ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Destiny Shadowkeep moved to October 1st, but I'm not going to move A to B for that.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Whatever that is.

00:00:07 ◼   ► They delayed it.

00:00:08 ◼   ► It was supposed to be September 17th.

00:00:09 ◼   ► They sent out this point.

00:00:11 ◼   ► When game companies, like, you know when Apple tells you the thing that they didn't even

00:00:15 ◼   ► tell you, they're like, "It's going to be in the fall," and it ends up being the last

00:00:18 ◼   ► day of fall or whatever.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Game companies announce a launch date, and they have to announce a specific day, like

00:00:24 ◼   ► months and months and months in advance, and then if they miss that day, they're moving

00:00:28 ◼   ► it from September 17th to October 1st, which is like nothing in Computerland.

00:00:32 ◼   ► So what?

00:00:33 ◼   ► Who cares?

00:00:34 ◼   ► They end up writing a two-page apology letter and explaining in detail because game fans

00:00:38 ◼   ► are so rabid and insane that they'd be like, "You're delaying my thing.

00:00:41 ◼   ► You said September 17th six months ago.

00:00:43 ◼   ► I planned my entire life around her.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Now you tell me October 1st?"

00:00:46 ◼   ► Where it's in Computerland, it's like, "October 1st, September 17th, whatever.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Who cares?

00:00:51 ◼   ► Ship it when it's done.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Fix the bugs."

00:00:53 ◼   ► God, gamers are the worst.

00:00:54 ◼   ► They are.

00:00:55 ◼   ► They're absolutely the worst.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Because I read these letters, and I'm like, "I feel these companies."

00:00:59 ◼   ► And then I think, "They have to do that.

00:01:01 ◼   ► They have to prostrate themselves and be like, 'We're so sorry that six months ago we didn't

00:01:06 ◼   ► know the exact date, time, and hour that we were going to launch a thing that we're working

00:01:10 ◼   ► on that is basically software.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Please forgive us.

00:01:14 ◼   ► We just want to make sure it's okay.'"

00:01:15 ◼   ► But it's like, "It's fine."

00:01:17 ◼   ► It's like two weeks.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Not even two weeks.

00:01:20 ◼   ► But you said October 1.

00:01:21 ◼   ► That's a Tuesday.

00:01:22 ◼   ► That doesn't bother us?

00:01:23 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:01:24 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:01:25 ◼   ► It's not like I'm taking a day off of work.

00:01:28 ◼   ► I wouldn't put it past you.

00:01:29 ◼   ► People take weeks off of work for these launches.

00:01:31 ◼   ► They take an entire week off.

00:01:34 ◼   ► It's a way of life.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Vacation is over for at least one of us.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Summer of back to work.

00:01:43 ◼   ► For some of us.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Hey, we work occasionally.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm working right now on my vacation.

00:01:49 ◼   ► How was your time in Long Island, Jon?

00:01:52 ◼   ► On Long Island, Casey.

00:01:54 ◼   ► On Long Island.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Oh my god, you two are...

00:01:58 ◼   ► You know, I expect this from Jon, Marco.

00:02:00 ◼   ► But for you to have fallen this far this fast, I'm sad.

00:02:05 ◼   ► It's okay.

00:02:06 ◼   ► It's okay.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Marco has nearly adopted the island.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Alright, Bane.

00:02:11 ◼   ► So how was your time on Long Island?

00:02:14 ◼   ► It was fine.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Good talk.

00:02:16 ◼   ► I'm glad you're still with us, man.

00:02:18 ◼   ► Really?

00:02:19 ◼   ► That's all we're gonna get?

00:02:20 ◼   ► It's like talking to a teenager.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Well, it's the same vacation I have every year and I enjoy it and it's good.

00:02:26 ◼   ► You sound like you really enjoyed it.

00:02:28 ◼   ► It was fine.

00:02:29 ◼   ► Well, in Jon's defense, not only was I'm sure...

00:02:33 ◼   ► It was very hot here.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I can imagine it was very hot there.

00:02:35 ◼   ► But you woke up this morning, I almost said "in" again, on Long Island and then you drove

00:02:42 ◼   ► some amounts of time, is that right, to a ferry and then drove many amounts of time

00:02:46 ◼   ► to home?

00:02:47 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it was an easy trip.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Not a big deal.

00:02:50 ◼   ► How long does it take at a broad order of magnitude?

00:02:53 ◼   ► Like an hour to the ferry, an hour and a half on the ferry and another hour and 40 minutes

00:02:57 ◼   ► in the car.

00:02:58 ◼   ► It's a really easy trip.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I have never been, to my recollection, I've never driven onto a car carrying actually

00:03:06 ◼   ► anything.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I've been on things that carry cars.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Like I've been on the Chunnel, for example, and I believe that carries cars.

00:03:13 ◼   ► But I've never driven onto anything.

00:03:16 ◼   ► There's actually possibly the only car carrying train that I'm aware of anyway.

00:03:21 ◼   ► I think the only one that Amtrak has is a train that goes, I think they call it the

00:03:26 ◼   ► Auto Train, and it runs from the DC area to the Orlando area.

00:03:30 ◼   ► And don't tell Declan, but we're going to Disney in a few months for his fifth birthday.

00:03:36 ◼   ► And I had kicked around the idea of taking the train, but it's like a 24 hour journey

00:03:40 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:03:41 ◼   ► I forget how long it takes, but it's long.

00:03:43 ◼   ► And you know, long enough that you have to sleep overnight on the train, which to some

00:03:48 ◼   ► degree is part of the fun, but I don't know.

00:03:50 ◼   ► I'm not sure Michaela, a year and a half, almost two at that point, will really see

00:03:54 ◼   ► the fun in riding on a train for 24 hours straight.

00:03:57 ◼   ► But that's right.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Anyway, all that's to say that I'm jealous of going on the ferry.

00:04:02 ◼   ► It sounds fun.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Yeah, you haven't lived until you've tried to take your stick shift car with no hill

00:04:07 ◼   ► hold up a wet 45 degree angle slick ramp with metal inches from either side of you.

00:04:15 ◼   ► That sounds absolutely delightful.

00:04:18 ◼   ► My modern cars have no holds, but I still remember back in the days when they didn't

00:04:21 ◼   ► and you'd get unlucky and you'd be on one of the side ramps and they'd be like guiding

00:04:25 ◼   ► you.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Like there's no room.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Like they alternate the cars so that they're staggered so that the doors can open because

00:04:33 ◼   ► you need the door to open into the gap between the cars because you couldn't get out of your

00:04:39 ◼   ► car if you have the car.

00:04:41 ◼   ► It's just all lined up right next to each other.

00:04:42 ◼   ► You couldn't open the door wide enough for humans to fit out of it.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Maybe you come out the window Dukes Hazard style.

00:04:48 ◼   ► I've cut it close.

00:04:50 ◼   ► Couple of times I've had to go out a different door than the one that I'm sitting in because

00:04:55 ◼   ► it turns out I can't open the driver's door, but they really wedge them in there.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Today on the way back though, they offer like priority boarding or whatever.

00:05:04 ◼   ► It's not always available.

00:05:05 ◼   ► I think they sell out.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Anyway, I had priority boarding on the way back, so I was dead center first one off the

00:05:12 ◼   ► thing, which means that my car was like three inches from falling into the sound the entire

00:05:16 ◼   ► time.

00:05:17 ◼   ► I'm sure that means just one block under one front wheels between me and an ornery grave.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Wait, all kidding aside, the ramp doesn't fold up to block the car from falling out

00:05:31 ◼   ► of the car?

00:05:32 ◼   ► The thing that was keeping me there is the block under my driver's side front wheel and

00:05:37 ◼   ► a couple of metal poles about the diameter of a golf ball with chain strung between them.

00:05:44 ◼   ► So there's no, what do they do for a ramp to get the car off of the boat?

00:05:49 ◼   ► So when I board it, I'm boarding through the front of the boat.

00:05:51 ◼   ► So my car ends up at the very back of the boat facing backwards and then the boat backs

00:05:55 ◼   ► into new London and the flat deck of the boat backs right up to the dock.

00:06:03 ◼   ► They pull those little metal poles out, the little metal pole I described, those poles

00:06:06 ◼   ► and chain, like the pole just goes in like four inches into a little hole in the deck.

00:06:10 ◼   ► They just pull those poles out, undo the chains and I just drive right off.

00:06:13 ◼   ► So really like there was nothing stopping my car from going into the sound except for

00:06:17 ◼   ► that pole that just manually shoved into a hole in the deck.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Sounds super secure.

00:06:23 ◼   ► But those blocks, they do the job.

00:06:26 ◼   ► As they say on the Long Island Sound Ferry, "Sea conditions are calm."

00:06:30 ◼   ► And that's what I like to hear.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Do you get real bad motion sickness during this hour and a half journey?

00:06:36 ◼   ► No, because sea conditions are calm.

00:06:38 ◼   ► But on not so calm sea conditions, have you got...

00:06:41 ◼   ► They're always calm when we go.

00:06:43 ◼   ► I always pick the biggest boats.

00:06:44 ◼   ► You can see which boat is going to be your boat, so I don't pick the dinky boats.

00:06:47 ◼   ► I pick the really big ones.

00:06:48 ◼   ► So the odds of them being rocky is low.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Do you pre-reserve this spot or do you just kind of pitch up at the last second and say,

00:06:57 ◼   ► "Here I am"?

00:06:58 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you got to make a reservation.

00:07:00 ◼   ► That's why you go for the priority.

00:07:02 ◼   ► The priority boarding is like...

00:07:03 ◼   ► I mean, hopefully they don't learn anything from the airline industry.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Priority boarding is like $10 extra.

00:07:07 ◼   ► It's the most no-brainer purchase you've ever made in your entire life.

00:07:11 ◼   ► It's not like an extra 300 bucks for two inches of leg room on an airline or something.

00:07:15 ◼   ► But they do sell out.

00:07:16 ◼   ► So depending on what boat you're going for and what time and what day, you might not

00:07:20 ◼   ► be able to get priority.

00:07:21 ◼   ► Does it earn your car extra room in any dimension?

00:07:24 ◼   ► It did actually this time.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Because I was...

00:07:28 ◼   ► First of all, you want to be in the center.

00:07:29 ◼   ► You don't want to be off to the sides because then you just have to drive straight on.

00:07:31 ◼   ► So you don't have to maneuver into any of those little alleys.

00:07:34 ◼   ► In the center, the aisle is usually wider.

00:07:36 ◼   ► That's where they put the big trucks and stuff.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And yeah, so I was straight right back to the back of the boat and we had plenty of

00:07:42 ◼   ► room on either side.

00:07:43 ◼   ► It was very nice.

00:07:44 ◼   ► But the problem is that means your car is out in the sun.

00:07:47 ◼   ► So it gets super hot on the journey over.

00:07:48 ◼   ► The struggle.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Does your car have an electronic or a hand parking brake?

00:07:53 ◼   ► Hand.

00:07:54 ◼   ► Okay, so are you wrenching up even harder than normal in this particular circuit?

00:07:58 ◼   ► I'm trying not to brake.

00:07:59 ◼   ► I have the whole thing with the parking brake thing seizing up.

00:08:03 ◼   ► So I had to get the whole rear brake caliper replaced at tremendous expense.

00:08:06 ◼   ► So I'm trying to be gentle on my...

00:08:08 ◼   ► Because I think I do...

00:08:09 ◼   ► I tend to pull up on the parking brake too hard just from a lifetime of older cars.

00:08:14 ◼   ► They were where you needed to do that.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And I think in modern cars, you don't need to pull up quite as hard.

00:08:18 ◼   ► So I'm trying not to...

00:08:19 ◼   ► I'm trying to lengthen the lifetime of my parking brake by not yanking on it like it's

00:08:24 ◼   ► my 1983 Volvo.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:08:28 ◼   ► We didn't ask you.

00:08:30 ◼   ► I forgot.

00:08:31 ◼   ► How was the refurbished, re-renovated whatever beach house this year?

00:08:34 ◼   ► Nah, I mean, they didn't do much.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Like they had ripped up a bunch of carpeting, which was good.

00:08:41 ◼   ► And then they ripped up a bunch of very large linoleum tile, which was neutral because the

00:08:46 ◼   ► old tile was fine.

00:08:49 ◼   ► And what they did was they put this wooden laminate flooring over top of all of it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And you can tell it's over top because it's another half inch higher than the rest of

00:08:56 ◼   ► the floor in the house now.

00:08:57 ◼   ► No, no.

00:08:58 ◼   ► And it was not a good...

00:09:00 ◼   ► First of all, it's not real wood.

00:09:02 ◼   ► It's like particle board or something.

00:09:03 ◼   ► And it's squeaky and it looks okay and it's better than the carpet.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And then what they did is they had these nice wood grain cabinets.

00:09:12 ◼   ► They had them all painted white, just spray painted white.

00:09:17 ◼   ► That's like instead of getting new cabinets.

00:09:19 ◼   ► And then they replaced the countertops with some kind of stone countertops.

00:09:23 ◼   ► They spent a bunch of money to "fix things that did not need fixing."

00:09:28 ◼   ► And things that did need fixing, like every appliance in the house, remains the same.

00:09:34 ◼   ► They replaced a really old '80s couch with a newer couch that was an upgrade.

00:09:40 ◼   ► But the room they have in it is still a little bit ridiculous.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I'm saying is I could have brought my dog.

00:09:46 ◼   ► I wouldn't have had to bring the dog because the house is all remodeled.

00:09:50 ◼   ► It would have been fine.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Have you picked Daisy up yet or is that tomorrow?

00:09:55 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:09:57 ◼   ► I'm assuming she's at a kennel or something now.

00:09:59 ◼   ► A kennel, yes.

00:10:01 ◼   ► We sent her to the orphanage.

00:10:04 ◼   ► First of all, Daisy gets picked up immediately upon returning.

00:10:09 ◼   ► You're going to leave the dog stranded while you're like, "I'll just get my dog tomorrow."

00:10:13 ◼   ► You're going to get the dog immediately.

00:10:14 ◼   ► And second of all, Tina came home before I did, so she got the dog.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Oh, that's right.

00:10:19 ◼   ► I knew that.

00:10:20 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I thought you had come home before her, but in retrospect, I don't know why I thought

00:10:23 ◼   ► that.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Wait, so where is the dog?

00:10:25 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Where was Daisy when you guys were both gone?

00:10:28 ◼   ► She goes to a doggy playdate four days a week where she just, in the middle of the day,

00:10:34 ◼   ► she goes and hangs out with a bunch of other dogs and runs around.

00:10:38 ◼   ► And the person who does those doggy playgroups also does boarding, and so that's where she

00:10:42 ◼   ► was.

00:10:43 ◼   ► So she's boarded there several times.

00:10:45 ◼   ► It's just a person at their house, and there's a bunch of other dogs that she knows already

00:10:48 ◼   ► there, so it's great fun for her as well.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Everyone's on vacation.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Always on vacation in New York and Massachusetts.

00:10:55 ◼   ► All right, to go back a half step, I think we should start the follow-up with the most

00:11:00 ◼   ► important follow-up.

00:11:01 ◼   ► I know that I am on pins and needles to find out the one true version of the story of the

00:11:08 ◼   ► Apple sticker on your Civic from 20 years ago.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Please, Jon, fill me in.

00:11:12 ◼   ► What was the story with your sticker on your Civic?

00:11:13 ◼   ► It's actually related to a topic farther down in the notes that you may or may not get to.

00:11:20 ◼   ► I forgot, oh, it was some Ask ATP question a week or two ago.

00:11:24 ◼   ► It was like, "Do you put stickers on your cars or your iPads or something like that?"

00:11:27 ◼   ► And I said I had one sticker on my first car, which is a Honda Civic.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And first of all, I'm surprised my wife didn't call me on this.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Maybe she didn't hear the episode yet.

00:11:36 ◼   ► But when I was listening back to it, I heard myself say that I had an Apple logo sticker

00:11:41 ◼   ► on the back window of my Honda Civic, and I said it was a white Apple logo sticker.

00:11:48 ◼   ► But by the timelines, I think this might have been before Apple had dropped the rainbow

00:11:53 ◼   ► logo.

00:11:54 ◼   ► It was a '92 Civic, but I didn't get it new, right?

00:11:58 ◼   ► So maybe this is like '98.

00:12:01 ◼   ► When did they drop the rainbow?

00:12:02 ◼   ► Maybe around the iMac.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Anyway, bottom line is, good thing I have photos.

00:12:06 ◼   ► I went into my photo collection and looked it up, because as soon as I heard that, I'm

00:12:09 ◼   ► like, "Wait, it wasn't white, was it?"

00:12:10 ◼   ► It was a rainbow sticker, rainbow logo Apple sticker, which is what used to come with all

00:12:15 ◼   ► your Macs before they started to go to the solid color thing.

00:12:18 ◼   ► And the story that's related to it is the potential return of the rainbow Apple logo.

00:12:21 ◼   ► We'll see if we get to that this week.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I feel better for having known that piece of information, and your old man Mac user

00:12:26 ◼   ► cred has been restored, don't you worry.

00:12:28 ◼   ► Also, it wasn't on the rear quarter window, because the '92 Civic did not have a rear

00:12:32 ◼   ► quarter window.

00:12:33 ◼   ► It just had a little piece of plastic there.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Like, you know how there's the part that goes up and down that has straight sides, right?

00:12:38 ◼   ► And sometimes they have that little tiny bit.

00:12:40 ◼   ► First of all, the little bit of window would have been tiny, but second, it's a very inexpensive

00:12:44 ◼   ► car, so it was just plastic.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Marco, do you feel better knowing this?

00:12:47 ◼   ► Because I know I do.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I'm not even sure I know it now.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I'll send you pictures.

00:12:52 ◼   ► You've seen the picture of me with my cool white Civic, right?

00:12:55 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:12:56 ◼   ► I really want to see this picture now.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I really want to.

00:12:58 ◼   ► When I show it to you, it will look familiar.

00:13:00 ◼   ► It's not in front of me now, because it's in my wife's photo library, which I have no

00:13:04 ◼   ► access to on this Mac, of course.

00:13:06 ◼   ► All right, let's move on with other beach-related follow-up.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Michael T. Raymond has some information for us about underwater swimming.

00:13:13 ◼   ► So this was with regard to Marco learning how to swim, specifically in the ocean, and

00:13:18 ◼   ► Michael had some feedback for us.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Would you like to take it away, John?

00:13:22 ◼   ► Yeah, this was about my suggestion that Marco spent some time in his pool, being comfortable

00:13:27 ◼   ► holding his breath, and you can build up your lung capacity by holding your breath and swimming

00:13:30 ◼   ► underwater back and forth.

00:13:31 ◼   ► A fun thing you can do in a pool, and Michael T. Raymond had this long, harrowing email

00:13:36 ◼   ► explaining how you could die instantly without knowing it, even if you're a lifeguard, because

00:13:42 ◼   ► you're all on him.

00:13:43 ◼   ► The problem is that people, almost invariably young males, which I guess excludes Marco,

00:13:50 ◼   ► figure out that you can extend the distance that you swim underwater by hyperventilating

00:13:54 ◼   ► right before.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And so you see this in movies sometimes, when a boat is capsizing and everyone's stuck on

00:13:59 ◼   ► a cruise ship beside an adventure or something, and they have to hold their breath and go

00:14:03 ◼   ► under a thing.

00:14:04 ◼   ► They breathe in and out real fast before diving under the water.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Have you seen that in a movie?

00:14:08 ◼   ► You know, I have not seen this in a movie, and I am really going to regret sharing this

00:14:11 ◼   ► out loud.

00:14:12 ◼   ► As usual, I haven't seen it.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Well, as usual, I'm going to regret saying this out loud.

00:14:17 ◼   ► There was a TV show, I don't remember the name of it, I will put a link in the show

00:14:21 ◼   ► notes for it, but there was a TV show way back in the day that starred Hulk Hogan, of

00:14:26 ◼   ► all people, and it was like two dudes with this cigarette boat who went and solved crimes

00:14:32 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:14:33 ◼   ► And I can't remember the name of the show, but I will never forget watching one episode

00:14:38 ◼   ► where they needed to, I don't know if the boat capsized or something, but something

00:14:42 ◼   ► happened where they needed to be underwater for a long time, and that's exactly what they

00:14:47 ◼   ► did.

00:14:48 ◼   ► They, you know, and then dove in, and I was like, what in tarnation just happened?

00:14:52 ◼   ► And at some point they explained, maybe beforehand, they explained what they were about to do.

00:14:55 ◼   ► And I was like, does that make sense?

00:14:57 ◼   ► Well, apparently, apparently it's real, but unwise.

00:15:00 ◼   ► So continue, please, sir.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's not just one particular movie or TV show.

00:15:04 ◼   ► It's a way to be able to stay underwater longer, but it lends itself to what's known as shallow

00:15:09 ◼   ► water blackout or shallow water drowning, where it upsets the balance of stuff that

00:15:13 ◼   ► normally forces you to do a service and take a breath so that you can stay underwater longer,

00:15:17 ◼   ► which allows you to deprive your brain of oxygen for longer than you would expect.

00:15:22 ◼   ► And then you just basically black out while you're underwater, which is bad because as

00:15:26 ◼   ► soon as you become unconscious underwater, then you, you know, your body will take a

00:15:30 ◼   ► deep breath and then you'll inhale water and you will basically drown.

00:15:33 ◼   ► And at that point, your brain will have been without oxygen for a long time anyway, because

00:15:36 ◼   ► that's what you were doing by extending the time you are underwater.

00:15:38 ◼   ► It was a very long email.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Bottom line is do not hyperventilate before going under as a way to try to, you know,

00:15:45 ◼   ► let yourself break your record of going back and forth.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Just do it the old fashioned straight up way.

00:15:49 ◼   ► No, no pre-hyperventilating apparently is very dangerous.

00:15:51 ◼   ► And I'll just add to this.

00:15:52 ◼   ► This is like a specific case of the general idea of the buddy system.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Don't swim anywhere ever by yourself if you can help it.

00:16:01 ◼   ► It's always good to have someone else there with you because water is dangerous.

00:16:05 ◼   ► And even if you are an experienced swimmer, you can get tired.

00:16:08 ◼   ► You can knock your head on something.

00:16:09 ◼   ► You can have low blood sugar and faint.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Any of those things happen while you're in water.

00:16:13 ◼   ► It's very bad.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Always have someone with you.

00:16:16 ◼   ► The television show that I was thinking of is Thunder in Paradise, which, and apparently

00:16:24 ◼   ► now that I'm reading the Wikipedia page, it was, I guess, Knight Rider on the water to

00:16:28 ◼   ► some degree.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Thunder in Paradise Fallacy Adventures.

00:16:30 ◼   ► It wishes.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:16:32 ◼   ► It Fallacy Adventures with two ex-navy SEALs who work as mercenaries out of their tropical

00:16:36 ◼   ► resort headquarters along Florida's Gulf Coast using their futuristic high-tech boat nicknamed

00:16:40 ◼   ► Thunder.

00:16:41 ◼   ► They travel around the world fighting various criminals and villains.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I know you feel better for having known that particular piece of information.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Unrelated to Hydra Thunder.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Yes, which is a fantastic video game.

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00:18:51 ◼   ► I had asked last episode, which feels like it was 17 years ago that we recorded it, for

00:18:56 ◼   ► an idea for what to do about ditching Dropbox, because I was very upset with Dropbox and

00:19:00 ◼   ► I had kicked the tires very briefly on Synology Drive as a replacement for Dropbox.

00:19:07 ◼   ► And my initial impression after having spent 30 seconds with it was that it's too much

00:19:12 ◼   ► like Google Apps with like documents and spreadsheets and all sorts of things I don't care about.

00:19:17 ◼   ► Well, many people very gratefully, or very gracefully I should say, wrote in and said,

00:19:23 ◼   ► "No, no, no, really, it's not bad, you should try it."

00:19:25 ◼   ► And it turns out it's not bad and I'm glad I tried it.

00:19:27 ◼   ► So the good news, it does seem like it is very similar to a hosted Dropbox that's on

00:19:33 ◼   ► my Synology.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And so it seems to work pretty much instantly.

00:19:38 ◼   ► It works inside or outside of my home network.

00:19:41 ◼   ► In that sense, everything seems good.

00:19:42 ◼   ► You know, it operates just like Dropbox would.

00:19:45 ◼   ► It has a native app for the Mac.

00:19:46 ◼   ► Thankfully, one of the few good, there are almost no options in this app, but one of

00:19:50 ◼   ► the few options that it does have is to make a grayscale menu.

00:19:55 ◼   ► What do we call these things?

00:19:56 ◼   ► Menu bar items on the upper right?

00:19:57 ◼   ► I don't know, whatever it's called.

00:19:59 ◼   ► You can do a grayscale one of those, which is great because otherwise it was going to

00:20:03 ◼   ► be the only colored icon in my little, I don't want to call it a tray lest John yell at me,

00:20:07 ◼   ► but we'll call it a tray.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Anyways, so on the surface, seems good.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Bad news, however, the client is very crash-plan-y, very Java-y.

00:20:18 ◼   ► It is not very native at all.

00:20:20 ◼   ► And in particular, the notifications, which can get very chatty, don't use the notification

00:20:25 ◼   ► center stuff that is native to Mac OS.

00:20:28 ◼   ► It looks very much like, what was the growl that was around before notification center

00:20:33 ◼   ► was a thing.

00:20:35 ◼   ► I think there may be a mechanism to get like a synced folder to someone that does not have

00:20:41 ◼   ► an account on your Synology, but it does not seem clear to me the mechanism by which one

00:20:47 ◼   ► does that.

00:20:48 ◼   ► So I'm 50/50 on that.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Additionally, when I tried to set it up, port forwarding requirements were extremely ambiguous.

00:20:54 ◼   ► It seemed like it wanted other ports besides the ones that I already had exposed to be

00:20:59 ◼   ► forwarded, but I couldn't find any documentation about what they wanted forwarded specifically.

00:21:04 ◼   ► So I had to use Synology's Quick Connect, which is sort of kind of like a dynamic DNS

00:21:09 ◼   ► sort of thing for your Synology where your Synology phones home and says, "Casey Synology

00:21:15 ◼   ► is at IP address 192.168.1.1."

00:21:18 ◼   ► Of course, that would be an externally accessible one.

00:21:20 ◼   ► You get the idea.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Anyway, so I did have to use Quick Connect for the first time, and then it worked no

00:21:23 ◼   ► sweat.

00:21:25 ◼   ► So it is not flawless by any means.

00:21:27 ◼   ► I don't think it would solve the problem for the three of us of passing our microphone

00:21:31 ◼   ► recordings around.

00:21:32 ◼   ► But if you're just doing stuff within your own family, for example, or people who may

00:21:37 ◼   ► have an account on your Synology, in that sense, it seems to work really well.

00:21:41 ◼   ► So I have stopped using the Dropbox client on all of my computers, at least for now.

00:21:46 ◼   ► When I do need to share files with somebody, I'll just go to the web interface and upload

00:21:49 ◼   ► them.

00:21:50 ◼   ► And so far, so good.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Synology Drive seems good.

00:21:52 ◼   ► The other thing that was offered as probably the second most popular contender was, I think,

00:21:56 ◼   ► Resilio?

00:21:57 ◼   ► I might have that name wrong, but it was the BitTorrent-based thing that has recently changed

00:22:03 ◼   ► its name to something else.

00:22:05 ◼   ► And that was the other thing that people said worked really well.

00:22:08 ◼   ► I have not tried that.

00:22:09 ◼   ► So Synology Drive, don't fall trap like I did to it looking like enterprise garbage.

00:22:16 ◼   ► It actually seems pretty good.

00:22:18 ◼   ► Have you guys explored any of this or don't care?

00:22:20 ◼   ► These things have social components.

00:22:22 ◼   ► They have network effect components.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Like if you only need to share something with yourself and your other computer, and you

00:22:27 ◼   ► have no need for shared folders, well, I got iCloud Drive.

00:22:31 ◼   ► That's everywhere.

00:22:32 ◼   ► It's built into all my computers.

00:22:33 ◼   ► I'm already paying for the space.

00:22:35 ◼   ► So I might as well just use that.

00:22:37 ◼   ► The whole reason why so many of us feel like we're stuck to some degree on Dropbox is because

00:22:40 ◼   ► it has social network lock-in.

00:22:43 ◼   ► There are files that we have to share with people for folders, we have to share with

00:22:47 ◼   ► people for various workflows or things we like to do or things we need to do for work

00:22:50 ◼   ► or whatever else.

00:22:51 ◼   ► And so there is this degree of lock-in.

00:22:54 ◼   ► And so for anything to come along to replace it, it has to be something that has a really

00:23:01 ◼   ► large social network already or a really large install base already among people who we would

00:23:06 ◼   ► need to trade files with or sync files with.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And so that's why I think ultimately nothing is going to stand a chance against Dropbox

00:23:13 ◼   ► in that way except maybe iCloud Drive.

00:23:17 ◼   ► If you have an Apple-centric work group like we do, then we can very easily-- but when

00:23:22 ◼   ► all this Catalina and everything ships in a few months, chances are the three of us--

00:23:27 ◼   ► well, John can't because Mac Pro can't run it.

00:23:29 ◼   ► But chances are two of us can switch to this new iCloud Drive-based system and have shared

00:23:34 ◼   ► folders that way, and we can get rid of Dropbox.

00:23:37 ◼   ► But most of the other solutions that are like, well, yeah, this is great if you're the only

00:23:41 ◼   ► person who's using it.

00:23:42 ◼   ► But if you're the only person who's using it, you probably don't even need something

00:23:45 ◼   ► like this, or at least you need it a lot less.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And/or iCloud Drive can be fine for you.

00:23:50 ◼   ► So ultimately, I'm not really interested in trying any of these other solutions.

00:23:54 ◼   ► I think I'm just going to hang out with Dropbox until iCloud Drive launches with its shared

00:24:00 ◼   ► folder support, hope it works, and switch to that.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't disagree with you.

00:24:05 ◼   ► The one nice thing about using something on your own private cloud or hardware or whatever

00:24:11 ◼   ► is that I have no space quota of any kind.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Like if I wanted to put 15 terabytes in this quote-unquote "Dropbox," I could.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Now I don't see myself doing that.

00:24:21 ◼   ► And in fact, I removed a lot of old cruft when I pulled pretty much everything out of

00:24:25 ◼   ► my Dropbox and put it onto this thing.

00:24:27 ◼   ► But I think I'm going to stick with it for my own personal stuff.

00:24:31 ◼   ► As you had said, Marco, I completely concur that if you do any sort of social thing with

00:24:37 ◼   ► this, as the three of us do, this is probably not a good solution.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And if there is a good solution for that, for having people who are not on my Synology

00:24:46 ◼   ► have access to some sort of shared folder, I will put out a call for help for that, please.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Since you fine ladies and gentlemen, we're so great to provide such good help on this.

00:24:55 ◼   ► If you have an answer for that with regard to Synology Drive, I'd love to hear it.

00:24:58 ◼   ► But one way or another, I suspect you're right, Marco, that iCloud Drive is going to take

00:25:01 ◼   ► up this spot for most of us, including probably you and me, if not Jon as well.

00:25:07 ◼   ► One aspect that I like of the original Dropbox and the version that I continue to use is

00:25:13 ◼   ► that it has complete copies of everything, plus or minus selective sync, but complete

00:25:18 ◼   ► copies of everything on the Macs that are connected to Dropbox.

00:25:22 ◼   ► No weirdness, no user space file system, no magic automatically downloading files.

00:25:28 ◼   ► They're just there.

00:25:30 ◼   ► And it's a cloud service where all of my files are kept in somebody else's computer far away

00:25:35 ◼   ► that will survive if my house burns down.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And also, that cloud thing keeps version history for some period of time.

00:25:45 ◼   ► And a lot of those things are not true of Synology.

00:25:47 ◼   ► It's not in a cloud anywhere unless I use B2 to back it up to the cloud.

00:25:51 ◼   ► It doesn't have a versioning.

00:25:53 ◼   ► And it does.

00:25:54 ◼   ► The Synology Drive, I believe, has versioning for possibly infinite amounts of time.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I'm not confident I'm right about that, but I have seen mention of versioning somewhere.

00:26:03 ◼   ► All right.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And then your description of the client interface is not particularly reassuring.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Not that I love the Dropbox client, but a weird-- and same thing with iCloud Drive.

00:26:15 ◼   ► Despite our complaints about the Dropbox client, as mentioned the last show, I think, you can

00:26:21 ◼   ► just completely uninstall the Dropbox client and either use the web interface or use transmit.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Both of those interfaces do not mock up your computer with anything and still allow you

00:26:30 ◼   ► to participate in the network effect like we're all using Dropbox type of thing.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Whereas if we switch to iCloud Drive, I think there's a web interface, but I'm not sure

00:26:40 ◼   ► if there are any other interfaces to iCloud Drive that are more sensible, let's say, or

00:26:45 ◼   ► more trustworthy as far as I'm concerned than the thing that the Finder exposes for iCloud

00:26:50 ◼   ► Drive, which I have found to be terrifying in so many ways.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And I'm not sure, does iCloud Drive have versioning?

00:26:55 ◼   ► I'm not sure about that.

00:26:56 ◼   ► I don't think so, but again, I'm not terribly confident.

00:26:59 ◼   ► The chat room is saying that I am right at least in part--

00:27:01 ◼   ► Would you trust it if it did?

00:27:02 ◼   ► I wouldn't trust it either if it did.

00:27:04 ◼   ► That's true.

00:27:06 ◼   ► The chat room is saying that Synology Drive does have at least some amount of versioning,

00:27:10 ◼   ► but it doesn't sound like anyone's really played with it heavily at this time.

00:27:13 ◼   ► So I continue to prefer the actual cloud solutions that have options for interfaces, even Google

00:27:20 ◼   ► Drive.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I think Transmit does Google Drive as well, and then of course there's the web interface,

00:27:25 ◼   ► and then there's the Mac interface, which is not great.

00:27:28 ◼   ► But I like the idea of it being a cloud service far away from my computer and then me having

00:27:31 ◼   ► options of how I have some kind of interface to it.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And of course, Google Drive sharing thing requires people to have a Google account.

00:27:38 ◼   ► I think every time I try to share with somebody, I think they all end up having to have a Google

00:27:42 ◼   ► account, but I'm not sure if that's true.

00:27:44 ◼   ► But anyway, bottom line is I have successfully shared many, many files using Google Drive

00:27:47 ◼   ► where I have tons of space, mostly because the people I share with all have Google accounts.

00:27:53 ◼   ► And I continue to like the network effects of Dropbox and my many options for using the

00:27:59 ◼   ► clients.

00:28:00 ◼   ► If the Mac client becomes unusable, then obviously I'll look elsewhere, but elsewhere might be,

00:28:05 ◼   ► "Okay, uninstall the Mac client and just use Transmit."

00:28:07 ◼   ► I think that may be an acceptable solution for certain limited uses of Dropbox.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Mainly, I'm just still scared of iCloud Drive just because I've not had successful experiences

00:28:18 ◼   ► with it, so I'll let somebody else go first and tell me if it's safe.

00:28:22 ◼   ► That's probably going to be Marco and me.

00:28:23 ◼   ► So I'm wondering, so I had this idea that I haven't had time to try yet, and I'm a little

00:28:28 ◼   ► scared to.

00:28:29 ◼   ► So John, tell me how this could fail and why.

00:28:32 ◼   ► So I did for, last time I tried to give up Dropbox, I basically gave up Dropbox for like

00:28:38 ◼   ► a month or something like that, like about a year ago, because I got mad at them then

00:28:41 ◼   ► again.

00:28:42 ◼   ► Problem number one is that the iCloud Drive folder is some weird file path buried deep

00:28:48 ◼   ► in library mobile documents, something like that.

00:28:50 ◼   ► It's some big folder path that you're not really supposed to ever use the folder path.

00:28:54 ◼   ► It's totally obfuscated.

00:28:56 ◼   ► And then inside of it, and this is something that actually John Gruber brought up on last

00:29:00 ◼   ► week's talk show.

00:29:01 ◼   ► By the way, I was on the talk show this past week, you should go listen if you want to

00:29:03 ◼   ► hear more of me talking.

00:29:05 ◼   ► Anyway, so one thing he brought up the week before was that with iCloud Drive, it creates

00:29:10 ◼   ► all these folders for all these different apps that you have, so you are not really

00:29:14 ◼   ► creating the folder hierarchy.

00:29:16 ◼   ► If you create a folder in there, it's buried between like 17 other folders that you didn't

00:29:19 ◼   ► create, so it's kind of annoying.

00:29:20 ◼   ► So one thing I did a year ago when I was doing my Dropbox diet back then, I just created

00:29:26 ◼   ► a folder inside iCloud Drive called Dropbox, and I sim linked home/Dropbox to that, and

00:29:33 ◼   ► I just moved everything to that from my Dropbox, but that was actually mine.

00:29:37 ◼   ► And so I was able to use like my command line utilities and stuff that call into like some

00:29:43 ◼   ► of the various scripts I have in Dropbox.

00:29:45 ◼   ► That all just, it all just worked, because the file path was the same.

00:29:49 ◼   ► The only downside to it was that I didn't have shared folders, which is hopefully about

00:29:53 ◼   ► to get fixed, and that every time I would type in home/Dropbox as a folder path, it

00:30:03 ◼   ► wouldn't autocomplete the slash at the end, because it was a sim link.

00:30:07 ◼   ► I would have to type in the slash before it would autocomplete to the stuff below it.

00:30:11 ◼   ► So the idea I had earlier today is, what if I hard link a folder from iCloud Drive to home/Dropbox,

00:30:20 ◼   ► or the other way around?

00:30:23 ◼   ► And then wouldn't, so first of all, would Time Machine back that up as a normal folder,

00:30:30 ◼   ► and then would anything weird happen if I had a hard link into or out of iCloud Drive?

00:30:36 ◼   ► - What shell are you using that it wouldn't tab complete with the slash?

00:30:40 ◼   ► - Bash, the built-in one.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I mean, maybe, I don't know, does this change that for--

00:30:45 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, well just hit tab a second time.

00:30:47 ◼   ► TCSH does it on the single tab, but for Bash, just hit tab a second time and you'll get the

00:30:51 ◼   ► slash.

00:30:52 ◼   ► - That's a good one, right?

00:30:53 ◼   ► So anyway--

00:30:54 ◼   ► - Change the TCSH and you'll get it.

00:30:55 ◼   ► All right, so but--

00:30:56 ◼   ► - I'm not gonna change my entire shell if I'm not willing to hit tab twice.

00:30:59 ◼   ► - There's probably some setting in Bash that lets you control that.

00:31:02 ◼   ► So I would not do this.

00:31:03 ◼   ► - Why not?

00:31:04 ◼   ► - Either one of those things.

00:31:06 ◼   ► Don't mix cloud file system thingies.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Like I understand that it's possible that it worked, and that's fine, but you're relying

00:31:14 ◼   ► on unintended cooperative behavior.

00:31:19 ◼   ► Because all of these things have some mechanism monitoring the local file system, and some

00:31:22 ◼   ► mechanism is syncing those changes up, and if you try to do what you're doing where there's

00:31:28 ◼   ► basically a single directory that two cloud file thingies think they own--

00:31:33 ◼   ► - Wait, wait, to be clear, I would not have Dropbox installed anymore.

00:31:38 ◼   ► The only reason it would be called home slash Dropbox is for all my file paths for all my

00:31:43 ◼   ► scripts not to break.

00:31:44 ◼   ► - Okay, well so my second concern then is if you don't have Dropbox installed and you're

00:31:49 ◼   ► just doing it with iCloud Drive, I would be worried that iCloud Drive really, really expects

00:31:55 ◼   ► its stuff to be where it expects it to be.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Simlink is not the same thing.

00:32:00 ◼   ► Hardlink to directory could be done.

00:32:03 ◼   ► You could also use Firmlinks if you can find the private API that creates them, but all

00:32:06 ◼   ► of those things are not the same as directories, and I don't know how well the various demons

00:32:11 ◼   ► that are on iCloud Drive handle those things, because they would have to be designed to

00:32:15 ◼   ► explicitly handle them, I believe.

00:32:18 ◼   ► Even in the case of Firmlinks, I'm not sure about that.

00:32:22 ◼   ► And Hardlink's directories might work.

00:32:25 ◼   ► Because we don't have the source code to these demons, it's not clear how well they'll handle

00:32:30 ◼   ► it.

00:32:31 ◼   ► Now if I work with Simlinks, you'll be like, "Oh, fine," but you're relying on an implementation

00:32:34 ◼   ► that, it may work now, but they may make some change to it in the future, all of a sudden

00:32:40 ◼   ► it stops working or it hoses all your files or deletes them all or something like that.

00:32:43 ◼   ► I don't feel like this is a supported scenario, despite the fact that we all do things like

00:32:48 ◼   ► this.

00:32:49 ◼   ► To give an example, I had a bunch of my BBEdit directories Simlinked to Dropbox for a really

00:32:53 ◼   ► long time.

00:32:54 ◼   ► I think at one point it was actually recommended, "Oh, if you want all your BBEdit settings

00:32:59 ◼   ► to sync between your computers, just put them in Dropbox and then go to Library, Application

00:33:04 ◼   ► Support, BBEdit, blah, blah, blah, and make a bunch of Simlinks that point to your Dropbox."

00:33:07 ◼   ► And it worked fine for years and years until it didn't.

00:33:10 ◼   ► And when it didn't is when BBEdit decided, "We're going to have official support for

00:33:14 ◼   ► having your stuff in Dropbox," and their official support stopped working with the Simlink thing

00:33:20 ◼   ► and said, "We will look in your Dropbox and see if the files are there and they have to

00:33:23 ◼   ► be in a particular location, but we will totally ignore your Simlinks."

00:33:26 ◼   ► And there was, you know, I read the release notes and I'm on the list, so I was able to

00:33:30 ◼   ► fix things, but everything just would have stopped working.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I would have had fresh preferences or would have hosed my preferences.

00:33:35 ◼   ► I don't write them with fresh versions if I didn't keep track of that.

00:33:38 ◼   ► And that was a more or less supported configuration recommended by the application developer at

00:33:42 ◼   ► one point.

00:33:44 ◼   ► But yeah, for Cloud Drive, stuff like this, I would like, "Give iCloud Drive the best

00:33:48 ◼   ► possible chance at success.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Use it in the default mode."

00:33:53 ◼   ► Then you can say, "Look, if it messes up, it's not because I was doing some weird stuff

00:33:56 ◼   ► behind its back."

00:33:57 ◼   ► If you really want to keep your muscle memory the same or whatever, maybe like do it in

00:34:04 ◼   ► the opposite direction.

00:34:06 ◼   ► I know as everyone who seems to be confused about the order of arguments to the LN command,

00:34:12 ◼   ► we had the verbal equivalent where what you described wasn't clear to me whether you were

00:34:16 ◼   ► Simlinking from the Dropbox location into iCloud thing or vice versa.

00:34:22 ◼   ► But if you Simlink into the iCloud location, then iCloud should be none the wiser because

00:34:26 ◼   ► all the Simlinks are in the old locations where Dropbox was.

00:34:29 ◼   ► It just means you can't go in the reverse direction.

00:34:31 ◼   ► So if you're just Simlinking into it, like Dropbox is Simlink into the iCloud Drive,

00:34:37 ◼   ► then that's fine.

00:34:38 ◼   ► But it wouldn't Simlink out of iCloud Drive into the actual Dropbox directory.

00:34:43 ◼   ► I mean, it reserves your muscle memory and all your commands and stuff, right?

00:34:49 ◼   ► Because they're doing tilde slash Dropbox slash whatever and that will work.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Although, who knows how many commands and scripts you have that might be confused by

00:34:56 ◼   ► that if someone runs a real path or whatever on a path and resolves it.

00:35:01 ◼   ► I mean, you have some regular expression running against the path that's no longer going to

00:35:04 ◼   ► match because it's not where it was.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Let's give iCloud Drive a chance here.

00:35:11 ◼   ► All we are saying is give iCloud a chance.

00:35:14 ◼   ► I can't believe Bash makes you tab a second time for that slash.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Barbaric.

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00:37:18 ◼   ► All right, and then we had something that was kind of intended to be an Ask ATP, but

00:37:24 ◼   ► it's also sort of follow up and one way or another it was a really good question.

00:37:28 ◼   ► So I'm going to ask it on behalf of Justin Cardinal.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Marco, what steps are you taking in Overcast's recommendation algorithm to avoid the radicalization

00:37:35 ◼   ► issues that have resulted from YouTube's similar approach?

00:37:38 ◼   ► I thought that was a really good question and I commend Justin for asking it in a way

00:37:43 ◼   ► that wasn't snarky.

00:37:45 ◼   ► There's a way to ask this question like a jerk and that is not what Justin did.

00:37:47 ◼   ► So well done.

00:37:48 ◼   ► So Marco, what are you doing?

00:37:50 ◼   ► Before you answer this one, can you briefly explain what the radicalization issues are?

00:37:56 ◼   ► What is he talking about?

00:37:58 ◼   ► Basically Overcast has a new recommendation algorithm we discussed last week or the week

00:38:02 ◼   ► before, I forget.

00:38:04 ◼   ► And basically I'm looking at people who subscribe to this also subscribe to this.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And so I can provide recommendations based on what other people subscribe to who listen

00:38:12 ◼   ► to the shows you listen to.

00:38:14 ◼   ► The problem that happens with YouTube and I think Facebook has a similar problem, I

00:38:18 ◼   ► don't know if it's by Facebook to say, YouTube's algorithm will eventually make you, like if

00:38:24 ◼   ► you just keep clicking on like recommended videos in the sidebar from what you're looking

00:38:27 ◼   ► at, you will very quickly eventually get to like really radical conspiracy theory content

00:38:31 ◼   ► or stuff like that or hate content or whatever.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And so the algorithms on these big social networks that are very advanced optimize for

00:38:39 ◼   ► engagement.

00:38:40 ◼   ► So what that means on YouTube, you know, on Facebook that means like clicks and time,

00:38:44 ◼   ► you know, looking at stuff and sharing stuff.

00:38:46 ◼   ► On YouTube it means watch time and clicks.

00:38:49 ◼   ► So whatever you end up watching the most, spending the most time watching or clicking

00:38:54 ◼   ► on at least, YouTube then feeds that into the algorithm to recommend that content more

00:38:59 ◼   ► to other people.

00:39:00 ◼   ► And what tends to get clicked on and watched the most is stuff that makes people angry.

00:39:05 ◼   ► There's actually a really good CGP Grey video on this, like the mental virus thing or whatever

00:39:09 ◼   ► that was, we'll link to it.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Anger is a very powerful emotion.

00:39:13 ◼   ► Making people angry is a quick way to have something spread very quickly, virally online

00:39:16 ◼   ► and everything.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And so what ends up happening is because the algorithms are optimizing for whatever engagement

00:39:22 ◼   ► happens, good or bad, it still counts for engagement, then all this like, you know,

00:39:27 ◼   ► stuff that makes people angry ends up bubbling to the top and being recommended.

00:39:32 ◼   ► So the reason why I, so there's a number of layers to Overcast's engine that I think

00:39:38 ◼   ► won't let this be a problem.

00:39:40 ◼   ► I mean obviously time will tell and I'm happy to adjust it if it needs to be, but really

00:39:44 ◼   ► out there stuff in podcasts tends not to be found very easily because all podcasts that

00:39:51 ◼   ► are in the Apple podcast directory are reviewed by humans at Apple at submission time.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Now they're not listening to every episode, they're not, you know, like it's possible

00:40:01 ◼   ► for a podcast to get submitted, get reviewed by a human and then get, you know, get crazy

00:40:06 ◼   ► afterwards and you know, that can happen.

00:40:08 ◼   ► And podcasts can get delisted later, but it's more like only in response to complaints and

00:40:13 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:40:14 ◼   ► But like, but Apple does have humans screening things for initial submission.

00:40:19 ◼   ► So that initially cuts out tons of stuff from getting into the Apple podcast directory and

00:40:23 ◼   ► there is this process for things to get removed.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Now almost all podcast apps that are on iOS, including Overcast, use the Apple podcast

00:40:32 ◼   ► directory somehow.

00:40:33 ◼   ► The way I use it is I use it as a filter.

00:40:37 ◼   ► If something is not in the Apple podcast directory, I don't show it in search results and I don't

00:40:42 ◼   ► show it in any kind of editorial recommendation context like these recommendations.

00:40:47 ◼   ► So I basically, anything that is not listed in Apple podcasts, I basically treat it as

00:40:51 ◼   ► private.

00:40:52 ◼   ► So if you enter the URL for it, you can subscribe to it.

00:40:54 ◼   ► Like if you know the feed URL, fine, I don't care, but I'm not going to promote anything

00:40:58 ◼   ► that's not in Apple's directory.

00:41:00 ◼   ► So that right there filters out a whole lot of the really extreme and harmful content.

00:41:05 ◼   ► I do have like a switch that I can press on a podcast that even if it is something that

00:41:10 ◼   ► is in the Apple directory, I can say this is not appropriate to be recommended to people.

00:41:17 ◼   ► I don't know if that's currently active for anything.

00:41:20 ◼   ► I had to look it up.

00:41:21 ◼   ► It's not a switch I use more than like twice a year or something.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Sometimes I use it like if some podcaster writes to me and doesn't like that their podcast

00:41:27 ◼   ► shows up in Overcast, I can hit that switch for that, but that's very rare.

00:41:32 ◼   ► The other thing is that I think podcast subscription activity is very different from clicking a

00:41:39 ◼   ► link once in a web browser.

00:41:42 ◼   ► If you click something and it makes you angry, and even if it takes you like two or three

00:41:46 ◼   ► minutes of watch time to realize this is making you angry and you back out of it, YouTube

00:41:52 ◼   ► doesn't know that that just made you angry.

00:41:53 ◼   ► All they know is you just click on that and watch it for two or three minutes.

00:41:57 ◼   ► So they're going to show you more stuff like that.

00:41:59 ◼   ► In a podcast app, if you subscribe to a podcast, first of all, that's kind of a bigger action

00:42:03 ◼   ► if you're going to subscribe to a podcast.

00:42:06 ◼   ► And then it ends with this podcast is not for you and you delete that subscription if

00:42:09 ◼   ► you unsubscribe from it.

00:42:11 ◼   ► That data's gone out of my database.

00:42:13 ◼   ► That's a hard delete.

00:42:14 ◼   ► If you subscribe to a podcast and delete it, I have no record that you ever did subscribe

00:42:19 ◼   ► to it.

00:42:20 ◼   ► The subscription is a row in a table that gets deleted.

00:42:23 ◼   ► It's not marked as deleted.

00:42:24 ◼   ► It's not soft deleted.

00:42:26 ◼   ► It's an actual SQL delete statement.

00:42:28 ◼   ► So once somebody unsubscribes from a podcast, next time that podcast's recommendations are

00:42:34 ◼   ► refreshed, which is every time the feed is crawled, or rather every time it has updated

00:42:39 ◼   ► contents, that data's going to be gone then.

00:42:41 ◼   ► So it's not going to keep contributing.

00:42:42 ◼   ► So the only way to have my algorithm recommend stuff to you is if people are subscribed to

00:42:49 ◼   ► it currently.

00:42:51 ◼   ► So while it is possible for something to maybe get a whole bunch of rolling one-time subscriptions

00:42:55 ◼   ► every time it happens to update itself, that's not going to be the common case.

00:43:00 ◼   ► So ultimately, I don't think my algorithm is going to fall prey to the same types of

00:43:05 ◼   ► dysfunction that the big guys' algorithms do that could potentially make me promote

00:43:12 ◼   ► weird radical content more than usual.

00:43:14 ◼   ► I feel like the alignment of incentives are different too.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Marco is not incentivized to try to get people to subscribe to more podcasts or listen to

00:43:32 ◼   ► more podcasts or whatever.

00:43:34 ◼   ► No, technically I am.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I have ads in the podcast player.

00:43:37 ◼   ► So the more time you spend-- I know, but if someone is subscribed to a single podcast

00:43:43 ◼   ► that listened to 24 hours a day, that is better to you than someone who's subscribed to 1,000

00:43:48 ◼   ► podcasts that have listened for two minutes each.

00:43:49 ◼   ► So you're not incentivized to try to get them.

00:43:54 ◼   ► The advertising is not as associated like it is with videos because if you see ads in

00:43:58 ◼   ► YouTube, you'll see an ad at the start of a video.

00:44:01 ◼   ► So watching one video for 20 minutes that has a single ad at the beginning is worse

00:44:05 ◼   ► for YouTube and worse for the creators than watching 20 videos that are a minute long,

00:44:09 ◼   ► each of which shows a head in front of it.

00:44:11 ◼   ► I know YouTube doesn't work exactly that way, but the incentives are different.

00:44:15 ◼   ► You just want people to be in your application.

00:44:17 ◼   ► You don't necessarily need them to be hopping from thing to thing.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Podcasts in general are longer than YouTube videos.

00:44:25 ◼   ► There's not many two or three minute podcasts.

00:44:28 ◼   ► There's tons of two or three minute YouTube videos.

00:44:30 ◼   ► So I just feel like it's a different incentive structure for both the podcast makers who

00:44:38 ◼   ► generally don't want to put out hundreds of two to three minute podcasts per day, but

00:44:42 ◼   ► rather one 30 minute podcast a week or every day.

00:44:48 ◼   ► It's like long format versus short format.

00:44:51 ◼   ► The advertising model is different.

00:44:53 ◼   ► The advertising inside the podcast is different than it is on YouTube videos.

00:44:56 ◼   ► The advertising in the client is different than it is.

00:44:57 ◼   ► It's just that the revenue sharing with YouTube selling the ads that run in front of other

00:45:02 ◼   ► people's things, then YouTube shares the revenue.

00:45:04 ◼   ► That's not how overcast works.

00:45:07 ◼   ► It's different enough that I feel like there's not enough in common to end up in a similar

00:45:11 ◼   ► situation.

00:45:13 ◼   ► Honestly, being audio only eliminates a large category of toxic engagement or whatever you

00:45:23 ◼   ► want to call it.

00:45:24 ◼   ► The example I kept thinking of are those – I forget what they're called.

00:45:27 ◼   ► I knew at one point.

00:45:28 ◼   ► I'm glad.

00:45:29 ◼   ► I don't remember.

00:45:30 ◼   ► Please don't tell me.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Those clusters of images that you see at the bottom of websites that make you lower your

00:45:34 ◼   ► opinion of the website.

00:45:35 ◼   ► You know what I'm talking about.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Like celebrity, look at them and buy these cheap shoes and 11 ways you can turbocharge

00:45:42 ◼   ► your blog or whatever.

00:45:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:44 ◼   ► It's like six pictures and they're all appealing to base emotions.

00:45:48 ◼   ► There's going to be a sexy lady.

00:45:51 ◼   ► There's going to be something really gross.

00:45:53 ◼   ► There's going to be a thing that appeals to your sense of gossip or knowing what people

00:46:01 ◼   ► happen.

00:46:02 ◼   ► There will be some kind of celebrity thing.

00:46:04 ◼   ► There will be some kind of thing that appeals to your sense of insecurity about your personal

00:46:11 ◼   ► relationships or your health.

00:46:13 ◼   ► There's like six boxes and each one does a thing.

00:46:17 ◼   ► They're all gross and they're all trying to get you to engage with them in some way.

00:46:25 ◼   ► Each one of those things relies on the fact that when you're scrolling some article

00:46:30 ◼   ► on a website whose opinion is about to go down when you get to the bottom, these images

00:46:38 ◼   ► scroll up and you're confronted with all of them essentially at once because there's visual

00:46:43 ◼   ► information.

00:46:44 ◼   ► They have text in them, yes, and they have pictures, but there they are.

00:46:47 ◼   ► There is no equivalent of suddenly being assaulted with six different one-sentence come-ons in

00:46:52 ◼   ► a podcast player because you can't hear six snippets of audio at a time and you're not

00:46:56 ◼   ► going to engage with it in that way because it's visual and because they can put text

00:47:01 ◼   ► and visuals as well as regular visuals.

00:47:04 ◼   ► It's a lot easier to appeal to all of the base instincts in a person, whether it's sex

00:47:13 ◼   ► appeal or insecurity.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Those are the main ones, sex appeal and insecurity.

00:47:17 ◼   ► And I guess that's it.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I'm not trying to think of if there's a third pillar there.

00:47:21 ◼   ► I feel like it can all be reduced to lust and insecurity in one form or another.

00:47:26 ◼   ► Immediately poking your lizard brain in those places, not sort of against your will, but

00:47:33 ◼   ► by looking at that section of the screen, it's like poke, poke, poke.

00:47:36 ◼   ► And that's what leads to the radicalization on YouTube.

00:47:39 ◼   ► It's like, what will cause people to go and click on that thing?

00:47:44 ◼   ► Something sexy or something that appeals to your sense of insecurity about something.

00:47:50 ◼   ► And the more gross and periant, the more extreme, the more likely someone is to click on it.

00:47:59 ◼   ► So that just drives the cycle.

00:48:01 ◼   ► It's like, okay, well, you clicked on something in this sidebar.

00:48:04 ◼   ► Now what is it going to take to get you to click?

00:48:06 ◼   ► You're mad about the last video.

00:48:07 ◼   ► What is it going to take to get you to click now?

00:48:09 ◼   ► And you end up in Nazis in three clicks.

00:48:13 ◼   ► Because you can't generally just have someone scroll to the bottom of a screen in Overcast

00:48:19 ◼   ► and have six audio snippets play in their ears and have some way for them to engage

00:48:22 ◼   ► with those.

00:48:23 ◼   ► It's just not the same.

00:48:26 ◼   ► I think it's just because it's audio and it's a more deliberate medium.

00:48:30 ◼   ► You have to actually choose to listen to a thing.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Listening takes longer than looking.

00:48:35 ◼   ► And it's harder to get at those insecurities in such a sort of broad bandwidth way.

00:48:43 ◼   ► You can still say things like, do you think you're too fat?

00:48:46 ◼   ► But it's just not the same as showing someone pinching some fat and saying magic, lose weight,

00:48:53 ◼   ► whatever.

00:48:54 ◼   ► It's just different.

00:48:55 ◼   ► So I haven't seen any podcast clients that suffer from this cycle of radicalization that

00:49:04 ◼   ► lots of these visual mediums do.

00:49:06 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's not possible.

00:49:07 ◼   ► It totally is possible.

00:49:08 ◼   ► You can add a visual component to podcasts.

00:49:10 ◼   ► You can add thumbnails to podcasts that are come ons for the things.

00:49:14 ◼   ► This is all technically possible to be done.

00:49:16 ◼   ► I just haven't seen it yet.

00:49:18 ◼   ► So we've been blessedly spared this particular disease for now.

00:49:23 ◼   ► For now.

00:49:25 ◼   ► So I need help.

00:49:27 ◼   ► I have shipped to beta testers something that I've called duplicate detection in Vignette.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And in discussing with Mike this very feature on a forthcoming episode of analog, it was

00:49:41 ◼   ► made very clear to me that duplicate detection is a terrible freaking name for it because

00:49:45 ◼   ► it makes people think that it's doing something it isn't.

00:49:47 ◼   ► So what am I talking about?

00:49:50 ◼   ► So what I have shipped to beta testers and hope to ship very, very soon to the greater

00:49:54 ◼   ► public is a mechanism by which Vignette will detect if it's offering up the same image

00:50:02 ◼   ► to replace one that you already have.

00:50:04 ◼   ► So let's run through like an example use case.

00:50:06 ◼   ► So you have my phone number in your contacts list.

00:50:11 ◼   ► You have an entry for me.

00:50:12 ◼   ► 867-5309 is sitting right there.

00:50:15 ◼   ► That's a reference, John.

00:50:16 ◼   ► And you eventually put in my Twitter handle and Vignette offers an image.

00:50:21 ◼   ► As we record this, that image would be me looking down to the left, bearded.

00:50:25 ◼   ► In fact, I think John, you took that picture if I'm not mistaken.

00:50:28 ◼   ► Anyways, you see that picture of me looking down to the left.

00:50:31 ◼   ► And you have Vignette update my picture.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And now my picture in your contact card is me looking down to the left.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Then fast forward a week.

00:50:39 ◼   ► And you go back to Vignette and it's looking at all these different things.

00:50:42 ◼   ► And today, as it exists in the App Store, it will offer you, "Hey, here's Casey's Twitter

00:50:46 ◼   ► avatar.

00:50:47 ◼   ► Would you like to use that to replace what you've already got?"

00:50:48 ◼   ► Well, what you've already got is Casey looking down to the left and here's the Twitter avatar,

00:50:51 ◼   ► which is Casey looking down to the left.

00:50:53 ◼   ► And that's not very helpful, right?

00:50:55 ◼   ► So what I was, I've been calling this internally.

00:50:57 ◼   ► And by that, I mean what I've been referring to it for myself is duplicate detection because

00:51:02 ◼   ► I'm detecting a duplicate image.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Now what Mike thought I was talking about, and I think that's completely reasonable,

00:51:07 ◼   ► is, "Oh, you have two entries for Casey in your contact list.

00:51:10 ◼   ► That's not good."

00:51:11 ◼   ► That is not at all what I'm talking about.

00:51:13 ◼   ► What I'm talking about is detecting when an image that I'm suggesting matches the image

00:51:19 ◼   ► that is already there.

00:51:21 ◼   ► So one of my questions is, "What should I call this?"

00:51:23 ◼   ► But we'll get to that in a minute.

00:51:24 ◼   ► But my bigger question is, and what I need advice on, is, "Okay, let's say my contact

00:51:30 ◼   ► card has my Instagram account, my Twitter account, my Facebook account, my GitHub account,

00:51:35 ◼   ► and my Gravatar.

00:51:36 ◼   ► And so in theory, Vignette will find, what is it, five, doesn't matter, some number of

00:51:42 ◼   ► images.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And they may or may not match.

00:51:44 ◼   ► So what if my Instagram avatar, which I think it is different than my Twitter avatar, and

00:51:49 ◼   ► what if my GitHub avatar is different than my Twitter avatar, and so on.

00:51:53 ◼   ► So what should happen if Vignette sees that the Twitter avatar matches the contact card,

00:52:01 ◼   ► but maybe other networks do not?

00:52:04 ◼   ► So my two choices here are, I could eliminate only the things that are found to be matched.

00:52:09 ◼   ► So in this example, Vignette would not offer Twitter as a way, as a thing to replace the

00:52:14 ◼   ► existing image, because it is the same image.

00:52:17 ◼   ► But it would offer Instagram and Gravatar and so on and so forth.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Or do I just throw away that entire contact the moment I find any matches?

00:52:28 ◼   ► So in that case, it says, "Well, even though the Instagram image doesn't look the same

00:52:33 ◼   ► as what's in this contact card, the Twitter image does match what's in this contact card,

00:52:38 ◼   ► so screw it, we're not even going to offer KC for updates."

00:52:42 ◼   ► Am I making any sense at all?

00:52:43 ◼   ► Let's start there.

00:52:44 ◼   ► - So first of all, the name for this feature should be nothing.

00:52:49 ◼   ► There should just be some logic that you do behind the scenes.

00:52:52 ◼   ► This is not a marketing feature, this is not a marketable feature.

00:52:56 ◼   ► This is just the way people expect these things to work.

00:52:58 ◼   ► They expect it to just figure it out.

00:53:00 ◼   ► So you're not going to get much recognition for this feature.

00:53:04 ◼   ► In the blog post where you release it and talk about it as an update note, you can describe

00:53:10 ◼   ► it there, but it doesn't really need a name.

00:53:13 ◼   ► And I think duplicate detection is a totally fine name.

00:53:15 ◼   ► I would maybe say duplicate photo detection to clarify that it's the photo, not the contact.

00:53:20 ◼   ► But anyway, this is not a marketing or public name as a marketable feature.

00:53:28 ◼   ► You don't currently have, well, hold on, maybe you do.

00:53:31 ◼   ► So I was going to say you don't currently have the concept of when you have multiple

00:53:35 ◼   ► image sources, which ones are the best ones.

00:53:39 ◼   ► But you do, because you choose which ones to show as the one, when you have the little

00:53:44 ◼   ► stack interface, like you have whatever you show as the suggested replacement.

00:53:48 ◼   ► So you do have logic there to somehow rank the images in order of what do you think is

00:53:55 ◼   ► the best one.

00:53:56 ◼   ► - That's adorable.

00:53:57 ◼   ► But that logic is just what's the first one.

00:53:59 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:54:00 ◼   ► - I appreciate your vote of confidence, but it is undeserved.

00:54:04 ◼   ► - So anyway, well, so I think this might be how you can potentially solve this, is develop

00:54:09 ◼   ► a stable ranking algorithm so that given a set of possible avatars on a contact, somehow

00:54:19 ◼   ► be able to rank which of these avatars are the best ones which to show people.

00:54:27 ◼   ► And so some obvious examples of this I would think would be which one is the largest one,

00:54:32 ◼   ► image size-wise, which is the biggest image.

00:54:35 ◼   ► If you have any way to get modification dates on any of these, I know that for most of the

00:54:40 ◼   ► services you probably don't, but if you have any way to get modification dates, you could

00:54:43 ◼   ► say like what's the most recently changed one.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Or you could do something more complex that you probably shouldn't engage the engineering

00:54:52 ◼   ► effort in, such as like which of these social networks have they posted on most recently.

00:54:56 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:54:57 ◼   ► - You know, but that's probably not worth the trouble.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - It isn't, but that is a clever solution to the problem.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I do like where your head's at, but I agree that it is a big waste of my time.

00:55:06 ◼   ► - Right, or you could, you know, if you're doing similar photo detection, you could see

00:55:11 ◼   ► like if they have three photos and two of them are the same and one of them's different,

00:55:16 ◼   ► probably the two that are the same, that's like the right one, right?

00:55:18 ◼   ► So then you could just pick the larger file size out of those two or whatever.

00:55:22 ◼   ► So there's a couple of heuristics you can use, but somehow develop like a stable sort.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Use that to like basically compare like does whatever you have in the contact now, does

00:55:33 ◼   ► that photo match using the similarity algorithm?

00:55:36 ◼   ► Does it match the current like one that you would show at the top in this sort?

00:55:41 ◼   ► And if it does, then it's considered a duplicate.

00:55:44 ◼   ► - And in that case, you would just move to the next highest scoring image or you would

00:55:49 ◼   ► throw out that entire row.

00:55:52 ◼   ► So if I've decided that what you've got for my image matches Twitter, would you throw

00:55:58 ◼   ► Casey out entirely or would you just re-rank or would you eliminate Twitter as an option

00:56:03 ◼   ► to overwrite what you've already got?

00:56:05 ◼   ► - Do you have, right now, do you store in any kind of metadata whether you have modified

00:56:11 ◼   ► the image for a contact?

00:56:13 ◼   ► - No, and I am resistant to doing it because I don't feel like I should have to, but it

00:56:18 ◼   ► absolutely would solve this problem.

00:56:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause obviously then like when someone has changed something, you basically force

00:56:26 ◼   ► that, whatever they picked, you force that to be the top element in that ranking algorithm.

00:56:32 ◼   ► But I don't know, yeah, obviously this would require you to first like start writing metadata

00:56:38 ◼   ► if there is even a way to do that without some garbage like putting stuff in the notes

00:56:42 ◼   ► field.

00:56:43 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:56:44 ◼   ► - Which you probably shouldn't do.

00:56:45 ◼   ► I mean you could even keep a local database in the app of some kind of like, is there

00:56:48 ◼   ► like some kind of unique ID on a contact?

00:56:50 ◼   ► You can just like keep like a list of them that you have modified.

00:56:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know if it's consistent, you know, across different runs.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And I could do it by, you know, first and last name or something like that.

00:57:00 ◼   ► Again, I'm with you, I understand where your head is and it does make sense.

00:57:06 ◼   ► I don't think I want to go that deep on it.

00:57:10 ◼   ► I think what I'd rather do is just make a best guess with the information I have at

00:57:15 ◼   ► either, well, the two original options were either throwing out that one or more images

00:57:20 ◼   ► that match or throwing out that entire contact.

00:57:24 ◼   ► Or this third option which you brought up which I do like, which is just re-rank the

00:57:29 ◼   ► options that I have to perhaps move something that I believe to be a duplicate further back

00:57:36 ◼   ► in the stack, so to speak.

00:57:38 ◼   ► - I mean one thing also, like, I don't know, do you have any kind of analytics to know

00:57:43 ◼   ► how, what percentage of your users are running the app multiple times?

00:57:48 ◼   ► - I don't.

00:57:49 ◼   ► I do get enough feedback about this that I know it bothers people.

00:57:52 ◼   ► And it should.

00:57:53 ◼   ► I mean it's kind of bull the way it works right now because it's, let's say you run

00:57:57 ◼   ► it and you decide to run it again for whatever reason, like immediately.

00:58:01 ◼   ► It's gonna show you a whole, like, it's gonna show you everything and all of the left and

00:58:04 ◼   ► right images are gonna look identical.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Maybe not all of them, but you take my point that almost all of them will look identical

00:58:10 ◼   ► if everything goes according to plan.

00:58:11 ◼   ► And that's not good.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Like, that's not a good runtime experience for users.

00:58:14 ◼   ► So I feel like this is something that in a perfect world would have been in the 1.0,

00:58:22 ◼   ► in the launch version of the app, but I just couldn't get it in time.

00:58:25 ◼   ► And now I've got it basically right, I'm just not sure how to design for it.

00:58:31 ◼   ► - My thoughts probably require more work than you wanna put into this, but I'm gonna bring

00:58:35 ◼   ► back my old favorite from the beta period, which is that I still, again, kind of like

00:58:39 ◼   ► the LN command for some people, but not me for some strange reason, I still look at your

00:58:44 ◼   ► interface and have to remind myself forcibly that what the arrow is trying to tell me.

00:58:51 ◼   ► It is not telling me that the left image is going to go and overwrite the right image,

00:58:57 ◼   ► or is it telling me that?

00:58:58 ◼   ► Or is it telling me that the left image is the current image and the right image is the

00:59:01 ◼   ► image that it will become?

00:59:02 ◼   ► Like the visual metaphor of these two images next to each other with an arrow between them,

00:59:07 ◼   ► like I always find myself wondering, which one is the current picture and which one is

00:59:11 ◼   ► the one that it's offering to put on it for me?

00:59:13 ◼   ► Which makes me think, this is related to your question, that, backing up a bit, utility-wise,

00:59:20 ◼   ► the whole point of this program is to do a bunch of stuff for me that would be tedious

00:59:23 ◼   ► for me to do myself.

00:59:26 ◼   ► And that utility is strengthened by saying, like I found a bunch of images, right?

00:59:33 ◼   ► And maybe you picked one of them last time, but maybe you change your mind in the future,

00:59:36 ◼   ► maybe someone updates one of their things before you chose their Gravatar, but then

00:59:40 ◼   ► they updated the Twitter icon and it turns out the Twitter one is better.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I basically want to see, here's all the work I did, I'm the application, I did a bunch

00:59:45 ◼   ► of work, I got a bunch of images.

00:59:47 ◼   ► And I would like to say, here is the current image, here are all the other options that

00:59:52 ◼   ► are available for me, maybe one of which you've already picked and I'll gray it out or indicate

00:59:55 ◼   ► that, which basically means a much more complicated interface than the current two circles with

00:59:59 ◼   ► an arrow between them, right?

01:00:01 ◼   ► Which is not ideal and it's going to be difficult to design, but that gives the most utility.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Like if I was to care about what is the power user tool for dealing with my contacts and

01:00:10 ◼   ► not something simple and straightforward, but that's what you're getting into with this

01:00:13 ◼   ► whole like, well, I've got multiple options and you picked one of them before and I have

01:00:16 ◼   ► to detect whether it's a duplicate.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Like you're starting to get into that realm anyway, but it is like bigger rows, different

01:00:22 ◼   ► interface, sort of the GameCube controller style of thing.

01:00:26 ◼   ► One button is more prominent than the other.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Like the current image should not be the same size and prominence as the options available

01:00:34 ◼   ► to change that image to.

01:00:35 ◼   ► And I would imagine that if you picked one of the images, there'd be some animation showing

01:00:38 ◼   ► that you've selected one of them so that it's clear and that some resting state display

01:00:43 ◼   ► so that it's clear.

01:00:44 ◼   ► If you scroll down the list, you can see which ones am I changing at all?

01:00:46 ◼   ► Like maybe get rid of the check boxes and maybe you have the selection of the image

01:00:49 ◼   ► cause a animation and translation and overlay and graying out so it's clear which ones you're

01:00:54 ◼   ► going to change at all and which ones you're not going to change.

01:00:56 ◼   ► You know what I'm saying?

01:00:57 ◼   ► Like a different interface.

01:00:58 ◼   ► Like this is not a minor issue of like, oh, I just, which one do I pick or do I show this

01:01:02 ◼   ► or do I not show it?

01:01:03 ◼   ► Like I'm getting into more bigger changes, which may not be worth your time, but for

01:01:08 ◼   ► the, to solve this problem in a more comprehensive way, I think you need that, that kind of interface.

01:01:15 ◼   ► And on going in the far opposite direction from large scale changes that you probably

01:01:20 ◼   ► don't want to make to small scale changes that you should make.

01:01:23 ◼   ► I'm using the beta with supposed duplicate detection.

01:01:25 ◼   ► And I posted a bunch of images to our Slack channel that show a bunch of things where

01:01:28 ◼   ► it is not successfully detected duplicates.

01:01:30 ◼   ► So you might want to look into that.

01:01:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:33 ◼   ► So the way this works was a suggestion from Craig Hockenberry, which I had never heard

01:01:40 ◼   ► of something called a hamming distance and I probably will do a terrible job describing

01:01:44 ◼   ► it.

01:01:45 ◼   ► How did you graduate from CS without hearing about hamming distance?

01:01:47 ◼   ► I did not go through a CS program.

01:01:49 ◼   ► I went through a CPE program just like you did, but be that as it may.

01:01:52 ◼   ► Oh, I learned it.

01:01:53 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Wait, am I the only one here with the CS degree?

01:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:57 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:01:58 ◼   ► That's incredible.

01:01:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:00 ◼   ► We're both, we're both engineers, which is much harder.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:02 ◼   ► I'm going to go ahead and learn this just for the record.

01:02:04 ◼   ► In any case, so the basic, I'm going to hugely oversimplify it and then we'll see if I get

01:02:09 ◼   ► away with it.

01:02:10 ◼   ► So the basic idea is, I think I have a degree.

01:02:12 ◼   ► You kind of get a hash for each of the two images and then figure out, okay, how far

01:02:17 ◼   ► away from each other are the bits of these two hashes?

01:02:20 ◼   ► And if they're not far away from each other, they're probably the same.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And if they're pretty far away from each other, then they're probably not the same.

01:02:29 ◼   ► And one of the nice things is, by just changing what the threshold is between what I consider

01:02:33 ◼   ► to be far and what I consider to be close, then I can crank up or down the sensitivity.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And I haven't had the chance to look at these screenshots because you just sent them to

01:02:42 ◼   ► me moments ago, but if it's really a whole ton of duplicates, then maybe I need to make

01:02:46 ◼   ► it so that it needs to be closer together than I already need it to be in order for

01:02:52 ◼   ► them to count as the same.

01:02:53 ◼   ► So, so in other words, the distance really needs to be almost nothing for them to be

01:02:58 ◼   ► considered...

01:02:59 ◼   ► Oh, did I get that backwards?

01:03:00 ◼   ► You get the idea.

01:03:01 ◼   ► Yeah, sorry.

01:03:02 ◼   ► But anyway, you get the idea, is that I can crank up or down the sensitivity.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Take a look at the screenshots.

01:03:07 ◼   ► It's like two seconds to see.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Like look at Will Shipley, clearly that's a duplicate.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Gruber.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Atwood.

01:03:15 ◼   ► Jeff Atwood.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:17 ◼   ► They're just, I mean, if you look really close at the pixels, you can see how they aren't

01:03:19 ◼   ► actually identical.

01:03:20 ◼   ► It was like JPEG compression differences, but they are literally the same picture, just

01:03:23 ◼   ► with different levels of compression.

01:03:24 ◼   ► So you have to adjust that.

01:03:25 ◼   ► I also threw a screenshot down at the bottom where this, yeah, getting back to the big,

01:03:30 ◼   ► bigger changes thing.

01:03:31 ◼   ► I thought of this when I saw this.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Like I run the app all the time, obviously, because I'm running the betas and trying it

01:03:37 ◼   ► out and stuff like that.

01:03:38 ◼   ► And after you do a bunch of updates, like I select a bunch of ones I want to change,

01:03:43 ◼   ► it updates them.

01:03:44 ◼   ► It leaves the button for updating, but it changes the number to update zero contacts.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I don't want to see that button anymore.

01:03:50 ◼   ► I don't want to grade out buttons to update zero contacts.

01:03:52 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense.

01:03:53 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:03:54 ◼   ► And to Marco's question of like, who's running the application more than once, the actual

01:03:59 ◼   ► sort of non-beta tester users who are legitimately running the application more than once, what

01:04:03 ◼   ► they want to make their experience better, I would say the number one thing before the

01:04:10 ◼   ► things we're talking about with duplicates and like maybe their other options is for

01:04:13 ◼   ► it to remember what it did last time and to just see if anything has changed since then.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Like for it not to take as long, basically.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Because every time I run it, I got to wait for that progress bar to go through.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And even with multi-threading, it takes a really, really long time and makes a lot of

01:04:24 ◼   ► requests.

01:04:25 ◼   ► I'm like, you just did a bunch of this.

01:04:26 ◼   ► Like remember what you did last time and just show me anything that's different.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Like in other words, have in the UI to say, I found all these last time.

01:04:35 ◼   ► You can consider them again if you want, like if I can hide them from you, but here's what's

01:04:38 ◼   ► changed since the last time you did this search.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Here's some new stuff that you might want to consider.

01:04:43 ◼   ► And you can also go and consider stuff that you didn't make decisions on last time, but

01:04:46 ◼   ► that differentiation and the acceleration of like doing the new stuff first, I'm not

01:04:49 ◼   ► sure how easy that is to do given all the APIs or whatever, but that's the experience

01:04:53 ◼   ► you want.

01:04:54 ◼   ► We don't want it to be a frosty the snowman happy birthday every time we launch the application

01:04:57 ◼   ► has no idea that you've ever run it before.

01:04:59 ◼   ► Do all the work again upfront because I have a lot of contacts and it's a long wait.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:05 ◼   ► I don't think that what you're asking for will empirically change the amount of time

01:05:10 ◼   ► it takes to process things unless I just blatantly refuse to look for updates on anything that

01:05:16 ◼   ► has been updated in the last X days.

01:05:18 ◼   ► >> The services don't have like if modified since header support or whatever.

01:05:22 ◼   ► >> Not to the best of my knowledge, no.

01:05:23 ◼   ► >> Really all these images are probably being sort of CDNs.

01:05:25 ◼   ► They probably all support that.

01:05:27 ◼   ► >> I mean, I'll have to look again.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I hadn't really looked in the past, but I, to the best of my knowledge, they don't, but

01:05:33 ◼   ► I am not confident I am correct about that.

01:05:35 ◼   ► So I can certainly look again.

01:05:38 ◼   ► But yeah, I take all of your points and they are all genuinely very good.

01:05:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a tough nut to crack, right?

01:05:44 ◼   ► Because I think to get to the app that you want, Jon, is a considerable amount of effort.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And I don't disagree with any of your desires.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I just don't know if I want this app to solve those problems or to solve them in exactly

01:06:00 ◼   ► the way you want.

01:06:01 ◼   ► >> Well, you do, but it's just a question of how much development effort you want to put

01:06:03 ◼   ► into it.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Like you do want your app to solve all of these problems, but like is a question of

01:06:08 ◼   ► do I want to put in the amount of work that it would take to do that?

01:06:10 ◼   ► Because does it provide, what is the marginal value?

01:06:12 ◼   ► Like is the point of diminishing returns?

01:06:14 ◼   ► Like the app basically solves the problem for 80% of the people now and now you're getting

01:06:17 ◼   ► to like, well, what if I run the app multiple times or what if I have lots of different

01:06:20 ◼   ► options and it's diminishing returns really fast?

01:06:23 ◼   ► So it's up to you to decide whether you want to invest any time in this.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Although for the duplicate detection thing, if you're going to have it at all, you definitely

01:06:30 ◼   ► need to tune it so that it doesn't, you know, because despite this not being a marketing

01:06:36 ◼   ► feature and I agree, for you to even say you have the feature, you can't have results that

01:06:39 ◼   ► are clearly a bunch of duplicates that people can see with their eyeballs.

01:06:43 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just, it's going to be, there's only so much I can do, right?

01:06:46 ◼   ► Because if the JPEG compression is utterly mangled one version and not at all mangled

01:06:52 ◼   ► another, it's going to be relatively hard for me to really be at, well, no, it shouldn't

01:06:56 ◼   ► be though.

01:06:57 ◼   ► There might be core ML stuff that you can do some kind of, like we discussed this before,

01:07:02 ◼   ► I figured there's got to be some kind of API for image similarity that will give you something

01:07:07 ◼   ► close, but you know, again, how much time do you want investing and just searching for

01:07:10 ◼   ► that?

01:07:11 ◼   ► Fair.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I think it can, it certainly can be tweaked.

01:07:14 ◼   ► I'm not, I'm not debating that at all.

01:07:17 ◼   ► The question is, you know, where do I land?

01:07:18 ◼   ► And inevitably it's going to be wrong for some people, right?

01:07:21 ◼   ► Like when I initially tested it, it looked pretty darn good to me, but I cannot sit here

01:07:25 ◼   ► and argue with what these screenshots that you've shown me that clearly are offering

01:07:29 ◼   ► duplicates in some cases.

01:07:31 ◼   ► So yeah, it's, it's, it's a tough nut to crack.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I feel like now I'm left with more questions than answers, but that's okay.

01:07:38 ◼   ► It gives me a lot to think about.

01:07:39 ◼   ► You can always count on us.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Maybe we can revisit this in a little while, but, but no, I appreciate the, the talk through

01:07:47 ◼   ► and thank you gentlemen for the time.

01:07:49 ◼   ► All right, moving on.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Apple is buying the corpse of Intel's modem business, which I think all of us expected,

01:07:57 ◼   ► not just the three of us, like all of us expected when, when all the brouhaha happened with

01:08:03 ◼   ► Intel, basically shutting all this down, but it is officially a thing.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Apple's getting something to the order of 2200 or thereabouts more employees, and hopefully

01:08:11 ◼   ► they will not need to rely on Qualcomm much longer.

01:08:14 ◼   ► So I think this is good, right?

01:08:16 ◼   ► I mean, I don't see why this is anything but a good thing, but, uh, but maybe I'm missing

01:08:20 ◼   ► something.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Marco, how do we feel about this?

01:08:22 ◼   ► I feel great about it.

01:08:23 ◼   ► I mean, like I remember like back when Intel kind of like, or when the news came out that

01:08:27 ◼   ► Intel's modem business was for sale, um, I believe there was some initial reporting that

01:08:32 ◼   ► like Apple had been in early talks and then basically bailed out.

01:08:36 ◼   ► And I found that's very surprising because it does kind of seem like they would be the

01:08:39 ◼   ► best buyer.

01:08:40 ◼   ► Like, Oh, that's weird.

01:08:41 ◼   ► Why, why would they bail out?

01:08:42 ◼   ► Why didn't they buy it?

01:08:44 ◼   ► And now it seems like that was probably just part of some negotiation or, or process or

01:08:49 ◼   ► who knows what, you know, these things are complicated.

01:08:51 ◼   ► So uh, so it, I'm glad to see that I was wrong or, and that that report was wrong and that,

01:08:56 ◼   ► you know, that they actually are buying it.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And I don't know how you possibly absorb 2200 new employees.

01:09:03 ◼   ► That seems like a big job, but I'm sure that, you know, they're a big company, they can

01:09:06 ◼   ► figure it out.

01:09:08 ◼   ► And so I think this is great.

01:09:09 ◼   ► Um, I think it's, it's been kind of, you know, an obvious prediction for a while now that

01:09:14 ◼   ► of course Apple wants to make its own cellular modems if it can.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Uh, I was under the impression they already were, but Hey, whatever.

01:09:21 ◼   ► Um, this is great.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Uh, I look forward to the results of this, which I don't think you're going to start

01:09:27 ◼   ► seeing the results of this.

01:09:28 ◼   ► It's certainly not this year and probably not even next year.

01:09:31 ◼   ► Uh, but maybe in iPhones that come out and iPads that come out like two or three years

01:09:36 ◼   ► from now, you might start seeing Apple branded modems.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Or Apple, Apple made modems, or they might just become integrated into the a series systems

01:09:44 ◼   ► on a chip, which would be, you know, a bunch of wins in a number of ways.

01:09:48 ◼   ► So I think that's great.

01:09:50 ◼   ► It makes a lot of sense.

01:09:51 ◼   ► It's probably going to work out about as well as their acquisition of PA semi did.

01:09:55 ◼   ► And that's how we had a chips in the first place.

01:09:57 ◼   ► Uh, so yeah, I think this is great and I'm, I'm kind of surprised it didn't happen sooner,

01:10:02 ◼   ► but here we are and I'm looking forward to the results.

01:10:04 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to be as good as PA semi because just because it's so many

01:10:10 ◼   ► more people, it's such a larger group.

01:10:12 ◼   ► It's not like a small group of super duper experts.

01:10:15 ◼   ► It's a much larger group of super duper experts plus every other kind of employee that you

01:10:19 ◼   ► need.

01:10:20 ◼   ► But the biggest thing it has going for it is like there are, there are very few companies

01:10:25 ◼   ► in the world that have any experience building and selling cell radio chips for smartphones

01:10:34 ◼   ► on the scale that Apple needs with the quality that Apple needs.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Like we've talked about them all in the show.

01:10:38 ◼   ► There's Qualcomm, there's Intel, there's Apple's team that they've been working on internally,

01:10:42 ◼   ► but Apple's team has never actually shipped a cell modem chip.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Intel's has again, as we mentioned in past shows, we're using them right now in our iPhone

01:10:50 ◼   ► 10s, right?

01:10:51 ◼   ► And how many teams in the world can say, yeah, no, we totally have made the cell radio chip

01:10:58 ◼   ► for Apple's top tier smartphone.

01:11:01 ◼   ► We not only do we know how to do it, but we all like the legal hurdles and all of the

01:11:06 ◼   ► regulatory hurdles and like all the intellectual property issues, like we have overcome all

01:11:12 ◼   ► those to get to the point where we sell them, they put them in the phones and you buy them

01:11:15 ◼   ► and they work.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Now, 5G is a different ball of wax.

01:11:18 ◼   ► It's not just because they did it with the current things doesn't mean, you know, 5G is

01:11:21 ◼   ► going to be more difficult, but like that kind of experience is just invaluable.

01:11:26 ◼   ► That and the IP, if any, that's coming with this to say they have overcome all those things

01:11:32 ◼   ► and they have actually shipped.

01:11:34 ◼   ► That's that's who you want.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Because PA semi, even though it was a smaller team and easier to integrate, they hadn't

01:11:39 ◼   ► made all these great A series chips yet.

01:11:41 ◼   ► We just thought they were very talented people and they probably can, but the Intel folks

01:11:44 ◼   ► that they're getting have done it at least once or twice.

01:11:48 ◼   ► And they're, you know, to varying degrees of success, but apparently they've they were

01:11:52 ◼   ► good enough.

01:11:53 ◼   ► I'm fine with Apple's in-house team that has presumably been working on this for years.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Like I'm I'm a little bit worried about integrating those thousands of employees and what kind

01:12:01 ◼   ► of redundancies there are and how to merge the efforts of those teams, because I don't

01:12:04 ◼   ► think, as we've discussed in many past shows, Apple's strategy was not let's twiddle our

01:12:09 ◼   ► thumbs for years and then hope we can buy someone else a cell modem business.

01:12:13 ◼   ► They had their own team working on this.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And now they have these Intel people who have also been working on this.

01:12:19 ◼   ► They need to merge those two things together, and it's probably a smaller team at Apple

01:12:24 ◼   ► and a much larger team at Intel with two totally different projects that had no relation to

01:12:27 ◼   ► each other whatsoever suddenly smushed together.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And we want to get something out of that.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Now that could accelerate things if the Intel project is really close to being done and

01:12:36 ◼   ► the Apple one just kind of waits in the sidelines and the Apple one becomes the 2022 chip and

01:12:40 ◼   ► the Intel one because of 2021.

01:12:42 ◼   ► Or it could delay things even farther to say like, we need to rationalize these and come

01:12:45 ◼   ► up with a single project and that single project is going to be 2022 instead of 2021.

01:12:50 ◼   ► In the meantime, we'll buy from Qualcomm or whatever.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Either way, we continue down the long path that we've discussed many times in the past,

01:12:57 ◼   ► which is that Apple wants to be masters of their own destiny here.

01:13:01 ◼   ► And just like they make their own system on chips, they want to make their own cell radios.

01:13:04 ◼   ► So far, they're not making their own flash.

01:13:07 ◼   ► And are you know, well, they are making their own Taptic Engine.

01:13:10 ◼   ► Like you should start looking at the chip breakdown from iFixit and say how many chips

01:13:15 ◼   ► on the iPhone's board are made by Apple and how many aren't.

01:13:19 ◼   ► And I feel like Apple is sort of going by area.

01:13:22 ◼   ► The system on the chip is Apple's.

01:13:23 ◼   ► It's usually the biggest or one of the biggest chips on there.

01:13:25 ◼   ► The cell radio may not be the biggest, but it's one of the most important.

01:13:29 ◼   ► I guess the flash storage, probably Apple's not going to be into that because it's more

01:13:32 ◼   ► of a commodity and it takes up a lot of space.

01:13:35 ◼   ► But we're getting to the point of diminishing returns where all the major important components

01:13:39 ◼   ► are made by Apple.

01:13:40 ◼   ► And that's kind of where they like to be because having to deal with third party vendors is

01:13:44 ◼   ► a pain, especially since Apple usually wants to have two of them and that becomes increasingly

01:13:48 ◼   ► difficult for components that are difficult or highly differentiated like the CPUs or

01:13:53 ◼   ► the cell modems.

01:13:54 ◼   ► So I think this is good news for Apple, probably good news for the people on the Intel teams

01:13:59 ◼   ► that their alternative is to be laid off by Intel and now they have a slightly less chance

01:14:03 ◼   ► of being laid off by Apple.

01:14:04 ◼   ► I'm sure there will be some layoffs, but hey, now you're an Apple employee instead of an

01:14:08 ◼   ► Intel employee and that may be a good thing depending on whether you get to move to Apple

01:14:12 ◼   ► Park or eat the fancy food or whatever.

01:14:15 ◼   ► I don't think they're on a totally different campus, right?

01:14:17 ◼   ► I forget where they are, San Diego or something?

01:14:19 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:14:20 ◼   ► I honestly don't know.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Which I think is also where Apple's team was.

01:14:24 ◼   ► They did a good job of sort of setting things up for this, that I think they're geographically

01:14:28 ◼   ► co-located so that acquiring doesn't require everybody to move, any of the Apple side or

01:14:33 ◼   ► the Intel side.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Anyway, things are looking up.

01:14:35 ◼   ► This is a good move.

01:14:36 ◼   ► I still think we'll be waiting a year or two to see the fruits of that labor, but when

01:14:40 ◼   ► we do, it should be good.

01:14:42 ◼   ► And then I think finally for today before I ask ATP, apparently Apple has employees

01:14:48 ◼   ► or contractors listening to Siri audio.

01:14:51 ◼   ► What?

01:14:53 ◼   ► So this was a report from the Guardian from a few days ago as we record saying that Apple

01:14:58 ◼   ► employees and/or contractors are occasionally listening to Siri audio to help improve Siri,

01:15:03 ◼   ► which on the surface makes a lot of sense, but what?

01:15:09 ◼   ► Apple is the self-proclaimed top of the mountain, the king of the hill, if you will, on privacy,

01:15:16 ◼   ► and this doesn't feel very private to me.

01:15:20 ◼   ► So what's going on here and should I start putting on my tinfoil hat?

01:15:26 ◼   ► I'm trying to think.

01:15:27 ◼   ► I don't know the details of whether they're just doing it for transcription or they're

01:15:30 ◼   ► also doing it for commands, but Apple often touts the things they do on your device, but

01:15:36 ◼   ► there are many things that Siri does that require contact with the server, but all of

01:15:41 ◼   ► that is separate from the idea of you say something and Siri turns it into text, which

01:15:48 ◼   ► then sort of drives the rest of the system, right?

01:15:51 ◼   ► So that could all be happening in device.

01:15:54 ◼   ► You say something, Siri translates it to text, the text gets sent to a server, the server

01:15:57 ◼   ► does a bunch of work, gives you a response, something like that, or it could happen on

01:16:00 ◼   ► device, but the bottom line is that usually with Siri architecture, as I understand it,

01:16:06 ◼   ► there's no reason for your audio to leave the device, except of course this reason,

01:16:11 ◼   ► which I have to say I'm not surprised this is happening, but I can understand why people

01:16:16 ◼   ► would be surprised that it's happening given Apple's privacy stance, which is Apple wants

01:16:21 ◼   ► to make its thing better, and if someone says something and Siri interprets it terribly

01:16:27 ◼   ► badly, that's something that Apple wants to know, and if you picture yourself as tasked

01:16:33 ◼   ► with making this better, making Siri better, you're like, well, some user said set a

01:16:38 ◼   ► timer for 10 minutes and it totally interpreted it in some bizarre way, and even if you give

01:16:45 ◼   ► them the bizarre way, you're like, if you're the developer working in Siri, this is not

01:16:50 ◼   ► actionable, how do I fix this?

01:16:52 ◼   ► I have to know what they said, I have to know what it sounded like, I have to know where

01:16:54 ◼   ► the problem happened, was there lots of background noise, did they have an accent, was there

01:16:58 ◼   ► a certain cadence, like what part of our system is failing?

01:17:00 ◼   ► I need the audio to be able to debug this.

01:17:04 ◼   ► The part where I think people are, as a developer, that's not surprising, you can't improve it

01:17:10 ◼   ► without this audio.

01:17:12 ◼   ► The part that people find surprising is that sometimes that audio will just be taken and

01:17:18 ◼   ► fed into the machine to make it better without any kind of consent or notification or anything

01:17:23 ◼   ► like that, and that is off-putting and not in keeping with Apple's privacy stance in

01:17:29 ◼   ► general, despite the fact that Apple says, oh, it's not identifiable as you, it's not

01:17:32 ◼   ► associated with your Apple ID, it's your voice.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I don't know, people's voices may sound similar, but it's your voice and you're saying words,

01:17:42 ◼   ► it's your voice and your content.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Just because it's not associated with your Apple ID, if Morgan Freeman says something

01:17:47 ◼   ► to his thing to remind him to set up a meeting with Steven Spielberg about the whatever movie,

01:17:53 ◼   ► you're going to know that it's Morgan Freeman, you know who Steven Spielberg is, it's information

01:17:57 ◼   ► that someone, some random contractor gets to hear that and now can sell the story to

01:18:03 ◼   ► the Hollywood Reporter or something like that.

01:18:05 ◼   ► You can say, oh, but don't worry, they don't know Morgan Freeman's Apple ID, so everything

01:18:10 ◼   ► is completely anonymous.

01:18:12 ◼   ► It's not, and the fact that that's happening behind the scenes, not all the time, just

01:18:17 ◼   ► once in a while or whatever, it seems like Apple has sort of snatched a feat from the

01:18:21 ◼   ► jaws of victory here, because what do we all think every time we try to tell Siri to do

01:18:25 ◼   ► something, it hilariously screws it up.

01:18:28 ◼   ► If there was a giant button somewhere that said, do you want to send the audio of this

01:18:34 ◼   ► interaction to Apple so that they can try to fix it, lots of the time we would say yes,

01:18:38 ◼   ► because we just have something totally innocuous, like we sold them to set a timer and it did

01:18:42 ◼   ► something bizarre, right?

01:18:43 ◼   ► We would say send, but Morgan Freeman would not hit that button after he tried to remind

01:18:47 ◼   ► himself about the Steven Spielberg meeting about the new movie, right?

01:18:50 ◼   ► Because he would know, I'm not sending that audio to Apple, right?

01:18:53 ◼   ► Or he wouldn't even see that button, he wouldn't even hit it, he would just turn off the phone

01:18:55 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:18:56 ◼   ► It has to be informed and opt in, and there's a benefit for being opt in because it provides

01:19:03 ◼   ► satisfaction.

01:19:04 ◼   ► When Siri screws up now, there's no satisfaction, you just get angry at it and it just sits

01:19:09 ◼   ► there mocking you with its ridiculous answer.

01:19:11 ◼   ► I had one recently, I'll save a screenshot of it, I think it was like, what the hell

01:19:16 ◼   ► did I ask it?

01:19:17 ◼   ► Oh, I asked it to change the volume?

01:19:21 ◼   ► No, I think I asked it what the weather was and it told me the volume level or something,

01:19:25 ◼   ► it was totally bizarre.

01:19:26 ◼   ► And of course I screenshotted it because you screenshot all these ridiculous Siri interactions.

01:19:30 ◼   ► If there had been a big button that said send this to Apple right now because it's ridiculous,

01:19:35 ◼   ► I would have sent it.

01:19:37 ◼   ► And it would say I'm about to send this and it would play the audio back to me and it

01:19:40 ◼   ► says to confirm that you want to send this to Apple.

01:19:42 ◼   ► That would have made me more satisfied as a customer.

01:19:45 ◼   ► That I was actually, because I'm not filing a radar, I'm not creating an Apple developer

01:19:50 ◼   ► account like it's just happening on the device right then and I get to say, hey Apple, your

01:19:55 ◼   ► thing is broken, here's exactly how it's broken, yes you can have this audio that I just heard,

01:20:00 ◼   ► it's fine with me, fix your stuff.

01:20:03 ◼   ► That would make me a happy customer.

01:20:04 ◼   ► Whereas if you tell me, every once in a while, unbeknownst to you, and this may never have

01:20:08 ◼   ► happened to you but you really have no way of knowing, some of your audio may have been

01:20:12 ◼   ► sent to someone at Apple so they can try to fix some sort of problem.

01:20:15 ◼   ► A, you're mad that they may be getting my audio or whatever.

01:20:19 ◼   ► And B, you're probably mad that maybe they picked up something where there was just lots

01:20:23 ◼   ► of background noise.

01:20:24 ◼   ► That's not the one you need to fix.

01:20:25 ◼   ► You need to fix the one where it was a quiet room and you correctly interpreted what I

01:20:28 ◼   ► said but still told me about the volume level instead of the weather.

01:20:31 ◼   ► That's the one you need to fix.

01:20:32 ◼   ► And I don't know if you sent that one because it's just a random sampling of stuff that

01:20:35 ◼   ► you send.

01:20:36 ◼   ► So I really hope Apple fixes this.

01:20:39 ◼   ► There are lots of ways to fix this to make everybody happy and I feel like to give Apple

01:20:43 ◼   ► more better data because Apple doesn't just care about making Siri better.

01:20:47 ◼   ► They care about making it better in ways that make customers more satisfied.

01:20:51 ◼   ► So the more angry and confused the customer is, the more likely they are to opt into the

01:20:56 ◼   ► system and the more valuable those are to be the ones that get fixed, not just the randomly

01:21:01 ◼   ► selected ones that fail for some reason.

01:21:04 ◼   ► So this is all just disappointing all around, easy for Apple to fix and I hope they take

01:21:08 ◼   ► some action on it.

01:21:09 ◼   ► And I talked about this on the talk show this week.

01:21:13 ◼   ► So listen to that also please.

01:21:14 ◼   ► I won't repeat myself too much because we have a lot of audience overlap but I don't

01:21:18 ◼   ► think this is as egregious of a problem unless you consider two things.

01:21:24 ◼   ► Number one, there is no way to opt out of this and still use Siri at all.

01:21:30 ◼   ► There is no like don't share this with Apple.

01:21:32 ◼   ► If you use Siri at all, your audio is transmitted to Apple and John by the way you said earlier

01:21:38 ◼   ► that you think it's transcribed on the phone and sent.

01:21:41 ◼   ► That's not the case.

01:21:43 ◼   ► That can be the case sometimes but I believe still by default the audio is transcribed

01:21:49 ◼   ► remotely and so it is sending the audio and that's probably still going to be the case

01:21:53 ◼   ► for the foreseeable future.

01:21:55 ◼   ► So that's problem number one.

01:21:56 ◼   ► Problem number two is that there is a lot of accidental invocation.

01:22:01 ◼   ► So it's one thing if you hold down the Siri button and you say hey do this thing and it

01:22:04 ◼   ► gives you some bad response and you say well I guess hopefully someone on Apple is going

01:22:09 ◼   ► to see stuff like this and try to fix them.

01:22:10 ◼   ► It's a whole other thing when the HomePod in the corner of your room says hmm when you

01:22:16 ◼   ► weren't asking it something and all of a sudden you realize like oh wait a minute that was

01:22:22 ◼   ► listening to what did we just say and it's you know what if you were saying something

01:22:26 ◼   ► sensitive and that like all the time I have the HomePod or any hey dingus enabled iOS

01:22:32 ◼   ► devices very frequently will butt into conversations where I didn't say hey you you know wake

01:22:39 ◼   ► up.

01:22:40 ◼   ► I didn't even say anything that even remotely sounded like it.

01:22:44 ◼   ► But and oftentimes we'll think back and realize wait it thought that was hey whatever like

01:22:48 ◼   ► wow.

01:22:49 ◼   ► I have a sound alike problem related to last week's link to the look right into the eyes

01:22:53 ◼   ► of your sweetie which is what I call my sweetie and sweetie when I mumble it or yell it across

01:22:58 ◼   ► the house sounds a lot like Siri so I get a lot of accidental activations with incredibly

01:23:04 ◼   ► bizarre results that follow the word sweetie because it tries to transcribe what I'm telling

01:23:08 ◼   ► it to do.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Right like Siri has a pretty significant problem with accidental invocation by accidentally

01:23:14 ◼   ► recognizing those words especially on HomePods and so not only is it sending recordings to

01:23:21 ◼   ► humans potentially when you intentionally invoke Siri but it's sending recordings to

01:23:26 ◼   ► Apple for humans to review when you didn't even realize you were invoking Siri and didn't

01:23:30 ◼   ► intend to be invoking Siri.

01:23:32 ◼   ► Or maybe it's sending them you don't know like right you don't know which ones it's

01:23:35 ◼   ► sending because it's not sending a hundred percent of them that's too much it's sending

01:23:38 ◼   ► some amount of them but you don't know which which ones it's sending.

01:23:41 ◼   ► Right so to me because there is accidental capture happening there must be clear communication

01:23:49 ◼   ► there must be an opt-out that allows you to keep having Siri enabled as a as a service

01:23:55 ◼   ► but that you can say don't use recordings of me don't let don't let humans review those

01:24:00 ◼   ► that needs to be an option.

01:24:02 ◼   ► And I found my screenshot that I took of the ridiculous Siri thing this was actually the

01:24:07 ◼   ► legit thing that we were trying to do with various iOS devices of my family on vacation

01:24:11 ◼   ► the question like we're trying to say what version of iOS device is running without having

01:24:15 ◼   ► to go to settings general about blah blah blah and scroll and look for the thing so

01:24:19 ◼   ► just ask Siri and so it Siri shows you what it transcribed of what you said so it correctly

01:24:25 ◼   ► transcribed my question which was what version of iOS am I running correctly capitalized

01:24:31 ◼   ► iOS like that's you know it got the question and its answer was the current volume is 13

01:24:37 ◼   ► percent.

01:24:38 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:24:39 ◼   ► Nice.

01:24:40 ◼   ► Which is an interesting answer to the question that it correctly transcribed and you may

01:24:44 ◼   ► think I think it just can't tell the answer to that question not true because if you do

01:24:49 ◼   ► it again and it re-transcribes it it tells you like the version like it's in typical

01:24:53 ◼   ► bizarre Siri fashion why does the same question result in different answers in the same device

01:24:58 ◼   ► seconds apart.

01:24:59 ◼   ► Yeah so I did take a screenshot of this.

01:25:04 ◼   ► There was no button to submit it to Apple but I submitted it through other channels

01:25:07 ◼   ► whether anything comes of it who knows.

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01:27:12 ◼   ► All right let's do some Ask ATP and we start tonight with Prone2Bits who asked for a two-fer

01:27:21 ◼   ► which is usually against the rules but they were both pretty good and hopefully quick.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Number one does Marco have any favorite tracks for testing speakers or headphones?

01:27:30 ◼   ► I have a whole playlist called audio quality tests and there's a there's a few go-tos in

01:27:33 ◼   ► there that's I shared it at some point I blogged about it I think or I showed a screenshot

01:27:37 ◼   ► of it right now there's 31 songs on it and the idea is to span a wide variety of musical

01:27:42 ◼   ► genres at least within what I know and what I have and to include songs that are very

01:27:47 ◼   ► well recorded and and songs that I just know really well and that way I can I kind of have

01:27:52 ◼   ► a very quick benchmark. One of my favorite ones the one of the ones that I go to fastest

01:27:58 ◼   ► and most often is the Once and Future Carpenter by the Avid Brothers. That is usually the

01:28:04 ◼   ► very first song I will test on any new pair of headphones and then I will go on from there

01:28:10 ◼   ► I have songs from I have old songs I have a couple of Cat Stevens songs I have new songs

01:28:15 ◼   ► I have like you know 90 songs like Counting Crows I have Decemberist, Dispatch, Foo Fighters,

01:28:21 ◼   ► Green Day, Maroon 5, Milk Carton Kids, obviously some fish, some social distortion, yeah stuff

01:28:30 ◼   ► like that like it's songs I know very well and especially some songs that are very very

01:28:35 ◼   ► well recorded so that they so that when I'm listening to something that has very high

01:28:39 ◼   ► quality potential I'm feeding it really good input so I know like if I'm if I have really

01:28:45 ◼   ► good headphones that I have something that can sound really good on them. Nobody asked

01:28:48 ◼   ► me but I really like two Kevin Gilbert tracks one is Thud or excuse me it's the album is

01:28:56 ◼   ► Thud Live the track is Kashmir which is a cover of Zeppelin I forget I know everyone's

01:29:02 ◼   ► gonna be angry at me I'm so sorry anyway it's a really good cover of Kashmir and then Last

01:29:06 ◼   ► Play Now which is also Kevin Gilbert but part of the band as part of the band Toy Matinee

01:29:11 ◼   ► both of those I really enjoy using for similar circumstances. Coming back to Ask ATP well

01:29:17 ◼   ► actually let me give John a chance John do you care and ever have any favorite tracks

01:29:21 ◼   ► for these sorts of things?

01:29:22 ◼   ► >> John

01:29:44 ◼   ► S. B. stuff went to user space in iOS 13 or in iPad OS 13?

01:29:48 ◼   ► >> No, it's because iOS doesn't care about your data that's why. This is an eternal question

01:29:54 ◼   ► of like you know PC users say I hate on Macs you have to unmount volumes before ejecting

01:30:00 ◼   ► floppy disks or disconnecting drives or stuff like that and the Mac users would say like

01:30:06 ◼   ► well then how do you know all the various buffers have been flushed to disk and then

01:30:10 ◼   ► the Unix people say just type sync and hit return then type sync again and then hit return

01:30:13 ◼   ► and everything will be surely on disk and we go round and round and then the PC users

01:30:17 ◼   ► say I just wait for the light to stop blinking and then you can yank it out and it's a complicated

01:30:22 ◼   ► issue.

01:30:23 ◼   ► I was complicated very often there is buffering involved there are various mechanisms in operating

01:30:28 ◼   ► systems that are supposed to ensure that all bits have been successfully transferred to

01:30:32 ◼   ► the persistent storage media so that it is now safe to remove things. The Mac OS way

01:30:39 ◼   ► the Mac way of unmounting is always going to be the safest because it allows the operating

01:30:44 ◼   ► system to decide that everything truly has been written in disk and to give a visual

01:30:49 ◼   ► indication in the interface that says now it's okay for you to pull your disk out or

01:30:53 ◼   ► disconnect your thing because as far as the operating is concerned everything has been

01:30:56 ◼   ► flushed to it and we have unmounted the device and it's gone from the operating system so

01:31:00 ◼   ► if it didn't make it to your disk now or your storage now it's never going to make it there

01:31:04 ◼   ► but either way it's safe to pull it out. But practically speaking given modern IO stacks

01:31:11 ◼   ► and modern storage mechanisms and you know the experience of all PC users are just staring

01:31:16 ◼   ► at the little blinking light and yanking it out when the light is done blinking that technique

01:31:20 ◼   ► also works if you always wait for the light to be done blinking as long as you're not

01:31:23 ◼   ► sure it wasn't about to blink one more time right before you yanked it out. As for iOS

01:31:29 ◼   ► it's like it's no different than any other operating system it's trying to get everything

01:31:34 ◼   ► flushed to storage as fast as possible it's trying to handle cases where there were things

01:31:38 ◼   ► in flight if you yank it out while it's in the middle of a transfer and put it back in

01:31:42 ◼   ► maybe it can resume where it left off like I don't know what things it's doing but the

01:31:45 ◼   ► bottom line is it is always safest to let the operating system unmount and be completely

01:31:50 ◼   ► done with the thing. That is there's never going to be it's never going to be as safe

01:31:55 ◼   ► to do it the other way because you can yank it out at any time and the OS may not be ready

01:31:58 ◼   ► for it. The fact that lots of operating systems let you yank it out is a feature in that it's

01:32:05 ◼   ► more convenient and you don't have to deal with unmounting but I have to believe that

01:32:10 ◼   ► there's no possible way that you can allow the user to yank it out at any time and never

01:32:15 ◼   ► suffer any data loss if they don't plug it back in ever because if I yank it out and

01:32:19 ◼   ► it's in the middle of a transfer and I'd never plug that thing back in I'm not getting those

01:32:23 ◼   ► bits they're on the device they're not on the thing that I yanked out and there's nothing

01:32:28 ◼   ► you know it's just that's just the arrow of time right so I'm I don't like systems like

01:32:33 ◼   ► this where it says just pull it out at any time I'm sure it'll be fine because the answer

01:32:36 ◼   ► is no it won't always be fine almost always it'll be fine but I would rather it be closer

01:32:42 ◼   ► to always fine we need more nines so you get a lot more nines with unmounting. Oh my goodness

01:32:50 ◼   ► all right Aaron Bushnell writes you wake up to an email from Phil Scheller that you're

01:32:57 ◼   ► on the new pro workflow team for complete overhaul of Mac OS iPad OS and iOS what suggestions

01:33:03 ◼   ► would you provide for the next generation of Apple operating systems so I did not spend

01:33:07 ◼   ► enough time thinking about this but I thought about this briefly before we recorded and

01:33:10 ◼   ► I came up with kind of a big question yeah it's it I came up with some ideas I don't

01:33:15 ◼   ► think they're revolutionary enough but let me just throw some ideas at you for Mac OS

01:33:21 ◼   ► I first of all think that we should get cellular radios and particularly Marco and I have been

01:33:25 ◼   ► barking up this tree for a while now for portable Macs I think they should have cellular radios

01:33:30 ◼   ► I think I'm also on board with touch support which makes me sick to say out loud but I

01:33:34 ◼   ► think I'm on board with at least giving it a shot for iPad OS I the best I could come

01:33:40 ◼   ► up with was increased system access which is very nebulous but I'm thinking of things

01:33:44 ◼   ► like is it why can't you sideload an iPad app like if this is really a professional

01:33:48 ◼   ► device let us maybe get something from places other than the App Store and yes I know the

01:33:52 ◼   ► million and six reasons why that's a bad idea but maybe let us anyway and also like audio

01:33:57 ◼   ► subsystem access like can we please be able to do I would like to be able to record a

01:34:01 ◼   ► podcast my iPad I would never do it but I'd like to be able to that would be kind of cool

01:34:04 ◼   ► and then finally with iOS picture in picture please and I feel like there may be something

01:34:10 ◼   ► better we can do with the home screen I'm not sure what but I feel like springboard

01:34:14 ◼   ► a which has gone through zillion changes over the last 10 years but I feel like we could

01:34:18 ◼   ► get something a little more interesting on the home screen so again most of those not

01:34:23 ◼   ► terribly revolutionary but just some ideas I thought about I feel like I've been picking

01:34:28 ◼   ► on Marco first a lot recently so John what do you have for us this is too big a question

01:34:32 ◼   ► to be answered in any kind of comprehensive way especially in an STP so I'll just give

01:34:37 ◼   ► one tiny thing that that occurs to me aside from the fact that I probably shouldn't be

01:34:40 ◼   ► on the per workflow team because I don't have any per workflow so I don't understand why

01:34:43 ◼   ► I would be on the team but this is a hypothetical John you are a developer they said developers

01:34:48 ◼   ► are their largest segment of pro users yeah the most the most important pros that's right

01:34:52 ◼   ► not the most important clearly we're not but they are the largest segment right and there's

01:34:56 ◼   ► the same developers seem to do seven thousand dollar monitors they can view text on it right

01:35:00 ◼   ► yes well obviously the most important members of the pro workflow team are video editors

01:35:04 ◼   ► all right but yeah my my one quick tiny answer that spans all their OS's would be would have

01:35:11 ◼   ► to do with responsiveness they did a lot of this in iOS 12 with enhancing it but I feel

01:35:16 ◼   ► like it's something needs to be done across the board to give an example of what I'm talking

01:35:19 ◼   ► about well the larger issue is like today we're using computers and phones and iPads

01:35:25 ◼   ► and whatever they're fantastically more powerful than the ones I started out using when I was

01:35:29 ◼   ► a kid they're just tremendous they have so much faster CPUs and more RAM and just like

01:35:33 ◼   ► there's so many more computing resources and yet the second by second moment by moment

01:35:38 ◼   ► interactive experience of using the computers it's faster than it was but not by the same

01:35:44 ◼   ► amount that that the actual resources have increased because we're using the resources

01:35:49 ◼   ► to do fancier things obviously right so we're not not just because your CPU is a million

01:35:52 ◼   ► times faster you don't expect everything to be faster because you're doing stuff with

01:35:56 ◼   ► that I get that but there are many corners of the various operating systems that are

01:36:00 ◼   ► less responsive than they should be to give a tiny example if you are in the list view

01:36:04 ◼   ► window in the finder and you hit command and to make a new folder because you've remapped

01:36:08 ◼   ► that command because you've spent 16 years typing command and then you refuse to command

01:36:11 ◼   ► shift in anyway set that aside you hit the keyboard shortcut to create a new folder right

01:36:17 ◼   ► and because you're used to doing this frequently you immediately start typing the name of that

01:36:21 ◼   ► new folder because you know the untitled folder text will automatically be selected so you

01:36:26 ◼   ► know command and then you start typing the name of the folder it will miss the first

01:36:30 ◼   ► few keystrokes or maybe just the first one keystroke of what you typed what you have

01:36:33 ◼   ► to do is hit your keystroke for a new folder wait a moment for the computer to catch up

01:36:41 ◼   ► to what you've done then start typing the name of the folder and this seems like a tiny

01:36:47 ◼   ► thing it's like just wait a fraction of a second what's the big deal the big deal is

01:36:51 ◼   ► on a computer with like an 8 megahertz CPU or the hell was the spell type command in

01:36:55 ◼   ► and immediately start typing the name of the folder and it would get all the characters

01:36:58 ◼   ► every single time on a computer that was so much slower than any other computing device

01:37:03 ◼   ► I have in my life that's an example where responsiveness has not been prioritized and

01:37:08 ◼   ► by the way it's only list view like com view doesn't have that problem I think icon view

01:37:11 ◼   ► doesn't have problem it just lists view there are all sorts of weird corners of the operating

01:37:15 ◼   ► system of all operating systems where there are delays where I have to wait for the computer

01:37:18 ◼   ► iOS and iPad OS have tons of delays that are built into the interaction model whether it

01:37:22 ◼   ► is because you have to hold down a certain period of time or you have to check whether

01:37:26 ◼   ► I'm double tapping like all those kind of delays it's harder in iOS and iPad OS find

01:37:31 ◼   ► a way for me not to have to wait for the computer I think a lot of the stuff where they eliminated

01:37:34 ◼   ► the loop for the cursor insertion point and everything on iOS 13 which I still haven't

01:37:38 ◼   ► tried because I've still been afraid to install it but those are steps in the right direction

01:37:42 ◼   ► that's what I want I don't want to be waiting for the computer for things that I shouldn't

01:37:46 ◼   ► have to be waiting for the computer for small interactive things that involves like it's

01:37:52 ◼   ► not saying that oh you have to eliminate animations they take too long I just want everything

01:37:56 ◼   ► to be interactive all the time I want it to be responsive to my input and this occurs

01:38:03 ◼   ► to me because I just have gone through you know many hundreds multiple thousands yeah

01:38:08 ◼   ► probably multiple thousands of photos of the course of my vacation so I spent another many

01:38:13 ◼   ► many arrows and in the Apple photos application on my Mac and boy is that program not responsive

01:38:20 ◼   ► like you'll hit the right arrow key to go to the next photo and not only will it not

01:38:23 ◼   ► go to the next photo often it will show you a beach ball I was starting to do counts one

01:38:29 ◼   ► two three four oh you went to the next picture great sometimes it will just never advance

01:38:35 ◼   ► the next picture and you have to hit the right arrow key again this is not an example of

01:38:38 ◼   ► a responsive program I'm not asking for the moon here I'm asking to go to the next completely

01:38:43 ◼   ► unedited picture as I go through imports it they need things need to be more responsive

01:38:51 ◼   ► and it's not just something that benefits people who are in a super duper hurry they

01:38:53 ◼   ► go you're in such a hurry you hit command and you want to type the name right away just

01:38:56 ◼   ► wait a second nobody's in that big a hurry it's not a big deal blah blah blah responsiveness

01:39:00 ◼   ► benefits everybody even if you think for 15 seconds between what you do everybody likes

01:39:05 ◼   ► it that when you finally after thinking for 15 seconds go to do what you want you immediately

01:39:09 ◼   ► see the result on the screen that's what people want it makes a satisfying user experience

01:39:14 ◼   ► it feels like you are directly interacting with the thing just feels less like you are

01:39:19 ◼   ► sending a letter in the mail to the computer for it to do something at some point in the

01:39:22 ◼   ► future oh my words how do you really feel john don't hold back marco thoughts all right

01:39:29 ◼   ► so I picked just a few things I spent you know maybe 15 minutes on this earlier so you

01:39:34 ◼   ► know forgive me this is not comprehensive as john said on mac os I would I had forgotten

01:39:41 ◼   ► until john just mentioned it that like the photos app is kind of considered part of the

01:39:45 ◼   ► os I would completely throw away the photos app everything about it except the syncing

01:39:53 ◼   ► engine throw away the entire browsing and editing interface on the mac it's terrible

01:40:00 ◼   ► it is it seems designed for people who don't actually use it it seems programmed by people

01:40:06 ◼   ► who have never used it and I don't know how anybody could be expected to do anything in

01:40:12 ◼   ► the apple photos app for mac on more than like one photo at a time ever without throwing

01:40:18 ◼   ► it out the window it's I still it's still baffling how like basic stuff like going through

01:40:24 ◼   ► a bunch of photos and trying to like delete the bad one to keep the good ones is so clumsy

01:40:28 ◼   ► and bug prone and slow and unintuitive simple things about editing as john said are like

01:40:34 ◼   ► unresponsive slow confusing like it it just seems like the people who make this app don't

01:40:40 ◼   ► use it and or maybe they're not empowered I don't know what the problem is but whatever

01:40:45 ◼   ► it is it seems like the mac photos app is just it's just bad simple things very very

01:40:54 ◼   ► common things you need to do with such an app are bad or unintuitive or slow or buggy

01:40:59 ◼   ► or just clumsy so that app needs to be totally thrown out but moving on to to kind of larger

01:41:06 ◼   ► themes for mac os I would say again I echo Casey on cellular support I actually I'm not

01:41:13 ◼   ► convinced yet on touch I go back and forth on touch I would say at kind of an a big user

01:41:20 ◼   ► experience level I think time has proven that the lion document model was the wrong choice

01:41:29 ◼   ► it is still all these years later still confusing people frequently still do unintended things

01:41:36 ◼   ► make unintended changes you know people know how to do things like file save as we've been

01:41:43 ◼   ► doing this for decades on our computers we had like people know that they learned that

01:41:49 ◼   ► it is how all computers worked for so long and by trying to make the mac work more like

01:41:56 ◼   ► ios and getting rid of save as and making everything autosave by default and having

01:42:01 ◼   ► these weird like duplicate commands instead I see what they were going for it didn't work

01:42:08 ◼   ► it's very confusing I would like to see that totally rolled back honestly or at least an

01:42:13 ◼   ► option to enable because like right now you can like hold down the option button and you

01:42:17 ◼   ► get like a save as command for real but like the fact is users I don't think ever caught

01:42:23 ◼   ► on with the system pro apps mostly didn't adopt this system so now you have a situation

01:42:29 ◼   ► where a lot of apps on your computer don't work this way but then all the built in ones

01:42:34 ◼   ► from apple do work this way so you have an incredible inconsistency now the lion document

01:42:39 ◼   ► model failed it is it was a good idea to try something like that they failed it didn't

01:42:44 ◼   ► work get rid of it architecturally speaking if we didn't you know if this is like a total

01:42:49 ◼   ► overhaul as it was kind of stated I would like to see a an ios style container folder

01:42:57 ◼   ► structure for each app like on the mac you have like the library folder and inside the

01:43:02 ◼   ► library folder you have all these different folders so like if you install an app on the

01:43:05 ◼   ► mac if you run an app on the mac it's expected to write files in standard locations they're

01:43:10 ◼   ► kind of all over the place you know it has like it's supposed to write documents in your

01:43:14 ◼   ► documents directory it's supposed to write its temp files in a certain folder under library

01:43:17 ◼   ► it's supposed to write its preferences in a different folder under library and if you

01:43:20 ◼   ► delete the app all those files are still there and or even if you just install a new version

01:43:24 ◼   ► of the app it might start writing them in new locations and so you have all this garbage

01:43:27 ◼   ► accumulating all over the file system and that's why you have you know all these like

01:43:30 ◼   ► app cleaner app uninstaller apps that are supposed to try to help you out but like on

01:43:35 ◼   ► ios you delete an app and you know it's gone you know it can't possibly have left anything

01:43:40 ◼   ► behind like zoom stupid web server like you just know it's gone because the container

01:43:44 ◼   ► structure of the app is such that you install an app it gets its own little folder with

01:43:49 ◼   ► its own little library folder inside of it and that library folder has all of its temp

01:43:53 ◼   ► files and everything else and when you delete the app that whole container gets deleted

01:43:58 ◼   ► now there would have to be some concessions about like where documents go for example

01:44:02 ◼   ► because that's you know the mac works differently about documents than ios does but i think

01:44:07 ◼   ► having that kind of structure come to the mac would be great and would solve a lot of

01:44:10 ◼   ► problems and yes it would be a lot of work and a big change and a lot of things would

01:44:13 ◼   ► break but this is in a you know re-architecting kind of scenario i would also say i would

01:44:19 ◼   ► like to see more background app services come to the mac from ios things like background

01:44:25 ◼   ► refresh content available push notifications background downloads of urls and stuff like

01:44:30 ◼   ► that i don't know how much of that is there yet i don't think much of it is moving on

01:44:34 ◼   ► to ipad os i would like to see this become a little bit more mac like in in a few ways

01:44:41 ◼   ► that i don't think are popular but that i would like to see um number one and this is

01:44:46 ◼   ► going to be controversial a desktop for files on the ipad people want to work this way i

01:44:54 ◼   ► know it is not what nerds like to have a desktop covered in files but this is how i work i'll

01:45:00 ◼   ► admit it i'm a desktop file clutterer i have crap all over my desktop my folders are all

01:45:04 ◼   ► over there that's like all my active working files are on my desktop and then once they're

01:45:07 ◼   ► done i move them somewhere else maybe but like the desktop is my home base for my files

01:45:12 ◼   ► that's how most people use their desktops that's why apple made a feature uh one or two mac

01:45:17 ◼   ► versions ago that will optionally sync your documents and desktop folders and none of

01:45:23 ◼   ► your other folders because no one uses any other folders they will optionally sync your

01:45:27 ◼   ► documents desktop folder uh folders between your max i would like to see that feature

01:45:31 ◼   ► extended to also include ipads to be able to potentially optionally sync your desktop

01:45:37 ◼   ► and documents folders between your max and your ipads so the ipad would have a desktop

01:45:43 ◼   ► that could have files and folders on it that is what i would like to see additionally a

01:45:47 ◼   ► few other uh kind of mac niceties come to the ipad i would like to see a standard window

01:45:55 ◼   ► chrome for the ipad right now the ipad can do things that are kind of window like but

01:46:01 ◼   ► they're all with only hidden gestures there's not a lot of on-screen controls to control

01:46:06 ◼   ► them or to invoke them and everything i would like to see some kind of like standard title

01:46:10 ◼   ► bar with standard buttons to like you know shrink it to the various window sizes that

01:46:14 ◼   ► let you know there are various split configurations that can exist on the ipad and not every app

01:46:20 ◼   ► would have to show window chrome those apps that you know benefit from full screen edge

01:46:25 ◼   ► to edge content could opt into it the same way right now we have the home indicator and

01:46:29 ◼   ► apps can opt to hide it by default so some kind of standard title bar with window chrome

01:46:35 ◼   ► going along with this to make multitasking less slow and horrible and painful like it

01:46:40 ◼   ► is now a fast mode for multitasking that skips all the animations of moving and resizing

01:46:47 ◼   ► apps on the ipad and instantly snaps apps into place so you drag that thing over it

01:46:54 ◼   ► doesn't have to go whoop and slide it over you don't have to set it down and wait for

01:46:58 ◼   ► it it just goes bam snaps right into place you want to resize it drive the handle bam

01:47:02 ◼   ► snaps again instant finally much more responsive and much more reliable keyboard shortcuts

01:47:10 ◼   ► the ipad is slowly gaining keyboard navigability but it's pretty slow it's still pretty you

01:47:16 ◼   ► know few and far between and it's unreliable and it's not very responsive at times i want

01:47:21 ◼   ► to see just again kind of what john said about you know responsiveness get get faster because

01:47:25 ◼   ► if the ipad they're trying to push the ipad into a lot of mac like uses mac like territory

01:47:30 ◼   ► it needs to be fast and responsive and multitasking has to be immediate we can't be waiting around

01:47:34 ◼   ► for things to like swoop around and slide around and get pushed around it's just too

01:47:39 ◼   ► slow that's not how that isn't how pros work you need things to be faster broadly moving

01:47:44 ◼   ► back moving on to the iphone including you know ios i would like to you know for ios

01:47:50 ◼   ► generally it's time we want uh user set default apps for uh http mailto and the camera at least

01:47:59 ◼   ► and any other buttons that appear on the lock screen by default they have this in the mac

01:48:03 ◼   ► it's been fine it hasn't like you know prevented them from shipping a web browser on the mac

01:48:07 ◼   ► or having awesome user features on the mac that involve integration between the system

01:48:11 ◼   ► and safari or mail or whatever else two little things uh phone calls to show as notifications

01:48:18 ◼   ► not as full screen takeovers as an option multiple named timers to be supported i would

01:48:25 ◼   ► like to see the ability to integrate widgets into the home screen alongside icons if we

01:48:30 ◼   ► see fit and to let those widgets update much more frequently right now we just seem to

01:48:36 ◼   ► update basically only when you navigate to them so when you swipe over to see your widgets

01:48:41 ◼   ► which itself is kind of varied you first see old stale data first i can as they update

01:48:45 ◼   ► to fresh data and that's how dashboard on mac os always worked may it rest in peace

01:48:51 ◼   ► and that sucks we have computers they have background refresh we have enough power now

01:48:56 ◼   ► enough ram now we can have those widgets update more often maybe like every couple of minutes

01:49:01 ◼   ► every 10 minutes that that would be great and finally i would like to see complications

01:49:08 ◼   ► like watch os has complications although better because they're terrible uh from a programming

01:49:12 ◼   ► point of view so a complication api customizable for the lock screen on ios so what you're

01:49:22 ◼   ► saying is you want tiles on springboard that are like alive so you want these like alive

01:49:30 ◼   ► tiles on springboard and then you want to have a whole bunch of little things hanging

01:49:34 ◼   ► out across the top of your screen on the lock screen yeah basically i want the iphone lock

01:49:39 ◼   ► screen to become watch os i want the ipad to become the mac and i want the mac to become

01:49:42 ◼   ► the older mac you want the you want springboard to become uh what is it windows metro what

01:49:48 ◼   ► was the thing that that looked like a lot of tiles are dead now i'm not sure that's

01:49:53 ◼   ► what he's asking for i think he just wants to to ugly up his lock screen like an android

01:49:56 ◼   ► phone that's the other thing i was going to say is what you want it's all every time i

01:50:00 ◼   ► see any family members or friends android phone the amount of that is across the top

01:50:06 ◼   ► of their screen is insane i don't understand he wants complications like there's a lot

01:50:12 ◼   ► of quote unquote wasted space on the lock screen i know there's notifications stuff

01:50:16 ◼   ► that can potentially fill up that space but there's there are there is space you could

01:50:20 ◼   ► carve out on the lock screen for uh watch size complications yeah i mean what like why

01:50:26 ◼   ► not what is it what is it for it's it's right now it's basically a giant billboard why like

01:50:32 ◼   ► why can we not use the space ios uses it sometimes like if you have a timer running it'll show

01:50:37 ◼   ► on the lock screen that's great very useful and not notifications that if you have notifications

01:50:41 ◼   ► set to show on the lock screen you could fill that entire lock screen just with notifications

01:50:44 ◼   ► like that's what that space is reserved for essentially like they'll they'll fill your

01:50:48 ◼   ► screen sure but what if look look the apple watch look at how many apple watch screens

01:50:53 ◼   ► could fit on your iphone screen like the apple watch like most of the complication face things

01:50:58 ◼   ► on the apple watch like most faces have support for between three and six complications you

01:51:04 ◼   ► could fit like five or six complications in the space of one notification that could just

01:51:10 ◼   ► be like pinned to the top of notification area you could have like a little like complication

01:51:13 ◼   ► zone like right below where the clock and date are that if you wanted to you could have

01:51:17 ◼   ► a little row of like five or six little square complications like there there's so much potential

01:51:22 ◼   ► there like weather temperature timers you know staff flight status whatever what everyone

01:51:27 ◼   ► uses the watch complications for why isn't that on the iphone which would also by the

01:51:32 ◼   ► way have the battery resources to be able to update those more frequently like that's

01:51:38 ◼   ► it to me is like the the iphone lock screen is a huge amount of wasted potential and it's

01:51:44 ◼   ► just empty space right now and i would love to see us be able to use that more and to

01:51:49 ◼   ► be to have apps be able to use that more certainly an interesting point do you vision envision

01:51:56 ◼   ► this phantom desktop on ipad to be like an app that you open or is this in replacement

01:52:01 ◼   ► of springboard like what what is the experience there right now like like in ios 13 you have

01:52:06 ◼   ► the option to opt to uh to optionally put like a basically your widget zone as like

01:52:13 ◼   ► the left side of your springboard what if this is just another option for that what

01:52:17 ◼   ► if you could put you know instead of having like you know half of it be your widget zone

01:52:22 ◼   ► and half of it be your your app icons what if half of it is your desktop files like you

01:52:27 ◼   ► know like so and you could do left the left pane could be widgets or desktop who knows

01:52:32 ◼   ► what if what if app launch moved what if it really became mac like and what if the apps

01:52:37 ◼   ► all moved into the dock and then the whole desktop was there for your files it works

01:52:43 ◼   ► on the mac we've done it on the mac for a very long time and this is how people are

01:52:48 ◼   ► accustomed to working and if you're trying to say the ipad is more and more appropriate

01:52:52 ◼   ► to replace the mac hey maybe it would make a little more sense to be more mac like in

01:52:57 ◼   ► this way that everyone's familiar with as well i don't know i mean maybe part of the

01:53:00 ◼   ► reason why the ipad why ipad people like it so much is that it isn't like the mac in some

01:53:05 ◼   ► ways but certainly when we've given the ipad more mac like functionality in some of these

01:53:11 ◼   ► like basic like kind of you know workflow ways or the way the way multitasking our window

01:53:16 ◼   ► and work like the more math like it gets in a lot of ways the more mac the more ipad power

01:53:22 ◼   ► users like it but i think right now we still have these major problems of a lot of clumsiness

01:53:27 ◼   ► around file access a lot of clumsiness around multitasking discoverability and performance

01:53:31 ◼   ► and everything else like i feel like if we if we improve that by bringing over more helpful

01:53:37 ◼   ► things from the mac i feel like it wouldn't just make it a little mac but there there

01:53:42 ◼   ► are more ideas we can borrow that i think would bet that it would benefit from you two

01:53:46 ◼   ► or two new to the mac to remember this but there was a time when applications cared way

01:53:51 ◼   ► way way less where they were and people did indeed put applications on the desktop i know

01:53:55 ◼   ► you just said like oh applications in the doc and files on the desktop nope you could

01:53:59 ◼   ► put anything on the desktop including all your applications if you wanted and people

01:54:03 ◼   ► did yeah you can you can still do that with a lot of apps who cares like look who cares

01:54:08 ◼   ► where people put their apps apps these days though are super cranky about it like so many

01:54:12 ◼   ► of them detect whether they're running from slash applications and they're not they're

01:54:15 ◼   ► like hey i'm not running a slash applications do you want to move me in there i might be

01:54:18 ◼   ► running on a read-only disk image that might screw me up because i'm not it wasn't created

01:54:22 ◼   ► in an age of sandboxing it's things are more complicated than they happen but yeah marco

01:54:27 ◼   ► marco loves desktop everybody loves desktop as i've been pointing out for i was gonna

01:54:31 ◼   ► say multiple decades now it is the one the most reliably spatially consistent part of

01:54:37 ◼   ► the mac operating system that remains now that the spatial finder is gone and so it's

01:54:40 ◼   ► the one place people always know that they can find and that's why they put all their

01:54:43 ◼   ► stuff there right well and like i feel like really kind of like raging against people

01:54:49 ◼   ► keeping all their files on the desktop it's like raging against people taking photos on

01:54:52 ◼   ► ipads or taking portrait video those fights are lost people made people do what they do

01:54:57 ◼   ► and the fact is everyone keeps files on the desktop but it's not it's it's a fight it's

01:55:02 ◼   ► not you're fighting against them doing that though it's not like saying oh you shouldn't

01:55:05 ◼   ► be doing it's a bad thing what the reason i rage against it is not because people are

01:55:09 ◼   ► doing it but because it shows that what people want is a spatially consistent place to put

01:55:14 ◼   ► their stuff that's why people put on the desktop and the fact that there's only a single one

01:55:17 ◼   ► of those places left is a problem that the operating system needs to address it's not

01:55:22 ◼   ► the people's fault they're using the best that is offered to them the best that's offered

01:55:25 ◼   ► them is like oh there's one place where i can put stuff where i know it will not move

01:55:30 ◼   ► someplace else and i won't have multiple places where i can see it it's just this one place

01:55:35 ◼   ► right and of course they're putting everything there because there is no other place like

01:55:39 ◼   ► that and so i'm what i'm not raging against is you know people having messy desktops i'm

01:55:44 ◼   ► raging against the operating system for not providing more places that feel as secure

01:55:48 ◼   ► as the desktop they don't have to be exactly like the desktop but it's obvious that that

01:55:53 ◼   ► is the the characteristics that make the desktop so attractive should be duplicated elsewhere

01:55:59 ◼   ► like you should make other places that also feel as secure and as easily findable as the

01:56:04 ◼   ► desktop or close to it or try to do that and it's like they don't even try it's like no

01:56:09 ◼   ► there is the desktop and then there's just a series of a million different windows that

01:56:13 ◼   ► are all million different views on things and no one can find anything so continue putting

01:56:16 ◼   ► stuff on the desktop all right and finally from ask atp this week anthony roberts writes

01:56:22 ◼   ► that the last episode reminded anthony that uh john is a tennis fan john how would you

01:56:28 ◼   ► rank the following players not taking into consideration their competition record but

01:56:31 ◼   ► using some other criterion such as style of play and the options are as follows thanks

01:56:37 ◼   ► to our sponsors this week brutal brutal the options are andre agassi uh michael chang

01:56:44 ◼   ► jim courier and pete sampras i don't know why johnny mac isn't there but uh you know

01:56:49 ◼   ► you can't win them all you're not a tennis fan these are a more or less a particular

01:56:54 ◼   ► class of tennis players as in like high school class like they're they all came up around

01:56:59 ◼   ► the same time so and these are american players so this this grouping does make some kind

01:57:04 ◼   ► of sense um yeah so i'll make the short yeah i'm glad that the question was not about rank

01:57:11 ◼   ► or whatever because you can easily rank them by number of grand slam wins or whatever you

01:57:14 ◼   ► want to pick and that's boring so i'm going to pick based on my amalgam which is like

01:57:21 ◼   ► it's not just my favorite players but their favorite for a reason anyway andre agassi

01:57:24 ◼   ► is my number one he's always been my favorite player uh even though his record is not as

01:57:28 ◼   ► good as uh some other people i've always loved his style of play i've always loved his personality

01:57:33 ◼   ► of loves his personal struggle yada yada yada he's my favorite player i really like him

01:57:38 ◼   ► he's number one pete sampras is number two uh pete sampras probably a better player has

01:57:43 ◼   ► a better record uh but whenever andre played pete i was always rooting for andre because

01:57:47 ◼   ► he was the underdog right so pete is a better player probably in most regards except probably

01:57:53 ◼   ► return of serve anyway um so pete sampras number two this is where it gets hard and

01:57:58 ◼   ► michael changer is jim courier i'm gonna have to give it to courier just because he's so

01:58:01 ◼   ► much more accomplished michael chang had a lot of potential but could only break through

01:58:04 ◼   ► a very small number of times and i was rooting always rooting for him but jim courier made

01:58:09 ◼   ► it happen more often despite the fact jim courier took advantage of one of andre's big

01:58:14 ◼   ► chokes and you know defeated my favorite so that there's your ranking it's agassi sampras

01:58:19 ◼   ► courier chain which i think is a ranking that most people would agree with except people

01:58:23 ◼   ► would probably have sampras above agassi you know i do like that as i'm looking up who

01:58:28 ◼   ► uh jim courier is because i have no idea who that was uh one of the items in the contents

01:58:33 ◼   ► for his wikipedia page is item number four atp career finals you're excited by the fact

01:58:39 ◼   ► that uh atp stands for association of tennis professionals oh they stole it from us man

01:58:43 ◼   ► thanks to our sponsors this week ero away and molecule and we'll see you next week

01:58:51 ◼   ► now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental it was

01:59:02 ◼   ► accidental john didn't do any research margo and casey wouldn't let him because it was

01:59:10 ◼   ► accidental it was accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm and if you want to

01:59:19 ◼   ► follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m a r c o a r m anti-marco armen

01:59:36 ◼   ► s i r a c u s a syracuse it's accidental they didn't mean to accidental

01:59:48 ◼   ► they didn't mean to accidental tech podcast so long john how was your camera stuff for

01:59:56 ◼   ► your vacation this year did not drop it in the ocean did get one very big splash sort

02:00:02 ◼   ► of over the top of my entire head and camera so like it's not like the camera went in the

02:00:07 ◼   ► water but i don't understand how the camera could have gotten any more wet based on the

02:00:10 ◼   ► amount of water that fell over both of us so it was you know just water just imagine

02:00:15 ◼   ► dumping a bucket of water on top of your camera and then just letting it fall over it right

02:00:19 ◼   ► and so i dried it off and it seems like it's okay but i guess we should now accelerate

02:00:25 ◼   ► the uh salt corrosion countdown clock on the innards of my camera it is absolutely astonishing

02:00:32 ◼   ► to me that a man who has a phone condom for putting his phone in his pocket will take

02:00:40 ◼   ► a probably far more expensive camera and lens combination into salt water for it to get

02:00:47 ◼   ► splashed on i'm taking it underwater i'm i'm very see i think it should not be too incongruous

02:00:52 ◼   ► because the little my little sleeve is too is a way of taking care of my phone and i

02:00:59 ◼   ► because i'm trying to be careful and take care of my things i'm also trying to be very

02:01:02 ◼   ► careful and take care of my camera as i use it standing knee deep in ocean waves right

02:01:10 ◼   ► it's a dangerous thing that i'm doing with my camera but i'm very careful during that

02:01:13 ◼   ► process which is why it survived as long as it has so it's all just me being careful but

02:01:18 ◼   ► the bottom line is this is what my camera is for it's to be used so i'm using it and

02:01:24 ◼   ► this camera has long since outlived its expected lifetime of being taken into the ocean like

02:01:28 ◼   ► this i did have access success with i think i mentioned in the show someone suggested

02:01:33 ◼   ► when i was having some wonkiness with the camera to use this deoxit stuff the electrical

02:01:37 ◼   ► contact cleaner i don't know what uh terrible chemical is in this spray bottle but it really

02:01:43 ◼   ► did help i had an issue that is apparently common with my model of camera even if you

02:01:46 ◼   ► don't take them in the ocean which is the little the main shutter switch gets a little

02:01:50 ◼   ► wonky and the camera thinks that it is half pressed down when it's not half pressed down

02:01:54 ◼   ► and that locks out a bunch of functions and so you'll try to use controls in the back

02:01:57 ◼   ► of the camera and it would just be totally unresponsive and it's because the camera thinks

02:02:01 ◼   ► that like the shutter button is like quarter pressed or half pressed or some other thing

02:02:05 ◼   ► that locks out the ui a little bit of electrical contact cleaner about a year ago solved that

02:02:10 ◼   ► problem completely i brought the contact cleaner with me on vacation just in case it came back

02:02:13 ◼   ► and it hasn't so camera still going like a champ i am really kind of feeling frustrated

02:02:20 ◼   ► with both the limits of my lenses and the limits of my camera now that i'm more intimately

02:02:25 ◼   ► familiar with those limits like i can see like boy this zoom lens that i use at the