309: Do Not Expect Five Nines From My Plex
18 Jan 2019Terminator woes, Smart Battery Cases, and the most impactful things we hope to see from Apple in 2019.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Affluent bezelles (Overcast: bezelle, correction)
- Follow-up: Casey's WAF-F20 waffle maker 🤤
- John's Terminator woes
- iPhone Smart Battery Cases
- Apple's 2019: what do we want, and what will affect Apple the most?
#askatp- Why didn't John buy a 2013 Mac Pro? (via Wojtek Pietrusiewicz)
- Do we all play Super Smash Brothers? (via Marco Silva)
- Post-show: Three middle-aged men explain Instagram to each other
Sponsored by:
- AfterShokz: Headphones powered by bone-conduction technology. Use code atpbundle for $50 off the Trekz Air bundle.
- Care/of: Completely personalized vitamins and supplements delivered right to your door. Use code
ATP50for 50% off your first month. - Banktivity: An easy-to-use, full-featured personal finance management app exclusively for macOS and iOS. Use code
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Chapters
- Affluent bezelles
- Waffle irons
- John’s Terminator woes
- Sponsor: Banktivity (code ATP10)
- Smart Battery Case II
- Sponsor: Care/of (code ATP50)
- Apple in 2019
- Sponsor: AfterShokz (code atpbundle)
- #askatp: 2013 Mac Pro
- #askatp: Smash Brothers
- Post-show: Instagram
Affluent bezelles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you pronounce that? Let’s work on affluent first. Is it affluent not affluent? Is that right? Is that what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did wrong? Yeah, I always get that one wrong. That’s my bazelle, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John You got like nine of those though. And I only said it wrong once.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, but it was a pretty amazing one. It was like, it was gloriously saying it wrong. It
⏹️ ▶️ John was pretty amazing. But I’m learning. See how I don’t make the same mistakes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still remember exactly where I was when I heard that for the first time. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John moment in your life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, because I was doing a weird thing. So I was walking over the Brooklyn Bridge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was listening to your TV segment and I heard you say Bazelle and I just cracked up laughing in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this very crowded area and I like rewound it like three times to just keep hearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. It was amazing. to go visit Jason Santa Maria
Waffle irons
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s get started. Let’s do some follow-up. And I have some quick waffle iron follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know that the ATP universe was just riveted by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my waffle iron quest from a few weeks ago now, maybe a couple of months ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you recall, we had a Waring Pro waffle maker that is no longer being produced that I loved,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that was our Sunday breakfast for years. And then the thing kind of exploded out of nowhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we bought a cheap and truly terrible Hamilton Beach waffle maker
⏹️ ▶️ Casey based on a Wirecutter pick, I believe. And it’s really bad. And I feel bad saying that because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hamilton Beach is local, actually. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, but see, no one ever says, well, I guess except for this one Wirecutter review, but no one has ever said the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X is the Hamilton Beach one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyways, we were gifted a Cuisinart WAF F20, a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It almost says waffle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s true, actually. Good And I just would like to report in that this is a very, very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey close version to my beloved Waring Pro. In fact, I would argue it’s probably made by the same people when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s all said and done. And now we can make two waffles at once instead of just one, which is kind of cool. So if you’re looking for a waffle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iron, I strongly recommend the Waffe 20 double Belgian waffle maker, stainless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey steel by Cuisinart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This looks nearly identical to the one I actually have. Like, because I have the, mine is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco branded Waring, but I think what happened is Waring sold the consumer business to Cuisinart and they’re just doing the pro end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. But this looks identical to mine with the sole exception that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the power switch on mine is one of those that has the red LED that glows through it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco otherwise it looks identical.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s really good. I really recommend it. And if you have the luxury of living near me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should ask to come over for Sunday waffles. Don’t be creepy. I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ John saying. You gotta stop putting these emoji in the show notes that my computer can’t display. It’s just punitive now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh my gosh. Wearing pro period space white box.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s the drooling emoji in case you were in case you were curious. How old is your we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get to that later. Let’s not even go there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The question is what in what year was that emoji added to Mac OS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes seriously. I think that was in the last year or two. Where’s Jeremy Burge when we need him?
John’s Terminator woes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, that is all for follow-up. That was world record fast. John. Tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me is a robot coming back from the future to Terminate you what’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John I shouldn’t have put a top capital letter T in there and made you think it was about scuzzy Terminators or I’m not sure what else you would have thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would have thought scuzzy terminators actually because I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John know what is
⏹️ ▶️ John it because do you know this because I already complained about it elsewhere And that’s why you know, I’m gonna talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, I don’t know what you’re gonna talk about.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, well, what’s your guesses?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I mean, I would have said scuzzy terminator, but I know that’s even older than your computer, which is saying something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it’s capitalized. It’s it’s got to be a movie reference like to the Terminator movies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing it’s either something about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Therefore, California. So some kind of issues having with California
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Something that promised to be back and now is back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so so maybe the keyboard problem I don’t know. I’m proud of
⏹️ ▶️ John you for making pop culture references to a movie. You haven’t seen Mark, correct? Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now for the listeners just to be clear the the show notes read as follows John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Terminator woes John is of course capitalized Terminators capitalized woes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not capitalized. So John tell us what is this about?
⏹️ ▶️ John I It’s a segment of the show now where I have I feel guilty about bringing it up because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just here to complain about a thing but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John this is literally why people love listening to you on podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s such minor thing anyway this this one. It’s minor. Yes. They’re all minor things. That’s what we love
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s minor, but it’s subverted like it is it is rearranged the My mental
⏹️ ▶️ John model of like the media world in an interesting way so
⏹️ ▶️ John You know as I’ve talked about my past shows. I have all sorts of ways to watch television and
⏹️ ▶️ John movie things I subscribe to all the services under the Sun although I did actually remember this month to cancel one of the ones that I haven’t watched
⏹️ ▶️ John in a while. So I am I’m trying to manage my subscriptions better. But every time speaking of
⏹️ ▶️ John subscriptions, every time I have to cancel a subscription, Gruber keeps talking about how he loves
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple subscriptions shows him all the stuff he subscribes to in one place. That’s true. And it makes it easy to
⏹️ ▶️ John unsubscribe. You know, you just go to that screen and get rid of it. Every time I want to go to that screen, I have to Google for iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco manage or like I
⏹️ ▶️ John have to Google where to find it. know, like the top Google hit is that thing where they break out the instructions. I can never remember where
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell it is. Do you guys know offhand where it is?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s actually a new URL. If you happen to be an overcast premium member and you go to overcast dot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco FM slash account, you can do it there. I just paste in the show notes. So it’s apps dot apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dot com slash account slash subscriptions.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can get to it on your phone to not going to a web browser. And that’s the one I usually go to. And that’s the one it eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John kicks you to what I think is a web interface.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and if you if you click that URL from any Apple device. It works on desktop iTunes, it works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iOS, like it works on any Mac or iOS device that will take you to the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, it’s like settings, your Apple ID, view Apple ID from the pop-up and then once you view Apple ID you
⏹️ ▶️ John scroll to manage subscriptions.
⏹️ ▶️ John all this is saying I have lots of different ways to watch stuff. There’s sort of a hierarchy of
⏹️ ▶️ John how much time do you want to spend looking for it. Like a lot of times I want to watch a movie and
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes I’ll I’ll be feeling bold and I’ll speak into my terrible Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John remote and ask to watch a movie and see like what service it pops up because it in theory knows that I subscribe to
⏹️ ▶️ John Hulu and Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the other things. And I want to see what it will bring up. And if it’s on Netflix,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, Oh, great, I’ll just watch it. Right. But if we’re in a hurry, like, oh, the kids want to
⏹️ ▶️ John watch a movie, or we’re all sitting down as a family to watch a movie. And I don’t want to deal with figuring out where
⏹️ ▶️ John which of the umpteen services that I have has that movie? Like, is that I HBO? Is it in the Showtime isn’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to deal with that at all I just go to iTunes and just buy the movie because it’s like it is the
⏹️ ▶️ John used to be in my mind the most reliable the fastest and also the most expensive obviously way to
⏹️ ▶️ John get it because I have all these services I subscribe to they have them we for free why would I pay $12.99 to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John the movie or rent it depending on whether I think I’m ever gonna want to watch it again right so in that situation
⏹️ ▶️ John I was uh bringing my family my children up to pop
⏹️ ▶️ John culture snuff so that I end up like Marco. And they
⏹️ ▶️ John seen the Terminator movies because Terminator one, the first Terminator movie not titled Terminator one
⏹️ ▶️ John is rated R. So I couldn’t really show this to my kids until they’re older. Right. So my son is old enough to see it now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, so I said, we’re gonna watch Terminator. Then we’re gonna, I really just wanted him to watch Terminator two, which is not rated R, but you can’t watch
⏹️ ▶️ John Terminator two without watching the Terminator. Uh, so I’m like, all right, I don’t want to deal with finding where this movie
⏹️ ▶️ John is available. It might be on one of my streaming services. I don’t know. Let me just go to iTunes and buy it
⏹️ ▶️ John because I know I instantly know how to do that I don’t bother with any voice and I just go to
⏹️ ▶️ John iTunes type the term you know I can find it and I’ll just pay the money and we’ll play immediately and I won’t have any
⏹️ ▶️ John problems this is particularly true of last time so I’m looking for like anime or foreign movies or things with
⏹️ ▶️ John subtitles where I don’t want to deal with like is it gonna be the dub are the subtitles gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be burned in in a weird font if I see it in streaming or even just regular movies is it gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John reformat on Amazon Prime or it’s like the weird unrated version like iTunes I feel like is the canonical.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a movie. You know it exists. You just want to see the movie the way you expect to see it. So good iTunes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in the case of the term that we’re watching it as we’re watching the movie immediately
⏹️ ▶️ John I noticed, but it just gets worse and worse as we watch the movie. The audio sync is off. The words people’s mouth lips
⏹️ ▶️ John moving don’t match the audio at first. I’m like, boy, back in the eighties, they were pretty sloppy with the ADR. I remember.
⏹️ ▶️ John not the ADR. It’s it’s actually out of sync and it’s getting worse. So I do all the things I try. You don’t want to like
⏹️ ▶️ John ruin the movie experience like, wait, I gotta pause, I gotta fix anything. One time I tried, during the movie I tried
⏹️ ▶️ John like, pausing and reloading, like when someone got up to go to the bathroom. I tried pausing and then playing it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John work. I killed the application, that didn’t work, and then they were back. So we just watched it with out of sync audio.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m like, this is BS. Like it was one of the few times I was thinking I should ask for a refund. Wait,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you watched an entire film, even one you’ve seen before with out of sync audio?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen it many, many times before.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I mean, it wasn’t that- I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John care! I don’t know if anyone else in the room noticed it was out of sync, but I noticed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot fathom John Syracuse of watching an entire two-ish hour movie.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a talking movie. First of all, and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey second of all, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John worse to, it’s worse to like interrupt the movie, like I’d gotten everyone together. We’re all going to watch the movie. The lights are off in the room.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you can’t kill that experience by saying I’m not going to futz with my Apple TV for 20 minutes. Again, that’s the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m doing it on iTunes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If anyone can do that, it’s John Syracuse that can kill that experience by futzing with the
⏹️ ▶️ John I would absolutely not do that. I’m the one who doesn’t want you to stop in the middle of the movie. I want you to like watch it uninterrupted and
⏹️ ▶️ John have your full concentration anyway. And this is just blowing my mind
⏹️ ▶️ John because it was like, like I said, the most expensive way you can get this movie. I’m like, what could the problem possibly be?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, is it my AV set up? I’m like, no, because I use this Apple TV to watch video all the time
⏹️ ▶️ John through the same receiver, and there’s no problem with the audio sync. I was starting to think that it had to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the file like that. Actually, this is somehow got uploaded to Apple servers with a file where the audio
⏹️ ▶️ John is not in sync. So to test that I downloaded the audio on my Mac and tried playing it there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Two things there. One, I’m doing this on a 5K iMac, which is not that old of a machine, right? It’s, I think it was,
⏹️ ▶️ John is it the current 5K iMac still? Maybe it is. It’s a 1080p movie
⏹️ ▶️ John and my 5K iMac could not play it without dropping frames. Which, I don’t understand at all. I tried it
⏹️ ▶️ John in iTunes itself and I tried it in like the new crappy QuickTime player.
⏹️ ▶️ John And both of them, they’d play it but occasionally it would drop frames. But anyway, despite them dropping frames,
⏹️ ▶️ John the audio was still in sync with the frames that were there. So it’s not the file. The audio is in sync in the file.
⏹️ ▶️ John I tried rebooting the Apple TV. I tried checking the audio and video settings in the Apple TV. I tried doing
⏹️ ▶️ John software updates in the Apple TV. It didn’t need any. It was already up to date. This is an Apple TV 4K,
⏹️ ▶️ John all on the latest version of everything, playing an iTunes movie. I tried it on multiple different dates.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s just weird today. Maybe there’s something else going on. play this movie with all
⏹️ ▶️ John you out of sync and it got it got worse like farther into the movie it went so this is a it’s making
⏹️ ▶️ John me think about how I might try to get a refund although every time I think about I’m like I have no idea how to do that and they’ll probably involve calling
⏹️ ▶️ John someone on the phone and it’ll be a hassle who the hell knows so now I have this cruddy copy of the Terminator
⏹️ ▶️ John with the audio out of sync and now next time I need to get a movie and think like what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the least problematic way to get it I don’t know maybe I’ll just try to buy it from Amazon or something I don’t even know what my next in line
⏹️ ▶️ John is Terminator 2 by the way didn’t have this problem on the Apple TV because you watch Terminator 2 like the
⏹️ ▶️ John next day and I had already purchased both of them ahead of time so it wasn’t like I had to reach you know I watched Terminator 2
⏹️ ▶️ John the audio was in sync for the most part like there was a few seconds or like wait a second is it out of sync again I’m like no that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John actually just bad ADR anyway this this is a really bothering me
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly because I don’t know how to explain it but secondarily because now I don’t really have a go-to
⏹️ ▶️ John for you’re in a hurry you want the movie now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean it’s do you think like does one bad occurrence here ruin this whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco service? Because like I too have had occasional problems with iTunes bought content usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s TV shows but they’re very occasional like the hit rate is very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high like as a percentage and so if you look at what else is out there like I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of us have more experience with like you know Amazon purchases for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco digital downloads or anything like that so we don’t really know if they’re actually better. I mean, in this case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this isn’t a problem where like, you know, Apple, Loll Web Services, this is a problem where like the file itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was probably at fault. So the file itself was probably messed up. And like, what can you really do about that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if, you know, no service is going to be impervious to content providers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uploading bad files.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the file wasn’t messed up. Like I said, the audio was in sync when I played it on the Mac. It dropped frames, but the audio was in sync. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So, I mean, there was some kind of, it’s like a a problem with playback. And it’s not 4K, I don’t think.
⏹️ ▶️ John My TV’s not 4K anyway, but I don’t understand what its problem could have possibly been.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it could have been maybe it’s a bit rate thing. Maybe it was encoded with, it didn’t cap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bit rate in a way that your Mac, well, I was gonna say that your Mac is powerful enough to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up, but not your Mac, per se. One’s Mac could be powerful enough to keep up compared to an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV. In your case, your Apple TV is probably faster than your Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John I watched it on my iPad too, and also had audio sync problems then. Not as bad as the Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John but definitely noticeable. So it is baffling. So yeah, maybe I’ll just, I don’t know, maybe I’ll find a way to get a refund
⏹️ ▶️ John and like, just continue to go back to it as my only choice. But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely weird, and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in the interface to complain about this. I guess it’s something they don’t expect to happen. Like The Terminator is a popular movie, so I don’t quite
⏹️ ▶️ John understand how this could happen and not, them not know about it. Maybe because
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone, like me, just gives up before they even start trying to figure out how to tell them. Hey, Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John your copy of the Terminator is messed up. There, I told them. File a bug.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why did you not try Plex? Like you know, one of the advantages
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Plex is that when you’re Plex friends with other people, as I know you are, other people might have the movie you’re looking
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s like the least reliable way. I got to rely on someone else’s server being up and my bandwidth, their upload bandwidth being
⏹️ ▶️ John adequate to keep the movie streaming and them not turning off whatever computer they’re running Plex on, that’s, I would never choose that
⏹️ ▶️ John for, it’s time to see a movie right now and be guaranteed that it works.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Douglas Goldstein Really? That’s bananas to me because in my eyes, that is the most reliable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way because, you know, I’ve never had an instance where one of my friends was randomly turned off the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Matzko I, I, the, the, my Plex server that you have access to is
⏹️ ▶️ John on my wife’s computer that she restarts all the time for any reason she feels like it. So you could be in the middle of a movie and it could restart. So let me tell
⏹️ ▶️ John you, do not expect five nines from my Plex server. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, I mean, in my experience, you know, Plex server files are often
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either files that fell off of trucks or files that people have encoded themselves with rips and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And those, in my experience, tend to be the least reliable in terms of audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sync to video. Like that, that actually is a very common problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John If people are bad at it, yeah. But my main thing is it would be lower quality because it’s probably re-encoded from something that
⏹️ ▶️ John was already lossy encoded.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Even if that’s true, at least, maybe it’s just my values, but I would much rather have an SD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video that is matched to the audio than a 1080 video where the audio is 10, 15 seconds, well, milliseconds off.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, you’re overestimating the audio. I think I’m talking, the audio drift I’m talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. Yeah, I shouldn’t have said seconds, yeah. But you get my point, is that personally for me, and maybe you don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agree, but for me, I would much rather have synced crummy video than unsynced
⏹️ ▶️ John mentions the movies anywhere thing. Do you guys know about that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. If anybody out there doesn’t know about this, you need to know about this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so it’s some service that I think Disney ran that somehow they got deals with all the other streaming people where if you buy
⏹️ ▶️ John anything anywhere, it can appear in movies anywhere and you can play it back there. And I think it might be DRM-free when
⏹️ ▶️ John you play it in that context.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, I doubt it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco DRM-free. But so yeah, the point is basically like, they have deals with like Amazon, iTunes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whoever else, and including when you redeem those codes that come with blu rays and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can buy a movie on a blu ray redeem the code at movies anywhere and then it shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up as a purchased movie on apple side in your itunes movie account if they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like it’s crazy i don’t know how they rigged this deal up with apple like i don’t know how i don’t know how they got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apple to agree to this uh or anybody else for that matter but yeah basically like almost every studio participates in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now and so you can buy like for me like i bought a bunch of blu rays on black friday because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were all discounted on various Black Friday sales. They were cheaper than buying movies like on iTunes and Amazon stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought a bunch of blu rays. I typed in the codes and I put the blu rays in the closet and I’m probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not sure if I’ll ever watch them but I have the codes and so now all those movies just showed up in my iTunes account. It’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I should try. I always forget about that. I do have that app installed and I do look at it. It’s kind of cool to
⏹️ ▶️ John see all your movies like aggregated into a single place and everything and I do use it occasionally to get like file downloads
⏹️ ▶️ John for services that I traditionally think of as, although I think Amazon gives you file downloads now. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I always forget that it exists when it comes time to watch a movie like this. So I could have just bought it on iTunes,
⏹️ ▶️ John quit the Movies app, and then gone to the Movies Anywhere thing and see if I could play it there. Although, do they have an Apple TV app? I have
⏹️ ▶️ John the app on my iPad where I watch a lot of cruddy movies, but I assume they have an Apple TV app somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The actual Movies Anywhere, I’m not sure, I’ve never looked, because I don’t need to, because everything that I put in there shows up in my iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ John well, anyway, watching movies is hard.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, over the last, what is it, 48 hours or so, maybe a week or so, Apple has brought something back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the dead. We have iPhone XS and XR smart battery cases,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and even the XS Max gets a smart battery case now. Smart battery cases for everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never had one originally. I was on the camp that it looked kind of silly with the humpback on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. These appear to be a little bit less silly looking to my eye because the humpback
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going all the way to the bottom of the case rather than kind of being a bump in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey middle. But they’re $130 for the XS one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is the Max one more expensive? I’m sure it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they’re all the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, they are all the same. You’re right. These, I guess, are pretty cool. Like, this is not something that I personally feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I need in my life, but they charge via Qi now, which is really cool. So the case will charge via Qi,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then the case will charge your phone. And from what I understand, they’re really great. Marco, you got one, didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not the new one, no. But we did have the old one. Tiff used it on her iPhone 7, I think, for almost the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire time that she had it. I think you nailed it, where we all made fun of it when it came out because it looked just ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was by far one of the ugliest looking Apple products that they’ve ever released. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the coming weeks after it was released, we came to learn, well, they did it that way because it wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco block the antenna bands, and every other case blocks the antenna bands and everything, and so there were some reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why they made it so ugly. The shape of it had some practical upsides to it. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in use, it was actually kind of nice because you could rest your pinky along the bottom edge of that like backpack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it was wearing. And so it was a way to, you know, like if you look at pretty much any way that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people hold large phones in a more easy ways by sticking things to the back, they all kind of rest on this principle of like it’s easier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to hold stuff near the middle of the back of the phone than it is like to reach top and bottom edges. And so you could kind of rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your pinky on that little ledge and support the phone that way. And it was easier to hold a bigger phone that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The new ones don’t have that, but, but, and that’s honestly, I consider that a slight regression in that way, because it actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was really nice to hold that. But otherwise, the new ones appear to have similar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco general appeal in that they, you know, they’re kind of frumpy looking, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco providing excellent utility if you need a battery case. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco currently don’t have a need for battery cases, but if we were to need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, I’d go right to that one. Because when you compare it to other battery cases, Like it has the same advantages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the first one did. First of all, it charges via lightning in. This is very rare
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for peripherals, and especially for battery cases. Almost all of them require micro USB in to charge,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which now means you’re carrying multiple types of cables with you necessarily. Whereas if it has lightning in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can just plug in however you normally charge your phone. As you mentioned Casey, this one also supports wireless charging, which very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few battery cases do. So again, that’s even better. It’s like however you charge your iPhone now, you need to change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing about that to charge this case. And then my favorite thing about the smart battery case as compared to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other ones, is other ones, they kind of act like USB battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco packs in the sense that you have to turn them on, and then when you turn them on, they activate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and become a power source for your phone. Your phone thinks it’s pulled into the wall and pulls power until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either it’s full or the case battery is depleted. And there’s a number of things about this that Apple improves upon with theirs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So first of all, there’s no on-off switch. You don’t have to think about whether it’s on or off. you just charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through it when you have a chance, and it charges your phone until it’s empty. So like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone stays at 100% until the battery case is empty, and then the phone starts reading itself from there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can view the charge level in the batteries widget on iOS, which again, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other cases, like you’re at best with cases you have like, you know, like a four LED kind of dot situation, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s usually the most detail you’ll get. The other cases also have, you know, because you have to like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manually turn them on or off, It’s kind of wasteful if you turn them on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the phone fills up and you don’t turn them off. Like it can slowly drain power in a weird, inefficient way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can accidentally leave it on when you don’t really need it to be there, like when you’re not even using it and that can slowly drain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the power. Or you can think you’re charging up and then it’s actually off. Like having to manage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the power switch on your battery case is annoying. And so for Apple to remove that and add
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these smarts about how it charges it and where you can show the battery info and everything and not having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have your own separate type of cable. It’s a really convenient package. Like I gotta say, it’s very well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done and it’s a decent capacity. It’s not like super, super high capacity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you need like maximum capacity, you wanna look at other things besides this, but otherwise like it’s a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice package. Unfortunately, as usual, it’s more expensive than when it replaced by a good deal. I think the old one was a hundred bucks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think. So if this is 130, that’s a big increase, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s typical of many modern Apple things, which is, it kinda hurts to eat the price,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if you can get past that, it’s a pretty good option.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I find so weird about this battery case, and it’s been weird about a couple things, is the timing. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems to me that it would’ve been much better to release the battery case at the same time that you release the phone, because
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s when there’s gonna be a big rush of people who are buying the phone because they want the latest and greatest, and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re the least price-sensitive people, and when they buy it, they’re gonna buy accessories, and they’re gonna buy a case, and if
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re the type of person who used a battery case before, they might want a battery case again and it’s not available for months.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s just bad. I mean, probably this is not their most important peripheral so whatever. Same thing with
⏹️ ▶️ John the XR, with the clear case and everything. It’s better to have the peripherals available when
⏹️ ▶️ John you launch the phones. And of all the things that you can’t get done, I’m obviously getting the phones
⏹️ ▶️ John ready for sale. It’s much more important than getting these peripherals ready for sale. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a type of thing that you would, that seems odd that Apple has these weird misses in
⏹️ ▶️ John timing on stuff like this. Not that I’m saying they should delay the phone or whatever, but cases, like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not that, what is it that made this thing be delayed? Is there something about this case?
⏹️ ▶️ John Did they not have batteries because they had to use them all on the phones? Like, I’m sure there’s some explanation somewhere, but it just seems weird to
⏹️ ▶️ John me that, you know, it would be better if they could get their acts together
⏹️ ▶️ John and have launches where something isn’t delayed. And the same thing with the 10 hour delay itself, which obviously is
⏹️ ▶️ John more explicable because they, You know, maybe there’s some conservation of parts or manufacturing capacities
⏹️ ▶️ John for the big phone launches. But here’s hoping that someday soon, we can actually have a flagship
⏹️ ▶️ John product launch from Apple that where everything launches at the same time, including all the peripherals, and there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John weird manufacturing problems, and there’s no like slow trickle. I mean, this is after the holidays
⏹️ ▶️ John for crying out loud. I don’t understand it. Oh, and as for the specific battery case,
⏹️ ▶️ John the only thing looking at it, and you can tell me, well, maybe it’s not the same. You can’t tell me Mark, you had the one,
⏹️ ▶️ John the one you had was for the seven? Yeah, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John one that’s ever existed before this. Yeah, right, I’m just trying to remember which phone it was on. So the battery case, unlike
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple leather case and the Apple silicone case, goes all the way around top and bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ John And for a 10 style phone, where you constantly swipe up from the bottom, I don’t like the idea of hitting
⏹️ ▶️ John the lip on the case. Now I can’t tell from pictures whether the lip is big or small or whether you notice it
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but I do, one of the things I like about Apple’s cases, the leather one and the silicone one,
⏹️ ▶️ John is they don’t even have anything down there. So you have no chance of hitting a lip when you do that very, very frequent gesture, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is swipe out from bottom. So if I go to an Apple store and these things is on display,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll have to try it out. But I think it looks better than the old one. It’s more elegant. I think I remember defending the old ones looks
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s like that Johnny Ive, let’s not hide the fact that there’s something slapped to the back of this phone. Let’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, let’s embrace that and say, guess what? It’s a phone with a thing stuck on the back. This one actually does less of that. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it is a foam with things stuck on the back, but let’s try to blend it in,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know, to
⏹️ ▶️ John make it not quite as obvious, like putting, you know, strategic makeup on a very large nose.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it looks nice. And if I had to get a battery case, I think I would also get this one. But the things you said about capacity
⏹️ ▶️ John and price, like the dollar per watt hour or whatever is not good on
⏹️ ▶️ John this case, but sample
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you. No, and you know, like the reality is like, if you need a battery case at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re already a subset of the population. And then if you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big, big, big battery case, those people exist, there’s plenty of them in absolute
⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers, but that’s such a smaller percentage of the population. Apple’s not going to make a case that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that big and heavy to have a three times your iPhone battery size battery in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Realistically, this is the most they’re going to do, and that’s plenty for them, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ John that Renee Richie pointed out, and a couple of other people did as well. You see a look at this case, and you’re like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the iPhone XS smart battery case, and they have the one for the Max, and they have one for the XR, yada yada.
⏹️ ▶️ John What about the X? They never had a smart battery case for the X, but the XS is the same as the X. Can I just
⏹️ ▶️ John take the XS smart battery case and use it on the X? Well, the XS is kinda sorta
⏹️ ▶️ John the same as the X, like the same dimensions, and the camera’s in the same place, and so on and so forth, but there are things that are different about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And initially, I think people were like, that you can’t use it with the X, because
⏹️ ▶️ John of those differences, because like the speaker holes won’t align or whatever. But Randy said, yes, you can use the 10S battery
⏹️ ▶️ John case with the iPhone 10. When you attach it to the iPhone 10, apparently you may get an incompatibility
⏹️ ▶️ John pop-up that says like you can’t use this device with this peripheral or whatever. But if you just dismiss that dialogue,
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently it charges
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco fine. Yeah, and if it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t work, they say if you just update to iOS or reboot or whatever, it’ll work. You still
⏹️ ▶️ John have the problem that it’ll be covering up some of your speaker holes and they won’t be aligned. so you might not get a good sound
⏹️ ▶️ John performance out of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the speaker holes, the XS reduced the amount of holes in the bottom because it had to make room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that antenna band, but the speaker holes that it replaced were the ones that weren’t there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for any purpose anyway other than visual symmetry. The speakers in the bottom of all modern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhones, they look like there’s two speakers at the bottom, but only one of them is actually the speaker. You can tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by playing something and covering up each one with your thumb, you can figure out which one is the actual speaker. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that the one that’s the real speaker hasn’t changed between these two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco models. All they did was reduce the number of holes that were around what on the other side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is actually the microphone hole.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, so are you blocking the microphone? Like I don’t know which ones are blocked and which ones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t. Well, I’m guessing the location of the microphone didn’t change. Like all they did, I think when they added the antenna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco band on there and reduced the number of holes, I think the holes they got rid of were holes that weren’t necessary anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think that’s why, like Rene even said, he tried it on his X and he couldn’t tell a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference with the sound. I think it’s because there really isn’t actually a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of weird that Apple didn’t just make a X case. Like, I mean, I was speaking about timing,
⏹️ ▶️ John how this didn’t launch with the XS. If they were gonna make a battery case for the X style phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John why did they not do it for the entire year that the X was the flagship phone? I don’t know, it’s weird. Don’t they
⏹️ ▶️ John money? Don’t they want this? I mean, the margins must be great on these things. Anyway, they look really cool. Do they come in
⏹️ ▶️ John colors? I just see it in black here. Oh, it does. Just black and white. Black and white,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. And I will warn you, if you’ve never had the white silicone, ours was white that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiff used, and they do pick up lint and dirt and discoloration like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crazy. Honestly, I still think the white is the better looking one of the two,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but just don’t put it in like jeans pockets and expect it to come out not covered in blue
⏹️ ▶️ John lint. If you’re making a science fiction movie, definitely get the white one, but just make sure
⏹️ ▶️ John you get it in the first few takes because it won’t look that color for very long. Doesn’t it look like something from a sci-fi movie?
⏹️ ▶️ John It looks totally like something from a 70s sci-fi movie only it is a real device. The white
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super super future-y. I could see that. I will say too, so as I mentioned,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t usually use these kind of things. I have in the past, I have owned them in the past and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have tried various things for various phones, but I really have tried over time. I’ve kind of learned my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lesson a few times to stop buying things that depend on the exact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size and shape of a particular phone because we all we’ve seen this business long enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by now that we know that pretty much every new phone that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy is very likely to require all new accessories of that type which means
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can spend a hundred and thirty bucks on this but in however many years it is between now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and when you buy your next phone which is probably not that big of a number this is that’s that’s all the use you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna have out of this at that point this becomes useless and you throw it away or whatever you’re right you’re out that money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s it like or you know if you’re lucky you give it away for somebody who needs it but whatever accessories you buy that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cases or that that are like very tightly fitting things or integrated things that depend on a phone shape
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those have a very limited lifespan and so I have found over time that I try to minimize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that as much as possible like I still usually will get like whatever Apple’s leather case is for my phone of the time But that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I try to keep it at about that and hopefully nothing else anything like Doc’s or anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I try to make them try to get the ones that are size adjustable But they have like little rails you can move back and forth or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to accommodate different phone sizes and that will usually last many years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or you know rely on things like wireless charging pads instead of Doc’s and you know in certain cases Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just it’s so wasteful to get accessories like this and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one to three years later that battery is still good and could still be useful but well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I got a new phone doesn’t fit oh well you know give it away throw it away whatever so generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I find if for my external battery needs which are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relatively infrequent I really prefer just standalone USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco batteries that I can plug in to my phone with the cable if I actually need that because it’s It’s infrequent enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the inconvenience of that is greatly is much less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significant than the wastefulness of having to buy one of these things every year or two. Now if you’re somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who actually needs that extra battery life every day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then this makes more sense because then like that that calculus changes. But if you’re if you only need it like when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re on vacations or at conferences or whatever, I strongly suggest considering just a regular USB battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pack which are so plentiful these is you probably already have one and just using a cable because it isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as convenient or integrated as this, but it goes in and out of your pocket a lot easier and it’s so much less wasteful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I used to always get battery cases for my phones the same way that you did. And my math
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also changed and I’ve come to the same conclusion that you have, Marco, that I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use the batteries at conferences and maybe a couple of other times, maybe if I were to go to a concert or something like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey generally speaking, I never really need a battery for my phone. And when I need one, I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use past and probably future sponsor away. You know, my suitcase has a battery and I can just, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey granted it’s physically quite large because it’s designed to mostly live in the suitcase, but it’ll pop right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out and I can take that with me. And I would much rather have one battery that will last me across
⏹️ ▶️ Casey multiple generations of iPhone than have to pay $130 or what have you every single
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time. The phone changes, even, even the speaker grills change, you know what I mean? And so I completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agree with you, Marco, that I personally think that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a external battery pack that is not strapped to your phone is much better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, we live in a multi-device world. If you get a standalone USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery thing, you can charge your phone, yes, or if you’re out somewhere and you need to charge on your iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or your Kindle or your Apple Watch or whatever else, you can charge those also.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In fact, if you get a USB-C one, can charge a MacBook. It’s better rather than having like 15
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different batteries for all these different devices or battery cases or whatever else just get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one USB battery pack that you will keep charged and that you can keep in whatever bag you carry most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco often and have it be as versatile as possible. It’s just nicer and easier in general
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to consolidate and have fewer like phone specific accessories
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to have your kind of like to in like an out and brown kind of way like to have more generalists and fewer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like single purpose batteries just get like one or two general purpose USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco batteries and be done with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unitasker is the word you’re looking for. Yes. So talking about this
⏹️ ▶️ John first, I think that most people who are not tech enthusiasts keep their phones for way longer than we
⏹️ ▶️ John think. So maybe it’s less of an issue for them. Like I just think about the phones I see people using and how old they are
⏹️ ▶️ John and how destroyed they all are and just how like they’re not Like you see something like that and you’re like, it’s kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John me with my car. It’s like they’re not going to get a new one until that one like breaks or they or I can tell
⏹️ ▶️ John is about to break or like stops being functional for the purpose, right? That’s kind of, you know, so maybe it makes more
⏹️ ▶️ John sense there. But the other thing I maybe think of is the reason I’ve never bought a dock for any of my phones or
⏹️ ▶️ John iPod touches or whatever. I always wonder like if the dock, the dock
⏹️ ▶️ John or charging station or whatever market is kind of like people get excited about one particular one
⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s some kickstarter for or something, or they see a cool one for sale, and they buy it and they love it
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s next to their bedside or wherever it is. And then it comes time to get their new phone and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re what they want is to be like, I want to use it. You keep using my old doc or just
⏹️ ▶️ John find whatever the updated version of the stock is for the new phone. And they find it. Oh, the company that made this doc is out of business,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey or this was just a random
⏹️ ▶️ John Kickstarter or the company that makes a stock is still in business and makes a doc for my new phone, but it’s totally different because
⏹️ ▶️ John of the whims of fashion. And like, I just want my old dock or like that doc that you got involved in a Kickstarter Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John or like the doc didn’t ship until They had changed to lightning
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s weird adapter like docks are not that they’re expensive or anything But especially if you like fall
⏹️ ▶️ John in love with one and build your habits on it And it’s like this is just what I wanted because it’s beautiful and it has my phone in the right
⏹️ ▶️ John position And you know make some of them have a little place for your watch I think both of you have some weird thing that like put your
⏹️ ▶️ John phone in your watch in it. Don’t they studio neat?
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, like you can make those better or worse like more flexible I think the ones you have are basically just like
⏹️ ▶️ John a big expanse with a lightning port poking out from it. And you’re like, well, as long as it’s a lightning port, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, this isn’t trained to a particular width or thickness, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know. Yeah, it’s adjustable to different thicknesses.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s why I’ve never been into those things. Cause I just feel like if I ever found one that I really liked,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would just be disappointed. Speaking of which, speaking of finding something I really like and being disappointed, my stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John phone pouch, same thing. My phone pouch was
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey looking a little rough.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you know, I’m using the one from my seven, Which I thought, you know, even though the butt sticks out of it, I’m like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s still… And I like it, it’s fine. The butt sticks out, but it’s fine. I’m like, well, this is looking kind of beat up. I should order another one.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t make it anymore. Very sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You could just go without a pouch. No, it’s crazy
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is the middle of January, which means it’s time for us to start thinking about 2019.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this has been in the show notes for a couple of weeks now, but I was thinking a while back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I feel like there are two interesting questions that I’d like to hear your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey opinions on and I’d like to weigh in with my own opinion about Apple’s 2019. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seems like more than I can remember in the last several years,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone, myself included is kind of anticipating a very,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, turbulent year for Apple and not in the bad way necessarily, but just that there’s probably going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a lot going on this year and I got to thinking about, you know, what are some of the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that all of us feel like we’re seeing some smoke about things like Marzipan,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which we’ve heard about already, uh, at WWDC last year. And I don’t recall what the formal statement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Apple was. I don’t think they ever committed to this year, but it certainly stands a reason that we should hear more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it this year, even if it’s not formally released. There’s been plenty of smoke around the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ARM-based Macs. And then, as we discussed last episode,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey supposedly there’s a Mac Pro this year, maybe, possibly. And additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this new Apple streaming service, which I have unequivocally decided will be called Apple Video.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You heard it here first.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, thank you. That will be this year, I think. And additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the last week or two, we’ve heard, I think it was in the last few days actually, we’ve heard rumblings of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe a new iPad mini and maybe a new iPad touch. What?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That might be happening in 2019. So given this list of potential events, and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s others that I didn’t think of, I have two questions to ask each of you. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can either start or finish, it doesn’t matter. but the two questions are, what generally accepted story or event,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the ones I just went through, are you personally most interested in? And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey secondarily, what generally accepted story or event do you think will affect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple the most? So you may not be into it at all. So let’s take an example, like I don’t care about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Mac Pro. I actually don’t think it’ll affect Apple the most, but you could make an argument that a new Mac Pro could make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a big difference to Apple. So maybe I would choose, you know, that the Mac Pro is the thing that will affect Apple the most, even though I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s start with Marco. What do you think you are most interested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in? And let’s go through those for the three of us, and then we’ll come back around and we’ll talk about what will affect Apple the most.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have a hardware answer and a software answer here. My hardware answer, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my theme here, I kind of touched on it last week. I think this is gonna be a big year for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macs and for pro Mac hardware, and maybe software too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think this is a big year for the Mac in a number of fronts. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco heard either Apple promising or rumors rumbling to the effect of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big things happening, at least the Mac Pro hardware, the display that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should be coming out, the possible rumblings of MacBook Pro update maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even the remote possibility of ARM Macs, which I think are possible this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t say likely, but I think possible. this could be a really interesting year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the Mac in particular. And they’ve kind of like been leading up to this. I think this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the year where a lot of questions get resolved. That’s ultimately what I’m excited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about, is like we have the giant question of the Mac Pro. We have the giant question of what the heck are they gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do in the next MacBook Pro? Are they gonna change the keyboard? Are they gonna do anything else to address, you know, Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs a little bit better or whatever else like. The Mac Pro I think is interesting in like John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco halo car sense, but it’s not like super important actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in most ways. So for the hardware pick, I actually am more interested,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though this is sacrilege in the show, I’m actually more interested to see how and if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they answer questions about the MacBook Pro. That is the more interesting hardware thing to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I look forward to, I don’t know that we’re going to get an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco answer that this year, but I think it’s about time for that. I think it’s likely, I think we probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will. And I just really wanna see what is the next MacBook Pro? How
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do they take these three years of feedback and make the next product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of that? I really hope that that gets answered this year. And I hope it’s a satisfactory answer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it has seemed recently like they’re in the weirdest spot right now, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in something that I don’t think we expected, their desktops are actually in pretty good shape right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, this is a great time to be a Mac desktop user. Like, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac Pro is fantastic. The new Mac Mini is fantastic. Who would have thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I would be saying these things, right? And the iMac is a little outdated, but, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the iMac is not a great buy right now, but it’s still a great computer. Like, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just outdated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, the high-end and like the specialized desktop lines are great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the Mac Pro is probably gonna make that even better. But because the iMac Pro is so great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already, and the Mac Mini is also so great, and also solves a lot of potential Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use cases, there’s actually, I think, less need than ever for the official
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro. So the Mac Pro, I think, is, I’m looking forward to it finally, and I might even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy one, but it’s actually less burning of a question for me, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the laptop line is, I think the MacBook Pro is still partially on fire. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite as bad as before the keyboard membrane version, but it’s not great. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really wanna see how that’s resolved, and I think we will actually have that answered this year. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the software side, again, this is some Mac excitement here. I wanna see what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the heck Marzipan ends up being like. That’s the big question. Our Macs might also be a big thing, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be potentially cool, interesting hardware and some kind of software ramifications, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s honestly not as interesting to me as what the heck is going on with Marspan. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am a Mac user, I love the Mac, I’m an iOS developer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t love developing for the Mac, and I’ve done very little of it as a result, I love developing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for iOS, I’m also as a Mac user, I’ve been scared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the clear slowdown in the development of new good Mac software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last decade or so. So like the Mac has all these unanswered questions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on around it and I really do think 2019 will be the year that a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these questions get answered and I’m just super excited about that. John?
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re doing one question at a time? Oh this is too easy for me. I’m obviously most interested in the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John like for many reasons you’ve all heard all my reasons over many
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco years. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I need a new computer. I want it to be a Mac Pro style computer. They said they’re going to make one. That is where all
⏹️ ▶️ John my interest is. And I actually am secondarily, even though I hate laptops, very interested in laptops just
⏹️ ▶️ John because I’m so angry about this three or four year run of bad laptops. And I really, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have, because I know they will make a new laptop and because there
⏹️ ▶️ John is less flexibility, like, the Mac Pro could be anything. And it could be a weird pyramid shaped floating thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who knows? but laptop is going to be a laptop and I just want to see it have a decent keyboard and maybe have some
⏹️ ▶️ John more ports on it. And I’m just, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I hate laptops. So I’m not interested in that. I just, in an academic sense, you know, and, and in kind of a
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, you know, get your stuff together kind of it’s, it’s the,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the part of the Mac business where they have screwed up the worst. And so they need to, where they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John screwed up the worst and haven’t announced the fixed. They screw up the worst and probably in the Mac pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they’ve announced, they’ve said all the right things about that, whereas they’re not saying anything about the MacBooks other than like,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe at best, like, stay tuned or whatever. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they haven’t said- They
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t even said that. Yeah, well, they don’t have to. Like, we know that, like, we’re gonna come up
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey with a new laptop. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John we know. We know everything. You’re gonna come out with a new laptop eventually. They don’t have to announce that. It’s not like the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John where we question whether they’re gonna make another one, but about it, they have said nothing, and they haven’t had any
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of like, you know, round table, you know, where they talk about the laptops and say, we hear you about the keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John the next one will have a better keyboard and more ports. They have not said that. So that’s my second
⏹️ ▶️ John place. That’s my honorable mention.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also, as far as the Mac goes, the Mac Pro doesn’t affect that many people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anything that happens to the laptops, the laptops are the Mac. They are by far the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sellers. Relatively nobody buys desktops. The laptops are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the line. And so when the laptops have a problem, that’s a way bigger impact on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac in general than if the desktops have a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they screwed up the Mac Pro the worst, but even a much smaller screw up on the
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs that they actually sell is a bigger deal, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, for me, I don’t know if it’s going to happen in 2019, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought of ARM Macs, I think is the most interesting. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am hard, it is hard for me to argue against the MacBook Pros and if there’s something different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happening there because I think, Marco, you make a very compelling case. But in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just interest and what just piques my interest the most, I think it’s ARM Macs. And I’m not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey predicting it’s gonna happen this year, but there’s enough smoke around this fire that it’s a possibility.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I just think an ARM Mac would be fascinating, both in terms of how do they manage the hardware transition, but also how do they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey manage the software transition? And does it look like the transition from PowerPC to Intel,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or is it something totally different? Is Marzipan really a kind of a Trojan horse to get ARM Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be a thing? I don’t know. But I think for the one that I’m most interested in, it’s gotta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be ARM Macs, because that’s kind of all-encompassing and would mark a pretty dramatic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey change in direction for the Mac. So that’s what I’m most interested in. Now, Marco, tell me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of all the things you’ve gone over, what do you think will affect Apple the most?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have as good of an answer for this one. I mean, if you go, strictly speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what will affect them the most, I think whatever the iPhone is this fall. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s kind of a boring answer. In a larger way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re pushing into services and that does weird things to their incentives. If you look at iCloud storage,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the user experience of using a phone without photo backup, without enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space for all your photos back up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a miserable experience without that and people get these pop-ups saying you’re out of storage space and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what those people don’t do they don’t go sign up for plants. That’s that’s not how that’s what they do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead they just dismiss those boxes and they think their phone is annoying and eventually their phone breaks or gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lost and they lose all the pictures of their kid for the last three years. Like that’s not a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to do these things like and and it does leave open competitive holes like that’s why you see like the Google ads that are that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco poke fun at it and say you know buy our you won’t have this problem. That’s a pretty compelling sales pitch. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what has a non-trivial chance of happening is what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of our podcast friends have also been speculating about is, I think there might actually end up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being some kind of expansion of one of the Apple services. Probably,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s the iPhone care thing where you get a new phone every year? Upgrade program. I’m guessing they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expand one of their subscription offerings, probably the upgrade program, into including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone every two years, whatever it is, so an iPhone every X years, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also iCloud storage, and also Apple Music and Apple Video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have one subscription that they can, if they have this, this solves a number of problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So first of all, and you can look at Amazon Prime as one of the reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of why this is so compelling for the business, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you have a service that you want a bunch of people to sign up for, but they aren’t, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bundle it with something that they are going to pay for. Right? So here’s what apple knows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everyone wants to buy iPhones. Even yes. Even now, after this disappointing quarter, everyone still wants to buy iPhones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? And everyone doesn’t want to pay for apple music or apple video separately. And everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure as hell does not want to pay for their, for their photo storage. So what apple can, Oh, and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already did this to some degree with apple care, The iPhone upgrade program includes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AppleCare and you still pay for it like it’s it’s just the cost of the phone plus AppleCare amortized over You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know 24 months or whatever it is like you’re not saving money, or you’re saving some some small trivial amount of money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you sign up for that you get AppleCare to Apple gets the money for AppleCare, too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they automatically tie AppleCare to the phone sales So if they can make a more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an even more compelling package there that includes all these other services even at some basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco levels then they can prevent people from not getting them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they get their phone through this program. So they can bundle in, and think about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything this does. This, first of all, it gets more sales to Apple stores instead of carrier stores, because the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store version of the inscription is more valuable. It gets more people to have a better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience and better data safety, because they actually have their phone fully backed up and all their photos backed up. And Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still gets the money for all these services. And if they started out with Apple Music, and then later on they add Apple Video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or even if they do it up front, that gets more people into those services. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that makes those services more valuable and makes people more likely to stick with them because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you are buying the iPhone upgrade program package anyway, and it comes with a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco music service, how likely are you to use Spotify after that? If it comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a video service that you’re already paying for and have anyway, are you really gonna also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get HBO Now or Netflix? Maybe you know some people won’t because they’ll already paying for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is what happened to the Amazon Prime. This is why Prime is so big for Amazon. It’s like people all bought it for the fast shipping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Amazon’s been shoving all this other stuff into it and people now like now they have this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge install base for their crappy video service because everyone kind of had it quote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for free anyway with the shipping program and now they have this massive video service as a result. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a lot of reasons I think for Apple to to do a large bundle subscription.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, it also fixes iPhone sales because it makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people more predictably upgrade no matter what phone they release. So it solves a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of problems, it really does, if they do something like this. I don’t think we’ve heard anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that suggests that they are doing something like this, but I think they should, and if they did this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that would have the biggest effect on Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think it’s hard not to imagine Apple wanting to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a kind of get all the Apple things service. You know, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems like such an obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco answer. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not all the things, because what they don’t want to do is lose like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco add-on sales, attachment sales, upgrade sales. Like they’re not going to give you everything, but they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should give you like a baseline level of all these things. So like services that only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really have a fixed price where you get everything for that fixed price like Apple Music, that makes sense. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone plan, I wouldn’t expect that to be like the two terabyte plan. I would expect that you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever like the base one is, is it 100 gigs or something like that? Whatever the base one is, that would be the one that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco included. And then if you want a bigger one, you pay a little bit more per month. And I wouldn’t, and I think too, like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware, like you know, you can, it’s the same thing with a great program. Like you don’t get the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone for the base price. your price varies depending on the iPhone you choose, right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how expensive that is. So I think it would be like that, but you’re still getting a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for one price that you just build into your budget, and it just, oh yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay 60 bucks a month for my iPhone and the things around it, or whatever the cost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. John, what’ll affect Apple the most?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna actually take the boring answer because that’s probably the actual answer, which is what the new
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone is, And the main reason it’s a big deal in the upcoming year is because we’re just coming
⏹️ ▶️ John off this change in guidance about earnings. And then we’re going to get the second
⏹️ ▶️ John impact of that story when the actual earnings come out, the ones they warned us about, even though it’s the same story,
⏹️ ▶️ John unless there’s some dramatic difference. Like, oh, we warned you, but it turns out everything was great after all. It’s probably not going to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John They warned us, and it’s going to be bad. So this next phone is super important. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the main reason I’ve been thinking about this phone is, well, two reasons. One,
⏹️ ▶️ John we talked to many reasons about why phone sales might be down and all sorts of the China issues or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, but there are other ancillary things in addition to the battery replacement program. And one of the things in that giant bucket
⏹️ ▶️ John of things that probably didn’t help phone sales is the fact that the whole phone line changed over to the 10
⏹️ ▶️ John style. And some people may be wary about that because it’s not what they’re used to. We all did that transition already
⏹️ ▶️ John and we’re fine with it, but we’re early adopters. Everyone else may be less so. The next one of those that’s coming along,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, first of all, presumably that’s going to continue and you know, I don’t think the home buttons coming
⏹️ ▶️ John back. So the new ones are all going to be like that. And now there’s the rumor of USB C
⏹️ ▶️ John floating around again. We talked about this a couple years ago, we will continue to talk about until they do it or until they lose
⏹️ ▶️ John connectors entirely. If they did that this year, like this is kind of it’s not a make
⏹️ ▶️ John or break phone, but it’s a more important phone than normal because it may be a new and perform factor. So there’s a lot of question
⏹️ ▶️ John marks around that it may They have a new connector and it’s kind of important for this phone
⏹️ ▶️ John to do better. They need the story
⏹️ ▶️ John for 2019 needs to be better than the story we’re about to have for their earnings on the XS
⏹️ ▶️ John and the XR and everything like. However things worked out and whoever’s fault it is or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John the pressure is on. And so I think because the phone is most of their money and it’s their flagship product
⏹️ ▶️ John and this is a very important year and it’s a year when potentially many things could be changing,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s going to affect them the most. But that is the boring answer, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s the answer. But I do want to talk about the sort of prime type service
⏹️ ▶️ John that Marco was talking about that has been discussed in the Apple nerd community for a while now. I keep thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John of it as Apple One because Google calls their storage thing Google One, which is a terrible name for
⏹️ ▶️ John a storage service. But Apple One is not what they’ll call it because that’s too highfalutin
⏹️ ▶️ John of a name. I don’t know what they’ll come up with. The thing that I have my
⏹️ ▶️ John head scratching about this Apple plan, and it has nothing to do with what Apple will
⏹️ ▶️ John do, because they may do something very much like what Marco described, but
⏹️ ▶️ John what I would suggest to Apple that they do in this type of strategy, that you’re going to have one subscription thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John to tell them I need to figure out what the tractor is. Marco mentioned the fast shipping and Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ John Prime. That’s why everyone got Prime. I don’t even know if it had any benefits beyond that in the beginning, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John did. Lots of people order stuff from Amazon. And even today,
⏹️ ▶️ John for the generation of people, when Prime was introduced to ordering things online, we’re still the generation
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s like the, who buys batteries, old people, Seinfeld sketch, where shipping
⏹️ ▶️ John seemed like an affront. Like I want stuff and I don’t wanna leave my house,
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna have to pay extra money for it to come to me. And so just, it’s not even the amount
⏹️ ▶️ John of money, It’s just that it seems like, especially for small purchases where the shipping becomes a
⏹️ ▶️ John large portion of the thing, you’re like, I could go to the store, but I don’t wanna get out of my pajamas,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t wanna pay shipping. Like there’s a huge psychological draw of, I would love to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John everything I can on Amazon, but I just hate the idea of shipping. Maybe I can afford shipping, maybe it’s not even the
⏹️ ▶️ John money, it’s just the idea of shipping. That was a tremendous tractor onto which they could attach all
⏹️ ▶️ John this crap, right? And I actually think Amazon’s video services is not that bad and they have some good original content.
⏹️ ▶️ John Music service is less appealing. But anyway, that was an incredibly powerful
⏹️ ▶️ John tractor. It still is probably the reason most people buy Prime because it just feels good not to
⏹️ ▶️ John have to pay shipping. I don’t think people even end up doing the math, right? And I don’t even think it sells mostly to
⏹️ ▶️ John people who can’t afford it. In fact, I think that Prime probably sells the most for the people who can most afford the shipping,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? It’s people who are just like, I just want to make shipping go away because I don’t like that feeling, right? I don’t know what the tractor
⏹️ ▶️ John is for Apple One type service, unless they do what they have heretofore
⏹️ ▶️ John not done, which is, you know, I’m gonna suggest a tractor, but before I suggest one, can
⏹️ ▶️ John you guys think of, what’s the tractor in an Apple One all encompassing? It’s the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, absolutely. Well, what about the iPhone? It’s getting an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone now without Apple. Yeah, but or you can spend, or you can get this wonderful monthly upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco program where you don’t have to spend $1,100 up front. You know, you can spend, you know, the whatever, 40, 50, 60 bucks a month on it instead,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then you don’t have to think about it. And then, and it comes with Apple Care. But you can do that now. Right, and so that’s why I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I’m suggesting is they basically do an expansion of that, where like, they just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco throw more stuff into that plan.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but they would have to charge more money if they throw more stuff into that plan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sure they would, but I think that is the draw, is like, for 40 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month, you can get this phone, or for 50 or 60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks a month, you can get everything. And the Amazon Prime trick to this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t even make it an option. I mean, they don’t even give you a choice. There is no shipping only Amazon Prime service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because if they offered one, a lot fewer people would get all the other crap that comes with it. I know I wouldn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if Apple really wants to push people into this, what they would do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is only offer this plan that includes everything. I don’t know if they would go that far, or at least maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not at first, but they could really just do the upgrade program,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco add 10 or 20 bucks a month to it, and have that include Apple Music and Video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and iCloud storage, and that would be pretty awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ John So here’s what I think they have to use as their tractor. You’re right that the iPhone is the thing that has the most
⏹️ ▶️ John draw, but I think for any service like this to work, they need to do something
⏹️ ▶️ John like what I just described with Amazon, where just the idea of shipping
⏹️ ▶️ John is making that go away is the thing. Now, there’s nothing really like that in the Apple world,
⏹️ ▶️ John except for maybe storage, which I’ll get to in a second. But I think the best tractor for this is for
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to give up on what they have traditionally done, which is all their
⏹️ ▶️ John financing, pay over time, layaway, loan
⏹️ ▶️ John type things, all of them have either been the same cost as buying it up front or more expensive. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think for Apple One to work, the draw has to be get an iPhone for less money
⏹️ ▶️ John than you could get one for otherwise. Not a lot less money. In fact, so little less money that it practically doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the draw is not that you can get an iPhone and not that you can get an iPhone by paying monthly instead of paying
⏹️ ▶️ John all at once, but that you can get an iPhone for less. And it doesn’t even matter how much less it is gonna be like $1
⏹️ ▶️ John less as long as you get people talking about the idea like, oh, if you wanted to get an iPhone, you got to do the Apple one plan because you can get
⏹️ ▶️ John it for less money. How does Does Apple make money on that type of thing? Well, the Apple one plan
⏹️ ▶️ John altogether, you’re not just paying for the phone, you’re paying for other benefits as well. So they
⏹️ ▶️ John say you should get that plan because it gives you the Apple video service, Apple music,
⏹️ ▶️ John more iCloud storage, so and so forth, all of which you pay for it again at some potentially reduced rate than if you bought
⏹️ ▶️ John them separately. But the main point is, but if you buy all that stuff, you get the you get the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John for less money. all it has to be is it has to be the program that you get to reputation for
⏹️ ▶️ John the cheapest way to get an iPhone is like this and they’re like, well, it’s not actually cheaper because you’re paying for a bunch of other
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. And what if I don’t want Apple Music? What I was like, yeah, but that’s like an extra, you know, five or $10 like
⏹️ ▶️ John and you might have bought that anyway. In fact, that stuff is cheaper too. But the point is, you get the iPhone for less money.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s the only tractor I can think of. And the thing that bothers me about their their services thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John the tractor for Netflix is original programming. Like they’re getting into this realm with the Apple video service,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, where they have to, it’s like I said, uh, I think the last show, like it’s like Pixar,
⏹️ ▶️ John it becomes like a hit based business where you’re making content that has to be good. Kind of like the products, like
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to make phones that are good too. Right. But the phone is, is their
⏹️ ▶️ John strongest pull, but in Netflix they don’t have a phone. They, they have to make good shows that you want to watch
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s all they can do. So I do wonder about the Apple video service, like as a weird
⏹️ ▶️ John attachment thing that you put onto the tractor of getting an iPhone for a dollar less that
⏹️ ▶️ John tricks people into buying more stuff from you because they’re in their mind it feels good to get a quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ John get a deal on an iPhone. The video service is like oh and they give you this video service
⏹️ ▶️ John like it has to have some appealing value. So they do need also to have like
⏹️ ▶️ John a hit show or something. Music doesn’t help because everyone’s got all the same music at this point. So I don’t I don’t think they can differentiate that on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But to tell someone, yeah, and you also have to pay as extra money. The two little
⏹️ ▶️ John mini tractors they have alongside are never get that stupid dialogue that your that your phone is full, which means
⏹️ ▶️ John they would have to give people what we’ve always talked about, like just you should give people as much storage as the
⏹️ ▶️ John phones they buy can hold. Right. I think that’s what they have to do, because the value
⏹️ ▶️ John of getting more storage is not getting more storage. It’s not having to worry about storage anymore. So if you give them 100
⏹️ ▶️ John gigs instead of five gigs, and they still run out of space, they still hate you for it. You have to say, get this, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you won’t get the dialogue ever again. So that’s a hurdle they have to overcome. And the second thing is the video service has zero value
⏹️ ▶️ John unless there’s one show that people talk about that you’re interested in on their service. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a big ask. Cell phones for slightly less, give them storage, they don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John to worry about storage anymore, and have at least one or two good shows on Apple Video to get people talking about it. That
⏹️ ▶️ John is a plan that you could get more people into. I wouldn’t include AppleCare and I wouldn’t include like get the
⏹️ ▶️ John upgrade to whole type thing because I think that’s asking for too much. Like you have to keep this bill down to a reasonable rate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Prime is like what $90 a year and you’re talking about 60, 70, $80 a month. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a mass market program. So that’s that’s my advice to Apple on on any sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John one purchase program is eliminate things that eliminate concerns entirely when it comes to the storage
⏹️ ▶️ John and when it comes to like you know the phone everything have the tractor be get an iPhone for cheaper and
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve got to make one or two good shows. And that’s a hell of a
⏹️ ▶️ John bill to fill. And I don’t think actually that’s all coming in 2019, which is why I still listed the iPhone. And even if they did all that
⏹️ ▶️ John in 2019, the iPhone would still affect them the most because in the first year you launch a thing, who knows who even
⏹️ ▶️ John is gonna sign up for it. So long-term, that may affect Apple’s trajectory the most, but
⏹️ ▶️ John in 2019 itself, it’s still the boring old iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand what you’re saying about this whole tractor thing. And yeah, the obvious answer is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone, But I don’t know, I feel like there’s a really clear marketing, marketing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey angle where Apple says, look, you want to have an iPhone every year. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t want to have to worry about storage. You don’t want to have to worry about your photos being backed up. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t want to have to worry about where you’re getting your music and you don’t have to worry about where you’re getting your video either. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so with this one monthly fee, you will get a phone once a year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You will get all the music in the world. you will get all of our original content, which I agree with you, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we don’t know if that original content is useful or not, but who knows. But we will give you the storage so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you never get nagged, which is what you just said. I think the storage in addition
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to all the other things may be enough pull to get people to do it. And certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if, if Apple has a couple of really hit shows, then that would, that would put it right over the edge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I think it’s, it’s even more than the storage. I think it’s just the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one one bill to solve all your problems, which of course isn’t literally the case But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one bill to get all of your photo issues resolved one bill to get all of your backup issues resolved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one bill to get all of your music Desires resolved one bill to hopefully get all of your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your your TV or your movie stuff resolved And who knows maybe they would throw in like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can get a couple of iTunes rentals for free every month or something like that that. I don’t suspect that to happen, but you never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. But the thought of them discounting the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a tough pill for me to
⏹️ ▶️ John It has to be. For this whole plan, there has to be some discount somewhere in there, and no one cares about discounts on Apple Music
⏹️ ▶️ John or Apple Video or discounts on AppleCare. All they care about is discounting on the iPhone. And again, you can make
⏹️ ▶️ John the discount $10. It doesn’t have to be a lot. But the whole point is, there has to be a value
⏹️ ▶️ John proposition. I don’t even question the whole thing of, I want an iPhone every year. I don’t know people do want an iPhone every year. I know some
⏹️ ▶️ John people who get used to the phone and want even if you gave them a free upgrade, they’d be like, I just want to keep this phone because I like
⏹️ ▶️ John it because I’m not sure about the new ones. Like some people want a phone every year. And those people would probably be the most likely to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John for this thing. But it can’t be one of those Apple style plans where you just add up the prices of everything and add a little bit on top
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re like, Why would I do this? Like, yes, one bill is convenient. But you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ John liked it when they consolidated the family plan or whatever. But the mass consumer is like, any sort of bundle,
⏹️ ▶️ John there has to be a savings. And the only thing people care about savings for is the phone. It’s like, it’s like a Prime. Prime
⏹️ ▶️ John people bought it when it was just shipping. Like that’s all they cared about. Everything else they didn’t care about. It was on top of it. So there’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do for like, oh, I’m buying this because I get these add-ons. They have to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John it and say, yada, yada, yada, add-ons. The whole point is that I pay
⏹️ ▶️ John less money for the iPhone. And so I, you know, and that is totally not an Apple thing to do. I know they’re raising all
⏹️ ▶️ John their prices and so on and so forth, but like that’s, you need to appeal to people’s sense
⏹️ ▶️ John of getting a bargain somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Yeah, I hear you. But I really think the one fee to fix everything, because I forgot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about AppleCare, you don’t have to worry about breaking your screen within reason. And so I really think one fee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get it all done is maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John enough. Paul Matz
⏹️ ▶️ John I think AppleCare is a deal breaker price-wise because it’s so damn expensive. But maybe they could just spread that out over three years or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because I know so many people are like, I want AppleCare, then you show them how much it is. And you’re like, oh, never mind.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Yep. Hi. But just as a final thought, my answer to my own question, what will affect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple the most? I think Apple Video or whatever it ends up being called, which I do think it will be Apple Video.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that is really going to change Apple because if it flops, I think that will have a ripple effect,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possibly even more than the Project Titan that may or may not have ever existed. And if it’s a success, then that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey changes the way Apple feels about things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so, and suddenly they become a content company. And we actually recorded today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for RelayFM members, myself, Alex Cox, and Stephen Hackett did an episode of Fusion,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is just for relay members, where we kind of dive into this a little bit. And it’s worth listening to if you are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a relay member, and if you’re not, you should be one. But anyway, I just think that having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one Apple bill that solves almost all your problems might be enough. I think we should move
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on to Ask ATP. But before we do, Marco, any closing thoughts on all this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think so. I think you pretty much covered it. I mean, I do agree with John, there should be some kind of like, significantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco motivating factor, but I don’t think it needs to be as like as much of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a exclusive discount as he says. Like I really do think that just offering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this stuff together as part of the iPhone upgrade program for some you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know smaller additional fee every month like you know on the order of like 20 bucks a month more or 50
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks a month more whatever it is like I think that’s very powerful because ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are going to come in and buy iPhones anyway. The iPhone upgrade program by by most accounts we’ve heard has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a success like people do seem to be doing it in good numbers and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making you know making a single price thing that includes all the stuff is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just makes so much sense from both a consumer point of view and from a point of view of helping Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get more services off the ground.
⏹️ ▶️ John To be clear they can do like what you’re describing like that’s a plan that will be a success
⏹️ ▶️ John in and of itself is just you know people who have lots of money will do it for the convenience like there is that convenience of it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m trying to think like Amazon Prime bigger, as in like, how can you get it to appeal to the widest variety of people? Not just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John how can you make it more convenient for people who are gonna give you that, like us. We give them that money anyway. I buy like the biggest storage
⏹️ ▶️ John plan. You know, I buy the family thing, like I buy AppleCare, I buy all the expensive phones, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I would love to have that consolidated into a single bill. So that is a valuable product that will work for customers exactly like me. But
⏹️ ▶️ John what I’m trying to think of are all the customers who don’t buy the backup plan and don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, cheap out on the storage and don’t replace their phones every year and
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t care about Apple Music or Apple Video and how are you going to get them on board the Amazon Prime
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I think that’s me that you’re describing because I do get an iPhone almost every year. I am a devout
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Spotify user, but I could be convinced if I felt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I was saving even a few bucks somewhere, and not necessarily on hardware, just somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I get the the video stuff, the music stuff. If I get iCloud storage, which I still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am not paying for, even though, yes, I know I should, please email somebody else. Do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John we do this already? You’re not paying
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey We did, we did, yes, we already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’ve been beaten up about it. I was just
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna ask you if you were buying the family plan, but you’re not even buying the storage at all. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John We need to put that in the follow-up, and until you buy it, we just ask you about it every week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll make a web, somebody will make a single-serving site
⏹️ ▶️ John it. You’re gonna be like my parents. I’ll just have to buy it for you, without your knowledge, and not tell you about it. perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John sold. I’m going to delegate that to Marco actually. Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could I could see myself being convinced because the idea of just getting one bill
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that just covers everything is appealing and maybe that makes Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go away. I don’t watch that much Netflix. Maybe Netflix would go away probably not
⏹️ ▶️ John being a video service is the hardest because no one who’s into orange is the new black is going to say well now
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’ve got Apple video like people but people will subscribe to the services because there are specific shows they want,
⏹️ ▶️ John increasingly exclusive shows. No one is going to ditch CBS All Access because they get Apple Video, because CBS All Access has
⏹️ ▶️ John Star Trek. So video is tough. They need to make good shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s why, like, you know, the reason why Netflix took off so well is because you can have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just Netflix and always have something to watch. You don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that with services that are exclusively original content like HBO. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t, if you’re a big HBO fan, you can go there and you can watch Game of Thrones and whatever else, whatever else you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch and they’re like when it’s in season, but then when it’s out of season, you don’t have much you can go there for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like there and so if Apple’s doing exclusively original content, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean I don’t think we necessarily know that from reports so far, but it’s most likely that it’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exclusively original content, you know, based on how they appear to be doing things so far. So like if that’s mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if there’s not going to be like some giant catalog of 90 sitcoms that you can watch reruns of instead when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you feel like doing that it’s not going to be a service people are like I’m going to cancel netflix and go to that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it they’re going to watch stuff on there when there’s a reason to and when there’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re going to go elsewhere and that’s why I think it’s going to be a really tough sell like to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a video service off the ground in this day and age like when all the competitors are very mature
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have huge catalogs to get something off the ground today that’s probably going to have a fairly small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco catalog to start is not gonna be easy. Especially since
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is not incredibly good at launching these kinds of things. See,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Apple Music launch.
⏹️ ▶️ John The way everyone talks about this launch, and which I think would make sense to downscope this slightly, is like, oh, how does
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple deal with an Apple video service? You just make a part of Apple Music with no increase in price, done. Like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly the prime model. Say you already buy Apple Music because, for whatever reason, you like Apple Music, works with your HomePod,
⏹️ ▶️ John guess what? You got video for free. Oh, I don’t even care about video. I was like, well, well, you’re getting it. So deal with it. And suddenly
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Video has exactly the same user base as Apple Music, which is actually doing better than probably the last time we talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. That is not Apple One where you get everything in a phone upgrade and the storage or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is the obvious way to launch Apple Video in an Amazon style. That is not an Apple style.
⏹️ ▶️ John We come up with a new service and you get it for free at the same price with Apple Music. Not Apple, not the old Apple style,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the new services oriented Apple style, if they care about getting adoption and they have any, you know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the way to do it. That is exactly the prime plan. It’s just less exciting for us hoping for an Apple One service.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and you know, and maybe that’s like the baby version of it. Like, I agree that it’s probably the more, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like kind of the safer, the safer, smaller step. I don’t necessarily know if it would come with no price increase.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think maybe Apple Music would suddenly become 20 bucks a month instead of 15 for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John family or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just the usual sneaky, like, the price wouldn’t increase when the video was added, but Apple Music would just creep up in
⏹️ ▶️ John price like everything
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco else. in a way that you don’t notice. Like that’s not that’s why Amazon did it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon charged a fixed price for prime for years, and then they started adding a bunch of stuff to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And then like a couple years after the added a bunch of stuff like we’re going to raise the price because now you’re getting so much
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s a proven and the good thing is they raised the price after I think Amazon video
⏹️ ▶️ John has proven its worth. They had some good shows to people like they’re like I wouldn’t want to get rid of prime now partially
⏹️ ▶️ John because of the video because Patriot was on there and the man in the high castles on it like they’re they actually have shows that I care
⏹️ ▶️ John about in the beginning. They didn’t, but now they do. So when they increase the price, there was no question that I was going to keep paying that price.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but anyway, so I think it some kind of bundle subscription, I think will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen whether it’s part of the iPhone upgrade program or whether it’s a separate thing that could be expanded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple music or a whole new plan that includes Apple music, whatever it is. I think a bundle subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that includes multiple services, at the very least, music, video, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco God, I hope iCloud storage. Because look, everyone should get iCloud storage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s time that Apple makes a plan that forces people like Casey to get it, even though they don’t think they need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. We are sponsored this week by Aftershocks bone conduction headphones. I love bone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conduction headphones. So here’s how they work. It’s different from most other headphones if you haven’t tried them before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Instead of having anything sticking in your ear or resting on or pushing on or sitting around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your ear, bone conduction headphones don’t actually block up your ears or put anything in them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have these little tiny like micro-vibrating transducers that sit next to your ears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a headband that goes around the back of your neck and so your ears are left totally open. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those transducers send little micro-vibrations, you don’t even feel them, through your cheekbones and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it makes your eardrum pick up the vibration so you hear sound from the bone conduction headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but no one else does. And best of all, you also hear sound from the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the world because your ears aren’t being plugged up or covered. And so this is actually really useful when you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it in lots of situations. So for instance, my favorite way to use these is walking around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco outside, especially in the summertime because I get really hot and sweaty. I don’t want big sweaty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pads on my ears. And if I do happen to sweat all over these things, they’re water resistant and everything so it’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem, but They don’t make you hot, and when you’re walking around, you can hear things going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on around you. So you can hear, for instance, if you’re outside walking or jogging or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can hear cars as they move. So you’re not surprised all of a sudden there’s a car behind you, you didn’t even realize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that never happens with bone conduction headphones because you always are aware of your surroundings. So they’re great for environments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. Even, I use them all year round because even in the winter time when I’m spending a lot of time inside, I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to be able to listen to podcasts or take a phone call and say no if somebody’s knocking on my door,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or if I’m not the only person in the house to know if somebody’s calling my name. They’re so useful.
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#askatp: 2013 Mac Pro
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, let’s do some Ask ATP. Vojtech Petrusavich writes, Hey, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please explain again in as much detail as possible. Oh, God. Exactly why you didn’t buy the 2013 Mac Pro. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a serious question slash request.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re not going to get as much detail as possible on Ask ATP. Sorry. I thought I did it like last show.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Trashcan Mac Pro had two big sort of workstation style GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John with tons of VRAM and one CPU. And that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John the shape of the machine that I want. I want one fast GPU for gaming that doesn’t need to have 12
⏹️ ▶️ John gigs of RAM. I certainly don’t need two of those. And the other big factor
⏹️ ▶️ John is the Trashcan came out around about the time we were talking about having
⏹️ ▶️ John a quad 5K, what we now know is the Retina display on the, not
⏹️ ▶️ John quad 5K, quad 27 inch, I think I kept referring to it, but anyway, a 5k display. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that Mac Pro seemed like it couldn’t drive one, even if one existed. So it’s like, well, I’ll wait for the next
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those because maybe the next one will be able to drive a 5k display. Ha ha ha. The next one. The never was the
⏹️ ▶️ John next one. So that’s why, like if I was going to buy a new Mac Pro, I wanted it to be like we were so close
⏹️ ▶️ John to to retina on the desktop in a in a 27 inch form factor that it seemed wasteful to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a machine that didn’t do that. And this particular machine didn’t like it didn’t have the internals that
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanted. It was very expensive. I was paying for workstation class GPUs with tons of VRAM that not
⏹️ ▶️ John only did I not want but weren’t actually as good as what a single gaming GPU could be. Doesn’t mean the new Mac Pro is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to satisfy me anymore, but those are the reasons I didn’t buy that old one. And obviously because I thought they would
⏹️ ▶️ John revise it and maybe the one the next year or the year after would support 5k. But there just never was
⏹️ ▶️ John the next one. Sorry.
#askatp: Smash Brothers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco Silva writes, Hey John, do you smash? And if you’ve ever watched
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jersey Shore, that’s very funny, but I believe Marco’s referring to Super Smash Brothers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And also, have you ever wandered into the world of fighting games, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why I’m asking this to everybody. We all have a way to play Smash Brothers now, right? We’ve all got Switches.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve played Smash Brothers on the N64, on the GameCube. Did I
⏹️ ▶️ John get the Wii version? I don’t think I did get the Wii version. I didn’t even remember if there was a Wii U version. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get it for Switch. Not that into it. Like, I got it because it’s a cool, fun game, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just not that into fighting games, period. I have not wandered into the world of fighting games. I know a lot about
⏹️ ▶️ John it and I’ve read a lot about it because it is the subject of many articles both interesting and horrifying
⏹️ ▶️ John in the recent years in the gaming press and in the past as well. Like, the GameCube,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like, was where I started really reading about the Smash fighting
⏹️ ▶️ John game community, you know, and the tournaments and everything. And yeah, I’ve never been
⏹️ ▶️ John into that at all. It’s just not my cup of tea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I had Super Smash Brothers for the Wii. Yeah, I think it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Wii. And I actually really liked it. I didn’t play it that terribly often,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it was a really fun party game because it well, the way in which myself and my friends played it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey none of us had any particular skills who were just mashing on buttons randomly. And it was a lot of fun to play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in like a group setting. I haven’t yet picked up the one for the Switch. I probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will at some point for the exact same reason. But generally speaking, I’m not that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into fighting games either. I never really played Mortal Kombat that much. I did love and play the snot out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Street Fighter II back in the day. But that was about it. Marco, where do you come down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t play fighting games, really. I mean, I barely play any games at all. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I’m going to be playing games, it’s generally it’s not. It hasn’t been fighting games for a long time, like back back when Street Fighter two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out for the Super Nintendo, which was the first modern fighting game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I played that with my friends at my friends houses, but I never really went past that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, fair enough. The thing about fighting games is like there’s what we all describe, which is like, oh, let’s just go have fun with the
⏹️ ▶️ John game. But that like there’s another game that the fighting game people are playing. Like it’s there is a big
⏹️ ▶️ John gap. It’s probably not as comparable as in any other sort of genre. I was thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John of Destiny. There’s a pretty smooth spectrum from people who are just playing
⏹️ ▶️ John Destiny casually all the way up to the crazy people like me, or obviously the streamers
⏹️ ▶️ John people play all day long. But in fighting games, you’re either just goofing around and having fun,
⏹️ ▶️ John or you are playing an entirely different game, where it looks different to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John It looks and feels different to you because you know all the different things about the moves and
⏹️ ▶️ John the timing and the frames of animation and the cancellations and like people who
⏹️ ▶️ John just play fighting games casually don’t even know that stuff even exists. Like they’re just, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John all button mashing, but it’s close. Like they start, they’re conceptualizing as a little person on the screen that you can make
⏹️ ▶️ John do stuff. They’re not seeing the matrix and there’s this huge gap and then there’s actual fighting game people.
⏹️ ▶️ John And to be any good at fighting games, you have to see the matrix in that way and it becomes a different thing. And I think it’s actually very
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting. just not what I’m into.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week Aftershocks, Care Of, and Banktivity by IGG
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Software and we will talk to you next week.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over they didn’t even mean to begin cuz
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental John didn’t do any research Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was accidental. And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm, and if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s, so that’s Casey Liss, m-a-r-c-o-a-r-m,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental Accidental They
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental Tech Podcasts It’s been
Post-show: Instagram
⏹️ ▶️ John What exciting things happening in people’s lives.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Michaela turned one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Good pictures of Michaela up on your Instagram.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, thanks. Yeah, those are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John good ones. For a one year
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. You’ve had a lot of nice pictures on your Instagram lately.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, thanks, man. Yeah, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John trying. Actually, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I- I’m just digging for compliments because they’re all my pictures.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was, I realized, I realized as soon as you said that, that the pictures,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the pictures I put up of Aaron and me yesterday, I think both of those are John Syracuse originals And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least one or two of the Michaela ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was all of them except for the last
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey one of Michaela. Was it? Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Last two, maybe? But yeah, you’re right. Okay, here it was. I thought you were complimenting me, but no, it
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you ever get the, I get this, I think I’ve talked about this before when I first started doing Instagram, people giving me crap about
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that I take my pictures from my big camera and put them in Instagram, like that’s cheating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t think that’s something people actually care about anymore. Like, there were people who would give you crap about it like, you know, years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago, but yeah, that’s not a thing anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now people just care about ads in their timeline. That’s not a chronological timeline.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, because the reality is, now, a lot of what you see in your timeline is shot on professional cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and processed in professional apps and then stuck in Instagram. There’s so much of it now that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the cameras in your phone have gotten so good that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John many of the phone shots. You would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say everything’s portrait mode, yeah. Yeah, yeah, many of the phone shots look like pro camera shots. So yeah, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think anybody cares about the distinction anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I have such a complicated relationship with Instagram because the more time I spend on it, the more I like it, then the more I hate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself because I know it’s Facebook. Well, then there’s so many damn ads.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the ads are out of control there. Speaking of something I would pay for a service for, like, oh God, not that
⏹️ ▶️ John Facebook would ever let us pay to get rid of ads, but I would pay that in a second. It used
⏹️ ▶️ John to be like every couple of pictures there was an ad, and now I think it’s like literally
⏹️ ▶️ John every other picture is an ad. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handle it. Yeah, they’ve really cranked them up. And it’s in the stories, too.
⏹️ ▶️ John and the story like it came the stories like is nowhere is safe from this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it like I don’t and the thing is like I actually like Instagram ads more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than most online ads that get in my way because they actually are creepily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relevant a lot of the time and I’ve actually discovered some really nice products that I’ve bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Instagram ads. So I know I’m like not helping the system at all by actually so you’re the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I’m like the guy response to spam right it’s like that’s like I I have actually bought really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things from Instagram ads and so so has my wife so stiff so like and I heard from other people to like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the products that get advertised to you on Instagram ads often are pretty good and often
⏹️ ▶️ John are pretty well targeted maybe I need to give them more information about me because they do not have my number
⏹️ ▶️ John like there I mean they’re advertising me clothes for example like it’s not yeah what they’re doing there
⏹️ ▶️ John was an ad like I don’t even know what the ads are for the reason they bother me is they’re so big and you have to scroll past them Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I got a launch Instagram’s like it was an ad that I saw just before the show and I like I scroll past
⏹️ ▶️ John it And I don’t it didn’t even realize what it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I think they think I’m a woman There’s a number of reasons why the ads suggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that but but overall like they think I’m a man often enough to sometimes suggest like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know men’s walking shoes and stuff So I don’t know but but I have there’s a couple of like mistargeted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things where like maybe it’s confusing me and Tiff because we are from the same IP address I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John all right so I’ve got Star Trek ad which I mean I guess that’s close but like that’s not a great egg is already know about
⏹️ ▶️ John that show like I’m very aware of it and anyway leaf
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah I’ve seen that one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that’s actually pretty well targeted you’re a homeowner you care about such things probably
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not in the market Greek yogurt? No. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, like, the one, here, let me see, the one Instagram ad I ever saw that
⏹️ ▶️ John I had any interest in, that I actually looked at long enough to know what it is, was that service that I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure everyone gets this Instagram ad. Like, it knows that I play video games, so there’s this thing where they do, like, these metal posters
⏹️ ▶️ John of, like, video game characters and people from movies and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John seen that one? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I looked at that because it had a cool picture of some, like, Destiny or Halo thing
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, and I’m like, all right. They know I play video games and I like those video games and I would like a cool
⏹️ ▶️ John looking thing, but then I didn’t do anything about that. It’s not like I actually bought anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Instagram. And the stories with the green circles now, I’m really confused by that. You have used some of those, Casey?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, that’s close friends. Explain to me how that works. I mean, obviously I know how it’s supposed to be like only
⏹️ ▶️ John your close friends see this, but I didn’t know there was a way to say someone is a close friend at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Instagram. Yeah, so this is only in the last maybe month or so, but you can set up a list. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think there’s a numeric limit if there is, it’s fairly—what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the word I’m looking for? You can put a lot of words. Trevor Burrus Generous. Paul Mueller Generous. Thank you. God, I couldn’t think of the word. Thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So there’s this new thing from last month or so, and it’s where you can specify that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some number of people—and the number is fairly generous—are your close friends. And when you put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up an Instagram story, you can elect to make it public or you can elect for only close friends to see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And naturally, there is no hint that you have put up a close friend story
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to people who are not your close friends. Um, so, you know, if, if you did not mark me as a close
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friend, John, but you did put up an Instagram story for your close friends, then I would be none the wiser,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unless I was like looking over say Marco’s shoulder and I saw you with a green circle around you. But the green indicates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that some of that content, some of, if not all of that content is just for close friends. And I really like that a lot because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think to some degree there’s an implied, I don’t know, seriousness isn’t the word I’m looking for,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but like, Instagram carries a little bit of implied weight in my mind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the things you put on there are pretty or special or interesting. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, especially with Instagram stories, my day-to-day life is really, to anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else in the world, would be quite boring and very uninteresting. And so I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put up a lot on Insta stories unless I’m at a football game or a a concert or traveling or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. But my close friends of which I think the list is, my list
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is like 30 ish. Um, my close friends might give a crap about the boring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey administrivia that I do day to day. And so I might be way more forthcoming with my close
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friends and putting up Insta stories that only they get to see. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, there’s a handful of people that have made me close friends of theirs, which is really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’ve really enjoyed being able to interact with their stories because I know going into it that this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is less polished, I guess, than the sort of thing I would normally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see on Instagram or, or especially an Instagram story. And there’s, there’s a, there’s more,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even more casualness, casuality. I don’t, that’s not a word, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s more casual when it’s with close friends than, than it is even with stories. And I feel like stories is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more casual version of Instagram and a more ephemeral, of course, version of Instagram to begin with.
⏹️ ▶️ John I find this feature terrifying because it’s yet another opportunity for you to not be aware that you aren’t sending it to your close
⏹️ ▶️ John friends when you thought you were. Like, it’s one of those rules, like, never put anything up on the internet that you wouldn’t want the world to see. This
⏹️ ▶️ John feature enables you to do that. You are
⏹️ ▶️ John made to put things – and it’s just, like, can you imagine, like, if you put something in there that’s supposed to – especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if you actually treat it as just your close, close friends and you want to say something important or heartfelt or show some
⏹️ ▶️ John thing where your wife walks by in her underwear in the background or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you thought you were on Close Friends, but you weren’t. It’s just, ugh. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco imagine. I took it for
⏹️ ▶️ John a ride. I’m someone who never does Instagram stories at all, so obviously I’m not the target marketer. Maybe it’s an awesome feature, and
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously you like it. Every time I see that green circle, it just
⏹️ ▶️ John makes me think about all the non-green circles that people thought might have thought were green circles when they were.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I take your point, but they are, I forget exactly how the UI works. I haven’t done it in a few days at least,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I believe there’s like two different buttons on the bottom of the screen when you take a picture or movie or what have you. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty clear which one does what. And there’s no like in, there’s no hoodwinking or any of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other creepy stuff that Facebook typically does yet. There’s the, you know, there’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s none of that to make you, to make it easy for you to make a mistake. I, again, I take your point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It doesn’t mean you’re wrong by any means. But, but I don’t know, I really, really like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m getting some real time follow up from an anonymous person whose name might sound like Schmike, who has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said that he has occasionally put up a he or she, I should say, has occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put up a story that was intended for close friends, but ended up going to the whole world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So such things do happen from time to
⏹️ ▶️ John time. Yeah, the one thing gets me on Instagram is like, I post Instagram so rarely, right. But the I think,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you count the number of times I’ve intentionally posted an Instagram and compared to the number of times I’ve have somehow hit something
⏹️ ▶️ John that accidentally turned on like the it’s either the camera or maybe it’s like the starting a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ John activate that all the time and I’m like, oh, stop whatever you’re doing. Stop. Turn off camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not, you know, it must just because I brush the bottom at the bottom of the thing or maybe I I’m going for another icon,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they don’t have labels on them. They’re not good. I think I do that more often than I intentionally post.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just Just to show the relevance of the ads, I’ve been scrolling through as you guys have been talking and documenting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the ads I’m seeing. Watches, watches. No, surprisingly not. But New York Times subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the first one. That’s actually pretty good. Like, that’s pretty well targeted. I read the New York Times sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t subscribe to it. I’ve thought about subscribing to it. I’m in their demographic. I’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ John seen that ad, and I go to the New York Times all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job. So I got that. I have something called Pop Chart, which like makes posters of things. That was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of a miss. Fancy upstate New York architectural homes in the mountains.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s actually a pretty well targeted at marine layer former sponsor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the show. They make good like soft t shirts. That’s a great ad. I have some other shirts that’s perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco waterproof sneakers. It’s okay at I’ve bought athletic sneakers from there before, so that makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fancy leather dress shoes actually pretty good. I’ve tapped on some of those ads before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe you just buy more stuff than me. That’s more data an iphone cloth case. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know where that one came from, but not too bad. Some kind of fancy mattress for athletes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco t shirts for people who love the big labowski. Okay, a hands free dog leash.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do like a lot of dog posts and finally a men’s like subscription clothing box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco service, which I am like you know pretty much in the demographic for so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these actually pretty well targeted ads to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Meanwhile I’m looking at an ad about as far as I can tell this is hate I can’t hate when I can’t tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ads for. Wait people are going crazy over these MacBook skins John.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco The ad that I’m looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at is I think trying to get me to travel to Iceland
⏹️ ▶️ John not a well targeted ad but the thing is I can’t even tell with the audio off I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t tell the the account that it’s from is L A N D B L A D E X P
⏹️ ▶️ John Lindblad Exp I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That shit’s house pronounced.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway so I’m not going to Iceland. I’m not a big traveler. Like I don’t know where the hell that’s coming from. What else do
⏹️ ▶️ John we have? A smart home blinds closing thing? I own zero
⏹️ ▶️ John smart home things. I’ve seen that. The thing that loops around
⏹️ ▶️ John cord. Yeah. Yeah yeah. That’s a good idea. this one’s closer
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a dongle USB-C dongle all right
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s I mean I guess yeah I just I mean I
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing I used to like about Instagram ads is they would have nice photos in them I’d be like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco well even if
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a thing I care about it has a pretty photo but I think Instagram ad makers have figured out they don’t need to make a nice photo
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore they just need to have like a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco crass come on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well if they’re if they’re like high-end price like the the upstate New York mountain house architecture ones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those photos are beautiful like I I almost like the I kind of make a habit of not liking ads because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I don’t I don’t want to feed them that, but I almost like that one because it was just really nice picture.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t don’t like ads. OPP France is a sneaker company called OPP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m getting my first day that I’ve seen is Goosebumps the movie, which okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say, my favorite sneakers came, it’s the On Running brand,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I discovered that through Instagram ads. I discovered it, I bought the shoes, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re the problem, you’re propping up the entire Instagram
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey economy. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Quaker, chia peach overnight oats.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, finally, finally found a relevant ad. My dog’s GPS, which I already own, is being advertised
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Westin Hotels. Some of my ads are really, really, really annoyingly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and uncomfortably good, but most of them, I feel like, are just shotgun
⏹️ ▶️ Casey approach. Let’s just put this in front of as many eyeballs as we can and see what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happens. Yeah, I mean, a lot of these are clearly like, give me men 25 to 34 or whatever. Yeah, exactly. A lot of it is stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey like that, you can tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But a lot of it is more focused and sometimes very focused. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of them are cheap, garbagey stuff like, back this Kickstarter for this thing you don’t need. Those are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of crappy, but like there’s enough good ones that like I don’t mind the quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the ads anymore. Like when they when they first join my timeline, I was very offended by their presence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because I’ve never had ads before, but now that I’ve now that I’ve had them for a long time and I’m accustomed to them and I’ve gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some actually pretty good products out of them. I don’t mind them as much. I do think that they are a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little bit too frequent like they they need to turn that dial down a little it and of course they never will.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like if I had my ideal case, like I know they’re never going to get rid of the ads completely, but I do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wish there would be fewer of them and have them be more spaced out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, this is tangentially related. Do you ever look at the explore tab, which is the little magnifying glass?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Occasionally, if I feel like I’ve run out of stuff and I’m not tired yet or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is exactly when I use it for the record. But I have found that that tab
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is eerily good at predicting what I would want to see. Like lots of cars,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair bit of nerd stuff, and then a smattering of other things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Feeney Yeah, mine is entirely watches and dogs. Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey all it is. Steve McLaughlin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. John at the bottom on the tab bar, not the home, but the magnifying
⏹️ ▶️ John glass. John Sockell Magnifying glass. I have never tapped on this before in my life. Here we go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin So this is to me exactly what Instagram thinks you are. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my case, it’s stunningly accurate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is not good. It’s showing me Trevor Noah. I did watch
⏹️ ▶️ John a Trevor Noah video on Twitter today so that’s a good guess that I might want to see it. Kind of?
⏹️ ▶️ John Then there’s a bunch of pictures of people that I don’t recognize. I don’t know why I would think I would want to see these people. I have no idea
⏹️ ▶️ John who they are. There’s one picture of food because I follow Nevin’s food account. Do you follow Nevin’s dog? He’s really cute.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I know about Max but I don’t follow dog accounts. No, it’s just a bunch of people I don’t know. Why would I ever? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s so much for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So maybe I just don’t, maybe you don’t put in enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Instagram. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John follow like car accounts, dog accounts, like all, I follow people that I know. So as far as it’s concerned, it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John this person likes pictures of people. I mean, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s true. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the only time I ever hit the like button is on like a picture of somebody that I know or the only thing I’ll do in the Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John vein is cute kids I will almost always give. But that’s cute kids of people I know. It’s not just random cute
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kids, right? First of all, you are missing out by not being a part of dog Instagram. Dog Instagram
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m on, I’m on dog Twitter like I get my dogs on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter. Dog Instagram is better I’m telling
⏹️ ▶️ John you. I mean maybe but like I don’t I feel like I’m cheating on my dog plus my dog is really cute anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That sweet precious angel.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah I get I get all the dog loving I need in person.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah no I’m just looking at Instagram just just to see and just to see pictures from people I know and that’s it so maybe I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John using it wrong but whatever that’s what I do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing for me that kind of like poisons my Explorer tab sometimes is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s, there’s a large part of Instagram that I normally don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see any of and don’t want to see any of, which is basically people just screenshotting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco viral tweets and trying to make like viral memes spread on their Instagram accounts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they just stole from Twitter and other social networks. Like, so it’s just like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I’m coming here to not be on Twitter. And then when they bring Twitter to me. It kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you seen the stories
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, is that a thing now?
⏹️ ▶️ John God. Yeah, you can do a story of someone else’s story. Oh, good. And I was like, as if these things aren’t blurry
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco enough, now you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John do someone else’s story within your story? Ugh, don’t like it. I think maybe that’s a feature
⏹️ ▶️ John that only certain high-influence people have, but I see it and I’m like, it is like you said, it’s like pictures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, there is a thing where if somebody tags you in their story, it gives you the quick ability to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco re story it in like one of those little like inset things. But yeah, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m talking I’m talking more about like it’s just like people like screenshotting memes and gifts and Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco posts and making Instagram posts out of
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, or taking picture of their computer screen as a story of them holding their phone for their computer screen. It’s like great.