399: Off the Pouch Lifestyle
08 Oct 2020Who are you, Speed?
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
- Follow-up:
- Facebook vs. Apple
- Merchants have been allowed to add surcharges for credit card transactions since January 2013 (via Jordan Ryan Moore)
- Adam’s watch battery update
- Cell tower “trees” (via Nathaniel)
- eFUSE
- Baby Monitors
- Eufy SpaceView
- Previous recommnedation: Infant Optics DXR-8
- iPhone 11 Exit Interview
- Apple Event
- Potential iPhone 12 Sizes
- iPhone 11: 6.1”
- iPhone 11 Pro: 5.8” or 6.5”
- iPhone 12: 5.4” or 6.1”
- iPhone 12 Pro: 6.1” or 6.7”
- MacRumors 5.4-inch iPhone 12 Size Estimator
- Thursday’s child has far to go…
- John’s “code”
- Apple stops selling rival earphones/speakers
- Potential iPhone 12 Sizes
- House Judiciary Committee antitrust report
#askatp- What’s the deal with disk images, anyway? (via Andy)
- What’s the reasonable lifespan of a phone? (via Ian Uymatiao)
- What’s the point in a “real” camera? (via Luke Shulman)
- Post-show: More on the Sony α7C
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Chapters
- It’s been a week 🖼️
- Facebook-story correction
- Credit-card correction
- Adam’s Watch battery life
- Cell “trees” in affluent areas
- eFUSE
- Baby-monitor recommendation
- Sponsor: Hover
- iPhone 11 Pro exit interview
- Sponsor: Mint Mobile
- iPhone 12 expectations
- Hi, Speed 🖼️
- Sponsor: Linode
- House Judiciary report
- #askatp: Why DMGs?
- #askatp: 10-year phones?
- #askatp: Big camera for baby?
- Ending theme
- John’s camera-shopping
It’s been a week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had a terrible week for technology.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A few episodes ago I described my choice to not get another Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the beach, but instead just get a couple of large SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in an external USB enclosure, and just use them as local disks and host Time Machine for that and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gotta interrupt you. Are you in a mental place where I’m allowed to laugh at you for for your misfortune
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or are you in need of me to be sympathetic and understanding?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have almost ordered a Synology to fix the problems I’m having.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you’re really trying me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I’m not quite there yet. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really trying me here. Okay, I’m going to try to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco answer your question, you are totally allowed to gloat about how right now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my solution is not working well. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so all kidding aside, what’s going on?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I got these big SSDs in. I had some weirdness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where sometimes they would unmount themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco After the first time machine backup, it took a while, and after the first time machine backup I started getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco errors that they couldn’t complete another backup. And the errors would report
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of weird file system problem. So I would run like the disk repair healing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing and it would fail. Like, okay, well that’s good. So I tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blowing away the partition, start over, you know, like erase the whole disc, start over, start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time machine again. And it couldn’t even complete a whole backup. It would just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like stall for a while and eventually fail. Or it would do, there’s this weird step of time machine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where like after you do, it seems like after you do a first time machine backup, it then tries to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco encrypt the whole disk for some reason. This is all still on Catalina, by the way. It wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get through that process. Like it would just stall. And so I eventually concluded, okay, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very possible that these SSDs are already bad. Or at least one of them is. Which,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I know there are these like micron 7.68 terabyte SSDs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re a very low price for that capacity. But it’s still not a low price in absolute
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terms. So like, this is a decent amount of money at stake, and for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SSDs that are just outside of the Amazon return window, so I’d have to like deal with Micron
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directly, which I don’t wanna have to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John What kind of case are they in though? That’s the thing that I would suspect, because you have the two separate sticks, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John being joined by like a hardware RAID zero thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It joined in this kind of like Cable Matters box that Cable Matters doesn’t appear to make because a few other sellers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Amazon sell the exact same box, and they’re brand names for the same price. And it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hardware RAID thing on it, but I have the RAID disabled, so they just appear as two separate disks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I also thought, maybe it’s the enclosure. That’s certainly where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my mind went first.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, but you’re using them as two separate disks, but which one of the two are you targeting with Time Machine?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Only one of them. The other one was my big archive drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But fortunately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t put anything on it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you try the other one with Time Machine? I probably should have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attempted that. No is the answer, I didn’t. Anyway, what did Micron say? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t go to them yet, because first I figured, well, let me order a couple of cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enclosures that are just single disc regular enclosures, just so I can rule out, is the enclosure being buggy?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As I’m working on that, as I have no time machine, Tiff’s laptop dies.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I heard about that. That was the overheating thing, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if it was overheating. However, as part of the, so the symptom is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just would not power on no matter what you did, no matter what kind of crazy key commands, what kind of crazy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SMC resets and PM, whatever resets and all the like reset the T to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every possible thing that we could think of to do. None of it would make this computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turn on, followed every single possible thing. And after a while of doing some of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things, Tiff’s like, oh my God, I smell burning plastic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And sure enough, out of the right side vent, it was the distinct smell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of burnt electronics. You know, like, I don’t know if it’s like a burnt capacitor or what, but it’s like, it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John smell of a dead power supply.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smell that. Yeah, oh yeah, we didn’t take a big long sniff. But yeah, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the distinctive smell of a dead, you know, power supply or something, coming from inside the laptop. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have worried that it was a battery fire situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did, and in fact, we brought it outside, holding it over a pit of sand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while I continue to try to get it to power on just in case it would catch additional fire.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, is that a butterfly keyboard?
⏹️ ▶️ John is. Because sand is its mortal enemy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, I thought of that as well. What a fitting end. Of course, it’s the butterfly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard. This fricking keyboard. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so Tiff’s laptop is totally dead. This laptop is only like 15 months old.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the 2019 15-inch, the very last butterfly keyboard 15-inch.
⏹️ ▶️ John It just couldn’t bear to go on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So that, and guess what? We bought it last year and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my standard policy is I don’t buy AppleCare on most things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is the very first time it’s ever really bitten me hard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, did it bite you? Because now you get to get one with a good keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we look at this and we’re like, Okay, well, this computer is a $2,300-ish a year ago computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we don’t want it to be worth nothing now.
⏹️ ▶️ John People usually don’t buy them on the used market once the magic smoke has escaped.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly. And we figured it would probably not cost $2,300 to repair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it out of warranty, and sure enough, it didn’t. Apple repaired it for something like $750. It’s on its way back to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us now. We’ll see if it’s actually repaired. I hope so. Did they tell you what they thought was wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s funny actually. Again, I’ve never actually seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an Apple paid repair process for a computer. I don’t think I’ve ever actually done a paid
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ll give you a parts and labor breakdown at the end of it. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that also happened. God for Backblaze because we didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a time machine during this. So we had no time machine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because my time machine disk died. Tiff’s laptop then died and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my laptop works. It worked in the sense that it was running the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Big Sur beta and it functioned. But now my laptop has to then take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over and be two people’s laptop. And we’ve been using TIFFS for a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things because none of my audio apps work yet on Big Sur.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we had to keep like a Catalina laptop operating in the house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we still needed that. So it’s like, okay, well we still kind of need a Catalina laptop. I’m not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go buy a new one now, like right before the ARM transition. This is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible time. I’m not gonna buy something now, there is no way I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rationalize it. Oh, well if I buy some new thing I want, then we can sell this when it gets back. Like, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s no way to rationalize that right now. This is a terrible time. So, I’m just like, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well let me, I think the most pragmatic thing to do, I was having a lot of problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with my laptop’s installation of Mac OS anyway. Like, and this is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily Big Sur’s fault. I was having issues under Catalina. Severe performance problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the point where you kind of can’t tell at first, like, is this a hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem? It’s things like every keystroke I would type in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mail would bog down the system, or changing the selection between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things in mail and other apps, it was just slow. It would take a while to load every new thing it was doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So much of it was just slow. And sometimes I would see problems like what people have reported
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with, I think it’s accountsd, This is a common issue coming up recently for a lot of people where like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some background demon in Catalina would just use, and Big Sur, would just use massive amounts of CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power for no apparent reason. Whether it’s like FS events D or accounts D or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other various things. You know, certainly the, what’s the privacy one? TCC, something like that or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the privacy one is that one too. There were so many weird problems with that installation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, you know, I’ve wanted for a while to do a like clean install on this laptop. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we suddenly are in need of a laptop that is not running this beta OS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why don’t I just refer to it and do a clean install? So I tackled that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during this time because we really needed a laptop that was, you know, usable so that tip could use it while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hers was out for repair and that I could have my audio needs satisfied better and get rid of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive performance problem. So going through all that now, reinstalling all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that stuff, and then, oh by the way, during this process, the entire family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got a virus. Not THE virus, but A virus. A real life one, a like, you know, kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of medium grade cold. Not only was this not a good time to lose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Time Machine, and not only was this not a good time to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need possibly another laptop, This was especially not a good time to get a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cold. This is not at all a time that you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have a cold. So in the middle of all this, we also have to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, first of all, freak out about whether this is a virus or the virus, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get our kid to be able to go back to school, we had to all get COVID tests. So that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was fun too. So, it’s been…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco negative, by the way, but it’s been a week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have to congratulate you. I don’t know if that’s what I’m looking for, but I admire that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you didn’t somehow, like Marco of just a year or two ago, turn this or end this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey story with, and then I bought a Mac Pro. Because some way, somehow, Marco of a year or two ago would have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ended this story with, and then I bought a Mac Pro. Would it have made sense? No. But that was the Marco way. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you didn’t do that this time. So I’m very proud of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I almost bought like seven new laptops in the process. Yeah, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got the pressure for we’ll talk about this later when we talk about the Apple app, but the pressure for a new laptop in this house building and I keep
⏹️ ▶️ John fending them off like just no, you said it would be the next Apple. And it’s like, no, maybe not this one, but just
⏹️ ▶️ John not buying another Intel laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, like, if you really, really, really, really have to find and I And I was telling Titchfield,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not a great time to need a replacement big laptop, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the big ones might not be the first ones. Like it’s my theory, maybe we’ll get to this later, but it’s my theory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the Macs that need discrete GPUs to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitive in their category might be coming later. Like I don’t think we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting the discrete GPU category of Macs going ARM first.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s way more likely that the things go ARM first are Macs that historically had only integrated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPUs. So basically, the small laptops, the cheapest iMac, and the Mac Mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But who knows? Ugh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sorry. That’s no fun. Although, I am more than a little bit amused
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the end of this story might involve you buying a new Synology.
Facebook-story correction
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have some follow-up. We, largely me, but, but we,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, totally, uh, missed on the Facebook versus Apple thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from last week. So this was, okay. Can listeners, all of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your angry email do not direct to me this time. John is the one who’s saying that we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey handled it. Okay. So what we didn’t have in our notes and what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t talk about and what I think we should have talked about was the fact that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple takes 30% of this purchase that was shown under a button on Facebook, that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a button where you were paying an individual or like a small company.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So like I want to go take an online fitness course and so I can purchase access for $9.99
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then Apple takes 30% of this purchase, learn more. Well, I had thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reading our show notes and not having spent enough time reading the article apparently, that Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was the one losing out on 30%. And that was not correct. What was actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happening was the local business was the one losing out on the 30% and Facebook was just trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to let you know, Hey, you know, Apple’s being a little greedy here. They’re taking 30% of this. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not taking anything. They’re taking 30%. And I grossly misunderstood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. And furthermore, after a bunch of complaining and moaning from a bunch to people about this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very issue. We missed last week because this had happened before we spoke about it. Apple decided
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not to take that 30% cut after all, at least for now. So we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did miss some important context there. And I, for one, am sorry about that. John, explain why we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not wrong, apparently.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you did complain about Facebook in a few ways that were not fair, but here’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is interesting that, like, remember this issue where, like, Apple replied about the 30% thing and their reason was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it goes against this guideline that says you can’t present the customers with irrelevant information, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like the whole situation with how much money Facebook were taking is mostly irrelevant
⏹️ ▶️ John information in the context of how this item was presented. Maybe not in the context of you guys going on and
⏹️ ▶️ John complaining about how mean Facebook was after that. But anyway, this item
⏹️ ▶️ John from last week, this was the point of the item. Apple is telling Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ John not to tell the truth about what Apple does, and that’s a crappy thing for Apple to do. That was the
⏹️ ▶️ John item. It was, hey, Apple doing something crappy. Like, why shouldn’t Facebook be able to tell the truth? It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of shady, it’s kind of crappy, right? They shouldn’t be able to stand behind their business arrangement, it’s bad, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was the story. You would have thought from the feedback that the story was Facebook is evil.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was, no, Apple is the bad guy in this story. Unequivocally, the entire point of the thing was
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wouldn’t let a developer say that they take 30%, which was the truth at the time, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And isn’t that crappy of Apple? But the Facebook people came out of the woodwork and said, how dare you be so mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Facebook? I’m like, and for the longest time, I’m like, wait, what? Mean to Facebook? No, we were telling you
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple was the bad guy in this story. Then I listened back to the show and I heard that some mean things were said about Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ John later, which was unfair. And we should have clarified that, you know, that
⏹️ ▶️ John this was just, you know, that they were, what Facebook was calling out Apple for was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t blame us, but this is Apple doing this thing, which is the point we kind of made is like, look, Facebook’s trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John turn sentiment against Apple to say, look, it’s not Facebook doing this mean thing. Let me tell you
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly in print right underneath the button if you’re worried that not all this money is going to this thing, it’s Apple’s fault.
⏹️ ▶️ John And which we agreed with, it was Apple’s fault, like that was their requirement or whatever, right? And so that part of the story was
⏹️ ▶️ John also true. But it seems like all anyone heard in the story was Facebook is mean, which I don’t understand at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In all fairness, we were missing some critical context. But also, Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a horrible company. Both things can be true.
⏹️ ▶️ John We can’t have another barrage of that feedback, Marcos. Stop saying mean things about Facebook. They’re innocent.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I feel like it is irrelevant information. Yes, this was about a live event, and Facebook wasn’t taking any money and giving
⏹️ ▶️ John it all, and aren’t they nice and magnanimous, and Apple was the meanie, which lends itself to the point of the
⏹️ ▶️ John story, which was Apple was being stupid and or mean. That was the point. You know
⏹️ ▶️ John that, hey, Apple’s, you know, taking this money and not even letting Facebook explain what’s happening. So
⏹️ ▶️ John there we go. And yeah, Apple did back down. Although Apple backed down temporarily, we’ll put a link
⏹️ ▶️ John in the show notes to a story about this. It seems like Apple has not committed to forever allowed this to happen. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is just saying, oh, for now we won’t take the 30%, but it seems like they reserved the right to later
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, you know what, we want that 30% again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got to tell you, we get a preposterous amount of feedback for,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the show, which usually is very good. And that means people are listening, people care, and that’s wonderful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But when you read a pile of feedback, and it’s defending
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Chris No, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re digging yourself into gig, Casey. Remember, everyone’s all friendly to Facebook. They’re banning QAnon, they’re stopping
⏹️ ▶️ John political ads after the election, which makes very little sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But no, we’re only saying nice
⏹️ ▶️ John things about Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey Speak for yourself. I agree to nothing. Facebook is terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Chris Sorry, Facebook fans, I tried. I didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All I’m saying is that it was an uncomfortable position to be in. I’m not saying I was right. I’m just saying, my word, when everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming to the defense of Facebook, it makes you wonder what on earth did you do wrong?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, I was wondering about it because, like I said, it was baffling to me. It was like, when did we say something
⏹️ ▶️ John mean about Facebook other than the normal sort of baseline level of our joint hatred of Facebook, which were,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s unspoken most of the time. By
⏹️ ▶️ John incidentally, in the last episode I recorded of Rektifs, I also complained about Facebook a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John you love hearing me say mean things about Facebook, that’s another podcast you can listen to. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John in the context of the story about how Apple is mean and dumb for not letting people tell the truth about their cut,
⏹️ ▶️ John the information about how Facebook was being magnanimous and letting all the proceeds of this thing go to the live event thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John irrelevant information, but it is true, so now we have said it on the program. And Apple People can’t stop
Credit-card correction
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jordan Ryan Moore writes to tell us that merchants have been allowed to add surcharges for credit card transactions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since January of 2013. Yeah, this was my
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey fault. We don’t need all
⏹️ ▶️ John the details in this, but I heard two things about this from the feedback. One was this bit about how there was a lawsuit
⏹️ ▶️ John and people wanted to be able to charge different amounts and all that other stuff. And the other thing was that there was
⏹️ ▶️ John actually a law passed to make it so that credit card companies weren’t allowed to require this. And I’m not sure if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John both true or if they both combined or they both did the same thing. But it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John that old rule about not being allowed to charge two different prices and basically
⏹️ ▶️ John making the vendor eat the cost of the credit card transaction, they can’t pass it on to their customer,
⏹️ ▶️ John is no longer in effect. And the thing I forgot to mention in the last show about this was that Apple used to do the same thing back in the
⏹️ ▶️ John day. I also don’t remember the details of this, but remember a time when Apple said, oh, you can sell a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John on the web and also an in-app purchase, but they have to be the same price?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was a very short-lived thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone talks about as though it was a much longer-lived thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like they stopped doing it probably for the same reason, that like, you know, people said, well, come on, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John it was, we remember it so much because it was so audacious. It’s like, you’re gonna charge 30% and then
⏹️ ▶️ John say, you know, you can’t pass that on to the customer because it puts us at a disadvantage. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of like telling the truth. Like, look, Apple is taking a bite out of this. If you buy it from the web, you can get it cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John because Apple’s byte isn’t there, right? And that was something that Apple didn’t want conveyed.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the same way the credit card makers didn’t want people, saying, oh, if I pay for a credit card, it’s 1% more, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna pay with cash then. All right, I think the credit card thing lasted a lot longer than the App Store thing, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the instinct is the same to try to hide the fact that you are taking
⏹️ ▶️ John a byte out of somebody’s, you know, income. Real time follow up, because I don’t wanna get email about
⏹️ ▶️ John this. According to this article that we will link in the show notes, which may be a bit old, Ten states have laws restricting
⏹️ ▶️ John any type of surcharge fees. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oklahoma, and Texas. So, as with anything in these United States, things tend
⏹️ ▶️ John to vary from state to state. Even things that you might not expect, like rules about how much you can charge
⏹️ ▶️ John when someone uses a credit card.
Adam’s Watch battery life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And furthermore, I would love to hear an update on Adam’s watch battery, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah. So I said last week that after the very first day of school with Adam’s family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set up independent watch that he only had like 33% battery left.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Second day was way better. The main difference is on the second day. So not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it just like not the first full day of use so that any kind of like, you know, background
⏹️ ▶️ Marco process that the system is doing with a new OS install, like that, you know, that had time to complete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that was ever a thing on watchOS, but also on day two, I changed the watch from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco raise to wake to tap to wake only. So this is like, you know, so it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just respond to a wrist turning and turn the screen on, you have to tap the screen to turn it on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as a result of that change and whatever, you know, time has passed, now the typical school
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day ends around 60 to 70% battery instead of 30% battery. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so battery life right now seems to no longer be a concern. So, so far so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. And we remain very happy with the functionality of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the family setup Apple Watch.
Cell “trees” in affluent areas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on Nathaniel writes with regard to cell tower trees I work in finance for a very large cell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone tower company The fake trees are almost always a local zoning rule. The local government thinks they look better than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past rules Mandating their use for any tower those fake branches do break off in the wind which requires
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maintenance The fake pine trees are just the tip of the quote-unquote stealth structures I’ve seen palm trees
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cacti flagpoles church steeples faux water tanks streetlights repurposed smokestacks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey faux modern art installations, etc You are also correct that the more rich
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the area, generally speaking…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John You can do it. I believe in you. You
⏹️ ▶️ John take multiple runs at it and Marco will put the right one in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey during the interview. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no. I’m not even going to do it. The less receptive the town is to having cell towers. The most likely place in those instances where a town
⏹️ ▶️ Casey might have a tower is on the DPW’s Department of Public Works, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that right? Department of Public Works,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. Or police station property. and then the tower company provides space to the municipal service for their radios.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I love the idea of making fake trees and then having to pay as the limbs break off because,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, first of all, limbs fall off real trees all the time. And second of all, real trees are surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ John sturdy as compared to manmade ones and surprisingly resilient when it comes to wind. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of inevitable that all these sort of useless cosmetic only things like you’re basically making a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of things to catch the wind that serve no functional purpose, but absolutely will bend and break off in the wind.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now you have something else that you need to do. Maintain your hideously ugly tree. We got a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John one batch of good feedback we got from last show is tons of people sending us pictures of the hilarious
⏹️ ▶️ John cell phone trees. And I did see a couple of cacti in there and weird palm trees
⏹️ ▶️ John and pine trees and just you name it. Cell cell towers are everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John except near rich people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m sorry, if you didn’t want to say rich, what else could you say? I was just thinking about it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I was going to go the other direction, so I’m glad I didn’t say
eFUSE
⏹️ ▶️ John You just need to get that pathway. You know, it’s like an eFuse.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been reading too much about consoles. You know what an eFuse is? No. This kind of blows my mind.
⏹️ ▶️ John Electronic fuse is inside CPUs, right? It’s like, it’s a fuse, just like a regular fuse,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s inside the CPU and you can blow it at any time with software, essentially. And then once it’s blown,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey What? And when… Wait, what?
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget which of the Xboxes, maybe it was the 360, maybe it was the most recent one, But anyway, they used
⏹️ ▶️ John e-fuses to, they would blow e-fuses with updates to prevent you from being
⏹️ ▶️ John able to revert to a previous version.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, wow. What? So how many e-fuses are there?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how many, but it’s like, it’s like that’s the pulling out the big guns to try. And of course it never actually stops
⏹️ ▶️ John piracy. Like the pirates are incredibly clever and they find a way around it, but it just makes it harder. Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John did not do this apparently, but Microsoft did. I’m like, man, can you imagine the pressure of like accidentally bricking or
⏹️ ▶️ John screwing something up when you know you’re literally blowing tiny hardware fuses inside people’s consoles when they
⏹️ ▶️ John update. It’s terrifying.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m also told, a real-time follow-up from Jelly, that the Switch also has e-fuses, apparently. Try
⏹️ ▶️ John think about this type of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Man, that’s weird.
Baby-monitor recommendation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on. With regard to an Ask ATP question from last week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and baby monitors, I had recommended the Infant Optics DVR something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something, I forget exactly what it was, it’s in the show notes from last week. We had a handful of people write in, including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a friend of the show, Dan Provost from Studio Neat, recommending the Wirecutter Pick, which is the, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess, Eufy Space View. And Dan writes, I had the same Infant Optics Monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as Casey for our first baby, but we decided to treat ourselves to a new one for our new baby. We went with the Wirecutter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pick, the Eufy, and it is significantly better in every way except the kickstand, just in case you’re directing your parents
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a baby monitor. They definitely want the Eufy and not the infant optics, which had a good run but is outdated.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, I fully agree with Marco, I would never want a Nest style solution even if the quality and latency were flawless. Just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too annoying to be constantly opening an app versus having a constant monitor. So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Eufy, from what I understand, is somebody who gave a crap designed a baby monitor. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not flawless. The kickstand, I guess, sucks. It looks like the Nintendo Switch kickstand, which definitely sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s also no lights. The Infant Optics has a series of LEDs that will light up so you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can have the monitor screen off. You can have the volume off. You can still get a level
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of how much volume there is in the room. The Eufy doesn’t have that, but apparently in every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other way, it’s actually modern. Whereas the Infant Optics one is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clearly out of like the mid 2010s. And coincidentally, the Eufy SpaceView came
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out like six months after Michaela was born. And so that’s why I was not at all aware of it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you haven’t yet bought a monitor, I’ve heard and would recommend the Eufy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SpaceView because apparently it is very good.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like these are all tongue twisters. What Casey was saying was infant as in a baby infant,
⏹️ ▶️ John infant optics, right? So that’s the first one, infant optics, that’s infant space
⏹️ ▶️ John And then yuffie is E-U-F-Y, which apparently is the smart home
⏹️ ▶️ John sub-brand of Anker, someone in the chat room says. Oh, I didn’t know that. Oh, yeah. E-U-F-Y.
Sponsor: Hover
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Hover. Get your domain name at hover.com
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever make. Everything I make, I first have to have a name before I can really get into working on it. It’s just, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just the kind of person I am. I need to get a good name. And the very first thing I do once I think of the good name is I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to Hover and I search to see what kind of domain names I can get for that name. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hover has over 300 domain name extensions to choose from when you’re building your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new site or your brand online. No matter what you want to build, there’s a domain name waiting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it. They also have excellent technical support if you have any questions. And their support team,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only are they really good, I’ve actually, I’ve used them a couple times and they’ve been wonderful. But they also don’t try to upsell you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, a lot of places, if you contact support, they see it as like a sales opportunity try to push you into like higher plans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or more add ons. They don’t do that. They only work hard to help you get online. They offer free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who is privacy protection, a very clean, easy to use UI for managing all your domains.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they have monthly sales on popular top level domains. So it’s hard not to see why hover is a popular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco choice for people starting all kinds of businesses. It’s also it’s just a wonderful thing being a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hover customer. It’s super easy to use. They respect you, you can get your work done quickly.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco your domain name. Make a name for yourself with Hover.
iPhone 11 Pro exit interview
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is this the time, and I’m asking not sarcastically, is this the time that we do the report card year in review
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing that Marco came up with a few years ago or am I crazy?
⏹️ ▶️ John Exit interview, he used to call it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s what it was. Thank you. I knew report card wasn’t right. I couldn’t think of what the name of it was. Thank you. The exit interview.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’re obviously referring to there’s going to be an Apple event on this coming Tuesday. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know what day, what is that? The 13th. number 13. There’ll be an Apple event. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the last week before our iPhones, our current iPhones are pieces
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of utter garbage. And so now is the time to do the iPhone 11
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro report card. John, what- Exit interview. Sorry, exit interview. See, we got to change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show notes. I’m like Ron Burgundy, for goodness sakes. So anyways, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, what are you on? Are you on a 10 or an 11 Pro? 10S, my wife has the 11 Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I am on the 11 Pro, Marco, you’re on an 11 Pro as well, right? I sure am. Okay. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still love this darn phone. The one major
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complaint I have about it is that I feel like, I think I talked about this on the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like this screen has been scratched to smithereens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it is probably my fault. I’m not saying it’s not my fault, but it is scratched
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so badly in so many places, so much worse than any other phone I’ve ever had. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I treat it the same way I’ve treated every iPhone since the 3GS, which was my first.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is scratched to death. Marco, do you find the same thing on your phone?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually haven’t had that problem on the 11. I did have that problem on, I forget whether it was the 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the 10S. One of them was the same problem for me, where I didn’t abuse it anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or less than any other phone, but it just got scratched to hell for some reason on the screen. Because it’s hard when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco designing the screen materials. There’s a lot of tension between various physical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco characteristics to optimize for. If you optimize for scratch resistance, that usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes it harder and more brittle and more prone to cracks when people drop it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re being pragmatic about how you’re designing a phone, I think you probably want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to protect against shattering when it’s dropped more than you wanna protect against
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minor scratchability, you know, from just like the surface being a little bit soft. And even though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s worse for people like us who don’t drop our phones, it’s much worse for us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you’re optimizing for the whole population, I can see why you would make that decision.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure, yeah. And otherwise, I really, really love this phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love the camera system. I still think it looks a little quirky having the three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big lenses back there, but as with the notch, like within a couple of weeks, I mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have been able to ignore it. The notch also, I don’t mind it at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And in fact, I remember when we were all about to get our iPhone 10s that I thought,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, this is gonna bother me for a long time. And it didn’t, you know, the notch really doesn’t bother me. I do think it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be neat to have one of the more circular pinhole style setups like the Android phones have,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’m not going to complain if the iPhone 12 or whatever’s coming next has a notch as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it’s a big deal, but the camera system’s great. The phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is still fast. I don’t even know what size mine is, but I’m not running out of space.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love this thing with the exception of the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting scratched to smithereens. And I am really hopeful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the next one, by the way, mine is a 256 gig model. I’m really hoping that the next one does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey indeed have the square sides, like the rumors say, because I don’t mind the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey curved sides, and it’s not the most slippery phone I’ve ever used in my life, but it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slippery. And I feel like having those solid or straight sides,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flat sides, would be extremely nice. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I suppose.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really, really love this phone, and I am definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna get a new one because I’m a sucker, but I am not actively looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get rid of this one as much as I am actively looking to get a new screen or a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new glass on the screen, which I could do to this, but you know, I would be without a phone for a little while. Marco, other thoughts on the 11 Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think I agree with much of what you’ve said about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One regression of the 11 Pro compared to the XS, in my opinion, is they changed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the texturing on the back. Like the back of these phones have alternated between like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost like a sandblaster kind of textured finish and a flat polished glass finish.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And on the 11, I believe this was when they switched it. It used to be that the whole back of it was glossy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then the area around the camera cutout was matte. And with the 11 series,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire back was matte and the camera area was glossy. What that did for me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was make the phone impossible to use without a case. Like the 10 and the 10S, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would occasionally, like if I was wearing like tight jeans, you know, like my skinny pants,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I wouldn’t want the bulk of a giant case or any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant phone really in my pocket. And so to minimize the bulk, I would like take the phone out of the case for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few days and use it like that. And with the 11, I cannot do that. Like the 11 Pro, excuse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me. I think the 11 actually, the non-Pro I think actually flips it around and actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fixes this. Anyway, the Pro, I can’t do that. It’s so slippery. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use this phone without a case. And it’s the first phone in a long time that I can say that about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like usually, like ever since the 6 series, I’ve been using cases just because the stupid, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, bar of soap sides design made case use nearly inevitable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I could get by it with previous phones. This one, I can’t. It’s just, it’s way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too slippery. so much more slippery than even the XS was. So besides that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am overall very satisfied with it, but I really do wish for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lighter weight and a slightly smaller phone. I’m very curious about the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rumored slightly smaller one, the 5 point something inch one. Unless that phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has some kind of major feature cut downsides, I’ll probably go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that this year because this phone is just a little bit big and a little bit heavy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That being said, you know, the screen is great. I love the screen when I’m using it, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m not just carrying it, when I’m not trying to wedge it into a pocket or move it around so it’s not like all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sticking out weird as I walk, but I just, I don’t like how this phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels in my pocket, it’s too big still. It’s not like super massive, like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Max, but it’s bigger than I would like. So I’m really hoping for the smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. I’m also hoping that if a smaller one comes, that it doesn’t sacrifice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too much on battery life. Because historically, part of the trade-off of bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus smaller phones is that the bigger phones get bigger batteries, which does make them heavier,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco admittedly. But that’s usually a pretty good feature with the big ones. The 11
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has such great battery life, the 11 Pro, rather, has such great battery life, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the smaller one that comes out allegedly next week has significantly less battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life in practice, that’s gonna be disappointing. But I think I’m still gonna probably go for the smaller one unless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if the camera’s not anywhere near as good. Now, if I just lose the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 2X lens, but I still have like the regular and the wide, I think I’d probably still take that trade off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and take the small one. I wouldn’t want, yeah, like I wouldn’t have thought this a year ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I actually have been using the wide more than I’ve expected to. And I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using the 2X less than I expect to. Maybe if I suddenly lost it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would realize I miss it more than I thought. But I’m looking forward to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a smaller phone. And if it takes the loss of a 2X camera to get that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and nothing else about it is really significantly worse, then I will probably take that trade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off. Finally, again, I know this is a long shot, I really still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am so tired of lightning because my house is full of wires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re all different. And I have to have different chargers and different wires. I gotta always know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which cable I just, the entire world has moved to USB-C already. Everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like every accessory, like everything is USB-C except
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone. And I know there are reasons. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will assert that those reasons are overruled by the incredible benefit we would have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the iPhone charged with USB-C. So I really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope Apple will eventually do this. I don’t know if it’s gonna happen this year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or next year or never, but every single year I’m going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I completely agree with you. I would love to just simplify my life and go all USB-C.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also agree with you, I don’t think it’s gonna happen anytime soon, if at all. I think we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are way more likely to get a Touch ID sensor on the sleep wake button or lock button,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever it’s called, than we are USB-C. And I’m not particularly confident about either of those things,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am way more confident about Touch ID than I am USB-C. But I don’t know, we’ll see what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happens. So John, this is an on-year for you, right? So I presume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re looking to upgrade some sort of iPhone 12?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and since my wife has the 11 Pro, like I asked her to come down and bring me her phone
⏹️ ▶️ John so I can look at it, check the screen for scratches and stuff to verify Casey’s situation. And
⏹️ ▶️ John because she loves me and cares so much about this show, she said, how long do you need it?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I promised her it would only be a short amount of time. Pokemon Go is a terrible thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John people, don’t get addicted. So I looked at her phone and there are definitely more scratches
⏹️ ▶️ John than there are in my XS, But she does not treat her phone like I treat mine. She just
⏹️ ▶️ John throws it into her purse next to her keys. She doesn’t care. Like, just, it is, she
⏹️ ▶️ John does things with her phone. I don’t understand how it’s still in one piece, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, to be fair, nobody should treat their phone the way you treat yours.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, that’s another thing I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John to get to. So you mentioned, you know, people who don’t drop our phones. Like, I’ve never broken an iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John which, you know, maybe I’m getting lucky or maybe I just take care of it. But this phone and many of my other phones
⏹️ ▶️ John have fallen from height. So for example, this phone in, within its lifetime got knocked off of the mantle
⏹️ ▶️ John over my fireplace because I was dusting and one of the, you know, and it was on the mantle, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s from a mantle, a pretty high, you know, fireplace mantle height onto a hardwood floor,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And this is a 10S, right? And it didn’t shatter, right? And it’s been knocked off my nightstand who knows how many
⏹️ ▶️ John times when I’m groggy in the morning, reaching for it and knock it up, but then it’s just falling into carpet. So it’s not a big deal. Although sometimes it
⏹️ ▶️ John falls into hardwood depending on which side it falls off. But the point is this thing has hit the ground. It’s just got the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple leather case on it. It’s hit the ground from reasonable heights many times as I either grew up for it or don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John notice it’s there and accidentally knock it over, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t shattered. And this is the XS, right? So this is the one with the ostensibly harder,
⏹️ ▶️ John easier to shatter, but harder to scratch screen. But anyway, I agree with Marco that I
⏹️ ▶️ John think the trade-off of not shattering is the right way to go with this. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like my wife does not take good care of it, but I had to actually clean the screen really assess
⏹️ ▶️ John how many scratches there were without me cleaning the screen off is really hard to tell like none of my scratches
⏹️ ▶️ John are so big that I would even have noticed them if I hadn’t been looking for them so I don’t think that’s that big of a deal
⏹️ ▶️ John but yeah this is my year for the phone and I haven’t been keeping up with the rumors mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John because I figure like well I don’t know like I figured everything would be fine I know all the rumors about the different sizes
⏹️ ▶️ John and all that other stuff but the thing I had been wondering you know and I saw the you know supposedly
⏹️ ▶️ John flat-sided case and everything I asked So the thing I’ve been wondering and I could never keep track of, which is like, so
⏹️ ▶️ John if the two sizes, I know there’s supposed to be a smaller one, but not as small as the SE and then a
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger one. But like my question was always, okay, but like are any of them going to be the same size
⏹️ ▶️ John as my XS or what is going to be the one that is closest in size to my
⏹️ ▶️ John XS, right? And the reason I asked that is because I felt like the seven was the right size. I felt
⏹️ ▶️ John like the 10 was a little bit too big, but now that I’ve had the 10 size for a while,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, okay, well, I appreciate the bigger screen and the size isn’t so big
⏹️ ▶️ John that it really, that it, you know, is too big for me. So what, you know, so when
⏹️ ▶️ John I buy a new phone next time, I don’t think I want the small one because I kind of like having the screen as big as it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it went back to the seven size, that might be okay, but then somebody, I’m assuming Casey, has put a bunch of the rumored sizes
⏹️ ▶️ John in here. And it seems like my only choice is if I want to get the top of the line phone
⏹️ ▶️ John after the event next week is a phone that is 3 tenths of an inch bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John than my current phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and that’s not a small difference. Like that puts it, I believe, at the same size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as like the XR line, right? The XR and base 11.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s right. I didn’t verify that, but I think you’re right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and so like, and that’s, and I’ve handled that, I’ve never used one like for more than a second in a store, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, when I’ve handled them in the store, I’ve had the same feeling of like, you know, Like, again, when I use my 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash 10 S slash 11 Pro sized phone, the 5.8 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen with the notch, I’ve always thought like, I can use this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I wish it were a little bit smaller. And so now, the fact that they’re going to make it a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit bigger, that’s what’s making me really hope that that smaller phone is a real thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that it’s compelling in all other ways, because I just am not excited about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this phone that is already a bit big for me getting a bit bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Oh, and I have an update related to something just mentioned in the chat room, pouch update.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know about my phone pouch, right? Well, so here, this is a side effect of COVID, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John COVID comes and everyone’s in the house all the time and I’m never going anywhere, especially in the beginning, like really just never leaving the house,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And my sort of pattern of placement of stuff of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s where I keep all my things. I had like my stuff that I go to work with and just everything arranged in a particular place. the
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that I go to work with eventually just got put away because I realized, well, I’m not going into
⏹️ ▶️ John anytime soon, so I’m just gonna put that stuff away. So the pouch got put away too, which is fine
⏹️ ▶️ John because the pouch, as we know, is only a thing for when I go out of the house. But if I’m never going out of the house, I’m never gonna use the pouch.
⏹️ ▶️ John But eventually, the pouch got put so far away that when I did go out of the house, I’d go without
⏹️ ▶️ John the pouch. I mean, just going on a dog walk or whatever. Oh no. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John basically trained myself out of using the pouch in the external world. Part of it was because I’m like, well, I’m gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John getting rid of this phone soon anyway. So what do I care? You know what I mean? Like, although now that I’ve just examined the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John after cleaning it, I realized there are still zero scratches on my XS. So I still think I’m babying it. Like I would
⏹️ ▶️ John never put it next to a set of keys, for example. But I may, we’ll see how this goes. I
⏹️ ▶️ John may be off the pouch lifestyle with this and my future phones. It’s hard to tell because
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re still in COVID times and I’m still technically not really going anywhere ever. Right, so we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think I may be out of the pouch. I still have the pouch and it still fits this phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe I won’t buy a new pouch for my new phone and maybe I’ll just see how that goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Since this is a safe space, I can admit to you that after, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I noticed a scratch or two after one of the beach trips that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey took with this phone. And subsequent to that, there was a second beach trip that I took
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I actually employed a pouch for the purposes of like letting it rest in a beach bag
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tent or whatever, because I felt like I don’t, like I don’t know if I would go so far to say I’d baby my phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t think with the exception of having dropped my first 11 Pro on a cement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey driveway the day I got it. After that, I feel like I didn’t do too badly with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m guessing that it was during, you know, storage in a beach bag or something like that, that it ended
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up getting scratched up. And so I did employ, just for the purpose of the beach bag,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did employ a pouch. And I don’t think it made any darn difference I think the damage had already been done,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but here we are. I was living the pouch lifestyle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Matt Stauffer The pouch is transferred from me to Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wendell** Yeah. I don’t know which of you has won there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Matt Stauffer Yeah, me neither. Jason Wendell Well, one of us has a scratch-free phone, so. Aww.
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iPhone 12 expectations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Real-time follow-up, the iPhone 11 is 6.1 inches.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The iPhone 11 Pro is either 5.8 inches, which is what Marco and I are talking about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the big one is 6.5 inches. So it’s 5.8 for the 11 Pro, 6.1 for the 11, 6.5 for the other 11 Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The 12 is rumored, the non-Pro 12 is rumored to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be 5.4 inches, so that’s four tenths smaller than Marco’s phone and my phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the big one is rumored to be 6.1 inches, which is three tenths
⏹️ ▶️ Casey larger than Marco’s and my phone. And then the 12 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to start at 6.1 inches, again, three tenths larger, and go as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey high as 6.7 inches, which I already think that the big phones at 6.5
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inches are preposterously large. So I can’t imagine a 6.7 inch phone. For
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, I think I mostly agree with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, Marco. I would rather go a hint smaller if I could, but I know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself well enough to know that I will almost certainly be completely and utterly unwilling to give up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything. So like if the non-Pro 12 has only two cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as you were describing, which I think is a very fair conjecture to make, I don’t think I would do it. I think I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would just suck it up and get a 6.1 inch phone, which I would really rather not do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But knowing myself well enough, I think I would end up doing
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s not a 6.1 inch phone. Like those are diagonal screen measurements and the flat sides should shave
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot off, right? So like, well, what we’re really gonna be looking for once they announce these is go to
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple site find the thing that gives you the outside dimensions, you know, in millimeters, and then we’ll see how much bigger it
⏹️ ▶️ John actually is than an 11 or a 10S or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Also, a couple of other things. Yeah, like that’s, first of all, that’s one of the reasons why I’m hoping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a, like, case shape rethinking, like with the straight sides and everything. If I can use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it without a case, then that makes it effectively smaller for me. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so maybe I would then stick with the medium size if it’s something that I could use without a case. But also, if you’re interested
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in what the smaller size looks like, uh, a a couple of months ago, Mac Rumors published
⏹️ ▶️ Marco images of the rumored sizes such that you could,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever phone you have, they have separate downloads, and you could see, all right, show me what the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small phone would look like if I’m holding a XS or an 11 or whatever. And then you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can view that image at 1X in your camera roll at full screen, and it shows you exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what size that phone would be on your existing phone. So it’s actually a really nice estimation tool,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I’ve actually had that tab open in my mobile Safari browser for like two months just so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could occasionally look over and edit and be like, hmm, I think I do want the smaller size phone. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is noticeably narrower, which I think would be the limiting factor. Like it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously shorter as well, from top to bottom it’s shorter, but I don’t really care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much about that. Like ever since the notch era, the phones are so tall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I don’t necessarily need all that height. Like I could spare that pretty easily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it would mainly just be giving up width, which would indeed make it significantly more holdable and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would give you a lot more like touch range, you know, holding it and touching it. But my concern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with giving up the width would be when you squeeze the keyboard down,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going to be a transition period for keyboard accuracy and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly not a good one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but let’s be honest, keyboard accuracy hasn’t really existed since ML took over autocorrect. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it can only go up.
⏹️ ▶️ John They should just do what they do with the laptop keyboards and just make it so there’s one size keyboard and it’s the one that fits
⏹️ ▶️ John on their smallest phone and use that software keyboard on all the phones. And then just put dots on the left and the right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, earlier today I typed in Thursdays and it put an apostrophe on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thursday apostrophe S.
⏹️ ▶️ John Thursday’s child is full of woe? Come on, chat room, what is Thursday’s child full of? John, why
⏹️ ▶️ John I got nothing on that one. These two don’t know what I’m talking about. I am relying on the chat room. We’ll have some real time follow
⏹️ ▶️ John up soon as someone finds the answer. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what? Who puts apostrophes? I don’t want my correct grammar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be auto corrected to be incorrect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, the thing is, it just occurred to me, I don’t know why I just thought of this, but I, I know that I can turn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off auto correct, but it is correct enough in my fingers, fingers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are incorrect enough that I do want auto correct on. But oh my word,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if there was a way to to turn off like the machine learning portions of autocorrect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And maybe I’m misattributing this. Maybe it’s not machine learning at all. Maybe something changed in the algorithm. Maybe something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is different. But my feeling, my recollection is that autocorrect up until like two or three years ago
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was really, really good. And then suddenly, like two or three years ago, and everyone assumed it was ML,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey including me, but maybe we’re wrong. But suddenly something happened where it got real,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real bad. And if I had a switch to just turn off the ML portions of autocorrect,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would flick the crap out of that switch. I would turn that on, or I guess off, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fast. Because I really feel like it’s the ML that’s doing it. It’s a bunch of idiots typing, T-H-U-R-D,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thursday, apostrophe S. I got myself, see, I’m the idiot now, right? Anyway, the point is, it’s a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of idiots typing Thursday, apostrophe S, instead of Thursday S, and then the ML engine picks that up,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then all of a sudden, now we’re getting it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, it’s like, no, like that, and I understand, I am probably benefiting from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of what that ML engine is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the dictionary.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But when it gets it wrong, it’s just like, I’m being failed, like many other things, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being failed by the collective idiocy of the rest of humanity here. Like I am right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are wrong, and they’re making my life worse as a result.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Related, please vote.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, please, for the love of God. Real time follow-up on what children are filled with. Monday’s child
⏹️ ▶️ John is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child is full of woe, but Thursday’s
⏹️ ▶️ John child has far to go.
Hi, Speed
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll put a screenshot by the way for you two in the Slack. So like in our,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t understand this. Is this a GPU problem? Is this, in our show notes, we have
⏹️ ▶️ John the like the picture from the invitation for the Apple event, which I swear we’ll get to in a second or two. Like the
⏹️ ▶️ John invitation is high comma speed, right? That one, right? That’s in our Google doc,
⏹️ ▶️ John pasted as an image in the Google doc, right? So I opened another browser window to
⏹️ ▶️ John search for the Thursday’s child answer, and I found it. And would you two please look at the screenshot,
⏹️ ▶️ John which contains, in the background is my Google Docs window and in the foreground is my browser window. What in the hell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that? So in the Google AdSense boxes, on this unrelated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco page. The two Google AdSense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, on two Google AdSense medium rectangle units on the right sidebar of this page, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco showing the high comma speed Apple invitation image with a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google AdChoices X and forward arrow on the upper right corner. I guess instead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is this an ad? What happens if you click on it?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, is it because I opened the email and there was a tiny one pixel image tracker that, because I didn’t go to the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s website. Yes, I did copy and paste the image out of Gmail, but now when I go to a random webpage,
⏹️ ▶️ John I see two copies of the high-speed Apple event
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad. What happens if you click on it? Does it go to that ad, or does it go to
⏹️ ▶️ John something else? All right, so I’ll click on it. It goes to apple.com slash
⏹️ ▶️ John apple events. question mark gigantic tracking crap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s not a GPU bug, it’s just incredibly creepy ad tracking in your Google-owned browser with your Google-owned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spreadsheet thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh wait, if I scroll down more, there’s a, if I scroll down further, there’s a third Google ad containing, you guessed
⏹️ ▶️ John it, same exact question. It’s unbelievable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanna know what code it is you’re writing in the background there, sir.
⏹️ ▶️ John not code. What is that? is, uh, this is using dispatch work item
⏹️ ▶️ John to delay or cancel tasks. An article by Natan Rolick,
⏹️ ▶️ John which will now be in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Thank you. Thank you,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Casey, for spying on my computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re welcome. All right, so let’s move on to the event. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s going to be this upcoming Tuesday. Uh, I obviously am in, we’re expecting iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before we talk anymore about a potential iPhone 12. Are we expecting anything else? I know both of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are begging for laptops, but well, actually, I guess now might be a good time for John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for you to explore why it is you want a laptop so desperately.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah, that’s a simple like we need another one for the kids. They’re all doing like remote schooling stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we just have one laptop and then we have one desktop computer and I like to work in the room with desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John computer, but the kids don’t like me to be in the room when they’re working. Plus, I have to be on calls all day, too. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John as soon as As soon as we get a laptop, I can kick the kids back out of my room and then they can be in their individual rooms with their individual laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John and I can get to be in front of my computer again. I mean, I’m working on my laptop too, but I also like to be at
⏹️ ▶️ John my computer desk with my real computer there. Anyway, so that’s why I needed a laptop. It seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like I haven’t been really keeping up with the rumors here because there are many other things going on in the world that are distracting
⏹️ ▶️ John me and every other sane person, but it seems like we’re not getting Macs in this event.
⏹️ ▶️ John And every time, like I said, every time an event comes, my whole household goes, can we get a laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John now? I’m like, huh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey seems like maybe not this time, but there’s gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John another Apple event before the end of the year, and then they’ll announce the first ARM Mac, which will probably be a
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop, but we’re not sure. But anyway, probably before the end of the year. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t even care about the new phone. I don’t care. I do want a new phone, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that I want before the end of this year is an ARM Mac that is a laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems like, according to the rumors, that’s not gonna happen at this event. Obviously, there will be iPhones.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other rumor that I vaguely believe is about the headphone situation, because as we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John link in the show note, apparently Apple has stopped selling speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John and earphones ahead of the event, like a third-party one. So anything that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not by Apple or Beats, right? Not being sold in Apple stores anymore. Does that mean an
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple over-ear headphone is coming? Does that mean there’s gonna be a new, cheaper HomePod? Does it have anything to do with this
⏹️ ▶️ John event? I don’t know, maybe, but it seems like, again, if the vague rumors that I’ve looked at are to
⏹️ ▶️ John be believed, both of those things are more likely than an ARM Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s really all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I care about. During this iPhone discussion, I pulled my phone out of its case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look at it and everything, and it’s been sitting here since then, like just out of its case, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks like, have you ever had a hermit crab growing?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m aware of what they are, but I’ve never had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. It looks like when your hermit crab is changing shells and it like leaves its first shell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it just walks around naked for a second until it finds the second shell it’s gonna go into. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, when you see your hermit crab naked, it’s like the weirdest thing ever because you’re really not supposed to see it that way. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it feels looking at an iPhone without a case right now. Like, I see my iPhone 11 Pro sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there without a case and it’s like, ew, where’s the rest of you? Put some clothes on. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so. I think you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, John. It does feel like we haven’t heard enough rumors about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our Macs being imminent for them to be at this event in all likelihood, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of hope they are anyway. Like Apple has been significantly better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at secrecy in the last couple of years than they were before. So they actually might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have all this stuff ready and we just don’t know about it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John When I first saw this ad, like the event invitation, before I’d read anything about it, when I
⏹️ ▶️ John just saw it on my email box, which usually this doesn’t happen, usually I see about it on Twitter before I get the email, but this time I actually got the email
⏹️ ▶️ John before I had read anything about it, and I was excited because it said hi, comma, speed, right? And I’m like, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John this makes perfect sense, Apple, because now you’re finally gonna reveal all the specs of the A14, which
⏹️ ▶️ John you kinda tried to hide at the, you know, with the iPad, the previous iPad event, and of course you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John have the R Max, and they’re gonna be super fast, and then I read the rumors, and it was like, no, Don’t get your hopes up for Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s perfect, high speed, it’s all the fast things. And yes, the phones will be faster, and yes, this will be the
⏹️ ▶️ John A14’s real coming out in terms of performance, but honestly, the real demonstration of
⏹️ ▶️ John high speed things is gonna be the R Macs, right? Because they’re gonna be so much faster than the Intel chips. Isn’t that what
⏹️ ▶️ John the speed is about? It just seems like such a waste of a speed-related tease to only
⏹️ ▶️ John be talking about phones, which I feel like phones in general are a place where we love that
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhones are fast and everything, but we’re at the point now where I don’t think people are
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh my God, my phone is so slow. If you have any kind of recent iPhone. I’m not saying there’s no point in more speed, there absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ John is, but phones have always been, Apple’s phones, Apple’s top of the line phones
⏹️ ▶️ John have always been fast. We are spoiled by fast phones, we expect it. And so if you’re gonna brag about speed,
⏹️ ▶️ John brag about it on the platform that has had some speed challenges, let’s say, over the last several years due to
⏹️ ▶️ John Intel. But all the rumors say no, right? So, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but, you know, the rumors could also be, I mean, first of all, they could just be wrong. We’ve heard many rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this fall that have been wrong so far. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, air tags have been rumored for every event for like two years
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco now. Exactly. Right, so. Do
⏹️ ▶️ John we already have, sometimes I forget if we already have air tags. Do we already have them? They didn’t actually ship them, they didn’t actually even announce
⏹️ ▶️ John them. It’s just a thing that everyone knows that exists and just is never released.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. So yeah, so, who knows what, you know, When the rumors say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing is not coming yet, it’s really hard to put a lot of faith into that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That being said, the rumors could also be hearing things about supply and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco delivery timelines that might be different from announcement timelines. Apple could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco announce our Macs at this event next week and maybe not ship them until November.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could totally say, here’s the first two or three Macs that use Apple Silicon, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you wanna call it, They can show them off, they can get us all excited, and then they can say, shipping next month.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s totally a thing they could do if they want to.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, to be clear, that’s all I need. That’s all I need to get the pressure off me in this household to say, they
⏹️ ▶️ John announced it, and ideally, we can place an order for it. And if it doesn’t ship until next year, say,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, we already ordered it. It’s on its way in December. But I just need it to exist
⏹️ ▶️ John so I can point to it and say, we’re getting that. That’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. So they could do Arm Max at this event and just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have them shipping yet. You know, there is some question about like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how many events are they going to do in one fall? Historically, I believe that’s been capped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at about two. This would be the second one. If are they really going to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco third one in another month? Maybe they could. You these are just like online
⏹️ ▶️ Marco streams. So they’re kind of like fancier press release product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco releases. So in a way, they could do as many of these as they want to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s some value in conserving or diluting press attention in certain ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they wouldn’t want to do tons of them or only one for the entire season.
⏹️ ▶️ John They should do the Netflix approach where they dump the whole season at once. They prerecorded all these
⏹️ ▶️ John in June and they’re just sitting there and releasing them one by one. It’s like, oh, just dump the whole season at once. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John binge, right? Just here’s all the announcements for the rest of the year and we’re going on vacation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we’ll see what it actually is, but I’m thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t rule out the other products besides iPhones. Like, cause otherwise, you know, you look at like what’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s expected, what’s left. It’s basically iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and our Macs as like the definite things that we know are going to happen this fall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they’ve told us basically. And then the likely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe column includes things like the audio products, which again, I think, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that story about them being dropped out of Apple’s retail stores, that’s a pretty strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indicator that more Apple audio products are likely to arrive in the very short
⏹️ ▶️ Marco term. So like, that’s probably, that’s probably a real thing. So, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely in the near future, we’re gonna have the Apple over-ear headphones, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco second HomePod, the HomePod Mini, whatever that’s gonna be. It is, by the way, it’s interesting that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve dropped all that stuff out of their stores, because the amount of the real estate of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple stores taken up by those like 300 to $500 bang and olofsen speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and speakers and all the weird like 300-ish dollar,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco master and dynamic hipster styled, super expensive headphones. Those have historically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been a pretty significant part of the store with lots of the real estate, lots of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually at them using all the broken iPod touches to try to get music to come out of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So to eliminate those is actually pretty significant. And Apple won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a while, if ever, have enough audio products themselves to fill up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, the space that was usually given in the stores. So it’s actually interesting to think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, is there anything more to that? Like maybe people just stopped buying them because AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco killed so much of that business. It’s possible, like maybe people just weren’t buying.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the move from wired to Bluetooth was a pretty big damaging factor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a lot of those headphones. But they switched to Bluetooth models and everything, but still like a lot of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones probably aren’t being bought anymore because AirPods are so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I wonder if that has something to do with it as well. And maybe Apple is having to downsize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that entire category because like maybe no one’s buying a lot of premium headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore. And on the speaker side, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of that market, a lot of the like, you know, nice home speaker for your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone to play music to market, I think a lot of that’s been lost to voice cylinders.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if people aren’t buying the HomePod, they’re probably buying Echoes and stuff. And that probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco takes away a lot of the market for the high-end, leather-wrapped, B&O, $500
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blimp thing. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I think the high-speed thing on the imitation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the speculation that it’s probably about 5G iPhones, it’s plausible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t give a crap about 5G, and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple would push it that hard, like as a thing, because I don’t think it’s that good yet,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s a benefit that they aren’t in control of. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yes, they will
⏹️ ▶️ John have 5G, and yes, 5G can be much, much faster, but if they sell the phone based on that benefit, and you get
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone, and you be like, it doesn’t seem any faster to me, it’s like, oh well, probably because 5G
⏹️ ▶️ John is not either penetrated in your area, or the fast version of 5G isn’t near you,
⏹️ ▶️ John or you don’t realize to get the super high speeds, you really need to be really close to one of those millimeter wave thing. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like a weird benefit to sell. Now, we can, to compare, we can say, well, how did Apple sell LTE?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like when their phones went LTE? I think they did make kind of a big deal about that, but they were
⏹️ ▶️ John so late to that, and LTE had much better penetration than 5G. So, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John right or wrong, when I saw high speed, like I said, I thought of RMX, but I also saw the A14, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is very fast and was introduced already on the iPad, but in a very vague kind of way. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I can imagine, like the reason I thought this would be a combination event and one thing we didn’t mention is like a
⏹️ ▶️ John revamped Apple TV with an A14 in it, is that if you release our Macs, the new
⏹️ ▶️ John phones, and an Apple TV, and they all have some variant of the new A14 cores,
⏹️ ▶️ John if not the specific A14 chips inside them, that’s a great place for you to just bask
⏹️ ▶️ John in benchmarks and be like, look at all this fast stuff we’re giving you. Our Apple TV is way faster than it was. It’s faster
⏹️ ▶️ John than a PlayStation 4, and the new ARM Mac is amazing, and it’s super duper fast, and our phones, of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John are fast too, and it’s all based on Apple Silicon and blah, blah, blah. But it just seems like that’s not the event
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re planning according to the rumors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it also seems like the A14 is not that much faster than the A13. The initial benchmarks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the iPad Air that are kind of slowly trickling out, they show that it’s fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, it’s great in absolute terms, but as a year-over-year upgrade to the A13, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s just because we’re spoiled by the previous ones. Wasn’t it like 20% or something faster in single-core
⏹️ ▶️ John performance? Like, Intel is likely to eke out a couple of percentage every few
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey years. And like, we’re gonna say, oh, it’s only like 15 or 20% faster in
⏹️ ▶️ John single-core. Like, the A14, if those leaked benchmarks are to be believed, is a beast.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it is faster in single-core performance than any Mac Apple sells currently, right? If those benchmarks,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s their phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. But by Apple’s standards for the A chips, like the year over year upgrade from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A13 to the A14, it’s nice, it’s welcome, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not something you’d base an event around, right? So that’s why I think there must be something more to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, how can you brag about speed, again, on phones? Because the phones are already so fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I guess what I just said is a thing that Apple could say, but I think they won’t. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John at various times, Apple could have said, you know, the single core performance of our phones is better than
⏹️ ▶️ John X amount of our Macs. Now they can say it’s better than all of our Macs, but you really don’t wanna slam
⏹️ ▶️ John your Macs by saying that. Like the real thing that they could brag about speed though is
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU stuff, right? Because GPUs are easy to make faster by just adding more area. And once you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John putting an Apple Silicon chip in a thing with a fan, suddenly you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John capacity to just shove those GPU cores in there and to get a chip
⏹️ ▶️ John that is just a monster that again is like PlayStation 4 caliber power
⏹️ ▶️ John in a thing with a quote unquote integrated GPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John The benchmarks were showing that essentially the, I think this was just the A14 that’s in the iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is a fanless enclosure, right? With very strict temperature and
⏹️ ▶️ John battery life constraints, right? That chip, apparently, its GPU power is about equivalent
⏹️ ▶️ John to the base discrete GPU in a MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John you take that chip and you give it a fan and put it in a case with a fan. Your integrated
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU could be fast enough to compete with many of the discrete GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John that are offered in Macs today. So I am very bullish. Is that the right word I was getting
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco confused? I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John very bullish on the performance of ARM-based Macs. But
⏹️ ▶️ John for the phones and the iPads, like you said, it’s like, well, they’ve always been fast and now they get faster again, fine,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we’re reading too much into the high-speed thing. They’re gonna introduce
⏹️ ▶️ John things that are faster and that is all the excuses they need. I have stars in my eyes
⏹️ ▶️ John about the potential of ARM-based Macs and even the potential of a really fast ARM-based
⏹️ ▶️ John app with UV to be, if not a good platform for games due to software mismanagement and so
⏹️ ▶️ John on and so forth, at least be extremely capable hardware attached to my television that could
⏹️ ▶️ John potentially play really good games were they ever to be released.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I just I can’t see them having an invitation that says high speed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at an event where the most likely headliner is the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how they would like unless unless they’re believing in 5G way more
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that’s all it takes. 5G is faster. There you go. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think we’re reading too much into the title.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Agreed, but the title matters a little bit. And like, you know, I don’t know why they would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call it this if it was anything about the iPhone. Because the iPhone, yeah, it’s going to get faster but it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get faster mostly in ways nobody cares about. And not like massively so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas the transition to ARM Macs will probably make Macs way faster.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so to have this event named High Speed in the fall of 2020, when they’ve said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is when the first ARM Macs will come out, how can this event not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco contain the first ARM Macs?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Of course it’s gonna contain
⏹️ ▶️ John them. They said before the end of the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco year. Agree, yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Anyway, Apple, we’ve decided you have to ship
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gotta tell you, I would love to see a new Apple TV. And I think I’ve mentioned this a couple times recently, But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we have this almost a year old 4K LG TV downstairs, and I’m still running a 1080
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple TV on it because when we bought this a year ago, I thought, oh, surely there’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a new Apple TV in 2019. Why wouldn’t there be? And obviously there wasn’t. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey surely there’ll be a new Apple TV in 2020. Why wouldn’t there be? I am ready to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get a new Apple TV, and I would really rather not. I mean, at this point, I’m just gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey continue to wait until they, I guess they cancel it, airport style. But I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love to get a new Apple TV that’s 4K to put on my TV downstairs. So I hope I see
⏹️ ▶️ John AirPower, and there were rumors about that coming back. Have you seen the rumors about AirPower coming back?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I saw a couple, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like they just started over and they’re gonna make another product that does the same thing, but like start over from scratch and
⏹️ ▶️ John make one that works. We’ll see if that ever happens. If that, boy, if that beats AirTags
⏹️ ▶️ John out, I don’t know what’s going on with AirTags. I don’t know what the holdup is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just not the right time, John. It’s just not the
⏹️ ▶️ John right time. They keep catching on fire. Oh, God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That might have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something to do with it. Oh, yi, yi. I’m really looking forward to it. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited. I’m not excited about the potential choice I’m going to have to make with regards to size,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we’ve already covered, because I feel like I’m going to be forced to go bigger, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really don’t want to. But one way or another, I’m excited to see what’s on offer. OK,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love the idea that you’re forced.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I’m going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forced to buy a new iPhone to replace my one-year-old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll be forced to get the nice model that’s big.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, you’re right to call me out on that. That’s a fair point. But I am curious.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do the two of you guys think we’re going to see iPad-style, a Touch ID thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the side button? Let’s start with Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say it’s possible. I would hope to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it might be a little ambitious because to get that well, I think about it because like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the one of the biggest challenges for that would be the thickness of the case. Obviously, you want that button to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be as thick as possible to give you the most surface area possible to see as much of the fingerprint as possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and phones are not that thick, but they do tend to be thicker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than iPads. So, are they still? I haven’t checked. Are they current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John phones? Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re thicker than iPads. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if it can fit on an iPad, it might be able to fit on a phone too. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, maybe. I would love to see that. And I would love to see a hybrid model where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s Face ID and Touch ID. That would be awesome. And especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you could pick, tell it, oh, just whatever recognizes me first, let me in. So you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need both to match,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John or you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always need Face ID. you can just like whatever recognize me that that would be awesome. I would love that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I don’t know if they’re quite ready for that yet on the phone. I might need one more year.
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like something we would know already through the rumor mills and leaked cases and stuff like that. And the fact that I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John heard anything about it makes me think that it’s not going to have it like mostly because you know, it’s like the the touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John on the on the iPad. What is the iPad? The new iPad air? Yep. Like that’s not a reaction to COVID that was planned way
⏹️ ▶️ John ahead of time. And even though I don’t personally understand the cost trade off between face ID and that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It seems clear to me that that’s why it has touch ID because they didn’t put face ID in because it’s the cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John model. And once you don’t have face ID but you still wanna have the full screen gesture, blah, blah, blah thing, you need something in there
⏹️ ▶️ John so touch ID is. Whereas on the phone, it’s not the thickness that I worry about because again, the phones have been thicker than iPads
⏹️ ▶️ John for a little while now. It’s like how much space is there inside the phone for you to put crap, right? And putting
⏹️ ▶️ John the touch ID sensor, it’s not big, like it’s not huge, but it’s bigger than a power button, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so it makes me think that like, because there’s no reason to do it on the phone, that they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John been perfectly happy with this design of like, you know, just face ID and it being fine. And because
⏹️ ▶️ John this phone wasn’t made in reaction to COVID, cause it was planned way before this happened, that regardless
⏹️ ▶️ John of what Apple wants to do or plans to do, and certainly regardless of what we all wanted to do, because I agree with Marco, I’d love it with a phone
⏹️ ▶️ John with both, it seems to me that this phone is not gonna have it. And which is understandable and fine, but
⏹️ ▶️ John for the next phone, hopefully COVID didn’t come too late to influence the design of the next one, because now I can imagine making
⏹️ ▶️ John different trade-offs and saying, well, we don’t know how long we’re gonna be wearing these masks. If you can,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s get Touch ID into the iPhone 13 or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To be fair, the demand for Touch ID on a phone existed strongly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before COVID also. There’s a lot of people who still don’t like Face ID and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are still holding onto the older style phones. And that’s one of the reasons I think why the new SE is the older style,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s a lot of people who just don’t want Face ID for whatever reason, or it doesn’t work well for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so Touch ID still has quite a fan base. And I think until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple can offer Touch ID on the high-end phones in some form, whether it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an under-screen thing, or a power button thing, whatever it is, some form of Touch ID, I think they need to do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to capture the rest of that market again, and to get them to be upgrading to nice iPhones again.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who do you know who Face ID doesn’t work well for? Because I know old people say Touch ID doesn’t work because their fingerprints are
⏹️ ▶️ John all old and ever-changing apparently.
⏹️ ▶️ John who has a face that’s a problem with Face ID?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, people who wear face coverings on a regular basis, that’s a big one. And that was a big one before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, and it’s just a bigger one now. But that’s a big one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. They should do both of them. It’s just a question of like, was this the year where they felt like the
⏹️ ▶️ John trade-off in internal space and cost, I suppose, was worth it to
⏹️ ▶️ John get it wedged in there? And given the one device we’ve seen where they’ve done this, It’s not the high
⏹️ ▶️ John end, it’s a trade-off feature. But my finger’s across for it, because obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John we all wish it was there. I just feel like it, I feel like I would have seen
⏹️ ▶️ John confirmed rumors of it. I’m casually paying attention, but I think casually paying attention to rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John is a good way to note when exciting things are happening, because if it’s, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John the rest of the world isn’t excited, isn’t as excited about Touch ID as the power button as we all are, but they should be.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would love to see it. I strongly suspect that it won’t have made the cut
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in terms of timing, but I would love to see it. And again, to go back to what we were talking about earlier, I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love this thing to be USB-C. Do you think, well, John, did you weigh in on that earlier? Do you think that it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, based on the fact that I haven’t heard the rumors and the fact that the only rumor I have heard is lightning forever
⏹️ ▶️ John until there’s no more wires at all, which could be as early next
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not holding my breath for it. Although on all these issues, Touch ID and USB-C, I keep eyeing
⏹️ ▶️ John the Giganto phone, whatever it is, the Pro Max whatever, like the 6.5 inches,
⏹️ ▶️ John or 6.7. If you have a 6.7 inch phone, you don’t really have issues about internal
⏹️ ▶️ John space for the Touch ID sensor. Right? And so maybe that makes it a potential
⏹️ ▶️ John candidate for that and also USB-C again I know it’s not a thickness issue but if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re thinking of a phone that’s starting to edge into iPad territory and all the iPads have USB-C you could make
⏹️ ▶️ John an argument that you could just convert the monster phone to USB-C but that would be ridiculous that they would just do it in one phone
⏹️ ▶️ John but like I think I would like it to be coming I don’t want them to go from lightning
⏹️ ▶️ John to nothing I want them to go to lightning to USB-C and then maybe to nothing when it actually is good so
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m a little bit of terrified of them just holding the line of lightning for as as long as they can and then switching
⏹️ ▶️ John to pure wireless. Because I can, even though I have a phone that supports wireless charging and we have wireless
⏹️ ▶️ John chargers in the house, I don’t use it. I’m an old flutty duddy. I plug it into a cable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, wireless charging is very polarizing and it’s not a clear win for everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or for all circumstances. Like I use a mix of both. I use wired in the car. I use wired
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m traveling. I’m not gonna bring a weird wireless charger with me if I don’t need to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I also use wired when I need a fast charge, when I need just a faster charge or if I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using some kind of USB battery pack or something like that. It’s very common. And Tiff, she doesn’t like wireless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. She never uses it. I use it on my nightstand at night.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People have different preferences and different needs. And wireless charging is not the same as a cable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s not universally better. It’s better in a few ways. It’s worse in a few significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways. Like one of the biggest ways it’s worse is efficiency. It’s terrible for efficiency.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you just end up wasting a whole bunch more of that electricity as heat. So not only do you charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more slowly, which is a problem, but you also waste a ton of power. If you think about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if every iPhone in the world could only charge wirelessly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like imagine the global power waste. Compare that to whatever gains
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you get by not including the power brick in the box, it’s laughable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s an interesting point. I use a wireless charger on my nightstand and I love it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t particularly want to go back to having to plug in at night. I mean, that’s the first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worldiest first world problem, right? Well, no, the first worldiest first world problem is, oh my gosh, I don’t want a bigger phone and I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But the second most first worldiest first world problem— You already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hit that record. Yeah. So I’m going for a trifecta and I’m on number two now, which is I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t particularly want to have to fumble with a plug at night. It’s not that big a deal, no. It’s not like an infomercial where I’m stabbing myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a lightning cable, you know. But it would be nice, I prefer not dealing with it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, it’s funny because I think with the exception of when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing development, I don’t think I would have a problem with a completely wireless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone, you know, that has no lightning port, no USB-C, no nothing. I could make everything else
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work. Now, I agree with almost everything you said, Marco. Like when I travel, I use a cable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When I’m in the car, I use a cable. But with the exception of a couple of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like CarPlay come to think of it, but with the exception, I should say, with the primary exception of doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey development, I don’t think I would really mind having a completely wireless phone. And the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time I tried doing Wi-Fi builds and debug and whatnot in Xcode,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it worked, but it was not fun and it was not consistent because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as with all things at Apple, if Apple engineers don’t use it all the time, then it’s not going to be great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And from the looks of it, they are not using wireless debugging very often at all. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so in that sense, like in a hypothetical world where you could option
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a port on your phone, you know, so they have the 12 with the port
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 12 with no port, I would absolutely option the port even if it costs a little more money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I forgot about the development angle, but you’re right, like wireless debugging is terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would significantly slow down on device development. I mean, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can imagine how things work with the Apple Watch today, because that’s all wireless,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and trying to build and run onto the Apple Watch and trying to debug stuff is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco painful in so many ways. And I have noticed too, I occasionally do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to use wireless debugging on the phone as well whenever I’m testing CarPlay, because my CarPlay rig
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is wired, so that has to be plugged into the phone as the lightning port, so then I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use Xcode wirelessly to the phone. And it is noticeably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slower, significantly slower, than just doing a straight USB build, and it’s less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reliable. And that would be a huge step backwards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for iOS developers.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if Apple made them wireless, wouldn’t all of Apple’s iOS developers also now be forced to use this
⏹️ ▶️ John wireless thing all the time too and then maybe it’ll get better?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, no, not necessarily. I mean, a lot of Apple development happens on development hardware rigs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they’re not just running on a production phone necessarily. Like, they’re running on- The app development? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of it’s running on, you know, like development boards or development kits or modified hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, maybe when they’re doing the phone app or something, the phone app, the camera app or something that has to
⏹️ ▶️ John take advantage of the new hardware, the iOS mail team, I don’t imagine they need to work on dev hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin You would be surprised. So my limited understanding about this is that a lot of Apple engineers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now I am not sure to your point, John, if it’s like the Apple engineers that work on mail or the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engineers that work on UIKit. But I know that a lot of Apple engineers have, what do they call it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think they call it like dev fused or something like that. They have these special kind of phones that allow like SSH access
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and all this other crazy stuff that we don’t get to do. And I think that that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the phones that Apple will issue for their engineers. And it would not at all surprise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me if a dev fused whatever it’s called phone in the future, when when Marco and me and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are all buying completely wireless phones, it would not surprise me not one bit if a dev fused phone
⏹️ ▶️ John port, it should have that that little port that the Apple Watch has, you know, inside the band. Yeah. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. But it’s funny because we’re not for development
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in CarPlay. I think I would be all in on a completely wireless phone because presumably it would be way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more waterproof or be able to stay underwater longer or what have you, which is not a problem I can say I’ve run
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into often, but it’d still be nice. I don’t think I would have a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with it with the exception, the big exceptions of car play and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in development. And because of those two things, I would absolutely option a port if I needed to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see what problems I have that would be solved by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a portless iPhone. Like, I don’t understand what, like, I can see problems that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be created by such a thing. I don’t see what problems are being solved that make that worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s fair. And I think you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. Because you can already achieve amazing water resistance with ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re properly designed as we see with both the current iPhones and with phones from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other manufacturers that use USB-C and headphone jacks that are waterproof. This can be done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not… the port… I just don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good reasons to go portless on a phone because wireless charging is not good enough,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco communication is not good enough, it shuts down so many options, it cuts off all peripherals. It’s a weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing to do as the only option because it seems to have almost no upside,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but pretty substantial downsides.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a problem that Apple has, because Apple has the problems of all of its customers in aggregate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Us as individual customers might not have this particular problem, but what I’m thinking of is crap getting in the port,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? How many Apple Store visits are people picking lint out of their ports? And now you may say,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, you don’t need to pick lint out of the port, because you can always do everything wirelessly. But because the port exists,
⏹️ ▶️ John and people want to use it rightfully, because it’s a feature of their phone, When it stops working,
⏹️ ▶️ John they think their phone is broken, and it is in a way, and so needs to come in and get it cleaned out. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John only Apple knows what are those numbers like. Is this really an epidemic of like, you know, 50% of the visits
⏹️ ▶️ John to the Apple store are belly button lint picking from ports, right? Anecdotally, I know plenty of people whose
⏹️ ▶️ John ports get filled with gunk, and then they stop charging, both on iPads and on iPhones and so on and so forth.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, I’ve never had that problem individually, and it sounds like you two haven’t either, but Apple writ large
⏹️ ▶️ John may have that problem. And when I say Apple has the problem, It’s not, you know, the problem Apple has is like, oh, I don’t want to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John for to manufacture a little port, like some sort of cost things. But this, in this case, it’s a problem that may
⏹️ ▶️ John be prevalent in Apple’s customer base and give people lower satisfaction on the phone and take time in Apple stores
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth. That’s the only thing I can think of in terms of, you know, other than the basic like simplification,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have to drill one less hole. We have slightly more room inside the case now. Like those are all very
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny, although real gains for Apple alone. But the potential gain for customers is don’t worry
⏹️ ▶️ John about getting lint in your little phone belly button anymore because there ain’t no belly button.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say to your point, John, that when Marco was saying, you know, what is this solving?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s when all of the Apple geniuses that listen to us start writing and saying, you don’t even know how often
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what if it’s a problem? People drop their phones and shut out of the screens all the time. So the next phone out of a screen?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, but they’re trying to work on that too by making it, you know, I don’t know how big of a problem it is, but like that, that is the benefit
⏹️ ▶️ John I can think of, of not having a port there. Now, the question is, OK, but there are also drawbacks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your phone charges slower, gets hotter, reduces the battery life because the heat damages the battery, yada, yada.
⏹️ ▶️ John Are the trade-offs worth it? I don’t think that’s clear at all. But I can think of at least one benefit in that column
⏹️ ▶️ John to balance against all the other bad things that we just described.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, sure. Yeah, there’s totally like a Apple saves money in various ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco angle to that. No question.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excuse me. Excuse me. It’s not Apple saving money. It’s Apple doing good for the environment. Thank
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very much. Yeah, with their sealed up, unrepairable devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John Honestly, I don’t think Apple is actually saving that much money there. But the simplification is one fewer thing they can break.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when things break, it’s the customers that suffer when
⏹️ ▶️ John their port stops working or their phone stops charging reliably or whatever, because lint got in there. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the main benefit of no ports is a customer benefit. There are ancillary Apple manufacturing,
⏹️ ▶️ John pricing, blah, blah, blah benefits. So those are much smaller in the benefit column than
⏹️ ▶️ John the benefit of not having to worry about the pork getting yanked up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So can you imagine, so something I hadn’t considered because I have a couple of Qi chargers around the house is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is unlikely in my mind that Apple would include a Qi charger in this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fantasy completely wireless phone. So now, not only have they taken away the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey charger, which would tick everyone off something fierce, just on principle, but now you need to go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buy 10 to 20 to 50 to 100 or whatever. I don’t even know. It looks like they’re like 10-ish to 15. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John include it. You think they would include a Qi charger? Just like they do on the watch. Like, it wouldn’t have the brick, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it would have the little, you know, thing, something to, because they have to give you something to charge it with, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not going to like, you know, as in a physical thing that you can buy that you plug into
⏹️ ▶️ John something that has power, right? And to be clear, if everyone’s listening to this, none of us think this is happening in the Apple event. For
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey whatever reason, we’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John speculating off into the future about thing. I think it’s because we were talking about USB C, which we also don’t think is happening, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But this is this is for future phones. Not don’t worry about the iPhone about they’re going to have wires. It’ll be fine. They
⏹️ ▶️ John won’t have power bricks, but they’re going to have wires. But I think they would ship it with some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John solution. And maybe it’s an Apple. Hell, maybe it’s an Apple provider solution that yes, they would still do charging, but there’d
⏹️ ▶️ John be these other Apple Manta Ray suction cup BS, whatever thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John you slap onto the phone in a slightly different way. And maybe it attaches with magnets so it always goes on to the right spot
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe it’s really small, you know what I mean? Like, but there’s still no actual port there and it charges faster and doesn’t produce
⏹️ ▶️ John as much heat as Qi charging, but there’s still no linty belly button. Like, that would totally be an Apple move. Hell, bring back
⏹️ ▶️ John MagSafe. I mean, that had lint problems too,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I’m, my mind is open to potential quote unquote wireless
⏹️ ▶️ John solutions that are essentially a magnetically attached little wire thing that clings to the surface
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere on the phone and charges it and having the phone still have Qi charging for the oh I
⏹️ ▶️ John stick it in my car and it charges the whole thing right because there’s room for both of those inside there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way for the record if Apple does go to a portless phone at some point in the future there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no way they include the cable in the box. Whatever your wireless charging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John No way. That’s what I was saying. No way. I mean they do it with the watch. Like I said the reason they do it with the watch is because the watch thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is proprietary right? Yes. I mean, you can actually kind of charge it on Qi chargers and scrap like that because whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John inductance doesn’t care. But um… Have you ever gotten that to work? I’ve tried it a few times. I think it depends on the particular
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. But if it is a proprietary Apple faster more
⏹️ ▶️ John localized heat generation charging thing or whatever, they would absolutely include it in the box for
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly the same reason they include it for the watch. Because where else are you gonna get your first one of those cables? Because they don’t exist when you buy your first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know. I’m with Marco. I think they would just say, well, it’s Qi charging. go get one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or you can buy the Apple Fast Charger for $29. Exactly. And
⏹️ ▶️ John as I said last show, or whatever it was about the power bricks, if they want to make the pricing of
⏹️ ▶️ John these phones a la carte and just subtract the price of all the accessories from the phone price,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s fine for everybody. No one objects to that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s not the way things go. They keep the price the same, but remove
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff from the box. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly. record profits again somehow this year.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even less e-waste.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, I’m curious, do you think, so in the last year or two,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s been a noticeable push on Apple’s end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for much more aggressive sales. And you see this in a lot of different ways, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re on an emailing list that they have, that they have, they’ve been pushing increasingly aggressively for you to upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco constantly to every new product. They especially push on iPhones. If you know any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco business reps in any of the retail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve been pushing way more heavily through them over the last year or two.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ever since the Apple Card last fall, they’ve been pushing a ton
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like, you know, buy through this card thing. They’ve been pushing through the upgrade program, like this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they changed every price of everything on the website recently to put the new per
⏹️ ▶️ Marco month lease price first instead of the actual cash buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price of everything they sell basically, which I think is, honestly, I think that’s kind of sleazy and gross, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve been pushing so hard on the more aggressive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sales angle recently. Do you think they’re gonna do anything differently this year in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area? Do you think, like, is there gonna be any more of a push this year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco given that we’re in such a weird time and maybe sales might be suppressed because of global conditions?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is anything gonna be different this year, you think, on the sales or business side?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you just mentioned all the stuff they’re already doing, so I think they will continue to do that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t, I’m not, you know, they already have the up-to-date thing, they already show you all the
⏹️ ▶️ John prices per month, that stuff already exists, they will absolutely do that for the new phones, but what is one step beyond that? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s the next step up and what’s it gonna take to get you into this new phone today? I don’t know what the next step is.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John those things, already done all the obvious straightforward things to make the phone
⏹️ ▶️ John seem more affordable to people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think they would ever tie in with the Apple One bundle of something like, you know, you pay, kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like what the new Xbox has, like you pay whatever this price is and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically buying a services and iPhone bundle together.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, there’s no reason they can’t do that, but historically what they’ve done is the opposite, which is you buy a new Apple thing that we
⏹️ ▶️ John really want you to buy, and you get a free year of whatever service we’re currently pushing. Right, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, I mean, yeah, I think that kind of deal makes perfect sense, although at a certain point when you start bundling things
⏹️ ▶️ John together, there’s a point of diminishing returns where you’re like, which of the
⏹️ ▶️ John seven things do I want, and can I get them in a bundle? Apple one is already kind of complicated enough, So like
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems to me that they’re much, they’d much rather have you subscribe to one of their services. And that’s why,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, buy a free Apple thing and get a year of Apple TV Plus, like it’s the obvious biggest example.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the lever they’ve been using here, not on the opposite direction. I feel like the iPhone doesn’t need anything
⏹️ ▶️ John to pull it along. Obviously COVID times may change that, but who knows? Like there are lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of interesting things you can do in terms of marketing and advertising, but I really feel like they
⏹️ ▶️ John have most of the big bases already covered and I think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John with the current crop of come ons, but who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mostly agree with that. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is eventually a merging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the Apple One and iPhone upgrade program but we’ll see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One final question I have for you guys and we should try to squeeze in some Ask ATP. Do you think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this will be for, say the iPhone upgrade program or for people who are upgrading
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every year. Do you think that this will be the shortest amount of time that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we will have a phone? Because this is going on in mid-October, presumably won’t ship until next,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe next week at the earliest, but probably the week after that, or maybe even the end of October, early November.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is this going to be the shortest amount of time that annual iPhone upgraders will have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a particular phone? Do you think next year we’ll be back on the September schedule?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that it may just shift everything because it’s not like the conditions that cause this delay
⏹️ ▶️ John go away or we suddenly get a time to catch up, right? And I think that the main,
⏹️ ▶️ John the sort of target, the sort of unavoidable target for the phone around this time of year is you
⏹️ ▶️ John really can’t miss the holidays, right? So September is like, I didn’t miss the holidays, I’m fine. October,
⏹️ ▶️ John you still kind of haven’t missed the holidays. And if this pushed this thing out to October, that might’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John also pushed the next phone out to October. So October could become the new September until they can slowly shift it back, that
⏹️ ▶️ John seems like a reasonable assumption to me. Because October, you still got the holidays, right? I
⏹️ ▶️ John still feel like that is fine. And if the schedule has to be shifted for a year or two and they could slowly
⏹️ ▶️ John ratchet it back to get to September if they really care about that, I think that’s a more likely
⏹️ ▶️ John outcome than, like, I don’t know. I know what you’re saying, like, you get this phone in November
⏹️ ▶️ John and the next phone comes out in September and it didn’t have a long life at the top of the heap. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that really depends on stuff in the world that we can’t really predict at this point, how the planet
⏹️ ▶️ John recovers from its current situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What about you, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’re gonna get back to September as quickly as they can. So if it’s not this one, it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be slowly over the next few phones, they’ll shift their way back. But I have a feeling it’ll be this one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a feeling next fall, they’re gonna be back on schedule. Because they don’t care when they release the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last one. Most people don’t buy phones every year, only us idiots. So most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t care how soon they release the next one really. And if it’s 11 months away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of 12 months away, like most people aren’t even gonna remember the difference. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s more a question of whether they can do it. And I bet they can.
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House Judiciary report
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, John, we have three minutes for you to cover the House Judiciary Committee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey antitrust report on Amazon and Facebook and Apple and Google. The clock is ticking.
⏹️ ▶️ John Go. I’m going to need more than three minutes, but not not too long. So we talked about this when the people when
⏹️ ▶️ John all the tech CEOs were in front of Congress and answering their questions and how bad some of their questions were
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth. And now they released this 450-page report, PDF link in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Interestingly, the old PDF link 404 today, and I had to find it elsewhere, but it’s up still there.
⏹️ ▶️ John The result of this report, the summary would be basically that
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who wrote this report think these big tech companies have a lot of power, probably too much
⏹️ ▶️ John power, and they sometimes abuse it to make things worse for people. Like, that’s the summary.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does this mean that there are going to be a bunch of new laws in the United States that constrain these companies.
⏹️ ▶️ John If the people who wrote this report have their way, it will, but the people who wrote this report currently do not
⏹️ ▶️ John have their way in anything, right? So that is the executive summary, that in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is mostly bad news for the big tech companies, because it means that a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John people, at least one party in our crappy two-party system, think these companies
⏹️ ▶️ John have too much power. I encourage people to look at it, because you can read the first page or two and
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of get the gist of it. One little part that I took out that I thought was interesting was,
⏹️ ▶️ John all right, so there’s two aspects. One is like, we need some new laws to address
⏹️ ▶️ John these issues, because obviously our current laws don’t address it at all. A lot of these things people are doing are illegal, but they’re bad for
⏹️ ▶️ John the economy and bad for customers and bad for everything. So we should make some new laws, which fine, that makes sense. They’re the legislature.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what they do, right? But the other aspect was relevant to the discussion we had
⏹️ ▶️ John earlier about like, well, current antitrust law, who is a monopoly
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple’s argument that it does not have majority market share in any markets that it competes in or doesn’t have dominant
⏹️ ▶️ John market share. One section of this document says, I’ll read from the thing here. Um, the subcommittee
⏹️ ▶️ John should examine the creation of a statutory presumption that a market share of 30% or more constitutes
⏹️ ▶️ John a rebuttable presumption of dominance by a seller. Um, my translation of this is basically saying, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, right now with the Sherman antitrust law, if we try to use the Sherman act on, say Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s going to say, we have like 40% market share. According to the Sherman Act, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not a dominant monopoly, so you can’t say anything. And what they’re saying is, we should consider
⏹️ ▶️ John changing the existing Sherman Antitrust Act to say, even if you have a smaller market
⏹️ ▶️ John share, that doesn’t mean you’re automatically not subject to the constraints
⏹️ ▶️ John of our existing antitrust laws. That is my interpretation of this paragraph. It is written in a complicated way, and I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John sure if I’m reading it right. But I feel like that two-pronged approach of, one, we need new laws because
⏹️ ▶️ John there are new companies doing new things that were totally unforeseen at the time the Sherman Antitrust Act was written long ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John And two, maybe we should also consider revisiting the constraints that I kind of outlined,
⏹️ ▶️ John like sort of the stuff that was forged in the fire of the Microsoft Antitrust Trial saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you have a monopoly? It’s like, well, Microsoft just owns the entire PC industry. It was an easy slam dunk case.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, yes, of course they have a monopoly. But Apple’s big defense is, we’re not like Microsoft. And now
⏹️ ▶️ John Congress is saying, even with our existing laws, even when we pass no new laws, maybe we should
⏹️ ▶️ John examine the creation of a statutory presumption. We should look at that. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John really need to have like 95% market share to be considered a monopoly according to current interest laws? Maybe not. So
⏹️ ▶️ John this shows me that a large number of Democrats in Congress
⏹️ ▶️ John really, really think that these companies need to be taken down a notch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Will they be successful? Will this happen in general? Making any new laws that
⏹️ ▶️ John constrain the richest companies in the world usually requires many, many
⏹️ ▶️ John more people to die. I mean, look how long it took to get laws to constrain tobacco companies.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is not easy, not easy to get, in our current system of government,
⏹️ ▶️ John to get new laws constraining the richest, most powerful companies in the world, because there’s so much working against
⏹️ ▶️ John it in our terrible, broken system of government. But this report
⏹️ ▶️ John was entirely one-sided declaration that, boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John if a bunch of people have their way, tech companies, you will be newly constrained in some
⏹️ ▶️ John potentially minor way in the future. That’s it. That’s my summary.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That actually wasn’t bad. All right.
#askatp: Why DMGs?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ask ATP, Andy writes, what’s the deal with disk images? Why were they introduced? And more importantly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why do they still exist? I know people who’ve gotten Macs and just booted apps like Steam directly from their disk image until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they asked me to help them out. What’s going on with that, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John So disk images originally existed because Mac file system could support more
⏹️ ▶️ John kinds of, uh, you know, metadata resource forks, stuff like that, then
⏹️ ▶️ John could exist on other systems. So if you wanted to take a bunch of Mac stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John say an application that itself has, you know, finder attributes and resource forks and type and creator codes
⏹️ ▶️ John and all sorts of crap like that, and you wanted to transport that safely across any other system,
⏹️ ▶️ John you would have to package it up in a way to essentially flatten it, right? And one of the ways that you
⏹️ ▶️ John can do that is if you have a disk image system, which is basically a little file on disk that you can open and it will be
⏹️ ▶️ John mounted as if it is a Mac volume, that disk image can be a flat file,
⏹️ ▶️ John but within it, once it mounts it as a disk image in the OS, the OS sees the entire rich file system, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not, I don’t think that’s why disk images were created, but that’s one of the reasons they still hang around, right? Second thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John disk images are just plain cool. You can take a file and use it as a disk. You can make an image of an
⏹️ ▶️ John existing disk and save it as a file, and you’re like, it’s a cool thing to be able to do. I remember showing
⏹️ ▶️ John people disk images back in the DOS days, and it would blow their little minds, because it is just,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it’s- Why are they little minds, John? Come on. Very little minds. Their drives were named
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey single letters,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? OK, and still. Anyway. I can name my hard drive whatever I want with spaces. Look, it’s got a cute cartoon icon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway. So yeah, so disk images are a useful thing
⏹️ ▶️ John to have, just because it’s useful sometimes to be able to make a fake little volume out of a file. I
⏹️ ▶️ John do it sometimes even today. Like if I need a case-sensitive file system somewhere to do something, for example,
⏹️ ▶️ John at work where we have files that differ only in case, it drives me nuts. If I wanna do that on my Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John I need to make a case sensitive volume, but I’m not gonna like partition my thing or, yeah, I guess it would be the APFS, it’s much
⏹️ ▶️ John easier. But back in the pre-APFS days, you’d make a little disk image and you could make it any size
⏹️ ▶️ John you want and it can be sparse so it doesn’t take up all that space and yada yada. Disk images are just a cool thing to have. Now, as
⏹️ ▶️ John for why they still exist today in a world where our Mac applications shouldn’t have any crap that can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John live on the internet, why don’t we just use zip files? Well, a lot of applications do just use zip files,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there are still things that disk images can do that say a zip file can’t. For example, mount is a volume,
⏹️ ▶️ John open a window that has the stupid little arrow in the background that says, drag this application over to this
⏹️ ▶️ John alias or symlink usually to your application folder. How many apps have you gotten that do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? If you just unzip it, it sits there in your downloads folder and then everyone just runs it out of their downloads folder
⏹️ ▶️ John then everyone’s got to write custom code that says, hey, it looks like you’re running this application out of your downloads folder. Do you want me to move it into applications?
⏹️ ▶️ John None of these are a perfect system. The Mac App Store is better where you just hit the button and you get the app and it goes in the right
⏹️ ▶️ John place. but both of them have fulfill a role. And so that just came at that disc image
⏹️ ▶️ John convention today. Yes, it technically does preserve all next specific data, yada, yada. But you probably
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t need to do that anymore. But it does let you do the little thing where you can instruct people to drag the icon
⏹️ ▶️ John into the application folder, which I grant most people don’t even understand what’s happening there. And it’s confusing. You’re still left with
⏹️ ▶️ John a disc image that you have to unmatch. It’s a bad system. We all know it is. But I think that’s one of the reasons they
⏹️ ▶️ John still hang around. Right. So to sum up, disk images are cool and should always exist.
⏹️ ▶️ John People needed to use them for software distribution back in the day. People don’t need to use them now, but they still have some features
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is a zip file or a tarball a disk image?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, not at all. Because when you sort of unpack it, you get files out of it. When you open
⏹️ ▶️ John a disk image, it mounts a volume. Your computer thinks it has a new volume attached to it, just like
⏹️ ▶️ John any other volume and all the other tools you can use for volumes, including ejecting them and running file system check
⏹️ ▶️ John on them and like the volumes can have different file systems than the file system on your Mac like totally unrelated,
⏹️ ▶️ John not even remotely close.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What about a WAD file? Do you know what that is, John? Because, you know, there aren’t very many games on, there aren’t many games
⏹️ ▶️ John on Macs. I know what a WAD file is. I don’t know, I think, aren’t WAD files just zip files
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though? I don’t think they’re literally zip files, but they’re effectively the same as far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I’m aware. I think they actually might have predated zip files because that was what like Doom used for its resources,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? Yep. I don’t know if it predated zip, but I think they are effectively the same. It
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t predate ZIP, but there are a lot of file formats that are really just either ZIP or
⏹️ ▶️ John tar under the covers. What the hell is a XIP, though? I would love to know what that format is. Is that really a totally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Xcode ZIP? Yeah, I thought that that was like a cryptographically secure ZIP file
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that. I probably have that wrong for the record, but that was my impression, was that it’s effectively a ZIP file
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s got some, you know, certs and cryptographic magic that I don’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ John of it. All we know is that it takes forever to decompress.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. The chat room is saying it’s a signed zip, which is, I think, a better summary of what I was trying and fumbling
⏹️ ▶️ John to say. Although I imagine that it takes forever to zip, not just because of the format, but also because Xcode itself contains a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also because you probably have Dropbox running, which is using 100% of your CPU while it’s unzipping.
⏹️ ▶️ John Come on, rookie mistake. Never try to expand on one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John Xcode XIP zip files with Dropbox running. Silly.
⏹️ ▶️ John after all. That should be the real benchmark of any new pro Mac hardware. It’s like, OK, this is all well and good.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can have five 8K streams of video, but how long does it take to decompress Xcode? Hahahahahahaha
#askatp: 10-year phones?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Ian Oimaitiao writes, as users are starting to make their phones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last three to four years between upgrades, do you think it’s possible or reasonable for the useful lifespan of a phone to reach 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years? It feels like official software support is artificially holding older phones back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I think I take a little bit of issue with artificially holding older phones back. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think that’s particularly fair. I think 10 years is aggressive, but on an infinite time scale,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you never know. But I do think that it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems as though iPhones anyway are lasting longer. And look at like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Watch, you know, the Series 3. Ah, bless its heart. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still going. So I do think that things are definitely getting or having increased
⏹️ ▶️ Casey longevity. Ten years, I don’t think we’ll see for a while. But I mean, the point is still,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other than the artificial thing, I think the point is still fair. Marco, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also don’t think any vendor is artificially slowing old phones down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think software moves forward and the OS’s move forward because they’re able to assume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things about how modern phones have more processing power and more RAM and stuff like that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the OS’s will always move forward and will always be slower on really old hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the fact that the OS’s run at all on the old hardware, I think that letting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that happen for a certain period back in your hardware lineup is the only obligation the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform makers have to old hardware. And that being said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could think about, could a phone last 10 years? And I think to get to that point,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would need two things to happen. Number one, you would need a dramatic slowdown in the advancement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of phone hardware. Now we see on the PC side, Mac side, that has happened over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the last decade or two. And a 10-year-old Mac, as John knows,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can still be usable. It’s not, it might not be the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern performer by the time it gets there, but like it is possible because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones will get to a point where they are advancing much more slowly as they have been for these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last 12 years. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but you can see like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the shape of the curve, it is flattening, it is getting less steep. phones are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accelerating in performance more slowly than they used to be. So that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think has to happen to make this even possible. And the second thing, from a practical standpoint,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that the batteries have to be much more easily replaceable, or they have to last much longer on their own.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the main problem we have that limits phone and watch and laptop lifespan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these days is the chemical useful lifespan of lithium-ion batteries. They degrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time, no matter how much or little you use them, there’s a certain inevitable amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of degradation that happens just chemically to them that they lose capacity. And if you actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are using them, if you’re like discharging and recharging them every day, like you do with phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and watches at least, maybe not all laptops, depending on whether you use it to plug them most of the time but like phones and watches,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re discharging to some degree, to some significant degree, and then recharging every day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No battery can stand up to that for more than a few years without having pretty significant capacity loss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually to the point where the device is no longer useful. And to reach 10 years, you would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to either have dramatically better and longer lasting batteries which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think we really know how to make yet in this category, or, and or, you’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to have the batteries be easily replaceable outside of warranty by any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco repair shop or end user, not just having Apple do it for whatever price they want. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I don’t think is very likely either.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, battery I feel like is the main constraint. The only thing I would add is that you mentioned like I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturers are slowing down old phones intentionally. The one instance where Apple was slowing down old phones intentionally was
⏹️ ▶️ John because of, ta-da, the battery. As in they had to, you know, it would overflow,
⏹️ ▶️ John overload the battery and the phone would switch off. So the choice was to run at a slower speed and draw less power,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? The battery is the real constraint here, both the changing of it and the technology. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John good news is that there is a potential for new, longer-lasting battery technology.
⏹️ ▶️ John The bad news is that the time horizon is not particularly good. It’s always as,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, five to 10 years in the future. You know, it’ll probably come to, I like the, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, the solid metal batteries or whatever, probably come to vehicles before it comes to phones, but who
⏹️ ▶️ John knows? But that’s what you really need. And as for the phones, you know, Apple support
⏹️ ▶️ John for OSs, I saw a chart, I wish I could remember it, I couldn’t find the link. chart recently showing OS support versus
⏹️ ▶️ John phone hardware age on Android. And it is dismal compared to the iPhone. Apple, Apple supports
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware so much farther back in time with its most recent OS than than Android tends
⏹️ ▶️ John to. So I think Apple’s doing about as well as you can expect, given the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re all their batteries are internal, are not particularly easy to replace NR lithium ion.
#askatp: Big camera for baby?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, Luke Schulman writes, we are expecting our first child in January 2021. We don’t currently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a quote unquote real camera. With the newest capabilities of phone cameras, would you recommend buying a quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real camera? What attributes would you prioritize? You know, I was just thinking today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I haven’t used my Micro Four Thirds camera, which is a small quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real camera. I haven’t used that in a little while. And I kind of miss it. I kind of miss,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the same way that, what did you guys call it, a tea ceremony playing vinyl? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like to some degree, there’s a little bit of a tea ceremony now for my Olympus,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Micro Four Thirds camera. Up until the iPhone 11 Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t personally feel like any of my iPhones took good enough pictures
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be comparable to that phone. And I still don’t get the really good bokeh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off of the iPhone, even with portrait mode, like it’s oftentimes, it feels synthetic even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me, and I don’t have the world’s most discerning eye. But there’s things about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m comparing only one data point, which is my Olympus, and so this math may be different for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other cameras, but like the iPhone’s HDR mode, so you can capture a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very bright sky at the same time you’re capturing a normally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exposed person, That works much better on my iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than it does on my Olympus and video is much better on my iPhone than it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is on my Olympus. And my iPhone is always on me. So in a lot of ways I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would say no you shouldn’t buy a real camera. But I will tell you even with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Micro Four Thirds camera which is way less fancy than the cameras that the two of you gentlemen have,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I get a good shot it is a Good, good shot. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t feel like there’s been many pictures on my iPhone, even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 11 Pro that I love so much. There haven’t been that many that I’ve been like, wow, that was a great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shot. I’ve gotten a zillion shots that are very good, but not to the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey level. But the thing of it is, is that, you know, the real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera’s bigger, it’s slower, it’s heavier, it’s got its own battery, I need to worry about charging.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t automatically like geo tag all the pictures. There are many disadvantages to it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I personally still think it is worth it. And whenever we’re doing something that’s even remotely unusual,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which for the last seven months has been never, but you know, when we’re doing, when we’re going to my parents’
⏹️ ▶️ Casey house, when we’re going on a vacation, I will still bring the big camera out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot, and I am always glad that I did because I will always find at least a handful of shots
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I think to myself, this may have been taken differently with the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe the sky wouldn’t be blown out on the iPhone, but I’ve zoomed three times further
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than my iPhone can zoom or the background blur that bokeh in the background is so much cleaner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and crisper than it is, or I guess not crisp, you know what I mean? It’s so much less synthetic than it would have been on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPhone. And so that is many words to say that I still think it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worth it, but it is a much, much tougher call now than I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has ever been before. And even, you know, one phone ago, I didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a XS, but I did have a X. With my X, I would have been like, absolutely get a real camera. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not so sure. John, let’s start with you because I think even though you are extremely opinionated, I think you might have actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey softer opinions about this. And let’s have Marco round us
⏹️ ▶️ John out. Oh, easy answer. This is another one of our perennial questions that we get all the time. Absolutely get a real camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like your kids are not gonna be this age, you know, they’re only gonna be this age one time. You will never regret spending more
⏹️ ▶️ John money to get even a tiny bit better pictures. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey regret getting,
⏹️ ▶️ John I had a real camera because camera phones weren’t much of a thing for my kids. I regret not getting a better camera because they
⏹️ ▶️ John were just too darn expensive. We got a good camera, but not the best. I look back at those pictures now and I say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should have spent $3,000 to get whatever the best, you know, SLR camera you could
⏹️ ▶️ John have gotten was, which you didn’t, right? I feel like for memories like that, especially your young child,
⏹️ ▶️ John where this will be the time you have the absolute most motivation to deal with all the downsides, Casey said, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s big, it’s bulky, it’s expensive. When it’s your first child coming, you will find yourself,
⏹️ ▶️ John find the motivation to carry around the big heavy camera. If possible, you will find the ability to dig
⏹️ ▶️ John out that much money from your savings to pay for the thing, just like you’re paying for all the other baby stuff when the new baby’s coming, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And then in later years, you will never regret having a even slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John better than phone camera camera for, that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna take pictures with your phone, because you totally will.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think there is no question, the sort of the, this is the loss aversion model, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John What will you regret more, lugging around a big camera and not using it as much as you quote unquote thought
⏹️ ▶️ John you would, or having phone quality only pictures of your baby?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, I know I need to give you a chance, Marco, But one thing that I used to convince myself to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my first Olympus camera was that I thought of it kind of like an insurance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey policy in so far as I don’t want to regret
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not having had the best camera or maybe not the best, but a really good camera for this time, like you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, John, that you can never get back. And so I think that’s a really good point that I didn’t consider.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s something that should be considered, you know, that there’s no way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go back in time and get better photos, so you might as well get a good camera now. Marco, I apologize.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think for the first time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might take the other side of this.
⏹️ ▶️ John As somebody who has pictures of his child with a Canon 5D, which look amazing and would
⏹️ ▶️ John not be possible with current phones, let alone phones that were back when Adam was a baby.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s a tough call because it’s so much more complicated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. Every year that goes by, this decision gets more complicated because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones get better and they keep getting better and better at more and more things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iceberg that SLRs and mirrorless, other cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, they’re standing on this iceberg and it just keeps shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Full size or other cameras are still better than phone cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and will always be better than phone cameras in certain ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And those ways are significant. They’re always going to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more resolution, way better optics, way better low light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noise performance. Big cameras are always going to be able to capture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better pictures in ideal circumstances when you have them with you, when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have good light, when you have good glass, when you have the settings right, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when everything is right, the big cameras will always be able to capture amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shots that phone optics simply can’t do because they’re so much smaller and cheaper.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is a lot of value to the pictures that big cameras can capture that you are just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not going to get out of a phone camera no matter what. But you will take so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more pictures with your phone, so many more, and you’ll take video with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your phone and you’ll be largely looking at many of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pictures on phones, where the difference in quality is not that big,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not that noticeable. You start seeing these differences when you’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco large scale viewing, viewing on computer monitors or printing. That’s when you start noticing quality differences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more. But viewing at phone sizes, even the quality advantages of big camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photos are getting less and less noticeable compared to well done phone photos. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone can now succeed so much better in areas where the big cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco struggle or where the big cameras can work if you’re a pro, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a high chance of making an error. So like what Casey was saying about exposure problems of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have a bright area, like you can capture high dynamic range,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco general imaging with big cameras. It’s just harder and you’re more likely to do it wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it might require post-processing that you will probably never do. So there’s that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole issue. There’s the ways in which the big cameras are so much worse. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco workflow is such a big one. As Casey mentioned, the big camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photos are not gonna be automatically geo-tagged. You gotta remember to set the clock right on the camera, otherwise they’re gonna even have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong timestamps. You have to somehow import them from the camera to whatever your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photo collection is, whether it’s the Apple Photo Roll or whatever else you might do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that process is gonna be heavy and clunky and error prone. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much harder to work with them, even beyond the physical side, which is itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not trivial, because no matter how small of a camera you get, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be pocketable, and you’re not gonna have it with you most of the time. So you have all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these, there’s so many issues that make standalone cameras so much harder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use in practice, and you just get such amazing output
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from modern phones, it’s just increasingly hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to justify a standalone camera. So what I would say is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re the kind of person who loves gear and you just want a reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy some cool gear and you’re gonna actually therefore be motivated to use it when you get it, by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all means, get a cool camera. Having your kid is a great time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to scratch that itch of, I want good camera gear. If you’re into it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the gear’s sake, go for it. But if you just are thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I should have this because I quote, should, I think phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are just about at the threshold now where they are good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough at the things that the big cameras are really good at, and they’re better than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the big cameras in many common situations. Casey mentioned video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree. Even though my big cameras are capable of shooting better video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in professional hands, in professional settings, I don’t have professional hands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’m usually not in professional settings. And so in the settings I’m usually in, with the hands I have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I grab the phone in my pocket and I shoot video and it looks incredible and it looks better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than what I could have done in those same situations with my big Sony camera. That dynamic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like the phone actually doing better in the situation I’m actually in than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big camera could do, that keeps broadening to accommodate more and more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use cases. One of the biggest ones now is in low light. That if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want a photo in low light, if you have a giant full frame sensor on a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice big Sony sensor, full frame sensor, nice big wide open lens, you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really well in low light and get an amazing amount of detail with not nearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as much noise as you think you would get. But if you go a step below that and you need to like shoot a picture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a dark restaurant of your family, an iPhone 11 will do a better job of that than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost any big camera because it’s combining its crappy optics with amazing software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the big cameras never will have. Or at least they seem to have shown no interest in ever adding.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even like an area like that where the area of low light, you would think this would be an area where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the big cameras would outshine them just because they have just simple physics tremendously in their favor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the amount of light they can capture. And it turns out in a lot of cases, no, the iPhone does better in practice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of its software. In another example, the, oh God, what’s the super resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sweater mode called? Deep learning or something like that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, I completely forgot because I think I have that off, but I know what you’re thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of. Oh, you have it off, turn it on, it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, but I thought it took away like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco something else. It takes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away the thing where it would capture the outside of a frame, like using the wide angle camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you weren’t using wide angle and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey then you could like crop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. But I use that. Deep Fusion, thank you, Ashkosh in the chat. Deep Fusion is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a real thing. Like I wasn’t sure it would be much of a gain when they announced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Again, another area that big cameras usually excel is just sheer resolution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if you wanna zoom in and start pixel peeping you can see that you’re capturing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more detail, usually, with a big camera than you are with a phone camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Until Deep Fusion. And Deep Fusion closed that gap significantly. The gap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is still there. Big cameras will still capture way more detail in ideal circumstances
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than an iPhone, but the gap is a lot smaller. And so at some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point, as these gaps get smaller or go away, every time that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happens you have to ask yourself, like, is the big camera still worth it? And I have never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used a big camera less than in the last two years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s to the point now where I’ve mentally decided, like, I’m just not gonna buy any more of these.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because our phones are just so good, we’re just never using the big cameras. All of their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco downsides, how incredibly clunky they are at certain things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t make the upsides worth it to us anymore. So John’s argument is…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The correct one. Ha ha! It’s totally worth considering like, you know, the kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you know, you only have one shot at this kind of angle. You know, no pun intended, where like, you only have a certain amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of time where your kid’s gonna be super young and you’re gonna want to capture as much of that as you possibly can. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want the camera for that purpose, go for it. But if you’re looking at it like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little more pragmatically and analytically, If you’re not super excited to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a big camera and to use it as its own thing, as a gear thing, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you aren’t super photographically inclined, I don’t think it’s worth it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s really weird to finally admit that, but I think I’m at that point now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you have two factors working here. One, your kid is getting older, and when kids get older, you take fewer pictures of them. That’s a real thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And two, I think it’s a false dichotomy, because of course Luke is gonna have a phone too. Like, it’s not an either or.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re saying, do you want a big camera in addition, of course, to the smartphone that you already have? You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John still gonna have a smartphone for all the things that it’s better at and for all the times when you don’t have the big phone. We’re just saying, on top
⏹️ ▶️ John of that, like Casey’s scenario, in the situations where you want the big camera, the day of the child’s
⏹️ ▶️ John birth, first birthday, vacation, stuff like that, in context where you will
⏹️ ▶️ John be motivated to have a better camera, would you recommend buying a real camera? Absolutely,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would recommend it because you don’t lose out on any of the things Marco said. It’s just a question of how much you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John use the big camera. And I think, A, because Luke is writing us to ask this question, and B, because when
⏹️ ▶️ John people have babies, they’re all very highly motivated to take lots of pictures of them. That is the prime
⏹️ ▶️ John time when no matter how little you care about real photography and big cameras, you will
⏹️ ▶️ John be the most motivated to lug the big camera more than you would. I imagine it’s fading
⏹️ ▶️ John just like Marco’s scenario where the kids get older, you don’t take as many pictures of them. That continues to happen the whole time. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John the trade-offs become like, well, I don’t really need the big camera. But I would say even today, even though Marco, you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John using your big camera that much, Tiff still uses it to take pictures of birds, right? So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s still good.
⏹️ ▶️ John She just did an Instagram like three times this week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true, but that was a very rare thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m saying is it worth it to have a real camera? Yes, you should have a real
⏹️ ▶️ John camera in your house. Certainly when you’re having a baby, but even just for the rest of your life with the
⏹️ ▶️ John camera, it’s good to have one around. you’re not gonna use it as much as you did when the baby was an infant.
⏹️ ▶️ John Certainly, you’re not gonna use it as much as when you go on vacation, but it is definitely a thing worth having. The second part is,
⏹️ ▶️ John what attributes would you prioritize? Given the trade-offs that we’ve just described, the attributes
⏹️ ▶️ John I would prioritize, the one attribute I would prioritize, is essentially sensor size. All other
⏹️ ▶️ John things being equal, the one thing that big cameras are gonna have up on the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John is, it’s not gonna be video, right? It probably still is low light performance, just in general, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John sensor size, because everything else flows from that, right? Obviously you don’t get a camera that’s too big that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna use it, right? And don’t buy one that’s super duper expensive, but if you have to pick one thing to prioritize, pick that. Pick the
⏹️ ▶️ John biggest sensor size that comes in a form factor that you think appeals to you and get that camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because that’s what the big phone has, the big cameras have. They can gather more
⏹️ ▶️ John light through better lenses that go to a bigger sensor. If you get an expensive camera
⏹️ ▶️ John with a relatively tiny sensor that might not actually be better than your phone camera
⏹️ ▶️ John in many scenarios. Whereas in lots of scenarios where the phone excels, it’s thanks to software,
⏹️ ▶️ John so on and so forth, but there’s nothing that phone can do to get real depth of field, whereas the camera with
⏹️ ▶️ John a big sensor and a wide open lens will get you that, right? And I still think in low light performance, the phones can
⏹️ ▶️ John do amazing things, but what they’re basically doing is hiding incredible amounts of sensor noise
⏹️ ▶️ John that will not be as noisy on your camera with a big sensor. But if you get like
⏹️ ▶️ John a, you know, a little pocketable sort of integrated, quote unquote, big camera, well, it’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, but it also is not an interchangeable lens camera with a tiny sensor, that will literally have worse low light performance
⏹️ ▶️ John than your phone, even ignoring any software processing. So if you’re gonna get a big camera, which you totally should,
⏹️ ▶️ John prioritize sensor size.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I will say, you know, to answer the second half of this question of what attributes would I prioritize, I agree with John
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if you’re gonna go through all the downsides of something not being your phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera, you want it to be amazing. There’s no room for anything in between.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say you can skip anything smaller than micro four thirds or APS-C.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would even say if you’re asking this question and you’re a listener of our show, you should strongly consider full frame.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are many good full frame options these days that didn’t exist back when we were
⏹️ ▶️ John Including a new one that’s not much bigger than my APS-C camera but is full frame,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco which is the Sony A7C. Yeah, and I have not been paying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attention to this market at all, but that even made splashes that I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it was so small and compelling. Because it’s not that big.
⏹️ ▶️ John The mirrorless is really, and if you want specific model recommendations, the current line of the A6600,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s an amazing compromise between image quality and amazingly
⏹️ ▶️ John good auto focus, way better than an iPhone in terms of tracking people keeping them in focus, which is important once your kid
⏹️ ▶️ John starts running around a little bit. That’s a great sort of compromise. But if you can afford to go up to the full frame
⏹️ ▶️ John version, either the A7C or the big real A7R and all that stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John all those are great cameras. But all those sensor sizes are bigger than micro four thirds. And I would agree with Margot.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just forget about anything with a sensor size that’s not hilariously bigger than your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So if you’re going to do this at all, do really do it. Go all out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there are certainly a lot of reasons why you might not want to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And also, one quick final note, Lensrentals.com, not a sponsor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’ve used them several times in the past. You can not only rent lenses, but entire cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from them. And so before Declan was born, I thought I wanted the Olympus camera that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I ended up getting, it’s in the show notes, but I wasn’t sure and I wanted to try it. And so I rented
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the camera body that I thought I wanted and the lens I thought I wanted and I used them together for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about a week, you know, like a month or two before Declan was born and I really, and I spent some time with it and thought, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey okay, I like this. This is going to work for me. And then I bought the camera and lens that I had tried. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not literally the same ones, although you could. Um, but I, you know, went to Amazon or B&H or wherever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I got that same setup. And I was, even though it cost me like a hundred or $150 more to rent for a week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was so glad I did it because that convinced me that it was something I was going to want to use and that it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wasn’t some really clunky user interface or something like that, that would just drive me nuts for the next several years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I too have used lens rentals and they’ve been wonderful. Anyway, thanks to our actual sponsors this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week. Hover, Linode, and Mint Mobile. And thank you to our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco members who support us directly. You can join yourself and get all the cool member benefits at atp.fm.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. John didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at atp.fm, And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to. Accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ John check podcast so long
John’s camera-shopping
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m finding links to Sony cameras.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now you got John shopping for cameras again. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I just… John, it’s fine. John,
⏹️ ▶️ John the A7C, actually. So, yeah, so what is the deal with the A7C?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, Sony has been frustrating me lately,
⏹️ ▶️ John and for all these new cameras they come out with, there’s always some annoying caveat,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re like, that caveat didn’t have to be there on these
⏹️ ▶️ John phones, and it’s kind of annoying. Cameras, I’m gonna bring up the 7C again. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the 7C body looks a lot like the body on the 6100, 6400, 6600, like my model of camera, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s more or less the same size and shape body, which is fairly small and compact, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s an interchangeable lens camera. And the 7C, when you first look at it, it’s like, wow, they fit a full frame
⏹️ ▶️ John sensor in that same package, but it’s not the same package. It is actually, it’s a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John beefier. It’s a little bit thicker, it’s a little bit wider. it’s just, it’s a little bit bigger,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And it uses the full frame lenses, so that makes it feel bigger too.
⏹️ ▶️ John The annoying compromises is like, they can’t seem to get the software situation sorted out across their
⏹️ ▶️ John line. So like they have a new interface that’s not as terrible as the old, like two dimensional menu
⏹️ ▶️ John interface. Like they have a new touchscreen based interface, but it’s not evenly spread across their line. I forget which models have it and which
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t, but that’s annoying. Like you just wish they had it in everything. And those type of compromises
⏹️ ▶️ John are, you know, every one of the cameras has one of those little
⏹️ ▶️ John things. So no one of these current crop of Sony cameras I look at and say, that’s the one. It’s got all the features, it’s got
⏹️ ▶️ John all the newest stuff, it’s got all the newest ports, it’s USB-C, it has the touchscreen, it has the joystick on the back,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it has amazing battery life, it doesn’t overheat. You know, none of them have all of that, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is frustrating. But the 7C is super duper close, right? The 7C has almost everything
⏹️ ▶️ John I could hope for. my only reservation for it is it’s kind of like the iPhone 10. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John can I handle one that’s just a little bit bigger? And am I going to die with these full frame
⏹️ ▶️ John lenses? Like they’re so much bigger than my current ones? Or is that what I just need to step up to? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been, I’ve really wanted the CC 600 for a long time, assuming we actually went on vacation this year
⏹️ ▶️ John to the ocean and I had to take pictures of kids in the surf again. I lust after
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony’s sort of best in the industry, like software, auto focus,
⏹️ ▶️ John and object tracking, which for whatever reason hasn’t been something that Apple has really either touted
⏹️ ▶️ John or jumped on top of, but if you’re trying to catch action of things moving around
⏹️ ▶️ John and keep them in focus, Sony’s got the best system. It’s the fastest, it understands how to do
⏹️ ▶️ John pet eye tracking now in addition to human eye tracking. It’s really phenomenal. It combined
⏹️ ▶️ John with the ability to take many, many pictures. So the 6600, which is just my camera with essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John improved software and in-body stabilization. That may be
⏹️ ▶️ John my next purchase instead of the 7C thing because I feel like the 7C, I’m not sure if I’m ready to graduate
⏹️ ▶️ John to that size, essentially, and sort of, I think it invalidates
⏹️ ▶️ John all of my lenses too because none of my lenses are full-frame lenses. So, I don’t know. I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t really decide, but I’m glad Sony’s making progress and I’m glad that this camera existed,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I was like 900% more excited about it than I was after I watched all the reviews.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, so, I’m sorry, this does or does not have the new UI. So let me rephrase, other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than size, other than size, what are the drawbacks?
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget which, other than size, which this had. I think it might not have the new software.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it might lack the joystick on the back. I don’t remember the details, so I don’t wanna commit to it because I just saw a bunch of preliminary
⏹️ ▶️ John reviews. But mainly the thing that’s keeping me is like I would deal with those things that I just described, even if they were all
⏹️ ▶️ John true, is I’m worried about the size. The good thing is that one of the things that doesn’t screw up is battery life. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently the battery life is phenomenal. And most of Sony’s recent cameras, they’ve really repented
⏹️ ▶️ John from the bad battery life. Now they just put massive batteries in everything. So the number of shots is
⏹️ ▶️ John insane. So yeah, it’s really just the size keeping away. Oh, I know the other one. This sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John stupid, but it came, I noted it before I watched any review, and then I watched other reviews and everybody complained
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. So I’m like, good, it’s not just me. The little eyepiece thingy, where you stick your eyeball on the back of it,
⏹️ ▶️ John all of these cameras, all the 60, you know, 6XXX series, have like
⏹️ ▶️ John a rubber hood that’s over the little place where you put your eye, and the 7C doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nor does it have a place for you to attach one. It’s just this little stump that you just shove your eye up against.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, what happened to the hood? The hood is awesome. Why wouldn’t you get rid of that? Maybe they did it to make it feel
⏹️ ▶️ John smaller. Like the hood is actually removable. You can take it off if you don’t want it, right? Why would they not just put it there?
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you don’t want it, just take it off. That, and that annoys me. That and the size are probably
⏹️ ▶️ John the two biggest physical barriers to me getting this phone. It’s like, I bet I want the little IP’s hood because it’s rubbery
⏹️ ▶️ John and comfortable. And I shove it up against my glasses basically. Like, cause they’ve got the, what is it called Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ John The name of the thing where you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey adjust it so if
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you have- The diopter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, whatever. The diopter dial. I shove this thing up against either my bare
⏹️ ▶️ John eyeball or against my glasses. And I don’t want to do either one of those things with a hard piece of plastic. I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John do it with a soft piece of rubber. So, I mean, this is the first version of this camera and they’ll have complaints
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but they fixed so many other things. So like they fixed like the card slot, they fixed the little flappy doors on them, it’s USB-C,
⏹️ ▶️ John like everything about it is like they updated all the things, but they made a couple of sort of unforced
⏹️ ▶️ John errors in the design. And the handle is a little bit more shallow, which, and it’s a bigger camera. So it’s like a shallower
⏹️ ▶️ John handle and a bigger camera, and it’s heavier.
⏹️ ▶️ John I say this now, We’ll see how long I hold out against full frame because that is obviously the next step I need to jump to
⏹️ ▶️ John but we’ll see it does have all the cool tracking and sensing the sensor is exactly the
⏹️ ▶️ John same Resolution in terms of megapixels as my current camera, but obviously physically
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger So the the low-light performance I haven’t seen the final reviews of the actual photos
⏹️ ▶️ John taken up with a little ants Performance has got to be good because it’s the same number of pixels but a way bigger physical sensor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera Yeah, and it’s just you know Sony’s sensor progress over the years is just remarkable like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their sensors are world-leading in low-light performance And every year they get better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so or every generation they have better So that’s that that is non-trivial and it is probably better in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light my concern for you with going full frame is your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love of long-range zoom lenses That is just an area that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just either non-existent or garbage on full frame. You have to
⏹️ ▶️ John Or weighs a thousand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pounds. Right, and costs $2,000. Yeah, like to get a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full frame zoom lens, it’s very large and doesn’t have that much reach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually. You know, usually has less overall reach than what you’re getting out of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a consumer grade or even semi-pro, even pro-zoomer, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super zoom lens for a crop sensor camera. But the full frame,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s- Yeah, that’s one of the things that annoys me about this is that the megapixels are, like, it’s only 24 megapixels. So you can
⏹️ ▶️ John get away, the reason you can get away with a zoom that doesn’t have much reach, if you have 41 megapixels, is to just crop it yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if it doesn’t, and it’s just 24 megapixels, and I can’t get a long zoom, I can’t even crop
⏹️ ▶️ John into it, because I just don’t have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resolution. Again, megapixels are all about how you use them, but it would be hard for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me to justify buying a new standalone camera today that was only 24 megapixels.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just because the sensors go so much higher. You can get easily up to in the 40s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with full frame sensors that aren’t even that crazy up the market,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least in the 30s. I know there’s trade-offs there and everything too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One advantage to 24 is that the photos will be smaller for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your post-processing workflow. And there’s also to consider things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the actual resolvable resolution of the lenses that you’re gonna be using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might not be 24 megapixels, it might be lower, depending on what lenses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re using. The path to full-frame happiness is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco primes, like prime lenses, not zooms. Zooms exist for full-frame,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they’re so big and so heavy and so expensive that really the path to happiness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to get some small, fast primes. My favorite by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far, my favorite lens in the Sony lineup is that 35 millimeter F2.8 prime with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little inward facing hood thing because it’s so small and so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they have tons of great primes in the Sony FE line. I love the 55 1.8 as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ve added even more since I’ve been really looking, but that 35 millimeter 2.8 is so good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s just so tiny. Overall, I love a camera that has a small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prime lens on it because it’s just so much easier to handle and it’s so much easier to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in and out of a bag and it’s so much smaller and lighter that you end up using it way more. And if you can get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shockingly good optical performance out of that at the same time, even better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s why one of my favorite types of camera to use is the small,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boutique-y, fixed lens, but still full frame, roughly 28
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 35 millimeter lens camera and that would be things like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sony RX1 series or the Leica Q series. But yeah, ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though, I can’t recommend specific models because I just haven’t been paying attention at all. Like I know Canon’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new mirrorless thing is getting a lot of rave reviews. Nikon has one now. This is all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more recent than when I stop paying attention.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the one I’m still waiting for, you know how Sony’s very confusing namings, like the A7R
⏹️ ▶️ John is the one, maybe the R is for resolution, but it always has like the most megapixels, right? And then they have
⏹️ ▶️ John the A7S, which is I think is the video focused one. Yeah, usually it’s, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then they just have the plain old A7 with a Roman numeral after it. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John usually, it’s like the same body as the R, but the sensor doesn’t have as many megapixels,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s still full frame in the big body. And anyway, I may be screwing up these names, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom line is that that model that I just described, that basically what used to be the A7 III or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John the new one of those is the last one that hasn’t come out. The 7C is out of left field because this is a model they had never
⏹️ ▶️ John had before, but they did the new, you know, they’ve got the 6600, which is the tiny little one. They did the A7R, they did the A7S.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s Roman numerals there that I’m dropping, but the plain old 7 one, which is the body of the R and the
⏹️ ▶️ John S, but not video focused, but not as many pixels as the other one, they haven’t released that camera yet as far
⏹️ ▶️ John as I know. So that’s the last shoe to drop to say, okay, what
⏹️ ▶️ John number of megapixels do they choose for that? Because it is the bigger, bulkier body, but the thing about the 41
⏹️ ▶️ John megapixel is, like your hard drive space is, you’re just gonna be weeping from the size of those photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I feel like 24 isn’t exciting to me because I already have something close to that resolution.
⏹️ ▶️ John if not exactly, I forget if my thing is 21 or whatever. But 41 is probably too much. So somewhere in
⏹️ ▶️ John the middle, maybe the sweet spot for a full frame thing, but then do I want the big
⏹️ ▶️ John case? And I have looked at the other ones as well, the new Canons and the Nikons, but I’m pretty firmly in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony campus. They have so many models that are sort of orbiting around the sweet spot for me in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John size and resolution and features, it’s just, I haven’t wanted to choose one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have bought a new camera this year if it wasn’t for COVID. I would have probably bought the 6600, right? And taken it and used
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but COVID kind of squashed those plans. So I’ve got a year reprieve. Next year, if the world goes back to normal
⏹️ ▶️ John and I can go on my normal vacation, I will probably buy a new camera. It’s just a question of which one it will be.