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300: First of All, It's Easy

 

00:00:00   Casey has just seen the modern version of Skype for the first time, like the one that the rest of us have been seeing for like six months or something.

00:00:07   This is, it is hilariously bad. Just truly hilariously bad. I can't, there's a, the entire window is one humongous pane of blue that shows Marco's floating head until I mouse over it, and then I get a whole bunch of what the cool designer kids called "fabs". Are you familiar with this trend, Marco?

00:00:28   No, it's like, not like silicon manufacturing production facilities, but like something else?

00:00:34   No, floating action buttons, Marco. It's the new cool thing.

00:00:38   Oh god, is that, so when I hover and get all these round things, that's what these are?

00:00:41   Mm-hmm.

00:00:42   These have a name, not just badly implemented buttons?

00:00:44   It's, and guess where I heard it first starting? Google.

00:00:48   Of course.

00:00:49   Remember, remember kids, material design is where it's at. Anyway!

00:00:52   Wait, so why are heads in fabs that aren't buttons?

00:00:55   I don't know.

00:00:56   That look identical to the buttons, except they have our heads in them.

00:00:59   Oh, it's so, this is truly heinous.

00:01:01   And why is John's head floating in the middle of the screen while your head is up on the upper right next to mine?

00:01:06   Well, see, you're, you're my floaty guy title, and John is just relegated to the corner.

00:01:12   And also, didn't, didn't the previous version indicate to you who was talking?

00:01:16   Yes, that's correct.

00:01:17   So if you were on like some big conference call with a bunch of people you didn't know, you could tell who's talking, which is really nice.

00:01:21   On the plus side, I can show you a red heart, which I'm doing right now.

00:01:26   Oh yes, there's a red heart on top of your fab.

00:01:28   Yes, indeed.

00:01:29   Can I put a middle finger on top of mine?

00:01:31   It's a thumbs up.

00:01:33   I can only do a thumbs up.

00:01:35   Why, you know, Jelly just sent me a text message, which makes a good point.

00:01:38   Why aren't we trying like group FaceTime or something?

00:01:40   Eh, I don't know, inertia. This is proven, we know this works.

00:01:43   It's the kind of thing that like, it's like why don't you try, you know, new toilets in your house?

00:01:48   It's like, it just, you know, this is serving a function for us that we need to just work, and we're not that interested in exploring a bunch of other things.

00:01:54   Like, we just need this to work.

00:01:56   Well, welcome to the same hell that the rest of us have been in for some time.

00:01:59   I'm glad you were able to get to avoid it for this long.

00:02:01   At least be thankful for that.

00:02:03   Yeah, the only reason I upgraded, or, I don't know if this is really an upgrade, side-graded, downgraded?

00:02:08   Updated, at least.

00:02:09   Yeah, updated is probably a better word, thank you.

00:02:11   The only reason I did is because the old Skype that actually made some amount of sense was pegging my CPU on my 5K iMac, anytime it was open.

00:02:20   And so I figured, okay, I might as well just bite this bullet, and wow, do I regret it.

00:02:25   Must have been your third-party RAM.

00:02:27   Here we go again. Welcome to the 300th episode, everyone!

00:02:32   We are recording our 300th episode, and we are going to skip follow-up on Mino's to Jon for a few minutes, and mention that this is the 300th episode.

00:02:43   How have you two been able to stick with me for this long, and more importantly, how have we not killed each other?

00:02:50   Yeah, that's kind of impressive. By the way, I should just claim right up front, I have a cold and my voice is going.

00:02:55   So, I sound worse already, and I might sound worse as the 300th episode of "Partacular" goes on. We will find out.

00:03:01   Anyway, so, that aside, I think part of the reason why this has worked so well for so long for us is, you know, first of all, it's easy.

00:03:10   We all, all three of us have no trouble talking tech. There has never been a week out of 300 weeks that we have not had enough to talk about, or that we have had trouble filling the time.

00:03:20   So that's part of it. Part of it is that all of the practical stuff, the technical stuff, the scheduling stuff, all pretty much works out, you know?

00:03:30   The three of us are all within the same time zone. We all have really good, solid internet connections. We never, seriously, no, you laugh, but when you're doing a podcast with somebody for a long time, that kind of stuff matters, right?

00:03:43   We never have severe technical problems. Even John's Mac Pro has not lost more than one recording.

00:03:50   So, like, you know, all the technical stuff is good, but ultimately, you know, we're friends, and we talk well together, and I think we have good chemistry. I don't think it's boasting for us to say this.

00:04:01   And so, I think, you know, we just, we like BSing with each other, and you like listening. That's all that really matters, you know? Like, everything else is secondary.

00:04:09   Yeah, I completely agree. And as the chief mush of the three of us, the chief emotional one of the three of us, self-anointed, I should add, I would just like to say that it is our tremendous pleasure, the three of us, to be able to be, to do this at all, much less be compensated for it, much less be compensated reasonably well for it.

00:04:30   So, it is because of all the listeners who listen to us, who spread the word about the show, who buy our t-shirts and other merchandise, who do iTunes reviews, which we haven't talked about in like 200 episodes, but that still, I guess, maybe counts.

00:04:44   But anyway, it is because of all of you that we are able to do this and enjoy doing this. And, you know, there wouldn't be Ask ATP without you. There really wouldn't be ATP without you.

00:04:53   So, if you are listening to the words coming out of my mouth right now, then thank you, because it is because of all of you that we are able to do this.

00:05:01   Well, there would be Ask ATP without them. It would just be a once-a-year show of the three of us BSing in the W2C keynote line with each other.

00:05:10   Which is arguably how this all started.

00:05:14   That would be a long episode. That was a lot of reminiscing. I put the item in the list here for episode 300. We normally don't do anything for occasions, and I plan on not doing anything for this occasion.

00:05:24   But I figured this was a good time for me to reflect on what I always reflect on when we have anniversaries. But this time, I actually looked up some information about it.

00:05:31   And that is the fact that we have been surprisingly very, very consistent. So, our first episode was released on February 7, 2013. That was five years, nine months, and approximately eight days after you're probably listening to this.

00:05:46   2,107 days ago. And I looked up our release schedule, and we released that first episode, which, if you don't know the origin of the show, like, it's in the song, but kind of.

00:05:58   But it actually was an accidental show. We were doing Neutral as Car podcast, and we talked about tech after the episode of Neutral was over.

00:06:05   And those sort of neutral aftershows about tech became the first episodes of Accidental Tech podcast. So the first episode was like 36 minutes or something ridiculous like that long, because it was just an aftershow for another podcast.

00:06:16   So we released that, and then there was a two-week gap, and then we released episode two. And that two-week gap was like, I don't know, we were just figuring out if this is a thing we're going to do, or like, I don't even remember. Do any of you remember why there was a two-week gap?

00:06:28   Well, the first episode was like on SoundCloud. Like, we didn't even have a website or anything, because we didn't think it would be a thing. We're just like, hey, we kept the recording going after Neutral and talked about tech in a way that maybe our audience would want to hear. Let's just put it up somewhere and see what people think.

00:06:43   Well, slow down, though, because if my recollection serves me and I have a terrible memory, that wasn't we that decided that. That was 100% Marco that decided to just throw this up on SoundCloud. You probably ran it by us. Like, it's not that you did it in a nefarious way.

00:06:55   I hope so.

00:06:56   But either way, it was because of your insight that you put that up on SoundCloud. You're absolutely right about that.

00:07:03   And I thought it was like three or four episodes before we really realized, oh, this is what we should have been doing this whole time, and this car stuff, while entertaining to the three of us, is really not our bread and butter.

00:07:16   Yeah, like, I'm pretty sure it only took until the second episode before we had outdone Neutral's traffic. It was real quick.

00:07:24   Yeah, but anyway, the release schedule, according to our SS feed, which may or may not reflect the actual schedule of the way things dribbled out, we have that two-week gap, but after that two-week gap between episode, quote-unquote, "episode one," which again was very abbreviated in episode two, after that, from episode two through episode 300, we have done one episode a week for five years, nine months, and eight days.

00:07:46   That is ridiculous.

00:07:47   It doesn't mean we do them all exactly on a Wednesday, because we have vacations and we arrange things, but the bottom line is they're 52 weeks in a year, and every year we're putting out 52 episodes for five years, the only exception being that little gap when the thing was getting started with the weird episodes at the beginning, which are totally weird.

00:08:03   Like, the people who go back and listen to episode one, A, I salute you, and B, boy, it must be really weird to hear those first episodes.

00:08:10   So that's one of the things I'm the most proud of, and for lack of a better name, even though Marco said this is easy, our work ethic. Like, yes, it is easy, but we all have lives and other things going on.

00:08:20   Try doing anything every single week for five years and having any other kind of obligations, let alone families and kids and, in my case, another job to go to and all the other stuff.

00:08:32   So that's it. That's all I wanted to mention, to give our, you know, we're already up our own butts about this whole thing, to give ourselves a pat on the back about the fact that we've done a thing every single week for five years.

00:08:45   Yeah, I'm very proud of that.

00:08:47   And we cheat a little bit by, like, you know, if there's a holiday or somebody's traveling, we will, like, double record one week and maybe, you know, release it, like, a little bit later.

00:08:54   Yeah, but we're just trying to provide a consistent product. You know, 52 times a year you'll get an ATP episode.

00:08:59   So while we're in the mushy butts segment, I also just wanted to point out that this, about, I don't know, about a year ago or something like that, this surpassed my previous longest job as this is now my longest job I've ever had.

00:09:13   And this is for about, you know, five and three quarters years. Previously, Overcast is the runner up because I started Overcast only a few months after we started the show.

00:09:23   It wasn't launched yet but I started working on it, like, roughly that June. So Overcast started, you know, roughly, you know, June 2013.

00:09:31   So that's about five and a half years. And then Instapaper was next longest. Tumblr was actually the least long until, like, all the way back to my job in Pittsburgh.

00:09:40   That was only two years. But, you know, Tumblr was a little over four. Instapaper was four and a half. Overcast five and a half. And ATP about five and three quarters.

00:09:47   So this is my longest job I've ever had. And it's going to stay that way for a long time, probably, because Overcast started after it did. So, yeah, it's pretty cool.

00:09:59   You know, it just occurred to me, just this moment, that's true for me too. Because my longest stint was when I first moved to Richmond.

00:10:07   I worked for a company for four and change years or something like that. So I knew that this was the longest for you. And that's because, haha, Marco always changes his job, hahaha.

00:10:16   But, no, actually, for me as well, it's the same story. It just occurred to me now. I never even realized that. Wow, that's wild.

00:10:23   It's kind of wild to go to catch up with me. I think I'm about double that in my current job.

00:10:27   Oh, wow. That is a long time.

00:10:29   Mm-hmm. It's a lot of Pearl.

00:10:32   It's a lot of Pearl. All right, so, you know, when we were realizing, when we had come to the realization that we were approaching episode 300,

00:10:41   we all kind of looked at each other, well, as much as you can inside a Slack chat room. We all looked at each other and said, kind of, are we going to do anything?

00:10:51   And in typical ATP fashion, the answer was basically no. But I was trying to rack my brain for something.

00:10:57   I did something. I looked up things.

00:10:59   That's true.

00:11:00   I computed all of these job durations.

00:11:02   Well, and my contribution to not recognizing this 300th episode and not making it that spectacular is I wanted to ask you two, what is your favorite episode or perhaps moment that you can think of in the run?

00:11:17   And this came from me thinking, not that I necessarily wanted to do a clip show, but it would be fun to have gotten like a handful of clips from years past and handed them to Marco to staple in.

00:11:26   We are not doing that because we're not.

00:11:29   But actually, so it actually crossed my mind, like, wouldn't it be fun to make like a clip show as a joke really?

00:11:34   And then I realized, like, that would actually be way more work for me.

00:11:37   Exactly.

00:11:38   You know, like when like a TV show makes a clip show, it's great because like they don't have to like have all the actors come in and shoot new scenes.

00:11:44   It's way less work for them because they can just have a couple interns going through clips and pulling things together.

00:11:48   Whereas like when you are the editor of the podcast, a clip show is actually way more work for you than it is to just record a new episode.

00:11:56   Exactly right. So we're not going to do a clip show, but I ask and I will start with Marco, what is your favorite episode or perhaps moment from the show that at least sitting here today, maybe change your mind, but sitting here now, what was your favorite episode?

00:12:10   Oh, easy. Windows of Syracuse County.

00:12:12   Why do you say that?

00:12:13   It was, I think it was, not only was it incredibly entertaining, but it revealed, it was like the best kind of thing. It's like, I don't even remember what the rest of the episode was about. I don't care. It's just the after show. It was revealing.

00:12:28   Was that the after show? I thought that was a topic.

00:12:30   No, I think it was the after show.

00:12:32   Ah, yes.

00:12:34   So we have no idea what happened in the show. There's so many episodes to remember. I'm sure we'll get corrections.

00:12:39   Yeah.

00:12:40   That's right.

00:12:41   But it was just like, you know, as a listener of shows, you know, like the kind we listen to and hopefully the kind we make, I care much more about the people than the topics. And it's my favorite moments of podcasts are when the people have a really funny moment with themselves, where like their chemistry just works really well together and they like uncover something crazy about another host or one another and they all laugh about it.

00:13:07   Like that's not an uncommon pattern. Like, you know, that happens a lot on the kind of shows that we make, you know, the kind of like unscripted shows about friends, you know, with friends talking.

00:13:16   And I think that was one of our moments, you know, when we discovered the way Jon runs his windowing on his computer and quite the extent of which that happens.

00:13:27   I think that was a moment for our show. It was my favorite as the host of the show. And I've heard a lot from listeners that it was their favorite as well.

00:13:34   So that to me is probably my favorite moment.

00:13:38   Jon?

00:13:40   It's tricky. Like as a listener, I bet listeners to the show have different favorite episodes than we as hosts do. Trying to think of favorite episodes, last moments, one of my favorite moments, which probably does not rate for highly and listeners minds is our first live show when the audience sang the song.

00:13:59   I thought that was cool. Like a lot of people don't like our live shows and they're definitely different than a regular shows. And if you're not at the live show, I can kind of see where you're coming from.

00:14:07   It's like, well, can I just have a regular episode? And I was all this weird audience noise and the shows are shorter and like blah, blah, blah.

00:14:14   But if and I don't know how it's like to be there, but I can tell you to be the person doing the live show and to have the audience sing your theme song.

00:14:21   That's really cool. So for me personally, that was a really cool moment. And my honorable mention in Top Four Fashion is this is kind of a typical Marco fashion is not actually an episode, but a category of episodes.

00:14:34   It's again, this is just strictly as a host. And so like occasionally I'll have, you know, just I guess there's a typical day at work or whatever, work and family stuff.

00:14:46   Right. And at the end of my long day, I have an episode of ATP and I know sometimes it can seem like, oh, you've had you've had a full day and now you have to sit down and record.

00:14:58   You have to keep working. There's more stuff that you have to do. Right. And then you just have rad that you're going to go to bed and go to bed.

00:15:04   It can feel like a very full day. But my favorite kinds of episodes are the ones where I had a crappy day or like just a tiring day.

00:15:13   And then we do an ATP and by the end of the ATP, like I feel better. Like, you know, it's not usually not that impressive of an episode, but we just had a good time.

00:15:22   We talked about we talked about fun things like it cheers me up at the end of the day. Like those are my favorite kinds of episodes for me as a host is when just had just a grind of a normal day.

00:15:32   And, you know, maybe I'm not even looking forward to doing like, oh, I got to do a podcast. But by the end of the episode, I go to bed happy.

00:15:38   Those are my favorite kinds of episodes there where we're like the additional quote unquote work I have to do that day actually makes the whole rest of the day better.

00:15:46   And I have a surprising amount of those. I'm always sometimes it makes it hard to go to sleep at the end of it because I'm like happy and jazzed about whatever it is we talked about it again.

00:15:53   I don't know if those are the episodes that end up being favorites of the people listening, but as the person who does the episodes, I really like that.

00:16:00   So to answer my own question, I have two honorable mentions because I also listen to top four honorable mention number one was the two minutes that just happened because now I'm all misty eyed and that's adorable.

00:16:11   And I love you, John. But my other honorable mention actually is exactly what was it.

00:16:17   John said that when the audience sang to us, was it 2017? It was not this year.

00:16:23   That was the WWDC 2017 show.

00:16:25   Okay. That was like on the one side, I think all three of us kind of expected it to happen, but actually witnessing it happening was bananas was utterly bananas and extremely, extremely cool.

00:16:40   And to be in front of a thousand people that are genuinely jazzed to see you and your two really, really good friends is a really messed up feeling in the best possible way that I don't know how to describe.

00:16:52   And that is a true honorable mention. But if I had to choose only one moment, I can tell you off the top of my head, it is the end of episode 96, which is called the Windows of Syracuse County.

00:17:05   Because as Marco said, I was, my recollection anyway, and this was a couple of years ago now, but my recollection is that I was literally crying.

00:17:15   I was laughing so hard, listening to John and ribbing John and just everything about it, Marco and I going back and forth in various states of utter disbelief, utter hilarity, and like almost anger that John was defending himself with this.

00:17:33   And you have to understand that. What was John the episode of Hypercritical that involved Syracuse County? Do you remember off the top of your head?

00:17:40   Bridges of.

00:17:41   Okay, there you go. Right, right, right. Okay, because it was Madison County and knockoff on Madison County. Is that right?

00:17:45   And so because of that episode, Bridges of Syracuse County, for the longest time, every single, and this actually still kind of happens sometimes, and that was episode 15. Holy smokes. I didn't realize it was that early in Hypercritical's run.

00:17:59   So anyway, so episode 15 of Hypercritical was Bridges of Syracuse County, and so every time we had somebody in the chat room, you know, suggesting titles for all of these ATPs, for 95 episodes, they would always come up with, you know, something of Syracuse County titles, to the point that I coded the showbot to give a snarky reply about, "Oh, you can do better than that," anytime somebody suggested that.

00:18:20   And at the end of episode 96, it was clear, at least to Marco and I, if I remember correctly, that we had no choice but to use a Syracuse County title. And our agreement, if I recall correctly, Marco, was that this is the one and only time that will ever happen, and it will never happen again for the rest of the run.

00:18:38   And I stand by that decision because, oh my word, that episode is great. And if you haven't heard it, you need to go listen to it.

00:18:45   Yeah, I firmly stand by that, like, we made the right call that if we're gonna ever do this once, this is the time to do it. And sure enough, you know, almost four years later, that was still the right call.

00:18:55   I would also say, so now that I knew that it's okay to, like, recommend, you know, topics instead of just, you know, episodes, my favorite type of diversion is the food diversion.

00:19:07   Yes, I have concluded that as well.

00:19:09   This is a recent trend. I don't know if we're all hungry because we're on diets now or something keeps coming up on this show.

00:19:14   Well, it's great because all three of us feel very strongly about food and cooking and how we make things and what is good.

00:19:23   At the same time, though, our taste in those things and our opinions of those things have fairly little overlap.

00:19:29   And so it's a very, very good area for us to go into. And the audience seems to enjoy it quite a bit as well, so it isn't just us who like it.

00:19:38   They're all on diets, too. I had someone, a young person at work ask me today what Sicilian pizza was, if you want to know what kind of day I had.

00:19:49   I pulled up a picture on the internet of my favorite pizza in the entire world, which happens to be Sicilian. I said, "It's this."

00:19:54   So, okay, I'm gonna bite. Tell me why Sicilian is not just deep dish, man.

00:20:01   Because it's not. It's nothing like deep dish. What are you talking about?

00:20:03   Well, first of all, it's square.

00:20:05   That's not the major difference. The major difference is it's not a giant weird cornmeal bucket filled with sauce and cheese.

00:20:12   I don't even know what you're talking about. It's not even. Have you had deep dish pizza and have you had Sicilian? They're not the same thing.

00:20:20   No, they're not at all the same.

00:20:22   See, I don't think I've had deep dish, at least not proper Chicago deep dish. I have had Sicilian a lot, though, and I like it.

00:20:28   But it is a lot of bread. There's so much more dough in it that you fill up on so much bread so fast.

00:20:35   Finding good Sicilian is really difficult because you can screw it up very badly.

00:20:39   But my favorite pizza in the world happens to be Sicilian, not because from two particular places all around.

00:20:45   But I don't think I've had Sicilian that I like almost any place else.

00:20:49   That's odd to me that a true-to-form, proud New Yorker would enjoy a pizza that does not require it to be folded.

00:20:56   You can't fold it.

00:20:57   That's my point. But to me, you would know a New Yorker because they immediately fold their pizza whether or not they really need to.

00:21:02   But this, to your point, you are not folding a Sicilian pizza. It is not happening.

00:21:06   See, I actually don't fold my pizza.

00:21:08   You're from Ohio!

00:21:10   But even once I learned the way of the fold, I don't do it because when you fold it, the little crease in the back becomes a dripping spout of grease.

00:21:20   Yeah, that's where the orange grease comes out.

00:21:22   Right, and I don't like getting my hands greasy or anything like that, so there's a high risk of hand greasiness if you fold it.

00:21:29   It's much lower if you don't.

00:21:31   As Merlyn would say, you're a fancy dutchess.

00:21:33   Oh, my word. Well, anyway, we can stop navel-gazing.

00:21:39   We just did it again. Anyway.

00:21:41   But no, thank you to the listeners one more time for indulging us not only over these last few minutes, but over the...

00:21:47   Somebody should add up exactly how much time all these 300 episodes have added up to be because, oh, my word, we've talked to each other for a lot.

00:21:54   And I am very proud of the work we've done. I'm very proud of our work ethic because, like Jon was saying, it takes some pretty significant scheduling hurdles and gymnastics in order to get this stuff done, especially over summertime,

00:22:08   where it has come to my conclusion that the three of us are extremely talented at picking not overlapping times to go on vacation because, especially I think this past summer, it was basically three straight weeks that one of us was going to be gone

00:22:21   and in a position where recording would be very uncool. So it isn't that hard in the grand scheme of things, but it's hard.

00:22:30   And I'm proud of us, and I'm proud of our listeners for sticking with us, and I appreciate all of our listeners for sticking with us. And thank you.

00:22:38   We are sponsored this week by Change the Terms. Visit changetheterms.org to learn more.

00:22:43   Following the deadly events of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, the tech industry finally started to take real steps to address the spread of hate speech online and the ways their platforms are used to organize, fund, and recruit for white supremacists and other hateful movements.

00:23:02   But there's a group of organizations looking for the tech industry to do more to protect people of color, women, LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and other marginalized communities.

00:23:12   For the past year, Change the Terms, which is made up of civil rights, anti-hate, and open internet organizations, has been working on a set of corporate policies to help tech companies stop hate and extremism online.

00:23:25   The coalition has shared these policies with tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. The corporate policies that Change the Terms developed are intended to help internet companies reduce hateful activities that are taking place on their platforms.

00:23:38   By implementing and following these policies, tech companies can help stop the spread of hateful activities via social media, web hosting, and online financial transactions.

00:23:47   Change the Terms is asking internet users to call on tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to lead the industry in stopping online hate.

00:23:56   To learn more and to help out, visit changetheterms.org. Once again, visit changetheterms.org to learn more.

00:24:04   Thank you so much to Change the Terms for sponsoring our show.

00:24:07   We should probably do some follow-up. Let's start with Apple making a MacBook Air with Retina Display battery replacements easier so that it no longer requires replacing the top case. How excellent is that? Do you want to tell us about this, John?

00:24:25   You look at the iFixit teardown of the new MacBook Air. It's got some interesting things in there. Of course, iFixit's whole position is they want everything to be repairable, and Apple's position for the past several years is they don't care about that.

00:24:37   So they would make these devices, obviously the phones and the other iOS devices, but even the Macs, sealed up with no room to spare for anything and lots of components glued inside it.

00:24:51   Or lots of components combined together into a single thing. We talked a lot about replacing any part of the keyboard on one of the 2016 and 2017 and probably also 2018 MacBook Pros.

00:25:04   You had to replace the entire top case. You couldn't just replace the keyboard part of it because everything was all glued together.

00:25:09   So the new 2018 MacBook Air has some interesting developments, sort of reverting to a simpler time of Apple laptop design, where the batteries are, yeah, okay, so there's lots of things that are still glued in there, like the speakers and the batteries.

00:25:26   But they're on these little, I don't know how to describe it, but you guys know those 3M strips where you can put a hook on the wall, but they know that you're going to have to take it off because you rent the apartment.

00:25:36   And there's a little pull tab at the bottom of it and you pull, like there's adhesive on the back and you stick it to the wall, but there's a little dangly bit of the adhesive that hangs down.

00:25:47   You grab that little dangly bit and pull it, it stretches the adhesive out and in the course of stretching it out, it lets it disengage from the wall in theory without damaging the wall.

00:25:56   So a whole bunch of the components, including the batteries and the speakers inside the MacBook Air have these little pull tabs on, which is way better than the thing being glued down there and having to pry it up or melt the glue.

00:26:07   They're designed with the knowledge that, look, you might need to replace a battery on this. And actually the MacBook Air has two batteries, one on each side of the laptop that you can replace individually.

00:26:16   Same thing with the speaker assemblies. They've done this for a while, but noted in the Mac Fixer thing as well, that the precious few ports that are even in this thing are all on secondary circuit boards.

00:26:29   So if someone jams something into one of your USB-C ports or someone breaks off the headphone thing and the precious headphone jack is on the side or whatever, you don't need to replace the entire motherboard such as it is.

00:26:40   You just need to replace this tiny, tiny little daughter card that's connected by a ribbon cable to everything else. Lots of Apple laptops have done that for a while.

00:26:47   And just in general, the ability to get into the thing and take pieces out and replace them is better than it has been in the past.

00:26:55   And this is especially impressive considering that the MacBook Air is not a roomy machine. It's not like, well, this is the big one where there's tons of room.

00:27:02   No, it's very skinny and things are very tightly packed, but it is better designed for repairability than the other ones. So I thought that was worth noting because it is a trend in the right direction.

00:27:12   That also brings up a secondary topic. This is based on some conversations I think people have been having in Slack lately and elsewhere.

00:27:23   The MacBook Air that we see now, is this a product that was started many years ago and has finally come out or is this a product that was created in haste based on feedback from the beginning of 2015 line of laptops?

00:27:36   Obviously, Apple is never going to tell us. But looking at the inside of the thing, I don't know.

00:27:42   I'm thinking there are some things to suggest that this was not a hastily slapped together laptop. But there are also things to suggest that its design reflects feedback received from the 2015, 2016, and maybe even 2017 years of MacBook Pros.

00:28:01   The trend is in the right direction and I'm not sure which would be more reassuring if this was hastily assembled based on poor sales or the MacBook escaped or if this was a three or four year project that just happened to come out when it did.

00:28:17   I like to believe that it was a longer running project and they really incorporated feedback into it as it was being developed.

00:28:23   Again, we'll find out in 50 years when people write their tell-all books, if they can still remember what the heck happened because we can't even remember what happened five years ago on our show.

00:28:32   I'm one of the people who thinks that they probably started this about two years ago. When it became clear that the reactions to the MacBook Pro line launched two years ago were not as positive as they wanted them to be.

00:28:44   Because this does incorporate a lot of feedback from those. It is improved from those in a number of ways while still being one of those generation machines.

00:28:52   I don't think back then Apple thought they had to replace the MacBook Air. I think they thought the new MacBook Pros would eventually come down in price and be able to get cheap models to replace it.

00:29:02   And that kind of happened with this new one. It's kind of that, but kind of not.

00:29:09   I'm very happy to see these design updates. It's not major in the sense that it doesn't have things I wanted. It doesn't have a new keyboard. It doesn't have more ports or the return of a card reader or anything like that.

00:29:27   This is not a machine that is ideal for me. But I got to say people do seem to be liking it a lot. And liking it a lot more than they have liked say the MacBook Escape. Which is very similar.

00:29:42   As I talked about before with this machine. On paper if you weren't buying the MacBook Escape for some reason I don't see why that reason still applies. And all of a sudden people want to buy this and all of a sudden people want to buy that.

00:29:57   But they do. And over the weekend I was in a store a couple times and I got to pick one up and play with it for a little bit longer.

00:30:06   And you know I got to say it does feel a lot better. Like I've been carrying around the 13 inch MacBook Pro for a while now. Which is very similar. It's only a quarter pound heavier.

00:30:17   And it's a little bit thicker at the front. It doesn't have the wedge shape. But the air feels better. Like the difference in how good it feels is bigger than you would expect.

00:30:29   Like when you're carrying it. When you're holding it. When you're using it. It really is a nicer feeling computer than my 13 inch MacBook Pro. And there's a few reasons. A few areas.

00:30:38   A lot of it just comes down to the size. Like how easy it is to pick up off the table. You know John's favorite argument. It's super great picking it off the table.

00:30:45   Opening and closing one handed. The wedge feels really nice. If you remember I had a very obscure complaint with the 13 inch MacBook Pro. Which I think applies to all the 2016 and forward MacBook Pro models.

00:31:00   Where like the ridge under the left and right front side of the case. Which I believe is an intake vent. There's a ridge on both sides.

00:31:09   And when you pick up a laptop your fingers go into that ridge and it's sharp. And it feels pretty unpleasant to actually hold the laptop by those edges.

00:31:16   The MacBook Air doesn't have those ridges. It's a totally different design on the bottom.

00:31:21   And so like I found it really nice and really pleasant to pick up and carry around and use the MacBook Air. In ways that the 13 inch and 15 inch touch bar models don't feel that nice.

00:31:32   So I can see why people like this thing. Even though it's not completely rational or not completely based on specs.

00:31:40   Because the specs I think aren't a very good deal for the money. What a lot of reviewers are finally noting is that the screen is also a lot less bright.

00:31:49   It's only 300 nits instead of 500 compared to the MacBook Pro. So like it's not a very bright screen. It is a nice screen but it's not a bright screen.

00:31:56   It's pretty slow. It's roughly MacBook class. And reviewers are saying that you hear the fan spin up a lot when it's working hard.

00:32:04   And because it's MacBook class that's often. And so there's reasons why it will remind you it's a low end machine.

00:32:11   But it does seem really nice. And so I'm understanding now a little bit better why people who didn't like the Escape or 13 inch Pro like the Air.

00:32:23   Even though on paper it doesn't make sense. We have ours here now as well. And I've been using it.

00:32:30   And if I don't think about the price, it's nice. You know having touch ID with no touch bar is really nice.

00:32:39   It seems nice and quick. The wedge shape, to your point about it feeling nice. I talked a lot about this over the past year or so.

00:32:47   But the wedge shape really is a perceptual thing that makes the thing feel different and better.

00:32:54   And familiar to people who like the MacBook Air. And I was replacing a 2011 MacBook Air with the 2018 one.

00:33:00   So it all fits together well. I like the fact that it's smaller length and width wise than the 2011 that it's replacing.

00:33:08   But that it has an equal screen more or less if you run it in non-native res which is still a bit of a sore point.

00:33:15   But yeah it looks like a machine that's well put together. I really wish it had more ports. I really wish it didn't have this keyboard.

00:33:23   We've already talked about this before. But in the grand scheme of things it is a reasonable, what we hope is the last gasp of this particular laptop design.

00:33:33   With some changes internally that I hope continue on into the future laptop designs.

00:33:38   All that stuff about command strip pull tabs on all the stuff and being able to replace pieces individually. That's all good.

00:33:48   Yeah especially for the MacBook Air line. I mentioned when we were talking about this new model.

00:33:54   The MacBook Air needs to be especially serviceable and especially rugged and durable.

00:34:00   Because it is used so often in places like schools where they're going to get beaten up.

00:34:06   A lot of kids use them. A lot of careless adults use them. Or they use it in environments that are just difficult environments.

00:34:12   And that's why I think the butterfly keyboard is still a huge problem on this machine.

00:34:18   But other than that, that is now my only complaint about this machine.

00:34:22   Everything else seems like they really addressed the needs of the MacBook Air market pretty well.

00:34:27   At least as well as modern Apple could have.

00:34:29   Also by the way, I find the gold color really fascinating on this thing.

00:34:34   Like every time between the website and the press hands on area.

00:34:40   And seeing it in a couple different stores now.

00:34:43   This color looks different every time I see it.

00:34:46   It kind of floats between gold and orange and a little bit salmony pink.

00:34:52   And I have no idea what to call this color.

00:34:55   But if I was at all into the goldish hues of things, I would love this color.

00:35:02   Unfortunately I'm not. But it's a really fascinating case color.

00:35:05   So I have a really random question with regard to the MacBook Air.

00:35:10   It is clear that since it has no touch bar, that that is a concession.

00:35:16   And I would guess it is almost certainly because of cost.

00:35:19   But it does have touch ID.

00:35:22   So do you view this keyboard layout, so do you view the presence really of touch ID,

00:35:28   as a concession that the touch bar is imperfect or do you think it is strictly and only a financial problem?

00:35:35   Just cost.

00:35:36   Yeah. I mean I think what will answer that question for us is like when there is a next generation of MacBook Pros,

00:35:45   do we get this option? Or is this all that we get?

00:35:48   Is the touch bar totally gone from them or does it become optional or replaced with this as one of the other options?

00:35:54   And we don't know yet. And honestly, I wouldn't bet on that happening.

00:35:57   It does seem like Apple is really in on the touch bar even though many of us are not.

00:36:02   But I don't know. I think in this model it's very likely to just be cost.

00:36:09   And even if they could have put it in there and maintained pretty good margins otherwise,

00:36:13   I think they probably didn't put it in for market segmentation reasons.

00:36:17   Like the touch bar, whether or not it costs them extra money, it is used to justify higher prices on the higher end models.

00:36:26   So if they put it on the lower end models, that removes a key difference from them and that makes the pricing jump less justifiable to customers.

00:36:36   Yeah, that's a fair point. Also, some real time follow up on Command Strips.

00:36:41   You will never guess, particularly Marco, what the URL for the Command Strips is, what host name it is.

00:36:48   It is command.com.

00:36:50   Oh, man.

00:36:51   How does that make you feel from like 15, 20 years ago?

00:36:54   I thought I was going to say command.strip.

00:36:56   No, no, no.

00:36:57   No, it's a Windows reference, not a Mac OS reference.

00:36:59   Actually, it's a DOS reference.

00:37:00   A DOS, yeah, right.

00:37:01   So how about them Apples?

00:37:03   Unfortunately, autoexec.bat is not a valid TLD.

00:37:08   What about config.sys? Anyway, tell me, one of you who put this in the show notes, about Mac Pro going ARM in 2020.

00:37:15   This is actually related to, or moments ago I'm using it about the timelines associated with the MacBook Air.

00:37:22   So this quandary that I brought up a couple shows ago about the new Mac Pro coming and Apple ever more strongly signaling that they're going to put ARM chips in Macs because the ARM chips are awesome and they would work really well in Macs, as the primary CPU that is.

00:37:40   And Mac Pro, like, okay, well, the Mac Pro is coming. They said it's coming. It's a 2019 product. Will this be the last great Intel-based Mac or will it be the first, hopefully, great ARM-based Mac?

00:37:53   And this is me getting nervous about buying it because both cases have upsides and downsides.

00:37:58   Obviously, if it was the last great Intel Mac, it's kind of weird to be buying the last of a generation, but then it's kind of good to get just one more Intel Mac.

00:38:04   And if it's the first ARM one, it's like, well, is it going to run all my software? How's it, you know, all sorts of other issues related to being ARM.

00:38:11   So both of them are exciting and scary for various reasons.

00:38:14   But the ARM thing, a lot of people say, well, how can they be ready to have an ARM Mac?

00:38:20   Yes, I know we've been waiting two years for the Mac Pro, but if they just decided two years ago that they're going to do a Mac Pro at all, that's not enough time to make a Mac Pro-caliber ARM CPU and to make a new Mac and to ship it all.

00:38:35   It's just not right. And that makes sense. Right.

00:38:39   But in thinking about timelines, you have to remember the butterfly effect alternate timeline where the Mac Pro never existed and Apple never decided to make another one.

00:38:53   And that timeline, which was our timeline for a long time, the iMac Pro was the only Pro Mac at the top end, the Pro Desktop Mac.

00:39:04   The decision was, you know, two years ago, oh, actually, that's not enough. We have to make a proper Mac Pro with the separate display and all that other business. Right.

00:39:13   But before they made that decision, it is conceivable that they said, we're going to do the ARM transition.

00:39:20   And, you know, in 2019-ish, 2020-ish, we want to release our first Macs with ARM processors in them.

00:39:29   And, you know, maybe one of them will be at the high end. So their plan could have been, OK, in 2019-2020, that's when we release the iMac Pro with an ARM processor.

00:39:42   And that ARM processor could have been in the planning and design stage five years ago. Right.

00:39:48   So I feel like the decision to make a Mac Pro can be entirely separate from the much more distant past decision that Apple made to bring a high end ARM chip out suitable for its high end desktop computers.

00:40:02   And that you could decide to make a Mac Pro. It's not impossible that it could be ARM, provided that the previous plan was to bring out an ARM iMac Pro.

00:40:14   So that's got me thinking more seriously about the prospect of the new Mac Pro being ARM.

00:40:22   Whereas before I couldn't think about it seriously at all, because there's just not enough time to make it, you know, a Pro caliber ARM processor.

00:40:27   But if I just think, well, it's just going to use the one they would have otherwise used in the iMac Pro.

00:40:31   And that one they started planning five or six years ago. That at least is conceivable. Is it true? Do we have anything to support it? No, I'm just musing or whatever.

00:40:39   But I thought I would bring that up just because it's something that I hadn't heard offered on this show or elsewhere.

00:40:46   And it makes me start entertaining for real the idea of an ARM Mac Pro, even though I still think it's a distant second to the much more obvious choice of it just being, you know, a Xeon.

00:40:58   Is there a particular preference that you have? You know, if they called you in and said, "John, it's up to you. ARM or Intel, what are we doing?"

00:41:07   ARM would definitely be more exciting. And also you have to believe that ARM would be faster at this point.

00:41:12   Like that if they did have a Pro caliber, you know, 16 core ARM CPU.

00:41:18   But I'm scared about compatibility. And as weird as it would be to have like the last one of the last round of Intel Macs.

00:41:28   I don't know. I'd probably be okay with it. I'm okay with either one. Like they're both exciting for different reasons.

00:41:35   I wouldn't be super disappointed. It's not like I wouldn't buy it if like Intel Mac Pro comes out and then like six months later, the, you know, the ARM MacBook Air comes out and it's amazing.

00:41:44   I'm not going to mind about that. Like, I don't know. I don't feel like I have a strong preference.

00:41:49   The ARM one is more technologically exciting, but the Intel one will probably be a more useful machine for longer.

00:41:54   And I don't plan to keep my next computer for 10 years like I've kept this one. Like it's never the plan.

00:41:59   You know, five years maybe, three years maybe, ten years, no. That is never the plan. Just things have gone awry.

00:42:06   One question I had about like, I was thinking the other day, there was some interview.

00:42:13   Oh, I think it was the Ars Technica interview of Anand Lalshimpe and Phil Schiller talking about the A12X and how awesome it is.

00:42:23   And I was wondering like, you know, they mentioned, you know, one of the reasons why iOS is able to be so fast is that it has unified memory architecture between the CPU and the GPU.

00:42:33   There's just one bank of RAM and it's very fast, you know, one bank of very fast RAM that is fast enough to be video RAM that is also used as the main CPU RAM.

00:42:43   And that way, you know, like in PCs and Macs, the GPUs have their own separate banks of video RAM and you have to be shuffling data back and forth over these buses to get data from main memory or from the CPU, you know, to the GPU texture memory or video memory and vice versa if you do computation back and forth and everything.

00:43:03   And so that shuffling data back and forth between main memory and video memory is like a major performance bottleneck and there's a lot of effort that needs to go into like, you know, optimizing for that when you're designing stuff that uses the GPU on Macs and PCs.

00:43:17   And with iOS, it's just way, way simpler because it's just one bank of RAM that's all super fast that the CPU and GPU can access.

00:43:24   So I was wondering, in a situation where they go to ARM for Macs, would they go to a unified memory architecture also?

00:43:33   No, like the old term for that, I wouldn't consider it a unified memory architecture.

00:43:39   Like a shared memory?

00:43:40   A shared memory architecture is a pejorative term for it. It's like, oh well, cheap computers can't afford to have dedicated VRAM so they have, they just share the RAM between, like that was, for many years that was the slam against the low end Macs. It's like, ah, but you don't get dedicated VRAM.

00:43:52   Right, because integrated GPUs usually do that.

00:43:55   Right, they have to because where else do they get, they don't have room for a bunch of VRAM.

00:44:00   Well, some of them have their own little RAM packages now, but...

00:44:02   At the high end, like, you can buy GPUs with like, what, 12 gigabytes of RAM or something just for the GPU, like separate from the system memory and...

00:44:12   But those are like Mac Pro level GPUs. Like, what do gamer ones have now, like three or six?

00:44:16   Yeah, yeah, well, a lot of it, but the other thing about the RAM that's dedicated, you know, next to the GPU is that it is designed differently than just generic memory.

00:44:27   Like, the bus widths are insane, right? So it can be accessed in parallel by a huge number of things in the GPU.

00:44:34   Now, it's still true that getting information to and from the CPU and memory and stuff like, is more of a pain, but once you're there, the GPU and its dedicated VRAM have a relationship that cannot be matched by the relationship that most CPUs have to their local RAM.

00:44:51   Because the VRAM on GPUs and the whole bus architecture around it is specifically designed for GPUs only, and it doesn't have to keep up with all the demands that regular memory has to keep. It just has to be super wide and super high bandwidth, and...

00:45:05   I think the simplification for the iOS devices is it's much easier to optimize for energy efficiency and for, just in general, dealing with bugs and optimizations when you have a single, simple, known architecture and you don't have to deal with, "Well, sometimes it's over here, and sometimes it's over there, and sometimes we have to shift between."

00:45:22   But part of the point of Metal, there are many purposes to Metal, but one of them is making more efficient use of the bandwidth between a CPU and a dedicated video card in terms of command sequences and how many times you have to communicate back and forth between the two areas.

00:45:39   So, I think on the high end, things are still going to necessarily be more complicated for a long time to come.

00:45:47   On the lower end, obviously, I think Apple has shown that you can do a "integrated GPU" better than Intel has done it, or better than Intel seems to want to do it, because occasionally Apple has pushed Intel to put beefier integrated graphics, the whole Iris graphics architecture around it, CPUs...

00:46:13   ...because Apple wanted better integrated GPUs that can do more of the stuff that, at the time, Mac OS needed to do with GPUs.

00:46:21   Apple can do better still, as it's shown with its iOS devices.

00:46:24   So, I think on all but the highest of high end, Apple can do a pretty good job of its "integrated GPU" being sufficient, certainly through the whole Macbook line and the Macbook Air, maybe even well into the Macbook Pro line,

00:46:39   especially with the ability to use external GPUs, they can just say, "Look, the new Pro way to do it is we give you a pretty awesome integrated GPU on your ARM Macbook Pro, and if you need something even beefier, then do eGPU."

00:46:52   I think that is a reasonable position, and we'll have all the wins that you talked about in terms of simplification and optimization and battery life, hopefully, and all that other stuff.

00:47:03   So, the prospect of an ARM Mac, again, looking at the new iPad Pros, the prospect of an ARM Mac has never been more tantalizing and easy to see, because if you look at what they've been able to do in a completely fanless 5.6mm thin slab,

00:47:19   it's like, what could they do with a full laptop with a huge battery and two fans in it? The power would be unbelievable.

00:47:27   Well, see, that's why I think, because the ARM designs would most likely lack Thunderbolt, because Thunderbolt is an Intel technology, and I think Intel's now willing to license it, but...

00:47:39   Money can fix that problem, like I said before. I believe in the power of money, and Intel's need for that money.

00:47:45   Well, sure. But they would lack Thunderbolt, probably, at least at first, and they would also probably lack a lot of the huge high bandwidth PCI express lane arrangements.

00:47:57   I know internally, I think modern iOS devices do have PCI express, but I don't know if they would have so many lanes of it that they could offer Mac Pro level bandwidth and throughput to things.

00:48:07   That's why I think it is much more likely that the first ARM Mac start at the low end, especially the 12" MacBook, seems like an obvious...

00:48:15   Yeah, I mean, they could have been making them for years already. You just look at the chips that are in the iOS device, you could take those and just slap them into a MacBook and it would be unbelievable.

00:48:23   So that's the obvious thing people expect. But I think the iPad Pro, the most recent one, showed me that they've got enough grunt now, that already, with the things that they've released now, today,

00:48:35   are within striking distance if you just double the number of cores and increase the clock speed and put a fan and a big cooler on it. They're already within striking distance.

00:48:43   So again, I'm just suggesting things that make me put it into the realm of possibility, not that make me think that they're going to do it instead of a laptop, because a laptop is a much more obvious win.

00:48:55   What's also interesting to think about, to me anyway, is that I feel like we're starting to have these multi-headed laptops, because the T2 chips, they're all ARM, like old 8-whatever chips, aren't they?

00:49:10   They're all old CPUs from older Apple devices, or very close to them, aren't they?

00:49:14   Well, not quite, but I think the T2 is roughly an A10 in performance. It's not like they didn't just literally take those chips unmodified, but I think, architecturally, I think it is roughly A10 class.

00:49:26   Yeah, the CPU cores, that's how they're classifying them. It's not an A10 system on a chip, but if you look at the CPU core part of it, it looks like the same architecture as the cores that were used in the A10.

00:49:37   Yeah, so that has kind of come out of nowhere over the last couple of years, and it seems like the T chips are taking on more and more and more of a role within Apple laptops.

00:49:50   So do they just kind of, you know, envelop them, you know, white blood cell style? Like all of a sudden there's no Intel chip left, or the Intel chip is only for, you know, things that haven't been compiled for ARM,

00:50:05   which I know it's not quite that simple, but just for the sake of discussion, you know, over time, does the T2 chip kind of just subsume and consume whatever the needs that Intel was previously serving?

00:50:19   You've got such a big power budget inside a laptop, you can have the T2 and the regular system on a chip.

00:50:26   You can combine them, but having them both is not entirely insane. I mean, it's a little bit insane. The thing is that the T2 is basically running the show in the new Mac architecture.

00:50:37   It's the thing that starts the computer, and it's the thing that starts the Intel CPU, right? So it is the computer at this point, and the Intel CPU is basically the co-processor in terms of the secure startup process and validating the images and doing all this stuff, right?

00:50:53   So, you know, a cleaner architecture would be, "Okay, well now you go to the big hunkin' ARM CPU and the Intel one is out of there, and you just need one of those."

00:51:01   Because you put all the different things that you need inside it, whether on a system on a chip or on a, you know, a package with multiple dies inside it or whatever,

00:51:12   and there's no reason to have one dedicated little thing that starts up the computer in a secure way and kicks it off to the other thing. You can just combine it into one.

00:51:20   But for practical reasons, in the short term, it may be more expedient to go with an arrangement with two ARM chips.

00:51:26   The Intel chips, though, the whole point is you've got to get them out of there, because they cost a lot of money, and they use a lot of power, and they just need to get them out.

00:51:33   We're all hoping that they'll be able to emulate Intel on ARM processors in some way that isn't super-duper painful, because that's kind of essential for the transition.

00:51:44   A real-time follow-up is an article someone just put in a link to remind us, and I think we talked about this on the show, this is from 2017, that Intel is making Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free.

00:51:55   I don't know about the details of it, I think they mostly just mean in terms of if you want to make devices that, you know, use controller chips and stuff like that.

00:52:02   Does it also mean if you're going to make host computers? Maybe. Anyway, the point is Intel is already opening up Thunderbolt more than they had in the past,

00:52:11   which means that they want it to be widely adopted, which means they're even more amenable to any kind of arrangement they might need with Apple.

00:52:18   Again, if Apple says, "We're not going to buy CPUs from you anymore," Intel, although they'll be cranky, is probably going to say, "Well, you'll still buy modems from us, right? Sell modem chips?

00:52:31   Are you interested in licensing some sort of Thunderbolt controller chip or technology?"

00:52:37   Intel still needs to sell things, right? Once they've failed to change Apple's mind, they're not just going to go away and never have a relationship with Apple again.

00:52:46   They still want to sell Apple stuff so they can make money and stay in business because Apple's got all the money.

00:52:51   So I'm very hopeful about a continuing fruitful relationship between Intel and Apple in areas where it needs to exist.

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00:54:52   Make sure to pick ATP.

00:54:53   Thanks again to Fracture for sponsoring our show.

00:54:55   All right, so last week, Marco, you had a pre-release iPad Pro or a review unit iPad Pro.

00:55:06   Since then, Jon, did you buy any other new Apple hardware other than that MacBook Air?

00:55:11   Nope, just MacBook Air. I haven't even seen the new iPads.

00:55:13   I need to get to a store and look at them.

00:55:15   Man, it's like you don't do homework for this show.

00:55:17   Why don't you care about the show like Marco and I do?

00:55:19   I'm busy. I got things to do.

00:55:21   I have also purchased an iPad Pro.

00:55:25   I purchased an iPad for the first time.

00:55:27   Well, actually, my most recent iPad Mini was a gift, so I haven't purchased an iPad since, gosh,

00:55:32   I think the first Retina Mini, whenever that was, like 18 years ago.

00:55:35   But I purchased an 11-inch iPad Pro, 256, cellular, space gray.

00:55:40   I did get the Smart Keyboard Folio, and I am glad that I wasn't paying close attention to how much it was

00:55:46   because holy Moses, what was it, $180 or something like that?

00:55:49   Yeah, something like that, yeah.

00:55:50   Hilariously expensive. Actually, depressingly expensive.

00:55:53   I did not get a pencil because I don't think I really have a need for one,

00:55:57   and maybe I'll be convinced I'm wrong.

00:55:59   Plus, the holidays are coming up, and that could be an expensive but useful gift.

00:56:04   But I do have this iPad Pro.

00:56:06   Did I say it was cellular? It is cellular because even though I was planning not to go cellular this time,

00:56:12   eventually Marco, amongst others, convinced me, Marco and Jason Snell especially convinced me,

00:56:17   that that was a poor choice, and certainly my own experience for buying iPads for the first few years

00:56:22   is that when I didn't go cellular, I regretted it.

00:56:24   So, I did go cellular.

00:56:26   People in the US, interesting tip, if you're cheap like me and don't want to add, you know,

00:56:31   10 or 20 bucks monthly to your cell phone bill, T-Mobile actually allows you at least once,

00:56:38   I don't know if it's more than once, to buy for $10 one time, to buy, I think it's a 5-gig, 5-month pass.

00:56:45   So it's like one of those, you know, I want it just for today and then it disappears,

00:56:49   or I want it just for this week or this month and then it disappears, you know, prepay plan.

00:56:54   But T-Mobile offers you a 5-gig for 5 months for 10 bucks, which is, I think, an unbelievably good deal.

00:57:03   And I am really excited about that.

00:57:06   T-Mobile in the past had offered 200 megs for free every single month, which they don't do anymore,

00:57:11   which is too bad.

00:57:12   And because everyone will ask, why not tether to your phone?

00:57:15   Because even with it being easy enough to just go into settings and say, "Tether to my own iPhone, please,"

00:57:22   that is still way more annoying than just having it built into the iPad.

00:57:26   And yes, it is possible, and yes, I do still tether this to my phone from time to time,

00:57:30   say if I'm watching a video or something like that.

00:57:32   But Marco in private conversations with me and Jason Snell in private conversations with me were right.

00:57:38   Having cellular is so much nicer.

00:57:40   So that's what I bought, and I have some more impressions or some thoughts about it.

00:57:44   But Marco, why don't you tell us what you've learned since we spoke last week?

00:57:48   Honestly, I don't really have much else to say about the iPad.

00:57:52   I did a whole video review of it.

00:57:56   I like it a lot.

00:57:58   I mean, I've been using it now for about a little over a week now.

00:58:01   And it's not perfect.

00:58:05   There's some things that I -- obviously, there's some nitpicks I have.

00:58:09   The new Smart Keyboard Folio is better in some ways but worse in others.

00:58:14   So I think it's overall kind of a sidestep.

00:58:17   It's way better on your lap than the previous one, but it's not as good on countertops.

00:58:23   So that's kind of eh.

00:58:26   It also is significantly bulkier around the back, which I don't love.

00:58:30   But actually using the new iPad, I just think it's awesome.

00:58:33   I love using it.

00:58:35   I love the way it looks. I love the way it feels.

00:58:38   It's just really, really nice.

00:58:41   Face ID, just like on the iPhone, Face ID is kind of a mixed bag but mostly positive.

00:58:45   I do frequently cover up the camera with the way I hold it in landscape.

00:58:49   But it's also way faster than Touch ID in other cases or it's more convenient in other cases.

00:58:55   It's especially more convenient when you are using the iPad and have to authenticate for things like passwords.

00:58:59   It's really, really nice for that because you don't even have to move your hands.

00:59:02   It just sees you and it's like, "Oh, hey, it's still you. Okay, cool. Let's see you in."

00:59:06   It is still a massive fingerprint magnet.

00:59:09   The oleophobic coating has not changed at all.

00:59:12   So it is still the same fingerprint magnet that the previous generation was that every iPad Pro has been.

00:59:18   Because they changed their coating to make it pencil compatible.

00:59:22   And ever since they did that, it has been a massive fingerprint magnet.

00:59:25   So that's incredibly unfortunate.

00:59:28   But I'm assuming that Apple, they're not unaware of this issue.

00:59:35   Maybe they just haven't found a better oleophobic coating yet that can work with a pencil.

00:59:39   Otherwise, I'm a big fan. I like it a lot.

00:59:42   I love the new size, the new 11-inch size.

00:59:44   It's similar to the 10.5 but nicer.

00:59:47   I love the new straight edges, the flat edges around it.

00:59:50   I love the curved screen. It looks really sleek and modern.

00:59:53   And I really, really hope that the new iPhones next year follow this industrial design.

01:00:00   Yeah, so like I said, my most recent iPad that we had in the house was a fourth-gen iPad Mini.

01:00:08   This was the most recent iPad Mini. I think it was from 2015, if I'm not mistaken.

01:00:13   So that was halfway through this show's run, roughly, which is kind of bananas.

01:00:18   And I still used the iPad Mini from time to time but had mostly abandoned it at this point.

01:00:26   And I did get this iPad Pro because the hardware was just too good-looking and too sexy to pass up.

01:00:33   And so I got it on launch day. I just sauntered into the store and made it happen, thanks to my business contact there.

01:00:41   And anyways, I am really enjoying this thing so far.

01:00:45   I did not have any iPad Pro in the past, and so I didn't have a lot of experience with the Smart Keyboard Folio, whatever thing, from prior years.

01:00:54   But I remember always seeing it and seeing how it was kind of stepped, and there was a thick part and a thin part.

01:01:00   And that always just made me think that it felt gross.

01:01:02   And this one is even the whole way around. It is pretty sturdy in the lap, which my understanding of past years is that that was not the case.

01:01:11   On the 11-inch, I don't care for the two angles very much.

01:01:15   There are basically two different positions you can put it in, one that is kind of vertical and one that is at a very slight angle.

01:01:25   And the vertical one, the only time I have really used that is if I am in bed and watching something.

01:01:30   So I am laying down in bed and the iPad is just like on my chest.

01:01:34   And that is about it.

01:01:37   The other one is for basically any other use.

01:01:39   And I wish there was a third one or something with a little bit steeper angle.

01:01:43   Because if you are sitting up close to it and your head is considerably above the screen, I don't feel like the angle of the other position is really steep enough, which is a little frustrating.

01:01:55   But, overall, I love this thing. I am really surprised by how much I have enjoyed using it.

01:02:03   And I took it with me on a small trip that we went on over this past weekend to watch some dear friends of ours get married.

01:02:11   And I brought my MacBook, adorable, I brought my 12-inch MacBook.

01:02:16   But I attempted to use that 12-inch MacBook as little as possible.

01:02:22   And I took some notes on what I couldn't avoid using the MacBook for.

01:02:28   And truth be told, it really wasn't that much.

01:02:31   I even figured out on the plane to California, I figured out how to post to my blog from just the iPad.

01:02:39   Or actually, maybe that was the night before. I might be lying to you.

01:02:42   But the point is, I figured out how to post to my blog on my iPad.

01:02:46   And that turned out to be the app Working Copy, which is a really powerful Git client for iPad.

01:02:52   I find the interface a little bit clunky in a few ways, but it is extremely powerful.

01:03:00   And it even includes a built-in and pretty good markdown editor.

01:03:04   And if you recall, or if you were not aware, I wrote my own blogging engine in Node years ago.

01:03:10   And the input to that blogging engine is basically just a folder full of markdown files.

01:03:14   And so I was able to compose a markdown file in Working Copy.

01:03:18   I was able to push that to GitHub.

01:03:21   And then I was able to create, I used Heroku as my particular host of choice.

01:03:26   And I was able to create a hook in Heroku to say, "Hey, when I push to this particular branch of this particular repo in GitHub,

01:03:33   go ahead and redeploy my website."

01:03:35   And so twice for two different blog posts I wrote on my website, I did that from the plane,

01:03:41   all completely on the iPad, which is something that I hadn't really been able to do before,

01:03:45   and I thought was extremely cool.

01:03:47   The only things that really fell down are, and we talked about this actually somewhat recently,

01:03:53   the particular app I use to manage, to kind of balance our checkbook, if you will, and manage our money is called MoneyWell.

01:03:58   I like it a lot, except it is not updated terribly frequently, and they don't really have a sharing story

01:04:05   that's been consistently working for sharing between devices.

01:04:09   And so I don't really have an equivalent on the iPad.

01:04:12   And the best I could do is using screens by some friends of ours, which is a VNC client.

01:04:17   I could remote into my iMac and do that, but that's fairly clunky, not because screens is bad, screens is fantastic.

01:04:26   It's just that's always going to be clunkier than doing something on an app on your device.

01:04:31   Additionally, there was an instance where I wanted to grab a movie from, actually a friend's Plex,

01:04:41   and I didn't have the sync permissions on that person's Plex server, but if you know what you're doing

01:04:50   and have YouTube DL, which is one of my favorite command line tools in the entire world,

01:04:54   you can actually download pretty much anything on a friend's Plex server via YouTube DL.

01:05:00   And though somebody in just the last week or two, or I guess just the last few days, has released ISH via TestFlight,

01:05:08   which is an iOS Linux shell in user land, which is really interesting.

01:05:12   Oh, really?

01:05:13   Yes, and I tried installing YouTube DL, which did work, but the second I tried to run it, it was like, "Ha ha, no."

01:05:21   I am very interested in that.

01:05:23   Yeah, it is very interesting. It reminds me a lot in spirit, and I'm sure this is technically inaccurate,

01:05:29   but it reminds me a lot in spirit of Cygwin, C-Y-G-W-I-N, which was basically an interpreter between Bash

01:05:41   and the Win32 subsystem, so you could basically run an almost true-to-form Bash shell on Windows.

01:05:46   And ISH seems very, very similar. We'll put links in the show notes.

01:05:49   So for certain things you can do, if you're doing more basic stuff that the author/authors have intended or tried,

01:05:56   it works okay. So VI works, but my preferred editor, which happens to be Emacs, please don't @ me.

01:06:02   Wait, really? What?

01:06:04   That doesn't work. It's what I got used to before I knew what I was doing, and I've got a lot of momentum there,

01:06:09   and I don't care passionately about it. Whatever, it's just what I'm used to. So anyway...

01:06:14   That might be worse than Velveeta.

01:06:16   Well, I'm okay with that. So anyway, I'm trying not to get derailed. I couldn't do YouTube DL from my iPad,

01:06:24   and I had to do that on my MacBook. And the reason I wanted to do that, not just stream it from Plex,

01:06:28   which I absolutely can do on my iPad, is because I wanted to prepare to be able to watch it on the plane,

01:06:33   and so this way I would just have the file on my MacBook and be able to just watch it on the plane, disconnected.

01:06:40   And then finally, I do have a USB-C SD card reader that does work pretty darn well.

01:06:47   However, it does not show the particular flavor of RAW files that my camera generates, and this is important,

01:06:54   not because I necessarily want to do any editing of RAW files on my iPad, and frankly, I don't really do any editing of RAW files anyway,

01:06:59   but I do shoot in RAW and JPEG, and basically my workflow is, if there's anything I think I might want to blow up

01:07:05   or maybe touch up one day in the future, I'll keep the RAW, but generally speaking, I just delete all of them.

01:07:10   And what I'd like to be able to do on the iPad is just tap through and say, "That one's garbage, that one's garbage,

01:07:15   that one's garbage, that one's garbage. Okay, delete all those off the SD card and move along with your life."

01:07:19   And that doesn't seem to be possible because, I think, because of the particular flavor of RAW files that my Olympus camera generates.

01:07:27   From what I understand, that is not true of every camera's RAW files. I just got unlucky.

01:07:31   So, all told, I spent the entire weekend remotely doing things that you could even call work all on my iPad,

01:07:40   and as I got more and more used to the multitasking features in iOS, well, I guess it was like 9 or 10 or whatever that these came out,

01:07:47   but I hadn't really used them much, it's pretty powerful, and I do like it a lot.

01:07:51   It is not always as quick as my MacBook is, but especially now that I actually have a keyboard attached to my iPad,

01:07:59   because again, I've never had an iPad Pro before, and this is what Marco actually had said just an episode or two back,

01:08:06   once you have a keyboard connected to your iPad Pro, it changes everything and makes it so much better a computer than it was before.

01:08:16   So, all told, two thumbs up for this thing, man. I really, really like it, and I can't stress enough,

01:08:23   and I think I said this last episode, I am really looking forward to iOS 13 or whatever's coming next year,

01:08:29   because I just get this sneaking suspicion that a lot of these pain points are either going to go away or be a lot less painful in the future.

01:08:37   I still just want to use my iPad as an iPad, and I'm still holding out hope for an iOS laptop.

01:08:43   I understand the utility of having the keyboard, my wife uses it and I totally get it,

01:08:47   but to me, as good as it is and how much it changes how the iPad is, I think it would be better still if it was an actual hinge laptop thing,

01:09:00   like Jason Snell's beloved Brydge keyboard, but made by Apple, and not two separate weird things.

01:09:07   Not that I have a yearning for that, but I feel like that's the point at which I will start entertaining putting a keyboard on it,

01:09:13   because in my life, the role of the iPad fills is the role of the tablet, where I do stuff that doesn't require typing on a keyboard,

01:09:21   although I do answer short emails and stuff and send people messages or whatever, and that's fine,

01:09:25   but the whole point is when I'm using the iPad, I'm not in the computing mode.

01:09:30   Now, if I was to go somewhere and only bring my iPad with me, as I've done the past couple of WWCs, I don't even remember.

01:09:38   I only really use my iPad at WWCs, but I'm not doing any typing anymore at WWC, I'm mostly just reading things and sending random messages or whatever.

01:09:46   So I'm still a little bit down in the hole. This turns your iPad into a heavier iPad with a floppy keyboard,

01:09:54   so that's still not particularly appealing to me, but I do want to check out this new one, because, you know,

01:10:00   although as Marco determined it is heavier, but it's also flatter and not as lumpen, and maybe I'll change my tune.

01:10:08   I would still love to have one of these, just not sure I have a pressing need to buy one quite at this moment.

01:10:17   I do want to see them in the store, maybe I'll be convinced otherwise.

01:10:20   Especially since the accessories that I was so excited about, the Smart Folio case, it's getting kind of mixed reviews.

01:10:28   Not the keyboard one, but the non-keyboard one. Mix reviews as compared to the old arrangement.

01:10:33   My current arrangement that I have, in the whatever model I have, like the original 9.7" iPad Pro,

01:10:40   I have the Smart Cover, plain old original Smart Cover that just goes in the front,

01:10:46   and whatever that back shell case is, and they're matched to each other, they're the same color, and they're all this kind of rubberized material.

01:10:52   I really love that arrangement. I would love it more if it didn't make the iPad wider and taller, because it goes all around the edges,

01:10:59   so that's why I think I like the protective sandwich, as the past episode was called.

01:11:04   But mixed reviews I'm hearing from people about the material of the case, and how it compares to the old ones,

01:11:11   and weird issues with the bazillion magnets, so I gotta go to the store and check them out.

01:11:16   But I think I'll be able to hold off buying one.

01:11:18   You know, I really, really like it, and again, I can't stress enough that I do not have a prior gen to really compare to,

01:11:24   but I really like the case. I don't think the materials are bad. I think it works pretty well, again, with my small lamentation about angles,

01:11:31   particularly on the 11". However, something that I couldn't put my finger on until I read Jason Snell's review that just came out earlier today as we record,

01:11:41   is that it is just this grand expanse of grey that is the cover, in fact. When you close it all up and are looking at what would be the front of the iPad if the cover wasn't in the way,

01:11:53   it's just nothing but grey. There's no ridges, just a slab of grey. And I couldn't figure out why I kept looking at that and thinking I should put a sticker on this,

01:12:02   because that is not usually my thing. I did on my work laptop, because who cares, it's not mine, but I've never stickered up any of my devices,

01:12:10   and I'm really thinking about stickered the hell out of this, my curly style, because it is just grey. It's just a slab of grey, and I don't really love it.

01:12:20   Yeah, like for a device that is so creative-focused and artistic-focused and so fun in so many other ways, the design of the dark grey, flat, bland keyboard cover

01:12:36   doesn't even have an Apple logo on it. There was a good segment on upgrade about this a few days ago, yesterday rather. And also the new cover design also picks up any crumbs off your counter,

01:12:48   because it's just this flat rubber I have right here. It just looks so bland. It looks like it is punishing you for wanting nice-looking things.

01:12:59   It's such a contrast to the iPad itself, which is just ridiculously nice-looking. The actual iPad looks gorgeous. It's such an amazing piece of industrial design.

01:13:12   And then you put this ugly keyboard case on it that looks like it's punishing you.

01:13:17   I don't know if I would personally describe it as actively ugly, but it is certainly not great-looking. And I think I will probably end up putting some stickers on mine at some point or another.

01:13:29   All in all, I do love having a keyboard attached to an iPad, and I also do love the industrial design of this iPad. I love having the flat sides.

01:13:39   It reminds me of how much I miss the feel and to some degree the look of the iPhone 5 era with the flat sides. I wish that would come back on new iPhones, and I don't think it will.

01:13:52   Or if it does, I'll be surprised. But I do love having the flat sides. Occasionally I stand by what I said about being a little bit of a pain to pick up off a flat surface, but that's not something I run into often.

01:14:02   But no, I love this thing. I've been impressed by it. The sound is pretty darn good. Again, I have a three-year-old mini to compare to, so all of these comparisons take with a grain of salt.

01:14:13   But the sound is good, the screen is good, the face ID is wonderful. Everything about this I've been really, really impressed by.

01:14:21   Speaking of picking it up, I think someone tweeted at us a video of an alternate technique for if you wanted to pick up your 11-inch iPad Pro off the table with one hand.

01:14:34   If you can manage it, you can put one finger on one side and your thumb on the other side and pinch it and pick it up like that.

01:14:43   I guess if you can palm a basketball, you can probably pull that off.

01:14:47   Oh my word, yeah, no way.

01:14:49   Can you do it?

01:14:50   Not even close.

01:14:51   I actually can pick it up with one hand only if the keys part of it is face down, so it creates a little bit bigger of a gap.

01:15:00   So if the keys are face are on the bottom side and the keyboard cover is closed and I put my hands around the binding side of it, then I can pick it up with one hand.

01:15:12   Oh, actually, you know what? I was looking at the wrong dimension. I was looking landscape like an idiot.

01:15:16   No, I can almost get it up. Yeah, you're right. I can almost do it. I can almost do it. It's close.

01:15:21   Yeah, if you have the 12.9-inch, it would take quite a finger span to pull that off, but it's possible.

01:15:28   That's nice. But anyway, no, I really like this thing. I've been quite impressed by it.

01:15:32   The only problem I have with it is now that I see that ISH is a thing, now I'm just waiting for support that just a handful of things I really wanted to support, which it probably never will.

01:15:43   But I would love for that to happen. And certainly in a lot of cases, I can just use, you know, what is panic's thing? Is it prompt? Is that right?

01:15:51   Prompt, yeah.

01:15:52   I can just use prompt and, you know, SSH into my iMac. But it would be nice to be able to do some of that stuff locally.

01:15:58   And I think one of the things that the developer, and this is all open source, one of the things the developer is looking to do is support node, for example.

01:16:04   And I think PHP might have support. I'm not sure about that. But it would be cool to be able to, you know, write a little bit of code natively on this device.

01:16:12   And so...

01:16:13   Write some scripts too. Like, put like, you know, ImageMagic on it and like do some scripting. Like, there's all sorts of stuff I could do with this.

01:16:20   Don't you get an incredibly uncomfortable feeling? Like, you know there's Unix under there that you could be running an actual shell on the actual hardware.

01:16:28   But Apple doesn't let you. So here, to get around all the App Store restrictions, they're running a user mode x86 emulator so you can run a shell inside it on a system that is already like, just...

01:16:40   Not a lot of empathy for the machine.

01:16:42   I do! Like, it's ridiculous. Like, this is another... I know Jason Snell had a rant on, what was it, the most recent upgrade? I haven't heard the episode but I've heard a lot of people talk about it.

01:16:51   Complaining that, you know, the iPad hardware, you know, the theme that we've heard many times, the iPad hardware is amazing but the software doesn't...

01:16:58   The software prevents certain things still. He was complaining that Apple doesn't create its own pro applications for the iPad.

01:17:06   It just gives you the more cut-down versions of it which doesn't make any sense given the incredible power of the iPad Pro other than Apple's general lack of commitment to its pro applications.

01:17:15   Or lack of commitment to them on iOS, anyway.

01:17:18   And this is another one of the areas. All the restrictions which make some sense for historic and current security reasons but...

01:17:25   Like, you can't offer an iOS application that lets you run a shell even though those capabilities are sitting there completely untapped inside the hardware.

01:17:38   Again, makes sense from a security perspective but it is entirely within the reason for Apple to provide ability to have sort of a ch-rooted, secure, sandboxed environment where you run a native shell that nevertheless is restricted from doing any damage to the system because it is confined to its little pinned-in world or whatever.

01:18:01   Where you don't have to run an x86 emulator on your ARM CPU just so you can get a shell prompt. Like, you mentioned Sigwin. I don't think Sigwin was that bad but it reminds me of, going back even farther, Mac Mint.

01:18:11   Which was a system that I believe it was like a port of an Atari, Unix-y flavored thing to the 68K classic Mac.

01:18:22   And the whole reason I ran it on my Mac was guess what? It lets you have a TCSH prompt on your Mac that you could, you know, go and wander around your Mac's directories from an actual shell running this weird, mutant Atari, Unix on top of your Mac.

01:18:38   But classic Mac OS wasn't Unix, it didn't have a shell prompt. Like, that's the same thing with Windows. It wasn't on top of something that was already there, it was adding something that didn't exist at all. This, the ISH thing, I applaud the developer for making it happen but it depresses me that this is the extent we have to go to to get this functionality when it's sitting right there, just completely untapped.

01:19:01   Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair. But it is cool as hell and I'm really hopeful now that it's getting some attention, you know, because Steve Chaunce Smith has been talking about this for the last day or so.

01:19:12   I'm hopeful since it's open source that we're going to see a lot of progress on this and maybe get a reasonably full featured shell natively on the iPad. Which would be cool.

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01:21:28   John, tell me about your MacBook Air. What else have you learned about it?

01:21:34   I guess we've kind of already covered that. I mean, I haven't learned that much exciting about it. It hasn't yet been dropped. Kids are using it. They don't seem to have any complaints. Touch ID is great. Kids are already forgetting their passwords.

01:21:44   Oh, wonderful.

01:21:46   Apparently, in a recent user version of Apple, they didn't want you to have the same password for your Apple ID and for your Mac account. Well, that was the default, I think, maybe. That you'd set up your Apple ID.

01:21:59   I don't know. Both kids ended up in a situation where their password to get onto the Mac was the same as their Apple ID password, which I understand why Apple doesn't want it. It's not a good idea. You shouldn't reuse passwords. But anyway, now Apple forces you not to do that. So now they have slightly different passwords for the Mac and for their Apple ID.

01:22:17   But because there's Touch ID, they never have to enter the Mac one. They just swap back and forth. They come to the computer. They don't even need to click on their face or whatever. They just put their finger on their fingerprint thing, and their fingerprint is only associated with a single account, and it just logs them into that account. And it's great.

01:22:31   As great as it is, though, it still kind of burns me that we don't have Touch ID on a Mac yet. So hopefully that will be on my fancy Mac Pro someday. But other than that, nothing much to report. Everything going fine. Oh, I guess one additional thing is MagSafe. Stupid MagSafe.

01:22:51   Not that anyone has tripped over the cord, but now we have a place for the laptop. It goes right where the old MacBook Air went. Two things that are pretty big quality of life downgrades from before, and neither has to do with tripping over the cord.

01:23:07   One, I was using the MagSafe adapter that was designed for the original MacBook Air that couldn't accept MagSafe that came in from the side. It looks kind of like a toothbrush. It comes in from the back.

01:23:23   And that was super convenient, because the most convenient place for the cord to go away was back behind the desk that the thing is sitting on for me. It also meant that enough of the cord was on top of the desk that when you disconnected the laptop, the cord just sat right there, waiting for you to bring the laptop back and put it on. It didn't slide off the desk because there was enough of it pulled onto the desk.

01:23:42   Yeah, that was a much nicer design to use. Yeah, so that's totally gone, because if there's a right angle USB-C power adapter connector, I haven't found it yet. I think Monoprice has a couple. I looked at them, but they're like ugly adaptory things. It's not an all-in-one. It's just not as nice.

01:24:01   Second thing is, given that now the plug has to snake up from the side, when you disconnect the laptop, that cord just slides right off and goes back down the side of the desk, because there's not enough of it on the desk.

01:24:16   Now, I actually have a little weighted metal thing that you hook the cord into that we're kind of using, but because the cord is so thick and unruly, it doesn't really stay. The little thing doesn't grab it. It's not like a grippy thing. It's more like just a little slot.

01:24:32   So it's not easy for the kids to disconnect the cord and put it in the thing. So very often, the cord just falls down the side of the desk. I'm working on something to make that more reasonable, maybe something that actually grips the cord.

01:24:44   The third thing is, actually connecting and disconnecting the USB-C thing is more of a pain than MagSafe was. For me, definitely, you've got to see where the little thing is. I'm trying to be careful not to scrape up the side of the computer.

01:24:59   Because it's a new computer and a new power cord, it's still very stiff. It clicks in and it's actually kind of hard to plot. I'm sure that will change as the cable gets looser and looser over time. But right now, it's very stiff to get in and out of there.

01:25:15   And you have to pull it out straight, because you can't pull it out at an angle. This is not going to come out. You're just making your life more difficult. And the kids have much more difficulty than I do with it, because they're not as careful as I am.

01:25:29   And the holes are very small, and you have to be precisely aligned. They're just like, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, until it eventually goes in, which just puts my teeth on edge. So, big downgrade in terms of the basic experience of, "Hey, go put the laptop away and plug it in," or, "Hey, go get the laptop."

01:25:48   I'll figure out the cord issues, but the plugging and unplugging, I feel like, is not going to get any better. In fact, it's probably going to get worse, and the thing will get looser and looser, so it'll come out more easily than it does right now.

01:26:01   I kind of like the fact that it stays in very well right now, because everything's new, because I don't have to worry about someone moving the laptop around and it becoming disconnected. But, ugh, downgrade.

01:26:13   To that end, something I meant to bring up earlier, and I completely forgot, I haven't really noticed this with USB-C charging cables quite as much, but when plugging in the Apple, whatever they call it, the Apple HDMI adapter, I forget what it's called, the official name for it.

01:26:31   The digital AV adapter, maybe?

01:26:33   Yeah, yeah, I think that's it. Thanks. And the Monoprice SD card reader, that probably cost me 10 or 15 bucks. Plugging those into the iPad Pro, plugging it in was fine, but removing them was actually genuinely difficult.

01:26:48   The iPad Pro is more grippy than I remember the MacBook Adorable ever having been. And I don't know if it's just me, and I'm crazy, I was talking to, I think it was Gruber about this, and he said that he had seen a lot of the same.

01:27:04   But I'm curious, you know, if the listeners find that the iPad Pros are all so much grippier. Like, Marco, have you noticed this with things other than power cables, or have you only really plugged in power cables so far?

01:27:15   I mean, this is just what USB-C feels like. USB-C is, you know, it takes more effort to pull out the cable than Lightning and than most cables when the cables are new.

01:27:27   Over time, the cable ends, like the pins inside of them do wear down and get easier to pull out, often to a fault where they stop making good connections and you have to replace the cable, or at least turn it around if it's a C to C cable.

01:27:39   But that is a thing that happens, and they do start out really tight.

01:27:44   I mean, I haven't ever noticed my Switch, my GoPro, or my MacBook, adorable, all of which are USB-C. I've never noticed them grip onto something nearly as much as an iPad Pro has.

01:27:57   And it was striking how much of a difference it was with the same, like, dongles, because I use that same digital AV adapter with my MacBook, and the MacBook's barely holding onto it.

01:28:09   And again, it's a year older, so your point is fair, Marco, but I can't verbalize how strong a hold this thing had on my dongle. This is going nowhere good.

01:28:20   That's another thing about things being hard to pull out. It just encourages kids to pull by the cord even more, right? Because it is hard to pull out and because they're kids and have no patience.

01:28:28   Like, any chance I had of them trying to get them to pull any cord out by the stiff part of the connector, which is the correct way you should do it, people who are destroying your cords, they're like, "Forget it. They've just totally abandoned any pretense of ever trying to do that."

01:28:40   And with MagSafe, you could basically yank by the cord, because you just learn to kind of yank on an angle, and it disconnects, right?

01:28:47   They have not destroyed any MagSafe connector that we've had in the house, which is quite a feat, because they've destroyed many, many Lightning cables, right?

01:28:56   But I'm not sure how the USB-C cord is going to hold up. We'll see.

01:29:00   All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Fracture, Linode, and Change the Terms, and we'll talk to you next week.

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01:29:42   E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Kasey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Anti-Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C USA-Syracusa, it's accidental (it's accidental)

01:29:59   They didn't mean to, accidental (accidental) Tech podcast, so long

01:30:09   So Marco you have become Mr. YouTube my friend what's going on here?

01:30:12   Yeah, I decided to get back on YouTube and start making more videos

01:30:17   How's the recording audio for YouTube these days?

01:30:20   Recording it's not bad syncing. It was pretty bad the first time

01:30:25   So so what happened?

01:30:28   Alright, so so in between the recording of the last episode in this one I released two YouTube videos

01:30:36   They each had their own issues the Mac Mini review came first that was that one

01:30:41   I had severe audio sync issues, and I'll tell you why in a minute, but for the most part otherwise it was fairly decent

01:30:48   I had fewer issues overall than my other video two years ago

01:30:53   when I reviewed the

01:30:56   First touch bar MacBook Pro a few technical things that I learned in making these videos

01:31:01   the Mac Mini video I

01:31:04   Shot entirely with my iPhone XS every every bit of video in that is shot on my iPhone

01:31:10   Including the main like you know sit down in front of the camera and talk to it video

01:31:14   Which was it which involved a teleprompter?

01:31:17   Fancy it's not a fancy teleprompter. It is a very inexpensive

01:31:22   Bracket with a reflective piece of glass on top of it that you put an iPad under and the iPad was not included in the press

01:31:29   It's a teleprompter and I was using Joe's

01:31:58   left basically

01:32:00   you know looking down to the left a little bit because that's where that's where my like bullet points were that I was reading from and

01:32:06   It was you know not great pretty distracting

01:32:09   You know not particularly useful, and so I I bought the teleprompter right after making that video

01:32:15   And it sat in the box for two years

01:32:17   Because I've never made another video after that until like you know last week or whatever

01:32:22   So when it came time to make a new video. I decided you know great

01:32:25   I will I'll do it right with teleprompter this time you know I'll write out bullet points of what I want to say and have them

01:32:30   Actually on the screen and be shooting through it

01:32:33   and that way you know I'm looking at the camera while reading the text and

01:32:38   That actually worked fairly well for the Mac mini video the interesting thing is like

01:32:42   Behind the teleprompter is basically like a big black nylon bag that like you put the camera into so the camera doesn't see

01:32:50   Reflections on the back of the teleprompter and that works fine when it's a camera lens that you're sticking in that black bag

01:32:57   It's really clumsy when it's an iPhone because you have to reach into it to see the screen and to push the buttons on the

01:33:03   iPhone and everything, but I wanted to see if I can make the whole video

01:33:06   it's just my iPhone as the main video as the only video camera and

01:33:09   Indeed with the Mac mini video. I did I didn't with the iPad video. I'll get to that in a second

01:33:14   I also decided I wanted to shoot all the day all the b-roll and everything with my iPhone

01:33:19   Because it's just easier and you know a lot of it was using

01:33:22   Using like a like a stand with a clip on the end of it like basically

01:33:26   It's like an iPhone holding clip on the end of a it's actually a microphone stand

01:33:30   With a couple of little screw adapters to make that work

01:33:33   you know I had the stand so I could like you know put it on the stand and I can like hold the thing and

01:33:36   Move it around and and get good b-roll with the camera being steady and then also with the Mac mini video

01:33:41   I took a lot of shots where the camera was moving like panning around something and I did most of those using my

01:33:48   Gimbal because another thing I bought two years ago and almost never used

01:33:51   I learned a few things in making that first video number one

01:33:54   I learned that I really like the app filmic Pro that we talked about before

01:33:57   It's it was very very nice to have an app that had all the manual video controls readily accessible and and everything else

01:34:06   And I shot all my b-roll using filmic Pro for the Mac mini review

01:34:10   And it was just fantastic and I thought the main video as well one of the things you can do with filmic Pro is

01:34:15   Record video without audio. I figured well. I'm recording the audio onto my audio recorder. I

01:34:20   Don't need the audio from the video Oh Marco

01:34:24   So the result was that the audio recorder had my audio track the video had no audio and

01:34:32   Therefore Final Cut could not automatically sync the audio to the video now. I thought well

01:34:40   I edit podcasts. I know how to sync up audio. It's no big deal. I'll sync it up

01:34:45   It will take you know five minutes and it'll be fine

01:34:48   Unfortunately for whatever reason I don't know why

01:34:52   there was ridiculous drift and

01:34:55   That is that for anybody who doesn't know that is basically when like, you know, the audio

01:35:00   basically doesn't match the duration of the video even even after you line it up like

01:35:05   You'll have to like real line it at many different points because it'll just drip like you can sync it up at one point

01:35:11   But then like a minute later

01:35:13   It'll be out of sync and so you have to like cut it somewhere and then move it around

01:35:17   So it's in sync again, and I had ridiculous drift. I again. I don't know why but it doesn't matter and

01:35:24   I tried to sync it up so much and I synced up so many things and like I think I had in in the

01:35:31   I think like eight minute Mac mini video. I think I had like ten sync positions

01:35:36   It was it was ridiculous and and I could I just couldn't quite get it right and that's why

01:35:42   When I published the final video, it was just the audio sync was off and that's that's a huge technical problem with it

01:35:49   It is my one major regret with that video is the audio sync is not good

01:35:53   Now if you happen to record the video on the camera with just like, you know recording off the camera mic

01:35:59   Which sounds like garbage, but if you happen to record that with the video and you have an audio track recorded by a nice microphone

01:36:04   Or audio recorder somewhere final cut will automatically sync that up with like, you know

01:36:08   You right-click on the clips and you say synchronize and it's it's it works seemingly perfectly, which I did

01:36:13   On the second video so I know I know now

01:36:15   but

01:36:17   Yeah, so the audio sync on the Mac mini video was a mess and that's why because I didn't record the audio with the video

01:36:22   Because I was using filmic Pro and I didn't record audio for any of the b-roll shots because I didn't you know

01:36:27   I wasn't gonna use it. I was gonna use the one continuous take of audio from my like, you know

01:36:31   Stand-up shot even though I was sitting down, but I think they call it a stand-up and and then you know

01:36:35   The b-roll shots are gonna be silent and I just I didn't enable the audio recording for that big long sit-down shot

01:36:41   and I should have yeah, that is that is not fun and I

01:36:45   Have a pretty bananas set up for when I do

01:36:49   car stuff which actually coincidentally I am going to be doing that all day tomorrow if all goes according to plan, but

01:36:55   One thing I've learned is that whenever I start recording this is outside or in a car where there's a lot of noise

01:37:01   Typically whenever I start recording I you know start recording the audio I start recording the video

01:37:07   I walk to wherever I'm supposed to be or you know

01:37:10   Sit down in the car whatever the case may be and I clap my hands one time

01:37:13   Very loudly to make sure that every audio recording both the video audio and the you know, the lavalier audio

01:37:20   Here's that clap. So it gives something for Final Cut to

01:37:24   Sink against when I when I go to do the edit and to your point when you do have

01:37:29   Something like that when you when you've done the small things you need to do on your end to give Final Cut what it needs

01:37:36   It is like freaking

01:37:38   Magic how it can put these things together. It is unreal how good a job it can do

01:37:44   But if you don't give it, you know that tool if you don't give it is the audio to sync off of then

01:37:49   You're screwed as you as you now know and have lived through

01:37:52   Having been through of videos with crappy audio. I'm just glad that I am not alone in this

01:37:57   Yeah, welcome to the club and and I had you know, I really wanted my audio to sound good

01:38:04   I did you know, my my first my MacBook Pro video two years ago. I was using a lavalier mic and

01:38:11   It was it's a it was you know, a decent prosumer one the the road

01:38:17   Road link wireless and whatever might comes with that and I honestly I hate the road link wireless. It's it

01:38:23   Because it's not a pro wireless setup, even though it cost almost as much as one

01:38:29   It uses 2.4 gigahertz as the radio

01:38:32   spectrum instead of like one of the you know, TV signal ones that the other ones use and

01:38:36   So there's just constant interference from everything like it's just not a very good setup

01:38:40   So I didn't want to reuse that although I did try because you know the issue with getting good sound

01:38:47   out of a microphone on video

01:38:49   The microphone matters to some degree

01:38:51   But what matters a lot more is proximity to your mouth and you know, I've told you this

01:38:56   As you're making your videos like yep a crappy microphone close to your mouth almost always will sound better or will be able to sound better

01:39:03   Than a really good microphone like, you know five feet away. And so

01:39:08   When you're when you're in a video, you know, you basically have two options

01:39:11   You can you know if you don't want some giant mic in the frame

01:39:14   You can either use some kind of lavalier or maybe like some kind of discrete headset thing

01:39:19   Which usually is not very discreet and lavaliers have their own challenges to like, you know placement and picking up

01:39:25   You know any if you move your shirt

01:39:26   If you turn your head at all lavaliers dramatically change the way they sound and dramatically pick you up less or more

01:39:31   So lavaliers have their own issues and they're also, you know, you can see them

01:39:35   And so if you're trying to have the microphone not be visible

01:39:38   You can pull some tricks with wardrobe to try to hide lavaliers, but you don't always succeed and it's it's tricky

01:39:44   And so I I tried with the lavalier. I

01:39:47   also tried with a

01:39:50   I have a Sennheiser

01:39:52   MKE

01:39:54   Something 600 maybe I bought it two years ago. It's like a video microphone. That's shotgun style

01:39:59   So I tried that up on a boom. I tried it on the camera is too far away

01:40:03   The boom got a little closer the microphone that I'm using for that. Oh, I even tried like my awesome podcasting microphone

01:40:10   Just like, you know, basically boomed above my head slightly out of frame. What ended up being the best was that Sennheiser?

01:40:16   MKE whatever on a boom a little bit of frame like basically like above my head pointing kind of diagonally down in my mouth

01:40:23   that that was by far the best audio, but it still wasn't great audio and

01:40:29   You know, it was still picking up tons from the room

01:40:32   So I tried like, you know putting out all my sound dampening panel like I have all this acoustic foam

01:40:38   Because when I bought acoustic foam for the first time like five years ago

01:40:41   You could only buy a certain box size and so I have a lot of extra that's just like normally lives in the basement

01:40:46   So I I brought it upstairs and I basically laid acoustic foam all over the floor of the room

01:40:52   the entire room was covered in acoustic foam panels and

01:40:54   I so I just you know

01:40:55   Just trying to just trying to reduce reflections around the room and make it sound less echoey so that a microphone that is

01:41:00   Two feet away from my mouth can actually sound like it's closer to my mouth and I succeeded somewhat. I

01:41:07   Still ended up post-processing the audio with isotope to run a little bit of D reverb which helped a little bit

01:41:14   I can't use too much of it because because it starts sounding weird if you use too much of it

01:41:18   It's kind of artifact II but I did use a little bit of D reverb a little bit of EQ as well

01:41:23   Because I'm a audio nerd for podcasting and so I'm not gonna just leave my voice on EQ'd like an animal

01:41:28   And and the combination of those plus a little bit of noise removal just to get a little bit of you know

01:41:33   Lower the lower the noise for a little bit

01:41:36   Made it sound pretty good. I was I was pretty happy with it

01:41:39   It was I wasn't incredibly happy with it

01:41:40   I was you know, pretty happy with it even though then of course

01:41:43   I totally miss synced it and the audio became the worst thing about the video, but

01:41:46   overall, yeah overall it was

01:41:49   it was a bit of an audio adventure to get that and

01:41:53   I realized after I was setting this up and I took a picture and I sent it to you guys of like the state of

01:41:59   My office to do this video

01:42:01   In order to create the Mac mini video

01:42:04   I basically had to destroy the rest of my office like it there was crap

01:42:07   Everywhere and part of it's my fault because I had a lot of crap out just because I was working with a lot of crap

01:42:12   You know during that week and part of it is just because like I had unload all this video stuff

01:42:17   Take it all out of the closet unbox the teleprompter, you know, set it all up have foam panels all over the floor have lights

01:42:22   You know on sitting on various things to boost up my light a little bit. It was just a mess and

01:42:28   as I was

01:42:31   taking it all down and and you know after after like the shoot was done and I and I figured I had my take and I

01:42:37   Reviewed it and look pretty good and I started started the edit and I'm taking all the stuff down and I'm like, you know, I

01:42:41   Don't want to do videos anymore. Like I this this is just time for another two-year break

01:42:47   Yeah, buy a bunch of stuff right now put it in the closet in two years from now. You can make some more videos

01:42:52   So I was this is after the Mac mini videos this I still made the iPad video after I don't get to that

01:42:59   But so so after this so I I'm like, this is just way too invasive

01:43:03   Way too much setup and teardown. It destroys my office. It's just so much

01:43:08   Overhead to make a video but then I started editing it and I'm like, you know

01:43:12   I'm actually kind of happy with how this is turning out

01:43:14   this is actually pretty decent and

01:43:16   then I posted it and when I when I released it and it's the blog post with it and like and like I

01:43:20   Released it and people loved it

01:43:23   Like it was it got a very strong reception way stronger reception than I thought and this is for the Mac mini which you know

01:43:29   Kind of is not that interesting of a product to most people I think so

01:43:31   it was I was very I was blown away by the positive reaction of the Mac mini video and I'm like

01:43:36   Damn it. I should really make more videos

01:43:40   But I need to make it easier to make videos

01:43:43   Like I need some kind of like something I can leave set up or at least leave mostly set up

01:43:49   I need you know to get better at this to you know

01:43:52   To polish my process a little bit to improve to fix the issues like the audio sync I had

01:43:57   Just like I need to get something. I need to make this easier because I do

01:44:00   actually want to do more of this and also I think professionally I think it's a good idea to

01:44:05   You know to grow my audience in a in an area that I don't have one yet and that area would be YouTube and video

01:44:11   And everything so I decided fine. I

01:44:14   I'm going to make this easier and I talked to a TIFF my wonderful wife and

01:44:18   She suggested rearranging the office to be more meaningful to video

01:44:22   And so we basically move the furniture around in the office and and she said why don't you just leave the camera?

01:44:27   tripod and everything set up like just leave it up like we'll find a place to put it in the office and

01:44:32   so we did so we we like turn the whole office sideways made, you know rearrange this whole midsection of the room and

01:44:38   Made myself a video set basically and that's what you see in the iPad video now I can

01:44:46   Actually make a video with way less setup and way less disruption to the office and then way less tear down afterwards

01:44:53   What I put in the tripod for the new video setup is one of our Canon 5d mark d or 5d mark force

01:45:01   We bought them a couple years ago

01:45:03   Usually TIFF ends up only using one like we bought a pair because the previous 5d mark twos

01:45:09   We had a pair and TIFF used to frequently for shoots these days

01:45:12   Usually she brings the Sony and one 5d mark 2 or mark 4 so she so we basically have one 5d mark 4 that we don't

01:45:19   Use very much. So I mounted that like semi permanently as my video camera in the tripod

01:45:25   Works way better than teleprompter. I have a nice lens for it. That's good for video. Nice 24-70. So I'm like, alright

01:45:32   Try number two iPad video. I'm still shooting all the b-roll with my iPhone because it's just better and easier

01:45:39   But I could now I will set up the Canon and it's and it's nice too because like the Canon I

01:45:44   Have like a little tiny extra monitor a big shout out to the company Neewer. I think it's pronounced neewer

01:45:51   Neewer produces a bunch of cheap video gear and it's not that bad in some cases

01:45:58   I would even go as far as to say it's good like they make a bunch of gear that is

01:46:03   surprisingly cheap and

01:46:05   so so one of the things I wanted to do is like I

01:46:08   Want more permanent lights like the lights I used for the iPad

01:46:11   I have two little lights for the iPad mini video both Neewer lights, but they are they are battery powered only and

01:46:16   Batteries are a pain and I'm charging batteries and managing and swapping batteries is a pain

01:46:20   And so I was like, you know what? I want to just get two light seconds

01:46:24   I can have on sticks, you know

01:46:25   on light stands

01:46:26   that could just plug into the wall and I could just leave them put into the wall most of the time and when I want to

01:46:30   do a video I could turn them on and

01:46:32   Neewer sells a two-pack for like 150 bucks of these wonderful like LED light panels

01:46:38   That can turn between cool and warm color temperature

01:46:42   You can adjust on the back is basically it's like a panel of alternating white and yellow LEDs

01:46:46   So you're basically adjusting the brightness of either the whites or the yellows and you can achieve all different color temperatures

01:46:50   they're super bright and it was only 150 bucks for two of them with stands and AC adapters and

01:46:56   when I looked at pro lights, it was like

01:46:59   $400 for that kind of light for just the light without the stand with heads like okay, so this is

01:47:06   I'm not I don't need a 400 our light yet. I'm not to that point. Hopefully I never get there. So anyway

01:47:11   So I got I got my new Neewer lights I got my camera in my fancy video tripod I bought two years ago and

01:47:18   I'm just very very happy with that setup. Now like it's easy to turn on it's easy to set up. I

01:47:24   do have a couple of issues with the

01:47:29   using the Canon as the video camera and

01:47:33   I don't know what I'm gonna do about this yet. I probably should just use the Sony because it's a way better video camera

01:47:37   But I don't want the Sony to be always tied up in in this setup

01:47:40   So I should probably just tolerate the Canon but the Canon does have a couple of issues that I ran into with the iPad video

01:47:45   number one it only records 4k in

01:47:49   twenty nine point nine seven

01:47:52   Frames per second, which is the old TV standard

01:47:54   The iPhone records its 30 frames per second as 30 frames per second exactly 30 frames per second

01:48:01   So I have a slight frame rate difference between my two cameras

01:48:04   so whatever I set the Final Cut project to one of them has to be like reinterpreted and so

01:48:11   Moving around the Final Cut timeline dropping in the clips previewing them was way slower when I made the iPad video

01:48:18   Then when I did all the footage on the phone and therefore nothing was requiring any kind of frame rate conversion or anything like that

01:48:25   So problem number one is the frame rate between my b-roll camera and the Canon can't match up

01:48:31   At least not not if I stick with 4k, which I do want to so it was the Canon that got interpolated, right? I

01:48:37   Believe I set the project to 30, but I'm not positive

01:48:42   So I'm just looking at the iPad video now and now that you mentioned that one of them has interpolation

01:48:46   I'm like, I think it's when Marco's talking on the sitting in the chair

01:48:49   Well, the other thing is the Canon video like my tripod wasn't perfectly level

01:48:54   So the Canon the the Canon shot in the chair, I actually had to rotate it slightly. So it's like it's like one degree rotated

01:49:00   So don't judge it on that. And then also I also learned

01:49:05   That and and movie people are always complaining that things that claim to shoot or display

01:49:12   4k

01:49:14   Don't actually display

01:49:16   4,000 pixels across 4k encompasses a number of different resolutions one of which is

01:49:23   696 across

01:49:25   that is what the Canon shoots and

01:49:27   also and the iPhone shoots at 38 40 across which is I think more common and

01:49:32   So I not only did I have a frame rate difference that was annoying

01:49:38   But then as I'm as I'm playing with like it was like the very last clip

01:49:43   I insert the very last b-roll clip I inserted I noticed that on the far left and right sides are these thin red strips

01:49:50   Show of the shot behind it showing through. Oh, yeah, and I realized oh crap

01:49:56   And I look back and every single one of my beer roll cliffs

01:50:00   Didn't quite fill the frame that the Canon made

01:50:04   So I had to go through and basically zoom

01:50:08   Every b-roll clip by like, you know five percent or something and then make sure it fit like a you know

01:50:13   Pan it slightly to make sure it fits, you know, make sure nothing's weird getting cut off and everything and also

01:50:19   the Canon only records video at 4k in

01:50:23   motion JPEG, which means that a

01:50:27   You know

01:50:28   like the like the 9 minute or 10 minute raw file of that shot was like 60 gigs and

01:50:34   took final cut a very long time to render at full resolution like in the preview window and

01:50:40   it also takes a long time to pull off a bestie cards and everything and so it's just like

01:50:44   working with the Canon as the video camera is cumbersome and

01:50:48   I'm going to have to do something about the frame rate issue. I think if I want that to

01:50:53   You know to be a thing I'm gonna keep doing so, I don't know the camera situation

01:50:59   I might change I mean maybe I'll get like a cheap Sony to put in there

01:51:02   That's not like a super high-end one or something because it doesn't need to be for my purposes. I don't know but

01:51:07   somehow the camera thing might change otherwise

01:51:10   I'm otherwise very very happy with this setup the the iPad video. I had a similar audio set up people keep asking me about my audio

01:51:18   Because it because it the the iPad one sounds pretty good actually

01:51:21   What I did for that was very similar. It's a it's a boom mic

01:51:27   I went so there's this there's this wonderful YouTube channel called by a guy called Curtis Judd

01:51:33   with two D's on the end of Judd and

01:51:36   he does all sorts of tutorial videos and reviews of camera lighting gear and audio stuff for video and

01:51:43   I've been watching his videos for a while

01:51:46   I've learned a lot from them and I I went and bought his mic that he uses for this purpose

01:51:51   Which is the audio technica AT4053B. It's like $600. So this is not something I can recommend to everybody

01:51:58   It's a hypercardioid mic not a shotgun which he recommends for indoor dialogue

01:52:02   Better than a shotgun which for his reasoning and seeing his videos makes sense

01:52:07   It's a little bit better

01:52:09   I did still have to do

01:52:11   Post-processing with isotope to reduce the reverb a little bit and to denoise a little bit because it is still

01:52:16   You know a good foot and a half from my mouth

01:52:18   but one of the good things about using the Canon as the camera instead of using my iPhone is that

01:52:22   when I was when I was shooting with the iPhone for the Mac mini video, I

01:52:26   very quickly learned that

01:52:28   the almost all the video I shot with the 2x lens was just too noisy to use and

01:52:33   If I apply a hell of a lot more light

01:52:35   Maybe that can be different

01:52:37   but I was able to use almost none of it because it was just the 2x lens has such a has a narrower aperture and

01:52:43   Is smaller pixels and so it's so much noisier than the video shot with a wide lens

01:52:48   So I ended up I think the Mac mini video. I think all of the iPhone video I have for that

01:52:54   I think it all was with the wide lens or at least the vast majority of it as

01:52:56   And as and the like the the sit-down shot where I'm talking is also using the wide lens as far as I remember

01:53:03   The problem is that if you have a boom mic that needs to be as close to your mouth as possible

01:53:08   So just barely out of frame if you have a wide perspective

01:53:12   It has to be much further from your head

01:53:14   Then if you have a zoomed in perspective with it with a closer zoom lens

01:53:19   So the closer you're willing to zoom that lens in the closer you can get the mic to the to you to you

01:53:25   before it's in the frame and so I

01:53:29   Wanted one of the reasons I switched to the Canon for the next video was this and I'm not gonna switch back to the iPhone

01:53:35   because

01:53:37   Even the 45 millimeter, you know ish lens on the iPhone

01:53:40   It's so noisy and I and it's so awkward to use that inside the teleprompter. I'm not a big fan of that

01:53:46   So I do want to stick with like a long perspective here

01:53:49   But it's but some of the point I like that's that's one of the reasons the audio was so much better in the iPad video

01:53:53   Not only was it in sync properly because I recorded on the camera and see to it

01:53:57   But also the microphone was able to be a lot closer to me and it was a better microphone

01:54:01   But honestly the distance made a bigger difference than the microphone did

01:54:06   in ATP tradition, I think John and I need to critique the videos and I

01:54:12   think I'd prefer to focus on the iPad video and I

01:54:17   Thought it was really good, but you suffered over the course of these two videos

01:54:23   You've suffered the same exact problems that I have although you have also accelerated probably even quicker than I have in fixing them

01:54:30   In the first video as you discuss the audio was not great in the second video. I I think that the framing is great

01:54:38   I like the way it looks aesthetically. I think you had a lot of b-roll, which was good

01:54:42   I think you and I both need to talk less

01:54:43   But you have not yet solved the problem that I am getting better at solving but also have also not solved which is being more

01:54:52   Diffusive on camera and be in being more being more

01:54:56   Over the top and I'm still not great at it by any stretch

01:54:59   But it's taken me what for videos to get to the point that I'm not I don't think it's a problem for me anymore

01:55:06   but I definitely think I have room to grow and

01:55:08   Hearing you talk about having a teleprompter and all that

01:55:11   I almost wonder if

01:55:13   Having the teleprompter if it is more than bullets and you had previously meant said it was just bullets for one of the videos

01:55:20   If it is more than bullets, I wonder if that's kind of letting you down and and if it is just bullets

01:55:25   and you just need to crank up the silly or maybe not silly isn't the right word for it, but crank up the the

01:55:30   Humidity. Yeah, yeah the humanity. Yeah

01:55:33   You weren't being a robot but you were way more robotic than I know you to be and that's because again having just been there

01:55:41   It's very awkward even in your own house. It's very awkward to be enthusiastic

01:55:47   I mean look at me when I did my voiceover stuff for my first few and actually even the most recent video

01:55:53   I think my voiceovers aren't quite as

01:55:55   Energetic as my other stuff because I am doing it in the house oftentimes at night oftentimes

01:56:01   I get you're sleeping your voiceover is like not trying to wake up your kid. Exactly. Hey, I really love this car. Yeah

01:56:07   You're exactly right. And so

01:56:10   The problem is even if you recognize it, which it sounds like you already did recognize it

01:56:14   It is a hard thing to fix it just takes time, but that is the only thing that that I was let down by

01:56:21   I mean the audio stuff whatever it could be fixed and you did fix it, but

01:56:25   You need to just like me you need to be less of a robot and it's something I'm working on and I'm sure it's something

01:56:30   That you're gonna work on too and and for clarification and so like what was on the teleprompter?

01:56:34   It was some bullet points

01:56:36   But it was also some like complete sentences that I wanted to say

01:56:38   Just like you know

01:56:39   Like so I remember like good wording that I wanted to say one of the key differences between the two is

01:56:44   That when I was doing the Mac mini video, I did a lot more takes of that

01:56:49   Of like of my sit-down, you know

01:56:52   Basically, whenever there's a whenever there's a b-roll shot in the neck mini video chances are what you're coming back to after that is a different

01:56:57   Take yeah

01:56:59   Because that's how you know use the bureau to hide the the transition

01:57:02   because with the Mac mini video I had much I had more of the sentence is fully written out and

01:57:09   I had the teleprompter

01:57:11   Automatically just going at a fixed speed and I couldn't adjust it during the shots

01:57:15   For and and so I ended up having a tweak a lot like having like, you know add new lines between things or you know

01:57:21   It's like, you know pat these out or slow things down

01:57:23   So it would match the rate that I was actually and ended up saying it

01:57:26   But you know, I adjusted the speed in the app because you can adjust the speed but you know

01:57:31   It's still it's still like a fixed speed if you're doing it that way for the iPad video for the second one. I

01:57:37   Took out of its box. I went in my closet found the pile of things

01:57:41   I bought two years ago and took out of its box the Bluetooth foot page Turner thing

01:57:46   It's literally it's like a it's like a rectangle you put on the floor

01:57:51   It's kind of like a guitar effects pedal

01:57:53   You know

01:57:54   It's a box you put on the floor with two buttons on it and you can map those two buttons to whatever you want them

01:57:59   To do in the teleprompter app for the iPad video I had I was only using one of them

01:58:03   But I had it basically be play/pause for the scrolling of the teleprompter

01:58:07   So I could at any point I could just pause it if I needed more time on something and then unpause it

01:58:12   and that helped a lot with like being able to deliver things a little more smoothly and you know if I and it allowed me to

01:58:19   riff more on

01:58:20   certain things because I could just pause it and riff for a second and then unpause it and it would it would resume instead of

01:58:25   Having to like try to like keep up with oh, it's all I'm gonna miss it. You know, I better keep going

01:58:30   Yeah, yeah it for me. I haven't yet really scripted any of my videos that being said

01:58:36   Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to record

01:58:40   with with actually two cars and basically drive two hours

01:58:45   Record with two cars and then drive home and I basically have one day to get all this done. And so because of that

01:58:52   Having I've driven both of these cars a little bit in the past

01:58:56   And so I've put I put together an actual verbatim intro and conclusion

01:59:00   Which I think was useful to get the flow of what I'm trying to say out of my head

01:59:07   but ultimately

01:59:09   I briefly looked into doing a teleprompter kind of thing and what I think I'm just gonna do is just read it right before I

01:59:14   Record it and just kind of wing it which in past videos

01:59:18   I just kind of think about what I want to say and I do like

01:59:21   15 takes and eventually I find one that I think is pretty decent the whole way through and occasionally, you know, like you said

01:59:27   Once or twice I've swapped between takes in using b-roll, but generally speaking if it's you know me

01:59:32   Outside of the car especially in the intro and conclusion. I'll just do one shot maybe 15 times

01:59:39   But I'll do one shot start to finish and and so I'm very interested to see how this goes tomorrow because I've put a lot

01:59:45   More planning into this than any of the others I've ever done

01:59:48   But I don't know if that's gonna be for the best or for the worst so we shall see

01:59:53   I would also say too like I don't I don't think you would have much use for a teleprompter because I

01:59:57   Can't imagine it would be it would work very well outdoors and you tend to do all of your stand-ups outdoors

02:00:02   So I don't I can't I can't see that being a thing

02:00:05   You need you need like somebody holding up giant cue cards and like flipping exactly

02:00:10   Alright John, what did you think?

02:00:14   The same comments I always have on all these videos more b-roll less you I don't need to see you

02:00:19   I need to see the iPads and the Mac Mini

02:00:20   That's you did have tons of b-roll as compared to your previous one, which is good big upgrade

02:00:25   Especially on the Mac Mini or whatever like but like when you're talking

02:00:27   I don't need to see you talking

02:00:29   Talk and show me the thing that you're telling me and it was like I had the moment that I always have in all these

02:00:34   Videos all cases and all yours the one that sticks out to me the most is when you were talking about how?

02:00:40   Apps don't like fill the the 12.9 inch iPad like they look awkward because the screen is so big

02:00:46   Right when you're describing that was the one thing as I was editing

02:00:49   I'm like, you know, I really should have b-roll of this really should like

02:00:53   Don't tell me that and don't show me an app show me what you it's a thing that we can't do on

02:00:57   Podcasts right you have to describe it with your mouth words, right?

02:01:00   But on video you can finally I was like fine. I'm gonna get to see the awkward app layouts that he's talking about

02:01:06   Nope, didn't get to see him. Just got to look at you

02:01:08   I think it might have also missed focus on yourself when you're sitting in that chair

02:01:11   It seems to really like the high contrast the paper dog thing

02:01:15   I think I was in focus

02:01:17   But I because like I mean I was in manual focus mode and I had Tiff sit in the chair first and I focused

02:01:23   Properly on her I think

02:01:25   Maybe you're leaning forward or back more but your your I your eyeballs look soft as compared to the the nose of the the fake

02:01:31   dog

02:01:31   yeah, I mean and I think I could have also been just like it could have either been lighting or it could have been a

02:01:36   Result of of the of the alien rotation of the video that I had to do everything who knows

02:01:41   Yeah, and the whole the whole idea both of you that you have to have a single take stand up like forget about that

02:01:47   You don't need that like you can have cutaways in your stand up

02:01:50   You can do dice slice and dice your stand up into 12 pieces

02:01:53   Like it does not need to be one continuous shot

02:01:56   Don't put this pressure on yourself to perform the soliloquy in a single take and doing it 15 times like again

02:02:02   Just watch some other people's videos like yeah, we see them. We see their face

02:02:05   We know it's them we get to know the face

02:02:07   But very briefly and then it's off to whatever it is that we're talking about and this person is still talking

02:02:12   Like maybe they did the full stand up when they were there

02:02:14   But once I get the idea of you're in a chair and you have a dog and you're talking about a thing

02:02:19   Move on pretty quickly from that

02:02:21   I thought I thought that most of the bureau work really well like for the most part you were showing me

02:02:26   relevant things that like what I wanted to see I

02:02:31   liked the

02:02:34   The action shots the here here you are using your iPad doing a thing in various environments

02:02:42   Whether you're sitting on the couch or typing out of them in the kitchen or whatever

02:02:45   Where we don't have to hear the audio from that because you're just doing the voiceover

02:02:48   I like the part where the hop slicks your arm. Yeah

02:02:50   That was not planned

02:02:53   You can't you shouldn't be planned for it because hops looking you is not a

02:02:58   infrequent occurrence, but that was very cute

02:03:01   I

02:03:03   do wonder

02:03:05   If hops is getting adequately compensated for his performance work as a part of the screen Actors Guild

02:03:10   Hope you're at least paying him scale

02:03:13   He's a very important star of these shows. I noticed your little family dolls

02:03:18   I don't think I've seen them in real life the little little dolls of your family that you've got on the chair

02:03:21   They've been on that chair for about three years. That's cute

02:03:24   I did notice also that you had to rearrange the room like I didn't realize it was for the purposes of the video

02:03:29   I thought oh, I guess they just rearrange their room at some point since last time I was there

02:03:32   But it makes sense now see rearrange it for the video in terms of

02:03:36   You know you're gonna rearrange it for video

02:03:39   You sitting in a chair is fine and casual and looks nice

02:03:44   But I think there's a reason that most of the little set type things that

02:03:49   Technology youtubers have involve some kind of a desk or flat surface where you can

02:03:53   Put down and talk about the things that you're messing with and yeah

02:03:57   Maybe even like Stephen Hackett have a camera up above the thing so you can have sort of a

02:04:01   It doesn't all have to be b-roll it can be

02:04:03   Now switch to the overhead camera, and you continue to talk about the thing that you're manipulating your hand

02:04:08   But I get to see it from above anyway. There was all just vague thoughts, but in general

02:04:11   More b-roll oh yeah, the audio sync thing that was brutal like oh

02:04:17   You can do about it like this ship has sailed, but lesson learned

02:04:21   But it really makes it very difficult to watch the video because you're like is something wrong with my computer

02:04:26   It's it's like it's this video lagging is this some sort of problem with the HTML 5 video, but it's like no

02:04:32   It's just it's just out of sync yeah

02:04:34   And there were a number of good excuses for why some of the things you just mentioned are the way they are or were

02:04:39   you know like like with the Mac mini thing like I

02:04:42   Had a pretty firm deadline of like the Apple review embargo

02:04:46   I wanted to hit it because it's like this is the first time they've given me review hardware

02:04:50   I wanted to really do it right of course I'd had audio sync issues

02:04:53   But I'm like I wanted to really make sure like I woke up at 6 in the morning to make sure I hit that embargo

02:04:59   Like to hit publish and everything like and I really wanted to do it right so I had that kind of hard

02:05:04   deadline there and then with the iPad one we were going out of town for the weekend and

02:05:11   We were leaving like I literally like I I hit publish in the video

02:05:16   About 15 minutes before we left and I drove for two hours like it's like I didn't see any of the feedback

02:05:22   bold for like two hours afterwards

02:05:25   Because like we were like we just you know we we had a trip planned

02:05:30   we were going to Philly for the weekend and we were like oh this is when we're going and

02:05:33   part of the reason why there wasn't b-roll showing how the apps are too wide on the 12 9 is because I had thought of that as

02:05:40   I was editing I'm like I just don't have time like I like I

02:05:42   Wish I would put this b-roll in but like I'm publishing this video in the next hour

02:05:47   Like I just don't have time for that

02:05:50   And so part of it is like yeah, I had this deadline and but also like looking back

02:05:53   I'm like, I'm glad I had oh and also like yes

02:05:56   I could have waited and published it like, you know, maybe yesterday

02:05:59   But like I wanted to get this video out while it was still iPad launch week. I wanted to be reasonably current

02:06:06   I thought it was ended up being kind of a good thing that I only had a very small amount of time to do it in

02:06:12   because

02:06:13   ultimately

02:06:14   like I would have I

02:06:15   Probably would have even done a whole different set of takes for the main stand up because like there were things in the main stand

02:06:20   Up like I'm holding this whole nine iPad upside down

02:06:22   Which is very obvious

02:06:24   Like when you watch it and like there's stuff like that

02:06:26   Like if I had more time, I would have reshot that whole thing just to fix stuff like that

02:06:29   But I didn't it's like well

02:06:32   I got to just use what I got and just go with it and

02:06:34   there's some value to having that kind of pressure because otherwise like I would be

02:06:38   Closer to a perfectionist and just try to reshoot everything do everything exactly perfectly and it would take way too long

02:06:45   And then I would say I'm never doing a video again

02:06:47   You know like and then they put all this stuff back in the closet for two years. So like

02:06:51   It's actually kind of nice to have

02:06:53   those deadlines and and to have something firmly come by and say

02:06:58   Whatever you have now, you just got to ship it

02:07:01   So that was very nice and then I do agree with you that I don't have the ideal furniture for this

02:07:06   The way we created this video set was basically

02:07:08   Rearranging the furniture we already had

02:07:11   But long term I do agree with you that like some kind of desk or table in front of me and maybe I could be

02:07:17   at standing height

02:07:18   Would be probably better. That's a much bigger operation than just moving the stuff in the room around

02:07:24   So that's probably further in the future

02:07:26   Time constraints are good

02:07:27   But if you have to funnel your perfectionism into something I wouldn't do it on like

02:07:32   you know more takes and more perfecting the shots you have I would concentrate the perfectionism on kind of like the

02:07:38   The Pixar brain trust type thing where they spend tons and tons of time

02:07:41   when things are in storyboard where it's just a bunch of like sketches up on pieces of paper up on a big board because that's

02:07:48   like

02:07:49   spending all your time there

02:07:51   Rearranging that and then and then even if your execution once you finally come out with the way it's going to be done once you have

02:07:56   All the shots laid out then if your execution is not great because you don't have a lot of time fine

02:07:59   it's much better to invest the time into getting the correct flow of shots and script and

02:08:05   Then executing in a mediocre whatever way that you get better at then

02:08:09   Perfectly executing a series of shots that don't flow the way you know

02:08:14   you know, I mean like that the the more important harder thing to get right is the the general script and structure of shots

02:08:20   Yeah, less the execution of them because it you know

02:08:24   especially like we don't care how beautifully framed and how nice we can see you sitting on the chairs are and we do want to

02:08:29   see the products but

02:08:30   You're gonna see them enough if you do your job. Well, I

02:08:33   even the noisy video like it may bother you that it's noisy, but like just

02:08:38   Get getting the shot sequence and the script right is so much more important than the individual shot

02:08:42   So that would if you do end up having time more time

02:08:45   The next time you do a video that's where I would invest it because honestly the audio and video quality is

02:08:50   Plenty good enough for YouTube already

02:08:53   You're not gonna you're gonna get most of the the value of making the video better

02:08:57   Figuring out that the chunkier stuff than the details of execution. Oh sure

02:09:02   And and you know like the script writing takes way more time than the actual video

02:09:07   you know, like like like figuring out what to say and how to say it is

02:09:11   like that took

02:09:14   The vast majority of the time that you know of like the overall production of these videos. I wonder if people have other

02:09:20   Technology channels even write scripts seems to me that a lot of motors wing it

02:09:24   You just kind of get used to it and you just kind of like go in there you say a bunch of stuff and then you

02:09:27   Sort of make the video and the edit right because again if you're on camera

02:09:31   If you're not on camera not expected to do a continuous take stand up and you're just seeing someone's hands anyway

02:09:36   Just talk about the thing that you've got say all the stuff you want to say about it

02:09:40   If there's a particular turn of phrase you want to say have that on a note card somewhere

02:09:43   You can go but in general like when I watch these technology videos, I'm thinking nobody scripted this

02:09:48   They just sat down in front of the camera

02:09:49   They talked about it for a while and then they cut it together and cut out the boring parts and spiced it together and maybe

02:09:55   Did one additional audio recording of a thing they forgot to say and that's it. They were done like it's a it's a high bar

02:10:00   I mean, I think it's more important unfortunately for Casey to script it because it's like car reviews are

02:10:05   More of a structured thing and you can't really like ramble while you're driving because this you know

02:10:11   It's I think it's harder for car reviews for technology reviews

02:10:15   I think you could just you mean you've said all the same things about the stuff

02:10:18   you just get up there and talk about it and then just

02:10:20   you know make sure that we're looking at b-roll or your hands manipulating a device and not your face in your mouth moving and you can

02:10:27   Turn that into exactly what you want to say in post

02:10:31   That's fair

02:10:32   And I do intend to get less scripted as I go like these I scripted it simply because I was brand new at it

02:10:40   And and I didn't like I wanted to hit certain points and I wanted to be careful on how I word of them

02:10:46   And I also didn't want to miss I didn't want to like forget

02:10:48   something I wanted to say, you know, like I would I would come up with

02:10:52   impressions or

02:10:54   Comments as I was using these devices and I write down in a big a big Apple Notes file

02:10:58   And then like eventually I'm like, alright now I need to like compose a video

02:11:02   So I arrange them and you know make an outline, you know make some actual like, you know

02:11:06   Bullet points and some actual lines I wanted to say and everything

02:11:09   And I just I didn't want to miss anything. I didn't I didn't want to

02:11:12   Forget to say anything if that makes sense

02:11:15   yeah, it does but

02:11:17   In my experience what ends up happening is?

02:11:19   There are two or three things like in an intro or a conclusion that I really really want to say because I think they're clever

02:11:26   They're funny or what have you and then everything else is a lot more malleable than I think it is and

02:11:32   And as long as I nail the two or three things that I'm really really entranced with whatever they may be

02:11:39   Everything else just kind of works itself out

02:11:41   It's funny like the the part that where I threw the old pencil on the ground

02:11:45   That was like I that wasn't in my script or outline

02:11:47   I'm just like I had nowhere to put it and

02:11:49   So I'm like I gotta get rid of this real fast

02:11:51   and so I guess you know like came up with that and people love that like

02:11:54   That was like a favorite moment for a lot of people in the video, so yeah, I guess I'll start you know scripting less

02:12:00   Let me discourage you and Stephen Hackett. Please stop throwing things on video. You just you're gonna break something. It's very upsetting

02:12:07   He's always throwing stuff in his video now. You're doing it. It was a very soft carpet. Don't throw your hardware

02:12:13   Yeah, yours was less egregious than us. He threw like the $300 Apple book. I remember that that was just throwing his iPads

02:12:20   He's throwing he's throwing everything

02:12:21   He's throwing devices on top of each other into the frame of the camera. It's like stop stop throwing your hardware. It's expensive. It's fragile

02:12:27   yeah, I think ultimately my my

02:12:30   Furniture setup should probably become some kind of table thing

02:12:34   Kind of like like what I like what chase Reeves does our wonderful friend chase Reeves

02:12:39   He does wonderful backpack reviews and stuff on his YouTube channel and actually I do want to I mentioned last week

02:12:45   I've been on kind of a backpack Odyssey, and I do want to do a couple of videos on my backpack stuff

02:12:50   And it's gonna be very hard, you know similar to like how it's hard for Casey did not just try to be Doug DeMuro

02:12:55   It's gonna be very hard for me to not try to be chase Reeves because I'm not chase Reeves and I could never be

02:12:59   But I do want to do stuff like that also like it isn't just gonna be like here's the newest Apple thing

02:13:04   Like I'm not I'm not gonna do a video on my book air

02:13:06   Cuz I don't have one Apple didn't give me one and I'm not gonna go buy one just for that

02:13:10   So I'm probably not gonna do that

02:13:12   but I do want to do other things like, you know backpack stuff and travel stuff and maybe coffee stuff and

02:13:18   Other kinds of stuff. I don't know you did a demure injury realized on your on your iPad per review

02:13:24   I've never seen a do your video so I have no idea what you're talking about

02:13:27   Every one of his video starts like this ready. This is the new iPad Pro

02:13:32   This is the whatever it's that they all start with that every single one. That's it. I mean, that's a stick

02:13:37   He's got he's got a format and that's the format but you unknowingly exactly match the format damn it

02:13:42   So now you don't need to watch a Doug DeMuro video

02:13:45   You just watch my four videos over and over and over again. You don't you don't do anything. You're interested

02:13:49   Yeah, I mean not knowingly. I don't try to this is the

02:13:52   2019 Audi a4

02:13:55   Certainly not knowingly this is a backpack

02:14:01   Backpack I can't insert a name. Yeah

02:14:05   Well, just think of me and wish me luck tomorrow as I try to cover two cars in the span of like six hours

02:14:11   Well, I usually have a week you could do three cars in that amount. He could he could I'm not Doug DeMuro

02:14:17   Well, but again, like that will probably help you the same way my deadlines helped me some credit

02:14:22   Just don't crash the car, please

02:14:23   well the thing is the problem I have with it is that I think it will help me in the broad like in in the

02:14:30   at a macro level

02:14:32   But I am really scared that I will take all this time and and take some time from a friend of mine

02:14:40   To do this and then have nothing good to show for it on the other hand

02:14:44   You know, like I'll learn a lot about how to make these things quicker, but I'm scared

02:14:48   I won't have enough to make one good video out of which song I'm intending for this one video to be both cars

02:14:54   I'm not intending to get two videos worth of stuff out of this but but I'm scared that I'm gonna spend

02:14:58   You know like six or eight hours

02:15:01   You know doing all this and then have nothing to show for it when it's final cut

02:15:05   Pro time so we'll see so make it a crappy one

02:15:08   You can always fall back to I mean, I don't know how much you've done this in other videos

02:15:11   but this seems to me the the easier route is you've got a bunch of footage and maybe you've got a bunch of audio with

02:15:16   It and maybe it doesn't come out that well

02:15:19   But it has the moments that you wanted in it that you narrate over footage that already is health has its own audio

02:15:25   so basically you have you have the video and then you have your

02:15:28   Commenting on the video and that is the final video because if you just present the video as is like it's too like it's not

02:15:33   Good because that the the shot is blurry or the camera is shaky or the audio is bad

02:15:37   So the regular car reviews approach of doing yeah

02:15:41   But then in in the video you can in front of your podcast microphone

02:15:46   Record a voiceover that explains what's going on in the video that you couldn't explain in the moment

02:15:50   But you you know you caught some funny moment that you showed something or you're explaining

02:15:53   What is not very apparent on the video and the fact that it's revealing about the cars or whatever so you can always do that

02:16:00   Yeah, and that is something I'm not above doing it's just a matter of you know

02:16:04   What can I do with?

02:16:07   Potentially a second shooter, which is both good and bad because that makes me even more self-conscious about all the stupid things. I'm saying

02:16:12   Yeah, what can I do with the second shooter and?

02:16:15   And in a lot more of a plan that I've ever had before but still kind of shooting for that from the hip

02:16:21   So we shall see I will say dealing with the YouTube back end. It is as bad as everyone says

02:16:28   Like hmm one of the things so like I I decided you know I wanted to make sure now that we taking this more seriously

02:16:35   I wanted to make sure that

02:16:37   youtube.com

02:16:38   Marko Arment or you know like whatever the whatever the the custom URL scheme

02:16:42   I want to make sure I had that I know that like it's not automatic or at least

02:16:45   Maybe not always automatic, so I wanted to make sure like I want that I want to get my URL setup

02:16:49   Trying to do that trying to figure out how to do that even is its own little adventure

02:16:55   then

02:16:57   Once I found out how it's like like I can't just be slash mark arm. I have to be like slash mark

02:17:01   I'm gonna add some characters afterwards. It wouldn't let me just take my name and

02:17:05   In certain ways my name already works like it like it's certain URL formulations

02:17:09   It already works, but not all at this you know slash channel whatever ones

02:17:13   And it's like oh you can you can add this you you you just register for this here

02:17:17   But you have to only have the thing after your name like

02:17:20   Okay

02:17:22   So I tried searching everywhere to figure out why does it why does it make me add?

02:17:25   Characters to get my name that is not taken in these other places and turns out oh well

02:17:30   That's because to get just your name you have to be part of the partner program

02:17:34   which is their euphemism for you have ads in your channel and

02:17:38   That of course is documented nowhere

02:17:40   It's like you end up searching you find like a usenet posting or something

02:17:45   And so eventually I learn I have to be a partner so I go in our how do I become a partner?

02:17:51   So I went and signed up and it's oh I have to sign up for an Adsense account great

02:17:55   So I can't have a good URL

02:17:57   Unless I put ads on my channel

02:18:00   He's like I don't I'm not gonna make money from this in any meaningful way for a long time if ever so like I'm just like

02:18:06   I I'd rather I'd rather even have the ads probably you know

02:18:09   But I can't be like like a class a youtuber in the features set

02:18:15   Unless I turn on ads basically and so I alright fine. I'll turn on ads so I applied to the essence account

02:18:22   I get an email day later saying you already have an Adsense account limit one per person and the one I had is the old one

02:18:29   For for like there was like a six month period where overcast ran Google AdMob ads

02:18:35   In the app like little banners. You know I haven't actually

02:18:38   Run those ads in the current version of the app for over a year, and I you know

02:18:44   But there was like you know

02:18:45   $18 in unpaid funds sitting in it you know and so I'm like alright

02:18:49   How do I close that because that's I don't want to reuse that account that's for overcast. It's a whole different business

02:18:54   It's a different. You know LLC like I just I want a separate one for just me as you know as the youtuber

02:18:59   So okay, how do I do that? I?

02:19:01   Challenge you to try to find how to close an Adsense account. Oh, that's no surprise

02:19:07   There is a help page on YouTube

02:19:09   It'll it says you know because in in the in the email that you get that says you have a duplicate account

02:19:14   There's a link to Google help documents that say how to close it

02:19:17   And you can follow everyone of those instructions and the things that it says are there aren't there

02:19:23   So it's like okay

02:19:25   It says to go here to this page and then click the button, but the button it says will be there isn't there

02:19:30   What now where is it?

02:19:33   Eventually, I think I found like a Quora post that linked directly to some like customer service form on Google site that you could fill

02:19:40   Out to request cancellation of your of your account, which is linked to seemingly nowhere else

02:19:46   I did eventually figure it fill that out like after verifying is this even real like am I getting fished like what?

02:19:53   What is going on here?

02:19:55   But it was real I filled it out. I got an email like you know a day later saying okay

02:20:01   We've canceled your old account. We'll be sending you $18 somehow, and then I finally could get my partner program

02:20:07   Approved to the point where it's now in review, so

02:20:12   Sometime in the last it says it will decide quote usually within a month or so

02:20:17   So sometime in the next month or so I will be approved

02:20:22   I hope for monetization that I don't want so I can just get the URL I want it is a total disaster

02:20:28   This is a great time to remind everybody

02:20:31   They should go to youtube.com slash

02:20:33   Syracuse so the spelling is in the theme song for this podcast and you will find my beautiful correct URL for my youtube channel

02:20:41   That I got a long time ago even though I don't make videos

02:20:44   because

02:20:46   The most important thing you can do with every service is reserve a good URL for yourself

02:20:50   So let this be a lesson to you Marco always reserve a cool URL for yourself even when you have no plans to make videos

02:20:55   And I put up a new video since we last recorded - by the way oh yeah, no audio sync issues to speak of

02:21:02   It's not in 4k because my ps4 only records at 1080p

02:21:06   So sorry about that Snipes awakening doesn't features any pictures of me or anything in my house or any products

02:21:14   It's just all destiny all the time

02:21:16   Yay, so I'm a little curious John like why so what are these destiny videos of?

02:21:22   These like you know special events special achievements. You've gotten and and I'm curious like you know both well

02:21:29   You haven't watched my videos. Why do you have this question? You should go to my channel watch all my videos

02:21:32   I'm watching this now, and I don't know what's going on your view count will be significant

02:21:36   Yeah, you're a single view

02:21:39   Significant contribution will be lost in the noise in a popular channel, but in my channel

02:21:44   I'll see your video like look Marco watched it the number went up by one so I am curious like you know

02:21:50   Why because you know you're not much of a public share in on most forms

02:21:54   Why are you posting these videos?

02:21:58   I'm engaged in the destiny community. They're all destiny videos. I like destiny

02:22:03   And I so this is a part of the genius of the ps4

02:22:06   As many people have noted in the years since the ps4 has come out when they introduced the ps4

02:22:11   And it showed that one of the buttons on the controller the precious controller real estate had been dedicated to a button

02:22:17   Simply had the word share under it like the share button of all the things you're gonna put on the controller a button called share

02:22:25   How dumb is that what you will come to regret this that you wasted a button on the controller face for?

02:22:30   Share who the heck is gonna do that the answer is when you make it

02:22:33   When you put that button on the controller

02:22:36   And you make it really easy to share anything cool that has happened who cross fades on your on your console

02:22:42   People use it all the time and so if I do anything fun or cool or interesting

02:22:47   supercharged on my ps4 I hit the share button and

02:22:53   It saves the last like configurable amount of video likes of the last 15 minutes or whatever that I've done

02:22:58   And then every once in a while. I pull that video off and I cut together into some kind of

02:23:03   Sequence and I throw it up on YouTube. It's just a way to share

02:23:07   Cool things that have happened to me or that I've done or that are interesting to me in destiny

02:23:13   And there's no way I would do it if it was like there was some kind of burden where I had to like get some

02:23:18   Sort of recording equipment and premeditate and think I'm gonna I'm gonna record some stuff or whatever

02:23:22   This is just like I play my PlayStation all the time. I play destiny a ton and if something interesting happens

02:23:28   I hit the share button and I save a video and

02:23:30   Then every few months I have all this footage and I can put it together and make something out of it

02:23:34   So everyone if you like destiny go to youtube.com slash, Syracuse. I have no idea what I just watched

02:23:40   It just looks like footage of you playing a video game

02:23:42   You got it. That's what it is. Yes

02:23:45   It's not quite as a broadly interesting as stuff about Apple Hardware

02:23:50   [BEEPING]