Volume Micromanager
the correct title for this episode is john saracusa was wrong about something you too you too love love love love just listening and jumping on something you think is wrong both at once well it's not that we think it's wrong it is wrong oh no you think you think are you saying this is only children
Then it takes me 10 minutes to explain what I actually said.
You know, it's a thing.
No, you were wrong.
Where's that window?
I have so many windows open, I can't find it.
Actually, it's funny you say that.
I have one, two, three, four, five, six different desktops running, which is more than I usually do.
And they're not in the places I usually leave them, which is a problem of my own creation.
Yeah.
I have three, what is it, spaces is the official macOS term, you know, virtual desktops.
I have three of them.
Like a maniac.
I have probably 15 tabs open across all my browsers.
This is ridiculous, I tell you.
15, John.
I have 15 tabs across probably, well, I guess I can figure this out.
How many browser windows?
Three browser windows, and I have like maybe 15 tabs open.
Maybe.
You might have more tabs open than I do.
It's unmanageable, I tell you.
Tell you what, listening back to the Windows of Syracuse Academy last week during the edit.
Oh, so good.
So good.
I kept listening after the clip I pasted in, and man, it just holds up.
like it yeah i mean casey and i sound like garbage because we have terrible microphones and like we like recording at the bottom of a well like everything's all echoey and sound terrible john had his good microphone by then so he sounds perfect of course because he sounds frustratingly good but the most difficult to use microphone of all of us uh and naturally but if you if you get past the audio quality oh my god that holds up so well it's probably my favorite episode of atp that has ever happened yeah oh god so good
The best part was, and I think it's kind of like Top Gear at its finest, which was, it was completely genuine.
Like, genuinely, we had no idea where this conversation was going.
And the two of us, like my recollection, Mario, I haven't listened to it outside of what you put in the show.
The two of us, Marco and I, were just completely stupefied, dumbfounded, flabbergasted that what was unfolding in front of us was real life.
I could not believe, John, and still can't, that you feel like that was an acceptable way to manage your Windows and browsers and tabs and whatnot.
Don't you realize that it's only a matter of time before both of you eventually adopt...
that the the quantities so uh ludicrously uh discussed i can't believe these numbers are so big it's blowing my mind it's only a matter of time before i mean you're getting close already you were making jokes about 15 tabs i mean i don't how many tabs do i have in open chrome right now i have two chrome windows open with one two three four five six i have 12 12 tabs two windows six tabs each
honestly i i'd be i'd be surprised if both the mac and the web last long enough for us to get to that point oh here we go there's the marco we know and love welcome back one of those is gonna i mean come on like what are the chances really let's be realistic but tabs will live forever hopefully not in multiple rows windows style because that was ridiculous oh yeah i don't know tab will tab live forever do you think there's a few honestly honest question
So everyone around this part of the commentosphere seems to have some idea of what the future of computing is like.
The future of computing so far does not seem to contain tabs much, if at all.
What do you think about that?
Sure it does.
They're in Safari on the iPad, so they're safe for the future.
But I really want to put a pin in the commentosphere thing, a big pin, a pin that fatally wounds that word and causes it to die and never escape from where it is pinned down.
Would you rather I start a vlog, John?
Is that better?
A vlog?
I just feel like you don't need to go to commentosphere.
You could pick something, anything else.
Blogosphere?
That's just as bad.
No, Blogosphere is better.
It's still bad, but it's better.
Honestly, though, you mentioned there's obviously tabs in web browsers, even on iPads and stuff.
Well, how much of computing these days is happening in web browsers?
And how much of the web browser part of it is happening on mobile, which is where the future apparently is.
If I'm using the Amazon app, I can't do crap with tabs.
I can't do anything.
If I'm using some other app, if I'm working in an app, it's up to each individual app to support tabs.
There was this relatively brief span in computer history where we did a whole bunch of stuff in PC-based web browsers.
So there was this time that I think is pretty clearly fading where we could have the amount of ridiculous tabs that John had and we could have all this stuff open and different, you know, everything was a URL and we could have multiple windows to everything we did because everything was basically a web app.
That time is clearly fading away and we're moving towards and very much already in this other thing with custom apps for almost everything, most of them on phones.
And in that era, in the current paradigm that we have here, I don't actually think that we're going to get to a point where the type of keeping all this stuff open, that type of multitasking is really not going to be possible in this world for the foreseeable future.
People love tabs.
You can't stop tabs.
They might not be on web browsers.
They might be on the future mobile Facebook app that will have tabs.
But people love tabs.
Until something comes to replace tabs...
tabs will be a thing doesn't mean that their tabs have to be what they are on pcs today which is like the document model but instead of multiple windows you have a single window with multiple tabs and they're interchangeable and that doesn't mean that they have to be that i'm just talking about like tabs like little things that when you hit them switch it i mean you could just call it the segmented control in os 10 that counts as tabs too because they actually used to be tabs back in the you guys never use max back on those are actual tabs right
No, no, no.
I remember when they were tabs.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
But if you go to system preferences now and go, what is it called, Marco?
You don't know.
The segmented control?
Yeah, the segmented control used to be tabs.
It used to be rendered as tabs, and they changed it to this big, long capsule somewhere around 10.3, 10.4.
I forget when they switched it.
Weird.
Go find, they were big, shiny, glossy aqua tabs.
They were like the aqua-est tabs you have ever seen.
You know, it would be really cool if there was some sort of resource that existed that we could go to to see lots of screenshots and intense discussion about old versions of Mac OS, or excuse me, OS X. Man, that would be awesome, wouldn't it?
No, but honestly, I really do wonder how this, the way that we like to work with tons of windows and tabs, and of course, John takes it to a whole other level.
Is there room in what we know today as the iOS and mobile paradigm and what everyone says is the future of computing and what Apple seems to be not only saying is the future, but also allocating resources in order to basically force it to be our only choice for the future?
uh is there room in that for a lot of power users i i don't know i think that tabs are the easiest way to punt on like having multiple things open at once you know you don't need to do a full-on windowing system you just have a little tab control at the top of the bottom and
And I mean, think about UI tab bar in iOS.
I mean, those are still tabs, strictly speaking.
Well, no, that's different.
Tabs, the way we're talking about, are not the way a segmented controller or a tab bar would separate out different functions of the same app.
That's just how you arrange one Windows interface.
I'm talking about what browser tabs are, and then what Sierra introduced as for any document-based app, where...
you can basically spawn as many tabs as you want, and each one is like an independent document or window for that application.
And the problem is on iOS, apps are not designed to have multiple windows at all.
So you can't even simulate this easily for all apps.
Basically, all apps would have to be rewritten to support multiple windows on iOS, not to mention whatever kind of complexity the iOS UI itself would have to add for people to manage their windows.
which I'm sure would not be good enough for John.
So, you know, I wonder, like, is the idea of having all these things open a relic of the past that's going to die with the Mac, which might be sooner rather than later?
I don't think so.
To be clear, I was actually just talking about them as, again,
not as like browser tabs or a separate darkness but as just the plain old ui control so the ios ones would count as in a horizontal strip that has a bunch of things in it and when you hit one of the things a larger area above or below it changes to reflect the thing that you hit and only one of them can be selected at a time so that's totally what i was talking about if you're talking about specifically the idea that it's user controlled arbitrary in which case like a tab bar wouldn't count then that's a different thing but i'm just saying people like people like the idea of
a strip where you can hit a thing and it's, it's always visible.
It's like radio buttons.
Basically.
You can only pick one of them.
Only one can be active at once.
And when you pick it, the whole rest of some large area changes to reflect the thing that you picked tabs.
People love them.
i pasted a bunch of ones in there it's a i think i got up to what 10 10 2 pinstripes 10 to 10 3 look at those look at those tabs though are those not the tabbiest tabs that same control yeah change they changed the appearance in i think 10 5 ish i haven't gotten up to that to look like segmented control so it was like your same code all of a sudden would go from that to what you see today more or less with the segmented controls
Because it isn't just the bar of words at the top.
Is it the whole frame there that makes it the whole card thing around it?
It's exactly the same as the segmented control.
So if you look at this, look at one of these things, and then just go to system preferences today, if you just took this code and were able to run it today, it would look like it does with the little recessed well.
I think I had a graphic because the cool thing was they would change the original implementation.
they would change the texture of the well, like the inset period, or inset area, to be darker.
So if you nested a bunch of them, it would just get darker and darker and darker and darker.
It was fun.
Yeah, Windows did that too.
Yeah.
Windows did the double row of tabs, which was just...
No, but Windows had, I believe they called it frames, but it was the similar kind of thing where you'd have the inset area with a label or tab row at the top.
But of course, Windows did it uglier, but more affordably.
You know, that reminds me, and I'll use this to segue into follow-up.
We had a handful of people write in and say that they are Microsoft employees that listen to the show.
And, oof, I'm sorry.
Turns out they're our son.
Yeah, I'm not sorry that you're a Microsoft employee.
I'm just sorry that, well, for basically anything we've ever said about any Microsoft product, except apparently the Surface.
Not true.
We say nice things about Microsoft products all the time.
Yeah.
And from what I understand, from what I hear from people who work there or have worked there, it actually sounds like it's a pretty good place to work.
Is that right?
I didn't know that.
Yeah, yeah.
I've only ever heard good things about the Microsoft work environment and just like the kind of place it is to work.
You never had Microsoft or learned about stack ranking and stuff like that?
There's bad things about Microsoft, believe me.
But when they're being ranked, they'd be in a really nice office.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Oh, goodness.
In any case, so I just wanted to thank those of you who have written in that are Microsoft employees.
They all were quick to point out that they were not in the Surface Studio group, and they didn't know anyone from the Surface Studio group, which was unfortunate.
However, it was still nice of them to write in, so thank you for that.
Secondly, John's extraordinarily nerdy and fiddly wish for a battery burndown chart.
Guess where it exists, kids?
Yeah.
It exists in Android because why wouldn't it?
So I didn't know what a burndown chart was, as you correctly predicted during the show.
But I did, of course, find that afterwards from all the people telling us Android has it and showing us what they look like.
And yeah, it actually looks pretty useful.
I would love that.
And I think now the door is open for people to make that for the Mac as a little battery widget for the menu bar.
Honestly, it probably already exists.
I probably just don't know about it.
uh but uh that would be i believe the market for that on the mac is now very real and i hope that either it already exists and it's good or that somebody makes a good one yeah so there's that uh mario run is now a thing it's out i personally have yet to try it um i've been extremely busy but uh it's it's out it's a thing uh and if you're john syracuse it's mario run so john how do you like mario run
It's what I thought it would be.
I mean, we've all seen the videos.
It plays like it plays.
It's fine.
You know, the online thing is annoying.
The UI that they put in there is weird.
The first run experience is cruddy.
But as I said last week, they get the first one for free because there's just so much pent-up demand.
for a nintendo game on ios and it's a popular property and so the first thing in the show notes was like oh it's been downloaded 2.8 million times the first day and then we have updated numbers 40 million times in the first four days um and uh phil schiller made a statement nintendo made a statement phil says this is the uh fastest selling fast fastest downloaded game not fastest selling fastest downloaded game ever uh and then these various companies try to estimate
how many people are actually buying it based on the top charts and all this other stuff uh guessing that maybe four percent of the people who downloaded it actually paid for it at its astronomical ten dollar price and so that means it made like 16 million dollars which is you know it's pretty darn good yeah i'm gonna sneeze that money i'm i don't know if it has already made back the amount of money it costs to develop it considering they use a third-party engine for it and and uh had another developer i think help them actually do the dev work um
yeah so it's going well uh uh their second game that they release i guess they'll probably still do okay on the second game because it'll be a different property or whatever but uh a lot of people are sending feedback saying or sending me uh reviews that are saying this shows that nintendo or whoever helped them develop this game really understands the mobile platform because it's a great mobile game and it's good it's fine it's a good mobile game but i still feel like it is
Taking an existing game, a 2D Mario game, you go run from left to right with Mario and you jump and stuff, taking that and finding a way to make it work on mobile, which is different than starting from scratch and finding a good mobile game idea.
It's different in subtle ways.
Like, I keep comparing it to Alto's Adventure.
Like, isn't Alto's Adventure exactly the same thing?
You just go from left to right and you press the button to do some stuff?
I would argue that it is not quite the same thing because Alto's Adventure is not...
an established franchise skiing platformer ported to single button press thing it's conceived from the beginning to be a game for mobile i find it more pleasing than a mario game partially because when i see him running uh from left to right
i have certain expectations of gameplay and realizing that they had to subvert that and find a way and to their credit they did but find a way to make it interesting novel and fun while taking away freedoms that you expect when you see a static screenshot i expect to be able to stop and run left and
and i expect to run into a goomba and die instead of automatically vaulting over him like changing these expectations like you're getting a lot of praise or isn't that clever they chose just the right balance of things to make the game different and fun or whatever it's like but you are taking a different kind of gaming dressing it up and cosplaying it as a mario game and i think it's a good game and people should totally get it it's well worth the ten dollars you pay for it but
it is i'm not saying this to to say it's not a good game and you shouldn't buy it but i think nintendo has not yet made a game conceived for uh the the mobile platform like i would be fine if it had their mascots and everything but just like don't
In the same way that Mario plays soccer, he plays baseball, he plays, I don't know, I forget every sport he plays, he drives around in go-karts and stuff.
In the same way that you can take that property and put it on a different genre, they have not yet taken that property and put it on a genre or a style of game made for mobile phones.
Instead, they have taken an existing game style, which is the 2D platformer, and modified it to work better in this environment.
And I don't think that's a sustainable...
business for them if it's just a way to get people into larger franchises that's fine but i'm still looking forward to the day where they come up with a game concept and idea that is for mobile first and truly plays to the strengths of that platform in the way the pokemon go did basically uh but you know not not that specific franchise like for amer or whatever and then put whatever ip on it you want call it metroid pinball i don't care whatever you you know whatever graphics you have to put on it to make it palatable make people buy it fine but
They aren't quite there yet.
So I continue to view this as them dipping their toes in, making some money, making some mistakes by making it online only and doing silly things on first launch, like making people pick their country from a really long list instead of using location services and so on and so forth.
But if...
But this is only a way to get people onto their other platforms.
By the way, even though these numbers look big, they still make more money selling one of their other games on their own platforms because every single person who buys one of those games pays for it, whereas those 40 million downloads...
Those aren't all paying $10 for things.
So right now it still looks like a hedge.
And if they're going to commit to it, we'll be able to tell when they start getting serious about the game's development for these platforms.
Right now it still seems like they're going for the Switch.
And so we'll see how that turns out for them.
Marco, have you played this at all?
Of course I have.
It's my job to stay current on the world of video games.
So that's a no?
No, I honestly have.
And I honestly have enjoyed this game.
It is currently on my home screen.
I don't know how long it'll stay there, but it is currently there and I use it as a fun diversion.
um i think they did overall a really good job with it there are areas of it that drive me nuts the internet connection thing hasn't hasn't hit me yet because i don't have a real job anymore but it will hit me um next week when i'm traveling and when i'm uh in areas with poor reception it will definitely hit me then um but
Overall, it's a really fun game.
I really enjoy it.
What I'm doing is, rather than just blowing through all the levels, I'm not moving on until I've gotten at least the first two coin colors, the pink and the purple, in each level.
What I like about this game is that
while i'm probably playing it wrong by whatever john would say i'm supposed to play it uh this game allows you to play it kind of however you want you can blow through everything you can do like i haven't i haven't even done toad's racetrack or whatever that is i haven't built anything i haven't redeemed any of the various currencies i've been earning uh or whatever all i've been doing is playing the levels to get the coins that's it uh and i've currently gotten through only world one doing it this way
I haven't even gotten to the second row yet because I'm not very good at video games, turns out.
But it's fun.
And I like this.
I don't like how much overhead there is, like in waiting for menus and stuff and waiting for loading screens.
I'm not crazy about that.
There's like...
To me, an iOS game like this is something that you should be able to play while waiting online for something quickly.
There's a lot of friction involved in getting started with this game.
I don't know if Nintendo is just incapable of not doing it that way or if they just think it's the right thing to do.
I don't know.
Anyway, I just like it.
It's fun.
I am not analyzing it too deeply.
I'm just having fun with it because I've always been more of a casual Nintendo fan.
I'm not a super diehard Nintendo fan or a diehard gamer for that matter.
So I'm having fun with it.
It's nice.
I bought the Unlock.
I'm not going to give it a one-star review.
And that's it.
I'm having fun with it.
Yeah, that phenomenon was the other story about this, the fact that Nintendo released what I think anyone would have to say is a really good iOS game, despite whatever stumbles in the first launch.
But it's a good game.
It's a fun game.
People enjoy playing it.
And their reviews are being massacred by people who don't want to pay money, mostly by people who say, this game is so fun.
It's so mean of you to ask me for money for it.
Why couldn't you give me this game that's... I love this game.
Isn't my loving this game enough for me to get it for free?
Huge number of reviews saying, not worth $10.
I love the people who are like, I would pay $7, but not $10.
It's like, come on, people.
Anyway, welcome to the App Store.
There's so many things wrong with the App Store.
And I always wonder who reads those reviews hoping to find out... In many ways, this game is review-proof because...
If people are actually able to confirm that it is actually a Nintendo game and not a scam, which is a topic that we keep pushing down in the show notes, maybe we'll get to in a future show.
If they're able to make that determination, no one's reading the reviews.
Say, this is the one and only Mario game on the App Store.
Let me read the reviews first.
The reviews on the App Store.
Maybe people will read reviews on their favorite tech site if they really care, but people know whether they want a Mario game, especially since it's free to download.
Just get it.
The only people who are taking to the review section
I want to play this game, but I can't spend $10.
I have to think most of those people are younger people, children who literally don't have $10 to spend.
I just can't imagine someone getting angry about $10.
for nintendo and taking to the reviews about being angry or not signing out to buy it fine oh john you you have never had an app in the app store now i for nintendo games specifically i'm thinking because you know no it doesn't matter i don't think it matters it doesn't matter at all someone who is someone who's angry about their note-taking app or whatever i can understand them going to it because those are adults but these have to be children
John, when you tell me what it's like to have a real job, I'm telling you what it's like to have an app in the App Store.
You've never put a Nintendo game on the App Store.
Obviously, if you're creating an app for adults... It doesn't matter, John.
That's the thing.
It doesn't matter.
How many people... How many of those... Okay, so first of all, they've had... What is this?
40 million downloads?
So it doesn't take a high percentage of those to result in tons of reviews.
Right.
So that's why I think most of those one-star reviews complaining about the price are young people or children.
Because it doesn't take a lot of them to do the top 50 reviews.
There's 40 million people, 50 of them, the 50 cranky children.
Who spends the time to write a review for a Nintendo game?
Again, it's review-proof.
It's like a Star Wars movie.
I don't understand why you're hanging your hat.
Why are you hanging your hat on Nintendo?
Nobody gives a crap that it's Nintendo.
Bingo.
All they care about is that it's a game that they want to play, but they have to pay for it, and they're pissed off.
No, but adults understand that no one is going to look at reviews for a Nintendo game.
Oh, no.
Oh, they really don't.
No, no.
Trust me, they don't.
If you're an adult who left an angry review about a $10 game, about this specific $10 game, please write in to us and tell us why you think it was a good idea for you to spend your time writing a review.
for a nintendo game for the one and only the first john nintendo game you don't understand you are getting clouded by your own love of nintendo there you are so out of touch on this one and your own faith in adults apparently it's not it's not about love of nintendo it's about the idea i can't imagine an adult wasting the time for to write an angry review about the one and only nintendo game on the app store just feel free to hate it feel free to not spend ten dollars on it there are a lot of angry naive children of all ages
I know.
I agree with that.
But I feel like those people are writing angry reviews about a $2 note-taking app.
They're not writing angry reviews about a $10 Mario game.
They very much are.
Oh, you are so wrong, John.
Well, first of all, most of you don't know that because there's no ages attached to this thing.
And neither one of you have written the one and only Nintendo game or the App Store.
So I'm not arguing whether there are adults sending angry reviews about note-taking apps.
Of course there are.
You can tell that there are adults writing angry reviews about a $2 note-taking app.
I know they're out there.
But for the Nintendo game, I feel like it's got to be young people.
It doesn't matter, John.
It doesn't matter if it's Nintendo or Vesper or your mom or 123 NoteTaker.
It doesn't matter.
The fact of the matter is it's $10 they don't want to spend.
So let me give you an example.
Just today I was at Target and I realized that Captain America Civil War is out.
And whether or not you, the collective you, liked that movie, I enjoyed it and I wanted to buy it on Blu-ray.
It was $15.
So it was $15 for me to legally purchase a movie.
Think about the incredible hoops adults go through.
Adults who make over $100,000 a year go through in order to rip off a $15 Blu-ray.
Think of all the trucks that they look in to see if the back has come off of them to save $15 on a movie.
And you think that they're going to say, oh, well, this is Nintendo.
They're okay.
They get a buy.
Hell no.
No, you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.
Those people are not writing angry reviews.
They're not going to Best Buy and going to the bottom of the Best Buy store section where you buy Civil War and saying, this movie isn't worth $15.
I would maybe pay $10 for it, but $15 is too much, one star.
Have you seen Amazon reviews?
Oh, come on, John.
There's a lot of people out there who will complain about anything.
No, they're not.
They're just going to go get the movie another way.
And it's not because they're laying off because it's Nintendo.
It's because they realize that nothing they can say in the comment section of a Nintendo game has any relevance to anybody.
No one is reading the comment section to decide whether they want a Mario game or not.
That's where – this is the flaw in your logic, John.
These people who leave one-star reviews think they have power.
They think this will hurt their sales.
They think that people will be forced to read this, that people will respond to it somehow.
They think they're voting with their one star.
They really do think they are powerful and they are going to register their complaint and it's going to make a difference and someone's going to have to face them.
Yeah, but that's true on note-taking apps because people do read reviews on note-taking apps because they have to find which one of the 8,000 note-taking apps is any good.
So they actually do have power on the note-taking apps because by millions of people leaving credit reviews, people will try to find ones that have high star ratings.
You are so confusing logic with emotion.
No, this is so wrong.
There is no logic.
I understand about venting.
I understand all those things.
Look, we don't have demographics, so nobody actually knows the ages of these people leaving reviews.
You can try to surmise the ages by the grammar and punctuation, but that is questionable.
No, that doesn't work either.
But it gives you something to hang your hat on.
That's all we've got to go on.
Let the record show on the 21st of December in the year 2016.
John Syracuse was finally wrong about something.
You have no idea who is right or wrong.
Because we don't have the demographics.
You're just assuming.
No, we know.
You're wrong.
I would love to see the demo on this.
There's 40 million people.
It's all the demographics, John.
Come on.
Yeah, exactly.
It is 40 million people.
But do you think the 40 million people are evenly distributed and the people who write reviews, like demographically speaking, is an even distribution?
no i don't think they're all i don't think it's a bell curve hovering around 10 year olds though all right here here let's put it this way um so let's say a distribution wise for gender what do you think the distribution is of gender of people who write angry reviews as compared to the purchasers so let's say the purchasers are 50 50 what do you think the distribution is of angry commenters probably a little bit more male but probably not as much as you think a little bit
I'm going to go like 98 to 2% mail.
I would agree with John on that one.
98 to 2% mail.
This is an example of how the demographics of commenters can be wildly out of line with demographics of downloaders or purchasers.
Oh, sure.
However, there is absolutely no way...
That the people commenting on this are only children because the adults know that it doesn't matter.
I didn't say only.
I said mostly.
I said mostly.
I didn't say only.
I still disagree.
How many children do you know that have iPhones?
I know it's a lot, but still, come on.
I include young adults.
Like I said, young people.
Oh, that changes everything.
These are people of all ages who want to get their satisfaction and want to be heard and want to send a message to those greedy, money-grabbing people at Nintendo.
Trust me, this is the App Store.
I haven't read my App Store reviews for Overcast in probably two years.
And I have been so much more mentally healthy as a result of that.
Because for years, I would worry, what would the reviewers say?
With every change I made, with everything I did or didn't do, I was constantly worried with my apps.
Like, will I get more one-stars for this?
And you know what?
It doesn't matter at all the vast majority of the time.
If you have any number, if you basically have anybody looking for your app for any other reason, if they heard about it somewhere, if they know it by name, whatever else, if you have any number of people seeking out your app, the reviews don't matter.
And if you don't have any number of people seeking out your app, you're going to fail anyway.
So really, it kind of doesn't matter.
And I can urge all developers out there, please, if you read your iTunes reviews, your App Store reviews, same thing for podcasters.
I don't read those either.
Take six months and don't read them and see what happens.
Are you happier?
Is anything different?
Are your sales any different?
Probably not.
Yeah, it's so true.
So there's a feedback form within the app that I work on at work, and it emails a mailing list that's internal to the office and all of the developers, iOS and Android, get all of the feedback from both iOS and Android.
And you would not believe the amount of four-letter words and demands that we get.
Just the other day, I was stunned.
Somebody wrote in, such and such thing doesn't work.
I expect this to be fixed immediately.
Like, this is just some random schmo writing into the ether.
They have no idea who this is going to.
I expect this to be fixed immediately.
What?
And it was clearly an adult.
Like, this was not a child.
This was an adult.
You don't have to convince me that adults send angry emails and random feedback about applications they want to use.
But not to Nintendo.
No, it doesn't have to.
All I'm saying is this specific game, I would say the reviews are skew way more male than the purchasers and skew way younger than the purchasers.
Not just by, like, a percentage or two, but...
Hugely.
Way more male and way younger.
And I would say that if you took the top 10 or 20 angriest one-star reviews complaining solely about price, those are going to be dudes, and they're going to be between the ages of young enough to be able to write into a review and like 25.
i'm not so convinced i mean you might be right i i don't know but i i doubt it it's not they're all children it's not that adults don't write in angry things to other applications it's not that reviews kill other applications all those things are not things that i said i said that i have to think that these are mostly children which nailed down into more concrete terms that these reviewers skew more younger and more male and the more male i think you can both get on board with because honestly like men are terrible
like just you know it's true it's that's a gimme right and and and not because people not because men refuse to buy things more than women or anything it's just that they're going to tell you about it right uh and and then young people like old people don't have time for that crap right so it's just a question of how it's used compared to the demographics right the the male part i agree with the youth i agree with i believe these are both
Like, you know, it does skew that direction.
It's not all men.
It's not all young people.
Right, right.
But compared to the purchasers, because I had to think the purchasers, it's probably pretty even gender split for Mario.
It's a popular... But I will say it is all ages, and it doesn't matter whether they've heard of Nintendo or not.
Everyone's heard of Nintendo.
You'd be surprised.
Everyone's heard of Nintendo, but I think your affection for Nintendo is deeply clouding your perspective here.
It has nothing to do with affection.
It has to do with an understanding that the older you get, the more you realize what Marco just said, that no one reads those reviews to find out whether they're going to download a game, and all you have left is venting about it.
People don't learn that.
They really don't.
Old people eventually give up on venting because they realize that.
Oh, no, they do not.
Are you kidding?
kidding me have you ever been around an old person all they do is vent well they're writing to their congressman and sending angry letters to the diner because the soup was cold that's a different that's a different they find different outlets oh no sir there's there's a personality type that like that they they need to get their satisfaction and they need to make their voice heard about every minor complaint in their life i mean i can't i can't really talk that much about this
But this personality type, this does not change over time.
They don't grow out of that.
That stays with people forever, their entire lives, all ages.
That stays with people.
Well, maybe we have to wait until the generation that grew up with the App Store gets to that age, but they're not that age yet.
uh all right we're we're circling we're going in circles on this let's move on but let let the record show you need to do apple is put demographic information attached to all the comments so we can just scroll down there and say oh mail 18 mail 22 mail 25 oh what a surprise oh my god oh god oh my god although by the way if you go to like like here let's try to think of the application that has the audience that skews the oldest so what the the oldest part i guess it's probably like health related like uh
blood pressure things or like health monitoring something broadcast tv apps like an nbc app or something maybe i bet that's probably broader than you think but no maybe the cbs app that's used pretty old right um and i have trouble because those people who are that age didn't grow up with the app store i have trouble thinking how many of them realize that leaving a review is a thing you can do even
Oh, they know.
Oh, I agree.
They know.
I think in small numbers.
But anyway.
Oh, John, your innocence is beautiful.
I would love to read the angry reviews of the application whose customers skew the oldest.
Maybe the AARP app or something.
Facebook?
Because I think they would look... And comparing them, like, sentence structure-wise, like, the things they're angry about, how they express themselves, to the angry married reviews, I think you could feed the text through one of those, like...
guess the age and educational level and the year they were born based on the words and sentence structure they use.
I think the incredibly angry AARP app reviews would look materially different than the incredibly angry Mario run reviews.
Wow.
so we actually have a new sponsor this week um it is called we sell socks so it's at we sell socks.com and uh the guy who runs this it's a it's a one-person operation he's a fan of the show and he said i was wondering if i could request that marco john and casey critique the site and the service negative and positive uh on first glance instead of doing a regular ad read that is a bold bold maneuver my goodness a terrible idea
john's critique originally has he never listened to the show it's a good thing i'm not riled up today oh god so i think we should probably save john for last case you want to go first or should i uh opening hero image good not a movie good 14 14 a month it's uh it's a little aggressive depending on how much uh how many socks you get and how fancy they are
So scrolling down, pretty good calls to action, pretty simple poll quote, good FAQs.
No, the site looks good.
And I'm not clear on how many pairs of socks you get for $14 a month, but the socks look nice.
They're colorful.
I don't know.
Seems good to me.
I also was not sure.
So $14 a month.
It says $14 a month delivered worldwide.
And I got clarification, and it's actually $14 Canadian, which is about $10 US.
But there's a $5 shipping charge on top of that, I believe.
And so...
that ends up being $14.15 US, including the shipping.
So it ends up working out about the same.
So anyway, worldwide shipping, that's good.
And they also do a cool thing where for every pair that he sells, and I'm pretty sure, I also didn't know how many pairs you get.
I'm pretty sure it's one pair for that.
Because these are like fancy socks.
It isn't like a pack of Hanes.
It's like these fancy designer socks that people who are cooler than us would usually wear.
Although, honestly, I have been thinking about whether I want to get into the world of fun socks, because right now I wear very boring things.
What?
You're a man that wears the same black T-shirt every single day.
Jeans and a black T-shirt, but every day, socks are different.
Exactly.
Oh, my God.
You two are out of control.
I need to start drinking.
Holy crap.
Yeah, so anyway, and he also does this cool thing where for every pair he sells, he donates a pair to a local shelter for people in need.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
And it doesn't donate like a crappy pair.
He donates a good pair along with the pair that you buy.
Oh, that's awesome.
So it's a cool mission.
I think the site could communicate this better because the thing about how that's $14 a month Canadian and that it's one pair of socks, I think there needs to be clarification on that.
But otherwise, I think it's pretty cool.
I know there are other sock subscription services out there, but I would try this one first, honestly.
I will reveal a secret to you guys.
I have always had a dream of getting a sock subscription service where I could wear a pair of brand new socks every day.
of course of course because the feeling of new socks is so awesome you know and and the reason why i've never done this is because it just obviously sounds incredibly wasteful and because what do you do with socks that were worn once like for one day at like you can't just throw that away that's terrible oh
And nobody really wants used socks.
So I haven't ever done this or started this business or patronized any such businesses because that would just seem ridiculous.
But I feel like one pair of cool new socks a month might be a nice compromise.
You are the clothing equivalent of the billionaire who smokes a cigarette once and then puts it away.
I don't know anything about cigarettes, but sure.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know what you're referring to.
I did look at it ahead of time.
I had the same question.
I think it needs to be clearer of how many things you get.
Maybe I would throw in some more reassuring text about if you want to bail, you just cancel.
Stuff like that.
You want to tell people what the deal is quickly and overcome people's anxiety about getting roped into something.
As for the concept...
uh marco aside which still seems like a little bit of a stretch to me this is a thing that i have seen like the idea that interesting socks is part of your look and i can imagine if that was part of something you do just have fun with your clothing
it's not that easy to find interesting socks and also you never quite know like if you're presented with you just go on etsy and see like billions and billions of weird socks which one should i get now or whatever they're the aspect of having someone do the picking for you and just like you know having it be a surprise each day like you take you know whatever you you arrives that's what you're gonna take
That is both freeing and a little bit interesting and exciting.
So I can imagine people, not Marco, doing this and getting a kick out of it.
The website, my only real complaint other than whatever those non-loading images are, is I hate when they do the little cutaway with the position fixed background as you scroll things above it.
So the picture in the back when you scroll, I don't like that.
I don't like things that break the physical metaphor of the scrolling page.
I know kids like that, but it's, it's not for me.
Yeah.
And I think there's a lot of space taken up by stuff that is not, uh, the, the most important three power.
I mean, they have the three paragraphs on anything, but I feel like information density could be better.
Um,
Yeah, I can see that.
Other than that, yeah.
It's not for me.
It's probably not for Marco, but I have seen people in real life who are into fancy socks, and I subscribe to the idea of putting that into someone else's hands.
So anyway, I think it's a cool service.
I think, John, I agree with you that if I were to be a fancy sock person, I would want someone else who is more fashionable and into sock choices than me to...
to be choosing them for me.
And that's what this would offer.
And I think I might do something crazy like this because, you know, for basically like half of the days of my life when I put on my outfit, which is the same thing every day, about half the time I put on the socks and I think, wouldn't it be great if all of my socks were exactly the same and I wouldn't have to match up the subtle difference between these like minor black pattern variations.
It solves the problem in a different way, right?
Right.
And then the other half of the mornings, I think, you know,
well, maybe I could try some fun socks sometime.
Because everything else I wear is boring and I like it that way.
I like to keep it that way.
But I'm always wearing a nice watch and I wouldn't mind always wearing cool socks.
So I have thought about this before and I might do it.
I also like the idea...
that inevitably you'll get some socks that you that you think are hideous in the same way with like jelly bellies when there's like a bad flavor i think that is part of the fun that you know the whole idea of letting someone just send you a bunch of socks is you're gonna have some ones that are like exciting and cool and fun and maybe you wouldn't have picked up for yourself and you're gonna have some that are hideous and that is part of the fun that's true yeah or i just send those to you
well you know you you should you should still wear them like you do a thing of like even when they come and they're hideous in the same way that you end up eating like the jelly belly flavor you don't like or like you put them all aside but then when you're done you still want more jelly beans so you just eat all the black ones anyway black ones are the worst anyway thanks thanks to we sell socks for sponsoring our show and uh check it out thanks we sell socks
Did you guys get your AirPods?
I did.
John did too, right?
I got my little clicky case right here.
Oh, fancy.
Nice.
And what do you think?
Which one?
You have to address one of us.
Hosting 101.
This is the one time.
This is the one time that the two of you don't jump in and you wait for me to give you this.
This is the first time that's ever happened.
I know.
I'm stupefied.
I would have gone far, but I want to go back to this.
The item I had for the AirPods before we had received ours, so this was last week, was
is about why they were delayed you know they they were expected i forget when it was there so they were going to come out october or something and it's like where are the airpods and it's like oh there's some sort of delay and apple had to scrap its entire first production run of the things and and and remake a whole bunch and now they're in short supply and there's a bunch of stories about that and whatever they're shipping now and it was difficult to get them before christmas and and even in the new year it'll be difficult and apple stores are getting tiny shipments but what i'm interested in is
The idea of the delay, because a lot of people were upset about it just because people want what they want, but also, oh, Apple's supposed to be good at making things.
Why did they do this?
And I think this is a situation where anyone who is...
uh who thinks this delay is indicative of something bad about apple or a problem has things backwards it's it's disappointing like you know obviously apple would have liked to have gotten them out sooner and someone made a mistake somewhere or whatever but the fact that there's a delay is exactly what we want apple to be doing especially in light of like samsung galaxy note you know batteries exploding or whatever it is the the note 7 batteries exploding like
the most important thing apple can do is make sure that whatever it is they ship meets their standards for whatever aesthetics reliability safety so on and so forth whatever this problem was that caused them to have to delay the thing that's exactly what we want them to do like obviously ideally that you don't mess up right but if you do mess up you have to do the right thing and i
i i just can't i can't you know think about people being angry at apple for delay it's like this is exactly what we if anything ever goes wrong they say well why did you ship it if it wasn't ready don't ship it if it's not we say that about software all the time it's it's like quadruply true about hardware um so i don't know what the problem was i don't really care what the problem was i would much rather have a product that is ready to be released
than one that is rushed out and has some sort of problem because who wants to get airpods and find out there's some little flaw and some you know if even two percent of the people have to end up going back to the apple store that's terrible no one wants to go back to the apple store i'll wait an extra two months ship it when it's done so i'm not gonna say i applaud the delay because no one likes a delay and again ideally whatever the problem was apple would have caught earlier and fixed it and you know this is not exactly a good thing but
This is exactly what I want a company to do when they do make a mistake, which happens.
Companies made of people, people make mistakes when they do make a mistake and do the right thing about it.
And it seems like that's what they did here.
Cool.
I'm a little bummed that there was a delay just because these seem like they're super cool.
But I completely agree with you that if you're going to roll the dice, I'd err on the side of caution.
And gosh only knows what the delay was.
I think it was iFixit said that there were some dubious tolerances or something like that in the case, which they somehow extrapolated to mean that maybe there was some build quality issues.
I don't know about that one way or the other.
Yeah, that didn't read right to me.
That read a lot more completely based on speculation than anything real.
I agree.
Yep, that's how I read it too, which is why I was kind of confused by it.
But anyway, I don't know that we'll ever know why there was a delay, but it's certainly, like you said, John, I'll take the delay, and they did eke it in by the end of the year, and I'll take the delay over some sort of flawed process.
If anything, I'm hoping at this point that they didn't do anything silly to rush it out just to get something ready for the holiday season.
If anything, I'm hoping that it really was ready to ship and there wasn't some immense pressure because obviously there's immense pressure to ship in time for the holidays, right?
uh and that can cause that's exactly what causes a company to say well under normal circumstances i wouldn't do it but because we have to make the holiday season everybody's on under a huge amount of pressure to just make it happen even if they're not quite up to where they want them to be and i haven't heard any stories yet and i guess we'll find out in a couple months if all our airpods die or whatever but
I'm hoping that they waited long enough because honestly, like that's the right move for the company is like your reputation as Apple as a company, you know, just ask Samsung again, your reputation for reliability and and doing the right thing and only shipping products that are.
of the standard people expect especially for hardware where you can't ship a patch right you can't you can't fix it in a point release um that is so much more important than even hitting a holiday season especially for a company with as much money in the bank as apple if you have to miss the holiday season miss the holiday season you'll get dinged for it and you'll say hey you tried to hit the holiday season with your product and you didn't and that's bad and you have made a mistake but it's still a lesser mistake than shipping people earpods that blow up in their ears or whatever
yeah and for whatever it's worth atp tipster in the chat is saying that the issue was not blowing up in your ears it was um a manufacturing problem initially related to the bluetooth hardware that it was not performing well and it was using excessive battery uh during operation so that could be true any of those things like oh i got my airpods and they don't connect or their battery runs out too quickly and you know again apple can't patch it if it's a hardware problem so yeah
And it does seem like the basic operation, I mean, most people have had them for one or two days so far, but it does seem like they work well.
And with a few exceptions, a few people have had like, you know, interference problems or connection problems with them.
But with those few exceptions that I've seen, almost everyone who has them seems very happy with them.
So are you guys starting with Marco?
There you go.
One more item.
One more item.
Oh, God.
That was the perfect segue.
We are not beholden to the damn notes, John.
But okay, John, tell me.
Yeah, you are.
You are beholden to the passage of time, the earlier things, and then they're followed by later things.
Oh, God, John.
The earlier item is, well, first of all, Marco, have you lost any of your AirPods yet?
i don't know tiff has them right now but when i gave them to her an hour ago last time you saw them they were both there yes all right i haven't lost mine either but if i did uh it was asked on the last show what would we do about it you can apparently uh replace one for 70 bucks i did have one fall out of my ear during the first two hours of using it all right well now we can shift into marco telling us what he what he thinks of them i just wanted to just wanted to get the because that was a question last show what happens if you lose one answer 70 bucks
Yeah.
And that's honestly not bad.
For what they've cost, that's fine.
It's good that they will sell you individual ones at all.
They could have just very well said, well, you've got to buy a new pair.
Oh, well.
So to have an option at all to buy individual ones to replace lost or broken ones is nice.
Yeah, so my impressions overall, as you know, I'm reviewing all the headphones in the universe, and basically my concerns before this were, I've never had an Apple EarPod or any EarPod or any EarBud or any EarCanal phone that fit me comfortably and well, that both was comfortable and would stay in.
I've never found one.
My ears are just weird, I guess.
And I was concerned the AirPods would fit me as well as the ear pods do, which is with mediocrity, with some discomfort, and they fall out.
And I was also concerned about the lack of controls on the ear pod, on the AirPods, excuse me.
But that's a common mistake this week.
Oh, yeah, it is.
The lack of volume and play pause and seek back, seek forward, which are very commonly used in podcasts.
I had one person on Twitter.
I'm sorry, I forgot the name.
One person on Twitter said, I've heard more ads on Overcast this week than I ever have before with the AirPods.
Yeah.
But anyway, thanks to our sponsors.
So, you know, they only have either Siri or PlayPause with the double tap gesture.
We've gone over this before.
So anyway, when they arrive, those are my concerns.
And they are exactly what I thought they would be in good and bad ways.
So in all the good ways, the pairing process is awesome.
The case, the battery charging, all that stuff is awesome.
The case is a little bit thick, right?
for pocket use it fits okay in that little like change pocket on top of your jeans right pocket it fits okay in there oh i didn't think about that but otherwise they're great they they actually you know i'm not a huge fan of of earbuds for sound purposes but these sound pretty good if you like hold them in especially like basically the the amount of bass that
that earbuds have depends entirely on how well they seal snugly inside of your ear.
If they seal well, if they can really rest in there and really lodge themselves in there, you will get great bass, and they will stay in, and if you are not me, they might even be comfortable.
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.
I'm sorry for jumping in, but I have a pair of Ultimate Ears.
I don't know how they're classified, but they're basically earphones.
And I could not agree with you more that when I have them seated just right, they are probably the best sounding speakers that I own.
And I have a couple of pretty decent pairs of headphones, not Marco Crazy Good, but decent pairs of headphones.
And
And I actually think the stereo in my car is really darn good as well.
But these ultimate ears are phenomenal as long as they're seated properly.
And the moment they get even the teensy, weensiest bit unseated, it's a totally different scenario.
Yeah.
So the AirPods are exactly the same.
When they are very well seated so that you get good bass out of them, the sound quality is very good.
Because when they're that seated, the harshness and tinniness of the mid-range and the highs that you often get if they're out a little more...
that gets softened and rolled off and muted a little bit.
So it's actually a very well-balanced sound.
And for $160, a properly sealed AirPod is a really good deal in the headphone world.
It's not the best, but it's really good, especially for something that small.
So when they are well-sealed, they sound good.
When they are not well-sealed, like how they sit in my ears, they sit a
um they the bass suffers tremendously but the rest of the sound actually isn't too bad the mid-range it's a little bit accentuated and so it sounds a little bit more harsh but overall i'm very pleasantly surprised by how good they sound uh and and i really wish they fit me better because i would use them a lot more unfortunately they don't they fall out of my ears
Even if I'm just like, like I wore them yesterday while I was wrapping gifts.
I'm like walking around the table, bending over here and there, and they fell out.
One of them fell out after a few minutes.
Fortunately, I kind of felt it's happening, so I caught it.
The other day, or yesterday, whenever it was, I took my dog for a walk also and had to bend over to pick up something that you have to do when you take your dog for a walk.
Oh, God.
And the worst almost happened.
Oh, God.
It didn't.
It missed by like a few inches.
So you almost spent $70 at the Apple store that day.
I wouldn't buy a new one.
You can clean that off.
Come on.
It's all natural.
You can clean that off.
I would buy a new one.
You have a kid.
You know what it's like.
Everything in your house is covered with poop.
Don't pretend it isn't.
And I put it in my ear.
You are.
You don't know it, but you are.
so yeah man's conjecture they they don't and yeah and that actually happened to jason snell as well he mentioned an upgrade this week um so yeah i they don't fit me well and it's unfortunate because they are it is really nice to have something that small um the the double tap to play pause i have found to be fairly unreliable um you have to tap it pretty firmly to get it to work reliably and that's not good because it's kind of uncomfortable um
Why would you do that rather than just pulling one of the earbuds out?
So you could do that too.
So basically, I'm just saying, for reference, the gesture of either invoking Siri or doing play pause, depending on your preference, it is a little inconsistent and a little tricky to do reliably.
So that's unfortunate.
But...
Other than that, they're fine.
The sound is better than I expected.
They are small and light, and they almost fit in my pocket comfortably with the charging case.
And without it, of course, you could do whatever you want with them.
They do, unfortunately, fall out of my ears.
And so I'm not going to return them.
They're nice to have around, but...
i think there'll be more like something i keep in my backpack for like in case i forgot big headphones and i'm like on a trip or i'm if i'm going to the city you know maybe i'd bring them at least something like that like where like i'm not going to be like bending over much i'm i if i'm going to be like sitting on a train or a bus for a while like that would be better for that but i don't know so i'm going to keep them uh i'm glad i have them but i'm probably not going to use them heavily because they just are physically incompatible with me in a pretty big way unfortunately
also uh i found uh if you have a winter hat over them it could help hold them in because the winter will cover your ears and then you know like not too tight but like it'll basically they won't they basically it's impossible for them to fall out with my big heavy winter hat down over my ears yeah i'll try that next actually because uh walking with like bigger headphones is not great in the winter but yeah so i'll try that so john what do you think about yours
I agree with most of the things Marco said, but the ear thing, ear pods do stay in my ears like the plain old ear pods do.
And so do the air pods.
Cause I keep reading reviews of like whether they're shaped differently.
Even Jason Snell said he thought they were shaped differently.
And I looked at my, you know, the ones that came with my iPhone seven and these, and as far as my eyeballs can tell without a micrometer, they are identically shaped.
But anyway, they, they stay in my ears just fine.
Just like all the other ones have.
And I've been using them for,
a long time now um so that's not a problem for me i was interested to see how they would change the way you know i listen to stuff because i do listen during my commute and the commute is bluetooth in the car obviously but walking to my car you know which is not a long walk but even just you know walking around the house in the morning and then i go out to my car and then i get into my car and then it comes over bluetooth and i take out my headphones and i drive to work then when i get out of my car from the umpteenth floor of the parking garage i put my headphones back in and i walk all through the parking garage in the building you know so
I'm using my headphones for the walking part of my commute, and I also wear them a lot when I am doing dishes or when I am cooking dinner at night and stuff like that, or just folding laundry or whatever, just doing mindless work by myself.
And not using like Bluetooth speakers sometimes because I don't want to disturb other people in the house.
Other times it's just, you know, you just want to have your own thing.
So I thought these would be ideal because I've wanted something like this for a long time.
I was talking about it this many, you know, like six months ago or a year ago and about wireless earbuds.
and they mostly work the way i thought they would uh glad that they you know they pair with the phone sound comes out of them no real problems the taking the thing out of your ear to pause and putting it back in actually works for the most part exactly as advertised the construction of them looks good they sound more or less the same as i'm not picky about the earbuds i'm just listening to podcasts or whatever as the other earpods
here are the things that surprised me though what i i knew this was a thing that i did but this really hammered on how much i do it apparently i adjust the volume a lot on my wired earbuds in all sorts of circumstance why would i be adjusting the volume a lot when i'm making dinner alone in the kitchen by myself
Well, because sometimes the little overhead fan is on, and sometimes you're running the garbage disposal, and sometimes there's a pan sizzling.
Apparently, just like I'm a climate micromanager in the car, I am a volume micromanager with listening to podcasts.
I'm shocked.
Me as well.
i tried going with can i squeeze the little volume buttons with the thing in my pocket like in my jeans pocket or my jacket pocket as i'm walking because they're walking like in the parking garage as noisy as a car goes past you but then when you get on the street it's not as noisy but then the ups truck is driving past and you gain it your podcast again so you need to pause it or make it louder again taking them out of your ear is not an option when you have a big thick glove on anyway volume adjustment
is it's a no-go but i think i would probably tolerate that i think i would probably just put it at a louder volume and just tolerate it and just or try to learn do it if it wasn't for the second thing which is i pause the podcast a surprising amount of time specifically when i am in the kitchen cooking because my wife will come in and ask me something and go back out or i'll want to ask her something or one of my kids will come in and say something i pause and play and pause and play a huge amount taking out
is not really an option because then i have to have some place to hold it and maybe my fingers are gross enough you know like too gross to be grabbing the earbud but just gross enough for me to use just my pinky and my thumb to press the little but i i don't know but like you know taking it out just didn't feel and i was afraid i was gonna like drop it down the disposal or not keep track of where it is or then i had you know then i'm occupying one hand because if i have to pause it to help do something else and often actually
I will pause when I need to concentrate on the important part of the Blue Apron recipe that I'm doing because I have to read the instructions and I want to pay attention to the instructions and not gloss over it or whatever.
So sometimes I'll pause when I'm alone in there just because I need to concentrate slightly more and I'm an active listener who wants to listen to what they're doing.
You don't have to pay that much attention.
Season with salt and pepper.
Wash and dry the fresh produce.
Come on.
Well, it's easy to miss the fact that they said only fry up a quarter of the noodles, not all of them, because the fry ones are just to put on top and then you're supposed to boil the, you know, so...
yeah you fried all the noodles in in the in the chicken uh kasui soup i didn't but someone we both know did because i followed instructions and paused during what during that part but i'm just saying it is possible to not oh my goodness you know anyway um so i'm i'm pausing and resuming now what about the double tap here's the here's the other thing that surprised me i was like all right fine whatever i have to pause whatever i'll just do the double tap
The double tap, reliability-wise, I found, like Marco, that it's not 100% reliable.
But I think I can live with that.
You know, it's not as 100% reliable as pinching the little thingy.
But whatever, it'll get by.
But I find it to be incredibly physically unpleasant.
Yes.
To tap that thing that's in my ear.
Incredibly unpleasant.
Like, shockingly.
Like, it didn't even occur to me to think about how unpleasant this would be.
You know how unpleasant it is to get earbuds yanked out of your ear by the wires, which will never happen again with earbuds?
It's like that, but you're doing it to yourself.
You have to hit it.
surprisingly hard and if you have to do it four times instead of two i'm like no if someone was doing this to me i would punch them but i'm doing it to myself i'm doing it to myself i'm tapping the thing that's lodged into my ear it is terrible feeling and i just can't have it so in the kitchen now i'm back to using my wired earbuds because pressing the little play pause button
is way more pleasant and way faster and just you know and i also have volume control so the the airpods are banished from the kitchen for other environments if i'm going out for a walk or just you know anything that is like out and about in the world including mostly commuting you know walking through the parking garage and down and across the campus and up the like airpods i think are mostly still good for that and i will still use them for that
but for for basically for non-exercise or non-mobile things for in the house the wired ear pods have beaten them out for me personally i'm not saying this is going to be for you because everybody everyone is different i'm going to say like as as a review of the product i think the product works as advertised and does exactly what everyone says it does and you can read the reviews to see the feature set and so on and so forth like you'll know there's no volume control right but for me personally uh the wired ones went for the house
So I got to tell you, in my personal opinion, I love these things.
As it turns out, a listener of the show who lives in Richmond, Matt Wallen, wrote me two nights ago.
Is that right?
Two nights ago and said, hey, I bought two pairs, one for my wife, one for me.
And my wife said, yeah, I'll pass.
Thanks.
Do you want them?
And I said, well, yes.
Yes, I do.
And so I met Matt at a local Starbucks.
Sorry, Marco.
And he was a very nice guy.
And it happens.
He was a very nice guy.
And I gave him a very sketchy-looking wad of $20 bills.
And he gave me a completely sealed...
AirPods.
So I do have AirPods, as it turns out, and I love these things.
There are problems for sure.
I personally have not run into the double tap thing because I find that I'm never, ever, ever double tapping the AirPod.
If I want to pause, I'll just pull one of them out of my ear and...
And I haven't even thought to use Siri for anything.
The pairing process, as you said, was phenomenally easy.
They showed up on my iMac pretty much immediately, although it was a little wonky getting them to...
to attach i don't want to say pair because they were paired to the imac but getting them active on the imac um and we'll come back to that in a second it took a reboot to get them to show up on my work computer but my work computer has odd firewalls and security restrictions and big business yada yada yada um but after reboot that did work just fine i use them off and on today at work um
I use them as much as I would use my traditional Bluetooth headphones.
And at the end of the day, the earbuds or the AirPods were pretty much entirely charged because the handful of times that I would go and use the restroom or have a chat with somebody or, I don't know, go downstairs to nuke my lunch, I would put them back in the case and that would top them up.
And the case was down to about 52%.
Now,
I did leave work early today.
I left work at about one o'clock.
And so this isn't a perfect exemplar of a normal eight to nine hour workday.
But having worked over half a day, the case was at 52% and the earbuds were basically completely charged.
I didn't have any grumbling or I didn't find it frustrating to not have any sort of playback controls because most of the day I spent with them active on my work computer where I have my keyboard with play pause and all that other stuff right there waiting for me.
The handful of other times I used them throughout the day, they were attached to my iPhone, which was attached to me.
I can absolutely see how it could be annoying.
And John, I totally understand what you're saying.
And I can totally see why that would be frustrating.
But that's not something that has bothered me yet.
Erin, every time she sees me with them in my ears, very casually and very politely reminds me how much of a moron I am.
Or at least what a moron I look like.
Which I think she's kind of right about that.
They do look a little goofy.
But...
I love these things.
The one complaint I have is that I haven't quite figured out the right dance in order to get them to mate, if you will.
That's probably not a good word for it either, but whatever.
Mate with a laptop or desktop as opposed to the phone.
Because the phone is pretty much always near me.
And even if the phone is...
off in the sense that the display is not on and it's just sitting there idly.
It seems like they really want to connect to the phone first, which I think I understand.
But I'll start playing like a podcast or music or what have you on, say, my work laptop.
And that doesn't seem to be enough.
Now, maybe this is user error and I just haven't broken the code on the right sequence of events to do.
But it wasn't until I went to the Bluetooth menu item and then went to my AirPods and then said connect that they would wake up and start to connect to my work computer.
It was also very briefly discerning.
It was just weird.
Thank you.
That's what I was looking for.
That I would hear audio out of the right ear first consistently and then the left ear.
Now, it was for a flash, just barely enough for me to tell that there was a difference.
And then they never got out of sync after that.
But that was a little weird.
But all in all, I love these things.
And I think a large part of the reason that I love these things is because it reminds me of the idealized Apple that we all love.
And I think we're probably going to talk about the other kind of Apple that might be the Apple of today here in a few minutes.
But the Apple that shipped these, the Apple of today that shipped these AirPods...
is the Apple that I love the most.
And the one that is whimsical and has soul and has energy and has fun.
And God, I love these things.
And just doing the little flip.
I don't know if that's coming through on the mic, but oh God, just doing that.
I'm going to break the Stam case from doing that constantly.
It's so satisfying.
It's so satisfying.
And then the magnets that kind of like suck the AirPods into the case.
Yeah.
super satisfying so good i love these things i do think 160 is pretty steep like i'm not saying it's not fair honestly for for what you're getting in the competitive landscape of decent bluetooth earbuds especially separate ones because it like the level of complexity to make them not have a wire that goes between them
is very like that's that's a very cutting edge thing very few other things in the market can do that right now and and they all have massive challenges in making that happen and making it work well um because of the way bluetooth works basically but uh for what you're getting here i think they're actually well priced they're like it's not like a bargain basement like you know gonna blow the doors off with pricing only kind of thing but it is a it is a fair price for what you're getting
And that's fair.
I'm not saying it's not a fair price.
It's just $160 is a lot of money for what appears to be physically not that much.
Now, in reality, you're exactly right, that there's a lot there.
And in fact, getting it so small is a big freaking deal.
But I love these things.
I am surprised how much I like them.
I really like them a lot.
And there's a rough spot here and there, like you guys are saying about double tapping.
Again, maybe it's user error, but I haven't really gotten the sync between computer and phone working quite right.
But the Bluetooth headphones that I use at work, which I've talked about incessantly for the entire run of this show, they're terrible headphones, but they work consistently.
However, they work consistently in part because I only ever have them paired to one computer at a time.
These AirPods are paired to a work computer, an iMac, an iPhone, and an iPad, and don't blink an eye.
And I only had to really do the pairing once.
And that is freaking magic.
And for that, that alone makes me super enthusiastic.
And...
And I know that's silly.
I recognize how silly that is.
But just having the flexibility to use these things with whatever I want, basically in a way that's no more difficult than unplugging, replugging a cable, that's just awesome.
So...
I love them.
I really do.
And there are other Bluetooth headphones on the market that support being paired to multiple devices at the same time and having some way to choose between them or to be simultaneously connected.
That does exist in other headphones, but none of them do it quite to this level.
Especially the way they basically sync the pairing to all of your other iCloud devices.
If you have an Apple Watch...
It'll just show up as an AirPlay output device, the same way an AirPlay device would show up.
It shows up on your other devices like that.
If you're sharing it between, as you said, laptop and phone or phone and iPad or all of the above, it is way easier with the AirPods than with anything else I've ever used to have it on more than two devices.
Yeah.
So two thumbs up.
I know I'm one person in a week.
Did you see that feedback we got way back when that one person can't say two thumbs up?
But anyway, two thumbs up for me anyway, because that's how much I like them.
Yeah, fair enough.
Any other thoughts on AirPods from either of you, too, before we move on?
uh about the the hardware i was thinking about how you know how these things are so close to being just take the regular airpods and cut off the wires and like if we had seen this exact thing in like a 90s sci-fi movie would have been like that's so fake yeah oh absolutely absolutely we are like they've done such an incredible job of
not having this look like a thing that plays audio plus a big blob that has the electronics in it right like and because it's an object that we've seen so often these white ear pods that have been on the market for a long time just like a slightly thicker thicker skin it just appears to be magic that's part of what we're responding to like that is a magical i mean it's it's low level magic you know it's not it's not you know you know levitated mountain magic but
it is low level magic like we you know it it is surprising that it works and very quickly you get used to it but it's it's very impressive in terms of this this is the magic of design of like making a thing that looks boring and simple but then like if you look at the eye fix it tear down and realize what they shoved in there
and what it manages to do and just it's it's fairly incredible that that even the basics work um and i think they made sacrifices to do that like by not having a wire you sacrifice the ability to have a little dongle by making them so small and perfect you sacrifice the ability to have like a little touch area where you slide your finger up and down for volume control like it wouldn't be the same magic with that i still
would like a little extra dongle that would maybe let me use these that i could you know play pause or whatever like i clip it to my belt or something who knows what the hell i would do with it um and yes we've seen the ones that are on the market like that um i wish more of them had buttons that i could feel without looking instead of being a uniform circle or whatever but anyway um hardware wise this is a pretty big
home run i think uh other minor details a couple people in the chat room were talking about my uh how i didn't like tapping it in my ear doesn't matter where i tap it i tried every location you could tap the thing i tried tapping you know the stem part the end the middle the part that's in my ear i tried tapping light heavy tapping next to it not actually like every combination that actually causes it to play pause or to activate or whatever i immediately changed it to play pause i didn't even bother with the siri thing but
anyway at any location i find very unpleasant um the other thing that my wife pointed out uh after you know for me giving these a trial run is that the signal that you send other people if they try to talk to you and you turn to look at them and double tap your ear it's kind of like you're saying uh-huh i'm listening to something here like as you point to your own ear hello hello see the thing
my ear which is exactly the same you do not want to say because it seems like you know because you do turn to face them and then you you double tap your ear like you're pointing to it especially if you have to do it four times you go one two three four it seems like you're saying you know you see the ear pod don't try to talk to me which let me tell you doesn't go over big
i'm like no i'm just trying to play pause uh so i'm not quite sure i think obviously you're meant to just remove one from your ear which does the same which also pauses it like that's obviously like the more common thing you're supposed to do right right yeah but like i'm the removing is just a non-starter for me like in that environment like it's even if only because then i mean i have to receipt them and i'm grabbing the thing with my grubby fingers again i'm much better at tapping the little thing um
One thing that a lot of us who just received our AirPods noticed is a similar story of receiving them, you know, a couple days ago in the Northeast anyway.
It's very cold.
And you get the package, you know, and you open it up and you want to try them out.
And because they're so cold and they have these tiny little batteries that are frozen and lithium-ion batteries do not do well when they're frozen, I got them and it's like, oh, these things need to be charged.
Like, they're not...
you know i i opened up immediately and it started to pair but then it was like you know low battery or whatever like oh you know i just got out of the box maybe they don't have a charge i should charge them so i went to plug them in and the time it took me to take them over to the other room and find a lightning cable and plug it in like all of a sudden they were you know they appeared as on my phone which i was bringing with me i was like oh they're almost already charged really it was just the batteries thawing out like so if you do get these and it's cold
and you're anxious to open up the package like give them five minutes to warm up like they usually do come with some amount of charge in them it's not as if they charged in five seconds they didn't they just thawed out so chill when you're the reverse of chill let them un-chill when you get them and you'll be happier which by the way may be a factor for people who run in the cold this is what i'm thinking about like these are the exercise
Well... AirPods?
No, if it's in your ears, your ears are going to keep them warm.
The bigger issue would be if you leave them in your car all day and your car's parked outside and you come back to your car and they've been there and they're frozen.
That's going to be the bigger issue.
Yeah, don't leave them in your car.
But I was thinking... These seem like they'd be ideal for exercise as well.
Especially... I know they're... I don't want to go into things that are probably not public yet.
But anyway, I would love to...
be able to play podcasts from my watch locally onto my ear pods when out for like a run or something and not have my phone with me at all for a lightweight way to do this without wires that is very appealing to me i'm looking forward to something like that this summer um if possible
If it's possible, we can talk.
I'm not entirely convinced it's possible.
I know.
I'm not going to want to talk.
Anyway, you can talk about that later if you want.
The final thing is the case is awesome.
Flicking the little thing is awesome.
Pulling the earpods out of the case is sometimes less than awesome.
Because they are held in there by weak magnets, but there's not really a good place for you to grab.
Yeah, that's fair.
And guess what is on earpods eventually?
earwax which can be kind of slippery if you're a greasy italian like me uh i make i make the ear pods greasy and sometimes i'm trying to remove a greasy ear pod from a tiny little case and it's slippery and sometimes it's a little bit difficult to get them out is all i'm saying
Anyway, yeah.
In closing, I agree with Casey.
These are such a good product.
This is Apple at its best.
This is the kind of thing that most people don't do as well as Apple.
It's them tackling an incredibly complicated problem.
It's a serious technology challenge and a serious design challenge.
And I don't mean that in just the way it looks.
I mean a lot of design choices that go into it.
This is a serious challenge.
And Apple really did a really good job with it.
I wish they fit me.
They don't.
But for people who they fit, you should really consider picking these up because they're really, really quite good.
And on the fit thing, by the way, I'm trying to think about, you know, because there are people who just doesn't fit ears.
Everyone's ears are different, right?
There's not much you can do about it because Apple only sells one shape.
Do you think it would – would it help you, do you think, if they sold them, like, three sizes?
Like, standard and then, like, a smaller and a bigger?
Or, like, I don't know if the problem is that they're too big or too small or shaped wrong or whatever, but, like –
Obviously, Apple did that whole big thing when they first came out with the ear pods, the wired ones a long time ago.
We measured a million years and they try to go for the shape that will fit the most ears.
And they probably did.
They probably nailed it.
This is a shape that fits the most possible ears with a single shape.
But with a single shape, you're never going to fit all the ears.
Do you think they could eventually expand to have two or three different sizes?
And if they did, do you think that would help your fit?
Because I don't know exactly what the problem is, but I would imagine that if it's falling out, it's probably either too small so it's not gripping against the edges or too big that you can't really get it wedged in there.
Right.
I mean, I also don't know what the problem is, but assuming that that would be a problem that they could address that way, I don't think they would.
I don't think it would be their style to sell ear pods in three different sizes.
Sell the watch in two sizes.
Especially because, like, think about, like, you know, when somebody returns an earpod, they cannot do anything with that.
Like, they can't resell it.
They can probably refurbish it if they can get all the crap out, but they probably can't.
It's probably not worth it.
They're going to refurbish it, guaranteed.
When you pay your $70, I guarantee you getting somebody else's earpod.
maybe but it's probably like you know because it's been in somebody's ear like there's like a lot of like issues anyway so like they have to totally refurbish that if they sold them in three different sizes they'd get so many more returns from people who they didn't fit and they think you know what this is the wrong size let me try this other size now and they get then you got it then and then they then oh it turns out that doesn't fit me either it's like that would be problematic also they gotta have they have try-ons in the store they should have like little inert plugs that they like douse in alcohol between you know like
You know what I mean?
I mean, they wipe down all the stuff in the store anyway.
That's not Apple style.
But no, they do that for all the phones and everything.
First of all, those are just germ transference devices anyway.
The phone, sure.
Yeah.
They wipe them down with these disinfecting wipes, like, I don't know, all day long and also when the store closes and everything like that.
They're not going to open a little drawer under the table that you're not supposed to know exists and pull out a tray of ear plugs and be like, here, it's...
try this on like that's not no they they would rather take the return they let you try on watches to see which size fits you they do have two different sizes of watch yes but that's not putting something inside of you yeah and you can see it and and i think most of the time like you know you can just know by trying it on for a second that and they could and they can reuse that one that you tried on but yeah it's like that's that's very different the chat room says they do airpod try-ons and then they wipe them down really ew already
anyway so the other the other thing is like i don't really see today's apple as caring a whole lot about edge cases uh and so anything that they consider an edge case it's they they kind of by their actions or lack thereof have been giving the middle finger to recently um so i i can't imagine that that they would care
Because it really matters what percentage they hit.
Because, again, their whole thing is like we measured thousands of years and we tried to find one shape that would fit the largest number of them.
If that number is like 95 percent, no, they're never going to do anything for the 5 percent.
But if it's 70 percent, I think eventually they could be convinced that 70 percent is too low.
And so either change the shape of the one that we're selling to try to get to 80 or 90 or if you can't.
And, you know, I'm sure they gather this information of like people who buy these things and then fill out a survey or complain because they do do that.
Like every time you buy something, it seems like every time I buy something, I get one of the surveys and they ask you very pointed questions about stuff like this.
And if they ask anyone any questions about ear pods or air pods, guaranteed one of the questions would be, do you find that it falls out?
Do you feel like it fits well?
Is it comfortable?
Like this is one of the pillar items of this product is they want to know if
Can people put it in their ears and does it do the job of playing the music reliably and staying in their ears and doing what it's supposed to do?
And it seems to me anecdotally that I think they already are getting a really high percentage.
So I think you're right that they're probably not ever going to do anything about that.
But if if I'm wrong and they're really a little low percentage, I would say high is like 80 or 90 and low is 70 or lower.
If I'm wrong and they are low, I think they will do something to try to address that because 70 percent is not is not a high enough.
I think they would like to sell.
uh products like this to more than 70 of their customers and granted they're like you know buy beats buy whatever like it's you know it's third party ecosystem so on and so forth as long as it's does bluetooth or has a lightning connector haha um it'll be fine uh but and also like when a product is really mature then and you have nothing left to do that's when you start diversifying so
We'll give it a few years, but I think the first thing they would try is maybe tweaking the design, and they would say, oh, now the all-new AirPods three years from now with a slightly different shape that we think fits a wider variety of ears.
Yeah, maybe.
not marcos though no it'll never fit my and you know i don't really hold it against them in this particular case like my because what can you do yeah i mean i don't because i don't even know what the problem is you know so it's you know that's that's fine uh i'm i'm perfectly fine with other headphones i would be happy with airpods but i also do like having a lot of good controls on my headphones and a little more isolation sometimes so yeah that's nice anyway i'm reviewing a bunch you'll you'll hear about them later
Just to avoid the feedback that we'll get, what do you make of this theory that these were originally supposed to charge via USB-C based on the size and shape of the receptacle, the lightning receptacle?
And then at the last second, they said, oh, just kidding, let's use lightning.
I personally don't really buy it.
I have plugged an official first-party cable into my AirPods case right now.
Yes, it does look ever so slightly bigger, the receptacle does.
And I don't have a USB-C connector handy.
But this seems like a really weak argument to me.
What do you think, John?
No, I don't buy that one.
Mostly because...
if you remember we talked about the fat lightning connector that it didn't like plugging into the bottom of my iphone 7 that the larger one that has the chip in it because it has the deck and everything like that if you plug that into the case which admittedly makes no sense because it's a headphone right but if you plug that into the case it perfectly covers the opening
like it looks perfect it looks exactly like it was made to plug in there right if you plug in one of the older ones or if you plug in the lightning cable that is hidden at the bottom of your box that you may not have found if you have airpods by the way look in the bottom of the box it comes with a lightning cable for charging which as marco points out has a usba connector on the end courage yep um that one does not cover the ends of the connector and you can see these little parts peeking out and it looks weird you're like what's the deal johnny i've um
but i have like here's here's the main reason i don't think it was usbc but like apple charges stuff with lightning connectors all of its ios devices charge with lightning connectors everybody who has apple crap has a bunch of lightning connectors to charge stuff why in the world would they make this one thing charge not with a lightning connector
So I think, you know, and the only thing I can think of is like, well, does that mean that every lightning connector is going to be like these fat ones, even if they don't have the DAC chips in them?
Like, will the plain old charging cables be fat?
I hope not, because I don't like the fat one.
I like the skinny ones.
So I don't really have a good explanation, but I have a hard time thinking of any reason that this one particular peripheral would charge with USB-C, unless they're going to go to USB-C everywhere, which seems entirely unlikely because it's still bigger and so on and so forth.
But yeah, it's
It's an interesting theory.
I would love to know the actual explanation, and I guess if we wait a year and every single lightning cable now comes with a fat connector, there's your explanation because it looks perfect on this thing.
Marco, what do you think?
John covered it well.
Basically, yes, there is this weird gap that is kind of un-Apple-like to have this weird-looking mismatch.
It's extra weird that the cable that comes in the box doesn't fill the gap properly.
But I also would think it would be very strange to have this charged via USB-C given the current lineup.
Because all of their other accessories that are this size and in this area... Even the pen.
Pencil, sorry.
Yeah, and that's its own weird charging thing.
But everything else charges by lightning that's like this in the Apple world.
So, yeah, I would be very surprised if it didn't.
And it would actually be, I think, less convenient for most people if it charged via USB-C.
Because if you are using these, you're almost certainly using them with an iPhone.
And you are going to have little lightning cables all over your house or car or work or all of the above to charge your phone wherever you are in most cases.
So you're always going to have the ability to charge something that charges via lightning if you own the AirPods.
So it makes total sense to have these also charged by lightning.
And it would not make a lot of sense in real world use for who's actually buying these and how they're actually using them to have that be a USB-C port.
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I'm bracing myself for impact.
Over the last couple of days, there's been a little bit of chatter about the state of the Mac.
This started, at least as far as I'm aware, by a back and forth, a Q&A, some sort of thing that happened on some sort of internal Apple message board that, of
And it has Tim Cook discussing the future of the Mac.
And I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but he says basically, hey, the iMac is great.
Oh, okay.
Would you mind jumping in then, please?
Yeah.
So the question from, I guess, an employee was, we had a big MacBook Pro launch in October and a powerful upgrade to the MacBook back in the spring.
Are Mac desktops strategic for us?
And so Tim Cook basically says, I'll summarize a little bit.
He says the desktop is very strategic for us.
It's unique compared to the notebook, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Then he says, the current generation iMac is the best desktop we've ever made.
And it's beautiful.
Retina 5K display is the best desktop display in the world.
Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we're committed to desktops.
If there's any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear.
We have great desktops in our roadmap.
Nobody should worry about that.
So, yeah, I mean, here's the thing.
That was a very Trumpian answer, I have to say.
Well, it wasn't that bad, let's be honest, but it wasn't that much better.
Here's the thing.
This was an opportunity that Tim Cook chose to take.
to reassure people who really care about Macs and specifically Mac desktops to reassure them that Apple still has their needs covered and plans to keep covering their needs.
And Tim basically gave an informationless answer that committed to nothing that had even less hope than the last time somebody asked him about this that resulted in the 2013 Mac Pro where he said, like, we have something for our Pro customers coming later next year, whenever that was, 2012 probably.
Yeah.
If he had anything positive to say about any Mac desktop other than the iMac, I think he probably would have made a stronger implication about that or would have used some different wording.
Tim Cook chooses his words very carefully.
He knew by writing this, he knew that somebody would leak it.
So he was obviously writing it with that in mind because he's a smart person.
He knows how these things work.
And again, he chooses his words very carefully.
If he had anything more reassuring to say about Mac desktops, he would have said it.
So the fact that he didn't is actually a little unsettling, even more unsettling than if we didn't have this interaction with Tim.
If we had no information, I'd be a little more confident with that than what we have here, which is basically him...
Saying, we have desktops covered with the iMac.
That's basically what he's saying here.
And look, I'm talking to you from an iMac.
I have an iMac right here.
I sold an underperforming older generation processor Mac Pro to get this iMac because the iMac outperformed it.
But that's not a problem.
The problem there is not that Mac Pros are terrible.
It's that the Mac Pros we have right now are not competitive and are not a very good buy and are not being kept up to date.
I wrote months ago now why I care about the Mac Pros so much and why I think it needs to remain in the lineup and remain good and remain up to date.
None of those things have changed.
The Mac Pro still does things that iMacs can't do.
Not to mention, Apple also sells its other desktop called the Mac Mini, which is even more neglected most of the time than the Mac Pro, which is saying a lot.
The last update to it was not only many years ago, but made it worse.
So, it's like...
There are these two desktops that a lot of people use and in many cases depend on.
And Apple has a lot of customers who depend on these machines who are basically begging them for some sign that their needs will continue to be covered in the future.
And Apple is responding with, most of the time, silence and inaction.
And then this statement here is not only not better than silence, but is actually worse, I think, because the way you can read it very easily really does seem like the only desktop that Tim Cook thinks people need is the iMac.
Yeah.
and and i there are other ways to read it i'm not saying it's the only way to read it but i think that's the implication here and i think it's pretty clear i have a different take on it than marco in the terms of being unsettled by it because first of all uh it could have been way worse i know that's you know not damning the faint praise but uh if he had been asked this question and it said
I know desktops have been an important part of our business, but we really believe that the future is laptops only, and our laptops actually now are almost as powerful as our desktops that we never update.
And so, actually, we think that having a laptop with the amazing Thunderbolt ports that could connect to these wonderful LG displays that are totally not delayed and that we've discounted, like, they could have given an answer that said, actually...
the day of the desktop is done he didn't give that answer instead as vague as it was he said we believe desktop is really important blah blah blah we have great desktops coming blah blah he felt compelled to give an answer that is in the direction of attempting to reassure people that yes apple still does care about the desktop despite recent and not so recent events so
And that doesn't change anything because that's where the direction I thought they were going in anyway.
The only information in this statement is for people who were afraid that Apple was going to cancel the iMac.
This statement would reassure the people who were afraid that Apple was going to cancel the iMac.
It did nothing to reassure people who were hoping that he would say something about the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini because he didn't.
And, you know, it's totally clear.
You know, we think the desktop is important.
Hey, have you seen the iMac?
Because when we say desktop here at Apple, we basically mean iMac at this point.
It's a really great desktop.
It's the best desktop we ever made.
Look at that screen.
It's great.
iMac, iMac, iMac.
And then one vague statement, we have great desktops coming, one of which is an iMac with a better GPU, right?
Whatever you want to read into it.
It could be we have great desktops coming, including an amazing new Mac Pro, an amazing new Mac Mini, or something you've never heard of, and we'll cancel both those lines and replace it.
Who knows?
You could read anything you want into that statement.
So I feel like this entire exchange is...
a reaffirmation of the status quo that we on this show at least have have you know had consensus on that basically the iMac is Apple's vision of the desktop it's the only thing they're updating it's the one that we all think is the best one to buy because the other ones are so terrible and they reaffirmed that and only if you were afraid that they were going to go laptop only would you be reassured by this otherwise it's just you know business as usual
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't feel good about the Mac right now.
And that is very painful for me.
I don't want to get into it because we're happy for the most part tonight.
So I want to stay that way.
And talking about the Mac makes me sad because it seems like I care about it a lot more than Apple does.
And that's scary.
Well, so we should save, since we have a scheduling thing and we want to, we're going to have another, we're going to record another show very soon after this one.
So I think I want to save the German MacMalays article, as it is called in the show notes here.
Which made me very happy, by the way.
That was very well done.
for the next episode but there is one thing on a slightly lighter note that i don't want to throw in on on the tim cook thing although it's actually more related to the mac malaise someone wrote in whose name i'm removing to protect the the innocent um a listener uh about the uh wrote in about the idea of us complaining about the mac pro and everything and uh they were giving us some information that they thought we might not have um and this person said
wondered if you you'd mentioned that back in 2010 they took two years to make a minor silent update to the mac pro and then the day after the silent update tim cook said he'd get a better update the following year but then it took 18 months to get this better update so apple's taking its sweet time giving the update to the mac pro before just wondering if we we were aware of that and what he basically did in those two sentences is summarize the first year and a half to two years of atp
for the people who haven't listened to the show in the beginning our logo was the old cheese grater mac pro with a sarcastic new badge on it that was about the silent update after a wwdc keynote it was like yeah we updated the mac pro but it's such a minor update that it's not even worth talking about and they're not really new and it's not a good update but we have more stuff coming and then we still had to wait a long time for it and then it was the the trash can can innovate uh what was it can innovate my ass or whatever it was supposed to be
can't innovate anymore my ass and then they didn't update it for three years so yes uh dear new sweet listener we are indeed aware of this history of the mac pro and it is kind of one of the foundational uh uh building blocks uh i don't know what you call it uh it's really the one of the running themes of our show
Yes, yes.
I'm trying to think of it.
It's one of the axes that we grind.
Our main grinding axes.
It is the axe that we grind.
Or at least two out of three of us anyway.
And then we grind it and Casey rolls his eyes and moans.
And drinks.
That was only once.
Thank you very much.
That was amazing.
But nonetheless, I'm not as worked up about it as you guys are for sure, because whether or not I would be better served by a Mac Pro, which presumably I would, I don't personally feel like I have a need for one.
And so because of that, I'm not as worked up about it.
I am, however, worked up about the future of the Mac in general.
It seems clear that the kind of Macs that I would buy, which is either a MacBook Pro or 5K iMac, I don't think those are going away anytime soon.
But I do think that there will come a time that these machines are either going to be even more neglected than they are today, or perhaps non-existent at all.
And I think that my canary in the coal mine, to some degree, is going to be...
when does Swift Playgrounds become more than just Playgrounds?
Because the most obvious reason to keep the Mac around is to make iOS apps.
And if suddenly it's possible to do that on an iPad, that makes things interesting and potentially very bad for someone like me who genuinely prefers the Mac.
Because if I have a choice...
to do anything other than browse Twitter or whatever.
Even oftentimes ordering something on Amazon, if I have the choice, I'd rather go to my 5K iMac or perhaps my MacBook Pro than an iPad.
Because you want to open up a lot of tabs, right?
No, truly, yeah.
That's exactly right.
I know.
I was not being sarcastic.
I'm just showing you how you are going down this loop.
slope towards me or rising up to mount olympus to be with me oh listen to this guy oh my god oh jesus i think my eyes just rolled right out you can choose whether i'm dragging you down into hell or uh up to the no comment i plead the fifth your honor anyway but the point being uh
I still very, very deeply care about the Mac.
I would like to think just as much as the two of you guys do.
The difference is I don't personally need a Mac Pro in my life where I think that you guys do.
And so I'm scared.
I'm scared about where this is all going, but I don't think the sky is falling quite yet.
But it certainly looks like it's getting a little closer, and that's scary.
I fundamentally have a major problem with the perception that many people have.
And I'm not saying this to attack you, Casey.
But this is not just you.
This is far from you.
Many people seem to be under the impression that the main role that the Mac serves is as a legacy support platform for the creation of iOS apps.
And that is just complete and utter bullshit.
It is nowhere close to reality.
That being said, that is not necessarily to say that Apple doesn't think this or that some people inside of Apple don't think this.
I don't think everyone in Apple thinks that.
But I do think that there is a strong risk that Tim Cook might think that.
I don't know that for sure, obviously.
I don't know Tim Cook.
We don't hang out.
But I do worry about that perception that, like...
A, the assumption that the Mac is a legacy platform, that it is on its way out, that it is not the future.
And then B, that its main reason for continued existence now is as an iOS app creation platform.
And then C, that iOS will become a better app creation platform.
Because I would actually argue that all three of those are wrong.
I have thoughts about this, but before we do that, why don't we go through our last sponsor?
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So, Marco, a second ago you had taken me to task, and fairly, that it's kind of BS that everyone looks at iOS apps as the only reason the Mac exists.
And I think that you're right to take issue with that.
If I'm allowed to spend a moment and expand my thoughts a little bit, I think the thing to me is if I try to put myself in Apple's shoes –
Apple may not have an answer.
Like the chat room is talking about having hundreds of gigabytes of photos that they'd like to process on their Macs.
Okay, that's totally fair.
But Apple may not care about people who have hundreds of gigabytes of photos that they need to process.
They could just say, you know what, buy a damn PC.
I'm not saying that's factual.
I'm just saying it's a possibility.
And the thing that Apple cannot get around, there is no two ways around it, is if they want their strongest and most profitable platform to continue to exist, which is iOS...
If they wanted that to continue to exist, they need third-party developers, and those developers in turn need Macs.
I don't think that Apple wants to tell photo professionals or video professionals or any other professional to go away, but they could, whereas they can't tell iOS developers to go away unless suddenly Xcode is running on a PC, which I guess weirder things have happened, but that'd be really freaking weird.
And that's why I'm hanging my hat on this iOS app thing.
It's not because...
It's just because that to me is the one thing that is non-negotiable.
And if that goes away, if suddenly you are capable of building an iOS app on an iPad, which I think would be preposterous and frankly strikes me as a frigging terrible idea.
But who knows if that works.
Oh, I think it's coming, but I just don't think it would be particularly efficient at all or a lot of fun.
But that being said, look at what Steve Trout and Smith has been doing.
And there's an argument for it.
But anyway...
If that becomes possible, if you can submit to the App Store from an iPad, then suddenly the Mac isn't non-negotiable anymore, and suddenly Apple has options that involve killing the Mac.
And that's what I'm saying.
Does that make any more sense?
I understand why you say that.
I understand why lots of people say that.
I understand why people think that developing full apps on iOS is going to be a thing.
And I think it will be a thing for some people.
But I also think that I've heard that argument almost entirely from non-developers, and there's a reason for that.
Modern app development involves the integration of a lot of small tools everyone has a slightly different set of.
It is kind of, in many ways, it isn't just Xcode.
If you just port Xcode over, that's not enough.
That's enough for some apps, but not enough for complex apps, not enough for most good apps.
The way developers work with the computer itself, with the apps, with the file system, with the tools, the various tool chains, all these different integrations and plugins and custom scripts and custom builds and everything...
The way developers work in practice, professional, real developers, does not translate well to iOS's software ecosystem or to the OS itself right now.
The machines, like the iPad, is powerful enough that you could... It is a computer of sorts, and you could...
The hardware could do this, but the OS is completely wrong for most developers, for most development tasks, and most development needs.
And this is true needs.
Not like, you know, I need this chair to be purple.
Like, a need like, no, if I don't have this capability, I can't do this.
Or it would suffer so much that I would never want to do it that way.
The way software development happens in practice, for that to move to iOS in a meaningful way would require so many changes to iOS that I think are either unlikely to happen market-wise or that Apple would probably never do and probably shouldn't do to iOS because it would in many ways ruin a lot of what makes iOS great.
So, development of software, I always see as needing a more PC-like operating system.
And whether that is the Mac or Windows or Linux, God, I hope it's still the Mac.
And out of that list, I think my second choice would be Linux.
But I really don't see professional software development moving to iOS anymore.
Not only for the next few years, but possibly ever, just because of the way iOS works, the way it's limited, the whole way of iOS being like a collection of not like small apps that do one thing and not people's little scripts they wrote for the most part.
I know it's possible, but that's not the common case.
And there are many limitations there.
But iOS is the world of maximized full screen apps.
I know, again, not always, but it is the world of like big, complex apps where you do everything inside of this one app.
And Xcode could be one of those apps.
But most developers who I know working in software development use way more than just Xcode to get their job done.
And it all integrates in these weird little custom ways.
And every single thing, like every developer has something in there that Apple excusers would call an edge case.
And each one is an edge case, but everyone has at least one of those.
So in order to accommodate that style of use, that style of tool chain and workflow, you need something more like the PC operating system than like iOS.
in the way you can have tons of different tiny little apps working together, tons of windows, John, tons of like, you know, different things that integrate and plug in and aren't all firewall off and sandbox all from each other.
This is what developers need to work.
This is not negotiable.
This is the way things actually work in the real world for all developers.
I don't see how iOS gets to that, ever, unless it basically gets ruined and becomes just like a weird re-implementation of macOS, which could happen, but I don't think that should happen, and I don't think that will happen.
So on that particular point, when you said it before, and you just reiterated again, the idea that you're not going to be doing development on iOS unless iOS, you know, on iOS as it currently exists, unless iOS changes in a way that allows you to do that, because right now it doesn't have the facilities, right?
The other option, obviously, and I think the one that Apple...
thus far has shown the most inclination to pursue is not to change ios so that it is able to support development but to change development so that it is able to be done on ios and so if you look at playgrounds obviously that's no xcode right but the idea that
What it takes to develop software could be changed rather than changing iOS so that it can support what it currently takes to develop software change what it takes to develop software so that it fits into some semblance of the shape of iOS.
And I totally think making applications for iOS on iOS is going to come if iOS itself exists long enough.
I would say within the next decade or two, you're going to be able to make iOS applications probably sooner for toy applications.
But for real full fledged applications, I think it's coming.
And I don't think it will come from iOS changing to be more like the Mac.
I think it will become.
from the process of developing software changing to fit into ios and i don't think marco will like it or anybody who has developed software in this current age because it will be different and more limited and crappier in a whole bunch of ways um but i think that's coming now i i don't i don't want to belabor this more because we do have another whole show to record tomorrow uh and i want to talk more about the the german mac malays uh story um and different angles in that
But from the specific issue of development, I would say that all the things I just said, it's possible for all that to happen and the Mac to still be a going concern.
But as Casey points out, I think mostly what Casey's point is, this is a prerequisite.
If you ever want to ditch the Mac, you got to do something about the development question.
And all the options are like, well, chuck them to PC and have them do the development there or whatever, or bring it into iOS.
And I think all of those options, all those prerequisites to ditching the Mac,
are difficult to do like they'll take a long time it'll certainly take a long time to try to it would take a long time to do a marco was suggesting like change ios to basically ruin it and make it more like the mac not that i think apple would do that but that would certainly take a long time it would take a long time to change software development so that fits in within an ios shape to make you be able to make serious apps that would take a hell of a long time
And it would take a long time to boot people to PC to say, oh, we're going to port Xcode to PC.
All those options would take a long time.
And most of them sound like bad ideas and would actually be bad ideas for anybody who is currently developing top tier iOS applications today.
So what does that mean about the future of the Mac?
Tune in next week slash tomorrow live listeners.
Cliffhanger ending.
It's so our style, right?
And on that bombshell.
Thanks a lot to three sponsors this week.
We Sell Socks, SQL Pro Studio, and CocoConf.
And we will see you next week.
Now the show is over.
They didn't even mean to begin.
Because it was accidental.
Accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
Accidental.
John didn't do any research.
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Cause it was accidental.
It was accidental.
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
And if you're into Twitter.
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It's accidental They didn't mean to Accidental Tech Podcast So long
so we have an extremely important bit of after show follow-up that i've been really really excited to talk about for easily hours now marco how's your snowblower
I have used it, and I'm pretty sure I know how to start it now.
All right.
And it turns out that wireless snowblowers are awesome.
I forgot that you were actually trying to use an electric one.
i use them for years i think you guys got snow yeah yeah we got we got um you know maybe like six inches and it was really wet and so like i knew that if i didn't clear it it would just turn into a block of ice which everyone else's who hasn't cleared it has done exactly that uh so yeah and and i had uh i've had electric ones in the past and they they work okay but they tend to die after about two seasons maybe three if you're lucky and
And every electric snow clearing appliance I had at PowerShell before, they all had the same problem.
They all would just work for a little while, they'd be okay, then they would die.
And having to drag around like a 100-foot 15-amp extension cord as you go is both limiting and annoying.
So I now finally have a wireless snowblower.
It is powered by old dinosaurs.
I know.
Please don't tell me.
It's actually old plants.
I'm very aware.
And I thought this is the first gas-powered non-car I've ever had.
Like I've never had a gas-powered lawnmower or anything like that.
I was worried that it would be a huge pain in the butt.
And maybe as it gets older, it will be.
But right now, as it's brand new and I get fancy gas from TruFuel, it is awesome.
And it turns out it's really heavy.
But that's about the only... Oh, it's pretty loud, too.
those are the kind of the only downsides otherwise uh it's kind of amazing to not be tethered by a cord i got to go i you know because i'm no longer tethered to my house by a hundred foot cord i got to do the entire sidewalk for like the three houses adjacent to mine because they never do it themselves and it's always very hard to walk around here so i get to be like finally i can just clear this whole sidewalk myself damn it
And it was everything I hoped it would be.
It was easier than I expected.
Less hassle than I expected.
And overall, now I kind of see after admittedly one use with no problems.
But now I kind of see why most of these appliances are gas powered.
And yes, I do know that wireless electric ones do exist, but I've never been brave enough to try them because not only are they almost as expensive as the gas ones, but I would expect that to not have as much power as the electric ones or as the quartered ones do.
And the quartered ones have even less power than the gas ones.
And so, yeah, that's no good.
I'm very proud of you.
We have the same amount of snow, but I don't have a brand new snowblower, so I had no reason to use the snowblower.
We just shoveled it.
you also have a lot less square footage to shovel than i do i know but like but six inches or eight inches even it's not snow it's not worthy of me getting out the snow because my snowblower is is worse like environmentally both environmentally as in for the environment but also environmentally as in the area around the snowblower because it's two cycle and it is old and is incredibly noisy and it makes everything smell and it's gross and so there has there's a high barrier for me to taking that thing out and
Six to eight inches.
We actually shoveled twice.
We shoveled once when it was a couple inches and once more when it was a couple more inches.
Six to eight inches and we shut down for a week.
Yeah, well, because you guys don't have plows.
Well, we do, but certainly not to the extent that you guys do.
I said plows, plural.
You have one plow.
Shut up, Mark.
Our plows weren't out either.
Like, I don't understand what our plows were waiting for, but the plows did not come by our house until for a long time.
And...
We always do our sidewalk because we're good suburban people.
Thank you.
I'm like whoever these demons are that live in Marco's neighborhood don't shovel their sidewalks.
But we have a lot of sidewalk to shovel.
And I shovel the whole sidewalk twice, too.
no uh marco did you take your tesla out and go hooning go what acting like a hooligan another southern thing i think who no yes never sounds like a southern thing it's not a southern thing is it a college football thing no it's a pro it's probably the what is that god-awful wrx forum north american subaru empresa owners club nazi oak or whatever is it a rally car thing
i don't know it's just uh the act of being a hooning top definition on urban dictionary uh the act of being a hoon well there we go or driving recklessly racing doing burnouts etc i've never heard that in my life hooning is australian the chat room says it's australian huh australian from beer mate uh anyway uh have you gone out driving like a moron apologies uh in your tesla in the snow
No, but by the time I got on the road, it was raining.
The snow was all gone.
So speaking of cars, the actual thing I really did want to talk about, but I was hoping to bait and switch John with this.
There's been a new arrival in the Syracuse family just today.
finally got your ferrari right yeah it looks it's red color it's the car we've been talking about for a while i finally got uh this is my wife's car she finally he replaced her old accord with a new accord it was very difficult for us to get a stick shift uh sport accord sport special edition because apparently nobody in the entire world or at least in the entire u.s wants to buy that car so they had to make it for us and then uh ship it out to us and now we've got it
And it's nice.
And it is currently unscratched and undented and unacorn dented and had seven miles on it.
And it's got the new car smell and it's got seat heaters.
And we're all very happy.
Congratulations.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
And I think they might have added some options to the infotainment system, which is still terrible.
But I saw a couple like I found the option to remove Pandora, which I never use.
So it's not on the source list anymore.
So I got to check my car to see if that option was always there.
And I just missed it.
um and a couple other nice things there and and fine and you can one of the few options the infotainment system has is you can change like the color scheme for it and it's a red color scheme and we're going to keep it on that because it matches the car oh that's that's adorable uh i gotta say it looks great really aggressive wheels which we covered on i don't know if we'd ever even made it in the posted version of the show but we did talk about it uh on the show at one point or another um
It looked really, really good.
The wheels particularly I really liked, and it's a sharp-looking car.
So what year was the one that you just replaced?
2006, maybe?
Okay, and this is a 2017?
yeah we keep our cars for about 10 years for the most part god that is 10 years isn't it my word i didn't even put that together it didn't seem like 2006 doesn't seem like that long ago to me but yeah you're right wow yeah and those aggressive wheels by the way those aren't as aggressive as they look they look like marco's m5 wheels but they're not marco's on files we i'm five wheels were like five spoke and each of the spokes was these two little skinny things
And, you know, so these look like that, but only because they have it's it's, you know, it's an alloy wheel and everything.
It's all it's, you know, but then they're big openings.
You can see the brake discs and the caliper and stuff like that.
But it doesn't have these little skinny spokes.
What it has is big, thick spokes, most of which are painted black, leaving the shiny silver parts that look like Marco's wheels did.
So it is cheaper than you think it is, but it is still a pretty cool looking wheel.
Yeah, it's cheating, but it's fine.
Is your wife happy?
That's really the only thing that matters.
Yeah, so far.
Fair enough.
Were the kids at all enthused or were they completely did not care about it?
think they care my daughter to be contrary because that's who she is said she likes that car better than my car but honestly i don't know she couldn't actually believe that yeah i don't know i mean that from her perspective in the back seat like they're practically identical i mean like they're i think only a car person would notice a difference between these two i mean i can tell that they're different model years but it's the same generation of car it's brand new it's red it has cool wheels
I know.
Well, they don't care about the wheels.
Believe me, they don't care about the wheels.
The leather seats, I tried to point out.
Don't you notice seats are leather and they're different?
I think they noticed they're different.
I don't know if they said which one is this.
Is this the leather one or the not leather one?
I don't think they know what leather is.
I don't know.
Anyway, they seem to be fine with it.
So you had sent us a picture of the outgoing car, you sent two pictures of the new car, and then you'd also sent a picture of the stick shift, which made me deeply, deeply happy.
I was very enthused to see that.
However...
I noticed that this is one of the, I think, pretty much standard configurations where reverse is down and to the right.
So away from the driver and laterally and toward the driver vertically.
That is so ancient looking to me because my legacy, my Subaru had that same arrangement, although it was a five speed.
But now I've been ruined in the good way, I guess, by going in toward me and forward, which I actually really like as having reverse all the way to the left and up, which is the German way of doing things.
I believe Volkswagens do it this way.
I can't speak for Audi.
Obviously, BMWs do it this way.
Mercedes hasn't built a car with a stick shift in 50 years, so who knows?
But in any case, I really prefer it there, and it was like a blast from the past to see it back into the right.
It was weird.
I think I would like reverse in that position you described.
I think it probably actually makes a little bit more sense there.
The only thing back into the right has going for it is that it feels reverse-y, like you're pushing it backwards.
Yeah, that's true.
But other than that, I think the strongest argument for being next to first is, especially in the age before lockouts, which everything has now,
If you're reaching for reverse, your car is stopped.
And the only time you're reaching for first is also when your car is stopped.
So the two gears you reach for when your car is stopped are right next to each other.
Whereas if you're reaching for sixth and get reversed, which obviously you can't position a lockout.
But if you were, and there was no lockout, that would be very bad.
And in the days before lockouts, that would actually be bad.
So I can see the argument for it being up there, but...
i'm hondas are all like that where it's where it's back and you just kind of get used to going back and then you're going to go first forward and then whatever it's what you get used to
It's totally what you're used to, but I quite like having the two things that I'm most likely to do from a stop be close to each other.
But then again, you could also confuse them, so there's an argument either way.
But no, congratulations to your lovely wife.
This is very exciting.
I'm glad she chose the correct transmission.
This is probably the last time that the two of you will buy a car with that transmission, so I hope you can keep it running forever.
You and your gears.
Yes, yes, yes.
I know.
So barbaric.
You've got gears.
You just can't change the ratio.
No, I have forward and reverse.
That's it.
I know, but you have gears.
You just can't change the gear ratio.
Well, okay.
I have one gear of each direction.
No, no, no.
I understand what John is saying.
Like actual gears, as in wheels with teeth on them.
do i yes i'm not so sure i'm not i'm not so sure that he does i understand your point john and i would guess that he does but i'm not i'm guessing there is literally one gear ratio on each axle and that is what i'm saying you have gears you just can't change the ratio that's all i said
Captain Pedantic, everyone.
It's not pedantic.
I'm using the most precise words I can.
It's not like I'm trying to get off on a technicality.
I'm not trying to trick you.
This is not a trick.
Oh, God, I love you guys.