Not MagSafe, but MagSafe
Marco:
so i think i've leveled up as a nerd oh i have i for i think the first time ever replaced a toner cartridge on a home laser printer in my house now is the leveling up having to do with you performing the task as in look at what i did i changed my own oil or is the leveling up owning a laser printer long enough to use up all the toner
Marco:
The latter.
Marco:
So, you know, I know all the millenniums out there are like, I don't even need a printer.
Marco:
Okay, I need printers.
Marco:
Like, that's just my life, and I don't know how anybody doesn't.
Marco:
But anyway, I have always been a fan of laser printers ever since I discovered them and ever since they became affordable, which was...
Marco:
I'd say around 2001, 2002, they started getting those sub-few-hundred-dollar ones that were just black and white from Brother or whatever, and they were really good.
Marco:
Anyway, over time, I have moved on eventually to color lasers, and my favorite color laser is this giant HP Enterprise 500 series thing I have in Westchester that is just massive and amazing.
Marco:
What I love about it is that you just hit print, and you walk over to the printer, and by the time you arrive, it's there.
Marco:
It's done.
Marco:
like i've there's no there's no warm-up time there's no like let me spin for a while and make some noises because i'm an epson thing like none of that stuff you literally just hit print on your computer get up walk over to the printer and it's sitting there in the tray ready to go i love that but here at the beach my office is quite small and i don't have a location that i can put a giant color laser printer
Marco:
So I have a tiny one, this little HP M182 NW.
Marco:
And through a combination of me not being able to fit a bigger printer that I actually want, and right now printers are insanely expensive.
Marco:
I don't know if you've shopped recently for printers.
Marco:
I know, John, you had one not too long ago, but...
Marco:
Printers ever since COVID, printers especially the kind of printer that somebody might want for a home office, which tends to lean more towards low-end lasers, especially with built-in scanners, that category has been expensive and hard to find for two years.
Marco:
And so and especially the one I have like I happen to luck out and caught it like for list price, you know, two years ago when I was when I was setting up this office.
Marco:
And I'm very lucky I did because it's been out of stock for most of that time or it's been, you know, grossly overpriced on like, you know, scraper sites.
Casey:
So it's it's available right now for six hundred and sixty dollars on Amazon.
Marco:
oh my god well the the actual price some people have it in stock for its actual current list price of about four hundred and seventy dollars which i think i paid three hundred dollars for it two years ago but a set of new toners is only two hundred dollars and so i i actually needed all four like all four running low and i lasted a long time of ignoring its warnings because when laser printers tell you their toner is low
Marco:
They don't actually know.
Marco:
All they're doing is keeping a page count.
Marco:
Usually, this is a hot tip, you can just keep printing unless it has some kind of lockout where eventually it'll just refuse, which most of them don't.
Marco:
You can just keep printing until you start seeing gaps in your printout.
Marco:
And that's when you know you have to do something.
Marco:
Now, what you need to do might just be taking out the cartridge and shaking it side to side a little bit and then putting it back.
Marco:
And you can usually get a bit more time out of it that way.
Marco:
But eventually you'd actually do have to replace it.
Marco:
But it's usually long after it tells you you have to replace it.
Marco:
But I actually finally have printed enough pages on this printer.
Marco:
And because it's a small printer, it has a very tiny capacity toner cartridges.
Marco:
So that combination, I finally had to replace toner cartridges.
Marco:
And because of the crazy printer situation right now, it is not worth just buying a new printer, which it often, previous to COVID, it often was just cheaper to do that.
Casey:
Which is so sad.
Casey:
It really is.
Casey:
Well, I'm very proud of you, Marco.
Casey:
A lot of you are going to buy iPhones soon.
Casey:
And that is a lot of money.
Casey:
And you know what you can do with some of that money, especially if you have a little extra lean around?
Casey:
What can you do with that, Marco?
Marco:
Well, you can waste it on electronics that you vaguely need, or you can actually use it to literally help kids with cancer.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
First of all, to have research done to prevent that cancer in the first place, then to have a hospital that Americans, and because they're Americans, they have terrible healthcare options, can go to to have their child's cancer treated, and they never pay a dime?
Marco:
That's a pretty great cause.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
St.
Marco:
Jude does amazing work in this area, and we are very happy to join our friends at Relay in their September campaign to support them.
Casey:
Whatever your particular financial situation is, as much as we joke about buying new phones, and we're going to be talking about new phones soon, if you have even but a dollar to throw in the direction of Memphis, Tennessee, specifically to St.
Casey:
Jude, please consider donating.
Casey:
You can go to stjude.org, that's S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash A-T-P.
Casey:
And you can very quickly and very easily go ahead and donate there.
Casey:
And this is something that the three of us have been involved with for several years now.
Casey:
We are all very close with Stephen Hackett.
Casey:
Stephen Hackett is the co-founder of Relay FM.
Casey:
And his eldest child, his son, was, and to some degree still is, a patient of St.
Casey:
Jude.
Casey:
And his son, Josiah's life, was saved by St.
Casey:
Jude.
Casey:
Like, I don't think this is up for grabs.
Casey:
I don't think this is up for debate.
Casey:
This is what happened.
Casey:
For St.
Casey:
Jude to do that and to not charge his family a cent is bananas.
Casey:
And I know if you live in a civilized country, this sounds utterly depressing because it is, but America, for all its good parts, has a lot of bad parts, and one of the bad parts is health care.
Casey:
And I can assure you it is financially ruinous to go through a devastating illness like this, even with insurance.
Casey:
And so for St.
Casey:
Jude to say to a family, look, this is...
Casey:
possibly the darkest days of your entire lives, we will take a small part of that and make it better.
Casey:
We will not charge you a cent.
Casey:
We will try to do everything in our power to fix your child and to help them survive and thrive.
Casey:
It's a really phenomenal thing.
Casey:
And this has been going on for 60 years.
Casey:
They opened their doors in 1962.
Casey:
And what's great about St.
Casey:
Jude is that it's not just St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Hospital, it's St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Casey:
And so because of treatments that have been developed at St.
Casey:
Jude, the worldwide childhood cancer survival rate has gone from about 20% to more than 80%.
Casey:
Now, that's not exclusively St.
Casey:
Jude, but it's a lot St.
Casey:
Jude.
Casey:
So even if you live in a civilized country where you don't have to worry as much about money and things like that when it comes to illness, you still have to worry about fixing the illness.
Casey:
And St.
Casey:
Jude has done incredible and immense things to help cure childhood cancer.
Casey:
And hey, you could spend a bunch of money on a phone that you'll throw away in a year or two, or you could help cure childhood cancer.
Casey:
You make the choice.
Casey:
What do you think is best?
Casey:
So, John, what is our plan for the three of us?
Casey:
What are we doing this year?
John:
So normally we try to make Casey do a hasty donation while he's in the middle of recording another podcast.
John:
And then he yells at us and accidentally puts an asterisk in the name.
John:
We're not quite sure how we're going to make Casey donate this year.
John:
No, stop.
John:
We discussed it before the show.
John:
We said we're not going to rush you to do it now, but we don't actually know him.
John:
But anyway, we collectively, as the three hosts of ATP, will be donating $21,000 to St.
John:
Jude this year.
John:
One of us will probably try to be a jerk and add $1 more than the other members.
John:
We'll see how that works out.
John:
We haven't actually pushed the button at the time of the recording, but we will be doing that.
John:
We are trying to model good behavior for you, our wonderful listeners.
John:
So please be generous.
John:
Think about how much money you're going to spend on your phone.
John:
And I'm going to say, just buy both.
John:
That's the Marco approach.
John:
Don't pick one or the other.
John:
Buy a ridiculously expensive phone.
John:
Buy the really expensive first-party Apple case.
John:
And also donate a ton of money to St.
John:
Jude, because that's what September is all about.
Marco:
Yeah, so my usual pitch is, you know, many of us are about to, you know, sometime this holiday season or this fall and possibly even next week, drop some money on some tech.
Marco:
You know, whatever Apple is going to release, we're going to figure out reasons why we have to have it and we're going to get something.
Marco:
You know, whether you're getting the iPhone or the Apple Watch or, you know, later on in the fall, maybe you're going to get a new iPad or a new Mac or whatever it is.
Marco:
You're going to be spending some money on tech this fall in all likelihood if you listen to this show.
Marco:
When that happens, you might have to spend like $700 or $800 or more on something.
Marco:
And a lot of times, you get these add-ons at the end.
Marco:
And that add-on might be something like a case.
Marco:
Oh, there's another $60 or whatever.
Marco:
Or if it's an iPad, maybe a new smart cover or a new keyboard.
Marco:
That's $100 or more.
Marco:
And at the end, you might have to throw on, oh, let's throw on some AppleCare.
Marco:
That's another $100.
Marco:
Oh, sales tax.
Marco:
That's another $100.
Marco:
Whatever those little increments are that you kind of just do at the end because you have to or it's an accessory charge or whatever, you can donate at least that much to St.
Marco:
Jude.
Marco:
Because if that's how you're looking at the purchase, oh, I'm going to get a $700 phone.
Marco:
Well, actually, it's going to be an $800 phone once I get the capacity I want or more.
Marco:
And then, oh, and then it's going to be, you know, actually, once I'm at the door with AppleCare and a case, it's going to be $1,200.
Marco:
You know what?
Marco:
You can give Sanju $200.
Marco:
And so whatever you can do, if your budget is not that high, give him $20.
Marco:
Give him $50.
Marco:
Whatever you can do, that's up to you, you know, with your abilities and your priorities there.
Marco:
That's up to you.
Marco:
But we ask that you at least give them something.
Marco:
because giving them something is better than giving them nothing and whatever you can give whether it's five bucks ten bucks or five thousand bucks that's fantastic great good for you it's a great cause and we hope you do
John:
What did we do last year for the top donor?
John:
I remember we made a... I believe Casey visited their house and made them Velveeta shells and cheese.
John:
We had the thing last year where if someone can beat ATP with our $21,000 donation, if they become the new top donor, topping us, we're just competing.
John:
The competition is just between ATP and ATP's listeners.
John:
There's probably other people who are in the mix that you're not competing with or whatever.
John:
Yeah.
John:
We talked about them on the show, but did they get anything?
John:
I don't remember.
Casey:
They got stickers.
Casey:
Oh, there we go.
John:
Do you still have stickers left?
John:
Are we doing that again?
Casey:
I am happy to do that again, and I do have stickers left.
Casey:
However, I do have a limited quantity of stickers left.
Casey:
I should probably print some more.
Casey:
I can look if you let me step away from the mic and dig up the stickers and figure out how many I have.
Casey:
But suffice it to say...
Casey:
it would behoove you to do a lot of donating and donating it quickly.
Casey:
Now, you don't have to say, oh, this is for ATP in the notes or anything like that.
Casey:
Just send me an email or figure out a way to contact me.
Casey:
Send me something on Twitter.
Casey:
It's not about ATP versus relay or anything like that.
Casey:
It's just about raising money to cure childhood.
Casey:
Oh, stop it.
Casey:
A little.
Casey:
It's about raising money for childhood cancer.
Casey:
So please...
Casey:
Raising money with some competition.
John:
Yeah, this kind of competition helps people to donate more.
John:
So if you want to be talked about, if you want us to try to mangle your name as we try to pronounce it on ATP and then apologize profusely and then get a sticker from Casey if he still has some left, all you got to do is donate $21,000 and one cent.
Casey:
Or more.
Casey:
You never know.
Casey:
You never know.
Casey:
What if I donate $7,010?
John:
I know.
John:
Yeah, you do have to wait until we actually do our donations because Casey sometimes shoves in a couple extra bucks.
Marco:
Doesn't it work for anybody who just beats us individually?
Marco:
Because we do it as three individual $7,000 donations.
Casey:
Okay, so here's the thing.
Casey:
I think that was the case last year.
Casey:
But we had some utterly bananas donations last year.
Casey:
So I will put the challenge out.
Casey:
Okay, here's your competition.
Casey:
We're not competing with Relay.
Casey:
here's your competition can you the listener beat the three of us as a collective so no stickers for you i'm serious this is what happened last i would say anybody who beats the seven thousand dollars we'll see they should get stickers what we'll have to do we'll have to do is wait until the whole thing is over and then see what like the top x donors are and see how many stickers we have and figure it out from there
John:
Because we're not trying to make this like obviously most people can't give that much money, right?
John:
So give $1.
John:
That's what we want you to do.
John:
Give $5.
John:
Give $20.
John:
That's great.
John:
But for the very, very wealthy individuals who are listening to this and who are taking our advice on what to do with their six-figure super hypercars and stuff and their ATB members at the top level, which is exactly the same as the bottom level.
LAUGHTER
John:
they might i mean it was it happened last year people donated a huge amount of money so i don't want to discourage those people very wealthy people go on do the very wealthy person thing and you may get a sticker worth probably at least 10 cents maybe 50 the sticker may be worth as much as the stamp the case he uses to mail that's true that's and you can put the 10 cent sticker on your hyper car like that makes total sense right that's right just peel it off and put it on the window of your ferrari it'll look great until it inevitably wears off and the glue dies because it's like a 10 cent sticker
Casey:
John, let me tell you a little secret just between the three of us.
Casey:
I actually sent like a couple of stickers to the big donors.
Casey:
It was more than one.
Casey:
It was like two, maybe even four.
Casey:
I think that somebody donated more than $20,000 might have even gotten like six.
John:
There's a raid array of stickers.
Yeah.
John:
That's why we have no stickers left.
John:
This is sticker inflation.
John:
You've got to be sending these people six stickers.
John:
You've got to think about the future ones.
John:
You know we can't actually make any more stickers.
John:
We've lost the technology for sticker making.
John:
Yep, that's right.
Marco:
I think if somebody actually donates like $21,000 or $21,001, I think they can get like a pack of stickers at that point.
Marco:
What is a pack of stickers?
Marco:
Like 10 bucks?
John:
You can give them Marco's old toner cartridge.
Marco:
We'll think of something.
Marco:
No, it's already gone.
Marco:
I don't have enough room in this office to keep spares around.
Casey:
Well, actually, if you really want to go nuts, this is going way off the rails.
Casey:
The speakers that you sent to me and gifted me, I never ended up doing anything with them because then I immediately got the studio display right after and that was sufficient for my purposes.
Casey:
So you can have third hand Marco speakers if you're in the continental United States.
John:
That sounds more like a curse gift.
Right.
Casey:
i gotta buy a receiver to connect them to and it's the whole thing i think i'm kidding but we'll see if you donate like thirty thousand dollars we'll talk um and cmf in the chat said you know would you would you send uh whoever the top donor is an apple pie as made by aaron because aaron makes some of the world's best apple pies i don't think that's really feasible but i like where your head's at and if you really do donate tens and tens of thousands of dollars well let's see what we can figure out i have no guarantees on anything i don't think you can ship food in the mail like that i don't
John:
Don't think it would survive or be.
John:
Maybe we'll send the recipe.
John:
I don't know.
John:
You're going to send the recipe?
Casey:
I don't know, man.
John:
Just work with me.
John:
Play with me in the space here.
John:
The display postscript of food prizes.
Casey:
Well, actually, you know, here's what if we get $100,000 donation, will you send them a pasta sauce recipe?
Casey:
I'll put you on the spot.
John:
Yeah, sure.
Casey:
For $100,000.
John:
That's not going to happen, but yeah, I will.
Casey:
Oh no, challenge accepted, but not for me.
John:
I mean, nobody wants it, but yeah.
Casey:
You heard it here first.
Casey:
$100,000 donation, you get John's pasta sauce recipe, which you may not share with anyone.
Casey:
That's part of the deal.
Casey:
You may not share it with anyone, but you can have it.
John:
And however you make it, it will be wrong.
John:
Yeah, that's also true.
John:
Merlin made it, and he said he liked it, and then he never made it again because it's just too much work.
John:
And he made it wrong.
John:
No, he made it fine, as far as I know.
Casey:
Oh, my goodness.
Casey:
It's so complicated.
Casey:
In any case, please, please, please, all kidding aside, and really and truly, as much as we're joking about the big ticket donors, honest to goodness, it's...
Casey:
The fundraising is not about the $1,000 donation, the $10,000 donation, the $100,000 donation to get John's pasta sauce recipe.
Casey:
It's about the $10 and $20 and $30 donations.
Casey:
If you're a student and you can only send a few bucks, send a few bucks.
Casey:
Feel good about yourself.
Casey:
There's nothing wrong with that.
Casey:
So please, you're going to hear this a few more times.
Casey:
You'll hear it all through September.
Casey:
But please, please, please consider going to stjude.org slash ATP.
Casey:
Nobody's making you.
Casey:
You don't have to.
Casey:
But if you have a few dollars to send their way, it would make the three of us.
Casey:
And kids sick with cancer.
Casey:
Very, very happy.
Casey:
So please think about it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We have a surprisingly short amount to follow up this week.
Casey:
John, can you tell me about your polarizer and your lens protector?
John:
There's something new I did this year, and I was reminded when I was going through a bunch of my camera junk on my shelf that I actually did this back when I got my first, like, Sony A6300, my first interchangeable lens camera.
John:
I had bought...
John:
I don't like a clear lens protector that like screws onto the front of the lens to protect it from things hitting it or scratches and stuff like that.
John:
And I never really used it.
John:
Like I didn't even, I didn't even remember that I had it until I found it up on the shelf.
John:
I'm like, Oh yeah, I remember when I got this and I guess I didn't use it.
John:
And I think why I didn't use it was,
John:
uh after i bought it i don't even know why i bought it was probably suggested to me as like other people bought this you know whatever um people saying oh you shouldn't put that on there because uh with a you know with an aps-c camera like that you need all the light you can get to the sensor and even though these things are ostensibly clear sometimes they you know cut down the amount of light that goes in especially if they're not so good and plus you get glare and reflections and there were naysayers let's say
John:
I was like, oh, I don't want any of that, and I need all the light I can get, so, you know, I won't use this thing.
John:
But when I went on my recent Long Island vacation, I'd totally forgotten about that, but I was looking through, you know, lens stuff, and I was getting...
John:
suggested to me by various uh e-commerce sites polarizers and clear lens protectors clear lens protectors i was interested in because i had just bought thanks to marco's curse gift a very very expensive lens and that i didn't want to get stretched um and like okay well if i get a clear lens cover that will help protect it um i watched some youtube videos about that like yeah the clear ones are pretty good
John:
And it's way cheaper to replace them than it is to try to replace a lens that has a scratch on it.
John:
I was kind of surprised at how expensive a clear piece of whatever the heck it is that screws onto your lens can possibly be.
John:
But I'm like, it's the floor mats effect where you're buying a $30,000 car and the $150 for floor mats doesn't seem so bad, right?
John:
When if you were just buying floor mats by themselves and they were $150, you'd be like, what?
John:
Although my prices are out of date.
John:
I should probably say like $500 or whatever the hell floor mats cost now.
John:
So I was considering that.
John:
And also in the same sort of genre of suggested products were polarizers, which is the thing you put on the lens of your camera that is, it's like polarized sunglasses that cuts down on light whose wavelength is, what is it?
John:
It's not the wavelength.
John:
It's the cut down light with the direction of the waves lines up in a certain way, right?
John:
And so I actually decided to get both of those things.
John:
I got the clear protective lens for my very expensive lens that I was going to use, like, you know, by just sort of everyday lens that I was going to use for people sitting on the beach towel and people back at the house and stuff like that.
John:
And then I got a polarizer for my long lens for people out in the ocean because you do get a lot of glare and reflections off of the ocean.
John:
Uh, and when I got the polarizer, I was kind of surprised to see that it didn't have any markings on it.
John:
So the polarizer works is, you know, I don't know if you've ever done this with like pieces of an LCD or whatever.
John:
Um, but you twist it and when you twist it in one direction, it's basically clear, not really cuts down some light, but it's basically clear.
John:
It's not, it's not doing anything polarizing.
John:
And when you twist it, I think 90 degrees, that's maximum, uh,
John:
polarized filtering where it will cancel out the light waves that are aligned in a particular direction, right?
John:
But there's nothing on the little thing that says this position is off and this position is on and all the positions in between.
John:
Like, well, maybe they don't put the markings because it's so obvious when you look through the lens which direction it is.
John:
And for me, it was kind of like the lip sync thing.
John:
It was not obvious.
John:
I had to go out to my car on my driveway on a sunny day, look through the, you know, viewfinder and twist the thing.
John:
And then you would see, okay, I see the highlights, the reflections of the sun bouncing off my car.
John:
Twist, twist, twist.
John:
Ah, they've kind of almost disappeared.
John:
Then twist, twist, oh, they're back.
John:
And so doing that, I figured out where the sort of, as best as I could judge, where the maximum effect was and where the off position was.
John:
But still no markings on the filter, which is really weird.
John:
And both of those, both the clear one that I put on my expensive lens and the polarizer that I put on my long lens, very expensive.
John:
Very expensive for a circular thing.
John:
And I guess, I mean, I did a lot of, you know, research and reviews of them.
John:
I guess there can be such a thing as a bad one in terms of reflections and how much light they let through and just general sturdiness and reliability and getting stuck on the lens.
John:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Well, because if you think about it, like you're adding another layer of glass.
Marco:
And so there's a lot of different qualities of optical glass and their coatings and their treatments and whatever they're being held in by.
Marco:
And, you know, so it kind of makes sense when you think about it that way.
Marco:
Like you're adding kind of like another lens in a way, like, you know, another glass element.
Marco:
and so there's you know there are lots of ways to make okay glass for okay prices but you know if you want really good glass that your you know incredible camera sensor can see through it with clarity and not have distortions or reflections or whatever else like yeah okay that actually that actually could be you know a fairly you know high-end precisely manufactured thing i mean so what was this by any chance was the b&w brand that's that's always what i bought
John:
uh what did i get no i think my polarizer was like polar tech or something and the clear one i forget the brand of the clear one like i was trying to price control on on the clear one and was the clear one technically a quote uv and haze filter
John:
Yeah, they always say that they're UV filters or whatever.
John:
I can look up the brands, and I'll put the links in the show notes, but they were both over $100.
John:
I think I brought lenses that were less expensive than this Polarizer.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, for like a B&W UV haze, that's usually like $80, and I think the Polarizer's usually like a $150 or something like that, in that range.
John:
It depends how big they are.
John:
They're expensive.
John:
And the other kind of filters people mentioned in the chat is a neutral density filter, an ND filter, that's basically just to cut down on the amount of light that's going in to your camera.
John:
In fact, some cinema cameras have ND filters like inside the body that you can swap between.
John:
It's such a common thing.
John:
The main reason I thought the polarizer would be useful is, like I said, if you're taking pictures of people in the waves at the ocean on a sunny day, there's lots of glare off the water in the ocean, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
You know, especially like the tips of waves and, you know, there are lots of curling water shapes that are going to potentially reflect a lot of water into the camera lens.
John:
Now, those reflections, it's not like they're necessarily bad.
John:
It really depends on what you're going for.
John:
So if you look at a lot of the sort of tutorials about polarizing filters, they show a lot of things like landscape photography.
John:
Let's say you're taking a picture of this river and the mountains in the background.
John:
uh and but all you're getting all you can see in the river because it's very still is just a reflection of the sky but if you put a polarizing filter now you can actually see the river and the ripples in the water and the stones in it and that's kind of an artistic choice because like maybe i want the reflection of the sky and maybe i like that's not something i want to cut out but if you're trying to for example take a picture of the clear river showing the stones under the water and
John:
And all you can see is reflection.
John:
You don't see a single stone.
John:
That's where you want a polarizer.
John:
That's hopefully going to knock down that reflection.
John:
I think the idea is that like when sunlight reflects off of like a surface like a flat reflective surface of the water that aligns the the the light waves in such a way that the polarizer can knock them out versus sunlight that is just scattering randomly or coming from the sun.
John:
The polarizer is not going to cut that out.
John:
Right.
John:
So.
John:
The upshot is I took all of my, pretty much all of my beach pictures with the long lens with the polarizer on it.
John:
And it was serving multiple purposes.
John:
It was also protecting my long lens, which is also kind of expensive.
John:
It was preventing water spray from getting up inside and onto my lens, right?
John:
And it was, in theory, cutting down glare and stuff.
John:
And I have to say, after the entire vacation of taking pictures...
John:
it's hard for me to tell, to look at a picture and say, oh, I can tell how the polarizer helped this picture because if I hadn't had it, I would have seen X, Y, or Z because it's hard to see the reflections that aren't there that would be because there's plenty of other reflections.
John:
It's not like it gets rid of them entirely.
John:
Like for example, when I was looking at my shiny car,
John:
There was still reflections on the car, but by twisting the Polaroid, I could say, oh, it's knocking down these reflections, and you'd see those highlights go away, and then they come back, and those highlights go away and come back, but there were other reflections in the car that it didn't knock down.
John:
It was just sort of like the big reflections from the sun bouncing off it or whatever, so...
John:
um the main reason i went through all this is just to ask both of you if you have ever used polarizers or lens protectors or you know what you think about this entire concept is it something that i mean the protection thing i i don't think i need opinions on it's like look if you want to spend 100 bucks to prevent something from damaging your umpteen thousand dollar lens then do it and whatever cost you have to pay in light that you're blocking like whatever
John:
But the polarizer, I'm less sure about.
John:
So it sounds like, Marco, you've had some experience with this.
John:
Do you actually use these things or do you have them but never actually put them on your cameras?
Marco:
I used to use them, but a polarization filter, it's like polarized sunglasses.
Marco:
As you said, it can look really good.
Marco:
It also comes with the cost of reduced light going in, which means the other parts of image quality will suffer as a result of less light.
Marco:
Usually I'm not willing to make that tradeoff.
Marco:
The times that I would want it were few and far between, whereas the times that I would not want it were almost every other time.
Marco:
And so I would just leave it off the lens and I eventually would just forget about it.
John:
I mean, I guess because I didn't dislike it and most of the time there is more than enough light on a sunny day at the beach that is not, you know, it's not my problem that I don't have enough light in that situation.
John:
I'll probably stick to the Polaris.
John:
I mean, it's still on my lens right now.
John:
Same thing with the thing protecting my expensive lens because now it's kind of like a security blanket of like, you know, I might scratch it over because my favorite lens, my favorite, my old favorite APS-C 50 millimeter prime, I do have a tiny scratch in that lens.
John:
I have no idea how it got there, but it bothers me.
John:
And I definitely can't see this filter
John:
We are brought to you this week by Collide.
Marco:
IT admins often feel like they have to choose between their commitment to cybersecurity and their duty to protect their employees' privacy.
Marco:
Naturally, you need to safeguard company data against hacks and breaches, but you don't want your workplace to turn into 1984.
Marco:
Traditional MDMs give the IT team complete access and control over company devices, but since employees are inevitably going to use their work laptops for some personal activities, these tools can saddle you with surveillance capabilities you never wanted, like access to photos and browser history.
Marco:
Before you know it, your users are complaining about all the security agents slowing down their laptops, developers are frustrated by their lack of autonomy, and people start secretly working on their personal devices just to get things done.
Marco:
It's easy to fall into the trap of top-down security, but that's not the only option.
Marco:
Collide is an endpoint security solution built around honest security.
Marco:
Their philosophy is that employees aren't your biggest security risk, they're your biggest allies, and your relationship with them should be based on transparency and informed consent.
Marco:
Collide works by notifying your employees of security issues via Slack, educating them on why they are important, and giving them step-by-step instructions on how to resolve them themselves.
Marco:
For IT and security teams, Collide provides the right level of visibility for Mac, Windows, and Linux devices, and it addresses high-risk issues that can't be solved through brute force or automation.
Marco:
And your end users can see exactly why and how every piece of data is being collected via Collide's User Privacy Center and their open-source codebase.
Marco:
you can meet your security goals without compromising your values.
Marco:
Visit collide.com slash ATP to find out how.
Marco:
If you follow that link, they'll hook you up with a goodie bag just for activating a free trial.
Marco:
That's collide, K-O-L-I-D-E, collide.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
I have a couple of quick pieces of follow-up.
Casey:
First of all, Johannes Zander wrote in with regard to the calibration of rock band instruments.
Casey:
So if you're not familiar, rock band was either an offshoot or a clone of Guitar Hero, and both of these games were super popular.
Casey:
I want to say in the early aughts maybe.
Marco:
2006, 2007.
Marco:
Okay, so mid aughts.
Casey:
So these were rhythm games where you played something that vaguely looks like a guitar or something that's kind of like a drum or a bass or what have you.
Casey:
and and there was a microphone and you would play along with um things that were falling like little symbols falling down the screen kind of kind of it's kind of sort of like dance dance revolution um and they were super fun or at least i always thought they were super duper fun they were super fun okay good i'm glad i'm no ifs and or buts about it rock band was awesome guitar hero was awesome and i missed these games they were super fun same yeah they were super great party games you get this big plastic band going and it takes up your entire closet when you're not playing it
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
It was a lot of fun.
Casey:
And the problem with this, though, is it's a rhythm game and it's based on you reacting.
Casey:
Your ability to do well is based on you reacting quickly to what's happening on screen and hitting, quote unquote, strumming, which really means hitting a button or hitting the drum at the right moment.
Casey:
And that means you really need to have everything calibrated correctly.
Casey:
You need to have the instrument...
Casey:
And the system that it's attached to know when you should be hitting the button to compare that against when you did hit the button.
Casey:
And I was reminded via this video that we'll put in the show notes that the way that Rock Band got around this was they had a little camera or at least a light sensor.
Casey:
I guess it wasn't really a full-on camera.
Casey:
a light sensor on the guitar and also a microphone on the guitar and there was two different kinds of calibration you could do one where it would play beeps repeatedly and it would measure how long it took for that beep to reach the guitar and presumably you know get all the way back to like the playstation or wii or what have you and then a different mode where it would flash the screen white and it would detect how long it took for the guitar to see the screen turn white
Casey:
And so it calibrated itself.
Casey:
And I guess what I'm saying in a roundabout way is, John, if you would like to properly calibrate your TV, you just need to bust out Rock Band and have it tell you the millisecond delay for your television setup.
John:
I mean, that's the type of thing that I was looking for, some way to do automatic calibration with like an iPhone app or whatever.
John:
But...
John:
like i said last time in this in this type of tool chain of uh measuring delay when the possible effect of the instruments you're using is a large percentage of the delay that you're going to be dialing in it can really mess things up so for example last time we're talking about an ios app that said oh well the iphone itself induces x amount of delay so you just have to kind of hard code that by looking up this table of things that i measure but some other equipment right and
John:
And that was a pretty big percentage of the total adjustment.
John:
So if you get that wrong, who knows what you could be doing, right?
John:
So with the Rock Band things, how much delay is introduced by the game or the controller or the sensor?
John:
Obviously, Rock Band is calibrating itself to itself.
John:
So it's probably fine because it knows what it's doing within its context.
John:
But...
John:
if i calibrated with a rock band thing would that be correctly calibrated for watching video on apple tv uh especially if the tv is in game mode which has different uh may have different latency um values for the television itself than the movie the mode you watch movies in or whatever so really i just wish this was built into the television uh but you know and if they have to use a phone app or whatever to do it uh that would be great but the the real way to do any of these things is with
John:
actual you know calibration equipment and when when tv reviewers measure sort of the input lag on televisions they're using equipment kind of like this not rock band but similar like a light sensor and stuff like that and even in that scenario there are lots of different choices tv reviewers can make about what they're measuring and how you know how they measure it and what number they're putting out they just have to be internally consistent to let you know hey this tv has less lag than this tv but the absolute values can be affected by how they choose to how and what they choose to measure um so it's
Marco:
trickier than you might think i'm just trying to get lip sync right like i'm not i don't need the i don't even game on this tv so i don't need the ultimate uh lowest possible lag and i was never any good at rock band so it would be kind of funny if they actually did use rock band for this purpose and there was like this this black market like people like keeping xbox 360s alive with these old copies of rock band just just for this purpose in this specialized industry of calibrations
Marco:
That would be amazing.
John:
Real calibration equipment actually costs even more than the very expensive plastic instruments that they would sell for those games.
Casey:
It was expensive, but man, was it fun.
John:
So fun.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
It is the week before the new iPhone, or at least that's what we are to assume.
Casey:
As we discussed last week, we got press invites to watch it.
Casey:
None of us, as of the time of this recording, have been invited to watch it in person.
Casey:
We were simply invited to watch the live stream today.
Casey:
But it is about that time, and we need to do the genuinely excellent idea Marco came up with a few years back, which is the iPhone 13 and Watch Series 7 exit interviews.
Casey:
Step inside.
Casey:
Close the door.
Casey:
Yeah, right?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I love that you can actually say that because you've probably never had an exit interview in your life, have you?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
But see, there you go.
Casey:
But that was well done.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I do not have a Series 7 in the house, so I have literally nothing to say about it.
Marco:
I've never worked at a place where my boss had an office with the door that closed.
Casey:
Fair, fair.
Casey:
I have on and off, but not always.
Casey:
I do not have a Series 7 in the house, so I have nothing to say about it.
Casey:
John, does Tina have a Series 7?
Casey:
I don't recall.
John:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure she does.
John:
I think she just got it because she was going for a 5.
John:
I think we talked about this before.
John:
But I haven't heard anything bad about it, so I think that's a good sign.
John:
She's a dedicated Apple Watch user.
John:
She wears it every single day.
John:
She has many, many watch bands, and she likes it, which is why she keeps getting new ones.
John:
And the fact that I haven't heard anything about this one means it's probably pretty much doing its job.
John:
The only thing I can recall recently is that she's still...
John:
She still doesn't seem to have a lot of faith in the cellular functionality.
John:
In other words, she says, I don't rely on it.
John:
Like, if it works and it's there, that's a great bonus, but she always makes sure she has her phone.
John:
I don't think that's the fault of the watch, although I do think there may be something to the idea that the...
John:
The transmit power of the cell radio inside Apple Watches is less than that of a phone just because the battery is so much smaller.
John:
But I'm not sure if that's actually true.
John:
All I know is that she does not believe in it.
John:
It doesn't believe it is real as reliable as her phone when it comes to cell reception.
John:
But she tends, like I said, she tends not to use it like you have.
John:
Sometimes Casey would say, I can leave my phone.
John:
I don't need it.
John:
I've got the watch.
John:
I can do everything I need.
John:
That's not how she uses her watch.
Casey:
Well, and I haven't done that in years.
Casey:
In fact, when I did my switch from AT&T to Verizon, I decided to...
Casey:
uh change my apple watch from having cellular service like obviously the hardware still is capable of it but what i ended up doing was deciding i'd rather put that money toward my ipad and give my ipad cellular service which i think i i pretty vastly prefer part of that is because i don't really run anymore like i i was a semi-avid runner and i would leave my
Casey:
phone at home and i would run with just my watch my airpods which is amazing and i love it but i just got away from running and it seems silly to pay the 15 a month after taxes or whatever it is for something that i used almost never and obviously everyone's you know mileage may be different may vary but for me i think it's much that money is much better spent on my ipad and so i do plan because i'm on a series six
Casey:
I do plan on Aaron and I getting new watches this year, and my current intention as I sit here now is for the first time since I think the cellular watch was a thing, my intention is to not get a cellular watch this year and to just get a regular watch, a non-cellular Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth only one.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And I think I've seen I know I've seen her look at her messages like text messages on her watch.
John:
So she does.
John:
She has been offloading more of her phone functionality.
John:
And I say this is relevant to the Series 7 because the main feature it had over the six was the screen was a little bit bigger, which, you know, oh, it's bigger by a tiny amount.
John:
But when the screen space is so small to begin with, every little bit helps.
John:
And so I've seen her.
John:
look at messages and i know sometimes when she's been out when i send a message and she gets it on her watch and she replies on her watch i think i'm not sure if she's using the graffiti scribble thing with her finger if she's using voice or whatever but i've seen her reply to things on her watch as well and i feel like that is slightly more likely to happen with the slightly bigger screen on the series seven so i would say the seven was a you know a boring year where the watch just got a little bit better in a few ways but you know that's that's fine and again with her upgrading from a five uh you know thumbs up
Marco:
Yeah, when the 7 came out, it seemed like a very, very small upgrade because the highlights basically were it supported faster charging with its new special USB-C cable that's different from the USB-C cable they've sold for years that was like one foot long for travel.
Marco:
So it's like if you happen to have this one special cable that came with it, it could charge faster, which is useful if you wear it overnight or something.
Marco:
So there was that.
Marco:
And the screen got a little bit bigger and a little bit brighter.
Marco:
But
Marco:
I came to appreciate it more because I've kept my 6 around for development testing and stuff, and I've occasionally had to wear the 6 for a whole day for some reason or another, and I really do appreciate the 7's benefit.
Marco:
It actually was... When you go back, when you've been using a 7, you go back to the 6, you realize how much of an upgrade it actually was.
Marco:
It actually was pretty good.
Marco:
It wasn't as big as some of the earlier years where they changed more things.
Marco:
It still has the same processor, I think, for the...
Marco:
second or third year in a row.
Marco:
So it hasn't gotten faster recently, but it's pretty much fast enough for now.
Marco:
But the bigger and brighter screen, you really do notice.
Marco:
And especially, as I was saying, you get a couple more words of text.
Marco:
And I wear the small size, the 41mm now.
Marco:
Having the smaller screen in the first place, that little bit more really does help.
Marco:
You really do get a little bit more space.
Marco:
This was the first size watch that I wore that was able to have the on-screen keyboard.
Marco:
And I've only had to use it like two or three times in the year I've been wearing this.
Marco:
But I was glad it was there those two or three times.
Marco:
Like one of them I had to type in my Apple ID password.
Marco:
And I can't imagine having you that like any other like the scribble or whatever else like that would be terrible.
Marco:
It was bad enough on the keyboard.
Marco:
So anyway, I've actually really enjoyed the Series 7 and this is the first year that I tried the titanium as the metal.
Marco:
I gotta say I'm totally converted.
Marco:
I love the titanium.
Marco:
It's really nice.
Marco:
So I've been a silver steel person for years and years and years.
Marco:
And I still love the look of the silver steel.
Marco:
But this year, I was tired of buying the same watch every time, basically.
Marco:
And so I was like, just for variety, let me try titanium.
Marco:
Everyone says it's really nice.
Marco:
Let me see it.
Marco:
And I love how much lighter it is.
Marco:
I love a light watch.
Marco:
In the regular watch world,
Marco:
i mean most regular watches are lighter than the apple watch but because they don't have batteries giant you know giant lithium batteries taking up most of their volume um but still in the regular watch world they also have titanium watches there and the apple watch is not as light as them because again the battery but i love a light watch it's so delightful feeling to have this this light thing on your wrist that like you can barely even tell it's there
Marco:
did you get the space black titanium or the regular titanium no i got i got the silver titanium which i think looks better personally the space black titanium i think is so close to like the the black or near black aluminum colors that it's i don't think that's really worth it in my opinion but that's that's up to other people i don't care what i don't care what you buy but
Marco:
Anyway, but yeah, it has a very different finish, like where the aluminum is kind of, you know, bead blast or whatever.
Marco:
So it's this like kind of diffuse, like staticky finish.
Marco:
The titanium is brushed in one direction, like like long ways on the sides.
Marco:
And it just it looks really nice.
Marco:
It has a wonderful way it plays with the light.
Marco:
And it is like a little bit more subtle.
Marco:
And frankly, it looks a little bit more high end than the polished stainless steel.
Marco:
And that surprised me because I love the stainless steel look, but I love the titanium even more.
Marco:
And that's why I'm actually kind of disappointed that the rumors, which we'll get to in a little bit, are kind of unclear as to whether there will be a titanium small watch.
Marco:
Well, I hope there is because I've really come to enjoy it.
Marco:
But anyway, I've been very happy with this watch.
Marco:
And I keep using it more and more.
Marco:
As time is going on, I'm wearing mechanicals less and I'm wearing the Apple Watch more as the Apple Watch gets better.
Marco:
And so I expect that trend to continue this coming year.
Marco:
But the Series 7, honestly, I'm at the point where... I say this during a lot of the exit interviews.
Marco:
We're like...
Marco:
I actually don't know what I would change about this.
Marco:
And I'm sure Apple will show us next week why I absolutely must have to have the new thing.
Marco:
But right now, as it stands now, I'm not sure what I would change besides software things.
Marco:
I have tons of software tweaks I can suggest.
Marco:
But hardware-wise, it's pretty nice already.
John:
Apple could easily make you buy this by just making it a lot thinner.
John:
I don't think they will because they need the battery.
John:
Apple Watch, unlike many of Apple's other products, has not been on a trajectory of getting thinner.
John:
In fact, I think the Series Zero is still the thinnest one that they ever sold, maybe?
John:
So if and when we get to a point where there's some kind of technological advancement that allows a significant decrease in thickness, that is the obvious next step.
John:
Because the Apple Watch is as thick as it is not based on style, because plenty of watches are big and chunky as a style choice.
John:
It's as thin as it is because that's as thin as they can possibly make it while still having good battery life.
John:
And I don't think they want to sacrifice battery life to keep trying to make it thinner.
John:
In fact, they've made it thicker over time.
John:
I don't think they're going to make the Series 8 really thinner, but that would do it.
John:
If they had one that was like half the thickness and styled to be thin like that, you would buy it immediately.
Marco:
Well, maybe.
Marco:
So the thickest one, I believe, is still the Series 3.
Marco:
It went up in thickness, up to 3, and then with 4, they kind of cut it back down.
Marco:
And I think we're still below what the 3 was.
Marco:
But regardless, the way it's styled and the way it sits off the wrist with a little sensor bump, I think it actually is...
Marco:
basically thin enough you know right now it looks i mean i don't have the numbers in front of me but the the body without the little puck on the bottom looks to be somewhere in the like 11 or 12 millimeter thickness range and for watches of this size that's very very common like that's this is not it isn't an ultra thin watch but this is not a thick watch like when you compare it to other mechanicals of similar size classes it's not a thick watch anymore the series three was was too thick but the the modern ones are are not in my opinion um and and so i don't i don't think
Marco:
They really need to go thinner.
Marco:
So, I mean, overall, like, again, like, I think the Series 7, I think it's a very good watch.
Marco:
And I'm, you know, the only thing I would wish for, again, are software things or, you know, more sensors, as Apple is rumored to add.
Marco:
And that's, you know, that might get me because that's one of the reasons why I wear it so much is health sensors.
Marco:
I really appreciate that.
Marco:
As I'm pretty solidly middle-aged now, when I had COVID a few weeks back, I loved that I had a history of my oxygen levels, and so I could make sure that things were staying within healthy ranges and not changing.
Marco:
It even...
Marco:
Thanks, Apple.
Marco:
It even alerted me after I was locked in my house for a few days.
Marco:
It alerted me that my step count and calorie burns were down compared to usual.
Marco:
First of all, I was kind of like, screw you.
Marco:
I have COVID.
Marco:
I can't leave my house.
Marco:
But also, I was like, you know, I'm actually glad that it noticed.
Marco:
Like it gave me that, you know, the health app on my phone gave me a notification saying like, hey, you know, we decided to change in your pattern.
Marco:
And then, you know, it's a wonderful euphemism.
Marco:
And you go in and you see what the change is.
Marco:
And it's like this huge drop off in it.
Marco:
my activity and I'm like oh god like you know thanks you know I don't feel good about this but I at least know why and I'm glad that was there for me the day before I tested positive I didn't feel super great and I got the high heart rate alert for the very first time that's like hey your heart rate's a bit high considering you don't seem to be moving
Marco:
And at the time, I just kind of wrote it off as, well, maybe my watch is having a false alarm.
Marco:
But I had never seen that happen.
Marco:
I've never gotten that as a false alarm.
Marco:
So I thought something was probably not wrong with me.
Marco:
And it was just weird.
Marco:
But I was feeling really tired that day.
Marco:
And sure enough, the next morning, I test positive.
Marco:
And I actually had COVID that was festering during that time.
Marco:
So something was off.
Marco:
So it actually did work.
Marco:
And so, you know, I really appreciate the Apple Watch health sensors.
Marco:
And so if the rumors are true that they're going to add maybe a body temperature, you know, sensor to detect fluctuations in your body temperature or, you know, abnormalities like that's really good to know.
Marco:
That's useful information.
Marco:
Ideally, I would love, you know, in the future.
Marco:
I know I know they're they've been working for a long time, as many companies have.
Marco:
For a through-the-skin blood glucose monitoring method, that's obviously massive for diabetics, but even for non-diabetics, to be able to track your blood glucose throughout the day would be incredible and would open up all sorts of new avenues for health monitoring and management.
Marco:
So if they ever get that, that would be a game changer.
Marco:
But even if they stay with simpler stuff like body temperature and blood oxygen, I still get value out of that.
Marco:
And so whatever they can do to add more sensors and more health monitoring and more proactive alerts of things being off, I am all for that, especially as I inevitably get older.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Trade Coffee.
Marco:
directly to your home on whatever schedule you needed to arrive and this can be as hands-off or as hands-on as you want it to be you can quickly select from curated collections by roast flavor profile brewing method and more and their team of experts do all the work to taste test hundreds of coffees from across the u.s every month and they curate over 450 exceptional coffees that make the cut
Marco:
Or if you want something curated just for you, then take a minute to complete Trade's coffee questionnaire, and you'll be expertly matched with your perfect coffee, and a fresh bag of beans will be on its way.
Marco:
I love using services like this, and I've used a bunch of them.
Marco:
And trade is one of my favorites.
Marco:
I always keep a trade subscription active because it adds a lot of great variety to my coffee day.
Marco:
I love getting freshly roasted beans.
Marco:
And this is a great way to get just amazing beans from all over the place from roasters.
Marco:
I would have never heard of otherwise.
Marco:
And fresh roasted beans are always better than anything you can buy in the store.
Marco:
So Trade is the easiest way to get your very best tasting coffee delivered fresh when you need it.
Marco:
You've got nothing to lose because Trade also guarantees you will love your first bag.
Marco:
If you don't, they'll work with you to replace it for free.
Marco:
So if you want to support small roasters around the country and brew the best cup of coffee you've ever made at home, it's time to try Trade Coffee.
Marco:
Right now, Trade is offering you a total of $30 off your first order plus free shipping at drinktrade.com slash ATP.
Marco:
That's drinktrade.com slash ATP for $30 off your subscription to the best coffees in the country.
Marco:
Thanks to Trade for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so let's talk iPhone 13 Pro.
Casey:
Now, John, remind me, you are on the 12 Pro?
Casey:
You're on the 12 Pro this year, right?
John:
12 Pro, and my wife has a 13 Pro.
Casey:
Okay, do you want to channel your inner Tina and tell me what you slash she thinks about the 13?
John:
Yeah, so, I mean, again, she hasn't really had any complaints about her phone for the most part.
John:
Her main complaint was the MagSafe battery pack is not as good for her uses as the old thing where you'd get a battery case from Apple that would only work with your phone.
John:
We talked about this back when this product came out.
John:
You know, the good thing about the battery pack is, in theory, you can reuse it on your next phone, which has generally not been true of Apple's battery cases.
John:
But the bad thing is that it is...
John:
Easy to knock off your phone.
John:
It's smaller, has lower capacity, and it's just generally more annoying than just a very snug-fitting battery case.
John:
And how does she destroy her battery?
John:
With Pokemon Go, which she plays a lot, and that game totally mauls the battery on the phone.
John:
I feel like there's special features that have been added to that game to destroy your battery.
John:
Is it doing Bitcoin mining?
John:
I don't know, but...
John:
Boy, does that game destroy your battery.
Casey:
Can I interrupt, please?
Casey:
I have been playing just a teeny bit of Pokemon Go in the support of Declan, who has also been playing a teeny bit of Pokemon Go.
Casey:
Don't worry about it.
Casey:
Long story.
Casey:
But suffice to say, that game, the rumors of how bad it destroys your battery are complete BS.
Casey:
It is so much worse than people say.
Casey:
Now, granted, I did put the beta on not too long after I started playing Pokemon Go, so maybe I'm misattributing my battery loss, but oh my gosh, it is a battery murderer.
Casey:
It deserves like...
Casey:
capital punishment for battery murder it's ridiculous how bad that game utterly destroys your battery and it is no wonder that people probably like tina have like two in three battery packs or carrying around like a laptop size battery pack with a cable attached to it oh my word is it bad what is it doing back there
Marco:
Well, think about it.
Marco:
It's using GPS and the camera and you're watching the screen the whole time and it's doing AR projection and a 3D.
Marco:
It's basically spending as much computing power using as many of the device's high power methods as possible.
Casey:
It's bananas.
John:
I cannot believe it.
John:
Yeah, this is why my wife's purse weighs so much because it's filled with four phones because she pays them multiple accounts because it's like the people play multiple slot machines at once in Vegas, right?
Marco:
No, yeah, yeah.
John:
and also all of the power pack battery pack lithium ion batteries that she's got in there on top of like she used to have her main phone inside a battery case now she has the little mag safe and she has the mag safe thing in her car so when it's on the on the mag safe car mount in her car it's also charging but she also has wired connectors in her car just it's a constant battle but anyway so that was her only real complaint about the 13 was the little the smaller battery thing that comes off real easy is not as good as a battery case
John:
But otherwise, she's been mostly fine with it.
John:
I don't use her phone, but I occasionally do pick it up to do something with it or take a picture.
John:
If both of our phones are around, I usually want to take a picture with her thing because her camera is better than mine because I've got the 12 Pro.
John:
So I use her phone to take pictures or whatever.
John:
And obviously, I haven't been using it for the year that she's had it, but I have picked it up a lot of times.
John:
And I've never gotten used to the giant camera bump and the case that highlights the giant camera bump.
John:
I've never gotten used to the way her phone...
John:
sits on the table because it is elevated from the she's got an apple uh leather case i believe on it it doesn't sit on the table evenly and when i pick it up and use it my finger hits the little you know the wall that's around the camera bump and so that's my main complaint about 13 pro i feel like the camera has crossed a line where it is bothersome to me which does not bode well for the 14 pro which i'm supposedly getting this year
John:
which as we'll talk about in a little bit, is supposed to have an even bigger camera bump.
John:
But I guess that's just the price of whatever cool camera it's going to have.
John:
So as far as I'm concerned, 13 Pro has been perfectly satisfactory other than the battery case issue, which is not a thing for me, but it's a thing for my wife and the camera being a little bit too big.
John:
what about uh promotion the fast refresh rate do you notice it oh i have a problem with promotion right so we talked about as my 13 pro came out i'm like i don't care about i use my iPhone i don't care um and i think i have promotion on my i have the latest uh ipad pro i believe at the m1 ipad pro that's the latest one right yes i believe that's right and that has promotion right m1 ipad pro
John:
yes every every ipad pro except for the 9.7 and like the very first generation 9.7 and 12.9 didn't have it but starting from the 10.5 all the other ones did yeah well so anyway i i've i've had that m1 ipad pro since it was introduced and i use it pretty much every single day and i was like yeah you know promotion is not a big deal for me but in the past month or so every time i pick up my wife's iphone 13 pro i see the promotion
John:
I don't know why I wasn't seeing it or noticing it before.
John:
I mean, I can notice everywhere you look for it, but I've been like unbidden.
John:
It has been leapt to my mind.
John:
I was like, whoa, that's so much smoother than my phone.
John:
And it's bothersome.
John:
I mean, so I guess I guess I'm getting to the point where phones without promotion seem a little bit
John:
you know stuttery to me and i don't want that like i liked it better when i didn't care about the difference but now i feel like with the phone i kind of do and every time i use our phone i'm like oh this makes my phone feel bad um so i am one of the things i'm looking forward to on the 14 pro is i will finally have a phone with promotion i endorse it
Marco:
Yeah, it's a big deal.
Marco:
Like, I have loved promotion.
Marco:
And it's one of those things that that I didn't think I was noticing after the first few days, until I mentioned earlier the summer, I did an experiment where I tried to use the mini for a few days.
Marco:
And I really noticed its absence.
Marco:
in a way that I don't notice it on the Mac like when I use a MacBook Pro with its built-in screen you know the modern MacBook Pros have promotion when I use that I don't really notice it there and then when I go back to my you know big Pro Display XDR that doesn't support it I don't notice the absence of it but on iPads and iPhones I do instantly notice its presence and later its absence and so it's it's been wonderful I've loved promotion but
Marco:
i also i love the cameras on this thing too like you know now that i guess i'm stealing a turn here so i i love the cameras on on the 13 pro the 3x i i i'm not super crazy about the 3x lens the 1x and the and the wide but especially the 1x have just been fantastic um i have enjoyed occasionally using the macro on the on the wide like you know just for a little
Marco:
pragmatic reasons here and there like you know scanning a like taking a picture of a tag on the back of a router or something like that that's been wonderful um little you know day-to-day life things like you know again like when i when i went to the mini that didn't support that i missed the macro mode like i realized oh i actually actually used that um the 3x lens i wish was both a better camera
Marco:
and was not as zoomed in because where we have it now is you have nothing between 1x and 3x hardware wise and oftentimes what i want is between those and so what has to happen then is it just crops the image off the 1x and that's fine the 1x is great but you know it's that's not that's not an amazing solution and
Marco:
and the 3x camera just like the the 2.5 and 2x cameras that came before it in previous models the 3x camera is not very good like optically it's just not nearly as good as the 1x camera and you do notice and so i find myself not using it that much as a combination of it you know not really being the the distance i often need and it being optically worse so
Marco:
I look forward to any improvements they can make in those areas, whether they can cover a wider range in hardware in some way, and or whether they can improve the optics of the telephoto camera.
Marco:
But otherwise, 13 Pro feature-wise, between the ProMotion and the macro camera and the overall camera system, it's been really, really great.
Marco:
One thing I still wish for is this is very heavy.
Marco:
I wish it was lighter.
Marco:
It's a very dense phone in the pocket.
Marco:
It's big and it's heavy.
Marco:
And this is apparently going to be the smallest phone they're going to make starting next week.
Marco:
That I hope, and I know the rumors are not backing me up here at all with anything useful here, but
Marco:
But I hope that future iPhones that are of this slot in the lineup, meaning the smallest phone with all the Pro features, I hope they find a way to make them lighter.
Marco:
Whether it's changing out the stainless steel band or whatever, or other changes, who knows what they could do with materials or whatever, but...
Marco:
It's a very heavy phone.
Marco:
So that being said, one of the biggest contributions to weight is the battery.
Marco:
And the battery life's been great.
Marco:
I've been very pleased with the battery life.
Marco:
Even during this beta season where beta battery life has been pretty rough, I had a lot to start with, and that has helped a lot.
Marco:
So I'm very happy with the performance, the battery, the screen, the cameras, all that stuff is great.
Marco:
I just wish it was...
Marco:
lighter and and maybe i might go a little smaller on the body too but hey you know it's a big screen it's beautiful whatever so just lighter is my number one request for future phones but overall this has been a great phone i don't i don't leave it in haste this is a wonderful phone and if i had to keep using it forever uh and nothing else ever came out that was better than it i'd be fine but fortunately that's not that's not how things work so we're gonna have amazing things next week
Casey:
Yeah, for me, the 120 hertz, I noticed it a lot early on.
Casey:
And now I do feel like I notice it, but it doesn't, I think I misattribute what's happening.
Casey:
So when I use an older phone, I feel like I'm misattributing it to the slowness of the phone rather than the slowness of the screen.
Casey:
Like I just assume, oh, well, this phone is older, so it's a little choppier and slower.
Casey:
But it's not that.
Casey:
It's that it's actually the screen is half as fast.
Casey:
But I forget that that's a thing, and so I think I often misattribute it in that sense, especially since iOS is usually very, very good about keeping pretty good performance even several models into the past.
Casey:
For me, all in all,
Casey:
I love the 13 Pro.
Casey:
I think it's a phenomenal phone.
Casey:
This is the first phone in two years.
Casey:
I guess it was three phones ago that I have not yet shattered.
Casey:
So that's good.
Casey:
Related, it's the first phone I put a case on in three years.
Casey:
So I'll let you decide if those are related events.
Casey:
I think they might be.
Casey:
But with regard to cases, I was a huge fan of the Apple leather case, the black Apple leather case.
Casey:
And at least at launch time, I don't know if that's still the case,
Casey:
there was no black Apple leather case.
Casey:
And that is a super bummer.
Casey:
Speaking like we were earlier, what Marco was saying about, oh, I'll just throw in AppleCare, oh, I'll just throw in this like $80 Apple case.
Casey:
I would just add that in, not even think twice about it.
Casey:
And now, or at least again at the time of launch a year ago,
Casey:
There was no black apple leather case, and I'm still a little grumpy about it, especially because this nudient case, which the name is kind of bad to begin with, it is not in good shape now.
Casey:
It has not stood the test of time terribly well.
Casey:
So I don't know.
Casey:
If there isn't a black apple leather case next year or in a month, in a week even, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Put in another plug for my, like, what was it, like a $30 cheapo Olexar iPhone 12 Pro black leather case with an open bottom that I bought when the 12 Pro was new.
John:
I mean, it looks like it's been used, but it's held up amazingly well.
John:
Amazingly well.
John:
It was like less than half the price of the Apple leather thing.
John:
Open bottom, which is what I wanted, black leather case.
John:
Good job, Olexar.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm going to have to look into that for this next one if Apple doesn't have a first-party thing, and maybe I'll just look into that regardless.
Casey:
The thing that is really a bugbear, and I'm grumpy about this because I spent a lot of time outside this year, does San Francisco not have...
Casey:
Any weather?
Casey:
I thought it had at least some amount of weather.
Casey:
And I thought it at least occasionally... I thought every once in a while Carl the Fog went away and there was this magical thing called sunlight in San Francisco.
Casey:
That does exist in San Francisco, does it not?
Casey:
I'm pretty sure it does.
Casey:
Because, oh my gosh, can we please...
Casey:
have a phone that can be in sunlight for more than 45 seconds before the screen dims like it is i'm being a little hyperbolic here but oh my gosh i spent a lot of time at the little community pool that we joined this year and my word if you have this thing in the sun particularly if you're on cellular for more than a few seconds it thermal regulates that screen right down to nothingness and it is so frustrating and so hard to see um
Casey:
My number one wish, I'm not even kidding, my number one wish for the iPhone 14 is to do better in full sunlight.
Casey:
I know I probably sound utterly bananas.
Casey:
I totally accept that.
Casey:
But this is a legitimate thing that I swear to you is worse in this phone than any of the phones that have come before it.
Casey:
And it's bad on my iPad, too.
Casey:
Maybe that's because of age.
Casey:
Maybe it's because of software.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But do not like it.
Casey:
Anyway, that being said, I do like the fast screen.
Casey:
Again, I don't want to belabor the ultra-wideband park bench slash picnic table, but that is pretty freaking cool.
Casey:
And I don't know if that was new with the 13 or new with the 12.
Casey:
I tried to look this up earlier and couldn't figure it out.
Casey:
But having a phone that's three times faster, that's internet connection can occasionally be three times faster than my home gigabit internet connection.
Casey:
That's pretty cool.
Casey:
I was trying to look at what else was new with this phone.
Casey:
Tell me, gentlemen, how many times have you used cinematic mode?
Marco:
none exactly but i mean that's not like i never i don't even use portrait mode like i like that's a bad example for me because you know whatever they're like you know trick photo mode of the year is i probably don't use it
Casey:
Yeah, I actually do use portrait mode from time to time, and I think it's gotten to the point that it's acceptable now.
Casey:
I wouldn't say it's good, but I'd say it's at least acceptable.
Casey:
But I think I used cinematic mode like once or twice when it first was a thing, and I haven't touched it since.
Casey:
In fact, I don't even know if it's on.
Casey:
I don't know how to turn it on.
Casey:
I know nothing about it.
Casey:
I've already forgotten everything.
Marco:
I've decided that I'm not actually a filmmaker.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
I'm very, I'm very happy admitting to myself that that's just not me.
John:
Yep.
John:
Yep.
John:
I don't wonder who that feature is for because people who are actual filmmakers don't want it in the same way that people who are interested in photography don't want portrait mode.
John:
Um,
John:
And then people who are casual, it's too complicated to think about like what they showed people doing in the demo videos of like I'm doing.
John:
It's hard enough to hold your phone and try to keep your family in the frame as they're moving around.
John:
Can you imagine also like I know you can do this after the fact, but like selecting who's going to be in focus or whatever.
John:
That's people don't want to.
John:
They just want to hold up their phone and record and be done with it.
John:
They don't want to have to spend any amount of time deciding who the phone focuses on and who gets the fake blur.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
But all in all, as much as I whined a couple times in the last few minutes, all in all, I really love this phone.
Casey:
I love the flat sides.
Casey:
I wish I had the, or I wish I wasn't so much of a klutz and that I could use it without a case because it does feel nice without a case.
Casey:
It's a little slippier, more slippy than I wish, but still it does feel nice.
Casey:
I popped the case off a minute ago just to look.
Casey:
uh i love this uh midnight blue or whatever this is called pacific blue you know it would be neat to have a pro phone with kind of vibrant colors like i would be so here for that well that's not even true i'd probably end up buying black because i'm an idiot and i'm a loser but i would be here for the idea of it no you're just a nerd casey nerds default to black it's fine you know we i've been there myself many times like i know how it works but no i'm with you the colors god just please more personality in the colors
Casey:
Please.
Casey:
That's a very good way to put it.
Casey:
Please more personality in the colors.
Casey:
That would be excellent.
Casey:
But all in all, a really good phone.
Casey:
I really think that if they did basically a little bit better camera and, God help me, a little bit better thermal regulation such that the screen wasn't dimming constantly in sunlight, if they did those two things, it would be an insta-buy for me.
Casey:
And I'm sure whatever they say next week, I'm not going to kid myself.
Casey:
I'm going to get it.
Casey:
It's just what I do now.
Casey:
But I am really hopeful that they improve the camera a little bit.
Casey:
Not to say it's lacking, but I hope they improve the camera.
Casey:
I hope they do a little bit better with these thermals.
Casey:
I don't feel like the phone is slow at this point.
Casey:
There's almost nothing I can think of that I feel like I'm running out of horsepower or RAM, for that matter.
Casey:
So really, just more of the same, just give me more of it.
Casey:
And I'll take that, please, and thank you.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online.
Marco:
Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything, your products, content you create, even your time.
Marco:
Squarespace just makes it incredibly easy to make amazing websites, whether it's something simple like a few pages of info, maybe a portfolio, all the way up to things that used to be really hard to try to host, things like storefronts,
Marco:
Bye-bye.
Marco:
Bye-bye.
Marco:
Everything you might want.
Marco:
Things like member areas.
Marco:
You can monetize your content and expertise in a way that fits your brand.
Marco:
Unlock new revenue streams for your businesses.
Marco:
Free up time in your schedule.
Marco:
You can sell access to gated content like videos or online courses or newsletters.
Marco:
They have email campaigns.
Marco:
You can collect subscribers, convert them into loyal customers.
Marco:
They have templates you can start with and customize it to your heart's content, whatever your brand ingredients might be.
Marco:
They have SEO tools, so you don't have to worry that people aren't able to find your site.
Marco:
And all of this is backed by great analytics.
Marco:
You can use insights to grow your business.
Marco:
Learn where your visits and sales are coming from.
Marco:
Analyze which channels are most effective.
Marco:
You can build a marketing strategy based on your top keywords or your most popular content.
Marco:
Whatever it is you need.
Marco:
And all of this is backed by incredible support and analytics.
Marco:
So many problems are out of your hands.
Marco:
You don't have to deal with server maintenance, software upgrades, security patches, none of that on Squarespace.
Marco:
It's a great place to host a website.
Marco:
So go to squarespace.com slash ATP for a free trial.
Marco:
And when you're ready to launch, use offer code ATP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Marco:
Once again, squarespace.com slash ATP to get started.
Marco:
Offer code ATP for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.
John:
That's potentially some good news for you.
John:
Now we can move on to the rumors for the announcement and spoil everything for our next week's show.
John:
Yes, please.
John:
So iPhone 14, 14 Pro, and 14 Pro Max, we talked about this before.
John:
The big change in the rumors this year is that you will be able to get a big phone that's not a Pro.
John:
So the 14 will come in big and small sizes, and the 14 Pro will come in big and small sizes.
John:
There's no more many.
John:
I'm starting with the information that we pretty much know for sure.
John:
Okay.
John:
i think that is uh everyone agrees on that uh the uh the pros having the a16 and the non-pros not having the a16 is another thing that has been heavily rumored and seems pretty sure this year that's going to be a bummer because the years when both the pro and non-pro had the same system on a chip were great but doesn't look like that's happening for a variety of reasons maybe it's
John:
cost maybe it's yields on the new you know five nanometer extra good five nanometer process i always forget what it's called five np or something whatever the hell tsmc calls it called five pro max yeah although does the 815 use that process as well i don't even remember
John:
anyway a16 only on the pros probably won't make a difference to you the other thing you mentioned ram i think they're both the pro and non-pro are getting six gigs of ram and i think the non-pro only had four last year is that true something like that these are not things that most people notice right so the what does the pro have to differentiate well the first thing is that it's it doesn't have a notch it has a different thing in its screen for where the face id and front-facing camera stuff goes um
John:
If you see the pictures of the screen pieces, it looks kind of like a sideways lowercase i. It's like a lozenge and then a circular dot for the camera.
John:
But the latest round of sort of late-breaking rumors that we'll put some links to is that sideways i will have the gap between the stem on the i and the dot on the i.
John:
that those screen pixels, although they exist, will be turned off.
John:
So instead of looking like a sideways lowercase letter i, it will instead look like a sideways lozenge that is disconnected from the top of the screen.
John:
Now, in total area, whether it's a lozenge or a sideways lowercase letter i, that is less total screen area that is removed.
John:
You will have more pixels on the screen than you did even with the new smaller notch, right?
John:
But in terms of how much...
John:
Those things intrude on the space available for like lines of text or lists or like whatever.
John:
I'm not sure it's much of an improvement and it may actually be worse because if you look at the pictures, it's almost as if they took the notch, made it narrower, but then disconnected it from the top of the phone.
John:
So now screen pixels can flow above it, but that doesn't help you when you're scrolling a list because you kind of got to stop the list scrolling before you hit the lozenge or the notch or whatever.
John:
And maybe you will scroll past it and you'll see like a half line of text above it or something.
John:
But I don't know.
John:
I'm not convinced about this.
John:
Now, I understand what they're doing.
John:
Like, as we've said, ever since the notch was introduced, it's not like Apple loves the notch.
John:
The notch is a necessary evil.
John:
And to the extent that Apple can get rid of it, they will.
John:
And so over time, Apple has continued to shrink the notch in terms of the total area of the screen that is notched out.
John:
That continues with the pro models.
John:
They have fewer pixels that don't exist because of the face ID and the front-facing camera.
John:
And so they continue to march towards...
John:
Not having, having all the pixels.
John:
We're not there yet.
John:
We won't be there next year, but eventually I feel like that's where Apple wants to go.
John:
So this is a step in that direction.
John:
I'm not entirely sure this step brings anything to the customer other than having an easy visual differentiator to let people know that you have the pro phone, which is itself a feature that Apple probably cares about and some users care about as well.
Marco:
Well, I will say the late-breaking rumor that they might put the dots in the little eye gap to show... That is actually really nice, and that's a neat little feature that's very useful.
Marco:
So I'm looking forward to that, if that's true.
Marco:
I think that's very, very nice.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But yeah, ultimately, I think it will just look more modern.
Marco:
I mean, the the current notch style has been there since the iPhone 10.
Marco:
You know, it's been there a number of years.
Marco:
Android phones have moved on to the hole punch style fairly recently.
Marco:
And so if Apple continued to have the same notch style, I think it would start to look dated.
Marco:
So I think this is about the time to change it.
John:
I mean, it was a differentiator because Apple's particular shape and style of the notch was, you know, even when they use little icons to show this is an iPhone, you can see a little, you know, we talked about this when we talked about the notch.
John:
Apple's using it for branding, right?
John:
Not because they love it, but because, hey, if it's there, it should be part of our brand.
John:
When I see it with the lozenge or the sideways eye or however they decide to do it,
John:
And not that it looks like an Android phone, but it doesn't immediately say iPhone to me.
John:
And I feel like it is less distinct.
John:
It is because there's lots of different hole punch cameras that have been on Android phones for years.
John:
They're all over the place, different shapes, different sizes.
John:
This one will be different.
John:
I don't think I've seen an Android screen with either of these exact arrangements, whether it be the eye or the lozenge or whatever.
John:
But I think it's going to take a while for me to look at that and have it read as iPhone.
John:
You know, I'm sure we'll get there.
John:
And eventually, I don't know what Apple's going to do when they can eventually get to the point where they can just make the whole front of the phone a screen.
John:
Because then how the heck do you make an icon of that?
John:
It's literally just a vertical rounded rectangle.
John:
featureless vertical rounded rectangle with nothing to differentiate it and it's kind of almost like and especially since apple continues to change to subtly change the proportions of its phones over the years you know starting from the sort of short squat 3.5 inch and the tall skinny the the you know iphone 5 screen and then like it has changed proportions so it's not even like they can show you a rectangle and go oh i can tell by the proportions that's supposed to be an iphone because it is so kind of like you know era dependent and
John:
Anyway, that's a future Apple problem, I suppose.
John:
Speaking of the screen, the other rumor is always on screen due to improved screen technology, where there will be a lock screen that will just be always on, kind of like the watch is.
John:
As part of that potential feature is the minimum 1 hertz refresh.
John:
I believe the current ones, even though they do have variable refresh, I don't think they go down to 1 hertz like the watch does.
John:
I think their minimum is like, what, 20 or 5 or something?
John:
I think it's something like 20.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Anyway, the always on screen thing,
John:
that was that's been rumored for a little bit i think it was even rumored for the last phone that's the type of thing that apple can do a go no go on pretty late in the game because you know the the one hertz minimum refresh that benefits battery life no matter what apple does you don't have to have an always on screen to reap the benefits of having the the one hertz minimum refresh on the ltpo screen technology the lower power and everything right
John:
But it seems like this may be the year for the always on lock screen.
John:
And kind of like on the watch, I imagine it will be an option that you can turn off for maximum battery life.
John:
Don't use the always on lock screen because even though you're probably only lighting up a small number of pixels, it's better not to light any of them up.
John:
So I'm kind of looking forward to that because I think there's a lot of fun things you could do with the phone there.
John:
But I'm not entirely convinced that it's not the type of feature that Apple might punt.
John:
We'll see.
Marco:
i'm guessing we actually get that one because yeah the the uh the lock screen widgets being added this year and in some minor hints that were dropped to wbc like basically the software is all lined up for that always on screen feature like it so i i think the combination of the software pointing the way there and the rumors to that effect for a pretty long time now that's probably a safe bet i'd say and and i think it's going to be kind of fun i mean
Marco:
i'm not a like phone on the table kind of person like my phone's in my pocket when it's not in my hand so i don't think the always on screen would be super useful to me personally but i can see that would be a pretty massive feature for most of the world who you know most of the world seems to be like this giant phone that doesn't fit in my pocket it must live on the table whenever i sit down and so for those people that this is going to be a pretty good feature i think
John:
I do wonder how they'll control what you're allowed to have on the screen.
John:
Because these screens are OLED on the Pro phones, you pay for every pixel that you light up.
John:
And people being people, I imagine what a lot of people want is, well, I just want to see the picture of my kids on the phone all the time.
John:
It's like, well...
John:
the full screen the picture of your kids that's a lot of pixels lit up how about just a little tiny widget with your with your kids in it right you know like they do on the lock screen right you get this little tiny rectangle and that's where you get to put the picture of your kids and i can imagine people saying yeah but on my watch i can do the whole kid's face on the whole screen it's like well the watch screen is tiny you know and so like i feel like there may be a tension between what technology allows in terms of the feature you know apple will have designed this feature to not
John:
To encourage you to not light up a lot of pixels and to force you, perhaps, to not be able to light up the entire screen and just get these little widget things.
John:
But I think that kind of flies in the face what people want from this feature.
John:
So we'll see how this evolves over the years as the tech improves.
Marco:
Well, you know, worth knowing about the lock screen widget implementation so far is that lock screen widgets are monochrome.
Marco:
and the when when you see some that have like a like a kind of what appears to be like a translucent kind of background like a glass background kind of effect that is a special modifier in swift ui that's it's like you know the vibrancy background or something like that i can imagine them in a in a low luminance situation like a you know sleeping lock screen that's always on just rendering those as black
Marco:
So I think I think the aesthetic is going to be basically just monochrome line art for the widgets, you know, text and iconography and monochrome.
Marco:
And that's probably it.
Marco:
And then that gives them the freedom to, like, dim it way down or adapt to different ambient light levels in a smart way.
Marco:
so that's probably how that's going to be and so i don't think we're going to see things like you know photos being used there because they would have to be like black and white like literally like you know not even not even having like translucency like or not even having not even grayscale like even even grayscale is not going to look super good there um they could do it but they probably won't do it so we're looking at basically monochrome art style here line art and text and
Marco:
For that, I think they can do quite well and have lots of control over it, but that will naturally limit it.
Marco:
Also, I don't know if you're using the beta, John, but I know Casey, you are.
Marco:
The number of widgets on the lock screen is very small.
Marco:
So you have the time, you have above the time, you have the date and day of the week, and you can put a tiny widget next to that.
Marco:
So there's one up top that's like a little skinny text thing that goes in line with the date.
Marco:
And then below the time, you have room for two, three, or four widgets that take up one line.
Marco:
So there's like medium rectangles and little circles.
Marco:
And you can either do four little circles or one medium rectangle that's as wide as two circles and then one or two more circles next to it.
Marco:
So whatever it is, it's only like the top third of the screen.
Marco:
And even in that area, it's a fairly small number of elements that you're actually, you know, keeping there.
Marco:
Plus the widget system itself is very much based on like, you know, pre-rendering a timeline.
Marco:
So these apps aren't actually being kept running this whole time.
Marco:
So they can make it pretty low power in a very similar way that watch complications are done.
John:
And speaking of the lock screen being monochrome stuff, it's not as if the screen is monochrome and it's not as if there's any particular power benefit to doing things monochromatically.
John:
In fact, it may be worse because you've got to light up all the RGB subpixels to get grayish.
John:
But it's like Marco said before, when you have something that is monochrome,
John:
That means it's also high contrast because it's black and then not black.
John:
And that means you can dim it down and it can still be legible with the screen dimmed.
John:
Whereas if you had something that had subtle shading gradations and was basically colored like any other interface thing that Apple does where everything is like, how about light gray miniature text on a white background?
John:
If you dim that at all, it becomes invisible.
John:
I would argue it's already kind of invisible to old people, but...
John:
Apple's line between here's how the designer with very good vision thinks it should look and then here's how it looks with the accessibility bolding thing turned on.
John:
I feel like there's a medium between those two which is here's how it can still be relatively attractive because a lot of times I feel like the accessibility mode with the high contrast and stuff just does not look as good as the real one.
John:
So I would like to be higher contrast but still attractive and Apple hasn't quite
John:
found that yet so maybe they maybe this lock screen will be one of the first interfaces they've done that is both high contrast in normal mode let's say or in in uh in default mode uh but still uh attractive looking we'll see
Marco:
I would also say, like, if you think about the the the world that will be in a few weeks where lots of people have these phones and, you know, again, assuming these rumors are all real, which they are pretty consistent about this.
Marco:
So assuming this world comes to pass, imagine if you're at like, you know, you're like a crowded table, maybe like in, you know, in a meeting or a restaurant or something, you're a crowded table and everyone has their phone on the table.
Marco:
You don't want everyone's phone to be blaring a full color screen at you the whole time.
Marco:
That would be very visually loud and very distracting.
John:
You say you in that sentence.
John:
You don't want.
John:
Apple doesn't want.
John:
People probably do want.
John:
But Apple is going to stop them from doing that.
Marco:
Well, good, because, you know, if you think about how they're probably going to do it, which is, you know, a very like subtle monochrome, you know, low brightness, no to minimal color, just a very like, you know, like a status display as if it's like an LCD alarm or an LED alarm clock, like very dim.
Marco:
Here's like a little bit of information for you on your phone.
Marco:
And then once you pick it up, then it all lights up in full color.
Marco:
Like, that's fine.
Marco:
But as it's sitting there idle on the table, you wouldn't want a whole bunch of phones on the table to all be glowing with bright colors and bright and bright high brightness.
John:
People just want their phone to have a full color picture of their kid and everyone else's phone to be dim.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So anyway, I'm thinking that's probably going to be like a very pragmatic and visually tasteful way to do it.
John:
yeah um so continuing with the phone room as you already said the six gigs of ram there's a rumor with that it's going to come with a 30 or it will you will have available to you a 30 watt charger but it but the the rumor is that the phone the iphone 14 will only be able to take 27 watts so it's a little bit of a future-proof charger maybe for the 15 um better battery life is always the rumor for phones in this case the better battery life would come from two main things i think
John:
uh one is the lower power screen that we just talked about although that is somewhat offset by the fact that there may be an option to leave it always on with the screen we just talked about and two is the uh lower power cell modem it is not apple cell modem this year it is still another one from qualcomm but apparently it is uh it does not take as much power as the previous one did which makes sense because 5g was young in the past in the first few phones that had 5g now the qualcomm ships that do 5g
John:
5g are not quite as power hungry so that bodes well for battery life assuming everything else is the same we think the phone is going to be basically the same size and so you know it should have pretty good battery life but the other factor is the even bigger camera it's not even a bump the even bigger camera mesa camera monstrosity that's on the back of this thing
John:
even bigger than the 13 in terms of sticking out of the phone which is what i care about i think it may also be bigger in terms of width and height but already in the 13 it is not in the corner of the 13 it crosses the midline it's huge they really need to revise this the rumor was that this was going to be the year where they were going to have a flat back on the thing with the periscope lens nope that rumor has moved to next year i really hope it's true for next year i wish it was true for the phone year that i was getting but apparently it's not but anyway in that giant camera bump that sticks out even farther
John:
It's got a 48 megapixel 1x camera, which will most of the time be pixel bin to 12 megapixel.
John:
So it's not actually like you're going to be taking 48 megapixel photos most of the time in low light.
John:
But in theory, you could, in very sunny conditions, take a 48 megapixel image.
John:
Also, in theory, it may be able to record at 8K, given the size of the sensor.
John:
We'll see what Apple does with that, because just because the sensor has 48 megapixels on it,
John:
Doesn't mean that Apple ever has to advertise or use those 48 megapixels.
John:
They could just say, you know, it's got 48 megapixels, but we pixel bin all the time.
John:
And that's a great advantage.
John:
And only Apple, blah, blah, blah.
John:
I'm interested to see, see how they market this.
John:
Can you explain what pixel binning is?
John:
so pixel binning is when you have a you know have a 48 megapixel camera but instead of uh reading out each pixel saying okay pixel what color do you see okay pixel whatever color do you see you take a set of four pixels a two by two square of pixels and you treat that as one big pixel because those that square of four pixels is very large compared to the size of the single pixel and so you get basically in the current camera so you get basically a 12 megapixel camera because 48 divided by four is 12 and
John:
you get a 12 megapixel camera where each quote unquote pixel on the sensor is actually four 48 megapixel size sensors.
John:
That's pixel binning.
John:
I think I've got the right term, right?
John:
Am I using the wrong term for it?
John:
I believe, I believe so.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's not the same as binning with the Silicon graphics, but anyway, it's, it's using four pixels.
John:
It's kind of like retina, the retina of the, of the sensor, you know, it's the same thing on a retina screen where you have a one onscreen point is made up of four native resolution pixels on your screen.
John:
Um,
John:
So there are a lot of things Apple can do programmatically with this sensor to do fancy stuff with cameras.
John:
And we don't know which of those things they're going to choose to do other than surely they will support pixel binning.
John:
But they could also say, well, when there's enough light, we'll use 48 megapixels.
John:
Maybe there's some weird hybrid thing where the readings of the photo that have enough light will use like the native pixels and the other ones will be binned.
John:
Who knows?
John:
Like computational photography is the type of thing.
John:
that tends not to leak because it's software we just know the hardware um also rumor is the bigger pixels on the ultra wide camera that are twice as large as the pixels were on the iphone 13 pro and that bodes well for light gathering this is the 0.5x camera the really really wide one i haven't heard any rumors about the 3x camera or whatever we call that camera that's not the ultra wide and not the quote-unquote 1x and
John:
Will it be 3X?
John:
Will it be 2.5, 3.5?
John:
I think I recall seeing rumors about that, but I didn't find them in time for the show.
John:
So we'll see what that is.
John:
But I would imagine it will continue to be like it is today, that the 1X camera is better and that the zoomed-in camera doesn't zoom in enough to be satisfactory for anybody, but also takes worse pictures.
Marco:
sounds about right yeah like i'm i'm very very interested to see what this you know allegedly 48 megapixel main sensor does like how that works you know because that's you know john john covered it well but that's going to produce some very tiny pixels because this is not a very large sensor like physically so very tiny pixels and a lot of noise which is why they do the binning because as the pixels get very very small it's easier for them to be deterred perturbed and to think i'm
John:
i'm not sure what light i got but i think i might be 100 red and you're like no pixel you're not 100 red and so that's why you get noise at quote unquote high iso on on camera sensors because they don't get you need a certain amount of light to get into the pixel on the sensor for it to take an accurate reading and if you just
John:
barely get a little bit of light in there the camera senses like i don't know like greenish i guess and you get noise you get noise in the form of sort of pixels in the image that you know didn't exist in the world when you look out there um and that's why sometimes you need to bin them because if you get four of those pixels together and you say okay let me just see what all four of you saw and one of them thinks it saw 100 red the other one's like no i think it's kind of grayish you can kind of
Marco:
again through computation figure out all right how do i interpret the noisy signal from these four pixels on the sensor to make one pixel that we think represents what the sensor actually saw yeah and that's that's what i think this is most likely about and and i think it is possible that they won't even necessarily market it as 48 megapixels they might they might come up with some new term that's like you know like we're beyond like
Marco:
this is our new gigapixel camera.
Marco:
You know, they'll come up with some new name for marketing that gets rid of the number of megapixels because they don't want to talk about that anymore because it's more complicated than that now.
John:
And to be clear, this is not, this is not a new thing at all.
John:
Cameras have been doing this forever.
John:
Phone cameras have been doing this for a long time.
John:
This is just, this is just what Apple's doing this year and Apple likes to have their own brandings for things.
John:
And, and,
John:
It's good.
John:
It's like we're not saying it's bad, but don't think this is – when Apple introduces things like this very often, if you don't know about this technology, you think, wow, this is amazing.
John:
No one has ever done this before.
John:
No.
John:
People have done this before.
Marco:
That being said, I do expect – if they were doing something like this, I do expect it to be some kind of significant advancement to the abilities of the computational engine because it'll be getting more information.
Marco:
And with more information, it can create better outcomes.
Marco:
so i'm i'm guessing that's going to be how we see this like it's not going to necessarily be that our that our output number of pixels is going to necessarily be that it might be but it probably won't be my my guess is we're going to get a better quality 12 megapixel size than than what we had before through the use of more pixels as input to the algorithm but we'll see i could be wrong i'm still holding out hope that they'll like if on a sunny day you take a picture that they're actually going to give you the full 48 megapixels because there's just so much sunlight
Marco:
I mean, maybe that would be great, but this is a really tiny sensor, so I don't know.
John:
It'd probably still be new.
John:
We'll see what they do.
John:
Yeah, I'm looking forward to any advancement of the camera, and I think to go along with this, the A16 is probably the only chip that has an image processor that can grind through.
John:
48 native pixels off the sensor in the time envelope required to do all the things they wanted to do with video recording and everything so uh you know obviously the the non-pro camera phone is not getting this 48 megapixel camera and i think it just it couldn't use it anyway because it only has the a15 so it seems like the a16 is probably the minimum uh soc spec for this camera yeah that would make sense
John:
More rumors, stronger MagSafe magnets in the phone.
John:
I mean, I suppose, you know, I don't know if that's true or not, but these rumors are getting less and less reliable as it goes on those lists, by the way.
John:
For Casey, one of the rumors that people really want to believe, and I bet Casey wants to believe it too, is vapor chamber cooling.
John:
uh which is basically uh you know what you need to know about it is a better way of cooling the phone what it actually is is kind of like uh if you ever seen like a heat pipe where there's like a liquid in there that evaporates and then and then goes someplace else and condenses and that how that's how it carries heat away from the thing that's hot a vapor chamber is just like that but instead of being in a tube
John:
It's a, you know, instead of being a long skinny tube, it's a large region where the stuff can evaporate and then condense and come back in.
John:
Anyway, whole point is better cooling.
John:
The iPhone 13 Pro, not that people really care about this or, you know, regular people care about this, but people who have heavily benchmarked the 13 Pro have shown that it thermal throttles a lot more even than previous phones did.
John:
Obviously, iPhones have no fan of them, and especially when they're in 20 layers of case, there's not a lot of place for the heat to go.
John:
So whatever Apple can do tech-wise in the very limited space available to it, to more efficiently carry heat away from the hot parts of the phone and dump it into the less hot parts of the phone, to the extent that they can succeed in that way, they may actually help with Casey's dimming screen in the sun.
John:
Now, there's a limited amount they can do.
John:
If you leave your phone in the dashboard of your car, it's going to overheat and show you that little sad graphic that says, sorry, you can't do anything on your phone now because it's too darn hot.
John:
Like, there's no getting around that.
John:
You know, it's just physics in terms of how many watts of power are dissipated and where those things have to go.
John:
But I would love to see...
John:
a better cooling solution for iPhones.
John:
I'm just not sure I'm willing to believe that, you know, all the rumors have been, Apple is investigating vapor chamber cooling.
John:
I bet they've been investigating vapor chamber cooling for the past 10 years for iPhones.
John:
It doesn't mean it's going to come in this phone, but fingers crossed.
Casey:
Yeah, agreed.
Casey:
And just to be clear, what I was complaining about before, I do every great once in a while see the you can't use your phone until it cools down message.
Casey:
That's not what I'm talking about.
Casey:
What I'm talking about is you can use the phone, but the screen has dimmed aggressively.
John:
Yeah, you're on your way to that graphic, though.
Casey:
Yep, yep, yep.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So yeah, I would love this, you know, if it would lead to me being able to use my phone more consistently in Sunshine, but I'm also not holding my breath on this one.
John:
And for my wife, there is a rumor of a new MagSafe battery pack accessory, which would kind of negate the advantage that I talked about before.
John:
It's like, well, they introduced this MagSafe battery pack, but the good thing is you don't need to get rid of it.
John:
You can use it with your next phone.
John:
But if Apple comes out with a better MagSafe battery pack, a lot of people are going to say, oh, well, forget about this old MagSafe battery pack.
John:
It's old anyway.
John:
Let me get the new one.
John:
So yeah.
John:
We'll see how that goes.
John:
And then the final rumor, as far as this list that I compiled here for the phone is related to the graphic for the invitation, which says far out and shows an Apple logo surrounded by stars and like a space star field.
John:
We had this rumor, I think last year, maybe even the year before that as well.
John:
Satellite connectivity for iPhones.
John:
I really don't.
John:
think this is the year for it but it's been rumored for like two or three years now maybe it will happen someday i always when i see these rumors i think oh i'm sure the company that owns those satellites would love for an apple tie-in for its service i'm just not entirely sure that it is a real thing or what its function might be but when we get to the apple watch rumors we'll see there may be a connection that will make sense there and hey the invitation does have stars on it this year but i wouldn't read too much into it we'll see it's a possibility there it is at the bottom of the list satellite connectivity
Casey:
Wouldn't it make more sense if this was when Apple starts using their own modems?
Casey:
Like, maybe I'm dead wrong about that, but it seems logical to me that it would make a lot more sense.
John:
They would wait to their own modems for the satellite thing?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I mean, I think the part of this rumor is that the hardware is capable of it right now, or the hardware in the iPhone 14 Pro is capable of satellite connectivity.
John:
It just doesn't mean that that's a thing that will be...
Marco:
in the product i mean if it is that's an incredible feature like that's that's a very very compelling feature for lots of people who you know take their phones or live in you know in or around places that have crappy cell coverage or no cell coverage it's an incredibly compelling feature for people who own satellites that are in space that can provide this because they would love some iphone customers money because to be clear this is not a thing that you'll just get for free
Marco:
And the way it's been rumored, which makes sense, is that it would basically be for emergency use only.
Marco:
And Garmin sells these little in-reach devices that basically do the same thing now, where it connects to a satellite network, and it's meant to bring with you, if you're going camping in the mountains or something, and you're going to be nowhere near cell coverage, well, what if you have some kind of emergency and you need to call for help?
Marco:
That's what these are for.
Marco:
So you can't place like a voice call on it, but you can like send a text message or you can hit like an SOS button and it'll transmit your location to responders.
Marco:
Like that kind of thing is very, very compelling.
Marco:
You know, so you're not going to be browsing like, you know, Instagram over the satellite network.
Marco:
Like that's that's not like there's no data functionality on these things or at least very, very, very minimal data functionality.
Marco:
It's only for like sending emergency messages basically and calling for help if you need it.
Marco:
The rumor is that Apple has been negotiating with the provider of the big company that makes these satellites to have some kind of level of emergency service for iPhone owners.
Marco:
If that's the case, first of all, that's a pretty big if because that's a very big deal involving different people and very large volumes.
Marco:
If that is a thing, that's massive.
Marco:
That would be a huge driver of sales for whatever model would have it because
Marco:
a lot of people want to have some kind of emergency coverage when they're out of cell coverage areas.
Marco:
That's a pretty great feature.
John:
We had this exact discussion last year for the 13 and it didn't ship.
John:
It's not
John:
not like it didn't ship because the iphone didn't have the tech for it it's like they didn't make the business deal because you got it like apple doesn't own satellites so they have to make a deal with somebody who does and it would be a cool apple thing to do for apple to say actually this is free for iphone owners apple will pay this company some flat amount or whatever and in exchange for that any iphone user if they need it can use it in the case of emergency or whatever you know because it's an infrequent feature but
Marco:
we'll see maybe this is the year for that feature and and honestly i could see that being the way they do it because otherwise like it i mean they would have to have some kind of like billing system i mean i guess they could make it like part of you know apple plus or apple one or whatever but but um you know that's i i can imagine them just saying like no look this is just included included for free with every iphone is is you know emergency calling if you need it with satellite yeah yeah
Casey:
Can we go back just a half step to the battery pack?
Casey:
If you recall, the three of us decided during recording like a year ago, whenever it came out, that I was going to be the one to take the fall and spend $100 or whatever the ridiculous amount was on the battery pack.
Casey:
And I did.
Casey:
Me too.
Casey:
Oh, you did?
Casey:
I don't think I knew that.
Marco:
I got it later on.
Marco:
I didn't get it when it was new.
Casey:
Okay, so I did.
Casey:
I spent the money.
Casey:
I got the battery pack.
John:
My wife's got it, too, so all three of us have it.
Casey:
As it turns out, although I was the first one to take the fall.
Casey:
I remember vividly I was given that homework assignment, and I thought, you know what?
Casey:
If I'm going to get a homework assignment to spend a pile of money, I will spend $100 size pile of money and be okay with that.
Casey:
But anyways, I bought this thinking I would use it twice, never look back.
Casey:
that thing is actually really convenient and i really like it like i'm not saying you have to buy the hundred dollar apple version because there are other you know third-party versions that do the same idea but i actually really like having a chi and magsafe battery pack that you can just slap on a phone for a little while or for even several hours charge the phone and then just pop it right off and you don't have to think about it again it is actually way more convenient than i expected
Casey:
And a surprise hit in the List household.
Casey:
You know, every great once in a while, because we have Qi chargers on our bedside tables, we do not have MagSafe chargers on our bedside tables.
Casey:
And every great once in a while, one of us will miss and we think the thing is charging.
Casey:
In fact, this happened to Aaron last night.
Casey:
We think the thing is charging, but it turns out, you know, it isn't.
Casey:
And so you wake up in the morning, your phone's at like 10, 20, 30%.
Casey:
Well, as long as we keep that battery pack charged, which we tend to do, which I know is terrible for the battery, but whatever, as long as we keep it charged and you just slap that bad boy on there and go about your day and not have to worry about it, which is really, really convenient.
Casey:
So again, I'm not necessarily advocating the Apple one specifically, but the whole idea of a Qi and MagSafe powered battery pack, two thumbs up from the Liss household.
John:
And the rumor about a new one, the things they could do with a new one to make it better is make the battery bigger, as in bigger capacity, maybe also because they're physically deciding you to and make it attached more securely.
John:
And so that fits with the potentially stronger MagSafe rumor.
John:
So I'm hoping that's the case because the current one is not up to the rigors of Pokemon Go.
Casey:
No, it is not.
Marco:
I wish that there was a better way to charge than Qi for these battery packs.
Marco:
Because right now, we have two options.
Marco:
We can either use Qi and MagSafe, which is very convenient, but performs horribly.
Marco:
Or we can use a cabled battery pack, which is very inconvenient and bulkier, but charges much faster and more efficiently and with less heat.
Marco:
Because a Qi battery pack, if you're using a little battery pack for your phone, size is important.
Marco:
Charging speed is probably important if you don't want to keep it on there all day long.
Marco:
And you were literally, Casey, just complaining about a heat issue with your phone.
Casey:
phone, right?
Marco:
And Qi is horrible for all those things.
Marco:
It is incredibly slow, it's inefficient, it loses lots of its power to heat in the process, which means both that your phone and pocket are hotter, and the same size battery pack, you're not getting as much power out of it, as much capacity out of it as you would if it was directly wired.
Marco:
So really, Qi is terrible for the performance characteristics, it just happens to be really convenient.
Marco:
I wish there was something, and I don't think they would ever do this, but
Marco:
I almost wish there was something like the iPad smart connector where there were like a couple of contact dots on the back of the phone.
Marco:
And, you know, a compatible accessory could directly charge with contacts.
Marco:
You know, maybe using MagSafe to align it, but having like little contacts in the back that they could just, you know, use little holes there.
John:
It sounds like what you want is not MagSafe, but MagSafe.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Stupid Apple names.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
MagSafe with contacts would be incredible because it could charge things with much more current, so much faster charging, and with much less heat and power loss.
Marco:
And again, I don't see them doing this for a number of reasons, you know, aesthetic, the issues of going through cases like, you know, I don't think they're going to do it, but I wish they would because because MagSafe for like alignment and stickiness is great.
Marco:
But she as a charging method sucks.
John:
Yeah, the thing that will solve this medium to longish term is that, you know, assuming the advances in battery technology that are on the horizon actually come to fruition in the next few decades, we should be able to get in a phone sized device enough battery power to be, you know, even better than what we have today to get you through the day with a phone caliber SOC.
John:
And basically have many fewer watt hours to do that.
John:
So as chip technology advances, as the batteries get better or whatever, even if the charging technology doesn't get that much better, it's kind of the same way that the watch charges so fast that you can just put it on the charger when you take a shower and then you can sleep with it all night.
John:
It's because the watch battery is so small.
John:
It has a small amount of energy in it.
John:
So to the extent that we can shrink the battery in the phone by saying, we don't need the battery to have as much energy stored in it.
John:
because the computing stuff in the rest of the phone requires less energy to be a phone caliber soc that will let us get to the point where this wireless charging stuff is less onerous not through any amazing advance in wireless charging technology not through any advance in connectors like the direct connection to things but simply in i don't have to put as much energy into this battery because the phone requires less energy this is you know
John:
That's not an infinite timeline argument, but it is a decades-long argument.
John:
That seems more lively to me than some kind of advance in wireless charging technology that makes it not have all the downsides you just talked about, because practically speaking, the way we're doing wireless charging is the way, you know, it's electromagnetism to get energy from one place to another, and the farther you separate them and the more energy you have to put, like, there's no getting around that stuff, right?
John:
I don't think there's anything on the horizon that's going to allow us to wirelessly charge
John:
at longer distances and higher power without, uh, you know, all the downsides of heat and inefficiencies and all the stuff we don't like.
Casey:
You know, it's funny.
Casey:
I said to you that Erin was using the battery pack this morning because her phone got a little off kilter last night on the charger.
Casey:
And she had her phone in her purse while we went out to breakfast for her birthday today, actually.
Casey:
And she pulled her phone out of her purse after, you know, it had been sitting there half an hour now or something like that.
Casey:
And the very first thing she said was, oh, my phone is on fire.
Casey:
Like, obviously not literally, but, you know, it was just really freaking hot.
Casey:
And that's because of the Qi charging, like you were saying, Marco, and the fact that the battery pack was...
John:
was creating and then the phone together were creating so much darn heat so this is another disappointing thing with the non-pro 14 is that historically the the non-pro phones have uh been the type of thing where like if you don't care about the maximum possible power and all that other stuff you could potentially get better battery life from the non-pro phone in these years when they've been the same form factor same size battery and everything just because
John:
they run less hot they are doing less stuff or whatever well this year i mean maybe it's not that bad because i think the i16 and the a15 are built on the same process i think um but anyway the the iphone non-pro 14 is not going to have a new soc that uses less power it's going to have the same old a15 as in the as in the phones now in fact the same a15 as in the iphone 13
John:
because it's coming from a year when both phones had the good soc which is kind of disappointing uh in theory it could still use less power because of the the more power sipping qualcomm uh cell modem that i think will also be in the 14 uh and maybe i'm not sure about the low power screen thing or whatever but this just if this becomes the the way things are i mean if it had always been this way we would have just accepted it oh well the pro phone has the fancy soc and the non-pro one has the old one but it
John:
because we were spoiled by those years when they both had the same SOC, it is disappointing to go back to this tiered world, and it makes the non-pro phone ever so slightly less attractive.
John:
Maybe that will be adjusted by the rumored price increases across the board, so it's like, well, I was going to get the pro phone, but look at these prices.
John:
I don't care about that camera that much.
John:
So we'll see how Apple positions this.
John:
Obviously, the big win for non-pro people is, hey, if you wanted a big phone but didn't want to pay pro prices, this is a huge upgrade.
John:
I can't believe Apple waited so long to produce a...
John:
big iphone for the people who want it that's not a pro phone i think that is filling a big hole in their line i would say that they're going to sell a lot of them but i don't actually know how many people buy the maxes at all and i think it's a little bit of an unknown because the max phone the biggest phone has always been apple's most expensive phone for the entire history that the giant phone has existed in their lineup so i
John:
we don't know what it's going to be like, how many people were buying that because they always wanted the most expensive phone or how many people just want a big screen phone and we'll get the cheapest big screen phone they can buy.
John:
And that happened to be it.
John:
So this will be a fun experiment for Apple's bean counters to see how this goes.
John:
But I think no matter what, it's not like they're going to do this and say, Oh, it was a terrible mistake.
John:
Let's roll it back next year.
John:
I think this would just be the way going forward.
John:
I mean, if only just for symmetry, which Apple loves like 14 and 14 pro, they both come in two sizes.
John:
Very, very easy to explain.
John:
all right what else uh apple watch series eight uh the rumors about that are hey uh super boring it's kind of like the series seven maybe you'll have a temperature sensor maybe it'll come in a new color or two yeah we've heard like basically nothing about like the whatever the regular version of the series eight is supposed to be we've only heard rumors about this like larger you know possibly more rugged one well the the
John:
The temperature sensor is the main rumor for the non... And you may be wondering, we'll get to a second.
John:
But anyway, for the plain old Apple Watch Series 8, temperature sensor is the rumor.
John:
It's one of those type of things that Apple has at various times.
John:
There have been rumors about new health sensors or capabilities that have...
John:
either not launch when we thought they were going to or launch with less capability than the rumors said.
John:
So we'll see how this goes.
John:
The rumor now is that, yes, it will have a temperature sensor, but you won't be able to say, hey, Apple Watch, what's my body temperature right now?
John:
Instead, it'll just because of the presumably the imprecision of it.
John:
It will just take readings over the course of the day and kind of tell you what your sort of average is by sort of throwing away the garbage values and averaging it all together, presumably due to the difficulty of taking your temperature on the back of your wrist, which, as you know, if you ever use a thermometer, is not one of the areas where you tend to put a thermometer to get an accurate body temperature reading.
John:
But then again, we've all been scanned by the stupid IR things that go on your forehead, although I still think the forehead is an easier place to get an accurate body temperature than the back of your wrist.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's a difficult challenge.
John:
We'll see if this thing ships or how they position it.
John:
But as with all health sensors, Apple tends to be cagey and say, we're not, this watch is not your doctor.
John:
We'll be really conservative about kind of what we say, like Margot's fast heart rate thing.
John:
Like, we're not going to tell you anything deep about your heart, but we're going to say, we noticed something that might be a thing.
John:
Here you go.
John:
Like, here's a summary of something we noticed, but...
John:
So we'll see how the temperature stuff goes.
John:
If that does ship on the Apple Watch Series 8, that was probably enough to get a lot of people on board.
John:
Presumably the rumor of design is it looks just like the 7, same big screen, same all that stuff.
John:
Maybe it'll have some power improvements.
John:
I think we talked about last time that the SoC in the Apple Watch, they incremented the number, but it's basically the same SoC as the last one with like minimal changes.
John:
I wonder if they'll do that again.
Marco:
I think it's about the same as the last two, actually.
Marco:
I think the Series 5, 6, and 7 have all basically had the same SoC.
John:
Even though they've changed the name under the covers of people who've been poking around, it seems like it's similar.
John:
So I don't expect any big changes there.
John:
This year, the big rumor is, for whatever the hell they call this thing, let's just call it the Apple Watch Series 8 Pro for now, but who knows what they'll call it.
John:
The rumor is that it will be a bigger watch with a flat display that is more rugged and has longer battery life and might be made of titanium.
John:
And this is kind of like the rumor last year that all the Apple watches are going to have flat sides or whatever.
John:
Although interestingly, the rumor for this one is that it has a flat screen.
John:
Presumably that implies flat sides as well.
John:
I'm not sure how they'll position this other than, hey, here's an Apple watch that costs more money.
John:
If it actually is bigger, the rumor is 47 millimeters.
John:
And if that's like the only size it comes in,
John:
I guess it'll have better battery life because it's just so much bigger, and most of the stuff that's inside it is battery.
John:
Titanium should make it lighter and maybe more rugged, but the rumors have been all over the place on this.
John:
Oh, it's going to be a watch for hikers and explorers, and you'll be able to take it into the wilderness with you because it's super rugged, and it's the G-Shock of Apple Watches, and the battery life lasts a long time, and you can camp for a week with it without charging it like David Smith wants to do.
John:
Yeah.
John:
but also it could just be oh this is a pro one and it's fancier and it's more expensive or it could be it's the most expensive one because it's the biggest like the iphone pro max i really don't know again if this appears how they're going to pitch this but this seems like i mean i know the iphone is the star of the show but everything we talked about on the iphone is like oh it's like last year's phones but that's some better stuff right and
John:
This is a new product, and I know the 14 Max is also technically a new product, but this is a new product that, you know, because Apple hasn't, we talked about this last year with the rumors of the flat size, Apple has not changed the fundamental iconic form factor of the Apple Watch in the history of the product.
John:
It has changed in, you know, subtle ways, but it's always been that Airstream trailer on your wrist but made of different materials, right?
John:
And it's gotten better and better looking over time, but they haven't changed it.
John:
If the rumors of this thing being flat and everything are true, this will be the first new
John:
design of the apple watch in the history of the product is almost it's like it's like as if tesla ever redesigned the model s it's like wow i didn't even know that was possible i thought it was gonna be the same car forever and ever uh we'll see uh if this happens but if it does i suppose the pro watch that presumably will cost even more than the other ones is the place to experiment with this and and to be clear like and you know we'll see what all this ends up being in a product if it comes out but
Marco:
there is a fairly substantially sized market for larger, more rugged smartwatches that are often used for extreme workout conditions or things like hiking and large outdoor expedition kind of things.
Marco:
That is a market that exists and that is being served by other brands right now.
Marco:
The Apple Watch is not competing as well as it could in that market.
Marco:
So,
Marco:
It actually does make tons of sense for Apple to try to get into this market.
Marco:
Whether they'll succeed, who knows?
Marco:
It remains to be seen.
Marco:
How well this product will actually appeal to that market, who knows?
Marco:
Again, it remains to be seen.
Marco:
This is not a market of just cheap crap watches.
Marco:
The watches that are in this market are in the ballpark of Apple's prices, and I think they might even exceed them in some cases.
Marco:
so you know it's it doesn't like apple can't compete just because they're like the nice expensive option like in certain markets no in this case apple could compete if they choose to they just so far have basically chosen not to and and if you look there's lots of these of you know these like 46 47 ish 50 millimeter watches that are very thick and chunky like you know john kind of
John:
sarcastically said like the g-shock of smartwatches but no those are real like that's that's a real category that actually exists and that is currently not buying apple watches does the g-shock of smartwatches exist though um i i know garmin makes a lot of i'll say i mean i guess that makes sense for garmin but like that's that's the challenge apple faces right uh it's thus far it's apple watches have not been anywhere near the ballpark of i can take this on a week vacation without a charger
Marco:
like not not even close a day or two maybe right so yeah the battery question that's a very big question and that that remains to be seen you know if they try to exceed their current battery life or if they just say you know what if you're if you're doing multi-day off the great adventures this still isn't for you but if you're doing something that's just requires like more ruggedness that's fine because you know ruggedness
Marco:
takes up space like it so the question is like are they are they making a significantly bigger battery inside this watch or is it a significantly larger and more bulked up body around what is basically a 45 millimeter you know series series eight or series seven like
Marco:
And that's I think that's the more likely thing, because, you know, to make something rugged again, like you need like padding, you know, so whether it's like, you know, this, you know, gummy plastic kind of case for, you know, some some squish resistance there or whether you're using thicker metals.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
That's why.
Marco:
So the rumor is that this might be offered in titanium as like a pro high end thing.
Marco:
I don't know if that necessarily makes sense to be this product.
Marco:
This that sounds like and maybe this is wishful thinking.
Marco:
That sounds like two different rumors that are being conflated.
Marco:
Like maybe maybe they're going to have or maybe they're going to rebrand the edition as Apple Watch Pro and that stays titanium but but stays available in all the sizes and.
Marco:
And maybe the large, rugged one is made of something else.
Marco:
Because, as I mentioned earlier, you can make titanium fairly tough.
Marco:
In the ballpark, maybe a little bit tougher than steel, depending on how you're processing it and what you're finishing it with.
Marco:
But it can be pretty tough.
Marco:
But it's nothing like these Garmin rugged watches that are mostly made of plastic materials or plastic composites.
Marco:
To be rugged, look at a G-Shock.
Marco:
Again, G-Shocks exist made of metal, but most of them are made of resin and stuff because it's just stronger and it takes damage more gracefully.
Marco:
So if they're trying to compete with that market...
Marco:
I don't see that being the same product as a quote pro thing made of titanium.
Marco:
That, that to me is a separate market.
Marco:
And there's lots of, you know, what we call tool watches or utility watches in the watch world that are basically, that basically means like kind of like, you know, rugged everyday things that if you're like, you know, working, you know, in a condition where, you know, your watch might get hit here and there, that it's strong.
Marco:
There are titanium uses in the watch world that, you know, in those roles that,
Marco:
But they get beaten up and, you know, they're made to take it somewhat gracefully, but they do get beaten up.
Marco:
And I don't know if Apple would use titanium in that way, knowing that that's how it would be, you know, how it would be used.
Marco:
So I don't know.
Marco:
We'll see that.
Marco:
I'm very, very curious to see what these rumors end up having been about, if anything.
John:
Yeah, or if anything ships at all.
John:
But again, this was rumored for last year.
John:
Maybe this will be the year.
John:
And speaking of that, one final product here, AirPods Pro 2.
John:
AirPods Pro have been around for a while.
John:
There's been rumors of a second revision of them that hasn't appeared yet.
John:
Maybe this will be the year.
John:
What would the AirPods Pro 2 do?
John:
What would they have?
John:
There are a lot of rumors surrounding they'll be the first ones capable of lossless audio through some new codec, or maybe they'll just use improved codecs for the regular audio stuff.
John:
presumably they would you know do slightly better at all the things the AirPods Pro already do slightly better noise canceling better battery life all that but the rumors are that these are not the new form factor that's been floating around like uh stemless essentially uh I don't know if that's a real thing or just like someone's fantasy of like Apple should make AirPods Pros without a stem but the rumor is that these don't look any different than the current ones more or less um
John:
they would just be better at it.
John:
And I think, I mean, this is kind of the problem with AirPods.
John:
We've talked about this before.
John:
They have such tiny batteries and lithium ion batteries eventually wear out and they are not replaceable.
John:
And so, yeah, people can continue to just buy new copies of the same product they had, but eventually Apple likes to sell you a different version that costs slightly more.
John:
And...
John:
That would be the AirPods Pro 2, which probably would be slightly more expensive than the old AirPods Pro.
John:
And I think it would encourage people to upgrade because they would say, you know what?
John:
I love my AirPods Pro, but the batteries aren't what they used to be.
John:
And I didn't want to buy a second copy of the same product I already have.
John:
But now that there's new ones that are slightly better in some way, I'll buy those.
John:
So.
John:
AirPods are an amazing product, whatever that rumor was.
John:
If AirPods were a company by itself, it would be somewhere really high up in the Fortune 500.
John:
They're great products.
John:
There deserves to be a version two of these for people who like little gummy things shoved in their ear holes.
Casey:
I couldn't agree more.
Casey:
I was an AirPods mega fan, super fan from the moment I got my first set, which was not long after they originally shipped.
Casey:
And the AirPods Pro, I think I got for this past Christmas from Aaron, and they make the original, assuming they fit in your ears, they make the original AirPods way better.
Casey:
Like the noise cancellation is, I wouldn't say it's so good in the sense that it's better than other headphones noise cancellation, but it's so good in the sense that it makes using the AirPods so much nicer.
Casey:
Because if you're in a loud environment, suddenly it can become a quiet environment.
Casey:
And that's so amazing.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
Yeah, I am not personally in the market for new AirPods Pro, because mine are still only eight, nine months old, and their batteries are still working quite well.
Casey:
But I don't want this product to be abandoned, and I'd very much like them to show that they are willing to keep making new ones.
John:
No fear of them abandoning.
John:
It's just a question of, are the AirPods Pro too ready yet or not?
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, I was specifically talking about the Pros.
Casey:
I don't think that AirPods as a general idea will be abandoned, but particularly the AirPods Pro.
Casey:
And I still think you're right.
Casey:
I don't think those will be abandoned either.
Casey:
But I don't know, it's been a couple years.
Casey:
It'd be nice to know that things are still happening.
Marco:
Yeah, I have been waiting to upgrade mine because my battery life is getting to be pretty terrible on my AirPods.
Marco:
And it is kind of showing me like, you know, because with the exception of the battery life, my AirPods Pros still work great.
Marco:
and it is kind of showing me like wow this is kind of a crappy thing for you know environmentalism and sustainability that this product is like i'm ready to replace it and basically throw it away solely because the batteries really need to be replaced but that they can't because they're too tiny and you know impractical and glued in and whatever else um but you know so that all that aside
Marco:
I really hope they update these soon because I don't want to buy a new pair of the current ones because they are so old.
Marco:
But if Apple came out and said like, hey, you know what?
Marco:
We're not going to update them for another year.
Marco:
I would end up just buying another set because I use them so much.
Marco:
They are such a good product.
Marco:
I love the AirPods Pro.
Marco:
they have made all other portable headphones useless to me like i i don't use any other portable headphones i only use like my big fancy headphones at my desk and i use the airpods when i'm not at my desk and that's it the airpods pros and that's it like and i love transparency mode
Marco:
I love noise canceling.
Marco:
The sound quality is extremely good for what they are.
Marco:
And I actually like the stems.
Marco:
I don't want them to go stemless.
Marco:
I like having the stems for lots of reasons.
Marco:
I think the pressure clicking mechanism is totally fine.
Marco:
Way better than the weird ear tapping thing on the other ones.
John:
Mm-hmm.
John:
I have to say an update on that because remember I got the AirPods 3 that have the squeezy thing instead of the tapping.
John:
I continue to do it less frequently, but I still tap them sometimes.
John:
And that's like a year after I got them.
John:
And I'm kind of amazed.
John:
I thought I would just totally get over it.
John:
But like in a few moments, my body just has to tap.
John:
I liked the tap.
John:
I understand why people didn't like it.
John:
There are pros and cons to both.
John:
But I have to say for my purposes, the tap was a little bit more convenient.
John:
well you're wrong yeah i i i am on team marco on this one i mean the squeeze isn't bad but it is it is harder it requires more than the tap i think people didn't like a tap they don't like the idea of hitting something that's in their ear right because that's uncomfortable but i never i never found it uncomfortable the way they fit and it's just so much easier to do i mean ideally i don't and they should totally do this why can't they have it support both because whatever the accelerometer that does the tap and the presser sensor for the squeezing uh
John:
You can fit those both in there, right?
John:
I mean, just jam it in.
John:
I would love to support both and for you to choose.
John:
Do you want to use one, both, neither?
John:
That makes perfect sense to me, but maybe in a few years they'll do that.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Anyway, yeah, so they're a great product.
Marco:
There's really not much I would change about them, really.
Marco:
So whatever Apple has updated, even if it's fairly minor updates, I'll take it because it's already a great product that really needs very little to change.
John:
And the final, final rumor, the one more thing that is not really rumored for this, but it's just in the news because Apple filed a bunch of trademarks.
John:
Apple did, through shell companies, apparently Apple has filed for trademarks for Reality One, Reality Processor, and Reality Pro.
John:
We think the OS is called ROS or Reality OS.
John:
This is for their AR, VR, whatever, mahoosie, thingamabobber, that someday might come out.
John:
I don't, I haven't seen any real people putting any stake in the idea that it's going to be announced at next week's event.
John:
But just FYI, that continues to rumble on the background, just like the car program.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
They're both going to ship any day now.
Casey:
I swear.
Marco:
And look, it very well might be next week.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
It seems like we're still... It's one of those things like desktop Linux.
Marco:
It's always coming out next year.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
At some point, it probably will come out.
Marco:
Again, I think that we probably will see an AR headset of some kind, while I think we will never see anything from Project Titan except maybe the new CarPlay thing.
Marco:
But this allegedly is soon...
Marco:
Um, and it might be, and, and maybe, maybe the meaning of like the far out title of the invitation, maybe the meaning is like, Hey, we're going to show you something that's kind of a preview of, you know, this is like, maybe we'll get that, that, you know, the rumored developer preview mixed AR VR headset, uh, now or VR only maybe now.
Marco:
And then maybe this is like, and they're saying, Oh, and down the road within, within two years, we'll ship the, the consumer version, you know,
John:
It still seems more like a WWDC announcement just because it's presumably a platform.
Marco:
It seems like that might even be a different event kind of announcement.
Marco:
I don't know if they would necessarily combine that with the iPhone event.
Marco:
Because the iPhone event is so important.
Marco:
They have the most attention on that.
Marco:
And what everybody wants to know is, what's the new phone?
Marco:
That's what they want to know.
Marco:
And they throw the watch in just because it's convenient and it's not that long usually.
Marco:
And AirPods can fit in there because fine.
Marco:
Yeah, AirPods are kind of... Watches and AirPods are both kind of phone accessories.
Marco:
And so that makes some sense.
Marco:
And you can see why they do it.
Marco:
I can't imagine them... Unless the AR headset is ready for consumers...
Marco:
Because then it would be a phone accessory.
John:
A headset with no apps is ready for consumers?
Marco:
I mean, the Apple Watch launched kind of like that.
John:
I mean, I suppose.
Marco:
I just don't see it.
Marco:
I think if it was that close to being ready for consumers, I think we would have heard a lot more concrete rumors about it by now.
John:
Yeah.
John:
either made for or suited to that program have we've seen the benefit of them being released into our other products all the noise canceling and directional audio spatial audio stuff all of the 3d engine things all of the ar things that are all of our phones and the lidar sensors and all that is all eventually essentially technological bounty related to the headset project any headset they come out with will use all of those things in the years and years we've been using ar kit and all that other stuff or whatever like
John:
it's not like that stuff is useless without a headset but you look at that and you're like oh stereoscopic vision is an apple's uh a feature of their 3d engine why would they have that like it's just like they're almost gonna at a certain point they will have literally shipped everything having to do with this headset except for the headset like
John:
the software ecosystem will be there the sensors would be that will have all the things like i mean we know like what was the thing that had like you take your phone and you put it in the thing and that would become your headset samsung did that years and years ago the cardboard yeah or no there was there was a bunch of ones where you used your phone as the display it was like apple has just unlike the car thing which we haven't seen anything from except for that you know various the duration of carplay that showed wdc
John:
we have been like this program even if it never ships a product has has given us lots of cool technology that has been useful in products that apple did ship so i don't i don't have a bad feeling about i don't know i don't have a sour feeling about this oh they've been working on this for years they never shipped it at least we're getting good stuff from it right even if it never ships and i think probably eventually it will but it doesn't seem like it's going to be a thing for next week
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Trade Coffee, and Collide.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join at atp.fm slash join, and we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now that the show is over, it's time to give to St.
Marco:
Jude's.
Marco:
They're funding research, curing diseases.
Marco:
Every year you get a new iPhone.
Casey:
Now think about the good you'll do when you're funding research, childhood diseases.
Casey:
Our friends at Relay organize this annually.
Casey:
It's time to do your part and give down
Casey:
They fund the research They're curing diseases Fund the research The link is in the show notes now
Marco:
So I've been battling in my office here for the last few weeks.
Marco:
My office has had a smell.
Casey:
Have you considered showering?
Marco:
It is not.
Marco:
It doesn't look like an Apple store.
Marco:
There was an object that was placed in my office that ended up having an odor on it, like a cologne kind of smell, like a very strong cologne kind of smell.
Marco:
And I realized that it was in my office for a few hours until I discovered it.
Marco:
So I got rid of the object.
Marco:
It didn't smell as bad when it was first there.
Marco:
Over the following days, it slowly built up in my office and it just smelled overwhelmingly of like cologne, like 80s cologne.
John:
If the object is gone, how is it building up over time?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
So it was placed on an upholstered chair that I have in the corner.
Marco:
It's soaked in.
Marco:
My office.
Marco:
The reason why I sound so good is because my office is full of soft things.
Marco:
I have the upholstered chair.
Marco:
I have window curtains.
Marco:
I have a wall in front of me where most of the wall is covered in acoustic foam tiles.
Marco:
On another side of me, I have a blanket that's wrapped around a canvas with sound editing foam on the inside.
Marco:
So it's basically like it looks like a big like a big like picture of blanket.
Marco:
that absorbs sound and then behind me i have a whole bunch of coffee shipping bags that are themselves wrapped around canvas frames with sound editing foam inside them for more sound editing and then below me is a five by seven carpet a dog bed and well at the
Marco:
In a very small... This is a very small room.
Marco:
Eyeballing it, it looks like it's maybe 8 by 10 at most.
Marco:
It's a small room.
John:
You need to stop talking about your small room, because you're saying... I've seen pictures of it.
John:
I'm in a small room.
John:
You are not.
Marco:
Anyway, so the object was gone, and the chair cushion smelled bad, but because...
Marco:
It had been here for a few hours.
Marco:
I feel like the smell had permeated every soft surface in the room because like the sound board, like the sound editing coffee bag that was above the chair also smelled like I took it out of the room so I could smell it independently and it smelled.
Marco:
It had the smell.
Marco:
And so did the sort of the couple of of framed ones next to it.
Marco:
And some of this stuff.
Marco:
So I have one of those Instagram rugs that you can throw in the washing machine.
Marco:
So that's the first thing I did.
Marco:
Like, all right, let me wash the rug.
Marco:
And like my desk sits on this rug.
Marco:
So getting the rug out from under your desk is not a small task.
Marco:
Like this is like a big job.
Marco:
Like, you know, anyway, so lots of stuff like filing cabinets on the rug.
Marco:
Anyway, so went through all these hoops.
Marco:
I first tried, you know, we don't have great options here at the Beakstown for like, you know, gear to remove this.
Marco:
You know, nobody has like, you know, carpet steamers or anything, but the little corner store sells Febreze.
Marco:
So first I'm like, oh, that should work.
Marco:
Febreze is supposed to get rid of smells, right?
Yeah.
Marco:
oh you're just masking it i learned that so first i try i try getting rid of the smell with febreze i i go through a whole bottle of it like all within five minutes no no your office smells like febreze yeah i soak the chair i spray every one of the soft things on the wall i spray the rug i spray my chair even though it's an aaron like it doesn't really have upholstery it just has like this mesh but spray everything because everything that could possibly hold the smell i smell i spray with febreze
Marco:
now I haul off a smell like freaking Febreze.
Marco:
So I'm like, all right, that didn't work.
Marco:
And the smell, right before I did the Febreze, the cologne smell was so strong that it was like making my eyes water.
Marco:
It was like I had to do something.
Marco:
So then...
Marco:
i febreze the whole office and meanwhile this process started while tiff had covid and had temporarily lost her smell oh nice she thinks you're just uh marbles i'm going nuts and yeah and she's like what are you doing doesn't smell bad i'm like i'm i assure you it smells
John:
my eyes are watering and i'm like well by the way though that is one of the the things that can be a side effect of covid uh is that things can smell and taste weird even after you've gotten over it or even if you never lost your sense of taste or smell when you had it afterwards things can taste and smell differently to you uh so it may be that you have an increased sensitivity to whatever this clone is maybe you should
John:
have a third-party nose come in and say, how bad does it smell?
Marco:
I mean, right now it probably does sell really bad at Febreze.
Marco:
And by the way, this is not something that can be aired out because while Tiff had COVID...
Marco:
As a precaution to try to make Adam and I not get it, we as I mentioned, like we were sleeping in different rooms, different sides of the house even.
Marco:
And we had all of the windows open and we live on the beach where there's tons of wind all the time.
Marco:
So the house was a wind tunnel.
Marco:
And it's and still like you'd still come into the room and you'd smell it.
Marco:
And, you know, later on, like after we were all clear, we closed all the windows up and turn the air conditioning on for a few days.
Marco:
And it was unbearable because now it's trapped in the room.
Marco:
so all right so first we i i i'm like i go on amazon like all right what the heck can i get for this like that i can get shipped here uh you know because washing everything is just not is not working the the chair i i can't wash most of it the dog bed i washed that like that's i could do that all right fine the rug but like the stuff on the walls like i can't wash all this stuff
Marco:
um so like all right so first i based on everyone's recommendations and amazon reviews and everything i tried a hepa filter an air filter that has like it had i got one that had like a really thick uh carbon layer on the filter so it'll absorb a lot of smells it's made for like vocs which smells kind of are i think um
Marco:
And then I also tried, they have these like canisters that have mesh tops that have gel in them that is scented with like natural oils.
Marco:
It's like, you know, pine oil.
John:
You got to stop bringing scents into this room.
John:
Have you learned nothing?
John:
Do not add any new scents.
Marco:
Well, people claim that these things work, that somehow the pine oil evaporates or whatever.
Marco:
And I'm like, I'm like, well, look, I'm desperate.
John:
These are people whose houses all smell like air freshener.
Marco:
you know because ordering things has you know a three or four day delay here i'm like let me just buy one of everything i'll just try so i bought a little air filter that said it was going to do this you know again because it's a small room i don't need a big air filter so that that was at least not too big or expensive little hepa filter i got these these you know little canisters and i got a couple of different sprays that they were supposed to like neutralize odors and oh and i was about to leave for a couple days
Marco:
And so I left the two.
Marco:
I got two of these little like, you know, air freshening things that allegedly kill smells with natural oils of whatever.
Marco:
I got two of them.
Marco:
I left them both in the office with the fan on high and the air filter running on a full blast.
Marco:
And I closed the door and I left for two days.
John:
Wait, wait, wait.
John:
One of the first things I would have suggested to you, and you're always going off and doing these things without consulting us and you really should consult us.
John:
Right?
John:
The thing that was sitting on an upholstered chair, right?
John:
You got rid of the thing.
John:
Is the upholstered chair still in the room?
John:
First thing I tried was taking the chair out of the room.
John:
Yeah, take it out of your house.
Marco:
Well, it's not that bad.
Marco:
Throw it in the ocean.
Marco:
First of all, it's a very good chair, and they don't make it anymore.
Casey:
No, but Marco, you already have a solution for this.
Casey:
As we've already established, there is a portion of your deck or under deck area that is completely weatherproof that you could have put it in.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
Anyway, so, yeah, first thing I tried, I brought the chair out of the room and just, like, let it sit for a while.
John:
Where did you bring it?
John:
To the room that's next to the room?
John:
Yeah, but, like... You need to get it out of the house.
John:
Because, look, smell is not...
John:
Smell is not magic.
John:
Smell comes from somewhere, whether it's these, these, you know, like you said, it smelled like this, this, you know, cologne or whatever.
John:
And that there was an object that had that smell that sat on the thing.
John:
Once the object is no longer on the house, if the smell continues to be there and get stronger, the whatever was in that thing must be in something else.
John:
You need you need to if you can't
John:
purge that thing of the smell which is what you've been trying to do with various techniques you need to get the source of the smell out of your house and then what you have left is how much of the smell is sunk into some other stuff but it sounds like the source of the smell is still there putting it in another room is not going to help you've just got to like burn it with fire if you can't get the smell out of it
Marco:
Well, it did help.
Marco:
Like, it helped a lot to move out of my office, just so I could tell, like, how much is a problem with the chair versus how much has it soaked into everything else in the office.
Marco:
Sure enough, my office still smells.
Marco:
I'm like, all right, now we've moved beyond the chair.
John:
But it's still in the house.
John:
You have not moved beyond the chair.
John:
Just think of it as a video game where you can see, like, smell vapors, like, great smell vapors coming out of that chair.
John:
Yeah, you moved it out of your office, so it's not as bad as it was, and it's being dispersed into a larger room, but it might still be there.
Marco:
So, after I stunk up my whole office with Febreze, which didn't work, it just made everything smell like Febreze, and I tried clearing that off with, you know, the air filter and everything else.
John:
Like buying a mongoose to go after the snake, and then buying a lion to go after the mongoose, and
Marco:
so then i had these little these canisters of gel that smell like pine or lemon or whatever no no i'm like let me open these up in here i'll let them i'll let it run with the air filter for a couple days i'll come back i'll get rid of them and i'll i'll see if it like can normalize right so i come back and now the room just smells like pine lemon cologne febreze who could have predicted this who could have predicted this
Marco:
i mean i'm like and i hate like i love when things smell like nothing i consider it a luxury like i wear like unscented deodorant i like i like unscented laundry detergent like i don't want scents on anything i i want everything unscented why did you bring new scents into your home so you brought a thing that said pine scent and you left in the room it said it would get rid of other scents so i figured i'd give it a shot you're replacing them with pine congratulations you've played yourself
Marco:
Oh, my word.
Marco:
So now that my room smells like cologne and pine and lemon and Febreze, finally, I tried this other spray I had called Zero Odor.
Marco:
So I tried spraying the cushion of the chair where the object was sitting.
Marco:
That was the most dense part of the cologne.
Marco:
I tried just dousing it in the Zero Odor stuff.
Marco:
I later learned, a few minutes later, Zero Odor itself has a smell.
Marco:
They call it a tracer scent, so you can tell where you smell it.
Marco:
That's supposed to dissipate.
Marco:
That's like the stuff they put in natural gas, right?
Marco:
That tracer scent smells quite strongly of baby powder or bleach or something like that.
Marco:
It smells very strongly, and it doesn't dissipate for a while.
Marco:
However, I did notice after a couple of days...
Marco:
that it did go away and that the smell on the cushion was substantially reduced.
Marco:
So I'm like, okay, I got something that works.
Marco:
Have you gotten rid of the pine thing?
Marco:
Almost.
Marco:
They're in a plastic bag Ziploc'd next to me just so I could... You have to throw them out.
Marco:
They were outside.
Marco:
I brought them back in for this show so I wouldn't forget to mention them.
Marco:
They're sitting right here next to the bottle of Zero Odor.
Marco:
Ziploc bags are air permeable.
Marco:
I've learned that.
Marco:
But anyway, they're just here for like an hour.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I realized, okay, the cushion was improved by the zero odor spray.
Marco:
I'm now out of zero odor.
Marco:
Let me order a couple of bottles more.
Marco:
So they come and I got two more bottles of it.
Marco:
They come and I spend the next few days just dousing my office in this stuff, which then makes my office smell like zero odor, which does not have zero odor.
Marco:
It sounds like it's non-zero odor.
Marco:
Yeah, it's definitely significant odor for a little while, but then I at least know there's an end to it.
Marco:
It ends in a couple days.
John:
They should be forced to rename their product to Rendezvous.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
That's a deep cut.
Marco:
anyway so eventually though it did work and and meanwhile so and every night like you know the air filter is loud as hell but every night i'm like when i leave my office i i turn the air filter on maximum and close the door and just let it run itself overnight like just filtering everything as far as i can tell the air filter seems to be doing nothing because it's just circulating clean air that is still having smell being emitted into it constantly by whatever anyway
Marco:
so i zero odor a few more times i deplete both bottles that i bought so now i'm now i'm three bottles down on zero odor oh my gosh but it is working like the areas that i spray then a few days later actually do smell less or like nothing or it's just slowly killing your olfactory receptor so you can't smell anything anymore yeah potato potato
Marco:
I eventually bought this thing called Zero Odor Pro, which... Oh, of course you did.
Marco:
I think it's just the same thing in a bigger bottle.
Marco:
It just has the newer SOC in it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So now I have the large bottle, the full-size bottle, which I have right here, Zero Odor Pro.
Marco:
The other day, I sprayed every surface in the office that was soft.
Marco:
the window blinds the acoustic tiles the acoustic panels the rug the dog bed not the dog the cushion i like doused the cushion because everyone says like if you like you gotta for it to work you gotta it has to be like damp like when you're done it has to you have to really spray a lot i sprayed every single service in the office it was unbearable to be in here
Marco:
For like the entire 24 hours after that period, it was way too much.
Marco:
I definitely should not have done that in such a small space to that density of spray in one day.
Marco:
It was unbearable.
Marco:
However, now it is a few days later and the smell is, I think, totally gone for the first time in three weeks.
Marco:
I feel like I've finally won.
Marco:
I have defeated the cologne.
Marco:
I've defeated the Febreze.
Marco:
I've defeated the air fresheners.
John:
I'm not sure you defeated anything.
John:
It may be that time defeated these things.
John:
So here's the thing with smells, right?
John:
If you remove the source of the smell and you just have lingering things that have picked up the smell...
John:
Most smells, the reason you smell them, I mean, VOCs are volatile organic compounds, is that things that smell bad tend to be volatile, which means they are reacting with everything.
John:
They are reacting with the air, which means if the source of them is gone, eventually all of those volatile compounds will react with just the air in the room and they will go away.
John:
Now, that may take a long time.
John:
I fed them so much air.
John:
Right.
John:
But I'm just saying it may take a lot of time.
John:
And yes, having contact with more air will speed that process up, but it may take a while, right?
John:
What you were actually looking for in the case where you're trying to, quote, unquote, get rid of a smell, I don't know what the solution is to cologne, but for things like a lot of pet odors, where it's organic compounds and pet pee or poo and stuff like that, or anal gland secretions and all sorts of stuff like that, or even skunk odor, there are...
John:
Things that you can buy specifically for whatever it is, like say your dog got skunked, which happened to me.
John:
I learned the hard way that there's lots of these folk remedies or whatever, but what you really want is a tailor-made product that will cause the volatile compounds in skunk spray to react much, much faster.
John:
So I think we used like Nature's Miracle brand or whatever that was specifically for skunk smell.
Marco:
Oh, I used some of that too.
John:
Right.
John:
Forgot about that.
John:
But here's the thing.
John:
I have that and use that the very first day.
John:
Those things are tailored to reacting with whatever it is they say they're for, whether it's for de-skunking or animal pee or whatever.
John:
They're almost certainly going to do nothing to cologne, which is your problem.
John:
But cologne, if it's very...
John:
smelly probably is itself some kind of volatile compound so what you need is either something that's going to quote unquote absorb odor like baking powder or charcoal activated charcoal whatever try baking powder the very first day right but better yet you need something that will react with this thing to sort of burn it out faster but but i don't know what the heck you would ever get
John:
to react with cologne, right?
John:
All these products are made for like your pet had an accident or you got skunked or something, right?
John:
And they're tailor-made to those, whatever is the smelly thing in cat pee or, you know, in skunk spray, right?
John:
But I don't think cologne hopefully uses any of the same ingredients as cat pee or skunk spray.
John:
So that's probably why you had a hard time.
John:
So I don't know what your solution should have been, but that's what you're looking for.
John:
You're not looking for a thing that will add a piney scent or whatever.
John:
Now, maybe that zero odor thing
John:
is that but i wonder if it's formulated for cologne or if it's just sort of like nuke everything and try to react with everything that you come in contact with and burn it out but i think the other plausible theory is if you had done literally nothing your room would smell the same now except for maybe with less of a pine scent
John:
because it would have eventually burned itself out because you yeah it would have eventually burned itself out no matter what over the course of a week because that's just what smells do if you've removed the source of the smell and if there's no new smell coming in it should eventually sort of burn itself out even if there was a pile of poop in your room if you wait a year your room won't smell like poo anymore because the pile of poo will be all just dried out and just you know like obviously that's the worst case scenario and but anyway what you did is i think a good lesson in the fact that you can't cover up smells