catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

298: Protective Sandwich

Analysis and hands-on coverage (!) of Apple’s October event and the updated MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and iPad Pro.

Episode Description:

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MP3 Header

Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. Intro
  2. Mac Opening Statements
  3. MacBook Air
  4. Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
  5. Modern laptop patterns
  6. Mac Mini
  7. Recycled aluminum
  8. Grading the Macs
  9. Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
  10. iPad Pro
  11. Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
  12. iPad Pro
  13. Prices and punishment
  14. Ending theme
  15. Executive encounters

Intro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey everyone, just me for a second here recording from after we recorded the episode. We are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco starting a merchandise sale starting about the day that you’re going to hear this. We have new t-shirts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sale, some of the old ones are coming back, and we have pins that are back. They’re a little bit more improved from before, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much the same design as before. Really hot sellers last time, so get them if you can, get them quickly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We will put the link in the show notes here or visit our website atp.fm and you will find the link there. Thank

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you very much. Also, we forgot to mention in our wonderful extravaganza covering the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple event that you’re about to hear that voting day in the US is going to happen between

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this episode and the next recording. And we would like to very strongly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco encourage all of our listeners who are able to vote in the US to please

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do so. It’s incredibly important that you vote. Not enough people vote and problems

⏹️ ▶️ Marco result. And we would love so much to hear that all of our listeners went out there and voted. No matter what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco races are in your area, no matter how much you think your vote doesn’t or does count,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey please,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco please vote. Thank you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, where are you right now?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am in my house in New York. And John, where

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are you? I’m in my house not in New York. Okay, and I’m also in my house, but that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t make sense because I hugged you like five hours ago. Why is your voice so hoarse, Casey?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because any time I speak at more than normal speaking voice for more than like 10

⏹️ ▶️ Casey minutes, I sound like a chain smoker. It’s been a long day. Marco and I work together.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is currently nine o’clock in the evening on Tuesday, Halloween Eve. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I last saw Marco at about one, I think, or thereabouts.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something like that. Yeah, right around lunchtime. Since the last episode was recorded,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we got invited to go to the Apple event today. And because Marco and I don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey jobs, we were able to do that. And so this morning I woke up at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little before four, flew to LaGuardia, went to the event, and got home about an hour ago.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s been a bit of a day.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I was listening to last week’s episode, actually just yesterday or today or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John I made a snarky comment about how, oh, we all got our invites to the event, right? Well, actually,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco we did get invites to the event. So thank you to Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John for inviting podcasters to Apple events, and thank you for having them on the East Coast, even

⏹️ ▶️ John though I couldn’t make to this one, unfortunately, because of my day job. I appreciate the fact that it was on the East Coast, and

⏹️ ▶️ John my ability to make it was, you know, made it much greater by the location. So I would encourage

⏹️ ▶️ John this. In fact, all Apple events should be in the East Coast. And if Apple would like to make them in Boston, that would be super convenient for me too.

⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, it’s awesome, it’s exciting that we got invited, and it’s exciting that you two got to attend.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, and I would like to reiterate what John said, because I was particularly curmudgeonly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash whiny about the fact that podcasters do not exist

⏹️ ▶️ Casey according to Apple PR. And I honestly don’t know how or why we got invited.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if a little birdie wants to tell me, I’d be curious to hear how that happened. But I ain’t complaining. I don’t know how it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey happened, but it happened. And so I am extremely thankful, and well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we are extremely thankful, and it was super cool. And we’ll talk a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the event, of course, because I think that’s what the people tune in for, but I’m sure we’ll be a little inside baseball

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about what it was like for us to be there. John, I am genuinely sorry you couldn’t make it, but I’m glad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that even one of us, let alone two of the three of us, could go. So it was very cool.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m actually kind of relieved that there was nothing related to the Mac Pro at the event.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It would have been amazing. It

⏹️ ▶️ John was hard enough for me not to be there, right? But I’m like, well, but at least there probably won’t be any

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro stuff, right? And there wasn’t, so great relief for selfish reasons.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how do we want to do this? Do you want to try to go chronologically?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think we’ll go through as usual in show order, in presentation order. I do have a…

Mac Opening Statements

⏹️ ▶️ John I have an opening statement that I was going to make more forcefully and now I’m now I’m waffling huh waffling on it

⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit. I’m sure we’ll talk about this

⏹️ ▶️ John in the event and this is not what the event was about but it’s something that a lot of people on Twitter were talking about

⏹️ ▶️ John and something that I was thinking when I watched the video of the event that

⏹️ ▶️ John aside from everything that was announced the event the the subtext that I was getting

⏹️ ▶️ John right or wrong from this event is this is this is Apple whispering

⏹️ ▶️ John slightly louder to the world not to tech nerds who have already been talking about this for literally years but

⏹️ ▶️ John to the world saying we’re gonna make our Macs

⏹️ ▶️ John and I think that that signal is

⏹️ ▶️ John less hidden than it was now the reason I’m waffling because I’m I’m like, oh, sure, they could be saying

⏹️ ▶️ John that publicly, you know, in subtext as a negotiating tactic

⏹️ ▶️ John for the company whose name was not

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco uttered or shown

⏹️ ▶️ John to the degree that normally is in this presentation, Intel. So if you are trying to

⏹️ ▶️ John get the upper hand on Intel in any sort of future negotiations about whatever they might negotiate about,

⏹️ ▶️ John one way to increase the power of your position is to stop really talking about

⏹️ ▶️ John their products so much. Stop really bragging about them. In fact, don’t mention their name at all, but just sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John use generic terms like the number of generation they’re on and maybe the word core.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then spend a long time talking about how awesome the CPUs that you,

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, make. So that’s my one meta comment

⏹️ ▶️ John on the whole thing. And that is not what this presentation was about. It was about iPads and all the products we’re gonna talk about, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John but I felt that signal coming through to me through the video. You guys can tell me what it was

⏹️ ▶️ John like to be there in the room if it really, this was really about Apple today and I’m just wrong because I was watching it by

⏹️ ▶️ John video.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what makes you waffle on it now though?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s potentially a negotiating tactic, right? That’s the only, like, I was gonna boldly predict

⏹️ ▶️ John like this is it, like, because I was coming out of this like that, Apple just basically said, we’re making our Macs. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John hello everybody, to the public, you know, tech nerds have been talking about this for years. Now we’re saying to the public, we are making

⏹️ ▶️ John our Macs. If you can’t figure it out by now, it’s going to happen. You want it to happen. Everyone knows it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John going to happen. We’re making our max. But if you are still if you were

⏹️ ▶️ John trying to negotiate with Intel about anything, this would be the way to increase

⏹️ ▶️ John the power of your position to say, you know, to get the public on your side to say, oh, the public wants us to make

⏹️ ▶️ John our max. Everyone agrees arm chips are better than everything you have. So what have you got to offer us? Right.

⏹️ ▶️ John That ship may have already sailed. We don’t know, right? And no negotiating can change the fact

⏹️ ▶️ John that Intel is behind on process, which Apple emphasized in this presentation. Seven nanometer,

⏹️ ▶️ John did you know that nobody on a laptop or phone or, no, I think it’s a laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John or desktop market has that. Did you know that?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Apple knew that and they

⏹️ ▶️ John mentioned it. It was just like, it was hit after hit. Anyway, that’s it. That’s my

⏹️ ▶️ John opening statement. If I’m at a commentary, we’ll go back to it when we get to that section.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, just to answer that question that you posed, I don’t think this is a negotiation tactic.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Apple has made the decision already that Intel’s being phased out over time. It’s only a question

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how and when that happens, but it’s not like, you know, it’s like when a job is really horrible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you decide to quit the job. If you go into your boss’s office and they’re like, well, how about we pay you 10% more? It’s like, that’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna change your decision. Like you already made the decision. It’s just an issue of executing it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Like that’s how Apple’s decision I think is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s sure what it looks like. Yeah, like that’s how, like I think Apple decided probably over the last few years

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to break up with Intel and they’re just slowly doing that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and I guess I have to add at this point because we probably won’t talk about the Mac Pro. Well, I’m not kidding, we

⏹️ ▶️ John will.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Anyway. Oh no, oh no. This is

⏹️ ▶️ John also making me think that I may be in a position, personally,

⏹️ ▶️ John and many other people may be in a position of buying the last great

⏹️ ▶️ John Intel Mac, assuming the Mac Pro comes out next year and is Intel-based. What is it gonna be like to buy like

⏹️ ▶️ John a $8,000 Intel-based Mac the year before all Macs go ARM and their processors

⏹️ ▶️ John are amazing.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And the other fantasy

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s throwing around is like, as everyone has said, but what if the new Mac Pro is taking so long because it is ARM,

⏹️ ▶️ John that would also kind of blow my mind. So I feel like I’m in an uncomfortable

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro position right now, but as we’ll get to later, Apple is kicking

⏹️ ▶️ John some major CPU butt.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so it starts with…

MacBook Air

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s see, the MacBook Air. And we are talking about the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right up front. And spent a fair bit of time talking about the Mac. Like I didn’t time

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it or anything, but I expected the Mac to take up like three minutes at the top of the show. And it was a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey while. So…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because this is major updates, right? Like… Yeah. And before we get into the Air, I do want to talk one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco second about the black and white video about creative people using the Macs that came right before

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Air segment. I thought it was very interesting that almost every Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop that was in that video had the glowing white Apple logo on the back, which means

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was pre-2016 models. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you had pointed that out to me when we were in the show, and there were definitely some that did not have a glowing Apple logo,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you were right that the majority to my eye, or at least once I started paying attention when you said something,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the majority were absolutely older ones, which is definitely interesting.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then we also got a number, Tim said that the active Mac installed base is 100 million.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s a number that I don’t think we get very often, if ever.

⏹️ ▶️ John We also don’t know how they measure that, so it’s like, okay, I guess. That’s true. Like, what does that even mean? Like

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s many different ways to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco slice that, but I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean, it’s a round number and then it’s a section on the Mac, so they got to look for some number to brag about, I guess.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder maybe if it’s like connections to XProtect or connections to other software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco update mechanisms or the App Store.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s definitely ways you can you can measure that to come up with a bigger number or a smaller number Like if you if you just measured the

⏹️ ▶️ John ones that are supported supported by Mojave, for example that number is always smaller right because they actually

⏹️ ▶️ John started cutting people off, but if you measure if they’re Hardware that you could take to an Apple Store and get repaired

⏹️ ▶️ John like not an Apple’s obsolete list I wonder if that number shrinks as well. Anyway, they’re selling

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of Macs

⏹️ ▶️ Casey indeed so they just they start by discussing how everyone loves the the MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Air, which was true, if not anymore. And we got a new

⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Air, which up until just a few minutes ago as we record, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think we all kind of assumed, and Marco, you had reached this conclusion almost immediately, assumed that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a MacBook Escape, but not. But it sounds like that is actually not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey true. So can you tell me a little more about this, Marco?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So this, I’ve been kind of like on a research rollercoaster all day trying to figure throughout the MacBook Air.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, so here’s, you know, it was introduced, like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve all in the Mac community and especially Apple users, we love the MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air. We have loved the MacBook Air for a very long time. And they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco capitalized very much on that in this presentation. They, like Tim called out the MacBook Air as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most loved Mac, which I think that was probably an accurate description. He

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even brought up the, he called back the envelope reference, which was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really nice. And so, it referred back to all the MacBook Air

⏹️ ▶️ Marco history and really capitalized on the MacBook Air love that it has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco built up over time as one of Apple’s most valuable product names and brands and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco icons, right? The funny thing is, if you look at what they actually have shipped

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the new MacBook Air. It looks a lot like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a middle point between two computers they’ve been shipping for two years now. The MacBook Escape,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which they’ve been shipping since 2016. And it also now we’re learning that it actually has a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of similarities to the 12-inch MacBook which shipped in 2015. When

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Escape was unveiled in 2016, Phil Schiller, during the presentation,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually called out this configuration of the MacBook Pro without the touch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bar as an Air successor. He mentioned the Air and he said

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they created this new configuration of it to appeal to Air buyers, something like that, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I forget the exact words. And so they were positioning, oh, and it made sense, like technically, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it had the same processor class as the Air, the same approximate guts as the Air. It was totally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different from the touch bar models. Like all the guts were different, like the components, the CPU and everything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Similar size and

⏹️ ▶️ John weight too, importantly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was 3.0 pounds, 13 inch screen, like it was very, very similar to the MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air in many, many ways. It was positioned as such, it was engineered as such. Clearly, the MacBook Escape

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was supposed to be the MacBook Air replacement. And the market basically said no,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for lots of reasons. I mean, up front, the price was even worse. Like, there was since a price drop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the Escape that brought it down a little bit further. But in 2016, it was much more expensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the Air, and people didn’t like the new keyboard, which also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kept dying. People didn’t like the fewer ports, and the loss

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the legacy ports, and the fewer total ports, because it only had the two, plus the headphone jack.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That has been on sale for two years, and the market has spoken very loudly that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, that is not the MacBook Air replacement we were looking for.

⏹️ ▶️ John One thing I’ll throw in there, Obviously the price I think is the number one concern and everything you brought up, but I actually

⏹️ ▶️ John think, and I can say this more confidently now that Apple probably agrees with me, that the taper, the lack

⏹️ ▶️ John of a taper was like the third place factor, which sounds stupid, and I’ve railed against

⏹️ ▶️ John the taper before saying you can fit more battery if you don’t taper it. But

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s clear that Apple considers, as I think I mentioned a couple of shows back, the taper to be an important

⏹️ ▶️ John part of the MacBook Air’s branding. They put it on the

⏹️ ▶️ John 12-inch MacBook, the MacBook One, that tapers, and the new Air has the taper as well,

⏹️ ▶️ John and the Escape didn’t. And so, obviously the price, I think, was number one, and

⏹️ ▶️ John number two was probably lack of ports and MagSafe and all that other stuff, but number three, I think, was the taper, because

⏹️ ▶️ John if you love the MacBook Air and it’s your most loved thing, what you want more than anything is a replacement

⏹️ ▶️ John for the MacBook Air that is like your MacBook Air, but better, and like your MacBook Air, like

⏹️ ▶️ John I was talking about this when we were talking about the rumors, mean to make a new MacBook Air? Like the MacBook Air? Means essentially it has to be wedge-shaped

⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s the MacBook Air and it I think it feels thinner because of the skinny edge

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it makes people think oh I had an old MacBook Air that I loved and now here’s a new MacBook Air which we’ll see whether we

⏹️ ▶️ John love or not but it’s clearly a MacBook Air whereas the new MacBook Escape was not a MacBook Air as much as Phil Schiller may have wanted

⏹️ ▶️ John it to be it was the MacBook Escape it was the MacBook without touch bar with a really big escape

⏹️ ▶️ John key that’s what it was and it cost a bazillion dollars and it was was not a new Air.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I agree it was not a new Air, but to me, what it looks like they have done

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here is basically renamed the MacBook Escape, the new MacBook Air, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco made it wedge-shaped, and now it still has almost all of the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco drawbacks as the Escape did to Air buyers. It’s got more, right? Because it’s five watt CPU. Right,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, okay, I’ll get to that in a second. But now that they call it the Air, now everyone’s like, oh, finally,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they made the computer I wanted. but it appears as though they really have done like a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco marketing jujitsu here. It really is basically a halfway point

⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the 12-inch MacBook and the Escape. And it does not have the things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that MacBook Air people want, but it’s called a MacBook Air. And it’s wedge-shaped.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s wedge-shaped, and it’s three pounds, and it’s 13 inches, but they’ve already been selling a computer that is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost exactly that for two years that nobody has bought, basically. So I don’t, to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, everyone’s really happy today because this is the day the event happened, everyone is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very excited about everything, it looks really cool and everything, but if you enumerate the reasons why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you weren’t buying The Escape for the last two years, all of those reasons apply to this.

⏹️ ▶️ John And more, and I remember a couple shows ago I was saying when we were in our umpteenth iteration of

⏹️ ▶️ John gnashing our teeth about the laptop line, it was like, something about,

⏹️ ▶️ John Imagine if Apple shipped this computer, how much would you like it? And I said, imagine a MacBook Air, but it’s Retina. You know, and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, that’s what people want, right? And so isn’t this exactly what you got? Isn’t this a Retina MacBook Air? Nope.

⏹️ ▶️ John I look at this machine and I say to you, if I took this machine and I put a 15 watt

⏹️ ▶️ John CPU instead of a five watt in it, and I put a USB-A and an SD card slot on it, and I

⏹️ ▶️ John put a different keyboard on, would you like it more or less than the computer here? And I would be hard pressed to find

⏹️ ▶️ John somebody who would say they would like it less. because those things I just changed about it,

⏹️ ▶️ John they would probably make it more expensive, but to the point that you’re going to get too soon,

⏹️ ▶️ John like there already is, you know, a bunch of other laptops in

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s line that are like this, like the, you know, or I could throw an Agsafe in there. There’s a bunch of other products

⏹️ ▶️ John that are sort of spreading out along the line here. If you wanted to make a new computer that

⏹️ ▶️ John fills a new role, the reason people don’t like the Escape, like you said, if you knew all those reasons, if you want to counteract them,

⏹️ ▶️ John make a retina MacBook Air, which is take the MacBook Air and put a retina screen on it and update the USB ports or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John but don’t take away things that people love, which is the keyboard that they like that’s more reliable, maybe an

⏹️ ▶️ John SD card slot, maybe a USB-A slot. Like there’s things that you could do, the small things that

⏹️ ▶️ John everyone would say, oh, that’s better, that’s even better than what we got, right, but they haven’t done that, right? So

⏹️ ▶️ John I think when people look at this computer, I think they may actually

⏹️ ▶️ John go pretty far on the fact that it’s called MacBook Air, But if you had that sort of Pepsi

⏹️ ▶️ John challenge where I said, do you want this one or the one with the single USB-A port? And they’d be like, oh, I’ll take that one.

⏹️ ▶️ John Why wouldn’t I would take the one with the big chunky port? Cause I have some stuff that’s shaped like that, that goes in that hole. Do you want this

⏹️ ▶️ John one or the one that has MagSafe? Oh, well, I love the MacBook Air. It’s the most loved Mac ever. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I love MagSafe. And I’ll take the one with MagSafe, right? Those two changes right there wouldn’t actually cost that much more money.

⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously Apple is on the outs about MagSafe for reasons that I don’t think have been fully articulated to the public, but

⏹️ ▶️ John may actually be valid. We just don’t know. of starting fires and causing reliability concerns. But a USB-A port,

⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t cost that much money. They can find room to fit it and people would love it, but Apple says no.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it has, you know, has the same two USB-C ports as the Escape, which- Two

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thunderbolt ports, to their credit. Yeah, okay, yeah, fair. So, but you know, what that really means though, is one port

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have it plugged in, plus the headphone port, which is on the wrong side.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, having one more port sounds like paradise. Don’t you knock it, my friend. That would be amazing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ll get to that in a second too. But anyway, so you have the same ports as the Escape, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had for a while and decided were not enough, but okay, we’ll move on from that. This is a low-end product after all.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have the same keyboard. It’s the same keyboard as this year’s 2018 MacBook Pros.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, obviously with the change of there being Touch ID without a touch bar, which by the way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is awesome. I love that. I love that you can get Touch ID without the touch bar. That is a great

⏹️ ▶️ Marco option, and I hope that option moves across the line. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John you hope that just because you’re begging for scraps. I hope Face ID moves across the line, but we’re not there yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fair enough, yeah. Yeah, I guess if we’re gonna keep having that giant top bezel on the screen, might as well make Face ID

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there. But anyway, so it is the same keyboard though. So anybody hoping for a different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard, myself included, we are disappointed because it is the same. Now it does have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that silicone membrane that the 2018 update brought to that keyboard to make it quieter,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but we also know that there are still reports of these keys flaking out and dying. So it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fixed. The problem is not gone, it just seems to be maybe reduced. So it still has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an unreliable, expensive, hard-to-service keyboard, which I still assert is a terrible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco choice, not only for anybody, but especially for a low-end model, where these have to last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long time, they’re sold to very value-conscious buyers, they need to withstand things like schools

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and heavy use. So I, you know, specks of dust are going to be a problem, I think.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re going to keep pushing this. I was hoping that this new MacBook Air would be the first model to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco show off a new industrial design that would be that would spread across the line. Obviously, that was wrong

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it that is not that was not in the cards for this year. That is not going to happen yet. We’re not ready for it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. I’m disappointed by that. But oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, and and your your new hope should be that this is the last laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John in the old design language. Right, so you were hoping this will be the first of the new generation. Right. Now

⏹️ ▶️ John we all switch to saying, I really hope this is the last of this generation. I mean, this generation means starting with

⏹️ ▶️ John a 2015 MacBook of the butterfly keyboard generation of no ports,

⏹️ ▶️ John this keyboard. We should all pray that this is the last one. That, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, whatever the new generation is coming in the future, it wasn’t in time for this, so

⏹️ ▶️ John just this is the capstone. They’ve now converted their entire laptop line to this style

⏹️ ▶️ John and this generation and all the trade-offs that are made on pretty much every single one of these models are the same. Like it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not like they perhaps couldn’t revisit the trade-offs. The best they could do was, you know, put

⏹️ ▶️ John some membranes on the keyboard, right? But all the trade-offs that were present across the entire line, they’re still there for

⏹️ ▶️ John every one of these computers.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And we’re three years into this, almost three and a half years into this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation of neutral design for the laptops. Typically these generations last like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco four to five years at most. Obviously Apple slows down over time with Mac updates

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly so that might extend, but I’m guessing we still have another year of this left unfortunately.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, besides it being not what I wanted, this does look like a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good computer, but what’s really interesting is this article that came out on MacRumors tonight, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing some investigation of what processor is in this thing. They really didn’t mention it very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much, all they said it was that it was 8th generation and we know it’s like you know 1.6 gigahertz base there’s only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one processor option there are there’s no built-to-order upgraded processors I noticed when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was looking through tech specs that this computer only has a 30 watt power brick

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is the same wattage of the 12-inch MacBook the escape which has what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to be the air class 15 watt CPUs ships with a 60 watt power brick

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it seems like this computer uses way less power So sure enough, there’s this MacRumors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco article tonight that seems correct, that the processor, based on just like model

⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers existing in Intel’s system and everything, it is the MacBook class of power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco consumption and performance, not the MacBook Air and MacBook Escape class. What this computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco appears to be is a 13-inch MacBook, not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a wedge-shaped Escape, after all. And this may this once you learn

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this about it a whole lot of things Make more sense and a whole lot of things are kind of disappointing or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird it is tech forward It’s way more tech forward than the 12-inch MacBook and by the way the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 12-inch MacBook didn’t get an update this year Which is weird like that like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it should Theoretically have gotten updated today with this if this is basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 13-inch MacBook the 12-inch should have updated with it I don’t know why it wasn’t but oh well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ll get there maybe it’s some weird Intel thing, who knows. But it is tech forward in the sense

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the new MacBook Air has the T2, the T2 architecture with the SSD controller and everything, that’s great.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has the modern speaker system and microphones, it has Touch ID, which is awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did find it kind of funny that they were like talking about things like Retina screens

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the Force Touch trackpad being new, because even though, like it was basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like re-celebrating all the innovations they had for the last few years.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like, the Air never had them. So to the Air, they were new, but it’s like, here’s why a force touch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco track pad is good. It’s like, yeah, that was introduced to the MacBook line in 2015. So thanks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, it does look like a really interesting product if you can tolerate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that keyboard and if the pricing works for you. But it’s more,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really curious to see the performance of it and to see whether it throttles really badly because the MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has some issues like that sometimes. But it sure does seem like it’s actually a 13-inch MacBook,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a replacement for the Air directly. And it’s actually gonna be probably a performance hit.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the only reason it compares well to the Air is because the Air is so old.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But. Yeah, this was weird for me to watch because I’m not dying to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey upgrade my MacBook, but I would like to. I got it, I think I placed the order during

⏹️ ▶️ Casey WWDC 2017, so I got it sometime in June of that year. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love my MacBook Adorable, but it’s not fast, and the one port

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is kind of annoying. Generally speaking, I don’t mind it, but there are definitely times that it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of annoying. And not having Thunderbolt is also kind of annoying,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because if I wanted to get a dock, and I have to be super careful that it’s a USB-C dock, and that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey could potentially limit me, although it doesn’t seem like I need anything that Thunderbolt gives

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. So I’m sitting in the presentation, I’m watching it, I’m, so, oh, there’s two ports.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, they’re Thunderbolt ports. This is all sounding great. Everything’s coming up Casey. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey then we learned that it’s basically the same CPU and that really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey puts a damper on things because I want something quicker, like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot quicker. And so I’m not desperate to upgrade my laptop, and thus I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably won’t, especially because the new iPads look so hot. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what I would do if I were to buy a laptop today, and my personal priorities

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are something that is very small and very light, but preferably not quite as slow as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my current MacBook, I guess I would get the escape,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey question mark? I’m not even sure what I would do. And also I should add that when I was in the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hands-on area, which it is so cool to be able to say that, but anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco when I was in the hands-on area,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had forgotten that I actually don’t love the feel of the third

⏹️ ▶️ Casey generation butterfly keyboards. They feel a little bit mushier to me. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would probably get used to it, and it’s probably for the best because they’re also quieter, allegedly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They felt, yes, I understand they touted the stability of the keys, but it just felt a little squishier

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me. And one of the things I love about my adorable keyboard is how crisp

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is. And yeah, I can totally see how that may not be your Royal You and your, specifically,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco Armand’s cup of tea, but for me, I really like it. And I’m not sure I like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new one quite as much. Although if I had to sacrifice the stability of it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to get, or the crispness of it, in order to get something that’s more reliable, I would totally make that trade.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really curious, like, especially if you look at, like, think about this too, like, the way this fits in with the lineup,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 12-inch costs $100 more to start. Now, that’s partly because there is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no 12-inch configuration that only has 128-gig SSD, which, by the way, should be illegal.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you actually, like, configure these to be equally specced, where, like, basically you give the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air 256, then the Air, the 13-inch new Air, is $100 more than the 12-inch at the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco spec. So what would actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco finally make sense here that would finally resolve this would be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the 12-inch gets a 128-gig configuration

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is $100 less to start, so like $1,099 basically to start.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then you have the two MacBooks, basically the 12 and 13-inch, at $1,100 and $1,200 to start.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you look at the pricing, as you scale up, like the Escape

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think is like $200 more than them, the Touch Bar is another $200 more than that, something like that, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, the lineup would make so much more sense, except for the one hilarious

⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference that these two very similar low-end computers, the larger

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them would be called the Air.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s just carrying along the branding, yeah. Like the more I think about this, the more it just looks like a 13-inch MacBook One

⏹️ ▶️ John with Thunderbolt, right? which is an okay computer to have, but it adds granularity

⏹️ ▶️ John to their line in a weird place. Like I feel like there’s still a gap. And incidentally, speaking

⏹️ ▶️ John of gaps, they’re still selling the old MacBook Air. That was a question we had going into this. As far as I can tell, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John still selling it. Maybe they’re just clearing the inventory. Maybe they won’t. But if,

⏹️ ▶️ John I saw people somewhat snarkily saying, or people who are disappointed that this isn’t the first of a new generation of MacBooks,

⏹️ ▶️ John saying that if pressed, they might still buy the old non-Retina MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John Air for the keyboard, for the USB-A ports, for the, you know, whatever. Especially

⏹️ ▶️ John if the main thing you’re doing on it is typing, maybe Retina doesn’t mean anything, you’re not doing image editing

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. And so if the main thing you do is, you know, go around with your computer and type

⏹️ ▶️ John words and maybe use a web browser and like plug in USB sticks and

⏹️ ▶️ John an SD card from your camera, the old MacBook still is the better, quote unquote, better computer for you.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you were someone who loved the MacBook One, the 12-inch MacBook, but you just wish it had

⏹️ ▶️ John Thunderbolt and maybe a little bit bigger screen and was slightly faster, this is the computer for you. But I’m not sure if

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going to appeal to MacBook Air owners. Like that was the pitch during the presentation. Tim Cook was like,

⏹️ ▶️ John everyone loves the MacBook Air, so now we’ve got a new MacBook Air. And again, it’s hard to tell when I’m not there in

⏹️ ▶️ John the room, but the video was like, and the crowd goes wild. Like who doesn’t want- The crowd

⏹️ ▶️ Marco did go wild.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thunderous applause. Because people love the MacBook Air. So I’m saying, they really are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really capitalizing on that. They’re really pushing the marketing on this product hard.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They really want people to accept this as the new MacBook Air.

⏹️ ▶️ John And they might, because if they just want a wedge-shaped computer that is not the tiny, tiny MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John One, this fills that role. But as time wears on, if people

⏹️ ▶️ John replace their MacBook Airs with this computer, like will they miss

⏹️ ▶️ John MagSafe and USB-A and SD? Or will they just be like, oh, shrug, it’s the new MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John Air, it’s a little bit weird, but I’ll get used to it. Time will tell. And again, still selling the old one

⏹️ ▶️ John is, that’s not a shock, because that’s the thing that Apple does now. And

⏹️ ▶️ John still selling it to schools makes some kind of sense. But having it in the line, making

⏹️ ▶️ John tech nerds, like not out of spite, not to be like, well, if you’re not gonna make exactly the computer I want, then I’m gonna buy the old

⏹️ ▶️ John one forever. Like a Marco move there. I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco didn’t say forever.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know, I know, but like, I don’t think it’s actually a spite move. I think it is really

⏹️ ▶️ John saying, let’s really think about, like what do I actually want out of my computer and am I willing to trade these things

⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m used to? Right, I’m used to like having MagSafe if you’re just really

⏹️ ▶️ John obsessed with that and can’t stomach the idea of not having it, they will still sell you a computer with that and

⏹️ ▶️ John you can decide whether typing your password every time you unlock your computer or having a slow computer or having a non-retina

⏹️ ▶️ John computer or having terrible viewing angles are worth it to you. All that said,

⏹️ ▶️ John I mentioned I was in the market for a new homework laptop and I did the comparison after everything was announced to say,

⏹️ ▶️ John okay, so they’ve made their announcement, let me spec out the new MacBook Air that I would get

⏹️ ▶️ John and now let me compare it. And I did the comparison, I compared it to the MacBook Escape and

⏹️ ▶️ John the configurations I wanted, the pricing was frighteningly close And I’m like, well then why would I get

⏹️ ▶️ John the Retina Air instead of the MacBook Escape? And I said, oh yeah, Touch ID. So for me, that puts it over

⏹️ ▶️ John the top.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, oh yeah, the MacBook Escape still has the more dust-prone keyboard. It has not been updated to the third

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gen.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m not entirely convinced that that’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco material difference

⏹️ ▶️ John with the memory. But anyway, Touch ID was the big deal breaker. I’m like, well, oh yeah, I’d forgotten that the Escape

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have Touch ID. Forget about that. So I have been to the Escape, even though they’re very similar in price

⏹️ ▶️ John And the Escape is faster, surely, right? But I don’t care about that for a homework computer.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s better in a whole bunch of ways. Touch ID makes the new Air much more attractive

⏹️ ▶️ John to me than the Escape. And then the 12-inch, when I compare the pricing there, surprisingly,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you start specking up the 12-inch to be close to the configuration I wanted from the Air,

⏹️ ▶️ John the pricing isn’t that far apart there either. But again, the MacBook One,

⏹️ ▶️ John no touch ID, right? Am I wrong about that? That’s correct. correct. All right. I forget what’s on the

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. No, no touch ID. Also no membrane on the MacBook one. Yeah. And then you got the other different keyboard and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John only got the one port. So within Apple’s lineup, the new air, at least for

⏹️ ▶️ John my purposes is the most desirable product for a sort of low end laptop because I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John want to get the non retina because I just can’t stomach it. And because I just had one of those, I’d feel like I’d be buying the same

⏹️ ▶️ John computer, right? And the, the two sibling computers that are around

⏹️ ▶️ John the same price range with different tradeoffs in terms of size and power. Neither of them have touch ID.

⏹️ ▶️ John And as much as I want face ID, touch ID on a laptop, especially one that multiple kids log

⏹️ ▶️ John into and parents and everything going back and forth, not typing your password is big quality of life improvement. So

⏹️ ▶️ John for all of our complaining about this computer, we can’t buy what Apple doesn’t offer. And among

⏹️ ▶️ John what Apple offers for a cheap laptop, as far as my specific use case is concerned,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is the most attractive model.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, like I said earlier, it was a roller coaster for me. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I was thinking about just a moment ago is that for my MacBook Adorable,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey generally speaking, the only real peripherals I ever plug in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is an SD card reader, which I do a lot. Occasionally, Ethernet,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I actually use an old USB-A Ethernet adapter just because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it works. Oh, that was why, because I needed to be able to plug

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it into the dongle that has power input because I only have one port. That’s what it was.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So shut up, Marco. So I was thinking about it though, like my SD card reader, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a USB-C SD card reader, is physically way wider

⏹️ ▶️ Casey than these two ports directly next to each other will allow.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s actually been a problem since all the 2016s. The ports are so close together that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco peripherals will block the other ports next to them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Right. So this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, so if we tunnel vision and I’m tunnel visioning on purpose, you know, to make my point,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but if we tunnel vision on the only reason Casey wants a second port is for an SD card reader, which is not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the truth, but it’s not far from the truth. This is still a one port laptop because they’re directly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey frigging next to each other. I couldn’t plug in a power port at the same time, or I couldn’t plug in power

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the same time I’m using an SD card reader, unless I get like a USB C extension. And I don’t even know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Does that exist? Is that a thing?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that exists and I wouldn’t trust one. But can’t you just get a different dongle that has a built-in power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pass through and ethernet and SD card reader? Like I have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey one, is that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair? Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you could do that.

⏹️ ▶️ John And they have adapters, like we have them at work. They’re kind of terrible, but they go into both ports. Like both

⏹️ ▶️ John of the USB-C ports and on them they have SD card and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco HDMI and USB-A

⏹️ ▶️ John and a bunch of other stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m always afraid those are gonna snap off. The ones that have little short cables I think

⏹️ ▶️ John are way better. We haven’t broken one yet, but they’re definitely ungainly. I noticed some things

⏹️ ▶️ John when I was going through the video. I think, I believe this is the first time that I can recall seeing

⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple promotional video that shows someone using an Apple product with an obvious

⏹️ ▶️ John white dongle poking out of the back. I think it was when they were showing like Mac minis or something, and a bunch of kids were using

⏹️ ▶️ John them to do some video project or whatever, and you could see the back of the computer, and it jumped out at me. It was like

⏹️ ▶️ John a sore thumb, because you’ve got all these sleek little computers, and the telltale white dongle poking out of the back, which is what real Macs

⏹️ ▶️ John look like in the world. There’s white dongles poking out of the sides of all of them, but very rarely do you see that. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you look at all of the, well, at least from the pictures I saw, in the hands-on area,

⏹️ ▶️ John not a lot of white dongles poking out of the back of all those Mac minis. Just smooth, carefully arranged, like color matched

⏹️ ▶️ John cables to show how awesome and cool and sleek the Mac mini is. Although we’ll get to that in a second, that’s the reason for that.

⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, they showed a dongle poking out of it. And I continued to think that, like,

⏹️ ▶️ John until and unless the world catches up with Apple’s vision of connectivity on laptops,

⏹️ ▶️ John the reality for all of us will be Dongletown, and Dongletown is not a fun place to be.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s not the end of the world, we’re all doing it. It’s a thing that works, and it has advantages in terms of docking stations and everything, but

⏹️ ▶️ John it also has disadvantages. And thus far, Apple seems either

⏹️ ▶️ John unwilling to compromise on this, or they’ve compromised on it, but we haven’t seen the fruits of that compromise yet. So it’s difficult to tell

⏹️ ▶️ John which is which. I feel like you two could have asked Johnny about that when you were there, and maybe Marco did, but we’ll get to that

⏹️ ▶️ John later.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually, I have a better idea for how they can solve this problem. Space gray dongles.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then, they’ll still look pro, and Apple can sell us a whole bunch of new copies of the same things we already bought. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone wins.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it’s interesting. I feel like this is going to sell well because people are going to say, oh, this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the new version of the thing I loved and I just want a more modern version of the thing I loved. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is certainly not without compromise, which is something we’re kind of getting used to at this point,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey unfortunately.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s something we get used to on the Macs and especially the laptop Macs. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the laptops specifically. Yeah, because if you look, the desktops, we’ll talk about the Mac mini

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a second, the Mac mini update is awesome. It’s fantastic.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the iMac Pro, as I mention every show, is awesome. I love the iMac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just the laptops that have been in such a weird place the last few years. And it seems like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can’t ship a laptop that doesn’t have severe compromises in some way. Even if you like the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I hate, it seems like there’s severe compromises on all these laptops.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whether that’s if you don’t like the keyboard or if you need it to work reliably, or whether

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s heat and thermal issues, whether it’s simply that they just cost way more than they used to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the upgrades for them are very expensive and less and less is serviceable. And you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy all these dongles for everything. or if you want

⏹️ ▶️ John any port other than USB-C and maybe headphone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. So it seems like the laptop updates are just compromise

⏹️ ▶️ Marco after compromise after compromise. Whereas the desktops and the iOS line,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hardware is so good and the updates are almost all positive. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re so strong. And we’ll get to that for the rest of the show, fortunately. I think our one kind of downside thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is over because the Mac Mini update was fantastic.

Mac Mini

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, so let’s dive in. There is a new Mac Mini and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that also made a lot of people very happy in the room and justifiably so because it had been

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how long? 18

⏹️ ▶️ Marco years? Something like that. Can I just say too, like, I loved the intro video. It was the

⏹️ ▶️ John most dramatic

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Mac Mini intro video

⏹️ ▶️ John ever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was kind of tongue-in-cheek because it was totally tongue-in-cheek. Like, that’s why it was funny. Like, I love

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Tim’s like sly little like, there’s another small but mighty Mac our users I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been waiting for like even Tim’s making fun of it. They this video makes fun of it. Like I just love that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they just kind of owned that. We know we’ve all been waiting for the Mac Mini and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco super unimportant for the most part, but they’re gonna like make it seem really important for this one presentation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the next four years. So it’s I and I love the way they did the video. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this totally over the top thing that makes it look like a giant spaceship. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it made it look huge, right? I just I love that style so much. like Apple spends a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of money on these videos and many of them I think are way less successful than this. This was a lot of fun. I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really worked.

⏹️ ▶️ John It undercuts itself at the end when the audio switches to being whatever the, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John movie making terms for this, Todd Vizzier would tell me. But anyway, music that you’re hearing has background to the music of the video to

⏹️ ▶️ John music that is emanating from the computer that’s distant in the video. And like it’s big dramatic and then it’s like, oh, here it

⏹️ ▶️ John is. It’s a Mac menu hooked up to a display. And it’s playing this video.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that was really, it was a fun

⏹️ ▶️ John video. So we had this big discussion about the Mac Mini a while back and we were like, what are they gonna do with it? Our main concerns

⏹️ ▶️ John were size and ports and the answer to the question is size is the same and the answer to the

⏹️ ▶️ John port question is they didn’t screw it up.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right? Yeah, the only things they removed from the ports are the audio input, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco SD reader, and the optical capability on the output. Which for an Apple update

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2018 after four years, that’s really good.

⏹️ ▶️ John It could have been way

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco worse. Oh yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, in the grand scheme of things, like they adjusted the ports in ways that may

⏹️ ▶️ John or may not be, but it’s clear that there’s not a new philosophy for the ports of the Mac mini

⏹️ ▶️ John as there were in the laptops. There is not a philosophy that like, well, you know what? We think all small Macs should

⏹️ ▶️ John only have USB-C Thunderbolt ports on them. That is not, you know, the philosophy is the same as it’s ever been. Let’s

⏹️ ▶️ John put a ton of ports on the back because we don’t know what people are gonna use these little guys for. And if we have room for HDMI,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, it’s a weird old connector, but put it there because people hook it up to the TVs. USB-A, is there room for that? Sure, throw it

⏹️ ▶️ John on. Thunderbolt, that’s cool too. Let’s put one of those two, let’s put four of them on there. Like it’s the same

⏹️ ▶️ John port philosophy as it was before, which is an incredible relief because as we discuss,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what people use these things for, all sorts of random stuff. And it becomes massively less

⏹️ ▶️ John useful if you have some sort of overarching, very narrow philosophy of

⏹️ ▶️ John the ports that are quote unquote allowed on the back of a computer. Incredible relief. So

⏹️ ▶️ John thumbs up on the ports.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, which by the way, is the same position they took with the iMac Pro. The iMac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has all of the USB ports. It has 4C, 4A, plus ethernet and everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. It also lost its audio input and its optical output, unfortunately, but the iMac Pro showed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like even a brand new design, they still believe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we should give all the ports on a desktop because there’s room and people need them.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, or not like every single port in the universe, but the philosophy is there should be a variety of ports.

⏹️ ▶️ John Even if we think that some of them are old or weird or we’re not sure how many people could use them, if there’s room

⏹️ ▶️ John for them and it’s reasonable, we should put them on there, and they did.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, and I love, like, they even called it out, they said, the quote, customers love

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having lots of ports. Which, that was hilarious, because the laptops

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the iOS devices are the complete opposite direction. But I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco agree, customers love having lots of ports. I wish you could tell the rest of the company that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey this customer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco does.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this Mac mini, I saw, and there were so many things, like I love that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can spec it up really high if you want to basically make it, like it’s basically like a mini

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac Pro. Like it is space gray, of course. It starts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out at a really crappy low power chip, the four core i3, which I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think this is the first time Apple has shipped an i3 branded chip. i3s are pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco low end. I don’t even know much about them, but I think they don’t have hyper-threading or turbo. Is that right?

⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s still faster than the old Mac Mini because it’s so ancient. That’s the beauty of this update.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, like it’s so ancient and the old one was two cores and this one is four cores. So even though

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s an i3, it still has enough other benefits and recency to boost it up. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would, you know, to me, like that actually makes some sense because Mac Minis are often used,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mine for instance, mine is used in a capability where I don’t need a lot of CPU power.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mine is mostly used as a file server and a low needs, low role

⏹️ ▶️ Marco provider for the household. The Mac Mini is sometimes used in roles like that or it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco used in roles where it needs a bunch of power. It needs to churn CPU things for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco running tests or doing builds or who knows what else, right? And so it does make sense to have a low power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPU option and I’m really happy they can also offer a six core high power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. One of my big question marks on this is, I don’t know what the thermal situation is here. Like, can it sustain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a heavy load for a while without throttling like a desktop should? I don’t know. I don’t know how the fan

⏹️ ▶️ Marco noise is. I don’t know how the enclosure treats that. Their enclosure design recently in this area has been really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good though. Like, I’m pretty confident. It’s probably like, you know, like the iMac Pro is fantastic for fan

⏹️ ▶️ Marco noise. The laptops are okay. So I’m assuming this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gonna be pretty cool. I’m really looking forward to hearing more about it. Maybe testing one out or something. I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s great that the RAM was up to 64 gigs. And the biggest surprise of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco day, upgradable RAM on standard RAM SO-DIMM sticks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God, like this is the first time I think ever that Apple has taken a computer that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they made less upgradable and made it more upgradable. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John has that ever happened? It’s on DIMMs, right? I’ve been reading conflicting

⏹️ ▶️ John reports about, so it is upgradable as in one can upgrade it, but it is not meant to be

⏹️ ▶️ John user serviceable, as in you, the person who bought the computer, are not meant to crack it open and do that. Surely you can,

⏹️ ▶️ John because, you know, iFixit will help you get the tools and the ability to do that, but I’m not entirely sure

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, they recommend that you do it. I think mainly it’s like, look, if you have

⏹️ ▶️ John a whole bunch of these in a build farm or your Mac Stadium or you have a server or whatever, and the RAM

⏹️ ▶️ John goes bad on it, it’s nice to be able to just swap out the RAM at a repair center or wherever

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re supposed to do it, quote unquote. But yeah, that’s that’s not they mentioned that specifically and it’s a nod in the direction

⏹️ ▶️ John of trying to make this Flexible and repairable. This is also the dawn as I think

⏹️ ▶️ John our friend Todd Vizzieri has pointed out the dawn of the $4,200 Mac Mini. Yeah, it is

⏹️ ▶️ John slightly hilarious But I mean, it’s only hilarious when you compare it to PC pricing because as many people point out

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, so you spec up this $4,000 Mac Mini? Yeah, it’s a $1,500 PC Right, like as we went to the

⏹️ ▶️ John Intel NUC things like you’re not this is the Mac Mini has not suddenly become performance bargain Right,

⏹️ ▶️ John but we’re mainly relieved that they didn’t mess up the things that people like about that Mac mini They increase the power all

⏹️ ▶️ John around they let you spec it to a ridiculous degree Which is good because if you have some application that needs a huge

⏹️ ▶️ John amount of RAM But you know doesn’t need a giant SSD you can adjust those two things,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know Or you need just a little bit of RAM but a really fast CPU like it’s configurable for people

⏹️ ▶️ John and you know Since we’re a captive audience and we don’t have a choice of a lot of desktop Macs having a

⏹️ ▶️ John choice in the small headless desktop Mac market that we can adjust in some way to

⏹️ ▶️ John our specific needs, even though it is still very, very expensive in the grand scheme of things, and way more expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John than an equivalent power PC, we’re still happy because we’re Mac users, and we like Macs, and

⏹️ ▶️ John this option will keep us happy for at least like a year and a half, two years, until we start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco grumbling again. And just like the range of, you know, like you mentioned that you can configure

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it up to like $4,000, and yes, the base model is more expensive than before, but again,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the era of people buying cheap Mac minis to be their new desktops as new Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco converts is long over, and these are much more often used for things like servers and other

⏹️ ▶️ Marco specialized roles. So I think the price change here is fine, and the new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco base model is better specced than the old one was. The old one had a hard drive at its base price and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really slow CPU, and the second you touched any of those specs, you were spending $1,000.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like it was, you know, I think the pricing is fine. It’s obviously like all of Apple’s modern

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pricing. It isn’t ideal and everything’s kind of creeping up gradually over time, but it’s fine. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love how it has this massive range where you can spec it out to be that low end server, or you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do things like 10 gig ethernet. Like who would have guessed

⏹️ ▶️ John that? Yeah, that was amazing to me. That’s like, I mean, they charge you a hundred bucks for it, but still

⏹️ ▶️ John having that as an option, like if you decide what you need is a huge SSD 10 gig ethernet,

⏹️ ▶️ John but a wimpy CPU, like it’s, it’s amazingly flexible in ways that pretty much no other

⏹️ ▶️ John machine is even the iMac pro, which is basically like they just expect you want everything awesome, right? You can get some

⏹️ ▶️ John weaker stuff and some stronger specs on this and mix and match to the degree that you generally can’t elsewhere.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I thought it was interesting also in the hands on area that they were showing the Mac mini

⏹️ ▶️ John in all sorts of different scenarios that I assume that they believe it’s really used in. So So they showed it

⏹️ ▶️ John as a compiler farm for Xcode or running

⏹️ ▶️ John your test suite or whatever. They showed it in the videos hooked up to a television, which is a thing that a lot of people do with their

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac minis. They also showed it in the video, actually used it as a desktop computer, but I doubt

⏹️ ▶️ John many people use it in that way. The mixing and matching and the stacking of them and showing them in racks,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is like, it was not, when Apple introduced the Mac mini and even when they introduced

⏹️ ▶️ John this latest form factor of it, I don’t think they had in mind, oh, people are gonna be putting these in server racks, but

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Stadium exists and Apple knows they exist and it’s a thing that people do because it’s a headless Mac and it’s small and

⏹️ ▶️ John compact and you can actually stack them. So Apple went with that saying, we’re gonna show them stacked,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re gonna show them stacked sideways because it’s a thing people do and we want to say, yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John we Apple recognize that this is the thing you might wanna do with your Mac minis. And it’s not like they’re designing

⏹️ ▶️ John it for that, but they have that use case in mind. They’re not going to ruin it for you. They’re not going to say, make it

⏹️ ▶️ John cylindrical, which makes it really hard to rack. It’s, you know, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple embracing what people actually use their computers for rather than what they imagine

⏹️ ▶️ John or would like people to use them for.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We were so worried that like, we would have to like use ethernet through a dongle. Like the fact that we can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get 10 gig ethernet built in and that like, and like they didn’t, they didn’t take the power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco supply and make it external to make the box smaller. Like stuff like that. Like they, it’s just a good update. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you would have asked, Well, I was gonna say, if you would have asked me to predict a Mac mini update, then I realize, oh yeah, we have done

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that for the last few episodes. But like, I never would have guessed that a Mac mini

⏹️ ▶️ Marco update in 2018 would be this good. And I’m really, really happy that they did it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even though I’m probably not gonna buy one for a while because my Mac mini that I use for my home server is fine. Once

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it flakes out, I will gladly buy one of these.

⏹️ ▶️ John Real time follow up from Todd Vaziri, the phrases I was looking for, actually I wasn’t looking for them, I knew what they were, but I didn’t know

⏹️ ▶️ John what order they went in, so it’s kind of important. Diagetic versus non-diegetic. I could not remember which one was the one

⏹️ ▶️ John where the sound is coming from an object on screen and which one is instrumental. And apparently, diegetic means it’s coming

⏹️ ▶️ John from an object on screen, and non-diegetic means it’s part of the movie soundtrack. So thank you,

⏹️ ▶️ John Todd, for-

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was actually Jelly. Oh, was it? Yes, which I said in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the- Sorry! Thank you, Todd.

⏹️ ▶️ John Todd, you knew the answer too. I believe in you. Ha! Thank you, Jelly, for actually giving us the answer.

Recycled aluminum

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One more thing that I wanted to cover before we left the Mac section,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is they mentioned with the Air and the Mac Mini as well, that they’re now being made from 100% recycled

⏹️ ▶️ Marco aluminum. And that got a massive applause in the room. And I think that’s totally deserved. Like, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really cool thing. I have some questions about some of the details of that. And as a few people on Twitter have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pointed out, they did later kind of basically say that Macs are now made from the shavings

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off of iOS devices.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is the worst.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it’s the first thing I thought of, and then they said it in the presentation. I’m like, don’t highlight that. We’re all

⏹️ ▶️ John thinking it, but don’t say it. It’s like, we spend lots of money on the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco highest quality aluminum

⏹️ ▶️ John for the products that we care about, and the shavings that come off, we make max out of those.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it’s such a painful metaphor

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John for all of the max issues.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s interesting, though, the way they phrased it. Like, and I’m not that I’m concerned about this, but I’m like, you’re curious

⏹️ ▶️ John about it. They said that basically they make a new alloy out of the

⏹️ ▶️ John aluminum shavings. It’s not like they’re saying we take recycled aluminum and what we end up with

⏹️ ▶️ John is exactly the same as if we had started with fresh aluminum.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John They said instead that-

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s not post-consumer recycled, it’s post-Apple manufacturing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but it’s interesting that they’re saying that, that basically I’m imagining

⏹️ ▶️ John if you gave a material scientist two chunks, one of the recycled and one

⏹️ ▶️ John of the regular, they could tell they were different. Like the Apple phrased it as they’re making a different alloy. So I’m slightly

⏹️ ▶️ John wondering, is it actually the same? Is it softer,

⏹️ ▶️ John harder, bendier, more brittle, more prone to scratching? Like, I mean, you saw them in person, I’m assuming

⏹️ ▶️ John they just felt like Apple aluminum laptops, right? There’s probably not any variance that we can

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco tell.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, like when you feel them for like two seconds, it’s kind of hard to get a good idea of that kind of thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John so hopefully, like, and the reason I, I mean, I guess it is a concern. The reason I have a mock concern about this is,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s 100% the right thing to do. And I applaud Apple for doing it, and they should do it for all their products. But historically, as Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John has attempted to decrease the environmental footprint of their products, they’ve occasionally

⏹️ ▶️ John had struggles with matching the characteristics of the worst for the environment

⏹️ ▶️ John materials. Think about all the different plastics used for power cords. Think about when they went to lead-free solder

⏹️ ▶️ John on everything. It takes a little while to get the kinks worked out to come up with hopefully

⏹️ ▶️ John a more environmentally friendly product that is also as durable

⏹️ ▶️ John and as pleasing and has the same performance characteristics as the worse for the environment

⏹️ ▶️ John thing that it replaces. So hopefully the aluminum is not such a case and they’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John nailed it on the first try. I imagine it’s probably closer because you know it’s a big hunk of metal

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not as perhaps as finicky as the you know something as delicate as the kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John plastic they use for their cords. Although arguably some would say that

⏹️ ▶️ John no plastic they’ve ever used for any of their power cords or lightning cables or whatever has ever been durable enough. and

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a separate issue.

Grading the Macs

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, for the MacBook Air

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a typical academic rating scale of A through F, how do we feel like that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is? Because I went from, this is great to this is garbage to, eh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s fine. So I guess I would rate it like a C plus B minus.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then for the Mac mini, I think this is an A. This is a good update.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey update. Marco, how do you feel about these two so far?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac mini, I’m with you, it’s an A. The only thing that keeps it from being an A plus is that the pricing gets pretty steep pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast. But it’s an A. The MacBook Air, there’s still too

⏹️ ▶️ Marco many unknowns. I think we need to see how these perform in real life. We need to see how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like the battery life should be pretty good actually, given the size of the battery it has.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s only about 10% smaller than the Escapes battery. But if it has a processor that uses half the power, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be noticeable. So it should have really good battery life, but performance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be questionable. The keyboard is, eh. So I’m gonna say, based on John’s logic

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the MacBook Air being the least crappy option of what Apple actually is willing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to sell us right now, it’s kinda like, it gets maybe like a B or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a C, but at a crappy school. All right.

⏹️ ▶️ John This grading system is getting more complex by the moment.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, it

⏹️ ▶️ John really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. John?

⏹️ ▶️ John I give the MacBook Air a B minus, mostly because,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, despite all the complaints we had about it, I think it is, it offers something that its

⏹️ ▶️ John siblings in the lineup don’t offer. And the things that we didn’t mention that Marco just

⏹️ ▶️ John brought up, like the battery life, like that’s great. You know, the advantage of being a 13 inch MacBook One essentially is that

⏹️ ▶️ John if you use the seven watt CPU, you can get a lot of battery life when your thing is slightly bigger. I give the Mini

⏹️ ▶️ John an A minus, mostly because the pricing is just, I mean, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John always been bananas, but it’s really bananas for this particular machine. So, and I was mostly

⏹️ ▶️ John considering A at the top of the scale, But yeah, I’m gonna give it an A-.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we had a retail update and then iPad. I gotta tell you, I’m gonna cut to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the end and give my concluding statement up front, which is not exactly what John wanted to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do, but that’s okay. I wanted an iPad for the first time in a long time. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you recall, I had a Retinapad Mini, fourth generation, which they’re still

⏹️ ▶️ Casey selling. They even named it

⏹️ ▶️ John twice. Yeah. Why? They named it. And they put it on screen. Like, that

⏹️ ▶️ John was the thing that blew me away. Speaking of things that are on screen, at the very beginning of the presentation, they showed, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John not that we, all the rumors had leaked to the point, especially like in the hours before the presentation, we more

⏹️ ▶️ John or less knew what was going to be announced. but they had a big product shot that showed their lineup of Macs,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And it was the iMac Pro in the background, and it was like the 15-inch MacBook Pro and the 13-inch

⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Pro. And then it was like all arranged in a nice little family portrait. And off to the left

⏹️ ▶️ John was the only computer with a big silver face pointing you,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John Air. And the Mac mini was in a picture. Since when do they ever show the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John mini in a keynote presentation alongside other products? And it was clear that what they were gonna do is take the

⏹️ ▶️ John two things in this picture that are silver and replace them with ones that now fit

⏹️ ▶️ John in with the family. Now the Mac mini is space gray, and now the MacBook Air has the same black screen face. So that’s how you

⏹️ ▶️ John could tell early in presentation if you didn’t already know that they were gonna replace the MacBook Air and the Mac mini. In the iPad presentation,

⏹️ ▶️ John I believe they showed the iPad mini on screen briefly. They did. When they were saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John here is our iPad lineup. We have the iPad mini and the iPad, and then we have the two Pro

⏹️ ▶️ John models. And for a moment I was like, by showing the iPad mini, Are they telling me they’re no,

⏹️ ▶️ John of course, and they didn’t. They didn’t do it. It’s it’s slid off the left side of the slide, never

⏹️ ▶️ John to be seen again. Mentioned one more time the presentation as the iPad mini four. And anyway, it remains a product

⏹️ ▶️ John in their lineup.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, yeah, so I have an iPad mini four that actually hand on heart. I’m not sure where it is because I haven’t seen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I’m sure it’s here somewhere, but darned if I know where. It’s too small. You need a bigger one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, maybe that’s the problem. But these These new iPads,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they feel like modern Apple, I’m going to say computers,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which kind of makes me feel a little weird, but modern Apple computers more than the iPads

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that preceded them do. They ditched the home button, which looks archaic now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re edge-to-edge screen for the most part. No real big bezel for the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey most part. So they look and felt like modern Apple devices

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a way that I don’t think the iPad has. Even the iPad Pro just didn’t look as modern to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me once the iPhone X came into existence. All the iPads

⏹️ ▶️ Casey looked old and busted to me and these do not. These look great, they feel great, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey super thin. I love the flat edges around the outside.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m trying to figure out an excuse, you know, trying to convince myself that I need a 10 inch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or, or I guess 11 inch actually, uh, iPad pro, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was very impressed. These things look great and make me want an iPad again.

⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s the problem with these, this iPad pro announcement and my problem with my feelings about it. I look

⏹️ ▶️ John at their presentation, their presentation of like what they chose to emphasize, uh, what

⏹️ ▶️ John they spent time on, what they bragged about and what the reality of these products is and

⏹️ ▶️ John as excited as I’m getting about it, like my suspicion and we will find

⏹️ ▶️ John out shortly is that the new iPad Pros are essentially

⏹️ ▶️ John faster in all meaningful ways than every single laptop Apple sells. Which is

⏹️ ▶️ John again, like you look at this thing an eight core A12, right? 120 Hertz screen, pencil

⏹️ ▶️ John support, Like we

⏹️ ▶️ John would kill to get these kind of specs and these kind of capabilities in

⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of thing that runs Mac OS. Like I believe

⏹️ ▶️ John someone saying this has six gigs of RAM, which is double what the previous ones did. Like the

⏹️ ▶️ John this the iPad pros are tickling all of the be dazzled

⏹️ ▶️ John by pro hardware stuff like they used to be a staple of Apple’s presentations. Like sometimes they tell you about the amazing thing you can get

⏹️ ▶️ John at a great price and sometimes they say, this is going to cost you an arm and a leg, but it’s amazing. Like it has,

⏹️ ▶️ John it is incredibly powerful. It has new capabilities. Everything about it is incredibly fast. Let’s just, we’re going to brag to you about how

⏹️ ▶️ John fast it is and what it can do. And it’s in a cool new form factor. Like it was pushing all of those

⏹️ ▶️ John buttons. And certainly I want one, right. But also I’m thinking how,

⏹️ ▶️ John how amazing would an Apple laptop be with these internals?

⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple would say, what do you, the hell do you need a laptop for? We got a cool keyboard for this like it’s practically a laptop already.

⏹️ ▶️ John But you know me with the OS thing and all the rumors about what iOS 13 will have that got kicked out

⏹️ ▶️ John of iOS 12 that may make this an even more amazing computer. But but yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John setting aside my uncomfortable feelings about how I wish the laptop line was as

⏹️ ▶️ John powerful these iPads, you consider it in isolation. These are amazing iPads. These

⏹️ ▶️ John are this is what we’ve come to expect from Apple in like the phone line. And

⏹️ ▶️ John now I feel like this is the first iPad that has received as much attention as the phones do that. This

⏹️ ▶️ John new iPad is so much better in every possible way than all of its already

⏹️ ▶️ John pretty good predecessors. Like that’s a feeling that we get very often on phones like, oh, the iPhone 10, like it just makes the iPhone seven

⏹️ ▶️ John and, you know, it looks like junk, right? This is like you look at this and you look at the old iPads. It’s just you

⏹️ ▶️ John just fling them out the window. Like it’s slower. It’s uglier. I don’t know where to put the pencil.

⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t have a USB-C port. The speakers are worse. The screen is worse. Everything is just like, these

⏹️ ▶️ John totally eclipse all the previous iPads and they’re lust objects. Like they’re things that,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if you’re into iPads and even if you’re not that into iPads, like Casey, you see this and you want

⏹️ ▶️ John one because they press all the nerd buttons. And if you can’t figure out, like to Marco’s

⏹️ ▶️ John point that he was saying before on Slack, maybe you’re not that into iPads, but you’re like, I wish I was because this thing is awesome. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and I made Marco also- That’s exactly it. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John exactly it. Like me, it suspects that this, is this faster than every single laptop Apple sells? Maybe,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like we’ll find out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon. Certainly it’s faster than a hell of a lot of them. Yeah, I mean, you cannot miss the contrast

⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the excitement and the energy and the mood around

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the laptop updates versus the iPad updates. Like the Macs, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptops seem like they are updated inconsistently,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really incrementally, and almost begrudgingly, like it seems like Apple doesn’t even want to update

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the laptops. And the updates they do to them have very often come

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with significant regressions, or as I said earlier, like significant compromises. Whereas the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates are just blowing out the water, like to the one before, like the iPad updates

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are just like all good. And every year, they’re like these massive, awesome, major

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new upgrades to the iPad. And it’s kind of sad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a Mac preferring portable person, but as you said, John, it makes me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to use the iPad for more things. And it’s hard because the software still isn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there for a lot of the stuff I do, and a lot of the ways I prefer to work. And a lot of those I don’t think are gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco change anytime soon. And it’s unwise to buy an iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, thinking that, oh, well, in the future, this iPad will get much better in the ways I care

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about. like, you know, buy it now for what it is now. You know, don’t be relying on iOS 13 to maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make it into a Mac for you. But it is striking, like, the massive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference and like, wow, these iPads, every iPad update for the last forever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been just a ridiculously awesome update with huge advances,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no regressions, no compromises, and then you have the Mac line, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is full of regressions and compromises in some really kind of tepid updates.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the Mac line almost feels like they’re punishing you for being a customer. And the laptop line, yes, the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop line feels like they’re punishing you for being a customer. And the iOS line is just like full of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco love and like the most amazing work that, and it’s just like, I want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so badly to move more of my portable needs to the iPad. I just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t, I don’t think I can yet. Like I don’t think, like Stephen Hackett made a great argument for this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on, there’s a, if you’re a RelayFM member, there’s a show that members get to hear

⏹️ ▶️ Marco called Fusion. And they did an episode today about this event and reacting to it, and you should be a RelayFM

⏹️ ▶️ Marco member to hear this episode. Just go become a RelayFM member, because it’s worth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And the analogy Steven made, which I think is excellent, that I’m going to rip off now, is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s almost like you have a supercar that has just an incredible engine performance,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like can’t put the power down on the road. You know, like it just like doesn’t have like the, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tires or whatever, like to put that power down. It’s like, that’s how I feel about the iPad. Whereas like the iPads have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredible capabilities, incredible hardware, incredibly sophisticated, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, frameworks and everything. But there’s still fundamental parts of the software, fundamental

⏹️ ▶️ Marco limitations of the OS and the way work has to get done, the limitations it has,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the apps that are available that just make it really hard for a lot of us to take advantage

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all that power that they have. And over time, that line is moving,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s moving down, like we are able to do more things with the iPad over time, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it still is very far from what you can do with a Mac in certain industries for certain needs,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a lot of people have at least one of those needs. So I hope so badly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that iOS on the iPad catches up more to where the Mac is. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s no question that if you can get done on the iPad what you need to get done. It is the way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better portable computer than any Mac laptops.

⏹️ ▶️ John To tweak Steven’s analogy a little bit, I don’t think it’s so much that you can’t get the power

⏹️ ▶️ John down we have in most car analogies, like that you just end up spinning the wheels or whatever. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John because it does, like it takes that power and uses it, it’s just that, this is getting worse, I hate car analogies.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco road doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John go. The roads don’t go where we want to go. Like, you can get the power to like, is

⏹️ ▶️ John it showing Photoshop? It’s using all of its power to do that Photoshop demo. It’s just that the road doesn’t go where we want to go. Where

⏹️ ▶️ John we wanted to go is a particular work style, particular applications. And, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John even even Photoshop. I was thinking about this when I was watching the demos like there are tons of people out there who

⏹️ ▶️ John who use Photoshop professionally right now. Right. Um, and let’s say those people

⏹️ ▶️ John came of age in their profession at a time before iPads or for whatever reason, like they do their

⏹️ ▶️ John work not on an iPad. They use Photoshop, but they do work not on an iPad. Chances are really good

⏹️ ▶️ John that those people the way they use Photoshop and you see lots of people using Photoshop user professionally

⏹️ ▶️ John is the either have a tablet with a bunch of buttons and or use

⏹️ ▶️ John a keyboard and like so they’re looking at a desktop computer. They’re hitting keys on a keyboard or a tablet and they’re using a stylus

⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s a lot of input. They know all the single letter shortcuts for all the Photoshop stuff. They have

⏹️ ▶️ John customized their tablets to have these you know hardware buttons that do what they want. There’s just way

⏹️ ▶️ John more input variability and as nice as it looks to be able to sketch on an iPad Pro or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John and even with that touch thing on the screen that is an efficiency downgrade for people

⏹️ ▶️ John who are experts at hitting the 17 keys they need to hit to do Photoshop quickly on desktop PC. So if

⏹️ ▶️ John you told those people hey we’re going to take away your desktop PC whether it be a Mac or Windows PC or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re going to take that away, we’re going to replace it with an iPad. They’re going to say, well, the screen is smaller. Oh, you hook up an external

⏹️ ▶️ John screen? Well, but then going to hook up a keyboard? Well, then so you’ve got an iPad with a keyboard and an external screen attached. And it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re just trying to recreate a PC, right? So that’s an example of a

⏹️ ▶️ John lot of power. But this thing, this road doesn’t go exactly where they want it to go. Now

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a whole new generation of people who are growing up right now who use Photoshop who never got used to a Wacom tablet

⏹️ ▶️ John and a keyboard and a desktop display. And that just seems like a crazy Rube Goldberg machine. Why wouldn’t I just draw directly on the screen? And

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to be used to the iPad. And they still probably want a bigger iPad at some point or whatever. But

⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s still this this bifurcation and for lack of a better word, like workflows

⏹️ ▶️ John or ways of working, we know from our own friends who are, you know, into the iPad lifestyle and they have workflows entirely

⏹️ ▶️ John built around iOS. So it’s just setting aside the things which

⏹️ ▶️ John exist where you just can’t do on an iPad still for a variety of reasons. Even if you could do it

⏹️ ▶️ John on an iPad, like again, Photoshop, it’s available on both now or will be next year. You can

⏹️ ▶️ John do it on both. Why would you prefer doing a desktop? It’s like, well, watch me use Photoshop and see how much my hand is hitting

⏹️ ▶️ John these keys on the keyboard and see how I use my tablet and see how I use my gigantic screen. That’s why I’m still doing it here.

⏹️ ▶️ John And someone else is saying, Oh, I never got used to those things. I’m just doing it entirely on my iPad. So I think we still have a ways

⏹️ ▶️ John to go for the iPad revolution. Apple wants and

⏹️ ▶️ John regardless of how the lines stack up against each other. It’s not as if iPads have to compete with Mac stuff for people doing

⏹️ ▶️ John creative stuff. They have to compete against Windows PCs too. It’s like if you’re gonna do audio editing, unless they have an

⏹️ ▶️ John awesome audio editing application on the iPad with awesome keyboard support that supports a bigger

⏹️ ▶️ John screen and actually gives you a better experience than using a Windows PC with your favorite Windows, with your favorite audio

⏹️ ▶️ John editing application or a Mac for that matter, it’s still not gonna win that race. So

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re still awaiting the changeover, I suppose, changeover I suppose when the

⏹️ ▶️ John people who prefer to work the old way and travel those old roads are Retired or dead

⏹️ ▶️ John and the new way is all there is and maybe you know, maybe they don’t they don’t know They don’t know about

⏹️ ▶️ John the old way. So they you know, a giant iPad is fine for them

⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking of audio editing Jason Snell was 95% ecstatic

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about these new iPads and and 5% devastated because he often uses, what is it, ferrite

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to edit podcasts on the go and there is no headphone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey jack in the new iPads. And so he is really annoyed because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey he wants to be able to do podcast editing with no latency whatsoever and I guess

⏹️ ▶️ Casey his experience with AirPods is that there’s enough latency there that it becomes frustrating for him and so now he’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna have to use a USB-C a set of headphones or USB-C to headphone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dongle. $9 from Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and the headphone jack thing, it’s like, this is the one downside besides the incredible price

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on these.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh my God. It’s only

⏹️ ▶️ John incredible if you think of it as an iPad. If you think of it as a laptop with no keyboard, it starts to make more sense.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like the configuration that I would probably get, which is the 11-inch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with keyboard and pencil, 256, was $1,400. Yeah, but you

⏹️ ▶️ John cannot buy a $1,400 Apple laptop that’s anywhere near this performance. Like again, I haven’t seen benchmarks, but go try

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to find, give Apple $1,400

⏹️ ▶️ John and try to get a laptop that comes close to the specs and performance of the thing you just

⏹️ ▶️ John described.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John true. Granted, it’s better as a laptop, it’s better than having a floppy keyboard and all those other

⏹️ ▶️ John things, but it’s no contest in terms of the power and capabilities. Like Face ID, 120 Hertz, True Tone,

⏹️ ▶️ John all this amazing lightweight and everything, this thing is an absolute monster.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a better keyboard. The smart keyboard on the iPads is significantly nicer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to type on, in my opinion, than the ones in the MacBook Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I wouldn’t go that far. I know you like it better, but I like the laptop ones.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not saying it’s good, but I’m saying it’s better. Although, I wish it was backlit, but otherwise. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Casey

⏹️ ▶️ John that I like the feel of the laptops, it is much more reliable. Getting back to our earlier topic about

⏹️ ▶️ John how these compare to how the Mac is treated, one of the most important things about the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John line in general is, you know, in this update and basically all the updates before that in recent

⏹️ ▶️ John memory, every update shows me that Apple has learned

⏹️ ▶️ John from their past products, which were themselves good. Like, I mean, I have the original 9.7 inch pro, which I think was a fantastic

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad. Like, remember when it came out, we were like, well, this is the pinnacle. Like, this is just the ultimate iPad. It’s great,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got all this, like every new one that comes out, there’s something about it that shows,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, we made this awesome product last time and people loved it, but there were a few things that we could tweak, and then they tweak them,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And so this one, like, there’s no place to put the pencil. Now there’s a place to put the pencil. The stupid cap is annoying.

⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t worry about it, there’s no cap anymore. It rolls off the table. It’s got a flat side. The keyboard, the smart connector,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of awkward to use at certain angles. Well, now we have two angles, one for when you’re looking down and one for when something, it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John everything in their new product shows, we heard you about the last product, and in a timely

⏹️ ▶️ John fashion, we give you a new product that does some amazing stuff you maybe never even thought of, but also

⏹️ ▶️ John all the feedback you had about the old one, we incorporate that. Like I’m amazed at the physical

⏹️ ▶️ John characteristics in terms of how many iterations they do of like the back case and the front case and

⏹️ ▶️ John dealing with the pencil and the connectors and where the speakers are and where the camera is and orientations. Every

⏹️ ▶️ John single iPad, they get slightly better. There are minor regressions here and there where like, oh, this case is bad or they

⏹️ ▶️ John only put the front case and not the back or the sleeve was awkward and you know, but they learn

⏹️ ▶️ John from their mistakes, right? That’s what you wanna see, forward progress. there’s a new set of mistakes. Maybe the headphone jack is not

⏹️ ▶️ John a great idea. You know, maybe there are other issues about this, which I think we’ll get to in a bit when I talk about the physical form

⏹️ ▶️ John factor of the thing. But that kind of progress is so heartening to see. Whereas

⏹️ ▶️ John in, you know, in other and I felt the same thing with the iMac, right? Or like,

⏹️ ▶️ John assuming the iMac pro was their new pro computer that they that they listened to pros and said, like, we’re not gonna, you know, slim

⏹️ ▶️ John it down. The laptop line, which we are constantly harping on, seems either not to learn

⏹️ ▶️ John from the mistakes or to learn on a much longer timeline, right? Because it wasn’t that long ago that we got

⏹️ ▶️ John iPads with the pencil and all those complaints about it and it seems like only a couple years later we

⏹️ ▶️ John have an entirely new iPad, totally reimagined, which addresses a whole bunch of the problems we have with the old one

⏹️ ▶️ John including very, you know, picky and things like the, oh well I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John really happy with the angle of the smart keyboard or the the magnets in the smart keyboard, like sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re, you know, it gets loose or whatever. So now the magnets are stronger and now there’s multiple angles and it attaches

⏹️ ▶️ John in a different way. It’s just, you know, and this is not to say that their solutions to this one are perfect. I’m sure there’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John be specific issues and complaints. And a lot of it owes, you know, if you look at this, it looks a lot like the Microsoft surface

⏹️ ▶️ John in many aspects, right? Cause you know, it’s not like Apple solving these for the first time and animate, but they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John listening to their customers. They’re, they’re looking at their products and thinking about how they could be better. And they’ve come up with a new

⏹️ ▶️ John product that improves upon all that stuff. But it’s so heartening to see and it’s again making jealous for the neckline.

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Out ♪ Casey and I got a chance to play with these new iPads briefly in the hands-on area and they’re just so good. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get to play with the pencil, the keyboard. I spent a lot of time with the 11 inch. Only a little bit of time with the 12.9.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I couldn’t get too much with it because there was this beautiful Italian man in front of me but I didn’t want to interrupt.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it was the 11 inch was fantastic.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think one of the dilemmas that I think a lot of people have now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 12.9 didn’t feel as ridiculous as the previous one. It didn’t feel too big.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It didn’t feel too crazy. Now maybe that’s just like size inflation over time in the sense that like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe we just figure like, well, you know, like when the 12.9 first came out, it was like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when the iPhone 6 Plus first came out and it was like the first giant iPhone most people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had ever held, and it just felt ridiculous. And now that feels normal. Like, I feel like that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of how the 129 felt. But also, the original 129 was really big, and it was kinda hard to hold for a while and everything. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new 129 is not small,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the difference is smaller between that and the 11. And it is noticeably smaller than it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was before, and it no longer feels or looks like extreme or crazy. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now it feels like a big iPad. And I would be surprised, like we have a number of friends who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are like real iPad power users, like Mike and Federico and Jason and a whole bunch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people and a lot of them will have, they’ll either alternate between the two or they’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually own both the 12.9 and the 10.5 or some other smaller one, because the 12.9 is someone we’ll do for like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco travel or whatever else. I bet this generation, a lot of these people just get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 12.9 and are happy with just that because if you’re gonna have a 12.9 at all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the justification for also having a smaller iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is greatly reduced now. Not to mention the fact that these cost $1,400 when you spec them up.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the 12.9 is actually, I think, a much more accessible and reasonable option

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a lot more people than it was before. I would even maybe consider, if I was an iPad power user, which I’m not,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if I got to the point where I could do a lot of my work on the iPad, I would get a 12.9

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it is that much better.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m considering it too. Just because like, who doesn’t want a bigger screen? And if it’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John I have to see what it’s like, right? And also the keyboard, if you have a keyboard with it, is also gonna be a little bit roomier, because

⏹️ ▶️ John it can be, because the thing is longer. It’s definitely, I’m gonna have to check them out in the store. Not that I’m,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not planning to buy a new iPad, but of course I want one. Like, who wouldn’t want one? It’s awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ John One of the things about this design, it’s the edges are straight. Like it’s like an iPhone 5. People

⏹️ ▶️ John can keep going to the iPhone 4, but it’s more like the iPhone 5. Like it is like a aluminum bathtub with right angle

⏹️ ▶️ John sides, right? And a lot of times, if you look at the laptops, like

⏹️ ▶️ John take the MacBook Escape or any, the MacBooks you’ve seen lately,

⏹️ ▶️ John very often, I mean, part of the thing to make them seem thinner is that the edge, the flat edge

⏹️ ▶️ John that you see on Apple laptops is thinner than the height of the entire laptop, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not like you know that whatever that flat portion is like, oh, that’s how thick it is. What’s not there is there’s a curve section

⏹️ ▶️ John that goes underneath and part of that is to make it seem thinner than it is because if you had flat slab sides, it would

⏹️ ▶️ John look thicker even though it would actually be the same thickness. But there’s another super important reason

⏹️ ▶️ John that tons of products, including almost all of Apple’s historically that sit flat on a table, don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have right angle sides, just straight up right angle sides that go all the way down, that they have that curve. And that’s so you

⏹️ ▶️ John could pick the freaking things up. Because if you made an Apple laptop or any other device that had, that was made

⏹️ ▶️ John of aluminum, perfectly machined, flat, blah, blah, blah, where the sides were straight all the way down,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’d go to try to pick it up. And you wouldn’t realize that you do this, but you’d go to try to pick up with one hand, you have an expectation

⏹️ ▶️ John that you can get your fingertips under the edge of the device. And if it went straight down to the table,

⏹️ ▶️ John you couldn’t do that. You’d try to grab it and you’d just be pinching at this little right angle corner on the top of the thing,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t pick up a laptop that way. Like, you have to get your fingers underneath it somehow. So you maybe you push it

⏹️ ▶️ John sideways, or maybe you’d hope that it had rubber feet that elevated enough, you get your fingernails underneath it or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John It would be awkward. The fact that you never have to think about this with Apple laptops, that’s called good design. Like they

⏹️ ▶️ John make them that way on purpose, not just for ventilation, not just to make it look thinner on the side, but

⏹️ ▶️ John because

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John really important. You can’t freaking pick the things up if they didn’t do that. So when made a phone like that,

⏹️ ▶️ John well how did the iPhone 5 or 4 work? Those work because you can pinch it. You can have one finger on one side

⏹️ ▶️ John and a thumb on the other and you can pick the whole thing up. You’re never trying to like pick it up from one edge. Try that. Put an iPhone 5

⏹️ ▶️ John down on the table and try to pick it up without having fingers on opposing sides anywhere. Like just from one edge.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a fun game to play. The only thing that might help you, not in the iPhone 5’s case,

⏹️ ▶️ John but in the case of this thing, I made a joke on Twitter that like the whole reason they had that gigantic camera bump

⏹️ ▶️ John is so that you finally have some fighting chance of getting your fingernails underneath the thing to pull it off the

⏹️ ▶️ John table. But Casey, who was there, tells me that actually, despite the huge size of the camera bump, it doesn’t really help

⏹️ ▶️ John that much and it still is kind of difficult to get off on the table. So Casey, can you fill me in on exactly how difficult it’s going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be for me to pick up a caseless new iPad Pro from a table?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you know, one of the things about going today was that it is clear that I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was wholly unprepared for being there. Because once I got to the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hands-on area, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Obviously, I went to play with all the things, but I didn’t…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco take your hands and you put them on the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey products.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s right. Which is what I did. It’s right there in the name. Yeah, it’s right. It’s exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it says on the tin. But no, it was funny

⏹️ ▶️ John because… Marco gives you that advice to put your hands on it. But if you recall, the last time I did that

⏹️ ▶️ John at the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey WWDC,

⏹️ ▶️ John I went straight to the iMac Pro, and I grabbed the mouse and keyboard and an Apple person practically slapped

⏹️ ▶️ John the back of my hand and said, I’m sorry, you don’t have to touch these devices.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t be fooled. I actually, I had a moment like that. My very first thing, I went up to the MacBook Air because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the iPads were mobbed when we first got in there and no one was at the Airs. So I went over to the Airs and,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the first thing I wanted to do was like, pick it up. And so I picked it up and I was able to do that. But then I was,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I do when I’m in an Apple store, when I want to see a new laptop and experience it for the first time is, I pick it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up and I close it. and then I see how it feels when it’s closed. So I picked it up,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m looking around, that person’s fine with that. As soon as I close it, like, oh no, you can’t do that. And I’m like, oh, sorry,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco geez. They like open it back up, and like nothing happened. Like they didn’t have to like log back in or anything. I don’t know why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was not allowed to close it, but I know they’re very particular about things like this. So I just, I didn’t like push

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any more boundaries while I was there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but to more directly answer your question, John, or really to answer your question at all, John, at one point

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was using, I believe it was the 12 inch, and it ended up, like I took

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it out of the keyboard folio case, whatever it’s called, and I put it on the table. The smart keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey folio. Thank you. And I think it might have been upside down, so maybe I lied to you. I can’t remember if it was upside down or right side up,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so maybe the camera bump would have helped. But one way or another, I put the thing down on either its belly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or its back, and I went to grab it, not thinking anything. I’m like, I’ll just grab it, pick it up. And then I was struggling.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It wasn’t the sort of thing where I just, it took a couple of tries to get it. I had to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually deliberately try to dig it up off of the table.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was really surprising. Now maybe I’m making a mountain out of nothing. Maybe it was just I was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey being a klutz that one moment, but it was striking to me in that moment that it was actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very difficult to get it up off the table. I couldn’t really figure out why until

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you had said, oh, well, typically these things are curved, so you have something to pinch at. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, maybe you’ll get this in your hands and maybe it won’t be that bad at all, but it was surprising to me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it was fairly difficult to pick it up. Now, in the grand scheme of things, I would expect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I were to have one of these, it would always be in the keyboard, smart keyboard folio, whatever it’s called. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it wouldn’t be a problem, but it was surprising how

⏹️ ▶️ Casey difficult it was to pick up. But that being said, it felt amazing in the hand. Every time I look

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a 12.5, 12.9, whatever the hell it is, iPad from before today,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey every time I see one, I think to myself, my word, that is a large

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad. It’s like when I used to see the Plus Club. That is a big phone. Well, here, that is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a big iPad. But granted, I was walking between different stations.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It wasn’t like I was going next door between these different stations. but when I walked across this little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey room from an 11-inch to a 12-inch, it was surprising

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how little difference I saw between them. And the 12-inch looked much closer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the 11 than I would have expected. And additionally, they felt great in the hand. It didn’t feel particularly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey heavy. I mean, admittedly, I was not holding these for more than a few moments, but it didn’t feel terribly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey heavy. They looked great, felt great. The keyboard cover

⏹️ ▶️ Casey felt particularly good. I’ve never owned an iPad Pro. I’ve only played with them a handful of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey times, but the way I recall the iPad Pro, and jump in when you’re ready, fellas, is that the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboard cover was lumpy because part of it had two folds and the rest had one or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John something along those

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lines. And that did not appear to be the case here, which I loved.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The magnets were incredible everywhere. For the pencil, they were extremely strong.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey For the keyboard cover, I would almost say for the keyboard cover, they might have even been too strong. So when you sit it in one of the two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey different positions, you know, the two different angles, I was struggling again, probably just because I’d never done

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it before, but I was struggling to pull it up enough to move it to the other position, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually is, I think, a good problem because this way, you know, it’s stable. But everything about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey these iPads just felt great. The display looked great. Now, I don’t have your eye, John. I’m not as discerning

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as you when it comes to these things, but the display looked great. Face ID seemed to work real well, even

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this super crowded room where everyone was like, you know, shoulder to shoulder with each other.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, obviously got confused from time to time because it would look at the wrong face, whatever, but it worked really well. As people have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pointed out, it actually says to you when you’re holding your finger over the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sensor array. I forget exactly what the phrasing is, but it basically says

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you’re covering… Cameron

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is covered.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John There you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey go. And I did not notice at the time, but I’ve since seen that they actually point at the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sensor array. Like there’s an arrow on screen pointing at the sensor array to let you know that’s the finger that’s covering

⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything up. I also liked, I think they showed this on the keynote, but maybe I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong. When you take the pencil to a locked iPad, as long as it can scan your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey face, it will jump directly into notes to let you sketch a note or whatever the case may be.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The little double tap on the pencil to swap between different tools

⏹️ ▶️ Casey worked really well. In settings, you can choose between different things that that does.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess just for notes, you can do toggle to eraser, toggle to the last tool you used, toggle a color palette,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was interesting. Everything about these iPads look great. And I forget if it was you or Marco. I think it was Marco

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that said, I just wish more of the things I did on a computer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey worked on an iPad. And I bet I could make a lot of them work, but man,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really want an iPad for the first time in a very, very long time.

⏹️ ▶️ John The thing you mentioned about the keyboard doubling up, yet another example of the past, you know, it was great that we had

⏹️ ▶️ John the cool keyboard that people really like for the old iPad, but that was like a slight ward. It was like, Oh, that’s kind of funny when you put the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ John case on this one side is lumpier solved in this generation, they addressed it. Right. And I think, and actually getting

⏹️ ▶️ John back to the, the camera bump briefly, I think the, the

⏹️ ▶️ John folio case thing with, with, with or without the keyboard, uh, the fact that there is a front

⏹️ ▶️ John and a back surface, the back surface is important because that’s where the smart connector is now as all the rumors said

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of in the middle it’s kind of weird how the keyboard thing connects it’s not on the edge it’s like in the in the

⏹️ ▶️ John middle like dorsally you know it’s like the spine right but but it just so happens that the keyboard cover goes down that far enough

⏹️ ▶️ John to catch the connector and charge it right that it’s covered on the back and on the front with

⏹️ ▶️ John a single layer the fact that the covers are made of that squishy kind of whatever that

⏹️ ▶️ John is material with a little thin edge means that if you put it on its back or on its front

⏹️ ▶️ John with the cover or the keyboard on it, even though it flattens out the camera bump,

⏹️ ▶️ John I suspect you will have an easier time getting your fingers underneath it because that’s what you want. You just need

⏹️ ▶️ John just enough leverage to lift it up enough for you to shove your fingers underneath it because then you can grab

⏹️ ▶️ John it with fingers underneath and thumb on top with a single hand. That’s what you do with laptops and all sorts of other things when you pick it up with

⏹️ ▶️ John one hand off the table. So it is, know, a surface that evens

⏹️ ▶️ John out the camera bump, makes it easier to pick up off the table potentially than than a

⏹️ ▶️ John bare thing, even with the camera bump, because you have that squishier area and that little fin that you can put your fingers

⏹️ ▶️ John under, doesn’t make it lumpy on the top if you have a keyboard because it’s uniform thickness all the way through.

⏹️ ▶️ John And also, I think this is also important, doesn’t go around the edges. So it’s not like your iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John is inside a tub of any kind. It’s like a sandwich, the edges are still

⏹️ ▶️ John just the bare aluminum. So it doesn’t make your iPad wider. You know, you’ve all had experience of you put an iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John in a case and this beautiful felt thing that you bought suddenly feels like chunkier, which by the way is what you want. If you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John for kids, you want to put in the world’s craziest chunky case. But for an adult who can take care of things,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s nice to be able to have all the benefits of the protection. Oh, you don’t have to worry about putting it down.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not going to scratch. Um, it’s evened out with the camera bump. It’s made easier to pick up. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John you get a keyboard as part of the bargain, but it doesn’t make it any wider or taller. And so I think will make it

⏹️ ▶️ John not feel as bulky and make you not feel that you’re this beautiful naked robotic core that you got to suddenly

⏹️ ▶️ John buried inside this, you know, rubberized tomb. It’s more like you’re just putting this beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ John neoprene sandwich, protective sandwich around your thing and it’s a sandwich that potentially gives you a keyboard.

⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, I really, again, having not seen or touched this in person in the abstract,

⏹️ ▶️ John I am in love with the new, what do you call it, the new wardrobe for the iPads? Not to mention

⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that there’s a place to put the pencil and the flat pencil and everything. I’m in love with the iPad wardrobe.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I, as a full-time smart keyboard user, and as I mentioned last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, like the smart keyboard transformed the iPad into something that I actually use

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a regular basis. Because it is always, not only does it help text input

⏹️ ▶️ Marco greatly and dramatically improve my ability to use an iPad, but also it is a really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good stand to have it on the counter in my kitchen where it spends most of its time or on the dining room table

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or on the couch at night. Like, it’s just really, really good. And so I’ve used the 10.5 smart keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a year now or a year and a half, used the 9.7 before that. They’re wonderful.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did have a chance to play with the smart keyboard folio today on the new iPads, and in some ways it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse. I think in most ways it’s probably better. It’s the kind of thing that like, I’m gonna need just more time with it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna do things like sit down with it on my lap because that’s one area where the old one kind of fell over,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally sometimes. And I didn’t feel like they would probably let me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sit on the floor cross-legged with the iPad in the hands-on area, so I didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco try that. But there’s a lot about the old one that, it wasn’t very good on laps.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would tip over, it would tip back or forward depending on how you were sitting. It was very good on counters,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that was about it. The new one has these two angles. The steeper of the two angles, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the new one that didn’t exist on the previous one, is very steep. That did not work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me at all at table height, but it wasn’t designed for that. It was designed for lap use, so I’ll have to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco try that sometime and see how that actually works if I get one of these. As John mentioned, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Smart Keyboard Folio does cover both sides fully. Before, the previous one would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only cover a little bit of the back when it was open, and when it was closed it would cover none

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the back. It was basically just like a big front side cover that unfolded. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco magnets are pretty strong. The one thing I didn’t like about it that I made immediate note of is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes, you know, I keep the smart keyboard on my iPad almost always, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes, like if I’m sitting on the couch just browsing the web at night, I will flip it back and just hold the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a regular iPad with no keyboard attached, as if it was smart cover that you flipped back. You can do this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the new smart keyboard, but it’s worse. Not only was it kind of a clumsy move to flip

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it back, but also the keys, when it’s flipped back, now face outward,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that when you’re holding it, your hands are on the keys. Now, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco smart enough not to activate the keys when it’s in this mode, so you don’t have to worry about accidental input, but it just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels weird to me to be holding the front of a keyboard with the back of my hands as I’m holding my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad. And I know these kinds of things are really tricky to design

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because no matter how you design it, you come up with some kind of downside. Like, like what John was saying about, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it’s lopsided or whatever, like there’s always some kind of downside to these things.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, but I, that was one that I thought was a little bit weird with this, that like when you, when you flip it back, you’re touching the keys

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with your hands when not using it. And that’s kind of odd. Um, but otherwise I’m, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really am curious to spend time with this. I’m a little curious. I didn’t get an idea about the weight of the keyboard.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as far as I can find, the site doesn’t specify the weight anywhere. So I would love

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to know, if anybody knows, how much do these smart keyboards weigh? Because one of the issues with the old

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one is that when you have the smart keyboard cover on the old iPad Pro, it does noticeably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco increase the weight

⏹️ ▶️ John of the iPad. It’s made of tungsten. I’m always amazed by this. My wife has a smart keyboard, and I pick up her iPad, which is

⏹️ ▶️ John ostensibly the same iPad as mine, and it feels like it is just the world’s most dense object. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like, holy cow,

⏹️ ▶️ John what is in this? Do you have fishing weights hiding somewhere? It’s not that much heavier. It feels so heavy it makes

⏹️ ▶️ John me angry. So I’m hoping this one is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lighter. Yeah, I weighed mine earlier. So the 10.5 inch smart keyboard is just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little over half a pound. It’s.54 pounds. Now the iPad itself is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one pound. So it increases the weight of the iPad by 50%. So that’s a significant increase.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s why whenever I take it off for any reason, which is rare, I’m always shocked

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at how light the iPad is by comparison. but I would love,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m a little concerned given how much more material there is seemingly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the new keyboard cover, I’m a little concerned they might be heavier. I at least, I hope

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re at least not heavier. I would love if they could find a way to make them lighter without ruining the keyboard, but I don’t know that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s possible.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I think we should talk about USB-C a little

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco bit.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. That rumor was true. There is no lighting port. There is instead a USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ John port, and watching the presentation, despite all the rumors and everything, I found myself thinking,

⏹️ ▶️ John especially as they went through this thing, like, well, of course, because laptops have USB-C ports, not lighting

⏹️ ▶️ John ports on them. And this thing is so much closer in the spectrum between like phone and laptop.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like it is, you know, it is an amazing laptop. That’s not a laptop. There’s no reason it should have the same

⏹️ ▶️ John connector as the phone. I think it should have more USB-C ports. What the hell else is new? But I

⏹️ ▶️ John am totally on board with USB-C. Setting aside all the external, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John connectors and connecting up to a camera and a 5K display. Remember when we were back

⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, I wonder when the new Mac Pro will be able to connect to a 5K display. Now the iPad can do it.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is entirely the right connector. There should be more of them. Goodbye lighting

⏹️ ▶️ John on the iPad. Oh, I won’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco miss you. And I really hope, so the iPad is showing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off a brand new industrial design style. I hope we get that on the iPhone in the future

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hopefully the near future, maybe next year.

⏹️ ▶️ John We already did. It was called the iPhone 5.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everyone loved it. Right, exactly. Like, yeah, like the new iPads basically look like the iPhone 5, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is awesome. I love the iPhone 5 and the SE, like, and like that, and the 5S, like, they look like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5S, really. Like with the space gray and the straight edges and everything being just nice in your hand.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I would love for the iPhones to return to that. I don’t think that’s incredibly likely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the iPhones, I think, I think the thickness matters a lot more on the phone and I can’t see them going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thicker to add USB-C, which they would have to probably do. But boy, I would love that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That would be so cool. It is a little bit weird now, like now that we have USB-C, it’s a little weird that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, if you’re traveling with an iPhone and an iPad, you now need two power cables.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is kind of cool.

⏹️ ▶️ John You just need one, you just need a USB-C to lightning and they both charge each other, that’s how it works.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. Yeah, like that, it is kind of cool that the iPad can now charge the phone, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John no, I think that, you know, if you happen to have those cables, it doesn’t come with the phone, but I think it makes sense.

⏹️ ▶️ John Although, like, everyone has habits, weird habits. Like I have a lightning cable by my

⏹️ ▶️ John nightstand, but I just have one of them, because I’m never fine. Basically, I charge my phone at night and my iPad during the day and everything works

⏹️ ▶️ John out. But now I would need two cables if I got this thing. I would need one USB-C for the,

⏹️ ▶️ John or I can have an adapter or some, but it’s the right connector for this product.

⏹️ ▶️ John But as many people have been pointing out, oh, now the phone is the odd one out, right? Now it’s one

⏹️ ▶️ John of these things, it’s not like the other. but Apple sells so many more phones than

⏹️ ▶️ John every other product that we’re talking about combined. It’s not even funny, right? So I don’t think there’s any peer pressure

⏹️ ▶️ John from Apple’s product line for the phone to immediately change to USB-C.

⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, people tend, I was gonna say people tend to freak

⏹️ ▶️ John out when you change the connector on the phone, but it’s happened so rarely. The problem is there’s just so many

⏹️ ▶️ John people have the phone. So if and when Apple does either change the connector

⏹️ ▶️ John on the phone or get rid of the connector and go all wireless or inductive or whatever, well, based on their AirPower success.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I don’t think there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John any pressure from the rest of the line because the phone, the phone is the thing. The phone is the product everyone cares about. There are

⏹️ ▶️ John so many of them. 100 million Macs as they’re installed. They sell 100 million iPhones like in a quarter or something. No,

⏹️ ▶️ John not in a quarter, I don’t know. But there’s a lot of iPhones out there. So I think

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhones can cruise along with lighting for a while longer. Certainly it would make

⏹️ ▶️ John some kind of unifying sense for them to be USB-C, but as we’ve discussed a lot in the past

⏹️ ▶️ John when we talked about whether the iPhone X would have USB-C, I wish I could remember that show number. There are advantages

⏹️ ▶️ John to lightning. Those advantages continue to exist. And at this point, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of lightning stuff out there for phones. It’s not like 30-pin

⏹️ ▶️ John where they’re in hotel rooms, at least I haven’t seen them, but it’s close. So I think we gotta

⏹️ ▶️ John ride out this lightning thing on the phone for at least a few more years. But iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ John USB-C, or Thunderbolt, or anything like that. Basically, any connector you can imagine on a

⏹️ ▶️ John laptop, those connectors are right at home on the iPad Pros, because the iPad Pros

⏹️ ▶️ John are basically amazing laptops without keyboards.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, though, I think a good counter-argument to the lightning is everywhere thing, though, is that Android phones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use USB-C now. So anybody who’s looking to have a cable at a clock radio at a hotel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that, if you just put USB-C cables there, you would be able to cover all phones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this future where iPhones have USB-C. So like-

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like they were burned by 30-pin. Like, have you seen

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco any USB-C ones? Have you seen like

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they decided, you know what, let’s not chase computer connectors with our hotel peripherals,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because that’s gonna, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. Not only have I not seen any USB-C ones, I still see 30-pin ones sometimes.

⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, if you think about this, what do you see everywhere in terms of computer connectors? USB-A.

⏹️ ▶️ John USB-A is on airplanes, USB-A is on every like charging station, USB-A is still everywhere.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s the other end of all of our cables, right? It’s USB-A

⏹️ ▶️ John to USB-C, USB-A to lightning. So if we can dislodge USB-A, that’ll be progress.

⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, so I can totally see Apple going to USB-C.

⏹️ ▶️ John If the current situation is sustained for a long period of time, they just probably won’t be able to avoid it despite

⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that it’s thicker and not proprietary and all the other things or whatever. but I don’t see a reason for them

⏹️ ▶️ John to rush to it now. I’m perfectly happy with lightning on my phone and for all subsequent phones, but on an iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ John love the USB-C.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me give you one small counter argument, which is something that we can easily get past, but is another

⏹️ ▶️ Casey expenditure. You know, if I were to have an iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like if I take my iPad now, which I don’t know where it is, like I said, but let’s just assume I knew where it was and I was using it,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m out and about, like, I don’t know, at an Apple event, because we’re cool like that. Well, maybe.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I was using it and I ran out of juice and I didn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an outlet nearby, I would take one of the, say, batteries out of my away suitcase, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly what I did today. I traveled without a suitcase, but I took the battery out of my away. They’re not a sponsor this week,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but they’re a past sponsor. I took the battery pack and I used the USB-A port on that battery

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pack to charge my phone or I could have charged an iPad. That’s not gonna be quite so easy, is it, with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB-C? I know you can go USB-A to USB-C, but is that going to be enough power to actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey power one of these iPads? So are you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco gonna have to get- It will be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay? It is, not at full speed. So you can, there are A to C cables now. In fact,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Nintendo Switch charges controllers with those, it comes with them. But it’s limited to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a certain wattage. I think it’s gonna be about 12 or 15 watts, maybe something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s, yeah, so you can do it. It would just maybe be slow. And also one new little tidbit,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iPads now come with a new and seemingly unbuyable, separately, 18-watt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB-C power brick. So that’s cool. I look forward to being able to buy more of those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it seems like that’s everything I’ve been wanting. There’s also now a few other new USB-C peripherals. So the aforementioned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB-C to headphone adapter dongle, $9. There’s also a USB-C SD

⏹️ ▶️ Marco card reader now to work with the new iPads. There’s a new one-meter charge cable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that comes with it because I think it’s the same charge cable as that comes with the new laptops, but those all come

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with two meter cables. This has a one meter cable, and you can buy those separately. And also, a fun little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tidbit, you can now get an Apple Watch charging cable that has a USB-C end.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting. And it’s only one foot, too. So it’s clearly meant for travel, which is great. Because one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing I’ve been doing, even though I don’t usually travel with the Apple Watch, but one thing I’ve been doing is I’ve been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco simplifying my travel setup to try to just be all USB-C for everything. The power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bricks, all the cables, the battery, everything. Everything I travel with is USB-C.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, Gray. No, there’s a reason for that, because carrying two copies of all your cables sucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’ve been trying to do this over the last few months. Anytime I can find a way to eliminate a USB-A cable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my travel setup, I do, because if I can make everything the same, which today that has to mean USB-C,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because otherwise you have dongles on that end, good. And apparently

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the last week or something, Apple released an Apple Watch charging cable with USB-C on the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco end. And that was perfect, because that’s the one thing I always thought, if I had to travel with my Apple Watch,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would have to bring some kind of USB-A power brick to charge just that, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it had that one cable, and that was your only option. So now you have two options, that’s nice. But yeah, I’m looking forward

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, Like, we’re just, we are slowly moving

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to this USB-C world, where you can actually go all in on it, but we’re not,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re still not there yet. There’s still huge missing parts, like the hub situation is still terrible, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are taking these baby steps. We’re slowly working our way towards there. Hopefully

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll get there before USB-D comes out and we’ll have to throw all these cables away.

⏹️ ▶️ John One thing that I think is a minor regression from going lightning to USB-C has nothing to do

⏹️ ▶️ John with the port and not even that much to do with the connector, but in my experience,

⏹️ ▶️ John the cables, the cables that are attached to USB-C connectors at sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John the length of the stiff part of the connector, the thickness and bendiness of the cable, like

⏹️ ▶️ John even the ones that are just power, like the one that you connect to like the, the one that comes with laptops, I think

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not like a full USB-C data cable, it’s mostly just for power.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s USB 2.0, not 3.0, that’s why. So it actually, it is thinner than it would be if it had the USB 3.0

⏹️ ▶️ Marco speed, but it is power and USB 2.0 data.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right, and it’s because it’s so long that even for USB 2.0 it has to be a little bit thicker, right, but lightning cables

⏹️ ▶️ John are very thin. The stiff part of the connector is very short.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s just generally like, it feels less like there is a stiff

⏹️ ▶️ John twig poking out of the side of your thing. and then a fairly stubborn

⏹️ ▶️ John garden hose size cable coming out. It feels more like there’s a light string with a little stiff nub, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s gonna be a downgrade because the thicker

⏹️ ▶️ John the cable and the longer the stiff part, the more unwieldy it is to plug stuff like

⏹️ ▶️ John this in. And that’s just the nature of USB-C, I think. Even Apple’s cables

⏹️ ▶️ John exhibit that pattern. It’s also one of the advantages of lighting for the phone because

⏹️ ▶️ John the phone is a small dainty device compared to an iPad or a laptop and it should have a small dainty connector with a small dainty

⏹️ ▶️ John cable. It’s exactly what we have with Lightning and I enjoy that. And it will be a slight downgrade to go away

⏹️ ▶️ John from that with the iPad. But again, I think it’s the appropriate connector

⏹️ ▶️ John for this device. And you know, speaking of this,

⏹️ ▶️ John when the iPad first came out, especially given springboard and the lack of major

⏹️ ▶️ John interface changes to support the iPad, the slam against it, and you know, was it, oh, it’s just a big

⏹️ ▶️ John phone. Despite the fact that this looks like an iPhone 5, this

⏹️ ▶️ John is the farthest from a big iPhone that the iPad has ever been, right? It’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re huge, they’re incredibly powerful, they’re massively advertised with a keyboard,

⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s so intrinsically built in, they have the pencil support. It

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t feel like the iPad is in the shadow of the iPhone anymore, like they’ve diverged from each

⏹️ ▶️ John other so significantly, and the iPad continues to go so far upmarket,

⏹️ ▶️ John well I guess the phone is chasing it, you can get a $1400 phone too. But I just feel like there’s a much

⏹️ ▶️ John more healthy separation. That separation will be even healthier if and when iOS 13 comes out with much more iPad specific

⏹️ ▶️ John features, but even as things stand now, I think there’s a comfortable distance between

⏹️ ▶️ John the two and the slam that, oh why would I want an iPad, it’s just a big iPhone, I don’t think anyone’s saying that anymore when they look at these things.

⏹️ ▶️ John trying Photoshop on your phone. We could probably run it, which is the sad thing, because the

⏹️ ▶️ John freaking CPU is insane, but not maybe the best screen to do serious Photoshop

⏹️ ▶️ John work.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey One interesting thing that I overheard was Marco talking to the developer of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the DJ app. And it was hard for me to hear because everyone was shouting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and, you know, even three feet from your face, Marco, it was hard to hear what you were saying. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it sounded like you had asked the developer, hey, can you do kind of whatever you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey want with the external display? Or do you have to, you know, is it something like the Apple Watch, where

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can only put certain UI kit elements or certain widgets, if you will, in certain places, et cetera. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey jump in whenever you’re ready. But it sounded like he said it’s a free for all. You can do whatever the hell you want.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because I was wondering, like it was one of the little oddities in the presentation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was that the very first thing they showed doing an external monitor, it was letterboxed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it was just mirroring the iPad screen and the monitor was a different aspect ratio than the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I thought that was kind of odd. And then later on, they showed a different app using an external monitor

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it was filled all the way. And so I was wondering, there has been external monitor support

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the iOS SDK for a while now, but I have never used it for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything because there aren’t a lot of reasons to play podcasts on actual monitors.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I’ve never had a reason to use these APIs. So I was just basically asking him,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can you just put whatever you want on that, or can it only do certain things like mirroring or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else? And yeah, he basically said, you can just, like I was asking, can you just render to it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as any kind of window or surface or whatever? And he basically said yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can just put whatever you want there. So it is not gonna be, like, with Macs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and PCs, the OS automatically expands itself and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all applications to be usable in some form on whatever number of monitors you plug into them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That isn’t the case on iOS. On iOS, like, each app has to implement its own support

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for whatever’s going on externally. Or, I think you can always just mirror the display, and that’ll always work, but that won’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fill the screen, and that might have other weird effects, like not being able to, you know, interact with it and everything else. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s always gonna be a little bit different with iOS in the sense that like you need each app to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually code support for external displays and for that support to actually be for something useful

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this kind of dream scenario where you’re using an external monitor with your iPad. But at least that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now like a little bit easier to do. It now requires fewer dongles, the thing’s more powerful and can drive bigger screens.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like that should probably happen more as the pro software market

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPad arrives and matures.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the beauty of the port, right? Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the good thing is that everyone in the Apple community is now very much familiar with how you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiply one USB-C port into multiple ports.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but they didn’t show it in the picture. And then the next thing is, okay, so

⏹️ ▶️ John on the big screen was like a photo, and on the small screen was like a photo application with a bunch of thumbnails.

⏹️ ▶️ John But, all right, so my application decides it’s gonna use an external display. You

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t touch the external display, as far as I know, although I think Steve Trout and Smith says basically there is OS

⏹️ ▶️ John support for external touchscreens. Just that as far as I know, that’s not a thing that’s possible with any current hardware or software.

⏹️ ▶️ John But in theory, like there’s nothing preventing it technologically speaking down the road. But right now you can’t touch it.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no cursor, no mouse cursor. So it’s not like you can

⏹️ ▶️ John use an input device, a touch input, and while looking

⏹️ ▶️ John up at the external screen because you wouldn’t see what the heck you’re doing. You have to look down

⏹️ ▶️ John or across or whatever at the iPad when you’re doing anything interactive because all of the interaction

⏹️ ▶️ John is happening on the iPad. That’s where you touch and you have to look at what you’re touching. So I suppose you could

⏹️ ▶️ John do something on the iPad and then look up to the screen and then look down at the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John and then look up at the screen. It just seemed like an uncomfortable scenario. I’m sure there’s lots of clever uses that people

⏹️ ▶️ John can find for external displays, but as a general purpose, to your point, Margo, as a general purpose solution, as in desktops have

⏹️ ▶️ John general purpose support for external displays and everything about their OS and input elements, everything lends itself to saying

⏹️ ▶️ John hook up more displays, we just roll with it. It’s just more of the same stuff. With iOS, it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John you are on the iPad. You’ve got your iPad. That’s where you do your interaction. And you can hook up

⏹️ ▶️ John an external display, which is basically just like a bucket to throw pixels that occasionally you might wanna look at. But you

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t really be, I suppose you could use the iPad as a giant game controller and project the game up onto there,

⏹️ ▶️ John but even that is a little bit weird. I don’t know. I’m sure people will come up with clever scenarios, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a slightly uncomfortable hybrid, even more so than hooking up an external display to a laptop. Because again, if you have

⏹️ ▶️ John an external display hooked to a laptop, you could be using the trackpad on the laptop while you stare at the giant 5K display.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not ideal, like you’d probably rather have a docking station and a real keyboard and a mouse, but it’s a thing that you could do. But with the

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad, I don’t know. Maybe Vitecci knows how to use

⏹️ ▶️ John an external 5K display on his iPad and he’ll tell us all the amazing productivity he gets from that arrangement. right now,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m wondering what the best use of that capability is for iPad power users. One other

⏹️ ▶️ John thing, keeping, I mean this is kind of good, not that my kids were going to get new iPad Pros, but

⏹️ ▶️ John as I think I’ve mentioned on other podcasts, my children spend their entire life with an essential life support umbilical

⏹️ ▶️ John cord snaking from their ears down to an iPad which they carry in one hand, leaving them only one hand to live the entire

⏹️ ▶️ John rest of their life with. So they must live their life just with one hand. If they need to brush their teeth?

⏹️ ▶️ John One hand. If they need to eat? Only one hand is available. If they need to take out milk and pour it in their cereal? They can only

⏹️ ▶️ John use one hand, because the other hand has an iPad in it. And, by the way, there’s a very precarious

⏹️ ▶️ John cord snaking from their ears to the iPad, which can catch on things, so you have to be careful. So it’s a very delicate dance, being

⏹️ ▶️ John my children. Anyway, these iPads have

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no

⏹️ ▶️ John headphone port. So I said, well kids, you may think these new iPads are great, but if I got them for you,

⏹️ ▶️ John how would you live? You can’t be connected to headphones anymore!” And they said, wait, what?

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no headphone port?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m like, yes, children. There’s no,

⏹️ ▶️ John I won’t tell

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco them about the adapter. But

⏹️ ▶️ John like, Apple has a hilarious picture on their iPad Pro page that shows, it says, accessories,

⏹️ ▶️ John explore cases, headphone speakers, and more. And it shows a picture of an iPad Pro with two AirPods

⏹️ ▶️ John floating in the air above it. This is Apple’s way of saying, guess what? AirPods.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know, don’t bother with that $9 connector. Buy $160 Bluetooth earbuds. And my kids, they know about AirPods

⏹️ ▶️ John because I have them, my wife has them. But the thought of my children

⏹️ ▶️ John having AirPods, they’d have them for 15 minutes and then we would

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey never find them again. So that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not gonna happen

⏹️ ▶️ John either. And honestly, they don’t know the beauty of AirPods, so they don’t even want them. So they are a little bit frowny

⏹️ ▶️ John faced about the lack of a headphone port. Myself, I can’t remember

⏹️ ▶️ John the last time I plugged headphones into my iPad because I am all in on the AirPod lifestyle because I’m an adult who can

⏹️ ▶️ John keep track of AirPods. But kids, I guess they’ll just have to stick with the old 10.5.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, to me, the headphone jack removal is the only real down, except the cost, as I said earlier, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the headphone jack removal is, I too, as the adult using the iPad, I too

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have almost never plugged headphones into my iPad in the last couple of years.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But why remove it? They didn’t give a reason. They didn’t even mention it was removed. But if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think about it, the reasons that apply to the phone, which even they were shaky, but like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not for thinness, it’s not for water resistance, it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a lack of internal volume. Like if you look at a teardown of a modern iPad, there’s tons of empty space in there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not for cost reasons, because there’s tons of profit on these. It’s still on every

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac, so they’re still important to quote computers, and the iPad’s a computer, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So why was it removed?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s the one hardware change I would make to this. Like, it’s not a big deal, but if I had to say, what would you change about this hardware?

⏹️ ▶️ John headphone jack, easy. Even though I probably wouldn’t use it. Yeah. It’s, it just feels like it’s another one

⏹️ ▶️ John of those sort of philosophical changes. Like philosophically, it’d be better if it just had one part. Wouldn’t that be great?

⏹️ ▶️ John Not really. I mean, throw it in there. It’s, people, I don’t think it’s a big deal.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that, you know, if Apple really wants to show that they’re learning, they could potentially bring it back in a future model, but they probably won’t.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s, this is, again, with the iPad being more like a laptop, and laptops, as you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John have a strict philosophical orthodox adherence to the idea of reducing the number of holes that are in

⏹️ ▶️ John them, even if it makes them less useful. And so this continues. I mean, hell, this thing could have an SD card slot.

⏹️ ▶️ John Once you get into a laptop size and power and price, there’s lots of things that I can imagine being

⏹️ ▶️ John on the side of this thing, or even just another USB-C. But yeah, headphone, it feels like the one

⏹️ ▶️ John slightly punitive change to this. But you know, as we both noted, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John probably not relevant for people who buy $1,400 iPads so I don’t think there’s gonna be that much outcry.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but it does, as Jason pointed out, it does reduce the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco potential usability of this, or it makes it more annoying to use for a lot of pro things,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of the things they demoed, things like DJs using it, or people doing live audio edits or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mixing. There are things where you really need a wired headphone for avoiding latency of Bluetooth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything, and now you can do that now, but you need a dongle, which means that you can’t charge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the laptop while you do it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And it’s like-

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like a bigger dongle or a breakout box. And maybe that’s what they’re envisioning in the pro scenarios.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, so it’s like you’re relying on more and more like dongles and dongles. Like if I’m using an iPad for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something audio related, the last thing I want is to run my interface through a dongle.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because dongles are unreliable. Especially if I’m doing some kind of live performance or live

⏹️ ▶️ Marco need, in which case I probably wouldn’t be doing this on an iPad, honestly. But I would not, I would never

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to run a critical audio interface to a live performance or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco live event through a dongle. That’s that’s a terrible idea because dongles are just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too unreliable. They’re like, it’s hard enough to get USB audio to be reliable in the first place

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to also be running it through a dongle doing its own USB translation stuff is just stupid.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so by requiring that port to be used

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for adapters and dongles and everything, and also power now, it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just adds to the complexity and possibly reduces the reliability of using this in certain pro contexts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s kind of annoying when it doesn’t seem like there was any obvious good reason to remove the headphone

⏹️ ▶️ John jack. Yeah, it’s just purely philosophical. And people in the chat room said, well, you know, you don’t have to buy $160 AirPods. There’s

⏹️ ▶️ John tons of cheap Bluetooth headphones. That’s true. The advantage of

⏹️ ▶️ John cheap wired headphones is that you don’t have to charge them, you don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John to worry about it, you can get them incredibly cheap, you can buy just the cheapest earbuds or whatever, you don’t care if

⏹️ ▶️ John they break, you don’t care if they bend, you can charge your iPad at the same time as you’re doing that.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no latency, they’re just cruddy analog things, it makes it more useful. I can’t wait

⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple’s whole philosophical bent about

⏹️ ▶️ John holes in the sides of their portable products wraps around to the point where they start

⏹️ ▶️ John bragging about and touting the dongles that you no longer need because here’s the new

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware item like buy the new Apple X and throw away those three

⏹️ ▶️ John adapter. I mean, it’s kind of hard for them to make that full circle. I have to like they have to wait for it to become sort of the thing we’re used to it for all of

⏹️ ▶️ John us to just accept it. And then they can say, look, if you know if if this was the only iPad and they introduced

⏹️ ▶️ John a new one and said now it has the headphone port so you don’t need to use that dongle to charge and listen to audio at the same time of that word?

⏹️ ▶️ John People would say, yeah, that’s great, right? They can come around on this and make it seem like they’re solving a problem that they

⏹️ ▶️ John solved and we’ll all be grateful for it. We’re rapidly approaching the point where memories are short

⏹️ ▶️ John enough that we’ll be like, that people won’t realize that they’re solving a problem that they themselves solved. Once we

⏹️ ▶️ John all have accepted our residence in Dongletown and we’ve developed our collection of these white, pasty

⏹️ ▶️ John white dongles, we will pay Apple money to make it so we have to carry one fewer

⏹️ ▶️ John dongle.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have to say that I haven’t priced out the iPad that I’m going to try to resist buying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if you wanted to get a top-of-the-line 12-inch iPad that’s $1,900 with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cellular is $130 a pencil is I know I’m sorry That’s $1,900 for the iPad with cellular

⏹️ ▶️ Casey $130 for the pencil $200 for the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey $2,230

⏹️ ▶️ John And yet it is probably has a faster CPU and potentially a faster

⏹️ ▶️ John integrated GPU Maybe a faster than the discrete GPU than any $2,000 Apple laptop Yeah

⏹️ ▶️ John Just like that’s that’s that’s why I think the prices aren’t that ridiculous anymore with these things because it is so

⏹️ ▶️ John incredibly powerful The screen is so good. It has so many things that no Apple laptop has how much

⏹️ ▶️ John would you pay for an Apple laptop with? Face ID.

Prices and punishment

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a billion dollars.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also like the use of the iPad, like, you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s, I can’t, it’s hard to mention enough how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s pricing is just going up and up and up. Like everything Apple has released in the last couple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of years has been noticeably more expensive than what it replaced. Like it’s, Apple’s pricing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really just tightening those screws, like making us pay more and more and more and more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every year for successive products. Like, there’s a new MacBook Air. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco old MacBook Air is still for sale at the same price. The new one costs more.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, so like the price is, I feel like, one area where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we, it’s hard to feel good as an Apple customer when you price things out now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you see quite how expensive everything has gotten because Apple stuff was never cheap,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it used to be at least like a respectable value for what you were getting.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as the prices keep going up and up and up and up, that’s a much harder rationalization to make.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But at least with the price, you feel that pain only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco once. Like when you buy it, you feel that pain. But then once you have the product,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re able to move past what you paid for it, hopefully. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John as long as it doesn’t break. Yeah, exactly, I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna say like, until like, you know, the keyboard dies or whatever, or you drop an iOS device or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like, the expense of these items is an upfront

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pain. The laptops, I feel like, punish you every time you use them. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like, the laptops are just like punitive. They just want you to hate yourself for having bought

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. Whereas the iOS devices, once you get past the cost barrier up front, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just pleasure, they’re just wonderful. Both the iPhones and the iPads

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are just so wonderful. They’re so pleasing to use. This is why I wish

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was more in the iPad ecosystem because like every time I use my laptop, I just hate it more. And every

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time I use an iPad, I’m like, man, I wish I could do more with this thing. You know, and a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s on me. Like I, there is more I could do on it if I would invest the time into learning new tools and everything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there’s also just a lot of my work I still couldn’t do on it that would bother me. but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco boy, these iPad Pros look really, really awesome. I’m much more excited

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the prospect of spending $1,400 on an iMac Pro. iPad Pro. Yeah, sorry, iPad Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I will use mostly to play Overcast during breakfast than I am about any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop I’ve bought from Apple in the last two years. All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace, and Eero, and our indirect sponsor, Apple, and we’ll see you next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to begin, cause it was

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, oh it was accidental. John

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, oh it was accidental. It was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ John And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM And

⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re into Twitter You can follow them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M Anti-Marco Armin

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C

⏹️ ▶️ John USA Syracuse It’s accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t mean to. Accidental, tech podcasts so long.

Executive encounters

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m curious Casey. I know my answer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to this. Did you run into any Apple executives or other Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John celebrities?

⏹️ ▶️ John Run into just coincidentally.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well because so at the hands-on area there’s a lot like a lot of the prominent people that we know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Apple events and stuff and high up executives and stuff will be walking around and you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they tend to be mobbed with people trying to get selfies but you you can occasionally interact with them. I’m curious

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had a couple interactions. My first one, while Casey was playing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the iPad that I had just freed up, I noticed that right across the table was Johnny

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ive having a big mob of people around him. I thought like, you know, first of all, I’m like, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, what am I gonna say to Johnny Ive? Like, I’m just, anything I say I would probably be making an idiot of myself and he doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know or care who I am, so like, what am I gonna say? Like, and it was very clear also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Johnny was very uncomfortable in this setting. Like, it’s clear, like there’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason why he’s usually only seen in videos. And he wasn’t this time. Like, it was interesting, like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco role that Johnny would have normally played, which is like the voiceover in the video, was Phil Schiller this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, for the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey video. Who did a great

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco job, by the way. He did,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. I really thought he did a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great job. I kinda miss seeing him, like, cause normally Phil would present new iMacs or iPads,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or new Macs or iPads, but I kinda miss seeing him on stage. But it was interesting, like, hearing a Phil

⏹️ ▶️ Marco voiceover in that video. That was pretty cool. But, um, Johnny was nowhere in the event then. Like, you know, he

⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t have any voiceovers, but it’s very clear, like why he normally does those. Cause like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve, we’ve heard here and there, like he doesn’t like being on stage or doing that. And he clearly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was not that comfortable in a mob room full of people who are mostly his fans trying to get selfies with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco him. Like this was not his scene. So I wasn’t going to try to add to his crowd,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but a few minutes later, as he was leaving, he was gonna walk past

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I was standing. I figure like, I’m not gonna like stop him or anything, because again,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what would I say? But as he was walking by, I did think of something. I thought of one thing, I said, hey Johnny, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco missed you in the videos. And he was like, oh, and he laughed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’s like, thank you, in his wonderful British way. And I feel very proud of that, that I made Johnny Ive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laugh, and he was clearly, you know, uncomfortable and wanted to get out of there as fast as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco possible. I didn’t stop him or slow him down, and I didn’t make an ass of myself. So I’m very proud of myself for that. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco normally in that kind of situation, I would say something really stupid and make a total ass of myself,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I didn’t do

⏹️ ▶️ John that. I would still be thinking that Johnny thinks I’m a jerk for

⏹️ ▶️ John saying that. But anyway, I thought it was weird that he wasn’t in the videos because

⏹️ ▶️ John this is an all new iPad design. And the time when you need Johnny to tell you about something

⏹️ ▶️ John is when it’s an all new design. How did they go from the old iPad to the new one? And what is it

⏹️ ▶️ John about this new design that’s so great? And tell us the philosophy behind it and tell us all that. And he wasn’t there to do

⏹️ ▶️ John that. And so, you know, they had that thing, that animation, like the finger running around the outside of the iPad, flattening

⏹️ ▶️ John out, which I thought was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cute. That video was awesome, by the way. Like the video of like the finger, like editing the old iPad to become the new one. That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was really cute.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. But they didn’t have Johnny telling us philosophically what their thinking was with the new iPad. I mean, we

⏹️ ▶️ John can surmise it and there were other things in the video, So that’s exactly the role that he normally fills.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I actually did miss him. You’re right. He was, and Phil did a great job, but

⏹️ ▶️ John his voice and what he normally says in his scripts or whatever was slightly missing

⏹️ ▶️ John from explaining the thinking behind an all new design for a prominent Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John product. He doesn’t need to explain the MacBook Air or whatever, but I feel like the iPads he could have explained.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Around the time that this, I guess it was right before this was happening. So Marco was using an iPad and I saw Johnny

⏹️ ▶️ Casey across from him and I snapped a few pictures and you can see one of them in my Instagram. I’ll put a link in the show notes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then I started using that same iPad and for a while there, nobody really noticed that he

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was there, I think. And then all of a sudden, I noticed that people are shoving my back more and more aggressively

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then cameras are getting closer and closer to my ears to the point that there was a camera within like a half

⏹️ ▶️ Casey inch of each of my ears going click, click, click, click, click, click, because everyone is like leaning

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and basically pushing me out of the way to take a picture of Johnny’s across the table. At some point I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought that Marco had left and I thought that Federico was either leaving or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey had left. And I didn’t know what to do with myself because I wanted to stick around

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the two of them, but then I went outside and couldn’t find them. And I thought, well, I’ll go to that fancy, you know, new Apple store across the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey street. And I walk in there and I, uh, and I happened to meet a couple of listeners, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was, which was lovely. and I’m talking to them, and then all of a sudden, guess who comes walking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in? But Tim. Of course, he gets mobbed immediately.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And one of the listeners I was speaking with, Parker, had no shame in running directly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Tim and getting a selfie within like 30 seconds. I was deeply impressed. But Tim is trying to make his way to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the back of the room and is being extremely gracious about it. And the Apple employees are pooping their pants because they want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get a picture with Tim more than anything. I’m pooping my pants, but attempting to keep it under control because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like to get a picture with Tim. And you only brought one pair of pants. And I only had the pants I was wearing. I didn’t bring

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a change of clothes because it was a day trip. I am not the kind of person who would do that sort of thing, generally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking. When Marco and I got a picture with Federici several years ago, it was basically because Marco

⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, oh my God, there’s Craig, and then disappeared with the outline

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Marco in dust, like Looney Tunes style. And then next thing I knew, he was taking a picture with Craig, and I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey got a picture with Craig as well. In this case, I required some amount of assertiveness

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my part, which is not my strong suit. But sure enough, as he

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was walking by, I said, oh, can I get a picture? He said, thank you. And I said, you did a really good job today. Thanks.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And for someone who has fallen out of love with the iPad, I really, really want one. It looks really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. And at this point, my body language, and I’m trying to indicate to him,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can ditch me, dude. I understand that you need to keep moving to the back of the store. You can walk away.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not going to be offended. But when I said, you know, the new iPads look really great,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey he fed me what was clearly like his standard canned answer. Oh, yeah, you’re really going to love them. They’re really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey beautiful. But he did it in such a way that made me feel like he was at least slightly paying attention

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to what I was saying, more than I think he was obligated to have done. And the entire conversation

⏹️ ▶️ Casey between he and me probably lasted between 10 and 15 seconds. But it seemed like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for those 10 or 15 seconds, he actually was trying to engage, which was very,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very flattering and very cool. I did introduce myself by name. I did not see even a glimmer of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey recognition in him, which is exactly what I expected. But if he had had

⏹️ ▶️ Casey his eye flutter the littlest bit or something as though he had recognized me, I probably would have keeled

⏹️ ▶️ Casey over dead right there. But no, no such luck. But he was extremely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice, extremely gracious, and I got a picture, which is in that Instagram post I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have in the show notes. It’s, I think, the last picture, because I did it chronologically, and then Mike justifiably yelled at me for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not putting that first. But you know, c’est

⏹️ ▶️ John la

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey vie.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was going

⏹️ ▶️ John to say the same thing when I was paged. It’s reading pictures like, you didn’t really bury the lead on this one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, my bad. But, you know, I wanted to do it chronologically. I wasn’t thinking about it in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey terms of growth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco packing. The cover photo for this album should be you and Tim, obviously. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly. Yeah, in retrospect, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it should be. This is my buddy Tim, we hang out all the time, you know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, totally. But no, that was very cool. It was funny though, as I was going through my pictures

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I took the day, because I did take my big camera and use it on and off.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey At one point, well somebody actually on Twitter pointed out to me that behind Johnny, when he was talking to some

⏹️ ▶️ Casey woman who had sunglasses on and had the air of someone who thought that they were important, I don’t know if she

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was important, but you

⏹️ ▶️ John know. Probably a world famous celebrity who we all don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. Oh, I’m sure. I have no

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco idea who she was.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is the kind of thing, I just assume that anybody in there who has even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two people trying to talk to them is probably somebody really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey important. Yeah. Well, you say all that and I agree, but just behind Johnny,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m almost sure was David Blaine. I had no idea until somebody pointed it out on Twitter. He’s a magician, a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey relatively

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John famous magician. Check inside your shoe, Casey. Yeah, exactly. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco even

⏹️ ▶️ Casey worse, was that my card? Wasn’t the six of diamonds. Even worse, as I’m going through

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my pictures later when Federico and I had lunch, I realized I took like three pictures of Phil, had no

⏹️ ▶️ Casey idea he was standing there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco None. Yeah, I didn’t see Phil at all. Like I was looking for him. I would have loved to say hi to Phil.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t see him at all. Yeah, I had

⏹️ ▶️ John no idea. That is not David Blaine behind Johnny Lai. You don’t think so? It’s just another man who hasn’t shaved recently.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. Maybe you’re right. I believed it when somebody on Twitter said it was David Blaine, but maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re right.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, maybe Dave Blaine has gotten older and puffier, and I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Could be. Who knows? But one way or another, I did not post the picture

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Phil, but I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John almost sure. Lana Del Rey was in the hands-on area, too. I saw a picture that she posted from some Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey person. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey did not

⏹️ ▶️ John see that. I like her music. I actually listened to her performance at the end of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco video. Yeah, and you know, I got to say, not only was that, first of all, not only is it really cool see like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have this empty stage like you because Apple events have an empty stage with an empty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco table for an AR demo of course but otherwise an empty stage and it’s funny to see like right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as Tim’s introducing the musical guest this team of stagehands and black shirts comes out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and brings out like four monitors four stage monitor speakers two microphone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stands and a piano and rolls them all like in like no time and all of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sudden this empty stage becomes a musical performance stage and it was a really good performance and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I gotta say Tim was not awkward with the celebrity. I think this

⏹️ ▶️ John is a first. They did have the awkward live mic moments like they still this is one one criticism

⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple’s incredible crack AV crew is when someone is

⏹️ ▶️ John leaving stage and someone is coming on stage and they meet each other I think both of them don’t expect their mics

⏹️ ▶️ John still to be live but very often they are because we get to hear them speak to each other

⏹️ ▶️ John sort of in a non-stage voice. I think what Lana Del Rey said was like, oh, when I do these things, I’m always

⏹️ ▶️ John so nervous. And Tim’s like, no, you did fine. I’m the one who’s nervous. Like they were conversing

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco with each other in a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. And you heard that? We couldn’t hear that in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John room.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, we couldn’t hear

⏹️ ▶️ John it at all. Right. But go watch the video. You can hear it. And I think basically that they’re not expecting their mic still

⏹️ ▶️ John to be live. So I feel like the AV crew needs to turn off their mics as soon as they start that transitional phase

⏹️ ▶️ John and only turn them back on once they’re separate from each other. Although it’s cute to hear that

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco interaction. I thought

⏹️ ▶️ John it was It was very honest and real moment. They briefly snuck through a very prepared presentation.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, I gotta say, it was one of the better musical guests in a long time. And the way it was integrated in was pretty nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it wasn’t awkward or anything. It was just good.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Tim was, if you’re watching the video, I’m sure it was

⏹️ ▶️ John obvious when you were there too. But the volume was fine in the video, because obviously they’re mixing that audio differently than it sounds in the room. But

⏹️ ▶️ John Tim was all full of beans, as they would say. Like he was very enthusiastic, very expressive

⏹️ ▶️ John about everything. he’s gotten notes on his past performances that he seemed like he was a little bit sleepy, but he was not

⏹️ ▶️ John sleepy. He was very expressive about everything and seemed genuinely excited about it

⏹️ ▶️ John and was just really, really pumped about the stuff they had and, you know, introduced everything

⏹️ ▶️ John with enthusiasm and was, he didn’t have like his thoughtful Tim Cook moment,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the thoughtful

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco moment that he has in the keynotes where

⏹️ ▶️ John he tells about only Apple or can do

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco this

⏹️ ▶️ John or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna give you a summary of why we’re so

⏹️ ▶️ John awesome. Or just, you know, about why they care about the environment or helping people, or it’s all about the creativity.

⏹️ ▶️ John This was all just like rah rah, go go type of stuff. And by the way, lots of new presenters. So

⏹️ ▶️ John they had that turn us what’s his name? Yeah, John Turner’s I think. Yeah, he was he was at the Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ John event back in 2014. Right. So he was that was like his his public introduction in one of these events. And

⏹️ ▶️ John now he’s on stage. He was pretty good. The marketing guy they had felt

⏹️ ▶️ John a little marketing me but it’s first time I’ve seen him on stage. So you got to cut him a break. It takes a little while to

⏹️ ▶️ John get the stuff all together. I thought I thought all the presenters were pretty good. And it was a lot of new faces. And it was

⏹️ ▶️ John it was like a quarter women or something like there wasn’t it was it was better

⏹️ ▶️ John than just having one woman. But you know, I did notice that they it wasn’t just

⏹️ ▶️ John just a bunch of dudes the entire time, which was which nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say also it was it was fairly well paced. And it didn’t no point

⏹️ ▶️ Marco felt like it was dragging Like they didn’t get too down in the weeds at the demos or anything. It was short, didn’t even go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two hours. Yeah, and it was a very dense hour and a half, whatever it was. There was,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the excitement levels were maintained for most of it. It only did a little bit during the demos,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it was overall

⏹️ ▶️ John pretty cool. Even the demo people were excited. The person who was demoing Photoshop was excited about the fact that she

⏹️ ▶️ John was using Photoshop on an iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think the only time it really got creepy was when they took that very long shot of the very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco detailed basketball

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John player model. Yeah, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. There it goes, it goes, he wasn’t blinking. Guys, you can’t do that, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Uncanny

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Valley. Yeah, that was real creepy. Like, it’s- The sweat beads. It felt kinda like, like, I don’t, I really don’t like wax

⏹️ ▶️ Marco museums, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the people in wax museums, like, they just look a little bit too lifelike, but still really creepy and fake

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and weird. And like, you know, Uncanny Valley kind of situation. And man, that, those basketball players

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that game, those looked freak, those just freaked me out. Like, and, and then to have that one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco long zoom in every detail of this guy’s like sweat beads and I’m like okay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this should have ended like 20 seconds ago like this oh

⏹️ ▶️ John my god He should have had an idle animation You know characters in game

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey idle animation

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re like bouncing up and down or breathing or blinking or just doing something that shows that they’re not

⏹️ ▶️ John a wax mannequin But are in fact a living thing or but anyway

⏹️ ▶️ John Focus on game was interesting especially when they compared like the GPU power to the Xbox one right Right?

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s all well and good, Apple, but like, you’re not convincing me. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, Apple. Like, just, you’ve got all the GPU power in the world. You

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco are like 100

⏹️ ▶️ John times more powerful than the Switch, but you do not have Breath of the Wild. Like, do you see the difference? Do you see

⏹️ ▶️ John the difference here, Apple? Like, what’s different? How is Nintendo able to

⏹️ ▶️ John make these amazing games with so much less power? And by the way, the thing costs so much less

⏹️ ▶️ John money. Maybe that’s part of it too, But either way, like, yeah, I love the GPU.

⏹️ ▶️ John I love the fact that they have gaming demos. Oh, look at this, it’s in retina resolution. This game, you know, no console can

⏹️ ▶️ John do 120 frames per second which is true, but PCs can. But anyway, that’s not the problem. That’s not,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you’re not, they’re filling the wrong gap. People aren’t saying I would love

⏹️ ▶️ John to use the iPad as my primary gaming system if only it did 120 frames per second. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not what people are saying. People saying I would love to use the iPad as my gaming system only if it

⏹️ ▶️ John had the games I want to play. It doesn’t. Red Dead Redemption 2

⏹️ ▶️ John did not come out on the iPad. The Last of Us 2 is not coming out on the iPad. Zelda didn’t come out on the iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ John All these games, they’re not coming out on the iPad. And it’s not because the iPad isn’t powerful enough.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s plenty powerful. Anyway, I don’t want to go off on Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco gaming

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, but they insist on bringing up gaming. They insist on comparing themselves to gaming consoles and it’s like, you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John see the differences that people care about. It’s not the difference do you think they are?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey One very small tidbit that I noticed that I might be the only person that finds

⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting is that when the Adobe people were on stage,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey shoot, I thought I wrote it down somewhere, but I’ve lost it. Oh, Chantal, I think,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was the woman who demonstrated the AR app by actually using

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPad. When she came on stage, I believe she brought the iPad with her, it looked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, if memory serves. But when she exited the stage, she put

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPad in that like cube that was on stage and walked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John off. So there was like

⏹️ ▶️ John three spare iPads. And if you look at the shot of when she does the air thing, you get the reverse angle. There was a bunch of spares

⏹️ ▶️ John there.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not surprising. Okay. Yeah, we couldn’t see that from our seats, but it was, I don’t know. It just struck me as weird

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that she would have brought it on stage. And maybe I’m wrong about that, but I could have sworn she brought it on stage, but then deliberately

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it looked like she pulled open a drawer and ditched it in the drawer before she walked off stage.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I always get kind of you know, I go when I see someone come up for a table and a real

⏹️ ▶️ John demo and I realize they’re standing in front of what is clearly and What have we come we’ve come to know as an AR table.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. Hey, why is there a giant? Oh AR table? And so, you know, there’s gonna be an IR demo when she was

⏹️ ▶️ John demoing it like it, but she’s demoing Photoshop It’s not gonna be a our demo, but sure enough It’s an AR

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey demo. Of

⏹️ ▶️ John course this ever all of us have a our demo tables in our house, right? It’s just a big giant flat empty table that we use

⏹️ ▶️ John for our demos to make sure there’s a service that it can track

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. Yeah, because obviously, like, you know, no table in our house would just fill with crap and never

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John empty ever

⏹️ ▶️ John again. I think the crap doesn’t actually interfere with it too much, but you do need a big table upon which to display things.

⏹️ ▶️ John Beep, beep, beep.