 were. Okay. So it's good that I didn't emulate Negan too much. Probably. It's a family shows. Scott, why did it? Why did I go to Scott? That's weird. Because you thought family? Oh, he's a family man. Also, when I first started doing podcasts with Mr. Johnson, he didn't swear at all ever. And recently I've noticed he throws out the S word. Yep. Very often. Definitely the A word. Yeah. Yep. I think the internet has perverted him. Prevert, postvert. I think it's, you know, I think it's a symbol of the same pattern of decline that we saw in last night's World Series. Not a Cubs fan. But I'm very happy for my Chicago friends, not my Southside friends, but the Northside friends. What do I know? I don't know if we explained that. So, you know, in Chicago, they have two teams, right, Patrick? Oh, I didn't know that. They have the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs. Now, it's not strictly geographical, but generally, because the stadiums are in these parts of the town, the Southside is considered White Sox territory, and the Northside is considered Cubs territory. We'll find both fans of both on both ends of town, but that's roughly the predominance. OK. I've learned so much. Yeah, Patrick was picking up baseball really, really fast last night. Well, you know, I just made a reference to the game just now, and it just didn't seem odd. No, it just fell right out of your mouth. The one I've always had trouble grasping is cricket. Like the animal. No, I wish the animal like figured out at that time, like watching a game and having people explain it to me. It's like, well, so wait, the post. I have a friend, an English friend, or that when we worked at Blizzard and when it was cricket season, he would watch the games from, you know, the office, but you would go to his desk and he would be watching and then go back to his, you know, as he was working, of course, but then go back a few hours later, he would still be watching. And then the next day you're like, wow, that that thing is really long. And he's like, yeah, it's the same game like what? Yeah, they take like like a three day test match. Yeah. Well, and I've tried to learn the rules of cricket and I've I've increased my knowledge of cricket, but I've never fully gotten all of the rules under my belt. Like you can have basic rules. And of course, there are certain certain idiosyncrasies of any sport that spin out from the as long as you if you got if you grasp the core mechanics of the game, you know, you can kind of figure to think of anything I don't know for the life of me, cricket is just like, like, but I think part of it is it's the only game I find even more dull on TV than golf. All right. I don't realize that I don't really watch golf on TV either. But it is time to do the show. All right. Oh, it is. Wow. OK. Here we go. Daily Tech News Show is powered by its audience, not outside organizations. To find out more, head to DailyTechNewsShow.com slash support. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, November 3rd, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt. We finish our upside down backwards week by bringing Patrick to Beja normally on Tuesdays in on a Thursday to complete the circle. You know, I'm so glad that we're doing it and that I'm here because I got to experience a deeply American and uniquely historical event yesterday evening as I was just landing. That's right. He got to eat some vegan food in California. Yes, that's what we're talking about. No, Patrick's actually in my house. He's here in the United States coming out for for BlizzCon, which is why we had to part of the reason we had to juggle all this schedule. Scott and traveling for BlizzCon, too. But you got to watch a historic baseball game yesterday. That was really fun. And I, you know, I've made I've learned the vernacular. I've followed the event and I've made at least two or three references to the game since then that were accurate and that felt natural. I feel like I'm becoming slowly more American by the minute. I'm pretty sure that Patrick is going to be walking up to people at BlizzCon dying to talk baseball like, hey, how about them cubs, huh? And I'll be like, like genuinely on Twitter, I put out a comment about like, yeah, but they came back from it on the eighth, so they might do it again. And I watched it going out of me through my hands. And I was like, wow, I'm doing it. I'm talking sports. It's amazing, you know, like about some of the experiences they grow up so fast. We are going to talk a little bit later about all of this fallout regarding the MacBook Pro. We haven't had a chance to really sit back since last week's announcement and say, OK, is all of the anger deserved? Maybe it is. We're going to talk about dongles, MacBook Pros and specs and prices. But we've got some other top stories to get to first. Samsung Gear S3. That's the one that has the optional built in LTE kicks off pre-orders November 6th and ships in the United States November 18th. It's kind of the only new smartwatch that will be coming out until after the first and next year because of the delay in Android Wear. And the Google Home product reviews are out. People are saying it's a little echoey. Smells great. Although I think they may be reviewing something that just looks like the Google Home in that case. But no, they're mostly positive. People seem to like the Google Home. And now here are some more top stories. Huawei. Every once in a while, I want to spell this because there are some people who are like, I don't understand what he's saying when he says Huawei. H-U-A-W-E-I announced it's five point nine inch Mate nine four with a 1080 by 1920 screen, seven point nine millimeters thick. Has the fingerprint reader on the back. I do like that. Dual Leica cameras capable of 4K. The cameras are positioned one above the other rather than the side by side. You usually see when phones have dual cameras has a 4,000 milliamp hour battery. In fact, the tech crunch, it was either the tech wrench or the verge. Now, I can't remember. One of the reviewers said it lasted them two days when they were testing it. Sixty four gigabytes of onboard storage plus a micro SD card slot, four gigs of RAM, USBC and Huawei's own octa-core Kirin 960 processor. Huawei also runs its emotional UI, which generally gets decent reviews on top of Android Nougat sells for 699 euros or 1,395 euros. If you want to get the special Porsche design. I don't think I'll be going for that Porsche design personally. But yeah, it's it's another good phone, apparently. Is that is that where we're at now? Because this isn't a significantly impressive phone. It's it's nicely designed and it's got that nice curved back fingerprint on the back four thousand milliamp hour. There's a lot to like about this phone. But I, too, find myself not getting excited. And it's not because I don't like Huawei or I don't like this phone. Phones just don't get my motor running anymore. I think your question is is that where we're at now? I think we've been there for a few years, no matter the manufacturer. There isn't anything that's made us go wow for a while. So it's definitely not a cheap phone at 699 euros. Although Huawei sells other more reasonably priced phones. But this is this is their top of the line, Mate 9, and it's a great phone. Yeah. And Thursday, Alphabet's Google officially rejected the European Union's antitrust charges over search engine results for shopping services and online search advertising, Google's general counsel Kent Walker said on a blog, we never compromised the quality or relevance of the information we received. On the contrary, we improved it and, quote, Google believes there is. So wait for that. There is no factual, legal or economic basis to the accusations. And let me read the end of the quote I started just now. He ends it with this isn't favoring, which is using the language that the you used, this isn't favoring. That's listening to our customers. Walker said, yeah, if there were going to be any punches that Google would pull, they didn't. This is this, this strikes me. We were talking about this earlier, Patrick and I, this strikes me as Google looking at what the EU has alleged and saying, we don't see a compromise position for us that wouldn't wouldn't violate one of our core principles. We don't think we did anything wrong. So they went the other way and wrote an extremely hard-nosed blog post. Yeah, it's definitely when you read it, you get the feeling that they will just not compromise. This is a way of signaling, not, you know, signaling to the EU. All right, we're done playing now. We're not going to we're not going to play along with any of this. So if the EU was hoping to get to push a little bit strongly to get a compromise, I don't think they're going to get it. And I think this also signals on Google's part. We'll have to see if there are multiple procedures going against Google and other big tech companies in you. And I think this is Google signaling. All right, we're sick of it now. This is drawing a line of the sand. We're drawing it. We're not going to play ball on this. I'm going to try and drop a few sports references throughout the show. See if you can collect them all. But they're saying we're we're not going to play ball on this. And I don't know how much the EU is going to is going to fight it, because ultimately, these issues that they're talking about do apply to some European companies, for sure. It's very hard to compete if you're being taken out of the search results and similar things. But mostly these were complaints from other American companies, notably Microsoft, which started this a while ago. So I don't know if the incentive for the EU, if they feel it's going to be a huge fight, I don't know if their heart will be as much in it at this point. But it is interesting to see Google essentially calling the EU's bluff because as we've noticed, Google kept getting an extension on this response. They said they needed more time and the EU gave them more time. I don't know what that was all about. But it is interesting to see them say, we need more time. Sure, you can have more time. Need more time. Sure, you can have more time. Nothing necessarily controversial out of that. But then to come back with, OK, after all of that time of considering, we've decided we haven't done a single thing wrong and there is no room for compromise and they actually provided a more compromised position a year or more ago when they said, hey, you know, we'll adjust search engine results this way with we'd offer these sorts of things and those were dismissed. So by the EU, so I think what Google's saying now is there really isn't anything that we need to do if you want to if you want to come for us. Come on, let's do this. Let's rumble. Yeah, it's definitely and it's not so, you know, you can point to a few specific cases, but I think looking at it from the EU, there's definitely a feeling that we're attacking them from every front. And it might not be like a coordinated thing, but every country is trying to get some money out of those companies that are fiscally optimizing their revenue streams so that they pay little as little tax as possible everywhere. And everyone is trying to get at them. And maybe at some point they have to stop being, you know, trying to work with the governments. And I mean, I don't think they have to stop working with the governments. But for them, for them looking at all of this, maybe they need to signal strongly that they will stand their ground at some point, maybe to soften the other's position and resume conversations after that. Intel has acquired Voke, spelled V-O-K-E, which specializes in virtual reality for sports, Patrick's new love. In fact, the Sacramento Kings basketball team in the National Basketball Association of the United States is one of the investors in Voke. Voke has broadcast NBA games in VR in the US. They have also broadcast Kabadi tournaments in virtual reality in India. It will make the basis of a new Intel sports group along with 3D, tech team they acquired when Intel bought replay technologies earlier this year. Voke's true VR uses a stereoscopic camera to record and stream to various devices, including virtual reality headsets live and can work with the large amounts of 3D that is generated by 3D. Intel says that using all of this, they could let a viewer experience a game from anywhere in a stadium so they could capture an entire stadium in virtual reality, stream it out live and let you decide where you want to sit and watch the game from wherever. Intel also recently acquired a couple other VR companies, Itsees, which does navigation and Movidius, which does computer vision. So they are certainly building up a VR team for virtual reality and particularly buying Voke allows them to get into sports for virtual reality specifically, which is very interesting. You know, this is yet another indication that every company is working. Every tech company in the world is now looking at VR. But the interesting thing with VR is that we've seen a lot of uses, a lot of concepts, but nothing that has knocked it out of the park yet, you know, where you didn't react. It was my sports. It was just so good. I didn't even think of it as something to react to. I was like, yeah, well, of course, that's how Patrick talks because he's a huge baseball fan. So nothing has knocked it out of the park yet. And they're they're, you know, Intel is also looking into this, but it's also a little bit hard to not look at this story and go, oh, so everyone's on VR, you know, it's funny because only six months to a year ago, every time one of those would happen, the reaction would be, oh, they're getting into VR as well. But now it's like, oh, yeah, all right, they're really investing a lot in technology. No, I agree that that Intel getting into VR is not news. What is what is exciting to me is seeing the different ways that all of these companies are getting into virtual reality. Now, on the headset side, you know, it's a little more regimented. You're either making a gear VR like headset or you're making a tethered Oculus VR type headset, and then there's some people experimenting in between. And that's where sort of the interesting stuff is happening. But in the implementation of VR, I think we've all thought, well, you're going to sit in your living room and play video games. And the idea that there are other things you could do is where you're right. We haven't seen anything that really knocks us out of the park yet, like you said, but also where people are trying different things. And so the idea of, hey, we're not just going to stream VR to sports. We're going to try to make it better and different. And so we're going to be able to stream the entire venue. And what else will that allow us to do? I mean, the obvious thing is I can see the game from various viewpoints and wander around. But are there other things that that will make happen? I think this is pretty exciting. Yeah, well, we'll see. But talking about interesting VR users for VR, HTC will bring thousands of its VR Viveport arcades to China and Taiwan by the end of 2017. HTC expects the virtual reality arcade locations to bring in more than one hundred million dollars over the next two years. HTC will launch with one hundred and twenty titles, including updated versions of the Brookhaven experiment and Everest VR. So yeah, here's another example of what we're talking about. HTC saying, well, yeah, we want to sell a bunch of hives. But also we want to get into other businesses. And maybe this will bring arcades back to places like the United States, where where they've sort of fallen off and rejuvenate them and make them even more exciting in places like Japan, where they're still very strong. They also talk about putting them in theme parks and other locations that aren't strictly about arcades. And again, maybe it's, you know, you can throw stones and go, that's dumb. Who's going to want to pay for that? You can just get this not that great of an experience. But I love that they're trying something new. This is causing a company to go out and take a little bit of a risk on a venture that most people thought arcades, that's done. You know, it's yeah, I think it's really interesting because the use of VR is perfectly fitted for that kind of setup. You can have a little bit more space. You can have a specific hardware accessory that gets the cable above your head hanging and you can move around in a wider space. And you also have to remember that arcades were often, I mean, arcade products, games were often designed specifically for the arcade with sometimes specialized hardware, so it wouldn't be hard to imagine seeing a game that would be developed for that use, where you know how the configuration of the space is going to be defined. And instead of having one arcade cabinet, you would have an arcade space of, you know, I don't know, six feet by six feet or 10 feet by 10 feet. And you would have some arrangement there that would help you materialize what you're seeing in that. My point is there are things to explore there. Yeah, yeah, working. No, I think that's a great point. I mean, they point to it a little bit in this article. The Brookhaven experiment and Everest VR will be updated specifically for the arcade experience and why wouldn't you also create the perfect place to use an HTC Vive on room scale? Everybody's got space. Not everybody has enough space or the right shape of space or doesn't really want to move the coffee table out of the way. So you can optimize it and do things that you would never be able to do in a home. I think that's a great point. Yeah. And this is something that you can go to and have a short experience. You know, usually VR experiences are 10, 15, 20 minutes and not necessarily like a full usual video game, which can be several hours. So it might be better suited for a small arcade experience than a full at home experience. It's it's possible it will work. Android continues to lead worldwide shipments of smartphones and now taking a record 88 percent of the market, according to the latest numbers from Strategy Analytics, shipments of Android based smartphones grew 10.3 percent year over year. Total worldwide smartphone shipments also grew 6 percent year over year. So it's still a growing market, although it's slowing down. 354.2 million smartphones shipped in Q3 worldwide. iOS is number two. It fell a couple of percentage points to 12.1 percent of the market, while all other mobile operating systems, all others, windows, BlackBerry, Tizen, Sailfish, YOLA, all of it. I just said YOLA twice, I guess. All of it made up 0.3 percent of the market. That's down from 2.3 percent a year ago. It is officially when you round up or down a two OS market now. And it is almost entirely Android. It's so the thought that came to my mind when I read this article was Apple is in a really interesting position and Android is in a super interesting position. The thing is it's easy to get to thinking of the PC Mac duality that we've had for a long time. And I know there are other OSes as well, but mostly they were those two. And Apple was in a very had a much smaller market share than PCs. Obviously, they were around five percent for the longest time. And now we're seeing this being replicated in the smartphone industry with an immensely dominant Android platform. And Apple getting to levels that are comparable of market share that are comparable to that of the Mac from 15, 20 years ago. Of course, it's not the same market. Smartphones are being used everywhere in the world intensively, almost everywhere, including in countries that didn't have a significant usage of actual computers of PC computers in the widest sense of the term. So it's not exactly equivalent, but certainly that it's there seems to be some kind of a repeat of the of history here with with it definitely has parallels. You look at this and you want to say, oh, Android's Windows and iOS is Mac, it fits. And maybe it's just a reflection of human nature to want to simplify on a major choice and an alternate. And maybe that's all it is. I don't think it's necessarily bad news for iOS. I also think it is good news for Google and Android. I think I think it can be good news for both of them in a way. Apple has not wanted and the switch drew of Mac to to branch out and let anyone use its operating system. So it is always going to be limited because it's one model of phone. OK, yeah, you can still get an iPhone 6S and plus 6 plus. So you can argue that there are multiple models, but it's really just Apple making the iPhone, whereas Google makes its own pixel. But also there's the Nexus that are still out there for sale here and there. And then you have Huawei and then you have Samsung. And then you have all of these other companies. So when you break it down by companies making phones with Android, Apple is doing very, very well. It just happens that that number also is the same number as the operating system. All of that said, Google is dominating the space. There is no question about it. And so when you do look at it, an operating system, Apple has decided they will not they give up dominating the space in order to do hardware sales and Android is covering everything. And Google monetizes it with Google search. It's why they're fighting in the EU and and and they have won. They have won the space at this stage anyway. And it seems difficult to imagine that this would change significantly any time soon. And there is a difference. I mean, I don't know if we want to talk about the origins of the of the Mac, but at some point, the iPhone had a very big market share. And Google was seen as the new entrant in that space with Android to an extent. But yeah, it's a little bit hard to compare because Apple had a dominant smartphone market at a time where it's weren't really if you included them with Nokia candy bar phones and Blackberries. Then, you know, I guess Blackberries were captured in the smartphone numbers. But, you know, there were there were lots of other phones that weren't smartphones. Smartphones are now the dominant part of this marketplace. But I think the key is that what Apple didn't do is expand into developing markets. And when you go back to your PC comparison, this is something that was not a consideration back then. If Apple wants to continue to maintain their toehold, they don't have to win. They don't have to knock Android off the throne. But if they want to maintain their toehold, they have to keep those numbers coming up in China, they have to move better into India, and they have to find out a way to move into the African market, because these Android numbers are not built on Samsung Galaxy phones. These Android numbers are built on medium phones and smart feature phones. Yeah, inexpensive phones. Yeah. And but I guess the the key there for Android, as you were saying, is they've won this battle. And the point I was trying to make clumsily is that it wasn't a given. The I think the openness of the platform and the strength that Google has put behind the development of it have proven to be very efficient in. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't like predicting something incredible a few years ago, but it certainly had wasn't one from the get go. But they've been masterful in this. And yeah, they've they basically wanted this one. Yeah. And now the question is, can they keep it? Yeah, big question. The Verge reports multiple sources say YouTube Red has one point five million paying subscribers as of late summer with another one million on a free trial. YouTube has one billion monthly users overall, but YouTube Red is only available in four markets, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the US. YouTube says red subscribers watch seventy five percent more YouTube on televisions than average users. And of course, my wife works for YouTube. She works for the YouTube Spaces, not YouTube's originals or YouTube Red, but she works closely to that. That said, I don't have any inside information about this. And I look at this and at first I think, well, YouTube Red really isn't meant to compete with Netflix. It's meant to take YouTube's strongest supporters and give them something special. And in that respect, it's working. This is not necessarily have to be a moneymaker for them. It has to be a loyalty builder. And what they're finding is the people who are the biggest fans of YouTube creators that are superstars like Grace Helbig and others are signing up for YouTube Red. So maybe this is an indication that there aren't as many of these dedicated fans as maybe people thought. But I think where it becomes damning for YouTube is this is also the launch of YouTube music. Anybody who subscribes to YouTube music or Google music gets YouTube Red. It's all one package. And they have not been able to convince people to sign on to the music program. You know, this is really, I mean, yes, they're probably making more money on YouTube Red users than they are on regular users, because the, you know, the ad is the ad revenue is so small per user that I'm guessing they're making more money there. So it's not like it's a negative, you know, they're from for each one of those, they're getting increased revenue, probably, so it's good. But still, I don't think anyone looks at these numbers inside YouTube and inside, you know, the company and thinks, yes, this is exactly what we want. These are the numbers we were hoping for. I mean, a conversion rate, if you're looking at their monthly active users, the number for the monthly active users and the number of subscribers is what one thousandth about between one and two thousandth. So 0.1 percent. That is not a conversion rate. That is, I mean, I don't know, maybe at the one billion mark, your conversion rate is so low that you didn't expect more than this. But I can't imagine they're happy with the number. Maybe not unhappy because it doesn't make them less money, but probably not happy. Yeah, I think if YouTube wants YouTube Red to become something more than a perk that the hardest of the hardest core are willing to pay for, they either have to do a better job marketing YouTube music because I think a lot of people look at that and go, why would I switch from Spotify to videos? And YouTube music isn't videos. It's it's it's just like Spotify. It can be managed just like Spotify, but they do a horrible job of communicating that and and trying to convince people to move out and Spotify's discovery is light years beyond what Google and YouTube have to offer in their music. So they have to get better at that or they have to come out with some hit shows that everybody wants to watch. They have to become a competitor for Netflix and Amazon. They have to have big names that are signing on and you're like, oh, wow, that's the house of cards of YouTube Red. And now I'm interested in signing up because I want to watch it. Yeah, that would be an interesting move. I doubt that's the direction they're looking at, though. And the reality is honestly, YouTube Red has not been marketed very much. I mean, in Europe, obviously, it's not available. So I'm not going to get a lot of advertising for it. But sure, we don't hear about it since the launch. And that doesn't seem like the kind of big marketing push a company would do if they really want to get this thing. It almost seems maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it almost seems like one of those things that Google does. And I understand YouTube isn't Google anymore, but that Google does. No, they try it. Oh, YouTube is still part of. Yeah, it's still part of Google. It didn't get separated out as part of Alphabet. My bad. Oh, right. And they use the same data. I'm an idiot. Anyway, it seems like one of the things that Google tries out and their their heart is not really into it. That's what it feels like. Yeah, it does have that that that Google feeling to it, unfortunately, that feeling being we're not sure if they're really going to keep it around or not. That's that's bad, isn't it? That when we get for those those kinds of new features that Google launches, there's been so many and so many things that they've tried and tested. Our reaction now is kind of, oh, all right. Well, we'll see what happens in a year or two, because right now it's hard to get excited about the new feature that Google launches, because you never know what's going to happen to it. It's I don't know. It's a weird place we've gotten to with Google that has been championing innovation in many ways. Well, yeah, we'll keep an eye out for it. Thanks to all those who participate in our subreddit, submit stories and vote on them at DailyTechNewsShow.Reddit.com. We appreciate everybody who gets in there and submit stories. We love our mods that keep it running nice and smooth. And if nothing else, just get in there and do some voting. Now that is the top story section. All right. A lot of people are very upset with what has been going on since Apple announced the MacBook Pros. A lot of flak being delivered at Apple. MJTSAI.com put a blog post together collecting the negative reactions to the new MacBook Pros announcement. And if you, like I did, go there expecting to see like a dozen to 20, you know, blog posts, you will be shocked. Michael Tsai did a much better job than I would have done. And the page goes on and on and on and on. Now, Phil Schiller did an interview and said, hey, MacBook Pro has more orders for than any pro notebook before. So obviously somebody likes it. He was asked about the SD card reader. He said, look, it's cumbersome to have that slot in there. It's best left to wireless transfers. But if you don't have wireless transfers, an adapter is just as good as having it stick out. All right. He also said that they kept a headphone jack on the MacBook Pro because, quote, many users have setups with studio monitors, amps and other pro audio gear that do not have wireless solutions and need that 3.5 millimeter jack. He kept to the idea that, hey, wireless is the best solution. Now, I think that's where Apple is going with all of this. Granted, for me to use the new MacBook Pro with USB-C, I went out and I had to buy a Thunderbolt to USB-C adapter, a US 2 USB to USB-C adapters in case I wanted to have two USB regular things plugged in at once and a USB-C to Ethernet adapter because I still use Ethernet right here at this desk. That's a lot of dongles. But as Patrick with shock noted, I am one of those few people who still relies on Ethernet for things. And I think that's I think what Apple is saying is like, most things that need a wire are going to move to USB-C. We're definitely future proofing there. And a lot of things are becoming wireless so that you won't need ports at all. You know, it's this is the explanation that Apple gives. And I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of being either brah, Apple does that all the time. And there, you know, people complain, but ultimately a year after that, it's everything's fine. Or to be on the other hand, on the other side of this and start showing picture of the very silly way you recharge a mouse and, you know, the Apple mouse, the magic mouse that you have to plug on the bottom of it and you can't use it as it recharging or going into the dongle, the forest of dongle that you're going to need to use the thing in the short term. And saying that Apple has lost its way and that, you know, that is unnecessary, quote, unquote, innovation, that the MacBook Pros don't have enough RAM or, you know, all of those complaints. I think what's interesting to note here is not necessarily that there are people that are happy or unhappy with that new Mac. It's the volume of complaints that we're seeing about this. And I think that took everyone by surprise, including Apple. When we first saw the announcement, I think the reviews or the first impressions by the press that was there was fairly positive. We also looked at it and thought, oh, you know, it's going to be annoying to have dongles, but the machines look good. But then over the past week or 10 days, we've seen all of those mostly developers coming out and saying. This is not OK for me is implied. This is not OK. This is not the kind of machine I'm expecting. And I'm a Mac lover. I love the MacBook and I've been using MacBook Pros. So that's the more interesting thing for me. I think we can dive into it. What does it mean? Yeah, I think part of the reaction comes from accumulation of disappointments. It's not that they switched everything to USB-C. It's not that only the 15 inch has a powerful graphics card. And even that one isn't the most powerful one you could wish for. It's not just that they got rid of the function keys and replaced it with this touch screen that we're not sure if it's really going to be handy and a good replacement. It's not that it's only 16 gigs of RAM and and you really can't replace the RAM and upgrade it yourself anymore, at least not easily. It's all of those things and some of those have been coming for years like the replacement of RAM is not new, but they've been building up. And I think it points to a larger trend with Apple, which is they are not targeting top end users. They don't upgrade the Mac Pro very often. What they've done to Final Cut Pro is legendary. And they've essentially handed Adobe a new market with Premiere. So that none of this should really come as a surprise. But I think people who want those top end machines from Apple were sort of giving them the benefit of the doubt for a couple of cycles here, then waited for a long time for a new one and didn't get any of those things back, but just had a couple more taken away. Yeah, I think this is definitely the key here. I think it is Apple signaling now, you know, very strongly you are not our market anymore. And we don't really care about you. Although I'm saying signaling, as you were saying, they've been signaling this for a while. This is just a confirmation. I mean, the Mac Pro, which was unveiled with the new design with the trash can design, was unveiled three years ago and hasn't been upgraded three years ago for a pro machine. Even specs have not been upgraded. I'm guessing it might, you know, an upgraded version might come in the next few weeks or months, but at this point, they're clearly saying we don't care about the real pros. If you look at the SD card, it's true that the people who need it are going to be really annoyed when they need it. Absolutely. It is factually true. It's another dongle I'm going to have to buy if I want to use that machine. And it's it's but what percentage of the people are those? But still, Apple has, you know, when they design their their MacBook Pro recently, you have been looking at what do we need in this machine. And clearly it hasn't been we need this machine to be the more powerful version of the PCs out there. They've been they've shown basically the lower end MacBook Pro 13 inch as a replacement for the MacBook Air, it's better in every respect, almost every respect. So they aim for 10 hours of battery life, which is very respectable for a device like this, but then they bring everything down to the level where it as long as it has 10 hours of battery life will be OK. And they make it so thin that, you know, I mean, they make it thin enough that it's going to still be able to do those 10 hours of battery life. Does it mean we need to remove the SD card or other ports? Yeah, whatever. We're not targeting the people who need these things. And the the that is the idea that is difficult to stomach for those supporters of Apple. But it's true that I don't think they care anymore. Well, and there's been a lot of flak to Apple about not being able to define who their products are for, specifically the MacBook Pro. And I think a lot of it is confused by that term Pro. Honestly, I feel and I don't know if Apple would agree with this, but I feel like the MacBook Pro line is targeted towards wealthier than most, not super rich, but people who can afford to pay a little extra. Very obviously the price is high for a solid, reliable machine that helps them with their creative pursuits as long as they're not at the high end of geekiness. So people in sales, people in marketing, people in product management, the there's a lot of people out there. They make enough money to afford these machines. These machines are very well built. I mean, that's what's got lost in this is like, hey, you know what? That's still a great trackpad. Yeah, there's some complaints about the keyboard. Jason Snell is not wrong when he criticizes those. But at the same time, it's a better keyboard than you'll find on a lot of machines and the OS is very tight and it's very reliable. It has got problems. Of course, all of that is is a hard to define market without sounding snide or insulting, you know, we're we're targeting middle management service professionals is not a great tagline for Apple when they're trying to appeal to those people by saying, hey, you're you're in the know, you're in the club when you buy these Apple products. And like the internet itself, the early adopters and the people who want to push the limits are sort of being left to the side and say, well, you might be able to find something else or you can deal with the difference. It's fine. 16 gigs of RAM is good enough. It's going to be fast RAM. You won't notice it that often. How many of you really edit in 4K? You know, that that seems to be the message. And you you hit the nail on the head. You you knocked it out of the park. You hit a home run. I forgot about. Thank you. Yeah. With the fact that the pro naming convention is confusing because those are definitely not machines that you use when you're a pro computer user. It might be good when you're professional using this for work. And in that sense, it might, you know, the naming convention might work, but it's not made for people who use those devices for intensive computer and calculation work. I think Apple maybe has always seen this line as the upsell of the MacBook line, the more professional, the more pricey and the more tightly built computer line. Before that, there were the, you know, you remember the white MacBook back in the day, the MacBook, the new MacBook, the 12 inch now is still available. The air is probably on the way out. But these are the more expensive Macs. And I think ultimately that's the best way to define them. Not they're going to be used by pros. Not they're more powerful. No, they're just the more expensive versions. And they're that before being better. Of course, they are better because they're more expensive and you pack in more technology and a tighter chassis and all of this. But that's just the price you're a Mac. And that's I think the best way to define them now. Yeah, in some ways, they're redefining pro to mean you're a business professional, not you're a geek. We think of MacBook Pro is like, yeah, I want to max out the RAM and the graphics card because I'm a geek and and whether that means I'm a computer geek or a film geek or whatever, I want to push it to the limit. And Max, Apple saying, no, pro means business professional. We're partnering with IBM. We want to move these things into the enterprise as much as possible. And it's people who who need enough power to run a lot of computer programs, but they're not pushing them to the limits. They don't need to max out their RAM. I mean, the existing line is already very thin and very compact. If you needed, they would they could easily have packed more technology into the existing chassis and made it more powerful to serve the needs of those more power hungry geeks. They could have done that easily. I'm sure or added more battery life, for example, they could have claimed you can get 15 hours. This is unprecedented if you there are a few that do that. But you can get 15 hours, 20 hours of battery life out of this. It's the same as they do with the iPhone. What do we need? 10 hours for most people, 80 percent of the people are going to need to use it for the whole day. The iPhone, they could make it thicker. They don't they make it thinner and it infuriates a few people who would like more battery life. But most people are OK with a you know, day long use of this and this is the same. So, yeah, it's it's definitely I think we might have understood a little bit of their strategy here is definitely for professionals who want to use Max. Dark Redeemer says the audience expects the end all be all power machine. But maybe Apple is just trying to make a generic professional device. Dev Dev ABC says the biggest feature for me as a primarily a web developer is the improved solid state drive speeds. The speeds up all kinds of tasks like NPM, get grunt, gulp, less, etc. This is huge to me. And Beatmaster says they've upped the SATA throughput. That's the real limitation these days. So I'm so he meant SSD, not not SATA, but it's the same as what Dev ABC is saying. And now I've embarrassed Beatmaster by repeating his mistake. I apologize, but they've upped the SSD throughput. So it's not like they aren't powerful. It's also Apple saying you say you want more RAM. We don't think you need more RAM. And that's always been annoying when Apple says that. But then sometimes they're wrong and sometimes they're right. Yeah, it's definitely a. It's definitely that junction where Apple tells you what you want. And here people are having a really hard time accepting it. And I think the reality is Apple is not talking to these people. As usual, Apple, Apple's first priority is Apple, not its users, not its partners. Apple's first priority is Apple. In this case, they're thinking about the bulk of their users, which have shifted away from developers and all of those. And they're saying, you know, we don't think the most of our users are going to need the 32 gigs of RAM. And the developers are like, but I do. Yeah. And Apple is telling them, well, we don't care about you too bad. I don't know if they're saying we don't really care, but they certainly are demonstrating it that they didn't put 32 in. Hey, let's finish up with a pick of the day from Franz. We get a lot of great suggestions on VPN and we will be getting to more of those in future days. I don't want to pour them all into one show right now. But I will go to Franz after yesterday's VPN suggestion because he didn't give us one VPN section. He said, I want to recommend Torrent Freak's annual VPN survey. Every year they ask VPN providers to answer a few questions, about 12 questions, regarding how they keep logs, which jurisdictions they operate in and encryption, among other things, and post the results on their website. Now, this one was last done in February, so these are a little bit dated, but it's a great way if you're concerned about actual privacy and encryption and security in picking a virtual private network to go through and look at a lot of the different people out there. ExpressVPN was the one I mentioned yesterday there on this list. Anonymizer is on this list. NordVPN, TorGuard, the list goes on. So you can do a little shopping there. Torrentfreak.com will have the direct links in our show notes. Thank you, Franz. That is the perfect response to our email yesterday. Send your pics to us, folks. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. You can find more pics at DailyTechNewShow.com slash pics. Big thank you, Patrick Beja, for flying all the way from France or Finland, I guess, just to be on the show. Just for that and for the match. I mean, I really didn't want to miss that. I met the game, the game. And also three strikes and you're out. Yeah, that's right. The ball, someone in the chat wanted me to say to make a reference to bunting. But I didn't manage to do it. You saw an example of bunting. You know what it is? Yeah, I do. I know sports and if you want to follow me and read my tweets about sports and other things, you can go to not Patrick on Twitter or on Facebook. And if you want to listen to shows, I do. You can find my shows at Frenchspin.com. The one I would recommend today is Pixels, which is a show about video games. And we had a very long discussion or a long discussion with Scott Johnson about the Nintendo Switch and a few other things, including the new games, reviews, policies by Bethesda, which is annoying a lot of people. Anyway, if you want to hear video game news, summarized and explained in an enjoyable manner, you can go to Frenchspin.com and listen to Pixels. Go do it now, ladies and gentlemen. It will help make you more fulfilled in life, I promise. You know what else will make you more fulfilled helping us out here on the show. The simplest, easiest way to do it is to tell us your favorite segment from this year, Roger Chang, our producer, is putting together a best of show and his idea for the best of show this year is to pick the five best segments of the year. So all you need to do is go to bit.ly slash best of DTNS. Best of DTNS all run together. Bit.ly slash best of DTNS and let us know what segment that was when if you could throw in time codes, that's even better. But we want to put together those five best segments for our best of show to run at the end of the year. Now, on top of that, we also have a store where we sell shirts and coffee mugs and those things that make great gifts in this upcoming gift giving season. You can find links to all that at dailytechnewshow.com slash support. And of course, the biggest way that we get support is from our patrons at patreon.com slash DTNS. We thank everybody who supports us there. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We're live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern at alphagicradio.com and diamondclub.tv. And our website is dailytechnewshow.com. Back tomorrow with Jen Cutter as our guest. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. Good show. Yeah, I actually feel like I understand what Apple was doing more than before we did that show. Yeah, me too. I think we talked it out, stumbled into that definition. It is a really good way of defining this line now. It's a lot clearer to me than than it was before. You know what? I was going to call out a few patrons in the main show, which I normally do, and Patreon decided to log me out, which is a perfectly natural security precaution. But it was really bad timing. So big thanks to Darren and Jude, who both up their pledge and a big welcome to David, thanks to Benjamin and James, who both up to their pledges. Welcome to Randy and Peterson. Thank you, Joyce, for upping your pledge. See, this way I actually get to do more of them. Welcome to Joe Howd, who joined us now and Kevin for upping his pledge as well, you guys are the best. Well, can you hear me? Yeah, I can't magic. It's good discussion. Good show. Thanks, man. The show deserves a good title. So let's check those out. Top is a MacBook cons. Rage against the parentheses MacBook Pro machine. Ah, ah, ah, ah. Google rejects your your legality and that's that's working hard. It's working hard. I admire the effort there. Oh, this was pretty funny. I rate. Get it. I read. I didn't get it initially. I know it now. Yeah. That's even better for Patrick because he has to it's it's not his native tongue. So that's a lot of dongles. That's a lot of there's another one with an exclamation. So I love dongles. You know, you can just get a doc. That's USBC Thunderbolt. Yeah, but I can't carry a doc around with me. Get a smaller doc. Sixteen gigs of memory ought to be enough for anybody. That's funny. Google tells the EU that it's feeling lucky. That's good. The hunt for red YouTuber. You guys are kicking it. EU's trust issues. Like antitrust nicely done. Intel gets vogue on VR. VRcade VRcade. YouTube Red Dead Retention. Nice. WWDC, the worldwide dango collection. Oh, I like this one from Dark Redeemer, Macbook No. Wow. I'm glad that one up. That's mean, but. Making people. It's along the same lines as I rate, I guess. Yeah. We don't think you need more RAM. It's more appliance than machine now. VR Serious. I almost want to modify ICUs to say MacBook Pros and Cons. That sounds good. I like that. Yeah. That's kind of nice. I like that. Proven Cons, yeah. I will say it, I think. I was going to add my two cents to the whole MacBook thing. But to me, it's just I think it's just kind of a signaling that. Apple sees sees their computer line as kind of being a legacy portion of their business, where they'll still keep it because it makes the money. But it's not their primary, you know, attention getter. And that's going to be on the mobile side. Yeah, I think that's implied, though. We mentioned very often how small the portion of the revenue, the max account for nowadays, but I see you as permission to edit his work. So MacBook Pros and Cons will be the title. We'll put it on a creative comments. Attribution, I see you. But yeah, but it doesn't mean they have to the fact that it's a smaller portion of their income doesn't mean they have to go one way or the other. That's true, they don't. But it is. I mean, how much time are you going to spend on something that brings in? Was it 15 percent of the revenue? The last 11, I think, or 12? It's not time, though. Like that that that's not always a wrong analysis, but it is sort of the go to analysis of like, oh, well, they don't want to spend time. It doesn't take that much time. It's more and to say like, well, it is not a priority is absolutely true. But even when it's not a priority, they still have to pick a direction. And they could have easily picked a direction that would have taken them less time to say, let's just max everything out. Like they this is a considered decision that took them effort and time to to come to it. It may have took them longer time because it's not as much a priority. But this this is not something they they cinched out on and just like, well, just throw a touchscreen on it. Like I think that's one of the reasons people are so upset is they know that they really thought about this and this is what they came up with. I mean, part of it, I don't know. I mean, part of part of my thinking is like, you know, is is is Apple really just doing just enough to keep the the inertia that they have in that market going until they can bridge out a newer solution that doesn't rely on this. But would this be what they did? If that was the case? Who knows? Easier thing be like, just leave a bunch of USB ports in there. It's easier for us, but not for them. Right. Well, why? No, it's easier for them. They would avoid the controversy. I think it's it's much easier for them. I think. I mean, if if if you come out with a product that is solid, although it's tweaked enough that the most vocal portion of your audience doesn't like it, but it still rakes in the same amount of cash. I mean, doesn't that just imply that? Yeah, you have you have a you have a very loud portion of your fan base that that doesn't like it. But, you know, it doesn't affect our bottom line. So does it really matter what they think? Just just Dark Redeemer found November 12, 2015. The title was iPad pros and cons. Oh, good. So it's a sequel. OK, all right. So you're good with it. Yeah, that's fine. Thanks, Dr. Dever. Yeah, I mean, I was worried we were using the exact same one before. I think that's. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I think it's I don't think it would have been easier for them to do it another way. I think I think yes, I'm sorry. It's the opposite. I think it would be easier from a communication standpoint to do it another way. Well, and engineering wise, if you just said, like, let's just leave the ports the same, then you that part of the design is done. You don't have to redesign USBC ports. You don't have to deal with the complications that cause. So, yeah, I mean, I don't look at this and think, oh, well, they just did the easy thing. The easy thing would have been to leave a lot of things the same and put that touch bar, slap that touch bar on. Well, no, I mean, I'm not saying they took the easy route. I'm just saying they took they they they took the route for for what made sense for them. And I mean, it kind of. I think what you're saying fits into what we were saying in the show, which is they don't prioritize this market. I think you're right about that as much as they do other markets. And so they're looking at, OK, who are the majority of the users of these things? Well, it's not the high end geeks anymore. So let's let's let's make sure we point this at the people left who do buy laptops. And really, I mean, sorry, I disagree that they would have done things. Basically, what you're saying, if they didn't have the iPhone market, they would have done things differently. I'm not certain about that. I so my take is part of it is that they also need to kind of look down on the roadmap of what Intel has come yet, you know, vis-a-vis chipsets and stuff. So I mean, the thing is USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 actually makes great sense. Totally. Because it allows a tremendous amount of flexibility, both with legacy and moving forward with new new peripherals or whatever. And it actually simplifies the outlay of the board because you're not supporting a bunch of different chipsets. You just have one that kind of covers everything. You know, the GPU thing might be moot if they do. If you can, you know, take a sonnet, technologies, you know, PCI Express, Chassis and plug it in and stick your favorite GPU. More dongles. It's more dongles. But so, you know, it's I think I think what's what people will find so frustrating is that it doesn't seem like, you know, everyone wants to have their input recognized and and validated, you know, with whatever product that comes out. Designed by committee. Yeah. And I mean, Apple does very much have a kind of single-minded approach. I don't think that Apple and going back to Patrick's point, I don't think Apple would have done a different thing if they didn't have the iPhone market. I think it's less about we have the iPhone as our dominant market. It's more about the PC market is slowing, you know, and we just don't need to spend as you know, we need to make sure we're targeting who's actually buying PCs anymore. Maybe they would have upgraded the Mac Pro more. But how long does that take? The more I think about it, the more I think about it, the more I realize that where they're going to increase sales is in the enterprise and where they have done a lot of work is partnering up with people like IBM to sell into the enterprise and what these machines look like are Dell Latitude laptops. Like they're mid-range, powerful enough, but not not so powerful that you're wasting stuff on people who are using it. And I think that the people who want their iPhones in the enterprise who are like, oh, I don't want to deal with that Android bullshit because they, you know, they're just people who like iPhones. They're going to have the same attitude towards the PC laptops and think, you know, there's there's tons of people, you know, normal people like my wife and my mom and who go like, I don't even want to hear about those other things. They seem complicated. So just give me the Apple one. I understand it. I'm fine with it. And I'm wondering if the the the people who choose a specific phone outside of the realm of geeks might have an affection for the iPhone and might think, well, I want the the one with the Apple logo on it for the laptop as well. Well, I have a friend, I have a friend who's an editor and she switched away from Mac because she's like, it's just too expensive. She went to Windows. She had problems with one machine, problems with another machine, but they were cheap enough that she was willing to like, well, I'll just I'll just get a different machine. They're only 600 bucks. And eventually she just gave in about a used Mac book because she still is like, they're still too expensive. But she's like, I have fewer problems when I'm on OS 10 with what I do. And she's largely using Microsoft Office and the web and a few other programs. I mean, it's in a weird way. It's kind of a reboot to back in the late 80s. Early 90s were max for super pricey compared to their PC competitors. And a lot of that was explained because they built them down in the valley. They physically had a factory here. They actually they used to have a burning side note. They used to have a burning section where they would just leave the machine running for like a couple of days to make sure it all run. And it was on this automated conveyor belt. And these Macs would go up and disappear into a giant block and come back down like a day later after they've went through validation. And it was, you know, people really like that about Macs. There was a there was an expected quality and rather and you didn't have any surprises. So I totally see that. I'm wondering, I mean, I'm really thinking about what you were saying about Enterprise. I mean, if that's something they would go because they dropped out of the back end market with their Sanette or was there was their server? Yeah, no, they're not they're not going Enterprise in that way. They're going client now, not not server. But they are definitely doing it like they are partnering up and trying to sell Apple products into the enterprise on the client side. The power PC wasn't cheap to fact wasn't cheaper. I don't think they got the the not not only the yields, but they didn't get the didn't they didn't Roger is reacting to Captain Jack. Sorry, Captain Jack. I have a habit of doing that. I'm a part of it. It's I mean, it's so funny. There's so many things I like about the new MacBook Pro. And all I want is just like, you know, hey, let me swap out the SSD. I don't care what's for us. That's what everyone has one of those, you know? That's you were saying everyone wants their own thing to be validated. Everyone has one of those. There's the the the photo and video guys who want the SD card thing. There's the programmers who want 32 gigs of RAM. There's the Roger Changs who want to switch the the SSD. Everyone has the one thing and 32 gigs of RAM. I don't care if I don't need it. I want it. I want an SD card reader because I shoot on on a DSLR that takes SD cards sometimes once a month. And yeah, I want to be able to repair my laptop. I want to be able to put in a new hard drive. I want to be able to put in RAM. I am totally the person who's angry at this. But I also get that like, yeah, that's not targeted at me. And the thing that maybe we didn't spend enough time on because it wasn't the specific discussion, but they had more pre-orders than for any other MacBook Pro. That is because there's been a trial. Yes, there has. But all of those people who were waiting for it might have been unhappy. If you listen to the complaints, everyone hates it, bought a surface book or something. Yeah, they might have gone somewhere else. But I guess they once again made the right calculation because apparently people are still buying them in spite of all of those issues. So maybe they're really writing that very difficult line of it's super difficult. You know, they make it just a little bit annoying enough that they can have these definitive design decisions, but not so annoying that people are annoyed enough to switch away. I'm sorry, Keb Jack, because we're talking about the SD card reader, Keb Jack wrote very reasonably. He wrote, are there not USB based card readers? And immediately my mind went to a Christmas carol. Are there no poor houses? Are the work meals closed? Then they should go there. Are there not USB based card readers? Then they should use. Well, you know, Captain Jack, in the future, you won't need SD cards because your camera and. Yeah, but my computer doesn't do it. Why was it yet? We'll see. So I get from a creator standpoint, whether you're a video editor, whether you do pro audio graphics, visual effects, whatever. As a rule of thumb, you don't necessarily upgrade your equipment all at the same time, you do it piecemeal. And the thing about having a rather accessible PC or Mac was that, OK, I can't afford the latest and greatest video card that would totally speed up my video renderings. But I can get the computer and I can upgrade in maybe six months or 12 months when the time is right and have enough money. Apple has has walked away from that. Well, no, but this is this is just an analogy. It's not not. I'm not being literal here. Just an analogy. But the same thing can be applied. It's like, I don't need the RAM right now, but I would like to be able to upgrade it, you know, in 12 months when I know I have more work, I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be doing a lot more. But I mean, you'd be more demanding on my system. I mean, being able to piecemeal that is a way for a lot of people to afford equipment over amortized over, you know, a couple of years or even five years because you're not spending all at once. And I think that's that's what I think. But what's the analogy for Roger? This is you're describing exactly the reality of the product now. Well, that's what I'm saying is that's what people are. That's what creators are finding so obnoxious. But they can't have woken up to this today. Apple has been doing this for 10 years now, right? Hope is a very powerful drug. People would hope they badly ran out of it. That's the thing that's, you know, this is the same thing that people had with Nintendo, Nintendo is going to their next machine is going to be, you know, in a is going to be at a quantum computer stored in a stored in the zero, zero temperature bio count bio camera in the chat room. You can tell an Apple owner because he's poor and angry. I, you know, it's I have a 2012 mid-2012 MacBook Pro and it works fine. I'll keep using it. It's like a Toyota. It's dependable. It's an appliance. It gets me to where I want to go up until the point where Apple says, you know what, your machine can't run or latest OS S O L. Yeah. Are there no USB card readers and the union dongles? Are they still in operation? Those who are badly compatible must go there. I have an SD card reader in mind. Many can't go there and many would rather die. If they would rather die, they'd better do it and decrease the surplus dongle market. OK, I lost it. OK, that's pretty odd. Yeah, that's pretty odd. And on that note, Patrick, Roger. Yes. Is it dentist time? It's dentist time. It's dentist. Patrick gets to experience our health care system. Well, that's that's the dentist system. It's still health care, I guess. It's our health, Roger.