620: Mostly Cookies
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We've been out of town for I think about 12 days. I just got back last night. Everything in my life is a mess as a result of this. Like, like obviously, first of all, like my schedule is a mess. Like that's, that's a given. Like when you take 12 days away from town, when you get back, everything has to be crammed, you know, before and after that. So hence why we were recording at a weird time. Sorry, my fault. My house is a mess. Like there's,

There's boxes everywhere because this was our big like Christmas and New Year's trip and there was a bunch of family events that we went to while we were gone for different reasons. And so we had all sorts of prep, you know, to prepare for this trip plus Christmas stuff. So there's boxes everywhere. There's a couple of returns stacked up. There's a ton of like unpacking and laundry. We just got back last night.

My car, a mess also. Covered in dirt and mud and the windshield washer fluid's empty. Everything, that's a mess. I personally, my body is a mess. Not only have I eaten mostly cookies for the last two weeks, but it's to the point where I don't know if either of you have a smart scale, but one of the great things about a smart scale is that it records all your entries. You can see them over time. One of the bad things about a smart scale is that it records all your entries and you can see them over time. And so,

This creates an incentive where if you've just had a really indulgent week and you get home and you step on the scale for the first time, it can cross a certain point where you're like, and you jump off because it only records it once the data like settles after like a second. So you have a window of time that if the reading is going to be something you would rather not be in your permanent record, you can jump off the scale and just revisit in a few days.

And so that was that was this morning's move. You know, like my face also a mess like I'm covered in pimples because I don't have my usual product for the last 12 days. I'm sitting here at my desk is a disaster. Like there's mail I have to deal with, like all over the place, different projects all over my desk, my computer, like the virtual environment on my computer.

also a mess like there's browser tabs open from before christmas that i'm like well if i order this thing it's gonna arrive while i'm gone so let me wait till after christmas to do that or this thing has to wait till the new year or whatever like so browser tabs everywhere files all over my desktop i gotta deal with i can't even find my macbook air i have for the first time ever i have lost a computer like i'm sure i'll find it in the next day or two but like i currently cannot it's so thin and light i lost it like i they should have the thing where it makes a noise like

With your phone where you can make the beeping noise? I don't think they have that for Macs, but they should. Yeah, I can't even find it in my Find My list. I'm like, oh, boy. Oh, that's alarming. Yeah, so I'm sure it'll turn up, but I've never lost a computer or electronics device before ever, and I currently have lost a MacBook Air. But it's fine. I haven't had that much time to look yet. Who is it who had the story about the original MacBook Air was like in a stack of papers and got thrown in the garbage? Was that Merlin? Well, I hope that didn't happen to mine.

Although I guess they're being replaced soon, but I don't want that to be the reason I replace it. Real-time follow-up. Allegedly, it was Stephen Levy who told that story. That's right, yes. Anyway, so... Even, like, Overcast is a mess. Like, I decided...

Right before the Christmas traveling for our family, I decided this would be a good time to start rewriting the watch app to use the new sync engine. So it's like there's parts all over the floor, and then I get up and leave for two weeks. So I'm coming back to that. So everything around me is a mess right now, including me. And oh my god, I cannot wait to slowly work through all of this and get...

get all this processed and put away and recycled and hopefully locate my MacBook Air. And this hopefully will all be behind me by next week's show. Vacation, all you ever wanted. How are you? I would like to hear John's Christmas and birthday results, but I'd also like to throw in just very briefly, as I sit here, it is what, Friday afternoon?

And they are calling, the weather people are calling for as much as 10 inches of snow in Richmond on Monday. Let me assure you, gentlemen, that we can have another argument about whether or not I'm in the South. And I would argue that getting 10 inches of snow would indicate I'm not in the South, but that's neither here nor there. Let me just tell you that we definitely do not have the equipment to handle 10 inches of snow. This will be

the cluster of all clusters, if we actually get 10 inches of snow dropped on us, Richmond will be shut down for at least a week, probably more. So I am not currently in a mess, Marco, but I am potentially going to be in a very messy mess sometime in the next couple of days. Places that get regular snow are equipped to handle it, and the people don't treat it as like the apocalypse.

You know, whereas like a place like where you are, you probably have a lot less like, you know, salt and plows and stuff. And you probably and the people I'm sure have like cleared out the grocery store shelves and are treating it like the apocalypse. That is 100% true. I actually went out this morning. I've been running around all day myself and they already put the like stripes of salt on the road.

It's currently Friday. Snow isn't due until Sunday at the earliest. They're already striping all the roads with salt to get ready for it, which is good. But yeah, we will all quote unquote die for the next week if we end up with 10 inches of snow. Although the way it usually works is it'll cross the mountains west of Charlottesville, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and then it'll kind of peter out not too long after that. So it is unlikely that we'll have an additional week of winter break, but

it's a possibility. So I think happy thoughts and I'll let you decide if that means think snow thoughts or think no snow thoughts.

That being said, John, how are your holiday results and birthday results? Because happy 50th birthday. You are now 50 in three days. So happy birthday. How are your results? 50 and three days, not 50 in three days, just to clarify. That's what I said. I know it just sounds similar for people who are listening. I just want people to know that my birthday has already passed. Yeah, I heard in. Sorry. I am now the big 5-0, really enjoying those retirement catch-up savings contributions. Yeah.

Wait, are you talking about the tomato condiment or is this like a... Catch hyphen up or catch space up. It was that Boston accent that got me. To certain retirement accounts, the IRS says you can put in a little extra if you're 50 if you're trying to catch up for lost time. I actually did that last year because I was 50 last year as well for one day. But yeah, no, it was fine. Birthday was good. Christmas was good. Everything here is fine.

All right. Let's do some follow-up. We mentioned, was it overtime, I believe, last week or last episode that we were talking about how Aaron's car is. And Marco was given the hard sell, understandably, on full battery electric vehicles. And I was saying how, you know, I'm really enjoying the plug-in hybrid. And I think, Marco, maybe it was John, brought up a really funny post. That's what I thought. Every time I think it's

you though, it ends up being John. So this was the one time I was actually right. Just do the opposite of what you think. That's true. George Costanza technique. Right. That's exactly right. Tuna salad on rye. So Marco brought up this very funny post of,

uh, what it would be like if you grew up on electric cars and went and test drove a, a gasoline or petrol powered one for the first time, a friend of the show, Spencer was able to dig it up for me and I will put it in the show notes for this, uh, this episode. I will say I skimmed it real quick, uh, again, and I remembered really liking this post when I first read it several years ago.

Skimming it now, maybe it's my own priors, as Merlin would say, that I'm bringing to the table here. But it reads really obnoxious, so maybe it wasn't as good as I thought. Well, and I actually am not sure this is it. So I went searching for it with every tool I have. I even tried, like, chat GPT, like, what did ATP talk about? Like, I tried, so I could not find, because the version that I remember was a blog post on somebody's website. Now, I found this version online.

And I'm not actually sure it's the same one. I actually don't think it is. But in this version, like if you search for a few of the phrases in it, like, you know, in quotes and Google or whatever, you can find this version is all over the internet. Like this has been copied from forums and everything else. Like it's all over the place. So this is obviously out there and this is, you know, this is, there are parts of this that are funny, but...

I remember the one I remember was not as long and I think a little bit, you know, softer written for people like you. But yeah, this anyway, this I don't think this was it. And if if this is it, it was also copied onto somebody's private blog. And I remember it having like a I don't know, like a like a brownish background or something. I don't know. I cannot find it for the life of me. Livestreams. I look forward to and couldn't find it.

Anyway, but as some minor follow-up to your EV-ness, I did want to tell you that I did just take all this, my 12 days of travel here was probably a combination of 500 miles, maybe 600 miles.

And I actually never had to use a fast charger once because at my in-laws place, they have like a circular saw 220 volt outlet in their barn. And so whenever I'm there, I just plug into that. It's about I can get about 30 amps out of it. So I just plug into that and my car is full overnight and that's it.

And then so I charged up at my house. I went up there. I charged there, drove around a lot and then drove home and I got home with like, you know, 20% or so. Nice. Just to give you some idea of like, you know, all of your range anxiety. What I'm trying to do is...

I mean, look, nothing's going to cure your range anxiety about a full battery EV until you actually own one. But what I'm trying to do is kind of just give you, you know, examples of like how much you don't really need to think about it as much as you think you will. And even like I am the kind of person that I don't – you kind of have to define like what's the lowest percentage charge I'm comfortable with getting it down to before I need to plug in or want to be at a place where I can plug in.

And for different people, this is different. Like, I'm the kind of person where, like, I don't even let my phone battery ever go all the way to zero. I have, like, when people say, like, my phone died, that kind of irritates me. That's like saying my kid starved. It's like, that implies some, you know, some, like, nothing. This action just happened. It's like, well, you didn't charge it and you used it down to zero. Anyway.

I am I'm a person who like my phone has never died. I have like my I literally have never drained a phone battery to zero because I manage it. If it's getting down low, I'll stop using the phone or I'll put it, you know, in obviously low power mode or if if I'm really desperate, like airplane mode. But I don't think I've ever asked out of like a hike. I don't ever had to do that. Like a week long hike. I'm saying where my phone still didn't reach zero.

Anyway, so the point is, with the car, I'm willing to get it down to 15% if I'm arriving somewhere that I know I can definitely charge, like a known fast charger or my house or my in-law's house. I'm willing to let it go that low. And if you are willing to let it go that low, you can get a lot of places. Because the thing is, even after, suppose you get it down to 15%. Well, if your car has like 300 miles of range...

that's still plenty of rings that you could use to drive to the next charger if you really had to, like the next closest one. So the reality of owning an EV is you think it's going to be so much worse and you think you have to plan every single bit. And really, the margin of error is pretty big and the capacities you have are pretty big. And it's getting better all the time as more stations open up. So like,

even if you pull up to a charger and it's broken or full or whatever you can probably just go to the next one with the range you have left or you can probably make it your entire trip without even using the fast chargers so this is a problem that is understandable for you to you know be all tense about but again i think once you get an ev for the first time which i think should be soon um i think you're going to be very surprised how little of a problem it really is

Yeah.

every summer. The place that we consistently go to, Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore, 140 miles away and damn near any EV worth its salt is going to be able to go, you know, 200 plus miles. So that shouldn't be an issue. Now, I did bring up that we're going to, we're actually having a second vacation this summer that's like four or five hours away. I forget how many miles that is offhand, but I think it was far enough that it would necessitate a stop. But in the entire lifetime of Erin's Volvo, her prior Volvo, may it rest in peace, we took like,

one trip, I think, that was more than like 200 or 300 miles away. So I don't debate that intellectually you are 100% correct, that I would probably almost never need to worry about stopping at a charger. And even if I did, it would be so infrequent, it would almost, it would be near as makes no difference to zero. But...

Now it's still scary. And for, for the needs that we have today and easing our toe in the water, I really stand by our choice for PHEV. But we'll see what happens in the future. And I was actually talking to my father this morning. We just saw them just a couple hours ago and I was talking to my dad about it. And I was saying to him that, you know,

in a way I'm getting a little bit of the itch, you know, I've had my, my Volkswagen for six years now and actually almost six and a half. And I'm kind of getting the itch to get something new. And if I do that, I think I would get a battery electric, which is what I said last episode. Um, but I have a couple of problems. First of all, there's none that I really, really love right now. There's no BEVs. There's no battery electric vehicles that I really, really love right now. Um, and, uh,

even if I went for one of the ones that I think I really like, it's like 150% of the cost of my car. My car, when I bought it six and a half years ago, was $40,000 out the door, which is a lot of money, don't get me wrong, but it's affordable. For the person that does the sorts of things that I do, it's affordable. Whereas to get...

approximate equivalent but full electric is like $60,000, $65,000, $70,000. And then you start, if I wanted to go to like the Rivians of the world or the Model S's of the world, now you're talking like $80,000, $90,000, $100,000, $110,000. And that's just, it's too rich for my blood. Now I feel like John all of a sudden where I'm refusing to spend any more money on a car. Unlike John, I'll buy cars from different makes, but that's neither here nor there. But it's so much money. And so not only do I not want to

have my left leg atrophy, but I just don't want to spend that kind of money right now, especially if there's not one car that I can look at and go, that's the one. That's it. I want a, you know, QRS TUV from such and such manufacturer. That's the one. It's the only one for me. And so because of the combination of those two things, well, and my car is perfectly fine as I sit here today, I don't think it's happening anytime soon, but I'm starting to get the itch. Yeah. I think there, I mean, first of all, like,

Like, I don't think it's quite fair to compare what you paid six years ago to what prices are today because I think prices of everything will be higher today. That's true. But even setting that aside, of course, yeah, EVs tend to be more expensive because batteries are still very expensive. So, of course, that is a factor to consider. And, of course, you can do like the Tesla configurator style math where you're like, well, I'm going to actually be saving this amount of money here and this amount of money. You can BS your way into it however you want to do it.

But, you know, and again, like if your car is working perfectly fine, you probably shouldn't replace it. But, you know, next time a car ending event occurs, you know, whatever that is for you, whether it's like, you know, a big expensive repair, you know, or whatever, like, you know, next time a motivating event happens that has you, you know, has you looking, I would say, look at EVs first. And because...

You're going to have some degree of hesitation of the fear of the range thing, I think, is going to keep you wanting to stay in your comfort zone. And of course, you have made a large part of your identity about things like driving stick shift. So that's a hard thing to change, and I get that. And I'm not saying you need to change it, but I think you will benefit from really examining hard when the time comes and...

am I talking myself out of an EV for good reasons or am I talking myself out of an EV for like, you know, kind of defensive reasons that might not hold up to scrutiny with my own standards down the road? And, you know, even like, you know, even, you know, things like the, you know, the range question of like the way you were talking about it last episode, you were talking about it very much as like a, like a,

prepper dad mentality which was like yeah because you know we well i mean look we all do this sometimes uh but like it's like okay i i'll charge up my house and then when i get to where i'm going i'll be able to plug in to you know to their to their you know regular 110 outlet and like when i when i got my first tesla in the trunk i or in the front i think i carried around like

a 50-foot extension cord, and all these different adapters. And I'm like, someday I'm going to be somewhere where I'm going to need to plug in. And what if the outlet is more than 10 feet away? Well, I'm going to need this. I'm going to need that. And I carried around all these wires and things for the whole lease. The next car, carried it over, carried them again for another three years. And I never used any of it. I never had to use it.

So now I just carry like the mobile charger, which has, you know, the, the, the two 20 plug and the one 10 plug. I use it only at my in-laws house in their circular saw outlet. I've never used it anywhere else because there are, you know, there are charge every, but when, again, before you know this world, you're thinking like, how can I have everything I need with me at all times? So it will, so I will always be prepared for every eventuality. And like,

Yes, some people need to think that way in some conditions. There are people who like if you're going off roading somewhere on the wilderness in a gas vehicle, you bring cans of gas with you. There are needs for that kind of thing. We don't have those needs like the vast majority of the time when we're living in the suburbs, driving our EVs around, whatever we need to do, like gas.

If you don't have the need to carry around a giant extra tank of gas with you all the time, you probably don't need to think that much about your EV charging either. You probably don't need to carry around a 110 volt cord because you'll never use it because it's too slow. Like it

when you when you get somewhere that you that you don't have like a place that's yours or your family's like if you're on you're going on a road trip when you get somewhere you know what you're gonna do you're gonna go to the nearest fast charger charge for 20 minutes and then keep going like that's what you'll be fine the whole trip like all your local driving it'll be fine and then on your way out of the town you were visiting for a few days maybe you're down to like 40 you'll stop again at a fast charger next time you pass one and you'll

sit there for 20 minutes, get, you know, get a cup of coffee or you won't get a cup of water or split onto your laptop and then you'll get back in the car and you'll go and it'll be fine. Like you'll never use all the gear that you think you will need. You will never use that extension cord. You will never use anybody's one 10 volt outlet, including your own. Like you will just never do that. And it's fine. But again, like until you experience that, like,

your first EV I guarantee you you will have those giant extension cords somewhere hidden in the frunk or whatever because you won't know that yet and that's fine we all go through that but trust me you will go through that you will realize you don't need any of that stuff and then on the other side you'll be like oh yeah it's fine

And this is just better in every other way. To further give you fuel for the fire that you're igniting right now, the earlier long trip, the second beach trip that we're taking this coming summer, the one that I'm presenting as this insurmountably far away trip, because it is, in my defense, further away than we have typically traveled by car recently, is

320 miles. And I'm guessing that your BMW could probably either get there on one tank or charge, if you will, or just about, if not all the way. Right. And it probably could, and I wouldn't. Because what I would do is, again, like, I would look at the map and be like, all right, what's the fast charger that's closest to the destination? Right, right, right. And on the way there, I would stop at that fast charger, you know, 80% or whatever, and then I'd have my vacation. Again, I could drive around freely because I had plenty of range to drive around for local errands.

And then on the way home, I would just go and stop at whatever charger I could hit when the car was near 20%. Yeah.

Yeah. Because there's probably multiple ones on the route. Or if there's one that is one of my favorites where I know, for instance, if I know that, oh, this one's in the parking lot of a Target and I can go in there and shop for a while or whatever. You get to know the chargers that are in your region. So you'll know, oh, this one has a good restaurant next to it. Or this one has a convenient store. I can pick up some drinks and go to the bathroom. This one has clean bathrooms. You learn that stuff. But it's so much less of a thing

than you think and it's so much less of a burden than you think and you net like if I have to go on a long trip

It almost doesn't matter at all how far away it is. It just matters because it's in the same way like, you know, in a gas car, you don't think in multiples of 350 miles because that's how much your gas tank holds or whatever. Like, you don't think that way. You just go and you look and if you need gas, you look around and say, oh, where's the nearest gas station? EVs are the same thing, just like it's a little bit longer to fuel up and there's fewer of them, but it's the same kind of mechanic. Like, you just go on the trip that you want to go on and you accommodate what the car needs every so often and it's not that big of a deal. Yeah.

I hear you. I know. We'll see what happens. Again, I don't plan on buying anything soon, but I have maintained since before we started talking about it in overtime last week that I do think my next car for sure will be a full electric. And we'll see with Aaron's. The EX90, I think we talked about this. The EX90 is supposed to be good but not great, and that is obviously the most analogous to her current car. So we'll see what happens. Also, other thing to point out too on that topic too. Something that John said a thousand years ago.

When you first get your very first EV, it doesn't even have to be a very good car. EVs are just so good. Like, when you first experience them, like, just the feeling of the electric drive. The SSDs of the car world, I think I called them. Yeah. Like, so, like, and that's... So, like, I know a lot of people who, you know, mostly for price reasons, but also maybe just for, like, testing the waters reasons, a lot of people I know, their first EV was something relatively small and relatively inexpensive. You know, something like...

There's that Kia little box thing. Those are fun. Even just base model Model 3s are actually fairly inexpensive. And there's all sorts of smallish EVs that a lot of the brands have that seem pretty fun. Like the Ioniq series from Hyundai. Honestly, I think you should look at an Ioniq 5. I think because it's very golfy.

in a lot of ways. But there are lots of EVs that are relatively smaller, less expensive cars compared to the flagships that you're talking about. You're talking about these big flagship SUVs and big flagship sedans. That's not what most people buy. Most people are buying the smaller, more affordable ones just like the rest of the car market. It doesn't have to be a really impressive car in other ways for an EV to be awesome.

because EVs are awesome. So like you can get like a reasonably inexpensive, you know, relatively inexpensive one. And it's still going to be amazing. You know, I see so, I mean, so many like the Hondas, the Mach-Es, like I see so many around that are just like, you know, not super high end cars, just kind of mid,

you know, kind of mid range cars. And then maybe have a little bit high end features, but are not like the luxury cars and they're all good. So, you know, don't be thinking you have to get the biggest Rivian SUV out there or like the model S like, don't be like, you're looking at like, would you get a Mercedes S class? Like, you know, would you get like a Range Rover? Like probably not. That's what you're comparing these purchases to. Like,

you know, look in the mid-range and even the low end of the EV world and you'll find a lot of good value there. And you can even, I mean, I don't know if you'd ever go this route, you can consider the used route as well. Used EVs can be had for very little compared to...

I think what they're worth. Yeah. And, and, you know, you lose some range by the battery being a few years old, but not as much as you think. I mean, again, like I know a lot of people like our friend Jason, so a lot of people like their first EV was something that had way less range, like, you know, under a hundred miles a lot of times.

And those were still amazing cars. And for your, literally your express priorities and needs would probably fit just fine. Oh, absolutely. And even then, like, it's just like driving around a cool futuristic golf cart. Like that's so, it's so fun. Uh, I think you, I think you'd have a lot of enjoyment out of that, even if it was not a, like an extremely high powered one. Yeah. I mean, I,

because on me, I would go for the extremely high powered one. And if I were to buy one today, I think I would buy an Ioniq 5N or an EV6 GT, which are in many ways the same car and in many ways not. But I mean, I'm looking at the MSRPs for each of them and it's $62,000 for the EV6 GT, which is the one I was leaning toward and $66,000 for the Ioniq 5N, which is a lot of money. I'm not saying it's unreasonable money. It's just

a lot of money. You don't need the 5N. I guarantee you the regular Ioniq 5 is faster than your car. I haven't even looked at the specs. I bet it's faster. I don't know. You might be right. I don't know. I'm curious now. I don't know if I'll be able to find it while we're recording. Go test drive one. I'm sure it'll feel faster. Whether or not it is faster is different. By the way, the regular Ioniq 5

300 miles of range, 41K. See, that is a lot more affordable. I don't love the look of the Ioniq 5. Oh, I think it looks cool. I don't know. It's a little too quirky. But then, I mean, honestly, the EV6 is also quirky in just very different ways. Yeah, I don't know how to figure out how quick this is without doing some deep dives. So I'll have to save that for another time. And also, like, you know...

certain metrics don't reflect things like, well, when you step on the pedal, it goes instantly. There is no delay. So there are different attributes, too, of performance where maybe it might, if you can find something that beats it in the quarter mile, well, that might be different from how it actually feels to you to use it in regular driving. Oh, you're exactly right. By the way, also, the Mach-E...

320 miles, $40,000. Just put it out there. Some very close friends have a Mach-E, and despite them choosing a Marco style color, from everything I can tell, it's very nice. I haven't been in it yet, but I've seen it many times. It seems very nice.

All right, moving on. Michael Stark with regard to recents and finder sidebar. Michael is confirming what I thought. See, here's the thing. We were already talking earlier in this very episode about how my memory is trash. And that is true. But there are occasions where I'm right. And I convinced myself that I'm wrong because I know my memory is trash.

I knew that recents was not new, despite what we talked about last week. I could swear it, but I didn't believe myself. Well, Michael Stark writes, the recents item has been there for many, many years, and it's even visible in the default installation of Mac OS. That's what I thought. Additionally, Odin writes, not only is it not new, but, unless I'm misremembering, for years now, when setting up a new Mac or a new user, it's the default folder that the finder opens to. I believe that's correct. Correct.

And then Joe Lyon writes, yes, recents is the default finder view in icon mode, and it's infuriating to me. I'm sure Apple has all of the market research in the world to show that relatively no one knows how to use the finder, navigate the file structure, create hierarchies, etc. And I'm sure that they've discovered that most people don't know and don't care where their files are, like on iOS. So they just gave in and said, fine, here's a recents list. Change the default view if you want, but we know 90% of you won't.

Eric Juergens writes with regard to Vision Pro displays, Samsung, in conjunction with Stanford University, has developed a 10,000 DPI screen, or nearly three times the display density of the current Vision Pro, which is about 3,300, almost 3,400 points per inch. For comparison, the earliest reference I could find of the Sony micro display used in the Vision Pro seems to be an article from 2022, which notes the display was made in 2021, or about two to three years before the Vision Pro was announced. And we'll put a link to that article in the show notes.

Given this, perhaps the more pixel-dense Vision Pro could be released in 2027 or 2028. Yeah, maybe add a year or two to that, because if you look at the article about the Samsung and Stanford screen, this is less a commercial product and more of a research effort. But hey, if they can figure out how to manufacture it affordably, maybe this will be the next technology. And so to give a reasonable timeline for...

A Vision Pro with three times the display density, hopefully for the same low, low price of $3,500, 2028, 2029, maybe those are the years, but keep an eye on it. But it's good to see some story out there about displays that could substantially increase the pixel density of a high-end device.

And then here's a PSA for you. This is from a while ago, actually. Here's why you shouldn't use iPhone mirroring on a corporate Mac, writes MacRumors. According to a blog post by security firm Sevco, the core issue lies in how iPhone mirroring interacts with macOS's file system and metadata. When activated, the feature creates app stubs for iOS applications and

In a specific directory on the Mac, users, your username, library, daemon containers, data, library caches, these app stubs contain metadata about the iOS apps, including icons, application names, dates, versions, and file descriptions. While they don't include the full executable code, they provide enough information for macOS to treat them as installed applications.

Whoops-a-dipsies. Yeah, it's another one of the great advantages of corporate malware that is constantly scanning your computer when something like this comes out. It's not like the people who make this corporate scanning software are on top of the latest advancements

advances in mac os and so when iphone mirroring comes out they're not like we've got a new version that accounts for that they probably never even tested it but users are going to find out when they you know you know i'd like to use iphone mirroring on my work mac and they do that and then suddenly they have essentially revealed every app that's installed on their iphone into the corporate scanning thing which maybe is not what they wanted to do setting aside that even if there's nothing on there that you want to

to hide now the scanner is going to say well look at all these new apps that this person has installed and maybe someone comes and pays you a visit and says you shouldn't be installing personal apps on your work computer and yada yada although I do find it interesting that this is you know secretly how this is implementing these little sort of empty app stubs that are enough of an app

to be recognized as an app and to have an icon and a creator or whatever, but they have no actual executable code in them. And that's how they implemented the thing where Mac OS is aware of the apps on your phone, right? Instead of just communicating over the network, they spray a bunch of files into the file system and say, here's a bunch of apps that are on your phone. Interesting implementation, but be aware of that. Yeah, this is a little bit older story, but I thought it was worth noting. If you haven't discovered this already, maybe don't use iPhone mirroring on your corporate Mac.

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iOS 18, it's been out for a while now, and I haven't heard any complaints here in the house ever since when it first dropped. But a friend of the show, Quinn Nelson, writes, I don't know of any iOS update more hated by normal people than the iOS 18 Photos app redesign. I don't love it, but I also don't hate it. I have a very kind of milquetoasty opinion about this, to be honest with you. It's fine. I don't love it, but I've gotten used to it, and it's

The one thing I will say is I really genuinely enjoy the trips feature where it tries to figure out when you've gone on a trip and it has its own like bespoke section for that, that a plus everything else. It's fine. Yeah. So yeah. So Quinn's Quinn's read here. This is a thing. This is the first thing that I heard from normal people in my life when I was 18 came out way back when, because I was trying to get people to update, you know, on day one, instead of waiting to the waiting for that time when Apple pushes the update and everybody, um,

If you look at the sort of non-tech enthusiast world, what do people know or think about iOS 18? The answer is the Photos app is bad. Don't update to iOS 18 because the Photos app is bad. Here's all the reasons that the Photo app is bad.

I put this item in here because I think we in the tech nerd sphere are not talking too much about that. There was a little bit of news about that back in the betas when Apple was changing it in response to negative feedback during the betas. But now that it's been released, I don't hear a lot of people in our circles complaining about it. My personal opinion is also that it is not

I don't think it's better than the one that came before, but I don't think it's that much worse. But let me tell you, if you just go to like, go to TikTok, go to Instagram on someone else's account, like just get out of your world of recommendations and look at what regular people are saying. First of all, the fact that regular people are saying anything about iOS 18 is probably bad for Apple because what Apple wants is,

just like, oh, my iPhone got better and they don't, they don't, they shouldn't know the number 18. They shouldn't care that there's an iOS update. Maybe they care about the new emoji, which is a big driver for people actually updating their phone or whatever. People, regular people fear OS updates. Um,

because they think it's going to break stuff or whatever. So as far as regular people are concerned, no news is good news for Apple. But that's not what's happening. iOS 18, people know the number 18, and they know it because everyone seems to hate the Photos app. And I want to talk about here, first of all, to hear what you all think of the Photos app. It sounds like Casey's kind of where I am, where it's like, I don't hate it, but I don't think it's a big upgrade either. But second, to Apple,

figure out what it is and regular people hate so much about the photos app. I have some ideas, but anyway, Marco, what, what do you, before we get into what other people think, what do you personally think about the iOS 18 photos app? If anything,

I don't really use any of the new like customizable swipey you're exploring rows or anything. So I don't really have a strong opinion. Like I'm a kind of photos app, you know, light user. I skim through and I usually am looking at my most recent photos. Occasionally I'll like go back and say, oh, what was that thing I did last week? Let me pull up that picture, you know, my New Year's suit or whatever, like

It's usually short time scale. I'm never going into the photos app and saying, make me a memory for last year. Like, I love they have those features for people who do that. I'm not one of those people. So like all that stuff, it mostly just kind of gets in my way if it's in the way. But I find like from my very light use, it's fine. I don't think it's an improvement for me, but it's also not a downgrade. So it's fine.

Yeah, yeah. So what I think most people dislike, and people in my life, my daughter refused to update iOS 18 for ages because she had heard that the photos app was bad. She hadn't even experienced it herself. But by the time I even mentioned it to her already in her, there's like two days after it's released already, she'd heard from her friend circle, don't update iOS 18. The photos app is bad.

I think she's since updated and she still maintains that it's bad. She hasn't articulated specifically what it is about it that she doesn't like it, but I have a few ideas. So first of all, one of the subgenres you will find in the world of, you know, Instagram, TikTok, whatever, or in the, you know, teen circles or, you know, regular people circles about socials.

here's how you can fix photos on iOS 18. So it's not so bad. And what they're basically telling you to do with a super secret hack is like, did you know things are configurable? Right. So in iOS 18 photos, you can configure, I figure where it is probably in settings. You can configure lots of the stuff to remove things that you don't care about, to change the order of things, to pin certain collections to the top. Like,

if the default set setup is not to your liking and it's showing you things you're not interested in you can change that so this is a super secret hack that there's a million videos about telling you here's how you can fix it which makes me think that one of the things about the ios 18 photos app that people don't like is they launch the photos app not to do as margo was suggesting to use memories or whatever but they just want to launch it to look at some photos they've taken i think that's what most people do with the photos app is i

I took some photos. Let me look at them. Let me show them to someone else. Let me open it up and grab that one photo. They just want to open the app and get a photo that they're thinking of from today, from last week or whatever. That's what they're doing. But the iOS 18 Photos app has other plans. It's like, you know what? Here's a bunch of carousels with memories and trips and whatever. And they're like, what is all this? I just want to get my photo. And the fact that the iOS 18 Photos app got rid of the bottom tab bar and replaced it with this like...

half of the screen is this other stuff. That's not your photos. Yes. You can see a grid of your photos, but also have you considered albums and shared albums and media types and people and pets and recent days and memories and like all that stuff. They're like, that's not what I want. Why is it taking up half of my screen? And then the UI is like,

Well, if you just scroll the grid of photos, eventually we make that bottom thing disappear and it becomes like a floating tab bar at the bottom. So look, it's just like your old photos app. This is one of the things they didn't bait. It was they said, OK, we're not going to take up half your screen with the stuff that you don't care about. If you just ignore it and scroll, then you just have a grid of icons like it used to be. And you have this tab bar with, you know, years, months or whatever.

But the fact that that big thing is there annoys people, right? The fact that they have to like scroll and it, like it behaves unlike any other kind of app. People are kind of used to an app where there's either a top bar and a bottom bar, like a phone app. And there's a middle region that you scroll. And this whole thing of like, well, half the bottom half of the screen is a bunch of stuff. And the top half of the screen is some other stuff. And then if you scroll,

the bottom half, you have to scroll like the bottom half of the screen resists you. It's like, I can't push it down. But if you push down a little bit more than it's like it surrenders and becomes a floating toolbar, that's not a paradigm that exists like as common idiom in the iPhone world. It's something that Apple made up for iOS, the 18 photos,

it's not familiar to people it's weird it's weird that the the app like resists you hiding that bottom part like you push down it doesn't go away you have to push down a second time like try it go ahead open up froze now and see the whole bottom white section below your grid of icons push it down with your thumb in a single motion no matter how far you push in that single swipe it will never go away like push push push push push your thumb will go off the end of the phone and it will never go away ah but push a second time and now it disappears and so like it's fighting you right and

So I think a whole bunch of the resentments about iOS 18 photos is there's this white bottom section that is not my photos that I don't want to see that fights me every time I try to get rid of it. So I think there's a lesson in that for Apple. And then the second thing, of course, is what's in that white section? A whole bunch of crap. And the fact that you can configure it

is one of the features I actually like about the new photos. You can configure to put the things you're actually interested in near the top. Which, by the way, just very quickly to interrupt, the real-time follow-up on that is if you scroll all the way down, scroll, scroll, scroll all the way down, there's a customize and reorder button, which is what lets you do the, you know, what do you want and what order do you want it in on this bottom section. Yeah, that's a super secret tip that you can learn from all these TikTok. Anyway, like the feedback side about the recents item, most people will never change the default.

Like they won't even discover that or whatever. That's why this is a super cool tip. Obviously anyone listening to the show probably knows that's there and they've already configured it. But still, that just lets you sort of minimize the damage of like, well, if I have to endure this white bottom section in the photo screen, at least I'll put the stuff that I care about on the top and delete the stuff that I don't care about. But that's why I say for me personally, the iOS 18 Photos app, it hasn't, it's not better than the previous one.

Because I'm like most people going in there just to find photos. The thing I wish, my personal wish for the photos app is, first of all, I would get rid of that whole like, hey, you can't get rid of this bottom part until you try a second time. Ask me a second time and then I'll turn into a toolbar. Like there's nothing wrong with just having a toolbar. Just have a toolbar, right? I would love it if that toolbar is customizable because the main, my main complaint with dealing with photos on my phone is,

Whenever I'm doing anything with photos, if I am picking photos like in a photo picker, like whatever the system photo picker when you're in some other app and it says here, pick a photo to put here. If I'm picking a photo or if I'm trying to file a photo away, like put this photo into an album. In both of those cases, I am always, almost always pulling from or putting into like three albums.

And in the little white region thing, you can pin them. So I have pin collections, favorites recently saved destiny, profile photos, contact photos, and memes. Those are the ones that I use most frequently. That's where I'm pulling from or putting into. And that's great for pin collections on the screen. But in the system photo picker, it's like, here's all your albums. Have fun scrolling through them. It's like 500 albums and they're alphabetical sort of, and there's some at the top if you've used recently. And it's just like, I wish you could just say, look, uh,

These five, just always have them be in the top. Kind of like the, you know, open save dialog box before you expand everything. It's like, just, you always pick from these ones. These will always be at the top. You will never have to scroll through the list of albums looking for memes or looking for the M section, trying to remember where the icons, where is my destiny folder? Scroll, scroll, scroll, Ds, I don't pass the Ds, scroll back,

Just always put them at the top. Photos on iOS 18 does not give me that experience. I still frequently in other apps find myself scrolling through my gigantic list of albums trying to find the Destiny album because it's somewhere in the Ds and I scroll past it and it annoys me. So it's not enough. That was the same before and it's the same after. So it's not a change. I do like having pin collections, but I hate the fact that the little white region I have trouble getting rid of. But anyway, I don't think most people are like into the nuances of user interface. They're just like,

Somebody moved my stuff. I used to know where things were in the Photos app, and now I don't. The tab bar that was at the bottom isn't there anymore. There's this other thing that I don't understand that turns into a tab bar. Even things like, I mean, they changed this in the beta. How do I change from showing my personal library or the shared library? That's a more esoteric feature, but they had that buried before too when they fixed it in the beta.

Still, do you two know where it is? It's pretty well hidden. If you don't know where to find that, you have to... To get to it, you have to push the white bottom region away because you don't want that anymore. So one push. No, you didn't make it right. Second push, you push it away. And then the up and down arrow keys to the left of the years, months, and all thing hit the up and down arrow keys thing. And then you can pick... And what does that mean? Like sorting or something? Then you can pick personal library, shared library, or both libraries. And it used to be in the upper right, and now it's in the lower left. So anyway...

everything is moved and I think the app is fighting people from the main thing that they want to do which is just show me all my photos now it could help people there I think it's trying to say you have too many photos if we show you all your photos and never be able to find anything what if we put them into a grid where everything whether we just pick like the ones that we think are important photos instead of showing you them all like the grid where they're all different sizes and stuff what if we do that what if we show you collections with what we think are the good photos and people like just get that out of my face

just the people just want to scroll their photos, scroll, scroll, scroll. Maybe they want to go to months and years and that should still be there, but they just want to do that. Everything else in the app is getting in their way. And it kind of amazes me that the backlash about iOS 18 is essentially you change the interface to the photos app. It's not like my photos are gone or there's something worse about the photos. It's just like when I go to find my photos, I'm now frustrated with my phone. I do wonder if by the time I was 20 comes along,

And they change it again, people are going to be like, why did they change it? The Photos app was fine. They didn't need to change... Like a new generation of people get used to the iOS 18 photos and they change it again and it annoys them. But it really...

I was really surprised by the backlash against this, the continuing backlash against this, because it's not like a high profile thing. It's not like controversial or salacious or whatever. It is just like you changed my user interface and it shows how much people treat their phones like cameras because the things that people use all the time are the messages app. And I guess also the photos app, you know, they take pictures with their phone, they go and look at them, they send them to people in messages and any change to that app is a problem. So I find this,

And I think iOS 18 photos, like, I don't give it a failing grade because I don't think it got much worse than before. It does some things better, does some things worse. I'm going to say it's a wash, but it is an example of like, if you're going to change, fundamentally change how a heavily used app on iOS works, it better be

either way better or it better look and work like the old one unless you do something an example would be the messages app when they added the pin things to the top if you didn't pin anything it just looked like the old messages app and if you did pin things like i did and you wanted to pin them it is an improvement so i think messages app has improved over time getting more capabilities but also not ruining it for everybody else but i was 18 photos

Not, not doing well. Again, Apple would hope that they would never hear the word iOS 18 on TikTok, but they will. I should have put this in the regular show because we're going to get feedback about it. I don't know if you two tried it in the iOS 18 photos app. Um,

That thing where you can't push the white area down on the first try only happens if after you launch the app, you swipe up by two millimeters before you swipe down. If you launch it, don't touch the screen at all and immediately swipe down. You can do it in a single swipe. But if you launch the app, like force quit it, launch the app, pull up two millimeters, release the screen and then try to pull down, it will fight you. We're going to get feedback about that, but that's my own fault.

for waiting too long. I thought you were crazy, but I figured I was just misunderstanding what you were trying to say. Try what I said now. Pull up a little bit. Say that one more time. So, okay, I've just force quit. I've launched Kodos. Scroll, push your finger upward on the screen for two seconds, lift it off so you see more of the white area. Now put your finger on the screen and try to push down. You will not be able to do it in a single swipe.

I see. Yep, you're right. No, you're right. But that is not... I was listening, but that is not what I got from what you were saying earlier. I thought I did it all the time because I guess if you have the app running and you're looking at that white area, I was just like fiddling around with it. If you mess with the white area at all, you're in that mode. But if on a fresh launch before you've done that, if the first thing you do is swipe down, you can do it in a single swipe. So now we have to endure a week of that feedback. Thanks, John. Ha ha ha.

All right. We have a handful of rumors from Mark Gurman, of course, and they all kind of interrelate a little bit. But we'll start with Apple's new chip for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, Mark writes, codenamed Proxima, will replace some components currently supplied by Broadcom Inc. This wireless chip will launch in some products next year, including this, I guess that means 2025, including a new Apple TV HomePod mini and the iPhone 17. The component will then come to other products during 2026.

And this is interesting. This is not surprising. But this is not the cellular modem chip that they've been fighting against for years now, right? This is something different. Yeah, the cellular modem chip is also coming, and we've talked about it before. But this is, yeah, this is the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, which, so...

One interesting aspect is how much of both of those things can they potentially build into the package of the SOC? Like, can you move like the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or cell modem stuff into the SOC? Can you put some of it on die most of the time for radio frequency reasons or whatever? You can't. But could it be in the same package? Like basically, can you get lower power and smaller footprint by Apple doing this themselves because they can incorporate things into the package?

That's that's a separate question. Bring that aside for now the reason I'm interested in this particular thing is like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth like no one's super excited about the chips for that like you just you just want it to work or whatever but Apple doing it themselves Maybe they save money. You don't to pay Broadcom for those chips because you know, they have their own profit margin So if you do it yourself you get them cheaper you can make exactly the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip that you need for your devices that only has the features that you need and

Pros and cons to that. Already, Apple doesn't put the latest and greatest Wi-Fi standard in all their devices. I think the phones have Wi-Fi 7, but the Macs don't, for example, right? If I'm getting that right. And Apple tends to not be a super early adopter on all these things, although they're usually on time with it for the phones. But the real question is, we just talked about software, but this is a hardware thing.

When Apple decides that they are going to stop buying some hardware component from somebody else and do it themselves, how do we feel about that in terms of, are we excited and optimistic about it? Are we fearful? Because...

I think that's changed over the years. And especially with hardware, it's a tough call. I think I was talking about something on Macedon with somebody and they were like, Apple's never going to do XYZ because they get all their stuff from this other third-party manufacturer and they're the best.

And one of the things I replied was, well, Apple used to buy its CPUs from a third-party manufacturer, too. And they were the best for a while. Right. But sometimes when Apple decides to do a hardware thing itself, it knocks it out of the park. Apple Silicon. Home run. Right? They decided we're going to do the chips ourself for our phones, for our iPads, and eventually for our Macs.

the phone did not use an Apple chip, right? And I think maybe the first, the first iPad probably had Apple. Can I forget? When was the first iPad? Was it before the A4? A4. All right. Anyway, they used to buy the chips from other people for all their products and they slowly but surely said, no, we're going to do that in-house and

And they just destroyed it. Amazing job. So you would think that anytime you hear Apple's going to stop buying some piece of hardware or some hardware component from a third party and they're going to do it themselves, you'd be like, you're an Apple fan. You must be excited about that because Apple's so good at hardware. And yet, if I heard, for example, Apple is going to start making its own

Well, I was going to say SSDs, but that's a complicated issue. We're discussing the best shows. But for this one, they're going to make their own cellular modem. They're going to make their own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips. My first thought is, I don't know if I'm optimistic about that because unlike the CPU and stuff where there's lots of room for innovation and excitement, you basically just want Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to work and work with the latest standards. And...

I worry that the potential for harm is high and the potential for good is low. Because even if they knock this one out of the park, they saved a few watts of energy and they saved a little bit of space in their phones. But if they do anything wrong...

Oh, that's the iPhone 17. That's the one that can't do Wi-Fi, right? That's the one that has even more Bluetooth problems than usual. The cell modem. They did use Intel cell modems instead of Qualcomm for a while. And it was like, did you get the iPhone with the Intel modem or did yours come with the Qualcomm modem? Because the Qualcomm ones were better. That wasn't even Apple. That was just two third parties. And everybody knew in the nerd circle, you want the one with the Qualcomm modem because it's better.

than the one with the Intel modem. Then Apple bought that Intel modem business and is trying to build not to do their own thing. So I'm looking at this Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip and I'm like,

It could be okay, I guess. I see the potential upsides. It's not like they're going to pass the savings on to us, so don't forget about that, right? It's just going to increase their margins. It could be a little bit smaller and lower power, but the downside is that Broadcom's been making Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips forever. They're probably really good at it, and the bottom line is their chips work with everything because everyone knows that Broadcom chips are in everything, and so if you use a Broadcom Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, it's going to work with all the, you know what I mean, whereas Apple doesn't.

does their own thing, there's a potential interoperability thing, uh, issue there. So I am really nervous about, about the wifi and Bluetooth chip, the cell modem. They said they were going to debut in like the iPhone SE or whatever, like they're going to roll it out and like not the flagship products in case it's a disaster, which makes sense to me. But the fact that they're mentioning this one with the iPhone 17 would have this chip in it potentially, uh,

that's the show. Like you put a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip in the iPhone 17, it better be perfect. Like it better be perfect or better than the Broadcom chips. And I'm not sure this one will. I don't know. How do you guys feel about the prospect of Apple doing this?

I mean, I think it's changed over time. Like, you know, we were all there for the bad iPhone 7 with the Intel modem instead of the Qualcomm modem. You know, we were there for that. I had the bad one. I had the Intel one because it was most of the... Most or all, I think, of the AT&T iPhone 7s. And so we see how this can go wrong. Like, we don't want there to be a bad one. And we don't want the Apple version of something that is as...

you know, basic and required and taken for granted as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Like we don't want that to be bad or buggy. Already today, I hit a lot of Bluetooth bugs with my iPhone.

Now, I don't know whose fault that is. I don't know if it's hardware or software. It's part of the Bluetooth spec, I believe. It's a special section of the spec that says, on flaky problems that customers will never be able to solve. It tells you what you have to implement. Right. So, like, I don't know if that's the Bluetooth chip, if it's the, you know, iOS software, if it's the stuff between the two. I don't know. I don't know.

On one hand, you can say, well, maybe Apple taking it in-house would give them, like, you know, more control over the process. And maybe, you know, that would allow them to build a more reliable one.

On the other hand, you can look at that and say, Apple can't even get the software right for someone else's Bluetooth chip. How are they going to get the software right for their own? So it can go both ways. But when you look at Apple's recent efforts, the iPhone 7 was, what, over a decade ago? It was a while ago. When you look at their recent efforts, their silicon is solid. When they transitioned the Mac to Apple silicon...

That whole M1 generation, you would think if you would have said, you know, five years earlier, they're going to do this. Would you buy the very first one? Most people would say no. That sounds like a terrible idea. Why would I buy the very first version of them doing this massive change? It's going to have problems. It's going to be unreliable. It's going to be buggy.

Well, what happened? They switched the entire Mac over to their own chips. And I was there, and I had the very first one, and it was solid. There were, I don't think there were any major problems. There were certainly fewer problems than the outbound mature Intel ones. So they knocked that one out of the park. So I think their current standards and their recent performance in areas like this, in terms of the Apple Silicon transition,

shows a pretty good track record. Well, you're forgetting their most recent effort in this area because it hasn't shipped. Their most recent effort is their many years long effort to make their own cell modems. They bought Intel's cell modem business, the business that made the cell modem that nobody wanted on the iPhone 7. They bought that business and they had plans to make their own cellular chip that they're going to put in their phones and they are behind schedule and presumably that means because they're not able to do it well.

And even though that hasn't shipped, it's unfair to judge them on that. Like, well, when they ship it, it'll be good. But this is very relevant to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It's like they have been trying for years and years to do something very similar, and they've essentially been internally failing, not shipping what they had, aiming to get a cell motor with these standards. Oh, now we can't do it. So now the target has moved. Now we need to make sure we have 5G, but we're not going to be able to do a millimeter wave because, you know, like they're having...

trouble with it. Maybe we don't see this internally. Maybe they were, you know, working on Apple Silicon for the max for years and years and kept delaying it or whatever because it was more secret. But the fact they're doing the cell modem is not secret. Everybody knows they've been doing it and everyone knows that they are behind what we, what seemed to be their earlier schedule. So,

I mean, that's good in that they're not shipping something bad. They're like, we're not going to, we're going to keep buying. They renewed their contract, as we discussed in the show ages ago. They renewed their contract with Qualcomm for several more years just to say, look, we need to cover our bases. We're obviously not ready with our cell modem. Qualcomm still makes the best one, even though we hate each other and have sued each other. Let's sign a deal and say, okay, we'll keep buying stuff from Qualcomm. But everybody knows Apple wants to stop doing business with Qualcomm. They just can't. They've been failing to get out of that relationship because their own efforts have been

not going well. So that gives me a lot of pause here. So like, yes, yeah, part of the recent experiences, the Mac transition, and they've done that transition multiple times, 68K to PowerPC, PowerPC to Intel, Intel to Apple Silicon. And they've just done amazingly every time. So they have lots of institutional experience. But

Their institutional experience swapping out wireless communication chips, I think, is far spottier. And the little information we do have is that they're having trouble. So that is another reason I'm feeling nervous about it. Well, I think you can frame it like two different ways. Like,

Is it that they can't do this well enough yet or that they haven't done this well enough yet? Look, Apple knows the iPhone is the show. They know. And you can look at like,

How many iPhones have there been? It's a pretty high number, especially when you include all the non-flagship models. When you include all the different sub-models and two different sizes of everything a lot of times, there have been a lot of iPhones. How many of them have had significant hardware flaws?

It's a very short list, and they haven't been that significant. They know how to make really reliable iPhones. They have shown an incredible... Like, when you consider how complicated iPhones are, the scale that they are produced...

It's remarkable how few hardware problems iPhones have had. One of them was specifically from the cell modem when they did the Intel one and they shipped that. But even that, like I still use that phone for a year and it was still mostly fine. Like it wasn't that wasn't that big of like, you know, they have had little minor things.

Yeah, the Intel submodem in the iPhone 7 wasn't that good. Yeah, they had the slightly more bendable than usual iPhone 6 series. There were a couple, the Antenna Gate forever ago, which was also a minor issue. Yeah, they're pretty good at making sure they're not going to ship something really bad. But part of my nervousness about this is I don't want them to do it and just have it be...

pretty much the same, maybe with a few problems. Like, as a consumer, that doesn't benefit me at all. It gives Apple a few more cents per iPhone, but I don't care. Again, they're not passing that savings on to me. Like, what I'm looking at this with a little side eye is like, why are you doing this? Like, what's the upside versus the potential downside? And the upsides seem like they're all for Apple, and the downsides seem like they're all we're exposed to them. And I agree with you that they're not like...

with the cell modem that they haven't shipped. If anything that goes into the phone, especially like the flagship iPhone, they're going to make sure it is at least okay. They're not going to ship something terrible, we hope, right? Which is why they've not been able to ship anything. But they are doing things like the rumors for the cell modem of like, they're going to make one without millimeter wave support and they'll only ship it in the lesser phones. That doesn't excite me. Like, why would I be excited about

a cost savings for apple uh that exposes me to potential risk and that they're not even willing to do on their flagship phone because they haven't been able to do that wi-fi and bluetooth i'm still kind of neutral i'm like what's the upside i one of the things i fear is that it's not going to make it more likely that the macs have like the latest wi-fi standard than the current one because like again someone can confirm this but i believe the the m4 max don't have wi-fi 7 but the phones do uh

If Apple made its own chips, would that make it a higher chance that when Wi-Fi 8 comes out that it's across all the lines? I don't think it does. I don't think it increases. I'm looking for the silver lining. I'm looking for like, what is the upside for me as the consumer? And I don't see it and I just see some minor risks. And I agree with you that the risk of the phone is probably low, but other devices mentioned in this rumor, Apple TV HomePod mini, right?

I don't want my Apple TV to have crappy... Well, my Apple TV is connected to the Ethernet, but I don't want it to have crappy Bluetooth, right? I just... I don't know. I'm not... I put this in here because I'm just... It kind of... It's notable to myself that I'm not enthused about the potential for Apple taping over a piece of hardware when...

In some respects, I should be because of Apple Silicon and their recent advances. But when it comes to this specific subgenre, I'm a little iffy. Well, think about like, OK, first of all, there there will probably be certain upsides in just things like power efficiency, small size. You know, so we will see probably some minor advances there.

Wi-Fi chips and cell modems are big. They take up space on the board. If they can make their own and or integrate it into the package of the SOC, which I think is more likely, or at least integrate parts of it into that and maybe... Or they can use their TSMC deal to fab it at the good...

fab size because most of these wireless chips are fabbed at like a two-generation old things to be cheaper or whatever apple can spend a little bit more because of their massive you know deals with dsmc right and that like you know given like the amount of power especially a cell chip uses like that that could be substantial savings there but like you know so there's obviously like there's like the physical benefits uh you know if they could integrate it in put it in package or at least make it on their process yes there's lots of advantages they could potentially do there but even if you think about too like

Apple does a lot of their own custom bolting on of functionality onto existing open standards like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Look at how AirPods pair and work. Look at all the Wi-Fi stuff they do for peer-to-peer Wi-Fi networks that are temporarily made for things like AirDrop and stuff like that. There's all sorts of features that Apple builds on top of these standards. Well, if they controlled the hardware, I bet they could do more and better features like that. Now, that's

kind of a double-edged sword. Because you think about, well,

Is it a good thing for Apple to have even more proprietary protocols and standards that can even maybe go at the hardware and radio level? Don't worry, the EU will make them open it up to all third-party developers. That'll be fine. Yeah, I'm sure that'll be fine with everybody. So it could be a double-edged sword in the sense that they could use it for further extents of lock-in and unfair competition. So there's...

There will be downsides to this path if they go on it. Although you're mentioning optimistic, like, oh, here's a problem that I currently have and they might be able to solve it. And I see where you're going with that, especially with the H1 chip. In general, I would say that the AirPods connecting is better than Bluetooth pairing. For example, I had their proprietary thing instead. And I have the same problem, or one of the problems you're describing is like,

I try to do airdrop. I'm in a room with like, I've got my phone in my hand. I've got a computer in front of me and I got a computer over there. And sometimes I want to airdrop something with my phone to the computer over there. And I would love to know what it is that determines whether I can see that computer on my phone. Yes, I have it set to like contacts only or everybody like I have everyone's in our contacts. I'm doing it among family members.

I've even done it in a situation where I've logged into my account on that computer and I'm on my same Apple ID on my phone and I'm trying to airdrop it to the computer I'm sitting in front of and it just doesn't see it. It sees the other computer across the room, but not that one. And all sorts of like airdrop issues that aren't solved by like banging the phones together with the iOS 18 thing or whatever. Is that a problem that Apple will be able to solve by doing its own Wi-Fi chip?

You're thinking like, oh, stuff like AirDrop, they could make that better. I'm thinking, is that a software issue or is that a hardware issue? Like you can pin a lot of dreams on like, oh, if Apple made the Wi-Fi chip, I wouldn't have that AirDrop problem. But I'm thinking that AirDrop problem is a software thing, not a hardware thing.

And I don't know, like, it's hard to know where the blame lies. But like, when there's new hardware, the optimistic take is any problem I'm currently having that involves that hardware could be improved because Apple will have complete control over it. And I kind of feel, especially when there's software in the mix, that's like 50-50, whether that's going to get better or get worse.

I mean, you're right. Obviously, in most cases, that is kind of a blend of hardware and software, and those lines are very squishy these days with a lot of these very complex protocols. But I think you are looking at it from the perspective of, like, Touch Bar, Butterfly Keyboard-era Apple. And that's not the Apple we have anymore, thank God. You know, modern Apple, I think, is showing –

Like, they really don't ship bad hardware anymore. They used to ship a decent amount of it. They really... Like, the hardware across the board is excellent these days. They really do not have major hardware problems that ship to customers, and especially in the iPhone. So I think...

I am optimistic that probably the reason we haven't seen these things yet, you know, we'll occasionally see a report that, oh, the cell mode has been delayed. I think part of the reason we haven't seen them yet is because Apple is probably holding them to very, very high standards and won't release them until they know they're solid. So I'm pretty optimistic. I think this will go well if and when it ever happens. And I think if it doesn't happen or doesn't happen yet, then...

It's probably for those reasons. It's probably that they just haven't reached the bar that Apple knows they need to reach to be good enough to ship in their flagship products. And so I actually think this is because like if you think to like how else could this benefit us? Well, how else could it benefit us if cell modems get smaller and or more efficient or cheaper for Apple? Huh?

maybe the Mac will finally get a cell mode. Stop teasing me. That's part of the rumor and it's not about cost. It's just about like that Apple will finally do it because part of them making their own hardware is like, well, let's make it so it works in all our products. And now Apple uses an excuse to be like, we couldn't put cellular in our Macs because reasons X, Y, but now that we make our own chip, we totally can. It's like you could have before too.

But anyway, whatever it takes. Yeah, whatever reasons they give, who cares? We just want it there. All right. I agree with that, but we're talking about the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, and they already have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Yeah, the cell mode on a chip actually ships...

And it makes them put it into Mac. I will count that as a huge win. And if it doesn't hose the iPhone, that's good too. But Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, Macs already have that. I'm a little nervous. Well, but what about the Apple Watch? The Apple Watch has optional cellular. All of them have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It is a very tight power situation in the Apple Watch. If you can make those – and it's also a tight space situation. If you can make Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular wireless,

smaller and more power efficient the apple watch will benefit substantially from that because it's where those are like most desperate resources so think about for instance not only can the watch possibly get you know slimmer lighter whatever bigger battery whatever also maybe if they can make big strides in those areas maybe the watch can start using its networking more

Oh my God, what a concept. Maybe our apps wouldn't be like incredibly aggressively throttled with every single thing they try to do on the watch. Maybe the cell connection on the watch could get reliable because it wouldn't constantly put itself to sleep. Or it could all just get so much flakier. No, trust me, the cell connection on the watch cannot be flakier than it already is.

But maybe the watch can start using Wi-Fi for more data transfer instead of relying on slow Bluetooth for as much as possible. Maybe the watch can do more frequent updates. Definitely more upsides for the watch. Yeah, so you can see there's very clear opportunities for if they could make Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular smaller and more power efficient and cheaper to them, that does benefit us in a lot of potential ways. So I'm rooting for this, and I am confident at the moment that...

Their hardware standards are so high, especially because these things would be going in the iPhone. And the iPhone standards are so high that I think they're not going to do it until and unless it's solid.

Yeah, I think that's really the key is if it ends up in the iPhone, then I'm confident. Anywhere else, maybe. Yeah, like if they put it like only in the Mac, I might be a little bit worried. Only in the Apple TV. Yeah, only in the HomePod. That's the worst. I mean, that's...

Well, speaking of your confidence in Apple making hardware, this next item will test your faith. Oh, no. Well, so Mark Gurman writes that Apple's Magic Mouse, which was introduced more than 15 years ago, 1-5, 15 years ago.

Well, they've made some tweaks to it, but only minor ones. It moved from AA batteries to a rechargeable system, swapped in a lighter case with a smoother glide, and just a month or two ago, switched from a lightning connector to a USB-C port. The good news is there's a new Magic Mouse in the works. Hooray!

I'm told that Apple's design team has been prototyping versions of the accessory in recent months, aiming to devise something that better fits the modern era. Apple's looking to create something that's more relevant while also fixing longstanding complaints. Yes, including the charging port issue. As for when the mouse will arrive, I wouldn't expect anything in the next 12 to 18 months. Are you kidding me? What are you doing? It's been 15 years. What's another year or two? What are you doing, Apple? Here's what... I can tell you exactly what they're doing. Do you remember...

when the butterfly keyboard finally died. About a year before, a year and a half before that, there was some rumor that, like,

personally called Tim Cook and complained about it and then it happened. I do remember that now. You know what I think happened here? The MKBHD question. Yes. I think I honestly think that MKBHD asking Tim Cook about the magic mouse. I think Tim Cook went back after that and told somebody, hey, fix this. And said, do we make

make a mouse yeah because I honestly I bet that's what happened because like 12 to 18 months that's how long it takes to make a new mouse like for a new for Apple you know that's how long it takes so I guarantee you it was the MKBHD question that and Tim Cook went to somebody and just said take care of this like and before that he never thought about it at all we'll try to find that interview I think it was a WWDC but just to be clear

I think he just asked something like, what do you think of the Magic Mouse or whatever? He didn't say anything bad about it. He didn't say... Well, it was pointed. Tim Cook, the Magic Mouse sucks. Why? He didn't say... It wasn't like a... It was just merely like... It was using this example of a product that maybe people don't care about too much. Like, how much do you really think about the Magic Mouse? It's just kind of like an aside and also random. And if I was... You know, if it was not Tim Cook, but if I was in Tim Cook's position but not Tim Cook, you can usually say...

Of all the products we make, the Magic Mouse is not one of the most important. Like, it's low on the list, right? It's good that we make it fine, whatever, but...

Obviously, you know, with the iPhone at the top, you got to go way down that list before you get to the Magic Mouse, right? That's the reality. That's why it's been around for 15 years. Nobody really cares. It's not a big deal. It's not a bad mouse. Some people don't like it because it's low profile. Some people love it because it's low profile. Marco loves it because you can swipe on it. Like, I don't have any hatred for the Magic Mouse. I don't think. There's no, like, iOS 18 photos hatred for the Magic Mouse out there. It's just, like, it's not for everybody, right?

But it's fine, right? And it's been around 15 years, so it's probably due for a redesign. The fact that it was mentioned at all in such a public forum maybe made him say, hey, Magic Mouse, we should update that once every few decades, right? And they said, oh, yeah, no, I guess, or whatever. But here's the thing. That's why it's just like the Wi-Fi chip. I read that very differently, but go ahead. All right. Well, anyway, like the Wi-Fi chip thing. Okay. How do you feel...

confidence wise about today's Apple designing a new mouse, setting aside the fact that you love the current one, Marco, just in general, like, do you think they'll do a good job on a mouse? Because I think human interface devices that are fit in your hand is not one of Apple's strengths. Currently, let me, I'll get to that in a moment, but my interpretation of the MKBHD question of Tim Cook up with a magic mouse is that the

Marquez stated the question. I forget exactly what he said. It was like something like, you know, what about the magic mask? He stated the question with an implication that it's not well liked and something is wrong with it. And Tim Cook was caught off guard by that. You could tell you can see his face that he not only was caught off guard, but he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught off guard by the fact that he was caught

He didn't know what Marquez was talking about. Do people hate the Magic Mouse? Yes. That's what Tim is thinking to himself. Exactly. Marquez probably doesn't like the Magic Mouse, but again, I don't think there's this iOS 18 photos type hatred out there. There's just, for computer nerds, a lot of people don't like it, but then you just ignore it and buy a third-party mouse, and so it's not that big of a deal. No, but you could see in Tim Cook's face

It dawned on him in that moment that, A, there is something that a lot of people don't like about this, and B, I don't know what it is. And I bet Tim Cook does not like being surprised, especially in public like that. So I bet he went back after that, and that was a, like,

fix this situation. Here's the thing though. There's not, there's not a giant movement out there to hate the magic mouse. There's just the baseline level of dislike that's been there since they introduced that mouse 15 years ago. Mostly only among computer nerds and other people are like, yeah, take it or leave it. And the fact that Tim Cook would be unaware of that, like, I don't think it's a thing that he needs to be aware of. What he should be aware of is like, which products have we not updated in a decade and a half? Maybe put them on a list.

but I don't think there's like, can you believe Tim Cook didn't know that everyone hates the magic mouse? I don't think everyone does hate the magic mouse. Like, I don't think it's actually, you know, even if it was incredibly hated, like,

How many Macs even come with a Magic Mouse, percentage-wise, of the Macs sold? Like, they come with trackpads, which people buy laptops. Like, it is so far beneath the thing that he should be concerned about. But on the same token, he should update it because it's 15 years old. What Marques was talking about is what all sort of, like, tech nerd people know is like, oh, well, that mouse is not...

a lot of enthusiasts don't like that mouth. They like it more of Logitech style, more buttons, higher profile, more, more quote unquote ergonomic, depending on how you like, it's not well loved in tech nerd circles, but in regular people circles, they don't know it exists because they all buy laptops. Like that's, that's the story, right? So,

To be clear, I think the mouse should be updated. It's been around for a long time. I personally don't like it. I think it should be updated. It's time to... 15 years is long enough to say, do you have a new idea about how Apple could make a mouse? Because Apple has done a not too big number of mice in the history of all their computers, from the Apple IIs to the Macs. There haven't been that many Apple mice. There's been some good ones and bad ones, and there's the Hockey Puck one. There was the mouse with the little ball that got clogged all the time on the top, right? Yeah.

the mighty mouse or whatever, but there haven't been that many mouse shapes. So Apple is not hasty about that, but I think it's time for them to reconsider. And so again, we're back to today's Apple making a new mouse. How do you feel that's going to go? All right. So as the magic mouse lover in the, in the group here,

What I like about it is the scrolling swiping. That is everything. That's why I switched to it in the first place from my previous Logitech Goodmice. Before this, I was using that Logitech mouse. One of the first ones, I think it was the MX Master, that had the wheel that you could flick hard and it would unlock and spin freely for a little while and then latch back in. A whole bunch of them do it now. Scrolling is everything. It turns out, scrolling, the way you scroll on touchpads,

is way better for me and the way I use computers than the way you scroll with a mouse wheel. The Magic Mouse gives you touchpad scrolling on top of a mouse. So that is the good thing about it. Everything else about it, I tolerate or it's fine or whatever. But that's what I like about it. Now, when you look at the Magic Mouse, this was designed in a previous era of Apple and of their hardware design.

probably almost nobody or nobody who is designed who is involved in the design of the magic mouse is is likely to still be at apple today or still be in the design group because you know especially the design group has had a lot of turnover in the meantime but so you know keep in mind like what we're what we're comparing this to is really a past era of apple like the magic mouse design especially if you include the double a version is very old as you said like what 15 years like

So I think today's Apple would do a pretty different version of it, even if no other reason than none of their products are this style anymore. Like, this is just a totally different version of what they make today. So...

I'm interested to see what that would mean. I do think that they wouldn't go through the trouble of redesigning it because mice are so unimportant to Apple unless they were going to actually do a more substantial change than just changing the port. So, you know, so obviously I think they're going to try to fix the complaints.

And sometimes Apple does that. Like when we got the Apology MacBook Pro, everything was so much better in that one. They gave us back the SD card slot. They gave us back the HDMI port. They put the headphone jack back on the right side of the computer. They gave us back MagSafe. They are capable of going in a less minimal, less stripped down industrial design direction when customers demand it enough and when it's enough of a gain. We've seen that now with the MacBook Pro.

So we know they can do that. I think the mouse has a decent chance, not a guarantee, but has a decent chance of going in that same direction because not only have we seen that happen with the MacBook Pro, but also who uses mice now? As John said, it's different than it was 15 years ago. 15 years ago, yeah, laptops were still dominant then, but I think they're way more dominant now. So the people who actually buy and use the Magic Mouse

maybe it's a more professional set than it used to be. Maybe Apple realized now, you know what? Most people have figured out right click. So maybe we can do something a little bit better there. Another thing to consider, by the way, is that this weird phenomenon, it's obviously all the laptops don't come with mice. They just have the track pads, right? But at this stage,

I think, was it most of Apple's desktops also don't come with a mouse? The Mini doesn't come with one. I guess the iMac comes with one. Oh, that's right. The Mac Pro does. I forget because I don't use it. Yeah, the iMac and the Mac Pro both come with one and you can configure them to come with a trackpad instead of...

Sometimes in addition, but I think usually it's just instead now. But they don't come in the box. Like the Mac Pro, I had forgotten that the Mac Pro does come with one in the box. Like of all the computers to not come with a mouse, you would think it would be the Mac Pro, but it does actually come with a mouse in the actual box, which again, maybe you can configure to the trackpad. The iMac does too. It's in the box. The iMac makes the most sense because it's color matched. The whole point is it's all-in-one. You get everything you need. But Mac Mini and Mac Studio, no mouse, right? Correct.

It's a separate... I mean, you can attach it. During checkout, it will ask you to buy one, but the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio box do not have a place for a mouse or a trackpad inside them. So that's half of Apple's laptops. Desktop. They didn't even put a mouse in the box because it's bring your own. And arguably, the Mac Pro should also be like that, although I guess the box is so big that they have plenty of room to put a mouse or a trackpad inside it. They should put it inside the Mac Pro, like in a bay somewhere. Right.

But, you know, but anyway, it is odd that like back in the day, if you bought a Mac, you know, that wasn't a laptop, it came with a mouse. And today, 50-50. Yeah, if that. I mean, that's obviously, you know, which one you buy and which one sell more volume. Yeah, obviously, when you go into percentages of people who buy the things. But yeah, it is interesting. And again, with the option, I don't even know what the default is, if there is one. But I bet a lot of people do choose the trackpad just because like Casey, like they like that better. Sure. But, you know, I think...

If they're going to go through the trouble of designing a mouse now...

I do think there is a non-zero chance they will aim it a little bit more towards like people who actually care about mice and use mice and are experts in using mice because it is now so often that is like people are choosing to do this who are actually power users now. So, you know, I'm not expecting this to look like the latest MX Logitech Master or whatever with 17 buttons and I'm also not expecting it to be super ergonomic.

Because one thing I also can't imagine Apple doing is making a left or right-sided mouse. I think they're going to make one mouse that is symmetric. So I would not expect the curvature that you get on modern ergonomic gaming mice and stuff where it's made for only a right hand or only a left hand. So what I can guess is probably going to be largely similar to what we see, but maybe

maybe they'll make it a little bit taller and a little bit boxier to be able to accommodate a charging port somewhere like on the front. Hopefully. That's what I'm guessing they're most likely to do. So if you really hate the current one for reasons other than the charge port location, I wouldn't hold your breath that they're going to make a mouse that you like. But if you use the current one and are inconvenienced by its design in a couple of ways, maybe they'll make that better.

I think there was another rumor report from Korea that actually did make a somewhat direct comparison to the Logitech mouse saying that Apple's new mouse would be more ergonomic, more like the Logitech mice. But using the example of the laptops...

Here's the thing. The fixing what was wrong with the laptops, yes, it kind of sort of required them to make the laptops a little bit boxier. They got rid of the, I think, more attractive Johnny Ive design case that had the shallow curve towards the edges and everything because they just needed a little bit more room. And that was the change we wanted them to make. But...

you know, practically speaking, if you show these laptops to just an average person who doesn't know the minutia of Apple stuff, they're not going to think they look radically different. They had to change the MacBook Pros in such a subtle way that is maybe obvious to us because we're obsessed with the fine details of them, but it still basically looks like a laptop. It's not that much thicker. It's not that much more slab-sided. It does have more holes in the side of it. But other than that, they didn't have to change it a lot.

They can't make a change that fine to the Magic Mouse and make any substantial difference. Even if they just do what you said is like make it a little bit taller, they have to make it taller enough that it's going to be uglier, right? And look a little bit more like I think the problem with the mouse is they want to look like a beautiful object when no one is using it. The current one does.

If you can't just do a change of a few millimeters like they did in the MacBook Pro and say, see, we solved it. If they do that, I guess they fix the charging port location and people stop complaining. But if they do that, they haven't really changed the Magic Mouse. And the rumors seem to be that they're trying to make it, quote unquote, more ergonomic. So they can't add one millimeter to it. They have to add substantially. And I think once you start adding substantially, you're into that situation. You highlighted it very well. You come to this question real fast, which is symmetrical or not symmetrical.

Because once you start making it bigger, you're making it bigger so it can fit into the negative space of someone's hand. And then you have to ask, which hand? You could always make it right in the left model. That's a thing Apple could do. It's not a popular thing that people do, but it's a thing, you know, they could do it, right? But once you start making it bigger, you're like, what am I raising this mouse up into? You're raising it up into a hand and hands are not symmetrical. Right?

Right. And so if you make if you make a larger symmetrical mouse, which Apple did, the original Mac mouse was much larger and also symmetrical. You have a problem there. Like when they started, like when they did the ADB mice, they were lower profile, both like the original ADB mouse. It was like two flat surfaces in the rounded one.

they were, they were starting to get low because a tall mouse should fit into the space of a single hand, which means it's going to be, even if you do like my Microsoft mouse that I have now, it's mostly symmetrical, but it's got that thing on the side for your thumb, your right thumb to be on. Right. And your, your fingers of your right hand go like, it's not symmetrical. Like it's very difficult to make a mouse that is both ergonomic and also symmetrical. So, um,

I don't, I feel like they won't have the, they won't be willing to make their mouse unattractive.

to make it ergonomically good and merely making a tall mouse that's symmetrical will not satisfy anybody because the people who wanted a more ergonomic mouse are going to say, well, this isn't it because it doesn't even recognize the fact that my hand is not symmetrical. It's just as big. It's like the, you know, a big, it's like the original Mac mouse, a big box in my hand. How is this better? Like might as well just go back to the low one because at least when I lay my hand flat and use it, my hand becomes more symmetrical than when it's gripping. Right? So this is an interesting test of their industrial design.

how ugly will they be willing to make this mouse as an object to make it better as an actual input device? And I think with the MacBook Pros, they were able to make it like a tiny bit less attractive for a massive functional benefit. And I don't think they'll be able to make that trade because if you make it a tiny bit less attractive,

tiny bit less attractive you're not getting a massive little fun massive functional benefit so my current theory is it'll be almost it'll still be low profile because to make something that is symmetrical it has to be low profile otherwise it just becomes unsatisfying to everybody it'll still be low profile they'll just find a better solution to the charging port my main hope for it mostly for marco is because i don't even use this mouse is the things underneath the surface that you swipe are

are very low resolution and crude. 15 years later, they can essentially increase the DPI and sensitivity of the swipey area on top. And I think that will result, especially with like 120 hertz screens, I think improving that resolution will make the mouse better for people like Marco who like this mouse. And if Apple refuses to give up on this being a beautiful object as it sits on the table...

Then the best design continues to be the current low profile mouse just with higher DPI of the tracking because that's another thing that Apple is like decades behind on in terms of like how well it tracks services and how, you know, the granularity of the updates and how fast it can handle things. You don't have to make it a gaming mouse, but it's been 15 years, right?

And then the sensitivity and resolution of the swiping thing on top. I don't think they're going to do a second right button, but who knows? I mean, the Magic Mouth has a right button. It's just a weird one that's like capacitive and you have to not touch the left side when you're touching the right side, but...

That's another thing. Can they bring themselves to make a two-button mouse? As in like a hairline split in the top surface. You know what I mean? Can they do that or will they continue to do? Make sure your finger's not touching the left side of the mouse when you push down the right side. Otherwise, we're going to register it as a left click. Are they going to still be doing that? So this is something I definitely have my eye on. Not because I really care that much because I have basically zero hope that they're going to make a mouse that I like, which is fine. I have this third-party mouse that Microsoft no longer makes that I should really have bought Ada but didn't.

And that fails all the time. And I've already had like three of them die on me. But I'm just interested. It's like a good test of Apple's industrial design. How do they solve this problem? How? And it's low stakes because who cares? Like if they mess up their mouse, like nobody cares. Like, you know, I don't know.

The headline for this item in the notes is save the turtles. Harpooning the turtle. Everyone wants to flip that mouse onto its back and harpoon it. And yeah, the turtles will no longer be harpooned. Surely they will fix that. Wouldn't it be amazing if they had a totally new, completely redesigned mouse with the charging port still dead center on the bottom? That would be an amazing troll. But anyway, this is the thing I'm keeping my eye on. It is much lower stakes than the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, but it is...

A good bellwether for the Apple of today. I was going to make the same point about how the laptops have gotten a lot better. You can make an argument since Johnny left. Maybe that's related. Maybe it's not. But I don't know. You're convincing me with it not with being symmetrical being bad, even if it's taller. Like the argument you made a moment ago really has convinced me maybe this isn't so great after all. I don't know. I was really looking forward to it just in principle because –

you know, again, the magic mouse is not well liked from ergonomic standpoint, from a general standpoint, because people aren't using mouse using mice anymore. But now, now you really got me worried about the whole, uh, them not being willing to make it ugly enough to be useful. So I don't know. I've got a lot of these mice in my attic. If Margo wants to, uh, he needs replacements. If the new one is not disliking, although you're probably gonna have to get my, uh, black Mac pro one, because that's still sealed in the box. Yeah.

I think it'll probably be fine. I think if anything, they will err on the side of not changing enough. I don't think they're going to change too much. Especially, you know, like you were saying, to make it taller, to make it better...

Look at Apple's keyboards. Their keyboards are all super flat, which is not good ergonomically. It's actually... It's better than them being tilted up, though. Well, they are actually slightly tilted up. They're tilted up by like one millimeter. Yeah. But like, Apple's keyboards are also not very good ergonomically, but tons of people use them happily and they're fine. They could be better. Apple has said, okay, this is as far as we will go for ergonomics and no further. And that's currently the design of the mouse. That's why I'm thinking like, if they do change the mouse...

Again, I think it's probably going to be in relatively subtle ways. I'm not expecting a major redesign. I'm expecting minor tweaks to lift up the front edge just enough that they can put a USB-C port under there and call it a day. And I think that's probably going to be what they do. And honestly...

that would be fine. It would be exactly as ergonomic as their keyboards are, and it would fix an annoyance. And I think that's by far the most likely outcome. Well, I don't know if you guys remember this, but Apple did actually ship actual Apple mice with side buttons. Do you remember those? No. The Apology mouse was a mouse with side buttons. They were terrible side buttons, but they existed, like actual physical buttons. Yeah, you squeezed it for something. What was the squeeze gesture? Yeah, there were buttons on it, essentially.

Buttons on the side. Every sort of third-party mouse, even my Microsoft mouse, has three side buttons. It has like a forward, middle, and back type thing. I don't even know what I have them mapped to because I never use them. But side buttons on mice are definitely a thing. And Apple did ship a mouse with physical side, multiple mice. I think the Apology mouse had it.

Didn't the one with the little tiny trackball on the top, didn't that one have a squeeze gesture? Yeah, the Mighty Mouse. I don't remember if that had it. The Apology Mouse definitely did. It was the one that was a thick, clear case that they gave to everyone as an apology for the iMac puck mouse. That had side buttons. They were bad, but all I'm saying is Apple, long ago Apple, was not above shipping a mouse that had more than one physical button, including a side button, which is like, side button is so kind of like...

outside the mainstream of what Apple wants to do. That mouse still didn't have a right button on it, like a physical right button, but it did have side buttons. So I don't know. Maybe they'll surprise us and ship a mouse that has two top buttons and a side button or one top button and two side buttons.

Two turntables and a microphone. They could call it an action button. Yeah, exactly. There you go. With the innovation. Oh, they should put the stupid digital crown on it. They put it on the Vision Pro for crying out loud. Oh, my God. Who knows what they'll do. Yeah. Keep an eye on it. It'd be pretty cool. Hit the button on the side of your mouse, turn the flashlight on. That'd be awesome. It's the best change I've made was making the action button, the flashlight button. I told you. It's great. It's so good. It's so good. I still use it for the Whole Foods app. Oh, gosh, John.

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Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

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John, I've joined the cult. Uh-oh. I've joined the Yolink cult. That's a good cult.

So, I don't remember if I said this to you at all, be that privately or on air, but I heard you talking about your Yolink. Well, how did you describe it? They're like low, long range, maybe low voltage transmitter. LoRa is the standard. I forget what it stands for. I'll have to look it up in the show notes for an old Rexy's episode. But it's like low frequency radio communication. It's not Bluetooth. It's not Wi-Fi. Mm-hmm.

And so I'd asked Aaron for a starter pack from Yolink that included...

one of their hubs. This one does not have ethernet, which I don't love. And I think there is another one that does, but that's neither here nor there. And it has a couple of, I'll call them contact sensors. I'm sure there's a better name for it, but basically when you have two magnets that are that when they're next to each other, the sensors registers is closed. And when you separate the magnets, the registers is open. These are the same kinds of sensors that I have on the garage door for my Rube Goldberg garage door alert system. And so I got, I asked for that from Aaron for Christmas. She got it for me. And since the last time we spoke, uh,

I have put one contact sensor on the stationary portion of my mailbox, the other contact sensor on the door of the mailbox, and now I am getting alerted whenever my mail is delivered, and it makes me so happy. Erin has made so much fun of me for this. She doesn't understand why I need to know this, and honestly, I don't need

need to know this, but it makes me happy that I do know exactly when the mail was delivered. Do I need to go check the mail? Let me look. No, I don't. You know, 20 minutes later, do I look? I can go look. Yes, I do need to check the mail. There's no checking, actually. I know it's there. It's magical. Now, the other thing that Erin has pointed out numerous times, and she is 100% correct, is that it is a miracle we're still getting our mail. Because if you look at my setup and

It's not only homely, but 100% looks like I've installed a bomb on my mailbox. Oh, no. I should take a picture. I haven't taken a picture. You have to take a picture. I will. I will. I will take a picture, and I will send it to the boys, and we'll put it in the show notes. But imagine... So the contact sensor, the actual magnet on the part of the sensor that is...

That is on the door of the mailbox. The magnet portion is approximately the same width as the mailbox door itself. However, there's also a little bit of extra plastic with a couple of screw holes so you can mount it on things, right? Well, the...

screw hole section is totally poking out past the end of the mailbox door. And then if you look at the, the portion of the mailbox that the mail carrier generally doesn't see because it's after they've passed, there's definitely the other contact sensor with wires that are going into the place that the mailbox is mounted on. Like the, the it's, it's not wood that our mailbox is mounted on. We, we just so happen to have like a plastic one and you can take off a little cover and there's just a hole in

there and that's where i stuck the transmitter it looks shady as hell gentlemen it looks so shady but the good news is it has been working very well and for those real nerds even though i'm sure i could do this with the o-link app directly what i've done is i've added a integration for yo link to home assistant and then i have an automation on home assistant that will then use pushover to send me a push notification when the mail arrives with the exact time the mail has arrived

It makes me so happy. It's so stupid, so unnecessary, and it makes me so happy. And I'm so glad I'm in the O-Link cult. And now, as with all things, when I find something new and exciting, see also Raspberry Pi, now it's like I'm smacking my arm trying to figure out, okay, what else can I do? What else do I need a sensor for? Maybe I do care about the fridge. I didn't think I cared about the fridge. Maybe I care about the fridge. Maybe I should get a sensor.

with that, I am already losing control and it's no good. So, John, it's all your fault. Yeah, the freezer one, the refrigerator one is just going to let you learn how often people stand in front of the refrigerator with the door open and causing the temperature to go above the safe area. That's me, all the time. Yeah, well, you're doing, yeah, but once you have the sensor, you'll suddenly know that and it's a little bit troubling. In fact, I've had to raise the threshold of my refrigerator one just to try to...

I say, look, I'm just going to have to accept that it's going to be 41 degrees in there when people open the door. So maybe I'll set the thing at 42 or 43. Basically, what I want to know is, hey, did someone leave the door open? Like they went to bed and they left the fridge door open a crack? That's what I want to know, not...

Did another person spend 10 minutes in front of the open fridge door on a hot summer day and make the temperature go up? So I wouldn't necessarily recommend that one unless you have a problem with it. Well, maybe as your kids get older, start leaving the fridge open by crack and destroying everything in your fridge more often or your freezer. Freezer is a little bit easier because it maintains temperature a little bit better and you just put it at the freezing point and you probably won't get any bad alerts. But the one thing I will tell you that you might want to do, well, maybe not, but the water leak detectors.

If there's any place in your house that you think there could ever be a leak that you want to know about it, you won't get any false alarms from that one. They're like 17 bucks. They, the batteries last for like three years. Um,

I was going to say put it next to your water heater, but that's in your garage. So if it floods, who cares? Put it like between every toilet and the wall or under every sink, like anywhere that you have a trailer. I don't have any of this stuff, but for insurance reasons, I had to get myself a home alarm system from SimpliSafe recently, not a sponsorship. It's like, you know, pick whatever of these sensors you want.

And they have Water League sensors for some relatively tiny amount of money. So I'm like, all right, I'll get six of them. I put them everywhere, under each sink and in every bathroom. And also, of course, the water heater.

How do they communicate? Are they like the Yoink things where it says low frequency RF thing? Yeah, I believe it's custom because there's like a base. There's like a simple safe home base thing that all their stuff talks to. Yeah, that's how the Yoink things work too, by the way. You get a quote-unquote smart hub, which gets on your Wi-Fi network, but then also communicates over the proprietary RF thing to the sensors. And that's why the sensors can be so cheap and last so long because they don't talk Wi-Fi. They're not on your Wi-Fi. They have no idea Wi-Fi exists. They just talk to the hub and

From like a quarter mile away or so they claim. And then the hub talks to your Wi-Fi. So you can just put the hub right next to your Wi-Fi thing and put these sensors anywhere in your house. And I'm assuming in three years they'll start notifying me on the app that their battery is getting low, but the battery is supposed to last a long time.

Yep. So I'm digging this. I like I said, I'm looking for reasons to install this in all the places. But so far, so good. I'm really pleased with this. I had no idea that this was a thing, not only Yolink specifically, but this whole LoRa thing. Hoorah. No, the LoRa thing that you were talking about. This has made me very happy and is giving me an outlet for ever more nervous energy, which I'm good with.

So thank you. And also no thank you because now I'm going to spend a bunch of money on damn water leak sensors too. They're cheap. You can buy it. They're $17 for a water leak detector. Just buy a couple of them. Chuck them around your house. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like once you are in the system, once you have their hub and you have their app set up and you have their alerts set up,

You might as well, like, you know, because you're not like, you know, paying a monthly fee per sensor or anything. So like, you might as well spend an extra 17 bucks to get a few more of them and chuck them around the house. Like anywhere that that could be useful. Anywhere that like, you know, a water leak or something like that's useful information to know. And it's part of the advantage of like, I think one of the lessons we've learned with smart home gear so far is Wi-Fi is bad. Smart home gear can be very useful.

The less that's on Wi-Fi, the better.

The most reliable and most useful smart home things tend to be ones that have some other kind of protocol they speak that is not Wi-Fi. And that usually requires a hub somewhere. And this is part of the promise that Thread is trying or purporting to solve or to unify all these standards into one new standard, XKCD style. That's why every single stupid Apple device comes with a Thread radio. We don't even talk about it anymore. Right.

Every act introduced, every home pod, everything that comes with Thread Radio. What good is that doing us? Someday. Right. So this may at some point be a good thing. It seems like it's pretty lightly used now. Although, actually, I have some Eve sensors that have Thread support. I'm not sure if they're using it, but they have it. So I don't know. But anyway, everything that is...

Not Wi-Fi smart home is almost always better. It is usually like usually the devices themselves are cheaper per device. Usually they are more reliable. They usually have better battery lives if they are battery powered. They usually have longer ranges or, you know, in the case of these things like power.

If you're not speaking Wi-Fi and going on Wi-Fi frequencies, you can probably use lower frequency radio waves, which penetrate walls better, have longer range. So basically getting off of Wi-Fi is better in almost every way for smart home devices that are not cameras. Cameras, unfortunately, need the bandwidth of Wi-Fi, but everything else usually doesn't. And that's why Wi-Fi is bad for home things. It's not like Wi-Fi itself is bad.

a bad protocol or anything. It's just designed for higher and higher data rates for things like computers. But a home device that's telling you the temperature and humidity has such low bandwidth requirements that using a sophisticated, complicated, high-frequency protocol like Wi-Fi is just a waste. It's a waste of battery energy. Like, the standard's not made for that. These other standards that have incredibly low bandwidth...

but can, you know, penetrate walls and go from a quarter mile away on a single AA battery. Like that's, it's a better fit for the application. So we're not saying like, why did they make wifi? If it's so bad, wifi is good for what it does. It gives you like wireless data to your phone and your laptop. And even maybe your Apple TV, uh,

It's bad for a thing that's telling you whether there's been a leak or not. It literally communicates almost nothing. Yeah, it's like, I need to send this one, it's like, you know, one byte of transfer basically to my home. Has there been a leak since the last minute I asked? Yes or no? No. Good. Done. Exactly. Problem solved. Anyway, so thank you, but no thank you, because I'm going to go broke putting sensors in a thousand different places that I don't need them. Yeah.

The reason I mentioned the water heater, by the way, is I already had before I got the Yoling things. I already had a Wi-Fi sensor on my water heater because twice now living in this house for 20 something years, twice my water heater has gotten old enough that it sprung a leak and

Luckily, not a catastrophically because water heaters are just a hot water tank heater or whatever. Eventually, corrosion eats away at the inside of them. There's a big sacrificial anode. See the rectives episode where I talk about this. That gets eaten away. Once that gets eaten away, guess what? The tank gets eaten away. And if you're not on top of replacing it exactly when the warranty expires because they put the anode in there that's big enough, they think as soon as the warranty runs out, the anode will be gone and then it will fail.

They're really good. They're, they're, they really can't, they could just put a bigger anode in it. Like I think when they sell you like a 15 year old one versus a 10 year, the only difference is bigger anode in the 15 one. They charge you 300 extra bucks. But anyway, uh,

When they leak, if they catastrophically leak, your basement fills with water and it's terrible. But usually what happens is corrosion makes a little tiny hole that starts spraying out or dribbling out water. And it's still an emergency. You'll be like, oh, turn off the water and plumber come or whatever. But it's something you want to know about ASAP. I've been lucky enough both times to be home and we go down to the basement enough because the laundry machines are down there to notice it and say,

And that's why I bought the sensor. I don't want to be away from home when that happens because even a small leak could flood my basement. I should really just replace my water heater more often, but you do what you can. My current one is still less than 10 years into its supposed 15-year lifetime, so I'll keep an eye on it.