ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► So Kasey, what trackpad are you using? (laughs)

00:00:04 ◼   ► - Look at the show notes, Marco,

00:00:06 ◼   ► I saw you using the show notes.

00:00:08 ◼   ► There is a time and a place for me to talk about my computer.

00:00:11 ◼   ► - So Kasey, what OS are you using? (laughs)

00:00:15 ◼   ► - I will say that I did not downgrade,

00:00:17 ◼   ► and there are reasons, there are reasons.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Most of them came from, I think it was

00:00:21 ◼   ► a post-show conversation between the three of us,

00:00:23 ◼   ► where I was convinced not to do it yet,

00:00:25 ◼   ► but I don't wanna talk about that yet.

00:00:27 ◼   ► - So who's going over to kick you?

00:00:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know, that's up to you guys.

00:00:32 ◼   ► - Give me one moment, I have to go turn

00:00:33 ◼   ► the air conditioning on, 'cause it's super hot in here.

00:00:36 ◼   ► - Remember when Marco said he was gonna hang out

00:00:38 ◼   ► above 77 degrees in his beach house?

00:00:40 ◼   ► I remember that.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - I remember that too.

00:00:43 ◼   ► - He's gonna turn on the air conditioning?

00:00:44 ◼   ► - All right.

00:00:45 ◼   ► - What the hell temperature is it over there?

00:00:47 ◼   ► I just jammed my mouse cursor into the lower left corner

00:00:50 ◼   ► to try to get dashboard to come up.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - Aww.

00:00:53 ◼   ► - 'Cause I wanted to see what the weather was.

00:00:55 ◼   ► It was just instinctive.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - What temperature is it?

00:00:57 ◼   ► - Mouse goes into the lower left corner, nothing happens.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's 46 degrees, but it's a hot room.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you need that AC, you're right,

00:01:04 ◼   ► get that on immediately.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - Let's start, as we must do, with some follow-up.

00:01:10 ◼   ► We had some really genuinely great feedback

00:01:14 ◼   ► with regard to radar and feedback assistant,

00:01:17 ◼   ► and my particular feedback with regard to my catalina woes,

00:01:21 ◼   ► which we'll get to in just a moment.

00:01:23 ◼   ► According to a couple of different people, I believe,

00:01:27 ◼   ► feedback, or feedbacks is, I guess, the plural of them,

00:01:31 ◼   ► those get turned into radars internally.

00:01:33 ◼   ► So feedback assistant, which is what the peons,

00:01:36 ◼   ► like the three of us, would use to file a bug,

00:01:39 ◼   ► those are their own bucket of things,

00:01:41 ◼   ► those are the feedbacks.

00:01:43 ◼   ► And then internal to Apple, they get turned into radars.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And so one of the other things that we had asked about,

00:01:49 ◼   ► either on Twitter or perhaps here on the show,

00:01:51 ◼   ► was, I think one of you guys, in fact,

00:01:53 ◼   ► brought it up last week, that you could do

00:01:55 ◼   ► rdar colon slash slash and then a radar number,

00:01:58 ◼   ► and that, on an Apple-owned computer,

00:02:01 ◼   ► would give the person a hyperlink directly into radar

00:02:04 ◼   ► to that direct ticket.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And according to anonymous people, those links do still work,

00:02:09 ◼   ► but the feedback number is different from the radar number.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Feedbacks generate a radar when they're submitted

00:02:15 ◼   ► and they get handled internally as the radar.

00:02:17 ◼   ► The feedback number is in a field of the radar,

00:02:19 ◼   ► so you can search for or track an issue by feedback number

00:02:22 ◼   ► or radar number, but if you're linking to it

00:02:24 ◼   ► with rdar colon slash slash, you have to use radar number.

00:02:27 ◼   ► And this one particular individual added,

00:02:29 ◼   ► I think the idea is that this lets the radar

00:02:31 ◼   ► get handled internally as a radar

00:02:33 ◼   ► without worrying about confidential information

00:02:34 ◼   ► getting transmitted back to the user.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I'm not sure about how or when things get transmitted back

00:02:40 ◼   ► to feedback assistant or the user.

00:02:43 ◼   ► - Sounds worse than the old system,

00:02:44 ◼   ► or even farther removed from the actual,

00:02:47 ◼   ► like, before we threw things into this web thing

00:02:50 ◼   ► that went into this bucket that got viewed by a native app,

00:02:52 ◼   ► now we're in this native app that throws things

00:02:54 ◼   ► into a bucket that goes into another bucket

00:02:56 ◼   ► that gets viewed by the real,

00:02:58 ◼   ► and then they don't even know if I do something in radar,

00:03:01 ◼   ► how does that propagate back to the customers?

00:03:04 ◼   ► So disconnected, it's kind of like a software developer's

00:03:08 ◼   ► relationship with their customers in the app store.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Very distant.

00:03:11 ◼   ► - I love that you're now one of us,

00:03:14 ◼   ► like after all this time.

00:03:15 ◼   ► - I know.

00:03:16 ◼   ► - You got an iPhone like 15 years after the iPhone

00:03:18 ◼   ► was released, like you finally joined the club.

00:03:19 ◼   ► - I got an iPod touch on day one,

00:03:22 ◼   ► just same thing, no phone calls.

00:03:23 ◼   ► And it was faster, dammit, it was faster.

00:03:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, that very first one, it had like

00:03:28 ◼   ► a slightly higher clocked CPU, right?

00:03:30 ◼   ► - It did.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - It was like 10% faster.

00:03:32 ◼   ► - It was thinner and faster, it was obviously better.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Who needs to make phone calls?

00:03:36 ◼   ► - Oh my word.

00:03:38 ◼   ► - All right, so let's talk about Casey's Computer Corner.

00:03:40 ◼   ► I know that during the main part of the show

00:03:43 ◼   ► that I had said that one of you needs to come

00:03:45 ◼   ► to Richmond and kick me if I have not yet

00:03:47 ◼   ► downgraded to Mojave.

00:03:49 ◼   ► We were discussing before the show,

00:03:51 ◼   ► possibly before we went live,

00:03:53 ◼   ► who it was that was going to come and kick me

00:03:55 ◼   ► because I am still in Catalina.

00:03:56 ◼   ► But I have reasons and I have updates.

00:03:58 ◼   ► So I will leave it to the two of you

00:04:01 ◼   ► to decide who's going to make the trek down to Virginia.

00:04:03 ◼   ► It sounds like--

00:04:04 ◼   ► - John, John, my finger's on my nose, it's John.

00:04:05 ◼   ► - Heard Margot's made an automatic kicking machine.

00:04:08 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Well done.

00:04:12 ◼   ► So anyway, so speaking of radars and feedbacks

00:04:14 ◼   ► and things of that nature, we did get an anonymous update

00:04:17 ◼   ► on the radar that was created from the feedback

00:04:19 ◼   ► that I had created complaining and moaning

00:04:21 ◼   ► and trying to get fixes for my poor iMac Pro.

00:04:25 ◼   ► And so this anonymous person basically paraphrased,

00:04:29 ◼   ► and I'm now paraphrasing the paraphrase,

00:04:31 ◼   ► what they had seen in the radar.

00:04:33 ◼   ► But if I understand what they said appropriately,

00:04:36 ◼   ► and I'm waiting for John to correct me

00:04:38 ◼   ► after I make my little spiel here,

00:04:40 ◼   ► it's that according to Apple, potentially thread contention

00:04:45 ◼   ► on kernel tasks VM map lock to the point

00:04:50 ◼   ► that the keyboard and mouse events can't get a lock

00:04:52 ◼   ► on this like global queue.

00:04:54 ◼   ► I'm pretty confident I butchered that pretty well.

00:04:56 ◼   ► John, can you translate that into something

00:04:58 ◼   ► that makes more sense?

00:04:59 ◼   ► - I didn't read the message with that much level of detail.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I think you got the gist of it.

00:05:02 ◼   ► It's just lock contention.

00:05:03 ◼   ► But why is there so much contention?

00:05:06 ◼   ► I think like that is the, well, two things.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Why is there so much contention, first of all?

00:05:09 ◼   ► And second of all, why does Catalina handle

00:05:11 ◼   ► that contention worse than Mojave apparently?

00:05:14 ◼   ► - Yep, and I have no answers for that.

00:05:15 ◼   ► But another thing that was said in the radar

00:05:18 ◼   ► according to this anonymous little birdie

00:05:19 ◼   ► is that a bunch of SMB kernel work is to blame.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Now I'm assuming SMB in this context is like Samba,

00:05:25 ◼   ► like server message block, whatever it's called,

00:05:27 ◼   ► like network shares.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And the reason I think that is because the Apple person

00:05:31 ◼   ► noted that MDS and backup D, and more importantly,

00:05:35 ◼   ► crash plan service and Plex were all between them

00:05:38 ◼   ► spawning a zillion threads, all doing stuff

00:05:40 ◼   ► across the network using what I used to call Samba,

00:05:44 ◼   ► basically a Windows-style network share to my sonology.

00:05:47 ◼   ► And apparently the Apple person called out CrashPlan

00:05:49 ◼   ► as being particularly egregious in this department.

00:05:51 ◼   ► - I'm shocked.

00:05:52 ◼   ► - And so--

00:05:53 ◼   ► - CrashPlan software might be inefficient.

00:05:55 ◼   ► - Who knew?

00:05:57 ◼   ► It's such, it's so bad, it's so bad.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And we're gonna talk about that later if you let me.

00:06:00 ◼   ► But anyway, it seemed like that was causing

00:06:04 ◼   ► some real problems.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Now I agree with you, John.

00:06:05 ◼   ► I'm not entirely clear why this is worse in Catalina.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Another thing that was mentioned that I didn't copy

00:06:10 ◼   ► to the Stair Notes, now I'm going right off the top

00:06:12 ◼   ► of my head, is that as cores go up, the amount of things

00:06:16 ◼   ► that could be asking for this global lock also goes up.

00:06:20 ◼   ► So on an iMac Pro that has, I don't even know

00:06:23 ◼   ► how many cores I have, a billion, this iMac Pro,

00:06:27 ◼   ► that could actually exacerbate it and make things even worse,

00:06:29 ◼   ► which is no bueno.

00:06:31 ◼   ► But the reason I didn't downgrade, other than some

00:06:34 ◼   ► convincing from Marco and John that again, I don't think

00:06:37 ◼   ► made the released version of the episode,

00:06:39 ◼   ► I decided to take a few different strategies.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Now, number one, the thing that everyone wanted me to do,

00:06:45 ◼   ► which I said I was going to do and then did not do,

00:06:48 ◼   ► is try the other trackpad I have.

00:06:50 ◼   ► I had lamented, mostly jokingly, that it was,

00:06:52 ◼   ► oh, it was all the way up in the attic, I need to go get it,

00:06:54 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah.

00:06:55 ◼   ► So I went up to the attic the very moment I stopped recording

00:06:58 ◼   ► last week to get that other trackpad, that alternate

00:07:01 ◼   ► trackpad that came with the iMac Pro.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And it was when I got the keyboard and trackpad box

00:07:06 ◼   ► back downstairs, or back into the middle floor, if you will,

00:07:10 ◼   ► that I opened it up and realized, oh wait,

00:07:12 ◼   ► I got a mouse with this.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I forgot.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Like a traditional magic mouse, I completely forgot.

00:07:16 ◼   ► - Whoops. - Right, right.

00:07:18 ◼   ► I completely forgot, I didn't order a new trackpad

00:07:20 ◼   ► 'cause why would I?

00:07:21 ◼   ► It seemed like I shouldn't need it.

00:07:24 ◼   ► So the reason I didn't try it was because I didn't have

00:07:26 ◼   ► an alternate one to try, and I absolutely had planned on

00:07:29 ◼   ► and was going to try it.

00:07:30 ◼   ► However, things, and let me do a little foley work

00:07:34 ◼   ► and knock on my glass desk very loudly,

00:07:36 ◼   ► things might be looking up, I think.

00:07:40 ◼   ► - So you're still using the old trackpad.

00:07:42 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:07:43 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:07:43 ◼   ► - Via Bluetooth, I should add.

00:07:44 ◼   ► I'm using a via Bluetooth.

00:07:46 ◼   ► - Did you just simply stop using Crash Plan?

00:07:48 ◼   ► - Well, almost.

00:07:50 ◼   ► The first thing, this is terrible, but I'm also overjoyed

00:07:55 ◼   ► that it seems to be getting better.

00:07:57 ◼   ► So the first thing I did was I started turning off

00:08:01 ◼   ► Crash Plan kind of strategically.

00:08:03 ◼   ► So when I was really sitting down working at the computer,

00:08:06 ◼   ► I turned Crash Plan completely off,

00:08:08 ◼   ► and there's a launch control command

00:08:10 ◼   ► that you can run in the terminal to turn it off.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Now, there are settings within Crash Plan

00:08:14 ◼   ► to be very gingerly, you'll treat the CPU

00:08:17 ◼   ► with very soft hands when the user is at the computer,

00:08:20 ◼   ► but I don't trust their crap software for anything,

00:08:23 ◼   ► so I just freaking turned it off.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And that helped some.

00:08:26 ◼   ► All right, listeners, here's the thing.

00:08:29 ◼   ► The other two aren't listening right now.

00:08:31 ◼   ► I'm about to say something that the two of them

00:08:33 ◼   ► are gonna have a choice, and they can either beat

00:08:36 ◼   ► the crap out of me for the next 20 minutes,

00:08:38 ◼   ► or they can be sympathetic and understanding.

00:08:40 ◼   ► So let's see what happens.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Right, so the other thing I did was

00:08:44 ◼   ► I took Plex off my computer, which pained me so much.

00:08:51 ◼   ► - Why would we complain about that?

00:08:52 ◼   ► - Because this is my world.

00:08:54 ◼   ► My world is my media consumption world.

00:08:57 ◼   ► - Plex is your world, not running Plex on your Mac.

00:09:00 ◼   ► You just have to have Plex running somewhere.

00:09:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can run it on pretty much anything.

00:09:04 ◼   ► - Well, that's the thing.

00:09:06 ◼   ► - Oh, did you upgrade your Synology?

00:09:08 ◼   ► - No, no, I want to so badly,

00:09:10 ◼   ► but that's a whole different discussion.

00:09:12 ◼   ► I also, we should talk about that later, but anyways.

00:09:15 ◼   ► It occurred to me that I had this Mac Mini

00:09:18 ◼   ► that was just kind of sitting there

00:09:19 ◼   ► that I had gotten from Justin at Mac Stadium.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And it's old, I don't even remember

00:09:26 ◼   ► exactly what vintage it is,

00:09:27 ◼   ► but it is more than enough to run Plex.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And it was literally sitting there sleeping in idle,

00:09:33 ◼   ► just because I wasn't doing anything with it.

00:09:35 ◼   ► I really wanted to have it in the house,

00:09:37 ◼   ► just in case, you never really know why,

00:09:39 ◼   ► but I wasn't doing anything with it.

00:09:40 ◼   ► And it occurred to me, wait a second,

00:09:42 ◼   ► why not run Plex on that?

00:09:44 ◼   ► And so I did that.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Well, I haven't literally removed it from my iMac Pro,

00:09:48 ◼   ► but I have not run it on my iMac Pro in about a week.

00:09:51 ◼   ► And I am running it on the Mac Mini.

00:09:55 ◼   ► And the moment I made that decision,

00:09:57 ◼   ► everything started to feel better.

00:09:59 ◼   ► That and the combination of Crash Plan,

00:10:00 ◼   ► not running generally speaking,

00:10:02 ◼   ► seems to have almost completely fixed my problems,

00:10:06 ◼   ► which is both wonderful and deeply depressing.

00:10:09 ◼   ► - What is Plex doing that would relate to contention?

00:10:12 ◼   ► Or do you have, like, is it in the background

00:10:14 ◼   ► making optimized versions?

00:10:16 ◼   ► Like how, I can understand how it would

00:10:18 ◼   ► spawn a bunch of threads.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Like, Plex is one of the least demanding uses

00:10:22 ◼   ► of network and file resources you can imagine.

00:10:25 ◼   ► Sequential reading, slow sequential reading

00:10:28 ◼   ► of very large files, granted, over the network.

00:10:30 ◼   ► But it's not like it's like Crash Plan,

00:10:32 ◼   ► where it's spawning a million threads

00:10:34 ◼   ► and trying to read every single file in your file system.

00:10:36 ◼   ► It's doing a targeted thing, right?

00:10:38 ◼   ► - Well, yes, and I do have Plex looking at my photo library,

00:10:43 ◼   ► which I don't think helps,

00:10:44 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think mine is as big as yours, oh God.

00:10:47 ◼   ► I don't think my photo library is as big as yours,

00:10:49 ◼   ► but I am still sure that that doesn't help much.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And also I do have it scanning like every 15 minutes

00:10:57 ◼   ► for new media or whatever the case may be,

00:10:58 ◼   ► which is probably not necessary.

00:11:01 ◼   ► - The new media scan is nothing, but like the photos thing,

00:11:03 ◼   ► tell me, I don't have a use Plex with photos.

00:11:05 ◼   ► What does that entail?

00:11:06 ◼   ► Does it crawl in your photos library,

00:11:09 ◼   ► like periodically to see if there are new photos?

00:11:12 ◼   ► - It is.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Now, I still take your point though, Jon,

00:11:14 ◼   ► and I agree with you that it seems odd

00:11:16 ◼   ► that moving Plex away from the iMac Pro

00:11:19 ◼   ► has made such a big difference,

00:11:20 ◼   ► but it seems like it's made

00:11:22 ◼   ► a tremendous, tremendous difference.

00:11:23 ◼   ► And so that has worked really well.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Now, earlier today, I turned Crash Plan on

00:11:28 ◼   ► for the first time in a while,

00:11:30 ◼   ► and within, I don't know, a couple of minutes

00:11:32 ◼   ► of that happening, I got a machine gun track pad.

00:11:34 ◼   ► So I think the next step is,

00:11:36 ◼   ► and we're gonna talk about this more later,

00:11:37 ◼   ► I think the next step is I'm gonna move Crash Plan

00:11:40 ◼   ► also onto this Mac Mini,

00:11:42 ◼   ► although at that point I'm really tempting fate

00:11:43 ◼   ► 'cause that Mac Mini is on Catalina,

00:11:45 ◼   ► and so maybe I'm just gonna move the problem

00:11:47 ◼   ► from one computer to another, who knows?

00:11:49 ◼   ► - But you don't need to use the Mac Mini interactively, right?

00:11:52 ◼   ► - That's the other thing, is that who really cares?

00:11:55 ◼   ► As long as the thing is functioning,

00:11:57 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter.

00:11:58 ◼   ► So that is probably the medium-term plan.

00:12:02 ◼   ► The long-term plan, which I'd like to get through

00:12:04 ◼   ► the rest of the follow-up before we discuss it,

00:12:05 ◼   ► but the long-term plan is I'd really like

00:12:07 ◼   ► to just divorce myself from Crash Plan entirely

00:12:08 ◼   ► and find a different mechanism to back up the Synology,

00:12:12 ◼   ► 'cause that's really what I'm after with Crash Plan.

00:12:14 ◼   ► After having reloaded to both my laptop and desktop

00:12:17 ◼   ► like 44 times in the last six months,

00:12:19 ◼   ► I've gotten to the point that almost everything

00:12:21 ◼   ► that's actually on my computer is relatively ephemeral.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I'm sure there are things that are not,

00:12:26 ◼   ► but the majority is on GitHub, it's on my Synology,

00:12:31 ◼   ► it's, I don't know, in iCloud or something like that.

00:12:33 ◼   ► So it seems like it shouldn't be a problem

00:12:38 ◼   ► to just get rid of Crash Plan

00:12:42 ◼   ► and not have it backing up the iMac at all.

00:12:44 ◼   ► And I do have Time Machine if things really get bad,

00:12:47 ◼   ► but in a worst-case scenario, screw it.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I'll just reinstall everything on the computer from scratch.

00:12:51 ◼   ► So my question for later,

00:12:52 ◼   ► which I really don't wanna get into now,

00:12:54 ◼   ► is how do I back up the Synology

00:12:55 ◼   ► for less than $100 a month?

00:12:57 ◼   ► And I'm saying that only slightly facetiously.

00:13:00 ◼   ► But in summary, the Mac Mini has saved my bacon.

00:13:03 ◼   ► I really appreciate that Justin had sent it my way,

00:13:07 ◼   ► and everything so far seems okay.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Now, remind me of that in like 20 minutes

00:13:12 ◼   ► when this thing fails miserably,

00:13:13 ◼   ► but sitting here now, it all seems all right.

00:13:15 ◼   ► - You're narrowing it down like we talked about

00:13:17 ◼   ► by removing things from your computer.

00:13:18 ◼   ► It's just that you're not removing them temporarily

00:13:20 ◼   ► to troubleshoot, you're moving them permanently

00:13:21 ◼   ► into another computer that you don't have to use.

00:13:24 ◼   ► - And part of the motivation for moving Plex to the Mac Mini

00:13:27 ◼   ► was that Plex is the thing that is least ephemeral

00:13:31 ◼   ► on my iMac Pro.

00:13:33 ◼   ► And the reason I say that is because yes,

00:13:34 ◼   ► all the media is stored on the Synology,

00:13:36 ◼   ► literally 100% of it,

00:13:38 ◼   ► but the database of what I've watched

00:13:40 ◼   ► and where everything is and all of this metadata

00:13:43 ◼   ► and all that other garbage isn't stored on the Synology.

00:13:46 ◼   ► That was stored on my iMac.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And yes, it is backing itself up to the Synology

00:13:50 ◼   ► from time to time, but it's just a nightmare,

00:13:55 ◼   ► or it would have been a nightmare to move Plex

00:13:57 ◼   ► to another machine out of like haste or angst,

00:14:00 ◼   ► you know what I mean, like when it wasn't on my own terms.

00:14:02 ◼   ► And so by having it on this other computer,

00:14:05 ◼   ► unless the Mac Mini blows itself up,

00:14:07 ◼   ► that leaves me much more flexibility with the iMac

00:14:11 ◼   ► to downgrade it or to reinstall Catalina from scratch

00:14:14 ◼   ► if I felt like it for some strange reason.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Now the iMac Pro is much more flexible than it was before.

00:14:21 ◼   ► And so, yes, you're right, it's not a temporary thing

00:14:25 ◼   ► with regard to Plex anyway,

00:14:27 ◼   ► but having Plex on its own, basically dedicated device,

00:14:30 ◼   ► has really freed up a lot of the stress in my world

00:14:34 ◼   ► with regard to the iMac Pro.

00:14:35 ◼   ► - One more thing about Plex,

00:14:36 ◼   ► from my troubleshooting with sleep/wake stuff,

00:14:39 ◼   ► Plex is not great about,

00:14:43 ◼   ► this is a, if you search the web for this,

00:14:44 ◼   ► you'll find it's a bug that they supposedly fixed

00:14:46 ◼   ► in the past, but it's not great about it.

00:14:47 ◼   ► It will grab power assertions that keep your,

00:14:50 ◼   ► not only keep your computer from going to sleep,

00:14:52 ◼   ► but even keep your screen from like going

00:14:55 ◼   ► into the screensaver or dimming or switching off,

00:14:58 ◼   ► which, you know, it'll grab them

00:15:00 ◼   ► when you ask it to play video,

00:15:01 ◼   ► if you ever ask it to play video locally,

00:15:03 ◼   ► but then it just will not give them up a lot of the time.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Like you won't be actually playing any video,

00:15:09 ◼   ► because you had previously played video.

00:15:10 ◼   ► If you look at PM set, you'll see that Plex

00:15:12 ◼   ► has a power assertion that prevents the screen

00:15:15 ◼   ► from even dimming, and it's the worst,

00:15:16 ◼   ► because I'll walk by the downstairs of the house

00:15:19 ◼   ► and I'll say, "Where's that light coming from that room,

00:15:21 ◼   ► "'cause all the lights are out?"

00:15:21 ◼   ► And I'll look in there and I'll see that, you know,

00:15:23 ◼   ► the iMac's screen has been on full brightness

00:15:26 ◼   ► for the past two hours on the same screen,

00:15:28 ◼   ► because something grabbed a power assertion,

00:15:29 ◼   ► and it's always Plex, so Plex,

00:15:31 ◼   ► if you're out there and listening,

00:15:32 ◼   ► let go of your power assertions

00:15:34 ◼   ► when you're not playing video.

00:15:35 ◼   ► And people, if you have this happening to you,

00:15:37 ◼   ► Plex may be the culprit.

00:15:39 ◼   ► The way to fix it is just to quit the Plex server

00:15:41 ◼   ► and restart it, and then it doesn't have

00:15:42 ◼   ► the power assertion anymore, but it's still an annoying bug.

00:15:45 ◼   ► - No argument.

00:15:47 ◼   ► All right, tell me, Jon, about the Pegasus J2i, please.

00:15:50 ◼   ► - That's my $400 piece of bent metal

00:15:53 ◼   ► that holds hard drives that I shoved into my computer.

00:15:56 ◼   ► I had it on my desk for a while.

00:15:58 ◼   ► I had it on my desk last week.

00:15:59 ◼   ► On the weekend, I got some time

00:16:00 ◼   ► to open up the computer to do it.

00:16:02 ◼   ► This is my second time now opening up the computer.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I'm still terrible at it.

00:16:07 ◼   ► I think this design of getting the internals,

00:16:10 ◼   ► once you have the thing off, it's great

00:16:12 ◼   ► 'cause you have access on all sides to the internals.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Getting it off, not so great.

00:16:17 ◼   ► A, I'm bad at it, but B, it is harder.

00:16:20 ◼   ► It is way harder than popping the side off

00:16:22 ◼   ► of an old cheese grater.

00:16:23 ◼   ► It's harder than opening the door

00:16:25 ◼   ► on a Yosemite or El Cap plastic tower case.

00:16:29 ◼   ► It is a physically difficult thing to do

00:16:34 ◼   ► because there's a lot of friction pulling the thing off,

00:16:37 ◼   ► and if you are not pulling exactly straight,

00:16:39 ◼   ► it doesn't come up.

00:16:40 ◼   ► All right, and it's especially difficult

00:16:41 ◼   ► because mine is on this little table thingy

00:16:44 ◼   ► that is lower than a desk but higher than the floor,

00:16:47 ◼   ► so there is a little bit of awkwardness

00:16:49 ◼   ► of trying to lift the thing up.

00:16:50 ◼   ► But anyway, that aside, I was all ready to install the thing,

00:16:54 ◼   ► and my first problem was that somehow

00:16:57 ◼   ► I don't have a T8 Torx driver in the house.

00:17:00 ◼   ► I have T6 and T, you know,

00:17:03 ◼   ► and all the sizes around it, T3,

00:17:06 ◼   ► just, I didn't have a T8, so I had to go out

00:17:07 ◼   ► and get another tool, which was kind of annoying.

00:17:09 ◼   ► But beyond that, installation went fairly well.

00:17:13 ◼   ► My only real complaint is that they give you a cable

00:17:18 ◼   ► to connect to the power and the two SATA ports.

00:17:22 ◼   ► You know, on the motherboard, there's a power connector

00:17:24 ◼   ► and then two SATA ports, and then there's the big

00:17:26 ◼   ► SATA cables that go to the actual drives.

00:17:28 ◼   ► And they make a single bundle of ribbon cables

00:17:32 ◼   ► that, you know, supposed to fulfill that role,

00:17:36 ◼   ► and they tape, it's like this bundle

00:17:38 ◼   ► of interleaved ribbon cables, they tape them together,

00:17:41 ◼   ► right, and you would think, great,

00:17:42 ◼   ► they know exactly which computer this is going in,

00:17:45 ◼   ► they know where all the parts are on the motherboard,

00:17:48 ◼   ► they know where the ports are gonna be on the hard drives,

00:17:50 ◼   ► this cable should be an exact fit.

00:17:52 ◼   ► But it is not, it is not an exact fit.

00:17:55 ◼   ► It, like, for starters, if you look at the parts

00:17:58 ◼   ► that plug into the drive, they are exactly level

00:18:01 ◼   ► with each other.

00:18:02 ◼   ► It's like, the drives are top and bottom,

00:18:04 ◼   ► they're not side by side, you can't have these things

00:18:07 ◼   ► be exactly level, like, it doesn't make any sense.

00:18:09 ◼   ► One of the drives is gonna be higher than the other,

00:18:11 ◼   ► therefore one of the connectors has to have

00:18:13 ◼   ► a longer ribbon cable on it.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Otherwise, either one's not gonna reach

00:18:17 ◼   ► or one's gonna be buckled.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Second, the connectors on the motherboard are horizontal,

00:18:22 ◼   ► like, it's the two SATA connectors and the power connector,

00:18:24 ◼   ► they're in a line horizontally, but the little,

00:18:27 ◼   ► the things that plug in there are not three different lengths

00:18:30 ◼   ► to go into things that are three different distances,

00:18:32 ◼   ► they're all the same length.

00:18:33 ◼   ► So I had to untape some of the tape that they had used

00:18:36 ◼   ► to tape together this bundle of wires,

00:18:38 ◼   ► just to try to get it so that things would plug in

00:18:40 ◼   ► without kinking too much.

00:18:41 ◼   ► I talked to Stephen Hackett, he said,

00:18:42 ◼   ► "Yeah, he did the same thing, he had to remove the tape."

00:18:44 ◼   ► So, you know, I guess you get what you pay for,

00:18:46 ◼   ► for only $400 for a bent piece of metal, you know,

00:18:49 ◼   ► they can't bother making the ribbon cable

00:18:51 ◼   ► be the right length.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, it's, you know,

00:18:53 ◼   ► $400 for a bent piece of metal.

00:18:54 ◼   ► I say that because that's all I wanted

00:18:56 ◼   ► was the bent piece of metal,

00:18:58 ◼   ► but it did come with an eight terabyte hard drive.

00:19:00 ◼   ► So that's where some of the cost is.

00:19:02 ◼   ► An eight terabyte hard drive, retail value, $134,

00:19:05 ◼   ► or whatever the hell it is.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Anyway, now I've got a big hard drive in my computer.

00:19:11 ◼   ► I ordered another hard drive to fill the other bay,

00:19:13 ◼   ► just because I wanted one a little bit bigger

00:19:15 ◼   ► than the other ones I have laying around.

00:19:17 ◼   ► So I'm doing that.

00:19:19 ◼   ► I don't like having a big noisy spinning hard drive

00:19:22 ◼   ► inside my otherwise quiet computer,

00:19:24 ◼   ► so I keep it unmounted and spun down.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Those two things are not synonymous with this computer

00:19:30 ◼   ► and Catalina, perhaps surprisingly.

00:19:32 ◼   ► When I wake my computer from sleep,

00:19:37 ◼   ► the hard drive spins up, even if it's not mounted,

00:19:40 ◼   ► and it stays spinning, even though it continues.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - Oh, you must love that.

00:19:44 ◼   ► - Even though it continues to be not mounted,

00:19:46 ◼   ► it's an easy fix.

00:19:47 ◼   ► You can just mount it and then unmount it,

00:19:49 ◼   ► and then it spins down.

00:19:50 ◼   ► And all this is to say is I can definitely hear

00:19:52 ◼   ► when the hard drive is spinning.

00:19:53 ◼   ► Forget about accessing, nothing is accessing it.

00:19:55 ◼   ► The drive is unmounted.

00:19:56 ◼   ► There is no hard drive heads moving back and forth,

00:19:59 ◼   ► but it's spinning, and I can hear that.

00:20:02 ◼   ► The solution to that, or one of the solutions

00:20:03 ◼   ► that I came up with, is this handy application

00:20:06 ◼   ► called Mountain, which I've had for ages,

00:20:08 ◼   ► used to use to mount and unmount my, at one time,

00:20:11 ◼   ► four internal drives on my old cheese grater.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And one of the features that Mountain has,

00:20:16 ◼   ► it's on the Mac App Store, but I bought it from the website

00:20:18 ◼   ► because anything that deals with hardware,

00:20:20 ◼   ► I figure that there's gonna be some feature

00:20:21 ◼   ► that can't implement it, it'll be in the Mac App Store

00:20:23 ◼   ► version, so buy direct, gives the developer more money,

00:20:26 ◼   ► and potentially has more features.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Anyway, there is a setting that,

00:20:30 ◼   ► there are many settings in Mountain,

00:20:31 ◼   ► one of which is, hey, when this drive is unmounted,

00:20:35 ◼   ► spin it down.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Or when I wake from sleep and it's not mounted,

00:20:38 ◼   ► spin it down.

00:20:39 ◼   ► There's a whole bunch of options about what you should do

00:20:41 ◼   ► when you reject it, what you should do

00:20:42 ◼   ► when you wake from sleep, and lo and behold,

00:20:44 ◼   ► just put that setting, and now when I wake my computer up,

00:20:47 ◼   ► the hard drive spins up, reminding me of my old

00:20:50 ◼   ► 10-year-old cheese grater making some noises

00:20:52 ◼   ► of things spinning up, and then immediately spins down,

00:20:55 ◼   ► back to blessed, not quite silence.

00:20:58 ◼   ► So, mostly thumbs up on the ridiculously expensive

00:21:02 ◼   ► Pegasus J2i, big thumbs up from Mountain,

00:21:05 ◼   ► although I don't like the menu bar icon.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Could be better, but anyway, other than that,

00:21:10 ◼   ► I am headed towards having many, many terabytes

00:21:14 ◼   ► of internal storage, and soon I will be very happy.

00:21:18 ◼   ► - All right, Darren Rogers had some feedback

00:21:20 ◼   ► with regard to shorter certificate expiration,

00:21:22 ◼   ► which we had talked about last week.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Darren writes, "The shorter expirations also helps ensure

00:21:27 ◼   ► "that everyone, for a reasonable value of the term,

00:21:29 ◼   ► "is using the latest standards and best practices

00:21:31 ◼   ► "for their certificates.

00:21:32 ◼   ► "A concrete example would be the certificate transparency

00:21:35 ◼   ► "and SCT signed certificate timestamp.

00:21:38 ◼   ► "Any cert you get today should have an SCT,

00:21:40 ◼   ► "but that hasn't always been true,

00:21:42 ◼   ► "so there are many websites without them.

00:21:43 ◼   ► "The very nature of SCTs is such that they will mostly

00:21:46 ◼   ► "be useful when everyone has them and browsers

00:21:48 ◼   ► "can start requiring them.

00:21:49 ◼   ► "Until then, they are of nominal value."

00:21:51 ◼   ► So this shorter expiration kind of forces everyone

00:21:54 ◼   ► to embrace the latest and greatest quicker

00:21:56 ◼   ► than it would otherwise.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Additionally, Chris Thompson writes,

00:22:01 ◼   ► "You're right about certificate revocation

00:22:02 ◼   ► "not being very effective currently,

00:22:04 ◼   ► "and that an attacker having a year to use

00:22:06 ◼   ► "a compromised cert is still bad.

00:22:07 ◼   ► "That said, browsers still do use bundled verification lists

00:22:10 ◼   ► "to cache a set of revocations.

00:22:13 ◼   ► "By constraining the max certificate lifetime,

00:22:15 ◼   ► "that means you can potentially clear out

00:22:16 ◼   ► "the expired certificates, and this will take up

00:22:18 ◼   ► "less bandwidth, storage, memory, et cetera.

00:22:21 ◼   ► "Secondly, with long-lived certs,

00:22:22 ◼   ► "it becomes very hard to make important security changes

00:22:25 ◼   ► "to TLS certificates.

00:22:25 ◼   ► "For example, in SHA-1, signatures support was removed

00:22:29 ◼   ► "in browsers after increasing evidence

00:22:30 ◼   ► "that collisions were feasible,

00:22:32 ◼   ► "but if certs last up to five years,

00:22:34 ◼   ► "you can't just turn it off

00:22:35 ◼   ► "or set a reasonable cutoff point.

00:22:36 ◼   ► "Instead, browsers are stuck with a potentially

00:22:38 ◼   ► "half a decade-long deprecation window

00:22:40 ◼   ► "to avoid breaking the web, which is no fun."

00:22:43 ◼   ► - Yes, by the way, if any developers are listening

00:22:45 ◼   ► who don't read any security things,

00:22:46 ◼   ► SHA-1 is super-duper broken.

00:22:48 ◼   ► Don't use it for anything remotely related to security.

00:22:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, pretty much any hash that you would have worked with

00:22:54 ◼   ► in 2006 in PHP or whatever,

00:22:57 ◼   ► it's probably broken at this point.

00:22:59 ◼   ► - MD5, if you don't know it for many, many years,

00:23:01 ◼   ► has been broken in this way.

00:23:03 ◼   ► SHA-1, in the past couple of years,

00:23:05 ◼   ► has been super-duper broken in this way, so there you have it.

00:23:09 ◼   ► - And then, a friend of the show, Ben Thompson,

00:23:10 ◼   ► of Stratechery wrote with regard to,

00:23:13 ◼   ► I think it was an Ask ATP question,

00:23:15 ◼   ► when do you go to Apple Notes,

00:23:16 ◼   ► when do you go to a flat file, et cetera, et cetera,

00:23:18 ◼   ► and Ben wrote, "There's absolutely middle ground

00:23:20 ◼   ► between Notes, StoreEverything, and an inaccessible database,

00:23:23 ◼   ► but it syncs and plain text files."

00:23:25 ◼   ► Ben writes, "I use notational velocity on the desktop

00:23:27 ◼   ► or more accurately in v-alt,

00:23:29 ◼   ► which has a setting to store Notes as plain text files

00:23:32 ◼   ► in the location of your choice.

00:23:33 ◼   ► At the same time, in v-alt,

00:23:34 ◼   ► use the simple Note as the syncing service,

00:23:36 ◼   ► which gets me all of my notes on the web or on iOS,

00:23:38 ◼   ► so I have the best of both worlds,

00:23:39 ◼   ► sync and plain text access/backup.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I do a time switch for Notes app-rich functionality,

00:23:44 ◼   ► particularly in terms of embedding photos and whatnot,

00:23:46 ◼   ► but I consider easy access to my data and availability

00:23:48 ◼   ► on any computing platform to be table stakes

00:23:49 ◼   ► for any data that I want on a permanent basis."

00:23:52 ◼   ► We don't have it in the show notes,

00:23:53 ◼   ► but Ben had said something about how, you know,

00:23:56 ◼   ► it's, he understands the trade-off with regard

00:23:59 ◼   ► to using simple Note as the syncing service,

00:24:01 ◼   ► so he doesn't put anything like super sensitive

00:24:03 ◼   ► or private or whatever into any of these notes,

00:24:06 ◼   ► but it was an interesting approach

00:24:07 ◼   ► to get a middle of the road, like he said.

00:24:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, there was another story that flew by recently,

00:24:12 ◼   ► although I think it was a repeat of the same story

00:24:14 ◼   ► from maybe years ago, about the security of,

00:24:16 ◼   ► quote-unquote, encrypted Notes in the Apple Notes app.

00:24:20 ◼   ► It uses a database behind the scenes,

00:24:21 ◼   ► and apparently, you know how like,

00:24:23 ◼   ► when you're looking through your notes,

00:24:24 ◼   ► the notes are represented in a list

00:24:26 ◼   ► by basically the first line in the note,

00:24:29 ◼   ► and when you encrypt a note,

00:24:30 ◼   ► apparently that first line is still visible

00:24:33 ◼   ► in some data store or somewhere.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Anyway, if you're relying on the security of your notes,

00:24:39 ◼   ► such that no one, you know, if you take a note

00:24:41 ◼   ► and then encrypt it, and then someone grabs your Mac

00:24:43 ◼   ► and runs a bunch of forensic tools

00:24:45 ◼   ► and finds a SQLite database and rummages through it,

00:24:47 ◼   ► they may be able to find snippets of unencrypted data

00:24:50 ◼   ► from that note, which is kind of bad,

00:24:53 ◼   ► but, you know, probably not the end of the world.

00:24:55 ◼   ► All that I have to say is if you have something

00:24:57 ◼   ► that you really care about the security of,

00:24:59 ◼   ► it's best to actually use a security-focused application

00:25:03 ◼   ► to store it rather than just an app that is like a Notes app

00:25:06 ◼   ► but also happens to have an encrypt feature.

00:25:08 ◼   ► - And then finally, Satheesh Paul Leo writes,

00:25:10 ◼   ► "I really enjoyed the segment where you talked

00:25:12 ◼   ► "about using hyphenated words.

00:25:15 ◼   ► "It made me realize how much more I need to learn

00:25:16 ◼   ► "about the English language.

00:25:17 ◼   ► "I found this helpful and wanted to pass it along."

00:25:20 ◼   ► And this is a link to developers.google.com,

00:25:23 ◼   ► which is a post called Just Enough Grammar.

00:25:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, these things are great.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Like, sort of, they're not trying to teach you everything.

00:25:31 ◼   ► I mean, you know, English language is ridiculous and huge

00:25:33 ◼   ► and has all sorts of strange things,

00:25:35 ◼   ► but you just need a little bit.

00:25:36 ◼   ► You just need enough to know what you don't know,

00:25:39 ◼   ► because then on a case-by-case basis when you're writing,

00:25:41 ◼   ► if you're aware of, sort of, the lay of the land,

00:25:44 ◼   ► like you come across some construct in your writing,

00:25:46 ◼   ► you're like, "I don't know what to write here,

00:25:48 ◼   ► "but I know this is an area of frequent problems

00:25:52 ◼   ► "or there is an issue here,

00:25:53 ◼   ► "or that this is something I should pay attention to."

00:25:55 ◼   ► At that point, you're armed with enough knowledge

00:25:58 ◼   ► to just go Google the answer.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Okay, in this exact sentence structure,

00:26:01 ◼   ► with this exact word, what am I supposed to do?

00:26:02 ◼   ► If you don't know that,

00:26:03 ◼   ► if you don't have that Just Enough Grammar baseline,

00:26:05 ◼   ► you won't even know that there's a thing to know there,

00:26:07 ◼   ► and you'll just, you know, if you don't know hyphens exist

00:26:09 ◼   ► or what they might be used for,

00:26:10 ◼   ► you'll just never think about them.

00:26:12 ◼   ► If you know they're used kind of in this context

00:26:14 ◼   ► for this reason, when you're writing,

00:26:16 ◼   ► you may come across something and be like,

00:26:17 ◼   ► "Wait a second, is that one of those places I use hyphens?"

00:26:20 ◼   ► You're not gonna know the answer.

00:26:21 ◼   ► You know, it's always gonna be tricky.

00:26:22 ◼   ► There's all sorts of special cases and everything,

00:26:23 ◼   ► but at least you know that it's a thing.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So this Just Enough Grammar page

00:26:29 ◼   ► and similar sort of crash courses for the basics of grammar

00:26:33 ◼   ► very often focused on, like, tech writing,

00:26:34 ◼   ► just so you can, like, write sensible,

00:26:37 ◼   ► coherent documentation for your code even.

00:26:40 ◼   ► It's well worth the effort to just, you know,

00:26:44 ◼   ► get Just Enough Knowledge to be dangerous.

00:26:45 ◼   ► I would say Just Enough Knowledge to know what to Google,

00:26:47 ◼   ► 'cause that's all you need.

00:26:48 ◼   ► No one really knows all these answers

00:26:50 ◼   ► except for, you know, some, you know,

00:26:52 ◼   ► very obscure book editor who's been doing it a million years.

00:26:56 ◼   ► All you gotta know is what to Google.

00:26:58 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Collide.

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00:27:21 ◼   ► and then use it to lock down everyone's devices

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00:27:29 ◼   ► They don't understand why you don't trust them.

00:27:31 ◼   ► They don't understand why the device's features

00:27:33 ◼   ► and capabilities are turned off.

00:27:34 ◼   ► It's really annoying.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Do this often enough, and they'll start just using

00:27:37 ◼   ► their personal devices to actually get their work done

00:27:39 ◼   ► because they don't get in the way.

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00:27:53 ◼   ► to see if they're compliant with your security policy.

00:27:56 ◼   ► And if any device isn't, Collide can message

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00:28:44 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.

00:28:47 ◼   ► - How do you back up a Synology?

00:28:53 ◼   ► And the reason I ask is, we had talked

00:28:55 ◼   ► just a little while ago about CrashPlan

00:28:57 ◼   ► and how I really, really don't like it.

00:29:00 ◼   ► But the advantage of CrashPlan is that it is $10 a month

00:29:03 ◼   ► for one computer for whatever plan I'm on right now.

00:29:06 ◼   ► $10 a month for me to back up.

00:29:08 ◼   ► I think my backup set is something

00:29:09 ◼   ► like 13 terabytes right now.

00:29:11 ◼   ► Now, admittedly, that backup set includes the iMac Pro.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Admittedly, that backup includes a bunch of stuff

00:29:17 ◼   ► on the Synology that I could probably pare down

00:29:20 ◼   ► and weed out.

00:29:22 ◼   ► And so I looked before the show,

00:29:24 ◼   ► I was doing a little preparation because I'm allowed,

00:29:26 ◼   ► because I'm not John, and it turns out

00:29:28 ◼   ► my media folder on my Synology,

00:29:30 ◼   ► which is the thing I care most about,

00:29:31 ◼   ► or at least the thing I think I care most about,

00:29:33 ◼   ► is eight terabytes of the 13 terabytes.

00:29:37 ◼   ► So I was looking at what are my options

00:29:40 ◼   ► for backing up the Synology?

00:29:41 ◼   ► And the most obvious one, the one that everyone recommends,

00:29:45 ◼   ► and for good reason, because everything I've read

00:29:47 ◼   ► is that it's excellent, is Backblaze B2.

00:29:50 ◼   ► So this is their bigger, longer term,

00:29:53 ◼   ► if I understand it right,

00:29:55 ◼   ► storage that's really for this kind of a use.

00:29:59 ◼   ► It's designed to compete with a bunch of stuff

00:30:02 ◼   ► that's of similar vein, right?

00:30:03 ◼   ► You're just gonna put something away for a long time

00:30:05 ◼   ► and probably not need to restore anything from it,

00:30:08 ◼   ► if ever or not frequently, if you do at all.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And I was looking at it, well, and the thing of it is,

00:30:13 ◼   ► is that Backblaze B2 is $70 a month for 13 terabytes.

00:30:17 ◼   ► A month, it's $40 a month for eight terabytes,

00:30:19 ◼   ► and these are all rough estimations, give or take a bit.

00:30:24 ◼   ► But that means it would take me like three and a half years

00:30:28 ◼   ► of B2 to break even with just buying a whole new Synology,

00:30:33 ◼   ► filling it with drives, and then moving this one

00:30:35 ◼   ► to my dad's house or something like that,

00:30:37 ◼   ► which is far enough away that it's not anywhere close,

00:30:42 ◼   ► and just mirroring the darn Synology from here to there.

00:30:47 ◼   ► And this is kind of a call for recommendations

00:30:50 ◼   ► from the listeners and from the two of you.

00:30:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, what about us?

00:30:53 ◼   ► What is one do with this?

00:30:57 ◼   ► Like, and the other thing I've heard decent about

00:30:59 ◼   ► is Glacier, I think it's called from Amazon.

00:31:01 ◼   ► - Oh, no, no, no, no.

00:31:03 ◼   ► - Okay, okay, well this is what I wanna know.

00:31:05 ◼   ► And the other thing is--

00:31:05 ◼   ► - Oh, Glacier's terrible.

00:31:07 ◼   ► - So the other priority I have is I want something

00:31:08 ◼   ► that's as close to turnkey as possible,

00:31:10 ◼   ► and that B2 very much counts as,

00:31:12 ◼   ► because B2 is built into the Synology software,

00:31:16 ◼   ► and I can just say, hey, please back yourself up to B2 now,

00:31:18 ◼   ► and if I'm willing to throw money at this problem,

00:31:20 ◼   ► which I'm getting ever more willing to do,

00:31:22 ◼   ► then that is an acceptable answer, and a very easy answer.

00:31:26 ◼   ► But what am I not considering?

00:31:28 ◼   ► Like, should I just pony up literally $3,000

00:31:31 ◼   ► to bring a new version of my current Synology into my house

00:31:35 ◼   ► and move this one to Dad's house?

00:31:37 ◼   ► Is there something else I'm just not thinking of?

00:31:40 ◼   ► - Well, we had this long discussion last time

00:31:41 ◼   ► about how maybe you don't need all that media.

00:31:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:45 ◼   ► You don't need to be storing all that.

00:31:46 ◼   ► - That's fair.

00:31:47 ◼   ► - You might be able to access through streaming services

00:31:50 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:31:51 ◼   ► I really feel like, especially,

00:31:53 ◼   ► you mentioned this is the media

00:31:56 ◼   ► I think I care about the most, but it's not really.

00:31:58 ◼   ► I know you spend a long time organizing everything,

00:32:00 ◼   ► and it's good to have a collection,

00:32:01 ◼   ► but you care so much more about your family photos

00:32:03 ◼   ► than you do about any of that media, right?

00:32:05 ◼   ► - Well, that's a subset of that eight terabytes,

00:32:07 ◼   ► but yes, what you just said is accurate.

00:32:09 ◼   ► - Right, but it's a tiny amount.

00:32:11 ◼   ► It's less than a terabyte of that as photos.

00:32:13 ◼   ► - I think it's about a terabyte, but still,

00:32:14 ◼   ► I'm quibbling over minor things.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Your point is still completely fair.

00:32:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, so one way to save money is to--

00:32:21 ◼   ► - Do not back that up.

00:32:22 ◼   ► - No, don't not back it up, but decide

00:32:25 ◼   ► what part of it you really want to back up, right?

00:32:30 ◼   ► So I feel like the most important thing

00:32:32 ◼   ► is the metadata and the database, the Plex database,

00:32:35 ◼   ► which is tiny, right?

00:32:36 ◼   ► Any organization you've done,

00:32:37 ◼   ► any custom poster images you've done,

00:32:39 ◼   ► maybe your watch counts or your progress,

00:32:42 ◼   ► or that is the stuff that you've invested time

00:32:45 ◼   ► in dealing with, right?

00:32:47 ◼   ► The actual media files behind the scenes,

00:32:50 ◼   ► if they disappeared, you can probably replace them, right?

00:32:53 ◼   ► Many of them, at least.

00:32:57 ◼   ► - Some of it, yeah, but not all of it.

00:32:58 ◼   ► - And so what I would do is I would choose

00:33:01 ◼   ► what subset of that you actually want to back up.

00:33:03 ◼   ► If you want to save money,

00:33:04 ◼   ► I feel like you could cut your storage in half

00:33:07 ◼   ► just by being judicious about which media do I want to back up

00:33:10 ◼   ► versus which media do I not want to back up,

00:33:12 ◼   ► and that would involve having to categorize things

00:33:14 ◼   ► in some way or like, I know it's annoying,

00:33:16 ◼   ► but that's a lot of data,

00:33:18 ◼   ► and if you're gonna have somebody who's not you

00:33:23 ◼   ► store 13 terabytes of data for you,

00:33:25 ◼   ► there's no way around that being expensive

00:33:28 ◼   ► or a hassle or both.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Like, there's no magic solution that's gonna be like,

00:33:32 ◼   ► I have a way for you to do that for three cents

00:33:34 ◼   ► or $5 a month, it's not gonna happen.

00:33:36 ◼   ► Like, you're already doing that.

00:33:37 ◼   ► - I have a way to do it.

00:33:38 ◼   ► - You're taking advantage of it the best you can

00:33:39 ◼   ► with the crash plan thing,

00:33:41 ◼   ► or if you did like iSCSI with the back place, you know,

00:33:44 ◼   ► that is the cheapest way to do it,

00:33:45 ◼   ► but both of those things are sort of not using the services

00:33:49 ◼   ► for their intended purposes and really pushing the limits.

00:33:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I hear you.

00:33:54 ◼   ► - That's a simpler solution.

00:33:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do wanna, I very much wanna hear Marco's answer,

00:33:57 ◼   ► but just to address a couple of things you said,

00:33:59 ◼   ► your point is overall very fair,

00:34:02 ◼   ► but the thing I just really,

00:34:04 ◼   ► I really don't wanna lose any of this media,

00:34:07 ◼   ► and I think the reason I'm harping on this so much

00:34:09 ◼   ► is because for the stuff that's on the Synology,

00:34:12 ◼   ► that is the only place it,

00:34:14 ◼   ► well, with the exception of pictures,

00:34:15 ◼   ► that is the only place it exists.

00:34:17 ◼   ► So like all of my TV shows and movies and things like that,

00:34:20 ◼   ► well, some of them actually,

00:34:21 ◼   ► I do have Blu-ray sitting downstairs,

00:34:23 ◼   ► but for the purposes of this discussion,

00:34:25 ◼   ► that's the only place it exists.

00:34:26 ◼   ► It's there in crash plan,

00:34:27 ◼   ► and so I'm so scared that if this Synology just fries

00:34:32 ◼   ► and I can't salvage the drives for some crazy reason,

00:34:35 ◼   ► that all of that media just goes up in a puff of smoke.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Again, the pictures are different, but--

00:34:39 ◼   ► - The other good thing about the media stuff

00:34:41 ◼   ► is it's basically immutable.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Like the media files themselves once they're there

00:34:46 ◼   ► don't change, right?

00:34:47 ◼   ► So you can, if you wanna pinch more pennies,

00:34:50 ◼   ► I know Marco is making groaning noises about Glacier,

00:34:53 ◼   ► but there are various temperature storage options in S3

00:34:57 ◼   ► that can let you hold a bunch of data

00:35:02 ◼   ► that you don't need access to

00:35:03 ◼   ► and is not going to change for less money than B2 maybe.

00:35:07 ◼   ► I mean, you have to look at the pricing.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Glacier is a pain in the butt

00:35:09 ◼   ► because to get anything out of it is like pulling teeth,

00:35:11 ◼   ► and maybe that's acceptable

00:35:13 ◼   ► if you really just like, again,

00:35:15 ◼   ► if it's a super duper emergency backup type thing,

00:35:18 ◼   ► but that's, you know,

00:35:19 ◼   ► paring down the data you're backing up is one way,

00:35:21 ◼   ► and then using slower storage with the knowledge

00:35:24 ◼   ► that you don't need to access that.

00:35:25 ◼   ► It's like write once and read never, right?

00:35:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - And that it doesn't change.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Now, the difficulty is trying to use backup software.

00:35:33 ◼   ► A lot of backup software doesn't expect that scenario.

00:35:35 ◼   ► It expects to be able to sort of crawl your data

00:35:39 ◼   ► and then confirm that it's backed up and diff the two things

00:35:41 ◼   ► and doing that with Glacier is gonna be unfriendly probably

00:35:44 ◼   ► because it doesn't expect that type of thing.

00:35:46 ◼   ► But we know that the nature of your backup is

00:35:48 ◼   ► I'm gonna back up these terabytes of data

00:35:50 ◼   ► and they're never gonna change in the backup.

00:35:51 ◼   ► They're just gonna sit there unmodified

00:35:53 ◼   ► for years and years, never being updated.

00:35:55 ◼   ► And so those can be fairly distant, you know,

00:35:59 ◼   ► access time-wise.

00:36:00 ◼   ► You just need a piece of software that understands that.

00:36:03 ◼   ► But this is all like all ways to pinch pennies.

00:36:05 ◼   ► Can I get my bill down to 50%?

00:36:08 ◼   ► Like that's the best case scenario

00:36:09 ◼   ► and you're still paying $30 a month.

00:36:10 ◼   ► So.

00:36:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:36:12 ◼   ► And I promise Marco, I'm gonna give you a chance, I promise.

00:36:14 ◼   ► But the other thing that occurred to me

00:36:16 ◼   ► as I was talking to you guys is

00:36:18 ◼   ► one of the backup strategies that I have is that

00:36:20 ◼   ► a super duper clone of the iMac on a physical hard drive,

00:36:24 ◼   ► that you know, one of the portable USB drives,

00:36:26 ◼   ► and a physical clone of my entire photo library

00:36:30 ◼   ► on a separate physical hard drive, you know, a USB drive,

00:36:33 ◼   ► that gets, you hand it,

00:36:35 ◼   ► yes, I see my parents at least once a month,

00:36:37 ◼   ► usually twice a month,

00:36:38 ◼   ► that gets handed to mom and dad at some time

00:36:41 ◼   ► after the beginning of the month,

00:36:42 ◼   ► and then they bring it back

00:36:43 ◼   ► right around the end of the month.

00:36:45 ◼   ► I'll update both.

00:36:46 ◼   ► - But why do they need to bring it back?

00:36:47 ◼   ► All you're ever doing is adding to it.

00:36:49 ◼   ► You know what I'm saying?

00:36:50 ◼   ► Like you need to implement your own system

00:36:51 ◼   ► of write-only media, where you write a bunch of stuff to it

00:36:55 ◼   ► and then it gets stored, and then, you know, anyway.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Marco's solution is gonna be to get a 14 terabyte hard drive.

00:37:00 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - Well, and that's exactly what I'm driving,

00:37:02 ◼   ► that's exactly what I was gonna say is that

00:37:04 ◼   ► it occurred to me as I'm talking to you guys that

00:37:05 ◼   ► I'm filling my Synology,

00:37:08 ◼   ► well, let me back up a half step.

00:37:09 ◼   ► Several of the drives in my Synology,

00:37:11 ◼   ► which are Western Digital, whatever, the NAS Red's,

00:37:13 ◼   ► I think, Western Digital Red's,

00:37:14 ◼   ► which are whatever it came with

00:37:17 ◼   ► literally six years ago, almost seven,

00:37:19 ◼   ► about half of the drives in there

00:37:21 ◼   ► are the six-ish year old drives.

00:37:23 ◼   ► And I have been replacing them bit by bit,

00:37:26 ◼   ► but it occurred to me that, you know,

00:37:28 ◼   ► I am really playing with fire,

00:37:30 ◼   ► having, I think I have three six year old drives

00:37:32 ◼   ► in there right now,

00:37:33 ◼   ► and I really, really should try to get those,

00:37:38 ◼   ► you know, replaced sooner rather than later.

00:37:40 ◼   ► And as I'm replacing them, you know,

00:37:42 ◼   ► I'm putting more pressure on every drive that remains,

00:37:45 ◼   ► and so I'm really, really, really playing with fire.

00:37:47 ◼   ► But it occurred to me as I'm replacing them,

00:37:48 ◼   ► I'm swapping from three terabytes to 10 terabyte,

00:37:51 ◼   ► and I just told you my entire backup set

00:37:53 ◼   ► is like 13 terabytes.

00:37:56 ◼   ► So presumably, I could get one of these humongous,

00:37:59 ◼   ► what are these, two and a half inch drives?

00:38:01 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:38:02 ◼   ► It's three humongous physical platter drives.

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Three and a half inch.

00:38:04 ◼   ► They have 14 terabyte, three and a half inch drives.

00:38:07 ◼   ► - They have 16 terabyte drives now.

00:38:09 ◼   ► - So you see where this is going,

00:38:11 ◼   ► is I could add that to the physical package

00:38:13 ◼   ► that I'm transferring back and forth to dad,

00:38:15 ◼   ► you know, and just give that to mom and dad once a month

00:38:18 ◼   ► and have them bring it back,

00:38:19 ◼   ► and I do a quick update,

00:38:20 ◼   ► and then send it back to their house,

00:38:21 ◼   ► and that's, honestly,

00:38:23 ◼   ► that's probably gonna be the best solution.

00:38:25 ◼   ► All right, so Marco, with all this in mind,

00:38:26 ◼   ► tell me what I need to be doing,

00:38:28 ◼   ► 'cause I have not hit the right answer apparently.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Okay, so this all goes back to,

00:38:32 ◼   ► the problem you have is that CrashPlan

00:38:36 ◼   ► is the only online backup service

00:38:38 ◼   ► that will back up unlimited space,

00:38:40 ◼   ► including network shares for a low price.

00:38:43 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:38:45 ◼   ► - And most of your data lives on a Synology,

00:38:48 ◼   ► so the only computer that you have

00:38:50 ◼   ► where that data is local on local disks is the Synology.

00:38:54 ◼   ► I get around this with my stupid iSCSI setup,

00:38:56 ◼   ► which I would not recommend to anybody,

00:38:57 ◼   ► and as soon as any part of it breaks,

00:38:59 ◼   ► I'm not replacing it, but--

00:39:01 ◼   ► - Right.

00:39:02 ◼   ► - The real solution here is to take advantage

00:39:06 ◼   ► of the other backup service that has way better software,

00:39:10 ◼   ► is a frequent sponsor of our show,

00:39:12 ◼   ► and that will back up any drive

00:39:15 ◼   ► connected to your computer locally,

00:39:18 ◼   ► which is Backblaze.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And the way you switch to Backblaze

00:39:22 ◼   ► is by making this data local to a computer

00:39:25 ◼   ► that runs an OS that Backblaze clients will run on.

00:39:30 ◼   ► You already have one, we already mentioned it,

00:39:32 ◼   ► it's the Mac Mini that you just turned on.

00:39:34 ◼   ► So the way to fix this problem, the simplest way possible,

00:39:39 ◼   ► is to buy a giant hard drive,

00:39:41 ◼   ► yes, they come up to 16 terabytes now,

00:39:44 ◼   ► buy a giant hard drive or two,

00:39:46 ◼   ► connect them as local disks to the Mac Mini,

00:39:50 ◼   ► have the Mac Mini share them on the network itself,

00:39:52 ◼   ► if it wants to, and have Backblaze back 'em up.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And then you don't have to do this craziness

00:39:58 ◼   ► with your parents, you have online backup,

00:40:01 ◼   ► you can even put two of them in RAID 0.

00:40:04 ◼   ► You have online backup and drives last pretty long

00:40:06 ◼   ► these days, like you could literally just do

00:40:09 ◼   ► two external drives or one giant external drive,

00:40:12 ◼   ► plug it into your Mac Mini, and have Backblaze back it up

00:40:16 ◼   ► for the five bucks or six bucks a month that it is.

00:40:18 ◼   ► That's it, and it's the very,

00:40:21 ◼   ► and you know what, I know that you no longer drive

00:40:25 ◼   ► a white BMW, and I know that your identity

00:40:28 ◼   ► is being challenged here.

00:40:30 ◼   ► I'm not gonna tell you to give up Plex,

00:40:32 ◼   ► I'm not gonna tell you to cut back your library,

00:40:34 ◼   ► but I will tell you, retire the Synology at this point,

00:40:37 ◼   ► because it is old, it is not providing you

00:40:40 ◼   ► the computing power that you want for things like Plex,

00:40:42 ◼   ► because it's old hardware, and it was made

00:40:46 ◼   ► right before they did a whole bunch of those

00:40:47 ◼   ► transcoding acceleration stuff, so it's old,

00:40:51 ◼   ► it's full of, by today's standards, small hard drives,

00:40:55 ◼   ► it's probably costing you a decent amount

00:40:57 ◼   ► in just electricity every month, so just plug in

00:41:02 ◼   ► an external hard drive to the Mac Mini,

00:41:04 ◼   ► because you have six wonderful years

00:41:06 ◼   ► of incredible hard drive capacity expansion

00:41:09 ◼   ► that you can take advantage of now.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Like, the technology has gotten better for spinning disks,

00:41:12 ◼   ► they're way bigger now, and they're not that much money

00:41:15 ◼   ► for very giant ones, so just do that,

00:41:19 ◼   ► and I think that right there is your solution.

00:41:23 ◼   ► Just switch to a local disk, connect it to that Mac Mini,

00:41:27 ◼   ► make that Mac Mini run all the software

00:41:29 ◼   ► that your Synology was previously running,

00:41:30 ◼   ► like just use the Mac clients of these things,

00:41:32 ◼   ► use Mac Plex, use the Mac sharing stuff, whatever it is,

00:41:36 ◼   ► like, you might give up a few things

00:41:38 ◼   ► that your Synology was doing that were kind of cool

00:41:41 ◼   ► that you occasionally used, but overall,

00:41:44 ◼   ► I think this is a better solution, and it is way simpler,

00:41:48 ◼   ► and while it requires a bit of investment up front,

00:41:50 ◼   ► first of all, it's way cheaper than if you wanted

00:41:52 ◼   ► to replace your Synology, it's way cheaper

00:41:55 ◼   ► if you need to replace a bunch of the drives

00:41:56 ◼   ► in your Synology, and it's probably cheaper to operate,

00:42:01 ◼   ► you know, with electricity and stuff,

00:42:03 ◼   ► and it's definitely way better on the backup front,

00:42:05 ◼   ► because then you can simply use any Mac backup software,

00:42:09 ◼   ► so you can use Backblaze for their flat fee,

00:42:11 ◼   ► you can do what I do and use Arc, which is fantastic,

00:42:14 ◼   ► and I actually, I use Arc backing up to Backblaze B2 storage,

00:42:18 ◼   ► I just kind of prefer the Arc UI for certain things,

00:42:21 ◼   ► but like, you have so many more options then,

00:42:24 ◼   ► because you're running what appears to backup software

00:42:26 ◼   ► to be a regular consumer operating system

00:42:28 ◼   ► on a regular PC/Mac, you know,

00:42:30 ◼   ► but then you have options then,

00:42:32 ◼   ► and you have this one great option,

00:42:34 ◼   ► which is Backblaze Unlimited,

00:42:36 ◼   ► and that, I think, solves your problem

00:42:38 ◼   ► in a pretty simple, elegant way,

00:42:41 ◼   ► and you can retire a Synology.

00:42:43 ◼   ► - I do wonder how long Backblaze is gonna allow

00:42:46 ◼   ► these type of things to go on.

00:42:48 ◼   ► I saw recently a tweet where Backblaze was sad

00:42:52 ◼   ► that someone was using their service

00:42:54 ◼   ► to backup many large numbers of terabytes

00:42:56 ◼   ► directly connected to their computer.

00:42:58 ◼   ► I don't know if they were using

00:42:59 ◼   ► the iSCSI trick that you're using,

00:43:00 ◼   ► but similarly, like, it's meant to be

00:43:02 ◼   ► a single computer thing if you're backing up 13 terabytes.

00:43:05 ◼   ► I know hard drive sizes are increasing,

00:43:07 ◼   ► but still, it's kind of like an outlier,

00:43:09 ◼   ► so Casey may be ruining it for everybody

00:43:11 ◼   ► if someday Backblaze says, "You know what?

00:43:13 ◼   ► "It used to be unlimited, but a few people

00:43:15 ◼   ► "have been abusing that privilege,

00:43:17 ◼   ► "so now there's a cap of 10 terabytes."

00:43:19 ◼   ► - Even then, like, what's great about this solution

00:43:22 ◼   ► is that right now, you can do it right now,

00:43:24 ◼   ► it's very simple, and simple, in this case,

00:43:28 ◼   ► is a big benefit here, like,

00:43:30 ◼   ► making this not a convoluted, complicated,

00:43:34 ◼   ► fragile setup, like, just make it a very simple thing,

00:43:37 ◼   ► and right now, it works.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Like, in the future, who knows,

00:43:40 ◼   ► but right now, it will work,

00:43:42 ◼   ► and in the future, if you have to spend a bit more

00:43:44 ◼   ► on backing up all your media files, oh well.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Like, you can also, you can kind of do the exercise

00:43:48 ◼   ► of like, all right, so of all those eight terabytes

00:43:51 ◼   ► of what's probably what, like movies and TV shows mostly,

00:43:54 ◼   ► right, so like, of all that, what percentage of that

00:43:57 ◼   ► can you just re-rip if you lose it all?

00:44:01 ◼   ► And then, whatever percentage of it that, you know,

00:44:03 ◼   ► fell off trucks or was not available in the US,

00:44:06 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be, like,

00:44:08 ◼   ► how hard would it be to either re-download it from somewhere,

00:44:12 ◼   ► or buy it all legally?

00:44:13 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:44:14 ◼   ► And what would that cost, versus what it will cost

00:44:17 ◼   ► if you have to pay somebody per gigabyte

00:44:19 ◼   ► to back this up for, you know, indefinitely,

00:44:21 ◼   ► like, what are you paying over time for that,

00:44:24 ◼   ► if you have to pay one of those $70 a month, you know, fees?

00:44:27 ◼   ► What is that costing you over time,

00:44:29 ◼   ► versus what would it cost to actually just replace all this

00:44:31 ◼   ► if you lost it?

00:44:32 ◼   ► So do that math if that comes up,

00:44:34 ◼   ► but honestly, you can avoid all that entirely right now

00:44:37 ◼   ► by just plugging in a giant hard drive

00:44:38 ◼   ► to your Mac Mini and using Backblaze.

00:44:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I am not in a position that I am willing

00:44:42 ◼   ► to give up my beloved Synology,

00:44:43 ◼   ► and I agree with everything you said on paper,

00:44:46 ◼   ► but it also does some things that I know I could do

00:44:49 ◼   ► on my Mac Mini, but I like the way the Synology works,

00:44:52 ◼   ► I have a very good workflow for it,

00:44:53 ◼   ► I don't wanna mess with that,

00:44:55 ◼   ► but I take your point, and I agree with you,

00:44:58 ◼   ► that getting one of these, like, 400 or $500,

00:45:00 ◼   ► 16 terabyte drives, and just physically hooking it up

00:45:03 ◼   ► to the Mac Mini, even if I just run, like,

00:45:05 ◼   ► an R sync or equivalent, and pull everything off

00:45:08 ◼   ► of the Synology onto that drive,

00:45:09 ◼   ► and then Backblaze is now backing that up

00:45:11 ◼   ► as a regular old computer, that is, far and away,

00:45:15 ◼   ► a much better answer than anything else

00:45:16 ◼   ► I've come up with so far, so I already like

00:45:18 ◼   ► where this is going.

00:45:19 ◼   ► - Why are you pulling it off the Synology?

00:45:20 ◼   ► Why don't you just leave it on,

00:45:21 ◼   ► put it on the hard drive as your primary location?

00:45:23 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, or you can do things like move the eight terabytes

00:45:25 ◼   ► of Plex data to the Mac Mini, you know,

00:45:28 ◼   ► giant hard drive option, and leave other stuff

00:45:31 ◼   ► on the Synology, which would be way smaller.

00:45:33 ◼   ► - Stuff that you might care about data redundancy,

00:45:35 ◼   ► so you can redo your RAID scheme to add more redundancy

00:45:39 ◼   ► on the Synology and put your photos on there,

00:45:41 ◼   ► so you have protection against double drive failures

00:45:43 ◼   ► or something, you know what I mean?

00:45:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I hear you.

00:45:45 ◼   ► I think what I'm looking for now is the least disruptive way

00:45:49 ◼   ► to improve my world, and I think, Marco, you hit it,

00:45:51 ◼   ► that it's just getting a big friggin' drive,

00:45:54 ◼   ► at least for now, anyway.

00:45:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause they're really big these days.

00:45:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and I don't know that would work forever,

00:46:00 ◼   ► but certainly for now, I mean, if I got a 16 terabyte drive,

00:46:03 ◼   ► I am well over, or well, I have at least three terabytes

00:46:07 ◼   ► of headroom, and so as much as I am slowly filling up

00:46:11 ◼   ► this Synology over time, first of all,

00:46:13 ◼   ► there's certainly stuff I can get rid of and call,

00:46:15 ◼   ► absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt,

00:46:17 ◼   ► and secondly, you know, that's plenty of extra space,

00:46:20 ◼   ► or plenty of headroom that I wouldn't have to worry about

00:46:23 ◼   ► at any time soon, and presumably, there's no reason

00:46:26 ◼   ► I couldn't just attach another one, if necessary.

00:46:28 ◼   ► - Right, that's, like, once you get into this habit,

00:46:30 ◼   ► like, you know, if you get a fancy external drive enclosure

00:46:33 ◼   ► that has, like, built-in RAID, or, like, you know,

00:46:36 ◼   ► these giant metal boxes with, you know, multiple connectors,

00:46:38 ◼   ► those get expensive.

00:46:39 ◼   ► - Or a power supply that doesn't fail.

00:46:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, but, like, you know, single drive enclosures

00:46:44 ◼   ► are basically free, like, they're really cheap, and--

00:46:47 ◼   ► - They're really cheap, but they're also kinda garbage-y.

00:46:49 ◼   ► - All right, well, anyway, like, if you want,

00:46:51 ◼   ► you can invest in a nice big one, but, like, you know,

00:46:53 ◼   ► if you keep it relatively simple, you can say,

00:46:56 ◼   ► you can buy a, you know, 12 or 16 terabyte drive,

00:47:00 ◼   ► and say, this is the most I'm going to keep,

00:47:03 ◼   ► and when you need space on it, you force yourself

00:47:06 ◼   ► to go delete something that you're not gonna need anymore.

00:47:08 ◼   ► You know, that's another option.

00:47:09 ◼   ► That's honestly not a bad solution,

00:47:11 ◼   ► because you probably don't need to keep more than 16 terabytes

00:47:14 ◼   ► of various media files that are, you know,

00:47:16 ◼   ► mostly, like, movies and TV shows, like,

00:47:18 ◼   ► you probably can get rid of a lot of that.

00:47:20 ◼   ► So, you know, maybe capping it at a certain size

00:47:23 ◼   ► that is one drive, which keeps everything a lot simpler,

00:47:26 ◼   ► maybe that's all for the best.

00:47:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was talking about potentially abusing backplays

00:47:31 ◼   ► by backing up so much, but it occurs to me

00:47:33 ◼   ► that when my additional hard drive arrives,

00:47:35 ◼   ► I'll have 16 terabytes inside my Mac Pro,

00:47:38 ◼   ► so they can't really complain I'm abusing it by,

00:47:40 ◼   ► you're supposed to just back up one system,

00:47:42 ◼   ► it is one system, but these are all inside the computer,

00:47:44 ◼   ► and I can fit eight more drives in there,

00:47:45 ◼   ► so watch out, backplays.

00:47:47 ◼   ► - To get ahead of the email that we will receive,

00:47:50 ◼   ► and to answer J Stretch in the chat,

00:47:54 ◼   ► just off the top of my head, things that I want

00:47:56 ◼   ► to keep on my Synology, I absolutely acknowledge and believe

00:48:00 ◼   ► that a lot of this, if not all of it,

00:48:01 ◼   ► could be done on the Mac Mini, I am not debating that.

00:48:04 ◼   ► I like it on the Synology, I want to keep it

00:48:06 ◼   ► on the Synology, it makes me happy being on the Synology.

00:48:09 ◼   ► And I wrote a post about this, I'll link in the show notes,

00:48:11 ◼   ► that talks about a lot of this stuff,

00:48:12 ◼   ► but things like VPN server, the Docker container

00:48:16 ◼   ► for Homebridge, obviously I can do that on the Mac Mini,

00:48:19 ◼   ► I like it on the Synology, I like it over there,

00:48:21 ◼   ► off by its lonesome.

00:48:23 ◼   ► What is some of the downloading torrents,

00:48:26 ◼   ► if I ever do that, or stuff from news groups,

00:48:29 ◼   ► if I were to ever do that, which obviously I wouldn't.

00:48:30 ◼   ► - No.

00:48:31 ◼   ► - Your Dropbox replacement thingy.

00:48:32 ◼   ► - My Dropbox replacement is the biggest one of all,

00:48:35 ◼   ► because for those who haven't been keeping up,

00:48:36 ◼   ► I am almost entirely off of Dropbox,

00:48:39 ◼   ► and I use Synology Drive as a replacement.

00:48:41 ◼   ► I'm sure there's something I could put on the Mac Mini

00:48:44 ◼   ► that would be an equivalent, but again,

00:48:47 ◼   ► I'm not looking to disrupt my entire world,

00:48:49 ◼   ► I am looking to disrupt my backup strategy,

00:48:52 ◼   ► and I think Marco, if it's that I just sneaker net

00:48:56 ◼   ► a 16 terabyte hard drive to my dad,

00:48:59 ◼   ► if it's that I put it on the Mac Mini--

00:49:00 ◼   ► - No, I'm saying you can stop that.

00:49:01 ◼   ► Use online backup. - No, I agree, I agree.

00:49:03 ◼   ► - That's what it's for. - No, no, I agree.

00:49:04 ◼   ► I'm just saying that even if I did that,

00:49:07 ◼   ► which I agree with you is not the best answer,

00:49:09 ◼   ► my point is that that's still a much better answer

00:49:11 ◼   ► than paying $500 a year to backblaze B2,

00:49:15 ◼   ► or at least it's a better answer for me.

00:49:16 ◼   ► But again, I couldn't agree more

00:49:19 ◼   ► that I think the best-est answer

00:49:20 ◼   ► is to just stick a big, fat hard drive on the Mac Mini,

00:49:24 ◼   ► and I just kind of like having the Synology

00:49:27 ◼   ► being the one source of truth for my data

00:49:29 ◼   ► that just makes me happy that I know it's all right there.

00:49:32 ◼   ► It makes me happy in no small reason

00:49:34 ◼   ► because if, God forbid, the house went on fire,

00:49:36 ◼   ► I would know, just grab the Synology, after the kids,

00:49:39 ◼   ► grab the Synology and it has all the stuff I need,

00:49:42 ◼   ► which is silly, I know.

00:49:43 ◼   ► - You know what's a lot smaller?

00:49:44 ◼   ► A single hard drive. (laughs)

00:49:46 ◼   ► - That's true, that's true.

00:49:47 ◼   ► - The Synology, it's like a mid-tower computer,

00:49:50 ◼   ► full of hard drives, it's heavy and huge. (laughs)

00:49:53 ◼   ► - I understand, no, I'm with you.

00:49:54 ◼   ► But my point is just that I like having the Synology

00:49:58 ◼   ► be the center of my storage world.

00:50:00 ◼   ► It makes me happy, it doesn't have to make sense

00:50:02 ◼   ► to be the listener or you, Marco Arment,

00:50:04 ◼   ► but it just, it makes me happy,

00:50:05 ◼   ► and that's the way I would like to keep it.

00:50:07 ◼   ► But be it a sneaker net, be it just connecting it

00:50:10 ◼   ► to the Mac Mini, which again, I think is the best-est answer,

00:50:12 ◼   ► one way or another, just putting a big, fat hard drive

00:50:15 ◼   ► somewhere and duplicating all my data on it,

00:50:18 ◼   ► and that's the difference between what I'm saying

00:50:20 ◼   ► and what you're saying.

00:50:20 ◼   ► I would want that to be a redundant copy of all this data.

00:50:23 ◼   ► You're saying just make it the canonical data.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And again-- - Yeah, make it

00:50:25 ◼   ► the primary storage. - You're probably right.

00:50:27 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, you're probably right.

00:50:28 ◼   ► And on paper, I think you are right,

00:50:30 ◼   ► and if I was a sane individual,

00:50:32 ◼   ► I would do what you're saying.

00:50:33 ◼   ► But because I'm just weird like this,

00:50:35 ◼   ► I think I would have that as a redundant copy.

00:50:37 ◼   ► And then yeah, if that gets sent up to the cloud,

00:50:39 ◼   ► that's the best of all answers.

00:50:40 ◼   ► If for some reason I don't do that or that doesn't work,

00:50:42 ◼   ► which I don't know why it wouldn't,

00:50:44 ◼   ► then I could sneaker net it to Dad,

00:50:45 ◼   ► and it's still an improvement over the world I have today

00:50:47 ◼   ► where I'm relying on crash plan, which I friggin' hate.

00:50:50 ◼   ► So I am glad, I hope this isn't a waste of time

00:50:52 ◼   ► for everyone else listening,

00:50:53 ◼   ► but I'm glad we talked about it

00:50:54 ◼   ► 'cause this is a much better plan of action

00:50:57 ◼   ► than I had before.

00:50:58 ◼   ► And just to reiterate, if I were to replace the Synology,

00:51:02 ◼   ► I would want to take the one I have and stick it at Dad's,

00:51:05 ◼   ► and so I can't take the drives out of this one

00:51:07 ◼   ► and put it in the new one, 'cause I would want,

00:51:08 ◼   ► again, I would want a redundant Synology.

00:51:11 ◼   ► And to do that the way I would want to,

00:51:12 ◼   ► which again, this is all my own choices, is over $3,000.

00:51:16 ◼   ► That is a lot more money than a $500 16 terabyte hard drive.

00:51:21 ◼   ► So I think, Marco, you hit the nail on the head.

00:51:24 ◼   ► - Over time, the threshold for like,

00:51:26 ◼   ► do you need a giant NAS box,

00:51:29 ◼   ► goes up with how high your storage needs are.

00:51:31 ◼   ► Over time, that threshold goes up

00:51:33 ◼   ► because hard drives get bigger.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And you would never recommend in 2020

00:51:38 ◼   ► that somebody who needs to store four terabytes of data

00:51:41 ◼   ► get a NAS, because hard drives or SSDs

00:51:44 ◼   ► can store that locally really easily,

00:51:45 ◼   ► and so if it's just gonna be a few terabytes,

00:51:48 ◼   ► there's no need to have a giant drive enclosure

00:51:51 ◼   ► and a whole second thing to maintain

00:51:53 ◼   ► and update and everything else.

00:51:54 ◼   ► And I think for you, when you first got the Synology,

00:51:58 ◼   ► you were within the range of like,

00:52:00 ◼   ► okay, you have enough data, it's reasonable

00:52:02 ◼   ► to need a big multi-drive thing.

00:52:04 ◼   ► But since then, the drives have gotten so big,

00:52:08 ◼   ► and the backup situation has become more important,

00:52:10 ◼   ► and a few things have changed about it,

00:52:11 ◼   ► and so now I think you're at the point now

00:52:14 ◼   ► where if you were starting from scratch today,

00:52:17 ◼   ► we would never say you should get a NAS,

00:52:20 ◼   ► because while there are people who still need NAS boxes

00:52:24 ◼   ► because they have massive storage needs,

00:52:26 ◼   ► your storage needs no longer qualify.

00:52:28 ◼   ► You are no longer one of those people.

00:52:30 ◼   ► And this is why I don't think

00:52:32 ◼   ► almost anybody should get a NAS.

00:52:34 ◼   ► I think the time for them is mostly behind us,

00:52:37 ◼   ► and most people don't need them.

00:52:40 ◼   ► And I think the number of people who need them

00:52:42 ◼   ► is going down over time.

00:52:44 ◼   ► - I think 13 terabytes is still close to that territory.

00:52:46 ◼   ► For Casey, I don't know,

00:52:48 ◼   ► because he has this incredible tolerance

00:52:49 ◼   ► for terrible noise very close to him,

00:52:52 ◼   ► but for me, the biggest advantage to the NAS

00:52:55 ◼   ► is it's in the basement.

00:52:57 ◼   ► I don't hear it.

00:52:58 ◼   ► And if I had 13 terabytes of media,

00:53:01 ◼   ► like I was just talking about keeping my hard drive

00:53:03 ◼   ► spun down inside my big Mac Pro,

00:53:06 ◼   ► I can have 16 terabytes of storage in there,

00:53:08 ◼   ► but the storage that is not on an SSD,

00:53:10 ◼   ► I do not want spinning.

00:53:12 ◼   ► I want them not spinning and unmounted.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And you can't do that if you actually need that data.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Like if my photo collection was on spinning media,

00:53:21 ◼   ► it would not be tenable.

00:53:22 ◼   ► I don't have to mount it every time I launch photos.

00:53:24 ◼   ► My photos are on my SSDs.

00:53:25 ◼   ► I don't have to deal with that.

00:53:26 ◼   ► But if you have 13 terabytes of data

00:53:28 ◼   ► that you need online all the time,

00:53:30 ◼   ► you better be ready to deal with

00:53:34 ◼   ► the sound of spinning disks fairly close to you,

00:53:37 ◼   ► or you get a NAS.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, and again, I love my Synology,

00:53:42 ◼   ► so darn much.

00:53:43 ◼   ► I love it.

00:53:44 ◼   ► It's the sort of thing I would have never spent

00:53:45 ◼   ► the money on at the time.

00:53:46 ◼   ► And now that it's a part of my world,

00:53:48 ◼   ► I cannot, today anyway, I can't get rid of it.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And I'm not arguing with you, Marco.

00:53:52 ◼   ► You're so right in so many ways.

00:53:54 ◼   ► But it has become the center of my computing world,

00:53:58 ◼   ► and I like it there because it makes me happy.

00:54:01 ◼   ► It is not, knock on glass, it has never failed me.

00:54:04 ◼   ► It has always worked.

00:54:06 ◼   ► It has never caused me problems.

00:54:08 ◼   ► It's done better than my iMac Pro has.

00:54:11 ◼   ► And I've had this Synology for six years.

00:54:12 ◼   ► I've had the iMac Pro for six weeks.

00:54:14 ◼   ► But nevertheless, your point is, again,

00:54:17 ◼   ► is certainly very fair, if not correct,

00:54:20 ◼   ► that for a normal person, this is not necessary.

00:54:23 ◼   ► But there are many like it, but this one is mine.

00:54:25 ◼   ► That's a reference, Sean.

00:54:26 ◼   ► - And if you wanna throw money at the problem

00:54:28 ◼   ► and you have a Mac Pro, you can get one of those cards

00:54:30 ◼   ► that you can put four four terabyte SSDs on,

00:54:32 ◼   ► or four two terabyte SSDs,

00:54:34 ◼   ► and you can get two of those cards.

00:54:35 ◼   ► You can have 16 terabytes of internal solid state storage,

00:54:38 ◼   ► then you solve the noise problem and the access problem,

00:54:41 ◼   ► and the storage space problem,

00:54:42 ◼   ► and it only costs you probably what, 20, 30, 40 grand?

00:54:45 ◼   ► - And the back plays, and back plays will back it up.

00:54:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, he's like, look, it's one computer.

00:54:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, you spend 40 grand once

00:54:51 ◼   ► and you can save 70 bucks a month.

00:54:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

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00:56:51 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:56:53 ◼   ► - As we record this, it is the evening of March 4th

00:56:57 ◼   ► and WWDC is still a thing, in theory.

00:57:02 ◼   ► - Well, it hasn't been announced yet.

00:57:05 ◼   ► WWDC is never a thing until it is announced.

00:57:08 ◼   ► Previous WWDC was announced, we attended,

00:57:11 ◼   ► and then it ended.

00:57:11 ◼   ► And at that point, WWDC ceases to exist

00:57:14 ◼   ► until there is a future announcement that says,

00:57:16 ◼   ► hey, guess what?

00:57:17 ◼   ► We're doing WWDC and here are the dates.

00:57:19 ◼   ► So right now we're in the in-between time

00:57:21 ◼   ► when WWDC does not exist.

00:57:23 ◼   ► It only exists as a thing that happened in the past.

00:57:26 ◼   ► - It's like doing a show with two lawyers, I tell you what.

00:57:28 ◼   ► - Everyone loves lawyers.

00:57:29 ◼   ► - You're right, you are right.

00:57:30 ◼   ► - I'm just saying, it's just the unknown.

00:57:33 ◼   ► What I'm saying is that the current period we're in

00:57:35 ◼   ► is not that dissimilar from years past

00:57:40 ◼   ► where we are waiting to find out when WWDC will be.

00:57:44 ◼   ► The difference this year is one of the prominent options

00:57:47 ◼   ► is not this year.

00:57:49 ◼   ► - Yep, and so the reason this is potentially

00:57:52 ◼   ► gonna be a thing is because of the coronavirus

00:57:54 ◼   ► or whatever the correct term for it is.

00:57:56 ◼   ► - COVID-19.

00:57:57 ◼   ► - Thank you.

00:57:58 ◼   ► It is certainly going around the world.

00:57:59 ◼   ► It's going around the US now.

00:58:01 ◼   ► It sounds like Seattle in particular,

00:58:03 ◼   ► a lot of things are happening out there,

00:58:05 ◼   ► and that's a lot closer to California

00:58:07 ◼   ► than say Marco and John and I are.

00:58:09 ◼   ► So a lot of other conferences have also said

00:58:12 ◼   ► they're canceling.

00:58:13 ◼   ► The Geneva Auto Show got canceled.

00:58:16 ◼   ► Google I/O got canceled.

00:58:17 ◼   ► That usually happens about a month before dub-dub.

00:58:19 ◼   ► There's a lot of smoke saying that WWDC

00:58:24 ◼   ► is probably gonna be canceled.

00:58:25 ◼   ► And I noticed, but I have not yet had a chance to listen,

00:58:28 ◼   ► that on Under the Radar, you in front of the show,

00:58:31 ◼   ► David Smith covered this and kind of alternatives,

00:58:34 ◼   ► and so I don't know if you wanna rehash briefly

00:58:36 ◼   ► some of that, but I guess let me start by asking,

00:58:39 ◼   ► starting with Marco, do you suspect that WWDC

00:58:42 ◼   ► will happen in person this year?

00:58:45 ◼   ► And let's leave aside a press event.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I'm talking about the regular people,

00:58:49 ◼   ► you know the thing that we're allowed to go to,

00:58:50 ◼   ► the regular people, the Worldwide Developer Conference.

00:58:54 ◼   ► Do you suspect that that will happen in person

00:58:56 ◼   ► in California this year, Marco?

00:58:58 ◼   ► - Almost certainly not.

00:59:00 ◼   ► I am like 90% sure it's gonna be canceled.

00:59:04 ◼   ► They just haven't announced it yet.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And I tweeted this to the fact of the day,

00:59:07 ◼   ► my theory is basically that I'm pretty sure

00:59:10 ◼   ► they've already made the decision internally to cancel it,

00:59:13 ◼   ► and they're just trying to make alternative arrangements

00:59:15 ◼   ► for things like online sessions and whatever else

00:59:18 ◼   ► so that they can announce at the same time.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Instead of just saying, no WWDC this year,

00:59:23 ◼   ► I'm guessing they wanna do an announcement that says,

00:59:26 ◼   ► WWDC will be online only this year,

00:59:27 ◼   ► and here's all the great things we're gonna have to offer.

00:59:29 ◼   ► Something a little more upbeat.

00:59:31 ◼   ► That I think is much more likely to happen.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And yeah, and I did talk about this

00:59:36 ◼   ► for the entire Under the Radar episode

00:59:39 ◼   ► with our friend Undercore David Smith.

00:59:41 ◼   ► So check out Under the Radar from today.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I'll link to it in the show notes.

00:59:44 ◼   ► That is certainly worth listening to

00:59:47 ◼   ► if you wanna hear us talk for almost exactly 30 minutes

00:59:50 ◼   ► about this exact topic and kind of what it means

00:59:53 ◼   ► and what Apple could do instead.

00:59:55 ◼   ► And we're gonna recover some of that here, of course,

00:59:57 ◼   ► but certainly check that if you are interested in this topic.

01:00:00 ◼   ► But yeah, I think the chances of Apple holding this conference

01:00:05 ◼   ► are extremely low because this is a significant virus

01:00:10 ◼   ► that's going around the world.

01:00:12 ◼   ► It is causing deaths, and it's not killing everybody

01:00:17 ◼   ► who gets it, but it is a serious problem,

01:00:19 ◼   ► and it's not something that can be taken lightly.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It's something that everybody needs to be very cautious about

01:00:23 ◼   ► and Apple is a cautious company,

01:00:25 ◼   ► and Apple is a company that tries to avoid bad press

01:00:28 ◼   ► whenever possible, and no company wants to put on an event

01:00:33 ◼   ► that at the event exposes people to this virus,

01:00:37 ◼   ► and one of them dies.

01:00:39 ◼   ► That's horrible.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Nobody wants to risk that, understandably.

01:00:43 ◼   ► And so there is no way that I think Apple's

01:00:46 ◼   ► gonna put this conference on.

01:00:47 ◼   ► I think they are way too smart to do that.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And anybody who's running a big event right now

01:00:53 ◼   ► for a high-profile thing, if they're not canceling

01:00:56 ◼   ► that event, they're not thinking right,

01:00:59 ◼   ► because it's a big enough problem.

01:01:04 ◼   ► The virus is a pretty big problem.

01:01:06 ◼   ► The effects are still largely unknown.

01:01:09 ◼   ► The gestation period is long, and so you don't really

01:01:13 ◼   ► realize how bad it is for a couple of weeks

01:01:16 ◼   ► after it has gotten that bad, and these are all events

01:01:20 ◼   ► that have to be planned months ahead of time

01:01:22 ◼   ► that are gathering a whole bunch of people

01:01:26 ◼   ► from all over the world in confined spaces.

01:01:29 ◼   ► It's just ludicrous to think that any of these

01:01:32 ◼   ► major events are gonna happen,

01:01:34 ◼   ► or that they should happen.

01:01:36 ◼   ► There are some conferences that are happening

01:01:40 ◼   ► in the near future that are still gonna go on, allegedly,

01:01:43 ◼   ► but I think that's a mistake for those conferences,

01:01:46 ◼   ► and I think they're hearing from it.

01:01:48 ◼   ► Major sponsors and participants are pulling out

01:01:51 ◼   ► these conferences, companies are restricting

01:01:54 ◼   ► their employees' travel, they're saying that they're not

01:01:57 ◼   ► allowing their employees to travel to conferences anymore

01:01:59 ◼   ► for a lot of things, it's a big deal.

01:02:02 ◼   ► And Apple's not gonna take any risks, Apple's not stupid.

01:02:04 ◼   ► They're a conservative, smart company.

01:02:07 ◼   ► There's no way this conference goes on.

01:02:10 ◼   ► - John, what do you think?

01:02:12 ◼   ► - I was thinking about, I haven't heard the end of the radar

01:02:15 ◼   ► about various options you can do.

01:02:17 ◼   ► W3C has been streaming live online

01:02:20 ◼   ► for the past couple of years.

01:02:21 ◼   ► Not only do you get the sessions,

01:02:22 ◼   ► but you can watch them at the same time

01:02:24 ◼   ► as the people in the room,

01:02:25 ◼   ► maybe with a seven second delay or something.

01:02:27 ◼   ► And then they have the recordings of the video,

01:02:29 ◼   ► and all sorts of things that they could do

01:02:32 ◼   ► over the internet, and of course, obviously,

01:02:34 ◼   ► the press only keynote that you could do,

01:02:37 ◼   ► the same way they do all the other press only keynotes.

01:02:39 ◼   ► But the thing that occurred to me is,

01:02:41 ◼   ► it's a very Apple move to also find some way

01:02:44 ◼   ► to charge quote unquote attendees $1600 to attend it online,

01:02:49 ◼   ► but I'm like, what would be the distinction

01:02:50 ◼   ► between the people who pay $1600 and the people who don't?

01:02:53 ◼   ► Because already, if you pay nothing,

01:02:55 ◼   ► you can stream the sessions live for free.

01:02:57 ◼   ► What would you be getting?

01:02:58 ◼   ► Would they mail you a jacket and some pins?

01:03:01 ◼   ► They mail you some terrible box lunches?

01:03:05 ◼   ► - I don't think the ticket price comes close

01:03:08 ◼   ► to paying for the massive cost

01:03:12 ◼   ► that Apple endures for this conference.

01:03:14 ◼   ► When you combine all the various factors,

01:03:17 ◼   ► the ticket price probably pays for the venue

01:03:18 ◼   ► and your box lunches.

01:03:20 ◼   ► - Well, if they add in our hotel fees,

01:03:23 ◼   ► it pays for everything, but Apple doesn't get the hotel money.

01:03:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it probably doesn't.

01:03:27 ◼   ► I'm sure to Apple, from their point of view,

01:03:30 ◼   ► the most expensive part of this conference every year

01:03:32 ◼   ► is probably the massive amount of time it takes

01:03:34 ◼   ► to prepare for all the employees, all the engineers

01:03:37 ◼   ► that have to go there and prepare presentations

01:03:40 ◼   ► and be there for the labs.

01:03:42 ◼   ► That's a massive amount of labor that goes into that.

01:03:45 ◼   ► That is probably way more expensive to Apple

01:03:47 ◼   ► than the actual nuts and bolts of,

01:03:49 ◼   ► like, the conference center costs this much,

01:03:50 ◼   ► the lunches cost this much.

01:03:52 ◼   ► And that's why, assuming they don't hold this conference,

01:03:55 ◼   ► I think what they are most likely to do

01:04:00 ◼   ► is to just do a bunch of online sessions,

01:04:02 ◼   ► just like they've been doing.

01:04:03 ◼   ► As you said, they've been live streaming.

01:04:05 ◼   ► I think they're just gonna release a bunch of session videos

01:04:08 ◼   ► and have a small media event

01:04:10 ◼   ► where they live stream a keynote.

01:04:12 ◼   ► And I think that's gonna be it.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Now, I would like to see them do more.

01:04:15 ◼   ► This is what we talked about on Under the Radar,

01:04:16 ◼   ► this part of it.

01:04:17 ◼   ► I would love to see them invest more heavily

01:04:20 ◼   ► in things like documentation, sample code,

01:04:24 ◼   ► and possibly, this is a bit of a reach,

01:04:28 ◼   ► but possibly staff up DTS and expand some kind of form

01:04:32 ◼   ► of the labs to be online and public,

01:04:35 ◼   ► where you get to actually talk to Apple engineers

01:04:39 ◼   ► about specific questions and problems you have

01:04:42 ◼   ► with specific APIs and your code,

01:04:44 ◼   ► and they'll look at it, and they'll, like,

01:04:46 ◼   ► it's similar to what DTS incidents do

01:04:48 ◼   ► when you have a developer account, but free and easier.

01:04:52 ◼   ► That kind of thing, DTS is famously a very, very, very,

01:04:57 ◼   ► very, very small staff,

01:04:59 ◼   ► and I would love to see them staff it up.

01:05:01 ◼   ► I would love to see them take the resources they are saving

01:05:04 ◼   ► by presumably not having this conference

01:05:07 ◼   ► and use that to really beef up the documentation

01:05:10 ◼   ► and really beef up the sample code

01:05:12 ◼   ► and really beef up DTS,

01:05:15 ◼   ► and just give more developers more access to stuff

01:05:18 ◼   ► without having them fly across the world

01:05:22 ◼   ► to stay in a very expensive hotel

01:05:24 ◼   ► and go to this one thing in person

01:05:27 ◼   ► for these few days a year.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Because if you think about it,

01:05:30 ◼   ► that whole system is incredibly inefficient

01:05:34 ◼   ► and incredibly exclusionary.

01:05:37 ◼   ► It's very exclusive.

01:05:38 ◼   ► The percentage of Apple developers

01:05:40 ◼   ► that can actually go to the conference

01:05:43 ◼   ► is such a tiny percentage of all the Apple developers

01:05:46 ◼   ► out there in the world.

01:05:47 ◼   ► It's this, you know, a few thousand people

01:05:50 ◼   ► out of hundreds of thousands or millions

01:05:53 ◼   ► of iOS developers around the world.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Like, we're talking a lot of people here.

01:05:56 ◼   ► It's a very big field, and so anything they can do

01:06:00 ◼   ► to make that more accessible to more people

01:06:03 ◼   ► has way more value than anything they could possibly change

01:06:06 ◼   ► about the conference itself,

01:06:07 ◼   ► like, of, you know, how it is for local attendees.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And, you know, I like the conference.

01:06:11 ◼   ► I've been fortunate enough to be able to go

01:06:12 ◼   ► to every one of them since 2009,

01:06:14 ◼   ► and I, you know, I consider that a privilege.

01:06:18 ◼   ► And yet, I also look at it as, you know,

01:06:22 ◼   ► every year I kind of think, wow, this is kind of wasteful.

01:06:25 ◼   ► This is very expensive. (laughs)

01:06:28 ◼   ► And that's one of the reasons why I stopped getting badges

01:06:30 ◼   ► a couple years ago, too, is like, you know,

01:06:31 ◼   ► 'cause I'm going mostly for, like, the community events

01:06:33 ◼   ► and occasional, like, find a way to sneak into a lab

01:06:37 ◼   ► and ask, like, one question to a lab person.

01:06:38 ◼   ► But otherwise, like, I'm mostly going

01:06:39 ◼   ► for the community events and everything.

01:06:41 ◼   ► But, like, they would have so much more value

01:06:46 ◼   ► to more people if they beefed up all of the online resources.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And if they're not gonna have a conference this year,

01:06:53 ◼   ► I think that is a, like, if you can find a silver lining

01:06:58 ◼   ► in them canceling this conference, that's it.

01:07:00 ◼   ► Like, they should redirect that energy and that time

01:07:03 ◼   ► to making things that everybody can use,

01:07:06 ◼   ► making all that stuff better.

01:07:07 ◼   ► The documentation's in a terrible state.

01:07:09 ◼   ► Sample code has been decimated by all the changes in Swift.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Like, most sample code doesn't work anymore.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Like, it's just, they really, they need a lot of help

01:07:18 ◼   ► in documentation and all that supporting stuff.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And they, it's just, it needs help, and I hope it gets it.

01:07:26 ◼   ► That being said, I don't think most of that

01:07:29 ◼   ► is likely to happen.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I think what's most likely to happen

01:07:33 ◼   ► is the conference gets canceled, and we just get videos

01:07:36 ◼   ► and a keynote from, you know, a media event, and that's it.

01:07:39 ◼   ► And no other changes.

01:07:40 ◼   ► That's much more likely, I think.

01:07:43 ◼   ► - Well, about the videos, though, you mentioned,

01:07:45 ◼   ► like, the cost of putting on WWDC.

01:07:48 ◼   ► The cost to the engineering org is the engineer's time

01:07:51 ◼   ► that they take out to prepare and perform the presentations.

01:07:54 ◼   ► And that time doesn't probably shrink at all

01:07:58 ◼   ► for them doing it, you know, on a stage versus not.

01:08:02 ◼   ► If anything, maybe they have to do more takes

01:08:04 ◼   ► in front of a camera, right?

01:08:05 ◼   ► 'Cause they still have to prepare the presentations.

01:08:07 ◼   ► They still have to make sure they have slides and sample code

01:08:09 ◼   ► and a rehearsed presentation that has correct, you know,

01:08:12 ◼   ► all the art on it is correct,

01:08:14 ◼   ► and all the information is correct,

01:08:15 ◼   ► and it matches up with the WWDC build.

01:08:17 ◼   ► And like, that engineering time is absorbed

01:08:20 ◼   ► whether we're there or not.

01:08:22 ◼   ► All the people whose time gets back are the people

01:08:24 ◼   ► who plan the event, deal with the venue,

01:08:26 ◼   ► deal with meals, deal with security.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Those people don't have to do anything.

01:08:29 ◼   ► Like, they're freed up, but they're not going to suddenly

01:08:31 ◼   ► hop on to making the documentation better, right?

01:08:33 ◼   ► So it is still a fairly large cost to Apple's engineering org.

01:08:37 ◼   ► The part they save for the engineers is you don't have to be

01:08:40 ◼   ► in this building for a couple of days or the entire week.

01:08:43 ◼   ► You know, you don't have to actually physically be there.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Once you're done with your video,

01:08:46 ◼   ► you can resume your regular work,

01:08:49 ◼   ► and then the videos go out to the world, right?

01:08:51 ◼   ► And then as for, like, labs and remote labs,

01:08:54 ◼   ► I think it was making me, when you were saying that,

01:08:55 ◼   ► it was making me think about,

01:08:56 ◼   ► do you remember when iChat video conferencing first came out?

01:09:00 ◼   ► One of the features it had is you could sort of share

01:09:03 ◼   ► a document, like you could see the little faces

01:09:05 ◼   ► on these screens in this little 3D kind of view,

01:09:07 ◼   ► and then you could also share a document,

01:09:09 ◼   ► and then your two little faces would be looking

01:09:10 ◼   ► at the document, do you remember that?

01:09:12 ◼   ► - No.

01:09:12 ◼   ► - So they had multi-person conferencing, right?

01:09:15 ◼   ► And the way they did it was instead of just seeing,

01:09:18 ◼   ► instead of in the window just seeing, like,

01:09:20 ◼   ► the other person, right, you would see the other person

01:09:24 ◼   ► would become like a little tile that would sort of move back

01:09:27 ◼   ► into the screen, kind of like a bunch of picture frames

01:09:29 ◼   ► sitting on a table or whatever.

01:09:31 ◼   ► And then when you shared a document,

01:09:32 ◼   ► that document would be another little picture

01:09:34 ◼   ► in the sort of setting, like a cover flow type setting.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Anyway, the point is, it would let two people,

01:09:41 ◼   ► you know, it would let you see the other person's face

01:09:43 ◼   ► and a document that they can also see on their screen.

01:09:46 ◼   ► And I can't tell you how many times I'm usually doing stuff

01:09:48 ◼   ► with my parents on FaceTime or whatever,

01:09:52 ◼   ► and we essentially want to share a document.

01:09:54 ◼   ► Let's all look at the whatever thing together,

01:09:56 ◼   ► like in this context, not, hey,

01:09:59 ◼   ► I'm gonna open up another window

01:10:00 ◼   ► and I'm gonna look at this document and you look at it too,

01:10:02 ◼   ► and like, so we could both be looking at it together.

01:10:04 ◼   ► I know with like Google Docs or whatever,

01:10:05 ◼   ► you can interactively see each other's cursors

01:10:07 ◼   ► and both be looking at the same document or whatever,

01:10:08 ◼   ► but it's just, it's so much easier if you can just say,

01:10:11 ◼   ► here, in this multi-person FaceTime chat

01:10:14 ◼   ► with the whole family, let's look at this thing,

01:10:16 ◼   ► or let's look at a bunch of pictures together.

01:10:18 ◼   ► I have a slideshow to show you, let's go through it,

01:10:20 ◼   ► oh, look at all the pictures, and you can see the pictures

01:10:22 ◼   ► and the people's reaction to them.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Something like that would go a long way

01:10:26 ◼   ► towards making things like labs possible, right?

01:10:29 ◼   ► Interactively over some Apple product or communication

01:10:32 ◼   ► protocol that Apple feels is secure

01:10:34 ◼   ► and you're all happy with or whatever,

01:10:35 ◼   ► let's all be sort of collaboratively working on a thing.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Something better than, oh, I'm gonna let Apple control

01:10:41 ◼   ► my screen with screen sharing,

01:10:42 ◼   ► or I'm gonna let Apple view my whole desktop

01:10:44 ◼   ► with screen sharing, just to selectively share documents

01:10:47 ◼   ► or a single window, or to be, you know,

01:10:49 ◼   ► tools that Apple's generally not good at.

01:10:52 ◼   ► As a company that tends to frown upon people telecommuting,

01:10:55 ◼   ► they like things to be in person

01:10:57 ◼   ► and they don't have a lot of collaborative tools

01:11:00 ◼   ► to be able to have a bunch of people

01:11:02 ◼   ► working on something together.

01:11:03 ◼   ► As terrible as things like WebEx and Zoom

01:11:06 ◼   ► and Microsoft Teams and Slack and all these other things are

01:11:09 ◼   ► almost all of those tools have as table stakes,

01:11:11 ◼   ► a bunch of people can communicate through audio and video

01:11:15 ◼   ► and also can all be looking at a single document

01:11:17 ◼   ► or a screen at the same time.

01:11:19 ◼   ► And if you're gonna do anything remotely like labs,

01:11:22 ◼   ► remote, you know, when people aren't in person,

01:11:24 ◼   ► you need something like that.

01:11:25 ◼   ► And Apple has nothing like that,

01:11:26 ◼   ► I can't really imagine Apple instructing everyone

01:11:28 ◼   ► to download Zoom or WebEx.

01:11:31 ◼   ► So remote labs, unless it's all gonna be over like,

01:11:35 ◼   ► we do what I do with my parents,

01:11:36 ◼   ► which is we're all on FaceTime,

01:11:37 ◼   ► and then I like hold up like a phone or a laptop screen

01:11:41 ◼   ► in front of the camera so they could see,

01:11:42 ◼   ► it's just, I don't see that working.

01:11:45 ◼   ► Whereas in the labs, you're both hunched over

01:11:46 ◼   ► the same laptop and everything works out.

01:11:49 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm not optimistic about that,

01:11:51 ◼   ► but getting back to my earlier point about customizing,

01:11:53 ◼   ► I'm also not optimistic about the idea

01:11:55 ◼   ► that once there's no longer a conference,

01:11:57 ◼   ► suddenly engineers will have a bunch of time

01:11:58 ◼   ► to sharp their docs.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Now it could be that one of the announcements at WWDC

01:12:02 ◼   ► is since last WWDC, we've had a concerted effort

01:12:05 ◼   ► to improve our documentation,

01:12:06 ◼   ► and it's all rolling out this week.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And that's like revealing work that they had done

01:12:10 ◼   ► over six months or a year.

01:12:11 ◼   ► That, if that's what they had done,

01:12:14 ◼   ► that happens whether or not they have WWDC,

01:12:16 ◼   ► doesn't have nothing to do with freeing up engineers' time,

01:12:18 ◼   ► has to do with the thing they already did in the past.

01:12:20 ◼   ► And I'm hoping that's the case.

01:12:21 ◼   ► I'm hoping the reveal is we made a big effort

01:12:23 ◼   ► to improve this aspect of the developer experience,

01:12:26 ◼   ► and we are revealing it at WWDC,

01:12:29 ◼   ► not doing it while you're watching

01:12:31 ◼   ► a bunch of pre-recorded videos.

01:12:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

01:12:34 ◼   ► Nope.

01:12:35 ◼   ► - Never know.

01:12:36 ◼   ► I mean, even if they don't really do it, do it.

01:12:37 ◼   ► They tend to make announcements like that.

01:12:39 ◼   ► If they know it's a thing that people want,

01:12:41 ◼   ► they'll want to have an announcement that says,

01:12:43 ◼   ► we've heard your complaints about documentation

01:12:44 ◼   ► and we've improved documentation in X, Y, and Z way.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Whether or not is it a significant improvement

01:12:50 ◼   ► or they make it sound better than it is,

01:12:53 ◼   ► very often there's some effort to help with that.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Even if they don't come out and say it,

01:12:59 ◼   ► they'll just say, here's a new framework

01:13:01 ◼   ► and we're really proud of the documentation.

01:13:02 ◼   ► There's lots of different ways they could spin it

01:13:03 ◼   ► to try to sort of address the issue in some way.

01:13:07 ◼   ► And I think that might happen.

01:13:10 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:13:11 ◼   ► It's hard to predict WWDC because very often

01:13:13 ◼   ► there's something big and shiny that they can throw out

01:13:16 ◼   ► and it will just distract everybody from any issues,

01:13:18 ◼   ► any boring issues like documentation and sample code.

01:13:21 ◼   ► Like I say, an ARM transition.

01:13:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:13:24 ◼   ► - Can you imagine if this was the year

01:13:26 ◼   ► for the ARM transition?

01:13:27 ◼   ► That would be brutal.

01:13:29 ◼   ► I don't know, I just want to reiterate though

01:13:30 ◼   ► what Marco had said earlier on that for the three of us,

01:13:35 ◼   ► this is our job, well, I think, especially for me

01:13:39 ◼   ► and Marco, maybe for John, it's our job

01:13:40 ◼   ► to go to the conference, or at least to go to the event,

01:13:44 ◼   ► I should say, and be there for it and make an appearance

01:13:47 ◼   ► and I think to some degree it is kind of a responsibility

01:13:50 ◼   ► for the three of us to have a live show there

01:13:51 ◼   ► when it happens.

01:13:52 ◼   ► But it is extremely expensive.

01:13:55 ◼   ► Not only is the ticket $1600,

01:13:57 ◼   ► but any even slightly reasonable hotel

01:14:00 ◼   ► is easily another $1600, if not 2000 plus dollars.

01:14:04 ◼   ► And I will never forget, I don't remember who said it to me,

01:14:07 ◼   ► but I will never forget when it started to get

01:14:10 ◼   ► really and truly expensive when it was still

01:14:11 ◼   ► in San Francisco proper, somebody looked at me

01:14:14 ◼   ► and I think it was the year that the Apple Watch

01:14:16 ◼   ► had just been released or announced or whatever.

01:14:19 ◼   ► - I believe this was Underscore who said it. (laughs)

01:14:21 ◼   ► - Was it Underscore? - I think so.

01:14:22 ◼   ► - Would you surprise me?

01:14:22 ◼   ► Underscore looked at me and said,

01:14:25 ◼   ► you realize that this $400 a night hotel

01:14:29 ◼   ► is you buying an Apple Watch every single night

01:14:32 ◼   ► and then throwing it away. (laughing)

01:14:33 ◼   ► And boom, my mind exploded and I just couldn't believe it.

01:14:38 ◼   ► And I was, no, no, that's, oh God.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Oh, oh, oh God, you're right.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Oh, that's not gonna, I mean,

01:14:45 ◼   ► that is preposterous, that is utterly preposterous.

01:14:48 ◼   ► I mean, I could go on a three hour tear

01:14:50 ◼   ► about how obnoxiously expensive everything in the valley is

01:14:53 ◼   ► and I don't understand how anyone can afford to live there,

01:14:55 ◼   ► but be that as it may, to go to this conference,

01:14:57 ◼   ► as someone who lives in the United States,

01:15:00 ◼   ► you're probably going to need to get on a plane,

01:15:02 ◼   ► so that's between 500 and 1000 bucks in most cases.

01:15:06 ◼   ► If you want a ticket to the event, that's $1600,

01:15:09 ◼   ► so call that an even 2000.

01:15:10 ◼   ► Then you wanna sleep somewhere and preferably somewhere

01:15:12 ◼   ► that has all the walls, this floor and the ceiling,

01:15:16 ◼   ► so that's probably another $2000.

01:15:18 ◼   ► So you're looking at $4000, you haven't eaten anything,

01:15:21 ◼   ► you haven't drank anything, I'm not even talking booze,

01:15:23 ◼   ► just in general, you haven't eaten or drank anything.

01:15:25 ◼   ► You do get those sweet, sweet, sweet box lunches

01:15:27 ◼   ► for quote, unquote, free, but you haven't had breakfast.

01:15:30 ◼   ► Oh, I guess you could have their crap circular bagel-like

01:15:34 ◼   ► things at the conference.

01:15:37 ◼   ► But you certainly haven't had dinner.

01:15:38 ◼   ► I mean, you're looking at between 4000 and $5000 for a week,

01:15:43 ◼   ► and it's just insane.

01:15:46 ◼   ► It's just bananas that it's that expensive.

01:15:49 ◼   ► And somebody in the chat is saying,

01:15:51 ◼   ► "Well, that's just what hotels cost."

01:15:53 ◼   ► Absolutely not, it is like $100 a night

01:15:56 ◼   ► to get a really decent room where I am.

01:15:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, and these aren't nice hotels.

01:16:01 ◼   ► They're like really mediocre hotels

01:16:03 ◼   ► that if they were anywhere else in the country,

01:16:04 ◼   ► would be like 150 bucks a night,

01:16:06 ◼   ► and instead they're 400.

01:16:08 ◼   ► - Or more, or more!

01:16:10 ◼   ► It's preposterous, and so as we have said,

01:16:14 ◼   ► I love WWDC, I really do.

01:16:16 ◼   ► I love the event, like the conference.

01:16:18 ◼   ► I love the actual conference that takes place

01:16:21 ◼   ► in the convention center.

01:16:22 ◼   ► I love, love, love, love, love all the superfluous

01:16:25 ◼   ► and other things that happen around it.

01:16:26 ◼   ► When I had the chance to go to Layers, I loved that.

01:16:29 ◼   ► There's so much good to be said about this,

01:16:32 ◼   ► but I also feel like there's been some tension building

01:16:36 ◼   ► over the last several years as things are just getting

01:16:39 ◼   ► insurmountably expensive, and to the point that

01:16:42 ◼   ► the only people who can afford it

01:16:44 ◼   ► are people who are billing their employer,

01:16:46 ◼   ► and maybe that's okay with Apple, I don't know,

01:16:48 ◼   ► but for someone like the three of us,

01:16:50 ◼   ► it's tough, it's hard, it's frustrating,

01:16:53 ◼   ► and so I would love to see it,

01:16:55 ◼   ► as much as I would hate to see it go away

01:16:57 ◼   ► on a more permanent basis, although it seems like

01:16:59 ◼   ► we all agree that maybe this year we should sit this one out,

01:17:02 ◼   ► as much as I would hate to see it go away

01:17:04 ◼   ► on a permanent basis, I would love to see

01:17:08 ◼   ► a lot of things change, and I'm really looking forward

01:17:10 ◼   ► to listening to that under the radar

01:17:12 ◼   ► to hear what you and David had to say about it.

01:17:14 ◼   ► - And I would even go a little bit further.

01:17:16 ◼   ► I would push a little harder on the angle of like,

01:17:19 ◼   ► you know, making, that this is kind of ridiculous now.

01:17:22 ◼   ► If you look at the landscape of tech conferences as a whole,

01:17:28 ◼   ► there was a period, kind of a golden era of tech conferences

01:17:33 ◼   ► that were mostly smaller conferences,

01:17:35 ◼   ► started about 10 years ago, and ran until probably

01:17:38 ◼   ► about three, four years ago, and this was an era

01:17:42 ◼   ► when there were lots of conferences, big and small,

01:17:45 ◼   ► at all different price points, all around the world,