Protective Sandwich
Marco:
Hey everyone, just me for a second here recording from after we recorded the episode.
Marco:
Uh, we are starting a merchandise sale starting about the day that you're going to hear this.
Marco:
We have new t-shirts for sale.
Marco:
Some of the old ones are coming back and we have pins that are back.
Marco:
They're a little bit more improved from before, but pretty much the same design as before.
Marco:
Really hot sellers last time.
Marco:
So get them if you can get them quickly.
Marco:
Uh,
Marco:
We will put the link in the show notes here or visit our website, atp.fm, and you will find the link there.
Marco:
Thank you very much.
Marco:
Also, we forgot to mention in our wonderful extravaganza covering the Apple event that you're about to hear that voting day in the U.S.
Marco:
is going to happen between this episode and the next recording.
Marco:
And we would like to very strongly encourage...
Marco:
all of our listeners who are able to vote in the U.S.
Marco:
to please do so.
Marco:
It's incredibly important that you vote.
Marco:
Not enough people vote and problems result.
Marco:
And we would love so much to hear that all of our listeners went out there and voted.
Marco:
No matter what races are in your area, no matter how much you think your vote doesn't or does count, please, please vote.
Marco:
Thank you.
Casey:
Marco, where are you right now?
Marco:
I am in my house in New York.
John:
And John, where are you?
John:
I'm in my house, not in New York.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
And I'm also in my house, but that doesn't make sense because I hugged you like five hours ago.
John:
Why is your voice so hoarse, Casey?
Casey:
Because anytime I speak at more than normal speaking voice for more than like 10 minutes, I sound like a chain smoker.
Casey:
It's been a long day.
Casey:
Marco and I work together.
Casey:
It is currently nine o'clock in the evening on Tuesday, Halloween Eve.
Casey:
And I last saw Marco at about one, I think, or thereabouts.
Marco:
Yeah, something like that.
Marco:
Yeah, right around lunchtime.
Casey:
Since the last episode was recorded, we got invited to go to the Apple event today.
Casey:
And because Marco and I don't have jobs, we were able to do that.
Casey:
And so this morning I woke up at a little before four, flew to LaGuardia, went to the event, and got home about an hour ago.
Casey:
So it's been a bit of a day.
John:
I was listening to last week's episode, actually just yesterday or today or whatever, and I made a snarky comment about how, oh, we all got our invites to the event, right?
John:
Well, actually, we did get invites to the event.
John:
Thank you to Apple for inviting podcasters to Apple events, and thank you for having them on the East Coast, even though I couldn't make this one, unfortunately, because of my day job.
John:
I appreciate the fact that it was on the East Coast, and my ability to make it was, you know,
Casey:
made it much greater by the location so i would encourage this in fact all apple events should be in the east coast and i would like to make them in boston that would be super convenient for me too but anyway it's awesome it's exciting that we got invited and it's exciting that you two got to attend you know and and i would like to uh reiterate what john said because i was particularly uh curmudgeonly slash whiny about the fact that uh podcasters do not exist uh according to apple pr and and i don't
Casey:
I honestly don't know how or why we got invited.
Casey:
And if a little birdie wants to tell me, I'd be curious to hear how that happened.
Casey:
But I ain't complaining.
Casey:
I don't know how it happened, but it happened.
Casey:
And so I am extremely thankful.
Casey:
Well, we are extremely thankful.
Casey:
And it was super cool.
Casey:
And we'll talk a lot about the event, of course, because I think that's what the people tune in for.
Casey:
But I'm sure we'll be a little inside baseball about what it was like for us to be there.
John:
uh john i am genuinely sorry you couldn't make it but um but i'm glad that even one of us let alone two of the three of us could could go so it was it was very cool i'm actually i'm actually kind of relieved that there was nothing related to the mac pro at the event it would have been amazing it was hard enough for me not to be there right but i'm like well but at least there probably won't be any mac pro stuff right and there wasn't so great great relief for selfish reasons
Casey:
All right, so how do we want to do this?
Casey:
Do you want to try to go chronologically?
John:
I think we'll go through as usual in show order, in presentation order, but I do have an opening statement that I was going to make more forcefully, and now I'm waffling on it a little bit.
John:
I'm sure we'll talk about this in the event, and this is not what the event was about, but it's something that a lot of people on Twitter were talking about and something that I was thinking when I watched the video of the event.
John:
that aside from everything that was announced at the event, the subtext that I was getting, right or wrong from this event, is this is Apple whispering slightly louder to the world, not to tech nerds who have already been talking about this for literally years, but to the world saying, we're going to make our Macs.
John:
And I think that signal is...
John:
less hidden than it was now the reason i'm waffling is i'm like oh sure they could they could be saying that publicly you know in subtext as a negotiating tactic for the company whose name was not uh uttered or shown to the degree that normally is uh in this presentation intel right so if you are trying to get the upper hand on intel in any sort of future negotiations about whatever they might negotiate about
John:
one way to uh increase the power of your position is to stop really talking about their products so much stop really bragging about them in fact don't mention their name at all but just sort of use generic terms like the number generation they're on and maybe the word core uh and then spend a long time talking about how awesome the cpus that you apple make um
John:
So that that was my that's my one meta comment on the whole thing.
John:
And that is not what this presentation is about.
John:
It was about iPads and, you know, all the products we're going to talk about.
John:
Right.
John:
But I felt that signal coming coming through to me through the video.
John:
You guys can tell me what it was like to be there in the room if we really this was really about Apple today.
John:
And I'm just wrong because I was watching it by video.
Casey:
So what makes you waffle on it now, though?
John:
Because it's potentially a negotiating tactic, right?
John:
I was going to boldly predict, like, this is it.
John:
Because I was coming out of this, like, Apple just basically said, we're making ARM Macs.
John:
Like, hello, everybody.
John:
To the public, you know, tech nerds have been talking about this for years.
John:
Now we're saying to the public, we are making ARM Macs.
John:
If you can't figure it out by now, it's going to happen.
John:
You want it to happen.
John:
Everyone knows it's going to happen.
John:
We're making ARM Macs.
John:
But...
John:
If you are still, if you were trying to negotiate with Intel about anything, this would be the way to increase the power of your position to say, you know, to get the public on your side to say, oh, the public wants us to make our max.
John:
Everyone agrees our arm chips are better than everything you have.
John:
So what have you got to offer us?
John:
Right.
John:
that ship may have already sailed we could we don't know right uh and nothing can no negotiating can change the fact that intel is behind on process which apple emphasized in this presentation seven nanometer did you know that nobody on in a laptop or phone or no i think it's a laptop or desktop market has that did you know that apple knew that and they mentioned it
John:
It was just like, it was hit after hit.
John:
Anyway, that's it.
John:
That's my opening statement.
John:
That's my meta commentary.
Marco:
We'll go back to it when we get to that section.
Marco:
Just to answer that question that you posed, I don't think this is a negotiation tactic.
Marco:
I think Apple has made the decision already that Intel's being phased out over time.
Marco:
It's only a question of how and when that happens, but
Marco:
It's not like, you know, it's like when a job is really horrible and you decide to quit the job.
Marco:
If you go into your boss's office and they're like, well, how about we pay you 10% more?
Marco:
It's like, that's not going to change your decision.
Marco:
Like, you already made the decision.
Marco:
It's just an issue of executing it.
Marco:
Like, that's how Apple's decision, I think, is.
Marco:
That's sure what it looks like.
Marco:
Yeah, like, that's how, like, I think Apple decided probably over the last few years to break up with Intel.
Marco:
And they're just slowly doing that.
John:
Oh, and I guess I have to add at this point because we probably won't talk about the Mac Pro.
John:
Well, I'm not kidding.
John:
We will.
John:
Anyway, this is also making me think that I may be in a position, personally, and many other people may be in a position of buying the last great Intel Mac, assuming the Mac Pro comes out next year and is Intel-based.
John:
What is it going to be like to buy, like, an $8,000 Intel-based Mac the year before all Macs go ARM and the processors are amazing?
Yeah.
John:
and the other fantasy that's throwing around is like as everyone has said but what if the new mac pro is taking so long because it is arm that would also kind of blow my mind so i feel like i'm in an uncomfortable uncomfortable mac pro position right now but as we'll get to later uh apple is kicking some major cpu butt
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So it starts with, let's see, the MacBook Air.
Casey:
And we are talking about the Mac right up front and spent a fair bit of time talking about the Mac.
Casey:
Like I didn't time it or anything, but I expected the Mac to take up like three minutes at the top of the show.
Casey:
And it was a while.
Marco:
Yeah, because this is major updates.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Like, yeah.
Marco:
And before we get into the air, I do want to talk one second about the the black and white video about creative people using the Macs that came right before the air segment.
Marco:
I thought it was very interesting that almost every Mac laptop that was in that video had the glowing white Apple logo on the back, which means it was pre 2016 models.
Casey:
Yeah, you had pointed that out to me when we were in the show.
Casey:
And there were definitely some that did not have a glowing Apple logo.
Casey:
But you were right that the majority to my eye, or at least once I started paying attention when you said something, the majority were absolutely older ones, which is definitely interesting.
Marco:
And we also got a number.
Marco:
Tim said that the active Mac installed base is 100 million.
Marco:
And that's a number that I don't think we get very often, if ever.
John:
We also don't know how they measure that, so it's like, okay, I guess.
John:
That's true.
John:
What does that even mean?
John:
There's many different ways to slice that.
John:
It's a round number, and it's a section on the Mac, so they've got to look for some number to brag about, I guess.
Marco:
I wonder maybe if it's connections to XProtect or connections to other software update mechanisms or the App Store.
John:
Yeah, there's definitely ways you can measure that to come up with a bigger number or a smaller number.
John:
Like if you just measured the ones that are supported by Mojave, for example, that number is way smaller, right?
John:
Because they actually started cutting people off.
John:
But if you measure hardware that you could take to an Apple store and get repaired, like not an Apple's obsolete list, I wonder if that number shrinks as well.
John:
Anyway, they sell a lot of Macs.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
So they start by discussing how everyone loves the MacBook Air, which was true, if not anymore.
Casey:
And we got a new MacBook Air, which up until just a few minutes ago as we record, I think we all kind of assumed, and Marco, you had reached this conclusion almost immediately, assumed that it was a MacBook Escape, but not.
Casey:
But it sounds like that is actually not true.
Casey:
So can you tell me a little more about this, Marco?
Marco:
I've been on a research rollercoaster all day trying to figure out the MacBook Air.
Marco:
It was introduced... We've all, in the Mac community, and especially Apple users, we love the MacBook Air.
Marco:
We have loved the MacBook Air for a very long time.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
They capitalized very much on that in this presentation.
Marco:
Tim called out the MacBook Air as the most loved Mac, which I think that was probably an accurate description.
Marco:
He even brought up the – he called back the envelope reference, which was really nice.
Marco:
And so it referred back to all the MacBook Air history and really capitalized on the MacBook Air love that it has built up over time as one of Apple's most valuable product names and brands and icons.
Marco:
The funny thing is, if you look at what they actually have shipped as the new MacBook Air,
Marco:
It looks a lot like a middle point between two computers they've been shipping for two years now.
Marco:
The MacBook Escape, which they've been shipping since 2016.
Marco:
And also now we're learning that it actually has a lot of similarities to the 12-inch MacBook, which shipped in 2015.
Marco:
When the MacBook Escape was unveiled in 2016, Phil Schiller, during the presentation, actually called out this configuration of the MacBook Pro without the touch bar as an Air successor.
Marco:
He mentioned the Air, and he said they created this new configuration of it to appeal to Air buyers.
Marco:
Something like that, right?
Marco:
I forget the exact words.
Marco:
They were positioning.
Marco:
It made sense, technically, because it had the same processor class as the Air, the same approximate guts as the Air.
Marco:
It was totally different from the Tuxbar models.
Marco:
All the guts were different, the components, the CPU and everything.
John:
Similar size and weight, too, importantly.
Marco:
Yeah, it was 3.0 pounds, 13-inch screen.
Marco:
It was very, very similar to the MacBook Air in many, many ways.
Marco:
It was positioned as such.
Marco:
It was engineered as such.
Marco:
Clearly, the MacBook Escape was supposed to be the MacBook Air replacement.
Marco:
And the market basically said no for lots of reasons.
Marco:
I mean, up front, the price was even worse.
Marco:
Like there was since a price drop in, in the escape that brought it down a little bit further, but you know, in 2016 it was, it was much more expensive than the air.
Marco:
Uh, and, uh,
Marco:
People didn't like the new keyboard, which also kept dying.
Marco:
People didn't like the fewer ports and the loss of the legacy ports and the fewer total ports, you know, because it only had the two plus the headphone jack.
Marco:
That has been on sale for two years.
Marco:
And the market has spoken very loudly that, no, that is not the MacBook Air replacement we were looking for.
John:
One thing I'll throw in there, obviously the price I think is the number one concern in everything you brought up, but I actually think, and I can say this more confidently now that Apple probably agrees with me, that the taper, the lack of a taper was like the third place factor, which sounds stupid.
John:
And I've railed against the taper before saying you can fit more battery if you don't taper it.
John:
Um, but it's clear that Apple considers, as I think I mentioned a couple of shows back, the taper to be an important part of the MacBook Air's branding.
John:
They put it on the 12 inch MacBook, the MacBook one that tapers, uh, and the new Air has the taper as well.
John:
and the escape didn't and so if obviously the price i think was number one and number two was probably lack of ports and mag safe and all those stuff but number three i think was the taper because if you love the macbook air and it's your most loved thing what you want more than anything is a replacement for the macbook air that is like your macbook air but better and like your macbook air like i was talking about this when we were talking about the rumors what does it mean to make a new macbook air like the macbook air means essentially it has to be wedge-shaped because that's
John:
the MacBook Air, and I think it feels thinner because of the skinny edge, and I think it makes people think, oh, I had an old MacBook Air that I loved, and now here's a new MacBook Air, which we'll see whether we love or not, but it's clearly a MacBook Air, whereas the new MacBook Escape was not a MacBook Air as much as Phil Schiller may have wanted it to be.
John:
It was the MacBook Escape.
John:
It was the MacBook without touch bar with a really big escape key.
John:
That's what it was, and it cost a bazillion dollars, and it was not a new Air.
Marco:
see i agree it was not a new air but to me what it looks like they have done here is basically renamed the macbook escape the new macbook air i made it wedge-shaped and now it still has almost all of the same drawbacks as the escape did to air buyers it's got more right because it's five watt cpu right yeah okay i'll get to that in a second but like now that they call it the air
Marco:
Now everyone's like, oh, finally, they made the computer I wanted.
Marco:
But it appears as though they really have done marketing jujitsu here.
Marco:
It really is basically a halfway point between the 12-inch MacBook and the Escape.
Marco:
And it does not have the things that MacBook Air people want.
Marco:
But it's called a MacBook Air.
Marco:
And it's wedge-shaped.
Marco:
And it's wedge-shaped, and it's three pounds, and it's 13 inches.
Marco:
But they've already been selling a computer that is almost exactly that for two years that nobody has bought, basically.
Marco:
So I don't... To me, everyone's really happy today because this is the day the event happened.
Marco:
Everyone is very excited about everything.
Marco:
It looks really cool and everything.
Marco:
But if you enumerate the reasons why you weren't buying the Escape for the last two years, all of those reasons apply to this.
John:
and more and i would like i remember a couple shows ago i was saying when we were like in our umpteenth iteration of gnashing our teeth about the laptop line it was like um something like you know whatever imagine if apple shipped this computer how much would you like and i said imagine a macbook air but it's retina you know and it's like that that's what people want right and so isn't this exactly what you got is it is a retina a retina macbook air nope i i look at this machine and i said and i say to you if i took this machine and
John:
And I put a 15-watt CPU instead of a 5-watt in it.
John:
And I put a USB-A and an SD card slot on it.
John:
And I put a different keyboard on.
John:
Would you like it more or less than the computer here?
John:
And I would be hard-pressed to find somebody who would say they would like it less.
John:
Because those things I just changed about it
John:
They would probably make it more expensive, but to the point that you're going to get to soon, like, there already is, you know, a bunch of other laptops in Apple's line that are like this.
John:
Like, you know, or actually throwing MagSafe in there.
John:
There's a bunch of other products that are sort of spreading out along the line here.
John:
If you wanted to make a new computer that fills a new role, the reason people don't like the Escape, like you said, if you knew about all those reasons, if you want to counteract them, make a Retina MacBook Air, which is take the MacBook Air and put a Retina screen on it and update the USB ports or whatever.
John:
But don't take away things that people love, which is the keyboard that they like that's more reliable, maybe an SD card slot.
John:
Maybe a USB-A slot.
John:
There's things that you could do.
John:
There's small things that everyone would say, oh, that's better.
John:
That's even better than what we got.
John:
But they haven't done that.
John:
So I think when people look at this computer...
John:
I think they may actually go pretty far on the fact that it's called MacBook Air.
John:
But if you had that sort of Pepsi challenge where I said, do you want this one or the one with the single USB-A port?
John:
And they'd be like, oh, I'll take that one.
John:
Why wouldn't I take the one with the big chunky port?
John:
Because I have some stuff that's shaped like that, that goes in that hole.
John:
Do you want this one or the one that has MagSafe?
John:
Oh, well, I love the MacBook Air.
John:
It's the most loved Mac ever.
John:
And I love MagSafe.
John:
And I'll take the one with MagSafe.
John:
Right.
John:
Those two changes right there wouldn't actually cost that much more money.
John:
Obviously, Apple is on the outs about MagSafe for reasons that I don't think have been fully articulated to the public, but may actually be valid.
John:
We just don't know.
John:
Maybe it was starting fires according to reliability concerns.
John:
But a USB-A port doesn't cost that much money.
John:
They can find room for it and people would love it.
John:
But Apple says no.
Marco:
so it has you know has the same two usbc ports as them as the escape which two thunderbolt ports to the credit yeah okay yeah fair so but you know what that really means though is one port if you have it plugged in plus the headphone port which is on the wrong side no having one more port sounds like paradise don't you knock it my friend that would be amazing
Marco:
and i'll get to that in a second too but anyway so you know so you have like you have the same ports as the escape which i had for a while and decided were not enough but okay we'll move on from that this is a low-end product after all um you have the same keyboard um it's the same keyboard as this year's 2018 macbook pros so uh you know obviously with the with the change of there being touch id without without a touch bar which by the way is awesome i love that i love that you can get touch id without the touch bar that is a great option and i hope that option moves across the line
John:
Well, you hope that just because you're begging for scraps.
John:
I hope Face ID moves across the line, but we're not there yet.
Marco:
Fair enough, yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, I guess if we're going to keep having that giant top bezel on the screen, might as well make Face ID in there.
Marco:
But anyway, so it is the same keyboard, though.
Marco:
So anybody hoping for a different keyboard, myself included, we are disappointed because it is the same.
Marco:
Now, it does have that silicone membrane that the 2018 update brought to that keyboard to make it quieter.
Marco:
But we also know that there are still reports of these keys flaking out and dying.
Marco:
So it's not fixed.
Marco:
The problem is not gone.
Marco:
It just seems to be maybe reduced.
Marco:
So it still has an unreliable, expensive, hard-to-service keyboard, which I still assert is a terrible choice
Marco:
Not only for anybody, but especially for a low-end model where these have to last a long time.
Marco:
They're sold to very value-conscious buyers.
Marco:
They need to withstand things like schools and heavy use.
Marco:
So specs of dust are going to be a problem, I think.
Marco:
They're going to keep pushing this.
Marco:
I was hoping that this new MacBook Air would be the first model to show off a new industrial design that would spread across the line.
John:
obviously that was wrong that it that is not that was not in the cards for this year that is not going to happen yet we're not ready for it yet i'm disappointed by that but oh well and and your your new hope should be that this is the last laptop in the old design language right so you were hoping this will be the first of the new generation right now now we all switch to saying i really hope this is the last of this generation meaning this generation meaning starting with a 2015 macbook
John:
of the butterfly keyboard generation of no ports, this keyboard, we should all pray that this is the last one.
John:
That, you know, whatever the new generation is coming in the future, it wasn't in time for this, so just this is the capstone.
John:
They've now converted their entire laptop line
John:
to this style and this generation and all the trade-offs that are made and pretty much every single one of these models are the same like it's not like they they perhaps couldn't revisit the trade-offs the best they could do was you know put some membranes on the keyboard right but all the trade-offs that were present across the entire line they're still there for every one of these computers
Marco:
Yeah, and we're three years into this, almost three and a half years into this generation of industrial design for the laptops.
Marco:
Typically, these generations last like four to five years at most.
Marco:
Obviously, Apple slows down over time with Mac updates seemingly, so that might extend.
Marco:
But I'm guessing we still have another year of this left, unfortunately.
Marco:
But anyway...
Marco:
Besides it being not what I wanted, this does look like a good computer, but what's really interesting is this article that came out on MacRumors tonight.
Marco:
They're doing some investigation of what processor is in this thing.
Marco:
They really didn't mention it very much.
Marco:
All they said was that it was 8th generation, and we know it's like 1.6 gigahertz base.
Marco:
There's only one processor option.
Marco:
There's no built-to-order upgraded processors.
Marco:
I noticed when I was looking through tech specs that this computer only has a 30-watt power brick, which is the same wattage as the 12-inch MacBook.
Marco:
The Escape, which has what used to be the Air class 15-watt CPUs, ships with a 60-watt power brick.
Marco:
So it seems like this computer uses way less power.
Marco:
So sure enough, there's this MacRumors article tonight that seems correct that the processor, based on just like model numbers existing in Intel's system and everything, it is the MacBook class of power consumption and performance, not the MacBook Air and MacBook Escape class.
Marco:
What this computer appears to be is a 13-inch MacBook, not a wedge-shaped Escape, after all.
Marco:
And once you learn this about it, a whole lot of things make more sense and a whole lot of things are kind of disappointing or weird.
Marco:
It is tech forward.
Marco:
It's way more tech forward than the 12-inch MacBook.
Marco:
And by the way, the 12-inch MacBook didn't get an update this year, which is weird.
Marco:
Like, it should theoretically have gotten updated today with this.
Marco:
If this is basically a 13-inch MacBook, the 12-inch should have been updated with it.
Marco:
I don't know why it wasn't, but oh well.
Marco:
We'll get there.
Marco:
Maybe it's some weird Intel thing.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But...
Marco:
it is tech forward in the sense that the new MacBook Air has the T2, the T2 architecture with the SSD controller and everything.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
It has the modern speaker system and microphones.
Marco:
It has touch ID, which is awesome.
Marco:
Um, I, I did find it kind of funny that they, they were like talking about things like retina screens and the force touch trackpad being new because even though like it was basically like re celebrating all the innovations they had for the last few years, um,
Marco:
But like the air never had them.
Marco:
So to the air, they were new.
Marco:
But it's like, here's why a force touch trackpad is good.
Marco:
It's like, yeah, that was introduced to the MacBook line in 2015.
Marco:
So thanks.
Marco:
But anyway, it does look like a really interesting product if you can tolerate that keyboard and if the pricing works for you.
Marco:
But it's more... I'm really curious to see the performance of it and to see whether it throttles really badly because the MacBook has some issues like that sometimes.
Marco:
But it sure does seem like it's actually a 13-inch MacBook, not a replacement for the Air directly.
Marco:
And it's actually going to be probably a performance hit.
Marco:
I think the only reason it compares well to the Air is because the Air is so old.
Casey:
Yeah, this was weird for me to watch because I'm not...
Casey:
dying to to upgrade my macbook but i would like to you know i got it i think i placed the order during wwdc 2017 so i got it sometime in june of that year and i love my macbook adorable but it's not fast and the one port is kind of annoying generally speaking i don't mind it but there are definitely times that it's kind of annoying and
Casey:
And not having Thunderbolt is also kind of annoying because if I wanted to get a dock and I have to be super careful that it's a USB-C dock and that could potentially limit me, although it doesn't seem like I need anything that Thunderbolt gives me.
Casey:
So I'm sitting in the presentation, I'm watching it, and I'm saying, oh, there's two ports.
Casey:
Ooh, they're Thunderbolt ports.
Casey:
This is all sounding great.
Casey:
Everything's coming up Casey.
Casey:
And then we learned that it's basically the same CPU, and that really puts a damper on things, because I want something quicker, like a lot quicker.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
I'm not desperate to upgrade my laptop, and thus I probably won't, especially because the new iPads look so hot.
Casey:
But I don't know what I would do.
Casey:
If I were to buy a laptop today, and my personal priorities are something that is very small and very light, but preferably not quite as slow as my current MacBook, I guess I would get the escape.
Casey:
Question mark?
Casey:
I'm not even sure what I would do.
Casey:
And also, I should add that when I was in the hands-on area, which it is so cool to be able to say that, but anyway, when I was in the hands-on area, I had forgotten that I actually don't love the feel of the third-generation butterfly keyboards.
Casey:
They're...
Casey:
They feel a little bit mushier to me.
Casey:
Now, I would probably get used to it, and it's probably for the best because they're also quieter, allegedly.
Casey:
Yes, I understand they touted the stability of the keys, but it just felt a little squishier to me.
Casey:
And one of the things I love about my adorable keyboard is how crisp it is.
Casey:
And yeah, I can totally see how that may not be your Royal U and your specifically Marco Armin's cup of tea.
Casey:
But for me, I really like it.
Casey:
And I'm not sure I like the new one quite as much.
Casey:
Although if I had to sacrifice the stability of it in order to get – or the crispness of it in order to get something that's more reliable, I would totally make that trade.
Marco:
I'm really curious, like especially if you look at – like think about this too.
Marco:
Like the way this fits in with the lineup –
Marco:
The 12-inch costs $100 more to start.
Marco:
Now, that's partly because there is no 12-inch configuration that only has 128-gig SSD, which, by the way, should be illegal.
Marco:
But if you actually configure these to be equally specced, where basically you give the Air 256, then the 13-inch new Air is $100 more than the 12-inch at the same spec.
Marco:
So what would actually finally make sense here, that would finally resolve this,
Marco:
would be if the 12-inch gets a 128-gig configuration that is $100 less to start.
Marco:
So like $1,099, basically, to start.
Marco:
Then you have the two MacBooks, basically, the 12 and 13-inch at $1,100 and $1,200 to start.
Marco:
And if you look at the pricing, as you scale up, the Escape, I think, is like $200 more than them.
Marco:
The Touch Bar is another $200 more than that.
Marco:
Something like that, right?
Marco:
So like...
Marco:
The lineup would make so much more sense except for the one hilarious difference that these two very similar low-end computers, the larger of them would be called the Air.
John:
I think I was just carrying along the branding.
John:
Yeah, like the more I think about this, the more it just looks like a 13-inch MacBook 1 with Thunderbolt, right?
John:
Which –
John:
Which is an okay computer to have, but it adds granularity to their line in a weird place.
John:
I feel like there's still a gap.
John:
And incidentally, speaking of gaps, they're still selling the old MacBook Air.
John:
That was a question we had going into this.
John:
As far as I can tell, they're still selling it.
John:
Maybe they're just clearing the inventory.
John:
Maybe they won't.
John:
I saw people somewhat snarkily saying, or people who are disappointed that this isn't the first of a new generation of MacBook, saying that if pressed, they might still buy it.
John:
the old non-retina macbook air for the keyboard for the usba ports for the you know whatever like especially if you're if the main thing you're doing on it is typing maybe retina doesn't mean anything you're not doing image editing or whatever and so the if the main thing you do is
John:
uh you know go around with your computer and type words and maybe use a web browser and like plug in usb sticks and an sd card from your camera the old macbook still is the better quote unquote better computer for you um but if you were someone who loved the macbook one the 12 inch macbook but you just wish it had thunderbolt and maybe a little bit bigger screen and was slightly faster this is the computer for you but i'm not sure if
John:
if it's going to appeal to macbook air owners like that was the pitch during the presentation tim cook was like everyone loves the macbook air so now we've got a new macbook air and it's again it's hard to tell when i'm not there in the room but the the video was like and the crowd goes wild like who doesn't want the crowd did go wild yeah it was like thunderous applause like because people love the macbook air so i'm saying like they really are are like really capitalizing on that they're really pulling
Marco:
pushing the marketing on this product hard.
Marco:
They really want people to accept this as the new MacBook Air.
John:
And they might, because if they just want a wedge-shaped computer that is not the tiny, tiny MacBook One, this fills that role.
John:
But as time wears on, if people replace their MacBook Airs with this computer, will they miss...
John:
mag safe and usba and sd or will they just be like oh shrug it's the new macbook air it's a little bit weird but i'll get used to it uh time will tell and again still selling the old one is i mean that's not a shock because you know they that's the thing that apple does now uh and still selling it to schools make some kind of sense but having it in the line is
John:
making tech nerds, like, not out of spite, not to be like, well, if you're not going to make exactly the computer I want, then I'm going to buy the old one forever.
John:
Like a Marco move there.
John:
I didn't say forever.
John:
I know.
John:
I know.
John:
But, like, I don't think it's actually a spite move.
John:
I think it is...
John:
Really saying, let's really think about, like, what do I actually want out of my computer?
John:
And am I willing to trade these things that I'm used to, right?
John:
I'm used to, like, having MagSafe.
John:
If you're just really obsessed with that and can't stomach the idea of not having it, they will still sell you a computer with that.
John:
And you can decide whether typing in your password every time you unlock your computer or having a slow computer or having a non-retinal computer or having terrible viewing angles are worth it to you.
John:
All that said, I mentioned I was in the market for a new homework laptop, and I did the comparison after everything was announced to say, okay, so they've made their announcement.
John:
Let me spec out the new MacBook Air that I would get, and now let me compare it.
John:
And I did the comparison.
John:
I compared it to the MacBook Escape, and the configurations I wanted, the pricing was frighteningly close.
John:
And I'm like, well, then why would I get the Retina Air instead of the MacBook Escape?
John:
I said, oh, yeah, Touch ID.
John:
So for me, that puts it over the top.
John:
also oh yeah the macbook escape still has the more dust prone keyboard it has not been updated to the third gen yeah i'm not i'm not entirely convinced that that's a material difference uh with the memories but anyway touch id was the big deal breaker i'm like well oh yeah i'm not for i've forgotten that the escape doesn't have touch id forget about that so i have been to the escape even though they're very similar in price and the escape is faster surely right uh but i don't care about that for a homework computer
John:
and is better in a whole bunch of ways touch id makes the new air much more attractive to me than the escape and then the 12 inch when i compared the pricing there surprisingly if you start specking up the 12 inch to be close to the the configuration i wanted from the air the pricing isn't that far apart there either but again uh the macbook one no touch id right
John:
am i wrong about that that's correct that's correct all right i forget what's on the thing no touch id also no membrane on the macbook one yeah and then you got the other different keyboard and it's only got the one port so within apple's lineup the new air at least for my purposes is the most desirable product for a sort of low-end laptop because i don't want to get the non-retina because i just can't stomach it
John:
And because I just had one of those, I'd feel like I'd be buying the same computer, right?
John:
And the two sibling computers that are around the same price range with different trade-offs in terms of size and power, neither of them have Touch ID.
John:
And as much as I want Face ID, Touch ID on a laptop, especially one that multiple kids log into and parents and everything going back and forth, not typing your password is big quality of life improvement.
John:
So for all of our complaining about this computer...
John:
We can't buy what Apple doesn't offer.
John:
And among what Apple offers for a cheap laptop, as far as my specific use case is concerned, this is the most attractive model.
Casey:
You know, like I'd said earlier, it was a roller coaster for me.
Casey:
And what I was thinking about just a moment ago is that for my MacBook Adorable...
Casey:
generally speaking the only real peripherals i ever plug in is an sd card reader which i do a lot occasionally ethernet which i actually use an old usba ethernet adapter um just because i it works oh that was why because i needed to be a plug in i need to be able to plug it into the to the dongle that has power input because i only have one port that's what it was um so shut up marco so
Casey:
So I was thinking about it, though, like my SD card reader, which is a USB-C SD card reader, is physically way wider than these two ports directly next to each other will allow.
Marco:
That's actually been a problem since all the 2016s.
Marco:
The ports are so close together that some peripherals will block the other ports next to them.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So this is, so if we tunnel vision and I'm tunnel visioning on purpose, you know, to make my point, but if we tunnel vision on the only reason Casey wants a second port is for an SD card reader, which is not the truth, but it's not far from the truth.
Casey:
This is still a one port laptop because they're directly frigging next to each other.
Casey:
I couldn't plug in a power port at the same time, or I couldn't plug in power at the same time I'm using an SD card reader unless I get like a USB C extension.
Casey:
And I don't even know if that thing is, does that exist?
Casey:
Is that a thing?
Marco:
I don't think that exists, and I wouldn't trust one.
Marco:
But can't you just get a different dongle that has a built-in power pass-through and Ethernet and SD card reader?
Marco:
Like, I have one that has that.
Casey:
Yeah, fair.
Marco:
And they have adapters.
John:
Like, we have them at work.
John:
They're kind of terrible, but they go into both ports.
John:
Like, both of the USB-C ports, and on them they have SD card and HDMI and USB-A and, you know, a bunch of other stuff.
Marco:
I'm always afraid those are going to snap off.
John:
The ones that have little short cables, I think, are way better.
John:
Yeah, we haven't broken one yet, but they're definitely ungainly.
John:
I noticed some things when I was going through the video.
John:
I believe this is the first time that I can recall seeing an Apple promotional video that shows someone using an Apple product with an obvious white dongle poking out of the back.
John:
I think it was when they were showing Mac Minis or something, and a bunch of kids were using them to do some video project or whatever, and you could see the back of the computer.
John:
and it jumped out at me it was like a sore thumb because you've got all these sleek little computers and the telltale white dongle poking out of that which is what real macs look like in the world there's white dongles poking out of the sides of all of them but very rarely do you see that like if you look at all of the uh the well at least from the pictures i saw in the hands-on area not a lot of white dongles poking out of the back of all those mac minis just smooth carefully arranged like color matched cables to show how awesome and cool and sleek the mac mini is although we'll get to that in a second that's the reason for that uh but yeah they showed a dongle poking out of it and
John:
I continue to think that, like, until and unless the world catches up with Apple's vision of connectivity on laptops, the reality for all of us will be Dongletown, and Dongletown is not a fun place to be.
John:
I mean, it's not the end of the world.
John:
We're all doing it.
John:
It's a thing that works, and it has advantages in terms of docking stations and everything, but it also has disadvantages.
John:
And thus far, Apple seems either...
John:
unwilling to compromise on this or they've compromised on it but we haven't seen the fruits of that compromise yet it's difficult to tell which is which i feel like uh you two uh could have asked johnny about that when you were there and maybe marco did but we'll get to that later i actually uh i have a better idea for how they can solve this problem space gray dongles then you they'll still look pro and apple can sell us a whole bunch of new copies of the same things we already bought so everyone wins
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Casey:
I mean, it's interesting.
Casey:
I feel like this is going to sell well because people are going to say, oh, this is the new version of the thing I loved.
Casey:
And I just want a more modern version of the thing I loved.
Casey:
But it is certainly not without compromise, which is something we're kind of getting used to at this point, unfortunately.
Marco:
Well, it's something we get used to on the Macs and especially the laptop Macs.
Marco:
It's the laptop specifically.
Marco:
Yeah, because if you look at the desktops, we'll talk about the Mac Mini in a second.
Marco:
The Mac Mini update is awesome.
Marco:
It's fantastic.
Marco:
And the iMac Pro, as I mention every show, is awesome.
Marco:
I love the iMac Pro.
Marco:
It's just the laptops that have been in such a weird place the last few years.
Marco:
And it seems like they can't ship a laptop that doesn't have severe compromises in some way.
Marco:
Even if you like the keyboard that I hate, it seems like there's severe compromises on all these laptops.
Marco:
Whether that's if you don't like the keyboard or if you need it to work reliably or whether it's heat and thermal issues, whether it's simply that they just cost way more than they used to and the upgrades for them are very expensive and less and less is serviceable.
Marco:
And you have to buy all these dongles for everything.
Marco:
Or if you want any port other than USB-C and maybe headphones.
Marco:
right exactly so like it seems like the like the laptop updates are just compromise after compromise after compromise whereas the desktops and the ios line the hardware is is so good and the updates are almost all positive like they they're so strong and we'll get to that for the rest of the show fortunately like i think our one kind of downside thing is over um because the mac mini update was fantastic right
Casey:
Alright, so let's dive in.
Casey:
There is a new Mac Mini, and that also made a lot of people very happy in the room, and justifiably so, because it had been how long?
Casey:
18 years?
Casey:
Something like that.
Marco:
Can I just say, too, I loved the intro video.
Marco:
It was the most dramatic.
Marco:
dramatic Mac mini intro video.
Marco:
And it was kind of tongue-in-cheek.
Marco:
It was totally tongue-in-cheek.
Marco:
That's why it was funny.
Marco:
I love Tim's sly little like, there's another small but mighty Mac our users have been waiting for.
Marco:
Even Tim's making fun of it.
Marco:
This video makes fun of it.
Marco:
I just love that they just kind of owned that
Marco:
We've all been waiting for the Mac Mini, and it's super unimportant for the most part, but they're going to make it seem really important for this one presentation for the next four years.
Marco:
And I love the way they did the video.
Marco:
This totally over-the-top thing that makes it look like a giant spaceship.
Marco:
It makes it look huge, right?
Marco:
I love that style so much.
Marco:
Apple spends a lot of money on these videos, and many of them, I think, are way less successful than this.
Marco:
This was a lot of fun.
Marco:
I think it really worked.
John:
It undercuts itself at the end when the audio switches to being whatever the – there's movie-making terms for this, Todd Vazieri would tell me.
John:
But anyway, music that you're hearing as background to the music of the video to music that is emanating from the computer that's distant in the video.
John:
And like it's big, dramatic, and then it's like, oh, here it is.
John:
It's a Mac Mini hooked up to a display.
John:
And it's playing this video.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That was really – it was a fun video.
John:
So we had this big discussion about the Mac Mini a while back and we were like, what are they going to do with it?
John:
Our main concerns were size and ports.
John:
And the answer to the question is size is the same.
John:
And the answer to the port question is they didn't screw it up.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The only things they removed from the ports are the audio input, the SD reader and the optical capability on the output.
Marco:
Which, for an Apple update in 2018 after four years, that's really good.
John:
It could have been way worse.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
I mean, in the grand scheme of things, like, they adjusted the ports in ways that may or may not be.
John:
But it's clear there's not a new philosophy for the ports of the Mac Mini as there were in the laptops.
John:
There is not a philosophy that, like, well, you know what?
John:
We think all small Macs should only have USB-C Thunderbolt ports on them.
John:
That is not, you know, the philosophy is the same as it's ever been.
John:
Let's put a ton of ports on the back because we don't know what people are going to use these little guys for.
John:
And if we have room for HDMI, yeah, it's a weird old connector, but put it there because people hook us up to TVs.
John:
USB-A, is there room for that?
John:
Sure, throw it on.
John:
Thunderbolt, that's cool, too.
John:
Let's put one of those two.
John:
Let's put four of them on there.
John:
Like, it's the same port philosophy as it was before.
John:
Which is an incredible relief because, as we discussed, that's what people use these things for, all sorts of random stuff.
John:
And it becomes massively less useful if you have some sort of overarching, very narrow philosophy of the ports that are, quote unquote, allowed on the back of a computer.
Marco:
incredible relief so thumbs up on the ports yeah which by the way is the same position they took with the imac pro yep the imac pro has all of the usb ports it has 4c 4a plus you know ethernet and everything else like it also lost its its audio input and its optical quality unfortunately or its optical output unfortunately but uh you know the imac pro showed like even a brand new design they still believe we should give all the ports on a desktop because there's room and people need them
Marco:
yeah or not like every single port in the universe but the philosophy is there should be a variety of ports even if we think that some of them are old or weird or we're not sure how many people could use them if there's room for them and it's reasonable we should put them on there and they did exactly and and i love like they even called it out they said the quote customers love having lots of ports which i thought was hilarious because the laptops and the ios devices are the complete opposite direction like but
Marco:
But I agree.
Marco:
Customers love having lots of ports.
Marco:
I wish you could tell the rest of the company that.
Casey:
This customer does.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
This Mac Mini, I saw... And there were so many things.
Marco:
I love that you can spec it up really high if you want to basically make it... It's basically like a mini iMac Pro.
Marco:
It is space gray, of course.
Marco:
It starts out at a really...
Marco:
crappy low power chip the four core i3 which i think this is the first time apple has shipped an i3 branded chip um i3s are pretty low end i don't even know much about them but i think they don't have hyper threading or turbo is that right but it's still faster than the old mac mini because it's so ancient that's the that's the beauty of this update yeah
Marco:
Yeah, like it's so ancient and the old one was two cores and this one is four cores.
Marco:
So even though it's an i3, it still has enough other benefits and recency to boost it up.
Marco:
But I would, you know, to me, like that actually makes some sense because Mac minis are often used.
Marco:
Mine, for instance, mine is used in a capability where I don't need a lot of CPU power.
Marco:
Mine is mostly used as like a file server and like a low needs kind of like, you know, low role provider for the household.
Marco:
the Mac mini is sometimes used in roles like that, or it's used in roles where it needs a bunch of, you know, power.
Marco:
It needs to like churn CPU things for running tests or doing builds or, you know, who knows what else.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so it does make sense to have a low power CPU option.
Marco:
And I'm really happy they can also offer a six-core high-powered one.
Marco:
One of my big question marks on this is I don't know what the thermal situation is here.
Marco:
Can it sustain a heavy load for a while without throttling like a desktop should?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I don't know how the fan noise is.
Marco:
I don't know how the enclosure treats that.
Marco:
Their enclosure design recently in this area has been really good, though.
Marco:
I'm pretty confident.
Marco:
It's probably like the iMac Pro is fantastic for fan noise.
Marco:
The laptops are okay, but
Marco:
So I'm assuming this is going to be pretty cool.
Marco:
I'm really looking forward to hearing more about it.
Marco:
Maybe testing one out or something.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
It's great that the RAM was up to 64 gigs.
Marco:
And the biggest surprise of the day, upgradable RAM on standard RAM SODIMM sticks.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Like, this is the first time, I think, ever that Apple has taken a computer that they made less upgradable and made it more upgradable.
Marco:
Like, has that ever happened?
John:
It's on dims, right?
John:
I've been reading conflicting reports about, so it is upgradable, as in one can upgrade it, but it is not meant to be user serviceable, as in you, the person who bought the computer, are not meant to crack it open and do that.
John:
Surely you can, because, you know, iFixit will help you get the tools and the ability to do that, but I'm not entirely sure...
John:
it's uh they recommend that you do it i think mainly it's like look if you if you have a whole bunch of these in a build farm or your mac stadium or you have a server or whatever and the ram goes bad on it it's nice to be able to just swap out the ram uh at a repair center or wherever you're supposed to do a quote unquote but
John:
But yeah, they mentioned that specifically, and it's not in the direction of trying to make this flexible and repairable.
John:
This is also the dawn, as I think our friend Todd Vaziri has pointed out, the dawn of the $4,200 Mac Mini, which is slightly hilarious, but not that.
John:
I mean, it's only hilarious when you compare it to PC pricing, because as many people point out,
John:
Oh, so you spec up this $4,000 Mac Mini?
John:
Yeah, it's a $1,500 PC, right?
John:
Like, as we went to the Intel NUC things, like, you're not... The Mac Mini has not suddenly become a performance bargain, right?
John:
But we're mainly relieved that they didn't mess up the things that people like about the Mac Mini.
John:
They increased the power all around.
John:
They let you spec it to a ridiculous degree, which is good because if you have some application that needs a huge amount of RAM but, you know, doesn't need a giant SSD, you can adjust those two things, you know, or you need just a little bit of RAM but a really fast CPU, like...
John:
It's configurable for people.
John:
And, you know, since we're a captive audience and we don't have a choice of a lot of desktop Macs, having a choice in the small headless desktop Mac market that we can adjust in some way to our specific needs, even though it is still very, very expensive in the grand scheme of things and way more expensive than an equivalent power PC.
John:
We're still happy because we're Mac users and we like Macs.
John:
And this option will keep us happy for at least like a year and a half, two years until we start grumbling again.
Marco:
And just like the range of, you know, like you mentioned that you can configure up to like $4,000.
Marco:
And yes, the base model is more expensive than before.
Marco:
But again, I think the era of people buying cheap Mac minis to be their new desktops as new Mac converts is long over.
Marco:
And these are much more often used for things like servers and other specialized roles.
Marco:
So I think the price change here is fine.
Marco:
And the new base model is better specced than the old one was.
Marco:
The old one had a hard drive at its base price and a really slow CPU.
Marco:
And the second you touched any of those specs, you were spending $1,000.
Marco:
So like it, it was, you know, I think the pricing is fine.
Marco:
It's obviously like all of Apple's modern pricing.
Marco:
It isn't ideal and everything's kind of creeping up gradually over time, but it's fine.
Marco:
And I love how it has this massive range where you can spec it out to be that low, that low end server, or you can do things like 10 gig ethernet.
John:
like who would have guessed that yeah that was that was amazing to me that's that's like that that's i mean they charge you 100 bucks for but still having that as an option like if you decide what you need is a huge ssd and 10 gig ethernet but a wimpy cpu like it's it's amazingly flexible in ways that pretty much no other machine is even the iMac pro which is basically like they just expect you want everything awesome right you can get some weaker stuff and some stronger specs on this and mix and match to the degree that you
John:
generally can't elsewhere um and i thought it was interesting also in the hands-on area that they were showing the mac mini in all sorts of different scenarios that i assume that they believe it's really used in so they showed it as like a compiler farm for like xcode or running you know uh you know your test suite or whatever they showed it in the videos hooked up to a television which is a thing that a
John:
they also showed it in the video actually use it as desktop a computer but i doubt many people use it in that way like the the mixing and matching and the stacking of them and showing them in racks which is like it was not you know when apple introduced the mac mini and even when they introduced this new this latest form factor of it i don't think they had in mind like oh people are going to be putting these in server racks but mac stadium exists and apple knows they exist and it's a thing that people do because it's a headless mac and it's small and compact and you can actually stack them so apple
John:
You know, went with that saying we're going to show them stacked.
John:
We're going to show them stacked sideways because it's a thing people do.
John:
And we want to say, yes, we Apple recognize that this is the thing you might want to do with your Mac minis.
John:
And it's not like they're designing it for that, but they have that use case in mind.
John:
They're not going to ruin it for you.
John:
They're not going to, say, make it cylindrical, which makes it really hard to rack.
Marco:
like it's it's you know it's apple embracing what people actually use their computers for rather than what they imagine or would like people to use them for we were so worried that like we would have to like use ethernet through a dongle like the fact that we can get yep 10 gig ethernet built in and that like and like they didn't they didn't take the power supply and make it external to make the box smaller like stuff like that like they it's it's just a good update like
Marco:
if you would have asked well i was gonna say if you would have asked me to predict a mac mini update then i realized oh yeah we have done that for the last few episodes but but like i never would have guessed that a mac mini update in 2018 would be this good and i'm really really happy that they did it even though i'm probably not going to buy one for a while because my mac mini that i use for my home server is fine it's you know it once it flakes out i will gladly buy one of these
John:
Real-time follow-up from Todd Vaziri.
John:
The phrases I was looking for, I actually wasn't looking for them.
John:
I knew what they were, but I didn't know what order they went in, so it's kind of important.
John:
Diegetic versus non-diegetic.
John:
I could not remember which one was the one where the sound is coming from an object on screen and which one is instrumental.
John:
And apparently diegetic means it's coming from an object on screen, and non-diegetic means it's like part of the movie soundtrack.
John:
So thank you, Todd, for...
Casey:
That was actually Jelly.
John:
Oh, was it?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Sorry.
John:
Thank you, Todd.
John:
Todd, you knew the answer too.
John:
I believe in you.
John:
But thank you, Jelly, for actually giving us the answer.
Marco:
One more thing that I wanted to cover before we left the Mac section is they mentioned with the Air and the Mac Mini as well that they're now being made from 100% recycled aluminum.
Marco:
And that got a massive applause in the room.
Marco:
And I think that's totally deserved.
Marco:
That's a really cool thing.
Marco:
I have some questions about some of the details of that.
Marco:
And as a few people on Twitter pointed out, they did later kind of basically say that Macs are now made from the shavings off of iOS devices.
Marco:
It's the worst.
John:
Like the first thing I thought of and then they said it in the presentation.
John:
I'm like, don't highlight that.
John:
We're all thinking it, but don't say it.
John:
It's like we spend lots of money on the highest quality aluminum for the products that we care about.
John:
And the shavings that come off, we make Macs out of those.
John:
Like, it's such a painful metaphor for all of the Max issues.
John:
It's interesting, though, the way they phrased it.
John:
Like, and I'm not that I'm concerned about this, but I'm like, you're curious about it.
John:
They said that basically they make a new alloy out of the aluminum shavings.
John:
It's not like they're saying we take recycled aluminum and what we end up with is exactly the same as if we had started with fresh aluminum.
John:
And it's not post-consumer recycled.
John:
It's post-Apple manufacturing.
John:
right which but it's interesting that they're saying that like that that it basically i'm imagining if you gave a material scientist two chunks one of the recycled and one of the regular they could tell they were different like the apple phrased it as they're making a different alloy so i'm slightly wondering what it you know is it actually the same is it
John:
softer harder bendier more brittle more prone to to scratching like i mean you saw them in person i'm assuming they just felt like apple aluminum laptops right there's probably not any variance that we can tell yeah i mean like when you feel them for like two seconds it's kind of hard to get a good idea of that kind of thing yeah so hopefully like and the reason i i mean i guess it is a concern the reason i have a concern about this is uh
John:
It's 100% the right thing to do, and I applaud Apple for doing it, and they should do it for all their products, but historically, as Apple has attempted to decrease the environmental footprint of their products, they've occasionally had struggles with matching the characteristics of the worst for the environment materials.
John:
Think about all the different plastics used for power cords.
John:
Think about when they went to lead-free solder and everything.
John:
It takes a little while to get the kinks worked out and to come up with, hopefully, a more environmentally friendly product
John:
that is also as durable and as pleasing and has the same performance characteristics as the worst for the environment thing that it replaces so hopefully the aluminum is is not such a case and they've nailed it on the first try i imagine it's probably closer because you know it's it's a big hunk of metal and it's not as perhaps as finicky as the uh you know something as delicate as the kind of plastic they use for their cords or whatever and although arguably
John:
Some would say that no plastic they've ever used for any of their power cords or lightning cables or whatever has ever been durable enough, and that's a separate issue.
Casey:
So for the MacBook Air on a typical academic rating scale of A through F, how do we feel like that is?
Casey:
Because I went from this is great to this is garbage to it's fine.
Casey:
So I guess I would rate it like a...
Casey:
C plus B minus.
Casey:
And then for the Mac mini, I think this is an A. This is a good update.
Casey:
Marco, how do you feel about these two so far?
Marco:
Mac mini, I'm with you.
Marco:
It's an A. The only thing that keeps it from being an A plus is that the pricing gets pretty steep pretty fast.
Marco:
But it's an A. The MacBook Air...
Marco:
There's still too many unknowns.
Marco:
I think we need to see how these perform in real life.
Marco:
The battery life should be pretty good, actually, given the size of the battery it has.
Marco:
It's only about 10% smaller than the Escape's battery, but if it has a processor that uses half the power, that's going to be noticeable.
Marco:
It should have really good battery life, but performance might be questionable.
Marco:
The keyboard is eh.
Marco:
I'm going to say, based on John's logic of the MacBook Air being like,
John:
the least crappy option of what apple actually is willing to sell us right now uh it's kind of like it gets maybe like a b or a c but at a crappy school all right this grading system is getting more complex yeah it really is john i give the macbook air b minus uh mostly uh because i you know despite all the complaints we had about it i think it is
John:
It offers something that its siblings in the lineup don't offer.
John:
And the things that we didn't mention that Marco just brought up, like the battery life, that's great.
John:
The advantage of being a 13-inch MacBook One, essentially, is that if you use the 7-watt CPU, you can get a lot of battery life when your thing is slightly bigger.
John:
I give the Mini an A-, mostly because the pricing is just, I mean, it's always been bananas, but it's really bananas for this particular machine.
John:
And I was mostly considering A, the top of the scale, but yeah, I'm going to get an A-,
Marco:
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Casey:
So we had a retail update and then iPad.
Casey:
I got to tell you, I'm going to cut to the end and give my concluding statement up front, which is not exactly what John wanted to do, but that's okay.
Casey:
I want an iPad for the first time in a long time.
Casey:
And if you recall, I had a RetinaPad mini, fourth generation, which they're still selling.
Casey:
They even named it twice.
Yeah.
Casey:
Why?
John:
They named it, and they put it on screen.
John:
Like, that was the thing that blew me away.
John:
Speaking of things that are on screen, at the very beginning of the presentation, they showed, I mean, not that we, all the rumors had leaked to the point, especially like in the hours before the presentation, we more or less knew what was going to be announced.
John:
But they had a big product shot that showed their lineup of Macs, right?
John:
And it was the iMac Pro in the background, and it was like the 15-inch MacBook Pro and the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And then it was all arranged in a nice little family portrait.
John:
And off to the left was the only computer with a big silver face pointing you, the MacBook Air.
John:
And the Mac Mini was in a picture.
John:
Since when do they ever show the Mac Mini in a keynote presentation alongside other products?
John:
And it was clear that what they were going to do is take the two things in this picture that are silver,
John:
and replace them with ones that now fit in with the family now the mac mini is space gray and now the macbook air has the same black screen face so that's how you could tell early in presentation if you didn't already know that they were going to replace the macbook air and the mac mini in the ipad presentation i believe they showed the ipad mini on screen briefly they did when they were saying here is our ipad lineup we have the ipad mini and the ipad and then we have the two pro models and for a moment i was like
John:
By showing the iPad mini, are they telling me they're... No, of course.
John:
And they didn't.
John:
They didn't do anything with it.
John:
It's still there.
John:
It slid off the left side of the slide, never to be seen again.
John:
Mentioned one more time in the presentation as the iPad mini 4.
John:
And anyway, it remains a product in their lineup.
Casey:
Hmm.
Casey:
So yeah, so I have an iPad Mini 4 that actually, hand on heart, I'm not sure where it is because I haven't seen it in a while.
Casey:
I'm sure it's here somewhere, but darned if I know where.
Casey:
It's too small.
Casey:
You need a bigger one.
Casey:
Yeah, maybe that's the problem.
Casey:
But these new iPads...
Casey:
They feel like modern Apple, I'm going to say computers, which kind of makes me feel a little weird, but modern Apple computers more than the iPads that preceded them do.
Casey:
They ditched the home button, which looks archaic now.
Casey:
They're edge-to-edge screen for the most part.
Casey:
No real big bezel for the most part.
Casey:
So they look and felt like modern Apple devices in a way that I don't think the iPad has.
Casey:
Even the iPad Pro just didn't look as modern to me once the iPhone X came into existence.
Casey:
All the iPads looked old and busted to me, and these do not.
Casey:
These look great.
Casey:
They feel great.
Casey:
They
Casey:
They're super thin.
Casey:
I love the flat edges around the outside.
Casey:
I am trying to figure out an excuse, trying to convince myself that I need a 10-inch or I guess 11-inch actually iPad Pro.
Casey:
But I was very impressed.
Casey:
These things look great and make me want an iPad again.
John:
Here's the problem with this iPad Pro announcement and my problem with my feelings about it.
John:
I look at their presentation, their presentation of what they chose to emphasize, what they spent time on, what they bragged about, and what the reality of these products is.
John:
And as excited as I'm getting about it, my suspicion, and we will find out shortly, is that the new iPad Pros are essentially faster in all meaningful ways than every single laptop Apple sells.
Yeah.
John:
which is again like you look at this thing an eight core a12 right uh 120 hertz screen pencil support like we would kill to get these kind of specs and these kind of capabilities in any kind of thing that runs mac os like i it
John:
i believe someone was saying this has six gigs of ram which is double what the previous ones did like the this the ipad pros are tickling all of the be dazzled by pro hardware stuff like they used to be a staple of apple's presentations like sometimes they tell you about the amazing thing you can get at a great price and sometimes they say this is going to cost you an arm and a leg but it's amazing like it has it
John:
It is incredibly powerful.
John:
It has new capabilities.
John:
Everything about it is incredibly fast.
John:
We're going to brag to you about how fast it is and what it can do.
John:
And it's in a cool new form factor.
John:
Like, it was pushing all of those buttons.
John:
And certainly I want one, right?
John:
But also I'm thinking, how...
John:
How amazing would an Apple laptop be with these internals?
John:
And Apple would say, what the hell do you need a laptop for?
John:
We got a cool keyboard for this.
John:
Like, it's practically a laptop already.
John:
But, you know, me with the OS thing and all of the rumors about what iOS 13 will have that got kicked out of iOS 12 that may...
John:
make this an even more amazing computer.
John:
But, but yeah, I'm setting aside my uncomfortable feelings about how I wish the laptop line was as powerful.
John:
These iPads, you consider it in isolation.
John:
These are amazing iPads.
John:
These are, this is what we've come to expect from Apple in like the phone line.
John:
And now I feel like this is the first iPad that has received as much attention as the phones do that.
John:
This new iPad is,
John:
is so much better in every possible way than all of its already pretty good predecessors like that's a feeling that we get very often in phones like oh the the iphone 10 like it just makes the iphone 7 and you know it looks like junk right this is like you look at this and you look at the old ipads it's just you just fling them out the window like i don't it's slower it's uglier i don't know where to put the pencil it doesn't have a usbc port the speakers are worse the screen is worse everything it's just like these
John:
totally eclipse all the previous ipads and they they're lust objects like they're they're things that you know if you're into ipads and even if you're not that into ipads like casey you see this and you want one because they press all the the nerd buttons and if you if you can't figure out like to marco's point that he was saying before it's like maybe you're not that into ipads but you're like i wish i was because this thing is awesome like and that's exactly it like me suspects that this this is this faster than every single laptop apple sells
John:
Maybe.
John:
We'll find out soon.
John:
Certainly it's faster than a hell of a lot of them.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, you cannot miss the contrast between the excitement and the energy and the mood around the laptop updates versus the iPad updates.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
The laptops seem like they are updated inconsistently, really incrementally, and almost begrudgingly.
Marco:
It seems like Apple doesn't even want to update the laptops.
Marco:
And the updates they do to them have very often come with significant regressions, or as I said earlier, significant compromises.
Marco:
Whereas the iPad updates...
Marco:
are just blowing out the water to the one before.
Marco:
The iPad updates are just all good.
Marco:
And every year, there are these massive, awesome, major new upgrades to the iPad.
Marco:
And it's kind of sad as a Mac-preferring portable person.
Marco:
But as you said, John, it makes me want to use the iPad for more things.
Marco:
And it's hard because the software still isn't there for a lot of the stuff I do and a lot of the ways I prefer to work.
Marco:
And a lot of those I don't think are going to change anytime soon.
Marco:
It's unwise to buy an iPad now thinking that, oh, well, in the future, this iPad will get much better in the ways I care about.
Marco:
Buy it now for what it is now.
Marco:
Don't be relying on iOS 13 to maybe make it into a Mac for you.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
it is striking like the, the massive difference in like, wow, these iPads, every, every iPad update for the last forever has been just a ridiculously awesome update with huge advances, no regressions, no compromises and,
Marco:
And then you have the Mac line, which is full of regressions and compromises in some really kind of tepid updates.
Marco:
The Mac line almost feels like they're punishing you for being a customer.
Casey:
The laptop line.
Marco:
Yes, the Mac laptop line feels like they're punishing you for being a customer.
Marco:
And the iOS line is just full of love and the most amazing work.
Marco:
And it's just like, I want so badly to move more of my portable needs to the iPad.
Marco:
I just don't, I don't think I can yet.
Marco:
Like, I don't think, like, Stephen Hackett made a great argument for this on, there's a, if you're a RelayFM member, there's a show that members get to hear called Fusion.
Marco:
And they did an episode today about this event and reacting to it.
Marco:
And you should be a RelayFM member to hear this episode.
Marco:
Just go become a RelayFM member because it's worth it.
Marco:
And the analogy Stephen made, which I think is excellent that I'm going to rip off now, is that it's almost like you have like a supercar
Marco:
that has just an incredible engine performance, but, like, can't put the power down on the road.
Marco:
You know, like, it just, like, doesn't have, like, the, you know, tires or whatever, like, to put that power down.
Marco:
It's like, that's how I feel about the iPad, whereas, like, the iPads have incredible capabilities, incredible hardware, incredibly sophisticated, you know, frameworks and everything, but there's still fundamental parts of the software, fundamental limitations of,
Marco:
of the OS and the way work has to get done, the limitations it has, the apps that are available, that just make it really hard for a lot of us to take advantage of all that power that they have.
Marco:
And over time, that line is moving down.
Marco:
We are able to do more things with the iPad over time, but it still is very far from what you can do with a Mac in certain industries for certain needs.
Marco:
And a lot of people have at least one of those needs.
Marco:
So I hope so badly that iOS on the iPad catches up more to where the Mac is because there's no question that if you can get done on the iPad what you need to get done, it is the way better portable computer than any Mac laptops.
John:
To tweak Stephen's analogy a little bit, I don't think it's so much that you can't get the power down.
John:
Everyone loves car analogies, like that you just end up spinning the wheels or whatever.
John:
Because it does.
John:
It takes that power and uses it.
John:
It's just that... This is getting worse.
John:
I hate car analogies.
John:
The roads don't go where we want to go.
John:
It can get the power down.
John:
When it's showing Photoshop, it's using all of its power to do that Photoshop demo.
John:
It's just that the road doesn't go where we want it to go.
John:
Where we want it to go is...
John:
a particular work style, particular applications, and even Photoshop.
John:
I was thinking about this when I was watching the demos.
John:
There are tons of people out there who use Photoshop professionally right now.
John:
And let's say those people came of age in their profession at a time before iPads, or for whatever reason, they do their work not on an iPad.
John:
They use Photoshop, but they do work not on an iPad.
John:
Chances are really good that those people, the way they use Photoshop,
John:
and you've seen lots of people using Photoshop or use it professionally, is they either have a tablet with a bunch of buttons and or use a keyboard.
John:
And so they're looking at a desktop computer, they're hitting keys on a keyboard or a tablet, and they're using a stylus.
John:
And that's a lot of input.
John:
They know all the single-letter shortcuts for all the Photoshop stuff.
John:
They have customized their tablets to have these hardware buttons that do what they want.
John:
There's just way more input variability.
John:
And as nice as it looks to be able to sketch on an iPad Pro or whatever, and even with that touch thing on the screen,
John:
that is an efficiency downgrade for people who are experts at hitting the 17 keys they need to hit to do photoshop quickly on desktop pc so if you told those people hey we're going to take away your desktop pc whether it be a mac or a windows pc or whatever we're going to take that away we're going to replace it with an ipad they're going to say well the screen is smaller oh you can hook up an external screen well but then going to hook up a keyboard well then so you've got an ipad with a keyboard and an external screen attached and it's like you're just trying to recreate a pc right so that's an example of
John:
lot of power but this thing this road doesn't go exactly where they want it to go now there's a whole new generation of people who are growing up right now who use photoshop who never got used to a wacom tablet and a keyboard and a desktop display and that just seems like a crazy rube goldberg machine why wouldn't i just draw directly on the screen and they're going to be used to the ipad and they still probably want a big ipad at some point or whatever um
John:
But I think there's still this bifurcation in, for lack of a better word, like workflows or ways of working.
John:
We know from our own friends who are into the iPad lifestyle and they have workflows entirely built around iOS.
John:
So it's just setting aside the things which exist where you just can't do on an iPad still for a variety of reasons.
John:
Even if you could do it on an iPad, like, again, Photoshop, it's available on both now or will be next year.
John:
you can do it on both why would you prefer doing a desktop it's like well watch me use photoshop and see how much my hand is hitting these keys on the keyboard and see how i use my tablet and see how i use my gigantic screen that's why i'm still doing it here and someone else is saying oh i never got used to those things i'm just doing it entirely on my ipad so i think we still have a ways to go for the ipad revolution apple wants and
John:
regardless of how the lines stack up against each other it's not as if ipads have to compete with mac stuff for people doing creative stuff they have to compete against windows pcs too it's like if you're going to do audio editing unless they have an awesome awesome audio editing application on the ipad with awesome keyboard support that supports a bigger screen it actually gives you a better experience than using a windows pc with your favorite windows uh with your favorite audio editing application or a mac for that matter it's it's still not going to win that race so
John:
We're, you know, we're still awaiting the the changeover, I suppose, when the people who prefer to work the old way and travel those old roads are retired or dead.
John:
And the new way is all there is.
John:
And maybe, you know, maybe they don't they don't know they don't know about the old way.
John:
So they, you know, a giant iPad is fine for them.
Casey:
Speaking of audio editing, Jason Snell was 95% ecstatic about these new iPads and 5% devastated because he often uses, what is it, Ferrite to edit podcasts on the go, and there is no headphone jack in the new iPads.
Casey:
And so he is really annoyed because...
Casey:
He wants to be able to do, you know, podcast editing with no latency whatsoever.
Casey:
And I guess his experience with AirPods is that there's enough latency there that it becomes frustrating for him.
Casey:
And so now he's going to have to use, you know, a USB-C set of headphones or USB-C to headphone, you know, dongle.
Casey:
$9 from Apple.
Marco:
yeah and the headphone jack thing it's like this is the one downside besides the incredible price on these oh my god but it's only incredible if you think of it as an ipad if you think of it as a laptop with no keyboard it starts to get more make more sense yeah like like the the configuration that i would probably get which is the 11 inch with keyboard and pencil 256 was 1400 dollars
John:
Yeah, but you cannot buy a $1,400 Apple laptop that's anywhere near this performance.
Marco:
That's true.
John:
I haven't seen benchmarks, but go try to find... Give Apple $1,400 and try to get a laptop that comes close to the specs and performance of the thing you just described.
John:
Yeah, that's true.
John:
Granted, it's better as a laptop.
John:
It's better than having a floppy keyboard and all those other things, but...
John:
It's no contest in terms of the power and capabilities.
John:
Face ID, 120 hertz, True Tone, all this amazing lightweight and everything.
John:
This thing is an absolute monster.
Marco:
A better keyboard?
Marco:
The smart keyboard on the iPads is significantly nicer to type on, in my opinion, than the ones in the MacBook Pro.
John:
Yeah, I wouldn't go that far.
John:
I know you like it better, but I like the laptop ones.
Marco:
I'm not saying it's good, but I'm saying it's better.
John:
Although I wish it was backlit.
John:
I'm with Casey that I like the feel of the laptops as much as they're reliable.
John:
Getting back to our early topic about how these compare to how the Mac is treated, one of the most important things about the iPad line in general is, you know, in this update and basically all the updates before that in recent memory,
John:
every update shows me that apple has learned from their past products which were themselves good like i mean i have the original 9.7 inch pro which i think was a fantastic ipad like remember when it came out we were like well this is the pinnacle like this is just the ultimate ipad it's great it's got like every new one that comes out
John:
that there's something about it that shows well we made this awesome product last time and people loved it but there were a few things that we could tweak and then they tweak them right and so this one like there's no place to put the pencil now there's a place to put the pencil the stupid cap is annoying don't worry about there's no cap anymore it rolls off the table it's got a flat side the keyboard uh the smart connector it's kind of awkward to use at certain angles well now we have two angles one for when you're looking down on a one for instance it's like everything in their new product shows that
John:
We heard you about the last product, and in a timely fashion, we give you a new product that does some amazing stuff you maybe never even thought of, but also all the feedback you had about the old one, we incorporate that.
John:
I'm amazed at the physical characteristics in terms of how many iterations they do of the back case and the front case and dealing with the pencil and the connectors and where the speakers are and where the cameras and orientations are.
John:
every single ipad they get slightly better there are minor regressions here and there where like oh this case is bad or they only put the front case and not the back or the sleeve was awkward and you know but they they learn from they learn from their mistakes right that's what you want to see forward progress like there's a new set of mistakes maybe the headphone jack is not a great idea you know maybe there are other issues about this which i think we'll get to in a bit when i talk about the the physical form factor of the thing but that kind of progress is so heartening to see whereas
John:
And I feel like the same thing with the iMac, right?
John:
Assuming the iMac Pro was their new pro computer, that they listened to pros and said, like, we're not going to slim it down.
John:
The laptop line, which we are constantly harping on, seems...
John:
either not to learn from the mistakes or to learn on a much longer timeline right because it wasn't that long ago that we got ipads with the pencil and all those complaints about it and it seems like only a couple years later we have an entirely new ipad totally reimagined which addresses a whole bunch of the problems we have with the old one including very you know
John:
picky things like the oh well i'm not really happy with the angle of the smart keyboard or the magnets in the smart keyboard like sometimes they're you know it gets loose or whatever so now the magnets are stronger now there's multiple angles and it attaches in a different way it's just you know and this is not to say that their solutions to this one are perfect i'm sure there'll be specific issues and complaints and a lot of it owes you know if you look at this it looks a lot like the microsoft surface in many aspects right because
John:
It's not like Apple solving these for the first time, but they're listening to their customers.
John:
They're looking at their products and thinking about how they could be better, and they've come up with a new product that improves upon all that stuff.
John:
That's so heartening to see, and it's, again, making me jealous for the Mac line.
Marco:
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Marco:
Casey and I got a chance to play with these new iPads briefly in the hands-on area, and they're just so good.
Marco:
I got to play with the pencil, the keyboard.
Marco:
I spent a lot of time with the 11-inch, only a little bit of time with the 12.9.
Marco:
I couldn't get too much with it because there was this beautiful Italian man in front of me, but I didn't want to interrupt.
Marco:
But the 11-inch was fantastic.
Marco:
And I think one of the dilemmas that I think a lot of people will have now
Marco:
the 12.9 didn't feel as ridiculous as the previous one it didn't feel too big it didn't feel too crazy now maybe that's just like you know size inflation over time in the sense that like you know maybe we just figure like well you know like like when the 12.9 first came out it was like like it was like when the when the when the iphone 6 plus first came out and it was like the first giant iphone most people had ever held and it just felt ridiculous and now that feels normal like
Marco:
I feel like that's part of how the 12.9 felt, but also the original 12.9 was really big, and it was kind of hard to hold for a while and everything.
Marco:
The new 12.9 is not small, but the difference is smaller between that and the 11, and it is noticeably smaller than it was before, and it no longer feels or looks extreme or crazy.
Marco:
Now it feels like a big iPad, and I would be surprised.
Marco:
We have a number of friends who...
Marco:
are like real iPad power users, like Mike and Federico and Jason and a whole bunch of people.
Marco:
And a lot of them will have – they'll either alternate between the two or they'll actually own both, the 12.9 and the 10.5 or some other smaller one because the 12.9 is someone we'll do for travel or whatever else.
Marco:
I bet this generation, a lot of these people just get the 12.9 and are happy with just that because –
Marco:
If you're going to have a 12.9 at all, I think the justification for also having a smaller iPad is greatly reduced now.
Marco:
Not to mention the fact that these cost $1,400 when you spec them up.
Marco:
But the 12.9 is actually, I think, a much more accessible and reasonable option to a lot more people than it was before.
Marco:
I would even maybe consider... If I was an iPad power user, which I'm not, but if I got to the point where I could do a lot of my work on the iPad...
Marco:
I would get a 12.9 because it is that much better.
John:
Yeah, I'm considering it, too.
John:
Just because, like, who doesn't want a bigger screen?
John:
Right.
John:
I have to see what it's like, right?
John:
And also the keyboard, if you have a keyboard with it, is also going to be a little bit roomier because it can be because the thing is longer.
John:
It's definitely... I'm going to have to check them out in the store.
John:
Not that I'm...
John:
I'm not planning to buy a new iPad, but of course I want one.
John:
Who wouldn't want one?
John:
It's awesome.
John:
One of the things about this design, the edges are straight.
John:
It's like an iPhone 5.
John:
People keep going to the iPhone 4, but it's more like the iPhone 5.
John:
It is like an aluminum bathtub with right angle sides.
John:
A lot of times, if you look at the laptops, take the MacBook Escape or any of the MacBooks you've seen lately.
John:
But very often, I mean, part of the thing to make them seem thinner is that the edge, the flat edge that you see on Apple laptops is thinner than the height of the entire laptop, right?
John:
It's not like, you know, whatever that flat portion is, like, oh, that's how thick it is.
John:
Well, it's not.
John:
There's a curved section that goes underneath.
John:
And part of that is to make it seem thinner than it is.
John:
Because if you had flat slab sides, it would look thicker, even though it would actually be the same thickness.
John:
But there's another super important reason that tons of products, including almost all of Apple's historically...
John:
that sit flat on a table, don't have right angle sides, just straight up right angle sides that go all the way down, that they have that curve.
John:
And that's so you can pick the freaking things up.
John:
Because if you made an Apple laptop or any other device that was made of aluminum, perfectly machined, flat, blah, blah, blah, where the sides were straight all the way down, you'd go to try to pick it up.
John:
And you wouldn't realize that you do this, but you'd go to try to pick it up with one hand.
John:
You have an expectation that you can get your fingertips under the edge of the device.
John:
And if it went straight down to the table...
John:
You couldn't do that.
John:
You'd try to grab it and you'd just be pinching at this little right angle corner on the top of the thing.
John:
You can't pick up a laptop that way.
John:
Like you have to get your fingers underneath it somehow.
John:
So you maybe you push it sideways or maybe you'd hope that it had rubber feet that elevated enough.
John:
You get your fingernails underneath it or whatever.
John:
It would be awkward.
John:
The fact that you never have to think about this with Apple laptops, that's called good design.
John:
Like they make them that way on purpose, not just for ventilation, not just to make it look thinner on the side, but because it's really important.
John:
You can't freaking pick the things up if they didn't do that.
John:
So when they made a phone like that, well, how did the iPhone 5 or 4 work?
John:
Those work because you can pinch it.
John:
You can have one finger on one side and a thumb on the other, and you can pick the whole thing up.
John:
You're never trying to pick it up from one edge.
John:
Try that.
John:
Put an iPhone 5 down on the table and try to pick it up without having fingers on opposing sides anywhere, like just from one edge.
John:
It's not a fun game to play.
John:
The only thing that might help you...
John:
uh not in the iphone 5's case but in the case of of this uh thing i made a joke on twitter that like the whole reason they have that gigantic camera bump is so that you finally have some fighting chance of getting your fingernails underneath the thing to pull it off the table but casey who was there tells me that actually despite the huge size of the camera bump doesn't really help that much and it still is kind of difficult to get off on the table so casey can you fill me in on exactly how difficult it's going to be for me to pick up a caseless new ipad pro from a table
Casey:
Well, you know, one of the things about going today was that it is clear that I was wholly unprepared for being there.
Casey:
Because once I got to the hands-on area, I, like, didn't know what to do with myself.
Marco:
I mean, obviously, I went to play with all the things, but I didn't— You take your hands and you put them on the products.
Casey:
Right, which is what I did.
Casey:
It's right there in the name.
John:
yeah it's right right it's exactly what it says on the tin uh but no i it was funny because that marco gives you that advice to put your hands on it but if you recall the the last time i did that at the uh wwc i went straight to the imac pro and i grabbed the mouse and keyboard and an apple person practically slapped the back of my hand and said i'm sorry you don't have to touch these devices
Marco:
So don't be fooled.
Marco:
Actually, I had a moment like that.
Marco:
My very first thing, I went up to the MacBook Air because all the iPads were mobbed when we first got in there and no one was at the Airs.
Marco:
So I went over to the Airs and the first thing I wanted to do was pick it up.
Marco:
And so I picked it up and I was able to do that.
Marco:
But then what I do when I'm in an Apple store, when I want to see a new laptop and experience for the first time, is I pick it up and I close it.
Marco:
And then I see how it feels when it's closed.
Marco:
So I picked it up.
Marco:
I'm looking around.
Marco:
That person's fine with that.
Marco:
As soon as I close it, like, oh, no, you can't do that.
Marco:
I'm like, oh, sorry.
Marco:
Jeez.
Marco:
They like open it back up.
Marco:
Like nothing happened.
Marco:
Like they didn't have to like log back in or anything like it.
Marco:
I don't know why I was not to close it, but I know they're very particular about things like this.
Marco:
I just I didn't I didn't like push any more boundaries while I was there.
Casey:
Yeah, but to more directly answer your question, John, or really to answer your question at all, John, at one point I was using, I believe it was the 12-inch, and it ended up, like I took it out of the keyboard folio case, whatever it's called, and I put it on the table.
Casey:
The smart keyboard folio.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
And I think it might have been upside down, so maybe I lied to you.
Casey:
I can't remember if it was upside down or right side up, so maybe the camera bump would have helped.
Casey:
But one way or another, I put the thing down on either its belly or its back, and I went to grab it, not thinking anything.
Casey:
I'll just grab it, pick it up.
Casey:
And then I was struggling.
Casey:
It wasn't the sort of thing where it took a couple of tries to get it.
Casey:
I had to actually deliberately try to...
Casey:
dig it up off of the table.
Casey:
It was really surprising.
Casey:
Now, maybe I'm making a mountain out of nothing.
Casey:
Maybe it was just I was being a klutz that one moment.
Casey:
But it was striking to me in that moment that it was actually very difficult to get it up off the table.
Casey:
And I couldn't really figure out why until you had said, oh, well, typically these things are curved, so you have something to pinch at.
Casey:
And, again, maybe you'll get this in your hands and maybe it won't be that bad at all.
Casey:
But it was surprising to me that it was fairly difficult to pick it up.
Casey:
Now, in the grand scheme of things, I would expect if I were to have one of these, it would always be in the keyboard, smart keyboard folio, whatever it's called.
Casey:
And so it wouldn't be a problem.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
It was surprising how difficult it was to pick up.
Casey:
But that being said, it felt amazing in the hand.
Casey:
Every time I look at a 12.5, 12.9, whatever the hell it is, iPad from before today, every time I see one, I think to myself, my word, that is a large iPad.
Casey:
It's like when I used to see the Plus Club.
Casey:
Like, that is a big phone.
Casey:
That is a big iPad.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
Granted, I was walking between different stations.
Casey:
It wasn't like I was going next door between these different stations.
Casey:
But when I walked across this little room from an 11-inch to a 12-inch, it was surprising how little difference I saw between them.
Casey:
And the 12-inch looked much closer to the 11 than I would have expected.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And additionally, they felt great in the hand.
Casey:
It didn't feel particularly heavy.
Casey:
I mean, admittedly, I was not holding these for more than a few moments, but it didn't feel terribly heavy.
Casey:
They looked great, felt great.
Casey:
The keyboard cover felt particularly good.
Casey:
I've never owned an iPad Pro.
Casey:
I've only played with them a handful of times.
Casey:
But the way I recall the iPad Pro, and jump in when you're ready, fellas, is that the keyboard cover was lumpy because part of it had two folds and the rest had one or something along those lines.
Casey:
Definitely true.
Casey:
And that did not appear to be the case here, which I loved.
Casey:
The magnets were incredible everywhere.
Casey:
For the pencil, they were extremely strong.
Casey:
For the keyboard cover, I would almost say for the keyboard cover, they might have even been too strong.
Casey:
So when you sit it in one of the two different positions, the two different angles, I was struggling, again, probably just because I'd never done it before, but I was struggling to pull it up enough to move it to the other position, which...
Casey:
actually is i think a good problem because this way you know it's stable but everything about these ipads just felt great the display looked great now i don't have your eye john i'm not as discerning as you when it comes to these things but the display looked great uh face id seemed to work real well even in this super crowded room where everyone was like you know shoulder to shoulder with each other i mean obviously got confused from time to time because it would look at the wrong face whatever but it worked really well as people have pointed out um
Casey:
It actually says to you when you're holding your finger over the sensor array.
Casey:
I forget exactly what the phrasing is, but it basically says you're covering.
Casey:
Cameron is covered.
Casey:
There you go.
Casey:
And I did not notice at the time, but I've since seen that they actually point at the sensor array.
Casey:
Like there's an arrow on screen pointing at the sensor array to let you know that's the finger that's covering everything up.
Casey:
I also liked, I think they showed this on the keynote, but maybe I'm wrong.
Casey:
When you take the pencil to a locked iPad, as long as it can scan your face, it will jump directly into notes to let you, you know, sketch a note or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
The little double tap on the pencil to swap between different tools works really well.
Casey:
In settings, you can choose between different things that that does.
Casey:
I guess just for notes, you can do toggle to eraser, toggle to the last tool you used, toggle a color palette, which was interesting.
Casey:
Everything about these iPads look great.
Casey:
And I forget if it was you or Marco.
Casey:
I think it was Marco that said, you know, I just wish more of the things I did on a computer worked on an iPad.
Casey:
And I bet I could make a lot of them work.
Casey:
But man, I really want an iPad for the first time in a very, very long time.
John:
Yeah, the thing you mentioned about the keyboard doubling up, yet another example of the past, you know, it was great that we had the cool keyboard that people really like for the old iPad, but that was like a slight war.
John:
It was like, oh, it's kind of funny when you put the keyboard case on this one side as lumpier.
John:
Solved in this generation.
John:
They addressed it, right?
John:
And I think, and actually getting back to the camera bump briefly, I think the...
John:
the folio case thing with with or without the keyboard uh the fact that there is a front and a back surface the back surface is important because that's where the smart connector is now as all the rumors said it's kind of in the middle it's kind of weird how the keyboard thing connects it's not on the edge it's like in the in the the middle like dorsally you know it's like the spine right but but it just so happens that the keyboard cover goes down that far enough to catch the connector and charge it right that it's covered on the back and on the front with a single layer
John:
the fact that the covers are made of that squishy kind of whatever that is material with a little thin edge means that if you put it on its back or on its front with the cover or the keyboard on it even though it flattens out the camera bump i suspect you will have an easier time getting your fingers underneath it because that's what you want you just need just enough leverage to lift it up enough for you to shove your fingers underneath it because then you can grab it with fingers underneath and thumb on top
John:
with a single hand.
John:
That's what you do with laptops and all sorts of things when you pick it up with one hand off the table.
John:
So it is, you know, a surface that evens out the camera bump, makes it easier to pick up off the table potentially than a bare thing even with the camera bump.
John:
Because you have that squishier area and that little fin that you can put your fingers under.
John:
Doesn't make it lumpy on the top if you have a keyboard because it's uniform thickness all the way through.
John:
And also, I think this is also important, doesn't go around the edges.
John:
So it's not like your iPad is inside a tub of any kind.
John:
It's like a sandwich.
John:
The edges are still just the bare aluminum.
John:
So it doesn't make your iPad wider.
John:
You know, you've all had experience of you put an iPad...
John:
in a case and this beautiful felt thing that you bought suddenly feels like chunkier which by the way is what you want if you have it for kids you want to put it in the world's craziest chunky case but for an adult who can take care of things you know it's nice to be able to have all the benefits of the protection oh you don't have to worry about putting it down it's not going to scratch
John:
um it's evened out with the camera bump it's made easier to pick up maybe you get a keyboard as part of the bargain but it doesn't make it any wider or taller and so i think will make it not feel as bulky and make you not feel that you're this beautiful naked robotic core that you got is suddenly buried inside this you know rubberized tomb it's more like you're just putting this beautiful
John:
neoprene sandwich protective sandwich around your thing and it's a sandwich that potentially gives you a keyboard uh i really again having not seen or touched this in person in the abstract i am in love with the new what would you call it the new wardrobe for the ipads not to mention the fact there's a place to put the pencil and the flat pencil and everything i'm in love with the ipad wardrobe
Marco:
As a full-time smart keyboard user, and as I mentioned last time, the smart keyboard transformed the iPad into something that I actually use on a regular basis.
Marco:
Not only does it help text input greatly and dramatically improve my ability to use an iPad, but also it...
Marco:
is a really good stand to have it on the counter in my kitchen where it spends most of its time or on, on dining room table or on the couch at night.
Marco:
Like it's just really, really good.
Marco:
And I've, so I've used the, I use, use the 10, five smart keyboard for a year now or a year and a half use the, use the 9.7 before that.
Marco:
They're wonderful.
Marco:
Um, the,
Marco:
I did have a chance to play with the smart keyboard folio today on the new iPads, and in some ways it's worse.
Marco:
I think in most ways it's probably better.
Marco:
It's the kind of thing that I'm going to need just more time with it.
Marco:
I'm going to do things like sit down with it on my lap, because that's one area where the old one kind of fell over, literally sometimes.
Marco:
And I didn't feel like they would probably let me sit on the floor cross-legged with the iPad in the hands-on area, so I didn't try that.
Marco:
But
Marco:
There's a lot about the old one.
Marco:
It wasn't very good on laps.
Marco:
It would tip back or forward depending on how you were sitting.
Marco:
It was very good on counters, but that was about it.
Marco:
The new one has these two angles.
Marco:
The steeper of the two angles, which is the new one that didn't exist on the previous one, is very steep.
Marco:
That did not work for me at all at table height, but it wasn't designed for that.
Marco:
It was designed for lap use.
Marco:
I'll have to try that sometime and see how that actually works if I get one of these.
Marco:
As John mentioned, the smart keyboard folio does cover both sides fully.
Marco:
Before, the previous one would only cover a little bit of the back when it was open, and when it was closed, it would cover none of the back.
Marco:
It was basically just a big front side cover that unfolded.
Marco:
The magnets are pretty strong.
Marco:
The one thing I didn't like about it that I made immediate note of is that
Marco:
sometimes you know like i keep the i keep the smart keyboard on my ipad almost always uh and sometimes like if i'm sitting on the couch just like browsing the web at night i will flip it back and just hold the ipad like a regular ipad with no keyboard attached as if it was smart cover that you flipped back you can do this with the with the new smart keyboard but it's worse uh not only was it kind of a clumsy move to flip it back but also the keys when it's flipped back now face outward
Marco:
so that when you're holding it, your hands are on the keys.
Marco:
Now, it's smart enough not to activate the keys when it's in this mode, so you don't have to worry about accidental input, but it just feels weird to me to be holding the front of a keyboard with the back of my hands as I'm holding my iPad.
Marco:
That's kind of like...
Marco:
And I know these kinds of things are really tricky to design because no matter how you design it, you come up with some kind of downside, like what John was saying about whether it's lopsided or whatever.
Marco:
There's always some kind of downside to these things.
Marco:
But that was one that I thought was a little bit weird with this, that when you flip it back, you're touching the keys with your hands when not using it, and that's kind of odd.
Marco:
But otherwise, I really am curious to spend time with this.
Marco:
I'm a little curious.
Marco:
I didn't get an idea about the weight of the keyboard.
Marco:
And as far as I can find, the site doesn't specify the weight anywhere.
Marco:
So I would love to know if anybody knows how much these smart keyboards weigh.
Marco:
Because one of the issues with the old one is that when you have the smart keyboard cover on the old iPad Pro,
Marco:
it does noticeably increase the weight of the iPad.
John:
It's made of tungsten.
John:
I'm always amazed by this.
John:
My wife has a smart keyboard, and I pick up her iPad, which is ostensibly the same iPad as mine, and it feels like it is just the world's most dense object.
John:
I'm like, holy cow, what is in this?
John:
Do you have fishing weights hiding somewhere?
John:
It's not that much heavier.
John:
It feels so heavy, it makes me angry.
John:
So I'm hoping this one is lighter.
Marco:
Yeah, I weighed mine earlier.
Marco:
So the 10.5 inch smart keyboard is just a little over half a pound.
Marco:
It's 0.54 pounds.
Marco:
Now, the iPad itself is one pound.
Marco:
So it increases the weight of the iPad by 50%.
Marco:
So that's a significant increase.
Marco:
And that's why whenever I take it off for any reason, which is rare...
Marco:
i'm always shocked at how light the ipad is by comparison but i i would love like if i'm a little concerned given how much more material there is seemingly in the new uh keyboard cover i'm a little concerned it might be heavier uh i i at least i hope they're at least not heavier i would love if they could find a way to make them lighter uh without ruining the keyboard but i i don't know that that's possible
John:
So I think we should talk about USB-C a little bit.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That rumor was true.
John:
There is no lighting port.
John:
There is instead a USB-C port.
John:
And watching the presentation, despite all the rumors and everything, I found myself thinking, especially as they went through this thing, like, well, of course, because laptops have USB-C ports, not lighting ports on them.
John:
And this thing is so much closer in the spectrum between, like, phone and laptop.
John:
like it is you know it is an amazing laptop that's not a laptop there's no reason it should have the same connector the phone i think it should have more usbc ports what the hell else is new uh but i am totally on board with usbc setting aside all the external you know connectors and connecting up to a camera and a 5k display remember we were back like oh i wonder when the new mac pro will be able to connect to a 5k display now the ipad can do it uh
John:
It is entirely the right connector.
John:
There should be more of them.
John:
Goodbye, Lightning on the iPad.
John:
I won't miss you.
Marco:
And I really hope so the iPad is showing off a brand new industrial design style.
Marco:
I hope we get that on the iPhone in the, in the future and hopefully the near future, maybe next year.
John:
We already did.
John:
It was called the iPhone five.
John:
Everyone loved it.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
Like the new iPads basically look like the iPhone five, which is awesome.
Marco:
I love the iPhone five and the SE like, like that.
Marco:
And the five S like it, they look like the five S really like with the space gray and the straight edges and everything being just nice in your hand.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
So I would love for the iPhones to return to that.
Marco:
I don't think that's incredibly likely because the iPhones, I think the thickness matters a lot more on the phone, and I can't see them going thicker to add USB-C, which they would have to probably do.
Marco:
But boy, I would love that.
Marco:
That would be so cool.
Marco:
It is a little bit weird now.
Marco:
Now that we have USB-C, it's a little weird that if you're traveling with an iPhone and an iPad, you now need two power cables.
Marco:
It is kind of cool.
Marco:
You just need one.
John:
You just need a USB-C or lightning and they both charge each other.
John:
That's how it works.
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
It is kind of cool that the iPad can now charge the phone, which is pretty awesome.
John:
I think that if you happen to have those cables, it doesn't come with the phone.
John:
I think it makes sense.
John:
Everyone has weird habits.
John:
I have a lightning cable by my nightstand, but I just have one of them because I charge my phone at night and my iPad during the day and everything works out.
John:
But now I would need two cables if I got this thing.
John:
I would need one USB-C for the, or I can have an adapter or something.
John:
But, you know, it's the right connector for this product.
John:
But as many people have been pointing out, oh, now the phone is the odd one out, right?
John:
Now it's one of these things that's not like the other.
John:
But Apple sells so many more phones than every other product that we're talking about combined.
John:
It's not even funny, right?
John:
So I don't think there's any peer pressure from Apple's product line for the phone anymore.
John:
to immediately change the usbc and you know people tend people i was going to people tend to freak out when you change the connector on the phone but it's happened so rarely the problem is there's just so many people have the phone so if and when apple does either change the connector on the phone or get rid of the connector and go all wireless or inductive or whatever
John:
Well, based on their AirPower success, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
John:
I don't think there's any pressure from the rest of the line because the phone is the thing.
John:
The phone is the product everyone cares about.
John:
There are so many of them.
John:
A hundred million Macs as they're installed.
John:
They sell a hundred million iPhones like in a quarter or something.
John:
No, not in a quarter.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But there's a lot of iPhones out there.
John:
So I think iPhones can cruise along with lighting devices.
John:
for a while longer certainly it would make some kind of unifying sense for them to be usbc but as we've discussed a lot in the past when we talked about whether the iphone 10 would have usbc i wish i could remember that show number there are advantages to lightning those advantages continue to exist
John:
And at this point, there's a lot of lightning stuff out there for phones.
John:
It's not like 30 pin where they're in hotel rooms.
John:
At least I haven't seen them, but it's close.
John:
So I think we got to ride out this lightning thing on the phone for at least a few more years.
John:
But iPad, USB-C or Thunderbolt or anything like that.
John:
Basically, any connector you can imagine on a laptop, those connectors are right at home on the iPad Pros because the iPad Pros are basically amazing laptops without keyboards.
Marco:
I think a good counterargument to the Lightning is Everywhere thing, though, is that Android phones use USB-C now.
Marco:
So anybody who's looking to have a cable at a clock radio at a hotel or something like that, if you just put USB-C cables there, you'd be able to cover all phones in this future where iPhones have USB-C.
John:
I feel like they were burned by 30-pin.
John:
Have you seen any USB-C ones?
John:
Maybe they decided, you know what, let's not chase computer connectors with our hotel peripherals.
Marco:
Not only have I not seen any USB-C ones, I still see 30-pin ones sometimes.
John:
And, you know, if you think about this, what do you see everywhere in terms of computer connectors?
John:
USB-A.
John:
USB-A is on airplanes.
John:
USB-A is on every, like, charging station.
John:
USB-A is still everywhere.
John:
And that doesn't, you know, that's the other end of all of our cables, right?
John:
It's USB-A to USB-C.
John:
USB-A to lightning.
John:
So if we can dislodge USB-A, that'll be progress.
John:
But, yeah.
John:
So I can totally see Apple going to USB-C.
John:
If the current situation is sustained for a long period of time, they just probably won't be able to avoid it despite the fact that it's thicker and not proprietary and all the other things or whatever.
John:
But I don't see a reason for them to rush to it now.
John:
I'm perfectly happy with lightning on my phone and for all subsequent phones, but on an iPad, love the USB-C.
Casey:
Let me give you one small counter argument, which is something that we can easily get past, but is another expenditure.
Casey:
You know, if I were to have an iPad, like if I take my iPad now, which I don't know where it is, like I said, but let's just assume I knew where it was and I was using it.
Casey:
And I'm out and about, like, I don't know, at an Apple event, because, you know, we're cool like that.
Casey:
Well, maybe.
Casey:
If I was using it and I ran out of...
Casey:
and I didn't have an outlet nearby, I would take one of the, say, batteries out of my Away suitcase, which is exactly what I did today.
Casey:
I traveled without a suitcase, but I took the battery out of my Away.
Casey:
They're not a sponsor this week.
Casey:
They're a past sponsor.
Casey:
I took the battery pack, and I used the USB-A port on that battery pack to charge my phone, or I could have charged an iPad.
Casey:
That's not going to be quite so easy, is it, with USB-C?
Casey:
I know you can go USB-A to USB-C, but is that going to be enough power to actually power one of these iPads?
Casey:
So are you going to have to get it?
Casey:
Yeah, it is.
Marco:
It will be okay?
Marco:
Not at full speed.
Marco:
There are A to C cables now.
Marco:
In fact, the Nintendo Switch charges controllers with those.
Marco:
It comes with them.
Marco:
But it's limited to a certain wattage.
Marco:
I think it's going to be about 12 or 15 watts, maybe something like that.
Marco:
um but it's uh yeah like so you can do it it would just maybe maybe slow and also one new little tidbit the ipads now come with a new and seemingly unbuyable separately 18 watt usbc power brick so that's cool i i look forward to being able to buy more of those um because it seems like that's everything i've been wanting
Marco:
There's also now a few other new USB-C peripherals.
Marco:
So the aforementioned USB-C to headphone adapter dongle, $9.
Marco:
There's also a USB-C SD card reader now to work with the new iPads.
Marco:
There's a new one-meter charge cable that comes with it because I think it's the same charge cable as that comes with the new laptops, but those all come with two-meter cables.
Marco:
This has a one-meter cable.
Marco:
And you can buy those separately.
Marco:
And also, a fun little tidbit, you can now get an Apple Watch charging cable that has a USB-C end.
Casey:
Oh, interesting.
Marco:
And it's only one foot, too.
Marco:
So it's clearly meant for travel, which is great.
Marco:
Because one thing I've been doing, even though I don't usually travel with the Apple Watch, but one thing I've been doing is...
Marco:
I've been simplifying my travel setup to try to just be all USB-C for everything.
Marco:
The power bricks, all the cables, the battery, everything.
Marco:
Everything I travel with is USB-C.
Marco:
Okay, Gray.
Marco:
No, there's a reason for that, because carrying two copies of all your cables sucks.
Marco:
So I've been trying to do this over the last few months.
Marco:
Anytime I can find a way to eliminate a USB-A cable from my travel setup, I do, because if I can make everything the same, which today that has to mean USB-C, because otherwise you have dongles on that end,
Marco:
And apparently, in the last week or something, Apple released an Apple Watch charging cable with USB-C on the end.
Marco:
And that was perfect, because that's the one thing... I always thought, if I had to travel with my Apple Watch, I would have to bring some kind of USB-A power brick to charge just that.
Marco:
Because it had that one cable, and that was your only option.
Marco:
So now you have two options.
Marco:
That's nice.
Marco:
But yeah, I'm looking forward to...
Marco:
We are slowly moving to this USB-C world where you can actually go all in on it, but we're still not there yet.
Marco:
There's still huge missing parts.
Marco:
The hub situation is still terrible, but we are taking these baby steps.
Marco:
We're slowly working our way towards there.
Marco:
Hopefully, we'll get there before USB-D comes out, and we'll have to throw all these cables away.
Mm-hmm.
John:
One thing that I think is a minor regression from going Lightning to USB-C has nothing to do with the port and not even that much to do with the connector.
John:
But in my experience, the cables, the cables that are attached to USB-C connectors at sort of the length of the stiff part of the connector, the thickness and bendiness of the cable, like even the ones that are just power, like the one that you connect to like the...
John:
The one that comes with laptops, I think that's not like a full USB-C data cable.
John:
It's mostly just for power.
Marco:
It's USB 2.0, not 3.0.
Marco:
That's why.
Marco:
So it actually is thinner than it would be if it had the USB 3.0 speed.
Marco:
But it is power and USB 2.0 data.
John:
Right, and it's because it's so long that even for a USB 2.0 it has to be a little bit thicker, right?
John:
But lightning cables are very thin.
John:
The stiff part of the connector is very short.
John:
And it's just generally like it feels less like there is a stiff twig poking out of the side of your thing and then a fairly stubborn garden hose size cable coming out.
John:
It feels more like there's a light string with a little stiff nub, right?
John:
And that's going to be a downgrade.
John:
um because the thicker the cable and the longer the stiff part the more unwieldy it is to plug stuff like this in and that's just that's just the nature of usbc i think even apple's cables uh exhibit that pattern um it's also one of the advantages of lightning for the phone because the phone is a small dainty device compared to an ipad or a laptop and it should have a small dainty connector with a small dainty cable that's exactly what we have with lightning and i enjoy that and it will be a slight downgrade but
John:
to go away from that with the iPad.
John:
But again, I think it's the appropriate connector for this device.
John:
And speaking of this, when the iPad first came out, especially given Springboard and the lack of major interface changes to support the iPad, the slam against it, and was it, oh, it's just a big phone.
John:
despite the fact that this looks like an iPhone five, this is the farthest from a big iPhone that the iPad has ever been, right?
John:
It's there.
John:
They're huge.
John:
They're incredibly powerful.
John:
They're massively advertised with a keyboard.
John:
Like it's so intrinsically built in.
John:
They have, they have the pencil support.
John:
Uh, it doesn't feel like the iPad is in the shadow of the iPhone anymore.
John:
Like they've diverged from each other so significantly, uh,
John:
And the iPad continues to go so far up marketable.
John:
I guess the phone is chasing it.
John:
You can get a $1,400 phone too.
John:
But I just feel like there's a much more healthy separation.
John:
That separation will be even healthier if and when iOS 13 comes out with much more iPad-specific features.
John:
But even as things stand now, I think there's a comfortable distance between the two.
John:
And the slam that, oh, why would I want an iPad?
John:
It's just a big iPhone.
John:
I don't think anyone's saying that anymore when they look at these things.
Casey:
trying photoshop on your phone we could probably run it which is the sad thing because the freaking cpu is insane but uh not maybe the best screen to do serious photoshop work uh one interesting thing that i overheard was marco talking to the developer of the dj app and if i it was hard for me to hear because everyone was shouting and you know even three feet from your face marco it was hard to hear what you were saying but
Casey:
It sounded like you had asked the developer, hey, can you do kind of whatever you want with the external display?
Casey:
Or do you have to, you know, is it something like the Apple Watch where, you know, you can only put certain UIKit elements or certain widgets, if you will, in certain places, etc.
Casey:
And jump in whenever you're ready.
Casey:
But it sounded like he said it's a free-for-all.
Casey:
You can do whatever the hell you want.
Marco:
Yeah, because I was wondering, one of the little oddities in the presentation was that the very first thing they showed doing an external monitor, it was letterboxed because the monitor was just mirroring the iPad screen and the monitor was a different aspect ratio than the iPad.
Marco:
And I thought that was kind of odd.
Marco:
And then later on, they showed a different app using an external monitor that it was filled all the way.
Marco:
And so I was wondering, there has been external monitor support in the iOS SDK for a while now.
Marco:
But I have never used it for anything because there aren't a lot of reasons to play podcasts on external monitors.
Marco:
And so I've never had a reason to use these APIs.
Marco:
So I was just basically asking him, like, you know, can you just put whatever you want on that or can it only do certain things like mirroring or whatever else?
Marco:
And yeah, he basically said, like, you can just – like, I was asking, like, can you just render to it as –
Marco:
any kind of window or surface or whatever.
Marco:
And he basically said, yes, like you can just put whatever you want there.
Marco:
So it is not going to be like with, with Macs and PCs, the OS automatically expands itself and all applications to be usable in some form on whatever number of monitors you plug into them.
Marco:
That isn't the case on iOS.
Marco:
On iOS, each app has to implement its own support for whatever's going on externally, or I think you can always just mirror the display, and that'll always work, but that won't fill the screen, and that might have other weird effects like not being able to interact with it and everything else.
Marco:
It's always going to be a little bit different with iOS in the sense that
Marco:
you need each app to actually code support for external displays and for that support to actually be for something useful for this kind of dream scenario where you're using an external monitor with your iPad.
Marco:
But at least that's now a little bit easier to do.
Marco:
It now requires fewer dongles, the thing's more powerful and can drive bigger screens.
Marco:
So that should probably happen more as the pro software market on the iPad arrives and matures.
John:
they were showing all these scenarios i forget if some of them were in videos or some of the apple sites maybe some of them are from the hands-on area like where they'd show someone with an ipad pro and they'd have it hooked up to like a camera but also to like an external display and they i guess it must have been a photo like you have the person posing like so okay like you know first of all you have it hooked up to both a camera and an external display which means there's some kind of dongle happening there i don't see it in the picture but we all know it's there because you can't plug both those things into a single port you got to have some kind of
John:
adapter or dongle which is fine that's the beauty of you know the port right well the good thing is that everyone in the apple community is now very much familiar with how you multiply one usbc port into multiple ports yeah uh but they didn't show it in the picture and then the next thing is okay so on the big screen was like a photo and on the small screen was like a photo application with a bunch of thumbnails and
John:
All right, so my application decides it's going to use an external display.
John:
You can't touch the external display, as far as I know, although I think Steve Troughton-Smith says basically there is OS support for external touchscreens.
John:
It's just that, as far as I know, that's not a thing that's possible with any current hardware or software.
John:
But in theory, there's nothing preventing it, technologically speaking, down the road.
John:
But right now, you can't touch it.
John:
There's no cursor, no mouse cursor.
John:
So it's not like you can...
John:
use an input device a touch input and while looking up at the the external screen because you wouldn't see what the heck you're doing you have to look down or across or whatever at the ipad when you're doing anything interactive because all the interaction is happening on the ipad that's where you touch and you have to look at what you're touching so i suppose you could do something on the ipad and then look up to the screen
John:
and then look down at the iPad, and then look up at the screen.
John:
It just seemed like an uncomfortable scenario.
John:
I'm sure there's lots of clever uses that people can find for external displays, but to your point, Marco, as a general-purpose solution, as in desktops have general-purpose support for external displays, and everything about their OS and input elements and everything lends itself to saying, hook up more displays, we just roll with it.
John:
It's just more of the same stuff.
John:
With iOS, it's like...
John:
on the iPad, you've got your iPad, that's where you do your interaction, and you can hook up an external display, which is basically just like a bucket to throw pixels that occasionally you might want to look at.
John:
But you can't really be... I suppose you could use the iPad as a giant game controller and project the game up onto there, but even that is a little bit weird.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm sure people will come up with clever scenarios, but it's a...
John:
is a slightly uncomfortable hybrid, even more so than hooking up an external display to a laptop.
John:
Because again, if you have an external display hooked to a laptop, you could be using the trackpad in the laptop while you stare at the giant 5K display.
John:
It's not ideal, like you'd probably rather have a docking station and a real keyboard and a mouse, but it's a thing that you could do.
John:
But with the iPad,
John:
I don't know.
John:
Maybe Vitici knows how to use an external 5K display on his iPad and he will tell us all the amazing productivity he gets from that arrangement right now.
John:
I'm wondering what the best use of that capability is for iPad power users.
John:
one other thing keeping i mean this is kind of good not that my kids were going to get new ipad pros but as i think i've mentioned in other podcasts my children spend their entire life with an essential life support umbilical cord snaking from their ears down to an ipad which they carry in one hand leaving them only one hand to live the entire rest of their life with so they must they must live their life just with one hand if they need to brush their teeth one hand if they need to eat only one hand is available if they need to take out milk and pour it in their cereal they can only use one hand because the other hand
John:
has an ipad in it and by the way there's a very precarious cord snaking from their ears to the ipad which can catch on things you have to be careful so it's a very delicate dance being my children anyway these ipads these ipads have no headphone port so i said well kids you may think these new ipads are great but if i got them for you how would you live you can't you can't be connected to headphones anymore and they said wait what there's no headphone port
John:
I'm like, yes, children.
John:
I won't tell them about the adapter.
John:
Apple has a hilarious picture on their iPad Pro page that shows, it says accessories, explore cases, headphones, speakers, and more.
John:
And it shows a picture of an iPad Pro with two AirPods floating in the air above it.
John:
This is Apple's way of saying, guess what?
John:
AirPods.
John:
you know don't bother with that nine dollar connector buy 160 bluetooth earbuds uh and my kids and they know about airpods because i have them my wife has them but the thought of my children having airpods for they'd have them for 15 minutes and then we would never find them again so that's not going to happen either
John:
And honestly, they don't know the beauty of AirPods, so they don't even want them.
John:
So they are a little bit frowny-faced about the lack of a new, lack of a headphone port.
John:
Myself, I can't remember the last time I plugged headphones into my iPad because I'm all in on the AirPod lifestyle because I'm an adult who can keep track of AirPods.
John:
But kids, I guess they'll just have to stick with the old 10.5.
Marco:
See, to me, like, the headphone jack removal is the only real down, as I said earlier, but, like, the headphone jack removal is, like, I, too, as the adult using the iPad, I, too, have almost never plugged headphones into my iPad in the last, like, couple of years.
Marco:
But why remove it?
Marco:
They didn't give a reason.
Marco:
They didn't even mention it was removed.
Marco:
But, like, if you think about it, like, the reasons that applied to the phone, which even they were shaky, but, like, it's not for thinness.
Marco:
It's not for water resistance.
Marco:
It's not for a lack of internal volume.
Marco:
Like, if you look at a teardown of a modern iPad, there's tons of empty space in there.
Marco:
It's not for cost reasons, because there's tons of profit on these.
Marco:
It's still on every Mac, so they're still important to, quote, computers.
Marco:
And the iPad's a computer, right?
Marco:
So, why was it removed?
John:
Yeah, it's the one hardware change I would make to this.
John:
Like, it's not a big deal, but if I had to say, what would you change about this hardware?
John:
Headphone jack, easy.
John:
Even though I probably wouldn't use it.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
It just feels like it's another one of those sort of philosophical changes.
John:
Philosophically, it would be better if it just had one part.
John:
Wouldn't that be great?
John:
Not really.
John:
I mean, throw it in there.
John:
I don't think it's a big deal.
John:
I think that if Apple really wants to show that they're learning, they could potentially bring it back in a future model, but they probably won't.
John:
It's...
John:
This is, again, with the iPad being more like a laptop.
John:
And laptops, as you know, have a strict philosophical orthodox adherence to the idea of reducing the number of holes that are in them, even if it makes them less useful.
John:
And so this continues.
John:
I mean, hell, this thing could have an SD card slot.
John:
Once you get into a laptop size and power and price, there's lots of things that I can imagine being on the side of this thing, or even just another USB-C.
John:
But yeah, headphone, it feels like the one slightly punitive change to this.
John:
But, you know, as we both noted,
John:
it's probably not relevant for people who buy $1,400 iPads, so I don't think there's going to be that much outcry.
Marco:
Yeah, but it does reduce, as Jason pointed out, it does reduce the potential usability of this, or it makes it more annoying to use for a lot of pro things.
Marco:
A lot of the things they demoed, things like DJs using it, or people doing live audio edits or mixing, like
Marco:
There are things where you really need a wired headphone for avoiding latency of Bluetooth and everything.
Marco:
And now, you can do that now, but you need a dongle, which means that you can't charge the laptop while you do it.
John:
You need a bigger dongle or a breakout box, and maybe that's what they're envisioning in the pro scenarios.
Marco:
Right, so it's like you're relying on more and more dongles.
Marco:
If I'm using an iPad for something audio-related, the last thing I want is to run my interface through a dongle, because dongles are unreliable.
Marco:
Especially if doing some kind of live performance or live need, in which case I probably wouldn't be doing this on an iPad, honestly, but I would not, I would never want to run a critical audio interface to a live performance or live event through a dongle.
Marco:
that's a terrible idea because dongles are just too unreliable.
Marco:
It's hard enough to get USB audio to be reliable in the first place.
Marco:
To also be running it through a dongle doing its own USB translation stuff is just stupid.
Marco:
And so by requiring that port to be used for
Marco:
adapters and dongles and everything and also power now it just like it just adds to the complexity and possibly reduces the reliability of using this in certain pro contexts and that's kind of annoying when it doesn't seem like there was any obvious good reason to remove the headphone jack yes it's just purely it's purely philosophical i mean
John:
And people in the chat room said, well, you know, you don't have to buy $160 AirPods.
John:
There's tons of cheap Bluetooth headphones.
John:
That's true.
John:
But like the advantage of cheap wired headphones is that you don't have to charge them.
John:
You don't have to worry about it.
John:
You can get them incredibly cheap.
John:
You can buy just the cheapest earbuds or whatever.
John:
You don't care if they break.
John:
You don't care if they bend.
John:
You can charge your iPad at the same time as you're doing that.
John:
There's no latency.
John:
They're just cruddy analog things.
John:
It makes it more useful.
John:
I can't wait for Apple's whole philosophical bent about holes in the sides of their portable products wraps around to the point where they start...
John:
bragging about and touting the dongles that you no longer need because here's the new hardware item like buy the new apple x and throw away those three adapter i mean it's kind of hard for them to make that full circle i have to like they have to wait for it to become sort of the thing we're used to for all of us to just accept it and then they can say look
John:
If this was the only iPad and they introduced a new one and said, now it has the headphone port, so you don't need to use that dongle to charge and listen to audio at the same time.
John:
People would say, yeah, that's great.
John:
They can come around on this and make it seem like they're solving a problem that they solved and we'll all be grateful for it.
John:
We're rapidly approaching the point where memories are short enough that people won't realize that they're solving a problem that they themselves solved.
John:
Once we all have accepted our residence in Dongletown and we have developed our collection of these pasty white dongles, we will pay Apple money to make it so we have to carry one fewer dongle.
Casey:
I have to say that I haven't priced out the iPad that I'm going to try to resist buying.
Casey:
But if you wanted to get a top-of-the-line 12-inch iPad, that's $1,900, with cellular is $130, a pencil is... Oh, no, I'm sorry.
Casey:
That's $1,900 for the iPad with cellular, $130 for the pencil, $200 for the keyboard, $2,230.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
and yet it is probably has a faster cpu and potentially a faster integrated gpu or maybe faster than the discrete gpu than any two thousand dollar apple laptop yeah just like that's that's that's why that's why i think the prices aren't that ridiculous anymore with these things because it is so incredibly powerful the screen is so good it has so many things that no apple laptop has how much would you pay for an apple laptop with face id
Casey:
A billion dollars.
Marco:
Also, the use of the iPad.
Marco:
It's hard to mention enough how Apple's pricing is just going up and up and up.
Marco:
Everything Apple has released in the last couple of years has been noticeably more expensive than what it replaced.
Marco:
Apple's pricing is really just tightening those screws, making us pay more and more and more and more every year for successive products.
Marco:
There's a new MacBook Air.
Marco:
The old MacBook Air is still for sale at the same price.
Marco:
The new one costs more.
Marco:
The price is, I feel like, one area where...
Marco:
we it's it's hard to feel good as an apple customer when you when you price things out now and you see quite how expensive everything has gotten because apple stuff was never cheap but it used to be at least like a respectable value for what you were getting and as the prices keep going up and up and up and up that's a much harder rationalization to make um but at least with the price you
Marco:
you feel that pain only once.
Marco:
Like when you buy it, you feel that pain.
Marco:
But then once you have the product, you're able to move past what you paid for it, hopefully.
Marco:
Until you drop it.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Until the keyboard dies or whatever, or you drop an iOS device or whatever.
Marco:
But the expense of these items is an upfront pain.
Marco:
The laptops, I feel like, punish you every time you use them.
Marco:
The laptops are just punitive.
Marco:
They just want you to hate yourself for having bought them.
Marco:
Whereas the iOS devices, once you get past the cost barrier up front, they're just pleasure.
Marco:
They're just wonderful.
Marco:
Both the iPhones and the iPads are just so wonderful.
Marco:
They're so pleasing to use.
Marco:
This is why...
Marco:
I wish I was more in the iPad ecosystem because every time I use my laptop, I just hate it more.
Marco:
And every time I use an iPad, I'm like, man, I wish I could do more with this thing.
Marco:
And a lot of that's on me.
Marco:
There is more I could do on it if I would invest the time into learning new tools and everything.
Marco:
But there's also just a lot of my work I still couldn't do on it that would bother me.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Boy, these iPad Pros look really, really awesome.
Marco:
I'm much more excited about the prospect of spending $1,400 on an iMac Pro.
Marco:
iPad Pro.
Marco:
Yeah, sorry, iPad Pro, that I will use mostly to play Overcast during breakfast than I am about any laptop I've bought from Apple in the last two years.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper, Squarespace, and Eero, and our indirect sponsor, Apple.
Marco:
And we'll see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter.
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's K-C-L-I-S-S M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-
Marco:
so i'm curious casey i i know my answer to this did you run into any uh apple executives or other apple celebrities run into run into just coincidentally well because so at the hands-on area there's a lot uh like a lot of the prominent people that we know from apple uh events and stuff and high up executives and stuff will be walking around
Marco:
And, you know, they tend to be mobbed with people trying to get selfies, but you can occasionally interact with them.
Marco:
I'm curious.
Marco:
I had a couple interactions.
Marco:
My first one, while Casey was playing with the iPad that I had just freed up, I noticed that right across the table was Johnny Ive having a big mob of people around him.
Marco:
I thought, first of all, I'm like, what am I going to say to Johnny Ive?
Marco:
Anything I say, I would probably be making an idiot of myself.
Marco:
And he doesn't know or care who I am.
Marco:
So what am I going to say?
Marco:
And it was very clear also that Johnny was very uncomfortable in this setting.
Marco:
There's a reason why he's usually only seen in videos.
Marco:
And he wasn't this time.
Marco:
It was interesting.
Marco:
The role that Johnny would have normally played, which has the voiceover in the video, was Phil Schiller this time for the iPad video.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Who did a great job, by the way.
Casey:
He did, yeah.
Casey:
I really thought he did a great job.
Marco:
I kind of miss seeing him, because normally Phil would present new iMacs or iPads, or new Macs or iPads.
Marco:
But I kind of miss seeing him on stage.
Marco:
But it was interesting hearing a Phil voiceover in that video.
Marco:
That was pretty cool.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Johnny was nowhere in the event then.
Marco:
He didn't have any voiceovers.
Marco:
But it's very clear why he normally does those because we've heard here and there that he doesn't like being on stage or doing that.
Marco:
And he clearly was not that comfortable in a mob room full of people who were mostly his fans trying to get selfies with him.
Marco:
This was not his scene.
Marco:
So I wasn't going to try to add to his crowd.
Marco:
But a few minutes later, as he was leaving, he was going to walk past where I was standing.
Marco:
I figure like I'm not going to like stop him or anything because, again, what would I say?
Marco:
But as he was walking by, I did think of something.
Marco:
I thought of one thing.
Marco:
I said, hey, Johnny, I missed you in the videos.
Marco:
And he was like, oh, he laughed.
Marco:
He's like, thank you.
Marco:
And it's wonderful British way.
Marco:
And I feel very proud of that, that I made Johnny Ive laugh and he was clearly, you know, uncomfortable and wanting to get out of there as fast as possible.
Marco:
I didn't stop him or slow him down and I didn't make an ass of myself.
Marco:
So I'm very proud of myself for that because normally in that kind of situation, I would say something really stupid and make a total ass of myself and I didn't do that.
John:
I would still be thinking that Johnny thinks I'm a jerk for saying that.
John:
but anyway i thought it was weird that he wasn't in the videos because this is an all-new ipad design and the time you need johnny to tell you about something is when it's an all-new design how did they go from the old ipad to the new one and what is it about this new design that's so great and tell us the philosophy behind it and tell us all that and he wasn't there to do that and so you know they had that thing that animation like the finger running around the outside of the ipad flattening out which i thought was cute
Marco:
That video was awesome, by the way.
Marco:
The video of the finger editing the old iPad to become the new one, that was really cute.
John:
But they didn't have Johnny telling us philosophically what their thinking was with the new iPad.
John:
We can surmise it, and there were other things in the video, but that's exactly the role that he normally fills.
John:
I actually did miss him.
John:
You're right.
John:
Phil did a great job, but his voice and what he normally says in his scripts or whatever was slightly missing from explaining...
John:
the thinking behind an all-new design for a prominent Apple product.
John:
He doesn't need to explain the MacBook Air or whatever, but I feel like the iPads he could have explained.
Casey:
I guess it was right before this was happening.
Casey:
And then cameras are getting closer and closer to my ears to the point that there was a camera within like a half inch of each of my ears going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, because everyone is like leaning in and basically pushing me out of the way to take a picture of Johnny's across the table.
Casey:
At some point, I thought that Marco had left and I thought that Federico was either leaving or had left.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I didn't know what to do with myself because I wanted to stick around the two of them.
Casey:
But then I went outside and couldn't find them.
Casey:
And I thought, well, I'll go to that fancy new Apple store across the street.
Casey:
And I walk in there and I happened to meet a couple of listeners, which was lovely.
Casey:
And I'm talking to them.
Casey:
And then all of a sudden, guess who comes walking in?
Casey:
But Tim.
Casey:
Of course, he gets mobbed immediately.
Casey:
And one of the listeners I was speaking with, Parker, had no shame in running directly to Tim and getting a selfie within like 30 seconds.
Casey:
I was deeply impressed.
Casey:
But Tim is trying to make his way to the back of the room and is being extremely gracious about it.
Casey:
And the Apple employees are pooping their pants because they want to get a picture with Tim more than anything.
Casey:
I'm pooping my pants but attempting to keep it under control because I would like to get a picture with Tim.
Marco:
And you only brought one pair of pants.
Casey:
Yeah, I only had the pants I was wearing.
Casey:
I didn't bring a change of clothes because it was a day trip.
Casey:
I am not the kind of person who would do that sort of thing, generally speaking.
Casey:
When Marco and I got a picture with Federici several years ago, it was basically because Marco said...
Casey:
oh my God, there's Craig, and then disappeared with the outline of Marco in dust, like Looney Tunes style.
Casey:
And the next thing I knew, he was taking a picture with Craig, and I got a picture with Craig as well.
Casey:
In this case, I required some amount of assertiveness on my part, which is not my strong suit.
Casey:
But sure enough, as he was walking by, I said, oh, can I get a picture?
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
And I said, you did a really good job today.
Casey:
Thanks.
Casey:
And
Casey:
You know, as for someone who has fallen out of love with the iPad, I really, really want one.
Casey:
It looks really good.
Casey:
And at this point, my body language and I'm trying to indicate to him, like, you can you can ditch me, dude.
Casey:
I understand that you need to keep moving to the back of the store.
Casey:
Just you can you can walk away.
Casey:
I'm not gonna be offended.
Casey:
But when I said, you know, a new iPad's really great, look really great, you know, he fed me what was clearly like his standard canned answer.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, you're really going to love them.
Casey:
They're really beautiful.
Casey:
But he did it in such a way that made me feel like he was at least slightly paying attention to what I was saying, you know, more than I think he was obligated to have done.
Casey:
And the entire conversation between he and me probably lasted between 10 and 15 seconds.
Casey:
But
Casey:
It seemed like for those 10 or 15 seconds, he actually was trying to engage, which was very, very flattering and very cool.
Casey:
I did introduce myself by name.
Casey:
I did not see even a glimmer of recognition in him, which is exactly what I expected.
Casey:
But if he had had his eye flutter the littlest bit or something as though he had recognized me, I probably would have keeled over dead right there.
Casey:
But no, no such luck.
Casey:
But he was extremely nice, extremely gracious.
Casey:
And I got a picture.
Casey:
which is in that Instagram post I have in the show notes.
Casey:
It's, I think, the last picture because I did it chronologically.
Casey:
And then Mike justifiably yelled at me for not putting that first.
Casey:
But, you know, c'est la vie.
John:
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing when I was paging three of your pictures.
John:
Like, you really buried the lead on this one.
Casey:
Yeah, my bad.
Casey:
But, you know, I wanted to do it chronologically.
Casey:
I wasn't thinking about it in terms of growth packing.
Marco:
Yeah, but the cover photo for this album should be you and Tim, obviously.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
You know, in retrospect, that's what it should be.
Marco:
This is my buddy Tim.
Marco:
We hang up the time, you know.
Casey:
Yeah, totally.
Casey:
uh but no that was very cool it was funny though as i was going through my pictures um that i took the day because i did i did take my big camera and use it on and off um at one point well somebody actually on twitter pointed out to me that behind johnny when he was talking to some woman who had sunglasses on and had the air of someone who thought that they were important i don't know if she was important but you know probably a world famous celebrity who we all don't know
Casey:
oh i'm sure i have no idea who she was exactly yeah this is the kind of thing like i just assume that anybody in there who has even like two people trying to talk to them is probably somebody really important yeah well you say all that and i agree but just behind johnny i'm almost sure was david blaine i had no idea until somebody pointed it out on twitter he's a magician a relatively famous magician inside your shoe casey yeah exactly right and then even worse he was that my card wasn't the six of timers
Casey:
Even worse, as I'm going through my pictures later when Federico and I had lunch, I realized I took like three pictures of Phil, had no idea he was standing there.
Casey:
None.
Marco:
Yeah, I didn't see Phil at all.
Marco:
I was looking for him.
Marco:
I would have loved to say hi to Phil.
Marco:
I didn't see him at all.
Marco:
Yeah, I had no idea.
John:
That is not David Blaine behind Johnny Lime.
John:
You don't think so?
John:
It's just another man who hasn't shaved recently.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Maybe you're right.
Casey:
I believed it when somebody on Twitter said it was David Blaine, but maybe you're right.
John:
I mean, maybe David Blaine is...
John:
gotten older and puffier and i don't know it could be uh who knows but one way or another um i i def i did not post the picture of phil but i i'm almost sure lana del rey was in the hands-on area too i saw a picture that she posted from there some some apple person oh i did not see that i like her music i actually listened to her performance at the end of the video
Marco:
Yeah, and you know, I gotta say, like, not only was that... First of all, not only is it really cool to see, like, you have this empty stage.
Marco:
Like, yeah, because Apple events have an empty stage with an empty table for an AR demo, of course, but otherwise an empty stage.
Marco:
And it's funny to see, like, right as Tim's introducing the musical guest...
Marco:
this team of stagehands in black shirts comes out and brings out four stage monitor speakers, two microphone stands, and a piano, and rolls them all in no time.
Marco:
And all of a sudden, this empty stage becomes a musical performance stage.
Marco:
And it was a really good performance.
Marco:
And I gotta say,
Marco:
Tim was not awkward with the celebrity.
Marco:
Good point.
Marco:
I think this is a first.
John:
They did have the awkward live mic moments.
John:
This is one criticism for Apple's incredible crack AV crew is when someone is leaving stage and someone is coming on stage and they meet each other.
John:
I think both of them don't expect their mics still to be live, but very often they are because we get to hear them speak to each other sort of in a non-stage voice.
John:
I think what Lana Del Rey said was like, oh, when I do these things, I'm always so nervous.
John:
And Tim was like, no, you did fine.
John:
I'm the one who's nervous.
John:
Like they were conversing with each other in a way.
John:
Have you heard that?
John:
We conversed.
John:
couldn't hear that in the room yeah we couldn't go watch the video you can hear it and i think basically that they're not expecting to let their mic still to be live so i feel like the av crew needs to turn off their mics as soon as they start that transitional phase and only turn them back on once they're separate from each other
John:
Although it's cute to hear that interaction.
John:
I thought it was very honest and real moment that briefly snuck through a very prepared presentation.
Marco:
But yeah, I gotta say, it was one of the better musical guests in a long time, and the way it was integrated in was pretty nice, and it wasn't awkward or anything.
Marco:
It was just good.
John:
yeah tim was uh if you're watching the video uh maybe i'm sure it was obvious when you were there too but the video volume was fine in the video because obviously they're mixing that audio differently than it sounds in the room but tim was all full of beans as they would say like he was he was very enthusiastic very expressive about everything i don't know if he's gotten notes on his past performances that he seemed like he was a little bit sleepy but he was not sleepy he was
John:
very expressive about everything and seemed genuinely excited about it and was just really really pumped about the stuff they had and you know introduced everything with enthusiasm and was he didn't have like his thoughtful tim cook moment you know the thoughtful moment that he has where he tells about only apple or can do this or give you a summary of why we're so awesome
John:
or just you know about why they care about the environment or helping people or it's all about the creativity this was all just like rah rah go go type of stuff and by the way lots of new presenters uh so they had they had turnus what's his name yeah yeah john turnus i think yeah he was he was at the mac pro event back in 2014 right so he was that was like his his public introduction in one of these events and now he's on stage uh he was pretty good uh
John:
The marketing guy they had felt a little marketing-y, but it's the first time I've seen him on stage, so you've got to cut him a break.
John:
It takes a little while to get this stuff all together.
John:
I thought all the presenters were pretty good, and it was a lot of new faces.
John:
It was like a quarter women or something.
John:
It was better than just having one woman.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But I did notice that it wasn't just a bunch of dudes the entire time, which was nice.
Marco:
I will say also it was fairly well paced and no point felt like it was dragging.
Marco:
They didn't get too down in the weeds at the demos or anything.
John:
It was short.
John:
It didn't even go two hours.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And it was a very dense hour and a half, whatever it was.
Marco:
The excitement levels were maintained for most of it.
Marco:
It only dipped a little bit during the demos, but it was overall pretty cool.
Marco:
Even the demo people were excited.
John:
The person who was demoing Photoshop was excited about the fact that she was using Photoshop on an iPad.
Marco:
Yeah, I think the only time it really got creepy was when they took that very long shot of the very detailed basketball player model.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
Because he wasn't blinking.
Marco:
Guys, you can't do this.
Marco:
Uncanny Valley.
Marco:
Yeah, that was real creepy.
Marco:
The sweat beads.
Marco:
It felt kind of like... I really don't like wax museums because the people in wax museums, they just look a little bit too lifelike but still really creepy and fake and weird.
Marco:
Uncanny Valley kind of situation.
Marco:
Man, those basketball players in that game...
Marco:
those looked freak those just freak me out like and and then to have that one long zoom in on every detail of this guy's like sweat beads and i'm like okay this should have ended like 20 seconds ago like this oh my god he should have had an idle animation you know what characters in games are idle animations which they're like bouncing up and down or breathing or blinking or just doing something that shows that they're not a wax mannequin but are in fact a living thing but anyway um that that
John:
Focus on gaming was interesting, especially when they compared, like, the GPU power to the Xbox One, right?
John:
That's all well and good, Apple, but, like, you're not convincing me.
John:
Like... Oh, Apple.
John:
Like, just... You've got all the GPU power in the world.
John:
You are, like, 100 times more powerful than the Switch, but you do not have Breath of the Wild.
John:
Like, do you see the difference?
John:
Do you see the difference here, Apple?
John:
Like, what's different?
John:
How is Nintendo able to make these amazing games...
John:
with so much less power and by the way the thing costs so much less money maybe that's part of it too but either way like yeah i love their gpu i love the fact they have gaming demos oh look at this it's in retina resolution this game you know no console can do 120 frames per second which is true but pcs can but anyway that's not the problem that's not you know you're not they're filling the wrong gap people aren't saying i would love to use the ipad as my primary gaming system if only it did 120 frames per second
John:
That's not what people are saying.
John:
People are saying, I would love to use the iPad as my gaming system if only it had the games I want to play.
John:
It doesn't.
John:
Red Dead Redemption 2 did not come out on the iPad.
John:
The Last of Us 2 is not coming out on the iPad.
John:
Zelda didn't come out on the iPad.
John:
All these games, they're not coming out on the iPad.
John:
And it's not because the iPad isn't powerful enough.
John:
It's plenty powerful.
John:
Anyway, I don't want to go off on Apple gaming stuff.
John:
But they insist on bringing up gaming.
John:
They insist on comparing themselves to gaming consoles.
John:
And it's like, you don't see the differences that people care about.
John:
It's not the differences you think they are.
Casey:
One very small tidbit that I noticed that I might be the only person that finds interesting is that when the Adobe people were on stage... Shoot, I thought I wrote it down somewhere, but I've lost it.
Casey:
Chantal, I think, was the woman who demonstrated the AR app by actually using the iPad.
Casey:
When she came on stage, I believe she brought the iPad with her, it looked like, if memory serves...
Casey:
but when she exited the stage, she put the iPad in that like cube that was on stage and walked off.
John:
It was like three spare iPads.
John:
And if you look at the shot of when she does the AR thing, you get the reverse angle.
John:
There was a bunch of spares there.
Casey:
Like, that's not surprising.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
We couldn't see that from our seats, but it, I don't know.
Casey:
It just struck me as weird that she would have brought it on stage.
Casey:
And maybe I'm wrong about that, but I could have sworn she brought it on stage, but then deliberately it looked like she pulled open a drawer and ditched it in the drawer before she walked off stage.
John:
Yeah, I always get kind of, you know, when I see someone come up for a demo and I realize they're standing in front of what is clearly what we've come to know as an AR table.
John:
Yep.
John:
Why is there a giant, oh, AR table.
John:
And so you know there's going to be an AR demo.
John:
When she was demoing, I'm like, yeah, but she's demoing Photoshop.
John:
It's not going to be an AR demo, but sure enough.
John:
It's an AR demo.
John:
Of course it is.
John:
All of us have AR demo tables in our house, right?
John:
It's just a big, giant, flat, empty table that we use for AR demos to make sure there's a service that it can track well.
Marco:
Yeah, because obviously no table in our house would just fill with crap and never be empty ever again.
John:
I think the crap doesn't actually interfere with it too much, but you do need a big table upon which to display things.