Begging for the Hub
John:
We didn't even address rose gold as we forgot.
John:
Rose gold or no.
Casey:
What about it?
John:
Is there going to be rose gold?
Casey:
Why wouldn't there be?
Marco:
It's led to now that pink copper color.
John:
Is it going to be like space gray where they just keep calling 20 different colors rose gold despite the fact that they look nothing like each other?
John:
It's rose gold, right?
John:
I don't care.
John:
I don't buy those phones.
Casey:
We have a lot to talk about, and we should start immediately, as we always do with follow-up.
Casey:
Richard Anderson writes in, If you use all the Apple things, isn't iCloud pretty close to offering full Mac backup?
Casey:
Desktop and Docs and iCloud Drive, Photos and iCloud Photo Library, Music and iCloud Music Library, or whatever it's called.
Casey:
iTunes Match, I guess.
Casey:
One extra thing offered by Backblaze is backup of other folders in User Home, and with storage sharing in the new OSes, the 2TB plan is a good option.
Casey:
I'm assuming they mean two terabyte iCloud, but whatever, it doesn't really matter.
Casey:
More for Apple to do, but that's a lot of Mac backup they're offering.
Casey:
So why is that not sufficient?
Casey:
I will speak for me first in saying I do not use all the Apple things.
Casey:
I very much like iTunes Match.
Casey:
I have never tried iCloud Photo Library.
Casey:
Don't trust it.
Casey:
Don't plan to use it.
Casey:
I have used iCloud Drive only for things.
Casey:
Things like Solver, for example, where it's just easier to save those documents to iCloud Drive, but I don't use it as like a Dropbox replacement where I'm just putting random crap in there.
Casey:
And I think that was most of what they said.
Casey:
So for me, I don't trust...
Casey:
Apple to do those things as well as the longstanding people have done it so I don't use Apple for all the things although I understand Richard's point and I do think he is on to something so Marco how do you treat all this stuff would this be sufficient for you
Marco:
I mean, obviously not.
Marco:
I mean, we're all nerds, so we're all going to have different types of data that's going to be different folders and everything else.
Marco:
So it's probably not going to really help nerds very much.
Marco:
But, you know, I think it's it's basically Apple like hitting the big things first, you know, picking the low hanging fruit.
Marco:
So, you know, photos are a big one.
Marco:
Like what do people you know, you got to look, you know, look at what people store on their computers.
Marco:
Where is most of the stuff they store?
Marco:
And what is the stuff that is basically hardest to lose?
Marco:
Stuff that if your computer was wiped out, what would most people freak out about losing the most?
Marco:
So photos are a huge one.
Marco:
That's probably the number one on that scale.
Marco:
So they have a service now to do that.
Marco:
And it's built into the phone.
Marco:
It's built into the Mac.
Marco:
They cover photos really well.
Marco:
They added the documents folder and desktop folder in Sierra.
Marco:
I still have not been brave enough to actually try to use that feature.
Marco:
However, that's also two big spots.
Marco:
Basically, where most people store most stuff is either in the documents folder, where every app in history has defaulted to saving because that's where they think you should put your documents, or the desktop, which is where people actually put all their documents.
Marco:
So it's great they hit those two big ones.
Marco:
But, you know, and all this, you know, music, that's another big one.
Marco:
And a lot of that's moving to streaming anyway.
Marco:
So, you know, they're doing it piecemeal so far.
Marco:
That's nice.
Marco:
That is better than not doing it at all.
Marco:
And that has probably saved literally millions of people's, you know, data loss from being worse than it could have been.
Marco:
So that's a great thing to do.
Marco:
But that's not full backup of a computer.
Marco:
That's a separate type of product, separate type of design and decisions and implementation details that has to work out.
Marco:
So no, that is not enough to be a full backup.
Marco:
It is enough for many people, or it's close to enough for many people, but many people are not all people, and that's not a full backup.
John:
so it's not just that it's not a full backup the problem is that it's not a backup that's the real problem so if you if you're going through like oh are they creeping up on a full backup solution by backing up bits and bits those aren't backups those are just cloud storage of stuff it's like calling a dropbox a backup dropbox is not a backup right a backup is first of all completely uh service agnostic backblaze doesn't care what i use to store my photos backblaze doesn't care if i use dropbox google drive anything like that it's not application connected
John:
And Backblaze makes a separate copy of my stuff, right?
John:
And I know Dropbox, you've got your local files and they've got your cloud versions and you've got local files and all your other computers.
John:
You can kind of sort of view it as a backup and the same thing with iCloud Drive or iCloud Photo Library, but they're just fundamentally not backups.
John:
So for example, if in iCloud Photo Library, you accidentally delete all your photos and that syncs to all of your things, I know they go into recently deleted and yada yada, but stay with me here.
John:
Like if you actually legitimately deleted them,
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
um and you go to backblaze to restore from backup backblaze will still have them because backlight doesn't care what the hell you do with icloud photo library right it's going to still have those photos or you know whatever your actual backup solution is so the key part of a backup solution is it is a separate copy that is disconnected from the programs that created that stuff same thing with icloud backup for your phone right if you delete everything off your phone
John:
your previous iCloud backup of your phone still has that stuff on it.
John:
So if you're like, oh, I've made a terrible mistake, reset my phone, restore from cloud backup, I think they still give you, I haven't done this in a while, but don't they give you like a date, a series of backup dates where you can restore from your most recent backup, second most recent, third most recent, right?
John:
I don't know what the retention policy is.
John:
And that's a, you know, that's a point of contention of a lot of these backup services.
John:
But the nature of a backup is it is a separate thing.
John:
So cloud sync is great.
John:
And I use it in addition to my backups, but it should never be confused with an actual backup because it's a separate job.
John:
And you want both.
John:
I want iCloud photo library.
John:
In fact, I have my photos in two cloud libraries, but I also have multiple actual backups of my photos.
John:
So backups are different than cloud sync.
Casey:
all right uh marco you have some quick follow-up on your requirement uh that you spend a thousand dollars to take good pictures which clearly i mean all snark aside to me i totally understood what you were driving at and that that i don't think that was intended to be a literal like it is impossible to take good pictures with less than a thousand dollars spent but seemingly your your sarcasm uh was not well received or understood so can you clarify for us please
Marco:
Sure, yeah.
Marco:
So last episode, we talked about one of the Ask ATP questions was about beginner camera advice and some setup advice.
Marco:
And I had said something along the lines of, you probably need to spend at least $1,000 in order to get pictures that are significantly better than a recent iPhone's camera.
Marco:
Because the cameras in smartphones are so good these days that
Marco:
It doesn't just take like a mid-range point and shoot to be better than an iPhone in a lot of conditions.
Marco:
A lot of times you have to be better.
Marco:
You have to go even higher than they.
Marco:
A lot of times you have to go to like a mirrorless or a high-end compact to really be better.
Marco:
So I had thrown out the number of roughly $1,000 as an approximate minimum.
Marco:
A number of people wrote in, most of the contention seemed to be that I was prioritizing the price of the camera body over the price of the lenses.
Marco:
I don't think I actually said that, but I left it ambiguous, and that was my fault.
Marco:
What I really meant to convey with that estimate was the cost of the whole setup, body and lenses.
Marco:
And I'm not even including in that an amazing high-quality set of primes or zoons.
Marco:
I'm thinking what most people do, which is you get the kit lens, or if it has a kit lens, you get the kit lens for general use, and maybe you get a 50mm equivalent prime because those are usually really inexpensive and really high-quality.
Marco:
Something like that.
Marco:
One good prime with whatever general-purpose lens you're going to use on it.
Marco:
and usually that's going to put you over $1,000 with almost any decent setup.
Marco:
So that's kind of where I got that from.
Marco:
Again, this is a ballpark.
Marco:
This is meant to be an estimate.
Marco:
These are all squishy, vague things, and it's also all very subjective.
Marco:
The other thing I wanted to talk about with camera follow-up is John mentioned that I had told him at one point that the secret to...
Marco:
I told you at one point that the secret to photography was don't use the flash and take lots of pictures.
Marco:
And we got a number of people who wrote in who took offense to this because they thought that either we should learn how to use the flash properly or that it is not necessary to take lots of pictures to take good pictures.
Marco:
That, in fact, many people can take great pictures and as they get better, they take fewer.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
And that's great advice if you've already developed a good eye and a good proficiency with the technical side of things.
Marco:
That is not true of most beginners.
Marco:
It's not true of me when I was a beginner.
Marco:
It's not true of me now.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
If you can shoot fewer pictures and get the same number of hits, that's great.
Marco:
That means you're getting better at it.
Marco:
But for beginners, it helps to take a lot, and then you can kind of see where you go wrong on some of them, and you have a better chance of having caught something almost accidentally instead of having to get it exactly right the very first time.
Casey:
Yeah, I thought your advice was good, which is why I brought it up.
Casey:
And I stand by your advice for, like you said, the general purpose person, which is exactly what I was.
Casey:
I was a complete novice.
Casey:
I was a noob.
Casey:
And I wanted some basic guidance on how to take a decent shot.
Casey:
And to me, I concur that avoiding the flash and just, you know, trying not to just drown it out with too much light is the right answer.
Casey:
Now,
Casey:
One of the things that somebody wrote in to say was, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
You need to think about where the light is.
Casey:
Well, okay, sure.
Casey:
But that to me is like step two or whatever.
Casey:
The first step is just trying to take a decent picture that isn't just blown out to smithereens.
Casey:
And any normal camera, particularly, you told me this in like 2007 or 2008 or something like that.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
You know, your average camera was a point and shoot, which probably had a flash that was always ready to rock and on 90 percent of the time.
Casey:
So it made perfect sense.
Casey:
And I stick with it and stand by it.
Casey:
And I think you were right to say it.
Casey:
So don't don't let the haters get you.
Casey:
But speaking of photos, we had a little bit of interesting feedback about printing photos.
Casey:
John, do you want to tell us about this?
John:
I mentioned it last show as a diversity of backup, but also to print your photos so you actually look at them every day and get to enjoy them.
John:
So the enjoyment thing, everyone's all on board with that, but the diversity of backup, a lot of people wanted to point out that many modern processes for printing photos will not stand the test of time.
John:
They won't even last as long as the photos printed from like
John:
your childhood in the 70s right because of the you know the differences in uh chemical composition of developed photos or god forbid if you're printing them on your inkjet printer those are going to be and putting them uh you know somewhere in sunlight those will be dead in like a week and a half right um so if you are actually trying to make hard copies of your photos for the purposes of diversity of backup you'll have to go
John:
and find someone who's going to print them on acid-free paper with a process that's not going to fade or one of the colors isn't going to go all wonky or whatever.
John:
I confess I have no idea what those processes might be.
John:
Digital is my backup for the most part.
John:
But even if you just have a bunch of prints that will last even just a few years, they don't have to last 100 years.
John:
So they'll last a few years and...
John:
if they're spread around or if you have some sort of digital disaster and all you've got left are the prints, it is possible to recover.
John:
You know, you can scan those prints back in.
John:
Now it's not going to be great, but scanning prints back in is way better than losing your pictures entirely.
John:
Like we have our wedding photos for a while.
John:
You know, they were,
John:
we got married before the digital camera age so they were taken on film and we had prints of them and i have no idea how high quality those prints are but anyway we scanned the prints and scanning the prints didn't come out great but it was reassuring to have the photos on our computer and backed up a bazillion times right and eventually many years later uh we went uh through the process of scanning the negatives and that came up way better because we still had the negatives right
John:
um and so now we have digital copies of our wedding photos in addition to you know ones that are in it we have a wedding album we have things and frames on the wall so i feel like we have a pretty big diversity of wedding photo backups you know all all the digital versions the negatives pictures and frames and pictures and albums uh and so that that's what you're going for but like i said if you if you're interested in
John:
making prints for archival purposes or to pass on to your children or grandchildren uh be sure that you just can't go to a walgreens and get a print you have no idea how long that's going to last you have to do some research on this all righty and do you want to talk to me about the plateau of photo resolution
John:
A couple of people wanted to talk about this.
John:
I listened back to the show.
John:
I thought I had said more about it, but apparently I just thought some of it and said less.
John:
This is about the idea that photos get bigger every year.
John:
And I was saying that that'll level off because you get diminishing returns.
John:
at a certain point and you can argue what that point may be a lot of people said well you know it may not be useful to have a thousand megapixel image because like you know you don't need that many pixels for normal sizes that you're going to print it but now all of a sudden you have the ability to crop subsections of the image and stuff like that uh but even even in terms of cropping and everything
John:
they will reach a point of diminishing returns is it 100 megapixels is it a thousand is it ten thousand you're not going to have a 10 billion megapixel image like it's just not going to happen it's not it's not a useful thing unless you're nasa like taking pictures of the surface of a planet and even those are a series of other pictures stuck together right um but this is all talking about plain old 2d pictures
John:
nothing else in them just uh you know colors and pixels in a big matrix right as soon as you start considering other things uh like photos with depth or light field photos or things that are not simply 2d images or photos with like live picture photos or photos where you can 360 degree photos where you can move around or change the focal depth and all these other technologies that are different than plain old 2d photos
John:
those can potentially be very large uh it remains to be seen if those will take the place of plain 2d photos i have to think that plain 2d photos will still have a place in the world and that those will be capped in the same way that audio is essentially capped we have we have two ears and yes you can have multi-channel audio and yes you could go up and higher bit depths and resolutions but for you know at a certain point and we may already be at that point uh digital audio files are not going to get any bigger than
John:
today's biggest highest resolution totally uncompressed audio because there's no point there's no point in taking a hundred thousand times more space than flack you know 75 channel flack and and you know 196 uh kilohertz or whatever you know like the max values that we're able to do
John:
there's no point in going much bigger than that because you know the limits of human hearing right same thing with vision once you go out of the realm of 2d photography into the realm of like vr or like a scene you could travel around in or depth maps or other things like that then you start to go up on the curve again i have to think that that will eventually level off too because again our eyeballs can only see so much and there's eventually a limit to
John:
you know just even in a 3d world how much you want to move around but that's a different graph but i but photo resolution like i think in our lifetime photo resolution or plain 2d photos will level off um and if i had to guess what the number is i would guess that it is going to be under a thousand megapixels so
John:
probably some number of hundreds of megapixels maybe as low as one or two hundred and that will be like the point at which people in the same way mp3 is like it seems almost like 256 kilobit lossy compressed files are like yeah we can do better than that but at this point consumers are fine with it so we'll just stick with that um so i think that will happen
John:
So don't worry about storing, you know, if storage sizes keep going up, you know, the current trends, because we always have more stuff to store like video and, you know, all the other things that we have.
John:
Hell, pretty soon each game is going to be 100 times the size of like the biggest hard drive I could have imagined like 10 years ago.
John:
We'll have plenty of room for generation upon generation of photos in our storage.
Casey:
Speaking of the size of games, I was looking through some old files that I have, and I noticed that Super Nintendo games are like under a meg.
John:
Yeah, they're smaller than a macOS icon.
John:
Yeah, they're like 200K or something.
Casey:
It's insane.
Casey:
I understand it.
Casey:
It conceptually makes sense, but it's hard for me to reason through it.
Casey:
When you think about it without really reasoning through it, is I guess what I'm trying to say.
Casey:
It's just like, wait, how can that possibly be so small?
Casey:
There was so many hours of gameplay I got from that.
Casey:
How can that be so small?
Casey:
But I mean, again, once you start thinking about it, it does make sense.
Casey:
But wow, did that really kind of freak me out when I saw that.
Ooh.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
Anyway, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Thomas Holliday writes in to say, Apple distributes not a lot of WWDC tickets with a lottery.
Casey:
If Apple reused its WWDC ticket system to allocate first-day iPhone whatever shipments, would that be better or worse than what they do now, which is a screen refresh click fest?
Casey:
After the iPhones are up for sale, presumably next week sometime, I will tell you our secret to how to avoid the screen refresh click fest, which really means Marco or John is about to tell you the secret to avoid the screen refresh click fest.
Marco:
Force quitting the app and using the app?
Casey:
Yeah, basically.
Casey:
Just use the app on your phone.
Marco:
That's the way to do it.
Marco:
The reality is no matter what method you pick, whether it is refreshing the store page in a web browser or whether it is using the Apple Store app, which is definitely the method I'd recommend, and even if you take all the shortcuts, like if you first set it up as a favorite after it's been announced before it ships, then you can go in and just go right to your favorites and order it from there in the app.
Marco:
There are ways to make this faster.
Marco:
However...
Marco:
the way the store has worked in the last few years, different areas, I don't know whether it's because of CDN caching or different region caching.
Marco:
It seems like there's something about caching or going live.
Marco:
Not every region goes live at the same time.
Marco:
And so no matter what, if you are not one of the lucky few whose region goes up the very first, whatever you're loading from might go up five minutes later than some other people's.
Marco:
And so you're already going to be backordered.
Marco:
Or you're going to only be able to get the least desirable color in the largest size for T-Mobile or something like that.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
It's going to be backordered like crazy.
Marco:
And if the various rumors of low volumes and low availability due to low yields or low production numbers, if that's all true or if it's even half true...
Marco:
It's going to be a crazy mess of scalpers buying them, having to get them off of eBay or Craigslist or everyone trying to sneak in through the business reps.
Marco:
It's going to be a huge mess of trying to get these phones.
Marco:
I would say probably until January, maybe even longer than that.
Marco:
So just expect going into it that almost no one's going to have these on day one unless you are willing to pay a large premium or you get very, very lucky.
Casey:
Yeah, and I actually wrote up a blog post on all this last year.
Casey:
And we'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
It's called iPhone Pre-Order Lessons Learned.
Casey:
And basically, it's exactly what you described, Marco.
Casey:
Set up your favorite in the Apple Store app.
Casey:
Get your Apple Pay settings squared away in advance.
Casey:
Make sure your shipping stuff is squared away, etc., etc.
Casey:
um it ended up that according to this post that my pre-order went through at 3 11 in the morning if you recall the pre-orders in years past have always started at midnight pacific because apparently the world revolves around california anyway so they went up at three three or so our time and then it's never actually on time because besides cashing california is not exactly a punctual area of the world don't at me
Casey:
You can email Marco about that.
Casey:
Hey, don't hate me.
Casey:
It's true.
Marco:
They're even on vacation at midnight.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Even on vacation at midnight.
Casey:
They're still not punctual.
Casey:
It drives me bananas.
Casey:
But anyway, the point is that 3.11 was when I finally got it through.
Casey:
And what I ended up doing was just what Marco said, you know, force quitting the Apple Store app, trying again, force quitting the app, trying again, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
And that is...
Casey:
And I've tried just about every mechanism for buying iPhones over the last few years, and that is the one I do recommend.
Casey:
It may not work this year.
Casey:
It may not work for you, but that is what I recommend.
Casey:
John, what are your thoughts on this?
John:
To actually answer this question, would it be better if they used the lottery?
John:
No, it would not be better if they used the lottery.
John:
It would be worse if they used the lottery.
John:
And the difference between WWC tickets and iPhones is that
John:
iPhones they make more of them right so you may not get it as soon as other people but you're going to get an iPhone if you want one eventually whereas WWDC tickets if you don't get one of them that's it until next year right so a lottery would be worse because that's just more bookkeeping and the added bit of randomness and
John:
like like i said with wwc tickets when we talk about wwc lottery i kind of like the idea that people who are willing to stay up at three in the morning and have these elaborate systems put more effort into it showing they care more about getting it on day one and they're rewarded for that whereas a lottery is like oh well everybody's equal in the eyes of the lottery and it's just totally random and so i like the idea that there's something people can do to try to get an iphone sooner but like i said unlike wwc tickets if you don't get one that doesn't mean you can never have one of these iphones you just have to wait a little bit longer i'm
John:
rest assured apple will sell you one unless it's like the white iphone 4 and then which case you might have to wait a really really long time but you'll get one eventually so lottery would be worse
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Monty Thomas writes in,
Casey:
This seems to be a compelling position that I've seen little meaningful counterarguments against.
Casey:
I don't really know anything about this, so I'm going to throw in my two cents so I can feel smart and then give it to John.
Casey:
But my understanding is that it's HDR that's the real good stuff.
Casey:
And that 4K, in most cases, until you get just a comically large TV, really isn't that great.
Casey:
So, John, what's the reality?
Yeah.
John:
So there are plenty of meaningful counter arguments because, as you noted, first of all, 4K, when you see like that on a television, it represents a set of industry standards that people have all agreed on, only one aspect of which is the increased resolution.
John:
There are other aspects to it.
John:
Setting aside HDR, which you're right, is probably a much bigger deal than 4K.
John:
The plain old 4K standards have different bit depths, different...
John:
frame rates and all sorts of other things, different color profiles, right?
John:
All sorts of other things that make the picture better.
John:
Now, as for the resolution itself, there are, you know, I tried to find a good one for the show notes.
John:
This one I found is reasonable.
John:
There are calculators you can put in to say, how big is my TV?
John:
How far away do I sit from it?
John:
And at what point does the increased resolution become meaningless?
John:
Now, the question of become meaningless is,
John:
It's tricky because a lot of these things use like, oh, the eye is no longer able to resolve anything, you know, smaller than this particular size or whatever.
John:
That's not necessarily the point at which the picture is indistinguishable.
John:
Because you're not trying to resolve individual pixels or lines distinct from each other.
John:
The eye can still perceive increased detail, even if it can't perceive the boundaries between the pixels, right?
John:
But nevertheless, there is a point at which your distance from the television combined with the size of the television means that 4K is completely indistinguished from 1080, 1080 is indistinguished from 720, so on and so forth.
John:
So a lot of these charts have a thing that shows your screen size and your distance and a bunch of lines, and you can...
John:
you know plot the things and find out where you lie and they show a region of the graph where it's like if you're in this region of the graph the graph it doesn't matter if you have 1080 or 4k or 720 because they all look the same to you um so use one of these viewing distance calculators one of which we will put in the show notes to see if it makes a difference in your setup but like i said keep in mind that 4k resolution is just one aspect of 4k and not even the most important aspect for most people most setups hdr
John:
is i don't know if it's part of the 4k standards but anyway hdr comes to modern tvs and that is more important than than 4k resolution and the color profiles and bit depth are also probably more important uh than the resolution so yes 4k tvs are probably worth it uh and bottom line is like so many things before you don't have a choice like eventually you won't even be able to buy a non-4k tv so don't sweat it too much and rest assured that is not just a marketing gimmick it does
John:
You know, modern TVs, 4K, UHD, HDR capable TVs have better picture than 1080 TVs, even if you can't see the resolution difference.
Casey:
So let me ask a dumb question now.
Casey:
My understanding of HDR comes from when it was added to the iPhone.
Casey:
And my understanding is it's a way of saying, well, you're taking a portrait of somebody like at the edge of a mountain, for example, and
Casey:
And you want the people to be exposed properly, but you also want the perhaps comparatively much brighter landscape in the background to also be exposed properly.
Casey:
And so my understanding of how the iPhone works is that
Casey:
It'll like take two or three shots at different exposure levels or what have you and kind of stitch them together to make one shot that's exposed properly at a wide range of distances.
Casey:
Assuming that's the case, why is this on the presentation side?
Casey:
That to me is a capture time issue.
Casey:
What makes it a display time issue?
Yeah.
John:
So yeah, you're looking at it at the opposite end.
John:
You're looking at it at capture.
John:
What you're trying to do is like your sensor has a certain dynamic range.
John:
You know what this is like if you're taking a picture with a film camera or any kind of camera, depending on how you have your camera set up in terms of what's the aperture, shutter speed, the speed of the film in the old days, your sensor, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
The bottom line is certain areas below a certain darkness are 100% black and areas above a certain
John:
brightness are 100 white that represents the dynamic range of your current setup of taking a picture right and if you have an image that you see with your eyeballs or you know out in the world where the brightest part is really really bright and the darkest part is really really dark
John:
And that range is way bigger than the dynamic range of your capturing equipment.
John:
The way they cheat this with HDR photos and the iPhone is they will take multiple pictures of different exposures.
John:
So they will say, I'm going to take the dynamic range of the camera and shift it way over to the left and take one picture over there.
John:
Right.
John:
Right.
John:
Right.
John:
that is making the trying to fake the dynamic range of your sensor to make it wider now on the display side assuming your content was either captured with a higher dynamic range by like a much fancier camera than the ones in our phones or manipulated in some way in a computer to add more dynamicism back in it to say that the bright parts are really bright and the dark parts are really dark now the display has the capability to show that range usually this manifests in the bright parts being much brighter than you thought um
John:
But it's the same thing, like, if you take your television and, like, crank down the brightness or whatever, all of a sudden the shadowy areas just become 100% black and you can't see anything.
John:
And the same thing if you crank up the brightness, you lose all detail in the light areas, right?
John:
A screen with a higher dynamic range can show details in those shadows while also not washing out everything at the bright end.
John:
And like I said, this usually – TVs are good at –
John:
pretty good at showing shadow detail but if you want the brights to be really really bright you will destroy all the shadow detail on a tv with a cylinder dark range so high dynamic range tvs when you watch them it feels it doesn't feel like looking out a window obviously because it's not like the sun burning your eyeballs out from your television but they go much brighter than regular televisions and when they go brighter like that it doesn't wash out the bright the blacks so that's high dynamic range in the display tech
Casey:
So when I watch an HDR TV, do I have to put like a little pinhole in a box and look in the box and all that?
Casey:
Just like the Eclipse is how that works.
John:
I think I haven't been keeping up with this recently, but I'm pretty sure no television you can buy maxes out the range of like the highest dynamic range standard.
John:
Like to be compliant, you just have to, I fit some fudge factor of like, you just have to be like within this range, but the HDR standards go like to super, super bright.
John:
And I don't think any television for sale today can hit the max limit of the HDR standard with the highest range.
John:
Maybe it's Dolby Vision, I forget.
John:
Because if you were to crank any current panels to that level, it would wash out the dark.
John:
So they have a much higher dynamic range than...
John:
I don't know what you call the regular televisions.
John:
TVs without HDR, right?
John:
Much, much higher than that.
John:
But there's still even headroom in current standards.
John:
But no, you won't need to burn your eyes out.
John:
Although I imagine if you're watching it in a really dark room and a movie, a poorly mastered movie switches from a really dark scene to a really bright scene.
John:
you're gonna squint i've had that happen with my nine hdr tv ever watch like a movie in the dark and it switches from a dark they've been in a dark scene for a long time then it switches to bright sunlight and you squint i've had that happen with my extremely dim by standards of hdr or even terrible led backlit lcds uh i've had that happen with my plasma so i imagine that'll happen even more so with hdr
Casey:
Finally, for Ask ATP, you know, these previous two were really long.
Casey:
Are you accepting Ask ATP via email?
Casey:
Because that was not part of the agreement.
John:
Those were tweets.
John:
Tweetstorms is what people do instead of blogging.
John:
I was going to blog this, but how about I write it a sentence at a time?
John:
with numbers at the end of it every time i read that i just think what what happened to blogging all you got to do is do one tweet with a link to a blog that's it but people don't want to click through the link so they'd much rather read what you write one tiny paragraph at a time in some ways it makes people condense their thoughts and say you know so they don't just ramble on and on and on but the other way it's like just too many damn tweets anyway this was like three tweets i accept that well it's better than tweet shots at least
Casey:
oh amen brother i hated what are tweet shots when you would you would take a picture of it or take a screenshot of the thing you're trying to talk about like write it and then highlight yeah and like highlight the section oh god oh no that's like a that's like a feature of the medium side isn't it that they like manufacture those pings programmatically for you or whatever and upload yeah what was it like one shot or something was an app that used to do it was really popular for like two to two months or something
John:
You say it's better, but honestly, I would rather click on one of those stupid images and read it than have to scroll through 75 tweets.
Casey:
In any case, just let the record show that if you're writing a tweet, Storm, your question is probably too long.
Casey:
Matt Sullivan writes in one tweet in an obscenely short amount of characters, and I commend you for it.
Casey:
Let me try that again.
Casey:
Would you discuss why and how y'all use Plex Media Server?
Casey:
I would love to because I love talking about Plex.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So this, you know, we might not have time for the iPhone announcement predictions because this is going to take a while.
Casey:
So what I use Plex for is a front end to any sort of video media that I have.
Casey:
So that's TV shows, it's movies, it's a collection of music videos that I tend to like to watch from time to time.
Casey:
It's concerts that I have.
Casey:
It is to some degree home movies, though I don't have a lot of those split out right now.
Casey:
But Plex is an unbelievable front end to basically any kind of media.
Casey:
It does do music, although I don't think it's particularly fantastic.
Casey:
It does do photos, which is okay.
Casey:
But to me, video is where it's really at.
Casey:
And what's great about Plex is if you can suffer through their very opinionated naming structure...
Casey:
and their very opinion way of how they want you to name things, then it will find all the metadata for your stuff automatically.
Casey:
So if you name the file for the movie that you're trying to put into Plex, I don't know, the rundown space paren 2000 paren or whatever the year it came out,
Casey:
It will go to not IMDb, but an equivalent thereof.
Casey:
And it will grab the poster.
Casey:
It'll grab the cast.
Casey:
It'll grab all sorts of stuff.
Casey:
And so the Apple TV app, as an example, is a really phenomenal front end.
Casey:
The Plex Apple TV app is really phenomenal front end to all your media.
Casey:
What's also great about Plex is if it's being run on a machine that is even reasonably powerful, it will transcode that media on the fly.
Casey:
So say something fell off the back of a truck.
Casey:
And let's say, for example, it's an MKV.
Casey:
It's a Matryoshka file.
Casey:
That isn't something the Apple TV can natively pick up or read.
Casey:
I'm sure someone will well actually me on this one, but let's just go with it for now.
Casey:
So it can't read an MKV natively.
Casey:
Plex is smart enough to see, oh, the client that's trying to play this is the Apple TV or an iPhone or an iPad.
Casey:
It really needs to be H.264, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
So I will either repackage it so that it's being presented in an MP4 container, or I will actually transcode the darn thing so it is H.264.
Casey:
And it does it all on the fly, all transparently.
Casey:
You don't have to think about it.
Casey:
The other phenomenal thing about Plex is if you expose a couple of ports in your router, you can access all of your data, all of your media remotely.
Casey:
So as an example, when we were at the beach a few weeks ago, we wanted to listen to music or put on a movie or what have you.
Casey:
And what we would do is we would hook up my Fire TV stick.
Casey:
It has a Plex client.
Casey:
And we would connect to my Plex server at my house.
Casey:
So we were in North Carolina.
Casey:
Obviously, the house is still in Richmond.
Casey:
And we would connect to Plex and we would play our movies remotely from North Carolina, which is really awesome.
Casey:
And then what's even greater, which people don't talk about that often, is if you have really close friends that you're willing to share your media with.
Casey:
you can become Plex pals.
Casey:
That's my word.
Casey:
I just came up with that.
Casey:
I really like it.
Casey:
Plex pals.
Casey:
Book bag.
Casey:
Anyway, so you can become friends on Plex.
Casey:
And that means that you can stream from each other's libraries.
Casey:
So as an example, all three of us are friends on Plex.
Casey:
And so if I ever wanted to watch something that I don't have, but Marco has or that John has, I can just go to their Plex servers from my house and stream right off their servers.
Casey:
And similarly, if Marco ever wants to watch, you know, Top Gear or the Grand Tour or what have you, I mean, if I hypothetically had those on my Plex server, that is, then he can just stream direct from me.
Casey:
And in fact, if you're a Plex Pass member, and this is where you would start having to pay for it.
Casey:
Actually, I think the iOS app might be paid.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
There's no recurring fees.
Casey:
Plex Pass does have a recurring fee.
Casey:
And if you are a Plex Pass member, you can actually download this media onto your devices.
Casey:
So I can download stuff from my server onto my device if, say, I'm going on a plane or something like that.
Casey:
And then furthermore, if I want to, I could...
Casey:
give Marco or John the ability to download from my server.
Casey:
So by default, you can only stream, but I can go and say, no, Marco and John can download from me.
Casey:
And I think I have actually, but anyway, Marco and John can download from me.
Casey:
And so they can download my source files onto their devices.
Casey:
So it's a really good kind of omnivorous.
Casey:
It will consume anything.
Casey:
It will spit it out in any way you need it.
Casey:
It's on darn near every platform.
Casey:
And it's really, really great if you can suffer through naming your files in a particular way that makes Plex happy.
Casey:
I don't find that way terribly egregious.
Casey:
I know a lot of people that think it's absurd and completely unintelligible.
Casey:
I have a couple of blog posts I've written about this in the past.
Casey:
I'll put links in the show notes.
Casey:
But it really isn't that bad.
Casey:
For TV shows, you make a folder with the name of the TV show, The Grand Tour.
Casey:
In there, you make a folder per season, season 01.
Casey:
In there, it's the Grand Tour space hyphen space S01 E01 dot whatever.
Casey:
That's it.
Casey:
That's the whole thing.
Casey:
So it's really not that bad.
Casey:
I have talked a lot.
Casey:
Marco, John, thoughts?
Marco:
I have none.
John:
John?
John:
Well, you kind of got it why you use Plex and how.
John:
I mean, how do we use it to watch video, right?
John:
So that's what we use it for, I'm pretty sure.
John:
I mean, I guess the only thing I have to add is like,
John:
I have video from all sorts of places.
John:
As we've established on Pat Shows, I can't even remember all the subscription services I subscribe to.
John:
I think it's probably all of them at this point.
John:
And I have a TiVo.
John:
And the clients for all the streaming services, some of them are on my television, some of them are on my TiVo, some of them are on Apple TV.
John:
They're all over the place.
John:
and the playstation and everything else is hooked up to it um so i don't have all my video in one place a lot of people use plex sat as like their clearinghouse but i don't i have plastic discs with a video on it of various kinds blu-rays and dvds i have movies saved on my tivo that are marked not to delete that are just convenient to watch them in that way and it really depends on i mean it's kind of annoying like how do you know where your thing is i just know because i put them all there but like
John:
The big fancy movies that I care about, like I just watched Blade Runner for when we did the Mike of the Movies Revisit thing.
John:
I watched that off my Blu-ray, the actual plastic disc, because that is the highest quality version of that movie that I have.
John:
And I wanted to see it in really nice quality.
John:
Other movies.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I don't care about the Blu-ray quality for when the kids are showing it.
John:
Sometimes Blu-rays come with a digital copy, but if they don't, I will rip the Blu-ray and re-encode it as smaller H.264 and put it on my Plex server.
John:
And so now they have a way to watch a movie immediately.
John:
um i don't know how they keep track of where everything is but eventually they just learn like hey moana's on the plex you don't have to get the disc right just play it from there um and we do have buy things on itunes and they just keep track of oh the hunger games movies we bought those on itunes so if you want to watch those through there and kids are adaptable and they learn so i use it as just another place to hold video
John:
that's convenient to to play it from because plex is very convenient it looks nice like casey said it will get the cover images you can change them if you don't like them which i appreciate because i always pick alternate covers you would yeah and it's pretty good about matching up the metadata and it presents a nice interface and i have clients on lots of different places on on ios devices and on my television uh so that's
John:
That's why I use it.
John:
That's why, despite all the things I already have in my life that I just listed, I found room for one more thing, which is a convenient place to play video that's not on a plastic disc or purchased in DRM and covered from some other service.
John:
Or streaming, obviously.
John:
Or recorded from TV.
John:
I got a lot of video in my house.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I mean, to be fair, I do have a bunch of plastic discs, but generally speaking, I will rip them and in a lossy way, which I know offends John, but to me it's fine.
Casey:
But I will go and buy the plastic disc and rip it so I don't have to worry about the being DRM encumbered.
Casey:
I almost never buy anything video on iTunes because I want it to end up in Plex and I don't want it to be DRM'd.
Casey:
But I did kind of skip over the how.
Casey:
And we've talked about this, I think, semi-recently on the show.
Casey:
But very, very briefly, all of my media is on the Synology, but the Plex server software is on the iMac.
Casey:
The iMac and the Synology are both on always.
Casey:
And so the iMac looks at the Synology via a network share and crunches all the media off of that.
Casey:
Synologies do run Plex natively.
Casey:
There's been conflicting experiences even within the three of us, whether or not our synologies are fast enough, good enough, strong enough, quick enough, etc.
Casey:
to transcode things on the fly.
Casey:
In my experience, it very much was not.
Casey:
But I think the media that I was asking to transcode was not already H.264.
Casey:
Now that I've been doing a very, very good job of curating what enters my Plex server and making sure it is always transcoded to H.264 before Plex gets to it.
Casey:
Now I wonder if it wouldn't be so bad, but I haven't done any further tests since then.
John:
You've got to change the quality to original.
John:
Like the remote quality or whatever, change it to... Well, there's two qualities, local and remote.
John:
At the very least, change the local quality to original.
John:
Even on your iOS devices, that will tell it...
John:
If it already is in the right codec, do not attempt to downsample it to a lower resolution, and that will go a long way towards making your streaming from your plain old Synology work fine.
John:
I do the same thing as Casey, but I also have Flex running on my actual Synology, pointing to the exact same media.
John:
They have separate libraries, which is a little bit annoying to keep in sync, but I mostly go from the Synology because my iMac isn't always awake.
John:
It's my wife's computer.
John:
Sometimes it's sleep, and the Synology is, you know,
Casey:
far away and i don't have to know what i'm doing into it by streaming movies i don't hear it it's in the basement that's my ideal if it doesn't work on this analogy in the rare case then i try it from the imac yeah the only problem with doing it original is if you have something that is truly big then your downstream connection may not be able to handle it so as an example uh normally at the beach we have truly terrible internet connections via wi-fi and
Casey:
And streaming video is not the sort of thing you would want to do over tethering.
Casey:
So a lot of times, including this past beach vacation where we had better Wi-Fi than we've ever had, it was still too slow to get a lot of like 1080 stuff without any sort of down sampling or anything like that.
Casey:
So I agree with what you said in principle that, you know, doing it where it's just blindly dumping stuff across the Internet.
Casey:
will make it a lot easier on the Synology, but that may be overloading your internet connection if you're outside of the house.
Casey:
Within the house, oh, absolutely, you should be fine.
Casey:
Also, the chat room is asking, do I have my Plex library backed up to CrashPlan?
Casey:
Yes, I do.
Casey:
Yes, I understand, given last week's discussion, that some of that is redundant, especially since I just said a lot of this I have on Blu-ray.
Casey:
But I prefer it that way because to separate out what is redundant and what isn't would be a nightmare.
Casey:
And also being asked in the chat room, what do I use to transcode every incoming file?
Casey:
Either Don Melton's video transcoding script is what I typically use.
Casey:
And if not, I'm using FFmpeg.
Casey:
And I'll put links to both of those in the chat or in the show notes.
Casey:
Excuse me.
John:
Just to be clear, Plex has separate preferences for when you're on a LAN versus when you're on the internet.
Casey:
Oh, you know, that's true.
Casey:
I'd forgotten about that.
John:
You're right.
John:
Like I said, set your local connection to original because I have gigabit ethernet between all these devices, like wired.
John:
None of this is on Wi-Fi.
John:
Everything is connected to wire.
John:
So it's like no problem whatsoever.
John:
And remote is where you have to pick what kind of quality downgrade you want.
John:
But you can change that setting from the clients.
John:
You can say, let me try original.
John:
Nope, not going to happen.
John:
Let me try transcoding.
John:
And, you know, you keep downgrading it until you get it.
Casey:
yeah that's exactly what happened at the beach was i was like oh yeah we'll just use original oh that didn't work for beans all right well let's try it slightly down i think you know let's let's crank it back but still keep it 1080 oh that didn't work all right let's crank it back to 720 oh i think we're almost there let's crank it back to crappier 720 ah okay there it is finally we've got it and by the way within the house like i said i don't have any devices that will play these things back at correct 24 frames per second cadence uh you may have a different box that is able to do that but
John:
you can do multi-channel audio like so if you have if you rip something rip it with 5.1 like or i always make sure i rip it with 5.1 because it will stream the you know original quality which obviously is a downgrade from what was on the blu-ray because i'm not doing 50 gig rips uh if i can help it uh and it will also stream the multi-channel audio as well and that will be the same as it was on the disc so it makes for some pretty big files but within the house it is a perfectly acceptable way for the kids to watch movies so i don't have to get a disc out
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Casey:
John, tell me about your work computing situation because I hear it's just recently changed.
John:
Yeah, so my 2009 Mac Pro that I've been using since 2009 at work, it was the first Mac our company ever bought.
John:
And I'll be sad to see it go.
John:
It's been a true, but it still works fine.
John:
But I do now have a 2017 Mac Pro device.
John:
uh they got space gray i think they got space for everybody pro you mean yeah macbook pro sorry wishful thinking small difference yes yes uh so now i have that and i know you know marcos had 17 of them and casey casey has one and you've already still hate it by the way given your impressions about all these things but now i have one so i have i have some actual hands-on impressions with it
John:
uh, aside from my sadness of trying to retire my other computer.
John:
So first the computer itself, like no surprises.
John:
I'd seen them in person or whatever, but, uh, actually using one for real at work very quickly, uh, let me know in practical terms, which things bother me and which don't first, the keyboard, uh,
John:
I've typed on a million times in the store.
John:
I've even typed on 2017 ones with the different damping and stuff.
John:
It's not a surprise, but again, you do a day of work in it.
John:
It is different than when you're in the store just playing.
John:
I think I mostly like the keyboard.
John:
I'm not sure if I would choose a desktop keyboard with this, but as far as laptop keyboards go...
John:
it mostly agrees with me i like the fact that it is quieter uh i feel like i can type fairly efficiently on it my if i only have if i have one complaint about the keyboard it's that i think i may be pressing harder than i need to which is weird because the travel is so low you think i'd be pressing less hard but i don't know if i'm i don't know i i feel like i'm more gentle on the
John:
apple aluminum extended um and i use the i use the keyboard for only a couple of days for reasons i'll get into later before i switch back to my apple extended aluminum so obviously i don't want to use like that tiny cramped up keyboard without home and end and full-size arrow keys and all the other things that i hate about laptop keyboards right um i am using it in clamshell mode by the way
John:
I really like touch ID because my work computer, I have to enter my password every single time I come back to the desk every, every single time.
John:
And my password is long and complicated for stupid security reasons.
John:
I was like, touch ID, this will finally save me from it.
John:
But because I'm in clamshell mode, I, and I'm so good at typing my password that.
John:
It's faster for me to type my password than it is for me to open the case, put my finger on touch ID and close it.
John:
Touch ID is not as fast as it is on the phone, right?
John:
The thing about the laptop as a laptop, setting it aside, you know, connecting it as my sort of clamshell desktop machine that I was...
John:
very surprised at how i cannot handle is the escape key in the touch bar i cannot handle it in real life when i have to press that key i just can't do it like i don't like i don't even like vi to begin with but the added insecurity of knowing did i actually get out of it uh get into command mode
John:
Did I actually hit the escape key?
John:
Because I have no way of knowing if I hit the escape key.
John:
I almost wish the computer beeped when I successfully hit the escape key because I just don't know.
John:
I reach my finger up there to hit escape instinctively and I land on an unmoving slab of whatever that stuff is, like plastic or glass or whatever.
John:
No, my whole body revolts.
John:
I cannot handle it.
John:
Just that one key.
John:
And who hits escape?
John:
Apparently, I hit escape all day long.
John:
Like whether it's, you know, escape X and Emacs or I'm stuck on a machine that has VI and I'm hitting escape.
John:
No, no, no, no.
John:
And this is totally a surprise to me because I went in the store.
John:
It's like, oh, yeah, I can hit it.
John:
No, it activates fine.
John:
But when you're doing it for real, like doing real work and you just expect to be able to hit the escape key with your pinky or whatever and that thing is there, I don't like it.
John:
I do not like it at all.
John:
as much as i love touch id i would be with marco in the uh you know the macbook escape camp which i need an escape key right now all the other keys in the touch bar i could take or leave like it bothers me a little bit that there's a a thing with flashing lights under there like it's another screen kind of flashing in my face but some of the more annoying things you could turn off like this auto suggestions as you're typing and crap like that i could mostly take or leave it
John:
I think if I had the choice and they gave me one with regular keys, I would leave it, even setting aside the escape thing.
John:
So not a touch bar fan, but the escape key is my big evil thing.
John:
I haven't had a lot of accidental input.
John:
I don't mind the trackpad any more than I mind other trackpads.
John:
I think I'm getting worse at trackpads in my old age.
John:
I've never been good with trackpads.
John:
I've always hated them, and now I think I'm getting worse.
John:
especially with force touch because when i'm getting worse with the trackpad and i'm just like in the middle of a drag operation or some crap and i got to move my fingers around i end up pushing too hard in it and going through to force touch and then i just like disable it or in that application so force touch doesn't mean anything anymore i don't like trackpads but anyway i got this thing's closed um i'm not using it as a laptop if i can at all help it because i don't like laptops so then i'm faced with a challenge of how i connect my 2009 peripherals right these are all you know well they're not all 2009 but uh
John:
The screen is from 2009.
John:
It came with a computer.
John:
It's a 24-inch LED Apple Cinema display.
John:
uh i think it was their first led backlit uh monitor yeah it was one that looks just like the thunderbolt display and has a mini display port connector but is not actually a thunderbolt it came out right before thunderbolt came out yep and it was it was the first of that style like so i'm what i'm staring at right now is a 23 inch apple cinema display which has a matte screen had white on the side it was aluminum with curved things on it and was not led backlit right so this was the one after that 24 inch led backlit
John:
And it's mini display port.
John:
Um, the, this, this display, I got it with my Mac.
John:
I don't remember what I got.
John:
I think it was my only real choice because the Apple is weird, but it's monitors.
John:
It comes with a very, very short cord.
John:
Um,
John:
that goes out into like a three-prong rat tail thing so like this little cord like the size of a power cord and then it splits into three separate things one is magsafe i think it's magsafe one it is right yeah which i've never used and still can't use it just sits there being annoying and magnetic two is the mini display port connector which as marco said is actual mini display port not thunderbolt of any stripe whatsoever and the third cable coming out of there is usb
John:
and the usb connects the monitors speakers microphone and camera that are all built into the monitor so that's my monitor and i want to keep using that monitor the reason i want to keep using that monitor is 24 inches it's small right it's 1920 by 1200 the reason i want to keep using this was part of my plan is because i hate laptops and because i hate anyone to move my windows i
John:
i was going to take this 15 inch macbook pro put it into scaled resolution at 1920 by 1200 and put into mirroring mode so when i open and close my laptop and disconnect it from the screen nothing moves because the resolution of my big screen is exactly the same as far as the computer is concerned as the resolution of my small screen plus or minus the retina right but it handles that like it you know it figures it out right
John:
And that part works, but then for that to work, I was faced with the problem of how do I connect this thing I just described to my computer?
John:
And I also have an Apple aluminum extended keyboard, which, you know, post dates, 2009, like whenever that came out, I got that.
John:
And I have an ancient USB mouse that I use at work, right?
John:
My challenge was how do you get all these things connected to your laptop?
John:
And I had, I thought, every adapter that you could possibly need, but I was wrong.
John:
And also work gave me like this little docking station thing.
John:
The docking station, I don't know what brand it is, but it's a thing that plugs into the two Thunderbolt ports on the side.
John:
Like it takes both of them up.
John:
It's sturdy, like it goes in both ports, so it doesn't like twist or anything like that.
John:
But then it hogs both ports.
John:
And what it has on it is...
John:
two usb-c i think that both may be power pastor or maybe just one of them is uh two usba sd card and hdmi none of those are helping me with my monitor and it would be hogging two ports so that's out the window i can't use that at all all right so i didn't think i was gonna be able to use that
John:
So I have a bunch of adapters.
John:
First thing I did was like, right, I do have USB to plug in.
John:
I have USB from my keyboard and my mouse is plugged into my keyboard because my keyboard serves as like a hub and the mouse is attached there, right?
John:
So why don't I connect the keyboard?
John:
I try this stupid docking station thing, plug it in.
John:
use one of its two usba ports for my mouse and keyboard use the second usba port for my monitor but that doesn't work because the monitor rat tail can't reach the usb on that side because the the mini display port went to the other side so it doesn't physically reach then it plugged my keyboard into the usb thing let me just use the mouse and keyboard nothing keyboard does not work mouse does not move nothing right try it in the other port took it in took it out i was like is this does this keyboard not work with the 2017 mac pro
John:
I could not for the life of me figure it out.
John:
Look, I Googled for it.
John:
Some people think it's a bug.
John:
Some people said, oh, you have to use an extension cable, which I have, which was frustrating.
John:
The answer is just use the extension cable that came with it.
John:
And I'm using the extension cable.
John:
So I tried not using the extension cable.
John:
Didn't make any difference, but that didn't work.
John:
monitor wise i had to buy an adapter that is mini display port to thunderbolt whatever that has a power pass through so i don't have to you know hog the power port for that then i have c to a connector for on one side for the monitors camera speakers and microphone and
John:
And then on the other side, I had a C to A connector for my keyboard.
John:
And the plain old straight through Apple C to A connector does work with my keyboard and mouse 50% of the time.
John:
Sometimes you plug it in, the keyboard doesn't work.
John:
You just unplug it and plug it back in, and then it does work.
John:
Very disconcerting.
John:
The docking station is completely dead to me.
John:
And then I had a USB-C to Ethernet adapter, which I needed for a variety of gross reasons.
John:
to get files from my 2009 mac pro onto this laptop they're on separate networks they can't see each other's ip addresses at work at all so i had to disconnect them both from network and then do an ethernet cable like a patch cable directly from the laptop to the computer and just communicate over self-assigned ip addresses to transfer the files which was fun
Casey:
Oh my God.
Casey:
What is this?
Casey:
2003?
John:
They're on different networks.
John:
It's a security thing.
John:
Like, and the thing is, the networks, as far as I'm aware, the work, like the networks are based on my Mac address, all caps, M-A-C, you know, the medium access control address, not the capital M lowercase AC address.
John:
Not the Mac store.
John:
Yes.
John:
That's how it must be.
John:
I assume this is the case because how does it know to give my Mac pro this IP?
John:
It's gotta be, you know, Oh, you come in the network, you recognize your Mac address.
John:
I'm going to put you on this network.
John:
Right.
John:
Um,
John:
so i said okay well my mac pro has two ethernet ports surely they only entered the mac address of one of them like it has two separate interfaces but apparently they entered them both so that didn't help me so yeah my only way that these things communicate they communicate with each other in two ways one i could put things in dropbox but we can't do that for security reasons because we're not supposed to have any of our work files like outside of our network so i can't do that and i wouldn't be able to do that anyway because i just have too many damn files and they're too big and it would blow my dropbox space
John:
I could have tried to use Google Drive for the work thing, but I thought it would have taken forever to upload and download.
John:
So the picture I sent to Slack the other day was my laptop in clamshell mode with all these adapters sticking out of it.
John:
And I think it was basically all four ports filled up just to be in the same state I was with essentially no –
John:
but certainly with none of the front ports filled uh on my mac pro because i'm just i just have a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor and i'm using my computer and almost every port was filled depending on whether or not i had the ethernet patch cable and to pull things from the other uh thing in there which means every time i want to leave the desk i gotta yank out all these cables carefully and you know if i want to bring my laptop with me which i tend not to want to
John:
And then I did the thing where I wanted to play some music or something.
John:
And I picked up my headphones and put them on.
John:
And I'm cranking the volume.
John:
Like, why is this not working?
John:
And then I heard sound coming out of some other place.
John:
Like, why isn't it's not coming out of my headphones were still plugged into my Mac Pro.
John:
And then I realized, oh, I have to plug my headphones into the stupid laptop now, too.
John:
And so I had to snake the cable around and shove it into the little headphone port, which is totally in the wrong place for my desk.
John:
And I started thinking about Casey and his Bluetooth headphones and how I don't want to have yet another cable that I need to plug and unplug.
Casey:
Hey, buddy.
John:
From my stupid laptop.
John:
anyway uh that's that's my not too brief impressions of my 2017 macbook pro don't have much to add other than i can't handle the escape key and laptop plus dongles does not make a desktop computer user happy especially one with eight-year-old peripherals which is mostly my fault but i didn't have an option to get a laptop so it's kind of works fault too or option to get a desktop so there you have it
Casey:
Before you get a billion emails, are you looking to upgrade your peripherals or try newer peripherals?
Casey:
Can you try Bluetooth for keyboard and mouse, for example?
Casey:
I know you have like a 30-year-old mouse, but are there no other keyboards and or mice that you're willing to entertain that are perhaps Bluetooth?
Yeah.
John:
I thought about getting the new wireless one with the key switches you like, you know, the Apple extended wireless thing.
John:
I thought about that.
John:
But then I said, well, then where am I going to connect my mouse?
John:
Right.
John:
And then basically I have to get USB into this computer somehow.
John:
And I guess I could get a Bluetooth mouse, too, eventually.
John:
But it's like, how much money am I spending here on or, you know, how much of my like desk budget do I have left to buy peripherals that replacing perfectly good working peripherals?
John:
And I like my mouse and I like my keyboard.
John:
And I'm pretty sure I would like the one with the key switches you like, too.
John:
I'm pretty sure I would like that.
John:
It's got full size function keys on it instead of the half size things.
John:
I think I would like that keyboard, but it's serving as the USB connection point for a mouse, which means I don't have a mouse cord that's like dangling all over the place.
John:
And I know corded mice are so, you know, weird people, but remember I'm the person who searched eBay to buy this exact like 1990s model.
John:
It's like the Logitech USB wheel mouse is the name of it.
John:
It's before they started ladding letters and numbers.
John:
It's not like the MX anything or the G anything.
John:
It is just Logitech USB wheel mouse.
John:
It is really, really old.
John:
And when my work one died, I went on eBay and found another one.
John:
So
John:
i really like my mouse i don't want to change it my mouse needs to connect to my keyboard bluetooth keyboards don't have a place to connect usb so it's all one big chain that leads back to me having crap plugged into the thing as for monitors i have a 27 inch thunderbolt display at home and i do have a thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter that would let me use it with my laptop but i can't match the screen res and i can't handle my windows moving so i don't think i'm gonna do that
Casey:
so much of this you're doing can we just put it on record that okay yes being in dongle town totally sucks i totally get that it totally sucks but so much of this you're doing to yourself by insisting on using an ancient mouse you're kind of doing this to yourself by being unwilling to have your windows ever move on you you're doing it to yourself i'm not saying that's unreasonable no who wants their windows to move who wants that nobody likes that who can
Casey:
Who cares?
Casey:
Or run some stuff full screen.
Casey:
If you didn't have 85 tiles on your one desktop, this is why you need to embrace spaces.
Casey:
Full screen.
John:
Come on.
John:
Come on.
John:
So I can have one window at a time.
John:
That's great.
John:
No.
John:
Well, you can have two.
John:
You know about my windows.
John:
I need to have them.
John:
They need to be arranged.
John:
I don't want them to move.
John:
Now, the possible solution is never let my laptop leave my desk.
John:
And I may come to that because the 27-inch screen is bigger and nicer than what I have.
John:
And it would mean...
John:
fewer and less crazy dongles, right?
John:
Because I can go from two dongles to one because right now I have two dongles just for the monitor.
John:
And one of the dongles is the crazy thing with the power pastor, right?
John:
So I could switch to one very simple dongle because the Thunderbolt display does the camera and the microphone and the speakers all through the one adapter.
John:
So I'm tempted to do that just to have a bigger screen at work and also to have fewer dongles.
John:
And I may bite that bullet, but if I do that, I'm just never going to open the lid of that laptop.
John:
which means i'll never get to use touch id which is sad or i'll or i won't use it in mirror mode i'll just use it in dual screen mode and just find something to do with that other screen or whatever but i don't know i'm i'm still mulling it over this is just week one with the new computer i thought it would feel like super duper faster than my old one and i guess it does 2009 mac pro is still a champ obviously i upgraded with an ssd long ago right uh and that made it tolerable and not you know disgusting right
John:
But it's still a champ.
John:
I switched back to it today, earlier, and I was like, because I have essentially perfectly cloned the setup down to the position of all the Windows, the desktop background, the order of the items in the dock, all the software that's running on it, you know, in my way that I do.
John:
Unplugging mini DisplayPort from one and plugging it into another, it was like manual KVM.
John:
And I was like, if someone switched this on me and didn't tell me, would I notice that I'm using the 2009 Mac Pro instead of the MacBook Pro?
John:
Maybe.
John:
Maybe.
John:
But it's still pretty good.
John:
It's still such a good computer.
Casey:
So why move on then if you don't absolutely have to move on from the Mac?
John:
First of all, I fear this thing dying.
John:
And second of all, I do want to have a faster computer.
John:
and nicer things and i thought i wanted to have retina until i realized i'm not gonna be looking at the screen so it doesn't matter and it's just it's just more it's been eight years i think every eight years it's okay to get a new computer at work can i widespread agreement on that if you feel like it's the right time to do our i think our replacement interval is 18 months or some some absurdly short thing that i remember hearing a couple years ago it's like if your computer is older than how many months you can get a new one
John:
so anyway i made it eight years it's still on my desk officially it doesn't i'm not going to stop the clock until it leaves my desk and that will be a sad day when i have to call the it people and say please come take away take away the computer that is listed in your inventory system as a mac mini because you have no idea what macs are i kid you not it is listed as someone came to my desk at some point in the inventory system and said this is a mac mini and that's what they wrote like they had to see it in person to write that down because if they were taking the information programmatically they would have got the correct
John:
model on it so i will enjoy seeing them come to retrieve my mac mini and then learn how painful it is to carry a 50 pound block of metal with sharp edged handles quote-unquote handles on the top of it hey so for the record listeners if you have not heard atp number 96 which is entitled the windows of syracusa county
Casey:
Marco and I think John begrudgingly and myself allowed for that episode to use the of Syracuse County title, which is something that we swore we would never allow.
Casey:
And we allowed it in this episode because I will only speak for myself in saying I am pretty sure that is my favorite episode that we have ever recorded of ATP.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And the discussion about John's window management, I was literally in tears laughing so hard at how absurd John's window management, quote unquote, set up is.
John:
And by absurd, you mean the one true way, of course.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And management, I think, is a loose term.
John:
Yes.
John:
Oh, it's management.
John:
I'm managing the hell out of those windows.
John:
But seriously, like, I mean, you don't do everything full screen, right, Casey?
John:
Like, do you have?
Casey:
No, I don't.
Casey:
No, I don't.
John:
So do you get annoyed by the screen flippy switchy gathering together crap when you unplug?
Casey:
As both friends and co-hosts, it is my obligation to make merciless fun of you for this.
Casey:
However, if I take off that hat and just be honest with you.
Casey:
Yeah, it does bother me, but it doesn't drive me nuts.
Casey:
And to be honest with you, when I'm going to a meeting and bringing the laptop, it's typical that I'm doing something in one of the apps that's either half screen.
Casey:
So, you know, I don't remember when this started, but in macOS, you can either do one window full screen or you can do two tiled side by side.
Casey:
So they're not full screen, but they're in that full screen mode, if that makes any sense.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So in any case, typically if I'm in a meeting, I'm going to be looking at Slack, which I happen to have sharing full screen mode with messages.
Casey:
Or I'm using Google Chrome because that's my work email.
Casey:
We're all in on Google Apps at work.
Casey:
So I use Chrome as like my work, you know, quarantine where Gmail and Google Calendar and all that jazz is.
Casey:
And so if I'm in a meeting, I'm typically working with one of those windows, which is in that full screen mode.
Casey:
If I'm at my desk, I'm usually writing code.
Casey:
And that is a combination of Xcode taking up most of the screen, a terminal window in the upper right, and managed so that it's just so, just like John.
Casey:
And then the iOS simulator in the bottom right, again, managed so that it's just so.
Casey:
And that screen, that virtual desktop,
Casey:
absolutely gets rejiggered every time i unplug and reopen the computer but it takes me all of three seconds to get it back to where it is so it doesn't it annoys me but it doesn't bother me it's usually only got three windows to arrange that's annoying to rearrange three windows now imagine if you had 30 it gets way more annoying and at a certain point you're not going to put 30 windows back and you're just going to surrender the problem john the problem john definitely isn't the 30 windows definitely no i got 30 things to do
Casey:
You can use more than one desktop, John, and I'm pretty sure you're not doing 30 things a month.
John:
No, I don't use multiple desktops.
John:
That's the problem.
John:
No, it's not the problem.
John:
That's the solution.
John:
I hate multiple desktops.
John:
I hate multiple desktops.
John:
I hate spaces.
Marco:
I love that we're talking about this an hour into the show the week before the iPhone.
John:
As foretold by the tweet of somebody earlier in the day.
John:
Well, I think they used two hours, but we'll allow for exaggeration.
John:
I will say one quick thought.
Marco:
I bet you will.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm sure this will be quick.
Casey:
Hey, really quickly, though, Marco, really quickly, do you believe in multiple spaces or are you a one space only kind of guy?
Marco:
No, I don't.
Marco:
I tried spaces briefly and I even for a long time I did multiple monitors instead of doing spaces.
Marco:
I figured like now here's just two physical spaces.
Marco:
And I have come to know that I am I'm a one large monitor and one space kind of person.
Casey:
Oh, you monsters.
Casey:
That's the way to go.
Casey:
You monsters.
Marco:
Just wait until he gets one 8K display, then he'll be living large.
Casey:
I know.
Marco:
Well, yeah, I have predictions about that probably for the Mac Pro next year.
Marco:
Anyway, but I will say... Go ahead with your quick thought.
Marco:
My very quick thought about the Toggle Town.
Marco:
tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock of uh of the 2017 ancient macbook pro um or 2017 macbook pros um so my my summer of using the macbook pro as my primary computer has concluded uh and you know using it in clamshell mode with the lg 5k doing all my regular work
Marco:
If you can get over the keyboard, which I can't, but if you can get over the keyboard and you can get over the touch bar's just kind of, you know, floppiness in the way that it is a flop, not that it is flexible.
Marco:
If you can get over all that, the ports still really irritate me.
Marco:
And not just in the way that, oh, no, I have to buy dongles.
Marco:
That's kind of a secondary concern.
Marco:
The biggest problem for me in using this computer is that the USB-C ecosystem still can't produce reliable hardware.
Marco:
Like, there isn't a lot of it.
Marco:
The hardware that's out there is weird and limited.
Marco:
And it's just not reliable.
Marco:
So, thank God I had four ports on this because one of them is going to the monitor.
Marco:
One of them had to be my Ethernet adapter, which is the Apple Ethernet adapter, which is actually made by Belkin.
Marco:
But it's the one Apple officially sells.
Marco:
It's the only one they sell.
Marco:
It would drop packets if it was plugged into the Thunderbolt display or any hub of any kind.
Marco:
So you have to plug that into one of the four ports that you have if you're lucky.
Marco:
If you're unlucky, you might only have two of them or one of them.
Marco:
So you have to plug the Ethernet cable or the Ethernet adapter into one of the four on the computer.
Marco:
I also had problems with my keyboard.
Marco:
I don't know, John.
Marco:
John had the same problem.
Marco:
I don't know if this is a keyboard thing, but my keyboard USB adapter, the little wireless receiver for the Microsoft Sculpt, it would only work reliably when plugged into one of the ports on the computer through Apple's USB A to C adapter.
Marco:
It would not work reliably in any other place in this setup, either in another USB A to C kind of hub or splitter thing or directly into the LG 5K's ports on the back of it.
Marco:
So that's now two things that require to be plugged in to the ports on the computer.
Marco:
Plus the 5K monitor itself, that's number three, which left me only one port on the computer that...
Marco:
could be used for like high reliability needs devices now in my case i considered my audio interface one of those when podcasting because the last thing i want is to have weird stuff happen to a usb device while i'm using it to record a show so that goes that goes into the fourth one i'm full that's it and they were like it's just the usbc ecosystem is so crappy
Marco:
And Apple is so insistent on relying on it heavily that what we have here is that even on the highest-end computers, you have now a port situation that is way less flexible and way less reliable than what we had before.
Marco:
You know, the USB-C...
Marco:
way the usbc promise is that you have these ports that are versatile that can do anything and that's a great idea i hope we get there someday but we're so far from it now and usbc is not that new anymore and i'm starting to wonder you know
Marco:
Will we ever get there?
Marco:
And in the meantime, what are we supposed to do with these pro computers that are just increasingly difficult to use in pro contexts?
Marco:
You know what pros need?
Marco:
They need reliable hardware.
Marco:
They need reliable ports and as many of them as you can give them.
Marco:
That's what pros actually need.
Marco:
We have unreliable keyboards.
Marco:
We have unreliable ports.
Marco:
We have unreliable peripherals, unreliable dongles.
Marco:
Good luck.
Marco:
If you ever want to have an HDMI output, read the reviews of every HDMI adapter out there for USB-C.
Marco:
It's a disaster zone.
Marco:
And, you know, video out is not an uncommon thing.
Marco:
This entire ecosystem is really crappy.
Marco:
And it is totally...
Marco:
Not sufficient enough, not reliable enough, and unbefitting of the pro name to rely solely on this ecosystem of crap hardware plugged into this way fewer ports than we had before on these laptops.
Marco:
And the only ways I can see Apple really meaningfully helping the situation are either give us our ports back, which will never happen,
Marco:
or actually make high-quality USB-C dongles and hubs and adapters and docking stations and everything else, because no one else obviously is or can.
Marco:
So Apple shipped that weird hub that Tipster rumored for us forever ago.
John:
Oh, here we go.
John:
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
John:
The foundational ATV Tipster rumor, we made fun of it, but now we're begging for the hub, aren't we?
John:
We're begging for it.
Marco:
Yes, because, look, you can't rely on the rest of the... It's just like the monitors.
Marco:
You know, Apple...
Marco:
Tried to rely on third parties to make good monitors.
Marco:
LG tried.
Marco:
It sucks.
Marco:
So Apple's getting back into the game because they saw that the third-party world just didn't and seemingly couldn't deliver.
Marco:
Deliver on USB-C hubs because that's what all of your pro users buying these pro laptops actually need.
Marco:
We need reliable, useful, many-ported USB hubs.
Marco:
And those don't exist right now in USB-C.
Marco:
So please, for the love of God, Apple, fix this problem because it makes it very, very hard to use your laptops the way you market them to be used if things aren't reliable.
Casey:
My Adorable works great.
Casey:
So do my Bluetooth accessories.
Casey:
I just wanted to let you know.
Marco:
Yeah, but your iMac was turning itself off intermittently for three months before you told us about it.
Marco:
And you were like, it's not a big deal.
Casey:
Well, actually, to that end, I meant to mention that the infinitesimally small or infinitely small piece of dust that has been migrating around my Adorable keyboard...
Casey:
Definitely made its way under the space bar briefly until I blew it out with some compressed air.
John:
Who uses the space bar?
John:
I don't think you blew it out.
John:
You've got to stop saying that you blew it out.
John:
You're just moving it around in there, it seems like.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
Well, that's true.
Casey:
That's true.
Marco:
You love this keyboard, though.
John:
It's great, right?
Casey:
No, I do.
Casey:
I know you're being silly, but also serious.
Casey:
I do love the keyboard, but I will absolutely concede after a few months' use that it is not tolerant enough to having any sort of dust...
Casey:
I'm assuming that's what the problem was, but any sort of like debris getting under the keys.
Casey:
I do love it in every other way.
Casey:
I still prefer the Magic Keyboard ever so slightly, but that's the current gen external keyboards.
Casey:
But I do love this keyboard, but it is not tolerant enough of the real world.
Casey:
And as much as I'm poking fun at you guys for not liking your MacBook Pros, I think part of the reason I love my Adorable so much and can suffer through it having only one port is because it's an accessory computer, which is a totally ridiculous thing to say.
Casey:
But it's the truth.
Casey:
If I really want to get something done, I either have my work, you know, pre-USBC MacBook Pro.
Casey:
Or I have my iMac and I don't have port issues on either of those computers.
Casey:
And although the USB-C peripherals that I've bought have been perfectly fine, I'm not in a position where I'm relying them for my livelihood like you guys are.
Casey:
So as much as I'm joking and poking fun, it's really not an apples to apples comparison.
Casey:
It's not fair of me.
John:
And I think Marco and I have the same problem in that to varying degrees, we are attempting to connect quote unquote legacy peripherals to a modern computer.
John:
Like Marco has his weird Microsoft keyboard, which doesn't, is not Bluetooth and doesn't know anything about USB-C.
John:
And I have my.
John:
weird ancient uh discontinued mere months ago apple extended aluminum keyboard which used to be the most modern extended keyboard they sold until they changed to the bluetooth one and i have my totally uh ancient usbc belkin ethernet adapter sold in apple stores as of last year yeah yeah that's that's a separate thing yeah ethernet is legacy everything is everything is wireless now um but yeah the keyboard thing just really blew me because you just assume like keyboard and mice they're the the most boring peripherals
John:
how could they not work if anything is going to work connected to any kind of adapter that makes a usb surely like the keyboard will that's not a demanding application and you said you had uh reliability problems with it as far as i'm able to tell it never works with that adapter so there's there's this the you know the dock thing that had that plugs into both the ports that has two usba ports on it and the keyboard
John:
plugged in with or without an extension cable on both sides of the thing plugged and unplugged 50 times just nothing just like there was nothing there and even the mini display port adapter if i unplug it and plug it back in very often it won't work and i will have to unplug the mini display port from the adapter unplug the power from the adapter plug them both back in and then plug the thing back in to get it to just i don't i don't even that's some weird off-brand thing but
John:
I agree that the ecosystem is bad.
John:
If we use Bluetooth, everything and had modern peripherals, things would be better, but that doesn't help with like the ethernet situation and the lack of hubs.
John:
So.
John:
Not looking great, but I'm sure my new Mac Pro will solve all these problems.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
You know, to be fair, I would argue, just to play devil's advocate, that I would argue that Ethernet is also legacy.
Casey:
Like, just Ethernet as a thing.
Casey:
Hold on, hold on.
Casey:
I absolutely love Ethernet.
Casey:
I have pretty much all of my devices on Ethernet.
Casey:
I'm not... I'm playing devil's advocate here, but...
Casey:
The future, hypothetically, is wireless.
Casey:
And just a few weeks ago, I was transferring something mammoth between computers.
Casey:
I forget exactly what it was, but I was reminded how much faster Ethernet is than any wireless I've ever used.
Casey:
And I completely agree with you guys that given the choice, Ethernet all day, every day.
Casey:
But you could argue, you could make the argument that just the fact that you want to plug in Ethernet is just as legacy as using a USB-A keyboard.
John:
yeah reliability is legacy well the usb i'll give you this the ethernet connector is ridiculous right rj45 or whatever the hell that thing is that is ridiculous and that is totally a legacy connector which is why it's not on computers anymore unless they're giant desktops in which case you'll still be there and also modern wireless standards are faster than gigabit ethernet they have faster than gigabit wireless things they don't have faster than 10 gigabit because you have 10 10 gig internet ethernet
John:
on you know super fancy enterprise hardware and of course the new mac pro will have 10 gig ethernet because why wouldn't it with the 8k display you'll have five 10k ethernet ports you know the iMac pro has it seven usb 3.1 ports with a connectors boy this fantasy mac pro is looking better all the time wow like that mock-up that guy made remember like six months ago with like it just had like 15 000 ports on the back of it you're right
John:
It's got an ADB port in case if so, Gruber can hook up his Apple Extended 2 without an adapter.
Marco:
Scuzzy.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
There's an event next week, but before we talk about what we hope and want to see an hour and a half on the show for the event, let's talk about Marco's self-described crazy topic idea.
Casey:
And if I'm reading this right, I actually think this is a really good idea.
Casey:
So tell me, Marco, what's going on?
Marco:
So I kind of felt like this would be a good time.
Marco:
It's always hard to know after the event to objectively look back on the phones we've had for the last year and to really judge them or to look back and say, you know, what did we really need versus what was delivered by the new phone?
Marco:
And so I kind of wanted to have what I'm calling here the iPhone 7 exit interview.
Marco:
And I know you think I've never had a job before, but I actually have done a couple of exit interviews because one thing I'm good at is leaving jobs.
Casey:
I was just thinking to myself, does he really know what this is?
Casey:
I'll just let it go.
Casey:
And then sure enough, I haven't done many of them.
Marco:
So basically, I wanted to kind of like, you know, look at looking back now at the iPhone 7 that is a year old.
Marco:
How has it been for us?
Marco:
What are things that we were concerned about that ended up not being a problem?
Marco:
And what do we really want from the next phone to solve shortcomings or things that we would like to be improved in the iPhone 7?
Casey:
I wish I had prepared more for this because I saw you adding this like 20 minutes ago into the show notes.
Casey:
But I really like this topic.
Casey:
I think this is a really great idea.
Casey:
And
Casey:
Off the top of my head, just some immediate ideas.
Casey:
I think... Well, let me remind everyone.
Casey:
I have an iPhone 7.
Casey:
I do not have the Plus because I am not a giant.
Casey:
I do not have the Jet Black model.
Casey:
And because of that, I feel like I don't care for the fact that this thing is still one of the most slippery devices I've ever held in my entire life.
Casey:
However...
Casey:
It is visually, aesthetically, one of my favorite looking devices.
Casey:
I have the matte black, and I think this color is just beautiful.
Casey:
And I love the way it looks.
Casey:
I wish it was tackier, stickier, maybe not the right word for it, but I wish it had that feel and that grip of the jet black.
Casey:
But I love the way this thing looks, with the exception of the camera bump.
Casey:
I like the fact that they embraced the camera bump this time rather than in the 6S and maybe the 6 as well, where it was kind of like a piece of metal that was not part of the case.
Casey:
This feels to be a part of the aluminum was kind of blown out to make the camera bump.
Casey:
I don't care for the camera bump.
Casey:
I really wish that would go away.
Casey:
I think the battery life on the 7 has gotten to the point that it is no longer frustrating on a regular basis.
Casey:
If I go to WWDC or something like that where I'm on my phone constantly, I'm fighting thousands of other people for cell coverage, then I will need a battery pack or something like that.
Casey:
But for my use anyway, day to day,
Casey:
I think this battery is fine.
Casey:
I am sure there is a listener and it might be you listening to this right now saying, oh, my gosh, Casey is crazy.
Casey:
This battery is nowhere near fine.
Casey:
And for you, that very well may be true.
Casey:
But for me, this is the first phone that it's very rare that I end the day concerned with how low my battery is.
Casey:
So I do very much approve of the battery life.
Casey:
I still want for more.
Casey:
I wish I had an additional 20 to 50 percent more than I do at the end of the day.
Casey:
But because thin trumps everything with Apple, I don't expect to have that.
Casey:
And for all I know, it might even get worse with this new phone with its even bigger display.
Casey:
Um, the lack of headphone jack doesn't bother me because I am freaking in love with my AirPods.
Casey:
There's been like twice that I've really needed to plug something into this.
Casey:
And, and I think both times I had the little adapter thing with me, unlike John on his flight to London.
Casey:
But overall, I think this is a damn good phone.
Casey:
It doesn't mean it can't be improved, but I do think this is a really, really, really good phone.
Casey:
And I'm really, really happy with it.
Casey:
And that said, it's about to be ruined when Apple tells me about the new phone.
Casey:
And this is going to be an utter piece of garbage, which is exactly why we're doing this today, like Marco said, instead of in a week from now.
Casey:
John.
John:
So I think when we were listing like maybe the end of last year, like our favorite Apple products, I think I listed my iPhone 7.
John:
I've got the Jet Black iPhone 7 in the Apple leather case.
John:
And I said I liked it then and I really like it now.
John:
This is by far my favorite iPhone I've ever found, which is not saying much because I've owned two iPhones.
John:
I had a six.
John:
Now I have a 7, so I do not have a long history of phones, but I like this better than any of my touches, I feel like, because... I hope so.
John:
Even just in the moment, I'm adjusting for... Obviously, it's better than now, but even back when I got them, because...
John:
i think as i think i said on a past show the non-moving home button i have become a super fan of now just as they're gonna ditch it of course right yeah i love it uh the leather case which which i lasted like you know 24 hours with it and not in the case and i couldn't handle it so i bought the leather case the leather case is so much better than my iphone 6 leather case it's just the apple leather case black apple leather case
John:
i love the volume controls on it i'm good enough now that i can hit the volume controls when my phone isn't in my front in my front or in my back pocket why do i have to do that because the damn airpods don't have volume control on it so i've learned this skill um but they're they're very reliable they feel good i can find them um it has not steered me wrong battery life is sufficient for my needs uh more than sufficient for my needs even to the wwdc i feel like it's okay
John:
I would probably go with the Silly Hump battery pack if I did a WWC-like thing more often, but I don't, so it's fine the way it is.
John:
I like the fact that it's grippy.
John:
It's been very reliable.
John:
It's felt fast the whole time.
John:
The lack of the headphone port burned me twice maybe, once in a big way on a six-hour flight to the UK and once in a small way where I just couldn't listen to something when I wanted to.
John:
uh but in the end it was not a big deal in my life like it doesn't day to day it doesn't bother me i have not encountered situations where i wanted to use headphones and also charge because i'm in the post airpod age now and i super duper love my airpods maybe the airpods help cover for the lack of headphone jack but in the end even when i was using the wired ones i thought it was mostly fine i think i think i would be more cranky about it if airpods didn't exist let's put it that way but
John:
but it didn't bother me.
John:
But yeah, I think it's been great.
John:
I really like the product.
John:
I like the camera.
John:
I like the case.
John:
I like how it fits into my life.
John:
It is better than the six.
Casey:
All right, Marco, take us home.
Marco:
Overall, I am way happier with the 7 than I expected to be at its launch.
Marco:
Things that I thought would be a problem, the home button being all weird, like John, I thought it was weird for the first couple days, and now I actually like it.
Marco:
I actually have converted to it, and now other home buttons feel inferior.
Marco:
I don't know why.
Marco:
It doesn't make sense, but that's how it is.
Marco:
The jet black finish that we were all concerned about, all the scratches...
Marco:
It turns out I never look at the back of my phone.
Marco:
So while it is indeed all scratched up at the bottom, you really only see it at like a certain angle where the light reflects on the scratches anyway.
Marco:
And it just is not a problem in real world use for me.
Marco:
I just don't ever look at that.
Marco:
And the Jet Black finish, because it is a little bit tacky, like you were mentioning earlier, Casey, it allows me to use this phone with no case, with no grippy stickers or decals or vinyl wraps for the first time in the entire, in this whole design era from the 6 forward with the shape of phone.
Marco:
It allows me to use it caseless.
Marco:
And it has always been very secure in my hand.
Marco:
I've never even come close to dropping it.
Marco:
So I'm incredibly happy with the physical parts of it.
Marco:
The size is great.
Marco:
I would like the larger screen and better cameras of the plus size, but ultimately the size of this just works very, very well for me of just the regular size 7.
Marco:
So I'm very, very happy with that.
Marco:
The camera is amazing.
Marco:
Having optical image stabilization has made a huge difference, especially in video.
Casey:
Oh, good point, good point.
Marco:
And this is one of the things that I really want from the next iPhone.
Marco:
Hopefully, we're going to get that next week.
Marco:
I saw a brief rumor about it, so we'll see.
Marco:
But one thing I really want is for the video camera to not make me choose between 4K and 60 frames per second.
Marco:
I want to be able to shoot in 4K at 60 frames per second.
Marco:
And that's a big ask.
Marco:
If you look around the rest of the...
Marco:
video camera world, very few things shoot at 4K60.
Marco:
That is incredibly uncommon.
Marco:
Even among very high-end video cameras, that's still pretty uncommon.
Marco:
But the iPhone, especially with the 7 adding the stabilization and everything, it has made it very clear to me in practical usage that the iPhone is the best video camera in the world for almost anything.
Marco:
Obviously not if you're shooting professionally for movies or TV or things like that.
Marco:
But if you are just a regular person shooting video for your family, yourself, even lower end creative projects, I would say the iPhone camera as a video camera is world class in practice.
Marco:
It is incredibly easy to use.
Marco:
You don't have to really worry too much about focus or audio.
Marco:
both of which are massive pains in the butt on a regular video camera, even good ones.
Marco:
It's just really, really good as being a video camera.
Marco:
And a built-in stabilization, that helps too, everything else.
Marco:
So overall, I am very, very happy with camera, with the physical form factor.
Marco:
The battery has been pretty good for me, better than I thought, and by far, probably the best iPhone battery I've ever had.
Marco:
still not enough for me most of the time.
Marco:
But I would say actually before the iOS 11 beta in June, it was enough for me most days.
Marco:
So ever since the beta, that has not been true anymore, unfortunately.
Marco:
And that could just be weird beta weirdness.
Marco:
But even now that we're at the very, very late beta stages and the build we have now is probably the GM, the battery still is not good enough, but it's at least not that far off.
Marco:
Like Casey, an extra 20% to 50% would probably do it for me.
Marco:
Headphone jack, it was a real pain in the butt when I was on an airplane.
Marco:
Like John, airplanes, I think, are when a lot of people hit that problem.
Marco:
Or if there was a situation in which you listened a lot while charging at work or in various other places.
Marco:
Or in cars, if you use the little plug adapters for it instead of a Bluetooth adapter, things like that.
Marco:
The only thing out of those that really applied to me in my life was airplane usage.
Marco:
So on flights, I hated it.
Marco:
But I eventually have figured out Bluetooth headphones that aren't so bad for planes.
Marco:
So I switched to those begrudgingly, giving up my awesome wired pair.
Marco:
For portable walking use around town, I was already on Bluetooth, so it didn't matter.
Marco:
AirPods don't fit my ears, unfortunately, but that solved the problem for a lot of other people, although also not on planes because they just leak too much sound in and you can't hear anything.
Marco:
Anyway, so overall, pretty good.
Marco:
One thing also that doesn't get a lot of attention with the iPhone 7 that we might have already forgotten about...
Marco:
the speakers got a lot better and it used the little, the earpiece as a second speaker.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
That helps a lot.
Marco:
Um, it helps, especially when you're watching video on the phone, you don't have to like cup your hand around the bottom to try to reflect the sound into your face.
Marco:
Like it's just coming out the front now from the, from the ear speaker.
Marco:
So that helps a lot.
Marco:
And it also just got louder when using it like, you know, on a table or windowsill as a podcast speaker.
Marco:
Um, it gets louder for that.
Marco:
So speaker improvement was a pretty major upgrade.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
the one thing i'm hoping that we get with the new phones you know we already are pretty sure that we're going to get big screen in a small body that's awesome and huge and i'm willing to tolerate a lot to get that as i said last episode the camera is where i where i have a lot of these wishlist items still i mentioned earlier 4k at 60 frames a second would be great um i know artistically a lot of people don't like 60 frames per second but i want that when capturing family videos and to have more resolution would be nice um
Marco:
So anyway, that's great.
Marco:
I would also like to see on the camera front, make it so that live photos, so that more of the frames in a live photo are full quality than just the middle frame.
Marco:
This is a similar problem to 4K60 in that it requires dumping a lot of data off the camera sensor very quickly.
Marco:
And that's usually hardware limited by whatever the sensor can push out or retain or whatever.
Marco:
That's not an easy problem, but...
Marco:
I bet Apple could do it.
Marco:
Also, in the two-camera system that the 7 Plus got, the 2X zoomed-in camera is significantly worse optically than the wide-angle camera.
Marco:
And that kind of harmed a lot of its usefulness, or it reduced the coolness of that feature for me.
Marco:
The zoomed-in camera lets in less light, so it's more noisy, and it is not optically stabilized.
Marco:
I would love for those problems to be improved upon or eliminated in the next one.
Marco:
So it looks like we're going to get two camera systems again.
Marco:
Anything they can do to reduce the quality difference between the two cameras would be very, very welcome.
Marco:
Stabilization would be the most helpful.
Marco:
And if they can't do that, let more light in.
Marco:
Other than that, though, you know, I don't really know.
Marco:
My wish list is fairly common with everyone else's.
Marco:
Sure, yeah, make it faster, make the camera better, and, you know.
John:
And more battery life because the rumors are it's going to be thicker.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
All right, so we can transition to predictions now.
Marco:
Some of what you've already given.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
So on the iPhone front, they have really kept a remarkable lid on secrecy of the physical devices and of the software.
Marco:
Software is usually kept secret pretty well, so that's nice.
Marco:
But how this phone will use the screen and the weird notch on top is still so unknown that
Marco:
That's very interesting to me.
Marco:
And in fact, I have done very little work on overcast UI for iOS 11 so far.
Marco:
I've been mostly doing under the hood things and fixing table view stuff and stuff like that because I don't want to do any UI design until I use this phone.
Marco:
Because for me, this could be a dramatic change in how apps are laid out, what kind of gestures they should respond to, what kind of gestures they shouldn't respond to or that don't work very well.
Marco:
I'm very concerned about this swipe up home button thing, that that's going to basically make my now playing card far less useful.
Marco:
So I might have to relay that out or reconsider how that's done.
Marco:
I think it's wise for developers to...
Marco:
Wait a little bit before you make any major UI decisions for iOS 11 because, again, we have no idea how this phone is going to use that screen.
Marco:
So that's very interesting to me.
Marco:
And we're going to learn part of that at the event.
Marco:
But we're not going to really learn a lot of it until we get our hands on these phones as our primary phones and just figure them out and, you know, feel them and use them every day.
Marco:
So that'll be interesting.
Marco:
But otherwise, I do think, again, it's wonderful that we really don't know a lot of the major details here.
Marco:
You know, as much as we learn from rumors and leaks and everything else, the major details, there's still a lot of holes in that picture.
Marco:
So that's pretty cool, I think.
Marco:
Especially so close to the event that we haven't seen, like, credible parts leaks or, you know, fully assembled phones or anything.
Marco:
Compared to previous years, we know not that much.
John:
The major details is like jumbo shrimp.
John:
Like we know it's going to be an edge to edge screen with a notch on top of an OLED screen with stainless steel.
John:
Like we know so much about it.
John:
We know the dimensions.
John:
We know that we have guesses at the screen res.
John:
We just don't know how the software is going to work, as you noted.
John:
But I feel like we know the same amount as normal.
John:
All these mockups that you see, the reason they're able to make these mockups is even if they're all just fake, like we built something, they have the specs down to the millimeter.
John:
for this thing and they just might not have the surface details right so i feel like we know the same amount as we normally do and it is more exciting stuff this year because it's like oh it's actually a different phone and you know with with the notch and the size and stuff like that but i think for the the one bit that i haven't been keeping up the rumors so i so maybe we're just gonna sound dumb or i'm gonna sound dumb by saying if you've just been keeping rumors you know the answer to this but do you all want to make a prediction about whether this thing will have touch id on the back or not
John:
Again, I don't know what the current rumor is.
John:
Is everyone just saying that it's not a thing anymore or it is definitely a thing?
John:
But what do you think?
John:
Regardless of whether... Oh, I don't think it'll have Touch ID.
John:
Just this one question.
John:
Will it have Touch ID on the back of this phone or not?
Marco:
No.
Casey:
No.
John:
Is that because the rumors all say no?
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Do they?
Casey:
I haven't kept up as much.
Casey:
Okay.
John:
I was going to guess no just based on the...
John:
The possibilities of the rumors about the software swipe up and stuff, because if they're going to do stuff like that and they have face recognition, it's so clear that they're all in on the front of the phone.
John:
And honestly...
John:
I really don't want there to be Touch ID in the back because I'm a case user, and as we discussed before, I don't want to have a lint-filled belly button to poke my finger into in the back.
John:
So I'm going to say no both because I hope it and because most of the markets I've seen haven't had it either.
John:
So that makes me kind of sad because I really like Touch ID, and the face stuff is still a big question mark, but it seems like we're all thinking no.
Casey:
Well, so slow down.
Casey:
So slow down.
Casey:
Let's talk about that.
Casey:
So in my opinion, the only way that the face ID or whatever it's called, I think Perl is like the internal code name.
Casey:
We'll call it face ID for now.
Casey:
The only way that face ID is going to be OK in my book is if it's at least as reliable and fast as touch ID.
Casey:
So similar to John's question a minute ago, yes or no, do you think, starting with Marco, do you think that this Face ID thing will be as good and as fast and as reliable as Touch ID to the point that you will not end up missing Touch ID?
Casey:
Yes or no?
Marco:
I think it will be at least close enough that we won't care.
Casey:
That's a cop-out, but I'll allow it.
Marco:
It might not be at least as good or better in all those metrics, but anything that it is worse at, I bet it'll still be close enough that we won't care.
John:
So this question is supposing that they haven't done Touch ID under the screen, right?
John:
Like this phone not only won't have it on the back, but now we're saying we won't have it at all, and the only thing it will have is face.
Casey:
That is how I meant it, yeah.
John:
All right, so I don't think that any face thing they have will be...
John:
I can't imagine a situation where it will be as fast and as convenient as current touch ID.
John:
Current touch ID is really, really fast.
John:
I can have my thumb on it before I get it out of my pocket.
John:
At what point the cameras are useless, right?
John:
So no matter how fast it is, it's already unlocked by the time the camera sees my face right now, right?
John:
So nothing can beat that in terms of actual efficiency.
John:
As Marco said, though, all right, fine.
John:
But is it...
John:
less efficient do you care do you care that is that it is a little bit slower because there's a trade-off they're like okay well it's a little bit slower but you don't have to fish around for the button in your pocket and there is some utility to that as well so i 100 believe that apple can make face id so that i don't care about the lack of touch id
John:
Uh, but I, but I don't think it's possible to be as efficient as touch ID.
John:
And I have my doubts that their first crack at face ID will be, uh, good enough that I don't miss touch ID because like this is going against the second generation or is it third?
John:
I forget, but second generation of touch ID that is, uh, that is phenomenally good.
John:
Like that's one of the reasons I love.
John:
I think I mentioned one in that show where I said the iPhone seven was my favorite Apple device of the year.
John:
i love the fast touch id i love it to pieces right and so i it makes me and that's one of the reasons i don't like the touch id on my on my 2017 macbook pro it's not as fast as it is on my phone right so i think it is possible that in their first crack at face id uh it will i will feel the loss of touch id if touch id isn't there i hope it's not true but anyway i totally believe by their second crack at face id i'll be in the marcosome where it's like yeah it's a wash
Casey:
Yeah, we'll see.
Casey:
I think Marco nailed it, that it will be sufficient that it won't drive us bananas, but we may still miss it.
Casey:
Missed Touch ID, that is, and Face ID will be sufficient.
Casey:
But I'm very curious and slightly nervous.
Casey:
If I hadn't learned from my past and Apple's past...
Casey:
I would absolutely absolutely be going on a tirade right now about how there's no way that that face ID could be even near as good as touch ID.
Casey:
But if there's anything I've learned over the years is that just because I don't understand how something could possibly be as good as what it replaces doesn't mean that Apple also doesn't understand it.
Casey:
You know, typically Apple does something to amaze me and and and stupefy me with these sorts of moments.
Casey:
So I have faith, but I am slightly nervous.
John:
So before we get off of this whole topic, prediction on will every touch ID be anywhere on this phone, just to nail down a prediction?
Casey:
I would say no, but I think the rumors are saying yes right now.
Casey:
I personally say no, and somebody mentioned that ATP Tipster in the chat had mentioned that it is still there.
Casey:
I didn't personally see that.
Casey:
I don't think it'll be there, but I am not terribly confident about that.
Marco:
I mean, Tipster in the chat, I think, is the only person I'm seeing who is still saying that it's there.
Marco:
Everyone else, I think, has assumed or has actually said, no, it's gone.
Marco:
I hope it's still there, but I bet it isn't.
John:
Yeah, I'm with Marco.
John:
I really, really hope it's still.
John:
I really hope they figured out a way to get it to work under the screen, something like that.
John:
But if I had to put money, I would say I lean slightly towards it's not going to be on the phone.
Marco:
I do hope they do ProMotion or whatever they're going to call if they do 120 hertz refresh rate.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
I would be 100.
John:
I think it's got to have that.
John:
It's got to have ProMotion.
Marco:
Is OLED good enough to do that?
Marco:
I don't actually know.
Marco:
Can you get an OLED screen of that size to do 120 hertz?
John:
I don't know if that's a limiting factor.
John:
If that's a limiting factor, then oh well.
John:
i really hope it has it because it's like the phone still don't have true tone right uh that's true probably not they don't have room for the sensor i hope this isn't one of those situations because i feel like it's not they don't need to find room for another sensor they just need to crank it and if it's one thing this phone is going to have it's plenty of grunt cpu and gpu so i feel like there's no reason they can't do promotion so i'm 100 predicting promotion i'd be really upset if it doesn't have it
Marco:
Yeah, I really hope they do because on the new iPads, it's so pleasant to use that.
Marco:
It looks so good.
Marco:
I described it before as it's like retina for motion.
Marco:
And in practice, now that it's been a few months since getting the new iPads, it isn't as big as retina was, even for motion.
Marco:
It isn't quite that big, but it's really nice, and I would really like to have it if I can.
John:
I have to say that I set up my dad's new 10.5 inch, uh, you know, thing, uh, iPad with promotion on vacation for him.
John:
And now that I wasn't impressed by it, like I could see it, but it was way more subtle than I thought it would be.
John:
And so I'm, I'm totally all for this feature.
John:
I want it to be everywhere.
John:
So on and so forth, but it was less noticeable to me than I thought it would be.
John:
And I was looking for it.
John:
My dad, of course, has no idea what I didn't even bother trying to tell him because he can't even tell retina from not retina.
Casey:
So slightly pivoting on this new phone topic, what is the feature or features that Apple will be marketing in order to make the non-pro or non-edition or whatever the thousand plus dollar phone is?
Casey:
What are the...
Casey:
The regular iPhone 8 and 8 Plus or 7S and 7S Plus, whatever the hell they're called, what are they going to get that's going to be enough to convince people to upgrade?
Casey:
I mean, the obvious answer is, oh, it'll be a better camera.
Casey:
Oh, it'll be faster.
Casey:
Oh, it'll potentially maybe have more RAM and or potentially maybe more storage.
John:
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
John:
I'm just spitballing.
Casey:
I know, I know, I know.
Casey:
I'm spitballing.
Casey:
But you see what I'm driving at, though.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Is it just going to be basically a spec upgrade on some or all the things?
Casey:
I'm specifically looking at CPU and camera hardware.
Casey:
Or do you think there's going to be some other nifty trick?
Casey:
Like maybe as an example, and I don't think this would be the case, but as a silly example, will Face ID be across the entire line and there will be no Touch ID or only Touch ID under the screen everywhere?
Casey:
Or maybe as a different approach, maybe Touch ID is under the screen in the iPhone 8 device.
Casey:
and either is also under the screen in the 8 edition or 8 pro um or it isn't on the 8 edition or the 8 pro because face id is only on that you're confusing me with your with your names i know well you should call them 7s and 7s plus and 8 is okay or is it one that's fine we'll go with that well let's go with that not that we're predicting those are the names but just for discussion
Marco:
Well, but even on the names, though, there was a great discussion on Upgrade about this during their draft episode today.
Marco:
The more I think about it, the more sense it makes that it is not 7S and 8.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
I'm just saying that's a way we can refer to them so we all know what we're talking about.
John:
The names are a separate discussion of what they'll actually be called, and that's always the trickiest to predict because Apple is...
Marco:
historically very weird about names well but it i think it does lead to the question of what what is in the you know the the smaller or lesser eights you know or whatever they are like oh so you're confusing me again in the 7s thingies well because so so so so
Marco:
Think about this.
Marco:
I think it makes the most sense to have these be marketed together because they don't want everyone to regret not getting the big one if they have to get the boring ones.
John:
That's the best case scenario is this is a family of phones that all have the same external appearance.
John:
that all have OLED screens, which I'm saying this is best case scenario, all have OLED, all have the same external case appearance, whatever it is, stainless steel, glass, whatever the hell it's going to be.
John:
And then you have no problem.
John:
Then you just pick some naming scheme, whatever you come up with for the naming of them.
John:
It's fine.
John:
You start to run into problems, though, like Casey was saying, is if the only thing you can unify them with is external case design and two of them essentially are seven S's and one of them is clearly an eight.
John:
And then whatever you name them, it's really kind of hard to convince people that those aren't the lesser phones.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so that's why I think naming wise, I think this ties in.
Marco:
I would go with iPhone eight, eight plus and either pro or eight pro.
Marco:
So pro is a pretty well understood word in Apple marketing.
Marco:
What pro means is the biggest and the best.
Marco:
Across the whole rest of the lineup, that's what that means.
Marco:
And they use it not to suggest that you have to be professional to buy this product, whatever that means, right?
Marco:
But it kind of self-segments people, and it gives people who aren't buying the pro...
Marco:
permission not to buy it it lets them be happier with a lower end purchase because they don't think they need the pro stuff and it lets people who think they need the best or who are want to do video editing and have been convinced through years of computer marketing that you need something named pro to do video editing
Marco:
um it convinces them that you know people who people will self-select and say well i'm a professional i need the best i will get the pro the expensive bigger better one and it gives everyone else permission to buy the regular lower ones without feeling like they're buying something you know low-end or cheap or or bad and
Marco:
And that's what Apple needs to happen here because they aren't going to be able to produce the Pro one in volume.
Marco:
It's going to be more expensive.
Marco:
They need the regular iPhones to also seem really great.
Marco:
And so that's why I think the naming is going to be across the way, eight across all of them, and just the high-end one is Pro.
Marco:
And iPhone 8 will mean a certain amount of core features.
Marco:
I think CPU, GPU, maybe even most of the camera functionality will be the same across all of them.
Marco:
The other ones might even get wireless charging because we haven't talked about that yet really either, but...
Marco:
It's been heavily rumored that there's going to be some kind of wireless charging, you know, thing, add-on purchase after the fact.
Marco:
Apple's really good at coming up with ways recently to make you spend an extra $100 to $200 on accessories to your devices.
Yeah.
Marco:
And that's not an accident.
Marco:
But anyway, every iPhone update to date has been pretty substantial from the one before it.
Marco:
Even the ones at the time, people kind of poo-pooed because they weren't enough.
Marco:
If you look back and you look at all the components that were upgraded and everything else, it ends up they were all pretty good updates.
Marco:
And I don't think this is going to be any different.
Marco:
They're not going to crap out an update to the two consumer-grade, or whatever we're going to call them, iPhones.
Marco:
I think the components across all of them are going to be very, very similar with a few exceptions for the big one.
Marco:
The big one's going to obviously have the very different screen.
Marco:
The other two, I don't think are going to be OLED and they're going to be LCD, regular IPS LCDs that we've had forever.
Marco:
They're going to be the same old form factors, maybe, you know, updated case design with the new, you know, stainless steel band with glass in front and back.
Marco:
Maybe that, I don't know.
Marco:
It doesn't honestly matter that much in that regard.
Marco:
Most of the camera upgrades, I think are going to happen across the line.
Marco:
with the exception that I don't think the 4.7-inch smaller phone is going to get dual cameras.
Marco:
I think they're still going to have problems with fitting that in there while also fitting in the forehead and chin components and the LCD screen.
John:
The Pro will also have a better front-pacing camera, I bet, for Face ID.
Marco:
Yeah, I would guess you're right because it looks like, you know, based on APIs and stuff, it looks like the front might be getting dual cameras or at least a camera with a depth sensor so that we're going to have, like, you know, better portrait mode.
Marco:
That whole thing about adding better portrait mode, that might be pro only.
Marco:
I don't know if the lower end ones are going to get the IR depth sensors or not.
Marco:
And if they don't, they wouldn't get face ID.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
So I'm guessing the Pro, the exclusive features to the Pro are probably depth camera things, dual front camera, dual back camera in the small size, face ID, obviously the big screen with the notch,
Marco:
And that might be all.
Marco:
I wouldn't expect major differences.
Marco:
I think wireless charging goes across all of them.
Marco:
I think any CPU and GPU update goes across all of them.
Marco:
RAM probably goes the same across all of them.
Marco:
I bet it's the same system on a chip in all of them.
Marco:
Or maybe the Pro might be slightly overclocked, but probably not.
Marco:
I'm guessing even that's the same.
Marco:
Because they really have to make sure that most of the people who are going to want to go buy iPhones buy the regular ones and not the Pro.
Marco:
And therefore, they have to make sure that the marketing does not denigrate it or make it seem like it's an inferior product.
Casey:
So hold on, though.
Casey:
So if I don't think I'm interested in the pro or perhaps edition, and my money is on edition the more I think about it, but be that as it may.
Marco:
No, edition is a failed name.
Marco:
Edition died with the gold edition, even though I know they still sell the white one, which is way better.
Marco:
Yeah, that there's a reason why even Apple can barely bring themselves to talk about the edition watches anymore, even though they still sell one.
Casey:
i don't know i think in a lot of ways it makes sense but that's irrelevant so the the the question i'm still not hearing a clear answer to is if i don't think i want the pro what am i getting from the non-pro iphone so you're saying obviously better camera hardware possibly new case and possibly inductive charging and that's it you're getting the same thing you got from six to seven
John:
right so it's the same size the same screen resolution essentially the same screen but you get a better camera faster cpu faster gpu better battery life and in this case you actually also get a different case too slightly different uh aesthetic uh case so it's a pretty big upgrade and by the way if i had to nail down like the like i gave the best case before they're a family and they all have a lid and blah blah blah the more realistic case is as marco said lcd only on the non fancy one
John:
I'm also going to say no wireless charging on the non-fancy ones, too.
John:
I feel like that's going to be a Pro-only feature, if it exists at all.
Marco:
Well, but they really want to sell you that $150 wireless charging thing.
John:
I think just because it's a good differentiator, and honestly, I don't think out of the gate it'll be all that popular.
John:
People love plugging their phones in.
John:
They have things to plug them in.
John:
I think it should get its test run on the low-volume Pro to see...
John:
what kind of appetite there is for it um and because i agree with you that there's there there's not going to be that much differentiation when it comes down to it beyond the the physical form factor this is an additional differentiator that everybody understands like you want the pro and only the pro ones got wireless charging but no one's going to say oh i'm not going to buy the non-pro ones because they have no expectation of wireless charging like it doesn't feel crappier uh they're like oh i just plug my phone it's fine like i don't want to buy a hundred dollar wireless charging thing anyway
John:
Right.
John:
It's only people with money to burn.
John:
So that's my prediction that if it exists, it's pro only.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So what else are we predicting?
Marco:
I do expect the iPhone SE to get an update, but not this fall.
John:
It's going to be updated the special event with the Mac mini, right?
John:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
No, no.
Marco:
I'm guessing, you know, because the first iPhone SE came out in springtime.
Marco:
I'm guessing it's going to be similar here because the SE is a product that has sold way better than they thought it would.
Marco:
It is a product that to keep pushing into more markets that they're not very dominant in, I think they should keep selling it.
Marco:
And I think they know that too.
Marco:
And it doesn't seem to cannibalize sales of the bigger phones to a meaningful degree.
Marco:
So that's great.
Marco:
But they probably shouldn't update it at the same time as the bigger phones because I think it might cannibalize slightly more if they did.
Marco:
it won't it won't match them too it's not going to be right it's not going to look it's not going to be of a piece with the other ones with the you know new external design so they're all family yeah exactly um and and it might not be even after it's updated you know so it anyway i do think they were they're going to update the se or at least the role the se plays in the lineup but not probably not until next spring or summer so anyway so moving on to other products so 4k 4k apple tv
Marco:
I sure hope so.
Marco:
Based on the rumors, that sounds likely.
Marco:
I sure hope so, because the Apple TV needs help.
Marco:
We're going into a holiday season, and it is probably the least desirable of all the TV set-up boxes for most people.
Marco:
It's already the most expensive.
Marco:
It already has the worst remote in the history of TV remote devices.
Marco:
It needs a lot of help.
Marco:
So if this is a great time, I really, really hope they add 4K, redesign the remote, and have some kind of story for 4K content.
Marco:
A basic story could just be as simple as look we have Amazon and Netflix having 4K in their apps.
Marco:
That's good.
Marco:
I would say that's a minimum that what you need.
Marco:
I really hope they also have a story for buying 4K movies and 4K TV shows from iTunes.
Marco:
That would be great.
Marco:
I really hope they do that.
John:
Even if they don't, though, they should just ship the hardware.
John:
I hate waiting for hardware for content deals.
John:
Just ship it.
John:
Like you said, Netflix will be useful.
John:
We can look at the menus and just ship it.
John:
You know the hardware is done, just ship it.
John:
And then whatever you can get stupid deals worked out, you can't agree on how much they're going to cost, work that out later.
John:
We'll get it in a software update.
John:
Just ship the hardware.
Marco:
Especially because the deal-making department at Apple seems like it has been underperforming in recent years.
Marco:
The last thing I want is for the hardware and the ability of other apps that could do 4K just fine to be held back because the deal-making department can't make content deals anymore.
John:
Now, I can imagine they'll ship the hardware and it will come – I don't even know.
John:
What are they up to?
John:
TVOS 4?
Marco:
I think it just matches iOS versions, yeah.
John:
11?
John:
I can't keep track.
John:
But anyway, there's obviously HEVC crap that they need that's part of that.
John:
So it could be that the 4K Apple TV doesn't ship until the TVOS equivalent of iOS 11 is ready for it.
John:
So there could be a couple-week delay in that or whatever.
Marco:
tv os 11 is that what it is called i don't yes i mean they don't really talk about the os on tv on the tv it doesn't really matter honestly right but but it's but but it's totally the ios 11 based tv os that has the hevc stuff that they need for 4k that's it i'm also i'm one of the wild cards for me for apple tv prediction is i wonder you know assuming they have redesigned the remote which we've heard from a few different places and i hope it's true
John:
i'm so dreading that like now i know i want the remote to be changed but it's like oh god what are they what are they because they had two remotes so far and both of them i'm not a fan it can't get worse than this one they're more than two they have three remotes it can't possibly get worse yeah yeah they have a white plastic plastic right yeah a series of remotes that it makes me feel like they're just they're not getting it like they're they're trying i guess every like five every five years they make a new remote but i just hope someone says look look how big my hands are
John:
Look how small the couch cushion cracks are.
John:
Just give me a TiVo peanut, or I'll just use a spare TiVo remote.
John:
I left the TiVo remote at the vacation house, by the way, so I'm down one TiVo remote.
John:
I knew I could buy an aftermarket one.
John:
It's like, why are you buying a $70 Bluetooth TiVo remote to use with my Apple TV?
Marco:
Yeah, so anyway, I hope that in the process of them hopefully redesigning this remote, I would like to see a little bit more of a nod towards gaming uses.
Marco:
You know, the Apple TV, I would say the...
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
So the App Store situation I don't think has panned out the way Apple expected it to and the way most of us hoped it would.
Marco:
There really have not been must-have apps on Apple TV that were anything beyond video apps for content services.
Marco:
And that's fine.
Marco:
That's what most of us want most of the time, it turns out, to nobody's surprise.
Marco:
But the gaming situation...
Marco:
First of all, other types of apps.
Marco:
When they demoed it, they had a real estate browsing app and catalogs that you were supposed to browse catalogs on your TV.
Marco:
Nobody does that.
Marco:
But the two big ones that are obvious that most people want to do on their TV is watch video and play games.
Marco:
And the video thing, I think they have pretty well down.
Marco:
There's some rough edges here and there, but it serves that purpose pretty well.
Marco:
The gaming thing, I think there's a number of issues that have prevented that from really taking off.
Marco:
There are a few good games on the Apple TV, but not many, and as far as I understand, the financial upside of those for their makers has been pretty low, and that's one of the reasons we haven't really seen a lot of them.
Marco:
One of the things that could fix that, I mean, obviously, there's lots of app store improvements that could fix that or could help that.
Marco:
But one of the things that could really help that also is no one is buying a $50 controller for their Apple TV.
Marco:
I have.
Marco:
I bought two of them.
Marco:
But I'm weird.
Marco:
And they aren't very good.
Marco:
And I kind of regret having bought them.
Marco:
Like, no one's buying them.
Marco:
What Apple needs to do is to have every Apple TV that is sold be able to play a reasonable number of games with the remote that it comes with.
Marco:
That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be a giant gamepad, but it has to be a little more game accessible than the Siri remote that we've had so far, which basically has one button that games can use.
Marco:
It needs more than that.
Marco:
So I hope we see something like that.
Marco:
I'm not confident that we will necessarily.
Marco:
I think they're just going to give us a redesigned version of the Siri remote with no additional functionality really.
Marco:
And if that's what we get, fine.
Marco:
I would still be happy with that.
Marco:
That's still better than the remote we have now.
Marco:
But I think it would be a missed opportunity if they didn't take this chance to improve the prospects of gaming on the Apple TV.
John:
I reject this plan for two reasons.
John:
One, I want the redesigned remote to be a good remote for the common case, and I don't want any gaming functionality compromising it in any way.
John:
And two, if you don't want to make it a full-fledged controller,
John:
there's going to be no analog sticks.
John:
It's going to basically be, Oh, it's great for playing NES and SNES games.
John:
And I feel like that is not sufficient to fill the role that you're trying to say, which is like, look, there's some, you can play reasonable games on it because in my world, reasonable games are not only things that are controlled with a D pad.
John:
You have to have,
John:
at least one analog stick preferably two and you just can't put that on a remote that is good for the common case for tv i'm all for apple shipping an actual real gaming remote with the apple tv by default as part of their astronomically high price but we know that's never going to happen so i'm saying apple continue to be really bad games and game hardware and just
John:
Ship it with a decent remote for the TV.
John:
I understand where you're coming from, where you want a gaming ecosystem to flourish a little bit there by having something, but I feel like the gaming control that you can fit into a remote that is still essentially a TV remote is not good enough to fill that role.
Marco:
yeah i don't know plus plus there's a switch have you played sonic mania you really like it i've started to i haven't gotten through a lot of it yet because i i keep saving it to play with adam but i have started to play it and i am so incredibly happy with it i it just it makes me so happy it is so good and anybody who's a fan of the old 16-bit sonic games for the sega genesis must play sonic mania it is so so good
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Apple Watch.
Marco:
Yes or no?
Casey:
I think yes.
Casey:
I am slightly in favor of it being with LTE.
Casey:
I think it's going to happen.
Casey:
Not terribly confident.
Casey:
What I'm unsure of, though, is will you be able to place a phone call via LTE or will it be data only like an iPad?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I want the answer to be that you can place a phone call only because I want it in like, oh, crap scenarios.
Casey:
Like, oh, crap, I just broke my leg as I'm off for a run.
Casey:
But I suspect that if it gets LTE at all, it will not be supportive of a phone call, much like the iPad.
Casey:
I think...
Casey:
If it gets LTE, it will keep the same form factor because it'll need more battery.
Casey:
I think there'll be intelligent... I'm not the first person to come up with this, but I think there'll be intelligent switching as to whether or not LTE is on, so it will be off until it can't find an internet connection any other way.
Casey:
I...
Casey:
I think if it doesn't have LTE, then the form factor might get thinner, but I think they are going to stick with the same, not lugs, I don't think that's the word I'm looking for, but the same design for the connector for the watch bands, so that even if it gets a little bit thinner, your existing watch bands will still work.
Casey:
That's my two cents.
Casey:
Marco?
Marco:
So, you know, I have a love-hate relationship with the Apple Watch.
Marco:
There's a love part?
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, it's useful sometimes.
Marco:
I want it to be a better watch than it is.
Marco:
But it seems like Apple thinks it's good enough as a watch and that the market is very clearly telling them this is a fitness tracker, primarily, for most people.
Marco:
It is a fitness tracker and maybe a notifications display.
Marco:
And so it's hard for me to argue against the entire rest of the market.
Marco:
I would love for it to move in the direction of telling time more reliably and maybe looking better while doing it.
Marco:
That would be nice.
Marco:
But the market is telling it differently.
Marco:
It seems by all accounts to be selling pretty well as mostly a fitness device.
Marco:
So I think what they will do is to keep pushing it in that direction.
Marco:
And that means probably a cellular option so that you can take it without having your phone with you and have it behave as a stand-in phone, things like that.
Marco:
Because a lot of joggers and things really want to be able to run without their phone.
Marco:
And right now they run with like big phone armbands or belt clips and they're clunky and nobody really likes them.
Marco:
And so Apple will do with the watch what it takes to sell to more fitness type roles because that is where it succeeds.
Marco:
So that's why they added GPS in the Series 2 and full waterproofing and full swimming capability and stuff.
Marco:
That's why they keep working on things like new workout functionality and why
Marco:
like the smart watch faces haven't gotten very smart.
Marco:
And there seems to be very little effort for them to move in the direction of having an always-on or at least ambient mode type screen.
Marco:
You know, things that would make it a better watch or a better wrist computer...
Marco:
they have not really invested heavily in those areas where they are investing heavily as fitness areas.
Marco:
Cause that's where it's selling.
Marco:
So again, what I would like is very different than what they will do.
Marco:
Um, but that's fine because I liked regular watches so much.
Marco:
I don't wear the Apple watch most of the time.
Marco:
And I would rather have a regular watch that is, that has its screen always on and always tells the time with that and doesn't require me to bring a charger on trips.
Marco:
So yeah,
Marco:
I am curious to see what they do with it, but I'm not hopeful that it's going to change my outlook on the watch for myself.
Marco:
I do think whatever they do will probably be successful.
Marco:
One of the reservations I have, though, is that if they do what people expect them to do and make it cellular, the entire watch OS, as an OS, as a platform, really is designed to be a satellite device of a phone.
Marco:
And granted, the phone was first devised to be a satellite device of your Mac, so it's not to say that they can't ever break it away from that, but watchOS needs a lot of work to make it meaningfully good to use, I think, as a standalone cellular connected device.
Marco:
And I don't think they're doing that yet, or I think it would be unrealistic to expect them to do that this quickly based on what we've seen so far.
Marco:
So I don't know how a cellular watch would work in practice.
Marco:
And so that remains to be seen.
Marco:
I'm a little skeptical on that front, but I do expect that's probably what they're going to do.
Casey:
If they do a cellular watch, will there be any sort of negotiation, at least with American carriers, about how that is handled from a pricing standpoint?
Casey:
So do you think they'll say, oh, OK, here's your cellular watch.
Casey:
And by the way, we've talked to the major U.S.
Casey:
carriers and it's not going to cost you any extra money on any of your plans.
Casey:
Or do you think they'll just leave that entirely to the carriers to utterly fleece us as they are off to do?
Marco:
Oh, it's definitely going to cost extra money.
Marco:
The only question is maybe they've got a good deal.
Marco:
Maybe it'll only cost $10 a month as opposed to more.
Marco:
That's the more likely situation there.
Marco:
There's no way it's free.
Marco:
I think there were already the beginnings of various moves by the carriers to enable technologies for things like having multiple devices share the same phone number.
Marco:
If your watch was away from your phone and they both have cell connections, they could both ring.
Marco:
And you could pick up on your watch.
Marco:
I think there is something about that I read recently that like that's in progress or that's being deployed slowly.
Marco:
So like, you know, there is carrier involvement probably here to make this stuff happen.
Marco:
But there's no way that's coming without an additional monthly fees.
John:
Thinking about the watch, now I'm starting to think how much stuff is going to be in this event.
John:
Obviously, they've got to have time for the phones.
John:
You would think maybe that they would do the phones as here are two new phones and then there's one more thing, whether they say that or not, and then there's the fancy one.
John:
I guess that depends on how they end up naming the thing.
John:
It would work better if we didn't all know the notch one was coming.
John:
But anyway, who knows what they'll decide there.
John:
Then you got the Apple TV, which is a good warm-up thing of like, yeah, yeah, that could be the first thing they announce.
John:
It's short.
John:
No one really cares that much.
John:
We all look at the remote.
John:
Fine.
John:
The middle thing could be a watch, but...
John:
I don't know.
John:
Is that too much?
John:
Will they have to spend not as much time on the watch?
John:
And I think it works out if the watch is not externally changed too much.
John:
You mentioned the strap lugs being the same, which seems like a gimme, but that the external design is also pretty much not changed.
John:
It's like the...
John:
what are we on the third iteration of the airstream trailer now right you get zero one two right that's fine i guess i with the with the cell connection in the phone i think uh that's a reason they would have to keep the airstream look because they just need all that battery right it's gonna you know it's got to be tough on the battery so presumably all the internals are get yet more efficient right and what do you do with the extra battery now we can have lte
John:
Um, I guess maybe that you would consider that not a very exciting watch update, but to show anything about it at all, you've got to show the hardware and then also the software and do some silly demos of how, or video or something of how it works.
John:
Um,
John:
um i mean we haven't gone on to other things but i guess like is this it for the event i because i could i think the watch does to be clear i think the watch does need to be updated and it would totally fit in this event and you know now would be the time to do it so they should um but is that it now now we have a full event apple tv new apple watch new phones that's it
Marco:
I mean, that's three new phones, one of which is especially groundbreaking.
Marco:
The Apple TV, you know, and, you know, Apple TV going 4K and, you know, having a little new remote and everything and getting 4K content being sold through iTunes, that's not that much time on stage, really.
Marco:
Like, that's, even if they pad it with a demo, which doesn't make a lot of sense, but even if they pad it with a demo, that's probably under five minutes.
Marco:
Definitely under ten.
Marco:
So I think stage time-wise, we're mostly spending time on the iPhone.
Marco:
And even if they had cellular for the watch, that also is not a huge time-taker in the event.
Marco:
They can probably get through the whole watch segment in 20 minutes at most.
John:
Yeah, the phone is going to be so long, though, because it's three phones, and they have to really talk up the first two to make you think, like, if this was all there was, it would be a great update year, but wait, there's even more, and they're just going to spend so much time on that, because this is like the most important thing.
John:
marketing presentation they give all year every year and this time it's like did you get it it's actually three separate devices three separate devices yeah that's showmanship even just the showmanship to do the first two and to say aren't these phones great but there's one more thing like jobs would have loved that if everything hadn't leaked but i don't think whoever they have presenting these phones will even
Marco:
make a faint in that direction because we all know they know that we know that they know that we know that you know the notch is coming i'm mad that i flubbed it it's are you getting it yeah yeah damn it yeah right well and also you know speaking of steve like this is their this is their first event in the steve jobs theater of their new campus so they're probably going to spend a couple minutes on that all right so it's that's probably the opening i'm guessing that gets two to three minutes one one one picture and two sentences
Marco:
yeah well only if they don't mention their campus yeah if they actually mention their campus you know then we're spending two or three minutes on this probably but that's fine i i'm curious to see it honestly i'm whatever they say about it i want i want to see the theater it's just gonna be a big screen in a stage like is the inside of that theater anything special i mean it's nice that it's there i'm sure it's a really nice theater
Marco:
Oh, no, no.
Marco:
I'm saying like the whole... I want to like... Anything they're going to say about the whole campus, they're probably going to give like a very brief introduction to the campus.
Marco:
Thanks for having us, etc.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
And then they're going to go over probably the most boring stuff first.
Marco:
So probably like the Apple Watch update first, then TV.
Marco:
Actually, maybe TV first.
John:
No, TV is before Watch.
Marco:
Yeah, TV first, then Watch, and then they're going to get into the phones.
Marco:
I don't expect...
Marco:
maybe they could do like a home pod update but i don't think the home pod is ready to ship yet and i also don't think there's that much more to say unless it's ready to ship what about the giant mac pro teaser video how about that huh yeah right i hope not oh my god i hope like on upgrade they had like a bit they were trying to bet like whether they would even mention the mac at all
Marco:
80 to 1 odds against the Mac Pro.
Marco:
I honestly think it is a valid question whether the Mac will be mentioned at all in the entire presentation.
John:
No, why would it be?
John:
Is the Mac ever mentioned at the phone event?
Marco:
Well, here's a question.
Marco:
Do you think High Sierra is ready?
Marco:
Because some of the beta people are saying it's really not.
John:
even if it is they're not gonna no i don't i haven't been using the betas but my impression is that october i mean if they can announce it like you know it'll be ready by the end of october the latest but why would they say anything about it we all know about high sierra they've talked about it plenty it'll come when it comes there's no reason to mention it maybe like here's one final thing for this uh ios 11 date do we get that at the event
John:
oh yeah they're definitely gonna ask yeah i mean because it's probably going to be like within a week or something ios 11 is going to be soon after that yep i agree i'm just wondering like you know something they might just be like uh you know the the new iphones ship on such and such a date and we all know they're coming with 11 but they never actually say ios 11 for everybody else is coming in whatever day because that is an announcement that does fit in
Marco:
No, they always tell us.
Marco:
They're probably going to give a GM that day and then the full iOS 11 chips to customers a week later or five days later, something like that.
Marco:
It's not going to be a big gap there.
John:
Steve Trout and Smith has been doing the diffs on the builds and now they're really tweaking small things in each of these builds.
John:
So it seems like it's pretty much ready.
Marco:
The only thing is that whatever API changes are going to be required or enabled to take advantage of the new phone screen shape and size and any possible IR depth stuff, those are probably all going to be enabled at the very last minute in the SDK, the day of the event.
Marco:
That's going to be brand new in the GM, and none of the developers will have ever seen that stuff before, or at least some of them.
John:
I'm sure all those if-defs coming to life won't affect their code.
Yeah, right.
Marco:
Again, this is one of the reasons why I said earlier.
Marco:
I'm not doing any UI work on Overcast yet because I want to see how things change because I know they will.
Marco:
I'm really delaying my iOS 11 UI refresh until probably the wintertime because I really want to do it right for these new phones.
Marco:
And to do that right requires me to use it.
Casey:
All right, we're running long, which is of no great surprise.
Casey:
We're running long.
John:
Us?
Casey:
Yeah, I know, right?
Casey:
So let's maybe round this out with a wild card prediction, something that, and you can specify one way or the other, either the one thing that you don't expect that you really want or what I'd prefer you answer, but go whichever way you'd like, the one thing that we haven't really talked about but you expect to be there.
Casey:
And so I will start to get to kind of get you thinking about it.
Casey:
I think that if we're doing this at Apple Park or Apple Campus 2 or whatever it's called, Apple Park, and this theater was presumably built in large part for this very moment, I think there's going to be some sort of showy, like...
Casey:
I can't think of how to verbalize this, but something will come up from the floor in a way that we've never seen before.
Casey:
There'll be some whiz-bang showmanship things that are enabled by this new space that they had complete control over.
Marco:
The whole building just takes off?
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
It spins so fast that it eventually takes off and or travels back in time.
Casey:
That's a reference that neither of you will get.
Casey:
But anyway...
Casey:
I think that there'll be some sort of like interesting thing that that is never been done before.
Casey:
And yes, OK, so like Sam, the geek in the chat is saying we've seen things emerge from the floor.
Casey:
I'm just using that as like an illustrative example.
Casey:
But I think there'll be something about it that makes it more fancy and whiz bang than anything we've seen from an Apple product demo before.
Casey:
Certainly recently.
Casey:
That's my wild card prediction.
Casey:
So, John, what do you think?
Casey:
Either something that we haven't really talked about that you really expect to happen, or if you want to cop out something that you just really wish would happen that hopefully isn't the Mac Pro that may or may not actually happen.
John:
First of all, I just want to say I hope that the thing you predicted doesn't happen.
John:
because that's like i don't think that not that it's in poor taste but that's not the modern apple sensibilities for that type of thing i hope that the inside of the theater is just a really nice theater with a really awesome projection and comfy seats for a thousand of your closest friends uh and that's it it could have stage lifts
John:
But I feel like that's kind of gimmicky, and I hope they don't do that.
John:
So for, I think my wild card, I think this is a third category of a thing that I don't actually predict, but I really wish would happen, is I really wish all the phones would be OLED.
John:
I know that's almost certainly not going to be the case, but I think that would be, that would really unify the line.
John:
The external appearance, the OLED, the internals, the different form factors, it would be nice if this was the year for OLED for all the phones.
John:
Based on the various articles floating around and how Samsung's supplying all the OLEDs, maybe they just mean for Apple's new phone, but I think they just mean in general.
John:
They just can't do that with their high-volume phones.
John:
Aside from Mac Pro stuff, obviously, that I'm not going to mention, I think it would be really cool if they were all OLED.
Marco:
I mean, the thing I would want the most that is still plausible that I haven't already predicted, I would say early release of the iMac Pro or the HomePod.
Marco:
I don't think either of those are very likely.
Marco:
Because they both were saying December, I think, at WBC, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So those are fairly unlikely.
Marco:
And if they're being released in December, this would even be awfully early to open up pre-orders.
Marco:
So they probably aren't going to do that either.
Marco:
But if the iMac Pro is ready early, that would be cool.
Marco:
And the HomePod, I think, probably has the least chance of being released early because it seemed like it was still way behind in software.
Marco:
And that's the hardest thing to get done early.
Marco:
I also, more realistically, on the iMac Pro front, it would be really cool if that had Face ID.
Marco:
It isn't out yet.
Marco:
We don't know whether it will or not.
Marco:
It could.
Marco:
They could put the same sensors, presumably, into the display of an iMac.
Marco:
So I would love if an iMac Pro, if the iMac Pro started out having a face.
Marco:
We already know it has secure enclave.
Marco:
So it has some of the things that would be required to do that already.
Marco:
So any sign that Face ID could be making it into Macs would be really cool.
Marco:
And the most opportune time to start that would be with the iMac Pro.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
That's a big wild card, I think, but that's fairly unlikely to happen at all, let alone in this event.
Marco:
So if I had to look at this particular event, I guess my wild card or the thing I kind of hope blows me away, you know...
Marco:
I already hope the phone is great in all these different ways, but I, I, I'm pretty sure it will be like the phone being Apple has such a good track record with phones that the phone being great is not even a risk to take to predict that.
Marco:
It's not even a thing that would surprise me because the phones are always great.
Marco:
So, and that's, you know, it's kind of horrible in some way to think that way and to say that, but that like their track record is so good that, you know, I expect the phone to be amazing.
But,
Marco:
One thing that would dramatically surprise me that is not easily predicted is I want the watch to really surprise me and delight me.
Marco:
They're doing a new watch now.
Marco:
The only watch update they've done so far, which was when they launched the Series 1 and 2, was a pretty minor overall update.
Marco:
As I said earlier, it really didn't change that much.
Marco:
i would love for the apple watch to really surprise me in a positive way to and to to do something that makes me say wow that's i really want that or that would be really great or i wonder what i could do with that and it hasn't done that yet and so i really hope for that yeah there's no way that'll happen so marco listed three things in the interest have you ever heard top four
Casey:
Well, in top four, you can only come up with one or two things.
Casey:
In this show, I ask for one, you get three.
Casey:
I see how it works.
John:
Of course.
John:
For his next selection, Marco picks every prediction except for the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Well, we know that's not going to happen.
Marco:
I would not even bet on them mentioning the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Nope.
Marco:
No Macs.
Marco:
i honestly think it's very unlikely that we're going to have anything about the mac mentioned at all that would be extremely unlikely i don't think high sierra is ready and therefore they're not going to launch the mac pro without high sierra and i don't think they're going to mention the mac pro at all because they have nothing new to say about it yet because it's too early um so yeah i i wouldn't expect really anything about the mac to be mentioned at this event
Marco:
A few people have predicted or have wished for an update to AirPods, either a new version or a price drop or both.
John:
Or shipping them?
Marco:
Yeah, I think a new version and a price drop are both incredibly unlikely to happen.
Marco:
I think the AirPods go unchanged in all ways through this holiday season, and they're going to sell a ton of them, and you're going to love them.
Casey:
Well, they're not going to sell a ton of them.
Casey:
They can't make them.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Still.
John:
We forgot to mention for the 4K Apple TV, HDR, which should go without saying, but it's worth saying.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
And the other thing is increased frame rate output so you have something that's a multiple 24.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
I think we're done.
John:
I think we're done with this event.
John:
We don't even need to watch it now.
John:
Yeah, that's it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week.
Marco:
Betterment, Hover, and Away.
Marco:
And we will see you next week after the iPhone event.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C
Casey:
I'm going through serious bike withdrawal.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
Don't you have like seven bikes at your house now?
Marco:
No, they're at the beach house.
Marco:
What about the one you got for your house?
Marco:
I didn't get one for my house yet.
Casey:
Oh, good.
Casey:
Now you can get another six of them.
Marco:
Well, the problem is that there's really nowhere here to put bikes at all.
Marco:
Like, it's going to be fairly hard to put even one bike in my garage.
Marco:
don't you have a two-car garage yeah it has two cars in it don't tell me there's no room for bikes my garage barely fits my honda coordinate you're like oh there's no room for bikes in my two-car garage uh well i mean i i i still actually like you know we use our cars in and out of the garage all the time and we have other things in the garage also like you know snowblower and tools and stuff like that so it's like it's hard there's there's not a lot of room in there oh that sounds hard
Marco:
If it was at all reasonable to have multiple bikes in my garage, I would have already ordered one to tide me over until I get the one I really want, which is probably like a couple months out.
Marco:
So, oh, well, at least at least this money draining hobby of mine is making me marginally healthier.
John:
yeah i was also gonna get you hit by a car because it's not like uh you know biking on this level ground with no cars trying to kill you now you're in a combat zone now no i actually have incredibly little uh interest in riding on the roads oh you're gonna go on the bike the bike trails
Marco:
Yeah, we have a trail very close to our house.
Marco:
So I plan to do a lot of riding on that.
Marco:
There's also a much larger trail on the border of our town.
Marco:
So I have to figure out how do I either get there on a bike without dying on the roads or somehow transport a bike using my car.
Marco:
And that's the whole thing.
John:
Bike rack.
John:
I'm sure they have bike racks for the back of your thing.
Marco:
They do, but you have to get a tow hook installed first.
Marco:
And getting a tow hook installed on Model S is something that is possible to do, but is not officially supported.
Marco:
And it's kind of hard to do.
Marco:
And you have to have a specialty place install it.
Marco:
And the dealers won't do it anymore.
Marco:
And so I don't know.
Marco:
See, I started looking into it.
Marco:
I'm like, oh, God, this sounds awful.
Marco:
So then I stopped looking into it.
Marco:
I think the more likely approach is I'll just throw it in the back and go alone sometimes when I don't have a car seat back there.
John:
yeah it could fit you don't have the seats back there so you fold the seats down you should have room back there i was gonna say a roof rack but then you need someone's help to get it off the top of the car i'm serious though i think i would need someone's help to get off the top of the car it's not easy to like the bikes you know standing it's like skis on a ski rack where you just have to be able to reach onto the thing to get it off you getting a big tippy bicycle up there is tricky oh yeah because they stand them up they don't lie them down right yeah oh geez yeah how do you like not hit overpasses and stuff i guess they're not that high oh yeah they're not that high
John:
Yeah, it'll probably fit in the back of your sort of hatchback but not a hatchback car.
Marco:
If I take out the car seat, I bet it'll fit.
Marco:
With the car seat in, it might not because then I can only do the two-thirds fold down with the car seat in, so that probably is not going to happen.
John:
Stick to your local bike trail.
John:
That's the easier way to do it.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
but but like the one that's on the edge of town is way longer and so i don't know well so the real problem is if you ever want to go on the big long one like as a family now you got to fit three bikes and three people and now yeah now you're into you got to call casey with the giant truck to help you exactly you couldn't fit that you couldn't fit that in his truck anyway because you couldn't get it on a roof rack and there's no room in that tiny little trunk because it's a stupid suv