Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - A Portless iPhone Chat with Mark Gurman, $500 Airpods Max, & Samsung's Disappearing Charging Brick

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

As we prepare to wrap up the longest year in history, 2020, we discuss several of the latest tech news stories: Apple releases their insanely expensive $500 Airpods Max, Samsung might not include a charging brick with the Galaxy S21, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman joins us again to talk about the potential of future iPhones being portless! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganell https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh https://twitter.com/markgurman Portless iPhone Video: https://bit.ly/2Kdk5n8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And it's finally December, which means 2020 is about to be over, one of the longest decades in a while. We're finally getting through it. No, it felt like maybe the fastest and shortest year ever, but we are finally in through it no it felt it felt like uh maybe the fastest and shortest year ever but we are finally in the home stretch yeah it was a weird year because i mean you came in every single every day the rest of us had through four months off right yeah and you had to do a bunch of wow we moved into this studio this year like a lot has changed a lot has gone down a lot of things happened this year just like on the channel which is pretty 100 so in today's episode we're going to talk about a

little bit of the year-end stuff the blind smartphone camera test bts we're going to talk about galaxy s21 possibly not shipping with a charger brick then we'll get into apple's new 550 airpods max headphones and we'll talk Apple Silicon. And then at the end, we actually have an interview with Mark Gurman, where we just talk about iPhone 13, possibly not having a port, and what that could mean for the rest of the industry. So let's just jump right in, straight from the top. You have any content you liked for the last couple weeks? I have a super quick one. I've just been playing a lot of Valorant lately, and they just had their first big tournament so congrats i was rooting for 100 thieves they won super pumped about that wait okay it was valorant is a game valorant's a game that's very similar

to like counter-strike which i'm sure you've heard of i've heard of it it's like tactical shooter they call it basically like a shooter that's super strategy based um i just got really into it because all my friends got into it and there's a couple players on 100 thieves that i really like so i've been rooting for them and they just won the first big north american tournament so oh that's sick is it new like a newish game or yeah probably only like four or five months old okay i'd say yeah so it sounds like if they're already having tournaments, it's kind of getting big fast. Owned by Riot, who does League of Legends, so they know how to do tournaments

and leagues and stuff. Obviously, it's a lot different because it's all virtual, which they do do a lot of virtual stuff, but usually when they get into these big ones, they do LAN events. They couldn't for obvious reasons, but they still made a really good

tournament, right? Knows how to, they get casters, they get interviews, they do everything. They make it as, as close to real sports as possible. Hey, launching something physical is not easy, but launching a game in 2020 is also probably very, very difficult. So props to them on that. Yeah. I want to give a shout out to Spotify Wrapped. I just feel like every year, so I started doing the Spotify Wrapped thing in 2016, but I'm sure it's older than that. But basically it'll just take your whole year of how many music, how many minutes of music you listen to and sort of sort it out and tell you what your top songs were, top artists, top albums, top genres. And it compiles it all into this one really shareable image and this like shareable link and playlist

that people just can't help but share. It's such a good idea. It's like marketing genius. It's pretty great. And I know every year I want to resist like the urge to tweet my Spotify rap and I always share it. I don't know why.

It's great. Every year I like, I look at, I tweeted about this. Every year I look at mine and I go, oh, I can't know why. It's great. Every year I look at, I tweeted about this. Every year I look at mine and I go, oh, I can't wait to see what this is. And then every year I realize how predictable I am. And it's basically the same stuff. But it's still interesting to see and see everyone else. I think I listen to the least music out of everyone here. Yeah, this was the year that my minutes was the lowest it's been in a long time.

Because there was less flights, less travel. True flights. I mean, I'm usually listening to a lot of music, but I only had 40,000 minutes this year, and I'm pretty sure like two years ago I had 75,000, 78,000 minutes. So a big drop-off, but I still – this is the first year that Kanye West wasn't in my top five artists of the year in like five years.

So that's something. That's kind of crazy. I only had 17,000 minutes listened. And is that including podcasts? I think it's just all of Spotify. Just all of Spotify? I forget how many podcasts that I've listened to. This is a year, despite not commuting as much,

I still listen to a ton of podcasts, especially political ones around the election time. So shout out to everyone who had the waveform podcast and their top five podcasts listened to for Spotify wrapped out. We saw those, we saw the mentions, saw you guys on Twitter sharing your Spotify wrapped. A lot of people had waveform number one,

which is crazy. So shout out to you guys. There was that. There were some people who had like it would show uh how many episodes you listen to in a day and some people were out with like six or seven which is so they're binging if you're spending seven hours of your day listening to us i'm saying you yeah i'm sorry that's probably a lot um and like people listening to 26 episodes this year and stuff like that. It's cool to see, actually. So Spotify did a wrapped for podcasters,

which I brought up here that has some cool stuff. Did you get a chance to listen and look at this yet? I have not seen this yet. We'll go through this together really quick. Sure. I love numbers, so this should be good. Numbers are fun. There's some cool stuff.

Let me see. Waveform podcast grew 177% in India. Wow. Shout out, India. So that's more than doubling. Because if it grew 100%, that means it doubled. So it's more than double. Yeah, it almost tripled.

That's pretty sweet for a year. I mean, this is our first real big full year, but that's awesome. Yeah, I guess it's probably comparing to last year, which was started in August, right? Yeah. So first full year. Makes sense. But still, it's 78% in the UK, 60 was started in August, right? Yeah. So first full year. Makes sense. But still, it's 78% UK, 60% growth in the US. So that's pretty awesome.

I think it said we were played in 85 countries. Wow. 85. I can't. Yeah. Honestly, I probably could not name 85 countries. So that's a pretty awesome number. I don't know if I really could either.

Yeah. It's really weird thinking. thinking I mean this is something you've probably thought about for a long time like how where your voice is traveling across the world through YouTube but this is the first time for me I've been like why it's crazy some of the some of the YouTube stats you can really dig down into if you start to narrow it down uh just because of the scale of the channel you'd be like all right this this really popular video how many people uh watch this video who were male ages 18 to 35 living in new york and you can narrow it down it'll be like 3 000 jeez that's a lot you can narrow it down to like how many people male ages 55 to 65 living in nepal uh, you know, between these dates and this time on a tablet with less

than version Android seven, watch this video. And it'd be like 13. You're like, how are there that many of those people? That's incredible. So yeah, the scale of it is pretty crazy. Let's see. There's like one or two more cool things in here. Oh, our, I don't really get, it says our peak position was number three. And I two more cool things in here oh our i don't really get it says our peak position was number three and i'm assuming because later in here it says we were the number three technology podcast on spotify oh this says six most popular in the u.s versus the u.s it's pretty cool i mean even number six is it's pretty wild sorry this feels a little like patting ourselves on the back but i hope you guys uh 1900 minutes 27 episodes that's a i can't

believe we recorded that much and to think about how much we cut out it's i definitely don't talk that much until the podcast and then the podcast is like most of the talking that we do in the week so yeah it's pretty great oh that's pretty cool all right here last that we'll do from this is there are 44 000 people who we are their top podcast they listen to our podcast more than any other podcast that they listen to well i want to give a shout out to those 44 194 people huge pat on the back i don't know if you just don't listen to other podcasts on Spotify, if you just listen to others on others, but I'll take that anyway. Sick. Why don't we talk about the blind smartphone camera test?

It's finally live. Everyone gets to see the results. We've done a lot of discussing about like, obviously, last episode, we talked about the first two or three rounds um and then in the video we obviously talked about our findings from it but i felt like we kind of wanted to go behind the scenes here and one thing we do that it's kind of sad that only we can do this because we're the only people that know the phones and we don't want to ever release it but we do our own march madnessness kind of bracket here.

Oh, yeah, that's great. So we wrote down the bracket, and then beforehand all five of us took the phones we knew and tried to make a bracket prediction. Right, so we all knew what the letters were at the beginning and what all the first round matchups were, and we tried to fill out how the bracket would go. And then as we went through the rounds

and you guys all voted for certain phones and knocked out all our favorites, we slowly lost points and went crazy, but ended up having some pretty decent predictions. Two of you actually predicted the Zen phone to be the winner, which says that we were paying attention in previous years when it lost narrowly. Yeah. That's pretty impressive. So you guys had the most points in your March Madness brackets or December Madness brackets, if brackets yeah i call it that um yeah i think it's a i feel like people probably hearing that two out of five of us got it right seems weird but we've been able to watch this behind the scenes for three years and we watched the zen phone do really well against the mate 30

who was the 2018 winner last year um it it was reasonable to pick it it did have to go against pixel 5 which is tough but we've also watched pixel lose a ton so um i think final points the way we did it was if you guessed first round right one point second round two points third round three points finals four points i wound up with 18 brandon at 13 Marquez at 12 then at 8 and Michael had 2 but Michael had a clear clear disadvantage of all of us have gotten to see this happen for three straight years and this is his first time he's gonna win behind the scenes he's for sure gonna win next year probably yeah yeah I I just found the the iPhone conversation that came out of this so interesting.

Like, there's a lot of interesting conversations we get out of when we publish something that we find that's new like this. And what we've known for the past few years is that when an iPhone takes a picture of me, it's always very blue and very cool for some reason. Something we also have noticed, and I guess noticed isn't the right word, but every one of these years we've done this test, the first round photo has been a photo of me, because we're trying to get as many variables as possible, skin tone, sky, dynamic range, and white balance, and everything. So each year, the iPhone in the first round gets a picture of me, goes to blue, and loses. And this year was no no exception the iPhone 12 pro max was the most blue of probably all of the other phones in the bracket and uh you're trying to kind of figure out why it

might do that obviously the iPhone is one of the best smartphone cameras so why does it go blue what is it trying to do I think the best we came up with was okay it's it's probably trying to saturate some of the cooler hues like a blue sky will look more blue when your photo's overall more blue. And it's just trying to, like, brighten up faces. And there's a really interesting article. I want to say it was either 9to5Mac or something like that where they were talking about why they disagreed with the voters who voted for OnePlus who beat the iPhone. And actually, I understand their reasoning why I disagree. Basically, they were saying the iPhone failed in a more helpful way than the OnePlus photo.

That is to say, the iPhone blew out highlights, lost the sky in the background, but overexposed and brightened up my face, which is the actual subject where a lot of people looking at the comparison saw the blown out background on the iPhone photo and said, ah, this is worse and voted for the one plus when in reality, the one plus photo actually lost some of the deepest, darkest shadows on my face and on my clothes, which were black. And so the, the, the argument was the iPhone actually failed in a more helpful way because you're taking a picture of the person, not the sky. And so I get that. But yeah, that's just always a fascinating conversation. And I kind of wonder,

just now that we've seen this three years in a row iPhone losing, here's been my uh my challenge is i wonder if we could design a test a blind test and try to air quotes here rig it in a way that we know the iphone will win because we've seen it lose very consistently in the same way every year with a certain skin tone with a certain subject but if we continue and take photos with it in other cases it might have won so I wonder if we could design a test where we know it would win might be kind of hard I think it would be hard I think since it's been so consistently losing we could probably find something to cater to its needs that I think it could do really well in but again it still has to go against a lot of phones that process quite a bit more than it does and seem to come to the conclusion of what people like out of a stock photo.

So I still think, yeah, it still would be hard. I think we could get it past the first round. Pretty much don't include a sky. Yeah. And I mean, I almost think change the subject of change the person and probably change a lot of the other colors in the subject to start to be more cool colors. Yeah, things that should go cool, I guess. Yeah, it would be interesting. being the worst and being like cameras fail at it the worst is because it's generally the hardest photo of the whole bracket because when you have 16 phones put together if all of them have an easy

subject it's going to be really hard voting like first round would be really boring if everything was decided by one or two percent which just means it was essentially a coin flip like yeah you have to give some a tough subject in the beginning to watch some things really shine or at least give some things a couple different opportunities to shine exactly so that's a hard one i i don't fault the iphone just because the iphone took a bad picture there doesn't mean it's a bad camera there's a lot of comments that are like of course oh iphone can never make it past the first round it's terrible it's like no that's not true at all I continue to only use iPhone video

for substituting smartphone video on the channel which is I think a pretty big step forward for a smartphone camera to make but yeah it was a fun experiment as it always is and we'll continue to mess with it and see how we can tweak it and make it better we also wanted to talk about

there was that Pocophone video Pocophone M3. And that phone, as we were drafting up like a thumbnail, which we kind of tend to just want to get an idea for a thumbnail as we're making a video. As we're drafting it up, I think Vin was just kind of remarking, hey, it kind of looks like an Among Us character.

And then we all went, wait, it really does. And then it just turned into a thumbnail and a theme for the video. I think it like, yeah, it was, we don't really draw it on the whiteboard very often but like every once in a while someone has an idea and it's hard to like get everyone else to think the same so you drew it on the whiteboard vin said oh that kind of looks like an among us character and then i was like wait a minute but and the whole basis of this video is that the price tag is kind of weird and suspicious.

And we were like, oh, my God. It's a theme. Yeah, there we go. We're running. And then we spent like two or three hours just making the thumbnail and the little floaty things. Brandon did an awesome job on all that. No regrets at all. Yeah, I thought that was a fun story that people might want to hear.

And then a real news story here. Samsung S god charging brick there's been this phone has actually kind of leaked a lot more than i thought and i think it's coming out earlier in the year than uh previous s launches they've usually been around like march and now it's moving up i think last one was end of february because it was our last trip yeah and if you look at our calendar we were in in San Francisco at some point in February before we stopped doing anything. So it's leaking like crazy again. It's got this kind of interesting corner camera cutout design where it's not a rounded square again, but it's more, I guess, just push the rounded square over halfway over the edge of the phone.

And it's now separated. How would you describe that? It like blends in with the rail it's like a it's like a little cutout i don't know you you'll know what i'm talking about if you see the the leaks and rumors but the one we're talking about is galaxy s21 not shipping with a charging brick now are they like when they talk about because you know they're gonna have an unpacked event, right? They're going to have to address it, right? I think they just ignore it. I feel like Samsung's the company that just ignores

stuff. I mean, unless they also go the environmental route. Quickly, the rumor that this is coming from, it's been rumored for a while, I think. I think we talked about it in July, that there was a potential rumor. But now, a blog in brazil called tech where i have this oh a blog in brazil called techno blog found some like certifications that specifically said uh will not be sold with a power supply and

this cell phone will not be sold with headphones. So whether that's a regional thing, it feels like having rumors beforehand though and then physically seeing this on paper now, it seems very likely it would not have it. Okay. My hot take is this isn't as bad as Apple removing the headphone jack or as Apple removing the charger from their box.

And the reason for that is, okay, let's say Samsung does all the same stuff, right? Samsung gets a smaller box for their phone. They ship millions of phones. They have more efficiency that way. They ship no headphones like Apple ship no headphones. They just ship a USB Type-C cable. The thing is, most people buying the Galaxy S21

already actually have a USB-C charger. Okay. And that's fine. I think that's fair. I think that's fair to say it's slightly better than Apple, yeah. Now, most iPhone, I know the argument is most iPhone buyers already have a lightning charger,

and that's also fine, but the cable you're're gonna get in the box is probably going to be a usb-c to usb-c cable so in the rare case that you do have to buy a charger you do have to get a charger you have to get a usb-c charger you're more likely to already have one on that android phone than the iphone because apple has only shipped one for one year. So that's why I'm hot take saying it's a little better. Yeah. A little, a little better. Yeah. Well, the reason I think it's, I mean, maybe for the consumer, but on the other hand, two months ago, Samsung was releasing tweets and stuff, making fun of subtle handsets. Oh, but that's right online. That's perfect. But that is quick. The headphone thing was like, it took a year or two for them to make fun of it

and then go against it. And this is like three months. The truest thing in tech is things that have already happened will continue to happen again. And this happened with the headphone jack pretty much right online, maybe a little bit of a longer timeline, but we've all seen the headlines

where like Apple gets rid of the headphone jack. Samsung runs ads for an entire year about how crazy that is and how they would never do that. And in their next phone release, they go, you know what else it has? A headphone jack. And the whole crowd goes, oh, they're talking about Apple there. And that lasted about a year before they got rid of the headphone jack in their very next flagship.

And we're very quiet about it. And I don't think they even, did they even say it in their keynote? That's the question. I don't know, and that's why I wonder if the charging brick thing will be brought up at all or ignored, because they have already publicly, apparently they deleted the tweets already.

Oh, and it's happening. Yeah. It's happening. But that's why I think they're just gonna kind of ignore it because they've already made fun of it. It will make no difference. Well, the thing is. Samsung does not care if they're going to be hypocritical. The thing about like saying nothing is like, you really should say at least a positive because people are going to get that phone and be like, wait, there's no charging brick. But Apple had to see that coming and spin it positively. And it happened to be better for the environment. So,

hey, look, smaller box, sleeker packaging, more efficiency. I think Samsung should at least say that. Like, hey, look at this new Galaxy unboxing experience and have, like, BTS on stage unboxing the new smaller box, and they'll conveniently forget to mention that there's no charging brick in the box, but they'll be very excited about the new smaller box. I think that's how it goes. Okay, so that's how they bring it.

They don't physically mention it doesn't have it, but they show it and explain the other benefits around it. They show the new smaller box, they unbox it and they go, wow, look how great that was. And then they all go, all right, moving on. No one says. I feel like we kind of agree here. I don't think they're physically going to mention the charging brick, but yeah, it does make sense that they would show something like that. it's it's and i think i had a pretty bad take on this previously with apple um i was like pretty into defending them with their environmental stance but i i was wrong i was just straight up wrong it was a bad take um i saw a really great quote lately which was a smart person i'm'm paraphrasing, but a smart person has two answers

to why they did something, the good answer and the real answer. And for Apple, getting rid of the charger, the good answer was, oh, the environment, which is technically true, but they had a real answer behind the scenes, which was dollar dollar bills. Well, yeah.

I think it's also not like totally fair to say it's just Apple. It's every smartphone company. Apple just seems to be a little, they seem to pioneer the profit first. They should all be thanking Apple. Yeah, honestly, all these companies should be thanking Apple

for like catching the beginning of the flack and then. Because do we really think Samsung would have gotten rid of the headphone jack first if no one else had done it? It might've taken them much longer. I think the headphone jack was like more of a like commitment to getting rid of it. Like a charging brick doesn't seem that crazy, but like a whole headphone jack that just seemed like such a staple in a phone to get rid of it. Seems pretty important. We'll talk more about it. You just did a whole video actually, portless iPhones, about selling solutions. So that's what Apple does well.

We'll talk more with Mark Gurman about that at the end of the episode, but that's definitely a thought that goes through our minds a lot. Okay, let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk about some very, very, very, very live chat. It's convenient and affordable and can be done from the comfort of your own home. Having someone to talk to is truly a gift, especially during the holidays. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. This holiday season, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is counting on your support.

CAMH is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality. And they've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher. You can help create a world where no one is left behind. Donate at CAMH.ca slash donate now from December 23rd to the 31st, and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact. All right, let's talk headphones. We got a little one more thing from Apple. After their one more thing announcement, we got another thing,

which is a very strangely announced two week before Christmas, a new drop of headphones. They're called AirPods Max. So they're over-ear, noise-canceling, wireless headphones. They look kind of like those big magnetic, planar magnetic headphones, those sort of classic older design. Yeah, they remind me like...

But like a little more modernized, and they have a couple colors now, the same colors as the iPad Pro, black, silver, green, blue, pink, and they retail for $550, which immediately, of course, sparks this outcry. There's a lot to talk about here.

We have the headphones now. We've dropped our first impressions video. It's a surprisingly, like I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people are talking about a new expensive Apple product, but it's just a confusing launch that they would just quietly drop this new thing.

First of all, how do you feel? Does the name, do you hate the name? The name is the first thing I want to talk about. We're talking about this earlier. AirPods Max. I really liked the rumor of airpods studio yeah i think that made way more sense whether they eventually come out with like a pro grade version of one later which i can't imagine how much more that would be for maybe like people in the studio or

pro users yeah um but airpods max seem weird and i think the reason I have an issue with it is for so long we've heard Apple basically replaced the word buds with pods on everything. Like we're used to ear buds. They've called them AirPods, ear pods. So I just automatically assume pod meant bud. I think you're not alone. So now it's over ear.

But then we talked about how there's HomePod and HomePod Mini mini so does pod just mean something that plays audio i think pod just means audio product for apple so we have air pods we have ear pods we have home pods and this is home pod this is air pod max so air just means wireless i guess um yeah i mean that makes sense there you got one out of the three words so air pod max air means wireless pod means audio and max means big. All of these things are true, including the price. They're going to be an air pod mini. I want to talk about what I think is coming next,

because I actually think there's a conversation there about like the, the Tesla strategy, but just, you know, first impressions in case you haven't seen the videos, these are like really, really high-quality materials, and they're metal. Most headphones aren't this much metal. They're stainless. I think it's titanium and aluminum. There's definitely aluminum on the cans,

and I think there's either stainless steel or titanium as the frame. They're flexible, but they're also a little bit heavy because of all that. They're very heavy. Yeah, you got to think about what's the typical use case for these? Who are these for? Here's my evaluation of just like them launching $550 headphones like this. I see it as, well, here's the first thing I thought is,

all right, I love Sony's WH-1000XM4s. How do they stack up? Well, let's see. Sony, best wireless noise cancellation is in the business. Check to Sony. I haven't evaluated the sound quality of Apple's yet, but let's just say Sony's got great audio. Yeah, like if we had both on paper right now.

Yeah, Sony's got great audio. Sony's got lighter, more comfortable, just generally like if I want to have them on my head for a six-hour flight, I want the lighter headphones, so they're lighter. Sony's fold-up, and they actually store smaller, which is huge if you're traveling with them in a backpack or something like that. Apple's absolutely don't fold up or get any compact at all.

No, that part's just embarrassing. The case is one of the strangest accessories I've ever seen. We'll talk about that in a minute. I have a pretty big gripe on that. Okay. The case that the Sony's come with is also a hard shell case, so it protects it. So you can toss it in a duffel bag, toss it in a backpack, something like that. The Sonys have a 30-hour rated battery life instead of Apple's 20 hours.

The Sonys have multiple device support. The Sonys have a $200 lower price tag. So on paper, I'm like, check Sony, check Sony, check Sony, check Sony. How would I get convinced to buy the Apple headphones over the Sony's unless I just want Apple headphones? I feel like this is the exact same conversation as when HomePod originally came out. Exactly.

Yeah. Here is a competitor that is cheaper and has a million more features to it. One of them being that just like the thing it does the best that both of them have is miles ahead of the other with google and alexa versus siri right um but then it's like is sound quality going to blow someone out of the water for this enough now the thing is is in a home pod like speaker that competition's not quite as hard because if you want a smart speaker there's not a lot of them these are headphones there are thousands of options out there for very good sounding headphones so if sound quality is your i feel like you have to be in this perfect niche of like apple ecosystem audiophile if they sound like we haven't even gotten to that point we don't know yet we'll know soon but like active noise canceling sleek look stupid purse good possibly good sound quality and like be okay with the like it's past apple tax 550 is yeah a lot of money okay here's my here's my evaluation

of the strategy from apple okay right it's the It's the same as the Pro Display XDR. And this is going to sound like I'm praising them, but I actually feel like there's a good amount of sense to this. I think the smart argument when you see that price is like, wow, it's the HomePod again. They've priced themselves out of most of the market and valued something like sound quality that most people don't care that much about,

$500 that much about. But I would call this like the Tesla strategy, which is they will start with a really high-end product that's overpriced to most people. Most people won't buy it, but it's so that they can establish their technology and then use the profits from that to make a lower-priced version, and then use the profits from that to make a lower price version so you're coming down in price so everyone knows you for your high tech stuff I'm thinking like Roadster and Model S the way they started and then once everyone's established that as like the highest tech the best quality in some way then when you bring out a lower priced

version then everyone can jump on it and it's still kind of premium like Model 3 is still pretty expensive yeah but you've already established your awesome tech at the higher end. And I think audio from Apple kind of works the same way. Look at HomePod. Started off with a $350 smart speaker where really they worked for a very long time on making it sound as good as possible.

Now, most people don't care that much about the sound, but they're establishing themselves as the tech leaders and they're establishing themselves for their quality of sound. So when they finally, years later, make a still premium, but much less expensive version, HomePod mini, a lot of people are more likely to jump in because they've heard good things about HomePod.

So same thing with the headphones. Now you get these $550, incredibly high-end headphones. We've seen articles about how they've been working on these for four years, which is a long time for any company to work on anything in tech. And again, we're going to see how good these actually sound, but basically their focus is to make these, the tech leaders, as good as possible. And maybe in a year or two or three or who knows,

we'll have, oh God, the name, AirPods Pro Max Lite or something. That's like $150 where everyone goes, ah, I heard about the Max. This is going to be where I jump in on Apple's over-ear headphones. It's kind of weird, though, because it's like, I guess in that sense, it would have to be specifically on headphones, not because they already have an audio, a wireless audio solution that's AirPods, which are earbuds, not headphones that went the opposite way. Or did they just upgrade? Like, I don't know. I think most people don't. Did they put the cheaper and then the more expensive or did they just upgrade it while keeping the cheaper ones around i i think in my head maybe i do this more than others but i think of over your headphones

and earbuds as like very separate products yeah i i agree but like in that sense the way they put those out they put the cheaper one out and then the more expensive ones i still think there's room for oh true it sounds weird but a more expensive version of AirPods Max. Like I said, we talked about Studio. I could see a Pro version here where it would make more sense to me having a higher price tag. Yeah, you know, the name is so high now. It is really high. I think the name is maybe throwing us off a little bit.

I think so. But if you look at Pro Display XDR, a lot of this same conversation happened where it was like, all right, what is Pro Display XDR? I think so. group who really appreciates what they've had to spend 40 grand on for a reference monitor for 6k resolution for you know single cable high quality images and accuracy this was like a breakthrough tech and it took apple a lot of work to work really hard to make that display possible and now that it exists if they make a some other display xdr and it's a third of the price, I think a lot more people will hear good things about Pro Display XDR and jump in on that. And I think maybe these headphones,

at the risk of sounding like I'm defending their price, is maybe just like a ton of R&D has gone into this and they spent tons of time and effort to make this very difficult to make thing. I don't know how difficult these headphones are to make i'm sure they are but if there's something to that then maybe eventually the plan is you know these headphones aren't for most people i think we see an apple product and we're like wow apple sheep will buy that too but like it's it's a very not for most people product

and maybe eventually we get a third of the price version that is for more people. So, like, I can, I see that perfectly with the Pro Display XDR, and I think I'm just having a really hard time, and I think this segues into, like, my main gripe on these, is I don't know what the niche is here. Like, what is, who's the target demographic for this because it's not like the pro display xdr is obviously a reference monitor for people who are really like professionals doing video editing and want perfect color calibration whereas this is like it's supposed to be high sound quality but it's not going to match something like your like high grade

sennheisers that are wired and can okay stay with me okay okay so i i compared it in not going to match something like your high-grade Sennheisers that are wired and can- Okay, stay with me. Okay. Okay, so I compared it in the video to the, I have a $2,400 pair of Sennheiser reference headphones. And to me, again, if you're giving benefit of the doubt to Apple in sound quality, which is a lot, but let's say we give it to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then-

I'm on board for giving them okay so then these headphones are a much lighter wireless much more convenient much more technically impressive and feature-packed version of the sennheisers for a fifth of the price and so maybe maybe for the people who are buying those six seven seven, eight, 900, 1200, $1,500 headphones, audiophiles who just want pure amazing audio experience have been annoyed by cables. And maybe there's something to them wanting like a, like an AirPods max version of that experience to like take on a plane. Then I think best case scenario for these are the fact that they have W1 chip can connect to a Macintosh computer for audio and video editing wirelessly and hope that through wireless, it can give you a sound quality.

It doesn't have to be exactly like Sennheiser. You said it's a fifth of the price, but it has to be over. Over certain threshold. Yes, it does. I think my main gripe with them is how heavy they are i don't think they would be great for a long editing session yeah that remains to be seen i'm quickly off the bat yeah just yeah just guessing that um they're they're too heavy i so here's my like this is where i kind of have an issue here and it all comes down to the case.

The case to me feels like a tell of to why I just don't really get these. And maybe that's like why I'm thinking like kind of poorly about them. I hear so many people say Apple is like a status symbol. And it's like it's a premium brand that you buy just out of the Apple logo. And I generally don't agree with that. I think Apple has like a bunch of really, really things they do really, really well. Yes, they're more expensive. But usually I think you get the benefits of paying that extra for it.

And a lot of that has to do with their support. Like going to an Apple store is just something that I think you're willing to pay hundreds of extra dollars for because it's a lot of convenient. Yeah. These, if you're trying to tell me that there's something that these are like meant for the everyday life and like supposed to be for people who are just like traveling and walking around with headphones, the case is just the dumbest thing I've ever seen. It makes sense it doesn't fold up any any better the case if you're trying to visualize right now imagine like a diaper and you just put like one each headphone in each diaper leg and that's it it doesn't cover the band at all which is the softest least durable yeah i think the least that that material on the headband is very soft i think

that's actually gonna potentially have some problems in the future. But it just like it doesn't protect them at all. It doesn't make them any smaller. It holds them together. You can only put it in low power mode if it's in the case, which is just like so you have to use the case. I just like it makes me feel more like this is a product that I could potentially call a status symbol because the way they created that case that they want you to physically hold it like a purse all the time like that feels like a fashion slash like status kind of thing you would be walking around with and you're walking around like I have apple headphones I'm wearing $550 headphones someone's

gonna walk a red carpet with those like in their hand or hey man on the subway take this off my head because nothing is stopping you right now yeah it's like i guess i i see both sides of that case which is when you compare it to any of the cases we use in headphones because here's the thing headphones are an everyday product like apple makes products people use every day they make phones computers speakers people use headphones all the time um when you compare this silly case to like like I said, the Sony Mark IVs where you fold them up, you put them in there, it's a hard shell case. It's protective.

It's compact. Slips in a bag super easily. Slips in a bag. This Apple's version of this case is super stupid. It's pointless, basically. But when you compare it to the $2,000 Sennheisers, which also don't fold and also don't come with any sort of case, you would never really consider bringing those Sennheisers anywhere.

They take much more power draw. You don't just plug them into your computer. You need an amp, a preamp to go up next to them. But these Apple ones, you kind of can bring them anywhere. You can put them in a backpack if you want you can get almost maybe that sennheiser audio experience but you can bring them more places and you don't need a preamp with you everywhere maybe maybe that's something it's gonna a lot of yeah the review is gonna be super interesting of these and i think finding the

target demographic for it will be interesting. I think no matter what, you're gonna see a lot of people wearing them every day as a status symbol. Jeez. I don't think they look particularly great. Just a heads up, if you're planning on like walking around New York City wearing these,

they are not sweat or water or dust resistant at all. So yeah, if it rains, put them away. They're not really- The case will not protect it from it. the case will not protect it will not protect you they're not meant to be everyday headphones at all but because it's apple you're right people are gonna just hop on this and wear them every day and make it a status symbol because hey i've got apple's 500 headphones what you got but i don't know uh this is it's a weird niche product but again i think that this is eventually a long-term play into making sort of like in that

beats level of like 200 wireless noise canceling headphones that you get someone as a gift for christmas i think that's the next move in in airpods i just don't know what they name it so so going on that we want we're kind of interested on like what do you guys want us to compare it to in the review i think it's so easy to pick, would we call them just traveling headphones? Is that the category of quiet comforts and the XM4s? That's kind of Microsoft Surface headphones, whatever. Because I don't think that's exactly,

the more we talk about this, I don't know if that's the demographic it's looking for. It's kind of like when a lot of people went up and compared the Pro Display XDR with like their 144 hertz gaming monitor, which is like, wow, it's got way more hertz and I've got the same, almost the same resolution. Why would I buy Apple's display? It's just not the same target demographic. So it's going to be tough. Again, send off on Twitter or in any comments if you got suggestions. Cool. Also, I just want to toss in there, it doesn't come with any sort of cable. I forgot to mention that. So all of the headphones we've been talking about, like the Sonys and the Bose, all come with a cable.

So if you're plugging into your phone or plugging into the airline jack, you just plug straight in. These don't come with any cable other than a USB-C to lightning charging cable. don't come with any cable other than a usb-c to lightning charging cable if you want a lightning to three and a half millimeter cable that'll be 35 extra dollars for yeah i wonder how long that even is i bet it's like it's probably a meter and a half and if you want uh one of the cool things we didn't mention about these headphones is the removable uh ear cups so that seems really nice yeah just a nice little magnetic removable ear cups. A lot of people in the high-end headphone world do a lot of replacing of old ear cups, and the fact that you can pop them off with magnets, pop them back on is nice. $69 for a pair of new ear pod

covers. For the way they are, I don't think that price is actually as ridiculous as it seems. I've also just really recently learned that when you're getting nicer headphones you should replace the ear cups pretty often yeah i had like my hd 6xx is uh the ear the ear cups have just become a little like ratty over two years um and they were getting a little uncomfortable and then someone told me i should be replaced i think it was ron at main gear said you're supposed to be replacing them because they're supposed to keep the drivers a certain distance away from your ear to keep the sound stage that they're... They compress over time,

but also, they're just less comfortable. If you look at an old pair of body of Technicas, the leather gets harder and starts cracking more. You don't want to use a three-year-old pair of those compared to a new one. But a lot of people will just throw them out and buy a new pair because they're like, wow, my headphones are older, when really the truth is you've broken the drivers.

They're sounding better than they ever will. Just get new ear cup covers and they'll be like good as new. So, yeah, it's a different world out there of high-end headphones. But I guess we've talked that to death. Why don't we talk about something else, Apple world? There's a whole other section of what Apple's been doing this year, which is in the silicon world, which is basically eating Intel's lunch, or I guess I'll just say

they switched all of their low-end machines to the new M1 chips, and the reviews are out, and you guys have seen, they're absolutely crushing. I am still using this MacBook Pro. It's been a couple days since I plugged it in. It's at 76%.

It's crazy. There's new rumors though. And this is something I was looking forward to a lot. We've talked about this. But of the new higher end versions of these chips. Now we see M1 in the lower end one with the integrated graphics. That's all good. Eight cores. So four high performance cores, four high efficiency cores. Now we're talking like, well, what about the 16 inch macbook pro what about the iMac what about the Mac Pro and uh there's a Bloomberg article by none other than Mark Gurman so you'd expect it to be pretty accurate yeah um talking about like what we

might see in the next couple years I guess it's the next two years for what they've planned for this transition um and these crazy high-end potentially i think it says yeah 32 core version of this apple silicon so i don't know if that's the m2 or like the m4 or how long it's going to take to get to that high level but i don't know it just got me feeling all warm and fuzzy i'm so really interested what naming is going to be i think it's going to be like an m1x type of thing in the higher end version but i think when you get to the desktop you got to go like m2 oh like a non-mobile or m10 or just a different branch of m for mac silicon i think m10 or m2 or something like that huh i could be wrong

m2 might be too close to m.2 which is already a pretty common computer oh they pretend that doesn't exist true um i mean it's generally pretty easy to pretend part names don't exist because you have sony out there naming things with 4 000 numbers in it so like apple's never gonna do that but huh yeah naming should be interesting but i'm really interested what these chips are gonna do when they get to the higher end i think that's where we're going to start seeing some i mean obviously crazy numbers but i'm really interested how they deal with uh graphics graphics and ram because like you're seeing it all put together in these chips which at a lower end mobile scale doesn't really matter but you have a mac pro with what 700 gigs of ram right now that's the thing it's so hard like the the whole recalculate

title i really feel strongly about because yes my mac pro has 768 gigs of ram and yes it has these huge dedicated gpus with i maybe it's 64 or 128 gigs of vram each they're talking about uh apple's testing gigantic integrated gpus on these chips with 16 and 32 core graphics parts on the chip which is like i guess you can scale up the integrated gpu but is that the move i still just like i'm wondering if i just my understanding of chips is just wrong like when does it not be considered a chip how big can a chip get before it's not a chip anymore does it have to be standard snack size chip or are we like are we on bite size right now and we're gonna go into real ones it's like family size yeah like what's gonna happen is it our motherboards of the future just going to be like one solid sheet of metal that just like

looks like a giant cpu and i love that it wouldn't need any, no, it'd need insane cooling. What kind of cooler would you put? Oh man, computers are gonna get weird and they're gonna get really cool. Exactly. They are changing very quickly and the next two years of Apple Silicon will say a lot about how Apple envisions

the future of computers and computing. But yeah, I think, what does it say? Apple is working on pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 dedicated cores aimed at its highest end machines these graphics chips would be several times faster than the current graphics modules apple uses from nvidia and amd and its intel powered hardware that's the last paragraph i am i am so happy about that i also find it really funny that do you remember that commercial they did like a year or two ago where there's that girl like sitting in the grass

in her backyard with her iPad and the guy goes, oh, what you doing on your computer? And she's like, what's a computer? And now they're like attacking some of the most powerful computers in the world. So it's like, oh, on this hand, iPad will replace all computers.

On this hand, our computer will replace all computers. Yeah, that's actually kind of funny. I mean, as much as I've talked about iPads being close to computers, macOS Big Sur looks a lot like it's designed for me to use it with my finger. So they are kind of moving in a weird way with that. Do you remember when Windows tried to do that, though? It did not go very well. It didn't. They did tiles. Windows they wanted you to use a mouse with gigantic tiles why i just i mean there are touchscreen windows computers so i guess it's not crazy but it was

an interesting concept but it worked so poorly on regular desktop i just um upgraded my uh father-in-law's computer and it had windows 8 on it before. And I was just like, I don't know how you deal with this every day. Man. Yeah, there's a lot changing in Apple's world, but I don't know, maybe it's time to take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about that last change, which is on their most popular product, which is the iPhone. We're going to talk with Mark Gurman, who wrote that Bloomberg article just about Apple getting rid of the port on the iPhone, the past, present, and future of Apple getting rid of things, how we feel about it, what it could mean for the rest of the industry, because we know they all, you know, sort of follow in those footsteps. So we'll take a quick

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All right, welcome back. So we have a quick conversation with Mark Gurman that I talked about. There was, of course, that recent video on the channel where we talked all about the possibility of a portless iPhone 13, whether we thought it would happen or not. And there's some clips from our conversation in that video. But this, which you're about to listen to, is a full unedited chat. Talk about a lot more. talk about Johnny Ives' role at Apple, talk about what other companies could do in response, how quickly it could all happen. It's a pretty fun conversation, so let's dive in.

All right, Mark, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, happy to do this. Love your stuff, obviously. Appreciate it. So I've had a lot of questions. We've seen sort of the rumblings over the last year or so of all these talks of, yeah, maybe Apple is going to get rid of the lightning port and the iPhone soon. And I figured if there was anyone good to ask about the possibility of this, it was you. I guess I'll just float the idea. When I say that, what do you think immediately? Is there anything that to mind is this is do you think it's definitely happening definitely not happening i i think it's a given this is for sure happening so i've been hearing for years that they want to do this starting with the iphone 10 so when they were developing the iphone 10 uh across 2015 to 2017

the goal was to remove as many of the buttons and ports as possible. So obviously they got the home button out. They got the Touch ID out, replacing with Face ID. And one of the things they wanted to do at the time was remove the lightning connector completely. That was Johnny Ive and the design team's goal at the time. But it just wasn't feasible. Getting wireless charging out of its infancy at low price points in a way that could replace a included cable. It was just not feasible at the time. But now, three, four years later, we're starting to see it be feasible, right?

Like I know you've been using the iPhone 12 for a few weeks now, and I've been using it as well too. And I've only plugged it in a couple of times just for car play, right? I don't have it for any other use case because I have the MagSafe adapter. Wireless charging has been everywhere. I can't count the amount of wireless chargers I have stuffed in my closet and drawers here. So, you know, I think this is something we're going to start to see. I think we'll start seeing a transition away from including the port on some iPhone models probably as early as the end of next year.

So I think the time is right. And they're going to have the magsafe duo coming out as well hopefully at the end of the year i know you've been testing it i haven't gotten my hands on it but if they're able to get that price point of the magsafe down to a point where they can include it in the box they should be able to start releasing iphones with that in the box because it's 40 bucks uh obviously they won't include the power adapter so I think it could definitely happen with MagSafe as the uh as the replacement so first thing is timeline I know we've talked about like I thought seeing MagSafe was like Apple's version of all right we fixed wireless charging this is good enough now uh so you think this could maybe start as early as the next iPhone having no ports? I think it's possible.

You know, a lot of things got pushed back and changed because of COVID. Obviously, the whole air power incident threw a wrench into their general wireless charging plans. I think people don't realize how recently MagSafe came together. My impression is that this was a project that only really took off when it came off the ground at the end of last year, early this year. I mean, I'm sure the sensors and the magnets and such that were in the phone needed to do this. We're already in the design stages and implemented you know well over a year ago but in terms of actually creating that accessory

ecosystem and making that MagSafe adapter I'm pretty sure work on that really only started in earnest at the very tail end of last year or early in 2020 they were really hoping to get air power off the ground before they canceled it early 2019. Okay, so I know there's a lot of posturing that Apple does when they get rid of things. They tend to have an angle for like why they removed it. So when they got rid of the home button, it was these gestures and that was very futuristic. They got rid of the headphone jack and it was more, you know, there's more space in the phone, I guess, for more battery and more parts. And then they got rid of the charger in the box and it was an environmental angle, of

course. What do you think could possibly be Apple's explanation or angle to justify or explain why they wanted to get rid of the port, the last piece you could plug in? Yeah, you know, I think that their explanation for removing the charging port is going to probably be nearly identical to their explanation for removing the headphone jack. Their rationale is probably going to be the same. One, you don't need it. Two, we have wireless. Three, it takes up, you know, valuable space that they can use for other things, whether that's making a larger battery or other little gizmos they can throw in

there, right? I mean, this is what would make sense to me. So my sense is that they're going to add in-screen fingerprint, whether that's in the 21 phone or the 22 phone. That probably, you know, I'm not exactly sure, but I assume that's going to take up a little bit more space inside the phone to have that sensor underneath the display, right? So I would say, you know what, they'll probably be like, this is the trade-off. We're going to remove that port that you probably don't use or need anyways, and we're going to put that under screen fingerprint, a larger battery, better camera, et cetera, et cetera, in the phone. And sometimes these things are not tied to a specific year or a specific model, right? So let's say they remove the charger from next year's phone and they don't add any other breakthrough new feature that takes up more space, right?

What that still does is introduces the idea and the technology of removing that port for when they actually do need the space further down the road. Does that make sense? So they remove the charging port, don't make any changes, maybe year one, but two or three or four years down the road, you start to see, okay, that's what they needed that room for. That's what the charging mechanism took up too much space for. Yeah, I can see that. I guess to me, it looks a lot more difficult to justify buying the phone with no other changes

But no port but that actually brings me to the next question, which is okay you and I we have wireless chargers sitting around You have three or four. I have a bunch, you know, just kind of we can use wireless charging, but does the average person Wireless charge their phone most often. I feel like that's the number one use case of plugging in your phone. I would say the average person probably doesn't use wireless charging. You know, it's still not at the point where it's everywhere. I remember Starbucks, they tried this a few years ago, they were going to put wireless charging pads and a bunch of the tables there, right? I've seen airports do it in some of their areas there. But what Apple's really going to need to do to pull this off is they're going to need to work with their retail partners, others, to really bolster the sale of wireless charging. They're going to need to promote more wireless charging.

They're going to need to work with companies like Falcon and Mophie and others further. And what really is going to need to happen, to be honest with you, is they can't pull this off unless they put the MagSafe in the box, right? going to need to happen, to be honest with you, is they can't pull this off unless they put the MagSafe in the box, right? At $40 this year, I'm sure they can get the margins down at higher quantities to being able to feasibly price it at $20 or $30. The charging cable, I believe, is $10 or $20. So if they only put it into the higher margin, higher priced phones at the beginning, it should be a wash if you take into account the few dollar savings you're going to get on each unit by removing the charging mechanism, not including that cable anymore.

So I would say that they definitely have to include that MagSafe in the box to alleviate that issue. They might also need to lower the price of the cable from $40 to $20 or $30, maybe lower the price of that charging brick as well. But I think, you know, time allows for stronger margins on these products and time allows for lower prices. So I think we'll all even out. Trust me, if they move to a portless iPhone and don't include the MagSafe on the box, you know, I'm going to lose my mind on Twitter, right? So, you know, that would be pretty controversial. And I would be shocked if they did that. But on the other hand, you know that would be that would be pretty controversial and um i would be shocked

if they did that but on the other hand you know they're the same company that said they're moving away for environmental reasons this year but really requires you to go ahead and buy uh that new charger for you know 40 or 60 dollars depending if you get the magsafe as well to really take full advantage of that full power charging. So I guess anything's possible. Anything is possible. To me, it just seems like every phone, every phone has to have some way to get it charged in the box. This year, you know, not having the brick, it's like, okay, you could still have your cable and your old brick or some brick already, and it might still charge.

But to ship a phone with like nothing in the box, because obviously you don't ship a cable, seems wild to me. But again, anything is possible. I'm pretty confident when they do it, they will ship it with the MagSafe in the box. I mean, it would be no different to the Apple Watch situation where they ship the Apple Watch with that MagSafe adapter. You know, one thing they could honestly do is like, you know how on the Apple Watch they have like the cheap and premium MagSafe? On the lower end watches, it has like the plastic magsafe and the higher end watchers it has like the aluminum magsafe i'm not really sure that costs them that much money but maybe they do a plastic magsafe for the phone that they throw into the box right and you know i guess

there's a larger question here right like their connector strategy is just all over the place right right now you have you know this you know you're the one who complains most about usbc they've got usbc in almost all the ipads now they've got usbc in these laptops i feel like just having that connector everywhere would have been fine just just usbc the iphone but hey they're they're working towards something so okay what's uh what's next then? If they've gotten rid of the home button, they've gotten rid of the headphone jack, they're getting rid of the port, are the buttons next? Oof, that's a good one. I don't see how they can remove the buttons,

to be honest. I thought they were going to get rid of the volume, or sorry, I thought they were going to get rid of the vibrate switch, because that seemed like a natural one you could replace i remember they removed that from the ipad i believe it was the ipad i would say the ipad air starting with the ipad air maybe or the one after sorry the ipad air 2 right they removed the switch to go between silent and you can also set it to orientation lock and all that. And they basically made it a control center switch. Or if you press down on the lower volume button, you can quickly silent the phone. So I think that's probably the only other one they would be able to easily remove is

that rocker in terms of the slider for vibrate or ring or silent. I don't see how they could remove the volume up or down or the power button. Right. The other interesting thing to me is data. So right now, as you know, MagSync, it only does charge. You can't do data. So it won't work for CarPlay. It won't work for MagSync.

It won't work for things where you actually have to transfer information. So that's something that's going to have to be solved, whether that's a software change, a hardware change to the phone, or a hardware change to the MagSafe adapter itself. They're going to need to figure out a way to do cable-based data transfer. Just like on the Apple Watch, there's the diagnostic port under the band lugs on one of the sides where at a Genius Bar or AppleCare, I can put a little tool there to connect over a Harper line. So they're going to need to figure out a way for that. They're also going to need to figure out a way to go wireless CarPlay, right? Because lots of people

use CarPlay, but I would say probably sub 10% of CarPlay users have a wireless CarPlay enabled car. And obviously people aren't going to run out and buy a whole new car for wireless CarPlay. And it's like you're an extreme Apple fanboy, right? And even then that's a stretch, right? So they're going to need to either come out with some sort of wireless CarPlay adapter. They're going to need to add data to Magsafe and allow that to be connected to your car but then on top of that lots of cars for carplay at least in my car it's usb2 right whereas magsafe is usbc on the other end so they're going to need to figure those out but those don't seem

like extreme challenges if i were to be honest with you right like those seem like minor fixes that they'd be able to get in with a year's time interesting all right well i guess you know we we brought up johnny ive at the very beginning and this seems like a very johnny ive thing to do which is to to go super minimal and reduce everything uh is this still part of the greater apple vision is to get to this portless slab with a screen even though johnny ve is not part of Apple anymore? I think so, right? I mean, by removing the charging port, that means you're not going to have any open connectors,

any open holes or inputs in the phone anymore. And I know the dustproofing and the waterproofing and all that resistance on the phones are pretty good. But my assumption is if you remove all sorts of holes there, it would make it even better. Obviously, like I said, there's lots of challenges to work through before getting to that point. But none of these things seem like a real barrier to me,

some things that won't be able to make it happen. So I would expect we're going to see at least one portless phone in 21, and they'll probably transition the whole line across the few years after that, at the very least. So I'd be shocked if this doesn't happen. I mean, we've seen the direction of the watch and the Mac and all those charging strategies. I guess the question is what happens to the iPad? My assumption is that's never going to transition, or if it does, that'll be so many years down the road, given the size and it being more like a Mac in that regard. Got it.

All right, Mark, thank you for answering my questions and for taking the time. I appreciate it. And yeah, thank you. Thanks, man. All right, thanks again to Mark Gurman for that chat. Again, one of the most notable and accurate Apple reporters I've ever seen. Obviously, he has an incredible track record.

So if you want to follow more of what he reports on, I'll link his Twitter in the show notes. He writes for Bloomberg. And that's been it for this Waveform episode. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Waveform is brought to you in part with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by cameron barlow