714: Get the Bigger Pizza

Casey, Marco, and John opened by recounting Casey and Marco’s New York visit, which included wine, a long walk to John’s apartment caused by Casey using driving directions instead of walking directions, and a lunch at John’s of Bleecker. When choosing between two pizza sizes, the hosts said there was no real debate: if the larger pizza costs only $2 more, “of course” you get it. Casey and Marco each ate half a pizza, skipped dinner because they were still full, and declared that they had no regrets. John then introduced the ATP Holiday Store, which would remain open for three weeks. New products include ATP Pride and ATP Trans Pride shirts, with 100% of the profits donated to TransLifeline and the Transgender Law Center; Cotton Bureau is additionally contributing $2 per shirt. John described TransLifeline as a grassroots crisis-support and microgrant organization for trans people, while the Transgender Law Center works on advocacy and litigation. The store also has an A18 Pro shirt, M5 Ultra and M5 Ultra-with-interposer shirts, a returning ATP graffiti shirt based on Palm Graffiti handwriting, regular logo shirts, hats, and expanded-color and expanded-weight ATP zip hoodies. The ATP polo has become so expensive to manufacture that profits after the member discount are only cents, making this potentially its final sale. Members can get 15% off through their member page, and gift memberships are also available.

The hosts followed up on HomeView after Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that finished units had been boxed in warehouses for nearly a year while Apple waited for the software to catch up. They considered this unsurprising because the device appears to combine fairly familiar hardware—an aluminum-framed display above a HomePod-like speaker—with a much harder software and Siri problem. John compared its pricing with Amazon’s Echo Show lineup: the Echo Show 5 was listed at $100, the Show 8 at $200, the Show 11 at $250, and the Show 15 at $350. He suggested that HomeView is within the overall range, even though its smaller display puts it toward the expensive end. Several listeners proposed explanations for why Apple charges the same price for the tabletop and wall-mounted versions. MVK suggested that making the wall-mounted model cheaper would encourage people to buy it for the lower price and then leave it on tables with cheap, unattractive mounts. Ben O’Matic suggested Apple might be trying to avoid a market full of cheap third-party speaker bases and accessories. The hosts found those theories plausible as justifications but thought the simpler explanation was that Apple commonly charges one product price despite different included hardware. They also agreed that Chinese copies will soon appear, possibly with OLED screens and Linux support for Home Assistant tinkering. A listener showed a HomeView powered through a hole in a kitchen island using a desk grommet. The hosts acknowledged that this solves the cable problem but noted that kitchen-island outlets and cable holes raise electrical, spill, and cleaning concerns; one host said outlets on the side of islands may now be prohibited by code in some states. They thought most people would place HomeView near a wall or existing outlet rather than in the middle of an island. Apple’s square screen was defended as useful for tiling square widgets, and the hosts said developers are not really receiving a conventional third-party app platform—widgets are the primary development story. Marco also doubted that Apple would grant his Unforgettable reminders app the special CarPlay entitlement.

John revisited Apple TV pricing and found that Apple briefly cut the third-generation Apple TV from $99 to $69 in March 2015. Adjusted for inflation, that is roughly $100 today, and the hosts used it to illustrate how much more expensive current Apple TV hardware feels. They also noted the irony that the current Apple TV remote costs $59—only $10 less than that old Apple TV itself. A linked chart from Glenn Fleishman tracks the pricing history in both nominal and inflation-adjusted dollars. The new Apple TV includes far-field microphones and hardware AV1 decoding through its A18 system-on-chip. The hosts explained that AV1 matters because services such as YouTube and Netflix use it, potentially allowing better image quality at the same bandwidth, but the benefit depends on those services actually sending AV1 streams to compatible Apple TVs. A Reddit comparison chart showed the increasingly long gaps between Apple TV generations, including a particularly long gap before the current model. The hosts also explained the audio-passthrough complaint that had confused some listeners. Apple TV takes a bitstream from a streaming service or personal media collection and converts it before sending it to a receiver, television, or soundbar. That conversion can remove information needed for dialogue normalization, channel-level controls, or the sound profile an owner’s equipment would otherwise provide. Some AV enthusiasts also report that Apple’s processed output sounds less dynamic than output from other streaming devices. The hosts said ordinary users connecting directly to a television probably will not care, but people who bought a receiver or soundbar for its audio-processing features understandably want Apple TV to pass the signal through unchanged.

Apple hardware executive Kate Bergeron said the iPhone Duo’s nanotexture layer over the foldable inner display can be removed and replaced. The hosts clarified that customers should not literally peel it off themselves; it is a replaceable service part. AppleCare+ customers can have the cover layer replaced for $19, and the hosts said the out-of-warranty price appears to be about $50, though replacing the entire display would be vastly more expensive. The cover layer hides much of the crease in the folding display, but it also means the surface can wear over time. The hosts compared it to a consumable part such as brake pads: it should remain usable, but scuffs or a more visible crease may eventually justify replacement. They found it notable that Apple did not emphasize this during the keynote, especially because the matte layer must also survive stylus use and repeated folding. Early reviewers suggested the layer is more durable than a cheap plastic screen protector, but not invulnerable.

Marco described Apple’s Manhattan iPhone Duo Creator Showcase, where press members and developers demonstrated Duo-optimized versions of apps from companies including Netflix, MLB, and The New York Times. Casey and Marco could handle the hardware and fold it repeatedly, though they had limited time with each application. Casey found the Duo heavy but solid rather than unpleasantly burdensome, and the hosts later confirmed that it weighs about 254 grams versus roughly 249 grams for the iPhone 18 Pro Max and 211 grams for the regular Pro. The hinge felt well engineered but clearly required two hands. Casey initially found the crease almost irrelevant: it could be seen from certain angles and felt when running a finger across it, but it did not interfere with use. The more distracting feature was the under-display FaceTime camera on the large inner screen. The matte nanotexture stops around the camera, leaving a visibly glossy area that Casey found surprisingly prominent. Both hosts predicted that users would eventually stop noticing it, just as people adapted to earlier notches and camera cutouts. The inner and outer displays also felt radically different: the glossy outer screen resembled older polished-metal iPhones, while the matte inner screen was optimized for large-screen use. Netflix was Casey’s standout app, and he said the praise it was receiving was deserved. Marco especially liked the Instagram Edits demonstration, where video preview, timeline, and controls could occupy separate portions of the expanded screen. Casey compared the Duo favorably with Vision Pro: both are compromised or opinionated products, but the Duo seemed genuinely useful rather than merely an impressive glimpse of a future product. Marco refined that into “trade-off” rather than “compromise”: the Duo is for people who want the largest possible screen in a pocketable device, and its weight, folding mechanism, cameras, Face ID omission, and outer-screen usability all follow from that priority.

Casey secured a white 512 GB Duo for 8 a.m. pickup on launch day. He had configured the order in advance and used his iPhone over cellular, which he said has consistently worked better for him during high-demand Apple launches. He completed the transaction around 8:01 and was surprised that the order went through so quickly. Marco’s preorder experience was much worse. Apple’s business representative had warned him not to rely solely on the business ordering channel, but Apple had also suggested that the business system would submit orders immediately at launch. Marco prepared an order for Tiff and one for himself, refreshed Safari, Chrome, and the Apple Store app, and found that the app did not open for him until roughly 8:05. The desktop pages promised that he was in a queue, but never admitted him. Once the phone app finally worked, the first order was already delayed to early November and his own order was about a month late. The business order confirmation arrived roughly 92 minutes after the store opened with a January 26 date. Marco said the problem was not merely that supply was constrained; Apple’s systems behaved differently for different customers despite promising a fair queue. He was willing to wait in a line, but objected to a system in which the line effectively breaks for some people while others get first-day orders. The hosts speculated that both demand and manufacturing difficulty were responsible for the Duo’s long delays. Unlike Vision Pro, which did not sell through its supply as quickly, the Duo appeared to have exhausted every unit Apple could make.

The hosts reviewed videos and articles from MKBHD, HTX Studio, Tim Pan, Joanna Stern, The Verge, and John Gruber. John was particularly impressed by Chinese-language tech channels producing English reviews with unusually high production values, extensive hardware testing, motion graphics, X-rays, scans, and fold-cycle experiments. One test opened and closed the Duo 32,000 times without a measurable or perceptual hinge failure. Other tests showed that the crease becomes less perfectly flat almost immediately, but the actual deviations are measured in microns and remain visually manageable because the matte cover diffuses the crease’s reflections. The Duo’s battery results varied because reviewers did not standardize how much time the phone spent open versus closed. Most reviewers who lived with it found battery life acceptable, while benchmark testing showed that the GPU thermally throttles more than it does on the Pro models, although apparently less severely than on the iPhone Air. The vapor chamber is smaller and located on the hot side of the phone because the hinge separates the two halves. The MagSafe magnet also appears somewhat weaker, likely because of the Duo’s thinness. The central disagreement was about who the phone is for. Marco thought the Duo was not right for his mostly one-handed, on-the-go use, particularly because the outer screen is awkward and the phone is heavy in a pocket. He believed it would be much better for people who carry bags, edit video, work with documents or spreadsheets, fly frequently, or want an iPad mini-sized screen without carrying an iPad. Casey was more enthusiastic and planned to keep his unit for at least 13 days, possibly as his main phone, despite concerns about the absence of Face ID, the missing 4× camera, and the awkwardness of different keyboard orientations. Both agreed that the Duo’s software story was weak at launch: unoptimized apps appear as small iPhone rectangles on the inner display, and many Apple and third-party interfaces contain rotation, animation, keyboard, and layout bugs. They also agreed Apple could have improved this by giving developers earlier access, better tooling, or a later launch.

The hosts briefly previewed Apple’s announced October 28 “Pro and Tell” event. Rumored products included touch-screen 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with OLED displays, a new OLED iPad mini, and M6-equipped MacBook Pro and iMac models. They also wondered whether Apple would call some of the new chips “Ultra,” since the event’s wording might be hinting at the name. In the post-show, Marco revealed Fineliner, an iPad and iPhone Duo note-taking app inspired by his experience with Remarkable and Supernote devices. Its onboarding asks users to draw their own face, back button, undo button, pen controls, and other interface elements. Those drawings become the app’s interface, so the user’s handwriting and artwork appear throughout the notebook. Users can trace Marco’s guides rather than draw from scratch, and can optionally create a custom font from their handwriting. The app uses vector-based ink, supports zooming, dark mode, links, headings, notebooks, iCloud syncing, SVG and PDF export, and collaborative notebooks. Marco emphasized that Fineliner is not intended to be a full illustration app; it simulates a digital fine-liner pen with a limited set of widths and colors. Most features are free, while additional pen widths, colors, and page templates are sold through one-time purchases rather than a subscription. Casey and John thought the onboarding was unusually whimsical and memorable, and urged listeners with an iPad and Apple Pencil—or an iPhone Duo with the appropriate pencil—to try it after hearing the introduction. John said the app’s handmade interface succeeds because it makes even the metadata and controls feel like part of the user’s personal notebook.