627: Dragged Across the Line

43:45All right. So earlier today, as we record, Apple announced the final entry in the iPhone 16 family, the iPhone 16 E, which was a name I did not expect. That's because you don't read the rumors. This is one of the surprising things. This name, in case people are wondering rumored for a long time although most people had a capital e so rumor mill didn't get the lower casing and actually i was surprised by the lower casing as well but to be clear it's iphone space one six lowercase e is this gonna be one of those things too kind of like like when they used to do s phones where we all just put the capital s even though the apple officially lowercases it i don't know i mean it looks it looks okay being lowercase i think people will mostly go with the lowercase but who knows like that casey uh just said the tagline from this like the final member of the 16 family uh and i heard that i was like the 16 family what is this 16 family you're talking about you released a bunch of phones that phone time and then much later you came up with another phone and you named it similar is this really a family or is this just like a long lost relative well you know the parents you know had a surprise let's say but is it well anyway suffice it to say they they're trying to make this the idea that this is a 16 family and we'll talk about the possible implications of that in a little bit but i was surprised the the uh the the rumor mill so so thoroughly just even on these phones even not like the flagship phones so thoroughly have this phone nailed that we've been enduring weeks of people with physical knockups of this exact phone and again the 16e name leaked a long time ago and it's just boy whoever is just doing all the leaks related to phones it's just covering like every possible base no they're not going to get things like pricing and stuff like that but just everything is leaking so anyway if you don't follow those rumors crossly you could have been surprised but uh know that all this stuff did in fact leak but here we are uh in fact we knew it would be coming out this day and this time as well and so you know There it is.

45:46Apple today announced iPhone 16e, a new addition to the iPhone 16 lineup that offers powerful capabilities at a more affordable price, kind of. iPhone 16e delivers fast, smooth performance and breakthrough battery life thanks to the industry-leading efficiency of the A18 chip and the new Apple C1, the first cellular modem designed by Apple. That was from the Newsroom Post. They did a, what was it, like a 10-ish minute intro video, which was good. I have no particular complaints about it. So let's talk specs. I guess. So it's got an A18, as I just mentioned, with a four-core GPU, one core is disabled.

46:21That's not one of the four. No, normally the A18 has five when they're working, but these ones have four. And I don't think there's any option to get anything different. So these are all four-core GPUs. Yeah, and to be clear, the A18 Pro has six, right? Yeah, A18 Pro is a different deal. But yeah, this is a four-core GPU. It has eight gigs of RAM, as all phones seem to want to have these days. on account of Apple intelligence. This was, I guess, confirmed by Mac rumors via some Xcode spelunking. And then the C1. This is the most power-efficient modem ever in an iPhone, according to Apple, about a chip that Apple designed and built and put into Apple's iPhone.

46:57But here we are. I wonder if we're, are we running, not running out of single letters and numbers? Like, there's plenty of more letters and numbers, but it's like, we sometimes get annoyed that the A chip numbers are close to the phone numbers, but not quite matching or whatever but then you've got things like the c1 out here or just like we're starting from one and so i guess you know in a few years we'll have the c2 and the c3 and the c4 and just keeping track of the all the different uh alphabet soup of numbers especially as some of the numbers are going to be pushing up into you know the 20s and 30s while the numbers are in single digits it's a bit of a challenge but uh yeah i mean i i guess i hadn't mused about what the what the c1 what letter would be on that uh but c for cellular makes sense right yeah this is i mean that's huge like the iphone sc which is now dead and now replaced by the 16e this is not an exciting product in most ways this is not a product that that i think most tech podcast errs or listeners uh care about or even remember exists most of the time but this like the fact that they have a cell modem that Apple made that is in this for the first time.

48:07That is, for tech podcast people, that is probably the biggest news about this release. That's massive. And we'll see how well it works. I mean, that remains a huge question mark, but if this is indeed kind of like the public open beta of the cell modem and then this falls iPhone... what number are we on? 17? 17? If the iPhone 17 family has more entrance in the Apple C modem lineage, this is big. As we mentioned in the past, there's a huge amount of risk associated with Apple making their own cell modem. There are substantial benefits they could reap from it. um so we'll see how this goes but that that to me that's the story of the day yeah so there are the line they gave about it in the video which is case you just quoted here is this is what they're touting for like what why do you care that apple that cell modem is from apple if you don't listen to atp and haven't heard us talk about this for the past five years why do you care um the most power efficient modem ever in an iphone saying this this cellular chip uses less power than any cellular chip we've ever put in an iphone uh and you know less power longer battery life we get the battery life in a little bit so that's the pitch for this you know it's good it's good for you the consumer that apple is making this because we it gives you more battery life which is you know a good pitch um part of the reason they're not pitching much more is because well this is the i was gonna say this is the iphone se well just whatever this is the the 16e i guess the e is for economy all right it's the cheaper phone uh but that means it's not the flagship and so as as rumored um no millimeter wave right it's one of the their first round of you know apple's first celly chip is not going to have millimeter wave it's going to go on the se first as a test bed so you don't ruin your flagship phones this is not a flagship cell modem chip it doesn't have the fanciest of the fanciest cutting edge fastest of the fastest feature that casey uses from his table no millimeter wave at all um they have on the spec page of like what what cellular capabilities does this have and there is just such an incredible alphabet soup of numbers and letters there i had to textually diff it against the 16 pro to confirm that there's no millimeter wave because i didn't know how how millimeter wave would be represented and if you do that textual diff you'll see there's other like bands that are different between them it says 5g nr bands n1 n2 n3 n5 n7 and just goes on up to like n79 then it says fdd lte bands well like these are all very complicated cellular stuff that i do not understand but they list them all and so if you diff them against the 16 pro you can see there are differences and by the way they list them by saying model a3212 asterisk and then they list all the things and they say all models and they list some more stuff the 16 pro has multiple model a something something things because they sell different versions of these in different parts of the world and then there's a little support document saying how can i tell if i have model a3212 which is weird on the 16e because i think there's only one model i think there's only the a3212 there's no second line but anyway cellular is incredibly complicated even just in the u.s it's complicated with all the different kinds of networks uh and so just glancing at what the c1 supports it's not entirely clear how much less capable this is than the qualcomm chip they're using in the 16 pro but i think the one thing consumers if they care about this at all which they probably shouldn't but maybe casey would care no millimeter wave which i forget what the rumors were about the 17 using this chip i think they're saying the 17 lines or at least the top end 17s are still gonna use qualcomm chips which is the reason apple renewed that contract for a couple more years because they're probably going to still want to have millimeter wave on their top end phones and the c1 doesn't support it and i'm not sure they're going to have the c2 or c 1.5 ready in time for the iphone 17 so we'll see when we get to those phones i forget what the rumors or maybe like they're saying that the 17 air or the slim whatever would use the c1 uh because that'll be another like compromise that it doesn't need millimeter waves it's so thin or whatever but the other ones will use qualcomm chips but either way 16e it doesn't sell as much uh it's not the flagship phone perfect place to roll out the first cell chip as rumored uh and here it is yeah i mean i actually have been thinking about this the whether or not i would miss millimeter wave and when it was rumored to be falling off of the iphone 16 pro before the 16 pro was announced i was pretty upset about it but to be honest with you i haven't been to my beloved picnic table in probably over a year now and so i'll still be slightly bummed but if i'm really honest with myself it's really not that big a deal i don't think it's a big deal for anybody because it's just it's such a limited it has such limited applicability it doesn't even exist anywhere near you and if it does you have to be so much closer and so much like it's not you know it's it's i don't know if it's exactly line of sight but it might as well be right it's just very i don't think it makes a big difference but the thing is it is the fastest way and it's kind of hard to sell flagship phones that have that support this incredibly fast protocol and then say well you know what it not enough it's not useful to enough people so we're pulling it out of the phone they could do that but it seems like i mean there's no way to to slice it was saying this is moving backwards a little bit if for the people who care about the the fastest of the fastest speed on the other hand you'll get back more battery life more space in the case because you don't need those millimeter wave antennas like there are trade-offs and reasons they might do it but it is just from a marketing perspective uh kind of difficult to say yeah we got you all excited about millimeter wave but just never mind another thing this thing is missing i'm pretty sure again this was just announced today but as far as i can tell no ultra wideband which i don't understand there's a lot of things about this phone that i don't understand but i searched the spec page i looked at other phones and how it is listed on other spec pages the other phones list something called ultra widebands with the u what number are they on the youth they call it the u the second generation they don't want to call the u2 for obvious reasons it's not the u1 but it's the second generation ultra wideband chip or whatever the iphone 16e as far as i am able to determine does not have an ultra wideband chip or capability is it built into the c1 is that why i'm missing it it seems really weird to me that it wouldn't have this like for for doing like air tag fine mom with a little arrow thing or whatever but that's what the spec she seems to indicate i would be very surprised i would think that would be integrated into like you know the the wi-fi and bluetooth radio stack too like i don't know right but you should you should see it listed on the spec page on other phones you see the phrase ultra space wideband on the spec page and it's not there on the 16e right in the place where it would be it's not anywhere on the page right and i just i it's hard it's hard to tell when these things just came out the other thing is no wi-fi 7 right for the the fancy the the other members of the 16 family i believe all of them even the plane 16 has wi-fi 7 right but anyway this is wi-fi 6 right so like this is this is supposed to be the the cheaper phone i get it right um but some of the omissions i find a little bit baffling so millimeter wave i do not find baffling perfectly makes perfect sense like we were just discussing it might even be dropped from the 17s who knows like fine ultra wideband i start to go did you really are you saving a lot of money on that that seems like something that should be there but well i i think it makes sense like when you look at all the other things that the se line which i guess is now the e line um maybe their s key stopped working uh when you know it's a 16 family there is no se line anymore right anyway when you look at what these phones have have lacked um a lot of it is just like what are some things that we can cut that the kind of casual budget or non-caring user doesn't care about and is unlikely to use or unlikely to miss if it's not there um and so you know there's other things like like magsafe charging missing yeah we'll get to that yeah that's i think that's weird but i think if you what'll be interesting about this phone is i think apple does not yet have a great idea of who's buying this phone because what the se has been purchased for before you know which this is replacing i know it's not part of the se family john but what what this is replacing is a phone model a phone line in the se that was basically i want to hold on to the old style of phone because i don't want to change and that that has meant in the past it meant a small phone it meant touch id instead of face id and the home button instead of the swipe up a lot of people who were buying the SE before were buying it because they wanted to hold on to those old ways of the phone working.

57:18This phone looks and works just like all the new phones. It's the same size as all the new phones, roughly. So I don't know that Apple necessarily has a good idea of who's going to buy this. So they're going to find out. And so what we see now is basically for people who want to cut another hundred bucks off the price from their other lowest end option which is not the 16 but is actually the 15 which is still for sale you know the the the n-1 base model phone apple still sells that typically um in some markets they even go out n-2 i think i don't know if they still do that but they did no they just discontinued the 14 and the 14 plus they discontinued all the phones with lighting ports so they don't sell any new phones with lighting ports anymore so they can the 14 the 14 plus and obviously the se right but right now the phone lineup is you have this at the bottom 600 bucks for 700 bucks you have last year's iphone 15 model or like a year and a half ago iphone 15 model then for 800 bucks you have the new baseline iphone 16 and and so on so you have every hundred dollars you have these increments so if you look at like you know what else can they cut to make to hit those price points okay they're going to start cutting things like weird stuff that that to nerds like us we'd be like i don't know if i'd want a phone with that that or wow that would be inconvenient to not have that, you know, things like MagSafe and maybe ultra wideband, like this kind of thing.

58:36But to an average iPhone buyer, that might not matter. And they might just want, you know, just give me the cheapest phone, but. Again, I think in the past, the SE line was the cheapest phone, but it was also the phone that lets me not change my habits from the old ways of Touch ID and Home button. those buyers are now you know not being served anymore so they're going to be forced to make a decision among the whole product line so the only people who are going to buy the cheap the se are people who want the cheapest current model which is different it was i think it partly overlapped that but partly not so i will we'll see how this all works out but i think most of what i'm seeing here on like what it has versus what it's missing i think they they're all pretty good decisions and And I think this is still...

59:26I think they're all pretty bad. Honestly, no, I don't think so. I mean, the only thing is that I think for many people, I think buying last year's, you know, buying the M-1 model, the iPhone 15, buying it now for$100 more, I think that for many people, that will be the better phone. But a lot of people just won't care. And the only people who would buy this over that are either people who want to save the$100, which is not a small number of people, but I don't think that's a massive driver because these are all expensive no matter how you look at it. Or people who want like Apple intelligence for some reason, but I don't think that's a strong selling point right now either.

1:00:08Tim Cook thinks it is though. Well, yeah. Their marketing sure sells it as one, but we'll see. Yeah, so the thing about the, you mentioned the SE being like the, for the people who want the old stuff. Well, this is part of the Tim Cook philosophy of just continuing to sell old products, you know, as long as people will buy them. And that has been true of the SE line, and it has always lagged behind. But here's the thing. The iPhone, the iPhone as a product, has recently gone through some major transitions. And what that has caused is this trail dragging behind you these older phones, right? These older phones have been slowly being dragged up to the line where they have to cross over.

1:00:49We already dragged them past the line of the small phone because the SE used to be the small phone. But it turns out that one of the transitions the iPhone line has gone through recently is no more small phone. Right. And so the SE was behind there and we were dragging it along, dragging it along. And all of a sudden one year came along. And guess what? The new SE is not small anymore because it got dragged past that line. And then, but it was still the one with the home button, still the one with an LCD screen instead of an OLED, you know, all that stuff or whatever. But that is another transition that the phones have gone through too.

1:01:15And this year it got dragged across that line. it's not like they're doing anything new with the with the se phone it's just that the entire line has transitioned physically form factor wise and feature wise has gone through a transition from phones that had a home button and lcd screen and then were smaller to phones that have no home button oled screens that are bigger and finally this year the lowest of the low-end ones that they sell got dragged along on that uh often talked about in the steve jobs era how he couldn't tolerate once there was something better he couldn't tolerate the older things being in existence so if it was like some new thing like oled screens that were better than the old screens we'd be like we're no longer selling anything any phones with lcd screens everything's going to be oled that is not the tim cook philosophy uh much to my personal consternation we'll just keep selling the old technologies for as long as possible uh but when you have this type of transition where it's like we had a long time in this period where we had like a button on the front of it and lcd screens or whatever and then the iphone 10 came along and here's the new era it is somewhat nice and something that i think a lot of people were looking forward to with the quote-unquote new iphone se to sort of get all of the iphones across most of the important lines they all don't have a home button they all have oled screens they all are like normal quote-unquote normal iphone size right to try to make it so that like there's no there's not this bifurcation of like well here's the current modern iphones and then if you like the old stuff you can still buy one of those weird ones and this year they got pulled across the line now do they get pulled all the way across the line not really because this one has a notch and not the dynamic island because that's the line it hasn't dragged across the dynamic island line yet but still if you look at this phone as you noted 6.1 inch screen uh it is almost exactly the same size as an iphone 16 it's 0.1 millimeter narrower and 0.7 millimeters shorter than an iphone 16 um it's got an oled screen 1200 nits peak instead of 1600 or whatever 60 hertz it's not promotion or whatever but like what people i think a lot of people were hoping for with this is like now finally the the new se it's not there's it's not like a different weird worse product and finally there is a family cohesion and resemblance but and and when designing a product line i think it's short-sighted to to ditch stuff like ultra wideband because and this is part of the chemical philosophy every year you keep selling one of your products it doesn't have a thing it means that doesn't become like the baseline for your product oh you have an iphone well i know you can use this cool find my feature it'll point an arrow to your apple tv remote and your couch oh you can't do that but i just got a new iphone this year yeah but you got the weird one that doesn't have this so when i look at the omissions i say does this unnecessarily prolong a lack of unity in the line for a feature that you could otherwise tout as like the baseline.

1:04:04Every iPhone has Wi Fi. Every iPhone has cellular, every iPhone has an OLED screen, every iPhone has Face ID, whatever, like the baseline you want to be the Tim Cook philosophy makes that baseline constantly be dragged behind you by many years. And people who are interested in technology in our of my, you know, of the the mindset that I have for wanting it to be a rising tide that lifts all boats i don't want to see older stuff being sold for a long time because every year they keep selling it is another year that we have to deal with it still being existence and you can't just assume that everybody has this cool feature it becomes the question of what exact model you have and so for ultra wideband i look at it and i say how much money space and power did you save with that specific thing i would understand if this phone had an lcd screen more than dropping ultra wideband because the screen is the most expensive component in the phone is the ultra wideband chip saving you that much time and energy even though if nobody uses it or whatever just just to say that the new baseline i mean they put thread radios in everything now even though no one's using it for anything right just to say every apple product is a thread radio and that will become important later but you won't have to worry about it ultra wideband has been so foundational to every phone that they've sold except for the lagging behind se's this this year when they're finally bringing it across the most of the lines to not have it have ultra wideband seems like just family disunity that is it's like penny wise and pound foolish right whatever you save whatever power and space you save leaving ultra wideband is not worth the family disunity that it causes and i guess we could jump to the big one here uh which is the perfect example this is mag safe the 16e does not have magsafe does that mean you can't wirelessly charge it oh no you can wirelessly charge it with chi charging but there are no magnets in the phone so there's no magsafe it chi charges but no magsafe and you can put a magsafe case on it i suppose if you buy a third party one of the apple's ones don't have it but boy talk about a family like sacrificing family unity i know i i kind of get this because the magnets are probably surprisingly expensive and they do have thickness but like an uh a iphone with the numbers one six in the name that does not have magsafe part of the iphone 16 family i'm sorry magsafe was like the iphone 12 right yeah like this is not a new feature but they put wireless charging up but no magsafe is one of the best features of the iphone it's one of the best recent features they had of the phone to not put magsafe on this phone again i would sacrifice the screen for magsafe i would say give me a worse screen give me an lcd screen just so i can get magsafe because what matters more to people the beautiful blacks of oled on their phones or magsafe i feel like magsafe will have a larger impact on people's lives just from making the charging easier to be able to stick it to the phone mounts and cars and stuff i just it this is a baffling feature set to me and on top of all of this okay so they did all these things that i i think they shouldn't have done for family unity but at least this phone's real cheap right it's so much more expensive than the se that replaced now granted the se that it replaces was from 2022 at an a15 like i i get it wasn't it 400 bucks time marches on this is better technology it's going to be more expensive inflation yada yada like i i do see the price increase and as you noted marco like the marching up of the hundred dollars nice and uniform and makes sense or whatever but my point is they didn't strip out these features and it's like well we had to do this to hit this really really low price point it's not really really low it's kind of what you would expect for this phone given the specs but no mag safe no ultra wideband is just really i think it's the wrong call i think it is sacrificing family unity is sacrificing sort of the standard feature set that we expect to be in phones i think ultra wideband and especially mag safe are part of that base feature set wi-fi 7 is not part of the base feature set right millimeter wave not part of that base feature set but magsafe and ultra wideband i feel like they are part of the base feature set and they're just not on this phone yeah the magsafe is is i think one of the weirder ones because not only has it been there since the iphone 12 but i think don't most android phones also support magnetic charging that is magsafe compatible in recent years also like so i feel like people who buy this phone who expect that would probably feel like the phone is broken the first time i try to put it on something magnetic and it just falls off but that being said yeah especially since it will it will charge like it does have wireless charging just the old bad kind yeah but but you know that being said like if you wanted to add magnet charging to this people make like you know eight dollar stickers of magnets on amazon that that yeah like cases can do it but like apple didn't even do it with its own cases like why didn't they put magnets in their own case but they just didn't magsafe is the kind of thing that you either use all the time or never so again for all the people who are the nevers on that i don't think they're going to notice or care yeah what what is the cost in space savings versus like the baseline feature set maybe it doesn't get used all the time but i feel like there had the whole point of like the the the potential the reason a lot of people were looking forward to this phone was it would be finally a unification right and it's why the people were not looking forward to it because they like the smaller phone they like the home button blah blah blah like the unification of the all the phones kind of look like they're of a piece now and there's not this weird one that's kind of back there across those lines and omitting features like this that i think if we had asked beforehand like what what are the baseline features of the iphone family that you think every iphone should have magsafe would be on that list and maybe you one wouldn't for you it would be for me but magsafe is definitely on that list it's been around since the 12 it it should be on every single iphone whether people want to use it or not yeah i i think it Both of them would be on my list, both MagSafe and ultra-wideband.

1:10:01I'm very surprised that both of them, we think, have been omitted. I mean, MagSafe definitely has. But yeah, like the synergy with Apple's other products, like Apple sells like the AirTags, like that there's synergy with that product. Why would you do that? Why would you ever sell a phone in 2025 called iPhone 16 anything that doesn't give you the best feature of the AirTag, which is getting finding exactly where it is, not just like what room or what house it's in? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the ultra-wideband is there and we just don't know. This could be a mistake. but magsafe is not a mistake this phone does not have magnets in the back of it there is no magsafe that's cheap charging but not magsafe yeah which is again like i'm i'm sure there was a good reason for that but that is a the omission of magsafe is weird because it does it seems like it would be really cheap and not bring any major downs it's like you know it'd be one thing like like for instance like if the iphone uh 17 slim or air that's rumored if that didn't have magsafe we would assume maybe they couldn't fit it thickness wise we know still be a terrible mistake but at least there would be a reason i mean that's kind of this seems like there's no reason is that like one so what's good about this phone what is what you know what does it have to recommend it one of the things that apple doesn't really tout but people are picking up on in the spec sheet it has better battery life than the iphone 16 slightly better battery life than the iphone 16 which ostensibly has the same processor although one fewer gpu core right um and they apple touts in its video essentially by leaving out stuff there's more room for a bigger battery what do they leave out we haven't talked about this yet but might as well now there's just one camera on the back of this phone that's a sensible cost saving and there's a nice symmetry the cheapest phone has one camera the second cheapest one has three cameras and the camera that's in this is a good camera it's this 48 megapixel slash 12 megapixel 2x you know yeah it seems like it's the same camera that's in the current base model 16 just it just doesn't have the ultra wide and so you can't do things that require two cameras and you can't do macro because that's actually done by the ultra wide so it just it's the one x camera from the iphone 16 non-pro which i think is again like for for something that replaces the iphone se that's a great pick it is you know as you mentioned though i think it's important to distinguish that the iphone se was a lot cheaper than this so it isn't it isn't quite directly replacing that saving money you're saving money those cameras are expensive uh and you reap some benefit for it first of all i think the back of the phone looks nicer with just one camera yeah it does yeah you know it's nice and smooth and simple can i say by the way on this point like the rumors that we have of the 17 pro like big camera bar i think look hideous like i hope the rumors are wrong on that but we're getting close enough to it in the timeline that i'm fearing that they might be right i mean that's pixel phones have been like that and so many other phones have been like that for ages i think it's unavoidable i think the devil's in the details now and we'll see how it looks but yeah you know it's funny because just to very quickly uh throw in my two cents here i when you told me when one would say to me you know or if i read oh there's gonna be a camera bar it's not gonna be like this weird triangle thing in the back of the phone on paper the way i imagine this sounds great sign me up i'll take two but i agree marco the the renderings that i've seen i have not really liked the renderings don't have a lot of imagination they just imagine the current design philosophy extended to that especially the ones that render the 17 pro and they just take the 16 pro and leave the cameras exactly all where they are and make a bar across it but if you want to see just look at android the world of android phones many many android phones have had a camera bar for ages now and they all do different treatments there are ways to do this so it looks reasonable but boy that 16 the 16e the back of that phone looks so nice with just the one camera now you know and that's that that's cost savings makes sense the benefits you get from it is maybe you get a little bit more room for battery in there which gives you better battery life like thinking of what this thing has to recommend it is like if you don't care about the fanciest of the fancy specs if one camera is plenty for you here's a pretty good phone and by the way you get even better battery life than the expensive one because you don't have the extra cameras the extra gpu for core in there right but the other compromises the lack of mag safe the potential lack of ultra wideband like i would have sacrificed the soc number i would go with a 17 pro or something in exchange for getting back mag safe like you don't need an a18 for that i know they did it for apple intelligence like i understand why it's the way it is but like what what do people who buy the cheapest iphone uh will they will they care about apple intelligence for that matter uh apple cares about it um or the a18ness or any of that stuff versus what caring about magsafe i think for the people who want magsafe that feature makes so much more difference in their life than the the neural engine that's going to allow them to use uh the apple intelligence right and i we're in another transition period where everyone's getting eight gigs of ram which is good that by the way this is 8 gigs of ram um like that's a thumbs up and everything but practically speaking like first of all i don't know how much money you would even save on that because the soc is not the most expensive thing in this and apple makes them themselves so it's pretty cheap but like if i had to design what is the feature set that you actually want to put in the lowest end iphone i would probably sacrifice ram apple intelligence and the soc if i can get back uh the ultra wide band and magsafe because i just feel like that's in the baseline and i mean again apple and apple wants apple intelligence to be in the baseline but just i don't think that's i don't i don't think that's an important feature for pretty much anybody using these phones let alone the cheapest one so yeah and this and this you know to get the hard numbers in this the previous se at 128 gigs of storage was 480 bucks and this one is 600 um and you know it's a big spec bump or whatever but then And of course, Apple storage prices mean that if you spec this thing, the 16e all up to 512, now it's a$900 phone.

1:16:05So you're going to sell me a$900 iPhone 16 something that doesn't have MagSafe? No thanks. Apple's obviously, I think, in a mode now where I can't see them selling any products that don't support Apple intelligence from this point forward. That seems like that's baseline. Yeah, no, I get it. Like, I understand how it's not going to happen. And I thank them for the RAM. Right. And the reality is, so far, Apple Intelligence is not very compelling. And so far, it's the kind of thing that, yeah, if you can get it, cool. But I wouldn't pay extra for a product based on today's Apple Intelligence features just for that support alone.

1:16:42But obviously, that's not what Apple has in mind. And when they were making these kind of decisions of like what chip is going to go in this product, they made those decisions probably a year and a half, two years ago. So at that time, they probably thought by this date, Apple intelligence is going to be so big and so important and so good with all these different features that it's going to be a really compelling thing. And the reality is it's been hard and it's been, you know, not it's probably been like, you know, off track and under delivered and over promised. But two years ago, they probably did think by this date in 2025, it's going to be so compelling.

1:17:21Everyone's going to want it. And, you know, their marketing seems to suggest they still think that and maybe someday we'll get there. We're not there now. So right now in the release, this seems like a weird trade off. but maybe two years ago and maybe one year from now it'll seem more logical it doesn't say it's not a weird trade-off at all i'm just saying that i would be willing to sacrifice that i mean honestly like it's kind of like the 17 pro in the ipad mini they they got a bunch of a18s that only have five four gpu cores that work like this is just economically like it has probably cost them less like they have that waste anyway can we put that in a product the answer is yes we can put it can go in the 16a it's better to do that than to make perfectly manufactured 17 pros or 16 a7 16s or whatever if you've got a bunch of a18s with uh with one broken gpu core what else are you going to sell them and i don't think they've ever sold one with this number of cores and so that just it just makes economic sense like i understand that and i was just promoting the whole family idea of family unity apple intelligence for my lack of enthusiasm about it is part of that family unity the baseline for apple products period is apple intelligence they they put more ram in the m2 macbook air for crying out loud clearly they think this is this is the base this is a baseline feature of not just the phone but of all apple products which that's exactly the philosophy i'm trying to endorse for other things that if you have something i mean setting aside my difference of opinion about the value of apple intelligence if apple has decided that we just want you if you buy a new apple product you should know that it will support apple intelligence unless it's home pod uh that right so when they can do that that they bumped ram which they didn't they they're not they don't want to do that if the cheapest phone is going to have eight gigs of ram the cheapest two year two generation old uh mac is going to have 16 gigs of ram like they did it because this is the new baseline magsafe should be part of that baseline i think ultra wideband if it's not on this phone should also be part of that baseline uh and again the pricing on this being 600 bucks and going up to 900 i feel like gives them the headroom to put in magsafe at those prices and still have pretty healthy margins and i'm trying to look at other places where they could save money like the notch is probably less expensive than dynamic island right so it's older tech there uh one camera instead of two or three they're saving money there well i can tell you where they're saving money and i haven't seen anyone talk about this yet which mean which maybe means I'm misled.

1:19:45But the going understanding was that for some devices, and there's been a lot of arguments that this is why we've never gotten a cellular Mac. The going understanding is that Qualcomm's licensing agreement or whatever requires you to give a portion of the cost of the device to Qualcomm. But there's a cap on that. We've discussed that. And I remember talking about that, which is why I don't think it's necessarily a big deal for Macs. But I mean, if they're not using Qualcomm modem, then whatever the licensing fee would have been is now zero. Now, I don't know if that's a savings of a dollar. I don't know if that's a savings of a hundred dollars.

1:20:24I would guess somewhere between, probably closer to one, but that's still a savings. Like that's still one more thing that they don't have to pay for. So that could have been where some of these savings could and should have come from. I saw a tweet, I will probably forget to put it in the show notes, but I saw a tweet from a friend of the show, John Voorhees earlier today, where I think he was saying it kind of tongue in cheek, but it was, it's been one of those like brain worms where I can't help but wonder if maybe he's right. Wherein he said, I wonder if the reason you can't have MagSafe or whatever, you know, choose your piece of internals is because the Apple C1 is physically larger than the Qualcomm equivalent.

1:20:59I have no earthly idea if that's true. And again, John might've been trying to, you know, crack wise and saying that, but I can't help but wonder if what if he's right, You know, what if that is the case? We'll crack it open. I doubt that's the case because one of the advantages Apple has with the C1, I think, is they're getting TSMC to fab it on a really good process. Oh, that's a good point. That's a good point. And so it shouldn't be bigger. It seems unlikely. And also, I think, like, they touted that the one thing they touted about the physical design of this thing is that there's just so much more room inside for a bigger battery.

1:21:26And again, obviously, you save so much space by not having two more cameras in there. Like, there's so much more room physically to put stuff. And I bet you do save space by not having the magnets. you can make the battery that much thicker right so like i i get that they're reaping some savings from it i just think it's a foolish savings in this particular case um yeah anyway so this is the new baseline i don't mind the fact that it has an option set of dynamic island uh i wish it had mag safe everything else i'm mostly willing to sacrifice you know where else they save money you can get it in black and white because those colors just cost too much money right which seems kind of punitive the black and white look fine they look nice but it's like if the iphone 16 comes in so many fun colors it's like that's that's the only place where you get fun if you get the expensive phone well it's too professional we can't have fun colors there if you get the cheap phone oh you get the cheap phone all you get is black and white only exactly in the middle with two cameras you get fun colors my theory on that teenagers yeah my theory is that teenagers will not let their parents get them the boring black and white phone they'll push them for the hire one and they can't push them into the pro territory teenagers put cases on them and apple does sell fun colored cases although interestingly like apple's cases for this phone they don't ruin the uh the the look of it but like the back of it with the single camera looks so nice but remember you also have the flash and the whatever thingies so apple's case has a lozenge shape opening because it encompasses the round camera and also the flash and other stuff that's to the side of it and that kind of ruins the cool look of the back of the phone but yeah anyway i'm i am have not i'm not a small phone fan and i think it is well past time when phones with lightning connectors and home buttons we should move on from them i feel for people who like them but like you know everyone everyone has to deal with this the products the the the attributes of the product they like eventually change over time and i feel like with the tim cook era those people have gotten the longest time to enjoy the features that they enjoy uh that has ever been the case and so i don't you know uh i feel for them but like technology marches on keep using your old phone if that's the thing you like i feel especially for the small phone people because i still feel like there's room in the iphone line for an actual small phone apple disagrees maybe they'll come back to it someday we are brought to you this episode by delete me delete me makes it easy quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable delete me does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal info from data broker websites because here's the thing there's these data brokers out there and if you go and do like a web search for somebody's personal info you can find it on all sorts of different data broker sites now if you want you can like go through these processes to try to get your stuff removed from each individual data broker but it's a lot of work.

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1:25:42We have a little bit of Apple TV related news. Surprise, surprise. eyes. First of all, the Apple TV app, so not the hardware, of course, but the software, is now available on Android. Reading from Apple's newsroom, the Apple TV app is now available to download from Google Play on Android mobile devices, including phones, tablets, and foldables. Android users can subscribe to Apple TV Plus and MLS Season Pass using their Google Play account on Android mobile and Google TV devices. Apple TV Plus also offers a seven-day free trial. all right so show of hands how many people didn't know that android didn't already have an apple tv plus that's me yep i just assumed they did the whole the whole thing with apple tv plus is like this is a streaming service for everybody it's not just for apple users surely there's an android version but i guess there wasn't until today i mean i guess it was just all you know it's built into smart tvs these days and uh most streaming but like yeah i guess you just couldn't watch on your phone so now android users get to use the wonderful interface that is the apple tv plus app on their Android phones.

1:26:42And then we had, I mean, granted, it's early in the year, but I think my favorite tech story of the year thus far, on Valentine's Day at just shy of 9.30 in the morning Eastern, there was a post on The Verge, Netflix finally decides to play nice and support the Apple TV app. So reading from that post, some Apple TV 4K users in the US are being prompted to connect their Netflix accounts to the Apple TV app. This would appear to signal an end to the streaming service's long-time refusal to have its content aggregated into third-party platforms. Users who link their accounts are able to add certain Netflix originals like Squid Game and Stranger Things to their Apple TV watch list, their Apple TV app watch list, with shows also appearing in the continue watching section.

1:27:26The Verge has also verified that Netflix is now listed as a participating service within the Apple TV app alongside the apps that were already supported, though this isn't yet reflected on Apple's website. The integration appears to still be in the process of rolling out. The entire Netflix catalog isn't available yet and only US-based users have reportedly been able to get it working. Apple and Netflix both have yet to announce the update. Again, this was Valentine's Day, just about 9.30 in the morning Eastern. And the world rejoiced. So many people were so incredibly excited. And justifiably, I'm not trying to imply that's bad.

1:28:01So many people were so excited about this. I am no longer a Netflix subscriber and beyond that I almost never use the Apple TV app my mental model for the Apple TV app which full stop is incorrect but my mental model is that's where I go to watch Apple TV plus stuff that's really the only time I ever use it I cannot emphasize enough I know that's weird and probably by any metric wrong but that's just the way I think of it but I can tell you I can tell you that everyone was super excited about this during the morning of Valentine's Day. Then about 2.30 in the afternoon on Valentine's Day this year, this same day, a new post from The Verge.

1:28:41Netflix says its brief Apple TV app integration was a mistake. Again, about 2.30 p.m. Eastern, Netflix spokesperson Momo Zhu has told The Verge that this morning's window where Netflix appeared as a participating service on Apple TV, including temporary support for the watch list and continue watching features, was an error that has now been rolled back. Stupendous work, Netflix. Just incredible job. And I think my favorite summary, which this made the rounds when it was tweeted or actually posted, but a friend of the show, Joe Rosenstiel, wrote on both a tweet or a post on Maston and a post on his website, Netflix deeply regrets accidentally making Netflix a better product for its customers.

1:29:24I couldn't even get through with a straight face, but Joe is so right. It's so right. Oh, this stuff drives me bananas. And honestly, it's stuff like this, I guess hubris. I feel like we use that word a lot. But the hubris of Netflix, they, oh, we'll charge extra for 4K. You know why? Because we can. Eat crap. Oh, we don't have to be in the Apple TV app. Why not? Because we don't want to be. Eat crap. It's just this like, I don't know. I find this kind of behavior very off-putting and very anti-customer, anti-consumer. and so here it is it's so funny because everyone rejoiced on the morning and early afternoon of valentine's day that this had finally happened it's so clear that everyone all of netflix users want this integration to be a thing and netflix just doesn't want to listen i i i don't get it i just don't get i mean it's easy to understand but i think it's an interesting contrast with the other situations where there's like a uh a battle of wills a battle of market share between platform owners and products so the classic one that we've talked about many times in the past has been apple owns the iphone platform uh amazon has a kindle app on it apple does not want uh you to be able to buy kindle books without giving apple 30 but unfortunately there's not 30 to give apple in the book business.

1:30:52And so they were at a standoff for customers. It would be better if you could launch the Kindle app on your phone and buy a book and you didn't have to know that you had to go to a web page and do it and blah, blah, blah. It'd be better for consumers. I think even Apple would agree this would be better for consumers. But financially and strategically, Apple demands money that Amazon cannot give them and will not give them. And so the reality is that for customers, the experience of reading eBooks on their phone through the Kindle app is worse. And in that case, it's much more cut and dry where it's like, this is just a money thing.

1:31:27Apple wants 30%. 30 % is not available. They're at a standoff and consumers get hurt. For the Netflix thing, I think it's a little bit different because you've got Apple who has an app called the Apple TV app on the Apple TV puck. Where you can watch Apple TV plus. Anyway, they have an app that tries to unify your viewing experience. Go here. Here's all your stuff. You can connect it to all your other services, unified, continue watching, watch NextList or whatever. In theory, this is a unified interface to all of the streaming services that you might want to watch. And if you have this app on your phone or on your television or on your Apple TV puck, this can unify your experience.

1:32:11But Netflix, because they're the biggest, most important, most popular, whatever, like said we're not going to participate in that because we think we should be the top level destination and it looks a lot like the kindle scenario where you're like wouldn't it be better for consumers if netflix the lone holdout didn't didn't think they were too big to be involved in this and just let themselves be subsumed into the apple thing but i think the situation is slightly different than the kindle app being able being able to buy books in the kindle app because what what Apple is doing here is not as straightforwardly consumer benefiting as being able to buy books in the Kindle app.

1:32:52Like that just, that just benefits consumers. It's like, it's something you should be able to do technically. And there's not really a lot of downside to it because you can just makes it more inconvenient to do something. You just have to go to a webpage to do it. Right. But allowing Apple, the reason, one of the reasons Netflix doesn't do this is allowing Apple to be sort of the top level of the funnel, the interface to watching television, surrenders a bunch of control that Netflix thinks, and is probably right, that it has. Now, a lot of people, when they want to watch something, they go to the Netflix app first.

1:33:27And maybe it's the only streaming service they subscribe to, but there's a lot of stuff in Netflix. Giving that up and saying, oh, they won't come to us first. We'll just be another alphabet soup of connected services what they'll do instead is they'll go through this apple interface and this apple interface will essentially erase and smooth over all the services below it so that what people think they're doing is that whenever they want to watch tv they launch the apple tv app and there's all their stuff right and that actually is a struggle for control between netflix and apple they both want to be the place where you go to begin with because that being in that position gives you power right just ask google websites exist out there but the fact that people will go to google first to get to a website to the point where instead of typing you know amazon.com they'll type amazon.com into the google search box instead of the address brother go to google.com type amazon.com into the search right being that top level of the funnel has a huge amount of value and in this battle between netflix wanting to be the top level of the funnel for the people who just have one streaming service and it's netflix and apple wanting to be the top level of the funnel i kind of feel like i don't want to give apple any more control over any more funnels than they already have for two reasons one we've seen what it's like when they have control over the top level stuff exclusive control with like the app store they're not very nice about it right and two i don't like the apple tv interface i don't want that to be the top level to anything i think netflix makes it easier to find stuff and organize stuff i have complaints about both of them but like it's not a so clear cut as like i just want to be able to buy kindle apps in the in the kindle uh ebook kindle ebooks in the in the kindle app that's just such a clear win it's all in the amazon family there's no exchange of control amazon already controls all kindle books like that that's there's no there's no structural change there right but But Netflix holding strong and saying we think we have the power to not be subsumed into the Apple thing, specifically because it's Apple wanting to be the top level of the funnel and specifically because their top level of the funnel, I think, is cruddy.

1:35:42I'm kind of rooting for Netflix here. And I know people don't want it. Like people who use Apple TV, the top level one are like, oh, Netflix, you're the only holdout. Why can't you get with the program? but as someone who does not like that program i kind of wish i wish more people would not be subsumed by the apple thing because i think their interface is terrible and i don't want to give them any more power i don't know maybe this is like uh this is maybe i'm in the minority here but i kind of feel like most people the people who are enthusiastic users of the apple tv interface to watching stuff are specifically the very apple focus and nerds that are in our tiny circle and that most people don't even know that app exists or if they did wouldn't know what it's used for and i think casey a lot of them are much more like you just described that's where you go to watch severance or ted lasso and otherwise you go to netflix or hulu or whatever despite they don't even know that you can go there and watch stuff that's on hulu or whatever it just doesn't because it's not like connecting the things up or whatever.

1:36:45It's just, I feel like that is a narrow market and I don't want that to be any more prominent than it already is. I kind of prefer the world. That's why I have my Apple TV set up. My home button thingy or whatever takes me to the big grid of apps. I launched the Netflix app. I launched the Hulu app. I launched the Netflix. Like the only reason I personally go to the little black, black and white TV thing. The Apple TV thing is to watch severance. That's how I preferred. it and that interface isn't great but that it actually is a uniform interface it just requires you to know what services everything's on which i understand is a weird thing or whatever but i don't think this is cut as cut and dried as joe seems to think it is they deeply regret making their product better for its customers they made their product better for some customers potentially at the cost of giving more control to apple which at this point i'm not inclined to be in favor of i i i don't entirely disagree with you but i don't know i think most people with an Apple TV, probably leave the home button or whatever you want to call that to be the default, right, to be the Apple TV app, which I agree with you is barbaric.

1:37:51I really, really dislike the Apple TV app a lot. I have complained and moaned about the information architecture on that app a thousand times, and I'll do it again right now. I think everything is laid out in a confusing way. It's gotten better, but it's very challenging to find the thing you want to find. Maybe my brain just disagrees with the way it's designed. It's intentionally hiding it from you because it doesn't want you to continue watching the thing you were previously watching. Yeah, it's preposterous. But I do think that is most people's interface to the Apple TV. So yeah, I mean, maybe you're right that maybe most people do the thing that I would suggest and that you would suggest, and I presume that Marco would suggest, which is to switch the home button to going to the grid of apps.

1:38:32Most people don't have an Apple TV box. Fair. That's the reality. They have a television that has an Apple TV app on it, but I think they launched it to watch Ted Lasso and Severance. I think that's how it works. Yeah, you very well could be right. Except for in our little circle where everybody has an Apple TV puck and everybody actually uses that interface. Like I feel like the vast, vast majority of people who watch streaming don't subscribe to every streaming service in the world like I do. Don't have an Apple TV puck because that is just a high-end, weird Apple nerd thing. Do have Apple TV on their television because it comes built into all their television, which kind of gets me to the point of the earlier story about Apple TV being available for Android.

1:39:06like apple tv seems to be on board with the whole idea of we need to be everywhere we need to be in every tv like there should be no reason that you can't watch ted lasso which is why i was so surprised to see that you couldn't watch an android phone until recently right so they're all signed up to that type of thing but i i feel like that's like that is the actual world that most people live in that the apple tv icon means severance and ted lasso and that uh so few people have the apple tv remote with that button with that default with all that stuff it's only in our little circle and within our little circle people who like that interface i feel for them i understand you're one you're one service away from uniformity right and you like the interface like i get it but there is a that comes with baggage and the baggage is do you want apple to be to give apple more top level control over streaming stuff i would be more inclined to give them the control felt like their interface was tons better than everybody else, right?

1:40:00But I don't like the interface, and I don't think they need more things to have control over. Yeah, see, but I think I really, the more I hear you talk, the more I strongly disagree with you here. First of all, I think that there are people in our little, you know, click that do enjoy the Apple TV app. And I might be putting words in his mouth, but I could swear I've heard Jason talk about how... No, as I'm saying, in our circle, some people really do like that interface. And the thing, I'm glad you brought up the Kindle because to my eyes, it's actually a very, very different situation. With the Kindle, everyone involved wants a piece of the pie.

1:40:35Like they all want a little cut of the money. And you can squint and say that that's still applicable with the Apple TV app. But to me, it's very different. To me, it's not about Apple getting a cut of Netflix's money. And it's not really even necessarily about them getting more of your attention. I really think to my eyes, having everything bubble up into the Apple TV app is to just make a unified, better experience in the same way that the Apple TV hardware to me is a better experience. Again, with the caveat that I completely concur with you, John, that the Apple TV app is a dumpster fire. But if we take it, if we can put that large caveat aside and take it and go with the assumption that the Apple TV app is at least serviceable for most people, then I don't feel like Apple's trying to take a cut of Netflix's money or of time.

1:41:22I mean, they are, but Netflix just doesn't sell subscriptions through. Oh, but sure. You can't sign up to Netflix through the Apple TV because just simply because Netflix does not want to give Apple cut anymore. Sorry. I'm in this context. You're totally right. But I mean, in this context. I know. That whole control that Apple has over that has already warped the space in that way to drive away all of the people who did not want to give Apple a cut. We should accept that as the status quo. But just remember, there was a time when Netflix actually did allow you to sign up right on your Apple TV, right inside the app.

1:41:53And they gave Apple 30 % and they stopped doing that. All fair. But what I'm driving at is from my perspective, and I have been quick to point, as all three of us, I think I've been quick to point out a lot of ways where we think Apple's making really BS decisions these days. this smells to me like they're just trying to do right by their users. They want their users to have one place to go that will be omnivorous and slurp up all their, you know, watch habits and whatnot. And hopefully not in a, you know, data vending gross way, because this is Apple and they'll just present, you know, here's what you, what you were watching.

1:42:24And here's what the next thing is, which again, John, I agree with you that the app sucks, but leaving that aside, I think the motivation is pure. And whereas I feel like Netflix is just like, meh, we're too cool. we're too good for that we don't need you and it's and it's it the the motivation is not pure on netflix's side and that's what that's what makes me feel like it's gross it's not the purity like so unified interface is good i'm in favor of that i've been in favor of that for years that whole episode about it on all hypercritical podcast like just having a single interface to television is good but what i'm trying to say is there is power that comes associated with being that unified interface no matter who does it doesn't matter if netflix is the unified interface if Apple is, if Google is, if your TV vendor is, whoever presents a unified interface that subsumes all the other services, if they are successful in that endeavor at scale, it gives them tremendous power.

1:43:16I don't doubt that the idea behind the Apple TV app and connecting services is to provide a better user experience. What I do doubt is if they were successful, that that power would not be leveraged to do bad things. That's my problem, right? And same thing with netflix if netflix was able to successfully become you know the dominant thing and all the other streaming services went by the wayside they would have tremendous power and probably also do bad things with it i think we've been spared that because netflix is not massively dominant as it once was the space is fairly well divided up into a couple of significant players and i think those couple of significant players keep each other honest that's kind of why i feel like netflix will eventually bend on this one because they're not it's not it's not hubris they're just it is correctly surmising how much power they actually have but i feel like their power has been decreasing over time so at some point someone's going to look at this again and say can we afford to continue to not be in the apple app at some point i feel like that will flip back when they were the biggest by far and there was hardly any other popular streaming services they could afford to it it was clear cut and they were like they did the apple thing which is like we don't need to go to ces why the hell will we go to ces we have our own things why would we why would we do that oh we'll just have one conference for all the technology it's a great unifying experience but all the apples like no we don't need to do that like people come to see our stuff we don't need to be subsumed into ces right it's exactly the same thing that i don't think that's going to change with apple because they continue to not need to go to ces but netflix i I think eventually if trends continue, we'll correctly surmise that they are not big enough to stop this.

1:44:55And I do wonder, this is part of the mystery of this thing. What happened? Like, how did this integration happen? Clearly this integration is like one feature toggle away from happening, right? Who accidentally flicked the toggle? Like, has this, like, is there a deal in the works? Like, I feel like Netflix is getting to the point where they're going to have to end up doing this anyway. And I don't doubt the, the, like the motivations of the people working on this feature to Apple. I don't doubt the motivations of creating this feature to Apple. It's not a pure power grab. It is. This is a better experience, right?

1:45:26I fear what will happen if they were, they are successful, even just within the little world of Apple, what will happen if they're successful? Because I've seen what Apple does with power that it happens to acquire. It kind of not like, you know, fell a blank backwards into the app store monopoly, but like they didn't seek out to become what they are today but they did get there and when they got there everything they did with that power has been upsetting and not good for anything so that's what i'm worried about here now maybe it's silly to worry about this because again how many people even use their interface and they'll never do it and really netflix should just be incorporated into the apple tv app because there's no fear of the apple tv app ever becoming the dominant interface to streaming simply because too few people use it and i can see that argument and it makes sense and joe should really have netflix in his app that he likes because it would make his life easier and there's no real fear of it but my instinctual reaction to this is hold strong netflix for as long as you can because a it's not going to be that much longer and b i just don't want to see apple come to dominate another anything thanks to our sponsors this episode squarespace delete me and factor and thanks to our members who support us directly you can join Join us at atp.fm slash join.

1:46:42One of the many perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic. This week on Overtime, we're going to be talking about the recent obsession with, quote, humanoid robots. It seems like Apple and Meta are rumored to be working on humanoid-style robots. We're going to be talking about that in Overtime. You can join and listen at atp.fm slash join. Thanks, everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.

1:47:10even mean to begin cause it was accidental oh it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him cause it was accidental oh it was accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm and if you're into Mastodon you can follow them at C-A-S E-Y-L-I-S-S That's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M Antimarko Armin S-I-R-A-C U-S-A Syracuse It's accidental They didn't mean to Accidental Tech Podcast So long So I have some news that I know the two of you have been waiting with bated breath. I have yet another update about my status board. I am confident that you are so very excited for this.

1:48:21But no, a very kind listener, Chris R., was kind enough to send me one of the Homeseer switches that they had bought a while back and didn't end up needing. And this is the thing, if you recall, so to back up just a smidge, I wanted to have a couple of like a trio of LEDs in the kitchen or kitchen area that will illuminate when there's something going on, either the mail's waiting for us, the garage door's open, or the car's charging. And I had thought I was going to put this, like make a bespoke solution in a decommissioned RJ11 outlet. And the historical commission, otherwise known as Aaron, said, yeah, I don't think that's going to fly.

1:49:01And so then I went back to the drawing board and I hadn't really come up with any good answers. And a bunch of listeners had suggested Inovelli, if I recall correctly, switches, which are similar to what I'm talking about. But basically, in addition to just a standard paddle switch, the Inovelli has like a single diffused, or a single diffuser with several LEDs behind it. So I could kind of get what I wanted, but it would all kind of be visually one LED with different colors that bleed together. So I didn't really love that. And a handful of people had written about the home seer switches, H-O-M-E-S-E-E-R.

1:49:33and Chris R had an older one, but that did, or that would hypothetically do what I wanted to do. And he was kind enough to send it my way. And I got it about a week ago, I'd say. And I decided since Erin had very strong opinions about how she really didn't want any sort of status board in the kitchen. And I was going to install this on the sly sometime when she was out, but she hadn't been out in a long time until last night when it was book club night. She goes to book club once a month with a handful of girlfriends. And last night was book club night. And so I installed a HomeSeer HS-WD200 +, Z-Wave +, scene-capable RGB wall dimmer.

1:50:16Oh, for people who haven't seen this product, they should follow the link in the show notes and look at it. And I think they'll have the same question that I have. How can you, you can sneakily install something, but how can this thing with colored leds on it sneakily exist in a place where your wife does not want a thing with leds to exist unless the leds never turn on oh no no it was she will notice and as i sit here now has noticed this is uh what is it called um casey you should know this um uh the uh the the robert moses uh strategy uh building things what is that called I know exactly what you're thinking of.

1:50:56I don't recall the term for it. It's annoying me that I can't. I know what you're thinking of, though. The idea is that if you have to, like, we're going to cut down these trees to make way for a parking lot. And someone says, you can't cut down those trees. I'm taking you to court to sue about it. And they take you to court. And before the first court date arrives, you've already cut down all the trees. So then you go to court and it's like, well, we were here to sue to stop him from cutting down those trees. But he already cut down all the trees. That was a strategy that Robert Moses, to be clear, bad guy employed.

1:51:23So Casey is employing that strategy, which is, I know you said that I can't install colored lights here, but while you were gone, guess what? I already installed it. Excuse me. Excuse me. This is the classic man approach, which is not good for the record, but it's the classic man approach of you told me I couldn't do it over there, but I did it over here. That's totally different. How, what is the, how, what is the distance? It is almost none. So there is actually took, I knew you were going to ask this. Steak driving? Steak driving, maybe? So I'm putting in the show notes and in Slack for the two of you.

1:52:02I have already taken an image and it will be in the show notes, like I said. It's like a one and a half. Correct. So if you look, I'll paint you a word picture. So I don't know if I ever put a picture of this publicly up until just now. but there was there is a blank if you will wall plate which is uh not quite eye level but a little bit higher that's where the rj 11 outlet used to be and just recently which kind of started this whole process i had you know taken away the rj 11 the phone outlet and put on just a blank because there was no need for the phone outlet anymore if you look to the right about a foot and a half and about six inches down so what is that like a half a meter and i don't know in several centimeters down.

1:52:43There is a trio, a three-gang set of switches, and this one is in the middle, and it is not a great picture, but you can see that there are seven LEDs on the left-hand side of the middle switch. Oh my god. Going from the bottom, the bottom one is currently illuminated red, then it skips one. Then the next one is illuminated white, then it skips one, and the top one is illuminated blue. It looks much better in person than this picture would lead you to believe. I hope so. Because it doesn't look stellar here. But it does work. And so there's a few different issues here. First of all, I installed it.

1:53:20What did you call it? Steak driving or whatever. I installed it on the sly last night and Aaron got home and we chatted for a little bit before we went up to bed. And I conspicuously and conveniently stood in front of the light switch while this was going on because the white switch or the white LED. This is a scalable strategy. You'll just constantly stand there from no the thing of it was i wanted her to notice it organically and i would and i prefer that she notice it when the lights were not illuminated so sometime the next morning because i wanted to see what she would say and what she would do and coincidentally i sent an email to chris r about this and i said oh you know i installed this while she was gone and i'm expecting her to give me a huge you know wtf when she finally realizes it to which chris replied which was so great uh he's he said that's great i hope the commission accepts the fact that it was already installed as enough of a hassle to not require removal for lack of proper permits ahead of time, which is very well put.

1:54:14So this morning, I forget when it was this morning, but it was not very long after getting downstairs. Perhaps, maybe it was when I was gone at Wegmans studying up for the episode today. It doesn't matter when, but at some point I'd come in or come downstairs or whatever. And the kids were like, Oh dad, I look up at Aaron and she's pointing at the, she's pointing at the, uh, the light switch saying, what is this? And the funny thing is there's so much more to the story that I haven't told her or you guys. Uh, so you didn't pick up on the important phrase that I mentioned when I read this earlier, I will repeat myself.

1:54:55HomeSeer HS-WD200 plus Z-Wave plus scene-capable RGB wall dimmer. I don't have any Z-Wave devices until just now. And let me tell you, if you want to think about what it would be like for the most nerdy nerd to design a home automation or smart home kind of thing, let me tell you all the good news about Z-Wave. It is so user hostile and so awful to interact with. so what I had to do was I knew that Chris was kind enough to send this to me and genuinely leaving aside Aaron's opinion which I'll come back to in a minute genuinely I think this is the right solution to my problem because I have up to seven LEDs that I can use they're super easy to control within home assistant once you get everything wired up which we'll talk about here in just a second um but they're super easy to control it works really well it's pretty good dimmer the button feels pretty great and pretty decent I wouldn't say it's great but it's decent and so on the surface, this is a win-win-win.

1:55:55It's not as much of an eyesore as my three LEDs popping through a wall plate would have been. In a lot of ways, I think this is the rightest answer. If it remains, which is yet to be seen. Narrator, it will not remain. To get this all to work, now I have Z-Wave in my world. And let me assure you, everyone, you do not want Z-Wave in your world if you can help it. Because what I had to do was I needed to get like a$30 dongle, which I will try to remember to put in the show notes, a$30 dongle that will allow you to communicate via Z-Wave. And so this is a USB-A dongle. I'm sure maybe that USB-C once exists, but it was getting plugged into my Synology anyway.

1:56:42So I needed a USB-A dongle that was something like$30 that I got off Amazon. But then I need more containers because Home Assistant doesn't want to natively talk to via Z-Wave. You need to get Z-Wave JS UI, which is a combination of, I believe it's Node, a Node interface to Z-Wave, and then a user interface on top of that. So I needed all of that. And a lot of people will then also add an MQTT broker, which I happen to already have in my collection of Docker containers that run my home. But I needed that. And so now I needed to get a dongle and I needed to get that USB device passed through to Docker, which I had never done before.

1:57:29And I assumed would be ruinous, but actually it was pretty straightforward, which I was very happy about. I then need to get this Docker container talking to that dongle. I need to get all that squared away. I need to then get the Docker container talking via WebSockets, my favorite thing in the world. Here we are. Everything is full circle, baby. I needed to get the Docker container to talk via WebSockets to the Home Assistant Docker container. It was a lot. Then I get everything installed physically and I am running against the clock because as everything is hanging out of my wall, you know, there's two switches that pre-existed in this new one that I'm trying to plug in, including tapping a new neutral wire, which I've done before.

1:58:07But everything's hanging out of the wall and I get a buzz on my watch that, hey, Aaron has just added a new calendar event to the shared calendar for book club for next month. Oh no. That means they're wrapping up. She's got like 15 minutes drive to get here and this wall, everything is just hanging out of it. So now I'm trying to like quick Carl, shove everything back in the wall, put the faceplate back on and then act nonchalant when she gets home, hopefully when this is all done, and be like, oh no, nothing's weird. What are you talking about? Just walk away whistling. Right? Exactly. Exactly.

1:58:45I was able to do so. Thankfully, she ended up chatting with a friend who she gave a ride to two book clubs, so that gave me a little spare time. But then I needed to connect this device to this. I needed to connect it to my Z-Wave hub thing. This terminology, I'm sure, is wrong. But I needed to get the device, the dongle that acts as like the Z-Wave hub and this light switch to talk to each other, which you would think would be easy. But have I told you the good word about Z-Wave? Everything in Z-Wave makes no f***ing sense whatsoever. And so what I needed to do was I needed to put the device and the hub in inclusion mode.

1:59:26because when I think I want to add a device, I think of the word inclusion. It makes no damn sense. And then on top of that, apparently there's like 17 different flavors of Z-Wave, not unlike USB-C. And there's like a stapled on feature called Smart Setup or something like that. I already forgot what it was called, where you can scan a little QR code, Smart Start. You can scan a little QR code and it will allegedly make things faster or better. but I did that and then basically nothing happened. So it might've been user error, but who knows, but I'm trying to like figure all this out. And you know, Aaron is now about to walk in the door.

2:00:06And thankfully, finally, after some help from a friend of mine, I was able to put the hub in inclusion mode. I was able to figure out how to get the switch to be in inclusion mode. Cause he basically got to do this dance on both sides. The hub will only stay in inclusion mode for 30 seconds at a time. It's such a mess, but I finally got them talking to each other. And once I did that, it all ended up being very straightforward to use in Home Assistant. The only problem I really had at that point was you needed to tell the switch, oh, I would like full control over the LEDs because by default it shows like how dim or bright the lights are.

2:00:39And once I found that switch, then everything was good to go. So Erin gets home. You know, we chitchat for a little bit. We go up to bed. I stand conspicuously in front of the light switch as she's grabbing the stuff to bring upstairs. And then, you know, today we get home, I get home from Wegmans and she says, what the hell is this? And I think at this point she has resigned herself to the fact that it's already been done. Thank you, Robert Moses. And she's resigned herself to the fact that these LEDs are very physically small. They're like a couple of millimeters across. They are very small and not very obtrusive.

2:01:12Whereas if I were left to my own devices and if I had used that RJ11 panel, they would have been quite a bit larger, quite a bit brighter, and quite a bit more intrusive and obtrusive and whatnot. You get those colored light bulbs that are in like those metal cages, you know, like that hang down in like mine shafts, like giant incandescent colored blue bulb inside a metal cage and put just three of those in the wall. Well, you know, people had suggested, you joke, but people had suggested there's an easy fix in this problem. Just put three full side light bulbs and pick like, yeah, basically make a traffic light.

2:01:42And I thought about it briefly, but even for me, that was too much. But I got to tell you right now, at least for the next five minutes, anyhow and before somehow z-wave like all falls apart it's all working pretty well and because my wife is a damn angel and she knows that i won't just leave this well enough alone and i think she is mostly acquiesced to the fact that this is a pretty decent happy medium and let me remind everyone that the steady state of this whole setup is all of those leds are off the garage doors closed closed there's no mail waiting and the car is not charging which is the way it typically is in the house all the leds are off so nobody's any the wiser but i am pretty happy with myself and I think it worked out really well and I have learned a whole lot which is probably the most important thing at all but if you two saw this you would absolutely hate it by the way i'm seeing it in the picture now i already hated yeah i'm on i'm on team aaron on this one although although on my side i feel like you should just have a full-fledged screen with actual text on it that explains all the things you want instead of tiny lights that that you know the meaning of oh that's too obtrusive when this tiny light is pink that means your car is charging but if it's green that means the garage door is it's like the mail comes the blue light turns on right but only if the red light is on at the same time as the blue light comes on that means mikhail is coming home from school oh i thought about that.

2:02:57I don't think there's an API for that, but I would totally do that. If the lights start blinking, get out of the house.