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452: It's Totally Leashed

 

00:00:00   So Casey, how'd you do on the watch ordering or not ordering? Did you manage to resist ordering a watch?

00:00:06   Right, so we should start with follow-up.

00:00:09   No, I'm kidding. I know I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, I honestly did not order a watch.

00:00:13   I really truly did not. It is very much on brand for me to have ordered a watch, but I did not.

00:00:18   You know,

00:00:20   sitting here now, I'm not feeling enough FOMO yet, which is a very unusual occurrence for me.

00:00:27   I'm sure the FOMO will come, a title.

00:00:30   But sitting here now, I'm okay.

00:00:35   And I was actually talking to my friend, Steve, about this and he was saying that he's looking for...

00:00:39   I love the idea of you having like therapy to cope with your FOMO.

00:00:42   Because I wasn't sure if he and his wife had ordered watches or not and

00:00:48   and so I was talking to him about what his plans were and

00:00:53   he had said, you know, I don't really like any of the colors of the aluminum that much and that's kind of put me at

00:00:59   this impasse where I don't really know what to do and I was thinking about it and again

00:01:05   I haven't done like deep research on the color profiles or anything like that on these new watches, particularly the aluminum.

00:01:11   But... Well, you couldn't until ordering time. That's true.

00:01:14   There was no, there were no pages up that would tell you what combinations there were, how much they would cost. Like there was nothing.

00:01:21   Yeah, it was so weird the way they did it. It was, it seems like a really fairly bungled rollout, but nevertheless, I

00:01:27   am not overwhelmed in a bad sense, you know,

00:01:32   I'm not really overwhelmed by any of these colors and I'm not a fancy lad that wants one of the fancy watches.

00:01:37   I'm not saying that's wrong for anyone else. It's just not for me.

00:01:40   So because of that I just, and there was nothing compelling that I felt like I needed to have. So no,

00:01:46   I didn't order a watch yet.

00:01:47   I'm not closing the door and it happening sometime between now and the next watch, but sitting here now

00:01:53   I have no plans to order one. But... You're gonna be lined up at the Apple Store at 10 in the morning on Friday.

00:01:57   That's true. That is a fair point. I kind of thought of it as like, well, it's all over and done with, but you're right.

00:02:04   I suppose I could go on Friday morning and see what, see how my luck holds out.

00:02:07   But I know, how'd you do? Did you order four watches? Ten? One? Only, only two.

00:02:12   I feel good about neither of them. But so first of all, I do think it is, it is interesting

00:02:19   what they did with the aluminum colors this year. The way they introduced Starlight to replace silver.

00:02:25   I don't know if Starlight's gonna end up looking silver in real life.

00:02:28   But one thing I can definitely say that that is a, like the way it looks on the website

00:02:35   does not look like a silver replacement.

00:02:39   It looks like a separate color. But that being said, in person it's probably gonna be more subtle than that.

00:02:44   So, you know, maybe in person it'll just be like, oh, it's just like silver.

00:02:47   And anecdotally, by far the most common Apple watches I see

00:02:53   being worn by people out in the world are black by a long shot.

00:02:58   Oh, no way. No way. It is absolutely the bog-standard silver, aluminum or whatever.

00:03:05   I see silver more in women than men.

00:03:08   But men, it's like overwhelmingly black.

00:03:11   And women, it's like half and half maybe. Like, but it's--

00:03:14   Really?

00:03:15   Black is by far the most common color I see on people and it's always aluminum.

00:03:18   That is bananas. I mean, now I have to pay more attention.

00:03:20   Maybe you're right, and I just haven't paid close enough attention.

00:03:22   But my, my gut, which is, you know, super scientific, tells me that it's almost entirely silver watches

00:03:28   with anything other than silver being a very rare occurrence at all.

00:03:32   So maybe it's a different area. You know, maybe it's something about New York versus Virginia.

00:03:36   I don't know, but--

00:03:37   Plum Island versus Fire Island.

00:03:38   No comment. If I were to guess, I would say almost everything's aluminum and like 10% of them are black.

00:03:44   Or, you know, and maybe like 2% are other colors.

00:03:48   Jon, what do you, do you pay attention or which one of us is crazy?

00:03:50   Yeah, I was, my experience matches yours. I mostly see the regular standard silver as the most common one.

00:03:56   Although I do have to admit that I'm probably looking at people's watches a lot less than Marco is.

00:04:01   Because I really have no interest in watches.

00:04:04   But yeah, if I had to guess what the most standard one is silver.

00:04:06   And I do, I'm looking at the website when you're mentioning the Starlight thing.

00:04:10   I'm gonna guess that in real life you're gonna have a real difficult time telling Starlight from silver

00:04:15   without having them literally next to each other.

00:04:17   I hope so. Because it does seem like that is a very popular color.

00:04:21   And to have a generation where you just can't get that anymore would seem odd.

00:04:27   But anyway, you're probably right.

00:04:29   So I would look at the colors--oh, and just also, I will sometimes see black stainless steel

00:04:35   on like higher end models.

00:04:38   But I don't think I've ever seen silver stainless steel, besides on my own wrist, which is the one I always get.

00:04:46   I don't think I've ever seen anybody else wearing that outside of an Apple conference.

00:04:49   And even then it's not common.

00:04:51   No, Snarek, how can you tell the difference?

00:04:53   Like just looking at the stainless steel versus the aluminum, I don't think I would know.

00:04:56   You can tell.

00:04:57   It's highly polished versus being matte.

00:04:59   It's like, it's shiny versus matte.

00:05:01   So it's not even close.

00:05:03   And it scratches like hell because it is very polished.

00:05:06   But it is a high polished finish.

00:05:09   And so it's like looking in a curved mirror as opposed to, you know, the silver looks like an iPhone.

00:05:14   So it's a very, very different finish.

00:05:16   But the reason I like the stainless steel, first of all, I like it because it's shiny.

00:05:23   I can't--I'm not going to candy coat that.

00:05:25   It is shiny and I like it.

00:05:26   But also, I find that I like Apple Watch color schemes that have a lot of contrast

00:05:33   between the black top screen crystal and the case color.

00:05:37   So the case color should ideally be like bright or light in some way for my preferences.

00:05:42   That's why a few years back I bought the white ceramic one.

00:05:45   If they still made white ceramic today, now that I'm wearing it like every single day,

00:05:48   I would probably have bought that this year because I love just that high contrast look.

00:05:54   I don't like when it looks like just one continuous blob where it's just like black watch with black crystal.

00:06:00   Like that, I don't--I don't love that.

00:06:02   But that is a very popular look.

00:06:04   Anyway, so this time I went with stainless steel.

00:06:08   But that being said, literally later that day when I was--I was running some errands

00:06:13   on the mainland that day.

00:06:14   And literally later that day, I happened to be in an Apple store picking up some 30-pin

00:06:19   dock cables for reasons I would get to some other time.

00:06:22   What?

00:06:23   Which they still sell.

00:06:24   Yeah, so I was in an Apple store and I happened to see the titanium in the case and I thought,

00:06:30   "Oh, that actually looks pretty nice."

00:06:32   So I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

00:06:34   I'm probably going to stick with the steel because of what I've always had.

00:06:36   And the only reason--I'm telling you, I'm not super excited about this generation.

00:06:40   The only reason I'm getting it is because the reviews and some more of the photos and

00:06:46   videos that are coming out of it are confirming my suspicions that developers of watch apps

00:06:51   who are concerned about their design should probably have one of these screens.

00:06:55   Because it does seem like they're--you know, there are--there's like new layout guides

00:06:59   as I mentioned last week that you can align text to and everything.

00:07:02   But text isn't the only thing on my screens and I have a lot of controls on the screen

00:07:07   and I also work on a couple of complications for various things.

00:07:11   So I just--I kind of want--I need to have one of these screens and so I can't just pass

00:07:15   up this whole generation.

00:07:17   And I could get like a cheap watch and have like a cheap testing watch--well, cheap, it's

00:07:23   all relative--have a less expensive testing watch and then have--keep my stainless steel

00:07:28   series 6 but I just--I have so many devices, I don't want to like have extras.

00:07:33   So that's--that's--that's what--that was my thinking there.

00:07:35   So I'm just going to replace my series 6 with a series 7 in either steel or titanium, whichever

00:07:41   one ends up working best for me.

00:07:43   And that'll be it this year.

00:07:45   And I don't feel good about having spent this much money on something that's not a huge

00:07:49   upgrade but here we are.

00:07:51   I did start sleep tracking but that's--I don't--that's going to be probably temporary.

00:07:54   Hm, can you unpack this 30 pin adventure or are you going to just tease us and then walk

00:07:58   away from it?

00:07:59   Some other time.

00:08:00   You're the worst.

00:08:01   All right, let's just move on to some follow up.

00:08:04   Now this is going to be eating at me the rest of the show, thank you for that.

00:08:06   No one asked me if I ordered any watches.

00:08:08   No one cares about my watches.

00:08:10   You didn't order a watch except maybe for Tina.

00:08:12   Yeah.

00:08:13   I used my--I finally used my DTK discount successfully as far as I can tell.

00:08:18   So it was pretty cheap once you take 500 bucks off.

00:08:22   She got the gold stainless because that's what her current one is and she likes that.

00:08:25   Cool.

00:08:26   I'm sorry John, genuinely.

00:08:27   And she did with the dark cherry leather something or other, that's what she picked as her band

00:08:31   choice.

00:08:32   Not that there were many choices but that's the one.

00:08:33   I genuinely dropped the ball on that John, I'm sorry.

00:08:36   It's all right, it's not that expensive.

00:08:37   I should have asked you about it.

00:08:38   And the shipping dates were bad so it's like not coming until like mid-November or end

00:08:41   of November, who knows what.

00:08:43   Yeah, it seemed like--I was able--my steel one I got for day one which I was--I was surprised.

00:08:48   I was, you know, hitting refresh over and over again like, you know, I was there at

00:08:50   minute one but I was surprised that steel was available still on day one because that

00:08:55   never happens usually.

00:08:56   Yeah, and part of the time barrier was like, like you said, Marco, which one do you want

00:09:01   and which style?

00:09:02   I don't know what's available.

00:09:03   Right, you don't know.

00:09:04   I don't know.

00:09:05   And so we had to spend precious minutes, like she had to spend precious minutes deciding

00:09:09   and I really emphasize like make sure you decide because I don't want like--I can't

00:09:12   easily like undo the order with the DTK thing and I don't want to have to go through that

00:09:16   again.

00:09:17   So just really decide this is the combination you want.

00:09:18   And even then it was like--because she was at work at that point, I was going through

00:09:22   the things and she was like--I was like, you want the small size, right?

00:09:24   Yep.

00:09:25   This is what you want, the material.

00:09:26   This is the strap size, right?

00:09:28   Did you know by the way that there is a strap choice?

00:09:31   Do you take the small, medium or the medium large?

00:09:33   I don't know.

00:09:34   Go check my existing straps.

00:09:36   So they look like small, medium, right?

00:09:37   Apple Care Plus or not Apple Care Plus.

00:09:39   Pay all at once or pay monthly.

00:09:40   It's a surprising number of options when you're not the one ordering it and, you know, but

00:09:44   anyway we got through it and in theory our watch is coming someday.

00:09:46   [Music]

00:09:48   There--a Dutch watchdog has found that Apple's App Store payment rules are anti-competitive.

00:09:55   So this is kind of in the same spirit as what was going on or what is going on in Japan

00:09:59   amongst other places and the Dutch antitrust authority has found that Apple's rules requiring

00:10:05   software developers to use its in-app payment system are anti-competitive and ordered it

00:10:09   to make changes.

00:10:10   Whoopsie-dopsie.

00:10:11   Hey, we'll see where this goes.

00:10:13   I mean there's been a lot of challenges.

00:10:15   I mean like every country is doing it now.

00:10:16   There's a lot of peer pressure.

00:10:18   It's like, oh, Japan's doing it.

00:10:19   The US is doing something.

00:10:22   Everyone is--anyways, it's--we've talked about this many times but this is not what Apple

00:10:27   wants.

00:10:28   A bunch of individual countries coming up with their own set of rules.

00:10:30   It's kind of a mess.

00:10:32   Yeah, I mean this is why like, you know, when for Apple to continue to invite regulation

00:10:39   and court decisions and things like that from governments by their, you know, most egregious

00:10:44   anti-competitive behavior, I think is a strategic mistake because if you're going to, you know,

00:10:50   really--if you're going to do things that are so egregious that governments will find

00:10:55   the, you know, need to regulate you, they're not all going to do things the same way.

00:10:58   They're not all going to make the same decisions and it's going to be bad for Apple in the

00:11:03   long run and probably bad for Apple's users as well because it's going to be this weird

00:11:07   fragmented system where certain things are allowed some places, certain things not in

00:11:10   other places.

00:11:11   You know, there's going to--it's not a good place to be.

00:11:15   Apple's strategy so far has seemed to be, well, we can pretty much do whatever we want

00:11:19   so we will and shut up.

00:11:22   But that's not really going to hold for much longer.

00:11:26   It already isn't.

00:11:27   And so, you know, they're just going to slowly lose control over their own platform in some

00:11:35   small and some big ways because they refuse to yield at all.

00:11:39   And so people will yield for them.

00:11:42   Yeah.

00:11:43   It amused me, by the way, that if you read this short article that the complaint was

00:11:46   from the people who make Tinder match group, which I don't know, it just struck me kind

00:11:49   of funny.

00:11:51   There's enough smoke here that there's definitely a fire brewing.

00:11:55   And I really think Apple is going to need to act on this.

00:11:59   If I were to wager a guess sometime in the next six months because the--this whole thing

00:12:03   is really getting away from them in a very bad way.

00:12:06   And Apple does not want all these governments, like you guys said, to dictate the rules for

00:12:11   them.

00:12:12   They're going to want to get ahead of this and get everyone to just shh, shh, shh, shh.

00:12:15   It's OK.

00:12:16   We've got this.

00:12:17   It's OK.

00:12:18   And so I really think that that time is coming.

00:12:20   Moving right along.

00:12:22   Microsoft Store is going to allow third-party app stores.

00:12:25   This is a little confusing for me to parse, partially because I haven't used Windows in

00:12:29   a long, long time.

00:12:30   But if I understand things correctly, in the Microsoft App Store, you can then, from within

00:12:36   that, download or will be able to download the Amazon and/or Epic Games stores, if I

00:12:43   get that right.

00:12:44   And then from within there, you can obviously buy and install software.

00:12:47   But yeah, they're being a lot more forgiving, which would be nice.

00:12:51   Well, when you're the distant third-place app store, yeah, this is the kind of things

00:12:56   you buy.

00:12:57   And Microsoft, this is more blood in the water.

00:12:58   It's like, we'll do what Apple and Google won't do.

00:13:02   We'll let you have your own store within our store.

00:13:04   Hey, why not?

00:13:05   We want people to buy things from the Microsoft Store.

00:13:08   And it's not that weird.

00:13:09   If you think about it, in the pre-app store world, where we didn't have these single-company

00:13:15   controlled places where everyone got all their apps, if you got a Mac, you could go download

00:13:20   Steam.

00:13:21   And Steam itself was its own little store.

00:13:22   Now imagine, instead of just downloading Steam, you got Steam itself from a store, because

00:13:27   it's basically the equivalent of just downloading it from Valve.

00:13:30   It's not a thing that people are unfamiliar with.

00:13:33   The advent of Steam and these storefronts for vending, in this case specifically games,

00:13:38   is something that people became accustomed to, and is its own problem.

00:13:42   Like Steam wields its own power over the gaming industry in a strange way or whatever.

00:13:46   This is just sort of a, what do you call it, nesting dolls, matryoshka dolls, whatever.

00:13:50   That's right.

00:13:51   That's only the pirated dolls.

00:13:52   Yeah, what is it?

00:13:53   I'm so old, I can't remember the...

00:13:58   It's Yo Dog, right?

00:13:59   Yeah.

00:14:00   Wow.

00:14:01   Yes, yes.

00:14:02   I couldn't decide whether it was Hey Dog or Yo Dog.

00:14:05   Yo Dog.

00:14:06   So app stores themselves are problematic for reasons that we have discussed at length in

00:14:10   this program.

00:14:12   Gaming app stores, like Epic Game Store and Steam, are also problematic.

00:14:15   And if you nest one inside the other, I think they multiply.

00:14:18   I'll have to consult my mathematics textbook to find out if you multiply the probabilities

00:14:23   or do they get raised to the power of.

00:14:25   But anyway, this type of thing where Apple is, and other game stores, like Google, not

00:14:32   game stores, other app stores like Google and Apple, their silently agreed upon practices

00:14:39   are coming under the eye of various governments.

00:14:42   And there's Microsoft saying, "We have a store too, and we're nicer than those guys.

00:14:47   Look what we allow."

00:14:48   But I just wanted to underscore that beneath all of that is like, well, okay, so you're

00:14:52   allowing this in your store.

00:14:54   But then within Steam, and Epic Game Store is itself a reaction to Steam flexing its

00:14:58   power when Steam was the biggest and baddest game in town.

00:15:01   Epic was like, "We're not like Steam, we're the good game store."

00:15:04   But anyway, every one of these game stores just wants to be where Apple and Google are.

00:15:09   So don't forget that as you download your store from your store.

00:15:12   - It also kind of sucks, like as a user, like I mean, I'm not a Windows power user enough

00:15:17   these days to care to actually fix this.

00:15:18   But every single time I boot up my gaming PC, I have to dismiss like four different

00:15:23   stores login screens.

00:15:25   Oh, here's Steam, now here's GOG, now here's the whatever the Razer thing is.

00:15:30   Oh, Microsoft has some updates for me.

00:15:31   There's so much crap now.

00:15:34   And I don't, even, I mean, we aren't even necessarily free from this on the Mac in smaller

00:15:38   ways.

00:15:39   Like I have my Adobe updater running in the background, now I have my iZotope updater

00:15:42   running in the background.

00:15:43   It's like, "Oh, come on."

00:15:45   I hate having to first get a store from my store, and then I get the downloader from

00:15:49   my store from my store, and then the downloader gives me my app from my store from my store,

00:15:52   and it's like, "Oh my God, just let me buy the app and download the app directly."

00:15:56   For God's sake, make this easier.

00:15:58   And this is one of the many reasons why I kind of hope we don't enter that world on

00:16:04   iOS, because we can see on the PC how kind of mediocre and annoying that world becomes.

00:16:13   I mean, the flip side of that is what everyone on the PC would say.

00:16:15   It's like, "Yeah, but if I want a game on PC, I can go get it wherever it is."

00:16:18   And there is the war between Epic and Steam of trying to get the game developers to sell

00:16:23   there, and Epic will take a smaller cut, but then they want the exclusives, and Steam is

00:16:26   flexing its power to take more from game developers, and game developers think it's worthwhile,

00:16:31   and then it's the question of who gets promoted and all that other stuff.

00:16:33   But as a user, if you're on a PC and you want to play what we call a PC game, you can get

00:16:39   it.

00:16:40   Whereas if you're on the Mac, you're like, "Oh, well, if you're on the M1, sorry, Steam

00:16:43   has them.

00:16:44   None of the games have come over to ARM, and the deprecating 32-bit killed a bunch of games,

00:16:49   too."

00:16:50   And can you even get that game store?

00:16:53   You get both.

00:16:54   So the freedom to choose from all these different stores, but if you really do, it sounds like

00:16:57   in your case, actually want something from GOG and something from Steam and something

00:17:00   from Epic.

00:17:01   Now you've got these three storefronts on your computer, and in general, the way they

00:17:07   work is like, you can't, as far as I know, maybe someone who's an expert who knows better,

00:17:11   I don't think you can delete Steam and still play games from Steam, right?

00:17:15   So if you get a game from Steam, and you say, "Okay, well, now I'll just uninstall Steam

00:17:19   because I've got the game," I don't think that's going to go the way you think it's

00:17:21   going to go.

00:17:22   And so, of course, they also want to auto-update, and obviously, being thrown the login screens

00:17:27   and stuff like that, I'm sure it's something that you can go into Windows and, as people

00:17:30   are saying in the chat, just disable the auto-start items or whatever the equivalent of login

00:17:34   items is on Windows, not to be bothered by them.

00:17:36   But yeah, that's the price of access to all the things, is all the things have access

00:17:41   to you, too.

00:17:42   Yeah, and I don't, having some kind of, what in mobile is called sideloading and what in

00:17:48   computers is just called downloading apps, that is fine in the computer world.

00:17:52   Again, I think in mobile, I'm not a huge fan of that prospect, but in the computer world,

00:17:57   I'm fine with being able to download software directly from the vendors.

00:18:00   That's great.

00:18:01   What I don't like is having increasing amounts of middle people in the way.

00:18:05   That sucks.

00:18:07   And what the industry needs is not more middle people.

00:18:12   It's nice to have something that's nicely integrated with the system.

00:18:15   We have the App Store, we have the Microsoft whatever store.

00:18:19   That's nice for technical convenience sake, but I don't want a whole bunch of different

00:18:25   app stores that are all launching and running in the background and running their own DRM

00:18:31   schemes and their own auto-updater.

00:18:33   It's just a pain and it's burdensome.

00:18:37   I don't think we're necessarily in a better place.

00:18:41   That doesn't make the world better to have four different app stores on Windows.

00:18:44   That sucks.

00:18:45   It's better off having just direct downloads.

00:18:47   It makes it better in some ways.

00:18:49   If you think about why Steam became popular, because it was solving a real problem that

00:18:52   people had.

00:18:53   Do you remember when PC games were all their own individual installers and how much of

00:18:57   a challenge it was to get the three games you want to currently be playing, all three

00:19:02   of them installed and working on your Windows PC at the same time?

00:19:06   Because they all have their particular requirements.

00:19:08   That wasn't the problem.

00:19:09   The problem was all their terrible DRM schemes that would install rootkits on your computer.

00:19:15   Or which drivers they want to work with or what their updater is.

00:19:19   So Steam came in and said, "Hey, you don't have to worry about that.

00:19:21   You're no longer at the mercy of every single individual game developer's attempt to make

00:19:24   an installer and an updater.

00:19:26   Steam will handle all of that for you."

00:19:28   And that's why users flocked to it.

00:19:29   And then of course, enough users flocked to it that it gave Valve a tremendous amount

00:19:33   of power.

00:19:34   And that's where these problems all come in.

00:19:36   Every one of these things that was introduced was solving a real problem for somebody.

00:19:40   But eventually, if you become the biggest or the only game in town, it's like you start

00:19:44   seeing dollar signs and now you start turning the screw on everybody.

00:19:47   And developers start to not like you and then you realize, "Hey, we have game players over

00:19:52   a barrel because of course you need Steam because if you want to play games on a PC,

00:19:55   you need Steam.

00:19:56   What are you going to do?

00:19:57   Individual installers for every game?

00:19:58   Ha ha ha.

00:19:59   No one wants to go back to that."

00:20:00   So now you start messing with developers and throwing more ads in their face because you

00:20:02   show it gets them to buy more stuff.

00:20:04   So this stuff does go bad, but in general, it comes from a place of some kind of progress.

00:20:09   I remember the first time I used Steam, I'm like, "Wow, this is so much better than dealing

00:20:13   with individual games."

00:20:14   Because every game was different and they were all of varying quality and Steam was

00:20:18   a level playing field from the user's perspective.

00:20:21   It was one application, one place to deal with all your game stuff.

00:20:26   But yeah, and then you've got the Epic Store.

00:20:27   So now you've got two places and the reason Epic Store exists is because Epic wasn't happy

00:20:31   with Steam for very good reasons and sometimes users aren't happy with Steam.

00:20:34   So now you've got two.

00:20:35   And I'm not sure the solution is beyond altruistic things of like, "You know what?

00:20:39   There should be a standardized way to deal with installs and updates and so on and so

00:20:42   forth and it should be developed and supported by the OS vendor, but why are they motivated

00:20:46   to do that?

00:20:47   Because if they're going to do a lot, why don't they just make their own app store and

00:20:49   then they would have all the power and you get an Apple or a Google type scenario more

00:20:53   or less.

00:20:54   So I think this is an inevitable series of events, but I think we get there by individual

00:21:01   companies doing things that for various moments in time, users and developers did like, and

00:21:08   then it just turns bad and then we get the reaction to that and just the wheel turns

00:21:12   whatever the expression might be.

00:21:13   That's it.

00:21:14   Yeah, I got it.

00:21:15   Nailed it.

00:21:16   Casey style.

00:21:17   Speaking of wheels turning, can we just go back a step?

00:21:20   Did you, what was your opinion, Jon, of MTV's Pimp My Ride?

00:21:24   Because I feel like you're going to say that you hated it, but I'm hoping against hope

00:21:29   that you found something delightful within it.

00:21:32   Can you tell me how this is connected to anything we've discussed so far?

00:21:35   Yo dawg.

00:21:36   Okay, sure.

00:21:37   All right.

00:21:38   I'm not sure I watched any entire episode of Pimp My Ride.

00:21:42   I must have.

00:21:43   I must have seen an entire episode once in a while, but I mostly know the meme from the

00:21:46   internet connected thing and it's connection to Pimp My Ride I could not have pulled out

00:21:50   of a hat if you hadn't reminded me.

00:21:51   Oh, it was so, it was trash, but it was so delightful.

00:21:56   Did you see it, Marco?

00:21:57   Of course not.

00:21:58   Oh God.

00:21:59   Marco hasn't seen it.

00:22:00   Don't you know the meme?

00:22:01   It's a car show.

00:22:02   Well, kind of.

00:22:03   Allegedly.

00:22:04   Nevertheless.

00:22:05   All right.

00:22:06   Well, we'll move right along.

00:22:07   It's a little disappointing, but that's okay.

00:22:09   I wanted to share a hilarious and delightful story that a listener sent us.

00:22:14   Thomas Q. Brady sent us a link to a blog post that they put up with regard to their adventures

00:22:21   with a brand new iPhone 13 Pro.

00:22:23   Now, it is worth reading the blog post because I thought it was very, very good and very

00:22:27   funny, but the extremely short version is that Thomas was tubing with his family and

00:22:34   oops-a-doopsies, his brand new iPhone 13 Pro slips out of his pocket into the water in

00:22:39   like a river or some such.

00:22:40   Can we pause for a moment and think about the idea of I'm going tubing and I'm going

00:22:44   to go and I'm going to keep my phone in my pocket right away.

00:22:46   Right away I'm thinking maybe this is not the best life choice.

00:22:49   Like, I know people always want to be with their phone, but when you're going tubing

00:22:52   on a river, maybe that's time to think about not bringing your phone with you.

00:22:55   This would have been a more appropriate time for a GoPro, but you know, that's neither

00:22:58   here nor there.

00:22:59   In class, Thomas writes, "The next morning I took a backup phone to T-Mobile to get a

00:23:04   new SIM card.

00:23:05   I told the T-Mobile salesperson my tale of woe and he and his colleagues said, 'You

00:23:08   should talk to that man plus river guy.'

00:23:10   They told me of a YouTube celebrity that apparently now lives nearby into scuba diving sessions

00:23:14   looking for treasure and/or people's lost items."

00:23:16   This is like the beginning of a movie.

00:23:17   It's like, "Oh, you gotta go down to Old Man Peabody."

00:23:20   It's like...

00:23:21   Well, there should be a monster in the river that eats him or something.

00:23:25   It's so true.

00:23:26   Anyway, so long story slightly shorter, the man plus river guy, whose name is Dallas,

00:23:31   goes searching and searching and searching, and eventually his scuba tank runs out of

00:23:34   air and he says, "Ah, the heck with that.

00:23:35   I'll grab my snorkel."

00:23:36   And then he goes snorkeling to search and search and search and search.

00:23:39   And eventually he came up with the phone.

00:23:42   But what amazed me was, and this is now reading from Thomas's blog post again, "The phone

00:23:47   was still on.

00:23:48   The battery still had 20% charge, probably thanks in part to a shortcut script that automatically

00:23:52   enables low power mode when the battery falls below a threshold.

00:23:56   I'm holding the phone right now.

00:23:57   There aren't even any visible scratches.

00:23:58   The only 'defect' I could find of any kind between the moment when it was found and now

00:24:04   is that the speakers weren't working.

00:24:06   I could barely hear anything when I tried to play music or make a phone call.

00:24:09   As they've dried out, even those seem to be coming back.

00:24:11   The camera lens and screen buttons all fine.

00:24:14   I took it to T-Mobile to get the eSIM reactivated and told them what had happened, that it had

00:24:17   been underwater for 26 hours.

00:24:21   They looked at the water damage sticker that's apparently visible from the SIM tray door.

00:24:25   It's a white sticker that turns pink if it gets wet, and that's how they determine water

00:24:27   damage.

00:24:28   It was white.

00:24:29   So 26 hours underwater.

00:24:31   I wasn't entirely clear on how deep, but 26 hours underwater and it basically works no

00:24:36   problem.

00:24:37   And so Thomas goes into a little bit about the, what's the IP rating?

00:24:41   I forget what it stands for, but basically the rating is to how it can protect against

00:24:45   ingress of dust and water and stuff like that.

00:24:47   Is it ingress protection?

00:24:48   I don't know.

00:24:49   IP 60, whatever, you know.

00:24:51   Yeah.

00:24:52   So the iPhone 13 Pro is IP 68 rated.

00:24:54   Six is the maximum amount, which is according to Wikipedia, no ingress of dust, complete

00:25:00   protection against contact.

00:25:02   So it is dust tight.

00:25:03   So no dust should be able to get in it.

00:25:05   And then the eight indicates it's water rating.

00:25:08   Eight is the second best, which reads water can enter, but only in such a manner that

00:25:12   it produces no harmful effects.

00:25:13   Now there are limits to how long it can be underwater and so on and so forth.

00:25:17   It cannot be blasted by a like powerful jet, which is the most strong rating.

00:25:22   But how cool is that?

00:25:24   26 hours underwater, some random, well, not randomly, he's a very popular YouTuber, but

00:25:28   some YouTuber ends up finding it underwater and the thing is still on and working no problem.

00:25:33   I just thought that was such a cool story.

00:25:35   Yeah, that's pretty great.

00:25:37   And I watched the most recent of the man plus river YouTube videos.

00:25:42   It is not the video that will presumably eventually go up about Thomas's phone, but it was just

00:25:47   a general video about somebody looking for a class ring that was lost in like a lake

00:25:50   or something like that.

00:25:51   And it was delightful.

00:25:52   It was like 15 minutes.

00:25:53   And if you have 15 minutes to kill, I recommend it.

00:25:55   So check that out.

00:25:56   If you're going to lose your phone underwater, it's probably a good idea to do it when it's

00:25:59   brand new because that's when all the seals presumably are at their best rather than like

00:26:03   a year later when you accidentally left it on the dashboard of your car sitting in the

00:26:06   hot sun and like baked all the rings and the rubber is hardening and things are becoming

00:26:10   unseated.

00:26:11   So there you go.

00:26:12   We are sponsored this week by Revenue Cat.

00:26:16   If you are an app or web developer, you've probably either actually implemented in app

00:26:21   purchase and subscription handling in some form, or you've heard about it or will need

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00:26:58   and subscriptions make everything even more complicated.

00:27:01   It's a pain in the butt without Revenue Cat.

00:27:03   Honestly, if I was building a new app today, I would use Revenue Cat to handle all of my

00:27:06   in app purchases.

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00:27:53   sponsoring our show.

00:27:55   (upbeat music)

00:27:58   - Come right along.

00:27:59   Sharon Lynn Falk writes with, do you want to handle this, John?

00:28:03   This was with regard to larvae in, what was it like dry pasta.

00:28:10   So Sharon writes, any wheat based product, this is so gross.

00:28:13   Any wheat based product can harbor weevil larvae.

00:28:17   They will hatch if it gets warm and humid.

00:28:19   I learned this living in Florida and turning off the AC when I went up north for three

00:28:22   weeks.

00:28:23   Now I refrigerate my flour and Sharon provides a link to pestshero.com where they talk about

00:28:30   what bugs are in my pasta and which ones are safe to eat, which was super great.

00:28:35   - I don't think the link was from Sharon, but a lot of people send in suggestions of

00:28:38   different insects.

00:28:39   I was trying to find a page of list them all.

00:28:40   You've got your green weevils, your rice weevils, sugar ants, flour beetles, think someone had

00:28:45   some Mediterranean like European moth thing.

00:28:47   You can read this page and yes, it does cover things such as how do I know if there are

00:28:50   weevils in my pasta?

00:28:52   What happens if I cook and eat pasta with weevils in it?

00:28:55   Read the page to find out.

00:28:56   - Oh God, how about if there's any doubt, don't.

00:28:59   - Yeah, seriously.

00:29:00   - Yeah, that's the good, I mean, the thing of pasta is not that expensive if you don't

00:29:04   want to eat bugs, don't, but they're probably fine.

00:29:07   Oh my God.

00:29:08   - I'm very disturbed right now.

00:29:10   All right, can we move on?

00:29:12   Can we move on please and thank you?

00:29:14   And let's talk about what's going on on Monday.

00:29:17   You guys doing anything fun?

00:29:18   - I mean, hopefully.

00:29:21   This is an exciting, for once the, for once the, like the announcement, like the, you

00:29:28   know, they send a little picture and a word or whatever to like announce the event to

00:29:33   various people when it's happening.

00:29:35   And this one is extremely straightforward.

00:29:37   I feel like the event is called Unleashed with a period, not an exclamation point, Jaws.

00:29:43   And the little animation that accompanies it is like an Apple logo with what looked

00:29:48   like speed lines kind of coming at you as Todd Vaziri will tell you, this is not a proper

00:29:53   Star Wars style hyperspace star field thing, but it's clearly inspired by a similar thing.

00:29:58   And Jaws, Greg Jaspiak of Apple tweeted a little animation with this thing and the text

00:30:05   of his tweet is unleashed exclamation point.

00:30:08   These next six days are going to speed by.

00:30:10   So fairly straightforward, no complicated reading here.

00:30:16   Apple will announce things that are fast and that's exactly what we expect.

00:30:21   And they're going to apparently emphasize the fact that they are fast and what is Unleashed?

00:30:26   Hopefully the M1 will be unleashed by adding more of it and putting an X on its name or

00:30:32   whatever.

00:30:33   So this is exciting.

00:30:34   This is presumably the Mac event that we've all been waiting for.

00:30:37   We talked a lot about laptops in the last show.

00:30:40   Maybe they'll also introduce those AirPods, the regular AirPods that don't go in your

00:30:44   ear canal that we talked about for the previous event, but that didn't show up, but still

00:30:47   are apparently a real thing.

00:30:49   Who knows, but all I care about are the Macs, bring on the Macs.

00:30:52   Yes, indeed.

00:30:53   Oh, I'm so excited.

00:30:54   This is actually earlier than I would have guessed this event would be.

00:30:58   I was thinking more like maybe end of the month.

00:31:00   So this is very promising.

00:31:03   I mean, assuming this is most likely the Mac event, which I think by all means it certainly

00:31:08   looks very likely to be the case.

00:31:10   I am just so looking forward to this.

00:31:11   We talked last week about the laptop rumors in particular and we talked in the past shows.

00:31:15   I really want to see what is the next step in the M1 or the Apple Silicon progress.

00:31:24   How do we broaden these chips into the higher end products?

00:31:28   I personally have been full time M1 user for almost a year now and I love this chip and

00:31:37   this is the lowest M1.

00:31:38   This is the most likely the slowest and worst Apple Silicon chip that will ever be in a

00:31:42   Mac.

00:31:43   It's leashed.

00:31:44   It's not a leashed.

00:31:47   It's totally leashed.

00:31:48   Well done.

00:31:49   You want to get rid of that.

00:31:50   And in some ways it is.

00:31:52   I've been using 16 gigs of RAM this whole time and I could really use more of that.

00:31:56   I talked about there's only four high speed cores.

00:32:00   I would love more than that for the performance cores.

00:32:05   I just cannot wait to see what is the story here.

00:32:09   This might not even be the entire story as we'll talk about next week.

00:32:13   Whatever we get and whatever we still need to get.

00:32:17   We're expecting the laptops basically.

00:32:21   The MacBook Pro.

00:32:23   What we don't really hear any rumors about as far as I can tell for anything imminent

00:32:29   is the Mac mini that has the bigger chip.

00:32:33   We're not hearing anything about Mac Pro options like the miniature Mac Pro that was rumored

00:32:37   with the...

00:32:38   The Mac mini there were a set of enhanced Mac mini rumors.

00:32:41   Remember the one with the magnetic?

00:32:42   I don't know if we talked about it on the show.

00:32:44   It's skinnier and has a magnetic power cord just like the new iMacs does and it would

00:32:47   have an M1X in it.

00:32:48   I don't know if it's rumored for this event but there were a round of rumors about that.

00:32:52   The Mac Pro as usual there's nothing.

00:32:55   Other than it's a half size one or something something like that.

00:32:58   So the Mac Pro no one is expecting this event.

00:33:00   I don't think people are expecting the mini either but at least there's a solid rumor

00:33:04   and renderings and feature set that supposedly is in the new mini.

00:33:08   But yeah this event when they say unleashed they've already done with the M1 Max release

00:33:13   the Macs that most people buy.

00:33:15   The M1 MacBook Air.

00:33:17   But if you don't know anything about Macs and you just want a Mac we know you want a

00:33:20   laptop because who uses desktops which one should you get?

00:33:23   The M1 MacBook Air.

00:33:24   It's amazing just buy it.

00:33:25   But for the higher end things for the people who care about their computers being unleashed

00:33:29   the MacBook Pro is the computer.

00:33:31   It's like Apple sells two Macs.

00:33:33   The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro.

00:33:35   And every other Mac is like weird special interest groups like us who care about it

00:33:39   all right.

00:33:40   And so this is the MacBook Pro event and that's all they have to do is put out this MacBook

00:33:44   Pro is hopefully as described in our previous thing.

00:33:47   Everything else like oh I'd like a new Mac mini.

00:33:49   Apple's like yeah everyone always wants a new Mac mini.

00:33:51   We'll do it someday.

00:33:53   Also I think the large iMac is also a question mark.

00:33:57   Because they do sell a good number of those.

00:34:00   And so I think what we need to complete the Apple silicon picture is the big iMac, the

00:34:08   pro laptops and the pro desktops.

00:34:10   Whatever that means.

00:34:11   And I don't know how much of that we're going to get yet.

00:34:16   If the rumors about the Jade C chop and Jade C die thing from a few months back if those

00:34:20   end up being correct and looking at what they did with the M1 I would assume that the high

00:34:27   end Mac mini, the MacBook Pro and the big iMac will all use the same chip.

00:34:32   Whatever the M1X or whatever the M2X the M plus whatever that's called I'm assuming all

00:34:38   three of those product lines use the same processor.

00:34:40   And then the only question is whatever the Mac Pro might use which might be like two

00:34:44   or four of those same things or whatever.

00:34:46   Yeah and I think it's perfectly fine.

00:34:48   Like kind of like it was fine for the M1 to be used everywhere it is as we pointed out

00:34:51   in a past shows every machine that has an M1 is happy to have it and it is appropriate

00:34:54   for it including the iPad.

00:34:56   Like it's fine.

00:34:57   And those things that you listed the you know the high end power book the iMac the quote

00:35:03   unquote big iMac and the faster Mac mini those can definitely all be well served by with

00:35:09   the variability of the GPU cores.

00:35:10   Again the rumor is you can get one with more GPU cores and less right.

00:35:14   But in general the CPU is like and I'll go back to our previous show where we talked

00:35:18   about these rumors right.

00:35:19   That one feature set including the RAM limit including the rumored RAM limits can serve

00:35:24   all those machines fine because if you if you get a big iMac and you're like oh but

00:35:28   the big iMac can only hold 64 gigs of RAM it's like well it's not the Mac Pro and the

00:35:31   Mac Pro isn't out yet but that's fine for the big iMac if it has 32 GPU cores and the

00:35:37   normal big set of you know CPU cores and maxes out at 64 gigs of RAM that feature set is

00:35:43   also fine for the MacBook Pros and the Mac Mini would love to have I mean I don't know

00:35:47   if the Mac Mini will get it or deserves it or whatever you want to say because the Mac

00:35:50   Mini is often neglected but it would fit fine in that machine as well and and it fits with

00:35:57   what we know of Apple's rollout which is let's just try to use the same chip as in as many

00:36:01   places as we can and I think I would be happy with that whole thing but I for this event

00:36:05   I'm actually only expecting the laptops and anything else I get is gravy.

00:36:10   Yeah I think the laptops are obviously the most likely I bet we're gonna get at least

00:36:16   one at least either the Mac Mini or the big iMac and probably the Mac Mini but we'll see.

00:36:24   I'd be surprised we got any desktops I think they are the most likely I'll be super surprised

00:36:29   if we get anything that's not like just straight up computers you know I'll be surprised we

00:36:33   get AirPods personally I'm hoping for AirPods Pro because I think it's time for me to get

00:36:38   a set and I'm waiting and trying to resist up until the time that there's a new version

00:36:44   but I don't know nevertheless I don't know I have this what was it it's a year old or

00:36:52   two year old 13 inch MacBook Pro what was this it was 2020 so it's a year old.

00:36:57   It was one day before the Apple Silicon transition began.

00:37:01   Yeah basically that's true because I got it for that keynote didn't I? So anyways I don't

00:37:08   have any problem with my laptop but I don't know and I don't even know why I'm more keen

00:37:13   to update this than I am my iMac Pro but I really would like to have a new 13 inch MacBook

00:37:20   Pro I know I've said this several times I really don't want to give up on ports if I

00:37:24   can avoid it.

00:37:26   Just like a week or two ago I had all four ports chugging on something I think I had

00:37:29   power Ethernet phone and there was one other thing I was using at the same time I can't

00:37:35   remember what it was now but I do occasionally use all four ports and so I would like to

00:37:39   keep all of them and I would like to be able to do stuff in Swift UI in less than a calendar

00:37:44   year which would be super cool but if there was a new iMac Pro then I'm gonna have a real

00:37:50   uncomfortable conversation with Aaron about how I'm going to replace my entire computing

00:37:54   life in one shot so we'll see how that goes.

00:37:57   I need it for my work.

00:38:00   Well and I can pull that card sometimes but not always.

00:38:03   Yeah.

00:38:04   Nevertheless you know what come to think of it have I mentioned recently that you can

00:38:09   go to ATP.fm/join if you would like.

00:38:12   Just gonna throw that out there.

00:38:15   But no I'm very excited to see what's released next week.

00:38:20   I think it should be interesting.

00:38:23   I am trying not to get my hopes up that we are going to get the you know a longtime Apple

00:38:28   user apology tour that we're all hoping for with you know the SD cards and the HDMI ports

00:38:32   and so on and so forth but oh man I'm just I'm excited to see what they do here because

00:38:38   I feel like we really know so little and we are going to know so much more so soon so

00:38:45   it is not the longest six days of my life but I am super excited for it.

00:38:49   They're supposed to speed by but you get speed it's not that they're gonna be long.

00:38:53   I have two big fears about this event.

00:38:55   One we talked about in the past show which is like well are they really gonna do the

00:38:57   thing with the laptop like have they really turned a new leaf and are on a new strategy

00:39:01   like the rumors say or is that just not true right so that's my one fear for not that I'm

00:39:05   into the laptops but I feel like I hope they've I hope that rumor is true and my second fear

00:39:09   is very specific my second fear I don't I'm gonna be keeping up with the rumors on this

00:39:12   so I don't know if it's founded second fear is that they'll max out at 32 gigs and I'll

00:39:16   be super sad because I think that is not appropriate for all these machines maxing out at 32 is

00:39:21   not good.

00:39:23   Well the current MacBook Pro the current big one max out at 64.

00:39:28   I don't think they would they would replace the 16 inch with something that has lower

00:39:34   maximum RAM specs.

00:39:35   I really hope that's true but I'm just like because we have these questions about economically

00:39:40   speaking how much RAM can they shove in the unified memory thing and we you know we did

00:39:44   a lot of stuff with the GPUs where I did a bunch of back of the envelope math to show

00:39:47   that you know GPU power is within shouting distance given the size of the rumored things

00:39:52   and so on and so forth but I don't know what factors are involved in the RAM thing and

00:39:57   the fact that the the fact that the M1 is even available with 8 bothers me right because

00:40:04   I just feel like it's not appropriate but that makes me think oh maybe it's it's really

00:40:08   expensive to do that you know the unified memory architecture and there I have seen

00:40:12   a couple of rumors bouncing back and forth over the past months of like will it be 32

00:40:15   or will it be 64 so those are my two fears the laptop things aren't true and they haven't

00:40:19   really turned over a new leaf which will be sad or that the high end you know that any

00:40:25   of these things that the laptops the the iMac the Mac mini the new the new unleashed chip

00:40:30   is still leashed to 32 gigs.

00:40:34   Marco what would you be most excited to see like if we really do get the apology tour

00:40:39   is is the SD card that we may or may not be getting the most exciting is the death of

00:40:44   the touch bar the most exciting like if you could choose only one what would you choose

00:40:49   to make you just overjoyed?

00:40:51   When the the current M1 series of laptops they they basically swapped in the M1 guts

00:40:57   and left pretty much everything else the same and what that has resulted in is a almost

00:41:03   ridiculous surplus of battery life because they replaced the more power hungry Intel

00:41:09   guts with the more efficient M1 guts but didn't change the battery sizes and so as a result

00:41:15   my MacBook Air has ridiculous battery life and also no fan that's that's awesome I love

00:41:23   that my fear is that they will or have taken the opportunity now that they have quote surplus

00:41:31   battery life and maybe they decided to make them thinner and lighter and shrink those

00:41:36   batteries down a bit I hope they haven't because having this MacBook Air with its ridiculous

00:41:43   battery life has made it so that for the first time ever I rarely need to think about my

00:41:49   laptop's battery life I can bring it if I'm like going on an overnight trip somewhere

00:41:52   or even a weekend trip somewhere I can bring my MacBook Air have it just in my backpack

00:41:58   occasionally pulled out and use it and just never think about it and never have to plug

00:42:02   it in for like that entire trip if I left it upstairs you know for a couple days I know

00:42:08   I can go to it and use it and it'll be fine it won't be discharged or it won't be at like

00:42:12   10% it's been amazing having a laptop that has battery life that's more like an iPad

00:42:18   in that way you can you can kind of just not think about it for a while and actually it's

00:42:22   honestly better life than my iPad it's just it's great and so I hope whatever they've

00:42:28   done with this next generation of laptops that we hope is about to come out obviously

00:42:33   I hope they're good and we went through all last week all the different things that we

00:42:37   hope they come with and everything and that that all sounds great but I hope they haven't

00:42:42   shrunk the batteries by too much I'm sure they shrunk them by a little bit I hope they

00:42:47   haven't shrunk them by too much because this is such a great like situation we have now

00:42:51   with these laptops where we finally have great battery life for the first time literally

00:42:56   ever in a laptop all of their claims in the past have they've never panned out to be great

00:43:02   battery life in a laptop ever ever ever they've always been okay maybe decent some of them

00:43:07   have been pretty poor it's never been great now it really is and I hope this wasn't a

00:43:13   one-time fluke like during this transition I hope they actually keep this standard up

00:43:18   of having this good a battery life so that's honestly that would be like my stretch goal

00:43:24   of what I hope to see that's assuming they haven't you know screwed up anything else

00:43:28   but I think you know when when Apple designed these these this last generation laptops before

00:43:34   the 2016 release and that was a long time ago that was that was you know deep into the

00:43:39   unedited Johnny Ive era that was I think some of their worst products were came out of that

00:43:44   era and this is a very different time you know this again that was 2016 that those came

00:43:49   out so this is significantly later and hopefully they have learned and the products they have

00:43:56   designed more recently than that have pretty much gone on an upward trend like they've

00:44:01   been better by a lot and and so I expect great things here I don't expect this to be a compromised

00:44:08   product line or controversial one I expect this to be great and boring it should be amazing

00:44:15   and it should not have any kind of massive drama it shouldn't require the bags full of

00:44:20   dongles that we all been carrying they shouldn't have any kind of massive missteps like the

00:44:24   butterfly keyboard or the touch bar I expect them to be really great laptops that are just

00:44:29   normal in like once you once you buy them and you're over the newness of it it just

00:44:34   feel like a great normal laptop you shouldn't have to think about any XYZ part of it that's

00:44:39   like stabbing you in the back every time you use it it just should just be a great computer

00:44:44   that's what they used to release on a routine basis now I'm pretty sure I'm confident that

00:44:50   they have the skills and the direction and the humility in this area to do it right this

00:44:56   time so that's what I'm looking forward to also I have some confidence that they're not

00:45:00   gonna mess with the battery too much if only because they're with the Unleashed thing I

00:45:04   hope they're really putting in enough hardware in there that at maximum tilt where everything

00:45:11   going off it will really eat battery right and so I think they'll still have great battery

00:45:14   life for people who are just tooling around on them or whatever but if you really want

00:45:17   to exercise all the stuff they put in I think they're still gonna have to put in similarly

00:45:20   sized batteries just to handle that you know the the aggressive case maybe not so much

00:45:27   on the 14 but certainly on the 16 so I'm looking at the rumor renders who knows how accurate

00:45:32   they are if it's thinner by a millimeter it's fine but I feel like and you mentioned they

00:45:36   kept the battery the same size the MacBook Air I think they might have increased it a

00:45:39   little bit because the like the logic boards shrink a little bit for the these arm things

00:45:44   as well they were already tiny with the Intel things but they're even tinier now because

00:45:47   everything is shoved into the system on a chip right and that makes actually makes a

00:45:51   little more room for battery so who knows how it'll come out if the rumored ports are

00:45:54   true they're gonna eat in some space but then logic boards gonna be smaller so you get some

00:45:57   space back so I I think also part of the supposed new ethos is not just give people ports the

00:46:04   knee but also let's get off that thin and light thing and arguably Apple has learned

00:46:10   that lesson even on the laptops a little bit with like the discontinuation of the the MacBook

00:46:15   One and the fact that over the past few years like the new 16 inch MacBook Pro they didn't

00:46:23   lean heavily on even making that thinner not that they really could with the Intel chips

00:46:27   but anyway I you know this if you're if they were gonna lean on something to make it thinner

00:46:32   like I feel like that you will see that in the M2 MacBook Air next year right because

00:46:35   that's the machine to do that on that makes sense but for the big honkin 16 inch that's

00:46:39   gonna be unleashed I hope they still stick with essentially the biggest battery they

00:46:43   can legally fly on a plane with I forgot about that actually Casey I do have an answer to

00:46:48   your question that's not crappy what what would be my most like mind-blowing thing is

00:46:54   if the 14 inches fanless well that's interesting I really don't expect that's not appropriate

00:47:00   is it do you think that's appropriate for the 14 inch MacBook Pro to be fanless that

00:47:07   I don't think they will do it but but I I would love it if they did I mean you just

00:47:12   want an M2 MacBook Air like because if you want a fanless like I if it's gonna be unleashed

00:47:17   part of the leash is the lack of a fan because you have thermal throttling and you can't

00:47:21   clock it as high or whatever unleashed means you have a fan so if you don't want a fan

00:47:24   in your thing Apple will have computers you can buy but I really hope the 14 inch has

00:47:28   a fan a quiet one but the the current the M1 MacBook Air which is fanless and it's the

00:47:34   only M1 computer that is fanless it actually is not that much less performant than the

00:47:39   ones with fans in actual use like if you look at you know the the actual benchmarks and

00:47:46   workload and load testing and thermal testing it actually doesn't get that much slower than

00:47:51   like you know the Mac Mini or the 13 inch MacBook Pro that has it now it doesn't have

00:47:55   32 GPU cores I feel like the Delta between full tilt and idling is gonna be way bigger

00:47:59   for these things fair enough and also in all fairness you know the Mac Mini that I've been

00:48:03   using as my desktop for most of the last year it has a fan and I've never heard it and so

00:48:07   maybe maybe this is just you know wishful thinking but the MacBook Air that is fanless

00:48:14   what as we mentioned that's that's an old case design that design was never made to

00:48:18   be fanless and what they did what they had to do to make it fanless so there's these

00:48:23   like regulations with safety like with laptops in certain countries that the bottom of the

00:48:29   laptop that touches your skin in many in much common use and when it's on your lap that

00:48:35   can't get above a certain temperature with sustained use just for like safety and comfort

00:48:38   reasons and certain regulatory reasons and so the most obvious way if you were going

00:48:42   to cool a laptop down passively and you have this giant metal underside of it the most

00:48:48   obvious thing to do to cool it would be to bond the heat generating surface of the processor

00:48:53   to that metal surface that because it's like a giant metal heat sink basically as the exterior

00:48:57   casing of the laptop but because of those thermal limits for comfort and health and

00:49:01   stuff you can't really do that so what they did with the MacBook Air if you look at the

00:49:04   teardowns of it it basically has like an air gap like there is a heat sink inside the laptop

00:49:10   that does not touch the exterior of the case it just basically heats up the heat sink and

00:49:15   then the air that's in there and you know but air is an insulator largely thermally

00:49:21   like it's not a not a great way to cool things passively so if they redesigned the case of

00:49:28   the laptop I think there are other places they could dissipate heat maybe the screen

00:49:32   lid maybe maybe you know some parts of the top decking that are away from the keyboard

00:49:37   I don't know but what I'm saying is the M1 MacBook Air which is fanless is in an enclosure

00:49:43   that was never meant to be fanless if they design a new enclosure with that from the

00:49:47   start as a goal they could do it differently and they could potentially dissipate much

00:49:51   more heat again I don't think they're doing this for the 14 inch I don't think they would

00:49:56   but I would love it if they did I mean again you just described the M2 MacBook Air rumored

00:50:01   it's going to be a case designed to be fanless from day one it's going to have higher thermal

00:50:04   limits than the current one because it's purpose built for it it'll probably also be thinner

00:50:07   and lighter and the M2 if they crank it up might even dissipate more heat than the M1

00:50:14   does just because now they have the headroom because they have a better case but we'll

00:50:17   see there's only so many places you can check that the place I'm only mainly remember the

00:50:20   heat going is especially with like the original like PowerBook G4 and stuff is would be the

00:50:25   piece of metal between the function keys and the screen like the piece of metal on the

00:50:29   lower part of the case that would get so hot which it's basically the right place to do

00:50:33   it because you tend not to touch there and it's not touching your leg it's radiating

00:50:37   into the air but man I think we get that probably even on modern laptops if you just reach slightly

00:50:41   above the keyboard to that metal yeah if you're really working your laptop that'll get warm

00:50:46   I would love to have first of all no regressions because you never know with Apple like modern

00:50:53   Apple of the last year or two doesn't seem to want to step backwards like Apple of a

00:50:57   few years ago often did but nevertheless I would like no regressions but the other thing

00:51:01   I think I would like it in the spirit of Unleashed is let's get rid of those limitations that

00:51:05   seem silly at a glance that seem to be holdovers from the M1 seeming to be a largely iOS design

00:51:14   or a processor built for iOS and so an example of this is the limit of 32 gigs ram is it

00:51:20   there no 16 gigs ram I'm sorry they're currently limited to 16 gigs ram and in the M1 and and

00:51:26   I believe it's still true that it's only one external display except maybe the Mac Mini

00:51:30   is that right or did I make no because you can like that's what they say on their specs

00:51:33   page but it's so easy to make to connect more than one monitor with these various adapters

00:51:38   and dongles and stuff which is not great but it's not an actual limitation it's a compromise

00:51:43   it seems right that you need to go like USB C to HDMI and HDMI to a monitor and then you

00:51:49   can go direct USB C to a different monitor or whatever yeah there are other ways to do

00:51:52   it but it's an it's more annoying than it should be for sure yeah and so I feel like

00:51:55   those seemingly arbitrary limitations or the limitations that seem to be because it was

00:52:00   born as an iOS chip I would really love for those to go away it's not like I almost never

00:52:06   connect my laptop to a monitor and in fact if I do it's usually sidecar it's not a physical

00:52:10   monitor at all and actually if I ever do it's usually a television because I'm using it

00:52:15   to like watch a movie you know when I'm traveling or something like that so it's not it's something

00:52:19   that would really fix a need for me but it's just in principle something that I think is

00:52:23   unfortunate and and I haven't lived with 16 gigs ram in a long time and I know that it's

00:52:28   not you know it's not all apples to apples on the M1 max but I would really really find

00:52:35   it difficult to buy a professional an allegedly professional computer in 2021 in late 2021

00:52:42   with only 16 gigs ram like I feel like I would want at least 32 maybe even like John was

00:52:47   saying 64 I don't know so yeah I think those like seemingly arbitrary limitations is what

00:52:53   I would love to see go away and then in two ports I'd like to see more than two ports again

00:52:57   a seemingly arbitrary limitation that is applicable to the laptops at least that I would like to

00:53:03   see go away and if they can accomplish that if this is really a a chip that is built for

00:53:07   desktops or at least behaves like it whether or not that's the actual history of it I think

00:53:13   that would make me the most happy John do you have any thoughts on this I know you love

00:53:16   laptops so so much you know I think I expressed everything I wanted to say last week I just

00:53:21   hope that the rumors about the new ethos are true and that these laptops really embody

00:53:27   them in terms of limitations system on a checklist another thing we mentioned briefly last time

00:53:32   I'll reiterate now the expectation I think is a reasonable one is that these are not

00:53:36   like this is this is like it's the stuff from the M1 but more of it right so it's not like

00:53:41   oh it's totally different whatever they call it whatever they end up calling it don't get

00:53:44   distracted by the names we can but I keep referring to like M1X implying it's like it's

00:53:48   M1 guts but more stuff and on that end the idea that they're going to fix weird limitations

00:53:54   that were present in the M1 and they'll fix them in these I'm not sure that we should

00:53:59   be expecting that just because like this is following this is what Intel has always done

00:54:03   like the first chips that come out are not the Xeons with like the new cores of the new

00:54:06   architecture it's the smaller and cheaper ones and they build up to the Xeons and so

00:54:09   that's what Apple's been doing it really is the small one with the M1 cores and all that

00:54:13   other stuff and then this one is going to be the big one but it's gonna have the same

00:54:18   or similar M1 cores and stuff and I would imagine the same or similar IO or whatever

00:54:24   it whatever it is that's stopping them from doing multiple displays easily hopefully that's

00:54:28   not something that's inherent in the architecture and hopefully it was just that you know they

00:54:31   would have added added needed to add more you know lanes to some bus somewhere or something

00:54:35   and then that'll be solved by this one if this if the chips and these unleashed things

00:54:40   really are like oh all new cores new if it's like the a15 cores for example or the a15

00:54:46   GPU cores which as we covered in past shows are actually different as well I will be very

00:54:49   surprised by that and what it will do is it will make the M1 seem like this weird stop

00:54:53   gap right they just had to get something out the door ASAP and so they gave you the M1 but

00:54:58   really they were working on these unleashed ones that essentially have a15 cores in them

00:55:02   I don't expect that right now I'm still fully expecting these to be M1 but more which will

00:55:07   be great M1 is a great chip but I think that kind of dictates the feature set whatever

00:55:13   stuff that was if it is M1 guts whatever stuff they planned on with the M1 guts you're gonna

00:55:18   get that but just more of those guts so as a final question before we move on and let's

00:55:24   start with John what is this chip going to be called just for bragging rights it's assuming

00:55:29   there's only one chip which maybe there won't be but what are they going to call this chip

00:55:33   that they're announcing Monday I mean I again have not been keeping up so I'm just gonna

00:55:37   go with the boring old M1X right you know it's we're already trying to make the shirt

00:55:41   for it so please let it be called M1X because it'll save us a little bit of work but yeah

00:55:47   Apple can call whatever the hell they want but M1X is what I'm thinking of it as in my

00:55:51   mind for the reasons I just stated that I expected to do the M1 but extra Marco I'm

00:55:56   also going M1X because you know we talked about this before you know a lot of people

00:56:01   think oh maybe this should be the M2 the M3 but I think that's what that's what the future

00:56:05   years chip lines will be I don't think the you know bigger core version of the M1 will

00:56:13   be called the M2 I think the M2 is next year's chips or you know it's like the chips that

00:56:19   come out next spring that are based on the A15 or whatever I mean and it's possible you

00:56:24   know one thing that we haven't talked about it is possible that they might skip M1X and

00:56:29   these new chips might be M2 based in their naming because maybe the new chips will use

00:56:35   A15 cores instead of the A14 cores that are in or you know the A14 based cores that are

00:56:41   in the M1 so it's possible that you know this might that like M1X might never exist and

00:56:48   that maybe the M2 goes in the you know most of these things or the M maybe they start

00:56:53   out with M2X and then we get the M2 in the spring with the MacBook Air update that's

00:56:58   rumored who knows but I think the most likely outcome here is this is the M1X and it's based

00:57:04   on the M1 cores from last year but more of them in larger chips and that the cores that

00:57:08   are based on the A15 updates this year are possibly coming in future products.

00:57:15   I think it's going to be M2 or M2X or something M2 derived and I'm saying that for a couple

00:57:23   of reasons first of all the M1 was you know roundabouts of this time last year and second

00:57:30   of all the A what is it A15 right in the in the new phones so many of them I can't keep

00:57:35   them track keep track of them so the A15 in the new phones as we've said plenty of times

00:57:40   is not an earth-shattering difference from you know the 14 that preceded it and what

00:57:46   if the chip team which we know has suffered some losses over the years what if they were

00:57:51   focused on these new chips for for these new computers and so I'm going to go out on a

00:57:57   limb and say that this is going to be a bespoke computer chip you know not just something

00:58:03   that was derived for an iPad or an iPhone chip and and it will be called M2 or M2X or

00:58:09   something along those lines.

00:58:12   Speaking of the A15 one thing that is a possibility here is like because the Macs are in such

00:58:17   low volume compared to the phones it's possible that these unleashed ships whichever whatever

00:58:23   cores they use might use the new whatever was it for all it and 5p or whatever like

00:58:28   the the new refined TSMC 5 nanometer process that Apple is using for the phone chips and

00:58:35   I say that just because the volume is so low like why not why not use if there's if there's

00:58:39   a you know you can just carve out a tiny little sliver of spare capacity I think I just saw

00:58:43   some rumor that Apple was stepping down its iPhone orders because of whatever you know

00:58:48   like you don't need a much of a percentage miss on iPhone prediction to say oh now we

00:58:53   have access we have enough capacity to cover all the MacBook Pros because most people don't

00:58:56   buy MacBook Pros they just they buy the cheap laptops right those are the big sellers and

00:59:00   in the grand scheme of things the numbers are so small compared to iPhones that I really

00:59:04   do hope that these chips are built on the new process because as we talked about last

00:59:08   week part of what makes the A15 good is like oh you get a free five whatever was you know

00:59:14   five or six percent clock speed increase for no increase in power because we improve the

00:59:18   process that's great that is a great example of unleashed oh we get speed for free and

00:59:23   we don't burn any additional heat yes please put that in the MacBook Pros and then also

00:59:26   crank it up even higher so I really hope these use the new process just to you know goose

00:59:31   them a little bit more regardless of what course they use.

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01:01:05   our show.

01:01:07   All right Marco you have in the show notes something very interesting Marco's new Dropbox

01:01:16   setup tell me about this.

01:01:18   Yeah this is a pleasant little surprise people a few weeks ago started recommending to me

01:01:23   this new Dropbox client called Maestro and it is an open source Dropbox app that runs

01:01:31   on Macs and Linux I've been using it my side I uninstalled Dropbox from my Macs and I've

01:01:37   been using it on Mac and also on Linux on a server that I run that hosts my blog because

01:01:41   it's a Dropbox based blog engine and Dropbox forever ago they had a Linux CLI version of

01:01:47   their client it broke constantly and my blog just hasn't worked for a while.

01:01:52   I had to write things by rsync and SCP and it's been a mess and so anyway so I have I've

01:02:01   had this running now for the last couple of weeks and here's some reasons why you might

01:02:06   want Maestro so first of all it is very very basic it does not support some of Dropbox's

01:02:15   more modern and you know broader esoteric features that if you first got to Dropbox

01:02:22   because it was a folder that syncs this does everything you want but if you if you came

01:02:29   to Dropbox for its collaboration features and hey let me suck all the pictures off of

01:02:35   every device you plug in like that kind of stuff I don't think it does any of that stuff

01:02:38   but what's great about this so first of all Dropbox is native app as far as I'm aware

01:02:43   is still not Apple silicon compatible or not compatible but it still runs in Rosetta like

01:02:48   it still is not compiled for Apple silicon again I could be wrong there they always say

01:02:54   oh there's a beta you go here and then I've tried that and it's still it's still always

01:02:57   running Intel binaries so the Dropbox app on your Mac today if you have an M1 Mac you're

01:03:03   already you're running Rosetta that might be the only Rosetta app you're still running

01:03:07   at least continuously so that's overhead number one number two Dropbox recently is an

01:03:13   electron app so as we've discussed that has a very large disk and memory footprint to

01:03:19   give you some idea after both after I had like I did my laptop first and I had Dropbox

01:03:25   running on my desktop and I restarted both machines they were both fully synced and their

01:03:29   memory footprint Dropbox was using seven hundred and forty megs of RAM my goodness and maestro

01:03:37   was using a hundred and eighteen the Dropbox app disk space wise was four hundred and twenty

01:03:43   one megs maestro's app is forty five megs so it's ten times smaller on disk and what

01:03:50   is it like five times smaller in RAM it is very lightweight and that to me for something

01:03:57   that is running continuously on my Mac on all my Macs all the time it feels like I have

01:04:04   removed a small burden that was just constantly you know pegging one CPU core for some reason

01:04:09   or you know just the amount of RAM that's using is inexcusable right so maestro is great

01:04:15   for that it is Apple silicon native as well as Intel native the Linux version I'm now

01:04:20   running is also great was super easy to install it's it's a Python based thing so you need

01:04:25   to install some weird Python stuff but you know it's it was in modern package manager

01:04:28   so it's fine and it's configurable you can tell it where to put the folder and everything

01:04:34   the only things I really found that were lacking about it it didn't transfer over things like

01:04:40   whether my shell scripts were executable and certain whatever extended attributes on on

01:04:47   Macs tell it like this this bundle is actually something that you shouldn't show the file

01:04:53   extension on so like like my any logic file I have in there will have will show the dot

01:04:58   logic extension that normally shouldn't be shown so there might be like some extended

01:05:03   stuff that it's not transferring properly but as a like file transfer thing it's been

01:05:08   fine it's it's been fast you know the shared folders update just fine I haven't found I

01:05:15   don't think it has any kind of like right click for share link integration and finder

01:05:19   so that is one downside if you use that a lot personally I don't need that very often

01:05:23   when that happens I can just go to the dropbox website and just you know get the get the

01:05:27   showing there if I really need it so it's not it isn't that big of a loss for me but

01:05:32   it's been great I feel like my computer I mean this is probably psychological but I

01:05:36   feel like my computers are faster and less burdened if nothing else I trust this it's

01:05:43   a it's a it's a very simple open source app and dropbox with their own client software

01:05:48   I do not trust them at all the the dropbox app has declined over the years to be both

01:05:55   technically less sound and far less efficient and also to be creepy and to try to take over

01:06:00   more more and more parts of my system in weird ways they try to play tricks to get you to

01:06:04   give them your root password they they play tricks with accessibility stuff it's just

01:06:08   it's weird what they do and we've talked before like I really have been so turned off by what

01:06:15   dropbox has done with their with their client apps in in recent years and my stroll really

01:06:21   removes most of that you know it there's there's nothing bad about maestro at all it works

01:06:25   well the things it doesn't support are things I don't really use and so it's great I can

01:06:31   recommend it looking at their Linux documentation and they talk about raising the limits for

01:06:35   I notify which lets me know that they're using I notify for their change detection right

01:06:41   oh by the way if you if you don't have I notify installed it won't install it for you so install

01:06:47   I notify tools in your Linux box before before you install maestro learn that one the hard

01:06:51   way this is a problem I think we talked about years ago or maybe I wrote about in my Mac

01:06:56   OS X articles like the problem you're faced with is let me know when something happens

01:07:00   with these files and it's a lot of files and you can do it with polling which is just I'll

01:07:04   just check constantly did anything change did anything change did anything change and that

01:07:07   is incredibly inefficient and destroys your battery and you don't want to do that nobody

01:07:10   likes polling so you need some sign of OS facility that says how can I tell when crap

01:07:14   has changed in the file system without constantly polling I notify is one of the many features

01:07:19   that does that on Linux I guess it's the one they chose here it's fairly modern and basically

01:07:24   what the kernel know because all I owe all local I owe goes through the kernel and so

01:07:29   you can say hey kernel if anyone does anything to any of these any files anywhere you're

01:07:33   going to be involved in it and so just just so you know this set of files tell me if anything

01:07:39   happens with them call me back in or whatever and so now you don't have to pull you just

01:07:42   have to wait for anybody who does anything to the file system their code will eventually

01:07:46   enter the kernel and the kernel will say oh I've got if this is one of those files are

01:07:49   supposed to be watching I'll then send that notification so it's efficient it's good right

01:07:52   but as you can imagine you can't tell the kernel hey kernel if anything happens to any

01:07:56   of these millions of files let me know because now the kernel is like oh you know I have

01:08:00   to keep track of these millions of files and every time I do anything to a file I have

01:08:03   to check if it's on this list of millions and it's a paint you know so there are limits

01:08:05   in the kernel there is not unlimited kernel memory lots of fixed buffers or whatever so

01:08:09   that's why there is a limit in Linux that you can adjust to say how many events am I

01:08:15   allowed to have how long can the queue be how many things can we watch so on and so

01:08:19   forth so if you have a really big dropbox as this documentation says you may need to

01:08:22   adjust those the reason I bring all this up is on the Mac there is no iModify the Mac

01:08:26   has its own multiple facilities for getting changes about files one of them is fs_events

01:08:32   which is what spotlight uses and I think Dropbox uses as well there's also kq which is kernelq

01:08:38   short for kernel queue which is similar to iNotify there's at least one other facility

01:08:42   that I'm not remembering the name of but on one of the sins of Dropbox on Mac OS is that

01:08:49   historically and I think still it has done what is described as drinking from the fs_events

01:08:54   fire hose which is it just kind of wants to say I'm just just I'm going to hook into fs_events

01:09:00   and I just want to see everything that happens in the in the sort of the least discriminating

01:09:05   way possible fs_events isn't that granular but if like instead of it saying instead of

01:09:11   saying just tell me what happens to the dropbox folder it's like nope I'm going to watch the

01:09:15   fire hose and so literally every single piece of file I/O that happens in the entire system

01:09:20   the dropbox application at least in the past and I'm not sure about right now in theory

01:09:24   had to watch at least go by and go nope not interested that one nope that's not for me

01:09:27   that's not in the dropbox folder nope not for me not for me and that can be expensive

01:09:32   even though it's mostly just like seeing notifications go by getting sent to it and disregarding

01:09:36   them that's why you might if you go into activity monitors see like dbfs events d or whatever

01:09:42   the hell that process is called not burning your cpu but using cpu and you're like dropbox

01:09:47   isn't doing anything why is it using any cpu oh it's watching every single file system event

01:09:51   go by so I do wonder what this apparently python based thing uses on mac os to watch

01:09:57   for events it's probably not polling because that would be terrible it could be using fs_events

01:10:03   in a more limited fashion it could be using kq for all I know or it could be using that

01:10:06   other one that I can't remember that mac os has and that like if you're not a programmer

01:10:11   now to think about these things it's like oh I just want to fold to the sinks isn't

01:10:14   that easy this particular problem of hey let me know when something happens so I can do

01:10:18   a thing is actually one of the harder problems because if you have millions of files in your

01:10:22   dropbox your choices are like the naive choice of like oh I'll just check all the files well

01:10:30   checking a million files is incredibly expensive when you're done checking you just got to

01:10:33   start checking again because by the time it took you to check tons of things could have

01:10:36   happened that's incredibly inefficient so you have to use some kind of os provided facility

01:10:41   for checking for changes without polling all of them have limitations and caveats and costs

01:10:47   to using them it's better than polling it's better it's not as costly as polling but there

01:10:51   is some cost and so that is one of the main challenges of making a good magic folder that

01:10:57   sinks across the network is finding a you know efficient way to check and also you want

01:11:03   it to be reliable you don't want to miss events if Marco you know put something in the folder

01:11:07   and says like and and then he sees the little you know maestro thing sink and it's like

01:11:12   oh great it sink my change and it's done but what if it didn't what if it missed something

01:11:16   because it's event watching mechanism missed that event or it got dropped off a queue or

01:11:21   whatever like that is the hard problem here and so Marco said he trusts this and I think

01:11:25   what he meant was I trusted not to be creepy and do creepy things but I'm not sure if I

01:11:29   trust it to not accidentally miss a file as awful as dropbox is it has so many users and

01:11:36   it's such a big company I have some confidence that if there's some systemic problem where

01:11:39   they're missing updates or whatever they'll notice before I do and hopefully get it fixed

01:11:44   whereas this thing if it's missing and or mangling files in some subtle way I'm not

01:11:49   sure and I might be the first person to discover that and I don't want to be that person still

01:11:54   it's interesting though and if I was running dropbox on my machine I would definitely be

01:11:59   installing this right now just very quickly if you happen to be one of the 10 people who

01:12:03   have Synology that listen to this show what I've been doing oh god you really did get

01:12:09   a fiber slap is that just for Synology or is that F of MPEG too?

01:12:13   No just Synology.

01:12:14   Oh god I cannot believe you actually got a fiber slap anyway yeah if you happen to be

01:12:20   one of the lucky people that own a Synology then you can use Synology drive in combination

01:12:25   with cloud sync I think one of Synology's major problems is that they have terrible

01:12:30   names for things and then rename them to similar things 85 times a year but suffice to say

01:12:36   Synology drive is like dropbox but it's running your own little private cloud and then you

01:12:39   can have the Synology sync with your actual dropbox such that your actual dropbox is a

01:12:46   subfolder within your Synology drive and that's what I've been doing for like two or three

01:12:50   years now at the suggestion of a listener and it's been working great so you can also

01:12:55   take that approach where you don't have to have anything dropbox at all happening directly

01:12:59   on your computer it's just pushed off to the Synology to handle it for you which I also

01:13:03   recommend but this Maestro thing is certainly a lot more accessible for most of us so that's

01:13:08   top tip.

01:13:09   The Synology thing is probably using iNotify as well that tends to be the most modern maybe

01:13:14   iNotify is on Mac OS now maybe that's the one I can't remember someone suggested e-poll

01:13:18   but I think that's just Linux anyway it's not nearly here nor there I'm not saying any

01:13:22   one of these mechanisms is bad or good you know you should or shouldn't be using Fs events

01:13:26   you should or shouldn't be using iNotify or KQ or e-poll or whatever you just need one

01:13:29   of them but all of them are tricky like it's not it's not straightforward to make sure

01:13:35   that you are efficient and reliable and you know don't have weird corner cases or bugs

01:13:41   and stuff like that and in the magic folder that syncs it's really easy to end up with

01:13:45   corner cases and this is kind of like the the thing that Merlin always harps on about

01:13:48   if you have a Dropbox with a hundred files in it you're fine no matter what like it's

01:13:51   fine but if you have a Dropbox with four million files and like terabytes of data and using

01:13:56   selective sync suddenly the problem gets a lot harder and the odds of you encountering

01:14:00   an issue go up a lot like almost any of these systems we describe will work fine if you

01:14:05   are a light user of folders that sync but I don't know how much you guys use but I've

01:14:10   definitely been pushing up against not being particularly light user of Dropbox I don't

01:14:14   like it but that's just this is the world we live in I keep coding more and more stuff

01:14:18   in Dropbox which I'm sure Dropbox loves because it's convenient to have it accessible everywhere

01:14:22   and because I still don't trust iCloud drive so yeah.

01:14:26   I mean for whatever it's worth my Dropbox is a bit it's just under seven gigs and it's

01:14:30   thirteen thousand individual items and because the reason why my entire blog CMS is hosted

01:14:35   in my Dropbox and so there's like you know at least one text file for every single post

01:14:40   that's ever been on my site and so it there's a lot of like files and folders and images

01:14:45   and stuff like that there but I can say you know it this worked really well for thirteen

01:14:51   thousand files that are seven gigs one of the things that I forgot to point out that

01:14:55   you might want to use my stroll is that the way it works you know the mechanism by which

01:14:59   it works is it just using Dropbox's API and as a result of that Dropbox recently introduced

01:15:04   changes to their plans and stuff to make more people buy the paid version that the free

01:15:09   versions now have like a computer limit of how many computers that can be installed on

01:15:12   before you have to upgrade to the paid plan space regardless and this does not count towards

01:15:17   that limit because it's just an API client.

01:15:20   I don't know how long Dropbox is going to let that go they might have a problem with

01:15:23   that I don't know but it's probably not going to be a big enough deal for them to care so

01:15:28   if you are running against the limit of your device count on a free Dropbox plan this might

01:15:33   help you out there as well.

01:15:34   So someone in the chat room posted some links to the source and they have an unfortunately

01:15:39   named file called polling.py but it's in an fsevents subdirectory so it looks like they're

01:15:43   using fs and some mac os apparently they're using this watchdog python module that uses

01:15:50   inotify on linux on mac it can use fsevents or kq and you can choose the implementation

01:15:55   if you want but I'm assuming based on the directory name that they're choosing fsevents

01:15:58   which is honestly probably a reasonable solution although on mac os I feel like fsevents is

01:16:03   the most likely to continue working thing and I know I say that and then people are

01:16:08   like oh what about that bug when you switch user accounts on the mac and then all of a

01:16:12   sudden spotlight stopped working yeah fsevents does occasionally have issues or like oh I

01:16:16   can't search my mail because fsevents is hosted in some weird way fsevents probably is not

01:16:23   as reliable as inotify on linux is but given the choices available I think fsevents is probably

01:16:29   the right choice.

01:16:30   oh also I had this on my desktop which is a multi-user desktop I have an account on

01:16:35   this and so does tiff we do we both do our podcasting from this so she has dropbox installed

01:16:40   on her account so that she can like you know drop her podcast files into it to transmit

01:16:43   to you know ongoing needs and I have my stroll installed on both accounts and it works great

01:16:49   to sync both of them you know mine with my dropbox hers with her dropbox never any problems

01:16:54   there either so I can say once again here's another great thing about it works fine on

01:16:57   a multi-user mac os which is not something I can say for lots of things including watch

01:17:02   unlock mac os itself barely works like but damn it maestro does.

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01:19:09   let's do some ask atp derrick aldridge writes you commented on a recent show that one of

01:19:14   the hardest tests in computer science is creating an accurate progress bar I've watched a lot

01:19:17   of bad progress bars over the years so I believe that it must be really difficult to do well

01:19:22   but why is it so difficult you know I was thinking about this before we recorded in

01:19:28   the the answer I wanted to use was going to rely on like spinning platter hard drives

01:19:34   and that's obviously not something we need to worry about quite as often anymore but

01:19:38   I mean look at if you were to download something from the internet how how do you know how

01:19:42   long that's going to take if it's going at a megabyte a second now will it be a megabyte

01:19:47   a second in in 10 seconds what if it goes from a megabyte a second to 100 megabytes

01:19:51   a second to one tenth of a megabyte per second and there's no real way to predict that and

01:19:56   that's just one silly example of why especially when you have any sort of input or output

01:20:02   you know any sort of io it gets really hard really quick and you can't really reliably

01:20:06   make predictions but I don't know john I'm assuming you put this in here do you have

01:20:10   a more scientific answer than that yeah that's the type of question that if you're a user

01:20:15   of a thing it seems mysterious and weird like it seems like such a simple thing I just want

01:20:20   to you know see a bar and I wanted to fill a progress bar and I wanted to fill in some

01:20:25   reasonable progression like I don't think people demand like you were like suggesting

01:20:30   is that like that is that there are no jumps or stutters or whatever but progress bars

01:20:34   are so bad like they're not even close to being correct that it seems like you know

01:20:39   they'll spend an hour for the first two pixels and then jump to the end in two seconds like

01:20:43   that's that's really far off and not not a something that you can blame on like variability

01:20:49   of like a dispute or internet connection right but the reason it seems weird to people is

01:20:55   it just seems like it should be a straightforward thing and the way it doesn't seem weird to

01:20:59   programmers because if you've ever had to program a progress bar you immediately understand

01:21:05   why they are crappy right because what you're asked to do with a progress bar is essentially

01:21:09   like I said know the future and you can't know the future right and you like you don't

01:21:15   know but not only can you not know the future about how things are going to go very often

01:21:19   you can't even know what it is you're going to be asked to do think of like an installer

01:21:24   or something right this all I know is roughly what it has to do but if there's any step

01:21:29   in the installer that involves like cleaning things up or preparing the way for a thing

01:21:34   or whatever you don't know what you're going to be faced with say you are upgrading something

01:21:39   and you have to clean up an old version you don't know where the old version is installed

01:21:44   or if there are seven old versions that you have to get to you don't even know how much

01:21:47   work you have to do yet right so very often the first job to make a progress bar is like

01:21:53   well if I want to make this progress bar reasonable at all I need to essentially do a pre-flight

01:21:57   and say how much work is there for me to do I know my job is uninstall X and install Y

01:22:03   but how big is X and where is X and and how fast is the disk that X is on and is X even

01:22:09   present at all are there 17 copies of X right I don't know any of these things I don't even

01:22:13   know what I have to do yet and so you'd have to go out and wander and say okay should I

01:22:19   take the time to like or say you know your job is to like delete a bunch of stuff should

01:22:23   I take the time like the Finder seems to and count how many files are in the trash first

01:22:28   before I even start the progress bar because otherwise like empty trash is a good example

01:22:34   oh you should know what you have to do why don't you just measure the speed of the disk

01:22:37   and just do it it's like well well how many files are in the trash okay counting the files

01:22:41   in the trash can be really fast or you might have literally four million files in the trash

01:22:46   counting four million files takes a non-zero amount of time now how do you show the progress

01:22:51   bar for counting four million files you probably don't because you don't know how many you're

01:22:53   counting so how do you put up a progress bar you have to count before you can even know

01:22:57   how to put the progress bar and this cycle just repeats and it's just a fractal itself

01:23:02   it's just a nested thing within thing you don't even know what you have to do let alone

01:23:06   how long it will take to do it now try making a progress bar like the boot process of a

01:23:09   computer is similar which is why for various various times in the history of Mac OS Mac

01:23:13   OS has essentially had a progress bar that's just like look don't pay any attention to

01:23:16   what we're actually doing during the boot just show a progress bar that lasts roughly

01:23:20   the length of time the last boot process lasted and if we get close to the end and we're not

01:23:24   done yet just make it slow down like it's totally fake like they don't even try because

01:23:28   what you will find if you try to program this is pre-flight is often the most expensive

01:23:32   thing you're going to do and it's better not to pre-flight it's like don't prepare to go

01:23:36   just go don't prepare to move out just move out from space balls or whatever right and

01:23:40   that's often what they do they say I'm not going to try to prepare because I know if

01:23:43   I have to count up all the things or meticulously figure out the list of things that I have

01:23:48   to do that might take longer than doing the thing and no one wants to wait twice as long

01:23:52   so the progress bar can be slightly more accurate just start going and just start filling the

01:23:55   progress bar and you know if there are five steps in this installation progress then have

01:24:01   the progress bar I've done step one I've done step two and I'm so it doesn't matter if step

01:24:04   three takes two hours and step one and two take 30 seconds but this is just how we decided

01:24:07   to do it you know why because we can't pre-flight this crap and you know so it's it is understandable

01:24:13   as soon as you try to implement it but from a user's perspective it's like doesn't the

01:24:16   computer know what it's doing or how long it's going to take the answer is no the computer

01:24:20   doesn't know because humans don't know because it's unknowable and figuring it out knowing

01:24:25   it is often one of the most expensive things you can do and just slows everything down

01:24:28   nobody wants that so that's why I don't use empty trash in the finder I use RM minus RF

01:24:32   from the command line because RM minus RF does not pre-flight that crap that's the most

01:24:38   john thing I've ever heard I would also add you know other reasons that that progress

01:24:42   bars are often so bad you know there's a lot of these days network involvement in the things

01:24:48   that we are waiting on progress bars for and not only are networks potentially fickle and

01:24:54   unreliable you know things might fail in the middle and have to be retried bits of data

01:24:58   might not make it and have to be resent things might time out but also when you're operating

01:25:04   over the network you're dealing with you know two unreliable conditions your end of the

01:25:09   network where you might be like moving with a cellular connection or even just moving

01:25:14   throughout your house on you know some weird Wi-Fi setup or you know somebody might turn

01:25:18   a microwave on next door and blast out the 2.4 gigahertz spectrum and then that makes

01:25:23   all your devices like reconnect and have problems so there's you know you have your own unreliable

01:25:27   network and then you have whatever's going on between you and whatever server you're

01:25:31   talking to and then that server could be could have like spiky performance depending on the

01:25:37   load that it's bearing at the time so there's all sorts of unreliability there and then

01:25:43   finally I would add to provide a progress report back to the user is more code you have

01:25:51   to like in for most operations that you would write as a programmer that you might want

01:25:56   to display a progress bar for many of those operations in order to make them get progress

01:26:02   updates and display them to the user that's significantly more code and sometimes more

01:26:07   complicated code than just like in the code just saying like alright fetch this file now

01:26:11   write it out here and if I just file then write it out here like to to do that while

01:26:16   also providing progress on that transaction or on on whatever operation you're doing is

01:26:21   more work and more complexity and for most things that's not worth it unless something's

01:26:25   going to take you know a reasonably long time every time and so most programmers just going

01:26:30   to skip that part and just say alright write the file here and tell me when you're done

01:26:33   and that's it so that's those those are some of the many reasons why this is hard.

01:26:39   Some common programming practice which I think is a pretty good one is like do a thing and

01:26:45   then basically say if I start doing a thing and it turns out it's taking more than X seconds

01:26:50   now now go and throw up a progress bar which I think is usually a good UI because if it

01:26:54   happens instantly very often especially in the olden days but maybe less so now it would

01:26:59   take more time to instantiate create and display the window with the progress bar in it than

01:27:04   it would do to to do the actual thing so lots of still to this day lots of applications

01:27:09   lots of good Mac applications will just try to do a thing when you ask and only after

01:27:14   1.7 seconds elapses or whatever their timeout is they'll say this is obviously going to

01:27:18   take more than 1.7 seconds so throw up a window put a progress bar on it or whatever and I

01:27:23   think that's right like it's kind of once you pass that threshold of this happens instantly

01:27:27   you need to give some kind of feedback but if you tried to throw the progress bar every

01:27:30   time it could be like visual noise if the operation is so fast that by the time the

01:27:33   progress bar is drawn on the screen it just zips to 100% and disappears that's wasting

01:27:37   everybody's time and it's flashing crap on the screen one more question in the chat room

01:27:41   about this was in a specific case of counting up files like why doesn't every directory

01:27:45   just keep track of how many files are in it and so on up the tree so that you would never

01:27:49   need to count files you would just ask the top level directory hey how many files are

01:27:51   under you sounds like it makes a lot of sense again until you try implementing a file system

01:27:56   that's actually pretty hard to do because that would mean that every time something

01:27:59   adds or removes a file everyone's fighting over updating the count of files and you really

01:28:04   need that not to get out of sync because if it's out of sync it's useless to you you need

01:28:07   it to be in sync all the time but you don't want to pay the contention over it for that

01:28:11   said APS as we have discussed on past shows many years ago has this feature ostensibly

01:28:17   where it does have a way to keep track on a per directory basis how many files are in

01:28:21   it remember we're talking about when we were this feature is rolling out like this will

01:28:24   be great because now when we go to the storage screen on iOS it won't take a year and a day

01:28:28   to show us what's using all the storage because it'll it won't have to like crawl the whole

01:28:31   file system it'll just know this I don't know what happened to that feature I'm not Mac

01:28:37   OS doesn't seem to use it I think it's still there maybe I mean iOS is storage screen also

01:28:43   is just as slow as it ever was maybe for other reasons I think that is still a feature of

01:28:48   APFS like part of being a part of the the great features that is like we found a way

01:28:52   to do this that doesn't cause huge amounts of contention and it actually has adequate

01:28:56   performance so we're going to and what that means is you can do this fast you know fast

01:29:00   directory file count thing that I think I think it's there I think the API's are still

01:29:04   for it probably someone will find it and send it to us and we'll have in the show next week

01:29:07   or whatever but the the bottom line is if the OS is and the software don't use it if

01:29:14   like the common API's don't use it doesn't really matter that feature is good so if that

01:29:17   feature does exist and is reliable I really hope more parts of Mac OS and iOS start using

01:29:24   it if it's not reliable please continue not to use it right because it's really important

01:29:29   for the answer to the question of how many files in this directory to be accurate not

01:29:35   so much for the emptying the trash finder just just empty it please.

01:29:39   Alright Tom Jacob writes what's a good car blog to read to keep up with the latest in

01:29:45   car technology preferably one that plays nice with my favorite RSS reader net newswire I

01:29:50   don't really read any to be honest with you I just get my news through you know people

01:29:55   in in slacks or through Twitter I'm assuming Jon that you have some good answers for this

01:30:00   though so tell me please.

01:30:02   Really we've answered this one a couple times with people who ask every few years like I'm

01:30:05   still a old fuddy duddy I still get Car and Driver magazine on paper and I read it on

01:30:10   paper and I like it Car and Driver does have a website and they do have an RSS feed but

01:30:16   it's not good it's not a good RSS feed it like it has like the title and then like not

01:30:23   even the description but it's got the title and maybe a few words and then a link to the

01:30:26   article so technically it works with net newswire but yeah if you're looking for a car magazine

01:30:33   I like Car and Driver.

01:30:34   Jalopnik is another website that I often find myself going to but honestly I don't know

01:30:38   enough about the website to recommend it specifically I just do know that on Twitter kind of like

01:30:42   I see links there occasionally and I go and read them but in terms of the writing about

01:30:48   cars that I can relate to that I think is not entirely scummy and slightly less well

01:30:55   anyway I don't anyway Car and Driver that's my suggestion they have a website check it

01:31:00   out.

01:31:01   I used to read autoblog years and years and years ago and then mostly gave up on it and

01:31:04   if I were to choose one I'd probably choose Jalopnik but I don't really read anything

01:31:09   with regularity I do watch a couple of YouTube channels I've given up on Doug DeMuro I just

01:31:16   found that I didn't really like his style anymore.

01:31:20   What is it Straight Pipes is pretty good Savage Geese is good I personally really like regular

01:31:27   car reviews I know that the that is a very polarizing channel not everyone will like

01:31:32   it but I really really enjoy it those are three off the top of my head that I can think

01:31:36   of but I don't know John do you have any that you would like to add I know you do a lot

01:31:40   of there's a lot of rebuild ones that you enjoy but yeah.

01:31:44   Alex on Autos is less objectionable let's say than even Savage Geese I would say I enjoy

01:31:53   Savage Geese as well but their opinions don't always match up with mine but Alex on Auto

01:31:57   is very sort of straightforward it's kind of what I think it was like a spiritual successor

01:32:01   to Motor yeah Motor Week going to Mills Maryland 2-1-1-7 yeah that's Motor Week is still on

01:32:06   it's still on they're still doing it but if you wanted to see like a YouTube eyes version

01:32:11   of that Alex on Autos he does very thorough very long explorations of cars he's got his

01:32:16   own weird opinions as well but it's less about him and his personality and I think his format

01:32:20   is more like Motor Week it's just like look we're gonna we're gonna sit in all the seats

01:32:24   we're gonna look at all the things and it's you know anyway Doug DeMuro is definitely

01:32:27   a thing very often I just go on there to see the cars but yeah he's definitely got a shtick

01:32:31   539 I can never remember the stupid channel what's the 539 m5 39 restorations yeah that's

01:32:40   my guy yep that's my the the one and only car rebuilding channel that I want Doris it's

01:32:46   the guy I think he's like is he Croatian or Slovenian or something but he lives in Germany

01:32:51   m5 39 is because he likes the what's the e39 m5 m5 is his big car he's got a bunch of them

01:32:59   but he rebuilds all BMWs he is amazing and great and I love all his rebuilding and I

01:33:04   know so much about everything that will fail on BMWs now which is basically everything

01:33:09   many things BMWs from the 80s and 90s that is Marco I know you're going to have a lot

01:33:14   of answers for this so please do share yeah okay yeah I don't I have never read a car

01:33:23   blog on a regular basis yeah I think like what what keeps me out of needing to be in

01:33:28   that world or wanting to be in that world is like I love my electric vehicle transition

01:33:33   so much I don't really care about what what goes on in the non-electric world because

01:33:38   I care a lot about the electric vehicle options out there but the problem is most of the electric

01:33:43   vehicle coverage out there is about Tesla and even though I love my Tesla car to drive

01:33:48   the last thing I want to do is follow Tesla news and discussions that's a that's a garbage

01:33:53   fire so I don't I don't want to go anywhere near that and so there's just not much for

01:33:57   me there most of the time of course all right and moving right along let's see we've got

01:34:03   next Sean Cohen writes hey question for John he always talks about his old hardware going

01:34:08   up into the attic how often does he power anything on check check that it worked etc

01:34:13   I've had my own experiences re recapping classic Mac hardware reflowing solder joints refreshing

01:34:18   heat sinks and so on does John actually maintain all of his hardware smiley face apparently

01:34:24   where this is we're doing all repeat questions this week yeah this is another one we answer

01:34:28   every few years it's time for it to come up again we have to re-solder the question yeah

01:34:33   the answer to the question is no I absolutely do not maintain it things are in the attic

01:34:37   surely some huge percentage of it just all have blown capacitors and are leaking all

01:34:40   over the place occasionally I do think take things out and turn them on and test them

01:34:45   and so far I've been lucky but I do absolutely nothing to maintain them other than trying

01:34:49   to do the minimum possible climate control to my attic where they are because it is a

01:34:54   finished space but it is not heated or cooled other than through it by windows and my efforts

01:34:59   so yeah everything up there is just slowly rotting and when I finally move out of this

01:35:03   place or deal with that stuff it's going to be a bloodbath delightful great all right

01:35:13   thank you so much to our sponsors this week Mac Weldon, Hover, and Revenue Cat and thank

01:35:18   you to our members who support us directly you can join ATP.fm/join we will talk to

01:35:24   you next week.

01:35:54   Thank you.

01:36:16   Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I've been really excited for this. John, what's up with your winter

01:36:35   hats? I have a winter hat. I don't know where it came from. It might have been my dad's.

01:36:42   It is a lot of things in my life I feel like I own I don't know where they came from and

01:36:49   they also might have been my dad's but they're just they're old and I remember it's what

01:36:53   I used to call a chicken hat you know kind of hat I'm talking about no no if you look

01:36:57   at it from the side it's kind of like let's see it's got angled sides and a flat top right

01:37:04   what so it's like I think I think of a house you're talking about think of a house right

01:37:09   it's a square with a triangle on top of it right yeah yeah cut off the tip of the triangle

01:37:13   on top that shape you've got now that's the shape of the hat and when you and when you

01:37:18   and when you put it on and when you put it on if you look at someone on the side you

01:37:22   will see that shape wait is so it does it have a rigid shape or is that just like cloth

01:37:26   that drapes over your head this is cloth but that's the shape the cloth is you've probably

01:37:30   seen this hat I don't know I've ever seen this I'm gonna need a picture yeah yeah we

01:37:35   are definitely gonna need a picture I mean I'd have to Google for when he's not actually

01:37:39   called the chicken hats and I just Google winter hat and try to find winter hat that

01:37:42   looks like a house I hear that if you just type something into Google and not think about

01:37:46   it yeah I should try that winter hat this is great program doesn't look like a shape

01:37:51   like it's shaped like the chat room is going through actual pictures of chicken hats and

01:37:56   it's probably not what you're I know I know if I that chicken hat it is not going to how

01:38:01   old would you say if you if you might have gotten this hat from your dad how old do you

01:38:07   think your current hat is time works maybe 20 years 25 and you have and are still wearing

01:38:15   a 20 possibly 20 year old winter hat all right well so anyway the the shape is not that important

01:38:20   I'm just trying to describe the current hat that I have you'll see why in a second right

01:38:23   so this is this is the type of hat it is I never really like this kind of hat I associate

01:38:26   with my dad gets used to wear a chicken hat when we skied again it's not called a chicken

01:38:30   hat or maybe a rooster hat or whatever but anyway this is so somehow I came into possession

01:38:34   of this green hat and it's made of like kind of a filthy type not fleece but kind of fleecy

01:38:39   turtle furry type material and given that it's 25 years old and has not pilled I'm going

01:38:44   to say it's very resistant to pilling because I don't know I don't know how it hasn't killed

01:38:47   but it hasn't but here is the key point about this hat I was to give you this hat and you

01:38:54   were to like put it between your fingers and squeeze it it's like it's like an inch thick

01:38:58   like with the two halves of the hat together an inch thick and squishy it is a thick hat

01:39:03   no we're not starting that again it like it is not it that you can't see through it it

01:39:10   doesn't have a mesh that you can see through again it's like fleecy type of material if

01:39:15   I think if you shoved it up to your face and tried to blow through it no air would come

01:39:18   out the other side it is extremely thick which means that it's warm and I'm cold all the

01:39:24   time so I want a warm hat I'm going to pull this over my head down over my ears and I

01:39:29   want it to insulate them from the cold so thickness is a super duper important feature

01:39:34   and you know I've had this hat for years I'm like you know I should I should try to find

01:39:38   a again I'm not trying to replace it I was trying to find a backup for this hat right

01:39:42   so I started looking around for winter hats a few years ago and every single hat I found

01:39:48   is like the thickness of my sock and pretty much as like wind and like weatherproof it's

01:39:53   like I can see through this hat like I can literally see sunlight through that when I

01:39:57   hold it up to the light in the store I'm going to put this on my head it's so thin it's like

01:40:01   paper thin and you know like that's not going to be warm I need something that is thick

01:40:08   and thick is thick and squishy is nice too like it's comfortable it's comfy I don't want

01:40:12   that skin thin thing and I know I'm not in the majority most people don't want a thick

01:40:16   hat because then their head gets all sweaty and it's gross like I get that I understand

01:40:20   why this is not the popular hat but somehow somewhere someone I think related to I think

01:40:26   we got this hat from REI maybe because I did a lot of investigating to try to find this

01:40:29   hat at one point made thick hats and so now I've been on this multi-year in the background

01:40:36   type of thing where if I'm ever in a store and they have winter hats I go over to them

01:40:39   and I squeeze them all and go nope thin thin thin thin thin thin nope nobody makes a thick

01:40:43   hat and I just move on and I bought a bunch of additional hats like beanies and knit hats

01:40:48   and all this other stuff and like buying them from Amazon based on reports of how thick

01:40:52   they might be and they just were all incredibly thin I went to L.L.Bean I've been to all the

01:40:57   various stores in person not like I'm hunting with hat because I still have my other hat

01:41:01   but now I'm living in fear of losing it because if I go who's this hat like that's it I can

01:41:04   never buy winter hat again and I'm not even thinking about style I don't need it to be

01:41:07   a chicken hat I don't mean anything about I'm like I just needed to be a thick hat and

01:41:11   there is literally nothing and so it's very disappointing to me.

01:41:15   So first of all I'm going to guess that this hat is somehow magic that it is going to be

01:41:21   bound to you forever and that you cannot lose it because I don't know anybody who could

01:41:27   keep a winter hat or any winter clothing item that is you know hat or glove category and

01:41:32   not lose it for 20 years like because these things rarely wear out I think they get lost

01:41:38   long before that so the fact that you've had this for possibly up to 20 years and you haven't

01:41:43   lost it yet I think you're good on that I don't think you're going to lose it.

01:41:47   I mean I don't tend to lose things but you know I think maybe part of what precipitated

01:41:52   this is like you know like if it's going to get lost it's going to get lost essentially

01:41:55   in the house it's like well it's getting cold again let me go find my winter hat and you

01:41:58   realize I don't know where in the house the winter hat is and then you've got too much

01:42:01   crap in your house and you can't find it so I think that is the scenario that prompted

01:42:05   me to say I should really have a backup I did eventually find it and I'm pretty sure

01:42:08   I know where it is now I haven't taken it out yet because obviously it's still like

01:42:10   70 degrees here and I don't need to wet their hat but you know you're right that I'm not

01:42:15   the type of person who loses things often so it's not an imminent danger but after 20

01:42:20   plus years I feel like I'm pressing my luck.

01:42:22   So I would say also the two areas you might want to look at are number one wool area I

01:42:31   like the smart wool brand for both hats and gloves they're not super thick but they are

01:42:36   warmer than you expect because they do I assume using merino or some kind of like nice wool

01:42:41   because I usually get itchy with most wool and I don't with that.

01:42:45   This is not wool and I don't want wool.

01:42:48   Well but I'm saying like that's an option for you know higher weight to thickness ratio

01:42:53   another thing to consider is if you look at the fleece category of hats there's many of

01:42:59   them that tends to be warmer also because it is substantially less breathable than these

01:43:04   kind of looser knits that you tend to see like on the most common like you know winter

01:43:08   beanies or whatever they're called the part that has like you know they pulled down you

01:43:12   fold up the little flap usually like the fleece versions of them are significantly warmer

01:43:16   so I don't know if you're going to find one that is the thickness that you want but you

01:43:22   can probably achieve similar warmth with some different fabric choices.

01:43:27   Yeah I mean I just posted in the chat I found the shape of the hat it's the wrong material

01:43:31   the wrong color everything about it is wrong but this is the shape and I found it by searching

01:43:34   for 80s ski hat and I came up with 80s wool ski hat so maybe it totally wasn't an 80s

01:43:39   thing so anyway look in the chat do you see that shape?

01:43:41   Yeah I've seen this before.

01:43:42   And the whole idea is that you like your nose would be facing you the left or the right

01:43:46   right that's how you put it on you don't put it on sideways right and this is you know

01:43:49   this is totally wrong because this is like a knit hat you know whatever.

01:43:53   So I was gonna say if only you knew someone perhaps extremely well that knits constantly

01:43:59   maybe you could make a custom bespoke request.

01:44:02   You know I don't want knit because knit is just full of holes yeah that's the whole thing

01:44:05   this by the way is this is the more extreme chicken hat this is not the shape of my hat

01:44:08   I just put it in the chat but this is the more extreme chicken hat and now you can see

01:44:13   why it would be called a chicken hat.

01:44:16   I guess yeah.

01:44:17   Well more like a rooster or whatever I don't know what it is this is my name for it but

01:44:21   like this this is more exaggerated you can see how it's got little things that poke out

01:44:25   of it but it's still basically a triangle the first one I sent you is more like the

01:44:29   shape of my hat.

01:44:30   We're gonna need a picture of you in the hat.

01:44:32   I'm sure you've seen me in this hat you probably have seen me in this hat it's very nondescript

01:44:37   it is like dark green and that is all there is to it there is no texturing or coloring

01:44:41   anything like that it's just a dark green hat.

01:44:43   I have hundreds of pictures of me in it I'm sure because it's literally everywhere in

01:44:47   the winter.

01:44:48   Good.

01:44:49   Find one and we'll make it the show the chapter art for the chapter if you can get it to me

01:44:51   by tomorrow morning.

01:44:54   By the way this is not my ski hat when I went skiing what I would wear I went through a

01:44:58   series of hats for skiing but I eventually settled on a hat that looks like and this

01:45:04   is not really what it looks like but I will send this to you my ski hat not stylish but

01:45:11   it is basically has it has a baseball brim and ear flaps it's this shape that I just

01:45:17   put in the chat do you see that yeah and that I used because the brim serves the purpose

01:45:22   of stopping falling snow and sun shielding and my ski goggles are going to the ear flaps

01:45:27   keep me ears going and my ski hat which I still have somewhere you know I haven't seen

01:45:31   ages like it's actually insulated like a winter jacket like it's made like a winter jacket

01:45:35   where it's like you know ripstop nylon with insulation between it on all the different

01:45:38   layers and underneath this hat I would wear a fleece headband so it's fleece headband

01:45:42   ski hat goggles over the hat to hold the hat to your head this was the days before anyone

01:45:46   wore helmets I probably should have been because I was it's amazing that I'm alive but that's

01:45:50   my ski hat and I still have that somewhere so have you considered a multi hat approach

01:45:58   how would that oh I think multiple thin hats and just shoving them on top of each other

01:46:03   that would be a mess like I'm trying to avoid the whole thing of like I don't want anything

01:46:07   that's itchy I don't want anything that's weird like the beauty of the big thick hat

01:46:10   is just I just pull it over your head and it slides right on and it goes off and it's

01:46:14   soft and it's squishy and it's warm and it blocks the wind and it has no moving parts

01:46:20   like it is not there are no drawstrings there's no seams that are all like I'm sure there

01:46:23   are somewhere but there's no sort of visible seams or other things that get in the way

01:46:26   it's just a green chicken hat

01:46:29   [beeping]

01:46:31   (beep)