Bigger in the Pocket
All right.
Is there anything we need to talk about other than the fact that this show is going to be all follow-up?
The other things we have to talk about, what is it, like Apple TV and all that business, that'll keep because it's all just rumors.
So we should just get, if we just end up doing follow-up and stuff, it's fine.
Nintendo.
And I think that will keep too, I think, because also nothing is happening in there.
It's just an announcement.
But we'll get to one of those.
Don't worry about it is what I'm saying because all the other stuff that we think is news news isn't really news.
It's all just news.
Future news.
How does Nintendo basically get bought by the world and we don't talk about it this week?
Get bought by the world?
I mean, they're basically selling out.
Like, they're admitting defeat.
The reason I said it'll keep is because it's a press release and an announcement.
It's not...
a thing a product you know we'll talk about i think it signifies something you know yeah no i know but what i'm saying is it will keep if we talk about it next week nothing new will have happened between this week and next week related to that story it's not as if anyway we'll get to it our entire podcast this week should be discussing like this like before we're actually going to say anything about a topic just talking about what we're not going to say and what we're going to say doesn't matter we go in order we go from top to bottom oh god follow forward follow up follow out follow in follow casting
We have a lot of follow-up today, and it starts with our tipster having a compatriot.
This compatriot said, back to the hub.
This was in the middle of an email.
It's real, and it's coming, just not as soon as the tipster thought.
It'll probably come when the MacBook Pros are announced, whenever that may be.
Right, so the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro has not been updated yet for Broadwell and does not have the 4-stux trackpad yet.
Presumably, it will be updated sometime later this year, possibly this summer, because right now the only reason it wasn't updated yet, as far as we know, is because the quad-core Broadwell chips aren't actually out from Intel yet.
My question on this device...
is whether they're going to actually just skip that entirely and wait for Skylake.
Because if Skylake is on schedule, which it theoretically is, then Skylake quad-core chips can't be that much further off.
And with the Skylake chipset, not only do you get faster CPU performance, but you also get new RAM types, and the big thing would be you get Thunderbolt 3.
And then that means you could drive a 5K external display if there was one.
This is the curse of the pro suffix that machines that have a pro suffix eventually skip Intel chip generations.
Well, yeah.
Well, what Intel messes up their entire consumer lineup for an entire year.
I mean, Intel always messes up and delays the Xeon.
That's no big deal.
And in fact, there are new Xeons for the Mac Pro and Apple's not using them.
They're skipping a Xeon generation.
I don't know why, but they are.
But, yeah, for the MacBook Pro, I would expect 15-inch to be this summer with either Broadwell or Skylake.
The timing works out that if they can wait until probably late summer, I think they can get Skylake.
And that would certainly be a better update.
But as you said, Intel is very often late-ish with their... Don't you think the Skylake will inevitably be a little bit later than we think it's going to be as well?
Well, the issue with Broadwell was the die shrink and getting the 14 nanometer process to have usable yields.
But Skylake is a microarchitecture change, so it's not related to the yield issue.
So Intel is claiming, and they're still claiming this even recently, they are claiming that even though Broadwell was extremely late, that Skylake will actually not be late, which means Skylake is shipping in the second half of this year.
Could be.
Like, Broadwell is actually intentionally going to be a really short generation.
So the only question is, what does Apple and what do the other PC manufacturers do with that?
Do they actually make Broadwell products en masse, or do they just make a handful, like what Apple has done,
and wait until Skylake for their higher-end stuff where it'll make more of a difference.
And I think if Thunderbolt 3 is right around the corner, it would be unfortunate to have a 15-inch MacBook Pro update months before you can get Thunderbolt 3 chipsets.
You're assuming they'll have Thunderbolt ports on them.
Uh, I think they would.
This new tipster, the friend of the tipster says that the updated pros will have more than one port.
Now that does not by necessity mean it will have Thunderbolt of course, but, but apparently there will be at least more than one John.
And so you can finally relax and be happy.
Well, the context of that was it will have more than one USB-C port.
Right.
The number of other ports was not specified.
But I'm thinking Thunderbolt is not dead.
I'm thinking Thunderbolt continues on much like Firewire 800 did for so long because it continues on in the high-end products where, like, the typical things people would plug a drive into a laptop for...
you don't really need Thunderbolt for most people's needs.
So it's fine if the low-end laptops don't have Thunderbolt anymore.
That's not a huge deal, especially something like this ultra-portable.
And keep in mind, the new Airs still do.
You can still get an 11 and 13-inch Air or a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt.
So it still goes down to the 11-inch Air.
I mean, that's pretty good coverage right there.
So anyway, Thunderbolt is fine.
It'll be here for a long time.
So it is still worth it, especially considering the high-end stuff like the Mac Pro and everything.
It is still worth it for Apple to invest in Thunderbolt, to support it fully, and to issue Thunderbolt 3 when it comes out.
I didn't remember seeing this email.
I didn't put it in the follow-up, and people in the chat room were complaining about this, and I agree with the complaints.
Where does this come from?
Why does it get to be in the follow-up?
Why do we believe this person?
I just thought it was interesting that somebody else apparently tried to double down on behalf of the original person.
I could have written this email.
Yes, absolutely.
I'm going to start doing that.
I'm going to start writing stuff, writing plausible things into our email form and see if you two are suckered into putting it into the show notes.
Maybe I've already done that and I'll reveal it in a year.
That is a long, long troll.
But yeah, if that would make you happy, John, to ruin your own show, feel free.
The tipster's been in the house the whole time.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
What are we moving on to?
Oh, see, this was out of order.
We should have started with this top one because the top one was a...
accidental neutral follow-up we're talking about the apple watch and uh the potential for it to gain value as a sort of collectible piece of electronics like the i tweeted about this and i almost tweeted the wrong thing and now i can only remember the wrong thing it's not summer games it's
sports championship someone in the chat room will tell me that's super rare nes cart that that goes for a lot of money these days that starts with the letter s i think it's sports champions or maybe it's the nintendo world champion cart anyway uh if you got an original apple watch
uh and especially as marco pointed out if they don't make any more of the original not original apple watch original apple watch edition and they don't make any more of these gold ones after that which seems unlikely to me but it could happen then it could be worth more than you paid for it in the somewhat distant future purely based on its rarity nintendo world championships uh the chat room says is that rare card so anyway
one of the things i threw out there related to that is say you know uh very expensive sports cars that they only make a few of like if you had bought the mclaren f1 i said it was really expensive but now it goes for a lot more than you would have paid for it and i threw out some numbers i think i threw out like 250 grand and now they're like in the millions or something uh and i was way off i think i was going for the 250 or maybe 232 because i was thinking of the max speed of the mclaren f1 for back in the day but uh
TBI Rally Sport on Twitter gave us the correct numbers.
The McLaren F1 was originally 960K, so not cheap because that was in, what, 1990-something dollars?
And they currently go for around $10 million now.
And I recently saw a white one, the only white McLaren F1 ever made, going for $14 million.
So if you had invested a million dollars in a McLaren F1 in the 90s, you would have got a 10x return on your investment if it didn't kill you.
I'm not sure I would take that deal.
Like buy a white car for 10 years and then sell it.
I don't know.
That was the only white one.
It's all about rarity.
Yeah.
Not the pony.
I think there's a reason they only made one.
I know you're trying to mess with me, but there is a reason they only made one.
It's that it looks terrible.
It doesn't look that bad.
I mean, it is generally a nice looking car.
It's a couple of awkward things about like the rear overhang is really small.
So it kind of looks clipped in that way.
But yeah, like I said, you get the car in white.
If it's a really nice shape, it can still look good.
McLaren F1 almost pulls it off.
Almost.
I don't know.
It does not look great in my personal estimation.
And according to Marco, I like everything that is white ever.
Well, you just happened to have bought all of your cars in white.
And each time it just kind of happened to you.
No.
There are two times I've bought cars on my own.
And one time it was deliberate.
One time it was not.
Everything else, it was a hand-me-down.
And, Marco, you had something from Ed Ryan.
Yes.
Last week we talked about Bluetooth headphones.
And, you know, we were talking in the context of Apple eliminating the headphone jack from their stuff eventually and switching over to requiring Bluetooth headphones for everything and what that would mean.
My main complaints about it were that of not only complexity but also battery life.
Then you have this other thing that has to be charged and everything.
We got a lot of good feedback on this.
Some of it came from the hearing aid world because they have a similar set of problems with hearing aids.
You want to make something as small as possible that can pump sound into your ears but that also has good battery life.
And hearing aids manage pretty impressive battery life these days, especially the high-end ones, but there are, from what I understand, some pretty substantial costs associated with that.
I don't know much more about it than that, but it seems like that might be an indicator of what's possible in the, not necessarily close future, but what is possible with the cutting-edge battery technology and miniaturization of headphone-type things.
but um a number of other issues were pointed out specifically about bluetooth headphones uh the biggest one which i totally forgotten about is latency a lot of bluetooth headphones and it seems like this might differ per model or maybe per application or something this seems like it's inconsistent and i've seen this myself where it's better or worse with some um latency is a big problem when you're watching videos and
uh or of course anything that requires really up-to-date uh sound to match what's on screen there to be no latency or you know inaudibly inaudibly short latency i have found with all the bluetooth headphones i've tried when i did i did like a little roundup with it with i think four or five of them and i found the latency was noticeably bad on all of them enough that like playing a video on an iphone i didn't try it on a mac but playing a video from an iphone was just unbearably annoying because the latency was extremely noticeable so you know it was out of sync the audio was out of sync with the video and
I would just like to put it on record that I use really cheap, really crappy Bluetooth headphones with my Mac every for nine hours a day, five days a week.
And I have never noticed any latency issues.
And these are not fancy headphones.
They are made by a brand called Arctic, which I've never heard of before.
I've never bought any of their other products.
And either one of two things is true.
Either the latency on these just happens to be wonderful or
In short, or I'm just not picky enough to notice.
And if it's the latter, then let this be a lesson, kids, that being fussy about headphones and coffee and about everything else under the sun maybe isn't the best thing in the world.
Anyway, carry on, Marco.
Yeah.
Anyway, and by the way, as I said last week, I use Bluetooth headphones when I'm walking.
I listen to podcasts on them.
They're fantastic.
And in that context, they're way better than wired headphones.
I love them.
I use the Sennheiser PX...
I think it's the 120 BT.
I'll link to it in the show notes.
It's like $100, and they're great.
They sound like complete garbage for music.
And by the way, a lot of people are saying Bluetooth audio, because it uses lossy compression codecs, there's a lot of arguments that Bluetooth headphones sound bad because they're Bluetooth.
uh i've tested uh in the ones i've tested most of them offer the ability to plug in a cable so i've tested them in both modes cable mode direct and bluetooth mode and they sound equally bad in both modes so the reason they sound bad is not because they're bluetooth necessarily it's because they're bad headphones uh and it is possible to make decent sounding bluetooth headphones now a lot of people say oh these new headphones support aptx this new codec uh the aptx i don't know if it's pronounced aptx that's how i say it
The problem is that iPhones don't support Appdex.
So I see these Amazon reviews of these headphones that say, these new headphones support Appdex, and it sounds great for my iPhone.
It's way better than the previous headphones.
Well, they might sound better, but it's not because of the Appdex codec, because if you're using them on an iPhone, Appdex is not being used.
All that being said, we got a very good email from Josh DeLioncourt at Lioncourt on Twitter.
And Josh says, one other use case that wasn't mentioned in your discussion, but perhaps should have been, is that of voiceover users.
I'm a writer and developer.
I spend virtually all day on my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone plugged into headphones.
Bluetooth not only comes with the battery life issue, which is compounded by constant use by voiceover users, but also, in my experience, latency.
It's tough enough that a voiceover user must listen to everything.
Even the slightest amount of latency in audio can lead to frustration and disruption of productivity.
I'd imagine this is very analogous to when Touch UI suffers from lag.
So yeah, that I could definitely see what that would be a problem.
All right.
So we should at least briefly touch on the Apple Watch Edition pricing.
There's been a lot of chatter that Tim Cook was perhaps embarrassed about the price of the watch.
It didn't show up on any slides.
And he kind of just said, oh, yeah, and it's $10,000.
So anyway.
Now, there will be limited quantities of the Apple Watch Edition.
It is priced from $10,000.
And it will be available in select retail stores.
The Apple Watch Edition is the most beautiful expression of the Apple Watch.
So there's an article in the show notes that I did not read.
And I'm assuming, John, you put it here.
I did.
I don't remember what's in this article.
I didn't open it in one of my tabs.
I'm sorry.
But maybe you did and you lost it.
I paid.
No, I opened up the tabs right before the show and closed them all after the show, as you well know.
I remember hearing about this before I saw the presentation because I didn't watch it live.
Right.
And so I knew to pay attention during sort of that section of the thing to see if these articles that I had heard about were on the nose.
And there's two things I noted about Tim Cook and the Apple Watch Edition, the pricing thing and the presentation.
One, he made a comment earlier in the presentation, I believe, when they're doing the health section about his heart rate, you know, sort of doing the jokey kind of thing that I guess I'm not going to say non-professional, but like...
less experienced public speakers or maybe yeah i think so like a less experienced public speakers will add something to their presentation that acknowledges the fact that they're nervous to sort of you know cut the tension to get the audience on their side and to relax them and to just sort of go forward together so we don't have to so it's not awkward right tim cook did that in this presentation when he was showing the heart rate thing it's like you can even check
Your heart rate.
And this is clearly not mine at this point in time.
This is not Tim Cook's first presentation.
We assume that there's some baseline level of nervousness that everyone feels when they're doing a big, important presentation.
We assume they're all nervous about things.
But if he was going to be nervous about something, you would think he would be nervous about the revealing of the Apple Watch and not...
this presentation so what i was thinking about is all right what is it about this presentation which really is just going over stuff we already knew and adding detail to the apple watch what is he nervous about in this one and that ties into when he got to the apple watch edition and he has to say the apple watch edition starts at ten thousand dollars will be available and select blah blah blah blah blah and he just like
those words like he didn't look down at his shoes and mumble them but he might as well have like he was not he did not muster up a bunch of fake enthusiasm saying the apple audition is really great it's available starting at ten thousand dollars and
it was low key.
There was no slide.
There wasn't a lot of time given to it.
He didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for the announcement.
Is that what he was talking about with his heart right now?
I'm sure he's nervous when he does all his presentations.
Maybe it's not a natural thing for him.
Maybe they're not connected.
But whether they're connected or not, the way the pricing of the Apple Watch Edition was dealt with in that presentation, at the very least, shows that Apple thinks that
The audience it was communicating to in that keynote is not really the same audience that's going to buy this watch.
The information has to get out there.
It has to be in the press and so on and so forth.
But it's a different set of people.
It's not the tech press that was invited to this thing, although I'm sure they invited all the fashion people and everything as well.
It just...
not i put in the things was tim cook embarrassed about the 10k watch i don't know if he was embarrassed but he definitely didn't seem as excited about the apple watch edition at its price as he was about other things and and i guess what you could do is make a little clip and say let's show him saying the apple watch starts at 349 does he say that with more or less enthusiasm maybe he always says pricing in a boring way and that's all he had to say about the edition i don't know uh but to me it seemed like
that this product does not sit comfortably in the same sort of keynote presentation style that we're accustomed to from Apple and that it, as in so many other things, that it needs some other venue in the same way that it's going to need some other venue for sales, like select stores, a special room they go to, a different kind of treatment from the people selling you the watch, like the different box that it comes in, like everything about it is...
different from other apple products uh and i don't know that's did you guys notice that when you're watching this presentation because it really stood out to me and maybe i was primed to look for it i guess but i noticed it but i wouldn't say it was loud so to speak and it's a poor choice of words in this context but i it wasn't the sort of thing that knocked me off my chair i um but i did notice he seemed to kind of brush by it quickly i don't know marco what did you think
Yeah, basically just that, that it very clearly that he rushed through it.
It was not – I don't think it was necessarily nervousness, and I don't think it was necessarily him not being excited about it.
That's just his style of speaking.
I think he really just rushed through it, and that that part was intentional, that they did not want –
Yeah.
I think in order to try to minimize how much this would alienate their existing customer base or most of their customer base that is not buying this thing and that can't or at least won't buy it, I think...
In order to just minimize the alienation there and minimize the appearance of being this new snobby company, I think that's why they didn't give a lot of time.
I don't think it necessarily reflects what Tim thinks about it or whether Tim was nervous about it.
I think it's really just about just making sure that it wasn't distracting from the other parts of the presentation, like the other prices being pretty reasonable.
Well, that's the other that's what he could possibly in theory be nervous about like the idea that the entire conversation about this product that he's clearly very excited about could get derailed talking about this one low volume version of this product and that ties into the other sort of vague rumor story narrative the idea that
Johnny I really likes expensive watches.
Mark Newsome really likes expensive watches.
And as sort of a perk to the two of them, or a perk to Johnny essentially saying, stay with Apple, make this watch for us.
We'll let you make a ridiculously expensive one because we know you really like that.
And it may seem silly that personal considerations like that, if they're even true.
Like, again, we don't know.
This is all just rumors, right?
But imagining for a second that this was the case, that Johnny Ivory likes expensive watches.
The idea that the world's biggest company would do something like have a special low-volume version of its product to satisfy the person designing the product seems crazy and weird, just because it seems like...
are the whims of this one person dictating an entire product line by Apple?
But it's not weird.
Like, when Steve Jobs was alive, the whims of an even more mercurial, as they used to say back in the 80s person, was dictating the whims of the world's biggest company.
So that's the way people work.
That's the way people deal with each other.
I don't think it's out of the question that, you know, I haven't listened to that episode of the talk show yet, but, like, that there could be an internal debate about...
what kind of company does apple want to be this why how is this product different from a ten thousand dollar mac pro well it's different these ways and that way you know like we talked about all these things before right i can imagine that same conversation going on inside the company and i can also imagine uh ending up in the current situation where they make a ten thousand dollar gold watch because uh one faction of the company really likes ten thousand dollar gold watches
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, Johnny is worth keeping around, so if anyone could pull it off, it'd be him, but it's weird.
I mean, I don't think it's just to satisfy him, but if there is multiple factions inside the company among the decision makers...
It's reasonable to think that the side that won could include a very important person like Johnny Ive, who's into that.
Or maybe that's what it took to get Mark Newsom to come to the company, and Johnny really wanted Mark to come.
Anyway, you can make up all sorts of stories about this, but I think it's notable in that I can't remember the last time, unless a product is something like...
a compromise or sort of a boring product or a not interesting thing, then they gloss over it or maybe it doesn't even make it to the keynote, like the new Mac Pro that wasn't really new and stuff like that.
Yeah, that'd be expect, right?
And everything's not.
But this is like...
The top of the top of the line, fanciest version of the product that Apple is just super excited about.
Right.
And so it's weird for this one to be like, oh, and by the way, this is the watch edition is a rich people.
It's $10,000.
Never mind.
Right.
That was weird.
I mean, I think it just it just shows how much the edition really is, I think, an experiment from Apple.
I don't think when they initially conceived the watch that they were like, all right, we're going to have three versions, cheap, normal, and gold.
I don't think it went like that.
Well, I think, I mean, as Monk Bent in the Tower Room is pointing out, when we were talking about the watch, if they decide to make a watch, they have to have the conversation about how is this different than everything else we made?
How do our products change once we ask people to wear them?
And no, putting an iPod shuffler on your neck doesn't count, right?
How does it change?
We have to address it differently.
And if you're going to make a watch,
And we're not going to sell $10 plastic watches we're going to sell mid-range watches and like I said watches go up to this high end Why would we not?
make a watch like that and then it gets like well it's the same as the other watch you're just making out of fancy materials like yes that's that's something people do with watches why because people want gold why do they want gold things why is the gold why do we get to do a 500 markup it's like it's just it's just the way it works yeah and that's the thing like you know as a like i wrote in my blog post right before the event um thinking that it would be cheaper uh but oh well i wrote in that that you know the point of of apple watch is to get people to wear it first and then do all this other stuff like it's
If you can't get people to wear it, then all the other work you do is pointless.
And there are certain people who the only kind of watch they're going to be seen wearing is something that's expensive and made of gold.
And that's for various reasons that we can disagree with them or not think the same way, but people have those reasons.
So, if they want people like celebrities and really rich people who like fancy jewelry, if they want them to wear an Apple Watch at all, they have to make a gold one.
And certainly, there's some of it being this...
This very profitable fashion world kind of thing and being prestigious.
But I think most of it is just the goal of we need to make something that nobody can look at and say, well, that's too dorky to wear.
That's not good enough for me to wear.
And if Apple's going to do this, which they clearly are, I think they made the right call.
I think this is not a boondoggle for Johnny Ive.
I think more or less he was right.
But I think the company has to now become comfortable with the idea that this is the type of thing they sell.
You wouldn't see Rolex mumbling over the pricing of its new fancy watch.
No, they just don't tell you.
Yeah, well, the horsepower is adequate, right?
Either way, however you handle it, either you don't mention the price, if you have to ask, you can't afford it, whatever.
Apple needs to figure out
How do you present products like this?
Because they are making a product like this, and it's probably a good call for them to make a product like this.
They just have to figure out as a company, how do you present it?
Because I think you have to present it differently than the new MacBook or, you know, a traditional technology product.
And speaking of the addition, there was an omission during the keynote, not an awkward flyby, but a straight-up omission, and that was the video about gold.
We saw a video about aluminum, we saw a video about steel, but we didn't see a video about gold.
But apparently such a video exists, they just didn't play it during the keynote.
So that strikes me as slightly odd, although...
Since most of the audience of that presentation is, both in person and in general, is probably not going to be buying an edition, it's not terribly remarkable to me that they didn't show that video during the presentation, but I don't know.
Can you imagine if they did... So if they did show that video, it could have just been cut for time or whatever, but imagine they did show it.
I can imagine, given the population of that room, despite the fact that I'm sure Apple invited people from Vogue and all these other fashion magazines that I don't know the names of, I'm sure they were in the audience too, but we know...
that a lot of the audience are technology, you know, media, right?
I can imagine a little bit of weird, uncomfortable tittering from the audience when this gold thing is playing.
Like, cause for the same reason that the nerd tech press is kind of like totally willing to see like CNC milling machines, uh,
grinding weight aluminum and oo and aahing over asymmetrical fan blades and stuff like that.
That's what the tech press likes.
Once you start showing gold, I think they feel like they're going out of their comfort zone.
And, you know, with Johnny Ive talking in flowery terms about the gold they have and how it's a beautiful metal and blah, blah, blah.
Like, it feels uncomfortable because you're like, this is not engineering.
This is not technology.
This is merely fashion, right?
And it just...
I don't think it I think it would have been fine, probably.
But I can imagine if I was there in person, you wouldn't have heard it on the slides.
But if you were there in person, a couple of weird tsk tsk or at the very least the media deciding that that's the time they're going to check their Twitter.
Right.
When the gold video comes up.
I think it's very simple.
I think it's that they wanted to not spend a lot of time on the gold pricing, and so they just blew right by the whole gold section of the presentation.
I don't think it's any more complicated than that.
It wasn't worth the time.
They didn't want people to be focused on that.
They wanted people to be focused on the other stuff.
I know, but I think that's a problem for the company, that they have to figure out – they have to get comfortable themselves and decide –
I mean, we just have one data point now, so you don't know.
But they have to figure out how do we deal with this?
How do we deal with the vast gulf between these product lines?
Because if they make future products like this, like the Apple monocle, the Apple ring, like whatever the heck they're going to do with wearable tech in the future, they have to figure it out.
They have to just...
sort of come up with a policy and then until it comes routine and we sort of you know expect that there either are aren't going to talk about the super expensive one or when they do they're going to do it in this way or they are aren't going to mention the price and all that business well the good thing is our first sponsor this week is a much better deal than an apple watch edition it is our friends at thank you it is our friends at fracture fracture prints your photos in vivid color directly on glass go to fracture me.com for more info here
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so we have approximately six hours of macbook follow-up oh my god i don't think it's that bad we talked about most of these things just filling in little gaps uh because we spent a long time last show talking about the new macbook's limitations uh and pros and cons and blah blah blah and here are the things that we didn't get to or that have had new bits of information about the first one is
about the flash in the new macbook apparently it's really really fast which is nice uh linked to this barefeet's benchmarking showing that if you get the the new macbook the flash storage is actually faster than the big black tube mac pros flash storage
which is a hell of a bargain, if you consider the price of the Big Mac Pro.
Yeah, I believe... I think they made PCI Express faster on this chipset.
I think that's one of the sources of this gain.
Yeah, and maybe different Flash chips or whatever.
It's just, you know, technology marches on.
Flash is a relatively young technology, but we're in a weird situation now where actually if you get...
this pretty much you know bottom of the line close to bottom of the line apple notebook you will get really fast flash storage which is nice and hopefully bodes well for future big tube mac pros and other products yeah i would expect as everything gets the updated chipsets you know over the over the coming year i would expect them to all have the same the same things basically
No word yet on trim support or whether we need that anymore, whether it's handled by the firmware or some cooperation with the OS.
Like people are always asking about that because I got the, what is it, Samsung 850 Pro SSD.
I have not done the crazy hack to enable trim support.
Now I'm just going to say like...
know you just handle it i know there's nothing magical that the firmware and the thing can do to make up for the fact that the os is not telling the hardware which blocks are unused but i don't know i mean i'm trying to keep a reasonable amount of space free on it i haven't probably filled all the space with real or deleted files yet if the performance drops off a cliff on my ssd i'll be sure to let you guys know but so far i'm doing okay and i just hope
I don't want to have to think about that, and I also don't want to be in any unsupported configurations, but I know a lot of people do do the hacks to enable trim support, and they seem okay with it, too.
So, you know, do whatever you got to do, but so far, so good.
And I'm just happy to see storage getting faster.
Because, you know, although SSD, once you go all SSD, then you're just like, okay, how much faster can Flash go?
Why is it so slow?
Maybe it's just me.
Yeah, just you.
All right.
You know, if you got a more modern computer, you'd have faster buses and everything.
I know.
I was thinking about that the other day.
It's like, boy, seven years.
I'm using a seven-year-old computer.
Can I make it to using a 10-year-old computer?
I mean, at this point, you might as well try.
If you're this close...
I'm going to buy the first one that comes that, you know, fulfills my requirements.
It never will.
Yeah.
Don't hold your breath.
So you'll definitely reach 10 years as long as this still works.
No, no, no.
The current Mac Pro, I would have gotten it if it was like half the price.
Here's a question.
If something critical died on your current one today, what would you buy to replace it?
I would probably be forced to get the iMac that you have.
That must be excruciating for you.
no i would like i would it would i i would not like it because it would be like i know this is just a a stepping stone machine and you know the graphics the whole graphics performance and overheating and whatever like i'd love the screen and everything but i'd be just like a way station on my way to
getting something better later i don't know i'm hanging there it's it's hanging in there by the way whatever it's worth uh graphics performance i don't i don't know how it compares by gaming standards but i have not had any heating problems uh oh yeah you're not playing games on this is all just about game benchmarks that's fair but i mean like when tiff was playing i mean i think we were only playing portal 2 so it wasn't really stressing it that much but it was how old is portal 2 it's like a seven-year-old game i
Yeah, but when playing Portal 2, the fan did spin up to what I would consider medium speed, and it sustained at that level, and it was never really a problem.
It was never obnoxiously loud.
It was audible, but it was not obnoxiously loud, nor did it ever overheat or seem to throttle itself in any noticeable way.
yeah i don't know if you've noticed it in a game like that because that that gpu will just eat portal 2 for lunch like you're just it's i don't think it's a problem but uh i want i want that little tube i want it to be quiet like the little tube i want it to be powerful like the tube i just want it to not cost a jillion dollars and i could give up one of the gpus probably and that's the problem that i don't think they will ever ship that machine i know i know well anyway i'm i'm just waiting patiently to see
to see what i can see i mean who knows like maybe the next 5k mac uh they resolve some of the the they put a different gpu in there or pick a different vendor like they're always changing things so i'm i'm you know i'm in the meantime my ssd is is really extended the life of this computer it feels much snappier than it used to so i'm okay for now as long as nothing breaks
um what's the next one the next one is about uh we've talked about uh the uh keyboard having a symmetrical rectangular outline because johnny ive doesn't want to bump out the keys bump out the the outline for the arrow keys to have an inverted t with full size keys in there we have follow-up on this
yeah well you know we i talked about it on the show and i said but look at the keyboard you notice something on there that that uh that is a step in the right direction for johnny ive accepting asymmetry and i acknowledge that there's always asymmetrical stuff on keyboards but in this model in particular because the trackpad is jammed right up against the space bar and because the left edge of the space bar was aligned with the left edge of the trackpad it really emphasized the fact that the track that the space bar is not centered on this keyboard
And then I had to deal with, you know, a week and a half of people telling me the space bar is never centered on the keyboards.
Yes, I know it's never centered.
But because there's always like a buffer, there had been historically a buffer between the trackpad and the space bar.
It wasn't just in your face so much.
But on this particular model, because they're just touch right up against each other and because the left edges are aligned, it really emphasizes the fact that the right edge is not aligned.
And someone tweeted at me.
Who is this?
Shane Bonham tweeted, how hard do you think it was to talk Johnny Ive out of this?
And he shows a picture that he mocked up of a new MacBook with a perfectly aligned space bar that is exactly the width of the trackpad.
And how did he do this?
By making half size left and right arrow keys.
So you got half size up and down arrow keys and then flanking it half size left and right arrow keys.
And it does surprisingly fit.
And it's hideous and I would hate it.
And I hope Johnny Ive never sees that because it's going to give him ideas.
Why do you think this is so bad?
I think it looks good.
I hate trying to... I use the inverted T arrow keys with three fingers.
Middle finger is up, down.
Pointer finger is left.
Ring finger is right.
Sure.
I want full-size keys for those things to go on.
I hate having up and down the half-size keys because I find myself accidentally hitting one or the other or trying to grope around to find the right key.
Yeah.
making the left and right also half size is just squishing my three fingers together until all three of them feel like they're trying to press the same key cap on different you know press the lower left corner of the key cap plus the right no full size keys uh and again on a tiny laptop like this i under kind of understand you know whatever i'm just talking about like the 15 inch back when they had a 17 inch the fact that they had a little tiny keyboard in there was ridiculous
anyway i would not like these arrow keys i don't like laptop keyboards at all uh but boy it looks if he sees this man look how look how beautiful it is with the space bar exactly the same width as the trackpad you don't even buy laptops i know just like i don't think johnny i've used laptops i think he just likes how the keyboards look it's perfectly rectangular outline for the laptop
I think going back for a second, I think if anything expresses the weirdness of Johnny I have, I think it's the the addition watch with the white sport band.
Yeah, that's I mean, it doesn't it's how he dresses looks a lot like that watch.
Like when he when he dresses up, that sort of light.
I don't know anything about fashion again, but sort of light colored pants and just I just think of like a Bentley with the white leather interior.
I don't know if that's the kind of Bentley he has.
Anyway, no accounting for taste, as they say.
Tell us about Marcus Brownlee and his prediction.
That'll be a point of this out.
We've talked about MKBHD before.
That's his Twitter handle.
Marcus Brownlee, apparently a very popular YouTube person that we don't know about because we are all old, including you.
That makes me feel so bad.
The one time when he had the supposedly sapphire cover glass, and we were like, this guy on YouTube, and none of us knew who he was.
Meanwhile, he's like freaking massive in YouTube.
He was invited to the Apple event.
He has an audience bigger than pretty much everybody we know in this space combined.
like he is like the biggest guy in tech and none of us know who he is that's only because your kids aren't old enough once that once your kids get old enough you will very quickly come to accept that you don't know anybody and all you know you're there you just don't know it yet once your kids start telling you that you don't know who anybody is or start talking about famous people and you don't recognize any of the names that's when it really comes home so you'll get you'll both get there
Yeah, but usually it's okay for me to not know somebody who is a really big deal in music or TV or something.
To not know somebody who's a really big deal in my own industry.
That's right.
I mean, for me, it was stuff about gaming, right?
Because I subscribe to game magazines.
I read gaming news sites and stuff like that.
But I do not watch a lot of gaming YouTube channels.
And they are humongous.
And I don't know who any of those people are.
And I'm fine with it, by the way, because I just am.
but yeah no i mean i've watched some of his videos he does a great job i i would have eaten that up if i was a kid and this youtube existed and these channels exist i would have been over the moon because i was trying to illegally get copies of mac week that's what i was doing these guys got hd video of a guy stabbing a potential iphone thing with a knife it's awesome anyway he he is getting bold you know these these these youths they're they're brash predictions oh
And we'll put a link to this in the show notes at 3 minutes and 14 seconds in this video.
Here is a quote from Marques Brownlee.
I can pretty much guarantee the second generation of this thin and light new MacBook will have more than one USB port.
Quote me.
Well, I quoted him.
That's exactly what he said.
He is just, he says, pretty much guarantee the pretty much hedges a little bit.
But then he says, quote me.
All right, we're quoting you.
You can pretty much guarantee that the next one's going to have two.
I hope it does, as has been stated at length.
I really hope it does.
But this is interesting to see a popular person.
I think he thinks there's going to be another one, assuming he has no inside info, which I have no way of knowing.
But if he doesn't have any inside info, he's just saying, at least, you know, he's saying what we're all thinking.
It's like, well, duh, the second one will obviously have a second port.
Like...
it's crazy to just one with one port right guys right like come on you know uh that could be what he's thinking that could show uh either wisdom uh of knowing his history about the original macbook air that had one and eventually came out with two or uh not knowing exactly how stubborn apple can be i think we'll get to apple stubbornness a little bit later in a somewhat related topic but uh i just wanted to put that out there so that we can all hold him to his prediction
yes all of us who are approximately 25 times less than his own audience oh even much less and we're all old people and he won't even know that we're talking about him and that's fine but amongst ourselves in our knitting circle and our book club and our little technology nerd thing we will talk amongst ourselves about these youngsters
i mean i i think i know we're going to talk endlessly about this port but i i would i would bet he's wrong about this i i would bet that this doesn't pan out that way that oh no you're making you're doing you shouldn't have said that why because you're always wrong about everything you just we went through back when you said i thought the apple watch edition was gonna be true but that's your thing every time you do predictions on your blog you're like keep in mind that my track record of predicting apple things is terrible and that's the one thing you're right about your track record is not good
And so now that you said that, now I'm doubting.
Now I'm like, oh, damn it.
I agree with you.
And now I think I must be wrong because I agree with Marco about a prediction on Apple.
All right.
Before we take this any further, let's go ahead and thank another sponsor.
And then we can go in the one versus many port black hole.
Oh, my God.
This is going to be all follow-up, isn't it?
Told you.
We got to put a time cap on follow-up.
We'll get to Nintendo even if we have to do it in the after show.
It'll be fine.
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All right, so let's go into the black hole, John.
Yeah.
Why don't you tell us about the ports again?
So this is from Dave W. He...
He's getting down to the sort of philosophical reasoning for why there's, you know, what do I get with one port instead of two?
Why is there one port instead of two?
So on and so forth.
Thus far, I've still not seen any credible practical support for the idea that there is one instead of two.
just lots of plausible theories uh when you know lots of people like what if blah blah blah blah like yeah sure i can play what if all day but if you don't say if if the what if isn't true like then we don't know so even though there's there's a bunch of potentially plausible reasons like
You know, we went over them before PCI express lanes, power concerns, blah, blah, blah.
You got to quantify them.
You got to you got to know that they're actually true, that you're just not saying this is theory.
This could be true.
And then you have to quantify them because if you quantify them, then you can say, oh, well, it does would take more power, but it would take point zero zero zero zero zero one more watts of power.
Then I don't care.
Then it's not a good reason.
Right.
But if it would take double the power, then I do care.
So you have to quantify.
Anyway, this reason gets more philosophical.
Dave W says, I think I can think of two reasons.
Neither are about making this MacBook better.
They're kind of both the same reason, but I'll give them the two.
One, Apple can use customer reaction as a signal on whether it's safe to reduce the number of ports on the rest of their laptops.
So this is sort of like, let's try it with one.
And...
See what the reaction is.
It's a trial balloon.
If it goes over like a lead balloon, then Marcus Brownlee will be right and the next one will have two ports and, you know, lesson learned, right?
And number two, related, those who adjust first to having only one port effectively carve a path that makes it easier for the rest of us to follow.
There's a lot of things about the carving the path.
It's like you get used to it, you get acclimated to it on a small thing that the industry of adapters and everything can be built up around that.
So then it's safer to go to the other models.
The idea that it's a transition point to try to go to, you know, zero ports or go to one port everywhere.
All of this sort of accepts as a premise that one port is the way to go.
And then just explains how Apple would be using us as a strategy to get to one port.
i don't think it answers the essential question from a consumer's perspective of like what am i getting with one that i wouldn't be getting with two so that is still an open question i will re-emphasize that does not mean i think there is not an answer i think there very well could be an answer but
the answer would have to be something in the form of here is a technical reason or whatever this couldn't be done not just there could be a technical reason like this yeah there could be but we're not you know what i mean i'm not it's not interesting to me to hear people speculate about how much power they think it would have taken to add a second port if they have no idea how much power would have added to take a second port if any uh
so we may never know uh we uh we'll have to wait till the next version of this thing comes out if it still has one port uh it shows that it didn't matter enough for apple to care that it only had one um and related to that uh i've got i have a whole section about this down there i didn't realize how long this goes sorry guys
uh yeah yeah yeah related to the idea so i'll see you next week yeah related to the idea that the case design dictates this that they really wanted to have this case casey came up with this fittingly based on his name that they really wanted to have this case have you ever had that that particular uh pun based on your name in your life what caseless about about a computer case no
There's a first time for everything.
Yeah, well, people who have names and get teased about them, it's like, oh, it's the first time I heard that one.
Well, you know, you've gone through 30-something years of life, and no one has ever compared your first name to a computer case until now.
Yep, that's true.
This is what I say every single time somebody says Marco Polo.
Yeah, I see Marco has heard that one before.
I'll have to think of some novel way to...
uh compare marco's name to something but but not today damn yeah so casey's thing was they just wanted this they just wanted this case and i was then i started uh considering the notion is that the way that anyone would design anything that you just come up with the case and you just say okay now you just whatever you can fit inside that go go for it uh and we got a lot of uh armchair speculation about that from uh
listeners and from us on the show saying i was saying that regardless of whether this is how apple designs things it's a bad way to design things because it doesn't make any sense to me and realistically speaking it's an impossible way to design things because you know why isn't the macbook as thin as a piece of paper well that's the case i want to have
There are practical considerations that the people designing the case know.
They know it can't be as thin as a piece of paper because they know, at minimum, there's some certain thickness for the CPU.
You can't make the CPU the thickness of a sheet of paper right now.
They know that.
And, you know, they're not engineers, but they know.
Everyone knows, like, okay, there's going to be a CPU in this.
The CPU can't be a thickness of a piece of paper.
So I'm not going to say this is the case.
The case is always defined by what's inside it because the people designing it know the limitations, roughly, of the stuff that's inside it.
But you can say, yeah, within the bounds that they just assign the outside and then the inside comes after.
Well, I don't think we need to speculate about what actually goes on inside Apple, because Johnny Ive in a video interview with Vanity Fair at six minutes and 38 second in is asked or is this a question, I guess.
the interviewer asked so when you started off you were designing the outsides of machines almost exclusively uh and again i would encourage people to read that johnny ive book uh that we will put a link to in the show notes uh that it goes over his history in the company and how kind of he would back in the bad old days he would kind of get a completed machine and he was asked to sort of put a nice looking thing around the box right uh and that's not the way he liked to work work so johnny's answer is
uh yes that this in the bad old days this was how it was going yes but i think if you're going to do a good job you can't just impose an outside on something you know you have to have a bigger idea and that always meant that you're involved in designing the layout and the internal architecture with the engineers it's one of the things i really love i really love doing a lot so there it is from the horse's mouth he is not just designing the outside he's designing the outside of the inside together because that's the better way to design things that's what he loves doing period end of story
all right are we done with the follow-up yet oh no we have a humongous section on naysayer notions so this just looks big you should go oh my god this is you should open up all these links in tabs i think we'll breeze through this because it's really just a lot of my screen's not big enough a lot of links and just open a new window and just put all the tabs lined up in it i'm at my window limit not so three um
um so these are all the various the various naysayers about the the idea that uh we're gonna call like macbook fatalism or sort of like uh hardware design fatalism that the way it is the way things are is the only way they could ever have been because that is the way they are like is a tautological fatalistic notion that apple has done something therefore the only way apple could have done something is the way apple did something because that's the way apple did it
That just goes around and around in circles, a snake eating its tail, and people love it.
They just cannot resist the notion that it is absolutely positively impossible to make this machine with two USB-C ports without some massive compromise that would destroy the machine, either spiritually, physically, or both.
Right?
one idea was related to the taper uh that if you made and mark we even said in the show if you made this machine either untapered or less tapered that there would not be distinguishable from the 13 inch macbook pro and even though i directly addressed that on the past show uh at least i gave my opinion on it people acted like they didn't hear me or at least acting like they disagree i actually sent someone a mock-up of like the side view of the thing and saying
I just drew a straight line where there was a taper, and then I colored in the triangle, and it was like, put computer here.
Like, this black triangle that I have drawn, that's the place that does not currently have computer.
Put computer there.
And I think that machine, if you put it next to a side view of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, it is still clearly distinguishable, even if you entirely eliminate the taper.
Oh, yeah.
No, I mean, I wasn't saying it was going to be exactly the same, but...
You know, the difference would be a lot smaller.
It would still be noticeably smaller because it's a smaller screen.
Right.
And you could just taper it less.
Like what I was getting at is like, even if you just taper it a little bit less, you like the battery savings are tremendous because there is so little battery in there that even just a couple of degrees of, you know, a fraction of a degree of untapering gives you potentially a large percentage more battery.
Yeah, but then that would push it over the magical two-pound mark, too.
Even if it was only a little bit, even if it was 2.1 pounds, you know, that's still... There's nothing magical about two pounds.
2.01 pounds, 2.02, 2.03.
Again, you have to quantify it.
How much more does it weigh?
Could a person, given these two things, be able to tell the difference in weight blindfolded between 2.012 and 2... You know, like, it's nice for marketing materials that it's exactly two on the nose.
Who knows if it even is?
It's like a displacement in engines, you know?
Well, just, you know, it's close enough, right?
I don't even know if it is exactly two pounds on the nose.
uh it's like again you have to quantify because people are willing to say like if you make this thing one gram heavier the whole machine is ruined if you make it one millimeter longer in any dimension that's it it's just it's johnny ive will cry because he wanted that particular case and now you've ruined it because it is perfect
and if you make and the best thing about it is like in the whole parallel mirror universe thing where you have a million different universes where they make a million different decisions and you actually do introduce this machine with variations of fractions of a pound and fractions of a millimeter everyone in those universals would be like this is the only way it could have possibly been and if i saw a machine that was different in any dimension or in any weight measured by a tiny amount i would know that it is different when you wouldn't you would just accept whatever machine they put out and you would say that's the machine and anyway i get frustrated
Really?
Yeah.
So a lot of people, you know, here's the people who are quote unquote on my side, kept coming in with these examples of existing PC machines that supposedly demonstrate everything that I'm frustrated about.
And there's a whole bunch of stories about this.
There's one on the verge about the Asus Zen books, beautifully named capital U, capital X 305.
Great product name there, Asus.
I believe it's pronounced asses.
I believe it's not.
uh that is thinner than the new macbook and never and of course has multiple ports as everything else does what is that it says an sd card reader uh headphone jack three usb uh ports not type c full size three full size usb ports micro hdmi and it's thinner than this new one people like oh see that shows apple could have made it uh smaller but those people weren't paying attention to the specs because this machine is an inch wider an inch deeper and a half a pound heavier and those are quantifiable
an inch is not a couple of millimeters an inch wider an inch deeper i don't know how to talk about these dimensions when i say that people think it's like an inch thick i guess you know what i mean right it is it is thinner when you lay it down than the macbook but it is much bigger in the other dimensions and it's half a pound heavier and i think a half a pound you could probably uh tell that it's not just like 2.0 versus 2.1 pounds right it's also by the way half the price of the macbook so all this is showing is that another machine was made with different trade-offs um
if the new macbook was the same dimensions and weight as this uh in that mirror universe i think people would be fine with it uh but now that you can see them side by side clearly the apple one is giving you a a trade-off that i think people would find more attractive uh for double the price i guess then there's lenovo yoga yoga pro 3 i guess it's better because it doesn't have a bunch of alphanumerics in the name but yoga you name your computer yoga
i don't i don't like that i don't like that this is the one that had the misleading ad right yeah so that's we should put a link to this you know it's first of all they're they are it's really bad they are touting the fact that they're thinner and they put they put the computer the side view of the computers next to each other and just use different scales for them like like like wildly different scales
yeah like they are they are a few millimeters thinner but again because humans can't perceive a few millimeters like if you if you drew an accurate picture people would be like those look like the same thickness because nobody can tell when it's a few millimeters off except for of course the people who think that the entire macbook would be ruined if it was a few millimeters different in any dimension anyway yeah they they totally cheated on the ad but it is thinner slightly uh it's bigger in the other two dimensions uh it has full size usb it's a half pound heavier blah blah blah noticing a trend here right and
So all this goes to say that all the people finding the other machines that seem to be better than the MacBook and all things, they're just shifting around the internal components.
This doesn't say anything one way or the other about whether Apple could have within the same case or within a case that is imperceptibly different.
uh done two usb ports i remain convinced that apple could have put two usb ports on this without a perceptible loss of anything to anybody uh but these computers are don't say anything pro or con to that argument i think they are interesting though to see what other people are doing with similar chipsets both in terms of price battery life uh
and the other type of limitations the most fun one is what is this one here the who sent this in uh someone named ken sent in a microsoft windows 8.1 pc the size of a dongle so it's something about they show a little lipstick container next to it it's about the size of like one of those streaming sticks right and it has more ports than the mac pro it's about the size of lipstick and what does it have on it it looks like it has full-size usb micro hdmi uh
uh micro sd port hdmi and usb uh yeah that is probably the most embarrassing but again that's not a full-fledged computer it doesn't have a keyboard blah blah blah blah it's just funny uh the other limit that we did we talk about the 8 gig ram limit i think briefly yeah yeah that you can't get it with 16 that i'm actually more willing to i so ram chips take up room you can't put more ram on their uh
Like, you can't say, well, I'll just shrink the other RAM.
I mean, I'm assuming they're fabbing the RAM at the same size as everybody else, and that it would not be economical to try to press the process.
And usually RAM is one of the best process sizes anyway because it's really easy to make because it's very regular.
So you would need more space for the RAM.
Also battery power.
Yeah, and a little bit of battery power.
Like, I think we're all well aware of the trade-offs of more RAM on portable devices, which is, you know, we're always complaining about it with iOS devices.
But the tricky bit here is like, we're not saying that they should all have 16, merely that 16 should be an option somewhere.
And historically, once Apple started soldering the RAM to the boards, it has not been good about giving out.
Has it ever given a BTO option for a laptop with RAM soldered to the board?
Yeah, the whole 15 inch line.
I thought they all came with 16 now, and that's it.
When I bought mine, the first gen, it was an option.
I got eight.
I got the base model, but 16 was available.
Yeah, and for Aaron's MacBook Air that I'm talking to you on right now, the only thing that made it a BTO was that I made it have eight gigs of RAM instead of four.
yeah so it's always nice to have that other one and in practice like even though only nerds know that like oh more ram needs more power and everything like that a a lot of people are willing to take that trade off and b if you asked anybody to measure that trade off it's actually probably pretty hard to measure like you would have to come up with some sort of you know i don't know like measuring energy usage is a pain which i know from my extensive attempts to try to test mavericks battery usage
there's just so many variables like what what is representative usage for you how can you prove that the 8 versus the 16 how could you show a measurable difference or is it just like within the margin of error of your energy testing thing like would you notice it in real life but regardless it's nice to have choices but it's better for apple to have one skew although then they made it in colors but anyway to have one board right to have one board inside all these machines it's a nice simplification 8 is a little bit
We were talking about the limitations of the machine.
The RAM limit is the one you can't get around as easily.
I mean, if you're really pressed, you can attach external storage.
And for CPU stuff, you can just wait longer.
But RAM is just this unfixable... And it's fine for most people.
But if you know you need more RAM than that, and you'd really love to use this machine, then you'd be willing to say...
charge me more money use more of my battery it's more important for me to have 16 gigs of ram so i can do task x on the road with a super light macbook this is not the product for you i think it's not the worst ram choice they've made i think having putting keeping one gig in the ios devices for so long was more painful than this just because of all the safari tabs going away every time you switch to another app
it also burned me by my ram star machine burned me playing alto which by the way is a great game we should link in the show notes because i would leave the game i would leave the game paused uh and then like i don't know if i would just close the lid and then i would open back up again and the game is gone i sometimes i forget that like if i switch away for a second to read twitter i
Alto is out of memory, and if I was in the middle of a run, I'm screwed now.
So I think the iOS devices have been more RAM-starved than Macs lately.
Macs have been getting better, in particular, when they went to 16 across the board on the MacBook Pro line.
It was like, thank God.
Reflect the fact that it's a Pro.
So I think 8GB is the right choice for the bottom of the line here.
It's just a shame that it doesn't go up higher.
Well, for whatever it's worth, to be fair to this computer, I just verified all of the MacBook Airs currently ship with four stock and max out at eight.
You can BTO all of them.
They max out at eight.
So this thing as a replacement to the MacBook Air to come stock with eight is pretty good, first of all.
It's not very forward-looking, though.
That's an old machine.
It's like at the end of its life.
It's like the last model year of a car before it goes through the generational revision.
I give the MacBook Air as a pass.
Because they're the older machine.
This is the new one.
It should be built for the future.
Well, they were just updated, though.
They all just got a minor update.
So anyway, as this thing basically sitting pretty close to the bottom of the lineup, I don't think it's that unreasonable for it to have 8 gigs of RAM stock.
I mean, 8 gigs of RAM stock at this price, I think, is good.
And maxing out at 8 just matches it up to the other MacBook Airs.
And so I think...
I think the goal here was probably to minimize SKUs and board space.
And so I'm sure they'll switch to 16 gigs once whatever mainstream RAM process, basically once the DRAM chips double in size that they're using.
Once that becomes reasonably available for a good price, I bet that's when they'll do it.
I wouldn't be too concerned about that.
And I think...
you know seeing the rest of the lineup i'm actually very pleasantly surprised that they all come with with a minimum of eight gigs i think that's great what is the mac for the big tube mac pro come with isn't it some ridiculous minimum like 12 or something 12 yeah you're right that is weird yeah it was three dims apple's always been really weird but yeah this this is fine like far more people would find a practical use for a second usb port than care about having more ram so it's just something to note i
Mostly because, like, you know, the other comparable machines, all this one is thinner and it goes up to 16 and all that other business, whatever.
Yeah, I mean, and I, you know, again, on this machine, though, you know, we're all looking at it as geeks because we all want this to be good for us because it's new and shiny and really impressive in a few, you know, physical ways.
So we're all looking at this like...
getting mad at it, you know, almost like getting mad at the Apple Watch Edition for not being made for us and not being priced for us.
You know, we're looking at this MacBook and saying, man, why do they only have one port?
R, big rigs.
Why is there only eight gigs of RAM here?
Big rigs.
But the fact is,
It's a low-spec laptop made for other priorities, and it's really tiny.
Like, I can't think of anything I would do on this machine that would need more than 8 gigs of RAM, because if I'm doing stuff like that, I need more screen space.
Buy a lot, not buy a little.
I need a lot more screen space.
Yeah, but some people get by with that much screen space.
Like, we all have the things that annoy us.
Like, the port is the most annoying one for me, because I don't see the reasoning behind it.
The 8.16, like...
The economics and the power draw and the placement of this machine is a low-end machine, but I don't think a second USB port is a high-end feature.
That's the one that I think is the most needless, the most sort of arbitrary as far as we know.
There's no good reason to support it.
It's just what they want to do.
uh whereas the eight gigs of ram we can all think of much you know lots of good reasons for it and the screen size like that may annoy you because you have trouble working in a small but you see why the screen is small because that's how big the laptop is like that there's a direct correlation there so i this is low on my list it's just i thought it was worth worth discussing in the context of apple's history of uh of ram limits and bringing up the four gigs on the air is great because that's that shows how far they've come if this thing had come up with four we would be screaming about it way more than the port situation i think
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all right uh we're getting there final sponsor still in follow-up yeah uh magsafe and usbc and tripability we talked about this before the machine came out but not so much afterwards uh and luckily we don't have to do the hard work because was this glenn fleishman i think uh in mac world yep tried to figure out again in in the grand tradition of uh all of us commenting on things we've never seen or touched uh and try to figure out yeah yeah
how this new macbook will behave if you trip over the cord versus how magsafe behaves with all sorts of perhaps questionable physics he did uh involve dr drang in this discussion but predictably dr drang had complaints about how the information was conveyed after the fact anyway we'll put the link in the show notes he tried to use coefficients of friction and physics and forces to figure out what will happen when you trip over the cord of your usbc connected new macbook
um i don't know what will happen i i remember when we first discussed this i was totally willing to believe that because the connector is so tiny it might have similar performance characteristics to mag safe depending on the angle uh that the thing is pulled and the uh apparently the thing that matters the most is how quickly the force is applied not so much the direction uh
Anyway, read the story.
We'll all find out once we get these things and our kids and significant others start tripping over them.
Yeah, I mean, the problem is, you know, if you look at both Glenn and Dr. Drank's analyses of this, you know, they have to make some estimations here and there and, you know, some ballparks here and there because we just don't have certain information.
But it basically looks like there's a very, very good chance of it being able to be pulled off a table with enough force or enough speed of tripping over that cable with so much leeway that it's pretty clear that even if their assumptions are not that accurate –
there's so much leeway in the number that like, yeah, pretty much like you don't want to have this thing plugged in with the cable draped across something where people are going to be walking.
Like again, if this is, this is yet another thing.
If, if that's important to you, this machine is not right for you or you need to get some kind of extension cord.
like magsafe could go away entirely and apple could just say again like i was saying like they didn't make a big deal out of this by saying we thought magsafe was a good idea but it turns out it's not a big deal they just didn't mention it and if this turns out not to be a problem i can see them ditching magsafe and all their other machines too just because they're gonna get thinner too and magsafe is pretty big and magsafe 2 was worse than magsafe 1 partially we assume because it got smaller and didn't you know what i mean like it didn't quite work as well and people complain about magsafe uh
not being not staying connected enough like they use it on their couch and they switch to magsafe 2 and it was always coming disconnected and it was annoying them like it seems like the problem is in the other direction so now maybe this is a solution for those people to say well you were annoyed by magsafe 2 constantly coming disconnected when you didn't want it to and no one's tripping over it well this will solve that problem for you uh and
Yeah, I think the interesting thing about their analysis was they were taking force numbers from the USB spec because the USB spec says how much what the min and max forces for plugging and unplugging is a pretty wide range there.
But it's interesting that, you know, they could get as far as they could with the analysis without actually having machines to trip over.
um and peter wagenet or wagonette or something like that uh tweeted uh that no mag safe on the new macbooks means apple doesn't expect to use it use it plugged in no one complains about no mag safe on the ipad this is the idea that with this all day battery life and so on and so forth you don't use it plugged in you when you're using it it's not plugged in and like your ipad when you're or your phone when you're not using it you plug it in
uh unfortunately i have seen a lot of people including my children much to my chagrin use ios devices while plugged in uh this is a no-no in terms of cable life although i still maintain my unbroken record of never having destroyed a lightning cable or never having i broke mine this week or last week i lost my first one i'm so upset you lost it as in damaged it to the point it doesn't work
Yeah.
I mean, it was the one I'm using in an elevation dock.
So it has like this bracket that like it like turns it on a right angle.
So like I'm not surprised it's that one, but I'm still annoyed.
Yeah.
So but I do see people.
Have you seen this?
Have you done it yourself?
Used an iOS device while plugged in?
i do yeah my my uh my kid's ipad which is also the first ios device i've ever had that has a cracked screen um that uh is frequently being used while plugged in because um you know a lot of times kids especially when they're not even three don't remember to plug their ipads in all the time when they need to uh so sometimes it it's desired to be used at a time when it's not fully charged yeah
My son has, uh, Marco's, his range anxiety for, uh, for his iPad because he, he watches YouTube videos.
I used to play Minecraft.
I've been watching YouTube videos and like, he's never really in danger of running out of battery, even on this, you know, it's an original iPad two.
Right.
But,
if if the battery looks a little bit low he just like it just makes him feel safer to just use it plugged in all the time which is terrible because he's constantly kinking the cord and moving around and i'm like you're at 100 you've been at 100 for 20 minutes unplug the thing you can go to another place you don't have to be sitting next to the cord anyway um the idea that the new macbook that that's the model they're going with there is like you don't use it when it's plugged in and then serenity colwell replied to that same uh thread she says well if the macbook had 12 to 15 hours of battery maybe but nine is right on the edge for me so
you know can you use it like an ipad ipad has a comfortable 10 and i think people are less likely to just sit in front of an ipad for an entire working day and you not go accept it i guess um anyway we'll see if if that is the new use case and if they can stretch out the battery to the point where people stop feeling like they need to have it plugged in while they're using it they just use it and it's not plugged in and then close it up put it someplace else plug it in when you're not using it that could make the mag safe issue moot as well
Yeah, but I totally agree with Serenity that all these new Apple laptops, you can tell.
Jason Snell had that post a couple months back that Apple was solving for a certain battery life with the iPads and with the iPhones.
And you could see, especially with the iPads, it's very clear that Apple takes whatever gains they get with advancements in battery technology or more efficient components.
Any gains they get in battery life that could be used to make something with much longer battery life
They usually apply instead to keep the same battery life, but with less physical battery.
And then you can make the whole thing thinner and lighter.
Did you just attribute that to Jason Snell?
He wrote the article about it, right?
We talked about it like a year ago.
Well, yeah, but he wrote an article about it and he had pretty graphs.
Come on.
I know just because he wrote it down.
You attribute your own idea to Jason because he wrote about it.
Not that I'm saying, yeah, Jason's right.
We agree with him, but I think it was you or us.
We talked about this like a year before he wrote that, but because he wrote it down in a blog post, our podcast discussions don't count, and now this is Jason's idea.
I'm sure if we said it a year ago, I'm sure we weren't the first people to say it even then.
I know, but of all the people to attribute to, attribute to yourself, you...
never mind doesn't matter who said it but um you know i i think if you look across apple's lineup like this is this is one of those areas where like i think they have calculated that a little bit wrong i like i would love to have 25 more battery life across the line 30 like 40 something like um the six plus kind of does that but i think i think it does that almost accidentally um in the laptops um
they're all within the same pretty narrow range, or lower, like the 11 inch is actually lower.
But they're all within this 9 to 11 hour range that's all pretty close.
And the problem is those numbers are wildly variable based on what you're doing with it.
If you're doing something that stresses the CPU more than average, that number could drop by half.
There isn't necessarily enough leeway for a lot of people in these numbers to be running untethered to things all day.
And if that was how you're intended to use this laptop all the time, personally, I would want a longer battery life on it.
I would want more like 15 hours.
Yeah, and Marco, you have just recently done the thing that I've seen done many other places, which is somehow arranged to have an Apple power connector snaking out of the cushions in your couch.
Yes.
And why would you do that?
Because you find yourself using Apple devices, and you have range anxiety as well.
You just feel more comfortable being able to plug them in, to have it on your lap, and to plug them in, sit on your couch and do it.
And really, that's the kind of usage where MagSafe comes in handy.
Because in the office...
if people are sitting at their desk with their laptop plugged in, like the cords are, you know, down behind, like they're not in a trippable location, but in people's houses, when they're using them on their couches, that's when things get tripped over.
And it's like, why are you having it plugged in when you use it on your couch?
Well, you feel like I just always keep it next to the couch and it's a pain to plug it and unplug it.
And sometimes I'm near the end of the battery, but I don't want to stop what I'm doing, whether it's watching a movie or playing a game or even just web browsing.
So I just...
It's nice to have it on your lap and have it plugged in, right?
And so then eventually you end up snaking the little Apple power cord up between the cushions in your couch and it's convenient, right?
And I think it's going to be very difficult.
You're going to have to have a hell of a battery to stop people from doing that.
And nine hours is comfortably below that limit where I think you feel like you have to go to like 24 hours or something.
And even then, the problem is if people don't pay attention,
like if they forget to charge it overnight they come in the next morning they're like oh well it's not like i'm not going to use my computer let me just plug it in while i use it yeah exactly yeah we definitely have one of those cords snaked between our couch as well it's a good idea it's a it's a it's a thing no i've seen it over many years i've resisted doing it mostly because i stick to ios devices on the couch and so far i've been able to keep that policy but if someone like we have oh no our cord is an ios cord it's a lightning cable yeah same here
So you're using, like, iPads plugged in?
Usually iPhones, but sometimes iPads.
Same here.
iPhones.
See, you're using the iPhones plugged in.
So iPhone, like I said, I have my battery life on my 6.
I mean, it's a new phone.
And so far, I have not ever had to use it plugged in.
Occasionally, my iPad upstairs, I'm in a big alto session, and I notice I'm getting a little low on battery.
I get nervous, but I don't like using it plugged in.
um speaking of plugging things in one of the other this should have been the naysayer section the idea that like well if they had two usbc ports what are you going to do have one that you can charge through and one that you can't that's confusing there's people who have two minds in this some people said having one port that you can charge from one that you can't is too confusing it's a non-starter and other people said you can't have two ports that you can charge from because it's confusing i'm not sure what would be confusing that people wouldn't know which port they're like if it works in both they don't have to know but somehow they'd be concerned that they were plugging in the wrong one
And a lot of people said it's just impossible.
You can't have something that charges from both ports because it's electrically impossible or because whatever.
So the Chromebook Pixel actually has two USB-C ports and it can charge from both of them.
So it is not electrically impossible if you thought that was the case.
Here's a product that shows that it's not.
I assume this machine does not immediately burst into flames if you plug in the charger into both sides.
We have this amazing technology that they can sense when things are plugged in.
we have the technology we can make something with two USB-C charging ports.
Can you make it with four or six?
I believe we can.
We sent a man to the moon.
I believe we can make a computer with six USB charging ports.
Oh, wow.
Whether or not that becomes more complicated to some degree that precludes it, I don't know.
But anyway, there is one that charges from two.
If you think charging from two is more confusing than charging from only one, I don't know.
I don't know what the right call is.
I think either one would probably be fine.
But if you're going to have two identical looking ports...
and you're not going to make one clearly the charging port, you should just make it charge from either port.
And I think we can do that.
Well, I don't think we have time for anything else this week, except for all this follow-up.
No, we're almost there.
We're almost there.
There's like two more items.
We're going to do it.
Okay, go for it.
Mirror display only.
I put a question mark because I didn't check that.
Is that the case?
You can't do extended display.
You can only mirror the display?
Doesn't sound right.
I was thinking about a desk at work.
If I'm forced to get a laptop to replace my current Mac Pro at work,
I would actually choose to do it mirrored just so my windows wouldn't move every time I plugged and unplugged.
Oh, my God.
I think you are the only human who would ever say that.
Because I only like one screen.
I would only ever look at like the main screen.
Right.
And what I would do is get a 15 inch and set it to the max like FACO resolution and just have it be the same on my 24 inch monitor.
Anyway, you are insane, sir.
I don't know if that's the case.
We'll leave a question mark.
facetime camera downgraded from 720p to 480p i put a question mark after that but i think it's true right uh two things first of all the real-time follow-up uh nobody underscore in the chat room uh is quoting the macbook specs page and it's right there on the specs page just does support uh display spanning and mirroring so that's not a problem and then secondly um who cares about the resolution of the front camera it's this is one of those like megapixel race things where the resolution has never mattered and
Well, 480 is pushing it, don't you think?
No, it's it goes from a crappy camera with more pixels to a crappy camera with less pixels.
Either way, you're getting crappy images.
It's not made for quality.
It's made for like just barely being good enough to do FaceTime.
That's all it's for.
Casey needs to say his beautiful baby's face in HD.
Sure.
And so do I, for that matter.
Everybody does.
What Marco said is probably true about the light-gathering ability of those pixels.
I don't think it's a big deal.
I think... I assume it was kind of mostly there for cost savings, but I don't think... I don't know.
480, I think, is the type of thing I would notice.
480 versus 720, I think I would notice that, but...
It's just kind of a shame.
You know it's going to be 720 in a revision or two.
I'm going to pull a Marcus Brownlee here and say, guaranteed, two or three revisions from now, that camera will not be 480.
Quote me.
Oh, it's very possible.
Yeah, I'm just saying it probably isn't that big of a deal.
So this will be just like the one year that it came with a 480.
Anyway, not a big deal, but something to keep in mind if you really care about having HD pictures while you...
whatever like just use your phone it's got a higher definition camera to do facetime stuff uh i'm gonna skip the three finger drag thing thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week uh i can't even read them hold on yeah i can fit one more item in while you search ah fracture igloo and squarespace and we will see you next week haha i beat you oh
Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental Oh it was accidental And you can find the show notes At atp.fm
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-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
It's accidental.
It's accidental.
Dude, we have got to put a time limit on follow up.
Yeah, I like this is ridiculous.
Like, so let's save it by talking Nintendo.
But this is a topic, too.
I mean, like, I think just because we talked about it on the previous show, which makes it follow up on this show, doesn't make it any less of a topic than it was last week.
You know what I mean?
It's still the same subject.
yeah yeah and i also blame marco for going to england and delaying the show because we would not have had this much follow-up if we had recorded on wednesday we would have had two days less believe me it would have been pretty similar yeah yeah i don't know i i think i think that's an it's an interesting machine with a lot of interesting compromises and it's worth talking about oh yeah i agree so now let's talk about something potentially uplifting and let's get uh our nintendo chat out of the way real quick because that'll totally be quick are you serious
Oh, actually, no, no, no.
What about the 6 Plus?
You want to talk about that?
That'll be a topic and it'll be quickish.
So I went on this trip and I brought with me a 6 Plus to do the local SIM card thing because my 6 Plus is unlocked because I bought it for developer testing.
Let me stop you there.
Where did you get your local SIM?
Because I've never done this and I'm very intrigued by the whole process.
I had never done it either, but I was tipped off in advance by our friend Daniel Jaka that this was really easy in England.
It varies by country.
Some places it's easier than others.
But in England, you can just go... There's a store in the airport.
I walked out of customs and
While waiting for my ride, there was a store right there that sold Sims.
So I walked in and they did it right there.
I paid £30 for a Sim on the Carrier 3.
And it supports... £30 got me 30 days of unlimited data, some number of local UK minutes that I will never use, and even tethering with all that.
And I asked the guy, I'm like, well, I'm going to Ireland in two weeks.
So, you know, not every sim in England will work in Ireland.
Three is one of the only ones that does.
And I asked, oh, does it work there?
He said, yeah, but there's a limit on the tethering there.
I'm like, oh, 25 gigs.
Well, my God, that's amazing.
Oh, OK.
So don't worry, that won't be a problem.
So, yeah, 30 pounds got me all that.
And some people were saying they got a very similar plan for 15 pounds somewhere else.
So that might have even been overpriced.
I would absolutely pay 30 pounds for that.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
I mean, and that's like even after the exchange rate, that is that is cheaper than what I pay per month for AT&T in my home plan.
And it comes with unlimited data.
I mean, it's like that's a better plan that I have at home for less money.
So I did that, you know, and the guy, I brought my phone, the guy popped it in right there.
And even though I did bring my own SIM removal tool, which is a paperclip because I don't have the official one.
Do they not have paperclips in England along with no top sheets?
I didn't want to presume that they would have paperclips.
So I brought my own paperclip in my carry-on bag.
So yeah, so I brought the 6 Plus as my unlocked phone and normally I just pay AT&T the 30 bucks for the 120 megs of data and I'm just afraid to use it ever for the whole trip.
So it ends up I pay 30 bucks to not have data for the whole trip or I accidentally use it and launch Instagram once and then I've blown the cap and pay another 30 bucks every 100 megs.
It's annoying.
So anyway, this is the first trip where I did this, and it was great.
It was fantastic to just not have to think about it.
I have an iPhone like I always have an iPhone.
I can just use it whenever I want, and it's fine.
I'll fit within whatever limit there is.
It's just by my normal usage, and I can download stuff if I want to.
I can tether if I want to.
It was great.
So...
Definitely recommend doing this if you have any unlocked phones.
I also, in advance, just in case I unlocked my old AT&T 5S, which you can do, AT&T now has a thing, you can do it online.
It takes like five minutes.
You can just fill out a form online and it sends it to them to review.
And then like two minutes later, they approve it and that's it.
So that was great.
And I spent the whole week using the 6 Plus.
Did you download season five of Mad Men while you were asleep?
You could have done that with 25 gigs.
It would have been, well, it would have been close.
No, it was unlimited in the UK.
I'm limited for two weeks from now when I go back.
So tethering was great.
Using it as data was great.
And using the 6 Plus, it felt really, really weird and huge for about the first half a day.
And then I just forgot about it.
And it just felt normal.
and you know there were times where it felt large in my pocket here and there but for the most part like you know like when i first got the six plus like for for my testing and everything when it came out you know that was when when we were all coming from the five the five line of phones and so the six and the six plus both felt really big and i was barely able to really hold on to the six let alone the six plus which just looked ridiculous and
But now, having now used the 6 for so long, going to the 6 Plus from the 6 was not a huge jump.
It didn't feel that ridiculous now that I'm used to the 6.
And once I was using the 6 Plus for half a day, it felt...
fine it felt good and then and i was able to enjoy it to just really you know just enjoy all the screen space as a as a travel device i mean as an everyday device i'm not sure if i would prefer that just because you know it is pretty big in the pocket but as a travel device i loved it because it has way better battery life mine happens to be unlocked so that helps a lot with international stuff
and it's nice to like so and on this trip i didn't bring an ipad at all it's a phablet you had a phablet you didn't need it yeah there was no reason to bring an ipad and so i had this little phone and like hey you know this is this is how i cut down the weight of my laptop in my bag i stopped bringing an ipad
saved a pound and a half right there so now i have a 15 inch laptop and no i've had and then i'm having carrying around the same size bag as all these people with their macbook airs and their 10 different devices uh so i i think the six plus is great uh i like so i came home yesterday and uh and switched back to my six for on at&t now and
And now the 6 feels tiny.
It actually feels noticeably small.
And I miss the screen space.
And I might actually switch back at some point.
I'm not sure yet.
Certainly I'll switch back when I go to Ireland in two weeks.
But I get the 6 Plus now.
I gave it the chance.
Now I understand it.
I get it.
I get why people like it.
I like it.
I'm not sure if I like it enough to use it full time or to get another one next year.
I don't know about that.
But
I get it now, and I think all of us who were saying that it was completely ridiculous and couldn't understand who would buy it, I think, you know, give it a try sometime.
And it's really, I totally get it now, and I might convert at some point.
We'll see.
I hope my grandkids find this episode so they can laugh at us all about the idea that you have to decide on a certain set of differently sized pieces of glass to bring with you.
So I've got the really small one, which is my phone, and then I've got the iPad, and then I've got the laptop, which has the keyboard, and you're shuffling around.
Well, if we can make this piece of glass a little bit bigger, then I can get rid of that piece of glass because this now fills the gap or whatever.
And they'll have every image being displayed on the back of their retinas by tiny nanomachines or something.
And it'll be like, remember when they had to pick different pieces of glass and pack them in their suitcases?
What jerks?
No, I mean, really, it is a really good device.
And like, I mean, it totally eliminated any desire I had for an iPad while I was there.
I mean, I'm obviously, you know, I said when I bought this last iPad that I was experimenting because I had kind of fallen out of iPad usage.
And part of it, I thought, was just because I had like all the worst hardware.
Yeah.
And so I got the best iPad, and to see if that would fix my usage, and it hasn't.
So I don't think I'll be getting any more iPads for a long time.
Now that I see the 6 Plus, I really do respect this device, and it might be the phone for me, because it has more space.
If you're not going to have an iPad, it's a great balance between the two for screen space reasons, and you can't beat the battery life.
And with the Apple, I had the Apple leather case on it, just like I have on the 6, and
And with the Apple Leather case, grip is perfectly fine.
I had no issues with feeling like I was going to drop it at all.
One-handedness was obviously not great.
In my limited usage of it during this few days, it didn't really come up.
It wasn't really a problem.
Once the watch comes out, it'll be even less of a problem because there'll be less need to use it one-handed.
We'll see.
another size piece of glass like it's really like it's this continuum from like from the big piece of glass to the smallest and it's like how many sizes in between do i need can i eliminate a device by having a really really tiny one and then a bigger gap and then a bigger one or like what is the right
number of pieces of glass sizes from small to big and and what you're describing marco is the shuffling of the structure of that internally and now all of a sudden there's going to be a new a new tiny piece of glass coming in you're like that may let me make my other piece of glass bigger because the small one will figure and it's all just about like
How how big is the little light up picture that I'm seeing and how many of those little pictures do I have to carry around with me?
And I think the other aspect of this is that it's not really just a bunch of interchangeable different sized pieces of glass, because to a degree that we're that is still slightly uncomfortable.
These are separate devices.
And yes, iCloud.
And yes, you know, the Web and email and Twitter and things being and, you know, all that business.
that tries to make them feel kind of like the same thing but they're not like that it's not synchronized to the degree where you're like this is just a differently sized window into one into my world digital crap a lot of it's like that but maybe a game is installed here and not there well maybe you can't play a game here not there maybe this thing has an app that that thing doesn't maybe if i edit a document over here i gotta wait for it to sync over there maybe from the middle you know with handoff in between them and then the gap between ipad and phone and the gap between the ios devices and the mac or
We just need to fast forward like 300 years because I can see where this is going and we're not quite there yet and also frustrating.
All I know is Mike Hurley is going to be intolerable after hearing this.
Oh, I know.
Well, because I'm connected.
Does Stephen have one too?
Stephen, you're in the chat.
Do you have one too?
I know Federico has been trying a 6 Plus.
Mike has had one since it came out.
And Mike's been telling them all, oh, the 6 Plus is the best and they all didn't believe him.
And now Federico is basically converted.
Steven?
Yeah, he did too.
So, Steven, you converted too?
I think he also said that he respected it and appreciated it.
Just watch what's going to happen when the watch comes, because that's going to screw up everybody's lineup of little glass squares.
Or rectangles, really.
Real-time follow-up, Steven Hackett said he had a loaner, but he will be going for the larger phone the next time.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is the year of all of us realizing that the big screen stuff is good.
I got my... Oh, and this was yet another trip.
Again, last, like...
Last week, I'm saying, oh, well, you know, maybe I'll go with the smaller screen on my next laptop to get a small laptop.
And then I take this trip where I'm working on my slides until the last minute, of course, because I always am.
And I'm like, man, I am so glad I have this big screen.
On the plane on the way home, I'm working on Overcast and Xcode.
I'm like, man, I'm so glad I have this 15-inch laptop.
So...
I think this is the year where I admit to myself that even though the small stuff is all sexy, I actually enjoy using the bigger stuff more.
So you were just saying how there's not so long ago, I think both of you were saying that if Apple made a four inch version of the iPhone, the next version of the iPhone, you might consider getting in instead of the six size.
So you've gone totally not only getting used to the six, but saying, in fact, you'll go possibly in the other direction.
So so the market for it, do you think there's still a market for a smaller size of iPhone or no?
Just based on I mean, for you, obviously not.
You see you're not going to buy one.
But do you think Apple should still make one?
I honestly don't know.
They could they could sell it.
I mean, you know, people would buy it.
Who would buy it?
besides john gruber i don't know would he still buy it like is it could be just like through through sort of indoctrination by forcing everyone in the apple you know everyone who wants a new iphone being forced this is the smallest one you can get just deal with it for a year and then you know like we said it could be that you go back to the old size and it seems ridiculously small to you i still find the six again not so much in the hand but as you said in the pocket just my plain old six
how long have i had it now a couple months yeah in the pocket i still feel like man i remember my other one was not such a hassle in my pocket and usage fine i'm okay with it in the pocket it feels small but of course i have all these ipod touch running around the house and i pick them up and i say
the pocket you know it's worth it to deal with the pocket thing to you know exactly it's always a trade-off right and that's what the six plus like it's a it's a trade-off it is significantly bigger in the pocket it is harder to use one-handed than than the four inch phone i don't necessarily think it's harder to use one-handed than the six
uh i i would say compared to the six it's about the same like i don't i really don't think it's uh harder to use than the six uh and because you know either way like you're not reaching the whole screen either way you're changing your grips in such a way that you got to kind of like have like this wide claw and kind of hover over things like that's fine
When I was going for the trip, I have two unlocked phones now.
I have the 5S and the 6 Plus, and I charged up both, and I have all my stuff on both, and I played with the 5S for a few minutes, and it was just too tiny.
I loved how tiny it felt in my hand, but when I tried to do anything on it,
I loved how I could reach everything, but I felt cramped.
I felt like I had no screen space.
And that was even before I was used to the 6 Plus.
Now that I'm used to the 6 Plus, the 6 almost feels that way.
It's all about what you're used to.
And the 6 Plus does have a better camera, not by a huge amount, but it is better because of the image stabilization.
So it has a better camera and a significantly longer battery life.
Those are pretty big advantages.
So combine that with the screen space advantage and it might be worthwhile to me.
I don't know.
We shouldn't rule things out because of what we're accustomed to.
Because that, you know, it's all relative.
That can all change.
We said only a few months ago that they should really make a smaller phone.
But in reality, once I'm used to the 6 now, the 6 feels fine.
I still think that the physical design of them being these slippery blobs is horrible.
But once I put Apple leather cases on them, they became great.
I'm fine with them now.
Once I put the leather case on, it's fine.
It's great.
I like it a lot.
And same thing.
The watch, I was hoping to go with 38 because I don't like big, chunky watches.
But I think, you know, but then I have a fit issue, but also the 42 millimeter watch will have substantially better battery life.
Apple has said it themselves.
We don't know by how much, but it's going to have better battery life and that's going to matter on first generation smartwatches.
So again,
going a little bit bigger than I would normally be comfortable with, but it's bringing advantages, so it's a trade-off that's worth it.
With the laptops, we think the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro is this big, heavy laptop, but compared to the 15-inch PowerBook I bought when I first converted to Macs in 2004, this thing is light.
It's 4.5 pounds.
That one was almost 6.
So that's a pretty substantial reduction in weight proportionally.
it's much thinner it's way faster of course and has all these different all these better capabilities um we're now saying oh my god this this brand new macbook which is 2.0 pounds is amazing the 11 inch macbook air is 2.26 or something 2.2 something right so like that's it's not that much lighter than the 11 inch macbook air but we're saying oh my god we're willing to give up so much to get this and the other ones now feel really heavy so
It's all relative.
It's all what you're used to.
Making any kind of absolute declaration about something being too big or too small or too heavy or not the right size for you, that can change over time based on what you're used to.
And it can change over shorter time spans than you might expect.
I just want to point out that you were complaining about all this fall, about the MacBook sizing, and then you took the opportunity in the after show to discuss big iPhones, a topic that I believe has been covered more than adequately by the show.
And I'm not complaining.
I am in support of you doing that.
Why?
Just because we've talked about something before doesn't mean there isn't more to say about the topic.
Oh, goodness.
All right, are we done?
Oh, we're never done.
Thanks a lot, everybody.
All right, let's do some titles before we sign off.
Oh, my God.
That was great.
I can do significantly bigger than the pocket.
Caseless.
That's pretty rough.
Yeah, look who submitted that one.
Not to say it's bad, but it's pretty rough.
No, we're not doing list puns as titles.
That's the Syracuse County of Casey.
List puns.
I like going into the black hole.
We are going to do Marco Polo someday when Marco plays Polo.
i don't even know what i know it's like a type of shirt and there's some kind of like stupid sport that it is but i don't i don't even know what the sport you don't know what the polo is this is like the the the ultimate achievement in things that marco doesn't know about or like references you don't get i made a reference to a sport that you don't know
Oh, Marco.
I'm now reading this Wikipedia article on polo.
You're learning what polo is.
Everyone in the chat room knows what polo is, right?
I'm not the only person.
Yeah, it's a rich people sport.
Is it like croquet on horses?
That's what it looks like.
Yeah, basically.
That's stupid.
Why would you do this?
Because rich people, Marco.
I don't understand how you got to this age without knowing what polo is.
it has never occurred to me to even look it up i've never seen polo in real life but i like i know it's a thing that exists it's like highlight oh my god the field is huge well they're horses you can't put them on like a little basketball court you see this combination this uh this diagram of a football field and then a polo field yeah they're horses they're big legs they run god this seems like a ridiculous sport why would anybody do this because you're really rich and you have horses
Why would anybody have horses?
It beats, like, chasing a fox.
I guess, but I don't know.
I mean, you have to start with the idea that it's okay to have horses to just run around on.
That alone is a problem.
It looks really hard, too.
Like, I mean, you gotta swing that big thing while riding.
Riding a horse alone is hard, and then swinging a thing and hitting a ball with the horse looks really hard.
Yeah, horses have terrible suspension, and I don't know.
I mean, like, they're only one horsepower.
Ugh.
Ugh.