Headphone Bump
All right.
Anyway, shall we?
Oh, what are you cracking?
Seltzer.
Nothing interesting.
Flavored seltzer.
Fine then.
You know, we have to properly start the show by talking about something that is truly awesome.
And no, John, it is not follow up, except it kind of is.
It's the ATP store!
Yay!
I don't have a Bell Merlin style, but we have the ATP store back in better than... Well, it's just different.
I don't know.
It's back.
It is back.
So we are selling some merchandise.
Merchandising.
Merchandising.
We do not have flamethrowers.
However, we do have enamel pins.
We do have... And we'll go back to that in a second, actually.
The classic ATP logo t-shirt that you know and love.
A brand new monochrome Pro Max t-shirt.
And then the also bordering on old enough to be called classic Rainbow Pro Max t-shirt, which was very popular last time around.
So running quickly through these, the enamel pins are excellent.
I have several.
They are great.
And they've gotten better, except not really the pins.
The backs have gotten better because by popular demand, we are now sending them along with locking backs.
Marco, I do not have any of these locking backs yet.
Would you mind telling us a little bit about this magical technology?
Yeah, it turns out those little black squishy things that came on the last pins.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry, everyone.
Those sucked.
They came off really easily.
And so we investigated for the second round of pins, better locking pinbacks, and my wonderful wife, Tiff Arment, discovered these wonderful locking pinbacks on Amazon, and
We asked Cotton Bureau to source them for our new batch.
And they basically have some little trick where you have to kind of like they like hold on more tightly and then you have to kind of like pull them in a certain deliberate way to make them release and come off.
So it basically prevents the pin or significantly reduces the chances of the pin like getting knocked from the inside of a bag maybe and then falling out the front.
Right.
It's fantastic from everything I've heard.
Again, I don't have any myself, but you should definitely check this out.
And I won't mention, because I'm selfish and I want all your money, that you can also get a billion of these off Amazon for like no money.
So we'll pretend that we don't know that and say, you should just get another pen.
Why not?
It'll be great.
Well, they don't come with the pins if you get them on Amazon.
I got my pins today, actually.
And the locking pinbacks are basically identical to the ones on Amazon.
Like, I couldn't tell the difference between them.
So if you have any kind of pins and you want to make sure they don't fall off, just buy it.
It's like, you know, you can buy like nine bucks for like a giant bag of these pinbacks.
And I think what happens is like the pins get pulled from the front.
It's not like anything hits the back of them.
They just get pulled from the front.
And if you pull hard enough from the front of them, they'll slide out of the backs.
But with locking ones, that's much, much harder to do.
So
Buy some HP pins and buy a giant bucket of pin backs to use for all your pins so they don't come off whatever you pin them to.
Yeah, but because we love you, we are including the locking backs on all future pin orders.
You're welcome.
Yeah.
And I've actually – I need some more of these pins myself because I'm going through a bit of a backpack odyssey again.
Oh, here we go.
I don't know if this is the night for that, but it's –
We can talk about that another time.
But moving right along, to reiterate, we have the classic t-shirt that is available in men's and women's styles.
It is available in tri-blend or 100% cotton.
There is the standard tee and the premium tee.
And this is the most popular of all of our t-shirts.
And it is lingering ever longer because it is that great.
John, would you like to tell us about the Monochrome Pro Max T-shirt, which is a brand new riff on the classic Rainbow One?
Well, you're taking a lot of time for the store stuff.
I had a very compact spiel ready, but now it's too late.
I've already blown the allotted time budget for you.
You've got to sell it, John.
Yeah, we've got to sell.
I know.
I could have sold it in much less time.
Oh, thanks a lot.
The other thing you forgot to mention about the shirts is all the shirts that we're going to talk about are available in black and white.
And like you said, they're available in multiple materials because some people love the tri-blend.
And some people love 100% cotton.
Now you can get whatever you want.
You get tri-blend, you get 100% cotton.
And also, as you mentioned, that premium tea thing, some people want a t-shirt that's going to last them as long as possible.
So they don't have to buy another one because these are expensive t-shirts.
We understand that, you know, there's...
Podcast t-shirts are not what you should use as a staple of your wardrobe.
But as a fun one-off thing, they're great.
So if you want to spend more, kind of like Apple, if you want to spend more to get an even beefier t-shirt or a t-shirt with better fit, we do offer that option.
We realize, yes, they do cost a lot more.
That's why we're still offering the regular ones as well.
Anyway.
All shirts in black and white, all shirts tri-blend and 100% cotton, all shirts in regular and super premium.
The new design is kind of riffing on the old Pro Max design where it had the silhouettes of a selection of professional high-end Macintoshes.
Illustrated by our very own John Syracuse.
Yeah, it's the same thing, but the design now is that they're basically more or less to scale, and it's more like pencil line art than just silhouettes, and it's not rainbow-colored.
It's monochrome, so you can get that with light text on a black T-shirt or black text or black lines on a white T-shirt.
So that is the new design that has never been sold before.
indeed and uh real-time follow-up the the atp classic logo t-shirt that is black only oh really i thought that was in black and white too oh well no that's all right though uh but anyway but the monochrome max very nicely done uh that was an update by our friends at cotton bureau and then as mentioned the rainbow pro max t-shirt uh which is also great a little inside baseball for the listeners i since i kind of have no job anymore i
I spent a lot of time working on the text for the atp.fm slash store page.
One more time, that URL, ladies and gentlemen, atp.fm slash store.
I worked on the, not the header text, actually, that was all John's work, but the like little blurbs next to each of these pictures I worked on very hard.
And I was very proud of the work that I did.
And then I went back, I don't know, a few hours after I wrote it and sent it to John and Marco to look at it.
And I noticed that John had made some additions and or really had added a little note to the page, which I thought was quite funny.
And you have to look at it and find out for yourself where it is.
So in summary, if you're working with John Syracuse, expect that edits will happen no matter how hard you try.
But that's how you get better.
I edited all the text.
I didn't just add one comment.
I edited everything.
Of course you did.
I'm going to give you a once over every single line.
No period unturned.
But in any case, we would love it if you could, before the 15th of November, ladies and gentlemen, that is Thursday, not this coming Thursday, but next Thursday, before the evening ATP time, next Thursday, the 15th of November, please place your orders.
And we would love it if you did.
And these things make great holiday gifts, especially for the nerds in your life or the people in your life who are nerds.
They just don't realize it yet.
They just need a good shirt to find out.
So, ATP.FM slash store.
For the beginning of follow-up, I would like to call your attention to the wonderful Good News podcast, which featured Jeremy Burge in a recent episode.
The Good News podcast is five minutes or less, generally speaking, pretty much every weekday morning.
And they talk about, guess what, good news.
And a friend of the show, Jeremy Burge, was on the show, and he predicted a kerfuffle with regard to Square vs. Round Waffles, which we talked about a couple episodes back.
And so I thought that was quite funny because we released our episode, uh, like a couple of days after this episode was released.
And so, so he had predicted it even, uh, before we spoke about it, which I thought was quite amusing.
And he is in two episodes of that show of the good news podcast, and you should check them both out because Jeremy's awesome.
And so it's a good news podcast.
Moving on.
Friend of the show, John Gruber, has eliminated all doubt and told us that the new Apple Pencil only works with new iPad Pros.
Additionally, the old Apple Pencil will only work on old iPad Pros and that 6th Gen iPad weird thing that came out semi-recently.
So that is good to know.
I hadn't thought about that when they made the announcement.
I'm a little bit surprised that they're so hardline about it.
Like, you understand why the new one, they would make only work with the new one.
Because if you buy the new pencil and you have an old iPad, how are you going to charge it?
Like, there's no place to plug it in.
It doesn't have any kind of ports or plugs or anything.
It's just got that flat side that they want you to shove up against the little flat charging thingy.
So I see how that's a problem.
Now, I'm sure someone could come up with some sort of little thing that charges the new pencil just from, like, you know,
Like some, I don't know, some flat thing that you put it against.
But right now, there's nothing like that.
And I'm sure Apple doesn't want... Well, how would it pair?
I don't know.
Like, I'm sure... There's two problems.
There's charging and pairing, right?
And that's why, like, even if you could, like, even if you had an old pencil and you wanted to use it on a new iPad, say, and you were willing to carry around, like, a lightning charger for it, that still wouldn't solve the issue of how the heck do you pair it to the new iPad?
You know, because, like, there's no way to adapt...
Yeah, I'm sure someone could figure something out, though.
Like, certainly Apple could have figured something out, and I'm sure there is going to be accessories that you can buy from China or something that will do this.
Well, yeah.
Yeah, but yes, it's a very hard separation between the things.
And, you know, going the other direction, so you have an old pencil and you want to use a new thing.
Well, if you have an old pencil already, probably you have something you can charge it with, but then, yeah, the pairing thing...
I mean, presumably there's some kind of Bluetooth thing going on in the pencil and Apple could have updated the software to find a way to make it pair, but they didn't.
So it is just basically a hard line.
The old Rolly pencil is the old world, the new flat-sided pencil in the new world.
And in case you were wondering over that, don't think that you're going to, I don't need to buy a pencil because I've got an old one.
It won't work with the new iPads.
All right.
Moving right along.
Something interesting came out recently with regard to laptops with T2 chips in them.
It says all Mac portables with the Apple T2 security chip feature feature a hardware disconnect that ensures that the microphone is disabled whenever the lid is closed.
So this is something that is literally in hardware.
And in fact, the paper continues, this disconnect is implemented in hardware alone and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in Mac OS and even the software on the T2 chip itself.
From engaging the microphone, the lid is closed.
The camera is not disconnected in hardware because guess what?
You can't see anything when the lid is closed.
So that is pretty cool.
I don't remember where we found that, but there's a PDF.
It's a PDF, and Apple has this PDF on their website we'll put in the show notes that just tells you all about the T2.
So this is coming straight from Apple.
This is not speculation.
Of course, the whole thing about the camera not being disconnected, because why would you need disconnected?
You can't see anything when the lid is closed.
That's the part where the 80s spy movie tells you that by noticing slight variances in light, you can reconstruct the image of the surrounding room, even when the thing is closed, right?
Which is one of those ridiculous movie things that you would see, but I remember seeing a...
demo of an MIT thing at one point where they were like using scattered ambient light to essentially see around corners to be able to see what card was completely out of view of a camera and it was mind-boggling and terrifying so I bet you could pull something like this off in a movie and people would accept it but anyway the hardware disconnect that's something I'd love to see iFixit figure out because the way they make it sound it's like
you know two metal things that are pulled apart from each other and i suppose like again the 80s hacker movie way to do it would be you'd like overdrive the circuit to cause an arc to connect the thing to hook up the which also wouldn't work but anyway um you know like they're essentially moving two pieces of metal far away from each other when the lid is closed because there's a hinge going on there and
And so there's nothing you can do in software to bridge that gap to turn the microphone back on.
And this is to prevent someone from somehow hacking your laptop, and you close the lid, and you think everything's fine, and it's closed the lid, but really it's there listening and sending all of your audio to this nefarious person who's spying on you or whatever.
So this is Apple bragging about their increased security in their...
T2 supporting Macs.
And all of this is going towards, I'm sure we'll talk about this in the future, is something that Apple has said themselves.
And the drumbeat will continue as they go with the T3 and all the other things.
They want to make Macs like iPhones.
We've talked many times in the past, and there's an old adage in the computer world that physical access trumps all security.
So if you have access to someone's PC, as in you're sitting in front of it, you're physically there with it,
Uh, there's nothing security wise that can be done in that computer to stop you from getting into it because, you know, there's so many different ways to get into a PC despite any kind of encryption or anything like that, especially if the PC is running all the way down to those ones that like freeze the thing.
And so they freeze the state of all the RAM chips, like literally like with cold stuff, freeze the RAM and then extract like your encryption keys because they're in memory somewhere when your computer is on.
Right.
Yeah.
All sorts of things like that.
Just saying, look, security is great.
It's great for preventing remote exploits of people attacking your computer over the network and all sorts of firewalls and all sorts of things to prevent privilege escalation.
If you connect to the computer somehow, you can escalate your privileges.
physical if you're in there in the room with it or if some nefarious person steals your computer and they have it in their laboratory and like they're physically with it there's nothing you can do to stop them and as we know from phones that has not really been the case for a long time with phones and that the goal is if even if someone nefarious has your phone that it's very difficult or impossible the goal for it to be impossible to get into that phone um and there are all sorts of exploits that have uh you know
made this not true for phones, but every time one of those exploits is found, Apple closes it in the next phone and so on and so forth.
So it gets harder and harder.
The whole goal of the T chip architecture for Macs is to make Macs like phones, where there is no longer a blanket expectation that if you have physical access to a Mac, you can get into it.
You want to make it more like phones, where...
you might not be able to get into it.
And the goal is you're not supposed to be able to get into it.
And anytime you can get into a Mac because you have physical access, Apple goes back to the drawing board and finds a way to close that hole and produces something better.
So the Macs aren't there yet, but that's the goal.
And it'll be pretty neat when they get there, despite the fact that it will make...
dual booting and doing what we want with our computers and all sorts of other stuff, uh, much, much harder.
Uh, but that's just the world we live in and I think it's probably the right move and I just hope they can preserve as much of the cool hackery fun things you can do with computers, uh, while they make things more secure for regular people.
It's a fine line to walk, but I think they can do it.
And then finally, in follow-up, ATPFM, our website, is now dark mode enabled thanks to a friend of the show, Spencer Rollers, who basically gave me a bunch of CSS to dump in Squarespace.
And that's what I did.
Hooray!
So if you happen to have Purple Safari and you're on Mojave and would like to check that out, please feel free.
If you have bug reports, I guess send them to me and I might get to them one day.
See?
You touch it, it becomes your problem.
yeah i know this is my this is what i do though i do it for you guys so you don't have to no one goes to the atp website so it doesn't matter but everyone's going to go there because they're going to go to atp.fm store right and then they'll see the atp website and if you're running mojave and you have dark mode enabled and you're running safari technology preview officially known as purple safari then yes you too will see dark mode which is exactly like light mode except basically reversed it's not very exciting it's not a very exciting website
We were sponsored this week by Hover.
Visit hover.com slash ATP to learn more and get 10% off your first purchase.
Get a domain name for whatever you're passionate about.
Hover is an awesome place to buy and manage domain names.
I'll tell you what, these days you want your own name to just manage your own identity.
Wherever you have your identity, whether it's your email address or the website URL you give people, it says something about you, good or bad.
If you have some kind of massive web host behind your name in what you're giving people, that comes with a certain degree of baggage because what if that company is falling out of favor or what if it's no longer cool or what if it has political problems, right?
And it also just kind of shows like you're not established very well or you're not really saying something with who you are.
Hover can change that for you by giving you a domain name.
Your email address can be your name at whatever you want.
Your website can be whateveryouwant.com or .info or .plumbing or .design, whatever it is.
You can have a name that you own and you control.
And Hover is just a wonderful place to do that.
You know, there's lots of places you can get domain names online.
I've tried a lot
it really makes you look better when you have your own domain name.
So visit hover.com slash ATP to learn more and get 10% off your first purchase.
Hover, get a domain name for whatever you're passionate about.
We have had a busy week.
I had a very busy week, as did Marco last week, when we kind of turned our worlds upside down in order to go to Brooklyn on a whim, if you will.
But Marco, you really missed the city a lot, and you decided to go back, if I understand things correctly.
So tell me about this.
To make a long story short, I'm sitting here with a 12.9-inch iPad review unit and pencil and keyboard.
So jealous.
By the way, some quick real-time follow-up.
I realized right after we finished the last segment about connecting the old pencil that there is indeed a way to do it with all Apple gear.
You can plug using a USB-C to lightning cable...
You can plug the C end into the iPad, the lightning end into the kind of ginger changer adapter for the pencil that lets you plug an iPad plug into it to charge it.
So I had, you know, C to lightning to flippy dongle thing to pencil.
And so I plugged it all in to see if it would pair.
And it wouldn't.
So, there is a way, indeed, to plug the old pencil into the new iPad very indirectly, but it doesn't do anything.
Oh, my word.
Anyway, so I was able to ask some questions of some wonderful Apple people who very generously gave me some time.
I asked a whole bunch of nerdy questions, and I don't really... This was literally a few hours ago, and so I have not had a lot of time to...
formulate my own impressions of this device with a few exceptions.
Uh, but for the most part, you know, it's, I haven't had that much time.
Uh, all the official press reviews all hit this morning as we record.
Um, so, you know, if you need, if you want to review from somebody who's been using it for more than a couple hours, I would suggest going to those and maybe next week after I have had more time with it, um, I will have more to say.
Uh, but for now, um,
I don't know, what do you guys want to know?
I mean, you had some pretty good questions earlier.
What do you want to know?
Did you ask Apple most of the things that we asked you to ask Apple?
Yeah, and so to put this in context, too, I've had a couple of fortunate occasions in the past where I've gotten the chance to ask Apple people questions.
And you have to understand, and you see this a lot in the reactions whenever a grouper has an exec on the talk show, you have to understand that
Apple people are not going to tell you all their secrets.
They're not going to tell you about future products.
They're not going to say anything that makes the company or their products look bad.
Certain questions aren't even worth asking.
These all have limited time.
When Gruber's on the talk show with an executive, he has 45 minutes maybe at most.
The press briefings are 20 minutes to a half hour at most.
There's not a lot of time to ask questions that you don't think you're going to get a useful answer on.
I did ask a few of them anyway.
I didn't get a lot of solid ground on things like price increases and everything.
I did find out, though, about the headphone jack removal on the iPad Pro that basically literally just doesn't fit.
The main issue with the iPad Pro is the thickness.
And while the headphone jack would indeed probably still fit on the outer edge, it would have to protrude into the case, into where the screen area is.
And it doesn't fit behind the screen.
That's the main problem with that.
And I'm actually, I'm kind of like looking at it, I'm kind of surprised that USB-C ports even fit.
But I think the answer of why the new iPad bezel is exactly the size that it is, is probably that the USB-C port just barely fits.
And I bet if you look at the teardown
that iFixit will probably publish sometime in the next 24 hours or so, I would guess that there's very little clearance between the USB-C port and the screen behind it.
That's something that people pointed out after last week's show.
We were talking about USB-C on the phone, and I think you, Marco, mentioned that Lightning still has an advantage because it's thinner.
But many people pointed out that the new iPads are thinner than any of the current iPhones.
In fact, thinner, I think, than any iPhone ever made.
Yes, by a lot.
And yet it has USB-C on it.
I think the argument for the phone, though, was always not that you couldn't fit USB-C on any of the phones, but that
ideally apple would still continue to like like to make the phone thinner uh just because thinner would mean lighter thinner means more room for a case thinner means more room for a larger battery case it just you know the naked robotic core that there's this room to make it thinner and if you could get the iphone 10 but have it half the thickness
and then put a chunky case on it or something, it would be a better, lighter phone than the current one.
Obviously, setting aside battery life and all the reasons why it's not thinner.
But all the things being equal, if you could find a way to keep the battery life but also make it thinner, it would be good.
On the other hand, I feel like making the iPad...
half the thickness of the current one you start to run into issues with like now it has to be like a bendy material because it's so large and you get so much leverage if you have any kind of fulcrum like in the center like your knee or something if it if it really is half the thickness or you know it has to be bendy at certain points anything with the phones i mean at a certain point if you make your phone too thin it has to be bendy
and but we're not at bending materials yet so i feel like the phone can get thinner easier than the ipad because you have less leverage to bend a phone although you know talk about the iphone 6 we've already seen uh depending on uh what the phone is made out of and if it doesn't have enough spring back you can bend it already but uh
Lightning on the phone gives Apple the ability to make the phone even thinner than the current iPad, which would be advantageous for the phone.
Again, assuming you could fit the battery and assuming it can be springy or whatever, but perhaps not advantageous to the iPad because the challenges are so much greater.
probably somewhat in the way that force touch uh isn't on the ipads because just you know the physical reality is of having a larger surface area to figure out where to put all the four sensors and bending and all the other stuff um anyway all this is to say that uh yeah i the headphone thing that's that's interesting information that they couldn't get to fit but uh usbc barely fitting makes total sense to me uh especially since it's uh
You know, it's a computer standard and it is a flat thing instead of a round cylindrical thing.
But when you said that, like, oh, the headphone jack won't fit.
I immediately thought of our friend, the someone will tell me the exact name of this.
The little skinnier headphone jack.
What is that called?
The one point eight millimeter thing.
Uh, it's one eighth or one sixteenth.
I believe it's, it's like the, it's, it's half the diameter of the, uh, right.
What a troll that would be to put that thing on there because nobody has anything that plugs into that.
I'd be like, Oh, look at this headphone jack.
And you'd go to plug in your headphones to be like, wait, why is this not,
this is this a joke why is this headphone so tiny and you can get an adapter of course that goes of course a dongle of course a headphone to headphone dongle you'd have a headphone dongle oh david shop in the chat got it right it's 2.5 millimeter and the other ones are 3.5 so it's not it's not it isn't half the size but it's smaller
Yeah, well, that would have been great.
I mean, actually, it sounds silly.
Like, we would make fun of them mercilessly if they had headphone dongle instead of no headphone.
But I think it would actually solve the low latency cheap audio problem that people are complaining about.
Like, they want to be able to, you know, edit audio without the latency of a Bluetooth headphone.
And, you know, you want to be able to keep your thing plugged in while you did that.
And anyway...
That makes sense.
I mostly buy that.
I think I would prefer the iPad to be thin and not fit the headphone jack.
So I think they made the right call in terms of that trade-off.
It's kind of surprising that they didn't mention that in the keynote.
It's such an explicable, easily testable reason that makes sense.
But to save that for briefings instead of just tell us on stage, it's so thin we couldn't even fit a headphone.
I don't know.
Maybe they didn't have a good way to sell and they figured let's just not mention it at all.
But
I still feel like this is going to be somewhat disappointing to people, but it also sounds like it's not coming back, because if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit.
The only way they can get it to come back is they switch, I suppose, to OLED, where the screen will be thinner, kind of like the iPhone X versus the iPhone XR, or XS versus the XR, where the OLEDs apparently are thinner than LCDs because you don't have the backlight assembly.
So maybe it can come back then, but until then, don't look for it.
I got a number of good tidbits about this kind of stuff.
I think, honestly, I don't think it's coming back no matter what technology does.
I think once Apple is done with the port, they're not going to bring it back.
That's just not the way they operate.
So wait until USB-A comes roaring back to the laptops.
Keep hope alive.
Or maybe SD.
Yeah.
If it didn't come back to the MacBook Air, it's not coming back.
Well, we don't.
We've got to wait for the new design philosophy.
There could be an SD card slot.
I'm still holding on, I hope.
SD card could come back.
I wish.
I've been thinking more about MagSafe just because it annoys me more and more to think about using a Thunderbolt 3 port to power something, like plugging a power adapter into it.
And the only thing that incredibly high bandwidth, incredibly capable port is doing is supplying power.
It's a total waste.
Put a MagSafe on it.
And then let people still run their laptops through USB-C, like don't make those ports stop working for that purpose, but also have MagSafe.
So if people want, they can use MagSafe for power, leaving all their other ports available for port stuff.
But if they don't want and just want to bring one charger with them, you can also charge it from USB-C.
This is my current Mac laptop fantasy that I'm... Anyway, sorry to...
Yeah.
So anyway, so I did ask about OLED because like, you know, one question, obviously, like you have these phones that have OLED now for two years.
You know, why not OLED on the iPad?
Like, is it just not ready yet or anything?
And of course, you know, Apple people are never going to say something is, you know,
not ready yet because that implies a future direction so you know again like you gotta you gotta take what you can get with like with you know the way they answer stuff because you know just knowing how they work like they're not gonna they're never gonna transmit future intentions because they know that that can bite them in the butt and so they're they're cautious um but the impression i the basically the impression i got about oled is that the oled tech simply isn't
there yet for panels of the right size and properties that would go in an iPad that they're basically just not good enough yet in areas like off-axis viewing and color and everything else.
My interpretation of the answer is that might be coming down the road, but not imminently.
I think that makes sense because, like, think about OLED panels and where they're made, right?
So we all know they've been made in phones for a long time.
Apple is kind of late to this party, but phones are all of a similar size.
Like, they're not too giant.
And then they're also made for television sets, but the television set ones, as thin as they are, are massively thicker.
than any screen that has to fit inside a 5.9 millimeter ipad and much lower density yeah and they have way fewer pixels in them so this is the two ends of the spectrum there's phone size very high density very very thin and there's television size comparatively monstrously low density gigantic but way too thick and so i think they have to meet in the middle there where they can
finally make something that is very high density but also like the size of an ipad which would be a huge number of pixels i don't know if an oled screen has ever been made with that many pixels like i don't do the math on how many pixels are actually on the big ipad at you know the retina resolution what are the native pixels um that said i would love one and i'm sure if they get there they will use it because that's clearly the direction they're going but it doesn't surprise me that they're not quite there yet
I think also keep in mind, and this is not anything they said, but, you know, keep in mind that, like, when you look at the way the phones went OLED, they had to go to 3X.
Like, 2X isn't enough.
They had to go to 3X because, I think partly because of the way that OLED doesn't really have all the subpixels.
Like, if you look at, like, the little subpixel pattern of how OLED screens represent, like, the different red, green, and blue.
It's not all OLEDs.
It's just that's what they chose to do with their panels, pentile or whatever, which is gross if you see how it's done, but...
Right, and there's a bunch of different arrangements and everything, but basically every pixel doesn't have red, green, and blue.
Basically every pixel has any two of those.
They all have green, and then they kind of alternate red and blue.
And so maybe they went 3x on the phones to try to alleviate some of the problems that came along with having those not really all there subpixels.
So maybe they would have to go 3x on the iPad to get...
you know acceptable quality and that would of course make it even harder you know because then that's an even bigger and and also i think price could become a problem at that point again this is nothing they said but you know the phone sells for more than what the ipad sells for but the ipad has almost all of the same hardware as the phone so you have you basically have a larger panel and a few other extra things like the bigger gpu and everything any other phone has more cost in the cameras maybe but like
The iPad has some pretty major costs that the phone doesn't have or has smaller ones of, but sells for less money.
So I would imagine there's also like an economic issue there of like, you probably can't put an extremely cutting edge OLED 3X panel and get enough of them to supply all the iPad Pros necessarily in 2018.
So anyway, I had a bunch of other miscellany that I asked before I got into some of the good stuff.
I did ask because I was so concerned about my fingerprint pad from my 10.5 FingerPad Pro that's just covered in smeary, greasy fingerprints all the time.
I asked if there was any change to the oleophobic coating.
No, there isn't.
So that's unfortunate.
It's the same oleophobic coating as before.
The anti-reflective coating got better, but that's actually under the oleophobic coating, so that's not going to probably have any effect here.
So unfortunately, the new one is going to be probably just as fingerprinty as the old one, and that's a shame.
The rear camera, there's been a lot of question about what the rear camera is.
Is it the XR camera?
Why is it different in certain specs?
And the answer basically is that it's a whole new camera, but it's roughly comparable in most major ways to the one that's in the XS and XR.
So, you know, it supports smart HDR.
It does not support portrait mode.
But and just impression wise, like it's freaking huge.
Like the camera looks massive.
It actually looks kind of cool.
So I think it looks like it's a pretty awesome camera.
I know that people are down on iPad cameras who are nerds.
Uh, but I would say that's a short sighted view.
Um, and you're missing out.
Like I actually use the iPad camera.
I don't, I don't carry it around in the world and hold it up to landmarks, but I use it around the house.
Uh, I use it like, you know, I'll, I'll take pictures of like my breakfast and send it to Mike.
Uh, you know, like I, I will do a lot of things with the iPad camera.
You're just going to let that go and not explain it.
Yeah.
And like, or like a lot of apps will use it in useful ways, you know, besides AR demos, which I don't care about.
Um, even stuff like the eBay app, if you're selling something on eBay, you can do the whole, it's actually way easier to do it on an iPad than it is on a, on like a desktop browser because it integrates the photo taking right with it.
And so you can just like snap a few pictures of the thing you're selling and just post it right there and have it all be done.
It's like there's uses like that, that, you know, the iPad benefits from his camera.
So anyway, it is a good camera.
It is not exactly the same as the other ones, but it seems like it's close enough.
I asked also...
The iPad is seemingly... It's marketed seemingly as a portrait device.
The logo on the back faces a certain way.
The logo on the back only looks right when you're in portrait.
Yet, the way that I use it is in a keyboard case.
And the way a lot of people use it is in landscape, like a keyboard case.
I asked if there was something behind that.
And I think I provoked some thought.
It didn't seem like a lot of people asked that.
Yeah.
There were a number of responses to my questions that indicated that not a lot of people asked the kind of things I was asking.
But I think a lot of it was just legacy.
It was always designed that way.
And also it matters less and less because now, since there's no more home button, the official orientation of the device in hardware matters less because you see it less.
When it's in landscape,
you don't have this big circle on the side where the home button is.
You do still have certain things that are not on all four sides.
You still have the positioning of the sleep-wake button, the volume buttons, and the face ID camera being significant things that are only in one spot.
But otherwise, the only time you would notice that your iPad is in the wrong orientation if you have a keyboard case connected to it is if it boots and you see the Apple boot logo.
But you don't reboot your iPad that much.
And now even the keyboard case covers up the back.
Sorry.
You don't see the Apple logo on the back being sideways either.
So that was interesting, I thought.
I asked a lot about the smart connector.
The original smart connector for the first iPad Pro, so for any listeners who aren't following along, that's the little three dots that the keyboard plugs into.
And Apple advertised it as a thing, and it was positioned as the kind of thing that other people can make accessories for besides Apple.
And in the, what, three years since the iPad Pro has existed?
Has it been about that long?
Something like that, yeah.
So in like the three-ish years that the iPad Pro has existed, I think only two non-Apple smart connector things have ever been made.
They were both by Logitech, I think.
One was a really weird keyboard that nobody liked, and one was the slowest charging dock in the world.
And so I asked about this, and, you know, because now the new iPad Pro still has a smart connector, but now it's in a different spot.
And only Apple's keyboard uses it.
Basically, the gist I got is that this could theoretically be used for other things, but that it's still really pretty much only designed for keyboards.
That it doesn't have the bandwidth or power to really have more than that.
For anything more than that, they expect people to be using USB-C instead.
And that makes sense.
um i asked about backlit keys and whether the smart connector would be able to provide enough power for backlit keys basically the answer i got on that was like you know they try to make this thing like as thin line as possible and and i i get that like even though i want backlit keys i also am a user of this thing and when the keyboard is on the ipad it does get pretty bulky and so
maybe I don't need more bulk on that.
So I respect that decision.
And Apple knows as well as I do that there are aftermarket options of fancier keyboard cases that have backlighting and maybe aluminum and stuff like that.
And so that can cover it somewhat.
I did ask, is there...
an MFI program or something?
Are there going to be third-party smart connector things?
And the general answer I got was pretty much no, or at least it hasn't happened yet.
It didn't seem like they were closing the door to that, but it seemed like there certainly aren't any on the horizon.
So I'm guessing that's going to stay that way, because if you're a device manufacturer, why would you make something for the smart connector when you could make something for USB or Bluetooth and have it serve everything?
Yeah.
If Apple wants a thin and light solution to backlit keys, I have a suggestion for them.
You know what I'm going to suggest?
You all have kids.
What am I going to say?
A light bright?
Close.
Do any of your kids' bedrooms have things stuck to the wall?
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
The thing where it's like a light capacitor, if you will.
Like luminous paint?
I was going to reference this, but I realized maybe you two didn't have this in your childhood when I was a kid.
uh glow in the dark was big yeah lots of kids toys were glow in the dark in some fashion i guess it was maybe in the the 50s 60s and 70s or whenever it was invented it was a big maybe by the time you were kids it wasn't that big anyway uh this technology still exists most often used to have like little stickers of stars that you put on your your bedroom wall or ceiling in your child's bedroom and then when you turn out the lights at night it's most often used in watches
Yeah, well, the watches have radium, which I don't think was a great suggestion for a keyboard.
No, they haven't had radium since the 50s.
I know, but that wouldn't be a good suggestion for keys.
But glow-in-the-dark is still a thing.
Look in the trunk of all of your cars, and there's probably a little tiny handle that government mandates be in there so you can get out if you're ever trapped in your trunk.
And chances are, because car manufacturers want to save money and wait, they just make it glow-in-the-dark instead of putting a light, because I think there's some government requirement that you have to be able to find it.
What else did I see that was glow-in-the-dark?
There was something else that I saw recently that was like a modern thing that had a plastic glow-in-the-dark part.
Anyway, if they made the little keycaps or the little white parts of the keycaps out of the magic glow-in-the-dark material that sort of charges up with sunlight during the day and then when it's dark, glows in the dark, they could do that, but it would look incredibly cheap and it would look like it was a toy from the 70s, but it would work and it would not add weight.
Thank you.
You're welcome, Apple.
I'll send you a bill.
Yeah, the entire watch world figured this out too.
It's called Loom Paint and it's very, very widely used.
Or you can use, I believe, tritium gas tubes, which is what ball watches use that kind of always softly glow, although I can't imagine Apple going for that.
It's like, yeah, our newest environmental initiative, tritium gas.
Yeah, that doesn't sound much better than radium.
Yeah, it's not really.
But the Loom Paint is fine.
What else did I ask?
Oh, why does the iPhone aggressively pursue water resistance but the iPad doesn't?
Yes, my children want another's answer, too.
And so do I on behalf of them.
And I asked, too, like, you know, like, have there been maybe any advances in water resistance that just haven't been talked about?
Like, that it happens to be more water resistant now, but, you know, that's never really said.
And, yeah, the answer I basically got is, like...
I'm the first person to ever ask that question.
Oh, come on.
That's just... They have to... Like, I have a better answer.
The answer for them is... I mean, I don't know.
The answer is, like, that it's more like a computer or a laptop, and you wouldn't stick your Mac underwater, and therefore it's not a concern.
I mean, the real answer, as we've talked about before, is I've... And Casey, I'm sure, has argued for Mac laptops to be more water-resistant.
Yes.
Like, I would say, oh, well, it's more like a laptop, so there doesn't have to be... No, no.
You're taking the wrong idea from that.
In fact, iPads should be waterproof, and...
laptops should be way more water-resistant than they are, because we all live in the world where we have drinks, and there are computers, and there are iPads, and there are phones, and yes, maybe you're less likely to drop your iPad off the edge of a boat into the water than you are your phone.
But who knows?
People are, to Marco's point earlier, take pictures with their iPads and stuff like that.
There's really no reason Apple...
shouldn't make all the ipads just as waterproof as the phone other than the fact that they just don't consider an important thing to do but i think it's super important and uh and i think everybody with kids and ipads feels the same way yeah and the reason i ask is like i i would want that you know like even though i don't frequently need to use my ipad out in the rain i would like the option to if it comes up and that's something that computers mostly can't do right and so like at least
You know, you can do it with your iPhone and your Apple Watch.
That's great.
It would be awesome if the iPad could be like your any conditions computer and you wouldn't have to worry about that.
In practice, I don't think I've ever heard of anybody liquid damaging an iPad, but I'm sure somebody like Casey could figure it out.
Here's the thing.
If any iPad is easy to waterproof, it's the one with only one remaining port.
right well all those speakers though i think the speakers might be the hard i know but like but i feel like the watch has solved that problem sealed speaker chambers that expel water and all the other jazz like the watch is much more complicated to waterproof than the current ipad the ipad pro rather because it's literally just got one hole in it that's all and then the speaker grills but again you seal off the speaker chambers just like they are on the watch
and deal with the one usbc port like the thing practically looks like is waterproof now not that i think anyone should go and test this but look at it like do you see any place where water can get in besides the speaker holes in usbc are there creases are there gaps i bet the thing is you know completely sealed up yeah i don't know i have a feeling it would be hard to make the speakers be good and waterproof like the speaker on the watch doesn't need to be good it just needs to be like a barely there you know
they made it they made the speaker on the watch ladder anyway i i feel like this is within apple's grasp and it would be a useful thing to do i and in terms of water resistance you know like maybe it is like if you spill a drink on top of your ipad and the water just sort of runs off the edges it's you know does it does it like does capillary action suck it into the speaker holes or does it just you know do you just wipe it off with a paper towel and you're fine like yeah it might be more water resistant than we think
But the fact that Apple does not tell you that it's waterproof and baseless, please do not use your iPad in the bath.
Do not drop your iPad into the water.
Do not use your iPad in the rain.
Makes me think that it is...
uh vulnerable in ways that it doesn't need to be so apple if you're listening please make waterproof ipads well i mean like it took amazon a long time to even make a waterproof kindle and that's one where like a lot of people like to read on the beach or in the bath and and like it took that so like there's clear demand for that and it took them a long time even a simple device so maybe there's something too like you know larger devices being harder
Well, and the Kindle doesn't cost $2,000.
So please, please make my $2,000 iPad waterproof.
It's more important than my $99 Kindle.
Yeah, fair point.
I did ask John one of your pet questions.
I asked...
basically is there anything that we are losing by leaving the lightning ecosystem and going to usbc like the example that you cited which is that the usbc charging cables are like thicker and bulkier and less flexible than the lightning ones or than the usb a ones in the lightning world like the usbc lightning cables are like much thicker and the connector is bigger and everything else as you described last time you didn't feed them that answer though you just asked the question right
Well, I use that as an example of, like, the kind of thing.
Oh, you ruined it.
Sorry.
I just want to see if they have the same thing, because you've got to answer in an innocent way.
Like, because they could just say, no, we're not losing anything.
Then you pull out the, well, what about the thinner cables?
But I would love to see if they came up with that, and they probably wouldn't have.
It's not going to tell you anything bad.
I'll tell you what, though.
I have the one-meter cable, and it's basically the same specs-wise as the power cable that goes from the USB-C brick to MacBook Pros for the last two years.
So it's a USB 2.0 data only.
It's not really meant for high-speed data.
2.0 data only, and a typical white C2C cable.
But it feels like it's thinner and more flexible than the two-meter one.
I don't know if they just didn't need as much stuff inside to make a shorter one, but it does feel better.
It's not quite as flexible as an old Lightning one is, like a USB-A Lightning one, but it's really close.
I would say it's close enough.
So that might not be an issue anymore.
How long is the hard plastic connector-y part?
It's the same as the USB-C Lightning one.
Do you remember the, I think it was Lightning cables, in the beginning had longer stiff plastic sections and then they shortened it up at some point?
Am I crazy for remembering that?
I think you're right.
Yeah, I think you're right.
That was a while ago.
Anyway, and I also asked, why go to USB-C at all and why do it now?
Yeah.
And the answer I got was very interesting.
Basically, it seems like one of the things they were really aiming for here was pro display use, external displays.
And Lightning was not designed to handle 5K displays.
So to add enough bandwidth or whatever to Lightning...
to make it handle a 5K external display, would have required updating the Lightning spec, getting new circuitry, new cables, an updated connector maybe.
Something about Lightning would have had to change to support that much bandwidth.
Rather than make that change, they decided to just go to USB-C because they could already do it.
I'm a little curious, and I didn't ask this, I didn't really have time, but from the software side, it seems like a pretty big decision to make for...
such a probably rare use case like i don't think there's that many people doing external monitor work on 5k monitors with ipads maybe that's because they there wasn't a good way to do it before but i don't know i did verify though so the new the usb c port on the ipads does output full 5k at 60 hertz without any dance down scaling in transit so like it's it's actually full bandwidth oh interesting and it's usb 3.1 gen 2 so
So the old ones were Gen 1, this is Gen 2.
Oh, I also asked, like, I mentioned this is the first port transition I think that Apple has had in modern history that has no backwards compatibility adapters.
If you have Lightning devices, you can't connect them to the iPad Pro at all through anything.
Like,
When they went dock to Lightning, there were dongles.
When they went USB-C to A, or A to C, there are dongles.
When they went Firewire, 400 to 800, there were adapters.
It seems like they, you know, Thunderbolt, there's always been adapters.
I don't think there's ever been a time when in one generation they've changed a port and all the old stuff could not even be adapted to it.
So if you have Lightning docks or Lightning audio garbage peripherals or anything like that, you just can't plug them in here.
What about the adapter you just talked about using for the pencil?
Oh.
I was going to say that the lightning cables are like the wrong gender plug, but I didn't think about that.
But I'm guessing it won't work for the same reason.
Because I asked this, and I got a surprisingly technical-oriented answer of basically the way you would have to negotiate what's plugged into it.
It would be very hard to design that kind of adapter.
Yeah.
So it sounds like it's not in the cards.
The impression I got is that it's not that they just haven't shipped the dongle yet.
It sounds like they're not going to.
Back up a second.
I think I missed your answer before of like, are there any disadvantages to going from lightning to USB-C?
And you described your examples of downgrades, but did Apple say anything?
Did they have anything to offer?
Not really.
Just making sure that we get their non-answer on the record.
Again, a lot of this stuff is going to be me asking a very probing question and getting not really the answer I was looking for, but other interesting information, at least.
The USB-C monitor one, the XFAR monitor one, I'm sure is 100% true and makes some kind of sense, but as you noted, that is a rare enough use case that I have to think strategically that their
It's not just that.
That's the reason they gave you, and it is a reason, and it may be an important reason for some people, but to completely ditch Lightning for USBC has to be part of some larger, strategic, longer-reaching thing.
I'm surprised they didn't give this answer.
They believe long-term...
the number of things that you can do with usbc on an ipad is greater than the number you'll ever be able to do with lightning so it's not just about external monitors it's basically about you know as we've all said like going to a standard port that has more capabilities uh whose capabilities have been expanded within the same connector and parameters and probably will be like at a certain point i'm sure the ipad pros are gonna you know have thunderbolt if they possibly can just because
it's the same connector and they'll just creep up there like that's that's the more strategic answer that i guess they didn't give because it hints at future things that haven't been announced and then you would have come out and say oh apple promises new you know usbc peripherals to do these amazing things instead they just gave you the one concrete use case for this ipad pro that they have announced and it's a real thing you can do external video and they're just going to say you know use your imagination but we're not going to talk about that other stuff
I also asked a lot about like USB-C hubs and power and things like that.
And I got to say, it was all good stuff, basically.
So number one, right here, I'm going to knock on the microphone here.
I finally have my little USB-C power brick from Apple.
And for some reason that the people I spoke to today weren't aware of, you can't buy it separately.
I don't know why.
I'm guessing this isn't a temporary oversight.
They didn't seem to think this was a decision.
It sounded like it was just like, oops, that should be available separately.
But it is a wonderful little power adapter.
It is approximately the same volume as the old iPad little 10-watt brick that came with pretty much all iPads before this.
It's a slightly different shape, but it's about the same total size.
And that makes it about slightly larger than the Auki brand one that I got from Amazon recently that also is an 18 watt USB PD charger, but it's probably built with like, you know, sawdust and cats.
So I would much rather trust the Apple one.
I would love to get a few more of these.
But basically, it's a wonderful little power adapter.
It's 18 watts.
I also asked if the previous iPad Pros added fast charging.
But if you looked at actual time tests of people doing fast charge tests, it seemed like they weren't drawing that much power through the fast chargers.
The regular brick is 10 to 12 watts, depending on which one you have.
And it seemed like the previous ones were not drawing a whole lot more than that, even in fast charge mode.
So I asked if the new one has more, like, what is the maximum wattage that it will fast charge at?
And was told that it can go as high as 45 watts.
which is awesome.
To be able to charge that quickly.
That being said, I've been trying to drain the battery of mine over the last hour so I can see that.
I'm down to 64%, and it will only charge.
I have a little power measuring thingy, and it will only pull about 27 watts at this rate, which is still way better than I think it was before, which I would estimate it closer to the 15 to 18 range before.
What have you got it plugged into?
Yeah.
i have a plugable usb power monitor uh and it's going to an apple uh you know 62 watt power brick so anyway so it will fast charge faster i don't know how much faster yet but it does seem like it's going to at least be significant and if the 45 watt figure was was correct that will be very significant indeed
it apparently will charge 7.5 Watts outbound.
So if you plug something into it, it can supply up to 7.5 Watts, which is massive.
That's great.
And I thought for like, some of the reviews were a little bit spotty on like what would work and what didn't.
Um, so I brought my trusty sound devices, USB pre to, I actually brought it to the briefing with a USB C cable.
And so I can plug it in and see if it worked.
And sure enough, uh,
The previous iPad 10.5 with the lightning USB adapter things would not power up the USB Pre.
It would start to power up and then stop because it couldn't draw enough power.
You'd have to use the weird little two-port one that offered power pass-through with the lightning input for power and the USB port and the lightning output that they released a year and a half ago.
You'd have to use that, and that was dumb.
So sure enough, the new iPad, I plug in the USB Pre with a USB-C cable right into the side of it, and it powers up fully.
That is awesome.
Can we pause for a second?
What was the look of the Apple employees in the room when you say, one moment, please, and bust out a USB Pre 2, which if you've not seen one, is like the size of a relatively large or at least relatively thick paperback novel.
And you say, hold on, please.
I would like to plug this into the iPad Pro.
Were they like, what the hell are you doing?
As we covered before, physical access to iOS devices does not trump all security.
In fact, all iOS devices are designed to resist physical attacks.
So they're like, go ahead, plug your little toy thing into your iPad.
You're not going to crack it, probably, we hope.
I asked first.
I will say it was less of a weird look than when I took out the kitchen scale to weight the smart keyboard.
oh my word you could have just asked them they might have had the weight on a spec sheet they didn't i did and they didn't um so anyway um i asked about the usb mass storage jacks has because this is this is one thing that every review has cited as a thing because it is it's it's an obvious flaw in like
Here you have this device that is really a computer replacement in a lot of different ways.
Not in all ways, and not in some big ways, but it is, in a lot of ways, a computer replacement.
And you have this amazing hardware that can now do things with the USB-C ecosystem.
And it seems really weird that...
The one thing that I think a lot of iPad owners have had to do before and have hit a wall with is like, oh, I have this thumb drive.
I want to import the presentation into Keynote or something.
Or I have this sound recorder or this camera that recorded stuff onto an SD card that I want to get onto my iPad.
And the only way it supported any of that stuff to date is, and still supports it today, is it can import photos from photo storage, whether it's a card or whatever, into the Apple Photos app.
That's it.
And the hardware support is there for more than that.
Third-party apps are able... There's a few things.
I think Jason's talked about this before.
There's a few, I don't know, SanDisk things or something, some brand that sells thumb drives that can work with your iPad.
But that's because they have a custom app that is basically directly accessing the USB port and writing its own file access stuff, basically.
And that's stupid.
They shouldn't need to do that.
And so I did ask, like, is this a deliberate choice not to offer this or is just kind of like you haven't gotten there yet?
And of course, you know, that is implicitly a question about future Apple products.
So I didn't really get a straight answer, but I did get, you know, questions like, what would you use that for?
And so it does seem to be the kind of thing... You had answers for that, right?
Of course it did.
So it didn't seem like the kind of thing that they were being dismissive about.
It seemed like they didn't want to tell me what's coming in the future, but that that probably is coming in the future.
That's kind of how it seemed to me.
They didn't give anything away, of course, but I would guess... The way I would characterize their interest in the question, I would guess like...
It probably is not an opinionated choice to say, no, we don't want anyone to ever access mass storage devices.
That's probably not the case.
Steve Trouten-Smith on Twitter was saying that it's so easy to do.
Apple itself, since they write the OS and they have access to the OS, it would be very easy for them to put a very simple driver in so that the Files app could see all of your USB mass storage.
And I surmise the fact that they haven't is just because that's one of the many things that we all think got kicked out of iOS 12 down the road to iOS 13.
And due to the way Apple's release cycles work, a feature like that, even though it would be in terms of code, you know, like, surely is already done.
It's like, well, you could just release that in a point release of iOS 12.
They still could do that, but Apple's philosophy is like...
quote-unquote major features and major new functionality go in the big releases.
There's been a few rare occasions where they've released major functionality in the point release, but for the most part, it might seem like, oh, it's so trivial to do, just throw it into iOS 12, but you don't know how that's going to perturb iOS 12.
And really, you want iOS 12 to get more stable as the point releases increase.
So it's just safer and more in keeping with Apple's release philosophy to put that in 2013.
No matter how trivial it might be, along with all the other much less trivial stuff that builds on that.
So I fully expect to see it in iOS 13.
And even though we're disappointed that they don't just sneak it out in a point release, we'll live, we'll wait.
Yeah, I mean, it seems like the kind of thing that if they're going to do a major update to iOS to...
even further increase productivity of iPad stuff.
That seemed like a low-hanging fruit.
I know it isn't super simple in the sense that you probably don't want to have people opening files directly off the card, because then what happens if they eject the card?
So you probably want to have it copy the files over first or something, but have some kind of interface and method for that.
you'll have to unmount it first yeah right safely eject your card there are a lot of implications for apps and all sorts of like there are even though writing the code is simple and just to get it to work right right there's like a you know one day of work for steve troutensmith the implications that that has for the whole rest of the system and the applications and everything like that takes much more thought and probably relies on stuff that's been done in ios 12 13 and everything like that so
It does make some kind of sense that they wouldn't try to rush that out to you.
And they're not going to tell you that it got booted out of iOS 12 or else.
So we'll just wait for what they have to say in 13.
We are sponsored this week by Marine Layer.
For 15% off your first order, visit MarineLayer.com and use code ATP at checkout.
Marine Layer makes clothes that make it easy to get dressed in the morning.
This is the stuff that's at the top of your rotation.
Basically, the first shirt you grab from your stack when you have all the clean laundry and you put it on and you think, wow, I look pretty good today.
They specialize in really soft fabrics.
And when I say their stuff is soft, I really, really mean soft.
It isn't just like, oh, this feels nice, soft.
It's like, whoa, how did they make this?
I'm never taking it off kind of soft.
Because they found out that the softest t-shirts come from trees and tree fibers.
So they figured out that Micromodal, which is found in Marine Layer's signature fabric, it's made from recycled beech wood.
The pulp production is self-sufficient, which makes their tees sustainable, eco-friendly, and so incredibly soft.
you can try it out because their return policy is also insanely good you can return pretty much anything for up to a year they really stand by their clothes and all of this is brought to you with free shipping and free returns on all u.s orders now i now have some marine layer clothes our saleswoman jesse had some last time to tell us about now i'm telling you i have some now too and i gotta say it's the real deal they are really really soft they feel great they fit nicely they're pretty cool i gotta say i'm pretty impressed
See for yourself at MarineLayer.com and you can get 15% off your first order with code ATP at checkout.
Once again, MarineLayer.com and use code ATP for 15% off your first order.
Thank you so much to Marine Layer for making really soft shirts and for sponsoring our show.
A few more miscellaneous things here.
I'm going to try to go through these quickly because it's getting kind of boring.
The new USB-C to headphone adapter is a standard USB audio device.
Works with Macs, works with anything.
You can plug it into a hub, which is interesting because one question I asked is like,
what are people supposed to do if they want to listen to headphones and charge it at the same time?
And the answer basically is, you can now use hubs for that, which is not a great answer.
I wish there were better solutions, but that is unanswered in the sense that all standard USB-C hubs work.
And as long as they are standards-based, they should and generally will work.
So...
If you want to have charging while having something else plugged in, you can do that the same way Casey's doing it with his dumb 12x laptop.
You have a power pass-through hub, and you plug the power cable into the power pass-through port, and then you can plug whatever else you want into the other ports the hub offers.
Which is way better than the old like, you know, weird lightning thing you had to buy from Belkin to do this on the iPhone.
Like, you know, it's it's still a dongle.
It's still a hub, but it's less horrible than other ones, I guess.
So you can hog the one USB-C pass-through port.
that's not used for power and use it for your headphones.
It also would have been better if they made a USB-A to headphone adapter because most of those, like as we pointed out, most of those hubs don't let you multiply your USB-C hubs.
You usually just get one in and one out, but there's usually tons of USB-A anyway.
Yeah, exactly.
Basically, the answer to a lot of my like, what's the official way to do this now?
Or what should people do to solve this issue?
The answer to a lot of that was basically USB-C hubs, you know, because I think Apple likes them a lot.
Like, you know, like talking to iPad people, talking to Mac people, it just seems like Apple is a big fan of USB-C hubs.
So maybe they've had better luck with theirs than I have with mine.
I hope so.
Anyway, I also asked, why just one USB-C port?
For this exact reason, it seems like you would want two in an ideal world.
I know Apple's not going to give us six.
Four, north, south, east, west.
There you go.
It wouldn't be bad to have two because then you could have power input along with a peripheral of some kind, whether it's headphones or something else.
That seems like a fairly common thing.
If you're going to use the port at all, you probably want two of them.
Right, Casey?
Oh, yeah.
Two would be lovely.
It would be 100% more.
Yeah.
So anyway, otherwise, yeah, I think it covers all the USB-C stuff.
What was their answer to the why isn't there two?
Oh, you know, noncommittal like...
What number of ports would you like?
Why?
I don't mind that.
In these very few chances I've had to talk to people at Apple in this kind of capacity, I think about half the value of it is for me to get answers to little nitpicky questions.
The other half of the value is for me to make my case to people who are pretty strong decision makers probably in these areas to say like,
here's something I care about that I would like you to address, right?
And I really... I take that opportunity very seriously, and I really treasure the chance to do it, as I'm sure.
I see you coming a mile away.
It's like, if Mark Weber asks a question you don't want to answer, just ask him what he thinks about it.
And then he'll go off for 10 minutes.
But, you know, look, Apple's a company of smart people who argue with each other and try to figure out what's right to do, right?
And so, like, if I can...
give a counter argument or an argument to why something is a good idea or why something should change or should be done i feel like they respect that yeah i feel like multiple usb ports are an inevitability in the ipad line so you know they they obviously know more they know their future plans so maybe there have been testing for the past six months an ipad with four usb but it's inevitable like you can't especially as they get larger if they especially when they go to like the third size and they start getting big enough you know like it's it's going to happen
But not this year and probably not next year and probably not the year after that.
So we'll have to wait a while.
But them asking you about it is a strong assent you're going to get is that this is a thing we've already thought about.
And we'd love to hear your thoughts on, you know, because it's the same thing with the USB mass storage.
What would you use that for?
That's interesting.
Oh, yeah.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Very interesting.
Yeah.
I asked a lot of questions about the Apple Pencil.
uh one of the things i asked i did try to pick up the ipad by the pencil very carefully like over a couch and you can't do it but you can almost do it um it doesn't it isn't as firmly held on there as i would have liked but it is pretty firmly on there i'm
As a couple of the reviews have pointed out, I think the main vulnerability is if you push it side to side as opposed to just pulling it straight off, it'll move a lot more easily.
Just like MagSafe.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's just kind of like the physics of how magnets and stuff work.
So anyway, one thing I noticed about the new pencil design is that I've seen a lot of Apple Pencils in the wild where people have some kind of
ergonomic grip on them whether it's something fancy like what mike has like this like metal barrel around the whole thing or whether it's like one of those like rubber triangle things that we all had in school like make pencils easier to hold you know i'm talking about yeah i mentioned that a couple weeks ago when i was talking about how the apple pencil is designed as an ideal solid and not as a thing that fits in people's hands um and when i saw the magnetic thing that solves the problem i wrote about the pencil i immediately thought
That solves a whole mess of problems but causes one that didn't exist before, which is now you can't have a cool ergonomic rubber grip thing, but then how the hell do you charge it?
Yeah, exactly.
I asked basically how much thickness can you add to the pencil before it stops charging?
And the answer was not much.
The answer is zero.
Do not do that.
It wasn't zero, but it's on the order of one or two millimeters.
So you could maybe do a vinyl wrap, but not like a case or not like a grip or anything like that.
Anything like that is going to make it too far from the inductive charger to charge.
This is starting to get into nightmare territory, but you got to have something that is kind of like a creature that opens up.
like that it's like a rubber thing with like you know they like those toys that are like they're like rubber with with metal armatures inside them like that it would open up so you could attach it and there would just be a thin film between it and then when you take it off the little nightmare creature thing clamps down again it's kind of like a face hugger or or a metroid or something something that that clasps your uh uh apple pencil and a death grip what is happening i can see this product in my head someone needs to make it
I also asked, can anything else charge the new pens?
Like, suppose you were, like, managing a bunch of them and you wanted to bulk charge them.
No, you can't.
Well, that aforementioned things from China will absolutely be able to charge your pens.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Yeah, because it's just inductive charging.
Like, it's not rocket science.
Someone will easily be able, unless they put DRM on the charging of some kind, some sort of security thing.
Like, I'm not talking about pairing, but just purely charging.
Someone will be able to make something that does.
Now, whether someone would want to make something that does it, like, where would you put that and what would the use case be?
I don't know, but...
technically it seems like it should definitely be possible i mean one use case would be like suppose you have like a big fleet of these like some big office or school or something yeah you want to like bulk charge all the pencils at night but it seems like now that you can just stick them on top of the ipad it seems like that's that's really the answer well that'll actually be interesting like we talked about the pencil canoes in apple stores where the pencils are so they don't need the canoes anymore because they can be stuck to it but if anyone had a need to potentially bulk charge a bunch of apple pencils it might be apple stores so maybe apple stores will have somewhere in the back room that that exact thing you just talked about
Yeah, the secret bulk pencil charger.
I asked if the charge rate is slower now that it's inductive.
I didn't get a strong answer on that, but the answer I got is a good explanation at least, or a good dodge at least.
Basically, it matters a lot less now because...
The pencil will so rarely have to charge from zero now because it's – if you can just stick it on top, it's going to be 100% charged almost every time you pick it up.
And I asked how the battery – if you're just using it continuously where you're never putting it down, you're just using it continuously, how does the battery life compare to the first pencil?
and they didn't have exact figures but they did say the battery is very slightly smaller to fit some of the new stuff inside so it might be a little bit less in that scenario but it's likely to matter a lot less because of you know it's always fully charged i'm surprised they didn't tell you do you have two pencils one always charging one in your hand battery runs out swap them day pencil night pencil
yeah apple loves for you to buy more of its peripherals exactly yeah actually i don't i don't think there's any reason or anything to prevent you from doing that besides 130 you can use two pencils at once i think i only have the one someone needs to try that the multiplayer people definitely need to try that because like so you can do like 11 touch points or something and right the pencil is probably just one other touch point i suppose there probably aren't many drawing applications that expect you to be drawing with two pencils at once but now this is the thing i need to see
We also don't know.
The Pencil, I think, uses a special type of digitizer to recognize itself.
So maybe that doesn't do more than one.
I don't know.
I also asked, we didn't really hear anything about the Pencil's performance.
It's obviously a form factor change, but is anything different about, is it more pressure sensitive?
Is it higher response rate?
Anything like that.
Is any of that stuff different?
And the answer is no.
All that stuff is the same.
And honestly, that's fine.
All that stuff, in my opinion, as a layman,
None of that stuff needed to change.
What needed to change was all this physical stuff that made it really clumsy to use.
So they did, and that's good.
I also learned that the capacitive area of it is basically the lower third of the pencil.
If you look, I think Panzerino's article had a diagram of where the magnets are in the pencil.
And basically, as soon as the magnet ends, from that point down to the tip, that whole surface is capacitive.
And if you do the double tap gesture, it doesn't have to be on the flat part.
You can be anywhere around the barrel.
As long as it's in that bottom third of the pencil, anywhere along the whole bottom of the barrel, you can double tap.
So you don't have to hold it in a certain way that puts the flat part under your index finger.
Like you can rotate it and have the flat part be anywhere and you can still have double tap access with your index finger.
And apparently, again, Steve Troutensmith on Twitter before the event even was finding pencil gesture recognizers in iOS.
One of them was a slide or like a swipe, right?
Right.
So we know that Apple just said you can tap it.
But hardware-wise, it seems, and you mentioned a capacitive area, hardware-wise, it seems like the pencil is capable of gestures.
I can kind of understand why they didn't release gestures for the pencil.
Because as hard as it is to get taps to be like...
Like Apple emphasizes very strongly in their sort of WWC style videos that if you add this to your application, you should honor the system setting.
And if you want to have custom settings, that's fine.
But like the honoring the system setting is important because if someone in the system says...
ignore taps to the pencil because say they're a nervous pencil tapper, like if that's their idle animation to use video game parlance, right?
They would constantly be doing it.
Apple says, don't make it a destructive action because if someone does it accidentally, you don't want them to delete half their document accidentally because it's a thing that you can do accidentally.
So if double tapping is a thing that you can do accidentally,
finger gestures like like sliding your finger along the pencil talk about a thing that you could do accidentally we all like adjust our grip and move our fingers around on a pencil if the entire lower third of the pencil is capacitive it would be very difficult to distinguish an intentional pencil gesture from someone just sliding their fingers around a pencil as part of the natural use so i'm kind of glad that it didn't go with gestures but hardware wise it's kind of cool that the pencil has the ability to do more and i can imagine that
That coming into like maybe it's just a custom per application thing that you can actually turn on to have more sophisticated gestures for very complicated applications where the pencil would recognize both a tap and a slide gesture.
Of course, the slide gesture immediately made me think of being able to slide my finger along my AirPods to change the volume.
Please, Apple, make that a real thing.
But yeah, so the as is the case with many things related to the iPad Pro.
as Jason so eloquently put it in something he wrote on Sex Colors.
The hardware is willing, but the software is weak.
I think I'm mostly done here.
Oh, I asked if Logitech Crown will work with the new iPad Pro.
No.
I also asked, I think my final question here that actually might be interesting.
If you notice on the very back, if you have a smart keyboard, get it out now, listener, and look like straight...
On the edge of it, if you look at the upper left and upper right keys, the tilde and the delete key, and you go straight up from there to the edge of the smart keyboard cover, there are five or six little tiny vent holes.
There's holes in the keyboard connector on the back edge of it.
And I noticed this the other day, and the new ones have it too.
And so I asked, what are those holes?
Turns out they're vent holes.
It's for the air to get out.
Yeah.
When you push down on a key, you know, if it was sealed up, it wouldn't like, it wouldn't have feedback or anything.
So like it wouldn't be able to depress particularly well.
So they're actually air holes.
It would be a pneumatic pressure keyboard where the bounce back of the key would be from the air pressure that's built up when you press down on it.
It would be a very unpleasing feeling.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, like the keyboard feel of the butterfly switches.
Probably like a little air bubble.
Yeah.
Also, on the keyboard, I don't know if this is because it's new, but it does feel like it has more feedback than mine.
But I'm guessing it's probably because it's new.
I wouldn't say it has more travel.
It doesn't.
But it does feel like the keys snap back a little bit better.
But again, I'm pretty sure that's probably just because they're new.
Also, the design of the smart keyboard is very, very different.
We're moving on to the hands-on area now.
The design is very, very different.
The old smart keyboard had a number of problems.
Number one was when you first got it, there was a pretty good chance that it wouldn't sit flat on a table.
And if that happened to you, that was often never fixed because there was some kind of problem with making it or the way the fabric would bend or whatever that made it very common.
And this happened to me where the one, it just wouldn't sit flat like that.
It just wouldn't bend right or the fabric had some flaw.
The way the new one is designed, I don't think that's going to happen.
I don't think that's going to be a problem because it's not doing the kind of crazy bends that the old one did.
So I don't think it will be the problem.
Also, the whole bottom plate of the new smart keyboard is one piece instead of before it was two.
Before you had the part that was in front of the iPad and the part that was behind it would form a little triangle.
And it could swivel on that little hinge point there, which made it also suck in your lap.
The new one sucks way less in your lap.
It's still not amazing like a laptop because the weight balance is off, but it's way better than it was.
And this is actually one of the big things for me of how I'm going to justify upgrading is that.
Because I use it in my lap a lot, and the smart keyboard is way better on your lap now than it was before.
As for the size...
I have the 12.9 here.
I don't have the 11, but I was able to play with it there.
The 11 is still right for me.
It was right for me before.
It's right for me now.
The 12.9 is really big still.
It is less big, and I would actually recommend it if you are an iPad power user.
If you really get a lot of work done on the iPad, if you multitask a lot,
if you are doing heavy productivity, if you're drawing on it, maybe you want a bigger drawing area or things like that, I would suggest checking out the 12.9 because it is no longer ridiculous.
Before, the first 12.9 was ridiculous.
It felt crazy in your hands.
It felt too big.
It just felt unwieldy.
The new one is still big, but it's smaller enough that that is less of an issue.
It's now within the realm of normalcy.
It's still too big for me, though.
For what I use my iPad for, I really need it to be a little bit smaller.
But it's closer than it's ever been.
And so if you have been meaning to check out the large size, I would suggest you do so.
If you're on the fence, maybe go to a store before you commit.
so good day yeah really good day tired actually going to the city is way nicer than it used to be because there's a shake shack in grand central now nice so i actually went there like multiple times in the last week you know you suggested them i'm thinking back to their their headphone thing and has enough room they've got a camera bump
Obviously, the camera is a little bit more important than the headphone jack.
But, you know, you can put a headphone jack bump in there.
That's what Samsung would do.
Oh, God.
You know, Apple, that's what Samsung would do.
And they'd say, exactly.
That's amazing.
Hasn't Samsung actually made a phone with a headphone bump?
I think I've seen phones in real life with a headphone bump on them.
Wouldn't surprise me.
So, Marco, you have this review unit.
What do you plan on or what did you order?
I don't recall.
And does this change what you did or were planning to order?
I have nothing ordered yet because by the time I decided to place an order, it was back-ordered.
And I'm like, all right, fine.
So I'm just going to go to the store on... What is it, Wednesday that they come out?
Yeah, I'm just going to go to the store on Wednesday and see what I can get.
What I want...
is the 11 now.
I was very much on the fence between the sizes because when we had the hands-on area, I remember being very surprised how big the 12.9 wasn't.
And I'm still surprised with it.
But now that I'm actually using it, where the 12.9 is really good, I mentioned multitasking, I mentioned productivity, big drawing area.
But
Also, the 12.9 is really good with browsing the web.
It's like web pages.
It feels like a desktop browser.
The 11-inch, well, the 10.5 and that class always kind of feel like...
It's just a big phone window that you're browsing.
A lot of websites still will display a mobile-type layout.
A lot of times you'll have to do a lot of scrolling to see something on a web page or things like that.
The 12.9 looks like you're using a desktop browser.
There's still going to be some functional differences just in the way mobile Safari works, but the viewport that you get and the scale that you get of web pages...
you feel like you're just using a desktop.
And that's really cool.
So if I did more stuff that involved reading big websites or productivity stuff, then I would go for the big one.
I don't, though.
Most of what I'm doing on the iPad is like...
Couch surfing.
Wait, that means something else, doesn't it?
Yes.
Well, I'm surfing stuff like on the couch casually.
I'm like balancing it on my knee while using the keyboard type stuff or it's sitting on my kitchen counter and I'm typing like during the day if I'm like cooking and somebody sends me a message, I go over and type a response.
And so for what I use it for, I think the 11 inch is the better size.
But one thing I do like a lot about the 12.9 besides the sheer size of webpages
is the aspect ratio.
The 11-inch is the first iPad that isn't 4x3.
It's a little bit wider.
And honestly, I didn't need it to get any wider.
I would like to get a little bit taller.
The height, since I'm usually using it in landscape because of the keyboard, the short height is usually the limiting factor of how much of a web page I can see.
So I actually would, like, seeing the 12.9 here, it's like, oh, this is actually nice to see this kind of height.
I wish the 11 inch expanded in the other direction, but, you know, that would also make it closer to square, and I know that would look weird to Apple, and so I'm not surprised it didn't.
But that is one thing, like, the 12.9 has me, like, questioning, like, hmm, if I, I kind of like this height.
Like, whenever I've been to a Microsoft store,
And I, I, I've picked up like the big 15 inch surface tablet thing.
It's really cool to have a really big tablet.
Like it feels really cool for a second and to actually like to hold it in one hand and like draw with it with the pencil with the other hand, like a big legal pad.
Like that's really cool.
I'm never going to do stuff like that in practice, but it's really cool.
So I do get kind of that feeling with 12-9, like, boy, wouldn't this be cool if I was a different kind of person than I am?
If I was actually somebody who would use like a giant pad of paper, that would be really cool.
Or who would pick up a webpage and mark it up, right?
But the reality is like, I don't mark up anything because I don't work with anybody.
Nobody ever asked me to mark up anything.
And I don't handwrite anything myself.
So that's not really a thing either.
But it is tempting to get the bigger one.
But now that I have the bigger one in hand for tonight, I've already decided like, yeah, I actually don't want the bigger one after all.
So, you know, the 11 inch just gets taller, like in the ratio that it already was taller, but it gets even taller still in that dimension.
And some of that is sacrificed to the home indicator.
Right.
You're actually losing space because the home indicator.
right so but but that's but in that that's the dimension that it also got taller right is if you have it in portrait is the home indicator eats some space but then you get that space back because it's got like 164 extra points or pixels i forget which um in that dimension um and
But overall, the 11-inch, if you're talking about a GUI and not a video or something, the safe area insets, because it's got rounded corners, eat some of your content area.
So I'm kind of glad that it got bigger in at least one dimension to partially offset the safe area insets that we all now have to deal with in anything with a UI.
The 12.9 is so big anyway that the safe area insets as a percentage are...
are less of a big deal um and as someone who watches a lot of video on the ipad if i end up getting an 11 inch that's like this ipad someday i'm kind of glad that it got wider just because that means a typical you know letterbox style wide video will make a more efficient use of the space the letterboxing will be less because it's yes
It's wetter.
So that's good for me, but I get where you're coming from with the 4x3 thing and having a more square ratio, closer to square ratio, being more versatile for a device that may be used in portrait and may be used in landscape to view content.
Yeah.
The other thing, too, is using the 12.9 just, again, for only a couple hours so far, but so much of iOS just feels like it was not designed to be this big.
and you really like that's always a problem on iPad OS to some degree but on the 12.9 it seems extreme like it seems like you just have like these you know massive empty spaces or huge like big wide text areas for no apparent reason and so the Germans love it their UI can finally fit yes yeah but like yeah definitely like the iPad OS is still not really ideal at this size everything does feel a little bit too big
and too spaced out as if they're just kind of killing space because they don't, they don't have anything to do with it yet.
Um, I wonder how that changes over time, but for, for right now, it's just like, it's everything's just really big and spread out and that works really well on web pages and, and not so well in a lot of other places.
Also, um, it's been reported elsewhere too, that like the, um, apps that were not built with 12 one SDK that just came out, um, they will, they're kind of letterbox in a special way when, when they're shown on this iPad.
Um,
almost every third-party app I've launched so far has been letterboxed in this way.
I don't know if just the App Store has not opened the gates yet for that, or if more likely developers just haven't had a chance.
I haven't updated Overcast yet for that, because I just haven't had a chance.
I've had a few days to do it.
It's going to be probably a while before most of the apps you use on the iPad are updated.
So you're going to be seeing a lot of black boxes.
So if you're thinking about maybe getting this iPad and...
I would say, A, you probably do want it.
It looks pretty cool.
So far, it's pretty awesome.
But B, maybe you shouldn't be in a huge rush to get it.
If you can't get it for a few weeks, that's fine.
Because right now, the software really isn't there yet to support it.
And it might take a while.
I think it'll be quick because everyone did all the safe area inset work for the iPhone X, and they do need to recompile a link against the 12.1 SDK, but I think it might just be a straight recompile for a lot of people to just quickly get your 12.1 update.
You've got your iPhone X version.
Do a quick validation that, yes, if you compile with the 12.1 SDK, the safe area insets save your butt on the iPad and then just ship it.
I think that's what James Thompson was saying he was doing with Peacock, that basically all he needed was rebuild.
Voila, Peacock filled the whole iPad Pro in the simulator or whatever.
Yeah, and that's probably all I'm going to have to do as well, but people don't update their iPad apps necessarily that often.
Or make them at all, Instagram.
Yeah, I'm still... God, I'm so mad at Instagram for that.
What a perfect consumption platform for Instagram, and they just refuse to do it.
But that's a separate issue, I guess.
But yeah, like...
iPad apps in general are often low priorities for companies, which is a separate problem that holds back the iPad in other ways.
But it was easy with the iPhone X when that came out.
There's huge motivation to update your app to the newest iPhone.
But when new iPads come out, especially when it's only high-end ones that are affected...
I don't think developers have as much motivation.
Not indies like me who are trying to be fancy craftspeople.
I'm talking about big companies.
How the hell is a big company going to justify doing this?
How long did it take people like Google to do split view?
I think it might be a little while before apps are meaningfully updated for this.
Speaking of split view, Apple talked about this, I think, in their developer videos as well.
Like if you have applications in split view and if one of them isn't compliant with all the safe area insets and linked against 12198, all the other applications in the split view get like Letterboxd that way.
I guess for uniformity purposes, so you don't have like one bigger than the other, they all revert to the weird letterbox black stuff around the outside mode, which is kind of disappointing because as you just pointed out, like Google is probably going to take forever to update their things.
And so if you use Google Docs in any capacity on your iOS, on your big new iPad Pro, and you do any kind of multitasking, guess what?
All your other applications are going to be.
It's not that noticeable letterboxing, but once you know it's there, it's kind of annoying that you're losing pixels because of one non-updated app.
They gave you a keyboard and a pencil.
Is that right?
Yes.
And so have you had any, any interesting impressions about either you talked about the keyboard, but like the pencil, like does the matte finish really make as big a difference as, as people have said, because when I played with it last week, I mean, I've never, I've used a pencil for 10 minutes, so it didn't make a big difference to me, but are things like the matte finish a big deal?
Do you not really care?
And also has Tiff used any of these and what were her thoughts?
She hasn't had a chance yet because she was busy tonight too, but I hope to get that done by next week to have her impressions.
Otherwise, my impression of using it for two seconds is the new one feels a lot better.
The matte finish is a very noticeable difference.
And having that flat side makes it like that's just like it's a place to put your fingers.
It's a place to orient it and like to feel like even like you can you can now feel better the transition between the flat part and when it starts to taper into the cone shape to form the point.
So like when I'm holding it, I can put a finger there on that transition between the flat and the taper and
And my middle finger on that, my index finger further up on the grip on the flat part, and my thumb on the opposite side, it's a really stable, firm grip.
It feels good.
The old pencil, you couldn't do that because it was a smooth finish, and it would then have a smooth transition into the taper.
And so it was easy to have your finger slide around on that.
And the new one, you don't have that.
The new one, your finger can feel that edge and can anchor itself in place.
And so you have like a feel orientation.
It's almost like the difference between like using a real controller versus using touch buttons, like a touch virtual D-pad on a screen for a game.
It's like you need to feel the orientation of where your fingers are to have good control.
the old pencil didn't have that so much the new one does so that i think is a huge difference in addition to all the other stuff like you know the charging and everything um and so like to me the pencil is the story of this like it's funny like i had more questions about the pencil the keyboard and the port than i did about the ipad itself like the internals of the ipad i had almost no questions about that uh
Because to me, what makes the iPad Pro useful to me is not most of its internal stuff, because the internal stuff was already great before.
It didn't really need to get any better.
It did, which is nice, it's welcome, but it was already great.
It was already way more than what I needed to do the small amount of work I do on my iPad.
What I wanted, though, was better accessories because I use a smart keyboard all the time.
I want to use the pencil and never could because it was never there.
And the accessories change this product for me.
They like now that I always have a pencil stuck to the top of it.
then maybe I'll use something like the wonderful app Linnea by icon factory to had to be like a sketch pad to doodle like a quick diagram of something when I want to show someone something or explain something or to think something through maybe some quick you know math trigonometry for a thing I'm working on in code or something like I don't use paper a lot but I do use it sometimes and I would like to have that ability whenever I'm out with my iPad to have something like that like
And with the old pencil, it was just never there.
It was never with me.
It was never charged.
It was probably somewhere buried on Tiff's desk because she at some point took it because she couldn't find hers because hers was somewhere discharged and not with her.
And so it was just always a mess.
It was such an afterthought almost the way it was designed before.
And now it's actually designed for the way people use it.
There was a period there where it seemed like Apple was not designing so many things that way.
And now I think that's changing.
I think it's changing for the better finally.
And I'm very, very happy to see that.
And the smart keyboard.
The previous smart keyboard was fine.
It wasn't great.
It was fine.
It had some issues.
And I just kind of thought, well, here's this kind of half-assed product that Apple made as an accessory.
And it's fine.
It's never going to be good.
But this is as good as I guess we're going to get.
And I'll live with it.
it wasn't until I saw the new one and used it that I realized, oh, that old one was crap because it turns out, oh, it was so tippy and wobbly in my lap and didn't cover the back and everything else.
And the new one is really nice.
The accessories make this product, really.
And they're really, really good.
Also, just like, you know,
Totally, like, subjectively, I love the new physical design of the iPad.
The new edge, my God, it looks so good.
Like, I love the flat edge so much.
It just looks awesome.
It looks modern.
Like, the old one now with its, you know, curve, everything being like the curved edge, it looks and feels really dated now.
And I don't know if I would have thought that a week ago, but certainly now it's like, oh my God, those curved edges are giant.
The iPad had the same shape since the iPad 2.
It just never changed.
It just always had that curved edge.
It looked and felt really old.
And this new one looks and feels incredibly modern and really nice.
so i'm i'm a big fan i'm curious about the pencil usage too because i'm on one hand i feel like if you're not the type of person who uses a pencil having a better place to store it is not going to change that about you like i always just thought about the storage place for the pencil was for people who who use the pencil all the time and just grumble as they use the pencil now where is that pencil or it's attached by some weird thing or it's not charged or whatever but if you're not the type of person that uses the pencil like i i predict that you're going to stick the pencil on the side of the thing
And maybe you'll get away with it because you use it as a kitchen computer and it's always just sitting there in the kitchen with the keyboard and with the pencil sitting there on top of it.
It will always be there for you.
But for anybody who carries around their iPad or uses it without a keyboard most of the time, the pencil will probably kind of get in the way.
If you weren't already using the pencil and already annoyed...
that you didn't have a good place to put it i'm not sure this will turn you into a pencil user because the use cases for the pencil as far as what you can do with it in the os are about the same as they've always been and yeah this is a better iteration of the pencil in terms of the ergonomics you just mentioned but still i don't think it changes the math so i think maybe maybe you'll get away with it because just because like
The pencil is not harming you in any way when it's sitting there on top of the thing, but I'm not sure it's going to convert people.
And as for the ergonomics of the pencil, yeah, obvious improvement, but still a long way to go to get to the ergonomic grip type thing.
And honestly, they'll never do that for the same reason, the naked robotic pencil.
You don't want to make a pencil...
that makes that decision for you and says oh well we want we think everybody wants one of those weird ergonomic grip triangular shaped rubber things no everybody doesn't want that so your best bet is to make a pencil that accepts that type of thing if you want it and does some minimal nod towards ergonomics by not being glossy by not being perfectly cylindrical so on and so forth but doesn't make all those decisions and lets people add to the pencil as needed although hearing you know hearing people talk about the pencil i have one too
I'm not a pencil person.
It sits next to my iPad, but I rarely use it.
And it just makes me feel like such an old man when I try to do anything with the pencil.
Like, you know, drawing with it or whatever.
Because I feel like drawing with a pencil, as someone who grew up drawing a lot with like plain old graphite pencils made of wood, right?
Drawing with the Apple Pencil or any other stylus type device makes me feel like it's like the equivalent of driving a car by throwing marbles into buckets attached to pulleys.
like like throw five marbles in that bucket the the bucket pulls down the rope on the pulley and the car turns left that's how distant i feel and it's like what what do you mean how does it you aren't you drawing directly on the screen it's like yeah but it's a it's a pencil thing that's skittering along glass that's not actually making marks that like an accelerometer or whatever gyroscope is detecting my angle like
compared to actually taking a graphite pencil and dragging it across a piece of the paper something that i'm just like intimately familiar with from from like my entire life and my childhood this feels so distant and that makes me an old person because you know people who grow up with this technology and use it as their tool it's what they're noodling on like their whole childhood to do drawings and stuff like that feels perfectly natural to them and this is a good iteration of it but like when you mentioned marco like oh the
Things having to do with the pencil don't need to be improved in terms of the drawing response and stuff like that.
I think they need to be improved massively.
it's not just because i'm an old man but like again go back to that responsiveness video from that tech demo for the microsoft hat or whatever um i think even artists would appreciate a 10x or 100x uh increase in responsiveness of the pencil uh but that's not the thing that really makes me feel distant is the fact that i'm it's not a little piece of graphite that i rub on paper and it leaves little you know like that's not what it is that's not what it will ever be and that's that's the advantage of it obviously that you can you know erase infinitely and
it can be a brush it can be a pencil it can be a marker like i get all that but every time i use it i just feel like i would never choose to draw this way and that's that's what makes me feel old like that that i can't i can never go away from the the actual pencil if i ever wanted to draw something right
i don't know i don't know i don't know if you you feel that way and use it like in terms of if you're just going to draw math problems or whatever would you feel like you know what i would feel better drawing this math problem on a piece of paper with a pencil even though you're not actually like it's not an artistic endeavor you're just drawing like equations and stuff or does it just feel fine to you i'm not picky about that kind of stuff so it's i really can't say not picky is uh is wonderful
We are brought to you this week by Betterment, outsmart average.
For more information, visit betterment.com slash ATP.
Betterment is the smart way to manage your money.
You're not the average investor, so why settle for the same old average investing?
With Betterment, they're an online financial advisor for people who refuse to settle for average.
They have cutting-edge technology combined with human expertise to build personalized portfolios for you and help you make more from your investments.
and they guide you along the way with advice to help you make smart financial decisions.
They bring all of this to you for one low transparent fee, so you can plan for retirement, reach your financial goals, and make the most of your money.
Don't settle for average investing.
Demand better with Betterment.
For more information, visit Betterment.com slash ATP.
Sign up today and listeners can get up to one year managed free.
Investing involves risk.
Once again, Betterment.com slash ATP and listeners can get up to one year managed free.
Thank you so much to Betterment.
Betterment, outsmart average.
Anyway, let's move on to Ask ATP.
And we have a few questions, as usual today, starting with Jonathan Bolling, who asks, in what ways has being a programmer changed the way you think in other areas in life?
What's the oddest experience you've had of applying programmer thinking to something else, especially in your personal life?
You know, I don't feel like I have a particularly awesome answer to this other than to say that
I feel like being a developer has helped me break down problems into smaller chunks better because that's a lot of times what development is all about is, you know, how do you make a podcast player?
Well, you have to download files and you need to play them.
All right, well, how do you download the files?
Well, you need to have an RSS reader and you need to go get those files.
Well, what's an RSS reader?
And you just go all the way down.
And I feel like
that sort of thinking has helped a lot but unfortunately i don't have any particular like specific stories that i think really well encapsulate this but i love the question so much so i'm hoping that one of you will save me maybe maybe marco since you've been talking a lot understandably john you can give marco a breather and and maybe is there an example of this in your life where being a developer has really changed the way you handled the situation
think so.
I think my experience is the reverse, that me being the way I am has helped me be a programmer.
It's hard to think about it and trying to come up with examples where I've applied lessons for programming in real life, but it's really the opposite.
I'm programming presents certain problems to you and to be able to solve them requires you to bring to bear your experience elsewhere in life.
At least that's how it feels to me that, that I look at a programming problem and then I use everything that I've learned from obviously from all my life programming, but also just like, you know, in my initial forays into programming, I was bringing myself to the table saying like these qualities that about, uh,
The way I work, the way I think about things, the way I operate in all aspects of life are the reason that I am suited to be a programmer, because they are useful in that context, because programming is tractable in that way, that it makes sense in that particular way.
I'm sure that's not entirely true.
I'm sure there is some case of the reverse, but...
Nothing dramatic comes to mind.
And I think I was going to offer like the same thing that you just said, Casey, like breaking a problem down to smaller pieces or whatever.
But honestly, that's not it's not as applicable in real life as you would imagine.
Like we'd like to think it is because we'd like to think that the real world is, you know, again, tractable in the same way that computers are.
but it's not there's many other variables that you don't see so i feel like the things that make me good at programming are separate from things that are useful in the real world and the overlap between them is in my experience surprisingly small it's two very different skill sets now all that said i feel like the skills that are useful that
elsewhere in the world are very important for the job of being a program because the job of being a programmer contrary to what many people think especially if you're not a programmer is not just you and the computer there are other people involved there's the person who's going to use your program presumably if there's any person other than you right there's all the people that you work with there is there's so many aspects to being a working programmer that have nothing to do with you and the computer that
mastering and becoming better at the part where you type code into the computer is such a small aspect of being a real programmer in the modern world that all the skills that you need to hold down any job really, but also to be a programmer in a real job, in a real company with real people, those skills definitely translate elsewhere in life.
And again, hopefully you're bringing those skills to your job as a programmer and not learning them on the job as a programmer because you won't be very pleasant to work with.
Marco?
I don't really have any good stories about a particular thing that I approached weirdly as a programmer in real life, but I will say that it infects the way I think all the time.
Like, anything that I have to do twice...
I'm starting to look at how can I possibly automate this into a subroutine?
How can I break this out?
I'm not going to repeat work.
I'm not going to copy and paste activity.
I'm going to actually make something that makes me never have to do this thing again, which mostly is laziness.
The big thing for me is that
I'm able to kind of feel bugs in everything.
Whenever we're in the world and something that we're interacting with or depending on or trying to use doesn't work quite right...
I can usually kind of feel intrinsically why.
I'm like, oh, they're having slave lag on their back end.
I can feel like, oh, I know this problem.
I've seen this problem.
I've caused this problem.
This is clearly like, oh, the screen didn't refresh in time, and there's a race with this other thing, and if you go back out and go back in, it'll fix that.
I can kind of feel...
by just observing the symptoms of how things are not working correctly, I kind of understand like what, what has probably happened because I've, I've dealt with so many bugs in so many things that like, you know, mostly my own code that like, I just have like a sense for bug behavior and, and I can, I can gather very quickly the behavior of a system and, and what it's doing and why it's doing it.
it doesn't make sense.
Yeah, absolutely.
You mentioned the, uh, not wanting to repeat, uh, an operation that can be automated or whatever.
I think one of the reason I gave the answer I did is that I have, uh, probably uniquely among the three of us experience being a person before computers existed in any meaningful way in their life.
Right.
So in my childhood before, certainly before computers were in my life in any fashion, like that individual people didn't have before I got my Vic 20, let's say, right.
My first computer, um,
I was already thinking in that way in terms of like doing chores and fantasizing about designing machines to do my chores.
Like it's a repetitive task and you realize that it can be automated.
And if you do it once, it seems like a waste to do it like from scratch each time.
Right.
That's, you know, thinking in terms of gadgets, again, ropes and pulleys and buckets and mechanical robots and other things like that before the world of computer is why I say that.
I brought my that self to the task of programming.
And it's like, oh, here's a realm in which I can actually do those things without having to, you know, fashion a rubber board device to, you know, clean the toilet for me or whatever.
And, you know, same deal with the, like,
finding bugs in systems or whatever, like realizing why things aren't working.
I'm realizing what's not working is the literal thing I'm trying to build out of ropes and pulleys in my backyard with sticks and figuring out why does, in my head, I imagined this would work.
But here now I am with these sticks and this rope and these hammers and this nail and whatever.
Why is it not working?
Quote-unquote debugging that physical world system and figuring it out.
I brought that to programming as well because it's a thing that, you know,
Instead of just throwing up your hands and saying, well, I thought it would work and it wouldn't.
Oh, well, fair.
Why doesn't it work or whatever?
So maybe if you don't have the experience of being a kid before computers existed, it may seem like those are skills that, you know, that come from programming.
But I think they are like ways of thinking that you bring to programming and that even if computers never existed, you would still be thinking that way about like, you know, tending the fields and like, you know, the feudal era as a surf on a farm or something.
Fair enough.
Benedict Beckman writes, given that the new 2018 iPad Pros are very likely incredibly fast and they quote unquote only have up to six gigs of RAM, if any laptop that runs Mac OS had six gigs of RAM, we would laugh about it.
So how is this possible?
Why is so little RAM okay for an iOS device?
How much would you need to put into a Mac to get the same kind of performance and whatnot?
Yeah.
So I think we actually talked about this a lot last week or the week before that.
We were talking about iOS getting swap.
I think much of that discussion holds.
We're basically like, iOS has been designed from day one.
And the entire software ecosystem has been designed from day one to be very careful with how much memory it uses.
Because...
the system has such a hard wall.
Like, if you try to take more than what is available to you, you just crash.
Like, that's it.
Like, you crash hard.
And so you have to be very careful in the way you develop things to minimize RAM usage.
Whereas on the Mac, that hasn't been the case for, like, 20 years.
And so you can... So we have bloat.
We have, you know, a combination of...
kind of negligence and sloppiness, but also we have features that are built on the assumption that you won't be constantly dumped out of RAM, and you have lots of RAM to spare.
So you have things like in the Mac and PC world,
You can have a bunch of browser tabs open, and you can switch between them and stuff, and they don't usually have to reload themselves because they've been in the background too long.
Safari does it a little bit, but for the most part, other browsers mainly don't.
Even with Safari, once it's open, it tends to stay open for that boot session.
Whereas...
On iOS, you leave a web page for a while, you come back, it has to reload.
There's all sorts of stuff like that where all of iOS is designed to have memory just expunged at any moment, to have apps really sip it very carefully, and to have the OS manage it all very strictly for you as the user.
Whereas the desktop, we haven't had that environment yet.
anytime recently and so apps use as much RAM as they need to they don't really pay much attention to it you as the user expect certain things to be the case like you expect your web pages to be there when you return to them you expect the OS not to be terminating apps in the background without your knowledge so it just the OS has just worked so differently and the software is so different that it just you can get away with a lot less on iOS even considering that it's also sharing it with video which is a whole separate thing
Yeah, and if I could get the same result as a 6 gig on an iOS device, I would say probably 16 gigs on a Mac.
Yeah, that's about right.
Yeah, and you mentioned design.
Obviously, the OS was designed for that reason, again, for reasons we discussed.
But the key part is the second part, which is not design in the evolutionary sense, but it's like the fitness criteria.
The fitness criteria for applications on iOS is...
has been survive within a RAM-constrained environment.
If you don't, no one uses your app because it crashes all the time, right?
That force has created the ecosystem of applications that we have now.
It's not as if the programmers are better or more careful.
They have no choice.
The environment is such that it's sink or swim.
Either your app is going to die and not want to run and no one will ever do it, or you will figure out how to fit into this.
Yeah.
The hard, unyielding ceiling has forced everyone to do that.
So Apple came up with the design, and everyone else is in an evolutionary environment where the only way you don't get eaten by the out-of-memory killer is figure out how to make it work.
the the fitness criteria of a mac application has been let people do powerful things with their computer there has been no monster waiting around the corner to just instantly kill you right instead people you know what the fitness criteria is uh you know do people like your application is is it good does let does it let them open a million tabs because people want to do that and if your browser suddenly quit if you open too many tabs people would move to one that didn't so
The sort of forces at work in these two environments are so different that it's not surprising that it has produced two very different breeds of applications.
All right.
Thanks to our sponsors this week.
Hover, Betterment, and Marine Layer.
And we'll see you next week.
Now the show is over.
They didn't even mean to begin.
Because it was accidental.
Accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
Accidental.
John didn't do any research.
Margo and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
It was accidental.
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
It's accidental, they didn't mean it.
i got some more questions about the ipad now that you've got it sitting there in front of you um how is the one hand and picking it up off the table uh modified by having the case on it is it easier that's i actually thought of that exact same thing because like i wonder i was worried like is my thumb gonna be on the screen
Because like normally the way I mean, I almost always carry my smart keyboard and iPad 10.5 around by basically I stick my hand, I stick my bottom three fingers of my hand into the triangle on the right side and put my index finger behind it and my thumb on the front of it and pick it up like that.
and you can still do that and it turns out at least on the 12.9 i can do that and it's you know it's a little heavier obviously but like it's fine it picks up just fine it doesn't touch the screen and uh the case still is amenable to that what do you worry about touching the screen for it's a touch screen
accidental input yeah that's pretty good about the rejection stuff and plus that you can turn it off when you carry but no i mean like laying flat on the table though like oh oh i see what you mean okay so when it's closed you're talking about picking up when it's closed you so use your ipad as a weird laptop it's so i do yeah all right so not how i use my ipad at all
It's not easy to pick up off the table one-handed.
I'll tell you that.
You've got the case on it now.
With the smart case.
Yeah, the whole folio.
With that on.
Yeah, it's easier because the folio, the side that has the keys is thicker than the side that doesn't.
So if the thick part is down,
then it's easier because you have more space before the ridge happens.
So you get your fingernails under there.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's easier if you store it keys down.
But either way, it's very hard to do one-handed without the whole thing just sliding to the right, to the direction.
I assume you didn't ask Apple about this?
No, I didn't, because I never do this.
I didn't have it on the list of questions, but you brought the kitchen scale to weigh the case.
I would have put the thing flat on the table and said, how am I supposed to pick this thing up one-handed?
You guys, it would have been a challenge.
It would be like Thor's hammer in the Avengers movie.
Everyone will gather around.
Everyone in this room is now going to try to pick this up with one hand, and we're all going to see how we do it.
I guess they can refuse to do it, but if they accept the challenge, there's some pressure for them to make it look like it's not that hard.
Of course, if they're going to use the Marco deflection technique, they would say, tell me, why do you want to pick it up with one hand?
They'd be like, just pick up the damn iPad.
I'm absolutely going to try this in the Apple store because I'm excited about the possibilities.
um i actually i think i have a little bit of now like i where i store my ipad is sitting on top of uh its case it has i know you're shocked to hear this but i have a pouch for my ipad i mean you've seen it no you're sure you don't i brought it wc every year but i brought my thing
it's it's like a waterfield design like oh yes way line pouch thingy um so anyway my ipad sits on top of it and it is squishy so even a flat ipad i feel like because it's sitting on top of a squishy thing i can dig my fingers into the squishy thing and pick it up because i pick up my ipad one-handed all the time i'm pretty sure it's the only way i pick up my ipad it is laying flat and i pick it up off of the little thing that lays on top of um so this is this is like a very important use case for me which is why i'm harping on it so i'm gonna go to an apple store and check this out um
You should you should compare it to like the naked take make the naked iPad and see if it is impossible to pick up like face down naked face down 12.9 inch iPad one hand pickup.
This is the new Olympic event.
I mean I would never I would never store my iPad face down because I would be worried about the screen getting scratched.
Of course not.
You're not a monster.
yeah that's i can't do it i can't canopy done no it's like taking the sword from the stone i i have to like slide it off the edge of the desk it's a little bit and then pick it up off the edge yeah no that's cheating yeah hurting it never mind the hurting it towards the edge of the desk is incredibly dangerous thing to do with your two thousand dollar piece of glass right i know here i'm gonna i'm gonna try if at least face up you have the camera bump hold on let me see if that's a better
uh no it just it just slides like because it's so slick go to the corner where the camera bump is see if you can get your fingernails under there i could if it wasn't sliding the whole ipad just slides across this is a friction issue yeah yeah like with the case the case solves the friction issue but uh yeah so i think the bottom line is you're gonna want this in a case
all right now to be fair to make the scientific go grab an ipad pro or some other like non rectilinear ipad and put it in the same scenario all right one second because because if you put that one face down the curve works against you right like again no one should be putting their ipads face down we're not we're not animals here
Go get the one you killed the cricket with.
What?
Now Marco is furiously digging through the mountain of boxes that are in his office right now.
Yeah, it's true.
Okay, I'm back with my 10.5.
Welcome back.
Is it in a case or anything?
Yeah, it's in the smart thing.
Smart keyboard.
All right, so...
10.5 is easy to pick up face down it's super easy face down with the case because there's a huge gap because you know the case is like kind of stepped it has like the thicker keyboard part and the thinner non-keyboard part so you can just grab that gap it's super easy let's see if it's keyboard down yeah you can still do it if it's if it's like you know case back down keyboard up you can still do it super easily by grabbing the edge yeah that works totally fine all right now let me try no case
um all right no case normal first because that should be straightforward screen up super easy yeah screen up super easy because the curve does that for you screen down can't do it yeah that's that the curve is working against you instead of for you yeah yeah
but yeah i would say if if grabbing something off the table one-handed is is a move that you do often with your ipad while it is closed uh then by all means maybe don't get this ipad or or while or while it's open if you have i guess you don't have the non-keyboard case like whatever like the regular folio smart thing that's yeah not for this model i had for previous ipads i had that one it's fine
Yeah, that's probably what I'm going to get.
My wife was concerned about your complaint about the keys facing out the back, like if you were to flip the keyboard cover around.
Does that feel as weird as you thought it would?
Let me see.
Back to this.
I'm going to juggle all these iPads for you, John.
Let's see.
Yeah, it's not as bad on the 12.9 because there's more height on the bottom.
So when you flip it around, when you put the keyboard against the back of the iPad and just try to hold it like a regular caseless iPad but with the keyboard still attached, basically the keys are facing out on the top half of what you're holding.
So if you keep your hands low and you're only holding on the bottom half, you don't really hit them.
again you're talking landscape like a crazy person who uses their ipad landscape all the time yes if you're holding it in portrait um if you're holding it like pencil side to the right then you're going to want to be holding the ipad with your left hand that will avoid pushing the keys oh well since the orientation doesn't matter you can just rotate it the other way i mean your apple logo will be upside down but you can't see that anyway true yeah
All right.
I mean, that's, yeah, we're going to go to the Apple store and check it out.
The ability to rotate it so that whatever hand you're using to grip it is gripping the non-keyboard section of the thing seems like it'd be good.
Yeah.
So, John, remind me, you have not ordered anything as yet because you want to go to the Apple store, as you just mentioned?
I ordered a homework laptop.
Oh?
Yeah, MacBook Air.
I told you I was going to get that.
So I've ordered the new MacBook Air.
What did I get?
Specking it out was so painful.
I have a bunch of stuff in the notes that I guess we'll talk about next week about the relative prices and power of the various products in Apple's lineup, at least the portable-ish ones.
But when specking it out, like I don't –
I don't want to pay a lot for this muffler and I want to pay a lot for a homework laptop.
But... Reference acknowledged.
I also don't want to... You don't want to buy something... I want this thing to last a long time.
I don't want it to... I just want this to be the last homework laptop I ever have to buy for at least one of my kids.
He's a freshman in high school.
He can go through four years of high school with this laptop.
It'll be fine.
Because all they're using is Google Docs.
I'm like, why can't you just use it on your iPad?
They're like... They make a groaning noise.
Anyway...
So I don't want to buy a new laptop.
So I don't want to get it with the minimum, minimum specs.
And the minimum specs are low.
Like 128 gig SSD is not like the default one or the lowest one.
Yes.
That's not enough to do anything.
Like both of these kids have devices they take photos on.
And both of them...
you know, have enough photos that they're both going to have accounts on this thing.
And if they both allow their photos, things to run, and even if they put optimized storage, quote unquote, they're going to fill the desk with their, put their photos.
And it's like, well, maybe don't let them bring the photos on.
Like they need them.
The thing is for school assignments these days, they need photos.
Like they take photos, like the school assignment is like, get a photo of your family and do it.
Like,
They're going to need their photo collections on there.
So they're going to have photos on there.
And they're going to like, this is what I'm thinking about.
So I had to up the SSD, but I'm not going to pay for a 1.5 terabyte SSD.
Now it's like expensive as a MacBook Pro.
So all I could do was 512, which is like too much money because Apple charging is arm alike for the charge.
But I could not buy this thing with 128.
So I got a 512 gig SSD, which I feel like is going to be tight for two kids with photos.
Uh, but it's enough that I feel like we'll get by and maybe Apple actually improve his optimized storage thing and photos someday and not have it eat all my disk space.
Um, and then for Ram, I had to get 16 because from my experience, having these two kids log into, uh, my wife's iMac, which also has 16 gigs of Ram.
You get three people logging in, four people, 16 gigs, it starts to get stressed, two people.
It can handle it.
Eight is too little.
So I got 16 gigs, 512, and those are basically the only choices you have because you don't get to pick CPU or anything like that.
And I got AppleCare because, again, my children have destroyed the 2011 MacBook Air that they had, eventually totally killing it.
So, you know, I need all the help I can get in terms of keeping this thing alive.
The idea of it being dropped down the stairs is not fantastical or being stepped on.
Oh, goodness.
I'm going to become one of those dads who's reminding them exactly how much money the thing they're doing homework on costs.
Please don't break it.
Because, like, all the hand-me-down iPads, like, whatever.
Like, we knew they were going to destroy them, and they do, right?
My son just asked for a new smart cover for Christmas because he destroyed the smart cover on his iPad.
How can you destroy the smart cover?
Like, what is there to destroy?
He found a way.
It looks like it's been chewed by dogs.
Like, it's just... It's disintegrated.
It's the same age.
I think it's newer than, like, the smart covers on, like, the adults' iPads, but somehow, I don't know what he does to it.
It just...
anyway and yeah they destroyed a 2011 macbook air but that was it was a hand-me-down computer it's like you expect the whole point is you hand down the older devices to your kids and they destroy them but this is a brand new 2018 laptop that costs a ton of money and i'm just gonna say here you go kids use it for homework only don't eat near it don't leave it on your floor don't drop it down the stairs don't step on it i don't know how this is gonna go