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

303: Your Mahogany World

Casey runs ffmpeg on his iPad, John defends desserts, and Marco finds himself in a Microsoft commercial.

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. Follow-up: 🇮🇹🍪
  2. Follow-up: iSH + ffmpeg
  3. 8K as 3X Retina?
  4. Sponsor: Fracture
  5. Tariffs, component costs
  6. Profits instead of growth?
  7. Sponsor: Molekule (code ATP)
  8. Airplane portables
  9. Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
  10. #askatp: Endian-ness
  11. #askatp: iPhone beats my SLR
  12. #askatp: Quality/effort foods
  13. Ending theme
  14. Neutral: Marco’s Tesla mess

Follow-up: 🇮🇹🍪

⏹️ ▶️ John This is a very, uh, a major recurring segment of the show where Marco asks for CEOs to be fired.

⏹️ ▶️ John Matt Stauffer laughs Should have institutionalized this. Matt laughs

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It appears to me that the universal law of podcasting with John Siracusa is that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on an infinite time scale, it all goes back to food.

⏹️ ▶️ John Matt Stauffer laughs Yeah. Why am I taking blame for this? Hang on a second. I’m not the food one. Marco’s got a whole podcast

⏹️ ▶️ John where he talks about food and buys cans of Pringles and stuff. I’m not responsible for the food talk. I participate

⏹️ ▶️ John in it, but I’m not why it’s there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re the common denominator between Robot or Not and here. I’m not on top

⏹️ ▶️ John four and they got food everywhere. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey making themselves sick with food. Other people are also allowed to talk about food, but it seems that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the trend line with the John Syracuse podcast is that you inevitably will talk about food.

⏹️ ▶️ John I do not accept this blame slash credit any more than you do. I think

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it is equally distributed.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can I get an amen on this, Marco? I mean, come on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would also say we got a lot of feedback about Italian desserts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that’s true. None of which I think adequately defended them.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, man. They don’t need to be defended from you. You just might not like them. But I think

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that needs to be defended is the idea that Italian is one of those cuisines that doesn’t really have good desserts, which is kind of what

⏹️ ▶️ John your starting point was, which is ridiculous on its face. Whether or not you like them or have been impressed with them or found

⏹️ ▶️ John good ones is different than like – different than like, because there are some cuisines that from an American perspective, you might say, not really known for their

⏹️ ▶️ John desserts. Like, you know, Chinese food as we know it, not really known for the desserts, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Italian is not one of those cuisines. Got to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, I had some Italian desserts over the weekend at nice restaurants and they were fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly what I say about every Italian dessert that I have.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John This is fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John You might, you just might not like them except for the six that you listed that you said were good. They were all exceptions.

⏹️ ▶️ John You

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what the problem is, is that you just haven’t been to a good Italian restaurant,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Mark, or have a dessert. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey here’s the thing. You really need to find yourself the nearest Olive Garden, you know, a really good Italian

⏹️ ▶️ Casey restaurant and try their desserts.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I think Italian restaurants in the fake Italy in Las Vegas are not too far from

⏹️ ▶️ John Olive Garden.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what we need to do is go to John Syracuse’s places on Long Island and see if they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually that good. Pick me up something.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, you’d have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to meet us there. This

⏹️ ▶️ John is starting to sound more complicated and not as good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was like John has named a spot that is good. So look, I’m nearby. I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John there.

⏹️ ▶️ John Come to come to Boston and go to Mike’s. It’s fine. I mean you just might not like canolis. That’s what the problem is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, then so if I if I go to whatever the place was that you gave me in Smith town or whatever I’ll plan in Smith

⏹️ ▶️ Marco town. Yeah, if I go there, what should I get in addition to canolis?

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I I can tell you a cookie assortment to get. I like a couple

⏹️ ▶️ John of ones in particular. I like the little rainbow sandwich things, which granted look better than they taste, but I do like

⏹️ ▶️ John them. They’re a sentimental favorite. We could do a whole top four episode on it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So actually Tiff’s mom makes those really, really well. And the ones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco she makes I love. I’ve never had any of those rainbow sandwich cookies from anywhere

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else that tasted like anything. Like hers are strong with flavor because she uses a lot of, I believe it’s because she uses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of almond paste. so they really have a nice dense almondy flavor. It’s wonderful. Most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the ones I taste just taste like air. They just taste like nothing. Maybe they taste like the chocolate that’s drizzled on the outside,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or maybe they use too much jelly between the layers and it tastes too much like jelly. But the actual

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sponge in it, the actual cake part of it, usually tastes like absolutely nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can mess those up for sure. They’re complicated, but they’re just fun. I like most of the cookies, the varieties

⏹️ ▶️ John that look like sugar cookies dipped in chocolate with jam between them, Those can really be screwed up by having the

⏹️ ▶️ John ratio not right. Like if you have too little jam for too much cookie, or the cookies are monstrous, this is a problem. Like I mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ John that Alpine, their cannolis had gotten bigger. And I like the smaller ones of my youth, because I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John like you start to supersize everything. Mike’s is the same way. Everything at Mike’s is supersized. But whatever, it’s New England. They don’t really know what they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John doing.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Everything about them is good

⏹️ ▶️ John tasting, but everything is huge. Even, actually, Tina brought back bagels from New York

⏹️ ▶️ John City. And they were these giant monstrosities. There’s definitely a food size inflation epidemic

⏹️ ▶️ John going around.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John apples prices. Yeah, that can affect that can affect cookies as well, where they just the ratios just go off like

⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t. You can’t have a cookie like that with the same thin smear of jam, but two huge cookies.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that gets to what you were talking about, which is like dry, sugary cookie thing. But part of the whole thing, kind of like getting it.

⏹️ ▶️ John You talked about this in your top four episode with like assorted chocolates. Any individual

⏹️ ▶️ John chocolate can be hit or miss, but the the excitement is in sort of the assortment that you have a whole bunch of different kinds

⏹️ ▶️ John of cookies, maybe only one or two of each kind. So there’s a sort of a

⏹️ ▶️ John you get a good feeling if you got one of the rainbow cookies and there was only a couple of them there or

⏹️ ▶️ John you did or didn’t you didn’t get the one you want or there’s such variety you don’t know which one you want to take because they’re all so different from each other

⏹️ ▶️ John as opposed to like a giant plate of all the same kind of cookies. That’s not the thing you’re going for. So there’s that aspect

⏹️ ▶️ John of it as well. And then all the things goes to before you said what tiramisu biscotti your fruit tarts

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s at least one other one that you said you like. Those are all pretty reliable

⏹️ ▶️ John almost anywhere.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, so we’re going to go to your place. We’re going to order one of everything, and we’re going to get it home,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and when it’s right, I’m going to be like, this is fine. And you’re going to be like, well, it was a bad day. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey never.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John What

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John really have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do is go there every day for 30 years, and then that’s really what it’s about.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now, I’m going to say you just don’t like Italian desserts. It’s okay for you not to like it. It’s not okay for you to say Italian

⏹️ ▶️ John is one of those cuisines that doesn’t really do good That’s not okay.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t say the desserts were bad. I said they’re just like they’re they’re just average. They’re just fine. Like they I they’re and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they disappoint me.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is not an ethnic cuisine with average desserts. Is it cuisine with above average desserts? That is

⏹️ ▶️ John my contention. I don’t know that I agree to that. Whether or not you like them, whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So now that we’ve already covered follow up, even though this wasn’t in the follow up list.

⏹️ ▶️ John You want and you want to have a project. I’m more invested in getting you into the ocean and not drowning you in the process

⏹️ ▶️ John than you going out to Smithtown and going to Alpine bakery. Well, although if you’re there, you should definitely go to

⏹️ ▶️ John my pizza place too. But that I, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if you’ve had good Sicilian, but you’ll be right

⏹️ ▶️ John there. You should just go to, you should go to branch now as you’d be closer to there than Emilio’s. Uh, just go there and get Sicilian with nothing on

⏹️ ▶️ John it. Wait, what about cheese? You know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like just a plain cheese, just, just, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yeah. No toppings,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no nothing. Yep. John, John, what would it take for us to do a food tour

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Long Island? Like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John My door

⏹️ ▶️ John is like the three places I grew up near.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t care for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like with you, John, like for you to come

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey with us.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I will drive up or fly up or whatever. And and you will drive down and we will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pile in Marcos, one of Marcos six Tesla’s that he’s paying for right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And we will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we will go to Long Island and do a food tour. What what is the Kickstarter goal that we need

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hit?

⏹️ ▶️ John I probably have to be unemployed. So you just We just wait around for that, I guess.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, we’re two thirds there, so it’s only been a third time. You

Follow-up: iSH + ffmpeg

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should probably get properly started at this point. And we have to do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ISH Corner, which I’m apparently making a thing. If you recall, ISH is a app

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that lets you run Linux on your iOS devices. And I’d been kind of updating everyone on the progress

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ISH, specifically with the things I want to do on it, which is mostly YouTube DL and FFmpeg.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s been another release to TestFlight and FFmpeg kind of-ish

⏹️ ▶️ Casey occasionally works And YouTube DL also, generally speaking, works now,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is super cool. And YouTube download takes, uh, forever and a day to get started. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you try this at home, understand it will literally take about a minute to get going. But once it gets going, it downloads

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at reasonable speeds and everything’s happy, unless it needs to do something with FFmpeg

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the other end. So as an example, a lot of times, just hear me out here, a lot of times what will happen is when you download

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something particularly from YouTube, It’ll come in as a separate video and audio file, and then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey YouTube DL will run FFmpeg behind the scenes in order to merge those together.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And one of two things will happen in that occurrence on ISH. Either

⏹️ ▶️ Casey FFmpeg will give a very peculiar error, which is unknown encoder

⏹️ ▶️ Casey called copy. So I can go into the reasons why that would happen. I don’t think it’s terribly pertinent

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the show. If you do know the reasons why this happened, tell me why it’s happening, please, because I don’t understand

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how the copy encoder could be missing. But anyway, suffice to say it will either die because of that, or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will be so hilariously slow, which makes perfect sense given how ISH works.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was literally watching the frame count rise. So usually, you know, it’ll do like 30, 40, 50 frames

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a second. I was watching the frame count go frame one, frame

⏹️ ▶️ Casey two, frame three. Remind you there’s at least 24 frames per second. Frame 4, Frame 5.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is hilariously slow. But again, I don’t blame ISH for that. It perfectly makes sense

⏹️ ▶️ Casey given what’s going on. But the whole reason I want this copy encoder issue fixed is because what FFmpeg

⏹️ ▶️ Casey can do is just kind of mash files together without re-encoding them and that’s what the copy encoder

⏹️ ▶️ Casey does. But for some reason it’s not working on ISH. It’s got to be something ISH related although darned if I know why

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or what. So if you have any thoughts on this, I’ll put link to the error message that I tweeted about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few days ago in the show notes, and additionally, the GitHub issue that friend of the show Federico Vittici

⏹️ ▶️ Casey opened. And so you can check that out and perhaps provide feedback.

⏹️ ▶️ John Can you remind us why you’re doing this at all? Why you want to run YouTube DL

⏹️ ▶️ John and FFmpeg on an x86 emulator on top of ARM chip on iOS? What

⏹️ ▶️ John is the use case, as they would say in your old life?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, sure. The summary is I’m an idiot. The longer version is it would be convenient to be able to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey download a YouTube video, say, before I go on a plane or something like that. And yes, I know, I know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are ways to do this, some of which involve money, some of which don’t. I understand. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m used to using YouTube download to do these sorts of things, and it would be cool to be able to do that on my iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is that a premium feature? Because my kids do this, they download it, but it’s because I pay for whatever the hell weird-

⏹️ ▶️ Marco YouTube Red or whatever it’s called now. Google.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey believe it’s a premium feature.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, if you’re a member of YouTube Whatever Premium, then you can download stuff offline in their app, but not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re not a member of YouTube Whatever Premium? That’s such good branding, we don’t know what the hell it is. You’re not a member

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that case? I am a member of it, but I don’t know what it’s called.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, no, I am not a member of it. I don’t watch that much YouTube.

⏹️ ▶️ John You need to eventually become a member of that, otherwise your children are going

⏹️ ▶️ John to, I bought it slightly too late in the life of my children and their YouTube

⏹️ ▶️ John exposure, so all of my kids know everything about Geico.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey If you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco want to avoid

⏹️ ▶️ John that fate, sign up just before they start becoming tiny YouTube-addicted

⏹️ ▶️ John little demons. Because it is well worth it not to have your kids see YouTube ads. Then

⏹️ ▶️ John all you have to worry about is your kids becoming white supremacists. But that’s it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no big deal. No big deal. Yeah, so I know there are other reasons to do this,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or other mechanisms by which to do this, but I would just like to. And sometimes I’ll download a copy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of—and it’s not always YouTube, but usually YouTube—a copy of a video that I really love. Maybe that’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey music video, maybe it’s a concert, maybe it’s an instructive video that I really, really love and I want to have locally just in case

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it gets pulled from YouTube sometime. And I could absolutely SSH into my iMac to do this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that’s generally speaking what I do when I need to do this sort of thing. But I’m going on this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of spirit walk, vision quest, whatever the silly turn of phrase is in order

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to try to eliminate needing a computer when I’ve decided to take my iPad and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do something on my iPad. And this is one of the small, but not infrequent

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stumbling blocks that I’m running into. So I really think if this FFmpeg

⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue gets fixed, then generally speaking, you won’t have to re-encode the thing that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey YouTube download downloads. And so because of that, I actually think even though it’s in this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like ridiculous, you know, layer upon layer upon layer of emulation and virtualization and things

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that nature, I really think it’ll go pretty quick because there’s no real computing to be done. You’re just copying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff from one file to another. But sitting here today, it is hilariously slow and it’s understandable.

⏹️ ▶️ John Paul, this is more about the ritual anyway, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. It makes you feel better. It sounds better. It looks better when you have the- Makes it warmer? It’s warm, much

⏹️ ▶️ Casey warmer.

⏹️ ▶️ John Your iPad is definitely warmer.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, that’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John fact.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nicely done.

8K as 3X Retina?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey A friend of the show, Andreas Netsmann, was one of the first people to write in to point out to us, with regard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to humongous 8K screens, well, what if they’re not so humongous? Because Andreas

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pointed out that Apple could go to 3X scale. At the same UI size, a 3X 8K

⏹️ ▶️ Casey display would be just slightly larger than 27 inches. So if you think about how 2X, or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what we currently consider retina, is pixel doubled off of traditional

⏹️ ▶️ Casey resolutions that we’ve had for years, well, if you pixel triple, if you will, that will pretty much put you at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an 8K display that’s something in the realm of like 27 to 30 inches. And so maybe that’s why 8K is more interesting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to us than we initially thought last episode.

⏹️ ▶️ John That would definitely be more palatable, but the reason I think 3X

⏹️ ▶️ John is more suitable to handheld stuff is that just practically speaking, they’re closer to your face.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think 3X would be lost on people’s eyes at the distances

⏹️ ▶️ John that they view it from. It still means that you’d be able to watch your 8K video natively, which is an advantage, but I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know if 8K on a 27 inch screen, like does anyone have the eagle eyes to

⏹️ ▶️ John distinguish that from 2X on a 27, you know, put a 2X and a 3X 27 inch screen right next to each other and ask somebody

⏹️ ▶️ John at normal viewing distance to tell the difference and if they can’t, then you’re just wasting money and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a great idea. But if Apple made an 8K 27 inch,

⏹️ ▶️ John like I think that is a reasonable size for the monitor and if the price wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous, I would buy one even if I thought I was wasting my money. Because I’d rather

⏹️ ▶️ John have a slightly wasteful, slightly more expensive 8K screen at 3X

⏹️ ▶️ John than that LG thing that Marco hates.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and the 3X theory is a nice theory. I don’t buy it. You know, if you look at what devices have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3X now, it’s only the iPhone X and XS and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco XS Max. That’s it. The previous Plus phones didn’t even have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3X. They rendered the 3X in the buffer, in the software side, but then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they scaled it down to the actual screen pixels so that it made it kind of like between 2 and 3X. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course, all the other iPhones are always 2X. If you look at why they might have gone 3X where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did, there’s a lot of other factors. Like for instance, phones are hyper-competitive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all the other phones went to nearly those densities or maybe a little bit past those densities.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but in the ballpark of those densities. So it was hyper competitive and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone else was in this other region, so Apple maybe felt they had to meet that region. The other big reason on the iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco X and why it wasn’t used on any other phone, including the iPhone XR, which is LCD,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that the X and XS and XS Max are OLED. And as I believe we talked about briefly a couple weeks ago,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at the sub-pixels of an OLED screen, every pixel doesn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every color. And there’s different arrangements, There’s like the pen tile arrangement, and there’s a bunch of other ones that phones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have used over the years with OLED screens. And with the arrangement Apple uses, every pixel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco contains a green and either a blue or a red, but not all three.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you need like this little matrix of a certain block of pixels to be able to represent all colors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nicely and sharply and everything else. So my theory is that they went to 3X on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone 10 family only because it was OLED, and they needed that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco density to make that sub-pixel pattern look up to their standards. If you look at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other products in their line, as I said, like almost everything is 2X or slightly above 2X,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the Plus phones, or notably for this purpose, slightly below 2X, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every MacBook and MacBook Pro that’s gone Retina. Which is terrible. Yes, it is. All

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them are below 2X. All of them run in scaling modes by default ever since about 2016

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or so, or in the case of the MacBook 2015. So basically, if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your MacBook has a USB-C port, it runs a scaling mode by default that runs at lower than 2X resolution because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have not changed the screen resolutions since 2012 when the retina happened. And that was actually a step back from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was there before. So anyway, what really needs 2X resolution, or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3X resolution rather, like on the Mac is not much. We haven’t even hit 2X on most Macs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sold yet because most Macs sold are laptops, and we can’t even hit 2X there. So I don’t I don’t see them going to 3X for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a, you know, 27 to 30 inch display that sits two feet away from you. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t I don’t see that being a priority when they can’t even get to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco X in the laptops for four years or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John Interestingly, for televisions, I believe most of the modern sets do rather than not having

⏹️ ▶️ John all of RGB on every pixel, they have all every pixel has all of RGB plus a dedicated white

⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to crank up the brightness that they mix in there. So obviously their pixels are huge compared to

⏹️ ▶️ John 3X on a phone or whatever, but it just goes to show that lots of different things are possible depending

⏹️ ▶️ John on your use case. And speaking of OLED, again, I didn’t even get an OLED iPad this year, I’m not holding my breath for an OLED

⏹️ ▶️ John desktop screen, but boy, a 2X, 5K, IMAX size

⏹️ ▶️ John screen that was OLED would be pretty cool for watching movies and TV and stuff, which you probably shouldn’t be

⏹️ ▶️ John doing, you should probably be watching it on your actual television or on your OLED iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it would be cool on a Mac too.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess for the same price, you could get like a 60-inch OLED TV

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco then. Yes, exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you could sit farther back from it, right? On a couch instead of in a computer chair.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you can run webOS. You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can.

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Tariffs, component costs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once again, FractureMe.com slash ATP for a special discount on your first Fracture order. And hurry,

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so there were a bunch of people who took some issue with our price increase

⏹️ ▶️ Casey discussion from last week, and one of you thought that Stuart Lord’s feedback was worth noting.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey points out that the iPad launched at $500 and today the cheapest

⏹️ ▶️ Casey full-size iPad starts at $350. The cost of the original iPhone over two years was $1,815

⏹️ ▶️ Casey depending on your plan and you can get the XR at considerably less than this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But even with the cheapest AT&T plan, it’s still $1,995, almost the same as the $1,975 two-year cost of the iPhone 3G

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and over $200 less than the original iPhone adjusted for inflation. Similarly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the original MacBook Air started at $1799. The new MacBook Air is starting at $1199,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s the cheapest new generation of MacBook Air has ever debuted. The difference is about $300, according to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Stewart, adjusted for inflation.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I was surprised. There wasn’t a lot of feedback like this, but there was some pushing back against the basic premise that Apple is increasing

⏹️ ▶️ John prices once you account things. And so the example Stewart gave I thought was interesting because they’re all

⏹️ ▶️ John original products. The original iPhone, what the iPad launched at, the original MacBook Air and I think

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a pretty clear exception for two reasons. One, when things originally launch, sometimes they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John pushing the envelope technologically speaking as the MacBook, the original MacBook Air was. So there’s a cost built in

⏹️ ▶️ John there to like, look, we, you know, this is the first unibody thing we’re making. It’s the thinnest thing we’ve ever made. It costs us a lot of money to make

⏹️ ▶️ John it. We have to charge a lot. And second is new product lines when they’re introduced, like the iPad or the iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John are not yet diversified. And so the first one tends to be more towards the high end. Once the

⏹️ ▶️ John line gets diversified, know, the original iPhone compared for the iPhone 10 are the iPhone 10 are it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John the flagship phone despite it being a really great phone. The 10 s is and the 10 is the max of the flagship phones, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And the iPad comparing the original iPad, that was the best iPad you could buy period

⏹️ ▶️ John for any amount of money, you’d have to compare it to an iPad Pro. I know it’s not quite apples and oranges because the features have expanded.

⏹️ ▶️ John But still, when there is just the first one, it is necessarily expensive.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you would expect down the line that there would be a more expensive iPad and a cheaper iPad. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think these comparisons are straightforward. And I think the the price increases,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s hard to, you know, you can go through every single product and try to average it out. And the interesting thing, a couple of people brought this up, although

⏹️ ▶️ John they weren’t really pressing against the conclusion that prices are increasing. But if you go back far enough,

⏹️ ▶️ John as we’ve pointed out in the show many times, you go back far enough. The cycles repeat, right? The original, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, no Mac available today matches the cost of like the Mac two effects, which is like 16 grand

⏹️ ▶️ John in today’s money or something like that for the base price. Uh, Max used to be much more expensive. It’s just that

⏹️ ▶️ John in the semi recent history and in, in, in living memory of the people who are on this podcast, uh, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John even the young people,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Matt, Matt, this podcast,

⏹️ ▶️ John Matt, Apple’s hardware, Apple’s hardware was cheaper and has been

⏹️ ▶️ John crawling up the, you know, Apple of course also says that their average sell selling price is increasing. That doesn’t mean their hardware

⏹️ ▶️ John is becoming more expensive. The good has been selling more of the expensive models because they don’t break it down at that granularity

⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re not even going to tell us the number of Unix sales anymore. But I think it is

⏹️ ▶️ John pretty clear that for the major product lines that Apple cares about, it’s portable devices, it’s Macs

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s iPhones and iPads and everything like that, over the past couple of years there has been a substantial

⏹️ ▶️ John price increase. And well, the next item is also about things that might explain it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Indeed. So Andy Hansen writes that, Apple’s pricing is high, no doubt, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey eight weeks ago I got called by two technology vendors telling me that OEMs are raising prices up to 25% in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 2019. Because why? It’s because of tariffs. And so Andy says, I’ve been in a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey purchasing role at my organization for almost nine years, and he has never before received a call like this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we’ll also put a link in the show notes to Washington Post article about tariffs

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and how they do or do not relate to Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so that’s the interesting part. So yes, tariffs are a thing and vendors might have prices increases and they pass that on to you.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the way this works. Um, the Washington post article is about how

⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook schmoozing as presented in the article, but in general, tech industry lobbying has managed

⏹️ ▶️ John to exclude some of Apple’s, uh, you know, flagship products from these tariffs.

⏹️ ▶️ John So while tariffs surely don’t help the pricing of things, it’s interesting that Apple has managed to carve

⏹️ ▶️ John out some exceptions for its most important products so they aren’t as affected by tariffs.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s just the lovely, weird, corrupt system that we live in. I don’t want to go into the

⏹️ ▶️ John politics of it, but I wanted to address tariffs because that is potentially a factor, but I did think it was interesting that

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, who is obviously philosophically and fundamentally opposed to everything the current

⏹️ ▶️ John US administration stands for, is nevertheless doing what it takes to make sure

⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t get hurt as much by this stuff as it could.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, and it’s doing what it takes to benefit from it as well. Don’t forget those giant tax cuts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Tim Cook pushes

⏹️ ▶️ John for really aggressively. Oh, and the repatriation of the foreign currency. Yep,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that too. Apple plays it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They definitely play both sides of the hand when they need to. When there’s a lot of money on the table for them, they work with the administration.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, very much so. Well, although I do wonder what form working with might take, because, God, I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John Can you only imagine? Just, I don’t want to get too

⏹️ ▶️ John blurry. Anyway, whatever they’re doing, they’re making it happen for them. And they are

⏹️ ▶️ John getting benefits, getting some of the benefits they want.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. And then finally, Jonathan Dietz writes in with regard to component costs. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey his theory is that the number one factor is SD-RAM pricing, which is currently at the center of a major

⏹️ ▶️ Casey price fixing lawsuit. Instead of DDR4, SD-RAM prices falling by almost 50%

⏹️ ▶️ Casey between June 2016 and February 2018, as we would expect them to, they nearly quadrupled a 280% increase. The

⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem is exacerbated by the sheer amount of silicon Apple is putting into their products these

⏹️ ▶️ Casey days. And furthermore, all of Intel’s prices have inched up because their transistors still cost

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as much as they did back in 2014 when they first moved to 14 nanometers. So in summary,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey particularly RAM, but even other things, are still just expensive, and in some cases are getting more expensive

⏹️ ▶️ Casey over time, which is unusual.

⏹️ ▶️ John So this is tariffs and component costs, two things we briefly mentioned, but with some more concrete examples that surely are affecting

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s prices. And yet I still say on top of all that, there is a conscious decision by Apple to charge more

⏹️ ▶️ John money for some of its products. Sometimes because they’re new, like the iPhone X, but then they kept that price increase

⏹️ ▶️ John when the XS came along. And sometimes because of component prices and foreign currency and everything

⏹️ ▶️ John like that. But I don’t think all of those factors combined are enough to explain the across

⏹️ ▶️ John the board, very large, not just one or 2% price increases that are

⏹️ ▶️ John way like put it this way. If if these trends continue, they’ll these things will cost as much

⏹️ ▶️ John as a car as a car in like, you know, 10 years, which is obviously untenable. So I, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, if I’m kind of surprised that in Apple’s earning calls and everything, people don’t ask about this, because in fact, they’d

⏹️ ▶️ John probably ask the opposite, you know, tell us what you’re going to do to get more money from your customers like they were, they’re not going going to

⏹️ ▶️ John say, why are your prices up? There is a different constituency on those earning calls. But

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of the other stream of feedback we got about price increases is from people saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I usually buy Apple stuff, but I’m experiencing sticker shock. They just kind of get accustomed

⏹️ ▶️ John to, like Casey was saying, buying an iPad for around $500 or $600, and they go in to get

⏹️ ▶️ John what they think is the new iPad that is more or less equivalent to their current one, but maybe a little better, and it’s just so much more expensive.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or same thing for the MacBook Air, which obviously suffers from being the low-end model. Now the new ones come out and they are not $9.99 anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John And there aren’t any $9.99 models, except for, guess what? The same MacBook Air that you could have bought

⏹️ ▶️ John before with a USB-A port on it and all that other stuff. So I think

⏹️ ▶️ John whether or not the price increase makes up for the customers who are priced out of the market, we’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John find out when Apple does earnings. But in the meantime, some people are sad that if they’re on the fringe

⏹️ ▶️ John of being priced out of the market for a particular product, they might’ve got pushed over the edge and they just have to like

⏹️ ▶️ John wait another year save their money.

Profits instead of growth?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you guys worried at all about like the I mean I don’t we don’t usually talk about like they’re the financial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco results and everything but like It does seem like you know sales are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco flattening In you know certain categories seem shaky The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive rise of prices has to have some effect to lower volumes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and You know like the iPhone 10 seems okay but then you see the reports

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like, oh, the XR seems to be doing horribly, and maybe the whole S generation might not be doing very well. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually these reports are BS, but this year it seems like maybe they might not be because there’s more stuff going on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think that… It seems very clear that the direction that Cook has decided to take the company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently is, you know, in the absence of strong growth, they’ll extract

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more money out of everybody. And part of that is raising prices on all the products. Part of that is, you know, services and stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like just generally like a tightening and like you know tightening the screws and just extracting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more and more out of everybody. But that obviously has a cost and you know that cost is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re really alienating a lot of customers, you’re losing some customers to some degree, I don’t know what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco degree but certainly you know some customers will just say no that’s that’s more than I will take and I’ll go somewhere else.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think this is the right move long term or do you think this is maybe like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the wrong thing to do?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it depends on who you’re asking, right? I mean, obviously you’re asking the two of us. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you think of Apple as a machine to make money for the people

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that own even a portion of Apple, you know, for shareholders and everyone else, then I think this is an inevitability,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? They’ve painted themselves into a bit of a corner wherein they have made so much money

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they have had so much growth that in order to keep that growth and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey money machine moving, they’re going to have to do exactly what you said, which is get more

⏹️ ▶️ Casey money out of each and every one of us. one of us. And it seems – I could

⏹️ ▶️ Casey make an argument that by virtue of them kind of twisting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey these screws, that implies that whatever is on the horizon, they don’t think it’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey brand new thing that’s going to print them brand new money. Like let’s say for the sake of discussion that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Project Titan, whether or not it was ever real, but they’ve come up with this Tesla beating electric

⏹️ ▶️ Casey car and they know it’s right around the corner. I wonder if they would be so aggressive about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ratcheting up the money machine, knowing full well that we’re all going to throw tens of,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe $100,000 at them for a Project Titan Tesla killer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But from a consumer perspective, which is what Apple claims to care about more than

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything else, but in reality, it’s a money machine like any other company. From a consumer perspective, yeah, this stinks. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have heard, since I’ve become an Apple fan, I have either been the one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey complaining or have heard complaining about how expensive Apple stuff is as compared to everything else. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the problem might be twofold. I think by virtue of increased

⏹️ ▶️ Casey complexity in everything, I think that the easy answer to,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, it costs so much more, well, yes, but it also just works correctly. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we’re losing that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost at high ground. So now I don’t know where I’m going with this, because I know that’s a loaded word now. You know, that we’re losing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that high ground in the sense that, okay, yeah, yeah, I know you could get the same PC for half as much money,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but macOS always works and always works properly and you never have to mess with it. Well, that isn’t always

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the case anymore. And I think some of that’s on Apple’s shoulders because I think they just aren’t doing as good a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey job with releasing quality software as they did in years past. But I think some of that is just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by virtue of being more complex. Everything is more complex now and that’s just hard. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard no matter who you are. I forget what the other side of this coin was. I got myself wrapped around the axle. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, what I’m trying to say is, from a consumer’s perspective, you know, there’s not as much

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a functional high ground as there used to be. And the cost is getting ever more egregious.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the three of us are unlikely to break anytime soon, but maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey less enthusiastic Apple users might either hold onto their phones longer, which just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes the problem worse, or may say, you know what, Android isn’t looking nearly as offensive as it used

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, maybe I should take a look at that after all.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s just, I’m a little, I’m not worried, not scared, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m giving a Stephen Colbert eyebrow to this, you know, I’m giving it a little bit of side eye because I’m not sure where this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going. And somebody wrote in, I don’t have the email in front of me, but somebody wrote in, actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it was Matthew Iglesias, had said, I’m pretty sure sure it was him, had said, you know, Hey, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey am the, the prototypical Apple purchaser, you know, much like the three of us,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, I have typically have bought iPhones every year. I typically buy Apple watches fairly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey commonly. You know, I buy iPads frequently and he was saying, and I’m heavily paraphrasing, of course.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t really bought anything this year and that’s in no small part because it’s just fricking expensive. And I mean, look at me,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want a 10 S, but I don’t know if I really want to drop another $1,200

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on top of the iPad I’ve already purchased. I really want an Apple Watch Series 4,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but eh, you know, my Series 3 is fine. And it was not long ago that I was on the upgrade

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my iPhone every year, no matter what train. And just this year, I’m like, eh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll be all right. Now, some of that is because, you know, I don’t exactly have the disposable income I once had, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nevertheless, it’s changed the math a little bit for me.

⏹️ ▶️ John the increases at the top end are actually probably a good idea because I think

⏹️ ▶️ John the customers that purchase the high-end products like that they’re correctly

⏹️ ▶️ John guessing that increasing by the by this amount is not going to stop those people

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like is that the game is like poker like how much more money do you have in your wallet and how much

⏹️ ▶️ John of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco would

⏹️ ▶️ John you be willing to put out for the latest iPhone and you know you

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s you don’t want to guess too high but it’s probably a safe bet

⏹️ ▶️ John that you can crank up the high end. And on the Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is, which has, I would say, less market share than the phone or certainly

⏹️ ▶️ John less important than the phone or certainly less important overall, but I think even less important within its market, within the market

⏹️ ▶️ John of first-line computers than the phone is within the phone market. Maybe that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John okay. But for the phone line, because it is such a dominant product, the numbers are so big, And

⏹️ ▶️ John despite the fact that it only has 20% market share or whatever, it still is a bigger player

⏹️ ▶️ John in its market than the Mac is in the other ones. The phone has the potential to be,

⏹️ ▶️ John if not as mass market as the iPod was, then at least more mass market than the Mac. It

⏹️ ▶️ John already is more mass market than the Mac, but it could be more so. So I think the mistake is not so much raising the prices at

⏹️ ▶️ John the high end, it’s raising the prices at the low end. The whole thing is shifting

⏹️ ▶️ John to the right on the price graph. And that I think is leaving money on the table because

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think the phone, I don’t think Apple should be content to push

⏹️ ▶️ John its main product upmarket and leave behind the people who can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John afford $800 for a phone. Apple can, and I’ve always said this and I will continue to say it, can make a really good phone

⏹️ ▶️ John for way less than they’re currently selling a phone. They don’t, but they could. And they may be afraid

⏹️ ▶️ John of that, accountanlizing their sort of middle of the road or high end sales. But I think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John this move is just like make more money from the people who were already selling to maybe leave a few behind but make

⏹️ ▶️ John up for it in profit. I think they can do that exact at exactly the same time as they say also introduce a much

⏹️ ▶️ John of a bunch of much lower cost phones to expand our market, they should be working to expand they have

⏹️ ▶️ John diversified the iPhone line, which is great. But I always assumed when I talked about diversification, I was calling for back when they

⏹️ ▶️ John had one phone was that it would mean expansion to the high and low end and they have expanded the high and low end. But then

⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve taken the little popsicle stick that’s attached to their entire market and just shifted it to the right. So they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John expanding out from the popsicle stick both to the right and to the left, but the whole stick is moving to the right. I don’t know, I’m imagining

⏹️ ▶️ John some puppet show of Apple pricing or whatever. It’s like, they need to expand down market. If they’re going

⏹️ ▶️ John to shift to the right like that, are they going to go higher end? They need to expand down market faster. So if there’s any

⏹️ ▶️ John turn of events that I think they should consider is, and as much as it pains me to say, it’s not so much for the Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ John because I don’t think you’re going to suddenly eat up all Windows PC market share any faster than you already are by going downscale

⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac, although there is, there is as there was a price umbrella there, but they probably should have a lower end Mac than they

⏹️ ▶️ John do that’s decent. But on the phone in particular, I think they really need to not

⏹️ ▶️ John to not give up and say, well, we’re a boutique phone maker, and we don’t really have they need to go down market with

⏹️ ▶️ John the phone, because it’s going to start to be untenable if your cheapest

⏹️ ▶️ John phone of any reasonable quality that’s not like a two year old model is, you know, 600 or 700 or $800 is just too

⏹️ ▶️ John much. I mean, what do you think, Mark? Or you pose the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey question, where do you stand on this? I’m worried.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, it’s easy to miscall

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is doomed. You know, it’s easy to think Apple’s doing something really wrong in a big way, and then,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, most of the time that doesn’t pan out, and they’re doing fine, and they’re, you know, record profits and everything else.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this is a pretty major shift over the last few years where, and I think, John, you have it right,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s fine to raise the bar on the high end to some degree not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know obviously to raise the ceiling of the high end that’s you know that’s fine you’ve always able

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy a Mac for like $12,000 if you try to to raise the entry point

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the high end I’m not entirely sure that’s necessarily right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because a lot because like you know high-end buyers are buyers to high-end buyers have budgets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too. And so if you say like, you know, I’m a high end buyer because I buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 15 inch laptop, right? Then if the 15 inch laptop starts way more expensive than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it used to, that still affects you and that can still lose customers. So that’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think the entry point to the high end needs to be pushed as high as it has been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily in most of the products. And I also agree that the low-end scene is pretty much not there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for most of the product lines. The 329 iPad I think is the major exception.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is a fantastic deal. But with that sole exception, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think any of the low-end entries in any of their major product lines are very good right now. They’re not very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitively priced. They’re usually not very well specced, unless you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade things. Like the MacBook Air coming with 128 gig SSD is inexcusable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iMac coming with a 5400 RPM spinning hard drive should be illegal and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the there is no low-end iPhone anymore because they killed the SE which itself was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting pretty old and the low-end iPhone is now $800 or whatever so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think they are addressing the low-end enough as John said and I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s almost as if Apple has totally stopped seeking market share entirely it’s almost as if they’ve decided you know what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our market share is as big as it’s gonna get in all these major areas so we’re just gonna stop trying and we’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to crank up the prices and the people we already have. And that is usually a terrible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco business idea. That’s usually only good, if anything, for short-term like you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quarterly or annual earnings. That usually in the long run really hurts a business.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now I know Apple knows what it’s doing more than I do in this case. There’s a reason why I’m not the CEO of Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s lots of reasons. But I don’t think this is the right move to to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly totally abandoned market share growth and to only go for cranking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up more profits from your existing customer base in a way that is actually costing you those customers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also. Like, I don’t think they have struck the right balance here at all. I really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t. They are a mass market brand, whether they think so or not, and they need to continue to appeal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the mass market as much as possible. It has taken them like a decade and a half to slowly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost lose the reputation that their products were way too needlessly expensive for everybody,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now they’re just going right back to that. They’re just throwing away that goodwill and that reputation that they’re like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they make really good stuff for the money. And a combination of extreme price hikes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and major problems like the MacBook Pro keyboard situation,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s throwing away a lot of their reputation and turning away a lot of their customers. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if they can make more money from the high-end ones that stick around, That doesn’t seem like the right move to me.

⏹️ ▶️ John You mentioned the $350 iPad, and I think that’s a good example of how to frame this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Some people panic when they hear the idea of Apple going down market with any of its products.

⏹️ ▶️ John The $350 iPad is a great deal and a good product and proof that Apple can make a product

⏹️ ▶️ John in its current line for a reasonable price that has a good set of features. It is not a cheap tablet. Cheap tablets

⏹️ ▶️ John are $99, right? We’re all, all we’re talking about

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is going down-

⏹️ ▶️ John Cheap tablets are $30 now. going down market for Apple. It doesn’t mean

⏹️ ▶️ John suddenly they’re going to be selling things for bargain basement prices. It just means that there will be a low end. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John the whole trick is, and again, the iPad, iPod is a great example of this. The whole trick is to make products

⏹️ ▶️ John that are more affordable than your current products, but are also good Apple quality products.

⏹️ ▶️ John The iPods, I talked about this a lot on Upgrade this week with Jason Snell, which is gonna overlap with some of the other topics we talk about

⏹️ ▶️ John later, I’m sure, too. So I’ll just repeat myself, but you can listen to that episode if you wanna hear me adrenaline more about it. It was

⏹️ ▶️ John good, by the way. The iPod sold to everybody. Like, the iPod was

⏹️ ▶️ John probably the most mass market thing Apple has ever sold. But none of the iPods

⏹️ ▶️ John were just garbage. Like, they weren’t poor quality, or had bad

⏹️ ▶️ John sound, or could only hold like three songs, so they were useless.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, they were all good for the most part, except for maybe the buttonless shuffle.

⏹️ ▶️ John But even the little shuffles, which Jason didn’t like, but I like like you can make

⏹️ ▶️ John a product that is not cheap for an MP3 player, but cheap for an iPod. So the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John is not cheap for a tablet. It’s cheap for an iPad and inexpensive, let’s say, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John still a high quality product. It’s still like the thing they do with the phones and what people

⏹️ ▶️ John are going to say is, well, they do have cheap phones. They sell you last year’s model or the year before that or whatever, but that is unsatisfying

⏹️ ▶️ John to everyone involved. Maybe it’s satisfying for Apple and they can keep those production lines going or whatever, But

⏹️ ▶️ John it is possible and Apple should endeavor to do so to make a product with current technologies

⏹️ ▶️ John to hit a price point. The 10 R is like that it just happens to be the more the less expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John version of their high end product. The 10 R approach is a great example. Put in the same guts use a cheaper screen

⏹️ ▶️ John one camera instead of two, you know a little bit thicker like as this is analogy

⏹️ ▶️ John as the 10 R is to the 10 s so should be the insert product here to like

⏹️ ▶️ John the you know, a bottom end phone like the the eight or whatever, like make a variant of

⏹️ ▶️ John an inexpensive phone that doesn’t feel like an inexpensive phone in the same way that the 10 hours cheaper but doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John feel cheaper. I feel like the last time I had this conversation, it was a surrounding like the before the five C

⏹️ ▶️ John came out. And maybe Apple’s a little bit shy about doing that because the five

⏹️ ▶️ John seat it wasn’t a big success. And also I I think when they had

⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper laptops, let’s say, we’d always hear or surmise or be able to determine

⏹️ ▶️ John that the best selling Apple laptop is the least expensive one. And

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple probably didn’t like that because they would like the numbers to be slightly different. You know, they don’t wanna sell tons and tons

⏹️ ▶️ John of the cheap one and very few of the expensive one. They would like to change those ratios. And one way you can change it is to eliminate the

⏹️ ▶️ John cheap one and see how, if people still buy Macs. And for the most part they do. And so you shift everybody up, but

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s unsatisfying. So maybe they fear that in the phone,

⏹️ ▶️ John that if they introduced a phone that is too good and too cheap, that it will just, it’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John change things in ways that the people on those financial calls are upset about, but that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t be upset about, to Marco’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco point.

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple shouldn’t be upset about it, and customers wouldn’t be upset about it, but everyone would be like, oh, your profit and revenue

⏹️ ▶️ John and ASPs for phone are going down, and we don’t care that your unit sales went up because we’ve also decided,

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like Marco was summarizing, they might have decided, they’ve also decided that Apple, your market share is never gonna increase. So if you tell

⏹️ ▶️ John me that your volumes are going down and that your ASPs are going down, and you don’t show

⏹️ ▶️ John me a huge, dramatic market share increase, I’m gonna downgrade

⏹️ ▶️ John you and your stock’s gonna go down. I don’t care what the hell stock does. Like, I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ John anyone should care about that. It’s not a video game. It’s about, the stock market’s not the video game that I care about. It’s about

⏹️ ▶️ John making good products. That’s what’s brought Apple where it is today. And

⏹️ ▶️ John hopefully they’ll concentrate on that as well. And to Casey’s point about their confidence and what the next big

⏹️ ▶️ John thing is, I think they continue to try to figure out what the next big thing is, whether it’s the car or the AR glasses or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re absolutely doing that. I don’t know what their confidence level is or whatever, but they’re doing that no matter

⏹️ ▶️ John what. That is definitely happening.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s just hard to

⏹️ ▶️ John do that. It’s hard to do that. It’s hard to know whether you have a hit, but they are absolutely doing that. In the meantime though,

⏹️ ▶️ John they have to take care of their current businesses and treat them well and do what’s right. Oh, and I finally

⏹️ ▶️ John remembered my point from before that Marco edited out my forgetting because he’s a nice person.

⏹️ ▶️ John Another factor in the pricing is devices lasting longer, partially because they slow

⏹️ ▶️ John down an eventual demise of Moore’s law, partially because in the case of the Macs, Intel’s specific

⏹️ ▶️ John woes about its 14 nanometer process not being changed over to 10 nanometer process. When

⏹️ ▶️ John devices last longer, people keep them longer, they buy new devices less frequently, which means in theory they

⏹️ ▶️ John have more time to save more money, but as far as Apple is concerned, it means that if you’re buying less frequently, if we keep the

⏹️ ▶️ John prices the same, we make a lot less money. So that I think is also an explanation. Apple being a victim

⏹️ ▶️ John of its own success, making iPads that last ridiculously long, and new iPads

⏹️ ▶️ John not having, this is probably not great for iPads, because they do have dramatic changes. Let’s say new Macs not being dramatically

⏹️ ▶️ John better than they were before means that people aren’t as motivated to buy a new one, which means they’ll just keep using

⏹️ ▶️ John their old MacBook for a long time. I saw someone tweet recently that they were using a 2013 MacBook Air and

⏹️ ▶️ John was pretty much good at everything they wanted it to do. That is bad for Apple. They are a victim of the success of their own products.

⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, partially Intel is to blame because computers aren’t getting faster. Partially, you know, the slow demise

⏹️ ▶️ John of Moore’s Law is to blame. But that’s a fact of life. So that may be a thing that we have to consider.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is that it could be that if the the pace of

⏹️ ▶️ John performance increase the pace of things that are obviously make the products better, oh, I can do my work and half the time,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll definitely buy a new computer every, you know, one and a half years. As that slows down, we will

⏹️ ▶️ John all buy electronic things less often. Even Casey, even Casey didn’t buy a new

⏹️ ▶️ John 10S, right? We will buy things less often if we buy them less often to make the same money. Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John has to make them more expensive. Otherwise, they’re going to make less money and then there’ll be a company in decline

⏹️ ▶️ John and this gets all back to the stock market video game again, I suppose.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what it is, is to me, I feel like in the last

⏹️ ▶️ Casey six, maybe 12 months, a company that to me appeared to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be almost wholly myopically motivated by building great products,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems now to be more motivated than I’m comfortable

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with generating profits. And I know that some of that is my own, maybe not ignorance, but like wishful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking. Because again, this is a, it’s a company, it’s a money making machine. Their job is to make

⏹️ ▶️ Casey money now, the way that Apple chooses to make monies by being, by making cool things.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But ultimately their job is to make money. And so I don’t think that anything has necessarily

⏹️ ▶️ Casey changed, but my perception of it has changed in the last six to 12 months. And I wonder if that’s because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey even if the rank and file are still just as, just as devoted to building great products

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as they’ve ever been, if not more so, it certainly seems from an outsider’s point of view that the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey executive team, again, mostly Tim but probably more than just Tim

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the entire executive team I would guess is more concerned with profits or more outwardly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and obviously concerned with profits than they had appeared to me to be in the past. Does that make sense?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you guys feel the same way or am I crazy?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s a one interpretation but I think it’s the more likely interpretation especially considering

⏹️ ▶️ John the executive team who you all sort of know from a distance well like there’s not there’s not like a brand new

⏹️ ▶️ John crop of people in there. It’s kind of all the same people that we know. Even Tim Cook is not,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, new, um, especially at this point is that I think all those top

⏹️ ▶️ John people still are trying to make the best products they can make. It’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of how we’ve talked about, you know, Johnny Ives potential blind spots in his design,

⏹️ ▶️ John making the best products you can make is they’re doing that, but they’re ending

⏹️ ▶️ John up like they’re ending up with more expensive products. And yes, more expensive products tend to be better. It’s just, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not correctly weighting pricing in there, make the best

⏹️ ▶️ John product we can make because obviously they could make better all their products if they made each one of them cost a million dollars, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So they’re not they’re not that disconnected. But they said, like, how can we the new MacBook Air is an example like

⏹️ ▶️ John they, it’s much more expensive than the old one. It’s also much better than the old one.

⏹️ ▶️ John Part of what makes a good product, though, is how many people are potential customers

⏹️ ▶️ John for this. So an example of how the MacBook Air could have been, now there’s lots

⏹️ ▶️ John of examples how it could have been a better product, but let’s take something like the SSD. We’re complaining about it being 128 gigabytes and it’s too small. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, you’re saying they’re too expensive. You want a better, bigger SSD? If for the MacBook Air,

⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s gonna be the sort of the lower end laptop compared to the non-wedge shape ones,

⏹️ ▶️ John One thing you can do is use a slower SSD that costs you less money so you can put a bigger one in.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I think the people there are like, let’s make the best product we can, but let’s not use a slower SSD. We know we have these super fast

⏹️ ▶️ John SSDs now. Let’s use the fast one and we’ll just increase the price because that’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John better product. And obviously they are weighting the price into what makes a great product,

⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re not weighting it enough. They’re not thinking about, the products they

⏹️ ▶️ John introduce, like we’re proud of this product, it’s really good, It’s high quality, it’s high performance. Maybe they’re not so proud of the keyboard anymore,

⏹️ ▶️ John but you know, everyone makes mistakes. But like, it’s like, yeah, but but I

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t afford that. I could afford the old MacBook Air and the new one. Yeah, it’s way better. Sure,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s way better. But now I can’t afford it anymore. So as good as as proud of this product, you might be. You need

⏹️ ▶️ John to think more about a great product that people that more people

⏹️ ▶️ John can buy. So I, I think everyone is still correctly motivated to make it. It’s kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ John when you have the ability to use the finest materials for everything. Like when you’re, say you’re like a woodworker or something and

⏹️ ▶️ John you start off just using like basic oak and pine, but then you get good enough to the point where

⏹️ ▶️ John you can do justice to mahogany. And you’re like, I’m making everything out of mahogany from now on. It’s like, this is great. This is so

⏹️ ▶️ John much better than the crappy oak thing I made two years ago. And it is. The mahogany is more

⏹️ ▶️ John finely crafted than the oak was. But if you make everything out of mahogany, you’re like, well, it’s a better product. It’s more weather resistant.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s tougher. It looks nicer. It’s just nicer. It’s like, yeah, we don’t care about money.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’re just making the best product we can make. But you’re leaving people behind. What good

⏹️ ▶️ John is your mahogany world if a few people can afford to buy it?

⏹️ ▶️ John Or it doesn’t fit into their life the way a lighter weight,

⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper wood did. I don’t know. I did a wood analogy instead of a car analogy. You should be proud of me for avoiding the car

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco analogy, but

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure it makes that much sense. Yeah, I did long-winded

⏹️ ▶️ John a way of saying that I still believe that everyone in senior leadership at Apple Certainly,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, maybe Tim Cook is the one you argue the most is cares most about the numbers But certainly the the lieutenants

⏹️ ▶️ John that we all know really want to make the best products they can make they are just

⏹️ ▶️ John not giving enough weight to pricing in their calculus maybe.

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I took an airline flight this past weekend and I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was juggling between my MacBook Pro and my iPad Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I like parts of both devices on a plane like there that there isn’t just one of those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I definitely want. You know, the MacBook Pro I had using YouTube DL.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had downloaded a whole bunch of YouTube videos to watch. I had downloaded a whole bunch of Seinfeld episodes to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch from iTunes. And I had some

⏹️ ▶️ Marco documents I could work on. I had email I could respond to real fast with the terrible keyboard if I wanted to. I had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Xcode, I could work on Overcast if I wanted to. Because I never really know what I’m gonna be doing on a plane ahead of time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I have some guesses, but like I always like to be prepared for whether I want to work or watch stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or just, you know, geek around on Twitter or whatever. Like I want to be able to do all whatever I, whatever strikes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my fancy at the time. So I don’t like to just only have an iPad cause I can’t do some of those things with that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, but I do like having the iPad cause I can do some of those things if I want to with that anyway. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there I was, you know, alternating with different points in the flight between this almost $3,000 laptop and this like $1,200

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad. And then I looked,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was a guy across the aisle from me who had whatever kind of surface

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like the iPad Pro where it has like the tablet with like the keyboard case that can be detached and the pen, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind, not the laptop kind of surface, like the tablet kind of surface. At different points in the flight,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this guy using this one device used pretty much every mode you could use on it. It looked

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a Microsoft commercial. Like he started it out like in like, you know, keyboard laptop mode and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he was working on like, you know, some office documents or something, spreadsheets. And I couldn’t see much. Um,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like he was working on like documents with a keyboard. Then at some point he detaches it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and uses a pen like the, the, the surface pen, whatever it is, and it’s like marking up a document,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like in tablet mode for a while for like a couple hours. Then he re docs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and watches a movie on it. Here I am juggling these two devices, both of which I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think are more expensive than that one device he was using. And I’m like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there were so many years, really like the really good period of Macs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and of Apple stuff in general, where like we could look at the PC people and we could kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laugh at them and kind of feel superior like, look at the crazy things you’re doing over there in PC land.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so much nicer over here. We have things really figured out and at this flight when I’m watching

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this guy use one device for everything correctly and and yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know it I know it’s still Windows I know it isn’t the best tablet OS or the best desktop OS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like to see him using one device for everything this was like the dream this is the dream

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we keep wanting an Apple land and it seems like it’s never gonna actually happen it seems like you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they keep trying to convince us that this shouldn’t happen I think they’re wrong, but like it just seems like there’s this impossible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dream in apple land that we’re never gonna get there Whereas like in you know Microsoft world they’re there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now like and I I was really hard for me to See that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to not feel like the roles have reversed here and to not feel like We are now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ones who are behind in in this pretty big way But teach

⏹️ ▶️ John you doesn’t feel that way He’s just got the iPad. You’re the one juggling two devices. Like, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple would argue that you can do all those things that you’re doing on the Surface just on your iPad. And it’s probably true,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just that you don’t want to do certain things on your iPad. You feel like you’re more efficient and they’re better to

⏹️ ▶️ John be done on your Mac. And I agree with you. I’m in your camp. I think

⏹️ ▶️ John using that hybrid solution, like, it lives and dies in the details.

⏹️ ▶️ John I personally would probably be more comfortable using a fancy iPad Pro as my only thing than trying to do the same

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff on the Surface for the same reason that you would because we’re all familiar with iOS applications so much more than we are Windows

⏹️ ▶️ John especially how Windows behaves on a weird tablet-y thing, but Microsoft is certainly in

⏹️ ▶️ John a Better place in the abstract if not in the concrete details of what they’re doing in that they don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John Two different operating systems albeit built on the same base with two very different UIs they have

⏹️ ▶️ John this weird hybrid thing that sounds better, but I think in practice has a few problems. But I

⏹️ ▶️ John see where you’re coming from, especially with the pricing, where juggling two more expensive devices.

⏹️ ▶️ John Would you feel better if you were Vatici and you just had one device that was twice as expensive or three times

⏹️ ▶️ John as expensive and you were both just sitting there using tablets and folding them into different origami shapes and using the pencil

⏹️ ▶️ John and swiping all over the screen? Because, I mean, that’s the Apple of today. Do the same thing

⏹️ ▶️ John as people with non-Apple devices devices at twice to three times the cost, but it’s also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. See, in that moment, I didn’t feel like it was better. And in that moment, as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m juggling two devices with two batteries and it’s and like to purchase, I had to make two

⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices. I have to keep updated. Like, that’s because using two devices, but pretend

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re just using your iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, that would be fine. I could just use my iPad, but then I couldn’t do a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things that I want to do. So like it’s it’s hard for like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco until the iPad. Sorry, I should say until and unless the iPad gets the ability

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do everything I want to do, then I’m going to have this problem. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, what I decided afterwards is next trip, I don’t think I’m going to bring my iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I know is the opposite of what I said literally here a week ago. But like if I have to just pick one,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like bringing two was so cumbersome, so heavy, so expensive,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco clunky. It’s and it’s like it was just a pain and if I’m only going to have one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want the one that can do an okay job at everything instead of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a better job at a smaller number of things. And that’s kind of a metaphor for this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole Windows divide. Like the Windows world makes devices that yeah they’re not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as good as Macs at being laptops and they’re not as good well except for the keyboards

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re not as good as iPads as being at being tablets. But you do get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one device that can do all the things and that has value even if it isn’t as good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is why I wish Apple would kind of suck up their pride a little bit in this area and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be willing to make some compromises in the like you know the kind of like no touching

⏹️ ▶️ Marco zone they have right now between the Mac and the iPad. Like this divide is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hurting customers pretty badly at this point and It’s making them look ancient compared to the rest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the technology industry.

⏹️ ▶️ John ______ Have you considered suffering from motion sickness to the point where you can’t look at screens on the plane, thus solving this problem

⏹️ ▶️ John entirely?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That sounds

⏹️ ▶️ John like an excellent

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey solution.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not saying I recommend it, but I am saying that it will eliminate this problem.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, that’s probably easier than an Apple making a touch Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I think the problem is, it appears to me that Apple is working

⏹️ ▶️ Casey towards an aspirational future in Microsoft is doing what they can to embrace reality

⏹️ ▶️ Casey today. And that is, the reality of today is that we don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have Xcode on the iPad. And not to say that that’s the only thing that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey requires you to bring a computer, but I think it’s safe to say, and correct me if I’m wrong, that that’s a big reason you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey brought your computer is so that if you decide to work on Overcast or any other sort of coding

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exercise, then you need a computer to do it. You can’t really do that on the iPad. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think Apple is working toward this aspirational future where of course you would have two devices, Marco, why wouldn’t you?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you would just use the device that’s best suited for the particular thing you’re trying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to accomplish. Whereas by comparison, Microsoft is just saying, hey, look, there are times that you’re going to want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a tablet-y thing. There are times you’re going to want a computer-y thing. And we will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey try our best to embrace all of those times with one device. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, as you had alluded to earlier, there’s a lot of compromises there, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey certainly, I think all three of us can understand the appeal. And what I wonder is, let’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey suppose in this completely fantasy future that you had a completely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey workable, even if it looks very different than today, but a completely workable version of Xcode

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you could use on the iPad. If you could have coded overcast

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things on the iPad, would that have been sufficient? And again, assuming that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you wouldn’t have to give up on all the things that we all know you would have to give up on in this fantasy world, would that have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey been enough?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably, yeah. Like, I mean, there are certain things I still like the Mac better for, you know, things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the file management and the hacks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey like YouTube DL and everything that actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco run at full speed and things like that. Even just, you know, the ergonomics of it, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of what we did on the plane was I set up my laptop between the two seats, like leaning

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the armrest, and we watched Seinfeld together with a headphone splitter cable,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with our two Bluetooth expensive headphones, because as far as I know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is no way for two people with Bluetooth headphones to split a signal and listen to the same thing at the same time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wirelessly. Correct me if I’m wrong. But anyway, so we had to go back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the hundred-year-old technology of the headphone splitter cable. And as I was doing that, I’m like, first of all, this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is wonderful because like, you know, we can plug this into a headphone jack, which was nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And second of all, we could adjust the screen to any angle, which you can do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a laptop and you can’t do with an iPad. I realized like this is actually the better device

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what I’m doing right now, but I still missed some of the things about the iPad. So like, this is why,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I think this is just gonna be a really annoying,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unresolved conflict that we’re just gonna have, that we have had for a while now, and that we’re just gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have for the foreseeable future of like, some people can use just laptops,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some people can use just iPads, but probably more people fall somewhere in the middle where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco neither device solves all of their ideal scenarios and needs, and they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco either have to have both, which is cumbersome and very expensive, or just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pick one or the other, which in that case, usually the laptop would win, and then miss out on all the stuff the other thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could have gotten them. Whereas people in Windows land don’t seem like they have this problem. They have other problems,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they don’t seem like they have this one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s the thing, right? Is that there are compromises across the board.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would argue and maybe not everyone would, but I would argue that Windows is a compromise.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey For

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco us, that’s being generous.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, fair. For us, having two different devices is a compromise,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but there’s compromises everywhere. And I hope that sometime

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sooner rather than later, we reach this utopia wherein there are fewer compromises and maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just an iPad would be enough. And this, I feel like we’re channeling our inner Steve Troutman

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Smith in talking about this because he’s been banging this drum a long time. That really,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this artificial separation between these two platforms is entirely that. It’s artificial.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And there’s no reason that we can’t or shouldn’t have a touch version of Mac OS. And yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can rattle off a thousand reasons why not. But I mean, if you just take the theory for a second,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, there’s no reason we can’t have a touch version of Mac OS and there’s no reason we can’t, you know, do iOS-y

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things on the Mac or vice versa. And I understand

⏹️ ▶️ Casey now more than ever what you’re saying, Marco, and what Steve has been saying for a long time.

⏹️ ▶️ John So one of the first articles I wrote for Macworld Magazine back when they were actually a paper magazine,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was like after WWDC and it was mostly

⏹️ ▶️ John sad that there weren’t more Mac announcements. This was around the time of Lion, I think,

⏹️ ▶️ John 10-7. The two things I asked for in the space-constrained

⏹️ ▶️ John old world of paper, like I didn’t have enough room to be my normal verbose self. One was a modern file system and I got

⏹️ ▶️ John that one. Hey, one for me. It only took eight years.

⏹️ ▶️ John The other one was, the heading title at least, is a touchscreen Mac. And what I described there

⏹️ ▶️ John was like my attempt back in 2010 to rationalize

⏹️ ▶️ John the state of affairs with Apple’s OS’s with exactly what Marco described. The need

⏹️ ▶️ John to do those two kinds of things, but not to have two devices. So the

⏹️ ▶️ John state of affairs was that iOS, which is a touch thing, and the iPad was a thing, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And you’ve got the Mac being the Mac. And what I describe is a product that I

⏹️ ▶️ John think I say at the end that like Apple’s obviously never gonna make this, but I’m trying to address a problem. Like, can you

⏹️ ▶️ John make the Mac operating system touch savvy? Yeah, eventually, but right now it isn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ John So your solution can’t be, oh, just make a Mac, but then have it have a

⏹️ ▶️ John touch screen, because that doesn’t solve anything. And it also doesn’t solve the thing like, what about when I want to use it as a tablet? So what I describe

⏹️ ▶️ John is basically a laptop that can fold back on itself. And the

⏹️ ▶️ John weird thing I’m proposing as a way to take the pieces that were available at the time and make something

⏹️ ▶️ John somewhat rational is that when you use it like a Mac laptop, it works like a Mac laptop.

⏹️ ▶️ John When you fold it back onto itself into tablet mode, it works like an

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad, as in it runs iOS, right? So it’s a single machine that basically is Marco’s

⏹️ ▶️ John laptop with a real hinge and everything running Mac OS, and also is

⏹️ ▶️ John his iPad with iOS, right? That’s, you know, obviously Apple’s not gonna make something like that, this

⏹️ ▶️ John weird Frankenstein two operating systems at once, but what I was getting at with the description of this product is

⏹️ ▶️ John that at the time, 2010, it’s still mostly true today, what they’ve got are

⏹️ ▶️ John two operating systems that work well in two different contexts, and I think both of them work better in their

⏹️ ▶️ John context than a hybrid solution of sort of smushing them together does, because iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John is great for touch, better than Mac OS ever would be, but it’s never going to match the functionality of the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John if they stay in their separate camps. And eight years later, they’re still kind of in their own separate lanes.

⏹️ ▶️ John So we’re not really any closer to a solution. They’re in theory coming towards each other with marzipan,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re crossing over the bridge, but it’s more like they’re across a canyon throwing boulders at each other, but they’re not really coming together,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And so one solution, okay, if you can’t come together, then fine. I will literally

⏹️ ▶️ John have Marco’s single device where you’re an iPad, you’re a laptop, you’re an iPad, you’re a laptop. And yeah, they’re totally

⏹️ ▶️ John different. It’s like, well, what, it’s like a totally different device when I fold it over, I don’t even see my Mac stuff, I just see, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s what Apple’s got now. They’ve got an operating system that works great for touch and one that works great on laptops and none that works great

⏹️ ▶️ John on both. So yeah, again, I just, this was one of the stranger articles

⏹️ ▶️ John I wrote because I described this thing and say, this is not something Apple can or should or would ever make.

⏹️ ▶️ John But you know, if I had more words and more time, I would have said, what I’m doing is highlighting the problem

⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple faces. This is the thing people want to do. They don’t want to do it with the compromise

⏹️ ▶️ John that is Windows, right, and certainly Mac users don’t. But they do want to use a tablet and use a laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John and have each one be good at what they do. And eight years later, Apple is only a little

⏹️ ▶️ John bit closer. Depends on who you are. Again, that’s why I mentioned Faticci. Some people have gone all in on the iPad and they use it for all their work

⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re very happy people and they’re much less grouchy than we are, although they’re grouchy about,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re still grouchy about the slow progress of the iPad, I don’t see them slinging their laptop and

⏹️ ▶️ John an iPad back and forth on a single flight to do what Marco was doing. So we are because we

⏹️ ▶️ John have old habits or because we have needs that are not just not met. You know, again, Xcode, that’s just a need that’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John not met, period, regardless of how well I bet we are not served by this,

⏹️ ▶️ John but by what Apple offers quite yet. And I, you know, I don’t want to turn this into another Marzipan conversation,

⏹️ ▶️ John but for our discussions of that, I feel like that is one of the biggest steps Apple has

⏹️ ▶️ John taken in the direction of crossing this divide. So at the very least, they’re hurling much larger spikier

⏹️ ▶️ John boulders across the divide, and maybe they’ll end up forming some kind of land bridge from the dead bodies

⏹️ ▶️ John that accumulate, the dead bodies of marzipan apps that accumulate. And maybe someday people will be able to

⏹️ ▶️ John walk across and populate North America. God, this analogy got away from me.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man. Yeah, it’s an interesting point, Marco, and I hadn’t really thought of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it that way until you brought it up. But yeah, you pretty much did witness a Microsoft commercial.

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#askatp: Endian-ness

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Starting off Ask ATP, Matt Christensen writes, I just watched a video about endianness, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll explain momentarily, and my mind is still reeling that all systems aren’t the same. As I was grappling

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with it, I thought, I bet Syracuse has interesting, entertaining, or strong opinions on this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So John, would you like to explain NDNS or would you like me to fumble through an explanation

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I would like to hear your opinions about

⏹️ ▶️ John this? John Greenewald I would like you to explain it because I always, I can never remember which is which.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I hope you do and are referencing something that will tell

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you which is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which. Steven Connelly Let’s see how I do. So if you have a series of, if you have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a number stored in binary, so it’s nothing but ones and zeros. You have to choose if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the position that indicates a whole lot is at the front or the back. So if you think about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey binary, it’s one, then two, then four, then eight, then 16, 32, et cetera. So I just did

⏹️ ▶️ Casey little Indian. I said one, two, four, eight, 16. Big Indian is the reverse. The very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey first digit would be 16, then eight, then four, then two, then one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the key is, is that either one of these is pretty much equally acceptable, but you have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to agree on which one you’re going to use. And within an individual system, that’s not very difficult, generally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking. But if you’re communicating to other systems, those systems need

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to agree that we are going to go all in on either big endian, 8-4-2-1,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or little endian, 1-2-4-8. So assuming that description was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mostly okay, John, what are your thoughts on this?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think the one piece from that explanation that’s missing and why we have to pick an order like this at all

⏹️ ▶️ John has to do and we’ll link the Wikipedia page which will do a better job than we will explain this hopefully. But

⏹️ ▶️ John what we’re talking about is storing numbers in memory and memory is

⏹️ ▶️ John addressable but it’s not addressable at the bit level. It’s addressable in chunks usually at the byte

⏹️ ▶️ John level. So if you have a number that is bigger than a byte, a byte is only 8 bits, it only

⏹️ ▶️ John goes up to 255, right? If you have a number like 5000 and you have to put it somewhere in memory

⏹️ ▶️ John and memory addresses are by bytes. You can’t pick an address and say, oh, it’s going to go in address two. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, I can’t fit there. The address two is just a byte long and you’ve got this number 5000 that it’s too big. It doesn’t fit in a byte.

⏹️ ▶️ John So how are you going to take that number 5000 and break it up into pieces? And like Casey said,

⏹️ ▶️ John okay, well, you can take, you know, take the number into two pieces and put the first piece in one address. But

⏹️ ▶️ John then where do you put the second piece? Do you put the second piece in the address that is one more than that address or

⏹️ ▶️ John the address that it’s one less. Uh, and so Matt asks if I have a strong opinion on this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Um, the interesting thing about Indianness is if you are, if you have a computer science background

⏹️ ▶️ John or end up working on hardware or anything where Indianness where you have to be aware of the

⏹️ ▶️ John Indianness, like if you work in assembler or you know, you do anything sort of low level like that,

⏹️ ▶️ John both arrangements make sense depending on your point of view and depending on what you consider. Like it’s not like

⏹️ ▶️ John gif or jif where there’s one obvious answer. It’s GIF. GIF. Yeah, exactly. But

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey for

⏹️ ▶️ John endianness, depending on how you look at it, you can make strong arguments for both arrangements.

⏹️ ▶️ John And depending on what you’re doing, say you’re writing, you know, you’re writing assembly, one arrangement

⏹️ ▶️ John may seem so much more natural than the other. But then when you’re writing C, the other arrangement will seem so much more natural. And then when you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John writing your own, making your own CPU out of gates and some logic program, then the other arrangement seems like

⏹️ ▶️ John there is no strong right answer, which is why we have chips going in multiple different directions. And

⏹️ ▶️ John in fact, power PC could switch Nd in this, which is really cool. Power PC was great architecture afforded

⏹️ ▶️ John by some bad business arrangements. But anyway, um, yeah, so no, no one is more right than the

⏹️ ▶️ John other. The, the choice is mostly arbitrary. Uh, if you always come

⏹️ ▶️ John at it from a particular perspective, I can see having a strong opinion that one way is the obvious right way.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I have, I have at various times in my life been convinced that either big

⏹️ ▶️ John Indian or little Indian is the obvious right way. And now I recognize that it really just depends on your perspective

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s mostly arbitrary.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, any other thoughts on this?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco From from a hardware point of view, I can see the argument of like, well, it doesn’t matter. They both have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pluses and minuses. Once you’re above that, though, in like regular languages and you’re dealing with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bytes and if you especially if you need to do any bitwise operations on numbers and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything, anything other than Big Endian is a pain in the butt. Big Endian

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is how people would assume things would be arranged in memory. Like, you know, like the when when humans have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers and you move on to multiple digits, the largest digit goes on the left

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the smaller digits go on the right. And that conceptually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Big Endian is the computer version of that. Like that’s that’s how you would expect things to work.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if you have to do any operations on binary data, that’s how you expect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to work by default. And in fact, I think computing history has proven out that that big endian

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of like the better or proper way to do it. Little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco endian has pretty much only been used by Intel in the mass market in like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, recent modern computer history. And there’s a reason why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing else uses it by default, because it isn’t the best way to do it. It’s, you know, it’s so despite

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what John said, trying to defend them both, I fall hard on the big Indian side. There’s a reason why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every modern architecture either only is big Indian or is big Indian by default.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s a reason why almost every binary file format specifies that it must be written in big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Indian.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re working at a lower level, and obviously you’re coming in at a higher level, and as time goes on, more and more people are working at a higher level.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you work at a lower level, sometimes little Indian makes the most sense because of the way, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John because you’re not dealing with like, oh, I’m dealing with numbers like you’re dealing with values and addresses

⏹️ ▶️ John and having the addresses go from like, you know, the addresses go up as you go

⏹️ ▶️ John farther is you go bigger in the number, right? So the smallest part is in the first address, then you get bigger and bigger and

⏹️ ▶️ John bigger. And the bigger, you know, the number you get, the more that that value extends into memory starting

⏹️ ▶️ John from the address that you specify. can make more sense in that context. But that’s what I’m saying at

⏹️ ▶️ John various times in life, both have made sense. I suppose the trend towards higher levels of abstraction means

⏹️ ▶️ John that maybe big-ending starts to dominate and make the most sense. But

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s more complications, like in terms of how the numbers are actually stored, whether they’re stored

⏹️ ▶️ John in twos complement or whatever in binary. Like, you’re at such a high level that you’re not even, like it

⏹️ ▶️ John seems to make more sense, basically, where you can find the address of the number and how it’s sort of arrayed. But if

⏹️ ▶️ John you get down to the actual values stored in memory, they’re not what you’re seeing in your high-level language

⏹️ ▶️ John either. So I feel like at the point where you’re not really connected to what’s going on, you don’t care what the abstraction

⏹️ ▶️ John is. You just want to dump out your values in your symbolic debugger and see the numbers get

⏹️ ▶️ John printed. And for bitwise operations and stuff, libraries are taking care of that for you anyway.

#askatp: iPhone beats my SLR

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, David Beck writes, I often hear you guys talk about how much better a real camera

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is than an iPhone, but I can’t get my 10-year-old DSLR to take anything as good as my iPhone. Do I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey need a newer camera? How do I even start to learn to use a real camera properly?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I kind of wonder about this, especially when it comes to low-light photography, because I don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of those super fancy pants Sony cameras like Marco and Stephen Hackett do. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for my eyes, I don’t think that even the fake

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bokeh of portrait mode has come anywhere close to as good as a real

⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera with real glass. And my camera is, I actually just upgraded my body to the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more recent version of the one I already had. I have an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a micro four thirds camera, which means it’s not physically that terribly large, but it has interchangeable lenses,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so on and so forth. I just paid 500 bucks for and I’m using four year old lenses

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that are like Each of them was between 500 bucks and a thousand bucks so this is not a small

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sum of money by any stretch of the imagination, but I spent around you could spend

⏹️ ▶️ Casey around a thousand bucks and get a really really good picture

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from this camera without too much effort and I don’t remember if it was Marco or maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tiff actually or Sean Blanc who recommended this whole setup to me initially, but one of you guys

⏹️ ▶️ Casey said shoot in aperture priority So that’s where you where you tell the camera how wide

⏹️ ▶️ Casey open you want the aperture to be and then it takes care of the rest The shutter speed the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know I so and all the other paraphernalia that that that needs to be decided and that’s still to this day four

⏹️ ▶️ Casey years on Mostly what I do and granted I’m not a great photographer, but I can take some pretty darn good pictures

⏹️ ▶️ Casey into my eye They are clearly better than my iPhone And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is my short short version of yes I really I do think big cameras are better and here’s how you do it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would I would like to save Marco for last because I think you have probably the most thoughts and most useful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey help So John, what do you think about this?

⏹️ ▶️ John Practically speaking if you don’t look too close to the pictures And you’re not going for something that the

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone can’t do it is possible that the iPhone is taking sort of bitter just random

⏹️ ▶️ John snapshots of things because of all the computational photography stuff that it’s doing where it’s just processing

⏹️ ▶️ John your picture to get something that overall looks nice to you. But

⏹️ ▶️ John there are so many things that a phone camera just can’t do because the sensor is too small and the glass

⏹️ ▶️ John is too small. All those effects that are being simulated on the phone you can get for real on your camera.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe if you don’t notice a difference it doesn’t mean it’s not there but maybe that just means you don’t care about that

⏹️ ▶️ John difference. You you should be able to get with a real camera with a big sensor, photos

⏹️ ▶️ John with real blur, uh, shallower depth of field. They should be sharper

⏹️ ▶️ John in the detail area and there should be less noise and they should also be able to shoot in lower light. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the pixel things with that night sight thing where it’s, it’s super amazingly used computational photography to take

⏹️ ▶️ John pictures that can practically see at night. To do that, if you look, zoom in on those pictures

⏹️ ▶️ John that the computational photography isn’t, isn’t perfect. Like it’s noisy, it’s strange. There are

⏹️ ▶️ John some artifacts here or there. If you’re far enough away from the picture, you don’t care. It just looks amazing. But again,

⏹️ ▶️ John as in the case with the simulated depth of field stuff, a real camera with a big sensor and big

⏹️ ▶️ John glass can do that for real. And it is just

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like so much better than the simulated thing in the same way that actually having

⏹️ ▶️ John a big sensor that gathers tons of light because it’s just it’s really big right it takes

⏹️ ▶️ John better low-light photographs than a tiny sensor plus a really complicated CPU

⏹️ ▶️ John to get the set you know salvage the same amount of light from the photo especially if something is moving

⏹️ ▶️ John for example because there’s only so much the phone camera with this tiny sensor can do computationally if

⏹️ ▶️ John something is fast moving in dim lighting so I’m not sure exactly what camera

⏹️ ▶️ John this person has but you should be able to There are things you can

⏹️ ▶️ John do with the real camera that you just can’t do with an iPhone just because for physics reasons. If you don’t care about that as

⏹️ ▶️ John anything, ditch the thing and just take it with the phone. But if you do care, you will

⏹️ ▶️ John definitely be able to take better pictures with your real camera.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, teach us.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, you guys covered it pretty well already. The, you know, there’s a lot of advantages to iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco photography and to modern smartphone photography that real cameras, you know, quote real cameras,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco either can’t catch up with, haven’t caught up with, or probably will never catch up with. And that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it’s mostly in just the sheer processing power, like the smartness of them. And also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s lots of like convenience reasons behind them, you know, like the fact that you can take a picture and immediately send

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to somebody or post it to a social thing or whatever, you know, that’s a level of convenience that you just can’t get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with regular cameras, no matter how many weird little wifi features that you tech into them. And so, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, there’s a lot of convenience attributes, but even just from like a photo quality perspective, using the algorithms

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and using the smarts of modern, you know, phone technology and machine learning and everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else, things that other cameras probably won’t get, or at least won’t be able to catch up with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or keep up with, allows you to, if you have good input

⏹️ ▶️ Marco conditions, and if what you want is fairly, you know, mainstream

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs. So, you know, your iPhone only has two lenses at most, and you know, and if,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if you need like, a different focal length, a different perspective, more reach,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re kind of out of luck, unless you go into weird attachments and everything, but you’re pretty much out of luck there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if what you need is mainstream, and if you’re somewhere that has pretty good light, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has pretty good conditions, and your subject isn’t moving too fast, and you don’t need to print it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at some massive size, then your iPhone is gonna be just fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where other cameras can really excel is if those conditions aren’t met,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you don’t have a ton of light, if you don’t want the exact same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one to two perspectives that the phone can offer you, if you need different optical characteristics, if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, you know, just different composition styles, different creativity styles, if you need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco high resolution, if you need really good performance and low light, like all those things are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that the phone cameras can attempt to use

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of their smarts to overcome their limitations, but tend to not do very well, or at least

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it tends to just not be the same. And so there’s always gonna be room for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dedicated cameras to use both physics and to use their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco versatility and customizability to their advantage in areas that smartphones just can’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also just cost, like a smartphone camera has to cost something like 40 or 50 bucks, I think at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most for that module, whereas a standalone camera can cost like $3,000, and the glass in front of it costs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco another $3,000. Like, it’s kind of crazy how, you know, but like there are just certain things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with physics and economics and practicality that the phones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just can’t do. No matter how good they get, they just can’t do. What

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do is increasingly good enough for increasingly more and more situations,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s still gonna be things they can’t do. Now, if you’re not getting good results

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your big camera and you are getting good results on your phone, that could be,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I mean, if you go old enough, you know, he said a 10 year old DSLR,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you go old enough, then yeah, you are gonna start to see like, you know, things like noise and things have gotten

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. But there’s a lot of attributes of successful photo taking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that don’t have to do with the hardware necessarily, or at least directly. A lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco times it’s just about like settings, it’s about technique, it’s about, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just technical aspects like was the picture properly focused were you actually focused on what you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to be or were you focused on like someone’s ear instead of their eye or whatever like you know or was the subject

⏹️ ▶️ Marco moving fast enough such that your you know 1 200th shutter speed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t actually fast enough to capture their emotion very well or it got a little bit blurry or the or it focused

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on where they were then they moved you took the picture and you know like they move between when it focused and when the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shutter fired or or whatever, or you know, are you, are you cranking up an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco old sensor to to a noise level that it’s not very good at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to, you know, use the light you have with the speed you need. You like there’s all sorts of like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco technical considerations here, and this is why like one of the reasons why I love my Sony

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I went through this whole thing when I when I briefly went to the Canon and then came back to the Sony and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I went through this whole thing here like the Sony allows me a really high hit rate and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s because of a few technical factors it’s because it has a really good autofocus engine it has in body

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stabilization so basically it’s always stabilized so I can take slower shots or it with faster

⏹️ ▶️ Marco motion I can crank up the ISO so that it takes really really fast speeds even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in low-light and then I can freeze motion better and keep that in focus and the so like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s technical attributes of it that make the shots better or worse or increase your hit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rate more or less. Whereas the iPhone, your hit rate can be way higher

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though it’s much more limited because the iPhone is way smarter about things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco focus and cranking up the ISO to whatever the heck it needs to be to get you the shot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if your resulting picture ends up being like a real watercolor blurry mess.

⏹️ ▶️ John So to give some examples, like so you don’t have to get that esoteric where phone cameras are just

⏹️ ▶️ John not good, and I see it all the time. If you have kids in school,

⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes your kid’s in assembly, or sometimes they’re playing in the band, sometimes they’re on a sporting field. And

⏹️ ▶️ John in those situations where I’m surrounded by a bunch of other parents, you see them all take out their phones, you see them

⏹️ ▶️ John all hold up their phones and try to get the shot, whether they’re taking video or still images, the shot of their kid up on the stage,

⏹️ ▶️ John the shot of their kid playing in the soccer game or whatever, and you get nothing. Like the kids are just

⏹️ ▶️ John too far away and too fast moving or too dim light. Like you can’t take a picture of your kid on the soccer

⏹️ ▶️ John field with your phone, even in two X mode, they just look like a spec, right? You can’t get a decent picture

⏹️ ▶️ John of your kid up there playing their musical instrument unless you’re in the front row. Uh, otherwise you just get

⏹️ ▶️ John the whole stage and you have to circle their tiny little blurry head because it’s dim and everything is noisy. And yet everyone

⏹️ ▶️ John is there holding their phone ups, hoping against hope that they’re going to pay. Even something as simple as your kids walking down the aisle for

⏹️ ▶️ John graduation, right? Graduation from elementary school. All the parents have their phones out there. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ John like within touching distance of their kid. Their kid is walking by them, walking down the aisle. Surely

⏹️ ▶️ John this is ideal for your phone to get a good picture. But because the lights were dim, because the slideshow

⏹️ ▶️ John was on, and because the kids are walking sometimes a little bit too quickly, everybody’s blurry and noisy.

⏹️ ▶️ John And even like, you know, the pixel night vision thing is not gonna save you from that. These are not strange

⏹️ ▶️ John scenarios you won’t find yourself in. If you have kids in school, you will wanna take pictures of them at assemblies, graduating, and in sporting

⏹️ ▶️ John events. and you basically need a camera to get pictures that anyone is gonna see

⏹️ ▶️ John and go, oh, that’s a good picture. Or even be able to recognize or find your child because they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John just zoomed out too far and the sensors are just too small. And so it kind of pains me to see

⏹️ ▶️ John everybody holding up their phones trying to get pictures because I know none of those pictures are coming out. And I do it myself sometimes. Sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have my big camera because it’s a hassle to carry around with you. All I have is my phone and I give it a try. And that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John why we get excited about things like the XS with all its like HDR stuff or get excited about

⏹️ ▶️ John the Google’s night vision thing, because it lets people get something salvageable from situations

⏹️ ▶️ John where previously you got nothing. But still there’s a huge gap, especially when your kids

⏹️ ▶️ John are far away. So big cameras are a pain in the butt, but they definitely have their uses.

#askatp: Quality/effort foods

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, Brent Trout writes, what are the highest value food

⏹️ ▶️ Casey items measured in quality versus effort? For instance, you mentioned canned cranberries

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Thanksgiving, or the tubes of Toll House cookies aren’t the greatest, but they’re so easy to make.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I will amend this slightly, which will not satisfy Mr. Syracuse, but I will say

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that you get at a restaurant doesn’t count. So like just going to a restaurant is obviously the easiest way to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey get a great amount of, or a really great tasting dish for sometimes not a lot of money. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey leaving aside restaurants, something that you can do at home. John, do you need any other clarifications or are you capable

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of answering this question?

⏹️ ▶️ John John Greenewald Eh, what is your interpretation of highest value

⏹️ ▶️ John food item measured in quality versus effort? Like, is the effort, the effort we’re talking about is the effort

⏹️ ▶️ John that it would require for you to prepare it because we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey eliminating restaurants. So it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you have to prepare this. So it’s like, the ideal one would be,

⏹️ ▶️ John like it has no preparation or very little preparation, and it’s really, really good. So that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what we’re looking for, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly, so the cranberries, I’m not personally a fan of this, but you just open the can, you let it drop

⏹️ ▶️ Casey onto the plate, and you have arguably a delicious cranberry thing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you’ve taken virtually no time to prepare.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does nutrition count here? Because like ice cream would be an obvious one, right? you open up the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tub and you eat ice cream and it’s really good. You don’t even need a bowl, you just need a spoon.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That actually is a very good answer and I would say that nutrition does not count. So I was having trouble

⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming up with some of these, although I was the one who put this in the show notes. There were

⏹️ ▶️ Casey two answers that someone dear to my heart, but I don’t want to name him or her lest they get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the crap that I usually get. But anyways, Aaron said the latkes from

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Trader Joe’s, which I think are delicious, and it’s Hanukkah time

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so Aaron made latkes and matzo ball soup on Monday, which was delicious.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Trader Joe’s has frozen latkes that I think are excellent and they have the advantage of not making your house

⏹️ ▶️ Casey smell like fried potato after having cooked them if you cook them from scratch.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So that was one

⏹️ ▶️ John answer. Wait, that’s not an advantage. That’s a disadvantage. I love that smell.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Oh, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it never leaves. The problem is it never leaves. Good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t like when the smell of cooking lasts longer than the meal does. Thank you.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to be going to bed at 11 o’clock at night still smelling what I cooked four hours

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago. A notable exception, bacon. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco otherwise I agree

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with you. And then I will read what Aaron said verbatim.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, we’ve talked about this, right? Do you pronounce it manacotti or managott?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I avoid saying it so I avoid the issue because no one in my family can agree on what the correct pronunciation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is and I don’t want to embarrass myself. See also the cheese and lasagna that begins with an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey R. Steve McLaughlin Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aaron said the manicotti from Costco, although then she’s I add she adds,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey though maybe you don’t want to say that one with John listening. Very

⏹️ ▶️ John astute of her. Aaron Ross I was gonna say based on your Thanksgiving dinner, your your family’s the effort

⏹️ ▶️ John required to prepare all your family’s favorites seems very low.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin That is true. Stove top, actually stove top. I know you’re gonna chew me out for this, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a good one as well. And finally, I think it’s also Trader Joe’s makes some really good bean burritos

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you just pop in the microwave from the freezer that I also think are quite, quite tasty. So those

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are my admittedly terrible answers. John, I would like to save you for last.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, other than ice cream, which I think was a great answer, any thoughts here? Marc Thiessen Beer and nuts.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Nuts, I feel like if I’m going to let ice cream

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be okay, nuts should be okay as well. I guess, yeah, especially if they’re roasted. All All right, all right, I’ve convinced myself

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John allowable. Which nuts though? Nuts is a big category.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, let’s see, if we’re doing low effort, see, normally I would have put pistachios

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty high, but you do have to bust them out of the shells.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, but that’s part of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fun though. Then in that case, I would put cashews slightly past them. So cashews, I think, are my number

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one nut. Roasted and salted, but not too salted. So my favorite cashew

⏹️ ▶️ Marco vendor, which is nuts.com, they have a 50% less salt cashew option,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s my favorite one.

⏹️ ▶️ John How do you feel about macadamias before we move on from nuts?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re good. They’re not like my favorites, but I like them. They’re fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t even picture them. I’ve heard of them a million

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco times. I’m sure I’ve had them in the past. This

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not surprise me. It’s the nut that’s always in the white chocolate cookies at fast food places. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the, here’s how you can tell macadamia nuts. When you buy a mixed nut thing, it’s the nut that you cannot find

⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s three of them in the whole container.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we almost never buy a mixed nut thing. You know, it would typically buy pistachios for sure, and occasionally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just peanuts. Fair enough. I’m looking at the Wikipedia page. I’m sure I’ve had these in the past, but I don’t remember

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they taste like. Have you never had a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie at like Subway or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything? I’m sure, again, I’m sure I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco have.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’ve ever had a white chocolate chip cookie from like a fast food thing, it most likely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had macadamia nuts in there too. And they’re good. I find their texture

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more interesting than their flavor. Like when you buy them, they kind of fall

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apart like in like a shale kind of feel. Like it’s really weird, but it’s a very pleasant crunch that they have.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, best quality versus effort.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I think Marco’s ice cream thing was a good pick because that is a very high quality item.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I was thinking about this, I was thinking more in terms of,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, this is gonna sound pretentious and obnoxious. I’ll go with my slightly less pretentious and I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John go into the more pretentious one after.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco My initial

⏹️ ▶️ John instinct was Parmesan cheese. Parmigiano-Reggiano.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, OK. You don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John to do anything except for grade it. And it is amazing. I feel like it is really highest value for lowest

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. It has very high value. It really elevates anything that it’s in.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is so much better than the sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John weird imitation versions that most people have in America. And price is not a factor, so don’t have to worry about

⏹️ ▶️ John that. But even more, you could say this is not a process food.

⏹️ ▶️ John Cheese is a processed food. If you wanna go into like not processed, and ice cream to that degree, you know, also.

⏹️ ▶️ John Really high value. This is situational, right? In the middle of summer, whenever

⏹️ ▶️ John like strawberries are in season, just a strawberry by itself, a really good strawberry,

⏹️ ▶️ John tremendous value, no effort. You just put it in your mouth

⏹️ ▶️ John and eat it. That’s what I’m thinking of. So it’s either a Parmesan cheese or a really, really

⏹️ ▶️ John good strawberry.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was pretentious?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because we’re like, oh, just a strawberry by itself.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You get a British accent. I mean, relative to our meals, I mean, I had beer, nuts, and ice cream,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you had a microwave burrito.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Yeah, I feel like, Casey, you were thinking of, what’s a thing I can buy in a store that is a finished

⏹️ ▶️ John meal that I can eat that’s pretty good? And I was thinking, what is a food product, or even what you

⏹️ ▶️ John would consider an ingredient that just by itself, without you doing anything to it, don’t cut it, don’t slice it, it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John amazing. Parmesan gets in there because it is a processed thing and you do have to somehow grate

⏹️ ▶️ John it or take pieces off of it and put it into your thing, but it is really one of my favorite

⏹️ ▶️ Marco foods. I think out of our three picks here, I would wager that most people would be happiest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having mine. Yeah, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey would agree. Absolutely.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re putting alcohol to get them dazed so they can deal with a bunch of low-quality

⏹️ ▶️ John nuts. I get really good nuts. Ice cream. Ice cream everyone would probably be

⏹️ ▶️ John happiest with. But I think people would be unwise to pass up my idealized

⏹️ ▶️ John strawberry. Because an amazing strawberry, not just a random strawberry. Random strawberry is like, meh,

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. But an amazing strawberry is a thing to behold. And you can get those other things

⏹️ ▶️ John any time. If I gave you the choice of beer, nuts, a bunch of things wrapped in plastic that Casey

⏹️ ▶️ John likes, or the world.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Ice cream. Don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John forget ice cream. Or ice cream. Or the amazing, perfect, in-season strawberry.

⏹️ ▶️ John You should go for the strawberry. Because other things will still be there when you’re done, but when are you gonna get a chance to this perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco strawberry? I’d take the handful of cashers every time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me give you another answer. I think that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one could find a reasonable interpretation of your pie of choice.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I know that I am deeply of the belief that Aaron makes a tremendous apple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pie. I know that, Marco, you believe that Tiff makes a tremendous apple pie. I’m not here to argue who does better or what.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So obviously we agree that homemade is better. I’m not trying to argue that, but I feel like you can get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a reasonable interpretation of an apple pie from a store, which involves zero effort as opposed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the entire effort of creating an apple pie, which even if you’re buying a crust, is not insignificant.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think, and maybe apple isn’t your particular pie of choice, but I think pie is also pretty good on this

⏹️ ▶️ John list. Yeah, store-bought apple pie is good, but it is not as good as pretty much any

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco homemade apple

⏹️ ▶️ John pie.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, agreed. that like store-bought baked goods are, I don’t think, very high on this list at

⏹️ ▶️ John all. They can still be good. Apple pie has the best chance of being good because it’s harder to screw up, but

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t eat it. You’re never confused that you’re eating a homemade

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey pie. Oh, totally. You can do a

⏹️ ▶️ John blind taste test of homemade versus store-bought pie, you get it by smell.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The store ones just, they feel like they’re made of wax. Like, they’re just, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John good. Yeah, I mean, and like, speaking of places that I love to get food from on Long Island, Brian Mayer Pies

⏹️ ▶️ John out east on Long Island, like, that’s technically a store-bought pie, but they’re all basically

⏹️ ▶️ John homemade pies. Like, so I feel like it’s a different category. So, Briar Mere pies are like my favorite pies

⏹️ ▶️ John in the entire world. Although I still think I could, obviously I could pick out a Briar Mere pie. Like, it doesn’t taste exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John like a homemade pie. In many cases, it’s better. Like, I’ve never had a homemade blueberry pie that’s as

⏹️ ▶️ John good as Briar Mere quote unquote store-bought, but they’re both very different than like Entenmann’s or something in

⏹️ ▶️ John the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey supermarket. What are you saying? Is it Briar Mere? Briar Mere, yeah. Okay,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey those letters all ran together in my ears and I could not make heads or tails

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John what you’re saying.

⏹️ ▶️ John B-R-I-E-R-M-E-R-E. I got you. They have an awesome website that was made

⏹️ ▶️ John in 1993. Oh, yes. Yes, they do. Holy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey smokes. This is intense. You couldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John make a parody of this

⏹️ ▶️ John website, but I’m just telling you, good pies.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me put it to you this way. Not only does it have frames, but they have allowed you to see the frame

⏹️ ▶️ Casey borders. They’re not resizable, it doesn’t look like, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is too bad. What do

⏹️ ▶️ John you think about that logo at the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey top? Oh, it’s good times.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m surprised frames still work in modern browsers.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. All right. Well, in conclusion, cheesecake is a pie. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John thank you to our sponsors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this week, Squarespace, Molecule, and Fracture, and we will see you next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey begin,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cause it was accidental, oh it was

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco and

⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. accidental And you can

⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at ATP.FM And if you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John 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 Auntie Marco Armin

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental, they

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to. Accidental, check podcast so long

Neutral: Marco’s Tesla mess

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, you went on a bit of a tear

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Twitter a couple of days ago, and there’s many layers to this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pie, cake, whatever. But it appears to me that maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey leasing, which you so strenuously encouraged me to do before I purchased a car, maybe leasing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wasn’t the right choice for you, my friend? So let’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey start,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t mind. How old is the Tesla that is in your garage

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now? Uh, about three

⏹️ ▶️ Marco months.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’ve had this new car for three months, you didn’t tell either of us? Did I not know? I swear I didn’t know this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought it would be funny to see how long it lasted before you even asked about it.

⏹️ ▶️ John You told us your lease was going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John up and we knew.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, but I couldn’t remember when.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, my lease was, it still had a while. It was going up like next spring. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so you did this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey early? Yeah. Oh, which you said

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually. Yeah, so I was just holding it back to troll you because I figured it would be really funny So at some point, have you mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a car and asked me, like, you know, if I’m reading my lease and say, Oh yeah, I did it like six months ago. Um, and I would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have held out, um, except that I had to at least attempt to use the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco power of Twitter to fix a problem having, which by the way, hasn’t been fixed, but, uh, we’ll see it. We’ll see if that changes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at

⏹️ ▶️ John all. Well, before we get to that, did you just get another red model? S like, yeah, it’s exactly the same.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s a few differences.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it the newer one? Yes. It’s the newer model. Like, you know, cause mine, mine was like right before the like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco series to autopilot hardware, whatever it is like because mine was like it’s the my one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was like early 2016. I think it’s a non ball gag model you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you’re a ball

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gag. Yes, I now have a little mustache and so anyway so I had like I have what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the currently sold ones and there was a story

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that floated around the the car electric blogs in early September

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Tesla in order to juice their September quarter numbers was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco offering people to renew their leases early that were near the end of their lease for models

⏹️ ▶️ Marco s and X. I keep trying to… I keep thinking 10.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco did ask when I was when I was in the sales floor. I asked if anybody ever asked for the model 10

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I got a totally blank stare.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a flat-out no. That joke failed. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I got this email in in September saying, Hey, if you want, you can renew your lease

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now with you know, and there’s lots of reasons to do is basically like we still had the full

⏹️ ▶️ Marco federal tax credit this year. And it was a few weeks before they were going to end the unlimited supercharging

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all new vehicles. That seems like a no brainer. I was going to renew in the spring anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then I’ll lock in the tax credit and the supercharging. No brainer, right? Right. This

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the surface so far so good. Yeah, exactly and because they were running a special they actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco discounted the price by like three or four thousand dollars uh… the only downside is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that i had to act quickly but you know i could do that’s fine and that i had to only pick with from vehicles

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were within local inventory there was not enough time to have the manufacture one like totally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco custom so they’re able to search the region see what you know see what they had and uh…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so yeah so i’m like you know what it’s it’s a good deal it’s even discounted and tesla never discounts their cars

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for other reasons like that was to have a discount it was special right there and to also have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the other all the side benefits for something I was going to do anyway in like you know seven or eight months like okay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine that’s great so there’s been a major change at Tesla since

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought my first one the model 3 came out and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this has dramatically changed the company and the way it operates first of all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I’ve been going to the dealership dealership about once or twice a year for three years. The dealership

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I picked up this car, which was in mid-September, was by far

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more crowded than I’ve ever seen it. The parking lot was packed full.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was like people were double parked across the whole parking lot. It was the first time I’d ever had to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait to talk to somebody when I walked in and I asked about this. I mentioned it to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the staff when I was talking to them and they said at time they were doing about 50

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new car deliveries a day. Wow, they started like a second location

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this dealership, like down the street by a few blocks where they were shuttling people back and forth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do like the new car walkthroughs, because like there wasn’t room in the parking lot to do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them here. Like it was it was crazy. It was I’ve never seen it busier

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and that has continued as far as I know since then, because they’re just doing a ridiculous amount of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Model 3 deliveries every day. Mostly Model 3s. I get the new car,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have some opinions on the new car as well. I’ll get to those. Actually, let’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do those first, and then I’ll get to the lease issue. So,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll start with the bad. So this is the new Model S compared to the three-year-old outgoing model.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco As I mentioned, it is more expensive. I have a defect in it. I actually had two. One was a pretty big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rattle behind the rear view center mirror, which they fixed by shoving some felt in the windshield.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other is that the main center screen has this like brownish

⏹️ ▶️ Marco orange ring around the perimeter. And it was there since day one. And I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco emailed the salesperson right when I got home, like, hey, is this normal? Can I get this fixed, please?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Never heard a response. I went in to get my snow tires put on about a month ago and I asked them and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re like, oh, yep, it’s the yellow ring of death or something. Like, yeah, this happens all the time with recent S deliveries.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just, it’s a defect. We have to replace the screen. We’ll order the part and we’ll call you. Of course, they never did.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The software in general on it, I’m not talking about like the V9 software that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just came out, which I hate, but the basic operations of the software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are buggier than my last car. Like when I get in, I almost always see like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco push brake when this message clears message, which is like, I’m not ready yet. It’s almost like when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri says, I’ll tap you when I’m ready. It’s like that. It’s like you get in your car, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to be able to just go, and you can’t do that anymore. There’s like a few seconds delay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about every like fourth or fifth time now. Oh, and when I asked the service person about that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their entire explanation for this was, well, these new ones run on Intel systems.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a different platform than the old ones ran on like, I think like an NVIDIA

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John thing. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new ones run on an Intel platform, so some things are still wonky. I’m like, uh-huh, okay, thanks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a little bit less space in the trunk than before because there’s this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant box on the right side by behind the wheel that wasn’t there before

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the old model. I have yet to find what that box is for. I tried doing some research. If anybody knows

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why that giant box is now taking up trunk space in the new Model S that wasn’t there in the old one, I’d love

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to know just what it is. So there’s a little bit less trunk space, but not to a degree that would matter too much.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, some things that are neutral or kind of work out in the wash.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The new one has the air suspension. My old one did not, because I wanted more road feel.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The air suspension is noticeably more disconnected from the road, noticeably more cushy. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels like a more luxurious ride, but a less car enthusiast ride.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I actually do like it a lot because it has the cool feature where you can raise and lower the air suspension,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like from the car while driving. And so there’s a few areas that I used to bottom out all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the time, like there’s certain speed bumps that I know are in certain spots, or like certain roads that I like bottom out at the bottom of,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I just set on those roads now, I like, I set the location to say, all right, always raise the suspension

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this location. And that has prevented me from bottoming out in those places where I bottomed out every time before.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that was really nice, actually. Like, I think even though it’s a very different driving feel, I like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco convenience of it. So maybe I’m just getting old and soft. Um, there is still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no good place to put sunglasses anywhere in this car. Uh, I tried

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a visor clip, but it like hangs down too far into my view. And finally, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, the bad parts of the software that I complained about in the last car, like the lack of CarPlay,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the weird limited Bluetooth stack, those are all exactly the same. Those I don’t change at all. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, the good. The touch screen is way, way faster.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is still not as responsive as like an iPad would be. Like, you know, if you expect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a touch screen to be like an Apple touch screen, like you’ll be disappointed in this one, but it’s a big, it’s a big improvement

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over what it was before. The new center console, which I didn’t have before, I had like a weird aftermarket one. Center

⏹️ ▶️ Marco console is really nice actually. It’s nice to finally get more cup holders that are not the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco awkward like elbow poking ones in the armrest, and that it’s cool to have with the configurable cup holder thing in the middle.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It allowed me to very easily route a USB cable like through the console.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They had these like dedicated channels you can route cables through, which is really nice. And I routed it up to my phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dock so I can run Waze. And it’s just like the fact that this like built-in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco OEM center console was designed for me to run a third party cable through is pretty awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Rear cup holders now, rear USB ports, these are all very, very nice. These are things like, you know, almost three years with the old car,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really wanted those at many points and now we have them. The backup camera is way,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way higher resolution, way nicer, way more contrast, so it’s just better overall. The headlights,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they got redesigned, they’re now noticeably brighter. The whole car looks like, like the general design

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it just kind of looks like a little bit nicer and like sharper, pointier, more angular at some points. There’s a few regressions,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s more improvements than regressions. It’s mostly the same as what I had before,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but improved. So it’s like, you know, if what I had before was like the 2.0, this feels like the 2.5 release. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not a totally different car, but it’s, it’s improved. So just as I was very, very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco happy with the old one so far, I’ve been very happy with this one. And if I can ever buy a Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, I will probably keep buying them. But let me tell you some issues

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that have come up besides the defective screen and the rattle. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco main problem is that this all began with them saying, you can end your lease early,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we will waive all the remaining payments if you get into a new car now. And that was in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mid-September. They didn’t cancel the old lease. Are you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kidding? I’m not. I wish I was. Oh my god. They didn’t cancel it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I noticed this about a month later when I saw that I was being billed for it, like auto-debited for my account. I’m like, wait a minute,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I was supposed to pay that. and also I shouldn’t have gotten some paperwork in the mail by now, but having turned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the car. So I listen to it and the the lease, which is run by a different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco company that you know it’s it’s serviced by this by US Bank. So like not Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I so I called them like hey, what’s up with this and like oh Tesla hasn’t told us you’ll end your lease. We have no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco record of your vehicle even being turned in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s interesting when I got to turn the car in mid-september paid the October payment

⏹️ ▶️ Marco paid the November payment. They did after I’ve been calling them basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about once a week since about mid October trying to straighten this out calling Tesla calling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco US Bank. It’s been hell. They they keep not straightening it out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They finally agree like I had to send proof to US Bank that I had turned the car and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I sent them the odometer statement and everything that like you get when you turn a lease. It’s like look this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dated like obviously whenever I call the Tesla dealership

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to get them to do something that they have to do because apparently my delivery center,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is the dealership, they have to do a bunch of stuff in this process. Literally, you call them up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you push like you know whatever number it is for new delivery department. The phone rings like five

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or six times and you get a voicemail that’s like HPN 053 dash

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new delivery center is unavailable. It’s It’s like it isn’t even a real voicemail greeting. It’s like the default

⏹️ ▶️ Marco voicemail greeting for their phone system and no one ever picks up or returns calls.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have called this dealership probably fifteen times for this issue trying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to talk to the same department zero return calls zero times. They’ve picked up the phone,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if I call I’ll call like a different one like sales. You know they’re always going to pick up and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some reason the people in the new vehicle department are never around. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the phone or out on a test drive and so they always take messages. Zero

⏹️ ▶️ Marco calls back in, you know, two months or whatever it’s been. It’s crazy. Like, so like the dealership

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is useless. The company is useless. The national numbers are useless.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco US Bank at least gives me info. You know, they’re, they’re barely involved here, but like they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so basically, uh, I dropped off the car in mid mid-september us bank finally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco got the notification from tesla that the vehicle was turned in two months later

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in mid-november and the other day I got my final bill from us bank my final

⏹️ ▶️ Marco statement where they have billed me for about eight thousand

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollars because they are billing me for all the remaining payments

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as if I just terminated the lease

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John early

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just just give the car in and didn’t didn’t get approval for this or anything so So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s when I went to Twitter. I’m like, you know what, I’m done. I’ve been trying to do this the right way for two months

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, and I’ve been getting nowhere. I’ve been getting absolutely nowhere. Every time I talk to somebody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Tesla, if I ever do, not locally, of course, it’s always national, every time it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, wow, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe this happened. I’m gonna get this fixed for you right away. Then I try

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get it, and then nothing happens, right? And every time, oh, we’ll call you back in the next 48 hours. We’re gonna really get this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fixed. I’ll put this in today. Every time nothing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way that company is being run, even the guy who made the initial offer to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me like who emailed me with like the early lease termination offer the people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in like the national headquarters couldn’t find him for like two months.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh neat. I just I finally got a touch with him like yesterday for the first time since this all started.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco He was just like they were like oh he has been to work in a while. That’s weird. I’m like okay. Can anybody else help me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll just leave a message. Oh my God. So it’s like I’m telling you, I don’t,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve leased a lot of cars now. And granted, this was, this is the first time I’ve done

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something out of the regular routine for the lease, where like the car company had to coordinate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something extra with the bank. And the car company here can’t be trusted

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do anything. Like when I, when I tweeted about this yesterday,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got so many responses from people saying very similar things that that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco including a handful of people who also got the same early renewal offer in September did the same thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and had the same problem and I haven’t heard from anybody yet who said they got paid

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so right now Tesla owes me over $8,000 in payments that I’ve had to make to US Bank that I wasn’t supposed to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to make you know I’m paying US Bank’s I’m like I’m not gonna I’m not gonna not pay a bank like that’s gonna mess

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up my credit if I if I mess with that so like I’ll pay the bank and then I’ll get the money out of Tesla somehow. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fact is, this is putting a severe damper on my appreciation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this company because I still love their car. I really love this car. But it’s real hard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me to get past this when they are jerking me around for over $8,000

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of their own incompetence at doing very basic things. I honestly, Honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for freaking fire Elon Musk, I am tired of the way he runs this company.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Looking at this company, looking at the way it’s run, looking at all the problems they’ve had with operations

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things, he should not be in charge of something this big. And it’s a shame

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the product is so good and that he is such a horrendously awful manager of anything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because if this company had an adult running it, I first of all, I think it’s time for that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the crazy founder early on at the beginning and they can make some really visionary stuff and it’s cool. I think that time for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tesla is behind them where that was really necessary. Now they need an adult to run the show

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Elon Musk is not that at all. Their operations are such a mess.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re burning customer loyalty left and right. Look at my responses. You’ll see they might lose me over this like and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really love them and I don’t know what else I would drive, but I’m just so mad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at how they have handled this and when I started hearing that I wasn’t the only one. It makes it even worse.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bottom line is, I have an amazing car, but the company has basically stolen $8,000 from me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on their own stupid incompetence. And that’s really hard to get past.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is intense.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be more concerned about the two defects of your brand new car off the lot. That doesn’t sound good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, well, first of all, A, it’s a lease. So I know that long term,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this won’t be my my problem, even if they never fix it. It annoys me. I want I demand that they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fix it. No, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John think they’re going to be long term problems. It’s just that, like a brand new car shouldn’t have those

⏹️ ▶️ John like you can look at the screen in the factory and say, oh, ugly yellow ring, especially if it’s a known issue. Like don’t sell

⏹️ ▶️ John that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one to customers then right like this. This is how much of a mess they are. The fact that like the main interface

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the car has a giant visual defect that I spotted when I was in the lot before even driving it off

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lot and like it’s clearly like okay that’s a defect, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know they delivered it anyway. Like it’s… they’re a mess.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco As far as I’m concerned, their big quarterly numbers that they got by boosting the sales

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this are illegitimate fraud, because they didn’t do it in a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco proper way. Like to me, it’s almost like they cheated on their numbers, because like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they cut all these corners to hit these numbers, they are defrauding investors into thinking they can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sustain this and they absolutely can’t and they’re defrauding their customers and thinking they’re getting proper new cars.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, if you’re, you know, you’ve got this for another three year at least, right? Uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John in, in other electric car news, I know you don’t like SUVs, but it’s kind of hilarious to me that how

⏹️ ▶️ John the, the SUVs, you know, they’re, they’re so dominant and you know, non car cars are so

⏹️ ▶️ John dominant in America, mostly trucks. Yes. But, uh, but in second places, the SUV SUV type

⏹️ ▶️ John things, it’s like take a typical SUV shape and just keep squishing it like a giant is

⏹️ ▶️ John stepping on to the point where it’s like it’s not a wagon yet but can we just squish that even

⏹️ ▶️ John more and it’s like anyway the Jaguar I-Pace and the Audi e-tron

⏹️ ▶️ John both are squished SUVs that are not wagons but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are also not cars but I don’t know if I could buy something called an e-tron

⏹️ ▶️ John I know the names are the names are not great but both of them are getting reasonably

⏹️ ▶️ John good reviews as probably less space than a Model S, probably a little bit slower, but also both cheaper,

⏹️ ▶️ John and from actual real competent car companies that have only the

⏹️ ▶️ John usual compliment of annoying dealer issues, and not these extra super special, can never get them to return a call,

⏹️ ▶️ John and forget to cancel your lease problems.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I feel like, looking at the rest of the market,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still don’t see anything else that I would want instead of a Model S. I love the Model

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S so much, but I really have concerns

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about having a complex financial arrangement with Tesla. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lease, they have to administer, they have to do their part, the dealers have to do their part.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m hearing stories all over the place from people on Twitter in response to my stuff saying how the dealers messed up their registration

⏹️ ▶️ Marco paperwork and they can’t get their car registered properly or they’re registered as a motorcycle.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like basic competence issues because the company is just such a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mess the way it’s run they can’t do the basics at all and so you know that’s that’s very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco concerning like when you have to when you have a situation like a lease where you need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the dealer to report to the bank when the car is turned even if it’s running on time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you still need the dealer to report to the bank that it’s been turned in and then the bank sends you you know the final statement or ever like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do they put it they bring it somewhere they do an inspection, they send you a statement. Like, I shouldn’t need to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pester somebody for two months that’s still charging me money and then have to seek that money afterwards. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s crazy the way they run this company. And so, if I want to lease

⏹️ ▶️ Marco again after this, first of all, I’m never trusting a damn thing they tell me about any kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of early deal, anything, never again. But at this point, I doubt even whether I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would trust them to handle a regular lease. Because again, you still need them to report things that’s been turned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, I don’t think I would lease from them again. You know, after this one ends, like unless this one ends

⏹️ ▶️ Marco perfectly, which even that I now have severe doubts about, I don’t think I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would lease from them again because I don’t trust them to do basic operations.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I think I would only get another Tesla if I was going to like buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it outright. But I don’t, I don’t like the idea of buying it outright

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all the other reasons that I’ve I’ve been saying that I like leasing. And I’ve leased with everyone else and it’s been fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I know like leasing isn’t the problem here. Tesla leasing is the problem. And so I think anything you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do to, if you’re buying Tesla, if you want a Tesla,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything you can do to make that arrangement really simple on them is beneficial.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But a lease is not that. A lease involves maintenance and service and them doing their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco part on their end. And so I would be very, very hesitant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to lease from them again. And ultimately that might cost them my business because I really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like leasing my cars. So I’m going to really, I’m going to have to grapple with that in three

⏹️ ▶️ Marco years when, when the decision time comes. But for now I love their cars,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but their company is just a wreck. It is embarrassing. It is destructive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is stealing my money.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve at this point I’m wondering about like, you know, with all the horror stories of the manufacturing

⏹️ ▶️ John mostly of the model three and everything, but just like I’m wondering that if you get a car from them, if some

⏹️ ▶️ John really important bolt is missing from an important suspension member and your car is going to, your wheels are going to fall

⏹️ ▶️ John off like a Casey’s Saturn.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like, yeah, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John worried like, like basic, just basic competence in assembling cars because everything is just sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John slap dash, get it done, get it done. And that’s not I don’t want people in a hurry to assemble my car.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want that at all, especially my super expensive car. I want some persnickety German

⏹️ ▶️ John to sign his name to my engine block like they do on the M series or whatever. And, you know, I granted

⏹️ ▶️ John the engine is probably still going to blow up, but I have some I have some faith that every bolt that is

⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to be in the car is in the car. And like spray paint didn’t get over on some area that’s not supposed to

⏹️ ▶️ John because it was spray painted outdoors on top of blocks in the wind or whatever. or whatever was

⏹️ ▶️ John causing the rattle in your dashboard that they jammed some felt down under. It’s not reassuring

⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of, the advantage is that these cars are so much simpler in terms of exactly how many parts they have than an internal

⏹️ ▶️ John combustion car. But then that’s why I’m thinking about, thinking about not the battery and stuff like that, but

⏹️ ▶️ John suspension members and things like that. Or I think about, what was it, MKBHD, when he got his P100D, he

⏹️ ▶️ John was taking it around turns and all of a sudden the power steering wheel had cut off and he couldn’t turn the wheel anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a safety issue. Like, it’s, I don’t know. I’m a little bit worried about that.

⏹️ ▶️ John And like I said, because nobody buys cars anymore, like it used to be like, oh, we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John losing our manual transmissions, right? And we were like sad about that. We should start getting pre-sad

⏹️ ▶️ John about the fact that no one buys cars anymore. I mean, Casey’s already fine. He’s got his little non-car

⏹️ ▶️ John thing over there. But you and I are still buying cars, and they don’t really make them anymore. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John why all the new electrics that I keep telling you about are squished SUVs and not cars. I’m assuming in

⏹️ ▶️ John three years, maybe you’ll have some actual car options or maybe the SUVs will be so squished that they’re basically just

⏹️ ▶️ John weird wagon things. But I do like the fact that most of

⏹️ ▶️ John the reviews they’re getting is like competency wise in terms of, hey, it feels like a nice car and it’s got Tesla type range

⏹️ ▶️ John and the performance is good and it’s smooth and you’re not really, especially

⏹️ ▶️ John since they’re made with less zazz than the Tesla, maybe this is a downside for you. It looks like a nice Audi

⏹️ ▶️ John interior, right? And it just happens to be electric, right? So,

⏹️ ▶️ John hopefully in three years, you will have more options to shop around for. At the very least, you should test drive these just to see

⏹️ ▶️ John how the other half is living.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John guess.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t have to worry about that for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John three

⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. Like, I don’t want like some Audi, you know, e-tron. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s, ugh. Yeah, that’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad name. It’s a bad name. I find it unattractive. Like, I just want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the car I already have to be like reasonably,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have the company behind it be like, have their basic stuff together. Like, to be able to buy it easily.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco To be able to turn it in easily. To be able to get it serviced easily. And to not have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, issues that never get resolved because no one can possibly reach the department that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco resolves them. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John God forbid something breaks on that thing and you have to deal with repairs during the three year lease thing. Just getting it repaired,

⏹️ ▶️ John getting the parts, you know, dealing with that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole and I’ve heard actually like I’ve been lucky that like in my first one, like the repairs were fairly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to get the door handles replaced once because like it wouldn’t it wouldn’t pop out and it was fairly straightforward and it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t take long, but like I’ve heard I’ve heard stories from people who have s’s and and that like the services

⏹️ ▶️ Marco take forever like that they they’re waiting for parts for months that like their car literally just can’t be fixed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for months and you know it’s I’ve heard I’ve heard it’s very very bad. So this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just I can’t like Like right now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m putting up with some of this BS, not all of it, I’m very much not putting up with the money part

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it, but like some of the stuff like the yellow ring screen, like I’ll put up with this temporarily

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I love the rest of the car so much, but like they’re just setting customers on fire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. Like I do not foresee positive things for their future

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they don’t replace Elon Musk like now. He literally, he needs to go. Like he needs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go yesterday. he cannot run this company the way he’s running it and have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it be sustainable at all.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s interesting to me because I feel like for a long time,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is going to sound more angsty than I mean it, for a long time you’ve been tolerating foibles

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the Model S. Things like, I don’t think you’ve been as grumpy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about a lack of car play as a lot of other Tesla owners have been, but that’s an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco example. No, it doesn’t affect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that much. But there’s ways I think that you’ve been kind of putting up

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the Model S. And now I feel like from my point of view,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are using or you own this car despite yourself.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like despite the fact that you really don’t want to own this car, you own this car. And I know that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably not the case because you just told me how much you love it. But man, this is getting to the point where it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I’d recommend it for you anymore. No,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m incredibly happy with the way the car works and drives

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how it feels, how it looks, what it can hold, how practical it is as a family car.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m very happy with all those things. But I don’t need imminent service right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this second. And if we can work out the lease thing, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Tesla sends me a check for $8,585 tomorrow, then this problem

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly goes away. I’ll deal with the yellow ring on the screen until they can fix it sometime next year. Probably you know that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. It’s not that it isn’t a big deal. If I if this car were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was going to say something that something that I that I like a a thought exercise that I often use with how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco happy I am with a car is if my car was stolen tomorrow. What would I replace it with and I was I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about to say that there, but then I was like oh crap. Imagine how long it would take

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tesla’s like leasing office. You have to keep paying that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John lease yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They would never straighten that out. Oh God, it would be a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mess.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Never

⏹️ ▶️ John mind. I don’t have any record of you turning the car

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in so no it was stolen. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John we can’t cancel your lease unless your car has been turned in. System won’t let us do it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even then you can’t cancel it yeah yeah so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but anyway, if The way I used to judge how happy I was was like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would I get the same car again if it just disappeared and I had to make that same choice like tomorrow?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And right now, the answer would be yes. I would get the Model S again. I love the Model S.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I absolutely love it. There’s a reason why I renewed the lease. Because it’s awesome. I love it. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco said yes, I want this car for another three years. It’s the first time I’ve done that since

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve owned cars. Oh, you did it with Tiff’s car, because you couldn’t decide. That was my car. That was Tiff’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco car. Yeah, same. By the way, her next car, which is due next year, not gonna be a Tesla.

⏹️ ▶️ John I3 is ugly, don’t do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Don’t do it. thinking about the i3.