Zero is Better Than One
John:
What is that background?
John:
Right?
John:
It's from Last Exile, which is an anime series that neither one of you has heard of, let alone seen.
Casey:
I've seen it.
Casey:
It's really good.
Casey:
You have not.
Casey:
What makes you think I haven't seen it?
Casey:
Tell me about it without Googling.
Casey:
I know nothing about it.
Casey:
I've never seen it.
Marco:
All the great shows.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So, John, why don't you tell us about how Crossy Road is doing financially?
John:
Why would I do that when it says in the notes that we already talked about this?
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's not talk about this because everyone keeps sending us the same link, and I'm tired of getting it.
Marco:
Well, here's what happens.
Marco:
Everybody has a bad memory.
Marco:
We talked about Crossy Road's finances on at least two episodes, maybe three.
Marco:
In the first one, it was before they did a major update.
Marco:
And in the first one, I was looking at the top grossing charts.
Marco:
And I was saying, given their position on the top downloading chart, because they were like, you know, one of the top handful of apps on the top free chart, but they weren't very high on the top grossing chart.
Marco:
So what I said was, at that position on top free, they should be making more money.
Marco:
And so maybe they can monetize better.
Marco:
Because, you know, there's not really much reason to ever pay them when you play the game.
Marco:
And then they did an update a few days after the episode came out.
Marco:
And then they very quickly jumped up the top grossing chart.
Marco:
And the following week, we talked about that.
Marco:
where we said, hey, looks like they fixed it.
Marco:
They're making good money now.
Marco:
Great.
Marco:
Good for them.
Marco:
And so tons of people now have only heard that first part or only remember the first part and are telling us, look, you are so wrong because look, they made all this money.
Marco:
When in fact, we did already talk about this the following week.
John:
when we said now they are making tons of money i think we read an interview with them where they said they were they were now didn't have to work again and made enough money to be set for life and so on and so forth that's why i felt like we covered already but this is actually a new story right with updated updated financials but the story the week after we first discussed this basically the developer said we never have to work again so reiterating that they still don't have to work again
John:
even less or more i don't know whatever they really don't have to work again uh anyway we'll put the link in the show notes for people who want to read the numbers but it's like uh i'm just reading what's in the show notes here 10 million dollars and 50 million downloads crossy road is a good game they deserve to make a lot of money because they made a really good game exactly
Casey:
Now, the main reason I wanted to bring this up again is because of that new interview or piece on it that was on Polygon.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Yes, Polygon.
Casey:
And we've gotten that link a thousand times, which I appreciate.
Casey:
Everyone is trying to keep us informed, which is very nice of them.
Casey:
But we have seen it and it's pretty much the same thing we already knew.
Casey:
So thank you.
Casey:
In other news, we should talk about our anonymous tipster who sort of came through and yet sort of didn't.
Casey:
on the apple event and obviously we'll talk about monday's event uh a little bit later but there were there was a win and there were some not so win well not not so good results for this tipster do do you want to take us through that john and where where he where he or she did well and where they did poorly yeah we kind of fell down on the previous show because at one point in the previous show i was trying to to nail down how we will know
John:
whether this whether these tips panned out because it was kind of vague and there was some bit like what are the criteria for success and then we kind of wandered off onto some other topic and we didn't really pin it down if we had it would have helped because as the keynote was going on and i'm reading people's tweets and stuff
John:
about 50 50 people were saying oh my god that tipster was 100 white right or haha that tipster didn't know anything nothing he said was in here like obviously different people saying that one set of people like the same we're all watching the same presentation and some people are getting the impression and tweeting to the the uh to that effect that they think
John:
this tipster was either right or wrong um and that's because we didn't really nail down success criteria if we had like a bingo card or a checkbox like i think casey you tweeted a little check mark of like things that we would check off as the tipster was right or wrong um yeah uh but as it turns out uh the tipster himself or herself gave some uh
John:
their own analysis of of the the success of their of their things uh now when when we were talking about the hub and people pointed me to the link for that av adapter thing was it hdmi video output using using usb c dvi digital av multi-port adapter blah blah blah blah right there's two of them actually yeah that and that is not what the tipster was talking about the tipster explicitly said that's not what i was talking about so if you think the tipster was right because you saw that adapter the tipster him or herself says
John:
Nope, that's not it.
John:
Right.
John:
The force touch thing was in the keynote with those exact words, the trackpad, the force touch trackpad.
John:
So you got to give that one.
John:
Right.
John:
So it's like at least there was only two predictions, one force touch to this hub thing.
Marco:
And the forced touch thing, I don't want to minimize that.
Marco:
That was pretty significant.
Marco:
From what everybody's saying, yeah, I mean, nobody guessed the new key switches.
Marco:
Mark Gurman didn't say anything about new key switches.
Marco:
He did mention a newer layout, but he also said the whole thing would be narrower.
Marco:
And I think...
Marco:
it's not we have to double check on that but i think it's actually i think it's the same width total or at least it's very close uh just the keys themselves have like less padding between them um so the keys themselves have gotten larger but i think the overall width of the keyboard is about the same um but nobody said anything about the new key switch type the very low travel of the keys uh which will be controversial and um
Marco:
But the forced touch trackpad, I think that's significant.
Marco:
I think this tipster has proven himself to be somebody in the know.
Marco:
Even if the second hub never comes out, I think he or she has proven themselves to be well-informed.
John:
I don't know about that because the force touch was super guessable, right?
John:
I would be impressed by force touch if the phrase force touch had never appeared in a previous Apple keynote.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
But because they use force touch to describe the thing on the watch and because the German rumor said that the trackpad wasn't going to move but would be pressure sensitive, you can put that together without any actual knowledge.
John:
You know what I'm saying?
John:
Yeah, that's a fair point.
John:
Like, I mean, you still have to be lucky.
John:
You still have to, you know, that's still that was correct.
John:
Like those things matched up.
John:
I'm not saying, but it's the type of thing that was guessable with not too much.
John:
You know, if you had to come up with the rumor that was plausible, you could have staked your reputation on that and say, well, I feel pretty good about it.
John:
They'll probably use the same term if they don't.
John:
Oh, well.
John:
And the second thing about the hub that wasn't announced.
John:
the idea that there's going to if if the german rumors were right which they were and this thing's just going to have one port on it the idea that there will be a whole bunch of different adapters that you can plug into that some of which will have multiple usb ports kind of like hub is also kind of a gimme but they didn't but apple didn't announce that um and as we discussed it's very rare that anyone uh who's going to leak knows when or when when products are going to be announced right
John:
uh so it doesn't mean this product doesn't exist but it does mean that this product was not announced at that keynote and that was specifically uh this tipster's prediction uh so i guess i'm gonna give like a i'm gonna give a less than 50 grade because it's like two predictions one came true but the one that came true was guessable and the one that didn't was was the quote unquote most interesting one uh
John:
We'll just put this in the back burner for now and see if that hub ever comes out.
John:
But it just goes to show, even when you get boring rumors, you can't count on them being right.
Marco:
Yeah, I would give a little bit better grade.
Marco:
I would say more like, you know, 67%.
Marco:
Because I don't want to deal with repeating numbers.
Yeah.
Casey:
You know, what was interesting to me about the follow up email we got from this tipster was that this individual seemed utterly convinced that it was a thing because it was something that they claim to have seen at work.
Casey:
And maybe they've worked on it.
Casey:
Maybe they haven't.
Casey:
But, you know, it's something that they're so confident in existing that they said it's going to happen.
Casey:
It's just a matter of when.
Casey:
And those are my words.
Casey:
But that was kind of the message we got.
Casey:
And so I thought that was interesting.
Casey:
And it's kind of.
Casey:
Granted, if you were fabricating all this and wanted to string us along, that's exactly what you would say.
Casey:
However, I thought it was interesting.
Casey:
And the way they talked about things, I'm not going to read this verbatim, but the way they talked about things, it certainly sounded like it sounded to me like it was genuine.
Casey:
But how can you really tell?
Casey:
It's an email.
Casey:
So I'm curious to see what happens over the next six months or so and to see if maybe this hub thing is the real deal or not.
John:
I think even if this tipster is 100% authentic, I think they don't understand how products get released.
John:
Say we 100% believe them and they've seen this.
John:
Tons of people inside Apple have it.
John:
It's all over the place.
John:
Until the day they ship it, at any point, Apple could say, you know what?
John:
No, we're not going to do this one.
John:
right and so how can you say you know this definitely will be shipping you don't know it'll be shipping unless you're the one who makes the decision for it to ship right like even even if everyone inside apple has this hub and has been testing it for months and months does not mean it's ever going to ship right so that i feel like you know if you have this information you shouldn't be you like how can you so confidently assert unless you're trying to snow somebody that like it's definitely going to ship it's going to be a thing until until something ships it's not going to ship i mean even
John:
Apple can put it up on their website and tell us that Snow Leopard is going to have ZFS support, but still it ships.
John:
It hasn't shipped, right?
Casey:
That's true.
John:
I don't know.
John:
How funny is the adapter that did ship?
John:
Oh, I mean, $80 makes me stop laughing real fast.
John:
that makes me laugh more because it's just it's so audacious i mean it's it's it's this is amazing like yeah so i think this is i mean we don't want to spend too much time on tips and tipsters but this was our experiment with tips it was i would call it a bust it was not it was a boring tip that didn't come 100 true true we're left in a situation where we're like well they might know something they might not uh tips are boring
John:
We probably won't do this again.
John:
Oh, well.
Marco:
Oh, I like this so much more than you do.
Marco:
So here's what I would love.
John:
Please email Marco your tips.
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
So I think there's some kind of law in California against soliciting people to break NDAs.
Marco:
So I don't want to do that.
Marco:
however i think it would be really funny if we got if it just became a thing that we got fairly accurate tips about the most boring apple stuff possible about the packaging yeah like what material will the packaging be how many usb ports the next mac mini will have like just like the most boring like i and i'm sure there's far more boring stuff than that like you know what if the airport express gets gigabit like there's
Marco:
all sorts of stupid little things.
Marco:
I would love it if we became the place where people sent those tips to our show.
Marco:
You can send Mark Gurman all the actual stuff anybody cares about.
Marco:
And you can send us the stuff that is so boring that you might not even get fired for sending it to us because it's that boring.
Casey:
Well, to be fair, if anyone is going to really get off on some sort of boring, god-awful, ridiculous tip, it's probably the three of us.
Marco:
Yeah, that's a fair point.
Marco:
So play to your audience, tipsters.
Marco:
Our first sponsor this week is Casper.
Marco:
Casper is an online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price.
Marco:
When I've gone to buy a mattress, and I've done that a few times now because we have a house, so we had to furnish a guest room and all sorts of stuff.
Marco:
So I buy mattresses maybe every 10 years for some reason or five years.
Marco:
and uh every time it's it's like a high pressure salesman just like a car dealership it's hilarious like how high pressure they are and kind of you know wheeling and dealing and you know you always feel like you're overpaying because the prices are like extremely flexible and oh well we can't discount this but we can throw in a free pillow or something and like there's all this like wheeling and dealing you have to do to negotiate the various things and
Marco:
It's just a crappy experience from everybody's point of view.
Marco:
And that's not even to mention the actual trying of the mattresses, which is you lie on this plastic-covered mattress in a store for a few seconds and you're like, okay, it's soft, I guess.
Marco:
And you go on the next one, this is soft too, I guess.
Marco:
Do I want pillow topping?
Marco:
Do I want it to be tall pillow topping?
Marco:
It's so hard to know and to choose.
Marco:
Casper, you order it online.
Marco:
And this sounds, at first, kind of crazy.
Marco:
You know, you can't try it.
Marco:
They have a risk-free trial policy.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
It's that easy.
Marco:
Now, Casper mattresses, they're pretty sure you're going to light them because they provide resilience, long-lasting support of comfort.
Marco:
It's one of a kind because what they did was... Memory foam by itself, pure memory foam is polarizing.
Marco:
A lot of people think it's too hot or not bouncy enough or whatever.
Marco:
And pure other foams and pure springs can also be... There's pluses and minuses.
Marco:
What they've done
Marco:
They have a hybrid approach that combines the best.
Marco:
It combines premium latex foam with memory foam to really give you the best of both worlds.
Marco:
So they call it just the right sink, just the right bounce.
Marco:
So you have a lot of the same benefits of pure memory foam, but without that hotness that you get from it sometimes.
Marco:
And all this stuff, this is all made in America.
Marco:
So I've heard from a rumor mill that John Syracuse has a Casper.
Marco:
Is that true, John?
John:
Yeah, I didn't get one when we had our code, so I had to wait around until we had another code to buy it with, and I did.
John:
And I just have one tidbit to add.
John:
We've all talked about the little box that comes in and how it expands and all that cool stuff.
John:
The box they send it in has a label on top of it that says different sizes, like twin, queen, king, whatever it is, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
and with and like with check boxes and you know uh we got a small one so whatever it was it was twin twin was checked off right my question is if you get a king size one does it come in that same box and they just check off king because that would be even cooler because my it's a twin size bed and it's a small box you think wow i can't imagine twin size betting there and you fit you open up you follow the instructions they give you like a little letter opener tool to open the thing and it expands and it's really cool but all i can think about is how much cooler it would be is if in that same box they sent you a king size one
John:
And how much that would expand and how much that would be compressed.
John:
Anyway, it's exciting.
John:
Unfortunately, you only get to do it once.
John:
And then it's inflated.
John:
And then it just becomes a really nice bed.
John:
And I was impressed.
John:
It's really nice.
John:
I don't typically like memory foam mattresses because I feel like they grip me too much.
John:
This one does not do that.
John:
So if you've tried pure memory foam mattresses and don't like them, this mattress is not like that.
John:
It's a nice kind of hybrid between.
Marco:
Yep, I agree.
Marco:
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Marco:
So normally, you know, a good mattress, usually if you want something high quality, it's going to last like a decade or more and be good the whole time.
Marco:
You're usually paying like $1,500, $2,000 for something like that.
Marco:
Casper mattresses cost between $500 for a twin, all the way up to $950 for a king.
Marco:
Now, come on.
Marco:
I mean, that's ridiculously cheap.
Marco:
$950 for a premium quality king size mattress.
Marco:
And it's delivered to your house.
Marco:
I mean, that's crazy talk.
Marco:
Also, if you go to casper.com slash ATP and use code ATP at checkout, you also get $50 off.
Marco:
So that way, you can have a king for $900.
Marco:
You can have a queen for $800.
Marco:
Full size for $700.
Marco:
I mean, these are incredibly good prices for high-quality mattresses.
Marco:
So check it out.
Marco:
casper.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot once again to Casper.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Free trial for 100 days.
Marco:
Made in America.
Marco:
Just the right sync, just the right bounce.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Casper.
Casey:
So we should talk about the Apple event for Monday.
Casey:
And I don't know how you guys want to go through this.
Casey:
I don't know if you want to do it in chronological order, which would require one of us remembering what the order of the events were.
Casey:
Who cares?
Casey:
New MacBook.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
New MacBook.
Casey:
So what do we think?
Casey:
John, you're the least likely one of us to buy one.
No.
John:
I don't know if I'm the least... Casey's probably the least likely.
John:
Why do you say that?
John:
You've got the oldest Mac and the one most in need of replacement, right?
Casey:
I love that we're arguing about this.
Casey:
Well, I probably do need to replace my personal Mac, and I know that I'm getting a new work Mac because it's been three years now, and that's apparently the cycle we're on.
Casey:
But no, I don't suspect that I'm going to be buying a new MacBook.
Casey:
Sitting here now, today...
Casey:
I use USB often enough that I would want to have at least one, if not a couple of ports.
Casey:
That being said, I only ever really use one USB port at a time.
Casey:
So there's really no reason why I couldn't get one of these absurd $80 adapters or the phantom hub that doesn't exist, that will exist, that may not exist, that our tipster talked about.
Casey:
Which should provide you with two USB ports.
Casey:
Right, exactly.
Casey:
In theory, that would be enough.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I just, I think if nothing else, I'd want something with a little more horsepower.
Casey:
I know a lot of people have been lamenting that apparently the performance characteristics are roughly on par with a 2012 MacBook Air, which, what with it being 2015, that's a little bit on the old side.
Casey:
And as I'm one to buy computers every three to four years, usually, I
Casey:
I would want a computer that's basically more than I would ever need today so that in three or four years, it's exactly what I need.
John:
Yeah, that's why I was saying that I'm not the least likely to get one.
John:
You probably are.
John:
Whereas I have an old MacBook Air and I can replace it with this new one.
John:
And if it only just eliminated the scream of the fan as my kids play Minecraft incessantly on it, it would be an upgrade.
John:
It does.
John:
It has no fan.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
But anyway, the thing about this laptop...
John:
First of all, the German rumor was 100% right.
John:
This is what they mocked up.
John:
I don't think they got anything wrong.
John:
Trackpad doesn't move.
John:
It's got one port on the other side of his headphones.
John:
The keyboard was laid out just like they said it was.
John:
It's retina like 100% on the nose.
John:
And I have to think that it would have been a cooler keynote if we didn't know all that.
John:
don't you think it would have been more exciting it's the same yeah like you know we got spoiled and it's not like star wars where you have a fighting chance i've been trying to avoid star wars episode seven uh spoilers and just by not going to movie sites and like you can pretty much do that but i was gonna say i've had zero spoilers from star wars because i don't care right but i mean i guess like if i had i don't think it would have been possible for me to avoid this you know
John:
it would just it's just tweeted at me too much like and you know i don't mind i wasn't trying to avoid it i went to but it does take away from the event and and the glamour of the event uh but no this is exactly what they said it was going to be we talked about this at length about you know if it does come with one port uh why why would it only have one port what do i get with one port that i don't get with two ports and we speculated a lot about it
John:
As it turns out, Apple felt no reason to try to justify the decision to have one port.
John:
They barely even emphasized the fact that it has one port.
John:
They talked all about the attributes of the port, which we talked about as well.
John:
Yes, the USB 3 and with the Type-C connector that can be reversible, which we all like, and you can put display over it.
John:
We talked about all this stuff before.
John:
That was all there, but they did not even...
John:
They didn't even they weren't defensive at all about the fact that there was one of them.
John:
They didn't even emphasize it, that there was one of them.
John:
Like if you weren't paying attention, you would just assume that might assume there was one on the other side.
John:
they didn't emphasize the fact that they took away magsafe they didn't say anything about uh you know magsafe was great but it's just too big to fit on that like they didn't they didn't give a reason or an explanation or talk about magsafe at all like it was just this is the thing they didn't even say how the thing would be charged obviously through the one port but they didn't they didn't emphasize that they didn't they didn't show it being plugged in they didn't show the power adapter as far as i can recall they certainly didn't they didn't show you plugging that adapter into it like
John:
as far as apple's presentation marketing materials are concerned this is a disembodied notebook that never needs to be connected to anything like and we all know it plugs into charge whatever but all the things that we talked about like if this hadn't if this product had not leaked and we hadn't all like anyone who's interested hadn't talked about it amongst ourselves for a long time i think we would have watched an introvert of you and said wait a second how do you power it and like we would have got you know because they were they did not emphasize
John:
the things that are different about this notebook in terms of how it's powered, how many ports it has or anything like that.
John:
All they did was talk about the benefits of USB type C and with no discussion of the drawbacks, which I thought was interesting because in the jobs era, very frequently, they felt the need to be proactively preemptively defensive about large changes.
John:
Like even when they took away the floppy drive or anything, there was, there'd be some kind of statement about you think you need it, but you don't trust us.
John:
You know, none of that here.
John:
It was just like, this is what it is.
John:
And, you know, it's the new MacBook.
Casey:
Yeah, I have a couple more thoughts when you guys ask, you know, would I buy one of these?
Casey:
The chat room got particularly grumbly because they said, oh, this isn't the computer for me.
Casey:
Well, yes, I know that.
Casey:
But the whole point of this little thought exercise was would I buy one or would it serve my needs?
Casey:
Just yes or no.
Casey:
And I don't think the answer.
Casey:
I think the answer is no.
Casey:
Additionally, you know, people in the chat are saying, well, CPU performance isn't the issue.
Casey:
Hmm.
Casey:
I wouldn't be so sure.
Casey:
Obviously, if you were compiling large projects, then that could be CPU bound, although not necessarily.
Casey:
But either way, especially for work specifically, less so for home, but for work, when you're living in a VM all day,
Casey:
Any extra bit of CPU power is certainly helpful.
Casey:
And furthermore, probably the biggest issue I have with this machine is that eight gigs of RAM I don't think is sufficient for the sorts of things that I do on a regular basis, especially at work, especially running a Windows VM all the time.
Casey:
And there's no way to get more because there's no build to order option.
Casey:
So no matter how you slice it, I don't really think this is for me.
Casey:
Additionally, if you've ever transcoded in Handbrake, you're obviously going to want something that has a little bit more CPU performance than a 2012 MacBook Air.
Casey:
Not that I do that every day, but I do it often enough that I'm going to want to have more CPU performance.
Casey:
Do I need it?
Casey:
Maybe not, but I want to.
Marco:
right i mean i think you know you can look at this machine and very obviously you can you can know you know if you're listening to this show the chances are this is not going to be your main machine like anyone listening to this show if you're if you're enough into computers if you you know there's a good chance a lot a lot of our listeners are developers um anyone listening to this show this is probably not your main machine period like that's it
Marco:
This machine is for a lot of the same reasons people bought 11-inch MacBook Air so far.
Marco:
And the 11-inch MacBook Air was actually in some ways more capable because it had full Thunderbolt expansion and everything and more ports.
Marco:
But for the most part, it had similar issues and similar limitations.
Marco:
People buy the 11-inch Air mostly because either they're carrying it a lot every day, like on their shoulder or on their back, and they really need the smallest weight possible, and or they fly a lot, especially if they're flying coach, where the tray tables are so small, and if the person ahead of you leans back an inch, which everybody sitting in front of me always does, the second the wheels are off the ground, boom, the seat's in your face.
Marco:
And if that's the case, and if you want to work on a plane...
Marco:
pretty much the only laptop you can really get is the 11.
Marco:
The 13s even have trouble.
Marco:
The 15s, I know because I usually have a 15, there's pretty much no hope of using a 15 on a coach tray table.
Marco:
So if you're flying a lot or if the carry weight is extremely important to you, then this is a really good machine as a travel machine or as a portable machine.
Marco:
If you're going to be doing coding work on it, though...
Marco:
then it's really probably not for you because, you know, coding, you have a number of issues.
Marco:
For me, the biggest issue is actually not the CPU speed.
Marco:
It's the screen space.
Marco:
It has a scaling mode that lets it go up to 1440 wide simulated, which is the native res of the 15.
Marco:
But all the 15 goes higher and I use it higher.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It has a scale that goes up to that.
Marco:
I don't know how useful that'll be.
Marco:
I mean, the 15 you can scale up to 1920 wide, but it's too tiny for me to use comfortably.
Marco:
And I have 20-20 vision so far.
Marco:
I mean, not for long probably, but right now I still have good vision and I can't use it at that size.
John:
People asked about that on Twitter.
John:
Someone asked, do you think you could do development on this?
John:
And what I said is, yeah, probably.
John:
The question wasn't whether Marco could do development on it.
John:
Can one do development on this?
John:
And
John:
I think that the CPU, the RAM, the screen space, everything about it is sufficient to develop an iOS or a Mac app.
John:
If you don't know any better and if you don't know how much faster it is on a faster Mac, it's fine.
John:
Like it will get the job done.
John:
You'll wait longer for compiles.
John:
Your windows will be more compressed.
John:
You won't be able to do have the kind of layouts that you may be accustomed to.
John:
but you will be able to do it.
John:
This is as opposed to like, is this a good machine for doing web development where you have to have five Windows VMs running all the time?
John:
No, it is not, right?
John:
Because that's a capability thing.
John:
It's just a no-go.
John:
And by the way, someone...
John:
john l 2112 uh rush fan i guess in the in the chat says ssd swap makes ram limits less important i'm sure that there are people at apple that think that but they are not thinking clearly or are not engineers because yes like technically it makes it less important than it was but it is still super duper important like
John:
The difference in speed between disk and SSD is huge.
John:
The difference in speed between RAM and SSD also still remains huge.
John:
So having only eight gigs of RAM, don't assume, well, it's eight gigs of RAM, but it's all SSD and the SSDs are really fast, so it's not so bad.
John:
You cannot run five Windows 7 VMs for different versions of IE all at the same time in this and not suffer.
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
It's not just it's just not going to happen for you.
John:
Right.
John:
So I think you can do iOS development.
John:
You can't do anything that really, really, really needs more than eight gigs.
John:
I just picked VMs because that's something for my work life.
John:
I'm constantly running tons of VMs.
John:
And no matter how small you make them, like they they can tend to be very big.
John:
um and and disk space similar like you try to keep the vm small but as they proliferate they start to fill up your disk and you realize you're spending half of your disk on stupid windows vms uh and if you put them on external disks where are you going to plug the external disk in now you got a dongle blah blah blah um so it's not a great machine for development but you can get it done and i really think that there are a lot of people who
John:
Like I bet a lot of the most amazing apps that we all use were developed, especially if it's like a developer's first app, were developed on Macs that we would all consider like insufficient to do development.
John:
Oh, I need a really fancy, fast computer.
John:
It's like, yeah, you really want a really fancy, fast computer.
John:
But sometimes you just got to make do with what you have and you can actually get it done.
John:
You will just wait longer for compiles and go make yourself coffee, you know?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And also, I mean, you know, keep in mind that things do move forward.
Marco:
Like Xcode now running on hardware from seven years ago is not going to be as good as Xcode seven years ago was running on that hardware.
Marco:
You know, like Xcode has gotten bigger and the compiler has gotten bigger if you use any Swift stuff.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so you have all these windows that have to be open.
Marco:
God help you if you want a documentation window also.
Marco:
I mean, you have the organizer and you're submitting things to iTunes Connect.
Marco:
I mean, there's a lot of screen space needs when you're doing modern iOS development.
Marco:
And they keep increasing as the hardware gets bigger and the simulators get bigger and you have more things you need to do.
Marco:
uh so again you're right john if you want to do development and you know if whenever you say oh well this kind of computer is not suitable for development you'll instantly get tons of replies people saying i have one of those and i develop on it just fine and yes you can do it but it's all like you can do it but it's a lot nicer if you have you know more screen space some more ram and a faster cpu and it's best not to know how much faster things are on
John:
a faster computer because once you know and then you go back to the other one you're like oh i can't do this whereas if you just don't know like this is the first i know a lot of people like back in the day like they got their very first mac and whatever they were doing was that they were just super happy because it's like wow i really like it it's shiny it's neat it can do something i can do something with it i couldn't do before and they have no other mac to compare it to speed wise right like they're doing an all new thing like how do they compare how long it takes to make a dvd and i dvd if they've never made a dvd before and
John:
little do they know that that same task of like you know making the dvd at the end could be like 5x faster on a big fancy mac it's like oh you can't use that to make dvds they don't know they can't let you know that as far as they're concerned this is just how long it takes so if you've never built an ios app and you you know click build and run and it takes a certain amount of time you're just like i guess that's the amount of time it takes and honestly it probably takes way longer than you would think it would ever take on any computer because like if you've never done if you've never compiled anything before like wow i guess compiling takes a long time but whatever time your first mac takes you're like all right
John:
And, you know, this is like a 2012 MacBook Air, which is not particularly fast to begin with.
John:
But just, you know, people just deal with it.
John:
Right.
Marco:
I mean, like I've mentioned before, I had one of the very first generation base model MacBook Airs in 2008.
Marco:
And that was, you know, the 1.6 gigahertz really, really slow processor that would overheat for a lot of people.
Marco:
I had that.
Marco:
I developed Instapaper partly on that.
Marco:
When I was on the train going to and from Tumblr, I would be working on Instapaper in Xcode on that MacBook Air, the first gen that everybody hated.
Marco:
I did it.
Marco:
It sucked.
Marco:
But I did it.
Marco:
And I knew it sucked because I was going home to the computer that John is still using today.
Marco:
I was going home to that awesome Mac Pro.
Marco:
So I knew.
Marco:
But mainly the issue that I've always had with doing development work on laptops, it's always screen space first.
Marco:
Performance is inconvenient when it's really bad like the MacBook Air.
Marco:
For the most part, screen space is always my limiting factor.
Marco:
And so, from that point of view... Look, this machine... If you're worried about screen space, if you're worried about performance, and if you're worried about the number of ports, this is not the machine for you.
Marco:
Period.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
You can get it if you really want it because it's really sexy and light.
Marco:
You can get it, but it's not the best choice for you.
Marco:
I would say... A lot of people have not really given this a lot of credit, but...
Marco:
the the update to the 13 inch retina macbook pro at the same time which is already available people have already disassembled it the update to that i think is uh is really interesting as well because you know it is not like a noteworthy computer it is not like they don't they don't replace that and everyone goes oh it's so it's so great i want to buy one of those immediately like no one on cnn is talking about the 13 inch retina macbook pro
John:
I was excited about it.
John:
I've always thought that's been a great machine, like just a great compromise between, you know, it's gotten so thin over the years.
John:
Once the 13 started to get is like as thin as almost as thin as an air.
John:
And then the fact that they gave it the new trackpad and the screen has always been good.
John:
I've always said that that's a great machine.
John:
But you're right.
John:
It's not it doesn't make headlines.
Marco:
right but it is it is like the middle of the line like to me there's three macbooks worth getting really like these days i used to say the 13 inch retina retina i mean the 13 inch air was like the default one to get these days i'm not so sure these i think i think i would say 13 inch retina um it would be like the default one like if you don't have any specific needs you just kind of general purpose all all things okay get 13 inch retina i would say the the 13 inch retina or this one depending on who's buying it
Marco:
Well, maybe.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
But so this one, as I said, I think this one directly replaces the 11-inch MacBook Air.
Marco:
And I think the 13-inch Retina kind of already replaced the 13-inch MacBook Air.
Marco:
And then the 15-inch Retina.
Marco:
I think those are the three laptops that are worth getting.
Marco:
This new one for those super portable, 13-inch Retina for normal, 15-inch Retina for Pro.
Marco:
That's like if you need the Pro things, which is the more screen space, the more horsepower, some different ports.
Marco:
But for the most part, you're talking about screen space and horsepower.
Marco:
I did say last time I was thinking about buying one of these things.
Marco:
Now I'm not.
Marco:
So what changed you?
Marco:
I started thinking about...
Marco:
when I actually use my laptop.
Marco:
And what I had said last time was, I find that I'm not frequently getting coding work done every year or whenever I go on trips.
Marco:
I'm not getting coding work done as much as I want to.
Marco:
And therefore, I can go with a smaller screen space.
Marco:
I started thinking, the times I do go on trips where I do need to get significant work done, one of the biggest ones is WWDC every year, where I often need to do coding work for labs and stuff, or installing new betas and testing stuff.
Marco:
And in the last few years, I've edited this show.
Marco:
And so I have podcast editing, which I love having tons of screen space for, because Logic is a massive screen space hog.
Marco:
So I have podcast editing, and I have Xcode on this one trip I take every year.
Marco:
And I don't take that many trips.
Marco:
And this is one where...
Marco:
If I had the small screen, I could do those things on it, but I would really regret not having the 15 during those times.
Marco:
I'm going to wait until Broadwell comes to the 15-inch and probably just buy one of those because it would kill me if I spent those trips in the next few years using this tiny little screen and just kicking myself saying, man, I wish I would have just gotten the 15 because when I'm doing these few important things, I really, really need it.
Casey:
What I would like to know is who is this computer for?
Casey:
What is the target audience for this computer?
Casey:
And I'm thinking about it and I'm thinking, well, why would I buy this?
Casey:
Who would I buy it for and why would I buy it?
Casey:
The first person that comes to mind, of course, is Erin.
Casey:
And I got her a MacBook Air for her birthday last year.
Casey:
So then I thought to myself, okay, well, what would stop her from using this?
Casey:
Would the CPU performance?
Casey:
Absolutely not.
Casey:
Would the disk space?
Casey:
Absolutely not.
Casey:
She stores nothing on her computer.
Casey:
But what she does have hanging off of her MacBook Air is a couple of Fitbit adapters, one to charge with and one that is like the general communication little nubbin thing.
Casey:
That's a technical term.
Casey:
And obviously...
Casey:
She could charge the Fitbit by way of, say, an iPhone charger or something like that.
Casey:
But if she wanted the Fitbit to communicate with her computer and not with her phone, which I believe is an option as well.
Casey:
I don't have a Fitbit, so I'm talking a little bit out of my comfort zone.
Casey:
she would still need at least one traditional USB port.
Casey:
And that would require one of these ridiculous $80, $80 dongles.
Casey:
And that's kind of unfortunate, but if it wasn't for her Fitbit, say hypothetically, if she had an Apple watch, she would pretty much never plug in any USB device for any reason whatsoever.
Um,
Casey:
Now, the other obvious thought I had was, well, what about students?
Casey:
And people in the chat are saying that as well.
Casey:
Well, that makes sense, too.
Casey:
And granted, I haven't been a student in over a decade.
Casey:
But last time I was anywhere near students, USB drives, thumb drives, whatever you would like to call them, were a big thing.
Casey:
And people were using them a lot.
Casey:
Now, that doesn't mean that'll continue tomorrow.
Casey:
It doesn't mean that it'll be that way forever.
Casey:
But today...
Casey:
Not being able to use a thumb drive without a freaking $80 adapter, that's kind of crummy.
Casey:
So, you know, who is this for?
Casey:
Is it for these quote unquote business people at my job?
Casey:
You know, the project managers and the other business consultants, maybe.
Casey:
But again, I mean, thumb drives are a thing and I don't see that going away soon.
Casey:
So who is this machine really for?
Marco:
Well, again, I think it's people who fly a lot in Coach or who fly a lot anywhere, but it's mostly valuable compared to the other laptops in Coach.
Marco:
So people who fly a lot in Coach and also if you're carrying it around.
Marco:
So if you're the kind of person who walks around your office all day going in and out of meetings, in and out of conference rooms, and you're constantly carrying a laptop with you during that time to take notes on or check email or whatever people do in meetings, I really have no idea...
Marco:
That is what this is for.
Marco:
This is not for sitting on a desk being plugged in all day.
Marco:
I mean, you can even tell.
Marco:
I think one of the reasons why the lack of MagSafe is less of a problem or that Apple maybe thought it was worth or it was okay to get rid of it is because this really obviously isn't made to be used at a desk all day.
Marco:
It doesn't have the connectivity or the horsepower or the screen space really to do that very well.
Marco:
I think this is made to be used out and about while traveling, walking around, whatever the case may be.
Marco:
And so this, to me, it's like... The reason why it charges through a USB port and not something that can be torn off is because iPads and iPhones charge that way.
Marco:
And this is meant to be used the same way.
Marco:
This is meant to be like you charge it up at night.
Marco:
You plug it in when you're done at the end of the day.
Marco:
And when you're using it, you're moving around somewhere.
Marco:
You're picking it up off a table.
Marco:
You're in an airplane, whatever.
Marco:
It's not plugged in, just like an iPad.
Marco:
Whether that's going to pan out to be useful that way, whether the battery life is going to be that good.
Marco:
When a CPU is very underpowered for the task you're asking it to do, it's going to be hitting 100% a lot.
Marco:
And it's going to stay 100% for longer as it's going through those tasks.
Marco:
And so the battery life might end up being really bad if you're hitting it very hard at all.
Marco:
we'll see if that's the case with this modern modern chips are pretty good about that kind of stuff so it might be less of an issue but for the most part i think that's that's probably what apple was at least thinking and it's probably what most usage will bear out if you're using this just like for notes and web and email and stuff you're not going to really be hitting anything that hard especially if you don't install flash you know i think it's meant to be used like an ipad which is away from its cable all day plugged in at night and you know time will tell whether that ends up being realistic
Casey:
Yeah, you know, I think you're probably right.
Casey:
And more real-time follow-up.
Casey:
I'm getting from Robert Thomas on Twitter.
Casey:
I've been a university student for six years.
Casey:
I think the last time he used to thumb drive was four years ago.
Casey:
So guess what?
Casey:
I'm old.
Casey:
And who was it in the chat?
Casey:
Somebody in the chat.
Casey:
I've lost your name.
Casey:
I apologize.
Casey:
Dave Wood pointed out that there is a straight USB, traditional USB adapter for only $20.
Marco:
Yeah, but then you can't power it, though.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
But as you just said, you know, it does theoretically have all-day power.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So maybe maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here.
Casey:
And, you know, it's certainly possible.
John:
But I don't know.
John:
It's just a flash drive.
John:
Thumb drives are going to come with type C connectors soon enough because type C will rapidly replace the old USB, I think, on basically everything.
Casey:
So, yeah, in the same way, HDMI is replacing VGA.
John:
uh i would say mini display board i mean like on all the macs you know what i mean and anyway but you can't have on this yeah so i want to talk about the limitations of this device and by talking about the limitations i think we'll get to we'll get to the uh the heart of who this machine is for uh
John:
And I'm going to try to talk about the limitations.
John:
And it's usually, you know, you shouldn't speak in a defensive way about things.
John:
I'm going to try to preempt the tweets that I know are already being typed about this thing based on past comments, because I keep getting people trying to explain to me why this thing has one port or whatever.
John:
I already said that in the keynote, Apple did not feel the need to talk about why this thing only has one port at all.
John:
No justification for it.
Yeah.
John:
The key sort of preemptive defensive point I want to get to is that...
John:
I'm okay with this thing only having USB type C. I expect the things to only have USB type, certainly like the Air is or anything Air is sized, right?
John:
I'm okay with everything about the machine, getting rid of MagSafe, getting rid of all the other ports, not having dedicated video out, like, because this is the super thin, skinny machine.
John:
The promise of USB-C is you don't have to have 50 different ports.
John:
Like, it is better to just have one type of port than to have a million different ports.
John:
I'm okay with everything about this,
John:
except i want the only point was i wanted an explanation of what do i get with one that i don't get with two a lot of people are saying there's not room for two in here well it's not as if the case is imposed on them by another manufacturer they choose the size of the case they can make any dimension of this one or two or three millimeters wider to make room for another one even within the existing case it's possible that they could have wedged another one in the other side and move the headphone port or whatever but even if they couldn't
John:
They make the case.
John:
They can decide, you know, whether there should be two.
John:
It also doesn't mean that there isn't a reason.
John:
There isn't some advantage you get with one.
John:
People have suggested, still suggested power things that...
John:
Maybe powering two ports would cause a problem.
John:
Maybe the circuitry to handle two ports, like you'd want to be able to charge from both ports, right?
John:
Maybe the circuitry to be able to handle that makes things too big.
John:
If you look at the inside, you look at how much they shrunk down the motherboard, there's not a lot of room in there, right?
John:
Again, Apple chooses the size of these things.
John:
So it's not, you know, if Apple decided they wanted to have two USB type C ports, they could have.
John:
uh the fact that this serves as power as well which means that you can't use this thing to sort of charge your devices which many people who have laptops do like they sit down at their desk they plug the thing and they charge devices now you need to have a dongle for it or whatever um so my only issue with the ports on this is that no one has apple has not given an official explanation for why there is only one and not two
John:
right and i don't see any advantage to having only one port not two i see tons of advantages for not having the other ports like i understand that direction i understand that eventually this thing will probably have no ports except for some kind of magnetic snap-on inductive charging thing when we get to that point right i understand this is forward looking i understand all this stuff about it that people are going to tell me you don't understand it's just like the original macbook yes yes totally agree 100 the question is
John:
why couldn't they fit another one of these because they're so small they're so tiny you could surely find someplace for another one unless there's some reason that you not have one uh so right now i'm going with that it's a philosophical statement and that merely having one port will look like a backwards thing in the future if we just think of it as like a power type thing in fact the thing that's going to look the oldest and this is a stupid headphone port which we don't seem to be able to get rid of because that is the most like old school archaic you know round
John:
like soon it will be the biggest port it's already the widest port i think it's not i mean like the highest port you know what i mean like i think it's higher than usb type c but it's not as wide or whatever anyway that that my complaint about it only having one of these still stands mostly because i don't see what you would have lost by putting another single usb type c port on somewhere else on this machine on the other side or something
John:
So that's one limitation.
John:
We can put that one aside.
John:
Second limitation, key travel.
John:
Marco already talked about it.
John:
They showed it in the video.
John:
They tried to spin it as a positive.
John:
Look at this cool switch mechanism.
John:
The keys don't bounce.
John:
I like that video.
John:
I thought that was good marketing, like the slow-mo with the fingers and the wobbling and everything, like even if it doesn't matter, like it's just the old one looks old and busted and this one looks new and shiny.
John:
but that's not a lot of travel apple did not feel the need to emphasize the fact that there's less travel here and it might take getting some use and i also feel like that's something that in the past the past apple might have felt some need to say there's less travel and it might feel weird at first but you get used to it and actually it's you'll type faster on this uh and i've heard people say who have typed on this on the you know at the event that
John:
It does feel weird, but they're surprised at how fast they go.
John:
I think Jason Snell, or maybe it was Jason or someone else, said that it was kind of like a hybrid between a physical keyboard and typing on the iPad keyboard where nothing actually moves.
John:
I don't know if this is a good limitation, or is it actually a positive or a negative?
John:
But at the very least, it's something where people are probably going to want to go to an Apple store and type on one and see how you feel about it.
Marco:
Oh, definitely.
Marco:
I would not pre-order one of these things without typing on it.
John:
yeah i agree the spacing looks like marco said the rumor that the spacing is tighter i can't tell but i i bet if you're a super good touch typist you'll go into the apple store and you'll be able to kind of feel if like the keys feel a little bit off for you or whatever but i have some confidence that this would this will be okay but i'm i don't know i'm definitely going to go into the apple store and try it uh
John:
We talked about the the arrow keys on the past, you know, based on the rumors, the market rumors, which are exactly right.
John:
The left and the right arrow keys are full size keys and only the up and down are half sized.
John:
And I once again complained about why can't I get full size up, down and left or right arrow keys?
John:
The answer is kind of battery related, which is another limitation I'll get to in a second.
John:
But also, as I said, you know, it's Johnny Ive does not want an asymmetrical cutout for the keyboard.
John:
Like he's big on symmetry.
John:
I like the full size left and right arrow keys.
John:
That's better than nothing.
John:
But I was excited by the fact if you look at this keyboard, do either one of you have like a screenshot of this keyboard up right now?
John:
Go to Apple site and take a look at it.
John:
I was excited by the fact.
John:
It may be excited in an evil way that somehow somebody forced Johnny Ive to put something asymmetrical on this keyboard.
John:
Do you see what it is?
John:
Oh, I see what you mean.
John:
The space bar is not centered.
John:
Yes, the space bar is not centered on the trackpad.
John:
Now, of course, keyboards have tons of things that are asymmetrical for historical reasons.
John:
And, you know, like the tab key is not the same width as the slide.
John:
The keyboards are not entirely symmetrical, but...
John:
Putting the off-center space bar right next to the exactly centered trackpad really emphasizes the fact that one of these things is asymmetrical.
John:
Now, the outline is still a perfect rectangle.
John:
And again, for battery reasons, more than anything else on this particular machine, you can't do that.
John:
But I still long for on the 15-inch...
John:
full-size arrow keys that are bumped i know it would be uglier i understand that it would break up the symmetry of the design but like the fact that like you know form over function that it's more important for it to be aesthetically pleasing than it is for me to have full size up and down arrow keys means that i will never want to do programming
John:
on on a laptop keyboard not that i really want to anyway but no i the half size arrow keys drive me nuts i mean maybe people don't use the arrow keys as much as programmers do i've never i've i mean you know i will nitpick anything i've never had a problem with that i i can't stand it i can't i i miss hit them i i hit them it's just i don't like it at all and you know if you use vi keys who needs the arrow keys if you use emacs key bindings who use the arrow keys but i use the arrows with in combination with modifiers
John:
to move around documents um and so i don't like the half-size hour it's not a deal breaker it's not anything new with this thing and in fact this machine has more excuse than any other machine to not move those things down because of the incredible shallowness of the of the enclosure if you move them down you would be cutting into batteries precious battery space and that that brings me to the final uh well not the final we'll talk about the trackpad i guess too but the final limitation i really want to like emphasize here
John:
the battery where they phil shows up there telling us about the scallop to the terraced battery thing we're like look if we tried to fit a regular battery it would stop here but we made it layered batteries and we can fill up more of the space and as i tweeted at the time i saw that you know what else would give you more room for battery phil
John:
stop tapering the damn thing if you just make it perfectly it's barely tapered as it is you're just torturing yourself the original one the wedge shape the wedge shape was part of the aesthetic right the original one is like it's you know oh it's a wedge or whatever it is barely a wedge all you're doing is making your own life worse if you made this thing the same thickness from front to back
John:
Think of how much more battery.
John:
It's not like an insignificant amount of battery.
John:
The batteries in this are so slim and so skinny and so tiny, like, that not tapering it could give you, like, 30%, 40% more battery.
John:
And here's the thing about this chipset, which everybody's using.
John:
There was, like, you know, this PC laptop's out with this, uh, what is it?
John:
The, uh...
John:
core m whatever it is yeah you see that dell the the 13 inch like borderless dell that one actually looks really nice like i wish they would have done that here and some of them have some of them have like 18 hours of battery life and again you know apple taking credit we've done this without a fan of like well intel kind of did that for you like you cannot you know if you did not have this chip you cannot make it fanless yes it is a feat to make it fanless but there are lots of pc makers using the same chipset getting insane battery lives like literally 18 hour battery lives right and
John:
And people were hoping, let's see what Apple can get out of this.
John:
Apple instead went for thinness.
John:
The MacBook Airs, they get like 13 to 15 hours of battery life out of them easy.
John:
This one gets less.
John:
It gets nine hours of battery life with a super low powered chipset.
John:
Why?
John:
Because it's so damn thin, they don't have enough room to put any battery in.
John:
They're going backwards.
John:
They're going to the sort of the iPad philosophy of like, what is an acceptable level of battery?
John:
We think nine hours is acceptable, right?
John:
therefore make it as thin as you can and keep nine hours right and they did which is fine it's a particular trade-off but for the taper that's what kills me like the taper is no longer i think a strong aesthetic for this i don't see what advantage the taper gives for carrying it because i find it more i find it less comfortable to hold by like that skinny edge you always have to turn it with the fat edge down like it doesn't it also by the way it makes it harder to open the lid uh like you need like two hands i mean i haven't tried one of these yet but usually like with the skinny skinny little airs
John:
you need two hands to open the lid because like it's like so fiddly and thin on the end and so light it like pulls both sides up you know i mean that may be true about the about even if you made it the same thickness all the way through but you know like in in the first computer to use this super duper low power five watt chipset to have it not be
John:
at least comparable to the old airs is disappointing it is it is a it is a reasonable trade-off and i agree with making things thinner i agree with everything they're doing it's just that once it gets down to this thickness i feel like the wedge shape is no longer giving you the aesthetic boost needed to justify the battery that it is shaving away from you
Marco:
yeah and and the chat room is pointing out that you know obviously batteries add weight and so if they didn't taper it and filled the extra space with batteries it would make a heavier laptop but i'm thinking at this size 2.1 pounds 2.2 yeah i mean most of the way you're talking about like the enclosure and stuff and the screen like i don't think yeah i don't think the diff the difference in battery there would be a significant weight increase it could be less not less weight but it could be comparable weight because if you look at this machine like what
John:
i kept seeing this a lot of stories like wow look how much battery is because you know they made the motherboard motherboard super small so it's like all trackpad and battery right this machine i'm i'm going to guess this machine volume wise has more aluminum than battery you know what i mean because they can't make they can't make the walls of the they can't make the aluminum too thin or you're going to have bend gate with the with the new macbook right especially as it tapers if you look at like the cross section they showed if that is in any way accurate and
John:
there i think there is more volume of aluminum in this device even just in the bottom part more volume of aluminum than volume of battery maybe i don't know that that may be pushing it but you the sidewalls can't be that thin they have to be certain thickness for structural integrity there is very little room left in these things for battery right and that taper could be cutting your battery room in half by the time you get to that tapered edge of the thing
John:
So I think it's okay for there to be a machine with these compromises.
John:
I would just also like to see a... I mean, that's why I talk about the 13-inch.
John:
The 13-inch is basically the non-tapered error, but like twice or three times as thick.
Marco:
And that's why I think it's important because what we're saying basically, like Apple already makes a computer that's not tapered, but still really small and has a full travel depth keyboard.
Marco:
It's the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.
John:
Right.
John:
But it's not like... I feel like...
John:
If you made a non-tapered version of the new MacBook, it would still feel like a different class of machine from the 13th because it would have the weak CPU.
John:
It would have, like, that's more limitations, right?
John:
So what is the name of that chipset?
John:
I keep getting it wrong.
John:
Is it the Core M?
John:
I believe so.
John:
Whatever it is, the 5-watt integrated really small low-power chipset that turbos up to 2.9 gigahertz but starts out at 1.1.
John:
Like...
John:
yeah it's five watts that's what you're getting that's how you can have a fanless thing right that is a limitation of this machine uh and you get dividends that limitation fanlessness i am all aboard for that like i love it i love the fact that i even love the fact that they tried to hide the antenna internally the performance that tenant is great no big black you know plastic thing the fact that it's all metal the fact that it's all sealed up i almost wish they could make it waterproof at this point right
John:
i love all that about this machine and i feel like if you made this exact machine but with no taper it would still feel like an entirely different class of machine than the 13 inch even though the 13 inch is only like you know six millimeters thicker or something like that because the 13 inch like you said full key travel real chip set you know what i mean fans right ports right ports like it would still feel like a different class of machine uh and so you know so let's let's get to who this machine is for um
John:
i'm you know i'm always trying to get my parents to buy better computers because i hate supporting them on their ancient like white ibooks or whatever the hell they're using i don't even anyway i get tired thinking about it i think this would be a great machine for my parents um because they don't do anything that's so demanding that this machine couldn't do well for them and it is they don't need like 18 hour battery life nine hours is plenty for them
John:
it has fewer things that can go wrong it has fewer moving parts it has no fans so i don't have to worry about them suffocating it with like puffy pillows when they have it on their their lap on on the couch or something and it's so small that they could move around like it's a manila envelope i think this would be a good machine for them if they can tolerate the keyboard and if they're not freaked out by the the haptic force touch tap thing
Marco:
And by the way, all the people who were at the event who tried the keyboard enforcement, the keyboard, everybody was a little polarized on.
Marco:
But the trackpad, everyone seemed to love.
Marco:
I mean, I didn't hear a single bad thing about the trackpad.
John:
I'm fully willing to believe that it's awesome.
John:
In fact, I'm hoping that, again, there's another reason I'm going to recognize my parents.
John:
My mom likes tap to click.
John:
You know, I can't stand tap to click, but she uses tap to click.
John:
Right.
John:
And so this is going to be awesome because it's basically like adjustable tap to click.
John:
Right.
John:
Where it's she's not going to accidentally hit it.
John:
And you can adjust how much force I think it requires to like to do the thing.
John:
I think this trackpad is going to be great.
John:
And, you know, that's why I'm excited to see it on the 13 inch.
John:
I think the non moving trackpad could be a real win, because honestly, I don't.
John:
I've never liked, I don't like trackpads, period.
John:
I didn't like the ones with the button on it when they got rid of the button.
John:
I didn't really like the whole idea that the whole thing slanted, including the part that I was tracing my finger over.
John:
So like you said, all the reviews of this have been great and I'm willing, totally willing to believe that they've nailed it on this trackpad and that, you know, this will, in the same way that like trackpads replace trackballs and they were kind of weird in the beginning, they settled down.
John:
Like once Apple goes to this kind of trackpad everywhere and once they inevitably add force touch to all the iOS devices, it'll be like, how did we ever live without this?
Casey:
Ben Thompson's in the chat saying that he has tried the keyboard and it does take some getting used to, but you absolutely will.
Casey:
And he also said that the trackpad is, and now I'm quoting, mind-blowing.
Casey:
So just like you said, John, everyone seems to love it.
Casey:
The other question I had, which I only want to put in a very quick thought about, is if the headphone jack is really that big and really causing that much extra thickness,
Casey:
I mean, we have Bluetooth headphones.
Casey:
That's a thing.
Casey:
But yet we don't seem to have embraced it yet.
Casey:
Do you guys see a future when A, they take away the headphone jack and say, if you really want to listen to your computer, get Bluetooth headphones, and B, that Marco is finally thus compelled to embrace Bluetooth headphones?
Casey:
Hmm.
Marco:
Well, this is a big topic.
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Casey:
Okay, so I'd asked you right before the sponsor break.
Casey:
whether or not you think that the headphone port will eventually go away on these MacBooks or perhaps even iOS devices.
Casey:
And if they do, does that mean you'll finally be compelled to embrace Bluetooth headphones?
Casey:
So I should start this by saying I have embraced Bluetooth headphones.
Marco:
for travel slash mobile purposes but not for your desk correct um and and i think many people would find a similar trade-off because they have batteries and they need to be charged and so if you're sitting at a desk all day long and you're not moving around you're plugging into a computer on the desk uh you're you know just go wired it's easier and they're they're lighter they're more comfortable because they are lighter um you know there's no big batteries or anything so
Marco:
And you don't have to charge them because, you know, Bluetooth headphones, battery lives in use range from a few hours to a lot of hours.
Marco:
But you're not talking months.
Marco:
You know, you're talking if you actually use Bluetooth headphones full time, listening to music most of the day, every day.
Marco:
Yes, I do.
Marco:
How often do you need to recharge them?
Casey:
Every other day, two days, maybe.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
So you're talking a substantial annoyance that if you can get similar benefits from wired, might as well, right?
Marco:
So Bluetooth headphones, though, where I love them is like when I'm walking.
Marco:
So if I'm commuting or if I'm walking the dog, well, commuting like on a train, which I hardly ever do.
Marco:
But if I'm doing that, I'll bring them.
Marco:
If I'm walking the dog, I bring them on dog walks.
Marco:
They're great.
Marco:
we are moving in a direction where they're going to become more common.
Marco:
And most of that's because of the Apple Watch, in my opinion.
Marco:
MacBook's possibly losing headphone ports in the future.
Marco:
That's a distant secondary concern, I think.
Marco:
I think the issue that we have, and what will hold Apple back here...
Marco:
is that Bluetooth headphones by nature are complicated devices.
Marco:
They have some kind of pairing interface.
Marco:
They have RF.
Marco:
They have batteries.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
And they have batteries.
Marco:
And so if you look at the kind of headphones Apple makes and the kind of headphones most people use with their Apple devices, they're those little tiny white earbuds.
Marco:
and you can't make bluetooth headphones that small they do have bluetooth earbuds they do exist but none of them are as small and sleek as the apple earbuds because they can't be because they need somewhere to put a battery and if the battery is that incredibly tiny it will last like an hour and said that i don't think apple would would deal with that very well you also need to you know have some kind of port on them to charge them i mean maybe inductive blah blah blah someday maybe probably not
John:
Here's how they'll do it when they actually do it.
John:
Cause I think it will come eventually.
John:
There'll be tiny little earbuds.
John:
They'll have tiny little batteries in them.
John:
There'll be no ports on them at all.
John:
They'll last about an hour or something close to that.
John:
And you'll stick them magnetically to some little recesses inside your tiny little Mac book when you're not using them.
I,
John:
i even if that was possible i would question all that i would say they would not do that because that sounds really clunky and remember when they stuck the remote to the side of the iMac with magnets you remember that oh yeah that's true that was a long time ago i'm saying like you know that's that would be the apple way to do it is that there's no you don't plug these little dirty things in you don't lose them because
John:
Because they're always stuck to your laptop, right?
John:
Because there is something very inelegant about even just the white earbuds and the short cord and plugging it in.
John:
It sticks out the side of your thing and you accidentally bend it.
John:
Bluetooth earbuds are more elegant, but like Marco said, the battery problem, batteries don't get better that fast.
John:
And so you can't fit a big battery in there.
John:
You can only fit a small one and then you're stuffed with the recharging problem and you don't want to plug anything into recharge them because that's clunky.
John:
So you could do inductive charge.
John:
Those tiny batteries would inductively charge really fast off of your MacBook.
John:
You just got to find someplace to stick them on or in there.
John:
Right.
John:
But that's not in the near future.
John:
I'm just thinking like future world stuff.
John:
Yeah, I mean, this is the problem.
Marco:
I think Apple has run through the same calculus.
Marco:
If they could reasonably get rid of the headphone port, they would have already.
Marco:
And maybe in the distant future, they will.
Marco:
But I don't think that time is imminent.
Marco:
Everyone thought, every single iPhone release that comes out, everyone predicts, this is the one where they're going to get rid of the headphone port.
Marco:
And they haven't yet.
John:
And you have to ask yourself why.
John:
Yeah, there's a light the lightning port headphones.
John:
I mean, they could be the use the USB port for headphones like that's how they'll get that before they go wireless, they'll probably end up whatever single port is left on the thing that will do everything including headphones.
John:
And hopefully they'll you know, their earbuds will have those little connectors or what I don't know.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so you have... There are so many issues with trying to get this now.
Marco:
Like trying to get Apple to... Because that's what they would have to do.
Marco:
If they get rid of headphone ports, they would have to basically replace their earbuds with something else.
Marco:
And whether you have to... You know, if they have to buy it separately, that sucks.
Marco:
Then all of a sudden, you got to spend like, you know, 40 more dollars or 50 more... Whatever they would charge for it.
Marco:
Probably more than 40.
Marco:
But, you know, have to spend 80 more dollars on Bluetooth headphones that... You know, just to use your iPhone with a headset...
Marco:
It's not great.
Marco:
This is the problem.
Marco:
The Bluetooth headphone situation, just by nature of needing batteries and Bluetooth headphones, they have a certain minimum size and a certain minimum level of clunkiness.
Marco:
They need a button and a switch somewhere to turn them on and pair them and everything.
Marco:
There's a minimum level of clunkiness to them that...
Marco:
I don't see Apple wanting to address so badly to get rid of the headphone port.
Marco:
And that's not to say they won't eventually try this.
Marco:
I just don't see this in the near future.
Marco:
And if they do release Bluetooth headphones, I think that would come before a headphone port is removed from a prominent device.
Marco:
To have them first have the hardware, test it out a little bit, see if anybody buys them, see if anybody likes them.
Marco:
Because if they release an iPhone that can't plug into any existing headsets, people are going to freak out.
Marco:
And much more so than having to buy new lightning cables.
Marco:
People are going to freak out.
Marco:
And not to say that doesn't keep Apple from doing things sometimes.
Marco:
But there's different degrees and different products.
Marco:
And getting rid of a headphone jack on their most important product, that would not be taken lightly.
Marco:
So, again, not saying this will never happen, but I don't see it happening soon.
Marco:
Now, going back to the MacBook, I don't know... I'm sure Apple has done some kind of research to know how important this is.
Marco:
I mean, there's nothing stopping them from putting a USB Type-C port on the other side and just selling, you know, just like they have a $20 adapter to plug in USB devices, sell a $20 adapter that is a USB sound interface and...
John:
I think that's more of, I would not recommend that.
John:
Why not?
John:
Because I think the use case for this, everyone has the little earbuds from their iPhone or their iPod.
John:
And a lot of times you're working on a laptop in an environment where you want to watch some silly YouTube video that someone sent you, but you don't want the sound coming out of the speakers.
John:
So you're plugging your little white earbuds, or even if you're just listening to music while you're typing away or doing your homework or whatever, like...
John:
You've got to be able to just quickly plug in earbuds with no adapter or have a wireless solution of those magical things that just click onto the side of your thing or something.
John:
I feel like that use case is more important than a second port.
John:
I would never give up the headphone port for a second USB-C on this thing.
John:
That would be a bad trade because I see people do it all the time.
John:
All the time, I see people with any kind of laptop, not just skinny little light ones, but any kind of laptop sitting in front of it plugging in their headphones.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
I mean, it's common, but you also see people plugging in a lot of USB things.
Marco:
So, you know, it's common enough.
Marco:
I agree.
Marco:
But, you know, I think one of two things is the case here.
Marco:
Either they did enough research and they know that, like, way too many people plug in their headsets and, you know, make Skype calls, listen to music, because, you know, because it's a microphone, too, if you use the headset.
John:
But there's no replacement.
John:
Like, with the whole USB thing, people plugging in USB stuff, there's always a replacement, but there's no replacement.
John:
You have to have some way to make your computer stop making noise, but let you hear the noise as your computer makes.
John:
oh i see whereas whereas everything else everything else it's like well i don't have a thumb drive but i can use dropbox well i don't i can't plug it in and power something but i can buy this dongle adapter you need something right you want automatic disconnection of the built-in speakers yeah but but you know if apple made their own official usb type c sound thing for 25 30 bucks or whatever well knowing them 40 bucks
Marco:
uh if they made that like there's nothing stopping them from coding that into the os where it automatically because right now it's two different sound devices and it auto switches logically in software um you know it's it already does that so they could do that if they wanted to i think the more likely explanation for the headphone jack being there is that for other reasons they only wanted to have one usb c port and they figure well symmetry we have the space over here for a port
Marco:
What single port in this size restriction can we put here that would make some kind of logical sense that would benefit some people?
Marco:
And they added that one.
John:
I would think the iOS devices would ditch the headphone port before the MacBooks too.
John:
And whatever the iOS devices do to deal with that, that's just what the Macs would do eventually anyway.
John:
yeah so i apparently i did not do enough pre-explaining and pre-empting of stuff because ben thompson in the chat room is getting all feisty he's tweeting while he's listening to the show well an earlier tweet geeks are just unqualified to explain the new back book they are anti-qualified they're saying that syracuse is way off base so i will try one more time to explain what i feel about this about this particular computer our final sponsor this
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Marco:
So John, why is Ben Thompson wrong?
John:
He's not wrong in sentiment.
John:
He's wrong about what he thinks my position is.
John:
So I will try to emphasize again that the thing that is messed up about this machine with one port, like it's,
John:
The reason it's going to look weird and look back on as like an oddity and like a mistake is not because it has one port instead of two.
John:
It's going to be looked bad on as an oddity and sort of a mistake because it has one port instead of zero.
John:
Like, I totally agree that basically the main thing that's wrong with this is like...
John:
ipads don't have ports in them they never had ports in them people complained in the beginning but by the lack of you know what i mean that the 30 pin connector it doesn't count like that's the well they they do have one port that can charge it and you can plug in devices i know but you know like no no usb port for like an sd card slot or expansion all the things that people would want that's not true the camera connection kit
John:
I know, but they don't have a port.
John:
They just have one plug that you plug the thing into.
John:
There's no plugging in a USB keyboard.
John:
There's no SD card slide.
Casey:
There is, actually.
Casey:
Actually, yeah, you can.
John:
With the camera connection kit, you can plug in lots of things.
John:
I know, but that's an extra thing.
John:
You know what I'm saying?
John:
So is the hub for this.
John:
No, it's a proprietary port.
John:
It is not something that is a standard type of port.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
What is going to look weird about this in the future is that it has... I still don't follow this argument.
John:
It's that it has one USB port and not two.
John:
What I'm trying to say is I'm entirely on board with the idea that the ports go away on this thing.
John:
That we go down to one kind of port and then eventually there's no kind of port except for some proprietary thing that Apple makes up for charging or whatever.
John:
Like, that...
John:
Plugging things into your laptop would not be a thing in the same way that plugging things into your iPad isn't a thing.
John:
You say, oh, well, what about the camera thing?
John:
And what about all the stuff you can plug in?
John:
When you see people using an iPad, how many of them do you see that have anything plugged into that port?
John:
Almost 0% of them, right?
John:
I've never seen anyone with a camera connection kit in the wild.
John:
I've never seen anyone with anything plugged into that as a peripheral or whatever.
John:
Even when I see people using keyboards and keyboard cases, they're Bluetooth.
Marco:
30 inches from my head is a picture of the three of us at a table.
Marco:
On the table is an iPad with a camera connection kit plugged into it.
John:
Yeah, well, you're using it to stream a podcast.
John:
This is not a common use case.
John:
The point is you saw it.
John:
Take iPhones as another example.
John:
Other than Mophie, you know, things plugged in battery cases, do you ever see anyone with something plugged into their iPhone that's reading an SD card from it, that's using a USB thumb drive on it, that's doing anything like that with it?
John:
You just don't see it.
John:
The devices are telling you, I am not expandable.
John:
There is one proprietary port used for charging and all data transfer, but most of the time you're going to be using me without something plugged into it.
John:
You see what I'm getting at?
John:
but i think this laptop is exactly the same way that's what you're going to see most people who buy this laptop i bet are not going to buy that stupid little adapter but it has a usb port and it does not have a lightning connector on it does not have mag safe on it does not have a proprietary apple thing that is not a generic port but it's a usb port that nobody has any devices for yet
John:
anyway ignoring this analogy which is trying to show that you're trying you're trying to pick up this analogy was not the main point my point is that i don't like i understand that ports are going away i am all for that i'm not saying let's hold back the tide bring back the floppy drive like i don't know how much i can emphasize this like yes get rid of all the freaking ports eventually right on an infinite time scale they're
John:
All I wanted to know was what am I getting for having one USB type C instead of two?
John:
And nobody's been able to tell me anything other than saying that one is less than two and eventually we're going to get a zero.
John:
And I feel like zero is better than one.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like, not practically speaking for this particular machine, but...
John:
that is a statement that is where we're going there is a it's a step change of like well you have zero or you have one if you have one everybody's going to try to cram everything through the one with a series of crazy adapters right because you're like well you've got the one and it can do video out and it can do all these things like it is a stand-in for all the other ports because you have one everything is going to funnel into that one spot whereas if you had zero or you had lightning connector or something like that it would be like well this is obviously not a
John:
into your mac and use it as a separate monitor and you can you know do all these sorts of things with it but no one is taking an ipad and like well i'm going to get that and i'm going to plug something in it's going to charge it and it's going to give my ipad a second display and that's going to give me sd card storage for my ipad nobody does that but they will do that with this because it has the one port um so what i'm saying is like if you're going to do one port
John:
if you put on two then what happens well it's a trade-off well you have this well you have that i'm perfectly willing to believe it's a trade-off all i'm saying is that no one has told me what i'm trading and if you just tell me that i'm trading space on the case that one i don't buy because i feel like you could make the case big enough to fit the second port on there all right now putting aside the second port thing i am also totally on board with the idea that no one cares about the second port except for nerdy people totally thinking about use cases as i mentioned my mom just you know like as a actual example but
John:
I think for basically everybody who isn't into computers, who wants to have a laptop computer in their house, this is the one to get because it's so small.
John:
You'll just put it with like the stack of magazines next to your couch.
John:
Like everyone should have, like I said, with the iPads, I feel like this is the type of thing that should just be laying around your house if you are a rich person in every room at your house, right?
John:
It's like picking up a magazine.
John:
Oh, I'll just pick up this iPad, like the iPad Air 2.
John:
Like,
John:
you just want to have a device that you can do web browsing on you can look stuff up while you're watching tv you can you know read your email or whatever that's that's what these things are perfect for these are computers for the masses i totally agree with that like this is more for the masses than the 13 inch pro is this is more for the masses than any of the errors are right this is the laptop for the masses getting rid of everything getting rid of the fan getting rid of ports they don't understand making it super small and light nine hours is fine for the masses
John:
The reason this is called the MacBook and not the MacBook Air 2, the MacBook Vapor, the MacBook Prelude, any of these other things, is because this is the Mac for the masses.
John:
People don't need all that other stuff that we're talking about.
John:
This is the one that they should sell the most of.
John:
It's priced fairly low, like $1,200, $1,300.
John:
It's not like a $2,000 type of thing.
John:
I totally agree with that.
John:
I can agree with all of that and also complain about if they had made it not tapered, would it stop being the MacBook for the masses?
John:
No, it would not.
John:
If they had put two USB type C things, would it stop being the MacBook for the masses?
John:
No, I feel like the masses would also not notice that those two things are there and it would make it
John:
more capable with very with with a trade-off that i think the masses wouldn't care about but the nerdy people like us would really appreciate because we're not at the point of going to zero things and we are you know like and i think that the the taper is something that actually people would appreciate because i think it would make it easier to hold by that sharp edge because the sharp edge would be less sharp
John:
so i don't know like if i continue to get tweets from people telling me you don't get it because you're a geek this is going to be a regular computer for other people i don't know how many other ways i can express it i totally agree with you i'm just saying that they could change these few things and unless someone explains to me the trade-off i'm totally willing to believe that it's like oh you couldn't do this because the chipset doesn't support it because there's no way to do the circuitry you know the circuitry for controlling two different power ports would have made the motherboard too big so on and so forth but i haven't gotten any explanation
John:
And as far as I'm concerned, you can make the same machine a few millimeters different in a few dimensions, get rid of the taper, put two USB Type-C ports on it, keep the price pretty much the same, have better battery life, and the masses would still love it, and we would love it even more.
John:
And as things stand, I still think it's kind of a great machine, and I would be perfectly willing to replace the 13-inch Air I have with this one, because the screens on the Air are terrible, and this one's just as fast, and it has no fan.
Casey:
You see, I can't agree with you there, because if the...
Casey:
If the priority is to make as freaking tiny a laptop as you can, and I understand that you don't like that priority, but the fact of the matter is... I do like it.
John:
I wrote a whole article about how I like it.
John:
Remember that article?
John:
That was me.
John:
Good grief.
Casey:
Well, you're saying, well, why don't they add a couple millimeters here or there, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
But they don't want to.
John:
Not thickness, length and width to make room for the port, you know what I mean?
Casey:
Okay, so...
Casey:
They wanted this case.
Casey:
This case is what they wanted.
John:
That's not good design, though.
John:
Don't you agree?
John:
You don't design a car by designing the body first and figuring out how you can fit the insides in there.
Casey:
I think that's a really shaky analogy.
Casey:
But I think the thing is they wanted a case to look like this because that makes a lot more sense in computers than it does in a car.
Casey:
I think they said, well, we want this case to look like this.
Casey:
And then I think they said, well, we only have room for one thing.
Casey:
thing on the left-hand side.
Casey:
We don't have any room on the right-hand side because we want to do a headphone jack for all the reasons we just discussed.
Casey:
We only have one thing on the left-hand side.
Casey:
We could either make that a traditional MagSafe, a MagSafe 2, or we can embrace this new USB Type-C.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
I already forgot what it's called.
Casey:
The USB-C, and we could make it dual power and peripherals.
Casey:
And because people are slow and dimwitted, myself included, because I just earlier in the show talked about how I have to have my USB ports and then couldn't figure out exactly which ones I needed or what I needed them for.
Casey:
Because people are slow and dimwitted, they need to know that they have some sort of parachute and they have some sort of escape hatch that allows them to.
Casey:
to plug something in it may not be something that that is that is worthwhile to you or to ben thompson or to whoever but at least people know that they have even if it's by way of a 20 adapter they have a means of plugging in a usb device if the need arises and so
Casey:
That, to me, is a much better choice than straight up MagSafe, too, because at least it gives options.
Casey:
Now, granted, Apple doesn't always like to give options, but as they're dragging people into the future and they refuse to stop thinking about tomorrow, John...
Casey:
They're trying to give some people the option of plugging in these legacy devices for the little bit of time they have to in order to move the world forward in the same way that they did and I think still do support using another computer's optical drive if for some crazy reason you're on a MacBook Air and must use an optical drive.
John:
You're arguing against zero ports and not for one port.
John:
Like, you're saying as if, well, they need to have a port so people feel they're safe.
John:
Yeah, I agree.
John:
I'm not saying now is the time to go with zero.
John:
But you're not arguing against two.
John:
Like, what is the argument?
John:
Like, everything you said applies to two ports just as well as one.
John:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
Yes, I do.
Casey:
And I think the only answer I have is the answer that you're not going to allow, which is this is the size case they wanted.
Casey:
This is what they wanted to do.
John:
If that was their philosophy, if they actually did...
John:
uh design the case first and figure out how for the inside set it which seems like a not a great philosophy for because i mean you get the realities are like they didn't know how small they can make the motherboard they didn't like they just i just maybe they do design it from the outside and if that's the way they do it i don't know that's fine i just think that's a bad way to design things because the insides have such an effect on the outside that if you are dead set on some particular dimensions like how would you even come up with those dimensions why not make it half this thickness well you know
John:
the reality of you know what the reality is of the insides there has to be some key travel you have to find bad they have to put batteries somewhere like if you at a certain point you can't have moving keys with batteries underneath them because it's not thick enough so i feel like the insides do have uh some effect on the outside but regardless even if apple totally designs the case first and figure out how they can fit everything in it uh i think that's a bad philosophy and they should design them together as as one working in a single unit uh and that
John:
There should be some form of, you know, like a decision of what kind of product you're going to make.
John:
Is this going to be the one that has no ports?
John:
No, it's going to be the one that has some ports.
John:
How many ports is it going to have?
John:
Where are they going to go?
John:
Like design that into it.
John:
Someone in the chat room says like that.
John:
again, missing the idea that I think it's perfectly fine for this to have one and nobody will care about geeks, which I will keep repeating, but people will keep telling me that I don't understand that because I totally do.
John:
This is like when the iMac had no floppy drive.
John:
And I would say it's more like the iMac, if the iMac only had one floppy drive instead of two floppy drives like the Mac SE had.
John:
That's what it's like.
John:
It's like, we're getting rid of floppy drives.
John:
They didn't get rid of the ports.
John:
There's still ports.
John:
They just have one of them instead of two, right?
John:
And can you get away with one of the ports instead of two?
John:
Yeah, you can.
John:
But what am I getting?
John:
You know, floppy drives are much larger than these tiny USB ports.
John:
What am I getting with one port that I'm not getting with two?
John:
And other than making some kind of philosophical statement and maybe saving a few millimeters here and there on, not on thickness, but on width and height, maybe somewhere.
John:
I just don't see what it is that I'm getting with one USB port instead of two.
John:
even even if you just pick it like it wouldn't be great to be able to put the power in both sides depending on how you arrange your stuff on your desk that's another thing you'd be getting with two ports instead of one sure but you would have a thicker computer which is not what apple wants would it be thicker i don't think it would be thicker it would be like length and width if you just if you just shift the keyboard down two millimeters make the case longer two millimeters there and i maybe will fit in the existing case for all we know i'm still not entirely convinced that that wouldn't fit there some people said because it fits on one side and you have the headphone port on the other
John:
i'm not quite sure if you if you couldn't get it to fit like that i just you know they designed the case they can make it would not be appreciably bigger if it had two of them i feel like but it would be bigger it would be bigger than it absolutely has to be it would get slightly longer battery life too because the bigger case would have more room for battery you know what i mean like it's just but then it'll be heavier
John:
And the weight, like... Then it would be the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.
John:
But it wouldn't be.
John:
Again, do you think this machine with no taper would still be extremely distinct from the 13-inch?
John:
Extremely.
John:
It would be way lighter, way thinner, right?
John:
And again, all these things I'm saying, I'm not saying this is a reason this machine is no good or whatever.
John:
It's perfectly fine for everybody.
John:
All I'm arguing about is for my specific needs or the needs of the geek people...
John:
where this computer could be a change in a way to broaden its appeal with broaden it without narrowing the appeal without making it worse for those people because they are not going to notice the you know even just lessen the taper like they're not going to notice that they don't they're not going to that such connoisseur as they can say oh this one is tapered slightly less than the other one or wasn't the other one tapered a lot and this one's only tapered a little or not at all like they don't care it would be 2.1 pounds instead of two pounds they don't care they don't notice those things next year's one would be two pounds like they'll they'll eventually get there when the cpu takes two watts instead of five you know what i mean like
John:
There are very few drawbacks for the editions that I'm suggesting.
Casey:
But there are a few drawbacks to you, or you don't think the drawbacks are big.
Casey:
So who would notice these drawbacks?
Casey:
Who?
Casey:
See, I don't know that a regular person or even I would notice them.
Casey:
But the thing is, I'm not the one designing this computer.
Casey:
And regular people aren't the ones designing this computer.
Casey:
This is all about what Apple wants.
Casey:
And Apple wants the thinnest frickin' computer they can get and the small... Apple wanted a round mouse, too.
Casey:
And they were wrong on that one, too.
Casey:
And they still say they were right on that, so...
Casey:
But that's the thing is that they still think they were right.
Casey:
Apple does what Apple wants to do, and that's the end of the freaking meeting.
Casey:
And yes, I understand what you're saying, that for an almost imperceptibly small addition in volume and surface area, we could have another port.
Casey:
And that, unequivocally, I am not arguing, would be hugely useful.
Casey:
But in the end of the day, the design goal for this machine seems very clearly to be make it as freaking tiny as you can.
Casey:
And that's what they've done.
John:
Well, if that was true, you'd get rid of the USB port.
John:
and making a tiny inductive charging thing that slaps onto it like a little lamprey and then we make it even thinner it's not as thin as possible you could make this thing thinner you could reduce the key travel further you could make the trackpad shallower you could make this thing smaller and lighter at some point they everything is a you know like this particular compromise is there's nothing dictating this particular size you could make it even smaller and even thinner
John:
shaving even more of these things off millimeter here millimeter there they decided to shop shaving at this point and and they decided it wasn't important enough to find room for the second second part and it isn't important enough like this machine is great it's great for almost everybody
John:
I'm just nippling at this little tiny edge.
John:
This is the problem that, you know, it sounds like, oh, you're complaining about this and you're being defensive about this one thing.
John:
Machine is great.
John:
It's great for almost everybody.
John:
I would recommend this machine more.
John:
This market was saying, you know, who this replaces like the 13 inch air is the one.
John:
Yes, totally.
John:
If someone says I want a computer plus or minus the keyboard travel, which I have to try myself before I completely unequivocally recommend it for everybody.
John:
This is the one to get.
John:
Apple correctly named this MacBook and not MacBook Air or any other variant.
John:
This is the MacBook.
John:
This is the future of laptops.
John:
Love everything about it.
John:
Just have these few quibbles.
John:
And then we keep arguing about it because people think these quibbles are not valid complaints in any way.
John:
And I think they are totally valid complaints about this machine that is the best laptop Apple has ever made.
John:
It's probably the best laptop for everybody except for people listening to the show, maybe.
John:
so john when are you gonna buy one uh i might get one to replace my wife's because like i said the 13 inch uh she's got a 13 inch air and i hear those stupid fans running all the time and the screen is terrible and you can't look at it uh and this one would probably be faster like even though the cpu is probably slower the ssd in it is probably faster um it really depends on actually i can't really use to replace that until i see if they have a
John:
something to connect it to a monitor you know the equivalent of the thunderbolt display where you'll have some kind of adapter or power thing because it sits in the desk right yeah well they do only for um hdmi and vga uh notably it can't connect to an apple thunderbolt display well i know but like i'm assuming they'll come up with a new display you know and it can't power the big retina one so you can't power the 5k imac
Marco:
size display from this and that's actually a good point i think if they're going to come out with a new display it's going to be a 5k 27 inch but if they do that this laptop can't drive that yeah don't you think there's a room in their lineup for like a 24 inch retina type thing
Marco:
no no i don't i mean they haven't had one for years well i mean considering they don't seem to want to make monitors at all anymore that's yeah i think that's the big thing i i think they're gonna at some point they're going to make a a 5k thunderbolt external display for whatever version of thunderbolt can support that and or maybe what it may be a future version of usbc maybe the current usbc can support it and we just don't know it but i think people ran the numbers on
Marco:
the GPU in this particular MacBook, and I think it can't do output at more than 4K.
Marco:
But it wouldn't surprise me if Apple's just going to wait until whatever bus can support it and whatever economics can support it and just do it in two years and only the MacBook Pros from the previous year can plug into it.
John:
I would like to have one of these, like I said, sitting on a little, you know, the table next to my couch or on like my bedside table.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like I don't I tend not to like laptops, but if I was going to get one, it would be this type of thing, like super thin, super light.
John:
All I'm doing is web browsing and typing because as much as I love my iPads, if it comes time to bang out an email, I don't want to do it on my iPad.
John:
I would much rather have this thing.
John:
So, yeah, I would totally buy this for myself if I had.
Marco:
money hanging around for a laptop which i don't well i think you nailed it though like that like this this does have lots of great uses i mean that's one of the things i i've considered for years picking up like an old or refurb or very very baseline 11 inch air
Marco:
to basically be my bedside laptop.
Marco:
Because I will so often want... We'll go up to bed and I'll be like, Oh, I had an idea.
Marco:
Before we go to bed, I want to type up an idea or for a blog post or type up an email or something or respond to some emails or something.
Marco:
I want to do things that involve typing.
Marco:
And normally I just have an iPad up there and it's, you know, I don't like doing those things like you on an iPad.
John:
I'd rather have a keyboard.
John:
So do you use dictation?
John:
I've been doing that lately because dictation is actually pretty good in iOS.
John:
And like, I don't want to type.
John:
So I will just use the dictation thing on the keyboard and iOS to do longer things.
Marco:
I would very quickly be kicked out of bed if I tried that.
John:
I mean, mostly, yeah.
John:
You don't do it when someone is sleeping next to you, obviously, but I find it more efficient than trying to type, but I still would want a keyboard for something longer, obviously.
Marco:
Yeah, and so, like, if I use laptops a lot,
Marco:
I would totally get one of these things for my bedside laptop.
Marco:
But because I tend to only have one laptop, and I don't use it so often that I would be able to justify having a second one, I'm probably not going to do it.
Marco:
But I totally see that.
Marco:
I think they're going to sell a lot of these things for a whole bunch of uses where people aren't really plugging anything into it except power sometimes.
Casey:
So I'm sorry, you're saying this would be your night phone, uh, laptop?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
My upstairs laptop and my downstairs laptop.
John:
If you, if you can afford to have one of these things in every room, you should have an iPad Air 2 in every room and one of these things in every room.
John:
It's just for convenience, you know, just so you can pick it up.
Marco:
Well, you can even, you can have three different colors now.
Marco:
So you can have, you can have like, you know, my weekend one is the gold one, obviously.
John:
Oh, well, no, no, no, no.
John:
You got to have one in every room.
John:
And then as the seasons change, you rotate them out for ones that are different colors.
John:
tip is totally on board with this plan i can tell probably two more tiny tidbits about this thing so we can move on no more light up apple logo on the back instead it's mirrored i you know i'm actually surprised it took them this long to do that because there has to you know to some degree that's that's leaking a non-trivial amount of light and it weakens the weakens the back of the case too
Marco:
Yeah, it weakens the back of the case.
Marco:
It's leaking light out so that you got to compensate for that.
Marco:
So the screen is evenly lit.
Marco:
And I'm sure it wastes power.
Marco:
And I'm sure it's not a massive amount.
Marco:
I mean, there's a ton of light behind an LCD anyway.
Marco:
But it's something.
Marco:
And so as you get more and more power constrained, as you try to eke every little bit of battery life out of something and every little bit of power out of something, that starts to become significant.
Marco:
And so, I mean, in this case, it was probably, honestly, in this case, it was probably about thickness and not any other reason.
John:
And I don't think it's kind of like that look, not that it's tired or anything, like it is still kind of a nice look, but... It's a little tired.
John:
It's old at this point.
John:
And adding mirror gives a lot of the same effects, but just with like kind of a different look and they can show off like their precision polishing and machining of things.
John:
I think it's nice.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And the other one is the backlit keyboard, which...
John:
i kind of like backlit keyboards but i never liked the kind of way like the light leakage around them it just wasn't really like a clean look and now i mean obviously they emphasize this again as a feature but it's a side effect of the fact that the keyboard is so damn thin that you can't there's no room for an entire layer of light underneath the thing
John:
And embedding tiny LEDs inside each thing actually probably saves space and is a nicer look.
John:
And it's just better.
John:
And all I could think of was, can you imagine going up to the menu in your Mac menu bar and hovering over a menu item and seeing the keyboard shortcut highlighted with LEDs on the laptop?
John:
Like if they just did that system wide?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, a lot of people were saying, like, wouldn't it be awesome if these things were software controllable to be able to turn them on and off dynamically?
Marco:
Now, the reality is, as I was thinking through it, that sounds incredible.
Marco:
It's very unlikely that that's possible in this version because that would require controller hardware in the keyboard to be able to independently turn them on and off as opposed to just like turn on all of them and turn off all of them at this brightness level, you know.
Marco:
And that circuitry probably doesn't exist in this model.
John:
it'd be a pretty thin wire like it could you could be done if it's going to show up like and really like it's mostly just like a cool nice to have thing maybe it would be helpful for like training purposes of just like reminding you what the keyboard shortcut is i don't really know it just seems cool um but it's yeah if it was going to show up anywhere i would show up on one of the thicker
John:
uh computers first and honestly i'm not entirely convinced that the use case is just as soon as you have individual lights you immediately start thinking of ways to control them well i mean the use case is just like the use case of having a light up keyboard at all it's cool yeah well well some people who who aren't some people who aren't touch typists need to look at the the key caps to see where the keys are and even people who are touch type occasionally to look at like what symbols on that fn key because you don't remember
John:
uh where well yeah but but like you know the reflect even if you're in a pitch black room the reflected light from the screen is usually enough to illuminate the keyboard enough i mean like it's it's totally illuminating keyboards are really nice totally unnecessary but really cool and really nice and that's why they do it i know a lot of people who swear by the backlight keyboard and will say that whether this is true or not will say that they can't they can't type in the dark without the backlight on the keyboard you know and like i agree with you about the screen light and everything like that but many people are very attached to it and
John:
i've seen people not buy max because they didn't have the backlight keyboard and it just seems nice and this this seems much nicer than like i said than the old backlight that was always leaking from around the keys this just looks like what i was imagining it would be like it's just like the little letters on the keys light up like they do on a car dashboard right in the daytime it just looks like white letters in the nighttime white light comes out of the letters they haven't done the reverse one yet but that'll maybe maybe in a couple years
Marco:
exactly all right well that's the whole event so thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week casper warby parker and hover and we will see you next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental oh it was accidental
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse.
Casey:
It's accidental, they didn't mean
John:
you're really gonna do the watch on the after uh after show we're almost two hours what are we gonna do well that's why i asked in skype like 20 minutes ago we just going for the whole thing or i feel like i didn't go any longer on that laptop and we're still gonna get angry email from telling me that i don't get it that only that just because geeks don't like this anyway
Marco:
We're going to go longer because we're going to get feedback email and we're going to talk about it next week.
Marco:
So we're going to go... No question, we're going to go longer on the laptop.
John:
Yeah, I suppose.
Marco:
No, I mean, personally, I'm hoping... The reason... I'm waiting for the 15.
Marco:
Even if I don't end up buying the 15, I want to wait to see what it is because it's possible... At some point, they're going to bring some of the advances they made in this laptop to the other laptops.
Marco:
They always do that, right?
Marco:
So...
Marco:
At some point, there's going to be a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro of some sort that has some of the advances of this.
Marco:
Now, when they brought it to the 13 at the same time, it only got the trackpad and Broadwell, no other changes.
Marco:
Broadwell CPUs for the Retina 15-inch are due out by Intel roughly this summer.
Marco:
And Intel's always late, so we'll see.
Marco:
But maybe WBDC, they might have a new 15-inch Retina to show off.
John:
So you think it's going to have the new keyboard backlights in there?
John:
What other parts are you looking to see?
Marco:
So it might.
Marco:
We don't know.
Marco:
Obviously, it's going to have the four-stucks trackpad because they brought that to the 13-inch.
Marco:
We can tell that's an easy thing to just bring over.
Marco:
So it'll obviously have four-stucks trackpad.
Marco:
Maybe it'll be thinner and lighter by a little bit.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
Probably not because those four core chips need a lot of power.
Marco:
So probably not.
Marco:
But maybe it'll have space gray gold options.
Marco:
We don't know.
Marco:
At some point, some of these benefits are going to move up the line.
Marco:
So maybe it'll have the weird new keyboard.
Marco:
Maybe not.
Marco:
we don't know but we're going to have six more months roughly you know or five four more months between uh now and then for them to have time with these technologies to move up so they might move up this year they might move up in two or three years who knows it might be nice to see the butterfly keyboard but with longer travel like the stability the supposed stability of the butterfly key switches i mean that's solving a problem that nobody has actually had i
John:
kind of agree that like you know because i've used used these you know the apple aluminum keyboard for a while and i've broken several of them just just from using them where the key that some switches start to get sticky like those little switches are not yeah like they'll get to the point where the i forget which key was but one of them like will start sticking and then i've disassembled them and reassembled them enough times to like it's they never quite come back to the way they were like they they do start to get a little wobbly and
John:
one side of them will stick down because it will it doesn't go down straight it does go down tilted and then one start of it starts to stick it's probably because you know i'm always hitting the edge of a particular key instead of dead center so if you could get keys that go up and down without tilting maybe they'll last longer um i don't think it's so much about feel it's just in terms of durability i've i've i think at work i'm on my third one of these keyboards maybe i'm still pressing a little bit too hard but they're not they're not as they're not as sturdy as they could be
John:
And it's fine trade off for a laptop, but for a desktop keyboard, I feel like, you know, anyway, I would like to see this mechanism with longer travel just to see how it would be.
John:
Because I found, like I said, I found that marketing video of showing the key moving up and down more straight, even when it's not hit dead center.
John:
I found that fairly compelling.
Casey:
It makes me sad to hear you talk about a butterfly keyboard and not be talking about a ThinkPad.
Casey:
I know about that one.
John:
When Marco was talking about his disappointment, like if he got a small laptop and then he had the small screen, he would be cursing, you know, like, why didn't I just get the bigger screen?
John:
This is I feel so cramped.
John:
All I could think of was like a laptop that opens up and like the screen gets bigger when you unfold it.
John:
It's a 15-inch screen.
John:
You close it up and it's a 13-inch size.
Marco:
And one thing I thought about, now that there's all these apps that use the USB lightning cable to make an iPad a second screen, I thought, well, what if I take out an iPad and have that be my second monitor for a laptop?
John:
take out your ipad ipad pro that'll be like what that's 15 inches right yeah but that's that i i can't can you imagine like you're sitting on a plane like trying to just have any room at all and the guy next to you is setting up this like multi-monitor setup can i use your tray table for my second monitor we're cool right exactly yeah you're like fighting over the armrest and he's taking out two ipads to be this triple monitor someone needs to yeah someone needs to go to the bathroom you just start disassembling the setup
John:
Well, VR will take care of that.
John:
So all those things that are on tray tables will be strapped to your face and everyone will just be sitting there and they're... What is it?
John:
A fart tube full of long pigs?
John:
I'm mixing my Roderick references.
John:
Wow.
Casey:
Alright, so do we want to talk about this Apple Watch before everyone just quits the show?
John:
Oh yeah, the watch.
John:
We can quickly, I think we can cover it in five minutes, right?
John:
The only thing we need to do in a timely manner is, I think, address the pricing stuff.
John:
I don't even remember what our predictions were.
John:
I remember saying, I think in the last show, one of the essential questions was, will you be able to get into an Apple Watch edition for four digits?
John:
And I said that 9999 didn't count.
John:
The answer to that is no, you will not be able to get an Apple Watch Edition for four digits.
John:
They were close, though.
John:
They went 10K.
John:
They could have gone $9,999, but that's unseemly for such an expensive item.
John:
10K, you cannot get into one for less.
John:
And all the other predictions, Gruber was the most obsessive thing that I was reading about.
John:
He kept revising his predictions.
John:
He had predictions for every single possible combination of stuff.
John:
I haven't he hasn't posted his like big postmortem follow up.
John:
How did I do on pricing things?
John:
So maybe I'm wrong about this.
John:
But my impression was that what Gruber mostly got wrong and what I was most surprised by was the big gap that there's a bunch of fairly reasonable price watches and then a big gigantic gap and then 10k.
John:
instead of like a smooth slope where you work your way up to 10k by increments going up and up with more expensive watches more expensive band it's you know like a spread price range my recollection of gruber's predictions which i of course did not look at before the show uh were that it was a much more gradual slope like if you graphed it whereas the actual prices were like oh all the apple watches are pretty reasonable prices then there's a big empty space and then rich people
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, I think I believe he was saying the the link bracelet stainless steel one was going to be like 1500 and possibly 2000.
Marco:
So like that's in that range.
Marco:
And and that's not you know, he wasn't that far.
Marco:
I mean, of most of the people making price predictions, I think he was among the closest, if not the closest, you know, notable person predicting these things.
Marco:
I mean.
John:
you know he was saying edition would be 10 to 20 000 which it is exactly yeah i mean that's pretty much what everybody's saying that's why the question was will you be able to get an edition for up for like will they like will they be like a super low end edition one that you can just barely get in for like seven nine ninety nine or something and the answer is no yeah the
John:
But it was close.
John:
We all we all knew they were going to go into five digits.
John:
And then the question is, how high would they go?
John:
And surprisingly, they stopped before 20k, right?
John:
Because the most expensive one you can get is 717.
John:
And a lot of people are predicting 10, 20, 30k in that range.
John:
So it's like there's like the reasonable price watches, a big gap, and then the additions pretty tightly clustered around 10k.
Marco:
Overall, I'm very happy with the pricing.
Marco:
I am not at all a gold person.
Marco:
I don't want gold.
Marco:
Even if it was similarly priced as steel, I would choose steel because I just don't like gold coloring stuff on me.
Marco:
It's just not my thing.
Marco:
So I was never considering it to begin with.
Marco:
So the fact that it's $10,000 and up, I don't care.
Marco:
That's fine.
John:
Yeah, I find it kind of gaudy as well.
John:
and i was afraid that the steel one was going to be like the predictions were like steel like the steel one with a steel link bracelet if that was like 1500 2000 like there's no way in hell i'm gonna because that's the one i would like to get if i if i was going to get one which i'm not like because that one looks really good and i'm happy to see that one down around like at this point like all the apple watches just ignore the gold ones pretend they're not even there because apple kind of is too and maybe we'll talk about that next week but all the apple watches are like
John:
Look, every time I go buy an iPad, I end up spending close to $1,000 on my iPad.
John:
I feel bad about it at the time, but I really like my iPads and I use them a lot.
John:
You're going to go into the store to get an Apple Watch.
John:
It starts at $350.
John:
You're probably going to walk out, if you're like me, with an Apple Watch that's pushing up into $1,000 and...
John:
you'll feel bad about it when you buy it and you feel like i'd really spend too much but you'll like it and it will be fine because how are you getting to a thousand dollars you personally with an apple watch i know it can be done but oh well because i would want the steel one with the link bracelet okay right that's that's pretty much the top of the top range of the the normal watches and for the gold ones i really like the gold for the gold one with the red band um in terms of the color scheming but i think that's more of a woman's look than a man's look but it definitely is
John:
I think that is the place where the gold looks the best.
John:
All the other gold ones I've seen, like you said, Marco, just don't appeal to me taste-wise.
John:
In fact, I think the way the gold one would look better is if they made a gold link bracelet.
John:
It was like, look, just go all in.
John:
It's a gold watch.
John:
It is just Goldie McGolderson.
Marco:
Well, and I think the reason they're not is I think they're really dipping their toe in the water with this.
Marco:
Like, I don't think they're, you know, the reason why there's limited quantity isn't only going to be in certain stores is partly for exclusivity and partly for price reasons.
Marco:
But it's also partly because, you know, like I tweeted the other day during the event that it wouldn't surprise me if there is no Apple edition to like if this is a one off really and this is the only time they ever do this.
John:
I saw you tweet that.
John:
What makes you what makes you think that?
Marco:
i'm not saying this will fail and i'm saying it wouldn't surprise me if this happened because it does seem like apple is kind of unsure whether this will even work or not uh and you know it's it seems very clear that that's an experiment the rest of the apple watch they're serious about it the addition you can tell is an experiment and it could go great and it could sell like gangbusters but
Marco:
it might prove to be not worth it for them.
Marco:
Because selling gangbusters for that is going to be still a relatively small volume.
Marco:
It might just be that the complexity is not worth it, that the divide in marketing isn't worth it, whatever...
Marco:
But chances are this won't be the case.
Marco:
Chances are they'll keep having it.
Marco:
All I said was it wouldn't surprise me if this happened.
John:
It would surprise me because I think no matter how successful this is, they're still going to want to sell gold one of these.
John:
And maybe they'll bring the prices down if it wasn't successful.
John:
I think it will be successful.
John:
So I think it's moot.
John:
But like...
John:
Uh, yeah, I, I think there's pretty much no way the addition line can fail because the success criteria are so limited.
John:
Like they don't expect to sell a lot of them, but I, they seem committed to the idea that if you're in the, if you're going to sell watches, the watch market has this little part that's like this.
John:
And if you're going to sell watches, you have to be in it.
John:
Like they don't feel like they have to do it on the low end, but they feel like they always have this kind of the same reason they keep making the Mac pro like computers go up to computers that personal computers go up to this end.
John:
we're and we sell we don't sell low-end computers we sell you know we want the top part of the market and computers do go up to this part so we should have one in that spice and i think it's even more of an imperative to do that with watches because like you know you could argue that the whole apple part of the watch thing is all sort of towards the addition and they're not really into the swatch part it just so happens that they're swatchy one
John:
is still $350, right?
Marco:
I mean, I think a lot of people, Gruber included, has been doing very smart analysis.
Marco:
So has Jonathan Geller, Boy Genius Report guy.
Marco:
He's been doing good stuff on the perspective of Apple Watch as a watch person, as the kind of person who is familiar with the existing high-end watch business.
Marco:
I don't think Apple really cares that much about the existing high-end watch business and how they fit into it because the reality is they're going to be selling these things mostly to people who don't wear watches, who aren't part of that high-end business.
Marco:
The edition may be more than people, but I bet not.
Marco:
I bet the edition sells mostly to geeks like us and people who like technology who are just a lot wealthier and who care a lot more about this kind of stuff.
Marco:
I'm not saying it's going to be all geeks.
Marco:
I'm saying it's going to be like...
John:
you know not people who were pre like no one's going to be price shopping and saying you know what i could get a rolex or i could get the gold apple watch no no i think you're thinking about it wrong this is not an iphone you wear on your wrist like that's where you're wrong about this there's a reason there's not a gold iphone like apple doesn't make a gold iphone and it's not it's not just because like phones don't go because they do like people make those that virtue whatever encrusted phone thing right or
John:
why why don't why doesn't apple make a gold iphone but they are making gold watches because the watch is jewelry it's a thing that you wear it is it is a beautiful thing in and of itself it is a different class of product it is fashion it's where you cross that threshold as we talked about in many past shows once you wear something not carry it with you even when you carry it with you you're gonna have the fancy cases and everything but once you wear it and it's jewelry and it's an established piece of jewelry called the watch i think you have to address the
John:
the market of people who like to wear gold jewelry.
John:
And it's not just rich people.
John:
Like, I mean, I know the 10 K one is like that, but just in general, like I think that it's a, it's a different, the nature of this product is different.
John:
I think you have to address that market if you're going to be in the high end.
John:
But I don't think you need to make a gold iPhone because I like I think, you know, you're right about the most people who are going to buy Apple watches or exactly as you describe.
John:
But I think the people who are going to buy gold ones are the people who are buying it as a piece of jewelry that also does cool stuff.
Marco:
No, I agree.
Marco:
No, I didn't say I didn't word myself very well there.
Marco:
So forgive me.
Marco:
What I mean is that even the people who buy the gold one are.
Marco:
are going to be people who were not otherwise wearing a gold watch necessarily.
Marco:
Some of them will be, but I think even among the gold sales, I bet most people who buy the gold watches... Don't have any other gold watches?
Marco:
First of all, I bet they're not going to be like white dudes on a podcast about computers, first of all.
But...
Marco:
I think it's going to be mostly people who are buying it because it is the Apple Watch, not because it is the newest gold watch in the world, but because it is specifically the gold Apple Watch.
John:
Well, oh yeah, of course.
John:
But those are going to be people who already own gold watches, I'm saying.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
Like...
John:
They're buying it because they own gold watches.
John:
They want a new gold watch.
John:
This watch gives them something other watches don't.
John:
Let me try that computer watch that also happens to be gold.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
But I would imagine the number of people who buy the gold Apple watches, their first gold watch is very small.
John:
um i well i mean we'll probably never know this information i would bet against that but well none of us own gold watches and one of us can afford a gold watch but doesn't know what i mean so like if you were going to buy a gold watch certainly you marco if you were forced to buy a gold watch that's the one you'd buy right all three of us could buy it just to be fair and we just wouldn't all three of us yeah i mean it really depends on where you you know you want to allocate your money if i want my kids to go to college you know okay
John:
can't buy a go watch but anyway yeah like we are not watch people we don't we don't buy expensive watches like you know so that's why we have difficulty talking about the whole you know and we don't none of us were even do we even any of us even wear jewelry at all i wear a watch i don't know if you'd classify my watch my 20 30 timex watches jewelry is he has it is it plastic because i don't know if that counts as jewelry
John:
Oh, is it Floralastomer?
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
Well, I mean, that kind of counts.
John:
You do wear a watch.
John:
Do you think of it as like a fashion thing where you would like, where do you look at your outfit and decide whether the watch is appropriate to wear with your outfit or no?
Casey:
Ish.
Casey:
So I actually have two watches.
Casey:
One is my daily watch, which is my $30 Timex.
Casey:
And the other is a citizen that Aaron got me for Christmas a year or two ago.
John:
All right.
John:
So that counts.
John:
And I think all of our wives would agree that Casey is the most fashionable out of all three of us.
John:
Not that that's a high bar at all.
Casey:
And I'm not particularly fashionable.
John:
Well, compared to us.
Casey:
Well, there's that.
Casey:
But all kidding aside, I do only wear the Citizen, generally speaking, if I'm dressing up for something nice, like a wedding or Christmas holiday party.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
If I were to spend $10,000 on a watch today, which I can't and wouldn't, but if I were, I would absolutely be getting something that does not say Apple on it.
Casey:
I would probably get a Panerai if I could find one small enough for my little tiny wrists.
Casey:
So you do have a little bit of it.
John:
I don't know what that is.
John:
So it shows you actually know something about this whole world of watches.
Casey:
Marginally.
John:
It's like me with my Ferraris.
Casey:
You know about them.
Casey:
Well, you know a lot more about Ferraris than I know about watches.
Casey:
I have a friend who is really into watches.
Casey:
And so I have seen a lot of his watches.
Casey:
So I've seen his Rolexes, his Panerais.
Casey:
And I forget what other ones, Omegas.
Casey:
There's others that he has that I don't recall off the top of my head.
Casey:
But I always really fancied his Panerais.
Casey:
Now, the thing with a Panerai is, or any Panerai I've ever seen, is that they're freaking huge.
Casey:
And I have little teeny tiny wrists.
Casey:
And so because of that, I don't think I could actually get one.
Casey:
But in this hypothetical, if I were to spend serious money on a watch, I would get something like that.
Casey:
There is no chance I would get an Apple watch because I want something that's going to age and age well.
Casey:
And there's something classic about a traditional analog watch that I don't think an Apple watch would hold up over time.
Casey:
I mean, look at any movie you watch, and you see flip phones.
Casey:
Or, you know, everyone makes fun of the Zach Morris cell phone from Saved by the Bell.
John:
This might be close, though.
John:
Because, I mean...
John:
it might end up being like a class because watches because the trend in watches is so gargantuan this watch is not the biggest gold watch you can get like it's not like it's not like the pebble where it's conspicuous in like oh that's got computer crap in it that's why it's so damn big because it's actually smaller that's what i hear from all the people who are there trying the watches on themselves which i haven't done but that
John:
it is when you try it on, it is smaller than you think it is.
John:
Like in the pictures, it's always right up in our face.
John:
It looks like it's the size of like the Hindenburg.
John:
Right.
John:
But, but when you actually put it on, it seems smaller.
John:
So I think it is not out of step with the size of regular watches.
John:
And it,
John:
It will be defined like, you know, it looks like a little Airstream trailer and it will be defined by its look.
John:
And so when we see this watch like two decades from now in a movie or something, it will evoke the time.
John:
But I don't think it will seem obsolete in the way that flip phones do, because I think it's about the size of a watch.
John:
Like it's not the size of a computer watch.
John:
It's about the size of a watch watch, right?
Marco:
Well, it's a fairly unusual shape for for most fashionable watches.
John:
well i mean you look at the mark newson's other watches that he's made that look also look like airstream trailers but don't have computers inside them but do have identical bands right like i said it's it it's going to look like a particular shape of a watch and i think that will evoke the time and the particulars of the apple watch but i don't think it will look dated in the way that phones the size of bricks that you hold to your head look dated you know what i mean
Casey:
Yeah, but you don't think these are going to get extremely thin.
Casey:
I mean, they already have all the ports gone.
Casey:
God, I couldn't say that with a straight face.
John:
They have the secret lighting port inside the band thing.
Casey:
That is true, actually.
Casey:
But all kidding aside, you don't think that these are going to get considerably thinner over time?
John:
yeah no i think they will go thinner but like i what i'm saying is that i think they're below the threshold of embarrassment and they will it will just look like a fashion choice like bell bottoms like you know the pants did the pants did get thinner on the ankles bell bottoms do look silly but we don't look at them and say that's back when they had to make the bottom of pants really wide they didn't have to it was a fashion thing and even though they kind of have to because of battery and other concerns here i think it's it's within the boundaries of watch especially since what like you said like that panerai especially since the trend now is for these gargantuan watches at least in men's watches
John:
that it won't look that crazy um of course i mean your point still stands about like you want to have something to stand a test of time whatever this thing's going to go obsolete the battery's going to die the internals are going to be terrible eventually you're not going to be able to it won't even be able to connect to your iphone 17 anymore like it's going to go away in a way that a ten thousand dollar gold other watch won't go away simply because that one just does less and it will be just as good when you hand it to your grandchild you hand your grandchild this and
John:
They're not going to turn their nose up at it because it's like a flip phone.
John:
They're going to turn their nose up at it because A, the battery will probably be dead.
John:
And B, even if it's not, there'll be nothing they can do with it.
John:
All its functionality will be gone because we'll be on to Bluetooth standard 17 or whatever.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
It just won't work anymore.
John:
It just won't do its job anymore, whereas the traditional watch will continue to do its job exactly the same.
Marco:
Well, and Casey, you're saying you would treat a very expensive watch purchase like an edition as an investment.
Marco:
You would want this to be a long-lasting piece that you would probably have the rest of your life and probably hand down to your kids and grandkids.
Marco:
Absolutely.
Marco:
That is completely not how people are going to be thinking about this.
Marco:
And Apple knows that, and they're willing to take that risk because there are enough people in the world
Marco:
Many of them not in North America.
Marco:
There are a lot of people in the world who are very happy to spend $10,000 or $17,000 to get themselves or their loved ones one of these.
Marco:
I think it's no coincidence that the red and gold one is probably the best looking one in the lineup, and that it's one of the most expensive, and that those are China's colors, and that it's made for women.
Marco:
I think all those things are extremely deliberate.
Marco:
And they demoed WeChat on the thing instead of iMessage.
Marco:
Remember that?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, this is going to sell in ridiculous quantities in China because we don't understand the culture there.
Marco:
From what people who do understand it say, what we've been able to learn is that this is going to sell like crazy to a lot of people.
John:
It's like the 80s there.
John:
Ostentatious shows of wealth are not frowned upon.
John:
To the degree that they are in other.
John:
I mean, everything's a continuum.
John:
I think ostentation shows of wealth are frowned upon more in some places and less than others.
John:
And, you know, in the US in the 80s, for example, everything was about gold and showing off your fancy things and wearing your, you know, and then there was kind of a grunge was a reversal of that.
John:
And like, so we know the US trends, but in in up and coming China with a rising middle class.
John:
showing your status and how much wealth you've gained seems to be more acceptable in that country right now than it is in ours uh to the point where like having gold and shiny things is like you know more popular there than it is here i i'm just not a fan of the whole gold color i remember when lexus first came out not to turn this into neutral again
John:
They offered gold trim.
John:
I think this was a factory option.
John:
If it wasn't, tons of people were getting aftermarket, where instead of having silver chrome, like the word Lexus, all the little trim pieces, the chrome around the windows, the grill, you could get them with gold.
John:
And I always thought it looked so awful and tacky, but it was everywhere.
John:
and these watches look a lot like that but except for except for like i said except for the red and gold one i think that looks really good like you know oh yeah it goes together i just you know with the other ones especially with the lack of a gold band it doesn't and i think we're also going to see these like on celebrities on the red carpet you know like yeah we're gonna we're gonna see it even if they're not theirs they'll rent it for the day just like they do the rest of their jewelry and you know
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, we're going to see these in places, just we're not going to own them ourselves.
Marco:
But there's going to be a lot of people out there who do, just not us.
John:
And as for the investment part of it...
John:
Even though you said they're going to sell a lot of these in China, in the grand scheme of things, they're going to sell a very small number of these compared to the number of other watches they sell.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
All I'm saying is that among the ones they do sell, a large portion of those will be sold in China.
John:
Right.
John:
So if you have an original Apple Watch Edition gold thing...
John:
as an investment item long after it stops functioning it may be in not saying that it's going to gain and you know like ferraris basically you buy them for a million dollars they lose value you keep them for 10 years and all of a sudden they're worth twice what you paid for them because they make like you know well okay so they make like 500 a year but maybe the how many of the la ferraris they're making maybe 100 or something
John:
and they're all sold or whatever like it doesn't matter nobody can test them right yeah the small but the point is when people buy those and they put mileage on it's like oh you're depreciating your 1.2 million dollar car just keep it for 20 years that thing will be worth 2.5 million dollars don't drive it like if you if you want to make money with a Ferrari buy the most expensive one they make and preserve it for 20 years and sell it for twice what you believe look at the McLaren F1 right you could have bought that for what was it 250 grand you could sell them now for like what a million and a half two million like
John:
And because there are a few of them.
John:
And so I think if if you have more so than if you have the very first iPhone, if you have the very first Apple Watch edition and, you know, if they sell only a few thousand of those and you have one of those in 20 years, it will be worth more than you paid for it.
Marco:
Well, and especially if it's a one-off.
Marco:
I was part of the logic in going into my thinking that, you know, what if this was a one-off?
Marco:
What if there is no Apple Watch Edition 2 next year?
Marco:
Because it makes this one even more prestigious...
Marco:
if they don't keep making them, or if they only release a new one every five years, or something like that.
Marco:
If there's some kind of limited availability, like the release windows, like the stupid Disney vaults, and all that stuff, that stuff all plays into the exclusivity, the high fashion angle here.
Marco:
Wouldn't surprise me at all.
Marco:
Anyway, you want to talk about the other ones, maybe?
Casey:
Well, one quick note as well.
Casey:
One thing that I don't think has been talked about too much with regard to the edition is...
Casey:
To go back to the Panerai's and traditional watches, my understanding of these really expensive traditional watches is that the secondhand market is extremely vibrant.
Casey:
And when you said, Marco, you're making an investment or I'd hypothetically be making an investment –
Casey:
I meant that – or you meant that in more ways than perhaps you realized insofar as you can trade these things like freaking stocks if you so choose insofar as you can buy and sell them.
Casey:
And I know that my friend who was really into watches, he would go through watches constantly.
Casey:
He was like a freaking day trader of watches because he was constantly –
Casey:
buying new ones, selling the ones he has.
Casey:
And that's a very, very vibrant market, which I don't know how well that's going to work out for the edition.
Casey:
It doesn't have to work out for the edition, but that's a piece of the more traditional watch market that Apple may not really be getting into.
Casey:
And I'm curious to see what the fallout has a negative connotation to it, but what the fallout is from that.
John:
Yeah, we talked about the tech angle on this.
John:
There's just no way around it.
John:
Like, it's going to be eventually obsolete.
John:
The battery is going to eventually die.
John:
Fine, you can replace the battery.
John:
Are they going to have a swap of the guts?
John:
Probably not.
John:
You know, like, all this stuff.
John:
And these are things, by the way, all of our questions that we've discussed at length about the upgradability and the pricing and how they're going to sell in the store.
John:
Apple could...
John:
not set minds at ease but just like if apple has decided which i'm not sure they entirely have but if they had decided if they had just got out ahead of it and you know because they know all the questions people are asking and either said we are going to have an internals upgrade program we are going to have a trade-in program or we are not going to do that or whatever like leaving it unknown is uh
John:
It's a very Apple move, but it leaves uncertainty of people, you know, again, with the $10,000 market, some people are going to have that concern.
John:
And the fact that there is no answer out there because people who buy 10,000 watchers have some expectations, like you said, of either be able to resell it and buy another one or...
John:
to give it to their kids or how long is it going to last and apple's current non-answer basically says you know don't buy this hoping that it's you know it's going to become obsolete we don't even know like i think apple has said they will replace the battery for you but just they'll replace the battery in all their things if you pay them money so that's fine but other than the battery it's going to be obsolete uh and when that happens
John:
Are you going to be sad that you can't replace the internals on it?
John:
Because Apple's not saying that you can.
John:
So don't buy one thinking you can.
John:
They could change their mind at any time.
John:
But clearly, Apple doesn't think that it's a deal breaker on this, that they can go to market with this, with just leaving this as a completely, you know, we haven't announced anything about replacing the inside of your watch, which is exactly what everybody predicted who knew Apple said.
John:
Apple is not going to come out there and tell you that you can upgrade the guts of this watch.
John:
That is a fantasy of people who, you know, because I know it's technically possible and it would be cool.
John:
You should do it.
John:
they could still change their mind if it turns out that no one wants to buy these editions because they can't upgrade them or you know when they when would they finally get obsolete then that happens but i think the watches will be kind of like ipads even more so that they'll last a really long time like eventually they'll become obsolete but
John:
what reason you know they're going to become obsolete because the protocols they talk to the iphone with will will change in a way that's not backward compatible or the new watches will be able to do so much more that the whole class of of really cool apps that you can run on your watch won't run on your old one and you just feel bad and you'll be like oh now i have to get a new watch because
John:
the cool video conferencing, whatever app won't run on my original Apple Watch.
Marco:
Don't forget the nose camera.
John:
Yeah, nose hair cam, right.
John:
I mean, that was kind of the sad part when they showed like the security camera showing the garage door opening in the keynote.
John:
It was like super low frame rate.
John:
That's because the camera, like, you know, it's one of those like not, don't...
John:
One of those surveillance cameras that takes a picture every second or two to save space, right?
John:
It's all blurry.
John:
It's not as far as I can tell a limitation of the watch.
John:
Maybe Marco could tell me better.
John:
Could you display 30 frames per second video on the watch?
Marco:
Probably not with the watch kit because you have to stream... You have to have the images on the iPhone extension and then they stream over Bluetooth over to the watch.
Marco:
Now, I haven't used a watch yet, so I don't know...
John:
how fast that connection is in practice but all the guidance on the sdk so far is basically like don't expect images to transfer quickly assuming you could get you know a you know h264 or 265 in the future video on there is there decoding hardware to play back is there is there a little h264 decoder hardware on there can it play video like that's my other question ignoring the whole limitations of like watch kit whatever like if apple wanted to show video on its thing
John:
could it do that and i would guess yes but i really don't know like no one knows what's in that s1 thing right well how do they do the animated emojis i'm being genuine like that is animated yeah that's like open that's like open gl like i assume there's there's open gl stuff in there or open gl es or whatever it is but yeah that's a good point is there the dedicated hardware to decode like whatever codec you know h264 now like is is that on the s1 chip if there's not that's another thing that's going to obsolete this original hardware because eventually there will be because eventually we will be
John:
you know nose time face uh no nose time yeah nose hair face timing from our things not on this version but like you know inevitably it will come i suspect that i suspect that's all there already i mean it it isn't it isn't exposed over watch kit to developers but i'm i i would be very surprised if it wasn't there because like why would why would you make it it seems like that probably the what the s1 is is a couple generations old iphone thing redesigned and shrunken to be the s1
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, what other people are saying is it's basically an A5 performance level.
Marco:
So it wouldn't surprise me at all if it actually is, for the most part, A5 cores, just with some modifications and some die shrinks over time, which the A5 already had, a few of them already.
Marco:
So, you know, that's fine.
Marco:
I really don't expect the CPU speed of the watch to matter that much in the grand scheme of things.
Marco:
That's why...
Marco:
these are going to have a slow upgrade cycle probably and that's not going to be that big of a deal because for the most part you're talking limitations in battery and you know that's that's probably about like battery life is going to be the limiting factor here i think uh i don't i don't see them adding tons and tons of of uh hardware capabilities i don't see them adding like cameras and dedicated gps and everything anytime soon if ever i mean we don't know yet again but
John:
the native apps are going to push us like we have to see what people what do people do with native apps because the current functionality there's like no reason for any more power like the current functionality they expose there's plenty to do glances plenty to do all this stuff to transfer files like everything's fine right as soon as they have a native app sdk then it's like okay where where are the edges that apps are pushing against
Marco:
It would surprise me if people had tons of apps on their watch.
Marco:
The watch might end up being a lot like people's Today screens, where you have five or six apps on there that you use a lot, but you don't have 150 apps on your watch.
Marco:
We don't know.
Marco:
The big thing is we still don't know...
Marco:
all the big killer apps for this thing yet we still don't know like what are people going to do with the native watch SDK a year from now that we are not foreseeing yet that Apple isn't even foreseeing yet that's going to be oh my god this is a great use of the watch right not just like shovelware from the iPhone with a little watch remote view which is what I'm doing
Marco:
Not just that.
Marco:
Something that could only exist on the watch that would not be a very good iPhone app or would not be possible on the iPhone.
Marco:
We don't know.
Marco:
That's all future unknown stuff for the most part today.
Marco:
We really have no idea.
Marco:
And I think for the most part, Apple still has no idea.
Marco:
So we'll see.
Marco:
For the most part, I would expect, you know, for upgrade cycle, I would expect it to be like, you know, for nerds like us, it might be two to three years for nerds like us who don't buy the watch.
John:
Oh, you're getting one, but I'm not a Casey.
John:
Are you getting one?
John:
Of course he is.
Casey:
uh sitting here now yes well so he's sitting fast text this is the this is the killer app for fast text yes yes yes unfortunately it's kind of built in yeah exactly so sitting here now uh no i am not getting one um but as i said on analog that's really just claim chowder for you guys and for mike
Casey:
because i suspect sometime over the next two to three months i will probably get one and not to totally repeat analog but short short version of what i said there was i felt the same way about or i feel the same way about the watch as i did about the ipad whatever it doesn't really solve any problems that i have i don't really get it fast forward a couple of years and now you can pry my you know ipad with retina and cellular out of my cold dead hands so
Casey:
I will probably end up getting one, knowing me, because every time I'm like, meh, to one of your points, I think it was Mario, or maybe both of you said.
Casey:
Anytime I say meh, that really means yes.
Casey:
I just haven't realized it yet.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
Sitting here now, I'm not so sure.
Casey:
And the other problem I'm having is the one I really want is the $1,050 or $1,100 space black, space gray, whatever it is, with the link band, which is, I think, what you guys said you wanted as well.
Casey:
Nope, not me.
John:
Not in black.
John:
That one in the stainless steel.
Casey:
Oh, okay.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So what would you get, Marco?
Casey:
Or what are you getting?
Marco:
I still want to see them in person before I judge.
Marco:
Originally, I wanted the... My goal with the bands was because I'm going to be taking this on and off a lot and I haven't worn a watch since middle school, I know myself, I know I'm going to be annoyed at trying to match the same fit every time I attach the band.
Marco:
And so I wanted something that released easily and had a fixed fit that I could set it to the right size and just leave it there.
Marco:
I also am not crazy about the idea of a plastic band.
Marco:
It doesn't make me feel good.
Marco:
Or elastomer.
Excuse me.
Marco:
Tim Cook pronounces that kind of the way underscore pronounces South Africa.
Marco:
Like there's like a syllable missing in the middle there.
Marco:
Florestimer.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Do you hear that when he says it?
John:
I think I black out for a moment when he says that word.
Marco:
anyway so my goal was to get like a fixed fit quick release on and off and to me the only two that really do that are the modern buckle and the link bracelet um now i as as i've said in the past even though you don't believe me i don't like to be flashy um and because i haven't worn a watch in so long i fear that a metal watch band would be flashy on me
Marco:
and maybe not i'll have to see them in person i also was leaning towards the dark one before the event and and uh since the event well all the new photos and everything the dark one looks really dark like way darker than the original pictures that were on the original site i think it's too dark anyway so um i'll have to see them in person but uh originally i was going modern buckle i was a little a little upset that the colors were all feminine before and then they added the black one which was great
Marco:
But it's only 38 millimeter and I tried on the paper prototypes that Casey linked to earlier.
Marco:
Thank you, Casey.
Marco:
Tried those on and the modern buckle, even in the largest size, just barely fits around my wrist.
Marco:
So I'm guessing it's too small.
John:
Apple tries very hard not to call these men's and women's watches, which is admirable, but the way they size them and the fact that women on average have smaller wrists than men is basically like, you may not be calling them men's and women's, but by taking this, like the modern buckle that you like, which does look very feminine to me, but you know, whatever you want, fine, right?
John:
But by making it too small, you're basically dictating, like, we're not going to say this is a women's watch, but we're going to make it so small that even a small man is going to have a hard time getting this around his wrist, which is kind of like undercutting the whole sort of
Marco:
we're not making any judgments about gender by whatever watch you want well there are some exceptions like the sport bands are the same uh there's the link bracelet which is a pretty masculine thing i don't i don't think women's watches tend to have big silver link bracelets do they i've seen them they would just be skinnier yeah they would just be skinnier but they have the same same type of thing
Marco:
i i don't think the apple link bracelet is feminine really but they do make that one in both sizes um for example anyway so you know if you if you're a man with smaller wrists there are options for you but the modern buckle is a little feminine i know that i see that um i still would be attracted to it for for that quick release and size locking thing but it's just too small for me well like i said all the ones that have a series of holes you always put it back in the same hole that you you know you know what i mean
Marco:
Yeah, but that's annoying.
Marco:
So I think the one I want to try... I'm not sure I would be confident enough to pre-order it yet.
Marco:
But the one I'm most looking at now is the black leather loop.
Marco:
And it doesn't keep its size fixed, which is annoying.
Marco:
It's similar to the Milanese loop.
Marco:
I know I'm pronouncing that wrong.
Marco:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
But it has the little notches between each leather link.
Marco:
So it should be somewhat...
Marco:
lockable to certain sizes i don't know but uh so that's what i'm looking at the black leather loop because i i again reducing flashiness so i'm a little scared about going going to link bracelet i also i i think the link bracelet look is kind of uh too old for me like
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Maybe it's because I'm just not a watch guy, and I haven't been yet, but I feel like I'm the wrong generation to wear a metal link bracelet.
Marco:
Again, could be totally wrong, but I think I'd have to buy a Mercedes also if I did that.
John:
I don't have fashion hangups for the watch.
John:
I'm actually intrigued by the watch, and now that I have an iPhone...
John:
like the only reason i'm not getting one it's not even because it's too expensive the only reason i'm not getting one is because i just don't wear a watch like that's it's it's the fact that this is a watch of any kind there's a thing that i strap my wrist and that's not a habit to do and i don't and i intentionally don't wear a watch like i wore one you know like in middle school to try it out and i didn't like it i didn't like things on my wrist and
John:
And that's the only thing stopping me from getting this.
John:
There's many things making me want to get it.
John:
It's like, look, even though you don't wear a watch, you should try it.
John:
It might be cool.
John:
I'm actually very interested in trying out the watch.
John:
And if I actually did buy one, I probably wouldn't buy the one I described just because the reason I hate things on my wrist is I'm just so sensitive to like, I mean, it would just get caught in my arm hair and it would be all pinchy.
John:
And it would just like, I would want, I would probably wear the rubber one as Christy Turlington called it, or I think she called it rubber.
John:
She did.
John:
Yes, she called it the rubber one.
John:
Tim's like, no, no.
John:
anyway we rehearsed this it's for a lestimer right like that i comfort would be that i need the sweatpants of of apple watches yeah go go with the rest of my wardrobe right like because that's the thing stopping me from wearing this is just a comfort thing but i think it might be cool to have a cool little screen thing so i'm not gonna say i don't think i'm gonna wait for the i watch six to get one of these or at least try one i may try it and regret it badly and really this argues for me getting this cheapest apple watch i possibly can just to see if can you wear a watch but i'm definitely uh
John:
intrigued by this device and would love to find out if it's a thing that has any place in my life um but yeah as a piece of sculpture i like the stainless steel one with the link bracelet but i it just seems like an arm hair trap and i got a lot of arm hair
Marco:
yeah well and the comfort angle is big to me too and that's one of the reasons why i'm considering the leather loop because i i suspect of all the steel bands that aren't the sport band i bet that's the most comfortable because there is no metal touching your skin and it's just this just this nice leather leather gets smelly though uh i didn't think about that well i don't know i'm not that smelly my wife replaces her watch band every whatever year or two and when she does it smells bad
John:
interesting well 150 bucks for a new one it's not that crazy yeah that's what i'm saying like her watch bands cost like whatever 20 bucks and it's just yeah leather leather soaks up stinks well i guess we'll find out