The Vergecast - Apple announces M1 chip computers / iPhone 12 mini and Pro Max review / HomePod mini review

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Nilay, Dieter, Dan, and Chaim discuss the new computers Apple announced at their "One More Thing" hardware event, as well as their reviews of the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and HomePod mini. Stories from this week: US sees two days with over 100,000 reported COVID-19 cases COVID-19 vaccine is highly effective, manufacturers report iPhone 12 mini review: fit to size iPhone 12 Pro Max review: the best smartphone camera The 5 biggest announcements from Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ hardware event Mac users couldn’t launch apps this afternoon after Apple verification server issue Apple announces MacBook Air with Apple’s Arm-based M1 processor Apple says new Arm-based M1 chip offers the ‘longest battery life ever in a Mac’ All the apps and games Apple promises for Arm-based Macs Apple announces new Arm-based Mac mini with M1 chip, starting at $699 Apple’s first Arm-based 13-inch MacBook Pro is here with an M1 chip Apple’s new M1 computers top out at 16GB of RAM The biggest difference between the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is a fan Apple’s M1 Mac design emphasizes continuity over complexity HomePod mini review macOS Big Sur is now available to download Google will end its free unlimited Photos storage on June 1, 2021 Microsoft: ‘please do not blow vape smoke into your Xbox Series X’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Dan Sefer and Heim Gartenberg, join us. We talk about the iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max reviews, Apple's big M1 Mac reveal. They put arm chips in Mac. And Dan reviewed the HomePod Mini. That's coming up now on the Vergecast. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog.

That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with Enterprise Security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software.

What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of processor transitions. It's a niche audience, but I like it.

We make a podcast once every five years. Every decade, we make. make a very niche, very popular podcast. I'm Yelapitam. Your friend, Dieter Bone is here. I'm your third high efficiency core. Well, our fourth high efficiency core is here. Dan Seiford is here. Hello. And then we've got one high performance core. Haim Gartenberg. Hi. We're going to let this joke be over now. I will say that Haim is definitely the high performance core here. He's the L3 cache of this conversation. Oh my God. I went with it and I regret it immediately and I'd stuck with us forever. Lots to talk about Apple Event. Obviously, the new M1 chip in Mac.

Lots of talking about there. Deeter and I reviewed yet more iPhones. They just won't stop releasing iPhones. So we reviewed those. We've got to talk about those. Dan reviewed the HomePod. Big Surrows out. So just a ton of Apple news. There's a little bit of Google news. People have been vaping to Xboxes. A lot to talk about. But before, just a little preamble. This was the launch week for Decoder, my new podcast about technology and business and policy all mixed up together. First guest was Mark Cuban. been saying, I think everyone's going to like the guest. I was trying to hype it up. And I was like, what if Cuban drops that at the last minute? But he didn't. But I just want you to know how nerve-wracking it is to make that promise. But Cuban was great. Go listen to it. It's on the old RICO decode feed. So subscribe to Decoder. You can search for it wherever you get podcasts. I thought Mark was great. It was fun to talk to him. We've got a whole lineup of guests through the rest of the year booked up, ready to go. I'm very excited about that show. We're trying to push beyond the hardcore tech stuff and do a little bit more business stuff.

Let me know how it's going, but I'm excited about it. And then always, I start by saying it has been 35 weeks since the president promised a website where you get a test. You know, if you say something over and over again, it kind of becomes a joke and it has been a little bit of a joke. The virus situation is very serious in this country right now. Two days in a row with over 100,000 reported COVID cases. It's skyrocketing everywhere.

Hospitals are overwhelmed. I think a lot of people know my parents are doctors in Wisconsin. and their hospitals are overwhelmed, talk to them about it. So just please take it seriously. Please stay home. Like Illinois issued a suggestion for basically a three-week self-quarantine today.

They don't want to say it out loud, but they suggested that everyone just chill out for 21 days. So we're back in that zone. Just please take it seriously. I know we joke about it a lot with the website, but it's real. It's the most important story in the world. And I encourage everyone to take it seriously.

That said, they just won't stop releasing iPhones. Nope. So, Deere, do you want to start with the mini or the Macs? I think we get the mini out of the way a little bit more quickly because it is an iPhone 12, but smaller. Yeah. So the question here is, it felt like it really just came down to battery life. Yeah, totally. That's what it came down to.

The only other spec is that it fast charges on wireless at 12 watts instead of 15, which is honestly a shruggy. I actually haven't checked to see what the exact milliamps are on the battery, with the water hours. are or whatever to see exactly how much smaller it is. But, yeah, battery life is a question mark, I think. Even having used it a bunch, I think that it is going to be more dependent on how you use the phone than what you're used to. So if you are willing to use your phone in 2020, the way that you used your phone in, say, 2010, you're gangbusters, golden, you know, do some email, open up Twitter

every now and then. Was Twitter in 2010? Sure. Play a game for a little while. but for the most part, it's a thing that you have in your back pocket to take photos with and, you know, listen to music with. It does all the phone stuff. It's literally the exact same specs as the iPhone 12. You just can't use it as much as the iPhone 12.

However, this all sounds like I'm really down on it. No, it's my favorite iPhone. I was not going to trade up. This year I was going to stick with my iPhone 11 Pro. And after using the iPhone 12 Mini, I am trading in my iPhone 11 Pro for it because I love it that much. I love the small form factor that much. It is, I really struggled to describe this. I don't know why, but it's ergonomic.

If you were to go to a store, a kitchen store, and you were to, like, go buy a whisk. You would judge the whisk or the spatula or whatever, in part by how easy is this thing to hold, right? If there was, like, the best whisk ever, but it weighed 10 pounds and it had a handle that required two hands to use, you wouldn't buy it. You'd want one that you can actually use with one hand because that's like part of the reason it exists. That's what the iPhone mini is. It's a thing designed for a human size instead of being designed around a screen size. Yeah. It's interesting that it took them this long to admit it.

I don't know if that's the right word. Yeah. But we've been asking about small phones across the whole industry. Every company has said, well, people don't want them. Yep. And every company is probably right. I don't know. big sales on the 2020 iPhone

SE, they were like, oh, wow, this sold really well, what the hell? Obviously, they had developed a Tullumini before that. There are a bunch of smaller Android phones, right? Like, the Pixel 5 is not that big. The Pixel 4A is not that big. So, like, there's a way that that on the Android side gets addressed, but just not explicitly addresses and I'm going to go by the small phone. There just happened to be smaller phones out there.

This is the first time in whatever, ever, ever? When was the last time Apple said we're making a small one? iPhone 5. Yeah, but the iPhone 5 was just the iPhone. Yeah. Well, no, the iPhone 5 was bigger. The iPhone 5 was bigger, but, like, that's the last time Apple intentionally sat down and was like, we're going to make a phone and it's going to be this size instead of we're going to make a phone and we're going to chase, like, Android screen sizes. Like, they bumped up the size like two years later with the iPhone 6 and they've been chasing that dragon ever since.

Yeah. Deider, I think you might have put this in your review or it was in our discussions while we were editing. But, like, the difference with this that I see is that you mentioned the Pixel 4A, the Pixel 5, those are smaller, kind of semi-smolar Android phones. But the Pixel 4A is a cheap phone. Like, and the iPhone SE is a cheap phone. People don't buy it primarily because it's small. They buy it because it's $400.

Right. This is a not cheap phone. It is $730. And if you get a $30 kickback from your carrier or whatever. But this is a premium phone. It's a, you know, like you said, said, iPhone 12 but smaller, so it's all the latest guts and specs just in a smaller size. And that's like the intention is that it is a modern premium phone that you're not compromising

on anything and you're getting a smaller size phone. And that is really what is so unique here and why I think we're all so excited and intrigued by it is that the last time this has happened was like Sony tried it a couple times, like five to 10 years ago, nobody bought those. And like the last small iPhone, which was like, you know, the iPhone 5 generation or 5S. The other thing we should talk about is pockets, and specifically pockets for clothes that are designed primarily for women, are small if they're existent at all. And this thing can fit in more of those. Yeah.

So in your review, I love that you went and talked to Liz. Yeah. So Liz has been on the show. She's our deputy editor. She is very fierce about the fact that phones are too big. Yep. I think she's written for the site that phones are too big. So this, I think she held it in her hand for one minute and said, I'm buying this phone.

Yep, pretty much. I think that's like, when I say it's taking a long time for manufacturers to admit it, I think that they have not, they've been following what the sales data is telling them instead of necessarily what users are actually saying about the products. Yeah. Because all things being equal, people always buy bigger screens. Like, we see it in TVs all the time. People will buy a larger, crappier TV over a higher picture quality, small TV, just dollar for dollar. That's like what they always do. we see it in phones.

There are lots of, and on the Android side, there are lots of, like, slow phones with huge screens. Because that, like, people sort of naturally gravitate to it. But I think what closes the loop is,

well, once they have it, do they actually like it? Like, once you're using the thing every day, are you like, oh, this thing is not great? Like, I don't like using it. I think the mini addresses that moment of, actually, it's a great phone.

It's premium, as Dan was saying. And it's small enough to, like, fit into your life. And I'm just glad that that loop has been closed. Yeah. I think that that sales data was also misleading because a lot of those people bought those phones against what they didn't want to. They're like, well, I got to buy a phone. I guess I'll buy this one.

Crap. And that's how they felt about their phone. And this addresses that problem. We should talk about the Macs though, because there's more interesting things there. And we just spent the last five minutes trying to like describe the smallness and how that matters as humans of the mini. You said Max and I thought you meant the laptops. No. No, the Pro Max, the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

One of the worst named products in Apple history. I hate saying, not least because my daughter is named Max. And they have a product called the Mac. Yeah. So just confusing from the jump as we just demonstrated. Can't wait for the Mac Max. My understanding is that the 12 Pro Max is approximately the size of a billboard. Is that correct?

So there's a lot of comments on the review and on the YouTube that notes that it is the same. size is like the iPhone 8 plus. Okay. If you're familiar with those phones, those old plus size phones yeah, it's correct. Those measurements are the same. But A, those phones were surfboards. We called them surfboards all the time. They were not

like pleasing to hold or look at. This phone is better than that and that display takes up a substantially large portion of the front face. But the square sides and just the weight of it. It's not that much heavier than the 11 Pro Max. It's like two grams heavier.

It's like a negligible amount heavier than the iPhone 11 Pro Max is like a little bit heavier than the Note 20, but you can feel it. And you hold it in your hand. You're like, this is a gigantic phone. And they sent reviewers the gold one. It's like, it's like gaudy. Like it's just such an imposing object to hold in your hand that I have not taken out of the case since I got it.

Yeah, because I'm like, this thing is just going to fly away. It has its own gravitational pull to the ground. And then I put it in a case, and now it's even bigger. And I'm a big phone person, like I said in the review. And every time I pick this up, I'm like, this is too big. What do you think you're going to do? You're going to stick with your current Macs? No, I'm going to buy this.

So we're going to get into why Nilai's buying this one. But this is exactly how people who wanted a small phone felt last year buying a phone. because they're like, I'm going to buy a new phone. I really am not happy with the size of this, but it's what I want or I need a new phone and I don't have another option. So tell me, Nelai, why are you buying the phone that you are not happy to hold?

Well, the battery life is insane. So like just at a minimum, eight hours of screen on time. That's wild. Right, just like at a minimum. That's like the lowest number I've seen so far. Endless doom scrolling. Yeah, it's doom scrolling. At the high end, it's like 12 or you can push it to 14.

like, it's just an incredible battery life. I don't know why that matters in my home where I am always near a charger. Well, you're the kind of guy that sits next to a charger and doesn't plug in. That's very true. I run down the battery in my own home all the time. And then I do think, and this is worth unpacking quite a bit, I think the camera is better. And I, you know, I have a kid. I said an interview.

Like, that is important to me that we always just have the best cameras around for that single purpose of taking photos of their kid. So we have a lot to talk about with the camera. So one more size thing before we move into camera. I think it is completely ridiculous that the software experience that I had on the iPhone 12 mini is not that different than the software experience that you have on the iPhone 12 Pro Max. In terms of screen layout and like options for icons and even like lines of text, the 12 versus the regular 12 mini, sorry, the 12 mini versus the regular 12, it's like two lines of text. It's ridiculous.

Yeah, it's not that much more. you know, with the plus size phones they did all, they launched those phones. They said, we've got a bigger screen. We're going to enable two columns and apps. And Safari will have tabs. And like, we see the future of big screens on phones. And they have just walked away from all of it. And I do think, like, this thing is getting closer to being a tablet than a phone. And they should let you do. It's so funny that after they peel the iPad away from iOS, I'm like, they should make the top, they should bring them back together a little bit. But yeah, it is very much just a, a, gigantic iPhone. Yeah. And you can mess with the settings and get to a different experience, but out of the box, just a huge iPhone. And I think that that is a miss. And it's something that if they want to, I think it's good that the line has this many

size choices in it. And so what that it lets them do is it lets them take the biggest and smallest ones and make them more different than the same instead of trying to make everybody have the same experience. But it's, yeah, it's a miss. Yeah. Okay. Camera.

So all these cameras look the same. Like we are clearly at the point where you have to really care about cameras and photos. Between, you talk about like between flagships, like a galaxy S-20, a pixel 5, a galaxy note 20 ultra, you know, top of the line 1-plus, that kind of thing. Yeah, two years ago, three years ago maybe we would sit here and talk about how the pixel had a look and the iPhone had a look and those looks were divergent. And, you know, Mark Levoy would come on and talk about Carvaggio and how, you know, the pixel team stared at paintings,

tie on shrooms to, like, come with their camera. And, like, now that, now they all just look the same. Like, they all realize that photos have looked like that

for a long time for a reason. Yeah. Right? Like, they've, they've kind of backed off their, their super intense looks.

But, you know, the iPhone 12 Pro Max does have the bigger sensor. And that means in lower light, it has a higher maximum ISO. And I've, like,

really struggled to explain, to put this in a context. So every time Apple, Apple says, it can capture more light. That's the thing they're always saying. And they describe either the lens that way or the sensor that way. The sensor is bigger, so it can capture more light. If you really take that apart that, you have to put a number next to it.

That number is ISO. So what they're really saying is that at any given ISO, the bigger sensor captures the same amount of light with less noise. That's really what they're saying. Right. And so their higher ISO is less noisy. And so the 12 Pro has like 5,800 top ISO. and the max has like a 7600 top ISO.

So they'll just run it, they'll run the sensor at a higher ISO all of the time to get more light with less noise. Usually higher ISO means more noise. Right, right. But at any given number. Oh, I see. So if you run the 12 Pro at 3,000

and the Pro Max at 3,000, the Pro Max has generated less noise. So the system is comfortable running at higher ISOs. That is fundamentally the thing that's happening here. that means they can use faster shutter speeds. And that means you get more detail on the photo because if you are shooting photos of things that move like toddlers, you freeze more motion in them and you capture more detail. And that little equation is really hard to communicate. And it is particularly hard to demonstrate if what you're doing in a review is shooting a lot of photos of things that don't move.

Right. Like, if you're, it's, it's even true in my review. Like, the stuff's animals aren't moving. It would be very strange if they started. I'm moving, right? My hand is moving, but that's what the stabilizer and the lens is supposed to help you do, or the censorship is supposed to help you do. But the real benefit, I think, of the Pro Max camera is that basically shot for shot,

it'll run at a higher ISO and a faster shutter speed. Right. And so if you have a kid, you have a pet, whatever, you're going to see that benefit, especially as light goes down. and it's just very hard to... It took me publishing the review, seeing the questions about it, watching Marquez's reviewers,

like all the pictures look the same, and really thinking it through one more round before I could clearly communicate what was going on with this camera. Right. Dan, did I do the math, or any of the camera nerd?

Do they get that right? Yeah, I mean, that's fundamentally it. But I just want to clarify that when you say shutter speed, it's not the response time of you tapping the button and it taking the picture. That's the same across the board.

Shutter speed is how long it takes to let in the light that it needs to capture that picture. And that's when you're talking about your... The thing opening and closing. The thing opening and closing, that's what you're talking about when, you know, if your kid is moving around in that time, they will be blurry. So the faster that time is, the easier it is to freeze their action. And when you're saying, like, you don't see it if you are taking pictures of something still, because the camera knows you're taking pictures of something still, it doesn't need to use a high shutter speed or a higher ISO.

It kind of ends up looking the same. but it is when you are in those situations where you do have lower light, faster moving subjects, the toughest subjects ever to shoot. And like any parent will tell you, the hardest thing for any camera is taking pictures of their kids indoors in terrible, you know, indoor artificial lighting. That is where you would see the notice a difference. Now, the difference is there and it's noticeable and we saw it in our tests. I wouldn't say it's dramatic. Like if you're going from ISO 5800, which is what roughly the 12 Pro is, to ISO 7600, that sounds really big because those numbers are big, but that's at the high end of the ISO scale.

It is like going from ISO 400 to ISO 600 on the low end of the scale. So it's not what we would call in photography a full stop, which is twice as much light. it is a, you know, 25, 30% more light, which is, you know, you can see that when it comes down to it in really those edge cases, but it's not like you're getting twice as better, twice as better, you know, performance or things like that. You really, really have to care about those specific scenarios, encounter those specific scenarios a lot with your shooting and be willing to put up with a phone that is the size of a surfboard to use those scenarios. Well, no, but I'll tell you this. I, you know, I have, I've got my

my now ancient Nikon DSLR, D-750-500, I've got any number of Sony RX-100 variants floating on my home now. I never want to run those things over ISO 1,000 ever. I just don't like doing it because they fall into noise so fast, right? And I think it's remarkable that these tiny sensors and Apple's processing are just so comfortable always at the top of their range. Yeah. And that is where computational photography comes in. because the reason they're able to run at 5,000 or 6,000 ISO when your DSLR will fall apart at 3200, is it is stacking images together and reducing the noise because it has 10 images instead of one,

and it can get more data out of those 10 images than one image, and that produces a cleaner output. That said, these are still on the scale of like sensors, small sensors, and they do hit their limits, and everything will usually look pretty good on your phone, but if you're, type person that prints something, if you blow it up on a big computer monitor or something like that, you will see a difference with something that has a larger physical sensor in it, like an actual camera, DSLR, or what have, RX-100, because there is a limit to what these can do. It is remarkable what they are doing within that limit. But for me personally, it's not replacing a mirrorless camera for photos of, like, my kids that I want to print. Okay, so a lot of quantitative

stuff, a lot of numbers, I get that the 12 Pro Max is better for movement in low light. But, Nealai, what's the qualitative experience? Like, when you, me, and Joanna, we're talking about our last iPhone reviews on the Tuesday show, I pointed out that I just, I feel with that iPhone, I know what it's going to do and I feel more confident in what's going to happen when I hit the shutter button. Was there a significant difference in your level of confidence or knowing what you're going to get or being willing to even try or whatever with the 12 Pro Max compared to the 12 Pro Max compared to the 12 Pro?

Because if people are like, fine, I'll get the big one because of the camera. Like, is there anything other than it can take pictures of kids in low light better that you experienced? You know, what's interesting about that question is it either that is the most important thing for you or you don't give a shit about it. There's like no middle ground in whether that is important for you from a camera. And I will say that I just, like Dan, when it's important, I will always go get a big camera. which is what I'm going to do. But that middle ground of like the hundreds of photos we take of the kid every day, which is insane, but we do it.

It's better as soon as the light goes away. Like there was a little bit of a difference where I could say, okay, I know the camera will perform. And maybe it's just because I had them both side by side, right? Like Becky does not want the pro max. She's like way too big. She doesn't want anything to do with it. I'm going to buy the 12 pro because it is a step improvement over the 11 pro

that she has. but between the two, it really comes down to, are you going to turn on portrait mode? Right? Stuff like that. Portrait mode at night, it's going to be substantially better than the 12th pro. That is the tiniest edge case

inside of already a very sharply set off use case that some people really care about and some people don't care about at all. Some people have pets. Yeah, but so the movement, the slight increases at the edge cases that doesn't translate into feeling more confident and willing to take a photo in the middle, right?

It doesn't translate to better photos in the middle, but does it, like, you're just like human feel of taking pictures on the phone? It sounds like it's basically the same, but you're more willing to do it in some of those edge cases. Yeah, I mean, I would put this into the context of the price. The phone is $100 more than the 12th pro. Right. For that, you get a substantially improved battery life, and you get a camera that will perform better in low light. And you get a ping pong paddle in case you get that at home. I was thinking a life raft.

Right. If you're ever in danger, you can ward someone off with this phone just by brandishing it at them. Yeah, I mean, like for the money, for an extra $100, like, yeah, I think that's worth it. But the size, I think this is going to be a unique cycle for Apple because people can't just go hold the thing as they might have felt comfortable doing before. And, you know, if you can find a way to do it safely, you should do it. But it is big. And I think if they get any bigger than this, we are going to say it's too big. It's not quite too big yet.

you know like it's right there where people can disagree a little bit bigger and everyone will be like yeah you're you're over the line a little bit bigger it's an iPad mini right it's like a little bit bigger from 6.7 is seven yep that's like you're in tablet territory so yeah I don't think people should buy it for the camera alone but I think the combo of the camera and the battery life more than justifies the price premium. One thing as a camera nerd, and I know a lot of people were very interested about this, we had a bunch of questions about this. With the bigger sensor, when you think about that with traditional cameras, the larger sensor, it usually gives you a shallower depth of field, so it's easier to blur your background and things like that. But we were discussing it,

it didn't really encounter that much in normal day-to-day photography, did you know it? Like, the sensor site didn't make the depth of field dramatically shallower. Not it's shallower not dramatically so And I think we saw it with the other phones of gigantic sensors They had issues focusing Not so much here And I think it just comes down to The sensor isn't quite that much bigger

It's a little bit bigger But yeah, it's there Especially if you have something close to you in the foreground And there's a lot in the background But anything in that middle distance It's about the same In a way that a middle distance With a long lens on a DSLR

You would still get that dramatic background blur I would not say it's in, you'd still need to turn in portrait mode if you want that to happen for you. Other than that, you know, it's like, it's an iPhone. It's gigantic. Is that enough about the Macs? Should we talk about the Macs? God, it is so confusing. Yes, we should take a break and we come back and talk about M1s.

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Grammarly.com. We're back. We want to talk with the M1Max, but We just figured something out that is completely wild. So you don't know this because you're listening to this on Friday, but we were 30 minutes late to recording today because everyone's Macs just lost it. I have three Macs here. All of them just like wiped out. It was like, am I just having the worst computer day of my life? Andrew's computer, our producer, his computer is crashing.

Dieter's yours were crashing. Hi, I think you said yours crashed. Yep. I couldn't, I just like couldn't open an app for a while. it was a disaster, and now we know why. Haim, explain what is going on. So apparently, so Apple just released Big Sur this afternoon at 1 p.m. And apparently there are so many people downloading it, and it's such a big file,

that it just wiped out one of Apple's servers, which is a key thing, which is this OCSP server, which is what it uses. It's the certificate that it uses to authorize basically all the programs and services on your Macs. Like when you open, like, you know, iTunes or Apple Pay, your computer goes to Apple. one was like, hey, is this real before it does it? And then that server, that certificate, gives it a nod back and it's like, yeah, that's good. So Big Sur's rollout, hose that whole thing for at least some time. It looks like it's still coming back now. And like huge chunks of apps and services just couldn't launch or had difficulty connecting so they couldn't do anything.

And they had difficulty connecting in a way that wasn't clear what was going on because it was this subsystem of macOS validating certificates sort of like in the background. The icon would just bounce in your dock. Like the app should be working on your computer, but in the background, it's like frantically waving at Apple being like, hey, can I do this? Like, like, and Apple's just like, don't know. How many times in the version of our chest are we talked about whether our computers belong to us?

This is my Macs are in 2015. Yeah. It's mine. There's, you have no claim on it, people. it's a mine. If you turned Wi-Fi off, everything would have worked fine. Because if it can't hit the server, it's like, eh, it's probably fine. But it's, I, the one who downloaded Chrome, I told the computer ages ago, this is my, yep, I want to run this app.

I don't care that it came from the big scary internet, Apple. And regardless of the fact, I'm launching it, and it's asking Apple for permission to launch. Can't take that risk, Neelai. One server is like, I don't know, I'll get back to you. And my computer is, like, right. That's right on the other side of the line of how much control do I want to give an operating system vendor. That is a great segue into what we're about to talk about.

I'm just saying that's crazy, right? That like, yeah, I get it. Apple Web Services go down, Apple Pay and messages and all that other stuff that I sort of understand it. Yeah. I mean, this happens with- I can't launch an app on my own computer because Apple is, their servers cannot give me permission is insane. Yeah. I mean, this happens with app stores.

Like, this has happened before with, like, iOS things with, like, Facebook certificates. Like, companies do screw this up. It's just bad when it happens on, like, a computer level. Yeah. But I didn't download Chrome from your dumb app store, I'm. You've got to be sure, though. There was no way to know that this was happening. The icon would just bounce in your dock.

And, like, you were trying to open it. And it just, the system didn't tell us anything. We're all freaking out. We're in Slack saying, I got a reboot. I got a reboot. Like, nothing's working. And then, like, eventually we got Zoom to open or Chrome to open. And it's just like...

The lesson here is that people just need to, like, chill when downloading their software updates. If you tried to install Big Sur today... I don't think that's the lesson. That's not the lesson. We're not blaming the customers here. Sorry. I'm blaming really myself because I could not install Big Sur today.

I mean, the lesson is fail gracefully. Setting aside, and you shouldn't, the idea... of my computer shouldn't need to get Apple's permission for every single app. There's this whole question about notarizing apps and blah, blah, blah, that has been increasing with Big Sur and, like, what are the permission prompts? And is Apple asking, you know, you to approve things too often? There's all this stuff. But even if you are like, you know what, all that stuff is fine.

You shouldn't, but even if you are, there's still the issue of things should fail gracefully or they should degrade gracefully. So they should either tell you what's happening. in a clear way, or they should just work. And if the thing, like, borks in the background, but otherwise everything is fine, it should keep going, you know? Like, it can't reach the server. It'll be like, well, he still wants to launch the app,

so we're going to let him. The opposite of failing gracefully is that whatever happened on my MacBook Pro was so upside down today that for a while it just insisted it didn't have a keyboard. You got to check with Apple's server for the keyboard, Neely. I mean, come on. It was like, where's your Bluetooth? keyboard and I was like it it's right here it's not Bluetooth and then it it just sort of came back I don't really be sure on that on on the servers the worst I'm having like a full give my let my

machine be free moment yeah I'm done with this I'm running Linux this is the year of the Linux desktop we have a great how to up on the site if you've got a laptop that you would like to run Linux on from now on I'm running the verge from that $400 S-ray pie keyboard You can't stop me. How does that thing run Zoom? Is it good? Okay. Speaking of extremely locked down computers fully controlled by Apple,

there was an Apple event this week. There was the last one, I hope. He said Tim Cook at the end was like, we'll be back next year. And you could see the relief over his face. That dude's going on vacation. So they announced three new machines, but really what they announced was their new processor,

the M1 chip that is in a new MacBook Air, which completely replaces the existing MacBook airline. It's in a 13-inch MacBook Pro, which replaces only the bottom end of the 13-inch MacBook Pro line. You can still buy Intel MacBook Pro's. And the new MacMany, which again replaces the bottom end of the MacMany line. You can still buy Intel MacMannys. From what we can tell, Apple is insanely confident about this chip. Haim, what do we know about the M1?

All right. So M1, it's an arm-based chip. So it's not X-86. It's based on, you know, different architecture entirely than Intel. It's the same architecture that your iPhone uses, that, you know, Qualcomm, Snapdragon, chips used. But it's in a computer, which is a thing we've seen before. Qualcomm has made, you know, the 8cx. It showed up in a couple Windows laptops.

There's the custom SQ1 and SQ2, which is in the Surface ProX. But this is Apple's first shot at it, which is interesting because we haven't actually seen this as, like, a high-powered thing. It is usually in ultralight devices. It's in tablets. It's in phones. It's in, you know, the Nintendo Switch uses an arm chip. But the idea of using an arm chip for something in a powerful laptop or desktop is not a thing we've seen. As a chip, it's actually like fairly by the numbers in terms of just like what Apple is doing here.

It is a five nanometer process, which is, you know, a smaller process than we're using on, you know, any mainstream X-86 laptop. Intel is still at the 10 nanometer node, AMD with TSM is at 7 nanometers, which means you can fit more transistors. This has 16 billion. It's a lot. Not really a number you care about. It is an 8-core CPU, but it's not an 8-core CPU in the same way that, like, Intel is, because it uses an arm big little breakup. So it has four high-performance cores. So it's four big cores that do, like, the real beefy processing.

And it has four high-efficiency cores, which are more efficient but less pay. powerful. This is, again, extremely standard across arm. Your Snapdragon phone already does it. Your iPhone already does it. But you get benefits on the computer. So Apple's making a boatload of big claims. They're saying, you know, it's the best CPU performance per watt of any, you know, CPU core. It's the world's fastest CPU core for the high performance core. It has a second integrated eight-core GPU, which Apple says is the fastest integrated graphics, which is a big deal because AMD and Intel both just release like big new laptop chips this year that they claim have super beefy integrated graphics. So Apple is really pushing this as like a big thing, which it kind of has to be because

otherwise why would they be dumping Intel in the first place? So one of the things that is difficult here, Deere pointed out first in the live blog and he's been tweeting about is Intel and AMD are vendors. They have to sell their products to other people to make computers out of. And that means there is just a wealth of information about their products on the market. Right. There's white papers and tests and reference designs. Like, if there's something you want to know about an Intel chip, Intel has produced that

information in a regularized, systematic way for like a decade. Yeah. Except for their product names, everything about Intel is clear and obvious. You can just go look it up. Yep. And it's the same for AMD. It's the same for Nvidia. Right.

Like they are their customers evaluate information to make buying decisions about computers. Yeah. Apple does not have customers in that way. So what we actually know about this chip is significantly limited. It comes down to one graph without labels. That's what it is. It is one power versus performance graph without labels. No, there is one label on it.

Somewhere on there it says 2x or 3x in the middle of the graph, but there's no X or Y access. There's no extra, there is one label on the X-axis at 10 watts. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's the only number. That's the one number is it's two, two times the CPU performance at 10 watts compared to an unnamed latest PC chip. Which has got to be Tiger Lake, right?

Maybe? I don't know. We don't know. That's the thing. They didn't label it. Name names. Yeah. So we don't know.

This is such a Bezos chart, right? Like, yeah, it's bad. I would say that it's probably not Tiger Lake. if only because there are no Apple devices with Tiger Lake yet. And all of their comparisons outside of this chart were to previous Macs, previous errors, which were older generation. All I'm saying is Steve Jobs would get on stage and he would put up a picture of a Dell laptop and be like, this is the 13 inch Dell whatever by the model number.

It was engineered by Steve Dell and it sucks. Right? And he would just do it every time. And like now Apple's like the highest selling PC and it's price band. And we're like we don't what what firm are you measuring that? Did you just did Craig stand in a Best Buy and count? Like where is this information coming from? So we don't know what I do know.

And this is actually very funny. We asked, I said, are you playing any games with this chart? Is that is that a log scale? Is it? And so we were told the chart is linear. And so I tweeted out the chart's linear. And already there are YouTubers who are. like doing the geometry to figure out the max TDP of the chip because you can just since you know

you know where zero is and you know where 10 is you can just like make an x-axis that is bad um so we don't know a lot about the chip itself but we do know we do know that apple has huge claims about it it's already showing up on geek bench as of the time we were recording it seems very fast but the thing that is the most interesting to me so the macwick air macs MacBook Pro and a Mac Mini. The chip is exactly the same in all three. We asked, it's not like Intel where there's the words core I-5 is like a concept. Yeah.

There is one tiny difference. I think there's a build of the MacBook Air that has seven, that's seven-core GPU instead of an eight-core GPU, and the assumption is that that's just binning. Like, sometimes the chip doesn't get all the cores right, so they just turn off the one that was busted, and so it's a seven-core GPU. Totally normal thing. But I think that's literally the only difference. And that's what they did with the A13Z bionic in the iPad Pro is the exact same thing.

Yeah. A13Z and A13X. 812 is one extra GPU. Yeah. So that's the one difference. But the actual chip die in all three computers is the same. The difference in performance, which I think is interesting, is that the MacBook Pro has a fan. and that lets it have higher sustained workloads,

which was true of the Intel-based ones, too. But I just think that is fascinating that they took the fan out of the air, and that means it's basically moment to moment they're going to perform the same. But if you have some extremely intense workload, the fan is going to let the chip run hotter longer and give you that higher sustained performance.

Right. That's sort of unlike what we expect from chips in laptops over time. Like, it's, that makes sense. Logically, it's how cooling works. It's how performance works. But when you come right down to it, you're saying, I want to buy a fan because I run Photoshop a lot. And that's like the difference.

I mean, there's some other little differences, right, Teeter? I mean, the battery is bigger on the pro. It has a touch bar. Hooray. That's horrible. And the screen gets brighter. It's like those standard differences. But the chip is the same.

It's just whether it has the fans. And in fact, There might be other similarities, like, down to, like, the logic board. Like, one of the things that they've done here is their shared memory between graphics and the CPU. And so there's, like, I don't know, less duplicating of that or whatever. But the whole thing, they've been able to put more into the system on chip. So, like, there's no longer a separate T2 chip for handling the secure enclave and touch ID and whatever else. They can put more stuff in a smaller area.

They don't need to duplicate stuff across, you know, a big old mum. motherboard or whatever. I'd be very interested to see the tear downs on how different the, you know, logic boards are across these two laptops. If it's just like one has aluminum for heat sink and one has a fan. Yeah. And obviously the other difference notably is the battery life claims. The MacBook Air on a video playback test, which is not realistic, says 18 hours, 15 hours of web browsing that's up from 11 hours. I reviewed the last MacBook Air, did not have great battery life. To me, it was more like five hours. hours of realistic real-world use.

So a big jump up to 18 and 15. We'll see how that translates. And then the pro has bigger batteries in it. They're saying 17 hours of web browsing up from 10 and 20 hours of video playback up from 10. So that's a doubling if you are the sort of person who watches 20 straight hours of video on your laptop. So Julia, I think, is that person. To be clear, we asked, and the batteries have not increased. that's the same batteries on both these laptops as the Intel models.

Yeah, and one of the sort of interesting stats that Apple gave out was 4X the number of code compiles on a charge, which is not a measure of battery life. It's a measure of efficiency because what you're doing is you're killing that battery much faster. So it's like if you think of the battery as a total sum of energy and you're going to drain it really fast, Apple's like the combination of efficiency, of power efficiency and performance means you, able to do four times of that kind of work on a single battery charge, which is a different way of thinking about power and performance. But they're trying to come at this.

They're just very proud of the fact that they architect their chips as performance per watt is the key metric versus clock speed or whatever else. In terms of Apple's confidence, there's one more thing that came through in the event, but really came through in and talking a little bit after. It's not just the way you think of Apple being really good at stuff because, like, if you just run Apple software. Like, if you just run Safari, you're going to get great battery life. This also is running Rosetta 2, which is their translation layer for Intel-based apps.

Apps assume there's an Intel processor there. And they are very confident about those apps as well. If you just go rewatch the presentation when they, like, show Rosetta 2, it kind of flies by. And I'm really bummed that this wasn't live because I really wanted to see, like, actual live demos of this stuff instead of pre-recorded, you know. But it seems like they just are not. not going to tell anybody that they're like, oh, yeah, no, it'll be bad in this one way. There's no hint anywhere that there's a problem, which is like. Yeah, they said some Rosetta 2 stuff works faster on the M1 than on Intel stuff,

which is like a huge claim to make for emulated software. And I'm... Let me tell you, over in the Windows arm world, there is nothing that runs faster on Windows arm through emulation versus native. So definitely we were like, what about Chrome? Do you test Chrome? But did you test Chrome? But no.

But like billboards descended and like, Safari is a great browser that we think people enjoy. Like they just like the walls went up. So there are some open questions. But Dieter is correct. No hesitation about these computers. And I think the MacBook Air is their best selling Mac. You cannot get it with an Intel chip. You cannot opt out of this processor transition right now.

the majority of people who buy a new Mac are going to get an M1 chip. That is an astonishing amount of confidence. We'll see. Now, there are some limitations here, which are, we'll just see where they're at, right? You can only get this computer with two ports right now, which this is your time to just give up, right? We made a new chip. Like, would you like a USBA port? Are you surprised they left the headphone jack on there?

I could see a world like, yeah, you know, our chip doesn't support headphone jacks. We didn't put the lanes in for analog audio conversion. I put it in a live log and a number of people called it out. I was like, everyone always wants to know. They had it before. But yeah, they look the same, but it's only the low end of the line. So we don't really know. They all top out at 16 gigs of RAM.

They all top out at 512 gigs of storage. the RAM is integrated into that SOC. So you can't add RAM. You can't add RAM to the Mac Mini, which seems challenging. That's a thing people like to do. And in those cases with the Pro and the Mini, their answer is like, look, you can still buy an Intel one.

They're right there. That's the thing you need. If you need 64 gigs of RAM, buy an Intel-based system because that's available to you. That's not a good long-term. Like Apple's thing here is that all the computers are going to be like this or like this in some way in two years. So go buy an Intel Mac is not a great long-term answer for these questions.

But I feel like if you are the sort of person who's like, what I need is a Mac minnie with 64 gigs of RAM, I'm just confident that that's because your work demands a Mac Mini with 64 gigs. It's either that or you run a Plex farm. Like those are your choices. Hey, man, I'm using a Mac Mini with 32 gigs of RAM right now. Because you run a Plex farm. Have you tried running Chrome on a Mac Mini is all I'm saying. No, but I just think that's their, the reason that they're comfortable with that answer is the vast majority of those use cases are professional ones. And in two years, when the transition is complete, you have to assume that they will make

computers a 64 Gs of RAM and arm chips in them. I mean, there's other professional, quote, limitations here as well. You can't run external GPUs over Thunderbolt, even though these have Thunderbolt support. You can't run external GPUs with them. There's no dedicated, discrete GPU support at all in any of these products. So we'll have to see how that shakes out over the next two years. I think it's kind of telling that they didn't release a MacBook Pro 16 with an M1 this year because you can't really release a MacBook Pro 16 that doesn't have a dedicated GPU for video editing.

And so, like, we're not there yet. I would greatly assume that's coming. And for pros, they're just going to have to wait a little longer. That's also like another full tier of processor that Apple then needs to say this is like like Apple's saying this replaces an Intel Y series. This replaces like an Intel U series. That's like a full what was an H series run at like 28 watts. 45 watt. Yeah, the H series is 45 watts. That's it. That's another huge leap forward for Apple to be like this 10 watt chip that we can can crush this 45 watt Intel thing that we like throw in gaming computers. Like but so that the there is a possible future where they, Max don't work with discrete GPUs. We don't need them. Yeah? Like, you can't get a,

just plug a discrete GPU into an iPad. Oh, my God. You can. You're right. And that probably is the future. But the integrated GPUs that are on this M1 chip are not to that level of the whatever radion card you can get in a MacBook Pro 16 right now.

And so I think that's kind of telling in, like, even the 13-inch pro, which a lot of people don't really consider the pro, it's just kind of like a nicer error. The fact that you can still get that with an Intel chip with the 32 gigs of RAM and things like that, they are saying that there are people who would want this level of performance and whatever specs that you just can't get on the M1. But it's a very specific and targeted level of performance.

I think that the thing that I saw, right, what are the big questions that we had? Intel owns Thunderbolt. Will Apple be able to put Thunderbolt on these computers? Well, they made their own Thunderbolt controller and put it on this package. they have Thunderbolt. Will they issue any caveats about the experience of this? They issued no caveats and they put it in their most popular consumer computer. Do they think that they're going to overperform on battery life the way that we think

that iPhones and iPads overperform on performance in the combination of battery life? They are more than confident about that. So like one of the things, like we have to get them, we have to use them, we have to read them, we have to see if all the claims are true. But I think saying like because they released these, at the beginning of a two-year transition, that they won't be able to just replace the AMD chip, the MD GPU.

Like, we don't know. Like, I don't think this tells us anything about that. They replaced their intel chips with integrated graphics. And so every computer where they were shipping that part, they were like, this part's better. Off we go. I think, like, what we were saying, what we see with this lineup,

to your point, Neli, the fact that these are the most popular Macs that Apple sells, the Aqq Air by Farr is the most popular Mac. it's very different compared to what we saw in the Windows world where the least popular Windows laptops get armed computers. And they're high end and they're expensive. The mainstream Windows laptops, even like the Dell XPS 13s that our premium level are not running arm chips. Because there is like when you're using Windows on Arm, you are going to run into a lot of scenarios where you're going to give up performance compared to Intel. You're going to give up app compatibility compared to Intel computers and things like that.

So I think at least a lot of us that have had experience with those Arm Windows computers are, like, rightfully skeptical about this transition for Mac, but Apple is saying they're very confident in it and the way that they're doing it. Not only is Apple saying that, they have gotten Adobe to commit to timelines for Arm on Mac in a way that Windows never has for Arm on Windows. Oh, come on. They really. Like, what's that a time? They're like early 2021 is not a timeline. Yeah. Yeah, they're like, they got Adobe to be like, fine.

I mean, for what it's worth, Microsoft got Adobe to go on stage for the Surface ProX, and that hasn't launched their app yet either. Okay. Believe it when I see it. So we got to get them. I will just say that we had a lot of outstanding questions. Apple was like a little bit irritated that Microsoft and Qualcomm had done such a bad job. They're like, look, we don't have to put that all aside.

like just think about these computers as they are so we got to get them we got to see if these claims are true but as always apple is very confident um and again you just go on the geek bench website and see apple employees are getting their computers running the benchmarks uh that's what it seems like and uh the numbers are pretty good so we'll see how it goes we got to take a break we got one more apple thing to talk about and then maybe maybe tim cook will let me run applications on my computer again we'll be right back This show comes from What Not. Whether you're selling online or out of a storefront, you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

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start building at MongoDB.com slash build. We're back. Dan Seaford. Yes. You reviewed the most diminutive Apple computer. Yeah. That's not true. The watch is the most diminutive.

One of the least expensive Apple products you can buy right now. Yes. The HomePod Mini at $99. What do you think? I think it's great. I think it's good. I shouldn't say it's great. And I'll get explained to why.

But I think that if you are been waiting for an Apple ecosystem smart speech, that, you know, you could buy a couple of, put in various rooms of your house, and use it to listen to music, weather reports, whatever you do with a smart speaker, the HomePod Mini works great. It's really small. It's really compact. It puts out a surprisingly good sound for its size, and it supports out surprisingly good volume for its size. And compared to the Echo Dot and the Nest Mini, which are other small smart speakers,

it basically wipes the floor rhythm. That all said, it costs twice as much or more as those. You can get a Ness Mini for like $25 any given day. So you can buy four of those for the cost of one HomePod Mini. And when you compare a HomePod Mini against what Amazon and Google are selling at the $100 point, it doesn't compare that favorably. The HomePod Mini sounds very good for its size. Next to a fourth-gen echo, it does not sound that great. It's not as loud.

It doesn't have the base, doesn't have the presence, doesn't have the sounds. stage. So that's like on the sound side of things. Then over, of course, it's a smart speaker, so it runs Siri. Siri's gotten better. And believe it or not, Nil, I'm going to blow your mind. You reviewed the original HomePod two and a half years ago. Yeah. Siri can now do multiple timers. Yes. They hired that guy from Google. No, they hired Gene Andrea from Google. And he was like, y'all, I brought some AI stuff with me. It's two timers at once. Here's the thing, though. The phone still can't do it. You're not in the watch. Listen, listen. Baby steps.

No, it's the fastest processor in the world, dear. So it's still Siri. Series's gotten better over the years. You can do multiple timers. It can do individualized voice responses. One of the biggest criticism we had against the original HomePod was that I could walk up to Neelai's home pod and send a text message from his phone. The new one will know that Neelai's not speaking.

The original HomePod got this update as well. but now with the HomePod Mini, it's there. I did run into some bugs with it. It identified my wife's voice versus my voice. However, it didn't know her name and called her supported user one. I could not fix that bug. I still have to figure that out. Are you going to refer to her a supported user one from now on?

Is that going to go well for you? I don't think it is. I don't think she's talking to the HomePod much anymore. This right here is why I don't trust my HomePod in my apartment with roommates. I have that feature turned off. Yeah. I mean, I always say that it's good that they made it. It's good they're being more aggressive with the price.

I just think they should make one with the screen. I think this is the miss. This isn't the place to win. I think you're right. It would be great if there was one with a screen. I would love to see, and this is the thing that I don't know if they're ever going to do, but maybe they will is like just better cross-platform support. Because right now, a HomePod Mini is effectively an accessory to your iPhone.

You need an iPhone to use it. You need an iPhone to set it up. You need an ICloud account set up to use it. And it really still works best with all of Apple services, which was what we said the first time around. Apple music, Apple Podcasts, Apple Books, et cetera, so on and so forth. Apple Calendar. They are making very small steps towards opening that up. You can use Pandora as the default service on it now.

That's what everybody wants. It's just Pandora. You know, Spotify is Spotify going to build a? support for that. We don't know yet. Every time we ask, they kind of give us a shruggy. So like, every time you ask Spotify, they're like, please refer to the number of lawsuits we have filed around the world. Spotify's responses are like, we oppose Apple's, you know, gatekeeping policies. Yeah, it's very harsh. Yeah. So are you going to get other services on there? It really, like, Apple, it doesn't seem like Apple is doing the legwork to reach out to other service providers and be like,

hey, please build us for the home pod. We'll help you out. Whereas we know that Amazon and Google have done that. And that's why the Echo supports basically every music service you can get. And the Nest audio supports almost every single one. So it doesn't feel like Apple is doing that. They're just saying, we put these tools out there. They can use it if they want. No big whoop sign up for Apple music. Yeah. You know, one thing that is just surprised me. Right. We moved to the woods. We have a house. I keep buying dumb smart home stuff. We had this big fear, I don't know, two, three years ago that sort of your voice assistant would dominate the ecosystem that like whether or not you bought an Alexa device or an assistant device or a Siri device HomeKit that would sort of

filter into everything and you get this lock in and I'm realizing I have all this stuff and I run HomeKit and Google Assistant just simultaneously they don't they don't bother each other they seem to work fine everything interoperates that was a fear that just hasn't come to pass what's very interesting about that is with very few exceptions. I can think of one manufacturer of HomeKit accessories that doesn't support Alexa and HomeKit or Google Assistant, is that if it supports HomeKit, it also supports Alexa and it also supports Google Assistant. Like if you get something that supports HomeKit, you're almost guaranteed it'll work with anything. But if you buy something that supports Alexa or supports Google Assistant, there's not a high chance that it

also supports HomeKit. If you are anticipating using a HomePod Mini as a smart home controller, really have to do your legwork and buy smart home accessories that support home kit. And they're out there. There's like, you can get door locks and lights and fans and smart switches and blinds and like most categories that you can think of, but you're going to have fewer choices within those categories of devices to choose from. Whereas like Alexa and Google Assistant are huge. But Dan, there's really good news. All these problems are going to go away. You don't have to worry about it anymore because the HomePod Mini supports thread. The most important standard.

It's also on Euros. It's on Google. Like, thread, it's happening. This is the year that thread is good. It's the year of the Linux desktop. It's the year of thread. I'm telling you. There's like one LED light that supports thread.

So like thread is actually really interesting and I didn't get into this in the right now. We're done. That's the Vergecast everybody. You can, the one person who wants to know about this, you can call Dan directly. You'll explain it to you. Thread is the product of the chip. Initiative, the connected home over IP, which Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, all the big names are part of.

And they've done a lot of, like, releasing press releases about it. But we haven't seen actual, like, products come out as part of this chip initiative. Thread is, like, the unifying factor that they've all agreed to. And it's very interesting that Apple is, like, the first one to release a device in terms of a smart speaker that supports thread. And we say, very interesting. on the scale of a server failed that every Mac in the world stopped working and Apple supports a radio standard where would you place a very interesting I would say that it is interesting in terms of you know nobody else

has gotten thread pickup yet that's true to go Google actually had it in its early early on hub routers it has it in the the latest Google Wi-Fis or Ness Wi-Fi's I don't even know if it's turned on in those at this point yet, but it couldn't get any pickup. ERO has had it in all of its routers for the last four years. It couldn't get any pickup. The CEO of ERO, Nick Weaver, will tell you it's going to happen. And we've asked them over and over again. So Apple puts it in the home pod.

And what do you know, nanoleaf releases a light bulb that supports thread. Ever, all that means is that Eddie Q is an investor in nano leaf or something. Like, come on. That's whatever. It's, look, thread is real. So, like, anyways, what thread is a smart home protocol? I can't make it stop. I've been trying so hard.

You get one sentence. It lets it connect instead of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. There you go. That's what Threat does. Anyways, HomePod Mini. If you live in Apple's world, it sounds pretty good. It's easy to use. It's nice and small.

It fits in a room very easily. You'll probably be happy with it. I will give the same advice to Apple and Amazon. For Apple, it's, you have. have a photo service that people like to use and you have great cameras in your phones make one with a screen people will reward you with amazon they made one with the screen they have an absolutely garbage photo service they can't even like give it away the thing is like amazon photos is free with your prime membership well no so here we go so this is our last little bit uh google's gonna start

charging for photos yeah which is a product people love i actually think it's like a sign that Google won't kill photos. Like they realize, I think they've realized two things. One, no one knows what Google One is or why it's valuable. Yep. So they've just glued their most popular, outside of Gmail, most popular service to it and said, if you need storage, you can get it. They're trying to do it in a responsible way.

There's a 15 gig cap, but any photos you have uploaded don't count towards it. Yeah. The 15 gig cap starts on June 1st. Starts on June 1st. They're going to help you delete crap, blurry photos, long videos, and all the stuff. They're going to try to help you do that. And then if you need more, you got to pay what, like, two bucks a month. Two bucks a month gets you 100 gigs, I think.

And then the tiers go. There's a 200 gig tier and then it's one terabyte, two terabyte. Although, it's like 150, 150 terabytes if you want. That's the world you live in. So the argument here is that Google killed a bunch of promising photo startups by making photos free. Now they're all dead. And Google's like, we're going to charge for this.

Do you remember some of these photo start-ups were great by like Everpix was a big deal when it launched. We were really into it. I loved it. And it like, it lasted not very long. Because Google Photos is free. And now they're all dead and Google's like, here's the money. So I'm just saying, karma suggests, Jeff Bezos, if you're listening, this is the time to launch your killer free photo service and stick it to Google and be like, isn't this the reason to own a Google home? the best reason I own a Google home

instead of an Alexa device has gone away. I'm just, I don't know how vindictive Jeff Bezos is. I have an idea. This really feels like that, like, you know, the image of the big fish eating a small fish and then the bigger fish I was just saying. But that's my advice about Apple and Amazon

is that the opportunity with these devices in your kitchen is photos. And both of them have missed it. and is where Google is far, far ahead, and Google is creating an opportunity. So just putting that out there. Okay. I wanted to mention the people vaping into their Xboxes, but here's what you need to know. There was a hoax, and then poor Microsoft had to release a tweet being like,

don't blow vape smoke into your Xbox. Yeah. I don't want to encourage hoaxes. I don't want to encourage vaping. I don't want to encourage blowing anything into an Xbox, especially smoke. However, there is something about this whole story that just kind of warms my heart it's a delight yeah if like we're gonna have like disinformation and vaping and this is where you want it to be that happened uh i just i can't not mention it we were

going to talk about big sir but the only thing to talk about big sir is that everyone's computer has died because of Orwellian gatekeeper software it's literally called gatekeeper yeah I'm dying anyway that's it we've gone over I'm not going to tell you by how much you'll just have to guess we're running decoder on Tuesday in the feed is the interview episode next week it's Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, the online learning platform. We had a really great conversation about online learning in the pandemic, as you might imagine. Check that on Tuesday. We'll be back next Friday with the chat show. On on it goes. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Deeders at Backlon. Dan is D.C. Seifert.

Heim is Seagartonburg. That's it. Rock and roll. Wear a mask.