Lunchbox on Your Face
Big day for me.
Big day for Richmond.
We took down the last of the monuments on Monument Avenue.
There's an avenue that runs through Richmond called Monument Avenue.
Guess what?
There's a bunch of monuments that used to be on it.
Last one, Robert E. Lee, trader, came down today.
I'm very excited about that.
So no more Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue, which is very good news.
Progress.
So big day.
Big day.
We should put up new ones.
It's still called Monument Avenue.
You can put monuments there.
Just don't put crappy ones.
no argument absolutely no argument at all if i say that knowing that they probably do sports team stuff which is i don't know what does that what does a hokey look like well you know as a former tour guide as the former president of the hokey ambassadors thank you very much i can tell you that a hokey i can tell you that a hokey is is me i am a hokey because i am an alumni of virginia tech you sound like a hokey you're petitioning for a monument
Yeah, I know.
I'm not petitioning for a monument for me.
Although I can tell you that the War Memorial Chapel has eight pylons above it at Virginia Tech, and the eight pylons stand for the eight virtues of Virginia Tech, which are Brotherhood Prosim, which is our Latin, which is our school motto, which is that I may serve, Leadership, Loyalty, Service, Sacrifice, Honor, and Duty.
Still got it, baby!
Woo!
all right you said duty this is a very useful skill i can walk backwards like the best of them let me tell you oh my god i guess we can't make fun of being called hokey when well marco can't because he lives in a place with a town called hicksville hey i don't live on that island that's your island sir yes you do you live on long island oh my god no i don't it's a very different place no
go find a map of long island that does not include fire island go ahead find me one it's a very different place i know i i was there this morning i had to drive through it it's a very different place i know it's hard to wrap your mind around the idea that there's a place called long island that could itself have many sub islands and one of which you live on but you do indeed live on long island
It's not called Long Islands.
I'm not arguing that, but I'm telling you there are a bunch of islands and they're all part of a place called Long Island.
And if you get a map of Long Island, it will include all those other little islands.
There's a bunch of islands in a place called New York.
And I happen to be in New York.
Oh, no, no.
Are you on Long Island?
No, I'm on Fire Island.
Yeah, that's on Long Island, right?
no no it's not island it is okay different island entirely here's the thing strictly speaking marco is correct however however he's not correct in any form no no i think colloquially or in any reasonable measure john is correct because yeah you live on long island of course you do like yes strictly speaking it's a different island whatever it's like that's not how geography works like the name of the place because it has the word island and it doesn't suddenly exclude other things that are islands that's not how geography works at all it's just it's just a place name
Shouldn't the person who lives here be able to be the authority on what this is called?
Tiff would agree with me because she was born there and she will agree.
All right.
I have an important question.
Do we live on Long Island?
No, it's a different island.
It's a different island.
It has a different name.
They're two different islands and they're islands.
So they're surrounded by water.
So they're distinctly different from each other.
We live adjacent to Long Island.
And for the record, where are you from?
I'm from Long Island.
Thank you so much.
I mean, Manhattan's not Long Island.
It's an island next to Long Island.
That's what I said.
Suck it, Syracuse.
How could I not know?
Did you know that Dave Matthews Band is a jam band?
Hey, so anyway, something that we can all agree on.
It is September, which means it is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
And for the month of September, the three of us who are all members of Relay FM, we try to join in with Relay and do a lot of fundraising for St.
Jude Children's Research Hospital.
What is St.
Jude?
Hey, well, if you live in a backwards ass country like we do, you have to pay for health care like a lot.
And if you have a really sick kid, that can be—well, first of all, having a sick kid is ruinous to begin with.
But if you have a kid that's been stricken with cancer, you can take them to St.
Jude.
And if St.
Jude treats them, not only will they treat your kid for free, they will help you travel and pay for it.
They will give you your food for free.
They will do all of these amazing things, and they will do it at no cost to you.
Well, how do they do that?
It's because of people like us, listeners and hosts of this very program.
And it's because of the generosity and donations of all of you that are listening to my voice right now that kids are getting healthy and not dying due to childhood cancer.
Treatments invented at St.
Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20%.
to more than 80% since St.
Jude opened.
With one in five children not surviving, St.
Jude won't stop until no child dies from cancer, but they need our support.
Now, let me tell you a quick story.
Last episode, a week ahead of schedule, John decided to do his donation, which meant the two of us needed to do our donations because we try to do this as a unit.
We each donated, well, two slackers donated $7,000 and the one true host donated $7,001 to St.
Jude Children's Research Hospital.
However, since then...
There have been two extremely noteworthy donations I'd like to call out.
I have not heard from either of these people, but if you would like to reach out, please reach out to me.
The first was an anonymous donor who left the message asterisk trolling asterisk Casey asterisk for asterisk the asterisk kids asterisk.
Who donated $10,001, which is genuinely, as much as I'm being silly right now, that is genuinely an immense amount of money.
And I am extremely thankful for that.
And that happened within like 24 hours, I think, of us releasing the last show.
Truly a sticker worthy amount.
Oh, absolutely.
Five digits worth of stickers.
Yep, absolutely.
So please, I'm really being serious.
Reach out to me, caseless.com slash contact.
Please reach out to me and let me know if that is you.
Send me a picture of your donation receipt or what have you.
Because remember, Casey said, anyone who beats the top amount, whatever the top amount is at the time.
So at the time this was done, the top amount was $7,001.
So $10,001 handily beats it.
And that means it is eligible for stickers.
And
Anybody who beats the current top scorer, according to Casey's rules this year, will get stickers if they write him.
Yep, that is correct.
And then not too long after this $10,001 donation, which again is amazing, then...
Apparently, not only can humans donate, but canines can as well, because Gus the Dog donated $15,000.
That's like eight of John's first Honda Civic.
It's $15,000 that Gus the Dog donated, and even typed out as a message, asterisk A, asterisk T, asterisk P, asterisk space, ampersand, ampersand.
So Gus the dog, I know you probably can't understand me, although, hey, you donated 15 grand, so you must understand more than I expect.
If you or anonymous want to send me a picture of your receipt and reach out, I will send stickers.
I don't care where you are in the world.
I will find a way to get them to you.
And if you're not Gus the dog and you're not the anonymous person trolling Casey for the kids, please, please, if you have even but a few dollars to scrape together.
stjude.org slash ATP.
S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash ATP.
Marco, this is your cue to give the spiel since it is next week that we might be having all of this become very relevant.
Yes, this is... Look, this is the season of Apple nerds spending absurd amounts of money on new gear, some of which we might need, most of which we probably don't need.
And when we buy our new gear, we...
have this, you know, purchase attachment thing that happens as, you know, this is the whole idea of like extended warranties and accessories for your new car and the fancy floor mats and all this stuff.
When you buy something expensive, you're more likely to throw away additional chunks of money on things for your expensive thing, whether it's upgrades to the next storage size or a nice new, you know, Apple silicone or leather case or, you know, buying the Apple care for your new phone or watch or whatever, maybe getting the steel watch or getting a cool band for it or something like that.
there's all these opportunities to not only spend a lot of money on the thing, but spend even more money to make yourself feel even better about the thing or make the thing accessorize in a certain way or whatever.
And what I ask every year of our listeners is, I know not all of you, not even most of you can do these amazing, you know, multi-thousand dollar donations.
Like that's an amazing thing.
And I'm glad we have any of our listeners who can do that.
But, you know, obviously I don't expect everyone to be able to do that.
I do know, though, that you're all going to go out and drop like $100 for the next storage size up.
Or you're going to drop $150 for the next AppleCare or whatever.
Or drop $70 on a new case without even thinking about it.
You're probably going to pay $100 in sales tax when you buy anything from Apple these days.
So what I ask you is take that size chunk of money.
If you can't do the bigger chunks of money, I understand.
But I bet you can do one of those chunks of money.
Throw in $100.
Throw in $70.
Whatever you can do, donate that to St.
Jude.
It makes a huge difference.
Even donations of that size, even smaller.
If you can only throw in $30, fine.
Do whatever you can do.
Be generous if you can, because this is an amazing cause.
It's hard...
Sometimes it's hard to know what's a good charity to donate money to.
Who can really make a difference?
Who's actually using the money well and everything?
It's really hard to beat St.
Jude for the amount of impact you can have and how important it is to people who are really in a tough spot in their life.
Having a child with cancer, both for the child and for their family, is just a really tough thing in so many ways, so many levels.
I don't even have the word to describe it.
so if you can help make that better in some way you're helping pay for treatment you're helping people you're helping fund research to help more kids survive cancer that's a huge deal to so many people and you can just like crap out a donation from what you were going to pay on sales tax on your iphone case or whatever like it's such a small deal to you and it can make such a big deal to someone else so this is a really great way to spend donate away your guilt about your apple purchases
by also sending a chunk of money in addition to sending a lot of chunks of money to apple also send a chunk of money to saint jude because they're doing really important work that money will put to very good use and it makes a very big impact in people's lives and then you can guilt-free get your new phone that you don't really necessarily need or get the steel watch because it's a little bit nicer you know as long as you also kicked over someone to saint jude that will absolve you of your guilt
That is true.
So again, stjude.org slash ATP, S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash ATP.
And just to do a quick situation report, we are at $215,674.11.
That is over a million raised in three years, which is amazing.
And hey...
One of the perks, which I will now announce since it's been made public, at $300,001, I will publish, or maybe not publish, but at least stream via Twitch one time, the lost Casey on Cars episode of the Tesla Model 3 versus Tesla Model S. So get us there.
We are only 75-ish.
Oh, excuse me.
What is that?
85?
I can't do math.
It's late.
85-ish thousand dollars away.
Let's get us there to $300,001.
at stjude.org slash ATP.
Moving right along.
Let's start with some follow up as always.
I've had a request, which I normally would absolutely ignore.
But in this case, I am allowing it.
An Australian listener reached out to me and said, Hey, you know, Australians are going through a real tough spot right now with COVID.
Vaccines seem to be getting to the point that they're pretty readily available.
So would you mind just encouraging Australians to get your shot?
Yeah.
And as you're sitting there, you're using your information phone to go to stjude.org slash ATP to donate to St.
Jude.
Imagine two birds and one stone.
Does life get better than that?
So Australians, Americans, anyone else who can, please do all the above.
Moving right along.
I have some important real-time follow-up as well.
Thanks to listener N in the chat for linking to the Wikipedia article on Long Island.
You'll notice that the map of Long Island colors Long Island geographically in red.
And you'll also notice if you click on that and make the map even bigger, that Fire Island, which is one of those skinny trips below Long Island, is not colored in red.
So Fire Island is not part of Long Island.
I'm going for a low-resolution bitmap image on Wikipedia as a deciding factor here.
No, it's clearly not colored in.
You can see some of the white.
Uh-huh, sure.
I mean, there's also other things that aren't colored in that are also part of Long Island.
As you see, there's other little white blobs there.
Those are different islands.
Uh-huh, right.
To think of the absurdity of it says, hey, what's your favorite Long Island beach?
And you say, I really love Robert Moseley.
Sorry, that's not a Long Island beach.
It's not.
That's the absurdity of where you are right now.
John, just hold on.
Since we're appealing to Wikipedia as the authority and arbiter, arbiter, whatever.
I don't think we are.
No, just hold on.
Since we are appealing to them as the adjudicator, that's what I was looking for of all these things.
Let me read to you the beginning of the second paragraph of the entry for Long Island.
Broadly speaking, Long Island may refer both to the main island and the surrounding outer barrier islands, which includes, ladies and gentlemen, Fire Island.
yeah i mean like i under i understand getting hung up on the word island this is like an episode of robot or not but don't get hung up on that like it's not it's not just the island that is long and anything that is not that island is not long island it's the name of an entire place i mean just look at like anything having to do with long island when they put a map of long island they don't remove all the little other things around those are all parts of the umbrella term long island i'm sorry it doesn't make a lot of sense that's just the way place names work
no this is like they include that because that's these are the best parts of the area so they include it's it's like when real estate listings when you have like a good neighborhood and then the like the neighborhood next to it they'll call it like you know west park slope or whatever like they'll give like a like they'll try to use the name of the nicer one for the less nice one because it increases the value of the of the houses there
So, John, since we're going down this rabbit hole and we're just going to keep digging, what is the city?
What portion of New York City do you qualify as the city?
All of New York City, all five boroughs.
Okay, so it's not just Manhattan.
It is all five boroughs.
Even just going by the boroughs, a lot of people are upset by the idea that a lot of New York City is on Long Island.
And I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.
So people in Brooklyn, should they say that they live on Long Island?
They do.
That's where they live.
I mean, they live in Brooklyn, too, and they also live in New York City.
So people from Brooklyn are called... So somebody from Brooklyn, they could say they're a Long Islander?
Sure.
And you'd be okay with that?
Yeah.
I'm surprised.
I mean, but I bet they would probably say they were from Brooklyn because there's a primacy of pride of place that, you know, there's sort of a hierarchy of where you want to say you're from, but...
be technically accurate i mean they could say they're from new york too but and that would be true they're also from new york but they probably wouldn't lead with that unless they're you know we've done all this before like when you say you're from new york versus the united states versus brooklyn versus long island so somebody in brooklyn shouldn't say they're from island because brooklyn is like a nicer place name but they would be legitimately on the geographic feature of long island so there the geographic feature boundary matters but when defining fire on the geographic feature boundary doesn't matter
I know, I'm saying that the geography of Long Island, as the thing that Casey just read, is the whole conglomeration of crap.
Like, I know it says island in the name, and you're just dying to make it one island.
It says, in quotes, the phrase Long Island may refer to that whole area.
It doesn't say it is.
And it does refer to.
Obviously, you are referring to it, so it may.
But that doesn't make it correct.
At least we can all just agree to dump on Staten Island, which is not part of Long Island, and...
really people wish it was really should be part of new jersey i mean it's it's if you look at the map it's kind of ridiculous staten island is part of new york it's not not i i i don't i think staten island gets a lot of crap and a lot of garbage from new york city literally um but but yeah it's kind of the the outlier in many ways
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All right, let's move on.
Apple delayed controversial child protection features after privacy outcry.
This is an article from The Verge.
Apple has a quote.
Last month, we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them and limit the spread of child sexual abuse material.
Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.
I think that's good.
I don't have extremely strong feelings about this.
Other than to say, hey, Apple, do you know what?
Sometimes doing things in public out loud is helpful.
Who knew?
Maybe you should consider it sometime.
I'm kind of thankful that this has been delayed, just so we can finally stop talking about it.
But also...
One question, do you think this is ever going to actually ship, or is this just going to be one of those air power delays where eventually it'll just stop being talked about, and this is actually more of a cancellation, but they don't want to really quite say that yet?
I think they're going to do something, right?
Just because all their competitors and everyone else does something, does a lot more than Apple does, as evidenced by how much of this stuff they catch.
So Apple has to eventually do something.
Do they have to do any of the specific things that they described here?
No, but...
I don't think they're just going to say, eh, never mind.
We're fine the way we are.
We don't need to do anything.
So what it is that they do eventually will be interesting.
I hope one of the things they took away from this, as we discussed on many past episodes, is that their notion of...
the most privacy-preserving approach to solving this problem does not match with the opinion of their customers' notion of what is the most privacy-preserving.
Like, I don't think, especially within the technical communities, there's any debate about what they're doing or the specifics of it, but Apple seems to think, like, everyone agrees about the facts, but Apple says, and this way preserves your privacy the best.
And the customers are saying, doesn't feel that way to us, but at least everyone agrees on what the thing is doing.
So I think this is more of a...
sort of customer fit type of thing of like, OK, well, we have our opinion and you have your opinion, but we don't want to do something that you feel like it doesn't preserve your privacy because that's what our goal is.
And so they kind of have to figure out something that everybody can agree is privacy preserving.
Or they could, the version of punting on this is like, I would just scan everything server side.
Right.
And not really make a big deal out of it because, hey, did we have any stories about this when all the other companies started scanning server side?
We don't even know when that was.
They just do it.
And it's not a big deal.
And, you know, that's that.
But Apple wants to do it better in a, quote unquote, more privacy preserving way.
And that's kind of how they got themselves into trouble.
Ultimately, I think the scanning on your device and therefore having your device be a police force or surveillance force, even though it's your hardware that you own, I think that is one of the biggest parts that offended a lot of people.
If they switch to a server-side model, that would obviously preclude end-to-end encryption.
But I think a lot of people would be okay with that trade-off.
yeah i mean like it doesn't make it like i think from a technical perspective that doesn't make any sense but i think that's what apple is learning is that it might not actually make any sense but really you are and when it comes to things like this you are in some ways beholden to uh what customers think about it right like you know and again the customer no customers are flipping out but the fact that their phones are scanning and categorizing all their photos to identify dogs airplanes you know dinner plates potatoes like the
you know this there's this open-ended um machine learning powered thing that is literally scanning and categorizing every single one of their photos and everyone's fine with that uh because it's missing that one little part of like oh we'll report back when we find a picture of a dog like you know the whole thing like if we find pictures of of a particular politician we'll report you they could totally be finding those pictures of the politician right now the only little bit they don't have haven't added is oh and by the way if you find pictures that politician
send a ping to the server or something like that all right so all the people who are upset about i don't want them to build this capability they already did and nobody cared right it's just it's anyway i don't want to rehash it all but like yeah i think they i think they need to do something and i would actually prefer that they do enable end-to-end encryption everywhere and do something like this tweaked such that there is like more broad agreement as i said with like advocacy groups researchers and you know customers i suppose and whoever the others are
that before they come out with an announcement, they've come up with something that has more features that make people feel more comfortable.
Because, you know, Apple thought they had all the features they needed to make everybody feel comfortable, and they were wrong, right?
People didn't feel comfortable.
So I think engaging in more dialogue with everybody who complained about this, now that they know who all those people are, to come up with something where they can say, okay, if we announce this, now all these other people who we didn't talk to at all or enough...
before our first announcement do we all agree that this is going to be better and i think for example you'd have to pair it with end-to-end encryption because what's the point again what's the point of doing this thing if you have access to everything server-side anyway i think that kind of pitch which is like from this point on apple literally can't look at any of your pictures but we want to catch these things so we're going to use this system and it has these safeguards that are much better than our previous safeguards and
You know, there'll be no automatic reporting and like, I don't know, like something to make people feel comfortable.
I think that is the best possible outcome of this.
I think one of the worst outcomes is for them to just get frustrated and do server side scanning, even though people would mostly be okay with that.
I would prefer to live in a world where Apple can't see my photos.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I would be willing to make the trade of them scanning device side, is what I meant to say, if I could have end-to-end encryption.
I think that's a trade I'm willing to make, although not everyone necessarily would.
right but you need you need like i think people need more more features more stop gaps more hedges against the you know uh false positives and stuff like that because what they had what they rolled out before like i said if you look at it in light of the app their performance of the app story it is not reassuring to you in any way that humans are going to review it that makes you feel like i still might get swept up in this so there obviously needs to be something sturdier than that uh to avoid false false positives
Yeah.
Uh, the one password eight beta is still a thing.
I'm still running it.
Uh, I'm still not in love, but it's not actively making me angry for the most part.
Uh, but I am happy to report, uh, this is a glowing review.
This is a tweet from a Dave.
Is it tier?
I hope I pronounced that right.
I'm sorry, Dave.
He tweeted earlier today, or maybe it was yesterday, by popular demand, today's update includes a cute little animation when entering an incorrect password.
I think you'll enjoy it, Casey Liss.
And so this is me kvetching about how in 1Password 7 the entire window would shake side to side a little bit when you entered an incorrect password.
And I use that as a silly example of what not going native does.
And so the good news is the shake is back.
The bad news is it's not the whole window.
It's just the little password entry field.
But nevertheless, small victories, my friends.
And actually somebody, I think it was Christian Selig of Apollo Reddit client fame, challenged Dave on the fact that it wasn't the whole window.
And there was a reasonable justification for that.
That was not technical.
Just in short, they thought it was less technical.
I guess less loud, for lack of a better word, to do just the input field.
But anyway, progress is being made, which is good.
I haven't done any testing with some of my other complaints yet, but I can tell you I did see the little shake earlier, which made me happy.
Does this count as you being served?
No, I don't think so.
Well, served in the sense that I have requested something and it has been served to me.
No, I'm thinking more of like the dance contest meaning.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
You certainly got better responsiveness than you get from filing feedbacks with Apple.
That's very true.
Well, slow down.
No, no, no.
I think that's an incorrect statement.
I got a response.
Right, yeah, that's that alone.
In and of itself.
That is table stakes for most people, and I did get that much.
A timely response?
First, it's the old communication pyramid we talked about on Analog, right?
So first level is, I got a response.
The second level was, it was timely.
Third level was, it was actually slightly f***ing relevant to what I was trying to say.
And where am I, fourth level now?
Fourth level was, it actually did what I wanted it to do.
So this is like a pure freaking victory for me.
And I would like to point out that I have filed two feedbacks this summer, both of them in early June, and neither of them have gotten a response.
So business as usual, same as it ever was.
All right, moving right along.
HomeKit camera, TV, picture and picture can be enabled or disabled per camera.
Which one of you, was this Marco complaining about this?
Is that right?
I was asking whether it was a thing.
I was saying it would be annoying if it happened to me, and is that a thing that you can turn off?
Yeah, John was saying it was an anti-feature to have your HomeKit camera alert you on your TV if you couldn't turn it off because John is very protective of his TV watching time.
Nobody wants that.
You're watching a show and all of a sudden another picture bloops on top of it?
I absolutely would like to know that if somebody's at my front door.
Are you kidding me?
I would too because I – so through two flues of construction, we don't have a doorbell.
And we haven't had a doorbell for like 10 years.
We do have a dog.
And so we always joke that Hopps' job is to be our doorbell.
The problem – and he's very good at it.
The problem is that he's only working for a certain part of the day and then he's off for the night.
He stops – usually his shift ends around like 8 or 9 o'clock at night.
And so if somebody comes to the door and knocks –
We don't necessarily know if we can't hear the knock, like if we're in another room far away from the door and hops is off for the night.
Like, you know, that's it.
So something like this would actually be useful.
I can't think of a time when I'm watching TV where I wouldn't want to know if somebody was at the door.
Well, I was thinking more of like – because you had security cameras.
Like if someone walks by your house and trips one of your motion lights, I don't want a little square popping up on the show that I'm watching.
Our camera philosophy here – and I said this last week, but just to reiterate a very important part of my camera philosophy.
When you're walking past my house like on the public sidewalk –
I don't want you to be able to see a camera.
I don't want there to be any sign that I have cameras.
You shouldn't even know that I have cameras until you are somewhere that you really shouldn't be.
Then I want my cameras to make themselves known in some way.
Nothing is looking at the public sidewalk or at the public street.
So that wouldn't be an issue unless somebody was under my house doing weird things.
In which case, I do want to know about it.
Yep, that's fair.
So anyway, Pinkaj Rupani writes, activity notifications are turned off by default on Apple TV.
What they showed in the keynote was doorbell notification, which is turned on by default and has actually come in handy when you have a movie night and you get delivery, for example.
Additionally, Jonathan Rogers writes, the doorbell actually rings my HomePods and can identify faces using people I've ID'd in the Photos app.
That's very cool.
I dig that.
Yeah, I wonder if it announces that.
It's like, so-and-so is at the door based on facial recognition.
That's a good Apple integration of tech.
And announcing it through the HomePods as opposed to, I don't know, the little dingy thing on your wall.
That's kind of neat.
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Can you tell me about your crappy mouse pad, please?
Yeah.
Remember this whole thing about like one side of my mouse pad wasn't working, right?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And I like rotated the mouse pad and people said, well, maybe it's the cord.
Maybe it's the desk surface.
Maybe it's this.
Maybe it's that.
Maybe your mouse has gone bad.
And I did all these experiments.
uh and i was like it just seems to be that part of the mouse pad and that part of the mouse pad was more worn than the other ones and had like a slightly different sheen to it i'm like wow it's really weird this isn't tracking and for a while now i've been like i really need to because my mouse pad is like cut from a larger mouse pad you know he carved himself from a larger spoon i don't know if either one of you get that reference nope um that was from the simpsons is that the chili cook-off that's right hey good job i haven't even gotten to that episode yet in our in our rewatch
He carved it himself from a larger spoon.
That's, I think Lenny says that.
I don't remember.
Anyway, I wanted to cut myself a new mouse pad because I have another sheet of mouse pad stuff up in the attic.
And I kept meaning to do it.
And every time I sat down on my computer and my mouse skipped around, I'm like, I really need to do this.
So finally I got a chance to do it.
I go, I cut my new, I brought my old mouse pad and put it down on top of the new one, cut myself a new mouse pad, brought it in, set it up, put it down underneath my mouse, woke up my computer, plugged everything back in.
My mouse wouldn't move at all.
on the new mouse pad cursor would not move at all i'm like all right well what's going on here like no motion zero zero motion i was like how is the mouse broken it's not the mouse pad like it's just a black you know felt fabric it's mouse pad material there's nothing wrong with it so i went through this whole debugging procedure what what what is the debugging procedure for this
Well, I mean, not moving at all is like, okay, this isn't a tracking problem, right?
And I tried it on different surfaces, put it on the, you know, the other parts of the keyboard tray, put it on the desk, put it on my leg, but it was just not moving at all.
And so I'm like, well, let's start eliminating these things here.
So first thing I did was I unplugged the mouse from the cord and connected it through Bluetooth.
and that worked i mean my bluetooth signal is crappy but anyway the mouse over bluetooth works but i don't want that i want it to be plugged in because the blue again my bluetooth signal from my distant tower is crappy so i'm like well the mouse isn't entirely broken but maybe just the wire connection is broken so i unplugged it from this cord and i got a shorter cord and plugged it into the same usb hub that this cord is in
And the mouse worked perfectly.
I'm like, well, maybe the cord is dead.
Maybe it kinked.
Maybe it got cut.
Maybe, you know, a mouse chewed through it.
Like maybe the cord is bad.
And, you know, I mean, I tried a shorter cord and it worked.
I mean, I'm kind of giving away by saying shorter, but I tried another cord, which happened to be shorter and it worked fine.
So before I realized the length was potentially an issue, I was like, well, I got another one of these mice in the attic.
I will go and get the long cord because it comes with this really long, really thin USB cord.
That's more like a mouse cord and not like a cord that you'd use to like, I don't know, charge your, you know, camera or whatever, like big, thick USB cord.
So I got that cord down.
I plugged it into the USB hub, plugged it into my mouse.
Same problem like it would it would not the same problem.
It would move a little bit but it wasn't like It's very sporadic like I'd move the mouse and maybe the mouse would twitch on the screen or whatever I'm like, okay, this is a brand new cord fresh out of the box never been used So it's got to be the USB hub, right?
So then I took it and plugged the long cord directly into the back of my computer, and that worked.
So I'm like, this cord is good.
The hub is bad.
And that's where I ended up after this process of elimination of trying all different combinations that my USB hub, which, granted, I've had since I had my cheese grater Mac Pro.
I don't know how old it is, but it's pretty old.
Apparently, it can't...
It doesn't supply enough signal strength for a very long USB cord anymore.
It can supply enough signal strength for like a three-foot cord, but not for like the six-foot cord that I have.
That's so weird.
Yeah.
Now, the question is, why did I think it was part of my mousepad?
Because all the experiments I had done before is like, if I do it on the right side of my mousepad, it jumps, and I do it on the left side, it's good.
And the best thing I can come up with is every time I did this test, I don't even know which order I did, but I probably always tested the bad area first and the good area second.
And there was probably some kind of, like, voltage ramp up or some kind of, like, the first thing that you try it on, it's jumpy.
But then when I moved to the second area, it's fine because, like, I don't know.
It's, like, whatever thing is dying inside my USB hub.
And it's super weird that the thing that was dying, like,
went totally dead uh you know the time i cut out the mouse pad and put the new one down because it wasn't moving at all right so a new usb hub it's on its way to me i just wanted to finish up that story to say it turns out it was not the mouse pad although now i have a nice new mouse pad i saved the old one too because you know of course rotate it back down
Now I have a nice new mouse pad.
I'm currently using my Logitech mouse with the little RF dongle, which I have sticking up out of the top of my Mac Pro with a USB-C to A dongle, like a little antenna.
Because if you stick that little dongle in the back of my computer, it's too far away and too close to the other USB ports.
It gets terrible signal.
But now I have my little antenna work.
So I'm using the Logitech one while I wait.
logical works great on the new mouse pad and when my new usb hub gets here which by the way i had to end up buying didn't have to but i did end up buying literally the exact same usb hub because since the time i bought that many years ago there has been no advance in usb hub technology or availability so i hope the new one uh solves all my problems i'll keep you updated
I wouldn't hold your breath.
So oftentimes one of my beloved co-hosts will put just a very, very curious line item in the show notes.
And I feel like it's happening more and more as we all get older.
But nevertheless, the next line item is as follows.
John's favorite percentage, colon, 9.6%.
What the hell are you talking about?
If you listen to the episodes like I do, you'd know.
Marco, do you know what that's about?
I don't think so.
I saw the earlier, too, and I was trying to think, what could that be?
And it seems vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it.
So we're entering the photos section of the follow-up here.
Oh, gosh.
Grouped items.
I was talking about how to organize your photos in an Ask ATP a couple weeks ago, and I said fave everything, and you can't fave all your photos, but don't fave one in a million photos.
And I was trying to think of like, I wonder what my percentage is.
So I measured.
And in my photo library, apparently I faved 9.6% of my photos.
I love that you thought we would know that.
This is a very good turn of phrase.
I thought you just meant that you really liked the percentage, 9.6%.
Very well done.
But I see now.
Percentage of favorites, which is probably a little high.
I have like 13,000 faves and 140,000 library thing.
But still, 13,000 photos over like a lifetime is way more manageable than 140,000.
It really cuts down the size of the library of photos you're dealing with.
So I would aim maybe a little bit lower than that.
But, you know, it is what it is.
All right.
And then tell me about Google drive for desktop, which is something that I really don't think I'm interested in, but maybe I am.
Well, so remember last time I talked about my photos backup strategy, I was saying how Google's backup and sync thing had just like become unable to upload my photos anymore.
Uh, recall that I had, I had it pointed at my photo library and I had it uploading to Google photos as like a fifth level backup of my photo library, just because I'm already paying for that space in Google and, you know, like might as well do it.
Right.
Um,
But it had gotten to the point where you'd run it and it would like say, OK, I'm looking at all these files and I'm trying to figure out which ones I've got and which ones I need to upload.
And it would just spend forever with like some huge number and saying looking at, you know, 700,000 files, looking at 500,000.
It would never complete.
It would never get to the point where it would upload new photos.
And so I was months and months behind in Google Photos.
If you went onto the web and looked at my Google Photos library, you see the latest photo was from ages ago because it couldn't.
It couldn't figure out what it uploaded or not from my thing.
I'm like, I don't know what to do with that.
I basically just stopped running Google backup and sync.
And I think the story I told last time is that I've forgotten that I had stopped running it.
I'm like, oh, why haven't I been running this?
And I launched it.
And I was like, oh, yeah, this is why.
Because it never actually uploads anything.
I don't know why, but I ended up looking at something on the web.
It was like, hey, try Google Drive for desktop.
And some piece of copy somewhere said, this is the replacement for Google's backup and sync.
I'm like, hmm.
Well, I was wondering why Google Backup Sync basically didn't work and would make the fan spin off my wife's computer and never actually do any useful work, and it was terrible.
Apparently, it's been replaced.
So I'm like, all right, I'll try the replacement.
So I tried the replacement.
It's called Google Drive for Desktop.
We'll put a link in the show notes.
Maybe I would avoid it because I don't want Google Drive.
It makes a little volume that is your Google Drive.
I don't want that.
All I wanted to do was look at my photo library and take the photos and upload them to Google Photos.
That's all I wanted for.
But this thing does both.
And it will import your settings from Google Backup and Sync.
So I launched the thing and it said, hey, I see you've run Backup and Sync.
Do you want me to import your settings?
I said, sure, go for it.
And it imported the settings.
And it's like, now I'm just trying to figure out what I need to backup.
And it ran for about 36 hours.
And then it said, OK, I figured out what I want to backup.
I'm going to start backing up stuff.
And it showed a bunch of progress and a number.
And that number counted down to zero.
And then it said, OK, I've uploaded everything.
Do you want me to uninstall Google Backup and Sync?
And I said, yes, please do that.
And so it uninstalled backup and sync.
And now I have Google Drive running on my wife's computer.
Yes, it has a little Google Drive icon mounted as volume that I never look at.
It's just like a network share volume.
It doesn't actually copy anything to computer, although that is an option.
But yeah, it takes like zero CPU.
It sits there.
And when new photos appear, it uploads them and says, I am uploading, you know, I have 500 photos to upload and that number counts down to zero.
And then it says, I'm done.
And it's a miracle.
I love it.
we have such low standards for google's client software well no but i'm struggling to understand you're saying you have feedback reliable feedback as to the progress of something uploading it's i mean everything's relative so it does occasionally say some errors have occurred to you like would you like to view them and you're like sure i'll view them then the other backup sync had this feature as well and what it would show me is usually a list of like five or seven files and it says these files fall below the minimum size
What I would love to do and what any good Mac app would do is I should be able to right click on those and say reveal and finder to show me where this file is.
But I'm pretty sure when it says they're below the minimum size, it means there's zero size because they don't exist.
But it insists on showing me those lists of a handful of photos that it said it couldn't upload because they're too small.
And it's weird because I think it's always skips over like the thumbnails, you know, the thumbnail layers that are just too darn small that are in the photo library.
Anyway, it seems to understand that it is uploading an Apple Photos system library because in the settings it says, you would like me to upload everything from your system photos library.
I'm like, yes, nice that you figured that out because I pointed it at the, you know, the photos library bundle folder thing, but it knows that that's the system library.
And when new pictures appear, it finds them, grabs them, and uploads them.
So I'm, despite the weird errors of it occasionally telling me that these files were below the minimum size, and the fact that there's no way to clear that error, it just constantly has this little notification that says, these five files were under the minimum size.
I'm like, okay, I don't care.
As long as you're making progress, and as long as you are, when there's nothing happening, you are idle, and you're like 0.01% CPU when I go look for an activity monitor, thumbs up.
Yeah, I'm so jealous of any system wherein you have an easily findable and actually useful progress meter.
Amazing.
Who'd have thought that that would be useful?
It's not a progress bar.
It's just a number.
And if you watch the little thing, occasionally it will do a thing.
It just shows the file name.
It's not a great app.
One of the file names it shows is called fullsizerender.jpg, which I think is just the file name that Apple Photos makes when it renders out a thing that you've done in external editor.
and for the longest time it just said full-size render.jpg and it would never seem to complete but i think it was just replacing the like essentially the table row with another full-size render.jpg table row that had the same progress indicator on it and i was afraid it wouldn't terminate but it did it did eventually terminate the number it said uploading this number the number did eventually count down to zero and then it was idle this is all i could ask for so i guess i get a few years out of this before google abandons google driver desktop and replaces it with something else
And speaking of progress meters, Chris Steckler writes, the obscure method to force your photos library to download everything to your Mac is to create a slideshow that includes all of your photos.
So in photos, library, all photos, hit command A to select all and then choose file, play slideshow.
I kid you not, writes Chris, I kid you not that you will get an
actual progress bar and it actually moves and provides you with an actual status update why apple couldn't hide a sync or refresh button to menu somewhere like they include in the mac app store is beyond me and me too chris me too i don't get it that's amazing it's
And remember that this is the alternative to going into preferences and saying, please put the originals on this Mac.
In theory, that's the way Apple wants you to do this.
If you want all your photos to be on the hard drive of your Mac, that's what that setting is for.
Download all originals.
But the problem is if you click that radio button in preferences, you have no indication whether it's doing anything about it or when it might complete.
Whereas this method, this is with that thing not checked, with just saying like, oh, you know, optimize storage or whatever.
If you want to force it to download them, try to make a slideshow with all the photos in it and play.
And then it will pull down all the, apparently all the files in that thing and give you a progress bar.
And I assume as soon as it completes that, you should rush into preferences and click originals on this Mac.
And then I guess you have to hope that it's not like purging all that stuff before it downloads them.
It's stupid.
Like, I know Apple just wants it to be like, you just check this box and you're done.
But people want to know, like, so A, are you doing anything?
And B, how long is it actually going to take?
And Photos is bad at answering those questions.
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So yesterday, today, sometime in the last 24 hours, the time is a flat circle, y'all.
Sometime in the last 24 hours, we have learned that the next Apple event, which presumably will be the iPhone event, is this upcoming Tuesday, the 14th of September at 1 p.m.
Eastern.
So as always, we need to spend some time talking about what's going to happen.
I don't know, man.
I'm not that jazzed about this.
Maybe it hasn't sank in for me yet.
I'm sure I'm going to love whatever's presented.
I'm sure I'm going to get whatever silly phone they tell me to buy.
I don't know.
There's nothing...
other than MacBook Pros, which I don't think we're going to get, that I'm like super duper.
Oh, and actually, now that I'm talking, maybe there are things I'm excited for.
So what do I really want to see?
I want to see MacBook Pros and new AirPods.
Just watch.
Next week, Casey has ordered a phone, a watch, AirPods, at least.
Seriously, I want...
I want Apple to take all my money, but I don't know if they're going to.
So, yeah, I would love to see, obviously a phone, but more importantly to me anyway, I would love to see new AirPod Pros because I'm in the market and I have been for like a year.
And I want to wait until there's a new set.
And I'd love a new MacBook Pro.
I'd love for one of my machines to be on Apple Silicon.
And at this rate, it's never going to happen.
Yeah.
I digress.
How do you want to handle this, John?
Do you want to walk through the rumors?
The very first item I put up there, I think we can dispense with this early, is MacBook Pro's question mark sad face emoji.
That's not an emoji.
That's an emoticon.
All right, you're right.
Remember at WWDC, we were like, hey, maybe there can be, maybe there'll be MacBook Pros at WWDC.
Oh, I guess they're not ready yet.
And now we just forget about them and the next event comes along and nobody's talking about MacBook Pros.
I mean, the rumor mill seems to say, like, this is, I mean, it's the iPhone event.
We all know it's the iPhone event, right?
Fine.
But there's no reason you can't also put out MacBook Pros.
Like, I really... I'm dying for M1X stuff.
That's the Apple announcement that I am most anticipating, and it just doesn't seem like it's in the cards for this event.
So I'm kind of sad about that.
But that's... I mean, set that aside, because I think there's lots of stuff that is rumored for this event that is good and interesting, and this is the iPhone event, and I get it.
You don't want to distract or whatever.
I really hope, though, that those, like, maybe...
an october event for you know monterey and the new macbook pros i'm ready for that thing to happen i just wanted to get that out there i know we're weird on the show tend to like the mac announcements i'm more excited about the mac tech uh obviously the macs going to apple silicon has been a big story and so far the apple silicon macs they put out have been amazing they just haven't been the high-end ones so i'm really hungry for the high-end stuff but it seems like i'm gonna have to wait a little longer
Yeah, I agree.
It seems, based on all the rumors and stuff, it does seem like this is not the MacBook Pro event.
This is not the M1X Mac event.
And it doesn't seem like we're going to actually be getting any Mac news at this event, which is unfortunate from those of us, like the three of us, who tend to care more about that.
But...
also not that unexpected you know yes we were expecting m1x's in june but the rumors even then kind of suggested later in the year and the iphone event almost never contains any mac news it's almost always the iphone and usually the apple watch as well and that's that's usually like the big headlining features and then they'll shove in like whatever they want to promote with those but it's usually not the mac event
So I'm not that surprised that the rumors seem to be indicating this is probably not going to be any Mac stuff here.
That being said, I am as excited as you and as impatient as you for whenever the Mac event actually happens because I love my M1 Mac mini that I'm using as my desktop right now.
But I really want more RAM and I really want more cores.
And as soon as I can get more RAM and more cores, I will get it.
And if I have to buy three small Macs this year, if I got the Mac Mini in January or February, if I have to buy the M1X Mac Mini because the Mac Mini Pro isn't out yet...
And then a few months later, buy the Mac Mini Pro and that comes out.
I'll do it because I need more cores so badly.
But I'm so happy with this thing right now.
And it was so inexpensive, like relative to other high-end Mac desktops, that I'm not going to feel bad replacing it soon.
But I really want more cores and I really want more RAM.
you really don't need to convince any listener to this program that, that you will be buying more Macs as soon as possible.
This is, there's been a large, large amount of, of past circumstance and, and evidence that that is exactly what's going to happen.
So I don't doubt it, but yeah, I'm, I'm in a similar boat, like both of my computers.
So I have a, what is a year old, uh, MacBook pro 13 inch MacBook pro, uh, four port with touch bar.
And I have an iMac pro and, uh,
Because I don't have any Apple Silicon computers that I use ever, neither of my existing computers feels bad.
But I know from the reports of every human who's ever touched an Apple Silicon Mac that both of them are actually dog slow and I just don't realize it.
So my thought process and assumption is that…
i wouldn't say the intel max are slow compared to the m1 max i will say like as i just said i am desperate for more cores and more ram because every time i do a build now that i'm using swift and swift ui oh my god i it murders my computer to do a build on my app that's true it's it's a never-ending cycle like it'll chew up whatever it'll give whatever you give to it
Oh, sure.
But because I run iStatMenus, I can see in the menu bar.
Isn't that convenient?
Here it's maximizing all my performance scores for this pretty big chunk of this build process.
So I know what it's doing.
But what I would say, the main difference, like here we are almost a year in, the main difference between the feeling of the M1 Max and the feeling of Intel Max is that the M1 Max raised the floor way up.
like stuff like common stuff that is not pushing everything to the max is faster and feels faster and is way more responsive
But when you want to push everything to the max, when you want to do a massive video encode or a massive build, Intel still wins on that front just because it has so many cores in many workloads.
Not all workloads, but many.
So it's like we've raised the floor.
We've made the low end of performance really, really high and fast and responsive.
But we haven't yet lifted the ceiling very much to make the high end much higher.
So that's what I'm waiting for, for the new, you know, upcoming higher end Apple Silicon Max.
That's what I'm looking forward to.
What can we do now?
We're doing some crazy stuff now with four performance cores.
What can we do with 12 or 40 or whatever, you know, whatever we can get?
Like, that's what I want to see.
What's the line?
You know what's cooler than a million bucks?
A billion bucks.
You know what's cooler than four cores?
A hundred cores.
I hear you.
And so my thought, like I was starting to say, my thought was I would replace the laptop first, even though it is newer, but I don't expect to have an Apple Silicon equivalent of the iMac Pro anytime soon.
So I figured I'd replace the laptop and then we'll see what I think after that.
Maybe I'll just get an external monitor for it if it really is that great.
I don't know.
So I don't want to get a two-port MacBook Pro.
I really want to replace what I've got, which is a four-port MacBook Pro.
I can take and leave the touch bar.
It doesn't bother me one way or the other.
But I really want four ports, and I don't think that that exists right now.
And I want to wait for this phantom one that's coming eventually.
Yeah.
We've probably spent too much time on this already, but I'm right there with you guys.
Well, I was going to say, I think it's funny that we spent this much time talking about Macs in our predictions for the event that we said is not going to contain Macs, but at least, listeners, this will mean that we won't have to talk about all this Mac stuff next week when this stuff has been announced, and we can actually talk about the iPhones that were presumably announced instead of talking about all the Mac stuff.
Unless they announce Mac stuff, who knows?
But looking at the list of things that are probably a good bet for our announcement, and we'll go through them in order, but it's iPhone, new Apple Watch, new AirPods, and the new iPad mini and the cheap iPad.
And that is plenty for an event, especially as we'll go through them.
We'll see that the watch is all new in theory this year.
The AirPods are all new.
The mini is making its triumphant return with an all new design.
So that's a full event there.
There's not really, you know, if they announce all that stuff that I just listed, this is a pretty good Apple event, right?
And I guess we can start with the iPhone, which presumably will be called iPhone 13, but maybe not.
But I feel like the big story here, based on the rumors, I put it as the first bullet item here, is that supposedly Apple ordered 100 million A15 chips from TSMC, which apparently is a bigger than normal initial order for like the launch of a phone.
Uh, and I mean, I guess you can read into that and say Apple thinks they're going to sell a lot of these.
There are also other explanations in that maybe the A15 is going to be used in things other than just the iPhone 13.
Maybe it's going to be used in the, the, the iPad mini, uh,
Maybe there's confusion about what things the A15 might go in.
Maybe they're announcing AR goggles that these will go in.
Like, we don't know.
We don't know what that $100 million means.
Maybe TSMC just wanted Apple to make a big order to lock in a low price.
It's very difficult to know.
But either way, it shows that Apple is A, tying up a lot of chip manufacturing capacity, and B, they seem fairly confident that they're going to sell a lot of things with A15s in them.
And one of those will presumably be the iPhone 13, which otherwise seems like a...
Not a boring year, but like, you know, the outward design looks about the same.
It's got the flat size just like the 12.
The notch is supposedly going to be smaller this year because they combined a bunch of sensors.
Larger wireless charging coils for better heat dissipation.
Stronger MagSafe magnets, a bigger battery, faster wired charging going from 20 watts to 25 watts.
Can we pause real quick right here?
I would love to see better battery life for both my watch and my phone.
Again, we talked about this last episode.
Maybe this is a self-created problem because I very rarely charge from any mechanism other than Qi charging.
But I don't know.
I feel like my phone's battery, and I have a 12 Pro, a regular-sized 12 Pro,
I feel like my battery is not great, which means Marco's must be abysmal at this point, given that you have a much smaller battery.
But I would love to see an increase in battery life in both my watch and my phone.
I tend to charge my watch for about half an hour to an hour in the middle of the day, not because I have to, but because I just have an opportunity to.
And if I don't do that, the watch typically dies not too long after dinner time.
Now, again, I have the smaller of the watches.
It is cellular, although it rarely has the occasion to be on a cellular or to have the cellular radio on.
But I don't know.
I feel like I would really love it.
We're back in that position after a couple of years off where I really would love more battery life.
And we're going to talk about it in a minute.
But if we're getting some new display technology, I'm really, really concerned that that's going to be even worse for battery life.
And I am not on board with that.
No, I think I think you're going to get so the reasons you're going to get better battery life on the iPhone are physically bigger battery, according to rumors.
Right.
So there's more, you know, more capacity in there.
Sure.
I remember last year was the first set of 5G phones and the 5G modems were not particularly good with power.
One of the rumors this year is that it will have an improved 5G cellular modem still from Qualcomm.
Apple's isn't ready yet.
And so those two things combined is that it's not the first generation 5G product with the big power-hungry 5G radio in it, and the battery is bigger.
And then I guess you could throw in there the A15 is 5 nanometer, the A14 was 7 nanometer, I think.
But anyway...
All those combined to make me think that the 13 is going to have better battery life than the 12.
Because, I mean, that was one of the knocks against the 12 when it came out.
It's like, do you really want the first 5G phone?
Everyone knows it's a little bit battery hungry.
It's why we talked about it on the past shows.
If you would disable 5G, you can get more battery life out of it just because you don't have it do the 5G stuff in it, you know, in its cell modem.
So I think you'll be happy there.
And the display, that's one of the rumors, is the display is finally going to be 120 hertz.
But the key part about the display, assuming it is still just the same OLED tech that we have now, is not the 120 hertz thing, which is kind of a battery sucker, but it's the variable refresh rate, which I think, does the current OLED screen have that?
I don't remember the current one.
No.
The watch has it.
The phone does not.
Right.
But anyway, variable refresh is that it can change the refresh rate of the display.
And if nothing is happening on the display, it can go down to one hertz, like one update per second, which is super slow.
And this is also part of the rumor of potentially having an always on display on the phone where it will just show like the time or something.
That's what the watch does.
The battery is it goes into, you know, how can you afford to keep the display on all the time?
Well, OLED, you only pay for the pixels you're lighting up.
And if the pixels you're lighting up like rarely change, like if it's basically a static image, like the time with the minutes and you can crank down the refresh rate to one hertz, that saves battery.
It also saves battery when you're staring at your phone and nothing is moving on the screen, like you're not scrolling.
The variable refresh can crank down the refresh rate to not be 120 hertz, but to be less than the 60 hertz that your phone is doing right now when you're staring at the screen.
Right.
So.
I know it might look scary that 120 hertz is going to eat your battery, but I think net net, unless you're constantly playing a game, it won't actually be updating at 120 hertz.
In fact, it should be updating it much less than your current phone 60 hertz.
So I think the phone screen is probably going to be a wash, especially if there's an option to just do 60 hertz.
Like lots of Android phones have that.
Like, do you want 120 hertz on or do you want it to just be 60?
I wonder if that setting will be in there.
Well, and I bet there will be suction option because when the 10.5 iPad came out with its 120 hertz screen, they added an accessibility option to limit it to 60 hertz.
Promotion.
Sorry, we should use Apple's marketing terms.
Yes.
Well, I'm sure we'll hear all about it next week.
But yeah, when the iPad got 120 hertz, they had an accessibility option added to limit it to 60.
And so I would expect to see that same option show up on any phone that has that capability.
yeah and this year's crop of camera stuff uh one of them is what was has been described as portrait mode in video essentially like the real-time effects that you can do for like blurring the background and finding objects and stuff apparently that that the a15 is fast enough to do that in video the rumored name for it is cinematic video possibly using lidar to better do object detection that'll be interesting the astrophotography mode rumor that we talked about over a while taking pictures of the night sky um
portrait mode using lidar apparently current portrait mode doesn't use the lidar but the new one will object detection photo filters where it can like find objects in the in the photo and apply filters just to them like just to the person or you know just to an object or whatever um else you could have those pictures that have like the red fruit inside of like the black and white picture right right yeah these are all just rumors like maybe this is all founded on the same underlying technology of hey now it's going to use lidar to pick out objects in the scene and you can do stuff with it
A better wide angle camera with autofocus.
I think, I guess the current wide angles don't have, they're just like a fixed focal distance or something.
I don't know what this rumor is about, but anyway, better wide angle camera.
The rumored new color is, it's been described as sunset gold.
I don't know if that's what they'll call it, but it's like the pictures, it doesn't look like rose gold, but it looks more like a bronzy type thing.
Anyway, that's a rumor of a potential new color.
There's the fun rumors about satellite connectivity for emergencies.
This is one that is very confused.
On the one hand, you have the people saying, oh, the iPhones have FCC registration or whatever for these radio bands that are used for satellites, but it'll only be used for emergencies.
Like if you're out of cell range and you want to do an SOS, you can connect to a satellite to do an SOS so someone can find you or whatever.
But then other people are saying, no, no, no, you don't understand.
There's just a bunch of radio bands that were previously licensed to satellite makers that are now being repurposed for cell phones.
And this radio has the capacity to use those.
So there's no satellite thing at all.
And it's really just, you know, 5G with more bands or something.
We'll find out which one of those is true, if any.
Maybe they just won't mention it all, and then we'll know this is not an issue.
But that crop of features right there, it makes for, you know, what we used to call an S generation.
It's the same case on the outside.
In this case, it's a little bit different because the notch will be smaller.
So for all the people who did little clever jokes where they hid something behind the notch in their apps, right, you've got to make sure you detect you're on the iPhone 13 and make it narrower to fit inside there.
Oh, yeah, one more thing about the narrow notch.
um the rumors and the little parts leaks and everything showed the notch being like not as wide on the phone but to do that they had to take the like the speaker that you would hold up to your ear when you talk on the phone if anyone ever talks on the phone like that anymore and doesn't you know talking to the end of their phone like i see everybody doing anyway that little speaker thing it used to be it's like a heart you look on your phone now if you have one of the newer phones it's like a horizontal slit kind of in the middle of the notch right the middle vertically speaking right
They the rumors are that they shoved that speaker towards the top of the phone to make room for like all the sensors and stuff that they kind of cram together.
And the reason I'm a little bit concerned about that is I bet a lot of cases have like a lip, right?
That goes over the overlaps the front of the phone a little bit.
And it doesn't take much to sort of blunt the volume of that little speaker.
If you have like, say, an iPhone 12 case that had a lip that didn't anticipate that the speaker would be like right up against the edge of the phone.
So that's the thing to watch for.
Obviously, Apple's new cases won't have that problem and they won't block the speaker.
But if you have an existing iPhone 12 case, assuming they're compatible or you're buying one, be aware that the lip might block the speaker.
I mean, the rumors were already that the camera bump block was going to get bigger this generation.
So chances are existing cases won't fit anyway.
like taller or like width and height wise bigger i thought the rumor was width and height but i honestly i haven't been paying that much attention to the rumors so i could be wrong it looked a similar size i think most of what i saw was that it was going to be like taller like you know skyscrapers coming out of the back of your phone that they would all be taller the plateau would be taller and the lenses would be taller but we'll see but anyway like it looks more or less like the 12 which i think you know i've had 12 for a year i i like it it's a good design i'm not getting this phone anyway but like
for a for an s generation if this was called the 12s or if it ends up being called the 13 for for a uh a revision of the previous design if it has all these features as in better cameras better software features faster cpu better battery life better display
That's a good S generation.
So I think thumbs up on this phone.
Like we talk about this every year.
It gets kind of boring, but it's like Apple makes good iPhones.
Like and setting aside the pro ones, like everything we talk about here, a lot of these are going to be pro only features like the plain 13.
If the plain 13 is to the 13 Pro the way the 12 was to the 12 Pro,
Also a great phone.
The 12 is a great phone, right?
I mean, the 12 Pro, it's honestly hard to justify the 12 Pro, except if you just want the best of the best or you like the colors or finishes better.
Just because the 12 was so great.
Same CPU, same great features.
So, you know, Apple continues to make really good iPhones.
Not a big story, kind of a dog bites man story.
But, you know, there's something to be said for consistency.
Like it's not easy every year to come out with a really good phone and Apple keeps doing it.
Yeah, I mean, this list of features or, you know, of rumored features, I mean, and honestly, these all sound fairly plausible.
Like, I don't think anything here is a massive reach.
I think this all sounds like in the realm of plausible.
Maybe the satellite stuff is...
Yes, exactly.
So I have a friend who does a lot of work on telecommunication stuff, and he had and probably still has a satellite phone that he uses in very, very rare circumstances.
And again, I haven't handled one of these phones in probably five years, but the antennas on those things were massive.
They were enormous.
And obviously, with the March of Progress and March of Time, everything gets smaller and smaller.
But
I'd be very surprised if true, honest-to-goodness satellite connectivity in the way that people are saying about it being for emergencies when you're out of cell coverage.
I'd be stunned if that really landed.
I would absolutely buy it's a bandwidth thing, or not bandwidth, a frequency thing, where it's like you said, John, the frequencies are retired now.
We're using new frequencies.
But this satellite thing, I'm super skeptical about.
Everything else, I agree with you, Marco.
Yeah, it's definitely plausible.
yeah and and if all of this or i mean heck even if half of this stuff happens and the other half is bs that's still a good that's still a solid update you know as john was saying like this is like a you know kind of like an s year maybe but i don't know some of these things i mean every year you want better battery life you want better cameras you want to be a little bit faster and you know whatever else that's that's like you know every year gets those things for the most part um but
this sounds like a pretty big upgrade to the display like if if there is 120 hertz and variable refresh rate and especially if there's the always on option to put like you know a clock or the now playing controls whatever that's a big deal that that like significantly changes how the phone looks and feels so that's actually i'm looking forward to this i think this could be a bigger year than we think
and any and you know the if the other stuff is true if we actually get like stronger mag safe faster charging like that's all just little quality of life stuff that just makes everything a little bit nicer so this sounds like a pretty good upgrade and we'll see what happens you know see what they're actually released but even if the satellite thing is bs or or misinterpreted or wrong in some way the rest of this is a solid update if the satellite thing is real and
then I can see that being a pretty nice, you know, pretty big deal because even people never end up needing satellite connectivity.
Like if you're never in the middle of nowhere and you need to be rescued, great.
But a lot of people might buy it
Just in case.
They might say, you know, occasionally we go somewhere with no cell coverage.
And what if we get stuck on the side of a mountain and need to be rescued?
Like, I can see that being an amazing thing for not only for, you know, the obvious humanitarian reason of maybe this could save a life, but also that could be good for sales because I think a lot of people would...
buy it on that just-in-case notion of like, hey, I might need this for my doomsday prep or for my weird hikes I do once every decade or whatever.
I think people would actually buy it in large numbers for that.
I absolutely agree with you there because for the longest time I was buying cellular Apple Watches, which I don't plan to do anymore and we'll probably talk about that later, but I was doing that because when I would go for a run on the off chance that I slipped and broke a leg or something, I wanted to be able to call for help and
And I was paying $15 a month as I whined and complained about many years ago on this very program.
I was paying $15 a month for that privilege of just in case.
And so, yeah, not only does it fit with what people might want to pay for and spend their money on, but in a place like California where weather doesn't exist, particularly in L.A., but to a smaller degree in the Bay Area –
You know, all those annoying people are constantly out taking pictures of the beautiful landscape there.
And it wouldn't surprise me if Apple, a very California centric company, decides, oh, we should do something about this when we're off the beaten path.
So, yeah, I think it is if you look at the technology not being plausible, which I do look at the technologies not being plausible.
But nevertheless, I think the desire is absolutely there.
Anything else on the phones?
I mean, I'm almost certainly going to get one because I'm a sucker and I do whatever Apple tells me to do.
But I mean, I'm looking forward to it tentatively.
I would love better battery life and I would love... Actually, I would love better glass.
As I've said to you, I'm never going caseless, caseless again.
But I would love to have more robust glass.
This 12 Pro I have, the front has been scratched to absolute smithereens.
And I somehow dropped the back on like...
the wood floor in my kitchen and, and lightly shattered the back of mine.
Aaron's looks like it's been through a trash compactor.
I would love to have stronger glass, even despite the fact that both of us are definitely in Iraq cases this year.
So better gorilla glass, please.
Maybe orangutan glass.
Is that an improvement?
I don't even know.
Moving on.
Apple watch seven.
This sounds very interesting to me.
Flat sides and flat display closer to the cover glass.
I'm in that.
That sounds excellent.
Part of that is also a larger display.
So the flat sides, it's obvious to say like, okay, this is a family resemblance.
The phones have flat sides.
The iPads got them a while ago.
If you put them on the watch now, Apple's devices kind of look, you know, Hey, it's a flat sided rounded rectangle.
Must be an Apple device.
Um,
And I see that angle, but I think probably the more important factor is the existing watch design, the way it curves, you know, the Airstream trailer look, leaves less area, less flat area for the display.
Like you're wasting a lot on essentially the bezels, like the curved part.
And I know there are, you know, phones that have displays in the curved parts.
I forget which manufacturer was picking that.
Maybe it was Samsung.
Yeah.
But that's...
I've never really liked that because that part of the display, like it curving away from you doesn't quite look right.
Right.
So and your other choice is to extend the display like out underneath that by moving it farther away from the surface glass.
And that doesn't feel good either.
So this is the solution.
The solution is you make the top flat and the sides flat.
You can have a larger display in the same width and height because the display goes closer to the edge and the top is very flat.
And then you can also get the display closer to the glass that it's on.
So it feels like it less like it's sunken down in there.
And that, I think, is the real benefit.
The family resemblance is nice and makes sense, but the real benefit is you get to have a bigger display with the same size watch.
That said, the sizes are supposed to be 41 millimeters and 45 millimeters.
I don't know how watch sizes work, but I think the current ones are 40 and 44.
Is that correct?
I believe that's right.
I don't know what they're measuring there.
Does that mean the watch will be physically larger by a couple of millimeters?
Or are they talking about the display?
It's confusing to me.
Based on the rumors, the rumors are that the body will be roughly the same size, but that the screens will be getting larger because they're shrinking the bezel effectively.
So I don't know.
We'll find out what happens.
Frankly,
This is what I'm most curious about.
What is the new Apple Watch design?
How does it look?
What kind of materials are they offering?
What kind of finishes and colors?
Because the little basic renders that we saw from the rumor mill did not look good to me.
really i thought they looked great well that's the other that's the other thing as as a fashion accessory the airstream trailer look for you know take it or leave it it is the iconic apple watch look because the apple watch has always looked like a rounded curve i mean it's it's physically changed many times but the the overall design has been you know a pillowy round thing of various thicknesses and this is the first time it's changed i'm i think the pillowy round thing
It doesn't look great as a watch, but it's like, oh, it's an Apple Watch.
The square-sided one, I think similar things.
Like, I don't have any particular tastes in watches, but either one of those I look at and say, yeah, they look like smartwatches because that's what they are.
Neither one of them looks any better or worse as a quote-unquote watch to me just because I see it entirely as a little computer on your wrist.
And I think having a bigger screen is a feature of a little computer on your wrist, but aesthetically speaking...
Yeah, well, we'll see what it looks like on people's when you're wearing it.
Obviously, it is flat sided.
It will be more prominent, like the curves are minimizing in some ways.
But on the other hand, it depending on how thin it is, it could be like more formal looking and less dorky.
Maybe.
I don't know.
It's very I agree that the renders look a little bit like you have an iPad strapped to your wrist, which is kind of what you do.
But I think I'd have to see these in person to see how they actually come off.
Having straight sides is
is not does not make a watch like a bad watch most watches have straight sides like that is by far the most common case shape you have the case band around the outside that and it's straight and then you have some kind of you know bevel up to the crystal which is like the cover glass or sapphire on top
that's very common for watch design.
It's like the most common shape.
Obviously, you know, it looks better when it's thinner.
It doesn't look good if it's too thick, but like overall that's common.
The reason why the Apple watch has been rounded like this, I think was twofold.
I think number one, that was the shape of iPhones at the time it was launched.
So that was like their design language.
And number two,
A straight-sided watch of the thickness that most Apple Watches are is – it looks really chunky.
It looks bad.
Like you don't want a straight-sided watch to be thicker than maybe about 12 millimeters depending on the design.
Like that's about as thick as you want.
And the Apple Watches I think are all thicker than that or at least are in the ballpark.
So –
If they can make it noticeably thinner and give it straight sides, it might look good, but there's also some challenges about that.
How will the materials wear, especially on the corner?
That's really tough.
On the current slope-sided ones, because the whole surface is curved, it hides scratches a little bit better.
If the surface is flat, you see every single scratch.
And if anything happens to the beveled edge, I mean, remember back with the iPhone 5S and 5, those beveled edges got nicked up really easily.
that's where you're going to see all the wear so i'm really curious to see how this plays out in practice both with with wear and with maybe this might alter the materials choices like maybe we might not get certain materials or colors that we had with with the outgoing design because it doesn't work or doesn't look as good with this new design who knows but that's i'm very very curious to see like materials visual design whether they're going to like
polish the bezel or the bevel or not.
And then, and then what the heck they're doing with the screens.
That all sounds probably good, but I think they're also going to have a hard time making the low end models not look cheap.
The flat sided cases are easier to manufacture.
And that's why almost every other smartwatch maker uses flat sided cases.
And as a result, a flat sided round, wrecked watch is,
from our current brains of consumers, looks like an Android watch or something.
It looks like something else.
It doesn't look like an Apple watch.
So with Apple moving into this, they're kind of redefining what an Apple watch looks like.
I hope they can do it in a way that makes it look good.
And I think they probably can.
Their history with making the Apple watch look good is pretty strong.
They've had a pretty good track record there, especially with the use of good materials and everything.
So I hope
They continue that.
But I am really, like, I'm kind of nervous for them on this because it looks like they're tackling a pretty significant challenge in making a new design language for the Apple Watch that both looks good and wears well and looks like Apple as opposed to some other cheap thing.
I think they're probably leaning on the watch bands a lot because like, I mean, the majority of the surface area of the watch is the band and Apple has done a good job sort of branding the bands.
And, you know, if you, when you see someone with an Apple watch band, even a rip off Apple watch band, it's not actually made by Apple.
That's as much an identity as like white AirPods are like the white headphones on an iPod were back in the day.
Like,
This design almost says, like, just ignore the watch body.
Like, it's all screen when viewed from the front.
When viewed from the side, it's just a flat surface that we can put a color on.
But really, it's all about the bands.
And that's going to be your fashion statement.
And the watch sort of disappears into...
I mean, that's one way this might pull off.
I'm mostly nervous about the thickness because, like you said, with the slab sides, with flat sides, if it's too thick, it can start to look like just a giant wall on your wrist.
You know, like the curves are slimming.
But if you get it down thin enough, maybe this generation won't be quite thin enough.
But if you get it down thin enough, the watch really does start to disappear and let the band do most of the talking.
Again, especially when viewed like the way you look at the watch when you're looking at the time.
I don't think you'll see anything except for the screen, which will go almost edge to edge.
You won't be able to see the sides at all.
Maybe you'll see the little rim around it, the little, the chamfered edge that was polished on the original five or whatever.
And that's the part that might nick, to your point.
Like, they have to do something with that edge to make it durable and attractive.
And in that respect, I think that even though my iPhone 12 Pro is in a case, I tried to use it without a case for, I think, like two days or however long it lasted.
The stainless steel rounded over edge of the edge of the iPhone 12 Pro, I think looks very attractive and would look great as that same edge on a watch, right?
And I don't know how durable it was.
Maybe Casey can tell me if he's nicked up that part of it.
But it seemed pretty sturdy with the surgical stainless steel and the rounded edge.
Unlike the chamfered edge, which was flat with sharp transitions to the other part,
that was easy and it was two-tone materials easy to nick up the stainless steel seems like it's rounded so there's no sort of corner to nick and it was sort of uniformly colored throughout so i'm hoping they can also do something good with that edge but yeah like these renders they get the gist of it the gist of the rumors or the parts leaks or whatever but you gotta wait to see uh you know
Well, it's two things.
One, you have to wait to see Apple's glamour shots, which only sometimes have any resemblance to reality.
And the second thing is you have to actually see the product that they ship in a store somewhere and see how it is on your wrist.
One other thing before we leave the design of this, one thing I'm actually also concerned about is I like the thick curved edge sapphire crystal.
It looks good.
And in the watch world,
Thick – they're called box crystals usually, like that shape where it kind of comes up on the edges, like it rounds up before it's like a flat top.
That's in fashion in watch design and has been for some time, like many decades, for many types of watches because it looks good and it's also highly functional.
With the crystal being very thick –
the crystal will therefore take a lot of the impact that would otherwise scratch the sides because some of those impacts will hit the crystal instead.
And, you know, the glass is pretty strong on the glass models.
The sapphire is super strong on the steel models.
And so it's actually a pretty, not only, you know, attractive, you know, kind of a retro look in some ways, but like it's also a very pragmatic design to have a thick curved edge crystal.
So if, you know, like the rumor renders of the new watch design show it with basically a flat crystal that has very little to no thickness.
And if they're extending the screen outwards and reducing the margins of the, you know, of the bevel here, bezel, I guess now it's a bezel.
I was talking about the bevel before.
It's hard to keep these things straight, John.
But anyway, I worry that they're going to like thin out and flatten the crystal and
And that will be another thing that might make it end up looking cheap.
So I really, this is a very tricky design line they're walking here.
I have faith that they tend to pull off these things well, but I'm really nervous for them on this one because they're taking on a pretty big challenge on this.
It's so fascinating listening to you talk about all these things because I basically disagree with everything you just said.
But I come from a position of not really understanding what is quote unquote correct amongst watch people because I am not a traditional watch person.
But like I'm looking at renders of this new Series 7 watch and it looks freaking great to me.
I love the way it looks.
I love the flat sides.
Now, I agree, like if it's a skyscraper on my wrist, that's different.
But assuming it doesn't look absolutely absurd in terms of how tall the watch is, I love the way this looks.
I would prefer to have a much flatter glass on top because I'm too cheap to get the fancy sapphire ones.
I think this looks excellent and I'm super pumped for it, even though I got a watch last year.
But again, it's kind of my job and I'm definitely a sucker.
So I'm not saying you're wrong.
Like, again, I'm not trying to argue with what the fancy watch people believe and think is best.
But to my eyes, to my silly, dumb consumer eyes, it looks great.
See, one of the reasons why I'm concerned by having the potential thinner crystal and straight ties and everything, to me, if it looks like a tiny iPhone on my wrist, that's a downside.
That's not good for fashion or elegance or looking nice.
It shouldn't look like a tiny iPhone.
It should look like a nice smartwatch.
It's never going to look like a nice watch, period, because it can't.
But it should look like a nice smartwatch.
And the Apple Watch...
not every model of apple watch has always looked like that but every generation of apple watch has offered configurations that look nice so i hope with this new design language they continue to offer that like i've been very happy yes you make fun of me for buying the expensive thing i've always gotten the steel watch i love the steel watch i love the you know the high polished edges even though it gets scratched to hell my my current one from just last fall is indeed scratched to hell because i've worn it a lot this year the
But I love the polished steel, the black top, and a white sport band.
I love that look.
With the Sapphire, it's a really, really nice smartwatch.
And it's actually a pretty decent watch, if you configure it right and don't mind it being a digital watch, because the analog faces are all terrible.
But the digital faces can be decent.
So anyway, once you're accustomed to that, and now that we have the always on screen, it can be a decent-looking watch.
I am fine wearing this watch most of the time now because it's decent looking.
I hope with the new design language that I hope they're able to still have configurations that look both nice and not like you have a phone strapped to your wrist.
And that's going to be the biggest challenge, I think.
Like seeing the rumor renders, that to me just looks like iPhones.
I really hope that the actual final design...
it differs enough from that in practice.
Like I hope it doesn't just look like I have a phone strapped to my wrist because that's not a look that I want.
And I don't find that elegant at all.
Yeah.
I always liked the shiny stainless steel too.
And then one Apple watch that I got, I paid more for the stainless steel because it's a look that I like.
And that's why we call it an Airstream trailer because they're kind of shiny while they're, they're more of a matte finish stainless steel.
But anyway, um, if you made this new design of that thing, I guess it would be a sardine can.
like a rounded rectangle with shiny sides we'll see i still kind of like the idea of a phone with the same finish that my iphone has around it in terms of battery life for casey if he gets one of these uh improved battery life is part of the rumors part of what makes that possible is supposedly it has wi-fi 6e and bluetooth 5.2 possibly there's also vague rumors of the possibility of 5g which would hurt
battery life which makes me think it's not going to be in this watch um but then of course the system on a chip the s7 is going to be at five nanometers which will help it sip uh battery power as compared to its seven nanometer i'm assuming the current uh system on a chip is seven nanometer and there's also rumors that it might have two gigs of ram which i suppose would help developers be maybe would help them be less constrained depending on how apple changes the rules um
and the final thing that helps battery life is straight sides make easy for easier packaging like there is more volume and it is easier to put components inside something that doesn't have curves all over it right it's just easy you know so they can fit a bigger battery you know the the the s7 system on a chip is supposedly the double layer design so it'll take up less area width and height wise in exchange for being a little bit thicker and maybe there's room for a bigger battery so i have
high hopes for that Apple Watch 7 will have improved battery life over the 6, just because of all those things combined.
You know, smallest amount of chip, easier packaging, bigger watches, period, 41 millimeters versus 45.
When you're talking about the watch battery, every millimeter helps.
So I think this will be, for people who aren't, people who like the aesthetic or don't care about it and are just mostly about the watch bands, I think the Apple Watch 7 will be a really good watch.
For people who like the Apple Watch for it being an Apple Watch, having a bigger display with less area,
uh and you know some fun new watch spaces that's another rumor like watch faces that can let you have more complications now there's more screen space i think for people who love the apple watch the apple watch 7 sounds like a hit all around longer battery life bigger screen uh you know faster not that anyone cares about that i think it will be extremely popular
Probably.
Then apparently AirPods 3 are rumored.
The rumors being that they would be stubby, kind of like the pros, but no in-ear soft tips, no noise canceling in a wide case.
I currently have the AirPods that have the Qi case.
You know, it didn't have an add-on Qi charger.
It has the Qi case that came with it.
and my left AirPod is really hurting in terms of battery life.
My right one, even though I use it more, seems to be fine.
I am ready to try, for the very first time, AirPod Pros.
I want to do it, but like I said earlier, I don't want to do it until there's new ones, and it sounds like maybe not new ones this event.
But man, can you imagine?
New watch, new phone, new AirPods.
This could be very... New MacBook Pro.
This could be real ugly for me.
So with that in mind, hp.fm slash join.
Better give to St.
Jude.
Hey, I gave to St.
Jude, so everyone else, after you give to St.
Jude, ATP.fm slash join, please, and thank you.
These AirPods, I've been talking about this before, of like how I might have to panic buy the previous ones when the new ones come out.
It seems like the rumors are pretty clear that these won't be.
I didn't want to call them in-ear, but, you know, the ones with the little AirPods Pro, the little soft, squishy thing that goes into your canal, I don't like how that feels.
My wife has them.
I don't prefer it.
Um, which is kind of a shame because I think I would enjoy the noise canceling, but I just don't like that sensation.
And the current regular AirPods fit me great.
I've used them since they were introduced.
I've bought a couple pairs as the batteries have gone bad or they've been passed down to kids or whatever.
I love them.
They're great.
My only problem is they do have a limited lifetime.
Like my current ones, they're doing this weird thing where when I pick up my iPhone, it shows the little rounded rectangle white thing from the top that comes down and says AirPods connected.
You know, that little thing, you know, it shows that.
And then I hit play and overcast and it starts coming out of my speaker.
Nice.
And why?
And then I have to go to like the little, you know, control center, little circle thingy and tap on AirPods again.
And now it goes through them.
And this is just a recent thing that's been happening.
They're taking longer to connect to my phone.
And this is my AirPods telling me, we're getting old.
And the batteries aren't that great.
In all fairness, almost every release of iOS, including point releases, messes with the way AirPods connect in some way.
I don't know why they mess with it so often, but they do.
Also, I would recommend to anybody out there with AirPods,
Turn off the auto switching.
It is such a big quality of life improvement to have that turned off.
And it's frustrating because you have to turn it off on every device that your AirPods pair with and for every pair of AirPods.
But trust me, manually switch, it's so much nicer.
I use the auto-switching, though.
When I'm in bed watching my iPad and then I switch to my phone, I love the fact that whichever device I'm using gets the AirPods and it happens transparently.
It's one of the few features that actually works.
Like, oh, they'll just automatically switch.
It really does work when I do that, and I kind of like it.
I'll think about it, though, if it's still...
You're an auto-switching unicorn.
Yeah.
I mean, well, I don't think I am because half the time when my things aren't connecting, I think they're connecting like to the upstairs iPad, right?
So I'm not really a unicorn.
I think it is messing me up a little bit, like you said.
Like if I just did it manually, I wouldn't have these problems.
But when it does work, I appreciate it.
And when it doesn't work, it's not that bad to...
manually fix it but anyway my my issue with these is they aren't shaped like the classic airpod shape has been and i don't know if this new shape will feel comfortable my ear will fall out of my ear like you know i just don't know right it's not shaped exactly the same as the airpods pro and it's it doesn't have the soft tip and so what would an airpods pro feel like without the soft tip but it's not quite that shape either if you yank the tips off the airpods pro and you look at it that's not quite the same shape as the rumors too
And I think these have the stubby tails that you have to squeeze instead of the tapping.
I've been tapping my ears for years now.
I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about the squeezy stubs.
Right.
So these are a mystery to me.
Like I'm probably almost certainly going to buy them to find out.
But it's almost like I should order these and quickly also order one more pair of the old ones just in case I hate them.
But that's a waste of money.
So I'm probably just going to order these.
And I really, really hope I like them.
Because if I don't, then I'm going to be trolling eBay for, like, you know, a new inbox of old AirPods or whatever.
So I'm a little bit nervous about these.
Like, I don't begrudge Apple.
Like, the shape of the current AirPods, how many years has that been out?
Like, they're due for a redesign.
Like, I'm fine with that.
Oh, and the other thing is the case, the wide case.
I don't like the wide case.
My case is slimmer and smaller and fits in my pockets better.
And the, the fat case just looks huge to me.
I understand why it has to be bigger because, you know, it's a different shape or all that stuff.
And I think it also has a bigger battery than my case, but I'm going to miss the original AirPods design.
It's one of the, it's lasted so long because it truly is one of Apple's great group.
We've talked about this many times.
One of Apple's great products.
Like it totally changed the way we all relate to headphones with these dirty little things and their little magnetic case.
Yeah.
Poor Marco, they didn't fit in his ears.
That's a bummer.
And maybe I'm going to be in that camp with these new ones, but I feel like this... It'll be a bummer.
Yeah.
Well, you know, if that's the case, I'll just have to buy the other ones, like the used ones.
It'll be like my cheese grid.
I'll just have a stock of old design AirPods in my attic and just go through them as the batteries get exhausted.
But yeah, I really think these are great products and I hope the AirPods 3 can live up to the legacy of their...
predecessor because again i feel like the pros i know they have pro in the name but they're really a different kind of product it's like they have features that these can't have because they seal in your canal and if you don't like a little thing shoved into your canal that's not the product for you so i'm glad apple continues to make the other one instead of saying we've just decided everybody needs to shove these things into your canals
New cheap iPad nine with laminated display thinner and an eight 13.
Cool.
Good.
I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of a shame that that hasn't had the laminated display for so long.
Cause that's just kind of, you know, I don't know.
It just seems like cheaping out or whatever, but yeah, I think it's important for them to continue to have a cheap one.
It's still kind of disappointing that this is still going to be like the touch ID thing with the whole, you know, big bezel and all that other stuff.
Like,
when i guess maybe next year the cheap ipad 10 will finally get updated it'll be the ugly duckling because we're going to see in a second like basically all the ipads will be on the new design except for this one
But at the same time, they update this iPad pretty much on schedule every year now, and they sell an absolute ton of them, and we never have to know about them.
We never talk about them.
And they're good products.
An 813 is a good iPad, right?
You can do all the things on it.
I would say they're fine products.
They're not great, but if you need an iPad and your needs aren't that high and price is very important, yeah, just get it.
It's fine.
and it'll run all the things like an a13 you'll be able it's not like oh i can't play games in this because it's only a13 a13 is fine you'll be able to play the games right and the screen is fine and like you know touch id versus face id is not a big deal for an ipad like it you know with the exception of having to use the crappy old apple pencil but at least it does support that um and you know again if you want the pencil maybe this isn't the product for you but yeah i think it's a good product and i think it's important for them to keep having this cheap one it'll just be nicer maybe next year when there's uniformity across the line
And finally, iPad Mini 6 with the iPad Air design, the flat sides, touch ID power button, magnetic Apple Pencil, etc., A14 or A15.
You know, as a former Apple iPad Mini apologist, this makes me happy that they're still making them from time to time.
And I hope they continue to, but I don't know.
It's not something that I personally care about anymore.
it's something that my kid cares very much about it's nice that it's getting the update like the ipad air design is so weird like remember when they came out it's like well it's gonna have touch id but it's in the new design oh they put touch id in the power button and it's like yeah i guess i mean it's working out and you get the new pencil with it and you know especially if this comes with an a15 which again is the new chip that's going to be in the iphones
that would be amazing it's kind of like getting the iphone mini with the same system on a chip as the you know the iphone 12 pro right like it's a little one but it's you know you don't compromise on the computing power you get the same a15 that's that's just one of the rumors it's probably gonna be an a14 since it's the mini but
yeah it's nice to see the mini getting updated uh because i think they need to have just like they need to have the cheap one they also kind of need to have a slightly smaller one because sometimes that's what people want so obviously it doesn't get updated that frequently uh and it's long overdue but yeah update it uh and if you're going to update it having basically the ipad air design is a great compromise in terms of family resemblance features uh and price
Also, I would love for it to be USB-C, which the iPad Air is.
And so if the iPad Mini adopts the iPad Air design in every other way, I would expect it would probably be USB-C as well.
And that would just be nice from a family charging perspective, just to have more things on USB-C.
That's always a welcome change for us.
Yeah, that leaves the poor iPad 9, the cheap iPad, as the last iPad with lightning on it.
It's kind of sad.
Just to be clear, new iPhone, still lightning?
Yeah, I think so.
I would love to have it go USPC, but I don't see it happening anytime soon, if ever.
No, it's not the type of thing they're going to do in, like, an S generation of, like, it's the same case.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
Fair enough.
All right, and then AR goggles, right?
Okay, good.
I didn't think so either.
people are gonna we didn't talk about the invitation but it was california streaming which is a play on california dreaming the song from the 60s it's a reference john yeah in some respects uh it is like the most generic title because it's like hey we're not inviting you in person we're gonna stream it just like we did all those past times right and so great you're not saying anything about the title but then of course people always want to read into it so
There was the little AR thing that shows the little Apple logo, and if you go inside the Apple logo, it plays a little song or whatever.
But Apple has done little AR gimmicks for its events for a long time now.
It doesn't necessarily mean this is going to be the AR goggles one, but still people want to hang on to it.
They say, yeah, but this AR gimmick for their event is cooler than the past ones, which I agree.
It is cooler, but...
I don't know.
Like everything we just read out, that's a full event.
There's no reason you need anything more than that in an event.
This is the iPhone event.
The iPhone is Apple's biggest product.
And there's a bunch of other cool stuff in this as well.
The Apple Watch getting its first complete redesign in a totally new form factor.
New AirPods that haven't been, you know, regular AirPods that haven't been updated in forever and some iPad stuff.
You don't need anything else in this event.
And I don't think that Apple would want to distract from the new iPhone by talking about AR goggles, like assuming the product was even ready.
And to be clear, what we're talking about here is a big, ugly thing that you strap to the front of your face.
We're not talking about like, oh, Superman style glasses that just magically show you like, no, we're talking about actual goggles that like a gamer would wear, right?
It's not, it's the type of product that really needs
dedicated explanation to explain to somebody why they would want to strap this plastic thing to the front of their face.
I don't know what Apple's pitch is going to be for that product, but the rumor is that they have, you know, they have multiple things in flight, and one of them is, in fact, a thing that looks kind of like an Oculus Quest or whatever.
Like...
I don't know if you've ever seen one of these things, but like a big plastic thing that you strap to your face.
It does not look like a pair of glasses.
It does not even look like a pair of ski goggles.
It looks like an existing VR thing, but apparently it's, you know, AR work and has cameras where you can see what's in front of you.
Anyway, that's the rumor.
And the other rumor is, oh, an actual thing that looks like glasses that is farther off into the distance.
Either one of those things seems like it would need a new event or severely it would need an event that does not include a bunch of iPad crap, AirPods and all the other stuff.
So I think this is not the event for AR goggles or if it is going to be like a three hour event and the messaging is going to be very muddled based on like Apple's recent history.
See the Casey's topic from a show or two ago.
Maybe our assumptions about how good Apple is at forming a coherent message about its products, maybe we should modify our assumption that Apple would never do something so muddled.
But I'm going to still say that this is not... If the stuff that we listed as possibly coming actually does come, this is not the event to try to jam in.
The AR goggles.
And...
yeah i think i think of this by this point with less than a week to go if the air goggles were coming out there would be much more rumors because it's not like this is an unknown we've seen you know renders based on descriptions of the device we've seen leaks of pieces of software of the starboard thing that they use for internal testing and all sorts of like you know code snippets and frameworks and libraries and of course we all know about ar kit and all the stuff that they've been doing over the years and reality kit like so
The AR stuff is an open secret, but we just don't know if and when any product will appear, and it just doesn't seem like it's imminent for this event.
Yeah, I think it would be – first of all, again, you're right that I think the rumor mill would be much stronger pinpointing it to this time.
But also –
based on the current rumors which you went over of like that they're not going to just come out out of the gate with like glasses the way we think of glasses that it would be like the most recent rumors were like it's going to be this multi-stage approach where first they're going to roll out basically a developer device that's going to be like the quest you know like this big virtual reality looking headset thing and then later down the road maybe the next year or two years later then maybe they release you know smaller things that are more like glasses
If that's what they end up doing, I wouldn't expect them to want to put it out at a very high-profile event.
I would expect them to actually slow-play it as much as possible because what you don't want to happen from a PR perspective is you don't want this massive, big project that's been going on for years, that they've been slowly building to for years, you don't want to put it out there in a really big fanfare way
If it's not ready for that yet, if it's going to be something that's going to be kind of not really for public consumption yet or much more specialized and early and rough and kind of big and clunky, and then later on you're going to have something better, you want to put that out there in the quietest way possible, basically.
Put it out to developers.
Don't even hold a massive big fanfare event for it.
and to put it in the biggest most massive highest fanfare event every year which is the iphone event would be literally the last place you want to put something like that so that's again as john said that's not to say they won't do it but they probably won't do it and they they at least shouldn't do it uh unless they're at a point where this is where this would like totally blow you away and we're and we're totally wrong about where they are in this but that seems very unlikely
yeah wwc seems like the natural place if you're going to pitch it as developers who want you to start figuring out how to make uis in ar and this product like that's the whole difficulty of this product like they could pitch it as like you know like they do for dev dev kits for game consoles where it's like the console's not done yet but game developers who want you to start working on games for it so here is some monstrosity some loud uh you know multi-fanned giant monstrosity that has
specs similar to what we're planning for the console but we're not entirely sure yet but maybe this one has more ram and is actually clocked a little bit lower but gets hotter because it's using an earlier version of the chip and it's just for you to get started on your game development and then you have to develop against that based on what you think the eventual product will be right and you know as time goes on and you develop in the years leading up to the console you adjust for okay we think the console is going to have less ram than the dev kit or more ram or we think the console is going to
you know have a higher clock speed or lower have more graphics course and you just sort of work around that right so that's one way they could go with the ar things the problem is you have to know when you're going to ship the quote-unquote real consumer product with game consoles they pretty much know like we have a dev kit it's going to be x number of years then we're going to at least a real console and we've done it year after year or generation after generation so it's somewhat predictable
but nobody knows how to make a pair of attractive looking glasses that double as a high resolution screen for AR.
Like that doesn't exist.
Like you see things like the magic leap thing or whatever.
Those don't look like it's a pair of glasses.
Like they look like computer things in your face or Google glass or whatever.
No one has cracked this problem yet.
So it's not like, you know, when you're going to be done with this right years in advance, you know, you don't know until you've actually done it.
And yeah,
Things that you strap to your face that look like Oculus-type things or whatever, those exist as products right now, and people buy them mostly for playing games.
So the question is, does Apple try to ship an actual product, a narrow-interest product, but an actual product to consumers that doesn't look like a pair of glasses?
An actual product that is used like the Oculus Quest?
I mean, they could pitch it as a gaming thing, and Apple's not great on gaming, but if they don't pitch it at gaming, it's like...
So why would a consumer buy this ugly thing that they strap on their face?
They're not going to wear it in public.
Why would they wear it in their house?
Like, what is the pitch to consumers for this device?
Because that, I feel like, is easier than trying to give something to developers and say, develop something against this and someday we'll have something that's not this.
Yeah.
that you can ship your software when will that day be well a we can't tell you because we're apple but b we actually don't know because it's a really hard problem like so maybe that's the reason nothing has come of this but i i feel like the most likely scenario is that apple is going to ship an actual product that looks like a big ugly thing that you strapped to your face
And it will be narrow interest.
It's not like they're going to say, this is the new iPhone and everyone's going to own one.
It'll be narrow interest than the watch.
It'll be narrower interest than any of their Macs because all those products are things that, in theory, anyone can buy and find useful.
But this product, I don't think you can pitch that to the broader public and say, everybody should buy this lunchbox that you put on your forehead.
No.
And so the question is, if it's not for everybody, who is it for?
The answer so far has been it's for gamers and here are some games on it.
And Apple is perhaps uniquely ill-equipped to pitch any product.
See the Apple Pippin and many other past attempts to make gaming.
Right, because if you look at what is an Oculus Quest, the hardware, it's basically smartphone hardware with some specialized displays in a nice plastic enclosure with some batteries.
Apple can do all of that.
Hardware-wise, I have no doubt that Apple could make a really good competitor to the Oculus Quest.
It would kick its butt in graphics performance and CPU performance and everything, because it's phone hardware.
This is what they specialize in.
So the hardware side would be fine.
But we know what Apple's relationship is to gaming.
And while they do have a lot of game playing going on on their platforms, that kind of happens to them.
It happens despite them, not because of them.
Just think of the casino games for children that could be in it.
You'd be like, you're in the casino for children.
Right, yeah.
You can see the gems flying out of your pocket to do everything in the game.
I can't imagine that they would...
be good at shipping something that is basically their first second game console we saw what happened with the Apple TV's attempt at gaming like I just I don't think they have it in them and we've talked about this before so that being said going back just a little bit higher level here
I wouldn't actually assume that anything will ever ship from the AR project.
We're all kind of assuming, like in the rumor mill and in the press, that it's inevitable, like, oh yeah, when the goggles come out or whenever this thing comes out.
It's stated as a when instead of an if, but...
The AR project, I think, has a significant chance of never actually shipping.
I think the same thing about the car project.
I think the car has an even higher chance of never shipping.
I think a much higher chance.
I would say I'd be shocked if the car project ever produces anything to the market.
Yeah, the reason the AR thing has a higher chance is like ARKit exists.
RealityKit exists.
They've iterated on these frameworks, these necessary frameworks for AR for years and years.
And, you know, they have us all holding their iPads in front of tables and stuff.
And it's like, see, isn't this stuff great?
It's like, yeah, but...
we all know like it's great that they're working on technology but like they're shipping it right so it's it would seem really weird to work for literal years on ar vr tech framework software applications and never ship hardware that does it justice and the rumors are that they do have a product-ish looking oculus quest kind of thing you're right they could still choose not to ship it but like unlike the car where they've shipped nothing right i mean carplay doesn't count like they have
There's nothing related to the car that is shipped.
It's not like, hey, self-driving for your iPhone and point it out the window of your car and it will say where it would steer if it was controlling the car.
No, that doesn't exist, but we have that for AR.
It seems like the car project only exists to just churn through a whole bunch of people and money.
Yeah, well, I mean, obviously someone somewhere thinks that they're on some track to something.
I think we saw recently a suggestion that there's a lot of things like, oh, don't you realize AR and the car project are combined because there's obvious synergies in terms of heads-up displays and stuff in the car.
But as far as I know, the AR project and the car project are not working together on anything, which it would make sense if they were, but I have not heard any confirmation of that.
You know, like if you know, like when when Steve famously came back to the company and he cut all like the advanced research projects that were like just burning money.
If that happened today, AR and the car would be the first things to get cut.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, AR might be one of those would probably end up being the iMac where he comes back to the company and realizes there's this industrial design group that everyone's ignoring.
It's actually doing some cool stuff.
I'm just not sure whether it would be he would come back to the company and say, oh, actually, I'm going to cut a bunch of stuff.
But these people working on the car are doing great work.
Or these people working on AR are doing great work.
And that's the future.
But yeah, the idea of them both continuing to exist and not ship anything for many years under a belt tightening regime.
But that's a different Apple.
That was an Apple that was going bankrupt in 90 days and needed to cut to save money.
Current Apple does not need to cut programs to save money.
To say the least.
I mean, hell, the car thing has probably gone through like three lifetimes worth of company money, right?
I can't even keep track of what iteration they're on.
The head of the project just got poached by Ford and apparently he was like, everybody liked him and he was doing a good job.
So that's not good.
So are we on the fifth iteration now?
I don't know.
Anyway, no car at this event.
Bold prediction.
Wow.
Yeah, bold prediction.
No car ever and maybe no AR goggles ever.
I'm pretty close to your opinion on that, Marco.
See, I feel like they have to eventually ship what they've got for the AR thing.
It's just a question of how to position it.
And, you know, the reason we keep talking about like, oh, why are you worried about Apple and gaming?
The phones are great with games, again, despite Apple, you know, if not because of it.
The problem is that like Apple TV, iPad, iPhone,
The way you make a game for those platforms is not that different.
The way you make a game for AR, VR is totally different and mostly doesn't make sense on the other platforms.
That's true.
You could say, oh, well, I don't touch my TV.
Doesn't that not make sense?
There's whole classes of games where you play them on the phone and, yeah, you're using your fingers to touch a screen, but actually it would be better with a controller.
But AR, VR, like the rules are entirely different.
Like the controls, you know...
you're you're looking around with your head in a virtual space and you can't map that onto a controller very easily unless you really narrow the genre like you could play maybe a half like alex with with a regular controller but lots of other vr experiences like even things like beat saber or whatever if you narrowed that to not be a vr type game
It would still work, but it would be like a really boring version of Guitar Hero versus what it really is when you actually play Beat Saber is it feels very different than Guitar Hero because things are actually coming at you and you're moving your arms, right?
I mean, I'm pretty sure I could play Beat Saber with the Sega Activator.
Or the fishing rod, right?
No, it's the octagon you put on the floor and you punch through it.
yeah but like the thing the game becomes boring at that point like because in terms of a rhythm game it doesn't have the complexity of like even guitar hero with different frets and strings or whatever the complexity comes from the fact that you're there in 3d space and you're moving your actual arms to hit the thingies that is what makes that game take that away and it's the world's most boring rhythm game so you know developing for ar would have to be you know the same things for the quest or whatever you have to
cultivate the development of games that take advantage of your hardware it is not a success to say look it's cut the rope in vr nope nobody cares like it's just you know you cannot keep selling threes to people like it's just you have to you have to actually make games it's like saying oh nintendo 64 and here's super mario brothers on it in 2d no you need mario 64 you need something that demonstrates why do i care about this new hardware and even just in the realm of gaming that is definitely needed and
I'm hard-pressed to think of an application other than gaming for Apple to pitch a product like the Quest, unless you pitch it to businesses or something.
But Apple doesn't care about that, right?
And they wouldn't be good at it.
That's a Microsoft thing.
Let them do their HoloLens.
And I don't think HoloLens has been too successful in that realm either.
Maybe like the creative fields, but just...
It just seems like gaming is the only possible application of that because you're not going to wear that out of the house.
It's not like, oh, I'll be able to see directions when I walk through the city with a lunchbox in my face.
Nope, not going to happen, right?
Well, and even gaming, I think what we've seen from VR so far
is that it's kind of like the Wii.
You get some fun novelty time with it, but I don't think we're seeing a lot of lasting must-have games yet.
And it's not like VR is super new.
We've had decent widespread VR hardware now for a number of years, and we still are not getting a ton of must-have VR games.
And it's possible maybe the appeal of it is just not as wide of an appeal as we originally thought.
Don't you think we haven't gotten over the threshold of minimum viability, though?
No, I think the Quest and the Quest 2 are that, because those are the first ones that didn't require a cable running out of your head to some PC somewhere or a PlayStation or something.
The Quest series made VR easy and palatable to consumers.
I, I don't, I think you're underestimating the motion sickness factor, right?
The fact that if there's even the smallest amount of lag, which there still is, especially on the quest, which is not powerful hardware that a whole section of the population, it's a torture device.
Like it's not, nothing is ever going to be.
Well, yeah, but you're over indexing on it though.
Yeah.
no but like if you if you if you get motion sick at all after like 30 minutes that's not a product you're going to want to buy or spend time with like nobody wants to feel that ever right let alone in something you spent money on right it's not a fun experience you have to actually solve that problem and it just flat out hasn't been solved because we just don't have hardware that's fast enough and responsive enough not to induce motion sickness granted not in all people but you're further narrowing the the group like i think
It's reached minimum viability for gamers, for a subset of gamers, but it does not reach minimum viability for everyone who might enjoy an AR VR experience.
It feels kind of like touchscreens where, yeah, touchscreens existed for years and touchscreens didn't cause people to vomit, right?
Like literally didn't make them sick to their stomach, but they just weren't pleasing to use.
And the threshold, we didn't know it, but the threshold was essentially the iPhone.
Before the iPhone, if you said, are touchscreens so bad that they make people sick to their stomach?
No.
Do you not like using touchscreen ATMs?
Eh, it's fine.
Like, whatever.
But we didn't until we saw the, okay, now we pass the threshold.
Like, I think it'll only be obvious when we get there.
And I feel like VR, if you have to make excuses or caveats or some people just plain can't do it because they get sick to their stomach, which I think is an incredibly...
And debilitating, again, you know, an unpleasing touchscreen is much less offensive for someone to use than use this thing and you're going to feel like you want to puke in 30 minutes, right?
That is a barrier that has to be overcome.
And we more or less know what's needed to overcome it.
It's just that it's too expensive and...
hasn't really been solved for the general case so i think the quest 2 solves the problem of like oh i don't want to set up all this crap in my house and it's too annoying but at the cost of low resolution and lag which causes motion sickness in a fairly large subset of the population and also you have a lunchbox on your face so i'm i'm looking forward to the day when the only excuses for not using vr are lunchbox on your face uh and too expensive
right but there are many more excuses that it's lunchbox on your face too expensive wires if it doesn't have lag and makes me want to puke anyway going back to ar for a moment i i don't think apple has to ship something to pay off all the investment they've they've put into it i i don't think all the investment they put into it necessarily suggests they will ever ship something uh
all of the effort they put into it and the hardware and the software and everything, I think they have found ways to make that improve their other products.
So like in the case of AR, you have sensors, things like obviously cameras need to be very good.
You have things like LiDAR being involved potentially, distance measuring and stuff like that.
Well, they put all that in the iPhone and the iPad and that has improved those products.
And those products have AR features,
I think the adoption of those features justifies their inclusion in those products, but it does not justify an entire separate product line focused entirely on AR.
Because what we've seen from those features so far, and yeah, it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem in the sense that, yes, I know the AR features would be more compelling on glasses than they are on a phone or an iPad, but what we've seen from these features so far, as they've been on the iPhone and iPad for quite some time now,
is that they enable some pretty cool use cases or some additional side features like assisting the camera in autofocus or something like that.
But they're not taking over the world.
We're not seeing massive must-have things that, wow, this thing I can do in AR on my phone is amazing.
If only I could have the glasses strapped to my face to do this full-time in the world.
We're not seeing that kind of thing come out of it.
So...
If the AR project, in all of its different forms, only ever results in things that make iPhones and iPads better, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I wouldn't consider that a failure at all.
I consider that just, well, we did all the R&D, we developed all this stuff, this is where it was most useful, in our other products, not as a standalone thing.
I mean, that makes it hurt less, but like I think everyone agrees that if you could get something that looked like a pair of regular reading glasses, they could put a name over everyone's head so you didn't forget their names.
That product sells a billion copies, right?
So I know that's distant future, but like, you know, it's an infinite timeline argument here.
Like, yeah, the lunchbox may never ship because they can just never find a use case for it other than gaming.
But
all this AR tech that, yes, it is helping in their existing products or whatever, and it makes it hurt less that you're not shipping the AR thing.
And I think actually, I've said in the past shows, it's super important that they're actually shipping AR kit and all this VR stuff and refining it and making it better because that is progress that's going to help when you do finally get the glasses.
But eventually technology, sometime probably in our lifetime, technology comes where you can get a pair of glasses that has a screen in them
And just the name over people's heads feature alone, plus walking directions in a city, that thing sells as much as the Apple Watch easy, right?
Because then you've cracked it.
We just don't know when that time is.
And that time definitely doesn't seem like September 14th.
Yeah, I think your point, Marco, about all of this kind of offshooting of the technology is
is valid and important, like getting LIDAR, which is ostensibly or presumably from an AR thing, but having it actually show up in iPads and then iPhones.
But I still think that having the driving force be, and we're all three of us making huge assumptions here, but having the driving force being an AR headset is
I still think that's important.
It's not that they're looking at existing technology or even inventing new technology and saying, oh, you know what?
We could try that on.
We could try that on an AR thing.
It really feels to me, knowing Apple the way I do, that this is trickled down from AR to their current stuff.
And it really feels like they are still trying to make AR stick, and they're still throwing things against the wall.
And they're not going to sleep on the stuff that they've come up with.
They're not going to sleep on LiDAR, and they're not going to sleep on...
any of these other technologies but nevertheless they're still pushing toward that ultimate goal you snarked earlier and i'm i semi agree with you that they're never going to release an ar headset and i don't i don't think i would say never and i don't think i would say infinite timeline but i think it's going to be years and i think it's going to be very unimpressive at first i do think the car will never ever ship and i will i will be stupefied if anything that even vaguely resembles a car does
But I do think there will be an AR headset or glasses or what have you at some point.
And I think it's easy for all three of us to kind of poo-poo it and say, oh, it's not that interesting or not that exciting because it's one of those things inventing the future.
I remember thinking, why would you want an all-screen phone?
That seems dumb.
But fast forward after the iPhone, it's clearly the way of the future.
So maybe I'm just not as good at envisioning the future as others, but I could totally see where...
Even though I agree with a lot of the things you said that, oh, this isn't that impressive, it isn't that exciting, I mean, who cares if you have an arrow on the street instead, or an arrow in front of your face, I should say, instead of like watching your phone as you're driving or walking or what have you.
But I can imagine experiencing it would lead me to a very different conclusion.
Yeah, the Mercedes with the heads-up display that has little AR arrows that's shipping now, it makes me think that the AR team should actually talk to the car team because they can never ship any goggles.
Apple has better tech than Mercedes for doing AR, I would assume, based on all their experience with ARKit and everything, and certainly better silicon experience.
Uh, and if they actually do make a car of any kind, it better have a heads up display that does AR kit crap all over the city.
Like that's it better have that.
Cause the Apple's got this technology, same company guys like work together.
And if they never do ship a car, then maybe they should just license that out to Mercedes or whatever.
That will also never happen.
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Now the show is over.
They didn't even mean to begin.
Because it was accidental.
Accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
Accidental.
John didn't do any research.
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Cause it was accidental.
It was accidental.
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
And if you're into Twitter.
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T Marco Arman S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It's accidental Accidental They didn't mean to Accidental Accidental Tech Podcast So long
So we never got the chance to do Ask ATP during the main show, and we thought we'd pull a relevant one into the after show.
So Doug MacArthur writes, do you think the iPhone will ever drop the number from its naming convention?
What would cause Apple to do it?
And what would be your ideal new naming scheme?
Maybe the crack marketing team at Apple will take notes.
I think it's going to have to happen.
We're not going to have an iPhone 37, but I don't know.
I can't think of a better scheme.
I mean, we could just have iPhone paren 2021 paren, which is fine.
Like it works for the laptops, but I don't know.
It's not great.
What would cause Apple to do it?
Maybe iPhone 13, maybe.
Actually, you know what?
What are the unlucky numbers in Chinese or in China?
Four.
Oh, do we already passed it?
Okay, never mind.
Apple doesn't care about superstitions, so they're not afraid of 13.
Well, yes, but they care a lot about China.
Didn't they launch the iPhone?
Was the iPhone 4 in China?
I mean, certainly China wouldn't have been as important of a market back then as it is now.
That's also true, yeah.
Yeah.
So here's the thing with the number.
I think we talked about this before with video cards, right?
uh everyone thinks like oh well it's not going to be like iphone 765 like that's silly it's not a good product name uh video cards have the same problem because they name their cards with numbers and they keep making the numbers higher for better cards and eventually the numbers get too big and they do what they call in the you know where they do a stat crunch and they say okay well the numbers are too big so let's just make all the numbers lower and they basically start over um i can't remember i think uh amd did that amd slash ati did that
They were up to like the 9000s and then they started over at like the 1000s.
Now they're up to like 6900 again.
You can just go back down and you say like, oh, they're going to have another iPhone 4.
Well, you just put a number in front of it.
You call the N4 or the iPhone A4 or the 4A.
Like there's all sorts of ways where it could technically not be exactly the same product name.
But the point is, by the time you get numbers big enough,
no one remembers the iPhone 4 or its ancient history.
So you can literally just do iPhone 4 again.
As for dropping the number, I know they did that with the iPad, but I feel like with the iPhone, don't mess up a good thing.
They finally got off of the stupid S thing.
The number just goes up every year.
It's really easy for people to say, what kind of iPhone do you have?
I have a 12, I have 11, 11 Pro, 11 is a little bit precious.
But either way, it's fine.
Every year, like last year was the 12 year.
There was 12 Pros, there was 12 Minis, and there was plain old 12s.
Don't screw that up.
Just keep going.
You can go easily into the 20s or even the 30s and you're fine.
I feel like you only get into a problem when you get to 99 because you don't want to go 100-101.
This is too much of a mouthful.
By that point, start over again with iPhone 1 or 2 or I don't know.
There's so many options you have because it's so many years in the future.
I really hope they don't drop it because if they do...
It's going to be so hard to talk about.
Like, we have the same problem.
Like, I have an iPad Pro.
Which iPad Pro?
Oh, the flat-sided one.
No, no, the original iPad Pro.
No, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro.
It's exhausting and annoying.
And people do upgrade their phones on a more regular schedule than they update their iPhones.
So I think the numbering is a feature.
I think Apple will keep it.
I think Apple should keep it.
Yeah, I think I agree.
I mean, they had a chance to reset it when the X came out.
Because instead of, you know, it's obviously written iPhone X. And so they could have pronounced it X like everyone else does.
And they could have had, okay, we have the iPhone X this year and the next year we have the iPhone X2 and then iPhone X3 and so on.
They could have done that.
They didn't.
I think the time of the numbers being clumsy is going to start, I think, before 99.
Like, I don't think we really want like, oh, I got the iPhone 41.
Like, that just seems a little bit clumsy.
It seems weird, but it's distinguishable from iPhone 40.
It's one more than the 40.
Yeah, I mean, so they could always go with years if they really wanted to.
It's a little corporate, thanks to Microsoft, so I don't know if they would actually end up doing that, but there are other options, or they could just drop the number completely, as Doug asks, and
I don't think they would drop it completely because people know how old their phones are based on the numbers.
Most people don't even realize that the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 10 are the same age because they don't realize that was a wonderful bit of marketing they did there.
But people who have iPhone 8s think they're really old, whereas people with iPhone 10s don't quite yet.
But anyway...
I think they have a little while longer before they have to change anything.
I think they can go through most of the teens, but I think like, you know, maybe past like, you know, 17, 18, I think they're going to want to switch by then.
20 will be cool.
The iPhone 20 will be like a celebration.
Same thing with 25.
Like it'll be exciting number like the Super Bowl when it's like a nice round number.
Everyone is excited about it.
I think we've got many more years where the numbers will be just fine.
Doesn't mean they'll keep them, but they should keep them, I think, because it's
It's a system people know and understand.
And in some respects, because they have a new iPhone every year, a yearly thing would make a lot of sense.
In that case, they should sync it up with the last two digits.
And so this year would be iPhone 21.
And they've suddenly jumped a bunch of digits.
Well, the problem with the yearly approach, though, is that they tend to keep around the old models for a few years to sell them for cheaper.
So I think that might discourage.
I mean, maybe they want to discourage it.
But that's why they don't do 2021.
They just call it 21.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Yeah, maybe.
But then they'd be skipping from 13 to 21, and that's burning a lot of numbers they want.
I think they'll just do a stat crunch.
Like you said, you can put a letter or a number in front of it or just go back, because by the time they're up into the mid-20s and they go back to 4, no one's going to be, the iPhone 4, I already owned an iPhone 4.
What year, Grandpa?
Like, it's so long ago, no one cares, right?
Yeah.
The real question as people putting in the chat is, did they change the little comma separated number like iPhone 20 comma one, 21 comma one or whatever, right?
That's the developer nerd question.
Same thing we have with like 10.15 versus 10.16 versus 11 and all that crap.
There is actually a kind of annoying problem of like internally, what representation do we have for device names and numbers?
It's worse with version numbers because people do version comparisons.
Although I think Apple has good macros for most of that now, but
Yeah, that's not a concern for consumers.
This is mostly a consumer question, but it will be interesting if they ever do a stat crunch if the numbers internally just keep going up.
All right, so I'm doing a survey for the Accidental Tech podcast.
I was wondering, where do you live?
I live in Ocean Beach, New York.
Would you say that's on Long Island?
That is not on Long Island.
It's on Fire Island.
And for the record, where'd you grow up?
On Long Island.
Thank you.
Where do you live?
Ocean Bay Park.
Would you say that you live on Long Island?
I do live on Long Island, yeah.
Part of Long Island.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
So is Fire Island part of Long Island?
No.
Municipality, yes, but it's not connected to.
It's an island of another island.
So would you say we are on Long Island right now?
No, we're on Fire Island.
No, it's completely different.
Where are you guys from?
I'm from Bayport, New York.
Or Bayport, Long Island.
East side of Long Island.
Thank you very much.
All right, so what I'm trying to find out is, first of all, where would you say we are right now?
The Albatross in Ocean Beach.
Would you say we are on Long Island?
No.
No.
We're in Fire Island.
In Fire Island.
No, I wouldn't call this Long Island.
And where are you from?
From Long Island.
Long Island, Sayville.
And would you say we are on Long Island right now?
No.
No, I guess I wouldn't say Long Island.
No, I would say Fire Island.
And then if someone who didn't know the area was like, well, where is Fire Island?
I'd be like, it's off of Long Island.
I think that's how I would word it.
So it's not on Long Island?
No, it's not on Long Island.
Would you consider it part of Long Island?
No, I like to think that I'm better than everybody on Long Island, so no.
I try to remove myself as much as I can.
Thank you very much.