iPhone Sorry Erin
Casey:
Are we talking about that amazing thing we were just talking about in the pre-show?
Casey:
Are we talking about that anymore now or are we done?
Casey:
Wait, what?
Casey:
The thing we were just talking about in the pre-show.
Marco:
The iPad Pro 9.7, whatever, whatever?
Casey:
Yeah, stop, stop.
Casey:
No, the thing that's happening next week.
Casey:
Are we talking about that?
Casey:
What's happening next week?
Casey:
Oh my God, Marco.
John:
How are we going to have anything to say about that until it happens?
Casey:
Yeah, I guess not.
Casey:
I'll just be that jerk that's teasing.
John:
And then it'll just be like, oh, it's fine.
John:
That's how it's going to go.
John:
Suddenly Marcos turned into John Roderick's father.
Casey:
It's fine.
John:
I think it's fine.
Casey:
I still... Oh, oh, the... You know what we need in our lives?
Casey:
We need some follow-up.
Casey:
We don't have that much this week, so it'll last about three hours.
Casey:
Why don't you tell us about an anonymous former Apple employee, John?
John:
Who doesn't love anonymous former Apple employees?
John:
Last week, we discussed some more.
John:
Why don't we have cellular on the Mac and have lots of different theories?
John:
There's one.
John:
This is one data point.
John:
This is a three year old data point from, again, an anonymous Apple employee.
John:
and he or she says a significant number of ipad owners do not have an iphone an insignificant number of macbook owners do not have an iphone uh as of three years ago anyway so the idea there is why don't you have cellular you have cellular on the ipad but you don't have on a mac why it's like well
John:
because lots of iPad owners don't have phones, but all the Mac users do.
John:
That's an interesting data point.
John:
May have contributed to their decision, but as we talked about last show, just because you have a phone doesn't mean you want to waste its battery tethering and deal with all the tethering stuff when it's built in.
John:
It's much nicer.
John:
But anyway, that's an interesting number.
John:
I probably would not have guessed that, that like...
John:
the mac well i suppose so if you have a mac maybe you're like an old school apple user and you're like everybody who's got a macbook's got an iphone but the ipad has sold to a much wider audience anyway there you have it take that for what it's worth from an anonymous apple employee from a three-year-old data
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Scott Williams wrote in sometime over the last week and asked a question, which I thought was actually very interesting.
Casey:
He asked, why not use CloudKit for file uploads in Overcast?
Casey:
And unbeknownst to Marco, I replied to Scott, just the two of us.
Casey:
I didn't copy Marco and John.
Casey:
And I said, I bet you anything it's just because S3 is what Marco knew and he didn't feel like learning something different.
Yeah.
Casey:
But I'm not 100% sure is what I said to Scott.
Casey:
And then you did reply to everyone.
Casey:
And that is not the answer you had, which I was very surprised by.
Casey:
So why don't you answer the question, Marco?
Casey:
Why not use CloudKit?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And actually, I mean, I've heard from a number of people on why don't I use X?
Marco:
One of the other X's was Backblaze's new S3-like service that I believe is called B2.
Marco:
So the reason why I built this on S3 rather than all these other options is, first, that Swilliams was right, that it was the thing I knew the best.
Marco:
But second, that I wrote that entire feature in 2014.
Marco:
That's the big reason.
Marco:
So that was before CloudKit and before Backblades B2.
Marco:
The reality is that the biggest cost of it, I don't actually know yet, but the biggest cost of it is more likely to be bandwidth than storage because bandwidth transfer is a lot more expensive on S3 than storage is.
Marco:
Storage is something like $0.03 per gig month, something like that.
Marco:
um and transfer in is free transfer out so when you redownload or play the file uh that i have to pay for and it's you know in in large quantity that's actually a non-trivial cost and the the the bandwidth fees are actually fairly similar on almost every provider cloud kit would be interesting because cloud kit is like free with a whole bunch of asterisks after it um
Marco:
One of the holdups with that is simply that I'm not familiar with how it works yet.
Marco:
And another big one is that I believe not all of those asterisks actually have definitions at the bottom of the page.
Marco:
Many of them are like, you just don't know what will happen with this asterisk.
Marco:
If you go over all your quotas...
Marco:
It's kind of undefined and stuff like that.
Marco:
So like CloudKit is a bit of a risk.
Marco:
If I were writing all of this stuff from scratch today, I would probably first try to do all of it, the sync, everything on CloudKit first.
Marco:
But because I wrote all this stuff before CloudKit existed, that's the main reason why it is the way it is.
Marco:
And so far, looking at how much space I'm actually using on S3 so far, I'm up to over 300 gigs now.
Marco:
But that's still something like $60 a month in storage.
Marco:
So the question will end up being, how much do I end up using in bandwidth costs?
Marco:
And if this cost does not end up being ridiculous, then I can, of course, raise the limit.
Marco:
Right now, it's 2 gigs.
Marco:
But why not offer...
Marco:
10 gigs.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I could offer more if the costs stay reasonable.
Marco:
So I'm just going to basically see what ends up being the average cost of it, and then I'll decide from there what to do.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
John, why don't you tell us about why it may not be your fault that your poor iPod Touch walked on you?
John:
No, it's my fault.
John:
A lot of people sent me links to various stories about technology to break into cars, particularly this one with keyless entry where you just have a little key fob in your pocket and you just walk up to your car and it unlocks and you get in and you drive away.
John:
I think you guys probably have that on your fancy cars.
John:
And the way you break into these, well, the way the system works is obviously you walk up to the car and
John:
The car knows you're nearby because it sends a signal to your key fob and your key fob says, oh, I should open the door and sends a signal back and tells the car to open the door.
John:
The way these break in things work is if you're in a restaurant and your car is parked outside.
John:
your car is sending out a signal hey key fob are you there hey key fob are you there but your key fob's not there the signal is very weak the signal only reaches when you really when you're right next to your car essentially these amplifiers take the car signal amplify it massively so your key fob in your pocket inside the restaurant can hear the car asking and then uh the key fob thinks oh uh the car has asked me something here you go car open your doors please
John:
Um, and it sends a signal, which can reach the car apparently from the key fob, because I guess they work from really far away in case you hit the button, you know, uh, and then the door opens and the thief gets in.
John:
So it's an amplifier.
John:
And what it's amplifying is the car signal reaching out to your key fob.
John:
And then your key fob just answers and opens the car door.
John:
um i'm pretty sure no one used that in my car because i don't have one of those things my car does not send out a signal to my key fob i have the old-fashioned kind of key fob where the way it works is you press a button on the key fob and it sends a signal to the car me getting close to my car with my key in my pocket does nothing does not open the doors for me um i just left it unlocked just that one time anyway the car is locked now got a new ipod in there i'm fine
John:
There are other... By the way, there are other things that you can use to break into cars like mine that just send a whole bunch of different signals to the car and all sorts of other hacks and things.
John:
But just all of that just sounds way... Even the amplifier thing just sounds way too sophisticated for the crime that this seems to be, which is just wander down the street in the neighborhood and try every single car handle, and if it's locked, go on to the next one.
John:
I mean, you could also just use, like, a rock to break the window.
John:
I mean, it's like... Yeah, they don't want to break the window.
John:
They don't want this...
John:
The whole idea about this crime is you keep it low enough level that no one really gets upset about it because, like, they didn't break anything on your car.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like, you're right.
John:
They could just break, you know, break the window and get in there however they want.
John:
Or they can, you know, use some other way to break into the car.
John:
This is totally about, I don't want to be bothered by that.
John:
If they leave the door open, there's enough people to leave the door open.
John:
Why should I bother doing something that can make more noise, that can get me caught, that can get me in trouble, that can make the police take notice, right?
John:
So this is totally a crime of opportunity.
John:
Just looking for the day I forget to lock my car door again.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Thanks a lot to Harry for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So this past Monday, we had our first Apple event of the year, and we did not get new Macs.
Casey:
Sad times.
Marco:
We spent a lot of time talking about them last week and then nothing.
Marco:
I mean, it's a bummer.
Marco:
But, you know, a lot of people are saying that, oh, well, this is a sign that Apple doesn't care about the Mac as much anymore.
Marco:
And I think it's true that Apple doesn't care that much about the Mac anymore.
Marco:
But I don't think this is a sign of that.
Marco:
i basically think like if you give apple the benefit of the doubt on this one uh we know that releases of max are tied very heavily to availability of the cpus they're going to use from intel and intel over the last few years as they face a lot of challenges with all their you know chip manufacturing changes and progress over time they have missed a lot of their of their target ship dates maybe even all of them like they've
Marco:
They have just been very delayed and very late getting stuff out the door for a lot of the recent chip generations.
Marco:
And Skylake, of course, is no exception.
Marco:
It was one of the biggest ones, actually.
Marco:
Skylake, the newest generation of their chips, has taken a very long time to come out.
Marco:
I think it was total, what, like a year late or something?
Marco:
It is definitely behind schedule.
Marco:
So the type of Skylake chips that go into MacBooks and MacBook Pros are usually the ones that have Intel's Iris Pro graphics in them.
Marco:
And so you can look around the industry and you can see certain Skylake chips are out, and you can buy certain ones in PCs for months or recently.
Marco:
But the ones with Iris Pro that would go into the MacBook Pro, those, as far as I know, are not really out in quantity yet.
Marco:
So that is much more likely to be the reason here that we didn't see Macs.
Marco:
It's not necessarily that Apple is snubbing the Mac.
Marco:
It's way more likely that those chips, Apple just can't get enough of them yet from Intel.
Marco:
So they can't really release this thing yet.
Marco:
That's a way more likely explanation.
Marco:
Again, I do think there are lots of signs all over the place that the Mac has kind of taken a backseat at Apple in recent years.
Marco:
But I don't think the absence of Macs at this event is a sign of that necessarily.
John:
And we'll talk about Intel's abandonment of their TikTok strategy probably on the next show unless we get through all the Apple event stuff, in which case we'll talk about later.
John:
But anyway, suffice it to say that Intel is now formally acknowledging what Marco just said and we've all known for a long time is that.
John:
They make a lot of promises about when things will be ready, and they usually kind of are within their promise window, but at the very tail edge, excluding the models that Apple wants, and caveat, caveat, asterisk, asterisk.
John:
So it's nice to see them acknowledging the reality and changing their game plan.
John:
I guess we'll talk more about why, what this means, blah, blah, blah, if and when we get to that topic, maybe next show.
Marco:
And the other thing is, though, it is worth pointing out that Apple has contributed from their end to the long release between certain Macs.
Marco:
And the main way that this is not all Intel's fault is that Apple often, for their lower priority products, things like the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro especially, they often skip Intel generations.
Marco:
So Intel will often make them a new CPU, and Apple will be like, eh.
Marco:
eh, we just updated this product last year.
Marco:
We don't need to do another one this year.
Marco:
And the Mac Pro tends to... I think for most of the recent generations, the Mac Pro has skipped roughly every other generation.
Marco:
So it is definitely partly Apple's fault.
Marco:
Also, Intel has been rolling out Skylake slowly over the last few months.
Marco:
The chip that is in the MacBook 1...
Marco:
That's a different line than the chips that would be used in the MacBook Air, and those are a different line than the chips that would be used in the MacBook Pro.
Marco:
And the 13 and the 15 are also, I think, slightly different, like the quad versus the dual core there.
Marco:
But these chips are all released at different times.
Marco:
It's kind of like a rolling schedule usually in recent years with Intel.
Marco:
And so Apple could release...
Marco:
macbooks at a staggered schedule um and in fact last year they did uh if you remember last year there were um i think the the macbook one came out first then the airs and then the 13 and the 15 right something like that something like that they were staggered out among a few months so you know apple could have some of these chips like the macbook one's chip maybe and just not have released it yet because they're waiting to do it all at once uh so that's also kind of on apple uh
Marco:
um but the main thing is like is the skipping of generations that that that is the big one like these the chip that's in the 15 inch right now is i think like three years old or something i mean it's like it's it's pretty rough the mac pro is also again in really bad shape because like once you start skipping intel generations now nowadays like where the intel generation itself is being extended because of various delays and getting to the next the next stage
Marco:
when you start skipping generations like Apple often does now, that could mean you're buying a three-year-old CPU when you go into the store today.
Marco:
And that just sucks.
Marco:
So I think if Apple wants to at least partially alleviate the notion that they're abandoning or neglecting the Mac, I think they've got to stop skipping these generations.
Marco:
Because if the generation is going to go from nine months long to two years long, that's a much bigger thing that, you know, stop skipping them already.
Marco:
Because
Marco:
they also tie everything else to it so for instance like if you buy it like this this came up in the oculus rift comments from a couple weeks ago that's still a topic down there by the way i know if you buy a mac pro today you're getting something like a three-year-old or four-year-old class gpu like you're getting a really old gpu uh by by modern standards even if you opt for the highest one can you believe people out there are using three-year-old mac pros isn't that sad
Marco:
well they're not buying that well they are but you know like ideally you wouldn't buy a three-year-old mac pro today right so the one you can buy today is three years old that's what i'm getting at i know right so anyway so like you know it sucks that because apple skips these generations of cpus on on the lesser mainstream products and these generations keep getting longer by tying themselves to intel's calendar they end up shipping a whole bunch of other old stuff too
Marco:
Like, you know, the GPUs are grossly outdated usually on these products.
Marco:
The configuration options, things like SSD pricing for higher capacities, that tends to stay very high for very long because it's just hardly ever updated.
Marco:
You know, when you're updating every two to three years and you're doing significant updates, then it's kind of hard to keep that stuff competitive.
Marco:
So that all is kind of, you know, that does all contribute.
Marco:
And all those things are within Apple's control to change.
Marco:
And I hope they do at some point.
Marco:
and all this is kind of just to lead into the final conclusion here which is now that now that we're seeing quite how much apple depends on intel to progress the mac line forward you know assuming apple fixes all their other stuff and starts you know and doesn't skip any more cpu generation than intel gives them and maybe keep things a little bit more up to date which that's a big if honestly i don't see it happening but if they would do that
Marco:
you can kind of see why Apple might someday want to move to our Macs.
Marco:
Because Apple could make their own CPUs that are Mac class.
Marco:
And if they could be at all competitive with Intel, which they, honestly, they might not even need to be.
Marco:
I mean, look at the MacBook One, an incredibly slow computer that seems to be selling pretty well anyway because nobody cares.
Marco:
So if Apple made their own ARM chips for Macs, for OS X,
Marco:
they would own this part of the pipeline that right now they depend on this partner who keeps delaying them.
Marco:
And that isn't necessarily to say that Apple would always do better, but it is exactly the same situation they were in back when they were on PowerPC waiting for IBM to do anything with PowerPC.
Marco:
It's very similar to that situation.
Marco:
And Apple made a change because they were tired of being dependent on this slow partner.
Marco:
They could do the same thing here with Intel at some point by saying, you know what?
Marco:
we are we are done dealing with intel holdups and intel delays we're going to try taking this on our own and we're going to make mac chips and you know just have like an a an a15x for the mac or something so this is all kind of you know big long-term stuff and all this requires a lot more thought and effort into the mac than what apple might be giving recently um but i do think it's within the realm of reason
Marco:
Anyway, new laptops will be out in a couple months.
Marco:
The answer is we don't know when they'll be out.
Marco:
Again, it depends on Intel.
Marco:
They could be out.
Marco:
I'd say at this point, since they missed this event, the most likely release is June at WWDC.
Marco:
But it also could be any time before then or after then.
Marco:
Because with Intel's ship dates, we don't really know.
Marco:
It could be just like a press release and maybe some briefings sometime between now and June without an event.
Marco:
It could be another tiny event, although I doubt that.
Marco:
Or, you know, it could just be announced in WBC in June.
Marco:
So really, it could be any of these things.
Marco:
And we don't really know.
Marco:
And probably only Apple and Intel know this.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we should probably cover the rest of the event chronologically.
John:
The things that were actually in the event.
John:
Right.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So why don't we start how it started with the brief, what was it, 40 years and 40 seconds video?
Casey:
I don't have a lot to say about it.
Casey:
Other than that, I really enjoyed it.
Casey:
And I also really enjoyed Stephen Hackett and Jason Snell's, like, We Didn't Start the Fire style recap of everything that was in it.
John:
Tim Cook did the little thing of, like, we here at Apple don't usually like to look backwards, but...
John:
yeah it seems kind of like the new apple kind of likes to look backwards sometimes like a little bit more than they used to because steve jobs was famously against ever doing anything remotely nostalgic so it was just forward new new of course he did do things like with the 1984 ipod ad and stuff like that um but it seemed more rare back then and this was small and it's just a bunch of words on a screen and it was fun and cute or whatever
John:
But it's like, I don't know, maybe just Apple's just getting to that age where there's like a lot of round number anniversaries and birthdays.
John:
It's 25th anniversary or the 30th anniversary of the Mac, the 40th anniversary of the company.
John:
You know, the last town hall thing just seems to me that the new Apple seems ever so slightly more sentimental than it used to be.
John:
i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing i mean i'm more sentimental i'm old too you know uh the the text name video it was cute but uh and i like the fact that it was 40 seconds but it wasn't anything too wonderful i mean i enjoyed it and um i didn't think it was overly self-indulgent like the uh thousand no's for every yes or whatever it was i also like that video but it kind of ran for a long time and got a little bit
John:
But that was forward-looking, though.
John:
That was like, this is the new Apple.
John:
This is what we're doing going forward.
John:
And I give them lots of leeway to sort of set a new direction.
John:
This is purely like, hey, it's an anniversary.
John:
We did a bunch of cool things in the first 40 years.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
And I liked it.
Casey:
And I liked it because it was quick.
Casey:
It was funny.
Casey:
And it didn't take things too seriously.
Casey:
So I quite liked the video.
John:
I didn't like that it wasn't chronological, though.
John:
Of course it bothered me because if you're trying to match up, it's kind of chronological, but then it jumps back and it goes all over the place.
John:
I'm like, just do it chronological.
Casey:
Sorry, John.
Casey:
After that, we heard about privacy.
Casey:
And even since we're recording this on Wednesday evening, the conference or whatever you want to call it, the keynote took place Monday afternoon, proper time.
Casey:
So even in 24 hours later, there's been new developments in this whole privacy battle with the FBI.
Casey:
And I don't know which one of you guys put this link to the New York Times in here, but perhaps you can talk about that a little bit more.
John:
Well, I mean, so he Tim Cook was on stage and being kind of like very assertive and determined, you know, as you all know in the audience, because you're a bunch of tech reporters.
John:
Here's the thing that we've been battling the FBI and Department of Justice over and Apple's committed to privacy and we're going to fight this fight and so on and so forth.
John:
And then the audience applauds and it's like, yeah.
John:
And then like one or two days later, the Department of Justice is like, actually, it turns out we might have another way into this phone.
John:
Never mind about that hearing.
John:
We were going to have Apple.
John:
Someone else approached the FBI and said they can get us into the phone, so never mind for now.
John:
So they postponed the hearing, perhaps indefinitely, and the government is going off and doing something else, and everyone's trying to read the tea leaves.
John:
Could they always have gotten into it?
John:
Do they get cold feet?
John:
Is this actually someone new saying, hey, here's a box you can buy in China that will unlock this phone, and FBI should have known about it, but you're a bunch of dunces.
John:
It's so hard to tell what's actually going on, but the bottom line for Apple is they were all stealing for a fight, and that fight has been either postponed or canceled.
John:
So it's like, oh, all right, well, I guess we'll wait to see if the government comes back and says, no, seriously, we want you to do this.
John:
But for now, it seems like a stay of execution for Apple.
Marco:
Which is excellent.
Marco:
I think it's most likely to be a combination of all those possibilities that you outlined, John.
Marco:
I think if you looked at the way the legal briefs were going back and forth,
Marco:
The FBI really did not have much of a leg to stand on legally, according to what most lawyers, which we are not, seem to think about these briefs and these arguments.
Marco:
It seems like the FBI was very likely to lose, basically.
Marco:
And so they're bailing out.
Marco:
And that's very smart from their point of view because we all, I think, suspect or know that this is very much about setting precedent.
Marco:
And they wanted to set precedent that would allow them to compel Apple to break into any phone they demanded, secretly probably.
Marco:
All the wonderful stuff our government does now in the name of freedom.
Marco:
they there was an equal chance if they lost to set a bad precedent for the fbi which should be like if apple successfully defended against this and uh courts ruled in apple's favor saying no you can't make apple do this then that hurts the fbi's uh cause for themselves so if they were pretty sure they were going to lose the best thing to do is say oh never mind we'll fight this again later
Marco:
And that's basically what they've done.
John:
I don't know if their handicapping of their chances of losing changed that much after seeing Apple's argument.
John:
It's so hard to tell when there's the possibility that one of the parties to this lawsuit is incredibly incompetent and doesn't know anything about the tech stuff.
John:
Because if you believe that, then you're like, well, maybe FBI really did think they had a strong case.
John:
But then when the facts came to light and Apple got to respond, they're like, oh, maybe we don't have a strong case.
John:
But then you would think, seriously?
John:
Would they not know all these things?
John:
And so it's so hard to tell.
John:
Are they super devious and just like bluffing?
John:
Or did they really not know that it seemed like they didn't have a good case?
John:
And the other possibility, the even more cynical one, is...
John:
They just decided, you know what, it's a lot easier if we just get laws passed that force Apple to do what we want.
John:
So we will retreat and, you know, go through government channels to try to, you know, influence Congress to pass the terrible laws that we want them to pass, and we'll secretly pass them in the night while no one's watching because we have enough people who will vote for them because they have lobbyists from, you know, whatever.
John:
Like, the typical...
John:
way the government passes laws that don't have popular support right right in the name of fighting this war that somehow never ends and is vaguely defined right right exactly it is a terrorism blah blah blah you know apple being mean blah blah blah encryption is going to kill your children whatever like anyway so that's another possibility that that they decided this is too much of a hassle even if we were going to win it's so much better if we can just get terrible laws passed and that has worked really well for lots of terrible laws that involve like
John:
warrantless wiretapping in the patriot act and all the other things they've done it's like that that's a proven strategy this whole battling a company in court especially a company that has a lot of money for lawyers that seems like a lot of work so who knows who knows what's going on but either way apple was all sort of grim and determined and committed and that determination has fizzled because now they had nothing to be determined about and they can just going back to suspecting that the nsa is putting secret chips into all their servers
Casey:
delightful so there was that speech about privacy the aftermath thereof and then we got to talk about the environment and i was very pleased to see that um the first not tim person on stage was a woman lisa jackson a woman of color no less which is excellent um and she was up there for quite a while and this is the first time i can recall seeing her on stage is that fair to say or am i forgetting one
John:
She might have been up there before, I think, for talking about environment.
John:
But yeah, this is something that people are watching now.
John:
Apple watchers are watching now because Apple itself has tried to do better about diversity and is giving these diversity reports to say, how are we doing?
John:
How far do we have to go?
John:
Apple itself has given itself a bad grade on diversity and continues to give itself a bad grade on diversity because it deserves a bad grade on diversity.
John:
But now when we watch these keynotes, especially as compared to some other companies, for example, Google has historically done much better in terms of who is on stage talking, right?
John:
And
John:
it's not just who's on stage talking like you can just you know we'll just pick someone up there and try to put a diverse face on things who's on stage talking always necessarily reflects who's in charge of things and that is the type of problem where you can't fix it overnight unless you fire everybody and start over right and that's usually people don't like to do that we were like that we're cleaning house the whole top five layers of the org chart everybody's fired and we're starting over um so it's going to take up a long time that would be interesting yeah
John:
it's going to take apple well steve jobs kind of did that but he just replaced all the white dudes with white dudes a long time for apple to undo the decades and decades of promoting white dudes essentially right so you can't you know you can't just you can't fix it overnight which isn't an excuse but it's just showing how how difficult it is to make this change and how deep this this stuff goes right and so
John:
trying to at the very least uh do a little bit better on each successive keynote is i think important but every time they do it it almost highlights how far they have to go you know what i mean like like this is this is literally the best you can do and you've got to dig all the way down to like your vice president of environment to come up with a female speaker no one who's in charge of like ios or the mac or apple tv or anything like that is any more diverse than just a million other white guys so
John:
um it's difficult to know how like i mean i know how i feel about this but like what what kind of feedback would you give to apple because it's clear that they're trying to do something but it's also clear that they're like that it's almost an indepenetrable wall and you wouldn't tell them you need to fire everybody and start over you would hope that they're working internally to try to hire and promote more equitably uh than they have been but
John:
For you to see results of that, it's going to take years and years and years, simply because, like I said, you just can't fire everybody.
John:
And it doesn't necessarily have to start at the bottom.
John:
You can hire women into the top like they did for their head of retail and stuff, too.
John:
But it's just like...
John:
It's a long road.
John:
I mean, to their credit, I mean, we'll talk about the environment in a second, but it seems like Apple at least knows that they have a problem and is trying to do something about it.
John:
But it's difficult to tell whether Apple is being ineffectual in their efforts or they're being as effective as they possibly can.
John:
It's just going to take for freaking ever.
Casey:
Alright, so let's talk about the environment a little bit.
Casey:
Apple cares.
Casey:
And they had said a couple of years ago, which I don't recall when that was, that they wanted to be 100% based on renewable energy.
Casey:
And
John:
they aren't there yet but they're 93 worldwide and apparently 100 renewable in 23 countries including the states if i'm not mistaken their environment this aspect of their environment the energy aspect of the environment i think is one of the best things apple is doing simply because they are so well positioned to do what they're doing all right so it's a it's it's a win-win for apple so
John:
Obviously, they get the PR advantage of saying, look how environmentally green we are, and we're setting an example for everybody else and blah, blah, blah.
John:
But it also costs them less money, not in the short term, but in the long run.
John:
And why does every company not do this?
John:
Why doesn't every single company in the entire United States...
John:
to use all renewable energy into all this stuff well because it costs tons of money up front they build solar panels they buy you know they build wind farms they invest money in like they're paying to put all those solar panels on top of the buildings in wherever that was singapore or whatever and they're building a huge solar arrays outside of you know there's a huge capital investment who can afford to make these gigantic capital investments so you can make it back slowly over the next 20 years
John:
Apple, that's because they got tons of money.
John:
Like that's not their problem.
John:
They have the capital.
John:
So this is exactly what Apple should be doing.
John:
Hey, we have a huge amount of money.
John:
Cash flow is not our problem.
John:
We are committed to having these data centers or these stores or whatever for a long, long time.
John:
Let's take all the money that we have.
John:
put it up front to build you know if there's not renewable energy we'll build it if there is we'll try to subsidize it or buy it or you know pay for whatever it is that you know that other companies can't do because like um that's great but i don't have no two billion dollars to put all these solar panels up right let's invest that money and then let's slowly make it back over years and years of saying oh now our data center is powered half by the sun and half by these other renewable things whatever they will make it back eventually um
John:
And even if they don't, it's such a drop in the bucket compared to their other expenses and the other things they spend money on.
John:
It's just a smart thing to do.
John:
So, like, especially when I saw them putting solar panels on the roof of skyscrapers and stuff, like, seriously, you're going to try to power your retail stores with renewable energy?
John:
As far as Apple is concerned, it's like, sure, why the hell not?
John:
I mean, it's just a smart investment.
John:
And if you are a company that's, like, has short-term thinking or doesn't have as much cash as Apple or sort of, like, pinching pennies, like...
John:
if you're like the walmart so the world or whatever wherever you know razor thin margins and pressuring your suppliers and not giving your employees health care and doing everything you possibly can to save every penny it's not as likely to occur to you that hey we should put solar panels on top of every single walmart and make them you know uh
John:
carbon neutral or putting energy back on the grid or whatever it is that you want to be doing because that just seems like a lot of capital investment for like a silly pr win but i truly think the people in charge and apple don't see it as a silly pr win they see it as like a strategic advantage as in we are self-sufficient another type of thing like oh we don't rely on intel for our cpus and we don't rely on stupid power companies for our power we'll do all that ourselves and
John:
um and they you know like so many other things that tim cook is apple has been behind they really seem to believe in this as as having an environmental impact even though apple's one small company and really it's a drop in the bucket i think the most important thing they do is set an example so i don't know if it deserved as much time as they gave it in the keynote
John:
uh i feel like they just need to mention this keep mentioning this over and over again kind of like they do with like the you know lead free pvc free check boxes they put in every single product like we've seen that a million times now but eventually hopefully it goes it you know it gets through everybody's head and when they don't see it for someone else's product so i guess your product contains lead uh you know so eventually i hope that
John:
Apple keeps showing these environmental things.
John:
And when other companies have big presentations about new data centers, infrastructures, the press can ask, are you powering this with renewable energy?
John:
If not, why not?
Marco:
Excellent.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So then ResearchKit and CareKit.
Casey:
ResearchKit was introduced, I think they said about a year ago.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
And CareKit is a new kind of extension of that.
Casey:
I don't really have that much to say about this.
Casey:
Other than that, I very much applaud it, and I think they're doing great work here.
Casey:
Yep.
John:
that's another example of an initiative that other companies probably wouldn't do anything about because it's not going to be a big money maker the number of people who are medical researchers who are also their customers is small i don't know if that's a big market but what you know it's not as big as like the consumer market so why did they bother doing it it's another one of those things that apple does because they think it's the right thing to do and they're in a position to use their technology to make this stuff better they're always bragging about a research kit
John:
These companies that use it to collect these programs, they use it to collect data like within 24 hours became the biggest Parkinson's study just because it's you know, they could distribute their app to all these people and gather data and care kit is the extension to say you're not part of a medical research program, you're just a patient.
John:
and care kit is something you can use to communicate your status back to your doctor and they can send you updates to your like you know your plan of of care after being released from the hospital after surgery or just keep tracking chronic conditions and stuff like that um and this stuff is all open source uh it's you know it's an admiral effort it got a lot of time in this thing care kit is a natural extension of research kit and this is exactly the type of thing that we would hope a company like apple uh would do so thumbs up
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
I would also refer everybody to this week's episode of Connected over at RelayFM, episode number 83.
Marco:
They have a lot more knowledge about the healthcare system and its needs, and they had a great discussion about this this week.
Marco:
Plus, it's a great episode otherwise.
Marco:
So I recommend you check out Connected number 83 for a more extended discussion on this research initiative for health and stuff.
Casey:
Awesome.
Casey:
Moving on, we have the brand new Apple Watch.
Casey:
It's lighter, it's thinner, it's faster.
Casey:
Oh, wait, never mind.
Casey:
No, but we did get new bands.
Casey:
Oh, I'm so sad for the Apple Watch.
Casey:
I am, but I'm not.
Casey:
I didn't actually expect to get a new watch this time, and I'm not really disappointed that we didn't.
Casey:
Well, why not, though?
Marco:
Because the watch came out a year ago, and it was unveiled like 18 months ago.
Marco:
So why didn't you expect to get a new one?
Marco:
Because usually after a year of a new product, Apple ships a much improved second version.
Marco:
Because it was in the town hall.
Marco:
That's why.
Marco:
Well, okay.
Marco:
But like, is there a great reason why we don't have new watch hardware yet?
Marco:
Because here's what I see about the watch.
Marco:
the problem with the watch is a combination of incredibly slow first-gen hardware and fairly young and limited and and kind of confusing software and they have made some software advances since since the release but most of them have not been very significant in terms of like what the user actually experiences with the watch on a regular basis like
Marco:
For the most part, it's like same stuff running at the same speed, roughly, you know, just a few minor improvements here and there, but not a whole lot.
Marco:
There's still tons of limits.
Marco:
There's still not a lot of customization of the watch faces, stuff like that.
Marco:
It's like, as our friend Steve Tratton-Smith pointed out, there are more colors of the sport band than there are watch faces that you can configure in software.
Marco:
It seems like what the watch desperately needs is
Marco:
is faster hardware number one and then a lot more work on the software number two what we have now a year later is is really neither of those things uh at least from what we can see uh instead we have the same hardware now a year later that will presumably be here for at least another i don't know six months maybe this fall we'll get new watches i don't know maybe it'll be next spring who knows
Marco:
But we have now pretty old, pretty creaky hardware.
Marco:
And we have tons of variation that we can get in the case material, in the bands that we attach to it, in the colors of those bands.
Marco:
We have so much variation on all those things.
Marco:
But the actual watch experience is brilliant.
Marco:
barely changed in the last year and needs a lot of help.
Marco:
So I kind of feel like... I don't know.
Marco:
I have this kind of larger concern with Apple that they are fighting a lot of battles on a lot of fronts.
Marco:
And we've talked in the past about how I'm concerned about them being stretched too thin.
Marco:
But I think...
Marco:
I think we're kind of seeing what that means here.
Marco:
We see, as I mentioned a half hour ago, the Macs get generations skipped of hardware and just kind of ignored.
Marco:
Some models like the Mini just get kind of neglected for years.
Marco:
It seems like the watch is possibly a low priority for them because now we have...
Marco:
year number two of it and no new hardware yet and minimal change to the software.
Marco:
Again, we'll see what happens at WWDC.
Marco:
Maybe they will unveil a significant update to the software.
Marco:
I hope they would.
Marco:
That would be the place to do it in the time.
Marco:
But I just feel like
Marco:
I feel like the watch has not gotten enough attention and has not improved enough for being in the point in its life cycle where it is.
Marco:
We didn't blink an eye when Apple let the iPad Air 2 continue to be the flagship iPad for more than a year.
Marco:
We didn't blink an eye at that because that was like, okay, well, it was like the iPad's fifth year and it was a great model.
Marco:
Nobody really had any complaints about it.
Marco:
So, great.
Marco:
But the watch hasn't reached that point yet or shouldn't have reached that point yet.
Marco:
This is a brand new product.
Marco:
It's first year, and it seems like it's already getting on a slow cycle.
Marco:
And I'm worried about it because it seems like if Apple was really putting their weight behind this product, it seems like we should have seen more by now.
Marco:
It almost feels to me like Apple kind of lacks hustle the way they used to have it.
Marco:
They used to...
Marco:
really put their weight behind new things and really try to make them work i mean not everything they were paying but you know like most most things like major new products they would really put their weight behind and really back them up for a while and and drive them forward and it just seems you know we'll see what happens with the tv going into this fall like you know will the tv get updated on a regular basis or will it get neglected we'll see what happens with the ipad you know as for you know for a while the ipad was neglected pretty badly and you know software wise at least
Marco:
And, you know, it got a lot of attention recently, which we'll get to.
Marco:
But we'll see how that plays out, you know, over the next couple of years.
Marco:
I hope they keep the attention level up for iPad users, but I don't know that they will.
Marco:
I feel like they're fighting on so many fronts that they're obviously having trouble staying competitive in certain areas.
Marco:
Like I recently got an Amazon Echo.
Marco:
The Echo is really good.
Marco:
And it kind of highlights what Siri should be
Marco:
and maybe an area of hardware Apple should consider being in that they're just not in, and that Siri is not this advanced or is not this well integrated with other products and doesn't have any kind of developer story yet.
Marco:
And so you look at a lot of Apple projects now, and it just seems like they lack that hustle that Apple stuff used to have.
Marco:
And I think a big part of that is just they're doing so much and they're fighting so many battles now
Marco:
And I don't think the company's resources have grown to match that.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
What do you think?
Casey:
So a few things here.
Casey:
First, I don't know why I didn't expect a watch update, but the watch never felt to me that it was going to be an annual update sort of thing.
Casey:
And maybe that's because I used to buy wristwatches once every five or six years.
Casey:
I think that we're running a little bit into this with the iPad as well, because the iPad isn't really an annual update kind of device either in terms of consumers.
Casey:
But I didn't really think we were going to get an update quite yet.
Casey:
And honestly, I'm not sure when we will.
Casey:
I couldn't even wager a guess.
Casey:
But I also don't think that I like my watch a lot.
Casey:
Although I like it for a lot less than I thought I would.
Casey:
I thought I would like to use all sorts of third-party apps, and I thought I would like to use it almost not as a replacement for my phone, but I would turn to my watch more often than I would turn to my phone.
Casey:
And I've found that...
Casey:
For me, my watch is a great notifications like triage device.
Casey:
It's great for the weather.
Casey:
It's great for my schedule, and it's great for health, and that's about it.
Casey:
I don't use it for pretty much any third-party apps outside of things that I stick on my watch face as complications, which basically is carrot weather and fantastical.
John:
We didn't talk about this, I think, last time, but Apple's practice over the last several years with most of its products is they want to –
John:
keep making a physical design for at least two years and they usually do that by keeping the the old models around right for the phones or with with the 5se even longer than two years um so even if apple revises the watch wouldn't you think they would want to keep making this this size and shape watch for two years and so that two years isn't up and so it's not so much that i didn't think this watch would still be around um
John:
it's just that there's no there's no replacement for it and and that's that's the thing i have thinking about seeing all these new bands and everything is it like if and when a new watch comes out first of all what can they even do well they can put a slightly lower power cpu that's slightly faster with you know new process technology or whatever and that will presumably let them get more battery life and maybe they can use a smaller battery and make it thinner and try to fix all the things that we think they should fix hardware wise just incrementally get a little bit better
John:
But then when they keep selling the I don't know, the Apple Watch one right alongside it for, say, a reduced price, not just the sport model, but all of them reduced price just because they have all the tooling to build these watches.
John:
And they would just say, well, we feel like we want to make every size and shape for at least two years to recoup the costs on the tooling in the process.
John:
If that's the case.
John:
I don't, I mean, I'm kind of like in the same boat as Casey.
John:
Like I, why didn't I expect it other than the town hall thing?
John:
Why didn't I expect new watches?
John:
It just doesn't seem like, I don't know.
John:
Like I, even if they had a new one, I wasn't confident that the new one would advance to such a degree.
John:
Like, like,
John:
basically Apple's treatment of this product has so clearly put it as a fashion accessory and not a tech accessory and fashion accessories like they have been changing it the fashion parts of it new colors you know you can get a rose gold one you can get an aluminum gold one you get a million different bands like they have been doing that and for
John:
a fashion focused product that is hustle kind of you know what i mean and marco you're thinking of it as if it's a tiny computer and they have to advance the computing insides because the problems you see with the product have to do with like software uh the the sort of functionality of the software and the focus of the product and the speed of the hardware but as a fashion accessory it's gotten more updates than any product app has ever sold and so
John:
i i don't know i i feel mostly okay with waiting two years for a hardware update on this product if in the meantime every six months they give new bands and new colors and everything because that's that seems like a a cadence and a treatment of this product that is in keeping with the the supposed theme of the product and i agree with you that they they do have problems that they need to address on the software side and better hardware is always better but uh i don't know i'm not too broken up about it
Marco:
Well, I agree with most of what you just said.
Marco:
I am very happy they're keeping the fashion angle up.
Marco:
And they are doing a really impressive job of cranking out tons of new bands.
Marco:
And I'm very happy to see all these new bands.
Marco:
Because if I go back to my Apple Watch on a regular basis, you bet I'm going to rock something like the Red Leather Band or something crazy.
Marco:
And I'm going to love having these new options come out all the time.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
And I'm glad they're doing that.
Marco:
But that stuff is relatively easy, you know, relative to everything else the watch needs to be better.
Marco:
They're doing the easy stuff and the stuff that gets them a lot of profit.
Marco:
What the watch needs to be good is both.
Marco:
It needs both the fashion angle to keep being up, you know, and honestly, you know, I'm not entirely sure that's incredibly well guided of them because, you
Marco:
The Apple Watch itself, the watch part of it, if you really want to keep up with fashion, that part needs to change on a regular basis too.
John:
Well, they did change it.
John:
They have new colors and everything.
Marco:
Yeah, they changed it a little bit.
Marco:
That's a minor change for fashion.
Marco:
Ultimately, I don't think a smartwatch will be a fashion object for that reason, that they kind of can't change the body of it in dramatic ways frequently because of all the software environment that has to run it and everything.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I wouldn't expect this to be a fashion item really ever, if it ever was.
Marco:
But if it is now, I wouldn't expect that to last forever.
Marco:
And treating it only as a fashion item, I think, is a mistake because that's not how fashion works.
Marco:
Fashion does not support the same rectangle with different bands indefinitely.
Marco:
So putting that fashion angle aside for a second...
Marco:
What the watch needs is to be really good, even at those basic functions.
Marco:
So I'm not saying it needs a faster CPU to play games on it or to run more advanced apps.
Marco:
I'm saying it needs faster CPU and better software, even just to do the basics.
Marco:
And even simple things like the Bluetooth communication to the phone is still unreliable.
Marco:
And I don't know whether that's the fault of Bluetooth, the big scary ghost of Bluetooth or what.
Marco:
But I have lots of other Bluetooth things that work great.
Marco:
So probably not just that.
Marco:
There's probably other reasons also.
Marco:
There's so much the watch could do, either that it can't do today or that it does poorly today, that is all dependent on the hardware being very slow and the software being very limited to conserve power.
Marco:
So if they would do something like increase the CPU performance by 25%, which based on their mobile chips from their phones and the progression, those have made that is not unreasonable or unrealistic at all, in all likelihood.
Marco:
Because again, this hardware was shown to us in a nearly finished state 18 months ago.
Marco:
So they can probably release a new one that's pretty good now if they wanted to, if they put the resources behind it.
Marco:
And so a 20%, 25% gain in CPU performance would help tremendously.
Marco:
And suppose they could reduce power draw by 20, 25%.
Marco:
Well, then maybe they could increase the frequency that complications update by, which can enable stuff to work better and can enable new kinds of apps.
Marco:
So I'm not saying they have to make massive advances in making this watch able to replace your phone or run really complicated apps or anything.
Marco:
I'm talking about just improving the basics by enough that you can really, really dramatically improve...
Marco:
the core functionality like if you just improve the the speed of the hardware and the power efficiency by you know not even like you know you don't even have to like quadruple them just like you know improve them by a double digit percentage and that can translate to real real gain i i would not say that you can look at this object and say oh you know what this is good enough for two years we don't need to update it no it's not good enough yet and
Marco:
Maybe in a few years we'll get there, but we're not there yet.
Marco:
And it really needs a lot of help to be a really good object besides just having cool bands.
John:
Anyway, a new watch in six months with a FaceTime camera, right?
Casey:
Something like that.
Marco:
Oh, God, I hope not.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
We need to move on.
Casey:
But I don't know if it's really fair to just say that, oh, this design can't work for two years.
Casey:
I mean, how long has Rolex looked about the same to someone like me who doesn't really tell the minute differences between them?
Casey:
All Panerais I've ever seen look the same to me.
Casey:
Every 911 is the same since the beginning of time.
John:
The 911s are not the same.
Casey:
They're the same.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Apple's not Rolex and Panerai and Porsche.
Marco:
And also, there's a lot of Rolexes and Panerais.
Marco:
And they have gone in and out of fashion over time.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that this should be the forever look, but I think to say that it will absolutely time out, so to speak, in the next two years, I don't know if that's really fair.
Casey:
It may end up that you're right, but I don't know if we can really see that now.
Casey:
And having these bands changing constantly is a good thing, like you said.
Casey:
And I wanted to also quickly say that I've been very impressed with the web presence for The Watch since the beginning.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
The way they did the bands, like the kind of animations of them clasping and unclasping or whatever you call it.
Casey:
And I really like this new gallery that they have where you can select what case you would like to look at by kind of scrolling left and right.
Casey:
And then you can scroll left and right to figure out what band you like.
Casey:
And then they have all three faces as well.
Casey:
But I really do like this new web presence.
Casey:
I wish they had prices on here, but I think it's the new gallery is really well done.
Casey:
And there's something to be said for that.
Marco:
I think they are nailing it on the bands.
Marco:
The bands are awesome, and they continue to be awesome, and they always have been awesome from day one.
Marco:
Apple's bands are awesome, but the rest of the watch also needs a lot of help, and so far we've seen almost none.
John:
they could just be a band seller for other watches wow it did get a price cut so there's that um what did they talk about next uh tv os got an update um i don't really have a lot to say about that i don't know do you guys have anything yeah we get to the highlights it'll be quick so they put up the the future of tv is apps yeah if you keep saying that maybe it'll be true it would be nice if they got a subscription plan no subscription streaming plan this time 5 000 tv apps they have
John:
I wonder how many of those are games.
John:
It's fine.
John:
You can do folders, which seems weird, but I suppose, you know, I kind of wish there was a nicer way to rearrange icons on the screen than having to use a silly remote.
John:
Siri expanded to do all the things that we thought it should have done in the beginning, as in letting you dictate.
John:
Although it's weird, like you can dictate your passwords, but
John:
i don't want to dictate my passwords and in the were in the same room like that my kids are in because they'll just like memorize it and buy things or something you know um but anyway that's good and they expanded siri to search more applications so these are all you know it's nice to see that the apple tv at least on the software front is getting steady updates that there's still a team working on it that is not just sitting there and languishing icloud photo library again we all thought that should have been there in the beginning and we're sad that it wasn't
John:
And now it is.
John:
I have to say, having tried it, the performance is not great.
John:
I enabled it.
John:
I logged in with my Apple ID.
John:
And then I went to my favorites album and looked at a bunch of blank thumbnails for a really long time.
John:
I tried to scroll around as the thumbnail started to appear.
John:
And I saw a cute picture that I wanted to show.
John:
Every time I scrolled around to it with my remote and pressed the button, when that picture was totally highlighted, it was like the one that was big and coming out at you, it would open a different picture.
John:
It was driving me nuts.
John:
So their collection view was...
John:
is weird and buggy and to this day when i go to icloud photos and go into my favorites collection it's just a bunch of blank thumbnails with a couple random ones filled in so like how long do i have to wait for it to appear uh it's not looking great but i'm glad it's getting updates
Casey:
Yeah, and I really have come to love my new Apple TV.
Casey:
Now, admittedly, I use basically Plex, Netflix, and music on it, like the Apple Music app.
Casey:
I would kill for a native Spotify app, but even for those very few limited uses, it's actually kind of the same story I had with my watch earlier.
Casey:
For those limited uses, I really, really love it, and I'm happy with the way it is today.
Casey:
So, I mean, improvements are good.
John:
Of those 5,000 apps, I feel like I've used about 10 of them to try to stream video.
John:
I mean, I guess it's good that I have options.
John:
I just go through all of them and find out in what ways they fail to fulfill my silly, lossless playback of Blu-ray things.
John:
But there's such variety in terms of like...
John:
what i was using infused ds video some other video one plex itself uh like all these different apps to try to see how will you be able to play this will you play it back will you try to transcode it what audio will be available oh this one only exposes stereo this one exposes the ac3 but converts it to pcm this one will send the ac3 directly to my thing and of course none of them do 24 frames per second cadence anyway video is the worst going through the wraps the the apps that are there but it's sad when i still can't find one to fulfill my needs
Marco:
I'm so happy I don't care about video as much as you do.
Marco:
It's such a pain in the ass.
Marco:
Amen.
Marco:
Stereo forever.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
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Casey:
So Apple did something mean during this event.
Casey:
They came out with a new 4-inch phone.
Casey:
And that's mean because... It was awesome.
Casey:
As I think we discussed last time, I really do like my 6S.
Casey:
And I really have come to like all the screen real estate that it has.
Casey:
But every time I pick up my 5S that we use as a noisemaker for Declan, I just think to myself...
Casey:
Oh, this feels so much better in the hand.
Casey:
And oh, I wish my success was more like this.
Casey:
And so now I'm torn.
Casey:
Like, what would I do?
Casey:
What would I do in if there's a new four inch phone in addition to the others in this October or thereabouts?
Casey:
We'll see when we get there.
Casey:
But the new SE, the iPhone SE, it's a new four inch phone with the guts of the 6S for the most part in what looks to be a damn near identical case to the 5S looks really good.
Casey:
And I haven't had the time to catch up on a lot of the reactions from this, but I did see that a friend of the show, John Gruber, sounds like he might be switching.
John:
It's not an identical case.
John:
That's why Johnny Ive wasn't there because he was so in love with his machine chamfered, as he said, edges.
John:
I think that's what he said.
John:
Anyway, the little edge that they shave off, the chamfered edge on the outside of the case used to be like polished.
John:
It's pronounced bazelle.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So it would be like...
John:
I assume the manufacturing process was they would make the case anodized or not cyanodized.
John:
Was it stainless steel or aluminum?
John:
I don't know.
John:
Yeah, it's aluminum, right?
John:
The 5S case?
John:
I think so.
John:
Anyway, it would have that sort of matte finish.
John:
And then as a final step, they would shave down the edge and that would be all shiny and pretty.
John:
And I always thought that detail looks really good when it's close up.
John:
But when I see the phone in front of me, it's too small to read as anything particularly impressive.
John:
Yeah.
John:
it would also nick up you could notice nicks on it more than other places and the new phone this may seem like a subtle thing like oh it's exactly the same case as the 5s but it isn't they they mentioned that the edge was different now it is just merely another shaped piece of aluminum that is completely anodized on all edges and all surfaces exactly the same way which has got to be much easier to manufacture and probably more durable than
John:
um and it comes in all the usual colors we expect silver space gray rose gold and gold which is now like that that set of four kind of pale looking pastel colors is now like the apple color scheme for all of their products that's why we you know fully expecting to have a rose gold macbook uh pro but who knows if that will come to pass but anyway
John:
it looks does it look less fancy than the 5s did maybe if you could see that shiny edge i mean maybe it is less fancy on the other hand it's it's kind of more uniform in appearance um but yeah it that i think that little shiny edge is a great example of how this is like
John:
exactly like the 5s with 6s internals except not quite and the not quite parts of it are the only few dings against it if you were really truly hoping for a 100 of the power of the 6s in merely a smaller package you got really close to it closer than i thought then that we would because really this does have all the parts that count from uh the the 6s but it's not 100 of the way there so no one is going to confuse this as a flagship phone but for a
John:
i think the the se shows that apple learned the lessons of the 5c and that people probably do want a four inch phone but they don't want to feel like they're getting the cheap or crappy phone because the number of people who will make that trade-off is much smaller like oh but i really want a white phone that i don't have to get a case with and the 5c feels so good but oh but it's slow and it's slower than the other one right and so this one takes away most of the excuses um
John:
if i was a small screen phone person the one missing feature that i would be most upset about is the new touch id sensor because i think it's really cool that it's faster and maybe secondarily missing 3d touch and i totally understand why those are missing and if they're going to skimp on anything those are exactly what i would have skimped on uh
John:
But overall, I think everyone who's seen this phone is pleasantly surprised about how much that if, hey, you want a small screen phone?
John:
This is a really, really good small screen iPhone.
John:
You will not feel bad about getting this phone for the most part unless you're obsessed with Touch ID or 3D Touch.
Marco:
As we were talking about this, I pulled out my 5S and I started using it and I started trying to transcribe what you were saying into notes, like I said, typing on it and everything.
Marco:
And, oh man, it's just so nice to hold.
Marco:
It's so nice to hit the sleep button in the right spot.
Marco:
It's so nice to reach everything on screen.
Marco:
And I honestly, I know a lot of people are saying that they're disappointed that the design really didn't change.
Marco:
I think that's a valid criticism.
Marco:
However, I really like the design.
Marco:
I like this design a lot more than I like the 6S design and the 6 design.
Marco:
I just think this is a great phone.
Marco:
And it's honestly very tempting to attempt to go back.
Marco:
I don't think I will because it is really hard for me to type on it.
Marco:
But man, I do love the way it feels and I love being able to reach everything.
Marco:
So I totally get the appeal.
John:
And this is a lower-priced phone, too.
John:
Like, I mean, ignoring the fact that it's still 16 gigs, gag.
John:
But this is the new cheapest way to get an iPhone, right?
John:
Like, to get the... In their current lineup of phones, this is the cheapest one.
John:
And what you get for that amount of money, for the cheapest amount that you get, is a phone that's essentially as fast as their flagship phone.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Which, that's a hell of a deal.
John:
Like, again, ignoring the 16 gigs, you know, because you have the same, like...
John:
It's a good deal on an iPhone.
John:
You get an iPhone with probably really good battery life.
John:
It's really comfortable.
John:
It's super fast.
John:
It's got a really good camera, comes in all the variety of colors, and you get it for way cheaper than the 6S, but it's the same speed as the 6S.
Casey:
Yeah, it's a really impressive offering.
Marco:
Yeah, it's such a good value for what you're getting.
Marco:
I mean, really, I think they're going to sell a ton of these things.
Marco:
And we might not hear about it very much because they might be selling a lot more outside the US.
Marco:
But I think it's a great product release.
Marco:
If not, a little bit half-butted in the design department.
Marco:
But because I like this design, I don't consider that a bad thing.
Marco:
The 16GB part is unfortunate, but...
Marco:
this is kind of a strategy tax like it's like they they stuck with the 16 gigs so long for all their other stuff for the high end especially what are they going to do release this new way cheaper phone is the only one with decent storage and it's the cheapest one yeah release this one at 32 gigs at 400 and then like the 700 6s doesn't have 32 gigs like that
Marco:
They're not going to do that.
Marco:
So even if they wanted to finally fix the incredibly bad customer sat debt they build up by these 16 gig phones, they can't fix it with this.
Marco:
They got to wait till the 7 in the fall and fix it then.
John:
that's the other minor thing like this one this goes 16 what is it 1664 and that's it i believe that's right there's no 128 right yes so that's another area where like you know to list all the areas where this falls down is you know no no uh no latest touch hd sensor no 3d touch no 128 gig model um what else is it missing
John:
You know what?
John:
I bet it doesn't support reachability.
John:
Yeah.
John:
No camera bump if you're looking for that.
John:
Sorry.
John:
You'll have to get a different model.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
And as a lot of people have noted, because it will most likely work with all the same accessories as the 5S...
Marco:
you can probably get not only a bunch of really nice cases and batteries and stuff that were made for it forever ago, but they don't cost anything anymore.
Marco:
Because like, you know, you look at, try to buy accessories for today's iPhone or iPad and they're, you know, 50 bucks.
Marco:
Try to buy them for the one that's two years old and they're like a dollar on Amazon.
Marco:
Like everything costs nothing because everyone's trying to clear them out because these phones are no longer being sold in the US or no longer popular.
Marco:
Now here's a brand new phone where you can get a ton of effectively free accessories for it.
Marco:
So, again, adding to the value aspect.
Marco:
It's a great value.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm really impressed with this.
Casey:
I think this was a great job.
Casey:
I think, like John said, the places where they skimped, they did it at the right spots, the spots you would expect.
Casey:
I don't think I'm going to switch back because I like the screen real estate enough on the slightly larger phone that I think I'm going to stick with it.
Casey:
I also really do like 3D Touch a lot.
Casey:
I might be the only one, but I use it quite a lot in TweetBot.
Casey:
I don't use the shortcuts very often from Springboard, but I use 3D Touch a ton in TweetBot, if nowhere else.
Casey:
And in that sense, I would miss 3D Touch a lot.
Casey:
The SE does get live photos, which are also important to me now.
Casey:
So it's a tough call because, God, do I love this design.
Casey:
I agree with you, Marco.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
I think I would probably stick with the, what is it, 4.7-inch phone, whatever the 6S size is.
Casey:
I'll probably stick with that in the future, but I would not begrudge anyone who decided that this was the phone for them.
John:
This feels so good.
John:
The cheaper front-facing camera, too.
John:
The 6S 5-megapixel front-facing camera.
John:
uh f 2.2 aperture and this one has a 1.2 megapixel f 2.4 aperture so yeah they skimped in all the areas they skimped are all exactly the areas that i would have picked because again if you're going to skimp on a camera skimp on the front one because nobody cares uh don't skip on the back one so yeah so the the expectation is that this will sell a lot better than the 5c did because it's just such a much a much better phone than the 5c that people won't be
John:
disappointed or embarrassed to buy it or own it that it is a fully a fully fledged iphone it's what it's a good reason they changed the name like i don't know they didn't say what the se stood for i think they did say special edition i'm pretty sure anyway the best joke explanation i heard is that it stands for sorry everyone
John:
For taking away the 4-inch phone and then for resurrecting it with the 5C, which was an awesome-looking product in every way except for the stuff that was inside it.
John:
You know, it was slow and old and creaky and small.
John:
I forget what the storage limits on the 5C were, but they were even worse.
John:
Well, they didn't take away the 5S.
John:
They took away the 5.
John:
Yeah.
John:
yeah i know but like it's that was this is the equivalent of hey we're going to make it cheap bottom end phone for people and we'll make it fun and i think the 5c was a great product except that it was you know it was not it was not as good it didn't have the same innards as they didn't have any small phone that had the same innards as the flagship phone like their small phone had worse innards than their flagship phone this i mean it's it's almost shocking that like six months after the 6s comes out or whatever is it six months something like that
John:
that there is a new small phone that is just as fast as the flagship phone in most of the ways that matter to people which is totally weird and has not happened it's not like a two-year-old phone it's not like oh we just move the innards down we're still selling the old models um so yeah i i like this trend and i think this is a good phone and i would totally recommend that if people want a small phone that they get this i wouldn't hesitate at all
Marco:
Although the only thing is, I do think for people like us who are happy with the 6, or at least have been happy until now with the 6 size, I think it's wise to at least wait until we see the 7 before the, oh, I'm going to jump back right now.
Marco:
So I personally, I am incredibly tempted by both sizes of iPhone I don't have.
Marco:
i'm incredibly tempted by this nice awesome small one because as i feel this 5s it just looks and feels amazing and it's so easy to hold and use and i love the sleep button on top um still i you know now 18 months into owning the six line of phones half my screenshots contain the volume overlay uh and the other half of them didn't happen because i accidentally put the phone to sleep
John:
so god i'm so i'm getting worse at the screenshot gesture i don't understand how this is possible but somehow i'm getting worse at it me too like i used to have a much higher hit rate of being successfully able to take screenshots yeah i think most people are not on the cadence that you just like people don't know like oh the seven is coming they just wander into an apple store when their contract is up or whatever and they get whatever phone is for sale then and so i think it's fine like it is it is weird from our perspective like
John:
if you're one of those people who lives and dies by the cycle of Apple releasing new phones and always gets the latest one when it comes out, it's like, this six-month thing is putting me in a weird position because even if I wanted this phone, would I buy it now?
John:
Because wouldn't I just want, like Marcus, I'd wait until see what the 7 is like and what's going to happen then?
John:
But regular people would just go into the store, and it's so much better for them to go in and to see this lineup of phones, and there really is something for everybody now except for the people who want a really big battery and a really small phone.
John:
But, you know, can't have everything.
Casey:
Yeah, I feel bad.
Casey:
There's got to be a lot of people like me.
Casey:
So when Aaron's on the S cycle, she doesn't want to have a phone every year.
Casey:
And when it was time for her to get a success, I said to her basically, look, you can keep your old phone, which is getting a little bit long in the tooth now, or you can just understand that Apple will never release a new four inch phone and just get on board now.
Casey:
so okay fine and so she got on board with the 6s and i think by and large she likes it but then fast forward a few months and sure enough there's apple's brand new four inch phone uh in rose gold no less and i feel terrible for that so sorry aaron my bad all right ipad pro 9.7 inch is that what it's called something like that i don't even know i think that's what apple calls it on their site
Casey:
The new iPad Pro.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Not a lot of surprises here overall.
Casey:
Definitely some surprises, but looks good.
Casey:
I'm not a big iPad kind of guy.
Casey:
I like my Mini.
Casey:
I love my Mini, in fact.
Casey:
but it's a little bit tempting even for me to go big, especially because from everything I've understood, this thing is tiny.
Casey:
It's thin.
Casey:
It's very light.
Casey:
They said under a pound, right?
Casey:
I mean, it's got to be super portable.
Marco:
Well, it's exactly the same physical dimensions and weight as the Air 2 within like a .001, something like that.
Marco:
It is effectively identical to the Air 2 in size and weight.
John:
i was so excited about this this ipad during the announcement because if you watch the event everything they say about it is like yes yes that yes like just everything you know because it's it's what we all talked about basically a shrunken down version of the ipad pro exactly as the name implies with all the features of the ipad pro and on top of that it does some things better than the ipad pro which of course are the things they highlight in the keynote with the whole
John:
true tone display and the uh well they talked about the usb3 speed thing but we'll get to that in a second um and that it's small and thin and it uses a stylus got a smart connector it's got a keyboard cover that fits the thing you know oh the whole nine yards and it's only after the keynote did i find out all the things that kind of broke my heart i feel like this this uh this this ipad pro is uh my fredo um
John:
i mean we all know they're not big it's not that big of a deal the the killer one for me is i really wanted this to have four gigs of ram it's got pro in the name for crying out loud i know it probably doesn't need four gigs of ram maybe because the screen is smaller or whatever but it's a pro like it does multitasking i would love it if it had four gigs of ram that is the one that really really broke my heart
John:
um the other stuff only getting usb 2 speeds i don't know if that's just for the camera adapter or if it's just you know for everything having to do with that lighting port i don't know the answer to that but definitely that the the new camera adapter thing says uh the ipad pro the big ipad pro gets usb 3 speeds and the little one gets usb 2 speeds not that i use the camera connector which is that like i want
John:
i want if you get this device with this much storage maybe say you get the 128 gig model i would like it to have usb3 speeds through that because i like the weird tech nerd that i am still doing encrypted back into my mac and it takes for freaking ever to copy everything at usb2 speeds from like a 128 gig uh thing but yeah the the ram the ram complement is the one that is uh the most disappointing and everything else is is minor after that but
John:
I guess you would expect that, because shouldn't the bigger one be more powerful or whatever?
John:
I just had this vision in my mind that this would be exactly like the big iPad Pro, better in a couple of ways and worse in none, and that is not exactly the case.
Marco:
Overall, I think it's a solid release, and I think it's going to really, really help the iPad lineup in general as much as any release can.
Marco:
Again, it's not going to save the iPad if the iPad sales are going to continue to stagnate.
Marco:
This release is not going to meaningfully change that.
Marco:
But for the people who are buying iPads, this is an awesome iPad.
Marco:
I think the only thing about this product that's weird is that it was released afterwards.
Marco:
If you imagine the process flipped and if you imagine either the 9.7 and the 12.9 released at the same time or in the opposite order...
Marco:
I think it makes a lot more sense.
Marco:
Um, right now there's a bunch of weird stuff around the way they did this, you know, weird, weird perceptions of like, wait, this kind of sucks if I just bought the 12 inch and now I don't have the, the weird color display or whatever.
Marco:
And you can, you can excuse some of it with like, well, you know, the camera is better on the small one cause it's, you're taking it around.
Marco:
You don't really need a better camera on the big one.
Marco:
Like you,
Marco:
You can excuse a lot of it.
Marco:
The simple fact is the staggering of these things and the difference between them are kind of odd, but it's fine.
Marco:
It doesn't really matter.
Marco:
And we'll all forget about it in a year.
Marco:
So ultimately, a very solid release, I think.
Marco:
Very solid.
Marco:
And I think if anyone is a heavy iPad user, this is definitely worth looking at.
Marco:
And I'm really glad they're making this, even though I probably won't use one, but very solid release, I think.
Casey:
Yeah, I largely agree with you.
Casey:
It's like I said earlier, it's enough that it's tempting me to go back to the mid-size iPad from my mini.
Casey:
I have a question for the two of you guys, though.
Casey:
What's the flagship iPad?
Casey:
And I'm genuinely asking because my immediate answer, if I were to ask myself that, is the big iPad Pro, I almost said the iPad Pro, is the bigger iPad Pro, but it doesn't have some really nice features like the True Tone display and
John:
and so i wonder what is the flagship ipad these days yeah i think that's just because of the cadence that marco mentioned the weird cadence that like they seem like they could have been released together but wouldn't it be weird that the small one has the color sensors on it and the big one doesn't and it's almost like they got out of sync at some point and you know whatever so
John:
I think because of the cadence, the flagship one has to be the latest released one because it has more better stuff.
John:
And you can excuse the smaller RAM and stuff because, oh, this is a smaller model.
John:
But you would imagine that when the new big one comes out, it will have all the same features as the other one.
John:
And then it will be the flagship.
John:
i mean what's the flagship mac the uh the 5k iMac because it's faster in some games than the pro with the d700 what's going on apple what's the flagship laptop i would argue it's the MacBook one yeah i don't know it depends on what you know what flagship means and we have weird definitions of it it used to be the old days it was the fastest computer but that really hasn't been true in a long time
Marco:
In the context of what we're saying, I would argue that it's basically the high-profile one that people lust over that is the defining one that defines the image of the whole range.
Marco:
And to me, on the iPad, that's the Air, or now the Pro Mini, whatever we call it.
Marco:
And in the Macs, I'd say it's the MacBook 1.
John:
i don't know like i i can't really tell on the ipad it depends on if the ipad makes this transition into more a more capable platform because if you stop thinking of an ipad as a bigger version of the phone and start thinking of it as it's my more portable laptop replacement then the big pro becomes the flagship because it is better able to replace laptops than the other ones but it really really depends for it's hard to tell in this period and i don't think the
John:
the weird differences in features like because that's basically what it comes down to is what hardware does the big one have the small one doesn't it has the same quality screen but it doesn't have the light sensors so it can't have the true tone display like that's not going to come in a software update it just doesn't have the sensors for it but it does have more ram i don't know i i only sleep thinking about it and a couple of people are asking the chat room if i'm gonna get this laptop i have an ipad
John:
uh three i waited a really long time to get that because i wanted a retina ipad and i got a retina ipad and i'm still using it at this point it's pretty much at the end of its life not because there's anything wrong with it and it still looks very new and it's in good condition it only has a small dent in the corner from when i put down my backpack too hard at wwc two three years ago or whatever
John:
It has served me very well.
John:
I still use it every day.
John:
This new iPad Pro 9.7-inch does almost everything.
John:
It's almost exactly what I want.
John:
The reason it broke my heart is because it was so close to being everything that I could have asked for and more.
John:
Instead, it's almost everything that I could have asked for.
John:
It is so much better than the one I have now.
John:
I am definitely getting one, 100%.
John:
I'm glad they come in all sorts of different colors.
John:
I'm sad.
John:
Only one of them has a black front, and the only reason I'm sad, not because I don't dislike the color of the back, but because I'm always afraid that someday there'll be none of them with a black front, and then I'll be really sad.
John:
So anyway, I am getting this one, and I will enjoy it, and hopefully it will last me at least as long as my iPad 3 lasted me.
Casey:
A couple other very, very quick thoughts.
Casey:
First of all, the camera adapter, there was the call out for podcasters that it's now you can power it with one of the bricks, which is exciting.
Casey:
Jason Snell wrote a post about that earlier today, which we'll link to in the show notes.
Marco:
And that's that's significant, though, because, you know, for a while, ever since the very first iPad that had the camera connection kit and then later on, there's lightning version of it when they switched to lightning.
Marco:
There was always this $30 adapter that you could get that would let you plug in a USB device to an iOS device.
Marco:
And this has always been... It was officially for cameras, and it would officially work with only iPads.
Marco:
However, this for years has worked for other things.
Marco:
And it was always kind of undocumented, and you were never really sure...
Marco:
Does Apple, is this going to be supported in the future?
Marco:
Is this going to work?
Marco:
And things like sound equipment was a big one.
Marco:
Also like network, like USB network interface and stuff like that.
Marco:
Like these things that like, you know, USB devices that you would think wouldn't work with iOS devices that often just did through like standard USB profiles and everything through this port.
Marco:
But there were always two major problems with this.
Marco:
Number one was that there was not enough power on the port to power a device that had high power needs, which does include a lot of USB devices.
Marco:
So you could do a hack where you could buy a powered hub and plug the upstream into this adapter for the iPad and have the powered hub power the other devices.
Marco:
So that was kind of an issue.
Marco:
And then the second issue was always that
Marco:
While you were using this adapter, your iOS device it was plugged into itself could not be charged or charging.
Marco:
So you could only use this adapter effectively on battery power.
Marco:
So you couldn't have something like kind of permanently installed like at a station or something like that.
Marco:
So there were always these two problems.
Marco:
This new adapter they're selling now for $40 is the exact same adapter, but has a lightning port inbound next to the USB port.
Marco:
So you can plug in an iPad class power brick into that.
Marco:
And not only charge the iOS device that this adapter is plugged into and keep it charged, but then also power a USB device that needs a decent amount of power, like an audio interface.
Marco:
So they've solved both of these problems with that one stupid little port.
Marco:
And even bigger...
Marco:
Phil Schiller called out on stage this kind of usage.
Marco:
He said for podcasters, he even mentioned network devices.
Marco:
Things that, again, we thought all these years, the handful of people who were playing with this thing, we thought that this was this unsupported, undocumented thing that was going to break at any time.
Marco:
And now here's Phil Schiller on stage advertising this as functionality and releasing this awesome new adapter that makes it a lot better than it was before.
Marco:
So this allows things like iOS devices to have audio interfaces in real production use here, where you can have everything plugged in and have everything be reliable and have everything be fully powered.
Marco:
You can do things like a network adapter and have Ethernet on an iOS device for the first time ever besides the Apple TV.
Marco:
All this stuff that was really just...
Casey:
difficult or tricky or impossible to do before or would suck in other ways now with this one adapter now sucks a lot less and now can be it opens up new doors for ios devices and that's that i think is pretty big yeah i completely agree uh i'm really pleased with this event as a whole actually i mean there's some things that bum me out i'm sad there's no new max um i understand your sadness about the watch even though i'm not entirely sad about it
Casey:
um this uh iphone se which someone in the chat earlier said uh it stands for sorry aaron which i thought was pretty funny um that that uh that that also i mean it makes me happy in the grand scheme of things but it's it's making me second guess my choices but all in all i thought this was a really good event um i didn't leave the event thinking oh my god i want to buy everything like i often do at apple events but um
Casey:
I rewatched it earlier tonight and in talking with you guys about it and thinking more about it, I think it was a really solid event.
Casey:
So, John, thumbs up, thumbs down overall.
John:
i thought it was i mean it was exactly the scale event you expect from town hall and despite the ram breaking my heart i am really happy with that new ipad i expect to be really happy with it as a product i'm not so happy about paying a bajillion dollars for a front and back case for it which i would remind i would remind people who are listening to this you don't have to buy apple cases lots of people are going to sell cases for the ipad i know it's hard to believe but you do not have to pay apple's prices for their cases lots of people will sell you much cheaper cases but if you are a
John:
sucker slash stickler like me i'm gonna end up buying the apple ones because whatever but anyway you don't have to but i will and i might even buy that stupid keyboard too because whatever anyway i buy an ipad like once every three years so i save my pennies and and that's what i'm going to do but you but you listener out there you don't have to buy all those cases because it's like 70 for the current case and 60 for the back and you're adding so much money to the cost and
John:
Anyway, and I'm probably going to get the 128 gig model just because I fill every iOS device I have.
John:
I should probably get the 256 if I was smart, but I don't know if I can stomach that price increase.
Marco:
Well, do you fill iPads though?
Marco:
Because like a lot of times people will fill an iPhone because a load of homebook and music onto it, but an iPad, not necessarily.
Marco:
No, I fill it.
John:
i fill it with video and i just they always get filled up yeah they feel even just photos even at this point yeah i really should buy the 256 i don't know if i can can handle paying like 1200 all in for whatever this ipad but anyway it's gonna be awesome i'm gonna love it and uh that alone and i and i even though i'm not going to buy the iphone se i think it's really good and so this was a fitting end to the town hall uh room venue for apple events
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Harry's, Igloo, and Squarespace.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
John:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
John:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
I forgot to mention something in the iPad section very quickly.
Casey:
Embedded Apple SIM.
Casey:
Weird, right?
Casey:
Like, not bad weird.
Casey:
Not bad weird.
Casey:
It's good weird, but it's weird.
Casey:
Why is it weird?
Casey:
Well, maybe weird is the right way to describe it.
Casey:
And maybe it's not the same.
Casey:
That's weird.
Casey:
But the way the American carriers are treating it is.
Casey:
Well, they're just carriers.
Casey:
Carriers are going to be carriers.
Marco:
Yeah, it's as weird as it always is, really, with with how they lock it and everything else.
John:
But Apple is helping.
John:
Apple is acknowledging, look, carriers are going to be annoying, but we're going to help you out here by not hogging the one SIM slot on this device with our thing.
John:
We're just going to build our thing in.
John:
And if carriers are sane, everything's great, but we know they're not going to be.
John:
So our SIM is there for when you need it.
John:
And for those annoying carriers, you can swap SIMs and do all this other crap.
Marco:
Right, but except, wasn't it Verizon, where if you... AT&T.
Marco:
Well, wasn't it one of them where if you activated with them, it would actually lock the Apple SIM also?
Marco:
I'm almost sure that's AT&T.
John:
Yeah, but you can always get that stuff unlocked.
John:
Yeah, there is a whole bunch.
John:
We'll link to Panzerino's article on TechCrunch explaining all the different ins and outs.
John:
Like, Apple has done everything it could to make this slightly less annoying for you.
John:
And if you know what's going on with it, you...
John:
you will have the most options possible and i think even the ones where they lock it don't doesn't every carry have to unlock it if you ask for at this point so it's just it's just more of a hassle but but at least they're not hogging a slot so like again if you and i think you can do like you could have i assume you can have like t-mobile or something using the apple sim but then also have like a verizon sim for when you travel and stick that one in and
Casey:
That's exactly what I do with my iPad mini, which I know it's not using an embedded Apple SIM, but the physical Apple SIM that I have for it, I typically have connected to T-Mobile, although I can swap between a couple with that.
Casey:
And then I have a Verizon physical SIM that I'll pop in if I'm in one of the many places that does not have T-Mobile coverage.
John:
So they're doing the best they can, and I like it, and it'll be great when the entire, at least in the U.S.
John:
world, is standardized on the built-in Apple SIM, and we don't have to deal with it anymore, but who knows when the hell that'll happen.
Casey:
Yeah, seriously.
Casey:
Any other thoughts that we didn't cover during the main part of the show?
Casey:
There was that kind of dig from Schiller, which was a little weird.
John:
Yeah, the people using a five-year-old PC is like, I understand what he's getting at, but that was badly considered for multiple reasons.
John:
First, it's like kind of like a, you know, some people can't afford to buy a new PC all the time.
John:
So you're taking a dig at the, you know, people who have less money than you.
John:
And that's the type of thing where it's just, he's maybe not even thinking as some, you know, as
John:
Someone like the rest of us who can buy hardware whenever they want to buy hardware, it's sometimes easy to forget that that's not something that everybody can do.
John:
And it's insensitive to say, oh, let's all laugh at the people using five-year-old computers.
John:
Of course, I'm sitting here next to an eight-year-old computer.
John:
But anyway, I could have bought a new one if I wanted to.
John:
so it's insensitive in that way and it's kind of a bet even ignoring that entirely apple as we just pointed out sells computers with essentially multi-year-old internals in them because they don't update them so it's highlighting something that apple should be embarrassed about the fact that they will sell you a mac mini with these ancient innards and the fact that they haven't updated the laptops at this particular event and the fact that the mac pros insides have skipped a generation like those are all things that apple should not be drawing attention to and shouldn't you know so
Marco:
that was probably not a good idea that line i think if he could take it back he probably would um well also positioning the ipad as like the inevitable replacement for other people with windows pcs or the or the best replacement for other people with windows pcs i think is really optimistic um for a number of reasons you know price being a big one but also just like
Marco:
iOS is not Windows and is not Mac OS.
Marco:
And there are, you know, as we've discussed at length, there's a lot of things that are great in iOS and a lot of people can get where they're worth on iOS.
Marco:
However, you can't do a lot of things on iOS that you can do on PCs and Macs.
Marco:
And a lot of people need to do those things, especially for their jobs that are using these old PCs.
John:
if you have a five-year-old windows machine aren't you going to probably be more likely to have your needs served by an ipad than not like i get what they're getting at no not necessarily it depends on what your needs are if your needs are like checking email and browsing the web sure you're going to be better off that's that's most people's things and video conferencing and sending people instant messages and like the ipad does fulfill all the computing needs for a lot of people
Marco:
But once you get into shuffling files back and forth, once you get into files and dealing with files, which a lot of people do, it starts getting a little bit dicey on iOS, where things start being like, well, you can do that, but it's awkward.
Marco:
Or you have to know these power user tricks or things like that.
Marco:
And of course, there's a lot of limitations and a lot of changes to the way the system works and what it does and doesn't do.
Marco:
And, you know, you'd be surprised in the real world, like, how many people need, like, one of those weird hacks that you can't do on iOS.
Marco:
Or they need one app that Apple would never approve for the App Store that just, you know, things like Call Recorder.
Marco:
Like, you know, it's like a lot of people need, like, one or two of those things.
Marco:
And that's enough of a deal killer that they just can't do their work on iOS.
Marco:
Or it's incredibly clunky for them to do their work on iOS.
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, but if you're going to pitch the iPad as a PC replacement, the people you want to pitch it to are the least demanding users, and the least demanding users are going to have the oldest computers, and they're also not going to have Macs because if they were demanding, they would be annoyed by their credit Windows PC, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
In the Apple frame set is like, this is our audience.
John:
If you don't really care enough about computers to buy a new one very frequently, and if you don't even use a Mac because you don't see any big difference and it just seems like, well, a PC is a PC, you are the type of person who we think is most likely to, if we gave you an iPad...
John:
after a little while even if it doesn't do everything that your five-year-old pc did to be like yeah but this is kind of nicer like i have less stuff to worry about don't have to worry about viruses it's nice that i can carry it around with me um you know so they're making the pitches they can make it doesn't mean that that it is truly the pc replacements there they were you know but obviously that's the angle
John:
they're going for and they are to their credit finally at least modifying both the hardware and software uh to try to fulfill that goal and so this is like stage 1.1 the ipad pro was the big first step and you know the ios with the split screen and everything and then 1.1 is take some of that technology and move it down so now you've got a stylus and more power and the four speakers and everything like it is the new ipad the ipad air 3 essentially is
John:
a much more compelling pc replacement uh tablet than even just the air 2 was even if only because of the possibility of the the stylus right ignoring everything else like just because i mean i know apple doesn't want to talk about this and it's maybe why they didn't do all the navigation stuff but like
John:
The stylus kind of does make it possible to have smaller touch targets on devices that support a pencil.
John:
I know Apple doesn't want to talk about it, but it's there, you know.
John:
And it opens the door for developers.
John:
I don't think AppReview is going to reject you if you don't have a 44 point high touch.
John:
I mean, I know that because there's tons of iOS apps out there, right?
Yeah.
John:
these are baby steps in that direction um so i kind of understand the pitch they were making but it wasn't that great and i think the only other point that i wanted to make about the thing was this uh but the presentation was this tweet by i think it was a tweet by zach city i think his last name is that the entry-level cost to apple computing ecosystem is the lowest it's ever been you can get into a flagship really good well-performing not cruddy three-year-old model iphone
John:
for 400 bucks you can get into an ipad for 270 you can get a mac mini which is cruddy and old for 500 bucks and you don't want that one because it's really bad and you can get a macbook air for 900 bucks so these are all three digit prices at spanning a pretty big range from mid 200s to 900 bucks and historically speaking i think it's probably never been cheaper to get into an apple product now
John:
The complaint we always have is, would you recommend someone you actually cared about buy one of these cheapest models?
John:
In the case of the iPhone, sure, yeah.
John:
I mean, even with the 16 gigs, you're like, as long as you're sure that that's going to be okay.
John:
i mean i don't know maybe i wouldn't be able to recommend a 16 gig to someone i really cared about but if they could convince me that they're not going to fill 16 gigs uh sure and the ipad which one is 270 is that the uh the do they still sell the yeah which mini though what what are the insides a7 oh i see your point uh i'm not sure to be honest with you i see your point now yeah i don't know if i could recommend that ipad i definitely can't recommend the mini the air if you want to get the cheapest mac it's not a bad mac right that's the 13 inch air
John:
uh wait a minute it's is it is it 13 of the 11 and also is it four gigs of ram in that one and like no storage right yeah yeah so that that's always apple's difficulty but there it does seem that apple has trying to uh
John:
lower maybe it's just the on-ramp they're trying to lower get you into the store get you to consider the products and then sell you the better one for slightly better prices but i think the iphone se is of course is the most recent one of these products that we all listed here and the iphone se definitely has far fewer compromises than all the other ones we listed so if only every other product line they have could have a lowest end model that is as admirable and sort of solid as the iphone line does and i hope i hope they do do that eventually with all their other models
John:
And maybe they will once they ditch the MacBook Air and they only have the all Retina MacBook One, MacBook Pro line.
John:
Those will all be pretty solid models once you get the second generation MacBook One in there.
John:
And the Mac Mini, I don't know.