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418: Dangerously Close to Being on a Phone Call

 

00:00:00   It's a party here once again on a Wednesday night! Join us in our clubhouse! Have either one of you

00:00:06   done that? I just installed it tonight and I just I did one dog walk with it and just listening. I'm

00:00:12   not, I'm not gonna say anything for a while. Just listening and I have not yet seen why people like

00:00:21   it but that doesn't mean it's not there. It just, you know, I need more time with it. Before you

00:00:25   tell me anything about it I'm going to tell you what I think it is based on nothing other than

00:00:31   like third degree tweets about tweets about tweets about clubhouse. Okay. My impression,

00:00:38   like multi-degrees separated, is that it's a thing where people are either lurking like you or are

00:00:48   on audio speaking and it's like, it's like, imagine if you had a Skype call but instead

00:00:53   of there just being the three of us on the Skype call there were 50 of us on the Skype call and

00:00:59   probably there's some way to determine who is allowed to speak at various times and who is ever

00:01:03   going to be allowed to speak or whatever but in general like a bunch of people in a big audio chat

00:01:08   room and the draw is that sometimes famous people come in and say things in real time that are

00:01:12   really dumb that aren't recorded for posterity because people don't know how to record audio on

00:01:16   their devices yet and and it's exciting to hear famous people talk just kind of like the same way

00:01:21   it was exciting on twitter to see a famous person type something like that they wrote themselves

00:01:26   presumably it brought you closer to famous celebrities than going through their publicist

00:01:29   back in the day now you can hear them on audio presumably the next step is chat roulette where

00:01:34   we get to see random people on video and then just you know how that ends that's my impression how

00:01:38   close am I to what clubhouse actually is. Uh, I again based on one evening of listening to it

00:01:46   that seems about right but again I this I don't want to be one of those people who like

00:01:53   makes broad proclamations about this thing and then like two months later I'm proven

00:01:58   grossly wrong and everyone's using my clip and they're worth 10 billion dollars and everyone's

00:02:02   like oh look at this podcaster who didn't get it because it attacked podcasting like

00:02:06   the I honestly I have absolutely zero interest in it the only reason that I asked a friend for an

00:02:12   invitation is because everyone's saying this is gonna like disrupt podcast and I figured well I'm

00:02:17   in the podcast business I should probably know about this I should probably have some knowledge

00:02:22   of this thing that has the risk of disrupting my business or at least changing what my business

00:02:26   needs to be and I think the risk of that is actually pretty low honestly like based on my

00:02:30   listening to it for again one afternoon it seems like it's a very different kind of thing and as a

00:02:37   podcast listener I mean we've all dear podcast listeners out there who listen to this show

00:02:44   you all like podcasts but we've seen over the years many businesses and apps and startups and

00:02:52   things like that that seem to be designed by people who hate podcasts to try to make it easier for them

00:03:00   to somehow get value at a podcast while hating them this seems like it might be in that ballpark

00:03:07   and so for people who actually really love podcasts I don't think this is gonna be for you

00:03:14   in the same way that it hasn't really caught on for me yet because the whole time I'm listening

00:03:19   to it I'm thinking of all the things about podcasts that I miss now this could again like

00:03:24   this take could age poorly when new things come out people often you know just complain that

00:03:31   they're not enough like the old things they're used to so I'm aware that this you know this could

00:03:35   be a bad take this could this could take off and be huge and I could be totally wrong and I could

00:03:41   be cringing listening ten years from now at this take I'm having right now but so far I when I

00:03:48   listen to clubhouse so I guess when I'm on there I don't know what the verb is when I'm listening

00:03:52   to a clubhouse club room I just miss podcast luxuries I miss things like pausing and speed

00:04:00   control and people who have some kind of production value and audio quality in their show and

00:04:05   people who perform editing for content I miss all the things that make podcasting really good and in

00:04:13   some ways like when when we moved from old media to new media in in many ways you know think about

00:04:19   you know when when like you know we moved from magazine articles to blog posts you know it's

00:04:25   like here's this this thing that this old need was being served this way in this new way you

00:04:29   aren't limited to like the bounds of a magazine or what one publisher selected or you know what

00:04:35   ten authors wrote you can read something from anybody and you can it can be any length that

00:04:40   needs to be and it can be published as often as it needs to be published and it can be you can

00:04:44   index it and search it and like all these luxuries you got via technology I feel like if if what

00:04:50   you're looking for is podcast like entertainment or information or conversation or amusement

00:04:55   clubhouse is like the opposite it's like going to step backwards it's like going back in time

00:04:59   to like am talk radio shows but by amateurs now people said a lot of this exact same stuff about

00:05:09   podcasts when they were new lots of like radio people said podcasts were were like you know

00:05:15   crappy productions of people who were boring and you know yammering on forever so like I get why

00:05:22   I should probably not be saying all this stuff but it's so far it's the best the best analogy

00:05:28   I can give is like I've never been one of the people and I think this makes me weird not them

00:05:34   but I've never been one of the one of the people who sits down and just turns on the TV and watches

00:05:38   quote what's on when I want to watch something I sit down I seek out a particular thing I want to

00:05:46   watch or I browse for like you know what's available right now what's new and I pick a

00:05:49   show and I watch that show I don't just turn on like a channel and see what's on I recognize that

00:05:55   makes me the weirdo because it seems like almost everyone else is the opposite but podcasting to

00:06:00   me is like the radio or audio version of selecting a specific thing you want to hear because you care

00:06:09   and you will seek out those things and you will listen to them and you will you know listen

00:06:14   straight through and you you know you don't want to miss a few minutes when you're like you know

00:06:17   pausing and you know having to talk to talk somebody in the street or getting out of your

00:06:21   car for a few minutes or whatever you know you want to pay attention to me Clubhouse is the just

00:06:29   sit back and watch whatever's on of audio and that's fine there's a huge market for that probably

00:06:36   but I'm not in it yeah the chat room is all talking about introverts and extroverts which

00:06:41   is exactly what I was thinking when you're describing it because a lot of the I feel like

00:06:46   a lot of the sort of foundational technologies of the internet if you squint at them kind of

00:06:54   look like things made to fit within stereotypical introverts lifestyle and worldview and the example

00:07:06   I was thinking of her Clubhouse is the opposite of that which is it's getting dangerous close to

00:07:10   being on a phone call so is it because a bunch of introverts made the internet I don't know I

00:07:14   mean that's probably not true but like it's true that sending an email is less pressure than being

00:07:19   on a real-time phone call you know it's true that asynchronous communication is less pressure than

00:07:25   synchronous communication in whatever form it's in right it's true that being in your house in

00:07:30   your pajamas is more comfortable than having to get dressed up and go to an office like all that

00:07:34   stuff like technology and lots of foundational internet communication mediums and protocols are

00:07:41   ideally suited to people who don't want to interact with people all that much and that probably means

00:07:48   that the portion of the population that doesn't like that is ill suit served by those technologies

00:07:55   and so as technology improves and we can better serve the the desires and needs of people who do

00:08:02   want to socialize I think that's probably a good thing for technology and in the podcast analogy a

00:08:08   podcast is like they don't know you're listening to them and you can listen to them at your leisure

00:08:11   how you want where you want with no pressure and feel like you have this relationship with

00:08:16   these people who are in your ears but never have to actually meet them or talk to them and you know

00:08:21   just like watching a TV show or a movie or reading books that is an ideal relationship with creations

00:08:26   and creators for a lot of people but for other people it isn't and they want to talk to people

00:08:30   and have an exchange and you know socialize essentially only over the computer and podcasts

00:08:37   don't fill that need an email doesn't fill that need and text messaging even doesn't fill that

00:08:41   need when it's you know minutes or hours between messages but real-time audio communication fills

00:08:46   a need it's like well don't we already have real-time audio communications not just a phone

00:08:49   call yes but what if it could be like a party line what do you remember those from the 80s

00:08:54   where they pick a party line telephone where you everyone would call up and then there we

00:08:57   bunch of people talking on the phone at the same time someone who has better knowledge of 80s party

00:09:01   line history can probably point to some cool web page going deep on what those were like and that

00:09:06   was more of a free-for-all I'm sure clubhouse is more refined than that but I think services

00:09:13   protocols or as they say in the term features if this is not a product that maybe it's a feature

00:09:17   that will quickly be you know stolen by all the big wigs so eventually Instagram will have

00:09:21   clubhouses and Facebook will have clubhouses and all that other stuff that serve needs other than

00:09:27   the needs of introverts to hide in their house in their pajamas and absorb entertainment in a

00:09:33   pressure-free way I think it's probably good for those things to exist all that said as an introvert

00:09:39   it's probably not for me like even though I sit here and talking to a microphone all week I'm not

00:09:44   really raring to go when it comes to the idea of essentially having a real-time phone call with

00:09:49   strangers just not into that but it doesn't mean this is not a useful and necessary and potentially

00:09:55   wildly popular idea and be going to be very successful whether it's through clubhouse or

00:10:00   you know someone else who takes this ball and runs with it so I've had a clubhouse account for a

00:10:05   couple of weeks but I have never remembered to listen in on any of the chats at a time when it

00:10:11   was convenient to do so and so I'll be sitting there and think to myself as I'm like trying to

00:10:15   watch a TV show oh I should listen to a clubhouse well I can't do that right now I'm in the middle

00:10:19   of watching a TV show or oh the kids are around don't want to do that and so I haven't even done

00:10:25   as much as Marco has even though I've had my account for a couple of weeks but my understanding

00:10:29   of it even though everything you guys said I think is accurate and I agree with including that my

00:10:34   take might be terrible one of the things that I think is worth noting is my limited understanding

00:10:39   is that you can have someone in the quote-unquote audience come up and join the chat so for example

00:10:46   if we were on clubhouse right now and we found that somebody had a particularly interesting

00:10:51   thing to say in the IRC chat room well this was clubhouse we could say to that person in the chat

00:10:57   room we could like bless them with the ability to talk on our show and I think that's a very

00:11:03   interesting and novel idea having never experienced it yet and I like the idea that you can have a

00:11:10   regular Joe Schmo and join in on a chat with a celebrity of any size you know a celebrity the

00:11:17   size of us which is to say not really a celebrity at all or an honest-to-goodness celebrity you know

00:11:22   and and I think that that's super neat and novel because it is very much like I forget which one

00:11:27   of you guys said it but very much like Twitter where you're watching these celebrities but even

00:11:31   more so you can talk to these celebrities and it with Twitter you're talking via your keyboard

00:11:35   with clubhouse you're talking with your voice and that I think is clever and novel and interesting

00:11:41   whether or not it's my cup of tea and I don't know again I haven't really properly tried it yet but

00:11:48   it doesn't strike me as the kind of thing I would like but I definitely do want to give it an honest

00:11:55   shake before I make up my mind someone it's a perfect opportunity for her million to do his

00:12:00   pre-taped call-in gag from was it from mr. show where you know if you wanted to call in about the

00:12:05   pets or the elderly should have called in last week because anyway it's complicated joke for me

00:12:10   to explain and I can't do it give me the bullet points I can't even do the bullet points but yeah

00:12:15   it's like a call-in show I mean we've all seen Colin you know am talk radio is like that hello

00:12:19   call you're on the line what do you have to say and they're pre screened and all this stuff but

00:12:22   now this is the disintermediated version where you're just plucked from the audience and allowed

00:12:27   to talk I thought it was even more of a free-for-all than that and maybe it can be but but yeah if you

00:12:31   have people picking people to come in and then you know then you get it's just a new venue for people

00:12:36   to say baba booey I guess right like or worse or much worse mmm because once you bless them to talk

00:12:42   now they have the microphone and everyone can hear them and yeah chat roulette let's never forget but

00:12:48   anyway I don't I don't mean to say that it's not a good thing and I definitely want to try it mostly

00:12:53   the reason I want to try it it's because I want my damn username do they have usernames yes I probably

00:12:58   don't I probably already don't have my username you should cut this part out of the show someone's

00:13:02   gonna go do you want me to give you one yes please do well that's the other thing very quickly I have

00:13:08   like five invites please don't ask me but I can't use them because the only way to use them is to

00:13:14   let clubhouse have access to slurp up all of your contacts like I would absolutely send you an invite

00:13:19   right now nope sorry John yeah exactly so I would send you an invite right now John if it wasn't for

00:13:25   the fact that they the only way to do an invite is to bless contacts access to the app where you know

00:13:32   they're gonna slurp up all of your data and do probably something terrible with you probably

00:13:37   have a spare device that you can turn off contacts from iCloud and delete all your contacts and send

00:13:43   me the right code right do I really want do I really like you that much I mean don't you have

00:13:47   spare devices hanging around the good things you test on yeah so easy so easy just to log out of

00:13:52   iCloud and turn off your contacts all right so I have a quick hot take on that actually why is

00:13:59   the address book API still a thing yeah my opinion is that Apple needs to deprecate and remove the

00:14:07   contact access API address book API I strongly disagree no it should it should be like photos do

00:14:13   you want this app to have access to one photo that you select to all your content like and there's so

00:14:18   many ways to do the exact same features with no loss of functionality without actually giving the

00:14:23   app access to your contacts you know what I mean I don't want the ability for people with one or

00:14:28   two taps to be able to share their entire address book even with their permission to some some new

00:14:35   app because here's why the reason why this is this is kind of a special case is that when you grant

00:14:41   access to your address book to some app that app not only has access to your personal information

00:14:49   but to the personal information of potentially hundreds of other people who didn't consent to

00:14:53   that and so it's different when you're sharing your photo library you're sharing your information

00:14:59   you are choosing and saying I'm gonna share my information with this app when you share your

00:15:02   contact list you're sharing a bunch of information for people from people who did not consent to that

00:15:07   and can't consent to that it's basically it's basically the same thing because when you share

00:15:11   your photo library you're sharing photos of people who may not have consented for you to share their

00:15:15   photo with this company but you have pictures of them like it's you know it's a very different

00:15:19   thing okay because it actually it's not even it contacts is actually better because presumably

00:15:24   someone gave you that contact info whereas you took that picture of that person they may not have

00:15:28   consented to that photo but they were in public so they have no choice and now their photo you're

00:15:32   giving it to somebody else it's the same deal I get implicitly when someone gives you information

00:15:37   or when you get information through some means that is deemed acceptable like taking a photo in

00:15:43   public that you can then there's an understanding that you can then take that information and do

00:15:49   something else with it that they don't control that's the price of giving it to you so if you

00:15:53   give someone your contact information you understand that they could share that contact information

00:15:57   with whoever they want now you can get mad at them about it and you can say I wish they wouldn't

00:16:01   share with these app vendors and you could be mad at an API saying they didn't mean to share

00:16:05   it or they don't understand what it means to share it but in the end it's the same thing once you

00:16:09   give the information to someone else it's under their control who knows what could happen to it

00:16:12   from there and I feel like photos are very similar especially I mean you're thinking of like someone's

00:16:16   in the background a picture that's not a big deal but what if it's like a photo of a personal nature

00:16:20   let's say and that's why we have laws against you know revenge porn and all sorts of stuff like that

00:16:25   but even if it's just an embarrassing picture of you looking goofy and you really wish that person

00:16:30   hadn't uploaded it to some thing that put it online for everyone to see and find forever you

00:16:36   know I think in both cases I'm with you that I think there should be much more control over what

00:16:41   shared and it should be much harder to indiscriminately share but I think that both situations are similar

00:16:47   and that once in once you give information that you care about to somebody else you are at their

00:16:52   mercy somewhat you're at the mercy of their decisions to some degree yeah but I think there's

00:16:57   a huge difference in degree and in in actionable uses between leaking of other people's data through

00:17:04   photo access and through contact access I mean through photos what are you gonna do like upload

00:17:08   two terabytes of photos to your service but that's somebody noticing like that's that's kind of a big

00:17:12   deal and then once you have those photos what do you like are you gonna like analyze every single

00:17:18   one of them to try to match faces whereas like a contact book the entire contact book is uploaded

00:17:23   within what a few hundred kilobytes then you have all the data in seconds and then every single bit

00:17:29   of that data is instantly cross-referenceable to get you know emails phone numbers for all these

00:17:34   people and so the the degree of leaking other people's personal data and the ease with which

00:17:40   it is leaked through the address book API is so much higher and easier for bad actors to use you

00:17:46   can instantly spam them you because you know you know how to contact them so you can like instantly

00:17:50   spam these people you can you can send emails you can send text messages you can cross-reference

00:17:54   those phone numbers with other databases and everything it's it's such a different degree

00:17:58   that Apple should not be in the business of enabling apps to have massive instant privacy

00:18:07   violations for everybody you know in a way that the user might not be considering or might not even

00:18:13   be thinking about like oh maybe there's somebody in my contact list who like just got a new phone

00:18:18   number for some good reason and they don't want all these services or the people to know it you

00:18:22   know like there's so many so many like bad abuse cases where the address book you know mass data

00:18:29   dumps to a service can be instantly used wrong and instantly have negative effects whereas like

00:18:34   picking a few photos for an app to see is a very very different context and I guess I don't think

00:18:39   there's enough positive uses of the entire contact list API to make up for this massive

00:18:47   negative downside that's that's not only possible but that's probably much more frequently used than

00:18:52   any positive use case I mean you can also give access to all your photos and I feel like the

00:18:56   protection of data volume for photos is kind of like the protection of data volume for movies like

00:19:01   in the beginning of piracy it was difficult to even pass around mp3s and the idea that we would

00:19:07   be passing around you know pirated movies to each other was ridiculous because who can put an entire

00:19:12   movie you don't have a room for that in your hard drive it's just a matter of time before that stuff

00:19:16   becomes tractable as well and I feel like it's the same deal yes contacts is obviously you know the

00:19:21   the best case because it's a low volume of data because people don't have a hundred thousand

00:19:24   contacts and it's text so it's real easy even if you set aside the contact images right it's also

00:19:28   precise like a phone number and email address are precise like they specifically identify somebody

00:19:33   with very high certainty but I mean the photos have the potential location information and I

00:19:38   feel like the thing the thing that is protecting currently protecting photos and videos from the

00:19:44   same problems that you're describing is the the volume of the you know the data and the precision

00:19:51   that we are able to extract from photos but imagine a future where it is extremely easy

00:19:56   and there are giant databases to cross reference locations and faces and people where you can just

00:20:01   go to a website of some terrible company that has aggregated all this information because they made

00:20:06   some cool fun thing that everyone needs to use that you have permission to access all your stuff

00:20:10   and say show me all the pictures of this person when they were on vacation at Disney World and you

00:20:14   and it can aggregate photos and do a 3d render of a fly-through of you walking around the Disney

00:20:19   Park collected from thousands of people's phones who took pictures with you in the background that

00:20:23   sounds ridiculous now it's like oh think of the data that would take and the computation and it's

00:20:27   going to be in a freaking web page in 20 years right so I you know I get it I mean the future is

00:20:33   the future and we're talking about the present and yes contact should definitely be locked down it's

00:20:36   the worst case scenario right now but I think photos and videos are just as bad if not worse

00:20:41   and we're just protected for them essentially by being down in the slowness to use a reference from

00:20:46   a cool science fiction novel I read once and that sometime within our lifetime photos and videos

00:20:52   will fall to the same thing that contacts do now and especially if we forbid contacts but still

00:20:56   allow access to all photos if you with one tap that's where they'll go next just because who

00:21:01   knows what you can extract how many people have ever taken a picture of their driver's license or

00:21:05   an ID card to upload with it something that requires identification and a website and left

00:21:09   that picture in the camera roll and forgot about it you might not be able to find it but the

00:21:12   computers can right so you know this is a grim warning from the the future of even cheaper

00:21:19   computation we should protect our photos and videos too well on an infinite time scale you're

00:21:23   right but today address book access is instantly way more problematic than photo access 20 years

00:21:30   not infinite time scale I'm putting a cap on this one all right so as someone who has actually

00:21:34   worked heavily with the contacts API may I have a chance please I think I see both of you to be

00:21:40   honest I I think for me the rightest answer is the same style of API where you get different levels

00:21:48   of access such that one could bless an app to have the ability to slurp up all their contacts however

00:21:55   I definitely see Marco's point and I think the thing that strikes me about contacts in particular

00:22:03   is that to my eyes today it's more actionable and I think one of you said precise a second ago but

00:22:10   it's more actionable like when I have a photograph of Marco that's been uploaded yeah I guess if it

00:22:15   was a weird photo of Marco like a computer could maybe figure out that it was an uncomfortable

00:22:20   photo of Marco and like do something with it maybe but when I upload Marco's phone number

00:22:25   somebody could call him right then and interrupt his day right then and so it is far more actionable

00:22:32   data then I think a photograph is at least today you can do associations with photos here's Marco

00:22:38   with the founder of the Proud Boys not an actual thing that happened sure no problem we could do

00:22:43   that today with machine learning and start doing graphs of associations especially you have dates

00:22:47   and locations to say this person that was with ate dinner with this person this time in this location

00:22:52   that's current technology and I feel like that is probably more damning than realistically speaking

00:22:57   someone's cell phone number or their email address which honestly is pretty easy to get via

00:23:02   other means and it's not like most people in their contacts have everyone's mailing address listed so

00:23:07   contacts are bad but I think photos I feel like you just need a little bit of imagination to

00:23:12   understand exactly how bad that can be because it's not like they're going to look for the

00:23:15   embarrassing picture of you they're gonna do the same crap they do with contact information which

00:23:19   is make graphs of associations and times and places put you in demographics guess your age

00:23:24   and your gender figure out if you're about to have a baby like all the things that they can do based

00:23:28   on all your other activity photos is a treasure trove of that crap and if you lock down contacts

00:23:34   or make it more difficult to retrieve or everyone uses sign in with Apple and doesn't give people

00:23:38   their email addresses photos is a goldmine I I still I agree with you but I still think contacts

00:23:45   are far more problematic in today's world but all of that said I once wrote an app that slurped up

00:23:52   all your contacts and did something I'd like to think novel and interesting with them and and I

00:23:58   would hate for there to be a scenario wherein a user couldn't use my app because there was no API

00:24:06   for it now maybe that's the cost of doing business but I think it's a very tough pickle for Apple to

00:24:11   be in where they don't necessarily want to kill them yet to the world because I did that already

00:24:16   they don't want to kill the vignettes of the world or whatever the case may be but they also don't

00:24:21   want to make it easy for the clubhouses of the world and maybe I'm unfairly besmirching them but

00:24:25   you know the club houses of the world to do something nefarious with your contacts so what

00:24:30   is the happy medium well I guess you trust the user which is what John was saying what I think

00:24:34   I agree with but oh no what I was saying is you could make an API that lets you do all the features

00:24:39   that you care about forget about the vignettes was honestly vignette should be a feature that's built

00:24:42   into the OS like sure kind of like it is now well not really but like exactly what he did is like

00:24:48   well there you might have other pictures and other services so the OS will go out and find them right

00:24:53   that's that's really just something like another example of a third-party mix thing Apple should

00:24:57   really put in the OS right but everything else like auto completes or even sending the contacts

00:25:01   there is no reason that the app ever needs to see that data to a to accomplish those features right

00:25:07   like you can you can have an autocomplete in a in a widget that runs with XPC and another process

00:25:13   that is essentially as far as the app is concerned a fancy way for you the user to autocomplete

00:25:17   something but the app only ever sees what you finish autocompleting and type into the text

00:25:21   field it has no idea like what was being fed into the autocomplete that's an eminently makeable API

00:25:27   right and same thing with like oh do you want to you know send this thing out to a bunch of your

00:25:33   friends here pick a bunch of these friends from this list and another UI comes up that the app

00:25:38   does not control that runs in another process lets you select contacts and is mediated by an

00:25:43   Apple service that hides all the email addresses like there that functionality that is a quote-unquote

00:25:48   essential part of a smooth application experience can be done without giving applications access to

00:25:54   any of your contact information the address book API the Marco is talking about does not do that

00:25:59   and so that's why yes the that API should be canned and replaced with a better one that never

00:26:04   actually gives your app access to anything because in most cases unlike photos where the app literally

00:26:09   does need one photo if it's like a photo editor or something needs at least one photo you need to

00:26:13   give the app the photo otherwise it can't edit but you don't actually need to give the app the contact

00:26:17   in many cases especially given that Apple has this whole thing now where they make their own private

00:26:22   email addresses with random names and connect it up to your own behind the scenes so the plumbing is

00:26:26   already there to essentially never give apps access to contacts yeah it's it's an interesting it I

00:26:31   guess what I'm saying is it's an interesting tug of war that I think Apple would have to go through

00:26:36   like what you're describing is somewhere between a moderate to massive engineering challenge I'd

00:26:41   reckon but it's not unreasonable especially for a company that's as big and as everywhere as Apple

00:26:46   is but here again I keep coming down to you know I my initial take is of course let everyone have

00:26:52   access to everything and then you see the clubhouses and all the other gross things in the world and

00:26:56   then you come to Marco's point of view you know the little balls the the Jacob's ladder or whatever

00:27:00   it is you know that bunk into each other I forget what that thing is called anyways Jacob's ladder is

00:27:04   the thing with the electric spark that goes up oh no that's not what I meant sorry you know what

00:27:08   I'm talking about the little desk cradle yes thank you Newton's cradle anyways so you know I start

00:27:13   all the way on the right hand side with sure why not give everyone access to all the contacts what

00:27:17   could go wrong and then you see what goes wrong and then you know the the ball falls and it bunks

00:27:22   and other intermediate balls now I'm swinging the other way of oh you should only ever be allowed

00:27:26   like anonymized contacts or whatever the case would be but but for Apple I think you need to

00:27:31   kind of ride that line and and that's a very very difficult thing to do and that's one of the things

00:27:36   that I think I lose sight of when I criticize Apple a lot is that it's a very different thing to have

00:27:43   to be all things to all people and it's a very different thing operating at the scale that they

00:27:47   operate at where a bug that hits one tenth of one percent of all users like I don't know my SMS bug

00:27:53   which by the way is mostly gone away for reasons I don't understand anyways for a bug that hits

00:28:00   one percent of all users that's still like a million a hundred million ten million users

00:28:05   however many ridiculous amounts of users it is and so it's just it's hard it's a hard thing because

00:28:09   you don't know where the line really should be but certainly if Apple's going to say we're the

00:28:15   privacy company we're the privacy company then I would say they should error on the side of what

00:28:20   Marco is saying which is you know no contacts access at all plus address book is like a cc plus

00:28:25   plus API isn't it so it's just candid for that reason it's it's gotten better but it's not good

00:28:30   and like and to be clear like I'm not saying that there's no legitimate users API I'm not saying

00:28:35   that certain things wouldn't get worse without this API but I do think though is that this API

00:28:40   the benefits that it brings are substantially less than the privacy damage it does especially

00:28:46   because of its nature of like such easily exploitable in mass data on not only the person

00:28:53   who's saying yeah allow allow contacts but on every single person they know that like whose

00:28:58   data they are giving away without those people's permission like that that to me is it's it's it's

00:29:03   really messy and and not not good and and that that seems to be like I think a good way to look

00:29:10   at it is like if Apple were designing this product today like this this whole OS this whole platform

00:29:16   from scratch today would they offer that access to anybody of course not like because like today's

00:29:23   privacy conscious Apple in today's like data leaky horrible tracking analytics world would they do

00:29:29   this if starting fresh today almost certainly not and so I think that's that's a good reason you know

00:29:35   ignore the sunk cost here that's a pretty good reason to say that we probably shouldn't have

00:29:38   this API today yeah for sure they wouldn't do it today and like as an example of you know going

00:29:43   back far enough Unix was like that in the beginning created in a you know hippie-dippie environment

00:29:48   where we're all just computer users here and we all trust each other and everything is open for

00:29:53   the most part even though you next had a permission system and everything even when I first arrived at

00:29:57   college and got on my first Unix system in the early 90s it was basically a free-for-all like

00:30:04   there was no SSH telnet FTP plaintext passwords everywhere world writable ttys and and you would

00:30:12   think oh well that's the internet age everyone was savvy then and knew about bad things that could

00:30:15   happen no no they didn't know we had to teach them by being terrible people by the time I left that

00:30:21   school I told the story or they had locked down you know world writable ttys were no longer a thing

00:30:25   and SSH was starting to you know come into being and telnet and FTP with plaintext communications

00:30:33   of passwords were out of fashion because too many people were hacked and you know being able to get

00:30:38   the ciphertext from the password file was also out of favor and there were alternatives to that and

00:30:42   it you know that's that's the way things go and so you know the iPhone was made in 2007 at that point

00:30:48   like stuff that like what path did you remember path the company like took all your contacts and

00:30:52   uploaded it to a server yeah Apple made that API and they were still in the hippie-dippie Unix

00:30:57   mindset of like well you know we're making a platform and it's super secure and it's sandbox

00:31:01   and boy isn't this iPhone security amazing but like they still didn't have a full grasp of the

00:31:06   bad actors right it's just you know you people can do incredibly novel it's like no one's ever

00:31:11   gonna like what good would it do to secretly take all your contacts and uploaded what what value is

00:31:16   there in having everybody's contacts all together because having millions and millions of contacts

00:31:21   like that's not useful it's just too much data it turns out that actually is very useful to

00:31:25   advertising companies Apple didn't foresee that so they made an API that seemed like a good idea

00:31:30   at the time despite the fact that this API was on a system that they were like locking down with

00:31:35   the with the tightest security they could imagine with all you know the applications can't do

00:31:40   whatever they want and no private API's and everything sandbox and everything is encrypted

00:31:44   they were doing all that but at the same time they didn't understand that oh yeah there's actually

00:31:48   value in just on mass extracting everybody's contacts and jamming them up to a server at

00:31:54   which point they become a giant bucket of you know slop for the ad industry so yeah live and learn

00:32:00   I have some follow-up about my question last week about where we would live if not the East Coast

00:32:07   but to ease into that and to kind of get us in the right mood Marco if you had to live in another

00:32:13   country where would you where would you live oh that's a good question and I'll accept like you

00:32:19   know a top two or three if you need you know whatever the case may be do I instantly magically

00:32:23   know the language of any of another country or do I have to stick with what I know now oh no that's

00:32:27   that's cheating mmm I like the spirit of your question but let I concur with John for the

00:32:33   purposes of what I'm driving at let's say no you do not know the language I mean you can learn it

00:32:38   if you want but you don't instantly magically get to know right okay so that's gonna that's gonna

00:32:42   restrict me not because I refuse to learn anything new but because I'm extremely self-conscious about

00:32:47   that and so I would not want to live somewhere where I don't already know the language so that

00:32:51   will limit it to either English speaking or at least like commonly English familiar countries

00:32:55   like Germany when I've traveled to Germany I wish I've liked a lot and actually might be my answer

00:33:00   here so many people there know English that it wasn't a big problem for me to not know much if

00:33:09   any German I could plausibly live there and get by okay while I learn the language a little bit

00:33:15   better so like that that's an option ultimately I would probably end up picking the UK is that a

00:33:24   country wait England one of them yeah because I have really enjoyed the what I've seen of the UK

00:33:35   both London and even other cities as well I've enjoyed that a lot so probably yeah probably

00:33:40   either Germany or England John this is a tricky because I never go anywhere the only other

00:33:47   countries I've ever been to are the UK and Canada that's not much to choose from based on personal

00:33:54   experience and both of those places I've only been to briefly I the reason I'm hesitant to pick the

00:34:01   UK is now because I don't like it because I've spent a total of about you know a little over

00:34:06   two weeks in the UK and I thought it was great I loved it but of all the English-speaking speaking

00:34:11   countries in the world there seemed to have a government that is the second worst screwed up

00:34:17   second to us that would be depressing to me to leave like the most screwed up English speaking

00:34:23   government in the world being the US for the second most and it's like oh come on there's so

00:34:28   many better choices you got to go to the second worst like it's just it's all the same problems

00:34:32   but like with a different accent and on a smaller scale and that would really depress me so I end up

00:34:38   leaning towards places that I've never been but just seeing pictures of and the thing that comes

00:34:42   to mind immediately and maybe this would be a terrible mistake I don't know because I've never

00:34:45   actually been there but New Zealand hmm yeah I thought about that it's it's beautiful that people

00:34:52   are saying it really looks like it's probably a nice place I don't know maybe I'd go stir crazy

00:34:57   on a little island maybe I wouldn't like the culture or something but boy in pictures it looks

00:35:01   really good and their government is not screwed up and they speak English ish yeah there's a lot

00:35:09   of asterisks on that but yes yeah yeah I did go there and I I love New Zealand it is a bit far

00:35:16   from from North America in ways that I think would would irritate me and I found that the internet

00:35:24   connection situation in New Zealand and from what I hear I believe this applies to Australia as well

00:35:29   is generally not it's it's harder to get really good fast internet connections there and that

00:35:35   could be outdated information I'm sorry because for everybody lives there because otherwise I

00:35:39   think both Australia and New Zealand seem to be significantly better run as countries than what

00:35:47   we have here Australia's got a little bit of a screwed up government and it's mostly a giant

00:35:51   desert so I'm a little bit wary of that I've seen too many Mad Max movies but it also doesn't have

00:35:56   bad winters so that's a feature for me and I don't want to give a candidate a short shrift it's just

00:36:01   I know it's Canada you're gonna feel bad it's the cold I'm sorry you're actually pretty far north

00:36:06   I don't think I could do that sorry yeah Canada is beautiful in the summer I would I cannot do

00:36:12   more severe winters than what I have now yeah for me you know I think if I were really and truly

00:36:17   being honest with myself if I really and truly had to leave America I would go to Canada despite the

00:36:23   fact that the thought of a Canadian winner just chills me to the bone and much less actually being

00:36:27   in a Canadian winner but that being said in this fantasy world where I think I could handle you

00:36:32   know moving that far away from everyone I knew I think the UK would be a very strong contender I

00:36:38   think if I could convince myself that I could learn the language I would strongly consider

00:36:43   Germany as well you know we traveled there together Marco oh you went one other time with

00:36:47   before though didn't you okay yeah so my only experience with Germany is when we all went and

00:36:52   as we've said many many times on the show I freaking loved it and I went into it thinking

00:36:56   well I mean I'm sure it'll be fine I've been to Europe a few times before and I've always liked

00:37:00   it and it'll be okay and I loved it I was very surprised with how much I enjoyed it and so I

00:37:05   like to think that I would give Germany a shot every American I've ever met that has spent any

00:37:10   time in Australia swears that they would move there if they were given the opportunity and I

00:37:15   think that the same is probably true of New Zealand but I don't think in you Marco you said

00:37:19   this a second ago I don't think I could stand being that physically far away from everyone that

00:37:24   I knew I mean not in a literal sense of course that's hyperbole but you know I don't think I

00:37:29   don't think I could handle being that far away from like my family they know my extended family

00:37:33   and so many of my friends and so on so I think realistically Canada would probably be my first

00:37:39   choice because of proximity and in a fantasy world where I could do whatever I would probably try for

00:37:45   Germany and realistically end up in the UK now that brings us into our follow-up many people

00:37:52   are many people were perturbed of varying degrees sometimes amusingly perturbed and sometimes

00:37:59   genuinely perturbed that we forgot about the Midwest and the Great Lakes we didn't forget

00:38:03   oh no we didn't forget you guys you I'm from the Midwest yeah you all forget that they have awful

00:38:10   winters there oh no I'm absolutely not doing that I know that the summers are gorgeous I've lived in

00:38:16   the Midwest I know it but winter hell no absolutely not not even not even possible no yeah I mean

00:38:24   growing up in Ohio and then going to college in Pennsylvania I am done with winters there that

00:38:30   like that was enough the winters are way colder way icier in the case of northwestern Pennsylvania

00:38:38   way snowier because it's neither Great Lakes and that whole thing and then also the summers are

00:38:44   also hotter like but you know the further inland you are you typically don't have you know the the

00:38:49   tempering effect of being closer to the ocean so it's actually it's the only less temperate so you

00:38:55   have much bigger extremes of you know you have way colder winters way hotter summers I've lived

00:39:01   that for a long time if I'm picking places to go I'm gonna try to make an improvement on that area

00:39:07   not make things worse yeah and I mean I think it does fit the bill in a lot of ways if you can live

00:39:14   the snowbird life you know the Great Lakes are enormous they do have plenty of beaches in some

00:39:19   ways you could almost argue that the Great Lakes are an improvement over the ocean because you know

00:39:23   they're not saltwater and there's fewer waves if you have small children for example this makes them

00:39:28   worse we've discussed the mud beach Casey I know I'm just saying you could make an argument but

00:39:33   those winners absolutely not absolutely not so thank you all of you from the Midwest we hear you

00:39:38   we love you but now moving on last week we discussed I believe in ask ATP some precious

00:39:46   media that we all have and I got a couple of people emailing me saying in nice ways stop being

00:39:53   a loser and just upload that concert for Charlottesville and eventually I listened

00:39:58   and so as I sit here tonight on the evening of February 17th the concert for Charlottesville

00:40:04   that I spoke about many times in the past I have uploaded it to archive org and it is still there

00:40:09   as of right now it is I believe 13 gigs it is a 10-hour show I think I said six last last week but

00:40:16   it's actually a 10-hour video and I believe that all of the chapters I put in to mark each

00:40:22   individual artist performance did survive the upload and then I redownload from other people

00:40:27   on the internet so if you would like to check out this concert which I really think is a really

00:40:33   special thing I strongly recommend it I will say that if you try to just stream it from archive

00:40:40   org it does not seem to work in my experience you have to download all 13 gigs and they seem to be

00:40:46   throttling it to about a megabyte a second so it'll take a while but it is very good and if you're

00:40:52   interested it is up and I wrote a small blog post about it which we link in the show notes I've just

00:40:56   been ignoring this Charlottesville thing because I just assumed that there are no bands that I have

00:41:00   heard of or care about in it but is that actually the case Casey which is no thing that I should

00:41:05   watch tell me something that I that was that played there that I would be interested in I

00:41:09   think that's quite possible it was opened with well there was a small Dave Matthews by himself

00:41:17   performance but it's Cage the elephant who I'd never heard of and I found to be okay it was shoot

00:41:24   two guys from Coldplay the the singer pianist whose name is Chris Martin and Johnny Greenwood is the

00:41:31   guitarist I hope I have that right it doesn't matter if I don't you it's the guitarist and the

00:41:35   singer from Coldplay just the two of them their performance was good and there were some really

00:41:39   funny honest moments in that where Chris Martin says you know I want to try I think was a Beatles

00:41:46   song or maybe it's not I forget who it was but I want to try this cover please don't put it on

00:41:51   YouTube if it sucks because I don't want to be embarrassed about it but for the rest of my life

00:41:54   so that that I think is worth it the best performance possibly the entire show I think was

00:42:01   the roots which are not a band that I typically like but they did a lot of like old-school soul

00:42:07   covers which I thought was really really good I'm being told real-time follow-up Johnny Greenwood

00:42:12   his radio had my bad so anyways the roots and then Pharrell comes out with the roots and that was very

00:42:17   good Chris Stapleton who was country singer who I can tell is very good but it's not really my cup

00:42:22   of tea area Ariana Grande did a solo set like she was the only person on stage against like a you

00:42:27   know backing tape if you will and her performance was actually very good another great one was

00:42:32   Justin Timberlake who I know was really problematic right now but if you can accept just his

00:42:37   performance and not anything else about him his set was extremely good and then Marco's favorite

00:42:44   band in the entire world the Dave Matthews band closes it out including a guest appearance from

00:42:47   Stevie Wonder which is pretty cool then like I said the whole thing is something like 10 hours

00:42:52   and I think it's worth at least listening to his background music you don't necessarily need to

00:42:58   watch it but it's it's a really really cool thing and they have some like interludes in in in the

00:43:03   in-between sections talking about you know what makes Charlottesville special what makes this

00:43:08   event so terrible well not the concert but the things leading up to the concert so terrible I

00:43:12   don't know I really think it's worth watching or listening to at least once but if none of those

00:43:18   artists mean anything to you then no don't bother we are sponsored this week by Linode my favorite

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00:43:55   great web host I've tried a lot of web hosts over the years believe me a lot and most of them you

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00:45:16   today thank you to Linode for hosting all my servers and sponsoring our show we have from

00:45:24   Richard Harris some more information about watch timers another obvious thing missing an Apple

00:45:29   watch timers wire timers set on my watch not synced with my phone and vice versa if I start a timer on

00:45:34   my phone I see the countdown on my phone lock screen but nothing appears on my Apple watch not

00:45:38   even when you go and open the watch timer app and if I start a timer on my watch there's no

00:45:42   corresponding countdown shown on my phone note that once the timer is set on my phone ends the

00:45:47   alert appears on both the phone and the watch even though the countdown did not this is a really good

00:45:50   point however I will say that I actually like this behavior because oftentimes I want a silent

00:45:57   timer and in my experience I maybe I have this wrong but I believe if you set a timer on your

00:46:03   phone it's going to be even if you're in silent mode or you know vibrate mode or whatever but if

00:46:07   you set it on your watch and if your watch is in tap tap tap mode it will just have to tap you and

00:46:11   that's that so I understand Richard's point but I actually kind of like it the way it is but maybe

00:46:16   I'm bananas Marco what do you think about this I mean it's a really tricky thing like you know you

00:46:22   could argue that should should things like timers sync across more like what about HomePod versus

00:46:28   phone like should those sync there's certainly utility to that like if HomePod watch and phone

00:46:33   all sync their timers then you could set a timer by shouting into the air no matter what device

00:46:38   picked it up you would have it displayed on all of them and they would I don't know all alert you

00:46:44   when it was over or something I'm not sure but that's the problem like when you when you start

00:46:49   figuring like okay what what what should the behavior be defined as in cases X Y & Z it starts

00:46:56   getting a little bit messy like you know like the silent switch you know should that be activated or

00:47:01   not you know if you have if it goes off on the HomePod or if you summit it on the HomePod then

00:47:07   should it go off on the HomePod every time or you know what if the HomePod is in the next room and

00:47:11   now you've you're in a different room should it go off then or should it only bring your phone what

00:47:15   if you expected to bring on the HomePod and your phone is actually sitting on the counter somewhere

00:47:19   and not in your pocket or not in your hand and then it buzzes just the phone then you miss it

00:47:23   like there's all sorts of weird cases that like once you start syncing stuff and having it try to

00:47:29   show up everywhere you start running into these kind of like you know messy areas of how the

00:47:34   behavior should should be and so it would be nice if there was more like unification like that in

00:47:40   many cases but not in all cases I think this is an obvious thing I agree with Richard that this is

00:47:46   obvious and this should absolutely be a feature but just because you have global awareness of a

00:47:51   thing and it's synchronized doesn't mean that you have to surface that so assuming that Apple could

00:47:57   get the sync right which is not a given based on how difficult it's been for them to sync like you

00:48:03   know what is it keyboard completions or whatever autocomplete things and other tiny pieces of data

00:48:08   that should be trivial to sync there should be global awareness of timers right and the default

00:48:12   behavior should probably be like it is now which is everybody in the nose and the house that's

00:48:17   signed into your Apple ID knows about the timers they don't do anything about them just the device

00:48:22   you did it on does something about them right and then if you have desires like you know like Richard

00:48:28   like you know what I would actually like whenever I set a timer on my phone and watch them to show

00:48:31   each other or whatever you can opt into that because global awareness of the timer is kind

00:48:36   of like having multiple timers like how hard a features that just have multiple timers in the

00:48:39   air right it was like oh it's too complicated or whatever just just allow that to exist and allow

00:48:44   there to be global awareness and allow people to opt in even if it's like hey you're in the room

00:48:49   with the HomePod the HomePod knows about your timer it's not going to ring you because you

00:48:54   said it on your phone right but you could ask the HomePod hey but how's that you know what do you

00:48:59   call a potato timer doing and the HomePod won't be like I don't know what the hell you're talking

00:49:03   about potato timer it'll be like oh I know about that because behind the scenes we've all been

00:49:07   talking to each other and synchronizing through iCloud because it's just a timer and it's really

00:49:10   easy to sync it's got like a string and like the start time and the you know it's like it's not a

00:49:16   lot of data that's exactly what you're looking for from the Apple ecosystem global awareness not

00:49:21   necessarily global cacophony of alarms going off or whatever so I think starting from a baseline

00:49:28   of trivial data should be synced everywhere and do not leap from that to oh and should automatically

00:49:35   display everywhere automatically off anywhere and don't even try to do like oh well proximity like

00:49:39   as Apple has all these proximity API's where it tries to figure out what you're near to don't even

00:49:43   try to do that if you can't nail it just by default you set the timer on your phone it goes off in your

00:49:47   phone but if you happen to be someone else you can ask the HomePod to do it and if you really want it

00:49:53   to always show up on your watch you can ask it just like now like the whole reason that Richard

00:49:56   said that this shows up on the alert shows up is because there is a single option that says hey do

00:50:01   you want me to your phone to mirror the alerts your watch to mirror the alerts on your phone or

00:50:06   not and that's it that's the only option and that's the same type of thing could be with like timers

00:50:10   hey do you want your watch to mirror the timers on your phone or not and that would be like opting

00:50:14   into I just always wanted to display in both cases that alone would be a big upgrade being able to

00:50:19   ask any Apple device and being able to opt into phone and watch synchronization because that makes

00:50:25   sense because they're both sort of like personal devices that you probably have on or near you as

00:50:29   opposed to HomePods and who knows what else which could be anywhere so I like this idea Apple should

00:50:34   do it I really wish Apple could I really wish we had faith to say that this task of synchronizing

00:50:40   tiny pieces of trivial information it's trivial ephemeral information we don't even care about

00:50:45   it can just go away after it's done I wish it was just a given that Apple would be able to instantly

00:50:50   sync that everywhere but unfortunately we can't we can't just assume that based on how well Apple

00:50:56   has done with syncing for real things in the past. All right Chris Harper writes in with some more

00:51:02   information on MDM which is mobile device management this comes out of Ask ATP last week

00:51:06   about would you let your personal life seep into your corporate devices Chris writes I manage about

00:51:12   350 Apple devices using Jamf Pro who I believe were a past sponsor most of these are iPads but

00:51:17   some are iPhones and there are a few iPod touches in the mix what I've learned since we started

00:51:20   device management 2015 is that all the mobile device management platforms have pretty much the

00:51:24   same capabilities and Apple devices these platforms all operate differently but the commands they are

00:51:28   sending to the devices are all the same they are limited by what Apple allows there's a good support

00:51:32   article from Apple which will link in the show notes that explains MD Apple MDM in detail as

00:51:36   well as the differences between what is available for restrictions policies for supervised and non

00:51:41   supervised devices so quick aside from me from Apple they're quoting Apple supervision generally

00:51:46   denotes that the device is owned by the organization which provides additional control over its

00:51:51   configuration and restrictions so now back to Chris I was going to make a long list of things

00:51:56   that you can and can't do with MDM but then I found this helpful PDF linked in the show notes

00:52:00   that explains it well in particular take a look at page 10 so let me read from that PDF MDM can

00:52:05   see device name phone number serial number model name and number capacity and space available iOS

00:52:10   version number and installed apps MDM cannot see personal data such as personal or work email

00:52:16   calendars contacts SMS or iMessages Safari browser history which is something that I did not know I

00:52:23   assumed it could FaceTime or phone call logs personal reminders notes frequency of app use

00:52:28   and device location so back to Chris basically the IT MDM admin can see some basic info about the

00:52:33   device itself but nothing that is really personal and more appropriately they can't really see

00:52:36   anything that they don't already have access to in other ways things like the content and email

00:52:40   teams your file server slack etc those all exist in other server environments with their own ways of

00:52:45   monitoring employees for whatever reasons they may have so that's a bunch of words that to say that

00:52:51   it's not as scary as I had thought even and I assumed it wasn't quite as bad as I thought but

00:52:56   it's actually considerably less scary than I thought and Apple really doesn't let your

00:53:00   employer see that much that being said your employer can still read all the emails sent

00:53:06   via your employment email address they can read all your you know slack messages and so on so

00:53:11   it doesn't mean you're out of the woodwork but it's not as bad as I thought is that list of C

00:53:15   and can't see stuff from the supervised device or the non supervised you know that's a good question

00:53:20   I don't know to be honest with you I just clipped it out of the PDF and put it in the show notes

00:53:24   we'd have to look back in that PDF but that's it that's a very fair question I have to say the

00:53:30   other reason that I don't think we touched on about MDM on devices and why I was wary of it

00:53:35   it's kind of the same reason that I moan and complain about stuff on my laptops setting aside

00:53:39   the privacy stuff that software sometimes affects the both the performance and the sort of

00:53:47   reliability of the thing that's running on certainly in the case of the Mac where it's

00:53:51   obviously a much more of a free-for-all situation than on a phone but I've always imagined that some

00:53:57   kind of MDM stuff happening on my phone could also cause problems that otherwise wouldn't happen right

00:54:02   or wrong because I've never actually had a phone enrolled in MDM but just the idea of you know work

00:54:07   running software installing stuff you know doing whatever it is sending commands to my phone when

00:54:13   I don't know they're doing it they could potentially do things that you know slow down or screw up my

00:54:17   phone just doesn't seem appealing to me Jonathan Dietz writes in with some information on SSD

00:54:24   where in RAM can you tell us about this John this is a point we didn't bring up when we were fretting

00:54:30   about whether the SSD usage on M1 Macs was going to wear them out prematurely. Jonathan says NAND flash

00:54:38   memory endurance is based on a finite number of program slash erase or PE cycles of the individual

00:54:44   memory cells given equal workloads in SSD with twice the capacity having twice the number of

00:54:47   cells will last twice as long unless the additional page outs from having only 8 gigs of RAM rather

00:54:52   than 16 gigs of RAM resulted more than doubling your total lifetime rights to the SSD there's no

00:54:56   way that spending 200 bucks on 60 gigs of RAM instead of the 512 gigabyte storage option will

00:55:01   be better for extending the lifespan of your SSD so this is obvious but worth saying if you have a

00:55:07   the same amount of RAM right if the use is this or not the same amount of stuff that you're storing

00:55:12   but you get an SSD that's twice as big you've got more sort of green field that hasn't been worn out

00:55:18   by your activity like the more cells you have to wear out and if you use them the same amount which

00:55:23   is the real the real tricky part about this assumption then yeah we'll last twice as long

00:55:28   now in reality it's kind of like getting a bigger house if you get a bigger SSD you're gonna fill it

00:55:34   with stuff like no one gets a bigger SSD and says wow I've got all this free space now my SSD will

00:55:39   last long no you fill it with stuff so I think realistically I'm not sure how much this saves

00:55:45   people because it's inevitable that you will put stuff in it but in general more SSD to wear out

00:55:51   is better right now on this on this thread that you know this on Twitter there's been an ongoing

00:55:57   threads of people posting their numbers from the smart tools thing about their data being written

00:56:02   and I don't you know it keeps going on and people still keep getting staggered by the numbers when we

00:56:08   did comparisons last week Casey and I were in the same ballpark it didn't seem that ridiculous to

00:56:13   me but some numbers that these people are putting up seem a little bit ridiculous and I don't know

00:56:19   is this like a very you know because people use their computers for different things this is a

00:56:23   very strange scenario they is something going on with their particular computer is there a bug in

00:56:30   the tools that is reporting incorrect numbers I don't know but I pulled pulled out one will link

00:56:37   to the tweet this is from David he's got a 16 gig m1 macbook probably by the way most of these are

00:56:44   16 gigs this is a bunch of computer nerds and they all bought the one with more RAM so I think the

00:56:48   only thing we can closely say is that 8 versus 16 gigs of RAM is not it's not a factor because almost

00:56:55   all these ridiculous numbers are from people with 16 gigs of RAM like it's not the swap that's doing

00:56:59   this or if it is it means these people need way more than 16 gigs of RAM and they can't get it

00:57:03   because that's all the m1s come with but anyway power on ours 432 that's a small number of hours

00:57:09   very small right data units written 150 terabytes really Wow so if we do the math on that that's

00:57:18   347 gigabytes per hour written that doesn't seem right that seems much bigger than the numbers

00:57:24   that Casey and I had weren't we like 200 to 300 gigs per like day or month or something I already

00:57:32   forgot yeah I know anyway I don't remember our exact numbers referred to last week's show but

00:57:38   I keep in this thread of people just posting their numbers this was the one that I was like okay this

00:57:42   seems like this seems like it might be a problem because 350 gigs per hour something's going on

00:57:48   here so I again it's trivially easy to do that amount of I/O just get something that is constantly

00:57:55   writes big files use DD in a for loop like you can absolutely do this like there's there's no

00:58:00   problem doing this the question and the question is like are these people using their computers in

00:58:05   a normal way and this is some kind of systemic problem I don't understand how it could be like

00:58:09   what is it what are they you know this is one of those sort of vague slow-motion computer panics

00:58:14   or if you're like something is going on but no one will ever say okay what what's going on

00:58:18   computers are knowable this is the thing we should be able to know you can't just say but something's

00:58:22   going on with these M ones they're wearing out as a steeze are are they how are they wearing out

00:58:27   those it's not the type of thing you can't just leave it there and say they're wearing out their

00:58:30   SSDs look at these numbers okay what's doing that run FS usage figure it out you know so I don't

00:58:35   know what the problem is and it's frustratingly vague and I don't like vague technical problems

00:58:40   but all I know is if you want to follow us on Twitter feel free to look at this thread and

00:58:43   watch people slowly vaguely panic about high numbers but ever actually figure out what the

00:58:47   problem is oh man all right last week we talked about us more safe programming I think what this

00:58:54   was with relation to like the Apple car that may or may not ever happen and Tesla's crazy ambitions

00:59:00   that might not match their quality levels of software indeed inside brought up Ada which was

00:59:07   a programming language that I had thought was used kind of a lot in the defense industry and an

00:59:11   anonymous person wrote in to say well yes actually several anonymous people wrote in one several of

00:59:16   them said yes it is the thing in the defense industry then a different anonymous person said

00:59:19   that most of this kind of development is actually now done using misra see where misra is an acronym

00:59:25   of course which is motor industry software reliability Association and pulling from Wikipedia

00:59:30   apparently mr. C's aim is to facilitate code safety security portability and reliability in

00:59:36   the context of embedded systems which is about what a car is you know or wants to be a car would

00:59:42   like safe code that's secure and portable and reliable and it's going to be run on an embedded

00:59:47   system so yep checks out I gotta make my joke about this now so mr. C is like C but with limitations

00:59:53   there's a bunch of stuff that you aren't allowed to do because they're unsafe so on and so forth

00:59:56   and so it is you know it has fewer features than C like you know for example you can't I think you

01:00:00   can't do function pointers or whatever like it's more provably correct it's easier to understand

01:00:04   and so I can imagine if you're a C program working in it it will make you miserable not to be able to

01:00:10   use all those features oh my god it's right there miss Racy who's naming their thing miserable don't

01:00:15   name your thing miserable see when it's gonna make C programmers miserable it's right there dad jokes

01:00:21   all right as punishment for that dad joke we all now have to live through even more of this stupid

01:00:27   t56 8a versus t56 8b your dad joke is now getting all of us punished so I'm not even helping you on

01:00:34   this this is all you know I so I last week we had a follow-up item that was cut from the show because

01:00:39   it turned out to be follow up for another one of my podcasts but it paired well with this one because

01:00:43   it was about it was it was like it was about like urban myths or sort of anecdotal stories that

01:00:50   people make a leap from a personal experience to a generalized theory right that is definitely the

01:00:56   case in our past discussions of t5 68 a versus B where various people think there's a super important

01:01:01   difference because they did this one thing one time and they changed from a to B and that made

01:01:05   all the difference therefore B is better than a or a is better than B or whatever the case may be

01:01:09   right and for context these are the two different ways you can wire Ethernet jacks or wires with

01:01:15   which color pair you split between the terminals where you split the pair right and the you know

01:01:21   we were misled by articles that said that they were different but then everyone said no they're

01:01:25   electrically identical the only difference is the colors of the insulation and electrons can't see

01:01:30   colors so they're electrically identical right and yet people will continue to insist hey I did a

01:01:36   thing and one time when we changed to be in a made everything better therefore B is better right and

01:01:40   I always ask these people okay but like what's the mechanism like why is it better there should be a

01:01:45   reason not just hey we did a thing and it was better therefore B is better right and John B

01:01:50   wrote in with at least a theory a hypothesis that could be tested all right and the hypothesis you

01:01:59   know based on fact all right so here's John B I've learned the hard way anecdote it begins the pairs

01:02:05   are in fact different the number of twists per inch is different for different pairs and that's

01:02:11   why the B style is commonly used for high-speed links it puts the pairs with more twists in the

01:02:15   right place now I tried to look something say is that true that the each pair of wires has different

01:02:21   number of twists and as far as I can tell yes that actually is true just a part of Ethernet like I

01:02:26   mentioned the twisted pairs are you know two pairs of cables that are twisted around each other and

01:02:29   they vary the number of twists per inch so one pair is twisted like I don't know like two twists

01:02:35   every inch and the other one is two twists every five inches or whatever because varying the number

01:02:39   of twists minimizes crosstalk or something this seems like a type of thing that would be trivial

01:02:44   to confirm by just simply cutting open Ethernet wire and looking at the twist and saying are any

01:02:47   of them twisted more closely more tightly together than other pairs but I just did internet searching

01:02:52   and it seemed seemed like I confirmed that yes this is true but the real question is okay they're

01:02:58   twisted different amounts to avoid crosstalk this last bit it puts the pairs with more twists in the

01:03:05   right place what does that mean is more twists better than more than fewer twists what is the

01:03:10   right place there's no further analysis of this you know like like it is our are they twisted

01:03:17   different amounts is one pair always plays like the green and green and white one always twisted

01:03:22   more than the red and red white one or is it just arbitrary I don't know but here's the here's the

01:03:27   story there's John B story because we got to include the story I was once called to a castle

01:03:32   yes really he says for an Ethernet network they couldn't get out of its own way one contract did

01:03:37   the patch panel in type B and one did plates the wall plates in type a amazingly the Knicks managed

01:03:42   to figure it out but it was slow as anything so for the fun of it we fixed half the castle to type

01:03:46   a and half the type B the bees were faster we redid the A's to B and they got as fast it's real

01:03:52   so there's there's your castle castle based anecdote we changed to be in to fixed everything

01:03:57   I don't doubt that that happened okay that happened and then the reasoning behind it it puts the right

01:04:04   the pairs with more twists in the right place I'm still going with their electrically identical but

01:04:10   at least at least John B came up with a hypothesis as to what might be causing a difference because

01:04:15   apparently there is a physical difference in number of twists for each of the pairs I love I

01:04:21   love that this story is continuing that we still that we've been talking about this for five

01:04:26   episodes again it seems like a thing that's knowable like obviously none of us care enough

01:04:31   about it to cut open one of our ethernet cables or to do any kind of testing but it just seems

01:04:34   like the type of thing that look I think probably if it is real it is so minor that no one cares

01:04:41   about it because if people cared about it like someone with actual you know equipment would like

01:04:46   test it like an electrical engineer would go through and test and just the answer would be

01:04:49   on the internet but apparently if there is any there aren't it's so small that no one even cares

01:04:54   enough to test it so it's left entirely to the realm of people with stories about castles that's

01:04:59   why like I would I would expect if this were true that it had to be this certain way because of these

01:05:05   reasons that these would be so well documented because Ethernet is so widespread and so well

01:05:12   known and so old that like you would think that this would be documented like crazy and it just

01:05:20   seems like no one has any act it's all based on like myths and hearsay which is you know ridiculous

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01:07:27   podcast for 20% off Mac Weldon reinventing men's basics all right you want to talk about iPhone

01:07:37   rumors sure why not iPhone 13 rumored to include always on display with 120 Hertz promotion astrophotography

01:07:43   capabilities stronger magsafe and more I did not pay too much attention to this because I assumed

01:07:50   it was a bunch of BS that nobody really knows yet but maybe it's not who really knows so what

01:07:56   are the highlights on this did either of you really dig into this I mean it's early in rumor season

01:08:01   right but I think you know it's early it's late enough that there could be some nuggets thrown out

01:08:06   there right I what I wanted to start with we can just go in the order of this headline always on

01:08:11   display for phones right so Apple watch is in its second generation of always on display now with a

01:08:17   brighter display it's obviously a much smaller screen but it's also got a much smaller battery

01:08:21   lots of Android phones have always on displays to varying degrees it's an obvious feature for Apple

01:08:27   to adopt they've been a little bit late to this game it seems plausible to me whether it comes

01:08:31   this year or next year the year after I mostly wanted to talk about it in the context of what

01:08:36   kind of value if any do you think you personally would get from a phone with an always on display

01:08:42   I mean I've seen it on Android phones plenty and it doesn't seem like a bad feature like I don't

01:08:48   think it's it's a bad idea by any stretch of the imagination typically on Android phones that I've

01:08:53   seen it's the the current time and little to nothing else which I don't think is all that

01:08:58   terribly useful especially since on an iPhone you can just tap the screen and it'll wake right up

01:09:02   that being said some of the renders on here include like the current temperature and weather

01:09:08   conditions and like how far you are through your music that you're listening to and how your rings

01:09:13   are doing and that's sort of like ambient information I guess sort of kind of in the

01:09:20   spirit of what was the windows phones like live tiles or whatever although not nearly as visually

01:09:26   busy I think that is pretty cool and could be very very interesting but it's so hard to say without

01:09:33   having seen any of this if this is useful but it's certainly not the sort of thing that I would you

01:09:38   know thumb my nose at Marco how do you feel I think I'm with you I I don't immediately get

01:09:43   super excited about this but I think it really depends on how you use your phone physically like

01:09:48   where do you hold it where does it sit when you're doing things for me personally I'm not a like

01:09:54   phone out on the table kind of person a long time ago I think it was Scott Simpson who said I

01:10:02   probably in a tweet like years ago something along the lines of like I I know you're a cool person

01:10:09   if when we're out to dinner I never see your phone ever ever ever and that that I kind of

01:10:16   internalized that and I am never I try to never be the person who has my phone out unnecessarily

01:10:23   and I'm not the kind of person who like when I sit down somewhere I like empty my pockets onto

01:10:30   the table in front of me and so because I don't do those things my phone is always either in my

01:10:36   hand being operated in which case the screen is on or it's in my pocket and so this feature I

01:10:44   don't think I would get significant value out of but there are so many people for whom that entire

01:10:52   list of qualification the news patterns is not true where so many people are just like their

01:10:59   phone is like out on the desk face up all the time and so for those people it could then have similar

01:11:04   value as deal with on screen on the Apple watch so I'm not super excited about this honestly but I

01:11:11   think it would be a pretty big deal to a lot of people I thought this feature was interesting kind

01:11:17   of in the same way that all features that that are gated by technology are interesting right it's like

01:11:24   why didn't the phone always haven't always on display well battery right we know why right

01:11:29   screen would take up too much battery having all the time when people aren't looking at it as a

01:11:32   waste of battery we kill your battery life nobody wanted right so old ed screens which have been

01:11:35   iPhones for several generations now don't have that problem because you only kind of pay for

01:11:39   the pixels you're lighting up and if you don't light up a lot of pixels and you can get away

01:11:43   with a lot and the variable refresh rate helps with that too and bigger batteries and more power

01:11:48   efficiency and so finally technology can give us the future that we didn't have but we had all this

01:11:52   time where the feature didn't exist and all that time does a couple things one it kind of cements

01:11:59   in a lot of people's minds the idea that well I haven't had it before and it's not immediately

01:12:04   obvious to me why I would get any value from it then I don't need it it's not a big deal right

01:12:09   and the flip side of that is you know oh now we've got always on display I can think of all these

01:12:14   cool things I can do with it I can show the weather I can give indications of what kind of

01:12:18   things may be available like obviously you can't you probably don't want to show actual messages

01:12:22   and other notifications but you can put little red dots or badges or you know information that

01:12:27   you don't mind that isn't a privacy violation that you would like to see on your phone and being able

01:12:33   to have your phone on your bedside to be kind of like your alarm clock with the time always visible

01:12:36   like there's tons of applications your mind goes wild is like now if I can have an always on display

01:12:40   I have so many great ideas of cool things I could do with that and I think both of those positions

01:12:47   like have a little bit of a lack of imagination obviously the ones of saying well I never needed

01:12:52   it before therefore I can't think of any use for it there's a little bit of a lack of imagination

01:12:55   there because if you have this feature who knows how you might use it who knows what value you might

01:12:59   drive for even Marco might find a reason not to have his phone in his pocket who knows what it

01:13:03   might be right but the other side is and I think people recognize that like oh you're an old fuddy

01:13:07   duddy you just like things the old way embrace the new but the other side is also true that your

01:13:12   mind spins with all these ideas of amazing things you could do and always on display but it's very

01:13:17   easy to lose sight of the fact that having a display that is off when you're not using it

01:13:22   also has benefits now we got those benefits for free by accident because we couldn't afford battery

01:13:28   life wise to keep the screen on but having the screen not be on is absolutely a feature if it's

01:13:35   in a dark room if you don't want to be disturbed by your phone right because it's been the default

01:13:40   we take those benefits for granted but if you were for example to put out a phone with an always on

01:13:46   display that you couldn't switch to not do this that you couldn't say I'll just when I'm not using

01:13:51   the phone be entirely black that would be worse than the current phones in many ways that people

01:13:57   would people would find annoying right so and I'm not saying apples can do this I assume they will

01:14:03   give the option like they do on the watch to not have the always on display but I think it's

01:14:07   important to recognize when the technology comes along to finally give us a thing even when it's a

01:14:11   thing that's an obvious thing like on the watch that you know well you know it's who wants to do

01:14:16   a weird motion with your hand to get the watch invisible everyone wants it always to be on Apple

01:14:20   smart enough to say you know what that's probably true and this is a no-brainer for a watch but

01:14:25   sometimes people want to make a different trade-off you know with battery life so you can turn that

01:14:30   feature off and I'm sure there are some people say you know what when I'm not looking at my watch I

01:14:34   want it to be entirely black because I work in sound behind the stage where all the lights are

01:14:40   off and I don't want something bright flashing who knows everyone has reasons and even more so on a

01:14:44   phone not having anything visible on your phone when you're not using it is actually a feature so

01:14:50   I hope and expect that if an iPhone comes with an always-on display that it is merely an option on

01:14:58   by default sure because it's cool and everything right but that you can turn it off now as for me

01:15:03   personally getting value out of this there are occasions where I will have my phone face up

01:15:09   unlike the end table next to the sofa while I'm watching a TV show or something and occasionally

01:15:15   I will glance at it to see if someone replied to a message that I sent a half an hour ago or

01:15:20   that email finally came in or even just like wonder what the weather is gonna be like or whatever

01:15:25   where I will tap the screen to get that information to see the lock screen or where I'll actually wake

01:15:31   it up right if I could get that information passively in a well-lit room where my phone

01:15:37   is you know on the end table next to the sofa without having me to go over and say hey phone

01:15:42   wake up hey phone wake up and tapping it like that because I do do that I appreciate being

01:15:46   able to tap to wake for this very reason before I had to have to wake I don't think I use my phone

01:15:51   like this once tap to wake became available like it's not that much effort to just reach over the

01:15:55   table and tap the phone because I usually have it face up right if I didn't have to tap it that's

01:16:00   benefit to me and I think I would use this provided I could configure the screen to have the type of

01:16:05   information that I would be interested in the time probably doesn't interest me as much because I got

01:16:10   clocks around the house but you know I would take it so I am cautiously optimistic about the always

01:16:16   on display all right moving right along 120 Hertz promotion in the iPhone because it is in the iPad

01:16:24   has been for like two or three years now more than that it's 120 Hertz has been in the iPad since the

01:16:29   10.5 inch iPad Pro oh well well however long it's been it's been a while because I remember sitting

01:16:35   in what was that beloved coffee shop that just folded a couple years ago at San Jose oh the slow

01:16:42   service but nice setting oh god yeah social distancing yeah social social distancing social

01:16:50   policy anyways I remember sitting outside there and someone who maybe should remain nameless walked

01:16:55   up with one of them and let us all play with it and I remember thinking oh that's really cool but

01:17:00   to be honest with you you thought I used my iPad a lot to this day I can't say I ever really noticed

01:17:04   the difference or maybe maybe I turned it off for some reason although I don't know why I would have

01:17:09   but I don't notice it day to day and apparently Mike really does and that's fine so I I don't

01:17:15   again like I'm sure this would be nice I'm sure it would be cool but it's not something I feel like

01:17:21   I'm yearning for but ask me again if I have it and I tell you you know the world who knows I mean

01:17:26   when the 10.5 launched I remember I would the the event you're talking about where we were shown one

01:17:32   at social policy I remember very clearly because when you first see 120 Hertz on an iPad it blows

01:17:39   your mind like when you're used to 60 Hertz and then you see 120 or it just it seems almost

01:17:45   unnaturally smooth I know some people even have a problem with it like and that's why there's

01:17:49   there's actually an accessibility option to turn it off to go back to 60 Hertz because some people

01:17:54   are like a little bit weird about the motion with it so it's striking when you said when you see the

01:18:00   difference that being said I thought like when I first saw that and then when I when I soon

01:18:05   afterwards got my own 10.5 iPad Pro I thought oh no this is gonna ruin my phone and my computers

01:18:12   and all other displays that I use that are only 60 Hertz but that didn't happen like instead like

01:18:17   I I love the way it looks and feels in the iPad but as I switch between the iPad and the iPhone

01:18:22   that doesn't have it I don't notice that so I'm sure the same like I'm sure it would be great if

01:18:29   they could do it on the phone I'm not saying they shouldn't but I'm not super excited about it the

01:18:35   way everyone else seems to be because now that I have devices with both I see like wow this is

01:18:40   really cool when I have it but when I don't have it I don't notice yeah yeah I think that's well

01:18:46   put yeah speaking of this is kind of like the the Ethernet thing where there's lots of you know

01:18:51   myths and legends surrounding this with a little bit more science so the the realm I'm thinking of

01:18:58   when looking at these rumors is video games right there's been debates about video game frame rates

01:19:03   forever in the beginning it was simple higher frame rates are better eventually technology

01:19:09   advanced to the point where we could get very very high frame rates and then the debate began

01:19:13   what is the point of diminishing returns can you tell there's between 30 frames per second and 60

01:19:19   everyone pretty much agrees yes anyone can tell can you tell the difference between 60 and 120

01:19:23   between 120 and 240 right where what at what point is it not possible for you personally or

01:19:30   people in general to actually notice the difference what is the point of diminishing returns and you

01:19:37   would think this is an open-and-shut case that could be measured and tested it is extensively

01:19:41   measured and tested and yet gamers are gonna be gamers and they still argue with each other about

01:19:45   it because there are many nuances involved here plus is also latency and response time and a bunch

01:19:50   of other stuff that's mostly not related to this but on the in the context of the iPhone I think

01:19:55   this is very much like the other other technologies that deal with human perception right and in

01:20:05   general we've talked about this in the past with music we've talked about it with with displays

01:20:09   technology is going to advance to the point where further advancement is wasted on our senses right

01:20:17   so retina displays they may not be at the limit but they're close right the whole point of retina

01:20:22   is like oh you can't discern the individual pixels well if you have really good eyesight you can still

01:20:25   kind of see them and if your phone is real close to your face you can still kind of see them but

01:20:28   we're definitely near the knee in that curve of like you know another doubling or tripling of

01:20:35   dots per inch on our phones is really diminishing returns at this point right like people won't be

01:20:42   able to see that difference arguably for the distances most people have their TVs 8k could

01:20:47   be near than the knee in that curve maybe even you know 16k put this way 16k televisions in video for

01:20:54   typical television sizes that we have today and distance we sit from them is the point of

01:20:58   diminishing returns right and I think it's the same deal with frame rate obviously technical

01:21:05   limitations keep us from having really high frame rates plus there's also a battery life issue but

01:21:08   as those dominoes fall it becomes possible to have higher frame rates the question becomes at what

01:21:12   point do we not bother any adding any more frames per second because nobody can tell the difference

01:21:17   30 60 we can all tell I thought I've yet to meet someone who can't tell the difference between 30

01:21:24   frames per second and 60 just to give a round number right 60 and 120 I think you will start

01:21:30   to find people who can't tell between 60 and 120 even though Marco could definitely tell some people

01:21:35   are less sensitive than others 120 to 200 120 to 240 you will find way more people who cannot tell

01:21:42   the difference between these two things again potentially like you know the the sampling rate

01:21:48   of input is not necessarily tied to the frame rate so the Apple pencil is sampled at 240 Hertz

01:21:53   but the display is 120 right so there are certain applications where you know the various things that

01:21:59   have to do with how often is the input red and how soon is that input reflected on the screen that's

01:22:05   actually somewhat independent of the frame rate Apple pencil could definitely get way more

01:22:10   responsive and there's that video that I linked to my blog way back when of a demo display showing

01:22:15   latencies between input and the reflection of that input going from you know 100 milliseconds to 10

01:22:20   milliseconds to 1 millisecond and it is startling and we still we're not close to the point of

01:22:26   diminishing returns for for example tracking the tip of your Apple pencil but that is mostly

01:22:31   independent of how often does the screen update if the input was red and correctly tracked by the

01:22:37   computer with one millisecond of latency even if the display only updated 120 times a second it

01:22:44   would eventually update to reflect the line that you expected to be there as opposed to now where

01:22:51   it eventually updates to reflect a line that lags a little bit behind where you thought you brought

01:22:55   the pencil right so those are all mostly independent but for things like scrolling I think

01:23:00   120 Hertz will put us over the line in terms of smoothness for most people the majority of people

01:23:10   they're like going to 200 frames per second or 240 at least more than half the population will

01:23:16   not know the difference from 120 to that new thing but I think 60 is a little bit under people's

01:23:23   perception limits so I think we will spend a long time at 120 and I think that is a reasonable place

01:23:29   to hang out for a while and then we can concentrate on input lag latency latency of reading you know

01:23:35   your touches and the Apple pencil and all that other stuff while maintaining 120 Hertz and also

01:23:42   remember with variable refresh part of the reason we can do this without killing the battery is

01:23:47   variable refresh allows us not to just repeatedly update the same image 120 times a second and burn

01:23:53   your battery when the image isn't changing so that technology I mean again it's from the iPad and

01:23:59   it's you know it's widespread everywhere is what makes us possible and I think is the real important

01:24:04   feature for all these high frame rate things so I am I endorse 120 Hertz like Marco like I my wife

01:24:12   has an iPad that has it right I see it there I appreciate it I don't miss it I play video

01:24:18   games at 60 frames per second now in destiny where it used to be 30 and that is wonderful I would

01:24:23   like 120 even more so you know obviously using your iPhone and scrolling with your thumb is not

01:24:29   the same thing as playing a first-person shooter in a video game but I can tell you just you know

01:24:34   the difference of the application I would love 120 Hertz and destiny I would like it on my phone

01:24:39   that's fair all right moving right along astrophotography capabilities so I must I honestly

01:24:50   don't know I'm assuming this means taking pictures of the night sky and that's gonna get better yeah

01:24:55   do we have any other information on what that cuz like typically the needs of astrophotography are

01:24:59   typically about taking long exposures so that you can capture useful images at night but not so long

01:25:09   or somehow compensating that it becomes a problem that the stars are moving fairly quickly in the

01:25:17   context of a long exposure so like if you take a long exposure you know particularly a minute

01:25:21   two minutes long exposure if you're at high enough resolution the stars that you're shooting will

01:25:26   have moved enough that it might cause a very small streak on each star during that exposure time or

01:25:32   you know whatever the times are so typically that's what you would need for astrophotography

01:25:36   is like some way to compensate for that so you know maybe just making really short exposures

01:25:41   that somehow get enough light to make it work I don't know so I'm curious what this is referring

01:25:48   to well we don't have much but it says in this Mac rumors article the mode will allow the phone

01:25:53   to detect different artifacts such as the moon and stars and adjust settings such as exposure

01:25:57   accordingly which doesn't necessarily fix what you're talking yeah that sounds like it's just

01:26:02   like you know better photo processing for a certain subject matter which is fine like that's

01:26:06   a huge part of what makes the cameras on the iPhone so good but that's it's certainly not

01:26:12   a headlaying feature yeah I mean I feel like it's probably making up for a weak area like it sounds

01:26:16   to me like basic machine learning the camera recognizes that what you're taking a picture

01:26:20   of is the night sky and it recognizes that through machine learning and then applies a custom set of

01:26:26   image processing that understands hey I know image processor you might see these little pin

01:26:31   pricks of light don't freak out it's not noise like those are stars you know what a star looks

01:26:35   like enhance and double down on the stars instead of treating it as noise and trying to smooth it

01:26:40   over and you know so it recognized that that is the moon and recognize that you're gonna do an

01:26:45   HDR exposure and what the moon is supposed to look it's like machine learning of like understanding

01:26:49   that you are taking a picture of the night sky because the night sky is not that varied

01:26:53   there's the moon there's stars maybe there's clouds and that's about it right so you know

01:26:59   what's gonna be there and you can make lots of custom machine learning stuff I don't think this

01:27:03   is what Marco was talking about which is like leave the shutter open for three hours and get

01:27:07   a cool swirly pattern of the stars I don't think that's what this is about third-party apps could

01:27:11   surely do that and probably do that now it's probably just about one more thing that your

01:27:16   camera kind of understands what you're taking a picture of and can do a decent job of it because

01:27:20   I can imagine night sky pictures are probably the type of things that people with iPhones take

01:27:24   because they're out at night and they see a pretty sky I want to take a picture of it and then they're

01:27:27   disappointed with the results because all the phones sort of default image processing work

01:27:32   against the idea of a completely dark background with pinpricks of light we are sponsored this week

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01:28:44   stronger mag safe I have yet to use any mag safe anything so I don't really know how strong or

01:28:52   not strong it is now I've heard it's not as strong as people expected but I don't know do you guys

01:28:56   have more input on this yeah I use mag safe all the time because our bedside cable solution is

01:29:03   mag safe and I I must admit even though it's only you know I mean the iPhone 12 series is still

01:29:12   fairly new but I am quite disappointed in how little mag safe stuff there is so far I assume

01:29:20   there's a good reason maybe this is the reason maybe the reason is like a lot of stuff was just

01:29:24   it was too hard to make it and to make it good with the existing mag safe magnet strength I don't

01:29:28   know but just using like Apple stuff which is like my my solution it's very low-tech is I just have

01:29:37   the mag safe cable and I have the Apple watch cable and I have stuck to the bottom that that

01:29:44   adhesive that's like the micro suction cups you know what I'm talking about like certain some

01:29:48   things have those I bought a sheet of that on Amazon and so I cut out little like discs of it

01:29:53   to stick on the bottom so I have the Apple watch charger and then a few inches away I have the

01:29:58   phone mag safe charger and those are just you know suction cups stuck to the desk with that special

01:30:03   tape so they just they just sit like flat on the nightstand so I've basically made my own unmovable

01:30:08   Apple dock which is great it's I like it better than any of the doc I've ever used because both

01:30:16   things there they stay fixed in place you can pick up each device with one hand because the things

01:30:20   are like you know sucked onto the table so it's great but that being said the issue with mag safe

01:30:28   that I have is that even with the mini which I think is the easiest phone to align a mag safe

01:30:33   because the mag safe disc itself is not that much narrower than the mini so like you have less kind

01:30:40   of slop in one direction to deal with but even with mag safe it's kind of hard to align the phone

01:30:48   correctly because the magnets don't pull it so hard to the correct alignment as you'd expect it

01:30:54   to it is kind of difficult like I have to kind of wiggle it around sometimes and sometimes I have it

01:31:00   in a way that it does feel like it's stuck on but it's like it's like an off by one error with

01:31:05   the mag in alignment or something it's like it's slightly off and so it's so it doesn't charge and

01:31:08   I have to like move it over until it makes a little like funk ding sound when it's charging

01:31:12   current mag safe I love the concept the execution has been a little I don't know a little disappointing

01:31:21   I think I still like it better than like unmagnetized Qi charging because it does solve the

01:31:27   alignment most of the time much of the time whereas you know unmodified Qi charger solve the alignment

01:31:32   problem none of the time so it's nicer than that but it could be made better and I think one of

01:31:38   the ways it could be made better would be strong magnets I think that would also greatly improve

01:31:42   things like car mounts where right now the current mag safe is not I don't think not strong and I

01:31:48   haven't actually tried this I've thought about it not quite strong enough that you could just like

01:31:51   stick a mag safe disk to some part of your car and stick your phone on it and expect it to stay

01:31:56   there but if the magnets were made stronger that might be possible so I can see this being plausible

01:32:02   and welcome John any thoughts yeah I have a mag safe puck the only thing I use it for is to charge

01:32:09   my air pods which don't magnetically align to it really in any way intentionally the kind of John

01:32:16   thing I've ever heard so they kind of did like I don't know if you've tried this but that I have

01:32:20   the second generation air pods and the non pro ones air pods do have little magnets in them to

01:32:26   you know to pull the air pods in and there is some interaction between those magnets in the puck but

01:32:32   it's not it's not like it's an intentional interaction I don't think my air pod case was

01:32:35   designed with that puck in mind because it's just it predates it by so many years but they do kind

01:32:40   of align but anyway my phone has mag safe and when I first got it I got the puck with it and I tried

01:32:46   it and I didn't like it I didn't like it for a bunch of reasons that have little to do with the

01:32:52   feature being bad I think it's great for you know like Margo said it's better than not magnets

01:32:56   because then you got to align the thing yourself and you're worried about everything charged right

01:33:00   and there's some complaints about the puck switch marker solved by sticking it to the surface or

01:33:03   whatever but anyway like in general a good idea but you know I in my context my fuddy-duddy context

01:33:11   I have readily available cables to plug in and if given the choice like the extra convenience of

01:33:17   putting it on the mag safe thing didn't outweigh my own you know weird paranoia about slower charging

01:33:24   extra heat build up all that stuff and also to be honest this is probably the biggest one marks in

01:33:30   the back of my case right little little circular marks and indentations you know it's whatever

01:33:35   that's just me right it doesn't mean it's a bad feature right but the real thing that makes me

01:33:39   worry about mag safe and especially these rumors of stronger magnets is the fact that my phone has

01:33:45   magnets in the back of it now now I have a case on it that is not a quote-unquote mag safe case

01:33:51   that somehow conveys the magnetic strength through either by having their own magnets you know a line

01:33:56   the same way as the regular mags or whatever like my case is just has no magnets in it whatsoever so

01:34:01   it provides a gap between the magnets that are inside my phone and the outside world it's kind

01:34:07   of also one of the reasons why I didn't want one of the Apple cases because they do have the little

01:34:11   magnet rings thing whose sole purpose is to make it so that the strength of your magnet is not as

01:34:17   diminished by the fact that you have a case on it but I put as we've discussed in past shows I put

01:34:21   my phone in my right pocket of my jacket with my wallet that's filled with credit cards that have

01:34:26   mag stripes now I know mag stripes are prehistoric and everyone has the tap cards now and everyone

01:34:31   has the chip cards now and who cares about the mag stripe but again worrying me worrying about

01:34:35   the marks on the back of my phone I'm also kind of worried about even stronger magnets in the back

01:34:40   of my phone being next to my wallet in my pocket there's probably enough gap there with the case

01:34:45   and the leather of my wallet and all the other stuff that it's not a big deal and and yeah who

01:34:49   knows whenever I use my mag stripes but having powerful magnets on the back of your phone is

01:34:53   not the type of thing that you can get rid of because they're embedded in the phone you can't

01:34:57   turn them off they're not electromagnets they're like permanent magnets right and you know there

01:35:03   were some articles going around about how Apple recommends that you not put like your phone in

01:35:07   your breast pocket if you have a pacemaker right now to some degree people with pacemakers and other

01:35:12   medical devices that are sensitive magnetic fields have to be aware that there are many products in

01:35:16   the world that could potentially have powerful magnets in them that are a danger to them so

01:35:19   it's not like Apple is doing anything necessarily wrong by doing this and putting magnets in them

01:35:23   for the convenience of most people because the people who have you know medical devices that

01:35:29   are sensitive magnets just have to be aware of that but I think a non-optional increasingly

01:35:36   powerful permanent magnet in the back of my phone is not something that I think pays for its

01:35:43   convenience right so I get that there's an alignment issue with wireless charging I would

01:35:49   prefer a solution that either mechanical alignment which is the thing that you can do you can have

01:35:55   things aligned by having a little notch or a nubbin or other sorts of things right that's I

01:36:00   know it's not as elegant but it can be done right or a you know a non fire inducing air power type

01:36:08   thing which is like hey but just don't worry about it just chuck your phone on the thing and however

01:36:11   it's aligned we will magically figure it out under the covers to make sure we charge it in as fast as

01:36:16   possible way given the alignment and so on and so forth we don't have to be one of those things so

01:36:20   magnets may be the best bet right but due to the unique nature of the phone or not unique but the

01:36:25   the special nature of the phone it is unlike for example mag safe on a laptop because most people

01:36:30   are not holding the magnetic parts of either part of their laptop or the charger up to their body

01:36:36   but phones go in your pockets right next to your body all the time next to other things in your

01:36:40   pockets unlike things like your AirPods case your laptop all the other the scenarios in real life

01:36:47   like my faucet has like a little thing that you pull out of it to you know that you can just pull

01:36:51   the end of the faucet out and it's got the long hose so you can spray in different places that

01:36:55   goes back in with a little magnet there are many applications where magnets for alignment is a

01:36:59   great idea but for a rectangular thing that I stick in the pockets of all of my clothes I'm not

01:37:05   super enthusiastic about them making those magnets more powerful now I agree that the current set of

01:37:09   magnets are a little bit wimpy and seem not to give all the benefits you'd want them to have but

01:37:13   I don't know if the solution is stronger magnets so I'm kind of hoping this rumor is bogus or if

01:37:18   they're stronger they'll be stronger by such a small degree that no one will even notice but not

01:37:24   looking forward to this all right anything else finer matte finish on the back that sounds good

01:37:32   no that's that could be huge I mean well I'll believe it when I see yeah we we talk a lot on

01:37:38   podcasts every year about the details of the iPhone surface treatments both visually and how

01:37:46   they you know how grippy they are how easy they ought to hold and everything and this is largely

01:37:51   an academic discussion because effectively nobody doesn't use a case like I so I haven't music a

01:37:59   case in my mini and it's it's almost weird that I don't and whenever anybody learns this fact

01:38:06   they're like what like and when I look around in the world and I try to take notice how many phones

01:38:18   I see without a case granted you know I haven't been seeing as many people as you would in a

01:38:24   normal year but it's basically zero it's as close as you can get to zero like especially as I

01:38:31   haven't seen John Gruber yet this year so that that would at least make it one but you know it's

01:38:35   basically zero people that don't have a case except me and so this kind of thing probably

01:38:43   doesn't matter however the current line of pro phones I think made grip ability significantly

01:38:52   worse we all thought that like the the new flat sided design and everything would be a huge

01:38:58   improvement for handhold ability and I think on the pro line it largely hasn't been now on the on

01:39:05   the non pro line the because the aluminum is textured instead of like that that polished

01:39:11   steel and because the glass has it's like it's like a kind of a flat glass back so it's kind of

01:39:17   tacky as opposed to the like kind of sandblasted glass back that the pros have the pros actually

01:39:23   again I think they got less handhold handhold able this generation and so if you care about

01:39:28   nice handhold ability the non pro phones this year are the way to go and I think it must

01:39:35   bother Apple that anything about the non pro phones is significantly better than the pro

01:39:41   phones like I think they want it to be a pretty clear distinction the approach phones should be

01:39:44   better in every way so to have something go the other direction would probably irritate them in

01:39:49   addition some of the people who I've seen not use cases are Apple executives as you said so so like

01:39:56   you know probably they want to correct this they probably want to they probably want the pro phones

01:40:03   to both look the best feel the best and be the best and so I would expect for feeling the best

01:40:11   that kind of matte texture on the back would be or some kind of change to the texture on the back

01:40:15   would have a chance of being a very good thing and I would also hope that they get rid of this

01:40:22   super highly polished stainless steel case band design on the pros because that does not look the

01:40:27   best once anybody has touched it that being said again all of this is academic because

01:40:32   most people put cases on their phones and so most people never even see or touch the actual raw

01:40:37   sides or back of their phones I like the steel the shiny steel I know people complain about

01:40:42   fingerprints but like you're going to touch it it's going to have fingerprints even with fingerprints

01:40:45   I think it looks nicer and more importantly it feels nicer like I use my phone without a case

01:40:48   for what a whole day or two before or whatever I tried to use it for a while without the case

01:40:53   and it feels like a really nice object but I agree with Marco and everybody else that the non-pro

01:40:59   phone actually has better grip ability and it's interesting because the non-pro phone's back grip

01:41:03   ability is because it is it's perceived as being grippier because it actually is glossy on the back

01:41:09   right the matte one feels slipperier in the vein of what was the slipperiest one the iphone 6

01:41:14   that was like yeah the one that was made of a bar of soap yeah you know so like that when you have

01:41:20   very glossy glass it's very slippery very very grippy right up to the point where you have a

01:41:27   dollop of moisture and then it becomes slick as anything right so I think we perceive the

01:41:33   non-pro phone as being grippier because we're gripping it with essentially dry hands but in

01:41:38   real life maybe if you got a little bit of water on your hand and tried to grab your phone with a

01:41:42   slick glass back maybe it would be different but either way this rumor is that they're changing

01:41:48   the back the matte back with a grippier more comfortable feeling so it sounds like they're

01:41:52   sticking with matte like the current pro has a matte glass back as in it's like it looks like

01:41:57   frosted glass right and that feels slipperier to us because it's very finely textured frosted glass

01:42:03   and it's kind of like the back of like the iphone 6 was where it was like a matte kind of aluminum

01:42:07   thing it feels slippery because it's not like the glossy glass that is grippy you know where you get

01:42:13   that squeaky sound where it's like oh I can really grip on this right but it's also not fuzzy like a

01:42:19   leather case where you actually get real grip on it it's the worst of both worlds so this rumor is

01:42:23   that they have improved the matte back to be grippier than it was I don't know what that means

01:42:29   I don't know you how you can make it matte but even grippier does that mean makes that make the

01:42:33   texture less fine so if you looked at under a microscope the you know the matte-ness would be

01:42:38   higher hills and valleys does it mean they would actually here's the thing naked robotic core is my

01:42:43   whole deal been talking about it for years right apple continues to not do the obvious other

01:42:50   solution which is make your naked robotic core really grippy by not making it out of quote unquote

01:42:57   premium materials by putting wear surfaces on the naked robotic core they've never done that they've

01:43:02   stuck with the naked robotic core which is here is as small as we can make this phone all the

01:43:06   surfaces are hard put a soft case on it express yourself make it grippy do whatever you want

01:43:11   but if we actually put essentially wear surfaces on the outside of the phone people might like it

01:43:19   but then they will wear them out and that's your actual phone you can't remove it when someone

01:43:23   destroys their case or wears it out they take it off and they get a new case right if the back of

01:43:28   the phone like my stupid Microsoft mouse was made of soft touch rubber once you destroyed the back

01:43:34   of your soft rubber phone it would be like oh my phone is all gross now and I can't take it off

01:43:39   because it's part of the phone right so I don't fault apple for not taking this approach they are

01:43:44   very committed to naked robotic core I think it's the right approach because like Marco said

01:43:49   so many the vast majority of people just put a case on it in which case they are benefiting from

01:43:55   naked robotic core which is make the phone as small and beautiful as you can get it and then

01:43:59   you have the option to put whatever cases on you want and if you're a weirder like Gruber and

01:44:02   apple executive or Marco now and you want to use without a case guess what you got the smallest

01:44:06   one possible with really premium surfaces that don't wear out like my stupid Microsoft mouse

01:44:11   and everyone's happy right but I continue to think about maybe one model of phone that is a little

01:44:19   bit chunkier that has actual I'm calling them wear surfaces and it's derogatory way of saying they

01:44:24   eventually wear down but if it has surfaces on them that are not hard durable materials

01:44:28   but instead are designed to be grippy and it's weird because I think that phone would get the

01:44:34   reputation as the grippy phone which makes no sense because every phone is the grippy phone

01:44:39   if you just buy one and put a super grippy case on it you've got a grippy phone but it's like yeah

01:44:43   but you buy this one whatever model this is the the iphone 15 you know pro rugged edition I don't

01:44:50   know someone can come on the fly with some sort of branding name for this whatever that the actual

01:44:55   phone itself is like like a Makita power tool it has like plastic and rubber all over it and like

01:45:01   it is just a grippy thing or whatever you know maybe not go that low end but like something a

01:45:07   premium feeling actual grippy material that the phone is made out of what about like that like

01:45:13   the iphone 5c plastic that felt great yeah the iphone 3g and 3gs also plastic also felt great

01:45:19   very shiny plastic but I'm thinking more of like like devices like I think of power tools because

01:45:24   very often they are made to be to have positive grip and to also be durable you don't want the

01:45:30   handle of your power drill to wear out but you also don't want it to be made of glossy plastic

01:45:35   yeah fair enough but like yeah I mean one of the huge benefit to this is that compared to the phone

01:45:40   that has metal and glass on it that you're putting plastic on top of the phone that actually is made

01:45:45   of plastic to begin with would be significantly smaller and lighter weight because metal and glass

01:45:52   are heavy and you know you would be replacing some of that frame there would have to be some

01:45:58   kind of structural you know probably interior metal frame for some part of it for for support

01:46:02   or rigidity or whatever but you know you would you would result the resulting product would be

01:46:06   significantly smaller and lighter and simpler than a metal and glass phone with a plastic case added

01:46:12   to it aftermarket yeah the tricky part is the screen still because I mean OLED screens are

01:46:18   flexible you can roll them up right but the the glass surface of the phones is part of the

01:46:24   experience of using an iphone like it's part of the reason the original iphone they ditched the

01:46:27   plastic one with glass because running your finger across the plastic screen is not great and we're

01:46:33   not what kind of plastic they make it out of glass just feels better and glass unfortunately is not

01:46:38   super enthusiastic about bending a lot so plastic I think is a great idea for a phone you mentioned

01:46:44   having a metal frame for rigidity part of the reason it needs that rigidity is the glass part

01:46:48   of the reason of course is the printed circuit board which also kind of doesn't like to be bent

01:46:52   but yeah plastic could go along setting aside the grippiness plastic could go a long way towards

01:46:57   reducing weight and increasing durability of phones but apple feels shy about that because

01:47:01   people didn't like the iphone 5c I thought it was great I still think the iphone 5c is a great phone

01:47:05   but it didn't sell well and I think apple may have taken the wrong lesson from that

01:47:09   that like oh we shouldn't make a plastic phone in reality just the price and features of the 5c

01:47:14   given the line that was around it was not right so I think there's two separate things one

01:47:20   make a phone out of materials that are not aluminum steel or glass but it still is

01:47:25   essentially a premium phone it still would be the naked robotic core and two

01:47:28   make a ruggedized phone that comes out of the box as a beefier bigger battery more grippy with what

01:47:35   I keep calling wear surfaces all over the thing but those are extremely diversified models I feel

01:47:41   like apple's iphone line is now perhaps as diversified as it's ever going to get

01:47:46   I'm not sure apple has an appetite to go into the more exotic realms I feel like that is more the

01:47:52   domain of android phones where there's more variability because apple does have a brand and

01:47:56   I think with the current phone lineup they're covering so many bases if you want a small phone

01:48:03   that's good they sell one if you want a gigantic phone that's good to sell one if you want a

01:48:06   quote-unquote normal-sized phone that's good they sell a couple they've pretty much covered the

01:48:10   market as well as they need to given current phone technology so I don't expect them to do either one

01:48:15   of these things and I don't you know think I couldn't even make a strong pitch for it but it

01:48:19   would certainly be cool mostly because it's a thing they haven't tried yet because everyone

01:48:23   uses the case and naked robotic core has served them so well they haven't even looked at that

01:48:27   other thing I just think it would be a fun a fun variation now all that said this rumor about oh

01:48:32   a matte back that's grippier I think it's going to be one of those things where if they mentioned it

01:48:36   at all it'll be like oh we improved the matte back so it's a little bit grippier and none of us will

01:48:40   be able to tell yeah by the way while you're on the subject of the variability of the lineup

01:48:46   all these rumors that the iPhone mini is like not selling at all and they're going to discontinue it

01:48:51   boy I hope that's wrong because I love the iPhone mini still I'm I'm a big fan the size feels

01:48:56   totally normal to me now every other phone feels like a giant monster phone to me now like it it's

01:49:01   so nice and small and light and it fits nicely in my pocket and I never get that feeling when like I

01:49:07   sit down and like whenever I've like tried a plus phone here and there like you sit down and it's

01:49:12   like a line so they're wrong in your pocket you gotta like shift around or move it over like

01:49:16   I've never had that happen with the mini it's just delightful I'm so happy with it and I really really

01:49:21   hope they continue to make flagship small phones I can't remember if I said this on Twitter or here

01:49:28   or both but like the idea that Apple would bail on the mini because it sells less of course it

01:49:35   sells less you're that's what diversifying the line means you have the sort of the the mainstream

01:49:40   phones that most people buy and when you make the weirder models fewer people are going to buy them

01:49:45   that's the whole point of diversifying your line is you want to address smaller and smaller subsets

01:49:49   of the market you do it after you satisfied the fat part of the bell curve then you go after the

01:49:54   edges and yeah you introduce a little phone fewer people are going to buy it now it could be oh well

01:49:59   it's not that it's fewer it's fewer than we even thought it would be it's fewer than projections

01:50:03   and kind of like the stock marketing business very often you make some wild ass guess about how many

01:50:07   you're going to sell and if you don't meet that expectation it's worse than if you had sold the

01:50:12   exact same number of phones but had predicted a lower number and exceeded it which doesn't make

01:50:16   any sense but that's just human nature so but as with so many of these things yeah apple you're

01:50:20   going to sell fewer of them stick to it because if you like if it's not like if you didn't sell like

01:50:25   half a percent of what you thought just keep doing it because honestly the you know the

01:50:31   technological investment like what did I talk about that before like star wars disney bailing

01:50:37   on star wars after they had some trouble with the the franchise part of what makes people you know

01:50:43   know and trust your brand is you not immediately running at the first sign of trouble in a product

01:50:47   line you know the people who love the mini really love it you may be disappointed that there aren't

01:50:52   more of them and that it costs you so much money to get this whole other production line up and

01:50:55   running but honestly you should just eat that because having extremely loyal mini customers

01:51:02   in your camp and having them give you 37 margins on their purchase instead of 38.5 percent margins

01:51:10   just make the bean counter swallow it and keep making the mini honestly like it's not this

01:51:14   terrible disaster where apple's losing money they got they make so much money they don't even know

01:51:17   what to do with it they can't give away their cash fast enough keep making the mini for crying out

01:51:21   loud thanks to our sponsors this week mack weldon linode and flat file and thank you to our members

01:51:28   for support us directly you can join at atp.fm join we will talk to you next week

01:51:33   now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:51:43   oh it was accidental john didn't do any research marco and casey wouldn't let him

01:51:52   because it was accidental it was accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm

01:52:02   and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m a r c o

01:52:15   a r m anti-marco armen s i r a c u s a syracuse it's accidental

01:52:25   i have been eyeballing this for a while and finally i just decided to pull the trigger

01:52:41   i got myself a dgi mini 2 drone oh nice those are those look so fun oh it is so much fun i

01:52:49   know not what i'm doing and one of the scary things about the mini is that it doesn't have

01:52:53   the accident avoidance that yours does marco like it doesn't have forward and rear sensors to prevent

01:52:58   it from running into things oh man though it's so much fun and it's so sweet sweet it's so adorable

01:53:03   it's like the it's like the drone adorable edition did you get the drone care plan that they offer so

01:53:09   like if you do crash into something it's no big deal i did they do have like an apple care plus

01:53:14   thing and i put it off and then it was like you have to do this within two days and that was this

01:53:19   morning and so i was like ah fine so for so for 50 bucks i get like two replacements i think or

01:53:24   something well i think i still have to pay for them a little bit just like you do with apple care

01:53:27   but significantly cheaper replacements if i do something extremely terrible and i figure at least

01:53:32   for the first year while i don't know what i'm doing uh it seemed like a reasonable thing to do

01:53:37   but i got the dji mini to fly more combo which basically means it gives you some extra batteries

01:53:43   which actually are worth discussing it gives you a controller which i guess it doesn't come with

01:53:47   generally speaking some extra propellers and i forget what else but um i freaking love this thing

01:53:53   it is completely stupid and useless and wasteful and oh my god it's so much fun that's awesome

01:54:00   useful or it's spying on your neighbors and menacing pets are you are we going to see some

01:54:05   like instagram stories of uh drone footage are you flying through cool things uh i don't i don't know

01:54:11   um i i don't think so uh so my intention with this was just to get something i i feel like i need

01:54:19   something a little bit happy after the last year i don't think that's unreasonable and kasey you're

01:54:23   an adult you're a professional it's fine yeah exactly you don't have to excuse it it's a fun

01:54:28   toy you're a tech podcaster it's fine so yeah so anyway so i wanted to get myself a little treat

01:54:33   i got myself a treat um but i figure on occasion i think it will be nice to have so as an example

01:54:40   like a listener of the show uh had was kind enough to lend me shoot i forget what model it was but i

01:54:47   think it was an earlier version of your current drone marco because what do you have you have the

01:54:51   something uh i have the mavic 2 pro i think it came out like two years ago but not the one with

01:54:59   the zoom lens the one with the big sensor um so i think i had borrowed from this very kind of listener

01:55:05   eric a previous version of that and it was phenomenal um there there were there definitely

01:55:12   a couple of things about it that i that i miss for example the accident avoidance because it um you

01:55:17   know this thing the the big guys will i guess they have like ir sensors or something on their sonar

01:55:23   or something on the front where radar is such that it will try not to run into walls or trees

01:55:28   or what have you um but the mini does not the advantages of the mini other than being cheap

01:55:35   are that it's quite small it is stunningly small and it's under the magic 250 gram limit that

01:55:42   certainly america and i think other countries have have decided that if a drone is under 250

01:55:48   grams it's considered like a complete and utter toy rather than something that could arguably be

01:55:53   used you know professionally now naturally there's nothing stopping me from using this professionally

01:55:57   i would need to go get you know my faa certification what have you but um but i could it's not that it's

01:56:02   a decent enough drone that i think i could do it but the point is is that like you don't have to

01:56:06   register with the faa you you and there's some i think a couple other differences check with you

01:56:12   know your local jurisdictions and what have you um but it's just it's portable it's super portable

01:56:16   like eric when he lent me his drone it came in this huge backpack which because the drone is not small

01:56:21   and so on and so forth um but the thing is so tiny like the the bag it came in is like the size of an

01:56:27   average purse i would say um and and i've been really enjoying using it and the thing moves like

01:56:35   when i was borrowing the whatever mavic it was i don't recall exactly the model number uh but when

01:56:40   i was borrowing that mavic like i kept it on super slow mode because i was so scared i was going to

01:56:44   break this you know fellow's drone and have to send him like a carcass back in the mail he was

01:56:49   kind enough to ship me this drone and say borrow it for a couple of weeks and uh and i didn't want

01:56:53   to ship a carcass back and so i was using it super slow mode well given the mini when you put it in

01:56:59   sport mode we'll do 30 miles an hour which is nuts wow it's 250 grams and it'll do i mean i think it's

01:57:06   a little shy of 30 but it has a readout on your phone screen and it says you know 28 29 miles an

01:57:11   hour or something like that it's bananas um but so much of the tech is so cool and just as as someone

01:57:18   who appreciates good engineering and i think i speak for all three of us in saying that it's

01:57:22   just so cool that so much incredible technologies in this little tiny device and if you've never

01:57:27   really used a drone like in and of itself it's exactly what you would think right you know you

01:57:31   can make it go up down you can make it spin you can go left or right you know you can forward and

01:57:35   back but there's so many cool things you can do and as silly as it sounds and anyone who has flown

01:57:40   a drone in the last 15 years knows this already but you can fly it wherever and say come home

01:57:46   please and sure enough it will ascend to whatever the you know stated uh come home uh altitude is to

01:57:54   make sure it gets over trees and other obstacles it will fly over you at you know a couple hundred

01:58:01   feet and then descend down directly in front of you and it's the coolest thing like it is so

01:58:06   freaking cool and and when you're flying it on your phone screen you see you the way it works

01:58:12   at least for dji drones that i've used is you stick your phone in a like holster within this

01:58:17   controller a controller like you would use for like an rc car and you hook a cable up into the

01:58:23   lightning port and that's your viewfinder if you will and it shows you you know what the drone sees

01:58:27   but you can also call up a map and see exactly where the drone is in relation to you and so on

01:58:31   and so forth and so much of this is so cool and the dji fly app is surprisingly good for a company

01:58:37   that you would think would probably have a mediocre at best um at best app it's it lets you do like

01:58:44   playback of the route that you took in in so far as you can watch a little arrow like dance around

01:58:49   on the map and and it'll even show you the messages it sends you like oh this is where the wind was too

01:58:54   was too strong or what have you i don't know this is so cool and so much fun and i'm so glad i got

01:58:59   it now ask me again in two months i'll probably be like oh yeah that's right i do have a drone i

01:59:03   forgot about that but sitting here now that's how it goes in sitting here now three days in it is

01:59:08   the coolest thing and i and i cannot recommend it enough they're not a sponsor they should be but um

01:59:12   the mini 2 is so fun and so neat and i did um i aaron was taking penny on a walk in the neighborhood

01:59:21   and so i did fly like i tracked her down and flew and and was kind of flying behind her trying to

01:59:27   get a cinematic video i'm not going to post this anywhere for several reasons but i was trying to

01:59:31   get like a cinematic looking video of her and when she got home she said you know you gotta be careful

01:59:36   with that and i was like well yeah and thinking that maybe i flew too close to a tree and i didn't

01:59:41   realize it or something and she said well you know as you were chasing me which was fine there was a

01:59:46   guy getting out of his car at his house and he was looking at that drone and looking at me looking at

01:59:49   that drone looking at me and he was like huh and definitely was like looking at me funny says aaron

01:59:56   and so i guess she was like to try to make it like less awkward she says to penny the dog oh daddy's

02:00:01   using his drone again that silly fellow you know i forget what she said you know something like that

02:00:05   you know to indicate that it's not like some freaking creepers well i mean arguably i was a

02:00:09   creeper yeah are you gonna get the neighborhood watch on your back or whatever the homeowners

02:00:13   association sorry no drones in the neighborhood casey new rule and it's funny because my reign

02:00:17   and the homeowners association is a month away from being done so you never know it very well

02:00:21   could happen yeah that rules that rule is coming down on you hard soon yeah you're under the f

02:00:26   the faa limit but guess what the neighborhood limit is zero grams oh it's so true and i'm just

02:00:31   waiting for the next door post like hey i hear i hear this drone buzzing my hat which yeah i was

02:00:36   doing this you know we don't need the leaf blowers are bad enough i don't need to hear a drone yeah

02:00:40   i don't know if it's all the uh post-apocalyptic uh literature and movies and televisions that

02:00:47   i'm super into but every time i see these drones i think of how incredibly useful they are in any

02:00:52   kind of sort of zombie apocalypse end of the world scenario where like you need to have sort of uh

02:00:59   you know situational awareness in a situation and uh if there's some kind of threat right where you

02:01:04   need to know what's around you and who's what and where and just that you know if you told me as a

02:01:09   kid that you'd be able to buy something like this drone all right a couple hundred bucks and like

02:01:14   how amazing it is and what it does and that you could just you could just buy one and have this

02:01:18   like obviously there are military drones and all sorts of other applications that like the real

02:01:22   uses but like whatever whoever does the next end of the world story with modern technology and

02:01:29   smartphones and everything like i can you know whatever the threat is whether it's other people

02:01:34   or zombies or who knows aliens or whatever having ready access to drones to just grab them from a

02:01:41   store and charge them up assuming there's electricity in this uh in this end of the world story

02:01:46   and fly them out to you know see to surveil your perimeter and everything it's just it's so science

02:01:53   fiction i'm so i'm so old i just can't get over how cool it is like just you just go to the website

02:01:58   how amazing it is you can just fly anywhere in any direction with live video in essentially disposable

02:02:04   hardware disposable from the perspective of like there's no humans in it and it's a couple hundred

02:02:08   bucks and in the apocalypse there's warehouses full of these things so just grab them and fortify

02:02:14   your castle with drones and just have them flying constantly of course the noise is something but

02:02:18   you know it still beats leaf blowers yeah totally not by much but it does not by a lot and it's i

02:02:24   don't know i just find it so fascinating like leaving aside the engineering of it i just think

02:02:28   it's such a nifty change of perspective and i mean that in the both literal and the figurative senses

02:02:34   that it's not often that i get to look down on the roof of my house you know and as it turns out

02:02:39   we're going to be doing an addition in sometime in the next couple of months and one of the things

02:02:44   i'm excited to do is not like film it happening but maybe at the end of each day after the crew

02:02:49   leaves take an overhead shot because you know it's an external thing that's happening take an

02:02:55   overhead shot of the progress right you know and just kind of have maybe not literally a time lapse

02:02:59   but be able to go through the you know week or two weeks or month or whatever it's going to take them

02:03:04   to build it and and see the progress happening you know not in real time but sort of so to speak in

02:03:11   real time and i'm really looking forward to that and plus you know the the time that we had borrowed

02:03:15   that drone from that extremely kind listener it was when we were at cape charles and whenever you

02:03:20   know we can start vacationing properly again i'm really looking forward to in when it's appropriate

02:03:25   when it's legal etc being able to take a you know a couple of videos like that it doesn't have to be

02:03:30   30 minutes of it it can be just a few minutes but the videos we captured at cape charles a few years

02:03:34   ago when we were borrowing that drone were super cool and i don't think anyone else really cared

02:03:38   that much but i thought they were phenomenally cool and and i i'm really excited to um to to be

02:03:44   able to do that sort of thing and and to be able to get just a different perspective on life and

02:03:51   and document that in and i've been thinking about it a lot and i think this is a topic maybe for

02:03:56   another day but i think it's fun for me and very neat and i'm very lucky to be able to have a a

02:04:07   kind of an arsenal or a tool chest that i can use when it comes to capturing moments you know because

02:04:12   i have the go pro and i've used it as i think we mentioned just a week or two ago i use the go pro

02:04:18   from for even just silly things like sticking it on a window so i can see if penny how and when penny

02:04:24   is escaping from her like pen that we put her in and i the go pro can be used to like film decal

02:04:31   back when you know swimming lessons were a thing and we weren't allergic to the indoors i can bring

02:04:36   that in the pool with me and declyn when we're doing like a swimming lesson or free swim or

02:04:40   whatever and film him underwater and film him you know and not worry about this breaking you know

02:04:45   like you were saying about this disposable to some degree john and having a proper camera with a zoom

02:04:51   lens you know granted it is a pain in the ass in a lot of ways but nevertheless it is also cool to

02:04:59   be able to take out this camera and and be a little bit further away from my family and taking more

02:05:05   candid shots of them like having all of these different tools and now a drone in my arsenal

02:05:11   i really really enjoy it and it's really really neat to be able to have all these different tools

02:05:16   in your tool chest to be able to use the right tool for the job at the right time which of course

02:05:20   99% of the time is just my damn phone but nevertheless when you get when you have some about

02:05:25   some amounts of you know ability to to plan it is really really cool so with that said marco you

02:05:32   haven't touched a drone in like two years i assume um yeah about a year but that's you know like you

02:05:37   know like i bought it for for a purpose and we were also doing some construction and i wanted

02:05:42   the same thing you were saying like to be able to you know take you know capture some of it going on

02:05:47   um and and it was it was good for that and then you know it was also nice just as a novelty you

02:05:51   know like the the the year of like having this like the first year i had like having this thing

02:05:56   as this great novelty where like you know i would i brought it like to the family gathering at

02:06:00   christmas and they live in a yeah in a rural area and so we were like you know zoomed up and showed

02:06:04   their whole you know their property and you know zoomed down to you know someone else's house like

02:06:08   hey here's an overhead picture of your house and you know it was just it was fun like there's a

02:06:12   lot of novelty value to drones um as long as you're in an area where you're not around a lot

02:06:17   of other people because they are super annoying but we were lucky that we were in two such areas

02:06:23   where they were not a lot of people so it was wonderful and it was it was it was like a great

02:06:28   novelty to bring it around like that first year and you know then the novelty has worn off and

02:06:33   i it's sitting on the shelf and i'm actually i'm going through a big wave of like cleaning out and

02:06:37   and trying to like get rid of a lot of stuff and sell some stuff and give some stuff away and

02:06:40   i i was just thinking today like should i should i give away the drone or sell the drone like i was

02:06:44   just thinking about that literally earlier today not knowing you've done this because like because

02:06:49   you know good mind also significantly larger than yours and so that means everything about it the

02:06:54   batteries like the the chargers like everything about it is bigger and the noise level maybe yeah

02:06:59   i don't know yeah yeah it is i wouldn't say it's dramatically different and granted i haven't heard

02:07:03   a mavic in a couple of years now but my vague recollection is that it is noticeably louder

02:07:10   uh the the the mavic the big guys are noticeably louder than the than the one that i have yeah and

02:07:17   like the one that you have like it has you know as you mentioned like it has a few limitations

02:07:21   compared to mine and you know the image quality is a little bit different because it's like a much

02:07:24   smaller design and but yeah i mean like no question if i were buying new today i would buy the one you

02:07:30   bought exactly that one because i was basically using it you know as you are kind of as as a toy

02:07:36   like so right right right i don't have professional needs i bought the one i bought at the time i

02:07:40   bought it was just i mean probably probably about three years ago now it's a while ago it was as

02:07:44   soon as the mavic 2 came out like i bought it like that week i i bought the one i bought at the time

02:07:49   because that was like the one that was that i knew would be easiest for me to operate because it had

02:07:54   all those convenience features it had like the you know the return to home thing and and all the

02:07:59   protective features to protect you from being too likely to to crash it into a lake or a house you

02:08:05   know like like it would it would automatically fly it also like mine automatically flies home

02:08:08   if it's getting to the point where it's not going to have enough battery life to make it home yep

02:08:13   yep yep yep so that way like again it kind of saves you from from yourself and uh stuff like

02:08:20   that so like there are all sorts of uh like little convenience features you know the the anti-crashing

02:08:25   into things sensors um that make it so that this was this was going to be really nice for

02:08:30   my both needs and my skill level yeah but now you know the one you got the mini 2 it's so much

02:08:36   smaller and so much like i feel like that makes it a lot more delightful in certain ways it also

02:08:41   makes it a lot smaller to fit in a bag yep that's exactly right and and i would imagine because it's

02:08:46   so much lighter weight uh you probably need less battery weight and battery bulk as well to get the

02:08:53   same amount of flight time i i would suspect so this thing will do about 20 to 30 minutes you know

02:08:57   depending on wind and so on and so forth um but yeah it's i'm glad you brought that up because

02:09:03   like i said earlier the particular setup that eric had lent me it was in a fairly large backpack and

02:09:09   you know there were plenty of accessories in it so it could have been in a smaller container but

02:09:13   it was the sort of thing where it was definitely a burden or at least a conscious decision to bring

02:09:20   the drone anywhere in the couple of weeks that he let me borrow it uh whereas this it's certainly

02:09:26   still a decision but it's a lot more casual like eh why not you know well i'll just throw it in

02:09:30   and can't hurt and and that i really like i mean it's small enough that i would consider if i was

02:09:35   going on like an airplane do you remember airplanes i don't know if i do um if i was going on like an

02:09:41   airplane vacation i would consider bringing it because it's not you know tremendous i'm not sure

02:09:46   that i would and certainly depend on where i would be going but it's small enough that it could

02:09:50   hypothetically work um a couple of quick things in case you're interested in this sort of thing and

02:09:54   potentially buying one uh the fly more combo i think i'd mention comes with like this with three

02:09:59   batteries but it also comes with a battery like um charger thing where you can slot all three

02:10:05   batteries into it and it charges via usb-c and what it'll do is it'll just charge yeah it's usb-c

02:10:12   and it'll charge whatever battery is closest to full first and then it will charge the next one

02:10:18   and then the next one but additionally and this is relevant because we're supposed to get a bunch

02:10:22   of ice overnight it will also act as a just standard battery you know like charger like

02:10:28   the other direction so you it has a usb aeb i always get it wrong a standard usb oh yeah usb

02:10:33   out port exactly now that one's usb old it's not usb-c it's a but i could hook up like a standard

02:10:41   lightning cable to this triplet of batteries and charge my phone if our battery if our power goes

02:10:46   out overnight which is super convenient especially when if you're traveling um and so i really dig

02:10:52   that and apparently like getting the batteries in and out of the mini one was a real pain and in it's

02:10:57   super easy on this one uh additionally the controller does not have any sort of screen

02:11:02   on it like my my recollection of the mavic that i had borrowed was that it had like some basic

02:11:06   readouts like what mode you're in what height you're at i think how much battery time was left

02:11:10   does yours have some sort of like lcd on it yeah it's very similar to that yeah okay well this has

02:11:14   no screen whatsoever which is fine but in a perfect world it would be neat to have that on the

02:11:19   controller as well i mean honestly i never use that screen like i'm always just looking at my

02:11:24   phone screen when i operate it oh and also uh the phone is above the controller not below which i

02:11:30   don't think was the case on the mavic that i use the the phone was below the controller when it

02:11:34   was all mounted up and this the phone sits above the controller which is really nice and i much

02:11:39   prefer that do you remember how yours is i know it's been my yeah my phone sits below mine's the

02:11:43   old style okay i i am curious though uh i don't think that are you aware of the goggles yes

02:11:49   actually i know are those compatible with the mini yet i don't think so but i haven't looked into it

02:11:54   and eric had a set for his uh i believe it was a mavic i might be misspeaking um he had a set for

02:11:59   his mavic which i tried like once or twice and was freaking trippy very cool super cool very weird

02:12:07   though that's how that's how the drone racers uh do do the racing have you seen those you ever

02:12:12   seen the drone yes yes yes yes yep and it amazes me that uh i mean if you watch them doing the

02:12:16   races like that they the drones are flying so fast that you're like how can anybody

02:12:21   yep possibly be controlling that and you're like well they have these goggles let them see what

02:12:25   the drone is seeing and then you see what they're seeing like nope doesn't help i don't understand

02:12:29   because it's like viewing through the lens of that thing it's like they're still going so fast how are

02:12:34   they how are they doing this i mean i suppose it's like any other thing like racing or video games or

02:12:38   whatever it's just practice and skill and probably a lot of crashes in the case of drones because

02:12:43   unlike being in a race car if you crash a drone you know you don't die so but it's just it is

02:12:48   amazing and yeah it is very i think the trippiest thing would have to be kind of like marco was

02:12:53   talking about with the the vr stuff of like if what you're seeing is a thing that is progressing

02:13:00   through space and yet you are standing still that's got to be disconcerting and potentially

02:13:06   motion sickness inducing but but yeah but the speeds these things go the other thing is just

02:13:10   just plain reflexes and just you know talk about flinching whether you run this thing into a wall

02:13:15   it's going to feel like you hit it with your own head right yeah seriously i don't know but yeah

02:13:20   so i mean i kind of wish i had the screen but not a big deal but and the other thing i don't like is

02:13:24   that if i wanted to on the mavic i could i think you would push down and twist a little bit to pop

02:13:30   off the propellers and with this there and i believe this is the only dji drone where this

02:13:34   is the case they actually are screwed in uh which is a little bit of a pain um and i don't love but

02:13:41   all in all why are you taking off the propellers no no i'd not that i wouldn't generally speaking

02:13:46   but like if i was going to leave the drone alone for a while just so i don't break them i would

02:13:50   occasionally take them off like when i shipped them back to eric i took them off um so general

02:13:54   not a big deal and and eventually it'll end up that i will break one of these propellers and

02:13:57   hopefully not the whole drone and so i will need to replace one and that'll be a little bit of a

02:14:01   pain but all things being all things being equal you know with the fly more combo i think was 600

02:14:07   bucks if i'm not mistaken so that's the drone the case the batteries the controller you know with

02:14:11   some extra propellers uh and and i i really am so sitting here now i'm so glad i spent the money i

02:14:18   think it's so much fun and i think it really will be a neat and novel thing to have from time to

02:14:22   time i'm sure you know in the next couple of months i'll i'll go from using it every day to

02:14:26   like once a week to like once a month to oh yeah i have a drone um but nevertheless it is super neat

02:14:32   and super cool and if you have a burning desire to you know to spend a few hundred bucks first of all

02:14:39   atp.fm join and then after that uh you can go to dji or amazon or what have you and uh check it

02:14:45   out i just think it's super cool this just strikes me as one of those toys that if i got it i would

02:14:48   just be angry at how unappreciative my children are of the amazing technology in the world

02:14:52   how much i would have killed for this as a kid they'd be like yeah it's a drone so what yeah

02:14:57   yeah it's so true do you understand it's like yeah i don't know what the equivalent is going

02:15:02   to be when they're old people and they're angry the children aren't amazed by some new technology

02:15:07   but these drones are it's like just just phenomenal i can't even believe they're they're real they are

02:15:13   so amazing like i i'm like the the drone i have which is again like three years old like the

02:15:19   pictures it takes the video it takes i'm like this is better than almost any camera i've ever owned

02:15:26   and it flies yeah i know right and it costs less than most of the fancy cameras do yeah

02:15:35   like it's ridiculous like it's you're right like you almost can't believe that it's real that like

02:15:40   technology like this is one of those products that you use it and you're like wow technology

02:15:45   is amazing like i can't believe that we can do this and what's what's especially impressive too

02:15:49   is just how incredibly good the gimbal is and and and the combination of the gimbal and the actual

02:15:56   you know the flight control of of all the rotors uh is such that like it can you can fly it up in

02:16:03   the air and it can be you know a decently breezy day and you look at the video afterwards and it

02:16:08   is not moving like it is rock steady and you're like how is that possible this thing is hovering

02:16:15   400 feet in the air on a windy day and i'm like gently moving it and it's it doesn't rock back

02:16:21   and forth at all there's no shake it's shocking how good like how stable it is how you know of

02:16:29   course and you know this thing has a great sensor so it's like how how clear and sharp everything is

02:16:34   it is it is mind-blowing how good this technology is for granted i'm not gonna i'm not gonna say

02:16:41   it's cheap it's not you know these aren't low prices you know as you said like you know 600

02:16:46   bucks is a pretty good entry point for like a decent mid-range drone but for that price

02:16:52   considering that it happens to also be an amazing camera that flies that's that's pretty amazing

02:17:01   like when you and especially you know when you compare the quality of that to a 600 point and

02:17:07   shoot camera like you're almost getting the flying for free it's it's really it's it's really

02:17:14   unbelievable how good these are i mean this is kind of the uh the aviation equivalent of

02:17:19   computational photography setting aside the photography just the flying thing the reason

02:17:23   all these drones exist is because uh computers and software you know advanced and shrunk to the

02:17:31   point where we could both fit them in a device that doesn't weigh too much so you need you know

02:17:37   die shrinks and smaller and smaller feature sets and more efficient circuits so you can have a

02:17:40   smaller battery that doesn't weigh as much and then software wise the control software to be

02:17:47   able to put essentially a bunch of dumb motors and servos in here being controlled by a very

02:17:53   complicated computer program that is fast and responsive with all the various sensors

02:17:58   accelerometers and gyroscopes to be able to stay in the air i remember as a kid watching

02:18:03   the precursor to all these drones which was like university projects where they would

02:18:07   take some computer and connect it with an umbilical cord because they couldn't actually

02:18:11   put it in the flying thing connect a flying thing with an umbilical cord to this huge array of

02:18:15   computers and these computers would be trying to control the flying thing with some really

02:18:20   complicated software program that some grad student wrote to figure out oh when you're tipping this

02:18:24   way change your rotor angle that way and do you know to eventually essentially be a drone and they

02:18:30   made it look so hard right because the the drones where everything cost a bazillion dollars it was

02:18:35   it was tethered to a giant cable to look like like a pool hose or you know it wasn't even just like

02:18:40   an extension cord it was this huge cable connected up to a wall of the most expensive computers that

02:18:46   they could buy and the thing would crash all over the place right and it's just we needed to just

02:18:51   get over that hump where it's like can we get the electronics small enough can we figure out this

02:18:55   software problem and once we got over that hump it's like guess what we you don't have to be

02:19:00   tethered anymore we can put the computer in there and guess what we figured out the basic software

02:19:04   program to more or less stay in the air and then then that was it like there's just like this

02:19:09   discontinuity of like before this was not a thing that you could even have and now it is well known

02:19:14   enough and the technology is widely available enough that it costs less than a good laptop

02:19:19   right it literally costs less than a good laptop because we cracked this problem this is what's so

02:19:24   exciting about technology that like something that seems so hard is to almost be impossible

02:19:28   and then we get over the hump and it is amazing and in case you're wondering no i do not file

02:19:33   self-driving this category because self-driving really is super duper hard but a remote control

02:19:38   thing that merely knows i stay i can stay level and i can adjust when i'm mashed by the wind and

02:19:44   you can control where i go we did get over that hump and that is a much smaller hump but even that

02:19:49   one was so hard to get over that you know for my entire childhood the reason this is so amazing to

02:19:53   me is that i saw people trying and failing again and again to do this and now it's just like

02:19:57   probably anybody can make one of these because the software idea certainly the hardware is so

02:20:03   widely available that anybody could assemble this amount of hardware like maybe as nice as this it

02:20:07   wouldn't be as good as this and refined and you know so and so forth it's a hard problem but like

02:20:11   this the hardware that's in these drones is not super secret that's why you can get one for a

02:20:16   couple hundred bucks and then the software seems like it's tractable enough that any company with

02:20:22   reasonably good engineering resources can make a drone that flies successfully and can keep itself

02:20:27   level and move around and then it's just a question of who are the good drone makers or who are the

02:20:31   bad ones or whatever but the problem of fairly inexpensive thing that flies has more or less been

02:20:37   solved by humanity and that's why these drones all over the place in the same way that how can you

02:20:41   get decent pictures from a phone sensor the sign of your size of your pinky nail that computational

02:20:46   photography stuff to be able to pull reasonable pictures out of that was solved many years ago

02:20:50   now we're all just iterating on it so drones really are they an amazing technology success for a

02:20:55   success story and maybe my kids should be bored with them but i will never be bored with them

02:20:59   because they just seem like you know they seem like such an amazing triumph and such a sci-fi

02:21:04   thing because that's what it's like when you read sci-fi stories the thing that's amazing is just

02:21:07   the everyday thing in the background the sci-fi story that's how you can tell it's the future so

02:21:11   i guess we're living in the future i mean we do have a pandemic after all