Bananas Ingestion System
John:
there's two items and they're both gigantic.
John:
I put the first one first, which is like headset.
John:
This is the, uh, what is it good for?
Casey:
Absolutely nothing.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
That's what I was calling for.
Casey:
I'm so proud of us.
Casey:
Marco, let me ask you a genuine question.
Casey:
What is an album that has come out in the last couple of years that you've really enjoyed that is not Fish?
Marco:
I have really gotten into Goose a lot recently.
Casey:
The aforementioned Goose.
Casey:
Yeah, isn't that just Fish by another name?
Marco:
No, it's a different band.
Marco:
I mean, look, is all music from a certain genre the same band?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
There's more than one band in the jam band genre.
John:
Can you do an analogy for us?
John:
Can you do like, fish is to goose as U2 is to Coldplay?
John:
Because Coldplay is very U2-ish, but not as good as U2.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, I see.
John:
So is Goose very Fish-ish, but not... Do you know how analogies work?
John:
This is what happens.
John:
If you take the analogies out of the SATs, kids don't understand them anymore.
Marco:
That's what happens, people.
Marco:
Well, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, so yeah, Goose, it's in the same genre as Fish, I would say, but I wouldn't say it's worse.
Marco:
It's definitely... It's a little bit different.
Marco:
It's like...
Marco:
These aren't totally overlapping circles.
Marco:
They're just heavily overlapping circles.
Marco:
But it's not like a clone.
Marco:
It isn't doing the exact same style.
Marco:
In the same way, you have multiple rock bands that played rock music that are not the same band and don't have the same sound.
Casey:
So Goose, there is a new album in the last several years that you've enjoyed, like an actual studio album?
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
They have a studio album.
Marco:
I have not heard it.
Casey:
So you're just listening to live stuff, aren't you?
Marco:
Yes.
Casey:
There it is.
Casey:
There it is.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Are there any studio albums that you have heard, discovered, heard, whatever in the last handful of years?
Casey:
I'm not looking to be particularly specific about this that you have enjoyed.
Marco:
Oh, man.
Marco:
Give me a second.
Marco:
I'm going to look through my recently added section of my Apple Music to see which of these are actually albums.
Casey:
What is all of this?
Casey:
Did I add some kind of playlist?
Casey:
Oh, this drives me nuts about Apple Music's.
Casey:
What is all this crap?
Casey:
So I am slowly, as I've said many times in the past, I'm slowly beating myself into submission about Apple Music and still trying to divorce myself from Spotify.
Casey:
It's not working.
Casey:
Where did all my fish go?
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
When I transferred or whatever, I forget what service.
Casey:
No, it was an app that I used.
Casey:
I forget which one it was now.
Casey:
But I used an app to suck the handful of playlists that I really, really love from Spotify into Apple Music, which did work and worked reasonably well.
Casey:
But when you create a playlist in Apple Music, and this drives me bananas, what it does is it adds all of the stuff in that playlist into your library.
Casey:
Peer with all of the music you got when you were in college and Napster was a thing.
Casey:
Peer with all the music you've ripped from CDs.
Casey:
It's all peer.
Casey:
It's all the same.
Casey:
And I don't like that at all.
Casey:
If I want to add something in my library, I'll put it in my damn library.
Casey:
I don't want Apple Music to take a playlist and suck all that into my library.
Casey:
I do not want it.
Marco:
do not want somehow I some like in the last couple days I went through and I deleted a bunch of old like playlists and smart playlists from iTunes slash music app on the Mac that I just hadn't used anymore because you know every time I wanted to like add a song to a playlist that list was so long that I'm like you know let me just clean this up a little bit
Marco:
And I guess somehow by doing that, I somehow triggered everything on the recently added list.
Marco:
This is stuff I've mostly never seen before, and I've never even heard of most of these bands.
Marco:
But somehow I got a whole bunch of stuff added to this list.
John:
What is the recently added?
John:
Are you looking at this on your phone or on your Mac?
John:
That's the first question.
Marco:
both um so on the in the phone music app if you scroll down on the library tab and you get the recently added that's usually how i listen to all my fish and goose and stuff because usually i'm listening to recent concerts that have been released that's that's like my main home listening and now there's all these things from like bands like i don't i don't know who bill withers is oh my god i assume this is not pronounced management mgmt is that
Marco:
i i know what tyco is but it's not none of these are in my library before and now they're now i have this giant list of all this stuff of bands i've never added to my library and you don't know how that happened no no idea i'll see what happens if i delete it but i just look at that section on my phone and i recognize all the things that it shows recently added because they're things i recently added yep same like these aren't these aren't stations i've played on the home pod or anything like it's mac music mac music has it too i see the same thing underneath the library recently added okay
Marco:
There it is.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
I deleted all that crap, and I got my own recents back.
Marco:
So now I can tell you.
Marco:
Let's see.
Marco:
Fish, fish, fish, goose, goose, goose, goose, fish, fish, fish.
John:
I was going to make a Duck, Duck, Goose joke earlier, but I think you kind of beat me to it.
John:
Thriller.
Marco:
That's a while ago.
Casey:
Well, it's an old album, but it's a great album.
Marco:
It is, yeah.
Marco:
It's a while ago.
Marco:
Distant Thunderstorms.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm not finding.
Marco:
This is all top four stuff.
Marco:
I don't know what.
Marco:
The problem is that the style of music that I usually like, first of all, is jam band music that is mostly concert based.
Marco:
So while they do tend to release albums periodically, they tend not to be what I'm looking for slash the best of that band.
Casey:
As a Dave Matthews Band fan, I know what you're saying.
Casey:
I understand.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So anyway, and that's most of my music listening is jam bands.
Marco:
And then secondly from that, there are other bands and genres I like, but they tend to be bands that are from like the 90s or early 2000s.
Marco:
And some of them are still making albums.
Marco:
Most of them are not.
Marco:
Or if they do make a new album, it's not recent.
Marco:
So like, for instance, like Stroke Nine is one of my favorite bands.
Marco:
I love Stroke Nine.
Marco:
They are still making music.
Marco:
Not super frequently, and usually it's released as just like singles on Bandcamp instead of a full album.
Marco:
They did make a full album a couple years ago, and I do like it.
Marco:
I mean, that might even be too old now for it to qualify.
Marco:
I forget when that came out.
Marco:
So that's one example is the new stroke, new slash, asterisk, new stroke nine album.
Marco:
But again, that's not super recent.
Casey:
I mean, I don't care if it's an old band as long as they're releasing new music.
Casey:
And it sounds like Stroke Nine is the only one you can come up with, which that's fine.
Casey:
I mean, you like what you like.
Marco:
I mean, there are lots of those bands that released albums well into the modern day or at least the mid-2000s.
Marco:
The Spin Doctors released an album in 2008 or 10 or something, and it's not bad.
Marco:
The Meat Puppets, I think, are still releasing albums on a regular basis.
Marco:
There's lots of those bands.
Marco:
I mean, Weezer...
Marco:
Can't stop crapping out mediocre music.
Casey:
Please email Marco.
Casey:
Not the show.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
Look, some of the modern Weezer albums are decent, like the one with the monster on the front.
Casey:
I'm actually not a particularly big Weezer fan at all, to be honest with you, but I'm not spitting out hot takes.
Casey:
Well, until just now.
Casey:
um real-time follow-up while i have the floor uh yodological says that you can disable this feature that i dislike so at least on the mac music app you go into settings hit the advanced tab and there's a checkbox add songs to library when adding to playlists i had already had that unchecked but a lot of these playlists were created like i said using some app on my iphone so i don't know what the situation is there but that is good to know and i will keep an eye on that in the future
Marco:
So I looked up the one we draw on my side that was recent and good.
Marco:
It's called Everything Will Be All Right in the end.
Marco:
It's eight years old.
Marco:
That feels great.
Marco:
I like I love the Avett Brothers.
Marco:
That was like a fairly modern find.
Marco:
But even that's like, you know, 2008, you know.
Marco:
And they're still making music, but I like their older stuff better.
Marco:
You know, there's all sorts of bands like that.
Marco:
So I do listen to other stuff, but not a ton of it and not super recently.
Marco:
And part of that also is because the type of music that I like outside of jam bands is not really made anymore by very many bands.
Marco:
Like I like rock music.
Marco:
Rock does not really exist anymore the way we knew it 20, 30 years ago.
Marco:
There are still some bands making some music that kind of sounds like rock, but they're few and far between.
Marco:
And what is now popular, all the genres now that are popular, really are pretty far from that kind of sound.
Marco:
So what I'm looking for, as everyone, is the music that was the style when I was a teenager slash young adult.
Marco:
And that's pretty hard to come by.
Casey:
John, are there any albums that you've discovered recently that are of the last few years that you would like to pitch or plug?
John:
Hearing Marco talk about all these bands, these old bands that are still around and making music, meat puppets.
John:
Anyway, I figured it was my turn to try to make you two feel old if you would like to look in the slack at the picture I posted there.
Casey:
I have no idea who this man is.
John:
So I'm looking at a high school principal.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
So it's a mostly bald man.
Casey:
He has like the captain Picard, you know, rim around the back of the head with a very serious, almost walrus level mustache.
Casey:
And he's looking to the right hand side of the photograph to his left and his mouth is agape.
Casey:
And it looks like he's in the midst of talking perhaps.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's hard.
John:
And it's hard for me to gauge for people who are born when you two were born.
John:
If this is the, the correct, uh,
Marco:
timing to make you feel old but anyway last chance any guesses who is this oh i have no earthly idea marco is that is that like some formerly cool young musician who's now not cool and old yeah who is it oh man is that like the lead singer of me puppets or something oh here you go
John:
here you go it's the guy on the right and if you don't know who these people is so help me marco i will reach through this computer mother of god are you serious i don't know his name but i know that this is don't give it okay marco do you know what is pictured in the bottom photo i i'm gonna take a wild guess i don't know for sure i'm gonna guess is this oasis oh
Marco:
No, I guess not.
Casey:
I guess I got that one wrong.
Casey:
Oh, no, no, no.
Casey:
Oh, Marco.
Casey:
In Marco's defense, I cannot state this fellow's name.
John:
The reason I paused there is like you never know with Marco.
John:
It's always worth asking.
John:
I'm going to put in a photo of the Statue of Liberty and be like, Marco, do you know what this is?
John:
He's going to be like, is that Oasis?
John:
Listeners, maybe Marco put it in the show notes.
John:
Casey, what have I pasted into the chat room?
John:
What have I pasted here?
Casey:
So again, the first picture was the old high school principal, bald mustache, bald mustache.
Casey:
The bottom picture is the band Nirvana with Dave Grohl.
John:
You may be familiar with them.
Marco:
They're obscure.
Marco:
You might not have heard of them.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I never knew Kurt Cobain's hair was that short at any point.
Casey:
They're leaving like an RV or a trailer or whatnot.
Casey:
It's Dave Grohl on the left, Kurt Cobain in the center.
Marco:
Dave Grohl, you like the Foo Fighters.
Marco:
He's like 10.
Marco:
That's the whole point of this.
Marco:
Also, his hair is too short.
Marco:
The one guy in the picture with long hair is the guy you're asking about who I don't know.
Marco:
Dave Grohl and Kurt Cobain always had much longer hair than that.
Marco:
The part that I knew of them.
John:
This is a photo of the entire band Nirvana when they were popular and you thought it was Oasis.
John:
So you're not coming back from this.
John:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
I mean, I got the time period almost right.
Marco:
But anyway, does that make you feel old?
Marco:
I guess not because you don't even know the heck they are.
Casey:
It makes me feel really freaking old.
Casey:
My goodness.
Marco:
I can tell you which of the songs are Me Puppet songs.
Casey:
Can we also agree, this is tangentially related, that Dave Grohl is possibly the coolest and most awesome human that has ever been.
Marco:
existed ever he seems fine i love dave girl he makes me so happy like like as far as okay so first of all the disclaimer as far as we know he's not like a jerk in any major ways so that helps a lot but like he is he just puts out so much good music and so much good energy into the music world like he just seems like he's one he seems like he's one of those pure musicians who just wants to rock all the time and not to mention the fact that he is incredibly talented at doing so um so yeah i have a lot of respect for him
John:
Did I photograph them playing at WWDC?
John:
Am I imagining that?
Casey:
No, Foo Fighters never played when we were there, John.
John:
Who played WWDC?
Marco:
Weezer played one of ours.
Marco:
It was a terrible gig.
Marco:
Nothing against them.
Marco:
They haven't ever been known for putting on a great show, but this was also the world's most horrible gig for a band to play.
Marco:
You're playing with the backs of a bunch of nerds who were trying to stay as far away from you as possible so they could talk to each other.
John:
I have too many WWDC pictures.
Casey:
But yeah, just to stall for time, I really enjoyed the new-ish Muse album, speaking of rock music, Will of the People.
Casey:
Silverson Pickups just came out with a new-ish album, Physical Thrills, which is very good.
Casey:
I also really enjoyed particularly the first few songs of Halsey's If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power.
Casey:
Very, very good album.
Casey:
Really enjoyed all those.
Casey:
And those are all in the last year or two, if I recall correctly.
John:
I just put a picture in the chat room.
John:
Yeah, that's Weezer.
John:
The giant W symbol kind of gives that one away.
John:
I don't know why I thought it was the Foo Fighters.
Casey:
It was WWDC 2019.
Casey:
It was a couple of years ago, yeah.
Casey:
That was the last time we were all together, wasn't it?
Casey:
Oh, sad.
Marco:
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Casey:
We should probably do a show for anyone that's actually still listening.
Casey:
I think we might have driven, if this might be the time, this might be the episode that we've driven everyone off.
Casey:
So for the three of you that are still here, thank you for hanging out with us.
Casey:
Let's drive you off too and talk about healthcare in the United States.
Casey:
Woo!
Casey:
So a handful of people pointed us to, I feel like I've heard of this fellow, although I don't know any of his work and that's not, I'm not trying to be funny.
Casey:
I'm really serious.
Casey:
Brian David Gilbert, who apparently is pretty popular on YouTube, did an overview of US healthcare terminology, which covers a lot, a lot, a lot of terminology.
Casey:
And because it's the US government, a lot of acronyms.
Casey:
This was very interesting.
Casey:
I had pieced together over time almost everything that he talked about, so I was pretty proud of myself.
Casey:
But there's definitely stuff in this that I didn't know.
Casey:
And if you live in a civilized country and want to see how barbaric and ridiculous our setup is, this is the video for you.
Casey:
Because, oh boy, it is entertaining.
Casey:
But it is, not the video, but our healthcare system is a mess.
John:
It's not aimed at explaining the healthcare system.
John:
It's aimed at, because he made a video, he's making lemons on lemonade.
John:
He either lost his job or left his job and he was out on his own and needed to deal with healthcare.
John:
not through you know his employer or you know continuing his health care from his employer and so he had to do a crash course and like i've never had to do this before i've got to learn about it and so as part of the process of learning about it he made a video because that's what you do if you're a youtuber you know and it makes perfect sense and so that's what it's about it's you know it's kind of like if you're just leaving school or just going off your parents health care and you don't know how the system works in the u.s this this video is for you but he also put in a little section i mean you do learn a lot about the u.s health care section he put a little uh
John:
A little bit in the beginning that says, and I'm quoting from the video, and for those of you non-Americans watching this video thinking, I don't need to watch this video.
John:
I'm British.
John:
Consider it a cautionary tale because there are definitely people in your country that want to privatize healthcare and you can't let them do that.
John:
And then he emphasizes, you can't let them do that because it's terrible and you'd become like us.
Casey:
The best part of this, by the way, was that he was wearing, or he had kind of like dubbed, if you will, chrome key or whatever.
John:
Don't ruin the joke.
Casey:
All right, all right.
John:
Let people watch it.
John:
It's humor.
Casey:
Well, you should watch it for the visual gag as well.
Casey:
But yeah, it's terrible here.
Marco:
My favorite term, by the way, is coinsurance.
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
It's one of those things where it's like, it sounds like a good thing.
Marco:
Oh, I get 80% coinsurance?
Marco:
What's that?
Marco:
And then you learn, oh, depending on what side of the line it's on, it's like, oh, that means I pay either 20% or 80% of...
Marco:
the entire cost of whatever you know operation i would get in that scenario or whatever it's like oh that's not a super useful after all yeah there's we have all sorts of fun stuff and my also my favorite feedback from people on on our health care thing was why don't you just move to insert better country here
Marco:
it's like well that's easier said than done for most people like i i think most people the suggestion of why don't you just move across the world to a different country um might not be super helpful i mean especially when it's phrased that way i feel like that's the type of thing uh where if i was in a snarky move i would be like um what's your best guess you know which is my usually one of the answers like why don't you just move to a different country it's like i'm
John:
I don't know.
John:
What do you think – what are possible answers to that question why someone wouldn't want to move to another country?
John:
Let's write them on the board, class.
Marco:
I mean cost, logistics, family, jobs.
John:
I bet if we put our heads together, we can come up with some kind of – why would someone not want to leave the country?
John:
citizenship they wouldn't let us it turns out you can't easily move to whatever country you want yeah first of all other countries aren't all necessarily saying sure come live here you can live here permanently forever real easily i mean granted not all of them are as bad as the u.s in that regard but some of them are you know whatever but yeah all the other stuff like our family's here it's expensive we have a house kids are in school like all the reasons you would expect so to answer that question but that's not really what they're asking what they're really saying is
John:
uh we have a better here and you if you came here you'd be happier and they're probably right but it's still a big ask as they say or at least like it might be better in that way but there also might be other changes that we would not view as better you know i mean not being able to speak the language would be difficult for a lot of the countries but oh right i forgot about language yeah countries that do speak english pretty much everything is better so like australian man i i had no chance understanding anything they say
Casey:
I don't know if you're kidding, but I'm not when I say I think you're right, because Australians abbreviate everything.
Marco:
You'd be fine, and it would be fun.
Marco:
Is Australian internet access still terrible?
Marco:
Is it still really slow?
Marco:
No, I think it's gotten better.
Casey:
I think it's at least mediocre, but it's way, way, way cheaper, which is an improvement.
Casey:
We had a couple of Canadians write us, and here's the thing.
Casey:
I like seasons.
Casey:
I like to have a season other than winter, please and thank you, so hard pass.
Marco:
Yeah, and if I'm only going to have one season, that's the last one I would pick.
Casey:
Right?
Casey:
Now, this is when you're all firing up your emails.
Casey:
I know there are other seasons.
Casey:
I'm kidding, mostly.
Casey:
But I just like Fahrenheit too much, and that's why I won't move.
Marco:
No, the good thing, Canadian emails, they show up as only about 90% the size of ours.
Casey:
John, tell me about the SARS technical article, please.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Just one more link for the people who want to learn more about it.
John:
The headline is, you know, you'd write this article every year for the past 100 years.
John:
It's probably true.
John:
U.S.
John:
still has the worst, most expensive health care of any high income country.
John:
As a country, the U.S.
John:
spends more on healthcare than any other high-income country in the world on the basis of both per-person costs and share of gross domestic product.
John:
Compared with other high-income peers, the U.S.
John:
has the shortest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of avoidable deaths, the highest rate of newborn deaths, the highest rate of maternal deaths, the highest rate of adults with chronic conditions.
John:
We pay the most, we get the worst.
John:
We're number one.
John:
Woo!
John:
USA!
John:
USA!
John:
And again, this is not a new thing.
John:
This has been true for our entire lives.
John:
The system sucks.
John:
We're trying to change it.
John:
We are stopped by many powerful forces and stupidity.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
It wouldn't be a new Apple product if we didn't have some sort of drama around it.
Casey:
We were talking about SSDs last week.
Casey:
Well, new HomePod review units are out.
Casey:
And guess what, baby?
Casey:
On the plus side, it does have a removable power cable.
Casey:
In fact, it comes removed in the box, apparently.
Casey:
But the white ring on wood tables, I don't even know what to call this, but the ring on tables thing is still a thing, apparently, at least at the beginning.
Casey:
MKBHD has a video, which we'll link in the show notes, where he discusses how the new HomePod does still indeed leave a different and lighter ring on wood surfaces, particularly the white one.
Casey:
But then I just saw a follow-up, maybe it was a reel on Instagram, I don't remember where I saw it, so I probably won't link it for the show notes, but...
Casey:
He had said after the first like one or two placements, you know, he put it down on a table and then moved it once, then moved it again.
Casey:
And by like the third or fourth time, he said the ring doesn't seem to be coming back anymore.
Casey:
So his suggestion, I'm not sure how you would do this, but his suggestion was clean the bottom of your HomePod and see if that makes a difference before you stick it on untreated wooden tables.
John:
So this we have this discussion when the very first big HomePod came out.
John:
And in practice, it is the type of thing that basically resolved itself because either because people don't care that it was doing that or they found a place to put it where this wasn't an issue or it didn't once it went away.
John:
This is not like the story here is not so much.
John:
uh that you know this problem remains or something the story is that the new home pod is so unchanged from the old one despite essentially having every single part be new as far as i know like it's not the same size not the same shape the foot on the bottom is not the same the screen on the top's not the same the insides aren't the same it's like an all new home pod but as i talked about last time when we discussed the new home pod they didn't really rethink this product down to this little weird annoyance that
John:
You know, it wasn't a very big issue, but hey, if you're coming up with the new HomePod, shouldn't everything be on the table?
John:
We could do better the second time around.
John:
I guess it makes a lighter ring, you know, the second time around.
John:
The foot is differently shaped, but they didn't even reconsider, like, is there another way we can... Could the bottom of the HomePod be different in some way to totally avoid this issue?
John:
And they did not address that.
John:
They did not rethink that.
John:
They just basically did a slightly updated version of the same rubber foot they had before.
Marco:
But now only five tweeters are pushing down to make the ring.
Marco:
As far as the HomePod, I don't have mine yet.
Marco:
I think I'm going to have it for next week's show, but I don't have it yet.
Marco:
But I think... I'm pretty encouraged by the reviews so far.
Marco:
The reviews basically say it sounds about the same, but is faster.
Marco:
And that's exactly what I wanted with the... That's exactly the low expectations version of this product.
Marco:
And I think, again...
Marco:
I'm very happy that this update happened at all.
Marco:
There are so many things I would love to do differently with this product if they actually put more effort into a real redesign and a real rethink of this product and maybe this product line.
Marco:
I would love to see them do more, and we all would.
Marco:
But I'm of the impression that, or at least I'm of the theory, that I don't think the discontinuation of the first HomePod was necessarily planned or happened on schedule or whatever.
Marco:
I suspect that was a product that they expected to last longer than it did, and they expected to sell better than it did.
Marco:
I mean, we were hearing that they were still selling out their launch stock, right?
Marco:
So maybe it's like at the end there.
Marco:
So maybe they just massively made way too many of them.
Marco:
And then something changed in the COVID era where it used an old processor on an old process node and nothing else in the lineup at that time was still using anything as old as the A8 as far as I know.
Marco:
And so it's possible with all the chip shortages and stuff, they couldn't even get any more A8s.
Marco:
If they wanted to make more, it's also possible that all the different things we were hearing about, like, you know, certain, you know, bad electronic parts or physical design flaws that would slowly fry certain components.
Marco:
Maybe it would just cost them too much in repairs and they couldn't redesign it yet or whatever the case may be.
Marco:
I think that that product's lifespan was cut short.
Marco:
They probably at that time when they discontinued it, that's probably when they started making this one.
Marco:
And it took them this long to do it because, you know, Apple's Apple.
Marco:
But I don't think they actually really were stepping back and rethinking and redesigning this product.
Marco:
I think they were putting out fires from the first one.
Marco:
Just, you know, metaphorically speaking, I don't think it actually started fires as far as I know.
Marco:
They were trying to just fix whatever was causing them to not even be able to continue the product existing.
Marco:
They fixed those things and engineered this new one with whatever resources they were able to justify here.
Marco:
Because again, this is probably not a high volume product at all.
Marco:
So they can't afford to drop everything from their more important product lines and put a bunch of engineers on this and get a new version out there in six months.
Marco:
I don't think that's a thing they could do here.
Marco:
They couldn't justify that kind of prioritization for this product.
Marco:
They did what they could with the resources that whatever team did this was able to get from the company.
Marco:
So this is a good like HomePod 1.5 maybe.
Marco:
But if they ever do like a true 2.0, I would hope to see more changes.
Marco:
And again, I don't have mine yet, so we'll see.
Marco:
But for instance, obviously some kind of input would be great.
Marco:
I don't think they're ever going to do it because that's not their way.
Marco:
But that would certainly be great for preserving the lifespan of these products, to use them in the future.
Marco:
Look at how many people have iPod Hi-Fis still in use today because they have inputs and they're able to have this perfectly good working speaker.
Marco:
They're able to use it afterwards, after all of the technology is outdated, after the whole product line it was made to hold and work with.
Marco:
It doesn't even exist anymore.
Marco:
Long after that, people still can use iPod Hi-Fis today because it has a line input and it's just an AC-powered speaker.
Marco:
And those things tend to last a long time when they don't have any major design flaws.
Marco:
I would love for the HomePods to have that kind of versatility and potential lifespan and future use.
Marco:
That would be great because they're really good speakers.
Marco:
I would also love them to rethink the control surface.
Marco:
I can't tell you how many times... If you've ever had a HomePod on a counter near a light switch...
Marco:
You have had this problem where you walk by to flip the light switch off and you accidentally brush a finger against that tuck surface.
Marco:
And maybe since you're turning the light off, maybe it's late at night and your house is quiet and people are already asleep.
Marco:
And because you brush that finger against that tuck surface when you turn the light off, it instantly starts blasting your Foo Fighters that you were playing earlier.
Marco:
to your quiet house and just and of course that is not an option yeah whatever whatever action you is like you know you tap the home pod to resume playing whatever it was playing before can't turn that off so that's just it good luck ever dusting one same thing same reason uh but why would dust accumulate on a flat surface facing straight up
Marco:
um anyway so there's there's lots of you know little tweaks the power cord i'm glad it's removable but i would prefer if it had a standard iec power socket because then i could buy a shorter or longer one again these are these are things that i would change um maybe maybe have some kind of as i mentioned before some kind of battery version whatever i don't want to go too far into this but because i don't even have mine yet but basically i think it's right to look at this product not as a 2.0
Marco:
but as like at best a 1.5 because this this was a oh crap something went wrong product this was not intended to ever to be like this was not the plan from the beginning i don't think if you look at what happened i can't imagine this was planned from the beginning to be this way so let's judge this product for what it is which is a revision to the to the previous home pod not a sequel
John:
i've watched a lot of the reviews uh and i feel like they're kind of not encouraging to me a lot of people say oh it sounds just good it's fine like you don't notice any of the missing stuff but there are a bunch of ones including ones that had people like blindfolded so they didn't know what thing they were listening to that's that were picking the old home pod over the new one and i didn't see a single one that was saying the new one sounds better than the old so that's not particularly encouraging but it'll probably be fine
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
It is very, very difficult.
Marco:
I've talked about this before.
Marco:
It's very, very difficult to do fair, accurate blind tests of audio equipment because even the slightest difference in volume or the very slightest difference in like the EQ balance can make somebody think one sounds better than the other.
John:
I know, but if that was the case, I would have expected to see some where it went the other direction, some where the new one was preferred and I didn't.
John:
I mean, I maybe watched like seven reviews, so it's not a great sample size, but I'm just saying.
Marco:
For whatever it's worth, I have found that whatever I am looking for in headphones or speakers, oftentimes it does not line up with what tech reviewers are looking for when they review speakers and headphones.
Marco:
There have been so many times where the tech world will just be fawning all over...
Marco:
Some new headphone or speaker or even microphone that comes out.
Marco:
And then I get it and try it.
Marco:
And I do a direct comparison to other stuff.
Marco:
And I'm like, I don't get it.
Marco:
Why is this special?
Marco:
Why is this good?
Marco:
This is not as good as they say it is to my ears.
Marco:
And at first, my original MO on that was basically to go on my blog and say everyone's wrong.
Marco:
And that's how I started my original beef with the wire cutter where he insulted my genitals on Twitter.
Marco:
My new strategy here, my new approach here is just to assume I'm the weird one here.
Marco:
Because I know, look, people's tastes vary, and also, people's taste in audio products shifts over time.
Marco:
Like, your ears change over time, your preferences change over time, your taste changes over time.
Marco:
All I can say is, I often don't agree with what tech reviewers look for in audio gear.
Marco:
And I would imagine that probably applies to lots of you out there.
Marco:
You also might not agree with them, for different reasons, in different directions, maybe.
Marco:
But it's very, very difficult to...
Marco:
to measure audio quality of something it's very subjective and then to try to communicate that in a review in a useful way is even more difficult and then and and then you reading or watching it you really have no idea whether you would like this in your room in your house playing your music to your ears so it's it's so difficult to make comparisons so that's why you you kind of just gotta you know
Marco:
You can take general ideas from people like, hey, in general, this set of products over here is pretty good and is worthy of consideration.
Marco:
And maybe this set of products over here is not so good.
Marco:
But the specifics of, you know, small details.
Marco:
Hey, does this thing sound better than this thing?
Marco:
Well, kind of, sort of, maybe.
Marco:
Depends on what you want or what you're playing or whatever, your room.
Marco:
There's so many little variations and little details that matter a lot that you can't make subtle distinctions very well in a repeatable, useful way.
John:
Good news, Marco.
John:
You can buy a third-party cable and connect it to your new HomePod.
Marco:
You can?
John:
What kind of plug is it?
John:
I'm looking at this 9to5Mac story that was posted in the chat, and it has a little caption on a picture that shows some ugly black third-party cable that says, plugged into a new HomePod, it says, you can use any figure-eight cable as a replacement.
Marco:
I don't know what a figure-eight cable is, but...
Marco:
It's the one back on the back of the Apple TV and the most PlayStations.
John:
Yeah, but it looks bigger than that.
John:
I can't tell from the picture.
John:
It's a similar shape.
Marco:
No, it looks exactly like that.
Marco:
Yeah, that's one of the IEC cable types.
Marco:
I forget the name of it, but that's a standard cable.
Marco:
Oh, that's great.
John:
I would imagine that they wouldn't have come up with it because to get a new connector type certified or whatever, blah, blah, blah, would be kind of annoying and painful.
John:
I was going to say it looked a lot like the one that's in the back of my PlayStation 5, but maybe bigger.
John:
But again, I can't tell scale from these photos, so maybe it is the exact same size.
Marco:
Yeah, it looks like it's, and thanks to David Schaub in the chat, it's a C7 or C8 cable.
John:
It depends on whether the engine is in the front or in the mid-engine.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Reference acknowledged.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
John, can you figure out or perhaps tell Marco the answer to all of his USB charging woes, please?
John:
We can try.
John:
We got a big authoritative answer from our friend of the show, Jonathan Dietz, whose name I hope I'm pronouncing correctly because he's written in so many times.
John:
uh here is quoting from his email the short answer to marco's question about why usb type c chargers don't work with the janky accessories is that they're non-compliant there there are however chargers that might work with these devices anyway so that's quoting from him and then he wrote a big long email explaining all this way too long for me to put in the show so i'm trying to summarize it forgive me if i'm getting any of this wrong i did not run it past him but here's my summary of what was in the email uh
John:
All right, so here's the timeline.
John:
In the absence of relevant standards, Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and others came up with their own proprietary charging standards for multiple voltages and currents over USB cables.
John:
They just did what they felt like they were doing.
John:
Mostly involved a series of resistors, and depending on the resistance, you'd get different voltage and amps and ball.
John:
They all came up with their own thing, right?
John:
This is proprietary charging standards.
John:
They just did what they wanted, right?
John:
Tons of manufacturers made chargers that work with these various proprietary systems, which makes sense.
John:
Once Apple, Samsung, and all these other companies do it, then people will just copy and say, okay, if you buy this, it'll work with your thing, right?
John:
With the release of version 1.3 of the USB Type-C specification on July 14th, 2017, proprietary charging was deprecated.
John:
Apple promptly replaced all of its Type-C power brakes with new compliant models.
John:
so that you know it used to be these proprietary ones were sort of under the umbrella of the usb thing but but when they updated for type c spec said no no no there we have our own charging thing this is what it is all that old crap that you were doing before in the wild west that's out and then the important part is that apple said okay now from this point forward we're not all of our charging brick things that come are not going to support the whole proprietary stuff
John:
If you have a USB type C brick type thing, or a device that will charge from a type A charger, but not a type C one, it's probably using a proprietary charging mode.
John:
If you can get your hands on an Apple 29 watt, 61 watt, 87 or 87 watt USB-C power adapter sold prior to the USB type C 1.3 spec changeover, that means one of those bricks that was sold before 2018,
John:
It might be universal charger.
John:
So that's the answer.
John:
Why doesn't this thing work?
John:
Why can't they make one or whatever?
John:
The thing you have is probably used proprietary charging method and you're probably trying to use a more modern Apple charging brick as you have modern stuff.
John:
So here, going back to Jonathan, his conclusion, Marco's issue has nothing to do with USB power delivery as that specification doesn't even come into play here.
John:
It's related to buying non-certified, non-compliant crap made by people who are too lazy to copy a working USB type C design from some time in the past five years.
John:
So that's the solution.
John:
If you want to find something that will charge it, apparently if you can find one of those old Apple chargers before they remove support for quote-unquote proprietary charging, that will work.
Marco:
Yeah, and apparently the root of the issue here is when they designed USB-C power delivery, keep in mind that power delivery not only does it support a whole bunch of different voltages and levels of current across a pretty wide range and up to a very substantial amount of power...
Marco:
But it also supports powering things bidirectionally, like the cable can't tell which end is the source without, you know, these protocols being followed that are more advanced than old dumb power.
Marco:
And so you wouldn't want to have the cable just always pass power without knowing what it is, because it could be passing power in the wrong direction.
Marco:
And that could that could do things like start fires in the worst case scenario.
Marco:
So they have this basic method where, and forgive me if I'm getting the details wrong, but basically USB-C ports can optionally put like one resistor across two pins and that will tell the cable, treat this like the old dumb charger thing.
Marco:
So if you have that one resistor in place, a USB-C port can take power from any PD supply and it'll just send it old five volt, you know, 2.4 amp or whatever power.
Marco:
Just like, you know, just like all the old USB-A stuff.
Marco:
And so all these devices that we have that are coming out that have USB-C holes that do not charge from USB-C power bricks could have fixed that problem apparently with the addition of one resistor.
Marco:
And they just don't or didn't.
John:
That's what he's saying about janky, non-compliant stuff that didn't copy a working design from some time in the past five years.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
So now we know the reason.
Marco:
Unfortunately, that's not really a solution.
Marco:
And it sounds like there probably really can't be a good solution.
John:
Well, what about the using the old Apple power bricks before they remove support for proprietary charging?
John:
Because that will work with your janky old crap because those power bricks will...
John:
They can do PD, but they can also do all the old weird proprietary ones from Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, because before the standardization and before PD was sort of finalized, all the bricks supported all the weird proprietary stuff because they just wanted it to be able to work.
John:
So if you can find one of those old bricks, it should work.
Yeah.
Marco:
I think the process of trying to find an Apple power adapter that's from before a certain manufacturing year that doesn't even have probably a separate SKU or anything, I don't think that process is going to be worth it.
John:
Also, here is another suggestion from Conrad Pose, if that's how you pronounce his last name.
John:
My fix for dumb USB-C charge ports is to buy a cheap USB-A to USB-C adapter and attach it to the USB-A end of the charge cable.
John:
Then you have a C to A to C cable,
Marco:
that will work with any usbc charger even though a c2c cable won't i don't know if that would work but it sounds like a fun dongle to try yes so and a few people wrote in to basically say because like you can get cheap dongles that not only do what we often had in the apple world since 2016 which is take a usbc port and be able to plug a usb a device into it but you also have little dongles that go the other direction take a usb a port and make a usb c port out of it to be able to plug in something with usb c into a usb a port
Marco:
And so if you just stick two of these together, so it goes C to A to C, or you do the same thing with a cable, like what this person was writing and saying, it will basically make a directional USB-A buffer thing so that it will work,
Marco:
The downside is that it will only obviously work in that one direction, so whatever this cable mess you're making with this dongle thing in the middle becomes directional, and that's fine for many cases.
Marco:
And also, it would be limited if it follows all the specs, which I hope it does, it would be limited to only the lower wattages supported by USB-A charging.
Marco:
Honestly, that's not a bad idea.
Marco:
I think I'm going to try that maybe just to keep some of these in my travel bag in case I need them.
Marco:
Ultimately, many people wrote in to basically say, just have a charging brick that has A and C holes and have some A to C cables.
Marco:
That's not the answer, but that is probably the only solution.
Marco:
That's not at all what I was asking for, but that is probably what I should do.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
So we have some more reviews and things from the M2 Pro and the M2 Max, most especially from MaxTech.
Casey:
So, John, can you tell me about what – what is it, Vadim?
Casey:
Vadim?
Casey:
How do you pronounce his name?
Casey:
Do you know?
John:
Vadim Uriyev, yeah.
John:
So the MaxTech folks always do tests on these things.
John:
I just wanted to have some concrete support for what we discussed on past episodes with the M2 Pro and Max products.
John:
They are exactly what they appear to be.
John:
They are –
John:
The silicon system on a chip is made on the same process node size as the predecessors.
John:
They're a little bit bigger.
John:
That results in systems that use a little bit more power.
John:
They get a little bit hotter and the fans run at a little bit higher RPM.
John:
And that is all borne out by the testing.
John:
Not big amounts, because it is, you know, the M2 Pro and Max are a little bit bigger than the M1 Pro and Max.
John:
They have a little bit more stuff in them.
John:
They run at higher clock speeds.
John:
The fans go at higher RPMs.
John:
Not ridiculously higher.
John:
Like, you know, numerically it does look higher, but the sound levels seem to be similar.
John:
But, you know, that's why I thought the M1 ones...
John:
They had so much overhead, but the M2 ones eat some of that overhead.
John:
In exchange for having higher clocks, for getting better performance, obviously, it's exactly what you thought it would be.
John:
So there's no real surprises in there.
John:
The cooling systems are similar in both machines.
John:
The temperatures are higher.
John:
So, like, Apple is pushing the innards of the new M2 Pro, M2 Max products harder than they were pushed in the M1 variants.
John:
They're clocked higher.
John:
They're allowed to get warmer, you know, in the course of normal running.
John:
Doesn't seem to be any excessive throttling any more than there was on the previous ones.
John:
But just FYI, those M2 products are just a little bit more than the M1 ones.
John:
So if you really, really care about...
John:
being super silent and super cool, and you don't care about that 20% of performance, buy an M1 Pro or an M1 Max.
Casey:
And then tell me about their new ultra mega clock speeds.
John:
Oh, yeah, this is, you know, just to put numbers on this.
John:
So the M2 Max was able to clock up to 3.68 gigahertz on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and it got the highest score they've ever seen for a single core, breaking 2,000 on Geekbench.
John:
So, yeah, for all of that extra noise and extra heat and all of that, you know, for that tiny bit of extra heat, for that tiny bit of extra noise, for that tiny bit of extra clock speed and tiny bit of extra power, you get the highest scores they've ever seen.
John:
So if that's what you care about, then the M2 ones are the machines for you.
Casey:
Marco, you have not ordered any M2 computers as yet?
Marco:
I mean, I have the M2 MacBook Air from last summer, but... Right, sorry, right.
Marco:
But no, none of the M2 Pro and Max machines.
Marco:
I'm still so incredibly happy with my 16-inch.
Marco:
It's just wonderful.
Marco:
And while I do... I know that Xcode is 25% faster with the new ones, and that is tempting, but... And it's tempting every time I do a build.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
But I'm just so happy with this.
Marco:
And I love that it runs a little bit cooler and quieter than the new ones.
Marco:
I still prefer that tradeoff for now.
Marco:
So I think I'm going to skip this generation and maybe consider, you know, we'll see what happens with the M3 series of chips or whatever comes after that.
Marco:
We are scheduled for a process node shrink probably with the next with the M3 generation.
Marco:
So we'll see what happens there.
Marco:
Or we'll see if I'm still doing desktop laptop.
Marco:
Maybe the Mac Pro or whatever will tempt me, but probably not.
Marco:
So we'll see what happens.
Marco:
But no, I'm very happy with my M1.
Marco:
And I think anybody with an M1 Pro or MacBook Pro or Mac Studio or anything, I think you don't have much reason to be envious of these new models.
Marco:
If I was buying new, sure, of course I'd get the newest thing.
Marco:
If I needed it, sure, I'd get it.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
The ones from a year and a half ago are still amazing, and I'm not motivated to upgrade.
Casey:
Yep, I still love my M1 MacBook Pro, which is what I'm using to talk to you fine folks right now.
Casey:
Frank Steiler had a very interesting piece of feedback.
Casey:
Frank writes, as the topic of how do you back up your iCloud photos regularly comes up on your show, and I've recently started using iCloud more and more and did not like any of the available options, I decided to take things into my own hands.
Casey:
About six months ago, I started work on my open source project, iCloud Photo Sync, that allows you to pull your whole library into the native file system.
Casey:
There's even a Docker version, so Casey can run it on his Synology, Pi, Mac Mini, etc.
Casey:
Once synced, you can use the backup service of your choice to persist everything securely, because this is a sync program, not a backup program.
Casey:
Please note, I'm doing this in my free time, and only thanks to the time during my Christmas break, I was finally able to reach version 0.1.
Casey:
I am very happy with the project.
Casey:
I feel the sync algorithm is stable, however, did not yet encounter a library the size of John's.
Casey:
In the future, I will be able to support shared photo libraries, but haven't gotten around to implementing it yet.
Casey:
So I've not tried this myself, but I went looking around the GitHub repository,
Casey:
And it looks pretty slick just based on like the documentation stuff I looked at.
Casey:
It looks pretty, pretty slick.
Casey:
And this is something that I don't know if I necessarily have a need for this because of my absolutely bananas ingestion system that I've been using for years.
Casey:
But if I wasn't me and I was any normal human, I would definitely be taking a look at this.
John:
Related to this, I didn't put it in here, but we have a bunch of Ask ATP questions that I didn't bother putting in because I felt like we'd answered this more recently.
John:
But people keep asking, I want to back up my iCloud photo library, but I either don't want to have or don't currently have a Mac where I can do the option in Apple's Photos app that says Download Originals just because they don't have the disk space.
John:
Like, my library is too big.
John:
It can't fit on my Mac, but can I back it up?
John:
And the answer is no.
John:
You have to have the data to back it up.
John:
But with something like this...
John:
you know the the selection of macs that you have uh in your house no longer need be the limiting factor you could if assuming this thing works again i didn't try it either but assuming this thing works open source project that runs in a docker container you could rent an instance from linode for a couple bucks a month run this little thing on it pull everything down there you know like there there are solutions that don't involve running a mac all the time people are also asking do i have to leave my user logged into my account all the whole time do i have to leave the photos app open uh the answer to those is no you don't need to leave photos open i don't
John:
think you need to be logged in but i haven't tested that but either way like messing with that and worrying that you're not like that you that is not pulling everything down that you want to be pulled down this takes the guesswork out of that it's a you know it's a thing you run it when you want to run it it syncs the contents and then you point whatever backup system you have at that and then that backs it up it's much more straightforward than trying to divine the behavior of apple's completely faceless completely uncontrollable sync services which which
John:
We all love to hate because, you know, there's no way to tell it to stop, no way to tell it to start, no way to say do it now, no way to check whether it's done anything.
John:
And all these, even if we were to like, you know, figure out experimentally, yes, it runs when you're not logged in.
John:
Yes, you don't have to run photos.
John:
That can change in a point update, right?
John:
You can't rely on that.
John:
So for backups, it's much better to have something that you're
John:
relatively sure about like for example the feature in apple photos says download originals that's straightforward maybe it doesn't work because of a bug but its intention is clear right and it will tell you if it runs out of disk space like i you know disk is full couldn't download the stuff or whatever and this command line thing similarly if it works you know you have total control over it so that's what i would suggest not trying to play guess whether uh you know it's downloading stuff when i'm not logged in or whatever
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then very briefly, a handful of listeners reached out with regard to apps for small kids.
Casey:
First of all, a few people said Khan Academy Kids, K-H-A-N.
Casey:
It's kind of like ABC Mouse, but without the fees.
Casey:
I put that on our kiddo iPad and Michaela's been playing with it a little bit and she seems to really like it.
Casey:
Also for iOS developers, Andy Matushak, I believe I pronounced that correctly, who is formerly kind of one of the big
Casey:
cheeses on UIKit and did a lot of really great WWDC sessions many years back.
Casey:
He was at Khan Academy in their R&D department for a few years.
Casey:
So he is an alumni.
Casey:
I'm pretty sure he's not there anymore.
Casey:
And then speaking of ABC Mouse, this is from Will.
Casey:
And Will writes, with regard to ABC Mouse, several public libraries in the U.S.
Casey:
offer free accounts if you have a library card.
Casey:
The Washington, D.C.
Casey:
library is one that comes to mind.
Casey:
Some of these libraries even offer library cards to non-residents for a fee, sometimes or sometimes even for free, for much less than what ABC Mouse charges monthly.
Casey:
By using a library card, you also get access to all the library's other online resources as well.
Casey:
So you might want to check that out if this is of interest to you.
Casey:
So, gentlemen, apparently we're all going to be getting foldable iPads with carbon fiber kickstands next year, baby.
Casey:
Who's excited?
John:
Because if there's one thing I wanted carbon fiber on, it's the kickstand to a tablet.
John:
Because you know what it's like when those kickstands are heavy.
John:
It's a fun rumor along multiple axes.
John:
We've talked about foldable devices many times.
John:
There are many foldable devices shipping.
John:
I think they're mostly phones, although I think there's some tablet-sized ones.
John:
The magic of screen technology allows us to fold them in various ways.
John:
So this is a foldable rumor.
John:
It's a carbon fiber rumor.
John:
We always love them because we always want Apple to experiment with new materials because they've done aluminum glass for a long time.
John:
Aluminum glass are great, but maybe there could be something better, lighter, stronger, more durable, all those things.
John:
And then kickstand, let's throw that in too because the iPad...
John:
does not really have a kickstand in the Microsoft Surface sense, as in like a panel that folds out at various angles, right?
John:
You could say the little triangle origami thing that you make out of the Apple, whatever they're called, smart cover things, is kind of like a kickstand, but it's not really.
John:
A kickstand is more like a panel that hinges out from the back of the thing at various angles.
John:
And so then this rumor is that the kickstand would be made of carbon fiber.
John:
This rumor doesn't make a lot of sense to me on multiple axes, but the collection of rumors related to Apple and foldable stuff continue to dribble out over the years.
John:
So Apple is certainly...
John:
Thinking about that, experimenting with that, but I kind of run into the same question I always have about foldable things is what advantage do I as a customer get for having a foldable thing other than it being cool and sci-fi-ish?
John:
And it's really difficult for me to answer that question, especially with something like an iPad because...
John:
uh ipads are big and if i could fold it to be half the size now it's half the size but still pretty big you know and in exchange i got to deal with all of the things that come along with folding you know is it going to be creased in the middle is it going to be bulky how how sharp can that curve be
John:
uh there's a bunch of rumors related to that in here as well about like who's going to be supplying the where is that one they say like lg or something was going to be supplying the ultra thin cover glass that could be used on the company's foldable products that would be cool instead of having to be plastic have a big glass but that you know then what's the radius on that bend or whatever uh
John:
There's just a lot of information surrounding all of these things here, and I still can't make any sense out of it in terms of the kind of product that I would want to buy.
John:
The pitch has not yet been made to me for why I would want an iPad that folds.
Casey:
I mean, I think the pitch is obvious.
Casey:
It's that you can have your cake and eat it too.
Casey:
You can have something that's, you know, pocket as pocketable as an iPad mini.
Casey:
Well, not pocketable, but you know what I mean?
John:
I'm saying like, it's not because it's half the size, right?
John:
If it folds in one, one direction, it's half, right?
John:
It's, it's twice as thick, but half the length and width.
John:
Right.
John:
And I don't think with an iPad size thing that buys me anything.
John:
You've gone from really big to still pretty big, you know, like it doesn't become pocketable.
Marco:
I mean, maybe it could fit in a jacket pocket, maybe?
Marco:
A big jacket?
Marco:
I don't, like, I don't know.
Marco:
To me, I have yet to see any foldable screen device that really nails, like, okay, that was worth it.
John:
The foldable phone that folds vertically, I don't know, there's a whole bunch of these.
John:
I don't know, Quinn Nelson's got one of them he likes.
John:
That, I can kind of see, like, I feel like that does...
John:
What we're talking about is like a vertical phone that folds down so it's more like a little square.
John:
I think that does make it more pocketable, especially with big phones than when it's vertical.
John:
Because phones already fit in your pocket.
John:
And usually the limiting factor for pocketability is not the thickness.
John:
So trading, I want to be twice as thick, but then half the length and half the width.
John:
makes sense for a trade-off if pocketability is your limiting factor.
John:
But in exchange for that with the phone thing, now you've got to constantly be folding it and unfolding it.
John:
And unlike the flip phones, it's not as cool to do.
John:
Remember when we had flip phones, you could do the little flippy thing?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Let me just flip up my iPad.
John:
Whack.
John:
Right?
John:
And then you snap it closed and everything like that.
John:
It's not quite the same.
John:
And if you don't think that's a big deal, we all just take our phones out and look at them and put them back in.
John:
There's no folding and unfolding process in there.
John:
Adding that step
John:
is a complication that you really like that trade-off you really need to be like pocket limited maybe if you're uh you know a woman who's constantly stuck buying clothes that have no pockets on them that is your limiting factor in which case you know thumbs up but remember we're not talking about a phone here we're talking about an ipad ipad is never going to be pocketable even if you're wearing overalls especially in some of the rumors like 20 inch foldable ipad that's still pretty big once you fold it like
John:
No, so here's the other angle on this, and it kind of goes into the kickstand thing.
John:
What if it folds and the horizontal part could be a keyboard and then the vertical part is the screen?
John:
Sure, I guess.
John:
I don't know if people are jazzed to use an iPad with an on-screen keyboard in an L shape.
John:
It seems like people like using iPads with physical keyboards as like little mini floppy laptops, but...
John:
on screen keep you know you know what i'm saying like make it like a laptop but have you know one half of the screen be the keyboard part and then you know it could change it to a tablet part and do you know like i get how that could work but doesn't it doesn't appeal to me it doesn't it's not solving a problem i feel like i have with the ipad and it is bringing a bunch of other weird stuff with it
Casey:
Yeah, I tend to agree.
Marco:
I mean, that's kind of the problem with all foldable stuff we've seen so far is that it doesn't really seem to solve problems that we have.
Marco:
And it might be a fun novelty here and there, especially maybe on phones.
Marco:
But I just I don't see it happening.
Marco:
Like, suppose we succeed in creating a foldable tablet or laptop sized device.
Marco:
what have we made we've made a worse laptop like every in every way it's worse it's more fragile it's more expensive the keyboard sucks like i don't and then what have we gained by that well you could i guess unfold into a flat screen and have a big screen with no keyboard i don't i don't know i don't know why this is something that that we are focused on so much in the tech world as being like some cool new thing on the horizon i mean it is cool that's why that's why
John:
you see stories about it it's but it's it's one of those like it's cool in the ces sense where it's like it's cool in the sense that wow that's a fun demo to see at a trade show but it's not a product you'd actually want to live with for the most part for most people some people do like the phone so let me just show you some of the highlights of how all over the place these rumors are right so this is uh ming shi kuo saying uh that he was quote positive that foldable device will arrive in 2024 but did not provide a more specific time frame
John:
Then another bit of rumor here from CCS Insight says that Apple plans to use a foldable iPad in 2024 as a practice run for foldable technology before adopting it on the iPhone.
John:
Again, I think a foldable iPhone makes way more sense than a foldable iPad.
John:
Doing a weird product as a practice run doesn't seem like, you know, a thing, but whatever.
John:
Um...
John:
And this is Ross Young talking about the 20-inch size.
John:
Young expects the device to hit the market a lot later in 2026 or 2027.
John:
Well, that's a daring rumor because it's way out in the future.
John:
Then LG with the ultra-thin cover glass.
John:
Ross Young said he is expecting multiple OLED iPads in 2024.
John:
Now we're talking.
John:
I've wanted an OLED on the iPad for a long time.
John:
It has nothing to do with foldable.
John:
It just has to do with a higher-quality screen with really good blacks.
John:
But Ross Young said he's heard nothing about a foldable iPad in the same year.
John:
And here's another update from Mark Gurman.
John:
He says that he has not heard anything about a foldable iPad in 2024, which he expects to be the year of the OLED iPad Pro models and spec bumps for the entry-level iPad and iPad Mini.
John:
So I want to believe the more conservative rumors that just say OLED iPads are coming, because that is a straightforward...
John:
upgrade to iPads with a better screen, something that I've really wanted because I watch tons of TV on my iPad and OLED screen will be better.
John:
I also kind of believe that Apple has been working on foldable iPhones for a long time.
John:
It would be irresponsible for them not to be looking into that.
John:
There are foldable phones on the market and there have been for a long time and some people like them for the reasons I described before.
John:
You got to at least look into it on the iPhone.
John:
You know, maybe it'll just be one model that's foldable.
John:
Maybe it'll be like the return of the mini is like a thing that folds up or whatever.
John:
Sure.
John:
Thumbs up.
John:
Foldable iPad rumors and especially the carbon fiber kickstand.
John:
I honestly have no idea where that's coming from, but I suppose stranger things have happened.
Casey:
Yeah, I think it was on Upgrade that Jason and Mike had said a couple of interesting things.
Casey:
First of all, you know, where is the fold?
Casey:
And I forget the terminology for this, but I think they described it as innie or outie.
Casey:
So if the thing folds like a book, right, and the display is on the inside, then what do you do when it's folded up?
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And this is what you were talking about with the phone as well.
Casey:
Like you have to unfold it to use it.
Casey:
That doesn't seem terribly useful.
Casey:
But then if it's the other direction where the display is.
John:
If it's in the anyone though, that's the way where you could use it as a laptop with a screen keyboard.
John:
That's true.
John:
That's like you would keep it open in an L shape and you would have it in front of you.
John:
And now the fold is letting you use it as a mini laptop kind of type deal with a kickstand behind it.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Whereas if you go Audi, then that potentially means that you can use it folded, but that still, it's basically you have two modes, completely folded or completely unfolded.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And one screen is like, presumably you're touching it with your hand.
John:
So it would have to be like palm rejection on the side that's not facing you.
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
So I don't know.
Casey:
I, and the other thing they said, maybe it was Jason, but I don't remember for sure that I thought was really astute is this feels like one of those things.
Casey:
If it's true, this feels like one of those things.
Casey:
And actually this is also true of the headset, which we'll probably be getting to in just a moment.
Casey:
It feels like one of those things that we're just not seeing it.
Casey:
And Apple will, you know, slap something on the table table and say, Oh, this is it.
Casey:
This is why you want this.
Casey:
And all of us will be, Oh, Oh yes, I do want that.
Casey:
Yes, please.
Casey:
I'll take three, you know?
Casey:
And,
John:
Or just as likely, Apple will never release this product because they will look at it and say there is no reason for you to want this product.
John:
So never mind.
John:
But eventually we'll get a foldable phone.
Casey:
Yep, yep, yep.
Casey:
No, I agree with that.
Casey:
So I agree with what you're saying, John, especially that I don't get what the – not the catch, but the draw is.
Casey:
I don't understand why I want this in my life.
Casey:
But, you know, Apple's got to throw stuff against the wall, see what sticks.
Casey:
And if this is something they're throwing against the wall, then power to them.
Marco:
I think they should throw it
Marco:
tons of features so you know they've always been great for other websites but now if you're a business you can sell your products on an online store both physical or digital goods it's great this is all the tools you need to sell online they have you know tax integration shipping management all sorts of stuff it's great my wife actually uses it to sell her goods and it is just a wonderful experience i i can't believe the capabilities it has and it's just it's so easy to use i never have to get involved and she's not a programmer she can just do it all i she never needs help from me
Marco:
They have built-in analytics to help you grow your business, learn where your sales are coming from.
Marco:
You can analyze your marketing channels' effectiveness.
Marco:
They have email campaigns.
Marco:
You can collect email subscribers and convert them into loyal customers with, of course, any kind of customization you might expect.
Marco:
So you can take their templates.
Marco:
This is for both the email newsletters and the website.
Marco:
Take their templates, their wonderful starting points, and then you can put in your own brand ingredients.
Marco:
colors, logos, whatever you might want.
Marco:
And you have built-in analytics there too to measure the impact of every email sent.
Marco:
And all this is backed by wonderful SEO tools so that you have tons of integrated features and useful guides to maximize your prominence among search results.
Marco:
It's great being a Squarespace customer.
Marco:
You can try it yourself and see why.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so let's talk headset.
Casey:
Apple's Reality Pro AR VR goggles.
Casey:
And as John put in the show notes, I think, what is it good for?
Casey:
And we don't know.
Casey:
We really don't know.
Casey:
But the information has information.
Casey:
They're saying, in short, that, hey, you're going to be able to write apps and stuff without even writing code.
Casey:
It's going to be amazing.
Casey:
What?
John:
Yeah, I think you should read this quote because I think this is directly from the information which broke this story.
John:
And it's the type of 9to5Mac summarized it, but I always like to try to go back to the source to see, like, what did they actually say?
John:
Because the 9to5Mac story reads nonsensically.
John:
Non-coders would be able to write VR apps using Siri.
Marco:
What?
Marco:
I can't even play music using Siri reliably.
Marco:
Like, how is that going to work?
Marco:
Yeah, I know.
Marco:
Yeah, I literally, yesterday morning, going downstairs after breakfast.
Marco:
Hey, Siri, stop.
Marco:
It's playing music.
Marco:
Wait.
Marco:
Wait.
Marco:
Hmm.
Marco:
Wait.
Marco:
Wait.
Marco:
Delay.
Marco:
One sec.
Marco:
Wait.
Marco:
The music's still playing this whole time.
Marco:
Wait.
Marco:
Wait.
Marco:
something went wrong blasting music again like it's just it can't even stop reliably like for god's sake what do we how how are we going to write apps using siri when siri still what is it 12 years after it was unveiled still can't do the basics reliably just before i came to record uh we were in the living room the other room where my where all my various devices listen to me is and we were
John:
So we wanted to know what year the original Superman movie was released, and I made my guess, which turned out to be right.
John:
Thank you very much.
John:
But then, of course, we did the thing.
John:
No one believes me.
John:
They need to double-check with the internet, right?
John:
So I did my normal bake-off.
John:
And I'm not good at speaking to devices.
John:
I gave it kind of a weird, kind of strangely structured sentence.
John:
I think I said something – and I always try Google first because it's going to be the good one.
John:
And I said, you know –
John:
I said to the Google thing, uh, what year was the original Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve released in?
John:
And that is a weirdly structured sentence because I don't get to the released in part till the end.
John:
And I say like original movie and like, it's, it's, I don't just say like, what was the year of release of, or when was, you know, like his releases at the end and you got to connect all this stuff.
John:
It nailed it.
John:
It just, it gave me the answer.
John:
It's a 1978.
John:
That's like, that's what Google said.
John:
Right.
John:
And I, you know, later on I did a second question, which is, uh,
John:
Oh, how old is Chris Novoselic?
John:
Do you know what the Google device said to me?
John:
57 it just said 57 it didn't say according to the page of wikipedia blah blah it just told me the answer like a human would right imagine anyway i also asked both of these questions in pretty much the same way to my original home pod oh no fell on its face the first one it's like the web page blah blah blah says and it started reading a bunch of crap about superman didn't get the date and i was like all right stop right no and it did to its credit it did stop and
John:
And then I asked about Chris Novoselic, and it started reading some other webpage that was not relevant.
John:
It was just like, 0 for 2, as usual, Google's voice assistant still champion.
John:
I was particularly impressed about how it just said 57.
John:
Like, yes, I don't need a preamble.
John:
I don't need a postamble.
John:
I don't need to be addressed.
John:
I just want the answer.
John:
Oh, and by the way, the answer was real, real fast.
John:
Anyway, let's write some VR apps.
Marco:
Whee!
Marco:
Whoever at Apple is in charge of Siri this year, because it seems to be a bit of a revolving door over there, I would love for them to just spend one day in my house using my HomePods.
Marco:
Just please.
Marco:
However you think Siri's working out there in California on whatever hardware you're using, I urge you, come here to New York and use it on my HomePods and tell me everything's alright.
Marco:
Just try doing anything on my HomePods for one day.
John:
By the way, I watched a bunch of the new HomePod reviews and everything.
John:
I mean, obviously we're weird and niche here or whatever, but I was amazed at how few of them, pretty much none of them, made any mention.
John:
I mean, maybe they mentioned in the specs, like, oh, this has X processor and the old one had Y processor, but none of them talked about
John:
Why do I care about that?
John:
Why do I care that the new HomePod has a different processor?
John:
Like, was there a weakness of the old pod related to the processor that might, you know, like, they didn't test response time.
John:
They didn't say it's great that it's faster.
John:
They didn't check whether it responds fast.
John:
They didn't do any of that.
John:
It's like...
John:
I know Apple doesn't talk about specs or whatever, but I feel like one of the things we hope and Marco will tell us is improvement in the new things.
John:
It has a new processor and it will be faster.
John:
And the comparison point, like Marco said on the last show, is the mini, which has the same processor that seems to be, you know, none of the reviews did any of that.
John:
It's like it didn't even exist to them.
John:
It was very disappointing.
Marco:
Well, I feel like the HomePod is a product.
Marco:
I'm going back to this for a minute.
Marco:
The HomePod is a product.
Marco:
The people who get Apple review units, all the YouTubers and the big publications and everything, these are tech reviewers.
Marco:
This is not an area of their incredible specialty or care.
Marco:
This is an accessory product.
Marco:
They review the HomePod the same way they would review an iPad smart cover.
Marco:
Like, okay, I'm going to try this.
Marco:
It'll be cool.
Marco:
But how comprehensively are you going to look at it?
John:
I mean...
John:
A lot of the channels did compare it to the competitors.
John:
Here's how it compares to the Amazon things.
John:
Here's how it compares to the Google things.
John:
And I think if you're making that comparison, one of the things you test is, hey, when I ask it a question, how long does it take to give me an answer?
John:
And how well does it answer those questions?
John:
I've seen a lot of reviews of like bake-offs like I do in my house all the time of like ask device A, ask device B, say how they weld.
John:
But response time, maybe it's just a sore point for us because we're impatient.
John:
But I feel like that is one of like...
John:
a new HomePod arrives, and that's one of the things I care about, because all the past HomePods haven't been real snappy with the answers.
John:
And so if a new HomePod arrives and it has a new SoC that is more updated and hopefully as fast as it was in the Mini, that's a thing I would test and mention in my review, but these guys just... Anyway, whatever.
John:
I'm a bag on YouTube reviewers.
John:
It's great that they have review units.
Marco:
I think also a big part of this is that
Marco:
Siri has been so bad and slow and unreliable for so long that it's kind of given now.
John:
They've just given up on it.
Marco:
Yeah, and like nobody... When you're reviewing a product that relies so heavily on Siri as the HomePods do, you don't even spend much time talking about how crappy and slow and mediocre Siri is because everyone just knows that and we've just given up expecting anything more.
Marco:
Like that's... Again, like I... Oh God, I wish...
Marco:
I hope, I really, really hope that whoever the current leader of Siri is this week actually thinks it's as bad as it is.
Marco:
Because if they know it's bad, then that gives us hope that, okay, maybe they're really going to rethink this.
Marco:
Maybe they're going to really put a lot behind this.
Marco:
Because obviously Google and even Amazon are way better at it in so many ways.
Marco:
So it's like...
Marco:
obviously like it's possible to do well it's been possible to do well for quite some time now um and so but if apple knows it sucks then great then that that's step one is learning you have a problem and admitting hey we can do better but i i honestly wonder like does apple think this is good because obviously all their pr always says how good it is and they have to of course but like internally behind behind closed doors do they know how crappy siri is do they know that it can be better
Marco:
I'm not sure they do.
Marco:
I don't know if we've seen enough evidence that they actually believe that or have any idea how to make it better.
John:
I should send them some of my free Google Home Minis so they just have them sitting next to their HomePods.
John:
The next time you want to know when a movie was released or how old a celebrity is, ask both.
John:
See how it goes for you.
Casey:
Well, I think, Marco, you said three different things.
Casey:
You know, does Apple know that Siri is trash?
Casey:
I think they do.
Casey:
It wouldn't entirely surprise me if they don't, but I think they do.
Casey:
What were the other two?
Casey:
Can they fix it?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
That I'm less convinced about because they've had a long time to fix it.
Casey:
And I don't know if they're capable of it.
Casey:
And shoot, I forgot what the third thing was.
Casey:
That's all right.
Casey:
But whenever I've talked to engineers at Apple, and granted, I've not talked to any Siri engineers, possibly because they don't exist.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But one way or the other, I've never talked to Siri engineers.
Casey:
But general rank-and-file Apple software engineers, they –
Casey:
claim and i believe them that they are their own biggest critics that they make john look like a pushover you know in that they know in and out how garbage so much of their stuff is now they also make excuses for it much like they make excuses for radar and feedback assistant because they know how the sausage is made they know why you know a stage manager sucks and they they might even know why why siri sucks because oh well we don't have the this that and the other thing or oh you know corporate politics or oh this or that
Casey:
But they know that it sucks.
Casey:
Like, that's not up for grabs.
Casey:
They know.
Casey:
They know.
Casey:
But again, the question is, can they do anything about it and or do they care enough to do anything about it?
Casey:
And I don't know the answer to those questions.
John:
You're saying that rank and file employees know, but as you go up the org chart, it becomes more and more important for you not to know that.
John:
Because when you have to say, I'm in charge of Siri, it's time for my annual review.
John:
How'd you do?
John:
Too great.
John:
We made huge improvements to Siri and Siri's doing great.
John:
It
John:
It is good for your career to actually believe that Siri is doing great because then you can convincingly say that Siri is doing great so you can get your raise on your new stock options.
John:
Whereas at the rank and file, when you're just down there, you can have a more clear eyed view of, you know, Siri's bad because it doesn't have the resources or is moved from X department to Y or everybody quit or whatever.
Casey:
Yep, that's completely fair.
John:
Anyway, VR headset.
John:
Read this passage from the information about making apps.
John:
So here's what they say.
John:
With the software tools, Apple hopes that even people who don't know computer code could tell the headset via the Siri voice assistant to build an AR app that could then be made available via Apple's App Store for others to download.
John:
So that is quite a claim.
John:
It's saying not only will you be able to...
John:
do something with Siri that makes something that could be considered an app, but then you could then put them on the app store as well.
John:
The tool, for example, could allow users to build up an app with virtual animals moving around a room and over or around real life objects without the need to design the animal from scratch,
John:
programs, animations, and calculate its movements in 3D space and so on and so forth.
John:
And 9to5Mac notes, this is similar to features already offered by headsets from Meta.
John:
The Quest headsets, for example, have an app called Horizon Worlds that allows users to build 3D environments without coding.
John:
Additionally, features similar to this have already appeared on the iPhone as part of Apple's other augmented reality and virtual reality work, right?
John:
So this is much less interesting than the story makes it seem.
John:
It's like, okay, you can make a thing in AR VR out of a bunch of pieces that are pre-made and you assemble them.
John:
And that could in theory be packaged up in a few, uh, standardized ways into an app that you could then put it in an app store kind of reminds me of the ebook plague of the early days of the app store, where it's really easy to package up an ebook and, and, and, uh,
John:
in an iOS app and put it on the App Store and make some quick money before Apple realizes this is a terrible idea and bans the practice.
John:
Only now it's Apple doing it by saying, hey, make a thing with a bunch of animals that walk around your living room and upload it to the App Store.
John:
All right, sure, whatever.
John:
And this is leading us to the title of this section that Casey tried to sing and I think... Failed miserably.
John:
what what is this ARPR headset good for uh again what we're not we're not talking about a pair of glasses that you wear that can project things into them because there's a million awesome uses for that we're talking about a headset a thing that is pretty big pretty bulky uh has a lot of computing power um has peripherals uh has like a battery which may or may not be clipped to your belt which was the style at the time um
John:
It's like, why would I want to buy?
John:
It may be expensive.
John:
Why would I want to buy this?
John:
What is it good for?
John:
Here's from Bloomberg.
John:
People familiar with Apple's content strategy for the headset say Apple executives are emphasizing health and wellness, including proposals for AR apps that assist with meditation and exercise.
John:
One early AR demo allowed users to sit inside a Zen garden.
John:
All right, sure.
John:
Another Apple demo for executives allow users to walk through the Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You'll Go, by blending its fantastical environment with the real world.
John:
All right.
John:
These all sound like cool tech demos.
John:
Still waiting to figure out what's going to make me want to buy this big headset and what's going to make me want to strap it to my head to pick up potentially the two things that I might have to hold in my hand to make it work.
John:
Gruber took a shot at it and went through... He's had the same question for a long time, and he wrote a big article about it called The Billions Dollar Question.
John:
What is it good for?
John:
He came up... So here's his summary.
John:
What are the intended use cases for Apple's headset?
John:
After you buy it, unbox it, and power it on, what are you supposed to do with it?
John:
What features and experiences will seem worth spending a thousand or even thousands of dollars?
John:
I ponder this every day, and I come up short.
John:
And so in his article, he lists...
John:
everything he could think of and i'm just going to give the bullet points here and you can read his article to see what he has to say about them the things he came up with is what you might use it for is games movies and tv virtual meetings with facetime like calls personal computing via projected displays and then he says i can't think of any other use cases for vr xr headset
John:
I cannot believe that such a headset would be intended for wearing around as you go about daily life, augmenting the real world with virtual displays and ambient contextual information.
John:
That's what we need AR glasses for, not AR goggles.
John:
And you can read his summaries of descriptions of why he thinks games, movies, TV, virtual meetings, and personal computing with projected displays probably aren't going to make him want to use this thing.
John:
But...
John:
And there's probably more items that you can hit.
John:
And I can look at each one of those items and say, well, if Apple did a good job of games, that would be a reason.
John:
If Apple did a really good job of virtual meetings, that might be a reason.
John:
But again, read the Gruber article to see all the countervailing forces.
John:
I don't think I have to describe the countervailing forces when it comes to Apple and games.
John:
We know about those.
John:
Virtual meetings, the countervailing forces are like Microsoft and Google, also pretty big forces.
John:
You know, just anyway, I thought it was a good article and I thought it was a good time to revisit the idea of like,
John:
what are we supposed to use this thing for and finally uh the reason we're talking about this now for the umpteenth time is that the rumors are heating up about apple's ar vr goggle thing uh german his latest thing he said that uh is reportedly set to be announced sometime this spring with launch to consumers happening later this fall so around wwdc ish time rumors say apple may actually be ready to release this thing
John:
This thing that the earlier rumor was that it might actually be released before the end of last year.
John:
Obviously that didn't happen.
John:
But if they're ready to release something, the mystery of, as Gruber says, when I take it out of the box, what am I supposed to use it for?
John:
That mystery kind of remains.
Marco:
I keep thinking back to previous Apple new platform launch warmups.
Marco:
When we were about to get the iPad or the Apple Watch, we kind of knew ahead of time, like, oh, hey, they're working on something.
Marco:
Even the phone, we kind of knew they were working on a phone.
Marco:
That was a special case because that really blew us away.
John:
Or even the Apple TV.
John:
People don't remember that was going to launch as ITV.
John:
People think, oh, there was never any question about what you can use the Apple TV for.
John:
If you remember what the original ITV thing was intended to do versus what the little puck does, it's similar, but kind of like all the other products you've named...
John:
The the what you're supposed to use this product for for actually has evolved over time as the market has decided, no, this is what we want to do with it.
John:
So, for example, DVRing things from broadcast television is not a feature that Apple went with for their TV connected boxes, but it could have been because the technical capabilities over there just turned out that's not what the market wanted.
Marco:
When you look at these previous product launches, look at the iPad, for instance.
Marco:
When Apple was rumored to... The iPhone was already going for a couple of years by that point, and they were rumored to be doing a tablet.
Marco:
And the rumors ended up being not too far off.
Marco:
Everyone kind of knew, okay, it's going to be a big iPhone.
Marco:
They got the price wrong, famously.
Marco:
But for the most part, we were wondering... And at the time, there were other tablets that predated it.
Marco:
and they weren't very compelling they had a market you know there was a and there were a couple different types of tablets there were like the pc world's kind of tablets which were actually like usually convertible laptops where you like flip the screen around and those did okay like in certain industries and then they had like remember right before the ipad they had like the crunch pad crunch pad
John:
no one should remember the crunch pad please there were some other like dumb startup that was like a thousand dollars for their for their tablet too and it was way worse yeah one of the things about the ipad launch that's interesting to remember is kind of like the headset launch before apple has launched a product entry into a space is the time of kind of like grubber was covering the time of infinite possibilities
John:
Right.
John:
There are lots of things this could be.
John:
And people's minds go wild.
John:
Well, this could be X. This could be Y. Because there's no actual product yet.
John:
We haven't seen what Apple's released.
John:
So we don't know what they're going to do.
John:
But we have all these ideas that could be possible.
John:
One of the most fantastical ones around the iPad was, if you remember this one, the iPad's going to save newspapers.
John:
Do you remember that one?
Yeah.
John:
Right?
John:
It's going to save magazines and newspapers because there's a business that existed for lots of the lives of people who were writing articles at the time.
John:
Old people remember magazines and newspapers and they're dying and Apple's going to come up with a tablet.
John:
So one thing this tablet could do is it could save magazines and newspapers by making a modern digital equivalent and all those newspaper reporters and magazine writers will keep their jobs and their pensions and still continue to be paid $20 a word and whatever the hell.
John:
That didn't happen, really, in the way that people expected.
John:
But before there is a product, there's lots of fantastical ideas about what it could be.
John:
And then the other analogy, which I'm sure you're going to get to eventually, Marco, is the Apple Watch, where Apple itself had lots of very fantastical ideas of what the product could be, even when it was launching it.
John:
But we eventually narrowed it down.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But going back to the iPad for a second.
Marco:
So in the lead up to the iPad launch,
Marco:
We were able to look at other tablets on the market that were in kind of, you know, moderate success, maybe in certain areas, but hadn't really taken over, you know, the world by storm or anything like that.
Marco:
But we were able to look at other tablets in the market and see, well, tablets have the following shortcomings.
Marco:
They're a little bit, you know, a little bit unwieldy to have in a pocket or, you
Marco:
But they're still useful.
Marco:
They're hard to have text input on.
Marco:
We haven't really solved the tablet text input problem.
Marco:
And for all these problems that we would think of, we would say, well, I bet Apple has a plan because Apple has such a good track record now at this point.
Marco:
I bet they have a plan to solve things like text input.
Marco:
And then the iPad came out and all those things that we thought Apple surely has a plan, we can't think of it.
Marco:
Well, it turns out they didn't have a plan for any of those things.
Marco:
They just tried to do a really good job with whatever they could do within those constraints.
Marco:
And what the iPad was, was a really good tablet that was the same type of thing that we'd already been imagining.
Marco:
Just a good implementation of it.
Marco:
So the Apple Watch comes along.
Marco:
Again, the rumors are that Apple's about to make some kind of smartwatch.
Marco:
Great.
Marco:
By this point, we kind of knew their M.O.
Marco:
It's probably like a tiny iPhone on your wrist.
Marco:
And yeah, it pretty much was that.
Marco:
We pretty much nailed that.
Marco:
But everyone's like, oh, the smartwatch is going to replace your phone.
Marco:
In a few years, you won't even be buying an iPhone anymore.
Marco:
And here we are many years later, and we're all still buying iPhones.
Marco:
And the Apple Watch, while it has good attributes and good uses and it's a good product in itself, it really hasn't overcome the fundamental limitations of smartwatches.
Marco:
You still only have to use it one-handed because naturally it's strapped to your other hand and your hand doesn't bend that way.
Marco:
It still has a very small display, very limited battery power compared to a phone, and very limited computing resources as a result of its small size and limited power budget and everything else.
Marco:
There are certain things that the smartwatch just can't really do because of its physical realities.
Marco:
Again, there were other smartwatches that came before the Apple Watch, and Apple came out and did something within the realm of what we already knew to be plausible.
Marco:
Just a good job of it, eventually.
Marco:
They found their way through a little bit of stumbling at the beginning there, but they found their way.
Marco:
It's now a good product.
Marco:
By the way, I already admitted last week that Gruber was right about his stupid gloves, his stupid thin North Face gloves.
Marco:
i i now have to admit he's right about one more thing this is almost as bad as when john's right about something when the apple watch first came out the there were two leather bands for the large there were three leather bands there was the modern buckle which was only available for the small size still around today then there there was um the classic leather strap which they don't make anymore that was just basically a regular like black leather strap like any other watch with a buckle and everything like that
Marco:
They stopped making that a few years in.
Marco:
And then they had this thing called the leather loop.
Marco:
And the leather loop was kind of like the Milanese loop where you have like it where like the strap is like one long piece kind of goes through the buckle on one side and then like the excess then folds back over and magnets to itself.
Marco:
And I had such high hopes for that leather loop.
Marco:
And I tried it on a store and I was so disappointed by how just rock hard it was.
Marco:
It felt like a plastic loop.
John:
Is this story leading to you touching a used, warm John Gruber watch strap?
John:
No.
John:
Okay, go ahead.
Marco:
He told me, oh, you've got to check out the new ones.
Marco:
They have since, I don't know when, I think a few years ago, they have since replaced the old leather loop with a new one called the leather link, which is now a two-piece, and one of them just magnets over the other one, so there's no more loop and bend back.
Marco:
However they've made this one differently materials-wise...
Marco:
It is so much nicer than the old leather loop.
Marco:
It is by far the nicest looking strap for the Apple Watch if you're trying to dress it up.
Marco:
That also feels really comfortable.
Marco:
It is a really nice, soft, pliable, practical band.
Marco:
I ended up trying one in a store.
Marco:
i bought it it is super nice so anyway if you're if you're trying to like you know like it's because it's leather you know obviously you have some you know animal concerns there but also it you know it doesn't deal well with things like moisture um and you know i wouldn't work out in this band if i could help it but if i was say like going on a trip somewhere and i wanted to just bring the apple watch and have it be like a little bit dressed up so i could you know kind of look a little bit nice on my trip
Marco:
no question i'd use this band the new leather link it's it's so it's so much nicer than you think it is and it's it's much softer than you think it would be based on the old leather loop thing and i think it looks pretty good and it's nicely adjustable and everything so anyway big thumbs up for that anyway going back for us to go back to where we were um thanks a lot john gruber going back you know as we look at the ar headset now
Marco:
We're in that kind of lead-up period where there are other – not AR, sorry, the mixed reality headset because it seems like we're not near AR yet.
Marco:
So there are other products in this realm that we can look at, most notably the Quest line.
Marco:
We can see that and we can see they are a successful product line.
Marco:
People do buy them.
Marco:
People do watch video in them.
Marco:
They do play games in them.
Marco:
they i don't think a lot of people use them as second screen to their computers i think they're just too low resolution um and and you know obviously the apple product is rumored to be pretty high specced in that realm so maybe that maybe can be better um and meta does have their their like uh whatever the um the is it horizon work rooms
Marco:
Whatever the thing is that Ben Thompson always talks about is being like virtual meetings.
John:
Let's sit around a virtual table and stare at our virtual faces and talk with each other.
Marco:
Yeah, which almost everyone who's tried it basically says, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Marco:
I don't want to do it, but it's pretty cool.
Marco:
And everyone says, yeah, like if everyone bought one of these and we could do this all day and it was comfortable, then yes, our meetings would be better.
Marco:
But that's a lot of ifs.
John:
Yeah, well, I mean, that last part is the key part there.
John:
Yeah, well, everyone buying them is like, okay, well, then what if your work buys them?
John:
That's fine.
John:
But being comfortable, that's where you start getting into technical limitations of these things are not small.
John:
There is a, not a social cost, but there is a weirdness of strapping them on.
John:
There is the practicality of strapping them on and strapping them off.
John:
And then it's just like,
John:
Just like what advantage do you get?
John:
I mean, you know, the thing I think about is, especially during all the COVID times and we're all like working remotely and everything, the social and cultural development surrounding whether or not you have your camera turned on.
John:
I don't know if you two probably didn't do lots of virtual meetings, but I was at my jobby job for most of the first few years of COVID and everything.
John:
And that was the thing.
John:
Do you even turn your camera on?
John:
Should you ask people to turn their camera on?
John:
Should students in classes have to turn their camera on or not?
John:
Should you force people to turn their camera on?
John:
Is it polite to even ask them to if they have it off?
John:
How does that change in school versus work?
John:
That was just simply basically toggling a switch in software.
John:
Now imagine what it will be like in terms of we're going to all have a meeting.
John:
Take this multi hundred or thousand dollar device that work bought for you and strap it on your head.
John:
Oh, you don't want to strap it on your head?
John:
Why don't I see you at the virtual table?
John:
I can hear your voice, and maybe I can even see you on the camera, but why don't you put the headset on, Jill?
John:
I don't want to put the headset on.
Marco:
Why can't I see your face at all times?
John:
It's going to mess up my hair.
John:
Uh, it's uncomfortable.
John:
I have a headache from being inside it.
John:
It makes me motion sick.
John:
Do I have to do this as part of my job?
John:
If only some people are on their headset and other people aren't on headsets in the meeting, does that make it a haves and have not thing?
John:
Kind of like people who are meeting in person versus the people who are meeting remote.
John:
So much complexity around this that it is not, even if you're setting aside that this is never going to happen because Microsoft owns that market and Apple's never going to be able to sell the enterprise because they suck at that and blah, blah, blah and all that other, you know, stuff in there.
John:
Just the idea that the killer app is going to be virtual meetings with a headset like this, I have such a hard time believing it, no matter how good it is, simply because of what I just said.
John:
We have experience with things that are much less invasive and much simpler, and that we all really do have laptops with cameras and everything on them like that.
John:
We've crossed all the hurdles, and yet we still have the difficulty of, should I be on camera or not?
John:
I haven't combed my hair.
John:
I'm still in my pajamas.
John:
Is it important to be on camera?
John:
And all we're asking you to do is click a button, not strap a couple pounds of plastic and batteries and technology to your face.
Marco:
Yeah, there's so many issues if we actually get to this world of everyone has VR heads so we can do meetings and then like...
Marco:
And we aren't even there yet.
Marco:
I mean, we're still... Again, like, we're still talking about, like, is this product even going to be, you know, compelling to people?
Marco:
And that's the thing.
Marco:
Like, when you look at these products today, you can see the use cases.
Marco:
You can see, like, you know, Gruber's article deciding these things.
Marco:
Like, this is what people do with the ones that are out there now.
Marco:
But it seems like it's more of a novelty or a specialty product.
Marco:
And it does not seem like anything the mass market really wants yet.
John:
Well, I mean, it's not... Novelty and specialty in mass market, like...
John:
The place where that doesn't apply is games.
John:
Games are mass market.
John:
Games are not a novelty.
John:
Games are bigger than movies, television, everything combined.
John:
Games are huge.
John:
Games are the main application for VR headsets and has driven most of the development for VR headsets.
John:
The technology we have is from Oculus and from Valve doing that.
John:
Like, that's why these things exist, because...
John:
People play games for entertainment in short-ish spurts.
John:
Huge advantages to VR in games.
John:
Games make sense for VR.
John:
But the reason we all give a funny face about this, like, oh, you can't think of anything you'd want to use a cool VR headset for?
John:
Well, what about games?
John:
Because we know Apple sucks at games for the million reasons that we've talked about.
John:
And it's not like there are no entrants in this space.
John:
Valve has a headset that's really good and expensive and works with a bunch of really good games.
John:
And even there...
John:
In the giant vast market of games so far, based on current levels of technology, most people are playing games on their television or on their phone or on their iPad or on their whatever, you know, on their console or on their PC rather than a headset.
John:
They'll buy a $2,000 gaming PC so they can play their favorite game at super high resolution, higher frame rates.
John:
And they will choose to do that instead of buying a VR headset because there aren't enough good games, because people get motion sick, because the VR games are not compelling enough to make people buy an additional $1,000 thing to connect to their $2,000 PC.
John:
There's all sorts of reasons why we haven't quite gotten there, but games are potentially a huge market.
John:
And even there with existing entrants with really good technology that if Apple is simply incrementally better than them,
John:
And given Apple's inability to really grok and succeed in the gaming market outside of mobile games, because obviously they're very successful in mobile games, and I don't think mobile games lend themselves too well to VR, that's what makes it a puzzle.
John:
And movies and TV are also a mass market, but I feel like that is another place where people...
John:
have mostly chosen to buy a large television and sit on their couch rather than to strap something on their head.
John:
Because again, if the family's going to sit down and watch a show, now everyone needs to have a headset or if one person has the headset and everyone else is watching the screen, it's weird, right?
John:
Those are the mass market things, meetings, movies, TV, games, just going from Gerber's list, right?
John:
Personal computing via projected displays, you know, like I think there are mass market uses for projecting computer images in front of your eyeballs, but yeah,
John:
That's not what we're talking about.
John:
We're talking about projecting computer images in front of your eyeballs with a thing that looks more or less like existing headsets that weighs the same, looks the same, has the same limitations.
John:
It's not the same as putting on a pair of your Clark Kent glasses.
John:
And being able to see people's names hovering above their head, which, as we know, is the killer app for augmented reality.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And even I mean, and that has its own set of like weird, creepy issues.
Marco:
But but, you know, just again, like just going back to the what we know now is like, you know, the most likely like, you know, mixed reality heads, that kind of thing.
Marco:
I don't see this being a big deal.
Marco:
And look, maybe again, we say this every time, maybe they're going to blow us away with something that we are not thinking of.
Marco:
But again, if you look back at their previous new product launches in young hardware categories, they usually have not come up with things we hadn't thought of.
Marco:
They just do a good job of what we already knew to exist.
John:
slow down what about digital touch baby it's the most personal device so here's the reason we think about this is because there is the phenomenon where a technology existed for a long time and apple does a better one we see that all the time right uh but there is a phenomenon where apple does a better one and the increment they are better crosses some divide that we didn't previously know existed and the obvious example that is the iphone
John:
Tons of touchscreen iPhones.
John:
Touchscreens had existed.
John:
Smartphones had existed.
John:
Touchscreen smartphones had existed.
John:
All those things exist before the iPhone.
John:
iPhone is better than them.
John:
Sure, Apple comes out with a phone.
John:
It is a touchscreen phone.
John:
It is better than previous ones.
John:
But it was better by enough to cross over this chasm.
John:
And the chasm was going from a weird product that nerds are into to a thing that literally every person on Earth can use really, really easily and get used to it.
John:
With the responsiveness, the scrolling, the intuitive.
John:
Apple did that.
John:
The iPhone was only, you know, let's say 50% better than the phones that came before it, but that 50% jumped over a gap.
John:
We didn't know that like touchscreens are like suck, suck, suck, suck, suck, you know, responsiveness, however you want to measure it.
John:
There's this much lag, this much, you cross this threshold, this threshold of responsiveness and ease of use.
John:
And it's a discontinuity.
John:
You go from not viable or nerd niche product like the Trio or whatever those Sony touchscreen phones were to this other thing that sweeps across the whole world.
John:
That's why we're interested in stuff like this.
John:
Okay, so they come out with an incrementally better headset.
John:
Does their increment of betterness cross a similar divide that suddenly brings it from the realm of weird, stupid crap that no one cares about to mass market?
John:
Or does it not?
John:
And it's so hard to tell with that.
John:
The other things you listed didn't do that.
John:
The watch was better than other smartwatches by a huge margin, I think.
John:
A huge increment.
John:
Think of the best smartwatch that existed before the Apple Watch and the Apple Watch.
John:
I think it made a huge leap, but it didn't cross any sort of divide.
John:
you know what i mean it didn't go from here's the thing that nobody wants to a thing that everybody wants it just was a better smartwatch it was better by i think a lot but no it didn't it didn't you know jump any kind of gap and i think that's true of the ipad it's the best tablet it had ever come out with but it was similar to the iphone and that we'd already jumped the the responsive touchscreen divide so it was we're on the other side of that and this was just like you know like i said a bigger iphone which is great and a useful thing but you know didn't didn't necessarily break any new ground and the headset
John:
The reason people are interested in technology is we see a divide.
John:
If you can get out of thing that I strap onto my head that's bulky and big or whatever and get into a pair of glasses like that I'm wearing right now, but that I can see 8K displays in each of my eyeballs with...
John:
That is clearly over a divide.
John:
And suddenly that is a product that everyone on the planet is going to be like, yes, please give me that.
John:
Right.
John:
But we don't have the technology yet.
John:
And Apple doesn't either.
John:
Like they're not coming out with a pair of glasses.
John:
They're coming out with a headset and people have already done that.
John:
So that is the question for this thing.
John:
Is it better?
John:
First of all, is it better?
John:
I think we all probably assume it's going to be better because it'll be the newest one.
John:
The newest one will have the best technology and the specs on it seem like they're pretty good or whatever, right?
John:
So it'll be good.
John:
Maybe it won't be as good as the highest of high-end gaming things.
John:
I think, you know, Meta, Facebook has...
John:
scale back on that and they're less interested in making the best of best for gaming with like you know a multi-thousand dollar device with the highest resolution and lowest response time feels like valve is more and what is that the valve index is what theirs is called they're more aiming for that market whereas meta is trying to go mass market which whatever i'm not sure that's a great decision but either way that's where they're going so i think the apple one will be
John:
like the best headset you can get in terms of the raw specs and maybe it'll do some novel things but it's it's going to be far far away from a pair of glasses and i don't think it's going to cross any sort of divide um where where the audience for this product suddenly explodes just like the audience for a touchscreen phone exploded after the iphone
Marco:
I mean, frankly, I think if you look at where technology seems to be now, I think we're so far from that, from the idea of just like the glasses that are just like glasses and somehow project AR stuff and are powerful and powered and things like that.
Marco:
if we're looking at this as a product that's going to actually be real and shipping soon, I think we have to think of it more like a VR headset than an AR product, just because it is so... It seems like we're so far from the AR dream here.
John:
I don't think we're as far as you think related to that, though.
John:
Related to the last time about the touchscreen stuff or whatever, because I always keep reading these articles about screen technology, mostly in relation to television stuff...
John:
The latest set of screen tech that allows you to lay down very low power, very high fidelity, very high resolution, very thin screen material on transparent surfaces is within the realm of our lifetime.
John:
spec wise in terms of just having a screen like it you could put them in a pair of glasses if these experimental stuff that they can make some tiny little postage stamp sizes thing actually existed and were economical today you could put them on glasses and then you could power them what you end up doing is powering them from your phone so 2040 the idea of a pair of glasses with a high res high fidelity color display that is wirelessly seeing what is projected from your smartphone which will then be insanely powerful it already is insanely powerful
John:
is plausible so when you say we're so far away it's not like the type of thing where we're like we'll all be dead i think it is plausible the people on this podcast will be alive when something like that exists and it's mostly has to do with screen technology right because the screen the technology to have a low power lightweight screen that has the specs that we need
John:
is the limiting factor powering it you know all you need there is enough you know because you can just power it from your phone right like phones are incredibly powerful in 20 years they'll be even more powerful hopefully uh and then you can just project it and the thing that's on your face is just a screen right that's not what this device is even though it seems like it's tied to your iphone it's going to have its own socs in it according to the rumors and all that other stuff which is fine and like like
John:
I'm not.
John:
That's why I don't dismiss this entire market, because I think when they do cross that threshold, it will be really big.
John:
And I think we are in in in a generational shooting distance of getting there.
Marco:
I think it's possible, but I do think the products that people think of when they think of AR, when I say we're not close, I'm thinking we're like 10 years or more away.
Marco:
Not to say that it's our lifetime away.
Marco:
Hopefully we live longer than that.
Marco:
But I'm thinking it's at least 10 years away probably from that kind of product.
Marco:
But that brings the question up, okay, well, what do they do in the meantime?
Marco:
And in the meantime, you know, if they're going to have this product out there, that's that's more of like a VR or, you know, we'll see what, quote, mixed reality ends up being like.
Marco:
That's that's a huge question mark.
Marco:
Maybe they've done such a great job with mixed reality that maybe a lot of these questions become moot.
Marco:
And we don't know.
Marco:
Well, you know, we'll see when the product comes out.
Marco:
If the product comes out, you know, we'll see that.
John:
When you say mixed reality, what are you what are you referring to?
John:
You're like, give me give me a use case.
John:
You're saying just projecting 3D stuff onto the real world.
Marco:
yeah basically like like you know what what the current meta quest 2 does with like you know you step outside of the circle and you get the little black and white crappy view of the world the current rumors on the apple thing are that it's going to have much better cameras to the outside world possibly even that goopy sounding thing that it shows your face on a screen to the outside world i hope that's wrong that reminds me of some some terrifying things from the peripheral tv series oh
John:
Now showing on Amazon Prime.
John:
It's pretty good.
John:
You should check it out.
John:
Yeah, I can't imagine that not looking horrifying, but okay.
Marco:
Yeah, but we'll see.
Marco:
Anyway, if that's the direction they're going, if they do a really great job of that, maybe there would be a decent amount of utility there, but I don't think this is going to be the kind of thing you're going to see people walking around on the street wearing this thing.
Marco:
It's probably more going to be you might play with it in the office or at home sometime, but
Marco:
If they do a really good job of that kind of mixed reality before they can get to truly AR-type glasses, maybe that'll be really great in some way that I'm not thinking of and won't be super creepy and weird and uncomfortable and with the short battery life.
Marco:
But again, I look at these rumors so far, and it just does not sound like a product that excites me at all.
Marco:
So again, I hope I'm wrong.
Marco:
It's not to say that Apple can't do this.
Marco:
They have a lot of resources and a lot of smart people, and they tend to mostly do successful things.
Marco:
So I'm sure if they really put their mind to it, they can do it.
Marco:
But I wonder what exactly they're doing here.
Marco:
And is this going to be good enough and successful enough to be worth all of this effort?
Marco:
And I don't know the answer to that yet.
Marco:
We have to see the product and see how it sells.
Marco:
But none of this sounds very exciting to me.
Marco:
Maybe we'll just be very pleasantly surprised or maybe it actually, maybe they haven't thought of something that we can't think of.
Marco:
Maybe they haven't broken out of the limited imaginations we have.
Marco:
And maybe it's just going to be a kind of okay product that doesn't go very far.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
We'll find out eventually.
Marco:
But frankly, I'm so excited about their other products that I worry this might just be a big distraction.
John:
Yeah, I've been throwing links into the chat room with a little L modifier so they show up in Casey's linked list to things that I've posted on my blog in the past about these topics.
John:
One of them was the article I wrote entitled Antastid Tablet, which was throwing cold water on all the fantastical rumors about the iPad before it was released.
John:
And I'll take my...
John:
Uh, annual, uh, victory lap for being right about that.
John:
Um, but the other one was like, uh, your, to your question about like, why are they building this AR headset now?
John:
If it's gotta be this big bulky thing and, you know, we're not quite at the point where we have the glasses or whatever.
John:
Um, the article wrote, uh, back in 2013, uh, don't stop thinking about tomorrow.
John:
Another song.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, you don't get to the glasses without doing all the hard work of the steps in between.
John:
And kind of like how we always talked about how it's important for Apple to do like their reality kit and the LiDAR sensor on the iPad and the AR, VR apps with, you know, placing furniture in your house.
John:
How important it is for Apple to do that, even though it seems like it's a silly thing and they do those AR table demos and we all laugh at them or whatever, because what they're doing is they're developing the technology that will be needed
John:
for, you know, the day when we get those glasses, right?
John:
You can't just wait, oh, we're not going to look into this field until the glasses are ready, because then someone else will come and eat your lunch.
John:
So similarly, I think it is important for Apple to do the work to make a, you know, Oculus, you know, Quest, Valve Index style, AR, VR headset thingy, more or less at the current level of technology, but a little bit better.
John:
Even if it is not a particularly successful product.
John:
Because if they want to be a player in this space, you can't just wait around forever.
John:
The article that I posted was people complaining at the time about the slimming edge of the 5K iMac because they took out the optical drive to make the edge of the 5K iMac slim.
John:
And they were like, why the hell are they making the edge of the iMac slim?
John:
Who cares how slim it is, right?
John:
Or like the iPhone 5 was too skinny.
John:
It's like, my phone didn't need to be that skinny.
John:
Why do you keep making it skinnier?
John:
And the analogy I made for the phone was like,
John:
Yeah, but what if I told you it was as thin as a credit card?
John:
Then when you dropped your phone on the ground like hazy, it wouldn't break because it would just flutter to the ground like a little credit card type thing, right?
John:
You're never going to get to that type of, you know, fantasy clear phone that you see in sci-fi shows that is light and durable and, you know...
John:
much much sturdier than an aluminum glass thing that we have now or whatever and for the iMac i would say you don't get to the current 24 inch iMac that's practically the thickness of a phone if you don't spend years and years and years making your desktop computer thinner for reasons that people don't understand again i'm not advocating for doing making stupid computers i rail against that all the time i'm just saying that like you can't just make a big fat computer for decades and then you have your next computer be as thick as a 24 inch iMac like the expertise you build learning how to make skinny things
John:
pays off and similarly making headsets hopefully this one will be a little bit slimmer a little bit lighter than existing products have better specs be more responsive have more power uh have better battery life like all the things right and still it might be this the apple watch series zero of headsets where people like ah it wasn't that great it was way too slow
John:
There was no good applications for it.
John:
The games on it were silly, you know, whatever.
John:
But if you ever want Apple to make those glasses that let you walk around the city street, seeing Apple map, projecting everything in all directions and being able to look at messages and see people's names floating over their head and all that other good stuff that we want to happen.
John:
You don't get there unless you do all the work leading up to it.
John:
And you can't.
John:
And by the way, you can't do all that work internally and never ship a product.
John:
So
John:
I'm already kind of like preemptively giving Apple a pass on this thing that even if it is a massive flop, Apple needs to do this in a way they don't need to do a car because I feel like this is up Apple's alley.
John:
If and when the technology gets to the point where we can all have information displayed on our eyeballs in a way that is unobtrusive and lightweight, like with glasses or in the distant, distant future, magical contact lenses or whatever, that's where Apple should be.
John:
That's right up their alley.
John:
That's what they've always been doing, personal computers, computing devices that you use yourself, right?
John:
Maybe less so with the car, but whatever.
John:
And so I do want to see them trying here, and I do want to see them ship something.
John:
And if this ends up being, you know, I was going to say the original HomePod, then, you know, go back to the drawing board and come out, maybe not with the Apple VR goggles 1.5, but who knows?
John:
This year, apparently, we'll find out.
Casey:
You know, I can't help but wonder, what has Apple already said to us about this device without us realizing it?
Casey:
And the canonical example of this is auto layout before they switch to more than one screen size.
Casey:
You know, they kind of choreographed that switch by saying, hey, developers, what if we made this system that was a pain in the ass, but what if we made this system that would let you kind of dynamically adjust to different screen sizes and layouts and whatnot with magic?
Casey:
And they did this for a year or two.
Casey:
And then finally we got the iPhone 4, the first iPhone that had a different size screen.
Casey:
And obviously the clear example of how they're potentially choreographing this headset is all the AR stuff they've been doing recently.
Casey:
And I don't know enough about AR or VR or any 3D programming or any of this stuff in order to be able to theorize where they're going.
Casey:
But I wonder if somebody more knowledgeable than I might be able to put together, based on what these APIs are doing and the direction these APIs are going to
Casey:
What does this indicate to us?
Casey:
I can't help but wonder if James Thompson, who spent an inordinate amount of time doing all sorts of interesting, and I say that genuinely, interesting and sometimes silly, but definitely interesting work in AR and VR.
Casey:
Well, maybe not VR, but like in AR.
Casey:
and in 3d space and stuff like that in like carrot weathers ar mode which i've used like twice but it's still a thing uh you know what are these apis telling us about the future and and all too often we we don't put it together until it was too late i think in the in the auto layout example i think we all kind of had a feeling where that was going
Casey:
But a lot of times we'll look at it after the fact and go, oh, like a lot of the changes.
Casey:
I can't think of specific examples, but a lot of the changes that it turned out were to support Swift DSLs like Swift UI.
Casey:
We didn't really know where that was going at first, I didn't think.
Casey:
Maybe my memory is bad.
Casey:
And then once SwiftUI landed, we were like, oh, that's what that was about.
Casey:
And maybe one of you guys can kind of theorize about this.
Casey:
I don't think I'm the person to do it.
Casey:
But I can't help but wonder if we look at the changes and the new things introduced over the last several years, particularly around AR, what does that tell us about the future?
John:
I don't think they were particularly secretive about that, though, because, like, all the AR stuff we see, it's right there out in the open, and we've been developing it for years.
John:
What we were always asking is, like, why the hell would I want to do that on my phone?
John:
Why do I need a LiDAR sensor on my iPad?
John:
And it's like, oh, well, if you wanted to change your paint color and interior decoration, and you can hold your iPad around and scan your room, and then you can use the IKEA app to drop furniture in, and you can tap on your walls and change the color, and then, like,
John:
And it all makes sense.
John:
Like, yeah, I guess.
John:
And, you know, you can use this to measure.
John:
Remember the measure tool?
John:
Oh, you're using to measure.
John:
Is it accurate?
John:
Well, you know, kind of.
John:
Not really as accurate as using a tape measure, but it's a fun thing to do.
John:
And, like, you could always see what they're doing.
John:
Oh, the new AR thing.
John:
Like, we have better 3D rendering, and it's better about detecting objects, and things won't clip and overlap.
John:
And here you can remember putting the new Mac Pro on the table.
John:
They have the 3D model.
John:
Mm-hmm.
John:
it's right out there in front of us the api is for it what you can use it for but it's like we'd always be looking at that and saying okay this is cool i like that you're making this technology better every time at wwec you have new sessions how you're making it better and all of us were just saying but we know we know all this is for when we strap something to our head when we put something into our eyeballs when we have a a stereo image one image in the left eye one image in the right eye that allows us to have a 3d view of things and like
John:
Like we know.
John:
And so we're waiting for this product to come out.
John:
And the questions about the product are things that I think that we haven't had hints of.
John:
Like, for example, what is the UI?
John:
Unless stage manager is the hint.
John:
Lots of people read into that.
John:
Oh, stage manager is exactly what the UI is going to look like.
John:
And here's the problem with that prediction.
John:
It's almost impossible for that prediction to be wrong.
John:
Because they're like, if there's literally any...
John:
like computer window floating on an angle, they're going to say, see, it's just like stage manager.
John:
Even if they share no code, if the teams didn't know about each other, if they were in different parts of the world, right?
John:
Everyone will say, it's just like stage manager.
John:
I can tell you right now, there will be an ability to see essentially a screen that is not square with your eyeballs.
John:
And so if you wanted to predict, is it going to be like stage manager?
John:
Yeah, there's going to be a screen that's floating off to the side that's not square with your eyeballs, but it doesn't mean it's the same as stage manager.
John:
Anyway,
John:
It might literally be called StageMirror.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm just saying, like, we can kind of see what they'll do.
John:
But what we haven't seen is, like, what is the UI?
John:
What is the equivalent of Springboard?
John:
How do you launch apps?
John:
How do you find apps?
John:
How do you interact with it?
John:
How do you enter text?
John:
Like, there's possibilities when you look at the competing products and how they do it.
John:
But we don't have answers to that because that's the stuff they don't have to release.
John:
But what they are releasing and what we do see is...
John:
how do you project objects into real space or metal their 3d api what does that support all you know like we see that we see the gpus we see their shader technology we see their rendering pipelines we see the their sensor technologies with the with the the cameras and the lidar
John:
that's all out in the open for us to see because they ship products they ship products and people ship apps and we can get to use it but every time we use it we think this is great and all but it really needs to be in a headset and so when the headset comes out we're going to be like oh no finally it's in a headset and then we have more complaints which is like well i don't want to spend fifteen hundred dollars on a thing that i'm not sure what i would use it for thanks to our sponsors this week green chef trade coffee and squarespace and thanks to our members who support us directly you can join us at atp.fm slash join we will talk to you next week
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
Casey:
I'm trying to figure out what to do with my iPad.
Marco:
What do you mean by that?
Marco:
Like in general, like, you know, I bought an iPad for like stage manager testing with my app that turned out not to really be much of a thing.
John:
You should have sold it to me, so I could have given it to my son, but you turned me down.
Marco:
I'm never going to sell anything to you.
John:
And now you don't know what to do with it again.
John:
Yeah, I'm bad to not knowing what to do with it.
John:
Well, you should go back in time and sell it to me.
John:
Easy peasy.
John:
Because I bought a brand new M2 one.
John:
It was way more expensive.
Marco:
I, you know, whenever I try to, I, so I tried, I tried once again using the iPad for some productivity roles and, you know, just doing simple things, email, notes, you know, basic things like that.
Marco:
And it just frustrates me every time.
Marco:
Are you using it with a physical keyboard?
Marco:
The keyboard's fine, but it's just like, you know, I had to like jump between a couple of like, so I had, I was trying to do this yesterday.
Marco:
I had a mail message open that I was composing.
Marco:
I wanted to refer to an attachment in a different mail message.
Marco:
Now, you can actually do this now.
Marco:
This wasn't always the case with iPadOS, but nowadays you can do that.
Marco:
You push the little compose window down, and it goes into the little ghost lineup of lost windows that every app has somewhere hidden.
Marco:
And then, okay, how do you get back to that window?
Marco:
Well, as far as I know, you have to tap the mail icon in the dock.
Marco:
So bring up the dock first, then tap the mail icon, then it brings up a little hovery ghost lineup, and then you pick it from there.
Marco:
And I was doing that, switching between that and a notes window, and trying to view this attachment so I could comment on it.
Marco:
And it was...
Marco:
It was so cumbersome.
Marco:
And I'm like, you know what?
Marco:
I'm just going to do this on a Mac where I can do it in two seconds super easily.
John:
You don't have to solve the puzzle of how to subdivide your screen and how to find the ghost windows.
John:
I know exactly what you're talking about.
Marco:
And then how to unsubdivide it.
Marco:
When you're done, how do you close all these ghost windows?
John:
Everything about it, just like...
John:
And even within the realm of the main multitasking thing that I use on the iPad, because my use case is very simple, is I use SlideOver a lot just because it's mostly the case where I have one big thing that I'm doing, which is, let's be honest, probably watching a YouTube video or a TV show.
John:
And then in SlideOver, I have a bunch of other crap like, you know...
John:
reading twitter or mastodon or looking at a slack thing or whatever right and so i know how all those modes work i know how to get things in and out of slide over i know how to switch between them i know how to move them from one side to the other i know how to bring them full screen and move them back like within the realm of the small corner of functionality i want i know how to do it
John:
But then on top of that, apps have bugs.
John:
Slack, for instance, when it's in slide over, if you want to type something, very often you can't hit the send button because the keyboard slides up over the send button.
John:
You can't get to it.
John:
The only way to send that message is to put Slack into full screen because it's something about the layout of the thing is wrong.
John:
They're measuring.
John:
They don't know where the keyboard is.
John:
They're measuring it wrong.
John:
And there's physically no way without an attached hardware keyboard, which I don't have, to hit send on the message you want.
John:
So you have to bring it into full screen, hit send, and then put it back into Slido.
John:
bugs like that would not be tolerable in a mac app imagine if like an apple mail that when you you know opened a new message to compose it uh you couldn't send it until you put the window into full screen that would not be an acceptable shipping bug but on common applications like slack basic functionality does not work in slide over is it an os bug is it a slack bug i don't know whose fault it is but it's it's unacceptable i say
Marco:
I just like every time I have tried to find a role for the iPad in my life, I either failed immediately or I have failed eventually.
Marco:
It's either either I it works for a while and then I'm just and then like all the limitations irritate me or like my needs change or my priorities change.
Marco:
And I and you know, it goes away.
Marco:
I hear from all the people who use and love iPads all the time, including the rest of my family.
Marco:
And I see how much everyone else uses them.
Marco:
And for the stuff I want to and have to do, I have just failed so hard, so consistently at making this device and this device family a routine part of my life.
Marco:
And I almost feel like I'm failing as an Apple nerd to find a use for all of their products.
Marco:
I really should be using an iPad on a regular basis, but like
Marco:
There have been long spans, months-long spans, where I haven't even had my own iPad.
Marco:
Oftentimes, it's because my kid's iPad broke, so we traded him mine for a few weeks while I got his fixed or whatever.
Marco:
There have been long spans where I just haven't had one.
Marco:
And it's never really been a problem with a very few occasional exceptions like, oh, there's now a new iPad with a hardware capability I have to test for my app.
Marco:
That's about it.
Marco:
And I think Stage Manager was the first one of those in maybe five years.
Marco:
it's like and and i just like am i i understand that because i'm a human being i don't need to find a use for every single one of apple's products i know that academically speaking but as an apple nerd and a technology enthusiast and a person who you know makes a big part of my living from talking about as many apple products as we can i feel like i should probably find a use for this device in my life but what what is it i don't know you need to watch more youtube i
John:
you need to watch more tv you need to watch more movies in bed like i mean that's literally the main use of my thing my ipad is on my my nightstand next to my bed i used to watch uh youtube television and movies uh in bed while i read other parts of the internet that's what i use it for like 99 of the time wait whoa whoa hold on it's playing tv show on your lap while you're browsing like on a different device like on your phone
John:
or something no it's the only thing on my lap it's my ipad it's in a little stand it's propped up i'm looking at it and i'm watching either youtube video a movie or a television show before i go to bed and then i'm saying i slide over things like mastodon and twitter and slack oh if the thing i'm watching is boring it's a two-screen experience with one screen
Marco:
YouTube is better on a laptop than it is on the iPad.
John:
No, it's not.
John:
That's why your kids... The iPad is the best device for YouTube.
John:
Phone is probably best for TikTok, vertical and all, to the extent that anybody should be using TikTok.
John:
But YouTube, iPad, they go together like bees and carrots.
Marco:
And by the way, the app that I usually would watch before going to bed is TikTok.
Marco:
So that's probably not going to work very well on the iPad.
John:
That's a phone thing, but I can encourage you to maybe check out some of those YouTube channels you subscribe to.
John:
Maybe they'll be more interesting and educational.
John:
If you're interested in seeing someone rebuild one of those hydrogen-powered V12s from those BMWs, that's what I was watching earlier today.
John:
He's got the whole bottom end of the engine reassembled.
John:
He's just waiting for the heads to come back from being ported in Poland.
John:
You can tune right into that.
Marco:
yeah but all i see when i go to youtube is like you know people's expressions of surprise or confusion with their exaggerated faces stop looking at the thumbnails a big headline that sounds really sensational and then like holding up a diagonal apple product like that's and there's like 17 like i remember like what i think was yesterday that all the home pod youtube reviews came out yeah yeah
Marco:
I was looking at probably the Mac Rumors page listing them all, and they had embedded five or six or nine different YouTube videos all in a row.
Marco:
Here's all the reviews.
Marco:
And you look down, and you look at all the thumbnails, and they all look exactly the same.
Marco:
They're all different people on different channels, but it's like, okay, I can see the formula clear as day, and this is all YouTube looks like when I see it, and I don't like that.
Marco:
It turns me off so much that all of these people who are otherwise smart people who I respect, and for most of them, or if not all of them, but to see them all stoop to this crappy formula, it just really turns me off.
John:
I can tell you that M539 Restorations does not have thumbnails like that.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
So, again, if you want to watch a BMW's engine being slowly rebuilt over the course of a month, that's the channel for you.
Casey:
For what it's worth, Marco, I enjoy using my iPad when I'm on the couch, you know, so I'm multitasking, you know, two-screening, etc.,
Casey:
I think that's a really good time for it.
Casey:
Now, you could absolutely use your phone.
Casey:
I'm not saying an iPad isn't required for this, but I do like it for that a lot.
Casey:
I also really, really like it if I'm a passenger in a car for a journey that's relatively long.
Casey:
So if I'm going to be in the car for like an hour and Aaron's driving, it's a great device for that.
Casey:
And why is that, Marco?
Casey:
Because guess what it has?
Casey:
A cellular modem.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
If only I could pay Apple an obscene amount of money to include one of those in a MacBook Pro.
Casey:
Gosh, that would be amazing.
Casey:
Have we ever talked about that?
Casey:
I feel like we should talk about that sometime.
Casey:
But anyway, legitimately, I really do enjoy it for those kinds of things.
Casey:
And I really do, for the most part, like using it.
Casey:
And I know this is such a tired thing to say, but I like using it for consumption.
Casey:
If I am not at my desk and I want to catch up on the things that I think we're going to talk about tonight on ATP, then I'll oftentimes grab my iPad because if I'm just reading stuff, it's great for that.
Casey:
Now, if I'm sitting down to add things to the show notes...
Casey:
Oh, no, put me in front of a Mac every day, any time.
Casey:
Because not only is doing multiple things on the iPad a pain in the butt, as you two have both described, but the Google apps on the iPad, in my personal opinion, are straight trash and are terrible.
Casey:
And so because of that, if I'm adding stuff to the show notes, I will absolutely be doing that on a Mac.
Casey:
But if I'm just consuming the things in the show notes, I'm catching up on the videos that you and John have put in or the links that you and John have put in, I can absolutely do that on the iPad and it's no problem.
Casey:
And it's a much more, even with the big heavy keyboard,
Casey:
It is a pretty convenient thing to carry, even with the pencil on the side of it that I don't even use that often.
Casey:
I still find it far more convenient to carry that around than I do a laptop.
Casey:
And the battery life, although now with the M1 laptops and M2 laptops, battery life isn't really an issue anymore either.
Casey:
But the battery life on the iPad is great, even with the cellular modem on.
Casey:
So I'm not saying you're wrong, for the record.
Casey:
I think...
Casey:
I'm not creating uses for it necessarily, but I am finding uses for the iPad where I have other devices that would work almost as well.
Casey:
So you're not really wrong or missing out or anything like that.
Casey:
But I do think if you are the kind of person to two screen in the living room or...
Casey:
If you wanted to be out and about in, in, you know, like say on the boat to or from the mainland, I can imagine assuming you have cellular service there, which I presume you do.
Casey:
That'd be a perfect time for an iPad.
Casey:
If you're just goofing off on the boat and you just want to spend however long that boat trip is with like half an hour, just goofing off.
Casey:
That's perfect for an iPad.
Casey:
Assuming you have cellular.
Marco:
I say I usually use the phone for that.
Casey:
And that's not unreasonable.
Casey:
It's not unreasonable at all.
Casey:
But if you have it, if you have one to use, I think you might as well use the iPad.
John:
I mean, if you're watching, like I was saying, watching video, yeah, like TikTok or something small like that.
John:
But if you're watching a television show or movie, which I know you're not that into, a bigger screen is better.
John:
You know, and if you're watching someone rebuild an engine and you want to see the details, it's too small on your phone.
John:
You can't see it.
John:
Like, it's too zoomed out.
John:
Even if it's like 4K, everything's tiny, right?
John:
So the iPad is a bigger screen.
John:
Not so big that it's unwieldy, but, you know, same thing with like on a trade table, on, you know, taking a flight.
John:
iPad is a better thing to watch a movie on than watching a movie on your phone, right?
Yeah.
John:
and even even i so like i have the big phone because i do watch youtube videos on my phone plenty of times right but in the winding down going to bed thing i use the ipad for that because it is a better device for that and also it's it stands up on its own it has a little you know i turn the little smart cover around to make the little triangle uh and i don't have to hold it up at all whereas my phone i would have to be holding right and when i'm going off to bed i don't want to have to hold it up so
John:
and would a laptop be better there's no way i would keep a laptop next to my bed i don't need the keyboard it's big and unwieldy i don't need that complexity so that's the place the ipad fits in in my life and i would be very sad without it uh whereas uh on the other hand i haven't worn an apple watch in ages and i don't spend any of my time thinking about how i can fit an apple watch into my life uh but i still have my apple watch although at this point it's probably dead like it's been in the drawer for so long like they always get to the point where they're so drained that they can't even charge anymore i should check that out sometime
John:
is it still the first generation one series zero yeah my wife has has the the current watch she's i'm i'm living vicariously through her watch use to be up on what it's like to have a watch because she gets a new one very frequently uses it every single day uh you know i see her use it i see her send messages to and from it and you know whatever so i feel like i'm up on the watch even though i'm not wearing on just because i'm not a watch person