0:00:00Pretend like I'm holding a hundred dollar bill
0:00:02I'm out. You're out of what you're out of hundred bucks. Yeah, I got the stupid ultra
0:00:09Why what brought you over the line is that everyone else has one and you don't what happened was
0:00:17Yeah, it did happen to you Marco. Did it just happen to you?
0:00:21So I was running some errands and then you found yourself in an Apple store somehow you have no idea how I literally
0:00:29had to kill time and I was in a mall.
0:00:32- Mm-hmm.
0:00:33- I was getting the, a tow, what, is it the hook?
0:00:38What's the square hole that you can put stuff into
0:00:41on the back of a car?
0:00:42Like, is it the tow hook?
0:00:44It's not a hook, what is that thing called?
0:00:47- The hitch, isn't it?
0:00:48- No, the hitch is the ball thing
0:00:49that you put into the square hole.
0:00:51What's the square hole called?
0:00:52- I should know this.
0:00:53I understand the question you're asking
0:00:54and I don't know the answer.
0:00:56- Anyway, I was getting a square hole installed on my car
0:00:59and it took a few hours and so I had to--
0:01:00- Wait, why were you doing that?
0:01:01What are you putting into that square hole?
0:01:04- A shackle thing so I can pull or be pulled
0:01:07if I get stuck.
0:01:08- You are so worried about this,
0:01:10this is huge Casey energy,
0:01:11you are so worried about this thing
0:01:13that you've spent inordinate amounts of money
0:01:16to prevent from ever happening
0:01:17and now you're spending more money.
0:01:19- No, actually I negotiated this part of the deal
0:01:21when I bought it, anyway.
0:01:22- One of these really far down the beach
0:01:24and he needs a watch that can survive the rugged conditions
0:01:28two and a half miles from home.
0:01:30- So what happened was,
0:01:31while they were installing the hole in my car,
0:01:33I had like a few hours to kill in the area.
0:01:35They gave me a loaner of some much worse small thing.
0:01:38I went to the mall 'cause I had a couple errands to run,
0:01:41and I went to the Apple store,
0:01:43and it was the first time I had seen the Ultra in person.
0:01:46Now, I did not think, "Oh my God, I have to have that."
0:01:51I also did not think, "Oh my God, that looks awesome."
0:01:54Then when I tried it on,
0:01:56I absolutely did not think, "Oh, this fits me great."
0:01:59Because none of those things are actually true,
0:02:02in my opinion.
0:02:03- Yeah, just to very briefly interject,
0:02:04I was in an Apple store doing one of the returns
0:02:06we spoke about a few weeks ago,
0:02:07and I put an Ultra on my wrist for literally 10 seconds,
0:02:11and I immediately looked down,
0:02:13maybe I had to tell the story, I don't know if I did,
0:02:14but I immediately looked down and thought,
0:02:15"Ooh, that's way too big."
0:02:16Now, Erin was standing next to me at this point,
0:02:18she was like, "Eh, I think you could pull it off
0:02:19"if you wanted," and this is the conversation
0:02:21that I think you would have had a few weeks before that,
0:02:23in saying if you believe it's not too big, it's fine,
0:02:27but, you know, because everyone else will think
0:02:28it's fine regardless, but I looked down and I was like,
0:02:30nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, not for me.
0:02:33So I totally hear you, and you and I are both
0:02:35on the teeny tiny wrist committee, right?
0:02:37'Cause you also have the smaller of the Apple Watch sizes.
0:02:39- Yeah, I wear the 40 or 41,
0:02:41and I'm very happy with it. - Right, same, okay.
0:02:44- Like before the Series 4 redesign,
0:02:46I wore the bigger one, the 42, and it was fine,
0:02:48but I'm a little happier with the 40 and 41.
0:02:52Anyway, oh, and by the way, from real-time follow-up,
0:02:53everybody in the chat is pointing out
0:02:55that apparently the square hole
0:02:56that you put in the back of a car to tow things
0:02:58is called the receiver or the tow receiver
0:03:01or the hitch receiver.
0:03:03- I'll give myself partial credit on that.
0:03:05- Which makes sense, receiver makes sense,
0:03:06'cause it's a hole, so it receives
0:03:07whatever square object you're inserting into there.
0:03:09Anyway, so I'm at the Apple Store,
0:03:12and I try this thing on just out of curiosity's sake,
0:03:15and it is massive, and I don't really think it,
0:03:18you know, the look didn't do anything for me,
0:03:20and it definitely didn't fit me.
0:03:22However, I started using it.
0:03:26And of course, I'm instantly pushing the action button
0:03:28alongside the crown every single time I push it
0:03:30because it's very difficult not to push those
0:03:32at the same time when you're first getting used to this thing
0:03:35but what I noticed instantly was everything looks
0:03:40and feels extremely different compared
0:03:42to other Apple Watches because of a number of factors,
0:03:45mainly that the screen is so large,
0:03:48secondarily because the screen is totally flat
0:03:50and doesn't have the little curved edges.
0:03:52And then tertiary that there's just the extra button
0:03:57and a little bit different ergonomics and everything.
0:03:59And so it's such a size difference that it's not quite,
0:04:04it isn't as severe as going from the iPhone to the iPad,
0:04:08but it's that kind of change where it's a bigger enough size
0:04:13that you have to kind of rethink how you lay things out,
0:04:19how you use the space, how big things should be,
0:04:22where things should be on the device.
0:04:24Just poking around the OS and the setting screens,
0:04:26I realized, oh, I have to have one of these
0:04:31for my app design.
0:04:32- Oh, sure you do.
0:04:33- Because, and it didn't help that like the day before,
0:04:37I had seen a screenshot of Overcast running on it,
0:04:39and I had seen it in the simulator,
0:04:40and it was, you know, it looked weird, but it was fine,
0:04:42but I saw the screenshot of somebody actually doing it
0:04:44in use, and I'm like, oh, that looks bad.
0:04:46Like, I can't just leave the layout the way it is.
0:04:50I have to actually customize it for the bigger screen
0:04:52because it just looks stupid.
0:04:53- If only there was a simulator you could use
0:04:56to do this sort of work.
0:04:57- Yes, but when you're doing design work on the Apple Watch,
0:05:01I know from previous experience,
0:05:02like I'll be coding up something,
0:05:04I'll do it in the simulator first,
0:05:05and then I'll run it on a device,
0:05:06I'm like, oh, that's not how I thought it would be.
0:05:09And you always have to do, so anyway,
0:05:12it is so, the screen is just so different.
0:05:14It's such a different size.
0:05:15It is not just the same thing, but a little bit bigger.
0:05:18Like it's radically different.
0:05:20And I knew, first of all, I knew from poking around the OS,
0:05:23Apple has a lot more work to do to make the OS work
0:05:27and feel right on this device.
0:05:29And the watch face situation is dire,
0:05:32I would say, on this device.
0:05:34I'm not a huge fan of the general watch face situation
0:05:36on the Apple Watch as a whole,
0:05:38but on the Ultra in particular, it's dire.
0:05:41It's bad.
0:05:42But all this is to say, I knew instantly
0:05:45as soon as I handled it, oh, I have to do
0:05:48real design work on this thing.
0:05:50And so I ordered one that day.
0:05:52- Of course you did.
0:05:53This surprises nobody, and as much as I'm giving you
0:05:56a hard time, like I do understand what you're saying,
0:05:58and yes, it is unquestionably, again,
0:06:00as much as I'm pulling your leg,
0:06:01it's much better to have a physical device
0:06:03to do this sort of work on.
0:06:04But yeah, this is not surprising.
0:06:06And I'm sorry, I guess, or congrats,
0:06:10I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to say in this context.
0:06:12What are you gonna do with it?
0:06:13Besides it being a dev thing,
0:06:15do you think you're gonna end up wearing it at all?
0:06:17You think someone else in your house is gonna wear it?
0:06:20Is it gonna be a very small iPad mini for Atom?
0:06:23- I don't think we have much use for it in the house.
0:06:26All three of us wear the 41 size,
0:06:29so I don't think we have a ton of use for it
0:06:32within the house, but I'm going to wear it for a few days
0:06:35while I figure out the app design,
0:06:37because I have to be familiar with the size
0:06:41to know what feels right.
0:06:43But I don't like the way this looks on me.
0:06:46It is also long sleeve season starting up now.
0:06:50And my sleeve situation is such that they exist
0:06:55and therefore this is not good.
0:06:57Because as soon as you try to tuck this under a sleeve,
0:07:00when you have a watch under a sleeve, it's always awkward,
0:07:03especially when you have those like the ribbed sleeves
0:07:04on the bottom of sweatshirts and stuff.
0:07:06You never want a big watch in that situation.
0:07:08It's awkward.
0:07:09And this just makes everything like a thousand times worse.
0:07:13- Maybe your Tesla could wear it.
0:07:14- Yeah, there you go.
0:07:15(laughing)
0:07:16- The defender's already got a watch,
0:07:17your Tesla's jealous, you know.
0:07:18- Yeah, yeah.
0:07:19- It's high tech.
0:07:20- Yeah, so even though I said
0:07:21I wasn't buying a watch this fall,
0:07:23I bought a G-Shock, this ridiculous thing,
0:07:27and a refurbished Series 6 for Adam.
0:07:29So here we are.
0:07:30- Yeah, your Prince of Tides G-Shock.
0:07:33Still didn't get that reference.
0:07:34- No, still didn't.
0:07:36It is awesome though.
0:07:37Like I've been doing a lot of sand driving.
0:07:38I love that G-Shock, it's fantastic for that purpose.
0:07:41I tried wearing it and it looks ridiculous,
0:07:43but I'm extremely happy with the actual functionality
0:07:46of why I bought it to be this thing in the car.
0:07:48It's awesome.
0:07:50- So as much as I'm, again, pulling your leg
0:07:52and giving you a hard time,
0:07:54have you found that the truck is sufficient
0:07:57for sand driving?
0:07:58Is this hitch because you're genuinely worried
0:08:00that you're going to get stuck,
0:08:01or maybe that you expect to get stuck,
0:08:03or is it just like you're trying to do everything
0:08:05in your power to make sure this is never going
0:08:07to be a problem ever, ever, ever, ever.
0:08:09- Mostly the latter because I am not good
0:08:12at asking for help.
0:08:13And the idea that-- - Yes, I can confirm.
0:08:16- Yeah, and the idea that I would be one of the newbies
0:08:20who just got a permit and get stuck
0:08:23and I have to call somebody for help,
0:08:25I know many people who would come help me.
0:08:27I'd be mortified though.
0:08:28I want to avoid that, especially because if those people
0:08:32were not able to come out at that moment or help me,
0:08:35then what you're supposed to do is call 911
0:08:39and explain to the Suffolk County Police where you are
0:08:41and the situation you're in
0:08:43and they arrange for a $700 tow truck.
0:08:46I really don't wanna do that for multiple reasons.
0:08:49Like that just sounds awful to me.
0:08:51So it's mainly because I have been told
0:08:54by everybody out here, everyone gets stuck sometimes.
0:08:58Like every single person who's driven out here for years,
0:09:01they all say that, everyone gets stuck sometimes.
0:09:04And so not only do I kinda wanna try to prove them wrong,
0:09:06like, hmm, maybe I won't get stuck, let's see.
0:09:09You know?
0:09:10But also, I want to be able to help other people
0:09:12if I pass somebody who is stuck.
0:09:14But ultimately, I have found, I think,
0:09:18since I have gone through the trouble
0:09:19of installing a tow hole in my car
0:09:21and have all these recovery boards,
0:09:23that's probably going to mean,
0:09:24kinda like when I bought a new snow blower
0:09:26and then it didn't snow for two years,
0:09:27it's probably gonna mean I'm never gonna use this stuff.
0:09:29And that'd be fine with me.
0:09:30I would gladly have made that trade-off
0:09:33to have not ever getting stuck.
0:09:37But I also think that, hmm, how do I put this?
0:09:40Some people are, they get bad information.
0:09:44And Long Islanders are really good at it.
0:09:47And so, the tips I have heard for driving on the sand here
0:09:52oftentimes are very different from the tips that I hear
0:09:58from the community of Australian sand driving off-roaders.
0:10:03And they seem to know what they're doing a lot.
0:10:07- Yeah, I would trust the Aussies.
0:10:08- Yeah, it seems like driving on sand
0:10:10is a big thing down there.
0:10:12- But their sand is upside down, it's totally different.
0:10:14- Yeah, it swirls the opposite direction.
0:10:16But anyway, it seems like the advice that they all give
0:10:23basically comes down to what you need really
0:10:26is ground clearance and low tire pressure.
0:10:29That's the secret to everything, according to them.
0:10:31So I lower my tires down to like 20, 22 PSI
0:10:35for most driving around here,
0:10:37and I know I could go lower if I really had to,
0:10:38if I got stuck, and it's been great.
0:10:42No one else here lowers their tires that reliably
0:10:45or that far.
0:10:46Everyone's like driving around on 30 PSI,
0:10:48like yeah, it's low.
0:10:49No, it's off-road and that really is not very low
0:10:53from what I understand.
0:10:54Even 20 is not that low for off-roading,
0:10:57from what I understand.
0:10:57But anyway, I think just having low tires,
0:11:01plus good ground clearance,
0:11:02plus a pretty seemingly great all-wheel drive system
0:11:06on the Defender, it's been amazing.
0:11:09Like, I'm able to hop in and out of the deep tracks,
0:11:11no problem, like it's been glorious.
0:11:15It's so easy.
0:11:16The chances of me actually ever getting stuck,
0:11:20I think might be lower than average.
0:11:22Simply because not only do I have a decent vehicle,
0:11:24for it, but I think more because I'm actually
0:11:26bringing my tire pressure down,
0:11:27and no one else seems to do that.
0:11:29They also tell me things here like,
0:11:30oh yeah, to get out just accelerates.
0:11:32That's oftentimes the opposite of what you want to be doing.
0:11:36So yeah, there's been a lot of information passed to me,
0:11:40and some of it's been very good, but far from all of it.
0:11:45- If you ever do get stuck, just to remind you,
0:11:46you are obligated to take pictures and video of it,
0:11:50because that's gonna be awesome.
0:11:51Oh, you have plenty of time waiting around
0:11:53for someone to come and save you anyway.
0:11:55So you should just go around the car with the phone
0:11:57and show the situation that we need to see it.
0:12:00It needs to be documented.
0:12:01- Honestly, to build on this,
0:12:03I don't know that I've ever FaceTimed with John or Marco,
0:12:07but I can tell you right now,
0:12:08if you don't get a three-way FaceTime going on this
0:12:11at this moment, I will never speak to you again.
0:12:13I will quit the show and you're all fired.
0:12:17We must have this happen.
0:12:18And listeners, I'm sorry,
0:12:19this is a perk of being on the show.
0:12:21You may never get to see this,
0:12:22But I want to see it, I want to be there virtually
0:12:26and watch this as it happens.
0:12:27But it probably won't, which is too bad.
0:12:29I mean, which is excellent.
0:12:30(electronic beeping)
0:12:33None of us are particularly active on Reddit,
0:12:34but there is an ATP subreddit,
0:12:36which I don't even remember what it's called anymore.
0:12:37I should have thought this through
0:12:38before it went in my mouth. - Wait, there is?
0:12:39- Yes, I didn't create it, but I forget what it is, actually.
0:12:42- I don't know if I've ever been there.
0:12:44- I cruise it, like I'm subscribed,
0:12:47I'm such a noob Redditor.
0:12:49But anyways, there is an ATP Reddit that I look at.
0:12:52Is it ATP FM, I think?
0:12:55I think that's it, ATP FM.
0:12:56I'm pretty sure that's right.
0:12:57Well anyways, somebody set up a robot to post
0:13:02when shows go up.
0:13:04I had nothing to do with any of this,
0:13:05but I'll occasionally look at it.
0:13:07This is not an officially sanctioned thing.
0:13:09It's just occasionally I'll take a look.
0:13:11Well anyways, somebody commented on Reddit
0:13:13after the last episode, this is Yalom on Reddit,
0:13:15who said, this is with regard, I'm sorry,
0:13:17to AI images and AI image creation and stuff like that,
0:13:22and whether or not that's like stealing
0:13:24and whether that's art or not, et cetera, et cetera.
0:13:26So Yalom writes, "I'm surprised I made it
0:13:28"through the whole AI image generation segment
0:13:30"without mentioning the last time
0:13:31"technology completely bulldozed the art world.
0:13:34"The bread and butter of the industry
0:13:35"used to be portraiture,
0:13:37"and those painters certainly realized
0:13:39"what they were looking at
0:13:40"the first time they saw a photograph,
0:13:41"and maybe the first time that three of them
0:13:44"have ever passed up the opportunity
0:13:45to talk about cameras, which is accurate.
0:13:48But that was a good point.
0:13:49And I don't remember any of us bringing that up.
0:13:51But yeah, portraits, I got to imagine,
0:13:52obviously we weren't there,
0:13:54but I got to imagine portraits were a big deal
0:13:57way back when, and then suddenly photographs were a thing,
0:14:00and sorry portrait artists,
0:14:01you were basically told tough noogies.
0:14:04- Well, they still paint portraits
0:14:04just like they still have horses.
0:14:06A couple of people wrote in
0:14:07with similar points about photography.
0:14:09One of them was noting that after the invention
0:14:14of the camera and the spreading throughout the world,
0:14:17you saw art go in different directions, less representative.
0:14:21I'm not sure if the timelines line up exactly,
0:14:23but certainly there was kind of an explosion
0:14:24in non-representative art around about the time
0:14:28that photography started to come into development.
0:14:30So maybe there are some analogs there for AI art
0:14:33versus human-made art, as we'll call it, I guess.
0:14:37- By the way, real-time follow-up,
0:14:38I used one of the AI art generators
0:14:42to generate an icon for the little tiny app I'm making
0:14:47for the sand drivers here.
0:14:48- Oh, I was wondering what that was about.
0:14:50I didn't wanna ask you publicly in case it was
0:14:53just kept close to the vest or anything.
0:14:55- It's really simple, just like showing the tight info
0:14:57and letting people report where the conditions are.
0:14:58That's it.
0:14:59I use the AI generator to generate an icon for this
0:15:02and not only was I laughing my butt off the whole time,
0:15:06here, I'll show you.
0:15:07So this was the first one that I generated.
0:15:12I'll have to put these in the chapter art,
0:15:14which made me laugh.
0:15:15- That looks like a Wrangler, my friend.
0:15:16- It's a Wrangler driving into a wave.
0:15:20- That's not a good situation.
0:15:21I would not recommend this.
0:15:23- That's why it's funny, Jon.
0:15:24That's the point of its humor.
0:15:26And then what I eventually landed on,
0:15:30so this is a white Jeep, I made it white.
0:15:33- Oh, that's pretty good.
0:15:34- Driving on the edge of the sand and the water
0:15:36so one tire is in the water
0:15:38and they're definitely getting stuck.
0:15:40I love how the AI image generators have,
0:15:42I mean, you don't have any text,
0:15:43but they do have a big problem with text
0:15:44'cause they don't know what text is.
0:15:46But also they have a problem with understanding symmetry.
0:15:50So look at the wheel on the Jeep on the top
0:15:52and look at the headlight, the right headlight,
0:15:54or the headlight on the right-hand side of the second one.
0:15:56- Or the mirrors are also wrong.
0:15:57The second one doesn't have a driver's-side mirror.
0:16:00- Yeah, it doesn't know or care
0:16:01that a wheel should be radially symmetrical.
0:16:04And same thing with the headlights.
0:16:05They should be two circles that are the same.
0:16:07It's the side one of the headlights
0:16:08gonna have a big blob in the middle of it and that wheel is gonna be melted.
0:16:11I feel like this AI art is, you know, people talk about machine learning as like ethics
0:16:16laundering or morality laundering.
0:16:18You say, "I didn't do it, the computer did it."
0:16:20This is kind of like artistic laundering where it's like, "Yeah, it's ugly, but I didn't
0:16:22do it, the computer did it."
0:16:24It's like, 'cause I feel like you could draw a better icon than both of these.
0:16:28It would take you longer than the 30 seconds it took to generate these, but they certainly
0:16:32need some help here.
0:16:33Yeah, but what was great about this was within a couple of minutes I had gone through 20
0:16:39or 30 different proposals that the AI had generated and I found what I wanted the icon
0:16:46to basically be conceptually.
0:16:48And so now what I can do is take this one I like, the second one here, take this one
0:16:53and then go to an icon designer and say, "Hey, here's a concept.
0:16:57Can we make something based on this concept?"
0:17:00And it saved, it gave me so many concepts to work with
0:17:04with no effort and no cost.
0:17:06That has tremendous value.
0:17:07And in the meantime now, while I wait to actually
0:17:10arrange that with an actual icon designer,
0:17:13I have a placeholder that I can at least develop the app
0:17:16and have this on my screen, not have like,
0:17:18just like the Apple crisscross default thing.
0:17:20Like, it's very, this technology I think has a huge amount
0:17:26of use that doesn't involve destroying artists.
0:17:31It's much more about being a part of the artistic process.
0:17:36It might replace some work that is happening,
0:17:42but I think ultimately this is just going to be another tool
0:17:44in our lineup that artists use as part of their process
0:17:49of being human artists.
0:17:51- You're gonna keep that Jeep tilted so much?
0:17:53Looks a little too, it looks like it's gonna fall
0:17:54into the ocean.
0:17:55point that's why it's funny. No the Jeep can absolutely handle that angle. I guarantee
0:18:01a Jeep can handle that angle. This is what your app is going to prevent right? It's going
0:18:05to prevent you from not realizing it's high tide in a Jeep that's tilting over into the
0:18:10ocean. Yeah but that's why it's funny. Like in both cases it's like wow this something
0:18:14has gone horribly wrong. That is pretty good stuff. Alright John tell me about how awesome
0:18:20it is when you have to use a screen to open your glove box. I don't know what it is that
0:18:24has caused the entire internet to send, at least me, but probably all three of us, links
0:18:28to the Cadillac Lyric reviews showing that you opened the glove box with a touchscreen.
0:18:33But Marco can confirm to me, I'm pretty sure that's been the case on Teslas for the history
0:18:37of Teslas.
0:18:38Is that right?
0:18:39I don't know about the Model 3, but on the Model S there's a button.
0:18:42There's like three buttons in the whole car, that's one of them.
0:18:44All right, well anyway, Tesla did it first, like so many things.
0:18:48And so, I mean, I guess Cadillac is on their big PR campaign for their EV, but they are
0:18:54not the first car company to open the glove box via the touch screen.
0:18:59And there, in terms of the controls inside the Cadillac, is it called the Lyric?
0:19:05L-Y-R-I-C maybe?
0:19:06Someone should look it up.
0:19:07Anyway, as for the controls inside that Cadillac, the Model 3 still is the champ in terms of
0:19:13not having physical controls anywhere.
0:19:15So yeah, Tesla did it first, thanks to everyone sending it.
0:19:18And just to reiterate, no, opening the glove box on the touch screen is not a good idea.
0:19:23a button or a handle on the glove box, please.
0:19:25Yep. So, an internet friend of mine just sent me his video review of his brand new Model
0:19:31Y, and one of the things he points out—I'll put a link to it in the show notes—one of
0:19:34the things he points out is that you have to go into the screen and, you know, bloop,
0:19:39bloop, bloop in order to open the glove box, which I think is bananas. And that's a tussle
0:19:44for you. Aaron's car does not have a physical latch that you can operate, but it does have
0:19:49a physical button, which I also think is a bit ridiculous, but that's neither here nor
0:19:53there. And also, since we're talking about ridiculous things, I would just like to point
0:19:58out that whenever I get on my high horse, which is all too often, about how dumb Celsius
0:20:03is for ambient air temperature, because it is dumb, I'm always telling people, "Oh, you
0:20:08know, if you have to use a decimal point, then I think you've already kind of failed."
0:20:13And every Celsius aficionado, which is the entire world except America, is quick to point
0:20:18Oh, no, we never use decimals. We never use it. Maybe we'll use half degrees once a while
0:20:22Maybe but you never ever ever see that me me me. Well, you know what I'm looking at on this Tesla Model Y video
0:20:28This is an Australian and you know what it says on his screen 20.0 degrees Celsius
0:20:330.0 people I'm telling you probably goes up in 0.5 increments, right? Yep. I would assume so
0:20:39I don't know but I would assume so Celsius people come on
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0:22:39(upbeat music)
0:22:42Hey, we accidentally glossed over something last week
0:22:45in Ask ATP.
0:22:46David Kome had written,
0:22:47and I had kind of lumped this in with another question,
0:22:50and I think we glossed over it by accident.
0:22:52So David wrote, "Given Jon has a new TV
0:22:54and clearly has a number of input sources connected,
0:22:56what advice beyond his past blog posts
0:22:58would you suggest in 2022 about settings for color,
0:23:00et cetera?"
0:23:00Here's the key.
0:23:01"In particular, we have an Apple TV 4K
0:23:03and are curious about the match content option
0:23:06in the late tvOS,
0:23:08and what's best to be set or unset
0:23:10on both ends of the HDMI cable?
0:23:13- Yeah, I know we talked about this before,
0:23:14but I didn't wanna actually answer the question
0:23:15since it was part of Ask ATP and we didn't get to it.
0:23:18I went off on a tangent about color calibration,
0:23:21but to reiterate, the match content setting,
0:23:23it's a weird name,
0:23:25but you do want that to be turned on on your Apple TV.
0:23:28What that's telling your Apple TV
0:23:29is to do a feature that Apple TV didn't always have,
0:23:32send the content to the television
0:23:35in the format that the program is in.
0:23:38So if you're watching a movie and the movie is 24 frames
0:23:41per second, you're telling the Apple TV,
0:23:43send 24 frames per second to the television.
0:23:45And you may think, how could it ever do anything different?
0:23:48If the movie's 24 frames per second,
0:23:49of course the Apple TV is gonna send 24 frames per second
0:23:51by television, but it didn't do that for years and years.
0:23:54For years and years, the Apple TV worked like a little
0:23:56computer, like your Mac does or whatever.
0:23:58It had a fixed refresh rate.
0:24:00Whatever the refresh rate is on, you know, ignoring the,
0:24:03what do they call it on the MacBook Pros?
0:24:05Do they call it-- - Promotion.
0:24:06- Promotion? - Yep.
0:24:07Anyway, ignoring promotion, before the advent of promotion and before the advent of different
0:24:11refresh rates for screens, computers would just pick a refresh rate.
0:24:14Like in your CRTs, you could pick whichever one you wanted.
0:24:17LCDs mostly are 60 hertz, and it just shows everything at 60 hertz.
0:24:22And that's what the Apple TV was like.
0:24:23It was a little computer that had video output running at 60 hertz all the time.
0:24:27So if you watched a 24 frames per second movie, it would output that at 60 hertz.
0:24:31So it would show, I don't know if the math, I can't do the math off the top of my head,
0:24:34If the number of frames per second was not an even multiple of or couldn't divide evenly into 60 frames per second
0:24:41Sometimes it would show one frame for longer the other it was bad, right?
0:24:44It was the reason the Apple TV wasn't a good video device for years
0:24:48Then eventually I added this feature called match content and that says we won't do that anymore
0:24:51We will send whatever the video dictates. We'll send that to the television
0:24:56You're watching a 30 frames per second television program will send that to the TV if you're watching
0:25:019.7 will send that, whatever it is.
0:25:03What is it, in PAL, it was like 25 frames per second
0:25:06or something, I forget.
0:25:07- That's called PAL, not pal.
0:25:10- Pal, PAL, I don't know.
0:25:12- I've never had to say it before,
0:25:14but I've always assumed it was pal.
0:25:16Just like ours is ints.
0:25:17- I don't think, well, PAL is not a mispronunciation,
0:25:20it is just a reading of the letters in the abbreviation.
0:25:24I pronounced the letters individually correctly.
0:25:25Anyway, I don't know which one of those two things it is,
0:25:27but yeah, they have different frame rates
0:25:30for their television over there.
0:25:31Apparently it stands for phase alternating line
0:25:34and it's pronounced pal.
0:25:36- Totally. - Yeah.
0:25:37Anyway, so you want that to be turned on.
0:25:39The downside of that though, there is a downside
0:25:43and I'm telling you to turn on even despite this downside
0:25:46is that when you enable that,
0:25:49the Apple TV chooses to run its interface,
0:25:52like the little thing with all the little rectangles,
0:25:54it runs its interface at whatever refresh rate
0:25:56it decides to run it at.
0:25:57And then when you play something,
0:25:59it has to switch from whatever it was running
0:26:01the interface at to whatever the thing you're watching is.
0:26:04And they're probably not gonna be the same,
0:26:05'cause I think the interface always runs at like 60 hertz,
0:26:08but pretty much nothing you're gonna watch on Apple TV
0:26:10is 60 frames per second.
0:26:13And even if it was 30,
0:26:14it doesn't just like frame double it up to 60,
0:26:17it switches to 30 frames per second
0:26:19or 24 frames per second or whatever,
0:26:20which means there's like this blackout interval
0:26:22when you launch an app
0:26:24or when you start playing something or whatever.
0:26:26Depending on how quickly your television setup responds
0:26:30to that change, it can be kind of annoying.
0:26:32You're like, instead of having such a phrase
0:26:34where you just go bloop, bloop, bloop, play,
0:26:35and it starts playing, it's bloop, bloop, bloop, play,
0:26:38black screen, maybe your television pops up
0:26:41and overlay native to the television
0:26:42'cause it's like a lost signal on HDMI one.
0:26:45Oh wait, no, here it is, and then it comes back.
0:26:48That can be annoying.
0:26:49The best way to fix that would be for television
0:26:52manufacturers and streaming box manufacturers
0:26:54to get together to make that switching way, way, way, way faster than it is now.
0:26:59Kind of like how when we got the ARM Macs, like changing screen resolution or attaching
0:27:04external monitors was suddenly a bazillion times faster and we didn't realize how slow
0:27:07it was before until we saw how fast it could be.
0:27:10We need that moment to happen for televisions.
0:27:12But in the meantime, I'm going to recommend endure the stupid screen blackout thing because
0:27:19what you want to see is each frame of the video you're watching displayed for an equal
0:27:23amount of time on your television.
0:27:24If your television supports, and most of the modern ones do,
0:27:27actually running at 24 frames per second
0:27:29or some multiple thereof, some even multiple thereof,
0:27:31and you're watching a 24 frames per second movie,
0:27:33that's what you want to happen.
0:27:34So turn on match content.
0:27:36And the same thing with the match HDR, SDR thing,
0:27:39turn that on as well, I think it's two separate settings.
0:27:42Basically what you're trying to tell the Apple TV is,
0:27:44hey Apple TV, look at the video you're trying to send,
0:27:47find out what the properties of that video is,
0:27:49and then send that to the television.
0:27:52From that point, it's up to the television
0:27:53to correctly receive that and display it.
0:27:55Some televisions can be annoying about this,
0:27:57and in particular, some receivers, my receiver,
0:27:59can be annoying about this where you have to convince them,
0:28:02oh, HDMI 1, turn on enhanced HDMI with,
0:28:06like, they have these weird words that basically say,
0:28:08should I support 4K?
0:28:10Should I support 120 frames per second?
0:28:11Should I support HDR?
0:28:13And they come by default often turned off.
0:28:15And so you may be wondering why the Apple TV
0:28:17can't go into Dolby Vision mode,
0:28:19or can't show something at the right frame rate,
0:28:21and you don't understand why,
0:28:22go to your television and/or your receiver
0:28:24and make sure they are set up to use all the features
0:28:28that you just paid for.
0:28:29Like it boggles my mind that you pay for this fancy,
0:28:31you know, television and receiver with all these features
0:28:33and they default to like a really safe SDR,
0:28:36non-4K, usually not non-4K,
0:28:38but they default to dumb settings sometimes.
0:28:40So that's what you want on both ends.
0:28:42You want Apple TV to match content
0:28:43in both frame rate and HDR SDR,
0:28:46and you want on the television and receiver end
0:28:48to have all the bells and whistles turned on.
0:28:51Tell me about Mac window management and stage manager, please.
0:28:54We talked a lot about Mac window management in the last episode,
0:28:56and I wanted to make a point about stage manager.
0:28:59We've talked about a few times before.
0:29:00I think when we originally covered stage manager, uh,
0:29:03I noted that on the Mac,
0:29:04it makes a lot more sense to me than it does on the iPad and related to Mac
0:29:09window management, even though Ventura is not out yet.
0:29:12I think stage manager will appeal to a lot of people. Um,
0:29:16in particular people who like the idea of spaces,
0:29:20but need a better visual representation.
0:29:23Because Stage Manager is kind of like spaces
0:29:25on a single screen where you've got these icons
0:29:27along the side, although you can turn them off
0:29:28if you don't want them there,
0:29:29that are groups of windows,
0:29:31and you can switch between those groups of windows.
0:29:33And unlike on the iPad, setting aside the stability things,
0:29:36unlike on the iPad, there's not a lot of weird limitations.
0:29:39You can't just have, you know, it's not like,
0:29:40"Oh, you can only have four windows in each thing,"
0:29:42and you can't position the windows.
0:29:44It just works like regular Mac windows.
0:29:46You can move them anywhere you want.
0:29:47You can drag them easily between groups
0:29:49'cause you have like a mouse cursor and everything.
0:29:52It's just very sensible.
0:29:54And if this appeals to you,
0:29:55if you think in terms of groups of windows,
0:29:57but don't wanna think in terms of spaces
0:29:59where you're swishing from side to side,
0:30:00from one set of things to another,
0:30:02try stage manager when it comes out immature,
0:30:05it may appeal to you.
0:30:06There's still the weirdness of like,
0:30:07well, what happens when I make a new window?
0:30:10What happens when I unminimize from the dock?
0:30:11Does it go back to the space it came from,
0:30:13or does it unminimize into the space I'm looking at right now?
0:30:16Not space, whatever the hell they call it in stage manager.
0:30:17I have no idea what,
0:30:18I'm glad I don't have to write a review of this.
0:30:20- Clumps?
0:30:21- Yeah, what the heck is, what do you call that?
0:30:23What is the nomenclature for a blob
0:30:26of stage manager thingies?
0:30:27(laughing)
0:30:29Someone writing their venture review
0:30:31will have to figure this out when they describe it,
0:30:32but try it, it's a nice hybrid
0:30:37of a bunch of different things that we had.
0:30:38Of course, it's yet another way to manage Windows
0:30:41on the Mac, as if we didn't already have enough.
0:30:43But hey, they threw another one in,
0:30:44and assuming it doesn't crash your Mac
0:30:46or do weird buggy stuff,
0:30:47I think a lot of people will find it very appealing,
0:30:49so give it a try.
0:30:50- And you have a new iPhone case, Jon?
0:30:52- I do, finally.
0:30:54The tyranny of the squeaky clear case is over.
0:30:56(laughing)
0:30:58- The saga.
0:30:59- Yeah, I got my first of two black leather,
0:31:04bare-bottom iPhone cases that I ordered.
0:31:06This is the Ryan London one.
0:31:07They won the shipping race that came here first.
0:31:11I was kind of half afraid that when I put it on,
0:31:13it would squeak, 'cause people would get into my head
0:31:15but it's the black DLC coating on the stainless steel,
0:31:19that's what's causing the squeaking error,
0:31:21but no, no, it's just a normal case.
0:31:24Put it on, does not move, does not squeak, does not creak,
0:31:27fits perfectly, it's fine.
0:31:29- The John Siracusa review.
0:31:32- Yeah, the case itself, it has one little stamping thing
0:31:36on the lower left when I'm looking at it edge,
0:31:41but it's not a place that I really feel.
0:31:42The back is entirely unmarked, so that's nice,
0:31:45no logos, no anything like that.
0:31:47They did a really good job with the volcano blister mound,
0:31:51I don't know, thing around the camera mesa, right?
0:31:55'Cause the Apple Clear Case has just a wall, right?
0:31:58And this has a kind of a gradual smooth thing
0:32:01and they did a good job of it's like,
0:32:03it's black so it's slimming and the little mound
0:32:06or taper also minimizes the gargantuan thing.
0:32:11But I have to say, I think I mentioned this
0:32:13when I was talking about the Clear Case,
0:32:14I was surprised that I was using the wall
0:32:16around the camera mesa to rest my finger on,
0:32:19kind of like a very tiny pop socket thing.
0:32:22Now it's not there anymore.
0:32:24Now it's a little slanty leather thing
0:32:26and I can't use it to rest my finger on it anymore.
0:32:28I'm sure I'll get over it,
0:32:29but it's amazing how I formed that habit
0:32:31in only a few short weeks and now I have to change it up.
0:32:34But the good thing is the whole rest of the case
0:32:36is leather and will get grippier over time
0:32:38and is already pretty grippy.
0:32:39It doesn't do the thing that I wanted to do with the buttons.
0:32:43I know this, the bull strap case is exactly the same.
0:32:45The buttons are not recessed in a little divot.
0:32:48They are instead poking out of a giant mound.
0:32:50So not only are they not sunken in,
0:32:53but they're actually, they start coming out
0:32:55from a lump that's already there.
0:32:57They feel good, they work well,
0:32:59but they are sticking out more than I wanted.
0:33:01I mean, you can't have everything.
0:33:03The case itself is also a little bit thicker
0:33:05than I expected.
0:33:06I mean, it's just plastic wrapped in leather,
0:33:08so it's not like it's thick, thick.
0:33:10There's no other stuff in there.
0:33:11There's no other additional padding.
0:33:13but maybe the leather is thicker or whatever,
0:33:14but it feels a little bit thicker
0:33:17than my extremely cheap OXR iPhone 12 Pro case,
0:33:21which is currently on sale for $5.50.
0:33:23It's also ostensibly leather.
0:33:26But yeah, I'm happy to have a leather case on my phone.
0:33:28I'm getting used to the little mound volcano thing.
0:33:32It is, you know, the thickness does have ramifications.
0:33:37Like it looks a little bit like,
0:33:39I don't know how to describe it.
0:33:41It looks like it's wrapped in leather.
0:33:43I know, duh, it is wrapped in leather,
0:33:44but it looks like it's wrapped in leather
0:33:45rather than like being,
0:33:47the Apple cases often look like
0:33:49they're just made of leather.
0:33:50This looks like a case that is wrapped in leather,
0:33:53if that makes any sense.
0:33:54So it is a little bit thicker and chunkier,
0:33:57but it also feels better and it's cushier
0:33:59and it's definitely nicer than the Olexar case
0:34:01in terms of leather quality.
0:34:02So I'll let you know when the bolster case gets here.
0:34:05I probably won't even swap it on
0:34:07if it is not significantly different
0:34:09because I'm perfectly happy with this one the way it is.
0:34:12But I'm just happy to get that clear case off there.
0:34:15Oh, and the MagSafe ring seems to work fine.
0:34:16So I give the Ryan London case a tentative thumbs up.
0:34:21- Jon, remind me, do you use MagSafe anywhere?
0:34:24You said you do in your car.
0:34:25Is there anywhere else that you'd use MagSafe?
0:34:28Like for example, the battery pack,
0:34:30which is, as we've discussed many times,
0:34:33hilariously overpriced, but actually quite nice.
0:34:35Do you use that or MagSafe charging or anything like that?
0:34:39- I do have MagSafe puck on my nightstand,
0:34:41but I don't put my phone on it.
0:34:42I put my AirPods on it.
0:34:44(laughing)
0:34:45- Okay.
0:34:45- Because I'm just so used to plugging in my phone.
0:34:48We do have the little Apple battery pack thing,
0:34:51but my wife uses that.
0:34:52I don't use it.
0:34:53And like I said before,
0:34:55because I have the MagSafe charger in my car,
0:34:58like I was starting to feel bad for my phone.
0:35:00Like I felt like I was abusing the battery
0:35:02because it would never go down below like 95%
0:35:05during the course of the entire day.
0:35:06And I feel like I should,
0:35:07I'm intentionally not charging my phone
0:35:10times when I used to.
0:35:11Like when I'm making dinner, I would listen to podcasts
0:35:13while I'm making dinner or whatever,
0:35:14and I would plug in my phone.
0:35:16My phone would be in the other room plugged in
0:35:17and I just have my AirPods in, right?
0:35:19Bluetooth range is fine.
0:35:20And I would plug it in so it would charge.
0:35:21Now I'm intentionally not doing that
0:35:23because I want my phone to go below 50%.
0:35:26'Cause I want, it's better for the battery
0:35:28for it to go below 50%.
0:35:29So I don't use the battery pack.
0:35:31I don't use any other MagSafe charging.
0:35:33It's just the cars, 'cause now we have
0:35:34the little MagSafe mounts in both cars,
0:35:36no matter which car I'm driving, I just slap it on there and they both charge while driving.
0:35:39So that's it for me and MagSafe.
0:35:42That's another thing I'm interested in seeing if I'm going to get like a circle worn into
0:35:45the back of the phone because obviously with the clear plastic one, it's not really, it's
0:35:48already got a circle you can see anyway and it's pretty durable.
0:35:51Both leather I imagine I will slowly wear in kind of a circle from slapping it on the
0:35:55thing, but we'll see.
0:35:57And then we should briefly mention Marco, if you need a repair on one of your army of
0:36:05original home pods. Listener Timo Bruck wrote in, "Since you mentioned original
0:36:09home pod failures on the show recently I wanted to let you know about NixFix who
0:36:13will fix them for $60 plus shipping. If you want to watch he live streams the
0:36:16repair on YouTube. For my home pod the issue was a shorted diode but he lists
0:36:20other common failures on his website and if you click through to look at this oh
0:36:24there's a lot of common failures." There's a lot of options there which is kind of
0:36:29sad. But anyways Timo writes, "If you want to do it yourself he's got a tutorial on
0:36:34on YouTube, which is like 30, 40 minutes long
0:36:36or something like that, but we'll link both of these
0:36:37in the show notes.
0:36:39The common issues list, man, it's something else.
0:36:42- That's weird. - Yeah.
0:36:43- The interesting thing is weird is like,
0:36:44it's not as if Apple doesn't have a lot of experience
0:36:46building electronics, right?
0:36:48Like you would expect something like this
0:36:49if Apple made, say, a car.
0:36:51They don't have a lot of experience making it,
0:36:52but they make like literal millions of electronic devices,
0:36:56and for some reason, this stupid big HomePod
0:36:58that apparently didn't sell very well,
0:37:00so how many of them have even made that?
0:37:01Like, it's not a complicated device,
0:37:04It's not expected to go underwater.
0:37:05People don't put it in their backpacks,
0:37:07and yet they can't survive more than like five years
0:37:09without what you would think would be
0:37:11like rookie mistake things of diodes burning out
0:37:14or amplifiers being driven to,
0:37:17like whatever these problems are,
0:37:18they seem like problems that Apple in particular
0:37:20should not be making with a product,
0:37:22and I don't quite understand how it happened.
0:37:25I mean, maybe they're the type of things
0:37:26that happen all the time,
0:37:26and they just fix them in revision two and revision three,
0:37:28and just because there was no revision two or three,
0:37:30they never got fixed,
0:37:31but it's really an anomaly in the history of Apple stuff.
0:37:34I can't remember any other device they've made
0:37:36that has sort of such a seemingly low degree of difficulty
0:37:40in terms of electronics,
0:37:41like the basic electronics stuff.
0:37:44It's not super high wattage CPU, it's not super fast,
0:37:47it's not cutting edge.
0:37:49Again, it sits on a counter in an air-conditioned space.
0:37:51It doesn't go out into the world, it's not an Apple watch,
0:37:55it doesn't go into backpacks, and they just can't stay alive.
0:37:59- Yeah, I mean, we heard,
0:38:01back when the HomePod was being developed,
0:38:02we heard that it was just a whole bunch of changes
0:38:07and the project kept getting restarted or changed around
0:38:10or refocused and restaffed and all these other,
0:38:13it seemed like the HomePod project was a mess
0:38:16to get out the door.
0:38:17It makes me so sad because again,
0:38:19it's a great product in many ways, not in all ways,
0:38:23but it's a great product in many ways
0:38:24and yeah, it does seem really unfortunate
0:38:27that there's so many actual physical flaws with its design.
0:38:30That being said, my bigger surprise,
0:38:33this came across my radar last time we talked about 'em,
0:38:36like months ago, my biggest surprise is that
0:38:39there is anybody out there who actually loves HomePods
0:38:42enough to do these repairs.
0:38:44And there's people out there willing to go have these done.
0:38:47Like that was a happy surprise to learn about.
0:38:49But unfortunately, my problems with the HomePods,
0:38:54I don't think fit into any of these categories
0:38:56of the common physical failures,
0:38:59I suspect mine are just like both software related
0:39:03and also them just kind of generally flaking out,
0:39:06which is hard to pin down.
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0:41:06We are hearing a lot of rumblings these days on and off, but this has flared up again recently,
0:41:12about how Apple is really cranking up their interest in doing advertising all over the
0:41:18place. And most recently, this has come up with regards to TV, but we'll get there in
0:41:22a minute. But over the summer, there was a post on 9to5Mac about how the App Store will
0:41:29be adding more search ads. So reading from this post, "The new advertising placements
0:41:33in the App Store will allow developers to place ads outside of the search tab and search
0:41:37results. First and foremost, there's a new advertising slot coming to the Today homepage
0:41:42of the App Store. Apple notes that the rest of the Today tab will remain focused on curation
0:41:46and Discovery, the ad spot will be clearly marked as an ad using the same blue banner
0:41:50and background as search ads. The second new advertising placement is coming directly to
0:41:53product pages themselves. This means that developers will now be able to place ads on
0:41:56the product pages for other apps. This spot is located at the very bottom of the product
0:42:01page beneath the banner section that shows the other apps by that developer. Developers
0:42:04won't be able to target a specific application when bidding for product page ad placement.
0:42:09For instance, Twitter wouldn't be able to target Tweetbot specifically. The ads, however,
0:42:12would be relevant for each of the product pages. This means you could and probably will
0:42:16for direct competitors on app pages.
0:42:18Ew, I don't like it.
0:42:23- This, oh I have so many, so many thoughts about this.
0:42:27I mean, so first of all, I have bought a lot of search ads
0:42:32over the last, what has been about three or four years
0:42:35they've existed.
0:42:36- Something like that.
0:42:36- Whatever it's been, I mean, I have bought a lot of them.
0:42:39I have spent a really disgusting amount of money
0:42:42on search ads and it's for the simple fact that
0:42:45all of the low hanging fruit of easy to get people,
0:42:50well I got them already.
0:42:51So now I have to get the harder to get people
0:42:52if I want my business to maintain and grow its user base.
0:42:57And so I started buying search ads when they came out
0:42:59and I've at various times paid reasonable amounts
0:43:04and various times when I wasn't paying attention
0:43:07paid unreasonable amounts.
0:43:08And a number of, I think I have a number of takeaways
0:43:12Number one, I unfortunately see search ads
0:43:17as a necessary thing in today's App Store environment.
0:43:22Like if you want people to find your app,
0:43:25if you wanna grow your user base, even for free apps,
0:43:28you gotta do search ads.
0:43:29And whatever Apple says about the value of the App Store
0:43:34in terms of discoverability that they are providing,
0:43:39That was more true in the very distant past.
0:43:42Recently, the App Store is just a giant search engine
0:43:46and if you wanna rank highly, you have to play games.
0:43:49And those games range from just being good,
0:43:53which is, that helps, but also you gotta play games
0:43:55like buying search ads or keyword spamming
0:43:58or doing unscrupulous things that I don't and won't do.
0:44:03And so, I view a lot of this stuff
0:44:08as the necessary evil that it is.
0:44:11A lot of this is within Apple's control
0:44:12to make better though, and they just don't.
0:44:15Like, the product page thing that you just mentioned, Casey,
0:44:19like this is like the new thing that there's,
0:44:21you know, they've been adding new ad units
0:44:22over the last few months.
0:44:24They added, they first, a while back,
0:44:26maybe six months ago now, they added a unit where like,
0:44:30if you go to the search box,
0:44:33before you even type anything in,
0:44:35there's an ad unit that shows right below it.
0:44:37And Apple tries to use their ranking system
0:44:40or intelligence or whatever they call it
0:44:43to appropriately place personalized ads in that spot.
0:44:48So I thought, well, let me try it.
0:44:51So I created a campaign to use that spot.
0:44:55I gave it, I forget, maybe a few hundred dollars,
0:44:57just to try it out, to see like,
0:44:58all right, what can I get for this?
0:45:00It burned through the money so comically fast
0:45:04and I got almost no installs from it.
0:45:07It was terribly targeted.
0:45:09Whatever they were doing to target that,
0:45:11and they gave you very little control over it,
0:45:14it was awful, it was just setting money on fire.
0:45:17So that was fun, okay.
0:45:19In the regular search ads that I've been using for years,
0:45:23the relevance algorithms are still comically bad.
0:45:28And you don't have to trust developers
0:45:30to know that Apple's App Store relevance
0:45:32or algorithms are terrible.
0:45:34just search for any keyword in the App Store.
0:45:36And you'll see for yourself that half the results
0:45:39are really poorly matched to that keyword,
0:45:42that the rankings of things that you think
0:45:44should be higher are not, and they're beaten out
0:45:47by apps that kind of play the scam system better.
0:45:51And see for yourself, you'll see the App Store search
0:45:56and relevance and ranking algorithms are still extremely
0:46:01like web 1.0, rudimentary, very simplistic,
0:46:06not having learned any lessons from the web basically.
0:46:10You know, it's exactly, it's like searching Yahoo in 1997.
0:46:15Like it's that level of sophistication.
0:46:17Like you know when Google came around
0:46:18and like made everything better with PageRank
0:46:20and all these like fraud detection algorithms
0:46:22and they like stopped using like keyword stuffing
0:46:24as a thing, Apple seems to have learned
0:46:26none of those lessons and the App Store search
0:46:30and relevance algorithms are really rudimentary.
0:46:32It's like comp sci 101.
0:46:33I've written search engines that are better
0:46:35than the app store search engine
0:46:36and that's not saying much
0:46:37'cause it's never been my full-time job.
0:46:38So the ranking algorithms are terrible.
0:46:41When they do things like show something on the product page
0:46:44but you can't buy a certain product page specifically,
0:46:47you can just say put my app on relevant product pages.
0:46:50What that tells me is that's also gonna probably
0:46:54be setting money on fire.
0:46:55Now am I going to try it?
0:46:56Of course.
0:46:56(laughs)
0:46:57'Cause that's what we have to do as developers.
0:46:59"Sure, I'm gonna try it.
0:47:00"I'll probably set a few hundred dollars
0:47:02"to a thousand dollars on fire just trying that out."
0:47:05That's part of the business.
0:47:06You try buying ads.
0:47:07I have burned more money on less effective ads before,
0:47:10so I'm going to try it, but I have little hope for it.
0:47:13And it seems like what Apple is doing
0:47:16is just gradually increasing the ad load
0:47:21in many places around the app store and the iPhone.
0:47:23And it's not hard to see why they're doing this.
0:47:26The heavily growing part of the company,
0:47:29When the hardware seems to be mostly mature/stagnant,
0:47:33the growing parts of the company largely are quote,
0:47:36services.
0:47:38Services is a wonderful euphemism
0:47:41for what's actually going on.
0:47:43What services seems to be largely comprised of,
0:47:48composed of, I always get those wrong,
0:47:50is app store revenue.
0:47:52That's a huge chunk of it.
0:47:55App store revenue is itself a huge chunk
0:47:59of the 30% cut and everything, but also search ads.
0:48:03And this is a massive business.
0:48:05Facebook has made a ton of money in app install ads
0:48:07over the years, Twitter has made some money,
0:48:10whatever they were capable of figuring out
0:48:11through all their crappy leadership with app install ads.
0:48:14App install ads are a really big deal,
0:48:16and they make a ton of money for whoever's doing them,
0:48:18and Apple has put themselves in the position
0:48:20to make the most money doing it,
0:48:21while also kneecapping everybody else who was doing it,
0:48:23so yay, good for Apple.
0:48:25So what this means is that app install ads,
0:48:29They're a huge deal, but Apple has huge incentives
0:48:34to keep tightening the screws on the App Store,
0:48:37to not give up a dime that actually matters,
0:48:40and to not only not lighten up on the fees and stuff,
0:48:45but to keep adding more ways in which we as developers
0:48:50need to be paying them more money,
0:48:52because that's a huge growth area of their business
0:48:55when they're running out of huge growth areas
0:48:56in their business.
0:48:57So this is only going to continue.
0:49:00There is no doubt in my mind this is gonna keep happening.
0:49:03They're gonna keep adding more and more ads
0:49:05around the phone and more and more ads
0:49:08specifically around the App Store.
0:49:10Whether it's in product pages, who knows?
0:49:13Maybe when you launch an app,
0:49:14they'll put up a little sheet sometimes saying,
0:49:16hey, maybe you wanna try XYZ Tweetbot instead.
0:49:20(laughs)
0:49:22They're gonna keep doing this crap
0:49:23because this is the business they are now in.
0:49:26Apple is now an ad company and they make a ton of money
0:49:30in a very important growth area
0:49:32via extraction from app developers.
0:49:35So that's what this is.
0:49:37I hate that this is what it's become,
0:49:38however this is the reality of the business.
0:49:40This is what it has become
0:49:42and they're gonna keep making really crappy ad units
0:49:46that have really crappy search relevance algorithms
0:49:48and I'm gonna keep spending a whole bunch of money on them
0:49:50because I have to.
0:49:51- How do you really feel?
0:49:53You know, I recently read after Steve,
0:49:56the, what is this, a trip, mickle,
0:49:58I forget the guy's name, it was a great name.
0:50:01Anyway, the book I had mixed feelings about,
0:50:03I really encourage you if you're an Upgrade Plus member,
0:50:06I'm pretty sure that it was discussed
0:50:08on the October 3rd episode in the Upgrade Plus segment
0:50:11and I think I landed between Mike and Jason.
0:50:15Jason seemed to really dislike it
0:50:16and Mike seemed to really like it
0:50:18and I was kind of in the middle.
0:50:20But one of the theses, thes, the psi of the book was,
0:50:25thesis, um, the thesis, this is, this is, this is, of the book was that, you know,
0:50:30all Tim Cook cares about is money and in businessy things and he ruins
0:50:35everything. And I think that that's, uh, not necessarily accurate,
0:50:39but if you are to take it as accurate, I think this is one of those ways where,
0:50:43you know, Apple needs to show growth, like you were saying, Marco,
0:50:47and it seems that this is an easy way
0:50:49for them to get growth without putting
0:50:51a whole heck of a lot of effort in.
0:50:53And from a business perspective,
0:50:55I think this makes a ton of sense,
0:50:57and I think it's smart.
0:50:59From a user perspective, I think it's super gross,
0:51:02and I don't like it at all.
0:51:03Because in a world where so much of our lives
0:51:08are inundated by ads, including this very program,
0:51:12if you don't happen to be an ATP member,
0:51:14by the way, ATP.fm/join.
0:51:17- We got sponsored this week by ATP membership.
0:51:19- Right, no I mean, obviously we try,
0:51:23genuinely we try to do our best to make sure
0:51:25that we only present ads that we think will be
0:51:26genuinely relevant to the people that listen to the show.
0:51:29- Have you tried listening to Upgrade?
0:51:31Cortex?
0:51:31Connected?
0:51:32(laughing)
0:51:33- So in any case, it's not a great look for Apple,
0:51:37which is this thing that seems to be resisting,
0:51:41just cranking out dollar bills by way of advertising.
0:51:46and instead is trying to crank out dollar bills by making good products.
0:51:51And now it seems to be falling and allowing itself to be overcome by the lure of the almighty
0:52:00ad dollar.
0:52:01And that's just a bummer.
0:52:03I feel like one of the things that I love about Apple TV+ as an example is that I'm
0:52:10not getting interrupted after the very beginning.
0:52:13This is what's been great about Netflix until soon when it starts having ads here
0:52:17But you know
0:52:18it's one of the great things about a lot of these services and now we're coming back around to let's put ads everywhere and
0:52:23It just stinks and and and I feel like I've always perceived Apple as being better than this which is probably
0:52:31I don't know if ignorant is the right word, but probably wishful thinking on my part
0:52:35But I completely concur Marco like there's no way that this
0:52:38Faucet is going to be turned back off and if anything it's going to be opened even wider with time
0:52:43And it's just, I don't care for it.
0:52:46I wish it was different.
0:52:47- And to be clear also,
0:52:48there is value in App Store search ads.
0:52:52I was just saying basically,
0:52:54yeah, it sucks that we have to do it.
0:52:55But the reality is, there is so many apps out there
0:52:59that again, as developers,
0:53:00you kinda do have to do stuff like this.
0:53:02If you're lucky, you can get away with not having
0:53:06paid promotion of your app,
0:53:09but even then, that only lasts for maybe
0:53:11if you have a good launch.
0:53:12great, then you'll have like, you know,
0:53:14if the blogs write you up and you get press
0:53:16or you get, you know, some little bit of traction,
0:53:18that's great, but you're still at some point
0:53:20gonna have to go to paid promotion if you want growth.
0:53:22That's just what happens.
0:53:24Trust me, I've been on this ride before.
0:53:26This is what happens to everybody at some point.
0:53:28Whether it's worth it or not, that's a different story.
0:53:31And that's hard, it's hard to make work, really.
0:53:34And again, I've done a lot of different paid promotion
0:53:36and it definitely has not all been worth it.
0:53:40In fact, I would say only a very minuscule part of it
0:53:44has been worth it, but again, you don't know,
0:53:46the famous saying, you don't know which half
0:53:47of your ad dollars are working until you've spent them,
0:53:50and even then, not always.
0:53:51But anyway, if the search ad system was better,
0:53:56like if it actually had better ranking,
0:53:59better relevance matching, just in general,
0:54:01if it was less dumb about what ads it chose to show
0:54:06and when and how, I would actually like it.
0:54:09as a developer and theoretically even as a user
0:54:12it could occasionally help.
0:54:14But the way it is now, it just reeks of Apple's
0:54:19crappy mediocrity when they don't have to compete
0:54:22because of the way the App Store is.
0:54:24And of all the issues and attitudes that come up therein,
0:54:29App Store search ads suck because they're really half-assed.
0:54:34That's why Apple does a terrible job
0:54:37of search ranking and relevancy
0:54:39and all of us are burning money unnecessarily,
0:54:42like, God, you wouldn't believe
0:54:43what they think Overcast is sometimes.
0:54:46It's not hard, okay?
0:54:48But because it's such a sealed box,
0:54:52you can't see what they're doing with their relevancy
0:54:55and you only have very little control.
0:54:59There's this whole interface, I do the advanced login,
0:55:01there's this whole thing where you can set certain keywords,
0:55:04you can set them as exact or not exact,
0:55:05you can set the negative keywords,
0:55:06say don't match this, don't match broadly this
0:55:09or exactly this, and there's all sorts of things
0:55:10you can do there, but the basic relevance,
0:55:14you end up just cleaning up after their mistakes
0:55:18so often with like, all right, no, even though
0:55:21the LLC name is Overcast Radio LLC, okay,
0:55:26don't match me against radio apps, okay, fine.
0:55:28Well then, why are you matching me against
0:55:31free music downloader apps?
0:55:34Oh, I can kinda see, you know, it's a podcast
0:55:36Okay, well, let's turn that off.
0:55:39Oh, wait, now here's all these apps
0:55:41that literally just like exist to rip off Spotify,
0:55:43to like download Spotify songs
0:55:45that pass the DRM or whatever.
0:55:47Why am I being ranting against those?
0:55:48Oh, it's considered a news app,
0:55:51so I'm being ranting against police scanners?
0:55:53What?
0:55:54Like, and this is what using search ads is.
0:55:57It's a constant battle of going through
0:56:00what they think your app is
0:56:02and what they think it's relevant to
0:56:03and just saying, oh, not that, not that, not that,
0:56:06not that, like it's not any of these crazy things
0:56:09that Google's relevance algorithms that are actually good
0:56:12would never in a million years guess
0:56:15that you were relevant to XYZ,
0:56:17but Apple's algorithms are crap.
0:56:19And so what that results in is not only
0:56:22is the experience crappy for users
0:56:24because they're getting ads that don't make sense,
0:56:26but then the experience for developers is
0:56:29we're not finding customers we could find
0:56:31and we're paying too much for it.
0:56:33Because the worse ads are targeted,
0:56:36the more you pay as the advertiser
0:56:38to eventually reach the right people.
0:56:41So it's just, ugh, the whole system,
0:56:43it's a crappy system poorly implemented
0:56:46to do something that benefits mostly just Apple.
0:56:50And if they did a better job of it,
0:56:52it could be a lot better
0:56:54and could benefit a lot more people.
0:56:55But it's just such a crappy mediocre system
0:56:57the way they've done it.
0:56:58And they have seemingly neither the will
0:57:01nor frankly the ability to make it any better.
0:57:04- Jon, you collected some quotes.
0:57:07- Yeah, this is the sort of snarky, cynical take
0:57:09from a few people in our community I thought was good.
0:57:11This is from Paul Haddad, he's the Tweetbot person, right?
0:57:15He says, "Coming next year, download ads.
0:57:17"Instead of downloading the app that you want,
0:57:19"the App Store will randomly download
0:57:21"the highest bidding app."
0:57:22(laughing)
0:57:23So that's the cynical take there of like,
0:57:25what will Apple not take money for?
0:57:28'cause in some respects, taking money for advertising,
0:57:32search advertising, is trading off on the user experience.
0:57:36Now, like Morgan said, sometimes not always
0:57:39because advertising can be useful to people.
0:57:41You may be looking for an app
0:57:43and you don't know what you're looking for,
0:57:44so you search for something
0:57:45and then one of the ads is actually relevant.
0:57:46If the algorithm actually works for once,
0:57:48you're like, oh, maybe I'll look at that app.
0:57:50So there is some user benefit.
0:57:52- That's basically what Instagram is.
0:57:54It's a giant shopping app that occasionally
0:57:56you can see pictures of your friends in.
0:57:57- Right, and so there is some upside to that to users,
0:58:00but there's an awful lot of downside,
0:58:01which is why so many things, including our podcast,
0:58:04allow people to pay more money to not see ads,
0:58:06because at a certain point it just gets annoying.
0:58:07So how far will they go?
0:58:09Well, they're putting ads for other supposedly relevant
0:58:13products on the actual product page.
0:58:15You drill all the way down to the overcast page,
0:58:18and then there's other things advertised there.
0:58:19So maybe, would they allow a different app
0:58:21to be downloaded randomly?
0:58:22Because again, the way they make money,
0:58:25let's have an auction.
0:58:26Who wants their app to be downloaded
0:58:28one out of every 1,000 times that Twitter is downloaded?
0:58:30So bid against that, Tweetbot.
0:58:32Maybe you'll get downloaded by accident
0:58:34and the user will hate you.
0:58:35Sebastian Dewitt says,
0:58:37"Apple shouldn't get into the ad business.
0:58:38"Pushing ads in their platform opposes their goals
0:58:41"and core values and will only erode user trust.
0:58:43"Are the relatively minor profits worth the price
0:58:45"of bad experience and lost goodwill?"
0:58:47I don't think the profits are minor.
0:58:49That's the one problem with this statement here?
0:58:52- Yeah, that's the thing.
0:58:53It's a lot of money.
0:58:54- Yeah, I mean we don't know exactly
0:58:56'cause they don't break it down to that way,
0:58:57but there is large potential upside
0:59:00and they're already potentially making
0:59:01a lot of money on that, so it's not minor.
0:59:03But this gets to what a lot of people feel like.
0:59:05They're like, this doesn't feel like a premium experience.
0:59:08It goes against Apple's quote unquote core values,
0:59:10like the user experience above everything else,
0:59:13a premium experience that you pay more money for,
0:59:15a premium experience doesn't tend to have
0:59:16as many ads or any ads, right?
0:59:18So I definitely feel that.
0:59:20And here's what MJ Tsai said,
0:59:22"Your core values are what you do on an ongoing basis,
0:59:25"not the talking points that you broadcast
0:59:27"or what you did 20 years ago under different leadership."
0:59:29This is the cynical take of saying,
0:59:30"Apple sounds like it up on stage,"
0:59:32saying, "Here are our values, and we value this,
0:59:35"and we value user experience,
0:59:36"and we respect the user,
0:59:38"and we have the whole privacy angle
0:59:40"and all these core values."
0:59:41And it's like, you can say that all you want,
0:59:43but your actual values are what you do, right?
0:59:47And not what you did 20 years ago under different leadership
0:59:50is implying that different leadership, maybe Steve Jobs,
0:59:53Steve Jobs was kind of annoyed by the same things
0:59:57that the users that we just read the quotes from
0:59:59are annoyed by and would not want his company
1:00:01to do something that annoys him,
1:00:03whereas Tim Cook either has a higher tolerance
1:00:05for annoyance or his desire to be a successful company
1:00:10and be a success as a CEO overrides the annoyance
1:00:15that he might feel dealing with this.
1:00:16And that gets to the larger point about search ads
1:00:19and advertising and stuff like that.
1:00:22The reason it is inescapable is unfortunate
1:00:26for people like the people I just quoted
1:00:29and us on this program who don't like ads.
1:00:32Most people have determined over years and years and years
1:00:37that they will gladly watch ads
1:00:39in exchange for paying less money.
1:00:41It's not like they're suffering under the yoke of ads.
1:00:44When given the choice to do something free with ads,
1:00:47people will take that choice.
1:00:48Most people will take that choice.
1:00:50And it's not even because they don't have the money
1:00:52or couldn't pay for it.
1:00:53They just can't be bothered to pay the $1.99
1:00:57to get rid of the ad banner
1:00:58at the bottom of their solitaire game.
1:01:00They'll have that stupid ad banner there rotating
1:01:02and burning their phone's battery for literal decade
1:01:06and never pay the $1.99 to get rid of the ad.
1:01:10That's the choice people make.
1:01:11It's been made in every medium, radio, television.
1:01:14Yes, there's always been things that you can pay for
1:01:15that have less or no ads or fewer ads,
1:01:19but the vast majority of people go,
1:01:21"Eh, I'll just take the cheap one with the ads."
1:01:23It's one of the reasons Amazon made the Kindle
1:01:25with special offers, right, with ads in it.
1:01:27If people can pay less for a Kindle,
1:01:29I'm like, "Eh, whatever, I'll just ignore the ads.
1:01:31"It's not a big deal."
1:01:32I'm not saying everybody loves ads
1:01:34or that they're the ultimate evil,
1:01:36but I'm just saying they have utility
1:01:38for people with products reaching customers,
1:01:41and customers writ large have decided,
1:01:43"Yeah, we'll tolerate ads.
1:01:45I'll tolerate ads if they help me pay for the newspaper.
1:01:47My newspaper will only be 25 cents
1:01:48because the advertisers pay for everything.
1:01:50And sometimes when I want to classify it,
1:01:51it's nice that the ads are in there, right?
1:01:54The human population will accept ads
1:01:59in exchange for hopefully some amount of money not being,
1:02:03some amount of cost not being passed on to them.
1:02:05That's why it's basically unavoidable,
1:02:07especially as Apple slowly removes
1:02:10the ability of other people to do effective
1:02:13install-based ads where they can determine
1:02:15with 100% certainty that you ran this ad
1:02:18and this number of people installed your app because of it
1:02:21and we're charging you this much.
1:02:23This sort of direct connection between
1:02:25you pay for advertising and you can see exactly
1:02:27how effective it is, Apple has been slowly breaking that.
1:02:31And so it's leaving them as the,
1:02:32not the only advertiser for app vendors,
1:02:36but the best one, the most powerful one
1:02:38because they own the platform,
1:02:39they have access to all the information
1:02:41and they can choose how much they want to expose to people
1:02:43how much privacy they want to preserve, so on and so forth.
1:02:46But it means also that as they edge other people out,
1:02:50they have to fulfill the role of advertiser.
1:02:52Because if they edged everybody out and said,
1:02:53"Yeah, but we're also not gonna do any ads,"
1:02:56that wouldn't benefit the market for apps on the phone.
1:02:59Because some users, again, not that they wanna see ads,
1:03:03but some users want to make that trade-off
1:03:04of seeing ads in exchange for not paying for things.
1:03:07And also, people with products
1:03:10wanna get them in front of customers,
1:03:12potential customers.
1:03:14And if Apple refused their money and said,
1:03:15"No, no, no, we're not gonna run an ad platform.
1:03:17"You can't run any ads in the app store at all.
1:03:19"Oh, and by the way, Facebook,
1:03:20"we're not letting you run effective ads anymore
1:03:23"for ad installs."
1:03:24Like that would be not good for the overall market.
1:03:27So we think of it as a quote unquote, "Necessary evil."
1:03:32But I think it's just a natural part of any market
1:03:34that advertising is a thing that has value
1:03:37to the extent that the market is weirdly shaped
1:03:40because the platform owner has a stranglehold on it,
1:03:43that causes ads to be more expensive than they should be.
1:03:46'Cause Marco talked about how his ads,
1:03:48how the relevance algorithms are crappy or whatever.
1:03:50In a more efficient market,
1:03:51those ads would become cheaper because they're crappy.
1:03:54But when the only game in town is Apple,
1:03:56they don't become that much cheaper.
1:03:57I mean, I suppose all the people buying the ads say,
1:03:59"I'm not gonna bother buying the ads."
1:04:00But when it's the only game in town,
1:04:03people just keep end up coming back to them and say,
1:04:04"Well, maybe I'll try this."
1:04:05And so people end up throwing money at it to say,
1:04:07"Maybe if I do this, maybe do that.
1:04:09"Maybe I'll try this ad slot.
1:04:10Maybe I'll put this keyword, maybe we'll do this.
1:04:12And it's probably not a particularly efficient market
1:04:14in terms of pricing those ads at what their actual value is,
1:04:18especially if they don't do the complete connection
1:04:20of telling you exactly how effective your ad is
1:04:23in each slot and all that stuff.
1:04:24So I think it's not particularly healthy,
1:04:27but it's unavoidable that there will be ads.
1:04:30And the final point related to the inevitability
1:04:33of advertising and what it does to companies
1:04:35and whether any individual likes that or not
1:04:39was on the September 30th episode of dithering,
1:04:42John Groob and Ben Thompson's podcast.
1:04:43It was around eight minutes and 40 seconds into the podcast.
1:04:47Ben said, they were talking about something related
1:04:49to advertising, I believe, and Ben said,
1:04:50"I wonder if an advertising-based company
1:04:52"is constitutionally incapable of really excelling
1:04:55"or putting the necessary investment
1:04:56"into any other sort of business model."
1:04:59They were talking about Stadia and Google and everything,
1:05:01how Google seems to have a hard time making products
1:05:03that you sell to consumers,
1:05:04but they're really great at advertising.
1:05:06And so that's the question here, the open question.
1:05:09Is it possible for an ad-driven business
1:05:11to make good products?
1:05:13And on the flip side, is it possible
1:05:14for a product company to do ads well?
1:05:17Despite Marco saying Apple is a services company
1:05:20and they're an advertising company,
1:05:21they're still a product company.
1:05:23That is what they're best at.
1:05:24Apple's attempts to get into the ad business
1:05:26have not been smashing successes.
1:05:28iAd wasn't great, even the search ads
1:05:30showed that they're not really good at being,
1:05:33at selling ads.
1:05:34They're good at controlling their platforms
1:05:36such that they have less competition,
1:05:38And then it's like, well, what are you gonna do?
1:05:39We're practically the only game in town
1:05:41or we're the best game in town.
1:05:42But looking at them compared to,
1:05:44let's say Facebook or Google,
1:05:46both of those two companies are much better at selling ads
1:05:49and making ad marketplaces than Apple is.
1:05:52And then the Google Stadia example was,
1:05:54what about these companies like Google and Facebook
1:05:56that make all their money basically from ads,
1:05:59but they also suddenly wanna make products?
1:06:00Oh, Google wants to sell Stadia,
1:06:02which was a little video game controller
1:06:04and a cloud gaming scenario.
1:06:05They wanna sell pixel phones or tablets
1:06:08or that weird sphere-shaped speaker
1:06:10that never shipped or whatever.
1:06:11Like when Facebook tried to make a phone too
1:06:13and Facebook bought Oculus and it got the headset things.
1:06:16If your company is built around advertising,
1:06:18can you make good products?
1:06:19And making this question is setting up
1:06:21at sort of like two extremes where
1:06:23if you're really, really good at making products,
1:06:25it means you care about the user experience,
1:06:27you're very focused on building physical things
1:06:29that you sell to individual people
1:06:30who have to give you money for them.
1:06:33It's not like an indirect market
1:06:34where people throw money over a wall
1:06:36and see if they get some result back,
1:06:37you have to appeal to actual consumers,
1:06:39you have to support the products,
1:06:41as opposed to advertising where it's all about
1:06:44gathering data and making an efficient market
1:06:46and giving a small number of quote unquote customers,
1:06:49being the people who buy ads from you,
1:06:52giving them access to enough information
1:06:54to feel like they're making an effective use
1:06:55of their marketing dollars.
1:06:56Two very different markets, and historically speaking,
1:06:59the companies that are good at one
1:07:01have not been good at the other.
1:07:02It's not like, Google's good at making phones,
1:07:04The Pixel phones are good and they've made some good hardware products, but it definitely
1:07:08is not their strength.
1:07:09And certainly they haven't turned it into a huge moneymaker.
1:07:11You would think Google, they make Android, shouldn't they be the biggest seller of Android
1:07:15phones?
1:07:16But they are not.
1:07:17Google Pixel and Nexus before it are not the biggest seller of Android phones.
1:07:21And on the flip side, Apple, they've got all this money and they've got all this technology.
1:07:24They should do great in the ad business and historically they have not.
1:07:28And to the extent they're doing great now, it's because they're fencing out everybody
1:07:30else with the thing they are good at, which is controlling their platform.
1:07:33So I do wonder, that's what the commenters are worried about.
1:07:39If Apple suddenly becomes good at ads, will that change the company that they are?
1:07:43Will they become worse at making MacBooks and iPhones if they become better at being
1:07:47ads?
1:07:48Are those two core strengths and sets of values that are required to excel in both of those
1:07:52areas opposed to each other?
1:07:54It's almost like you need to split off into a separate company that is ruthless and cutthroat
1:07:58and runs its ad business like a real ad business.
1:08:00On the other side, it's the product company that makes things that appeal to users.
1:08:04I do worry about that.
1:08:05That, I feel like, is underlying lots of our fretting about Apple and services.
1:08:10We talked about this before, not just ads, but just services.
1:08:13How being a service company, "You pay me money, I give you some network-based service that
1:08:17you get to use," is different than selling someone a product and making the profit from
1:08:23that.
1:08:24I think Apple, I'm not going to say they're in the middle of a transition, but they're
1:08:27definitely off on their...
1:08:29what is it, like the finding yourself trip
1:08:31where they go off to Europe and go backpacking
1:08:33to see what kind of company do we wanna be.
1:08:36Services, that's where the money and the growth is,
1:08:39so we really need to investigate that,
1:08:40but at the same time, if you ask anybody
1:08:43in their product organization,
1:08:44they still really care about making good products
1:08:46and are trying, big home pot aside,
1:08:48are trying really hard to make really good products
1:08:50and for the most part still succeeding,
1:08:52and I would say if they're trying really hard
1:08:55to be a great advertising company,
1:08:57they're still not doing great.
1:09:00Like I don't, they don't seem to be excelling in that area.
1:09:03So my hope is that Apple is kind of constitutionally
1:09:08incapable of being a really good advertising company.
1:09:10And that's to their credit because in the end,
1:09:12they are first and foremost a product company
1:09:14and they will always necessarily sort of
1:09:16kneecap their advertising business
1:09:19because they can't do what it takes
1:09:21or can't organize their entire business around that,
1:09:25around that type of market.
1:09:27because it will screw up their products
1:09:29and they're never gonna do that.
1:09:31- See, I don't have as much faith in them,
1:09:34I think, as you do.
1:09:35It seems like Tim Cook's Apple,
1:09:40and I don't know if this is him, people below him,
1:09:42I don't know, but Apple under Tim Cook
1:09:46prioritizes profits over product quality.
1:09:49And it's not to say that they always will take
1:09:52the most cynical route to get there.
1:09:54They try to blend as much as they can,
1:09:57but the insidious thing about putting ads and promos
1:10:02all over your platform for all your new services
1:10:04and everything is that once you say it's okay to,
1:10:09for instance, degrade the experience of using the music app
1:10:13on the phone to constantly, incessantly promote Apple Music
1:10:16to people who don't subscribe to it until they subscribe,
1:10:19or to degrade the experience of the App Store
1:10:21until people get Apple Arcade or whatever.
1:10:24Once you say it's okay to send promotional push
1:10:29notifications to make sure people have Apple News
1:10:31or to promote the new tier of iCloud storage or whatever,
1:10:34once you break that line and then you see the numbers go up,
1:10:39it becomes much easier to then justify,
1:10:44you know what, we're having a bit of a soft quarter,
1:10:47let's break that line a couple more times
1:10:49and get those numbers up because we have to.
1:10:51And then it eventually just becomes,
1:10:53this is just what we do, what are you talking about?
1:10:55What do you mean we don't send
1:10:56promotional push notifications?
1:10:58What do you mean we don't have ads
1:11:00and people setting screens for our other products?
1:11:02What do you mean?
1:11:03Of course we do that.
1:11:04Look, we've been doing it for years.
1:11:07Apple has not only fallen down a slippery slope,
1:11:11but has jumped off of a slippery cliff
1:11:12with a lot of these things in the last,
1:11:15I don't know, five years, maybe more.
1:11:17They have decided that this is acceptable now,
1:11:20that the iPhone is no longer purely
1:11:23about serving their customers.
1:11:25It is really about serving Apple
1:11:28and hoping the customers come along for the ride,
1:11:31but it's turning the customers more into
1:11:33like a resource to be squeezed.
1:11:35So instead of just squeezing us on the purchase price
1:11:37of the iPhone, which is something that we do willingly,
1:11:40now they are squeezing us as,
1:11:42let's get those,
1:11:45what's that profitability per user number
1:11:48that everyone's always talking about in the industry?
1:11:50- ARPU, average-- - That's it, yeah.
1:11:52Yeah, like we're just like ARPU blobs.
1:11:54They just wanna squeeze us for even more
1:11:57because we are now like an ongoing resource
1:11:59for ongoing revenue and there's always new
1:12:03and new and exciting ways that we can be annoyed
1:12:05into getting squeezed.
1:12:08That's what happens here.
1:12:09That's what all the people making these smart comments,
1:12:12that's what they're all worried about.
1:12:13That's what I'm worried about,
1:12:14that Apple has decided that it is okay
1:12:18to degrade the user experience in order to promote something
1:12:22that helps them.
1:12:23And they just keep doing that more and more and more.
1:12:27They're converting from a company that makes money
1:12:29by pleasing customers with really great products
1:12:32into a company that makes money by badgering their customers
1:12:36until we give in.
1:12:37- Oh, the distinction I was making,
1:12:39like the thing that is keeping Apple
1:12:41from being an effective advertising-driven business,
1:12:45is that they're only willing to do all that stuff
1:12:48for Apple, but they're not gonna sell an ad
1:12:51in the music app to Spotify.
1:12:53And if you're an advertising business,
1:12:54of course you would sell that ad spot.
1:12:56It's an incredibly valuable ad spot.
1:12:58Why would you not allow everybody to send,
1:13:00put advertisements in your notifications,
1:13:02in the settings screen, in the Apple Music app?
1:13:05Like, why wouldn't you do that?
1:13:06That's what an advertising-driven company does.
1:13:09And as you said, Apple is serving Apple.
1:13:10It's the joke hierarchy that we've been passing around
1:13:14our little community for probably multiple decades
1:13:17of Apple's order of priorities in terms
1:13:20of what's important to them.
1:13:22Number one is Apple.
1:13:23Number two is users.
1:13:24Number three is developers.
1:13:26But Apple is number one.
1:13:28And so, yeah, Apple gets to tell you that you
1:13:30can buy more iCloud stories.
1:13:32Apple gets to remind you for the umpteenth time
1:13:34that you can subscribe to Apple Music.
1:13:35Apple gets to put an ad in your settings screen.
1:13:38But an advertising company would sell all those ad spots
1:13:41to the highest bidder.
1:13:42And that, I think, Apple is not going to do.
1:13:44because they still have that,
1:13:46I mean, it may seem like,
1:13:49if it was really a slippery source,
1:13:50they would have just gone all down
1:13:50and there'd be ads everywhere.
1:13:52They still don't wanna be that company.
1:13:53They still wanna sell a premium experience.
1:13:55It's just that very often I feel like Apple
1:13:58drinks its own Kool-Aid to the extent that they think,
1:14:01oh, well, we're sending you, those aren't ads.
1:14:03We're just telling you about our great products, right?
1:14:05And that sounds so insane to us.
1:14:07Like, that doesn't make any sense,
1:14:09but there is a little bit of that internal thinking, right?
1:14:12Now, if you really press people,
1:14:14like, oh yeah, okay, so I guess it is ads
1:14:15and we try to do it less.
1:14:17And I bet they would say, but see, it's only us doing that.
1:14:19And that means, and there is something to this,
1:14:22that means there will necessarily always be
1:14:24limited number of things.
1:14:25Because Apple just doesn't have that much stuff to advertise
1:14:27and they're only one company.
1:14:29So you're not going to see 10,000 times more of those ads
1:14:33if Apple is the only one who can place them.
1:14:35We're all annoyed because we liked it
1:14:37when there was zero of those things.
1:14:39That Apple didn't do it at all because, you know,
1:14:41again, under the fantasy of Steve Jobs
1:14:43would never do something like that.
1:14:44But I wasn't Steve Jobs around for iAd.
1:14:46I don't know if that's the topic.
1:14:48- Yeah, I think the first one, yeah.
1:14:49- Right, right.
1:14:50So, but anyway, we would like there to be less of it.
1:14:53To my earlier point, most of the people on the planet
1:14:57have shown that they're okay
1:14:58with some amount of advertising.
1:15:00That said, the people who buy Apple products
1:15:03are not most of the people on the planet.
1:15:04And I have heard complaints about those Apple ads
1:15:07inside Apple products, because that is a relatively
1:15:09new thing for people who have been using
1:15:10Apple products for years.
1:15:12But mostly people get over it.
1:15:13And it boggles my mind when people get annoyed,
1:15:15like, oh, I hate that thing telling me
1:15:16to buy more iCloud storage.
1:15:17Let me go back to my Solitaire app
1:15:18with the flashing ad banner on it
1:15:19that I've been using for five years.
1:15:20Pay the dollar 99, oh my God.
1:15:22Sometimes the apps don't even let you pay the dollar 99,
1:15:24which is really sad, but.
1:15:26- Oh my God, by the way, I have, oh, Crafty Craft.
1:15:31This is the app that Adam uses to mod Minecraft on the iPad,
1:15:36like to make Minecraft mod.
1:15:37- Does it have an ad banner on it?
1:15:39- Oh, you don't know.
1:15:41- You get to watch a 30-second movie
1:15:42to continue using the app?
1:15:43- Yeah, so let me just be clear.
1:15:46We pay for this, I think it's like $4 a week.
1:15:50- What? - It's one of those
1:15:51weekly subscription scams.
1:15:52We pay for this because it's like a major creative outlet
1:15:55for them and we wanna support that and everything.
1:15:56But this is the most abusive, manipulative garbage
1:16:00I've ever, like, I can't believe Apple lets us in the store.
1:16:04Not only is it, so you pay for it to get rid of ads,
1:16:08but then it's still full of ads, just a few,
1:16:10a few of them, and then they have this like in-game gems
1:16:14currency that you have to spend to use things
1:16:18like the save button.
1:16:19You have to spend gems every time you save something.
1:16:24- Are you kidding?
1:16:25- So you run into saves for the day.
1:16:28Oh my, it, oh, it makes me so angry that like,
1:16:33this horrific app is the only and best option
1:16:38to do this on the iPad, and it is just downright abusive
1:16:41to children, and Apple's making 30% of all that money.
1:16:44Good for you, Apple, I'm so happy for you.
1:16:47- Casino games for children, yeah, that's another place
1:16:49that Apple has decided they're okay with things.
1:16:52- But it's a good thing that the App Store is protecting us.
1:16:54- Yeah, the final thing that Casey alluded to before
1:16:58is there's rumors today, we'll put a link in the show
1:17:01to the story, I haven't had time to read it
1:17:03'cause it just came out today, about they're gonna have
1:17:06an ad product that they're selling in the TV space.
1:17:09This, again, is kind of a no-brainer,
1:17:11the Netflix doing streaming services ads.
1:17:14Television being sponsored by companies that buy ads
1:17:18is not a new technology.
1:17:19It is a thing that the entire world accepts.
1:17:23And yes, people will pay a premium to get a network
1:17:26that doesn't have ads like HBO or whatever,
1:17:28but most television is not HBO.
1:17:31Most television is television with ads.
1:17:34And if you give people the choice between Netflix
1:17:36without ads for more money and Netflix with ads
1:17:38for less money, a lot of people are gonna take Netflix
1:17:41with ads.
1:17:42And Apple has a TV streaming product,
1:17:45and it seems like they're investigating, you know,
1:17:48having ads.
1:17:49Now as someone who doesn't like ads and is willing to pay
1:17:51to get rid of them, I'm annoyed that Apple TV
1:17:54always tells me about the other Apple TV shows
1:17:55before I watch an Apple TV show.
1:17:57- Yeah, agreed.
1:17:57- Right?
1:17:58People who are very sensitive to ads and are willing
1:18:00to pay money to get rid of them, it's like,
1:18:01there's nothing I can pay to stop Apple
1:18:03from telling me about the apple in the apple.
1:18:05(laughing)
1:18:07There's too much apple in my apple, yo dog, right?
1:18:11And every streaming service is like this.
1:18:12HBO, you wanna watch a show on HBO?
1:18:14Let's watch House of the Dragon.
1:18:16Oh, there's another show on HBO?
1:18:18Oh, season two of White Lotus is coming out?
1:18:20A, I already knew that.
1:18:21B, I'm already gonna watch it.
1:18:22C, get off my TV!
1:18:24I wanna watch the show!
1:18:25I already pay for HBO!
1:18:27Why are you advertising this to me?
1:18:29I can't pay again!
1:18:30Do you, I mean, you're afraid I'm gonna cancel,
1:18:32because I'm gonna get done with House of Dragon
1:18:33and I'm not gonna know that the new season
1:18:34of White Lotus is coming out, I'm gonna cancel HBO.
1:18:37That's just me, but I am not like most people.
1:18:40(laughing)
1:18:41And so it's the same situation with Apple.
1:18:42If you buy an Apple device increasingly,
1:18:44you will get ads for Apple Things.
1:18:45If you buy the Apple streaming service, Apple TV+,
1:18:49you will get ads for Apple Things.
1:18:50And now, just like its competitors,
1:18:52Apple seems to be investigating the idea
1:18:54that perhaps there will be other ad slots
1:18:56that people can buy in Apple TV+.
1:18:58Will there be a different tier
1:18:59for people to subscribe with more ads?
1:19:01Will there only be certain shows?
1:19:03We'll see, but it's kind of not possible to avoid that.
1:19:07If you were in charge of Apple TV+ or streaming at Apple,
1:19:11you would not be doing your job
1:19:12if you didn't investigate this avenue
1:19:15because your competitors are doing it
1:19:16and it's a proven business model, right?
1:19:18You could say, oh, we should be the premium one or whatever.
1:19:21You should be the company that doesn't have ads.
1:19:23Well, A, that ship has already sailed
1:19:25'cause Apple advertises with its own stuff as we established
1:19:27and B, Apple knows what that means in terms of market share.
1:19:33If you try to take the high road and not do any advertising
1:19:36and only appeal to the people who really dislike advertising
1:19:40and have lots of money or whatever,
1:19:41it will limit your market share, it will limit your reach.
1:19:43It will, in the end, and debate,
1:19:45use a big highfalutin Steve Jobism,
1:19:47it will limit the size of the dent
1:19:49that you can put in the world
1:19:50because fewer people will use your products
1:19:52because there aren't as many people
1:19:54who care that much about ads, right?
1:19:56So if you want to go to the largest number of people,
1:19:59you have to entertain this business model, and so they are.
1:20:02So, you know, that's what it's like
1:20:05when your tastes and preferences
1:20:07are a little bit outside the norm,
1:20:09you are inevitably going to be disappointed
1:20:12by the largest company in the world's moves in business,
1:20:15because for the most part,
1:20:17they're going to try to appeal to the masses.
1:20:21Still, to Apple's credit,
1:20:22they tried to appeal to the masses
1:20:24in a way that is a little bit nicer than their competitors,
1:20:27and I think they continue to do that,
1:20:29but it's the magnitude of the little bit in that phrase
1:20:31that may change from year to year.
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1:22:30- All right, let's do some Ask ATP, and Brian writes,
1:22:36"On a recent episode, y'all discussed future improvements
1:22:38to the Apple Watch, mentioning new sensors,
1:22:40longer battery life, and so on.
1:22:42But the most obvious improvement to me
1:22:43would be the complete elimination of the bezel,
1:22:45or perhaps bezel.
1:22:47I would love a watch face that isn't black
1:22:49to appear continuous with the case.
1:22:51As it is, the stupid black border
1:22:53ruins every other color watch face.
1:22:55When do you think we will get a bezel-less Apple Watch?
1:22:57Do we need micro-LED tech or something?
1:23:00Isn't this sort of the Ultra?
1:23:02Doesn't the Ultra have very little bezel or my bananas?
1:23:04- No, the Ultra, well, no, there is a bezel,
1:23:07and it seems, you know, it's relatively
1:23:08like the same thickness you'd expect it to be
1:23:10based on other Apple Watches.
1:23:11Where the Ultra is weird, though,
1:23:13is that most of the faces still don't look right on it,
1:23:16like they really are not like optimized for the size.
1:23:19Even the stock face that comes with it,
1:23:21the Wayfinder face, which, oh, I have complaints about,
1:23:25but that's fine.
1:23:27They can't make an analog face to save their lives.
1:23:31But anyway, even the Wayfinder face,
1:23:34like you can see a pretty thick bezel around it,
1:23:35but what's weird about the Ultra,
1:23:37again, it has a perfectly flat screen.
1:23:41I'm actually not a huge fan of totally flat crystal watches.
1:23:44usually a slight dome is preferable because totally flat not only looks kind of cheap
1:23:50but also causes some glare issues that if you have a slight curve you get way less glare
1:23:56and it looks a little bit nicer.
1:23:57So something to consider for ultra buyers.
1:23:59But anyway, to answer the actual question when we will get like totally bezel-less,
1:24:04I'm not sure.
1:24:06I mean the Apple Watch from the beginning was designed to have black around everything
1:24:10in part to hide the bezels and in part to save power
1:24:13on the OLED screen.
1:24:14'Cause everything about the Apple Watch
1:24:16is designed to save as much power as possible
1:24:18'cause it's such a constrained power envelope device.
1:24:21Because black has been worked into the design
1:24:24of all the faces, I don't know that they would
1:24:26necessarily want to get away from that,
1:24:28even if they could.
1:24:30Like even if they could make whatever kind of screen
1:24:32could go all the way to the bezel,
1:24:34which would be, I think, a significant challenge.
1:24:37Not knowing much about screen tech,
1:24:39I mean, look at the iPhone,
1:24:41we're nowhere near that there.
1:24:43But anyway, even if they could do it,
1:24:45again, I don't think they would want to do it.
1:24:48It would require a lot of different decisions
1:24:50around the whole OS that would mostly end up being
1:24:53more power hungry.
1:24:55And I don't see them ever doing that for the Apple Watch.
1:24:58- We don't need a different screen tech.
1:24:59You could do it with OLED just as easily
1:25:01as you could do it with some hypothetical micro LED thing.
1:25:05But it's interesting that how the word bezel
1:25:08has changed meaning in this context.
1:25:09What we're talking about is like the glass,
1:25:13let's take an iPhone, the screen of an iPhone.
1:25:15It's like a piece of glass that is, you know,
1:25:17it's part of the thing that lights up with pixels
1:25:19in different colors, right?
1:25:21When we say how big is the bezel on the iPhone,
1:25:23we mean go to the edge of the iPhone
1:25:26and eventually you run out of things that light up.
1:25:29This is the last pixel that's gonna light up.
1:25:31But there's still more glass, right?
1:25:34So there's glass that doesn't light up.
1:25:35There's no pixels in this area.
1:25:37all around the edge of the phone, top, bottom, left,
1:25:39and right.
1:25:39If you look at the phone, there's this black border,
1:25:42and it's because there's no pixels there.
1:25:44And people call that the bezel.
1:25:46But in television set parlance in the CRT days,
1:25:51the bezel was a piece of plastic that you shoved on the TV that
1:25:55covered part of the cathode ray tube, part of the glass cathode
1:26:00ray tube.
1:26:01It covered, often, the parts that didn't light up.
1:26:05That was the bezel, that plastic thing.
1:26:07You could do that on a watch today.
1:26:09Just make the metal, titanium, whatever, aluminum case,
1:26:14have little things that come up and overlap the screen
1:26:18and butt right up against where the pixels light up, right?
1:26:22Hey, it's a quote, unquote bezel-less iPhone.
1:26:24Well, no, it's not.
1:26:25You just actually made the bezel bigger.
1:26:27But now when I say bezel, I don't mean the black part
1:26:29of the screen that doesn't light up around the edges.
1:26:31I mean the old definition of bezel,
1:26:33which is the plastic, you know, or whatever,
1:26:35the part of the case that overlaps
1:26:37the thing that does light up, right?
1:26:39They could do that.
1:26:40And I think that's what this, Brian is asking about.
1:26:43It's like, I want a watch face
1:26:46that goes all the way to the edge.
1:26:47I don't want some black part of the screen thing
1:26:51to be, you know, interrupting.
1:26:54So I'll have a white watch face
1:26:56and then all this black border around it
1:26:58'cause that part of the screen doesn't light up.
1:26:59And then there's the actual, you know,
1:27:01watch case made of aluminum or titanium or whatever.
1:27:04If Apple wanted that look, they could do it today
1:27:06by making like, for example, on the Ultra.
1:27:09They can make a titanium little thing,
1:27:11like hook over the front of the case
1:27:13and cover up those black pixels,
1:27:14and then you would have what you want.
1:27:15But they're not doing that, I don't know,
1:27:18for fashion reasons or because like Marco said,
1:27:20the design aesthetic of all the watch faces has always been,
1:27:23if you don't light up pixels, they're completely black,
1:27:26and also where there are no pixels is also completely black,
1:27:29so it's seamless in that way.
1:27:32But that said, Apple has been slowly quote unquote
1:27:35shrinking the bezel, by which we mean shrinking the area
1:27:38of the screen that doesn't light up with pixels
1:27:41over the course of what, the watch?
1:27:42Four, five, seven, it's been getting smaller and smaller.
1:27:46It's still there, you can still see it,
1:27:47but it's been getting smaller.
1:27:48So I think they probably will get all the way to the edge
1:27:51if they ever can, but I'm not sure they'll ever actually
1:27:54use the old style bezel, as in make the case creep over
1:27:58and cover the part of the glass that doesn't light up
1:28:01because that doesn't seem part of their design aesthetic.
1:28:03Like the edges of the phone have either been non-existent
1:28:06and seamless than the regular one.
1:28:07And on the Ultra, they look basically like they're,
1:28:09I mean, Mark, you have it, you can look at it.
1:28:10It's like they're kind of vertical walls
1:28:12and then the glass is inside that.
1:28:14They don't like reach over and overlap onto the screen.
1:28:17Do they?
1:28:18- No, not at all.
1:28:19At least, I mean, I don't know how the Sapphire
1:28:21is mounted in there, but yeah, it doesn't look that way.
1:28:24- Yeah, so we'll see.
1:28:26They could do it.
1:28:27I mean, they've been trying to shrink it as much
1:28:28Same thing on the phones.
1:28:29They've been shrinking that part of the phone.
1:28:31They could have made a phone design, they did that,
1:28:32but they didn't.
1:28:33The current one has flat sides, they go up and down.
1:28:35They do not reach over and overlap any part of the screen,
1:28:38even though that's a design direction
1:28:40they could have gone and they chose not to.
1:28:41So, you know, hang in there.
1:28:43We're probably good about the same time
1:28:44as we get third-party watch faces.
1:28:46- By the way, nothing makes me want
1:28:47third-party watch faces more than using the Ultra,
1:28:50because again, like they,
1:28:52almost every existing watch face looks stupid on it.
1:28:54They look stupid.
1:28:56- I saw Underscore was messing with it
1:28:58and apparently it's not a super ellipse.
1:29:00Like it's not the shape of the app icons.
1:29:02- Oh really?
1:29:03- It's actually a rounded rectangle.
1:29:04Yeah.
1:29:05It had a Twitter thread where he was trying to make
1:29:06like watch faces that fit inside the Ultra.
1:29:08And he realized that it's not the super ellipse shape.
1:29:11It's actually like flat sides with a radius in the corners.
1:29:15So if you want to put an image on the screen
1:29:17that fits correctly with even borders around it
1:29:19and you do a super ellipse, it looks wrong.
1:29:22- Of course.
1:29:22- And of course he's making watch faces
1:29:24'cause why wouldn't he be?
1:29:25also of course. Yeah, all right. John Enger writes, I am surely
1:29:31going to be disappointed by your by your response to this, John,
1:29:33but I've been excited to ask you this. John Enger writes,
1:29:36assuming you can cover the price difference, why would you want
1:29:38an M1 Max Max Studio over the same spec M1 Max MacBook Pro?
1:29:43Said another way spec for spec does John's desktop desktop have
1:29:46any meaningful advantages over Marco's desktop laptop approach?
1:29:50As far as I can tell the advantages of the Max Studio or
1:29:52MacBook Pro are one additional Thunderbolt 4 port, two additional USB-A ports, and a 10 gigabit
1:30:01Ethernet port, which in this case Jon doesn't plan to use. Meanwhile, the advantages of the
1:30:05MacBook Pro over the Studio are an XDR screen with ProMotion, much better speakers, a webcam,
1:30:10a mic array, Touch ID, Ask Siri, effectively an integrated GPS, and of course it's portable,
1:30:16so I can go anywhere and still use it. So why would anyone ever buy an M1 Max Max Studio over
1:30:22over a same spec M1 Macs MacBook Pro.
1:30:24Am I missing something?
1:30:26- Well, if you want a desktop computer
1:30:28and it's never gonna go anywhere,
1:30:30the screen doesn't do you any good.
1:30:31So you just paid for that and you're not using it.
1:30:32The speakers don't do any good
1:30:33because if you're gonna keep it in clamshell mode,
1:30:35the speakers aren't gonna help you.
1:30:36The webcam doesn't do any good
1:30:37'cause if it's closed, the webcam isn't looking at you.
1:30:38The mic array, same deal, it's closed.
1:30:40Touch ID, the Mac Studio has that.
1:30:43Ask Siri, same thing,
1:30:44the display has a microphone or whatever.
1:30:45An integrated UPS, I suppose,
1:30:47but you can buy an external one of those.
1:30:49It's like if you want a desktop computer,
1:30:50don't pay for all that stuff on a laptop.
1:30:53And it used to be, it'll be like noisier and slower.
1:30:56Now it's not really slower.
1:30:57Is it noisier than the Mac Studio?
1:30:58Debatable that the Mac Studio--
1:31:00- It's quieter.
1:31:02- Yeah, under some situations,
1:31:04although under heavy load-- - All situations.
1:31:06- No, I have to imagine under heavy load
1:31:07that the thing about the Mac Studio
1:31:10is whatever annoying noise it makes,
1:31:11it's very difficult to make much louder noise
1:31:14where it is possible, although difficult,
1:31:17to make the MacBook Pro make noise,
1:31:18especially if it's in a clamshell
1:31:20especially if it's in clamshell in a situation that,
1:31:22you know, so like our Mac studio
1:31:23is bolted under the desk here.
1:31:25I don't think you'd want to bolt your Mac foot
1:31:27and throw under the desk.
1:31:29- You wouldn't need to. - 'Cause it would be hard
1:31:30to get at.
1:31:31Yeah, it wouldn't be a great place for it to be.
1:31:33And then finally, the things you listed.
1:31:34You get more ports and you get faster ethernet, right?
1:31:36So if you don't want a desktop computer,
1:31:38don't buy a desktop computer.
1:31:39But if you do want one, it doesn't make sense
1:31:41to buy a laptop and then try to use it as desktop.
1:31:43Even though Apple's laptops are amazing
1:31:46as desktop computers, it's still kind of a waste
1:31:48of hardware and it's not the best suited.
1:31:52And it would honestly be extreme shame
1:31:54to not use that screen.
1:31:55And you can have it on your desk and have the screen open,
1:31:57but I always found that the ergonomics of that
1:31:59where you kind of like make a little high chair
1:32:02for your laptop and it's got the keyboard open,
1:32:04but you're not using that keyboard
1:32:05'cause you want the screen to be up high,
1:32:06but it has to be open.
1:32:07So you're constantly seeing this keyboard
1:32:09and this track pad that you're not using.
1:32:11So this awesome screen could be at the right height
1:32:13and I don't know.
1:32:14Each thing should fulfill the need that it does.
1:32:18It would be more of a slang dunk if Apple hadn't done
1:32:22whatever they did with the Mac Studio fans
1:32:24that make them so weird and so strangely noisy
1:32:28yet never going above their base speed
1:32:31but still being noisy at their base speed.
1:32:33So we'll see what the next version of the Mac Studio
1:32:36looks like.
1:32:37Maybe they'll solve this cooling thing
1:32:38or maybe we'll have to wait until they make another case.
1:32:41And I wanna reiterate that the fact
1:32:43the mine is bolted on the desk,
1:32:44it is inaudible in that position
1:32:46under any normal circumstance.
1:32:48So it is a solvable problem.
1:32:51-I think perhaps Jon's point is that, yes,
1:32:55Jon Enger's point is that, yes, in the circumstance
1:32:59that you literally never use this laptop as a laptop,
1:33:03then, yeah, okay, I guess that makes more sense
1:33:05what you're saying, Jon Syracuse.
1:33:06But if you even once want to move this computer
1:33:10somewhere else temporarily,
1:33:12then I think Jon Enger makes a really good point
1:33:14that you're getting all of that stuff sort of kind of for free
1:33:17not literally for free, but sort of kind of for free.
1:33:19And I think that makes a lot of sense.
1:33:20So if you're, if you're desk,
1:33:22if you really are getting a desktop desktop,
1:33:23then yes, Syracuse is right.
1:33:25But if you're getting a mostly desktop laptop,
1:33:28then still get the laptop, man.
1:33:30- I still feel like it's like, if you get a laptop
1:33:32and you only use it just once someplace else,
1:33:35it's such a waste of a laptop.
1:33:37Like it's not that keyboard
1:33:38that you're not using the trackpad,
1:33:39you're not using the screen you're not looking at,
1:33:41like that's just, you paid for that, they built it,
1:33:43and you're just closing it up and hiding it away.
1:33:46It just seems wasteful.
1:33:47- It is really great though.
1:33:48I mean, that's the thing.
1:33:50Like I agree with what you're saying academically,
1:33:53but I think right now we're in this weird state
1:33:55where because of various, what seemed like possibly flukes,
1:34:00where the Mac studio has this weird fan problem for noise,
1:34:05and the MacBook Pro is weirdly way too good,
1:34:09right now that in the current versions of these products,
1:34:15The MacBook Pro is, I think, better in so many ways.
1:34:18And yeah, there is gonna be a cost difference there
1:34:21'cause you are paying for a lot of this stuff.
1:34:22But, you know, I've, believe me,
1:34:25I've rationalized every kind of purchase there is
1:34:26to rationalize, especially with computers.
1:34:28- True. - And the reality is,
1:34:30there has never been a time where I've said to myself,
1:34:33I'm gonna get this amazing desktop
1:34:36and then I won't need a laptop anymore.
1:34:38I've probably maybe attempted that,
1:34:40maybe with iPads at some point,
1:34:41forever ago, a million years ago, maybe.
1:34:43but the reality is I always also want a laptop.
1:34:47And if you can have one computer serving both of those
1:34:50rules, both of those roles, and you need both of those
1:34:55roles filled, then any value argument you try to make
1:34:58about well, you're paying for the stuff you're not using
1:35:00by having a desktop laptop, well that only applies
1:35:02if you're also gonna have a separate laptop.
1:35:04But if you can get away with just having that one
1:35:06be both your desktop and your laptop,
1:35:08which is what most people do,
1:35:11then you are saving an entire other computer worth of cost.
1:35:15So let's set aside the price difference for now
1:35:18because for people listening to this show,
1:35:20you probably want a laptop at some point in your life
1:35:21and therefore, if you can have one device instead of two,
1:35:25you are saving a ton of money.
1:35:26So that being said, again, like right now,
1:35:28we have this weird fluke situation
1:35:30where the desktop laptop is better than the desktop desktop,
1:35:33but you will occasionally run into a weird thing
1:35:37if you do this.
1:35:39And most of these weird things are solved
1:35:41if you don't use clamshell mode.
1:35:43If you actually have the laptop open in the second screen,
1:35:47most of these problems go away.
1:35:49But if you use clamshell mode full time,
1:35:51you will very occasionally run into a weird thing
1:35:55that's assuming things that shouldn't be assumed.
1:35:57So for instance, the other day I was trying to,
1:36:00I was signing up for a new developer account
1:36:02and the developer app, the Apple developer app,
1:36:04lets you sign up for a developer account right in the app,
1:36:07at least for personal accounts.
1:36:09And they had this thing where to prove who you are,
1:36:12you can use the built-in camera
1:36:13to scan your driver's license.
1:36:15Well, the built-in camera on my MacBook Pro is closed
1:36:20and facing a piece of metal.
1:36:23I have another camera, I have the Logitech thing
1:36:26stuck to the top of the XDR,
1:36:28but this didn't allow me a way to choose
1:36:30which camera I use.
1:36:31And so I just couldn't do that
1:36:33without opening up the laptop.
1:36:35If you're in clamshell mode,
1:36:37that's a very disruptive process of all right,
1:36:39lift it out of its little foldy stand to have it in.
1:36:42Unfold the laptop with all the cables still plugged in
1:36:44'cause I don't wanna lose all my stuff.
1:36:46Like have it like kinda hovering in my hand
1:36:48over on the edge of the desk.
1:36:50That same thing, by the way, is what you have to do
1:36:53if you ever need to like hard power it off
1:36:55because the power button is on the inside.
1:36:58So if you ever need to access the power button,
1:37:00which is not common, but occasionally you have to do it,
1:37:04You have to pick it up, unfold it, hit that, et cetera.
1:37:08So there are occasionally little weird things like that.
1:37:11But that's, I mean, maybe every couple of months
1:37:15I run into a thing like that.
1:37:16Once, like once every couple of months.
1:37:18And so I'm willing to tolerate that
1:37:21for all the other advantages of the setup.
1:37:23And I still, now it's been almost a year, I think,
1:37:26I still am a huge fan of the setup.
1:37:28Whatever, no part of the Mac Studio
1:37:32has made me envy that setup or want one.
1:37:35If they improve the MacStudio down the road
1:37:38to be, first of all, way quieter at idle,
1:37:43so to be as quiet as my MacBook Pro at idle,
1:37:47and if the power difference between the two gets larger,
1:37:51if the MacStudio can be way more powerful
1:37:54than the MacBook Pro, then I'd be more interested.
1:37:58And maybe the MacPro, whatever that story ends up being,
1:38:00Maybe that is that story, and we'll
1:38:02see whenever that comes out.
1:38:04But until then, this is an amazing setup.
1:38:07Frankly, it has no business being as good as it is,
1:38:10and I'm incredibly happy with it.
1:38:12The M2 MacBook Pro may change things,
1:38:14because it may be hotter and make things noisier.
1:38:17The other thing I would say for having a dedicated desktop--
1:38:20and if you don't want to have just one computer,
1:38:22you can make different trade-offs.
1:38:23So say you wanted to have a desktop desktop,
1:38:26but then your laptop, you wanted to pick
1:38:27the reincarnation of the MacBook Adorable
1:38:30that somehow comes, right?
1:38:31Super light, super thin, weight and size
1:38:34is your ultimate thing.
1:38:35You don't need it to be your full fledged desktop.
1:38:37You just want the lightest thing that you can have.
1:38:40Probably still more expensive than buying just one,
1:38:42but it lets you make that choice.
1:38:43Let's you make the ultimate portability choice
1:38:45and then power at your desktop.
1:38:46It's the trade off of modularity of having dedicated devices,
1:38:50dedicated special purpose devices.
1:38:52This is the computer that never leaves my desk.
1:38:53This is the computer that I'm on the go with
1:38:55as opposed to making one that has to fulfill both.
1:38:57And if you do have the one that fills both,
1:38:59that can't be a MacBook adorable sized thing probably
1:39:01because that's just, you know,
1:39:03if you want the lightest possible thing,
1:39:04it's not going to be probably powerful enough
1:39:07to satisfy high end needs.
1:39:08So yeah, the M1s are, you know,
1:39:11great machines that definitely smeared this entire thing
1:39:14and then the weirdness of the Mac Studio did that.
1:39:15But the M2s made on a similar process
1:39:19that are a little bit faster
1:39:20and a little bit more power hungry.
1:39:21Maybe the fans will go a little bit harder.
1:39:23Who knows what the M2 Mac Studio will look like
1:39:25if Apple has an October event.
1:39:27Maybe we'll see M2 MacBook Pros and people can test them
1:39:29and see how it turns out, but the M1 may be a moment in time
1:39:33that is not repeated, we'll see.
1:39:35- Also to answer, my name is T in the chat, asks,
1:39:38any regrets on having the 16 inch for all of this
1:39:41as opposed to the 14 inch?
1:39:43They say they got a 16 inch for work recently,
1:39:45have a 14 inch personal, and wow,
1:39:47the 16 inch is bad to travel with.
1:39:49I would say I love the 16 inch for this purpose
1:39:53because when I do use it as a laptop,
1:39:57in almost every case,
1:39:59I want as much screen space as I can get.
1:40:01I don't travel that often.
1:40:03When I do travel, it is much more frequently by car.
1:40:08The only place I really am not super comfortable
1:40:11with the 16 inch is on a plane in a coach seat,
1:40:14because we all know that person in front of you
1:40:17leans back and that's it.
1:40:18You're not using your laptop anymore.
1:40:21So game over on that.
1:40:23But that's also mostly true of the 14 inch even.
1:40:27So my trick is get exit row or business class
1:40:31or whatever you can get to get a little bit more room
1:40:33if you have to have a laptop working flight.
1:40:35If you're going cross country,
1:40:37get the exit row or something
1:40:38so you can have a little bit more space on the tray table
1:40:40because in that case, even the 14 inch
1:40:42is a bit uncomfortable.
1:40:44But with that exception of tight airline seats,
1:40:48I don't regret the 16.
1:40:49I love, again, I love having all the screen space
1:40:51and using something smaller, I miss that screen space.
1:40:55And the 16 also has a little bit better speakers,
1:40:58significantly better battery life, things like that.
1:41:00So it's great for that, but yeah,
1:41:02I love it for that purpose and I don't regret it at all.
1:41:04The actual size and weight of carrying it,
1:41:08it only feels big relative to the other machines.
1:41:12But in absolute terms, this is not a huge amount of weight
1:41:16for an adult in good health to carry.
1:41:18Like it's not, and if you're putting it in a bag,
1:41:21the difference between a 14 inch and a 16 inch
1:41:24in actual weight in that bag or bulk in that bag,
1:41:28you're talking maybe like what, 5%?
1:41:30Maybe more weight in the bag or 10%?
1:41:32Like it's not a ton to the point where
1:41:36it's going to radically affect your ability
1:41:38whether you can carry it or not.
1:41:39Now, it's nicer to have something smaller and lighter
1:41:42if you're carrying it in a bag every single day.
1:41:45Like when I was working in the city,
1:41:47I would take the train to the city every day,
1:41:49with a bag, sometimes standing up the whole time
1:41:51if there was no seats,
1:41:52then walking from Grand Central down to the office,
1:41:55that was a 15 block walk.
1:41:57In that kind of context where I'm carrying it
1:41:59a whole lot every single day,
1:42:01yeah, go a little bit lighter, it's nice.
1:42:04But if that's not what your life looks like,
1:42:05if you're mostly leaving it on a desk most of the time
1:42:08and maybe bringing it in a backpack on trips sometimes
1:42:10or bringing it in a car when you do go somewhere,
1:42:13the difference really is not that big.
1:42:15relative to the way computers used to be,
1:42:17these are all super lightweight, and we're all very lucky.
1:42:20So anyway, I'm very happy when I'm using it as a laptop,
1:42:24I'm very happy that it's a 16 inch,
1:42:25because I really do appreciate having infinite battery life
1:42:28and a giant screen.
1:42:29- One more thing on the getting to the power button
1:42:31when you're in clamshell,
1:42:32obviously bolting the Mac Studio under the desk
1:42:34makes it awkward to get to the power button too.
1:42:36The reason I needed to do this recently was,
1:42:39and I was reminded of this as I was about to do
1:42:41with the old way, booting into recovery mode.
1:42:43I had to do it because I was trying to uninstall a Wacom tablet kext that SIP was protecting
1:42:50or something so I basically needed to reboot into single user mode.
1:42:52I'm like, "Oh, no problem.
1:42:53I'll just restart and hold down Command R. That's not how it works anymore."
1:42:58All of the ARM-based Macs to boot into recovery mode, you have to hold down the physical power
1:43:04button until a little thing comes up and has options and lets you boot into different stuff.
1:43:08You can't just go to the Apple menu, hit restart, and then hold down Command R or whatever of
1:43:12umpteen different key combinations that you would use to enter recovery, single user mode,
1:43:16all that stuff.
1:43:17All of that is behind holding the power button.
1:43:19So no matter what kind of computer you have, even if it didn't crash, even if you're not
1:43:23hard rebooting, if you ever need to do something that requires booting into recovery, and it
1:43:27could be something as simple as uninstalling a piece of software that was probably installed
1:43:31so long ago that system integrity protection didn't even exist and somehow it got like
1:43:35shoved into a place where I can't delete it even as root, you're going to be finding that
1:43:39power button.
1:43:40(laughing)
1:43:42- Finally, Andy Hyde writes,
1:43:43"Why does router range matter?
1:43:45"Many models of router advertise varying coverage areas.
1:43:48"Shouldn't the limiting factor for WiFi range
1:43:50"be the power-sipping client radio's upload range,
1:43:52"not the router itself?"
1:43:54I don't feel like I've ever paid any attention to this.
1:43:57Is this a thing these days, is range for routers?
1:44:00- They mean like a WiFi router.
1:44:02They mean like, you know.
1:44:02- No, I know, I know.
1:44:04- Yeah, I know, they tell you how big of a place,
1:44:06like how many square feet it covers.
1:44:08Like Euro will tell you if you have a home this big,
1:44:10this thing or whatever. I just thought that was like a thumb in the wind like order of magnitude
1:44:15thing just to get you in the right direction. I didn't think it was any sort of scientific
1:44:18anything. Well, I mean, it's not scientific because they don't know where your walls are.
1:44:21They don't know where you're putting it, but they're basically more range is better on a
1:44:25Wi-Fi router. And what he's asking is like, why does what is the product I buy from Euro? How can
1:44:30that influence the range isn't the limiting factor of the transmit power of my phone or whatever,
1:44:35you know, or my laptop? Isn't that the limiting factor? No matter how big hunkin router I get,
1:44:39it's not gonna help if my phone is so wimpy
1:44:43it can't transmit or whatever.
1:44:45And what I would say to that is when routers advertise
1:44:48as having good range, yes, part of it is how much power
1:44:51they have to transmit, but the other part of it is
1:44:53how fancy and effective their antennas are.
1:44:56That may be because they're large,
1:44:57because there's multiple ones or whatever,
1:44:59and those fancy, better antennas are better at picking up
1:45:04the potentially weak signal from your phone
1:45:05or your laptop or whatever.
1:45:06So when they advertise range, don't just think as,
1:45:09This is how hard that my router can send the WiFi signals out.
1:45:13Also think of it as how big the ears are
1:45:15and how it can hear the whisper of my phone
1:45:17when it's in the basement.
1:45:18Both of those things contribute to range,
1:45:20and that's why it does make sense for routers to advertise
1:45:23and work on having better range over time.
1:45:27- Thanks to our sponsors this week.
1:45:29Trade Coffee, Collide, and Memberful.
1:45:32And thanks to our members who support us directly.
1:45:34You can join atp.fm/join,
1:45:37and we'll talk to you next week.
1:45:44They didn't even mean to begin
1:45:46'Cause it was accidental
1:45:48(Accidental)
1:45:49Oh, it was accidental
1:45:51(Accidental)
1:45:52John didn't do any research
1:45:54Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:45:57'Cause it was accidental
1:45:59(Accidental)
1:46:00Oh, it was accidental
1:46:01(Accidental)
1:46:02And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:46:07And if you're into Twitter
1:46:10You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:46:17So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:46:21N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A
1:46:29It's accidental (It's accidental)
1:46:32They didn't mean to accidental (Accidental)
1:46:37♪ Tech podcast so long ♪
1:46:40- All right, so this is not a sponsorship
1:46:46and advertisement, whatever,
1:46:48but it's gonna sound a heck of a lot like one.
1:46:50So I had the opportunity recently through various events
1:46:55to get a little bit of Sonos hardware
1:46:58at a pretty good discount.
1:47:00And I had really wanted a Sonos Arc,
1:47:04which is their soundbar for a long time,
1:47:07because it seemed like it was a cheap,
1:47:09well, it's not cheap at all.
1:47:11It was a easy-- - Yeah, nothing that
1:47:12makes it cheap. - Exactly.
1:47:13I should have said easy, not cheap.
1:47:15An easy way to get something that is vaguely
1:47:18like surround sound into my house
1:47:21without doing a whole lot of work.
1:47:22And I have had various price-watching things,
1:47:27watching for the price of the Sonos Arc to drop at all,
1:47:31and I've been doing this for like six months,
1:47:33and they don't appear to believe in sales.
1:47:35They're like Apple.
1:47:36there is there's no sale no soup for you please move along I was you know
1:47:41resisting resisting resisting spending almost I think it's almost a thousand
1:47:44bucks for an arc I was resisting it resisting resisting it and then I had
1:47:48like I said the opportunity to get some stuff at a pretty good discount and so
1:47:52suddenly instead of just getting the arc I wound it up with a whole surround
1:47:56sound system and a portable speaker because if you're gonna save money you
1:47:59might as well spend a ton right that's how it works something like that the
1:48:03The more you spend, the more you save.
1:48:04That's what they tell me.
1:48:05- That's right, baby.
1:48:06That's right.
1:48:06- I'm not sure that math works out, but it is a saying.
1:48:08- Hey, it makes sense, right?
1:48:09So anyway, so I ended up buying a whole bunch of stuff.
1:48:13Now, really quickly, the situation previously
1:48:15was I had a center channel and a left and right channel
1:48:19sitting on the mantle below my television
1:48:20because as we all know, my television is up
1:48:22at the second story of my house,
1:48:23even though I sit at the first story.
1:48:25Not really, but that's what John would tell you,
1:48:27and he's kind of right.
1:48:29The television is above the mantle,
1:48:30And so on the mantle was a left channel,
1:48:33a center channel, a right channel.
1:48:34I also had an external subwoofer.
1:48:36All this was plugged into a receiver
1:48:38that was literally 15-ish years old.
1:48:40The receiver, I think it was barely new enough at the time
1:48:44to understand Dolby Digital.
1:48:46Like Dolby Digital was the new hot thing
1:48:48when this receiver was brand new.
1:48:50This receiver predates HDMI.
1:48:51So it was not new at all.
1:48:54And I wanted to get rid of it.
1:48:55I wanted to do something different.
1:48:56I wanted to get an ARC.
1:48:58So I end up, oh, and I'm sorry,
1:49:00This receiver obviously supports rear speakers,
1:49:02and I had rear speakers, but I hadn't installed them
1:49:04'cause I didn't wanna run wires under the floor,
1:49:06through the floor, under.
1:49:07We have hardwood in the downstairs,
1:49:09and so I didn't wanna put something on top of the floor,
1:49:13so I would have to go into the crawl space or something,
1:49:16or up and around over the ceiling.
1:49:18I have no interest in doing any of those things.
1:49:20So I wanted to try this ARC.
1:49:23It seemed like the fancy lads way
1:49:26to get pretty decent sound in all one unit.
1:49:29And so I wanted to get the ARC, I was too cheap to get it,
1:49:32and then suddenly I spent like two and a half ARCs
1:49:34worth of money trying to,
1:49:36in setting up my fancy new setup.
1:49:39And I didn't really have a whole lot of interest
1:49:42in the Sonos ecosystem either.
1:49:45I didn't know a lot about it,
1:49:46but it seemed that it was,
1:49:49and maybe not competition,
1:49:51but I don't know of a better word to describe it,
1:49:52but in competition with like AirPlay,
1:49:55which I use all the time.
1:49:56You know, I have this Belkin Soundform Connect
1:49:58that I use as an AirPlay receiver
1:50:01to get AirPlay to the screened in porch.
1:50:04And then I use the Apple TV connected to the receiver
1:50:07when I was AirPlaying music or anything like that.
1:50:10And I didn't really see the point
1:50:12in trying to buy into the whole new ecosystem.
1:50:16So really what I wanted was a surround sound setup
1:50:19for the living room.
1:50:22And then I ended up getting a couple other things as well.
1:50:24So I ended up getting an ARC.
1:50:26I ended up getting a sub Gen 3,
1:50:28which is their big subwoofer.
1:50:29They've also just recently come out with a submini,
1:50:31which is their little subwoofer, of course.
1:50:33And then two Rheosonos One SLs, I think,
1:50:36and I don't know what SL actually stands for,
1:50:38but it basically means the non-smart version of the speaker
1:50:41as rear speakers.
1:50:42So I have the ARC, a soundbar, a subwoofer,
1:50:45two rear speakers.
1:50:46And so now I have surround sound for the first time
1:50:48in 15 years or something like that.
1:50:51And then I also got a Sonos port to handle term table
1:50:55and porch duties, which we'll talk about in a moment.
1:50:57and a Sonos Roam, which is their like,
1:50:59Jambox-esque speaker.
1:51:01This sent me back a considerable amount of money,
1:51:03even after the steep discount.
1:51:05But let me tell you, you know how everyone says
1:51:07that like, Sonos is really, really good
1:51:08and it's like, really awesome and super reliable
1:51:10and you should try it?
1:51:11I'm here to tell you, and I am not being paid to say this,
1:51:14boy, do I wish I was.
1:51:15Sonos is really good, really reliable,
1:51:17and you should try it, 'cause I freaking love this stuff.
1:51:21Oh my God, it's so great.
1:51:22I am so mad that I waited as long as I,
1:51:24well, not really, 'cause I saved a bunch of money,
1:51:26But I am spiritually ahead, if you will,
1:51:30that I waited so long, 'cause this stuff is so good.
1:51:33And it starts with even just the box.
1:51:36So it comes in like nondescript cardboard boxes
1:51:39because you know it would walk.
1:51:40Even though porch pirates aren't much of a thing
1:51:42here in Richmond, it would walk if you had
1:51:44a bunch of Sonos boxes sitting on the front porch.
1:51:46And so you take the box out of the shipping box.
1:51:50And the Ark in particular, I was so amused by this.
1:51:54And this is the first time that I've ever
1:51:55actually wanted somebody to watch an unboxing.
1:51:58And I will put an unboxing video into the show notes,
1:52:00which I cannot believe I'm saying this.
1:52:02This is how you know I'm so out of my gourd,
1:52:05excited about all this.
1:52:06So the way the Sonos Arc, the soundbar box works,
1:52:09is there's literal like lock switches
1:52:12on either side of the box.
1:52:15And then, so you have to slide
1:52:17these plastic lock switches aside.
1:52:20And this is at about 15 to 20 seconds in the video,
1:52:22I'll link in the show notes.
1:52:23You slide the lock switches, one on each side,
1:52:26to the other, from lock to unlock,
1:52:28and then you lift up the box.
1:52:30It's so dumb and kind of over-engineered,
1:52:33and I am so here for it.
1:52:34It was so cool.
1:52:36It's so dumb, and I loved it.
1:52:39So you open it up, and every Sonos item that I've bought,
1:52:43all whatever, five or six of them or whatever it was,
1:52:45every single one of them comes in this very neat
1:52:49like cloth, black cloth sleeve with a sticker,
1:52:53perfectly placed over the seam of the sleeve telling you which device it is. You can see this at about, what is this, like 45-ish seconds
1:53:00in the video.
1:53:01And you open it up and it's got, you know, you take it out of its little blankie and then you set everything up and it
1:53:08sets up super easily and
1:53:10I'm so in love. So I,
1:53:12all of these devices, almost all of them, actually everything except the
1:53:17the Jambox-esque Roam, all of them have both Wi-Fi capability and
1:53:22and Ethernet.
1:53:24And I didn't bother setting any of them up with Ethernet,
1:53:29except I tried to set up the subwoofer via Ethernet
1:53:32and I couldn't get it to work.
1:53:33That was like the only time I had a problem.
1:53:35But then as soon as I reset it
1:53:36and tried doing it over WiFi, it worked no sweat.
1:53:38- You're sure you used 10 base T?
1:53:41- No, I mean it was, I think it was against--
1:53:43- Come on, dad joke.
1:53:45- Oh, base, aha, I get it, I get it.
1:53:48- Oh my god.
1:53:49- That was the--
1:53:49- You're kicked out of the dad club.
1:53:51- Seriously, that was a bad one, John.
1:53:53- I tried to make it sound so dumb when I said it.
1:53:56You should have read it.
1:53:57- I'm a little disappointed myself, if I'm honest.
1:53:59- Should be, jeez, take his dad card.
1:54:01Temporary dad card penalty.
1:54:03- I know, I'm sorry, I get one demerit.
1:54:05So yeah, so basically what ends up happening is
1:54:07you set up the sub, and I ended up doing it via wifi
1:54:11and not 10 base T.
1:54:13I set up the two rears, obviously via wifi,
1:54:16because if I was willing to run an ethernet cable,
1:54:18then why wouldn't I have run the speaker cable
1:54:2015 years ago.
1:54:22And so the ARC, the soundbar, gets connected via HDMI--
1:54:28what is it?
1:54:28eARC, Enhanced Audio Return Channel, I
1:54:30think is what it's called.
1:54:31So basically, the way this works is there's a bespoke
1:54:34HDMI connection on my TV, which is an LG C9.
1:54:37And you connect HDMI from the TV to the ARC.
1:54:40And the TV and the ARC negotiator do whatever in order
1:54:43to understand, OK, I'm not going to be using this for
1:54:45video, really, although it does show a little pattern if
1:54:48you tune to it.
1:54:49What I'm really gonna do is pipe everything
1:54:51through this HDMI cable to the sound system.
1:54:55This is very similar to the way a SPDIF and optical
1:54:58would oftentimes work where it would just dump
1:55:00whatever the TV saw to SPDIF.
1:55:02It's now doing this with HDMI.
1:55:03So the arc on my mantle has power,
1:55:06it has HDMI and that's it.
1:55:08The subwoofer has power and it could have ethernet,
1:55:11but it instead works via WiFi.
1:55:13The two rears, power and nothing else.
1:55:15And then we'll talk about the port in a minute.
1:55:18But, and finally, I have Dolby Atmos,
1:55:21I have 5.1, I have all surround sound.
1:55:26And I know that every other person
1:55:27probably listening to this has been here for 15 years.
1:55:30And back when we had an apartment
1:55:32and it was easier to run all this stuff
1:55:33and I didn't care as much,
1:55:34I did have the surround sound set up
1:55:36with the old system and so on and so forth.
1:55:37But I literally never bothered
1:55:38in the 15 years we've been in this house.
1:55:40And so, having it all back, it's really cool, you guys.
1:55:44Did you know that surround sound's pretty awesome?
1:55:46Who'd have thunk it?
1:55:47And this was particularly relevant and I tweeted about this earlier today. I've been rewatching or not rewatching
1:55:52Excuse me
1:55:53I've been watching this semi old Canadian TV show called 19 - and the first episode of the second season was
1:56:00both extremely depressing but
1:56:03Incredibly done and it's a it's about a the whole show is a cop show and this particular episode is about a school shooting and
1:56:09It was wild sitting there and hearing like, you know
1:56:14as shots coming from over my shoulder and hearing the police radio over my other shoulder.
1:56:19Again, none of this is remarkable. I know this has been technology for literally 20 years,
1:56:23but more than that even. But it's just cool to experience it again. It's like, you know,
1:56:26the first time you experience HD or 4K even in certain circumstances. It's just, it's cool,
1:56:31and 5.1 is really great. The system sounds phenomenal. I am, I am not a connoisseur,
1:56:37but as I've said many, many times, I have good sound systems in my life. The BMW, actually,
1:56:43The Harman Kardon BMW was incredible, believe it or not.
1:56:46My dad has a ridiculously expensive
1:56:49and fancy stereo at his house.
1:56:51Just a preposterously expensive stereo.
1:56:54- Oh, by the way, the sound of the Defender sucks.
1:56:56- Oh, really?
1:56:57- Yeah, it's like one of the main downsides.
1:56:59Yeah, it's a (beep) sound system.
1:57:01It's a crappy sound system.
1:57:03- I'm sorry to hear that.
1:57:04That really bums me out,
1:57:05because I would have expected that,
1:57:06of all the things I would have expected
1:57:08to be the Achilles heel, that would not have been it.
1:57:10But anyways, so yeah, so I set this all up.
1:57:13It sounds great.
1:57:14You can do this, I think they call it like true tone thing
1:57:18or something like that, where you literally walk
1:57:19around the room waving an iPad or an iPhone,
1:57:23and you look like an idiot doing it,
1:57:25but it's allegedly will tune the speakers
1:57:28for your specific room, which is pretty neat.
1:57:30Then I needed a solution for the turntable
1:57:34because the turntable was sitting literally
1:57:36above the old receiver.
1:57:39And the turntable has RCA jacks, like analog jacks,
1:57:44in order to emit sound, and you have
1:57:46to plug that into something.
1:57:47So I needed to fix that problem, and I
1:57:51wanted to at least consider doing something
1:57:54different for the porch, which again, had a sound form
1:57:57connect, which was basically an AirPlay 2 receiver and nothing
1:58:00else.
1:58:01And what I ended up doing was getting this thing called
1:58:04a Sonos port, which operates both on the input and output
1:58:07side.
1:58:08So it has a couple inputs, it has an RCA input and it has an RCA output.
1:58:13And so the turntable gets plugged into the input and then the output gets plugged into
1:58:18the amplifier for the port speakers.
1:58:20And so now this one box, which is also connected via Ethernet, can operate as the turntable
1:58:25like translator, if you will, and also operate as the port speakers.
1:58:31And so that worked out pretty well.
1:58:33It took me a little bit of tweaking and trying to figure out how to get it to recognize the
1:58:37turntable just right, but I think it was a KC problem. Eventually I got it. What's
1:58:42really trippy though, if you've never heard a turntable, the way it works is
1:58:47there's a needle that touches the top of the record and the needle vibrates and
1:58:52then basically that sound just gets amplified in like five different
1:58:55stages and that's what you hear. So if you have the sound off on your stereo
1:58:58and you play a record and you stick your ear up near the needle, you can actually
1:59:03hear the music. Granted, it sounds like garbage, it's quiet, it's tinny as crap, but you can hear the music.
1:59:10And keep that in mind as I tell you that one of the things that you set up when you're setting up a Sonos port is
1:59:14how much of a time delay you would like as you're listening to music.
1:59:18Because if you think about it, it has to broadcast, or it may have to broadcast this to other thing.
1:59:24Well, it absolutely has to pump it to some speaker somewhere, and then it could pump it to multiple speakers.
1:59:28So it needs to build, it's like a freaking Discman, an anti-skip all of a sudden.
1:59:32And so next thing you know, you know
1:59:34you're playing a record and you hear the needle for a moment or two for a second or two and then
1:59:39then you hear the music coming through the speakers and
1:59:41it occurred to me I
1:59:44Would argue that one of the benefits of listening to vinyl is how everything is analog and yet here I am
1:59:51Turned my turntable into a complete almost completely digital setup
1:59:58Which may be defeating kind of the point accepting the whole tea ceremony thing that you guys have beaten me up about for years and years
2:00:03but nevertheless
2:00:04It is pretty cool to be able to listen to my turntable anywhere because it's just another input to the Sonos and so I can pump
2:00:10That to the porch I can pump that to my little quasi jam box thing the Sonos Roam that is pretty neat
2:00:15And so with that in mind, you know, their app is is not
2:00:19Stupendous, but it's not bad and it'll integrate with Apple music. It'll integrate with Spotify
2:00:25and it'll integrate with SiriusXM.
2:00:26And so what's nice about it is,
2:00:28I can go into the app,
2:00:30without messing with the television at all,
2:00:32I can go into the app and say,
2:00:33"Okay, I would like to listen to SiriusXM
2:00:35in these two places."
2:00:36Or, "I would like to listen to Apple Music in this place."
2:00:39Or all of the places, and so on and so forth.
2:00:41And you can adjust the volume on the app independently.
2:00:44Also, all of these devices support AirPlay too.
2:00:47I can't pump the turntable into AirPlay.
2:00:49That has to stay within the Sonos ecosystem.
2:00:51But anything coming into the Sonos ecosystem
2:00:54can come in via AirPlay.
2:00:55So I can AirPlay directly to the port speakers,
2:00:57I could AirPlay to the porch and the living room,
2:01:00I could AirPlay to the porch, living room, and the room,
2:01:02and it all works incredibly.
2:01:05I am so in love with this system,
2:01:07and I am so annoyed that all these dinguses
2:01:10that are always, "Oh, you should get a Sonos,
2:01:11it works really well, it's so great."
2:01:13Oh yeah, sure, whatever, I don't have $85,000
2:01:15sitting around to buy Sonos stuff.
2:01:16Well, you should try Sonos, it integrates so well
2:01:19and works really great, 'cause oh my God, it's so good.
2:01:22And here's the icing on the cake.
2:01:25So I get everything set up,
2:01:27and I could still tweak it some more,
2:01:29but I've found that not infrequently,
2:01:33I wanna make these little fine adjustments
2:01:35to the volume on the porch
2:01:37as compared to the living room,
2:01:39because the living room has a sliding door
2:01:42that opens onto the screened-in porch.
2:01:44And occasionally I'll find that if I'm just using
2:01:46the macro-level volume slider
2:01:50that's kind of relatively adjusting,
2:01:52any of the speakers that are playing right now,
2:01:55sometimes I'll feel like the port just sits
2:01:56a little too quiet or a little too loud.
2:01:58I wanna adjust just the port.
2:01:59And I can do that via the app,
2:02:00but it's ever so slightly clunky.
2:02:02You gotta like tap and hold on the volume knob
2:02:05or what are the thumb, the volume thumb,
2:02:08and then it'll expand into a different view
2:02:10where you get individual volume controls
2:02:11instead of the one macro control
2:02:13that you were just looking at.
2:02:15And I was getting a little annoyed by this
2:02:16and I thought to myself, well, Sonos, I think has an API.
2:02:20I wonder if I could like, you know, write some sort of app
2:02:23and stick it on like, I don't know, maybe a Raspberry Pi
2:02:25or something like that, and make something
2:02:28where I can put like a, like you know, like a dimmer,
2:02:31like a light dimmer sort of control on the wall of the porch
2:02:35and maybe I could do something like that
2:02:36and it would, you know, the Raspberry Pi would detect,
2:02:39you know, the relative position of this quote unquote dimmer
2:02:42and would make an adjustment to the Sonos volume
2:02:45or something like that.
2:02:45I wonder if I could do this.
2:02:46And at the same time, I was thinking about this.
2:02:50I somehow stumbled on that pass sponsor, Lutron Caseta,
2:02:55they have already solved this problem.
2:02:58So Lutron Caseta has these things they call Pika remotes,
2:03:02and they're these little portable remotes
2:03:04that work via their proprietary radio control.
2:03:08And you can use those to control lights.
2:03:10And so they have, what is it?
2:03:11One, two, three, four, five buttons on them.
2:03:13There's a big button at the top to turn the light on,
2:03:15and up down to dim, a little circle in the center
2:03:18that you use to like jump to the particular dim
2:03:21that is your favorite,
2:03:22and then you turn the light off button.
2:03:24And I thought to myself, well, oh my gosh,
2:03:28I think that they do this.
2:03:30They actually have a Pico thing, a Pico switch,
2:03:35specifically designed to control a Sonos system.
2:03:38The Pico Smart Remote for Audio,
2:03:40I can't link to this easily in the show notes
2:03:42'cause it doesn't really have its own URL,
2:03:44but it's a play/pause button at the top,
2:03:46which would normally be the volume up button,
2:03:48then, I'm sorry, the light bulb on button,
2:03:51then it has up down, which would be the dimmer on a light,
2:03:53but in this case it's obviously volume.
2:03:55The center one we'll get back to in a minute,
2:03:58the kind of dim to the favorite spot one
2:04:00we'll get back to in a minute,
2:04:00and then the light off button is skip to the next song.
2:04:04So, oh my gosh, I can just spend 40 bucks
2:04:07and get one of these, problem solved.
2:04:10Well then I'm thinking to myself,
2:04:11well I wonder, you know, does this really work?
2:04:13Let me find a review,
2:04:14and I stumbled on my real life friend Eric Wielander's YouTube channel, which he's somewhat
2:04:19put aside now, but it is a really good YouTube channel about smart home stuff, and I'll put
2:04:24a link to this in the show notes, but he pointed out this Pico remote, this Pico smart remote
2:04:30for audio, the only real difference between it and any of the other Pico remotes is that
2:04:34instead of a light bulb icon at the top, there's a play/pause icon, and instead of a light
2:04:39bulb icon on the bottom, there's a fast forward icon. Other than that, it's the same. It's
2:04:43It's the exact same stuff.
2:04:45And so, sure enough, I go into the Lutron app,
2:04:48and I say, "Hey, I have a Sonos system.
2:04:50"Integrate with that."
2:04:51And then I say, "Okay, I would like to add to my system
2:04:53"a smart remote for audio."
2:04:55And I happen to have an extra Pico remote,
2:04:57a light bulb one, sitting around.
2:04:59And so within literally a minute and a half,
2:05:02I now have a little remote control
2:05:04that does play, pause, volume up, down, and skip forward
2:05:08for my Sonos system on the porch.
2:05:10How friggin' awesome is this?
2:05:12It is, this is so cool.
2:05:15So now I can be sitting on the porch,
2:05:16and I already had a Pico remote on the porch
2:05:18for the lights previously,
2:05:20so I can turn the lights up and down,
2:05:21I can adjust it so that the dim is just right,
2:05:23and then I can get the music going,
2:05:26and I can adjust the volume, so it's just right.
2:05:28I don't have to mess about with my phone,
2:05:30not that it's hard, but I don't have to do any of that,
2:05:32and Erin doesn't have to have the Sonos app
2:05:34installed on her phone or anything like that.
2:05:36This is so freaking cool.
2:05:37The only problem I have with it
2:05:39is that I don't have a reason
2:05:40to use with the Raspberry Pi anymore, but that's okay.
2:05:43- You'll find others, don't worry.
2:05:44- I'm sure I will.
2:05:45I just need, somehow I need to get the Synology in on this
2:05:48and then I'll be all set, I'll hit the like Casey trifecta.
2:05:51But nevertheless, so yeah, so then I thought to myself,
2:05:54well this is kind of confusing,
2:05:55'cause I have two of these Pico remotes,
2:05:56both look like light switches,
2:05:58but only one of them actually controls the lights.
2:06:00And I was talking to Erin about it,
2:06:01she said, well just take nail polish remover to it,
2:06:03I bet it'll take the icons off.
2:06:05(laughing)
2:06:06Oh my God, oh my God, you're right.
2:06:08And so I took a little nail polish remover that she had,
2:06:10just, (imitates nail polish remover)
2:06:12on the light bulb icons, and now they're gone.
2:06:14And so now, you can tell which one's which,
2:06:17and then it gets better still.
2:06:19So I have two playlists that I tend to play if I'm outside.
2:06:23I don't only play those things,
2:06:25but especially when people are over.
2:06:26I tend to use one of the two.
2:06:28One of them is my, I call it my Funk It Up playlist.
2:06:30It's just a bunch of old,
2:06:32it's a bunch of soul and funk music from the '60s.
2:06:36- You can have your dad card back now, Casey.
2:06:37Thank you, thank you very much.
2:06:39If I remember, I'll put a link in the show notes,
2:06:41but I'll probably forget.
2:06:42But it is, without hyperbole,
2:06:44this is the best playlist that has ever been made.
2:06:47And so it's all, you know, like Stevie Wonder
2:06:49and Commodores and things like that.
2:06:51So anyways, I have that and I have the playlist
2:06:54that we use when we tailgate,
2:06:56because that's just a bunch of random music,
2:06:59much more modern music that myself and Aaron
2:07:03and our mutual friend Brian that we tailgate with,
2:07:05that the three of us have been adding to
2:07:07for probably five or 10 years now.
2:07:09Well, it turns out, if you add these playlists
2:07:14to quote unquote my Sonos, which I guess is,
2:07:16basically favoriting them, so to speak,
2:07:19within the Sonos ecosystem,
2:07:21then when you hit the little like jump
2:07:23to the correct dim button on the center of the Pico remote,
2:07:27it'll just cycle through those playlists.
2:07:31So I could be listening to nothing,
2:07:32my phone could be in another room,
2:07:34and I could step out on the porch,
2:07:35hit the little circle in the center of the smart remote,
2:07:38and boom, now I'm listening to funk.
2:07:40- Now you're funkin' it up.
2:07:41- I'm funkin' it up, baby.
2:07:43Then I hit it again, now it's like I'm at a tailgate.
2:07:45And then I can turn the volume up and down.
2:07:47I can play pause.
2:07:48I don't like this song because Brian added
2:07:49a bunch of country, that's not really my thing.
2:07:51Hey, guess what?
2:07:52I just skipped to the next song, baby.
2:07:53Oh, this is so cool.
2:07:54This is so cool, and I love it so much,
2:07:57and I wish it wasn't 85 gazillion dollars,
2:07:59'cause I want everyone to experience this.
2:08:01It is so awesome.
2:08:03So, if you're on the fence about any of this stuff,
2:08:06I swear to God, they have not paid me anything.
2:08:08I did get a discount, but they did not pay me anything.
2:08:10This was completely organic.
2:08:11They didn't ask for any of this.
2:08:13They don't even know I'm talking to you about this.
2:08:15It is so good.
2:08:17You've gotta check it out.
2:08:18I cannot say enough good things about this stuff.
2:08:21Genuinely, it is just so cool to have something
2:08:25that with the exception of the small hiccup
2:08:28when I was setting up the subwoofer,
2:08:29which again, may have been a Casey problem,
2:08:31Everything has just worked.
2:08:33Do you remember when we used Apple products
2:08:36and they just worked?
2:08:37Do you remember that?
2:08:38I remember that.
2:08:40Now I bought some stuff and I spent a lot of money on it.
2:08:43Does this sound familiar?
2:08:45I spent a lot of money on stuff that I probably don't need,
2:08:48again, sounding familiar, and it just worked
2:08:50and it was so awesome.
2:08:51And I really, really, really
2:08:54have been incredibly impressed by it.
2:08:56And the other nice thing is it is cool to be able
2:08:59to just go into the Sonos app.
2:09:01and say, play such and such on the main stereo system,
2:09:06the living room stereo system,
2:09:07and not have to have the TV on.
2:09:09Is that a big deal?
2:09:10No, of course not.
2:09:10And that's how I was doing it for the last year or so.
2:09:12Ever since we went to the 4K Apple TV,
2:09:15I had to change out some stuff
2:09:16and the way the stereo worked, it's not important.
2:09:17But basically, once we went to the 4K Apple TV,
2:09:19if we were listening to anything in the living room,
2:09:21except the turntable, we had to have the TV on
2:09:24because it was the Apple TV that was driving it.
2:09:26And now I can just go into the Sonos app
2:09:28and just have it play Sirius XM or Playlist or Apple Music
2:09:32or what have you, and play it to any one of the speakers
2:09:35that I have set up, and it just does it,
2:09:38and the TV can remain off, and it's fine.
2:09:40And it's so nice not to have to have the TV on,
2:09:43even though I love the Apple TV screensavers and all that,
2:09:45it's just nice not to have to have that on
2:09:47and worrying about any of that.
2:09:48And again, if I choose to airplay, that works flawlessly.
2:09:52That's not a problem.
2:09:53But now, here it was when I didn't know much
2:09:56about how the Sonos stuff worked,
2:09:57I thought to myself, I don't want to have
2:09:59another frickin' ecosystem in my life.
2:10:01That's the last thing I want right now.
2:10:03But now that I have it here,
2:10:04I find that I'm almost never air playing
2:10:06and I'm actually jumping in the Sonos app
2:10:08and just saying, you know, go play this
2:10:09on such and such a speaker.
2:10:11And it's been working out so well
2:10:13and I'm so pleased with it.
2:10:14And now, I'm gonna turn into like the average Tesla fan,
2:10:17or really the average Sonos fan.
2:10:19Oh, have you heard about Sonos?
2:10:21Let me tell you about Sonos.
2:10:21Did you know how great it is?
2:10:23Did you know you could integrate with Lutron Caseta?
2:10:24Did you know you could do this?
2:10:25Did you know, did you know, did you know?
2:10:26I'm now that guy, and I'm sorry, but it is so good,
2:10:29and I'm blown away by how good it is,
2:10:32and I am so overjoyed and happy with it.
2:10:35Now I just wanna buy all the things.
2:10:37I don't have anywhere else I need speakers.
2:10:39I wanna find a reason to get more of these stupid things
2:10:42and put them places, 'cause it's so great.
2:10:44Now, Marco, you had tried it in the past, right,
2:10:46and you were not as impressed.
2:10:47Am I right about that?
2:10:49- I'm very impressed with some of their products
2:10:51and less with others.
2:10:52So first of all, I am not a soundbar person.
2:10:55I've learned that about myself.
2:10:56You know, you have to know yourself
2:10:57and I've learned about myself, I'm not a soundbar person.
2:11:00- I will say the ARC without the subwoofer,
2:11:03I was not particularly impressed with.
2:11:05Once I added the subwoofer,
2:11:07then it made a world of difference.
2:11:08But without the subwoofer, it was okay.
2:11:11- Yeah, I will say the Sonos Sub,
2:11:13like the big subwoofer they have,
2:11:16is probably the nicest home theater subwoofer
2:11:19I've ever used and ever heard.
2:11:22It is one of the very, very few on the market
2:11:25that are force canceling, which means it basically
2:11:28does not generate vibration because of it's using
2:11:31two drivers opposite angle, it's a whole thing.
2:11:34Apple does it, all their recent wifers for like
2:11:36the MacBook Pro and everything.
2:11:38But anyway, it's a great subwoofer and my preferred setup
2:11:43is the Sonos Amp, which is a speaker amp
2:11:47that only drives two speakers, like a left and a right,
2:11:50but has the HDMI ARC input and everything.
2:11:53So I use it as a non-surround stereo plus subwoofer setup.
2:11:58And I love that setup, 'cause it allows me to use
2:12:03my nice KEF or keff, however that's pronounced,
2:12:06those speakers, my Q350s, those with the Sonos sub
2:12:11are an amazing, I've never been happier
2:12:13with a speaker setup than that simple pair of Q350s
2:12:18and the Sonos sub and the Sonos amp.
2:12:19I love it so much, it sounds incredible
2:12:23for both music and TV and movies and everything,
2:12:26but especially music.
2:12:27And it's just, it's awesome.
2:12:29But I have tried some of their smaller products.
2:12:32I've tried, let me see,
2:12:35I just make it get the names right, hold on.
2:12:36So I've tried the One, the Move, and the Roam.
2:12:41None of those have impressed me.
2:12:45And other people swear by these things,
2:12:46so maybe it's just my taste is not lining up
2:12:49with what they make in the smaller category here.
2:12:51I have never been impressed with those three products.
2:12:54And everyone else seems like you like them a lot,
2:12:57so good for you.
2:12:58But yeah, I haven't had a great experience with those
2:13:02in terms of value for the money.
2:13:04I do agree that, as you said, the setup process is great.
2:13:08And that, I have no complaints about setup, integration,
2:13:13the tech side of things, with the exception
2:13:15that the app is fairly clunky.
2:13:17- I don't know, I wouldn't say it's fairly clunky.
2:13:19I would say it's clunky.
2:13:20It's not perfect.
2:13:22I don't know if I'd even say,
2:13:23I'd probably say it's not even great,
2:13:25but I don't think it's actively bad either,
2:13:28especially because I freaking hate everything
2:13:30that Apple Music is in terms of their apps
2:13:34in every platform.
2:13:35But I would agree it's not like an exemplary app
2:13:38by any stretch of the imagination,
2:13:39but it is not, I wouldn't say it's actively bad either.
2:13:42- Yeah, it's in the middle.
2:13:44The bar is low for like iOS music playing apps.
2:13:49Like they're all awful and it's kind of a shame.
2:13:52Anyway, so I love them for TV sound and for AirPlay 2.
2:13:57And for those two purposes,
2:14:01you only use the apps to set them up.
2:14:03You're not actually going through the app to play stuff.
2:14:06So it doesn't matter how much I like the app
2:14:08'cause I never use the app.
2:14:09And so I'm extremely happy with them.
2:14:11As AirPlay 2 devices, the amps have been rock solid.
2:14:16When I had the one and the move,
2:14:18I did the same thing, I did AirPlay with those two
2:14:20and they were also rock solid for AirPlay.
2:14:23It's faster and more reliable to AirPlay something
2:14:28to play through the amp on my TV speakers
2:14:31than it is to a HomePod.
2:14:32Like it is, you pick it out, I know, right?
2:14:35But you pick it out of the AirPlay picker,
2:14:38you hit the name of the speaker,
2:14:40in my case, living room, a second later, boom, it's on.
2:14:43HomePods, not even close to that fast or that reliable.
2:14:47So anyway, I'm a huge fan of some of their products.
2:14:52And the rest, maybe not quite for me,
2:14:55but I at least respect them.
2:14:57- I totally get that.
2:14:58Oh, and I forgot to mention that they do have
2:15:01some seemingly rudimentary voice recognition
2:15:06that is off by default, mind you.
2:15:08You have to go in and add the voice recognition
2:15:11in order to get it to be enabled at all,
2:15:13which I really like.
2:15:15By default, you can say, hey Sonos,
2:15:17and it's just gonna ignore you.
2:15:18But then you can choose to add the voice recognition.
2:15:20And if I understand this correctly,
2:15:23all of the voice recognition processing
2:15:24is happening on device.
2:15:25There is no cloud component.
2:15:27But that also means you can't just ask it arbitrary queries.
2:15:30You have to add, you can ask it like the time, for example,
2:15:33but you can't ask it anything complicated like you would
2:15:36any of the other tubes.
2:15:38I don't wanna say their call names or whatever.
2:15:40- But you can add them as well.
2:15:41Not as well, but instead you can add Google Assistant
2:15:44or you can add--
2:15:45- The Amazon one.
2:15:46- Yep, yep, that's true.
2:15:47I haven't tried that, but I know I am aware
2:15:48that that is something one could do.
2:15:51So yeah, so what's really great about this
2:15:53is that it's all on device, so it's pretty quick.
2:15:55It seems pretty reliable,
2:15:57because the problem set is so small.
2:15:59What's his name?
2:16:00Is it Gus Spring?
2:16:01What was the guy from Breaking Bad?
2:16:02I forget the actor's name,
2:16:03but he's the one who talks to you, which is kind of funny.
2:16:05- Really?
2:16:06That's awesome.
2:16:07Sounds kind of threatening.
2:16:08- Yeah, it does sound a little bit threatening,
2:16:10but nevertheless, it's a very distinguished,
2:16:15a very recognizable voice, but that seems to work well.
2:16:18And it does handle semi-complicated requests pretty well.
2:16:21Like I've said to it, you know,
2:16:22hey dingus, stop playback on porch.
2:16:26And I've said that in the living room.
2:16:28And it's been smart enough to say, okay,
2:16:29I'm gonna continue the playback in the living room,
2:16:31but stop it on the porch.
2:16:32And that's just a silly example, but it's stuff like that.
2:16:35And that seems to work really, really well.
2:16:37And I've been really impressed with that too.
2:16:39The Roam is again, their Jambox like thing.
2:16:42I like it a lot.
2:16:43it sounds really good to my ear given what it is.
2:16:47So I am unquestionably grading on a curve.
2:16:49But given what it is, I get a lot of volume
2:16:52and a really impressive amount of bass
2:16:54out of something that is approximately the size
2:16:56of the original Jambox, rest in peace to the OG.
2:16:59But anyway, I've been impressed by it.
2:17:02And it comes, or you can get one that has,
2:17:05it's almost a triangular shape.
2:17:07And you can get like a bass that you can stick it on
2:17:10so it's always charged.
2:17:12As it turns out, I didn't realize until later,
2:17:14that's just a triangularly shaped Qi charging base.
2:17:17- Yeah, it charges what it's cheap.
2:17:18- Yeah, yeah, so it would sit on any Qi charger,
2:17:20it's just this is bespoke and so on and so forth.
2:17:22But again, all of these people who are so annoying
2:17:27about how great Sonos is, "Oh yeah, it's a tiny Sonos,
2:17:29"it's so good, it's not much better than everything."
2:17:31Well, you know what, you have to try it, it's so good,
2:17:32it's so much better than everything else.
2:17:34- Yeah, Sonos is what Apple should have been.
2:17:39Apple's speaker efforts should be like Sonos.
2:17:44And frankly, I'm shocked Apple didn't buy Sonos
2:17:47at some point in the past,
2:17:48'cause they've had a number of down times financially.
2:17:52I think before they really leaned heavily into soundbars,
2:17:55they were in a bad state.
2:17:57And it turns out soundbars are just cash cows for everybody,
2:17:59so that's kinda saved their butts, I think.
2:18:01But they were in a bad state for a while,
2:18:04and they could've been bought for a song, I bet,
2:18:06and Apple didn't.
2:18:09And on one level, I'm happy Apple didn't,
2:18:12because now we have an alternative.
2:18:14If the HomePod lineup keeps getting crappy
2:18:17or staying crappy or being buggy,
2:18:19then this is where to go, basically.
2:18:23This is your alternative to it.
2:18:26And it's not as good in certain ways.
2:18:27It's better in other ways.
2:18:29But at least it's a good alternative.
2:18:30And I don't see Apple getting this good,
2:18:35which is a shame, because I think if Apple
2:18:38brought their audio engineering expertise,
2:18:42like the actual, like the speakers, the drivers,
2:18:45the enclosures, they kick Sonos' butt.
2:18:50But Sonos slaughters them on performance,
2:18:54physical quality metrics, reliability, speed,
2:18:59inputs and handling and versatility,
2:19:01like Sonos destroys them on all those things.
2:19:05Apple just makes better sounding speakers.
2:19:07And I wish they could, you know,
2:19:09I wish there was something on the market
2:19:10that combined that, whether it was Apple,
2:19:12Sonos, or something else.
2:19:13But in the absence of that imaginary solution
2:19:16that combines all the best things of all these things,
2:19:18yeah, they're pretty good.
2:19:19(laughing)
2:19:20- Fair enough.
2:19:21John, have you ever played with any of this at Overcall?
2:19:22Don't you have a Roam or something?
2:19:24- I got two Roams now, actually.
2:19:26Oh, I've wanted one, or she was using mine,
2:19:28and I said, "I'll just get it your own."
2:19:29They can, you can actually hook them up in a stereo pair,
2:19:31which I thought was funny.
2:19:32I mean, a stereo pair of two little Roams.
2:19:33- That's awesome.
2:19:34Yeah, I still use mine as my shower podcast thing.
2:19:38She uses it as her little office radio, essentially,
2:19:40you know, just to play music in her basement office.
2:19:44What else do I have?
2:19:45Do I have anything else?
2:19:46I don't think I have anything else from them.
2:19:48And it's weird because the Roams are basically off
2:19:51all the time when they're not in use.
2:19:53So launching the app shows you don't have a Sonoma system.
2:19:55I can't connect to your things
2:19:56and you had to turn them on or whatever.
2:19:57So I'm really not using it the way it's intended.
2:20:00But I was hoping your glowing review would convince Marco
2:20:04that watching television and movies and stereo
2:20:06is barbaric in this day and age, but apparently not, so.
2:20:09- There is no chance, I love my setup way too much.
2:20:12- You can have an awesome setup,
2:20:13but just need more of those speakers that you love
2:20:16in different positions, and voila, surround sound.
2:20:19- Yeah, but then I have to like,
2:20:20then it becomes a much more complex situation,
2:20:22'cause like, the Sonos Amp is a really, really
2:20:25great alternative to a receiver
2:20:27if you only want two channels, plus sub.
2:20:29- But you think you only want two channels,
2:20:33but apparently Casey and I cannot convince you
2:20:36that having more than two channels can be fun.
2:20:37And every modern television show--
2:20:39- But I've had it before.
2:20:40I had it when it was new in the late--
2:20:42- Yeah, that was in the 90s or whatever the hell it was.
2:20:44- Yeah, but like, you know, look,
2:20:463D TVs existed for a little while,
2:20:48then they stopped because nobody cared.
2:20:50- This is, surround sound is not a fad.
2:20:52Every television show and every movie
2:20:54is mastered for more than two stereo speakers.
2:20:57And if you got them--
2:20:58- How is surround sound different from 3D TV?
2:21:01- Because it's a thing that people like
2:21:03it's not going away. I mean that's fair. So my experience with surround sound was way way way
2:21:09back in like the mid 90s. My dad, again super audiophile for all the good and bad that comes
2:21:14with it. He not only spent a brazilian dollars on the stereo but also you know put together a
2:21:20surround sound system for our main television. We had we were the only people I knew with a laser
2:21:24disc player like the whole rigmarole. Early early early surround, I don't know if this is true but
2:21:29it seemed to me that the original surround sound
2:21:32was just, let me guess what's coming from the back.
2:21:36It didn't seem like anything was mastered
2:21:38such that this sound needs to come out of that speaker.
2:21:41It was just, let's take a guess.
2:21:43Oh, just ambient noise that sounds like a crowd,
2:21:46we'll just pump that through everywhere.
2:21:47That must work, right?
2:21:49And occasionally it would guess right,
2:21:50and like in Top Gun, you would hear a plane
2:21:53go from behind you to in front of you
2:21:54as the same thing's happening on the television.
2:21:56When it did click, it was amazing,
2:21:57but it was very rare.
2:21:59Now, it is clear that,
2:22:03depending on what content you're feeding all of this,
2:22:05stuff is mastered for 5.1.
2:22:07So it is mastered such that I want,
2:22:09this is what I was saying earlier,
2:22:10I want the sound from this walkie-talkie and this cop show
2:22:14to come from the left rear speaker.
2:22:17I want the scream from somebody getting shot at,
2:22:20coming from, this is a terrible analogy, I'm so sorry,
2:22:22it's just the most recent example,
2:22:24is coming from the front right speaker
2:22:26and so on and so forth.
2:22:26So it is a very different experience than it was years ago.
2:22:30And I don't even remember, I'm probably wrong,
2:22:32but I don't remember Dolby Digital being this good.
2:22:34And maybe it was, or maybe it's just that mastering
2:22:37has gotten better over the years.
2:22:39- Well, it's both. - But it is, yeah, fair.
2:22:40- Mastering has gotten better over the years,
2:22:42but also the original surround sound formats,
2:22:46like the actual audio formats,
2:22:47were less able to represent perfectly discrete things.
2:22:51They were like simpler, lower bandwidth and everything.
2:22:54Modern formats now, they individually represent
2:22:57all the different channels and separately encoded
2:23:00and they can have, they can encode positional information
2:23:03so that that way your system can adapt
2:23:05to how your speakers are actually positioned
2:23:07versus how the sounds were intended in a giant soundscape.
2:23:11Now they're really advanced.
2:23:12Back then they were simpler.
2:23:14- Yep, I totally buy that.
2:23:16I mean, in the defense of Marco,
2:23:18again, I spent the last 15 years listening to stuff
2:23:20in stereo with a center channel
2:23:23that probably wasn't even used half the time.
2:23:25I don't think it is absolutely compulsory,
2:23:29but I will say without question,
2:23:31it is a much better experience to have a full 5.1 setup
2:23:34than it is to have just stereo.
2:23:36Again, not required, but it way, way, way better.
2:23:38(beeping)