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ATP

463: No Indication of Progress

 

00:00:00   I'm back on my LG 5k because I'm in that other location right now.

00:00:03   Every single time I come back to this, I feel like it gets smaller.

00:00:07   There's some jokes here, Marco.

00:00:10   Like it's so not only does it seem like it's smaller, which, you know, that's that's its own problem.

00:00:14   But the second I touch the keyboard on this desk, it jiggles.

00:00:20   The whole monitor jiggles with every keystroke.

00:00:23   And I'm oh, and of course, because of the stand, I can never quite tell if it's level.

00:00:30   Like if like the rotation angle of the monitor, it always seems like it's a little bit tilted.

00:00:34   And I try to tilt it back.

00:00:35   I'm not I haven't gotten to the point of getting on a level yet.

00:00:38   I probably should.

00:00:38   But like it's just it's so mediocre.

00:00:41   And then there's some kind of weird buggy behavior where it seems to forget its brightness setting every so often.

00:00:48   I'm not sure with what conditions exactly.

00:00:50   I don't use it enough.

00:00:50   Thank God to have nailed that down yet.

00:00:52   But it's so it's like every time I come up to it, it's like crooked and shaking and dim.

00:00:59   And I have to like hit the brightness up button on the keyboard to make it.

00:01:02   And then it blasts with full brightness because I only adjusted it one square, but it actually moved up nine squares.

00:01:08   So the thing with the brightness, I don't recall having an issue with mine with brightness, but I will say that the volume because the speakers on that thing are hilariously bad.

00:01:19   But nevertheless, the volume like the third the jump from third to fourth block cube, whatever you want to call it, was like the difference between a whisper and shouting.

00:01:30   And I believe when I busted out the iMac Pro, which I actually have an update about that as well.

00:01:35   But when I busted out the iMac Pro briefly to do the firmware update, I believe that was one of if the only thing that got fixed was the volume was actually more linear subsequent to that firmware update.

00:01:46   So you might want to see if a firmware update is possible.

00:01:50   And if so, if that does anything for your brightness, I believe as of we talked about this on the show, but as of a week or two ago, the LG monitor, whatever app, which is a steaming pile of garbage actually works on M1 Max now.

00:02:01   So that's kind of cool.

00:02:02   Well, for a loose definition of works, but nevertheless, but no, I will say I still am even despite all that I've been through, I still am a bit of an LG ultrafine 5K apologist.

00:02:16   However, it absolutely is what you said with regard to the stand.

00:02:23   It is truly and utterly atrocious, like hilariously bad.

00:02:27   And one of these days I'm going to figure out a different mechanism.

00:02:31   Well, assuming I ever get it back, a different mechanism to mount it because it is truly terrible.

00:02:36   What I really want is like a VESA stand rather than a VESA mount because I have this glass desk that I also...

00:02:44   Is it really VESA or is it like MasterCard or like is it...

00:02:48   I go with VESA.

00:02:49   I don't like saying VESA.

00:02:50   Oh, yeah, I very well could have that wrong.

00:02:52   I personally, like Jon, go with VESA rather than VESA, but I am not standing by this as accurate.

00:02:57   This could very well be a Bizell moment.

00:02:59   And they do make stands.

00:03:01   I mean, I've looked at a bunch of them for TVs and they make them for monitors too.

00:03:04   But the problem with I don't know if it's a problem for you because you're using an LG, but my problem with most of them is they don't look great.

00:03:10   I mean, I bet they're sturdy and you can find ones that are metal and that, you know, are well made and it's a straightforward thing they have to do.

00:03:16   But they're not particularly attractive.

00:03:18   They look a lot like just what they are, which is like bent pieces of metal and L-shape with, you know, they just they don't have good surface finishes.

00:03:25   They're not really shaped in any interesting way.

00:03:28   And the one thing the LG stands have going for them is that from a distance, if you don't know how terrible they are, they usually look pretty minimal and they're not in your face.

00:03:37   And they're usually some kind of reasonable curve.

00:03:39   They don't look like robot spider legs like they do on the gaming monitors.

00:03:43   You know what I mean?

00:03:44   Those giant claws or, you know, fake articulated like multi jointed feet.

00:03:50   They're just, you know, plain.

00:03:52   But of course, they don't fulfill their function of actually holding the monitor up and still.

00:03:55   So so then you look at the visa mounts and they all just they all just look like they belong in an office.

00:04:00   In fact, many of them are things that I've seen in my office and they're fine if you're going to buy 700 of them to put on all the desks of the people in your company or whatever.

00:04:08   But they're not particularly nice looking.

00:04:11   And I know that sounds dumb, but it's no more dumb than the criteria people use to buy 30,000 dollar cars, which is if you don't like how it looks, you're not into it.

00:04:18   All right, so may I give a brief update on my desk situation?

00:04:23   Absolutely.

00:04:24   OK, I've added a coaster.

00:04:27   Yeah, I do have a coaster.

00:04:29   Actually, I do set up.

00:04:30   I've not fixed where my drink is, but now that's correct.

00:04:33   There will be not as many rings on my glass desktop.

00:04:35   Well, it's a new level.

00:04:36   It's you know, three millimeters taller than you're going the wrong direction.

00:04:40   You're not supposed to go higher.

00:04:41   Higher does not help.

00:04:42   Because the gravity will pull the water down.

00:04:45   As we learned at Marco's Closet.

00:04:47   I have placed everything else in the table on coasters.

00:04:52   The water remains at desk level.

00:04:54   As it should be.

00:04:55   So my desk situation is actually the same.

00:04:57   I joke.

00:04:58   There's no significant differences here.

00:05:00   In fact, I don't think there's any differences from last week, which is itself a difference because every week there was something new.

00:05:06   But I will say that my LG 5K arrived in California, I believe last week in City of Industry.

00:05:13   Is it sending you postcards?

00:05:14   No, but.

00:05:16   Wish you were here.

00:05:17   Yeah.

00:05:18   Good God, tell me about it.

00:05:19   But surprisingly, something is happening on it because the track repair feature on LG's website moved from appointment confirmation, which it sat in for like three or four days after the monitor arrived, to repair.

00:05:32   So one would assume that my LG 5K is hopefully in the to do list, if not actively getting repaired.

00:05:40   So moving right along.

00:05:42   Let's start with some follow up.

00:05:44   And speaking of displays, a friend of the show, I think we can say that at this point, friend of the show, Jonathan Dietz came through with all sorts of numbers and mathematics about cabling and monitors and resolutions and bit rates and all that.

00:05:58   I'm going to leave it as mostly an exercise for the listener to dig into this and try to make heads or tails of it.

00:06:04   But a couple of things that are worth noting is this quote that you put in here, John, is this from Jonathan?

00:06:09   Yeah, that's the sort of the main I mean, we feel like we've gone over the same ground multiple times.

00:06:14   Every time we go over it, the the released Apple products are slightly different.

00:06:17   So we've always talked in the abstract about like, oh, here's what the standards support and here's which kind of standards can be tunneled over, which type of other connections, which type of mode, blah, blah, blah.

00:06:28   But the you know, and the reason we keep like forgetting is like, well, that's all well and good.

00:06:32   But then the question is of the existing Apple products they released, what do they support over their ports?

00:06:37   What protocols are they using?

00:06:38   And then so anyway, this is a an update, a modern update based on current hardware and the current standards.

00:06:44   Right. So Jonathan wrote to us privately.

00:06:47   A single Thunderbolt cable at 40 gigabits a second can handle 8192 by 4320, which is DCI full format 8K.

00:06:55   RGB with 10 bits per component, which is HDR 10, no chroma subsampling at 120 Hertz when using display stream compression.

00:07:03   Any existing Thunderbolt three or four controller that supports two DisplayPort 1.4 HBR3 streams and DSC 1.1 at 8 bits per pixel should be capable of this, including Titan Ridge, Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Goshen Ridge, Maple Ridge, M1 Pro and M1 Max.

00:07:19   So hypothetically, it should be possible to do according to Jonathan, who I trust 120 Hertz at 8K.

00:07:27   Although I swear I keep reading somewhere and I forget where that the M1 Max or perhaps macOS doesn't something in the Mac toolchain does not support 8K.

00:07:37   Do you guys know what I'm talking about there?

00:07:38   Well, I'm not sure if this list is exhaustive, but notice that the plain old M1 is not on the list.

00:07:42   All right. So maybe this is a new thing in the M1 Pro and M1 Max.

00:07:46   Like obviously we know Thunderbolt three and four exist on a Max for a long time, but the question is, do they also support sending two DisplayPort 1.4 or a high bit rate three streams and display stream compression version 1.1?

00:07:57   Like there's a bunch of extra qualifiers.

00:07:59   And so anyway, the M1 Pro and M1 Max hardware is apparently capable of that.

00:08:03   Is the entire hardware software stack capable of that?

00:08:05   I don't actually know the answer to that, but the point is that it could be in the future.

00:08:11   There could be a new version of Mac OS or maybe even the existing version for all we know, and an 8K monitor that you'd run at 120 hertz with display stream compression.

00:08:19   Yeah. So Jonathan put together an Excel spreadsheet, which I have then uploaded pretty much untouched to Google Sheets.

00:08:26   And I will put a link in the show notes.

00:08:28   If it's if it doesn't work properly, don't blame Jonathan on that because it's probably something about the Excel to Sheets conversion.

00:08:34   But you can go and poke about and kind of play with that if you so desire.

00:08:38   Then Jonathan pointed us to a person on the Internet called Glen Wing, who seems to have been doing some really deep dives into this.

00:08:44   So Glen Wing has a page which will put this in the show notes about different display infos and things that you can learn about it, including a calculator where you can say, you know, it's such and such resolution, it's such and such frequency and such and such color depth and whatnot.

00:08:59   Like what is or is not possible given those given that configuration.

00:09:05   And then separately within the Linus Tech Tips forum, there's like this very interesting and interactive it's a forum post, but it's an interactive calculator where you can say, all right, my computer's outputting Thunderbolt three and my monitor is importing Thunderbolt three.

00:09:22   Or, you know, you can mix and match what's possible.

00:09:25   So, for example, if you go Thunderbolt three, it's Thunderbolt three, according to this USB C Thunderbolt three alternate mode, 8K is only supported at 30 hertz.

00:09:35   So it's it's such a mess.

00:09:39   It's such a mess. But we'll put this in this link in the show notes as well.

00:09:42   This doesn't mention display stream compression, obviously.

00:09:44   So, yes, indeed.

00:09:46   Maybe that's where I'm missing out here.

00:09:47   Jonathan also had another piece of follow up, which I thought was very interesting, and he pointed out a page on Artings.com, which is, I think, John's beloved TV review website where they talk about chroma subsampling, which is something I vaguely understand.

00:10:00   But this is relevant because it talks about how chroma subsampling, which is basically like providing less information about color than you would normally want in order to decrease the amount of data you need to throw across the wire.

00:10:15   So you can get more stuff in less space, kind of sort of.

00:10:17   And so Jonathan writes, I also came across this page the other day that does a pretty good job of explaining chroma subsampling in relation to TVs and displays.

00:10:25   It even mentions LG's cryptically named HDMI Ultra HD deep color setting.

00:10:31   This to quickly remind you on these LG 4Ks that I have, I was saying I couldn't get 60 hertz on HDMI until I turned that HDMI Ultra HD deep color setting on.

00:10:41   So Jonathan continues, when you had your LG connected via HDMI, it would have been using YCBCR.

00:10:46   Is there a different verbalization for that, John?

00:10:49   No, I always hear people just say it out like say it just like you did.

00:10:53   OK. 4.2.2 to hit 60 hertz at 10 bpc, which would have made the text slightly blurry, which makes me feel a lot better because I swore that on the same monitor when I flip flopped between HDMI and DisplayPort, the text just looked a little wonky on HDMI and I couldn't put my finger on why.

00:11:10   So Jonathan continues, turning off HDR for that display by unchecking high dynamic range and system preferences might have enabled RGB 8 bpc at 60 hertz and allowed for sharper text.

00:11:18   When you have multiple displays that are the same model, connecting them using the same type of interface is definitely the way to go, which is what I'm doing now, wherever possible.

00:11:25   It sounds like you have rearranged things and now have both displays connected via USB type C to DisplayPort.

00:11:30   So I'm guessing they don't look noticeably different anymore.

00:11:32   That is correct.

00:11:33   However, it is worth looking at this Artings page because not only is it a really good explainer about what all of this stuff is about, but it shows you it provides images of what it looks like when the chroma subsampling goes a little wonky, particularly around text.

00:11:46   So this is surely what I was running into.

00:11:48   And I'm just glad that for all the many reasons that I am bananas, this is not on that very long list.

00:11:53   That was my guess when you said the anti-aliasing looked weird.

00:11:56   Like, what do you mean the anti-aliasing?

00:11:57   Didn't I mention chroma subsampling?

00:11:58   You might have.

00:11:59   I don't recall.

00:11:59   I was surely thinking it if I didn't say it.

00:12:01   But yeah, it's not that it goes wonky.

00:12:02   That's what chroma subsampling does.

00:12:04   Like you said, it throws away data.

00:12:05   It just plain throws it away.

00:12:06   It either throws away data about color or throws away data about brightness or both in a way that it hopes you won't notice if you were like watching a TV show.

00:12:14   But if you're looking at a monitor where you expect sort of pixel perfect text with, you know, so that every pixel has meaning, especially around the edges of text, if it's anti-aliasing or whatever, every one of those pixels is important.

00:12:25   And if you just say, ah, this square of four pixels will just average the color between them and you're just going to get one color for all of them or one brightness for all of them or both.

00:12:34   The graphics are great here to explain it.

00:12:36   The text does not explain it very well.

00:12:38   At one point, I read something that made me think I understood the encoding of 444422420, like what the number stood for.

00:12:47   Graphically, you can see it here.

00:12:49   And it's like, OK, I get it.

00:12:50   You can see how 420 is worse than 422 and 444 is just what you would expect of just everything going straight through.

00:12:55   Right.

00:12:56   But the text that tries to explain this on this page does badly.

00:13:01   It says the first number in this case four returns refers to the size of the sample.

00:13:06   OK, but the size of the sample has eight pixels in this example.

00:13:10   So what the hell is the four about again?

00:13:11   The size of the sample?

00:13:13   I don't I mean, I'm sure that makes sense if you already know what it means, but I don't already know.

00:13:17   So it doesn't make sense to me.

00:13:19   So anyway, the graphics are good.

00:13:20   The text is not great.

00:13:22   And, you know, if you have to remember anything, just remember that 444 is show me all the pixels.

00:13:27   Right.

00:13:28   Show me all the blueprints, Casey.

00:13:30   Nope, nothing.

00:13:32   OK.

00:13:33   I assume it's the aviator.

00:13:34   Yeah.

00:13:35   Yeah.

00:13:35   Mark.

00:13:36   I haven't actually seen it.

00:13:37   You heard it.

00:13:38   You heard it on back to work.

00:13:39   Yeah, exactly.

00:13:40   And then 422 and 420.

00:13:43   Like if you're watching it on a television, sitting in from a couch distance and watching like a movie, you can get away with a lot of those things.

00:13:49   A lot of video games, for example, use those formats to save data when sending things to displays and stuff.

00:13:57   And you can probably get away with it.

00:13:58   But if you're looking at a monitor real up close to it and you want to see every single pixel, 444 is the only way to go.

00:14:03   Yep.

00:14:04   Sure seems like that was probably the case.

00:14:06   And then Dimitri Bonyal writes, technically USB 4/Thunderbolt 4 can also support using all lanes in one direction for displays, making 80 gigabits per second available for it.

00:14:18   Won't it be possible to have, or excuse me, it won't be possible to have a hub in the display, but 8K at 120 Hertz should definitely be possible on a supported system.

00:14:26   And that's again, USB 4/Thunderbolt 4.

00:14:28   So many different, so many different just codecs.

00:14:32   I don't think anyone would do that though.

00:14:34   Like I looked it up in the spec and it does seem like that's true that you can say, okay, I'm just going to use all the lanes in one direction, but I don't think any computer system would really want like no way for any communication back from the monitor, especially if it's like an 8K monitor.

00:14:47   And it's really big.

00:14:48   That means no ports on your monitor.

00:14:50   No, it isn't.

00:14:51   Maybe not even any kind of ambient light sensor, anything like that.

00:14:54   So unidirectional, it doesn't seem, maybe like a first super pro setup where, you know, you just use it for display purposes.

00:15:01   You don't care about any of the other stuff.

00:15:02   It would make sense.

00:15:03   But, uh, it's interesting to know that it's there, but I'm not aware of anybody that has used that.

00:15:07   And this is again, without display stream compression.

00:15:09   Cause like, didn't you just get done saying that we could do 8K at 120 Hertz with 40 gigabits per second?

00:15:14   Why are we talking about 80 gigabytes?

00:15:15   Because it's all about display stream compression or not.

00:15:18   Uh, uncompressed, you can just do the straightforward math of how many bits or pixels, how many pixels and, you know, do it out both straight display stream compression.

00:15:25   I don't know what the expected compression ratio is, which is what's why it's always tricky to figure it out.

00:15:30   But presumably all these calculators that we will link in the show notes have some value put in for that.

00:15:35   And you can just punch the numbers in yourself and see what you get.

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00:17:39   I feel like this has been a running problem for the last few weeks where one of you two jerks will drop something in the show notes that gives me the shakes.

00:17:50   This week, I see the following in our show notes.

00:17:55   Marco's Christmas movie adventure.

00:17:58   What problem are you going to bring upon me that I would have immediately solved with either FFmpeg or Plex?

00:18:05   Well, before Marco talks about this, I just want to tell you.

00:18:08   I just want to tell the listeners that he assured us that this is tech related.

00:18:12   So now keep that in mind and Marco will now begin.

00:18:15   Because I keep thinking he's going to tell us about his giant Christmas tree and it's like going to be about like how his life is like Christmas vacation, the movie.

00:18:21   I believe I have mentioned in previous years that every year TIFF makes a photo slideshow video of the Christmas photos to give to the family.

00:18:34   And this is very important to certain members of the family.

00:18:36   And so it's a big deal.

00:18:38   We make the Christmas video every year and then we show it to the family the following Christmas.

00:18:43   Which here is last year's Christmas video.

00:18:45   This is like a desktop laptop.

00:18:46   Let's just go.

00:18:46   This is a photo slideshow video.

00:18:50   Correct.

00:18:50   It is a video of a slideshow of photos.

00:18:56   Of still photos.

00:18:57   Yes.

00:18:57   So it's one still photo after another.

00:18:58   Mostly still photos.

00:18:59   There are occasional video clips mixed in.

00:19:02   But usually and this has been generated over time from what used to be called iPhoto.

00:19:08   Later on, the photos app.

00:19:11   One or two years using Keynote.

00:19:14   And back to the photos app now.

00:19:16   Because that's where the photos start.

00:19:18   And they have a slideshow feature that you can export to video.

00:19:22   So it seems like the obvious place to do it.

00:19:24   And...

00:19:25   OK, so now hold on.

00:19:25   So you're saying this year at the end of 2021, TIFF has created sometime recently or attempted to a video of mostly stills occasionally other videos that is Christmas 2020.

00:19:39   Correct.

00:19:40   Will be displayed as a like family event during Christmas 2021.

00:19:44   That's correct.

00:19:45   OK.

00:19:46   And and we also we also do time lapses.

00:19:49   But those are actually much easier.

00:19:50   We would set up a camera.

00:19:51   This is before phones had good cameras.

00:19:53   We would set up a like, you know, an older SLR that didn't matter so much on a tripod and have a little timer trigger thing like using the like bulb port on it where you can like have a remote trigger for the shutter.

00:20:05   Well, they have one that that basically is an interval timer.

00:20:08   And like it's this weird, very specialized Canon accessory.

00:20:12   And, you know, you could you could have it, you know, just automatically click the shutter every X seconds.

00:20:17   And that I would use FFmpeg to create the video from.

00:20:22   Oh boy.

00:20:22   From that.

00:20:23   That was no problem at all.

00:20:24   But the slideshow is the is the much more effort and time intensive thing.

00:20:30   And that falls on TIFF.

00:20:32   And she has had many trials and tribulations with these videos over the years because this is the kind of thing like I feel like that I you know, I don't like to invoke when Steve Jobs is still alive unnecessarily.

00:20:46   But Steve Jobs really seemed to care a lot about this kind of use case.

00:20:52   You know, about the things that that what used to be called I life would cover.

00:20:57   Now, not everything in our life would still have a role today.

00:21:00   For example, I DVD, which we used to use to make these into DVDs back when that was like the easiest way to to display a video that we had made on our computers to the family at Christmas time.

00:21:11   Like we would we would burn.

00:21:12   We actually made DVDs and would bring it and had a whole menu and everything.

00:21:16   But, you know, it makes sense why that doesn't exist anymore.

00:21:19   But just the the act of creating a slideshow that is somehow, you know, that that Apple does a lot of the heavy lifting of like giving us a cool template to work within.

00:21:29   And then you pick the photos and, you know, it maybe suggests an order and a pattern, but also hopefully allows you to like modify the thing it automatically generated and then save it in some way that is persistent and maybe can be exported as a video.

00:21:46   This function has moved around so much over the years as these apps have died and been reborn and been rewritten and been neglected for in many cases.

00:21:57   And so the the simple function of creating a slideshow from your photos in a nice way has been.

00:22:06   Increasingly difficult over time to do reliably or even even to be able to like do it whatever way you did it last year, just do it again this year like that is so often not possible because the way you did it last year doesn't exist anymore or it officially exists, but it doesn't work, which is a common common thing.

00:22:25   Unfortunately, in today's technology world, especially in, you know, some of Apple's apps and various things like this.

00:22:31   So again, this is an area where I think in post jobs Apple, I think Apple has totally lost the ability to make really good like consumer facing content creation or content management apps in most ways.

00:22:47   There are a couple of counter examples like I think the notes app is pretty good.

00:22:51   Although honestly, notes sync has been really buggy for me recently, but that's separate, but you know, for the most part, the apps that used to be called iLife and iWork frankly either don't exist anymore or have reached a stage of kind of passive, mostly neglect.

00:23:10   Many of them in the especially in the case of photos.

00:23:14   The old app was rewritten and thrown away and so you know now the new the new photos app has not really no part of iPhoto left in it.

00:23:23   So the the experience that she has every year is is poor to say the least.

00:23:30   This year she she ran into frequent crashes like just using this is using the Mac app to be clear not not like on an iPad using the Mac photos app on photos that were created and stored in photo library.

00:23:44   Making a slideshow and doing a couple of modifications and the app would just crash and every time that she would like either leave leave a slideshow as the selection of what she's currently working on and go back in or every time the app would crash and she go back in.

00:24:01   Any customizations she had made were lost and it would just reset to its automatic state every single time.

00:24:08   So that's that's one problem right a secondary problem is that some we were looking for like we were missing in our in our main folder we were missing like 2017 or 2018 like one of those like you know a few years back we were missing the video for that year.

00:24:23   We couldn't find where the heck we had stored it and she you know she had them all in you know iPhoto previously on probably like three computers ago whenever it last ran.

00:24:34   And iPhotos files are just gone like there's like those files were just nowhere in our computer which we had like migrated every time those files are just not there anymore so like that there was a whole other thing.

00:24:46   There was an issue with like oh I had these in my iTunes home movies folder where is that.

00:24:52   What app does that even show up in anymore that good luck finding that like that's so there's a lot of things that have moved moved in recent years that a lot of stuff is dropping the floor every time Apple migrate something or rewrite something and this seems to impact this task in some way like almost every single year.

00:25:08   But anyway my vague recollection of the iPhoto to photos transition is that one of the very few things that didn't make the transition and they told you that during the transition was like your projects but they used to call them an iPhoto.

00:25:20   Some or all of your projects won't come over what it meant for me is that some of my book projects from iPhoto didn't come over well here's the thing they wouldn't come over they wouldn't it's not that they wouldn't come over they wouldn't sync.

00:25:31   Through iCloud right so this is back when the photo library was being used on my wife's computer in addition to being on her Apple ID.

00:25:40   And so on her computer the projects were all there but when I when I got my Mac Pro and said now the photo now I'm going to do all the photo library stuff on my computer I didn't you know I had to like if I synced it from iCloud I wouldn't see the project she still had them because she we'd like converted in place her actual thing so the projects were on her computer but when we sync with iCloud they were on mine and now I think the reverse is true now I think when I make projects maybe they don't sync back to her computer.

00:26:03   This may not still be true it may it may have just been a transient thing but I distinctly remember projects being the one of the few things that was left behind which makes some kind of sense because if Apple's not.

00:26:12   Like selling you the books anymore having a project for it is useless like you can order a new book from wherever but.

00:26:17   That may also be true of slideshows and then what you said about like home movies or you know you saying home movies people don't know that is it's just like.

00:26:25   Any video file that you stick into iTunes that it doesn't understand is a television show or movie would call quote unquote home movies but it could be literally anything and that's how they were categorized and when I turned to the iTunes.

00:26:37   You could you know right click reveal and finder and see where those files are there are filed away somewhere but the music came along who knows where they went.

00:26:44   Yeah and there's been you know increasing turbulence in that area in overtime and you know then then iTunes got killed and will sort of killed and broken apart and then the TV app replaced that section of it but the TV app has no concept of these videos and it's just it's it's a whole idea so anyway.

00:27:01   So that that whole mess that's mess number one that I feel like.

00:27:05   I do wish that Apple would.

00:27:10   Regain the talent and prioritization to make those kinds of apps really good again because they used to be so great that is exactly the kind of Apple used to just nail in the jobs era and I recognize that.

00:27:25   Not only is he gone of course and there's different people in charge but also we're in a different time and I recognize that I recognize that a lot of this stuff is.

00:27:35   It has fragmented onto will some people want to do it in you know in iPhone apps and some people want to do it on in web apps and by the way we tried some of those and they're horrendous.

00:27:46   I was going to say for the with the iPhone apps like that I bet a lot of people are thinking like oh it's because you're being an old grandpa and you're trying to use a Mac to do this stuff and yes Apple did stop caring about these types of Apple Mac but what about all these new apps to do similar things they're all focusing on the phone like that clips app that Apple made and a couple other examples of.

00:28:05   iPhone focus apps that can do all the things you're describing and that's where Apple is paying attention what I would say to that is yeah Apple occasionally comes out with an app that they're super proud of that it actually is pretty cool on the iPhone for doing this type of thing.

00:28:17   But 2 things about that one we call us old and funny daddy but doing a big project with lots of media on a phone screen.

00:28:25   Is not fun right having a big screen and a keyboard and a mouse and lots of different windows way easier to do a bunch of stuff like that and to the more much more important one depending on you know setting aside how much easier to do this stuff on a Mac because of the UI and the screen space.

00:28:40   Apple makes these apps and then seems to lose interest in them it's not saying that they don't still exist or that they aren't still updated but it's not like.

00:28:50   The thing people might not remember what I thought of you not know funny day like us is that every year someone will come on stage and say here's the new version of iPhone here's how it improved from last year they would just keep making that better and better and better year after year after year.

00:29:03   Like more capable of handling more photos better performance new features every single year whereas now we hear like here's the clips app isn't it fun and you'll never hear about it again.

00:29:12   So if that's the best their solution that like we made a clip sap once and it's really cool like does that team even still exist it is disbanded those people go on to something else you can't.

00:29:21   If you want to have a you know there's a customer problem hey I want to make a cool Christmas slideshow.

00:29:26   We're not saying the solution has to be you have to make an app just like Steve Jobs did on the Mac right because that's what he did but whatever it is that you do you can't make it once and then be done reassign those people you have to just keep updating and supporting that app every single year and I know.

00:29:40   That's boring or it feels like a waste of time do we really need to have a development team dedicated to photos on the Mac and we keep them employed year after year we keep paying the money yes you do because otherwise the app just dies in the vine.

00:29:53   So whatever apples strategy your solution is I would recommend their solution involve the Mac because big screens and keyboards and input devices like mice and trackpads.

00:30:03   Are way better than trying to do on a phone screen when you're trying to wrangle hundreds of photos right and be wherever you put it you have to keep developing and improving it it's a thing you can brag about it's a it's a it's a cell used to be a selling point of the apple experience if you want to make a slideshow.

00:30:19   Buy our stuff because we have an easy way for you to make it and you look cool.

00:30:23   Yeah and I do it does feel like you know like you said it does feel like they release these apps and then the teams get disbanded instantly and so like there's never like whatever either doesn't work or or isn't very good in version 1.0 that will just never get fixed.

00:30:39   And then 5 years down the road some manager somewhere will have a project oh let's make it let's make a new today's modern version of clips or iMovie or whatever and then something new comes along and then it has its own 1.0 bugs limitations and they never get fixed because the team gets disbanded.

00:30:55   You know it just I wish I wish that Apple held themselves to a higher standard in some of these areas and the second half of the story is going to touch on that as well but you know they have a slideshow feature in Photos app.

00:31:11   It is in many ways worse than what it replaced in iPhoto. How many years ago was that now? Why is it still worse at all? And why if you buy a flagship Apple product suppose you buy a new MacBook Pro.

00:31:26   You know it's a Mac that is like the highest end high end of Apple's product lines. The Mac it's higher end than the phone or higher end than the iPad.

00:31:36   It's certainly a higher price so people see this is the flagship Apple product line. I know sales wise it doesn't work out that way but you know that's logically in the product line if you want like you know the best Apple computing device.

00:31:48   You look at what they have oh it's clearly the Mac okay so you buy the Mac you open up Photos which is a really simple name and you would think Photos would have this feature and look oh it does it has a slideshow feature awesome.

00:32:01   You start using slideshows and it just crashes or you do something really obvious and simple and it doesn't work.

00:32:07   And I feel like does Apple not care that like that a common task on their flagship product just doesn't work is that okay? Is somebody in Apple saying you know what that's fine because our priority isn't to make our Mac apps very good.

00:32:23   Because that's what's happening.

00:32:25   Or because I can know but not a lot of people use that feature they would say like oh yeah but we have limited resources and like you know .02% of our customers ever touch the slides so feature.

00:32:35   It's like there are lots of bean counter reasons you can come up with that but but it there are terrible reasons but I bet that's what they'd say.

00:32:42   And I feel like you can you can use the term bean counter to describe a lot of the really tremendous leadership failures of the Tim Cook era and I think that that definitely applies to things like basically ignoring the entire Mac hardware and software ecosystem for a few years.

00:32:55   You know back during the bad old days and fortunately pulled out of a lot of that but I feel like the software team still seems to be run with like a the mindset of like a 22 year old smart guy.

00:33:07   Right like you know we we were those guys once we understand that you know what I was when I was a 22 year old smart guy I thought that I knew everything about everything.

00:33:17   I would look at something that I didn't understand and say well that's stupid why is it done that way and I was really good at starting projects and really bad at finishing them.

00:33:26   And I really think that's how Apple seems to be run a lot of times like it's you know we talk about like the kind of institutional attitude that Apple seems to have in certain areas.

00:33:37   And I feel like they are so good at starting new little projects.

00:33:41   Oh look a Clips app hey go go have fun with this and then it just falls on the floor.

00:33:45   Right.

00:33:45   Let's hey we're going to rewrite this entire our entire iPhoto app we're going to rewrite it for the phone and then you know replace the the Mac version that all this old code.

00:33:55   You know who rewrites old working code 22 year old smart guys.

00:34:00   And what what and then you replace the old the old working code with this no we're going to rewrite this whole new thing new language new platforms everything else new methodologies we're going to use the gang of four book or whatever and then the thing comes out and it's full of bugs and it doesn't have all the features the old one that people actually used.

00:34:15   You really got it in for patterns.

00:34:17   I guarantee you that is not the problem.

00:34:21   It's more of a culture thing but but so the thing is like they're so good at like doing the things that young people love to do let's we're going to rewrite it we're going to start clean you know they I mean design teams a whole other thing starting clean right but so much gets thrown away when you do that.

00:34:36   And you know the the healthy and functional and high quality thing to do is to you know obviously when you start out with something fresh like the photos rewrite there's going to be some losses along the way.

00:34:49   And certain features won't need to make it into the new version like it's OK that I DVD went away we don't need to burn DVDs anymore.

00:34:55   But you have to then iterate on it and restore the things that don't work anymore or a missing that people still do actually need and use.

00:35:05   Instead Apple just walks away.

00:35:09   That's why I think this is not a problem of like smart engineers wanting to rewrite stuff because that's that's not how things work inside big companies for the most part like it's someone else is setting the priorities what do we staff how many people do we put on this project how many people are on the photos team versus how many were on before and you know the photos like rewriting apps with new text acts a new UI frameworks like you have to do that every once in a while remember they changed I movie to like I movie 8 or whatever and it was it was had fewer features but it was all new UI and all new.

00:35:38   You know foundation for how video is and that needed to be done because the old one was old and creaky and the new one didn't have as much feature so they kept the old one around for a while like that's where engineering gets to lead there and if you give enough resources to people who want to do that it comes out OK like I think that that new foundation for I movie eventually became the foundation for Final Cut Pro 10 which also had its own problems in terms of not having as many features but they kept people on both of those teams long enough to make it over that hump but when you see something like.

00:36:06   You know the photos app come out and remove a lot of features my photo never get better that's not because you know the engineers wanted to rewrite it because they did come up with a call you ex kid or whatever it was like a first attempt to put.

00:36:16   iOS API's on the Mac without straight porting them so instead of it being UI kit it was you ex kit which I'm assuming the API look like you I get but it was all on the Mac and it was before catalyst before swift like this is all you know older stuff and in retrospect it's like well if you had waited longer you could have used callous to do this review and waited longer.

00:36:36   You use with the way back when that wasn't so much the problem is just unfortunate timing the problem is people make staffing decisions how many people are on this project how much money we put in this we're budgeting for next year how much budget how much of our budget is put towards the photos app.

00:36:51   That's where prioritization mistakes are being made engineers are making those decisions no matter how much someone wants to rewrite something or whatever if they say well guess what the budget of this team is cut in half for next year and you're being reassigned to do something else.

00:37:03   No matter how super smart you are and how awesome you would have made photos if you're reassigned or if they you know if they cut the team size down that's not going to happen like this is a management prioritization failure first and foremost and.

00:37:14   You can you know quibble with like oh this person rewrote this application and they did a bad job but for the most part if you know I think I think I was problem is not like picking the wrong people to do an important rewrite their problem is.

00:37:29   Keeping their eye on the ball and not not following through on the right if you're going to do the rewrite do it but then keep supporting it or just you know like with the Mac it's not like they stop making the Mac but they heavily deprioritize that's the.

00:37:41   They made a bunch of design mistakes and then they deprioritize that and.

00:37:45   I'm sure lots of people wanted to fix it inside Apple but it's like you know we're not doing that now we're doing something else.

00:37:52   So you know I don't I never will never fault somebody for trying to make the bold move and rewrite the thing you know even things like a discovery D versus.

00:37:59   What was the other thing I'm doing as a responder right like I applaud those efforts you just have to have enough follow through on and sometimes the father is.

00:38:08   You know we made a mistake let's revert and will regroup and consider this later core OS seems to do a good job of this in that when they address subsystems.

00:38:16   They either do it and then follow through and fix it until it works or realize they're mistaken back it out.

00:38:22   But either way what they don't do is drop discovery D and then disband the team like we'd still be suffering from that now if that's what they did right.

00:38:30   So I I blame this entirely on management and almost not at all on engineering.

00:38:35   Yeah that that rings true to me as well that this is absolutely prioritization more than it is some hotshot 20 year old trying to shoot from the hip and pew pew pew all over the place.

00:38:46   I I really suspect this is this is management this is an engineering.

00:38:50   Yeah I hope you're right but it that doesn't make it any less frustrating unfortunately.

00:38:54   Yeah now when you're on the outside you don't care what the reasons are just and I have to say reasons aren't our problem.

00:38:59   Yeah you know the reasons whatever the reasons are I'm sure there is like you know a handful of people in our audience who are going to hear this who who work in the company and who are going to be upset because like oh well you don't understand it's like I don't need to understand the details of why it is this way.

00:39:14   All I need to understand is that it is this way and it's apples problem to fix it and I don't care how far up you have to go it's you know the buck land somewhere and it's it's on some managers desk and if and you know ultimately it's on it goes over the top you know ultimately this is up to federal and cook like that's where this goes it's software problems that you know they someone has to take take a responsibility for this and and it should be on somebody to fix this problem.

00:39:40   And whether it's a problem of resource allocation or incentives or some you know bad manager somewhere along the line frankly I don't care it's the company's problem and they need to deal with it.

00:39:49   Yeah I've had the crashes and photo slideshows as well also also like they have a plug-in system for photos where you do like the third party things that replace the books and stuff sometimes those are a little creaky but that's probably like third party it could just about be a third party problem.

00:40:04   But if you don't you know I I tend not to expect the year to year big things from the photos app.

00:40:12   And that's why I like you know once I learned this slide show crashes a lot I just don't touch that part of the app anymore and look for alternatives and I know you haven't finished with your story but one that the thing I would have suggested if you had to describe to me your frustration with this in the process I would have said I you know you tried keynote already and maybe you went back to that but I movie.

00:40:32   I found to be much more stable and easier way to put a series of still images of transitions between them with an occasional movie trucked in.

00:40:38   Alright that's interesting yeah because the other thing like there were so many other limitations like the the speech volume in the movie clips was considerably lower and this is you know shot on iphone but it's considerably lower than the music volume and like there was no way to tweak that there was no way to tweak how long the movies were shown.

00:40:57   So it would show like a split second of a movie and then go back to a photo that like a split second of like a you know a 15 second long movie like it it just there were so many like lacking customizations and stability problems like this this is barely even a feature.

00:41:10   So anyway to end this on a happy note before I went into part 2 of the story which is more interesting this.

00:41:16   I'm if anybody out there has recommendations for other apps to use because frankly again I don't think modern apple has shown an ability to maintain this kind of consumer app very well so if there's any alternatives out there.

00:41:31   Please not a stupid web app like it but you know something that on a mac or ipad or iphone any just something that could make this easier just please let you know right and let us know.

00:41:44   Alright so part 2 we eventually found we eventually dug up the missing 2017 video on an old backup folder so we got that covered and then you know eventually tiff suffered through and found like you know the exact pattern of how not to cause a crash once or twice and got this year's videos made.

00:42:04   So then we thought wouldn't it be nice if this means the most to her father we thought wouldn't it be nice if we could wrap up like a USB something that he could plug into his ipad he could unwrap it and plug it right in and view the movies.

00:42:21   Yeah right okay so so first we were like alright maybe we should get some kind of like cheap digital picture frame that can play videos and just happy because we want you to be able to unwrap it and see the movie right there like that would be you know it's a this is a meaningful experience in this family and we're like let's let's make it cool right alright so.

00:42:40   He thought alright first I looked at digital picture frames and and you know they're like 150 bucks and everyone says they're kind of terrible and very few them are battery powered so you have to plug it in first and I knew the screen would suck and I knew also like I don't think they would have a use for digital picture frame afterwards.

00:42:58   Then I thought well for less money I can just get like an Amazon Android tablet so I wonder I wonder if we could just get like a cheap Amazon tablet to serve this purpose it has a battery and it could play videos I'm sure.

00:43:10   But I'm like they have then after that like after that that moment is done nobody in the family wants an Amazon tablet so we would have no use for this afterwards my guy that feels too wasteful so you know we'll stick with the ipad plan.

00:43:24   So I knew that you know Apple sold Apple sells that and this is a 10.5 inch ipad pro he has so it has lightning port not USB C so I thought alright well I know Apple sells the camera connection kit thing or what used to be called the camera connection kit which is a lightning to USB adapter so you can plug in a USB storage device and it will it will offer to import it into photos so I thought OK that's that's the way to go.

00:43:49   So we had a USB stick so fine great I even I got a new USB stick this year a sandisk like sliding thing where it has a USB C port and the USB A port on the same USB thumb drive and you just like slide the cover over to pick which one it is.

00:44:08   Oh yeah those are.

00:44:09   I got one of those from my PlayStation 5.

00:44:11   Yeah for the record the sandisk one that has the sliding thing don't get this USB stick and I'll tell you why in a minute but anyway so so we thought OK let's let's wrap up this thing and we'll try to get it on her father's ipad like in that moment we'll wrap up a USB stick plugged into a camera connection kit done great so I put the videos on that these are videos.

00:44:32   That were created with the photos app on the Mac.

00:44:36   These it's a standard like M4V file we know whatever it exported as video export h264 some of them were 1080p some of them are 4K like the newer ones are 4K you know maybe 300 megs each not not we're not talking big or obscure videos they're not encoded like in pro has really anything huge they're not like 8K they're not even HDVC they're h264 4K and 1080p videos OK so.

00:45:04   Unwrap it everyone's happy OK trying to get the videos onto her father's ipad.

00:45:10   So first we plugged in the thing that we got.

00:45:14   And with the modern sandisk USB thumb drive because we had an old thumb drive that we also had that we had a made a while ago with like a a wood look like a nice engraving for saying like our family Christmas stuff so.

00:45:26   Those are all USB 1.0 drives sorry USB 2.0 drives so they're pretty slow so I thought all right let me get a modern USB 3.1 and then the USB C port so that when he eventually upgrades his ipad he'll have a USB C model he could plug it in it'll be it'll be even better great OK so.

00:45:42   First we use the new sandisk USB thumb drive that's USB 3.0 with the USB 3.0 lighting adapter plug it in and it says it needs power OK well fortunately the modern Apple lightning adapter does have a second lightning hole for power input so we plug in fine I get get the cable I'll get a charger then you know this is already disrupting the flow of this experience that we're trying to have here but fine get a charger plug it in.

00:46:07   And you plug it in and nothing happens nothing at all nothing on the system seems to recognize that there is a drive plugged in not even the files app so I thought OK.

00:46:19   Let me try the other thumb drive I plug in the old ancient USB 2.0 thumb drive it's recognized every single time.

00:46:29   Now both of them are recognized on my Mac every time both of them are formatted as MBR partitioning with fat 32 file system exactly as thumb drives come from most factories so it's not a difference in any of that for some reason the ipad can see the USB 2.0 ancient one but not the modern USB 3.0 one OK well whatever.

00:46:50   So eventually we got well we at least get to see the thing but only in the files app not in photos.

00:46:59   So we go to the files app and we navigate to the drive it's all right well it's listing the files now how do we get these into his photos library.

00:47:07   Well time out these were just video files on the root of the USB key.

00:47:14   I see you've listened to this before I'll get there so OK originally yes.

00:47:19   All right so you would think that there would be you know photos would see it it doesn't right OK so the files app does so here we are first so the files app can list the contents of the drive.

00:47:31   And it offers the share menu so I think OK so you I selected like the five or six videos you didn't have yet and I hit share.

00:47:40   And there is an option that says save videos now I assume that this is very much like the save photo option all over iOS where like you share a photo from anything and you hit that and add it to your photo library save videos that seems like it makes sense right so I tapped save videos.

00:47:58   And what happened.

00:48:00   Nothing no feedback.

00:48:04   For a while no error message no sign of any progress happening you tap it and the share sheet disappears and just nothing happens.

00:48:12   For I think it was like 45 seconds like it was a long time so it's the point you definitely don't think something is going to happen.

00:48:19   And then it would eventually put up an error box like can't open fail to save item.

00:48:25   OK so OK and we start checking OK well we're on the latest software of everything there's 200 gigs of free space on the iPad so it's not like a free space issue so and we're trying to add like one gig of movies to a 200 gig I feel like it's fine.

00:48:40   At what point in this process did you reconsider the idea of just having it be on the network somewhere and then just loading it in like a web page.

00:48:46   But this is this isn't our house I they don't have anything they don't have like a NAS or anything.

00:48:51   So you could have just put it on Marco dot org slash Christmas slash our movies dot M4V and then just sent him a URL in a message and tapped it.

00:49:00   Not with this internet connection anyway so that would have taken longer so so eventually I'm like all right this what can I do here I try it let me let me try it I plugged it into my phone because you know modern iPhones have the files app.

00:49:15   So I plugged into my iPhone and I open up my files app and I selected the videos and I thought let me airdrop them to.

00:49:21   So this and this is like I was already laughing like this how ridiculous is it's like the iPad supposed to be easy to use.

00:49:31   Here we are trying to get videos in the right format from a USB drive using all Apple's hardware into Apple's device.

00:49:41   Another network thing could have been a shared album that you could have just shared with him.

00:49:45   But then it wouldn't be the original quality like these are this is like you know archival stuff for the family like we want him to have the actual files in his library.

00:49:52   You're right it wouldn't be there is no quality but if you wanted the open up the present and I can meet look at a video sharing it through photo sharing.

00:49:59   You know I know that now thanks but anyway so I try plugging into my phone and airdropping it to his iPad.

00:50:09   The transfer progresses it goes and you know this is as I mentioned it's about a gig so it takes like you know a minute or two.

00:50:16   Eventually airdrop completes the transfer and the iPad throws up an error that just says failed to save item save to iCloud drive instead.

00:50:27   What it's okay well I guess that doesn't work so then I started looking up and here we are the googling part of the story right and I learned what Casey just alluded to that.

00:50:37   Apparently the photos app will not offer to import things unless it seems to have the file structure of a camera card.

00:50:43   So you have DCIM like the DSM slash and then an eight character name you know dot MOV in all capitals.

00:50:51   Alright so okay so I rename all the files to put it right I made copies and it's whole thing so.

00:50:58   Eventually that completes I plug it plug it back into the iPad again.

00:51:04   And the photos app finally shows the card you know the USB drive as a card and he tap it and it says no photos to import.

00:51:14   What?

00:51:16   Okay another suggestion that I found with my googling was to plug the iPad into a Mac.

00:51:24   To be able to use the old file transfer thing like from a lot from iTunes where like you open up in in now finder what used to be iTunes.

00:51:31   And you go over the file section and try to just like drag it in or the photo section.

00:51:34   So I tried that but oh when I cloud photo library then you can't do that.

00:51:39   So what I then I'm like okay this I don't I don't even know at this point like what are normal people what would normal people do in this case like you just give up right.

00:51:51   So anyway so then I'm like alright let me just get this let me see what I can do here so I knew airdrop came the closest to working.

00:52:00   So I just airdropped the files one by one from my Mac where they originated to the iPad.

00:52:09   First one worked great and most of them worked great except for two of them that said on the iPad after transfer failed to save item saved to iCloud drive instead.

00:52:20   Now so I had I now I figured out okay there are two files that for some reason just don't work and that's causing the problem.

00:52:30   So I look at these two files both of them were 4k h264 m4v files exported from the photos app for Mac just like all of the other files.

00:52:42   There was nothing seemingly nothing different about them.

00:52:45   All the rest worked although only when transferred one by one with airdrop.

00:52:50   So I just those two problem files I just transcoded them to 1080p with the compressor app and then of course they worked.

00:53:00   So that's finally the story of how how we got videos from a thumb drive onto an iPad that were all made by Apple.

00:53:05   Like I just the iPad is supposed to be the easy computer.

00:53:10   This worked instantly on Macs everything about it worked great on Macs.

00:53:16   What the hell is going on with the iPad?

00:53:18   So as you've learned like the iPad is not a computer that has good ways to get hardware input like connecting drives or connecting hardware devices like the camera connection kit.

00:53:29   It's very tailored to what the name says that's why I wanted everything in that format.

00:53:32   I remember but the I think the the way that iPad people or the iPad experience wants you to do it is all over the network.

00:53:39   And there are lots of solutions to that there's photo sharing there's iCloud drive there's Dropbox the files app understands all of them.

00:53:45   So if for example you had it you know your grandfather was on Dropbox and you were on Dropbox and you shared the folder.

00:53:50   You could just go into the Dropbox app and from there you could save and or you could view it directly in the Dropbox app.

00:53:54   Or you could have put an iCloud drive and shared it or you could put like I said you could put it on a web page.

00:53:58   Because you have a website where you could just chuck it up there and then they would just tap a link and watch it.

00:54:02   And all of these are ways to get the original files and original quality over to the iPad that are probably more in keeping with the iPad experience.

00:54:10   The iPad experience is not connecting a camera connection kit then connecting that to a charger then connecting that to a USB thumb drive.

00:54:16   To put a file that you exported on your Mac into it right that should have still worked.

00:54:20   I'm not saying it shouldn't this is a mess but the you know the iPad way to do it is everything's just over the network.

00:54:26   And everybody has huge amounts of bandwidth and easy ways to share large files or and I would imagine there are consumer ways to do it.

00:54:33   Loss of quality who cares like that's what everyone says when they talk about shared iCloud libraries.

00:54:37   Why don't you just use shared albums it's the same thing I'm like no but it reduces the quality no one cares about that.

00:54:42   Like they just don't care.

00:54:43   So yeah this should definitely be easier and all these stupid limitations and how things work are just.

00:54:49   I feel like the historical baggage from the iPad basically being a sealed box and saying.

00:54:54   We don't need to ever get data from anywhere except for the network that lightning board is just for charging don't worry about it.

00:55:00   But I feel like but you'd be right if these features weren't not only offered but advertised.

00:55:06   Like Apple sells equipment to do this they in in like previous whatever I forget which version of iOS.

00:55:14   Had this been like in one of the recent versions of iOS or now iPad OS they even bragged about.

00:55:19   Hey look files app now supports external storage devices and so they they officially support everything I just said.

00:55:27   They officially support plugging in something to the files app to be able to browse the files on it and do something with them.

00:55:33   And you would expect that the files app since it offers a button that says save videos in the share menu.

00:55:39   When you select a video file would be able to save videos but it doesn't it just can't.

00:55:45   Like there's so much about this experience where oh that thing that we say you can do that you even spent money to buy hardware to do.

00:55:54   Oh that doesn't work.

00:55:55   Okay well what do you mean it doesn't work?

00:55:58   Like it's it's literally you literally said this worked it the and the software says it works.

00:56:04   Like these these options are offered and then it just doesn't work and that's okay.

00:56:10   I think the other part of the iPad experience is like the sort of the goalie effect of like we don't want to allow anything onto this iPad that either is in a place where it isn't expected or is in a format that isn't expected.

00:56:21   So as on the expectations on a personal computer or a Mac is if you're in the finder or any kind of file manager and you have external storage.

00:56:28   You can copy a file from point A to point B and then the the computer and operating system do not care what's in that file.

00:56:34   They're like oh file I'll just I guess I'll just copy it like it is not the it is not the finder's problem what is in that file right.

00:56:41   Whereas I always get the impression when dealing with anything having to do with files on the iPad or the iPhone it's like whoa whoa wait a second you want to copy a file?

00:56:49   Who owns that file?

00:56:50   Where will it be stored?

00:56:51   Who's container will it be and who can read that?

00:56:53   Who should own that file?

00:56:54   Is this a format I can understand?

00:56:55   Can I play this back?

00:56:57   And it's like I don't care files app just copy the file put it like trust me to later find a thing and that's not the iPad experience.

00:57:03   That's a personal computer experience where there is a file manager and the file system and the files and then it's a separate problem to deal with like oh what app can read this?

00:57:12   Can you play it back or anything like that?

00:57:14   And you know your whole experience makes me think that somewhere there's a misguided set of rules that are saying we don't want to allow anything onto this iPad that can't be played back because that would be a bad experience.

00:57:27   Whereas it's one of our most experienced to get just an obscure error that says I couldn't copy your file I'm not going to tell you why just sorry.

00:57:34   I just like it's like it's all the worst of Apple like it's it's a it's kind of you know an edge case feature on what they have always treated as an edge case operating system iPad OS which has never gotten a ton of attention and still isn't.

00:57:52   And it's it's on it's doing something that I think is a fairly common thing that people think they'll be able to do which is take something on a USB thumb drive that you know that came from some other computer device and get it onto their iPad like that's that's a fairly common thing.

00:58:11   I don't know about that I almost I don't think anyone really uses thumb drives anymore except us old and beyond that certainly nobody would think to themselves you know what I need for my iPad I need a camera connection kit so I can plug in a thumb drive like I I sympathize with what you went through I truly do because it stinks and it shouldn't have been that hard and if it did fail it should have told you why it failed.

00:58:32   And that's the thing that I think is driven all three of us nuts about Apple for the entire run of this damn show but be that as it may I think this was a bit of an esoteric use case and esoteric use case that I still think should have worked but.

00:58:44   Well no because the use cases sharing video with family that's not esoteric at all it's the way the market went about doing it with his PC mindset that should have worked but like the other mechanisms that Apple gives you to do it.

00:58:57   Like I imagine a lot of people if they try this at all like one of their go to is depending on their age might be why don't we email it to them which to us sounds like no you're going down the wrong path stop but that's the way a lot of people share files with each other because it's a thing they've learned how to do in the past is I know how to email stuff to people.

00:59:14   And when that inevitably doesn't work for things like large videos and they don't understand why then they're kind of stuck but that's their instinct our instinct is to copy files Apple would probably tell you oh just within the photos app you can add it to a shared album and then add your grandpa to the shared album then they just launched photos on their iPad and I'll see it there and I can tell you having done that that theory works.

00:59:34   Most of the time but if you have a large slideshow and you know you just invited them to the shared album there are ways you know if depending on how they have things set up you know accepting an invitation to share a shared album and photos there are ways to screw that up.

00:59:50   Like if you for example use the Gmail app and not the Apple Mail app and you try to click the link for years that didn't work and you have to like oh you got to use the Apple Mail app to accept the invitation and once you accept it where does that show up in the photos app where in the shared albums alright I'm in shared albums I don't see it well.

01:00:04   Wait how long should I wait I don't know.

01:00:08   It will appear because you know what it's like with iCloud syncing like it's pretty good and it syncs most of the time but it's not like there's a progress indicator it's not like there's a refresh button it's not like a thing you can do to say.

01:00:21   Hey someone I just accepted an invitation to photo library when is the stuff going to show up this is one of the reasons why I haven't looked in the sun years but for a long time with Apple TV Apple TV had you know you can sign into your Apple ID with Apple TV and you can use it to connect to your photo library.

01:00:36   And so if you make a slide show for example on your Mac and the Apple TV is connected to the same Apple ID and you tell point to your photo library in theory Apple TV can say oh I can see show you all your photos in your albums in your slide shows on the TV wouldn't that be great.

01:00:49   In practice it just shows me a bunch of empty thumbnails forever because apparently my photo library is too big for it to handle.

01:00:54   And I tried that for several years every time I knew Apple TV came out and say hey can you do something useful with my photo library besides showing me a bunch of you know blank grey thumbnails and the answer was no so I just gave up.

01:01:06   That's like even even the ways that like the sort of the paved paths for doing this fall down when you let's say have a big photo library or oh I want to show a slide show in 4k 4k why would anyone want that just take the default use the lower quality setting.

01:01:22   Don't do anything with big files because then our complete lack of progress indicators and your slow network connection will make it so that you just see an empty nothing for an undefined period of time after which maybe it will show up or maybe it won't and if it doesn't show up what's your recourse.

01:01:36   I don't know do it again unsubscribe from the library and resubscribe to it.

01:01:40   Yeah this is back in the same realm of making things magically work so there is nothing you need to do is great when they magically work when they don't magically work it's magically bad.

01:01:51   And then I feel like this is these are all harm hallmarks of you know the problem we're talking about earlier with 22 year old hotshots of like this is just immature software like software that does not handle edge cases very well or that fails silently.

01:02:05   Or that that you know can't can't really accommodate the things that it says it can do because they just don't test them very often or they don't think people do it very often those are all harm marks of just immature software like it's or software that is being.

01:02:20   Managed in an insufficient way but the result is immature immature software which is just like it just it can only do the common the common path because that's all they had time to implement or test or both or care about.

01:02:35   And the trains it trains you badly though like I think of an example my son was having probably call me to the room which is never good sign of like I'm probably going to be here he was having problem in Xcode and after you may be familiar with he was just trying to like you know build and run his app he was just trying to development.

01:02:50   And what he was faced with was like a dialogue that said.

01:02:53   Please wait while Alex's Apple watch is being prepared for development either you ever seen God reboot all 3 devices.

01:03:00   Yeah I know I trained him well enough of gone through stuff by the time he called me to the room he said I already rebooted everything right good good you did the first step debugging because that would have been my first suggestion but here's the problem like.

01:03:15   So this is one of the situations where you know you can do googling for it and see all sorts of stuff but like I mean I one of my instincts was alright so something is stuck or bad because for people don't know if you just want to build around your app and for the record he doesn't have a watch app but I could tell that it was like you know if you use Xcode it like it wants to set up your device for development it does stuff to devices whether it be your phone your watch even your Mac to say I'm setting this up so it can be used as a target to deploy in progress builds.

01:03:45   Of stuff right and even though he doesn't have a watch app and we've never had a watch and can I pause you right there if you want him to continue loving software development never build it meant never make a watch app just can confirm.

01:03:57   But that's what he was saying he was like but I don't even have a watch up and like yeah but I bet you probably Xcode probably updated it needs to like because your watch is paired to your phone because your phone is a dev target and used to prepare your watch so that you could deploy a watch app to it.

01:04:10   And that for whatever reason is blocking your ability to run your app on your phone right but the thing is that message would come up and it would say preparing Alex's watch for development.

01:04:20   And we were googling for answers and looking at it and it's like.

01:04:24   Because it was there for so long because there was no progress indicator other than like a spinning indeterminate progress indicator.

01:04:30   Distinguishing this is hanging and it's never going to complete from you just have to wait is very difficult and my first instinct was this is clearly hanging because it's kind of like I got stuff is like well you just wait and after a certain period of time you're like well it's not.

01:04:43   It's not updating I don't see the stuff I added this album on this computer and I don't see it on this computer and it's just not updating so we should do you want to do something you want to say OK let's delete it and re share it right or let's you know.

01:04:55   And if you do that you'll just chase yourself forever right because it could be that it wants you to wait 37 minutes and you waited 32 minutes before you gave up and deleted it now you're just going in a cycle forever so.

01:05:05   Luckily my old age instincts prevailed and said if let's let this sit for a little while and see if it eventually.

01:05:12   Does something and you know and his instinct to say let's just just keep trying to build and run right because it'll keep getting stuck but you can try to do it again we did do another set of reboots and the bottom line is we just have to wait and.

01:05:24   The instinct like if you use this offer for a long time you start distrusting it because you say I in the past I have waited we all had this experience I'm trying to update to a new version of Mac OS I'm trying to do an iOS update.

01:05:38   I launched photos and it's beach balling right sometimes you can say well I should just wait but then you forget about it and come back 5 hours later or come back in the next day and it's still beach balling in this trains you to believe that if I have no indication of progress and something is taking way longer than I think.

01:05:54   Don't assume it's ever going to complete just give up and try something different or whatever and the problem is that's right like 50% of the time the other 50% if you just walked away for an hour and come back it would have eventually completed.

01:06:06   And I was half of me was not surprised and half of me was surprised when after waiting for you know 1520 minutes eventually it finished doing whatever the hell it was doing right I think at that point we'd like.

01:06:18   We rebooted everything multiple times and I was almost to the point where I was going to unpair and repair the watch right I was trying to I was in the device manager saying can I delete the watch from the thing or whatever but if you have software that behaves this way no indication of progress.

01:06:31   Sometimes it completes if you just wait a long time but other times it doesn't it trains users to be distrustful and to do things that are counterproductive like give up after too short a period of time and just keep repeating the same action which is just angering the software right.

01:06:45   And I just you know for all we know a lot of the stuff like when you said when you had the share thing to save videos and the share sheet went away and then nothing is on the screen.

01:06:53   How long are you supposed to wait before deciding that that didn't work right 45 seconds with no feedback is too long 30 seconds 5 seconds just.

01:07:03   You know this when people writing software it's like I assume this operation will happen real quickly because it happens real close in my dev device so I don't need any kind of progress indicator here and meanwhile you do it the share sheet goes away and you left staring at the screen wondering what the hell just happened.

01:07:16   Maybe it would be successful if I wait here for 2 minutes 5 minutes 10 minutes 30 minutes like how long do I have to wait with no progress who knows and if you're not a computer person it makes you look like.

01:07:25   They look at you kind of with pity and go so are we are we waiting for something you're like just just give it time it might it might do something it might not I can't promise it's going to and so you're sitting there they all just want to the pictures and they're all just looking at each other roll in their eyes and you're like might something might appear here.

01:07:42   It doesn't appear what can you do we can try it again I guess it's not a good situation.

01:07:47   This reminds me.

01:07:50   I saw my my parents today and we had just seen them over the holiday and over the holiday you know I'm the kind of defacto family photographer and I taken a bunch of pictures of the events of the holiday.

01:08:05   And it shared it with you know all the people that were there and thankfully all of us are on iOS devices and my dad wanted a copy of all the files which was fine and I was too lazy to collect the files and like zip them up and send them to him by any number of different ways of doing that.

01:08:21   I said well just download them from photos of photos on your Mac and he said well they're not there.

01:08:30   What it's a shared album you can you see it on your phone yeah I can see it on my phone can you see it in photos no on your Mac no I can't see it they're not there.

01:08:37   Alright here's what I'll do I will record a screencast of a 45 second screencast of me showing you here's where you go here's what you do because exporting your photos wants to be you know he wants to eat all the things that doesn't particularly want to give them back up.

01:08:52   So I'll show you exactly how to export them then you can do with them as you please whatever says I swear to you they're not there and of course like I love my dad to death he's a very smart guy very good with computers and technology but he very rarely gives me actionable feedback it's just they're not there.

01:09:06   Okay I'm not sure what you want me to do with that so he was here his computer was here because he has a mac pro an older mac pro pro and Intel mac pro which by the way seeing a touch bar again for the first time in a long time was kind of weird but nevertheless he shows me photos he says they're not there.

01:09:22   And I look and darn if the damn album wasn't there what what was what was the problem gentleman.

01:09:30   Wait long enough no good guess no but that but that's the whole thing if you do something like a share the thing with you or I add we're in a shared album that we've been in for literally 7 years and I added 2 photos to it and everyone in the family sees that 2 new photos except for you what's the problem the problem is very often I don't know reboot your device wait a day you know and very often it will happen like oh they showed up eventually but why did why did they show up why did it take a day why did you have to reboot.

01:09:56   I don't know there's no refresh button now so as it turns out the problem was I don't know what made me think of this but I went digging in the photos preferences of which there are very few because Apple but sure enough in the iCloud tab there are 2 checkboxes iCloud photos and shared albums.

01:10:14   One guess what was unchecked it was shared albums so soon as I checked that everything came flying in right away and it worked perfectly and I mean I don't necessarily like Apple didn't necessarily do anything wrong here but it was just very frustrating because I don't.

01:10:29   I don't really know why that's not the default I don't think he had deliberately change that but even still it seems like some sort of information to assist him or me like if you're looking for shared albums you know shared albums is currently disabled in the sidebar photos or something to give you a hint that oh this is something you have chosen either implicitly or explicitly and you might want to look in preferences to take action on it you know obviously messaging that is very difficult specially in the sidebar but something.

01:10:59   To show him slash me this is where you need to look into their credit apples credit everything worked lickety split once I check the checkbox but I did not understand for the life of what his deal was like what do you mean it's not showing up you're clearly in the shared album if you're seeing it on your phone what's your problem old man turns out his problem was one checkbox.

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01:13:21   I tell you what so Aaron got me this is a complete subject change Aaron got me AirPods Pro for Christmas because I was too cheap to buy them for myself and they are really good I really really like them a lot the noise cancellation is phenomenal now admittedly I've not had a modern like the what is the beloved Sony's the WRX TUV 6794321.

01:13:46   Yeah the Sony WRX STI. Well done so anyway I have not tried those so that for all I know they might be just as good if not better but the noise canceling that I am familiar with from you know several years ago now was not great and holy cow like it's different like depending on you know what fan I'm standing next to sometimes noise canceling is is sufficient but sometimes it's like that fan is gone that fan just disappeared from my life.

01:14:14   I very briefly tried spatial audio very very briefly it was fine like it didn't do much for me I did this in the context of audio not like watching a movie or anything I have not taken the time or nor do I really even know what I should watch to try spatial audio in the context of like a movie I know John what's the what's the best way to do like is there some Apple TV show.

01:14:35   Best way is to turn it off and not use it because I don't I don't find it like useful at all but there's lots of you know you I think you watch pretty much any movie and just turn it on and it will try to spatialize it but there I'm sure you can find like demo things on Apple the thing is I don't think the effect that we've described it for like it's like the sound is coming out of the iPad.

01:14:57   Is that what you want do you want this sound to feel sound like it's coming out of the iPad because it can do that for you and it's really impressive and it's very convincing but that's not what I want that's why I'm wearing headphones with the sound was coming out of the iPad like you know.

01:15:11   Well I'll tell you one thing one time when you really don't want that is suppose you have your AirPods Pro paired to your MacBook and you have your MacBook propped up on your rowing machine and you are rowing back and forth moving your body physically frequently as it decides after a software update to spatialize all the audio from YouTube.

01:15:34   Oh interesting.

01:15:35   Oh my God first of all the illusion breaks real fast it's really impressive if you're like sitting still on an airplane seat it's a lot less impressive when you are moving and yeah let me tell you that's the very first thing you do if you listeners if you have this problem go to control center and turn off the space lights audio setting for that device on the Mac because you trust me you do not want this.

01:15:57   The other problem with that setting especially if you have your AirPods set to connect automatically is because the audio sounds like it's coming out of the iPad you're constantly thinking did my AirPods not connect right because a lot of the reason you're using AirPods is you don't want to disturb the person next to you if like you're in bed and someone is sleeping next to you you're on an airplane you don't want them to hear it to be annoyed by the movie that you're watching but it sounds so much like the sound is coming out of the iPad you're worried that the sound is coming out of the iPad but it's not it's coming through your headphones but sometimes it actually is coming out of your iPad and you'll be fooled into thinking it's actually coming out of your headphones but it's confusing.

01:16:26   As people are talking about in the chat this is going to be great for AR but AR is not what I want when I'm watching a movie on my iPad.

01:16:31   Yeah actually so you know to bring it back around a little bit I would love to briefly spend this time talking about really positive experience we've had with technology over this Christmas week because I have had a lot of those as well and you know Casey you mentioned how much you're you're loving the AirPods Pro and I gotta say as as a you know longtime AirPods Pro user I am still incredibly happy with them.

01:16:54   And if my AirPod Pros you know for some reason got lost or broke or something I would just go instantly buy another pair and you know listeners are aware how much I love headphones and I'm constantly using them and wearing them and I used to be constantly trying out different portable slash wireless headphones.

01:17:16   My desk headphones have been set for a while I love the HiFiMan HD6 for open and I love the DT 770 for closed and I haven't you know I'm so happy with those and so little has come around that's really been better for my preferences and needs and priorities in those areas that my desk headphone game has been solved for some time.

01:17:38   But my portable headphone game was really up in the air for a long time because portable headphones typically sucked in some ways and usually more than one and so you know typically you had to choose between you know quality and size first of all.

01:17:54   Small headphones like all of Apple's white earbuds like small headphones usually sounded like garbage for things like music but maybe maybe they'd be acceptable for podcasts and phone calls you know so you could like kind of you tolerate their crappiness and music because well they're small they can't be good.

01:18:14   And historically you'd also have to choose between things like noise isolation or active noise cancellation and size slash price slash portability you know you'd have the big you know Bose or Sony noise cancelling over ear headphones for airplanes maybe but those were a little large to be wearing you know walking around you know and they were also honestly quite expensive.

01:18:35   And so I went through so many like both wired and then later Bluetooth portable headphones you know headphones that were not as big as the giant ones I use at my desk like my studio headphones and I just never found a pair that was really great.

01:18:52   I found some that were pretty decent in most ways. The wired sets tended to be better in most ways except for of course there being a wire and then when we all went Bluetooth everything went to hell there were so many crappy headphones on the market many of which were very expensive and really everything Bluetooth that I ever tried was pretty compromised in some way until the AirPods Pro.

01:19:19   And the AirPods Pro are so damn good and still now that they're what about two years old three years old now.

01:19:27   Yep 2019.

01:19:29   Yeah so now that you know they're no longer at all like you know cutting edge in terms of newness or you know even the new AirPods have a couple of little feature improvements that the AirPods Pro don't have but they are still the best all around headphones that exist in the market today.

01:19:46   Like if you had if I had to just have one pair of headphones in my entire life it would probably be the AirPod Pros because they are just so not only so you know you mentioned Casey the noise canceling.

01:19:59   I can tell you because I've done back to back comparisons the noise cancellation on AirPods Pro is not as good as the big over ear Sony's or Bose's but it's not that far off.

01:20:11   And it's close enough that after one plane flight where I had both with me and I compared I never carried the big ones on a plane again and I think I sold them.

01:20:21   I haven't seen them in a while although I haven't flown in a while either but it's close enough in quality and in noise cancellation abilities that I decided to just take the massive backpack space savings on my airplane backpack and just never carry the big headphones again.

01:20:35   And that's that's when I believe we talked about in the show the only downside of you of the AirPods Pros in that context is that their battery life is not super strong to get through like a six hour flight.

01:20:46   So I just bought a second pair of headphones.

01:20:49   The most Marco answer I've ever heard.

01:20:51   Well because two pairs of AirPod Pros are better than most other ways you could spend four to five hundred dollars in the portable headphone space honestly like it they are just better.

01:21:02   It's simple as that. I would rather have two of those than one of anything else.

01:21:07   I'd rather have one AirPods Pro than the Bose or the Sony's.

01:21:10   You know if I have to take out take out an earbud at hour five to have it recharge in the case for a while and swap it out for the other one I'll do that fine.

01:21:18   They're that good.

01:21:19   And when you compare their music quality to anything else in the portable headphone space you have to get to a pretty large headphone before you match their quality.

01:21:33   Like you have to really get to like full size over ears before you can find anything that's better than them.

01:21:38   And even among full size over ears not all of them sound better than the AirPod Pros.

01:21:44   The AirPod Pros for given their convenience and their size and all their features with the integrations and everything even though I strongly suggest turning off auto device switching.

01:21:55   Please everything works better when you do that but there's basically no trade-off.

01:22:01   Like they're just great in all of those ways.

01:22:04   The only possible downside is if you're one of the people who they are not comfortable for.

01:22:08   And I understand that being I'm the kind of person who other AirPods were never comfortable on and I hated how awesome they were for everyone else not for me.

01:22:17   But you know so I know how you feel but man if you if the AirPod Pros are comfortable for you I so strongly recommend them because they are just so good in pretty much every way.

01:22:30   And I've never found a pair of headphones that was so good at so much.

01:22:35   I had my son audition all of the existing AirPod products as he had basically AirPod 1s I think still and he just uses them 24 hours a day now.

01:22:43   So it's just constantly like he's totally attached to them and of course now the battery is crappy or whatever and there's newer ones so hey let's get him some new ones right.

01:22:50   And so I not so subtly had him try you know a newer version of the AirPods of the old AirPods AirPods 2 or whatever.

01:22:57   I had him try the new AirPods 3 and I had him try the AirPods Pro.

01:23:01   And showed him the noise canceling feature and the transparency feature and did the tip fit test to make sure he was you know did all the things or whatever.

01:23:08   And of all those three ones I had him pick you know which one of these do you like better.

01:23:12   And he picked the 3s and I don't know it's just that the idea of having something in his ear canal was wigging him out because he's never used to that or whatever.

01:23:20   He said he doesn't care about the noise canceling maybe young people don't care about noise.

01:23:24   Noise just bothers old people.

01:23:25   But he did like the 3s better than the 1s probably because it doesn't take much to tell that the sound is better on the 3s or the 2s.

01:23:33   It was better on the 3s than the 2s.

01:23:35   The 2 and the 1s I think the audio was about the same but the 3s have significantly better audio.

01:23:40   So that's what that's what he got for Christmas he got the AirPods 3.

01:23:44   And my daughter did not like the 3 because they were too big in her ears and she got a new pair of the 2s.

01:23:50   Nice.

01:23:52   Yeah these AirPods Pro are really good and I immediately felt like they sound way better than my I guess they're replacing a second generation AirPods.

01:23:59   So the first look but the second version.

01:24:02   AirPods 2 as well.

01:24:03   Right okay.

01:24:04   Yes.

01:24:05   Night and day.

01:24:06   They're so much better.

01:24:07   But they are a very different shape so it is worth like actually trying them to see whether the new ship because if the if the original shape fits your ear great that means nothing about the second shape or the AirPods 3 shape.

01:24:19   Because there's no there's no panels in common.

01:24:22   Yeah but I've been using the 3s now as well and I should I should have been logging how many times I tapped them.

01:24:29   I'm just the other day I was thinking I haven't tapped these in forever maybe I've finally gotten over the pinch and then like the next day I double tap them real quick when someone's trying to talk to me.

01:24:37   I'll get over it eventually but you know I'm getting better at pinching.

01:24:40   Oh yeah to that end yeah the pinching doesn't doesn't bother me.

01:24:44   I think I like it more I feel like it's a slower operation but ultimately I think I like it more than the tapping and I never was that bothered by the tapping to be honest with you.

01:24:53   But so far so far so good on pinching.

01:24:56   Yeah these things are really great and I'm going to be so sad when the brand new ones come out in like three months but for those three months before that happens I'm super happy.

01:25:04   And if you'll permit me a very quick technology that makes me happy.

01:25:08   So I think I've mentioned many times in the past that the greater Richmond area goes absolutely bananas when it comes to Christmas lights and it's a thing to go on a quote unquote tacky light tour around here.

01:25:19   And some people go really all out and they'll rent like a party bus or limousine and you know typically drink grown up drinks while they're riding not driving and looking at lights.

01:25:29   And it's a very fun thing to do.

01:25:30   Granted I haven't done that in like 10 years but Aaron and I still like to take the kids and go around and you know look at lights.

01:25:37   In the last couple of years we've done it with her youngest brother and his now wife but we're still not entirely keen on you know everyone climbing into the same car.

01:25:49   So we used cheap crummy digital walkie talkies to talk between cars.

01:25:54   Worked great.

01:25:55   It worked great.

01:25:55   It's such a simple like I love those like cheap simple solutions to problems.

01:25:59   It's much greater than it's a much greater feeling when you can throw twenty dollars at a problem and I don't know how much these were but it was it was not expensive to get the.

01:26:07   These things and you know we threw twenty dollars at this problem like four years ago for something unrelated and we're getting so much use out of these little digital walkie talkies for all sorts of random and uninteresting things.

01:26:17   But I love when basic simple technology actually works and works reliably and it makes me so happy.

01:26:23   I'll also say so one of my Christmas gifts this year TIFF got me my own Nintendo Switch.

01:26:30   Our Nintendo Switch journey started out as I got one through a friend of the show Colin Donnell who had like an extra pre-order and let me buy it off of him at cost back when that was really quite a generous thing to do because nobody was giving him a cost.

01:26:44   So I had the first Nintendo Switch of the family.

01:26:47   It was very rapidly stolen by the rest of my family and then later on TIFF got her own and then you know quote mine really became Adam's.

01:26:58   And so I just really basically haven't had a switch for a while and Ab and I have really gotten into playing co-op games of Stardew Valley.

01:27:06   I love Stardew Valley it's such an amazing game and I hadn't played it in a while probably a couple years really and we really were enjoying co-op.

01:27:14   Well TIFF got me my own Switch now so now we have a family co-op game with all three of us are playing and it's delightful.

01:27:20   It's so much fun we love doing it I'm so happy I finally have a Switch and she got me I don't know how but she got me the Switch.

01:27:28   OLED the new one.

01:27:29   I was gonna say how is the distribution of OLED throughout the Switch family doing here.

01:27:34   I'm not sure that you should really be the one with the OLED based on hours played.

01:27:38   Well I won't have burn in.

01:27:40   So yes I have the only OLED model TIFF's and Adam's were both bought before that model existed.

01:27:47   And Adam's which is now the oldest one the original purchase Adam's now has a very loud fan and I've been faced with the dilemma of like do I try to replace it.

01:28:00   Like I looked up the iFixit guide and it's involved.

01:28:03   Do you have a Joy-Con drift on TIFF's or Adam's?

01:28:06   No surprisingly not.

01:28:07   I mean it's amazing you dodged that bullet.

01:28:09   Yeah I mean we do have a few extra Joy-Cons so it wouldn't be the end of the world if that happened but anyway.

01:28:13   So this is our first OLED model and it is I gotta say really nice.

01:28:20   I haven't been following really very closely like what the differences were and all I knew was everybody was upset that there weren't many differences.

01:28:28   But let me tell you the differences that are there matter.

01:28:31   It's so nice.

01:28:33   So first of all yeah the screen is just way nicer.

01:28:36   OLED looks way better than any LCD let alone the fairly mediocre and outdated LCD's that were in the regular Switch console.

01:28:44   So number one it's way better with contrast, color, brightness, everything.

01:28:49   It looks incredible.

01:28:50   It looks like an OLED TV.

01:28:52   OLED looks awesome.

01:28:53   And the screen size has also grown slightly.

01:28:58   It's a little bit bigger screen and they did that mainly by shrinking the bezels.

01:29:01   And again that matters.

01:29:03   It might not matter so much to kids who have amazing eyes and don't care about screen quality so much.

01:29:07   It matters a lot to me.

01:29:09   Like the regular Switch screen I could play games on it but I was always a little squinty.

01:29:15   Especially like when so many games assume they're running on a TV and so they have really small text in a lot of areas.

01:29:21   And it's a little hard to see on the original Switch screen.

01:29:24   The Switch OLED is like I think a half inch or one inch bigger screen.

01:29:28   It's not a massive difference but it is a helpful difference and a noticeable one.

01:29:32   So way nicer screen overall.

01:29:36   Also they have updated the feel of some of the buttons around the case.

01:29:39   The kickstand now is actually useful.

01:29:42   Like it goes all the way across the back instead of just a little like thumb thing.

01:29:45   So yeah overall a couple of little nice improvements and the screen being a really big improvement.

01:29:50   I'm very happy with it and I would say if you're buying a new Switch today assuming you can find one in stock.

01:29:57   If you care about such things the OLED model is really nice.

01:30:01   And I think it's only 50 bucks more than the other one was so it seems like a no-brainer to me.

01:30:05   Did they do the... I forgot if this was a software update or a feature of the Switch OLED.

01:30:08   But for the longest time Switch did not support plain old Bluetooth headphones.

01:30:12   That's a software update.

01:30:13   And that it did. I guess that's for all of them.

01:30:15   I haven't actually tried it on any of them but that was a software update across all of them recently.

01:30:19   Oh hold on. One complaint before we leave Nintendo Switch land.

01:30:24   We, you know being modern people, purchased most of our games as downloads.

01:30:30   Most of these games were purchased under my Nintendo account back forever ago.

01:30:33   Now that I have my own Switch that I've activated as my own.

01:30:37   There seems to be no way for Adam to play the games I bought on his Switch.

01:30:42   It says you're supposed to be able to do this like if it has internet connectivity.

01:30:46   In practice that seems to fail a lot and just refuse to play.

01:30:49   And certain games you can't play at all that way.

01:30:51   And I've tried different combinations of like which one you set as your active console and everything.

01:30:55   And that's it just kind of sucks that first of all you have to go through all these hoops.

01:30:59   And second of all that when you have a digital purchase.

01:31:02   I can't even though we are a like family share group in Nintendo's eyes.

01:31:06   I as the person who originally bought these games.

01:31:10   Not only can my family not play them even if I'm not playing it.

01:31:13   But I also can't seem to like transfer my ownership to my son for this game.

01:31:19   So I seem to have no recourse whatsoever except to rebuy all of these $60 games.

01:31:25   That my son wants to play if he's still gonna be able to play them.

01:31:27   And that that sucks. That really sucks.

01:31:29   I remember I went through this with Destiny and the PlayStation.

01:31:31   It gets even worse.

01:31:32   So Sony's terrible with that also.

01:31:33   But then it gets even worse when you have DLC.

01:31:35   Like Destiny you know is the base game is nothing and everything is about the expansions.

01:31:39   And it's like okay well you can both play the game.

01:31:41   But do they have that expansion?

01:31:43   Do you have to buy the expansion separately?

01:31:44   But you can share the base game.

01:31:45   Can you share neither?

01:31:46   Who can be playing at the same time?

01:31:48   It is very very very bad.

01:31:49   Yeah I gotta say Apple is way better at family sharing than Nintendo is.

01:31:54   By a mile.

01:31:55   And even Apple just recently folded in in-app purchases into the system.

01:32:00   Originally you could share apps within the family but in-app purchases were hit or miss.

01:32:04   And now I think it's up to the developers to decide right?

01:32:06   I believe yeah and for a while subscriptions couldn't be shared.

01:32:09   But they have recently modified that as well.

01:32:11   And yeah it's like we complain a lot about Apple.

01:32:15   But sometimes when you see some other part of the tech environment you realize like oh god we

01:32:19   we don't have it so bad.

01:32:20   And that's why we're all here right?

01:32:22   That's why we all care you know because the rest of the tech.

01:32:25   You know landscape is is not all roses at all.

01:32:28   John any good technology stories from your holiday?

01:32:32   I don't think so.

01:32:33   Not a lot of tech issues.

01:32:35   I mean the AirPods just worked out of the box.

01:32:36   Oh I guess the only one tech thing is I got my wife a new car thingy for a car mount for

01:32:44   the phone.

01:32:45   She'd been using one that she had for years which is one of the recommended kind of like

01:32:48   bear trap ones where you stick the phone in there and it triggers the trap and the thing.

01:32:54   You know just any size phone and she's used it across many different phones with and without

01:32:58   battery cases and it was fine but it always annoyed me when I had to drive her car because

01:33:02   when I use like the turn signal with my right hand it would occasionally hit the like the

01:33:06   thing that's sticking out of the like they have these little things that stick out the

01:33:09   side that you press in to make the to set the bear trap and it would hit my hand.

01:33:13   I didn't like it it was annoying.

01:33:14   So I figured I can solve that problem now by giving her a MagSafe mount that Marco raving

01:33:19   about his and she has a MagSafe phone and all of her cases are MagSafe right?

01:33:23   And she has a stupid Apple MagSafe battery thing but that's removable easily right so

01:33:27   you don't have to worry about that either.

01:33:29   And I'm happy with it so far she hasn't complained about it I think she likes it but like the

01:33:34   point is I was able to put that mount there the mount is way smaller because it's just

01:33:38   a circular you know magnetic puck thing and it's always plugged in through a cable that

01:33:44   I carefully routed to the USB thing so now she was taking the cable like from the USB

01:33:48   that's in like the center console and she would just stretch that thing.

01:33:52   I always bother me because she's remember she's stretching this past a stick shift right

01:33:55   so you've got this lightning cable stretching from the center console that she would occasionally

01:33:59   plug into her mounted phone if it needed battery because Pokemon Go had drained it for the

01:34:03   millionth time right but then she didn't always have a plug in sometimes it was just dangling

01:34:07   and sometimes it was just like hanging out by the shifter and all that is gone now.

01:34:10   Now it's just a cable that goes from the like the console like the where the radio would

01:34:15   be from there up to the puck and it never moves and I actually like you know gaff tape

01:34:20   it to the side of the dashboard so it's all like there's no hanging cables anywhere and

01:34:24   you just get in the car and you shove on your phone and it's mounted and it's easily adjustable

01:34:28   and it's also charging so I'm very happy with that gift I hope she is too.

01:34:31   And did she like her bowling ball as well John?

01:34:35   Yeah I mean it's in her car and I don't even have a magsafe case so it's not like

01:34:39   previously when I went in her car I could use that mount I can't even use that mount anymore

01:34:43   because I don't have a magsafe case so like it's fine it's not my car it's her thing but I

01:34:46   hope she likes it.

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01:36:40   all right Jeff Fowler writes the current iMac 27 inch starts at $1799 if the new replacement

01:36:46   for this machine starts at $19.99 but includes the option to use it as a monitor for the MacBook Pro

01:36:51   with 120 hertz p3 color hdr etc and can be connected with a single cable as we all want

01:36:58   would you buy it just to use it as a monitor is a base 27 inch iMac just going to sit dormant behind

01:37:02   a display on your desk or is this really stupid uh in knowing what I know today yes I would buy it

01:37:08   and yes it would be dormant or maybe I would turn that into my server and if there was such a way to

01:37:12   like have it not use the screen which I doubt but you know in this fantasy world but I would do that

01:37:17   without even blinking an eye I absolutely would you two wouldn't however because you have your

01:37:21   stupid xdrs that I'm jealous right but I think anyone would buy this because there is no current

01:37:26   $2,000 monitor that has the specs of this thing that they're describing in this question right

01:37:30   but the the real answer is that's not going to happen like target display mode hasn't been on

01:37:35   iMacs in what like seven years like how long ago did they get rid of that it was a while right yeah

01:37:40   it never made the jump to retina so the last Mac that had it was the 27 inch non-retina iMac right

01:37:45   and all the other solutions for using a Mac as a monitor like over the network or with air display

01:37:52   or whatever all those have lag or quality loss or both and so I think if that was the only way you

01:37:58   could use it I think all of our answers would be no we wouldn't use a new 27 inch iMac if it

01:38:03   couldn't be connected like a monitor like with an actual wire instead of like some weird thing where

01:38:08   we encode your video as h.264 and send it over the network and like it would have to be display port

01:38:13   you know like actual monitor connection not some kind of network blurry compressed whatever thing

01:38:19   because we already have enough compression with display screen compression we don't need

01:38:22   you know showing a weird movie on the thing so for two thousand dollars no I don't think any of us

01:38:27   and you can correct me if you're wrong would accept the idea that it's a way for you to airplay to a

01:38:31   two thousand dollar monitor yeah definitely not yeah I wouldn't do that but ultimately though like

01:38:36   I do think this is an interesting time to revisit like pricing estimates for what we think the

01:38:42   the alleged monitors that might be coming out in the future might cost you know if you look at the

01:38:47   the 24 inch M1 iMac and if you assume that the rumored LG like low-end one you know the made by

01:38:56   LG apple monitor which would be a 24 inch monitor if you assume it's basically the iMac the 24 inch

01:39:03   iMac's monitor in an external case with you know just ports in the back and no computer

01:39:07   that computer starts at thirteen hundred dollars I bet that monitor would be and no one's gonna

01:39:15   like this a thousand dollars for the 24 inch size without the you know micro led xdr stuff

01:39:23   just the regular 24 inch apple monitor I bet is a thousand dollars and I bet now for the 27 inch

01:39:30   that everybody actually wants well that iMac with right now the current iMac without the xdr stuff

01:39:35   again eighteen hundred dollars starting price I'm guessing the nice one probably goes to you know

01:39:42   the nice new one with the M1's the you know what's probably going to be called iMac Pro even you know

01:39:47   even like the you know quote base models it's probably going to be the same guts as the MacBook

01:39:51   Pros it's probably gonna be called iMac Pro and be 27 inches I bet that starts at two thousand dollars

01:39:57   and so I bet that the 27 inch monitor would be very unlikely to cost less than

01:40:06   eighteen hundred by itself so that's what I'm just prepare yourself people if you think that

01:40:12   when you say we want apple to make cheaper monitors than the xdr well it's that's easy to

01:40:18   make things cheaper than six thousand dollars because you know I bet they'll include stand so

01:40:21   I'm going to compare like to like and say six thousand instead of five thousand because I'm

01:40:25   including the stand price so I bet the lineup we're gonna be left with is 24 inches at a thousand

01:40:31   dollars 27 inches for almost two thousand dollars and the Pro Display XDR at six thousand dollars

01:40:37   one complication is some recent rumor back and forth about whether or not the 27 inch thing will

01:40:44   be mini led and will have hdr because there was some rumor going around that said oh actually it's

01:40:49   going to be like the 24 inch and that it's not going to have hdr not going to have high refresh

01:40:52   not even going to be mini led and that I think would potentially adjust down the price of the

01:41:00   27 inch monitor assuming exists maybe not though but that rumor was like the people who had the

01:41:05   mini led rumor strongly refuted it and said no no no the big one isn't going to be mini led so I

01:41:10   don't know if this is true or not but like the idea that there is some that there is contention about

01:41:14   whether the big one will be or not because it seems people seem to have consensus the 24 inch

01:41:19   won't be because it's just the iMac monitor and we know the iMac monitor doesn't have that and it's

01:41:22   supposed to be low end so that all makes sense the 27 inch I still really hope is mini led

01:41:27   but if it's not it could be lower but like two thousand dollars for a 27 inch especially if it's

01:41:32   mini led hdr high refresh that's not a bad deal at all again CEO the past shows where I looked at

01:41:38   like if you wanted to buy that today in like the quote unquote PC monitor market it's expensive

01:41:43   two thousand dollars for a monitor of apple quality of that size with those specs that's

01:41:48   a pretty good price and it's not just it's less than half of the six thousand dollar range you

01:41:51   know a third of the price so you know that's a good price spread right a thousand dollars I know

01:41:57   that seems like a lot for 20 orange but it'd be really nice and have a nice stand and blah blah

01:42:00   blah and then two thousand and six thousand that's that's a reasonable monitor range like ship it's

01:42:06   good yeah like that that's why like I think people who are hoping for like you know an 800 monitor I

01:42:12   think you're gonna be disappointed like I think it's gonna be you know typical apple as I said

01:42:16   before like they will probably eventually deliver on this but when it comes out it's going to be

01:42:22   substantially more money than you wish it was and some of you out there will buy it anyway and

01:42:26   that's why they can do it yeah I was gonna say that I would think that a thousand dollars and

01:42:32   two thousand dollars would be the target prices irrespective of the cost of the computer associated

01:42:37   with it like even if the 27-inch iMac starts at 1800 which I'm not saying it well but let's just

01:42:41   suppose the 27-inch iMac starts at 1800 bucks but the 27-inch monitor is two thousand dollars I

01:42:46   really don't think they'd care I really don't yeah that wouldn't spread them at all but but again I

01:42:51   think two thousand dollars may be low if it has all those specs because you cannot find a PC monitor

01:42:56   with those specs for anything close to two thousand dollars right now and you know those

01:43:00   are you know time marches on we get new displays right but I think it would be a quite a leap for

01:43:06   an apple monitor with p3 color high refresh HDR mini led with thousands of zones to be two thousand

01:43:16   dollars at 5k 27-inch we'll say though well I mean maybe maybe we have the pricing on this wrong I

01:43:22   mean let me see like the 16-inch macbook pro starts at 2500 so maybe we're maybe this is not you know

01:43:30   just one iMac pro starting at 1800 you know maybe maybe the rumors about that you that you just said

01:43:37   john about like the 27-inch not having the high refresh and possibly mini led stuff like maybe

01:43:43   we're actually talking about different computers here the iMac and an iMac pro yeah maybe there's

01:43:47   going to be like a 27-inch low-end model and a 27-inch high-end model that might be like three

01:43:53   thousand dollar starting price and that would be an even better way to to diversify this range even

01:43:58   more because a lot of people don't care about a high refresh or HDR or p3 color but that the

01:44:04   current 5k iMac screen is a really nice retina screen for regular people who don't care about

01:44:08   those things so why not sell it and then that lets them you know instead of having 1000 2006

01:44:14   they can have 1000 2000 3500 6 well honestly I would be surprised it like if they do have two

01:44:23   27-inch iMac classes you know if they still do have like you know a non mini led non high refresh

01:44:31   one and the high-end mini led and high refresh one I don't think they would turn both of those

01:44:37   into standalone monitors I think they would pick one probably the higher end one yeah maybe and so

01:44:42   then we might be something we might be might have something like 1000 3000 and 6000 yeah that's more

01:44:48   even spread but yeah a man can dream but can you imagine how much developers are gonna freak out

01:44:53   like you know people like us how much all the fans are gonna freak out if they finally make the the

01:44:57   27-inch monitor we've been waiting for for years and it's three thousand I mean it's still way less

01:45:02   than six thousand it is right I think I think people would be buy it and they buy it and they'd

01:45:08   be happy to buy it's like pent up demand people are just so I like kind of like how most people

01:45:11   aren't complaining about the prices of the new MacBooks because they're so good when we waited

01:45:14   so long for a good computer is that no one cares about the price like they could have been a thousand

01:45:18   dollars more each and people still would have bought them if they could afford it seriously I

01:45:21   spent five thousand freaking dollars on this MacBook Pro and I zero regrets absolutely zero

01:45:26   regrets and I know you don't want to hear this Casey I spent six thousand freaking dollars on

01:45:30   the XDR and I have zero regrets really sorry you broke up again are you back on wi-fi yeah anyway

01:45:35   Eric new writes apple is famously secretive to what extent do you think apple welcomes the drama

01:45:40   and publicity that comes with cat and mouse of the rumor and leak game this was I don't know

01:45:45   that this I felt like this was a fairly interesting question and I don't really know what I think

01:45:50   about it I think apple by and large enjoys the game but they hate when when when the press gets

01:45:58   something right like like the iPhone 4 leaking and when they leaked a whole bunch of press images

01:46:04   on when they themselves leaked a whole bunch of press images right before a keynote like a year

01:46:08   or two back a couple years ago I think when stuff is legitimately spoiled I think apple hates that

01:46:15   hates that more than anything but everyone just sitting and flapping their gums about it hello

01:46:21   I think I think they quite like that and like that everyone is always paying attention to them

01:46:26   and anytime they they move even the tiniest bit all of us go what was that what what I think they

01:46:33   quite like it what do you think Marco I think you know what what their executive said in interviews

01:46:38   recently like I know I think it was Schiller who said this on the talk show a few years back about

01:46:42   how like you know it was very much a like you know support the troops kind of argument of like well

01:46:47   you know we really don't like you know our teams work so hard on this and and it's it's just we

01:46:52   hate that they that their day comes to shine and it's ruined you know and that that argument I

01:46:57   understand to a degree I I see apple as not having much of a sense of humor culturally as a company

01:47:07   and I do think that that like oh the team's let down attitude I think really pervades the company

01:47:16   pretty pretty deeply and so I think when when when we heard that I think that was correct that that

01:47:22   it really deeply bothers them that when something gets spoiled and I don't I can't say I'm I can't

01:47:30   say that's unreasonable you know like that that makes total sense why they would be really upset

01:47:35   about that from that point of view that to me though you know that that is definitely filed

01:47:41   under in my opinion like that's apple's problem not our problem you know if there's some leaked

01:47:47   schematics of the macbook pro shows the ports and we talk about it on this show hey look this if this

01:47:52   is real this is pretty cool I don't feel like we are spoiling anything for anybody in the company

01:47:58   for their work not being valuable you know because then when it comes out we celebrate it again and

01:48:02   we love it and we are so happy about it and the whole reason people are really into finding out

01:48:10   new information about apple products is because we all love them and we're excited and this stuff

01:48:16   affects our lives in massive ways as customer you know not only as podcasters who talk about this

01:48:22   but as customers of apples we care so much because we love them and we love their products and their

01:48:29   products are super important to us and so to have an audience that cares so deeply about your stuff

01:48:36   that they would seek out and then discuss for hours rumors about stuff that you might be making

01:48:44   that rumors that might be true and how excited we would be if they do come true there's also a lot of

01:48:50   value in that to the company and so I think I don't think the answer is as clear-cut as apple

01:48:57   likes or doesn't like the you know the rumor and leak game I think it's complicated I think they

01:49:02   don't like the part of it that spoils their surprises but they also I think strong so

01:49:10   strongly benefit from the culture of people who are so obsessed with their stuff that we love it

01:49:15   so much and we care about this you can't ignore that benefit and granted that's a benefit they

01:49:20   didn't necessarily ask for but that is a benefit that they greatly enjoy and reap profits from so

01:49:26   I think it's complicated you know I think if you ask them like would you prefer if this thing in

01:49:32   the future be leaked they would almost certainly say no almost every time but to some degree it's

01:49:40   unavoidable because the scale they're at is so big and there's so many you know manufacturers

01:49:44   and stuff involved and and that's again that's a problem of their success and to it you know the

01:49:49   other side of it is that they they have enjoyed so much success based on people's obsession and care

01:49:54   about their products so again I think it's a mixed bag I think in an ideal world apple wants everyone

01:50:01   to be talking about what they're doing and want to know what they're doing and having that

01:50:04   conversation and they want them to never figure anything out and never get any actual weeks right

01:50:09   because the whole the whole I mean chiller's perspective I was like oh the teams are so

01:50:12   disappointed because they don't have their coming out story what the you know the team that most

01:50:18   cares about that is marketing right they want to control the message of their product like

01:50:23   and their message is like here's how we want our product to be presented to the world here's what

01:50:27   we're going to say it's good for and they lose control of that message if rumors of that actual

01:50:32   product get out ahead of time because then people start talking about it however they want oh like

01:50:35   if apple doesn't get to tell you like here's the thing and we did it this way because of x they

01:50:39   don't get to control the message and say here's how you should think about this product we'll just

01:50:42   make up whatever we want oh it's too expensive it's not expensive enough it has doesn't have

01:50:45   the features we want it's bad because it doesn't have as many megapixels as this like apple needs

01:50:50   to control the method what part of apple needs to control that message not the product team that

01:50:53   makes it marketing right and phil shiller is the head of marketing for years so of course he's

01:50:57   going to say oh it's so disappointing to the team you know what team is this point to the marketing

01:51:00   team because now you're like how the hell we were we had this whole message ready to tell here's

01:51:04   this product and here's what we want to say about it and now instead we are on our back on our heels

01:51:09   saying we have to counter the narrative that's been out there for two months because of the stupid

01:51:12   rumors uh so yeah apple wants people talking about them but they do not want them to know anything

01:51:17   fair enough and finally adam m head writes when teaching your kids best practices for their mac os

01:51:23   and windows device do you recommend they close all open apps before we're starting the device

01:51:27   mac os reopens the apps if you tell it to windows doesn't handle this as well i am not in a position

01:51:33   to need to worry about this quite yet although for my own use i almost never close basically anything

01:51:39   before i shut down i picked on marco first last time john what's your approach here with you and

01:51:43   your kids i think adam has a very optimistic notion of being able to tell your kids anything

01:51:48   like as if as if they're going to a seek out or b listen to any advice you give them about how you

01:51:55   think they should use technology products very optimistic um to answer this question for my kids

01:52:03   i do not have never taught my kids anything having to do with this uh the the closest i've come is

01:52:09   reprimanding them for reflexively force quoting apps in their phone but that's mostly a losing

01:52:12   battle because whatever um but no like i they will learn to use the device the way they feel

01:52:20   like using it if they again if they're doing something that has no technical foundation or

01:52:24   that is doing the opposite of what i think it is like force quoting all the apps in their phone

01:52:27   reflexively i will explain what's actually happening and then they can make a decision

01:52:31   from there but i don't recommend anything about window hygiene i mean the closest i'll get is

01:52:37   every time i sit down to try to fix something on my son's computer i have to take everything

01:52:40   out of full screen but that's more of a me issue right because he puts everything in full screen

01:52:44   and he three finger swipes between them that's not how i want to use the computer so when i'm

01:52:47   even though if i'm just there for debugging for two seconds like that or whatever like that xcode

01:52:50   problem i'm like i just pull everything out of full screen so i can see more than one window at

01:52:54   a time and so i just feel more comfortable doing that i hate having to swipe around he doesn't

01:52:59   like me swiping around because i'm swiping to some web page where he's looking at something that he's

01:53:03   one of his dad to see or whatever like it's just it's a bad three finger swiping is bad not my but

01:53:08   but i don't i just i don't tell him you shouldn't run things in full he's got a macbook air like

01:53:12   full screen i can understand why you do when things full screen you want to maximize you know

01:53:15   it's the old 13 inch macbook air and i know why he does things in full screen and if he likes three

01:53:20   fingers swiping between them you know go for it but i do the closest i get is i show him hey you

01:53:26   know when your dad stands your computer see i can do lots of stuff because i can see more than one

01:53:29   window on the screen at a time even on a 13 inch screen that has its advantages considerate that's

01:53:35   the closest i get most of the time i'm just hands off yeah so i don't see adam using a mac much yet

01:53:40   because the only place he uses a mac really is in school um so and you know i don't usually see that

01:53:46   um but uh on windows like on his gaming pc um he doesn't seem to really multitask so it's not i mean

01:53:54   but i mean why would a kid with a gaming pc really need to multitask that much you'll open one game

01:53:58   and you close and open another game so it's not really a problem that we're facing and he's a

01:54:02   little young to have like much productivity stuff open at all um but uh my my battle again with john

01:54:10   it's like my battle is like just can you please like quit tear down before you close the lid to

01:54:16   the laptop that way it's not sitting there blaring the fan for the next 12 hours until i walk by and

01:54:20   notice that it's on blaring the fan because it's not it's not actually sleeping and it's running a

01:54:23   game engine in the background and oh god just please quit quit the game before you close the lid

01:54:28   like that's the level pc less fan noise yeah fewer games uh that's another solution yeah right yeah

01:54:37   we can solve the problem of your games overheating your computer by just having a computer that can't

01:54:41   run any of the games you like thanks to our sponsors this week linode memberful and trade

01:54:45   coffee and thanks to our members who support us directly you can join at atp.fm join we will talk

01:54:52   to you next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:55:02   oh it was accidental john didn't do any research marco and casey wouldn't let him

01:55:11   because it was accidental it was accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm

01:55:22   and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m a r c o

01:55:34   a r m anti-marco armen s i r a c u s i syracuse it's accidental

01:55:46   they didn't mean to accidental

01:55:54   hey so we went long so uh i will give an extremely short update for the after show

01:56:00   uh the iMac pro is almost in florida um it did not sell on twitter did not sell on swapa

01:56:07   you're not are you disappointing me with the florida casey you're so excited when i hear

01:56:11   you say dog and coffee and you're saying florida come on what happened

01:56:16   well it's the florida instead of florida yeah god whatever anyway say the fruit the tropicana

01:56:23   makes juice from orange juice oh that's what happened did you never have that or did you

01:56:28   lose it no i never did no it's not orange juice yeah it's it's i pronounce things properly not

01:56:34   like a long island but you used to be on my page with them and you say things like dog and coffee

01:56:38   and stuff and you know i you you say it like uh closer to new yorker like you know your connecticut

01:56:44   your new york inflected connecticut accent but those two i thought i didn't know those two didn't

01:56:48   make it up to connecticut i guess not uh who even knows but also remember i'm a mutt of an accent

01:56:53   because yeah you know my very very early life was new york state and then i bounced around the

01:56:57   midwest for a while and then to connecticut during my high school years then southwest

01:57:02   really rural virginia for college and then in central virginia which is also a melting pot in

01:57:07   of itself ever since so i'm a mess although i think i feel like i just talked about this with

01:57:12   you guys maybe it was on on analog i don't know but anyway i feel like uh syllables are getting

01:57:16   longer over the years like it's instead of instead of mile it's mile yeah the south the south may be

01:57:23   affecting you but we'll always have dog and coffee that's right so anyway so yes so my uh my imac pro

01:57:30   is on its way to florida uh where mac me an offer has given me uh what did they give it

01:57:37   supposedly it's pretty good offer right it was like 2500 bucks which uh was not as much as i wanted

01:57:42   but is probably a fair offer for what it was for most should give everyone extra ten dollars due

01:57:47   to the name of their company so here's here's how i see this you know you got rid of this computer

01:57:55   you got rid of the intel generation it's it's now out of your hands it is done yeah bank it

01:58:03   and put it towards whatever your monitor conclusion ends up being you know don't consider this part of

01:58:09   the lg fund for the love of god uh just consider consider the lg fund like a sunk cost from a

01:58:15   previous age and now consider yourself having a effective 2500 discount towards whatever you

01:58:24   choose to do next and while i would push you for the xdr thing and just be done with it now

01:58:30   i know you're not going to really do that even though you you still should do that but i know

01:58:34   you won't so you know instead you know maybe maybe say maybe bank that towards the upcoming

01:58:40   three thousand dollar 27 inch monitor that they that they release instead well that's the thing

01:58:45   though it's it's the same it's the same thing that one of you i suppose was john just said about the

01:58:50   macbooks uh being so expensive like any and in any normal scenario if you told me that i would

01:58:57   willingly happily spend five thousand friggin dollars on a laptop i'd laugh in your face there's

01:59:02   zero chance of that well but speaking of i mean again like speaking of happy tech stories this

01:59:09   laptop was so good like all christmas break i right now you know we went to visit family i've been i

01:59:15   did some coding work on it oh my god it's so good sorry go on no i couldn't agree more that's exactly

01:59:22   it and so yes like even though five thousand dollars for really any computer is a preposterous

01:59:26   sum of money hi john uh and it's still it's still i would pay it again like not literally again but

01:59:32   i would do it all over again in a heartbeat to get this computer because i love this computer so darn

01:59:36   much it is so unbelievably great and i feel like you know this phantom apple monitor that may or

01:59:42   may not come next year even if it's three three thousand dollars like when you're standing in

01:59:47   monitor hell the three thousand dollar glass of water is well worth the money like i will

01:59:53   absolutely pay that i won't even blink an eye because you know what it's half off that six

01:59:57   thousand dollar monstrosity that you idiots paid for so uh yeah i will do that in an absolute

02:00:02   heartbeat i won't even blink i'll tell you sit in front of this glorious 27 inch ultra fine right now

02:00:07   i miss my 6k so much i do not mind that my 6k costs 6k i do not mind at all because i cannot

02:00:16   wait to go back to it and and i i see its value every second that i'm using this slightly diagonal

02:00:24   mediocre monitor with edge backlight bleeding and it's shaking every time i hit the keyboard

02:00:28   and like oh my god i i can't wait to get back i i totally hear you and and honestly like there is

02:00:34   a lot of value for a for an apple nerd like yourself to just be done with intel with you

02:00:40   i assume aaron's computer is still uh a macbook she still has the cute the adorable oh the 12 inch

02:00:46   right okay which i asked her actually i almost for christmas i almost impulse bought her a

02:00:51   macbook air and i thought about it and i was like you know what she uses her computer

02:00:55   basically exclusively to do online grocery shopping orders and almost nothing else like

02:01:01   okay in that case i i have a different i have a slightly different uh suggestion for you

02:01:08   our spouses put up with a lot from us let's let's be honest no idea right so

02:01:14   i mean the three of us i have to imagine you know we're our spouses are are are angels very

02:01:21   tolerant of our of our various um quirks employables yes take a portion of this 2500

02:01:29   you've just earned from your old intel trade-in and when the new macbook air comes out this spring

02:01:33   buy one for aaron and sell the macbook one i don't know if i would sell it honestly i did love that

02:01:38   macbook one so much well do a trade-in for apple that's what i mean uh well fair no i was i for a

02:01:42   fleeting moment i thought i would be i'd pull a john and hold on to it but ultimately i would

02:01:47   just take up space and there would be no point but i i did love that computer so much it was it was a

02:01:51   piece of garbage the moment i bought it and i loved it i loved it so much but that's all right yeah

02:01:58   and honestly i i have a feeling if any speaking of rumors if there if any of the rumors about the the

02:02:06   upcoming m2 potentially based macbook air um if the rumors are at all accurate it's gonna be awesome

02:02:13   in many ways like it obviously the m1 macbook air is awesome already like if you happen to go that

02:02:19   route that's also a fantastic route to go it would obviously be a bit of a size and weight upgrade

02:02:23   from what she has now um which would you know possibly be viewed as a downgrade um but first

02:02:29   of all i suspect the new air is going to close that gap a little bit um but also the new air is

02:02:35   going to have like the you know the even nicer new keyboard it's going to have allegedly like a a

02:02:41   physical design and color scheme similar to the uh new 24 inch imax like that's going to be an

02:02:46   awesome computer it's people are going to love that thing and they're going to sell a ton of them

02:02:49   um if that's at all accurate so consider this as an option uh because i'll tell you one thing

02:02:56   as an intel free house and and by the way i just traded in tiff's laptop the the 16 inch macbook

02:03:01   pro the intel one to apple and got almost 1500 for it it was like 14 80 or something like that

02:03:07   i was blown away like that it was still worth that much but it does feel really good to be intel free

02:03:14   right now like as a nerd the way we are we are like you know we are apple nerds and we all

02:03:19   all three of us keep with you know with the exception of john a few years ago all three of

02:03:24   us keep pretty high end apple hardware and you know pretty pretty recent apple hardware um and

02:03:29   so to be all in on apple silicon if if you don't need to run any windows stuff oh my god it's so

02:03:34   nice it's so so nice and i'm like i'm happy that the only intel machines in my house are now gaming

02:03:40   pcs it's like all right let intel be intel you know let let it do what it does best which is

02:03:46   gaming hardware with pc stuff and have intel microsoft have their own like you know hot little

02:03:53   room off to the side of the house where it's just full of like fan noise and then over here we have

02:03:59   glorious m1 apple land and it's just so nice over here this is like the you know the the

02:04:04   professional side of the house and it's just it's so so much nicer so yeah maybe consider that

02:04:09   option oh it uh speaking of tangentially i heard the fan on my macbook pro oh like a couple of

02:04:16   weeks ago i actually heard it i will give you one guess what i was doing fmpeg indeed i don't but i

02:04:23   wasn't even doing like i have done so much fmpeg work on this thing it hasn't even batted an eye

02:04:28   and for what i don't know i don't remember specifically what it was but something about

02:04:31   this particular transcode was really ticking it off and i was like what what huh oh that's the fan

02:04:38   that's the fan oh it had it does have a fan there is a fan there do you not use the hardware

02:04:43   encoding uh no i believe i do generally speaking because i i don't really futz with the um with

02:04:48   those particular switches very often and more often than not i'm just using don melton's scripts

02:04:53   that i'm almost sure do you use hardware encoding uh so yeah again i i don't remember there being

02:04:59   anything remarkable that's about this particular transcode but for whatever reason it kicked the

02:05:03   fans on and it was very very surprising and this was before my air my airpod pro so i couldn't

02:05:08   stretch it out or i couldn't silence it uh but no see all kidding aside like for me to have been

02:05:13   startled by hearing a fan on the on this laptop was it's just another sign of how great these

02:05:19   machines are john you should get one they're really nice i was just thinking about how i

02:05:24   rebooted into windows the other day and played a bunch of windows games in steam i'm not gonna be

02:05:28   able to do that i think i'm gonna miss this i'm not gonna miss running windows update but well

02:05:33   miss having the choice of anything in steam that i was it was a bunch of like little games and like

02:05:38   free demos of things i wanted to try and i'd seen them like you know i can do that and i just

02:05:42   route it into windows and did that and uh yeah i'm still gonna kind of miss that one you know

02:05:47   two years from now when the mac pro updates indeed so do you think you're gonna buy a gaming pc then

02:05:52   when that time comes no it's my problem my problem with the gaming pc i mean there's the there's the

02:05:57   philosophical problem i don't want windows in my house uh but uh hearing or i don't want a pc in

02:06:02   my house more precisely but i just don't have a place for a gaming pc so end of an era honestly

02:06:08   like i know you would never do this and i understand your reasons why no it's two two

02:06:13   things i hate a lap a laptop and yeah i was gonna say like having having a gaming pc be a laptop

02:06:21   for people for whom the gaming pc is not their primary computing device it's really nice because

02:06:27   it's self-contained and it doesn't have to like take over your entire desk or an entire desk like

02:06:33   it's to have like you know if you're like a really serious gamer i understand why you want to build a

02:06:37   desktop and everything but like if you're more of like a little closer to the casual side like like

02:06:41   i am and you know even people in my family like the gaming pc laptops are fine for us like they

02:06:47   have ample capabilities for us and the flexibility offered by it being a laptop is so nice and it's

02:06:55   i would suggest just checking it out because like they are they are not as underpowered as you might

02:07:01   think but they are as hot and loud as you think honestly even that i've been pleasantly surprised

02:07:08   i mean you know most of the time i'm playing minecraft so it's not like that demanding not

02:07:12   a demanding game cool but i'm playing at like high resolutions and you know having like far render

02:07:16   distances and stuff i was playing these games on steam i could play them in native 6k because i

02:07:21   have a pretty okay graphics card and sometimes games aren't that demanding when they're not

02:07:24   demanding native 6k baby that's pretty nice and there's no way i would get a 6k monitor for a

02:07:32   gaming pc gaming pc people are still buying 1440p displays because they're like oh i get better

02:07:36   frame rates that way because like for actual serious like top end triple a you know brand new

02:07:41   games it's actually you know and the total inability to buy a 3090 because of crypto and

02:07:47   covid uh means that 1440 monitors are still a big thing forget about hdr forget about color

02:07:52   reproduction they can't even get up to 4k with most of these games but uh here i am

02:07:56   playing some old ass game and it plays perfectly in 6k