Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 10/18 – Apple’s MacBook Event

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

All the headlines from Apple’s event today. The Bitcoin future’s ETF is real, as of tomorrow. Apple’s privacy changes have indeed upended the mobile advertising space… in Apple’s favor. Steam doesn’t want to play the NFT game. And putting a value on Squid Game’s impact for Netflix. Sponsors: Enterprise.Spectrum.com/TechmemeRideHome Napjitsu.com/techmeme Links: Apple unveils next-generation M1 Pro and M1 Max chips for new Macs (9to5Mac) Apple announces 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro: new design, display notch, 120Hz, M1 Pro chip, HDMI, MagSafe, more (9to5Mac) Bitcoin Comes to the Big Board (NYTimes) Apple’s privacy changes create windfall for its own advertising business (Financial Times) Valve bans blockchain games and NFTs on Steam, Epic will try to make it work (The Verge) Netflix Estimates ‘Squid Game’ Will Be Worth Almost $900 Million (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Monday, October 18th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. All the headlines from Apple's event today. The Bitcoin Futures ETF is real as of tomorrow. Apple's privacy changes have indeed upended the mobile advertising space in Apple's favor. Steam doesn't want to play the NFT game and putting a value on Squid Games impact for Netflix. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. All right, I'm going to try to write this chronologically in real time. as I'm watching, so hopefully you'll be able to hear my genuine delight. If and when we hopefully get the MacBook Pro of my dreams. Yes, the Apple MacBook Pro event was today, and it started out in a

garage with an old Bondi Blue IMac and someone using garage band, which, of course, all of that was speaking directly to me, I'd like to think. Then Tim Cook seemed to speed talk us into the first agenda item. This led to a discussion of Apple Music. There's a new Apple Music plan that they're calling the voice plan. It costs $4.99 a month. And the catch is you only get to use Siri to use it, which is someone's going to have to explain that to me. How is that something I want? Like, that's weird. It's a one-person plan only, and it does work on all Apple devices. So I guess this is Pandora-ish, I guess. I don't know. Need to dig more on that one. Then it was on to the HomePod Mini.

The HomePod Mini is getting some new colors. And then the big news, or at least the first big news of the event, the new AirPods, which are getting spatial audio. That's right. New AirPods, not AirPods Pro. This is the third generation of the run-of-the-mill AirPods. But the design does look an awful lot like the AirPods Pro, just without the ear canal fitting piece thingy. There's new low-d distortion drivers that handle the low-and-high-end. of the music you're listening to. The new AirPods are sweat and water resistant. They have longer

battery lives, six hours, Apple says, of music listening and then 30 hours of total listening with the case. They also have MagSafe and wireless charging on the case, but no word if that would work if you stuck them to the back of your phone. The price is $179. The second gen AirPods continue at the $129 price point, and orders open today with delivery. week. But, but, but, here we go. Hello, John Ternis. Tell me about this first pro chip designed for the Mac. Yes, they're calling it the M1 Pro. It will have the GPU built into the system on a chip and will apparently have shared memory. 200 GbPS of memory bandwidth, three times the M1 chip, 32 gigabytes of total memory, twice the transistors of the M1 chip, three core CPUs, eight high performance,

performance cores, two efficiency cores, 16 GPU cores, 2x, the graphics performance of the M1 they claim. This will apparently let you play multiple streams of 8K and 4K video with a fraction of the power. But that was not all, because say hello to the M1 Max chip. It is, get this, a chip with 10 cores of CPU and 32 cores of GPU. Double the memory up to 64 gigabytes. 400 GbPS memory bandwidth, 10 CPU cores, 32 GPU cores, 4x faster GPU performance than the M1, 2x faster video encoding. They say this is 7x GPU performance improvements while using less power.

100 watts less power than an unnamed PC chip competitor. There is a unified memory architecture across all these chips, 64 gigabytes worth, 400 gigabytes per second memory bandwidth. This leads to things like Final Cut Pro, now apparently being 5X faster for some video functions. Cinema 4D is apparently three times faster. But what sort of hardware could you slip these new chips into? Here we go, folks, the new MacBook Pro, which has ports. Yes, there are ports. Yes, there is MagSafe, and an HDMI, an SD card slot. There is a 16-inch model and a 14-inch model, both have raised feet, as John Gruber predicted. And yes, there is a notch on the screen because the bezels have been massively reduced. 16.8 millimeters thin on the bezels. The 16-inch

weighs in at 4.7 pounds and is 15.5 millimeters thick. And then the 14-incher weighs in at 3.5 pounds, and is 15.5 millimeters thick. And yes, the touchbar is gone on both. You have three full Thunderbolt ports, which you can charge through, even though MagSafe is also back. I'm going to call this right now. This is the MacBook Pro that I've been waiting five years for. If you put an M1 Pro chip in one of these, it can support two Pro Display XDRs, the M1 Max supports three Pro Display XDRs and a 4K TV. When I said the bezels are thinner, we're talking again only three and a half millimeters wide. The 16.2 inch display has a higher pixel density than the 14 incher, but they're both getting pro motion with refresh rates up to 120 hertz, mini LED and XDR, 1,600 knit peak brightness, and

wow, they actually improve the camera. Not a lot. It's only 1080P, which is still behind basically everybody else. But hey, they actually did improve the camera for once. And again, the camera sits in the notch. The MacBook Pro, you heard it, has a notch, which Lots of people are going to nash their teeth about why have a notch on a laptop. But what about performance? As far as I could tell, Apple kept comparing performance to the previous versions of the MacBook Pro generations. The M1 Pro and Max both give you 2x CPU performance.

The Max gives you 4x graphics performance, while the M1 Pro gives you 2.5X faster graphics. Those are on the 16-inch models. The 14-inch models are actually more impressive. 3.7x CPU bump on previous generations, and as much as 13 times better graphics. Both machines also reportedly have two times faster SSDs than the prior gen SSDs. With all of this performance, what about battery, Apple claims, 17 hours of video playback on the 14-incher. That's seven more hours than the previous Intel machine, and you get 21 hours of video playback on the 16-incher. Also, they're both getting fast charge.

So at this point, obviously, take my money. But how much money? The 14-inch starts at $1,99, and the 16-inch starts at $2,499. Obviously, we need to spec these out with the various chip options. But when can I send them my money? Pre-order is today. Delivery is next week. And that was it, dear listener. Again, they were really power-walking through all of this, given all of the performance comparisons. But was it enough for your humble podcast host. Oh yes, it was. It was more than enough. Ports, buttons instead of touchbars, faster chips. I mean, I am still pissed at Apple for solving problems they themselves created, but yes, I am satisfied. One quick edit. The Apple store just came back online, and it looks like the 14-inch MacBook Pro is not getting the M1 Pro Max chip. You can only get that chip on the 16-incher, and if you go the 16-inch route, it will cost you an extra $800 to go with the ProMax chip versus just the M1 Pro. And if you souped up a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the most of everything, the best chip, best memory, most memory, sorry, SSD storage, all that good stuff, you'd be looking at a price tag of checking notes. $6,99.

The 14-inch tops out at $5,899. But do check my math on that. The Apple store was laggy as heck as I was checking this out because I guess everyone else was pricing out their dream machines as well. Just confirming some other news here real quick, the NYSE has acknowledged that pro shares will indeed launch an exchange traded fund or ETF linked to Bitcoin futures tomorrow morning, giving investors exposure to crypto easily if you're in things like IRAs or 401ks without having to hold Bitcoin directly, quoting the New York Times. 2021 will be remembered for this milestone, said Michael Sapir, the CEO of ProShare,

investors who are curious about crypto but hesitant to engage with unregulated crypto exchanges, want, quote, convenient access to Bitcoin and a rapper that has market integrity, he said. A Bitcoin futures ETF falls short of what some purists want, a fund that holds crypto directly. Gary Gensler, the SEC chair, recently suggested that the agency might allow crypto ETFs based on futures, bets on Bitcoin's price fluctuations rather than the underlying crypto itself, that trade on a highly regulated exchange. Approval for the ProShare's ETF, which is based on Bitcoin futures that trade on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange won't be announced by the SEC, but the firm's final prospectus met with no opposition ahead of its effective deadline,

and the New York Stock Exchange is readying for launch tomorrow, end quote. But back to Apple for a second. Remember when Apple switched on that new anti-Aoucels? tracking regime. They said it was all about privacy, but their critics, largely their competitors, were loudly remonstrating to whomever would listen that this was also a naked power grab to actually bias the mobile ad ecosystem in Apple's favor. Well, the Financial Times is reporting that Apple's share of the mobile app advertising market has tripled in just the last six months, coincidental timing or dot, dot, dot, dot, quoting the Financial Times. advertising business has more than tripled its market share in the six months after it introduced

privacy changes to iPhones that obstructed rivals, including Facebook, from targeting ads at consumers. The in-house business called Search Ads offers sponsored slots in the App Store that appear above search results. Users who search for Snapchat, for example, might see TikTok as the first result on their screen. Branch, which measures the effectiveness of mobile marketing, said Apple's in-house business is now responsible for 58% of all iPhone app downloads that result from clicking on an advert. A year ago, its share was 17%. It's like Apple search ads has gone from playing in the minor leagues to winning the World Series in the span of half a year, said Alex Bauer, head of product marketing at branch. The market for app advertising is large and fast growing.

Apps Flyer, another analysis company, estimates that marketing spending on mobile apps for both iPhones and Android phones was $58 billion in 2019 and would double to $118 billion by next year. Apple, meanwhile, is likely to earn $5 billion from its advertising business this fiscal year and $20 billion a year within three years, said researchers at Evercore ISI, who said Apple's privacy push had, quote, significantly altered the landscape, end quote. Advertising with Apple has become more attractive after the iPhone makers said users would be opted out of advertising tracking by default, a move that left rivals such as Facebook, Google, Snap, Yahoo, and Twitter, blind, said Grant Simmons at Kochava, an ad analytics company.

Since April, data on how users were responding to ads once real-time and granular is now delayed by up to 72 hours and only available in aggregate. By contrast, Apple offers detailed information to anyone signing up to its ad service. One mobile advertising executive who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said Apple had, quote, given itself a self. a free pass because it is not subject to the same policy that every other ad network is, end quote. Somebody's not yet on the Metaverse bandwagon. Valve has quietly updated Steam's rules to ban games, quote, built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of

cryptocurrencies or NFTs, quoting the verge. Games that use blockchain technology or let users exchange NFTs or cryptocurrencies won't be allowed on Steam according to a rule added to Valve's what you shouldn't publish on Steam list. That change was pointed out by Space Pirate, a developer working on an NFT-based game, who said that the change was because the company doesn't allow game items that could have real-world value.

But Steam could also be avoiding controversy with the move. Steam is one of the most well-known PC game stores, but it's not the only one. While Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney has said his company isn't interested in touching NFTs, that policy doesn't seem to apply to games in its store. Epic told the verge that it is open to the idea of games that use NFTs or cryptocurrencies in an email on Friday. Steam and Epic's different approaches highlight the fact that any platform or store that moderates content will likely have to make a decision about whether it wants to allow apps or games to sell NFTs.

One of the biggest question marks right now may be Apple and how it handles apps like OpenC and Coinbase should they decide to start letting users buy the digital tokens, end quote. which is something that had never occurred to me, something, something more cracks in the app store. And finally today, when you play the Hollywood game, never forget that you're in the hits business. You're always only one hit away from glory, but also one disastrous bomb away from oblivion. Case in point, according to an internal document,

Netflix estimates that Squid game will create almost $900 million in value for the company. Also, 87 million viewers apparently finished the series in the first 23 days, which means, as many people have pointed out on Twitter, more people finished Squid Game, not sampled, but finished, the series, than most other streaming services have in total users. That indeed is quite a hit, quoting Bloomberg. Squid Game stands out both for its popularity and its relatively low cost,

The South Korean show, about indebted people in a deadly contest for cash prizes, generated $891.1 million in impact value, a metric that Netflix uses to assess the performance from individual shows. The show costs just $21.4 million to produce, about $2.4 million an episode. Those figures are just for the first season, and stem from a document that details Netflix's performance metrics for the show. While Netflix often discloses the number of people who start a show, It is yet to disclose how many people stuck around to watch more of the show, stickiness, or how many people finished the series, completion rate. Linear TV networks report the average number of people who watch a program for its duration,

which makes Netflix's usually reported two-minute sampling numbers look inflated by comparison. In the case of Squid Game, Netflix estimates that 89% of people who started the show watched at least 75 minutes, more than one episode, and 66% of viewers, or 87 million people, have finished the series in the first 23 days. All told, people have spent more than 1.4 billion hours watching the show, which was produced by closely held Searin Pictures. What makes Squid Game even more valuable is how popular it is relative to its low cost. The show costs less than a recent Dave Chappelle one-off special, or just a couple episodes of The Crown. Netflix measures this using a metric called Efficiency,

which measures viewership or AVS relative to cost. The show has a mark of 41.7X in efficiency, according to the document, when an efficiency of one X is considered solid. Chappelle's Sticks and Stones was 0.8X, as Bloomberg reported this week, end quote. Of course, I still haven't finished the final episode of Squid Game because I still can't watch videos on my phone, and I like to do that when I'm on the train going into the office, and I even checked if Apple TV was also affected, and indeed it is.

I ended up watching that Velvet Underground documentary on my actual TV, even though it too had been downloaded to my phone. I don't have time right now to go to the Genius Bar, or worse, do a hard factory reset of my phone, and have it be functionally out of commission for half a day while everything red downloads, and also I have to reenter passwords for every stupid thing I use, so I guess this problem is just going to fester in the background for a while.

Talk to you tomorrow.