The Vergecast - 329: Macbook Air, iPad Pro, and Mac Mini

Episode Date: November 2, 2018

Vergecast hosts Nilay and Dieter were able to attend Apple’s event in Brooklyn this week, so you can guess that’s what the crew talked about on this weeks show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Is it a screen, or is it a screen with a keyboard? Or a screen with a detachable keyboard? Either way, it has USBC and dongles. I think of it as a magical paint of glass. Yeah. So I'm here. I'm Nelai. Yeah.

Deider Bone is in New York with me. I am. I brought all my dongles. You really did? Paul Miller is here. Hello, Paul. Hello. So this show is basically going to be out three things.

I'm just straight up with listener. Dieter and I went to the Apple event yesterday. We did. We saw the new iPad Pro. Zah. Yeah. And we saw the new MacBook Air. And the new Mac Mini.

E. Yeah, there you. So we're going to talk about those things. And then I want to talk about the Big Foxxon story we did this week because it's my hometown. That's where I'm from. But let's start with that. Before we begin, I want to remind everybody to go listen to why did you push that button, the Verges other podcast that's currently running.

This week, Caitlin and Ashley talked about why people leave the group chat, like literally push the button to abandon their friends. Yeah. That's deep. That's an existential crisis. That show is among my favorites. It's everywhere podcasts are served. Go get it.

Listen to it. People love it. You're going to love it too. Listen to a wedge push that button. Okay. Apple. Yeah. That's what we're talking about.

So it was a pretty peppy keynote. They did it in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Opera House. A legendary space. Legendary space. They bought the block. So the space was across the street from Apple store that they have.

Yep. Then they rented out a taco place. Yep. that people are getting free tacos out of before the event. I ate a taco. That's fine. I got there early because I do. Look, we've disclosed it.

I donate to charity whenever I eat at a company food. Anyway. How much do I have to give a charity for this cup of coffee? The value of the cup of coffee. All right. Well, if you know how much one cup of coffee costs. $1.25. Done and done.

Okay. And then around the corner, they rented out. Another space that was where their big hands-on area was. It was this cavernous huge space. They had built a raised platform in the middle. middle. And there was a limit to know how many people were allowed to the platform before it would collapse and kill us all, which is a very, very savvy way to limit the number of people that can go into the hands-on area. It's like, just let me in there. No, it's too crowded.

It's not that crowded. Also, everybody will die. Okay, fine, I'll wait. Yeah, it's smart. And that was basically like they had built another Apple store. Yeah. And then they had advertising everywhere. So just a huge amount of space in downtown Brooklyn taken up by Apple. The keynote vibe itself, like you're saying, very peppy. So it was peppy in part because the, the, Whatever led them to bring it in New York is, I don't know. But they did invite, I want to say, they ran a contest at New York Apple stores. And the contest was, who can cheer the loudest and clap the most? Yeah.

And then the people that won that contest got to go. Is that true? And the person, no, this isn't true. Okay. But the person who won the, I can make your eardrum vibrate like it's going to shatter like a champagne glass in front of an aria. was sitting directly behind me. It was definitely Apple store employees, right? There were some retail store employees, for sure,

and they were cheering their faces off. It was the loudest Apple event of everyone. And, like, everybody on stage loved it. Tim Cook loved it. A bunch of fresh faces on stage, a bunch of new people that hadn't been up there, hadn't been up there much. Yeah, it was good.

It was like a fun event. Yeah. Sort of the iPhone event every year now has this like a portent of doom. It's like, can we do it again? Will we succeed or fail? The fate of computing rests on this square. I guess a rectangle.

This one is like, yeah, dude, this is the Mac. Like, aren't you happy? We did it. And everyone's like cheering. Like, it was great. Walt Mossberg was there as a guest. He was retired. So he hung out of us.

Didn't stop him from making fun of me in the live blog. Walt still has credentials to our live blog software. She came up to me afterward and said, this is a huge security problem. you realize. Yep. I don't think it is. Anyway, don't guess Walt's password.

So it was fun. It was fun to have them there. It was like floating around. So the news, Tim Cook announced the new MacBook air. Yep. That was the first thing. And he basically did that one like super casually. He's like, what do you want?

You want a retina display. Here's the writing display. I actually have more thoughts about how he introduced it. But we should run through the show and then, yeah. And he brought on other people to talk about it to the air. And he came back and said, oh, it's time. for the iPad Pro, we love it. They announced the two new size of iPad Pro.

Yeah. Then... So it was MacBook. Yeah. And then it was MacMany. No, it was MacBook. Then it was Store Stuff. In the store stuff.

And then it was MacMany. And then they wanted to put as much space as possible between MacBook and iPad. Yeah, so I'm pretty sure it was MacBook MacMany. MacBoo store stuff, MacMany. Here, so they did MacStuff, and then Angela Arons came out and talked about the classes to do with stores. And then it was iPad. iPad all iPad all the time. And then the whole point of this whole thing was for me to say that he announced the line it all

Yeah, which was hilarious and weird. Yeah. It was a strange moment to bring out Lana Del Rey who was like, I'm not allowed to swear here. Yeah. The title of her record is Norman fucking Rockwell. Yeah. So she couldn't even say it. Yep.

And one of the, which is ridiculous. She was great. Jack Antonoff was there playing the harpsichord or whatever he was doing. I think it was just a piano. It's a piano. Anyway, let's talk about these iPads. Yeah. Let's do the iPads.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. So obviously the big changes are the, smaller one has a bigger screen. Same footprint, bigger screen, smaller bezels. Smaller bezels. And curved corners on the screen

because it's a liquid retina display. Yes. And then the bigger one is the same size screen, but a smaller body because they eliminated bezels. I've been trying to figure out why they call them liquid retina because it's liquid crystal, so that's why? Because the iPhone 10R is also liquid retina,

and I figured it out. Have you ever seen water, except for that one crazy iceberg that cheered off a couple weeks ago? Water never itself naturally forms into a square with a 90-degree edge. It's always just a little bit, you know, rounded. Oh, my God. And so anytime a screen is a little bit rounded, it's a liquid retina display.

I have one of those silicon ice cube trays, and it makes perfectly square. Yeah, but that's not a naturally occurring event. You have to put it on a thing. I don't know about that. It's not a heavy lift for me. Okay, so the iPad pros screens different faster, faster processor, and they're pretty squared off. Like, they don't have a taper on the back anymore. Yeah. I think it's a thing that I will get used to, but it definitely felt, I don't know, weird.

Like, holding the thing in your hand, you're like, oh, this is really, like, square. I don't know. I can't put words to my feeling about it. So, look, we're going to have to get them and review them and live with them. Yeah, yeah. Can I just give you my extremely blunt first impression? Yes. It's ugly.

Oh. Wow. The thing is ugly. And I have specific reasons for this. Two. Two specific reasons. One is the antenna lines, particularly on the LTE model, are just crazy. Present.

They're there. They're big. They're on the back. You know the iPhone, like six antenna lines? Right? Yeah. They did the aluminum case and they had the big plastic antenna lines. Yep.

And then by the time they got the iPhone 7, they're like, oh, we should just make those black. Yeah. And just not draw attention to them. They're the iPhone 6 antenna lines. So they're huge they go across the entire back of the thing. They frame the back. Yeah. So it's like weird and then on the LT model they notch over the sides on different sides of the case. So one's like top left and one's like bottom right. Right. So that's just like first of all, what is that? Yeah. Then the extremely square proportion of the thing and then you flip it over and the 10.5 inch iPad Pro used to have like really tiny bezels on the sides. And then it had the forehead and the chin. Uh-huh. This one has pretty thick bezels all the way around.

Okay. It's not as big as the old forehead and chin, but like it's a uniform bezel. And so Apple is like, it's an edge-to-edge display. And it's like the edge of what? Because you can just see it with your eyes that there's a bezel. Yeah. And that, I think the old iPad, it felt like the screen was like too big for it because of those tiny side bezzles.

Do you know what I'm saying? It felt like you were getting something a little bit more than you should have. Yeah. This one feels like you're holding a reference design. Yes. I was not, okay, I haven't seen it in person, obviously. I was not expecting these strongly negative first impressions from you guys. Look, we got to like use it. Yeah, we got to try it.

The screens look great. The screen is beautiful. The 12 inch in particular, they reduced it. They reduced the volume by 25%. Whatever. The big 12 inch iPad Pro before made, like, it made a 13-inch MacBook Pro feel small. Like it was just like, herp-boop huge.

Yeah. It was funny in the way the big things are funny. Yes. And the 12 feels much more like, oh yeah, this is like, this is the size this should be. If this were my main computer,

I would be relatively happy. And I think more people are going to go with the 12 as a result. I think that's a mistake. I think the 11 is better. And there's a huge camera bump. And there's a gigantic camera bump because it has to sit behind the screen

and they told me that this was the same cameras in the iPhone 10R. And the same wide angle as the 10S. Yeah. Big sensor sitting around the screen, whereas before it lived in the channel, the forehead. And you know how it on like iPads before,

it was just like a little, like, I don't know, little metal ring that was black and whatever. Now the, the metal of the casing like curves out to it. So it just kind of looks like a, like a mole, like a wart.

Yeah. It's just like sitting on there. It's something. None of this to say is that it's like a bat. It's just in the pantheon of. Apple products. This one is the most utilitarian I've seen in some time. Yeah.

To me, just obviously I haven't seen it in person. The aesthetic is it's the classic Apple move where now I think the old thing is ugly. Like this looks right to me now. You know, my brain has been reformatted to the new APFS file system. And now this is beautiful. And old iPads are like just wrong looking. Yeah, I mean, of course, especially when you see it on the website, and it's like they've taken the photos beautifully and the in particular... Straight on.

The move that they're doing, I'm pretty sure. Let me double check is when they photograph, because they're still selling the 10.5, right? So when you see all three of them, they are doing this. So when you see all three of them together in like the compare iPad models photo, they've picked the black ones for the new ones and the white one for the old one. Oh, yeah. So like the bezels are even more apparent to you. Yeah. It's like, I mean, these are great tricks.

I appreciate them. But I don't think people expect Apple to put out things this kind of, almost like rugged. Like there's like a, it's a tougher product than Apple usually puts out. It's like, it's not characterless, but the, yeah, not having, part of it is I think just not having the home button. Like when they added the notch to the iPhone, it added say what you will about it and you can say many things. But you're like, you could identify it. It added some kind of character to the thing. some kind of sense of like this is a thing that has an identity.

And if you don't have a home button, which is the thing that gave Apple devices like a sense of like, this is what you are, you have a sense of identity. If it's just the screen, that's, I think, what makes it feel a little bit characterless. Like there's nothing when you look at this iPad that tells you this is an Apple device. And I think that that's what you're reacting to. Well, yeah, but it's also the extremely square corners. It's the antenna lines. It's the camera bump. Like all the things that make it seem like, you know, Johnny Ive didn't stand there like molding the aluminum with his hands into a perfect organic shape.

Johnny Ive, there, but was not in any presentation videos, blah, blah, blah. So that's what it looks like, and that was just my extremely blunt first impression. We have to review the thing. We have to actually use it and hold it. Maybe I'll decide it's beautiful later in the way that sometimes other things reveal themselves to be truly beautiful. Sure. Man, real hard not to make a joke about your family right now, but I'm not going to do it. My daughter is adorable.

I don't know what the hell you're talking about, sir. Wow. Just I was going to make your mother joke or something. My mother is a lovely woman, too, Mr. Bon. This iPad is bringing the worst out of both of you, I think. So much from Minnesota, nice, man. All right. Anyhow, so that's what it looks like.

Fine. The stuff inside it is way more interesting. Yeah. So face ID, true-depth sensor on the front. The camera's, again, identical to basically the 10R. 7 megapixel true depth camera system on the front that does face ID, and then the 12 megapixel same wide angle lens as the 10S and the 10R on the back. The front face ID stuff works in any orientation,

so it can even be on the bottom, and it'll work. You can be on the top, you can put it in the keyboard case. It'll be over there on the side. It'll work. They've done a bunch of work when you do an an emoji to, like, offset the angle that you'll be at. So, you know, when you do it like an emoji in a phone, It's looking at you and it sees you kind of dead on, but if you turn the phone, it's coming in an angle. So they've done all this, like, you know, neat Apple recalibration work to make sure all the angles line up.

They just turned it? Well, they just know it's over to the side. Yeah, yeah. And then when you have it in the keyboard case, you can just, like, double tap on the space bar and it'll just, like, light up and see you and unlock, which I think is very cool. Yeah. It's almost, I don't know, like it's saying hello and then Windows. It's kind of like Windows. Hello.

The pencil is probably the single biggest improvement. Yep. that people will notice. They've gotten rid of the dumb lightning port thing. It's a much nicer pencil. It's smaller. It has like a matte finish. It has a flat edge.

Thank God. It clips to the side magnetically and then also wireless charges, which is super cool. The magnet is pretty strong. Not strong enough to lift the iPad holding the pen pencil, but pretty strong enough to stay. It's strong enough to stay on there. We're not so strong that you have to fight it to get it off. If you could hold up the iPad, you try to take it off and scoot the iPad. No, but you could just like push it.

Like a cat on a thing out of a tape. just get a little nudge and twist off. My first thought is if I'm going to put the iPad into the laptop slot of my backpack, am I just going to be fine? I just snap the pencil to it and then drop it into that slot and I don't have to worry it's going to bump off. I think you're probably fine. I think you're probably fine. I think you probably want to put it in so it's like sideways, not so it's like on the top.

So it's like sticking out. Yeah. And then the pencil is touch, it's like a passive touch around the barrel. So you can like just double tap it while you're holding it to switch tools. So in the notes app, it'll switch you from the pen to the eraser. There's a couple options there. That's an open API so developers can do stuff with that double tap. In Photoshop, for example, it will zoom you in and out of the canvas and other apps can, you know, dozens of options available to developers there.

And then on the bottom, there's a USBC port. Yeah. And I will tell you, I drove these people crazy. Of the iPad. Well, the side. Not of the pencil. The pencil has no connector. anymore, right? It's just wirelessly.

No connector on the pencil whatsoever. Yeah. Right. Okay. And also, old Apple pencils will not work with the new iPad, not in theory because it uses radically different technology. Although it's a little bit fuzzy because the Logitech won't work with it. The Logitech crayon won't. But you can't use it simply because in order to pair an Apple pencil with anything, you

have to stick it in the lightning port and there's no lightning port. And they told us like, we're like, what if you get like some dongles? And they're like, no, it just doesn't work. Leave it alone. Just let it go. What a great segue. I had a whole build up to on the bottom of the iPad, there's a USBZ port. And we got totally derailed back onto the pencil.

I tried to bring it back to you by bringing up dongles. I veered us back. I did a little loop. That's good. Flat circle. And now we're in Dongletown. Dungletown, USA. So I will say that I, I think Dieter did this too, but we asked so many questions about this USBC port at this event yesterday.

Waves of Apple product. They're all wonderful. They're all super nice and very helpful. But just more and more of them had to come by to answer our increasingly granular questions. So here's what I know. And I apologize for our cast listeners. I did not bring a tiny printer to the event. I'm very sad.

I feel personally betrayed. Well, I couldn't find one that was USBC. So I thought, I figured it might be cheating to bring a USBC to USBA dungle and a USBA printer. So that was like part of my reasoning. My other part of the reasoning was I assume that at some point I'll actually get one and I can do all kinds of dumb stuff. But I did ask, what happens to you plug a printer into it? And an Apple person said to me, this is a quote, I don't know, we'll just have to find out together.

We'll just see what happens. What happens when you plug a hard drive into it, Neely? Nothing happens when you plug a hard drive into it. The USBC port on the bottom of the iPad is there for charging. Uh-huh. Charging other things, which is cool, so you can plug your iPhone into it. It'll charge. It is there for file transfer from camera file systems into the camera roll and the camera roll only.

Yep. So if you plug an SD card adapter into it, click an SD card into there, it will pop open the camera roll. If you plug, I did this with a Sony A7 camera, you light up a Sony A7 camera, you plug the cable in, you did the Sony. He's like, I'm in mass storage mode. It opens the only place photos can go. We've got to come back to this camera roll file thing because I'm very angry about it and Paul is very depressed. But let's just run through a couple more things. Okay.

What happens is. Wait, wait, let me just want to say the other thing. So it's optimized for file transfer. Yep. From camera file systems into the camera roll and display port. Right. That's it. And so when you plug in display port, it will just mirror the iPad.

Unless the app has been custom coded to be aware that there is another screen that it could do something to and then it could put something on that screen. So this was very confusing. But you can't extend the desktop. This was very confusing at the event because this is one of the questions sort of escalating answers to. This is exactly the same as the previous iPad. Yep. So previous iPads had Lightning Port, you go Lightning, Lightning, HMI, you plug it in an external display.

They would just sort of mirror the iPad display onto that display. You open something like Keynote or DJ, with one of these apps that has like a visualizer. They are aware of the external display. They can send content to that display. Now with USBC, it's a higher bandwidth port so they can drive a five-pay display from the iPad, whereas previously you were limited to some lesser resolution. That's it. That's what it can do.

We're going to try to plug in a bunch of stuff. It will also support docs. So if you have a USBC dock. It'll do Ethernet. It'll plug in USB. Ethernet, HTML jack. It'll work with or without an audio DAC, apparently. We'll build digital and analog audio.

Because there is no headphone jack on this thing, which I can't believe we haven't talked about yet. Here's the thing that is actually a little bit crazy making to me. One of the things I would, in a perfect world, use an iPad Pro for is tethered shooting from a camera. So plug the camera in. And you would like to think that maybe an app, if an app is allowed to do custom stuff with the monitor, maybe it could turn on like Canon could make a tethered shooting thing and then, you know, it would just be able to do that directly with a USB. Apparently not.

Apparently the only thing that an app can do with the USBC port is put display stuff out there. It's not able to like read. You can't like, if someone was like, well, screw this, I'm going to make an app that can read a hard drive. No, nope, not loud. That was going to be my first. question. Well, there's your answer. It is unclear. The answer appears to be no, but the answer it's unclear. So if you plug a storage device into this thing, it is not clear if another app developer can address storage device. There are some iPad hard drive things out there,

and they work over Wi-Fi. There are, there are products out there that do this. So it's not out of the question, but you have to, every piece of support happens in a third-party app, not at the OS level. Unless it's a camera file system or display port. Or it MIDI devices into a garage man. Yeah. Just think about that, Paul. It just seems like they have to work to make it this limited, you know? No, they don't. They just have to continue to have iOS be what iOS is. Yeah. Let me just say one thing about the camera file system. There's a files app. What if you, what if when you plugged in a hard drive, the files app had a little new tab on the side and it was the hard drive. The hard drive. That's something that was, oh, my God.

Gosh, it was vented so long ago. It seemed so easy. No. How are you going to get your 3 gigabyte PSD file? So if you listen to me on the Veritcast last week, I said the most annoying thing about the iPad, the reason I can't use it for Lightroom the way I want to is that I have to round trip raw files through iCloud to get him in the Lightroom, right? Paul, you're going to love this so much.

I cannot wait. To be clear, this is a huge sticking point with all Lightroom CC users. So I go to the event. What are going to the thing? I'm like, why do I have to use? And they had Lightroom CC preloaded on every. demo iPad. They're like very proud of it because the iPads are so fast, which is the thing we should talk about. So I'm like, why do I have to do this? Why can't I, why can't I just plug in my

camera or a card reader and have Lightroom address the storage device? And they're like, no, we have a great solution. We're so excited. Bringing over this dude, he's waiting to talk to you. He's like, you're going to love this. This is the true thing that happens. Paul, don't hold your breath right now. And he's like, you're going to hypervile. Adobe has built a Siri shortcut. for Lightroom. So you plug in your camera, you import everything into the camera roll, then you close that app,

you open Siri shortcuts, and then you've got a Siri shortcut you've program called Import to Lightroom. You push that, it'll shoot it all into Lightroom, it'll apply a preset, you know, like if you have a filter preset that you want to do,

which is actually pretty cool. Oh, how nice. It'll do that because that's a thing Lightroom people do. And then it'll go ahead and delete everything from the camera roll. And they looked at me expectantly, and I was like, I don't, They were so excited.

I heard about this series shortcut four times yesterday. It was demoed to me twice. Yeah. And every time I didn't want to, you know, it's like their event, it's like, you don't go to someone's party and be like, your appetizer suck. Oh, I do. It's like two mom jokes and my app suck. Okay. Okay.

So I just was like, that's great. It's kind of cool. The presets thing is cool. But like, just let Adobe do it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. So here, I figured it out.

Okay. So, you know, the files app can show, like, cloud providers in it, right? Yep. So you make a fake cloud provider that's called Neely's Cool Files. And then there's a series shortcut that pretends, like when you plug in a hard drive that it's reading a camera file system, but really it's actual files. And then it copies all of those to your fake cloud provider. Yeah.

And now you can see them in the Files app. None of that is easier than just giving up and using Dropbox or whatever. Yeah, what if I want to do something with, I don't know, something that isn't an image or a PDF on an external drive? Anyway, so that's the USBC port. Yep. All of this is in the context of... I will say one good thing about the USBC port. There is a world where Apple could have layered on the same MFI restrictions that apply to the lightning port to the USBC port.

They could have been like, it's USBC, but you got a, it only work if you do the special handshake deal, and then the software has to be pre-approved by Apple and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah, blah, blah. They could have done that. And I kind of thought they might, but they chose not to. Basically, the only thing that will stop a USBC thing from working in the iPad Pro is whether or not iOS, like, supports it. So there's no, like, any USBC compatible dock that conforms to the standards should work

with this thing. One thing I'm excited about is, so I have the last-gen iPad Pro, and I got it specifically for doing music stuff. But I've got a whole dongle situation for that, which is like the camera connector dongle to a USB

hub, then I plug in, like a made for iPhone mic that I could just plug straight into my iPad, but I need to use the USB hub so I can also get a keyboard, but the keyboard draws more power. I forget how exactly works. I think I power

the hub with a battery or no, I need to have something plugged in so that there's power delivery. So hopefully some of that is simplified, but I could just plug in a USB hub that's powered by USBC, plug my keyboard and mic into that, and I should be hopefully a little simplified.

Yeah, that USBC port on the iPad has enough bandwidth to drive a 5K display and, like, pull files off a camera. Right. So you can plug one thing, and they were like, we tested a bunch of hubs. So if you have a hub that has, you know, some more USBC ports, some USBA ports, a headphone jack, HTML, and Ethernet,

that thing should just work. Yeah. Assuming it's like built on standards, not some crazy things. That's cool. So the USBC conversation to me leads right into the performance conversation. Yeah, and so here the tenor of our conversation is, I believe, going to radically switch. It's exciting? Yes.

This thing, slide after slide after slide was the iPad is better than a computer. And I just, MacBook error as a computer, too. But just over and over, it's like 95% this and 3x that and 15x that, blah, blah, blah, blah. They showed us some stuff. But this thing is, I believe, genuinely radically powerful and way more powerful than some huge percentage of the Intel processors that people get in their laptops. Yeah, so A12X processor, which is eight cores. It's four performance cores and four high efficiency cores, which they are. And that's what the X is that there's more of the cores?

It's a bigger chip. It's a bigger chip. Yeah. So it's more A12. Yeah. And Apple's like, look, our high efficiency cores are actually really fast. Yeah. Right.

And they can light up all eight at the same time. I mean, they're just like very proud of this chip. And they hammered again and again and again and again. This thing is faster than laptops. They actually did not say the word Intel. They did not say the word Intel once during this entire event. I think it might have been on screen just one time. Yep.

They downplayed Intel completely, and they downplayed sort of what the Macwick Air's performance was completely. And then they were like, look it how fast her iPad is. So there's a lot to be discussed there between how they're presenting these things. But the iPad has the 812X, their best processor, their fastest processor. It can do a lot of things. And they showed a 3.5 gigabyte Photoshop file in the early version of Photoshop, just like, doing just fine. They showed us a bunch of neat AR stuff. They showed us some rendering.

And the thing that gets me is I would love to have a computer in this form factor, regardless of whether I think it's beautiful or not, but like in this form factor that's small, ultra high performance has great battery life and a beautiful display. But I can't do any computer shit on it, right? It's like it's an I. It's iOS on an iPad. And so you can show me mail running in split view all you like, but I don't want to use iOS mail. and so I'm always like living this life of dancing around the limitations of the operating system, even though this chip by all accounts is a technological masterpiece. Yeah. If you could hackintosh the iPad Pro, it would be the best Mac portable.

Yeah, like without question. So I don't want to give short shrift to this chip. Like the graphics are like 900 times faster than the first iPad ever shipped, right? Like it's insane. It can do all of these things. Apple's A-series processors are so out of control that they just like sliced off a chunk of them to be in Macs as the T-series chips. And so the MacBook Air has a T-series chip

that is some variant of an A-series processor. And it has so much additional performance overhead. It's there to just run the secure enclave and touch ID, but it has so much additional performance overhead that they just made it more of a computer. It runs the cameras. It runs the image processing for the cameras. It runs the audio processing for the speakers.

It runs like real-time encryption for the disc. Yep. It's just better at doing that than the Intel processor. This is something I was unclear about during the keynote because they mentioned T2 and then they said 30 times faster HVC encoding. Yes. Is that run by the T2? Yes.

Imagine this. The little chunk of the A-series that carved off to run touch ID is so high performance that it is faster to run video encoding through it on the MacBook Air than it is through the Intel chip or the integrated GPU of the Intel chip. I think this puts Apple in a very strong position. Because you can imagine that Apple likes to put its customers through painful transitions. You know, hey, we changed the connector again. You know, we got rid of 32-bit apps.

We got rid of carbon and all the OS9 remnants. You could have imagined Apple putting us through a difficult transition to arm laptops like three years ago. Yep. But now they're in this position where we're basically, I mean, I'm exactly where you're at. I'm basically begging them, please transition MacOS to arm. Yep. Yeah. And they're doing this Marsapan thing.

There is, I don't know if this is real or not, if this is a rumor or just something wishful thinking or prognosticating. But there was definitely a bunch of Mac web people on Twitter over the past week being like, the real trick is that the forthcoming MacPro will actually be the first Arm Macintosh. Right? Oh. They won't do a Zeon thing. They're going to take the next series of A processors. They're going to take the next line of A series processors.

Just run them at full tilt with fans and heat sinks and say, like, come at us. Which would be awesome. I don't know they they okay there are reasons that it's still important to have and pro users are the people wow I broke Paul I broke him pro users need the software compatibility you're still going to have a bit of a problem with software compatibility these people want to run pro tools you know like they want to run Linux. They want to run like like invidia's kuda stuff.

Like is that like all cross compiled already for X86 or for Arm? You know, like they are what they should do. You remember when we switched to OS10? And they ran OS9 apps in like a weird Rosetta emulated window thing. They should ship a Mac with both. And it should be really expensive.

It should be a, and you just work everything in the arm processor, but then when something opens and doesn't work on the arm processor, you just like boot up a virtualized OS10 over there. Over there on the Intel. Then the Intel chip spins up and then your battery life gets cut in half. But until you need it, you have a computer that is stupid fast, compatible with most of the stuff that you do day to day and lasts for 15 hours. So that is bad.

That's a bad idea. Don't have it anywhere. Take that idea in total way. I think it's hilarious and great. So to Paul's point, I hear what you're saying. Pros need their workflow software. They need pro tools and Adobe Premiere and whatever Photoshop. But hey, it turns out they just did Photoshop for the iPad using the same codebase.

It turns out they just cut down Premiere and put out Premiere Rush CC for the iPad. So Adobe, you know, one of their big partners is already moving its stuff to the A-series. Look, I think what they're going to do is build a Z on Mac Pro. It's like the obvious thing that they would do. Yeah. But I think it would be an amazing flex if they're like, we don't have to worry about battery or heat. Like, we lit up the A-series all the way.

That would be awesome. And it would be a great excuse for it taking this long if they just had it as like a co-processer. Like, look, all the Apple apps run so absurdly fast because we offload most of the work to an A-12xx bionic. A-12X-S bionic. Pro. Yeah.

I mean, here's where I'm at with the iPad Pro. It starts at $7.99. Yeah. Really cheap. The one I want would be 11 inch 256 cellular.

That's $1,100. And then the keyboard is different this year and I don't know if I like it better, honestly, which is funny because I've always complained about the origami one. Yeah.

Well, it doesn't have a weird bump. It covers it nicer. Yeah. But also kind of utilitarian. Kind of boring. Yeah. And like when you flip it the keyboard around,

you have to feel the keys, which is very unappell-like. Like, very, very, very unappell-like. That's, like, actually kind of sucks. The keys are less fabric-y now. No, that's... Right? It doesn't feel a lot different.

I don't feel a lot different. It continues to be not backlit, which is dumb. Yeah, they're less fabric. And it's $180. Is that what the keyboard cost before? Yeah, everything is more expensive. The pencil is $130 bucks. Yeah, so, like, it's $1,300 bucks.

Just shy of $1,300 to get, like, the version I want. Now, granted, I want the cellular, which is more expensive. And that's, you know, $1,300. bucks is more expensive than the MacBook Air. All right. I'm going to read an ad and then we're going to shift the air. All right. This week we have Betterment.

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow dirtbags and everybody else. Welcome to This Week in Elon. I'm your host, Liz Lapado, and I have a special guest here with me, Kara Swisher. Hello, Kara. Hey, how you doing? You have this week in Elon? This is fantastic. I didn't know. I had no idea.

Yeah, we do this. We do this every week. All right. This week in Elon. So you spoke with Elon recently, and we've got some clips we're going to chair. You were telling me he seems much more relaxed and just on a more evener keel and was working fewer hours. Is that right? Yeah, that's what he said. I visited him on Halloween night. We had almost a two-hour podcast that we're publishing. And he's got a lot of things.

But one of the things I know is I've known Elon for about 25 years. And he's never been as crazy as he was earlier this year. So I was not unsurprised by it because he's somewhat manic, but forever he's always been somewhat manic. But he actually was in a much looser frame of mind, calmer, less attacking journalists, attacking people. None of that. There was none of that.

And I think it's because he stopped working 120 hours a week and taking Ambien and whatever, you know, the ups and the day of doing it, of trying to get that Model 3 off the line. I think it drove him crazy. Yeah. It sounds like things are pretty much evening out with the Model 3, too. you know, obviously the great third quarter results. Yep, exactly. I think, you know, one of the things that Elon has, he's got a little bit, I think he even

admits that a persecution complex. Like, he's doing these amazing things, like, compared to, like, all these idiots making photo apps and, like, you know, dating services. This stuff is really hard. And I think he was making that point. And I agree with him. You know, he's building a friggin rocket to the moon, like, to Mars, excuse me, not the moon, although he talked about the moon, too.

But I think he's doing very things of difficulty. He puts these challenges in front of him, and then he doesn't behave as well as he can. when it stresses him out. And that's, I think, precisely what happened. And I got to say, I'm not condoning the things he did when he was under stress. The tweet about funding secure, he's irresponsible given he's the CEO of a public company. But it is what it is. He's an interesting and unusual character. And I think he put that on display in our podcast. Yeah. And you mentioned that he's going to be talking about some of the exciting new products that are coming out from Tesla. You know, the truck he especially seemed excited about. And we have a clip here. These new products, the truck, the roadster.

Where are they? Yeah, I mean, I'm super excited about the future. Do you have another thing you're making? We definitely do. Do you have a vertical takeoff? The supersonic Vitol jet, electric jet. Perhaps a hovercraft like Larry Page, I don't know. A hovercrafts are pretty straightforward.

Yeah, okay, sure. For you. A supersonic vertical takeoff landing electric jet would be interesting to do at some point. But my head would definitely explode if I try to do that right now. Yeah, I think so. But I've been thinking about that design for nine years. All right. I mean, I wrote down some of it, but...

But the truck is more immediate, the roadster? Yeah, I think what fires me have about tells us, I think we've got the most exciting product roadmap of any company in the world. Okay. Got the Model Y, which is the mid-sized SUV. You've got the semi-truck, which is going to be great for, you know, the really heavy transport. It'll be like the heaviest class of truck, of industrial truck.

We've got the next-generation roadster, which will be the fastest sports car on every dimension. fastest acceleration, fastest top speed, best handling. The goal with the Tesla Roadster is to show that an electric car can be the best sports car on every dimension. I think that's very important to kind of get rid of this halo effect that gasoline cars, sports cars have. The pickup or the more. Well, like I still like say the fastest top speed cars in the world are still gasoline sports cars. So I think it's important to have an electric car that is faster as electric sports car,

faster than the fastest gasoline sports car. And it helps address that sort of halo effect that gasoline sports cars have. So I think it's important to do that to show that electric is the best architecture. Then we've got the pickup truck, which actually I'm personally most excited about the pickup. Well, I can't talk about the details, but it's going to be like a really futuristic, like a cyberpunk blade runner pickup truck. Okay. What does that mean? It's going to be awesome.

It's going to be amazing. Who are you trying to sell that to? People who buy F, whatever. You know, I actually don't know if a lot of people will buy this pickup truck or not, but I don't care. Okay. I mean, I do care eventually, you know, like, sure, I care of, you know, like, we want to get, you know, gasoline and diesel pickup trucks off the road. Right. But if, like, if I find, like, you know, like, I'm personally super excited by this pickup truck.

It's something I've been wanting to make for a long time. I really want something that's, like, super futuristic cyberpunk, which if there's only a small number of people that, like, that truck. I guess we'll make a more conventional truck in the future, but it's the thing that I personally most fired up about. It's going to have a lot of titanium. You know, people will eat this step up because, you know, it's space rockets and cars and truck, so, you know, especially his male fanboys, I think they'll go crazy for it, not that women don't like. He talked about SpaceX and putting astronauts on the space station. He talked about a lot of stuff. He talked about liking Donald Trump's Space Force, the idea of it. He does not

want to make a scooter, just newsflash. I will think about buying an electric car. Probably not. I'm not going to try to. Make a scooter. Make a scooter and I'll go for it. Actually, they are electric. What am I talking about? I don't know. Like, there was like, some people in the studio wanted to make a scooter, but I was like, ah, I love the scooter.

No, it's like lax dignity. No. It doesn't lack dignity. Yes, they do. They don't lack dignity. What are you talking about? Yes, I do it all the time. I look fantastic. You do not. You are under laboring under an illusion. I think I look good. This is an illusion. It lacks dignity.

All right. Well, everybody at Lyme, don't worry, Elon Musk's not coming for you. Electric bike, I think we might do an electric bike. All right, okay. So it was good. It was a very rollicking interview. I think, you know, his critics won't like it so much because, you know, he was in a jolly mood. And, you know, he still got a lot of critics around what he did around the funding secure.

We talked about the Saudi about what happened there with the funding. He still sort of wants to go private. You know, he talked about why he did, and he still seems to be longing for that ability to get rid of the short-seller. and things like that. It's doubters. So it was a really interesting interview. And it's a lot. There's a lot there. It's a lot there to unpack. Yeah. I mean, you know, this is only five, like a short segment. And the interview itself is going to be something like 80 minutes. So. 80, he kept talking. It was supposed to be 45, but he just kept talking. So I kept listening. Well, that sounds great. Thank you so much for stopping by, Kara. I really appreciate it. No problem. I hope you enjoy it. And it will give you weeks of pleasure of Elon, all about Elon. There's lots you can pull apart. Okay.

All right. Thanks very much. Thank you. All right. Yeah. For $200 more. We saw, actually, we saw Joanna a lot over the past few days. And that was her catchphrase. Every time she reviewed an Ultra Book for us, or previously for Engadget, she was

like for $2,000 for $200 more, you get a MacBook Air, she got a MacBook Air. Steven Sinovsky, who ran Windows for a long time. He was tweeting at her just recently that he would pass around her reviews inside of Microsoft to be like, this is the reason we need to push into surface. Yeah. She specifically, for the very, for the very, Verge wrote an article that the MacBook Air is the best Windows laptop. Yeah.

And maybe it was this is my next. But that article exists in the world. And it was true. Yep. The MacBook Air was the best laptop for most people for easily five straight years. Yep. And then it just, they just, they just let it go. They stopped thinking about it.

And they're like, what if we made a really tiny underpowered laptop and then a really big laptop and put crappy keyboards on them and a little touchbar thing and made everybody real mad? What if that was the strategy for the Mac? And it didn't work. And Nelai has a 2015 MacBook Pro with a completely overpowered GPU for what he does with it that can't be turned off and kills its battery. But there has been a gaping hole. Everybody who just wants to go buy a good Mac that is thin and good and fine, a mass market consumer MacBook, has been MIA. till today

yesterday whatever day you'd listen to this yeah yeah and now it's back now it's back and like literally

introduced it with everyone loves the MacBook Air and all you wanted was a retina display so here it is yeah it was like all right

you filthy ingrates you just you've been bugging about us for so long fine here you go and sort of way it has the iconic

wedge shape I'm like that's not why people like loved it it it is there is part of me that's like, oh, it's just a, it's just a 13-inch MacBook escape, but they made it

thinner. There's a real part of me that feels that way. But the differences, so like Apple over and over and over again wants to compare it to the air, and it's this much faster and this much better and this many more pixels on the screen and the touchpad is bigger and yada, yada, yada. And sure, but I think the better comparison, the more honest comparison is to compare it to the 13-inch MacBook Escape, the MacBook Pro with the, without the touchbar. And by that comparison, things are a little bit diceier.

So it is a little bit thinner, a little bit lighter because it's tapered. The screen is not as bright because it maxes out of 300 Nits. It has the same two at USBC slash Underwellport, so that's great. And then the processor here is a dual core. I think it's 1.6 gigahertz. I forget what it supercharges up to. Why seventh generation, eighth generation? Eighth generation.

Eighth generation. I mean, they're like legitimate like size of relief from the audience. when they're eighth generation. Eighth generation. Sorry, I knew that. But it's a dual core Y series Intel processor, not the more powerful U series. And so people are flipping out,

and they may or may not be right. I don't know. The weird thing about this processor is, you know, Intel. Many angry feelings about Intel. Actually, I have a whole rant that Intel has single-handedly held the entire computing

industry back and has kept us all from having devices like the iPad Probe everywhere all the time. But this Y-series processor that's in the MacBook Air, the new one, was a mystery because people are like, what is this chip? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then finally, some white paper came out. Somebody found it from a non-tech, I think. And normally this Y-series processor is powered at 5 watts, TDP or whatever. This one is 7.

So it's a Y-series processor, but don't get mad because it's a special, like, Apple edition of it that could be handle a little bit more power and they're going to have their own thermal profile for it and you know they probably get like the best stuff off the bin you know the real center of the wafer or whatever you know what I mean I'm just saying but okay so that's

you heard that and I heard that and I've been thinking out of this ever since yeah so like they're you know they're at the Intel factory and I don't know Johnny Shrugis there he's like I want that one and that one and they make so many of these this is a mainstream product. This is going to be the most popular Mac.

So saying we just get the best ones, they have to make so many more best ones. I don't buy it. Yeah. Right? I don't know. Okay. Well, anyway. Yeah. This will be one of the world's most popular laptop computers.

By all rights should be. So the thing about it, and I was real mad about this first, so we talked a bunch of people about it, other journalists and analysts at the event. So it starts at $11.99, so $1,200 for, I think it's 8 gigs or am and 256. No, 128 of storage. I don't know. Whatever. It starts at $1,200.

And $1.28 a storage. Part of me is like, you should have, like, this computer is worth $1,200. Yes, yes, it is. Like, whatever the process shakes out, it'll be more than enough for most people. And it has the retina display, and, like, you finally release a modern MacBook Air. Good job just calling it to MacBook Air and not overthinking it. Yeah, that was the right move as well. This computer is worth $1,200.

But maybe you should have made $1,000 computer instead. Yeah. And so someone, maybe it was used, someone reminded me, like, We've never made a $1,000 MacBook Air at the first time we released it. It comes down over time, and people got used to a $1,000 MacBook Air existing. So next year. You know, the very first MacBook Air was like $2,800 or something crazy. It was insane.

And then when they released the one that was like truly good. 1800, I think. Yeah. So like the wedge-shaped MacBook Air, the one that everybody knows, came out at a higher price point. And, you know, it's been a very long time, if ever, that Apple has released, like, a brand-new, laptop that cost a thousand bucks. I think people are going to get their money out of the laptop. Yeah, so do I. The price thing to me is just

it's the same as ever. So the price thing is different now because the world is different now. When the MacBook, the first MacBook Air came out, it was like a holy crap, look at the future that could possibly exist, but I certainly don't want to buy it now because the thing

breaks in half if you look at it funny. The second generation MacBook Air was, holy crap, this thin and light future exists now, and this is a It is so much better than anything else that's out there. And then UltraBooks came along and they figured it out and they iterated and got better. And they just kept on putting the new Intel chip in year after year because they actually did that because Apple didn't. Who knows why.

And now this new MacBook Air is on par with the rest of the laptop market, I think, at best. Like it's probably, you know, put the whole package together. It's probably higher quality. I don't know. We're going to review it. We're going to see. But it is not a category apart from the rest of what the laptop world is doing right now. It does not feel like, oh, Apple just jumped ahead three years, like the old MacBook

So here's two comparisons. The Microsoft Surface laptop. Yep. Seems like a meaningful competitor. Yeah. $1,000. $1,000. Yeah.

Both with U-Series processors. I believe. Maybe not. I don't know. Whatever. Apple actually took a shot at the Dell on stage. It took a lot of shots. It took a lot of shots, but they took a particular shot at Dell where they're like, and it has a FaceTime HD camera above the screen, where it belongs.

Yeah. And like the four people in the world who have like at a video conference with an XPS 13 were like, ooh. And everyone else was like, yeah, that's where it belongs. Did someone else think otherwise? So those are good comparisons. So the question is, is MacOS worth 200 bucks to you? And the answer for most people is yes. Yep.

Right? Like for most people, it's still better. Now, would you like to touch your screen? No. I don't know. You're now making these kinds of decisions. Well, would you like to touch your screen? Would you like to have something other than the pretty garbage photos app on the iPad pop up when you plug in a hard drive?

Right? Like, those are the questions. But it's a super hard comparison. The iPad, I enjoy using the iPad pro way more than I enjoy using my MacBook Pro right now. It is just a fundamentally nicer experience. You're crazy. But I can do way less with it. Yeah.

Yeah. If you had to give me one of these computers on a desert island, I would take the MacBook 10 out of 10. Yeah. And that would be sad because it can't do so many things. Like, you can't post Instagram story from MacBook, right? Like, there's like stuff it can't do. Yeah. You can post an Instagram story from a Chromebook.

Technically you can. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We spent five years. dunking on Windows phone and, you know, whatever replaced the Nokia phones, I've sailfish, whatever, and just yelling at these phone companies for not supporting Instagram and not having the apps. And now we could do that to the Mac.

That's crazy, Tom. It's crazy. Look, it's a, we're going to have to get it. We're going to have to review. It's all the same stuff. Yeah. It is very much the MacBook air that people wanted. Yep.

It is one of the few. times I can like point to where Apple just had to respond to market demand. Yeah. Right? Like their Mac lineup was not doing what they wanted it to do. People were not buying the MacBook Escape. Nope. People were buying the little MacBook, which is a ridiculous product now, by the way.

I love it. I love it, but never buy it. And people wanted the mainstream consumer laptop. So Apple had to deliver it. Yeah. And that is, okay, I'm glad it's here. What's confusing to me about that is, duh. People want a mainstream consumer laptop? What a, what a country.

Come on. And the number of people who use these things are just like everyone who isn't trying to do MacBook Pro stuff wanted an air. Yeah. And like so many people bought like 13 inch MacBook Pros just like and are salty about it. They're just like, well, I guess I got this thing now. And now, like, they're, and, yeah. It doesn't have the iconic wedge shape. Look, you walk these streets.

You're in New York, and people are just like, you walk these streets. I wish it had this iconic wedge shape. That's how they talk. The biggest question mark for me is performance. So I've got like a 2015, 13-inch MacBook Pro, like, before the keyboard apocalypse. And this, I can't. I can't ever buy, I want this MacBook error, but I can't buy it if it's slower than my current computer.

Because then I'd feel like a big demo, right? And so, you know, Microsoft. What's a geekbench score in that computer? Do you know? Do you know the first digit? No. Okay. I think the first digit of the single core is going to be like four on this one.

It's, that doesn't mean anything to me. It just has, it has to be actually a faster computer. And like, to Dieter's point, you know, the surface laptop, it is, you know, series. It's cheaper. Also, it's on an offset release cycle. You know, Apple just released a perfect computer for somebody going to college. Yep. Like a month and a half after they started going to college. Yes, they did. Microsoft is released the service laptop in June. So if they update it, you know, early next year or mid next year, they're going to have a better chip and still likely cheap. You know, obviously, MacGaerer runs a great little operate system I like to call Mac OS.

Yeah. That's, I mean, that's all it's kind of going for. I mean, it looks beautiful. It's real simple and stuff. But it's, I feel like it's too late. I don't know. You know, it's not too late. It's going to be very successful, but it's, it's too late to be, to be, like Deeter said,

it's not a category defining anymore. It's not a world apart. The too late question is interesting, because the Mac, Air was the default, right? It was the thing everybody had. And so the question is, can this thing reach that default status before Intel falls into the ocean? Or the iPad gets powerful enough to be called the ocean lake, Dieter? Yes.

Unequivocally, yes. You think so? Yes. No questions asked. Right. It is an Apple product that's slightly more expensive. It is beautifully made. And there are certainly Windows laptops that are beautifully made, but this one is beautifully made.

It has Apple's aura about it. It runs an operating system. You can't get anywhere else. You know, the touch ID thing is like sitting there for Apple Pay if you have an iPhone. Like, it's just going to, like the compromise you have to make with the XPS 13 is the camera is in a stupid position. And it's just like there. It's just like a compromise you have to make every time you use that laptop. Yeah.

The compromise you have to make with the Surface laptop is basically none except a, you want this operating system. Right. So, like, of course. Like, it's just going to be that thing. Oh, also, Microsoft doesn't sell any of them, right? Yeah, well, it's unclear. Steven Sinovsky had a good tweet,

a series of tweets about questioning or, like, just trying to figure out where those numbers were, where, like, Microsoft has 0.3, whatever, and the iPad sold more than everything else. I don't know. The new iPad Pro, in terms of, like, a thing that has potential to be genuinely new and category defining and what is this thing and oh my god look at all the new ideas and look how powerful it is and blah blah blah blah blah

that's what the macbook air was you know a decade ago and this new macbook air has none of that juice and that's why in the live blog i kept on making jokes about how it was really sad about how apple spent so much time making fun of computers next to the iPad because the macbook air is one of those computers yeah that's just that's the reality of distortion field what were you saying paul Yeah, the, the, um, it is, it, it did feel like they were dunking on the MacBook Air by proxy, for sure. I, I felt that as well. But, uh, one of the cool features that this MacBook Air has is when you plug a hard drive in, you can see the files on it.

Yeah, it's a computer. But the default 128 gigabyte storage, I mean, I've suffered through two small SSDs for a long time. Like, it, it just feels so, it just feels so limiting. And so you're going to want to upgrade this. Like you're going to want the $1,400 skew or something like that. Like at that point, the alternative laptops that you can get are, you can really spec out a much better Windows computer for $1,200. Yeah, it's $1,400. You still get $8 gigs of RAM.

If you want to go to $16, yeah, you got to spend more. Wait, hold on. I think the people listening to this show are aware of this. I have been hypercritical of Apple for the past however long, right? Yeah. There's no world in which saying you can spec out a better Windows computer for the money is a winning argument against an Apple product. That has been true since 1994. No, there was a phase.

The MacBook Air ascendant phase was the same phase that's like, wow, I did the math, and it's pretty much the same price spec-wise. It was foggers because you're right. There was, yeah, since 1994, since all time, it's been cheaper. You can get better specs for cheaper in the PC world. And then we've been through a little bit of a drought where that's not true with Apple's laptops anymore. And I don't think this changes that. I don't think it changes either.

I think, but in terms of experience that you're going to have with a laptop, it's still like a winning experience. There's a reason I'm using a 2015 MacBook Pro instead of Windows laptop right now. It's because my entire workflow is geared around this operating system that I prefer. And I think the people are using MacBook Airs right now who have been desperate for an upgrade, they're just going to buy a new one. I mean, it's frustrating. If you're a VirtCast listener, if you're Us, it's frustrating to know that Apple's gravitational pull is just,

it obliterates your reference frame. Yeah. Right? Like everyone's reference frame is their MacBook Air that hadn't been updated, that didn't have a retina's screen that had giant bezzles. that had old processors that had old I.O. And then they're going to get this thing and be like, what a huge upgrade. And you're like, no, they didn't give you enough, but it doesn't matter. Right.

And that every year at the iPhone review, I go through the same thing where I'm like, the pixel camera's better, but everyone really just has an iPhone 6. So this is going to blow their, like, you know what I mean? Like, that is just like the Apple universe. And for those people, are going to be really happy. So yes, you're totally right. A lot of people are going to be very happy with this computer. All I'm saying is it could be either cheaper or better.

Yep. The verge cast everyone. Oh, also, Apple remembered the Mac Mini existed. They did all the stuff that they should have done. They put desktop chips in it. Yep. They're using removable RAM, I believe, on Sodems, which is a thing. Yeah, but it is soldered storage is on board now, so whatever.

Actually, I'm not mad about that. The Mac Mini has USBA ports, which is adorable. Yep. That thing is, I want one. It's like that's, of all of the things they announced, it's like, that's the one that I'm going to invent a need for. You know, like, I didn't look at the iPad Pro and be like, I'm going to learn how to illustrate today.

Like, with the Mac Mini, I'm like, I should build a home theater PC. I don't know why. It's just like where my brain would. What you, what the Mac Mini is great for is you have a MacBook Air, but you want to offload your compile your X-Code compilation to the MacMoney. They showed, at the hands-on, they had a stack of MacMany's doing that. remote into it in a,

oh, that's the answer to my MacBook Pro arm thing is you're, they're just going to stop selling MacBooks and they're just going to tell you to buy Mac minis and then you'll remote into it via, you know. Yeah, VNC is the future of Mac OSTA.

Okay, we're going to take another break, ever breathe, I'm going to read an ad. Okay. And we're going to spend just 10 minutes talking about what Foxhahn is doing to my hometown. And we're going to be done with this thing. Hey, everybody, I want to tell you,

something really cool that The Verge is doing. It's called Better Worlds. Everything today is so dark. The news is dark. The movies are dark. The superheroes are dark. The TV shows are grim. So we're trying to clear all that away with a project we're calling Better Worlds.

Basically, we hired, this is true, 10 science fiction writers to write us positive science fiction, to imagine better worlds. It's a huge project. So we have 10 stories on the site. We have a bunch of animated videos. It'll go up on the YouTube channel. And most excitingly, we're having to have. having those stories read to us on a new podcast feed, the Better World's podcast feed.

Okay, Paul, every week, you do a thing. Without fail. Same name, which is. Always this. It's called first to fold. All right. All right. So we've been hyping this rumor.

It's not really even a rumor. Samsung seems like they're coming out without folding something. Yeah. Hey. Maybe they keep talking about it. Yeah. Folding something. But before Samsung's folding something, a complete unknown company named Royal.

Wait a minute. We'll back up, back, back, back, back, back. What is this segment called? First to fold. Okay. Wait, do you have a folding predecessor that I'm unaware of? Laptops. No, the screen didn't fold.

Okay, fair. Yeah, we're talking about folding screens here. I'm sorry, I wasn't very clear. So this flex pie is like. It's like a tablet, but then it folds with the screen on the outside so that you're holding. It's just so dumb. But yeah, just look it up. It's as bad as you can imagine folding phones will be.

And I still have no idea how Samsung or anybody is going to make a folding screen. Because the big thing with folding screens is you can't put a crease in them. Yeah. Yeah. So they don't fold flat, so they're always going to be dumb and bulky until somebody solves that problem. This device is just hilarious and wonderful, and maybe he's going to ship in, I think, December. So we'll see if this is the first ship, first to fold. I like it.

It's going to be about $1,000-ish dollars. Okay. I'm in it. Let's get it. Flex pie. We covered another really dumb phone today. The one with dual screens to get rid of the notch. Oh, yeah.

Yes. Yeah. So there's a screen on the back. So when you take a selfie, you could see your, because there's no front-facing camera to get rid of the notch. So they put an extra screen on the back, which is awesome and hilarious. And probably not the ultimate solution to notches, but I like it. What was this phone called? I'm trying to find it.

Oh, the Nubia X. Yeah. It's horrible. Okay. I want to talk about Foxcon just for 10 minutes before we go. So where is that new factory located? So you might remember the state of Wisconsin. I don't call it Wisconsin.

My home state. I call it Wisconsin Valley. Oh, God. Announced a few years ago that it would, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin Valley. Paul Ryan, my parents' representative in Congress. Yeah. And that's, we struck a deal with Foxcon. Hooray.

To build a huge factory in Wisconsin. Yay. And then a little bit later it came out that it would be in Racine County. I'm from Racine. And further, in a village in Racine County called Mount Pleasant, which is where my house is. Okay. So that's where I grew up. So they're building the factory on your house.

They're coming to town. It's on Iowa 820. It's like I've taken the exit off of I-94 10,000 times now. So like, that's horrible. And then it came out, they were going to write a $3 billion subsidy to Foxconn in exchange for this, like, $10 billion. factory. Scott Walker the governor is very proud of the fact that he makes all of his

deals in the back of napkins. This is true. He's always like, I wrote it on the back of napkin. It's got to be good. So like wrote this deal with the CEO of Foxxon on the back, famously in the back of napkin. Okay, well, I haven't heard anything about it. Yeah. We covered it. I laughed about it. Donald Trump took credit for it. Donald Trump was recently in Racine.

He had a picture with a shovel. It's on the website. You can look at it. He may have been confused and thought that they were Apple Jobs briefly. He definitely thought it was Apple Jobs. Kanye West was like, the Foxcon deal is so great. I mean, like, This is a shining star. Yeah. Okay.

So no one's paying attention to it. Foxxon's in my hometown. Great. This is true. This is how the genesis of the story that's on our site. My parents were coming to New York to visit Max. Very excited. Seeing the grandkid.

Yeah. Love her. They're supposed to land early on a Friday, spend the day with her. And we get this call. Hey, we're going to be really late. We missed her flight. Oh. And my mom goes, it's all of the traffic from Foxcon.

Wow. Because they have to widen I-94 to support. I-94 they have to widen? They're widening I-94. I-94 is a major freeway. It's not wide enough already? No. They have to widen I-94.

Oh, my God. To support Foxcon. Wow. So it's under construction, and right now it's cut in half. So all of the traffic, both directions are now in one side. Oh, sure, yeah. There's actually, you can see it. We ran a photo of it in our pieces.

So my parents-smith... Can we just talk about Midwestern road construction problems for the next 45 minutes? It's a lot. It's a lot. Because I have so many feelings. Anyway. So I was like, I hadn't heard anything about Foxxon a long time. It hasn't broken out in like national press. So I go looking, I'm like searching.

And, you know, like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is doing a great job of covering what's going on a Foxconn. Little local sites are doing great job with covering what's going to Foxland. Like it's being covered in the region. And what struck me is if you just read a lot of that coverage. Yeah. It adds up to a disaster. Right. Right.

So I was like, okay, this is my hometown. They're like doing something bad. So we found a local freelancer. This guy named Bruce Murphy. It's in Milwaukee. He's been a long-time journalist there. hired him write this piece, hired a photographer, go take some pictures of the Foxhunt site.

The walls are up at the factory. So let me tell you what, so that's the genesis. Literally my mom missed her flight to visit Max, and I was like, we should write a story about Foxx. Because it's home. It's my hometown. So let me just lay out the chronology of what's happening with Foxhound, Wisconsin, because it is crazy and we left stuff that is even crazier out of this story.

So the first thing that happened is years ago, Scott Walker and the Republican government of Wisconsin passed a law reducing state taxes on manufacturers to zero. They're close to zero. Just keep that in your mind. That happened. Then they signed a deal with Foxcon to give them $3 billion in tax subsidies. But they already pay no taxes.

So they are writing Foxcon checks, right? The tax subsidy, they're just giving Foxcon billions in cash, which will be paid. That cash comes from the people who work at Foxxon because they pay their state taxes. So this is just a circle of weird money. So give them $3 billion in cash. Then the city and county governments gave Foxxon additional subsidies. So now the total subsidy is up to $4.1 billion, some enormous portion of it paid to Foxxon in cash.

This is for a factory that is supposed to be a generation 10.5 LCD plant that will build panels for 75-inch LCD televisions. That's the deal. That's on the napkin. So $4.1 billion for 13,000 jobs is like $300,000 a job. Wow. It's like that's bad math right there. Like you can already tell. There's economists where like the state of Wisconsin will never get this money back.

It's gone. But whatever. Oh, and they waive environmental protections on Foxcon, let them build all the stuff. They also allow them to pull 7 million gallons of water out of Lake Michigan every day, up to 39% of which will evaporate. So like the other states in the Great Lakes region might sue Wisconsin because this violates the Great Lakes compact. But is it, aren't they actually not building 75 inch? Yeah.

So then in order to build the 75 inch pieces of glass, Foxxon had hoped Corning would build a factory there because they need the glass to be closed. This can't move huge sheets of glass. And Corning says, oh, we want a subsidy too. And Wisconsin says, no, we can't do. We just, no, absolutely. So Cornyn says we won't do that. So they scale the plant down to a generation. 6 LCD plant, which requires only $3 billion to build, not $10 billion to build.

And they say, actually, we're not, this is true, this is in our story. We're not even that interested in television anymore. By the time this plant is up and running, China will supply the world's television needs. We're looking to build, say it out loud. We're looking to build an AI 8K plus 5G ecosystem in Wisconsin where the good people of Wisconsin will help us find usage. for LCD display technology, including healthcare and self-driving cars. All thanks to Donald Trump.

I don't even know. I mean, Foxcon has played other states. AI 8K plus 5G. AI 8K plus 5G. And I really sitting here. No, no, no. We cannot walk away from AI 8K plus 5G. We just can't.

If you are going to try and snow somebody by buzzwords, buzzwords, buzzwords. What would the buzzwords be that you picked? Well, obviously you're going to pick AI, and you're definitely going to pick 5G, because that's a thing that everyone's talking about. They're like, well, okay, those are the two. But then they're like, you know what? We did say that we were going to make panels here, so let's just throw 8K in there. Can I just say one more thing? That's what happened. Paul, I'm dying for your read on this book. Can I say one more thing? At the end of all of this, the dude's like Louis Wu, Lewis Wu, who's the Fox Sun guy who's like in charge of this thing. He's like, actually, and by the way, the employment mix, here. If we were building one of our Chinese factories, I would say it's like 75% labor and then 25% engineers and managers. I would say right now we need 90% knowledge workers, engineers, and most of the actual work will be done by robots. So, like, this whole deal has flipped up. Okay, what were you saying, Paul? AI, AK, plus 5G. All right. I've got a few things. First, I'm going to explain what AI AK plus 5G could possibly mean. Yeah. You will be the first person in history to do so.

We'll do it in reverse Okay, 5G What do you go with 5G? You probably get low latency And you get high bandwidth, right? Okay? So you could possibly stream something Around like a good

1080P, right? Then you use the AI To upscale to 8K Yeah, AI upscaler 8K I got you. Right? We got to actually be clear, Paul, I don't know if that's quite right

Because it's AI 8K Plus 5G That plus is important. Yeah. It's about AI 8K and then also 5G is in the mix. A.I.8K is just you can plug your DVD

player into it and it's going to upscale to 8K. 5G means that you also pay, it's you add a line to your Verizon So basically what you're saying is that Foxcon in Neely's hometown of Racine Russein

is building a giant $4.1 billion motion smoothing factory. No, it's 10 billion. Yeah. I want to die. Crony capitalism is garbage. Wait, I haven't even gotten to the crony capitalism yet.

And I hate it. The other thing, I'd like to hear you guys' input on this, because this is something I always think about, like, with, especially with this environmental stuff, right? I understand that there's like sort of a, like, I'm not in my backyard aspect, but like, it happens in somebody's backyard. Like, we like technology products, but those technology products require, you know, mining of, you know, rare earth minerals.

and dumping sludge into preschool playgrounds. And also, you know, there's a lot of side effects to building technology. Sure. So one of the arguments is everyone says they want the iPhone built here. No one wants the pollution that China is willing to put up with. So the price of the Chinese economy is this like massive pollution that you see in that country. That's great. But to crony capitalism, I want to say two more things and I want to address the environmental thing.

There are things we left out of this story because we just wanted to tell one story, right? The story was they wrote them a check for a generation 10.5 factory. And what they ended up with was the same check for AI 8K plus 5G. So literally they made a buzzword factory instead of a factory. That's like that's all the more I really wanted people to get from this story. Because again, the local papers, they're doing good coverage. but I wanted to add it up for like the zoom out for the verge audience and the bigger audience. But the stuff we left out, like this is stuff where you have to follow up on.

So the state of Wisconsin, crony capitalism, declared the area Foxcon sits in like an enhanced manufacturing zone or something like that. Then they passed a law saying any company located in one of these enhanced zones, if they're sued, the only court of appeals in the entire state that can hear the case is the Wisconsin Supreme Court. and the decision, if they lose at like the district court level, is automatically stayed. It's like suspended until the court can hear the appeal. So fundamentally, the only court in Wisconsin in this entire state of Wisconsin that can deal with Foxconn is a Supreme Court. That's just insanity. No other company in Wisconsin has that problem. So that's one.

And that's only for Foxconn or is there a literal geographic area that other companies could enjoy this? As far as I know, it's only for. We have to like follow up on it. That's just like one of these things that came out. You know, if we published a story, then people started telling us more stuff. So that's like the first one. Like, do you want the state of Wisconsin to craft its laws around one company? That's a little dicey, right?

Second, Wisconsin, Scott Walker is running for reelection. He stopped talking about Foxconn because most people in the state think it's a bad deal. But he's out there promoting really low unemployment numbers in Wisconsin, as he should. Good job. Low unemployment in Wisconsin. Well, you've got to add these like $13,000 jobs. Where are you going to get the people if everybody has a job? So Foxxon's like, we need to build a train from Chicago where all the engineers are

so the people in Chicago can come to Wisconsin and work. So now they've got to ask for like an Amtrak expansion. So that's like another one. We just got to go look into it. And then third, and this is in the story, but I don't think we hammered it enough. Other states in the region were competing for this deal because to make the LCD panels, you need the water from the lake. You need fresh water to like wash the panel.

And so Wisconsin just got played. like John Kasich, who is a Republican governor of Ohio, was like, I would never pay this money to get this plan. Like, this is a bad way to do business. And so Wisconsin used its leverage to extract the environmental protections they might want, to extract the money to recoup some of the thing, to say, actually, if you want to use the lake water, you have to do blah, blah, blah, blah. They just wrote them a check, right? So I think that's to the environmental point you're making. If you do want this stuff, then you want Foxxon to be there and you want manufacturing in America. Well, then you should say, like, make these promises to us.

And instead, say, Wisconsin did not in literally my hometown. What I would like in the U.S. is a Shenzhen-style special economic zone. And it's like no rules just right. And you'd have to hammer out some sort of environmental things so that, yeah, they're going to maybe wreck the specific area, but it won't, you know, leak out to surrounding area. You know, like, you can just have an angry industrial zone of wild capitalism. And so because otherwise, we're never going to make anything that is actually technologically advanced in the U.S. Because the only places that can do that are places that have far different rules than we do about employment, about taxes and about environment. And that's kind of what Scott Walker tried to do in literally my hometown, right?

You waved a bunch of rules, wrote a bunch of checks. Yeah, doing it a one-on-one sweetheart deal with one company is gross. Anyway, but Foxhont famously did this to the state of Pennsylvania. Famously they promised India a bunch of investment. They didn't build the factory in India. So this is like a pattern. Also, AI, AK plus 5G. My friends from Wisconsin were like, we were wondering when you would wake up to AI 8K plus 5G.

Because it's just buzzword soup, and I don't think they know what they want to do. So we published a story. That same day, Foxhoun's executives are, on some panel to talk about economic development in the region. And they're like, we're surprised at this criticism. We thought people would roll out the red carpet for us. That's where they're at. Like, they own the state.

They're also doing some insane thing with like, there's a bunch of ginseng farmers in Wisconsin. This is true. It's 100% true. And Foxxon has a big ginseng processing business. So they're going to like buy all the ginseng farms in Wisconsin. That's just a thing that's underreported on. They've also signed a deal. So they're getting $4.1 billion for the state.

It's not like paying it back in various ways, like spreading some of this money around. So they signed a $100 million deal with the University of Wisconsin system where they're going to share patents and IP and inventions. But that deal, this is also true. The University of Wisconsin has a board of trustees, as an oversight process, as transparency rules. The deal with Foxcon just not subject to any of those rules. All of it will be conducted in secret. Nice.

Like, it's just crazy. Great. So anyway, I'm sorry that I ranted about Racine Wisconsin. But, you know, you made my mom late. Wisconsin Valley. If you're from Foxcon and you're listening to this, I will be home for the week of Thanksgiving. Yeah. I would love to tour your magic factory.

And I'd love to hear what your letters mean. Yeah. That's great. On a positive note, the 1 plus 6T, which, by the way, I was not reading tech news while I was on vacation. And so someone was like, the 1 plus 16. And I was like, wow, I didn't know they were up to that high. Anyways. The 6T is a flagship.

phone that is not a million dollars. Yeah. It's like it's still possible to make a relatively affordable flexion. One, I'm really sad we don't have time to talk about the red phone, which would also be positive because it's so bad. The thing about the 6T, very good review, and I think you're right that it basically counts as a flexion, but the camera is like, you know, nah. But it has the in-screen fingerprint presence for all that stuff.

The question then becomes, how much is the pixel's camera worth to you? And that's actually a surprisingly hard question because we're talking like 400 bucks to get the 3xel. In my case, the Pixel's camera was worth switching from iOS and having everybody be completely incapable of communicating with me. It's a lot of pain, but I think it's worth it. It's a really good camera. The pixel also has a far better display. Dan has the 60 here. It's a beautiful phone and the notch design is good and all that.

The display, it's just like rainbow colors when you get off-axis. It's just a thing that does. Do you only look at your phone off-axis? I move my phone around my hand. So if you notice any amount of off-axis shift, like if you're in a car and the whole thing is like a rainbow spiral, like, you get it. That's fair. I only look at my phone sideways. Okay.

All right, that's it. A happy note. Six-T's for everyone. Yay. Yay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Just letters all, all the letters. I'm so mad. The Foxxon people need to call me. That's all I'm saying. I'll go do the next story. Okay. I believe you. You're just mad that you weren't there with a shovel,

breaking ground with all your buddies. He's looking at me like he wants me to wrap up, but I don't have the wrap-up scripted for me. Oh, right. Here's the wrap up. That was the show. It was wonderful. Thank you both. We've got to get this stuff. We've got to review it. It's coming. I want you to listen to why did you push that button. I want you to listen to Recode-D-Code with Kara Swisher.

I want you to listen to Pivot with Kara and Scott Galloway. We actually just met Scott Calloway walking into here. Lovely man. I want you to risk in Recode Media with Peter Kafka. Those are all wonderful shows. You notice we've done the interview episodes. Next week, I got the CEO of Anchor, who is just the most excited person about USBC I've ever met in my entire life. It's just, it's coming on.

And Neilie's met me. Yeah. Stephen Yang from Anchor, CEO of Anchor. We talked about USBC and its future and power delivery and what Anchor is doing for 45 minutes. It's coming on Tuesday. Check it out. He's got more thoughts about U.S. USBC than anybody.

You know, we ship the world. Ships like three billion chargers in the boxes in like phone boxes and whatnot every year. Yeah, we should stop doing that. Yeah, and there's a USBC. It's the whole thing. His was, it was like a religious experience when he told me this.

Yeah. Anyway, so that's coming next week. You can talk to us. I'm at Reckless, Deeter's at Backlon. Paul's at Future Paul. And you can also follow us on, you know, the social things and rate us on Apple podcast. That's it.

That was a Vurchast. Rock and Roll. Paul. Promocco. This episode of our podcast brought to you by Erickson, 5G isn't just a step up from 4G, it's a game-changing advancement. It's 100 times faster and the ultra-reliable, low-latency network, means it can connect more than phones and tablets.

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I was waiting for you to say AI. Just slip it in there.