Life by a Thousand Hugs
Casey:
We should start tonight by closing the loop.
Casey:
I can't believe I just said that out loud.
Casey:
I hate myself so hard.
Casey:
Let me try that again.
Casey:
Come out of the parking lot.
Casey:
The sad thing is this is going to go in the show.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
This is going to go in the show, and I hate myself so hard.
Casey:
Okay, so we should start tonight by putting a period at the end of the sentence, and that sentence being, John, what happened with your energy star sticker?
John:
I was encouraged by lots of stories and pictures posted by people on the internet saying, I have removed my Energy Star sticker from my LG monitor, and it went okay.
Casey:
Didn't I tell you that during the episode?
John:
Yeah, lots of people sent me images of them doing it.
Casey:
It's not until the other people tell you that you believe them.
Casey:
You don't believe me, your co-host, your good friend, but you believe the randos on the internet.
John:
It helps to have more people say it.
John:
Some people, one poor person was like,
John:
Boy, I'm glad I don't have an Energy Star sticker on my monitor.
John:
And then he looked and he found it.
Marco:
So now that we're on this topic, can you please explain the phrase trust but verify to me?
John:
That's from the Cold War, the Reagan era thing of trying to make it sound like he is cooperating with the USSR in disarmament talks.
John:
But by the same token, he is also still a strong cowboy who will...
John:
bang bang usa cheeseburger cheeseburger so it's trust but verify so how is that different from just not trusting people and just verifying everything anyway i told you how it's different it's different because it sounds like you're being trusting and cooperative but at the same time you speak out of the other side of your mouth and say but i'm still a manly man who can beat up people so it's trust but don't trust okay so it's not really trusting
John:
It's like your dishes are virtually spotless means your dishes have spots on them.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So I've heard this phrase.
Marco:
I never I didn't know that was the origin of it.
Marco:
Thank you for the history lesson.
Marco:
I honestly don't know that.
Marco:
So that makes sense that it was like a political doublespeak thing.
Marco:
But I hear people use the phrase as a seemingly non sarcastic directive.
Marco:
So are they just using it wrong?
John:
yeah you what is the context of how does this connect energy star sticker it's almost like security well because you you didn't trust casey telling you that you had to like get verification from everybody else oh no no it's just like i mean that's just one data point it just helps to have more data points it's not as if i needed
John:
to trust casey but verify like i needed more people because his monitor is not the same as mine his sticker is not the same as mine you know there are many uh different uh possibilities here and maybe he's not as picky about sticky stuff so trust but verify really just means don't trust anybody and verify everything
Casey:
Either that or just don't trust me.
Casey:
That's what it really boils down to.
John:
It means don't trust Casey.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And I don't even know if the Reagan USSR thing is the origin of it, but that's what I know it from.
John:
Anyway, emboldened by the internet.
Casey:
And your good friend Casey Liss.
John:
You're part of the internet.
John:
I removed the sticker and everything went fine and there's no residue and thumbs up.
John:
So don't trust your friend Casey, but trust random strangers on Twitter.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
That's what I'm hearing.
John:
If Casey had waited, if Casey had waited until seven other people sent me pictures and then had said he would have been, you know, not the straw that broke the camel's back, whatever the good version of that is.
Casey:
This is not getting any better, John.
Casey:
This is just getting worse.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So let's just move on while we still can.
Casey:
I went to the Apple store today.
Marco:
Move on while we're still friends.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
I went to the Apple store today.
Casey:
First and most importantly, it infuriates me the fact that there is no obvious place to line up or queue in order to pay for something.
Casey:
I know we've spoken about this in the past.
Casey:
Maybe it's an East Coast thing.
Casey:
Maybe I'm the problem here, but it drives me bananas.
John:
You're not the problem.
John:
The store is the problem.
Casey:
It drives me bananas that...
Casey:
I can't just go somewhere in being an obvious line to pay for things.
Casey:
Why is that not?
Casey:
It drives me nuts.
John:
And we've covered it before.
John:
It's like, well, you know, that may bother you.
John:
But for other people, it's more convenient.
John:
But I think the key issue here is the one that all five-year-olds have.
John:
uh which is the tiny child's version of a conception of fairness which is like if i come in the store before somebody or if i decide to i'm ready to check out if i make that decision before somebody else i should be served before somebody else and the way that's usually solved is by a line and yes there can be multiple lines and you feel like you picked the wrong line and there's all those little silly things to make
John:
You know, they make you notice when you feel like you're getting cheated again, more five year old versions of fairness.
John:
But when it's just a big, giant crowd and you come to a decision, I know what I want to get.
John:
It's this.
John:
Now I need to give someone money for it.
John:
And then you are just wandering aimlessly with the feeling that people who made the decision after you are getting served before you because they happen to be closer to someone who is ready to serve them.
John:
And then there's the application that makes you feel like you're stealing where you can check yourself out.
John:
And just overall, we want to go back to the system that we know and love, which is Align.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Because I know I'll get a thousand tweets and emails.
Casey:
I didn't use the Apple Store app because I was buying a gift certificate or gift card or whatever it's called.
Casey:
where I was doing an arbitrary sum of money on that gift card, which maybe there's a way to do it through the Apple Store app, but I didn't want to leave any doubt that it would work.
Casey:
So I wanted to wait for a human being to help me.
Casey:
And so anyway, so I just loitered.
Casey:
And the worst part is, so there was an employee working with a customer who was getting like, from the looks of it,
Casey:
Possibly a new phone, possibly a new watch, certainly a new watch band.
Casey:
And so this is like a fairly intense process.
Casey:
And I'm in that like uncomfortable space where I want to make it clear that I'm kind of forming my own line because I believe in order because I'm from the East Coast.
Casey:
And I want to make it obvious I'm waiting for this person, this employee's help.
Casey:
Yet at the same time, there's that ATM buffer zone where you don't want to get too close to the customer's business because that's not really appropriate.
Casey:
And so I'm just kind of standing around in the middle of the store looking lost because basically that's what I am.
Casey:
And so I get my wallet out.
John:
you didn't want to be tied to that person too because you're also on the lookout for anybody else who might be able to help you sooner and again this is a problem that we've solved with the magic of lines it's called the express lane if you're behind someone who's you know doing all their thanksgiving shopping and you don't want to wait you just want to buy two things you can in theory go to the express lane uh you know i totally agree which is the app that makes you feel like you're stealing but anyway lines right lines do have their drawbacks but you were in the situation where you're like
John:
I'm going to claim my spot by this guy just in case no one else is available.
John:
But it's possible that someone else just finished checking someone out, giving them their iPod socks or whatever, and they're ready to serve someone immediately.
John:
And then someone will wander over to them and you'll be like, but I was ready five minutes ago, but I'm not over there, but I was waiting by this guy.
John:
It's like lines, lines.
Casey:
people yep if this fixes everything and so so that's exactly what happened so my eyes are darting so fast i must have looked like i was learning something from you know getting a download from the matrix or something like that because my eyes are darting all over the place maybe they're ready no they're not ready that guy's ready no that guy isn't ready that woman is ready no that woman isn't ready it was insane and so anyway so i did the like social cue of i got my wallet out and not only did i get my wallet in my hand so i have merchandise in one hand i have wallet in the other hand
Casey:
I actually removed my credit card from my wallet, in part because I will always slightly be a New Yorker, and I want to take up as little time as possible, in part because I just want to give the social cue of, I'm ready to pay for this, please.
Casey:
Anyway, I bring all this up to say, I tried the Touch Bar.
John:
I tried it, too.
John:
I was on an Apple store.
John:
I was in there, and when I was in there, I forgot that the Touch Bar Max would actually be there until I noticed one.
John:
I'm like, oh, yeah, I should try that.
John:
So I did that as well.
Marco:
I also did it.
Casey:
Today or just recently?
Marco:
For the last few days since I bought one.
Casey:
Of course you did.
Casey:
I'm the worst.
Marco:
I'm just the worst.
Casey:
Let the record show I stopped myself from finishing that sentence.
Casey:
Anyway, so I tried the Touch Bar.
Casey:
I only tried it for about two or three minutes.
Casey:
Initial impressions, I liked it.
Casey:
I don't like the presentation in the Apple Store.
Casey:
And the reason I say that is, I feel like, and maybe it's my height, and I don't feel like I'm a remarkably tall person.
Casey:
I'm roughly six feet, give or take an inch or two, maybe 5'11".
Casey:
And I don't know what that is in meters because I'm American.
Casey:
And I think that the Apple Store's tables are a bit too low.
Casey:
And so the angle in which I'm looking at the touch bar is, I think, a bit too much.
Casey:
In other words, I think, generally speaking, my head would be lower as compared to the laptop if I was working at, say, a desk or something.
Casey:
And so it looked like, I can't describe it, but it looked as though I was at the wrong viewing angle for the touch bar.
Casey:
That being said,
Casey:
I really liked it.
Casey:
I think I can totally understand why someone would say, oh, it's a gimmick because it very well may be.
Casey:
But I thought it was clever.
Casey:
I thought it was well done.
Casey:
There's things that I don't love about it.
Casey:
For example, I want to say it was maybe Jason Snell.
Casey:
I might have that wrong.
Casey:
But somebody was saying on one of the podcasts I was listening to lately.
Casey:
That in Safari, there are previews of your different tabs that are open.
Casey:
And that seems kind of silly to me.
Casey:
I think titles would have perhaps been better.
Casey:
Maybe not.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I only used it for a couple of minutes.
Casey:
The escape key, I didn't have a problem mashing it by habit, but it was...
Casey:
uh, disconcerting that I didn't feel a button press when I did it.
Casey:
And a couple of times I caught the tilde key, which is an American keyboard, uh, directly below escape.
Casey:
I caught that key instead of escape, which was frustrating.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
And, um, I also spent a little time typing on the keyboard and in case for some reason you weren't aware, because I don't know how much I've talked about it on the show, but I've talked about it on like Twitter and my website incessantly.
Casey:
I freaking love the magic keyboard, the external keyboard that, that Apple's currently selling for say iMacs and whatnot.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
I love that keyboard.
Casey:
To me, it is my favorite keyboard ever, ever, ever, bar none.
Casey:
And the keyboard on the MacBook Pro, to me, and I'm curious to hear both your thoughts here in a moment.
Casey:
To me, the MacBook Pro keyboard was 80-ish percent of the way there.
Casey:
But I felt like the key travel wasn't enough, and that was very frustrating.
Casey:
I think I could get past it, but I really, really wanted just a little bit more key travel, and I think it would have made a world of difference to me.
Casey:
So let's start with John, since Marco, you own one.
Casey:
John, what did you think?
Casey:
I presume you at least typed on it for a few minutes.
Casey:
What did you think of the key travel and also the touch bar?
John:
Didn't feel that different to me than the regular MacBook one.
John:
And I did notice the, I did notice the noise surprisingly.
John:
Maybe it's because I've read all the stories about it and I was primed for it, but I feel like I would have noticed anyway that it was noisier and it did feel like stiffer and clackier, but not so much.
John:
Um, I do, I do think I liked it better than the MacBook one keyboard.
John:
I hate laptop keyboards in general.
John:
So it's hard for me to say like, you know, I think I said this about the Mac one.
John:
I just, I just don't like typing on them ever.
John:
Like in the best case, um,
John:
uh just because the keys are you know it's all wedged into a little shape and it doesn't have the keys that i want and i just i don't like the controls not in the corner yes i know i should wrap it to a caps lock whatever anyway i don't like them um as far as this one goes i'm glad it's an improvement over the macbook one i'm going to eventually have one of these for work but i i honestly doubt i will ever type on it at work like i guess maybe if i'm in a meeting or something briefly but like i don't i don't use laptops i don't find myself using laptops maybe that will change once i have this one for work and
John:
I'm bringing it home and maybe I'll just find myself using it.
John:
We'll see.
John:
But for now, I don't know.
John:
Same thing with the touch bar.
John:
Seemed fine.
John:
It's kind of interesting.
Casey:
What keyboard do you currently use at work or what do you expect to be using at work?
John:
Apple extended aluminum.
John:
That's what I've been using for many years now.
John:
And I was Apple Extended 2 for many, many years.
John:
I had to give that up for RSI reasons because the keys require more force to press.
John:
And I find keys that require less force to press are easier on my hands.
John:
That's why I like the Apple Aluminum Extended because the keys seem very easy to hit.
John:
And that was one of the things about both the MacBook 1 and this one.
John:
Like...
John:
the low travel maybe i'm pressing harder than i need to but it feels almost like banging your hands against just like the desk that doesn't move right like it feels like there's more the four more of the force i'm putting in is bouncing back at me or maybe it's bouncing back quicker i don't know i would have to type on it for a long period of time to see if this is actually a thing um but yeah and then so the touch bar
John:
um it's all right i mean it's basically what i thought it would be it was cute it looks nice i think the escape key activation is reasonable um i would still prefer a regular key but i think i would um i would be excited to have a laptop with this on it versus one without like it is a net plus to me in my mind having you know again having using it for five minutes like whatever the negatives are in there um i think the positives overwhelm it so i think this is a good addition to apple's laptop line
Marco:
Marco?
Marco:
So, regarding the keyboard, it doesn't feel that different from the MacBook One keyboard, honestly.
Marco:
If you get a chance, did either of you actually try them side-by-side in the store?
Marco:
Because a lot of the stores will have them, like, literally, like, there will be, like, an escape next to the MacBook Ones.
Marco:
I did not.
John:
Yep, I did.
John:
I went right from one to the other.
John:
And, like, I could tell you the difference.
John:
I could probably tell you the difference with my ears plugged, but definitely with my ears open, I could tell.
John:
They felt different, but they both felt like...
John:
That little keyboard that doesn't move too much that has the little cupped keys.
John:
They both felt like that.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
I would say the MacBook 1 keyboard kind of feels like what you'd expect the new MacBook Pro keyboard to feel like after five years of heavy use.
Marco:
It almost feels like it's worn out.
Marco:
It kind of lacks that kind of kickback the way the new MacBook Pro does.
Marco:
I think the way Apple described it actually is a pretty good, accurate description, which is it's the same key travel, but it has more feedback.
Marco:
It feels better.
Marco:
But it's still a very, very shallow keyboard.
Marco:
I still don't like it.
Marco:
But after a few days with it so far, and I traveled with it, and I did a lot of coding on the plane and everything, and I took a lot of notes about the computer on the computer, so lots of typing.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
I think this is one of many areas where Jason Snell is right.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
I can use it.
Marco:
But I don't like it.
Marco:
It's better enough than the MacBook One keyboard that I would not not get this computer just for that, if that makes sense.
John:
I think there's a big one of the biggest improvements over the MacBook One keyboard, not so much in like how it feels and touchy feely stuff, but just practically speaking again for the brief time I was typing.
John:
My problem with the MacBook One keyboard was often because there's so little travel and because the keys are so sunken in.
John:
it wasn't always easy to be sure that i have successfully activated a key right because sometimes you go to hit it and you can't tell you hit it because your finger goes up and down because it goes up and down like too little um and the new one has such a much more positive like you have pressed this key and you'll know it because clack right
John:
Whereas if you go for it and don't quite hit it because you didn't apply enough force, you won't get the ka-clack.
John:
And so I felt on a new one, maybe it's just psychological, that I could tell when I hit a key and I could tell when I didn't successfully hit a key in a way that was harder for me to tell on the MacBook One keyboard.
Marco:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Marco:
It is totally fine.
Marco:
I will also point out, though, while we're on the subject of the noise, the MacBook Pro keyboard is not only loud, like, noticeably loud.
Marco:
Like, Tiff noticed it even, like, in the same room.
Marco:
Like, wow, that is loud.
Marco:
But I also think that the sound it makes is particularly ungraceful.
Marco:
It almost sounds like you're tapping your fingers on a plastic tub.
Marco:
It's like, it's really a... Like, I would do it now, but I just, you know, I'm probably not going to convey it.
Marco:
But it's just like...
Marco:
Stephen Hackett already did it.
Marco:
It really does not sound good.
Marco:
It sounds very cheap and doesn't sound like something that's working the way it should be working.
John:
I don't think it sounds cheap.
John:
I think it sounds sharp.
John:
I think it sounds like a precision piece of machinery going... I don't think it's... It doesn't sound or feel cheap.
John:
In fact, that's one of the things a lot of people said about it, and I agree that this keyboard feels solid.
John:
The keycaps don't wiggle around like they do on my Apple Extended Aluminum or any of those other ones.
John:
It feels very solid, and when you type, it's like...
John:
It's like a sharp little punch, right?
John:
Like a little metal punch, which is not a pleasant sound if you're in the room.
John:
But I think it doesn't feel cheap.
John:
It doesn't feel cheap.
John:
It sounds cheap.
John:
It feels like a mediocre keyboard.
John:
I mean, people will get used to it.
John:
The problem with any of these things with volume is no matter what sound it makes, if it's more sound than your other one was...
John:
uh that's a problem because people kind of develop their habits around like i remember when i was on the apple extended too like i would be typing you know two rooms away and it would be like you you know my wife would be trying to sleep you're like i you can't do that i can't sleep because we're in a 900 square foot apartment you can't be typing right now because it's just too much like it's super loud
John:
And so in this situation, if you're used to sitting there on the couch and typing while someone watches TV and this one cranks up the volume just a little bit, it's like, all right, I can't watch TV while you're doing that.
John:
Just stop typing.
Marco:
Well, it's much louder the way the sound resonates on a desk.
Marco:
If it's in your lap, it is still weirdly loud, but it is less so.
Marco:
On a desk, it becomes substantially louder.
Marco:
I could definitely see if you share an office with people and you have a laptop on a desk and you're typing all day, it's going to be very noticeable.
Marco:
So you just better hope that you upgrade everyone in the office at the same time to these things.
Marco:
That way nobody can blame just you.
Marco:
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Casey:
Now, Marco, last I heard, if I recall correctly, you had ordered and then canceled one, but it appears you have now bought a new MacBook Pro.
Casey:
So are you no longer a professional or are you just slumming it?
Marco:
Well, I had ordered the MacBook Escape and then canceled it because I wasn't that comfortable with how much I was about to pay for it for the benefit it was going to get.
Marco:
And I kind of got like a 15-inch regret, like what if I end up wanting more power or more screen space?
Marco:
Sure, that makes sense.
Marco:
In summary, not to go over this too much again, but in summary, basically, I use an iMac for most of my stuff.
Marco:
I don't travel very often.
Marco:
When I do travel, my needs are either almost nothing.
Marco:
If it's not a working trip, my needs are either almost nothing, in which case I just need a Mac just in case the server goes down, or I want to SSH in and fix some stuff, or I might do light email and Twitter work.
Marco:
Or it's a trip where I intend to get work done or edit photos, in which case I want the biggest, most powerful screen I can get.
Marco:
Even a 15-inch, it feels like I'm cramped.
Marco:
I want the biggest, most powerful thing I can.
Marco:
And so my idea was, well, I'll just leave those needs aside and get the cheapo 13-inch one, which is not that cheap.
Marco:
Especially once you add any options to it.
Marco:
And I decided to chicken out.
Marco:
And instead, the local business rep gave me a good deal on the 15-inch.
Marco:
So I got the 15-inch.
Marco:
And I got the high-end in-store configuration.
Marco:
So the 2.7 gigahertz and the 512 and the Radeon, whatever, 455.
Marco:
The reason I went with this, first of all, I was about to go on a kind of spur-of-the-moment trip, and I wanted to test it out, and I wanted to get some work done, so I figured this would be a good time to test it.
Marco:
And if I really hated it, I could return it, but I figured this would be good to test and to talk about.
Marco:
Because really, the 15-inch MacBook Pro is the workhorse of so many industries, especially software developers, and especially people who listen to this show.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
It is such the workhorse.
Marco:
It is...
Marco:
If you look around at WWDC, almost every computer you see is a 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Marco:
It is so common.
Marco:
If you look around the office of any tech company, look around what computers people are actually using, a huge portion of them are 15-inch MacBook Pros.
Marco:
It is just an incredibly popular laptop among people who do the things I do and people who listen to this show and read my site that I figured it would be useful for my personal brand to be able to talk about this computer intelligently.
Marco:
And I kind of wanted one just to see for myself to test out the touch bar and just get some idea of where the Mac is going.
Marco:
I also, it was very painful for me to continue using my old one because I was constantly running out of disk space because I had made the mistake of getting the base model before.
Marco:
And the base model 15 inch, in general, the base model 15 inch is the best deal in all of Apple computers.
Marco:
By far, it is the best deal.
Marco:
For what you get for the price, it is not cheap, but for what you get, you get an amazing computer for that price.
Marco:
The price of the 15-inch base model, if you end up specking up a 13-inch to be comparable...
Marco:
it actually is almost the same price.
Marco:
If you spec it up to be comparable in RAM and performance, it is really about the same price.
Marco:
If you have relatively moderate to high-end needs and you can afford the price of the 15-inch line...
Marco:
I strongly suggest you go for the 15-inch line because it is just that good.
Marco:
Anyway, so I went for it.
Marco:
And, yeah, I've been trying it for a few days now.
Marco:
A little under a week now.
Marco:
And I traveled with it.
Marco:
I worked with it.
Marco:
And it's pretty good.
Marco:
It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.
Marco:
And I would say it's... I've actually considered maybe doing a YouTube video about it.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
It's hard to make videos, so I might not.
Marco:
But I...
Marco:
It's too long to go over all my impressions here, but it's funny.
Marco:
It's too long to go over all my impressions in our two-hour podcast, so I'm going to try to make a five-minute YouTube video about it.
Casey:
Naturally.
Casey:
Okay, so a couple of quick hits, maybe just the first one or two things that jump to mind.
Casey:
What do you really like about it, or perhaps what do you like about it that you didn't expect to like about it?
Marco:
They seem to have made substantial progress in making it quieter under moderate load.
Marco:
This is something that I haven't seen any reviews talk about.
Marco:
But the fan noise, both the actual noise the fans make and how loud the volume is, it is substantially quieter and less noticeable of a noise.
Marco:
Even if you're maxing out...
Marco:
all the CPU cores for a few minutes.
Marco:
Now, after a few minutes, if you're doing something like a handbrake or a video encode where you're maxing them out for a long time, then you will notice it.
Marco:
They will spin up to an audible level then, but it seems like whatever the thresholds they've made with the new thermal system, the new fans, however they've designed this, you don't hear the fan if it's just being stressed for a minute or two.
Marco:
And things like if...
Marco:
One core is being maxed out by some rogue process that's not working right.
Marco:
Apple Photos Library, for instance, or Dropbox, or iCloud, or iSecurity, iCloud Keychain, all these different things where you'll find one process hogging up one of your cores at 100%.
Marco:
In the old model, that would usually cause the fan to spin up audibly.
Marco:
In this one, it doesn't.
Marco:
If only one core is being saturated, you generally don't hear it.
Marco:
If all of them are being saturated, you only hear it after a few minutes.
Marco:
uh so overall like it's surprisingly quiet even quieter if you can keep it only using the integrated gpu uh which you can't force it to like like the like cody krieger's little utility graphics card status it can't force this computer to only use integrated at least not yet but it can tell you which one it's using and which like if it switches over to the discrete gpu it can tell you exactly which app or process is demanding that and why it's doing that so you can if you can go quit that app for instance then uh
Marco:
Then you can eliminate the need for that, and it can also notify you with standard system notifications when the switches take place if you want to.
Marco:
So anyway, it's nice to get an idea of what's going on and why.
Marco:
But anyway, huge improvement to the cooling system, I think.
Marco:
It does still run very hot to the touch when it's loaded heavily, so it's not like it's running at lower temperatures.
Marco:
But just whatever the cooling algorithms and designs are, maybe because... And there is a whole new fan design, so that could have something to do with it.
Marco:
But they've really made substantial progress there.
Marco:
I'm very happy to see that because I really hate when laptops get all loud and annoying with the fan when you touch them, when you do anything to the CPUs.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
What sucks?
Casey:
Sucks is a strong word.
Marco:
But I would say what's really disappointing is battery life.
Marco:
It's really disappointing.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I've heard that from a few people.
Casey:
And I haven't pestered anyone who I've seen say this to ask, is this just day one?
Casey:
Just like you say on a new iOS device or when you upgrade iOS on an iOS device.
Casey:
The first couple of days are going to be rough as it's churning through all the things it needs to churn through.
Casey:
So you said you've had this machine for nearly a week or about a week, right?
Marco:
So this is interesting.
Marco:
I've had it.
Marco:
Yeah, I've had it for about a week, a little under a week.
Marco:
There's a few system processes that will tend to load a Mac that's fairly new.
Marco:
Obviously, the old one is as old as time itself, at least time machine, is MDS and various time machine or various spotlight indexers.
Marco:
That finishes pretty quickly in the first day, and so that's pretty much done.
Marco:
And I use the wonderful utility iStatMenus to monitor this kind of stuff, so I can always see in my menu bar, I have a little CPU core graph, so I can notice.
Marco:
It's very apparent when a process is using too much power.
Marco:
You see it, and then you can go see what that process is, and you can kill it if you want to.
Marco:
Anyway, iStatMenus.
Marco:
What kind of animal wouldn't use iStatMenus?
Marco:
Ha, ha, ha.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Anyway, most of the hosts on this show use iStatMenus.
Marco:
So what I've had problems with is the Photos app, where in Sierra, I assume, it added the whole search for objects in Photos, kind of like what Google Photos does, but slightly worse.
Marco:
that process it's there's no indicator on like what it's doing when it's doing it there's no way to tell it to pause or to finish at a certain time or whatever else like there's no control over when it does that you will just see things like photo library d and photo analysis d in your activity list and uh and i i cannot get this laptop to finish the
Marco:
So there's only one place you can even see the progress of it, and that is if you go to the Photos tab in the app, it'll show you, like, you know, we've scanned 9,000 of 25,000 photos.
Marco:
I cannot get that to progress.
Marco:
Like, it says that it'll do it, you know, when you're plugged into power and when you're not using the app.
Marco:
So I don't know whether that means whether the app is quit or whether it's just running and hidden, whether the computer has to be idle or not.
Marco:
I've experimented with all the different things, and I cannot get it to advance very far.
Marco:
But yet I still see photo library or photo analysis D often popping up in the activity list.
Marco:
uh it tends to not do that on battery i watch for that like when i was doing battery testing you know taking these long flights i watch for that and uh i don't think that was the problem so basically i i don't think there was anything in my usage when i was when i was judging the battery it didn't there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary that was unfairly draining the cpu and keeping in a higher powered state uh that would that would you know otherwise not be there during regular use
Marco:
So, if you notice the reviews for the battery, some of them say, oh yeah, Apple's spot on, 10 hours.
Marco:
We did our light web browsing loop and it's 10 hours.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
Most of the ones that actually try real world use seem to all agree that it's about 5 hours.
Marco:
And if you drive it heavily, it can be even shorter than that.
Marco:
That matches up with my experience exactly.
Marco:
I'm consistently seeing that if I'm only doing really casual web browsing, nothing else, no Slack, no Twitter, no mail, if I'm only doing web browsing, and the Wi-Fi connection's great, and I'm not browsing any pages that turn on the discrete GPU, because some of them do for some reason.
Marco:
Maybe it's CSS animations, I don't know.
Marco:
But if you can give it very, very light use in a web browser, you can get about 10 hours.
Marco:
But even if you're bouncing between Twitter, Slack, and Web, my typical light workload, even that, it goes down to about six hours maybe, maybe seven if I'm lucky.
Marco:
If I'm using Xcode to build an iOS app and do build and run cycles with the simulator and change some stuff, just typical iOS development work in Xcode.
Marco:
Nothing incredibly heavy, not constantly cleaning and rebuilding the whole thing.
Marco:
Just typical work in an iOS Xcode development, five hours.
Marco:
and and that's that's been pretty consistent for me so far um so that is not great and that's that's with like you know relatively modest brightness settings the good thing is the screen brightness level doesn't appear to have as big of an effect as it used to it really does seem like whatever advances apple's made in getting the screen to be very low power uh those have paid off the screen really is seemingly pretty low power i don't know the exact numbers on it but uh
Marco:
But it seems like the battery life I'm getting is not that related to the screen brightness the way it used to be.
Marco:
But the problem is that you have these computers where the big advances in Skylake processors that let them make the battery smaller...
Marco:
Almost all came at the bottom end, as we've discussed, about like when the computer is doing almost nothing, when you're being very gentle on it and the processor can be mostly idle most of the time, then now it is using less power than it did before.
Marco:
But as soon as that processor is doing anything, as soon as you're giving it even a moderate load...
Marco:
The high end of the power envelope there is the same as it's always been.
Marco:
So as soon as you give it even a moderate load, it's just going back to how much power it used to use in the previous generation of processors.
Marco:
But because the idle power dropped so much, Apple considers that typical use.
Marco:
And so they were able to drop the battery size by 25%.
Marco:
So basically, we have computers that have 25% smaller batteries and processors that did get efficient enough to compensate for that when they're doing very little.
Marco:
But as soon as you make them do anything, really, now we just have a 25% less battery life.
Casey:
That sucks.
Casey:
That definitely is a pain.
Casey:
I have to ask, even though I'm already regretting doing so, what was your dongle, I'm sorry, adapter situation while you were traveling?
Casey:
What did you buy?
Casey:
What did you need?
Casey:
What did you miss, etc.?
Marco:
First of all, on the plane, this might have been my first long plane flight with the iPhone 7.
Marco:
And wow, does it suck to not have a headphone jack on the phone and to not be able to charge the phone while using headphones.
Marco:
That really does suck.
Marco:
Like, I know it's been a while.
Marco:
I know we're not talking about the headphone jack anymore.
Marco:
But wow, does that suck in practice.
Marco:
In my regular day-to-day life, I use Bluetooth headphones for walking around.
Marco:
But my big plane headphones are wired because there are very few big plane headphones that are good that are Bluetooth.
Marco:
Anyway, iPhone 7, big thumbs down for listening to music on a plane.
Marco:
Anyway, that aside, the computer itself, for doing occasional deployments to the iPhone, I used the Apple official USB-C to lightning cable.
Marco:
That was fine.
Marco:
I brought my other dongles, but it didn't really matter.
Marco:
I didn't really need them.
Marco:
I have...
Marco:
I have the ones I discussed last week.
Marco:
I have a couple of USB A to C or C to A. I have a Thunderbolt 3 to 2, which I only use for this one audio interface, which I didn't need the strips.
Marco:
I didn't bring it.
Marco:
And I have a card reader, which I didn't use because I didn't bring the camera.
Marco:
But otherwise, the dongle situation is...
Marco:
fine you know what really does drive me nuts though is the um the lack of cable management on the power brick that like i brought it up last last week i thought it would be a problem and it is a problem it's really annoying to have this big thick cable with no flip out arms no more mag save like you know the apple power adapter
Marco:
The previous one with MagSafe and with the cable management built in and everything, that was really an awesome design.
Marco:
And we had that for a very long time.
Marco:
And before MagSafe, those flip-out arms we had for even longer than that.
Marco:
This has been around for quite some time.
Marco:
Like my very first Mac, my 2006 PowerBook.
Marco:
had no my 2004 power book excuse me had those flip out arms on the power brick and and they're it's great and a little little clip to hold the excess at the very end of the cable a little clip that you can clip it on yep yep yep all the finest technology that's been around like in every vacuum cleaner cable forever uh anyway
Marco:
We don't have any of those anymore.
Marco:
Now it's just like an iPhone cable.
Marco:
It's just bigger.
Marco:
And it's thick because it's this big, like, you know, I think it's like an 85 watt or something cable.
Marco:
So it's like, it looks like the thickest lightning cable you've ever seen.
Marco:
And so it's kind of stiff.
Marco:
It's, you know, it's long enough to be a laptop cable-ish.
Marco:
So it's long.
Marco:
You know, it's not very flexible.
Marco:
There's no cable management whatsoever.
Marco:
So basically, you have to carry a cable tie with you all the time and keep doing it and undoing it or do some kind of crazy wrapping scheme, which, you know, takes more time.
Marco:
It's just like it's just a hassle.
Marco:
And I have some hope here that if Apple can start designing things to be useful again, they can fix this just by making a new power adapter or even a new power cable.
Marco:
Like this is not the kind of thing like the USB-C design does not dictate the power cable has to suck.
Marco:
It can be any cable they want.
Marco:
It can be any adapter they want.
Marco:
It can still have MagSafe that's just like a little bit away from the end of the computer or possibly on the plug end or whatever.
Marco:
They can still do all those things.
Marco:
They didn't, and that kind of annoys me because it really does make the product less convenient and less nice to use.
Marco:
And Apple has been always all about things that are nice, things that are delightful, premium products.
Marco:
And the switch to the power cable here is such a big step backwards.
Marco:
It goes against all of that.
Marco:
So it sounds minor.
Marco:
But if you're traveling around, moving around with a laptop, you know you deal with the power cable all the time.
Marco:
And the battery life is not yet good enough that you don't need to think about that.
Marco:
So you still very much need to be concerned about the power cable if you do anything on your pro computer besides very light web browsing.
Marco:
You still need to be plugged in often.
Marco:
And so to have the power cable be so really crappy is unfortunate.
Marco:
And so I really hope Apple fixes this at some point soon.
Marco:
Just updates the frickin' power cable and the power adapter.
Marco:
Just give us that.
Marco:
Give us one with cable management and MagSafe.
Marco:
That is very, very easy to do.
Marco:
They could totally do it.
Marco:
Third parties can do it.
Marco:
That is an advantage here of the USB-C ecosystem.
Marco:
Third parties can do it.
Marco:
And Griffin has a MagSafe thing, but the max wattage on it is only in the 60s somewhere, so you can't use it on the 15-inch.
Marco:
And relying on third parties is not a great solution to something like this.
Marco:
Apple can make a power cable.
Marco:
They can make a really nice one.
Marco:
They have for a decade.
Marco:
And more than that, actually.
Marco:
They've made them for over a decade, and they just stopped for some reason.
Marco:
And I wish they'd go back, and I hope they do.
Marco:
You can use the Griffin one.
John:
It just won't charge as fast.
Marco:
yeah but honestly i this episode is not sponsored by griffin i have not had great luck with griffin products in the past they they make a lot of stuff that like only they like they fill a lot of gaps in the in the apple product lineup which and that's that's part of the reason why i bought so many things from them in the past uh where like a lot of times they are the only maker of something that solves problem x y or z and that's great i'm glad they do but i've had very mixed luck with their products so i try to avoid needing them if i can uh
Marco:
And so the idea of relying on them for my power cable, I don't feel great about that.
Marco:
It's this kind of like little thing like as I complained last week about like the loss of humanity and as John clarified maybe as being whimsy in the products.
Marco:
A luxury product is kind of a collection of small delights, and Apple has gotten rid of a lot of those small delights in the laptop line in the last few generations.
Marco:
You used to be able to push a little button on either the battery or the side after the battery was not removable, and little green lights would light up telling you how much the battery was charged.
Marco:
That's really nice.
Marco:
You don't have to open up the laptop.
Marco:
If it's been in a bag for a while, you can just see how much it's charged without opening it up.
Marco:
MagSafe connectors, of course, that's a huge one.
Marco:
Having a little light on the plug so you could see without opening it up or anything, you could see, is it charging?
Marco:
Is it fully charged?
Marco:
It's just little useful things like that.
Marco:
Of course, the light-up Apple on the back, the startup chime.
Marco:
A lot of these things have been removed over time.
Casey:
You're forgetting one of my favorites that I miss.
Marco:
all the time the little pulsating breathing light to let you know that the machine was on exactly i love that god that was so cool like and so like there were there was this and and a lot of that i think has died with with scott forestall but uh i mean he's alive but you know basically you can call that living yeah exactly
Marco:
wow yeah but like you know they're like when we when we bought max uh casey and i at least john you bought max in the stone age but when casey and i bought max for the first time it was still this era of whimsy like where we we would be able to go into a computer store back when those still existed and another thing we go into like a you know like a circuit city or something
Marco:
All these dead computer stores.
Marco:
And you'd be able to go over to the Mac area.
Marco:
And you'd be able to play with the dock and see all the cheesy zoom animations and the scaling and the minimizing.
Marco:
You'd be able to see all the cheesy crap.
Marco:
And you'd be like, whoa, it's so cool.
Marco:
And when you actually bought your first Mac back then, all those cool little things just seemed amazing.
Marco:
The pulsing sleep light, all the cool little lights and battery things and everything.
Marco:
It was just cool.
Marco:
It made you feel nice about your luxury product purchase.
Marco:
And it made you love this platform.
Marco:
And so when things like the niceties of the power cable just get removed for seemingly very little reason, it really does kind of erode that nice feeling and the feeling of this being a premium product that you love.
Casey:
You know, I think it's been relatively obvious that I haven't always agreed with you on some of the things that you've been grumbly about over the last, I don't know, a couple of months about, you know, dongles and this and that and the other thing.
Casey:
I could not possibly agree with you.
Casey:
Everything you just said more.
Casey:
And I think you nailed it on the head with, and I forget how you phrased it, so I apologize, but a luxury product being a series of small delights.
Casey:
I think that's absolutely true.
Casey:
And I think that that used to, and to a large degree still is, but even more so used to be the case with Apple products.
Casey:
And obviously, I don't have a new MacBook Pro yet, but eventually I will get one for work, if not for myself.
Casey:
And not having those little flip-out hooks or arms, whatever you call them, on the brick in order to wrap up the cord, that's going to drive me batty.
Casey:
Not having the pulsating light.
Casey:
I still miss that to this day.
Casey:
Not having MagSafe.
Casey:
That has saved my computer on numerous occasions.
Casey:
I mean, how many in aggregate?
Marco:
And by the way, about MagSafe, USB-C holds on tight.
Marco:
It's a really secure connector.
Casey:
Which generally is good.
Marco:
Yeah, except you could, especially now with these laptops being lighter, you can very easily kick it off a table with that.
John:
You saw on the iFixit teardown, though, that they were smart enough to make the board that connects on the inside of the computer a separate replaceable part.
John:
So when you inevitably knock the thing over, assuming it survives, they can just replace the part that it plugs into.
John:
It won't kill your whole motherboard, at least on one of them.
John:
Sorry, Logic Board in Apple parlance.
John:
At least on one of the models that did that.
Marco:
Yeah, but that's not a great solution.
Marco:
That is both incomplete and inferior to MagSafe.
Casey:
No, but anyway, I just wanted to say that I completely agree with you.
Casey:
And I think this isn't absolutely whimsy or humanity, but it's tangentially related, I think, or it's in this kind of same universe in that it's these little things in the same way that in my personal estimation, Windows is death by a thousand paper cuts.
Casey:
Apple products, again, for the most part still are, but especially just a few years ago, tended to be whatever the opposite of that is.
Casey:
I don't know what the opposite of death by a thousand paper cuts is, but the opposite of that is what Apple products were and to some degree still are.
John:
Life by a thousand hugs.
John:
Yeah, there you go.
Casey:
But no, I couldn't agree with you more, Marco.
Casey:
Little stuff like that is just – it's frustrating.
Casey:
And I do think, as we've talked about in the past, like this dongle situation, it sounds like for you it wasn't that bad for this particular trip.
Casey:
And I do think in the future it will get a lot better.
Casey:
But there's nothing –
Casey:
There's no obvious answer for not having the little the cable management arms on the power supply.
Casey:
I guess you could get a third party power supply.
Casey:
I guess those might exist at some point.
Casey:
But there's no obvious answer for that.
Casey:
There's no way you're going to get the little pulsing sleep light on a MacBook Pro.
Casey:
It's just not going to happen.
Casey:
And all of this little stuff, it just adds up and is kind of frustrating over time.
Marco:
Yeah, and some of it, things like the glowing Apple logo on the back, apparently that was due to thinness reasons on the new displays or something like that.
Marco:
Things like the sleep LED, you could blame that on power or it being too bright in some people's rooms or whatever.
Marco:
Sure, sure.
Marco:
But things like the power brick getting worse, there's kind of no reason for that.
Marco:
And that's kind of what drives me nuts.
Marco:
It's like the unnecessary shaving off of all the personality and delight.
Casey:
And losing the extendo cable.
Casey:
I forget the term for it, but you know what I'm talking about.
Casey:
That's now $19.
Casey:
You can't throw that in.
Casey:
Come on.
John:
You're getting at the reasons.
John:
Like in the car industry, they called it decontenting.
John:
And when it struck Hondas, I was very upset.
John:
Yeah.
John:
uh that was many many years ago i think we talked about it on neutral at one point but uh when i bought uh my first honda civic which was a 1992 uh the honda civic is the low-end model i got the lowest of the low-end model didn't even have a side mirror on the passenger side like the cheapest model you could get and yet when you open the very very tiny trunk
John:
on the back of that car there were no struts that intruded into the trunk area it had a series of struts so that when you closed it there weren't and there wasn't anything poking in you could put a suitcase in there so it would just like fill the entire opening and then close the lid and you wouldn't have to worry oh but now when i try to close it the hinge will bang into you know the gooseneck type hinge will bang into the thing those are more expensive to make the little struts uh they're more complicated they're more prone to break they cost a lot more than taking a bent piece of uh metal and bending into a gooseneck shape and welding it on
John:
um and then uh when decontenting struck uh the japanese car industry i think probably because of exchange rates or some other thing or whatever i don't remember what it was but anyway it came to honda and all of a sudden the civic got gooseneck struts and in fact the accord got gooseneck struts and you know what to this day if you go buy an accord no matter how much money you pay for an accord gooseneck on the trunk they never came back like they never said okay well when things when things change we will you know we'll
John:
will whatever the reverse of decontenting is they made the parts cheaper and probably like you know simpler to build and more reliable and so they don't have to worry about it but it's worse in terms of packing things into the back of your car because now you have to worry about where the hinges land yeah i would say like in general i have i have thought about the the concept of decontenting for for a while with apple products and it really does seem that way uh with
Marco:
with some of the more recent releases.
Marco:
And it's sad because so many of those little things are delightful.
Marco:
And they add up to this perception of this being a premium, nice product that makes you happy.
Marco:
And every one of these removals, it's just eroding that feeling.
Marco:
And these are still nice computers, but...
Marco:
They were nicer in many ways in the past.
Marco:
In general, it's hard to really complain too much, although we always find a way, but it's hard to complain too much because overall, I would say this is a better computer in many ways than the one it replaced, but it is not as good as it could be
Marco:
And in areas that there is no excuse for that, you know, certain areas you can say, all right, well, it maxes out at 16 gigs of RAM for these reasons with low power RAM and Intel limitations, etc.
Marco:
You know, you can say like, oh, well, it couldn't have a better keyboard because then it would have to be thicker.
Marco:
By the way, as for the way this computer feels with it being so much thinner and lighter.
Marco:
feel like a small improvement not a substantial improvement like i'll i'll take it you know i'll take it being lighter i guess i mean i would prefer great battery life but you know if if this is what what is available now okay you know i'll accept the the the weight reduction but going from the retina macbook pro the the 2012 design to the 2016 design does not feel that different
Marco:
We're severely diminishing returns here.
Marco:
It really does not feel like a massive savings in weight or size or thickness.
Marco:
At no point, having used the 2012 15-inch design since 2012, at no point during these four years did I ever think, you know, this is too thick.
Marco:
Everybody could use their laptop being lighter because when you carry it, it's nice when it's lighter.
Marco:
Everyone can use a smaller footprint for the same screen size to have less overhead because, oh, that makes it easier to use on planes and tight areas and stuff.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
But the thickness of these laptops, especially in the 15-inch line, is so irrelevant.
Marco:
And they were already so thin in 2012.
Marco:
To make them lighter is very welcome, but they really didn't need to get thinner.
Marco:
And they really didn't get thinner enough in ways that are actually noticeable in real world use.
Marco:
So to do things like make a really controversial, weird new keyboard in the name of only thinness and not lightness, because keyboards are mostly empty space, to be able to force yourself into that kind of design trade-off,
Marco:
seems unnecessary when it was already so thin to begin with you know so lightness great it is noticeably lighter it's not it's not massively lighter it isn't like like when you first like the first time you picked a macbook air and you were used to everything that wasn't a macbook air before that yeah that was an amazing difference because that was that was like i think it was something like uh going from like 4.5 or 5.0 pounds to 3.0 uh it was a huge difference and also the taper was totally totally made a difference sure but like you know going from
John:
4.5 to 4.0 pounds is a much smaller difference you forgot about the the biggest difference though with this model that i can't believe you didn't notice oh maybe you don't notice because you didn't get it we didn't we never asked you what color i did get space gray oh nice and isn't that a big difference that to me that was the biggest difference other than the touch bar i guess maybe actually tied with the touch bar what's the biggest difference between this model and the old one this one comes in gray and it's a
John:
But it totally looks different than the old one.
Marco:
Do you like it?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And honestly, I was not a huge fan of Space Gray on the MacBook One.
Marco:
It just didn't seem quite right to me when I've seen it.
Marco:
You know, it doesn't look bad.
Marco:
But I just think, like, Space Gray on the MacBook One, it just seems like, you know, that's not really the best color.
Marco:
Like, I would say that MacBook One is best in probably gold and pink.
Marco:
And I don't love those colors myself.
Marco:
But it just looks kind of odd in Space Gray.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
On the 15-inch, I'd say space gray looks awesome.
Marco:
I don't know why.
Marco:
I think it's the same.
Marco:
But it, for whatever reason, looks really good to me.
Marco:
I'm very happy with it.
Marco:
So, you know, cool.
Marco:
That's good news.
Marco:
I do like it.
Marco:
I do worry a little bit.
Marco:
I know our friend Stephen Hackett.
Marco:
By the way, did you see his amazing video with the Apple book and the real products?
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
We'll put that in the show notes.
Marco:
It's so good.
John:
I was upset about the part where he shoves his $300 book.
Marco:
like all right fine i i see what you're going for but really come on it's a 300 book let's not just chuck it against the wall you would anyway you would so uh yeah that's that video is amazing uh anyway space gray is good but if it gets scratched or dented at all it shows the the silver color through as as he learned on his macbook escape oh no really yeah
Marco:
So, I mean, I don't know how deep of a scratch is necessary to make that happen, but it happened to Steven already with his MacBook Escape.
John:
Oh, that's bad.
John:
So that could be bad.
John:
I was going to change my work order to be gray, but now that I heard that, no, I can't have that.
Casey:
Oh, my God, John.
Marco:
So anyway, though, overall, I would say it's a good computer.
Marco:
As for the Touch Bar, which I didn't even talk about, the Touch Bar, I guess I'll go into it more in the future once I've had more experience with it.
Marco:
So far, it seems fine.
Marco:
It seems kind of like a sideways step.
Marco:
uh there you know again there's some pluses there's some minuses we'll see over time how it develops uh the escape key is really annoying to be up there so i've started developing a habit of i switched i remapped escape to caps lock i've just been hitting and i did that on both my imac and my laptop so i've just been training myself to hit caps lock instead of escape and the best way to deal with the escape key is to stop using it because the the new escape zone is
Marco:
fine but not great um the main problem is when when you're talking about a key not not an area on a touch screen but a key you know exactly when you've hit it you can rest your hand on it before you're ready to hit it and then you can push down and you know you hit it and you can't do that on on the escape zone you you can't rest your finger on it beforehand and you just trigger it i did that a lot the first couple the first day or two i had it
Marco:
And you can't know when you've hit it or not or how many times you've hit it very reliably.
Marco:
So I don't love that.
Marco:
So my solution there was to simply remap to Caps Lock, which is easily done with system preferences.
Marco:
The trackpad is being that huge.
Marco:
I do love having the big trackpad area.
Marco:
And when I went back to test to use my old MacBook Pro, one of the things that made it feel impossibly old was having this tiny little trackpad, which, of course, when it came out, it was huge.
Marco:
But it's like having this old, this tiny trackpad now.
Marco:
I still hate the Force Touch trackpad.
Marco:
I hate the way it clicks.
Marco:
I hate how weirdly the pressure is not quite right.
Marco:
I hate how it's not 100% reliable.
Marco:
So instead, I've been slowly transitioning to a tap-to-click wizard.
Marco:
If I'm going to have my taps be only mostly reliable and not 100% reliable, I'd rather do it that way instead of having to feel their stupid weird click and push harder to get it.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Basically, my solution to the downsides of the Touch Bar and the Force Touch trackpad are to avoid using them.
Marco:
And the upsides of the trackpad being so big are very welcome.
Marco:
And the upside of the Touch Bar being this new functional surface of weird things is basically a big we will see about that later from me so far.
Marco:
But so far, it seems it might be really cool.
Marco:
One more closing thought about this.
Marco:
I think looking at the specs and the pricing, to me, there's two laptops worth getting in this lineup.
Marco:
The MacBook Escape and the 15-inch.
Marco:
The 13-inch with touch bar is so expensive for what you get.
Marco:
It also has, I think, the worst battery life of the three.
Marco:
I think if you have the need for a lower-end or smaller or lower-performing computer, get the MacBook Escape.
Marco:
It's so much cheaper, and it has better battery life and everything else.
Marco:
If you want a strong workhorse computer that has a little more power or that has the touch bar, get the 15-inch because it is so much better spec'd per dollar than the 13-inch.
Marco:
So to me, those are the two worth getting.
Marco:
I don't love the 13-inch.
Marco:
I tried it in the store, and I ran a bunch of numbers online, of course.
Marco:
I don't love the 13-inch with Touch Bar.
Marco:
I don't think that product makes a ton of sense for maximizing your value.
Marco:
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Oh,
Casey:
John, do you have a new phone?
John:
I do.
John:
I got a new iPhone 7.
John:
It was the one that I said I was going to get, which was Jet Black.
John:
And I wanted to try using it without a case, and I did.
John:
I just didn't try it for very long.
Casey:
Define not very long.
John:
Less than 24 hours.
Casey:
The little birdie told me it was less than six, but I'll let you decide.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, look, I wanted to try it.
John:
It is grippy.
John:
And I never had an iOS device without a case, a small iOS device without a case.
John:
So I always thought I was going to just give it a go.
John:
And I was willing to take the scratches and whatever.
John:
And there's two reasons I had to stop working.
John:
The first, which I kind of knew about from using it in the store, is like when I was playing with it in the store, I noticed that I could feel the seams on the SIM tray.
John:
And I didn't like that, you know, on the outside of it.
John:
And using it more in real life, I could also feel the seams around the Apple logo on the back.
John:
and i didn't like that either like it's not it wasn't you know it's one of those things where you my fingers feel compelled to like seek out that seam or whatever and it's just it was bothering me that alone wouldn't have done it the real problem i eventually uh realized was even though i said i'm just gonna let it get scratched like i'm gonna accept the grippiness and i'll have a smaller shape and like i'll just i accept that it's gonna get scratched um i found myself
John:
when i was placing it down like placing it down gently like i was trying to stop myself from placing it down gently but i realized no matter how like it was a battle within myself to treat it as cavalierly as i treated my thing with the case on it um and then the final little bit of the you know these three things combined but i really think putting it down gently was the thing i just could knock it over the final little bit was doesn't lay flat because it got a stupid bump in the back of it when you have a case you don't have that problem
John:
And I find that I very often have my phone laying down and I very often press the button and do other things with it.
John:
And I don't like the fact that it's on an angle and could potentially wobble and stuff like that.
John:
um so i got a leather case for it it's in leather case it's much happier now i think i got into the leather case before any major scratching set in but who knows i'm just happy to have leather case on it and the new leather case is way better the buttons that poke out through the case are better than they were um the leather case is slip feels slipperier to me than the phone by itself so it's not like i'm putting in a case to be grippier
John:
but uh as soon as i got that case on it like just it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders and i can just go back into just having my regular phone uh the only other thing to speak of about this oh two more things one the home button that doesn't move i was on board pretty quickly with that uh it is different but i kind of i kind of like the little little kick as opposed to the button press like i'm i'm pretty much on board with that i even don't mind it when it's laying flat on a table like oh it feels so wrong it does feel weird in different
John:
But I'm pretty much on board with it.
John:
Like it doesn't bother me that much.
John:
I did eventually go down to a setting of one on that button because I can feel it.
John:
I don't need it to be in my face that much.
John:
I think one is fine.
John:
I'm definitely a one person for the for the home button.
John:
And then the final thing, the headphone port, which Marco had talked about coming back to reassert its absence when he was on the plane.
John:
I haven't had that experience yet, although maybe I will.
John:
But for now, the one thing that no review prepared me for or that I didn't think about beforehand and one of the things I didn't know is that... Well, two things.
John:
One, I knew this but didn't realize how I would feel about it.
John:
The lightning plug...
John:
is bigger than the headphone jack maybe not in volume if you do the math on it because the headphone jack is longer but it's just bigger around the headphone port is thinner circumference wise it is is closer to the diameter of the wire than the thing right and and it goes in and out a little bit easier especially on this this new thing so this feels like plugging in a bigger plug than plugging in the headphone and the second thing is
John:
The headphone, just a little thing that comes with the ear pods, which is what I use.
John:
I use the ear pods.
John:
And on all of their peripherals that have this little, you know, DAC chip in them, the lightning port on those, including the adapter, by the way, including the headphone jack adapter, the lightning port on that is fatter.
John:
The little plastic, white plastic part that the lightning metal thing pokes out of is fatter than the plain old lightning cable one.
John:
Fatter enough that you'll notice.
John:
Fatter enough that if you hold them up, if you, you know, it's not just slightly fatter.
John:
It is fatter.
John:
So...
John:
I feel like I'm plugging a big, fat, clunky thing into my phone when I connect my headphones.
John:
And that is weird to me because this is supposed to be the modern, new, getting rid of the old, clunky, you know, TTR, whatever the hell that thing is called, like the headphone jack.
John:
That's supposed to be the archaic thing.
John:
We should be going to the sleek, new, and I feel like I went the opposite direction.
John:
I feel like I just gave up USB-C for SCSI.
John:
That's what it feels like.
John:
LAUGHTER
John:
and it is not a good feeling i mean i'll get over it like whatever it's fine but i didn't expect that at all and i i had to actually say is it just me but you just hold it up just grab an old lightning cable and hold it up to your your uh you know headphones for your iphone 7 or for the headphone adapter it's bigger it's bigger around i really hope they can shrink that i think that would make a big difference so
John:
i'll get over it i really like my new phone it's super fast the screen is really awesome looking i i kind of like the new home button now i have forced touch uh i overall i really like the new phone especially now that i have a case on it but the the it's not the absence of the headphone port that bothers me so much it's the presence of the big fat lighting thing
Casey:
Yeah, you know, I noticed the big fat lightning thing, but I couldn't put my finger on until you said something, what it was about it that kind of bothered me.
Casey:
And I think it's exactly like you said.
Casey:
It's that it feels bigger and clunkier than just a headphone jack, which is definitely peculiar.
Marco:
Yeah, and I've got to say, I have also come around to the Force Touch home button, although I am a 3 person.
Marco:
I don't know how you could do anything less than 3.
Marco:
But the first day, I hated it.
Marco:
But after about that first day, now it feels normal.
Marco:
The illusion has totally worked on me.
Marco:
I like it way, way better than any Force Touch trackpad I've ever used.
Marco:
It is substantially better.
Marco:
So, yeah.
Marco:
It's good.
Marco:
I'm with you on that.
Marco:
The Jet Black, though, I'm curious.
Marco:
I must know.
Marco:
In your six hours of having it caseless, did you get any scratches on it?
John:
I was saying, like, I think it's mostly scratch free.
John:
I didn't I didn't go like hunting.
John:
I'm sure there are some because I again, I was trying to like, well, just don't put it down gently.
John:
Like, you know, the whole thing you're on board with getting a scratch right.
John:
Stop putting it down gently.
John:
So I was trying to force myself to just be like, stop thinking about it.
John:
Just treat it like your old phone.
John:
So I'm sure I like half intentionally put it down with more force than I would normally.
John:
And so I'm sure there are little scratches on the corners here and there.
John:
But I didn't go hunting for them.
John:
I just wanted to put it into leather case.
John:
It still looks pretty good.
John:
Like, when I polish it up before I put it in the leather case, it still basically looks new.
John:
But I'm sure if I got out there and, you know, looked at the edges exactly, you'd see these little hairline things.
John:
Whatever, it's fine.
John:
It'll be fine for the...
John:
The museum slash... Although now that my iPhone 6, I took it out of its case.
John:
Its case that is destroyed again.
John:
And it looks so nice and new in there.
John:
And I'm like, boy, this is a nice pristine phone.
John:
And then I realize, wait, I'm handing this down to my son, aren't I?
John:
This is the problem with phones.
John:
Maybe I won't hand him down my 7.
John:
Maybe I'll preserve that one and he'll have to get his own phone of some kind.
John:
But yeah, I'm handing my 6 down to my son.
John:
And so...
John:
that's kind of a bummer for the you know i did buy an otterbox case for it and hopefully that will that will help it to survive and he hasn't destroyed the 5s that he's using now which is also in an otterbox case so i have some hope that the six will make it out alive but we'll see it's amazing uh for the record i am also a one person just like john on the home button i started i think i started at two if memory serves and then and then eventually moved my way down to one it works or at
Casey:
We got a tweet from Chris Millar, who did a short video comparing different color gamuts.
Casey:
And this is just a couple of minutes long, and it is definitely worth watching.
Casey:
And it helped me understand a little better what the differences are.
Casey:
So we'll put a link to this in the show notes.
Casey:
It's pretty good stuff.
John:
Yeah, it gives you a 3D representation of the color space.
John:
And so you can just compare the size of like 3D shapes.
John:
Like here's how big this color gamut is.
John:
And now look, the shape is bigger and it's bigger in these dimensions.
John:
And so it's nice to visualize.
John:
And the app that he's using to do that, I think that's like a built in OS X app, isn't it?
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
So you can you can watch the video.
John:
And then if you have a Mac, you can open the same app and do the same thing he's doing.
John:
And, you know.
Casey:
explore at your leisure yep exactly right uh johnny i've speaking of beat up iphones uh commented on beat up iphones in the or i guess he didn't comment in the book because the book has no words but somehow commented in the in the in in context of the book and the link that's in the show notes
Casey:
Oh, there you go.
Casey:
Sorry, I didn't read far enough.
Casey:
So yeah, so Johnny said, that's Evans Hankey's phone, who manages the design studio.
Casey:
Isn't it cool?
Casey:
She destroys her objects.
Casey:
But I thought there was something so charming about that.
Casey:
I thought it was lovely to put that in.
Casey:
We designed tools to be used, and she definitely uses them.
John:
I put that quote in there because it sounds so much like he does not like that phone being in the book.
John:
Now, obviously, that's silly because he controls everything that's in that book.
John:
Like, why would he ever put anything in there that he didn't want?
John:
But I read that.
John:
And, you know, I've said this in the past talking about Apple products like Apple, with very, very few exceptions, does not show its products.
John:
used like worn scratch dented almost all of their product shots show them in the pristine idealized very often 3d rendered or at the very least you know photoshopped like that's that's how their products and we know in the real world like it what apple has been doing design wise has been trying to design products that stay as close as possible to that pristine look which is an amazing feat and you know sometimes they get closer than other times like it sounds like the darth vader
John:
Apple Watch with the DLC coating is very close to that, whereas the iPod Nano with the scratchy thing was very far from that and all products in between.
John:
And we'll see how the space gray 15-inch MacBook Pro turns out.
John:
But that has been the trend for many, many years now.
John:
And this whole, let's see what it looks like when it's been used.
John:
flies in the face of that and is not common and the fact that they put that in there and as far as i'm aware that's the only beat up thing like they didn't show here's what here's what a tangerine iMac looks like after it's been used by a bunch of kindergarten students for five years like they didn't show that because that is a thing and there is a look to that and it's not a great look but they did show the original iphone and so this little passage almost sounds like he is
John:
trying to convince himself that it's such a great thing i'm sure lots of other people tried to convince him that it was awesome i'm sure he appreciates it but i still feel like if he was a magical wizard a magical industrial design wizard and he said we said you can create products that look like your product shots and that no matter what users do to them they stay looking that way he would say yes do that because that's exactly what i want like if you can make everything out of adamantium or vibranium or whatever your uh marvel universe
John:
magic metal or unobtainium if you want to go with the very stupid avatar um and they never actually changed he would take that because that's what he wants like as expressed by every product that he's ever made and every ad that they've ever been in with the exception of like that one ad that shows a macbook with a bunch of stickers on it and stuff and maybe one or two other exceptions and this one thing
John:
It's so weird to me.
John:
So hearing that quote, I was just like, who is it that convinced you to put that in the book?
John:
Obviously, you agreed to it eventually, but your heart doesn't seem in it.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Tell me about the Penny Arcade and the Microsoft Surface Studio.
Casey:
This link was in the show notes for the last episode, but we never got a chance to talk about it.
John:
Yeah, this is just one example of, you know, we're talking about who would want this computer.
John:
It's obviously not just for everybody because most people aren't doing like digital art on their computer.
John:
But if you're a digital artist, maybe it's for you.
John:
And then we talked about, well, digital artists may be set in their ways, but for other people who are more flexible or have been looking for, you know, a new approach, this is great.
John:
And so...
John:
uh mike from penny arcade uh has been you know drawing comics for many years now uh digitally and he's used a tablet and then he switched from a tablet to a tablet that's basically a screen the the cintiq where instead of just looking at your screen and drawing where you're not looking now you're looking down at where you're drawing because there's an image there
John:
Um, and he wrote this big blog post about it.
John:
He's also been connected with Microsoft.
John:
Like they've been giving him preview hardware for a while with the old surface books and the, the, the, you know, he's, he's embedded with Microsoft on this, but he is pretty honest about what he likes and what he doesn't like.
John:
Um, and here's a couple of quotes from his post about it that we'll put a link to in the show notes.
John:
Uh, his, his business partner, uh, Jerry asked him, uh, to compare it to his Cintiq.
John:
He says, and I told him that drawing on this Cintiq now felt like drawing on a piece of dirty plexiglass hovering over a CRT monitor from 1997.
John:
So that's a pretty, uh, you know, the Cintiq is supposed to like the gold standard of, you know, uh,
John:
or at least at least the sort of mainstream i want to draw on a screen but i can't draw on my computer screen because my computer screen is just a monitor then i'll get a cintiq which by the way are very expensive and i'm assuming what he's reacting to is basically the retina resolution of the uh the server studio and to him that's more important than perhaps what a cintiq fan might say yeah but the cintiq is more responsive or whatever uh the cintiq now feels like a crt which is bad
John:
On this little passage where he tries to wrap things up, he says,
John:
I spend six to ten hours a day drawing digitally, and I have for more than a decade.
John:
The Cintiq and the Surface, these are like my tools or my instruments.
John:
I am intimately familiar in how it feels to create things on these sorts of devices, and the studio honestly feels like a generational leap forward.
John:
That sounds like ad copy from Microsoft, right?
John:
But I can tell you that Mike from Penny Arcade is not one to sugarcoat things.
John:
So he really likes this.
John:
He's an example of, who might like this weird thing?
John:
This is the type of person that would like it.
John:
And the people who like it, it feels like I've been waiting all my life for this computer.
John:
I think, again, I still think he's in the minority because I think most people who have been drawing digitally for as long as he has are kind of set in their ways and are happy with the situation they have.
John:
And they just wish they could have an incrementally better Cintiq.
John:
But if you've been dreaming of this, this fulfills your dreams.
John:
And I really feel his enthusiasm for this device.
John:
And that's what makes me think that given enough turnover in the staff of professional artists, eventually some company is going to win out by letting these people draw on a big, giant, beautiful screen, whether it's Microsoft or not.
Casey:
So there was some talk on our show last week about ARM Macs, and there's a great article by Jason Snell on ARM Macs.
Casey:
But the thing we were going to talk about really quickly is that apparently Microsoft listens to ATP because they've announced that they're going to enable x86 emulation on top of ARM 64.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
That's part of their whole on-again, off-again dalliance with trying to sell Windows on ARM and the ARM Surface computers and everything that haven't been selling as well as the Intel versions.
John:
And Microsoft's analysis seems to be it's because people have a lot of x86 software, and if you buy the ARM one, you can't run the x86 software, and it's hard for us to get to everyone to recompile it.
John:
The same old problem that you always have when you change architectures, only Microsoft wasn't changing architectures.
John:
They wanted to have their cake and eat it, too, and say...
John:
uh everybody could you like make your apps build them for make your you know surface apps also for arm and exit no you're not no you're not into that okay well maybe if you think about it you know you have to do what apple does but just say you have to stop making 68k applications eventually just make you know fat binaries but eventually we're just going to sell power pc computers we don't sell 68k max anymore so if you keep building for 68k you're gonna have to keep doing that for any number of years to support your old customers but you know that the future is power pc only right
John:
um and microsoft didn't do that and i don't see them doing that with arm so it's been difficult to get them on board so their stop gap just like apple during transitions is well let's try to emulate it and we've talked about that many times in the past that arm cpus are not so much faster than x86 or faster at all perhaps that you get emulation you know not for free but like that you can emulate it at an acceptable speed
John:
but microsoft's a company filled with a lot of smart people and if anybody can work out an x86 on arm emulator that has acceptable performance uh maybe it's them now how does this factor into apple i don't is microsoft going to open sources does the work that microsoft does making their emulator work help apple at all maybe not but maybe they can prove that it can be done maybe they can give a data point to say if you were to emulate x86 on arm
John:
how would it work would it be okay or would it be dog slow or you know it's nice to see somebody go first and so we will have something more than speculation eventually uh to see uh how feasible it is to do this emulation because it's important for compatibility for all microsoft x86 apps and if apple ever wants to transition surely as it has done in the other two transitions it will need emulation so it's something to watch
Marco:
We're sponsored tonight by Warby Parker.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
And then you can try the frames on for these five days and you just send them back in a free prepaid box and
Marco:
free prepay return label everything else no obligation to purchase so you've spent nothing up to that point and you have no obligation to purchase it's a hundred percent free it is so easy anybody can do it and if you want to order some after that of course they make it very easy but you don't have to worry parker believes that glasses should be affordable enough that you can treat them like a fashion accessory just like bags shoes neckties hats you can have multiple pairs if you want to and of course very very affordably
Marco:
For every pair of glasses sold, Warby Parker also distributes a pair of glasses to somebody in need through worldwide vision charities.
Marco:
They also have sunglasses starting at just $95, including polarized lenses.
Marco:
And they also have those available with prescriptions starting at just $175.
Marco:
Just like eyeglasses, their sunglasses are available through their home try-on program.
Marco:
Warby Parker sunglasses feature premium polarized lenses that are scratch-resistant and provide 100% UV protection.
Marco:
So go to WarbyParker.com slash ATP today.
Marco:
We've had Warby Parker products in our house.
Marco:
My wife wears glasses.
Marco:
She has some other glasses.
Marco:
I have some other sunglasses.
Marco:
They are fantastic.
Marco:
We highly recommend them if you can.
Marco:
Check it out.
Marco:
They make it so easy, so accessible, so affordable.
Marco:
The home try-on program is really amazing.
Marco:
Again, you get five pairs of glasses shipped to you for free.
Marco:
No obligation to buy.
Marco:
You try them on, keep them up to five days, send them back also for free, and then decide whether to purchase them after that.
Marco:
It's really great.
Marco:
Their stuff is top-notch.
Marco:
Highly recommended.
Marco:
Check it out.
Marco:
Go to warbyparker.com slash ATP to begin your free home try-in experience today.
Marco:
Thanks a lot, Tory Parker, for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So speaking of people who listen to the show, apparently we've reminded Apple that they make Wi-Fi routers, or they did anyway, because now they don't.
John:
That was Marco that did that, right?
John:
Wasn't Marco who said they should just discontinue the routers?
John:
And I said, shh, they'll hear you.
Marco:
No, I wasn't even arguing they should discontinue, but we were talking, it was literally last week, the one before that, saying how they exit the monitor business, and one of the arguments was that, well, they don't need to focus on monitors.
Marco:
And I said, well, look, they still make Wi-Fi routers, and some of them even have hard drives in them.
Marco:
Obviously, they're in businesses that are less glorious, but they stay in these supporting roles for the rest of their product line.
Marco:
And the airport routers really support the Mac and the various iDevices in this supporting role.
Marco:
The time capsule ones in particular are very useful appliances to get people who otherwise probably wouldn't back up to a time machine drive or to have any backup whatsoever.
Marco:
who don't listen to our Backblaze sponsorships or who can't use it for whatever reason.
Marco:
Maybe they have a really crappy internet connection.
Marco:
So those are now major roles that are going now unserved.
Marco:
That being said, Apple routers were never, as far as I could tell, they were never that popular because the idea of every other router being not only good enough but like 10 times cheaper...
Marco:
That has been the case for a long time now.
John:
Cheaper and better, usually.
John:
Better in terms of Wi-Fi signal.
John:
I don't think Apple has ever had, maybe the very first one, but I don't think Apple has ever had a Wi-Fi router whose Wi-Fi performance in terms of range and throughput has been the tops.
John:
They just have never done that.
John:
But I will say, as a fan of Apple's Wi-Fi routers, one thing in my experience that Apple has done with its Wi-Fi products is that they have been
John:
i in my experience at the top of the consumer brands in terms of reliability like they don't reboot they don't flake out my experience with them has been very very solid so i always felt comfortable spending the ridiculous amount of money for these things uh
John:
both for the integration reasons, because there is actually a surprising amount of crap integrated with them.
John:
You mentioned time machine, but there's also the bonjour sleep wake thing and the little app that comes with your Mac and iOS devices to control them.
John:
Like, uh, there are, you know, Apple specific technologies and nice integration with the Apple ecosystem that goes along with them.
John:
And they were just always dead reliable for me.
John:
I was willing to accept the crappy wifi performance for those two things because, uh,
John:
There's nothing worse than being in a house with flaky Wi-Fi, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
First world problems.
John:
But I think they fit into the old Apple model of giving you a product that may not be the best, but integrates with the Apple ecosystem, and we charge you through the nose for it, and it's actually pretty good.
Marco:
But unfortunately, I don't think it's ever been a large business.
Marco:
And the thing is, as you get further away from the devices or you get in these supporting roles, whether you're using an Apple product or not matters a lot less.
Marco:
So a monitor...
Marco:
You know, that matters somewhat, not as much as you might think, but it matters.
Marco:
Unless you're John.
Marco:
Unless you're John.
Marco:
But if you're anybody else, you know, the monitor you're using, the brand of the monitor, whether it matches your computer or not, or whether it's an official app monitor or not...
Marco:
For the most part, it doesn't affect your experience that badly if it's not.
Marco:
There's a few things that don't work quite right or don't have as nice of an experience as they could.
Marco:
You know, integrations that might not work for you like brightness control on the keyboard, stuff like that.
Marco:
But for the most part, you know, it's mostly fine.
Marco:
With your Wi-Fi router, if that's not being made by Apple...
Marco:
for the most part, you won't even notice until you're going to change something.
John:
Same people who are cranky about monitors like me.
John:
I had this experience recently because a lot of people after this announcement have been like, oh, great.
John:
Well, I got to shop for a bunch of Wi-Fi things.
John:
What should I get?
John:
And people have been throwing around links to lots of different things.
John:
One of the ones that was shown to be like, oh, this has the best performance by like 5%.
John:
You should get this one.
John:
I forget what it was.
John:
It was like Netgear Orbi or something like that.
John:
Anyway, I'm like, okay, well, look at these benchmarks.
John:
Then I go look at the product and I'm like,
John:
nope sorry i can't like i can't have three of those sitting around in open spaces in my house because from for wi-fi that is in multiple places like to get whole house coverage you know then it's not just one like in the computer room or whatever uh there's one in my hall there's one in my bedroom and there's one in the computer room and i want them to be small
John:
unobtrusive and reasonable looking and these net gear whatever the thing they were they were tall ugly looked computery and i didn't want them in my house uh and so it's not to say the apple ones are great because the stupid apple tower thingy is also big and ugly but i'm still shopping based on how these things will look like this is one of the reasons that the the euros have stayed in my house is that they are small and generally unobtrusive
John:
uh if they were bigger and uglier i would have a harder time you know like i like this is this is a shopping criteria so it is i mean the apple airport express was also small and unobtrusive but it was so crappy that you wouldn't want so yeah apple apple has gotten itself out of this business by just you know in mac pro style by not updating their products for three years and never having them be particularly good and now it's like we're getting out of the wifi business so many people replied
John:
you've been out of the wi-fi business for so like in case you haven't noticed everyone else has been doing these mesh networks and you just have been selling this crappy overpriced thing for three years so some some people might say good riddance but my my reaction to it was tweet apple out of everywhere which is a reference to the usa out of everywhere which is not that i'm endorsing this it was a snark uh because that kind of seems on the same on the decontenting front the idea like that
John:
Apple should get out of every single business that is not the iPhone and that is not a potentially multi-billion dollar thing.
John:
Like, stop selling everything.
John:
Stop selling, you know, stop selling USB cable.
John:
Stop selling lightning cable.
John:
Stop selling power adapters.
John:
Just stop selling everything.
John:
Like, you know, the bean counter kind of philosophy of just isolationist concentrate everything on the iPhone.
John:
Get out of all these other businesses.
John:
And
John:
We kind of feel like we're in this contraction period right now where they are getting out of other businesses.
John:
I keep bringing this up from past shows.
John:
They got out of the printer business.
John:
And at the time, that was a pretty big deal because Apple's printers were similar to Apple's Wi-Fi routers.
John:
There were some really good ones in the beginning.
John:
The Apple laser writers were actually pretty cool, like the very early ones.
John:
There weren't really any competitive products that were as cool.
John:
They had a good integration with Apple's products, better than third-party things.
John:
Eventually, in the bad days, when they were just taking Canon inkjet things and wrapping them up with Apple outsides, they at least looked nicer than traditional printers, but they were all pretty crappy.
John:
And when Apple stopped making them, people were kind of like, all right, well, your printers were expensive anyway, and they were barely yours, and you should get out of it.
John:
um but the thing you're talking about like now that apple's out of it you can look at the better alternatives how's that turned out for printers not too well if you look at printers right now they're all pretty crappy they're all pretty ugly and if there was an apple one the same stupid rich people who'd be tempted to buy overpriced crappy apple routers because they look nice and and are reliable would also be tempted to buy stupid overpriced crappy apple printers in the more of the laser writer vein than the style writer vein right um
John:
that problem like the ecosystem problem has been what a lot of people are reacting to we have a couple of uh random quotes from uh listeners here maxim says all these products working together seamlessly created value apple is killing its own ecosystem this is alex says there goes the only official way of having a wireless time machine backup which is not strictly true because apple had recently has recently published the the apple's time machine over smb spec and we'll put a link to it in the show notes and as we all know from using synologies it is possible to have a third-party product that reliably backs up over time machine but
John:
And a lot of people want to just have the ease of saying, I don't want to have to shop around to figure out what things are going to work or whatever.
John:
If I just buy all Apple stuff, everything will work together and be nice looking and pleasant.
John:
If I just give them a lot of money and as they remove pieces of that and say, well, actually that adapter you got to buy from Belkin and printer you got to buy from somebody else and they still all suck.
John:
and wireless adapter you got a wire wi-fi thing you're probably going to get it from your isp so you're not going to buy one anyway but if you do buy one just you know go to wire cutter and find out what the good one is and yeah it'll be ugly and it might be weird and it won't work with all our stuff but you'll be fine and it is a contracting of the ecosystem to the most essential elements which is good in that it focuses apple but as dan morin at six colors said
John:
This is quoting him.
John:
It's not as if the iPad or most of the Mac line has seen an update recently either.
John:
So what exactly is the company working on?
John:
The idea of focus is stop doing that all extraneous stuff so you can concentrate all your awesome effort on the things that you care about.
John:
And it could be with just a time lag.
John:
They are doing that.
John:
We just don't see the fruits of that focus yet.
John:
So I hope there are fruits of this focus that come out of it.
John:
But in the meantime, we just get the pain of this focus, which is now I got a shop in the...
John:
A nasty, shiny, black plastic world of non-Apple peripherals for yet more things that I used to be able to just throw money at Apple to give me.
Casey:
John, the struggle is real.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Is there any way we can avoid talking about the Nintendo Switch?
John:
We could because we're an hour and a half into this, but I don't know if we can squeeze it in.
John:
No one wants to talk about Brent Simmons' reverse halo effect?
John:
Because I think there's more to say about this Wi-Fi thing and the decontanting.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Marco, do you think you can summarize the reverse halo effect?
Marco:
Basically, the halo effect is when you make the whole ecosystem, as people get into parts of it, it's kind of easier to get into the rest of it.
Marco:
Like back in the day when you buy an iPod...
Marco:
then maybe your next computer you might buy a Mac because you were so impressed by the iPod, you're like, well, maybe Apple's computers are pretty good too.
Marco:
And same thing with the iPhone.
Marco:
Anyway, Brent Simmons wrote this post called The Reverse Halo Effect, basically saying as Apple gets out of various businesses like monitors and Wi-Fi routers and everything, people who are in the Apple ecosystem who used to just throw money at Apple to just solve problems because
Marco:
Things were pretty good for the most part when you did that.
Marco:
Once you start looking outside of Apple for some of these key things, maybe you'll start looking outside of Apple more for more needs and realize, wait a minute.
Marco:
If I can stop paying $300 for Apple's fancy routers and I can start getting a really nice router for like $70...
Marco:
Maybe I could also get really nice, you know, cables from Monoprice.
Marco:
And hey, what about that PC monitor that costs basically nothing?
Marco:
And then eventually you're buying Android phones and PCs.
Casey:
Wait, are you saying there are books that cost less than $300?
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
Only the small ones, not a big one like that.
Marco:
Yeah, the cut-down model, literally.
Marco:
Yeah, so I think there's something to this, to Brent's reverse halo effect.
Marco:
I don't know how strong it will be.
Marco:
I'm more concerned about – if I can summarize – again, this is kind of like a big feeling like last time where I'm going to try to put this into words –
Marco:
We've had to try to figure out context and meaning for a lot of Apple decisions recently that one of the interpretations of them is Apple might be getting a little too nickel and dime-y or a little too, maybe not greedy, but just making decisions that are better for money than for their products and for their customers.
Marco:
There have been so many decisions recently where that is one of the explanations.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And the other explanation is, well, we can try to figure out why things like the headphone jack got removed from the 7 and stuff like that.
Marco:
In the last few years, I feel like the rate at which we have to make that interpretation, because Apple doesn't really provide it or provides a weak explanation, it seems like we keep having to make those excuses more and more with each new product change or product end or product neglect.
Marco:
um we we are making a lot of excuses for apple recently we are having to interpret lots of things uh charitably in in the same vein of like where there's smoke there's fire we are having to explain away decisions apple's making as just being by bean counter management or just being for nickel and diming a little too often recently and that has me worried that
Marco:
there's a lot of cracks showing in the foundation.
Marco:
Maybe there's a bigger picture thing here that we're all afraid to not only say, but to even consider until maybe it's too late.
John:
The weird thing about the nickel and diming thing is it's such an obvious explanation for things like removing the little wings.
John:
The other obvious explanations are our research shows that nobody uses those wings and they often break off and it's simpler to not have them and simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and yada, yada, yada.
John:
But
John:
what the other aspect of this that that is weird to me that makes me pull away from the nickel and diming angle although that totally is there i know there i know for a fact that there are factions inside apple uh related to hardware and product design they will always argue for saving money if possible because they're going to make a lot of these widgets as well there has to be right but if you look at apple spending on r d in recent years
John:
It has gone up hugely.
John:
And so when I look at these things, I think they're willing to spend vast amounts of money to realize the design vision of their products in terms of like even just the new MacBook Pros.
John:
But yeah, they're just unibody aluminum just like everything else.
John:
Surely they've already mastered that process and there's nothing new about this one.
John:
Nope, nope.
John:
I'm sure these machines...
John:
have you know they they probably have new processes and new machines and even if it's just like the the part binning to exactly match up the little inside apple logo which they've done on the phones and everything like just doing that at scale and larger things like every product they make they seem to be willing to put such huge amounts of money into like i don't care what it takes i don't care if we have to invent a new machine or buy a company that sells this thing or do just
John:
huge you put huge amounts of initial investment in to make this perfectly designed product and yet on the other side of it we're like if you're willing to ramp up your r&d spending it really has gone up if you look at like asimco's charts recently like it's it is it is not just like a five percent increase over the past few years it is just like a 45 degree angle slope like it is
John:
they're they're spending so much more money a lot of that's like oh that's all project titan in the car or whatever i'm not sure what they're spending on maybe some of it is that but i think they really are investing a lot of money even in things like just the mac like the little old mac and what it takes to manufacture the mac to you know to satisfy the vision and then they're also removing the little wings and the little rubbery thing from the adapter and
John:
it makes me think that those removals are more explained by someone's wrongheaded in my opinion idea of you know simplicity we need to just reduce stuff everything needs to be simpler you shouldn't have little lights on the adapter that that is orange when it's charging and green when it's done because that's just one more thing and you should find out that information in another way i don't want to have a little light up buttons on the bottom tell your battery charge because
John:
that would take up room in the case and it's just you know like it's it's the computer equivalent of omit needless words like do you really need those little wings no get rid of them do you really need that little clip people find it annoying they don't know what it's for no get rid of it simplicity simplicity simplicity and that looks just like that little rubber widget thing cost 0.001 cents ditch it right it looks the same from the outside and and
John:
And like I said, I know there are factions inside Apple that do want to argue for cheaping out on things just because it saves a little bit of extra money.
John:
And it's so hard from the outside to say, what is actually happening?
John:
On the one hand, we know for a fact that Apple is spending way more on R&D than they used to.
John:
On the other hand, we know for a fact that they're canceling product lines and removing features and, you know, things that we know cost money.
John:
Every extra thing that you, you know, including that stupid power cable with the plug costs more money than not including it.
John:
Fact, right?
John:
Did they, you know, removing the little wings and not removing it?
John:
I'm going to say that that costs more money to have them because it's another part that they have to deal with, right?
John:
The little rubber widgety thing, is there really no little rubbery thing on it, Marco?
John:
Like they got rid of that part?
Marco:
No, it's just like a regular iOS lightning cable.
Marco:
There's just a plug on both ends and a wire in the middle.
John:
Oh, that's right.
John:
It just plugs in this, yeah.
John:
like that little rubbery thing, it costs more money than to not have it.
John:
Right.
John:
And so you can ascribe all these things to money.
John:
And yet it makes much more sense for me that it is a wrongheaded attempt at simplicity or a slut, you know, our opinion, like they've gone too far or that, or they haven't gone far enough.
John:
If you want that simplicity, then let me charge wirelessly.
John:
That's the ultimate simplicity.
John:
If you're going to give me a wire, give me a place to wrap it in a little rubbery thing or whatever, you know, whatever.
John:
Like that, that's the problem.
John:
And not so much of the bean counters are winning, but yeah,
John:
apple's the black hole we have no idea what's really going on so we just have to speculate and it's easy to get angry like if you just decide one day you know what it's the bean counters i hate them they're decontenting i've got goosenecks in my trunk right and the other days you might be like no actually they're spending tons of money they're just spending it on frivolous crap that i don't care that much about when i really wish they would just give me a cable with my power adapter and you know and the wi-fi things again it's a decision that happens in the context of all the other things we're upset about
John:
If you neglect your product for three years, people shed fewer tears when you cancel it.
John:
Because it's going to happen with the Mac Pro too, right?
John:
If their wireless routers were at the top of their game and everybody loved them and they canceled it, we'd be much sadder than like, well...
John:
you know i haven't liked their wireless routers either like the worst thing about it is like some people are like i have an airport and i've been using it for 10 years and they go oh well i guess that really isn't a good business to be in if i buy one of your things then use it for 10 years right so totally makes sense for them to get out of this business um but what dan morin said still sticks with me is like if this is a two-phase operation in turning the giant you know ship that is apple step one get out of businesses you don't need to be in and step two redirect all that energy and money to the products you care about
John:
We're now experiencing the get out of the businesses that you don't want to be in part.
John:
When do we get the part where all that effort and money and time and people results in the products that Apple supposedly does care about getting much more attention?
John:
Because now it seems like we're in the worst of all worlds.
John:
The ancillary products are getting neglected or canceled, and the main products are not getting substantially more attention, it seems like, than they used to.
John:
The Mac still seems a little bit neglected, and the iPhone and iOS devices...
John:
they're getting the same amount they always did yearly updates everything's good there right i don't see them getting fantastically more attention so where is this personnel money and resources going to you know i guess we'll find out over the next few years if they come out with like a hoverboard or amazing ar thing or something like that but and the other thing specifically on the wi-fi thing like maybe they're all those people got put on to the apple's answer to the google home or amazon echo that would be nice i hope they do do that if the apple's going to make that product
John:
and it's not just like part of the apple tv team that would be good to take this team who are making the wi-fi routers and redirect them to that because i think that is a better product for apple than just a simple wi-fi router uh but of course apple won't tell us so we just have to wonder
Casey:
Yeah, you know, it was funny for me to watch the reactions to this report of Apple ditching the airport routers, because I don't know which one of us, and I may be guilty of this as well, which one of us has said, oh, Apple should focus.
Casey:
But I've heard that a lot.
Casey:
And then a lot of people seem to be very upset about, oh, Apple shouldn't be killing this product.
Casey:
And it's like, wow.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Can we pick one?
Casey:
Can we as a group pick one?
John:
Well, but focus means you get more of something else in exchange for the thing you're removing.
John:
They're just doing the removing, but not doing, okay, now, like, you know, again, it could be separated by time.
John:
We have to wait for those resources to be, you know, so on and so forth.
John:
But that's what people, when they mean focus, what they really mean is...
John:
The thing that I keep waiting for that I'm not getting, give me that thing.
John:
And if you need to sacrifice other things to do it, fine.
John:
And what they're getting is just seeing the sacrifice part.
John:
But no, no, you don't understand.
John:
My important demand was update the Mac Mini or give me an even bigger iPad with a stylus.
John:
Whatever the thing is that you're waiting for, that's what you want.
John:
And what you're saying with the focus is stop doing insert thing that I don't care about and start doing the thing I care about.
John:
And instead they're doing...
John:
Stop doing the thing that I don't care about and then do nothing else different.
John:
And again, you just have to be patient.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree with you.
Casey:
And I'm not saying that anyone is wrong to have kind of both opinions because they both do make sense.
Casey:
My gut feeling is that Apple is just pulling out of the things that they just don't really care about very much, just like you said.
Casey:
And we will see some sort of marked improvement in other areas in the future.
Casey:
But
Casey:
In terms of the routers specifically, I'm not personally shedding a tear about this.
Casey:
I was using an Airport Express, an old one, in fact, one of the pancake-looking ones.
Casey:
I was using one of those until Eros sent us some Eros.
Casey:
I mean, they didn't sponsor this episode, but I really like my Eros.
Casey:
They work really well, and I've stuck with them despite expecting to just plug them in for a week or two and then disconnect them.
Casey:
So, and they're not the only option either.
Casey:
I mean, Marco's talked in the past about ubiquity.
Casey:
There's plenty of other options too.
Casey:
I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple to get out of this business.
Casey:
I don't think it's core to what they really want to be and what they really want to do.
Casey:
But I also simultaneously do understand Brent's point that, hey, if they just killed half the ecosystem and the ecosystem is now only defined as computers and, well, desktop computers, portable computers and hyper portable computers, that's not much of an ecosystem anymore.
Casey:
So it's a very double edged sword.
Casey:
And I'm not sure what the right right balance is.
Casey:
But so far, I'm going on faith that the balance is OK.
Casey:
What do you think about it, Marco?
Marco:
I think I'm mostly with you.
Marco:
The whole idea of demanding focus and everything, there's a huge disconnect here between how much these things cost to focus on or to invest in versus not invest in.
Marco:
I don't think there was a massive staff still working on the router division, which hasn't released a router in three years at least.
Marco:
And
Marco:
and even the last one was even a fairly minor update i mean like i i'm i'm pretty sure uh that was not that was not like a huge drain on the company compared to something like the car you know like this is a very different level of investment and focus so to say like oh well you guys complain when they break the mac but then you know you you want them to keep making routers or monitors like yeah that
Marco:
The routers and monitors division is really a lot smaller than the Mac division.
Marco:
They're spending money on lots of other things.
Marco:
And as Jason and Mike talked about on Upgrade this week, they're still making iPods, multiple models of iPods,
Marco:
someone's still buying them but like do you think the ipod business is really that much healthier than like monitors and airport extremes combined it probably is healthier but by how much like they still do that they're still happy to sell those i honestly don't know why and as i mentioned before like if they could get rid of the ipod business they could get rid of a lot of itunes which would help itunes be less terrible so
Marco:
So there's even reasons why they should get rid of that, but they're still doing that because it's still making money, I guess.
Marco:
So I don't know.
Marco:
Their decisions on what to continue to support and what to prioritize and what products should ship and what products should never see the light of day...
Marco:
It's hard for us to judge because we're not in there.
Marco:
We don't know everything they're doing.
Marco:
We don't know the decisions they make and why they make them and the data they have and what they base their decisions on.
Marco:
We don't know any of those things.
John:
You're trying to kill the iPod, aren't you?
John:
You talked about the... It's not like they're making a lot of money with Wi-Fi routers.
John:
Now you're like, I don't understand why they're still... Well, I guess that means everybody, as you're listening to this, wait about a week and then Apple announced that it's no longer making the iPod.
John:
Thanks a lot, Margo.
John:
now they're going to go through one more holiday season with the ipod they're not going to kill it they're not going to kill it the week after black friday honestly i think one of the things although a lot of people when they saw the uh the airport thing canceled they said like well i guess the ipod touched not long for this world like honestly one of the things that i think is keeping the ipod around is the fact that it's called ipod and that name has such resonance with apple like it's the same reason they keep calling these computers imax now that they're you know have barely anything in common with the original uh candy color thing but uh
John:
As I think about the ecosystem argument and the reverse halo effect and stuff like that, I feel like in this case, it's also slightly tied up with the Mac being de-emphasized, you know, from the perspective of Mac enthusiasts, because the iOS side of things, they have an ecosystem.
John:
Apple makes iOS devices.
John:
It updates them regularly.
John:
They make battery cases.
John:
They make front cases.
John:
They make back cases for them.
John:
They make, you know, styluses.
John:
They make keyboards.
John:
You know, the ecosystem, if you were to buy an iOS device, Apple will sell you almost everything.
John:
uh that you can use they'll sell you a watch that you can use with your ios device right they will they will sell you all sorts of things um they're in businesses in the ios side that we didn't think they would ever get into there is an ios device ecosystem and yes apple ones are usually not not the best ones and are more expensive but if you just want to go all apple you know as the joke many people made they're also in the dongle ecosystem if you just want to go all apple for the most part you can just go lay down a couple hundred bucks and get a lot of white dongles except for the ones that belkin makes but anyway
John:
ios seems to be treated now like the mac used to like they're making the equivalent of printers for for the ios devices they will make every accessory that you could reasonably hope to have with an ios they bought a headphone company so you could plug your headphones into your ios device and have pants like that ecosystem is healthy it's just because we're over here on the mac side and for whatever reason we we adopt the wi-fi things as part of the mac ecosystem because they existed before you know any of the ios stuff existed right
John:
uh and certainly the monitors or our mac thing and everything like that it feels like the mac side is having its ecosystem decontented and everything and but the ios side i mean it's holding steady it's not like they're expanding it's not like we see the apple hub device based on ios quite yet um but that's why i feel like this this decision
John:
almost feels like another stab at the Mac ecosystem and not so much as the Apple ecosystem.
John:
It's really telling when we talk about the Apple ecosystem, the reverse halo effect or whatever.
John:
The Apple ecosystem is not the Mac ecosystem.
John:
It hasn't been for a long time, but for certain people, people of a certain age, as they say in France, the Apple ecosystem is synonymous with the Mac ecosystem, even though the numbers have not supported that for years and years and years.
John:
So that's one reason that I think a lot of the same people who are upset about
John:
uh neglecting the mac and not making monitors are also upset about the wi-fi things in fact a lot of people said to me i wasn't really that upset about monitors but this this airport thing has really hit me hard you know i think people are losing sleep over the airport things as well even though this is a three-year-old crappy product uh
John:
yeah so i think we're just going to have to take our lumps in this one and hope that all this redirected effort doesn't get funneled into like uh new colors of battery cases for ios devices because that's not the ecosystem we want to see this effort redirected in or at least i don't anyway and that's the thing too it's like i i don't really have strong thoughts on the routers being discontinued and i don't really have strong thoughts on the weird new product photography book they launched and
Marco:
I do, as I said earlier, I do worry about the overall picture here.
Marco:
Does this indicate a trend going the wrong way?
Marco:
And I think we're seeing, again, we're seeing so many things that just seem like we have to really interpret them charitably in order to avoid the conclusion that things are going in a direction that might not be good for us or that might not be good for Apple.
Casey:
Well, don't worry.
Casey:
If you think about it, the soon-to-be prior Airport Express was kind of a cylindrical tower-y looking thing, right?
Casey:
And that looks almost like a trashcan Mac Pro, so therefore you're clear to get new Mac Pros any second now.
Sigh.
Marco:
Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Warby Parker, Pingdom, and Automatic.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Casey:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter.
John:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
John:
So that's Casey Liss.
Casey:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T.
Casey:
Marco Arment.
Casey:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Casey:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
They did it.
Casey:
uh do we did you guys both watch grand tour i did i did uh i posted a i don't know if i'd call it a review but i guess it was a review uh of the first episode on my website it is possible that by the time this episode is released that the second episode will be out and
Marco:
but uh in summary there were things that i didn't like which i'm sure we'll talk about but by and large i thought it was freaking great and i loved it yeah i uh i also i was very pleased with it um i i did think some parts like some of the in-studio bits i thought dragged on a little long but i i do kind of like uh are we are we gonna do a spoiler honk or something are we are we spoiling this yeah
John:
We're spoiling it.
John:
It's just Grantor.
John:
Come on.
Casey:
It's going to be spoiled.
Casey:
So if you haven't seen it at this point, at the very least, if you haven't seen the first five or so minutes, at least watch that much and then come back to the show.
Marco:
yeah so anyway uh big spoiler honk the whole bit in the middle with like the celebrities oh i kind of that did go on very long but and it was really cheesy but i i do kind of think like i mean i'll be honest like you know i've never been as big of a top gear fan as you casey and every single time they would sit down and do the celebrity interview i would skip that entire section i would just fast forward over it until i got to the end and then go back to go back to the fun segment where they're back in the cars doing stuff
Marco:
I never cared about the celebrity interviews at all.
Marco:
So if their cheesy little thing that they did here, which kind of indicated that they might be killing off this segment, I consider that a feature.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
I'm looking forward to that.
Marco:
I do also, before we get into anything else about the show, I've seen a number of people over the last few days ask me about my slash our support of a show that features Jeremy Clarkson, who has done things that are controversial and in many ways offensive.
Marco:
And how can we have that point of view where we enjoy and support the show he's on while being anti-Donald Trump, for instance?
Marco:
Because he has made comments in the past that I believe were slightly racist.
Marco:
I honestly am not that familiar with whatever the controversies around him have been besides the more recent thing where he beat up somebody about a steak or something.
Marco:
But I will say my opinion of the general answer to this is...
Marco:
I would not want Jeremy Clarkson being the president of my country.
Marco:
But it's totally reasonable to, in my opinion, to enjoy his television show.
Marco:
So that is my answer to that, is that I have very different standards for the president of my country and a television host.
Marco:
And those used to be separate jobs.
Casey:
Yep, I completely agree.
Casey:
And moreover, I think whenever we hear this sort of angst, nine times out of ten, it's coming from someone who lives in the UK.
Casey:
And from what I can gather, Clarkson invades the UK popular media in a way that he does not in the United States.
Casey:
And the only exposure that the three of us – I'm speaking for you – but the only exposure that the three of us really have to Clarkson is –
Casey:
either you know top gear in the past or grand tour now exactly so we don't see any of this this stuff that makes the media in the uk that makes everyone just viscerally hate him uh we don't get to see any of that which for and because of that i don't think he bothers us in a way he very deeply bothers a lot of the uk so
Casey:
But coming back to the show, I thought it was really good.
Casey:
I couldn't agree more.
Casey:
I thought the parts in the studio were pretty rough.
Casey:
I thought that the celebrity thing, I agree with you that the start of a reasonably priced car was never my favorite segment and oftentimes was really hard to watch.
Casey:
Oftentimes in a similar vein, because it was somebody from the UK that I didn't have the faintest idea who it was.
Casey:
Um, and so I would not shed tears if starting a reasonably priced car went away.
Casey:
I mean, it obviously would have a different name anyhow.
Casey:
Um, I thought the, the schtick about the air force was not very funny at all in the same way.
Casey:
I thought that the celebrity thing was not very funny at all.
Casey:
Now, uh, by the time this episode is out, I doubt that the latest analog will be out, but I will put a link in the show notes that will be broken until that episode is released.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
But anyway, Mike and I spoke about this on Analog at the end of that episode.
Casey:
And Mike thought both of those were hilarious.
Casey:
And what he had said to me, which was the same theory I had, was maybe it's just some like British humor thing that he's wired for and that we're not.
Casey:
But I did not find those segments funny at all.
John:
No, he just has a bad sense of humor.
John:
That wasn't funny.
Yeah.
John:
like there's no there's no planet there's no country there's no anywhere where that like i mean it wasn't like the most painful thing in the world but it didn't land like it was ill-advised it was not a good concept it was not executed well just it was it was all sorts of wrong it should not have no just no
John:
I mean like I mean to give you another example the shooting of celebrities also probably ill-advised but at least their execution was slightly better like they tried to redeem with execution whereas the Air Force stuff like bad idea also bad execution also you're a bad person and should feel bad.
John:
also both segments were like about 50 percent longer than they should have been yeah that's part of the badness it's like it's just you not it's like the snl sketch where it's not working it's like well we got to play this thing out right and they could have fixed it in editing but like we all know when we're watching it no nope it's not just like by the time clarkson comes out with the little trickle of blood on his face like this is the guy who just punched someone in the face and got fired from his job and this is this is where you're going to go with this joke that he's he's in a fistfight with the audience
John:
No.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
No good.
Casey:
By contrast, however, I thought the opening three or four minutes were perfect.
Casey:
Just freaking perfect.
Casey:
From the first frame until they jumped out of the cars at the burning van.
Casey:
I thought that entire segment was just perfect.
Casey:
And it was Clarkson leaving the BBC headquarters, I believe it was anyway, when it was rainy and dreary because, well, London –
Casey:
And then he goes to Heathrow, gets on a plane to LAX.
Casey:
He comes out of Los Angeles, and there's a little bit of a piano riff going, and it's kind of sad.
Casey:
And then he finds himself this bespoke Mustang, and he pulls out.
Casey:
And then you realize it's—I forget the name of the song, but it's about sunshiny days.
Casey:
John, what's the name of the song?
John:
I don't remember which song they played.
Casey:
Yeah, something about it's a bright, sunshiny day.
John:
I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
I figured John would know.
Casey:
But the point being, you know, you can hear the lyrics about, yes, I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
Casey:
And then Clarkson goes driving into the desert by himself in this blue Mustang.
Casey:
And then suddenly he looks to his left and he looks to his right.
Casey:
And you just see maybe he was acting.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
Because clearly he knew this was going to happen.
Casey:
But he just genuinely seems so happy.
Casey:
And he looks over at May and...
Casey:
And he looks over at Hammond.
Casey:
And all three of them look so happy in their red, white, and blue Mustangs, which I'm going to take as an American reference, even though I am well aware that the Union Jack has the same colors.
Casey:
And they drive into this desert where these Mustangs can run free, just like the horses do.
Casey:
And they drive up to Burning Van.
Casey:
And the first words that are really said are them making fun of each other for getting fired from everything.
Casey:
I thought the whole opening was perfect.
Casey:
And perhaps more importantly, John, you finally had your moment.
Casey:
You finally had those three cars together.
Casey:
What did you think?
John:
Well, I have some complaints about that.
John:
Do you?
John:
You don't say.
John:
Actually, before we do that, I just want to give a slightly different take on the opening.
John:
I know what they were going for in the opening, and they were not patting themselves on the back too much, but on the same token, there was a little bit of a tone as if...
John:
that they were wronged or jeremy was wronged somehow and that he can see that i was wronged and must and is forced to set out on his own and find a new happiness and he was not wronged he was in the wrong and did not seem particularly uh remorseful about it like the tone was we had a bad thing happen to us and we're gonna pick ourselves up by our bootstrap and come back
John:
which is a good story, but not what actually happened, right?
Casey:
John, don't ruin this for me.
John:
All right.
John:
I don't want to go too far into it.
John:
I'm not going to belabor, but anyway.
John:
And I think they're in a difficult position because what they want to be doing is still doing Top Gear, right?
John:
That's what they would like to be doing, but they're not.
John:
They've got to do this other thing.
John:
And they acknowledge that.
John:
They do all the jokes about if they have segments and they have all the things from Top Gear that they can have without using the names, maybe with a slight twist.
John:
They don't try to play it off as like, we just happen to be doing these things that are a lot like Top Gear.
John:
They have to acknowledge it, but it's difficult to...
John:
difficult to find what is this new show if it's not just like top gear but not top gear but slightly worse probably in a couple ways but maybe better in a few too so i it's a difficult tightrope there now as for the segments that i actually care about on the show which is them doing car stuff
John:
They did get the three cars there and I was ready to tear my hair out watching the three of them try to get those cars off the line to do a drag race.
John:
I mean, I know it is a bit right, but like I don't want to see you ham fisted people pretending to be ham fisted or really.
John:
I think they probably really were ham fisted a lot of the cases, but some of them obviously, you know, they're doing it on purpose.
John:
I want to know how, you know, how the cars go.
John:
And they do, they have their driver and they did move them around the track and they eventually kind of redeemed it.
John:
But like, I feel like this car, everything about this car test segment is,
John:
was not up to the best of top gear either the best of single host reviews because i've enjoyed a lot of single host reviews when that you know one one person just tries out the car and talks about it or the best multi-host things the the camera shots like you know just it didn't look like top gear exactly it looked good it wasn't bad but top gear it set such a high bar for these
John:
beautifully shot, moody, rainy, misty things with an overarching theme.
John:
I feel like a good Top Gear car thing is my OS X reviews where you try to weave a story throughout a thing that doesn't inherently have a story, even if just the story is the story of your opinion of this car.
John:
It's a high bar.
John:
I don't feel like they met it with this, and I was annoyed by their shenanigans when really they should have been getting on with the car parts of it.
John:
And also...
John:
not that i'm annoyed by but i have slight disagreement with their like their leveling decisions oh we put them all on the same tires but we didn't level a bunch of other things i don't know the upshot of this to spoil the end of this three hyper car thing the upshot is it's a non-result because it's within the margin of error right because they were all within like fractions of a second of each other and you just feel like even though it's the same driver in every car and
John:
maybe that driver's better at dealing with four-wheel drive cars maybe the course had more tight turns and so it favored the porsche maybe like you know i thought the porsche came in last i think uh it seemed muddled to me i'm glad that so much of the car was so much of the show was car reviews but it seemed a little bit muddled
Casey:
I can understand that.
Casey:
I'm sad you're ruining the opening for me because I really did think it was freaking perfect.
John:
It's not ruining.
John:
It's like just, you know, if I had to pick a nit at it and like it takes away from like being able to share in their in their triumph.
John:
Right.
John:
And also like the idea of them driving across the desert with a bunch of yokels with their cars all in the dust.
John:
I was like, you're just ruining your cars with all the dust.
Yeah.
John:
of course did you see the picture afterwards like someone someone had a vector in there it's like don't drive the vector across the desert you're just that's that's like a museum piece you know god indy said that belongs in a museum doesn't belong covered with dust uh that's why your phone has a case uh the ferrari or excuse me the porsche came in first then the ferrari and then the mclaren if memory serves
John:
Anyway, that was always the fear with the other vendors is like four wheel drive is a big advantage in anything that has lots of tight turns because you can, you know, get on the power sooner after them.
John:
And so it's almost as if you could you could put a particular car in lead by picking the course.
John:
Right.
John:
I mean, because, you know, the Ferrari had the best power to weight ratio.
John:
So if you pick the course for power to weight ratios, the thing that decides it, then that would be it.
John:
But.
John:
you know but they were so close it was like less than half a second between all of them right and and you know you don't know how many laps they ran and so they always make it seem like oh you run one lap that's not how you do it you try to go for your fastest lap and you know you learn the ins and outs in the car and you know just spend a day just on one car to get your fastest lap who knows what they really do under the cover so it's all kind of artificial but i would rather have seen more about them describing how the cars are different from each other which they did do when they changed cars and everything but
John:
They had that bit with it where I had to use my rudimentary French to understand what that test driver was actually saying versus the stupid subtitle gag.
John:
Like, I want to hear what he actually thinks of the cars.
John:
I don't care about your... We get it.
John:
You're rooting for your cars, but I still want to actually know what this person thinks of the cars.
John:
That also went on a little bit long.
John:
yeah anyway i would still take the ferrari i would also say i i didn't care for the american uh the stig driver segment i thought that was a little bit yeah that's like a british person's view of an ugly american it's like yeah we are we do have there are american stereotypes but you're not really like
John:
you're not really nailing it with the with the whole communist thing it's such a like the cold war is over americans are not obsessed with uh hating the communists anymore there are so many other newer american stereotypes that you could have latched on to but in general i don't know if that's your best bet is going with like this american has the prejudices of americans that ugly americans had in the 80s does he obviously he probably doesn't and i don't need to see that and the faceless stig was a much better version of that character
Marco:
But overall, though, I really did enjoy the show.
Marco:
Tiff and I both watched it.
Marco:
It got a lot of laughs from us.
Marco:
I really did enjoy it quite a bit.
Marco:
I would say, and Tiff even commented, and I agreed, the first two minutes of the show were better than the new official Top Gear, like the entire episode.
Marco:
It's already, before anybody even said a word, it was already better than official new Top Gear.
John:
Well, it's because you like these three people.
John:
Like, that's the whole reason you're watching this show at all, right?
John:
It's not the format.
John:
It's not the cars.
John:
It's the three people.
Casey:
As it turns out, if you get three people together with just unbelievable chemistry, amazing things can happen.
John:
Anyway, the chemistry and history, too, right?
John:
Like, I mean, because you've seen all the other shows with them.
John:
So you're coming in knowing what they think of things.
John:
And, you know, like, I think this was a shaky first episode, but I feel like they will eventually hit their groove.
John:
And even playing all Top Gear, like...
John:
It's terrible for so much of the season.
John:
By the end there, they were kind of getting it, but it's so clear that the chemistry doesn't exist.
John:
You could feel the hate on the screen.
John:
That's not a good look.
Casey:
Also, let's not forget, the first couple of seasons of Top Gear... I'm not talking about the ones in the 50s.
Casey:
I'm saying 2001, 2002, when the Clarkson era started.
Casey:
The first couple of seasons of Top Gear were...
Casey:
Awful, just terrible.
Casey:
And the newest season of Top Gear with LeBlanc and Chris Evans, they started really, really bad.
Casey:
But just like you said, John, by the end, it really wasn't that bad at all.
Casey:
And it's not unreasonable for the first few episodes, if not season of Grand Tour, to be a little bit wonky.
Casey:
uh the american i didn't i wasn't bothered by it but i agree with you marco i didn't think it was very funny i just thought it was a thing and also real-time follow-up porsche 918 154.2 la ferrari 154.4 p1 155.5 so uh about a second and a half between all three of them well let's say the p1 was way behind it but they're right that if you had the grip your tires and the p1 maybe it would have come in first like it was it was so so close
John:
The other thing I'm thinking about is the clock ticking on these guys.
John:
I mean, in some respects, I like Chris Harris in terms of talking about cars better than any of these guys.
John:
I love Chris Harris.
John:
He should be hosting Top Gear, right?
John:
These three guys we've known through many years of watching Top Gear or whatever.
John:
The problem they have increasingly faced, and the problem that we'll eventually do them in, is that very old, cranky, probably racist, definitely sexist dinosaurs who are ridiculously wealthy are increasingly difficult to relate to.
John:
That's the problem.
John:
They're not getting any younger.
John:
They're not getting any more progressive.
John:
Yeah.
John:
their concerns are not your concerns they all have million dollars millions of dollars worth of cars uh and we like you know it's it's fun to see them be able to talk about multi-million dollar cars the same way you would talk about like things that everyone can afford but they will slowly become more and more distant from the audience and i mean i think it's you know rebooting that's why we're doing top of your chris harris is better because like don't bring in another old guy right and
John:
And that's part of what we love about these guys.
John:
They're old curmudgeons, and we laugh at them as much as we laugh with them, and their attitudes are weird.
John:
But every time they talk to each other about things and get real for a second, you realize just what a whole different world they exist in.
John:
A whole different world of cars, of life, of expectations, of just...
John:
You know, like the best is when their enthusiasm for cars comes through because that's the leveler.
John:
It's like, I don't care if you have millions of dollars.
John:
We all love these cars.
John:
And, you know, I think they do love the cars and that comes through.
John:
The worst is when they try to be relatable to the audience, but don't realize their audience are not multimillionaires with Ferraris and it doesn't quite connect.
John:
um so i mean you know eventually they're just going to age out of this biz uh either by not being able to to keep up with the schedule or just by like no longer you know no longer being able to connect with the important demos right so enjoy enjoy grand tour while you can i think it's got a couple of seasons and eventually it's not going to be tenable
Casey:
Well, I think they've signed up for three years, if I'm not mistaken.
John:
They can do three.
John:
No problem.
John:
They can do three in their sleep.
John:
And Jeremy probably will be sleeping through most of it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But I'm guessing the total number of years of Grand Tour is probably under 10 for sure and possibly under six.
John:
yeah i'd probably agree with that i mean i do love it but i also do worry like the whole the whole thing of the grand tour they're going to different places right i do worry that their their uh their worst instincts about how to be amusing in different countries will not serve them well we'll see they define in america you know like whatever they you know i i don't think they embarrass themselves
John:
in the american one even if a lot of stuff they did fall flat but there is a great potential for them especially if they have lots more creative control than they used to and people aren't telling them no to reveal what dinosaurs they are by going to other countries and trying to do things that are funny going huh right isn't that funny guys and we're like no no you're no you're being the worst kind of british colonials um but we'll see
Casey:
I'm looking forward to the next episode, which here's one yet another advantage of living in the one true time zone because it airs, or at least the first episode anyway, aired at midnight in one minute in UK time.
Casey:
That means it's seven in the evening for us, which is extraordinarily convenient.
Casey:
So we actually got to watch the grand tour on Thursday evening, even though the UK had to wait until Friday because we are the one true time zone.
John:
Amazon video was letting me down, though, because I watched an Amazon video, right?
John:
And I watched on my iPad and I just could not get it to give me a high quality stream.
John:
It was giving me this blocky crap.
John:
And I don't want to see beauty shots of hyper cars with giant compression artifacts on.
John:
I want it to look nice.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So that was, and I don't, I don't know what to do in the app to make that not happen.
John:
It's not like my internet connection isn't fast enough.
John:
It's not like I was doing it.
John:
Like I wasn't watching it.
John:
Like the second it was out where I was competing with everybody else.
John:
I was watching it days later.
John:
Uh, and it just, it was just chunky.
John:
So thumbs down, Amazon video, know what your deal is.
Casey:
For me, I hooked up my MacBook Pro to my TV with the also convenient HDMI port that's right on the computer and did it that way.
Casey:
And I saw no issue with it.
Casey:
I thought it worked great.
Casey:
I'd heard other people, though, say that trying to AirPlay from like an iPad or an iPhone to their TV did not work well.
Casey:
And I got to also say that this is the first time in my life that I've wanted anything more than a 1080 TV.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Because, you know, our videos that we record, we almost always record on our iPhones and for the last couple of years now have been 4K and that's great.
Casey:
But, you know, I was there for most of these recordings.
Casey:
I know what they were.
Casey:
And now the grand tour being recorded in 4K, man, I kind of want a new TV now.
Marco:
also so first of all so do i second of all for whatever it's worth i did airplay it from the amazon video app on my ipad to my apple tv and it was great the the stream was always seemingly high bit rate like i never noticed any any compression artifacts or anything else it didn't seem to drop down any lower crappy bit rates uh it was perfect it was flawless it integrated flawlessly with like the the pause and play button on the apple tv remote uh it didn't do anything weird it didn't like put the ipad to sleep in the middle of it or anything like it was just great it worked perfectly
John:
That's the thing about streaming.
John:
If you're recording something on TiVo off your cable, you are at the mercy of however the cable company decides to compress that channel.
John:
But basically, if you get that channel, it looks the same for you as it does for your neighbor.
John:
It'll look the same next week as it does now because it is just always the same.
John:
You know, the difference between broadcast and, you know.
John:
you know point to point ip type uh streaming so when streaming works it's great when it doesn't i find it very frustrating like and especially if the player doesn't give you any control because youtube and stuff you can say do auto quality or just do 1080 and if you do 1080 and it's not coming down in real time you can just pause it and walk away and hopefully it will spool up and then you can watch it in 1080 right i would have done that with this if there was a thing that i could have changed i couldn't find in the app that says please only give me the highest quality version i will wait for it to download just pull it down and spool it up and then i'll start playing it instead
John:
I just had to watch a blocky for reasons that are completely inexplicable and could have gone away two days later for no reason.
Casey:
That's the other thing is that I totally understand it, but it bums me out that, uh, there's no download option because I am a pack rat.
Casey:
I'm a digital pack rat.
Casey:
I want a copy of this episode and Amazon doesn't provide a way for me to do that.
Casey:
And in fact, even though my streaming experience was great, uh,
Casey:
I would probably choose to download it and then watch a local file if Amazon provided the option of doing so than trying to stream it.
Casey:
So that's kind of crummy.
Marco:
Oh, I absolutely would too.
Marco:
But I mean, the way you've acquired all of your other downloaded Top Gear files, I think you can probably attempt that same method for this.
Casey:
I don't know what you're talking about.