707: Haunting the Campus Like a Ghost
03 Sep 2026Exit interviews for the outgoing iPhones and Phil Schiller (but not Tim Cook), baseball in the Vision Pro, and expectations for the iPhone event next week.
Episode Description:
- 🗣️ It’s St. Jude time! 🗣️
- Follow-up:
- Luz fooled me, Jerry!
- Extremely convincing fake by Daniel Luz
- Mea culpa
- Apple fooled us all
- Siri blobs fix
System Settings→Screen Time→Content & Privacy→Content & Privacy(turn the switch on) →Siri→Writing Assistance(turn the switch off)
- John is happy with new Macs timetable
- Are photo libraries on external disks supported?
- Yankees / Sox in Apple Vision Pro
- Motivations for SME adoption (via shac ron)
- Luz fooled me, Jerry!
- ✅ Tim Cook exit interview
- AT 688: A Company Man at 1h8m29s (Overcast timestamp link)
- Phil takes another step toward the door
- iPhone 17 / 17 Pro / 17 Pro max / Air Exit interviews
- iPhone event preview
- Post-show: John’s storage update
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Ternus & the Vision Pro
- 10 May: Mark Gurman
- 3 June: Juli Clover at MacRumors
- 21 August: Gurman
- 30 August: Gurman
Sponsored by:
- zocdoc: Find the right doctor, right now.
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Donate to St. Jude
- Fooled by a joke benchmark
- Wrong PCIe in PR?
- macOS 27’s Siri blobs
- Take note: John is happy
- Photo libraries on external disks
- AMX and SME
- Baseball in Vision Pro
- Sponsor: Zocdoc
- Tim Cook exit interview(?)
- Phil Schiller exit(?) interview
- iPhone 17 Pro exit interview
- iPhone Air exit interview
- iPhone 17 exit interview
- Event expectations
- Ending theme
- John’s storage update
Donate to St. Jude
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so you have caught us in the middle of doing our annual donations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to St. Jude, which we'll talk more about in a moment. But this is the time when the three of us get cranky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at each other because we all not outbid, but outbid each other in making our donations to St. Jude
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Children's Research Hospital. I am ready to. Oh, no, I'd have to continue to donate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some of us forgot to prepare for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, that's some of us Some of us is me. I'm the problem. It's me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That's a fish song, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. Let's go with that. uh Apple Pay. Let's do Apple Pay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that gonna work we're gonna go for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, so that's one thing I, since I've been on Chrome, Chrome doesn't offer Apple Pay for web forms.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't know if that's something I've missed or just what it's just limitation, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of don't miss it because Shop Pay, Link, and Google Wallet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pay, whatever, are so much more reliable and faster to do. Like Apple Pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the web, it always is like, what's your shipping address? I don't know. I don't have an address for you. What's your credit? Oh, wrong credit card.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't know. Like, it's so, Apple Pay on the web is so unreliable for me. But all these other ones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work flawlessly and usually faster.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that's not surprising. All right. I am ready to hit complete donation. All right, me too. Marco, you ready to
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Done. This is where I find out if my session timed out waiting for you two jokers to go through this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, John beat Marco by exactly $70. And I beat both, you fools. How
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that? So uh, Tiff and Marco, $7,007.77, John, well, just Syracuse,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey $7,077.77, and Casey Merrenlis,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey $7,143.03. Hey, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John won this year. This is the
⏹️ ▶️ John first year you've ever won, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Look at that. And that's the exact same I did last year. So look at
⏹️ ▶️ John I totally forgot what I did last year, but I just wanted to do lots of sevens, and apparently so did Marco, but I added one more seven than he did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, last year I did all the sevens, and you guys yelled at me, so I backed it off this
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, you can do whatever you want. Like, we're not stopping you from donating more. Like, it just, you know. It is nice for Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a win once. This is Casey's first victory in the St. Jude uh
⏹️ ▶️ John blind donation off that we have every year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although, I will also say that I think my one best victory was when I had that weird
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue with the ampersand or whatever it was. that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I think it was the first year
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, that's what it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh yeah. I thought I'd hit an ampersand. It probably was user error. I swear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don't think it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but logically it was user error. Casey star, Aaron.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yep. And then there were stars for all of the donate. Well, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco every, every,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every listener was like, ATP star.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It was incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so my failure was really a win for the children.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, I think this is
⏹️ ▶️ John the first year you won. Don't quote me on it. Maybe I'm wrong. We've been doing this for a while, but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, so it is September, and I always forget to look up if this is a national thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or an international thing. And for that, I apologize. But I can tell you, at least here in America and potentially worldwide,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. That is the month of September every single year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And because it's the month of September, because it's Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and because we are all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deeply associated with Relay FM, we are joining Relay FM and slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a part of it. Anyways, we are trying to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So St. Jude is a research hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and its business
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is saving the lives of children. And what's really incredible about this is that we are in our eighth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year as the Relay community coming together in September for St. Jude. uh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Here's the thing. When they opened, before they opened in 1962, childhood cancer was considered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey incurable. Just tough nuts. Your your, your child's going to pass away. Sorry about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Today, thanks in part to better therapies that St. Jude has helped develop, more than 80% of U.S. childhood cancer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey patients survive, which is incredible. St. Jude cares for some of the world's sickest children, regardless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of their race, ethnicity, beliefs, or ability to pay. And it's because of people like you that that's possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So for the last couple of years, I've been lucky enough to be a part of the podcast-a-thon,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which we typically did on iPhone release day. This year, we're doing it the first Friday in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey October, which is, I believe, the second of October from noon ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time until midnight ATP time. And you can use that as an opportunity to watch me act
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a dum-dum. You can send money St. Jude's way, but you can also do that right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you heard in the pre-show that the three of us did our annual donations. We do this because St. Jude
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that important to us and we feel that strongly about it. So between the three of us, based on John's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quick arithmetic, $21,228.57 to the wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. So as I was saying, I've been able to go for the last couple of years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this is going to be my third podcast-a-thon, if I'm not mistaken. And I got to tell you that you can imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what St. Jude is like before you go, but actually being there is truly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awe-inspiring. And the amount that St. Jude as an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey organization cares about their patients, cares
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about trying to cure cancer in children, it's astonishing. And everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that everyone does at St. Jude is with that unitary,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don't know if that's the word I'm looking for, but that specific mission in mind. And I told this story on analog this week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and forgive me, but I'm going to tell it again here. When I went for a like influencer thing a couple of years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago in April of 2024, Um, they took us to the pavilion, which is this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey building where they have the history of St. Jude and talk about their founders, Danny Thomas and his wife.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they had this like, not corkboard, but think of it as a cork board where, and it said on it, what inspires
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you? And they had these blank post-it notes that had already written on it. So I guess they're not blank, you know what I mean. Already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey written on it says, it says, I went to St. Jude and was inspired by ellipsis. And there's all of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these post-its on this board, right? And I talked about this in my blog post a couple, in a blog post a couple of years ago. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this board, I noticed a couple that were really striking to me. And it says, and it's clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a young adult or adult handwriting. It says, I went to St. Jude and I was inspired by the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lives they saved, including mine. If that doesn't hit you in the feels,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give me one more chance. I looked over and I saw another post-it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the handwriting was clearly a child's handwriting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it says, I went to St. Jude and I was inspired by the fact that I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make it. And there's a little heart drawn under it. I saw this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two years ago. I've thought about this so often since, and I'm getting a little bit choked up because that's how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey incredible this place is. I wish I was a good enough actor to do that on cue. I'm not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey St. Jude is a real deal. And yeah, it stinks that we need St. Jude, that we haven't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey solved all these problems already, but we have. And it's important to note that St. Jude, their research
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn't stay in America and their influence doesn't stay in America. So you might rightfully
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think, hey, I'm in Europe or I'm in Africa or something like that. Why do I care? Well, it's because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of St. Jude and the research they do and the treatments that they come up with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it is possible for so many people worldwide, so many sick children worldwide to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get through these unbelievably bad diagnoses. And as a final note from me, and then I'll give the other two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a chance to talk, our dear friend Stephen Hackett, his oldest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey son, Josiah, was a St. Jude patient. That's how we got involved with it. And at six months old, Josiah
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was diagnosed with a really, really gnarly brain cancer. And Josiah is, I think, 17 today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that. And Josiah is standing on this earth because of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey St. Jude. I'll say that one more time. Josiah is alive because of St.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jude. And if I can throw 5, 10, 15, 20, whatever dollars their way, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm going to do that. And I hope you will too. Now, Marco, we are coming up very quickly. We'll talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this later on a time where a lot of us really enjoy participating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in just unadulterated consumerism. If one were to feel slightly guilty about what could you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do to, I don't know, maybe offset that a little bit?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have big news. This year, the Marco offset is expanding. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell me more. Years ago, I developed in public on this show, the Marco Offset, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the way that you can assuage some of your guilt about what is probably coming up in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a week-ish, the iPhone event and a fall full of new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product launches. We all have phones that work for the most part. Like most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hearing this, you have a phone and it probably works. And you probably want to replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, especially once you see the new phone that's coming out. Like it's going to be awesome, especially the one that folds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in half probably. Like, you know, you're going to want that. It's going to cost a huge amount of money. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco originally I said years ago, to help assuage your consumer guilt, that you're
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about to buy products that maybe you don't necessarily need, or that you could get a lower-end one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you could make the one you have last another year or two before you upgrade, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can assuage your consumer guilt by simply taking all the extra money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you spend on top of your iPhone or Mac or whatever purchase above the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco base price and donating an equivalent amount to St. Jude in this campaign. So that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would include things like storage upgrades, AppleCare, the case, you know, all that stuff that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might add on. So whatever the base price of the phone was, I said, if it's like, you know, a phone that starts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at $999 for that product line and you get one all in with tax and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AppleCare and everything, you're up to like $1,200, then take that $200 extra and donate another $200 to St.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jude. because the theory was you can probably spare that little extra bit you just tacked it on at the end there. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can probably spare that and give it to St. Jude. And we encouraged you, if you could, to do that. This year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'd like to expand it to a level two and a level three.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, this is something I hand to God know nothing about. I'm genuinely very excited.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got a comment on Mastodon a couple days ago from user John Mullins.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'm not sure John Mullins was entirely serious. I'm also not entirely sure John
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mullins wasn't mad at me. But what this user suggested
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that basically that I should feel guilty about my use of AI.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I know a lot of people out there would agree with that statement. And what John said was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially with the St. Jude's campaign coming up where $100 can make a huge difference, we did the Marco offset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well as a Max AI offset where people donate the same amount that they paid for AI costs this month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ooh, that's very good. That's very good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I am now declaring is the Marco offset has levels two and three. Level one is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the baseline. So when you buy an iPhone that maybe you don't necessarily fully need, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you get the really nice one that maybe you don't fully need, and when you get the nice storage upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the fancy case and all that stuff, like that's still the base of the Marco offset.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But level two is that you add onto that whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you spent on AI this month. Level three above
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, whatever you spent on AI this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is very good. I fully endorse this. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco $20 a month plan for one of the AI providers, you know, you're in for $240 for the year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you're on the $100 a month plan, you're up for a little bit more, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So those are the three levels. Level one is what it's always been, the iPhone price delta. Level two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is you add on your AI cost this month if you've bought any AI. And level three is you add on your AI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco costs for the year. And that should be your suggested minimum St. Jude donation if you can swing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Now, these are wonderful ways to assuage us of things that maybe we feel a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit guilty about in some way to do something good with some extra money. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as Casey was saying, it's an amazing organization. They do amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work. And we talk about it every year. And you might get used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to it after a while. You might think like, yeah, I've heard the pitch. Yeah, I know. They cure a bunch of childhood cancer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They treat a bunch of childhood cancer and no one pays for it. Like none of their patients or their families pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dime, including things like lodging and travel and all the care around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And you might get tired of hearing that every year and you might stop for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moment understanding how amazing that is. But every one of those statements,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that's a huge deal. It's a remarkable achievement.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a huge amount of work. It's a huge amount of money. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impact they have on not only the patients and the patients' families, but the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world of cancer research broadly around the world, as Casey was saying, it's just a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impact. So this is not to be forgotten or taken lightly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They really do incredible work, and it's a really great place to donate money to. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please consider one of the Marco offsets or more if you want. If you can swing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, this is a good way to swing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Absolutely. Yeah, it's worth worth reiterating, like you mentioned, that no one gets a bill. It's not like there are certain patients
⏹️ ▶️ John that pay for it and certain patients that don't like college where some people pay tuition, some people get scholarships.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nobody pays for it. None of the patients ever pay a dime for anything. And how do they do that? How does an organization
⏹️ ▶️ John treat people for cancer at great expense, paying all the doctors and scientists and all the hospitals? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John how do they do that? All of their money comes from people giving it in donation drives like this. As I've said
⏹️ ▶️ John before, is this the best system for providing health care? No, but it's what we have. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can help, you know, if you're going to put your money towards helping some kids survive cancer, it's a great
⏹️ ▶️ John use of it. And I would also recommend, as I always do, to perhaps start thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John of yourself as a person who gives to charity, especially if you didn't think of yourself that way in years
⏹️ ▶️ John past. Maybe you were a college student, maybe you were young adult and broke and didn't have a lot of money, but maybe you're later in life
⏹️ ▶️ John now and you do have a little of money. Once you start changing your mindset and actually start
⏹️ ▶️ John budgeting this, like, you know, this, my donation is part of my annual
⏹️ ▶️ John budget. Like there are other things that can move and change. And maybe I spend a little more on this, a little less on that,
⏹️ ▶️ John but this donation remains a fixed percentage or a fixed amount or whatever. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I planned for this during the year and it took me a long time to come around to like, oh, is it just like a magnanimous, wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ John thing I do every year? Or is it just, no, this is just part of your annual expenses? Because it's a good thing
⏹️ ▶️ John to do. And, you know, when once you reach a certain level of success and have a certain amount of savings and income
⏹️ ▶️ John and are comfortable enough, you should start looking outwards and say, what can I do to help other people? It doesn't have to be money. You can
⏹️ ▶️ John volunteer, do other things, whatever. But one of the things you can do is give to St. Jude during Childhood
⏹️ ▶️ John Cancer Awareness Month. Now is the time to do that. Try to start thinking of yourself as someone
⏹️ ▶️ John who does that as part of their just normal life. You'll benefit from it and the recipients of
⏹️ ▶️ John your money definitely will.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Absolutely. And you brought up a moment ago, what if you don't have a ton of money? Well, you can absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey help St. Jude and other charities in other ways. You can set up your own fundraising, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fundraiser of your own that's kind of a child of the relay fundraiser and come up with your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own little like milestones and stuff like that. And a lot of people have done this over the last couple of years with Relay and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they've been very, very successful. You can also just ask a friend, you know, say, hey, you know, it would be really cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you sent five, 10, 20 bucks to St. Jude or something
⏹️ ▶️ John Find the friend who's spending $200 a month on AI and tell them about the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey offset levels, you know, Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Use the guilt to your advantage. And like, and if you can't afford it, fine. Like, But if you can give five bucks, give
⏹️ ▶️ John five bucks. Like if that's the level you can do it, every bit counts. Like this the whole point of this pledge drive. The whole point
⏹️ ▶️ John of it being a big month is that a thousand people giving five bucks is $5,000. That's how math works.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. I cannot reiterate what John said enough. Don't feel bad if it's $2,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey $5. That's awesome. Please do it. And also for those of you who are in the technology industry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and maybe have employers that are conducive to doing this sort of thing, please check out as you donate that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there's also options for employer match. This has gotten easier and easier to do during the donation process over the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last year or two. So please check that out. And we will be talking about this for the remainder of the month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It won't go quite as long as it did today. But I wanted to do one quick final thing. I wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey call out Guillaume Moran. I hope I got that close to right. Guillaume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been the leader for the last several years on the leaderboard for the largest donation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Again, $5 is great. Don't let me dissuade you, but I do want to recognize people who go above and beyond.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Guillaume this year donated by themselves $12,718.28.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that is truly incredible. It makes our piddly donations, our donations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seem piddly by comparison, but we still did it because it's important. So thank you to Guillaume. Thank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to all of you for even thinking about donating. And one more time, if you please, stjude.org
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash ATP, S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash ATP.
Fooled by a joke benchmark
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. We have something that's a little embarrassing to talk about, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We made a bit of an oops. What happened?
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you know the reference in the show notes there before you watch the video?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I certainly did not. I've seen like three episodes of Seinfeld in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John entire life.
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco, do you recognize it? I wasn't looking at the show notes. Hold on. Luce
⏹️ ▶️ John fooled me, Jerry. Ring any bells?
⏹️ ▶️ John put a link in the show notes. It's a Seinfeld reference, trust me. Anyway, continue.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so we spoke last week about Daniel Luce's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chart that they had noticed about how long it takes for different chips, different Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chips to transcribe audio. And we all thought it was real. I personally thought, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just didn't see wherever this came from. But this is clearly a honest-to-goodness Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chart. And Daniel wrote in to say, sorry, to be clear, that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fake. There's no audio transcription comparison on Apple's website. I meant it just as an inside joke for fans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the show, not to trick you guys. I also almost made a chart comparing gaming performance on the M5 Ultra to the Mac Pro 2019
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with 12-core CPU as another ridiculously specific comparison.
⏹️ ▶️ John That would have tipped me off. But honestly, the real tip off was the fact that it said long-form audio transcription
⏹️ ▶️ John because Apple would never say long-form audio transcription as audio transcription. There's no difference between long-form and regular
⏹️ ▶️ John form. They just do a benchmark on how long does it take to transcribe X seconds of audio. So that should have been the giveaway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Our bad. Daniel was not trying to fool us, but he did. Yep. Whoops.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fooled me, Jerry. Fooled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John me. Watch the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a good clip. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did. It was a good clip.
Wrong PCIe in PR?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. And then also, Apple kind of sort of fooled us all. Joe Rosignol at Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rumors writes: Apple's press release for the new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips last week initially stated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the computer had, quote, next generation SSD architecture built on PCIe Gen 6. quote.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, Apple removed the PCIe 6 mention from the announcement shortly after it was published. Whoopsie-dipsies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple has yet to respond to our request for comment, but it seems like the company simply made a mistake in the press release, as it is much more likely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the new Mac Studio supports the PCIe 5.0 standard.
⏹️ ▶️ John What a wild mistake. I mean, we did say PCIe Gen 6, I think, on the last episode, so we noted it, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that a typo? Because the 5 is next to the 6 key. Did they plan to do PCIe 6 and
⏹️ ▶️ John then change their mind six months ago or a year ago? Like, wow, what a strange
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to get out in a press release. But yeah, I mean, I think they basically just did the same thing they
⏹️ ▶️ John say with all of them. It's like all the M5s, they always say, and the storage is faster than the M4. It's like, yeah, the
⏹️ ▶️ John M5 things are faster than the M4 for reasons we went into when they first released all the M5 things. The
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Studio is surely the same, but I believe those were all PCIe 5, So it would
⏹️ ▶️ John be weird if the studio was PCIe Gen 6. When we get those into our hands, we can confirm
⏹️ ▶️ John this, but Apple made a little mistake there, it seems like.
macOS 27’s Siri blobs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, can you remind me what is a Siri blob?
⏹️ ▶️ John If you're using Golden Gate on a Mac, you will know the Siri blob because you'll just be using
⏹️ ▶️ John your computer and your pointer will be over some text, a text field, or I think sometimes even like just static
⏹️ ▶️ John text that happens to be selectable. And all of a sudden, a tiny circular Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John blob, you know, the gray, new gray, marble looking Siri orb that has a glowy thing
⏹️ ▶️ John inside it, that will appear floating next to where your pointer is. And you're like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that? And you'll move your cursor and it will disappear. And you'll see it again. You'll be just using your computer and then the blob will appear. like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is that? It's like the Siri, like click on this and it will help you write whatever you're
⏹️ ▶️ John about to write. But like, you're not even going to write, you haven't even placed the insertion point yet. It's just like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John is there some text near here that you might possibly be able to put your insertion point into? Here's a Siri blob.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's annoying. And last episode, we had some feedback about how to supposedly
⏹️ ▶️ John turn that off, but it was minutes before the show was on the air and I hadn't actually tried it. So now I have more precise instructions
⏹️ ▶️ John on how to do it. And I have some results of trying it. So it is on Golden Gate. System
⏹️ ▶️ John settings, sorry, screen time, content and privacy. And then when you go into screen time and then
⏹️ ▶️ John content and privacy, on that screen, there's an item called content and privacy with a toggle switch on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John You got to turn that switch on. And then after you turn that switch on, scroll down on that same page,
⏹️ ▶️ John find the Siri line item, click into that. And there you will see the thing that says writing assistance
⏹️ ▶️ John and you want turn that switch off. And I tried this and it
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly banished the blobs, but I think not everywhere. Maybe like if an
⏹️ ▶️ John app was still running when I turned the switch off, like put it this way, I'm seeing fewer blobs,
⏹️ ▶️ John not convinced that it turned it off entirely, but I have tried it. And again, we're only on beta eight, so maybe it's buggy or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I'll keep you updated on this because you may not care about the Siri blob now, but when you upgrade to macOS
⏹️ ▶️ John 27, you're going to care about the Siri blob.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they're everywhere. And in addition to the uh the Siri menu item and context menus. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. You can't get rid of that. seems Oh, geez. It's all over the place. There's these little…
⏹️ ▶️ John you try the the Siri blob fix, Marco? No, not yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John try it so that we can compare results. Because like I said, I think it has mostly banished them, but I think I've still seen one or
⏹️ ▶️ John two. You can't banish the one in the context menus. I think, uh speaking of gui Rambo from last week, I think he looked
⏹️ ▶️ John into it to see if there was like some private API or private, not private API have a private like internal Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John feature key or something to turn off, and he couldn't find one. So I'm hoping somebody does, or I'm hoping they backtrack on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John What we're talking about is that when you pull up a context menu in Golden Gate, there is like a new bar
⏹️ ▶️ John at the top of the pop-up context menu for like, hey, and you might want to do Siri stuff here. And maybe I would do and
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I don't, but I sure as hell don't want to see that on top of every single context menu that pops up. Yeah.
Take note: John is happy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. John, you are. I don't know how to introduce
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. I totally blew screen. This is something I forgot to say
⏹️ ▶️ John episode. Last episode, of the Mac Studios were introduced, and I talked about what I was going to buy and what I had ended up ordering. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John And one thing I just simply forgot to say, which I think is important to note, is how happy
⏹️ ▶️ John I was that the Mac Studios were introduced last week or whatever, because I
⏹️ ▶️ John fully believed that they weren't going to be introduced until an October event and they weren't going to ship until December
⏹️ ▶️ John and I wouldn't have mine until 2027. And so for all my hemming and hawing and getting my tide
⏹️ ▶️ John me over Mac and all that other stuff, I am extremely happy and relieved that they
⏹️ ▶️ John announced the new Mac Studio in end of August, beginning of September, and not at a date
⏹️ ▶️ John where I wouldn't get one until January. So I just want to express my gratitude there because that was my, that was honestly, that was
⏹️ ▶️ John my overriding feeling when these things were announced. Like, I cannot believe it. Like, it's it's the first
⏹️ ▶️ John good news I've had of Apple in so long. Like, it's always like, oh, there's more delays and the new series not ready
⏹️ ▶️ John and RAM costs more and storage costs. it's just been bad news after bad news for like the past year, especially for
⏹️ ▶️ John me because I'm waiting for a new computer. Oh, the Mac Pro is canceled. it Just bad, bad, bad. Finally, one
⏹️ ▶️ John thing went my way. And I just wanted to acknowledge that a good thing happened and I was happy about it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John for you. Let's talk about a bad thing that might happen to me.
Photo libraries on external disks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. So you had mentioned that you were planning, or I guess you have bought a four-terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SSD, which you're already bursting at the seams of your existing one. And you had made a mention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, hey, maybe you'll move your photo library to an external SSD. Surely that will solve all your problems,
⏹️ ▶️ John Got a lot of questions from people saying, can you do that? Can you put your photo library on an external
⏹️ ▶️ John disk in Apple Photos? Does it allow you to do that? And so there are some answers.
⏹️ ▶️ John So first of all, from Apple, they have a document called, a textboard document called
⏹️ ▶️ John Move Your Photos Library to Save Space on Your Mac. And the relevant text is make sure that your
⏹️ ▶️ John external storage device, such as the USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, is formatted for Mac, either APFS format or
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS extended journal format. And the published date on this is June 16th, 2026. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it's not an ancient document. OK, So they tell, and there's more to the document. They tell you, here's, make
⏹️ ▶️ John sure you do this, make sure you do that. Here's how you do it, blah, blah, blah. So Apple seems to say this is a supported
⏹️ ▶️ John configuration. Now, Apple says a lot of things. And just because the tech note says published June 16th, 2026, that could be an eight
⏹️ ▶️ John year old tech note that someone fixed a typo in in June. So I don't know. But then a lot, because lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of people are like, you can't do that at all. Other people like, I tried that and it didn't work. The most concrete thing I've
⏹️ ▶️ John seen a feedback on this so far is from Lawrence Feynman, who says, I use an external drive for my
⏹️ ▶️ John photos library on numerous desktop Intel Macs. It worked okay. This is no longer the case. Apple's
⏹️ ▶️ John enhanced spotlight-based photo search only indexes the system photo library when stored on internal Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John storage. Non-system libraries in any library on external storage are excluded from indexing. So this
⏹️ ▶️ John makes some sense to me because we talked about how like Apple intelligence wouldn't work if you booted macOS from an
⏹️ ▶️ John external drive. Not sensing that I understand the technical reason for it. We've speculated, but we don't actually know, or
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't know anyway. But with like the not AI power,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway, the fancier spotlight search where you can type in like pictures of fences in photos and it will
⏹️ ▶️ John find you pictures of fences. Supposedly, if you have your photos library on an
⏹️ ▶️ John external drive and it is your system photos library, you cannot use that search feature. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is not a deal breaker to me because I have another computer two feet away from me that has the photos library on the main internal
⏹️ ▶️ John drive and I can do the search there if I really want to. I can also do the search on my phone where it also works somehow. If
⏹️ ▶️ John it really doesn't work on one of my photos libraries external drive, I'm going to be annoyed and I'll probably file
⏹️ ▶️ John feedback to say, hey, what the hell? Make it work. I don't understand why this would be the case. But it is not a deal
⏹️ ▶️ John breaker. Otherwise, if it works on an external drive as Apple's document says it does, I'll
⏹️ ▶️ John be OK. And by the way, I have the external drive. It's sitting on my desk right now. I plugged it in and tried it. It works fine. It's
⏹️ ▶️ John just sitting here waiting for my computer to arrive, hopefully on September 22nd.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually have some additional info on this particular topic about photo libraries on external drives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it just so happened by coincidence that this past week, I was finally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so on my travel laptop, it has a one terabyte internal drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And because I am an app developer and Xcode keeps stomping all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the drive and dropping 80 gig directories everywhere and stuff like that, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever since this beta season with Golden Gate, I keep running out of disk space. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have iCloud photos on there. My photo library doesn't fit, obviously, but I just have it on optimized storage and it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just my travel laptop. Who cares? A long time ago, I discovered that if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you put your photo library on a size-constrained
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sparse bundle file.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah. You could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do what Apple should have done years ago, which is you could give it a specific
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size limit. Because optimized storage does not mean you get to choose the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size limit. It means Apple tries to automatically determine the size limit. What this means in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco practice is you're constantly running out of disk space and you have no control over it. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I decided, you know, the modern version of that, a little bit better than a sparse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bundle, is using an additional APFS volume because APFS allows you to split your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco internal drive into multiple volumes and they can be dynamically sized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you can tell one, restrict to this size, which by the way, I learned that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can't do after you've created the volume. You have to delete the entire volume and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it and recreate the entire volume and move everything back to it if you actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to change the size quota of it, which is ridiculous. But anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of changing sizes, by the way, I was doing the thing that you described earlier where you make a disk image and put your photo
⏹️ ▶️ John library on it. For my, it's complicated because my wife has the real photo library. So that's the one with originals,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I have the same photo library because everything is shared now. Anyway, on my personal account, I have optimized storage turned on because
⏹️ ▶️ John that's not the real copies of stuff, even though on the same computer in my wife's account, there's all the permanent copies. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I was using a disk image and I picked a size for it. And I found out what happens if you pick a size that
⏹️ ▶️ John Photos decides. Yeah, that's just not big enough for me because Photos will throw up a thing and say, yeah, I've been
⏹️ ▶️ John using this disk image, but I've just decided I'm not syncing anymore because there's not enough room. I'm like, well, evict
⏹️ ▶️ John some stuff, man. It's optimized storage. It's like, no, I'm just not doing it. So I had to resize the image. And I can tell you, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can resize a disk image, unlike an APFS volume after the fact. So I expanded my disk
⏹️ ▶️ John image to be a little bit bigger. So that's the one advantage, I think, of putting your Photos library on a confined
⏹️ ▶️ John disk image is that if and when Photos throws up its hands and says, no, it's too small, I can't do anything anymore, you can expand it
⏹️ ▶️ John to give more breathing room. Because like Marco said, if you just give it unlimited space, it will fill your entire drive and you
⏹️ ▶️ John have no space for anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And there's all these features in Mac OS that have like, you know, purgeable disk space that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to be automatic. And when you need space, we'll reclaim it for you. They don't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work at all. Like they are awful. Every one of those features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fails in multiple ways. Like the iCloud Drive ones or like you know store your desktop and documents on iCloud Drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All that means is you will always be out of disk space. And also, none of the files you create
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will ever actually be there, including ones that you just created or were just working with. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every one of those features, like all of those features are better off not being used or being somehow worked around in other ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, this feature in particular of you can put your photo library on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another APFS volume that is size limited. So I did that. I gave it a 128
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gig volume out of my terabyte because it was well into the 300s before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. I was like, I don't need that much on here. And so anyway, 128 gigs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can say, is enough for it to sync. It is fine. It is syncing just fine. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this library isn't searchable in spotlight due to its location.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann So even another
⏹️ ▶️ Marco volume on your internal SSD, it won't do it even then.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So John, A, this is our moment to be loud and to try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco convince them otherwise. But B, John, this is your next app.
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone's already made that. I think they have, doesn't the Iris app index your photo library?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, that's not what I'm saying.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's an app. I paid for it a while ago and I've already forgotten the name for it, but I think it's called Iris. I will look into
⏹️ ▶️ John When I'm in this situation, I will look for solutions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, no. That's not your app. Your next app is fooling the system photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco library into thinking it's talking to its own volume and it's actually being proxied
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off to some other drive. That's such a you app. It's about file systems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's about saving disk space. Like that's so, that's that's right in your wheelhouse. And photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think somebody also did that. Didn't we talk about that when we were talking about booting macOS
⏹️ ▶️ John from an external drive and convincing someone did a hack to convince macOS that your external
⏹️ ▶️ John drive is really an internal drive? And I said I didn't want to need to go anywhere near that. And that wasn't even something I wrote. So that's
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit too sketchy for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I know there's no way you would do this, but it would be so amazing if you did. Like that's, And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it fits it fits your your, you know, all of your attributes in so many ways. Like it is super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerdy. It has to do with these low level like file system access things that nobody would trust anyone else but you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do correctly. You would be incredibly stressed out about it all the time, and you would be incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John careful. I don't trust
⏹️ ▶️ John myself to do that correctly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. But And it would have a relatively small market that would be very difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to reach, but it would be high value to those people who
⏹️ ▶️ John it's for. I'm more likely to just spend my time filing feedbacks and complaining about it on the show until it gets fixed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plus, think about like, talk about a growth business right now. Something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that saves major internal SSD. I
⏹️ ▶️ John already made an app that
⏹️ ▶️ John space. That's what you should have done. You should have run hyperspace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your one terabyte drive when you're running out of space. That's not going to, believe me, that's not going to save me from a 300 gig photo
⏹️ ▶️ John you try it. Run it. All right, I'll run it now.
⏹️ ▶️ John sure you follow my tips for finding more space. If you don't find a lot, it shows a find more link that I hope people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm sure nobody's ever seen that link.
⏹️ ▶️ John No. No, because I forget what it is, but I set a threshold and if it doesn't seem like it finds a lot of savings,
⏹️ ▶️ John it has some tips for finding more, which is basically allow it to scan more places and allow it
⏹️ ▶️ John to scan all file types.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I can't scan. Volume is owned by another user. The volume slash is owned by another user. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can scan it, but it's just telling you you're not going to be able to Why
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco can't I scan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I pick a different, should I just do my home directory?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, you didn't read the message. No one reads dialog boxes. Dialogue box doesn't say you can't scan. It says,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, I'm just letting you know the directory you picked is owned by another user because it is slashes on by root or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so anything I find in there that's not owned by you, I won't be able to reclaim. But obviously it will find things that are owned
⏹️ ▶️ John by you and mostly they're in your home directory. So yeah, pick your home directory. You saved me 600
⏹️ ▶️ John check your settings now. Are you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco looking at all file
⏹️ ▶️ John types? Do you have a minimum file size set? Do
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey have all the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to scan photo library, scan libraries, all that stuff? You know, I think maybe you should just drive your computer over to John's
⏹️ ▶️ John Just turn just there's like two setting screens. Just flip all the switches. Flip, flip, flip, flip.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Yeah, looking inside packages, allow photos, allow cloud, allow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John library. And
⏹️ ▶️ John do the file types thing in the other screen where you say allow all file types.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I should have put a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey telemetry on how
⏹️ ▶️ John many people turn that off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you probably should have, to be honest. All right. May we move on? or Are we still going to?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, Marco scan is going to take a while once he flips all those switches. All right, let's see.
AMX and SME
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, AMX and SME. So, ARMS, I'm sorry, this is from Shaq Ron. Apple's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ARM architectural license requires that any extensions they create to the ISA be submitted for standardization
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that they transition to the standard when released. SME is the ARM standardized version of AMX.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn't have any way to confirm this, but I'll take Shaq Ron's word for it. And it makes sense. Uh, It explains the
⏹️ ▶️ John facts before us, which is they came out with AMX and then eventually AMX was sunset in exchange for SME. And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John that's part of the deal of their license. That you can make up all sorts of weird extensions, but you have to work to get them standardized.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when they are, you got to switch to the standard. And that seems like something ARM would put in their contracts because they don't want a sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of forking and bifurcation of their instruction set as everyone adds their own custom instructions.
Baseball in Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I wanted to quickly reenter Vision Pro corner. This past
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Friday, Apple did their first Friday night baseball that had immersive video.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you could put on your Vision Pro and you could be in Yankee Stadium. And I'm not here to pass judgment on the Yankees
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the Red Sox. I'm not much of a baseball person myself, but I wanted to at least experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what this was all about. I will say there's an excellent episode of Dithering about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can I just say, how did Ben Thompson not watch this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don't even get me started.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I haven't heard that dithering episode. He didn't even watch it? No. No, but he was basically like, yeah, this means I was right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't even need to watch it.
⏹️ ▶️ John You definitely need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch it. You absolutely do. This is what you've been talking about for years. I don't think Ben listens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our show, but he needs to watch it. And he probably is right. Like, but of all people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's like if Apple released a new Mac Pro and John's like, I don't need to buy it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Meh. Yeah, so to give a little bit more context, so there have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been other immersive things, many of them. And Marco was on the journey with me of watching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most of them, at least at first. And then Marco kind of gave up on it. And I've been continuing with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And one of the things that Marco and Ben, Ben more than Marco, but both of them seem to think very strongly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that when you're in an immersive environment, and to recap, that means you can twist your head
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and your perspective will change, right? Well, Ben especially seemed to think that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really should not be cutting to different cameras barely ever. And I think, Marco, you were closer to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ben's perspective, maybe not quite as hardliner.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I was I was totally with him in that like, you know, like the what Apple kept producing and, and releasing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Vision Pro is like a lot of things that had a bunch of quick cuts. And so because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you were like in the environment, like you're looking at 180 degree field of view video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in 3D, so you really feel like you are there. And you just kept getting teleported around almost. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was very disorienting and hard to follow stuff. And so what Ben was saying, and I believe I've made the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same case, was like, just have a fixed camera. Like go, like have a fixed camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a good seat at an event, whether it's a sporting event or a concert or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just sit you there. And don't even have like announcers at like, just make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, just put you in the event in 3D, hearing the audio of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being there, looking from a fixed position. And that simulates the feeling of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being there, which is amazing. And that's something that only something like the Vision Pro can do. Like you can't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get that on a big TV screen. You can't get that on YouTube. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only get that from the Vision Pro, which is a great way in theory to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lay some groundwork that might sell some Vision Pros someday.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And so with the Yankees thing, first thing I wanted to quickly call
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your attention to is that they have in F1 Speak, they have a race in 30, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is to say they have a 10-minute recap of the game. I don't personally have any interest in watching a three-hour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey baseball game, particularly with the Vision Pro on my face, but they do have a 10-minute version, which I very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much recommend. I think that that gives you basically the gist of it. I can also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say that at one point, spoilers for a baseball game from a week and a half or a half a week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, there was a home run at about an hour and 10 minutes into the broadcast. So if you wanted to just see something exciting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happen, you can see that. But what was interesting about the broadcast was that generally speaking, from what I saw of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, when one team was batting, you were positioned basically right in front of their dugout. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have a view of one side of the field. And I liked that a lot. But I will say when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there were deep balls into outfield, maybe it's just my own eyes, but it was hard to see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where they went. Now, what was nice was Apple had like a floating Jumbotron and like stats
⏹️ ▶️ Casey board thing kind of up above the field. So you could tune into the 2D broadcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as something was happening in the distance. Overall, I did very much like this. And I mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agree that in this context for sports, I mostly agree with Ben and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco that cutting less frequently is the correct approach. Now, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for different sports and different fields and different arenas, cuts make more or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey less sense. So when there's a, you know, pop fly into the outfield, maybe it does make sense to cut
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to an outfield camera. And they would do that, you know, occasionally for replays. But even during the meat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the game, it would be neat to see that, I think. Whereas I think in the basketball presentations,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it makes a lot more sense to me to just park that camera somewhere, preferably mid-court, and don't freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey touch it unless you're doing like a replay or something. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John we talked about this one when we were, when I still had the Your Vision Pro here and I watched that basketball game, and it's the same problem you
⏹️ ▶️ John just identified and everyone who's talked about this game has identified, which is if you have a stationary camera uh, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you see that stationary, you see the video that stationary camera is getting in your headset, Uh, you
⏹️ ▶️ John are subject to the uh, decreased resolution as you move towards
⏹️ ▶️ John the edges because that's just the way it is. Uh, What you would want to do with current tech is you would want
⏹️ ▶️ John to have a camera, uh, like not just one camera with like a big fisheye lens on it, but like a set of cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John that covers whatever the field of view is going to be, even if it's 180 degrees, but covers it all
⏹️ ▶️ John at the maximum center resolution of the Vision Pro. And then when you turn your head in the Vision Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John rather than you just looking at the fuzzy edge of the single capture from the camera, what you'd
⏹️ ▶️ John be looking at is the highest resolution center of whatever camera was facing in that direction. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John So your experience as a user would, same Vision Pro, same hardware, no different hardware. But what
⏹️ ▶️ John you're saying is like the video signal that is coming to you is not a single video signal that's stretched
⏹️ ▶️ John out across your field of view. Because when they do that, when they stretch that across your field of view, when you turn your head,
⏹️ ▶️ John you're looking at the highest resolution part of those sensors. The highest resolution part of your eyes is looking at the lowest
⏹️ ▶️ John resolution part of the video. And that is the weakness for balls in the outfield. And as I was saying with the basketball
⏹️ ▶️ John game, oh yeah, the tip off at half court, you got a great view of that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the baskets are both in the lowest resolution part of the field of view because they just have single cameras. So
⏹️ ▶️ John no technology change on the viewing side, same old Vision Pro, same field division, But
⏹️ ▶️ John on the recording side, they need multiple cameras that can capture the entire field of view
⏹️ ▶️ John in full resolution. And they need to basically do foveated streaming kind of where you like turn your head and it says, oh, you're looking
⏹️ ▶️ John over here now. We're going to give you camera four from that same tripod
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that has the full
⏹️ ▶️ John resolution view of the outfield. So when you look at the outfield, suddenly you can see the ball. When you look back to the home plate,
⏹️ ▶️ John in your peripheral vision, the ball is fuzzy or invisible. You know what I mean? But that's, you know, that's, we don't have
⏹️ ▶️ John that yet. And I know it's, there's not a lot of cost to justify it, but I'm saying like with current technology, that's what they need to do
⏹️ ▶️ John to make this experience better. And as I said, when I was talking about the basketball game and I mentioned football games,
⏹️ ▶️ John sport dependency is is a thing because Ben wants this because he loves live sports. He wants the experience of
⏹️ ▶️ John doing live sports. And lots of people like live sports and they want that experience. But I'm not even sure most people
⏹️ ▶️ John would prefer live sports, especially for something like the NFL because you just get such better view on television than
⏹️ ▶️ John if you're in the nosebleed seats at a stadium. And I know it's a whole experience and the smell and the people and whatever, but you're only getting some of
⏹️ ▶️ John that in a headset. So while being like courtside in an NBA game may be an unparalleled
⏹️ ▶️ John way to watch a basketball game, being in the nosebleeds at an NFL game is not better than watching it on TV
⏹️ ▶️ John if you really care about what's happening in the game, just because the field is so big and you're so far away from it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John there's definitely a place for this, but my stance on what Ben wants is you want the experience of live
⏹️ ▶️ John sports and so do a lot of other people and they should provide that. But that's not the thing that every single person wants.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think Apple or whoever still has to figure out, okay, for the people who
⏹️ ▶️ John don't want a live sports experience, what do we give them? Um, And for the live sports things, like you
⏹️ ▶️ John should talk about this, Casey, how you felt about it. They had like a screen floating in the air over the outfield. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John can you imagine if you could, for example, look to the outfield and then do a pinch gesture with your hand to magically
⏹️ ▶️ John zoom in on what you want to look
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco at and suddenly
⏹️ ▶️ John suddenly now you have a high res view of the right fielder. Nobody else does, but you do. Like that's,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the technology is there to do much cooler things than what they have here. And same thing with the Jumbotron.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you move it around? Can you have stats on the side like the F1 app? But Like there's fertile ground
⏹️ ▶️ John for doing cool things here. It's just we're really at the the baby stages of all this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And I think that there's, like you said, a lot of room for improvements. um I probably would have repositioned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Jumbotron. I mean, not to say that it needed to be repositioned, but just to make it a little more comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ John it annoying that you couldn't move it though? Like what the hell?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey i was I wouldn't go so far as to say annoying. It was lightly off-putting. um But I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think what you're describing, and what you make a great point, is you ever seen the, um I want to say it's called like Matterport
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that. It's these 3D like walkthroughs for like real estate where they have these like circles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you can click on that circle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it'll show you a different perspective of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the same room.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, yes, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they need something like that for this, you know, where you can pinch to or pinch to effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey click, if you will, on the outfield and to your point, it'll zoom you into the outfield. But no, I think this was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really good. I think they are making steps in the right direction. I can absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see that if these were teams I really cared about, this would have been an amazing experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you do kind of feel like you're there. I mean, you're for good and for better and for worse,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you see all the, you see over your shoulder, like all of the sunflower shells getting spit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey onto the grass from the dugout. And you see the people walking in and out of the dugout. And you see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the, the lights in Yankee Stadium so much clearer than when you would, what you would over a TV broadcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like as someone who really enjoys live sports, this is this is extremely cool. And on Dithering, they made the interesting point. I think they called
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it like, they didn't, they had a funny name for it that wasn't like FaceTime. It was like ShareTime or something like that, where they were saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how cool would it be if, you know, say me and John could sit courtside at, say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the U.S. Open or something like that and see our avatars, I forget what they call them now, um but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our fake people, you know, adjacent to each other so we could hear each other and talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to each other, but we're still watching the same live event in immersive video. And that was the point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were making on Dithering, and I could not agree more. It was still incredibly impressive. Again, I was watching it on replay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but this was available live, which is extremely cool. And I really hope they do more with this and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey try new experiments and continue with this. I know we got some news recently. We'll talk about it in probably over time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we've gotten some news recently that a lot of stuff with Vision Pro is in a little bit of turmoil potentially.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But man, I don't put the Vision Pro on often. I know I make this speech every time. I don't put the Vision Pro on often,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but every time I do, I'm like, damn, this is the future. It's just heavy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And low resolution and expensive and has no software. I mean, that's the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it would be wise for Apple to keep leaning into things like this because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what, you know, it's very, very clear that the market for this kind of thing in software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is basically only specialized industrial and enterprise applications.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that is a market for sure. Like you can see the history, you know, Microsoft had the HoloLens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is a market for specialty applications of this. That's not really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything Apple ever caters to in their other product lines. And I think they're not really well suited to that market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That's much more of a Microsoft market. And even Microsoft ended up canning HoloLens because it wasn't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a profitable enough market for them. But if the Vision Pro is going to succeed in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software, it's in those areas. It's not going to be general purpose computing. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there's another way this product can succeed. Well, there's two. There's games, which Meta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much dominates, and I don't think Apple would ever make a product that would compete with games for lots of reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the other one is content. And that's the other, like, if you want to get consumers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy this, who aren't like performing specialized surgery, like through, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just regular consumers to buy a VR headset, like a high-end VR headset,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's going to be content plays like this. It's going to be things like live sports, concerts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco theater, like, you know, live experiences, live spectacles. Sports probably the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco biggest one. And yeah, as we're saying, there are some challenges. Like, I think you're
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both right that the resolution of both the lenses and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screens and the video itself does not lend itself well to sports where you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see fine details across wide fields of view, like baseball.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that does kind of make sense. That's a bit of a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basketball is better, as you were saying, even though despite the fact that the baskets themselves,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which kind of an important part of the game, are kind of blurry on the edges there. And there's ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can make this a little bit better. Like, for instance, sit a little further back. That's that For many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these sports, that's actually, it's like, it's less of a wow factor, but it's actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a better overall experience. In the same way that like you don't usually want to sit in the front row of a movie theater either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the actual best experience of a movie theater is not in the front row.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there's a lot here. There's a lot of potential here. But I also think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's very obvious that we are like 10 years too early for it. That the screens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are just not high resolution enough. The video feeds are just not high resolution enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The hardware, the rest of the hardware to support it is still big and heavy and has terrible battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life. We are just 10 years too early. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don't know how we're going to get from here to it being good because I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don't see how it's worth anybody continuing this product line. But if it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets good, it's going to be a ways off. And I think this shows that it can be good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The potential exists, but we're just not there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of sitting in the front row of movie theaters, did either of you go to see The Odyssey and IMAX?
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven't seen it at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Of course I haven't seen it. Oh, by the way, real-time follow-up, 30 gigs, John. So I went from 600 megs to 30 gigs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of reclaimed space from hyperspace.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonder why, why, first of all, that's not enough, but I appreciate it anyway. Why does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your default mode suck so badly compared to the everything on mode?
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm being conservative, being safe. And also the the semi-psychological part of it. So obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John the conservatism is just like, look, don't go wandering through people's library folders and photos folders because if you screw them
⏹️ ▶️ John up, people will be mad. So be conservative to begin with. And again, I have the thing where if you don't find a lot, there's
⏹️ ▶️ John the little find more thing. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John aspect of it is people do feel kind of good about themselves when they like tweak an app to make it
⏹️ ▶️ John perform better. You know what I mean? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey now they go into settings and
⏹️ ▶️ John they flip a couple of switches and they make decisions about do I want to search my photos library? Do I want to do this? It makes them feel more
⏹️ ▶️ John like a power user. So it's those two things combined. They hit the NAS. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, Um, I, the reason I bring up the IMAX thing and Odyssey and the Odyssey, cause I did, I did go see it um,
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually in the, uh, the one 4K laser IMAX projector that's in
⏹️ ▶️ John New England, Um, which was a bit of a drive for me. But before I went to it, because I'm seeing it
⏹️ ▶️ John late, I saw it like, I don't know, like last week or whatever. Um, The two people I know who
⏹️ ▶️ John saw it both told me it was so loud. So you know what I did when I went
⏹️ ▶️ John to the movie? I brought earplugs with me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's the first time wearing earplugs in a
⏹️ ▶️ John movie theater. And let me tell you, it was really loud. And this stupid IMAX doesn't do
⏹️ ▶️ John like assigned seating. It's like the first movie I've gone to without assigned seating in forever. So I had to get there early and
⏹️ ▶️ John like fight with people to get a seat. And so I was a little bit closer than I wanted to be, but man, was it loud?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like with the earplugs in, I felt like it was loud. So
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Tim Cook exit interview(?)
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Tim Cook exit interview. We already did it. We did it in episode 688
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entitled A Company Man. Starts at about an hour and eight minutes. We've also talked about it in many episodes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before. And since then, we'll put a link in the show notes to the episode on our website, to the episode in Overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a timestamp link. Go check that out if you're interested.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as I said last week, Tim Cook has not done anything in between then and now that's worth talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about other than raising prices of a couple of the services on his way out the door.
Phil Schiller exit(?) interview
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. And speaking of people on their way out the door, Phil Schiller, former ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guest, Phil Schiller, has apparently stepped down from his role leading the app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey store and product events. Sorry, I'm reading from Mark Ehrman. Schiller was Apple's senior vice president of marketing until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leaving that job in 2020. While he is dropping his last two major responsibilities, Schiller is remaining at the company with his Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fellow title and told employees he'll be working on unspecified initiatives. Emma Roth of the Verge writes, Schiller
⏹️ ▶️ Casey initially joined Apple in 1987. Marco and I were five, and became the company's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey head of marketing in 1997 when we were 15. He helped launch the app store alongside Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 2008, but only started heading up the app store in 2015. Over the years, Schiller has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey played a role in the development of many of Apple's products, including the phone, iPad, and Macs, and has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey presented several of them at the company's launch events. In recent years, Schiller has started stepping away from some of these responsibilities
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as he relinquished his role as senior vice president of marketing to Greg Joswiak in 2020.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the longest goodbye ever. Really, he's just slowly working
⏹️ ▶️ John his way off campus. One job responsibility at
⏹️ ▶️ John a time, but never actually leaving. Not that I'm in a hurry for him to leave, but man,
⏹️ ▶️ John can you just keep dropping responsibilities and keep collecting your paycheck? I should have done this when I had a job, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is actually a possibly very big deal. So first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all, you know, Phil Schiller is the oldest of old school Apple. Like he's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so hardcore Apple. He's been there forever. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think he is, he's one of the last executives left with that, with like the old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple experience and philosophy and mentality.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also, but he's been there forever, but there's lots of people who have been there forever. He's been there forever at the highest
⏹️ ▶️ John levels of the company,
⏹️ ▶️ John next to Steve Jobs. Like he wasn't there, you know, like people have been there for a long time, but just have been in low-level positions.
⏹️ ▶️ John He's been right in the thick of it practically his entire career.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And I like Phil for a lot of reasons. I mean, you know, he has engaged with me and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with our show over the years. And so, of course, that helps. It's been very meaningful for me in my career.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like when I first heard from Phil, you know, in response to a blog post I wrote years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, you know, later on, like when I, when I wrote, what the hell was that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Functional high ground.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There you go. Yeah. When I wrote that, I actually had a phone call with Phil later that day, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that meant a huge amount to me. And then the whole elephant in the room thing at the live talk show, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, I think, you know, Phil and I go back a ways. And so I do feel honored
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at how much attention Phil has given me over the years as somebody who is so important
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at Apple. And so maybe that colors my view of him a little bit. But I am very fond of Phil, even though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't agree with him on everything. And I think he, like, there's a certain culture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of California executives. And California
⏹️ ▶️ Marco executives, first of all, tend to think I'm a I'm an a-hole. And maybe they're right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Certainly many of our listeners might agree, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people on the Reddits, I'm sure. But there's like a California attitude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of being maybe like indirect, insincere. You kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can't tell what they think of you. Phil is not that. Phil is East
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Coast. You can always pretty much tell what he thinks of you. He, I think, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty direct and pretty honest. And that's something that I, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't get a lot of that from a lot of the Apple people because most of them are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more West Coast culture. And that's just the West Coast culture does not really understand the East Coast culture and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vice versa as well as it might seem despite being in the same country. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Phil is East Coast, I think I've always gotten along well with him and understood
⏹️ ▶️ Marco him, I think, a little bit better than the other executives. Phil
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is an honest, straight shooter, and he cares a lot about the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product And when he was head of marketing, I don't know how much involvement he has now, but when he was head of marketing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he really advocated for very good product decisions from everything I've heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in lots of ways. I've heard lots of stories about input that Phil had or things Phil was pushing for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We even saw in that App Store trial, in some of the epic discovery processes, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the emails from Phil to the other executives, he seemed to be on the right side of a lot of issues
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have his head in the right place. Overall, he's been, I think, a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good force in the company. But there have been areas that we disagree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. Phil has a little bit of an edge, like a little bit of a sharp prickliness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as an East Coaster, I love that about him. The very first email he ever sent me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was while I was doing Instapaper. And he ended it by saying, I also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to thank you for creating Instapaper. It is a great app, well deserving of its four and a half star
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rating. And that's the that's just the most amazing, like, because first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all, it's like, wow. and he And he said he has it on his iPhone and iPad. So like, first of all, wow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phil Schiller uses my app. What an honor. Second of all, it's well deserving of its
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four and a half star rating.
⏹️ ▶️ John like I think he just meant that nice and you just took it, but he was talking about the half star. I don't think that was him being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He did, but that's like he He always means it nice, but like there's that little tiny,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, this is a great compliment, but I just might have stepped on one of those little one by one flat Legos.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, so, and, but that's Phil. He's honest. He's direct. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that about him. But he also has been all this time running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the App Store. And I've also heard stories about,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, his, his role there, his leadership there, and him being pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much like the driving force behind or the final authority of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of controversial app store decisions over the years. Things like policy, what's allowed, what's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. That all goes to Phil. Like the toughest decisions, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco real edge case rule enforcement things or the high-level policies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from my understanding, that was mostly Phil. The App Store under Phil has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been mostly good, but a little prickly. And that makes a lot of sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for Phil to be giving up the App Store, I think that might be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really big deal. Now, I'm not expecting tomorrow for Apple to open it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wide up, wide open and say, all right, everyone, do whatever you want in the app store. Like, No, I don't think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a reasonable thing to expect here. I don't think they're likely to change the commission
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when not legally forced by some jurisdiction. like I don't think we're likely to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see big changes like that that are going to impact their ability to make tons of money because that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reality is they make tons of money from it and their their, you know, growth story with the services business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of needs that. So I don't think that's on the table. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think that a change in app store leadership at this level, at the Phil level,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably going to result in over the next, I don't know, six months to a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year, I think we're going to start to see budging or bettering of things in other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas that for whatever reason, Phil was like a hardliner on some of those decisions, whether it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like what you're allowed to do, like rule-wise, maybe like a little bit of flexibility where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we didn't have flexibility before, maybe like a rule that's kind of been vague will start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be interpreted a different way. I think that's the level of thing that we're likely to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. That's why I think this is a really big deal. As an app developer, that makes me, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, similar to like the CEO change, it kind of makes me both excited and nervous because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phil, all these years running the app store has been the devil you know. And when you change that up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's like, well, you don't really know. Like who, what are we going to get with the new leadership, whoever that is?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is it going to be better in ways that we care about? Or is it actually going to get worse? Like, we don't actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know that yet. But that's why I think this is a really big deal because I think most people weren't aware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily of Phil's role in the App Store. And now that role is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changing. So that, I think, could be a big deal. But ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setting the App Store aside, if this really is Phil's ultimate final
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retirement from the company, which I don't, it doesn't sound like it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John He's got one more step at least because he's still, he's going to work on unspecified projects, but he's basically given up
⏹️ ▶️ John the two responsibilities that he had. So now he has zero responsibilities except for unspecified.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And knowing Phil, I bet he's still going to be working like crazy. But I did want to take this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chance while he is still probably there to honor all the work he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has done there. Because, again, I think he does so much work behind the scenes on so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products across the company that most people don't know about. A lot of what we love about Apple products,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phil had input in those decisions. And he pushed for a lot of the right decisions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So he has had an amazing career at Apple. Again, I will always be fond
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of him because he kind of brought me into the Apple PR world in a way that no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one else there has before or since. And I think he really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believes in and pushes for most of the best things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we love about Apple products.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would agree with that wholeheartedly. And, you know, I don't know that some of the crummy decisions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around the App Store were him. I mean, I feel like we learned in Discovery for the Epic thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that he was trying to pump the brakes on some of the commissions that they charge us once they hit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a billion dollars in revenue or something like that. I'm getting the details wrong, I'm sure, but you get the idea. I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we had seen emails where he was like, you know, do we really need any more money from developers? Like, aren't we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, we did. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's part of what came out in that trial.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the answer was, yes, they did need more money.
⏹️ ▶️ John in that decision, asked and answered. Tim Cook says, yes, we do need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I've never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but obviously we interviewed him in episode 317, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was March 15th of 2019. Without hyperbole, I really mean this, hand on heart.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of the coolest and best moments of my entire career was I forget exactly what question I asked Phil, but it was at the end.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We were just kind of goofing off. We were still on air, but we were kind of goofing off. And I'd asked Phil something car related,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he started rattling off a couple of cars that I was like, yeah, okay, I know what that is. And then he went deep into the weeds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, I think, Porsches, I might have that wrong, but I got the floor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wiped with me because he was just like, oh, you think you know cars, sir. And he wasn't being a jerk about it. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was just, oh, no, no, no, no, no. You sweet summer child, Casey, let me tell you about cars. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was incredible. One of the coolest moments of my entire career. I genuinely mean that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so, Phil, I don't think you listened to the show. I'm not sure you ever did other than perhaps the episode you were on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if you ever, ever, ever want to come back, I don't care if you're an Apple employee or not. We don't even need to talk about Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'll talk to you about car stuff again. I don't care. If you ever want to come back, the offer is there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We are ready and waiting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we're saying this is like a Phil exit interview, but again, he hasn't actually exited yet. He's on his way. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, he should do the Chris Lattner thing and leave Apple and then come on the show. My favorite part
⏹️ ▶️ John that interview, by the way, you should listen to him. I'm not sure how good a job we did interviewing him, but at the end where he was a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit loose, he did give us some fun stuff, which was retelling the story of how Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ John made him jump off a tower onto a stage holding the first Apple laptop with
⏹️ ▶️ John Wi-Fi to show that it didn't have any wires attached to it. And you can hear in his retelling of the backstage
⏹️ ▶️ John story of like Steve Jobs telling him, hey, we're going to have you jump off this thing and trying to get him to sign like an
⏹️ ▶️ John insurance waiver and him basically saying, I'm not signing that. Listen to that story again and think back to Marco's description
⏹️ ▶️ John of him of being a nice, friendly guy who's also got a little bit of an edge. I think you'll hear it in the story. Yeah. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solid, solid Phil for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really, not. I mean, I'm saying this as though the man has passed away and God willing, far from it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John He hasn't even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, I know. But I really wish I had the opportunity to meet him at some point. I'm sure he would have no freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clue who I was, but it would be really great to shake his hand and thank him for all the incredible work that he has done. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it wasn't the iPod click wheel his,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John if I'm not mistaken?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, just incredible, incredible work over an impossibly long career.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. If I see him in town, I'll tell him you say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hi. That's true. He is from Boston, isn't he?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So last time we said when he moved to Apple Fellow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and left his marketing role to Jaws, Johnny Ive, we were saying like Johnny Ive like went to the sky and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were like, Phil got promoted to the roof. Like he was like still like, near the building, on the building. you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what Where is he now? Like in the visitor center? He's just haunting the campus like a ghost.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just walk around the corner and there he is with sage advice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because like unspecified projects is, I mean, that could be that could be something like, you know, whatever the next car project
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, or that could be like feeding the ducks in the duck pond in the middle.
⏹️ ▶️ John He's working on the new pizza boxes for Cafe Max.
iPhone 17 Pro exit interview
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right uh let's do some actual exit interviews for the hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the event is next week. It is, when is it? I don't even know. It's like Wednesday?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John Labor Day is on Monday.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That's right. So it's Wednesday next week. So let's do the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exit interviews. uh First of all, we should note: the rumor is that the iPhone 17 isn't really exiting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quite yet. Allegedly, we're just getting the pros and the fold uh next week but
⏹️ ▶️ John do you I don't remember. Is the air supposed to come next week, too? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's been rumored to probably be in the spring with the others. um
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn't seem like the airscape is being updated yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there is another air coming. We're just not sure of the date. But yeah, we'll we'll exit interview all of them, even though, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh it's certainly the iPhone 17, if the rumors are to be believed, is not exiting. And maybe the Air is also not exiting, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they will exit eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, for me, so I have an iPhone 17 Pro. I have it in whatever the flavor of blue is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from this past year. I really love this phone a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don't have too much to say about it, or at least I don't think I do, but a couple of things I wanted to call out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am brutal on my phones, as we've learned over the years. I have went from never shattering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a phone to shattering like two or three in a row. I went through something like seven screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey protectors on the last phone on my iPhone 16 Pro. For this one, it has never, ever been in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a case, and I have yet to shatter it. And we are coming up on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the end of its service life. That's me knocking on wood. I have yet to shatter it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did get a couple of gouges in the screen, which I'm not sure how that happened, but here we are. But I am very satisfied
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I went almost the entire year with nary a scratch on it. And now I have a couple of scratches on the upper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey left, but I never shattered it. I have dropped it. Now, not as brutally as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have some other. No, that's not true. I dropped it on concrete once or twice. So yeah, really good work on the ceramic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shield 2 or whatever they're calling it. I forget the marketing name for it. I'm a little unhappy that there's a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of scratches, but given the way this thing has been treated, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A, maybe even A plus for the ceramic shield. Really, really good work there. The aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has chipped in a couple of spots, but I don't really mind it, to be honest. I think of it kind of like a patina. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other thing that really chapped my bottom around the 15 and 16 pros, if memory serves, was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thermal throttling. And I mean that not only in terms of speed, but especially in terms of screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brightness. And as someone who goes to football games in the fall and late summer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using your phone outside can really suck because you have it get hot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then you can barely see the screen because it's cranked the brightness to like negative 100%.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this phone is not impervious to that, but thanks to the vapor chamber,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it's called, it definitely does a lot better than any iPhone I've had in years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I'd say B to B plus for the thermal throttling in this phone and A to A plus for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the screen or ceramic shield. I have a couple of thoughts about the Air that are kind of tangential, but with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regard to the 17 Pro, Marco, you also have a 17 Pro, if I remember correctly. But John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the last year was not your year. Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And my wife has a 17 Pro, though, and really the only exposure I have to it is, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John she she uses phones differently than I do. She has like massive cases. She has like the wallet cases,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the magnetically attaching wallet case with like a, with like an air tag type thing embedded in it. It's just,
⏹️ ▶️ John she's got a lot of stuff on her phone. Her phone is big and heavy, and you could like bludgeon someone with it. It's the same 17
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro in there. It's not a Pro Max. It's just a Pro, but I compare it to my 16 Pro and her thing is just way
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger. But And she plays Pokemon Go on it all the time. So my exposure to it is when I borrow her phone or pick
⏹️ ▶️ John it up or hand it to her or whatever to basically feel how hot it is. And you would think you wouldn't be able to feel any heat
⏹️ ▶️ John through all of that stuff. But my subjective impression of handling my wife's phone
⏹️ ▶️ John for the past year, because she got it on launch time, is that the vapor chamber did help. I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure if it helped her battery life because again, she's very rough on these batteries and she has lots of charging solutions and
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff like that. Uh, but she, and the other, the other thing I will measure it by is, has she had
⏹️ ▶️ John complaints? Is she constantly saying, my phone battery is dying or it's doing a weird thing or it's getting too
⏹️ ▶️ John hot? And the answer is no. She hasn't complained to me anything about her phone. So I give the 17 Pro a thumbs up.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the vapor chamber actually did do something. And the rumor is that the phone that I'm getting this year, the 18
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro, will have an even bigger vapor chamber. So thumbs up for cooling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My experience using the 17 Pro for the past year, I just love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this phone. It is awesome. I have no major complaints
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the 17 Pro that I think are actually related to it. My my only complaint is that tethering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just doesn't work for me for more than like two minutes. Um, And so I've been carrying around this hotspot for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year because I haven't wanted to go to an AT&T store and have them like fix my whatever sim is causing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that to be a problem. But, um, But otherwise, like I love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my 17 Pro. I got the orange one, which was the right choice. Um, It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best iPhone color I've ever had. I think it's the best color that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever been offered in the Pro line. And I think the sales of the 17 Pro back that up. It's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been a huge hit. And when you look around the world, you see some of the dark blue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones, a very small handful of the silver ones, and a ton of the orange
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones. Everyone chose orange. And I think the orange being such a good color
⏹️ ▶️ Marco played a significant role in the 17 Pro's sales, which by all accounts have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very strong, even stronger than Apple expected by most accounts. So I think it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no question that objectively, having this be an awesome color was a good idea and helped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone a lot and just made it a great, fun, awesome new release. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functionality-wise, the cameras are great. The 4X is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like finally the right distance for that camera to be. The 8X mode where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it digitally samples the 4X middle section actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is usable. The stabilization of it is also perfect. Like I've never had a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with blurry shots on the 4X or 8X distances. I use the 4X
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time, and it actually provides a significantly different point of view than the 1X.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I do find frequent uses for it. The battery life has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome on it. And I don't have the Max. I just have the medium-sized one, the regular sized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. It's been great. I don't think I've ever seen the battery below 25%.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's just been awesome. Cooling-wise, the Vapor Chamber for me has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better than previous phones. If anything, I think that was one of the worst things about the 16 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco line, that it was the 16 Pro was pretty good, but it got really hot and thermally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco throttled all the time. The 17 Pro with the Vapor Chamber, it really needed it, and it performs great. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco delivered. Overall, I really, I can't say anything bad about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this phone. Like, when I got it, you know, I i also did originally get an iPhone Air. um I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ended up returning it. And then a couple months ago for beta season, I ended up buying a a renewed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refurbished iPhone Air um for a test phone for this summer. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I've had some more time with the Air. I'll get to that when we get to the Air. But when I was deciding to go with the Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I said last year was I wanted the Pro because I want to know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that whatever situation I'm in, I'm not going to regret the phone I have. Whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco situation I'm in, I know I'm going to have enough battery life. I'm going to have the best cameras I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have with me. It's not going to throttle under heat or whatever. It's going to be the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone that it can be in every situation. And the iPhone 17 Pro has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco delivered. It has been that the entire year. This phone has been great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has been so great that honestly, I don't think I'm going to upgrade,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I know that to the rest of the reasonable world, they're
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, why the hell do you upgrade every year, you crazy lunatic? But the fact is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have upgraded every year, and I'll say it's for the show, but it's not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course, it's for me. Like we all know that. It's fine if we don't all get you know the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco newest phones. John has never gotten the phone every year. And the show has gone on. It's been fine. um
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But honestly, between the the new colors that are rumored, honestly, not doing much for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um and the and I love the orange, but also this phone just is so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We'll see what, you know, whatever the 18 Pro has, maybe I'll convince myself I need it. but um
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ultimately, honestly, I think I'm just going to get the foldable and try that for a while for development
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design purposes, which actually is important. But I think I will probably end up switching back to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after I use the foldable for a little while, if I had to guess now at this point. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love the 17 Pro. It has been remarkably good. And here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am a year in thinking, I don't see any reason why I would replace this phone
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the new color has me a little bit nervous. I do think the the 18 Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John they picked one color for it. And it's, it's, it, I don't think it was a particularly controversial color. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it was bold enough that it's going to stand out and make people notice it. But it wasn't like, oh, I can't
⏹️ ▶️ John look at that. It's like a traffic cone or it's like green neon. It was, it was a crowd pleaser.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay. Like it was, it was, I think it was tasteful and bright. It was just, just walk that line. The
⏹️ ▶️ John rumors of the new color being like a deep cherry, and maybe, all right, I will admit that I
⏹️ ▶️ John do not have my finger on the pulse of what colors are in fashion. Okay. So maybe for all I know, deep cherry is going to make the world go
⏹️ ▶️ John wild, but it's not making Marco go wild. It's not making me go wild either. So maybe for the old man set,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's not as popular as the orange one. So maybe they're changing tactics. We'll see how it sells. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, the 17 Pro definitely is a milestone in the iPhone. It's the year they decided
⏹️ ▶️ John to give the pro phone a color.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And to, I forget which one of you said it, but to one of your points, I see the orange
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one everywhere. And I would have hoped that the the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey message that Apple received from that is, hey, we should embrace colors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the friggin' pro phones
⏹️ ▶️ John They're doing one color this year, the rumor is. So they're not decreasing it, but they're also not increasing and I
⏹️ ▶️ John think the other reason you see the orange everywhere is obviously it does stand out. And also, if you got an orange phone, you're less likely to
⏹️ ▶️ John put a case on it or less likely to put it have like it not a clear case on it because
⏹️ ▶️ John silver and black phones that are out there, they're all in just giant cases and you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey don't have no idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I mean, what are they doing that you said like a wine color or something like that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, again, we just have rumors and pictures, but it looked like a deep cherry kind of thing. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I, maybe it's in fashion and everyone's going to go gaga for it. But for me, it's not as straight up the middle crowd
⏹️ ▶️ John pleasing as a really nice orange
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice red or something. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Like it's just like
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the sort of basic colors as opposed to a subtle mix of purplish,
⏹️ ▶️ John reddish, deep kind of. you know. We'll see. I think this one is like a little bit more like metallic flaky.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, while we have our spy shots, so who knows what the real color will look like?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I just, I think something more vibrant like that orange is the right or way to go, but here we are.
iPhone Air exit interview
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don't have an iPhone Air. I've handled an iPhone Air a handful of times over the last year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm curious to hear Marco's thoughts. But one thing I will say is that from those that I know that have one, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know a handful of people with one, it does not seem like for them anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the camera or the battery were near as much an issue as I would have expected.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That doesn't mean that the camera and the battery are not an issue at all. Just that it seems from the people I know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with iPhone Airs, they make it work and it's not nearly as burdensome as I would have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought. Now, Marco, I don't think you've ever properly used the Air as a carry phone, but tell me what was your experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one way or the other?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I used it as a carry phone for, I think, like two or three days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I first got it. And then I got a pro instead and switched it to the pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the Air, I think the main problems with the Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are that it makes some pretty big compromises in areas that people care a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot about for benefits in areas that people don't care a lot about. It's an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting statement phone in the way that like, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought like the Cybertruck was an interesting statement vehicle design, but that doesn't mean I want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. you know? And so like, I'm glad that Apple did the Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because all of their other phones were kind of fitting the same mold, making similar trade-offs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just kind of, you know, different sizes and price tiers of the same kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. And the Air is way out there in a whole different continuum.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it does not follow the same trade-offs as their other phones. The problem is it follows trade-offs nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wants. So the air significantly sacrifices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the battery, the cameras, and also the performance, which I know that's less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a thing that matters to most people, but the air thermal throttles when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do anything. It has no cooling whatsoever. No chill.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The little island in the back that has the camera and everything that also houses a huge amount of the circuitry. That's why it's so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thin. That little island area gets so hot when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does anything that it turns out to do things very slowly. Even simple things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just processing photos you've shot with the one camera or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, like doing the migration is like it takes forever on the air because it's just thermal throttling constantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it does not have the vapor chamber. There are rumors that the next air might gain some kind of vapor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chamber. It badly needs it. I hope those are true. Thermal throttling aside, the main compromise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the air are that, yeah, the battery life is not amazing. Although, Casey's right, it was not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as bad as most people expected it to be. In part because they gave the Air the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Design cellular modem, which the Pro doesn't get. But that, and it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparently a pretty big savings. So that helps. The biggest thing with the Air is the camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, it has one camera. It is the 1X camera. And they do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can focus a little bit closer minimum focus distance than the 1X camera on the Pro. So it's not exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same camera. So it does sort of make up for some of the loss of the macro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco focusing by not having the wide. But it still doesn't have much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close-up focusing ability. and It doesn't have the wide, and it doesn't have a zoom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that's a pretty big set of compromises for people. And if people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want a phone with simpler cameras, usually they go for one of the cheaper ones that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller and cheaper. If you want a phone that's very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lightweight in your hand or in your pocket, the base model 17
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, I think, a better overall balance of things for most people. If you want a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone that has a big screen, you're probably going to want the Max
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the regular Pro. And so the Air kind of sits in this weird middle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ground where they're like, all right, what if we made a really thin phone? It's like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, nobody really cares about the thinness. But we made it really light. Okay, well, you're getting somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you already make the 17, that's pretty light. And the E, that's pretty light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too. The Air is big. It's like, okay, so it's harder to hold because it's wide. Hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay. It feels good, but it is wide. It's like almost as big as a max phone, like footprint-wise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, okay. And we're going to make your battery life mediocre to bad. Oh, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, oh, and we're going to take away all your cameras and just leave one. That's okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay. So the problem is no one who's buying a phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gives a crap how thin it is. They want the best cameras that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can afford. They want the biggest battery they can afford. That's what people buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones for. No one buys a phone saying, I want it to be the thinnest phone on the market. They used to. Back when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Motorola Razr was groundbreaking. That used to matter a lot. That doesn't matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. And oh, and as Neil58 in the chat points out, way worse speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPhone Air too. Another thing that people actually care a surprising amount about cuz people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end up watching a lot of video and having a lot of speakerphone calls on their phones, listening to music out loud, playing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasts out loud. It's actually a pretty common thing to use a speaker on a phone. So the Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a really interesting experiment, industrial design-wise, aesthetically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they just made a product that nobody really wants. And that's why if you look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at anything that tries to estimate iPhone Air sales, whether it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the analytics firms that look at having people buy stuff in Apple stores versus apps that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can report device type usage, like I see in my own stats, the Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so little in sales compared to anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No one bought the Air. No one is buying the Air. No one will buy the Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The upcoming folding phone is supposed to inherit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of these trade-offs, but it sounds like they've done a better job of it. And the difference there is that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco folding phone is going to offer a lot in return for those trade-offs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people do care about. You know what? People love giant screens on their phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That's been proven. People want the biggest screen they can possibly get and they will pay for it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that for sure, like that's going to get people to the ultra or the fold, whatever it's going to be called.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if you tell those people, well, the battery life might only be okay and you might give up one camera,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there's still this huge plus that the foldable will give them that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be a compelling thing. The Air doesn't have one of those. The Air just is all the trade-offs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the pluses just aren't that big and aren't things that most people really care about.
⏹️ ▶️ John To save people from, to save Marco from the feedback, we're going to hear Marco saying that no one wants a thin phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John He doesn't mean literally no one. I mean, we know people who got it because it's so thin and they love it. And as I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John when that phone was introduced, one of the reasons that it is that weird size where it's
⏹️ ▶️ John like almost as big as a Max is because you need to make it that big if you want it to be that thin and have a decent
⏹️ ▶️ John battery because every little extra bit of screen you have there is presumably more than offset by the extra battery
⏹️ ▶️ John you get for being behind it. What I want to say about the Air is I want to give kudos
⏹️ ▶️ John to the engineering effort where Apple sort of triumphantly returned to
⏹️ ▶️ John the thin phone game and created a thin phone that is so
⏹️ ▶️ John durable that as we saw when the YouTubers tried to test it, you cannot bend the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John with human hands. like that's true I know it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. People shouldn't be abusing
⏹️ ▶️ John their phones that way and the product is the product. Who cares how bendable it is? But from the same company that made the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John 6 that would bend when you looked at it sideways, they made this thing, which is like a miracle
⏹️ ▶️ John slab. You know, it looks beautiful. It feels great. It feels premium and you cannot bend it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John kudos to the team that did that. The team that did that is not responsible for the entire product. They didn't decide what the iPhone Air
⏹️ ▶️ John was going to be. They didn't decide it was going to have one camera or whatever. Just the team that says, hey, we're making a thin phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don't get to design this product. Your job is to make it so it doesn't bend. And they did it. So I want to give
⏹️ ▶️ John that team a big thumbs up. And the fact that they're making a second one makes me think that either they're just recouping
⏹️ ▶️ John tooling costs of like, look, we've already paid up front for all the stuff to make one of these. So we're going to make another one no
⏹️ ▶️ John matter what. But it does make me hope that, again, what is it? I already forgot it. Carbon silicon
⏹️ ▶️ John batteries, like the next jump in battery composition to give a little bit more power,
⏹️ ▶️ John that they could potentially shrink it down and maybe get some more of like, oh, it's light and thin,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it's actually not that small. I'm not advocating for the return of the mini, but I hope they keep pursuing this
⏹️ ▶️ John because as technology increases, all of the bad parts that Marco was talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John will start to be less bad. Maybe you can fit two cameras on it eventually. Maybe the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John life isn't as bad anymore, you know, like, and I don't know. Like, I think it is a viable option.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do think that the 20th anniversary phone that's all glass and blah, blah, blah, like that's going to really throw a monkey wrench into the Air's
⏹️ ▶️ John possible role as pointing towards the future. But again, the ultra slash folding
⏹️ ▶️ John phone will have a lot in common with the Air in terms of the, you know, the design and
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturing that Apple developed to make things thin because the sides of the fold are going to be even thinner,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would imagine. And of course, there's two of them. So you can put it together. The phone will be thick, but those individual pieces are going to be thin.
⏹️ ▶️ John So here's hoping they've gotten even better at it.
iPhone 17 exit interview
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just to reiterate, like something that I think most people who are buying at the high end don't really appreciate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If what you want is a phone that feels noticeably light in your hands and is lighter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to handle, get the base model iPhone 17 because it is almost as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light as the air. It's a very small difference between those two. Both of them are well under the weight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the 17 Pro. So if that's what you want, the iPhone 17 does a better job of it. It's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheaper. Well, at the moment,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we'll see what happens with pricing next week. That remains to be seen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the 17 is kind of an interesting case because it is continuing and the Air, both continuing to be sold.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we'll see if they get price raises or not compared to the new models, which will almost certainly have them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the iPhone 17 is almost as light. It's smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the hand, $200 cheaper. It has better cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better battery life. Like, there's a lot about the iPhone 17
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's like, well, you should probably buy that instead of the Air if what you're looking for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is is a lighter phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to say for the iPhone 17, I think this is probably the best
⏹️ ▶️ John no suffix iPhone that they have ever made. Obviously, because
⏹️ ▶️ John new or whatever. I'm saying like in the time that they've made it, because it really just, it came at a time
⏹️ ▶️ John when that phone with the specs that they gave it and its surrounding phones make it the kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John thing where it was like the MacBook era phones back in the day when the 2011 MacBook era where you just said, you need a Mac just get the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Air. Everybody who was looking for a phone, I'm like, I didn't even have to ask them anything about what they wanted. to just get the iPhone 17.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only thing I would say is, like the iPhone 17 is still expensive, then you can look at the 17e. But the default was go
⏹️ ▶️ John to the iPhone 17. I bought two of them. I bought one for each of my kids. Hopefully the last phone I'll ever buy any of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey see how that
⏹️ ▶️ John goes. um But yeah, the iPhone 17 is what an amazing phone because most people don't pay the extra for
⏹️ ▶️ John the Pro or the Air or even the Max. You're just like, what is the cheapest I can get an iPhone for? And
⏹️ ▶️ John the 17e is the answer or like older models, obviously. But the 17 have just like, there's a new iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John The number is one more than last year. I don't care about suffixes. What a great phone that is. Like it just, everything said
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. It's like the perfect size, the perfect weight. It looks nice. It came in fun colors. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ John just, I will definitely have fond memories of the Plane 17. It was definitely a good year. It's going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be big shoes for the Plane 18 to fill sometime in the spring.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also this the the Plane 17 brought the Plane phone line up to always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on display and promotion.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Yeah. It was the year that like they that they they took a bunch of things they'd been using for market segmentation
⏹️ ▶️ John and say now is the final year. Finally, the year that we dropped them. So that's why you could recommend it wholeheartedly. You didn't have to ask questions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, do you care about the screen being on all the time? Do you have it? was like They didn't drop all of them. There was still market segmentation,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they dropped a bunch of ones that people could see. Like the always on screen, that's a thing you notice. Like regular people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep. And promotion, like that's like, it's much smoother animation. And I'm not sure if regular people notice that, but it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it's they brought the nicer screen to the base phone for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first time ever. Like what a huge upgrade that was. I Honestly, I think the only thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I would really miss if I if I was using a 17, obviously I would miss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 4X camera and I would probably miss the heat pipe. But also I would miss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of another thing that I forgot to mention with the iPhone 17 Pro. I would miss shooting in RAW
⏹️ ▶️ Marco format. So in Apple's Pro Raw, I don't use any other apps to do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the time, but in the built-in regular iOS camera app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recent Pro phones have supported shooting in Apple's ProRAW. And you can just, whenever you want, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can just quickly go toggle like per shot. You hit the format thing. That's usually like, you know, the HEEK
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 24 megapixel, and you can tap it and you can say make it 48 megapixel and make it raw. And it'll keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that setting for you know, a couple of minutes. So if you're like shooting like a nice sunset or something, you can shoot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of raws there, but then you're not going to be shooting raw for you know, all next week and accidentally blow up your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco storage. But what's great about the iPhone RAW shots is that, functionally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in like camera terms, it's a lot more like RAW plus JPEG, that you shoot the RAW, but you don't have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to deal with the RAW if you don't want to. The only thing you're giving up is you're taking more storage space with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAW. And you can even, you can do like the, the kind of like slight compression options in it, which I do. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what's great about the iPhone RAWs is if, like me, you are a little bit turned off a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of times by like the very like kind of perfect processing, a little bit over-processing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of iPhone pictures, or kind of the sameness of iPhone pictures, if you shoot in ProRaw,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even again, even if you don't use any other apps, if you just shoot with Apple's camera app and edit with the Photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app right on the phone, you have way more latitude in editing, especially if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you're adjusting colors or exposure. So you can like bring up the shadows and tweak
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the contrast and tweak the white balance and everything. You can do so much with the ProRAW
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that for me, it removed the need for me to really ever use the alternative.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I've bought every alternative camera app, but I'm just not a good enough photographer to really ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use them. But like to have Apple stuff built in, the Pro Raw is so good. And to be able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to just toggle it on real fast for like one shot, and then I know later I can go edit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that and get a lot out of it. It's been awesome. And that is something that is exclusive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the Pro line. So that, honestly, I think I would miss Pro Raw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than I would miss the 4X camera. Like I use it that much, and it's that big of a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, yeah, the 4X camera is really good. But if you don't want any of that stuff, the regular 17,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as John was saying, it is the best regular line iPhone in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. And it was the biggest step up they've ever had in that line. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco closed the gap from the regular to the pro line to be a smaller gap than we've had in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it's worth stating, which I think all three of us are kind of dancing around this, but it's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worth stating plainly. To my memory, having followed Apple closely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since the iPhone 3GS and having this been my career, or at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey side hustle since 2013, this is the best iPhone lineup I think they've
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever had. Like top to bottom, inside and out. There's not a dud in the bunch. Even the air.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I'd say the air is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dud. But it also doesn't matter. Like, because no one's buying it. So it's not really, it'd be one thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if the pro or if the main line phone of a year was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of a stinker, that's a pretty big problem. Like, that's a big deal because they're such high volume products. So many people buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. The Air is kind of a stinker, but no one's buying it. So it doesn't really affect the other lineups.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's it's, it's, it's its own separate path. In the same way that like the, like the old plus model, like the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, not like the, the old old plus, but like the, the middle one where they they gave like the, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plain phone a larger screen. Um, That was also a stinker. Didn't matter. The mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as much as I loved my iPhone 12 and 13 minis, um, the mini was a stinker sales-wise too,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it didn't affect the line really because just not a lot of people bought them. By
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way, I still today have more users of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini than I do of the iPhone Air, which should tell you something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How many iPhone Airs have you guys seen in real life being used outside of like, you know, nerd
⏹️ ▶️ John Didn't they sell a bunch of minis, though? You're comparing a one, one year, one generation phone to a multi-generation mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But how many iPhone airs have you seen in the world?
⏹️ ▶️ John I've seen zero and zero minis as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In this entire year, everywhere I am, I'm looking around at people's phones and stuff. In this entire year, I've seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two. That's it. I've seen so many pros. I've seen so many base phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I've seen two iPhone Airs in the world. How many minis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did you see? More than that, honestly. I mean, I didn't count
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them because I saw too many to count, but compared to… I mean, that's like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think about that. More minis than airs in Overcast users. And Overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco users, you would think, would over would over represent the air. By the way, um just to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to clear up a uh to clear up a question in the chat um about that there were two generations of the iPhone mini So obviously that's why it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would would over represent um Nope, that's not it for Overcast. um I'll tell you, the um the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone Air ranks below the 12 mini
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also separately the 13 mini, with approximately half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the usage of the 12 mini. And about, let's see, I mean about a third of the usage
Event expectations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let's do a iPhone event preview to the degree that we have anything to say about any of these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices. I'll walk through a list that John put together of what we think might happen potentially,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we'll start with the iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max. I don't think I have anything to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say about this. We'll get there in a second when we talk about the Ultra. But, John, do you have any thoughts about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your potential future phone? I'm assuming it's this and not the Ultra.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it is my future phone. I'll be getting the 18 Pro. I'll probably get it in a boring color. If it has a bigger vapor chamber,
⏹️ ▶️ John I'll be excited about it. I'm looking forward to it. I mean, the expectation and the rumor is that it's basically
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be the same as the 17 Pro, except with an even bigger camera plateau, which I'm not actually very
⏹️ ▶️ John excited about. But, you know like this is true you know it's it's kind of a good thing that I only get a phone every two
⏹️ ▶️ John years because every time I do, it's just, I just feel like it's such trauma trying to deal with the case situation for me
⏹️ ▶️ John because it's not like there's anything like Apple. I can't like, oh, Apple always will sell this case and I'll buy it. No, I have to always go third
⏹️ ▶️ John party. So there's like a delay and I end up buying multiple cases. And it's just very disruptive to my life
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out, you know, I think on my 16 Pro, I had like a couple different cases on it before I finally settled on the
⏹️ ▶️ John one that I have. And now I'm going to the giant plateau. my wife's done it. She's got the, I think she's got the case that
⏹️ ▶️ John like covers the plateau with the bra, you know, that one, which on the one hand looks ugly and is bulky,
⏹️ ▶️ John but on the other hand, it does actually protect the corners of that plateau that get chipped a lot. So I don't know what I'm going
⏹️ ▶️ John to do. So like, yes, I'm looking forward to my phone, but my current phone is doing great,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially since I've babied the battery for its entire life. So it's a champ. And this
⏹️ ▶️ John new phone is going to be bigger and bulkier and heavier and have a bigger plateau. In exchange, you know, it'll be
⏹️ ▶️ John faster and have better cameras. So I will, you know, I'll get over it. But I'm a little, I have a little bit of trepidation
⏹️ ▶️ John about that. But I'm almost certainly not going to get whatever the new color is if the rumor is even remotely close to being
⏹️ ▶️ John true because the cherry doesn't appeal to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it doesn't really appeal to me either. All right, then we've got the iPhone Ultra, maybe the iPhone Fold. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was connected that's or maybe it's upgrade that somebody recommended or suggested the iPhone Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whatever it's called, I would guess iPhone Ultra would be my first pick and fold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being my second pick. But anyways, this, I've been thinking a lot about this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I am interested in the idea of a folding phone, even though it's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sitting here now. It doesn't solve any problems that I feel like I have. But I think I will definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get one to try. And I think certainly my other job as an app developer, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems pretty logical to have one in the house, despite the fact that it's going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a million dollars. But I think it makes sense to have one in the house, even if I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don't use it as a carry phone. I probably will try to use it as a carry phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for at least the two weeks until the return policy is up. I don't know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I'm going to like it or not. And I can tell you that if the rumors are true, if it does not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have face ID, I'm going to be bummed. If it doesn't potentially have Qi charging,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I would find or MagSafe charging, which I would find very surprising, but I would also believe that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to seriously bum me out. And there was something else. What was the other thing that people were saying it's not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh, the cameras.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cameras. That is going to massively bum me out. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use all three lenses on or all five different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey magnifications or whatever. I use all of them all the time. I'm constantly popping between them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm sure I could do some science and some math and figure out what ones I use and what quantity. We've done this in years past.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But suffice to say, my perception anyway is that I use all of the different uh X's,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you will. uh you know, the ultra-wide at half X, one X. I use two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey X and four X and eight X. I use all of them. And so to lose any of them will really bum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me out a lot. And that, I think, might be the thing that breaks me and makes me return
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or shelve the iPhone Ultra if that's the direction I go, which is currently the plan. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do think for the show, at least one of us needs to have this thing. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I am willing to take the fall at least for a couple of weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Don't worry, I'm going to get one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let's do our votes on what we think the name's going to be. I guess you can introduce whatever choice you want, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John Ultra Fall Duo, whatever name you want to pick. What's your pick for the name?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it's going to be Ultra.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I think there's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been so much smoke behind that fire. like there's It's probably right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that also just plausibly makes sense because like Apple's phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Apple's product naming in general, it usually is fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco formulaic and a little bit problematic, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco logically speaking like And that's what this is. like you know they they have People have suggested, like well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know does it make sense for the for something named Ultra to not actually have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best of everything? Like It's not going to have the best cameras, probably. It's not going to probably have the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery life. Um, it's, It will have the best price from Apple's point of view, but uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's, it's not going to, like, that front screen is going to be a little maybe compromised and weird. Like, the whole thing, it's going to be like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit compromised and a little bit weird in certain ways. Uh, It's not going to have face ID. That's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not not going to, that's not the best. It's not, If it's not going to have like the best speakers, maybe like there's a lot of things that's not going to have the best. But it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly the kind of like, weird problem with naming that Apple Marketing would just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pave right over and just say, nope, Ultra. That's it. This is what this means now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think that's very likely to be the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think Ultra is the most likely. I could see Duo, but I think they would go with Fold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before Duo. All three of them seem plausible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call theirs a fold? Like, Apple would never do what Android people do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that's true. That's true. That's true. All right. So maybe Duo
⏹️ ▶️ John all boring on the Ultra Train. I also agree with Marco that the reason I think is going to be the name is because it's
⏹️ ▶️ John dumb in certain ways, and that definitely fits with Apple's naming. Duo would be the most fun just because
⏹️ ▶️ John of the throwback to the Powerbook duo, but that's, you know, just me and Phil remember that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no, it's a throwback to the Core 2 duo, John. No, it definitely is not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Yeah, I mean, I think, like I said, my intention is probably to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order an iPhone 18 Pro and just not open it and then an iPhone Ultra or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and open that and use the Ultra and then leave my options open, but we'll see what happens. Uh, I've had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron on the annual cycle, much to her own protest,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because she doesn't really seem to see the point. And she's probably right. Um, But I've had her on the annual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cycle for years now. I think she is going to be, it's going to be very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard for me to get her away from her orange phone to come back to our last topic. She does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not want to lose her orange phone, and she's going to be very sad too. And so I think this is going to be the first time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in several years that Erin doesn't end up upgrading. I mean, I'll talk to her about it. We'll see what she ends up thinking once
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything is announced. But I think she's going to say to me, there's nothing that really justifies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, and I don't like any of those colors. Why would I bother? And you know what? She ain't wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When she sees how much your fold is going to cost,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that will also
⏹️ ▶️ John convince her, ah, yeah, you basically just did buy my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone. The second half of your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, right. No, you're exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. No, I I'm I'm I'm getting the ultra. I don't know if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's going to be something I stick with for the whole year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly. I think I'm probably going to use it for like a week or two and then want to go back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to my Orange Pro because ultimately, I don't think, I mean, look, we'll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People who use these foldable phones oftentimes fall in love with them and say they'd never go back to anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So maybe that's going to happen. I don't know. I've never used one. But sitting here today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the rumored trade-offs and sizing and things like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't think the foldable is going to be the way I want to go long term.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I know that not only as a podcaster, but especially as a developer of iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, I need one of those to test with. Like I have not done any of the work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to design Overcast for the foldable layout yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I don't have one. Back when the iPad first came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, we had the simulator for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before we had the hardware. Like we could develop our apps with the simulator for, I think, at least a month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or two before anybody could get the hardware. And so I made Instapaper. I adapted Instapaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the iPad and basically blew up the phone layout. And I got my iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on day one and I tried Instapaper on it. And immediately I was like, this sucks. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did everything wrong. And I I had the cardboard prototypes. Like I, I did all that stuff right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But as soon as I ran it on a real iPad and could actually interact with it, I instantly knew that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of the UI decisions I made were crap. And I had, And I ended up having to redo the whole design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this time like, you know what? I'm not going to play that game. with, I don't even have a simulator yet. I have a simulator that can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of simulate wide apps, but like, I don't know exactly what size these things are going to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't know like, how, like, what am I going to be able to reach like, control-wise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with my thumb? How am I going to operate that outside screen that's really weirdly squat? Like that's going to be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge design challenge for a lot of apps. How do the keyboards work? I have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, that's, It's going to be a big challenge. And I'm not going to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that design without having the hardware. I've learned that lesson. So anyway, I need one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my app design, no matter what. So that's why I'm going to get it. I'm going to try it out for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show. But I think I'm going to end up mostly probably going back to my 17 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you know, most of the year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That's fair. I think I'm in a similar, a similar path for sure. All right. iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Air 2. We briefly talked about this. We don't think it sounds like there's a consensus. We don't think it's going to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm sorry. We haven't. Probably the rumors would tell us the answer to this, but apparently none of us have looked it up because none of us care.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the rumors probably tell you what the answer is, whether it's going to come out or not. So just go read them.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they They have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The rumors have been very consistent that the Air 2 is not coming out now. That that there there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is apparently an Air 2 being worked on, but they've been pretty consistent that's probably coming out like in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the spring or next year sometime. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John The next item here is, I mean, again, it's the thing that most people don't care about, but I did see it mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John in the past week, which is AirPods 5. Not AirPods Pro, just the
⏹️ ▶️ John plain AirPods they used to be four. Those are the ones I have. Five. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John briefly looked at like, here's what the AirPods 5 will be. And I was like, that's what the AirPods 4
⏹️ ▶️ John are, but with a bigger number. Like maybe it has an H3 chip, you know what I mean? Like upgrade the chips in them. But it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like if the rumors are correct, that product is simply a slightly better version of the AirPods 4, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. I'm wearing AirPods 4 all the time. I like them. They're good. They fit my ears well. So I'm perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ John happy with the 5s. I may actually get them because I wear my AirPods so much and they have such tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John batteries and that are not replaceable that I've really kind of worn down the battery life in those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I've had many times where I'm trying to like watch the end of an episode of TV late at night
⏹️ ▶️ John on my iPad in my bed and one of the AirPods goes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I got to watch the rest of the show with one. it always It's always one ear that's lower than the other. It's like weird. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't know. They're both put in the charging case at the same time, but they just, anyway. So I'll probably end up. that's
⏹️ ▶️ John Interestingly, I'll get an iPhone 18 Pro and if they introduce the AirPods 5, I'll probably get them. And the other thing about the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ John is both of my children have some magical ability to destroy AirPods with their mind
⏹️ ▶️ John or their body. Like I have the same AirPods as them. And it's not like they're stepping on them or
⏹️ ▶️ John like running them through the wash. They're just using them the way, I mean, the one thing they do is they leave them all over the house, or one of my kids
⏹️ ▶️ John does. But anyway, and they let them fill with earwax. But just somehow, like, first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ John my daughter, if you give her AirPods, and she's had so many AirPods across her life, she'll
⏹️ ▶️ John tell you within a month or two, the microphone doesn't work anymore. And we've done Apple Care on a bunch of them and they've
⏹️ ▶️ John given her new ones. then she says, the microphone doesn't work anymore. I don't know what she's doing to make the microphones non-functional. Sometimes I think you
⏹️ ▶️ John had the microphone muted or it does work and you just think people can't hear you. Sometimes I've confirmed that they don't
⏹️ ▶️ John work. But anyway, it's it's mysterious. I use them all the time, every single
⏹️ ▶️ John day. Like anytime I'm doing dishes and there's no one else, to get, I'm those things are in and listen to podcasts. I put them in when
⏹️ ▶️ John I walk the dog. Like I use them like crazy and they just keep working. But my kids destroy them all the time. So maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John my kids will get themselves some new AirPods 5. Maybe I will as well. That's actually
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the products that is, that no one probably cares about it except for me. But, you know, it's, it's, uh
⏹️ ▶️ John like, just, you gotta cycle through these things. And maybe I'll rotate my perfectly good working, everything works
⏹️ ▶️ John on them, AirPods 4 down to one of my kids so they don't have to get any new ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, I must commend you on your perfect reproduction of the AirPods low battery sound.
⏹️ ▶️ John I messed it up a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey no you did the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of boops, but yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I don't think you were talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it It was pretty much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah. All right. Is there anything else we expect to see? Maybe Apple Watches? I mean, that's, or is that, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that it might be later in the fall, but usually it's with the iPhones, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that's true. It is usually with the iPhone. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think. We've lost so much interest in. Yeah, the Apple Watch 12 is it, but we've lost so much interest in them because the rumors are,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, any of that cool stuff that we talked about, it's not this year. Maybe we'll
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco be surprised. Who knows? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John Watch rumors are wildly wrong sometimes. but…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like every new generation of Apple Watch for the last, I don't know, five,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco six years, there's not much there, but there's like one good feature every year that they
⏹️ ▶️ John This one's going to have a new SOC.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, that's good because they're, what, on year three with the current one?
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget how long they have the same SOC they just kept renaming.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have, honestly, I haven't even put watchOS beta on any of my watches yet, but I've heard that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new Siri operation on the WatchOS beta is pretty slow.
⏹️ ▶️ John why you need the new SOC just so you could do what you used to be able to do at close to the same speed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know, right? And I don't even, I'm not sure why it would be, because like the watch is not running Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intelligence. But I think about three years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did, yeah, I guess when this SOC started, they did move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of series processing to run locally on the watch. So for simple things like timers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe that runs locally on everything past, I think, a Series 9. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every year you get like one good Apple Watch feature that's that is not really worth upgrading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just for that. But if you wait until your current Apple Watch's battery kind of sucks and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have like a three or four-year-old Apple Watch, then you upgrade, you get a nice combination of things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, the rumors are basically no form factor redesign,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe ceramic coming back as a premium material. So that could be very nice. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big fan of the white ceramic back in the day. So we'll see about that. But probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a like materials, maybe processing speed, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe one new or tweaked health feature. And that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. I do wish the Apple Watch was a little more exciting. I almost,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I believe we talked about this last year, I almost wish they wouldn't release it every year because each incremental
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update is so much of a nothing burger most of the time. But if you look, again, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at like a two or three year cycle on them, they actually do get significantly better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over like three years. So I almost wish the Apple Watch would go on like an AirPods release cycle. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don't get new AirPods Pro every year. Like the AirPods Pro is staggered. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they did the Apple Watch that way, maybe they would do like, you know, the Ultra would be one year, and then the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next year, the regular Apple Watch would get updated, but not the Ultra, you know, stuff like that. Like if they could stagger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it out to make just a little bit better of an update. But anyway, we'll see what they give us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'm not expecting it to be very exciting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that's it, right? I mean, we don't expect anything else. Oh, we're going to be getting a much more iCloud free
⏹️ ▶️ Casey storage Didn't you hear? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, we're going to be getting John Turnis. Like, that's, you know, that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey a pretty big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change. Not, you know, not in terms of like at the end of the day, what the products are going to be, but that is a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big change. And also, by the way, I should also, this is a good time to also point out that Phil Schiller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is stepping away allegedly from the App Store and Apple events. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those were his two big duties that he was working on that we knew about. He was still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actively playing a role in planning the events. And I assume that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means the presentation style too. Like maybe he was somehow leading or somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco heavily involved in the style of the videos that we get or how those things are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco presented. Certainly the events around like Apple Park and stuff, like the developer events and the press events,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'm sure he was involved in those too. If he is stepping away from that also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that also might introduce changes there. Like maybe not immediate, probably not like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this event, you know, but maybe within the next couple of years, we might start to see like, oh, the style
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this has shifted a little bit, or they've started to do something differently that they weren't doing before. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's something to look out for too, with this change. So we'll see, you know, between a new CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Phil's change, this could be the start of a whole, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shift of the entire format of these events. So that's something I'm also looking forward to.
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm going to say that the last presentation we saw, whatever it was, the Golden Gate announcement one I guess it was WWC. I felt like
⏹️ ▶️ John that was actually a shift. We talked about it at the time, but I do think that that actually represented
⏹️ ▶️ John a realignment of like they took some of the feedback to heart and were a little bit less stiff than they had
⏹️ ▶️ John been in the past and everything. So I hope they just continue along that trend.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And they were like, they're showing things in real time that were actually kind of slow. And to be honest about it, like that was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I remember we all commented and commended that because it's like, oh, yeah, they they actually did bring like a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco humanity into this. So I think that that whole story will be interesting to see. Like, it's John
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ternus' first event. I assume there, I mean, maybe there will be some kind of like thank you to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim on the way or something. um But either way, you know. Tim who?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like even if the products were all really boring, and I don't think they will be, you know, certainly the foldable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone is going to be pretty interesting if nothing else is. But even if the products were really boring, I think just the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco story around this event would be very interesting by itself. But it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like we're also going to get some pretty exciting products. So that should be fun too. Thank you to our sponsor this episode,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ZocDoc. And thank you to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco join. One of the many perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic. This week on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overtime, we're going to be talking about Ternus and the Vision Pro. There's been some recent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco events and rumors around what might be happening there. So we're going to be covering that in Overtime. You can listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco atp.fm slash join, get that, and all of our other exclusive member content and various member perks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. Once again, atp.fm slash join. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. And we'll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental. it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's KC-Liss, M-A-R-C-O,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann A-R-M, E-N T, Marco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann U-S-A-Syracuse. It's accidental, accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann They didn't mean to accidental, accidental. Check
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann podcast so
John’s storage update
⏹️ ▶️ John So, I talked, I think, a couple of episodes ago
⏹️ ▶️ John about me doing some stuff related to storage, and I would have some updates. Maybe it was more than a couple of episodes ago. I
⏹️ ▶️ John said I might have some updates in a couple of months. Here's why: here's what I was doing: as my ongoing
⏹️ ▶️ John filling of every ounce of storage I have in my entire life, I was doing some triage
⏹️ ▶️ John as usual, and certain things even hyperspace can't help me with. Like, for example, space on my Synology, which
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone's like why are you using an external drive for your Photoshop? Why don't you just put it on your NAS? My NAS
⏹️ ▶️ John is full too, man. Like, everything's full. Oh, no. You think this I have some huge amount of space sitting there on my network
⏹️ ▶️ John attached storage No, I fill it. I fill everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this isn't a good time to buy that either. Like, i like this summer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John at the restaurant,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we uh we have the ubiquity cameras and they have like the big ubiquity like NAS thing to record the uh the camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco footage. And just, it's you know has four hard drive bays in it. And that when I bought it, you know, last winter, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two winters ago, um I bought, I think, 24 terabyte drives. like you know, big drives. And it turns out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we need a little more space, like a little more retention. And I went to go look at drive pricing and I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh, no, like even hard drive price. Like I figured maybe it was just SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you know, SSD modules that were expensive. Nope. Hard drives are also incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive right now compared to where they were a few years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So fingers crossed for my NAS that has had constantly spinning hard drives since the year 2013
⏹️ ▶️ John and has not lost a drive yet. Fingers crossed that that continues to go well. Incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I was trying to save space on everything that I possibly could. And one of the one and not just save
⏹️ ▶️ John space, but also look at my bills. And one of the things I do is I back up my NAS to cloud storage.
⏹️ ▶️ John And because it's not directly attached, I don't do the iSCSI thing or anything. I can't use my flat rate backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to somehow let it back up my giant NAS, which
⏹️ ▶️ John not that giant these days. But anyway, I was using B2 backup because it was like the cheapest.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's Backblaze's S3, get it B2. Anyway, it's their object storage with a,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it has an S3 compatible API like they all do, but their rates are cheap. And Synology
⏹️ ▶️ John has an app that will back up your NAS over B2. It's just, it's a built-in
⏹️ ▶️ John feature. You just say, I wanted to go to B2. Here's my account, blah, blah, blah. And it does it. And I've done that for years, not backing
⏹️ ▶️ John up my entire Synology. Like, obviously, I'm not backing up my time machine backups on the Synology because that would be, probably wouldn't
⏹️ ▶️ John even work. But anyway, I'm backing up my other stuff that's there because that's the only way I have to back up my Synology.
⏹️ ▶️ John The cloud backup is it, other than like the RAID redundancy that I have, right? And I can lose a drive or two, depending on the RAID
⏹️ ▶️ John configs, which I did poorly and made poor choices, but it's too late now. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that used to cost me like, it was like 10 bucks a month for me to back up my Synology because it was so cheap. But
⏹️ ▶️ John as time went on, I was backing up more and more stuff. And then it was like 15 bucks a month, 20 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ John a month. And it used to be like, oh, 28, 29. I'm like, well, as long as I keep it under 30. But then
⏹️ ▶️ John in, I think in this past year, is like, oh, now it's 32, 37, 36.
⏹️ ▶️ John because like I'll delete stuff from my Synology and it will go up and down. But I'm like, it's just too much. Now it's pushing up against
⏹️ ▶️ John 40 bucks a month for me to back up my Synology. Like that's just my like backup
⏹️ ▶️ John of last resort. If I lose like two drives at the same time or something, or if like my house burns down and I'm paying 40
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks a month for that, like I've literally never used it. And I know it's not a reason not to have backup, but I'm like, I feel like the price
⏹️ ▶️ John is out of whack with the with the value that I'm getting from it. And so, you know, I looked
⏹️ ▶️ John at it I said, I mean, I've talked about this on the show many times. When Marco has mused about this, that
⏹️ ▶️ John AWS is an RPG and it's a game that you can play. And the win
⏹️ ▶️ John condition is how can you figure out how to get what you want by not paying a lot? Uh, And I have a lot of experience
⏹️ ▶️ John dealing with S3 in particular um, in my jobby job. Um, And so I'm like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John let me look. Let me see if I can do it. You know, S3 has changed a lot over the years. Can I beat
⏹️ ▶️ John B2 with S3? So the goal would be stop backing up to
⏹️ ▶️ John B2 and use the same Synology feature and start backing up to S3
⏹️ ▶️ John instead and then delete everything from B2 and stop paying that bill. So that was my goal.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, Now, I do have a lot of experience literally writing billions of files
⏹️ ▶️ John to S3 in my jobby job. Okay. Billion with a B, many billions. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing about my jobby job is I didn't have to pay for that. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was trying to save the company money, obviously, but I can tell you that when you're spending
⏹️ ▶️ John the amount of money that my jobby jobs are spending on AWS, you have like your own personal like concierge people
⏹️ ▶️ John who are talking to you and helping you with things. And it's just a very different experience to being like a lone
⏹️ ▶️ John developer with a free AWS account. Okay. This is not an excuse, but
⏹️ ▶️ John merely to explain that when I went about doing this and I'm like, okay, I think I know how I can do this. I've
⏹️ ▶️ John done the math. And by the way, their price calculator was and remains terrible. Third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John price calculators are a little bit better. I'm like, I think I can save money. Like before I even attempted this,
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm like, I think I can save money on this. So let me try it. And I made
⏹️ ▶️ John like all of the rookie mistakes. Like, I don't know if I've forgotten everything. I didn't I didn't forget, but as soon as I did it,
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm like, oh yeah, don't you remember when you had your job, this was a thing? And when I was planning to do, you know, millions
⏹️ ▶️ John and billions of files, you're very careful and cautious. But I'm like, oh, it's just my little thingy. I'll just do it. I'll pick this, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was, again, not excusing, but explaining. The Synology interface doesn't
⏹️ ▶️ John let you pick all of the storage tiers when you say you're going to upload S3. It just has like a limited selection.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I made a poor choice in that first thing. I was like, oh, well, I'll just put it here and then I'll re-tier it. And I know there's
⏹️ ▶️ John re-tiering costs, but how bad could it be? I should have looked at the numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John because month one of my transition where I, you know, I stopped sending it to B2
⏹️ ▶️ John and started sending it to S3. I was going from like a $36 bill, month one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going in the wrong direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is not a success. And part of it was because I made a poor choice in the limited tiering
⏹️ ▶️ John pop-up menu because I, again, I had forgotten what I once knew. This is the thing that happens, kids. You
⏹️ ▶️ John think once you know a thing, you're never going to make that mistake again. But then you'll get old. And you like, I knew it the
⏹️ ▶️ John second I did it, but it was too late. It was my damn gigabit upload connection. I had already uploaded so much stuff there.
⏹️ ▶️ John There's minimum time span cost. So it's like X amount per like byte per
⏹️ ▶️ John period of time, but there's a minimum. If you keep the file there for one second, we charge you for 30 days.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that type of thing. And that will screw you real bad because if you put the thing up there and then re-tier
⏹️ ▶️ John it, because I had to re-tier it because I couldn't upload it in the tier I wanted because the Synology tool only had a limited tier choice. When I talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John tiers, by the way, it's like, do you want to have it in the fast storage, the not so fast storage? Like there's different levels
⏹️ ▶️ John of storage that cost you different amounts of money and give you different performance trade-offs. And there's a lot of tiers and the names
⏹️ ▶️ John don't make any sense, even if you know the history behind them. So I had to upload into
⏹️ ▶️ John one tier and then immediately re-tier into the tier that I wanted. But the one second it was in the other tier
⏹️ ▶️ John charged me 30 days worth of it being there.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And that was
⏹️ ▶️ John But I still had hope. I'm just like, I'm like, I think I can fix this. And I did some more re-tiering. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John way you have to re-tier things sucks so bad. It's like, just, I just, I should have just done it. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of using the Synology thing, I should have just written the script myself Cause then maybe while I'm typing the code, I would have like remembered,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh yeah, 30-day minimum, dummy. We don't do that. Okay. Month two, July.
⏹️ ▶️ John After re-tiering, rearranging, just dealing with everything, trying to do it. And by the way, their price,
⏹️ ▶️ John not calculator, but their price predictor. Here's what we think your month's going to be. It's so bad, man. Like, it'll be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John your price for this month is going to be two cents. And then like the day before the month ends, like, oh, just kidding. And then it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco shows you like the real price is
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be. It's like, who's making this. Anyway, month two, July, $23.32.
⏹️ ▶️ John than 36, but I'm like, but it's still, I still feel like I can do better here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still feel like I'm going to do better, but you never know until the month ends. You know what I mean? Like, because the predictions
⏹️ ▶️ John are all over the place. Like, I can't trust what it says, what it thinks it's going to do. It fluctuates. Like, I don't, I don't know how they're predicting.
⏹️ ▶️ John There's not that much activity. Like, once I've got everything uploaded, yeah, there's some fluctuation of like, I'm pulling down like a new season
⏹️ ▶️ John of a television show or like, who wanted something recently? One of my kids wanted a TV show that I already
⏹️ ▶️ John watched that I had deleted. So I put it back on. And yes, I am backing up downloaded TV shows to it's just,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco worry about it. that's what I do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay. um Month three, August. August just ended.
⏹️ ▶️ John Month three, And keep in mind, the amount of stuff that I have in S3 is exactly the same as I had in B2,
⏹️ ▶️ John fluctuating plus or minus as it like fluctuates. Because again, the disc is basically full. So that's how much stuff is there. Month three,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Wow. Victory.
⏹️ ▶️ John So exciting. And the trade-off is that if I ever need to do a restore, A, it's going to take a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John And B, I think I'll actually be charged more for the restore. But like, considering I have never had to restore
⏹️ ▶️ John and this is my like thing of last resort, that's the trade-off that I wanted to make. Like, how are you saving this money? I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John using the the worst, slowest thing where you can't even get your data immediately. You just have to like put
⏹️ ▶️ John in a request and it's like, send a letter and we'll pull your things out of Glacier Deep Archive and we'll
⏹️ ▶️ John tell you when they're ready. Like, but that's fine because the whole point of this is like, this is not live storage. I don't access it. It is
⏹️ ▶️ John just there just in case. So I wanted the cheapest you can get. $4.74. Big decrease
⏹️ ▶️ John from $36 a month. I'm very happy. And all this is to say that the, uh, the RPG
⏹️ ▶️ John that is AWS can be won sometimes if you're persistent.