iPhone X
But I just wanted to let everyone know that I remain unsatisfied.
Well, I mean, I think everyone always knows that.
Yeah, that's a given.
I know, but like more than usual.
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Oh, goodness.
All right.
So I had tweeted earlier today that we would have a show without follow-up.
I didn't say we'd have the show without follow-up.
But at that point earlier today, we did not yet have follow-up.
And here it is, just a few scant hours later, and we have follow-up about new MacBook Pros.
We had follow-up.
It just wasn't written into the thing yet.
So you had follow-up.
Follow-up, it just expands.
It's like hard drive space and wedding planning.
It expands into whatever space is available for it to expand into.
Getting crap in your attic, right?
Well, John's attic, at least.
I cleaned.
I did some attic cleaning, actually, the other weekend.
I must have got rid of, I don't know, 40 boxes of stuff.
Good.
And some boxes of not stuff.
That's a lot.
I'm surprised your house hasn't fallen down.
what do you have more of boxes of stuff in the attic or browser tabs open right now boxes stuff in the attic no contest i'm slightly surprised to be honest with you okay i mean so if if you were able to get rid of 40 like how many do you think are are still there i mean that's this is the low-hanging fruit i'm going for like uh you know modems
okay so get rid of those are we talking like surfboard or u.s robotics no no oh boy 28 8 modems 56k modems 14 4 modems uh at least are they are they k56 flex or were they x2
Which one were they?
I think they were the Flex one.
I remember those competing standards.
I didn't look too closely at the box.
We were an X2 family.
We were all about the X2 because that's what our ISP said we should be.
I think X2 was the superior one until they merged the two into the V90, whatever that was.
yeah yeah maybe that's what i had when they finally settled that thing uh but yeah lots of boxes of stuff a lot of these boxes didn't have anything in them anymore some of them did and the things in them weren't worth much um yeah a lot a lot of empty boxes or somewhat empty boxes some of them just had cables in them boxes for old hard drives old hard drive enclosures the easy things to get rid of but it was a lot these all these boxes were flattened you know
And you want to make sure that when you sell your 28.8 K56 Flex modem, that doesn't make sense.
You want to make sure that you have the original box so that you get the maximum price for it.
Well, that's the way things are stored in my attic is in their boxes.
I don't get rid of the boxes until I get rid of the thing for the most part.
But think about how much more old computer garbage you could store in your attic if you weren't also storing the boxes.
I don't know if that's true, because with all the loose cables and everything, I just think you can pack them in better, like a Tetris puzzle, if they're all kind of rectilinear.
Oh, goodness.
Anyway, I got rid of a lot of stuff, and then getting rid of so much stuff and seeing the bags and bags full of styrofoam that you can't really compress, and then the stacks and stacks of flattened cardboard boxes, and then looking back at the attic and realizing it looks like stuff has been removed, but not that much stuff.
Boy, I got a long way to go.
LAUGHTER
I can't believe your house hasn't imploded under the weight that you're putting into the attic.
Yeah, I've thought about how much that stuff must weigh up there.
Some of it's pretty heavy.
Hey, wait, can we solve multiple problems here?
Can you take some of the flattened cardboard boxes of old computer equipment that you've taken out of your attic and make interior door trim with it for your front door?
Already recycled.
Too late for that.
Sad times.
Have to wait until you get more modems.
Yeah.
Actually, you know, the U.S.
Robotics external modems were about the right shape to be like molding if you line them all up, you know?
That's a fair point.
Doesn't have that many.
The sportsters.
Yeah, I remember, you know, at the time I didn't think of it that way, but there was something oddly satisfying about hearing that god-awful handshaking sound.
Like, today is so much better in every measurable way, but like that light amount of stress that you had.
Is this going to work?
Am I going to get the full, you know, 56K?
Oh, God, it fell down on the 56K negotiation, so we're back to stupid analog.
That's the first thing I did in my AT-whatever-in-it string was turn off that sound.
Come on, people.
You don't need to hear that.
It frustrates me that I can't remember what that was.
What was the code for turning off the sound?
It's not ATS, was it?
What was that whole protocol called?
Was that the Haze command set or was that something else?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, I actually had to leave my speaker on constantly because we only had one phone line and everybody would always call at night to talk to my mom.
And so I was only allowed to tie up the phone line if I left call waiting on and would leave the modem speaker on constantly with a special config string to set it to the higher level, unlike John, to set it to like number two or whatever that keeps it on the entire time.
So I was just always hearing static when I was online.
And when I would hear call waiting beeps, I have to go flip off the power to the modem so it would hang up immediately and then pick up the phone and then just go do something else for a while while my mom talked on the phone.
It was fun.
Yeah.
Yep.
Good times.
God, we're old.
In any case, we should talk about what we were intending to talk about, which is the new MacBook Pros.
Apparently, there is going to be something funky with the effing key row, but it may actually be only one screen and not individual screens on the individual buttons like we were perhaps led to believe.
i don't know what to make of this i mean i don't feel like my my thoughts have really changed since last week it could be good this doesn't strike me as it's fixing a problem i have in my life but you never know with apple sometimes they come up with things you don't know you need so assuming these parts leaks are legit it definitely looks like one big long screen and not a bunch of optimist keyboard style individual keys with screens on them which i'm very disappointed about because i have my hopes up from last week that that's what it was going to be
But boy, looking at these parts leaks, you see a little place where probably like a Touch ID sensor or the connector for things going to be in a part where a ribbon cable exits in a big, long channel.
Looks like it's going to be for a big, long screen.
The only thing I can think of now I'm trying to convince myself that this is not as bad as I think by saying, well,
They could show notifications on it or something.
Could scroll across there.
I don't know.
And the other thing I was getting my hopes up about was, like, when I was thinking about the keycaps, maybe they could be e-ink, so they wouldn't take any power, because keycaps are kind of monochrome, too, and that would be, like, classy.
But it really looks like it's going to be a big, long, skinny screen.
Again, if these things are to be believed, but...
This close to announcement date, it's reasonable for farts to leak.
These look semi-legitimate.
I'm kind of sad.
Yeah, now the tipster is saying in the chat that that's just the amount the thing sits in.
We'll see.
That's not, I mean, to my eye, that is not at all what it looked like.
But it's so hard to say with these, like, terrible pictures that clearly were taken, you know, what's the word I'm looking for?
Serpetitiously?
Something like that.
Taken illicitly, if you will.
And so it's hard to tell.
Well, the other thing with these pictures is like, you know, if you if you look, I mean, like tips was also kind of arguing whether this might be the the 13 inch MacBook, which, you know, last week we talked about this rumor in the middle of like the big long sentence of the rumor report was also a 13 inch MacBook one that we didn't talk about at all.
So I think it's worth mentioning.
And then there's some speculation in the chat that I think is possibly warranted here that these leaked photos may have been that 13-inch MacBook, not the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
And there's a few things that support that.
First of all, the people in chat are trying to figure out, is this implausibly thin for the kind of cooling system that an i5 would need?
But what I spotted earlier when I saw these photos, it only has the four USB-C ports.
There's no other ports.
And so that would mean dropping some ports that are on the current 13-inch.
Also, it would mean dropping the MagSafe port.
And while it is possible to charge things through USB PD into a USB-C port, like what the MacBook One does, there's a limit to how much current that can actually deliver.
And I think once you get into the 15-inch MacBook Pro with its external GPU, I think you're probably pushing that limit.
I'm guessing the 15-inch probably still has MagSafe.
And then if the 15-inch still has it, the 13-inch would probably have it too because they're built very similarly and share a lot of similar features and ports and capabilities and everything.
So I'm guessing that the speculation that this part is actually the 13-inch MacBook 1 is probably correct because that presumably would be able to be charged through USB-C just like the 12-inch MacBook 1, or at least it would be more likely to.
And we can speculate also about what the heck a 13-inch MacBook 1 might include and why that would be necessary when there's also a new, thinner, lighter 13-inch MacBook Pro.
But overall, looking at these photos, I'd say it is fairly likely that we're looking at 13-inch MacBook 1 enclosure, not 13-inch MacBook Pro enclosure.
However, that said, I agree with John and Casey.
I agree that if these are legitimate parts, which they look like they probably are,
And this would be, you know, a reasonable time for them to be leaking.
I'm guessing that this is real and that you're right about the keyboard row, that the F and key row sure does look like it's going to be just one big screen.
And if you think about one other detail, too, these rumors all said these were supposed to have Touch ID, at least the MacBook Pro.
We don't know about the MacBook One.
These are supposed to have Touch ID.
Where do you put the sensor?
There is really nowhere on the keyboard to put it.
You might be able to put it in the trackpad, but is that even possible without messing up the trackpad sensor?
I don't even know.
I thought there was a patent for that.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that gets patented that never actually is practical to show up in a product.
Totally.
So it might be possible, but for now, we don't know if it's there.
I'm guessing the most sensible place to put it
is probably on you know if that's going to be one big flat screen probably just like on the on the right side of that or something you know like an area of that that is actually a touch id sensor and not a screen but it just looks you know maybe it just like looks straight black across the whole thing it looks unified but it's actually like this part's a screen this part's a sensor you know if you think about where else you put the touch id sensor there's not really a lot of other good places that that that are plausible
So I'm guessing it's there.
And then if you're going to have one area of that be flat to be a Touch ID sensor and not be a key, it would look weird if there were a whole bunch of keys next to it.
And then the keys end like one key width short of the right side.
And there's a flat area there.
So it's probably going to be all screen across the whole thing.
Yeah, I'm not sure what to make of this, but I am excited and I think it's worth recognizing that this hopefully will be something new and different about the MacBook line or the MacBook Pro line.
And we haven't really seen that much different in a long time.
I mean, there's certainly been incremental improvements.
And I love my work MacBook Pro and God, do I love my 5K iMac, but this is something new and exciting and different.
And
I kind of like that we're trying something new and it's not just the, what was it?
The titanium power book or whatever that kind of started this whole unibody look.
It's not a continuation of that.
Just another, you know, photocopier, perhaps a slightly shrunken version of that.
It's something that's a little bit different and that's exciting.
So why do you think this is the 13 inch MacBook one?
If it's not wedge shaped, isn't that kind of the signifier of that?
Of the sort of ultra partable MacBook one line is that it would be wedge shaped.
I don't know.
I mean, what would a 13-inch MacBook 1 be for?
You know, if you think about like... A bigger screen.
Okay, a bigger screen.
But then what could differentiate it?
What could justify it existing compared to just the 13-inch MacBook Pro, which the new version will probably be almost as thin and light as the current 13-inch MacBook Air?
So like, why does that product need to exist?
Yeah.
And I have a hard time answering that question, honestly.
If it would have a wimpier CPU, maybe it could still be fanless.
They could put the fastest of the fanless CPUs in there, give it more battery because it's bigger and have a bigger screen.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm trying to think of when I picture a MacBook One, since there's only been one model line in that, you know, one physical shape for that model line, I think of...
Kind of like the Airs, where there was the 11-inch Air and the 13-inch Air, and they were both Air-shaped.
And the 13-inch had a bigger screen and more battery life, but otherwise not much differentiation.
I mean, what if it's for price?
What if this is how they eventually replace the MacBook Air, is by just making these cheaper, more limited computers at the low end, and then the MacBook Pro is the profitable one?
Yeah, we'll see.
In the little picture they show, you can see the little connector in the upper right, which I imagined, like there has to be a connector for the screen, right?
Yeah.
And I suppose you can't have the same connector for both the screen and the Touch ID, but there's also a little opening on the left side that like a ribbon cable could go through, so...
If the ribbon cable connects to the screen, that could be all the screen needs for the connector, which would leave that thing on the right for Touch ID.
Honestly, the left side just looks like a physical mounting point to me, but I don't know.
I mean, who knows?
We will probably hopefully know soon enough from Apple, but yeah, I think...
If it's the MacBook Pro, if it's the 13-inch MacBook Pro, then, you know, okay.
Then it makes... I think it makes more sense that way, honestly.
Even though we'd lose... You'd lose some of the ports and things that are on the current one, and some people would get mad.
Well, that's what Apple's best at, is angering people who like the old laptops.
So, you know, that's in the name of thinness.
You get four USB-C ports.
That's...
a pretty big number for apple and i think you can do a lot with four usbc ports like just one of those ports you can do a lot with a bunch of adapters but having four of them means you're probably not going to run out of ports you may be annoyed that you still have to carry a bunch of adapters around but i think four of them is enough for a 13 inch
Because you can do pretty much anything from any one of those points.
You can have a monitor, a USB thumb drive, an Ethernet cable, and an external hard drive.
And I feel like that is plenty of things hanging off of.
And you can connect so much more through just one of those if you have like a Thunderbolt breakout box or whatever.
Yeah, exactly.
Honestly, that's one of the biggest reasons I'm looking forward to the USB-C Thunderbolt 3 transition because we finally will have more... Assuming that these are real and assuming that the laptops, at least some of them, are getting four ports total.
I would love to have four USB ports on a laptop.
I'm always using both of mine.
Usually, at least one of them is charging something or something else.
I'm always using those when I travel.
I'm looking forward to this future.
But I do wonder...
it's such a weird wild card it's like you know assuming this is the 13 inch macbook one and not 13 inch macbook pro why do they justify having four ports on the 13 inch version of this computer where the 12 inch version has one you know it's just weird it's like this is a weird leak of what appears to be a very like a product that raises a lot of questions and it might end up being awesome whatever it is but uh but they this certainly yeah this certainly raises a lot of questions
it still has a headphone port too unlike the rumored iphone oh does oh yeah there it is you're right yeah yeah so i don't it's the weird thing to me is is the dropping of the mag safe in this in this kind of enclosure so like if it's if it's big enough and high powered enough to have four usb ports uh and no mag save then you know then it's charging through this then and if that can do it then why then could the 15 inch also do it i don't know i don't know it's a whole bunch of questions here
But I don't know.
This this is looking like it's going to it's going to be a pretty great update as to why this one's not tapered.
I commend whatever decision led to this not being tapered because I've always been all for it, too.
Yeah.
But I'm just saying, like, if I have to think of what defines the MacBook one line, it's like not only is it so insanely thin, but it wasn't thin enough that they had to make one edge like thin enough to slice cheese.
Well, also, again, going back to what I said last episode about defending deep keyboards, because keyboards weigh almost nothing in laptops.
Generally, when you're defining the thickness of the laptop, you're limited really by how much weight you're willing to devote to battery, basically.
Because batteries are generally one of the heaviest things inside of modern computing devices, if not the heaviest thing, depending on the device.
And the way you make computers thinner and lighter is not by just cutting the case in half and saying, all right, now just kind of shove everything in tighter.
I mean, that's part of it.
But the way you make them thinner and lighter is you first make them lighter by removing battery.
And you remove battery by removing the need for as much battery as you had before.
Which usually comes in power advancements in how much power the screen and processor both draw.
Usually the processor is the bigger one, but anyway...
so the idea is you know you you develop technology you develop savings you figure out a way to make the processor and everything else use less power then you need less less battery mass in there to achieve the same battery life you had before to achieve what people consider acceptable so then you can shrink the battery and then you can kind of shrink the case around it like now you have free space now it's like all right how how thin can we can we make this case that only has to hold x amount of battery plus the other the other parts
I think the reason the MacBook 1 is as thin as it is and the reason it's wedge-shaped is because they were probably first targeting a weight goal because that makes more sense.
It's like, okay, well now Intel's making this new 5-watt CPU so we can make a fanless and everything.
So if we make a computer that's small enough with a small enough screen that uses this CPU, it'll only need this little tiny amount of battery inside.
So then how do we make the thinnest case possible to contain these parts?
Yeah.
And they had to still have some, even though it's very little, some room for a keyboard in there.
But they didn't need the wrist rest area that was filled with battery.
They didn't need that to be any thicker.
Because any thicker, they would have just been empty space or more battery, which would have driven the weight up, which they didn't want.
So you make the front of it as thin as it can be while still holding that battery, and you make the back of it as thick as it needs to be to fit the keyboard and the other parts, and that's how you get a wedge shape.
So they weren't necessarily targeting the wedge.
They did the wedge because they just didn't need any more space in the front half of the laptop.
So if this part is real, and if this is actually a member of the MacBook One line and not the MacBook Pro line, it certainly raises the question of what the heck is all that extra space for?
And as far as I can guess...
Didn't the MacBook One's CPU architecture with the crazy Intel 5-watt thing, didn't that have a very low limit on how many ports it could even drive with its chipset?
So maybe this isn't using those CPUs at all.
Maybe this is using some other Intel low-wattage chip that's higher-end than the Core M.
and then that's how it's driving all these ports but then it needs all this additional battery to to function and to to have an acceptable battery life which of course then raises the question of well what the heck is the difference between that and the macbook pro all that empty space in the front is for uh speaker cavities right like on the ipad pro four speakers tell you what that'd be awesome that'd be amazing but no i doubt it we have so much space left over in this case we don't even know what to do with it speaker cavities speaker cavities for everybody
Anything else about these laptops?
I'm looking forward to hearing what these actually are and seeing them.
Because as you said, Casey, major changes to the Mac designs don't happen very often.
And especially to the main workhorse computers.
It's one thing to introduce a brand new, tiny little MacBook One at an event.
But everyone's still using MacBook Pros.
It's a whole other thing to totally redesign the MacBook Pro or the iMac or the Mac Pro.
These are major events in the product line.
And it's exciting.
And it's exciting for those of us who have and love our Macs.
It's kind of reassuring.
It's nice to know that the company that seems like it cares a whole lot more about iOS devices, that they haven't forgotten about the Mac yet.
In the process that the Mac is still being actively developed, being evolved and, you know, and having attention put on it, really.
Yeah.
And the thing is to kind of build on what you and I had both said earlier is that they clearly Apple clearly takes messing with the MacBook Pro and even the non pro line very seriously.
Like they don't tend to make.
Really crummy decisions like, yeah, we all we all complained and moaned a little bit about the MacBook one, but at least you could understand what they were going for there.
And for them to be messing with a design that really does work.
I mean, I have loved every MacBook Pro I've ever owned.
And I love the one that work gave me and I'm very anxious to see this new one.
Because if they're going to change something that is so important and that works so well, because the design that they have today I really do love, then it's going to have to be something good.
This isn't the playground like the iPhone or the iPad where things change fairly frequently.
This is kind of the slow and steady wins the race sort of product for them.
And so because of that, I'm really, really anxious and really, really excited to see it.
And also dreading it because then I'm going to want to buy a laptop and I really don't need a laptop right now.
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All right, so sticking with hardware for a moment, let's talk about this rumored external 5K display.
This is all coming back again.
I don't remember when it was we talked about this, but it was quite a while ago.
It's all coming up tipster.
It's all coming up tipster.
And so just earlier today, as we record this, there's been increased rumors about the potential of a new cinema display or Thunderbolt display.
given that stock seems to be running out everywhere so any new thoughts on this do we think this is real or is john finally getting his external retina display so he can get his stupid trash can mac pro what are we thinking the story the angle and the story i've seen i think we did discuss all this in past episodes maybe we did it off air maybe we all happened in the chat room it all kind of blends together but the
uh the angle in the story is hey new 5k display is fine but then everyone's like oh how are they going to plug this into macintosh computers and make an image appear on the screen and everyone is going through all the display port specs and seeing that they don't uh give enough bandwidth and trying to figure it out and going around and around and eventually the
gpu and the display idea comes out um so just as a review in case we actually didn't discuss this and it was all in the chat room the the idea is that you can't power it with display port because there's not enough bandwidth you unless you connect two wires which is kind of what happens internally on the on the imac or can happen externally on a current max but everyone believes that apple won't do that because it's gross
you don't want to have two wires connected to your actual display um and intel is not going to have the what was the display port 1.4 or whatever whatever standard it is that has the bandwidth to power a 5k 1.3 i believe uh maybe it's 1.3 but either way it's not going to be in the sky lake things it's not going to be in the next one even i think it's like it's a long ways out so even though display port will eventually support it doesn't look like any of the current macs are going to um and so the only thing left is uh
something weird and people think proprietary but really it's not proprietary it's just plain old thunderbolt because remember the thunderbolt spec has bandwidth allocated for data transfer and also display port and the idea is they will ignore a display port it will connect to it as if it's just a thunderbolt 3 device and you'll be running pci express over a wire and the thing on the other end of the wire will be this monitor that has some sort of pci express terminator so that from the perspective of the mac that you have connected to it it looks like
The monitor itself is a video card.
And then it starts to get hazy and like, well, is the GPU entirely in the monitor?
Maybe for laptops that don't even have a GPU that can drive it anyway, the GPU in the monitor will handle it.
But what about something like the Mac Pro, where surely the Mac Pro itself will have a better GPU than the monitor?
Well, if they update it, it might.
Yeah, it will use its internal GPU, but then just use PCI Express to communicate that the image information over to the monitor and then the monitor will act as a PCI Express device, even though all the GPU stuff is happening on the Mac Pro.
Anyway, bottom line is not DisplayPort.
That's the that's the answer that we all think of how they're going to drive.
this 5k monitor from a bunch of macs they're going to use thunderbolt and use it as the same as all those thunderbolts pci express breakout boxes only this will be a breakout monitor box yeah i mean this is another one of those things where like there's a lot of people making a lot of like blanket statements of well this isn't possible because of x and
The reality is this stuff is all very complicated.
Most of us who are making these statements don't have a full understanding of all the stuff that's involved and what actually is possible and what actually isn't possible and what's needed and what's kind of just a thing we heard.
The reality is the more I learn about this, the more I learn that it's way more complicated than I thought.
there are actually ways to do it with with current hardware or with near future hardware uh and so it's really just a question of like you know has everything gotten together in time and you know what will support it and when will it come out and what will it plug into and it seems like the answer to almost all those things is kind of like well that's up to apple so
i think it's too early to say really and they've had a long time to work this out and apple does have experience for example having dual gpu laptops and dealing with the gpu switching that's another question people have like how can you have a gpu in the monitor what if you yank the cable out of the monitor first of all yanking the cable out of monitors historically has always been a little bit weird not just when you're doing them over thunderbolts right uh but apple has some experience dealing with uh multiple gpus running multiple displays and laptops granted not all that experience is great
but presumably apple's the company can they can do it because they know all the hardware involved they control the monitor side they control the mac side and surely it will be limited to support for you know for certain collection of macs that can do this and it will probably require a new os update and all this other stuff and we've just waited so long like how how long has the thunderbolt display been out for i think i saw the date filed by it's been like four years five years i don't know it's it's been a long time
yeah well it's and it's especially because it's it's barely different from the led display that came right before it right they just updated with the thunderbolt but the having more ports than going over thunderbolt yeah july 20 2011 there you go yeah that's a long time so uh so it is entirely technical technically possible now for apple to launch both a new mac pro apple please uh and or
a external 5k display that a bunch of the laptops that they will also introduce can drive now is it possible that existing laptops can drive it too probably maybe especially if it's a gpu in the monitor that's sufficient to drive the monitor itself um and this will be a weird solution but it's better than waiting for the next waiting for the displayport spec that supports us and waiting a year many more years for intel chipsets to support their thing like this is far preferable so um
I really want Apple to do this.
We've all waited long enough for an external 5K display.
It's time.
And a Mac Pro update.
Well, I'm willing to believe that is not in the cards for WWC.
I'm trying to keep my expectations tamped down, but surely announcement of new laptops and surely an announcement of a 5K display.
Come on.
although i keep seeing more people like oh yeah q4 definitely later in the year so they could even they could even skip this and announce it not a wd i don't understand why they would but they could if they wanted to give all the glory of the wwc stage to i don't know what could possibly trump this iphone stuff uh swift stuff renaming mac os and ios i don't know like who knows what they have planned but this year for sure right guys
I sure hope not.
I mean, I'm really excited for you.
I hope it works out.
I don't know if I can handle it.
You know, even if they release the new Mac Pro, you know John's not going to buy it.
That's true.
You don't know that.
You don't know that at all.
Saving my pennies.
First, you're going to say, well, I want to wait and see, make sure that it doesn't have any big problems.
I'm going to wait for other people to buy it first.
Well, of course I'm going to do that.
Of course, I'm going to do that no matter what about everything.
Right.
And so then, so six months in, we're going to remember to ask you about it.
I don't have to wait six months to find out.
And we're going to say, hey, John, remember when you said you were waiting for the first people to buy the Mac Pro?
So now it's been a while.
There's no problem.
So when are you going to buy it?
And then you're going to be like, well, I wish I had better GPUs or the gaming performance isn't that good here.
And, you know, it's so expensive.
And so I think my Mac Pro is still going to work for a little bit longer.
I can get a few more years out of it until the next one.
And then two years into the cycle, like, well, now it's pretty old.
I might as well wait till the next one comes out.
This Mac's going to break someday, right?
Can't last forever.
Yeah.
i don't know those 08 mac pros are pretty solid it is tempting to try to go for 10 years though isn't it no no it's not oh my would you would you go 10 years like for milk in your fridge no like it doesn't it doesn't matter what the number is this is not the kind of area where you should achieve incredible longevity of like your main computer just for the just for the heck of it this would be great when uh i upgrade my ps4 to a faster version while i max it's there
continues not to be upgraded yeah how how many gaming systems have you bought in the time you've had that mac pro all of them no not all of them n64 came out before this right oh my god i think 360 but you never have a 360 right i think 360 came out before it but did the ps3 i know the ps3 was before that was like 06 or something like that right
yeah it's not console generations for like seven years for the ps3 generation so i haven't bought that money oh god all right uh what else is going on let's see here um we didn't talk about apple potentially opening up siri and developing an echo rival
We mentioned the article, but then we got off on another tangent about Apple and services and stuff.
We would never do that.
Us?
But that was the headline of the story was, you know, an Echo arrival and the Siri opening up.
I guess we didn't talk too much about the API aspect of it, but we mostly just talked about Apple and services.
Yeah, so apparently Apple may be opening up Siri.
There may be an Echo rival, and that's about all we know, which is to say basically nothing.
Was this the article that said, or maybe I heard this somewhere else, that the idea of opening up Siri is that it wouldn't be as open as the skills are on the Echo.
It would still be more kind of...
at least initially for select partners to have Siri integration.
I don't quite understand what the holdup is on having an official API for Siri.
Apple loves APIs.
WWDC is all about APIs.
They're all just, look at these great new APIs.
Integrate this into your app.
Integrate that into your app.
Your app should have one of these.
And yet Siri, it's like, no, nothing for you this year.
It's been so long.
It seems like they could have come up with...
the safest possible Siri integration maybe you would be useless maybe you know and use it but like get the ball rolling on the idea that Siri is not just like this feature of your phone but rather is an API that your apps can integrate with to make you know your apps can make Siri more useful in the same way that share sheets made like every app on the system more useful just implement the new share sheet API and suddenly everybody's apps can all work together to make everybody's phones more useful Siri should be exactly the same but isn't
I really hope that this report is true, that there is Siri API being unveiled soon, because as a developer, I would love it.
And there are so many things that I would love for myself to have access to it.
I would love for other developers to have access to it.
I would love to, as a user, for other developers to have access to it so I can do so much better stuff with Siri.
I really hope this is real.
I recognize it's a very hard problem to solve in a way that Apple would be happy with.
And...
It is not that surprising to me that they don't have an API, that they haven't had an API yet up to this point, because it is a very hard problem to solve in a way Apple would find tolerable.
But it's time.
It's really time.
As we see other voice assistant platforms having APIs and adding APIs and coming soon with APIs...
This is an area where I just really hope Apple keeps up, I guess.
And as we talked about last week, I really, really hope that they remain competitive in this area because it's exciting.
It could be really cool.
It's very useful a lot of times.
And I hope I can participate in that as an Apple user and as an Apple developer.
Thinking of the APIs and thinking of what the Amazon Echo Skills system is, it's not like Apple hasn't done APIs like that before.
I'm thinking of the Passbook API before they changed it to Wallet or whatever.
I didn't remember what that was like.
It was pretty easy for airlines or whatever to integrate with Passbook.
It was just like...
It was very webby.
It was very sort of make a REST-ish endpoint that sends and receives JSON in this format and sends some simple markup.
And in the app, it looked like these little cards.
And, you know, I think it's probably the same API for the wallet thing.
I don't think they've changed it that much.
That is exactly the API that you could use for skills in terms of integrating Siri, not with iOS apps, but just with other backend services and stuff like that to be able to
ask siri questions and have skills installed to let siri ask something other than wolfram alpha to get questions about i don't know sports like ask espn for more detailed sports information or whatever like that type of system that is an api it's not like apple has never made those apis before they've done it it's rare um but it's possible and it's you know it's successful like passbook and all that stuff had pretty wide adoption pretty quickly because it's like
We don't really care that much.
We don't know how much people are going to use it, but it's so easy to do.
Throw one web developer at it for a few weeks.
Every airline did it and it was fine and it continues to sort of lurch along, right?
They could do that with Siri easily.
Maybe they just don't think that's sufficient.
Maybe they have bigger plans with this.
The new, you know, whatever rumored, much better Siri.
The other thing I was thinking of is that if they're doing the whole Mac OS renaming with a lowercase mac capital OS, it's a good time to perhaps think about and if Siri is going to appear on the new version of the Mac operating system.
Good time to think about rebranding slash combining Spotlight and Siri, which have been sort of merging and dancing around each other for years.
I don't know who wins, probably Syria instead of Spotlight, but how can you have two different things that are all very similar?
They really should be integrated UI wise, branding and conceptually.
it's kind of confusing to have them like that so this would be a good time to unify those brands too um and if you did that spotlight does have an extension mechanism where you can write plugins and let your your files be indexed on your mac or whatever um that's another good time to add a siri api because once they're combined into one thing then you can add an api for i don't know like
again apple that's what wdc is all about it's all about sessions where they have new apis that you can use to make your apps cooler and that usually apple wants you to incorporate they're they're practically begging you to think of a reason think of a way that you can incorporate this new api uh in all the sessions like you may not think you need this api in your app but let me show you some examples you can add you know a rotating 3d cube in the corner so you should use scene kit like
They're very gung-ho about we have great new APIs and you should incorporate them because by incorporating the new APIs, you add value to Apple's platform and show its unique value proposition because Apple believes these APIs are something that the other platforms don't have things to compete with or that their APIs are more complicated or whatever.
Yeah, I guess this is the time of year where everything seems possible at WWC.
All our dreams will come true, and everything we have thought of will be announced at the keynote, and we'll have 15 sessions.
But obviously, they can't all fit in, so we'll see what gets dropped on the floor.
So quick aside, are you in favor of or against OS X becoming macOS?
uh aesthetically i'm pretty against but in terms of it's time for a rebrand i'm four like i don't like the lowercase m m a c o s but i think it's just like they drop the cats if you want to rename it after so many versions to do a different thing get rid of the the 10 and the x thing and like i don't know yeah sure rename it but i really don't like the lowercase thing but i'll live with it
I think it'd be good.
I think it's time.
I'm ready.
Yeah, me too.
I'm in favor.
The capitalization of the Mac aside, I don't really have a strong opinion on that.
I think it'd be cool if it was capital because it'd kind of be an old school reference and it kind of just fits better.
It's not an old school reference if there's no space.
But yeah.
Sorry, it's a different name.
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So iPhone seven, another talk or maybe tick.
I didn't, I didn't see this.
Tell me about this talk here.
Christina Warren's article at Mashable talking about the iPhone seven.
We've talked a lot about it already, you know, dropping the headphone port and we've seen the spy shots where it looks a lot like the iPhone six, but the antenna lines are a little bit moved around and the big one's going to have two cameras and so on and so forth.
This story was a sort of meta story about, okay, assuming all that's pretty much the case, hey, the iPhone 7 doesn't really look that different than the iPhone 6.
And for a long time now, the iPhone has been on the thing where they make a new case design, then they put faster innards in it, then they make a new case design, then put faster innards in it, and they're calling this the TikTok strategy.
Unfortunately, now that Intel has left the TikTok strategy and I have a solid grasp exactly on what is the tick and what is the tock,
Really, they said, oh, the iPhone 7 will be as if it was tick, tock, tock, when really it should be tock, tick, tick.
It's confusing.
I know.
Anyway, the iPhone 7 would really be another tick because tick is the shrink and the shrink is the boring one where it's the same thing, but they just put it at a smaller size.
And the tock is the exciting one, the new architecture or whatever.
Anyway, so the iPhone 6, new form factor, look different than its predecessor phone entirely.
The iPhone 6s looks like the 6 faster innards, and the iPhone 7 also kind of looks like the 6s with faster innards.
And the angle on the story is that this is a new three-year cycle for phones, that they're not going to do the every other year thing.
They're slowing down a little bit.
possibly permanently or possibly just because the iphone 8 will be like the 10 year anniversary of the iphone and the rumors about that one are like it's edge to edge glass and it's super thin and it's glass all over and it looks like it's really radical and amazing and wouldn't it be great to have a 10 year anniversary of the iphone with just this amazing new design that's something that no one ever thought of so maybe the iphone 7 year this year is going to be a kind of
boring year for a change where yeah it's gonna be faster and cool and have different antenna lines and maybe some different colors uh and all the great stuff that we love and the big one will have two cameras and do all cool things
but next year is the big one where the phone is going to look totally different and it's going to blow your mind because the touch id sensor will be integrated into the screen and it won't have any frame around the glass and who knows what the heck else it'll have um and i'm not quite sure how i feel about that because i'm i have a six and i skipped the 6s and i was thinking of getting a seven but if the seven looks the same and if i know the eight is going to be the crazy 10 year anniversary one
this is going to be like my mac pro all over again am i going to keep this iphone 6 the first and only iphone i've ever owned how long am i going to keep using this because you know what my iphone 6 is fine like it's it's still good i still like it the battery life is still decent you're accustomed to using crappy ipod touch hardware john trust me we we need to teach you as a first-time iphone owner we need to teach you how to be an iphone owner i need to get one every two years i need to get one every year if i want to be like you crazy people you're a tech podcaster just get one every year it's part of your job
Yeah, I agree.
My wife has a 6S Plus.
I see that it's faster and everything.
It's also giant, but I don't think I need a new phone every year.
I'll think about it.
You do.
At least every two.
At least every two.
But then if I get the 7, then when the 10-year anniversary one comes out and it's awesome, I'll be even more resistant to getting it.
I don't know.
I really have to think about this.
I really have to see what the 7 is like.
When you get the 6SS or whatever one for that this year.
I don't think they're going to go with SS.
Off the top of my head.
Yeah.
Let's hope not.
So when you get the one that comes out this year, and then next year, just one year later, an amazing new one comes out, get that one too.
I don't know.
You're a tech podcaster.
This is what we do.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I always wanted to go on the annual cycle and could never justify it to myself.
And then it occurred to me...
We do make a little bit of money off of this show.
It is sponsored for a reason.
And you know what?
$1,000 or $1,500 or however much a damn iPhone is these days.
Where are you getting your iPhone?
What the hell?
How much are they?
No, they're like $800 now.
He's factoring in the cost of the data plan.
Yeah, totally.
That's what it was.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Yeah, but anyway.
No, but the point is, you know, even a well-equipped iPhone, you know, it's, what is it, like $800?
It's $900?
Yeah, about that, yeah.
So once a year, I think I can afford that, and I do consider it to be part of the job of doing this podcast.
And
And I don't think that's true of everyone.
Like Erin, I've offered to get her a new phone on off years for her.
And she's, I don't think I really need it.
And that's fine.
I don't think that's a bad thing before the podcast.
I wanted it, but I never did it.
But John, you make a few dollars from the show.
It's time.
Isn't this why we do the podcast?
My wife has this year's phone and she has a 5K iMac.
She's all swanky and the fancy new hardware.
I'm the one with the... On the other hand, I have been buying more games recently, so that's how I spoil myself.
I mean, it is the polite thing to do as the tech podcaster to make sure that the other members of your family are adequately set up with good technology.
So you're doing that part right.
But you do have to think of yourself as well here.
You don't buy an iPhone and sit on it for three years because the next one might be good.
Well, anyway, my particularly used aside, what do you guys think of having like an off year where they just kind of cruise with like another S revision while we wait for what we hope will be an amazing new one?
Do you think that's a good idea, a bad idea?
Can they lower the price if they do that?
Can they get their margins up?
Like, why is this something that Apple would do?
First of all, as a huge disclaimer here, what we're really talking about is an external case design.
Every new generation of iPhone has been a substantial upgrade from the one before it so far.
The ones that have the S on the end look about the same or exactly the same, but they still have really significant upgrades.
All of them have.
So what we're talking about here, if they actually do what this rumor might say, they're really just saying we're not going to change the case this time.
Normally we would have changed the case this time, but now we're going to give it another year and change the case next year.
That matters a lot less, really, than everything else all told.
Granted, sometimes the case changes come with things like screen size changes, which is nice and important, but ultimately I think it's not that big of a deal.
As long as they have a good set of
iphone guts as long as it's a good phone and it's and it's a decent upgrade from the 6s in in important ways like if you know if the rumors are true that like the camera is getting a lot better especially in the plus size one then that's a big deal you know um so you know it all depends on like what else the upgrade if it's a compelling upgrade for the for the privileged of us who upgrade every year that i'll talk about how good it is or how good it isn't
it'll be fine.
If it's a compelling upgrade for all the people who still have two- and three-year-old phones to want to upgrade now instead of waiting for the crazy rumor to all glass one next year or whatever, that's good for them, too.
I do think, though, given the state of iPhone sales being the growth is slowing and they're under all the scrutiny now...
I do think the timing of this is not good.
Obviously, this was probably decided before these quarterly results came in, but certainly the timing of an appearance of them slowing down or not trying as hard, whether or not they actually are slowing down, and no matter how hard they are trying, it will appear as though they're slacking off if they do this again.
So...
i'm i'm totally up for it i i don't really care for the six design that much but it's fine it's good enough i care more about the way the phone works and the internals um so i'll be okay you know most of us will be okay people who buy the phones without doing a whole lot of research will be okay but i think in the public eye and for a lot of the for a lot of the press i think it will not be well received because people will think apple is kind of phoning it in no pun no pun intended
Well, there are potential upsides.
I can think of a couple upsides.
One, potentially the battery life could be better because if they're not making it thinner, like that's the rumor that not only will it look the same, but that it'll essentially like the cases will still fit and everything like or at the very least it won't be any thinner.
They always go down in power and find ways to eke out a little bit more power from, you know, the components.
if they keep the same amount of battery battery life should be better there right it will also presumably be cheaper for them to make because they won't have to have you know new tooling and everything and and build those costs into the line of phones so they could either lower the price for consumers which would make them sell more or they could have higher margins on the ones they do sell so potentially even though it could be boring aesthetically and there could be stories written about how like you said they're not really trying or whatever when it comes times to report results depending on which one of those levers they tried to pull they could have
increase customer sat because battery life is better they could have higher asp because it's cheaper for them to make them or they could have more sales because they could actually sell it for a lower price or at least like adjust the prices like the top end will still be the same price because that would be a bad signal to send but they could mess with the prices and by the way luckily it seems like
i'm just i'm just believing what i want to believe but anyway there were stories about the low-end model still being 16 gigs and then there were follow-up stories said no no no don't worry the bottom end will be 32 if they make the bottom end 32 that will also increase customers that probably won't increase their cost of goods any because people probably won't even sell them the stupid 16 gig chips anymore because it's insane um so financially speaking like in terms of what results they report and how many of these things they sell and everything i'm
an uh a another s revision could actually be really good for apple and really good for consumers especially if they actually do s stuff to it so the 6s they tried to make less slippery like the outside is a little bit less slippery right and they you know obviously upgrade all the components and if there were any sort of manufacturing problems with it like it was a little bit bendy in the 6 so they made the 6s stiffer if they keep doing that stuff like if this is yet another s where it's like
It's, you know, it's even less slippery and it's even stiffer and we've made it lighter and it gets better battery life.
And of course, the components are all, you know, revised and faster and all this other good stuff.
This could really be like they've never had three shots at the same phone essentially before.
This could really be...
sort of a you know a third attempt at building a iphone 6 shaped phone where they've learned so much from the past two years of doing that this will really be a great phone to buy but when you look at it from the outside it'll be boring and then whatever the 10 year anniversary phone is however
you know radical that is that in theory could have a bunch of weird problems but it will sell like hotcakes because it'll be sexy and new and everything so uh i like breaking up cycles like this any type of cycle you kind of get into it starts to feel like you're in you're into a rut for a while i think there are a lot of potential upsides to this but if you're going for like glam and trying to wow people i'm thinking of like showing this on the stage traditionally showing the new iphone
has been especially when it's like uh you know an even year or whatever odd year like when when we're expecting the the big redesign has been like oh and ah i can't imagine that much over the iphone 7 except for maybe the dual camera thing on the plus stuff um i guess we'll just have to save the oh and ah for the 10 year anniversary and whatever that's gonna look like
Ooh.
You know, I agree.
I agree mostly with Marco that I think that the fallout from the media will be ugly.
Well, and not just the media, the public.
You know, like Apple gets a lot of crap from regular people, from the customers whenever they don't change the outside design.
It is not just like a couple articles from like tech media trolls.
It's actually like people care about this.
No, that's a good point.
And a lot of people say, oh, I'm holding on.
You know, I don't want to bother with an S. I want the new case.
And so I'm holding on for the seven or what have you.
I do think I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's a good idea, but I don't I'm not frustrated by it.
And I and, you know, like I was saying a few minutes ago.
I like that my MacBook Pros over the last few years have been basically the same.
They've gotten a little bit thinner and a little bit lighter, but the battery life has kept about the same.
They've gotten faster.
They've gotten better.
They've gotten retina screens.
It's a formula that works, and I don't have a problem with just iterating on a formula that works.
I think that there are perhaps better choices of case design than the 6, but I don't dislike it.
And if the
The fallout from the press and to Marco's point a second ago from regular people is just going to be intolerable.
And there will be a part of me that'll be like, oh, that's sad that we're not getting a new one this year.
But in the grand scheme of things, I wouldn't be upset about it.
So I don't know.
We'll see it.
It would be a very fascinating.
It would be fascinating to see the reaction if they do have a six double S.
they're not gonna call it that though no certainly not but whatever and they can't call it 6s plus i already use that name would they call it the 7 even if it looks the same i would guess so to me to me i think if they call it a 7 that would make the the negative reception even worse uh like you know the negative superficial reaction because people would be like remember remember with with like the iphone 5 it was the 4s the 4s was the one that made everyone lose their crap because it was like whoa it's supposed to be the 5 and it's only a 4 with a letter
yeah like i'm gonna wait for a five and it's it was like this massively like upgraded phone with all this all this new stuff with siri with way faster chip and everything for us was a great phone it was an amazing it was a great upgrade and yeah and then you know everyone freaks out because they didn't call it five well that's why i think they have to name it the seven though they have to give it like you can't if you do it the other way it just reinforces the story you have to give it the seven because they'll be like well it doesn't look that interesting but the number is one bigger so i guess it's new
I mean, I see the argument for that, but I feel like that would make people even more mad that they call this the 7, it's the same as the last one.
I feel like that would make that worse.
I think you've got to put the number, because even if the story will then be this doesn't justify the number 7, not having the number 7 is worse.
Yeah, that's where I'm coming from.
Because then you're buying into the story.
Anyway, they could just drop the letters and say, this is the new iPhone.
or the numbers rather here here's here's how you solve this problem you ready one simple problem you call it the seven and you change all three four you change all four colors yeah like you can even call them the same names and just make all of them like lighter or darker just make them all look different visibly different dalmatian and flower power it's time yeah uh stephen hackett has finally had his day
Honestly, I would love cool colored iPhones personally, but even if you keep the same colors that you offer now, like the names, just change them all.
Make the phone look visibly different, even if it's the exact same stupid case, the exact same design.
Make everything that matters, make it all the same physically, but make it just look different, and people would be happy with that.
You can still call it space gray, though, because everything is called space gray, even though all the grays are entirely different.
How many space grays have there been?
About 14.
Oh, goodness.
No, I don't know.
We'll see what happens.
But it'll be an interesting fall if that's the case.
And...
I don't know.
There's a large part of me that thinks maybe just slowing down isn't a bad thing.
The three of us especially keep talking about how Apple stretched so thin and how they've got so much going on.
Now, granted, that's usually about software, but still, it may be nice for Apple to have a rebuilding year.
That may not be such a terrible thing.
And Wall Street just imploded.
I mean, nobody should suggest that the way for Apple to slow down is to release the iPhone less often.
Oh, my God.
All right, Casey, you should not direct Apple.
Sorry.
I mean, in all fairness, neither should I. But still...
That's the one option they should not do.
Well, I mean, sure, for the purpose of Wall Street, which granted is kind of the purpose for that entire company existing, is to please Wall Street in many ways.
But I don't know.
It would just be cool to see them breathe for a second and take a breath and make the iPhone 8 even more amazing than we ever could have imagined.
They should call it the iPhone X. They're going to skip 8 and 9 and call it the iPhone X because it'll be the 10-year anniversary.
They can use Roman numerals if they want.
They'll take the Roman numerals away from the Mac operating system and give it to the iPhone.
There you go.
Conservation of Xs.
Oh, God.
And you have everybody saying iPhone X instead of iPhone X. No, they should actually call it iPhone X. Like, it's not a Roman numeral.
It's the capital letter X. Confused yet?
Wait till we hear your name more stuff.
iPhone times.
yeah you don't remember the the very brief os 10 days do you remember that what no the capital o capital s space capital x that there was for like 15 minutes that was going to be what they called i forget if it was like the the shared operating system between the mac and and the phone it's when they dropped iphone os and they were like the iphone runs os 10 do you remember that part of the presentation yeah during the initial iphone yeah yeah they didn't say the iphone ran mac os 10
iPhone runs OS 10.
Right.
And in the literature, briefly, and in Apple's press releases, there was a thing called capital O capital S space capital X that was not referring to the Mac operating system.
Later, they would rename the Mac operating system to that, drop the Mac.
And that didn't last very long.
I think it was maybe a miscommunication or they changed their mind about the branding.
But it was an exciting day or two there.
Yeah.
it would be an amazing troll of john gruber if they switched to roman numeral numbering for the iphones that would be no people people can't handle roman numeral yeah although like when you do get up into the high numbers you do have to do something because the iphone 17 i don't know it just doesn't have the same ring to it but they're they're fine for a while just start using yours iphone 95 no no microsoft has tainted that whole naming scheme
forever yeah really it's not like it was a good idea when they had it it served them well but now everyone who uses it is associated with like windows operating system and office and all that even office dropped it for 365
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apple uh almost bought time warner apparently that or maybe according to this rumor story i like the fact that it involves eddie q because now i have so well not really new images of him but reinforcements of old image from that uh that cover story when he was the the basketball game did you see that video of him yelling his excitement to his favorite player's face anyway
Um, according to this rumor from the financial times, Eddie Q was all, we should buy time Warner.
What do you guys think?
Uh, and that didn't really go anywhere and Apple didn't buy time Warner, but the fact that it was floated as an idea and was vaguely, uh,
resulted in meetings according to this and uh and that it was a thing that might be considered kind of blends into the we talked about it a couple weeks ago we were talking about jason snell's story about apple should do something like netflix and sponsor its own content that type of stuff apple getting into the creative content business as not as a middleman not as a distributor not as a store but as a creator of original content or at least a funder of original content
I think that idea still has legs, and I just think Apple hasn't quite figured out what to do about it, which is good that they're, you know, considering all ideas and not quite sure.
Like, it's bad to jump in with that.
Time Warner itself has such a weird history as a...
not a great uh like there's not not good precedent there for the AOL Time Warner merger which was kind of a disaster I don't know if Apple wants to get in on that I don't know if they're the right company to buy they have HBO now and everything right so you can kind of see where there's some value there but on the other hand Netflix has sort of gone on its on its own Apple could buy Netflix like
So many things you can do when you have so much money piled up, and maybe that's part of it.
Maybe it's like money burning a hole in their pocket.
They're trying to give it back to shareholders.
They're trying to buy back their own stock.
They're doing all sorts of things to try to make this pile of money not quite increase at the same rate.
I think they've kind of leveled it off a little bit, the rate of increase, but it's just so much money.
and if they're not going to buy google which they probably shouldn't really um and they're not going to buy nintendo and apparently they're not going to buy tivo apparently we're never going to talk about that nope buying some company that owns the rights to a bunch of television shows um and has an existing system made to create original content it's not the worst idea in the world so
Um, even though this didn't go anywhere, uh, assuming this rumored story is true, I like the idea that this is what Apple's considering doing with its money instead of, say, I don't know, I'm actually more enthused about this than the idea of them making a car, for instance.
On the other hand, this was too bad for even AOL to hold on to.
Yeah.
Was it too bad for AOL or was AOL too bad for Time Warner?
That was just... Yeah, good point.
It could be either way, I guess.
I forgot.
But no, I mean, in the world of... In the areas in which Apple competes now, things that include online media services and possibly TV-related things, the Apple TV, with people like Amazon playing hardball, which we can get to, but I don't think there's much to discuss...
um having good original content is important it is strategically important it is important for sales of your stuff and your devices it is important for potential subscription services that apple might want to launch with things like tv service or you know like a netflix kind of service so it totally makes sense why this is a plausible story and why it might make sense for apple to do something like this so
This is the kind of thing... Apple is such a big company now.
If you look at what other companies this size do, there's a lot of big acquisitions and stuff for strategic reasons.
That's totally normal.
I know Apple doesn't work just like other big companies, but there's going to be some similarities there.
We're in a big business world with all this media stuff.
We're in times where lots of money is being thrown around for very important things and
A lot of power shifting going on.
A lot of high stakes going on.
Stuff like this is going to happen.
And it makes sense.
And most of it is going to be really boring for us to talk about or to think too much about.
But, you know, this is the world we live in now.
We're in the big leagues now.
We're in big company dealings.
Apple is no longer the scrappy underdog.
I worry a little bit about the size of the acquisitions.
I like it better when Apple is buying smaller companies, especially when it comes for something that can really change the character of a company as much as getting into the content business.
I like the idea of Apple getting into the content business as just one aspect of its ongoing strategy of selling digital television movies, you know, all that kind of stuff.
If you make a big acquisition with a company that's not as big as Apple but is actually really big, how do you incorporate that, those assets, all that intellectual property, all those employees, all those existing deals, how do you incorporate that into Apple without it significantly changing the character of the company?
So that's why I would say I would prefer smaller, more strategic purchases.
So, for example, if Apple could just buy HBO and the things HBO owns, right, instead of all of Time Warner or...
even just by netflix like because i think they're the sizes of their business and their entanglement is not are not great it's better hey you should have bought tivo too late for that um those type of acquisitions i feel like don't threaten don't threaten the character of apple won't distract apple from the important things it's already doing in in businesses where it has a lot of competition but will give it table stakes to be
part of the competition for you know tv set top puck boxes and having a value proposition why should you buy our puck thing well we have original content and that's why you should do this and and all this as we've said many times in the past get into the whole conflict of interest where you know you sell a puck box that lets me use the netflix app but you're also competing with netflix because you have your own subscription video service and you have your own original content how does that work
That's I think, you know, that's unavoidable at this point.
It's the same way that Apple sells apps in the App Store, but also sells your apps in the App Store.
And sometimes Apple's apps are free or cheaper than yours can be and have, you know, to the point where, you know, Apple is funding the development of its iWork suite with all the rest of the money it makes.
If you're going to try to compete with them.
you're not going to be you're not doing it on a level playing field but somehow everyone lives with the idea that apple sells software through its own app store and also lives with the idea that apple doesn't always have to follow its own rules and all these other things and we get along and it's not like everyone leaves in a huff it's harder to do that in music and movies and tv because there are fewer players and they're bigger and they're crankier um but i think apple can navigate that again especially since everybody's doing it these days like it's just going to be expected at some point um and
It also makes sense in light of Apple's apparent inability to cut a reasonable deal for subscription video service, which we know they wanted to do for a long time, that they wanted to launch it with the Apple TV and just couldn't and didn't.
This is another angle.
Well, if we can't figure out how we can license your content and compete with cable or whatever, we'll go the bootstrap Netflix route and say...
uh we'll still sell other people's stuff but we're going to fund our own original content and really in the grand scheme of things funding your own original content couple hundred million dollars here and there for a couple tv shows and a movie or two that's peanuts for apple they probably spend that much money like i don't want to speculate about what the budgets are because i would probably be way off base but in the grand scheme of things for a company with hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank it's nothing um and the potential upside is huge so uh
Yeah, I'm all for something happening here.
I am disappointed that this is just a rumor and that it was considered and nothing happened.
I'm disappointed there still is no TV subscription service, but I'm heartened to hear that ideas like this are floating around, even if they do come from MediQ.
Because content is king here.
In so many ways, look at what people will tolerate in terms of bad devices, bad apps, bad services, incredible expense in order to get specific content they're looking for.
The entire world of TV, cable, video, movies, everything is just dictated by must-have content.
And people are willing to do crazy stuff like have cable TV, which, if you think about it, is incredibly hostile and terrible in so many different ways.
But people are willing to do it for specific content they get there.
People are willing to, even within the realm of iOS and Apple TV and stuff, people are willing to use horrible apps from other companies in order to get must-have content.
People are willing to pay big money.
Look how many people pay for HBO.
I just subscribed to it.
Whichever version of HBO doesn't require the cable subscription, whether it's now or go, I forgot.
One of those.
We subscribe to that now.
The app is horrible.
And we're paying $15 a month.
I haven't paid a monthly fee for television shows in almost 10 years.
And now we're paying for this and using their crappy app because there's stuff on there we really want to watch.
People are willing to make decisions like that.
People are willing to use inferior apps to pay decent prices to change entire platforms or to not use entire platforms like Apple TV or whatever because of certain content that they get in other places.
So it's very, very important for Apple to play in that world.
If it's content that's keeping people away from Apple's stuff or that is making it less of a good proposition for people or it's making it a worse experience for people to go use other things, Apple has to get into the content business.
So it makes total sense.
So you hear that, Eddie?
Go ahead and buy whatever companies you want.
You have our blessing.
We say it's okay.
Well, you know, just run it past me first to give a thumbs up, thumbs down, obviously.
Obviously.
But beyond that, yeah.
All right.
Go ahead, Eddie.
Have fun.
And if anything breaks, you know where to drive it.
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, Casper, and Eero, and we will see you next week.
Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
Something big happened this past week.
Something happened this past week.
Season or series 23 of Top Gear started and aired and began, etc.
The new Top Gear without our dear friends, Clarkson Hammond and May.
All three of us have watched it.
I didn't watch the whole thing.
I told you I only watched the beginning.
I didn't have time to watch the rest of the night.
No, you wanted to.
What am I supposed to watch?
I go to work.
I come home.
I make dinner.
Put the kids to bed.
I do this.
You're the worst.
Well, I'm telling you, it's spoiler city now.
You said in the middle of the day when I'm at work, you said we should all watch Top Gear for tonight.
The middle of the day.
What time did you think I was supposed to watch this?
after you got home from work let's see what time the middle of the day was 657 in the morning 657 in the morning i'd like to discuss the new top gear on the post show so marco if you haven't watched please do so today marco did you do your homework i did he's unemployed well there's that but we're also not allowed to give you homework because that's what the theme song says yeah anyway i would have watched the rest of it if i had time but i didn't all right so how far did you get
I thought I got through the first segment.
I felt like that was enough.
I'm going to watch the rest of it.
To be fair, that's most of all you need.
So spoiler horn will be sounding, horning, whatever the word is I'm looking for.
Do we have the rights to use a spoiler horn?
I don't even know.
You can use the spoiler dong.
That's all in the family.
Okay, so the spoiler dong has just gone off.
I think that the new Top Gear, as I'll call it, shows a lot of promise.
I really, really honestly do.
Really?
And if you remember, you should—and this is a collective you, not you, Marco, not you, John, just anyone you—
If you really want to see a rough car show, go watch seasons one and two of the top gear that had Clarkson, Hammond and May because they were borderline unwatchable.
They were so bad.
Or the American top gear.
The American top gear, particularly in the beginning, was unwatchable.
I actually don't think it's bad, but I mean, teach their own.
uh as we've already established i'm not the arbiter of what's good and bad but um uh but yeah i mean like the first season of top of the top gear that we know didn't even have james may it had jason dawes i believe who did like a used car segment on every show or something like that i haven't seen it in many many years but it was bad the studio audience had like 50 people in it or something like that because it seemed like nobody could be bothered with going to the set to fill to you know be part of the filming it was rough the
This show, season 23, episode one, similarly rough.
Chris Evans, I was expecting to love him because I'd heard just tons of chatter about how much of a car guy he is, a gear head if you're American, a petrol head if you're not.
I was excited to see him.
He seemed like he really loved the brand.
The brand seemed like he really loved the opportunity.
I hated Chris Evans so much.
Oh, my God.
Did you like him, Marco?
I'm trying to think of what I liked about this.
About the show or about Chris Evans?
Because I was just concentrating on Chris Evans at the moment.
No, the answer is no.
What you're looking for is no.
Yeah, see, I love Clarkson.
Clarkson is bombastic and loud and obnoxious and ridiculous.
But Chris Evans was just like loud for the sake of loud.
I did not get it and I did not care for it.
Now, John, what did you think of Chris Evans?
I've never seen him before, to my knowledge, before watching the show.
He struck me as an overexcited poor man, Simon Pegg, and he didn't give me what I was looking for.
I'm looking for different things than you are, certainly, from Top Gear.
Again, first show.
There's always going to be first show jitters.
First segment of first show.
I give a lot of leeway.
I didn't get the impression.
I'm sure this is the case, but it wasn't communicated to me his enthusiasm for cars in general.
Like...
enthusiasm was communicated but it seemed like non-genuine enthusiasm not particularly focused on cars um and i guess like it's kind of rough comparing the old top gear where all of the hosts were had mellowed into their roles and could relax and just kind of be themselves and had sort of established their personality the old ones had sort of the uh the gene hackman school of acting as a an interview i saw with gene hackman once where
Someone was asking him about his acting technique and he says, if you're acting for a long enough time and you're in enough movies and you're in enough things, you develop a certain poise based on your years of experience and you pretty much know how things are going to go down.
And people interpret that poise as good acting.
Yeah.
And so the hosts of the show, they've been doing it long enough.
They kind of know what their schticks are, and they do them in a relaxed manner, and you become comfortable with it.
And is it the case that the previous hosts were actually wittier and more insightful about cars than these new ones?
Maybe.
But definitely they were more relaxed and more assured in their sort of roles and personalities when it comes to their...
positions on these cars or whatever and in general as you all know i don't like the silly stunt things they do with cars i like the part where they pretend to review cars like as seriously as the show possibly can that's what i like out of the show and i tolerate the parts where they play with a giant soccer ball with a bunch of small cars i tolerate those barely um so
The first segment being a combination of let's review the Viper ACR and let's also do some silly thing with Top Gun.
I didn't like that combination.
I didn't like any of the segments.
And Chris Evans just seemed overexcited about nothing.
The only part I came away from the first segment liking was the fact that the Jetfire pilot got sick in the car.
Yeah.
And Sabine is excellent.
Like she was relatively relatively reserved, I thought, on this episode.
And I was disappointed that she got like three minutes of airtime.
But I'm super, super excited to see more of her because I've enjoyed any time she appeared on old Top Gear, if you will.
I thought the segment was fairly cheesy.
I agree.
But I was happy that they started with something American, which was surprising.
You would figure they would just triple down on all things British.
And then Matt LeBlanc came out.
And Matt LeBlanc had also been rumored to be a huge gearhead, petrolhead.
And I wasn't sure what to make of him.
Yeah.
And I actually really liked him.
And I can't figure out if it's because I'm American and I'm just predisposed to like other Americans on the show.
But I really liked him.
I thought he did a great job.
And and he was far and away my favorite host of the basically three that they showed Sabine, Chris and Matt.
And I got did I hate Chris Evans?
Oh, the other thing I noticed, I actually jumped ahead.
The lap times that they used for the supercars.
He actually rewrote all of Clarkson's little stickies or whatever in Chris Evans' hand, which I thought was kind of funny.
And I also thought the jabs at Clarkson, Hammond, and May, they did make me giggle, but I don't know.
I just didn't think it was really necessary.
I forget what he said, but something like, oh, we don't talk about catering on this show anymore.
Ha ha ha.
Yeah, I found most of that pretty cringeworthy.
I feel like you do have to acknowledge it.
Like if you say nothing, it will seem weird, but you have to do it.
It's a tough line to walk because you want to do it in a way that is funny, but also respectful, but also acknowledges that I know that you know that I know that this is weird and they didn't pull that off.
I completely agree.
Well said.
So, yeah, so Matt LeBlanc, I really liked this segment with the two of them, the Reliant Robin.
Like it was ostensibly U.S.
versus Britain, but they're in two British cars like it just served no point to me.
And that I didn't care for at all.
But everything took a terrible, terrible, terrible turn when it was time for the guests.
This was the most ridiculous, cringeworthy, terrible interview I've seen on top here.
So the premise was they were having like a competition between Gordon Ramsay and Jesse something rather the dude who played Zuckerberg on the social network.
And they were like, thank you.
They were talking about like, oh, who had the best first car and who had like the best current car.
And I just thought it was terrible.
That sounds like I haven't I haven't seen the segment, but that sounds like a good premise for an interview like that.
Wouldn't it be fun to have celebrities on and have them compete over those type of car related things?
But I guess they didn't do it well.
No.
I think if the roles were reversed, I would have said the same thing.
But having seen it, I thought it was terrible.
What did you think, Marco?
Hmm.
Where do I begin?
I mean, so to be fair, I started watching this at 8 p.m.
or 7.45 p.m.
So you had to fast-forward a little bit.
So I knew I was going to have to fast-forward through parts.
And this was fine because for Old Top Gear, I would always fast-forward through the British celebrity interview and the Star on the Reasonably Priced Car segments because they were just too slow for me.
I would always fast-forward through those.
And usually I didn't know the people, so it was fine.
So I gave this show the same courtesy because I started watching a little bit of it to give it a chance, and it was so bad.
It just dragged on so poorly.
In general, one of my main complaints about what I saw so far, and granted only episode one, but one of my main complaints is that it seems like both the writing and the editing have gotten substantially worse.
And that was made very clear in every part of the show, but especially in the interview, where it's like...
It was clear that a lot of these things are scripted that they're saying.
They're trying to make it seem like it's not scripted.
It kind of flowed in many ways similarly to the Tim Cook Bono skit before the finger touch.
Where it's like, it's so painfully obvious that it's scripted, and they're trying so hard to make it seem like it's not, and doing a really poor job of it.
That's how a lot of this felt to me.
The interview, the bits, the challenging quotes, whatever challenges were going on in reality.
It all just seemed like it was...
really forced.
It seemed like everybody was reading badly written cue cards and having trouble seeing them.
I mean, it was... It was so rough in so many ways.
And it, you know...
The fundamental problem I have with this is that they walked right into the shoes of a show where the show had really moved beyond its initial premise of basically like a boring BBC show about cars.
It had moved beyond that into these three particular people who had great chemistry, great personalities, who had years to develop into this chemistry and into these personalities and into this show.
And the show was really about them and about their chemistry together, the things they did together, them being funny together, making fun of each other and doing things together.
It was really all about them.
It wasn't really about the cars.
Sorry, John.
And so it has taken that, removed them, and then they tried to just keep it going in the same way with...
completely different cast and and some minor variation on the formula but not not much variation um and i just don't see that working because what you have now is all these people who don't who clearly have no previous experience with each other or at least not enough to matter um trying to take a role of a show that depended so heavily on chemistry and on long established personalities and
I just don't see how that's going to work.
And it doesn't.
I mean, hopefully the show will develop over time into something people care about.
But the way it is now, I don't see that happening because I think what took it from that old boring British car show and turned it into the worldwide phenomenon that it was...
was that it went beyond just talking about the cars and doing skits with cars.
And it went into something that was way more mass appeal and could appeal to people who only like cars a little bit or barely even cared about cars at all, but were just entertained by the show.
The new show doesn't do that.
The new show is... It kind of reminds me, or it has shown me...
How little I care about cars.
Because I had no interest in almost anything they did.
I realized what I was actually watching for all this time was the cast.
And not this cast.
Maybe over time... As they're trying too hard to be old Top Gear...
You know, there have been other things in the past that have started off this poorly and have gotten better.
I think the most direct, clear example of this is the U.S.
version of The Office, where the first couple of episodes were like direct clones of the British Office show with a whole different cast and trying to be that.
And they were terrible.
terrible they were just so bad and eventually you know maybe like one or two seasons in the show kind of grew into its own and became its own thing because it stopped trying to be the old show and it became its own thing and it ended up becoming one i think one of the best shows that's ever been on tv and so this i hope this does that i
I don't have incredibly high hopes that it will based on what I've seen so far, but I hope it does because it just, so much of it just didn't work for me at all.
I mean, it just seemed so forced, so badly acted, badly edited, badly written, badly conceived.
And it's like you have this massive budget and not enough talent to use it right.
this is only episode one though i mean and like casey said if you're gonna think of an example of a show that started off bad in episode one according to casey top gear did like i give them i'm gonna give them some time to settle in although i wish i hadn't read the stories or skim the stories about like who's shooting with who on the show because it seemed to me that from the from the first shot that matt leblanc does not like the uh the fake simon peck guy
I don't know if those are the two people who were supposed to be feuding.
They were, I believe.
But that's not a good start.
If your show is going to be based on the chemistry and camaraderie, what are you going to say about the badly behaved...
slightly eccentric and all-around strange old hosts of top gear they seem to all pretty much get along with each other as evidence from the fact that they had some amount of solidarity to sort of stick to their jerky face punching uh non-steak eater guy when he got kicked off the show like so i think they all get along with each other at least in their working relationship and
And that came through on the show that they mostly enjoyed being together and doing the show together.
And I think you need that.
If a show is going to be based on chemistry, you need that.
And even though the show is not about the cars in terms of like gearhead type things where they're going to tell you about tech specs and get all into the nitty gritty of the testing and stuff.
I think everyone on that show had an enthusiasm for cars that came through in the cars that they reviewed.
Like each person would review a particular car and they would do the voiceovers.
And I assuming they had a lot of influence on how the segment was put together and structured.
And that came through in the reviews.
And it's not like I read car magazines for the more in-depth reviews and stuff.
It's not like that's what I'm looking for.
looking for basically the same reason you read like a columnist or whatever like three individual people whose personalities had come to know talking about cars that they have interesting things to say about that they're interested in whether they like them or not or they're into them or they're not into them they always had an interesting angle on the cars and i felt like the segments were put together well um edited well and it's sort of like it was like a coherent vision of it you know a james may review is very different from a jeremy clarkson review and
and all the different cars were the reviews are different from each other and uh and that's what i enjoyed out of the show and i haven't even gotten to well i don't know have i gotten to the car review segment was that acr thing it but if i finish the episode is there anything more in there for me not really well anyway episode one i give them lots of leeway in the meantime i will try out the whatever whatever the hell it's called the amazon thing those guys are doing although unfortunately grand tour if they're not reviewing cars at all maybe i'll be uh not too excited about that either
yeah i think that marco really um took the words right out of my mouth that when they the the rare occasions when they didn't try to just follow the exact formula i thought it actually went reasonably well um the star in a reasonably priced car is now star in a rally cross car i think they called it so it was like a rally mini and part of the track for the purpose of the stars is an off-road segment which at first i was like really and then
actually i was like i i've watched it a little more and thought you know what this is pretty good they're trying something different they're they're trying something new i'm okay with this i thought the um u.s versus uk segments with matt and and chris after the starting reasonably reasonably priced car so once they got into the the willys jeep and the um and the range rover land rover land cruiser i always get it wrong i'm sorry it it's all a mash a mashup in my head doesn't matter it's only a british thing right whatever uh
It's only a British car.
They never matter.
Yeah, never at all.
God, we're going to get so much email about this because I know they were like the most popular off-road car in the world.
We know, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.
The point is- No, all the people who own British cars don't listen to this.
They're busy fixing their cars.
Oh, shut up.
In any case, that segment I actually enjoyed.
I thought that was really good.
I thought Matt's segment on the off-road aerial Adam, I thought that was really good.
The things that bothered me the most about those two segments were exactly what Marco said earlier, that even though if you really look closely at old Top Gear, you could tell it was scripted.
And maybe for some people, you didn't even have to look close.
But for me, I was so caught up in the entertainment of it, I didn't really think about it.
And then you look closely and you realize, oh, wow, this is totally scripted.
It was so obvious here how scripted it was and where it was completely clear that they were trying to follow the script.
It just made it rough.
But all that said, I do think the hosts, with the exception of Chris Evans, have a lot of promise.
I'm hoping Chris Evans gets his act together and lives up to the expectation I had because he is so well regarded as a radio host.
And that's the other thing.
The other reason I hated the interview, because surprisingly,
He was interviewing people on the radio for decades, and yet it was such a rough interview.
But anyway, I do think it shows a lot of promise.
I thought the cinematography was still really, really, really good.
Maybe I'm easily amused, but I thought that was still completely up to snuff.
And I really feel like if we give them time, this will end up okay.
The other thing I should point out is that they did another show called Extra Gear, which is kind of like a behind-the-scenes thing that's only about half an hour.
Yeah, this was curious.
I didn't see this yet.
And so I'd really prefer not to have spoilers, if you don't mind.
But I have heard it was very, very good.
And Chris Harris, who was one of the hosts of that show,
at least this episode of Extra Gear, I really like because he had a YouTube series for a long time or a couple of YouTube series that were excellent.
And so I'm really looking forward to seeing Chris Harris on Top Gear.
Without spoiling it, was Extra Gear good?
I take it you had the time to watch it, Marco?
So I had to do a lot of skipping through because I was trying to fit it in before the show.
So I had to do a lot of skipping.
But...
I will say that I had a way higher... Tiff and I both had similarly low opinions of the main show.
And we both had similarly promising opinions of Extra Gear, where Extra Gear is a different cast almost entirely.
It's Sabine Schmidt.
What's the guy's name, Matt?
Chris Harris.
Chris Harris, yeah.
That show was, I think, substantially more promising.
It was kind of like an After Dark, behind-the-scenes kind of thing.
But they also did like some original bits here or some original things here and there.
It's clearly like a way lower budget thing.
And this is clearly like the B team in like celebrity rankings, I guess, like whatever politics led to them choosing these weird people for the main show.
But to me, that has a way better chance of developing into something good than the main show does.
Because those hosts are not only, I thought, substantially better, and their enthusiasm for cars is more obvious and clear and is better integrated into the show.
But they're doing like less goofy crap because the role of that show is not to have like a fighter jet fly around.
It's like all the goofy crap the main show did, Extra Gear didn't.
And it was what you want the main show to be in many ways, which is three people who are very passionate about cars, who know a lot about it, and can talk well about them in a seemingly less scripted way or unscripted way compared to the main show.
So honestly, I think Extra Gear is the better show.
And when you see Extra Gear, it kind of makes you wonder why they didn't just make these people the hosts of the main show.
that's too bad well i mean i'm excited to watch it even more so now but that's too bad that's the way the hosting shook out you know kind of played out so did you like matt leblanc or not really honestly no i i really didn't like him or chris evans yeah i didn't like either of them i and i i you know i mean i saw obviously i saw matt leblanc and friends i haven't really followed his work since then but uh
I had a fairly neutral opinion going in.
I never saw the other guy.
But I thought both of them were pretty painful, honestly.
It was hard to watch.
It was very hard to watch because I thought they were both doing such a...
mediocre job reading you know doing things and and reading things that were you know written in mediocrity and and uh it just it was not my my position on this show is now i'm just gonna let you keep watching it and you tell me when it gets good because i i have zero interest in seeing any more episodes of this show until everyone else has decided that this has become good
Yeah, we'll see how it goes.
I'm curious to see.
I am hopeful.
I'm excited that we have two shows to watch.
There was Fifth Gear back in the day.
That actually just got canceled, which I used to watch when I could, and it was a much more serious motoring show, so it might have been much more up John's alley.
But it was never quite the same as Top Gear.
It was always kind of an also-ran show.
I'm hopeful that the Grand Tour, the new Top Gear, if you will, with the original three hosts, I'm hopeful that's really good.
And I'm hopeful that Amazon treats it right.
And I'm also hopeful that they get their act together on the actual new Top Gear that we spent all this time discussing.
Because I really do think there's promise there.
But, man, it was rough, this first one.
We'll see.
I think there's a reason why we've seen all these different spinoffs and clones and everything of this show, and none of them have taken off.
There's a reason for that.
And what we have now is basically just another Top Gear clone or spinoff.
I don't think it's going to go very far.
I think it will probably be canceled within maybe three to five years at most.
And I think whatever Clarkson and May and Hammond do is going to be what we are mostly paying attention to.
But we will see.
Yeah, but I'm hopeful.
I mean, I agree with with nearly everything you said, but I am hopeful.
And John, you should watch the rest of the episode now that we spoiled it, just so you can see and and decide which one, whether we are trying to shine a turd or if it's actually really just a diamond in the rough.
i will and the extra gear thing where is that on after it like when is when is that supposed to be or is it web only or something no i believe it was on after i think you can get it on bbc america or if you uh have a friend that might have acquired it you might be able to get it off of his uh plex or synology perhaps possibly maybe yeah it's right next to the main show on casey's plex server john that's
That's how I might have seen it.
Are they airing them?
And I get BBC America.
Are they airing them in real time on BBC America?
Not real time.
I think it was Monday that they aired on BBC America because the show airs on Sunday evenings on the actual.
But it's not delayed by like a week or anything.
It's like a day off.
That's correct.
Or at least that's the way it was this week.
And I don't know how much time was allotted to it on BBC America.
The chat room is saying that it will be consistently on Monday nights on BBC America.
But I'm not sure if they're going to do the thing that they used to do where they cut it down and add commercial.
So the runtime is actually an hour on the BBC.
Honestly, that would be doing it a favor.
Well, potentially, but yeah, so they used to cut out scenes and also change the music, which that was another thing I meant to bring up the music.
I didn't notice any of the music on that episode, which is peculiar because usually the music on top gear is excellent.
Excellent.
And a friend of mine, the guy who got me into top gear actually said to me that he had, he doesn't think they actually licensed and licensed any actual songs like, like popular songs to use on the episode.
They just found like the, the, the oral equivalent of stock photography in order to fill out the episode.
And I haven't listened.
I haven't watched back since he said that I might be wrong.
He might be wrong, but, um,
But yeah, I'm curious to see whether or not that's true.
And anyway, I bring that up because in the BBC America version, they didn't have the rights to all these songs for anywhere but the UK.
So they would change all the music and it would be crappier.
They would cut it down from an hour to 42 minutes because commercials.
And it was just terrible additions.
And I don't know if that's going to be the case again for the new Top Gear.
It may or may not be.
Anyway, I'm hopeful.
We'll see.
That makes one of us.
Yeah.
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