I Slowly Ate the Crystals
Casey:
so how was the trip did we talk about this publicly i don't know that we did are we talking about this publicly whether or not it makes the show the only thing that made the show is the walkie-talkie bit okay where john was making fun of me for buying walkie-talkies for a road trip uh yeah i do want to hear about that but not this minute um but how was the other parts of the trip just out of curiosity
Marco:
No, I ate way too many combos.
John:
Did you enjoy all your good roadside coffee?
John:
Or did you bring a gigantic thermos of good coffee with you?
Marco:
Oh, you're going to make so much fun of me.
Marco:
Have I mentioned this before?
Marco:
I have a monthly subscription to a fancy hipster instant coffee thing from San Francisco.
Marco:
why i get eight little tubes of instant coffee powder a month delivered in a little canvas bag and they cost like a dollar fifty each and it's a subscription and it's instant coffee you dump it into water and it makes good coffee it's it's basically a really good version of instant coffee and it turns out instant coffee got popular for very good reasons it's pretty damn convenient when you're traveling
Marco:
you know like on the on the plane i got a cup of hot water please and i got a hot water cup and i dumped my coffee into it and stirred it up and had my like insufferable hipster coffee right there on the plane it was wonderful you would i'm so sorry for anybody who cares it's sudden coffee that's the name of it because it's not instant it's sudden haha it sounds like it sounds like it surprises you you go to drink a cup of water and all of a sudden it's brown and bitter what the hell sudden coffee holy shit it's coffee whoa
John:
how did that get there where the hell did this come from anyway it's it's not cheap but it's pretty good if anybody needs this this kind of thing it's pretty good that's pretty much that your motto it's not cheap but it's good this is why like i like anybody listening is probably like of course i have that like it's this surprise this is surprising this is surprising i thought you were gonna say you had like the uh underscore kit where you have this entire uh bunch of paraphernalia that you'd take out in the car including a little table lap desk to set it all up on and then
Marco:
plug in a kettle into the 12 volt socket in the car and just you know i used to do that kind of like fancy you know i i brought my air press on a couple of trips and it was just such a pain i have i got like a travel grinder and everything like and i just i found it not worth the hassle
Marco:
And so instead, uh, I, for a while I would just drink tea on trips.
Marco:
I'd bring my own fancy tea bags, but I don't like tea that much.
Marco:
And you know, coffee's better.
Marco:
And so I, uh, I, I found this and I decided, oh, you know, even though it's a subscription, which I don't like, I'm like, well, I'll try it.
Marco:
I'll see how it is.
Marco:
And, uh, it's been good enough that I've kept it up.
Marco:
Like I, I use it.
Marco:
I don't, I don't always use it regularly.
Marco:
Like sometimes like I'll accumulate a couple extras that I haven't used in the last month, but it's fantastic for road trips.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
sometimes i'll just tear up one of those tubes and dump it in his mouth he doesn't care i actually did that once i was on a road trip and i was i didn't want to stop to get like a cup of hot water because like there was no good place nearby to do that so i just kind of slowly ate the crystals oh my god tasted fine it's
John:
a little strong that's really sad someone someone draw a comic of that how come people never draw comics for our show someone needs to draw a comic of sad marco eating the instant coffee hipster instant coffee out of the tube maybe a little tear a tear going down his side of his face driving on the long island expressway that was another reason for a tear stuck in traffic all right let's start with some follow-up john tell me about breath of the wild on the wii u
John:
Last week, why were we talking about it?
John:
Oh, we were talking about bitness of consoles was one of the Ask ATP questions, and I was talking about how power still makes a difference in the modern era, and talking about a game like Breath of the Wild, which is a large open-world Zelda game, and how you couldn't play it on a less powerful console, and I said the Wii U, and I should have just said the Wii, because obviously, in the grand tradition, I guess two data points makes a tradition, of Zelda games that are initially developed for one console, but take so long
John:
to get done that the second console comes out and then they launch it on both consoles simultaneously that was the case with breath of the wild was actually developed for the wii u and only later launched on the uh the switch and that happened with twilight princess for the uh gamecube and the wii although twilight princess i highly recommend playing it on the gamecube not on the wii because the motion controls are not very good so uh a surprisingly small number of people sent in uh that correction but uh to the people who did a good job
Casey:
And to everyone else, John is disappointed in you.
John:
Yeah, seriously.
John:
Pretty big gaffe in the grand scheme of things.
John:
Maybe if it was about Apple stuff, we would have got more people.
Casey:
Half of the internet wrote in to tell us that the Space Gray keyboard, mouse, and Magic Trackpad are all available separately now, if that's your cup of tea.
Casey:
I am currently fondling at touching a space gray keyboard, and I have a space gray magic mouse next to me, and I have a space gray magic trackpad that I use from time to time.
Casey:
These were all secondhand from friend of the show, underscore David Smith, who did not charge me a premium.
Casey:
However, Apple will charge you a $20 price premium because Apple.
John:
Yeah, why is it that the dark ones... I mean, technically they can do this with any color.
John:
Let's just make fewer of them and then charge more because they're more rare.
John:
Sure, you can do it all the time, but in general, Apple doesn't seem to do that with things that come in colors.
John:
Like, you can get your phones or your iPads in various colors, gold, rose gold, space gray...
John:
Sometimes they come in black, but there's no price difference between the colors.
John:
And yet somehow in the Mac world, every time something gets a darker color, it's an extra 20 bucks or something.
John:
And I don't know.
John:
For some reason, it bothers me that you can get iOS devices in different colors for the same price.
John:
But in the Mac side, that's not the case.
John:
So anyway, I just hope if you're out there listening to this, you didn't buy a space gray iMac Pro keyboard for fifteen hundred dollars on eBay because that would have been a bad move.
Marco:
I kind of feel like my iMac Pro is less special now that these are available to anybody.
Marco:
I'm so sorry.
John:
Well, you know, listeners of this show would have been well-worned because as soon as the iMac Pros came out, we were surprised that it wasn't our prediction that they wouldn't sell for a lot on eBay because people would realize Apple's just going to introduce them and then your things will be worthless.
John:
But alas, that's not the way people think.
John:
And so some people did buy them and sell them apparently for very high prices on eBay.
John:
And I hope all those people are sad now.
Marco:
wow snarky john tonight is everything okay and the people who sold them aren't sad that's true oh yeah i guess well they should be because they took advantage of somebody that they feel bad about that right only if apple should not feel bad they're charging 20 more for no reason 20 premium is better than like a 1 350 premium
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to Jamf Now for sponsoring our show.
All right.
Casey:
I would at this point plug our live show that is going to be happening at WWDC on Monday night, but it is sold out.
Casey:
So if you happen to have a ticket and know you won't need it, please get in contact with Alt Conf and let them know that or tell a friend or do something.
Casey:
But we have no control over attendance.
Casey:
We have no sway over wait lists or anything like that.
Casey:
So thank you to everyone who has purchased a ticket.
Casey:
We hope to see you there and it should be really exciting.
John:
You could win one from a friend in a game of chance.
Casey:
I'm assuming this is a reference I'm not aware of.
Casey:
Anyway.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So, Marco, you went on a really long road trip recently and you had mentioned briefly in the last episode that you had bought some walkie talkies to take with you because it was going to be a multi car caravan.
Casey:
The last I tried to use walkie talkies, which was just a handful of years ago, they were promised to work for like 34 zillion miles and worked for about 34 feet.
Casey:
So tell me about your fancy.
Casey:
I'm sure you bought the most heinously expensive walkie talkies you could find.
Casey:
Tell me how well or not well they worked.
Marco:
So they were only, I think it was something like $60 or $70 for a pair.
Marco:
And then included all the accessories, like the charging base and everything.
Marco:
So I wouldn't say that was that expensive.
Marco:
It's some kind of Cobra.
Marco:
If you look at Amazon, like the Cobra model that is the highest of its group, that's the one I got.
Marco:
It's like something like that for a pair.
Marco:
And it's the one, it has a very useful feature.
Marco:
This is one of the reasons I went to this model, that it has a repeat that back button.
Marco:
So it keeps a buffer over the last few things that were said.
Marco:
And so if you miss what somebody said, you can just hit that and it plays it again, which is really useful.
Marco:
Anyway, John made fun of me relentlessly for buying walkie talkies for the purpose of communicating between two vehicles on a road trip because we have cell phones.
Marco:
And that was a really good argument.
Marco:
Cell phones do sound way better.
Marco:
Unfortunately, it takes a little bit of time to create a cell phone connection.
Marco:
You have to, you know, pick up the phone, unlock it if it's not unlocked, tap something, find them, you know, connect.
Marco:
A walkie-talkie, you literally just push a button and you immediately can say something to them.
Marco:
I told you, you should have had your phones connected the whole time.
John:
Yes, but we were like listening to music and podcasts and stuff the whole time with our phones.
John:
Yeah, you mute it.
John:
And when you want to talk, you hit the mute.
John:
It's not like you're browsing Twitter on it.
John:
Bounce it on the dashboard.
John:
Hit the mute button.
John:
Mute, mute.
John:
Mute, unmute.
John:
Mute, unmute.
John:
No, but... Yeah, I can't even say it.
Marco:
But the phone was being used for the media.
Marco:
So that's no good.
Marco:
Well, what were you... What media?
Marco:
Oh, the podcast?
Marco:
Yeah, podcast, music, or navigation directions.
Marco:
We were also using Waze to navigate.
Marco:
You can do all that at once on your phone.
Marco:
Nope, you can't play media while you're taking a phone call.
Marco:
Anyway, so... And also, where these really came in handy, besides the incredibly fast ability to just push a button and say something quick, like, hey, watch out, don't merge left yet, or something like that, or you don't want to stop at this exit, you know, really quick stuff.
Marco:
But also...
Marco:
not the entirety of our trip, had cell phone coverage.
Marco:
Because we were going to a very rural place at the end of the trip, the entire last 45 minutes had no coverage, during which we were on the walkie-talkies a lot to coordinate things like where we were going to park this giant truck and what direction it had to face, how we were going to get it that way, what we were going to do once we got there, how we were going to do the very first steps to unload it and all the logistics involved.
Marco:
They proved to be invaluable.
Marco:
Everybody involved in this trip was very, very happy that we had these walkie-talkies.
Marco:
They were wonderful in ways that a phone either would have been worse or would have not worked at all.
Marco:
So John was totally wrong.
Marco:
And to answer Casey's question, the range... I did a little bit of research, obviously, when buying these.
Marco:
And it appears... Most of them seem to quote a range of...
Marco:
somewhere between like 10 and 50 miles.
Marco:
And it's not, it doesn't take that much digging to realize that that's actually like, if you're like two people on top of mountaintops with nothing in between you, that's like the most ideal scenario of like nothing obstructing it, you know, no interference from anything.
Marco:
If you do, you know, if you use it like in like a more realistic location, like in a town or on a highway, the mileage basically gets cut to a 10th.
Marco:
So it gets decimated, right?
Marco:
That's what that means.
Marco:
So, yeah, so it basically gets, you know, so your your 37 mile one is actually more like three miles.
Marco:
And it's and even that is like, you know, if you're in a really dense area, like, you know, in like a city with lots of buildings and everything, it might be more like one mile, you know, or maybe even a half mile, worst case scenario for these for these bigger ones.
Marco:
And there's a limit on how powerful they can transmit, which I think on most of the bands is 2 watts.
Marco:
So that's kind of what limits how powerful they can be.
Marco:
But yeah, so it was fun.
Marco:
It was totally worth it.
Marco:
And they're really modern useful things, like the playback feature.
Marco:
They both can charge via USB or take AA batteries, or you can put rechargeable batteries in them and charge them through the USB ports.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
So John was wrong at the end.
John:
So just for the young people listening, I want to assure you that it actually is possible to take tandem car trips without either cell phones or walkie-talkies.
John:
Yeah, but it sucks.
Casey:
It does suck.
Casey:
I would agree with both of you.
John:
It's fun.
John:
You have to come up with systems for signaling and then get frustrated while the people don't follow the systems for signaling.
Casey:
That's a John statement if I've ever heard one of my words.
John:
It is fun, though.
John:
It's like being a spy.
Casey:
Something like that.
John:
If I put my right hand out the window, that means pull over.
John:
Put my left hand out the window.
John:
That means merge.
John:
Aye, aye, aye.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We should get to the actual topics for this evening and something happened on Tuesday and something, something education.
Casey:
Moving on, let's finally get to the topic we all want to get to, which is Apple's heyday.
John:
Let's talk about this.
John:
There's one in between that you skipped, but now we're going to talk about Tuesday thing.
John:
We're not going to go through the event blow by blow because there wasn't that much to go through.
Marco:
But this was...
Marco:
I thought this was so funny, because last week, we, as professional podcasters, completely failed to mention our WWDC live show, and also that there was about to be an Apple event that we all knew about, and we're like, ooh, everyone else is doing predictions, and at least mentioning this is going to happen.
Marco:
We completely failed to even mention it.
John:
I don't think we failed to, because I knew about it, I just didn't think there was anything worth saying on the last show.
John:
I think we talked about it beforehand, and we're like, well, we'll see what they announce, but until they...
John:
I didn't have high expectations of what they were going to announce, and so I didn't really feel like it was worth discussing until they announced something.
Marco:
I mean, I didn't have high expectations either, and they even failed to meet those.
Marco:
I thought it would be really funny if we just never mentioned it at all because there was so little really to it.
Marco:
But unfortunately, John wants to talk about it, so we're going to talk about it.
Marco:
Just pretend like we never actually mentioned it, and it's funnier that way.
John:
There wasn't a lot of product announcements, but I think there are things to talk about, though.
John:
So my first question is, did you two actually watch the event?
Marco:
Nope.
Marco:
Not live, because it was actually during the road trip that I was taking, but I downloaded the video and watched it that night.
John:
Casey's poo-pooing this event.
John:
He didn't even watch it.
John:
How do you know?
John:
They could have had seven slides about you.
Marco:
I have to admit, I also fast-forwarded through some parts of it because it... You know what?
Marco:
What I didn't like about it overall, it kind of made me feel... I don't know.
Marco:
It was a little bit off-putting.
Marco:
It basically seemed like they were holding an event to almost like...
Marco:
yell at the world like, no, look, we care about education, but without actually backing it up with what I consider to be enough.
Marco:
And that could take lots of different forms, and you could disagree or agree with that, but I felt like the premise of an education event that they call the press out and everything, and by the way,
Marco:
If I was an independent journalist who flew out there on my own dime to cover this, I'd be pretty annoyed, honestly.
Marco:
But anyway... And I'm friends with some of these people, and they haven't told me this behind the scenes.
Marco:
I'm just saying, if I were one of these people, I would be annoyed that I had spent the time and money to do this.
Marco:
But the impression I got from this event was that it was...
Marco:
a lot of cheerleading it was it was almost like a pep rally for apple and for teachers how accurate given it was in a school yeah right yeah but but without enough substance i thought to back that up it was it was really more like look at how great we already are at the things that we are already doing not so much here's some you know new new software new changes new hardware whatever it is like there was actually very little of that uh at least very little of of relevance or of significance
Marco:
And there was just a lot more like, here's how great we are.
Marco:
Here's someone else to come out and tell you how great we've been and how great we're going to keep being.
Marco:
And it was a weird balance.
Marco:
I just felt almost like my attention was taken advantage of.
Marco:
You're waiting for them to get to the product announcements?
Marco:
No, and look, I wasn't expecting an iPhone or anything.
Marco:
I knew that it was a focused education event.
Marco:
That's one thing.
Marco:
But if you look at what people would reasonably expect out of a publicized press event regarding Apple and education, I would have expected a lot more than what we actually got.
John:
some people were tweeting i forget when it was like the 20 or 30 minute mark they were like we're you know we're 20 minutes in and they still haven't said anything about any products yet you know there was like a long lead in and there was a long uh lead out as well um i so i i don't remember the last education event but another thing people were tweeting about was exactly how long ago the last education event was apparently they don't even have these things every two or three years there are long gaps between between the events uh having a dedicated education event apple does stuff education related all the time but
John:
Having a dedicated event for it doesn't have a lot of time.
John:
I think the last time we talked about it, these stats were similar.
John:
But to frame this, why is Apple having an education event?
John:
Why are they spending an hour on stage telling you about all the things that Apple does related to education and trying to make them seem, to Marco's point, as good as possible, seem desirable, seem like that Apple is doing great things in education?
John:
This is a quote from Bloomberg, a Bloomberg article, link in the show notes.
John:
Chromebooks accounted for 60% of laptops, tablets, and other mobile computers shipping to US K-12 schools in the third quarter of 2017.
John:
Apple's iPads accounted for 12% of those school devices, which is less than half its market share from 2014.
John:
So from 2014 to 2017, their market share has been cut in half, more than cut in half.
John:
So not only is Apple not leading in market share in this education category they're addressing here, which is basically United States K-12 schools, not only are Chromebooks eating their lunch there,
John:
But it's not as if that's just the status quo.
John:
It's like, yeah, well, you know, Apple's never had big market share, but they have the important mark.
John:
In three years, their small market share has been cut in half.
John:
So if I were Apple and I cared anything about education, I would have to be taking a hard look at this and saying, should we get out of the education market or should we do something?
John:
uh because unlike lots of other markets where we have small market share but it's steady and we you know reap most of the profits right like the phone market for example apple does not dominate the phone market market share wise but i you know apple is probably not uh crying over that because they make so much money on it and
John:
They are seen to have, you know, if not the best phone, then one of the best phones.
John:
Right.
John:
And I don't think you see a lot of articles anymore saying Apple needs to up its phone market share or they're going to be doomed or, you know, Android is eating Apple's lunch in the phone market just because the money talks.
John:
Right.
John:
You look where all the money goes.
John:
It goes to Apple.
John:
And also, if Apple's phone market share had been cut in half in the last three years, I think there'd be a lot of articles about that.
John:
So I feel like the context for this event is Apple trying to figure out how to even just stay in the game in education.
John:
Forget about here's how great we are.
John:
But just can you know, is this a market where we can or we can make a difference where we can be a player where we can be important?
John:
And that got me thinking about how the education market is different from the phone market or the personal computer market or the TV-connected puck market or the home cylinder that you yell at market or whatever, you know, the fancy computer watch market.
John:
Lots of, like, in the modern era, Apple has been all about...
John:
making tons of money selling relatively high margin expensive products to a minority of a market the phone market is the best example of that because they make so much money and their market share is so small compared to the aggregate of all their competitors which is always just lumped together as like apple and non-apple basically android and ios but they just make so much money it's like well this is a winning strategy we don't really care
John:
We're not going to worry that, oh, we need to make a netbook.
John:
Remember the netbook's little cheap laptops to compete with the PC space.
John:
We need to make a super cheap iPhone to compete with Android.
John:
That's not how Apple plays the game.
John:
They want to sell to the best part of the market, best meaning the part that is the most lucrative, the part that allows Apple to make the fanciest products because people will pay the highest price and the highest margins and will let Apple's products look nice and everything like that.
John:
And I was thinking about whether that strategy is viable in education, because as far as I can tell, Apple continues to essentially pursue that in these past decade or so in education, saying we're not going to have the majority of the education market.
John:
but we'll have the quote-unquote best part of the education market.
John:
The richest schools will buy Apple stuff.
John:
Like, I'm trying to figure out what they're thinking.
John:
That if you can afford us, we give you the best school experience, or it will seem the fanciest if you buy Apple stuff.
John:
And for some reason, when it comes to education, that rubs me the wrong way more so than smartphones.
John:
Just because education I think of more as a thing that has to be for everybody.
John:
Whereas smartphones...
John:
there are options and if you don't have an iphone you are not disadvantaged in life versus if you have an android phone right but if you don't have an education or don't have a good education or our education is not as rich as someone else's that feels you know inequitable to me uh and so i'm watching this presentation and i'm trying to figure out is apple changing course here are they saying we're we're going to figure out how to
John:
let more students get access to our products or are we still concentrating on providing the best products for the few students who are lucky enough to go to a school that can afford them uh and the presentation as i read it as someone who is not you know i'm not involved in the education system but i do have kids in school um
John:
Seemed to me that they were not changing their strategy, that everything they presented was beautifully polished, sort of very sort of high end, nice to look at applications, hardware and software that a few schools are lucky enough to have.
John:
But that the pricing was the same as it's ever been.
John:
And that nothing they announced is going to help them compete with the things that are currently eating their lunch in the market.
John:
not just on price, but from what I understand from people in education, a lot of the features for the stuff that Google offers are better than the feature that Apple offers.
John:
That's why part of the announcements are, yeah, we have a product, a new iPad, but we also have a bunch of new software that's playing catch-up to our competitors to say, oh, here's an easier way to manage a bunch of iPads, here's an easier way for a teacher to manage a bunch of students doing things.
John:
But even that, even the catch-up software,
John:
I saw a lot of complaints saying, OK, but you still haven't caught up entirely to the functionality offered by Google in terms of integrating into other school system things and providing a broader set of functionality, which may not be pretty and fancy and have like the Apple Pencil support and, you know, high end video production capabilities so kids can make cool videos about gravity and stuff.
John:
But practically speaking, when it comes to, you know, reading, writing and arithmetic and the basics of functioning in a school and having a lot of students and a lot of devices and managing it all.
John:
But still, Apple's offerings aren't even the best.
John:
And they're certainly not the cheapest.
John:
So I'm kind of...
John:
confused slash concerned about apple's approach to education because it seems to me that if they really want to make a difference in this market they need to pursue a different strategy because i don't i don't think it's appropriate to pursue a strategy like they do in the consumer market in education but you know i don't know maybe i'm wrong about that i would love to hear from people in education who have worked with apple and google stuff about what how they perceive
John:
these uh competitors that did people watch the education event in uh you know people who are actually teachers or school administrators and think that apple had done something uh that's going to change the game or did it just seem like more of the same i thought uh joe saplinsky had a few good tweets about this and i'll probably forget to put them in the show notes but joe uh used to be a i think he was an english teacher if i'm not mistaken apologies if i have that wrong but
Casey:
Now he's an app developer and designer and slash rock star.
Casey:
But in any case, you know, his take about it was, you know, look, Apple doesn't really play the, you know, cheap game.
Casey:
Just like you were saying, John, you know, it's not Apple's card that they play.
Casey:
So are we really surprised that this is the way this event turned out?
Casey:
And, you know, he and I went back and forth a little bit in a happy way, or at least I thought it was happy.
Casey:
Maybe he was annoyed at me.
Casey:
But, you know, we went back and forth a little bit.
Casey:
And the thing that...
Casey:
You know, I've not worked in education, but Aaron was a teacher, a high school teacher for a long time.
Casey:
And in fact, I think I've mentioned this a few times on the show.
Casey:
A few years ago, actually many years ago now, there was national news about like a stampede that happened because iBooks were being sold for 50 bucks a pop at the Richmond International Raceway.
Casey:
And they were old like high school iBooks that were being retired.
Casey:
And so they were selling them obscenely cheaply.
Casey:
And people got trampled trying to buy these cheap iBooks.
Casey:
Well, that happened because of the county in which we live.
Casey:
It was our county that was selling all those.
Casey:
And so Erin, when she was teaching, the kids all got issued Dells when she was teaching.
John:
Dude.
Casey:
Yeah, you're getting a Dell.
Casey:
It was just a couple of years before that they were getting these iBooks, et cetera.
Casey:
So having spoken to Erin about this earlier,
Casey:
I mean, again, I'm still a little bit removed from the actual decision making, as was she, but it seemed pretty clear to me that even in a relatively affluent area like we're in, I mean, we're no like, you know, Greenwich County, Connecticut or anything like that, but we're not broke around these parts.
Casey:
And even here, it's all about cost.
Casey:
It's just 100% about cost.
Casey:
And so, yeah, I think you're right, John, that maybe the Apple's play is, hey, if you happen to live in a really rich area or if you go to like a very well-to-do private school or something like that, then yeah, we have all sorts of sweet answers for you.
Casey:
We have a sweet solution for you.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
I don't know of any quote-unquote regular school system that is going to look at anything more than initial purchase price.
Casey:
Maybe, maybe total cost of ownership.
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
But generally speaking, it's going to be purchase price.
Casey:
And the other thing I've gleaned from Bradley Chambers and Fraser Spears and a few others is that apparently the management stuff that Google has is way better than what Apple has.
Casey:
It's not even in the ballpark.
Casey:
Now, to be fair, you can supplement what Apple does with like Jamf or other third-party tools.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
It seems to be a lot more work and a lot more money to use the Apple suite.
Casey:
Is that worth it?
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
They certainly painted, from what I've gleaned from not having watched the event, they certainly painted a pretty compelling picture as to all the things you can do with iPads in the classroom and so on and so forth.
Casey:
But I just don't see how that's a realistic play for almost any general school system in the world.
Casey:
And if you're going to spend $330 per kid on an iPad...
Casey:
I got to imagine an aggregate that adds up to a not insignificant amount of money.
Casey:
And the first place I would put that is teacher salaries, because at least in America, salaries are just hilariously, just devastatingly small.
Casey:
And it's absurd how little teachers get paid here.
John:
I guess the other point that is less and less mentioned, I feel like, in the modern Apple era, which is general skepticism about whether the addition of technology actually improves education.
John:
To your point, Casey, about maybe you've actually paid teachers more.
John:
That would improve education more than buying all the kids a laptop.
John:
There is a technology angle that Apple can speak to, which is they have a very important profitable platform that if things keep going well will be a viable place for...
John:
children to uh make their living uh and so teaching coding skills and just more broadly teaching coding skills which is the thing that apple's familiar with because they have a developer you know they have developers they have developer relations they have developer tools they are well equipped to make uh an education focused version of teaching people how computer skills which i think is a viable thing to learn in school right and apple has expertise there so welcome apple to the education they're teaching about something you know but beyond that
John:
um i feel like when i was a kid there was much more skepticism about whether having kids make a multimedia presentation about gravity like and that they have this cute video of kids you know doing this project and making slow-mo videos on all their ios devices and cutting it together and making animations and doing all that um looks fun seems expensive and especially like these you know incredibly high production values that these that for the things they do in these little promotional videos um
John:
But does that actually improve education?
John:
Like there's enrichment and there is getting kids engaged with technology and there is having the advantage to do something a little bit different every once in a while.
John:
But I think the vision presented by Apple of that, like all kids are doing creative multimedia digital things all the time.
John:
is not representative of, like, the broader effort to educate.
John:
Like, those are the most fun parts, and you can make learning fun with the addition of technology, but you can make learning fun with the addition of, you know, just sitting in a circle and talking to each other and, you know, or just going on a field trip.
John:
Like, there is... It just seems to me that Apple seems uninterested in...
John:
What will actually make education.
John:
Better and more interested in.
John:
How can we.
John:
Make education better with our products.
John:
And I'm not entirely sure their products.
John:
make education better in a way that is worth the money spent on i'm not one of those people's like oh school shouldn't have computers or anything like that it just it just seems to me that like that learning is not linked to the technology involved right that you can learn all the same things in exciting engaging ways
John:
without having computers involved at all unless of course you're learning about computers which again that's the angle that apple has expertise on and they're they're wise to to lean on it like learning to code and then there's swift playgrounds a lot of stuff but if you're not learning about computers computers may help you typewriters may help you slates may help you pencils and lined paper may help you but in the end the learning part it seems much more there are so many other much bigger factors starting with just like
John:
temperature control and safety all the way up to class size and teachers that are not, you know, stressed out and are not underpaid and overworked.
John:
And, you know, just curriculum that suits the students, different learning strategies, special help for the kids who need it.
John:
Like, there's so many more things that are more important to me than whether my kids have the latest iPad or Android devices or whatever, you know.
John:
And I'm not saying that it's Apple's job to solve education.
John:
The problem is just that I didn't even see a feint in that direction, a nod or an understanding to the fact that the most important thing in the classroom has nothing to do with the technology that's there because they're there to sell you the technology.
John:
And that's what I found.
John:
That and my concern about the fact that their strategy doesn't seem to be changing made me think that
John:
apple is on the wrong track with its education strategy and that that if they continue to pursue it they're not going to turn around their market share slide uh and and also like again having two kids in school it didn't make me think boy i wish my kids had access to to ipads and apple laptops
John:
I don't have any desire for that at all for my kids.
John:
I want my kids to learn and enjoy school and learn the things that they're supposed to learn, the social skills, to have a good school experience.
John:
I have no desires whatsoever about the technology they're using.
John:
I don't care if they use any technology unless they're interested in technology or unless they're taking a course in technology.
John:
And even then, I don't care if they teach the kids Pascal, teach them C++, teach them Scheme.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I don't care if they're learning Swift or iOS programming or anything like that.
John:
So, I don't know.
John:
Maybe I'm overly grumpy about this.
Marco:
No, I mean, I think you bring up a lot of really good points because, you know, I think maybe one of the reasons this event kind of rubbed me the wrong way is similar to what you were just saying about how, like, it seems like Apple more just wants to, like...
Marco:
yell at us about why they don't have to change much of anything, why their existing stuff can just be shoved right in there and be a perfect fit.
Marco:
And I think that over time, the compellingness or the fit of what they're trying to put into this category versus what these customers actually need and want
Marco:
is diverging.
Marco:
It's not getting closer over time.
Marco:
It's getting worse over time.
Marco:
The way I see it from both reading and listening to school workers who are also writers in tech or podcasters, also from friends and family I know who work in education, some of them teachers, some of them administrators, it seems like what schools ultimately want
Marco:
is inexpensive, durable laptops and enterprise-style management tools and services to back them to make it easier to manage.
Marco:
Apple seems to me like they're losing this on three pretty major fronts.
Marco:
Price is obviously a big one.
Marco:
They are losing on price, not by as much as some people think if you look at iPads as being the solution.
Marco:
If you look at laptops as being the solution, they lose big.
Marco:
they also seem to be losing with you know just kind of this is kind of the wrong product i think like and we have this argument a lot in in you know our regular you know tech beat of is the ipad a good enough computer for various people for various things and ultimately i think while you could make the some really nice marketing videos about how cool it would be if kids used ipads and to you know rediscover things like you know music and robots and stuff i
Marco:
That's not what most kids need most of the time in most classes.
Marco:
What they mostly need is laptops.
Marco:
And so what Apple is trying to sell the schools on is, no, look, yes, our laptops are way too expensive for what you're looking for.
Marco:
So instead, although they still sell a lot of them anyway, but instead, you should be looking at the iPad.
Marco:
That's why we don't need to make our laptops any cheaper because the future is the iPad.
Marco:
And you can just bolt on all of these...
Marco:
clunky expensive accessories that raise the price even further because you're not going to use that ipad at 329 or 29 you're going to have to add a case of some kind to protect it because it's way too fragile to just give to kids naked you can even give to adults naked uh so you got to get some kind of case it's probably going to want some kind of keyboard for a lot of things it needs or for standardized test requirements and things like that so that's why they have this logitech case it has this this you know special keyboard and everything
Marco:
So you have to add on all these accessories.
Marco:
Now they want you to buy a pencil or the Logitech crayon, which is interesting.
Marco:
They want you to add on even more stuff to it to make it into what you want.
Marco:
All that drives up the price and the complexity and the clunkiness of the solution.
Marco:
So it's very possible, and I think likely, that they're actually selling schools the wrong product.
Marco:
What schools actually want is inexpensive, durable laptops.
Marco:
And then the third problem, which I don't see them probably ever fixing...
Marco:
is that if you talk to an administrator or a teacher who runs the Google G Suite stuff or to an IT manager who runs the fleets of these things, the G Suite management tools are really good.
Marco:
It is an entire enterprise management platform
Marco:
And all these web services with Google Docs and all this stuff that's really good.
Marco:
And Apple, I don't think, is ever going to do well in that kind of environment.
Marco:
That's not in their DNA to make enterprise fleet management things very, very well or to make cloud document platforms very well.
Marco:
They try, but not very hard, and it's never very competitive.
Marco:
And when you compare, like, I laughed so hard.
Marco:
They made a quick little remark about how when the iPad, how it supports multiple users only in a school environment.
Marco:
And the presenter said, you can change users in under a minute.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
I was like, wow.
Marco:
Imagine if it took a minute to switch users on a PC or a Mac.
John:
It wasn't even change users.
John:
It was you could log out and be ready for someone else to log in.
John:
They were touting the logout time.
John:
I think the log in time could potentially be worse because what it does under the cover is it's not like they're using the multi-user features of the underlying operating system.
John:
It's just like a single user iPad that they swap in and out by shuffling stuff around.
John:
It's not like multiple accounts on the Mac.
Marco:
They're tearing down the entire user space, tearing down all of Springboard, swapping in various directories and files, and then bringing the whole thing back up.
Marco:
It's even more complex than a reboot, what they're doing.
Marco:
Because these devices are not made for this at all.
Marco:
If you want that kind of thing, you need networked PCs and Macs.
Marco:
iPads are so not made for multi-user.
Marco:
And they're not willing to change iOS in major ways to fix that.
Marco:
They're only willing to do this kind of minor lip service stuff.
Marco:
So if you look at Apple education, their history...
Marco:
They were always kind of like the fancy, expensive ones that you'd have a few of in the schools.
Marco:
I was in school long before any kind of one-to-one program, so maybe that's different now.
Marco:
But Apple did well when it was Macs only, when they weren't trying to split their...
Marco:
consumer computing ideal into these two very different platforms of Mac and iPad so when there's just one platform for them to focus on and in a world where that platform could basically be an island it was like here is a really nice desktop that you can use to edit videos and do desktop publishing on they were really good at that
Marco:
But today, you have large fleets of these always networked, strongly web services-based application platforms and enterprise management tools.
Marco:
And Apple just doesn't do that nearly as well or nearly as competitively as Google and Microsoft and other PC vendors that have tools for schools and stuff.
Marco:
I don't see that really ever changing.
Marco:
Apple is not that good at web services.
Marco:
They're not that good at enterprise management tools.
Marco:
In all the other areas of their business, they're actually pulling away from that.
Marco:
I also even question, back in the olden days, there was always that thing, no one gets fired for buying IBM.
Marco:
If you're an IT administrator at a school,
Marco:
and you are tasked with making this kind of decision of like, do you invest heavily in the Apple platform or in G Suite?
Marco:
Would you trust, knowing today's Apple, knowing how they do services, how they maintain applications over time,
Marco:
Would you trust building your school out on ClassKit and the classroom or schoolwork, whatever it's called, all that stuff?
Marco:
Would you trust that to actually be not only bug-free when it ships not today, when it ships sometime in the future, would you trust that to be stable enough?
Marco:
And more importantly, would you trust that to be maintained and supported over a reasonable amount of time?
Marco:
I think that's a huge risk for an IT administrator to take.
Marco:
I think that's way too high of a risk.
Marco:
Knowing the way Apple does things these days and knowing how seemingly stable and already well developed and well established the competing platforms are in these regards, I don't see this being a really good decision for an IT administrator pretty much anywhere.
John:
That gets me back to my earlier point.
John:
This is enterprise software for schools.
John:
Enterprise software, in my old definition, is software where the person you have to sell it to is not the person who has to use it.
John:
And there's two angles in that.
John:
The one we already talked about, which is management of large devices.
John:
In a world where you can actually conceive of one-to-one programs where every student gets one device, that was not even a twinkle in anyone's eye when I was in school.
John:
It was like you had a computer lab with six computers in it for the whole school.
John:
And they're all Apple IIs, by the way, not Macs.
John:
um but it that enterprise management thing like some of the people who watch this event i could see on twitter were from that camp like saying okay apple i have a problem my problem is i have lots of students i have lots of devices and dealing with them is difficult you got to keep track of them all you got to keep them all up to date you got to manage them all tell me apple how you're going to make my job as an enterprise school administrator easy
John:
That is enterprise software in both the good and bad senses.
John:
And I tend to look at the bad sense because the bad sense is, say, Apple or Google or anybody makes these school administrators lives easier and gives them an easy way to manage large fleets of devices.
John:
I, as a parent and as a general citizen interested in the education of the country, thinks, okay, but does every student having devices make their education better?
John:
Like, I don't care how easy it is for you, school administrator, to manage the devices.
John:
Like, I understand that's how they sell it to you.
John:
I understand that's why you're choosing, because you want something that can do all the things you want to hook into your...
John:
back-end system that keeps track of all your students you want to be able to you know but i'm not that interested in how easy it is for you to do your job the whole point of the school is education is it better for the kids for everyone to have these devices does does the device that the kids get is there a difference to them or is there no difference like do the kids care if they have a chromebook or the apple stuff does it make a difference to their education just like at all do they you know so that that's my question and the second thing is that i worry about is like
John:
The other constituency that is not the students that Apple appeals to just in general, but in education is regardless of how hard it is to manage the devices.
John:
Right.
Right.
John:
I feel like there is still, and maybe this has actually increased in the recent decade, some cachet for a school to say, all our kids have iPads or have MacBook Airs, going back a little bit in time, or have Apple devices that...
John:
if if someone was touring the schools thinking of buying a house in the neighborhood and this is the neighborhood school your kid would go to or if it's a private school or whatever and you have apple hardware everywhere that makes the school seem better because apple thanks to its marketing and the general high quality of its products in the consumer realm is seen as a premium brand and as like as it's fancy right and so the parents go all the kids here have ipads again
John:
So do the parents actually think if they sat down and thought about, well, are iPads going to make my child's school experience better than having one more teacher and making the class sizes smaller?
John:
Are iPads going to make my kids' educational experience better than if they had Chromebooks?
John:
And they're not even thinking that.
John:
They're just thinking, all the kids in this school, every school has an iBook.
John:
That's why people are making that stampede for the $50 iBooks, because Apple makes fancy, nice devices that most people usually can't afford.
John:
And if you can suddenly get them for $50, it's like there's a rush on that because there is a perceived value, a perceived coolness, cachet, marketing value, whatever, like status for Apple devices.
John:
So if you can get them cheap, all of a sudden people want to get them because they want a piece of that.
John:
And that bothers me in education, too, because I don't want to pick schools based on how fancy the hardware is.
John:
It's like picking schools based on, like, you know, mahogany railings on the stairs.
John:
I mean, there is something to be said for schools that look fancy and feel nice and everything, but...
John:
as far as education goes like do the kids care that the railings are mahogany like beyond a mint beyond a minimum level of school upkeep and temperature control and safety and you know not you know pumping carbon monoxide into the building because the furnace is old like obviously they can get bad but once you get into sort of the competent realm i'm much less interested in that stuff and then i am about all the other much more important aspects of the school and
John:
Even if Apple was massive, you know, take Google.
John:
Google seems to be very successful at appealing to people who are enterprise administrators.
John:
But I continue to wonder in a school where the enterprise administrators, kind of like in a workplace where the enterprise administrators, their job is awesome and they love their vendor.
John:
Do their end users love the product?
John:
Do the teachers love the product?
John:
Do the students love the product?
John:
Does it actually make their education better?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I have a real crisis of faith about technology and education, I guess.
Casey:
So it feels to me, having not actually watched this particular event, but based on all of the recaps that I've read, it feels to me like this was, and I forget which one of you said, I think it was Marco.
Casey:
This was a pep rally for Apple, but it was Apple trying to say, hey, you should consider us despite us.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
In other words, there's so many things that we don't do the way you want us to do it.
Casey:
But you know what?
Casey:
There's some other stuff that's really cool.
Casey:
And I guess there's a couple of ways to look at that, right?
Casey:
Like you could look at that as Apple is obnoxious and full of themselves.
Casey:
And, oh, of course, we're so fancy.
Casey:
And look at us and our fancy iPads and our AR and blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
But I don't really take it that way at all.
Casey:
I took it as, hey, look.
Casey:
We aspire, we genuinely aspire to make a engaging, interesting, enlightening, and diverse in terms of experienced educational-like, not event, but we want education to be interesting, basically.
Casey:
And here's a way that we are, or several ways that we are enabling that and making education interesting and making the education part interesting.
Casey:
relatively frictionless now the penalty is that the poor school administrator is going to pay for that tenfold but for the teacher and the student if you believe what apples if you buy what apples selling literally and figuratively then it's reasonably frictionless right so you should consider this because we are like the aspirational version of education that all of us really want aren't we you should really look at us despite the fact that we're way too expensive and way too difficult to work with
Casey:
And that's how I took the event again, not having seen it.
Casey:
I took it as, look, we're here, you know, knock, knock, knock.
Casey:
We're here and we do cool stuff.
Casey:
And if you really want to get your kids engaged, maybe try us because no kid today wants a laptop anymore.
Casey:
I mean, maybe that's what they need.
Casey:
I mean, I know you said that earlier, Marco, although I challenge, I'm not entirely sure why.
Casey:
I mean, my gut says, yeah, of course they need laptops.
Casey:
But then I ask myself, well, why?
Casey:
And other than a keyboard, I don't have a good answer.
Casey:
And I'm not here to have that argument at this particular moment.
Casey:
It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Marco:
Everyone says iPads are like, everyone's going to be doing tablets in the future because my kid loves tablets and doesn't know what a laptop is.
Marco:
And it's like, okay, wait till your kid is a little bit older.
Marco:
And then like, you know, how many kids get to the end of high school without having or wanting a laptop?
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
And I agree with you.
Casey:
But all I'm saying is there's the obnoxious Apple hubris way of looking at this, which is we are so much better than everyone else because look at how cool we are.
Casey:
And then there's the more humble, hey, man, we're cool too, right?
Casey:
Like, check us out.
Casey:
We're worth at least considering.
Casey:
And that's how I took the event.
Casey:
But in the end of the day, it all comes, well, not all, but generally speaking, and this is what Saplinski and I were kind of going back and forth about,
Casey:
In general, it all comes down to money, and it's just too damn expensive.
Marco:
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Casey:
Now, we haven't really talked about the actual product announcement that happened during this event.
Casey:
Product.
Casey:
Yeah, the product.
Casey:
Which, I mean, to be fair, I don't think anyone should have really expected more than this.
Casey:
I think we were all, myself included, aspirationally hoping for more than just a new iPad.
Casey:
But realistically, this is what the tea leaves were showing.
Casey:
So, Marco, tell us about this new iPad.
Marco:
So it is updated guts for the actually interesting one that they released last year without an event at all.
Marco:
So last spring, about a year ago, they released the inexpensive 9.7-inch iPad for $329 built with old parts, basically, to make it cheaper.
Marco:
And it's kind of like the way the iPhone SE is kind of built with old parts on the iPhone end to make that cheaper.
Marco:
It's basically the iPad SE.
Marco:
They basically kind of remade the iPad Air 1 with modern guts.
Marco:
So it doesn't have some of the niceties.
Marco:
So the news now is that they have now updated that model.
Marco:
And by the way, I think that model is...
Marco:
almost single-handedly responsible for the turnaround in ipad sales uh i think the numbers show from the analysts and stuff that ipad sales went up starting with this model because it turns out when you drop the price of the entry-level model to a lineup a lot more people want to buy it so they can learn a lot from the laptop line anyway to whoever's point it was before kids do love
John:
iPads, like very young kids all the way up.
John:
So there was always an appetite, a desire for iPads, but you're not going to buy a $600 iPad for a toddler.
John:
But a $300 one starts to get into the realm of possibility.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
So anyway, so they introduced this lower price point for the entry-level iPad last year, and it sold very well.
Marco:
And then now they've updated it with newer components.
Marco:
It is now roughly the guts of an iPhone 7.
Marco:
um in in most important ways um just in like an ipad uh size case with an ipad size screen um it is not the nicest screen it's it's like it's basically like an ipad air one kind of screen so it doesn't have the close lamination of the screen to the glass so you could there's like a small visible gap um although i mean it's not that big on that topic uh
John:
I would love to know if someone knows if that increases repairability, because that's all I could think of.
John:
It's like, why don't they use the laminated screen?
John:
Maybe it's because if students drop it, they can replace the top class without replacing the screen, or maybe I'm wrong about that.
John:
So someone at the Genius Bar, let us know.
Marco:
That's an interesting thought.
Marco:
I mean, I figured it was just for cost and for segmentation, because, see, I think one of the issues I have with this, so anyway, if you go down the specs...
Marco:
There's not a lot of differences between this and the 10.5-inch iPad Pro.
Marco:
There are some, and they might be big for you, but it's actually not hugely different.
Marco:
And it's half the price of the iPad Pro.
Marco:
So there are some differences, and again, they may matter to you.
Marco:
As our friend Federico Fatici pointed out, the new cheap iPad does not have the ProMotion 120Hz refresh rate, does not have the P3 wide color, True Tone, a smart connector for the keyboard, and then the camera is not as good.
Marco:
It does not have image stabilization, does not shoot 4K video, and it only has first-generation Touch ID.
John:
um it does now support the apple pencil which is interesting uh i don't know how much that's going to matter in practice because at least not for schools i i can't imagine apple pushing that so hard by the way like the pencil support every one of the slot the whole visual theme of the show was things drawn with the apple pencil every slide every like it was very consistent beautiful drawings as always with apple beautiful presentation
John:
they were leaning heavily on the pencil.
John:
But the pencil, of course, is $100 extra.
John:
That's why people are talking about the iPad.
John:
So you have the iPad, then you got $50 to $100 for a case, $100 for the pencil, and the crayon was half the price, but it doesn't do tilt.
John:
It doesn't do pressure.
John:
It just does tilt and touch.
Marco:
The Logitech crayon is interesting.
Marco:
It's like if they would sell that separately and if it would work with regular iPads, it doesn't.
Marco:
So it only works with this one.
Marco:
It doesn't work with the iPad Pros.
Marco:
And it is only sold through the education channel.
Marco:
So you can't just go on Apple.com and order one, which is unfortunate because it's Logitech's device that is really an Apple Pencil inside.
Marco:
It has the same benefits of the Apple Pencil except for it does not have pressure sensitivity.
John:
um but i know a lot of people who would buy that and it's like a little bit more ergonomic it has a button like there's like it's actually kind of better in some ways i mean and you know it doesn't look as nice and everything but honestly i would probably have bought one of those if it worked on the ipad pro but people can't use it for art without the pressure sensitivity though like i continue to think that the apple pencil i mean the apple pencil is great and all but i think it's just too expensive like maybe for the pro models it's like who cares but it just i really wish there was a pencil for less than a hundred dollars
Marco:
Yeah, and it really does have a few pretty annoying design flaws.
Marco:
Mike made the case on Connected this past week that we all made fun of it, how you can charge it by sticking it up the butt of the iPad, and it looks really funny, but he made the case that that's actually a good thing in practice, and that's fine.
Marco:
I think the Apple Pencil has lots of design problems.
Marco:
It has the issue of
Marco:
It's, you know, there's nothing to grip on it.
Marco:
It is a little bit too big and a little bit too heavy.
Marco:
The battery life is not good enough.
Marco:
And because there is no power switch, it just... The battery is constantly draining itself.
Marco:
If you're, like, carrying it in a bag and it's in motion or using the iPad without using the pencil.
Marco:
And, of course, there's nowhere to put it on the iPad or around the iPad.
Marco:
There's lots of problems that the pencil has.
Marco:
The Logitech Crayon solves some of those.
Marco:
And it's kind of a shame that you have to rely on that, like...
Marco:
Apple doesn't stoop down to the level of making something ergonomic with a button on it, even though that would actually make it a better product in some ways.
Marco:
But anyway, going back to this iPad, this iPad's a really good deal.
Marco:
You're getting a lot for this, and
Marco:
If anything, I think it really highlights how incredibly expensive the iPad Pro is for what you're getting there.
Marco:
To get a decently equipped one of these, which we'll get to in a little while, you're looking at $400 once you throw in some accessories, maybe more.
Marco:
With the iPad Pro, you're looking at about $800.
Marco:
For double the price, you're getting a...
Marco:
Nicer and slightly larger screen.
Marco:
The smart connector, which gives you the opportunity to spend another $200 on the keyboard.
Marco:
And a little bit better camera, which a lot of people don't use or don't care about on the iPad.
Marco:
So it's like the difference that you're getting is... And it's not...
Marco:
I don't think it's a twice the price difference to go from this to the iPad Pro.
Marco:
And again, this is only going to be for a few months because presumably in June, they're probably going to update the iPad Pro to make it even better.
Marco:
But I do think this kind of illustrates quite how expensive the iPad Pro is compared to how expensive it needs to be.
Marco:
Because this shows what they can do at 329.
John:
this ipad feels a little bit chintzy to me though like i'm i understand it's got to be a cut down model like it makes sense to have in the product line i think they should have a cheap ipad setting aside to get educated setting aside education just just for regular people right but some of the cheaping out like i i've complained about this before i really wish apple would make less expensive products that were not merely uh
John:
old parts or old like a purpose-built product to hit a much lower price point like in this case the one that really burns me is touch id second not doesn't have second gen touch id because that just feels like you're being it's like come on like i understand i understand i don't need p3 color gamut i don't need promotion like true tone maybe smart connector okay maybe that's like a feature that schools don't want or whatever camera sure by all means cheap out but
John:
but the touch id you unlock it like it just it just it's like everything like we can't have we can't have any nice things it's like as if apple was selling cheaper imagine apple sold lots of macs if they were selling cheaper macs with usb 2 in them still right and it'd be like come on at a certain point usb 2 isn't it more expensive for you than usb 3 like just i know it's not quite the same thing but the usb c cable that comes with all the macbook pros is usb 2 cable
John:
Yeah, I just feel like you have to make the product not feel like you're getting second class in everything.
John:
And this is a thing that Steve Jobs used to do.
John:
And my impression from the outside is that basically through sheer force of will, because it's what he wanted, is periodically...
John:
It would update the whole line, and they would expunge some lesser thing from the entire line top to bottom.
John:
Even the cheapest one wouldn't have the thing that Steve Jobs no longer likes.
John:
He loved to refresh the whole line and say, it's all gone.
John:
And in the Tim Cook era, refreshing the whole line pretty much never happens.
John:
Like, you get new things at the top, but the middle and bottom is just like...
John:
It's all, it's like hand-me-downs and secondhand stuff and just hanging out down there with yesterday's technology.
John:
You never get the clean sweep.
John:
They go through, it says, we have a whole new line of products from super low price, super high price, and all of them, we talked about this, look like a family and are brought up to some minimum standard.
John:
Right.
John:
So that like second gen touch ID should be everywhere by now.
John:
You should not have first gen touch ID.
John:
It should be a relic of the past.
John:
But it's like, can we save an extra dollar 50?
John:
Yes, we can keep shipping the old one.
John:
No, don't keep shipping the old one.
John:
Like even even the lowest end Apple product, I feel like has to be brought along with all the other tech.
John:
At some minimum level.
John:
I don't know.
John:
The product annoys me a little bit.
John:
I do agree that it's great that it's there.
John:
It's much better than not having it at all.
John:
But I'm not... I don't like it.
Marco:
Tim Cook has no minimum standard.
Marco:
That's really... If you look at... You said raise everything to a minimum standard.
Marco:
He has no minimum.
Marco:
He will sell the oldest, lowest-end parts forever as long as there's still money to be made there.
Marco:
That's why...
Marco:
I think if Apple was truly a premium company, if they really wanted that quality, and honestly, and I don't say this often, if Steve was still there, I do not think they would be selling anything today with a spinning disc or a non-retina screen.
John:
Yeah, it's because as a product guy, as Steve so much was, and I attribute to him because he just had the last say in so many things.
John:
Once you have the new thing, you don't want anyone to have the old thing anymore.
John:
Obviously, price is a factor, and you can't just make everyone retina overnight.
John:
But once you see a retina screen, God, can you look at a non-retina screen anymore?
John:
And as soon as that's feasible price-wise, you want to put that in everything.
John:
Same thing with second-gen Touch ID.
John:
First-gen Touch ID, yeah, it's our first cutout.
John:
But once we get the second-gen one and the price comes down, once it gets close enough, it's time to refresh the whole line and forget about first-gen Touch ID.
John:
You're never going to see that in an Apple product again.
John:
Everything is second-gen.
John:
Just because you feel like you want everyone to have your new thing.
John:
And yet, Tim does not seem to have that instinct.
John:
He feels no kind of...
John:
uh shame i'm gonna say embarrassment or it's not it's not shame or embarrassment it's too much it's more like just when you make a new thing you want everyone to see your bet you want everyone to see the best thing that you have to offer and again obviously price comes into it everyone can't get a p3 screen everyone can't get promotion right but there's a trickle down effect and a product person would be like boy i can't wait until it's financially feasible for me to offer p3 displays on all our products when is that going to happen give me a timeline five years from now or whatever let's go for that because
John:
that will be a milestone like that we will have raised the bar on all of our products and tim cook is like i don't care if that ever happens keep shipping the tn display on the macbook air with giant pixels and terrible color reproduction as long as people buy it that's not i don't like that this is a good time to bring up another point that we had in the notes here which is that uh apple's uh still selling the ipad mini 4 for 70 more than this new ipad it has an a8
Marco:
As opposed to an A10.
Marco:
And yep, still selling it.
Marco:
No end in sight and also no replacement in sight for that product, even though I think people would buy it.
John:
It's got no Apple Pencil support and a smaller display and it's $70 more.
John:
This is an article from The Verge, by the way.
John:
And this is another example of Apple's product lines not being coherent.
John:
Lay out all the iPads before me and explain to me what the progression is through your line or what the use cases are.
John:
And then you get to the iPad Mini 4 and be like, this is like for people who want something smaller but want it to be two generations behind our least expensive one and have no pencil support.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Like, I mean, maybe they're in an in-between period.
John:
But we used to say that in the beginning, like, oh, this line is in a transition, right?
John:
But now I feel like...
John:
We have enough time to say all the lines are constantly in transition.
John:
They never get to their destination.
John:
They never get to the point where there is a line that makes sense and that has good products at all price points.
John:
It's always just this long tail of the residue of yesteryear falling off the product line or not falling off as the case may be.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Away.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They cut out the middlemen and the whole retail chain and they sell directly to you without all that markup that all those middlemen have to add.
Marco:
away suitcases come from over 10 different colors and over five sizes they have carry-ons bigger carry-ons medium large even a kid's carry-on all their suitcases are made with premium german polycarbonate that's very lightweight and it bends when it gets impacted so it doesn't break the interior features a patent pending compression system i love compression suitcases they really really help and you have to get a little bit more in there
Marco:
They have four spinner wheels, and this is really nice.
Marco:
If you've never used a four-wheel suitcase, the way it handles is so nice, especially for the larger ones.
Marco:
I very much like those.
Marco:
There's a TSA-approved combination lock.
Marco:
They also have a removable washable laundry bag, so you can keep your dirty clothes separate from your clean ones as you travel, and then when you get home, you just pop it out and dump it in the laundry.
Marco:
It's wonderful.
Marco:
and the carry-ons you might have heard about this the carry-ons have built-in batteries and they can charge any usb devices so you can be charging your phone while you're sitting at the gate waiting for the plane and that way the whole flight you got a full phone it's wonderful they also have new add-ons now they have packing cubes
Marco:
which I've recently gotten into.
Marco:
And packing cubes, if you don't know, they're surprisingly useful.
Marco:
They're really good.
Marco:
Give them a shot.
Marco:
Away also offers garment sleeves and all sorts of wonderful other accessories for traveling.
Marco:
All this is protected by a lifetime warranty.
Marco:
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Marco:
And they have a 100-day trial.
Marco:
You can try their suitcases.
Marco:
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Marco:
How else would you try them?
Marco:
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Marco:
If you don't like it, you can return it for a full refund, no questions asked.
Marco:
And all of this comes with free shipping on any Away order within the continental U.S.
Marco:
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Marco:
Once again, for $20 off, awaytravel.com slash ATP, promo code ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Away for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, let's move on and do some Ask ATP, shall we?
Casey:
Let's start with Chris O'Rebo, who asks, which Apple product, when purchased from Apple, including refurbished and clearance, provides the most value or functionality per dollar?
Casey:
In other words, what's the biggest bang for your buck?
Casey:
I don't have a good answer for this.
John:
I do.
John:
I do.
Casey:
Okay, good.
Casey:
Well, we will get to you momentarily.
Casey:
My first, which is not good, is whatever the best iPhone is you can buy.
Casey:
Because given all of the things that you can do with your phone and how amazing your phone will be...
Casey:
Get the best one you can.
Casey:
It'll be great bang for your buck.
Casey:
My second answer, which is probably the better of the two, is AirPods.
Casey:
They are expensive, but they provide, assuming they fit in your ears, they provide me endless amounts of joy.
Casey:
I cannot speak highly enough of the AirPods.
Casey:
So let's go to John, who will hopefully have a very quick answer, and then Marco, you can take us home.
John:
Airpods is a good one, but I still feel like 160 is too much.
John:
My answer is the iPhone 8.
John:
I think the most expensive iPhone is too much.
John:
Like the iPhone 10, it's not worth the price premium, but the iPhone 8 is a fantastic phone.
John:
If the iPhone 10 didn't exist, the iPhone 8 would be a worthy top-end phone.
John:
And because the iPhone 10 does exist, it can be less expensive.
John:
Yeah.
John:
uh and yeah the iphone 8 is still expensive but it's a really great phone and i feel like it gets overlooked and it's the iphone is apple's best product they put their best stuff into it it has the the highest success rate uh so i feel like that's the most bang for the buck even though it is a hell of a lot of bucks it's also a hell of a bang
Marco:
that's a really good pick i will give you that all right so i i kind of have multiple picks it depends on like what category you're looking at i i thought about you know stuff like airpods but i wanted to just focus on like computers phones and ipads so like like so you know so i'm not going to say like well you know this one lightning cable is the best bang for the buck in the whole store none of apple's cables are the best bang for your buck i know i thought about that and looked i'm like no i can't there's nothing in these categories anyway
Marco:
And I also, I wanted to enforce some minimum standards of making things usable.
Marco:
And so iOS devices, I decided needed to have at least 64 gigs of storage.
Marco:
And for anything I picked that was an iPad, it had to include a smart cover.
Marco:
So that's 40 bucks to the iPad prices.
Marco:
For the Mac, I thought at least a 256 gig SSD or a one terabyte fusion drive.
Marco:
And if it's a USB-C model that I was considering, I added a $100 allowance for adapters and hubs because I truly... And I don't mean to go off on the laptops again.
Marco:
Here we go.
Marco:
I truly don't believe that the modern USB-C only laptops are useful without having...
Marco:
you know, $50 to $100 worth of adapters and hubs for them in the same way that an iPad is not useful without some kind of cover or case.
Marco:
Anyway, so in the iPhone category, which I think is my overall category probably because iPhones are just so damn useful and so damn good.
Marco:
I actually picked the iPhone 7 128 Jet Black.
Marco:
This goes for 650 new or 590 currently refurbished from Apple.com.
Marco:
You know, I looked at the iPhone SE 128.
Marco:
That's 450.
Marco:
That's only new.
Marco:
There's no refurb for that.
Marco:
So 450 for the iPhone SE or 590 for an iPhone 7 refurb.
Marco:
That is such a good phone.
Marco:
I like it better than the 8 because the great advantage of the Jet Black is you don't really need a case because there's so much grip on it.
Marco:
And I think it looks better, honestly, than the 8 does.
Marco:
And it's still a really solid, modern, internal phone.
Marco:
That's literally the CPU they just put in this new iPad we were just talking about.
Marco:
So the iPhone 7 128 Jet Black, new or refurb, I think is the best buy right now in the iPhone lineup and possibly the entire Apple lineup.
Marco:
I will also say in the iPad lineup,
Marco:
That new iPad, the new 9.7 iPad, 128 gigs with smart cover is 470.
Marco:
That's a really good deal.
Marco:
You can also get last year's version of it with smart cover refurbished for 350.
Marco:
That's an excellent deal.
Marco:
And you can get the cellular version of last year's model of that 9.7 in 128 for 450 refurbished.
Marco:
that's a cellular ipad i really enjoy a cellular ipad because if you're talking about like what's going to be what how can i make this thing the most useful to me adding cellular really helps a lot this is one of the reasons why i wish that out to the laptops because it really makes this like a truly like portable work device it's just like a giant phone then and it's really very nice to have that sometimes um in the laptop category um
Marco:
If you are limiting yourself to the only modern 2016 forward MacBooks, the 13-inch MacBook Escape with 256 gig SSD is 1,600 new or 1,370 refurb.
Marco:
Both of those include that $100 allowance for Donalds and hubs.
Marco:
if you don't need retina the 13 inch macbook air is still sold 256 gives you a 1200 new or 980 refurb i can't i can't pay nine hundred dollars for anything with that screen on it i know and and i that's why i had this as like a huge caveat if you don't need or care about retina that's a really great buy it's not the retina it's the it's the viewing angles and color reproduction i just think it's a bad screen well i think if you don't care about retina you're probably not going to care about that either
Marco:
oh and and for desktop you know 4k iMac i think eight eight one terabyte fusion uh 4k iMac is 1400 new 1270 refurb that's the way to go on that however i think the best mac value is to nobody's surprise the 2015 15 inch macbook pro base model oh here we go it's 2000 new or it's 1700 refurb
Marco:
For 1700 refurb, you get a hell of a computer.
Marco:
You get 16 gigs of RAM, which none of the other ones offer at these prices.
Marco:
256, of course, quad-core processor.
Marco:
And then you have all the ports you need.
Marco:
You have a keyboard and trackpad that are non-controversial and reliable.
Marco:
You don't need any dongles or anything.
Marco:
That is still, I think, the best overall value in the Mac lineup.
Marco:
So overall, iPhone 7 Jet Black and the 2015 15-inch base model.
John:
I've got that iPhone, and I think the 8 is a better deal.
John:
Maybe it's because I just checked my battery health and it's at 87% and I felt worse about my phone.
Casey:
All right, cool.
Casey:
Anson Jablinski writes, Hey, what did Marco play in marching band?
Casey:
Or what musical experience does each of the hosts have, if any?
Casey:
So Marco, what did you play in marching band?
Marco:
I was in the percussion section.
Marco:
So I started out as a freshman on crash cymbals right at the bottom of the totem pole there.
Marco:
And then sophomore year, I was on snare drum.
Marco:
Junior and senior year, I was on quads.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
I have never played anything with any sort of efficacy whatsoever, except I play a mean stereo.
John:
never mind john uh i played keyboards as a kid we had like electric keyboards in the house i noodled around those i did actually take piano lessons for some short period of time but i could uh play songs that i wanted to play like from the radio and stuff on on on uh keyboards and in college i picked up a guitar because everybody on my floor in my dorm my freshman dorm had guitars and so it was impossible not to pick up a guitar but
John:
All of those instruments I'm pretty much terrible at.
John:
And I could never sight-read music, but I could kind of non-sight-read it briefly for certain instruments.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
The Italian Stallion, who is apparently not John Syracuse, asks, backpack recommendations that would fit a 15-inch MacBook Pro?
Casey:
I know you just said backpack, but if you don't have to have a backpack, then I really love my Tombin Cadet, which I'll put a link in the show notes to my review of that.
Casey:
I have also heard but have not tried myself that the Tombin Synapse is excellent, and that is a backpack, but that's probably not useful.
Casey:
So does one of you have a backpack recommendation that you enjoy?
Marco:
So to me, backpacks are kind of like the way most people think of to-do apps and task managers.
Marco:
I'm always about 80% satisfied with the backpack I have, and I'm frequently trying new ones as a result.
Marco:
And so I have tried some really nice ones, actually.
Marco:
Some of these are wonderful.
Marco:
I have the Waterfield Designs Stod laptop backpack.
Marco:
They make a bunch of good stuff.
Marco:
And that's very good.
Marco:
Holds a 15 inch just fine.
Marco:
I have a really nice Briggs & Riley backpack.
Marco:
That was something like $200.
Marco:
And I forget exactly which model it is.
Marco:
One of the Active series.
Marco:
That's pretty nice, too.
Marco:
I recently got a Peak Design Everyday backpack.
Marco:
And that's also really nice.
Marco:
Ultimately, all of these are very good.
Marco:
None of them are perfect.
Marco:
I have not yet tried Tom Bin.
Marco:
I believe the Synapse 25 would be the one to get.
Marco:
I was looking at that.
Marco:
I would love to see it sometime.
Marco:
I might end up trying it anyway, but...
Marco:
All of these have pluses minuses and it depends a lot on what you're doing.
Marco:
If you're using it for like every day carrying it to work, that's a very different type of needs from if you're using it like to bring it on planes and travel with it or to also have like, you know, a weekend worth of clothing and stuff in it.
Marco:
Like these are very different needs.
Marco:
The Waterfield one is beautiful, very stylish, trendy, looks nice.
Marco:
The Briggs & Riley one I found has a lot of pluses to it, but ultimately I didn't care for the layout of the interior space.
Marco:
A lot of things are hard to reach, hard to access.
Marco:
There's a lot of seemingly wasted space with weird padding areas and stuff that I don't think need to be there or should be arranged differently.
Marco:
The Peak Design Everyday Backpack is my current one.
Marco:
I've got it recently, and it also is very nice with a few flaws.
Marco:
It really does not hold very much.
Marco:
I got the smaller one of the two, and I'm kind of thinking maybe the bigger one might have been the better bet.
Marco:
It's fine in that way, but it holds plenty if you want it to be like a laptop bag going to work.
Marco:
I would say, though, for a 15-inch MacBook Pro,
Marco:
it just barely fits in the Peak Design.
Marco:
The laptop pocket is very tight.
Marco:
It's squeezing my laptop such that I'm getting keyboard imprints on the screen, so I don't love that.
Marco:
I honestly would not recommend it for daily use, if only for that, whereas the Waterfield Stodd, I think, is better for that.
Marco:
But at these prices, I expect perfection to pay $300-ish for a backpack, and I haven't found that yet.
Marco:
So I'm all ears if anybody has something else they like.
Marco:
But ultimately, I think that it's the kind of category where like what's perfect for one person is going to be totally wrong for another person.
Marco:
And it's all going to be personal preference.
Marco:
And you just got to try it out and see for yourself.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
so the closest i've got to a backpack that i really like uh is actually it's not sold anymore but there's an equivalent um is this l bean backpack i i don't know what that model of mine is but the closest one they have is now called the quad backpack and it's it's so close i like i like backpacks first of all that are cheap this is like 80 bucks um they have tons of little pockets everywhere on them so you can put all those dongles that we need in this dongle lifestyle that we have now
John:
It's got an inside pocket that will fit a 15-inch laptop and also an iPad inside a case inside that same pocket.
John:
And then it's got tons of other interior space and all sorts of little pockets.
John:
And it's not fashionable.
John:
It's not made of nice materials.
John:
It's just kind of durable, kind of like camping-type equipment.
John:
There's no leather anywhere on this thing.
John:
Right?
John:
um so if you want to look good forget about it the one thing that annoys me about this backpack that you should be warned about is that it has tons of weird straps everywhere for like oh if you're stuffing it filled with camping stuff you need the strap that goes around your waist and the straps the two straps on the side that hold the backpack together and i considered cutting them off but it's actually kind of hard to cut them off because it's pretty durable so but i have found a way to tuck the straps that i'm not using into some of the pockets so they're mostly out of the way it's still an annoyance if it didn't have those straps i think it would be close to perfect for me because
John:
That's what I want.
John:
I don't want to be cheap, durable, light, and have tons of pockets and zippers and not fall apart.
John:
And so far, this L-Beam backpack has fit the bill.
Marco:
I will say, too, for the Peak Design Everyday Backpack, it really excels at hiding all of the extra straps and stuff that can be used in a pinch.
Marco:
Every strap that it has has some kind of pocket that it belongs in when it's not being used, and so it's totally invisible and out of the way.
Marco:
It is very well designed for expansion of that.
Marco:
But yeah, ultimately, I wish it was a little bigger.
Marco:
I might have to try the bigger version of it.
Marco:
And I also wish that laptop compartment wasn't so crushing.
Marco:
But hopefully this summer, I'll move to a 13-inch newer one, and that should probably solve that problem for me.
Casey:
do you guys are do uh packing cubes when you travel not in the traditional sense i do have that go pack that i talk about all the time that is sort of ish like a packing cube that's just basically got all my dongles and things of that nature in it but what you're talking about i think is you know packing like clothes and other things of that nature in packing cubes and
Casey:
This appeals to me from an organizational standpoint.
Casey:
I feel like this is something that I would really like, but I've never done it.
Casey:
And it doesn't seem like I don't really get why people would do this, even though it sounds like it would be something I would like.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
So what are you asking because you haven't or because you're trying it now or what brings this up?
Marco:
So I recently started.
Marco:
A lot of our friends travel a lot, way more than I do.
Marco:
And I kept hearing from people like, oh, you got to try packing cubes or just generally like the style of traveling or packing where you have like sub bags in your bags.
Marco:
All packing cubes are just like rectangular solid sub bags that you put in your bags.
Marco:
That's basically it.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
I was usually of the style of using the bag's pockets as dividers and compartments.
Marco:
But the packing cube and sub bag lifestyle seems to want to have just like large open compartments in the bags.
Marco:
And then you have your own like sub bag things that you put in there that are separate from that to be your separation organization.
Marco:
And so I recently tried, I wanted to, when I got my cool Peak Design Everyday backpack, I decided to also try the packing cube lifestyle for a couple of these trips I've taken recently.
Marco:
And I got to say, I see the benefit.
Marco:
It's pretty cool.
Marco:
Like Tiff made fun of me relentlessly, but then she wanted some as soon as she saw how they worked.
Marco:
Because what's nice about them is that there's a few benefits.
Marco:
Number one, it is actually nicer to organize things that way in a bag.
Marco:
And if you get the compression cubes, which have slightly compressing zippers around the perimeter, it actually does help compress your clothes slightly in a controlled way that doesn't excessively wrinkle them or anything.
Marco:
But a really nice thing about the packing cubes is that if when you arrive at a hotel, you can just take the packing cubes right out of your bag and just place them like in the drawers.
Marco:
If you if you use the drawers in a hotel, you just put them in the drawers and open them up.
Marco:
And then you have like, oh, here's my sock rectangle.
Marco:
You know, here's my shirt rectangle.
Marco:
And it's like it's actually really nice.
Marco:
And so I think I've been converted.
Marco:
I want to do a little more traveling with them.
Marco:
I've done two trips so far with them.
Marco:
But I think I'm being converted to the sub bag and packing cube lifestyle.
Casey:
So you said you have one for socks and like one for shirts or like what did you end up doing?
Marco:
So I got a variety of sizes.
Marco:
If you're looking at the Eagle Creek ones, I would say the small and medium sizes are the ones to get.
Marco:
The rest of the sizes I have not yet found much of a use for.
Marco:
So small, medium and compression if possible.
Marco:
And they're not cheap.
Marco:
They end up being like 25 bucks each, something like that.
Marco:
But they do seem pretty well made.
Marco:
I have like the tech line that has like slightly higher tech fabric and it's a little bit lighter.
Marco:
I haven't quite worked with the whole system yet, but I have like, you know, one of them will obviously put like all my underwear and socks in.
Marco:
And this depends on like how much you need to bring.
Marco:
And I've only, again, used this for two trips so far.
Marco:
So take all this with a grain of salt.
Marco:
But like all underwear and socks will go in one.
Marco:
And then all t-shirts will go in another.
Marco:
And then if I have extra pants, I'll put those in one.
Marco:
And that's about it.
Marco:
They have some that you can fold like dress shirts into.
Marco:
I haven't tried that yet.
Marco:
It's just, it's kind of nice.
Marco:
And then...
Marco:
It makes it easier to pack.
Marco:
It makes it more organized in the bag to get stuff, or if you have to move stuff around in the bag, if you have to rearrange stuff.
Marco:
It's surprisingly nice.
Marco:
Like, I thought they were pointless, but now I get it, and I'm sold.
Casey:
You know, I've tried a new thought technology with regard to packing, which is rolling rather than folding.
Marco:
Oh, the rolling people.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
You roll the stuff into the packing cubes.
Marco:
That helps a lot.
Casey:
I feel like it's probably a placebo, but I really feel like I can get considerably more stuff into my bag when it's rolled.
Casey:
And it's more likely to come out less wrinkled.
Casey:
It is still a wrinkled disaster, but it is less so than when I fold.
Casey:
And so I have been converted to the rolling lifestyle.
Casey:
Like I said, that's a new thought technology in my world that I have embraced.
Casey:
But
Casey:
But yeah, the packing cube is still beyond me.
Casey:
John, why do you scoff at rolling?
Casey:
You're not a fan.
John:
I'm not.
John:
There's a couple of reasons.
John:
I'm not into rolling and I'm not into the packing things.
John:
The rolling.
John:
Well, it's both the same reason, I guess.
John:
And I feel like all of my items of clothing have a natural size that they want to be folded at.
John:
And that size is not rolled, and it probably doesn't match any of the packing things.
John:
Like, I need to fold things at the size that they want to be folded.
John:
They speak to me.
John:
How big should I be?
John:
And if I try to fold my shirts bigger or smaller, maybe it's because I'm a limited folder.
John:
Maybe I have a limited repertoire of folding skills.
John:
Like, I'm not good at folding laundry.
John:
I fold things the way I fold them, and I let the garment tell me how it wants to be folded, right?
John:
And the other thing is, with my let the garment speak to me and tell me how to fold, combined with my fairly obsessive overpacking,
John:
I can pack any of my suitcases easily to the point where they exceed the weight limit that airlines have.
John:
So I don't need any compression thing to help me get more into the bag.
John:
If anything, I have to intentionally pack less efficiently so I don't go over the weight limit and have to pull things out of my bag to get it on the plane.
John:
Because the weight limits are like, what, 50 pounds, 40, 50 pounds?
John:
Well, it's not a weight limit so much as there's a fee if you go over it.
John:
yeah well anyway i don't want to have that fee and i don't want to go over the limit and sometimes it actually is a limit and they'll make you have another check another bag or something um so i am always on the ragged edge of that limit with no packing cubes and no rolling and folding my clothes the way they naturally want to be folded so i feel like this is not a problem i have in my life and i'm not looking for ways to jam more stuff into my suitcase and i'm definitely not looking for ways to make me have to learn how to fold my clothes in a different way than the one and only way i know how to fold them
Marco:
Well, it is really nice if – like if you're checking a bag, then yeah, you're right.
Marco:
The weight limit is usually a bigger problem.
Marco:
But it's really nice if you are kind of on the border between needing to check it and being able to fit it in the carry-on.
Marco:
And I love just traveling with a carry-on if possible.
Marco:
It's so nice to just bypass the baggage claim and just walk around and just leave.
Marco:
And you're just done.
Marco:
You have everything you need with you.
Marco:
You can just walk out and you're done.
Marco:
Like that's wonderful.
Marco:
So –
Marco:
Where this stuff helps is not in cramming, you know, 75 pounds worth of stuff into a very large check bag, but in fitting into a carry-on where otherwise you might not have fit into a carry-on.
John:
Or if you're underscore, not even having a carry-on, but just having a backpack for an entire week, which still blows my mind because, like I said, I'm a massive overpacker and he apparently needs no human sustenance of any kind.
John:
He can just...
Marco:
It is very satisfying to be packed very lightly on a trip and to need very little and to use everything you have.
Marco:
One of the trips I just took was this trip where I was helping my family member move.
Marco:
And because I was going to be like, you know, taking space in a very full moving convoy of trucks, I didn't want to have a large bag myself.
Marco:
I figured that was wasteful.
Marco:
And, you know, I want to leave as much space as possible for stuff.
John:
You've got a whole moving truck.
John:
You're afraid you aren't going to have room.
Marco:
You have a moving truck.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
oh you haven't seen the stuff uh but it was it was full um and so i brought for this trip i brought only my peak design everyday backpack and i shoved everything i needed for three days or four days whatever it was into this backpack it was glorious like there was no space left over and i had to do some pretty crazy stuff and i only had one pair of pants but it was glorious to have everything fit
Marco:
in in like one backpack including my computer these two walkie talkies some accessories for driving like i brought like my cell phone suction cup piece of garbage like i like i brought a whole bunch of like you know stuff that would that would be necessary for the trip coffee tubes yeah i brought my my tubes of instant coffee my tubes of sudden coffee excuse me so does now now does all your items of clothing smell like coffee because they're all wedged into this bag with the coffee tubes no the tubes are sealed
Marco:
all right i don't know no you said they were canvas i thought maybe they'd be no no they're plastic tubes that come in a pretty canvas bag all right yeah so and it is very satisfying i would love like to travel to wbdc i would love to travel with just like one of the like the smallest roller bag size you know like that like what the pilots usually have i i have one of those it's glorious i love being able to fit into that the only reason i don't for for wbdc is that we we bring like a whole podcast studio so
Marco:
So I have all this gear.
Marco:
But on trips where I don't have that, I love packing as small as possible.
John:
Maybe he can fit the podcasting studio in one of his inside jacket pockets.
Casey:
I really want to just emphasize what you guys are saying about Underscore's packing because we, for a long time, would fly out together.
Casey:
I would drive up to Dulles, which is reasonably close to his house, and we would take the same flight and try to sit next to each other and whatnot.
Casey:
And I would be rolling in with like my laptop bag, which is bursting at the seams and in a carry on bag, which is bursting at the seams.
Casey:
And that pain in my rear end rolls in with like a lightly stuffed backpack.
Casey:
It's not even I shouldn't even say like a lightly packed backpack.
Casey:
And that is all he has.
Casey:
That's his computer.
Casey:
That's his toiletries, his luggage.
Casey:
Everything is in this backpack for a week.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It's inhuman.
Casey:
I've asked him about this every year.
Casey:
I ask about this.
Casey:
And every year he's just he's got a shrugs and smirks and basically says, I don't need a lot.
Casey:
It's so it's both delightful and infuriating all at the same time, because I'm like, John, I pack way too much.
Casey:
And over the years, I have gotten that beaten out of me.
Casey:
Like over time, I have gotten better about not packing everything in the world.
Casey:
And I still pack way too much.
John:
And what you just described is half of what I pack because you were like, you have a laptop bag and a roller bag.
John:
I have a full size suitcase, like the biggest, the highest weight limit suitcase you can get.
John:
And then my backpack.
Casey:
I mean, I adore my away suitcase and they happen to be sponsoring this episode.
Casey:
And the carry on, I mean, it's a wonderful, wonderful suitcase.
Casey:
I would say that even if we weren't compensated to say that, but it is not, you know, cavernous.
Casey:
It's, it's, it's, it's carry on.
Casey:
I mean, which makes sense.
Casey:
And I can get, you know, like, well, last year I got my entire week's worth of luggage, my toiletry kit, my, my go pack and a pair of running shoes in there.
Casey:
And I was very proud of myself because for me, that was a heck of an accomplishment and underscore, uh,
Casey:
I think he was wearing sneakers for the week, so he didn't have to have a second pair of shoes.
Casey:
But he had running clothes.
Casey:
He probably brought a damn kettle for his coffee, for all I know, in this backpack.
Casey:
It's like Santa's freaking bag that he has.
Casey:
It's incredible.
Marco:
So thanks to our sponsors this week, Away, Aftershocks, and Jamf Now.
Marco:
And we'll talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental, oh 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.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Tech Podcast So long
John:
By the way, for people wondering about the inside jacket pocket thing, Underscore is the first person I saw who had a MacBook One, the little 12-inch MacBook with one USB-C port, literally inside his jacket pocket.
John:
This is not a joke.
Marco:
He opens up his jacket and takes out a laptop.
Marco:
Yeah, his wife custom-made a pocket.
Marco:
She sewed it on the inside of his jacket that would fit exactly that laptop.
Marco:
And it was amazing.
Marco:
To see somebody, especially Underscore, as you mentioned, he's so frustratingly organized.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
all the time like he he's so like together and he just like and and everything he does he makes look he makes it look effortless it's just no big deal like totally it's so true he has like all the grace in the world like just and so like he just like he we're like we were standing in line at the at the last senate the last wbc in san francisco we were outside uh the whatever center that it was we had to walk all the way over to get to get there and he just like
Marco:
whips this out like we were like oh we should check that sometime or you know and he just he's like oh i'll check it right now and he whips out this laptop out of his jacket like whoa like how did you do that where did that come from it was so i think we've been walking with him standing in line with him it's like you know yeah we had no idea and if it was like a it was like a fleece it was not like a big winter coat it was it was like a light fleece oh man
Casey:
I love that guy.
Casey:
But there's certain there's certain times that I want to strangle him in the best possible way.
Casey:
And that's one of them, because it's really you know what it is about underscore is that he he he very, very well reflects to me my own failings.
Casey:
But he's like the nicest human being in the world.
Casey:
And so you can't be upset at him.
Marco:
because he's the nicest guy ever yeah like did i ever say like the my favorite compliment i ever received was i i once uh i i'd sent john gruber some of my home roasted coffee he said i almost want to say you this is so good and that's kind of how it's like when underscore does something awesome and i'm like it's almost like he's such a nice guy like you don't you can't get mad at him but you're just like damn it why like why can i not why have i either not thought of that or not gotten it together to do that it's so true it's so true
John:
Just comfort yourself by thinking that just try to try a picture in your head underscore like being frustrated at something and getting and getting angry.
Casey:
I don't think I've ever seen him even mildly like disturbed.
Casey:
Like he's never been particularly angry about anything in my experience having known him for several years now.
Casey:
I've never seen him angry.
Casey:
Never seen him particularly upset.
Casey:
Sometimes he'll kind of do the exasperated laugh of, oh, well, then it's the breaks.
Casey:
But he's like the least phased person I've ever seen.
Casey:
And I am somewhat skeptical that he has ever raised his voice for any reason ever.
John:
I believe he has.
John:
And I picture that to make me feel better about myself.
Casey:
The best part of all is he's going to be listening to this at some absurd hour tomorrow morning because he typically bootlegs all this and he is going to be so deeply embarrassed by this entire conversation, which isn't actually something I should be proud of, but it is making me laugh a little bit.
Casey:
Maybe that's his one flaw.
Casey:
That's the one.
Marco:
His one flaw, excessive modesty.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
It's like the BS job interview response is, what's your biggest weakness?
Marco:
Sometimes I work too hard.
Casey:
Oh, God, that's incredible.