The Gear Patrol Podcast

Apple's Latest News: Nothing Groundbreaking, Just 20% Better

Episode Summary

First, the biggest announcements from this week's Apple Event–a typical maelstrom of devices and upgrades, but no real shockers. Mostly iterative (but impressive) upgrades. Like a 1TB iPhone... Then we'll talk about the Michelin Uptis: an airless tire that's been expected for years. It's objectively revolutionary, but what do we think about practical use-cases and what are we still wondering about? Lastly, Taco Bell wants their sauce packets back! The company has a new system that allows folks to return their empty plastic packets to be recycled.

Episode Notes

The biggest announcements from this week's Apple Event; the Michelin Uptis airless tire; Taco Bell wants to recycle your used empty plastic sauce packets.

Episode Navigation:

Featured and Related:

Episode Transcription

Nick Caruso:                                           This is the Gear Patrol Podcast for Friday, September 17th, 2021. I'm Nick Caruso. We've got some nifty news to talk about listeners, so I am glad you're here. First up, we're going to be covering the biggest announcements from this week's Apple events. This is I think, maybe the 14th or 15th Apple event this month, can't keep track anymore. It's a big one though, the typical Maelstrom of new devices and upgrades to cover. So we'll share that stuff and some opinions as, then we'll talk about the new Michelin Uptis, or Uptis, or Uptis, not sure how to pronounce it, but what it is, is an airless tire that's been expected for many, many years now, and no pun intended, this thing is revolutionary, I think, in an objective way. But what do we think about the practical use cases and what are we still wondering about? A new frontier to change what the tire is.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           So we're going to talk through all of that. And then lastly, Taco Bell wants their sauce packets back, everyone. Now that lots of Taco Bell orders are being delivered in our brave new pandemic era more than ever, I should say, people are getting a lot of those little plastic sauce packets. And the company has a new system that allows folks to return those empty packets to be recycled, which is a good move. And we're going to talk all about it. And by we, I mean, the people joining me today, which include Henry Phillips, who has a new title this week. His title is now associate director of production design. Congrats Henry, and welcome.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Thank you. I'd like to still be referred to as deputy, but-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. Okay. That's fine. [crosstalk].

 

Henry Phillips:                                        ... I'm keeping the badge. (beep)

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Okay. And our first bleep of the day, right out of the gate. And also here joining after a long time away, is Eric Limer, senior editor covering tech and much more. Eric, we missed you.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Hey, I missed being here sort of, sometimes. Glad to be back.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Good. Yeah. We're happy you're here, we brought up the big tech guns for this Apple discussion, but always eager to hear you weigh in on other stuff. Have you recovered from the event?

 

Eric Limer:                                            As much as anyone can recover from modern life.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah, no, it's drudgery. We were just alluding to that before we hit record. No, it's great. This actually makes it great, I always look forward to these chats, it's like we're in a room together and talking about products, it's just everyone's favorite pastime at Gear Patrol. So it's nice to put a mic to it. So let's get into it. Let's get started. Let's start with some of that, the biggest product news of this week, that Apple event. We all know each of these events is just chockfull of a lot of information, but this September Apple event, is the hallmark. Is, it heralds the arrival of new hardware, Visavi like the iPhones, and iPads, and Apple Watch kind of stuff.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Among the announcements and reveals this week were, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, a bigger screen for the Apple Watch or bigger available screen, a new entry level iPad and a totally redesigned iPad mini. So Eric, like I said, you're here to weigh in big time on the slew of announcements, but before we get into the nitty gritty, can I just get your overall take on the event itself? I was following your Live Slack conversation, which was mostly with Henry actually. And there were a lot of opinions. So what are the highlights? What are the hot takes? What what was it like?

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah, it was all right. There's this thing that happens with Apple events, I think more now than ever. But there is this on year, off year cycle, especially for the iPhones. I guess, maybe now more than ever, it used to be explicit, maybe it just feels more like, I don't know. Since all of these are just numbered iPhones, and we don't have the S anymore. But this year definitely, when it came to the big announcements, was a slower year, which, it's interesting for us because it dig into the minutia a little bit more, which I think we'll get into. This was the first year that I can remember in a while where there were so many rumors from pretty reliable sources that just turned out to be wrong.

 

Eric Limer:                                            So there was the rumor that the iPhone, excuse me. There was the rumor that the Apple Watch Series 7 was going to have a drastic redesign and that didn't happen. And then a smaller note, but the rumored drops for this event versus a hypothetical second event that I think we'll get, was that we were going to get iPhone and Apple Watch at this event and then maybe AirPods 3, which didn't happen obviously. And that the iPads were going to be coming at a second event, and then I guess spoilers for later in this conversation, but the iPads showed up. Yeah. I mean, it was all right. The summary I would say is, iPhone 13s, not that different, Apple Watch Series 7, not that different, iPad mini, reasonably different. New entry level iPad, not that different.

 

Eric Limer:                                            From the broad scale, it is a lot of that. If you've ever watched an Apple event, you're familiar with best iPhone ever, fastest ever, whatever, we get the new chips. Which is all good and all true. But this is definitely one of those years where I would say, the compelling upgrades, for people who aren't on a very old phone that's on its last legs, aren't super there. There's a lot of stuff that has been inevitable and hasn't happened yet, and it's like, maybe next year. The design of the iPhone 13, isn't very different. The notch got a little bit smaller, in the physical form, it's basically the same. But there is some stuff that's been floating around, like touch ID through the screen, the notch going away completely, some AR tie in with glasses at some point, none of that happened.

 

Eric Limer:                                            But it seems like all of that is going to happen just because it's inevitable and it's been rumored, but it's still off in the future. It leaves this event as a little bit of a shrug for me, I'm curious, what other folks feel on the big picture.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           That sounds like-

 

Eric Limer:                                            [crosstalk].

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Henry, that sounds like a cue for you to start talking.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Oh, that's how this is working. Yeah, no. I-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           [crosstalk] conversation.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I feel similarly. It seems like we've seen a big uptick in Apple events, maybe we have, or maybe we haven't. Eric, you might know better than me on that. But-

 

Eric Limer:                                            I think there have been. I would have to crunch the numbers, but it seems like in part, because there's no reason or even possibility really to do these in person that Apple has been feeling freer to just split things out into multiple events.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Yeah. But it seems like there are more events with fewer real bombshell moments. I mean, we follow this base so closely that it's hard to ever feel like, there's something that comes around and smacks you in the back of the head. But these all, they feel like fairly iterative, small refreshes. That being said, I'm an absolute slave to the iPhone upgrade program. So I will be ordering my iPhone 13 well, before this podcast airs.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           [crosstalk].

 

Henry Phillips:                                        But then on the flip side, my mom texted me this morning asking which phone she should upgrade to, and I immediately told her to get the 12 mini because, if there's money to be saved, there's not a whole lot. Yeah, exactly.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Right here. This it.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        [crosstalk] phenomenal.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           That's what I got.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I've loved every minute of it. I feel like everybody always comes away from these iPhone events talking about how phone camera technology is blowing things away and really stunning or something. And I don't know. I get sucked into it for about 45 minutes, usually during the event. And then I sit back and realize, the camera is good enough.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           What do you mean though? Let's delve into that a little bit. You're unimpressed by-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        No. I mean, it's really impressive. It's a ton of really interesting iterative hardware and software innovation. But it is marginal gains, at least in my mind. You're seeing a lot of refinement, a lot of things that are 20% better, 28% better was my joke yesterday. Everything's always-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           [crosstalk] joke.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        ... 20% better. And so things are better, they're generally better if you're upgrading. My sense at least is that, if you're upgrading from two or three generations ago, it's going to be a great phone, if you're upgrading from the previous generation, you're probably not going to notice it day-to-day.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           It almost seems like a cost of living raise. You get that 3%-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Exactly.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           ... at the end of the year just to keep you going.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. Except it's the opposite of that because it's the extra money that you have to spend. Because now I believe the baseline models of the iPhone 13, they have more storage now, but they're also more expensive.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Right. Well, let's go into there, that's a great segue. So the first product group that we wanted to cover is the new iPhone 13, and the 13 mini. So what's new? Put this in context for us and run us through those details like you were just talking about price and everything.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. I mean, I would say the most important things that are new is the chip set, so this is the A15 bionic, which always increases in performance and increases in battery life through efficiency gains. But then that stuff always, it's this inevitable pop of improvement and then fades away as hardware gets more capable, then suddenly the software gets more hungry, and it always balances out. Yeah. I think the other thing that is the most important for quality life is the base storage. The iPhones have base storage capacity of 128 gigabytes, which is a fair amount [crosstalk].

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Which is replacing what used to be 64, right?

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. Which definitely gives you a little bit more elbow room which is good, but it also comes at the cost of $100 price increase for the baseline models. Yeah. there's some camera upgrades. I believe one of the things there is, they're bringing the optical image stabilization that was originally on the Pro models of the 12 to the baseline 13s, which is cool and good, but again, it is one of those things where it's like, if you have it you'll appreciate it. But is not really that exciting to me anyway. Yeah. I mean, that's the main thrust of it. And like I was gesturing it before, they're the same size as the previous models, same design. I think the camera bumps are slightly differently sized, which means that case compatibility is probably a little bit of a pain in the ass, but other than that pretty similar. Yeah. That's pretty much the main bits of it.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Right. And Henry, I mean, you were talking about your jokes about percent increases. I'm just looking over some stuff here. One of the figures that I'm seeing is a screen that's 20% brighter, which is great. I mean, brighter screen is really helpful for stuff, but it is funny that it's always something like that.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Well, why bother making it 40% when you can make it two years of 20%?

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Pooh, cynical. Henry, with your new title, are you 20% more cynical? Is that-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I think that's how it works. Yeah. I'm fairly sure. No, I mean, I'm cynical about all of this, but I wasn't joking, I will be buying the new phone.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Sure. Questionable.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I have a perfectly functioning 12 mini, I will be buying the 13 mini for no reason other than I can.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. You're talking about price, you're going through the upgrade program, but if someone's going to come into this, that is a sticking point here. The mini starts at 699, the iPhone 13 full size thing starts at 799. Do either of you have any insight into why they eliminated the low capacity for hard drive? Is it because people just weren't buying it in large enough numbers? It's what I assume.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. I mean, it's hard to say for sure with all of this stuff. There's a little bit of a backstory with this, with Apple. I mean they used to sell iPhones with really poultry amount of onboard storage space. I want to say, it can't have been 16 gig but maybe-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I mean, at one point it definitely was.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Well, yeah. I mean [crosstalk].

 

Nick Caruso:                                           For sure.

 

New Speaker:                                           They were terrible.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. I think part of it is a swing in the other direction there. Especially when there are so few options available for iPhones, you can end up with the situation where it's like, "Oh, the iPhone, that's the phone that doesn't have storage on it." Versus Android phones, some of which may have very small storage, but some of which might have a ton or whatever. I think part of it is a little bit of a reaction to that. Also it's just like, this is an easy way to charge more money for a phone, and which I think that's always been part of how pricing tiers in consumer electronics goes in general. If you look at the raw prices of memory and whatever. If you're looking at it for a laptop, or a PC, or something that you can build, you'll see that the cost of memory is way lower than the premium that goes up on a gadget when the memory increases. But it is a way that they can get you for a while.

 

Eric Limer:                                            You'll see this a lot with all kinds of consumer electronics where the two options that you have are the more affordable option with not enough memory and then the more expensive option with too much. And so what this is, is an opportunity for them to increase the baseline price of the iPhone 13, which is a big deal. But it's not just a price hike because it is also this other thing that is ostensibly, and is going to make life better for everybody who buys the iPhone 13. Would everybody choose to pay that $100 for the extra storage? Of course not. But now they're getting it whether they like it or not. I mean, that's a completely legitimate decision for Apple to make. Because the alternative is that, they could put way too little memory on there and then try to get you to subscribe to iCloud forever. So it's either way.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Kind of balances out. Yeah. That's what I was going to say too. I mean, there is some practical reason for this too. I mean, as cameras get better, sensors get bigger, the files get bigger, and if you're not diligent about removing photos and stuff, you're going to fill up your phone pretty quickly. I've always gotten the 128.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        You need a big file.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. And if you-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah, rock baller.

 

Eric Limer:                                            If you're looking for a segue into the iPhone 13 Pros-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           You read my mind, Eric.

 

Eric Limer:                                            ... there's stuff. But I mean, it relates directly to what you were saying because, a fact about the iPhone 13 Pro is that, it's baseline is also the 128. But a big talking point for the features for the Pro, and maybe Henry can talk about this a little bit. This is the cinema tech stuff, where they're doing a lot of computational photography to try and replicate cinematography techniques, et cetera. Also shooting in high resolution or whatever. The baseline 128 gigabyte model of the iPhone 13 Pro, actually does not support video recording at the highest possible resolutions that the 13 Pro can offer. Extensively because they would just fill up your phone too fast.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Oh, no kidding. It's funny. But I mean, what you were alluding to also is that, the Pro and Pro Max, which of course have much more advanced camera hardware and the Max is just big, are available now, you can get a terabyte storage option in these. A terabyte, which is a first for Apple. This is the big news.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. It's wildly expensive as well.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Tell us about it.

 

Eric Limer:                                            I believe your baseline prices for the Pro and Pro Max, are 1,000 and $1,100. And the one terabyte model is 500 additional dollars.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Whoa, whoa.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. You can see where the upsell was happening there, but I mean, if you have that money, you pay and you never have to worry about storage again, even if you're shooting in ridiculously high resolution, I guess. It is interesting that they're going there. I believe some iPads have offered, some of the iPad Pros have had a terabyte for a while.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Right. Henry, why wouldn't you go for a Pro or Pro Max as a photographer?

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I suppose that's a good question. I considered it. I like the Pro a lot. Some of the added optical features are really impressive and the sensors especially, on the cameras are really, really impressive. But ultimately, it's too big for me. I love the mini and if they made a Pro mini I'd buy that, but they don't, so I won't. And the size matters more to me than the camera performance. But I mean, the Pros are really compelling in a weird way. I think they're compelling to me because I know how cool all of those features are, but I don't think I'd ever use them.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I love the idea of being able to record in ProRes which is the format that Eric was mentioning, and is just a really high quality, high bitrate video. It's what you would get if you shot on any Pro camera. And it's cool, but who am I sharing a ProRes 4K video with? I tried to do that in Slack once, and people got mad at me.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yes. Slack probably got mad at you.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Because it's 300 megabits. No, it's cool. The Pro is cool. And I like the way it looks, I think that the shiny sides are vastly superior to the normal 13's matte sides. That was almost enough to put me over the edge, it's the shiny sides.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. It's a chromed out look.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Yeah, it's sick.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           The Pro models. Yeah. It's really pretty good looking.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I don't love the baby blue though.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. Talk about colors a little bit. Because the last time, was it just in the spring, we got the purple iPhone, I think? Unless I'm screwing up my time references and now we have baby blue.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Purple, I think was a real limited edition drop. I can't remember, was the 12 the dark green or was that the 11? I don't remember.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Honestly, I never pay attention to phone colors because it's just, gray or black, that's it. I guess I understand why people are into that, to the other options, but it has never appealed to me.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Yeah. Someone I really respect, years and years ago told me that they only buy their Apple products in white, because something about Steve Jobs or Johnny [inaudible], or something. And now that's all I do. I only buy Apple products in white because I'm easily influenced.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. So the Pro here, there are four colors. It's the graphite, gold, which just looks like cream white, and then the baby blue you're talking about, Henry, it's called Sierra blue. I don't know. It's interesting offering, I always get black. I was tempted to go blue this time with mine when I upgraded, but I'm not as brave as you are Henry. I'm not brave.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I bought a gold MacBook once, because I thought it was funny, I returned it two days later, I couldn't do it. I was so excited in my slightly, inebriated, impulse buy and instantly regretted it.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. Well, you're forgiven. Just stick with the white. I think it's probably Steve's shoes or something is the reference there. For people interested in the phones cover prices, but the 13 and 13 mini are available for pre-order the 17th, if this is the earliest you could possibly be listening to this podcast. So by the time you hear it, they'll be available and then they will be everywhere on the 24th of September, same for the Pro models. Let's move on to Apple Watch. The big news here is a big screen available. Eric, can you give us a rundown?

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. I mean, that's really the most notable thing about it. It has the bigger screen, and by bigger screen, it's one of those situations where the physical size is the same, the bezels got smaller, so there's more screen space. And it's a little bit more rugged with IPX6 rating which is some degree of waterproofness. I forget which off top of my head. But that's really about it ultimately. Yeah. The watch isn't that different, it's got the bigger screens because the bezels are smaller. But otherwise, not much has changed. Some people have been digging around in some technical specs and whatnot, and it appears that there's evidence to suggest that the Apple Watch Series 7 is running on the same chip that the Series 6 did. So it's a relatively small upgrade if that's the case.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. Actually, the upgrade in terms of the size of that screen, the display, is Henry's favorite number here anymore. The 20% bigger screen.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        It's just, we live in a 20% world.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           That's right.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        [inaudible] about that.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           No, definitely. We're going to have him on next week to talk about it. But anyway, I mean, you alluded to all this, Eric. I mean, it's more durable design in some way, there's an IPX6 waterproof water resistance rating. Tucker in his story here, his piece, called it the most rugged Apple Watch yet. And says it's chips. There's another one, chips with a charging port that'll charge it up to 33% faster. So is that most of the takeaway away from that? Or is it this bigger maybe running on the same chip?

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. More or less.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           [crosstalk].

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah, it seems like, if there is going to be a big upgrade, it's still off in the future. There's no new health stuff with this one. There's been rumors floating around about new health stuff, whether it's drunk detection, or the thing that everybody has been waiting on for an Apple Watch to do forever is blood glucose monitoring, which who knows, if that will ever happen. So there is again, these theoretical big health updates in the future, but this is basically just a better Series 6 is what it appears to be. Apple spent a lot of time at the event talking about Apple fitness plus, which is cool in which you can use your Apple Watch Series 7 with, but which you could also use your Apple Watch Series 6 with. So that was the main focus when this was discussed on stage.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           [crosstalk].

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Eric, do you think that the rumor mill blew it or somehow skipped a generation?

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah, I'm not sure. I feel given where these rumors came from and the reliable folks like Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is one of them. It seems unlikely to me that they're baseless. And so it does seem to me, either something got mixed in the messaging and features for a feature watch got attributed to the Series 7, or maybe apple made a decision to pull back on something at the last minute, which is certainly possible if you look at what the Series 7 actually is. I mean, there's always the possibility that Apple, it's seeding fake information. But bear with me, that's impossible to tell. But I definitely get the feeling that these other rumors came from somewhere and that they're based in something.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. I mean, people love to speculate anymore. These are rumor machines, these events, and just seeing the payoff is, I don't know. I'd like to see the betting odds for a lot of this stuff. So we've alluded to the iPad, you said you were spoiling some stuff for us. There are two product announcements here to cover. So first, there's the completely redesigned iPad mini, which I think is really cool, ironically big news, and then a new entry level iPad. So can we go in that order, and just walk us through what we've got going on?

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah, sure. So the iPad mini has a bigger, effective screen, smaller bezels. Apple calls it edge to edge, which I guess is technically true of any screen. There is a bit of a border around it but it's more evenly distributed than the old forehead inch in designs. Yeah. That display comes out to be 8.3 inches, it's got touch ID integrated into its power button.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           That's cool.

 

Eric Limer:                                            So at the top. Yeah. Improved camera systems, support for the second generation Apple pencil, and also you can get it with wireless 5G connectivity, which makes it a different class of device for people who want to use it on the go professional capacity. I can see where there's some potential there. I think maybe the biggest and most interesting thing that hints at some other stuff is that, it doesn't have a lightning port, it's got a USBC port. Which is also what the iPad Pros have. And now to go into the other entry level iPad, that's mainly a camera update, it's got a wide angle front facing camera, it has a center stage, which is something I think that was revealed with the IMAX. But it's basically a wide angle camera, and then it digitally pans around as a video conferencing thing. But the entry level iPad still has the lightning port, which means that the iPhones do as well.

 

Eric Limer:                                            But that's one of the other rumors that's floating around, especially with the return of MagSafe, that we're going to get a fully portless iPhone in the future and the iPad mini going to USBC along with the iPad Pros, which are more laptop adjacent. I think really hints at that possibility, the entry level iPad is something that Apple is producing and selling at huge scale, and I'm sure they have a lot of capacity to make lightning stuff for that purpose. But I do think that the mini switching you see is a pretty good indicator that the lightning port is probably going to go away in the near future.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           All right. Yeah, no doubt if people are buying that entry level iPad, they probably have lightning devices already. So they're familiar with that ecosystem, but get them when you can. So those are all cool upgrades, obviously, things to look out for. I want to just touch on pricing real quick, and then we can move on, but the new iPad mini will start at 499. And the entry level iPad starts at 329. And I understand all of the tech specs and capabilities and everything make those numbers a reality, but it's always funny to me that the tiny little iPad costs so much more than the full size entry level iPad. But here we are, it's the world we live in. It's the 20% world, right Henry?

 

Henry Phillips:                                        It's better, man. Don't ask how much better.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Closing remarks on the event? Anything else we need to hit on before we move on to some exciting tire news?

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. I think we hit most of it up front. Well, I guess, the other thing to mention is this, what didn't get announced. So there are rumors of another event later this Fall, October, maybe November, that's where we were expecting a lot of Mac stuff. Last year was when Apple put its new, homegrown M1 chip into MacBooks for the first time.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah, that's right.

 

Eric Limer:                                            And what it did then was put its new chip, which is going to make it possible to make these things much smaller, but it put it in the old bodies. So you ended up with a MacBook that looked the same but it had a different chip in it. So this Fall we're expecting the big update on the MacBooks because they could stand to be a lot smaller and slimmer. So that's the thing to look forward to in the coming months.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. That'd be big news. Actually just yesterday absent mindedly, I hadn't thought about this until now, was, I don't know. Reading something online or whatever, and I was goofing around, just flipping my finger, popping my finger off the edge of my MacBook just to, I don't know, fiddle, fidget spin, so to speak. I suddenly realized, gosh, that thing is really thick, which is really ridiculous coming from someone who had a three inch thick laptop in college and is looking at something that is a miraculous fit of design on his desk here, it's thin. But the idea that these could go thinner and be so much more capable is pretty exciting. So hopefully, that is a rumor that comes true. I don't want any of these fake rumors starting on this podcast. Okay. This is not what this is for. So we're going to come after you, Eric, if it doesn't. Be prepared. But-

 

Eric Limer:                                            Please do.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah, we will.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Put me out of my misery.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah, that's right. We'll run you over with our cars that feature brand new tires, which is the worst segue, I think in several weeks that I've done on here. But our second story is from Michelin tire company. Michelin, also restaurants tire company, but that's another discussion. Michelin has these airless car tires. So what we've got here is a story that's actually been stewing for about 15 years. They finally announced that this airless passenger car tire will be hitting the road back in the mid-aughts, Michelin made ways when they announced something called the Tweel, T-W-E-E-L. Now they're officially launching this product called the Uptis, Uptis, still not sure. U-P-T-I-S.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           So these products and this new one that's real specifically, is a wheel and airless tire combo that features these rubber spokes in place of inflatable tire. These spokes suspend in cushion, and deform as the car moves down the road and hits things and runs over things. And they are of course in lieu of that traditional tire that we're all used to. And there are advantages, there are no more punctures or blowouts to stop you on the highway, you don't have to worry about tire pressure, obviously.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           These spokes that make up the structure of the tire thing are tuneable for lack of a better word, for different conditions and driving styles. You could put drain holes in the structure of these things to eliminate hydroplaning effectively. Then probably the best spec here is that there's less raw material involved in making these things, which means there's less energy needed, which means they are marginally maybe 20%, don't know, more eco conscious. So, Henry, what do you think about these? Are you ready to drive around in airless tires or are these just a gimmick? What are your thoughts?

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Hell yeah. I'm hype. No, I don't know. My joke in Slack was that this feels like one of those things that will just become normal in a surprisingly short amount of time. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of disadvantage for the daily driver unless you're in Michigan and you need a little cover for your spokes, so they don't freeze up or something. It's snowing your spokes.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. That's actually a good point. I hadn't thought about that. You could get water or ice in there and I guess it has to be crunched around.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        90 pound wheels. Yeah. They seem cool though. There's a lot of advantage and not a ton of disadvantage and seems like they've cracked the manufacturing. So hell yeah. Throw on everything, man.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           All right. Yeah, they look really wild too. I mean, truly, just very strange. This honeycomb spoke structures, really interesting to look at and would be an interesting addition to any vehicle. I've seen some people be dubious about speed ratings on these, could you actually do all the performance stuff that we like to do with certain cars? But that remains to be seen, I guess. Eric, what do you think? What's your takeaway here?

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. So this might seem a little bit out there, but I think I can draw it together, but do you know what this makes me think of? Remember compact fluorescent bulbs?

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Sure.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Remember how those, I would say were a thing? They're not a thing anymore, right?

 

Nick Caruso:                                           That's right.

 

Eric Limer:                                            But they certainly were a thing. This, I have to confess to not knowing enough about, or exactly about how the industry works to make this comparison too solidly. But my understanding of essentially what happened with compact fluorescent bulbs was that, similar to these airless tires, they had some huge advantages. Now we're in LED bulb world where we have a lot of those same advantages still. But when the compact fluorescent bulbs came around, it was like, well, these will last forever, and they're way more efficient, so they'll save you on your energy bill. But the thing about them, about the bulbs was that they were obnoxious in a few small ways that incandescent light bulbs weren't obnoxious. They had gnarly color balance. They would sometimes take a minute to boot up.

 

Eric Limer:                                            They wouldn't work well on dimmer switches. And if I remember correctly, another thing is, if they got too hot, their lifespan would go way down. So all these things were pretty minor compared to the huge advantages of not having to replace your light bulbs all the time. But those little advantages created these frictions. Created these multiple points of friction where people were like, "Oh, wow, I guess this thing is better, but man, it's a pain in the ass." And then that was a speed bump to adoption.

 

Eric Limer:                                            And I do have to wonder if there is something similar with these airless tires. I can imagine a world where they are better in a lot of ways, and comparable maybe in all ways, but they are slightly annoying in some small way. If the ride isn't quite as good or maybe just imagine it's like, yeah, you never have to replace your tires again. You never have to deal with a blow out, which I think is something that, it's bad to have to deal with, but relatively rare.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Imagine if going over potholes in these sucks, no one's going to want to pick that. I feel like little convenience things can be a huge barrier to adoption for tech like this, unless it's mandated. Unless traditional tires become illegal, but that's not going to happen.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Probably not. That's a really-

 

Eric Limer:                                            [crosstalk].

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. It's a really interesting comparison with the CFLs. Of course for anybody who's not totally tracking the compact fluorescence where these... You've probably seen them. They are fluorescent light bulbs that you would get in the stick things that mount in the ceiling, but miniaturized and wrapped up into this squiggly little compact shape that looked like a little brain almost. And I guess, that's really funny. I don't think about those very much, but they didn't last all that long as a product. Right?

 

Henry Phillips:                                        No, they got-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           They were [crosstalk] with that.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        They got beat up by LEDs, as soon as LEDs became not absurdly expensive. They just got annihilated.

 

Eric Limer:                                            And that is the important bit of context, is that the end of that story, isn't that, and we're still using incandescent light bulbs today. We're not, but the solution that had those little user hitches, those little inconveniences were enough to really slow down adoption in a way that it could get kaod by a different tech. I mean, who knows? Who knows how this will play out, but with new stuff like that, I am always like, what is the small thing that could be a real deal breaker for people who have the option to not adopt the weird new thing?

 

Nick Caruso:                                           That's smart. Yeah. Marketing people should get you in those focus groups. You'd be a terror. Henry, how does it feel now that you jumped on the bandwagon? Essentially the CFLs of tires? How does that make you feel?

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Well, I think, we've yet to see if they have the real... They could be the LEDs. I mean, I'm really curious to see these come out and I hope they do. I do think there will always be the airy, you got to come up with a name for people who favor pneumatic tires. Those new MOS.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Bubbles. Bubble people.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Those bubble folks. I think there's going to be a place for... This is so hard to describe. For inflated tires for some time to come. Especially, you mentioned that the performance driver. Wow. We're doing good at drawing historical connections to-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           I love it.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Slightly failed products. But remember when run-flat tires showed up?

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Heck yeah.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        They showed up everywhere.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yes, they did.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        And I think BMW wholesale adopted them across the entire line, including a bunch of their M cars and everybody hated them for it because they were terrible, much like compact fluorescent light bulbs.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. I mean they drove like they were roller skate wheels. They're the solid state rigid shitty feeling. Yeah. I don't know what to expect. I can't imagine owning a classic Mustang and deciding to put airless tires, these weird-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Yeah, it's whack.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           ... rubber turbines on the side of my car. But I don't know. Remains to be seen. An interesting thing is that, these tires from Michelin already exist in other applications, not passenger cars, utility sort of stuff. Like riding mowers and the like. I don't have anywhere to go with that statement other than that they exist, but maybe that's an application that we'd endure.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. It'll be interesting like Henry was saying. If somebody adopts them, puts them on something that people are already buying, because I do think that that barrier is like... I don't know about you guys. Sort of what you were saying with that Mustang. If somebody gave me a set of these tires for free, would I put them on my car? I don't know. If somebody paid me $100 to do it, maybe. I think it's going to have to be someplace where it's just like, "Yes. This is your only option now." Which, I mean, we'll see. I think regardless of whether or not it pans out, Michelin obviously, they've sunk a lot into this, they need to keep trying to make it work. And it is a nice thing to have, to be able to hold up for your rubber tire brand of being like, we're trying to make the good version of this. So I can see why they keep pushing at it.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. Future proof themselves. Really take the window of competition sales if you will. That's an air joke.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        But we're not talking about sales, we're talking about wheels.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Okay. Well maybe that's-

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. And it's more about pressure than it is about flow. [crosstalk].

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Okay. Pressure. You have no idea how much pressure I'm under right now. Fair enough. I think that maybe the LED of tires will be the back to the future thing where the wheels point down the ground and some hover mechanism shows up.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        For sure.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           But this is [crosstalk]. Yeah, right. I'd put those in my Mustang, A. And this is a nice CFL step for now, at least. It'll be really interesting to see these on the road soon. Story three, we're going to wrap up with a fun one. It's a fun story that may actually also do good or truly does objectively, I guess. Taco Bell has announced this program for recycling used sauce packets. The company says that over eight billion with a B, packets end up in landfills each year, meaning you get, you use them, you throw them away, and they're plastic. They're this weird, gross, rubbery plastic thing with foil on them. And they've, they meaning, Taco Bell has teamed up with this firm called TerraCycle to arrange this process whereby users collect their packets as they use them, send them into TerraCycle in the prepaid shipping situation.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           And then those packets are cleaned thankfully, then melted down and then molded into this plastic material that can be used to make new stuff. So focus group, Eric, what's your initial reaction to this recycling system?

 

Eric Limer:                                            I hate to be a crank, but I can't help it. I hate this stuff, man. Sure.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Really?

 

Eric Limer:                                            I mean, I guess, to make another, or to do another analogy thing-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Let's do it.

 

Eric Limer:                                            ... this just reminds me so much of... I mean, this one's more directly related. This one just reminds me so much about the plastic straw stuff, where it's one of those things where it's a small thing that ostensibly doesn't hurt, but I'm not convinced that it matters that much. If they don't want all of these plastic packets to be going into landfills, it seems like the solution to me is to make the packets out of something else, not be producing all of these things. Don't put the onus on me to have to send the packets back, I didn't ask for this. Frankly, I don't know. The barrier to entry for that is really high. In general, I get it. Global warming is scary and climate change is scary, and people want to do stuff to be more green or whatever, but until ExxonMobil doesn't exist anymore... I would say like, if it helps you sleep at night to recycle three Taco Bell sauce packets, it's fine, but actually not fine. Because it shouldn't help you sleep at night, I don't think it's helping that much.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. That's my rant on that. I mean, I guess it's fine or whatever, but I don't know. Buy a bottle of hot sauce. They should start selling the bottles of hot sauce. I don't know. It seems like there's a couple of different, better ways that you could go about this.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           I mean, that makes sense, Henry?

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Yeah. I'm firmly on the garage train here. I cannot understand how this, even remotely makes sense. They must be planning to recycle between 15 and 20 sauce packets total, because this is just a nonsensical thing and why don't they just not give out the sauce packets unless you ask for them? Surely that would save infinitely more sauces than literally everything they're trying to do.

 

Eric Limer:                                            I didn't look far enough into this to confirm or whatever. I have to imagine that there's something going on here involving tax credits for recycling initiatives.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Oh sure.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Oh, I love it.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Or something. That would make-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Burn it down.

 

Eric Limer:                                            That would make something like this, make some amount of sense. Yeah. Not giving people the sauce packets, unless they ask for them, seems like the very simple way to start here, which to be fair, maybe they already do do that. I'm not sure.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I'm trying really hard to find out. I'm ripping through the Taco Bell website.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. Get on it Henry. I mean, we all live in New York where ordering food delivery is pretty common, so I'm sure we've all done it a few times. How many times have you clicked the thing that says, don't give me plastic silverware and they just do it anyway?

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Don't make me do this, Nick.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Honestly, I stopped doing that because I don't think it necessarily affects how much plastic silverware the restaurant is buying. And furthermore, I don't think that how much plastic silverware that individual restaurant is buying has that much of an effect on how much plastic silverware is being produced. I don't know. The individual recycling initiatives really do get under my skin. It used to make me feel a little bit better to ostensibly be doing something that was helping, but increasingly it just makes me frustrated because I'm like, how could this small thing possibly help solve a problem that is so huge?

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Right. At your point, both of your points about just like doing away with the packets to begin with, is a good one, I think. I mean, I don't even know. Can you buy Taco Bell hot sauces in stores? Probably not. Right?

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Probably not in stores, though I bet there's a merch drop situation.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. They should get on that. It should be a soda stream thing, where you just run out of the container and then bring it in. They give you a new one or kerosene.

 

Eric Limer:                                            Well, there is a focus group idea for you. Taco Bell, sell me a bottle of Taco sauce that gives me a discount on my next orders or something. I don't know. But it seems like there must be a better [crosstalk].

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Yeah. It feels like there's some advantageous things going on or maybe they thought it was just a really good press release. But to the idea that Joe Taco Bell consumer is going to stash all of his grody-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. That's the [crosstalk].

 

Henry Phillips:                                        ... mostly used but not sauce packets in a box. I'm not sure I mentioned-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           It's like a [crosstalk] container.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        ... a certain Reddit thread that this immediately reminds me of.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Oh God, Henry.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I'm not going to.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           You just did, basically.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Anyway, but it's like, where is the critical mass when you decide to send your sauces in? Even in their little primer, they say, once you have enough sauces, it's like, "What the hell? I don't understand." Anyway-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. I wonder what that would be. Do you guys know how many packets of sauce you would get with an order? It must be four.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        I think it's a shit load.

 

Eric Limer:                                            I think it depends.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Oh, really?

 

Eric Limer:                                            I think it depends on how big the person's serving yous hands are.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. That's a good point. I don't know. You guys bring up interesting points. I was expecting this to be a little more programed, but you're swaying me. One interesting thing, I mean, supporting your cynicism here is, this figure out of the article I shared with you guys which there's a quote. If everyone on the planet recycled one Taco Bell sauce packet, there would still be another 420 million packets heading to a landfill on an average year. And I don't know what that means. That doesn't seem to true up with the eight billion packet thing Taco Bell was talking about. So I'm not totally sure who's saying the right thing, but the overarching point though is that, I mean, there are too many of them, and it's a problem, clearly a problem. There's the plastic wear, there's the packaging itself. I know we're done with the era of styrofoam, but maybe we're just in the CFL stage of-

 

Eric Limer:                                            Yeah. [crosstalk].

 

Nick Caruso:                                           ... packaging.

 

Eric Limer:                                            I'm pretty firmly of the position that basically every recycling issue is a supply side problem. If you don't want all this stuff going to landfills-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Don't. Yeah.

 

Eric Limer:                                            ... stop making it. I get that it's expensive to find an alternative or whatever, but that's something that we, as a society need to figure out how we can liquidate ExxonMobil and then put all of those resources into making biodegradable Taco sauce packets.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           There you go.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        There's a sauce called fire, so we're making a joke here. There's not to feed the fire. But I knew this had registered with me, and I actually thought it was related to the launch of this recycling program. But there was a semi-viral image where someone had received 44 packets of Taco Bell hot sauce with one order.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Geez.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        And the answer seems to be maybe 20, 15.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           You want some gordita with your hot sauce? Yeah. That's definitely too many. I feel like Michelin and Taco Bell can get together here and-

 

New Speaker:                                           Right.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           ... maybe-

 

New Speaker:                                           How do we make tires out of hot sauce packets?

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Yeah. I mean, selling a sauceless packet really, that would be a direct analogy. But you have to flip it, it's like a-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        A packetless sauce.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Exactly. Maybe it's a hard ball of sauce that you have to-

 

Henry Phillips:                                        The bag is sauce.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           The bag is sauce. Yeah. See, we're coming up with good stuff. I think we've landed in a good place. But I don't know. I'd be curious to see what listeners, if you are Taco Bell eaters, sauce people, do you feed the fire? Does the fire feed you? There's a lot of questions that we can ask here. But we do have to wrap it up. We've been going on for a long time because we really delved into a lot of dets today. So thank you all for tuning in. Thank you guys for your opinions. I'm going to cut it short right here. But if anybody listening wants more info about anything we talked about specifically the Apple products, prices, release dates, all that stuff. And then about the programs and the tire stuff, check out the links in the show notes or on the GP website, of course.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           And then if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, if you have better jokes, whatever you've got, send them our way on social media, you can hit us up, handle his gearpatrol one word, or you can email them and I will see that email and I will respond to that email and share it around with the people here. The email is podcast at gearpatrol.com. And of course, if you're listing, we hope you'll like the podcast and that you will subscribe, if you haven't already. And please also rate the pod, those five star reviews help us keep the CFL lights on if you will. Eric, thank you for coming back after all this time. Henry, congrats on your promotion, deputy person.

 

Eric Limer:                                            That's-

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Good to have you both.

 

Eric Limer:                                            ... deputy person.

 

Henry Phillips:                                        Director, deputy CEO.

 

Nick Caruso:                                           Deputy to the regional deputy. Well, thanks guys. It's always great talking with you, getting your opinions, hot takes. And hopefully everybody will tune in next time for the next installment of the Gear Patrol Podcast. For Gear Patrol, I'm Nick Caruso. And until then, take care.