0:00:00So what computer are you on right now?
0:00:02- The fact that you even have to ask that question
0:00:04is really depressing, really, really depressing.
0:00:08I'm on my iMac, I think last we spoke,
0:00:11nothing has changed with regard to the iMac, so it was--
0:00:15- So you still only had it repaired once,
0:00:17and then you did a software restore, basically?
0:00:19- Well, so, I had it repaired once,
0:00:21I restored from Time Machine, things got wonky,
0:00:25and then last Monday, so not October, what is today,
0:00:29it's the ninth, so not October 7th,
0:00:31but September 30th, I believe it was,
0:00:34I decided I'm just gonna nuke everything from orbit,
0:00:36and what is the genesis of that reference, John?
0:00:39- You don't know, you're making me so disappointed.
0:00:42I use it, you use it, I'm like,
0:00:44yeah, we're all on the same page, we all get this reference,
0:00:46but now you're admitting that you don't,
0:00:47and of course Marco doesn't.
0:00:48- No, of course not.
0:00:49(John laughs)
0:00:50- What is genesis of that?
0:00:51- Aliens, the one with the S, the plural one,
0:00:54the second one, the James Cameron one.
0:00:56- I've never seen it.
0:00:57- You've never seen aliens?
0:00:59- Wait, hold on, there are two different movies,
0:01:01one called Alien and one called Aliens.
0:01:03- There sure is.
0:01:04- That's terrible.
0:01:05- Are they related?
0:01:06- They sure are, 'cause the first one had one alien,
0:01:10and the second one had more than one,
0:01:13thus the plural. - Spoiler alert!
0:01:14- That's terrible. - Right there in the title,
0:01:16Casey, Alien, that's not terrible, that is classy.
0:01:19That is, before it was like--
0:01:21- Aliens 2, more aliens.
0:01:23- Furious 5, and The Fate of the Furious,
0:01:25and Fast Five, and all this ridiculous,
0:01:27we had Alien, and then it was followed up by Aliens,
0:01:30which is a perfect way to amp up the sequel
0:01:33while not being too loud about it.
0:01:35It's like, you get where I'm coming from.
0:01:37You had Alien, and it was a great movie,
0:01:39and you all loved it, guess what?
0:01:40Aliens, also James Cameron.
0:01:42And it's another rare sequel that is,
0:01:44let's say, almost as good as the original,
0:01:47some would say better, some would say,
0:01:49oh, it'll never match the original,
0:01:51'cause it's a different kind of movie,
0:01:52but I think we can all agree, it's a very good sequel.
0:01:55- Oh, God. - Totally, totally.
0:01:57- Marco, you and I are gonna get right on that, right?
0:01:58That's our homework, you and me?
0:02:00- I'm assuming neither of you has seen the original Alien,
0:02:03the singular one, right?
0:02:04- I don't think so.
0:02:04- 'Cause that's like a '70s movie,
0:02:05and that's before your time, but Aliens,
0:02:08I think Casey, at least, would enjoy if he's not too scared.
0:02:11- If anything, I think Casey and I have proven to you, John,
0:02:14over the years, that whether or not a movie was in our time
0:02:17has nothing to do with whether we've seen it.
0:02:19The answer is we've never seen it.
0:02:21- You've seen a lot of garbage '90s movies.
0:02:23There's a higher chance of you seeing it
0:02:24if it's in your time,
0:02:25whereas the classic '70s movies you haven't seen,
0:02:28but you've seen no garbage '70s movies, right?
0:02:31And you've seen few classic '70s movies,
0:02:33but '90s movies, you're probably all,
0:02:35you know, you've seen all sorts of trash.
0:02:36- So when Erin and I were engaged,
0:02:40she was living in Richmond,
0:02:41and I was still in Charlottesville,
0:02:42and that meant I had lots of time on my hands
0:02:45with nothing to do,
0:02:46and this was back when Netflix still sent DVDs,
0:02:49and I went on a binge of watching the original versions
0:02:54of then modern films that I really loved.
0:02:56So I watched the original "Italian Job."
0:02:59I watched the original "Oceans 11."
0:03:01- The original "Dodgeball."
0:03:03- I hope you're kidding, 'cause if that's a remake,
0:03:06I've gotta watch the original right away,
0:03:07but I'm pretty sure you're full of it.
0:03:09Anyway, I watched the original "Gone in 60 Seconds,"
0:03:12and I don't know if it's my,
0:03:15as we've long established, terrible sensibilities,
0:03:17but not a one of those was any good at all.
0:03:20Even, what was it, "Italian Job" had Michael Caine,
0:03:23who I love, my cocaine,
0:03:26and I absolutely love Michael Caine,
0:03:27and that movie was also terrible.
0:03:30So I have seen some things from the '60s and '70s,
0:03:33and I did not enjoy them, but that's okay.
0:03:36So to come back around to my computers,
0:03:38a week ago Monday, I had nuked the iMac from Orbit,
0:03:43as we discussed, that's from the movie "Aliens."
0:03:45That's right, right?
0:03:46"Aliens" got "alien"?
0:03:47That doesn't matter.
0:03:48Anyway, it's from some movie I haven't seen.
0:03:50So since then, knock on my glass desk,
0:03:53it seems to be behaving considerably better.
0:03:56Then a few days ago,
0:03:59I was attempting to use my MacBook,
0:04:02and I would start it up either from sleep or rebooting it,
0:04:06and it would work for a little bit,
0:04:07and then it would refuse all input
0:04:10from the mouse and the keyboard.
0:04:12Now, the mouse was clicking, because, mind you,
0:04:14this is one of the, what's the term for the fancy track pads
0:04:19where it's all haptic, right?
0:04:20There's no-- - Oh, it's a 3D Force.
0:04:23- Whatever, yeah, sure.
0:04:25But anyway, the point is,
0:04:27it's a mini haptic engine that's causing the clicking.
0:04:30It's not an actual physical motion
0:04:32that's causing the clicking, and it was clicking,
0:04:33which typically indicates that somewhere deep
0:04:36in the software, something is working.
0:04:38But I couldn't change focus to a different window.
0:04:41I couldn't do anything with the keyboard.
0:04:43It was just a disaster.
0:04:44And this happened reliably several times in a row,
0:04:46and I thought, well, I guess it's time
0:04:47to nuke this bad boy from Orbit, too.
0:04:49So that's what I did.
0:04:51I did an internet recovery, which actually,
0:04:54quick aside, works stunningly well,
0:04:57at least for me on my very fast internet connection.
0:04:59So if you hit, I'm gonna get this wrong,
0:05:02but it's Command + Option + R,
0:05:04or maybe it's Command + R, I forget what it is.
0:05:06- Command + R is regular recovery.
0:05:07Command + Option + R is the one
0:05:09where it gets the latest version of the internet.
0:05:11- Yes, and then there's Command + Option + something else R
0:05:14that gives you the version that came with the computer,
0:05:17again, off the internet.
0:05:18- No, no, Command + R does that,
0:05:19because it's just booting from your recovery partition,
0:05:21which probably has not been updated
0:05:23since you installed the original operating system
0:05:25or since it came with the computer.
0:05:26Command + R boots off the recovery partition,
0:05:28I'm pretty sure, and the Command + Option + R is internet.
0:05:30- Right, and I thought, maybe I'm wrong,
0:05:31it doesn't really matter,
0:05:32but I thought there was another key modifier
0:05:34that you could do an internet recovery
0:05:36against the version of the OS that your computer came with.
0:05:39- Oh yeah, there probably is.
0:05:40I didn't know if it would be presented with you,
0:05:42a menu or something.
0:05:43Once you're going to the internet,
0:05:44you have the option to pull different versions, I'm sure.
0:05:47Yeah, so anyway, so I did an internet recovery,
0:05:49and this was, I think the day that Catalina came out,
0:05:52it was this past Monday or something like that.
0:05:53It was shortly after Catalina came out,
0:05:55and sure enough, it gave me Catalina,
0:05:56and so far, it actually seems to be working better,
0:06:01I would say.
0:06:02The iMac in particular had a fair bit of cruft within it,
0:06:05but the MacBook, I don't think it had very much cruft
0:06:09from years and years and years
0:06:10of the same load being brought forward
0:06:13with each new computer, but even still,
0:06:16a couple of years on, I feel like the MacBook,
0:06:18and maybe it's a placebo,
0:06:19but I feel like the MacBook
0:06:20is operating considerably better now.
0:06:21So my MacBook, and we'll talk about this more later,
0:06:23my MacBook is on Catalina.
0:06:25I have not yet touched Catalina on the iMac.
0:06:27I'm not really sure why, except that everyone seems
0:06:30to be up in arms about the thought of upgrading.
0:06:33I think I would be fine, but I'm so scared
0:06:35to touch anything at this point
0:06:37that I figure I'll just wait it out for a little while.
0:06:40But yeah, all seems well in my computing world,
0:06:44at least for the time being, and I really am impressed.
0:06:48I really honestly am impressed
0:06:49with how well the internet recovery worked on the MacBook,
0:06:52because I have a gigabit connection,
0:06:55basically both directions, and it didn't take
0:06:59considerably longer than I would have expected.
0:07:01It took about as long as I expected,
0:07:02especially given that it's a MacBook,
0:07:04which is slow and underpowered, et cetera.
0:07:06And it worked really, really, really well.
0:07:08And so I think everything's good, believe it or not.
0:07:12I don't know, we'll see.
0:07:14(electronic beeping)
0:07:16Tell me, gentlemen, I did not put this in the show notes,
0:07:18but as soon as one of you did, I kinda slapped my forehead
0:07:22and realized, oh man, I completely forgot about this.
0:07:25Did FaceTime attention correction ship?
0:07:28- I check on my phone, but my phone is still not running
0:07:30iOS 13 'cause I'm a scaredy cat.
0:07:32Why don't one of you check for me?
0:07:34- All right, so where would this be?
0:07:35I'm looking in settings, let me search for FaceTime.
0:07:37- Well, that's assuming the search is working.
0:07:39- Yeah, that's true too.
0:07:40- No, don't search, just search with your eyeballs.
0:07:43- While I'm looking at the FaceTime portion of settings,
0:07:46I see allows FaceTime to access Siri and search,
0:07:49FaceTime on or off, my Apple ID, where I can be reached,
0:07:52my caller ID, FaceTime Live photos,
0:07:55and blocked contacts, and that is it.
0:07:56- And I can verify on 13.2 it's exactly the same.
0:07:58- Interesting, so I would say that no, it has not shipped.
0:08:01Where did we come down on this?
0:08:03If I recall correctly, I thought that this was really cool,
0:08:06and I thought that both of you guys
0:08:07were kind of anti-attention correction, is that right?
0:08:11- Yeah. - I was very anti.
0:08:13For reasons beyond the technical,
0:08:14'cause I just thought it was the wrong thing
0:08:17to try to accomplish.
0:08:18I don't remember what Marco's stance was.
0:08:21- Mine was almost as anti as you, basically.
0:08:23It's a very risky thing to try to do,
0:08:26because if you do it even slightly wrong,
0:08:28it really messes up badly.
0:08:30- Yeah, I was saying that even if you did it perfectly right,
0:08:33and perhaps especially if you did it perfectly right,
0:08:36I still don't like it.
0:08:37Anyway, we'll add that to the bin of things
0:08:40that didn't quite make it into 13.0 or 13.1 or 13.2.
0:08:45Stay tuned, brutal.
0:08:49- And speaking of, one of you has noticed
0:08:52that at apple.com/macos/catalina/features,
0:08:55we'll put a link in the show notes,
0:08:56there is a genuinely long list of features,
0:08:59I didn't even realize this page was here,
0:09:01a very long list of features that are new in Catalina,
0:09:04but if you look closely,
0:09:05two of them have little asterisks next to them.
0:09:08One of them is iCloud Drive folder sharing,
0:09:11which I think I speak for all three of us in saying
0:09:13we were very excited to have,
0:09:15because we could have maybe stopped using Dropbox
0:09:18for sharing audio files between the three of us.
0:09:20- You two were excited about that, I was not.
0:09:22I continue not to be excited by iCloud Drive
0:09:25or folder sharing or anything related to it.
0:09:27- Well now I'm not.
0:09:28I was very excited about that,
0:09:32but now I'm thinking when it comes out,
0:09:34are we gonna trust it?
0:09:36You know, it has had such a rocky summer,
0:09:39like the early betas,
0:09:41the reason it was delayed it seemed was
0:09:42that the early betas were really bad
0:09:43and people were losing data and files.
0:09:45And it seems like now it's even,
0:09:49it was so hard apparently to fix that and get it right
0:09:51that they were delaying it until next spring.
0:09:54So I don't know, when it does finally come out,
0:09:56are any of us gonna trust it?
0:09:58How long is it gonna take for any of us to trust it?
0:10:01I mean, I feel like in this context specifically,
0:10:05so the three of us are trying to share files
0:10:08amongst ourselves, where presumably these files
0:10:13will get caught up by time machine
0:10:15on each of our respective computers
0:10:17within an hour of them being generated.
0:10:20I feel like I would be okay with it.
0:10:21I don't think I would be too scared,
0:10:25but you know, you never really know what can happen,
0:10:27especially when it comes to iCloud.
0:10:29I haven't yet been burned by iCloud really badly
0:10:32and I almost wonder if that shoe is about to drop,
0:10:34especially given the conversation we just had
0:10:36about everything else in my computing life
0:10:37being a little rough these days.
0:10:39But I don't know, I feel like Apple has had themselves
0:10:44burned by this whole beta experience
0:10:48and one would hope that they have learned their lesson
0:10:51and one would hope that they will not make
0:10:54this mistake again.
0:10:55But I don't know, with Apple,
0:10:56especially when it comes to services,
0:10:57can you ever really be confident ever?
0:11:00- Well, a lot of their services do work well,
0:11:03but the ones that don't, they seem to never really fix
0:11:07in a way that earns our trust.
0:11:10- Yeah.
0:11:10- I mean, some of them, they've done a good job with.
0:11:13I feel like the backend for the Photos app,
0:11:17we had so many reasons not to trust it
0:11:18and there were bugs in the beginning
0:11:20and people did lose photos and have weird glitches
0:11:22and stuff, but overall at this point,
0:11:24I think the Photos backend has matured to the point
0:11:26where the vast majority of complaints about Photos
0:11:30have nothing to do with the backend
0:11:32and everything to do with the application
0:11:33that through which you use the backend,
0:11:35but in general, I think the Photo backend sinks.
0:11:38And that's a hard problem, I mean,
0:11:40'cause Photos are numerous and large and just ever-growing
0:11:43and I don't think there are as many light users of Photos
0:11:47because like on Drive, you can put three or four things there
0:11:50and that's it, right?
0:11:51Whereas Photos, if you take any photos,
0:11:53presumably if you continue to live,
0:11:55you will take more photos.
0:11:56And you probably don't delete your old photos
0:11:58and so it's a larger volume problem.
0:12:02The main reason I put this in the notes is,
0:12:04here we've talked about iCloud Drive folder sharing
0:12:06being delayed or whatever and we're thinking like,
0:12:10oh, maybe it's delayed till 13.1 or maybe 13.2
0:12:12if you wanna be pessimistic, but as Mark already noted,
0:12:15this page from Apple says, coming this spring,
0:12:19which you'll note is next year,
0:12:22like not even, but in the fall or by the end of the year
0:12:27or in early next year, I guess spring could be early
0:12:31next year, but as Marco also noted on Twitter today,
0:12:34this spring or whatever, you were saying mid-year
0:12:36or whatever, could also mean like WWDC.
0:12:38I guess this spring can't mean WWDC.
0:12:40- Yeah, I was talking about the Mengxi quote rumor
0:12:42about second half or Q2 or like first half,
0:12:45but it's like the first half of the year ends in June
0:12:48and so anything that says, oh, it's gonna be announced
0:12:51by Q1 or Q2, that could be WWDC.
0:12:54- Yeah, anyway, they're giving themselves a lot of time,
0:12:57which is fine, like if that's how long it takes,
0:13:00that's how long it takes.
0:13:01None of us want them to ship this in a broken state,
0:13:04so take your time and get it done.
0:13:06Hopefully you get it done before whatever's after Catalina.
0:13:10There's one more item here that I hadn't even recalled,
0:13:16but I saw it on the same feature page,
0:13:17which is communication limits where it's kind of like
0:13:20part of the screen time where you can limit
0:13:23who your children can communicate with
0:13:26during certain periods maybe or all the time.
0:13:29Like when they're in downtime,
0:13:31they can use the Messages app,
0:13:32but they can only use the Messages app
0:13:33to communicate to you and not to their friends
0:13:35or something like that.
0:13:36That feature is apparently so complicated
0:13:39that it's also not coming until spring.
0:13:42- It is a cool feature though.
0:13:42I don't remember them having talked about that at all
0:13:45when I saw this in the show notes.
0:13:46- I remember it 'cause I'm more attuned
0:13:48to the parental control-y type things,
0:13:51mostly because I, well, I don't know.
0:13:53I do use screen time,
0:13:54but it's basically like a bedtime enforcement mechanism
0:13:58to say, just so the kids don't secret their phones
0:14:00into the bed and stay up until 1 a.m.
0:14:02texting under the covers, they need to get sleep, right?
0:14:05But I do want their devices to be useful in an emergency,
0:14:07so Apple has all these sort of exceptions
0:14:09where you can carve out,
0:14:11like if they're stranded on the side of the road,
0:14:12they can always call you, they can message you,
0:14:14they can email you, they can do all sorts of things,
0:14:18but it's very difficult to strike the balance
0:14:19between having a device that works in emergencies
0:14:22for everything they could possibly need,
0:14:23maps, so on and so forth,
0:14:25but also that doesn't let them burn too many hours of sleep
0:14:30chatting with friends.
0:14:31- Makes sense.
0:14:32Can we pivot ever so slightly?
0:14:34What are your guys' expectations
0:14:36with regard to the remainder of this month in an Apple event?
0:14:38Because a week or two ago, I would have said,
0:14:42without question, there's going to be an Apple event
0:14:46shortly before Halloween, just like there was last year,
0:14:48and that is going to be the deal.
0:14:50There'll be new MacBook Pros,
0:14:52there will probably be a new iPad Pro.
0:14:55We'll get more details about your beloved Mac Pro,
0:14:58God rest my soul,
0:14:59and we'll probably get some of the things
0:15:02that have been promised software-wise,
0:15:04like Photoshop for iPad,
0:15:05but I don't know, after seeing this Ming-Chi Kuo rumor
0:15:09and some of the other talking heads like ourselves
0:15:11have started to pump the brakes a little bit on this,
0:15:14and now I'm starting to waffle a bit and wonder,
0:15:16do you guys still think there will be an October event,
0:15:19and if so, what do you think will be there?
0:15:21And let's start with Marco.
0:15:22- The rumors are, the latest rumors are basically
0:15:25that new MacBooks with scissor keyboards are coming out
0:15:28basically next year by June,
0:15:31but that is actually,
0:15:33we've actually heard rumblings of that same thing before
0:15:36with that same schedule.
0:15:38What those rumors didn't mention
0:15:39is the rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro.
0:15:42Those rumors were about the other models
0:15:44of various Apple laptops.
0:15:46The 16-inch is still unknown,
0:15:48but the latest rumors of the 16-inch
0:15:51were that it's coming imminently,
0:15:53that it's coming this fall,
0:15:54like possibly even this month.
0:15:57So as far as I know,
0:16:00or as far as we've heard, rather,
0:16:03that hasn't changed.
0:16:05So I still believe, I'm still holding onto the dream
0:16:09that we're getting this 16-inch.
0:16:12I could really, really use a 16-inch laptop this weekend,
0:16:17and so therefore, it's gonna be announced next week,
0:16:21because I need it this weekend. (laughs)
0:16:23- So thank you, Marco.
0:16:24- Yeah, so to answer your question,
0:16:27there is still so much that's rumored in the pipeline
0:16:30that seems like it's fairly imminent.
0:16:31So things like the little tag tile tracker things
0:16:35that the U1 chip is supposed to help locate,
0:16:38the rumored, and that we'll talk about later,
0:16:41maybe the leaked image of the AirPods with the rubber tips,
0:16:46so some kind of new AirPods model,
0:16:48a rumored cheaper HomePod that was rumored recently.
0:16:53There's all this different stuff.
0:16:54And not to mention,
0:16:57maybe when the TV service launches,
0:17:01maybe they'll wanna do something too.
0:17:02Oh, there's also rumored Apple TV hardware update as well.
0:17:05So there's all this rumored stuff
0:17:07about these lower-priority products
0:17:10that are all still waiting in the wings somewhere.
0:17:13And the iPhone event did seem
0:17:14like some stuff was cut out of it.
0:17:16So I'm still holding on to hope.
0:17:19I'm not actually hopeful for iPads.
0:17:21iPads seem like the rumors are all saying next year,
0:17:24and that's fine.
0:17:25The iPad Pro was just updated one year ago,
0:17:28and they tend to be on a year-and-a-half or so cycle,
0:17:30so that would be totally fine.
0:17:33But I still think there is room for a smaller event
0:17:36that would be the 16-inch MacBook Pro,
0:17:39new HomePod, new AirPods, new Apple TV,
0:17:42maybe something like that,
0:17:43and maybe that tile tag tracker thing.
0:17:45- Yeah, I started to get doubtful about the iPads
0:17:48after the phone event just had the cheap one.
0:17:51It's like, why wouldn't they say that for the iPad event,
0:17:53oh, maybe there's not gonna be an iPad event.
0:17:54But it seemed like it was still a thing that they could do.
0:17:57But this new rumor about the next iPad having
0:17:59what they keep calling a 3D ToF, or Time of Flight camera,
0:18:05which is basically a camera that emits stuff,
0:18:08I think it's light,
0:18:09and tracks how long it takes to bounce off things.
0:18:13- It's stuff.
0:18:14- Yeah, I mean, it might be, I don't know if it's IR,
0:18:17if it's visible light, if it's a laser,
0:18:19if it's, you know, whatever.
0:18:20Anyway, it times how long it takes to hit something
0:18:22and bounce back to it to get a better depth map
0:18:26for the purposes of AR and all that other stuff.
0:18:28That's the rumor that the next iPad Pro
0:18:32has that on its rear camera.
0:18:34And also coming along with that rumor is,
0:18:37and it's coming in the first half of next year.
0:18:39So that, I feel like if there's any foundation at all,
0:18:42kind of squashes any hope of a boring iPad Pro update,
0:18:47which is basically take the existing iPad Pro,
0:18:48put an A13 in it, you know,
0:18:50that doesn't seem like it's gonna happen.
0:18:52But like Marco said, the 16-inch rumors continue to be
0:18:56that this is a thing that Apple could announce at any time.
0:19:00Obviously all the rest of the laptops
0:19:03have never really been rumored for imminent release
0:19:06and are probably into next year.
0:19:08That's fine.
0:19:09I think the laptop can carry an October event.
0:19:11Now, what do you have besides the laptop?
0:19:13I think you can have the laptop
0:19:15and like one other thing and it's fine.
0:19:18I don't think all the things Marco listed
0:19:19are gonna be there.
0:19:20You can have laptop in the tiles, fine, there's your event.
0:19:22You can have laptop and Apple TV, fine, there's your event.
0:19:25You can have the laptop and the earbuds, fine,
0:19:26there's your event.
0:19:27Because if Apple's smart, well, I don't know.
0:19:30I don't know if this is the right PR move,
0:19:31but I think it would make everyone feel better
0:19:35for Apple to make a very big deal
0:19:37about how great this new laptop is.
0:19:39Now, they don't have to have any self-flagellation
0:19:41about oh, we made a bad keyboard, we're so sorry.
0:19:43But they know that we know that they know.
0:19:46You know, and they're just like,
0:19:48look at our amazing new laptop.
0:19:51This is the best laptop we've ever made
0:19:52and we're really proud of it.
0:19:53They can say all positive things and we'll get the subtext.
0:19:56The subtext is they're not crap anymore.
0:19:58And you know, actually, I have to make it not crap, right?
0:20:01So new keyboard and one new port, that's all we ask
0:20:04and we'll probably get half of that, so.
0:20:06(laughing)
0:20:07Anyway, yeah, we're hungry for new laptops.
0:20:11Apple tends to make us think when they say like,
0:20:15this is what all our new laptops will look like
0:20:17going forward, presumably this is that moment
0:20:19that we've been waiting for for so long.
0:20:21So yeah, I think they just need that laptop
0:20:23and want another thing.
0:20:23And surely, of all the stuff that was possible
0:20:26for release in the September event,
0:20:28one of those things should be ready
0:20:30to be announced alongside.
0:20:31Maybe not shipping, I mean, forget about shipping,
0:20:33but if you got an event, you can announce stuff.
0:20:35And especially for things like the noise canceling AirPods,
0:20:40which I remember thinking about that way back when,
0:20:42like how can you make an AirPod noise canceling?
0:20:44But I kept thinking of the AirPod as like a current AirPod.
0:20:46You can't make the current AirPod noise canceling,
0:20:50I suppose, because it doesn't seal your ear canal.
0:20:53It just kind of rattles around there, which is fine
0:20:56when you're just emitting sound.
0:20:57But if you want to counteract outside sound,
0:20:59you have to have a much more controlled sort of sound chamber
0:21:02so you gotta plug it up.
0:21:03So anyway, the rumors of those things are AirPods
0:21:07that look more like, I don't know what you would call them.
0:21:09Are they, they'll call those in-ear?
0:21:11I think they're just like not quite in-ear,
0:21:13but squishy into-ear.
0:21:16- I mean, yeah, they look like PowerBeats,
0:21:18but without the earhook.
0:21:19- Yeah, what do you call that style of ear thing?
0:21:22- I, you know, they're not quite in-ear monitors
0:21:25'cause they don't really seal.
0:21:26- Right.
0:21:27- I don't actually know what that style,
0:21:29it's just like, it's a rubber-tipped earbud, basically.
0:21:33- It used to be the only kind of earbud
0:21:35before I think they started popularizing,
0:21:37the kind that don't actually squish
0:21:39into your ear canal in any way.
0:21:40Like the AirPods just kind of, you know,
0:21:42are grasped by the funny little cartilage in your ear
0:21:44and they just hang out there,
0:21:46but they don't shove into your ear hole
0:21:47in any way whatsoever.
0:21:49But before that, if you had said earbuds,
0:21:51you would have thought of something
0:21:52that looks like these AirPods with a little rubbery tip,
0:21:54maybe changeable tips, maybe that's too much for Apple.
0:21:56Anyway.
0:21:57- The PowerBeats have changeable tips.
0:21:59It's really nice, actually.
0:22:01- Yeah, I mean, I suppose they have to make changeable tips
0:22:03because if it's shoving into your ear canal,
0:22:05it's harder to come up with a one-size-fits-all,
0:22:07even harder than it is for the AirPods,
0:22:09so I suppose it has to be changeable.
0:22:11- Yeah, and like, this is, I'm actually,
0:22:12I'm really hoping they ship something like that
0:22:15because I like the PowerBeats.
0:22:18So I have both PowerBeats and AirPods.
0:22:20I don't use the AirPods frequently
0:22:22because they are not very comfortable on me,
0:22:24even with the little like aftermarket silicone wraps
0:22:27that I put around them.
0:22:28Like, that makes them a little bit better,
0:22:29but they're still not very comfortable on me.
0:22:31The PowerBeats, which have those changeable rubber tips,
0:22:34and they come with three or four sets of them
0:22:36in different sizes, those fit me very well,
0:22:39but they have the giant earhook
0:22:41and the giant case to accommodate that,
0:22:43and so they're a much bigger thing that's harder to pocket.
0:22:47If Apple can make something that's close to AirPods
0:22:50in size and form factor,
0:22:51that can also have a pocketable case like AirPods do,
0:22:55but that has that rubber tip for a better,
0:22:57more comfortable fit, I am so in on that.
0:23:00I really, really hope they do.
0:23:02- Yeah, 'cause you always wanted to use the AirPods,
0:23:05but they don't quite fit your ears,
0:23:06so this is another chance for Apple to not fit your ears.
0:23:08- Well, and not only that,
0:23:10but if they have this kind of changeable tip thing,
0:23:12that also means that even if Apple totally blows it
0:23:15and doesn't give you multiple tips,
0:23:16other people can probably make them and sell them
0:23:18because they probably will have one of those little like,
0:23:20like stick port things on it that all these headphones do
0:23:23that you can, you know, it would take two seconds
0:23:25for a third party manufacturer to design something
0:23:27that could fit it if it's any kind of like
0:23:29removable rubber tip.
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0:25:21(upbeat music)
0:25:24- Can we talk a little bit about,
0:25:25this has been going around on other podcasts
0:25:27and in our various slacks,
0:25:28and I know we talked about it in the past,
0:25:30but I want to revisit it again.
0:25:31The idea of, oh, I know IY came up,
0:25:33'cause there was a story about how you can get Apple
0:25:35to replace your AirPod when the batteries go dead.
0:25:38The idea that AirPods are completely sealed
0:25:41and you use them and eventually use them
0:25:43for a certain amount of time
0:25:44and the battery no longer holds a charge,
0:25:46and then what recourse do you have?
0:25:47Because you can't change the batteries.
0:25:48Apple can't change the batteries.
0:25:50You just have to essentially either throw them away,
0:25:52buy new ones, or get them replaced.
0:25:54And the story, well, we should find a link
0:25:56for the show notes for this,
0:25:56but the story was like, if you know the magic words to say,
0:26:00you can go into an Apple store and be like,
0:26:02I've had these AirPods for two years
0:26:04and now they last like 20 minutes.
0:26:06Can I get a battery service?
0:26:08Can I get the battery service for them?
0:26:10And they charge you less than the price of new AirPods
0:26:13and essentially give you new AirPods.
0:26:14Like they don't actually change your batteries,
0:26:16but, and it's not much less than the AirPod.
0:26:19They get to pay $98 and then you get two refurbished AirPods,
0:26:23which is cheaper than $160.
0:26:25So maybe go in and say battery service.
0:26:27Obviously if your batteries are crappy
0:26:29within the one year warranty,
0:26:30they'll just give you new ones for free or whatever.
0:26:32Like this, we find there are articles to the other options.
0:26:35But anyway, this is renew the debate about,
0:26:38is this product a good idea?
0:26:40Like, yeah, we all love our AirPods,
0:26:41but it's another Apple thing with sealed batteries.
0:26:45And unlike some of the other sealed batteries,
0:26:47this literally can't be replaced
0:26:50because it's just totally glued in there
0:26:51and there's no way to get it out
0:26:53without destroying the thing.
0:26:54So once those batteries die, which they inevitably will
0:26:58because the lithium ion batteries only last
0:27:00a certain number of cycles and then they're no good,
0:27:02it seems wasteful to throw them out.
0:27:05Well, let's, I don't wanna say it seems wasteful.
0:27:07Look, here are the different angles on why it's bad.
0:27:10One is that it costs you lots of money.
0:27:12You paid $160 and that lasts you 18 months,
0:27:14then you have to pay another $160
0:27:16and then you get 18 months.
0:27:16That's not a great treadmill to be on.
0:27:19These are not a cheap product.
0:27:20No one wants to keep paying for that,
0:27:22says the person who buys a new phone
0:27:24for $1,000 every two years.
0:27:25Anyway.
0:27:26(laughing)
0:27:27Or a new computer for 12 grand every 10 years.
0:27:30Anyway.
0:27:31- I think you're getting away with just 12.
0:27:32- Yeah.
0:27:33- Yeah, that's laughable.
0:27:34- Well, we'll see.
0:27:35Well, I know.
0:27:36(laughing)
0:27:37So that's the cost argument.
0:27:38It doesn't feel good to spend that money.
0:27:39Second is environmental argument.
0:27:42You buy this thing and you just throw it away
0:27:45and then you buy another one and you throw it away.
0:27:48Is there a third argument?
0:27:49Let's see.
0:27:49You got cost environmental.
0:27:51There's a right to repair angle.
0:27:54I mean, I feel like you have the right to try to repair that,
0:27:56but they're assembled in such a way
0:27:57that it's not gonna happen.
0:27:59I mean, yeah, I think those are the two major angles,
0:28:04cost environmental, unless there's some other thing
0:28:06that I'm thinking of.
0:28:07Anyway, I've been thinking about them
0:28:11and we talked about it last time.
0:28:12Last time I think where I came down was
0:28:15I would rather have an AirPod with a changeable battery
0:28:18on it would be a worse product given the technology
0:28:21that existed at the time,
0:28:24because it would have to be bigger and bulkier
0:28:25and it wouldn't be as sort of, you know,
0:28:28lightweight and svelte and perfect and beautiful
0:28:30as the AirPod is.
0:28:32But we're on our second generation of AirPods now
0:28:35and it's been a few years.
0:28:37And I think it's worth revisiting the idea of, you know,
0:28:40revisiting the idea of these particular harms
0:28:43and how they could be mitigated.
0:28:45- I have such mixed feelings about this.
0:28:50I agree that this is an example of consumerism
0:28:55kind of run amok.
0:28:56You know, I happily spent almost $200
0:29:01on my AirPods 2 with wireless charging case,
0:29:05just two years after I spent 150 bucks,
0:29:08whatever it was, on the AirPods 1.
0:29:09And I use my AirPods every day.
0:29:11I freaking love these things.
0:29:13I still think they might be the best Apple product
0:29:16I've ever purchased.
0:29:17And if they were made appreciably worse
0:29:21by having say a removable battery,
0:29:23that would make me really, really sad.
0:29:26That being said, it is bananas that in probably
0:29:29another year and a half or whatever it's been
0:29:30since I bought this set,
0:29:31I will be buying yet another set of AirPods.
0:29:34And it is bananas that the old ones are probably
0:29:37just gonna end up in a landfill somewhere.
0:29:38And that's really, really crummy.
0:29:41- Is it really, really crummy?
0:29:42How crummy is it?
0:29:44- Well, I think it's really crummy
0:29:46from an environmental perspective.
0:29:48- But why?
0:29:49- Well, because it's just very wasteful.
0:29:50- It's very wasteful as compared to what?
0:29:53- I mean, yeah, I think it pales in comparison
0:29:56to the other waste that we will generate
0:29:58over that same timescale.
0:29:59- Yeah, that's fair.
0:30:00- How, like, how much mass is in an AirPod?
0:30:03(laughing)
0:30:04And how much mass is in every disposable plastic cup
0:30:07you get from a fast food restaurant in a month or whatever?
0:30:09Like, AirPods are very small and very light.
0:30:12Now, there is a manufacturing cost,
0:30:14'cause they're not just simple plastic.
0:30:15Like, there's electronics inside them,
0:30:16there's mining that goes into that.
0:30:18There is, they have a hot,
0:30:19they punch above their weight
0:30:20in terms of environmental costs.
0:30:22But the bottom line is, they're very small.
0:30:24There is very little actual mass in these things.
0:30:27And when I think about a replaceable battery
0:30:29from the environmental perspective,
0:30:30it's like, I mean, like the cost thing aside,
0:30:33from an environmental perspective,
0:30:34if you had to throw out,
0:30:35what percentage of the mass of AirPods
0:30:38do you think the battery is?
0:30:40Over 50, surely, right?
0:30:4260, 70%, 80% of the mass is battery?
0:30:46So if you're like, this isn't wasteful,
0:30:47I'll just put in a new battery.
0:30:48You're basically throwing away 80% of the device anyway.
0:30:53And it's not a particularly environmentally friendly 80%,
0:30:56because lithium ion batteries
0:30:57are not great at sitting in a landfill.
0:30:59But mass-wise, as compared to almost anything else
0:31:04that we consume and throw out,
0:31:05a wrapper, a waste, packaging, whatever from,
0:31:09it's so small.
0:31:10Every two years, you throw out like the equivalent
0:31:13of 1/18th of a golf ball worth of industrial waste.
0:31:17That's nothing compared to the amount of crap
0:31:19that the average person throws out.
0:31:21And how many AirPods are there in the world
0:31:23given that they're like a $200 wireless earbud
0:31:27that nobody actually really needs?
0:31:29Again, as compared to like anything else
0:31:32that you can imagine, plastic shopping bags
0:31:34before they were banned everywhere,
0:31:36cups, fast food cups, containers,
0:31:38like just all the plastic stuff
0:31:41that comes in the packaging of all the food that we buy,
0:31:43every package thing of strawberries
0:31:45and blueberries or whatever.
0:31:47And yeah, some of that can be recycled
0:31:48and see that depressing, what was that?
0:31:5199% invisible, I forget.
0:31:52Some depressing podcast episode
0:31:53about exactly how grim the recycling situation is.
0:31:56But bottom line is AirPods are really small.
0:31:58Now, I'm not saying we should throw them out.
0:32:00I'm saying of all the things
0:32:01that you should be concerned about waste-wise,
0:32:03I feel like you can offset that waste
0:32:05by buying three fewer plastic cups per every two years.
0:32:10And you've offset most of the plastic.
0:32:14The manufacturing and the sort of the microchip part
0:32:18of that or whatever, I can see where,
0:32:21again, it punches above its weight
0:32:22in terms of how much energy it takes
0:32:23to actually create these things and all the mining involved.
0:32:26But it's still so tiny,
0:32:28so tiny compared to almost anything else.
0:32:31The old laptop that you have,
0:32:32how much more electronics is in an old laptop
0:32:35that you're no longer using
0:32:36that you maybe didn't throw away
0:32:38because you remembered how much it costs,
0:32:39but bottom line is you're gonna eventually throw it away
0:32:41if you didn't sell it immediately
0:32:42because it becomes obsolete.
0:32:44And phone's the same deal.
0:32:45Like it's just AirPods, environmentally speaking,
0:32:48I'm not saying it doesn't matter.
0:32:50I'm saying it is not the top of my list for concern.
0:32:55And furthermore, that replaceable batteries
0:32:57does not really help the environmental story for these.
0:33:00Like lithium ion batteries are not great for the environment
0:33:03because they have a limited number of charge cycles,
0:33:05and when they're done,
0:33:05we don't have a good way to dispose of them.
0:33:08Again, a single Nissan Leaf that didn't come
0:33:11with climate control for the battery to save costs
0:33:14and therefore destroys its battery
0:33:16in like three to five years,
0:33:18how many AirPods worth of lithium ion battery cells
0:33:21are in a Nissan Leaf?
0:33:22All of them?
0:33:23All the AirPods ever manufactured?
0:33:25I don't know.
0:33:26- Maybe.
0:33:27(laughing)
0:33:28- So I don't think there's a good solution
0:33:31to the environmental thing.
0:33:33Even replaceable batteries,
0:33:34although it would make people feel better,
0:33:36doesn't actually solve the environmental impact of AirPods,
0:33:38which itself is tiny.
0:33:41- Yeah, you make a really good point.
0:33:42And can we just address that you and I drive combustion cars
0:33:47because anytime anyone says anything about the environment,
0:33:50then we have to address the fact that we drive a car
0:33:52that does not burn electricity, good grief,
0:33:55that does not use electricity.
0:33:56Like can we just--
0:33:57- That's incredible mileage.
0:33:59(laughing)
0:34:00It's like a 1.5 liter four cylinder, naturally aspirated.
0:34:03Come on.
0:34:04- You get a lot better mileage than me.
0:34:05But yes, the thing is, you can what about your way
0:34:10all the way down when it comes to really anything,
0:34:12but particularly the environmental stuff.
0:34:14And I am just so tired of hearing what about your car.
0:34:18But anyway, to come back to the actual point,
0:34:21you make a very good point actually,
0:34:23that these things in terms of mass alone are not big.
0:34:26And even if millions upon millions of them
0:34:28have been produced, well, there's been millions
0:34:30and millions of of a cords produced,
0:34:33and we don't know where all of that scrap metal ended up.
0:34:35And we don't know where all of the car batteries
0:34:37that have ever been replaced in the history of time
0:34:39have ended up.
0:34:40We don't know where Marco's prior Tesla's battery pack
0:34:43ended up.
0:34:44And so, yeah, I think you're right.
0:34:46And maybe it's one of these things
0:34:48that I'm majoring on a minor.
0:34:50Well, I mean, I don't, I'm not really,
0:34:53my engine is not really that revved one way or another
0:34:55about this, but for the purposes of this discussion,
0:34:58maybe I'm majoring on a minor when it comes to the AirPods.
0:35:01I do think it is unfortunate that there is no way
0:35:04to keep them going.
0:35:05You know, the advantage of say my car and yours, John,
0:35:08and maybe Marco's, is that even when we're done with them,
0:35:12in theory, they can continue on in the hands of somebody else
0:35:16and continue to be used as a car.
0:35:18And then hopefully, eventually,
0:35:20when they are no longer being used by someone else,
0:35:22they will be piecemeal, taken apart,
0:35:25and used in other cars or sold for scrap metal
0:35:28or what have you.
0:35:29But I just, I kind of wish, it's so hard,
0:35:33because I kind of wish that I had a computer
0:35:37with a removable battery, for example,
0:35:39so I could easily prolong the life of that computer
0:35:42and do that myself.
0:35:43You know, my first Mac laptop had a removable battery,
0:35:46if I'm not mistaken, and it eventually swelled, swelled?
0:35:50Swelled?
0:35:51And swelled.
0:35:51- Swelled as something else.
0:35:52- Yeah, yeah, something else in time.
0:35:54Yeah, yeah, I went to the gym, got real swole.
0:35:57Anyway, it eventually swelled and it got replaced,
0:35:59and it was pretty easy, and I kind of missed those days,
0:36:02but that being said,
0:36:03I freaking love carrying my MacBook Adorable.
0:36:06I freaking love that my AirPods fit
0:36:08in the little change pocket in my jeans,
0:36:10and neither of those things would be true,
0:36:12to your point, John, if they were easily serviceable.
0:36:16- Yeah, so the cost angle is the other part of this.
0:36:18Like, set aside the environmental thing.
0:36:21I feel like, you know, the environmental thing,
0:36:24we're stuck due to battery technology,
0:36:25no matter what Apple does.
0:36:27If they had 100% replaceable batteries,
0:36:30it wouldn't help the environmental factor,
0:36:31but if they had 100% replaceable batteries,
0:36:34it could definitely, if Apple prices it right,
0:36:36help the cost, because although the battery is
0:36:40over 50% of the mass of AirPods,
0:36:43it is not over 50% of the cost, I would imagine.
0:36:45Maybe I'm wrong.
0:36:46Maybe I'm overestimating how much
0:36:48the integrated circuits in it cost,
0:36:50but either way, I feel like if Apple wanted
0:36:53to do the right thing and make people happier
0:36:56with their AirPods, it eventually came out well
0:36:57in the removable batteries.
0:36:58When the batteries died, as they definitely will
0:37:01with current lithium ion technology in a year or two,
0:37:04you know, when they get so annoyingly run down,
0:37:08Apple could sell you new batteries for a reasonable price.
0:37:12I don't know, 50 bucks, maybe, 60 bucks
0:37:15for two of them for a pair, like, you know,
0:37:18that's, I feel like the margins on that would be good,
0:37:20given the size of these batteries, right?
0:37:22You know, as Marco would know,
0:37:24how big a lithium ion battery can you get
0:37:26for one of your weird flashlights?
0:37:27How much mass is in that battery
0:37:29as compared to how much mass is in the Apple ones?
0:37:30I know the Apple ones are odd shape,
0:37:32and the Apple, you know, anyway,
0:37:33feel like there's plenty of profit margin in that,
0:37:35and you could bring in your AirPods
0:37:36when you buy the new ones,
0:37:38and give Apple your old batteries,
0:37:39which they could then, I don't know, try to recycle?
0:37:41Is there some way to recycle
0:37:43lithium ion batteries, presumably?
0:37:45- Yes, in general.
0:37:46I mean, I don't know about these specific ones
0:37:48that they're using in AirPods,
0:37:49but yes, you can, like, you know,
0:37:50extract some stuff out of lithium ion batteries.
0:37:52- Yeah, I mean, again, the mass is so small
0:37:53that it may not be economically worthwhile to do that,
0:37:56but it's the right thing to do,
0:37:57and it will get, if you get people into your store,
0:38:00and they're willing to, you know, again,
0:38:01this is the fictional AirPod
0:38:03with an unscrewable battery stick thingy.
0:38:06Go into the store, give 'em 60 bucks,
0:38:08give 'em your old little sticks, screw in the new ones.
0:38:10Now, what you're actually doing is you're saving,
0:38:12like, once you unscrew the battery part,
0:38:14and you realize, this is what I'm saving?
0:38:16These two little turds here that weigh like nothing?
0:38:18It's like, yeah, that's where all
0:38:19the amazing, magical smarts are.
0:38:22You could prolong the life of your AirPods
0:38:24until they eventually die from earwax impaction,
0:38:27as all AirPods, I presume, will eventually.
0:38:31Just keep shoving 'em in your ears,
0:38:33and they get pushed into that little mesh grill,
0:38:35and anyway, right to repair and right to remove earwax.
0:38:40You need to be openable.
0:38:43But, you know, I feel like that is a worthy endeavor,
0:38:47because it makes a product
0:38:48that people will be more satisfied with.
0:38:50Apple, like, oh, doesn't Apple,
0:38:52Apple wants you to buy a new $160 one.
0:38:54I think Apple would be fine with you buying
0:38:56very high-margin $60 lithium-ion batteries
0:39:00that weigh as much as a bird's feather every 18 months.
0:39:04They would be better with you buying AirPods every 18 months,
0:39:09but unless they can keep adding new features,
0:39:10that road is harder for Apple to go down,
0:39:15to say, every year, we're gonna give you a reason
0:39:17to buy, you know, a brand, or every 18 months,
0:39:20we're gonna give you an actual, real reason
0:39:22why you want to buy a new pair of AirPods.
0:39:24Instead, right now, we have to buy new AirPods
0:39:28if we wanna keep using them,
0:39:28because the battery ends up lasting 20 minutes,
0:39:30and that really just makes them not useful
0:39:33for their intended purpose for most people.
0:39:35So, I'm rooting for Apple to get replaceable batteries
0:39:39in their AirPods eventually,
0:39:41but not really for environmental reasons.
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0:41:49(upbeat music)
0:41:52- Let's talk about Catalina.
0:41:53We glanced off of this earlier.
0:41:55I had told you to recap from just a little while ago
0:41:58that I do have it on my MacBook Adorable.
0:42:00I do not yet have it on my iMac.
0:42:02And so far so good, just a few days in.
0:42:04I also wanted to quickly, before I pitch to you guys
0:42:07and ask what your status is,
0:42:09I wanted to say that having just reformatted,
0:42:13to use Windows-ism, reformatted both of my computers
0:42:17and started from scratch, surprisingly refreshing.
0:42:20I feel like the iMac in particular
0:42:24had a lot of cruft and garbage and junk on it
0:42:28that I didn't even, couldn't even keep track of.
0:42:31And I don't know what about it.
0:42:34Maybe it's again, all a placebo,
0:42:35but having this like new fresh installation,
0:42:38even of Mojave, has felt really, really good.
0:42:41And I really, really recommend it
0:42:43if you haven't done this in a long time.
0:42:44And I'd be curious, Marco,
0:42:46particularly when I stop talking,
0:42:48how you feel about the idea of doing that.
0:42:50Because last I had heard, I thought Marco,
0:42:52you and maybe John as well,
0:42:54were carrying basically a build that had been migrated
0:42:57from, I don't know, 15 years ago,
0:43:00carrying it through all the way to your iMac Pro today.
0:43:02And as a final quick note,
0:43:05I wanted to call attention to Homebrew Bundle,
0:43:09which I wrote a small blog post about this week,
0:43:11and I'll link that as well.
0:43:12But Homebrew Bundle is kind of like a bundler for Ruby gems,
0:43:15if you're familiar with that at all,
0:43:16and basically lets you put together a file
0:43:19that Homebrew will use to look at,
0:43:21to install a whole bunch of software on your computer.
0:43:23And that doesn't necessarily mean just command line stuff.
0:43:25It can be Mac App Store stuff, it can be GUI stuff,
0:43:29all sorts of different things.
0:43:30And I found that having done this
0:43:33and worked out exactly what I wanted in my brew file,
0:43:36as they call it,
0:43:37working out exactly what I wanted my brew file for the iMac
0:43:42and getting it kind of locked in there,
0:43:44it made it that much easier and less daunting
0:43:46to go ahead and refresh and reformat my MacBook Adorable,
0:43:51because all I had to do was run this brew file
0:43:53I just worked on the week prior,
0:43:55and 90% of the stuff I needed was automatically installed,
0:43:58which was really, really great.
0:43:59So let me start with Marco, two questions.
0:44:01One, are you running Catalina, and if so, where?
0:44:04And two, are you still carrying around
0:44:07a 10 or 15 year old builds, for lack of a better term?
0:44:11- So in typical style,
0:44:12I'm going to answer your second question first,
0:44:14and answer your first question later.
0:44:15(laughing)
0:44:16Second question is,
0:44:18am I still carrying the same installation?
0:44:19Yes.
0:44:21I've had two unique Mac desktop installations
0:44:25during my Mac using career since 2006,
0:44:30since 2004, rather.
0:44:31I forget when I did the second one, but it's old.
0:44:35So I did one for a few years, then reset it,
0:44:37did a fresh one, but last time I did the fresh one
0:44:40was a long time ago.
0:44:41To answer your first question a little bit later,
0:44:45before that, to jump back for a second,
0:44:46your homebrew thing.
0:44:48So I read this blog post, I was very interested
0:44:50because as you mentioned,
0:44:51that it doesn't just install command line stuff,
0:44:53I'm really curious to learn about how it can also install
0:44:56other apps that are not,
0:44:57that are in the Mac App Store and stuff.
0:44:59But my concern, or my hesitation before I invest
0:45:02any time into this, the idea of having a script
0:45:06to set up a fresh installation of Mac OS,
0:45:09I love that idea.
0:45:10I tried making one of those, using homebrew
0:45:12for some of my command line stuff, you know,
0:45:14about a year ago.
0:45:16And as has been the case with most package managers ever,
0:45:21and especially for me with homebrew,
0:45:25it seems like if I write the script, get it all working,
0:45:30and then I buy a new computer in six months,
0:45:35the chances of the script still working are extremely low.
0:45:39And the chances that I'm gonna have to mess with it
0:45:41and fix things that have broken in the meantime
0:45:44is almost 100%.
0:45:45And therefore-- - Well of course you have
0:45:46to have a new version of your package manager
0:45:48for the new OS, so just do that before you get it set up.
0:45:50- Right, and so, but it's like,
0:45:52this gets me every time with package manager stuff,
0:45:54and especially with homebrew.
0:45:56Homebrew is so bad about this,
0:45:57'cause they change stuff so often.
0:45:59Like, I have a really hard time getting excited
0:46:03about this stuff, because I don't need to set up,
0:46:05like if I had to set up five computers this week,
0:46:08I would get one of these going,
0:46:09if I didn't have any kind of other automation thing,
0:46:11I would get one of these things going, and that'd be great.
0:46:13But for my actual need for it,
0:46:16which is setting up a new computer maybe once or twice a year
0:46:19it's so unlikely that it's actually gonna end up
0:46:22saving me time, because I have to mess with it
0:46:24the next time I actually have to use it, 'cause it breaks.
0:46:26- You know, I hear you, I really honestly do,
0:46:28and all I can tell you is that I first started working
0:46:32on a brew file like a year and a half ago,
0:46:34maybe two years ago, when I was at my jobby job,
0:46:37my last jobby job, and I think I did have to make
0:46:40a couple of small changes, and as I've lamented before,
0:46:44homebrew is a blessing and a curse,
0:46:46like the error messaging is both obnoxious
0:46:49and not very useful, and there were a couple of things
0:46:52that I needed to tweak, but it was very, very low impact,
0:46:56and for me, I still had this brew file from like,
0:47:00I don't know, 18, 24 months ago,
0:47:02and it almost entirely worked as is.
0:47:04So I totally sympathize with what you're saying,
0:47:07you are not wrong, but there's not a lot
0:47:09to these brew files, it's not like I'm running shell scripts
0:47:11or anything like that, which actually those don't really
0:47:13change over time, but you get my point, right,
0:47:15that there's not a lot of execution that's happening here,
0:47:18I'm just pointing homebrew at a bunch of different
0:47:20either Mac App Store IDs or brew package names
0:47:24or whatever the case may be, and it's just going
0:47:27to fetch them, so there's so little,
0:47:29there's so many, there's so little moving parts
0:47:32in the brew file, obviously there's a ton of moving parts
0:47:34behind the scenes, but in the brew file itself,
0:47:35there's so few moving parts that I'm not too worried
0:47:38about keeping it up to date between OS releases,
0:47:40but again, I totally hear what you're saying,
0:47:42and especially if you're the kind of person
0:47:44that only does this once every five years,
0:47:47then this is kind of useless, but for me,
0:47:50I like having this as a tool in my tool belt,
0:47:53so if I get a new 16-inch laptop, for example,
0:47:56I can just run this file and it will make all my software
0:48:00just get magically installed in one shot,
0:48:02and Marco, as someone who buys computers as often
0:48:05as I change underwear, this seems like something
0:48:07that might appeal to you.
0:48:07(laughing)
0:48:09- You change underwear about once a year?
0:48:10- Yeah, I was waiting for that, I was waiting for it,
0:48:13fair play, fair play.
0:48:14- Yeah, and to be fair, while I just said that
0:48:17I hardly ever change over and start fresh
0:48:19on my main desktop Mac, I usually will start
0:48:22any laptop I get fresh, and I usually do buy
0:48:25about one laptop a year, so it's, yeah,
0:48:28I do need this, but I need it just infrequently enough,
0:48:32like about once a year, maybe twice if it's a really
0:48:34crazy year, or maybe every two years if I'm exercising
0:48:37some self-control, but I need it infrequently enough
0:48:40that it usually breaks and it drives me nuts,
0:48:42but anyway, so going back to your original question
0:48:44about Catalina, I have not yet installed it,
0:48:48I installed the early betas here and there
0:48:50like on second partitions, but I have not upgraded
0:48:52my main partitions to them, I didn't even keep up
0:48:54with the betas, I eventually just stopped caring
0:48:55and have just abandoned those partitions.
0:48:58I haven't booted into Catalina in months now,
0:49:02because ultimately, the only reason I wanted to boot
0:49:04into it was to develop for Catalyst, or play with
0:49:07SwiftUI live previewing, and I quickly learned
0:49:10that A, I wouldn't have time for either of those things
0:49:13this summer or fall, and B, I quickly learned
0:49:17those things were very, very, very early,
0:49:19I had still lots of problems, and so I didn't want
0:49:21to get into it yet, so I'm mainly looking at Catalina now
0:49:25as a user, not as a developer, and as a user,
0:49:30there are so many downsides and removals
0:49:35and somewhat hostile changes in Catalina.
0:49:39- Such as what?
0:49:41- Well, all the permissions stuff, all the 32-bit apps
0:49:44breaking, all of the new dialogs and exceptions,
0:49:48a lot of stuff has changed under the hood
0:49:50for various reasons, the new partition thing,
0:49:53which might, who knows what little problems
0:49:56that might cause for various scripts
0:49:57and other apps and everything, all the crazy stuff
0:50:01you have to do to get terminal to work correctly,
0:50:03they changed my shell on me, there's so many changes
0:50:06that are going to be little pains in the ass to me
0:50:09that I have to look at the other side and say,
0:50:12all right, what's the benefit here,
0:50:14what am I getting for this?
0:50:16And there's also the risk, by the way, of quality issues.
0:50:21Like, it's very clear that Apple has released
0:50:24all the software this fall, not because it's ready,
0:50:28not because it's good, but because it was time.
0:50:32And so, as a user, I'm not particularly excited
0:50:37to jump into this, I'm scared about it,
0:50:40because I know that there is going to be regressions,
0:50:45there's going to be feature losses,
0:50:46I'm going to probably have to replace some old software,
0:50:49or I might not even know that very quickly,
0:50:51it might take a while to even realize that,
0:50:54I know there's going to be some friction involved
0:50:55in getting through all the apps, permissions, dialogs,
0:50:59and fixing terminal, all this stuff,
0:51:01I'm going to have to probably fix my PHP
0:51:03and Nginx setup again, using Homebrew
0:51:06to rewrite my entire script again.
0:51:09Like, this happens with every OS.
0:51:11So, there is a significant cost to me as a user,
0:51:16and I look at, well, okay, what am I getting for it?
0:51:20And I just don't see it, I'm not motivated at all,
0:51:23I'm not excited, I don't want to jump into it,
0:51:26because it seems like what you're getting with Catalina is,
0:51:30Apple really needs a lot of this stuff.
0:51:33Like, it benefits Apple to remove all this crap
0:51:37and change all this stuff and lock everything down even more.
0:51:41Does it really benefit me?
0:51:43I'm not sure a lot of it does.
0:51:45And so, for me, there's just not enough carrot
0:51:50to take the stick, I guess.
0:51:51Like, there's not enough good stuff here
0:51:54to motivate me to want to update,
0:51:56and not to mention the fact that I'm concerned about quality
0:51:59and so, you know, I will eventually update to it.
0:52:02I might last another like, you know, point one or point two,
0:52:07and I'm sure whenever the new laptops come out,
0:52:09I'm gonna buy it immediately,
0:52:11and so I'll have Catalina on that.
0:52:13But, you know, otherwise, like on my desktop,
0:52:17I'm not motivated yet to upgrade,
0:52:19because there just seems to be not enough upside,
0:52:22and there's significant possible downsides.
0:52:25- You know, I think the key thing you just said
0:52:28was on my desktop, because the one thing
0:52:30that I really was enthusiastic about putting Catalina
0:52:34on my MacBook was Sidecar, which is the Luna Display-esque,
0:52:39you know, use your iPad as a secondary display
0:52:43when you're perhaps away from the house.
0:52:45So, as an example, I did not use it this morning,
0:52:47but this would have been the sort of time I would have.
0:52:49I went to Wegmans, which is a local fancy pants grocery store
0:52:53kind of in the vein of Whole Foods, if you will,
0:52:55and I was sitting in their little like cafe area,
0:52:58and I was using both my laptop and my iPad.
0:53:00Now, today, it just so happened
0:53:02I was doing different things on both,
0:53:03but generally speaking, especially if you have,
0:53:05oh, I don't know, a 12-inch laptop,
0:53:08that would have been the perfect opportunity to use Sidecar.
0:53:12And I am really excited to use it.
0:53:15I did use it very briefly when I first installed Catalina
0:53:17just to try it out, and in the literally five minutes
0:53:20I used it, it seemed to work really, really well.
0:53:23And so, I think if you're the kind of person
0:53:26who likes having two displays when you're,
0:53:29I don't know, on a graycation,
0:53:31then maybe you would enjoy Catalina on a laptop,
0:53:34but I think that's ultimately why I am not in a huge rush
0:53:38to put it on my iMac.
0:53:39Like, of course, I want the new Shiny,
0:53:41but to your point, Marco, on a desktop anyway,
0:53:44there's nothing that I can think of off the top of my head
0:53:46that I can point to that makes me say,
0:53:48this is what I need Catalina for, and I need it for now.
0:53:51It's my OS, and I want it now.
0:53:54So, I'm curious how long both of us last before our iMacs,
0:53:58well, in your case, iMac Pro, gets Catalina.
0:54:02Any other thoughts before we punt to Jon?
0:54:04- I mean, I think what's gonna finally make me do it
0:54:07is when I wanna start playing with Catalyst.
0:54:10Overcast, I'm finally catching up with some of the stuff
0:54:12I wanna do this summer, and I would still like
0:54:16to do a Catalyst app.
0:54:18I still have a lot of work to do before that's a good idea,
0:54:21but I'm probably gonna do it over the next month or two.
0:54:24So, I'm guessing I'm probably gonna upgrade,
0:54:27I don't know, in a month or two.
0:54:29- That's fair, and sitting here now,
0:54:32to the best you're willing to share,
0:54:33you view Catalyst and a Mac app as more important
0:54:37or interesting to you than doing something with SwiftUI?
0:54:41- At this point, yes.
0:54:42I think Catalyst is going to change over the next few years,
0:54:47a lot less than SwiftUI will.
0:54:51It seems very clear, looking at what they've done
0:54:54with Catalyst, and what's considered okay,
0:54:57and what's some things that seem not okay
0:55:02that they're considering okay.
0:55:04It seems clear to me that Catalyst is not gonna be
0:55:07an area of heavy investment for Apple.
0:55:10That what they really, I think the direction
0:55:12they're trying to go is SwiftUI.
0:55:14'Cause SwiftUI, Catalyst is like,
0:55:16let's put iPad code in a window and very lightly
0:55:21reskin some parts of it to be kind of Mac-like.
0:55:25Whereas SwiftUI is, let's let people write
0:55:30higher level code that doesn't give a lot of the specifics,
0:55:33and then the operating systems can deal with these specifics
0:55:38differently in ways that are native to them.
0:55:40That's probably the better approach for cross-platform code.
0:55:44And it does seem like SwiftUI is like the ultimate plan
0:55:48of where Apple wants us to go in the future.
0:55:52And it seems like Catalyst is a stopgap.
0:55:55Catalyst is our carbon to the carbon-cocoa divide
0:56:00of years ago.
0:56:01And so it will serve a function,
0:56:05but I don't know how much investment it's going to get,
0:56:07and it certainly doesn't seem like it's going to be
0:56:09the focus of a whole lot of excitement
0:56:11or necessarily high-quality apps.
0:56:14And it's also just, I mean, part of it,
0:56:17it's still super early.
0:56:18Like everything else they shipped this summer,
0:56:20it's not really ready yet in a lot of ways.
0:56:22There's still some pretty annoying limitations
0:56:26and just like oversights.
0:56:28Like one of the things that a lot of people are facing
0:56:31is that you can't share purchases,
0:56:33and it can't be the same bundle ID.
0:56:34There's all sorts of weird stuff,
0:56:37because it's still two separate app stores.
0:56:40And so it's a whole thing.
0:56:41But anyway, I am not excited about Catalyst at all.
0:56:47I view it simply as a tool.
0:56:49Like I'm as excited about Catalyst
0:56:51as I am about App Store Connect.
0:56:53It's like this is a tool that I will have to use
0:56:57to achieve a goal I want,
0:56:59but I'm not excited about it at all.
0:57:00- Yeah, I hear you.
0:57:01And for the record, I think that that is the correct call,
0:57:03not that you really need my approval,
0:57:04but I think Catalyst probably makes a lot more sense for you
0:57:07than doing something with SwiftUI.
0:57:10But I view them as somewhat related,
0:57:12since both of them to be used properly
0:57:14really do require Catalina.
0:57:17- Yeah, and SwiftUI I think is gonna be very important
0:57:21to me in the future, but I kinda wanna hold off.
0:57:24My initial plan of SwiftUI was to redo my watch app
0:57:28is with SwiftUI first, learn it there
0:57:30on that much simpler, smaller canvas
0:57:33and smaller problem space,
0:57:35and then be able to apply those skills
0:57:37to other stuff in the main app.
0:57:39And that's probably still what I'm going to do.
0:57:41I haven't started yet.
0:57:42That's probably still what I'm going to do,
0:57:44but even doing the watch app in SwiftUI,
0:57:48SwiftUI itself is still so early and still so,
0:57:52like almost everything Apple has done recently,
0:57:54so poorly documented and undiscoverable.
0:57:58And it's still, as mentioned before,
0:58:01the error messages are comically hostile
0:58:03and it's still very obtuse in lots of ways.
0:58:06And so I might even wait still on that.
0:58:10But SwiftUI I think has a much more exciting future
0:58:13than Catalyst in the present.
0:58:16Frankly, I'm not that excited about either of them.
0:58:18- Yeah, that makes sense.
0:58:19Can we do a quick tangent if you don't mind,
0:58:22and you can just-- - Us?
0:58:23- Through the magic of, yeah, through the magic of editing,
0:58:24you can just put this somewhere where it makes sense.
0:58:26How is the documentation so bad this year?
0:58:30How is this a thing?
0:58:31- Honestly, it's not just this year.
0:58:33Like this is, I think it's worse this year
0:58:36than it had in previous years,
0:58:39but almost all new APIs that Apple has released
0:58:44over the last few years have very little
0:58:47to no documentation.
0:58:49There are so often that I have to jump
0:58:51into the header file for something just to see
0:58:53what the heck even the methods and properties do.
0:58:56- Speaking of that, with Swift not having header files,
0:58:59how do you deal with that?
0:59:01- I haven't had to deal with that yet,
0:59:02but that's gonna be an issue.
0:59:04And even the things that aren't header file based,
0:59:09a lot of the APIs, the documentation is,
0:59:12oh, go watch this WWDC session video from three years ago.
0:59:16That's the only time this was ever explained.
0:59:18- Yep, and that just grinds my gears so much.
0:59:20It's so unbelievably frustrating.
0:59:23Apple says, here, developer, here's this magical API
0:59:27that we allege will do exactly what you've wanted to do,
0:59:32but (bleep) you, figure it out yourself.
0:59:34It's just so frustrating.
0:59:36And I understand that it is more important
0:59:41to have a functional API, and you were kind of going
0:59:44on a tear about this briefly earlier on Twitter, Marco,
0:59:46and I agree with you.
0:59:48It is more important to have a functional API,
0:59:49which doesn't always work these days with Apple,
0:59:51but it is more important to have a functional API
0:59:53than it is perfect documentation.
0:59:55But it is genuinely unfortunate and frustrating.
1:00:00And I would almost go so far as to say unfair
1:00:04that Apple is expecting all these developers like you,
1:00:07like me, to adopt all these new APIs,
1:00:09but yet there is no formal documentation for them.
1:00:12And I know that some of the developers internal to Apple
1:00:16will put just unbelievably good documentation
1:00:19in their header files.
1:00:20Like, look at the Collection View header files
1:00:22and how unbelievably good they are
1:00:23with all of the ASCII art that's in there.
1:00:25But is there any good Collection View proper documentation
1:00:29on any of this stuff?
1:00:31I haven't seen much.
1:00:32And a lot of times, it's like you said,
1:00:33go to the dub dub session and you'll be fine.
1:00:35And that's just not acceptable.
1:00:38And it makes me wonder if the people who are writing,
1:00:41like Collection View and some of these other things,
1:00:43are taking the time to do this header documentation,
1:00:46is that because something outside of their org
1:00:49is preventing them from doing the real documentation?
1:00:52Like, is it that the lawyers are holding it up
1:00:54or the people who, maybe it's a different org
1:00:57that writes the documentation,
1:00:58which actually is probably the case,
1:00:59and they're just behind or slow or gosh knows what else.
1:01:03But man, what a frustrating and silly self-own,
1:01:07at least to my eyes.
1:01:08- Oh yeah, I mean, which is honestly,
1:01:09that's kind of the story of a lot of the Apple stuff
1:01:11recently, but yeah, like, and you know,
1:01:14you mentioned a second ago that like, you know,
1:01:15that's probably a separate team
1:01:17that writes the documentation.
1:01:19It seems, first of all, that's probably true,
1:01:20and it seems like that should be an easy thing to scale.
1:01:25- Yeah, one would think.
1:01:26- 'Cause you don't have to have the engineers
1:01:27who wrote the stuff be the ones who documented everything.
1:01:31And it seems like it should be relatively easy,
1:01:34'cause that's relatively orthogonal
1:01:36to the development of the APIs.
1:01:37Like, you can have people who make documentation.
1:01:40You can have people who make sample code
1:01:42and sample projects.
1:01:43Like, that seems like it would be easy
1:01:46to hire totally separate people to do those things.
1:01:49One of the biggest problems that I have
1:01:51as a developer with Apple's APIs,
1:01:52in addition to the lack of documentation,
1:01:55is that a lot of the APIs simply don't work,
1:01:58and it seems like no one in Apple
1:01:59ever actually tried to use them.
1:02:01And this is like yet another thing
1:02:03that you would think a similar orthogonal group could do.
1:02:07Have a group of people at Apple employed
1:02:09who just try to build something
1:02:11with every new API they make,
1:02:13using only the public stuff that developers get to use.
1:02:16Because I've faced so many problems over the last few years
1:02:20of seeming like I'm the only person
1:02:22who's trying to build on something,
1:02:23or building on an API that's like two years old,
1:02:26and finding critical flaws in it
1:02:29where it doesn't actually work,
1:02:30and it's like, has anybody actually shipped anything
1:02:33using this API over the last two years?
1:02:35'Cause you can't.
1:02:36And it seems like, with so much other stuff,
1:02:39they don't seem to actually be even trying it
1:02:42before they ship it, or after they ship it.
1:02:44- Anyway, John, I'm sorry, we got on a tangent,
1:02:47which was my fault, so tell me,
1:02:48how do you feel about Catalina,
1:02:49and how many decades has this Mac probe been in existence?
1:02:54Has that build lived?
1:02:57- Actually, before we get off that tangent,
1:02:59I'm really surprised that Marco would be even considering
1:03:02SwiftUI in any form, except for the fact
1:03:05that it's your only option if you wanna do
1:03:06like good WatchKit apps.
1:03:08Like that's, because SwiftUI is,
1:03:10it's not as young as the original Swift, but it's close.
1:03:14The only reason I say it's not is because
1:03:15the integration with Xcode necessarily
1:03:18is much richer than the original Swift had,
1:03:21because of the whole like, you know,
1:03:22real-time updates of the UI and the thing, or whatever.
1:03:25Swift 1.0 didn't have that.
1:03:26But other than that, I would imagine SwiftUI
1:03:29is probably gonna go through the same sort of
1:03:31tumultuous series of changes that Swift, you know,
1:03:342.0 through 4.0 went through.
1:03:37Hopefully not syntax-wise and breaking your code-wise,
1:03:39but it's got a long way to go.
1:03:41Like, we see the promise, you know,
1:03:44much more so than with Swift itself, I think.
1:03:46We see what SwiftUI could bring
1:03:50when it gets more full-featured,
1:03:52when the tooling gets even better,
1:03:53when, as you both complained,
1:03:55the error messages get better.
1:03:56And by the way, the error message,
1:03:57it's not just a matter of like writing good error messages.
1:03:59Structurally, there are things about the way SwiftUI works
1:04:02that's going to make it very difficult to be sensible,
1:04:06and they have to come up with solutions
1:04:08for all of those problems.
1:04:09It's not just, oh, we didn't have time
1:04:10to make good error messages.
1:04:11It's like sort of the tooling around React
1:04:14or any other kind of like various event-driven frameworks
1:04:18where things happen asynchronously,
1:04:21where just getting a stack trace tells you nothing, right?
1:04:24And just getting an error from the point where it occurs
1:04:26tells you nothing about where it originated, right,
1:04:28because of the nature of the sort of execution model
1:04:31and the fact that it is declarative and not imperative,
1:04:33and you're not controlling when everything happens.
1:04:34Things just happen in response to things that you declared,
1:04:37but you're not quite sure what thing you declared
1:04:38caused that thing to happen at that time.
1:04:39And, you know, it's a hard problem to solve.
1:04:42So for how long Marco stayed away from Swift,
1:04:46I'm really surprised that he's even looking at SwiftUI
1:04:49at all, except when forced, like with the Watch app.
1:04:51So in other words--
1:04:52- That just tells you how bad WatchKit is.
1:04:55- Well, yeah, 'cause it's an upgrade over like
1:04:57just describe a window for me,
1:04:59and I'll put it on the screen for you.
1:05:01At least you get to use two interactive elements
1:05:03and you like draw things and stuff.
1:05:05- Yeah, like WatchKit is like that much
1:05:08of a bane of my existence whenever I go near it.
1:05:10Like I hate WatchKit so much that I will tolerate
1:05:14learning the new craziness with SwiftUI
1:05:17because WatchKit's that bad.
1:05:18- Yeah, and plus you would imagine like
1:05:20there's not that many controls on WatchKit,
1:05:22and so even with the current limits of SwiftUI,
1:05:25plus or minus the error messages,
1:05:26like you're not gonna have that many controls
1:05:28on screen at once.
1:05:29They're not gonna be that complicated,
1:05:30so it feels like it actually is a good fit
1:05:32for a first foray, but then you'll have to change
1:05:36all that code like next year and the year after
1:05:38as they break stuff or quote unquote improve things.
1:05:41They will improve things, and that will mean
1:05:42your crusty old original SwiftUI stuff has to be changed.
1:05:46- Yeah, well that's okay.
1:05:47I rewrite my Watch app every couple of years anyway.
1:05:50- Who doesn't, right?
1:05:52Really quickly, Scott Horn on Twitter just posted,
1:05:55which I thought was very well put.
1:05:57If you can't properly document your API,
1:05:58the chances are that it works as intended are slim to none.
1:06:03Documentation forces testing,
1:06:04and I think that's a very good call.
1:06:06- Documentation forces testing, so optimistic.
1:06:09Yeah, right, forces testing.
1:06:11You know what tells you if your API works?
1:06:12Tests, that's what tells you your API works, do you?
1:06:14But here's what documentation does.
1:06:16Documentation, this is why I always press at work
1:06:19and no one ever believes me,
1:06:20so I'm the only person who thinks this,
1:06:21but it is actually right.
1:06:23Writing documentation-- - Of course it is.
1:06:25Everyone else is wrong, John.
1:06:26- You'll agree with me, you'll see.
1:06:27Writing documentation for your API, your code, your library,
1:06:32is a great way to let you know if you have a good API,
1:06:37because if you find yourself struggling
1:06:38to explain how something works,
1:06:41if you find yourself having to write paragraph
1:06:42after paragraph, including caveats and prerequisites
1:06:45and assumptions and everything, you have a bad API.
1:06:48It may work great and the tests may all pass,
1:06:50but then you're like, when it comes time
1:06:52to explain the purpose of this function,
1:06:54explain what arguments it takes
1:06:56and what it returns under what conditions,
1:06:58if you end up writing a choose-your-own-adventure novel
1:07:00underneath that thing, guess what?
1:07:03You just discovered that your,
1:07:04and that's why you can't leave, that your API is bad.
1:07:06You can't leave this to the end,
1:07:08because at the end when you're all done,
1:07:09like we wrote our API and people are building on it
1:07:12and all our tests pass and it's awesome
1:07:13and we did performance improvements,
1:07:15now, finally, the last step, the cherry on top,
1:07:17I'm gonna go write the docs, and you're like,
1:07:19oh my God, this API is terrible and we have to change this.
1:07:22There's no way I can explain to a user how to use this API.
1:07:24Like, I'm embarrassed for myself
1:07:26that I have to say these words, like,
1:07:28well, I can do this, but if you pass that and it does that,
1:07:30make sure you do this, but don't call it in this context
1:07:31and then just, like, oh God, what have we done?
1:07:34Like, it works, but, so you can't save the documentation
1:07:37at the end, you have to write the docs,
1:07:39maybe not at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle,
1:07:41because you will learn that your API is screwed up
1:07:44through writing the documentation,
1:07:45or someone else will learn it and come tell you.
1:07:48(laughing)
1:07:48- Well put, you're right, I did end up agreeing with you.
1:07:51All right, I'm gonna stop talking.
1:07:53Marco is hopefully gonna stop talking.
1:07:54Tell us about Catalina.
1:07:56- Oh, I'm gonna talk about my, you know,
1:07:57so I do upgrade installs on my Mac forever.
1:08:00I am pretty sure that I have files on my Mac
1:08:04that came from classic Mac OS.
1:08:06- Wow, that's interesting. - Because remember,
1:08:08when, you know, my Blue and White G3 was purchased with
1:08:11and ran for most of its life, classic Mac OS.
1:08:13Eventually it ran Mac OS X, but I installed it on top of
1:08:16my installation of classic Mac OS.
1:08:18So yeah, I've just been,
1:08:21I just peeked in my library preferences folder
1:08:23and the oldest file I have in there
1:08:25was last modified in 2003.
1:08:27So I have files that, - Oh, golly.
1:08:29- I have files that predate both of your use of the Mac.
1:08:31You can know that, you know they're old files from classic
1:08:33when they, the file names don't have file name extensions.
1:08:36That's a good way to tell.
1:08:37- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:08:38- Yeah, anyway, that's what I do
1:08:39and I will continue to do with my installs.
1:08:41Although it's like, transferring to the new Mac Pro
1:08:46is gonna be, I gotta figure out how I can actually
1:08:49connect them with a cable that's not ridiculously slow
1:08:51'cause you can like firewire to Thunderbolt to USB to,
1:08:56maybe I'll just do ethernet, I don't know.
1:08:58I'll figure something out, but it's gonna take a while
1:09:00'cause I have a lot of files.
1:09:01(laughing)
1:09:03So Catalina, obviously I'm not running it on this Mac
1:09:06because I can't.
1:09:07- Oh, wop wop.
1:09:09- I feel very similar to Marco in that,
1:09:14like there's not much pulling me into Catalina
1:09:18and there's lots of stuff keeping me away.
1:09:20Aside from bugs, like oh, I'm afraid the first version
1:09:22will be buggy or whatever.
1:09:24There's the whole 32-bit apps going away.
1:09:27I have a lot of 32-bit apps, most of which I've been
1:09:30saying my goodbyes to, like all right,
1:09:32I'm gonna live without you, like saying my goodbyes
1:09:34to Drag Thing, all my games and like, you know.
1:09:38There's a lot of stuff, but there's a couple ones
1:09:40that are really just, I bought a new version
1:09:42of Microsoft Office because the version of Microsoft Office
1:09:45I had was so old that, I don't know if it was 64-bit or not,
1:09:48but it was like, I was just, let me just solve that problem.
1:09:51The one that's really killing me though is Photoshop CS6.
1:09:55And I checked Photoshop CS6 as soon as I knew
1:09:58that Apple was dropping, like it was like two years ago
1:10:00when they made the announcement like this version
1:10:02will run 32-bit and then they stopped talking.
1:10:04It's like okay, well the next version won't.
1:10:05I'm like well I have to buy a new Photoshop
1:10:07and I did a little, you know, get in, I launched Photoshop,
1:10:09my Mac and I got in, oh, Photoshop CS6 is a 64-bit process,
1:10:12everything's fine and then I forgot about it
1:10:15and then I redid it, I downloaded like that,
1:10:17but Sinclair Software has this Go 64 application
1:10:20that will just scan your thing for 64-bit applications
1:10:23and, or 32-bit applications.
1:10:25And you know Photoshop CS6, it's a 64-bit application,
1:10:28I'm okay, right?
1:10:29But I did notice a lot of other 32-bit things
1:10:32with the word Adobe and I'm like, how do I do that stuff?
1:10:36So this is a question I have.
1:10:37I meant to tweet it earlier today
1:10:39and I'd already have the answer by now if I had tweeted it
1:10:41but I'll just, I shouldn't ask it on the program
1:10:43but anyway, 'cause I don't want a million people to tell me.
1:10:47I'll find out next week.
1:10:48But the question I have is if I upgrade to Catalina,
1:10:52can I even launch CS6 or will I, you know,
1:10:55like it's a 64-bit app, presumably it will launch,
1:10:57will it immediately crash because some Adobe utility
1:10:59won't work or is it like, you can launch it
1:11:01but you can't use like Bridge or some import functionality
1:11:04that I never use, like I'm a very light user of Photoshop
1:11:07but I do want to have it, I'm accustomed to it.
1:11:11So I don't, and I don't want to pay Adobe
1:11:15a monthly or yearly fee for Photoshop
1:11:17'cause I use it so rarely.
1:11:18Like I basically use it as like an image resizer,
1:11:23slight modification, you know, like I do, yeah,
1:11:26whatever weird t-shirt designs we're doing,
1:11:29sometimes I do in Photoshop, you know, or mock-ups.
1:11:32Like I don't use it that much.
1:11:33It's not worth it, it's not worth it for me to pay
1:11:36even like $5 a month for Photoshop
1:11:39or the equivalent yearly fee and you can't,
1:11:41as far as I know, you can't buy Photoshop anymore.
1:11:43I bought CS6 specifically because it was the last version
1:11:47that wasn't infected with Creative Cloud, not infected.
1:11:50Like I'm not against that model, I think it's fine.
1:11:51It just doesn't fit my use, my use of Photoshop.
1:11:54I'm not a professional person who makes their living
1:11:57using Photoshop, put it that way.
1:11:59So I don't want to upgrade to Catalina and lose Photoshop.
1:12:02And that's currently my biggest barrier,
1:12:06that and there's one application my wife uses
1:12:08for budgeting that she's saying her goodbyes to
1:12:10and she's like, she's told me before she left
1:12:13on another one of her trips, like don't upgrade my computer
1:12:17when I'm gone because I know that my budgeting application
1:12:21will not be supported anymore and I'm auditioning a new one
1:12:25but until that happens, you can't upgrade it.
1:12:27So there are a couple things keeping me away from it
1:12:29and the main thing pulling me into it is,
1:12:33I'm not really interested in Sidecar
1:12:34but I am interested in like the new applications,
1:12:38believe it or not, like the ability to watch 4K video
1:12:42if I wanted, yay, I'm entering the modern era.
1:12:44The new version of Photos, I spend a lot of time in Photos
1:12:46and I'm always hungry for a new version of Photos
1:12:48which tends to be tied to the OS.
1:12:50This new version of Photos might be good, might be bad
1:12:54but any change is an opportunity for things to be better
1:12:59whereas just for the entire life Mojave, I was like,
1:13:02yeah, here's Photos, it's never getting any better
1:13:04until the new version, so I do want to see that
1:13:06and by the way, my favorite plugin for doing
1:13:12the books that I print, Mimeo, that is not ready
1:13:15for Catalina yet either so I gotta wait for that update.
1:13:17There's an update coming soon that will make it work
1:13:19in Catalina and all the preference, the permission dialogue
1:13:24stuff, I'm not really too worried about that.
1:13:25It will be annoying but I'm the type of user
1:13:28that can handle that assuming I eventually defeat it all
1:13:32and it goes away.
1:13:33So the iMac hasn't been upgraded, long way of saying
1:13:36but I did willingly upgrade the laptop, the MacBook Air
1:13:41because, mostly because I want screen time
1:13:44'cause that's the kid's homework, quote unquote
1:13:46homework laptop but it's also their bypass of screen time
1:13:49if they want to watch YouTube all hours of the night,
1:13:51they can do so on the laptop.
1:13:53So I, and also I just wanted to see what it was like.
1:13:56I had Catalina installed on a separate APFS volumes
1:14:00on my, in my US container on the iMac.
1:14:03So I'd seen Catalina before, I'd run a bunch of the betas,
1:14:05I'd looked at it like, not like I'm too surprised
1:14:07but I upgraded the MacBook Air to Catalina.
1:14:12So far seems fine, a little bit of wonkiness
1:14:14around Apple ID stuff as usual, like it's always not
1:14:17a great first run experience like, you know,
1:14:19it's a bunch of permission dialogues,
1:14:21this app wants to do that, do you want to allow this
1:14:23after that, yeah, buh buh, go through all that thing
1:14:25and then I go into system preferences and I go
1:14:27to the new Apple ID screen, it's got like a red badge
1:14:29on it that's like, you need to update your Apple ID
1:14:33settings or something, like all right, fine, whatever,
1:14:36enter your Apple ID password, all right, fine,
1:14:38enter your Mac password, all right, fine,
1:14:40and then it grinds for a really long time
1:14:42and then it's done grinding and then I'm like,
1:14:44okay, I guess I'm done but the badge is still on the thing.
1:14:48It's like close to some preferences and then later
1:14:49I come back to the computer and it's like,
1:14:51you need to update your Apple ID settings.
1:14:53I went through the NAS like six times,
1:14:56the badge never went away, I kept asking,
1:14:57like what do you want from me, what am I,
1:15:00you want to update my Apple ID settings, then do it.
1:15:02It never did, I just logged out, I set up the kids' accounts
1:15:06you know, I launched all the stuff and got rid of all
1:15:08the permission dialogs for them, I set up screen time
1:15:10on the Mac which I'm assuming will work
1:15:13which is a big assumption because I have to say,
1:15:15these screen time reports for family sharing,
1:15:17like where you can see what your kid's usage is or whatever
1:15:20across all their devices, how long has that been out now?
1:15:23A year and a half, two years?
1:15:25It has never worked right and continues not to work right.
1:15:28Some devices don't show up at all,
1:15:29some activity doesn't show up at all,
1:15:30sometimes I go into my kid's screen time report
1:15:32and it's just blank, there's like no activity,
1:15:35activity will appear here once people use their devices,
1:15:37oh really, once people use their devices,
1:15:39two years later something will show up here?
1:15:41Sometimes it shows up, sometimes I can see one device
1:15:43but not another, like it's really bad, it's really,
1:15:46it's so unreliable, it's like what am I even
1:15:48getting reports on, you know?
1:15:50Like I don't think I've ever seen anything reported
1:15:52from my son's iPad but I do see his phone sometimes
1:15:55and it just doesn't make any sense,
1:15:57it's one of those features that's like, is this a feature
1:15:59or is this a thing that like might work sometimes
1:16:01but you know, check back later, same thing with the,
1:16:04you know, the weird first round bugs in Catalina.
1:16:06But I'm actually kind of interested in seeing
1:16:10the new music app and having the,
1:16:13all the device stuff in the finder,
1:16:15like most of those UI changes and the new applications
1:16:18I'm actually interested in, the new, is the new version?
1:16:20No, I think Maps is not the new good version, right?
1:16:23Messages got changed a little bit, anyway,
1:16:25I am interested in the new OS but I'm just scared
1:16:28to lose all my stuff and scared to break things so,
1:16:31on the laptop it goes and you know, I have to say,
1:16:34other than my complaints about those weird things,
1:16:37it's been okay, like it hasn't crashed,
1:16:40it seems to be running fine, it's not making the fan spin,
1:16:42I, you know, I did a full time machine back above it
1:16:45and that all seemed to go well.
1:16:46So, you know, I don't recommend people upgrade to Catalina
1:16:51but it has not been disastrous to me so far.
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1:18:21- All right, let's bring back Ask ATP,
1:18:27I think because we've been just full of stuff to talk about,
1:18:30we've skipped it for the last couple of weeks
1:18:32and so let's bring it back.
1:18:33Dan Stanton writes, "With the advent of family sharing,"
1:18:35speaking of, "why do you think contacts have been ignored?
1:18:38In my mind, contacts in a family should be bucketed
1:18:40just like calendar entries, yours, mine and ours."
1:18:43Dan's wife doesn't want to see a couple hundred
1:18:45of my work acquaintances in her address book,
1:18:47but it would be nice if I updated random aunt's info
1:18:50that my wife got the change.
1:18:52Do y'all experience this issue, any creative solutions?
1:18:54- Yes, this is a problem that Aaron and I face.
1:18:58Because I am, I don't know,
1:19:01like a pack rat of contact information,
1:19:03I have the kind of official contact list of the family,
1:19:07but that causes Aaron to oftentimes have to ask me,
1:19:10oh, what's so-and-so's address?
1:19:11What's this person's phone number?
1:19:12What's this person's email address and so on,
1:19:14which is fine, but it's frustrating for both of us.
1:19:17I don't know of any fix.
1:19:20I would imagine that if you had some sort of
1:19:24like Google app setup, which we actually do,
1:19:27maybe you could share contacts that way,
1:19:30or perhaps like I could log Aaron into my Gmail account
1:19:35and I could have both of us sharing our contacts
1:19:39with my Gmail account even if she doesn't look at my email.
1:19:42But that seems very, I don't know, kludgy.
1:19:45So I don't have any really good solutions,
1:19:47but Dan, I feel your pain.
1:19:48Marco, I get the feeling you have not a lot of input here.
1:19:52- Yeah, I mean, Tiff and I both have contacts.
1:19:55We occasionally have to ask each other,
1:19:58hey, can you iMessage me that contact card for somebody
1:20:02so we could get it?
1:20:04But we don't have so much overlap
1:20:06that it's a frequent problem.
1:20:08But that being said, I would love for Dan's
1:20:12proposed solution here to bucket them
1:20:14as yours, mine, and ours.
1:20:16That would be awesome.
1:20:17We do that with one password.
1:20:19We have a one password family setup.
1:20:21- Yep, same.
1:20:22- So we each have our own vaults,
1:20:24but we can also put stuff in the shared area
1:20:26that we can both access.
1:20:27- Yep.
1:20:28- And I think that would be wonderful,
1:20:29but Apple's not historically great at supporting
1:20:33things that families need to do.
1:20:35- I was just trying to Google to find out exactly
1:20:37how long ago No iLife is an Island episode
1:20:40of Hypercritical was.
1:20:41This is the exact same problem again.
1:20:43It occurs to me, I usually complain about it
1:20:45in the context of photos, but contacts is a perfect
1:20:48opportunity for Apple to work out what our,
1:20:52I was gonna say to be fair, but I was like,
1:20:53what are difficult issues?
1:20:55Like it's not easy to do this in a way where the UI
1:21:00makes sense to people.
1:21:01It is a difficult interface problem.
1:21:03But I feel like contacts, as I've complained about
1:21:07in the past, just for a single person,
1:21:09the current siloed version of contacts
1:21:11still sometimes doesn't work for inexplicable reasons.
1:21:14We went through on this show several episode run
1:21:16of trying to figure out with like,
1:21:18contacts aren't syncing 'cause the images are the wrong size
1:21:20and it just silently doesn't sync
1:21:21and you would never figure that out if you didn't listen
1:21:23to weird tech podcasts or for us if we didn't have listeners
1:21:26who knew this weird information and told us
1:21:28that we then broadcast in our weird tech podcast.
1:21:31So I kind of understand why they haven't done
1:21:35the harder thing 'cause they can't even get
1:21:37the easy thing right all the time,
1:21:38which I find endlessly frustrating.
1:21:40But if and when they tackle this idea,
1:21:42contacts is a perfect place to do it
1:21:44because the data volume is so much lower than photos.
1:21:48Like it's just text and some small images
1:21:51and the number of contacts you have does not,
1:21:53as I mentioned before, grow essentially without bound
1:21:55like photos does 'cause you just don't keep meeting
1:21:58that many people like, you know, maybe if you're something--
1:22:01- Speak for yourself.
1:22:03- Maybe if you're like a salesperson
1:22:04and you wanna keep everything in contact,
1:22:05they just keep growing.
1:22:06But in general, people have a much smaller number
1:22:08of contacts than photos.
1:22:09It doesn't grow as fast and the data is really tiny
1:22:11so this would be a perfect test bed, Apple,
1:22:13to finally figure out a solution to hey, families exist
1:22:18and you know, you figure that out and you can make a family
1:22:21and by the way, families don't wanna have two, three,
1:22:24four copies of grandma's address
1:22:26or someone's got their birthday
1:22:28and someone has the anniversary and someone has the address
1:22:31but you have the old address
1:22:32but you have the new phone number.
1:22:34It's a nightmare, we all do it.
1:22:36But it's like which one of our address books
1:22:38has this person's address
1:22:39and so many things are duplicated.
1:22:42Family, perfect, they're all of our family.
1:22:44It's not like I just have my parents
1:22:46and my wife just has her parents.
1:22:47We both have both parents, right?
1:22:49Common friends.
1:22:50When an address is updated.
1:22:52Now we have to update it in both places.
1:22:54Now every time, I have to do this thing,
1:22:55like every time I want to contact somebody
1:22:57or mail somebody something in the mail
1:22:58which you rarely do these days,
1:23:00I have to diff both of them.
1:23:01I have to say here's what I have for the address,
1:23:04here's what you have for the address.
1:23:05Which one was updated more recently
1:23:06and which one looks like it's more right?
1:23:08- No, that's when we mail people things,
1:23:10like we mail Christmas cards every year
1:23:11to a bunch of friends and that's contact hell
1:23:15as Tiff and I go back and forth like oh, do you have,
1:23:18didn't they move, would you have their address?
1:23:20- Yeah, what's the more recent one?
1:23:22- Yeah, right, exactly.
1:23:23- Well, I updated this more recently
1:23:25but I don't know if the address is more recent
1:23:26'cause you don't have per time stamped fields
1:23:28and the things and it's so bad.
1:23:30It's just, and this is the case where it is a regression
1:23:34from the old system which is you'd have
1:23:35a family address book of this little black book
1:23:38somewhere in your house that you'd write people's addresses
1:23:40and phone numbers in and when someone updated their address,
1:23:42you'd update it in one place and multiple people
1:23:45in the family could pick up that address book.
1:23:48Yeah, so I feel like we have the technology
1:23:50to solve this problem.
1:23:51Apple's not tackling it, they totally should
1:23:53and here's the thing, Dan is asking for like,
1:23:56any creative solutions, there are all sorts of quote unquote
1:23:58creative solutions, I don't recommend any of them.
1:24:00I know because my parents who apparently still want
1:24:04that old black book have tried so many different things
1:24:08to achieve this 'cause they have almost
1:24:11all the same contacts.
1:24:12They don't want them to have separate pools of things.
1:24:14They get very frustrated when they have to update it
1:24:17in two places or it's just in one place.
1:24:20It's just, it is a nightmare.
1:24:22They've tried all the terrible things like trying to sync it
1:24:25through some third party service or sharing an Apple ID.
1:24:28Do not do this, like any way you go off the sort of the way
1:24:32Apple wants you to do things, you're just asking
1:24:33for more problems and bugs and even if you can get it
1:24:35to work for some brief moment in time,
1:24:37it will eventually break and you'll end up
1:24:39with duplicated or lost contacts and just the pain
1:24:42and suffering of using, of sharing an Apple ID
1:24:46but also wanting to have your own separate Apple IDs
1:24:48and then trying to figure out what's what,
1:24:50it's not an easy thing for people who are not
1:24:54tech enthusiasts to keep track of and it does eventually
1:24:56break and they can't fix it and they get even more
1:24:58frustrated so there are creative solutions
1:25:01but I don't recommend any of them.
1:25:02Please just, you know, Apple needs to solve this problem
1:25:05for us and it's not that hard to solve and they should do it
1:25:09in contacts, it's a great first place to try it so
1:25:11take Dan's recommendation Apple and do this now.
1:25:14- I would prefer you to do photos 'cause I spend more time
1:25:17interacting with photos than with contacts
1:25:19but I understand that contacts are easier.
1:25:20- You know, if there's an app in the App Store
1:25:23that does this and does this well, I would love to hear
1:25:24about it so please tweet at me.
1:25:26- Oh, there are apps that do it, do it well.
1:25:30- Yeah, exactly, exactly.
1:25:32- 'Cause any time you're asking an application
1:25:34to programmatically modify one of your sort of precious
1:25:38data sets, oh, programmatically modify my contacts
1:25:40in response to something else, the potential for danger
1:25:44is big and again, I'll endorse the idea that you can
1:25:47back up your entire contacts database from within
1:25:49the contacts application.
1:25:51I recommend that, again, the data set is small,
1:25:54you will make a little archive file, worst case scenario,
1:25:57you can just destroy everything, delete everything,
1:26:01delete it all from iCloud, delete it all from your contacts,
1:26:03delete, delete, delete and then restore it
1:26:05with your contacts database.
1:26:06I think it's lossless, I've had to do it a few times
1:26:08so I hope it's lossless if I'm losing something,
1:26:10I haven't noticed what I'm losing but unlike photos,
1:26:13it's so easy to do that, make it an address book database,
1:26:16backup, make five of them, stick them in a little folder,
1:26:19stick those in Dropbox, have them go to Time Machine,
1:26:21have them go to Backblaze, like have a million backups,
1:26:24then start your experimentation, enjoy your life
1:26:27and contact hell as they duplicate and copy all the place
1:26:30and revert back to old versions and it's not good.
1:26:34- Yeah, also I'd really like to quickly reiterate
1:26:37what Marco said about 1Password.
1:26:38We went to 1Password for families
1:26:41right when that was first announced
1:26:43and I cannot speak enough good things
1:26:44about 1Password in general but particularly about families
1:26:46and it is extremely convenient to have, like Marco said,
1:26:51my personal vault, my limitless vault which is my LLC
1:26:56to have a family vault so things like social security numbers
1:27:01or something like that can go in the family vault
1:27:03whereas a login to Twitter that Aaron doesn't ever need
1:27:06can go in my personal vault and stuff like that
1:27:08so it's super convenient and we do the exact same thing
1:27:11as you and Tiff and I cannot recommend it enough.
1:27:14- It's right there in the name, 1Password for families
1:27:16and it seems like someone at 1Password understands
1:27:19what families do when they live together
1:27:22and exist as a family.
1:27:24March 11th, 2011 by the way, no iLife was an island.
1:27:28We're not at a 10-year anniversary
1:27:30but we'll be sure to celebrate that.
1:27:32- Cameron writes, Casey and John don't always upgrade
1:27:35their phones every year.
1:27:37Why not use the iPhone upgrade program?
1:27:39For me, a couple of reasons.
1:27:40First of all, it used to be and I don't know if this is true
1:27:43that you needed to unfreeze your credit
1:27:45in order to join the program
1:27:46and I'm just too lazy to do that.
1:27:48Secondly, I don't always buy AppleCare
1:27:50but as recently discussed on this very program,
1:27:53I am glad I did this year.
1:27:54Third of all, I'm kind of allergic to having something
1:27:59that I don't own.
1:28:02I mean, obviously I don't own my home outright
1:28:04but I really try hard not to have a loan of any sort
1:28:09if I can avoid it and that to the best of my understanding
1:28:13is exactly what this is.
1:28:14Now, the last I had looked, it's not really costing users
1:28:19of the upgrade program money.
1:28:21Like when it first came out, I remember doing the math
1:28:23and it was within like a nickel of,
1:28:26if you were to take the cost of the iPhone plus AppleCare
1:28:30plus and add that up and it turns out
1:28:34if you divide by 24 or whatever,
1:28:35that was the exact monthly price.
1:28:37They weren't like fleecing you or anything
1:28:39with the iPhone upgrade program
1:28:41and I presume that's still the case.
1:28:43But I don't know, I just don't really like,
1:28:45I don't like owing people money if I can avoid it
1:28:49and that's what this feels like to me.
1:28:50So it's probably not a logical answer,
1:28:52it's probably an emotional one
1:28:53but I'm an emotional being.
1:28:56John is a logical being.
1:28:57Why aren't you on the upgrade program, man?
1:29:00- I just want the control of when I get a new phone
1:29:02and when I don't.
1:29:03Having another, as John Rock was saying, another eel,
1:29:06another like sort of payment and contract
1:29:09and thing I have to remember that exists
1:29:11in terms of service and it's just so much easier
1:29:13to say like when I want a new phone, I'll buy one.
1:29:15When I don't, I won't and it's a much simpler relationship.
1:29:19And as you noted, like it's not a money,
1:29:22even if there was a discount,
1:29:24even if you saved money by doing this,
1:29:25I probably still wouldn't do it
1:29:26just for the convenience reason.
1:29:28'Cause who knows when I'm gonna buy a phone again?
1:29:29Just, I have been getting one every two years
1:29:31but they could come up with a phone
1:29:33that I really don't like
1:29:33and I would keep my phone for an extra year.
1:29:35And I know you can do that with the upgrade program
1:29:37but it's just one more thing to have sort of running
1:29:38in the background that you have to keep track of
1:29:40and yeah, it's not to my taste.
1:29:43- Fair enough.
1:29:44Philip writes, "What non-high tech tech
1:29:47do you like at the moment/which items
1:29:49have had a nice impact on your lives?"
1:29:51And Philip continues, "For example,
1:29:53I have a nice hairdryer
1:29:53that automatically lowers the temperature when it gets hot
1:29:56and that's just so especially nice."
1:29:58I came up with two answers.
1:29:59One is kind of cribbing what Philip had said.
1:30:02We recently joined the early 2000s
1:30:05and got electric toothbrushes.
1:30:07And one of the nice features about this is that they will,
1:30:11obviously they're shaking and there's a motor running
1:30:14as you're brushing your teeth
1:30:16and they will like, I don't know, change the RPM
1:30:18or do something so it sounds like an obvious change in pitch
1:30:22when you need to move to a different section of your mouth
1:30:24and then it'll turn itself off
1:30:25after like a couple of minutes or whatever it is
1:30:27when you can be all done.
1:30:28And I really like that.
1:30:29- Do you think electric toothbrushes were invented
1:30:31in the early 2000s?
1:30:33- I don't know.
1:30:34My point was a long time ago.
1:30:35My point was a long time ago.
1:30:37- Aren't they from like the '50s?
1:30:39- Well, okay.
1:30:40- Well, these ones tell you when you need to move
1:30:42to the next tooth, so.
1:30:43- Exactly.
1:30:44- That's really, really, otherwise you would just there,
1:30:46you just grind that one tooth down to nothing.
1:30:47You'd be like, "Oh, toothbrush never told me to move.
1:30:50What am I supposed to do?" - I just wanted to do
1:30:50you guys, I didn't know what to do.
1:30:53And then the other one,
1:30:53which is probably an even better answer is,
1:30:56I don't know if there's like a technical name for this.
1:30:59The one that I found that most closely resembles
1:31:01the one we have is listed as, in all caps,
1:31:04cast iron apple peeler.
1:31:06And then it goes on for another 35 minutes
1:31:08with different words and I don't know,
1:31:10the random stuff to spam the search engine.
1:31:13But anyways, in game the search engine,
1:31:14what this is is you put an apple on a series of three spikes
1:31:18and attached to those spikes is a hand crank
1:31:22and you crank this apple through like a circular cutter.
1:31:27And then there's a thing around the outside
1:31:29that peels the apple at the same side.
1:31:31And in summary, what you end up with is apple slices
1:31:35that are peeled when all you have done
1:31:37is turned a crank for a while.
1:31:38It is magnificent.
1:31:40And this particular one I'm looking at is 30 bucks on Amazon.
1:31:44And I generally follow the Alton Brown school of thought,
1:31:48which you know, don't have a unitasker that's a waste.
1:31:51And certainly you can do all this by hand for sure.
1:31:54But if your wife makes a phenomenal apple pie, as mine does,
1:31:59and you wanna make sure that she does that
1:32:01as frequently as possible, as I do,
1:32:03then one of these is super helpful
1:32:05and it saves a whole ton of time.
1:32:08- Well, you say it saves time, but speaking of wives,
1:32:11my wife is actually a very fast apple peeler.
1:32:14She's one of the kitchen skills that I don't have,
1:32:16which is, you know, the thing where you cut
1:32:18with a paring knife towards your thumb?
1:32:20- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:32:21- To peel things.
1:32:23I cannot master that skill.
1:32:25I mean, I can do it, but it's clumsy and slow
1:32:27and I take off way too much apple.
1:32:29She can do that with any shape thing,
1:32:31potato, apple, or whatever.
1:32:33And this thing goes, whizzes right through it
1:32:35in two seconds, but you do have to mount it first.
1:32:38And so I would be interested to see an actual competition
1:32:41starting from apple on table
1:32:43between mounting and whizzing and unmounting.
1:32:45- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:32:46- And her just going, "Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep,"
1:32:47with the little paring knife.
1:32:49But yeah, these things are super cool.
1:32:50For me, 'cause I'm terrible at peeling apples,
1:32:52if I had to make an apple pie,
1:32:53I would love to have one of these things.
1:32:55My parents had one.
1:32:56I don't think we have one.
1:32:58If we do, it's probably lost somewhere in the house.
1:33:00But yeah, she makes apple pies with her paring knife.
1:33:04But if I had to be involved,
1:33:06I hate peeling oddly shaped things.
1:33:09Yeah, these things are really cool.
1:33:10Plus they're fun to watch.
1:33:11If you have kids, get them in the kitchen
1:33:13to watch the little peel go flying off.
1:33:14Everything gets cool.
1:33:15- Yep, Marco.
1:33:17- I recently did an episode of "Due by Friday,"
1:33:20our friend's wonderful podcast.
1:33:22And I talked all about flashlights,
1:33:25my love of modern LED and lithium battery-based flashlights.
1:33:30So I will refer people to listen to that episode.
1:33:34And specifically, I think my two favorites right now
1:33:38are both by Phoenix, the PD-25 and the LD-12.
1:33:43We'll put links to both of those in the show notes.
1:33:45The PD-25 is a little bit smaller,
1:33:47but uses a kind of non-standard kind of battery type.
1:33:50The LD-12 is almost as small.
1:33:53Both of them are similar brightness
1:33:55and uses double A's or the crazy battery
1:33:59that is like a double A,
1:34:00but is lithium rechargeable and red.
1:34:02Which off the top of my head,
1:34:03I think is a 14500 battery, something like that.
1:34:05So anyway, beside that, I want to also refer back
1:34:09to something that I recently took out of the closet
1:34:12for the season, my beloved Patagonia Micro Puff hoodie.
1:34:17We had a very cold couple of mornings here last week.
1:34:21And this is a jacket that weighs less than most hoodies
1:34:25and is warm enough to be your only winter jacket
1:34:28if it doesn't get too cold where you are.
1:34:30And certainly by far my most frequently used jacket
1:34:33in the winter.
1:34:34- John, I don't think I ever got your answer, did I?
1:34:36I think we skipped ahead after you were commenting
1:34:38on my beloved apple peeler.
1:34:39- No, I'll go now.
1:34:41Speaking of Margot's flashlights,
1:34:43I've been aware of the fancy flashlight world for,
1:34:46I mean, since the internet existed.
1:34:47I think that's where I discovered it, the internet.
1:34:49I think one of the, you know, that wasn't the first webpage,
1:34:52but very soon after webpages became a thing,
1:34:55people would have put their cool, you know,
1:34:57their everyday carry, I think that term came later,
1:34:59but people would put their cool little flashlight stuff
1:35:02in there and like, oh, these flashlights are cool.
1:35:04I would love to get this, you know, it's LED technology,
1:35:06it's lithium ion batteries, they can be small and powerful,
1:35:09especially as LEDs got cheaper or whatever.
1:35:12But that's where I've always run into a problem.
1:35:14Every time Margot recommends these, I'm like,
1:35:16I really want one of these cool flashlights.
1:35:17And then I see the prices and I'm like,
1:35:19I don't want it that much.
1:35:20(laughing)
1:35:22They're so expensive compared to, like,
1:35:24compared to, you know, a $5 stupid cheap,
1:35:28like, especially now you can get cheap LED flashlights
1:35:31for like no money.
1:35:32I want one of the good ones,
1:35:34but I want them to be less money.
1:35:35They're so expensive, I just can't bring myself to do it.
1:35:38So I continued to limp along with what I consider to be
1:35:41a series of really terrible flashlights
1:35:44that cost $3 each and they last like three years.
1:35:47So it's like a dollar a year.
1:35:48It's like, boy, I would have to,
1:35:49I'm not gonna live long enough to recoup the cost
1:35:51of these other flashlights.
1:35:53Mostly I use them for morning dog walks
1:35:55when it's pitch black because I live in New England.
1:35:59It's to be able to see the poop to pick it up, right?
1:36:01So you need a flashlight,
1:36:02but I want it to be a small flashlight
1:36:03so it can be in my pocket and everything.
1:36:04So the ones I have now, you know, I get along with.
1:36:08But I would like one of those cool ones.
1:36:10I might, I should, when you put the links in,
1:36:11maybe I'll look at them again.
1:36:12Are they still, they're still like 60 bucks?
1:36:14- Yeah, about 60 bucks is what a good,
1:36:16like, you know, nerd flashlight costs.
1:36:18- Yeah, it's too much.
1:36:19- Agreed.
1:36:19- But they seem to last forever.
1:36:21I mean, like, I've had,
1:36:22I started buying good nerd flashlights
1:36:24probably about almost 10 years ago now.
1:36:26I've yet to have one die.
1:36:28Like, they're really good.
1:36:29They're built, you know, very heavy duty.
1:36:31- I think I'm gonna like lose it or break it.
1:36:33I don't think it's gonna die.
1:36:34I think I'm gonna like, it's gonna get lost somewhere
1:36:36or the kids are gonna lose it
1:36:37or I'm gonna break it in some way.
1:36:39- Yeah, you'd have to try pretty hard to break these.
1:36:42I'm not saying that you or your kids can't do it
1:36:44if you've really tried, but like--
1:36:45- They're very good at breaking things.
1:36:47- Yeah, it would be, you know,
1:36:48it would take some doing to break one of these.
1:36:52Losing it, I think, would be the bigger concern.
1:36:54But yeah, if you are willing to spend 60 bucks
1:36:58on a little flashlight, these are delightful
1:37:00because it's delightful, like, first of all,
1:37:02like how heavy duty and just, you know, well-built they are
1:37:05and also just like how much light you get
1:37:08out of something that is so tiny
1:37:11compared to like what we all grew up with.
1:37:12You know, 'cause the world of LEDs
1:37:14and now like, you know, higher voltage lithium batteries,
1:37:16like it's really amazing what you can get
1:37:18in a very tiny flashlight.
1:37:20- Oh, the whole street,
1:37:21now exactly where I'm picking up the poop?
1:37:23I don't need to be that bright.
1:37:24- Well, you don't have to, there's a button on it
1:37:26that like you select your brightness level,
1:37:28but so like, you know, most of the time
1:37:29I don't have it on full brightness,
1:37:31but it is nice to occasionally, like if I wanna like,
1:37:33you know, when I'm walking my dog at night in the winter
1:37:35and I wanna like, you know, scan the poorly lit street
1:37:38ahead of me for like, is there like a deer or a raccoon
1:37:40or a cat ahead of me, I wanna know that.
1:37:42- Or a skunk, I don't watch for the skunks.
1:37:44- Yeah, like I need to know that,
1:37:45and so it's nice for, you know,
1:37:47to amp up the brightness for a minute
1:37:49while you scan around and turn it back down.
1:37:51- Have you ever, has your dog ever gotten skunked?
1:37:53- No, I've dodged that, fortunately.
1:37:55- Be glad.
1:37:56- I know, I've heard.
1:37:57- All right, so my, what is this,
1:37:59non-tech, non-high tech product at the moment.
1:38:04I talked about this same thing on another podcast,
1:38:05just like Marco talked about his on another podcast,
1:38:08and mine is cheap.
1:38:10I spend a lot of time in the kitchen,
1:38:12I do most of the dinner cooking,
1:38:14and so I spend a lot of time cutting things,
1:38:17and the world of fancy knives is very much like
1:38:19the world of fancy flashlights,
1:38:21where you can just, you know, go nuts,
1:38:23and like, it's more like the world of watches, actually,
1:38:26'cause like at a certain point,
1:38:27performance characteristics stop being meaningful,
1:38:29and now you're buying like pieces of art or whatever.
1:38:30Anyway, a while back, after a series of knives,
1:38:34I was, you know, I was fine with,
1:38:35like we got a set of knives from a local place
1:38:38near my wife that we had, we got when we were married,
1:38:40and we still have that set of knives,
1:38:42so it's fine.
1:38:43It was cheap, we didn't have a lot of money,
1:38:44we married in our early 20s, we got a set of knives,
1:38:47but it's still sturdy and working,
1:38:49and so, you know, good investment.
1:38:52But they weren't great knives,
1:38:53so I've always been looking for, you know,
1:38:55a good chef's knife to replace my, you know,
1:38:59my wedding knives, and maybe 10 years ago or whatever,
1:39:03one of the many nerd cooking shows that I watch,
1:39:06I think it might have been Cook's Illustrated,
1:39:08I don't even remember,
1:39:09might have been America's Test Kitchen,
1:39:10did a thing where they test a bunch of knives
1:39:12and they pick their favorite,
1:39:13and their favorite was this, how do you say this,
1:39:18Victorinox, the Swiss Army knife company, right?
1:39:21- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:39:22- Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef's Knife, eight inch.
1:39:27And you can still buy this to this day,
1:39:29and I'm very glad, because I didn't want it
1:39:31to be like one of those things where I bought it,
1:39:32and then like, I wanna get a new one in a decade
1:39:34and then no longer make it.
1:39:36I just had that experience with my garbage can, by the way,
1:39:37my garbage can finally broke after like a decade,
1:39:39I'm like, oh no, I don't wanna have to shop for a new,
1:39:42I just want this exact same garbage can again.
1:39:44I did find almost the same garbage can,
1:39:46I bought two of them, so being smart.
1:39:48- Of course you did.
1:39:49- Yeah, anyway, this knife, it's not like a great knife
1:39:54in terms of like how knives are,
1:39:56how much carbon is in the carbon steel,
1:39:57how fancy is the handle, it is like,
1:40:00the most straightforward knife
1:40:01you could ever possibly imagine,
1:40:03probably made of a middling quality of steel.
1:40:06The handle is just cheap textured plastic,
1:40:10and that's exactly the way I want it.
1:40:12It's like the Oxo Good Grips of chef knives,
1:40:14it's $36 on Amazon, and we've had ours
1:40:18for at least 10 years, probably longer.
1:40:21I just bought a second one out of paranoia,
1:40:23like the first one was perfectly fine,
1:40:24I didn't want a second one, 'cause I'm like,
1:40:25I just need to have another one of these.
1:40:27It's like my main knife, I cut,
1:40:32like every night I cut something with that knife,
1:40:34I use it all the time, I've got a knife sharpener,
1:40:37which is again, probably a cruddy knife sharpener,
1:40:38I don't care, I'll put my $36 knife
1:40:40into my cruddy automated knife sharpener,
1:40:42I feel perfectly good about that,
1:40:43and it's worked great for 10 years.
1:40:44So if you don't have a chef's knife that you're happy with,
1:40:49maybe you have a chef's knife that costs $120
1:40:51that you don't like 'cause it's weird and uncomfortable,
1:40:53get this knife, it is the Oxo Good Grips of chef knives,
1:40:55and it's so cheap that you won't care
1:40:57if you dull it or sharpen it badly,
1:40:59or it gets caught in the garbage disposal and gets bent,
1:41:03it's 36 bucks, get this knife.
1:41:04I should probably get an infomercial,
1:41:06like you can't afford not to buy this knife.
1:41:08(laughing)
1:41:10Four and a half stars on Amazon,
1:41:12that is an accurate rating, it is not a fancy knife,
1:41:14and so you'll feel good about using it.
1:41:16The only thing I have to say is when I bought the new one,
1:41:17I noticed the ridge on the cheap handle,
1:41:20like the cheap molded plastic handle
1:41:22with the textured plastic, there's a ridge on it,
1:41:24but apparently that goes away after a while
1:41:25'cause I looked at my old one and it's not there,
1:41:28and so I started using it and eventually it wears down,
1:41:30but yeah, get this knife, it's great.
1:41:32- Thanks to our sponsors this week,
1:41:34Linode, Fracture, and Clearbank,
1:41:36and we will talk to you next week.
1:41:38(upbeat music)
1:41:41♪ Now the show is over ♪
1:41:43♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪
1:41:45♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
1:41:48♪ Oh it was accidental ♪
1:41:51♪ John didn't do any research ♪
1:41:53♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪
1:41:56♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
1:41:59♪ Oh it was accidental ♪
1:42:01♪ And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM ♪
1:42:06♪ And if you're into Twitter ♪
1:42:09♪ You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S ♪
1:42:14♪ So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M ♪
1:42:20♪ Auntie Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C ♪
1:42:25♪ U-S-A Siracusa ♪
1:42:27♪ It's accidental ♪
1:42:29♪ It's accidental ♪
1:42:31♪ They didn't mean to ♪
1:42:33♪ Accidental ♪
1:42:34♪ Accidental ♪
1:42:36♪ Tech broadcast ♪
1:42:38♪ So long ♪
1:42:40- Listeners of our show will know
1:42:44that you occasionally hear the ringing of a call bell
1:42:49in the background of our show.
1:42:50It sounds something like this.
1:42:52(bell ringing)
1:42:53- What's that bell sound that I always hear?
1:42:54It's so weird, I've been listening for years.
1:42:56I've been understanding when that bell sound appears.
1:42:59- So this bell sound originates with our friend Merlin Mann,
1:43:03who has a bell like this and would occasionally ring it,
1:43:07accenting a joke or something.
1:43:10Mostly early on, I heard it mostly on "Back to Work,"
1:43:13and then of course it has migrated to other shows as well,
1:43:15and he is the master of these bells.
1:43:17- Speaking of mastery of the bells, by the way,
1:43:20this complaint has been voiced by listeners,
1:43:22and I kind of agree with them.
1:43:23You may have different things to say
1:43:25as the performer of the bell.
1:43:27This is your instrument,
1:43:28and I understand that you may have
1:43:29your particular techniques, but--
1:43:30- Oh no.
1:43:31- Traditionally speaking, a bell of this kind
1:43:34should be rung by tapping and allowed to ring,
1:43:37and people don't like it when you mute it
1:43:39after hitting the plunger.
1:43:41You're doing that on purpose, or is it just--
1:43:43- Yes, because I learned that from Merlin.
1:43:46- All right.
1:43:47- You know, Merlin used to just ring it fully like that
1:43:50and let it ring out, but then as he developed
1:43:54the comedic stylings of using the bell,
1:43:56he would have a really quick joke
1:43:58and do a quick little hit and move on.
1:44:00- He's got a fever.
1:44:01(laughing)
1:44:03- It's not a cow bell.
1:44:04- It's slightly less bell.
1:44:05- Anyway, so a while back, around like,
1:44:08we started the show, what, like 2013 or something?
1:44:12- Forever ago.
1:44:12- Yeah, so yeah.
1:44:13I occasionally, I have a whole folder of sound clips
1:44:16that I'll occasionally drop in to punctuate a joke
1:44:20or be funny or be a reference to something
1:44:23or delineate sections of the show or whatever else.
1:44:26And forever ago, I clipped out a sound effect
1:44:30of Merlin's bell doing that short bell, that short ring,
1:44:34and I used that for a little while here and there.
1:44:37And it was some clip I stole from Back to Work
1:44:39for like two seconds.
1:44:40- Turns out.
1:44:41- This was all before 2016,
1:44:43that I would occasionally use that.
1:44:44And we developed this joke on the show that,
1:44:48I didn't wanna overuse Merlin's bell, because it's his.
1:44:51I don't wanna steal or ruin his gag,
1:44:54so I didn't wanna overuse it.
1:44:56So we kind of came into this pattern that I would,
1:44:59I only would use the bell during,
1:45:02right after John mentions file systems,
1:45:06either file systems in general, the file system,
1:45:08or a particular file system,
1:45:10and only the first time during a show.
1:45:12- And I just wanna point out that that's not like
1:45:15a thing that you do sometimes.
1:45:18It's very consistent.
1:45:19Literally every single time you hear that bell,
1:45:22I have just said something about file systems.
1:45:25So it kind of amazes me that people can listen
1:45:27to the show for years, literally for years,
1:45:31and not pick up, like you always say,
1:45:33how good humans are at pattern matching,
1:45:34and they find patterns when they don't even exist.
1:45:36This is a definite pattern intentionally put there,
1:45:39very consistently, and yet it doesn't connect
1:45:44to a lot of people listening.
1:45:46Maybe they're tuning out 'cause I'm talking
1:45:47about file systems, and they're not even listening,
1:45:49and then they hear the bell and it brings them back,
1:45:51and they don't know what I just said.
1:45:52So maybe I'm to blame here, but I'm always,
1:45:54and that's why I don't answer them.
1:45:56I'm not doing it to be mean, but I don't wanna explain
1:45:58why the bell is.
1:45:59I want people to sort of discover the bell on their own.
1:46:01I mean, now obviously Marco's explaining it,
1:46:03and I think that's fine after 60 years we've been podcasting
1:46:06or whatever the hell it's been.
1:46:07It's fine to explain it in the after show
1:46:08where half the people probably won't listen
1:46:10because those same people probably think
1:46:11that when the show says, "Now this show is over,"
1:46:15they're like, "Okay, well, turn this podcast off."
1:46:17- Later.
1:46:18- Yeah, so, pro tip, the show is not over.
1:46:20- Actually, before we go any further,
1:46:22I would like to point out that to the best
1:46:25of my recollection, once Marco acquired a physical bell,
1:46:29and I'm jumping slightly ahead here.
1:46:30- Which I get to, yeah.
1:46:31- Yeah, once Marco acquired a physical bell,
1:46:33I cannot remember a time that John has mentioned,
1:46:38one of the qualifying phrases, file system, APFS, et cetera,
1:46:42I cannot remember a time that John has made mention
1:46:44of one of those things, and Marco has not immediately
1:46:47rang that bell with his hand.
1:46:50It has been unreal how consistent he has been
1:46:54over the course of the, I don't know, two or three years
1:46:56that this bell has been a thing.
1:46:57- So, I was using the sound effect.
1:46:59I would just put it in during editing.
1:47:00I would use the sound effect for the first couple years.
1:47:03And because we talked a lot about file systems,
1:47:07John was known for it, and we got a tip
1:47:11a couple of months before WWDC 2016
1:47:15that they were going to announce a new file system.
1:47:17And so I thought, wouldn't it be funny
1:47:20if I brought a bell into the keynote
1:47:23and rang it when they said file system
1:47:26like during the keynote?
1:47:27But I didn't have one, so I ordered myself a physical bell.
1:47:33I figured I have to get a physical bell,
1:47:36then I have to teach myself how to do the short ding
1:47:39that I was using the sound effect for
1:47:40that Merlin was doing.
1:47:42So I went on Amazon, ordered a bell,
1:47:45and the one I ordered, unfortunately, had a much higher
1:47:48pitched sound, it was like the wrong note.
1:47:51And what I was trying to do was match the sound effect
1:47:54I'd been using exactly, have it be the exact same bell tone
1:47:57so that nobody could even tell that I was now
1:47:59using a real one.
1:48:00And in fact, still, people who listen to the livestream
1:48:03are still very surprised that it's a real bell
1:48:05like the first time they hear it.
1:48:07That yes, this is actually a real bell that I'm hitting now
1:48:09ever since early 2016.
1:48:11But anyway, so I was trying to find exactly Merlin's bell.
1:48:13First one I bought was the wrong note.
1:48:15And you can't really search Amazon listings for like,
1:48:18what is the frequency of this bell's ring?
1:48:21(laughing)
1:48:22None of them really have that information published.
1:48:25And so eventually I just asked Merlin,
1:48:27hey, what's the one that you got?
1:48:29And he sent me this link, and we'll put it in the show notes
1:48:32and it's of course, of course this is what Merlin has.
1:48:36It is this gag ring bell for service
1:48:39by this brand, Accoutrements, or Accoutrement,
1:48:43I don't know, it's probably French.
1:48:44And it's like this gag gift bell.
1:48:46The kind of thing you get in a Spencer gift.
1:48:48Like this is the bell, all right?
1:48:51So I thought, okay, so I ordered that, got it,
1:48:55and sure enough it was a perfect match.
1:48:57So I've been using that bell ever since.
1:48:58I've been bringing this bell everywhere we do a live show.
1:49:01So I brought it to WWDC like literally four times,
1:49:04or three times.
1:49:06I traveled with it to and from the beach.
1:49:09Like anywhere I'm going to where I'm recording this show,
1:49:11I bring this bell.
1:49:12- You forgot to, by the way, for the WWDC thing,
1:49:14you forgot to mention the best part of that story.
1:49:16- Oh yeah, well yeah, so I actually did bring the bell
1:49:19into the keynote.
1:49:21They didn't announce it during the keynote.
1:49:24They did announce it during the State of the Union.
1:49:27And you can hear us discuss this on ATP episode 174
1:49:31titled A Ding in the Room.
1:49:33I can tell you that somebody brought a bell
1:49:35into the State of the Union and didn't tell anybody,
1:49:38including all the co-hosts that were sitting next to him,
1:49:40and hit it real hard and it was clearly audible
1:49:45in the stream and the video.
1:49:46But anyway, I had this bell,
1:49:48I've been traveling with it all these years.
1:49:50This year when I brought it back from the beach,
1:49:52it got all rattly.
1:49:53Like something here, I'll show you.
1:49:55- What happens, you bring anything to the beach,
1:49:57it just destroys it, it's the salt air.
1:49:59- And it's just something has become mechanically wrong
1:50:02with my bell and I couldn't figure out how to fix it
1:50:05so it sounded right again.
1:50:06It was just all rattly.
1:50:07- You have the right to repair that bell.
1:50:09It's not glued together, you can get right in.
1:50:10- No, I've tried, right?
1:50:12So I went back to the original Amazon listing
1:50:14that I bought in 2016 and I ordered myself two more.
1:50:17I figured, let me get, I'll get a spare.
1:50:19- Okay, John.
1:50:20- And I'll get, 'cause I mean one lasted three years
1:50:23with a lot of travel.
1:50:23Let me get two more, I can leave one at the beach,
1:50:26that'll cut out a lot of the travel
1:50:27and have like a travel bell and that'll be it, okay.
1:50:29And it was a third party seller,
1:50:30it was all that was selling there.
1:50:33But they arrived a few days later
1:50:35and it wasn't the blue box novelty ring bell for service.
1:50:40It was a generic Graphco call bell
1:50:43and instead of sounding like this,
1:50:44it sounds like this, which is totally the wrong note.
1:50:47- Oh no, oh no.
1:50:49- And by a lot too, like that's totally wrong.
1:50:52It's way higher.
1:50:54So I thought, oh God, okay, so I requested a return,
1:50:58I went back to the same listing,
1:50:59which still had the picture of the nice blue box one
1:51:02I was looking for and I went to a different seller
1:51:05that was listed there and I ordered two more
1:51:09from them and I figured, you know what,
1:51:12just in case this is wrong, these aren't very expensive,
1:51:15there was another one that was significantly more money.
1:51:18It was a whole different seller,
1:51:20it was like, so normally the regular price was $10 each,
1:51:23the one I was ordering the second time was $14 each
1:51:26and there was another seller
1:51:27that was selling for $30 each.
1:51:28And I thought, you know what--
1:51:29- Oh my word.
1:51:30- Just in case, these gotta be two different listings,
1:51:33two different companies, maybe this bell's out of production
1:51:35and they're like scalping people for the cost.
1:51:38Fine, I need them, so I ordered two of the $14 ones
1:51:42and two of the $30 ones from two different companies.
1:51:45All four arrived, all four of them are from a company
1:51:51called Honest Medical or HPMS or the Therapy Connection.
1:51:55The mailing labels are very similar
1:51:57and all four of them are the wrong note.
1:52:00- Oh no.
1:52:01- They're all the same generic Graphco bell.
1:52:04So I have now three different sellers
1:52:07that have sold me the same generic bell.
1:52:11All of them seem to be exactly the same company behind them
1:52:14and now I'm getting into like, oh God,
1:52:16this is like an Amazon thing, right?
1:52:18'Cause this is like, this is the problem with Amazon.
1:52:20There's so much room for BS and arbitrage and scams
1:52:25and counterfeiting and generic stuff.
1:52:28Basically this listing has been corrupted
1:52:30by this company is entering these as that item
1:52:35when in fact they are not that item,
1:52:36they are like a generic similar item
1:52:38but it's not the same item that's listed or pictured, right?
1:52:41- And now speaking of third party sellers,
1:52:42I had a weird experience with Amazon recently too.
1:52:44I mentioned my garbage can that I wanted to get more of.
1:52:46I'm scouring the internet trying to find the garbage can,
1:52:48eventually I track it down, who sells it, of course.
1:52:51I found it at Walmart, sold it at Walmart,
1:52:54but I don't know if any of you have ever
1:52:55ordered online from Walmart.
1:52:56They don't know how to deliver you things
1:52:59that you order on the web.
1:53:00They literally don't know how to do it.
1:53:02They're so bad.
1:53:03It's like half the time I order stuff from Walmart,
1:53:05I just assume I'll get an email three days later
1:53:07that says, "Yeah, that thing you ordered,
1:53:08"we don't actually have that, nevermind.
1:53:10"Your order's canceled."
1:53:11Anyway, and then I also found that on Amazon,
1:53:14similar deal to this Bell.
1:53:15Sketchy looking listing, third party sellers,
1:53:18you just send and cross your fingers, right?
1:53:20So a couple days later, what arrives at my house
1:53:23is two gigantic Walmart boxes.
1:53:25They're brown cardboard boxes with the Walmart name
1:53:27and logo wrapped all around them.
1:53:29It's like a blue Walmart decorations all over them.
1:53:31And I'm like, "Good old Walmart.
1:53:33"Finally, bank makes an error in your favor.
1:53:35"Walmart sent me two garbage cans when I just ordered."
1:53:38And I double checked.
1:53:39I went back to my email receipt.
1:53:40I'm like, "Yep, I ordered one garbage can
1:53:42"and Walmart sent me two."
1:53:43Well, that kind of makes up for the 800 other times
1:53:46that you canceled my order without sending me anything
1:53:48after waiting three days.
1:53:49(laughing)
1:53:50But then I also noticed that my little Alexa
1:53:52had a yellow ring on it.
1:53:54And I said, well, I already said it, whatever.
1:53:57I said, "Alexa, notifications."
1:53:59And it told me that a shipment had arrived from Amazon
1:54:02containing a garbage can.
1:54:04Like, I did order one garbage can from Amazon
1:54:07and one from Walmart, but what arrived at my doorstep
1:54:09were two Walmart boxes.
1:54:11So as far as I can tell, Amazon sent me a Walmart product.
1:54:16Like, it's not ambiguous.
1:54:20It is in a Walmart box that is identical
1:54:22to the box from Walmart proper,
1:54:25but they obviously both came from the same place
1:54:27and arrived on the same day.
1:54:29And they're both from Walmart.
1:54:30And so I order something at Amazon
1:54:33and Walmart fulfills it?
1:54:34Like, what is going on?
1:54:36The same way that you order a thing from this listing,
1:54:38different sellers for different prices,
1:54:40and the same stupid product
1:54:41that's not that product shows up.
1:54:43I don't understand what's happening in Amazon
1:54:46or what even is Amazon anymore?
1:54:48Is it just a place where you press a button
1:54:50and then somehow things arrive at your, like,
1:54:53how is, it's like going to Burger King
1:54:56and ordering a quarter pound of cheese and getting a Big Mac.
1:54:59What, I don't understand it at all.
1:55:02- Yeah. - Anyway,
1:55:03continue your Bell story.
1:55:03- All right, so I was now in possession
1:55:06of six of the wrong kind of Bell (laughs)
1:55:09at various prices from 10 to $30 each.
1:55:12- Oh my word.
1:55:13You're gonna corner the market on Bells,
1:55:15on incorrect Bells.
1:55:16- Yeah, right.
1:55:17And meanwhile, of the three orders I placed so far,
1:55:20all three of them had, like, the same return address
1:55:23and a very similar company name,
1:55:25even though they were all three
1:55:26from totally differently named Amazon third party sellers.
1:55:29And so, like, clearly, like, you know,
1:55:31there's these companies who, you know,
1:55:32put themselves as lots of listings
1:55:34at lots of different price points,
1:55:35even though it's the same company.
1:55:37They're just, you know, making all these shell companies,
1:55:38I guess, or fake names, who knows?
1:55:40So I thought, you know, okay, fine.
1:55:41You know what, Amazon is killing me here.
1:55:44They're useless.
1:55:45Meanwhile, like, I was searching eBay for this,
1:55:47for the brand and everything.
1:55:48I was looking all over the place.
1:55:50Couldn't find them anywhere.
1:55:52And finally, I found using, like, Google Shopping,
1:55:55there was this other site,
1:55:57which I'm not gonna name for their protection.
1:55:58There was this other site that had the listing
1:56:02of exactly the bell I was looking for.
1:56:04It had the picture of the right box and everything.
1:56:07I'm like, finally, it was $21 each.
1:56:11And I'm like, you know what?
1:56:12I'm getting four of them.
1:56:14I'm just kidding. (laughing)
1:56:15Obviously, this is so hard to find,
1:56:18I'm never gonna be able to find them again.
1:56:19It's like, you know, John, like, you know,
1:56:21it's like John Gruber holding onto his old Apple keyboards.
1:56:24It's like, if I can find this for sale,
1:56:26for God's sake, I'll buy them all, right?
1:56:28I never wanna have to do this again.
1:56:30So I ordered four of these bells
1:56:33from this random other site.
1:56:35They arrive a few days later,
1:56:36and I look at the man label,
1:56:38and it says Honest Medical HPMS Therapy Connection.
1:56:43It's the exact same company
1:56:45that was sending them from Amazon.
1:56:46And I was like, you gotta be effing kidding me.
1:56:48- They have all the bells, obviously.
1:56:50They've cornered the market on bells.
1:56:51- Sure enough, I open it up,
1:56:53and it's the wrong bell.
1:56:55(laughing)
1:56:56And it's four of them from the same damn company.
1:57:00- They just keep sending you the same bells
1:57:02they sent you before.
1:57:02You return them and get a refund
1:57:04when you order them again from a different thing.
1:57:06- Yeah, we keep sending a lot of bells to this address,
1:57:08and they keep returning them.
1:57:09- No, but like, I still had them all.
1:57:10Like, you know, at peak time,
1:57:11I had like 10 bells in my house.
1:57:13So, 'cause I was like, you know,
1:57:15waiting for the UPS guy to come pick up the returns.
1:57:17So like--
1:57:18- You should do a top four on bells,
1:57:19top four bells, and all the bells are that bell.
1:57:21(laughing)
1:57:23- Right, yeah, exactly.
1:57:26So like, so here I am, I'm like,
1:57:27you gotta, like, no matter what I get,
1:57:29no matter, it's like Groundhog Daily,
1:57:30no matter what I do, the same thing shows up.
1:57:32It's like, oh my god.
1:57:33So, and it turns out this other site that I had found
1:57:37was just like an Amazon front site.
1:57:39Like, I emailed them all pissed off.
1:57:41I'm like, you know, I demand a refund.
1:57:43This is not what was pictured.
1:57:45Clearly, you're just reselling Amazon stuff.
1:57:47They responded, not addressing the accusation
1:57:50that they were just an Amazon shill site,
1:57:52but their return label that they gave me
1:57:54was a PDF of an Amazon return label.
1:57:57(laughing)
1:57:59- My word.
1:57:59- So, so you know, clearly,
1:58:01so I fell for one of these arbitrage sites,
1:58:03but I think I'm gonna get a refund.
1:58:04We'll see, so, I'm like, you know,
1:58:08I'm, you know, blocked at every turn here.
1:58:10What the heck am I gonna do?
1:58:12I went back to Amazon.
1:58:13I went to all the other sellers.
1:58:15There aren't that many sellers of this bell listed,
1:58:17but you know, they were all that same company,
1:58:19just different names.
1:58:20There was one company in the list that they're,
1:58:24like they had longer shipping times than the rest,
1:58:26and they're listing like all their info
1:58:28like that they give to Amazon.
1:58:29Like it looked a little bit different than the rest.
1:58:31- By the way, before you get to the end of the story,
1:58:34I wanted to say what I would do in this situation,
1:58:36and what I do do when I'm trying to,
1:58:38in this exact situation,
1:58:39I always try to find, if they're still in business,
1:58:42the actual manufacturer of the product,
1:58:44and I hope to hell that that manufacturer has a website.
1:58:47Whoever makes this ring for service novelty bell
1:58:51for Spencer gifts, find the company that makes it.
1:58:54Go to their website,
1:58:56and if they don't have online ordering,
1:58:58at the very least get like the exact part number
1:59:00and start searching based on that
1:59:02rather than trusting the picture.
1:59:03Now, maybe it's not possible with a novelty bell,
1:59:05but that's my usual technique, so continue.
1:59:08- All right, so yeah, and I try,
1:59:10but this appears to be like no longer produced
1:59:13for possibly quite some time.
1:59:15So finally, I found this one seller
1:59:18that looked a little bit different than the rest,
1:59:20and I emailed them, and I'm like,
1:59:21hey, here's exactly what I'm looking for.
1:59:24Can you verify whether this is exactly what you have
1:59:27or whether you have this other thing?
1:59:29And they responded, and they're like,
1:59:31yes, we actually have the real thing.
1:59:33We only have three left.
1:59:36Great, I place an order immediately,
1:59:37not from Amazon, but from their site directly.
1:59:41I got my bells.
1:59:44What shows up a few days later is three of the correct bell.
1:59:49So finally, for whatever price,
1:59:53I think 20 bucks each, whatever it was, 15 bucks each,
1:59:55I finally have the correct bell.
1:59:58I have three of them now that work
1:59:59and one of them that doesn't,
2:00:01and so finally I'm gonna hoard these for the rest of time
2:00:05or at least for the rest of the, however long ATP runs,
2:00:08I'm gonna hoard these bells, and now finally I have them.
2:00:10But it's just like, I know this is kind of,
2:00:12and not a great ending to a story,
2:00:13but I finally got the right thing,
2:00:14but just like, it just kind of shows how messed up
2:00:18the whole Amazon ecosystem is that you can get
2:00:22one company dominating the listings for this thing,
2:00:25selling a counterfeit item from all these different names,
2:00:27all these different price points,
2:00:28plus this arbitrage site that was off to the side
2:00:30that was the same.
2:00:31- Counterfeiting a garbagey item.
2:00:33- Yes!
2:00:34- It's like an Apple product or something.
2:00:36It's counterfeiting a Spencer Gips thing.
2:00:38- No, they're counterfeiting a $10 bell.
2:00:41Oh God, so I finally have the right thing,
2:00:44and that's it, that's my story.
2:00:45- Now you should save the quote unquote broken one too.
2:00:48- Oh I am.
2:00:49- Just because it's good to have the parts,
2:00:50and I feel like if you have two broken ones,
2:00:53maybe you can make one working one out of it.
2:00:54It's still interesting in exactly how this thing broke.
2:00:56I feel like it could be, I tried to repair it
2:00:58by the way, a garbage can, but I have some,
2:01:01I tried using Krazy Glue that worked for like two days
2:01:04as it usually does.
2:01:05I have some mechanical ways I could try to fix it,
2:01:07but I'm saving the body just like my cheese grater
2:01:10so that I can eventually make one whole working garbage can
2:01:14several years from now.
2:01:15(laughing)
2:01:16The garbage can situation was pretty grim,
2:01:18'cause like what I wanted was a garbage can
2:01:21that has a lid where you touch a thing on top of it
2:01:24and the lid opens, so I didn't want a foot press thingy,
2:01:28and where it is in my kitchen,
2:01:30it has to open on the narrow side,
2:01:32so it has to be wider than it is long,
2:01:34it has to be like a rectangle,
2:01:35and the hinge has to be on the short side of the rectangle,
2:01:39'cause that's just how our garbage can is
2:01:40and where it's placed, and that's not gonna change
2:01:42unless we get our kitchen totally remodeled.
2:01:45Just try finding a garbage can that's like that.
2:01:47They either all have foot pedals,
2:01:48or they all open the other way.
2:01:50Like price was no object, materials were almost no object,
2:01:53I didn't care, it's just impossible to find,
2:01:54except for my one garbage can that I found,
2:01:57almost the identical garbage can I found.
2:01:59The only difference is that there's slightly textured plastic
2:02:03in an area where the old plastic used to be smooth,
2:02:05which I'm afraid will make it slightly harder
2:02:06to clean that part of it, but it's not really visible
2:02:10unless you're right on top of it,
2:02:11and you can see that it's textured.
2:02:12So I got two of them, and I'm keeping 'em.
2:02:15Cheese gritters still can't find any of those.
2:02:17Anyone ever finds my cheese grater,
2:02:19just buy me one, I will pay you for them,
2:02:20as long as the prices are reasonable.
2:02:22Not like that $75 spatula that I didn't buy.
2:02:25- Oh my gosh.
2:02:26- But what is the right spatula?
2:02:27I would have paid $75 for one of the correct bell.
2:02:31- Yeah, yeah, well I mean, the thing is,
2:02:33if you don't have a working one,
2:02:34like that's the spatula I have a working one,
2:02:36but the cheese grater is I know that they break,
2:02:38and the bells, apparently now you know that they break.
2:02:41Maybe you should be more gentle with your bell.
2:02:42(laughing)
2:02:44- I gotta stop traveling with it.
2:02:46Shove it into a suitcase with a sock in the middle
2:02:48so it doesn't ring.
2:02:49- You should get one of those custom fitted cut foam,
2:02:52like carrying cases for the bell.
2:02:54- Yeah!
2:02:56- You can margo this up,
2:02:56how expensive can you make this $10 bell?
2:02:58(laughing)
2:03:00$150 custom cut Pelican carrying case for it.
2:03:05(beeping)