Tap-to-Click Wizard
Sometimes people just like to have something to fiddle with their fingers.
What else going on?
Nothing, because we have nothing in the follow up section this week, except for an item we decided we're not talking about this week.
And that's it.
So we actually genuinely have no follow up for real, as confirmed by John Syracuse himself.
We had a long, you know, I was away on vacation and we, you know, we had a weird recording schedule.
What the hell was our last show about?
It was so long ago.
It doesn't really matter.
I don't know.
So, yeah, we should, I guess, talk about Skylake, because that's a thing as of today.
Well, sort of.
I mean, I think the most boring Skylake chips launched today, the ones that go in like iMacs and desktops.
Well, are they the most boring?
I think Intel thinks that they're the most exciting because they are extreme to use the 90s parlance.
Like they're the unlocked, able to be overclocked, like Intel is actually talking about overclocking in them.
You know what I mean?
Like they're the ones, they're sort of the PC enthusiast chips.
Not that there's many of them left, but like maybe they think that's like the only place that is a potentially a growth market.
i don't think they are the most boring ones maybe they're the least relevant to people who buy apple computers because like you said that these are just going to be the ones that go on the imax and the ones that go on the imax aren't going to be overclocked and it's going to be the middle range one with the iris pro graphics and it's like whatever um but i think intel thing because they were released and announced that what is it gamescom what the hell's the name of that conference it doesn't matter
Anyway, a gaming-related thing.
And so they're going to be releasing the chips that would be of interest to people who are building gaming PCs.
And they want to know, I'm building my next gaming PC.
I want to maybe overclock it.
Maybe I want to put two, three, four GPUs, graphics cards inside it and gang them together in some way.
It's really about ethics and overclocking.
oh my god these are exciting what intel thinks are exciting but you're saying they're not exciting because they're not like the ones that are going to go in most of the macs that apple sells which are the laptops and they're not anything that would ever go into mac pro right
No, but it isn't even just that.
I'm saying even for the markets that they are intended for, I think it's an incremental update at best.
What is apparently the big thing with Skylake is a small incremental improvement in performance.
But it's an allegedly substantial improvement in power consumption and battery life.
And so to have these high clock desktop chips come out that are high wattage, high clocks, not meant for laptops, where the power stuff is probably not super tuned in or at least super emphasized, it's interesting, but only on a mild level for a very small number of people.
Like...
It doesn't really matter if the desktop chips get 10% more power efficient.
It doesn't have that big of an effect on them.
Yeah, you can slam against the TDP more and get a little more clock speed out of it, maybe.
But for the most part, the exciting part here is when these come to laptops and...
Because we have heard so many things that Skylake is going to be this major power improvement and everything.
The reality is that matters so much more in laptops.
So if we can actually get 20% more performance in a laptop or 20% more battery life, that's way more impressive.
And that could make a big difference in things like the MacBook 1 or the 11-inch Air where the battery right now is pretty short really for what you need it for.
or it could allow apple to you know obviously i would hope with like the 15 inch line i would hope they would use this new savings to just bank some battery life and bring it up like to 12 hours instead of nine or something like that you know or you know bring it up to six hours of heavy use instead of five or four uh that'd be great in reality what's probably going to happen instead is they're probably going to just redesign the 15 inch uh to make it thinner and lighter and you know
I don't love that they keep doing that, but it's at least interesting and exciting and certainly a lot of people like that.
And so that's where the action is going to be with Skylake is when it comes to the laptops.
In the meantime, as it's sitting here in desktops and not even the Mac Pro, it's just sitting here in high-end, mostly PC desktops and maybe the iMacs.
That just isn't that interesting to me.
So I haven't read too much about these chips and I think not everything has been released because even though they were sort of launched at this game thing, the technical details, according to non tech anyway, are not coming out until Intel's developer forum thing.
Like where they're going to tell you about the guts of the stuff, but this is, this is their, Oh God, what the hell is it?
Talk, right?
The new architecture.
It's the same.
It's not a shrink.
It's still, you know, 14 nanometers.
It's their talk.
It's a new architecture.
Uh,
But what is new and different about that architecture, I don't think we know the details yet officially.
And this thing that we'll link in the show is benchmarking them all like not impressive performance game for the desktop ones.
Some weird things where it's actually like a couple percent slower due to some issue they couldn't work out when using external GPU.
But whatever, like a low single digit percent increase on the stuff that you're doing.
And like Marco said, power savings are not of interest for the desktop things because it's like whatever.
It's a power range of the other chips.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can see how they can get a little bit of savings out here from moving execution units around and having the display, some fixed function hardware in the display chipset so you don't have to send data out through DRAM and back into the GPU.
All sorts of small changes to save power, lower voltage for the memory interfaces and stuff like that.
But I, you know, we don't know, at least I don't know the technical details of the Internet.
So I'm curious to where the big savings are coming from.
I mean, I believe that they're there from, you know, our tipster and other people, you know, speculating about Skylight saying that that is going to be the selling point of this line of chips, that it's going to be, well, who cares?
Not a big deal for desktops, but for laptops, you should see a nice power savings.
I want to know where that power savings comes from, because I think that'll be interesting, especially if it's not it's not like they it's clear that they didn't spend their time working on performance because it's like, well, performance, you know, whatever.
It's basically a wash, maybe a little bit better.
But power savings, boy, that's going to be great.
And we did it without a shrink.
How do we do it?
So I look forward to those details when they are revealed.
Our first sponsor this week is our friends at Cards Against Humanity.
And as usual, they have, instead of a normal ad read, they have asked John to review a toaster.
This week's toaster is the Hamilton Beach 31330 toaster oven.
This is a pretty big toaster.
It is what I would call a four-slice toaster, although, of course, the manufacturer claims that it's a six-slice toaster, but this claim requires the standard miniature bread that they use in the toaster oven box shots, right?
Yeah.
They don't put anything in there for scale.
But honestly, that bread is microscopic.
So anyway, four slices comfortably.
Like Mr. Burns, this toaster has a mighty hump on the back of it.
Those humps, you know, the humps I'm talking about where it's like at some point in the past decade or so, all toasters grew humps of some kind because someone decided that it's great to be able to advertise a toaster oven by showing a picture of a pizza inside it.
And of course, a pizza is not going to fit in a rectangular oven very easily.
But if you put a little rounded hump in the back of it, you get a little extra room to shove your pizza in there and blah, blah, blah.
you know my toaster does not have this john you don't have any hump you sure no it's flat is it pre-hump it's a pre-hump toaster yeah wow so you're pretty old my toaster that you said was inferior to your toaster does not have the hump yeah i i have a small hump most of them have homes anyway this it's made the hump is made to look larger because this toaster is skinnier at the top than at the bottom so honestly like maybe the hump is only a couple inches or maybe it's the same size as the average but it looks huge it really stands out the way this this toaster is shaped
the wire rack is kind of medium gauge the wire rack is not rectangular it's like a rectangle and then there's this extra little thing like a little house poking out the back that goes into the hump section that's how big the hump is that the wire rack is like it's you know it's a rectangle with another thing attached to it sticking out of there um supposedly again the purpose of the hump is to you know accommodate a round pan for something like a pizza but this toaster does not come with a round pan which seems weird that this is such a prominent hump and doesn't actually come with a round pan or a round rack or anything
I love like the promo pictures.
They show a pizza sitting on top of the wire rack of the toaster, just like just on top of the wires, not even in a pan.
I feel like that would be a disaster.
They would have to already be done before it's put in there.
Right.
Yeah.
You cook it and you put if you put a fake pizza made out of wax or whatever they make the food out of, you know, when they take pictures of it so it doesn't melt under the hot lights.
Yeah.
Anyway, it comes with a rectangular pan.
The rectangular pan doesn't quite fill the toaster edge to edge.
I don't know if they did that on purpose to try to allow hot air to come around or whatever, but it seems like kind of a shame.
Plus, there's a little small wire rack that goes in the pan.
The knob situation, this is a three knob toaster.
Top one is for temperature.
But you still need to set it to toast if you want to toast.
Middle one is for function, toast, bake, whatever.
Bottom one is the timer knob.
And this is one more toaster where all three knobs have to be in the right position in order for you to toast.
You've got to make sure the top knob is on toast and you've got to turn the function thing on toast and you've got to turn the bottom knob every single time to a particular angle.
This one on the knob also says, please turn the timer knob past 15 and then back to the time that you want every time.
Gross.
I don't even know if you need to do that because I think it feels like you can just turn it to like, you know, they have a very limited range, like maybe 10 or 15 degrees that constitutes the entire range of toasting.
And you have to turn it in that range.
The knob feels OK.
They don't wiggle or feel loose.
They feel like, you know, solid, but they're pretty darn hard to turn.
They're not very grippy that like actually kind of hard to turn.
Um, and the indicator of like where the knob is pointing is just kind of like a dull pill shaped lump in the shiny, uh, metal or shiny plastic face of the knob.
And the knobs are pretty tall.
So you're trying to line up like sort of a indistinct capsule shaped lump in the metal that's on a knob that's like an inch off the surface.
And you're like way above on an angle.
And you're trying to line up that lump with like the exact unmarked spot in the 10 to 20 degree range that constitutes toasting.
depending on like what angle you're it's it's really not easy to get repeatable stuff and it just doesn't it feels like too much effort like you're turning a little especially if you have to turn past 15 and like force it back not a great experience um it's got four unshielded uh resistive heating elements in it uh which i knew were going to be slower than the the big thicker quartzy looking things um
Four minute, 30 second toast time.
Not great.
At least it's not over five minutes.
But when it does toast, it's pretty even.
One edge was a little bit darker than the other, but it was kind of like a smooth gradient.
I would say it makes acceptable toast.
Takes a little bit too long.
Crumb tray blessedly comes straight out.
So you're much less likely to dump the crumbs back into the toaster when you're trying to remove it.
So a thumbs up on that.
Door feels a little flimsy, but at least it opens all the way and you don't feel like you're breaking it at any point.
The little claws on the door that like when you pull the door out, also pull the tray out a little bit.
This toaster has the same problem as the other ones where it has two different positions for the rack and you're supposed to use the middle or higher position when you're making toast.
but the little claws like we talked about how do you deal with the little claws that pull the tray out when pull the wire rack out when the wire rack can be in two different positions and a couple of the new manufacturers that are clever things that the fancy breville one has like magnets which i think are really cool to pull it out this one just punts on it and says you know what our little claws are only going to pull the tray out when it's in the bottom position when it's in the top position little claws do nothing
Which is kind of lame.
I don't know who made that decision, especially since most of the time you're using it in toast mode, aren't you?
I don't know.
Maybe most of the time people are using it in oven mode.
But anyway, it seems lame.
I have never until now considered the possibility that a toaster oven would have multiple rack heights.
are we supposed to be changing our rack height depending on what we cook because i'd never have does yours have multiple rack heights i have no idea i've never even looked it's pre-hump it could be pre-multiple rack heights maybe so the one that we had until it broke recently and so i am toaster oven lists which is terrible i know a guy who has some extras yeah so i hear um it had a very interesting design it had a wire rack and
that was um kind of in an upside or kind of in a u-shape sort of i mean it was flattened but the way it would work is you would put it in with when it looked like a u and it would be very close to the bottom of the toaster and then if you put it so that it was an upside down u it would bring the rack such that it was about the middle of the toaster don't you listen to my reviews i just reviewed a toaster that had that exact feature a couple weeks ago
Maybe it's the same toaster.
Anyway, yours might have different heights.
I think a lot of people buy these, never look at the manual, and if there's nothing written on the surface of the toaster, they just put the rack wherever they want it to and that's it.
But yeah, in the recent maybe five years, ten years...
most toaster ovens have been coming with racks with either multiple positions uh yeah usually multiple positions because the higher position the position that looks crazy to all of us like when we were growing up the toasters all had their racks way down low on the bottom that's the only place they would go that was that uh now the toaster ovens all seem to have a higher position it looks way too high but that's where they want you to do basically everything except for bake they want you to toast there they want you to broil there only if you're baking you're supposed to bring it down to the bottom this one is no different when you were toasting it wants you to put the rack in sort of the the
midpoint of the oven and only when you're baking you're supposed to put it down on the bottom this seems like a step backwards in toaster oven convenience because the whole point of this thing is like you can put basically anything in a toaster oven and get okay results out of it with very little effort once you're putting in the complexity of multiple rack heights and it's not that complicated like i feel like the toaster oven is used either mostly as an oven and mostly as a toaster so this is kind of a default position and honestly if you just leave it in the high position
it bakes things fine mostly they want you to use the bottom rack because if you're baking something that is tall so that it doesn't get like if you're baking something like maybe even just a big baked potato maybe starts getting too close to the heating elements on top so you want to move it down but i i don't think it's that big of a deal i think it is an improvement because when they were on the bottom it was basically impossible to get even toasting because you're so close to the bottom elements and so far from the top ones that is always you know a crapshoot when they're in the middle it's better
but anyway overall for this toaster i give it a passing grade nothing on it is terrible nothing on it is particularly great but it is certainly better than some of the really really bad toasters that we reviewed recently and it's 50 bucks ish so it feels quality wise like a 50 toaster but uh yeah it just barely gets passing grade i think a glowing review yep syracusa toast review
Thank you very much to Cards Against Humanity for sponsoring once again.
Okay, so I have big news in an otherwise completely empty week.
Are you guys sitting down?
Are you running for president?
I am running for president as a Republican like the rest of the country is.
No, not really.
Let's talk about that.
People will love that.
Oh, let's not.
No, there's not a fast text update.
I have joined 2013.
2012.
2012, whatever.
I have a retina Mac now.
Woo!
Do you have it or is this a work computer?
Well, it's sitting next to me, but it belongs to work.
All right.
Well, that's close.
I mean, that's baby steps.
You know, that helps.
Yeah, I'm taking a step in the right direction.
So the funny thing behind this is I was talking in Slack with a bunch of people, including the two of you guys.
um about you know i'm it's about time for me to get a new personal machine i have aaron's macbook air that i'm using right now which has been underwater about eight times i have two late 2011 uh high-res anti-glare macbook pros one with a platter drive and eight gigs of ram which is mine
one with a SSD and 16 gigs of RAM, which is works.
I knew it was about time to upgrade.
And I knew I should probably wait for Skylake.
And so I knew I wasn't going to order anything for me anytime soon until the Skylake one comes out.
But I've been working really hard lately.
I'm really getting sick of my work computer having screaming fans anytime I do anything.
And really, I was supposed to get an upgrade in June at my three-year work anniversary because that's when AppleCare runs out.
And I didn't get one then for various and sundry reasons.
And so today, just mostly to be snarky, I emailed our IT guy and was like, hey, just a reminder, not only is this computer three years old in that I've received it three years ago, but even when I got it, at that point we weren't buying new Macs, we were buying refurbished old Macs.
And so even though I got it in mid-2012, it's actually a late-2011 Macs.
And so I said that really just to kind of remind him that I'm looking for a new Mac at some point.
Next thing I know, he's going to the Apple store and getting me a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which, if you're going to choose a problem to have, is a pretty solid problem to have.
So...
So yeah, so I got a maxed out 15-inch retina MacBook Pro.
The funny thing about it was I had concluded along, well, really because of the tutelage of Stephen Hackett, Marco, and a few others, I should get the not-discreet GPU MacBook Pro because there's really no need for me to have a discrete GPU MacBook Pro.
I said to our IT guy, listen, I think what I want is the not-discreet one, but I want the terabyte hard drive if I can get it.
I want...
Oh, the maxed out processor, if I can get it.
But don't worry about the baller baller one.
Just get me the Intel GP one.
That's all I need.
So he said, OK, got it.
He comes back three hours later, whatever it was, and says, hey, also, I gave you the super loaded one because it was only $100 more and I figured you'd like it.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Close enough, man.
It was kind of the problem when like people know you're interested in something and want to like if someone's like Marco likes coffee, right?
I should buy him some coffee, but you don't know anything about coffee and you're going to buy Marco coffee.
right the odds of that like maybe marco would appreciate the thought but it's like and especially if mar and then you're in the situation like it's their job to buy you a computer and you have preferences and you communicate them but you just know if you're not there during the purchase it's like they're gonna do something that they think is the nice thing to do it's like if i could just if let me just tell you exactly what to get just get this
I know exactly what I want.
Just get this.
And that's what I tried.
But they feel like they want to do something.
Even better, like, give me the credit card.
I will order it and give you back the credit card.
That's even better if you can get them to do that.
Well, in his defense, not only was he trying to do the right thing and get me even more than what I asked for,
And not only that, but I'm pretty sure part of what influenced him was that he could have this computer today.
And if I had gotten the not discrete GPU one, that's not carried in any normal Apple store.
Well, the base model is, but not with the terabyte and the upgraded CPU.
Exactly.
So here again, I'm not mad about it.
I'm actually really excited to have a new computer because, again, as much as I do love my high-res anti-glare 15-inch MacBook Pros, they're both getting pretty long in the tooth now.
But I bring all this up, actually, because I wanted to share what it's like to have a retina Mac for the first time in 2015.
Because all of you have lived this before, but I haven't.
So I want my moment in the sun, damn it.
You mean all of you?
I don't have any retina Macs.
Well, you believe in ancient cheese graters, so you don't even count.
How am I the only one of three alleged Apple experts?
How have I been the only one who's had a Retina Mac since 2012?
You're also the only one who loves to buy expensive things and then sell them and buy different expensive things, whereas Casey and I are much more cautious.
Well, it's more that, John, you just don't own laptops, generally speaking.
I have two of them sitting in the room with me right now.
Yeah, but they're not yours.
I think if you were the kind of person who bought a laptop for yourself, I think you would have had one sometime in the last three years.
Yeah, that's definitely true.
If I was a laptop person, I would have had it right now one long time ago.
Yeah.
See, and I am a laptop person, but just like John said, I try to be frugal whenever possible.
I usually fail, but I try.
And so one way or another, this is my first Retina Mac, and I'm going to try to make this fairly quick.
Retina screens are beautiful.
A Retina display delivers the very best viewing experience.
That's the first thing I noticed.
Second thing I noticed is, oh, my God, everything is huge.
Because I'm used to this high-res, anti-glare MacBook Pro whose resolution I don't even remember offhand.
1680.
Sure.
That sounds about right.
It is.
Whereas this 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro is considerably less than that effective resolution.
1440.
Is it 1440?
Yeah, but you can change it.
There's a setting.
Oh, the scaled mode.
Yeah.
All right.
But native is 14.
I always keep forgetting that.
The native 2X is 1440.
That is tight.
Yeah, it is huge.
Everything is huge by comparison, which is a little bit weird.
I haven't yet changed the scaling.
I suspect I'm going to.
It's only a matter of time.
Yeah, just change it.
It's no big deal.
Just change the name.
Where do I know that from?
I don't even know.
You're not even getting Apple references anymore.
Come on.
Sorry.
Although, to be fair, I don't remember what he was talking about.
Which app it was.
Yeah, I don't remember the app.
I just remember it was a jobs email.
Just change the name.
Not that big of a deal.
Oh, that does ring a bell.
Oh, well.
The second thing I noticed after how beautiful it was was, oh, my God, I cannot put anything on the screen.
Everything is enormous.
Yes, I am aware of scaling.
I just haven't tried it yet.
I wanted to live with it as it was for a little while first.
The third thing I noticed was I'm trying furiously to prep this thing for work tomorrow.
And I'm installing VMware Fusion, which is the particular VM software that I use, just because that's what I bought forever ago, and I haven't ever switched to Parallels since.
Fusion's way better.
Please don't email us.
Fair enough.
I was installing VMware Fusion, and the first screen that comes up after whatever generic OS X screens...
Yeah.
But now it sticks out like a sore thumb, and I can already tell this is going to get annoying really quickly.
Now, to be fair, that's the only screen I've noticed in using this machine in the last couple of hours that was like that.
But, oh my God, it's so blurry.
What happened?
Yeah, it was way worse back in 2012.
For anybody who bought some of the first-generation Retina MacBook Pro, it was way worse back then because...
web pages were all just look terrible.
Like, you know, software updated itself pretty quickly, but it took the web a long time to really get into having high DPI versions of anything.
And so, and websites on retina still, like you'll occasionally run into one now that's not retina, but they're, they're much fewer and further between than they were in 2012.
Um, but you know, to be fair, VMware has had three years and more if they were, you know, once the iPhone four came out in 2010 with its retina screen, um,
you know any observer would have been like you know this is probably going to expand for the rest of the lineup we should probably get ready for this then when the retina ipad came out a year later hmm you know what we should probably get ready for this that was 2011 then and it's like okay now like anybody who is still not retina ready now like that's their fault really that's this is beyond reasonable
VMware doesn't really have much of a UI, so maybe they just don't dedicate the resources and have the department that is responsible for updating the graphics, because really, you're mostly not looking at VMware as you are.
You're mostly looking at whatever virtual machine you're using inside the thing, you know?
Right.
And to be fair, this was an installation screen.
And I haven't gotten to the point that I've put a VM on the machine yet, but I believe that all of the honest-to-goodness VMware screens will be retinified or whatever you want to call it.
Hi, Rez.
While we're complaining about VMware, by the way, I have a pet VMware bug that has been with me since 7.0.
I figure what they're up to now.
They're 7. something, whatever.
So when seven came out, I had this bug where you launch VMware and it shows me that little screen that shows you're like the virtual machine library with like the little screenshots of everything.
And if I launch it, that thing comes up and I quickly double click the VM I want to launch, it crashes, right?
If you let it launch, you let that screen with the little library come up and you just wait a couple seconds.
It's one of those old school bugs like classic Mac OS, cooperative multitasking, memory corrupt.
Just wait.
Just let it don't don't touch anything.
Just let it sit there.
and then go over and double click it's fine and it's been a repeatable bug through multiple minor and i think they even did like a major that the 7.1 i forget multiple revisions every time it says send a crash report i do i think there's going to apple vm where probably never sees them but boy i love those kind of bugs where it's like just don't touch it just be careful just wait just wait wait okay now it's good
What the hell could that possibly be?
I have no idea.
Anyway.
So that's basically all I have to say about the computers so far.
It does seem very nice.
The fans did kick on once or twice as I was doing an installation or two.
And by comparison, they were super quiet.
I don't know if that means that they're quieter in general now.
Asymmetrical.
Air is pulled into vents and propelled through sculpted cavities by fans with asymmetrically positioned blades.
In most fans, the blades are positioned symmetrically, which creates a single identifiable frequency.
We positioned ours asymmetrically to spread the sound over a variety of frequencies, which makes it seem quieter and less intrusive.
Every part of the enclosure makes a contribution that directly benefits the user.
Right.
And so that's the thing is I'd never experienced this for myself.
So that was very exciting.
It doesn't sound like a jet engine slash hairdryer anymore, which I was very happy about.
So that's all I have to say so far about like software and whatnot.
I will note, however, that this has a force touch trackpad.
Yeah.
Marco's favorite thing.
So you got four times the pixels and infinitely fewer buttons.
Right.
Still just one fewer, by the way.
Wow.
Anyway, when you first get a brand new Mac with the Force Touch trackpad, it is the worst trackpad in the entire world.
However, there is a magical switch one can flip.
Wait, hang on.
Before you talk about the magical switch, what's making you say that when you first get it, it's like the worst ever?
Like, what about it?
It comes out of the box.
You're not touching anything.
You start using it.
What repels you?
It's that there's a click, but it almost feels like, I don't know, like a fingernail got under the trackpad.
So it clicks, but it doesn't feel right.
It's almost mushy.
It's almost like a thud.
Yeah, I guess.
I don't know.
It doesn't have the depth that you expect.
Yes, I understand there is no depth.
It's all an illusion.
I'm just saying, if you don't really think about that fact and you're just clicking around...
You're expecting more depth than it has.
It feels like something's broken.
So you're saying like a fingernail, like a traditional button, but rather than going all the way down, it feels like it goes to about like half travel.
Perfect description.
That's why we keep you around.
That's exactly right.
So I hated it.
I hated it immediately.
I had a feeling I was going to be able to get over it, but I hated it.
But I thought to myself, self, why don't you take a look in system preferences?
And so I took a look in system preferences.
And sure enough, there is a completely unlabeled or two completely unlabeled sliders.
Well, I shouldn't say completely unlabeled.
They're labeled click and tracking speed.
Click did not mean anything to me, but there's light, medium and firm as the three options.
And I realized after thinking about it for a second, I was like, what the hell is?
Oh, right.
When I switched from medium, which was the default to firm, angels came out, came down from the heavens and everything was right in the world.
The pressure you apply activates an electromagnet that responds with tactile feedback.
So now instead of just seeing what's happening on the screen, you feel it too.
And I have no problem with this trackpad anymore.
You have no problem with it?
Like, do you like it better?
Is it just like, well, it's acceptable.
It's the same as the other one.
You got them right next to each other.
You can like go back and forth and like click, click, click, click.
So, yeah, I mean, I'm doing this mostly to get a rise out of Marco.
I wouldn't say I don't have a problem with it.
I wouldn't say I like it more.
I would say I like it marginally less.
it doesn't feel as crisp as it used to.
And there have been occasions when I think because there is no physical depth to it, it's misconstrued when I'm dragging or clicking and holding and when I'm not.
It's hard to describe, and I haven't really put my finger on how to reproduce it, but there have been occasions where I've thought I've released a click,
But my thumb is still physically resting on the bottom of the trackpad, and the software seems to think that I'm still holding down on the button.
Have you done the thing that some people have talked about?
Like with the physical button, because it was hinged on an edge, we all kept using the thumb because your thumb is usually near the bottom, and the bottom part is the easiest place to click.
But when no part of it moves, they're all equally valid, so you can stop using the thumb, sort of the theory goes, and use...
whatever finger you're using to control the cursor is also the finger that you use to click and no matter where you do it it's the same exact amount of effort required have you tried that is that even a thing my brain understands everything you just said my hands are already writhing in revolt for that idea but it should be easier because it's not coordinating like you're not cording you're not trying to like oh like press my thumb over here but then let me drag my pointer finger over there it's all just you know one thing
I totally understand what you're saying.
And all snark aside, I just I think it would be really hard to train myself not to use my thumb, a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
I mean, I'm sure I could.
It's just it would be hard for me to train myself to do that.
So I just think like it's one of those things that is made possible by the Force Touch trackpad.
And of course, it's not what we're all used to.
But like maybe someone who this is their first laptop ever, like a kid, like just accepts their habits are built on that.
And they would find a barbaric to have to press down with your thumb on this particular edge of the thing while moving your finger over there.
I don't know.
I haven't tried either.
And I hate trackpads overall in general.
I'm just I've heard that from other people.
I'm just wondering if you should give that a try, like give it a give it a good chance to be like, maybe this is better.
Although I think you're about to talk about something else that is even more.
potentially blasphemous about your trackpad habits.
Before we get there, let me just rebut slightly.
What drives me nuts about the Force Tux trackpad is not that I hate it.
I don't hate it.
I know that the next time I buy a laptop, it's almost certainly going to have one, and I'll just have to deal with it.
That'll be fine.
It's not going to stop me from buying a new laptop forever.
I'm not going to...
hold on to the old version forever because i don't like this trackpad like it's not i don't hate it that much it's not your apple extended keyboard too right but what i find unfortunate about it is that what you're saying is you're basically in apology mode for it it's like well this is almost good or this is great except for this unreliable thing and and the click is almost as good as the old one you know it's it's all these apologetic excuse excusing statements about it and
Because it really isn't as good.
And what bothers me about this trackpad is that we had a great trackpad before that very few people had problems with.
Yes, you could only click firmly on the bottom because it was hinged at the top.
But buttons used to be at the bottom.
On many PC laptops, they still are that way.
That's why it was hinged that way.
That's why we used our thumb on the bottom.
And everyone's been fine with that.
It's been fine.
More importantly, it was rock-solid reliable.
I don't think I've ever mis-clicked on a trackpad that had tap-to-click disabled.
To take something like the trackpad that is such a fundamental thing and to make it even 5% or 1% less reliable...
It's like if every 50th tap to the space bar just didn't work or inserted an X instead.
Making fundamental input methods slightly less reliable than 100% is, I think, a really big annoyance.
I think everyone should use mice, but besides the point.
The fact is, if you're really good with a trackpad and you don't have tap-to-click enabled, it's very reliable.
You very rarely have unintended results from it or missed clicks or missed gestures.
It's very reliable.
With forced touch, yes, they did something that's really cool technically, but on this fundamental level of reliability, even if you can get over the feel issue, which I honestly still don't think it's as good, even on the firm setting,
I've heard that El Capitan makes it better in software.
I have not been able to verify that yet, but I heard that's better.
I don't know.
But even with the click feel aside for now, which I don't think is a small thing, but put that aside for now.
The fact that it got even a little bit less reliable, the fact that it is occasionally misinterpreting what people want... And you weren't the first person to say that, Casey.
I had that problem when I owned one for two days.
I've heard many people who still have the same problem with it where it is a little bit less reliable.
It is like you will occasionally have a missed drag or a missed click or something.
That, to me, is unacceptable.
Like...
Why make it worse?
Because that is, it's making it worse.
Why take something that is so good... I don't know if it is making it... That's what I was getting at with asking about the habits.
I don't know if it's really making it worse.
It's making it worse for you and for people whose habits are trained on the old one.
Because you will find your fingers doing things and acting in ways that were appropriate for the old device that are not appropriate for the new one.
But I'm not entirely sure that if, you know, like...
ignore all of us and say this is the first time anyone ever used a trackpad this is their first computer they're 10 years old they start on this thing is it worse for them i'm there's that's one aspect of the other aspect that you talk about reliability of like i don't want it missing clicks and stuff like that that may be tied to our habits but the other aspect of us think of like the uh the ipod uh click wheel remember that thing with the spinning wheel
Apple quickly got rid of the ring that actually turns and changed it into a ring that does not turn, but that you just slide your finger around this channel.
And people didn't like that either because it was like, well, yeah, maybe it was bad because that ring popped off all the time on the old one.
But I like the fact that it actually moved.
Now I'm swiping my sweaty finger across plastic that does not move.
How is that better?
Well...
It's just a reduction in moving parts.
Apple loves to reduce moving parts.
This is a reduction in moving parts, kind of, sort of, mostly.
Is it?
I mean, it is because it's like the four sensors.
There's not a crack that opens up that, like Casey said, fingernails can get into, food crumbs can get into.
Setting aside the whole depth and battery thing, which we know is a big motivator for this, it is...
one fewer moving part and it is more uniform it is like i said the whole surface is equally tapable maybe it'll take a couple versions to figure out the feel and and stuff like that and the reliability i'm not i don't know because i don't have one of these i don't know if that's just because your fingers are used to it i know that coming from a mouse trying to use any kind of trackpad i felt like i was you know just completely
unable to like i felt like there was a huge barrier between me and the cursor all of a sudden because i grew up with a mouse and not a trackpad it took me a long time to even become vaguely competent trackpad and even now if i have to click and hold and drag something with a trackpad like with a traditional one i have one with actual physical buttons in behind me so i use that one a lot with the regular button all of them i feel like are terrible and the force touch trackpad i agree with you that doesn't feel as good to me but i feel like i'm more reliable clicking and dragging again i haven't used one for a long period of time but anyway i'm i'm willing to believe that
Even though you dislike this thing strongly and it is worse for you.
No, no, no.
That's not what I said.
I don't dislike it strongly.
I just think it's worse.
I know.
Even though you think it's worse, I would say it's definitely worse for you so far, even though you didn't have a very long time either.
But I'm willing to believe that it is going to be better for people who aren't used to the old way.
And I'm even willing to believe that it could actually be better for you.
three or four years from now when the mechanical ones are totally gone and you just kind of get used to it so put a mark in your calendar for three years to get from now and i'll ask you how you're feeling about forest touch track pads now okay you know but anyway i like again apple is forward looking and they're saying the same thing with like who's going to use these track pads uh i mean you guys don't remember this but you used to have track balls down there with a button above and below the track ball and use the track ball either with your thumb and then with the other thumb on the top button or you can use the track track ball with your finger with your thumb on the bottom button
uh some people were used to trackball some people like them and they replaced it with you know code name midas the touchpad thing people like whoa what the hell happened to the trackball this is worse i was much better at controlling things i never had any missed taps or swipes or whatever the ball was easy to control i could feel it moving back and forth eventually just all used to it and no one is like this trackpad sucks i wish i had a trackball
Right.
So I feel like this is one of those type of moves where it has the inevitability of fewer moving parts that is very in line with what Apple does and what technology moves to in general, just because it allows you to make things thinner and lighter.
And there's fewer things that slide back and forth against each other.
And I think it may be perfectly acceptable and possibly even better, depending on the habits for new people.
So I'm I still say the jury's out on this thing.
We're going to hear from all the trackball users, by the way.
Yeah, we are.
No one remembers the trackballs in Powerbooks.
Some people still use them.
Like the big external desktop ones, they still make them.
Oh, yeah.
No, that's the people who don't understand how a mouse works.
I know.
It's like you turn it over, the ball goes facing down, guys.
No one remembers mice with balls in them either, I guess.
Oh, my God.
I was an expert cleaning mouse balls, let me tell you.
Yeah, yeah, me too.
Get tweezers, peel off the big, like, string.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Get it off on one piece.
Yeah.
If you're lucky, it would come off on one piece.
Yeah.
You wouldn't have to scrape it.
Ew, it's so gross.
Oh, my God.
This is so amazing.
So, yeah.
So, in case you thought we weren't going to get enough email, let me make it better.
Trackpads are barbaric.
The only one true mobile pointing device is the track point.
Period.
That is the deal.
I kind of wish we still had trackpoints in Apple products because I think I agree with you because I had ThinkPads from eBay back forever ago before I could get myself a new laptop.
I would get old, terrible ThinkPads on eBay every couple of years for like $300.
So I had trackpoints here and there briefly in my younger years.
And...
i like them a lot i really really like them a lot but i i wonder if you know if you know the same way like i thought the sega saturn had awesome graphics when it came out uh and then i saw it you know 10 years later and did not think that anymore uh i wonder like do track points still hold up yep today no they never held up it's like it's like flying flying the spaceship cursor pointer with a joystick
That's what you're doing with the trackpad.
You are basically riding on top of the cursor, which is a spaceship that you are controlling on the screen with a joystick.
It is not direct manipulation.
Trackpads are better than little trackpoints.
I know people like them, and they have one advantage, which is it allows you to keep your fingers on the keyboard.
You just got to move your finger over between the F and the G or wherever the hell the thing was on the keyboards and use it over there and ignore the fact that it's cutting into your keycaps a little.
Uh...
and it's good you keep everything in the same place like that's that's its one advantage everything else about it sucks like as in how quickly can you move the poor cursor towards something that you want are interested in oh no good so the thing about it is um if i'm really honest with myself most of this is nostalgia and if you don't know what i'm talking about the track point on a think pad was always almost always read if not always read
They were also oftentimes put on Dells among many other manufacturers.
It's the little nubbin that's in between.
I think it's actually the G, H, and B keys.
I don't have one in front of me, but I believe that's right.
And so you would push the little nubbin.
It kind of was basically a little joystick.
You push the little nubbin forward and back and side to side.
And there were mouse buttons immediately below the space bar.
And that's where the mouse buttons were.
And I would fly on that track point.
And it was so much more accurate to me than I am on a trackpad, even after having a trackpad for the last, what, eight years or something like that?
Ten years?
I still genuinely prefer a track point.
The one place where a track point just completely falls down is multi-touch in terms of swiping.
So, for example, what do they call it now?
Is it Exposé now or is it Mission Control now?
I feel like they're always changing the name.
I've lost track.
Mission control as of a couple of years ago.
Okay, so the mission control thing where you can swipe between desktops, I use that constantly.
And not being able to do that, what is it, three-finger swipe?
Not being able to do that three-finger swipe would absolutely ruin me on a Mac.
But anytime I'm on a desktop, excuse me, anytime I'm on a PC, if it's a PC that has a track point, that's immediately where I'm reaching.
Because I just think it's better and I am still more accurate with it, even though I never use one anymore.
But to be fair, I think a lot of that is nostalgia.
And it's because it's what I grew up on because my dad worked for IBM.
And so I was always using old ThinkPads just like Marco.
And so I've always, always, always used TrackPoints up until I started using Macs.
So yeah, so I still think the TrackPoint's the way to go.
And John, you're entitled to your opinion as wrong as it may be.
Please don't email us.
These are things you don't have to have opinions about.
These things you can test.
You can have just, you know, a series of targets that you have to get and measure time and accuracy.
And like, you can actually figure this stuff out for an individual person, for people in general, if you get enough testers, like we don't have to just, you know, in theory, this could be tested.
Yeah, you could also test whether vinyl sounds good or not, but when have I ever cared about that?
Also been done.
You're right.
That can't be tested and has been, so check.
All right.
The track point, I'm not sure about.
By the way, have you ever seen the mouse with the track point in it?
We had them.
Think of where your scroll reel is.
That seems crazy to me.
It's like, you've got a mouse in your hand.
Sometimes people just like to have something to fiddle with their fingers.
Ew.
Yeah.
Hey, at least we've been calling it the nubbin.
We've been staying away from the various other names for this thing.
We've been very good.
We're doing well.
The other thing I wanted to say is I happen to think that touchpads are terrible, but as touchpads go, the Apple touchpads are far and away leaps and bounds better than any other touchpad I've ever used.
Oh, yeah.
And I think the multi-touch has a lot to do with that.
But to me, the biggest reason that's true is because of the sheer size of the touchpad.
Because maybe it's different recently in newer PCs.
I haven't used a terribly modern PC in a year or two.
But on PCs up until at least a couple of years ago...
The trackpads were tiny.
They were postage stamps compared to what you get on an Apple device.
And that just made it impossible to me.
It's like, have you ever seen someone use a mouse on a space that is nowhere near big enough for that mouse?
Yeah, they used to sell, they would sell like mouse pads.
They were like four inches by four inches.
Right.
Was that even a mouse pad?
Yeah, it's just the word.
And so all you hear is, the entire time they're using this, all you hear is...
because they're constantly picking up the damn mouse and putting it back on the table it's the worst yeah oh i've seen you ever see them use it like at a point of sale and they don't have a place for the mouse it's like wedged between like the monitor and like the little thing so they're literally using it with like with like a half a centimeter of slop and so like thump thump thump thump thump thump thump they have to like pick it up every three pixels they move the thing yep sometimes they're using it upside down you ever see those people
No, that I've not seen.
That was a big thing back in the early days where people weren't familiar with mice and they would get one and, you know, whatever.
There's no clear way you're supposed to use it if you've never used one before.
So they would turn it around so that the wire is coming out sort of towards them.
And, you know, the mouse works fine like that.
It's like inverted Y axis in a video game, right?
And they would press the button.
either the single button or double with their palm left or right side of their palm and some people just got used to using a mouse like that and that was just it that's like that's the way they're going to use the mouse for the rest of their life and if someone eventually would come up to them and say no no it goes around the other way and put your fingers over here and they'd be like oh well i like it the other way like you get used to an inverted y you get used to using the the buttons with your palms and that's it and who's to say that's bad really i mean you kind of run over the cord a little bit but you know it's all what you get used to some people are left-handed too can you believe that
Now, are you sure those weren't just trackball users that you were misinterpreting as mouse users?
No, I've seen this in real life multiple times, widely separated geographically and over periods of time, people who use the mouse upside down.
I've never seen that.
Well, I'm with you, Casey.
I would rather use a Force Touch trackpad on a MacBook One set to the squishiest setting than use the best PC trackpad available.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's not just the size, too.
It's also, I don't know if they're not made of glass because it's too expensive, but they're always made out of, like, sometimes it's textured plastic or some other kind of plastic that feels bad or, like, ends up getting, like, bubbles or wrinkles in it.
It just feels like the cheapest thing you've ever felt in your life compared to, like, Apple has traveled that same trajectory.
The original code name Midas trackpad on the first PowerBook
was plasticky and garbagey and terrible that's what windows trackpads are like now apple slowly progressed making its trackpads but the midas the midas trackpad was really tiny it was like it's like the size of the two combined mouse buttons on my mouse and apple just kept making them bigger and bigger and bigger and making the button part smaller and smaller and then removing the button part and making it glass and pc manufacturers said you know what we can just slot a piece of plastic on here with some cheap sensor underneath it that's fine
Fair enough.
The only other thing I wanted to say, because I don't think I've ticked off enough people yet this evening, I use tap to click, and I just wanted to throw it out there.
I don't have a problem with it.
I don't see why everyone's so worked up about it.
I don't see what the issue is.
I don't typically click by way of tapping, but I can go either way.
I can swing either way, and I'm okay with that.
Are you just using tap-to-click now with a new thing, or have you always used it?
No, always.
Well, then you have no reason to ever complain about missed clicks or accidental clicks, because you're just doing this to yourself.
Yeah, you deserve any unreliability and tapping that you get.
See, I think tap-to-click, I'm not super anti-tap-to-click.
Here's what I think about tap-to-click.
If you are a tap-to-click wizard, I think it's better.
Like, I feel like it's the expert mode because you don't have to apply a lot of pressure.
Like, if you have somehow trained yourself to magically dance your fingers across the surface and you can walk that line between putting your finger down into the thing and tapping to click, it is more efficient because you don't have to press hard, right?
But I know I can't do it.
I know when I enable it, I get missed clicks all the time.
And I try to do, I would like to be a tap-to-click wizard, but I'm just not, right?
And almost everyone else I've ever seen, they accidentally tap-to-click too.
And they're just willing to accept the error rate as just the cost of doing business.
I mean, my own mother uses it because it's just more comfortable.
You don't have to press as hard.
There is sort of a luxury and a kind of
a higher level of user interface.
Like it's one step removed from just waving your hands in front of something, a minority report style, or what the hell is that thing called?
The track pointy thing.
Remember that?
I actually used it.
I attached it to my computer.
It was cool.
The thing where you can like put your hand over this little bar and you see like these five points for your five fingertips and move them around.
What?
What?
Let me go look at my application folder.
You guys all remember it.
uh well anyway uh i so i actually i one of the reasons why i i think i resist tap to click is because i secretly want to be a tap to click wizard i i would love it if i was really good at it and really used to it because it does seem like it would be superior if it was perfect and it's silent and there's lots of times like i'm using a laptop in bed trying to get some work done before going to sleep or something uh like there's lots of times or like even while podcasting
I would love to, you know, get like a magic trackpad and be able to like tap and click on it comfortably and there and then have silent mousing while podcasting, you know, stuff like that.
Like I would love that, but I just, I've tried it here and there for like a couple of days at a time and I just could never get into it.
And it's not that it's not reliable.
It has a threshold.
This is a tap and this is not a tap, right?
It's just that you can't walk that line.
Very often you will find your fingers hitting the pad with enough force to go over that threshold and you didn't mean to, and you don't have control of that threshold really either.
Um,
so i think it is you know as reliable as a button it's like if you press with this amount of force i consider it to click if you press less for that i don't but you find your fingers hitting the thing and causing taps when you didn't want to by the way the name of the thing was called leap motion don't you remember it leap motion i feel like i've heard that name go click the link i just put in the chat room in the show notes you'll remember it i had one of them i tried it out when the sdk was in like beta or whatever it was really neat and cool and fun to use in the demo i'm not sure how you could use it to control any piece of software but uh it was a cool tech demo
i have never heard of or seen this in my life you had to have we had it in like the show notes i think for this show at some point what i mean it's that's possible i don't have that good of a memory but i don't think i've ever seen this before could have been a different show i'm on a lot of podcasts anyway uh take a look take a look at the videos uh this is a real thing and the demo is like you can get this thing stick it in front of your mac and do the things they show in the demo and it works like it shows in the demo
what i'm just not sure about is like okay can i is it useful for me to use to control my mouse pointer probably not is it useful for gaming maybe maybe someone can make a cool game with it there is a lot of noise and kind of fuzz in the thing and there's a lot of freedom of where you can put your limbs in front of it so there's the potential to be sort of miscalibrated enough but uh sure is an interesting piece of technology
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All right.
So, Marco, tell us about what you think is happening with the iPhone 6C.
Is this that interesting?
So, I don't know.
So, everyone's speculating that we've had the iPhone 5C, which was like the redone iPhone 5 with the plastic case and everything.
And, you know, everyone's now saying, well, we hope this fall when the new iPhones come out, there's going to be a 6C.
And everyone's kind of expecting it as if it's fact.
Like, oh, yeah, there's going to be a 6C.
They're going to redo the internals and everything.
And it'll be the 6's guts in a plastic 4-inch inexpensive phone.
I said on Twitter earlier this week, I don't see that happening at all.
Because the simple reason is that we always, for the last many years now, we have seen pretty solid healthy events of parts leaks in the late summer leading up to the fall iPhone releases.
Because the fact is, the supply chain for making millions and millions of iPhones to be bought all at once on day one...
It is very unrealistic to expect that they would have a brand new model of iPhone, even if it isn't the top of the line one, that they would have a brand new model using a new casing and new parts, and those parts wouldn't be leaking at all yet.
It is possible.
I just think it's unlikely.
And so I think if there was going to be a 6C, there would be some changes to the casing, certainly.
Even if it looked kind of the same, there's always minor variation.
Whenever there's like an S model, where the case stays basically the same, but there's new guts...
The parts are actually different enough, even on the casing, that those always leak.
And those, in fact, have leaked already for what is called, in quotes, the iPhone 6S, presumably the main iPhone 6 update for this fall.
There have already been leaked parts for that.
There was a back case.
There was a screen.
So...
We have seen nothing else, though.
We haven't even seen the 6S Plus parts leaks yet.
I assume there will be one because it would be weird if there wasn't.
So all we've seen so far is the 6S parts.
I would assume, based on that then, that we're not going to see any totally new-looking external cases, and that we're probably not even going to see an iPhone 6C.
I think the iPhone 5C...
falls out of the lineup or replaces the 4S, which is still for sale today in some markets, right?
Isn't that like, in some like India and China markets, isn't that still for sale, the 4S?
I think so.
I don't know.
I mean, I remember when they were saying they were keeping it, but only in certain regions, but I don't know how long.
Right.
So I assume, I think it's probably safe to assume that everything basically moves down a step.
So you have the 5C moving into that spot.
In the US and in a lot of like, you know, rich countries, basically, you have the cheapest phone becoming the 5S.
And then you have the old 6 and 6 Plus, maybe.
At least the old 6, maybe the 6 Plus, who knows.
And then the new 6S and 6S Plus.
I think that's the lineup.
And I don't think there's... It doesn't seem like it's that hard to predict.
And maybe there's going to be a new rose gold color, people are speculating, who knows.
But I don't think we're going to see a new low-end model.
I think that's a shame, though, because I think the 5C had a lot of really good attributes.
Obviously, the guts are now outdated or whatever, and if you're going to keep a phone like that in the lineup, you'd have to change the innards.
But that's what we're talking about, like the new iPod Touch.
Like, oh, an A8 in a 5C size case.
Like,
you could make that into a replacement 5c type phone which would be the old four inch screen uh the things that has going for it for the people you can ask someone who owns them why did you get this we all know somebody who is like an ios developer or an otherwise tech nerd who usually gets the best fanciest phone but decided to get a 5c what's so great about the 5c number one comes in colors people like colors just people like them
You want to have a phone with a white back or a yellow back or whatever?
These are your choices, or you can just get a case and slap it in the middle.
People like things that come in colors.
The iPods have taught us anything.
Number two, it's super comfortable.
Nice curved back like the plastic.
The people who have them and like them say one of the reasons they like it is it feels, especially compared to the stupid 5 and 5S with the little sharp, chamfered edge crap like...
not as comfortable in your hand um and those two things may sound stupid it's like who cares whatever how comfortable it is just a big rectangle of the screen what color it is those things matter especially in product lines and i think that uh you know maybe didn't solve the expectations maybe they didn't think it was worth it maybe it's better to just keep using the tooling from the other things
i'm not saying it has to be in in the 5c thing i just think those are things that apple should bring to its phones and they are kind of like giving you know over time there have been more and more variations in in all the products even their laptops this point you can get in gold and space gray and stuff right expanding the repertoire of things you can buy and if apple wants to segment its line you can always they kind of do like it used to be like aluminum was for the expensive ones and then plastic for the cheaper ones and they went all aluminum and and
you could have a more kind of refined line of colors with space gray and gold and black or whatever for the fancy high-end phones and then as you go middle or lower have them come in 700 different colors right you know have different colors change every year and i think marco on twitter you were making part of a little case with the holes in it with mixing and matching things like that's silly they're overpriced people like to do stuff like that maybe that particular design was ugly and didn't sell well um
But I really, really think that Apple should bring back at some point into its lineup of phones, a selection of colors and a more comfortable thing to hold.
And if it's not going to be this generation, then hopefully like whenever they do the big revision for the seven or whatever they're going to call it.
Well, but I mean, and first of all, I should point out that I'm a total hypocrite because as I'm sitting there saying, who the heck ever bought multiple holy cases for their iPhone 5Cs?
I also own three Apple Watch bands.
But anyway, I'm so angry that I didn't get to point that out.
You thought of it.
sorry uh but also you know if you look at the direction apple's going with their product designs all of the laptops now are metal they've been that way for a long time they just don't use that as a differentiator anymore they use other things uh all the ipads are metal plastic never reached the ipad line um if you look at the iphone line uh the iphone 6 is holdable and comfortable for nobody so
It's more comfortable than the five, other than it slipping out of your hand.
Don't you feel like the edges, at least, the rounded edges, are more comfortable?
Oh, yes, they are much more comfortable for as long as they're in your hand, and then they fall out.
I know, I'm just saying, like, that's... I know what you're getting at, like, they're going for all metal, but I think, like, metal is a poor fit for...
All of your phones.
It may be a poor fit for any of your phones.
Just look at how they've struggled with the antenna lines and everything.
Oh, sure.
No, but I agree with you.
However, I'm just saying realistically what they're doing, it sure does seem... And I heard from back when I was first complaining about the iPhone 6 design, which now seems like forever ago...
I heard from a couple of Apple people who were kind of coyly suggesting, well, what if the rationale wasn't... They would never actually say this is why we did it, but the coyly suggested rationale was basically your naked robotic core theory of like, we will just make the thinnest, lightest phone, the smallest, thinnest, lightest thing, and then you can customize it with cases to give it either more battery life or...
or a better feel and so and i did you know with with the iphone 6 this is the first phone that i'm constantly using a case on because i i i'm using apple's leather case because i just needed some more friction but it is a valid product strategy like i'm not even saying that's the wrong thing to do because if if faced with this option this is a great way to go because you're like
Do whatever you want with the case.
We'll make a whole bunch of really nice cases.
You can buy a bunch of third-party cases when you drop your phone, when you ding it, when something spills on it, when you scratch it.
Get a new case because all that damage is happening to the case, which if you buy from Apple is $70 for a thin piece of leather stuck to plastic.
But let's ignore that for now and just say, look, this is a good plan.
Naked Robotic Core is a viable good strategy.
Well, see, I disagree with you there.
All right.
So what part of that don't you like?
The problem is that if you, let's say you have the naked robotic, you know, fish phone in the middle there that feels like nothing and this is bar.
So, okay.
That phone with, let's say you want a little bit more battery life.
So you buy a battery case.
A battery case attached to the phone is always going to be bigger and worse than just building that in to begin with.
I agree with you for the battery.
I'm thinking only for fashion and protection.
Like for what color do you want it in?
And do you want something to be grippier or soak up Nix or whatever battery?
You're right because you're forced to have two layers there and then all the stuff.
Although people still do it, right?
And I still think it becomes a viable thing, but it's inefficient.
I agree with you that basically...
The trade-off that Apple makes in its phone line between thinness and battery life, we've talked about this a million times, there is definitely a place in the lineup for a phone that Apple sells that makes a different trade-off.
Oh, and by the way, if your most important thing is you need really good battery life, we sell you one that is way thicker than our other ones, you know, a millimeter or whatever the hell we think way thicker is these days.
Right.
It gives you more battery.
And at this point, the 6 Plus is kind of that model just because it's got the bigger battery.
But Apple just does not offer a phone that's like that.
So they force you to get these big humpback... Speaking of humps on things, these big humpback things.
You're right.
You have to have a layer of plastic of metal, the battery, another layer of plastic of metal, then a connector thing, and then it just makes your...
phone way bigger than it would be if they built it in but for the color and protection stuff i think naked robotic core is a reasonably viable strategy but also so is selling plastic phones that are comfortable and come out a bunch of colors
Well, but so going back to the feel and protection issue, though, I would say that selling a plastic phone and selling thicker metal phones, that is a better strategy than selling all thin bar soap phones and letting you put cases on afterwards.
Because the fact is, people are always going to put cases on if they want a case.
Anybody who wants extra protection for their phone, for dropping and everything, they're going to use a case no matter what shape or material the phone is.
It doesn't matter.
For people who don't want to put cases on their phone,
And there's, I think, a lot of those people and I think a lot of Apple people.
So I just took out my, I got my 5S here.
And my 5S with no case, which is how I used it because it's very comfortable for me with no case, is thinner and lighter than my iPhone 6 with the big leather case on it.
The argument of, like, the battery being better if it's built in, that applies also to the feel of the phone.
So I'm both agreeing with your earlier point and disagreeing with your most recent point where I think that, like, the Naked Robotic Core strategy falls over here because I think you're better off just making phones to begin with.
that can be used without cases and have good battery life if you want those.
And if you want even more battery life, and if you want an even bigger, grippier, more protective case, those are options you can add on as well.
People always will do that.
But the basic phone, I think, needs to be better than what we got with the 6.
See, I think that all of the phones have been pretty darn slippery, right?
That is not as if the 6 is so... By the way, you never actually owned any of the other ones.
My wife had a 4S and a 5, with and without the case.
They've been around, and of course I felt other people once, like, you're right that the 6 is slipperier.
A lot of that has to do with the size change.
That's why your 5 and 5S are lighter, because they're smaller phones, right?
Sure.
But...
I always like grippy phones.
I always like cases like silicone or something like that and a leather one.
I need that grippiness.
You can't build in that grippiness because by the nature of that grippiness, it wears out.
It scratches.
It dents.
It peels away.
It is subject to abrasions.
you just can't build that into the phone so you're going to make the phone out of something it has to be something that's smooth and hard and shiny whether it's plastic or metal because you can't like it would be terrible to make it make a phone that you buy that basically like the whole back of it is leather right but i like the feel of something that is that is backed by leather so it has to be a removable case for that material what you're saying is like the 4s with a glass back or whatever or the 5 with the metal thing like it
make it of a sturdy material that doesn't scratch and doesn't wear out and isn't really subject to abrasions but also isn't slippery and that is really difficult to do so i feel like if you're either going to go naked robotic core for metal or you're going to go non-metal material that is nevertheless pretty hard uh you're never going to be able to you shouldn't i think make a phone that has like integrated rubber grips or integrated silicone things because you're just asking for the phone to get dinged up and ugly and then it's like oh i can't take this off it's not a case it's part of the phone
God, this 5S feels great.
Speaking of the 5S, on Twitter, I forget who was saying it on Twitter.
Maybe it was the tipster.
Maybe it was someone else talking about how Apple was having difficulty with the 5 and the 5S.
It was the 5 only.
I was asking with the 5C whether it was a failure and what the reason was for it.
it apparently got better margins.
And my theory, my question was like, would continuing to make the 5 with just the advances in time and mass production, would they have had similar margins?
Like, was it really that much worth it?
And the answer apparently was yes, because on the 5, because remember the 5 and the 5S, the black color was different between the two.
The 5 had a very, very dark black color.
I think it was called space black, whatever it was called.
The 5S got lighter and called it space gray.
But anyway,
The black finish on the 5 chipped and flaked off really, really easily.
And most of the time, like on my 5, I saw this.
Most of the time it would show up on the edges, the chamfered edges, where you'd see the bright colored aluminum shining through the black finish where it had chipped off and everything.
so apparently that was such a big problem for apple and getting yields on that and everything uh the tipster said that uh that that was one of the biggest reasons that they switched to the plastic for the 5c rather than continuing to make those black cases as the 5 aged and went down the lineup because any phone they make where they don't do a 5c and replace it which has been every other one uh these are made for like what four years
They're made for a long time.
It isn't just the year they're the newest phone.
So if there was an issue of this thing is proving to not age well or have too low manufacturing yields, it might be worth it for them to switch out the entire casing and redesign the whole thing.
And so that was clearly a contributing factor, very likely, to the 5C's existence.
But we don't have that now.
Well, they talk about yields, what they're basically talking about, and we can remember back to the, what was it, the white-backed, you know, the 4S series, the white ones, remember?
Like, where they're talking about the yields, what they're talking about is they build this phone, like it goes down the manufacturing line.
At some point in the manufacturing process, there's a random sampling of things, and you look at them and say, does this pass our quality standards?
And what are our standards?
Can it not have any nicks?
It has to be uniform color.
You know, whatever their standards are, and Apple standards are pretty darn high in terms of it has to basically be perfect-looking to the naked eye and maybe even with magnifying things.
the ones that aren't perfect it's like rejected like this one came off the line it's it's an iphone 5 it's black all over except for this one little part here where a flight came off and it's shiny reject it and every time you do that it costs you money because you spent all this time manufacturing this phone and now it didn't pass qa uh and you don't get to sell that as a phone you it's got all the parts have to be recycled back and you start over and try again so that's what we're talking about when we're talking about yields for these things it's all down to what your standards are i think what your conversation on twitter was uh one of the things that was offered was that
the way apple dealt with this yield problem eventually was they started lowering their standards a little bit just to like to not have not to be rejecting what i don't know what the percentages are and again this is all speculative rumor blah blah we don't know this is all true but these are all things that sound plausible because we know for a fact that all manufacturing have some sort of quality control process and we know based on what apple sells that their quality control processes must be pretty tight because every time you open up one of those apple boxes and look at that thing under a jeweler's loop it's pretty darn i mean look at the freaking watch like it's pretty amazing what they do on a massive scale um
And it doesn't take much to throw that off to say now this is costing us big bucks because if our yield goes off by just some small percentage or fraction of a percentage, that's a big deal to us.
But setting all that aside, colors are cool and the 5C is really comfortable.
I'm still a big fan of that idea of a phone, if not that specific phone, because now the innards are all old.
Yeah, it's funny because on a daily basis, I typically have my hands on three different generations of iPhone.
I have a 6.
I have it in a leather case.
I've used cases since, shoot, I think I had one on my 4S.
I did not have one on my 3GS, if memory serves.
And I had one on my 5S.
So I am a case kind of guy.
That being said, Marco, I completely agree with you that even if I wasn't into cases for my phones, for the 6, I would absolutely have had to put one on because I do agree that it is slippier than any other iPhone I've owned.
But anyway, on a daily basis, I will typically have my 6 in my hand at some point.
I'll have Aaron's 5S in my hand at some point.
That's in the Apple leather case, just like mine is.
And we use my old 3GS as a white noise machine for Declan when he's sleeping.
And so I'll typically pick that up to turn on the white noise.
My 3GS was a you-look-nice-today on loop player for Adam while he was sleeping when he was a baby.
Yep, see?
Exactly.
So because of that, I feel like I have a pretty good span of several different models.
And to my hand, the 5S is far and away the most comfortable.
I agree with you, John, that the 5C is actually more comfortable, but we don't have one in the house.
So...
If I were just truly for comfort, if I were to pick a new iPhone tomorrow, it would be my ideal iPhone tomorrow is the guts of a quote unquote 6s in the case of a 5s.
That's if you have to hold it, but if you have to start actually looking at the screen.
Completely agree.
In that case, I have to have a 6.
I still think the 6 plus is a little bit freakishly large, but maybe if I had one, I would change my tune.
What's interesting, so I know this is very, very unlikely.
It's almost certain not to happen in this revision, and it's even very unlikely for the iPhone 7, I think, or for any iPhone just because of the nature.
But what I would love is if the DLC space black watch finish was available on an iPhone.
And I don't know enough about the materials to say it would probably have to be made of stainless steel.
I don't know if this could bond to aluminum in the correct way.
uh but so obviously this is a massive stretch of the imagination but uh if you could do it if you could have the stainless steel dlc coating from the space black watch on a phone uh somehow whether it's made from steel or not don't care uh if you could do that
That I think would be perfect because, although it's probably going to be heavier, unfortunately, but that would be great because the space black coating is extremely durable.
It looks great.
It is very dark, but it looks great.
And it kind of feels like it's almost like a wrapped in vinyl kind of feeling.
It does not feel like slippery metal.
It is a little bit tackier.
It's a little bit more friction.
It almost feels like plastic.
Yeah.
That would be amazing.
I completely agree.
Or they could make it out of plastic.
it almost feels like plastic we have that we can do that it's plastic make it kind of like a not so shiny kind of matte finish really hard plastic it could be unapologetically plastic someone said that once oh god that's great yeah so probably not going to happen because of the materials and cost involved but and wait you called that wait like why not make it out of what is that that big cylinder you have the tungsten yeah yeah make a tungsten phone the very small cylinder i have that's heavier than the macbook one good grief
All right, I do have some questions about upgrade cycles and some other things, but anything else about the hardware and what may or may not happen in a couple of months?
Actually, next month, in theory.
Marco had some bold predictions about flash storage capacity, too.
Oh, this is boring.
Yeah.
Well, you make these predictions on Twitter like, I totally think this is going to be it, but it comes time to the podcast.
You're like, yeah, maybe not.
You think this is going to be it or you don't, because I'm not ready to make these predictions, but you seem very sure.
Well, what happens is I make these predictions on Twitter, and then between the time I make these predictions on Twitter and now when we record the podcast, I've had hundreds of people telling me I'm an idiot and I'm wrong.
So then I introduced myself doubt.
But my theory here is I don't think that we're going to lose the 16, 64, 128 split on the high-end models now.
I think that's going to be here for at least one more year.
So 16 gigs, we're going to keep going on that.
And then I just think everything else, like the existing 6, and if the 6 Plus stays, which I actually predict the existing 6 Plus won't stay in the lineup, but that's not that important.
I'm guessing that it does basically what it did this past year, where the 6 that we have today moves down a slot, becomes available in 16 and maybe 32.
Because right now, the 5S is available in 16 and 32.
So maybe they would do that again.
And then the existing 5S that we have today is 16 only.
And then the... What's below that?
No, that's just the 5C.
The 5C right now is only 8, right?
i think that's right so god i hope the 5s doesn't go to eight jeez they gotta stop doing that nothing's going to eight please i i'm still holding out hope for a 32 i i would love if the base was 32 for the new 6s or whatever we're calling that thing but i i don't see it happening unfortunately yeah someone won an argument be like you don't need that anymore app thinning i'm slicing
If you look at the direction that they're taking with so many iOS 9 app features and OS features, part of that, obviously, is that they have a lot of phones out there already in the installed base that have 16 or even 8 gigs of space, which is really unfortunate and really tight and really stingy.
they have a lot of phones out there that have those capacities already.
And they want all those to be able to upgrade to iOS 9.
So that's a problem that they were trying to solve.
But if you look at all these app thinning and the various resource things, they're doing all this stuff.
And they're also promoting app thinning very heavily.
They sent out a bulk email about it today encouraging developers to use it.
And you can now test with internal testers, which are useless.
All this stuff.
So...
They are clearly laying the foundation for a world in which tiny capacity iOS devices continue to exist, basically.
I know.
I feel like there's a reason for them to do all that, because like you said, all existing devices, they're kind of righting a wrong that already exists.
But I fear someone also used that to explain why we have to continue making 16 gig devices in this next round and why we don't have to make a 32 gig.
Totally agreed.
Wish I could have been there and said, no.
From what I've heard from people here and there, what I've heard, which has no credibility whatsoever, is that it is very, very hard to convince the people at Apple who matter about things like this
to convince them to spend the extra couple of bucks on the bill of materials to get the bigger ram chip or to get the bigger flash memory chip i believe it i mean we see the evidence of it exactly like we see and and there are some trade-offs too like you know with ram ram uses battery life so i like you know there are some trade-offs there but a lot of the things just come down to making sure they have very very healthy margins and other things like that
right and just and just time marches on it's like all right i understand you have reasons for it but eventually you know you gotta and it's like they're just kicking and streaming dragging their feet and like even bumping the capacity it's like we bump the capacity but can we cut out 32 and make keep 16 yeah let's do that that'll that will make me feel better for the fact that i gave you the larger capacities and we put two gigs of ram in the ipad 3 can i just can i get rid of the 32 and keep the 16s oh money money money it's like ah like i just wish i could convince these people of the
of the long-term uh downsides like oh look at our customer set what long-term downsides are you talking about it's totally invisible to us i agree that's probably invisible to them but we all know from seeing the experiences like that it's like tiny little nicks of doubt and damage for the person who can't like can't upgrade because their phone is full it's like oh we'll fix that in software with the next version
can't fit all their stuff on it and like well we'll we'll figure out we'll we'll more gracefully handle when you run out of storage like all these things are good to do but another thing you can do is stop selling 16 gig phones that's another thing you can do and eventually you have to eventually you have to like you have to eventually stop selling eights you're gonna mention like they don't want to believe it's like it'll be 16 forever like yeah i don't want to have to use my argument again which doesn't have a name that we've agreed upon but i have to say like
2075 16 gig iphones it's fine we did app thinning like some you gotta upgrade eventually people and it's just a matter of arguing over what year it's going to be and i feel like the year i want it to be is like always two to three years different than the year apple wants it to be so we should so what kind of time scale would we need to to get that
uh you just need them to agree that that it's going to happen uh and then make them pick which year it's going to happen in yeah you agree with me that 16 gigs will go away what year will that happen well not this year for sure okay we've narrowed it down not this year will it happen next year
not next year but ask me again next year will happen the year after that and you just keep going and then eventually you're 75 years out and like look we're all dead now and you still think it'll be 60 gig phones like i just i just can't spare the margins just can't do it yeah well because you know if you think about like you know the iphone from apple's financials point of view from you know from the stock and and from you know their their financial performance and everything the iphone is their most important product by a long shot and
And anything that drives up the average selling price of iPhones is a pretty big deal to them.
It's a huge deal for their money.
It's a huge deal for Tim Cook's evaluation by the market and the press and maybe the board.
Who knows?
But that's not how they operate, though, because you know how they could save a lot of money?
Use crappier materials and don't be so obsessed with the stupid chamfered edges.
But those people, the people who want that stuff to be perfect, they win the arguments.
they say well sure yes we could do this much more cheaply and we wouldn't have all these qa problems and by the way the adb tipster wants us to know they didn't actually decrease their standards what they do is increase their standards earlier in their production process to not let those cases end up being in completed phones or whatever but anyway um
Those people win their arguments because you could save tons of money.
You'd be a PC manufacturer, make all your trackpans out of plastic.
It's way cheaper.
Look at those huge margins.
But they don't do that.
Why?
Because they want to make the best product they can.
And I feel like at this point, selling phones for $100 or $200 with or does even you can use a $300 one with 16 gigs of flash storage.
is making your products worse for people in a way that is avoidable with not too much you know wouldn't hurt your margins that much in the same way like if you need a trade-off maybe find a way to make it out of cheaper easier to man i think they did that i think the six plus is it's easier to manufacture this curved piece of aluminum
than it was to manufacture the five and the five s with a little chamfered edges it seems like i don't know anything about manufacture but it seems to me that this one must be cheaper to manufacture hey so hey use some of that money that you saved making a easier to manufacture case that's easier to get to pass qa put that into maybe having a 32 gig model somewhere in your lineup and maybe not selling the 16 at the top of the line
But it's not about saving the $5 or $10 or whatever the cost is of the flash chip going from $16 to $32.
It's about the people who upgrade, who pay the extra $100 to go from $16 to $64, who wouldn't have done that if the base model was $32.
I might.
yeah, you're right.
I know it comes out to money.
Like basically what he's down to is like, well, they're really sensitive to money.
This is a big product line.
Any small change in a device that sells in this volume for this amount of money adds up to big numbers.
And you're right.
It's the anchoring.
It's like, well, I don't want a 16.
It's my only other choice is 64 and they can charge more for 64 for 64.
So much bigger than 16.
Like all that stuff is all true.
It's just like,
You know, those type of pricing games and stuff like you can play those.
But the worst thing you can do is put a product into the hands of people that is going to give them a less satisfactory experience that will just get worse over time that will make them have bad feelings about you or your products.
I agree, but Apple has always done that.
They've always had very low RAM configurations on the base model laptops and stuff like that.
They came out of that.
I felt like they got over that.
It was a really dark time where your new $3,000 Mac comes standard with an obscenely small amount of RAM.
It might as well be empty.
don't even try to don't even try to use it in this configuration and by the way if you don't buy your rams from us it voids the warranty like those are the bad old days i felt like they came out of that uh especially when they started soldering ram on the board that's one of the best things that happened to them ram wise because they were forced to use a sane amount right because if there was gonna be you know it's a pro laptop but we put soldered on the board four gigs no and you can't expand it like so they were forced to pick sane numbers there i think that was a plus
the flash and the iphones is their new area of backsliding they just feel like they can get away with it for just way too long well and they they obviously can get away with it i know but there's there there are it's ramifications how many podcasts am i gonna say that on now uh
what is the fallout i'll even give them this current lineup that we've all got you know in our hands i'll even give them that 16 fine you get a pass on that one but this year i really really really hope in the top of the line product it doesn't even go down to 16 and that there's definitely a 32 you want to bet i would not bet against it because i think it's about at least a 50 50 chance that you're right and that it's going to go down to 16 but i just i just really you know if only just because like that's the phones that they're making like i'm
I'll bet you a 16 gig SD card that the base model stays 16.
No, I would not take that bet.
I feel like it's a coin toss.
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I have a couple of questions about upgrading.
So last year I was off cycle, but I treated myself and somehow convinced Aaron that it was worth it to get a six out of contract.
Well, that's not even true.
It was like kind of in contract.
I know it was weird.
Anyway, like the half subsidy where you pay like 400 bucks for it or something.
Exactly.
This is on AT&T.
This year, Erin is unequivocally due for a new phone.
Her 5S is two years old or will be two years old.
It is her time.
We'll see if I can convince her slash me if I should also get a new phone.
We'll see how that goes.
But my understanding, and I've not really had any time to look into this yet, but my understanding is AT&T and most of the other carriers have largely done away with the subsidy and two year contract dance that has been going on for forever and a day.
Do you guys happen to know anything about how this is working?
Oh, man.
I tried doing research before the show because I've also heard the same thing that apparently in Apple stores this fall, if you buy the phone through an Apple store, apparently I heard that they won't do subsidies at all or that you have to do these AT&T Next type plans where you pay per month additional amounts for the phone for X months and everything.
Which, by the way, is apparently like how the entire rest of the world works.
And it's the more sane way to do it.
It is the less manipulative way.
The way things are priced now is to fool you into like, you know, you're not good.
People's brains aren't good at realizing exactly how much money they're paying over the X number of years for this.
Like they don't see the subsidy.
They're like, oh, I get a phone for 200 bucks and I have a monthly bill that feels so much better to me.
And no one wants to do the math to figure out, you know what, you're actually paying more.
Yeah.
So I'm kind of baffled as to why they're changing it, because the voodoo of that pricing works really well.
Maybe competitive pressure from, I don't know, from T-Mobile.
I can't even think of why they would change this, you know, because the underdog, the crappy carriers that don't have good coverage that are trying to get customers like, hey, we have honest pricing and you can do math and figure out how it works and blah, blah, blah to try to attract customers.
No.
Maybe that's putting some pressure on AT&T and Verizon, but honestly, it's a mystery to me why they would go from a confusing pricing plan that makes people feel like they're not paying a lot, but really they are, to a pricing plan that is initially more off-putting because you see the real costs, but is actually more fair and understandable in the long term.
But one thing's for sure, I think this is not good news for Apple.
To me, I think having the iPhone being compared on unsubsidized pricing at any level, even if you try to put it in as like, well, the iPhone 6s will be $25 a month more, and the iPhone 6 will be $20 a month more.
Even if you try to break it into a layaway plan pricing like that, having the real price become more visible in any way without these subsidies...
is almost certain to negatively affect iphone sales don't you think it'll negatively affect all sales like aren't the carriers doing this across all their phones or just for the iphone they i think they are doing it across all their phones but uh now it is creating a price umbrella for people to go under apple on and some phones already are cheaper than apple's i think it'll greatly help things like um like what are the is it the moto x whatever the cheap uh
but they've always been cheaper they've always been like the free with contract phone or whatever like i guess it depends on like how much bigger are apple subsidies than they are for the basically comparable phones for the top of the line samsung smartphone or whatever like because the i think the the pricing on the box is it has been similar like it's you know 199 to get you into the the best samsung galaxy s whatever they're up to and 199 for the best iphone and the only difference may be well actually behind the scenes even though the
The list price for you is $199 plus, you know, to your contract.
Behind the scenes, the carriers are paying Apple way more than they're paying Samsung.
And so once that becomes visible, suddenly it's not $199 versus $199.
It's actually a much bigger number for the iPhone versus a smaller number for the supposedly equivalent top of the line, you know, Samsung phone.
If that's true, then that could hurt Apple.
But I think it'll just hurt everybody across the board because...
people don't want to see the real fight the real price of their their smartphone i mean i guess we get used to it because like you said that's how the rest of the world kind of does it and it's still kind of hidden you know it's like plus x number of amounts per month for x number of months and that'll still be enough multiplication to stop people from doing it as opposed to like basically buying an unlocked phone like okay give me 1200 whatever the hell it is for the unlock you're like whoa whoa i'm not using a 1200 phone it's like you are you just don't know it
Right.
And the other problem is, in the U.S., up till now in the U.S., if you kept buying the contract discounts, basically.
And these plans, these pay-every-month things have been around for, what, about a year or two now, but a lot of people still haven't been using them.
And so up until now, if you're on one of the big carriers, basically AT&T and Verizon in the U.S., let's say you were on a two-year contract.
At the end of those two years...
your bill doesn't go down.
Once your phone is, quote, paid off for the contract, your bill has not decreased.
And so you basically had a reason to go into the phone store and pick out a new phone for, quote, free every two years because you could.
Because there was no new cost to you to do that because you were paying for a subsidy whether you were using it or not.
Your bill stayed the same.
With these plans, that is changing.
And so now, I think you're right, John.
This is two-sided.
One is Apple could be vulnerable to people having cheaper phones than them.
But two, which is bigger, which you're right, affects everybody, is that now I think people will expect their phones to last longer than two years.
and they won't upgrade as frequently.
Because the entire smartphone business, the reason why Apple is never going to find another thing like the iPhone, there's never going to be the next great product that is as good financially for Apple as the iPhone was, because...
There is nothing like the subsidized cell phone market.
It's such a weird little oddity of a market where everybody buys a phone.
Like, everybody.
And smartphones in so many countries, and especially in the U.S., have been so heavily subsidized over the years that not only is everybody buying these expensive devices, and they could have these high behind-the-scenes prices because nobody was seeing them, but also people would update them constantly.
People update their phones way more often than they would update their computers or any other like $500 electronic device or more, you know.
People update their phones every, I think it was like every 18 months on average, something like that for most of the world.
I think that's partly because phones are at the point where they're getting, so we're in like the early phase of smartphones.
Like every new phone is better in some significant way and eventually that will start slowing down just like it did with PCs.
Maybe, but this subsidy model that we've had has been, I think, artificially inflating both the prices that these companies can charge for the phones.
Because, you know, an iPod Touch with an A8 inside and a great screen and everything is $200.
And that same device in a phone is $650.
It does have a bigger screen.
Yeah, I know.
But you're right.
Yeah, they can make more money.
And same thing with the carriers.
How can the carriers charge so much money?
a monopoly on all the you know a near monopoly on all the stupid cell towers and infrastructure and the barrier to entry to everyone else and all that other crap like why is it why are they able to charge us so much money like there is not enough competition in the space of of charging us but even they they're feeling the pressure the places where there are competition there is enough pressure to drive their prices down and
Like a lot of the reason you're like, oh, this has been so subsidized.
Who's subsidizing it?
Who is doing it?
It's the carriers because they know the total lifetime value of the customer is huge because they're going to get some massive monthly bill that people will be like, all right, I guess I just got to pay $100 a month for my whole family or more.
to use cell phones because you got to have a cell phone.
And so who is subsidizing this?
The carrier is like, all right, fine, Apple, we'll pay you $700 because we know the lifetime value of that customer is huge because like you said, you know, you get this huge bill.
It's monthly.
They just feel like they have to pay it like a utility.
If you're lucky, you have limited or no competition in your area for... Or maybe there's like one other company or two other companies that you can maybe collude with unless they're T-Mobile and they're a thorn in your side.
Or maybe you're Verizon and your network is really mediocre, but everyone thinks it's the best one in the country for some reason.
Amen.
Well, it's better than T-Mobile's, right?
And the barrier to entry is high and all these other things, right?
And so...
That should start to work itself out.
Hopefully that they can't just continue to charge huge amounts.
And if they can't charge huge amounts, the lifetime value of a customer is not as high.
So they won't be giving Apple as big as subsidies, whether they're splitting it out or not.
Anyway, I don't understand enough about this change in pricing to understand what's motivating it.
But for me, it seems like...
What they're doing is better for consumers and worse for Apple and carriers.
And so I'm obviously missing something big here.
Yeah, I generally feel the same way.
Maybe the carriers are trying to take away some of the power of Apple and the high-end device makers.
Yeah, it could be a power struggle like that, yeah.
But I definitely think that this is most likely to lead to longer phone upgrade cycles, which is bad for both of those, and lower monthly bills.
Yeah, I think that power struggle makes sense to me because I think...
uh you know you we always know that apple has made more demands of the carriers than other companies because they could and because that's kind of the other hard negotiators and you know for a long time it was just an at&t and you know like they've made more demands and one of those more demands is you're going to pay us a higher subsidy
And they're going to be like, well, you know, and you're not allowed to put your crapware on our phones and all that stuff.
And from the carrier's perspective, I think they like Android phones better because they have more power over the Android phones.
And as far as they're concerned, like, I don't even care what the hell crappy phone you use.
I just care that you pay me your monthly bill.
So from a carrier's perspective, it's better if you buy one of their cheaper, crappier phones that they get to put their crapware on.
Yeah.
they don't care if you buy a new one of those don't buy a new one like whatever we have to pay a lower subsidy i think i feel like from a carrier's perspective they'd be happier if people use cheaper crappier phones but just continue to pay the high same high monthly bills you know it's better for them than having to deal with apple and all its demands and not being able to put their crapware on it and having to pay them a bigger subsidy than everybody else because everyone loves a stupid iphone and so yeah that that is an explanation that makes sense to me
um i'm still not sure entirely sure it's not the carrier shooting themselves in the foot because it seems like as demanding as apple is and what power they might have android is the majority of the market anyway and so do they really need to just like continue to smoosh apple into an ever smaller slice of the pie i don't know
Well, but Apple still has a lot of power in that people are willing to switch carriers for iPhones.
And they probably aren't as willing to do that for Android phones.
And also, they don't really need to because Android phones are everywhere.
But if Apple decides not to work with your carrier anymore, that's kind of bad news for your carrier.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
And, you know, Apple customers have a lot of money because the phones are expensive.
And so maybe they're the good customers who can pay for your fancier plans where you overcharge them for more bandwidth that really doesn't cost you much more.
And I don't know.
But do you really think that Apple would say to AT&T or Verizon, no, I'm not going to be on either of your networks anymore?
Yeah.
There's no freaking way that Apple would do that.
They might threaten it or allude to threatening negotiations.
I don't know.
I mean, hell, they were on AT&T only for a really long time, which if you look at it, you're like, boy, is that seriously Apple still AT&T only?
Like, when is the Verizon iPhone coming?
Well, but hold on, though.
That's because at that point in time, Marco was absolutely right that back then Verizon really was the only network that really freaking worked.
And so Verizon had a lot more leverage, and I think that Apple couldn't put the squeeze to Verizon like they did to AT&T.
But Apple held out.
Verizon had the leverage.
It seems like Apple should have been forced to come over to Verizon even sooner because Verizon had all the leverage.
We're the best network.
You're on that crappy AT&T.
It's hurting you in the press.
You should totally come over to us.
But Apple held off for a really long time.
So you're saying it does – would Apple ever –
even threatened to pull out of like you know at&t or whatever no way i think i feel like they would try whether they would actually do it probably not but maybe they'd threaten but no way they do it and also i just want to quickly underscore what uh marco said earlier i have and this is actually a kind of good transition um i have a verizon ipad mini the original retina ipad mini or as i love to say my retina pad mini
It came with a Verizon SIM, but I got a T-Mobile SIM after the fact.
And I'll flip back and forth between them willy-nilly as I see fit.
And my phone, like I said earlier, is AT&T.
So I have devices that can use data on AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
And Marco, I could not agree with you more.
Everyone who has been a loyal Verizon user for a decade or more swears that Verizon has the best service in the entire world.
I really don't think that's true at all.
I would even go so far as to say I think AT&T service is actually more robust and faster than Verizon in anywhere I ever typically travel.
So I just wanted to say amen to that.
I agree with you.
We're going to get so many people telling us otherwise.
However, I totally agree.
I do the same thing where I used to have Verizon phones back before the iPhone.
And I had Verizon data sticks for a while after that.
And then I started tethering.
And then I got Verizon iPads.
And so I've had an AT&T phone and Verizon data devices for a very long time now.
And it is no contest that the Verizon like Verizon used to be the best network.
And I think they are they've banked on that with their reputation for so long.
They still have the best coverage in the US anyway.
Just in terms of total square miles of where you can get a decent signal?
I think they might, but AT&T has closed that gap so much that right now, there are places that don't have AT&T reception, but they don't have Verizon reception either.
It's like certain places upstate, they have neither.
They have no carriers, and that's fine.
AT&T, it's been a very long time since I have found a place where AT&T is not covered, but Verizon does.
And the opposite, where I have tried to use Verizon data somewhere, and it has, like, one circle and is unusable.
And then I'd go try AT&T, and it's, like, three circles and perfectly usable and fast.
That happens a lot.
Like, I really think that Verizon – for whatever reason, I don't know if there's a radio theory to back this up or if this is just coincidence –
Verizon seems to really suck at indoor coverage way more than AT&T does.
And anecdotally, this has always been the problem.
People rave about how much their Verizon phones are great, Verizon's the best network, and they come into your house and they can't make a call.
Or when I have Verizon phones, yeah, it'd be great until you go into a grocery store and then all the call drops or data doesn't work anymore.
That has always been the problem I've had with Verizon.
I have family members and friends who still have Verizon today.
Those problems have never gone away for them.
And AT&T has...
really the best thing to ever happen to at&t was verizon iphones coming out because that unloaded a lot of at&t's network and so they like at&t's network has been rock solid for me for the last i would say at least three years like before that it was a little bit spotty i'd say for a good three years at&t's network has been awesome for me with
tethering, with travel all sorts of different places, with voice, everything has been solid.
And Verizon, the Verizon devices I've had, I have been only, I've only seen mediocrity from them.
The Verizon people I know who use it on their phones, they keep complaining about the same mediocre problems that I always had with Verizon back in the day.
And
I don't think I will buy any more Verizon devices because the original reason I would buy Verizon iPads and keep my AT&T phone is, what if I'm somewhere where AT&T doesn't cover very well, but Verizon covers it better?
And that used to be the case when I would travel to San Francisco for WVDC.
I could use the faster one for tethering, and that one was usually the Verizon one back in the day when LTE was first coming out and everything.
That was the Verizon one.
in the last two years, I would say, the Verizon one has never been the faster one.
Not once.
Like, every time I try, like, the AT, I always end up using, go back to the phone because it's way faster.
So, I think I'm done buying Verizon stuff.
Yeah, I agree with you.
And I know that there are people that are listening right now that are saying, oh, but in my particular part of the country, be that completely rural or completely.
What the hell is the opposite of rural urban?
Thank you.
God, I had a total brain fart there.
Anyway, completely urban or completely rural.
Verizon is the only one that works.
You all are crazy.
I'm sure there are parts of the country that that's true.
That's what I'm getting at because we don't go to the whole country.
We go to like five spots in the country, right?
So I'm saying it is still entirely possible.
Even if those five spots are city, city, rural, city, it's still entirely possible that Verizon still has the best coverage in terms of if you put a little pin in every square mile of the country and check the signal strength for AT&T and Verizon, that Verizon still covers more.
That has always been the thing with Verizon, that not necessarily that it's always the fastest connection, but that if you sampled the entire country...
you can get a verizon signal or a stronger verizon signal in more places you can get an 18 as a tnt has been building out i'm assuming they've been building out on the population centers first so yeah new york city san francisco or whatever and there are still places where you can't get either one of them but i'm like i don't know i know i'm in kind of a cell phone dead area the only thing i know is that t-mobile gets crap signal here and that i can actually receive phone calls inside my house with verizon i don't have an at&t data point to go by um
But I'm still entirely willing to believe that Verizon still has better overall coverage.
And then it just boils down to, okay, but I don't go in the whole country.
I go to these seven places.
And the seven places that I go, who has better signal?
Who has faster data or whatever?
And indoor thing, I think maybe Moscone must have some kind of Verizon repeater because I get crazy good signal during WWDC deep inside the bowels of that building.
through like many layers of maybe they're just because they're like fabric fabric partitions or whatever don't you get awesome verizons maybe you don't use verizon anymore well i i get awesome at&t coverage in there i i to the point where i i usually don't join the wi-fi with my phone i don't i don't use the wi-fi anymore i use verizon only and i get great signal fast download speeds yeah so i don't you know again i don't know if like verizon weak indoors type of thing whatever is going on in moscone is definitely not weak indoors there
Yeah.
Yeah.
Who knows?
But anyway, the one the one other thing I want to talk about, then we should probably wrap is I kind of cracked the screen on my beloved iPad mini when I was at the beach.
I wasn't holding it.
I didn't drop it.
It was in my beach bag, my book bag.
And I guess I'd for whatever reason, maybe Declan had an issue or whatever.
I didn't flap the smart cover closed.
And so there's this little hairline.
In fact, I thought it was a hair crack.
So if you're holding the iPad in portrait, it's just a little like semicircle that only dips into the visible screen area right where the edge of the battery indicator is when you're holding in portrait and the portrait right side up orientation.
Ruined.
Throw it away.
It's ruined.
It's absolutely freaking ruined.
So what did it?
I don't know.
I genuinely don't know.
But what I know is it wasn't cracked.
I put it in the bag that we had towels and the camera and a whole bunch of other junk in that we had taken down to the beach.
And when I pulled it back out, it had this hairline crack in it.
I presume we picked up the bag or threw something into the bag.
I genuinely don't know.
We all know that I fess up when I do dumb crap to my devices.
I genuinely don't know what happened.
It must have been my fault some way, but I don't know what happened.
And so the reason I bring this up is because it was about time to upgrade the iPad anyway.
I was like the iOS 9 stuff.
I'm actually kind of amped up about for the iPad.
And so I was probably going to get a new one, but now I'm definitely going to get a new one.
Well, I really happen to like having cellular iPads.
I understand that most people tether and that works for them.
I'm still on the unlimited plan on AT&T, which doesn't allow me to tether.
I understand that I could probably save money and it doesn't matter, blah, blah, blah.
This is the way it is.
This is what I'm dealing with.
This is a choice I'm making.
So I'm going to get probably a new iPad mini with cellular this upcoming fall.
The question I have that I genuinely don't know the answer to is my understanding of this, having not really paid much attention in the last couple of years, is that cellular iPads have the Apple SIM in them.
And what I'm not clear on is...
My recollection of when they first came out was that once you committed to any of the carriers, you're locked to that carrier on that Apple SIM.
So your device could choose between Verizon or T-Mobile or what have you up front.
But the moment you choose, that's it forever.
Do you guys happen to know, is that true?
Or can you flip-flop willy-nilly?
No idea.
I have heard the same thing as you, but I have no idea whether it's true.
Yeah, someone who knows without question, not just anecdotally, like if you have some sort of web page somewhere that describes how this works, I'm assuming Rene Ritchie has something somewhere and I just don't realize it.
I would love to see it.
So send me a tweet or something like that.
Because the reason I bring this up is, like I said, I bounce back and forth between T-Mobile and Verizon.
I find that T-Mobile's coverage does indeed suck.
However...
When it is good, it's great.
And so it's much faster than Verizon and oftentimes much more reliable than Verizon when you're in a metro center that actually has T-Mobile service, you know, one of the three areas of the country.
And so I'd like to be able to flip back and forth.
Additionally, T-Mobile presently is giving me 200 megs a month of data for free.
I don't know if that would still be the case in a brand new iPad, but I'd love it to be the case.
And so I would rather not get the Apple SIM locked to Verizon if I can avoid it.
And maybe the answer is if Verizon is the only thing that locks, maybe I do what Marco was alluding to earlier.
And if I flip-flop at all, I do it between AT&T and T-Mobile.
But if there is some clear documentation somewhere that I can read, I would love to read it.
So please send me a tweet and let me know.
I'd really love to see it.
It's probably worth considering just getting a Verizon SIM and swapping that in and out, or getting a second Apple SIM.
Apparently, they will sell you a second Apple SIM.
Oh, is that right?
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, somebody in the chat said it's only $5.
I don't know if that's true or not.
I mean, for this kind of concern, first of all, just putting AT&T on it is probably the right choice, and you could probably add it to your phone plan for some minimal cost per month.
But if you're going to do swapping at all between carriers, you might as well swap SIMs just to be safe.
Then you avoid this entire problem.
Yeah, totally.
I actually genuinely did not realize that you could pop a different sim in.
I didn't know if the sim was like soldered into the board because I really haven't had to pay attention to this because I wasn't planning on getting an iPad until this year.
And so now is when I'm starting to think about these things and I'll have to do some research and maybe we'll have some follow-up about it since I know, John, you're probably very sad about the lack of follow-up this week.
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Cards Against Humanity, Harry's, and Hover.
And we will see you next week.
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 list m-a-r-c-o-a-r-m-n-t marco armen s-i-r-a-c-u-s-a syracusa it's accidental they did it in
So long.
Yeah.
Yeah.
everyone has seen someone doing that and you think why don't they why don't they get that fixed is this just like a permanent thing are they going to put a piece of packing tape over it just say you know what i'm just going to use it like this until my contract expires in a year and a half and they just do and you wonder like eventually will they wiggle loose are they going to slice their finger open on that uh is this a permanent state of being don't they get annoyed trying to look through the cracks where the refraction makes the little image messed up or whatever um and now i'm related to someone who's doing that
And I could not convince them to pay the $99 or whatever it costs to replace the screen of the thing.
So they're just going to keep using it like that until, I don't know, until they stop using it.
Speaking of, do you guys know how much it is to get the iPad mini screen replaced?
It's not worth it.
Probably more than $99.
Obviously, this is not talking about a phone-sized device.
Well, because I can tell you, so my kid's iPad has a cracked screen.
And it's a very small crack, but it is a crack.
And so we looked into... It's the very first iPad mini with the terrible non-retina screen.
We looked into what it would cost to replace the glass.
And it was... I forget exactly what it was, but it was basically like...
it is the cost of buying a new iPad or it's very close to it for the low-end ones.
It's probably different on like an Air where you're spending... If it's worth $500, then it might be different.
But for the minis, it's like $200 and it's really barely, if at all, worth doing.
That's a bummer.
So we just, quote, fixed it by getting a $6 screen protector that sticks on.
More people.
More people I know who are just like...
Cracks happen.
You would have just bought a new Mini.
I guess you're waiting for the new ones to come out before you bother.
First of all, it's the first generation non-retina.
It's to play occasional kid games on.
He doesn't give a crap whether the screen is retina and whether it's new or fast.
I'm like, okay, I have this.
There's nothing else I can do with this.
It's not even worth reselling.
Especially with a cracked screen, it's not worth much.
There's nothing I can do with this, so I'll just let him use it until it dies.
I have...
casey's retina pad mini i have that model of ipad that's been sitting in a drawer unused and i keep meaning to like sell it get rid of it i'm like well i you know if adam's ipad dies and i can just you know kick him down you know kick that one down into his slot and you know i don't know now i can just mail it to casey i guess but
is it cellular yeah it's verizon oh nice yeah no yeah i'll take it you guys remember when shampoo used to come in glass bottles no i think that was like the 50s and you're really old i don't you know anyway uh do you remember i think it was like maybe prel there was some particular brand anyway
I feel like that our grandkids, when we tell them stories that we used to carry around a bunch of rectangles that were made of glass and that sometimes they would crack and then people would just use them shattered or sometimes they will look at us and the same way we think about you had glass bottles of shampoo in the shower.
Doesn't that seem idiotic?
like why didn't you just you know make them out of plastic and say we didn't have plastic really that you know like it's i feel like we're in this period where glass is the right material to be making out of right now unquestionably but there are obvious downsides to glass that someday when we get past that and get a device that has like all the benefits of glass without the whole shattering and not being you know like
they'll look back on this and get you guys were carrying around glass things it was like you were carrying around these fragile east uh faberge eggs that if you drop them on the cement they would just like shatter or crack or spider web and you had to put this it's gonna look weird to them because already it seems to me like is this really the best thing we should be doing everyone in the world carries around a little rectangle of glass is that what is that what we're gonna do now seems absurd to me
Yeah, the tipster's asking in the chat, you know, what am I, to kind of recap, if I'm going to get a new mini this year, which isn't guaranteed, but it is my intention, what do I care about the existing one?
And the thing of it is, is that it's perfectly fine, with the exception of this stupid hairline crack.
And so I feel terrible, like, not that I would necessarily throw it away, I'd probably, like, gazelle it and just take the hit on the cracked screen, but...
I feel like this is a perfectly usable device.
I mean, I just told you earlier that I'm using a 3GS every single day in 2015.
To just get rid of this seems so stupid.
Like I could use it for Declan in a year or two, maybe.
I could give it to Erin if she wanted it.
There's so many things I could do with this.
And so it seems so wrong not to get it fixed.
But geez, for $200, it's probably not worth it.
Yeah, it's it's really it is unlikely to be worth Apple's fix.
Now, there are also third party fixes.
There's also do it yourself fixes.
I didn't look into any of those options because I did like five minutes of looking into it and it seemed like it was not only very difficult, but also like not that much cheaper.
Like I think it was like maybe 150 bucks.
It wasn't it wasn't that much cheaper.
So the guy is not worth it.
uh but you know that it might be worth considering for you but i think the better move is probably take the hit sell it and uh and just get something new or do what i did and stick a ten dollar screen protector on it and give it to declan to play stupid games on because kids really don't care yeah yeah i know i don't know it's it's it's i'm just annoyed just like before i'm annoyed at myself because this one is is not a quasi deliberate action not that i deliberately poured water on aaron's mac twice but um
But I don't know, I wasn't even touching the damn thing when it broke, so I feel a little less guilty about it, but I still am frustrated and I still want to make it right.
I don't know.
You make it right by buying yourself a new iPad this fall.
See, that's the Marco way.
No, no, I didn't.
That's true.
This happened to me and I didn't do that.
Fair enough.
John, anything interesting from you?
Did you break any iPads at the beach?
I did not break any of my things, although when I came home from vacation, I found that my hot water heater was leaking, so that's a nice welcome home.
Did it ruin anything?
What happened?
It did ruin a rug.
It didn't, like, you know, flood the basement.
It wasn't like all the water in the hot water heater came out and went onto my floor, which is good because it would just keep going, right?
But enough water.
Yeah, because that's usually what happens when they fail.
Right, well, they tend to also, like, fail slowly and start weeping.
Anyway, it was just leaking over the course of a week and, you know, covered the floor with...
barely enough water to basically soak and ruin a rug, but didn't, you know, cover the whole basement floor.
Anyway, we have a new hot water heater now.
Did you go tankless?
No, we talked about it again.
We talk about it every time we replace it.
It's still not the thing for us to do.
And why do you say that?
That's what they say.
I talked to them about it.
Basically, if you have what we have, which is like a boiler for making hot water for heat, an older one that vents to the chimney, and then you have a hot water heater and you just want to replace the hot water heater, you could go tankless, but there's still issues of how much pressure can it put out if you're running all your hot water things at the same time.
and the better way to do it is to just replace your entire system with a new high efficiency one that just vents straight to the outside doesn't need to go through the chimney and that does the hot water for all your radiators and the the tankless hot water and that has more capacity to to you know instantly heat the water and he was talking about like basically when it's cold here in the winter you got freezing cold water coming in from the outside and a lot of demand for hot water for all the radiators at the same time you're running
the, you know, trying to wash the dishes in the sink with hot water and running a shower that it's very difficult to keep up with that.
So we're sure as hell not replacing the entire system down there because it's fine.
If you're just replacing the hot water heater, they recommended and, you know, and they're recommending me buy a cheaper thing from them with a 10 year warranty.
So there, you know, I, I basically trust the fact that if it really was better, they'd try to sell me the much more expensive tankless thing.
But, uh, and they say they got, every time I've talked to them, the same company, like,
It goes in new construction all the time because it's like the sort of fancier, more expedient thing to do.
But new construction has entire high efficiency system, not just like, oh, you got an old boiler that does your hot water.
And then next to it, we have just the tankless system.
And then he still hears complaints from people who get them in new construction that it's not as good as a big tank.
So we went with the big tank full of hot water.
That is usually the most sensible economical option, even though we have fancier things like my system is fortunately we didn't do it.
The people before us did my system is the kind where there is one boiler for both heat and a big heat exchange tank for the hot water.
And so we just have one big boiler that can do both and a big tank that it heats up also.
And the advantage there, besides I'm sure there's some efficiency gains, but the biggest advantage is, according to some guy who looked at it once, is that then the boiler is continually running year-round.
So that tends to make them last longer because it isn't going like all the summer months without running at all.
And then you start it up in the winter and hope it works.
You know, it doesn't have like those big cycles of non-use for a long time and then turning it on.
But it's still vented to the chimney, right?
Not just to the outside of your house?
No, it has a direct outside vent.
All right.
Well, so then maybe it's one of those new higher efficiency systems.
And like in mine, I can do the same thing as yours.
Another option is we have a big boiler.
I could also, you know, it has the hookups and supposedly...
perhaps the capacity to say oh this can also do your hot water but it's like maybe barely got the capacity and every time that has come up it's like better just get a dedicated thing and be independent because it's not a big high efficiency thing and you know it
you may be borderline you may be taking a downgrade in how much hot water and how much hot water pressure you have available to you so the new one is actually the same size as the old one but fancier and like higher recovery so that once you start using the hot water it will heat up sooner anyway bottom line is we got the new thing installed and someone went to take a shower like the temperature is turned down like as low as it possibly can be like we always do in the summer to turn the you know the like sort of stand by this little dial you can turn to say
how hot do you want me to keep the water in this tank in the summer you can keep it way lower because the water coming in uh is warmer and you just don't want hot showers we had it in the lowest possible setting and still the first person to take a shower put turn the little knob to like what they normally turn it to it was just scalding hot and incredible amount of pressure and it was like all right the old hot water heater not only was leaking but obviously it was crap at this point in its life cycle like seven years old or whatever we're just just one year out of warranty they make these things so precisely you know
so anyway new one new one has a 10-year warranty so i need to put a reminder on my calendar for the 10-year anniversary before it starts leaking just make the call and don't even bother to see if it's going to last 11 or 12 years right no just replace it i've been told now from multiple contractors and plumbers over the last couple years that water heaters don't last as long as they used to and that they always die at about 10 years and that like if you like it's now to the point where like if you buy a home the home inspector
will flag a 10 year old water heater as like a problem that needs to be addressed yeah and because they fail in ways that cause much more you know they're not that expensive and when they fail potentially big problems because you know you don't want your entire basement flooding with water coming you know so because usually the way they fail is the bottom falls off and all the water comes out well the bottom falls off slowly i've been lucky the two hot water heaters that we bought for this house both of the previous ones failed by starting to leak slowly from the bottom which is a good way to fail yeah although when you're on vacation it's kind of scary that it was slowly leaking from the bottom
for an entire week when we weren't here.
All right, do you have a door yet?
No.
Cool.
How was the vacation?
It was fine.
So Casey, besides losing your iPad to your vacation, is it?
Yeah, it was good.
Declan did not like the water.
Did not like the water.
My kind of kid.
Like the beach just fine.
Yeah, right.
Like the beach just fine.
Got him near the water.
And as long as he wasn't touching the water, everything was mostly OK.
But even just dipping his little feet in the water, like way up at the very edge of where the wave can reach.
You know, so I'm talking about it's, you know, a quarter inch of water on sand.
He did not care for that at all, which is fine.
That's standard baby behavior.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not bothered by it.
But I will say he is crawling like a champion now, starting to pull up on things now, sort of.
I mean, he's not standing without holding on to stuff, but, you know, he can, like, stand for a long time, like, tripoded.
So he's got, you know, his hands on something and his feet on the ground.
So that's both wonderful and petrifying all at the same time.
But progress is being made.
My parents were here when I was at work.
They tend to come in once a week to give Aaron a little break and let her go grocery shopping without the baby or whatever.
And they said in the last two weeks, because they just hadn't seen him in two weeks, they said that the change was just tremendous, which, I mean, that's to be expected when it's a baby.
I'm not saying that much.
i'm not trying to be like well my baby is the most smart baby ever it's none of that it's just you know babies change quick as it turns out and uh so lots happening big doings around the list household but you gotta concentrate on the weekends when you're home or nights when you're home or whatever concentrate on getting him to if you want to see his first steps chances are he'll do it when you're at work so you have to basically take him during the weekend and say now we're going to do the first steps because the only way you're going to see it is if you make it happen
Yeah, yeah.
And I've been holding his hands when he's standing and trying to tilt him forward enough just to keep his center of gravity under him.
That's probably the wrong way to describe it.
But anyways, just to keep himself balanced, he'll have to bring a foot forward.
And sometimes he gets it, sometimes he doesn't.
But it's been funny.
He's also occasionally mimicking us, sometimes directly, sometimes vaguely.
So we'll tilt our head from one side to the other, and sometimes he'll tilt his head the same way and sometimes not.
Uh, sometimes we shake our head like, no, not, not to indicate not to do something, but just to shake left and right.
Uh, sometimes he'll like follow, follow that and shake his head left and right, which is really adorable.
Um, he's, he's becoming more and more a person with each passing day, which is wild.
Um, shoot, there's something else I was going to ask you.
Oh, did you get your new camera?
it's arriving tomorrow what was in those big boxes just lens lenses yeah and the lens is so tiny like no no but can we back up just a smidge you ordered a new sony camera that's full frame with interchangeable lenses is that correct that is correct okay so this is kind of like that that crazy sony you had at my house for top gear a couple years ago with the crazy good low light
It is extremely similar in many ways to that, but just with a larger body and with interchangeable lenses.
And one of the lenses I bought, yeah, so that was the RX1 that you're talking about, which I have since sold.
You sold something?
No way.
Yeah, right.
And one of the lenses I bought is basically the lens that was on that.
It's a little 35mm prime, the Sony F2.8 35mm prime.
and like optically the measurements are almost identical it's like it it's about the same size it's yeah it's very very similar uh so because i love that that little that that focal length and the small package uh but yeah so the camera i got is the a7r2 and uh it it just came out today and that my order from bnh which i placed uh
like iphone style by refreshing the page back when it went for sale in june and it just shipped today in the u.s uh so i will i will have it tomorrow because i'm very close to bnh's warehouse uh so everything i get from there comes in one day and uh yeah so i got the 35 uh 2.8 prime i got the 55 1.8 which is one of the best lenses in the
And I ordered the 90 Macro, which is very new, but everyone seems to think it's amazing so far.
It's getting stellar reviews.
This is my first upgrade to my big camera since the RX1, maybe, when I bought that two years ago.
That was kind of a temporary thing that I ended up not sticking with.
Before that, my last upgrade to my big camera and the last upgrade that I had to interchangeable lenses was in 2008 with the 5D Mark II.
So it's been a long time coming.
This one I totally replace using any Canons for me.
Tiff is still using the Canons and she still does photo shoots.
So we will see.
She's interested in the new camera.
And so maybe we might convert the whole system over.
I'm at least most likely going to sell some of the Canon lenses that we don't really use in Tiff's photo shoots because I'm never going to use them again.
So why wouldn't a professional photographer want to use a full frame camera with interchangeable lenses?
Let's suppose you were really good at photography, but you sold all your stuff.
You were doing other things for a while, but now you're starting the business back up and you're looking to buy all new cameras, all new glass.
Why not buy this?
What's wrong with this?
The biggest thing for pro... And a lot of pros are buying this.
So that's one thing.
And one of the reasons why I think TIFF is likely to stick with the 5D Mark IIs for... We have two of them.
We each got one in 2008.
And one of the reasons why we're likely to stick with those for a while is the same reason why we haven't upgraded since 2008.
Because there's a lot of inertia there.
We have...
we have probably five or six batteries for it.
We have tons of compact flash memory cards for it.
Some, you know, very good quality ones that are very expensive.
Uh, we have a battery grip for one of them.
We have a cable remote with a timer for time-lapse remote.
We have, uh, four speed light flashes, two old ones that were kind of flaky and two new ones that I bought to replace them recently.
Um, um,
We just have so many accessories that are not universal, that only work with those cameras.
We have so many accessories for them that we didn't even upgrade to the Canon 5D Mark III because the 5D Mark II was so good and the Mark III, for our purposes, didn't seem like a very compelling upgrade to replace all this gear that we would have had to replace.
We have, in addition to all the Canon lenses and everything, so there's a lot of inertia behind sticking with what we have.
But if that wasn't the case, if you didn't have any of that, what would prevent you?
Is the viewfinder not optical?
Does that even matter anymore?
What would cause that?
Anything mirrorless, basically, I know there's going to be some exception weird, but basically, the viewfinder is not optical.
It's not like what you think of when you think of an SLR, where you are looking through a prism, across a mirror, across out the lens.
That is what defines an SLR, is the single lens reflex.
It's like you're looking...
through the lens with this mirror thing that flips up when you take a picture and exposes the sensor so mirrorless cameras lack that and yes there's rangefinders and other weird things but basically you know mirrorless cameras lack that um and there are a lot of advantages to that there there's a lot that that is very nice that i really enjoy about that and this is a
In the process of renting this, I also rented the Nikon D750, which is a fantastic traditional style SLR.
It is excellent in so many ways.
It has an amazing focus system.
It has amazing low-light performance, amazing sensor made by Sony, coincidentally.
And it is a fantastic camera in many ways.
The reason why a pro might choose that, besides the handling and just preferring looking through the lens directly through the optical thing and everything...
is mostly just because there are certain things that appeal to pros and certain things that pros need so certain things that appeal to them there's there's a huge there's a much larger library of available lenses first of all now granted you have to you know pick a system so you got to pick nikon or canon or you know even the big sony's but nobody picks those um
And if you buy a Nikon camera, you've got to use Nikon's lenses.
And there are adapters, and there are adapters to use Nikon or Canon lenses on the Sony cameras, but you give up some things.
Some of them don't work quite right.
Some of them don't focus very quickly, if at all.
Some of them, they have little bugs, little glitches, little setbacks.
The adapters are all these kind of hacky, third-party things that are not supported by anybody.
So it's really not... If you have lenses that you want to use from Canon or Nikon's big lens lineups that stretch back like 20 years, 30 years or longer, you can't really use those well on a small mirrorless camera.
You can use them usually through the adapter, but you can't use them well.
You're better off just getting the native body if you can.
And because these mirrorless cameras have been around for way less time, the lens lamps are just way smaller.
Like, one of my favorite lenses on the Canon is the 135 F2 Prime.
It is awesome.
There is no equivalent to that that I can mount on the Sony that is native.
There are some that I can mount through adapters, and then I don't have autofocus and everything.
Or I can mount the Canon one and have autofocus, but it might be weird.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Regardless, there's no native one.
The lens library is small.
That'll change over time, but that is still the case.
There's also things like there's no great first-party flashes that have amazing metering, as far as I know.
You can use any flash, and you can manually meter it, but that's not as good.
There's all sorts of stuff like that.
There's just a lot more...
Like limitations in what kind of gear is available.
And then there's also things that a lot of pros either need really or at least would want.
So one of the biggest downsides to the Sony full frame system is that the cameras have terrible battery lives.
because they're really small, they're really high-powered computationally, and they have these little tiny batteries that... The battery for a full-size SLR can last five times as long, and full-size SLRs are not lighting up screens constantly in the viewfinder.
These little cameras have terrible battery lives.
That is the biggest downside to me.
Also, for pro use, the cameras are usually not weather-sealed, which a lot of pros need and many pros want.
And they are also, I don't think any of them have some of the more unusual but sometimes needed pro features like dual memory slots.
So there's stuff like that.
There's some features that pros need or want that are not available on mirrorless cameras and are probably not going to come soon.
We'll see what happens.
I'm very happy not being a pro in this way right now.
Back in 2008, we bought the Pro 5D because it was the only way to get really great image quality.
The difference, I mean, your camera is awesome, Casey, but the difference between full frame and not full frame is large.
This is not a small difference.
It is a very big difference.
And we just love that difference.
And back then there was a much bigger gap also.
Now the gap is smaller, but it was much bigger back then.
Well, it's also a considerably larger financial penalty as well, right?
Because I got a really, really beautiful lens, or at least I feel like it is, on top of the kit.
And off the top of my head, I want to say it was about $1,500 all in.
So the kit lens, which is a little zoom and this lens.
A really good lens.
It's not a pancake, but it's a really solid prime that Sean Blanc recommended, which I love.
I couldn't even tell you the statistics off the top of my head.
But anyways, that was like $1,500 all in.
And I'm going to, you don't have to tell me a number, but I'm going to guess that you're in a lot more than that for this full frame camera.
A lot more than that, yeah.
I mean, part of it's because I just got the cutting edge best model because I'm me and also because I don't upgrade these things very often.
So part of it is that certainly I think even if you get a more reasonably priced one, you're looking at for a good lens and a good body, you're looking at over $2,000 probably for this type.
Yeah.
Regardless, so yeah, that's what I got.
It arrives tomorrow.
There is no massive full review available of it yet, so it's a bit of a risk.
But based on the early... I rented its predecessor, the a7 II.
I rented that back right before I rented the d750.
I rented that.
And it has basically an identical body, an identical handling, identical menus.
There's almost no difference in the physical side.
So I know that I like shooting with it.
It just has a different sensor and a better sensor.
So anyway, I don't think it's that much of a risk, but we'll see.
I have no idea.