0:00:00Next thing you're gonna say, "Oh, I still use PHP," or "Oh, I still use Objective-C, huh?"
0:00:05Oh, God, let me tell you about PHP. Oh, my God.
0:00:08Actually, all kidding aside, I wasn't planning on talking about that tonight, but since I/you have brought it up,
0:00:13I'm genuinely curious what the issue is. And the problem is, I don't know enough PHP to really be able to contribute to the conversation.
0:00:21Save it for the show.
0:00:23This is the show.
0:00:24This is not the show.
0:00:25Get on board. Buckle up, Jon.
0:00:27Oh, my goodness.
0:00:28We're not following the format, Jon.
0:00:29Yeah, buckle up.
0:00:31So, what is the issue with modern PHP? And somebody, I don't remember who it was, but somebody had conjectured, you know,
0:00:37maybe it's for better testing or something, which could be, but again, I don't really know enough about what you're seeing,
0:00:44nor what I'm talking about when it comes to PHP, to be able to pass judgment.
0:00:48But what is good PHP to Marco, and what makes modern PHP not good?
0:00:54When PHP first was a thing, like in the, I mean, I think it came out in the late '90s,
0:01:00I remember first seeing it becoming a thing early 2000s was like really when it really got going.
0:01:06And it became very popular, and it got an immediate, very bad reputation.
0:01:12And part of that was well deserved.
0:01:14You know, there's that wonderful website that somebody wrote that says like PHP is a fractal of bad design,
0:01:19and it goes through a million different things about why.
0:01:21And yeah, PHP was like a kind of cobbled together mess of multiple different styles of things
0:01:27that from a very long time ago by, you know, not the most language nerdy of people.
0:01:33And so it really has a lot of, you know, odd or bad design choices.
0:01:38But, you know, as we said with Chris Latner, like if you don't know what those things are in your language of choice,
0:01:44you don't know it well enough.
0:01:46Like every language has things like this.
0:01:48You know, some maybe a few more than others, and PHP certainly doesn't do great unlike the design front.
0:01:52But it's not a bad language, and there's lots of wonderful solid code you can write in it.
0:01:57And I've made half of my living writing PHP code.
0:02:01Like everything I've done in my career has been, for the most part, has been backed by some kind of PHP web app,
0:02:07or it was some kind of PHP web app.
0:02:09So, you know, this is an area that I'm very familiar with.
0:02:12And over time, what has been considered like, you know, good or standard PHP code has changed.
0:02:21Back in those early days, before the language even had, you know, official object-oriented support,
0:02:26it was written very much kind of like in, kind of similar to how probably bad Perl was written back then.
0:02:33It was like everything was kind of like inline code mixed with markup that was being kind of templated out
0:02:39as it was being generated from the web server, and it was very much like a template language.
0:02:44You would have PHP code intermingled with a web page.
0:02:48If you've ever dealt with like an old WordPress template, you've seen the style that was of the time forever ago.
0:02:55And over time, it has been, they added really good object-oriented support, you know, a long time ago,
0:03:03back in like PHP 4 and 5, and really by the time PHP 5 came around, they had ironed out almost all the major shortcomings
0:03:11of object-oriented support. So it was like, you know, first-class stuff.
0:03:14So you could write really well-structured, clean code very easily as a PHP 5, and that was, geez,
0:03:21probably 14 years ago or something. It was a long time ago.
0:03:25And since then, the style of what was considered like good PHP code, the style of code you would find
0:03:32if you searched for a pre-written library of some kind, became like the worst stereotype of Java you could possibly think of.
0:03:42Like I don't even know if actual Java programmers write code this bad, but if you can think of like,
0:03:48how would Mike Judge write a Java programmer code? Like how would he satirize this for Silicon Valley?
0:03:57Like how would, what's the worst possible stereotype of Java programmers?
0:04:02It's all these like huge, deep class hierarchies for no reason.
0:04:09It's like the only programming book anybody's ever read is that stupid Gang of Four book that has all these patterns in it
0:04:14that are wasteful of everyone's time and code. And it's just this huge, like complex mess of just classes
0:04:23and getters and setters and subclasses and subclasses and subclasses and factories and all this,
0:04:28and generators and all these things that just like, you know, this just needs to like hash a string.
0:04:34What are you doing? Why is all this necessary? And the reason I'm getting all mad about this now
0:04:39is because Apple changed the protocol for sending push notifications a while back, and I've not adopted it yet.
0:04:47And they set a deadline that they're going to shut down the old one in, I think this fall, in November, something like that.
0:04:54Part of the work that I'm doing during the quarantine where it's kind of, I'm not getting a lot of like deep programming done,
0:05:02and that's not, you know, my family's fault, it's just like I'm not in the mood.
0:05:06And so I'm not getting like a lot of iOS coding done. But I'm taking this time to do like administrative stuff,
0:05:11server stuff, fixing server-side bugs, improving processes, upgrading some of the things on my servers that I've been putting off,
0:05:17upgrading that really need to be updated because they're really old, stuff like that.
0:05:20One of the things I wanted to tackle was this push notification thing.
0:05:24The new system Apple uses, it requires a certain kind of hash, it's one of those like ECDSA?
0:05:33Yeah, that with SHA256, and this is something that is not easily generated with stock PHP.
0:05:41And so there's all these things with like this Java web token or JSON web token JWT,
0:05:46with like, it has to authenticate with this thing. So I'm looking for like, alright, how do I generate this thing?
0:05:51Now, the way most programmers solve a problem of how do I generate this hash that this API needs,
0:05:59is they look for a library that already has it and they just blindly install it.
0:06:04And it doesn't really matter what it is or how complicated it is or how big or slow it is.
0:06:10There could be any code in the world in there, they're never going to look at it.
0:06:13There could be malicious code, there could be creepy code, there could be bad code, they're never going to look at it.
0:06:17So everyone just installs a package and adds it to their list of package manager scripts,
0:06:22and their app gets a megabyte bigger with 40 new files, and they call it a day, right?
0:06:29That's not how I like to do things. I just need to generate this hash.
0:06:33There's already a lot of open SSL and built-in hashing functions.
0:06:37Maybe there's some way I can generate this hash with a lot less than 40 files, right?
0:06:42Maybe I can do this in like a 15 line function somehow, if I could just figure out what exactly,
0:06:48how exactly to get this, what exactly to do here.
0:06:50This was tricky, because usually this involves, all right, I don't know how to do this yet,
0:06:55and PHP has very good documentation for most of its stuff, but even reading through a lot of documentation,
0:07:00when you're dealing with edge case stuff, like cutting edge open SSL calls,
0:07:06this is not going to be well documented, and it wasn't.
0:07:10So I had to resort to my last resort, having to read other people's library code to see how they do it.
0:07:19Normally when I'm in my PHP world, I'm writing my code with zero contributors.
0:07:28It is all my code. The only thing in this that is not my code is like the Stripe library for processing payments from ad buyers,
0:07:39which that's isolated and actually pretty old at this point, and I trust them to not mess around,
0:07:44and I don't want to mess around with payment stuff, and the built-in PHP functions.
0:07:48That's it. I don't run anyone else's libraries. I don't run anyone else's, I use S3 for some things.
0:07:53I wrote my own S3 functions, because I needed like two of them. It was super easy.
0:07:56I didn't need some giant thing, right?
0:07:58If I'm going to have to make this certain kind of hash for this push notification authentication token,
0:08:03can I just make a function that does this myself?
0:08:06I don't even use someone else's framework. I use my framework that I wrote, that I've been evolving for like 15 years.
0:08:13It's my framework, so I know everything it's doing when something is not working the way I want to.
0:08:19Not only do I know exactly where it is and how to get at it, but I can change it if I need to.
0:08:24Anything about my framework, I have full control over.
0:08:26Normally, I'm in this happy little world where I don't need to be exposed to the rest of the PHP universe.
0:08:32Every so often, I will have something like this where I need to go out there, venture out into the world
0:08:40with my cloth bag on a stick walking down the highway, venture out there to see what are other PHP programmers doing here.
0:08:49Every time I do this, it's like I'm looking at a different language.
0:08:53It's so different from the way I write. The way I write PHP code is very simple object hierarchies,
0:08:58mostly C-style functions and general processing, not using a lot of the newest cutting-edge features.
0:09:07Especially not using namespaces. If you see modern PHP code, they use the backslash character as the namespace separator.
0:09:14Now you see backslashes everywhere. It's very confusing for a programmer to look at that.
0:09:18Everyone's using this Composer package manager and all these frameworks that I don't use.
0:09:23It's like if there was a Ruby programmer who really didn't like Rails and was just still writing Ruby without ever seeing Rails.
0:09:32If you go and look for any kind of code out there, you're like, "Well, why is it all Rails?"
0:09:36Or in my case, I don't like using jQuery for everything whenever I have to write JavaScript stuff.
0:09:41I don't like to run jQuery. I don't like to rely on this giant third-party library when most of what I write in JavaScript now
0:09:50is supported by very easy built-in browser functions. JavaScript's built-in functions have gotten really good over the last few years,
0:09:56and you don't need jQuery for a lot of stuff anymore.
0:09:59Whenever I can write something that can use the built-in stuff, like the querySelectorAll kind of stuff, I just use that directly.
0:10:05I don't like to use frameworks if I don't have to. Anyway, so man, when I venture out to the world of PHP,
0:10:11and I try to figure out, "All right, this library can generate these hashes, allegedly. How does it do it?"
0:10:19First, you go and you're like, "All right, well, this, first of all, is not just a couple of files.
0:10:27It's an entire GitHub repo with 40 files, at least 10 of which are metafiles, things like package manager description files and manifests and stuff like that.
0:10:38And then you see source and tests and all this stuff. And eventually you find the source files where they're allegedly doing the code.
0:10:44And you go in, and it's like, "All right, well, now there's hashing and classes and combining and everything."
0:10:50And there's all these subdirectories, and each subdirectory has four files in it at least.
0:10:54And you're diving and you're driving and you're driving, and you're like, "Where the heck is the actual code to generate this hash? How hard can this be?"
0:11:02And you find one file, and it's just like, "Okay, this is actually just a subclass of a subclass of a subclass,
0:11:08and this entire file consists of four getters and setters that all they're doing is returning instance variables."
0:11:15Okay, that's nothing. That's an entire file of like 30 or 40 lines of nothing. It just bloat.
0:11:22And then you go to another file and you're like, "Okay, well, let's see what the superclass of this is, how is it calling this?"
0:11:27And that one is full of 40 or 50 lines, and they don't do anything either.
0:11:31They're just, it's just passing data in and out. Like getters, setters, creators, factories, destroyers, whatever they are, it's nothing code.
0:11:39It's overhead. It's templating. It's BS. You look at these files, and this library that's like 40 or 50 files in total,
0:11:49and it's hundreds of lines of code, actually contains very little like meaningful code. There's almost nothing to it.
0:11:56But it has all this structure on top of structure on top of structure and overhead and this like formality that something like this does not justify.
0:12:03Anyway, so after a day I had it down to 30 lines.
0:12:06In one, oh, in one function, because it's one function.
0:12:10And it turns out that there's almost nothing to what I wanted to do, and it's documented nowhere.
0:12:17And the responses in Stack Overflow and everything are all just like, "Oh, just install this library."
0:12:21It's like, no, that's, we have amazing hardware these days. We don't need to use it all for everything.
0:12:28We don't need to use all the memory and all the disk space and all the GitHub repo space. We don't need to use it all.
0:12:36We can do things simply. I just, I'm really happy I don't work with other people.
0:12:43This is one of those opportunities we have to make Marco even more depressed as he dips his toe into slightly more modern practices.
0:12:50Two things to make you more sad. Well, one of them, I don't know, you made me neutral about.
0:12:55But the idea that jQuery is what everybody's using as the big library that blows their JavaScript is maybe a little out of date.
0:13:04And the second thing is, would you like to know how modern people pronounce what you're just discovering as JWT?
0:13:11Do I want to know? You do not. I actually don't know either, to be honest. Well, you don't do modern server-side development.
0:13:18Not anymore. It's pronounced JOT. What? As in J-O-T? Because people didn't want to say JWT.
0:13:27I personally like saying JWT and I'm perfectly fine with it, but other people did not like it.
0:13:31So the community decided, without consulting me, obviously, that we're all going to pronounce it as JOT.
0:13:36So enjoy that. I don't even know what to say about that.
0:13:41I feel like I'm not even a programmer. I feel like I'm just some guy who happens to write code for my job,
0:13:48but the way the rest of the world does this job is so radically different from the way I seem to do it,
0:13:53I feel like I don't even fit in here. Not only do I feel like I would be pretty unhappy working in most modern software development teams,
0:14:02but I think I'd be fired. Or I wouldn't even get the job in the first place. Because I don't work this way.
0:14:08I don't think this way. I don't think it's good. I would not do it well if I was forced to.
0:14:14And I feel like there's just so much unnecessary overhead. I always wonder, when I hear some stat,
0:14:21like we learn that some company like Twitter has a thousand engineers for their iOS app. You hear something like that.
0:14:26And I always think, what do they need all those people for? But then I see the way people write code these days,
0:14:32and I'm like, oh my god, there's so much overhead. They need all these people to maintain and create
0:14:38and process and deal with this huge amount of BS that we're all writing to justify ourselves existing in this profession
0:14:47and telling ourselves this is all worth it and necessary because one time there was a bug because somebody didn't do this.
0:14:52And it's like, is it really worth all this?
0:14:56Well, so I think what we're potentially angling into is the philosophical discussion about unit testing again.
0:15:04And I can't speak for the specifics of this code you looked at. I didn't see it. Even if I did,
0:15:08I probably wouldn't be able to understand it because again, I haven't written PHP since 2006.
0:15:13And when I did it, it was barely functional at best. So I am not the judge of these sorts of things.
0:15:19But one of the reasons you could see that sort of bloat is to have a bunch of different places wherein you could plug in
0:15:27fake versions of other code so you can unit test that code.
0:15:31So for those who are not developers, think of it like you wanted to test out a car, right?
0:15:37Well, if you want to test the engine, you don't want to have to connect it to a transmission and all the other things that are downstream from the engine.
0:15:46You just kind of want like a fake transmission or something that you can just plug in in its place.
0:15:51Or perhaps an even better example is the other side of the coin.
0:15:54If you're testing the transmission, you don't want a full engine to test the transmission.
0:15:57You just want like a fake one, like an electric motor or something to test.
0:16:00That'll spin the transmission just enough so you can test it.
0:16:03And in my experience, a lot of times when you see this bloat of classes is because a developer, for better or worse,
0:16:10I'm not necessarily saying it's better, but perhaps a developer decides, "Well, I would really like to be able to unplug and uncouple these two things
0:16:19so I can substitute one in and test the other."
0:16:22And when that sort of thing happens, you have to have many different levels or layers, if you will, such that each layer is testable.
0:16:30Now, if I'm Marco, I would say, "Well, why do you need to test all these layers?
0:16:33I don't have any of these layers and my code works. Why bother?"
0:16:36And you're not really wrong.
0:16:38I don't disagree about the value of modularized testing, like what you're describing.
0:16:44Where I think people get it wrong is they make those modules too granular a lot of the times.
0:16:49In this analogy, it's like, "All right, we need to build a transmission. First, we need a screwdriver.
0:16:54Now, we need to have a screwdriver testing machine.
0:16:58First, we need to have a machine that makes a screwdriver.
0:17:01Then we need to test it to make sure it always makes screwdrivers.
0:17:03Then the screwdrivers that get produced need to be placed in a screwdriver testing harness first
0:17:08to make sure they work as screwdrivers before you can actually use them as screwdrivers."
0:17:11It's like, "Okay, move up a couple orders of magnitude."
0:17:14That's what we need to do.
0:17:16It's not that structure or testing or this kind of stuff, it's not that this stuff is bad.
0:17:22It's that people apply their practices or their design patterns so blindly
0:17:28and they never question, "Do we need to do this for this level at this time?"
0:17:32There's so much just unquestioning blind following of rhetoric
0:17:37and of other people's past wisdom in our industry that there's not enough people who are saying,
0:17:43"You know what? Let's actually think about this. Let's actually evaluate this honestly.
0:17:47Are we ever going to need this? Does this deserve this level of complexity?
0:17:52Does this problem need this complexity? Does this function need to account for all these different possibilities?"
0:17:59If that happens, the computer's on fire or something.
0:18:03If that happens, something else is so seriously wrong.
0:18:06Or, "Do we need to accommodate for all 17 hashing functions if we're only ever going to use one?"
0:18:11It's stuff like that that people are not asking these questions enough.
0:18:15There's such this dogma-driven approach.
0:18:21"Well, we need to do this because it's better.
0:18:23We need to do it this way because it will someday maybe be necessary.
0:18:27We need to do this because once there was a bug somewhere that we hit as a result of this not being done,
0:18:33so now we have to do this every single time for the rest of time."
0:18:36Some of these things are good practices, but they all have costs.
0:18:41It's so common for programmers to totally ignore the implementation and ongoing maintenance costs
0:18:50of some cool technical thing that they think they should do.
0:18:54That stuff adds up so much over time that we end up being crushed under the weight and complexity of things that should be simple.
0:19:05Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's tough, though, right?
0:19:09Because on the one side, you're completely and utterly correct.
0:19:13We shouldn't just blindly take the teachings of those who are older than us.
0:19:19But at the same time, how often do the three of us snicker when some hotshot startup like Twitter, when it was brand new,
0:19:27tries to do something with some new tech because Ruby on Rails at the time was new, if I'm not mistaken, or newish?
0:19:32And it all falls on its face because they decided to use the new hotness and not the old and tried and true stuff.
0:19:38So it's a give and take.
0:19:40And as I'm getting ever older, granted I'm working by myself now, but when I still actually worked with people,
0:19:47I would find it frustrating when the young whippersnappers would be like, "Well, why are we doing it this way?"
0:19:52Well, because I've lived it. That's why.
0:19:54And so I don't disagree with you, Marco. It's a tough thing even internally to myself.
0:19:59Like, where do I say, "No, I've lived this. This is the way it needs to be."
0:20:03And where do I say, "No, actually, you're right. We should rethink this."
0:20:06I presume, Jon, actually you probably have some more eloquent or coherent thoughts about this.
0:20:11I was just going to say that a factor in this discussion may be that PHP may not be the kind of language that attracts the wisest programmers.
0:20:21The present company accepts it, I'm just saying.
0:20:24There is something to that.
0:20:26I mean, part of the reason why PHP has such a bad reputation is that it was such an easy beginner's language to learn for so long
0:20:34that a lot of beginners would use it, and you'd see a lot of beginner code as a result.
0:20:40Before PHP, that role was filled by Visual Basic.
0:20:43Like, in the late 90s, Visual Basic was the thing that programmers mocked as a terrible language, but that newbies used in great volume.
0:20:52And it was possible, granted not easy, it was possible to write decent Visual Basic code.
0:20:58The language really fought you in a number of ways, but it was possible.
0:21:02And people did.
0:21:04But a lot of people who were very new to programming and not very good at it yet wrote in that language.
0:21:09And so it got a reputation for being a bad language.
0:21:11PHP was the exact same way.
0:21:13It's really, you know, PHP was so many people's first programming language, just as a result of the job market and how easy it was to run
0:21:21and what was in fashion in the boom of web development years of the early 2000s that a lot of people learned that first.
0:21:29And so you'd search for tutorials, you'd blindly plow through and copy and paste and have really unstructured bad code in PHP.
0:21:38And because the language had such a really horrible, rough start in the sense of language design and advancement there,
0:21:46there was no central authority really that was showing any kind of leadership whatsoever about what is good PHP code, how do you structure this.
0:21:53And there was no dominant framework for most of PHP's lifespan.
0:21:58It didn't have something like Rails where, like, alright, pretty much you're going to be using this if you're going to be using a framework in this language.
0:22:03And the framework can enforce a certain project structure and code layout and stuff like that.
0:22:08PHP didn't have that really.
0:22:10They had this weird zend company and this zend framework, but nobody ever used that.
0:22:14And that came along too late anyway.
0:22:16For the most part, most of PHP's real structure and renaissance has happened much more recently, like in the last five years.
0:22:24For a language that's been popular for about 15 years, that's pretty much missing the boat.
0:22:30But anyway, PHP has a lot of problems, but you can write really good code on it.
0:22:36And I think my code is alright.
0:22:38I don't think it's the best code in the world because it's just for me, so it's not well documented at all or anything like that.
0:22:44But it runs really solidly and it is possible to write extremely good, extremely fast, low maintenance, high availability code in PHP.
0:22:53I just wish anyone else's PHP code has ever been usable to me.
0:22:57Part of it is cultural because if you look at the culture of the language, you see a little bit of that...
0:23:05I don't know, the charitable way to put it would be a flexibility about adopting features of other languages.
0:23:13And a less charitable way would be a thirst to have what other languages have.
0:23:17So if you look at the PHP language itself, it's like, "We don't have this and not some other language does.
0:23:22We should add that." And they just add it with the first thing that jumps in their mind, whether it be OO or namespaces or whatever.
0:23:28And no one is like, "Alright, so we want to have namespaces. That seems like a thing I might want, but how can we best add them?"
0:23:33It's like, "No, just add them." Same thing with all the objectorians and stuff or whatever.
0:23:36So you end up with a language and a culture that is... The philosophy is, "We can do that too."
0:23:42And in some respects it's kind of pragmatic of like, "Well, who cares? I don't want to debate the perfect way to do the thing.
0:23:48Just add the feature."
0:23:50And so you end up with a language and a lot of features that don't really work well with each other, and you end up with a culture that says,
0:23:54"We all have all that stuff too." So if someone arrives and says, "I want to make a library and I want to do it in what you consider to be a Java style or whatever."
0:24:03They have an idea in their head of what "good code" is, and maybe they're not that experienced, but they just know about all these new cool features.
0:24:11They learned about object-oriented stuff and everything's going to have 20 class hierarchies using multiple inheritance or whatever.
0:24:17And they just bang it out and it suddenly, accidentally becomes popular.
0:24:22Then now, when you go looking for a library that does a thing, it's like, "Oh, this is the best known PHP library for doing cryptographic stuff."
0:24:31And you look at the source code and you're like, "This is the popular library that everybody's using?"
0:24:35And it's true in Perl too. A lot of times there'll be a library that becomes popular over time and you look at it and it was written in a different era of Perl.
0:24:44So if you look at the source code, it's like, "No one would ever write this this way now. Why did it occur to someone to write it this way then?"
0:24:50It's like, "Well, it was just a moment. It was a fashion." And in PHP, it's compounded by the fact that the language itself looks like that.
0:24:56Like, "Why does PHP have this thing?" Well, at the time it was considered important that it have that feature and it was important that it had it quickly, and so here's what we've got.
0:25:03The bigger picture, as you noted, is just how is other people's code, that whole thing, and the fact that you're used to working alone and not having to deal with that.
0:25:11But on the other hand, you're very used to dealing with the annoyance of other people's code when you work on Apple's platforms because most of the code in your apps is code that you did not write,
0:25:19and you have to deal with it, and their APIs sometimes are broken and they're weird and there's different errors of APIs depending on when they were written.
0:25:25And some are straight C and they're weird and there's the core foundation stuff, which is its own weird thing, and then there's Objective-C and now there's the new Swift stuff.
0:25:32And you survive that, like you complain about it, but you work in that world, so I think if you had to get a "real job" you would deal with it the same way you deal with working on Apple's platforms.
0:25:42Like, "Well, this is a fact of life. The code can't all be mined from top to bottom when I write my iOS app because that's just not how the world works, so I'll just have to deal with what I have to deal with."
0:25:52In the PHP world, thus far you've been able to say, "I can just use PHP plus my own code," but depending on what you're writing and what the environment is, that may not be feasible.
0:26:01If you were writing a much bigger, much more complicated application in PHP, you would be forced much sooner to look to third-party code, because either you wouldn't want to or flat out couldn't write all the code you needed.
0:26:12So, for example, if you needed to do some complicated cryptographic stuff and you didn't just need that one hash function, you're not going to write your own cryptographic library.
0:26:19It's just too much of a hassle. You would just find a reasonable library and use it and grit your teeth, and that's what everyone else does.
0:26:25I'd be fired immediately.
0:26:28Maybe for other reasons, but, you know.
0:26:30I wouldn't last a week in a regular job anymore.
0:26:33Too much fisherman's friend in the office.
0:26:36Creating a toxic work environment, literally.
0:26:39I don't wish you to have to get a real job ever, really, but I can't help but wonder if the thing that would be your downfall is your new boss saying, "Okay, I'd really like you to do this," and you look and you just blink.
0:26:59No.
0:27:01No, I think I'm done here.
0:27:03That's it.
0:27:05What if I don't?
0:27:07The key to having a real job is that you usually can't actually afford to do that unless you want to spend your entire time interviewing for jobs, which is its own special hell.
0:27:16Yeah.
0:27:18Oh, my goodness. All right, so you're half an hour in. You want to start the show?
0:27:22Tried to save it.
0:27:24We should do some follow-up, and that begins with some retro gaming follow-up.
0:27:30First of all, I wanted to say thanks to the people who wrote about enjoying the last episode.
0:27:34I thought it was one of my favorites from recent memory, and I think that you two probably did as well.
0:27:41I really enjoyed it, and thanks for all the kind words.
0:27:43A few bits of follow-up.
0:27:45A whole bunch of people pointed us/me to three different pieces of software/hardware that I was -- most of which I was familiar with, but I didn't think to bring up at the time.
0:27:55The first one is OpenEMU.
0:27:57OpenEMU is an emulator for the Mac, for Mac OS, and I have used it in the past.
0:28:05I didn't mention this on the show, but I've used it in the past, and it's very, very good.
0:28:10The problem I had with it at the time was that the only controller I had that could even vaguely work with it was a Switch Pro controller.
0:28:18For reasons that I never bothered to figure out, connecting the Switch Pro controller via Bluetooth was very finicky and didn't work terribly well.
0:28:27It very well could have been user error. It doesn't really matter.
0:28:30But I did try it a few times, and it did work very well, and I really liked it.
0:28:33I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
0:28:35Additionally, there's Providence, which is an emulator for the Apple TV, which I've heard very, very good things about.
0:28:42The only catch here is that you have to sideload it.
0:28:45You have to have a developer account with Apple, which I believe is free these days.
0:28:49But nonetheless, you have to sideload it and install it yourself onto your Apple TV.
0:28:53My understanding is that's fairly straightforward. I have never written anything for the Apple TV.
0:28:57I don't know what any of that is about, but they have pretty good instructions on the Providence GitHub site.
0:29:03And so I think it is definitely doable.
0:29:05I also, again, don't have any controllers that I'm aware of that work with the Apple TV.
0:29:09So for me, this wasn't really anything terribly useful, but I did want it to call-- wanted to call it to everyone's attention.
0:29:14But I do definitely recommend OpenEMU. That's very, very good.
0:29:19And then finally, James Thompson was the first person-- friend of the show, James-- was the first person to write to us/me about MISTER,
0:29:25which-- I'm a little out of my depth here, but if I understand it right, it's an emulator that's built on top of a readily available FPGA board.
0:29:33So I think we discussed last episode-- I think it was mostly Jon bringing this up-- that you have a field-- what is it?
0:29:39A programmable gate array, which basically means you can kind of reprogram chips as you wish.
0:29:45And what this allows you to do is, if you trust the way they've set up their FPGA, you can effectively *dagger double dagger
0:29:55have a perfect *dagger double dagger, a perfect recreation and emulation of the original systems,
0:30:02because they have the original system in this FPGA.
0:30:06It's not quite that simple, of course, but James said very, very good things about MISTER.
0:30:10That's capital M, lower I, capital S-T, lower E-R.
0:30:14And again, we'll put links to this in the show notes.
0:30:16But I just wanted to call all these to your attention, because a lot of people recommended all three.
0:30:20Any thoughts about that from you two fellows?
0:30:23I did want to add a couple of other tiny bits of follow-up.
0:30:26I don't think I ever actually mentioned in last week's show, but the way light guns work doesn't work on most modern TVs.
0:30:34If you want to play light gun games, depending on the light gun, some of them do work, but I think many of them don't because of the way they work.
0:30:42So you might need a CRT to play light gun games.
0:30:45I also looked into, you know, John and Tiff both thought I should get a CRT instead of using my crazy upscaler.
0:30:51And I looked into it like, okay, well, what if I want a good condition PVM, which is a professional video monitor,
0:30:58which is like the best kind of CRT you can get.
0:31:00What do those cost? How do you get them? How many are available?
0:31:02It turns out they're like over $1,000 for a decent one that's over like 20 inches.
0:31:07And so I actually think my setup is not as ridiculous as John and Tiff both suggested.
0:31:15Well, we suggested you get a CRT and you immediately said, what's the most expensive, rarest, weirdest CRT I can find?
0:31:22Like, I'm pretty sure you can get a CRT for less than $1,000.
0:31:26Well, yeah, but like a crappy one.
0:31:29Yeah, but that was how these games were played.
0:31:32I don't think many people were playing on professional video reference monitors.
0:31:36They were playing on their TV in their house and that's the way it looked and that's how it acted.
0:31:40And you can get one of those for less than $1,000, just saying.
0:31:43That's fair.
0:31:44All right, and then we had some feedback about 360 degree audio.
0:31:48John, I presume you put this in here. Do you want to tell us about this?
0:31:51Yeah, Ibrahim Al Ali writes in to tell us that Sony already has a way to take a photo of your ear to optimize audio.
0:31:58Apparently they do it for their 360 reality audio product line thing.
0:32:04It's kind of confusing. Like you can basically use apparently any headphones with it.
0:32:07It's not a headphone specific feature, but it's it's like software specific.
0:32:12So in their little how it works section, they're like, you know, you need to use it with a premium music service, which seems weird.
0:32:19But I guess it's some kind of tie in. And the choices are Deezer, nuggs.net and Tidal.
0:32:25I've heard of Tidal at least.
0:32:27I can tell you what nuggs.net is.
0:32:29Yeah, I was about to say, Marco is going to be all over nuggs.net. Even I'm familiar with it.
0:32:33What is that? Is that a fish thing?
0:32:34I believe it started out as one or at least it certainly started out as like a live band community thing of like, it's a service that for a while they were the only place to get like soundboard recordings and fan tape recordings and everything of like jam bands and other live performing acts.
0:32:49I believe they actually became official partners with fish at some point. But anyway, it's that kind of thing.
0:32:54Yeah. Anyway, so they have the Sony headphone app that Marco probably has from his old Sony headphones on his iPhone now.
0:33:01You can take a picture of your ear and it will set up a profile that you can apparently use to listen to music.
0:33:06Now, given the constraints of this thing that you can use any headphones, but you have to use these premium services and you take a picture of your ear, it seems to me that what it must be doing is and also it seems like you don't need special audio tracks.
0:33:18It's I think it's just creating like a profile like a I don't know if it's just an equalizer profile or a tying pro, some kind of profile based on your shape.
0:33:28But since it doesn't control anything other than sort of like the the audio processing side, it's not quite the same thing as the PlayStation where the PlayStation is, you know, making synthesizing, you know, thousands of audio sources in a 3D game world in real time.
0:33:43And then playing that through this thing and then it goes through your head transfer function.
0:33:47Yeah, yeah. But anyway, all this goes to show is that Sony's thing on stage is saying you can take a picture of your ear and stuff is a thing they're already doing.
0:33:55They also mentioned taking a video of your ear, which would give you in theory of a way to do a 3D map of your ear instead of just a 2D thing.
0:34:03So, you know, if you if you've heard that about the PS5 and thought that's ridiculous, Sony's never going to do that.
0:34:08Never underestimate the weird things Sony's going to do because they're already doing part of it.
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0:36:03John, great news about the Dacia Cindera.
0:36:05No, great news about your Mac Pro. You can put wheels on it and it is super affordable.
0:36:11Yeah, so this is almost the completion of the Mac Pro robot.
0:36:16As we'll see, there's a bunch of announcements.
0:36:18Roll out. I see what you did there.
0:36:19Hey!
0:36:20I'm going to say it's the completion as far as I'm concerned because I think if there's anything missing, it's stuff that I don't care about, which is why I don't know the details.
0:36:27So let's start with feed-in wheels.
0:36:29You can buy them separately now. We've known since the first Mac Pro shipped and people took them apart that they were removable and it's not a big deal.
0:36:37But them being removable doesn't help unless you can get something to swap in.
0:36:40So if you want to buy a spare set of feet for your Mac Pro or you want to buy wheels for it, you can do that.
0:36:47Now, John, what would four wheels cost me for my Mac Pro?
0:36:51Well, if you remember, when you ordered it online in the beginning, adding wheels was $400.
0:36:57But as people tend to not think about when they're doing options, like, "Oh, the wheels are $400," like, no, no.
0:37:03Adding wheels and taking away feet equals a net increase of $400.
0:37:09The feet aren't free, right?
0:37:10So you take away the feet and the feet must cost something and then you add the wheels.
0:37:15Basically, the wheels are $400 more expensive than the feet.
0:37:20So lo and behold, Apple and its Apple math continues to hold these constraints true.
0:37:26If you want to buy the wheels just by themselves and you do not have a pair of feet to trade in for them,
0:37:31a pair of like-new feet to trade in for them, you will pay Apple $700.
0:37:36That is...
0:37:37So let's do the math now.
0:37:39If they cost $700 by themselves but they cost $400 when you take away the feet and add them, how much should the feet cost?
0:37:48You guessed it, $300.
0:37:50If you want to buy a set of feet, they are $300.
0:37:53Apple's insane math works out.
0:37:56Whether this makes any sense in any real world, that's apparently how they're doing all the stuff on the Mac Pro,
0:38:03which is nice in that it's sensible and I guess it avoids like a condition where there could be this weird, you know,
0:38:12I don't know what the word for it is, like people could be buying feet in bulk and then trading them in for wheels
0:38:17and like there's no way to make money off of this.
0:38:19It's like in an RPG where if you figure out that if you buy this item from this vendor and sell it over there
0:38:24and you just do it infinitely, you can like make money forever.
0:38:27That's not possible with the Mac Pro.
0:38:29No matter how many Mac Pros you buy and strip the feet off of them and try to sell them separately and trade,
0:38:34like it's always, the math's always going to work out.
0:38:36The numbers are huge and ridiculous but that's what they are.
0:38:38So $700 for four wheels or $300 for four feet. Enjoy that.
0:38:43Now, Jon, what year is your cord? Is it 2014?
0:38:47Yeah, I think so. Oh, no.
0:38:49Okay, and is it an LX by chance?
0:38:51No, it's a Sport, remember?
0:38:54God, I thought it was a Sport and then I changed my mind.
0:38:56Well, for a 2014 Honda Accord sedan LX, which we now know is not exactly Jon's car,
0:39:02a set of four decent Continental tires, $139 per tire for a sum total of $557.
0:39:10First of all, those are garbage tires and second of all, having replaced a wheel on my car?
0:39:15Oh, wheel's a whole different story.
0:39:17At Honda OEM retail prices, the wheel for my car is $650.
0:39:23So if you do four of those wheels plus four decent tires, it is still way more expensive than this.
0:39:28Now, obviously, who would ever pay OEM Honda prices for their wheels?
0:39:32Well, I would because I dented my wheel like the first week I got the car and I couldn't stand it.
0:39:36I remember.
0:39:37But anyway, yeah, those wheels cost a lot of money.
0:39:41So it is still more expensive than for a real car and as many people wind up.
0:39:44The Mac Pro wheels, they come with basically wheels and "tires".
0:39:49Like you get them both. What a bargain.
0:39:52I can't. I just. $700.
0:39:56That's so. Especially like if you look at the rest of the Apple product line,
0:40:02you know, I think first of all, two things about the wheels.
0:40:06Number one, I think the value is hilarious because in the rest of Apple's product line,
0:40:11with the exception of the Mac Pro and the XDR, they've actually done pretty well in value recently.
0:40:18Like there was a bad time for a while, but they've come back in recent, in the last year or so,
0:40:24with some pretty good value moves.
0:40:27Like you can get the Series 3 Apple Watch, like the low-end Apple Watch is available now, for $200.
0:40:31That's pretty good.
0:40:32You can get that entry-level iPad, which is pretty good, for $330, $329, something like that.
0:40:38You can get the new iPhone SE, which we'll talk about, which is an incredible value, for $400.
0:40:43The new MacBook Air, that base model at $999 again is a great value.
0:40:49And then you go to the wheels for the Mac Pro, which, by the way, you could get an iPhone SE and an Apple Watch for less.
0:40:59Oh my word. Yeah, but try putting your Mac on top of those. They'll just crush it.
0:41:04You could get most of a MacBook Air for this price. It's comical when you consider it in comparison to other technology products.
0:41:12It's just what you could get for $700.
0:41:16And then point number two on the wheels. Back when the wheels were discussed on this show before,
0:41:22we didn't know at that time about this hilarious shortcoming that they don't have wheel stops.
0:41:28You can't see one in the picture, so I guess we should have figured it out. But he didn't think about it.
0:41:35And then you started hearing people who had this, and you started seeing these YouTube videos, like, "Oh yeah, they don't have wheel stops,
0:41:41and they're really good, really free-spinning wheels." So they roll really easily.
0:41:46I thought about it, if you remember, when we first discussed it, I said, "I didn't want wheels, because what if I ever decide to have it on my little table?
0:41:52I don't want it rolling off." That was exactly my thought of why I wasn't going to get the wheels.
0:41:56Now that I know that they don't have wheel stops, maybe in California, everything is so new that their floors are level?
0:42:06Well, no, it's not that they're level. It's that because they're in an earthquake zone, kind of like how a trebuchet has to have wheels on it,
0:42:11obscure medieval siege weapon reference. The wheels are important, because when the trebuchet launches,
0:42:17the wheels allow the base of it to move on the ground, and that's important for getting maximum throw distance.
0:42:22So when you're in an earthquake in California, if your Mac Pro has wheels, your house will shake, but the Mac Pro can stay still.
0:42:30Right, it will stabilize.
0:42:31Yeah, exactly. It can go back and forth on the table. The table will move underneath it, but it will stay still.
0:42:36Yeah, so I feel like any situation where you want to use these wheels that's not on carpeting, you'd be running a pretty big risk.
0:42:47If you're wheeling at to and from locations, that's kind of crappy. I feel like this was Johnny Ive's final middle finger.
0:42:54On his way out, he made these gloriously beautiful, useless, expensive wheels for this headlining product.
0:43:03Here it is. Here's my last move to Apple. I'm going to go out and ship these beautiful objects that are totally useless.
0:43:12Thanks, Johnny. Thanks a lot.
0:43:14I mean, they're not useless. It's good for if it's on a floor, because if you want these things on wheels, it's probably like you're wheeling it around some space that's frequently reconfigured, or you have it inside a movie studio and you're rolling from place to place.
0:43:25And in that case, the fact that there are no stops isn't that bad. It may even be an advantage, because if you are reconfiguring it after a shot or after a series of shots, you don't want to have to be bending down and finding the little wheel locks, and which wheel did I lock that I lock all four of them.
0:43:39It's just too fiddly. If it's on the floor, it can't roll off on it anywhere. It's already on the floor. It's not like you're taking this thing outdoors and you need special off-road wheels and it's going to be on a big hill in the dirt or something.
0:43:50It's just that wheels are a no-go if it is anywhere except on the ground, which I think is reasonable. And the fact that they cost $700 and the whole pricing thing, it's just like cars.
0:43:59I mean, just look at the price and options on luxury cars. They make no sense. You can buy a paint color that costs more than my car.
0:44:07It's only when you get into the ridiculous luxury or super exotic cars. The prices make no sense. That's what the market will bear. And it's a similar sort of jump.
0:44:18You go from regular people cars and then they're expensive cars, and then they're just cars where money no longer makes sense. And Porsche, I think, is the inflection point.
0:44:28Because it's just right in the middle. It's like, is that a regular fancy car like a BMW or is that a ridiculous car like a Ferrari? Well, Porsche is where you start having discontinuity in the graph.
0:44:38How much is that option? It doesn't really make any sense anymore. Whereas at least with BMWs, you can kind of see this is an expensive version of a regular car and even Mercedes.
0:44:47But then you get the Porsche and then after that it's like, well, Ferrari, Maserati, McLaren. Money has no meaning. You want a different color piece of fabric on your glove box, that's $8,000. It doesn't make any sense.
0:44:59So, I mean, Apple would probably argue this, you know, A, this is what the market will bear and B, if we didn't price stuff like this, there would be no Mac Pro.
0:45:08And I think most people in this market, and even people who are not technically in the market like me who is buying one anyway but doesn't need one, would say, I'd rather have the Mac Pro exist and have ridiculous prices.
0:45:18As long as, as Marco pointed out, the prices in the normal products are normal. Like, this is a better situation for everybody.
0:45:24The fancy product exists at ridiculous prices that no one's ever going to buy, but it exists and the regular products have reasonable prices.
0:45:32So I'm actually not particularly burned up about the price of the accessories. It could also be because I have no desire to have wheels, but there you go.
0:45:40You know, everyone's going to be real perturbed when they sell the $1,000 version that does have wheel locks.
0:45:46That'll be next year's model.
0:45:48Yeah, I mean, they have opportunities for improvement and price increases.
0:45:52So, yeah, and so we'll continue one more Mac Pro item. This completes the rollout. So I think it's, when the Mac Pro was launched, they had a bunch of video card options in the configurator, some of which were grayed out, including the one that I wanted to get.
0:46:08And I couldn't get it, so my only options were the stock card, which is garbage, but comes "for free" with the computer, or a horrendously expensive workstation card that was like, add $2,300 or whatever.
0:46:23And this, by the way, when we were doing this on like launch day, or when we were configuring it, this is when we first discovered the math that they work.
0:46:31So if you want to get the, whatever was the Vega 2 MPX module, it was add whatever amount of dollars.
0:46:39And so given that that's what it costs to add it, and they also sold it separately, you could do the math and say Apple is valuing the stock card at about $400.
0:46:50Because if you take the add price for the fancy card and the $400 you're saving by taking out the stock card, you get the total price of the standalone card.
0:47:00So sure enough, the card that I did want, which is their Radeon Pro W5700X, which is basically just a standard AMD gaming card with more RAM added to it,
0:47:15they are selling it for $1,000, and if you want to add it to your Mac, it's $600. Because if you take away the $400 stock card and add in the $1,000 one, your net increase in price is $600.
0:47:30So the math adds up, they're now selling it separately. Actually, during the day today, they launched it and it was available in the configurator, but it wasn't available separately.
0:47:37And then it was available in the UK separately, and now it's available in the US separately. So if they're missing anything that they had announced on launch day, I don't know what it is.
0:47:46I know they're missing the dual GPU 5700X, but I think that wasn't on launch day. I think they added that as an option later. They added it as a grayed out option later.
0:47:55So I think that's still not available. But anyway, now all the things, as far as I know, that were put up on Apple's website on launch day are available for purchase.
0:48:07So you gonna buy one of these?
0:48:09I did. I ordered it already. The reason I ordered it already is because I've already waited a long time for this, and I didn't want to be in a big shipping queue because who knows how many of these things are.
0:48:19I don't understand why it took them so long to launch it, but it's because they could only get five of them. I want one of those five.
0:48:24And honestly, it's because I have very little hope that a better card is going to come out anytime soon.
0:48:32There are better options for cards. There are better Nvidia options for cards, but Apple's not going to go there.
0:48:38So if I wanted to say, "Well, I want to wait around," or, "I want to wait to see what the benchmarks are," or whatever, I know what the 5700XD can do on PC.
0:48:48But more importantly, I know how terrible the 580X is, and I know I don't want the workstation card, so this is going to be my only option for a long time.
0:48:57So I ordered it. It's on its way. It's arriving sometime between the 30th and May 4th.
0:49:03So I will finally have a non-garbage GPU, and I will also have a $400 GPU that I extract from my computer.
0:49:14Actual retail value, what, $70? I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I'll probably just put it up in the attic somewhere.
0:49:21Of course you will. Where else would it possibly go?
0:49:23I mean, I could leave it in the computer if I had more monitors to attach, but I don't.
0:49:27The struggle is real. You could get another XDR.
0:49:30Yeah, right. I could. Actually, where would I even put that? I don't think it will fit. Literally, it will not physically fit on my desk.
0:49:36Maybe with two of them side-by-side fit, maybe if they went edge-to-edge, but then I'd really be turning my head.
0:49:41Goodness gracious.
0:49:43Everyone of those people has to make a V out of your dual monitors. I guess most people do that with their dual monitor setups, but at a certain point, it's just like, looking straight ahead just shows you the crease between them. It's not good.
0:49:53I'm not a multi-monitor person, as you know. My one monitor is just fine. Plus, my pocketbook can't handle another one of these monitors.
0:50:02Geez, why?
0:50:03It's bad enough that I'm paying $1,000 for a PC video card that actual retail price on the PC is like $300 and change.
0:50:11Gosh.
0:50:12But I do like, here's what I do. The reason I didn't, it's like, why didn't you just buy a PC video card already? You could have bought tons of PC video cards that work on these things. People have done all sorts of tests.
0:50:19Part of the reason I waited for this thing, even though I knew it would be expensive, is because as far as I'm aware, having already ordered it, but as far as I'm aware, it's passively cooled like the other MPX modules. It's just a big honking passive heatsink. There's no additional fan.
0:50:33So the only extra noise my Mac is going to make is going to be determined by how much extra fan RPM is needed to cool this thing. And I'm hoping it won't be a lot because most of the time I'm not playing games and when I am playing games, fine.
0:50:44So I'm optimistic about this and I'm glad that I'm getting an MPX module even though I'm paying through the noise for it, which is in keeping with my general attitude towards this computer.
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0:52:08We don't have this in the show notes because apparently you guys don't care, but I care. I ordered a new keyboard today.
0:52:13Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, I know that we were missing something. I'm assuming Mark ordered it too.
0:52:17Yep.
0:52:18Now, John, remind me, what iPad are you rocking these days? You've told me 18 times.
0:52:22I have the original Pro.
0:52:23The 9.7?
0:52:24Yeah, we don't have any of the flat edge ones in the house just because my wife, she would have gotten it, but she didn't like the keyboard accessory. So now that there's a new keyboard, maybe she'll like it. But I don't think she's going to entertain that until she can try one and she's not going to end up trying one until going to stores becomes a thing again. So I'm not holding my breath.
0:52:42Well, earlier today, as we record, the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro became orderable, and I have ordered one. It should be here in a couple of weeks. I'm very, very excited. I probably should not spend the money on this because I already have a keyboard attached to my iPad Pro, but I'm so excited for this thing. I'm so excited. Marco, did you order one or seven of them?
0:53:05It's funny, and now that I just ragged on the wheels for being so expensive, I did order a $300 keyboard for my iPad Pro, which is almost the cost of the entry level iPad. It does feel a little excessive, but it might be really great. I'm not yet convinced of that, and I really want to see it.
0:53:27And in part, I ordered it because it's such a thing in our community right now that I want to be able to try it and be able to talk about it intelligently on the show. I'm kind of irritated whenever tech podcasters say this. I've said it myself before, I'm guilty of this, of like, "I need this for the show. I need to buy this new gadget that I don't really need, but I need to buy it for my work, for the show, so I know how to talk about it."
0:53:51Like, I've said this before, too. We never need it. Many of us get by without buying these things, and we have careers in podcasting just fine. And there's lots of stuff I don't buy that I talk about anyway.
0:54:02So, we don't need these things. We buy them because it's an excuse to buy them, and we are fortunate enough that we can take advantage of that excuse, and here we are.
0:54:12So anyway, I bought it with no excuse, just because I want you to try it. I'm not yet convinced that I will keep it, because I'm not yet convinced that it will be the right thing for me, but I really am very curious about it.
0:54:25I'm most curious about that hinge and how it feels, how heavy the whole thing is, and just how it works in practice.
0:54:34Yeah, I'm super excited. I'm looking forward to it. You know, I am not a devout iPad user, but I really do enjoy using my iPad, particularly when I'm goofing off on the couch at the end of the day.
0:54:46And I find that the Smart Keyboard Folio, the existing one, I do like it quite a lot. In fact, I think I like it more than most people, to be honest with you, because I really, really like it.
0:54:58As do I.
0:54:59The thing that drives me absolutely bananas about it is the fact that there are two viewing angles which both suck, and this is not an original thought. Almost everyone who has this has said the same thing.
0:55:10There are occasions when one of those two viewing angles is perfect, but that's extremely rare for me, and I really want more mobility. This is such a first world problem. I'm listening to myself just getting disgusted, but here we are.
0:55:24So anyway, I just really want more mobility in my keyboard for my tablet computer that I don't need. God, I gotta stop. But anyways, I really, really am excited for it. I really, really want it.
0:55:34And so I Insta-bought it just because I think it'll... I'm hopeful and I think that it will really make using the iPad that much more enjoyable. Plus, the very limited time I spent with a mouse and/or trackpad connected to the iPad,
0:55:48it's not something that I feel like is changing my world in the way it might change like mics or Federico's, but it definitely was really cool, and I can definitely see using it.
0:55:56And I actually have been VNC-ing into my own computers, not irregularly for dumb reasons, to be honest, but it happens.
0:56:04And so it would be nice to have an honest-to-goodness pointer on the device that I could use instead of scrolling around.
0:56:10I mean, the Screens app by Adobe, is that right? Our friend's Luke, and I forget who else he's working with now. But anyways, it's a very good app, and I really, really like it, and they do as well as they can without having a pointer.
0:56:23But now that I'll have a pointer, they already support having the pointer, from what I understand. I'm so excited.
0:56:28So anyway, I am really, really, really excited to get this at the end of the month or beginning of next month.
0:56:35I was looking on the website, and it doesn't appear that there's any additional information about the weight of the thing or anything added to the website now that you can actually buy it.
0:56:43It's the same page as it is always. The buy page doesn't seem to have any extra info.
0:56:47So I think we're still all in the dark about how heavy this thing actually is.
0:56:51I know people were trying to do math based on the weight listing on Amazon or whatever, but then some people thought that included the packaging or it included the iPad or who knows, you know.
0:57:01Yeah, there was a good Dr. Drang post about that, but the thing is, Amazon weights and dimensions are off and off.
0:57:08Yes, yes. I've experienced that many times with non-tech products. Both of those things are very suspect.
0:57:16That's why everyone asks in the Q&A section on Amazon, there is always a question. Someone asks, "Can someone tell me how big this thing actually is?"
0:57:22Yep.
0:57:23Yep, that's so true.
0:57:24Yeah, and whenever I need to know the information, I always look there because the quoted spec I know is going to be wrong a lot of the times.
0:57:31Yeah, so I'm excited for both of you to get this and tell me whether it's garbage or not because I probably am going to get, I'm not going to probably buy this new iPad, but whatever the next iPad is, I think it'll be time for me to finally upgrade my 9.7-inch iPad Pro.
0:57:44And I might consider this keyboard thing. I don't think I would use it all the time, but it would make this a much more viable laptop replacement. I don't use my iPad like that at all now.
0:57:57I might even consider it, even if it just ends up being a better way to watch TV on my iPad, even if I never touch the keyboard, just because of the flexible hinge and the different viewing angles.
0:58:09Like Casey was saying, if you have more flexibility than two positions, or realize right now when I watch TV on my iPad, I'm using the smart cover on the 9.7, there's one viewing angle.
0:58:20Right.
0:58:21I make a little triangle behind my thing, and that's the angle. And of course, I can adjust that by putting it on top of a pillow and tilting it, and then it falls on my forehead.
0:58:27Everyone knows the deal with using an iPad in bed.
0:58:31So I might consider this case, if the hinge turns out to be super awesome, and they're like, "Look, even if you don't even care about the keyboard or the trackpad, this is the greatest hinge ever."
0:58:39I might end up getting it. But for now, I'm content to let you two try and tell me if it makes the thing weigh seven times as much or if the hinge is garbage.
0:58:46I am nervous about that. But I mean, does it really matter for me anyway in the grand scheme of things? Like this thing almost never leaves the house to begin with.
0:58:54And that was before we weren't allowed to leave.
0:58:57You might be used to it, but it might, because my wife has the old keyboard thing, the one we're talking about that's double layered in a spot.
0:59:06Oh yeah, I know that one.
0:59:08Every time I pick up her iPad, I just get angry at how heavy it is. Like it's on the bed, or I want to pick it up and put it on her nightstand or whatever.
0:59:16I'm like, "Why is this so heavy?" I don't know why it makes me angry, but it does. It just feels like a ton of bricks.
0:59:21This isn't going to improve that.
0:59:23Yeah, I know.
0:59:24This is going to make anything worse.
0:59:26Even though they never leave the house, I'm not carrying it in a bag over my shoulder. It becomes a different thing.
0:59:33It becomes less of just like a flingable light thing you can quickly pick up with two fingers.
0:59:39It becomes like if you had your laptop on your bed, you start feeling like you have to pick it up more carefully because it's so heavy.
0:59:45You need more effort. You can't just pick it up with two light fingers. Whereas my iPad is much less like that.
0:59:51I think, subjectively for me anyway, despite the fact that like Casey's iPad, it never goes anywhere, I don't want this to be a device that I think about and lift in the same way that I do my MacBook Air or whatever.
1:00:04Well, we all know how you mentally file laptops. If this gets heavy enough that it ends up in the laptop bucket in your mind, then it's all over.
1:00:13Yeah, the laptop bucket though, because I'm not using laptops, I'm constantly picking them up because my kids leave them on the couch, leave them on the bed, and I'm picking it up and I'm bringing it downstairs and attaching it to the charger so it'll be charged for the next day of school Zoom meetings.
1:00:26Yeah.
1:00:29Alright, so other new hardware today, and I honestly didn't spend the time to look into this too much because for me I'm not that interested, but perhaps others are. There's a new iPhone SE and it got bigger.
1:00:42Yeah, the iPhone SE is dead. Long live the iPhone SE.
1:00:46You don't sound too excited.
1:00:48I mean, here's the thing, this has been discussed to death in our weird nerd community.
1:00:55The iPhone SE, why is it not updated? I like small phones, when are they going to update it? Oh, when they update it they're going to make it bigger. I only care about the SE because it's small.
1:01:05There's much philosophical debate about this, whether the iPhone SE was the small iPhone or the iPhone SE was the cheap iPhone.
1:01:14And there's a very loud contingent of mostly tech nerds I would imagine for whom the iPhone SE was the small phone.
1:01:23The whole point of it existing is that there can be a phone in Apple's lineup that's small like my beloved iPhone 5 or 5S or whatever it used to be.
1:01:32The new phones are too big, I want a small phone, I want to go to Apple to make a small phone and when they updated the internals of the SE it's like, wow, look, I can have a small phone and not have total garbage internals.
1:01:42Right? Like to that section of the population, when you said iPhone SE, they thought, ah, the small phone that I like. Like that defined the product as far as they were concerned.
1:01:54I don't think it ever defined the product as far as Apple was concerned. I also don't think it defined the product as far as the public is concerned.
1:02:02But I could be wrong about the public part of it just because there are lots of reasons why Apple may conceptualize the product differently.
1:02:09Because in the end it was just like an older version of their phone that they were manufacturing for longer.
1:02:13There's all sorts of reasons why it made sense that it looked the way it did from the perspective of Apple, like here's how we manufacture phones and here's how we can sell it cheaply because we already have the factories and the assembly lines and all that other stuff.
1:02:28But from a consumer's perspective, knowing nothing about Apple or anything, if you go in the store and say, here's all the iPhones, which one do you want?
1:02:34The distinguishing characteristic of the iPhone SE would be, oh, this is the smallest one.
1:02:39Whether Apple intended it or not, I can imagine them thinking that.
1:02:43All that said, I'm not entirely sure that the public, when they saw the line of the iPhones in front of them, when they saw that's the small one, they would say, oh, that's the small one.
1:02:53Actually, I love small phones because the public has shown that they do not love small phones.
1:02:57The public has shown, ever since the iPhone 6, despite even the iPhone buying in public, is they like larger phones than the iPhone 5 or iPhone 5S.
1:03:07The public has spoken, right? Nevertheless, there was the SE and it was small and it was also cheap, but most people were not buying the iPhone SE.
1:03:17They were buying the bigger phones, and in the Android market, same deal. They're buying the bigger phones.
1:03:22So now the new iPhone SE, which is called iPhone SE, exactly the same as the previous iPhone SE.
1:03:28It's like the Xbox One, which is not the same as the first Xbox, but now it's the Xbox One, and then we're going to have the 1S, 1S, 1S.
1:03:34Xboxes were distinguished. James Thompson, the developer of PCALP, brought this up in a tweet today.
1:03:39He was in the Xcode simulator where you can pick which device you want to simulate.
1:03:43What are, in a pop-up menu, what's going to be the items in the pop-up menu?
1:03:47iPhone SE and then next to it another item that's also called iPhone SE?
1:03:50Are they going to put a year in parentheses after it?
1:03:53You have two items called iPhone SE? Anyway.
1:03:56I can tell you exactly what it's going to be because you see in the list right now, you see iPad Pro 11-inch in parentheses,
1:04:05and then in the second set of parentheses, first generation, and iPad Pro 11-inch second generation.
1:04:10iPad Air parentheses third generation. iPad parentheses seventh generation.
1:04:15So I bet what we're going to see is iPhone SE parentheses second generation.
1:04:19Is this the second generation? Isn't this the third generation?
1:04:21Not of the SE. I mean, there was the 5S, but that was the same thing.
1:04:25There was iPhone SE, which was the 5S case with the 6S internals,
1:04:29and now we have the iPhone SE, which is the 8 case with the 11 internals.
1:04:34Yeah. Anyway, so like I was saying, from Apple's perspective, this is just, you know,
1:04:40they sell you a phone that they use to manufacture, you know, form factor-wise, but with different internals,
1:04:46and so this is all shift, as time has marched on, they've done the shift, and now they're selling you,
1:04:50I don't remember what the year gap is, but they're X generations or X years old phone with modern internals.
1:04:56So this, as far as I'm aware, I didn't look at the details, but this is the iPhone 7, basically, case.
1:05:01iPhone 6, 6S7.
1:05:03It's the iPhone 8, yeah. 678.
1:05:05Yep. So that's what it looks like. It's obviously bigger than the SE, because the SE was like the 5 and 5S,
1:05:11which, you know, so it's just going back in time as far as manufacturing.
1:05:15But like the SE, even though it looks like Apple's old and busted phone, ancient phone from a long time ago,
1:05:22inside it has, for this brief moment in time, the best internals that Apple makes.
1:05:28So it's got the A13 chip inside it, and it's not a crappy version of the A13, it's not an underclocked version of the A13,
1:05:35it is the plain old A13. So kind of like the Mac Mini and lots of other products that Apple makes
1:05:40that are updated incredibly infrequently, there is a moment when they are first introduced when they are competitive.
1:05:48The new iPhones with A14 will come out soon, and then this will be the previous gen thing.
1:05:54But for this brief moment in time, if you're interested in a phone the size of the 6, 6S7 or 8,
1:06:01and you want to get one but not pay the price of having old internals, you can get this phone.
1:06:07And it's an incredible bargain because you're getting an A13 system on a chip and 64 gigs of storage for $399?
1:06:15And 64 gigs is, I think, a fair base model. Like that is a totally fair...
1:06:21It's a good phone.
1:06:22Yeah, so 64 gigs, it's the same as the base storage for the iPhone 11, and the iPhone 11 has the same processor.
1:06:30The cameras appear to be almost the same. There is some difference, like the iPhone SE apparently might have different optics maybe,
1:06:39and it apparently does not have night mode. But it does have almost everything else, including portrait mode.
1:06:45Amazing processor, as you said, it's the A13, so it's the same. The iPhone SE did something very similar when it came out.
1:06:51As I said, the first one, it was iPhone 6S internals during the 6S's reign as the flagship phone.
1:06:59So it was the same thing where the 6S was released in the fall, and then in the spring, they released the SE with the same processor as the current flagship phone.
1:07:06So there's the exact same thing again. Flagship phone releases in the fall, in the spring we have the new tiny value phone,
1:07:14tiny is relative, but the new tiny-ish value phone at this $400 price point, which is also what the SE launched at, and using the same internals.
1:07:22It's fantastic, it's a fantastic deal. And if you look at like, okay, well, if you want something above that,
1:07:26above this $400 phone, you have to go to $700 to get the iPhone 11, the non-pro one.
1:07:33And what you get for almost twice the price is nowhere near almost twice the phone.
1:07:39And if you want to go for the iPhone 11 Pro, you're then spending significantly, and then you're spending almost three times as much,
1:07:48for something that is definitely not three times the phone.
1:07:53And so this is an amazing value, $400 to get flagship class components with just no face ID, basically, and a smaller screen.
1:08:02That's not a bad deal at all, especially right now, as face ID is not really what the world needs right now.
1:08:12I mean, you give up other things as well, like obviously you have the screen that doesn't go edge to edge, it's an LCD instead of an OLED,
1:08:18you only get a single camera, like there's all those sorts of things, but like you would expect, especially from Apple,
1:08:24but even from any other manufacturer, you expect they would compromise on everything.
1:08:28And I think that the internals, like the system on a chip is where it really counts.
1:08:33So you like, yeah, you've only got one camera and it's not the fanciest camera and it doesn't have night mode,
1:08:38and it's touch ID instead of face ID, and the screen doesn't go to edge at all, these compromises,
1:08:42but like it costs so little money compared to the other phones, and you get one, the one component you get that is best in class is the most important component.
1:08:51Now, you might say, well, isn't the camera the most important component for most people?
1:08:54Maybe, but this is not a bad camera, and the lack of multiple cameras, I don't think it's going to bother most people,
1:09:00especially since the software papers over a lot of this, like with portrait mode with a single camera.
1:09:04And the reason they can do all that stuff is because the system on a chip is so powerful that they can make up for the hardware deficiencies.
1:09:09Also, I wouldn't read too much into the fact that this has touch ID and all that stuff.
1:09:14It's like, oh, Apple's found out that people don't like face IDs.
1:09:17It's just because this generation of phone had touch ID. That's why it's on this one.
1:09:20Eventually, as we move up, these phones with touch ID will age out, and if Apple hasn't come up with under the screen touch ID by then,
1:09:28this, the SE line of phones will stop having touch ID.
1:09:32It's not a philosophical difference. It's just the march of manufacturing of Apple makes a product,
1:09:39and they have the assembly line to do it, and they change the internals, and they keep making the product,
1:09:44and they don't want to change too much about it.
1:09:46So because the 6, 6S, 7, and 8 all had touch ID, so does the SE.
1:09:51Eventually, I guess when the XR or whatever ages down into this thing, they'll have face ID.
1:09:57Speaking of which, I think that, do they still sell the XR and XS and stuff?
1:10:02Like, that may be a step up. If so, that may be a step up from this that isn't a jump all the way to the 11.
1:10:06The R is for sale. The S is not.
1:10:08Hmm.
1:10:09And I also heard that this camera is more comparable to the camera on the XR than it is to the 1X camera on the 11 Pro.
1:10:20But either way, when you're buying a phone for this much less than the fanciest iPhone, haggling over the specific spec details of the camera is a little bit ridiculous.
1:10:31The XR, for reference, as a quick follow-up here, is $600.
1:10:35So it's like 50% more money for a phone that is better in some ways but worse in others.
1:10:41It does have the A12 instead of the A13. The camera is worse in certain ways.
1:10:45I don't know. I think between these two, I'd rather have the new SE than the XR.
1:10:51No, you don't have the face ID, which is a big experience change.
1:10:54But some people do like the touch ID better.
1:10:57Again, those people should be prepared that eventually it probably will go away.
1:11:00But for now, if you want a phone that has it, here's your option.
1:11:04I really love my iPhone 7.
1:11:07I think I said back when I finally retired that I felt like the 7 was the pinnacle of that form factor because the 7 was the flagship phone at the time.
1:11:17The 8 was not the flagship phone ever.
1:11:20And this is not a flagship phone, so the 7 was a flagship phone.
1:11:23And I felt like it all kind of came together.
1:11:25I like the home button that didn't move.
1:11:27I like the color and finishes, even though I kept my hand in the case.
1:11:33I like the size and dimensions, and this was before face ID appeared, so this is the perfection of this design.
1:11:40Basically the iPhone 6 size phone with touch ID before the iPhone X came and redefined everything.
1:11:48So this SE is basically like, imagine if they had just continued down that evolutionary path.
1:11:53This is an even better iPhone 7.
1:11:55I looked at this and I was like, for my next phone, if I was getting my next phone today, would I get this one?
1:12:00I pretty quickly said no just because of the camera stuff, because I'm not that price-sensitive and I'd rather have the fancier camera.
1:12:06But I really like this size. I liked it better than the X and XS size.
1:12:11The X and XS are a little bit bigger.
1:12:13I like the bigger screen on the X and XS, but I have some affection for this form.
1:12:20So kind of like the MacBook Air, if someone wanted to get an iPhone and they didn't want to spend a lot of money,
1:12:26I would have no hesitation to immediately point to the iPhone SE, especially since if you want to go to 128GB, it's only like 50 extra bucks.
1:12:33This is a no-brainer recommendation for somebody who wants an iPhone.
1:12:37What they would be getting is not a crappy iPhone or a used iPhone 6S that barely works anymore.
1:12:43This is a completely modern, good iPhone that if you don't care about having the super awesome best specs, I think you will buy and love.
1:12:51Yeah, I fully agree. And even you were saying a minute ago about Face ID.
1:12:57This past summer, if we recall, I did an experiment where for a little while I was carrying my iPhone SE a lot of the places instead of my, at the time, XS.
1:13:06I thought it would be harder to adjust to, but it really wasn't.
1:13:10And it was glorious how small and light it was compared to the XS and XS.
1:13:16The new X, XS, XS series phones are not only bigger but significantly heavier than what came before them.
1:13:26And if you're wearing a big complicated outfit, you might have noticed, in the summertime when you're wearing shorts, it's actually pretty obvious.
1:13:32It's actually a substantial difference. And when you put that little tiny SE in your pocket, you're like, "Wow, I feel like I'm walking on air."
1:13:38You're like bouncing down the sidewalk. It really is a noticeable difference.
1:13:42It is certainly very pleasant to hold that tiny phone in your hand.
1:13:46Now, actually using it was not quite as pleasant and the camera on it was garbage compared to modern standards.
1:13:52But this might be a happy medium for people who don't want the increased size and heft of these larger 10 series phones.
1:14:02This is a pretty good option.
1:14:04I would also say going back to Touch ID from Face ID and switching back and forth during those couple of weeks in the summer was not actually difficult.
1:14:13I thought it would be harder than it was. It really wasn't.
1:14:16The only hard part for me was going back to the narrower keyboard width on the original SE.
1:14:23That was tricky. I made a lot of typos those first few days.
1:14:26But then I just got used to it and it was fine.
1:14:29We typed on those for years and that was just the only size we knew and we all typed a lot of words on those just fine.
1:14:35Well, mostly fine. It would correct them.
1:14:37First of all, if anybody is thinking about maybe switching back to a smaller size, that's not a bad idea.
1:14:46Keep in mind that this fall new phones will come out at the high end and you'll be jealous of them.
1:14:53So you might not want to do it for that reason.
1:14:55But if you have been sitting around and maybe you skipped the 11 or the 10 series and you've been sitting around waiting for Face ID to get better
1:15:03or maybe you really love Touch ID and you want to hold onto it for as long as you possibly can, which is great.
1:15:08Touch ID is awesome.
1:15:10Then this is a really good option.
1:15:13I will also go back, if we can step back even further, before we leave this topic.
1:15:18John mentioned at the beginning, there's a lot of people who buy the small one because it's small.
1:15:24There's also a lot of people who buy the small one because it's the cheapest one.
1:15:27And we see this across the whole product line.
1:15:29Typically, Apple prices the smallest option in a line as the cheapest.
1:15:34And typically we hear from various rumblings or statements that those smaller options usually are the biggest sellers in any given line.
1:15:43Whenever the smallest is not the cheapest, it's usually not the biggest seller.
1:15:48Like the iPad Mini, for instance, is a great example.
1:15:50The iPad Mini is the smallest iPad.
1:15:52It got updated this past year, just like all the other ones.
1:15:55So it has current components and everything.
1:15:58It is the smallest iPad. It is not the cheapest iPad.
1:16:00As a result, almost no one buys it.
1:16:03So I think it's clear in that case that what people want out of an iPad is not the smallest iPad.
1:16:09They want the cheapest iPad.
1:16:10When you look at the Mac lineup, they had the 12-inch for a while.
1:16:14When the 12-inch was discontinued, the reasoning we heard from rumblings, etc.,
1:16:19was that basically once the new Air became for sale, the sales of the 12-inch fell off a cliff.
1:16:26That people just totally stopped buying the 12-inch.
1:16:29Because the new 13-inch Air was similarly priced, had similar compromises,
1:16:35but was actually just a better overall computer at that price range, even though it was bigger.
1:16:40And there were configurations of it that were cheaper.
1:16:43They would under-spec it, so it wasn't quite an even fair fight.
1:16:47But there were configurations that were cheaper.
1:16:50So really, what sells the large volumes at these smaller products is usually just that they're cheap.
1:16:57Cheaper. They're less expensive.
1:17:00Not that they are necessarily the smallest.
1:17:03And so while there are people out there who are upset by this, certainly,
1:17:07because they were hoping for the small SE to remain a small phone and just be updated in that old tiny form factor,
1:17:15the reality is that's not why most people who bought it were buying it.
1:17:19Most people who bought it were buying it because it was the cheapest one.
1:17:22Apple is doing the same thing again.
1:17:24They're using an old phone case, new phone internals, the same $400 starting price point.
1:17:29And they're going to sell a ton of these things because for what is in there, that's an awesome deal.
1:17:35Yeah, I do wonder about the justification that Apple gave for people asking the question,
1:17:45"Hey, the old SE was small. This one is bigger. What's the deal, Apple?"
1:17:48Apple's line was typical, political.
1:17:52They could have just given the answer that you gave, Marco, which I think is the right answer,
1:17:55which is basically, "Look, people don't want a smaller phone. They want a cheaper phone," as evidenced by these other product lines.
1:18:01But doing that would be, A, revealing too much about their sales that you tend not to want to reveal.
1:18:08They don't even give those unit sales and earnings or anything anymore.
1:18:11But also, B, when they discussed this topic, let's say what they actually said.
1:18:20They said, "We've sold 500 million of these phones, so people love this size,"
1:18:26which is a PR-y thing for you to say and is true, but it's also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
1:18:34It's like, "Well, you sold 500 million of them because it was the only size during the 6, 6S, 7, and then later you continued to sell the 8."
1:18:41Of course you've sold a lot of these phones.
1:18:43Any form factor that you keep in your lineup for years and years is going to sell a lot.
1:18:49And then later when you say, "Here's why we're selling this thing,"
1:18:52"Oh, it's because we sold a lot of them in the past."
1:18:54When they only had one size of phone, all of the phones were that size.
1:18:59And they said, "This is the size iPhone that people love."
1:19:01Why? Look how many millions we've sold.
1:19:03In fact, 100% of the iPhones we've sold have been this size.
1:19:06Clearly, people love this size.
1:19:08And that was true in one sense in that, yes, people bought them and they like them, but not true in the other sense
1:19:17in that when they put out the iPhone 6, their first "big phone" sales went crazy because there was pent-up demand for the big phone.
1:19:23This is too nuanced of an explanation for Apple to try to actually give when someone asks that question.
1:19:30They're not going to go through all of that.
1:19:32They're not going to explain how their experimentation with the SE, continuing to sell the SE,
1:19:38that Apple didn't conceptualize it as a small phone, it's just because that's how big the phone case was of their older phone and they kept selling it.
1:19:44And that their evidence shows that it's the cheapness that sells it, not the size and yada, yada, yada.
1:19:49They could talk about the 5C, about that being a cheaper phone.
1:19:53There's all sorts of stuff that Apple used to justify this, but they chose not to do any of it.
1:19:57They just said, "This is a super popular phone and we sold a lot of them," which is a non-answer,
1:20:03but in many ways it's a more honest answer than trying to explain these nuances.
1:20:08Because the bottom line is, they don't want to say, "We're selling this phone because we already have made this phone for multiple generations.
1:20:17And the next phone, if we continue to follow the same pattern, is going to be whatever phone we sold a bunch of, presumably the XR or XS form factor."
1:20:25They don't want to give you those details. They just want to give you an explanation that says people like it.
1:20:28And honestly, in the end, I think they're right.
1:20:30They sold a lot of these phones and unlike the situation with the original one before the 6,
1:20:35it's not like there's pent-up demand for a tiny phone that isn't being served.
1:20:38If that was true, the SE would have sold way better.
1:20:42Now, remember the stories way back when they were saying that Apple was surprised at how well the original SE sold?
1:20:49Because at that point there was pent-up demand for the smaller phone.
1:20:53But I think that's more of a "in comparison to expectations" thing, more than an absolute value thing.
1:20:59So Apple underestimated how much pent-up demand there was for a small phone,
1:21:03but in absolute values it was nothing like the pent-up demand for a large phone when the 6 came out.
1:21:09They quickly caught up for demand for the SE and there was a steady state in which the SE was not selling like hotcakes,
1:21:17despite the fact that it was the cheapest phone just because the market has moved on and they don't want phones that small,
1:21:22which is painful for people to hear.
1:21:24Like they were saying, "Can't they just make one phone that's small?"
1:21:26And I would argue that that would be a good idea.
1:21:28But the problem is that Apple's scale of phones, making even just one very small phone,
1:21:35the only way they could pull that off and make it work economically is if the small phone was like the Mac Pro of the iPhone line.
1:21:41That it would be by far the most expensive model with pricing that makes no sense
1:21:46because the R&D that goes into a phone that sells that few copies is just so astronomical
1:21:51and then that would make the sales be even smaller.
1:21:55And unlike the Mac Pro, it doesn't actually make sense for anyone to spend five times the price on a tiny phone.
1:22:02Really it's just a personal preference.
1:22:04And even the personal preference people have to eventually admit that typing on a tiny keyboard is really hard.
1:22:09Oh, one more thing. On Touch ID, this is always the front of my mind because I'm always recommending products to my older relatives.
1:22:19As has been expressed to me many times and despite my disbelieving it,
1:22:25experimental evidence shows that Touch ID works less well for old people.
1:22:29I don't know if you've experienced this,
1:22:31but apparently fingerprints on wrinkly old people fingers are less consistent.
1:22:36So no matter how many times I train Touch ID on various old people fingers and it works,
1:22:42the next day they'll come and say, "Nope, I can't unlock it anymore."
1:22:45And it's frustrating for them and guess what? They just stop using Touch ID.
1:22:48They type in their code every single time because it doesn't take much inconsistency to just give up on the feature.
1:22:55So although Touch ID is great for the days of us all wearing masks and you can train Face ID with your mask on and stuff like that.
1:23:02Anyway, even though it seems like a thing of the moment to go back to Touch ID,
1:23:06for certain people it appears in my experimental experience that Touch ID works less well for some people than others.
1:23:14Whereas Face ID, no matter how wrinkly your face is, Touch ID doesn't care. It will still unlock its phone for you.
1:23:19Well, I am glad that Apple has come out with a new SE2. This is not something that myself or anyone that I can think of is really interested in,
1:23:27like in my real life, if you will. But I am super glad that they're updating it.
1:23:32Just like we were saying, I believe, last episode with the Mac Mini and the new iPads from a couple of weeks ago,
1:23:39I'm happy to see even just version bumps, if you will.
1:23:44Just put the new internals in and just keep on chugging because I think that in this case, having more options is good and makes sense.
1:23:54And sometimes one of the things that frustrates me and certainly people who are considering the Apple ecosystem so much
1:24:00is when Apple basically says, "Well, these are your four choices and if you don't like it, go pound dirt."
1:24:04There should be more options and I'm glad to see that there are more.
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1:25:47[Music]
1:25:50All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
1:25:52Addy Burr writes, "I am finding myself wanting to listen to more podcasts than I have time for.
1:25:57This problem has been exacerbated by the recent changes to my routine due to the pandemic.
1:26:01How do you make time for listening to your favorite shows?
1:26:03What activities do you find yourself comfortable to do while simultaneously listening to a podcast episode?"
1:26:08For me, I am also having the same problem.
1:26:11As soon as I stopped even my 10-minute commute, that created problems for my podcast queue.
1:26:18Then I stopped working at a job where I can actually code and listen to podcasts.
1:26:23That's not a problem for me. And so that hurt my podcast queue.
1:26:27Now it's just terrible because my work-life balance is all out of whack.
1:26:32Probably for the better in the grand scheme of things, we're all out of whack.
1:26:35And so for me, I am trying to listen to podcasts at times when perhaps I wouldn't have before.
1:26:41So when I exercise, typically I'll listen to a show.
1:26:44If I'm doing something that's a solo chore, like the dishes, for example, I typically do the dishes by myself.
1:26:50And so I'll listen to a podcast then.
1:26:53But yeah, I'm super far behind and have stopped listening to shows that I genuinely enjoy because I just don't have time for all of them.
1:27:02Marco, what are you doing with this? Anything different?
1:27:05I'm in kind of a similar boat, except that my commute life hasn't been that differently affected by this.
1:27:12And I should say too, people have these theories that podcast listening is dead or gone or totally down.
1:27:20And I, at least the other day, in a tweet from the Overcast account, the actual Overcast stats of what is different in this globally among all Overcast users.
1:27:30And what's interesting is that Overcast usage has always followed a very, very clear pattern of weekends being down and weekdays being up.
1:27:41Clearly, many people listen to podcasts as part of their workday routine, whatever that may be.
1:27:48Whether it's commuting, whether it's at work, because there's always this huge drop of about, I believe it's like 20 or 30% on Saturdays and Sundays.
1:27:58And there was always this shape to the usage graph, and you could see it very clearly, of these bumps.
1:28:05What has happened since the quarantine is the weekends, like the Saturday and Sunday parts of that graph, are almost unchanged.
1:28:14They're down a little tiny bit, but it's not a significant reduction. They're almost the same.
1:28:19The weekdays have simply come down to be closer to them than they were before.
1:28:25So it's like whatever people are doing on Saturdays and Sundays, they're still doing that at about the same rate.
1:28:31But what people do on the weekdays is now closer to that than it was before.
1:28:36Which honestly makes sense. Many people who used to have commutes to work now temporarily don't.
1:28:42Many people who listen to podcasts are in jobs where they still have to go to work right now during this quarantine, so they're still listening.
1:28:50Many people who eliminated their commute listening are adding listening time during the rest of their day now in their new home life,
1:28:58because they want the company or they're bored or whatever the reason is.
1:29:03The reduction in listening has actually only been among Overcast users something like 15% total.
1:29:10So most people are still finding time to listen to podcasts.
1:29:15So my answer to this is I listen, first of all, the obvious ones.
1:29:22If I'm on a dog walk, the rare occasions where I am driving somewhere, or any kind of errand running, or walking,
1:29:30or if I were the type of person to run outside, maybe I would do it then.
1:29:36I'm not a runner. Most of my exercises are indoor stuff on mats or rowing machines or things, so it's not really outdoor stuff.
1:29:47But exercising, if I'm by myself, if I'm not working with a trainer, then I will either do YouTube videos or podcasts.
1:29:54Usually YouTube videos, but sometimes podcasts.
1:29:57And then, as Casey said, throughout the rest of the day, just errands.
1:30:02If I'm washing dishes, I'll put a podcast on. If I'm cooking, I'll put a podcast on.
1:30:06Anything where I have to be occupied with my hands, but I'm doing something where it's not distracting to listen to people talk to me.
1:30:15So this is not anything I ever do at a computer. This is one of the reasons why I don't have a Mac app.
1:30:21There is nothing I do at a computer where I want to listen to podcasts.
1:30:25Except maybe game time. And I actually have been listening occasionally while playing Minecraft,
1:30:30just with my phone next to the computer.
1:30:32So basically, anytime where you're occupied doing something else physically, but your brain isn't fully engaged,
1:30:41doing yard work, cleaning, any of that stuff, it's great for that.
1:30:45I also listen in the shower. I have a HomePod in my bathroom. Yes, I know, it's ridiculous, but there it is.
1:30:51I listen to John Roderick in my bathroom. He's my shower podcaster.
1:30:56So you find time. They're always just on as I'm doing things around the house.
1:31:04And the dog walks for like 45 minutes a day, so that's significant right there.
1:31:10So it adds up. Basically, make podcasts part of your routine if you want to keep listening.
1:31:16Keep in mind that you don't have to necessarily listen in headphones.
1:31:21The most popular output device for overcast is the built-in speaker on the phone.
1:31:26Many, many people just listen with their phone playing through its speaker as they do stuff.
1:31:34And so you can just take your phone, you can set it on the counter as you're washing the dishes,
1:31:38you can set it next to the stove as you're cooking.
1:31:41You don't have to make it a thing where like, "All right, let me go get my headphones.
1:31:45Let me put them in. Let me sit down and listen to it."
1:31:47Only these highly produced shows that you've got to listen to really closely.
1:31:51No, you can just be more casual about it than that. No one's stopping you.
1:31:54So just put on a podcast on the phone speaker when you're doing something boring next time
1:31:58and see how you like it.
1:32:00My venues are the same as they've always been. You're listed all of them already.
1:32:03I think doing laundry, cooking dinner, cleaning up after dinner, cleaning the house.
1:32:08Because it works kind of hard during vacuuming. You really shouldn't turn the volume up that loud during that.
1:32:12AirPods Pro. Noise canceling.
1:32:14I have a pretty little Bluetooth speaker for the shower. Although the shower is an issue in my house
1:32:19because in order to hear it over the sound of the shower and the ceiling thing, you have to turn it up pretty loud
1:32:25and then you can hear it in other rooms and people don't like me to listen to podcasts in the shower
1:32:28if they want the rest of the house quiet. That's the only one that's contentious.
1:32:32And yeah, going for dog walks and going for regular walks.
1:32:35The only thing I've added recently is I did start listening to podcasts during some Destiny stuff
1:32:42when I'm doing certain space chores that I don't have to engage my mind fully on.
1:32:46I can listen to podcasts, but for the real Destiny stuff I can't. It needs my full concentration.
1:32:54The way I have dealt with getting behind on shows, it's not really related to the virus stuff.
1:33:01It's mostly related to me continuing to subscribe to more and more shows, which is untenable.
1:33:06You can't just keep subscribing to more shows. You will run out of time in the day.
1:33:10The way I deal with it is I try to increase the duration of things that I'm already doing, so longer dog walks,
1:33:17or longer regular walks, which is easy because it's spring and you want to be outside more.
1:33:22It takes longer to maintain social distance and keeping 20 feet away from people or whatever.
1:33:27And then for all the things that you do, either do them more often, or instead of trading off with your partner cleaning up,
1:33:38just clean up after dinner all the time. Because that's now twice as much podcasting time if you were alternating before.
1:33:44Cook dinner all the time. Fold the laundry all the time. Clean the house twice as much as you were cleaning it before.
1:33:52It's kind of like in dieting where people can change their mindset to the point where just looking at some kind of unhealthy food
1:34:00they used to love makes them disgusted. It no longer becomes a test of willpower not to eat that food.
1:34:08You get to the point where you don't want that food anymore. It turns you off instead of turning you on.
1:34:13You can do that with chores. I hate doing dishes. If you reconceptualize doing dishes,
1:34:19as this is the time when I finally get to listen to that podcast show I've been waiting to listen to all day,
1:34:24you look forward to doing dishes. You'll fight over who gets to do dishes so you can listen to your podcast
1:34:29that you want to listen to all day. If you reframe things in that way, you can find more time for podcasting.
1:34:35I think that's why people love it during the commute. It's the perfect way to add enrichment to an activity
1:34:42that otherwise would not engage your mind fully. The dishes need to get done. You probably need to do a good job with them,
1:34:48but they absolutely do not need to engage your entire mind once you have a couple of decades of dish watching experience.
1:34:54You can basically do that on autopilot and you can be engaging the rest of your mind with an enriching activity,
1:35:00like listening to people talk about how expensive wheels for their expensive computer are.
1:35:04Well done. Hunter Holland writes, "When it comes time to record, you all have spoken a bit about all of the apps you have open
1:35:13and how you have them arranged in a specific way on the screen. Do you automate this? How do you do it?"
1:35:17I haven't found any good answers elsewhere and I don't know AppleScript yet. I don't automate this.
1:35:22I probably should because I, as we have discussed in the past, I like to tile things in a particular way when I'm recording.
1:35:28I don't automate this in any way, shape, or form. I'm not even sure. I know there exist apps to do it and perhaps you two can fill me in on some of them.
1:35:37I think BetterTouchTool might do that sort of thing, but either way, it's something I should probably look into but don't do. Marco?
1:35:46Similar. I don't do it. I don't have any kind of automation. I just manually move the windows to where they're supposed to be every time.
1:35:52And it's fine. I mean, I only have a few apps I'm using. I have Skype, Audio Hijack, and the chat thing, and a browser, and a terminal window for the live server. That's it.
1:36:03John?
1:36:04My computing philosophy, as implied by the Windows of Syracuse County episode and as evidenced from my first ever blog post at Arstectic, which I think was called the state of web browsing and it was a pun on state being about preserving state and not about the conditions of web browsing.
1:36:22My philosophy is that things on the computer that need input to customize them should stay the way I customize them. So asking this question is like, "How do you set things up and do you automate?"
1:36:37It's like asking, "Do you automate getting your keyboard connected to your computer and having the mouse be next to it and having the mouse pad go underneath and having the monitor be in front of you and having your chair be in front of you?"
1:36:47Do you automate that every time a video podcast? No. The keyboard, I connect it once and it doesn't move unless I move it. Like every time I come in, the keyboard is on the keyboard tray in the same spot. Why else would it be?
1:36:57I don't have to replace the mouse pad under my mouse. I don't have to reconnect the mouse and put it to the right of my mouse pad. It's always just there. And why is it there?
1:37:04Because at one point in the past, I set up my keyboard and mouse where I wanted them to be on the keyboard tray and they stayed there.
1:37:11Same thing with my monitor. Same thing with my chair. I don't come in and go, "Where the hell is my chair?" "Oh, my chair is on the ceiling?" "Oh, come on chair, off the ceiling, down in front of the computer."
1:37:20That's how I feel when I launch Skype and the stupid little floating recording window is some random ass place. It's like my chair is on the ceiling. It's like, "Why are you there, recording window?"
1:37:29Every time I launch Skype, I have to take that little recording window and drag it back to the place where it has to be.
1:37:34Everything else, for the most part, on my computer related to podcasting doesn't require any automation because I size the windows and place them once and every time I launch those apps, the windows appear in those same places.
1:37:49Now, arguably, you could automate the launching of the applications. "Oh, I don't have to remember to launch Audio Hijack and Skype and my IRC client and to quit Dropbox or turn off Time Machine."
1:38:01That can all be automated and I know some people who do it. Jason Snell, I believe, has a bunch of Apple scripts to set up all this stuff.
1:38:07The amount of things that I need to do to get into podcasting mode basically boils down to clicking a bunch of icons in my dock and that is way below my threshold for automation.
1:38:18I can just click the icons. Honestly, it's not a big deal. Do I have to remember to turn off Dropbox? Yeah, I do. But I don't forget, first of all.
1:38:27And second of all, it's mostly just Superstition at this point given I have like 12 cores or whatever. I used to turn off Time Machine on my 10-year-old computer. I don't do that anymore.
1:38:36It's been on since I got this new Mac Pro. It hasn't affected any of my recordings. It can have a CPU core to grind if it really starts going nuts.
1:38:46So my answer is no, I don't automate it. People shouldn't have to automate things like this. The state that you build up by arranging your work environment the way you want it should be preserved by a well-behaved computer.
1:38:58And if it's not, I think that's a problem, which is why I hate that stupid little tiny Skype floating window that is the one outlier in this whole setup.
1:39:06Finally, Marut Chandegra writes, "What podcast episode are you most proud of having recorded? What about that episode are you most proud of?"
1:39:17I can't choose one of my favorite children, but of all of my children, the hundreds of them in terms of podcast episodes, I am definitely very proud of the Latner episodes and the episode where Phil Schiller guested.
1:39:31I just think it's a really nice recognition of the work of the three of us, and that was a real honor to have both of them on the show.
1:39:41And then on analog, it was actually, I think, number five, I believe. I always get the number wrong.
1:39:48But it was one that I did very early on with Mike Hurley and Stephen Hackett about some of the tougher things that our families have had to deal with in the past.
1:39:57And that one is probably one of my favorite, if not the best, but also hardest podcast episode I've ever recorded.
1:40:05But yeah, every ATP episode, every single one, that's the final answer. Go Marco.
1:40:12So I like the special, like the high profile ones, like the Schiller ones, and the Latner. I like those, but ultimately my favorite, what I enjoy the most, are the episodes like this where we're just BSing with each other.
1:40:29And especially when one of us does something that the other two can make fun of, or when we uncover something about someone, that we're just like, "What? You do what?" I just like that.
1:40:42My style of enjoying this show, and heck, enjoying a lot of parts of life, is about finding everyday amusement and happiness in little crap with my friends.
1:40:56I love that. And that's what this show is to me, BSing with my friends, and it's fun, and all of you out there actually listen to this for some reason, and that's wonderful, for us at least.
1:41:09And so I appreciate that. But I just like the everyday BS episodes that we have. Like this, I think this week is great, I liked last week, these are just like regular episodes.
1:41:22This is what I enjoy. If I had to pick out something that I enjoy, like noteworthy levels, doing the live shows at WVDC, I really enjoy those.
1:41:32Because those are not only noteworthy for whatever news we just announced, but those usually involve a lot of us, like, you know, ribbing each other and stuff, and so that's always fun too.
1:41:43But ultimately, I just like the regular chemistry and BS that this show is.
1:41:50I couldn't agree more. And I actually would say that to me, the canonical, like, best example of the three of us just being the three of us might be the recently mentioned Windows of Syracuse accounting episode, which is number 96.
1:42:07If you have come to ATP after episode 96, please go back to episode 96 and just listen to it. I don't want to ruin it and say any more than that, but episode 96 is, in that sense, like just in terms of pure joy, is probably my favorite ATP episode we've ever recorded, because it was so ridiculous and so much fun.
1:42:28Jon, what do you think?
1:42:30I just think Windows should stay where you put them. I mean, can I get some agreement on that? Like, it seems like... Anyway, I'll try to answer this question better than you two, because you didn't answer this question.
1:42:40Oh, there it is! There it is.
1:42:42What are you most proud of having recorded? It didn't say what are your favorites. I mean, I guess it can be similar, but like, anyway, it's difficult because like, what are you most proud of having recorded? Like, it doesn't mean the episode that most people like, it doesn't mean the episode that you got the most compliments about, it doesn't mean the episode that you even enjoyed recording the most. What are you most proud of recording?
1:43:01So when I think about that, I'm like, is there something I think I did, like, or accomplished by recording something? The closest I could get is, I feel like there are a couple of episodes of podcasts where, you know, I was lucky enough to be recording a podcast at a moment in time when something important happened, and I was able to catch my reaction to it in real time, right?
1:43:24But just not really a thing that you can control, because if you're not doing a podcast when some important thing happens, like, you know, well, oh well.
1:43:31So I was thinking back to the episodes, hypercritical episodes when like Steve Jobs died, which was very important and emotional moment, and I just happened to be recording a podcast right when those feelings were the most raw, right?
1:43:47And if like that is the type of thing that you can't, you can't set out to do, right? You can't, no matter how hard you try and how good at you, what you're doing, it's a confluence of events that you didn't control.
1:43:57And like showing up was the most important thing that you had a podcast and that you recorded that week, and that it was an emotional issue for you, and that you captured how you felt in that moment.
1:44:07Even if those episodes aren't as popular as, you know, or as entertaining or whatever as other things. That's the first thing that came to mind. The second thing that came to mind is, like, I continue to get tweets about old episodes of ATP or old episodes of hypercritical or whatever, where I'm talking about some BS, who knows, we're doing pontificating about technology.
1:44:28And people tend to tweet like that they're amazed that what they heard reflected so well into the future. And when I listen to it, I'm like, I got everything wrong. Like, what are you talking about?
1:44:40I didn't, you know, this, if you listen to the text of what I'm saying, it's clear that the details of what I said turned out not to be true.
1:44:47But I think what people are reacting to is like, okay, so you got the details wrong, but in general, like the spirit of what you were going for, like big picture wise, you had the right idea.
1:44:58It's just that, of course, because if you're projecting 10 years into the future, you're going to get the details wrong. But in general, you had some inkling of the general direction that things were going.
1:45:10And I'm proud of being able to even especially when they hear it, I'm like, that was like a throwaway thing that I didn't even like wasn't even written down anywhere. It's just like the first thing that popped into my head.
1:45:19But yes, I am proud of the fact that off the cuff every once in a while, I would just instinctively say a thing, you know, the projected real far forward in the future and get all the details wrong.
1:45:31But some people listening to it in the present say, wow, that reminds me a lot of what actually did happen.
1:45:37So those two things showing up at a time when something really important happened and I guess being willing to just like spill your guts into a podcast. Right.
1:45:46I'm proud of doing that. And I'm also proud of every once in a while having an off the cuff insight that turns out to resonate with people in the present day.
1:45:55Also, I mean, the fridge episode directives has got to be on your list. I'm not sure which is that quality or I don't think that it qualifies for saying anything about the future. Maybe it captures a moment in time. I don't know.
1:46:08Maybe it's more of more of Marco's thing about just a bunch of BS.
1:46:12My favorite, I want to amend what I said also. Another type of episode I really, really enjoy doing is when there has been some kind of major tech news in an area that we ostensibly maybe should care about, but typically don't.
1:46:29Like some big new Android flagship phone was released. And we don't even mention it. Not even once. We pretend like whatever big news this is, that literally every other podcast in our little group of community podcasts have similar things.
1:46:46Everyone else is talking about news item X, Y, or Z from this week. And we blow right past, we don't even mention it because we're spending all of our time BSing with each other over other stuff that doesn't matter in the news sense.
1:47:00I love those too. Whenever we just totally skip a really big story that everyone else is talking about because we're too busy making fun of each other.
1:47:10Hey, you want to talk about the contact tracing?
1:47:12Anyway, thanks. We actually do have a lot to talk about that, but we'll save that for next week.
1:47:16Next week! We'll do it, really.
1:47:18Thanks to our sponsors this week. Squarespace, ExpressVPN, and Fully. And we will see you next week.
1:47:24Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
1:47:36John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
1:47:47And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them.
1:47:57@C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey List, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A. It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Tech podcast so long.
1:48:26I actually placed a second order from Apple.com today. Oh no. What did you do Marco? Well, it isn't that interesting.
1:48:36It's a Mac Mini. A Mac Mini? Why? Third place is another Mac Mini. Yeah, seriously. Basically.
1:48:42Wait, what? In our work at Homitude, Tiff and I both record a lot of podcasts. Adam is also being homeschooled in a way, sort of with the schools online stuff.
1:48:54And so there's lots of need for all of us to be using computers in the same two rooms of the house that are adjacent to each other at the same time.
1:49:05And so we have a need for, you know, maybe we can record podcasts upstairs during the day.
1:49:12So that way the people downstairs can keep doing the stuff they need to do on their computers or with the homeschool stuff, homework activities.
1:49:21The fact that we have a kid at home who needs to do stuff and be a kid and make noise sometimes.
1:49:27So we wanted for a while to set up an alternate recording studio upstairs.
1:49:32And we had pretty much everything to do it. Like I had my stupid LG Ultrafine monitor that was sitting in the basement wasting away.
1:49:40You know, I have a third microphone because when we do our live shows, I bring three, you know, for the three of us I bring three microphones.
1:49:48And so normally we have the two, my desk, Tiff's desk, but we had a third one of the exact same kind, just in the closet most of the year.
1:49:54And I had, you know, old, you know, boom arms and everything I wasn't using anymore.
1:49:58So like I had all the gear to do it. And so we set up the Ultrafine, plugged in, you know, a bunch of extra gear.
1:50:05So we ran it the last couple days. It's been wonderful podcasting up there.
1:50:09With the one exception that what we've been doing is just taking our respective Apple laptops and plugging them in during our recordings.
1:50:16The desk is really small for this, for like a laptop and the giant LG monitor.
1:50:22And there's no keyboard or mouse yet. And there's certainly no room to have keyboard or mouse and monitor and laptop, you know, somewhere.
1:50:28Unless we do clamshell mode and some kind of one of those like stand up stands.
1:50:32But the main problem is that using a laptop in this way is annoying.
1:50:37It is disruptive to the state of things on the laptop.
1:50:41And also what I learned today is that the fans on my laptop are a little bit too loud for this when plugged into a monitor.
1:50:48Whoops.
1:50:49Yeah, the 16 inch, even when I disabled turbo boost to try to save some heat, the 16 inch when plugged into the LG monitor keeps the fan around 2800 to 3000 RPM most of the time.
1:51:01And so it's just, it was audible on the recording.
1:51:05And I'm like, you know, I just, I don't like, this is not good. And plus, you know, using a laptop as a desktop is clumsy in lots of other ways.
1:51:13And I don't love that I had to use Wi-Fi for the recording because I'm not going to use Ethernet on my laptop because it's always unreliable.
1:51:21Using some kind of dongle for that.
1:51:23Like, I don't, I just want something with Ethernet.
1:51:25So basically I was looking at, you know, Mac Mini versus low end iMac and the Mac Mini 1.
1:51:30I considered using my existing Mac Mini for this purpose, but using it for this purpose would require me to upgrade its OS from, you know, DOS, whatever it's running, some very old version of the OS.
1:51:42To something more recent to run on like all the podcasting capture software and everything.
1:51:46And it's also, this is a 2014 Mac Mini, so it's very old. And it was, I didn't even get the high end configuration then. So it was, you know, it's an old low end Mac Mini running a very old OS.
1:52:00And if I upgrade the OS, not only will it probably run even slower, but I will lose my iSCSI setup for my Synology.
1:52:09Oh, yikes.
1:52:10Because the initiator software is not compatible and blah, blah, blah. You know, I could buy a new version or whatever, but like I don't want to do, I don't want to put any more money into my Synology setup.
1:52:22That's a legacy product for me.
1:52:24It remains a product in your lineup.
1:52:26Yes.
1:52:27So anyway, so I'm like, I don't want to mention that. So let me just get the new Mac Mini. I know it's great. Like I had that review loaner. I know it's a great system.
1:52:35And so I just bought like the kind of low to mid range one. But yeah, I think, you know, I listed all the options and I think it was the right move.
1:52:43Interestingly, in my house, we have a similar situation with people needing to be on computers simultaneously much more than they used to because everybody's home and everyone's got to do these computer stuff.
1:52:54And like, not really surprisingly, but still frustratingly, the same reason that both my kids and I imagine most modern kids prefer to watch any kind of, you know, video, quote unquote, television or whatever on their iPads, as opposed to on the gigantic fancy television.
1:53:11Right. They want the why. Why does why would they want to watch video on their phone or on their iPad instead of the big TV?
1:53:16Because they can do it on their phone or their iPod in the privacy of their own room.
1:53:20Right. They don't want the parents to know what they're up to, what they're watching. They just they want privacy because they're teens and tweens. Right.
1:53:27So in our house, we have all this computer equipment around where you can do your Zoom meetings and do all your school stuff and so on and so forth.
1:53:35And we've got this nice big 5K iMac with a nice comfortable desk chair. And you can just do there, sit there and do your work.
1:53:41And you have a desk in front of you to put your schoolbooks on and camera and microphone are built in and everything's great.
1:53:47And nobody wants to use it. Nobody wants to use the iMac. They're all fighting over the stupid laptop. Why?
1:53:53Because you can take your laptop into your room and not have your parents see you on a video conference and be all embarrassed.
1:54:00Right. So it's such a battle of like them fighting with each other over the laptop because they don't want to be forced, punished by using the 5K iMac, which is a much better computer in all respects for all possible schoolwork.
1:54:12It has a better keyboard. It has a better screen. Has a real mouse. Nobody wants to use it. So this is ridiculous battles over this.
1:54:20To make it to make them feel better, the solution I've gone with this because for my work, I have a laptop.
1:54:26So I take my work laptop up to my bedroom and do my meetings there.
1:54:31And then one kid is locked into the computer room that I'm in now with the door closed so they can have privacy and then they can go in the 5K iMac and do their Zoom meetings and somehow feel comfortable.
1:54:43So they are basically the inverse of me. I hate laptops and they will only tolerate laptops because they can't stand the idea of being chained to a desk.
1:54:51Actually, you know, kid computer needs did weigh into this decision because Adam is, you know, he's about to turn eight. He almost needs his own computer.
1:55:01He's finding situations where you're like, "Well, he can use ours for this. He can use ours for this. He can use ours for this."
1:55:06But like at some point he's going to need his own computer and this I think could become that.
1:55:10If we stop needing Studio B upstairs, then this computer can just become the computer that, this is the upstairs computer and that can be his computer because it provides some of that privacy and everything.
1:55:20It would be upstairs. It doesn't necessarily need to be in his room.
1:55:24But it's also not a laptop which I think is great for like a kid's first computer if you can swing it because not a laptop is much more durable.
1:55:34If there's like, you know, some, you know, sticky or buttery hands touching that keyboard or if something gets spilled onto it or anything like a desktop keyboard is much easier and cheaper to replace than a laptop keyboard.
1:55:46And a desktop is much less likely to get fatally damaged in use than a laptop.
1:55:51You know, you don't have to worry about like, "Oh, what if they accidentally leave it somewhere and somebody steps on it or the hinge breaks or whatever."
1:55:56Like, you know, you have none of those concerns with the desktop.
1:55:58So the likely lifetime of this computer, it's going to start out being a Studio B recording machine but I think it's going to end up probably as my kid's first computer.
1:56:09Plus 8-year-olds don't need the privacy that tweens need. Like, they're not in that phase of all that stuff. Although, and you're very right, like, the good 13-inch MacBook Air, like the good one before they went Retina, my daughter destroyed that.
1:56:22I mean, she just didn't treat it well and eventually got to the point where she literally cracked the screen on it.
1:56:27So, yeah, laptops and young children do not mix, especially expensive laptops.
1:56:32So if you can get him to use a desktop, and I think you'll have no problem with it until he becomes a surly tween and doesn't want you seeing what he's doing, I think that'll work out great.
1:56:40Although the only thing I worry about is maybe that he messes up your podcasting setup in some way because kids can find a way to mess up your computer.
1:56:46You go in, you try to switch to your account, and you realize that Adam has somehow found a way to download a bunch of malware and install it and it's screwing with your computer.
1:56:54Yeah, I mean, yeah, the reality is, like, I think if we still use this as a podcasting machine, we probably wouldn't let him use it also.
1:57:02That would be like if we stopped needing it as that machine, then we would repurpose it as his or, you know, something like that.
1:57:07Maybe he'll use my iMac Pro when I get the iMac Pro someday.
1:57:10Oh, goodness. That's what I thought you were going to say.
1:57:12I know. That's why I teased you. Like, "Hey, you know, I bought another computer from Apple."
1:57:16But not what you think. Still not what you think. And the thought even occurred to me. Maybe...
1:57:22Oh, trickle down.
1:57:23Yeah. My fan problem is back on my iMac Pro.
1:57:26Oh, I don't like that.
1:57:27The fans still spin up like crazy while doing simple things that didn't used to happen, and I'm concerned, but this is not a time to make changes to my production setup, Casey.
1:57:36This is not a good time for that. So I'm like, "All right."
1:57:40One thought I did have was, "What if I just buy myself the Mac Pro and then move this computer upstairs to be the Studio B computer?"
1:57:49But that is substantially more expensive, and I think that would be really a waste of this computer.
1:57:56Because the needs for that upstairs computer are not high. They're just specific.
1:58:01By the way, the chat room is going nuts saying, and so I want to put this in the show so we don't get a million emails, saying like,
1:58:06"Oh, my God. Don't get your kid a Mac Mini for his first computer. It's terrible for PC games."
1:58:11That's probably true. If he's going to be needing a computer for PC games, we'll get him a gaming PC. That's totally fine.
1:58:17During our Minecraft obsession during this quarantine, I've actually been using TIFF's gaming PC, which is a Razer, I don't know, a 15-inch Razer laptop that,
1:58:28whatever was their nice gaming laptop as of about a year ago. It's been great, actually.
1:58:34As a gaming PC, it's been wonderful. When I look at the numbers, the performance numbers of what gaming PC, like, GPUs, desktop versus laptops,
1:58:46how they perform. So in this laptop is a Nvidia, whatever, whatever, whatever, 80 Max-Q.
1:58:55It's a RTX 2080 Max-Q. Is that a thing, John?
1:58:59Yeah, I don't know about the mobile version of it. Yeah, the 2080 is their current sort of high-end video card line.
1:59:06Right. So it's the mobile version of that that's in the Razer 15-inch whatever from last year.
1:59:11And I looked at, you know, I tried searching like, OK, well, how does this compare to whatever you could get today in a desktop PC?
1:59:20And it's not that far off. What does that mean for me and my games? Like, you know, I can run them at higher resolutions or with greater filtering settings.
1:59:28I can get a few more frames per second. Like, it's already incredibly fast for the few games that it plays.
1:59:33So it's great. And so I think actually, like, if Adam ever needed a gaming PC, I'd probably go the laptop route for that.
1:59:41Because laptops can clearly come pretty close to that. And for that kind of purpose, a laptop would be fine.
1:59:47If he wants a gaming PC, I'm assuming he's going to be playing something more demanding than Minecraft.
1:59:51So maybe don't go with a mobile GPU.
1:59:53You'd be surprised how demanding Minecraft is because it's so poorly written.
1:59:56You should get the, there are a bunch of variants of Minecraft that do real-time ray tracing. You should try one of those.
2:00:04Oh, yeah.
2:00:06Because as you can imagine, like, it's simple geometry-wise. But, you know, the things that ray tracing is good at, like, you know, handling light sources in a more realistic way and having light sources sort of affecting color of the world in interesting ways and light filtering through transparent stuff can actually make Minecraft look, you know, more realistic.
2:00:25You know, look different. Look even more moody than it already does.
2:00:29There's a bunch of, I don't know if they're official ports or just tech demos. Just do a YouTube search for Minecraft ray tracing. You can see what some look like.
2:00:37And the RTX in those Nvidia lines is, you know, both Nvidia and AMD have this, have these extensions to their GPUs that are supposed to help ray tracing be faster in the ways that games use them.
2:00:52And those actually do make a difference if you try one of those game engine variants that takes advantage of the ray tracing things.
2:00:59It's obviously not doing full ray tracing for the entire engine, but it's like for the things that it's using it for, this tiny little part of the GPU helps accelerate that function and make it either less expensive or basically free in addition to the normal stuff that it does.
2:01:12Most of the research I found basically made it look like it would probably, like it has almost all the same capabilities as the flagship PC GPUs now.
2:01:22It just has like, yeah, it's like, you know, a 30% lower performance ceiling basically. Like it's not, it's surprisingly close. Like I thought the difference would be a lot bigger than it is.
2:01:33Yeah, but, you know, the gaming PCs, you get desktop, like you can get an entire desktop that is, like you said, 50% faster for less money than the laptop.
2:01:43The other tricky bit is that the laptop screen is small compared to the potential desktop screen.
2:01:49So once you get a desktop sized screen, now you need to beef your GPU if you want to run it at native res, which you probably do. So yeah, that's fair.
2:01:56Anyway, who knows what Adam will want by the time he's into that thing. Who would want to turn up his nose, like my kids, turn up his nose entirely at desktops and want to play everything on his holo AR iPad, whatever the hell.
2:02:07His Apple glasses.
2:02:11(laughing)
2:02:13(beeping)