0:00:00- Marco, I have two questions for you deeply unrelated.
0:00:02(laughing)
0:00:03- To each other or to Tech?
0:00:05(laughing)
0:00:06- Deeply unrelated to each other.
0:00:07First of all, how's your call recorder doing?
0:00:10- It's gone, man, I'm all M1.
0:00:12- Jon, how's your call recorder?
0:00:14- I have a question for Marco about call recorder
0:00:16before I tell you about my call recorder.
0:00:18- Oh, no.
0:00:19(laughing)
0:00:19Oh, no, this must be quick.
0:00:21What are we doing?
0:00:22- Did you actually try call recorder on your M1?
0:00:25- Well, yes, because I have to,
0:00:27because the stupid installation that I'm still on,
0:00:30that it was imported from my iMac,
0:00:32call recorder's on it, and so every time I launch Skype,
0:00:34it pops up a thing saying, "Hey, you gotta update me."
0:00:36So I humor it, I'm like, "All right, sure, go ahead.
0:00:39"Let's see what you got."
0:00:41And so it tries to update, and it instantly launches,
0:00:44and it's like, "Oh, I can't do this.
0:00:46"What am I talking about?
0:00:47"I can't run on this architecture.
0:00:48"I'll never run on this architecture."
0:00:50- But see, that's my question.
0:00:52Why can't it, is it a dialogue from the app itself?
0:00:55Why can't it just run on Rosetta?
0:00:56- I don't know how exactly it hooks into Skype.
0:00:59My best guess is that whatever mechanism it uses
0:01:02to hook into Skype has been tightened security-wise
0:01:06on the M1 Macs and no longer works,
0:01:09and there probably is no good alternative
0:01:10without doing a kernel extension or something,
0:01:13which if you had to install any of our friend
0:01:16Ruger Mieba's audio product, you know that that process
0:01:19is kinda cumbersome in Big Sur on an M1 Mac,
0:01:22and so I'm guessing that's the kind of thing they ran into.
0:01:26It's not that they have some x86 assembly code
0:01:29they don't wanna port.
0:01:30It's much more likely that the mechanism
0:01:32by which it hooks into Skype at all
0:01:35is somehow broken with this new architecture.
0:01:37- Yeah, that's what I assumed,
0:01:38but I hadn't actually heard anyone who had tried it,
0:01:40so I guess Merlin asked about that on our last podcast.
0:01:42He's like, "Well, does it just not run at all,
0:01:44"or does it run just in Rosetta?"
0:01:46And I didn't know, so it's good to know
0:01:47that it's not unsupported.
0:01:50It just is a no-go entirely.
0:01:52- It launches, presumably using Rosetta,
0:01:54to display a dialog box saying this doesn't work,
0:01:56and then quits. (laughs)
0:01:58- All right, anyway, yeah, my call recorder's fine,
0:01:59'cause I'm on Intel, and it'll be fine
0:02:01until I'm not on Intel.
0:02:03- I gotta get rid of this installation.
0:02:03- Old Mac users unite.
0:02:05- Like, I'm still on it because I haven't,
0:02:09there's never a good time to reinstall your OS
0:02:11on your main computer.
0:02:12That's never a fun thing, but,
0:02:14and man, I've gone so many years
0:02:17using the same installations.
0:02:19My entire time using Macs, which is since 2004,
0:02:23I think I've had a total of three installations
0:02:26of Mac OS on my desktop.
0:02:27Laptops, they're throwaway, whatever.
0:02:29But desktop, my main desktop installations,
0:02:31I bring them forward for a long time.
0:02:34That seems to be impossible on Catalina forward.
0:02:37Like, they just, Catalina was such a garbage fire
0:02:40that anything that has ever touched Catalina
0:02:43is messy and has problems like the weird
0:02:47Chrome is bad Windows Server thing.
0:02:48There's so many weird things that seem to be related
0:02:51to Catalina installs rotting and going badly.
0:02:54The same way old Windows installs used to slowly
0:02:56just slow down and accumulate problems over time.
0:02:59It feels like Windows, it really does.
0:03:01Now, this feels like back when I used to reinstall
0:03:04Windows XP and Windows 2000 every nine months,
0:03:07this feels like that again.
0:03:08It feels like you kinda have to keep things clean.
0:03:10The installation I have on my Mac Mini,
0:03:13which is the imported iMac installation,
0:03:15is so much worse and has so many weird problems
0:03:18than the one I have on my fresh new MacBook Air
0:03:20that was a fresh installation.
0:03:22So, I gotta move over.
0:03:24But again, there's never a good time to do that.
0:03:27- You can try just doing some house cleaning.
0:03:28I mean, I'm using essentially my install
0:03:31that I imported from Catalina,
0:03:32that I imported from whatever.
0:03:34I'm using my 2008 Mac Pro, brought onto this Mac
0:03:38through Migration Assistant and then upgraded
0:03:40to Big Sur in place.
0:03:42I haven't done any clean installs is what I'm saying.
0:03:44I did spend a little bit of time going through the cruft
0:03:47and cleaning out things that I thought were old.
0:03:50I did that actually before Big Sur.
0:03:52I just did it when it was still in Catalina,
0:03:54using just the normal suite of tools
0:03:56that are available to do that.
0:03:59Actually, I'm gonna do a recommendation
0:04:00for one of these things.
0:04:01What the hell is it called?
0:04:02Hang on.
0:04:03- You should use a utility, like a Mac cleaning utility.
0:04:05Or a defragger.
0:04:07- No, that's not actually what I want.
0:04:08The application that I like for the type of thing
0:04:11that most people forget about is called Launch Control.
0:04:15And it's a launch services editing application.
0:04:20Again, you don't need an app to do this.
0:04:21It's all a bunch of XML files
0:04:22and you can do it all yourself.
0:04:24But having an app that does it is super convenient.
0:04:26And that's where you find the real dark matter
0:04:29of stuff that you had no idea
0:04:30was still running on your computer.
0:04:31Now, I will caution you that if you don't understand
0:04:34what these things are, you can really screw up your computer.
0:04:36So don't just get it and say,
0:04:38"I don't know what any of this crap is."
0:04:39Delete it all, 'cause you will break everything.
0:04:41But if you have some confidence
0:04:43that you can tell what things are,
0:04:46and if you're super duper sure,
0:04:48"Oh, I'm not running VirtualBox anymore.
0:04:50"It's totally uninstalled and I haven't used it in 60 years,
0:04:52"and yet there is a VirtualBox user agent running.
0:04:56"I know I don't need that."
0:04:57And yes, I'm sure that because it says VirtualBox,
0:05:00it really is VirtualBox.
0:05:01And I'll double check and I'll look,
0:05:03then you can clean that out and say,
0:05:04"Why am I running this?"
0:05:05And all these things aren't running.
0:05:06They're just available to run on demand
0:05:08in response to certain things.
0:05:09So you kinda also have to understand
0:05:10how LaunchD works on the Mac and it's complicated.
0:05:13But anyway, I found tons of old crappy stuff
0:05:16to be able to be cleaned out.
0:05:17And then also just looking for,
0:05:19in your case you'd be looking for Intel binaries
0:05:21where you're like, "Ah, let me just delete that
0:05:23"because I don't plan on using it.
0:05:24"If I ever do, I should re-download the M1 version."
0:05:28I did this for 64-bit to 32-bit transition.
0:05:31Just general house cleaning of finding stuff
0:05:33that you haven't used in forever that you don't want
0:05:35and then really cleaning it off of your system
0:05:37instead of just dragging the icon to the trash.
0:05:39- One thing, all of my Adobe stuff is broken.
0:05:42(laughing)
0:05:43- Well, I mean, how can you tell?
0:05:44- Well, that's fair.
0:05:46Like won't launch, broken.
0:05:48- So I've got, speaking of that,
0:05:49I just launched Launch Control.
0:05:50They're one of the user agencies.
0:05:53com.adobe.gc.invoker-1.0.
0:05:56I have long since refused to let that thing load.
0:05:59So it's not, you can set it in various different states.
0:06:02Again, you have to look up the LaunchD documentation
0:06:03to figure this out.
0:06:04So it is unloaded right now.
0:06:06So it's not running.
0:06:08But I still am not sure if I can actually delete it
0:06:11because Adobe stuff puts so many things on your system.
0:06:13And I do wanna use Photoshop.
0:06:15Like I pay for Photoshop and have it and use it
0:06:18and you have to get the Creative Cloud and all.
0:06:21Like that has to be there,
0:06:22otherwise nothing for Adobe will work.
0:06:25But I never know which part of it is like from a decade ago
0:06:27that I can safely delete and which part of it
0:06:29if I delete that one file,
0:06:30I'll never be able to update an Adobe app again.
0:06:33- Yeah, I eventually was able to reinstall Creative Cloud
0:06:37and I got Audition working.
0:06:39Audition is the only Adobe app
0:06:40that I really don't have any good other apps
0:06:44that can replace.
0:06:45I don't have anything else
0:06:47that can do what Audition does for me.
0:06:49Now maybe I'll start looking a little bit harder
0:06:51because it's crazy for me to think that I'm keeping
0:06:56all of this Adobe craft around
0:06:58and paying this subscription
0:06:59for basically just Photoshop and Audition.
0:07:01And Photoshop, I haven't gotten to launch
0:07:03in this computer yet.
0:07:05And so it turns out I had bought Pixelmator Pro
0:07:09during one of the times it was on sale
0:07:10like in the last couple years.
0:07:12And I just never opened it because I'm like,
0:07:13oh, I should buy this, I might need this someday.
0:07:15And I always have Photoshop
0:07:17so it was always the easier path to just use the app I knew.
0:07:20But last week I had to do some basic manipulation
0:07:23of something for, I think for our show art actually,
0:07:25for whatever I was doing for chapter art and stuff.
0:07:28And I did it, I couldn't launch Photoshop
0:07:29and it was easier for me to just launch Pixelmator
0:07:32instead of trying to fix Photoshop.
0:07:33So I launched Pixelmator Pro
0:07:37and just started hitting the key commands
0:07:39that work in Photoshop
0:07:41and they all work in Pixelmator Pro
0:07:42'cause a lot of people would face this problem
0:07:44so they've accommodated for that.
0:07:46And so I just started doing things
0:07:48the way I would do it there.
0:07:50And it mostly worked,
0:07:52like the icons are in different places
0:07:53and everything looks a little bit different
0:07:55but most of the functionality that I actually needed,
0:07:58I don't know about the rest of the app,
0:07:59which it's a pretty big app,
0:08:00but most of the functionality that I needed
0:08:02out of a basic image editor,
0:08:04Pixelmator Pro had it just fine.
0:08:05And so that's one more Adobe thing off my list.
0:08:08Like I might not need Photoshop anymore.
0:08:11So maybe I'm just gonna get Audition
0:08:13and then they actually,
0:08:14I think they have a special subscription
0:08:15that's just for one app,
0:08:16if you just only need one.
0:08:18Just down to Audition now,
0:08:19I gotta figure out how to either fix Photoshop or downgrade.
0:08:24- I got super into the Affinity suite of products,
0:08:28Affinity Designer, Affinity whatever,
0:08:30there's like three or four apps.
0:08:31There's like the one that's Illustrator,
0:08:33the one that's Photoshop,
0:08:34they have to have a photo thing.
0:08:36I got into them when I was working on the T-shirt stuff
0:08:38'cause I used to have a thing of Illustrator
0:08:41and then it was no longer licensed.
0:08:43And so I was getting like,
0:08:43like you said, the one application for one month
0:08:46and you pay like eight bucks.
0:08:47And so I would just like pay eight bucks for Illustrator
0:08:48for a month to do a T-shirt for us
0:08:50and then just let it expire.
0:08:51And then you couldn't do that anymore, I think.
0:08:53And so it's let me just get the Affinity Designer.
0:08:55And I use that for a bunch of shirts and I liked it.
0:08:57And when I was going through and cleaning stuff out,
0:08:59I think it was maybe the 32 to 64 transition
0:09:02or maybe a little bit later,
0:09:03I was going through like my serial numbers
0:09:05and all the other stuff.
0:09:06And I realized I bought most of the Affinity suite twice.
0:09:10I don't know how they even let me do that.
0:09:12But like I bought it once when it was like,
0:09:13oh, it's a cheap bundle, get all these apps for a price.
0:09:15And then I also bought the individual three apps
0:09:17that I want.
0:09:18So I really need to pay attention
0:09:19to what the hell I'm buying in software.
0:09:21- All right, so Marco, I said I had two questions for you.
0:09:26My other-
0:09:27- Two quick questions, 10 minutes later.
0:09:28- Well, I thought that the first one was gonna be quick.
0:09:31I should have known better.
0:09:31I should have in retrospect reversed these.
0:09:33Maybe we'll do it from the magic of editing, I don't know.
0:09:35But- - No, we won't.
0:09:37- Yeah, I know, my icebreaker/warmup/let's ease
0:09:41into the show, I don't know, five, 10 minutes in,
0:09:44is, and I think we've discussed this in the past,
0:09:47but I'm curious to hear your answer now,
0:09:50because I think it may have changed quite dramatically.
0:09:53If you had to pack up and leave New York State,
0:09:57and in fact leave the entire Eastern Seaboard,
0:10:01where would you go?
0:10:02- Oh, geez.
0:10:04See, before I discovered the beach,
0:10:07and I found my happy place, I would say,
0:10:10"Yeah, I don't care, whatever, it doesn't matter."
0:10:12But now that I like this place a lot,
0:10:16it's a little harder of a decision,
0:10:17I think I like being near the water a lot.
0:10:22And so I think I would, with a heavy heart,
0:10:28go to California.
0:10:29- Oh, that's a bad choice, no.
0:10:31You want sort of Long Island methadone,
0:10:34and Long Island methadone is called like Cape Cod,
0:10:36Nantucket, Martha Zinnia.
0:10:37- He said the whole Eastern Seaboard.
0:10:38- No, the Eastern Seaboard's off limits.
0:10:41- Those are not.
0:10:41And I could go to the Gulf, maybe, but like,
0:10:44I don't know.
0:10:45- If you're looking, I'm saying like,
0:10:47the beaches in California are very different.
0:10:49- Agreed.
0:10:50- Than the ones in Long Island.
0:10:51And the land that leads up to the beaches are different.
0:10:54- Yeah, I mean, I care less about the actual
0:10:56like sand and water interface,
0:10:58and more about just like the air, and the sound,
0:11:03and the climate that you get when you're next to the ocean.
0:11:06Like that is what I like much more.
0:11:07- I know, but that's different too,
0:11:09because it's a gigantic landmass
0:11:11butting up against the Pacific Ocean
0:11:13with all these weird weather patterns.
0:11:14It's nothing like where you are.
0:11:15Forget about the water,
0:11:16say you never even touch the water.
0:11:18Like just the land is different.
0:11:19You need like an, you're on a little island.
0:11:22You want island life.
0:11:23Maybe you should go to the Bahamas, I don't know.
0:11:24- Yeah, I mean, maybe like, you know, Caribbean,
0:11:26'cause like it's all, there's no winter there.
0:11:28That would be nice.
0:11:29The, but yeah, the answer is probably like,
0:11:31I would go to some other coast, you know.
0:11:33Maybe even Europe, maybe?
0:11:35Like Europe seems a little more stable
0:11:38than California in certain ways.
0:11:40But it has its own issues, you know.
0:11:43So I don't know, I mean, everywhere has its issues.
0:11:46So hopefully I wouldn't have to make that decision.
0:11:49But if I did, I think the most likely outcome
0:11:50would probably end up being California.
0:11:53- See, I think for me,
0:11:54I would probably stay on the Eastern Seaboard,
0:11:56but I already declared that's not allowed.
0:11:58So with that in mind--
0:11:59- Yeah, if that was allowed, I'd just go,
0:12:00yeah, I don't know, Boston or, you know,
0:12:02the Carolinas or something like that.
0:12:03There's lots of other good places on the Eastern Seaboard.
0:12:06- And I think I speak for all three of us in saying,
0:12:08whether we're from the north, from the south,
0:12:11or somewhere in between, I think all three of us
0:12:13seem to dramatically prefer the Eastern Seaboard
0:12:15to anywhere else.
0:12:17For me, I think if I had to leave the Eastern Seaboard,
0:12:20I would really want to investigate the Pacific Northwest,
0:12:23'cause I've never even visited,
0:12:24and I've heard universally good things,
0:12:26and except maybe weather.
0:12:29And so I would want to at least check it out,
0:12:31but I think I might end up in Austin,
0:12:34'cause I lived in Austin as a middle schooler
0:12:37and really enjoyed it,
0:12:38and I know that's super trendy to say now,
0:12:40but I was there before it was cool.
0:12:42- There's a lot more traffic now.
0:12:43- Yeah, a lot more traffic as well.
0:12:45- I don't know, I'm not sure how well you'd deal with that.
0:12:49I know Austin seems super cool and everything,
0:12:51but it's in the middle of a not super cool area.
0:12:54- Remember where I live today.
0:12:56- Yeah, exactly.
0:12:57- So John, where would you go?
0:12:58- Still not the same.
0:13:01I mean, I obviously need to be somewhere near the coast,
0:13:04even though you think I'm not now,
0:13:05but I really am in the grand scheme of things.
0:13:07If you look at the dot on the map, it's near the water.
0:13:10California is such a big place
0:13:12that I'm pretty sure there's some place in California
0:13:15that I could probably tolerate,
0:13:16I just haven't found it yet.
0:13:18(laughing)
0:13:19- Probably tolerate.
0:13:20- It's a big place, right?
0:13:21I haven't been to all of it.
0:13:23Pacific Northwest, I don't think I would be able
0:13:25to handle the weather and the vibe.
0:13:29I don't know, I always think about, I mean, this is Canada,
0:13:32but some places in Canada I think I would be happy
0:13:36for two months out of the year.
0:13:38- Yeah, that's the problem.
0:13:39- The warm two months?
0:13:40- Yeah, I could just live on Prince Edward Island
0:13:41for two months out of the year
0:13:43and then just blink out of existence
0:13:45for the rest of the year and then blink back into existence
0:13:47for those two months on Prince Edward Island.
0:13:48I think I'd be pretty happy there.
0:13:51- That's fair.
0:13:51- The Pacific Northwest, whenever I've been there,
0:13:54I've thought, this is a very nice place
0:13:56for people who are not me.
0:13:58It seems like it's a fantastic place for a lot of people,
0:14:03but it's not for me.
0:14:04And California, I think I'm with Jon on that,
0:14:08I find a lot of nice places in California.
0:14:11I've never found the place yet
0:14:13that I would want to live, necessarily.
0:14:16And I can tell you one thing, it would not be San Francisco.
0:14:19That is not for me at all.
0:14:20But I have-- - Hard to agree.
0:14:21- The parts of California that I've seen
0:14:23that have been a little bit outside of San Francisco,
0:14:26the various suburbs, up north, the Marin area,
0:14:28down south, basically between that little beach town
0:14:32and Santa Cruz, that whole strip,
0:14:33there's a lot of very nice places.
0:14:36Half Moon Bay is what I'm thinking of,
0:14:37Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz, that whole area.
0:14:40I've liked seeing a lot of that,
0:14:41but again, I don't know enough about it
0:14:43to actually say I'd want to live here.
0:14:44And I've actually never seen LA in that whole area,
0:14:46like the whole bottom half, I've never seen it.
0:14:49- I feel like it's trendy to hate on LA,
0:14:50and insert the letter Kenny, LA right here.
0:14:53But I actually quite enjoy LA,
0:14:55and in fact, I strongly agree with you
0:14:57that San Francisco's not for me.
0:14:59I think that having never experienced
0:15:02the Pacific Northwest, I suspect if I went,
0:15:04I would come to a similar conclusion.
0:15:05Great place, not for me.
0:15:07But I actually really enjoy Southern California,
0:15:10and I've only ever been to the greater LA area.
0:15:12I've been to LA proper, I've been around LA a lot.
0:15:15I've never been way Southern California,
0:15:17like San Diego, for example.
0:15:19And honestly, I can only speak for me,
0:15:21but there's no way I could afford
0:15:22to live in basically anywhere in California.
0:15:24But I actually prefer LA in that area.
0:15:27Sprawl be darned, I prefer LA over Northern California,
0:15:31for me, I'm not saying it's the same for everyone else.
0:15:33- So far what we've learned is that
0:15:34you wanna live places with terrible traffic.
0:15:36- Yeah, I guess, which is funny, 'cause I really don't.
0:15:39- I mean, you said the same thing, Marco.
0:15:40Have you been in those areas of California long enough
0:15:43to actually try getting to that beach
0:15:44on a day when you might want to go to the beach?
0:15:47Like, the traffic in California is ridiculous.
0:15:49- I live on the beach, man.
0:15:51- I know, but you don't have, like, that's the secret.
0:15:52You don't have the traffic.
0:15:54To getting away from the people,
0:15:55one of the beautiful and terrible things about Long Island
0:15:58is as you go out on it to the extremities,
0:16:00both man-made and natural forces align
0:16:04to make it very difficult to get there,
0:16:06which is terrible when you're trying to get there,
0:16:08but good once you're there.
0:16:09- Right, yeah.
0:16:10- So that's, if you're, again, California,
0:16:13being this massive place with all of these highways,
0:16:17and you can get right to the water in all of them,
0:16:19it's very difficult, unless you're gonna go out
0:16:21to one of the islands off the coast of California
0:16:22or something, it's very difficult to get away
0:16:24from the people, you know,
0:16:26to get to lower population density, essentially.
0:16:28If you want lower population density, it's real easy.
0:16:30If you go to live in the desert or someplace, you know,
0:16:33in the middle of the country
0:16:33that has much lower population density,
0:16:35and I feel like that's one of the things
0:16:36that you've always said you appreciate about Fire Island
0:16:38is there's not, you know, a traffic jam every day
0:16:42and, you know, tons of people, like, coming and going
0:16:45and all that other stuff.
0:16:47It is, you feel like you are, it's more relaxing
0:16:49because you're away from the rad race, right?
0:16:52- Yes, but in a strangely dense place,
0:16:56but it's just everyone, but almost everyone's on foot
0:16:58most of the time, like--
0:16:59- Yeah, you're on top of each other
0:17:00'cause you're on this tiny, tiny little thing, right?
0:17:02But it's not, you know, no one is commuting
0:17:05to and from Manhattan from Fire Island every day,
0:17:08and there's a giant traffic jam when you try to go shopping
0:17:10because everyone's on their way home from work
0:17:12also stopping at the store.
0:17:13That doesn't exist.
0:17:14- That's the thing, like, when you,
0:17:16I mean, so much of your happiness in life depends on,
0:17:21like, your daily grind.
0:17:22Like, do you have a bad commute?
0:17:24Do you have a super long commute?
0:17:25Is your commute always full of, you know,
0:17:27angering traffic or stuff like that?
0:17:29Like, that stuff matters so much to everyone's happiness.
0:17:31- Okay, when you wanna go food shopping,
0:17:33do you dread it because it's gonna be so packed
0:17:35and you're gonna be waiting on a checkout line for an hour
0:17:37and you won't be able to find a parking spot,
0:17:39like, that type of stuff?
0:17:40- Exactly, like, if doing everyday stuff is hard.
0:17:42Like, I remember, like, one of the impressions I had,
0:17:45we lived in Brooklyn for a year,
0:17:46it was very clear that, like, all of the, like,
0:17:48delivery people, like, you know, UPS drivers, the mail people,
0:17:51like, everyone who kinda, like, had to work in Brooklyn
0:17:54was always angry because doing common tasks
0:17:58in the area of Brooklyn we were in is just difficult
0:18:00'cause there's just tons of traffic constantly
0:18:03and everyone's mad at each other all the time.
0:18:05It's very, like, tense and it just,
0:18:07there's just tons of friction to a lot of stuff.
0:18:10Whereas, like, here, everyone's really chill and happy
0:18:14because there is so little friction
0:18:16to the admittedly limited things that we have access to
0:18:19but what we have access to is really great
0:18:22and really easy to just go do.
0:18:24And so, like, and this is a place where, like,
0:18:26people come here and they can just kinda be happy
0:18:28and they can, like, you know, it's like a storybook.
0:18:30You're like, ride your bike to the grocery store
0:18:31and you ride home with, like, a bag in your bike basket
0:18:34with, like, a baguette and a pineapple sticking at the top
0:18:36so that you know it's from a grocery store.
0:18:38That's how you indicate that.
0:18:40And it's just nice, it's like a, it's a nice, pleasant thing
0:18:42and, you know, compared to before where we were living
0:18:46and just, I'd have to, you know, get in the car,
0:18:48drive across, oh, of course, they're tearing up the street
0:18:52again to put in more water main work somehow.
0:18:56Somehow this work needs to be done every six months
0:18:59on every street in Westchester.
0:19:01I don't know, like, we joke,
0:19:03there must be, like, a construction mafia.
0:19:04Like, there's some kind of, like, under the table deals
0:19:07where somehow they're tearing up every main street
0:19:10in Westchester to do water main work every six months.
0:19:14I don't know why it still needs to be done so often,
0:19:16more often than anywhere I've ever lived.
0:19:18- They should come to my neighborhood
0:19:19because the road in front of my house
0:19:20desperately needs work and it's never gonna get done.
0:19:23- Yeah, oh, and when, you know, when they're done,
0:19:25they don't repave the road nicely,
0:19:26they just kind of patch it up and so it's all,
0:19:28it's a bumpy mess of, like, patches
0:19:30and those iron plate things.
0:19:32But, like, you know, there's so much friction involved
0:19:35and just, like, okay, I have to go pick up something
0:19:37at the grocery store or I have to go, you know,
0:19:39it's time to go pick up our kid at school or something.
0:19:41Like, common tasks, when common tasks have lots of friction,
0:19:45that is a recipe for just stress and anxiety
0:19:47and frustration and anger and just unhappiness.
0:19:50Whereas the more of those everyday things
0:19:52that you can strip that frustration from,
0:19:54the, like, it pays massive dividends in overall happiness.
0:19:58And that's part of the reason why I love it here,
0:20:00is, like, a lot of that stuff is just a lot nicer.
0:20:03- You know, it's interesting to me,
0:20:04I wonder if in the after times I could convince,
0:20:07you know, you guys to come down to Cape Charles,
0:20:10which in so many ways, having never experienced Fire Island,
0:20:13in so many ways strikes me as a very similar thing
0:20:15because there's this historic district
0:20:17where it's a grid of, you know, not that many streets
0:20:20and not that many avenues,
0:20:21and you can walk to pretty much anything.
0:20:24There are cars, for sure,
0:20:26but most people don't bother using them
0:20:28'cause you really don't need to.
0:20:29It's a very chill, laid back vibe.
0:20:31But the difference is it's not separated
0:20:33from the rest of the world, well, it kind of is,
0:20:37but it's not as dramatically separated
0:20:38from the rest of the world that requires a ferry.
0:20:40Like, you would still need to drive over
0:20:41a humongous, tremendously long bridge tunnel thing,
0:20:44but you don't need to take a ferry in,
0:20:46so you can get deliveries in less than a week,
0:20:49which is kind of cool.
0:20:50So I wonder if you would enjoy,
0:20:52not to say it would cause you to move or anything like that,
0:20:54because there's a million and seven reasons
0:20:56why I know you'd want to stay in New York,
0:20:57but just, I think a lot of the perks,
0:21:01again, not apples to apples,
0:21:02but a lot of the perks from Fire Island you can get,
0:21:04or I can get in Cape Charles,
0:21:06with in some cases fewer of the drawbacks.
0:21:09Yeah, it would never happen.
0:21:10(electronic beeping)
0:21:12- All right, gentlemen, your DTKs,
0:21:14they are worth a lot more today
0:21:16than they were a week ago today, which is super exciting.
0:21:19- Yeah, this was great.
0:21:21You know, we talked briefly last week
0:21:23about how Apple had offered a very weirdly
0:21:26short time windowed $200 credit
0:21:29for the Apple Silicon DTKs back,
0:21:33and they have heard us and they agree,
0:21:37us being the general community developers
0:21:40who was kind of like, that's not very good.
0:21:42(laughing)
0:21:44So yeah, they are revising their offer.
0:21:47No one's actually gotten this yet,
0:21:48'cause they still haven't sent the email
0:21:50that says, all right, now send it in with this label.
0:21:52They're just saying that this will happen shortly.
0:21:54But yeah, they've revised it,
0:21:56so now instead of a $200 credit that expires on May 31st
0:22:00that seemingly could only be used on an M1 Mac,
0:22:04now they're giving us a $500 credit,
0:22:06which is the entire purchase price of the DTK.
0:22:09So they're basically giving us 100% refund
0:22:11on having used it, and we can use it
0:22:14on any Apple product through the end of the year.
0:22:17So that's fantastic.
0:22:18That is like, again, what I said last week,
0:22:21I still stick with, of like,
0:22:23modern Apple is usually pretty stingy
0:22:27about any kind of hardware discounting
0:22:29or giving away free hardware.
0:22:30They almost never do it.
0:22:31And so, like, when they said, you know,
0:22:34you can buy this DTK for $500 through this
0:22:37kind of invite only or application-based program,
0:22:39I figured they're not gonna give us anything for these.
0:22:42So to have even offered us the $200 last time,
0:22:46I thought it was weird how many weird limitations
0:22:48there were on it, but it was still more than the zero
0:22:51I thought we'd get, and to have those limitations
0:22:54be largely lifted and to have the amount
0:22:56also be raised to $500, that's really nice.
0:23:00That this was, this is the kind of thing that like,
0:23:03this is gonna cost them almost nothing,
0:23:07relative to like the other, like,
0:23:09the difference between this for such a small-volume program
0:23:11is gonna cost Apple like maybe 90 seconds of profit
0:23:14or something, it's gonna cost them like nothing
0:23:16in the grand scheme of things.
0:23:17But this is such a nice gesture, and Apple does
0:23:22have this weird habit recently of really
0:23:25reading the room wrong.
0:23:27Like that initial offer they did last week
0:23:29was really like reading the room wrong.
0:23:31I don't know why anyone at Apple thought
0:23:34that would go over well.
0:23:35When they put their foot in their mouth like that,
0:23:38it's nice to see them sometimes remove it again
0:23:40and resolve the problem and say, all right,
0:23:43that wasn't very good, here's something better.
0:23:45And that's what they've done here,
0:23:46and it's a nice thing, it's a nice gesture.
0:23:50They didn't have to do it, but I'm very glad they did.
0:23:53- This move is like the least Apple-like thing
0:23:56I can recall them doing in recent history
0:23:58just because it's so low stakes.
0:24:00Like the thing that we're talking about here
0:24:02is a program that only affects a limited number,
0:24:05just a low number of developers,
0:24:06let alone a limited number of customers.
0:24:07It's a fraction of a fraction.
0:24:09- Like how many of these do you think are out there?
0:24:10Like how many people do you think actually got DTKs?
0:24:13- I mean, many more than got the Intel one for sure,
0:24:15'cause it was cheaper and there are just
0:24:16so many more developers, but nothing compared
0:24:18to like their actual customer base,
0:24:20and it's probably not even like, you know,
0:24:23it's probably only a single digit percent
0:24:25of their developers, 'cause they have so many developers,
0:24:27and most of them are not Mac developers.
0:24:29- What do you think it is?
0:24:30Maybe like 50,000?
0:24:32- Yeah, but the real thing is like they had a program,
0:24:37and nowhere in that program did it say,
0:24:41oh, and when you send these back,
0:24:42we're gonna give you a treat.
0:24:43Now, we talked about that because that's what they did
0:24:47with the Intel thing, but that was like 15 years ago.
0:24:51Like how many people, of the people who got this DTK,
0:24:54how many of them were Mac developers 15 years ago,
0:24:57or whenever the hell the Intel thing was?
0:24:59- It's a very different environment.
0:25:00- There was no reason that anybody
0:25:03should have expected anything,
0:25:05and then Apple decided to give us something,
0:25:07albeit slightly weird, and you know,
0:25:10I feel like of all the circles that we travel in,
0:25:13the old school Mac developer circle is one of the ones
0:25:16that we are the most deeply entrenched in.
0:25:19We know a lot of old school Mac developers, right?
0:25:21That's our circle of people, and I did not see
0:25:25like an incredible outpouring of anger.
0:25:27Like we see so much more anger of like everyday apps
0:25:30or stuff and all sorts of other things
0:25:31where people are just genuinely pissed and angry.
0:25:34There was some discussion of this,
0:25:35but it was discussion in the context of
0:25:37they did a nice thing, eh, it could have been nicer.
0:25:40Like you said, Mark, like oh, maybe reading the room
0:25:41a little bit wrong or whatever,
0:25:42but there was also the discussion of like,
0:25:43well, they could have just done nothing
0:25:44and solved this problem too,
0:25:45'cause they didn't promise us anything,
0:25:47and it's just like of all the things to immediately come in
0:25:52and say, oh no, nevermind, we're totally,
0:25:54we're gonna double it, and you have a longer time.
0:25:56It's like, A, totally un-Apple-like,
0:25:58'cause they almost never react that quickly
0:26:00to something so low stakes, and B,
0:26:03the fact that it is un-Apple-like
0:26:05is a condemnation of modern Apple,
0:26:06of what Apple-like has come to mean
0:26:08in terms of developer relations,
0:26:09because this is exactly what they should do.
0:26:10You should, you know, if you make a fumble like this,
0:26:13just quickly correct it, it's no big deal,
0:26:15and the fact that I was so shocked by it made me think,
0:26:19you shouldn't be shocked by a company
0:26:20essentially having good customer support
0:26:21or good developer relations.
0:26:22Like this is basic table stakes,
0:26:25good developer relations, right?
0:26:27And the other thing I thought was like,
0:26:29boy, inside Apple, I'm sure there is at least one person
0:26:32somewhere saying, see, I told you we should've just given
0:26:35them the DDK for free and asked for it back for free
0:26:37and paid for shipping, we wouldn't have any
0:26:39of these problems.
0:26:40Think of how much more simple that would be.
0:26:41Hey, if you want a DDK, sign up here, we'll send it to you,
0:26:44and then later we'll send you a prepaid thing
0:26:46to send it back.
0:26:47So think of how simple that arrangement is.
0:26:49$0, it gets people to develop for your platform,
0:26:52no one is angry about it.
0:26:54This, instead they did this, give us $500
0:26:57with this vague potential expectation
0:26:59if you're a crusty old Mac user
0:27:00that we might give you something back,
0:27:02and then we'll give you something back,
0:27:03but not in a satisfying way, but then whoops,
0:27:04we'll give you more back.
0:27:06It's like, this is not Apple developer relations
0:27:12finest moment, and it was like, like I said,
0:27:15it was a depressing revelation to think that
0:27:17what you would expect from good developer relations,
0:27:20essentially like, hey, we want, you know,
0:27:22if you're inside Apple, you're like, we want people
0:27:24to develop for our platform, we want people
0:27:26to port to the M1, how much can we afford to spend
0:27:29to make that happen?
0:27:30And someone's like, well, we gotta charge them
0:27:32for this Mac Mini with an iPad inside it, don't we?
0:27:34No, you don't actually, I mean, they did it
0:27:36with the Apple TV where you got it for a dollar
0:27:38and you got to keep it afterwards,
0:27:39you didn't even have to send it back, like.
0:27:40- Yep.
0:27:41- Anyway, this is fine, Apple did the right thing,
0:27:45I'm all happy about it, I'm especially happy
0:27:47because I have the full year, so now I can just let
0:27:49that $500 sit there until like in a panic in December
0:27:51I buy something, right?
0:27:53I don't have to buy a Mac Mini or a MacBook Air,
0:27:57I can wait out the rest of the year where presumably
0:27:59there will be at least one or two more ARM-based Macs
0:28:03to come out during the year and then I can put this money
0:28:05towards one of those, so I'm very happy.
0:28:07- And it doesn't even have to be a Mac,
0:28:09I think it's just gonna be like an Apple Store credit.
0:28:11It says any Apple product, so maybe it wouldn't work
0:28:14on like, you know, a pair of B&O headphones
0:28:16or something like that, but like, it's probably gonna work
0:28:18on a lot of stuff that we're gonna be buying this year.
0:28:20- This would pay for like the Apple Care on my monitor
0:28:22or something. - Yes it would.
0:28:23(laughing)
0:28:25- Someone asked about that, did I get Apple Care
0:28:28on my stuff, I think I got Apple Care
0:28:29on all my expensive stuff. - You did.
0:28:31- Maybe I just blocked it out, but like,
0:28:32I think that Apple Care was not cheap.
0:28:34- It was $500, yeah, I'm very familiar with those.
0:28:38All right. (laughing)
0:28:41(upbeat music)
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0:30:24- iOS 14.5 Watch and Lock.
0:30:30We've been discussing kind of the implementation details
0:30:33as best we can figure out for that.
0:30:35And apparently it wants to see a masked face first
0:30:40before it offers or investigates the option
0:30:43of using the watch for unlocking.
0:30:45And one of you, probably John,
0:30:47wrote any masked face, question mark?
0:30:50- We talked about this last time.
0:30:51Why do you need to see a face first?
0:30:52If you're gonna let me unlock because of the watch,
0:30:55just let me unlock because of the watch.
0:30:56And a lot of people were discussing this on Twitter
0:30:59and sending feedback.
0:30:59They're like, oh, well, it wants to see
0:31:00the top half of your face.
0:31:02It does a partial face match because that's more secure
0:31:04than not looking at your face at all,
0:31:06which makes some kind of sense,
0:31:08but something in my mind was just itching in me.
0:31:11- I don't know much about machine learning,
0:31:13but it seems to me that a lot of the machine learning models
0:31:15if they're trained on your actual face,
0:31:16the whole reason they don't unlock for your whole face
0:31:19is that they're just,
0:31:20machine learning is not where someone just writes a program
0:31:23to recognize a face.
0:31:24It's different than that.
0:31:25If you could write the program,
0:31:26you wouldn't need machine learning.
0:31:27The whole point is it's really hard to write that program
0:31:29so you sort of let the program write itself by teaching it,
0:31:32by showing the face, and it's complicated.
0:31:34I don't understand, oh, that's more or less how it works.
0:31:36What it means is what you end up with,
0:31:37that model that recognizes faces,
0:31:40what you end up with is not a sort of a program
0:31:43that a human could look at and understand,
0:31:45because if it could,
0:31:45they would've just written it in the first place, right?
0:31:48And so just because we conceptually can think of the idea
0:31:52of like, oh, I can recognize your whole face,
0:31:54and I could probably recognize the top of your face,
0:31:56but we're human beings.
0:31:57Just because you have a machine learning model
0:32:00that can recognize the whole face,
0:32:02who's to say it can make heads or tails
0:32:03of half your face with a mask on it?
0:32:05As far as it's concerned, it's like no match.
0:32:07Now, I don't know.
0:32:08I don't know if that's the case,
0:32:09but either way, that was my thought when I was suspicious
0:32:12that it's not doing a partial face match,
0:32:16and so why look at the face at all?
0:32:18And I have at least one report from someone
0:32:20who has used the iOS 14.5 beta to say that you can take,
0:32:25you can be wearing your watch and take your phone
0:32:29and show your phone anyone's masked face,
0:32:32your wife's masked face, your child's masked face,
0:32:34just show anyone's masked face,
0:32:36and then your watch will unlock your thing afterwards.
0:32:39So it doesn't even need to be your masked face.
0:32:41Now, granted, this experiment was with people
0:32:43related to the person, so maybe the top of their faces
0:32:45looks enough like theirs that it was able to unlock,
0:32:47but the fact that it worked on a wife and a child
0:32:50makes me think that maybe it's not actually
0:32:52doing a partial face match, or if it is,
0:32:54all it cares about is that it's a human face
0:32:56with the same number of eyes as you or something.
0:32:59So I still don't quite know how this book works,
0:33:02and I still think it's weird
0:33:03that it wants to see anything first.
0:33:05And by the way, I don't know if we mentioned this last time,
0:33:07but it does buzz your watch when it unlocks
0:33:09and gives you the option to immediately relock it, right?
0:33:11So it's trying to do the right thing.
0:33:12No one's gonna secretly unlock your phone
0:33:13without you knowing, 'cause if you have the watch
0:33:15on your wrist and it just unlocked it,
0:33:16it will buzz you and then you'll look at it and say,
0:33:18"Hey, someone just unlocked your phone,"
0:33:19and you can just smack it and say,
0:33:20"Lock it," because it wasn't me.
0:33:22Anyway, and it's opt-in, so this is not going to happen
0:33:25to you unless you turn this feature on.
0:33:27But I'm interested to see, for those of us
0:33:30who have iPhones and watches, which is, I guess, YouTube,
0:33:33when the 14.5 comes out for real,
0:33:36setting aside whatever the betas do,
0:33:38does it need to see a face, and does it take any face?
0:33:41Or does it require your face?
0:33:42- All right, moving on, Mike Vossler has some information
0:33:46with regard to listing your trash.
0:33:49Can you tell me about that, Jon?
0:33:50- Yeah, last week I was surprised
0:33:52that Marco couldn't even just list the contents
0:33:54of his .trash directory and his home directory.
0:33:57And I had long since forgotten that it has been my habit
0:33:59ever since whatever OS this was introduced in
0:34:03to give the terminal application full disk access,
0:34:05because I find it maddening when I'm asked for permission
0:34:08to do stuff from the command line.
0:34:09So I always just give terminal full disk access,
0:34:12and a lot of people reported that if you do give terminal
0:34:14full disk access, then you can go into .trash just fine.
0:34:18Still, yet, some people have said,
0:34:20"I have terminal with full disk access,"
0:34:22but the particular problem Marco was talking about,
0:34:24I had something like that too, where there was some sort of,
0:34:27you know, something in my .trash directory
0:34:29that was somehow protected by system integrity protection,
0:34:32I needed to reboot in recovery mode to remove it.
0:34:34So both of those are failure modes that might happen.
0:34:36But if you're just wondering why terminal
0:34:38is not letting you see things that normally it used to,
0:34:41and you don't mind opening up a, you know,
0:34:43what we now call a giant security hole,
0:34:45but what we used to just call the way Unix works,
0:34:48give the terminal application full disk access,
0:34:51and then when you're in terminal, it won't complain.
0:34:53I mean, you're still subject to Unix permissions, obviously.
0:34:56That's so weird when you say full disk access.
0:34:59What it means is go back to just honoring
0:35:01Unix file system permissions.
0:35:03So you can't actually see everything, right?
0:35:06But we call this full disk access,
0:35:09and the opposite of that is, oh, you can't see anything
0:35:11unless you explicitly ask permission for it,
0:35:13and that is a little bit annoying.
0:35:15- By the way, for some actual follow-up on this topic
0:35:17on whether it solved my issue, nope, sure didn't.
0:35:20- Yeah, I think there's the one where you actually
0:35:22have to go into recovery and delete the thing,
0:35:24and you probably have that one.
0:35:25- Yeah, I didn't attempt that yet, because I don't want to.
0:35:29I'm like, to me, having my stupid X11 alias
0:35:33stuck in my trash forever is just kind of this reminder,
0:35:37like I have to get rid of this installation in Mac OS.
0:35:40I don't, I just have to get rid of this.
0:35:43That is not the real problem.
0:35:45The real problem is not my X11 alias.
0:35:46The real problem is that this installation is broken,
0:35:48and I have to get rid of it.
0:35:50- You're just making me want to dive in there
0:35:51and nurse it back to health.
0:35:52Just give feed it chicken soup and clean out
0:35:55all of its old launch agents
0:35:57and find all your old corrupt fonts
0:35:59and just really just shine it up.
0:36:01It's like those car detailing videos
0:36:03where they find the old car in the barn
0:36:04that hasn't been out in 20 years,
0:36:05and then by the end of the thing, it's all shiny.
0:36:07That's what I want to do to your Mac OS.
0:36:09- Excellent, and then this next item in follow-up,
0:36:13I haven't a clue what is happening here.
0:36:16So John, tell me about SSD traffic.
0:36:19- Last week, there was an Ask ATP question
0:36:22where someone was saying, "Hey, if I get the M1
0:36:24"with eight gigs of RAM, am I going to shorten
0:36:26"the life of my SSD just from swap file usage?"
0:36:30- Yes.
0:36:31- And my general answer to that was like,
0:36:33"Don't worry about it.
0:36:34"It'll probably be fine.
0:36:34"SSDs are fairly sturdy, and you're not going
0:36:39"to be swapping that much, and if you are,
0:36:40"you're going to have other problems that you notice
0:36:42"way before you wear out your SSD," so on and so forth.
0:36:45And there was some thread on Twitter
0:36:47where people were discussing this and saying,
0:36:49"Well, I'm looking at my M1 Mac,
0:36:52"and I looked at the total data written to the SSD
0:36:56"over some period of time, and I was shocked
0:36:58"at how much it was."
0:37:00And so the tweet was, this is actually on a MacBook Air
0:37:06with an M1 and 16 gigs of RAM,
0:37:08so it's not even an eight gig model.
0:37:09And this person was shocked.
0:37:11Two months in, the data written to the SSD
0:37:15was 13.4 terabytes.
0:37:17It was like 15.5 terabytes read,
0:37:2013.4 terabytes written.
0:37:23And everyone in the thread was like,
0:37:24"Oh, that seems like a lot, right?
0:37:26"Like, you've only had it for two months.
0:37:28"Like, boy, at that rate of IO,
0:37:29"are you gonna wear out this SSD?"
0:37:32And so I was curious.
0:37:33I decided to look at my work laptop,
0:37:35which is an Intel machine, but it also has 16 gigs of RAM,
0:37:38and I had it for a really long time,
0:37:39so I figured it would even out.
0:37:41And my work machine is thrashed by corporate malware, right?
0:37:46It's got SOPOS antivirus that's constantly scanning things.
0:37:48It's constantly doing an inventory.
0:37:50It's constantly searching my hard drive
0:37:51for personally identifiable information
0:37:53and running reports on it, right?
0:37:55Like, everything you can imagine
0:37:56is just incredibly abused by that.
0:37:58I can tell you that the fans run high a lot of the time.
0:38:02A lot of the time, it is swamped by CPU.
0:38:04And like I said, disk IO, you know,
0:38:06when it's just grinding over your whole disk,
0:38:07looking for stuff, not to mention running, like,
0:38:10you know, the Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox
0:38:14and plus, you know, running large VMs on the thing
0:38:17and pushing it into swap.
0:38:18And you know, so I really, this is,
0:38:19I feel like this is a heavily used laptop
0:38:21that is, you know, slowly wilting under the load
0:38:24that I put it in on top of all the corporate malware.
0:38:27So I'm like, this is gonna be a good test
0:38:29to see what, you know, what the IO is.
0:38:31And by the way, the way we're getting these numbers,
0:38:34both the Twitter thread and this is using smart utilities.
0:38:38I forget what smart stands for.
0:38:39It's probably an acronym for like, anyway,
0:38:41it's the tools that like measure hard drive health
0:38:44or whatever.
0:38:45So we'll put a link in the show notes too.
0:38:47I just searched for it on Google
0:38:48and I found this smartmontools.org website
0:38:51that downloaded the command.
0:38:52It's called smart control or smart control.
0:38:56And it's just, you know, run smart control dash dash all
0:38:59slash dev slash disk zero for, you know,
0:39:01built-in SSD probably.
0:39:03And the number I got was 246 terabytes written
0:39:08on my internal SSD.
0:39:11And that is over the course of the entire life
0:39:13of the 2017 MacBook Pro.
0:39:15So I did some math to figure out how many gigs per day
0:39:18of writes.
0:39:18I never really care about the reads.
0:39:19We're just worried about writes for like wearing out the SSD.
0:39:22How many gigs per day is that?
0:39:23The shocking one that was in the Twitter thread
0:39:25that was only two months old on the M1 Mac
0:39:27was 223 gigs written per day.
0:39:30And my, you know, four-year-old Intel MacBook Pro
0:39:34was 197 gigs written per day.
0:39:37And I'm shocked that the two numbers
0:39:38are that close to each other
0:39:39because surely the usage patterns are different.
0:39:42Like I don't think this person has sofas antivirus scaling,
0:39:44scanning every single file on their hard drive
0:39:46every single day.
0:39:48But yeah, they're both in the same ballpark,
0:39:50200-ish gigs per day written.
0:39:52There's some other stats that are printed out
0:39:54by this thing that I don't understand, but I can surmise.
0:39:56One of them is available spare.
0:39:58Remember we talked about over provisioning,
0:40:00how much extra storage is in there
0:40:03just in case you wear out some part of the SSD,
0:40:05you can use the extra stuff that it keeps in reserve.
0:40:08My available spare is at 100%.
0:40:11I think that means it's all available.
0:40:12I don't know.
0:40:13There's a bunch of other fun stats in here
0:40:16if you wanna take a look at what your laptop is doing,
0:40:18but I can tell you that it never crossed my mind
0:40:20to worry about wearing out my SSD on this laptop.
0:40:23I did worry that it was gonna overheat and explode
0:40:25because the fans are running high all the time,
0:40:28but 200 gigs per day of writes
0:40:31seems like a not unreasonable thing
0:40:34for a laptop to be writing to its SSD
0:40:37if it's used in a reasonable amount,
0:40:39whether it's an M1 Mac or an Intel Mac for many years ago.
0:40:43- So now, hold on.
0:40:44So you are, how are you getting how many days
0:40:47to divide by, by power on hours?
0:40:49- No, I'm getting that by the date I know
0:40:51I got the laptop from work.
0:40:53It was new, brand new laptop, fresh out of the box,
0:40:56and then I'm gonna start counting from there.
0:40:58And obviously I don't use it on weekends for the most part
0:41:00'cause it's my work laptop,
0:41:01but this laptop probably has more,
0:41:05I didn't run this on my Mac Pro,
0:41:06but this laptop is definitely the hardest used
0:41:09piece of hardware that's in my house right now.
0:41:11- Okay, 'cause I ask because I have 1,295 power on hours
0:41:15and 54 terabytes written, and so computing that out,
0:41:20if you treat it as powered on hours,
0:41:24that's 1,001 gigabytes a day.
0:41:27But again, that's power on hours,
0:41:29so it's not exactly the same as what you're computing.
0:41:33But that's considerably more than what you're talking about.
0:41:35- Yeah, I mean, it really depends on what you're doing.
0:41:37Like I said last time, you can wear out an SSD
0:41:39if you're doing something that's just constantly doing
0:41:42a huge amount of I/O,
0:41:43but most normal loads don't do that, right?
0:41:46So it really depends on the specific things
0:41:49that you're doing.
0:41:50The question was about whether swap would do it,
0:41:52and I think if you're swapping that much,
0:41:53you're gonna be suffering in so many other ways.
0:41:56Your concern is not gonna be SSD.
0:41:57Some other interesting stats here
0:41:59that make me wonder what it's actually showing,
0:42:01power cycles.
0:42:03I'm assuming that means maybe the OS or the hardware
0:42:08takes power away from the SSD when it doesn't need
0:42:10to be there or something,
0:42:11because my power cycles number is 26,000,
0:42:13and I know I did not turn this computer on and off
0:42:15to 26,000 times, right?
0:42:18So that must mean something else.
0:42:20Unsafe shutdowns, I think we all know what that means, 160.
0:42:24I'm like, yeah, that seems about right.
0:42:26It's because this machine did have a tendency
0:42:29to kernel panic for at least the first year or two
0:42:30of its life, it's settled down a little bit now.
0:42:34Media and data integrity errors, zero, no errors.
0:42:38- Oh, interesting.
0:42:39So I recomputed your laptop as per what's in the show notes,
0:42:44and I computed it the same way that mine was computed,
0:42:47and yours is actually 847.2 gigabytes a day,
0:42:50and I'm still sitting at 1,001.
0:42:52I have no idea how.
0:42:53- Yeah, I feel like those are shockingly
0:42:55in a similar ballparks, right?
0:42:58For two machines that are used
0:42:59for entirely different purposes,
0:43:00running entirely different software,
0:43:02it's amazing how these are not double each other
0:43:06or have a huge range,
0:43:07'cause I have no idea how you use your computer,
0:43:09but it can't be like I use my work laptop,
0:43:12which does such weird things.
0:43:14I'm running database servers on my work laptop,
0:43:19and I feel like it almost doesn't matter
0:43:21unless you're doing something that you know
0:43:23is intentionally, not abusive,
0:43:24but intentionally extremely heavy.
0:43:27Like say you're constantly recording 8K video
0:43:30to the drive 24 hours a day from a security camera.
0:43:32That's the type of thing where you'd expect
0:43:34to see a 10X difference or whatever,
0:43:35but if you just use your laptop like a human,
0:43:38it seems like the numbers sort of regress to a mean here,
0:43:41with our three data points,
0:43:42because Marco hasn't downloaded this thing and tried it yet.
0:43:45- No.
0:43:46- And all his computers are so new that it's like,
0:43:48(laughing)
0:43:49power on hour seven.
0:43:51- Three.
0:43:52- Soon I'll be leaving Marco's house.
0:43:54You just see the number of battery cycles
0:43:56whenever I sell a laptop, it's embarrassingly low.
0:43:59- Yeah, Marco has charged his battery 10 times.
0:44:03Looking at our two readouts, your controller busy time
0:44:06is 21,799, would you like to guess what mine is?
0:44:11- I don't even, what's the units for that?
0:44:12Is that seconds, is that minutes?
0:44:13What is that? - No idea.
0:44:14I have no idea.
0:44:16- But remember, this is a 2017 laptop, it's old.
0:44:18- Sure, well, but would you like to guess what mine
0:44:22controller busy time is?
0:44:23- Well, how old is your computer?
0:44:25- What, a year-ish, something like that,
0:44:27a little over a year?
0:44:28It's zero.
0:44:29- Yeah, well, I don't know what that number means,
0:44:32but my computer is stressed.
0:44:35It should move to the beach.
0:44:38- Yeah, that's what it needs to do, yeah, that's it.
0:44:40You know, you also have 60 error information log entries
0:44:43and I have zero.
0:44:44- Yeah, but I have no data integrity error,
0:44:46so I'm happy about that.
0:44:47- By the way, while we're doing things
0:44:50that are gonna generate tons of email over the next week,
0:44:52thanks a lot, guys, I'll add to the pile.
0:44:55I would like recommendations from listeners,
0:45:00not an overwhelming number of them, maybe,
0:45:02but I would like recommendations from--
0:45:03- Listeners can't control that, they don't know
0:45:05what other people are doing.
0:45:06There's no global knowledge.
0:45:07- Organize amongst yourselves to submit one copy
0:45:11of each thing.
0:45:11- Oh, God.
0:45:12- The problem I need to solve here is every time
0:45:15there's a new Mac OS update or something,
0:45:19I have to set up a new computer or the OS changes
0:45:23some policy or PHP gets updated or stuff like that,
0:45:28it always breaks my local web development stuff.
0:45:31Like what I want to do is run PHP, Nginx
0:45:35or any other web server, but hopefully Nginx
0:45:38with PHP and MySQL locally on my Mac.
0:45:43I have done this for over a decade just by usually
0:45:47either using the built-in stuff, like back when it was
0:45:50present and reasonably good, which it mostly still is,
0:45:53but I think they're phasing that out,
0:45:54or I would use Homebrew or similar package managing
0:45:59kind of stuff to install a different version
0:46:02or a newer version of something like PHP
0:46:05and have that be automated in some big script.
0:46:07And every six months, whatever process I did before breaks,
0:46:12and whatever installation I had before either can't
0:46:15be carried into the new OS or some component of it breaks.
0:46:19This is just the world of package management.
0:46:21And trying to run a package manager on Mac OS
0:46:26seems like a very hostile environment to try to operate in.
0:46:29I think it seems like the OS is constantly changing
0:46:31and breaking stuff like that in ways that Homebrew
0:46:34tries its best to get around, but it often doesn't succeed.
0:46:37And so I'm kind of at my wits end here,
0:46:41and what I would ideally like, I don't even know
0:46:43if this necessarily is possible with what we have
0:46:47so far today, what I would ideally like is a Linux VM
0:46:52that I could run, that could just be like a file
0:46:56or a folder on my computer that is mounted into a Linux VM.
0:47:00And that folder, I could still edit all my code,
0:47:03like in TextMate, all my PHP copies of everything.
0:47:05That could all still be in a regular Mac editing app,
0:47:09so mounted natively in the Mac file system.
0:47:11But I want just a Linux VM that I can set up
0:47:14that can actually execute this code.
0:47:17- This is amazing.
0:47:18- You should listen to some tech podcasts
0:47:19where they talk about things like Docker,
0:47:21which we've talked about on the show many, many times.
0:47:23- You realize you just invented Docker.
0:47:25- Well, so, right, so I've never used Docker.
0:47:28Is Docker the solution to this?
0:47:29And second question, does it work on M1 Macs yet?
0:47:33Now, here's the thing, other qualifications.
0:47:35So number one, it has to work on Apple Silicon,
0:47:37which I know most of the virtualization stuff doesn't yet.
0:47:40Number two, I don't care how fast it is.
0:47:44It doesn't need to be fast.
0:47:45In fact, if it's slow, that's actually kind of a feature,
0:47:48because then I'll be forced to optimize my web code
0:47:51if anything is noticeably slow, but it won't be.
0:47:53I mean, PHP and MySQL, even if it was doing
0:47:57full x86 machine emulation on the M1,
0:48:02I would still not notice the slowness.
0:48:04So performance does not matter at all.
0:48:06What does matter is it has to work on M1.
0:48:08It can't have any kernel extensions.
0:48:10It can't have the old virtualization methods
0:48:12where you'd install kexts all over the place.
0:48:14None of that, if that even still works,
0:48:16I don't think it does.
0:48:17So I just want a container that I can keep
0:48:22independent of what the OS does,
0:48:25and I don't care how much overhead it takes
0:48:27to execute the contents of that container.
0:48:29So it can be very, very slow.
0:48:30It can be full emulation of x86 if it needs to be.
0:48:33It can be ARM probably, but ideally it would be x86,
0:48:36just 'cause that's what I'm running on the servers,
0:48:37and it would be nice to match everything exactly,
0:48:40to just be able to install my server Ubuntu distribution
0:48:43with my server install script here locally.
0:48:46So that's ideally what I want.
0:48:48I'm interested to know what is the best solution to this
0:48:51that actually works on M1 Macs in any possible way.
0:48:56- So I mean, you have three main options here.
0:48:58One, I know you said you didn't like this,
0:49:00but homebrew has been updated for the M1 Macs,
0:49:02and so if you still wanna go that route,
0:49:05you actually have that option available to you.
0:49:07Two, you got plain old VMs, lots of options for them,
0:49:10and as you noted, the ones that you installed--
0:49:12- Do I have lots of options for them?
0:49:14- I mean, you're going to have lots of options.
0:49:17People are going to-- - Oh yeah, right,
0:49:18I'm going to, I don't right now.
0:49:20- But it could be like by next week.
0:49:22Things are happening fast here, right?
0:49:24But I'm saying don't set that aside,
0:49:25because traditional plain old VMs,
0:49:27whether you use VMware, commercial product,
0:49:29or VirtualBox or whatever, you could literally run
0:49:32the same version of Linux that your servers run,
0:49:34and yes, most of them have some way for you
0:49:36to essentially mount through some folder on your Mac
0:49:38so you can use all your native Mac tools.
0:49:40They all do that.
0:49:41And the good thing is on Big Sur
0:49:43with the virtualization framework,
0:49:44they don't need Kext anymore,
0:49:45because the OS supports virtualization itself.
0:49:48So I bet the people at VMware,
0:49:49I mean, I haven't talked to them,
0:49:50but I bet they're excited, because they're like,
0:49:52oh, thank God, we don't have to do this part.
0:49:54The whole part of our application that we had to write
0:49:56that was a pain in the butt to maintain,
0:49:57now we don't have to use it anymore.
0:49:59Apple gives us one, and we can essentially ship you an app
0:50:01that just runs without asking for weird permissions
0:50:04to install a Kext or whatever.
0:50:06Like, that's great for them.
0:50:07Now, this is assuming Apple's virtualization framework
0:50:09actually works well, and I'm sure the people
0:50:11who worked in that part of VMware say ours was better
0:50:14and had better features, but what I'm saying to you
0:50:16is that don't be afraid of virtualization,
0:50:17because all the things that we complain about on Big Sur
0:50:21and locking stuff down or whatever,
0:50:22it makes things like virtualization less scary,
0:50:26because now they're not allowed to do that dangerous stuff,
0:50:29and they can't, and the OS supports it natively.
0:50:31So look into virtualization,
0:50:33whoever ends up supporting that the best.
0:50:35And then finally, there's Docker,
0:50:36which is probably, of all those solutions,
0:50:39going to be the weirdest to you,
0:50:41and I also don't know whether it's entirely supported
0:50:43in M1 Macs yet, but it will be inevitably.
0:50:46- It looks like it's in tech preview mode right now.
0:50:48- Yeah, and also, I believe it will be able
0:50:51to do x86 stuff for you, which is what you want.
0:50:53So those three options should cover all of the possibilities,
0:50:57and I think you should try all three of them when you can.
0:51:01So you can try Homebrew now
0:51:02and get angry at it all over again.
0:51:03- Yeah, I will.
0:51:04- And then as soon as VMware or something like that is out,
0:51:08try that, and then try Docker.
0:51:10Docker is free for you to just run locally.
0:51:12And my experience with the Mac version of Docker
0:51:13has actually been pretty good, obviously not on the M1,
0:51:15but the Mac version of Docker,
0:51:18it's not super duper Mac-like,
0:51:20but it's way more Mac-like than you would think
0:51:22something like Docker would be.
0:51:24You probably do have to learn a little bit about Docker,
0:51:27and you're not gonna like what you learn
0:51:28'cause it's weird, but learn a little bit about Docker
0:51:31to do the thing that you want,
0:51:32where you wanna sort of mount through the directory
0:51:33and have it visible and all that stuff.
0:51:34You'll have to mess with that in some ways
0:51:36that are gonna be a little bit scary
0:51:38and more complicated to you than,
0:51:39VMware is like you can practically drag a folder over
0:51:42and make a shared thing, and it's really easy,
0:51:44you know, like VMware, right?
0:51:45But of those three options,
0:51:47surely one of them will work for you
0:51:49better than your current setup.
0:51:50And I guess the fourth option is what I did,
0:51:52which is you compile everything from source
0:51:53and just deal with it, but it seems like you're-
0:51:55- Oh, I'm not doing that, no.
0:51:56- It's the best though, no.
0:51:58- The best for what, in what way is it the best?
0:52:01It's the worst.
0:52:02- It's the best in that you have, you should love it.
0:52:04It's the Marco solution that you have total control.
0:52:06You're such a control freak
0:52:07about so many parts of your tech life, but not this one.
0:52:09- Well, because this is an environment that like,
0:52:13this is to me a tool.
0:52:14Like I don't want to build like my text editor from source.
0:52:18I just want this to be a package that I download
0:52:20as like a complete polished thing that is easy,
0:52:23because this is an area of my toolkit
0:52:24that I don't wanna become a power user or nerd about.
0:52:27This is something that I currently am forced
0:52:29to be a power user or nerd in trying to keep
0:52:31all the native, you know, homebrew kind of stuff
0:52:34working through our installations.
0:52:36And I just, to me, like any time I spend maintaining that
0:52:41is a waste of my time.
0:52:42Like any time I spend on that is like,
0:52:44I'm not working on my app, I'm not doing anything I like,
0:52:46I'm not doing something productive,
0:52:47like customers won't see or care about any of this.
0:52:49Like that to me is like burned time.
0:52:52And so that's exactly the kind of context where I would pay.
0:52:56If like, you know, VMware worked perfectly
0:52:59the way I want to and was out today and was $300,
0:53:01I would buy it.
0:53:02They'd be like, great, I can throw money at this problem
0:53:04and get all this time back to not have to deal with this.
0:53:08- I think it might already be out.
0:53:09I might just be thinking of the big Sur update
0:53:11and not the M1 update.
0:53:12But it's so much like your other situations
0:53:14in that when it breaks you get frustrated
0:53:15if you don't know exactly what's going on
0:53:17because it's using some third party thing.
0:53:19And so let me just write my own library
0:53:20to do this thing, right?
0:53:21So that way I know the code from top to bottom.
0:53:24Every time your homebrew stuff breaks or whatever
0:53:26you're like, and like you don't control homebrew
0:53:28and it's not your thing and it's big and it's complicated
0:53:31and it's like, ugh.
0:53:32So I can imagine you would derive some satisfaction
0:53:35for like understanding how your local setup works
0:53:39from top to bottom in the same way that you do with code
0:53:41instead of dealing with, oh, well why did you use
0:53:43a third party library that does that?
0:53:44It does it for you and it's like,
0:53:45but I don't want the whole third party library
0:53:47and it's complicated and when it breaks
0:53:48I don't understand why.
0:53:50So I feel like that the compiling from source,
0:53:53as ridiculous as it sounds to you,
0:53:55actually does fit with some of your other tech habits
0:53:57in the vein of I know exactly how it works
0:54:00and it does just what I need it to do and only that
0:54:03and when it breaks I understand and can fix it.
0:54:05- Yeah, I'm still not doing it.
0:54:07- I know, no one is, just me, but I enjoy it.
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0:56:08- All right, moving on.
0:56:12Oh God, we're gonna get so much email this week.
0:56:14Tesla.
0:56:15- Oh no.
0:56:16- As if we didn't have enough email coming our way.
0:56:18- Can you put this in here, Casey?
0:56:20This is all you.
0:56:20- Yeah, this is my fault.
0:56:22Everyone has a reason for email apparently.
0:56:25We had discussed, I think a couple of weeks ago,
0:56:27how Marco has to periodically reboot half of his car
0:56:31as he's hurtling down the road because that's totally safe.
0:56:35And don't worry, Elon will fix it, I'm sure.
0:56:38Well, apparently he is fixing it
0:56:39because they've basically been forced
0:56:42to do a recall for touchscreen failures.
0:56:44And so NHTSA has all but compelled Tesla,
0:56:48and I guess this is normal,
0:56:49that NHTSA will basically say,
0:56:51"Hey, we're going to make you do a recall
0:56:53"if you don't voluntarily do it."
0:56:55And then the car manufacturer, not just Tesla,
0:56:57will fight it for a little while.
0:56:58And then they're like, "No, really, this is gonna happen."
0:57:00And the car manufacturer says, "No, no, no, no, no.
0:57:02"We'll do it voluntarily, no need for a recall.
0:57:03"It's cool, it's cool, it's cool, it's cool, it's cool."
0:57:05So anyway, we will put a link in the show notes.
0:57:08And from that link,
0:57:09NHTSA, what is it?
0:57:11The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
0:57:14something like that?
0:57:15Is that right? - Yeah.
0:57:15- All right, go team.
0:57:17The agency said touchscreen failures
0:57:18posed significant safety issues,
0:57:20including the loss of rear view or backup camera images,
0:57:22exterior turn signal lighting,
0:57:24we were wondering about that when we were discussing it,
0:57:26and windshield defogging, I almost said defragging,
0:57:30defogging and defrosting systems that--
0:57:31- I think if you're just to defrag your windshield,
0:57:33do you have other problems?
0:57:34- That's a big worry.
0:57:36That quote, "May decrease the driver's visibility
0:57:38"in inclement weather."
0:57:39Quote.
0:57:40NHTSA said last month that, quote,
0:57:42"During our review of the data,
0:57:43"Tesla provided confirmation that all units
0:57:45"will inevitably fail,
0:57:46"given the memory device's finite storage capacity."
0:57:50Quote, are you kidding me?
0:57:52I guess they're just vomiting up like log files or something
0:57:56until kingdom come and--
0:57:57- No, the way I interpreted it was not about that,
0:58:00it was actually about flash wear.
0:58:01That's how I interpreted this.
0:58:03- Ah, okay, okay, then maybe I'm wrong.
0:58:04That's fair.
0:58:05- Yeah, whoever wrote this,
0:58:06NHTSA doesn't understand the tech involved,
0:58:07but that's my understanding too,
0:58:08that it is actually a case of wearing out flash memory.
0:58:12- So it's actually topical for this week's show.
0:58:14- Yeah, exactly, exactly.
0:58:16- I mean, but who's gonna think when designing a car system
0:58:18that the cars will be running for a long time?
0:58:20- Yeah, I mean, why would you think that?
0:58:22(laughing)
0:58:23- Like such a Tesla move where they're just like,
0:58:27we don't need to do things the car way,
0:58:28let's just do things the fast and nimble way.
0:58:31Why would we spend all this money
0:58:33for this really enterprise grade
0:58:35over-provisioned car industry flash module
0:58:37that costs a bazillion dollars?
0:58:38I can just buy a bunch of these on Amazon
0:58:40and stick 'em in the cars
0:58:41and oh, now they're all wearing out.
0:58:43- Whoopsies.
0:58:44- But we need to do all that logging
0:58:45to find out why things are broken.
0:58:46- Heyo!
0:58:47Oh god, we're gonna get so many emails, but you're so right.
0:58:50- Yeah, this is a super old story, isn't it?
0:58:52I guess it's finally getting around
0:58:53to recalling it or whatever,
0:58:55but I remember reading about this particular problem
0:58:57years ago.
0:58:58- Yeah, it isn't on any of their recent cars.
0:59:00I think the latest effect of cars
0:59:02are probably from like three years ago, right?
0:59:04It's not super recent, right?
0:59:06- Well.
0:59:06- Yeah, and it's the type of thing
0:59:07that happens after over time, right?
0:59:09So if it is happening on the current cars,
0:59:10we wouldn't know it for years.
0:59:12- That's true, yeah, that's true.
0:59:14- Now, with all that said,
0:59:16Michael Swindler wrote in to say,
0:59:18"In my Model 3, I had to reboot while driving recently."
0:59:20Why is this such a thing?
0:59:21Why are people okay with this?
0:59:23Oh my god.
0:59:24It happened to be at night,
0:59:25so I could see that the turn signal did still work,
0:59:28just no sound.
0:59:29Oh, that's reassuring.
0:59:30I'm glad we had that. - So that's the Model 3,
0:59:31which is a newer car, I'll say.
0:59:33- Yeah, that's what I hoped was happening,
0:59:35but yeah, I don't, uh.
0:59:38It's still not a good thing
0:59:40to have to reboot your car while driving it,
0:59:41and also, it just shows,
0:59:44anytime, we keep getting email from people who are like,
0:59:48"You guys don't understand the new Model S.
0:59:50"It's all about self-driving.
0:59:52"They're going all in on full self-driving,
0:59:54"so they don't need a steering wheel.
0:59:55"They're just designing it so you don't need to drive it."
0:59:57It's like, yeah, that's wonderful.
0:59:59- Full self-driving's coming out in 2018, Marco.
1:00:02- Yeah, right.
1:00:03(laughing)
1:00:04Yeah, like, the,
1:00:06you don't buy a car or design a car
1:00:10for promises of future software capabilities,
1:00:14especially things that seem really hard
1:00:17for anybody to actually achieve.
1:00:20If you ship a car, and it turns out that in one year,
1:00:23you have amazing full self-driving capabilities
1:00:25somehow magically, and it turned out
1:00:27that the steering wheels you put on the first,
1:00:29on the car for that whole year were redundant,
1:00:32oh well, you get some redundant steering wheels.
1:00:34No big deal.
1:00:35If you bet wrong, (laughing)
1:00:37and you have, like, you design a car
1:00:40for a software future that doesn't ship on time,
1:00:44or never, maybe, makes it in the lifetime of that car,
1:00:47and now you just have a badly designed car
1:00:49that could get people killed,
1:00:51I'd say that you've made the wrong bet,
1:00:53and that's a bad design.
1:00:55- Agreed.
1:00:55- And also, I mean, I know we discussed this
1:00:57a little bit tangentially, the whole split
1:00:59between the car computer and the infotainment computer,
1:01:03and whether they were merged or whatever,
1:01:05but just in general, the idea that rebooting your car
1:01:08while you're driving it is in any way a common thing,
1:01:11even if it's just the non-driving computer,
1:01:14does not make me particularly confident
1:01:16about any kind of self-driving future,
1:01:17which, by the way, I continued to see years ago episodes
1:01:21super pessimistic that we will ever see anything like that
1:01:23in our lifetime, but regardless,
1:01:26if you have to reboot your car while driving it,
1:01:30the one thing that probably won't work,
1:01:31if you're, you know, forget about turn signals,
1:01:33the part where the car drives itself,
1:01:35yeah, I'd worry more about that,
1:01:37'cause if you don't have a steering wheel,
1:01:39and the driving part of the car reboots,
1:01:42and you're going 70 miles an hour, that's a bad situation.
1:01:45So add yet one more pebble to the giant pile
1:01:49of reasons why full self-driving continues to be a fantasy
1:01:53in the way that most people envision it.
1:01:56- That's the thing, like, I'm so happy,
1:01:58and I'm so fortunate that my entire career
1:02:02has been spent writing software that,
1:02:04in the grand scheme of things,
1:02:06doesn't really have any major stakes,
1:02:08doesn't really matter, like, if I write something
1:02:11that has a bug, or if I mess up a server,
1:02:14and something crashes, no one dies.
1:02:17I don't have any kind of heavy stakes on what I do.
1:02:20I've made an entire career basically out of helping people
1:02:24waste time in various ways.
1:02:26And it's kind of wonderful in the sense
1:02:28that I don't have all that stress,
1:02:30you know, that like, I might, you know,
1:02:32mess up somehow and really get somebody hurt or killed,
1:02:36but I also then don't tackle problems with this skillset
1:02:40that might result in heavier stakes.
1:02:43Tesla, the way, their software quality of their cars
1:02:47is, granted, better than anything I could write.
1:02:52And you look at like all the miles driven
1:02:54on autopilot and everything,
1:02:55and they are largely pretty good.
1:02:58But to take on something like full self-driving
1:03:01requires a level of rigor and perfection
1:03:05and conservatism in development methodology
1:03:07and things like that, like, you have to be so careful
1:03:10and so rigorous and so slow moving and well tested.
1:03:15That's just not how Tesla does almost anything.
1:03:21And so I see them having a wonderful present and future
1:03:25in doing stuff like Autopilot on the Highway,
1:03:29which is like, this is a smaller problem set,
1:03:32we can do a pretty good job of it
1:03:33that works almost all the time,
1:03:35and is a nice convenience feature,
1:03:37and maybe improves average safety of our cars
1:03:40per highway mile driven compared to humans
1:03:43doing their own cruise control stuff.
1:03:46That is a narrower problem domain
1:03:48that they have proven to be pretty good at.
1:03:50And as a five year Tesla owner,
1:03:53I can say that has worked great so far.
1:03:57Not 100% of the time.
1:03:58There's still a lot of conditions in which it doesn't work,
1:04:00but it is a wonderful convenience feature.
1:04:04When you design convenience features though,
1:04:05that's a whole different ballgame
1:04:07compared to full self driving.
1:04:09What that actually means,
1:04:10not whatever Tesla's package of options calls that.
1:04:13What full self driving actually means
1:04:15is such a different ballgame,
1:04:17requires such incredibly different
1:04:19and much more advanced and much higher quality control
1:04:24in that software development.
1:04:26I don't see that just magically coming out next year
1:04:30based on what Tesla has delivered so far.
1:04:33And I don't even see Tesla being a company
1:04:36that's gonna be the world leader in that
1:04:38if and when it ever comes.
1:04:40I don't see them being that kind of software organization
1:04:44to have that kind of engineering discipline
1:04:47and quality control, frankly.
1:04:49I see them making really great cars
1:04:51that are driven mostly in the traditional way
1:04:55that have occasional convenience features like autopilot.
1:04:57That they're very good at,
1:04:58and I'm very happy using their cars that way.
1:05:02But they seem to be wanting to push the cars
1:05:05into a direction that I don't think they can do very well.
1:05:07And I'm worried about that.
1:05:09- Yeah, if you look at the industries
1:05:10that are tackling similar problems,
1:05:12they have gone through and continue to go through
1:05:14all the things we always talk about with Tesla.
1:05:16Like aviation, for example.
1:05:17Planes that essentially fly themselves,
1:05:19they have the exact same problem of like,
1:05:21well, if the plane almost flies itself,
1:05:23it can train the pilot into assuming
1:05:24that the plane knows what it's doing,
1:05:25but then the times when it gets it wrong,
1:05:27then the pilot's not ready to intervene at the right moment.
1:05:29And lots of crashes are about, you know,
1:05:31if it was just the human, the human error causes crashes.
1:05:35If it was just the computer,
1:05:36computer error can cause crashes.
1:05:37And if it's the human and the computer,
1:05:38they can collaborate to get a whole new series of crashes
1:05:41that would not happen if either one of them
1:05:42was solely in control, right?
1:05:44Like even just like the, what do you call it,
1:05:46737 MAX thing of like how the plane behaves
1:05:48slightly differently and the control program
1:05:51was trying to do something safe,
1:05:52but the pilot didn't know
1:05:53and they're fighting each other, right?
1:05:54That anti-pattern of like, well, it's not,
1:05:58the human needs to be there and needs to be aware
1:06:00and might need to intervene in a moment's notice,
1:06:02but most of the time the computer does it
1:06:03and it makes the humans not be able to be vigilant
1:06:06for that amount of time.
1:06:07And so aviation is constantly struggling with that.
1:06:09Yes, we do want these safety features
1:06:11because the plane can know and do things by itself
1:06:14and eliminate human errors from many areas,
1:06:16but we can't disengage the pilot.
1:06:18The pilot still needs to be there.
1:06:20It's super important that the pilot be there
1:06:21because we know for a fact that there's no such thing
1:06:24as full self flying.
1:06:25Like, it's just, you need to have a pilot with controls
1:06:29and the human, it's super important that the human is there
1:06:31because sometimes it's super important
1:06:33that the human take over, right?
1:06:35And you have to manage that relationship
1:06:38so that the human is not expected to do things
1:06:41that no human should be expected to do, right?
1:06:44And making that interface, making it help,
1:06:46but not help too much, but not help too little,
1:06:48but not, you know, like it's super hard.
1:06:51And aviation is, like Mark was saying,
1:06:53the opposite of how Tesla does things.
1:06:55Everything in aviation has so many regulations
1:06:58and so, you know, they're so careful
1:06:59and such a long history that's respected about what works
1:07:02and so conservative in every possible way.
1:07:05Every time they push the envelope a little bit,
1:07:07like the 737 MAX, like, oh, with software, we can do this
1:07:10and do this advance and save money for the shareholders
1:07:12if we just reuse some of this,
1:07:14but just modify the plane in this way
1:07:15and just like, just the littlest nudge in the direction
1:07:19of trying to be like, move fast and break things
1:07:21and hundreds of people die, right?
1:07:23So I'm setting aside Tesla when I'm pessimistic
1:07:28about self-driving.
1:07:29I'm self-testimistic about it just in general.
1:07:30Someone asked in the chat what episode
1:07:32we talked about that last.
1:07:33I think it was 165.
1:07:35We'll put it in the show notes
1:07:36if you wanna re-listen to that episode
1:07:37and hear what we had to say years ago about self-driving,
1:07:39but my attitude towards it hasn't changed.
1:07:41But yeah, to Mark's point, Tesla is the company
1:07:44that I least trust to do the default safe thing
1:07:48when it comes to self-driving,
1:07:49even if they happen to be the company
1:07:50that actually has the most expertise in the area right now,
1:07:53which is not a great combination.
1:07:55Lots of expertise, but not a lot of wisdom, let's say.
1:07:59- Yeah, and in the defense of Tesla,
1:08:01which I can't believe I'm the one saying this,
1:08:03I remember when I was working government contracting
1:08:06that a lot of the stuff we did was like C++ and C#,
1:08:10but I vividly remember that one of my coworkers
1:08:13had to learn, I think it was Ada, if I'm not mistaken,
1:08:16and there was a completely different programming language
1:08:19that the government had basically compelled us to use,
1:08:24and I probably have the details wrong,
1:08:26and it doesn't really matter,
1:08:28but I remember being told something along the lines of,
1:08:32"With Ada, every entrance and exit from every function
1:08:35"has to be defined," or something like that.
1:08:37That sounds wrong, but it was extremely explicit
1:08:40about everything that happened
1:08:42in every piece of the program,
1:08:44and so because of that, you knew with increased confidence,
1:08:48if not perfect confidence, that what you were writing,
1:08:52you have covered every possible case involved,
1:08:55every outside of the envelope case,
1:08:57inside the envelope case, happy path,
1:09:00unhappy path, and everything else,
1:09:01and that's why they used it
1:09:04for some more embedded-style systems
1:09:06at the place in which I was working
1:09:08for government contracting stuff,
1:09:10and it wouldn't surprise me, I bring this up
1:09:12because it wouldn't surprise me
1:09:13if the car control computers are using something
1:09:17along the lines of Ada, maybe not Ada exactly,
1:09:20but something along those lines,
1:09:22even if the infotainment is running on Java
1:09:24or something like that.
1:09:26- Oh yeah, that's one of the reasons
1:09:28why they're totally separate computers.
1:09:30The infotainment system should have nothing
1:09:32to do with driving, and from my understanding,
1:09:34it doesn't now, which is good.
1:09:36- I mean, whatever system has to do with the turn signals,
1:09:39at least on your car, potentially is the system
1:09:42that needs to be rebooted, so that's not great.
1:09:44- Well, the display or the sound of the turn signals
1:09:47is different from the operation of the turn signals, but--
1:09:50- Right, well, think of the recall, though.
1:09:51The recall was about like, oh, well, climate control
1:09:53won't work and you can't turn on the defroster.
1:09:55Okay, so now climate control, which I would argue
1:09:57is part, and NHTSA would argue as well,
1:09:58is part of the safety features of the car.
1:10:01If the computer that is the only thing in the car
1:10:04that can turn on the defroster, if that one has to reboot,
1:10:06I'd say let's move that out of wherever it is now
1:10:09and into the computer that supposedly doesn't crash.
1:10:11- Yeah, and to be fair, that is true.
1:10:13The climate control is controlled
1:10:15by the navigation and media computer,
1:10:17and that's another reason why physical controls can win out,
1:10:22because anything that is on the touch screen,
1:10:24this is why this came up in the first place
1:10:25like two episodes ago, anything on the touch screen,
1:10:27you might occasionally have to go without
1:10:29for a few minutes while the system reboots,
1:10:32and so that could be a problem.
1:10:34You don't have to worry about the car suddenly
1:10:37stopping and flying off the road,
1:10:39but you might have to worry about the defroster
1:10:41not being accessible or not knowing
1:10:43whether your turn signal is on or not,
1:10:45or not being able to control your drive direction
1:10:48in the new one if the car guesses wrong.
1:10:51So yeah, that's--
1:10:52- Well, you do have to worry about it flying off the road,
1:10:54but just you're supposed to take over control
1:10:56immediately when you see that happening, just FYI.
1:10:58- Oh, right.
1:10:59- Or all your die, like that guy who,
1:11:00that poor guy who died commuting to work
1:11:02at the same place his car had veered
1:11:04towards the barrier multiple times,
1:11:06and then the one day he was just too sleepy to catch it,
1:11:08and he died, that's just so terrible.
1:11:09- Yeah, that really is.
1:11:11- I mean, granted, people die every single day in cars
1:11:13from their own mistakes, but it's like I said last week,
1:11:15somehow, because humans are weird,
1:11:17somehow it feels more fair when you screw up yourself
1:11:20and die, you're just as dead,
1:11:21and you're dead maybe even more often than you would be
1:11:23if the car was helping you drive,
1:11:25but it just feels worse when it's like,
1:11:27hey, like, I, you know, car, you turned toward that tree,
1:11:32and yeah, I was too slow in yanking the wheel back,
1:11:34but honestly, car, you turned towards that tree,
1:11:36and I feel worse about that than me just not paying attention
1:11:40and hitting the tree myself.
1:11:42- I don't know, it's so wild to me listening again
1:11:45to you describing this operation, Marco, and thinking--
1:11:48- The rebooting while driving.
1:11:49- The rebooting operation, yeah.
1:11:51This is the same man who refused to use a monitor
1:11:55that was slightly wobbly and occasionally
1:11:57didn't work perfectly, and yet his 4,500-whatever
1:12:02pound automobile, he can occasionally reboot the infotainment
1:12:05and just shrug it off as, oh, no big deal.
1:12:07- Oh, it makes me angry every time,
1:12:09but I just like the car so much and every other,
1:12:12like, I love this car, I really do,
1:12:15and I mean, we'll see, you know, my living situation here
1:12:20is going to make it difficult to decide what to do
1:12:23this fall when my lease is up,
1:12:25but if I end up not keeping a car like this,
1:12:30I'm going to be very upset, I'm going to very much miss it,
1:12:32'cause I love this car so much.
1:12:35We are sponsored this week by FlatFile.
1:12:39Nearly everyone has dealt with formatting CSV or Excel files
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1:13:37(upbeat music)
1:13:40All right, so moving on to topics.
1:13:42This is actually really exciting.
1:13:43This is the second exciting thing I've seen from iOS 14.5.
1:13:46I'm not running it yet, so I'm just looking at reports,
1:13:49but supposedly, iOS 14.5 lets you set Spotify or others
1:13:53as Siri's default music service.
1:13:56How cool is that?
1:13:57So it used to be, even today,
1:13:59in the released versions of the OS,
1:14:01you can say, "Hey, dingus, using Spotify,
1:14:04play the most recent album by Meat Math,"
1:14:06or something like that.
1:14:07And it would work, usually.
1:14:09But now it appears, from what I've read,
1:14:11that you can just say, "Hey, dingus,
1:14:13play the most recent album by Meat Math,"
1:14:15and it'll just go and do it using Spotify
1:14:17or whatever your service may be, which is super great.
1:14:19- Yeah, and this seems like it's super early still.
1:14:21Like, I mean, granted, this is reporting a feature
1:14:23that's still in a relatively early beta series of iOS,
1:14:28but even its implementation in the beta
1:14:30seems a little bit flaky so far.
1:14:32So we'll see if this ships with 14.5.
1:14:35I would not recommend that anybody install the beta
1:14:38right now just for this feature
1:14:39because it is still a little bit iffy.
1:14:41But this is one of those things
1:14:44that we kind of never expected Apple to do.
1:14:48And maybe they're only doing it
1:14:49because of potential antitrust and regulatory pressure.
1:14:52I'm sure that plays a significant role
1:14:54in their decision to do this now.
1:14:56But the reality is they're doing it, and that's great.
1:15:00This is a feature that the Alexa ecosystem has had forever.
1:15:04If you buy an Amazon Echo,
1:15:06you've been able to go into the app
1:15:08and select any of their supportive music services
1:15:11as the default for years.
1:15:13I don't know if it was there since day one,
1:15:15but it's at least been there for years.
1:15:17And so to have this feature here, it's wonderful
1:15:20'cause then, as Casey said, instead of having to say
1:15:23on every single request, hey, play ATP in Overcast.
1:15:28Now you can just set a certain thing as your default.
1:15:31For most people, it's probably gonna be Spotify
1:15:32in this context, but you can set a certain thing.
1:15:35You can say, all right, play Green Day in Spotify.
1:15:37Green Day doesn't really hold up anymore.
1:15:38Have you heard Green Day recently?
1:15:40- No, I was never that into them.
1:15:42I didn't actively dislike them or anything,
1:15:44but it never really did that much for me,
1:15:46and I have not heard it recently.
1:15:48- There's a whole section of angry '90s music
1:15:51that if you listen to it, at the time,
1:15:53it didn't seem like, it seemed totally normal,
1:15:55but if you listen to it now with modern sensibilities,
1:15:59and it kinda doesn't hold up,
1:16:02it's kind of uncomfortable to listen to some of it.
1:16:04Anyway, they're one of those bands.
1:16:05So suppose you played something better,
1:16:06like, I don't know, Weezer, they seem relatively
1:16:10unoffensive most of the time,
1:16:11before you'd have to say on every single request,
1:16:13play the latest Weezer album on Spotify,
1:16:15if you were a Spotify user, and now you could set Spotify
1:16:19as your default music app, and it looks like
1:16:20they're also possibly doing podcast apps
1:16:23that are built into this.
1:16:25At the API level, the way this works is
1:16:27there's a whole Siri, IAM play media intent series
1:16:31of APIs, they launched a very basic version of it
1:16:35when they launched Siri shortcuts,
1:16:36which, was that iOS 12?
1:16:38It was either 11 or 12, anyway, when they did that,
1:16:40they did a very basic version of it
1:16:42that could do almost nothing,
1:16:44like the commands weren't parameterized,
1:16:46so an app, you could like, vend to the system
1:16:49a shortcut that played a particular artist
1:16:51or playlist or whatever, but you couldn't
1:16:53just accept any input, like people would have to create
1:16:55one of those shortcuts for every single artist
1:16:57or playlist they wanted to be able to call up,
1:17:00and that changed in iOS 13, they finally let it
1:17:04basically accept parameters, and so you could just respond
1:17:07to the generic play media intent,
1:17:10and you could even provide the Siri system
1:17:13with a vocabulary of things like the names
1:17:16of the user's playlists, so that way it would be able
1:17:19to recognize that a little bit better,
1:17:21or you could provide it like a list of artists
1:17:23that the user has in their library,
1:17:25and this API is structured, like the data formats
1:17:28are structured, so you can say, for instance,
1:17:30like, all right, this thing I'm telling you
1:17:31is a playlist, or the thing I'm telling you
1:17:34is a band or an album or a podcast,
1:17:38and all those things are separately structured in the API,
1:17:40so the API support is 100% there for them
1:17:43to actually have podcasts be a separate thing,
1:17:46and to be able to say, all right, this is my podcast app,
1:17:48this is my music app, so I'm actually looking forward
1:17:51to that, and Overcast in the current app store version
1:17:55does not support that kind of thing,
1:17:56but the current beta does, and I'm hoping
1:17:59to have it out in the store possibly in like a week or two,
1:18:02so anyway, Overcast will someday support this list,
1:18:05and I'll be very happy when that happens,
1:18:07and I hope they do podcasting separately,
1:18:09'cause I wouldn't expect most people to set Overcast
1:18:11as their default music app, but if they have a way
1:18:14to set a podcast app, which the API support
1:18:16is totally there for, then this could be really cool.
1:18:18- Yeah, this is very cool.
1:18:19- I feel like we're really starved for these features,
1:18:21the default apps thing, what did we get in the recent OS?
1:18:24We could do default mail.
1:18:25- Mail and browser. - Which is exciting, yeah.
1:18:28And then the music one, looking at the story,
1:18:29the fact that the way you do it is not remotely
1:18:33the same way you do it for mail and stuff,
1:18:35it's like, oh, well, if you talk to, hey, Dingus,
1:18:39you can interrogate it about, it will say,
1:18:41hey, what do you want me to use to play music for you,
1:18:43which is nice and everything convenient,
1:18:45that should totally be there, but again,
1:18:47I go back to, girl, general purpose personal computers,
1:18:51we had this super secret technology,
1:18:53which was to define default apps for different protocols,
1:18:56for different URL schemes, for different functions
1:18:58in the system, back in classic Mac OS,
1:19:01it's not rocket science, I mean, it changes with the times,
1:19:04like, you know, URL schemes is not probably
1:19:06the way you wanna do it, but iOS clearly has a notion
1:19:10of a thing that it uses to send mail,
1:19:12a thing that it uses to play music,
1:19:14a thing that it uses to open web pages,
1:19:17that's already baked into the OS,
1:19:19just make it generically configurable,
1:19:21instead of this weird piecemeal doling out
1:19:24of just the minimum we think we can do
1:19:25to avoid antitrust condemnation from the US government,
1:19:29which, honestly, seeing this happen at this point
1:19:32is like, just everything they do from now on,
1:19:33right or wrong, makes us think, oh,
1:19:35the only reason you're doing this is to try not to get,
1:19:38you know, sued into oblivion because of antitrust stuff,
1:19:41right, and really, I just wish they would allow
1:19:45the incredibly powerful computers in our pockets
1:19:47to sort of blossom and just be like a Mac from the '90s
1:19:50and just let me configure my default news reader,
1:19:53my default, like, just let me do it
1:19:55in a straightforward way, and I think the way
1:19:57they did it for Mailier thing is great,
1:19:58like, there are things that you have to,
1:20:01qualifications, things you have to fulfill
1:20:06to be eligible to be the default email application,
1:20:10and as I said ages ago and as people have proven,
1:20:13they'll do it, people will do it,
1:20:15Gmail has configured itself to be the default app,
1:20:18like Chrome to be the default browser,
1:20:20like, nevermind, Chrome isn't really Chrome,
1:20:22iOS, which is a whole other thing,
1:20:23but I just wish they would stop dribbling out
1:20:27these little crumbs piecemeal and just go whole hog
1:20:30and say we have a generic system for defining
1:20:33the default application for all common functions
1:20:35on the phone and a system for you to be able
1:20:37to qualify to be one of those applications
1:20:39and let the user control which one of those applications
1:20:41they wanna use and then Apple's apps have to compete
1:20:43on their merits and not just get by
1:20:45by being the default one, which, granted,
1:20:47is a huge advantage just because it's pre-installed,
1:20:50if that's not enough advantage for Apple
1:20:52and they still also have to say, oh, and by the way,
1:20:53it's super inconvenient to use anything else,
1:20:55that's terrible, just, what we're asking for
1:20:57is a little bit more competition
1:20:59and a little bit more flexibility for people
1:21:01who want to configure their phones the way they want.
1:21:04- Well, I think in all fairness, almost every year at WWDC,
1:21:08we talk about some new API that they have offered
1:21:13or some new capability they've changed
1:21:14so that something that was previously locked down
1:21:17to only Apple's stuff or only them being able
1:21:19to do certain things is then now opened to third parties
1:21:23and they have been knocking down
1:21:25a lot of these walls over time.
1:21:27They were just starting from a place
1:21:29where there were a million walls
1:21:30and they're knocking them down pretty slowly.
1:21:31- Yeah, and sometimes they just knock down a couple bricks
1:21:33in one of the walls and then they think the job is done
1:21:36and it's like, well, I can see through the wall
1:21:38and I can reach one arm through it
1:21:39but it's not really the same as there not being a wall.
1:21:41- Or they give you a ladder to go over the wall
1:21:43but it doesn't actually work
1:21:45and they don't have to use that ladder,
1:21:46they don't even realize how badly it works
1:21:48and you try to use it and you keep falling off
1:21:50and the rungs keep breaking and everything, yeah.
1:21:52- This is a complicated analogy.
1:21:53I was thinking like custom keyboard support, right,
1:21:55which they did and we were all shocked
1:21:57but if they don't maintain that and test all their stuff,
1:22:00it's like, oh, it's there and it's available for you
1:22:03but a whole bunch of bugs happen with it
1:22:05and when you report the bugs,
1:22:06it's like, well, just use the regular keyboard
1:22:07and that bug won't happen.
1:22:09It's like, ugh.
1:22:10- Yeah, exactly.
1:22:11And I mean, God, there's nowhere
1:22:13that I wanna break down the walls more than the watch.
1:22:16Oh my God, the watch is, ugh.
1:22:18But that's the story for another day.
1:22:20(laughs)
1:22:21Why, okay.
1:22:22(laughs)
1:22:23- No, he couldn't help himself.
1:22:24He couldn't help himself.
1:22:26- All right.
1:22:28As I said, I've been wearing the Apple Watch full time
1:22:30for the last few months for reasons
1:22:31and every night, Adam's in bed,
1:22:34we sit down and we watch a little bit of TV
1:22:36and we have some tea
1:22:37and I pour the tea water into the teacups,
1:22:40I pick up my watch to my face
1:22:42and I say, set a five-minute timer.
1:22:45Most of the time, it sets the five-minute timer.
1:22:48Fine, okay, that's the story for another day.
1:22:50Most of the time it works.
1:22:52It pops up a thing and it says,
1:22:55get your timer counting down
1:22:56and there's a button on there that says open timer.
1:22:59Now, no matter what I do from this point,
1:23:01here's what I want.
1:23:03I want my watch that is a computer that is smart
1:23:07to show a timer on the face when one is running.
1:23:12And then for that timer when it's no longer running
1:23:16to not be shown on the face.
1:23:18The iPhone does this.
1:23:21The iPhone has done this for over a decade actually
1:23:24on the lock screen.
1:23:26It's smart.
1:23:27It has the concept that this area on the lock screen
1:23:30that's by the clock and that little area
1:23:33can be used to display high-importance things
1:23:36in a conservative way sometimes
1:23:38but that's a valuable thing that is useful
1:23:41to display that information.
1:23:43On the watch, a timekeeping device,
1:23:47these timing functions of things like timers
1:23:50do not display on the watch face by any reasonable way.
1:23:54The only way you can make it display on the watch face
1:23:56is either to leave the timer app on the watch open
1:23:59as the active app, which we'll get to in a second,
1:24:01or to have it as a complication on your watch face
1:24:05which means all the entire rest of the day
1:24:08that you're not running a timer,
1:24:09you have this complication spot wasted
1:24:11and sometimes it even, depending on the type,
1:24:13it might even say things like set or whatever.
1:24:16So it's not doing a great job at integrating
1:24:21this temporary high-importance thing into the watch face.
1:24:25Secondly, we have an always-on screen
1:24:29for the last year and a half.
1:24:32This is a wonderful feature.
1:24:33This has changed the Apple Watch so much.
1:24:37One of the biggest reasons I am now able to tolerate
1:24:39wearing it full-time is that it has that always-on screen.
1:24:43But when the always-on screen launched,
1:24:45it had this weird behavior that, okay,
1:24:49when you're on a watch face, and that's what's showing,
1:24:52and the screen goes to its half-sleep mode
1:24:55where the screen is still on,
1:24:56but it goes to a less information display mode
1:24:59and doesn't activate as much and everything,
1:25:01when it's in its sleep mode,
1:25:03you see just a dimmed version of the watch face.
1:25:06It's simplified certain things, don't animate,
1:25:09but you're still seeing the watch face,
1:25:11and any data that's on the watch face,
1:25:13like your complications, the date, whatever,
1:25:16that's all still displayed.
1:25:17If, however, you had an app open
1:25:21at the time that the screen went to sleep,
1:25:23it simply displays a blurred version of that app
1:25:26behind a digital clock face.
1:25:28Yet another way I was able to tolerate
1:25:30the Apple Watch full-time now
1:25:32is that I just used the solar face, which is digital,
1:25:34so that the time always looks the same
1:25:36no matter what state my watch is in.
1:25:38I don't have to keep bouncing between
1:25:39their bad analog displays and their digital displays.
1:25:42Sorry, it's just always digital, fine.
1:25:45So anyway, when you have a timer running,
1:25:48you either have to go back to your home screen watch face,
1:25:53which probably doesn't have a timer complication on it,
1:25:56or you can leave the timer app open,
1:25:59in which case, when the screen goes to sleep and blurs,
1:26:04it just shows a blurry version of whatever time amount
1:26:07was left when the screen went to sleep,
1:26:09and it leaves that there indefinitely,
1:26:12until you wake it up, and then you see
1:26:14the actual timer remaining pop in after a second.
1:26:18The screen is always on.
1:26:22When this was a brand new feature a year and a half ago,
1:26:25maybe they didn't have time to really integrate
1:26:29all of the features of the watch
1:26:30into this new hardware capability of the always-on screen.
1:26:34That was a year and a half ago, though.
1:26:36Now, today, I would expect a timer
1:26:40to be able to display live countdown time
1:26:44once per second, like the workout screen
1:26:47can do once per second updates full-time.
1:26:50Why can't the timer do that?
1:26:52Why does it instead show this blurry card
1:26:54of the old time under it?
1:26:55Am I the only person who uses timers on a watch?
1:26:59I can't possibly be, right?
1:27:01Does anybody use this stuff?
1:27:03So I do, and I do it a lot,
1:27:06and I almost always start a timer using the call word,
1:27:11hey, dingus, start a timer for five minutes.
1:27:14But honest to goodness, the amount of times
1:27:18that I'm looking to see the state of the timer
1:27:21is near as makes no difference to zero.
1:27:24I do not care how much time is left.
1:27:26I just care that it has or has not happened.
1:27:28And because of that, none of what you're saying bothers me.
1:27:31I don't disagree with anything you've said.
1:27:33I think you're correct.
1:27:34I think it should work differently,
1:27:35and I think it should work as you describe.
1:27:37But for me, I'm never like, oh, it's 30 seconds left,
1:27:42or oh, how much time is left?
1:27:44And if so, it's so unusual that I'll just tap the watch
1:27:47and go to the timer app or whatever the case may be,
1:27:51which is frustrating, but it's so rare that I do it
1:27:54that it doesn't really bother me that much.
1:27:56- The problem is the way that all the other apps
1:28:01besides workout, the way that they just blur
1:28:03under whatever the digital time is,
1:28:06it's as though the same company didn't make
1:28:09the watch and the timer app.
1:28:11It feels as though this is a bunch of third-party apps
1:28:15working on this platform that has no idea about them
1:28:18and doesn't treat any of them as first-class citizens
1:28:21on the platform except the workout app.
1:28:24And there's a lot of value.
1:28:25I, when I'm doing a workout, I love what the workout app has
1:28:30'cause then I literally can see everything all the time.
1:28:32That's fantastic.
1:28:34Why can't that be applied to a few other things
1:28:36that would be really useful on a watch?
1:28:40And you know what, if you can't support third-party apps
1:28:42that way yet because you're not ready to give them
1:28:44that kind of power budget, okay, I understand.
1:28:47But your own apps, like the built-in timer and stopwatch,
1:28:50like why can't they do that?
1:28:52It seems like, everything with the Apple Watch,
1:28:56it just seems like they have two interns working on it.
1:29:00Like where is the movement happening here?
1:29:03Like why is this smart computer watch so dumb?
1:29:07Why does it not take advantage more of the fact
1:29:11that it is a computer and it has a dynamic screen,
1:29:14it can show whatever it wants to all the time now?
1:29:17Like why are the apps all still so dumb?
1:29:21- I feel like this is one area where I can map on
1:29:24to the departure of Jonny Ive and say hopefully
1:29:26all the people who are super precious about watches
1:29:29have mostly exited the building or aren't in control
1:29:33and we can finally get things like watch faces
1:29:36that don't feel as much need to imitate
1:29:39what a physical watch face could do
1:29:41and instead just fully embrace being computers
1:29:43and then we can get third-party watch faces
1:29:45and all that good stuff.
1:29:46So I'm hopeful that will come down the road
1:29:48'cause it always seemed to me that especially
1:29:49in the beginning of the Apple Watch,
1:29:50Apple was very tied to the idea of it as something
1:29:55is just as, not only just as valid as a mechanical watch
1:29:59but also gaining that validity by imitating the limitations
1:30:04of that form and that is and probably has always been
1:30:08the wrong choice for the watch and we continue to lobby
1:30:10for it to be more like the little computer
1:30:13that it actually is.
1:30:14- Someday.
1:30:15- All right, finally for today before we get to Ask ATP,
1:30:19maybe, we have a story that broke in the last few days.
1:30:24So Dan Riccio, we were wondering to some degree
1:30:29where he's ending up and according to Bloomberg,
1:30:33his new project is as we kind of thought maybe,
1:30:37overseeing Apple's VR and AR headsets
1:30:39and Apple has shifted its team to develop in-house screens
1:30:44and its team to develop camera technology
1:30:47to its chip chief so reading from this Bloomberg article,
1:30:51Dan Riccio is focusing on the company's upcoming virtual
1:30:53and augmented reality devices after he shed his role
1:30:55as the head of hardware engineering according to people
1:30:57with knowledge of the move.
1:30:58Apple has also told staff it is moving the group working
1:31:01on in-house displays and camera technology to Johnny Ceruggi,
1:31:06the executive in charge of processors and cellular modems.
1:31:08The move suggests the company's getting closer
1:31:10to shipping its first devices with fully custom displays,
1:31:13replacing those from outside suppliers.
1:31:15Apple is a facility near its Silicon Valley headquarters
1:31:18that's developing micro LED screens.
1:31:21- So a reminder, micro LED screens are the super cool ones
1:31:23where every little tiny element in the pixels,
1:31:26the little red dot, the little green dot
1:31:28and the little blue dot, each one of those little tiny LEDs,
1:31:31it puts out its own light, no backlight and no organic.
1:31:35These are not organic LEDs so it's not an OLED screen,
1:31:39it's micro LED, at least I think they're not organic.
1:31:41Anyway, micro LED is cool and I'll be excited to see that.
1:31:45Confirmation, or confirmation, a rumor in support
1:31:49of the idea that Dan Riggio is doing the VR headset
1:31:52makes perfect sense and then moving the display
1:31:56and camera stuff under Johnny Ceruggi, the chip guy,
1:32:00I mean, being the big chip guy at Apple right now,
1:32:03it's a pretty good place to be.
1:32:05Reminds me of that funny Intel ad where the guy
1:32:07who invented USB is the big star of Intel, right?
1:32:10- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - Nevermind, they should
1:32:12be throwing food at him for approving the USB-A connector.
1:32:15But anyway, if you're the chip guy at Apple right now,
1:32:19you feel pretty good, you feel pretty good
1:32:20about your job performance, I have to say.
1:32:22Not that you shouldn't have been before
1:32:23because the iPhone chips are phenomenal, right?
1:32:25But just chips at Apple, doing good.
1:32:28And so taking something like displays and camera
1:32:30and putting it under the chip guy, that's gotta be good.
1:32:32Not that Apple's been a slouch in the displays
1:32:35and camera area but mostly they buy sensors from Sony
1:32:38and they buy displays from LG, right?
1:32:41And the whole Apple's in-house display stuff,
1:32:45we heard the rumors of microLED.
1:32:47I think in fact that's the first time I even heard microLED
1:32:49years ago was that Apple was investigating it
1:32:51and then they bailed on it because it wasn't ready enough.
1:32:53But they continued to dig away at that.
1:32:56And I have to think, at least for some of these rumors,
1:33:00the screen, the first sort of Apple-made display
1:33:04that we might have some hope of seeing
1:33:05would be in the glasses, right?
1:33:07But there have been rumors for years about,
1:33:08oh, we're gonna get laptops with mini-LED screens
1:33:12or different kinds of display technology on laptops,
1:33:14maybe an OLED laptop, all sorts of things.
1:33:16But I always just assume Apple would buy those
1:33:17from third-party vendors.
1:33:19But from the rumors, it seems like whatever they're putting
1:33:22in these AR/VR thingies may actually be some displays
1:33:25that you can't just buy off the shelf from somewhere
1:33:28and possibly Apple's in-house stuff is going that direction.
1:33:30And we've talked in the past for a long time
1:33:32about Apple doing its own cell modems.
1:33:34They're getting there, it takes a long time.
1:33:36They'll eventually do it.
1:33:37But I am actually excited about the prospect of Apple
1:33:41either doing its own cameras, as in their own sensors,
1:33:44and/or doing their own displays.
1:33:46'Cause both of those areas are places,
1:33:50with the Tim Cook doctrine or whatever,
1:33:52to own and control all the primary technologies.
1:33:54There's a limit to that.
1:33:55Apple doesn't wanna own maybe the mines
1:33:59where the aluminum come from, right?
1:34:01But they do want to, like, making your own displays.
1:34:05They buy parts from lots of people,
1:34:06and they love being able to buy parts from lots of people
1:34:08because then you can set one vendor against the other
1:34:09and be super demanding and get good prices and so on.
1:34:12But sometimes you do wanna try to do it yourself,
1:34:14like the chips.
1:34:15Great move, Apple doing that yourself.
1:34:16That turned out to be a super great idea.
1:34:18So good they did it across their whole line, right?
1:34:21I think making your own displays is maybe borderline
1:34:24'cause displays is a tough gig
1:34:26and they're kind of a commodity.
1:34:28And I think Apple has done pretty well,
1:34:31essentially buying off the shelf displays
1:34:34or specifying displays like,
1:34:35"LG, can you please make us a 5K iMac display
1:34:37and you'll be able to put it
1:34:38in your own credit monitor too," right?
1:34:40But I am excited about Apple trying to make its own displays
1:34:43even if they're like special purpose displays
1:34:45for the goggles or whatever,
1:34:46just because Apple's got a lot of money
1:34:48and why not try your hand at that
1:34:50because it is definitely a value add,
1:34:51especially for things like VR glasses
1:34:53where the display and the specifics of the display are,
1:34:57A, it's a different kind of display
1:34:59in terms of what features make it good and bad,
1:35:00like when it's an inch from your eyeballs
1:35:02and you're only looking at a portion of it,
1:35:03and B, no one has really cracked that nut.
1:35:06Like the current set of VR goggles,
1:35:10the displays are good,
1:35:12but most people look at them and say,
1:35:14"I could see how this display could be better," right?
1:35:17And so I would love for Apple to innovate in that area.
1:35:19Cameras, I'm less optimistic that Apple's going to come out
1:35:23with something that is amazing sensor-wise
1:35:25'cause it seems like Apple's strengths with the cameras
1:35:26are not maybe the sensor or even the lenses,
1:35:29they're more about the processing,
1:35:31but who knows, like vertical integration,
1:35:33I think it can work out well in both of those areas.
1:35:35So I think this is all good news
1:35:37for things going on inside Apple,
1:35:39and I will be super excited
1:35:40if anything micro-LED comes out of Apple anytime soon.
1:35:44- Well, I got dibs on your $7,000 monitor
1:35:47when you resell it.
1:35:48- They're not gonna come out
1:35:49with a 32-inch micro-LED screen, I don't think.
1:35:52Or if they did, it would cost a lot more than this one.
1:35:54- John, on an infinite time scale, anything is possible.
1:35:57- Eventually, well, that's the problem
1:35:58with display technology is like,
1:36:00God, the alphabet soup of display technology
1:36:02is really getting confusing up to the point now
1:36:05where I think someone, one of the,
1:36:06I wish I could remember these details
1:36:08when I'm just going off the top of my head,
1:36:09one of the TV manufacturers tried to trademark
1:36:12one of the alphabet soup acronyms,
1:36:13but someone, another TV manufacturer
1:36:18already did the actual thing that's that,
1:36:19I think it was QNED, it's very confusing,
1:36:23but these things mean something,
1:36:24like they make up an acronym for a thing,
1:36:26and one company that's not doing that
1:36:29decided they're gonna use the same acronym
1:36:31and trademark it, but your screen isn't a QNED,
1:36:35I forget if it was QNED, but your screen isn't a QNED,
1:36:37so why would you try to trademark QNED
1:36:39for your non-QNED screen?
1:36:41And it's just, it's so, I don't know how consumers
1:36:43try to make hesitages out of it,
1:36:44I have to remind myself three times
1:36:45every time I look at this, you know.
1:36:47All the different quantum dot combined with inorganic
1:36:51or organic LEDs, just, it's a mess.
1:36:54But all that is to say that it's not clear
1:36:58what the next great display technology will be.
1:37:00We may skip over some of these ones
1:37:03that we keep trying to get to work
1:37:04and they don't seem to ship, you know,
1:37:06right now you can get a micro LED display
1:37:09for 100 grand that fills the wall of your house,
1:37:12but we may just skip over micro LED
1:37:15if it turns out one of the other more promising technologies
1:37:17that has even better attributes
1:37:19ends up becoming manufacturable at a reasonable price first.
1:37:22- All right, let's try to power through some Ask ATP.
1:37:26Jordan Cosentino writes, "What are your thoughts
1:37:28"on corporate device management profiles
1:37:30"on personal use devices?
1:37:31"I know the Casey and Marco no longer have jobby jobs,
1:37:33"but I was curious how you felt about this policy
1:37:35"when you did or how John feels.
1:37:36"My company requires that we have MS Teams,
1:37:39"Outlook, et cetera installed in our phones,
1:37:41"which must then be managed by corporate profile.
1:37:43"They will grant a small monthly subsidy
1:37:45"for your cellular plan, but it's not generous.
1:37:47"I talked to IT and while they claim it's primarily
1:37:49"to give the company remote erase functionality,
1:37:51"they said they would only monitor web traffic
1:37:53"related to quote client information, quote,
1:37:56"which really feels like a gross situation.
1:37:57"I could of course buy a cheap side phone just for this,
1:37:59"but the subsidy would not cover a full separate plan,
1:38:02"so it would end up costing me monthly,
1:38:03"and then I would have to carry another device
1:38:04"around with me.
1:38:05"I don't like either option,
1:38:07"but companies forcing management device policies
1:38:09"through bring your own device
1:38:10"really feels aggressive to me."
1:38:12Yeah, I agree.
1:38:15When I most recently had a jobby job,
1:38:19I knew the IT guy really, really well,
1:38:22and I really browbeat him about this.
1:38:25I was like, what is this about?
1:38:27Like, what am I really signing up for here?
1:38:29And his, what he parroted to me anyway,
1:38:32and what I believe to be true,
1:38:33was that no, really, it was just about
1:38:35remote destruction if necessary.
1:38:38Like, if I lose my device, they will fire off a remote wipe
1:38:41just to make sure that nothing private
1:38:43or no corporate secrets get out.
1:38:46And because I knew the IT guy and because I trusted him,
1:38:49I went with it and it was fine for me.
1:38:52If I was in Jordan's situation where it's like,
1:38:55no, no, no, they're gonna be sniffing your web traffic
1:38:57and it seems like they're willing to reach a little further,
1:39:00honestly, what I would probably do is try to use
1:39:03some sort of like web-based Gmail client,
1:39:06or I said Gmail, web-based email client,
1:39:08if possible, or just not check my email on my phone.
1:39:12Like, if this is the way you wanna be, then that's fine,
1:39:15but I'm just not gonna have my email on my phone.
1:39:17And I understand that that's something
1:39:21that can be a very hard thing to sell,
1:39:23but hey, listen, if you want me to have a device,
1:39:26so I can check my email anytime, give me a device.
1:39:29And if you want to take over my device,
1:39:32it should be my option to say thanks, but no thanks.
1:39:36I don't know, Jon, what are you doing about this?
1:39:38- Yeah, I feel like this is one of those things
1:39:39that you should think about and potentially talk about
1:39:42when deciding which job you're going to take.
1:39:45Like, if the company requires you to have a phone,
1:39:49but also won't give you a phone,
1:39:50but then requires that they install this profile,
1:39:53maybe if you talk to the IT person like Casey did
1:39:55and you believe them, you can say,
1:39:57oh no, we're not doing anything bad,
1:39:58but once they get that profile in there,
1:40:00that enterprise profile thing,
1:40:01they can man in the middle all of your traffic.
1:40:03They can do everything they could possibly imagine, right?
1:40:05So you should know that.
1:40:06If this type of thing,
1:40:07if you have any concern about this whatsoever,
1:40:10you should know and ask about,
1:40:12are you gonna do this to me?
1:40:13Because I think that's the worst scenario
1:40:14is like this bring your own device.
1:40:16Hey, you get to use your own phone, isn't that great?
1:40:17Yeah, it's great for the company.
1:40:18You don't have to buy me a phone then.
1:40:20Oh, but by the way, we have to install this profile on it
1:40:22because you have to be accessible by smartphone
1:40:24because of these job requirements, right?
1:40:26Talk about that, find out about it
1:40:27before you accept the job offer.
1:40:29And it's not like you're gonna change corporate policy
1:40:31by demanding it 'cause they'll just be like,
1:40:32all right, see ya, that's the way this company works.
1:40:34But you should know that that's what you're signing up for
1:40:37and decide not to sign up for it if it bothers you.
1:40:39I've been lucky enough at the jobs that I've worked
1:40:41where they insist on having all their crap on your device
1:40:46if it's a device that they give you and pay for, right?
1:40:49But if they don't give you a device and pay for it,
1:40:53then they don't insist that they put crap on your phone.
1:40:56So my personal policy is,
1:40:58it wouldn't probably be a deal breaker
1:41:00'cause anyone who has had a jobby job
1:41:02for any amount of time knows that there's a surprising amount
1:41:05of crap that you'll tolerate.
1:41:06I just talked about all the antivirus crap
1:41:09that's all over my Mac, right?
1:41:11I'll tolerate a lot.
1:41:12I've had a corporate job for 20 plus years, right?
1:41:15You learn to tolerate it.
1:41:16But I really, really prefer
1:41:19to not have any stuff on my phone.
1:41:21I could do more from my phone
1:41:24if I allowed them to install the enterprise profile,
1:41:26but I won't.
1:41:27And so I just simply can't check my work email from my phone
1:41:30and it's fine.
1:41:30Like, I have a work laptop that I can check it from.
1:41:33I could tether it to my phone for internet access
1:41:35if I really needed to, right?
1:41:37But my phone, my preference is to essentially
1:41:40have a personal phone that has absolutely nothing
1:41:42related to work on it.
1:41:43The only thing work-related I have in here is like,
1:41:45you know, some two-factor apps that I can run on my phone
1:41:47that you just download from the app store
1:41:48and they work fine.
1:41:51I think if the two-factor apps didn't work,
1:41:53because I actually do need those apps for my work,
1:41:55I don't know what I would do.
1:41:56Would I buy a second phone?
1:41:57Like, most people don't have the luxury to be able to,
1:42:01the luxury to be able to reject the job
1:42:03because they don't like some nuance of corporate IT policy
1:42:06or the luxury to just have two phones,
1:42:08their day phone and their night phone or whatever.
1:42:10But I would just suggest thinking about this when you go in
1:42:13and if given the choice at all,
1:42:16keep all work stuff away from your phone if you can.
1:42:19Like, if they'll buy you a phone and pay for it,
1:42:21just make that your work phone and then just have it
1:42:23be separate from your personal phone.
1:42:24And I know that seems like it's cumbersome,
1:42:25but it's actually not that bad
1:42:27and you'll have a lot more peace of mind
1:42:29and a lot less terrible corporate malware
1:42:32on the device that you use.
1:42:34- Right, 'cause like, your phone is one of your computers.
1:42:37In many people's cases, it's their only computer
1:42:39or their primary computer.
1:42:40Listeners to this show, it's probably not your only,
1:42:42but I bet it's an important computer of yours.
1:42:44And so reframe the same question
1:42:46as if it were about your computer.
1:42:49Like, would you tolerate your employer forcing you
1:42:54to have certain software installed on your home computer?
1:42:57Probably not, right?
1:42:59And many people, the only computer they have
1:43:01is their work computer.
1:43:03And they make that work somehow.
1:43:05But the more overbearing your workplace
1:43:08is going to be about it,
1:43:10obviously people listening to this show
1:43:12care a lot about their computers probably,
1:43:13and so you would probably not want your workplace
1:43:17to control your home computer that much
1:43:19if they were gonna have this level of control over it.
1:43:22So your phone should be the same way.
1:43:23Your phone is another one of your computers
1:43:25and you should treat it with the same kind of separation
1:43:30and reverence and care that you would treat
1:43:32your home computer.
1:43:33And so I would never, I mean, granted,
1:43:36nobody cares what I think about this,
1:43:37but I would never in a million years
1:43:39let my employer install a controlling profile
1:43:43on my home computer, and in the same way,
1:43:45I wouldn't let them install it on my only phone.
1:43:47And as John said, if they are buying me a phone
1:43:51for work purposes, then I think if they're paying for it,
1:43:54they have the right to control it,
1:43:56as long as they disclose to you that they're doing that,
1:43:57I think then that's fine.
1:44:00But then in that case, I would also choose
1:44:02to carry my own phone.
1:44:03- I think we all agree.
1:44:05Doc Davis writes, "I actually really, really like
1:44:07"this question a lot.
1:44:08"What is your favorite or most obscure media file
1:44:11"that you are proud to have and/or enjoy the most?"
1:44:15- I've mentioned this a few times in the past.
1:44:17The first, I'm gonna mention three really quickly.
1:44:19The first is the concert for Charlottesville.
1:44:22So in 2016, after the god-awful things happened
1:44:24in Charlottesville, Dave Matthews, amongst others,
1:44:27put together a concert with many, many, many
1:44:29different artists, and it was something like six hours,
1:44:32and it happened in UVA's football stadium,
1:44:33and it was free for those who attended,
1:44:35if I'm not mistaken.
1:44:36And it was simulcast online, and using my beloved
1:44:39YouTube DL, I recorded it, and to my knowledge,
1:44:43as last I looked, my recording is the only one
1:44:46that I'm aware of, maybe not the only one in actuality.
1:44:49That is the entire concert, start to finish.
1:44:52And I have hemmed and hawed quite a bit about,
1:44:55you know, should I upload this somewhere?
1:44:56And I'm currently sitting on the conclusion of no,
1:44:58because I don't wanna get yelled at for DMCA stuff
1:45:01and stuff like that.
1:45:03But this concert is a phenomenal concert,
1:45:05and most of my favorite parts of the concert
1:45:09have nothing to do with Dave Matthews at all.
1:45:11It is a phenomenal, phenomenal concert that I don't think
1:45:14exists anywhere else, and it's really too bad.
1:45:16It's really quite unfortunate that it doesn't exist
1:45:18anywhere else, because this is something that I think
1:45:20should be viewable, and potentially for free,
1:45:23or for a donation to a worthwhile charity or something.
1:45:27Very quickly, when I was in college, I was really into
1:45:29Vertical Horizon, who, if you've heard of them at all,
1:45:31you know their song, Everything You Want.
1:45:34They actually started not as a rock band,
1:45:37but as a kind of folksy acoustic duo,
1:45:40and some of their early stuff in particular
1:45:41is really phenomenal.
1:45:43And when I was in college in the early aughts,
1:45:46and this was around the time that Napster was coming out,
1:45:49but oftentimes if you wanted a big collection of media,
1:45:52particularly by the same artist, you would scour the internet
1:45:56for credentials to an FTP server that was public,
1:45:59and in certain cases, you know, people would put up
1:46:02FTP servers where you could just go and leech,
1:46:03or basically download all the stuff on that server,
1:46:06and I did that with some god-awful terrible sound quality
1:46:09but extremely rare Vertical Horizon concerts,
1:46:12and so I have what is probably hundreds of megs of MP3s,
1:46:16which for the time was an obscene amount of content
1:46:18of a very, very early on Vertical Horizon concerts,
1:46:21which I'm sure most of you are thinking,
1:46:23oh my god, you would, but you know what,
1:46:24I like it, so piss off.
1:46:26And then finally, my granddad, my dad's dad,
1:46:30who passed a couple years back, when he was younger,
1:46:34he would occasionally have New York area jazz musicians
1:46:39come into his house or later apartment and play sets.
1:46:43- Oh my god.
1:46:45- And so, yeah, and so dad, who was probably about my age,
1:46:50maybe a little younger than me at the time,
1:46:53he would record these concerts on reel-to-reel,
1:46:57because this was like late '70s, early '80s,
1:47:00and just recently, my dad has rediscovered,
1:47:04I think he has one of the reel-to-reel tapes,
1:47:07but he had also, at some point in the past,
1:47:10had them put on cassette, and even has a video
1:47:13of one of the sets, and so he's in the process right now
1:47:16of digitizing some of these old jazz sets
1:47:19with, I think, Milt Hinton was there, I think Zoot Sims,
1:47:22apparently Zoot Sims was my best friend when I was two,
1:47:25or something like that.
1:47:26So anyways, and maybe I got these names wrong,
1:47:30but the point being, these are concerts
1:47:32that maybe 10 or 15 or 20 people saw ever,
1:47:34and from artists that are mostly dead at this point,
1:47:37and so dad is trying to digitize them,
1:47:40and granted, the audio quality is meh at best,
1:47:43but it's better than nothing, and so dad's digitizing them,
1:47:46and I have already started pitching to him,
1:47:48hey, you really gotta put these on like archive.org
1:47:51or something like that when they're all said and done.
1:47:53I don't know if that's what's gonna happen,
1:47:56'cause it's his, as far as I'm concerned,
1:47:57he might not be interested in it,
1:47:59but I will say, I have channeled my inner Marco Arment,
1:48:02and have convinced him to record off of the cassettes
1:48:05to flack, and then recompress those to MP3
1:48:10or do whatever he wants with them.
1:48:11So that is my inner Marco Arment slash my old school
1:48:14Dave Matthews coming out of me.
1:48:16But all of this stuff, like all of this stuff,
1:48:18I think is worth sharing, and it bums me out
1:48:21that there's no obviously safe way to share
1:48:26all of these things, because especially with the concert
1:48:30for Charlottesville, these are all modern artists
1:48:32who are still touring and record, well,
1:48:35the whole thing's not being equal.
1:48:37They're touring and recording and whatnot,
1:48:39and I'm sure that I would get hit with DMCA
1:48:42takedown requests or something like that.
1:48:43And it sucks, 'cause I would love to share this,
1:48:46but I can't, and it bums me out.
1:48:48So I've totally railroaded this question, I apologize.
1:48:51Marco, what do you have other than 94 terabytes of fish?
1:48:54- Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of fish.
1:48:56And I definitely consider my fish collection
1:49:00to be my most important music that I have.
1:49:03It's certainly what I listen to the most,
1:49:05but it's not really obscure.
1:49:07Even though allegedly no one likes them,
1:49:09they're selling out stadiums somehow.
1:49:11(laughing)
1:49:13So anyways, and all of these, this is all concerts
1:49:18that I downloaded from them, legally, officially,
1:49:21that are almost all still available, if not all.
1:49:25So it's not super rare.
1:49:27I have the collection of the various older,
1:49:31usually deceased relatives.
1:49:34I have videos of grandparents here and there.
1:49:36Even my dad, my dad died in 1984.
1:49:41I was two.
1:49:42I barely remember him.
1:49:46And when you die in 1984, there's not a lot
1:49:49of media captured from you.
1:49:51I think, I mean, all I have of him is a few pictures,
1:49:57and I think there was a two or three second,
1:50:00he's in the background of one video.
1:50:03This whole side of the family had one video taken
1:50:06at some big party once, and that was it.
1:50:10I have no idea anything about what he was like.
1:50:14If you see somebody in a video, you could see
1:50:17the kind of person they are, you could see
1:50:18a little bit of their personality.
1:50:19I don't really have that with him.
1:50:21What I do have, though, is one tape of one concert
1:50:27that he, on the side, he was a musician,
1:50:29and he played guitar and sang with people.
1:50:31And nothing like that anybody would have heard of,
1:50:35nothing big, he just kind of played some local stuff,
1:50:37mostly cover songs and stuff.
1:50:38But I have one cassette tape of him singing.
1:50:42- Oh, that's awesome.
1:50:43- And he isn't even on every song.
1:50:44It's him and two other guys, but he's on four songs.
1:50:47And a while back, I finally got to digitize that
1:50:50in a pretty reasonable way, and it's a terrible,
1:50:53I mean, it's just like, this was not recorded
1:50:54on professional gear, this was recorded
1:50:56on a cassette recorder that was stuck
1:50:58probably at the foot of the stage of the bar
1:51:01they were singing in.
1:51:03This was not a professional deal at all,
1:51:05and the tape was then kept in a dusty shelf
1:51:07for the next 20 years until I could finally
1:51:10get it and digitize it.
1:51:11But I have a capture of that.
1:51:15Not even, again, not a good capture, but I have that.
1:51:18And it's all warped and warbly and everything,
1:51:20but I have something, and that's,
1:51:22considering how little I have of him,
1:51:25that's significant.
1:51:27- That's so cool.
1:51:28- And then besides the family and sentimental stuff
1:51:32and the massive amount of fish, as we've just mentioned,
1:51:34the other category of precious media files I have
1:51:38are things that are not available at all anymore.
1:51:43And a lot of this is just due to crappy DRM
1:51:46or rights changes over time.
1:51:48So one example is I have this fun crash test dummy's
1:51:52live performance that I think, I mean, jeez,
1:51:56I must have bought it in 2006 from the iTunes Music Store.
1:52:01And every time the iTunes Music Store would advance
1:52:05in some way, it would drop DRM, or it would add things
1:52:09like iTunes Match, this album was never eligible for it.
1:52:13And so it's still DRM'd, locked down,
1:52:17it's no longer even in the iTunes Store to even go
1:52:20look for it, to rebuy it or anything like that.
1:52:22Like, you can't stream it, you can't iTunes Match it.
1:52:26And I have, I think, like three or four albums
1:52:29that have this kind of status in my collection
1:52:31of just like, through whatever rights changes over time
1:52:34have happened, no one seems to have the rights
1:52:37to sell or give this to me anymore.
1:52:40And so my one copy that is DRM locked
1:52:43to iTunes's old DRM system is all I have of it.
1:52:47So yeah, there are a few things like that
1:52:48that are just kinda, you know, these weird little relics
1:52:53of DRM past.
1:52:54- Yeah, you know, it's funny you bring that up.
1:52:57I don't think I told this story on the show,
1:52:59maybe I didn't, I apologize, but this past Christmas,
1:53:03I had a real hankering for my Guilty Pleasure Christmas
1:53:06album, which was recommended to me, actually from a friend
1:53:10that I made on Tumblr, of all places.
1:53:12I don't know if you've ever heard of that website, Marco,
1:53:14but it's pretty cool. - A little bit, yeah.
1:53:16- And anyway, it's Family Force 5's Christmas Pageant,
1:53:19which by any reasonable metric is a truly terrible
1:53:22Christmas album, but I just have such an affinity for it
1:53:25and I love it just so darn much.
1:53:27And I was looking everywhere for it,
1:53:29'cause it fell off of Spotify a few years ago,
1:53:31it fell off of the iTunes store, if I'm not mistaken,
1:53:34I might have that wrong, but I think that's correct.
1:53:36And I was looking everywhere for it.
1:53:37I ended up reaching out to the friend
1:53:39that pointed me to this originally,
1:53:42and asked him like, hey, would you mind just like
1:53:44sending it to me, 'cause I couldn't buy it anywhere,
1:53:46like even physical media, I couldn't find any,
1:53:49it was ridiculous.
1:53:50And as it turns out, I had a copy of it in iTunes Match.
1:53:53So of all the places I thought to look,
1:53:55my own frickin' music library, I didn't look in,
1:53:59and it was there all along.
1:54:00And I think I had bought it off iTunes
1:54:02when it was available then, and I just never,
1:54:06I never did anything with it, I never thought to look there,
1:54:10and I feel so stupid because of it.
1:54:11But anyway, that's another great example
1:54:13of something that I can't, I mean, I could get back,
1:54:16I'm sure, and I mean, I kinda did by asking the friend,
1:54:18but I can't really get that back,
1:54:21and that's another great example,
1:54:22like your Crash Test Dummies album that I really love,
1:54:25and it really bummed me out that I hadn't been able
1:54:27to hear it for the last couple of years
1:54:29since it fell off Spotify.
1:54:30Jon, what do you have?
1:54:32- All your stories of like digitizing like family tapes
1:54:35and stuff and making you feel guilty,
1:54:36'cause I have a bunch of tapes
1:54:37that I'm supposed to be digitizing,
1:54:38and they're just sitting in a pile somewhere
1:54:40waiting for me to get around to it.
1:54:42- I will say, by the way, if they're video tapes,
1:54:44just send them to one of the dedicated services,
1:54:46that's so much easier and better
1:54:47than what you can do yourself.
1:54:49- Yeah, and I've done a bunch of that stuff in the past
1:54:52and have used services for it,
1:54:53the ones I'm talking about now are actually just audio tapes.
1:54:55My mother did this thing where she would like,
1:54:58we had, you know, the cassette recorder,
1:55:01the long skinny one with the buttons
1:55:02on the front and the handle?
1:55:04- Of course. - You know what
1:55:04I'm talking about?
1:55:05Yep, anyway, she had one of those,
1:55:07and she would record, she would start recording
1:55:10and just talk to us kids when we were like, you know,
1:55:12could barely, and then just record what it was that we said,
1:55:16and so it's a bunch of stuff like that.
1:55:18The only one I remember,
1:55:19'cause I'd heard a bunch of times,
1:55:20was when she was telling my sister and I
1:55:22that we were gonna have a new baby brother,
1:55:24she recorded that whole conversation.
1:55:26- Oh, that's so delighting.
1:55:27- That is one of the tapes,
1:55:28I have no idea what's on all the other ones,
1:55:30but anyway, I should digitize those,
1:55:32but that's not really what this question's about,
1:55:33I think it's more about like the obscure media
1:55:35as in like things that are not recordings
1:55:37of your own family or like your family pictures,
1:55:39which of course I have a bazillion of
1:55:41and are very precious.
1:55:43For obscure media, like thankfully,
1:55:47most of the stuff that I would have answered
1:55:49this question about is no longer that obscure.
1:55:52For like for years and years, for example,
1:55:54lots of like the extremely famous,
1:55:56like the most well-regarded anime movies
1:55:59like Miyazaki movies were actually really hard
1:56:02to get anywhere except on a plastic disc,
1:56:04and that was a shame.
1:56:05Luckily, we don't live in those days anymore.
1:56:07So back when I had all of them
1:56:10because I had all the plastic discs
1:56:11and I had ripped all the plastic discs,
1:56:13it was kind of cool to have a digital collection
1:56:15of Studio Ghibli movies, but guess what?
1:56:17Now they're on streaming services,
1:56:19so you don't have to worry about it
1:56:20and it's much better for them to be on streaming services.
1:56:23So I'm glad that those things are no longer obscure.
1:56:25Ditto for all like the other anime series and stuff,
1:56:29like they're so commercial that finally
1:56:31the people who own the rights to them said,
1:56:32"You know what, we can license these to Netflix or whatever
1:56:36"and don't just make them available on plastic disc."
1:56:38Same thing for like, like when I first went to college,
1:56:44I was super excited to be in the city of Boston
1:56:45to be able to go to for the very first time
1:56:48a store that would sell YouTube music
1:56:51that was not actually ever released.
1:56:54Like it's like fish,
1:56:55but not officially released by YouTube at all.
1:56:57Instead, it's just recorded from the soundboard somehow
1:56:59and smuggled onto a CD-R and you can buy it, right?
1:57:02So I have a bunch of YouTube bootlegs,
1:57:04which was super exciting for me to have
1:57:06and would blow people's mind,
1:57:08but like I could pull out different concerts
1:57:09and different live versions of things
1:57:11and tracks that were never released.
1:57:13But YouTube is a pretty popular band
1:57:15and that stuff is really easy to find now.
1:57:16So it's not particularly obscure.
1:57:19I think the only thing that still qualifies obscure
1:57:21is the things that aren't super popular, right?
1:57:23So I have a lot of video game music in my collection
1:57:27and the video games the music is about or inspired by
1:57:30are not rare at all, but video game music,
1:57:33even in the big music stores,
1:57:35even on the big streaming services,
1:57:37you'll find 50 versions of a song,
1:57:39but not the one version I have.
1:57:41And I don't even know where it came from.
1:57:42It was like an MP3 I downloaded in the Napster days
1:57:44from some obscure thing that just went out of print
1:57:46and no one ever bothered.
1:57:47Like again, who knows what the rights are?
1:57:49Maybe they didn't even license it from Nintendo
1:57:51when they did it, or maybe it was like a college orchestra
1:57:53that did a version of a song.
1:57:55And that's why I still use iTunes Match
1:57:58'cause they can't match that stuff.
1:58:00Like, you know, I upload it to the cloud,
1:58:03hopefully they don't destroy it.
1:58:05And I keep, you know,
1:58:06we talked about keeping your installation going.
1:58:08My iTunes library installation for the most part,
1:58:11the like the official one, if iTunes mismatched something,
1:58:16hopefully they didn't overwrite the local files.
1:58:18And especially for these obscure ones
1:58:19where iTunes Match has no idea what it is,
1:58:22those are just the original MP3 files from when I got them.
1:58:25And as far as I'm aware, that is the only copy of that song.
1:58:28And I have no idea where I would get a replacement for it.
1:58:31And like, and a lot of them are like,
1:58:32oh, I can find you 20 versions of that song.
1:58:34You can, but not this version.
1:58:36I don't even know where it's from
1:58:37because the ID3 tags are screwed up
1:58:38'cause they probably got it from LimeWire or something.
1:58:41So those are probably my most obscure, most precious files.
1:58:44And although, speaking of iTunes Match,
1:58:47the other thing that is annoying me
1:58:48is the one where iTunes does think it can match it.
1:58:51Remember the bad old days when they're like,
1:58:52oh yeah, I know, I totally have that song, it's real popular.
1:58:54And it's like, no, no, you've got the radio version.
1:58:57It's different.
1:58:57- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:58:59- That drives me nuts,
1:59:00especially when I find out about it later
1:59:01playing the song, I'm like, wait,
1:59:03that verse doesn't sound right.
1:59:04What version of this file is this?
1:59:06Like, even with things like U2 album,
1:59:09like I have all the U2 albums like on CD, right?
1:59:11Sometimes the digital files, I don't know,
1:59:13like it's either the single version
1:59:15or like they did a different version in digital.
1:59:17I'm like, that's not right.
1:59:18I remember that happened with like Mysterious Ways
1:59:20or something from OctoBaby.
1:59:22And like this file, this digital store
1:59:24sold me this copy of this file.
1:59:27And it's not right.
1:59:28Like they changed the timing of this verse or whatever
1:59:30and just to make sure I wasn't crazy.
1:59:31I'd pull out the CD and put it in
1:59:33back when the Mac had a CD player and a CD player app.
1:59:36And I would play it, I'm like, yeah, it's different.
1:59:37And then I would re-rip it and put it in there
1:59:39and then fight with iTunes Match about it.
1:59:40So obscurity is some protection of that.
1:59:44iTunes Match, I think is better behaved
1:59:46about that bad stuff now.
1:59:47But it does, speaking of obscure media files,
1:59:50I'm glad to have, I actually am kind of glad
1:59:52that I have all those plastic disks.
1:59:53And unlike all my CD-Rs, I hope the actual CDs
1:59:56that were stamped with little pits in them
1:59:58are still readable.
1:59:59So worst case scenario, I could spend a month
2:00:01re-ripping everything 'cause I do actually have
2:00:03all this crap on plastic disk.
2:00:05Except for the obscure stuff that I downloaded
2:00:06from LimeWire, so that needs to not be destroyed.
2:00:09- But even all the obscure music piracy stuff
2:00:12from those early Napster, et cetera, days,
2:00:15I have so many great things from those days
2:00:16that were never actually released.
2:00:18And this is one of the problems with modern
2:00:21streaming music environments, that you can get
2:00:25everything that's ever been released.
2:00:27But only everything that's ever been released.
2:00:30And that's not everything.
2:00:32And I have so many awesome Weezer promos and stuff
2:00:37that were trickling around the early music piracy scene
2:00:40like when I was in college.
2:00:42That's how I met my wife is I offered to give her
2:00:44a CD-R full of all the Weezer stuff I had found.
2:00:47There were so many great gems that were passed
2:00:53around that way.
2:00:54And on modern streaming services, maybe half of them
2:00:58might be there because the band actually released them.
2:01:01But much of it is not.
2:01:03And so if you happen to have anything like that,
2:01:04or heck, my whole world of fish.
2:01:07Part of the reason why I don't use Spotify
2:01:09is that using Spotify as a live fish listener is terrible.
2:01:13Because you have to either try to do,
2:01:16I think they do have a feature where you can upload
2:01:18your own stuff, but it sucks.
2:01:20So no one really does.
2:01:22Whereas with Apple Music, it integrates my iTunes library
2:01:26in with the luxuries of a streaming service
2:01:29with Cloud Sync and everything like that.
2:01:31So that's one of the reasons why I'm an Apple Music person.
2:01:34Even though I recognize that actually for most music
2:01:36it's worse than Spotify.
2:01:38But for my particular needs of having this massive
2:01:42collection of songs that are mostly not released
2:01:44through major labels, then that actually works
2:01:48a lot better for me.
2:01:49- I just remember the days, I know I've told the story
2:01:52a thousand times, so I remember the days sitting
2:01:54in my dorm at Virginia Tech and seeing I was downloading
2:01:56an MP3 from somebody else at about a megabyte a second
2:01:59and being like, "Nope, they're on campus."
2:02:00- Yep. (laughs)
2:02:01- That's the good stuff right there.
2:02:03And if I remember right, it's been so damn long,
2:02:05but if I remember right, then you could drill into
2:02:08that particular user's library and so you could just go
2:02:11basically leeching all the stuff you liked from them
2:02:13because it was so darn fast 'cause they were
2:02:15somewhere nearby.
2:02:16Ah, that was so delightful.
2:02:19- All right, and then finally, Anonymous writes,
2:02:21is it rude to put another app's name in your own
2:02:23app's search keywords?
2:02:25Asking for a friend.
2:02:26And I'm gonna steal your thunder, Marco.
2:02:29I read this Ask ATP shortly after I listened to
2:02:34Under the Radar 210, Thinking Like a Business,
2:02:36which I thought covered these sorts of things really well.
2:02:38But would you like to kind of give your short,
2:02:40short version of this?
2:02:41- So putting your apps, putting other apps' names
2:02:43in your app's search keywords is officially against
2:02:48the rules in the app store and it's kind of a gross
2:02:50thing to do.
2:02:52That being said, lots of apps do it and most of them
2:02:56don't ever get busted for it because you as the external
2:03:01viewer or as the owner of those apps' names,
2:03:04you can't necessarily tell for sure what search keywords
2:03:08another app has listed.
2:03:10You can search for those keywords and see what turns up
2:03:12and sometimes you can kind of deduce based on certain
2:03:16operations like well this sure looks like it probably
2:03:18has my app's name and its keywords or whatever.
2:03:21But you mostly can't tell.
2:03:23So it's mostly just left to that developer.
2:03:26It's like between them and Apple, what's in those keywords?
2:03:28And Apple doesn't look very consistently.
2:03:31So the result is many apps will put stuff like that,
2:03:35they'll put all their competitors' names in their keywords.
2:03:38So it's not great.
2:03:40Many of the other ones, even if they can't get in the
2:03:44keywords, they, I'm sorry, I've been sitting on this
2:03:49for so long.
2:03:50I know it's not nice to talk about your competitors.
2:03:53But I just want, just keep it between us.
2:03:56You listeners and me here, just don't tell anybody.
2:03:59Just if you're an Overcast user, I want you to get
2:04:02the same joy and amusement I have gotten out of reading
2:04:06the description for Cast Box.
2:04:09I want you to go look up Cast Box in the app store
2:04:11and expand that full text description and look at the
2:04:16bottom two thirds of what's in that description
2:04:20and how creatively they have managed to spam the names
2:04:24of all of their competitors and every popular search term
2:04:28somebody might be searching for in the app store
2:04:30into their description in an incredibly,
2:04:33like totally fraudulent way.
2:04:35So this claims to have podcasts such as The Overcast
2:04:41by the Seattle Times, sports podcasts such as MLB Network,
2:04:45the Chicago Audible, the Overcast Podcast,
2:04:49Google Cloud Platform Podcasts, the book from Stitcher,
2:04:54Ted and Audible, Luminary from luminary.fm.
2:04:57These are Waze and Waze Out Radio, Serious XM Entertainment.
2:05:00These are all allegedly popular podcasts that are
2:05:04available in this app store.
2:05:05It's incredible.
2:05:06- This is something.
2:05:08Like this is so unabashedly bad.
2:05:12It's actually somewhat beautiful in its badness.
2:05:15Like oh my gosh this is.
2:05:17- It makes me wonder why they didn't just say this app
2:05:19is a lot like these other popular apps that you may have
2:05:21heard of and then just listed the apps.
2:05:23Because that at least would be A true, it's like those apps.
2:05:27It's like the related and B just straightforward.
2:05:29Like I'm sure there are lots of podcasts with the words
2:05:32Stitcher and Overcast in the titles but you're not
2:05:35fooling anybody with that litany of podcasts.
2:05:37So just say it.
2:05:39This app is a lot like these other apps you may have seen
2:05:41colon Overcast, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts,
2:05:43Google Podcasts, Audible.
2:05:45- Well I suspect that App Review would stomp on them
2:05:48for that but App Review isn't going to stomp on them
2:05:51for this thinly veiled.
2:05:53- But why would, because you're not putting it in the
2:05:55keywords, you're just describing your app.
2:05:56And in the course of describing your app you could say
2:05:59this app is a lot like these other apps you may have
2:06:01also heard of which I don't know.
2:06:04Who knows what the actual rules are.
2:06:06And you bring this up Mark and you say it's actually
2:06:08against the App Store rules.
2:06:09I had no idea it was against the App Store rules.
2:06:11Now I'm super mad about, you know, so I have two tiny apps
2:06:15on the Mac App Store that sell essentially zero copies.
2:06:18And yet my one or two competitors slash clone apps,
2:06:23not only do they put my app's name in their keywords
2:06:27or description somewhere, they put my name.
2:06:29- What? - My last name.
2:06:30If you search for Syracuse you will find my apps
2:06:33because I'm the developer of them and you'll also find
2:06:36my quote unquote competitors apps.
2:06:38And I feel like, all right, putting your other apps names
2:06:41in your keywords or description, I thought it was
2:06:45within the rules but if it's against the rules
2:06:47they shouldn't do that 'cause it's against the rules.
2:06:48But secondarily, forgetting the rules, I feel like,
2:06:52I'll use this word again, I think the last time I used it
2:06:54was when we were talking about Samsung, it is dishonorable.
2:06:57Right, yeah.
2:06:58It may not be against the rules, it may be against the world
2:07:00it may be wise, it may not be wise, it may be smart,
2:07:02it may not be smart but it sure as hell is dishonorable.
2:07:05- Yeah. - Right?
2:07:06But at least it's the app.
2:07:08When you put the author's name in your keywords,
2:07:11now some person who is searching, I wanna go find
2:07:14John's apps and they type Syracuse into the search field,
2:07:17you know they're not looking for a generic app
2:07:20that does this function, they're looking specifically
2:07:23for my apps and so I feel like you should not put that
2:07:26in the keywords.
2:07:27Like if they're just searching for my app
2:07:28'cause they want an app that does what my app does, sure.
2:07:29By all means, do your dishonorable thing and get your app
2:07:34in the mix because how else would they find your app
2:07:36'cause it's not a common function but my last name
2:07:38being in the keywords really burns me up.
2:07:40And like for a while I thought they weren't gonna let me
2:07:42put my last name in my keywords but that's,
2:07:45the handful of people, thank you very much,
2:07:46who found and bought my apps, they probably found it
2:07:49by searching for my last name rather than searching
2:07:51for my poorly named actual apps so.
2:07:53- Which are? - I wish, yeah.
2:07:55You put the links in the show notes,
2:07:56that's how people buy things.
2:07:57Switch glass and front and center but just search
2:07:59for Syracuse on the Mac App Store.
2:08:01There's only two apps, buy 'em both, they're great.
2:08:03- Yeah and I feel like this whole category of like
2:08:07dishonorable but like possibly advantageous
2:08:11app store optimization, ASO, which is a term that
2:08:14angers me just as much as the web,
2:08:17what was the web version again?
2:08:18- SEO. - SEO, yeah, that's right.
2:08:20Yeah it's like, it's the same thing as SEO.
2:08:22It's like there's a few things that are just good ideas
2:08:24and a bunch of weird tricks that are kind of dishonorable
2:08:27and hacky and possibly against the rules.
2:08:29And so you should do the things that are the good ideas
2:08:32but the ones that are in the vague area,
2:08:34you probably shouldn't do.
2:08:35And this is one area where like I don't care if it gets me
2:08:395% more downloads or whatever.
2:08:41I wanna know that I can sleep at night and I want there
2:08:45to be no reason for anyone to ever look at anything
2:08:48I'm doing and say that's unfair or that's against the rules
2:08:51or they're getting away with something
2:08:52they shouldn't get away with.
2:08:53I want no reason for Apple to ever reject my app
2:08:57for anything that's stupid little stuff like that.
2:08:59I don't wanna give anybody any ammo to use against me.
2:09:02Like I wanna know that I'm doing everything on the up and up
2:09:05and not having to hide anything,
2:09:08not hoping Apple doesn't notice something
2:09:11or someone else doesn't notice something.
2:09:12Stay on the honorable side of things
2:09:14and don't do this stuff.
2:09:16The reality is this problem though is never going to actually
2:09:20really be solved unless Apple decides to dramatically
2:09:25shift its enforcement abilities
2:09:27or the sophistication of its search engine.
2:09:30And I don't see those things happening anytime soon.
2:09:34Anyway, thanks to our sponsors this week,
2:09:36Squarespace, ExpressVPN and FlatFile.
2:09:39And thanks to our members who support us directly.
2:09:41You can join at atp.fm/join.
2:09:44Thanks everybody, we will talk to you next week.
2:09:46♪ Now the show is over ♪
2:09:52♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪
2:09:54♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
2:09:57♪ Oh it was accidental ♪
2:10:00♪ John didn't do any research ♪
2:10:02♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪
2:10:05♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
2:10:06♪ Accidental ♪
2:10:08♪ Oh it was accidental ♪
2:10:09♪ Accidental ♪
2:10:10♪ And you can find the show notes at atp.fm ♪
2:10:15♪ And if you're into Twitter ♪
2:10:18♪ You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S ♪
2:10:23♪ So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M ♪
2:10:29♪ N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M ♪
2:10:31♪ S-I-R-A-C ♪
2:10:34♪ U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-S-A ♪
2:10:36♪ It's accidental ♪
2:10:38♪ It's accidental ♪
2:10:40♪ They didn't mean to accidental ♪
2:10:43♪ Accidental ♪
2:10:44♪ Tech podcast so long ♪
2:10:48- I have a question.
2:10:51- Shoot.
2:10:52No, it's not time for your question.
2:10:53Do the one before that first.
2:10:55- I don't wanna talk about that right now.
2:10:57I'm very down on it.
2:10:57- Just do it.
2:11:00It's not gonna be long.
2:11:01We just want, say it with me everybody, a pup date.
2:11:05- Oh yeah.
2:11:06- Give us a pup date.
2:11:07What's going on with the pup?
2:11:09- I don't wanna do a pup date.
2:11:10I'm not feeling good about the pup right now.
2:11:14- Oh, come on.
2:11:15What's going on?
2:11:16You and Faith are killing me with the puppy sadness.
2:11:17What in the world is going on with both of you?
2:11:19I mean, you have less of an excuse.
2:11:21You have two kids.
2:11:22You've done this before.
2:11:25- Not with a freaking dog.
2:11:26- You've been in the shit, you know, literally.
2:11:29- Yeah, you're in it now.
2:11:31- I mean, Faith, I can understand.
2:11:32If you've never had a kid before and you get a puppy,
2:11:34you may not know what you're in for,
2:11:35but you should have known what you're in for.
2:11:36And honestly, puppies, anyway.
2:11:38- Oh my God, I love Faith's dog.
2:11:39It's so cute.
2:11:40It looks like Hop's dog when he was little.
2:11:42- Yeah, the pup date is like, everything's fine-ish.
2:11:47Let me put it to you this way.
2:11:48We have started the process of talking to a dog trainer
2:11:52that will train us how to train the dog.
2:11:55So things were going reasonably okay,
2:11:59and then there were some developments.
2:12:02They were going reasonably okay
2:12:03in the sense of housebreaking,
2:12:05because she had been doing really well
2:12:07with smacking some bells that we had put
2:12:11on the door that we used to take her out.
2:12:13I don't recall if I'd said this on the show or not.
2:12:15And she'd been doing pretty well with that.
2:12:17And she would maybe have like one small accident every day,
2:12:21every other day, something like that, probably every day.
2:12:24But for the most part, she would be asking to be let out,
2:12:26and she would do her thing, and that was that.
2:12:29Over the last week or so,
2:12:32she seems to be less interested
2:12:34in bothering to go outside to pee.
2:12:37Thankfully, we have not yet had a number two inside,
2:12:41but she looked at me as she was in the hallway,
2:12:46nowhere near the door where we go out,
2:12:48and I was standing next to her.
2:12:49And she looked at me, squatted down,
2:12:50and basically with her face,
2:12:54you could tell she was just thinking to herself,
2:12:56"Hey, now what, asshole?
2:12:57"What you got?"
2:12:58- That's not what she's thinking.
2:12:59Stop personifying dogs.
2:13:01I guarantee you that's not what the dog was thinking.
2:13:03Dogs are not little people.
2:13:05They're not taking revenge on you.
2:13:06They're just like little babies.
2:13:08- Like intellectually, I know that.
2:13:10- Chances are, usually when you're in this kind of
2:13:14adolescent phase of housebreaking,
2:13:17most accidents are not the result of willful disobedience.
2:13:20They're usually the result of confusion.
2:13:22- I mean, it's not like you have a cat.
2:13:23- No, yeah, no.
2:13:24Cats would do it willfully, yeah, yeah.
2:13:26- Cats will poop in your shoes 'cause they're mad at you.
2:13:28- Yeah, they're the worst.
2:13:29But chances are she probably is simply just confused
2:13:34about where the right places and times are to go.
2:13:36- But she shouldn't be because she's so clearly got it.
2:13:39- Or she's in distress.
2:13:41And the Belle thing, I'm gonna caution you,
2:13:43there's a lot of anti-Belle wisdom out there,
2:13:46and I mostly agree with it.
2:13:48But there's no super secret trick to training.
2:13:52It's all about consistency above and beyond the level
2:13:55that a human should be expected to be consistent.
2:13:57Like that's what it is.
2:13:58That is the work of house training your dog
2:14:02is relentless dispassionate consistency
2:14:07to even more of a degree than you had to do with your kids
2:14:09'cause your kids are smarter than the dog, right?
2:14:11And so they have a little brain
2:14:12and you can eventually communicate with them and reason.
2:14:15And that will never happen with a dog.
2:14:16You will never learn to talk, right?
2:14:18So you always have to operate at this level where it's like,
2:14:21but I don't wanna take it out now.
2:14:23And it just went out and doesn't really need to go out.
2:14:25And you need to become like hyper attuned
2:14:27to the dog's needs and schedule,
2:14:29subsuming everything that you wanna do in your life
2:14:32to an even greater degree than you did with your kids
2:14:35to super consistently do this thing
2:14:38and power through the years of the dog's life
2:14:41when it actually can't physically control this
2:14:43to the degree that you want to get to the other side of it,
2:14:46which honestly isn't that far.
2:14:47It's like 18 months or 12 months or whatever.
2:14:50- Oh God, don't tell me that.
2:14:51- Probably less.
2:14:52You will get to the other side of it.
2:14:54If you've been super consistent during that time,
2:14:56you will get to the other side
2:14:57and you're set for the rest of that dog's life.
2:14:59- Well, and so to that end,
2:15:01like there was definitely an accident that was my fault.
2:15:04Like she had just taken a big nap.
2:15:06- They're all your fault.
2:15:06- Well, okay, no, no, that's fair.
2:15:08That's fair, that's fair.
2:15:09But you know that.
2:15:10- They're at least all your problem.
2:15:11They're also all your fault 'cause it's a dog.
2:15:14- No, you're right.
2:15:14I think they are all my fault,
2:15:16but like one particularly egregious time
2:15:18when she had just taken like a big nap
2:15:20and she had woken up and I was in the middle of something,
2:15:23Aaron was in the middle of something
2:15:24and I thought to myself,
2:15:25you should probably take her out and I didn't.
2:15:27- Every time I wake up from a nap, yep.
2:15:29Wake up or eat.
2:15:30- Yep, and so I didn't and then she rang the bell
2:15:33and then I went to walk over to her to take her out
2:15:37and in the time I was walking the 10 paces over to her,
2:15:41she squatted and peed everywhere.
2:15:43And that was clearly my fault.
2:15:44Again, like yes, I know everything's my fault,
2:15:46but like particularly that time
2:15:47because she clearly should have gone out immediately
2:15:50and I had waited a few minutes to try to test like,
2:15:53oh, let's see if she'll tell us, which to her credit,
2:15:55she did, but she didn't do it with enough time
2:15:57to actually get her out the door.
2:15:59- No, don't test your dog and say,
2:16:00let's see if she'll tell us.
2:16:01It's not, that is not what you wanna be doing.
2:16:05It's just relentless consistency of serving the dog's needs,
2:16:08rewarding for doing what you want,
2:16:09which is they go outside, they get a treat,
2:16:11they come back in just over and over again.
2:16:14It feels maddening and it feels like
2:16:16you're living your life for your dog.
2:16:18And like I said, even more of a way
2:16:21than you did with your infant, which seems impossible
2:16:23if you have kids, it's like,
2:16:24how could I ever pay more attention?
2:16:26But it's more of like a mindless,
2:16:28just serving the needs of the dog
2:16:30'cause the dog cannot serve its own needs.
2:16:32And the reward of that relentless consistency is
2:16:35the dog was all set.
2:16:36The reward for doing it with your kids
2:16:37is they become rebellious teenagers and hate you.
2:16:39So that's great, but they do eventually leave the house
2:16:43and get a job and stuff.
2:16:44So it's pluses and minuses.
2:16:45- Yeah, and remember, at the end of the day,
2:16:47dogs are tubes.
2:16:48Stuff goes in one end,
2:16:51it eventually comes out the other end.
2:16:53There's only so much control that they have
2:16:55over that process, especially when they're this young.
2:16:57- 'Cause they don't choose when they eat, right?
2:16:59And they can't choose how well they can hold it in
2:17:02when they're very young pups.
2:17:03So you just have to be taking them out way more
2:17:06than you think and rewarding when they do it
2:17:07and just consistency.
2:17:10And you're gonna mess up a few times.
2:17:11It's not like if you mess up once you've ruined it, right?
2:17:13That's what I wanna say to people.
2:17:14They're like, oh, it's just like,
2:17:15if you have like one accident a day is too much,
2:17:17like you should work on that.
2:17:18But if you, like, I remember I put in my Google Calendar,
2:17:21but I could go back and find it.
2:17:23I would put pee events in my Google Calendar
2:17:25at a certain point, because when I was,
2:17:27yeah, you know, house training Daisy,
2:17:29because I was at the point where I'm like,
2:17:31we've been doing this, you know, I was on sabbatical, right?
2:17:33I've been dedicated, I was dedicating my whole life
2:17:34to this dog.
2:17:35I feel like we should be getting on the other side of it.
2:17:37And it would see, we'd go days and days
2:17:39and everything would be fine.
2:17:40And then we'd have a pee accident.
2:17:41And it was so disheartening.
2:17:42And so I started putting events in my calendar
2:17:44just so I could see is the gap
2:17:46between pee accidents increasing?
2:17:48And guess what?
2:17:49Eventually there was just no more pee accidents ever.
2:17:51And that was like years ago, right?
2:17:52So you will get on the other side of it,
2:17:54but it's disheartening when it's just consistency,
2:17:57learning what to do.
2:17:58Don't do things like testing the dog and like,
2:18:01let's see if they'll tell me how to get out.
2:18:03Or, you know, the dog needs to learn how to hold it.
2:18:05These are not good strategies.
2:18:07No.
2:18:08- It's not, I shouldn't have phrased it that way.
2:18:10What I was trying to figure out is like,
2:18:13is she putting this together at all?
2:18:16And because I--
2:18:18- Yeah, that's not how the dogs work though.
2:18:19It's not, there's not gonna be a light bulb moment
2:18:21where the dog just suddenly figures it out.
2:18:23It's just gonna be, it's just routine.
2:18:25It's just, they're just little love machines.
2:18:28They just do a thing and you just gonna,
2:18:30you're gonna program them through repetition.
2:18:31I'm trying to think of like computer stuff
2:18:33where you would like program it by repeatedly doing a thing
2:18:35and like wearing a groove in.
2:18:37That's what you're doing with your dog.
2:18:38- Yeah, and so like that,
2:18:40like the accidents are disheartening.
2:18:41And like Aaron said to me just before I came up to record,
2:18:44the thing that's frustrating is,
2:18:46I felt like we were making progress
2:18:48and then we've either plateaued or regressed
2:18:50and that's extremely disheartening.
2:18:52And I probably have unfair and unreasonable expectations,
2:18:57which is part of the reason why we are trying
2:18:59to engage a dog trainer,
2:19:01which by that I really mean a people trainer.
2:19:03But nevertheless, it's very disheartening
2:19:06when I feel like we were making some pretty solid progress
2:19:09and then all of a sudden we've just hit a wall
2:19:12and that's too bad.
2:19:13But the real issue that's really starting to frustrate me
2:19:17is that it's like when the kid starts crawling
2:19:21and suddenly the world is bigger and that's bad
2:19:26because there's more world to screw up.
2:19:29Penny has very consistently learned
2:19:32that she's capable of jumping on the couches
2:19:34and we don't want her to for various reasons.
2:19:36And yes, I know we're gonna lose that fight,
2:19:38but she knows full well she's not supposed to be up there.
2:19:42I'm absolutely convinced she knows
2:19:43she's not supposed to be up there, but she doesn't anyway.
2:19:46Which in and of itself is okay, but like, Aaron--
2:19:49- You think she knows she's not supposed to be up there,
2:19:51but what she probably knows is,
2:19:52hey, if you wanna play a fun game where the human chases you,
2:19:54a good way to get that started is to jump on the couch.
2:19:57That's more likely what the dog knows than,
2:19:59oh, I'm not supposed to be on the couch
2:20:01because the concept of a place where you're not supposed to go
2:20:04is not communicated in the ways you think it is to a dog.
2:20:07Also, there's the overriding factor,
2:20:10like maybe she knows that she's not really supposed
2:20:13to be up there, but then you sit down on the couch
2:20:15and she really wants to be with you.
2:20:17- And I totally understand that,
2:20:18but we clearly prevent her from getting up there
2:20:21when we're up there and she loves to be up there
2:20:23when we are not there.
2:20:24- Couches are comfortable.
2:20:26- Yeah, they really are. - Yeah, they're comfortable.
2:20:28And John, I think your point about getting attention
2:20:30is possibly fair, but we're certainly not showering
2:20:33good attention on her, not that we're cursing her out
2:20:35or anything, but it's clear that this is now,
2:20:38well, it's clear to a fellow human it's not what we want.
2:20:41Perhaps it's not clear to her.
2:20:43Again, engaging a dog trainer, by that.
2:20:45I mean, people train her.
2:20:46- The clarity of communication is so important
2:20:48'cause you might be thinking that you are communicating,
2:20:52like if she jumps on the couch and you shoo her off,
2:20:55you might think she's learning
2:20:56you aren't allowed on this couch.
2:20:58What she might actually be interpreting from that is,
2:21:01they're mad at me for some reason.
2:21:03Let me jump up here and visit them and see if I can,
2:21:05like I wanna be with them, let me jump up there,
2:21:06oh, they're mad at me for some reason.
2:21:08- Or more likely, this is the best game ever,
2:21:10I wanna play this as much as I possibly can.
2:21:12- Right, exactly.
2:21:13- Because puppies love to play and so that's how,
2:21:17it's distinguished from playing in your mind,
2:21:19is it distinguished from playing in her mind?
2:21:20And on the dog trainer thing,
2:21:23I never actually engaged a dog trainer,
2:21:24but we did a lot of research about it,
2:21:26just to tell you, it's kind of like,
2:21:28most of your kids seem like they were better
2:21:30than my pale children, but at a certain point,
2:21:34you start being like, is there something wrong
2:21:36with my child/dog, I need to engage a professional,
2:21:39and we did so much research, or I did so much research
2:21:41on dog trainers, 'cause we're in the exact same dark hole
2:21:44that you're in, it's like, it seems like it's never
2:21:45gonna work and I'm out of doing wrong.
2:21:47- Yep, that's me.
2:21:48- And it's hard to find good dog trainers,
2:21:51because especially with dogs, also with children,
2:21:53but especially with dogs, you will find lots of dog trainers
2:21:55that tell you that you essentially need to punish your dog
2:21:58and physically abuse them to maintain dominance
2:22:00and all this other crap, and basically,
2:22:02it's actually hard to find dog trainers
2:22:04that don't have some aspect of that.
2:22:06So if your dog trainer tells you at any point
2:22:08to start choking your dog with something,
2:22:10get a different dog trainer.
2:22:11- No, that's fair.
2:22:12- Or it is a weird noise thing,
2:22:14there's a whole lot of bad advice out there.
2:22:16- Yeah, anything that punishes the dog
2:22:19will not work out for you.
2:22:21I sent you the YouTube video, Kiko Pup,
2:22:24that lady does some great dog training stuff,
2:22:27and there's a bunch of other people who do,
2:22:29I forget what they call it, but positive only training
2:22:31or whatever, I always show people Kiko Pup,
2:22:33because her dogs essentially will make tea for you.
2:22:36Like they are the best trained dogs you've ever seen
2:22:38in your entire life, the things she has,
2:22:39she does them in competitions and everything.
2:22:42You have, these dogs do things that boggle your mind,
2:22:45and she did every ounce of that training
2:22:47without punishing any of those dogs once,
2:22:49and she's got dogs of all shapes and sizes
2:22:51and all different breeds, so anyone thinks like,
2:22:53well, if you really wanna train your dog to behave,
2:22:55you're gonna have to choke it out sometimes.
2:22:58Like no, you actually don't, and let me show you
2:23:00the best trained dogs, the best trained five dogs
2:23:02you've ever seen in your entire life doing things
2:23:04that will make your brain explode, like sitting quietly
2:23:08three feet from the side while another dog is trained
2:23:11and given treats, and they don't move an inch
2:23:13the entire time and standing up on their hind legs
2:23:15and twirling and circling and going between people's legs.
2:23:18And if that's all possible, with everything from a Chihuahua
2:23:21to a sheep dog, without any kind of
2:23:25punishing the dog whatsoever, there is no excuse whatsoever
2:23:28except for machismo and toxic masculinity
2:23:32and just general venting of frustration
2:23:34for you to engage in any kind of training that involves
2:23:37menacing your dog or physically dominating your dog
2:23:40or choking your dog or playing a loud sound
2:23:42that your dog hates or doing anything like that.
2:23:44Just say no.
2:23:46(beeping)