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284: Hotel California Keyboard

 

00:00:00   I gotta go get a cup of water 'cause I didn't,

00:00:02   I realized I don't have one here, so hang on a second.

00:00:04   I'll be back.

00:00:05   Play some fish, I'll be back in a second.

00:00:07   Oh god, no, please don't.

00:00:08   We learned a lot more about the MacBook Pros

00:00:12   and everything this week, and honestly,

00:00:14   I feel like we spent too much time on it,

00:00:17   but the news is so big that we do need to talk about

00:00:19   a few angles of it. (laughs)

00:00:21   And like this, it's the kind of news that

00:00:24   whenever there's like a new, like brief little scandal

00:00:27   about our new Apple product, that news is relevant

00:00:30   for like a week, and then after that,

00:00:33   the value of it is basically zero.

00:00:35   - Except for the keyboard, which had like a three year life.

00:00:39   (laughs)

00:00:39   - Well, because they haven't fixed that.

00:00:41   Like it's one thing, like when they fix it--

00:00:42   - You never know. - Have they?

00:00:44   - Well, I guess, yeah, I guess we don't know.

00:00:45   But yeah, like when they fix it, then it becomes,

00:00:49   like then the value of like the scandal that happened

00:00:51   is basically zero.

00:00:53   So like, it's rough that we have to like spend

00:00:56   like pretty much three shows talking about this,

00:00:58   but there's a bunch of angles in this

00:01:00   that are kind of interesting.

00:01:01   I've learned a lot about this,

00:01:03   and so I hope that this can,

00:01:05   I hope we can provide some value besides,

00:01:07   hey, there was a problem, and now it's fixed.

00:01:09   (laughs)

00:01:11   - Yeah, you know, it's been weird,

00:01:13   because we caught the drama with regard to the

00:01:18   brand new i9, is it i9 or i7?

00:01:21   I'm having a brain fart.

00:01:22   - Well, I mean, technically it's all of them,

00:01:23   but the one that caused the most drama was the i9.

00:01:25   - Okay, I'm not crazy.

00:01:26   Anyway, so we caught, we recorded just after that all broke,

00:01:31   and in the time between we recorded and now,

00:01:34   when we're recording again,

00:01:35   it's basically all blown back over.

00:01:37   But we'll talk more about that.

00:01:38   - Our timing was perfect, I think.

00:01:39   - Yeah, actually that's true.

00:01:40   - These crazies were perfectly timed for our recording,

00:01:42   so thank you, Apple.

00:01:43   - Yeah, actually, I agree.

00:01:44   Like, you know, so the big fix came out,

00:01:46   was it yesterday, was it?

00:01:48   And so yeah, like we actually are perfectly timed

00:01:51   to talk about this in a way that is probably complete,

00:01:56   that has a decent amount of informing-ness to it,

00:01:59   informed-ness information to it.

00:02:01   (laughing)

00:02:03   And like, 'cause you know, last week we were kind of

00:02:06   in the middle of it.

00:02:07   Like we had seen the videos and Reddit posts that like,

00:02:10   there's a problem with the new MacBook Pro, we think.

00:02:13   And we could speculate a whole bunch on what that was,

00:02:15   and we could say it, but I spouted off about like,

00:02:17   what should and shouldn't be the case.

00:02:19   Now we have the information to actually,

00:02:21   like now we have way more information than last time.

00:02:24   We'll get to that, so I guess,

00:02:26   let's end this preamble for now, we'll get to that,

00:02:28   but suffice to say, I know this is a lot to talk about,

00:02:32   the new MacBook Pro and its weird throttling thing.

00:02:35   But I think we have value to add,

00:02:38   I will try to keep it brief.

00:02:40   - With that in mind, everyone look at your timestamps now.

00:02:43   All right, so to start off,

00:02:44   let's do some of the more mundane things.

00:02:46   It turns out that it is easier to replace the key caps

00:02:51   on the brand new keyboards.

00:02:53   From this small website I've never heard of

00:02:55   called 512Pixels, an Apple service document tells us

00:02:58   that the keyboard buttons is the word I'm looking for,

00:03:02   they're easier to replace, and the membrane is quote,

00:03:06   "To prevent debris from entering the butterfly mechanism.

00:03:09   Be careful not to tear the membrane."

00:03:11   So that's good news, and hopefully it works.

00:03:13   - You tried to combine two follow-up items there.

00:03:15   What are you doing?

00:03:16   - Dude, I'm following the show notes, man.

00:03:18   What do you want from me?

00:03:19   - That's a violation, sir.

00:03:20   - That's right.

00:03:21   Boy, you violated the indenting.

00:03:24   - Oh my God. - And getting this

00:03:24   for a reason, it's like Python.

00:03:26   Significant white space.

00:03:28   - Oh God.

00:03:29   (laughing)

00:03:30   John, why are you, I thought only Merlin got bad cop John.

00:03:33   Now I'm getting bad cop John.

00:03:35   - There's no such thing as bad cop John.

00:03:36   (laughing)

00:03:38   You messed with follow-up, Casey.

00:03:39   I mean, what do you expect?

00:03:40   - Oh, my word.

00:03:41   - The easier key cap replacement I think is a good move.

00:03:43   Like independent of the, you know,

00:03:45   the reliability of the keyboard

00:03:47   or how you like it or whatever,

00:03:48   being able to just fix just one key cap

00:03:51   is a smart thing to do.

00:03:52   And again, three years, we're three years

00:03:55   into this keyboard now, starting from the 2015 MacBook.

00:03:58   The fact that they went three years with a keyboard

00:04:01   where if a key cap like pops off or something

00:04:03   that you have to replace the entire keyboard,

00:04:05   it just seems like not a smart move

00:04:07   from a like cost and repairability perspective, right?

00:04:12   So I'm glad that they've addressed that

00:04:14   because it's just, you know, it's such a shame to see

00:04:17   there's nothing actually wrong with my keyboard,

00:04:19   but like I dropped something on it

00:04:20   and it broke this one key cap off.

00:04:21   Well, top case replacement.

00:04:23   Like that used to be the answer.

00:04:25   So now that you have a fighting chance,

00:04:27   the, you know, repair people have a fighting chance

00:04:29   of fixing your key cap by itself.

00:04:32   Although you have to be careful not to tear

00:04:33   the little membrane thing because the membrane,

00:04:36   as iFixit teardown has shown, is all one piece.

00:04:40   So if you tear it, it's not like you can replace

00:04:42   just the membrane under that key.

00:04:44   It's just one giant thing.

00:04:45   So you need a whole new top case.

00:04:46   And the second thing was like,

00:04:49   I mean, we talked about this last week,

00:04:49   I just wanted to put in here for confirmation,

00:04:51   like that Apple just said the keyboard is quieter,

00:04:54   but they had a patent about keeping debris out

00:04:57   and the patent looks like the keyboard.

00:04:58   So presumably that thing is not there to make it quieter,

00:05:01   it's to keep stuff out.

00:05:02   Apple's own documentation, it's internal documentation

00:05:05   for it's like service guide or whatever it says.

00:05:07   The keyboard has a membrane under the key caps

00:05:09   to prevent debris from entering the butterfly mechanism.

00:05:12   It's right from Apple's mouth, so if anyone

00:05:14   still had any question whether the membrane

00:05:16   was there to make it quieter or to keep debris out,

00:05:18   Apple has settled that once and for all.

00:05:20   - Yeah, that's like, and we have another

00:05:21   follow up item here that I'd like to also read.

00:05:24   This was from Josh Fenton, 'cause this is related to this.

00:05:27   When Apple issued the release of these new Apple Pros

00:05:30   and they said, this new keyboard design is quieter.

00:05:33   And everyone's like, does it fix the dust killing it

00:05:37   thing or not?

00:05:37   And it's pretty clear now that Apple was kind of BSing us

00:05:42   on that, like yeah, I guess it is a little quieter maybe,

00:05:47   but people are like straining to hear the difference.

00:05:49   Meanwhile, both Apple's support documents now

00:05:52   and iFixit tear downs and things confirm

00:05:54   that this is not really to be quieter,

00:05:56   it's really there for this ingress prevention.

00:05:58   So obviously that's the real reason it's here

00:06:00   and Apple was kind of BSing us.

00:06:01   One of the reasons why people speculated, including us,

00:06:05   why they might be not saying why this is actually here,

00:06:10   is that there are a number of class action lawsuits

00:06:13   about the keyboard failure.

00:06:14   And so people are speculating, maybe they didn't want to say

00:06:18   that it's quieter, or say that it fixes this problem

00:06:21   because that would admit fault that there is a problem

00:06:23   in the first place.

00:06:24   And we got a nice email from Josh Fenton, who is a lawyer,

00:06:27   saying that there's a legal doctrine that prohibits

00:06:30   introducing subsequent remedial measures as evidence

00:06:34   of the existence of a previous negligence or design defect.

00:06:37   So the idea is you couldn't make a legal,

00:06:40   according to this doctrine, it is not a valid legal argument

00:06:43   to say you definitely had a defect before

00:06:46   because the new product changed in this way

00:06:48   to make this thing better.

00:06:50   And Josh Fenton says, while counterintuitive,

00:06:52   this doctrine exists in support of a public policy

00:06:55   that the law should not serve as a disincentive

00:06:57   for people or companies to improve the safety and quality

00:06:59   of their products, services, or premises.

00:07:01   'Cause it's kind of, that would be kind of counterintuitive

00:07:03   and kind of damaging over time.

00:07:05   So I don't know, I mean, chances are Apple is being

00:07:07   exceptionally conservative and not even wanting

00:07:10   to try to have to invoke this kind of doctrine.

00:07:12   Like they probably want as much immunity as possible

00:07:15   against these lawsuits.

00:07:16   So this doesn't say like, they don't have to come out

00:07:19   and say that this is fixed, but it does seem like they have

00:07:22   less legal reason than we predicted to avoid saying

00:07:27   that this is fixed because of ingress.

00:07:29   - So if that's true, what's left is what people

00:07:31   were thinking before, which is pride, as in corporate pride

00:07:34   or like why would we admit that we ever did anything wrong?

00:07:36   Why don't we just say we have a new keyboard, it's great,

00:07:38   best keyboard we ever made, and it's quieter,

00:07:40   and just don't answer any questions about reliability.

00:07:45   Because if it's not legal, keeping their mouth shut,

00:07:47   it's a worse look.

00:07:49   'Cause if it was a legal thing, like whatever,

00:07:50   lawsuits are weird.

00:07:51   And you're right, maybe it still could be an abundance

00:07:53   of caution and who knows if there's some specific case law

00:07:56   related to this or whatever.

00:07:57   But if the legal reasons are taken out of the equation,

00:08:00   the only thing left is like, I think a miscalculation,

00:08:04   a PR miscalculation perhaps.

00:08:06   'Cause it looks better when you say we had a problem

00:08:10   and we fixed it and the new ones are great.

00:08:11   And it's not like they're not admitting they had a problem

00:08:13   'cause they do have the repair extension program

00:08:15   and you don't do that just for the hell of it.

00:08:17   You don't do a repair extension program on a keyboard

00:08:19   that has perfect reliability, right?

00:08:20   There's obviously a problem and yet still,

00:08:23   somehow they could not bring themselves to say

00:08:25   this new keyboard is more reliable.

00:08:27   Going back to the keyboard and these membranes,

00:08:30   iFixit did some really interesting work with regard

00:08:34   to testing whether or not the membrane does anything.

00:08:37   So they have this post which we'll link to

00:08:40   where they did a few things to kind of figure out,

00:08:42   does this make a difference?

00:08:43   And what they did was they sprinkled blue powder

00:08:47   on top of the keys, used them for a while

00:08:49   and then popped off the key caps to see, okay,

00:08:51   where's this blue powder?

00:08:52   And the conclusion they seem to come to is that,

00:08:54   yeah, it definitely helps.

00:08:56   I think the most relevant part of this test though

00:08:57   is so they did this glowy sand which is very, very fine.

00:09:00   It's kind of cool because you can track where it is

00:09:02   and everything and showing that it mostly keeps it.

00:09:05   An important part is I think they compare it

00:09:06   to one without the membrane.

00:09:07   Say without the membrane, it's all over the place

00:09:09   and with the membrane, it's mostly on the edges, good, right?

00:09:11   Well then they took a little bit of sand and put it on

00:09:13   and it wedged the keys instantly.

00:09:15   Because there are holes in the membrane.

00:09:16   There are big holes where the hinges come through.

00:09:18   So it's not like sand can't get in

00:09:20   and it's not like sand has to sneak in through a tiny opening.

00:09:22   The openings are pretty big.

00:09:23   So still you should really avoid getting sand

00:09:26   in your keyboard.

00:09:27   The good news, as we mentioned before,

00:09:28   is if you do get a piece of sand under your keyboard,

00:09:31   there's a chance that they can pop off the key cap,

00:09:32   take out the sand and put the key cap back on

00:09:34   and you don't have to have all top gear replacement.

00:09:36   But like I said, if you're gonna make some kind of barrier

00:09:39   to keep grit out and there are five giant holes

00:09:42   under every key where grit can get in,

00:09:44   it's only so much you can do.

00:09:45   So probably improved, probably better,

00:09:47   but maybe don't use your MacBook Pro on the beach.

00:09:51   - You know, it's too related to know

00:09:52   whether in practice this will actually reduce

00:09:55   the occurrence of the keyboard problems.

00:09:56   But it is kind of nice that they did this test.

00:09:58   It is kind of nice to know we aren't totally

00:10:01   out of the woods on this.

00:10:02   Like if you have one of these,

00:10:03   you still can't like eat a muffin on top of it

00:10:05   without running a pretty big risk there.

00:10:07   You're simply, you have a reduced risk.

00:10:11   But in a way I also think like,

00:10:12   you know Casey, you've had with your MacBook One,

00:10:14   you've had a lot of compressed air adventures,

00:10:17   as Apple recommends, like trying to get your one piece,

00:10:21   trying to move around the piece of dust

00:10:22   that gets under the keys so it goes to a different key.

00:10:24   I think with this, that's probably not gonna work.

00:10:26   With this, I think the dynamic here will be

00:10:30   that it is harder for things to get in,

00:10:32   but it's even harder for anything to ever get back out.

00:10:35   So if something does get in, which is, as John said,

00:10:38   which is still possible, it's just less likely,

00:10:40   but if something does get in, I bet you're done.

00:10:43   I bet that's it, you have no recourse.

00:10:45   It's nice that they're making this better.

00:10:47   I hope in practice it's gonna be so rare,

00:10:50   'cause you know, I've fixed it,

00:10:51   they had to try pretty hard to finally get something in it.

00:10:54   Like they had to really blast it with sand, I think.

00:10:57   So it was, I hope that in practice

00:10:59   it's not gonna be a problem,

00:11:01   but they still have a keyboard that if a piece of dust

00:11:05   gets in the wrong spot, it will kill it.

00:11:07   They just have made it less likely for that to happen.

00:11:09   So progress, but not probably completely out of the woods.

00:11:13   - I put a thing in, the thing I put in the show

00:11:16   and it says that they didn't actually have to try hard

00:11:17   with the sand, like this is a quote from another thing.

00:11:19   We sprinkle a pinch of sand over the keyboard,

00:11:21   type on the keys for a minute,

00:11:23   and we don't even have to lift the key caps

00:11:24   to realize that something is wrong.

00:11:26   A few keys have seized up.

00:11:27   So it wasn't actually that hard with sand.

00:11:29   Oh, that's not good.

00:11:31   - I don't know what to think about this.

00:11:33   I do think that listening to Marco,

00:11:35   I've come up with the official unofficial name

00:11:37   for this keyboard, which is the Hotel California keyboard

00:11:40   where you can enter but you can never leave.

00:11:41   (laughing)

00:11:42   - It's a Roach Motel.

00:11:43   I was gonna make the Roach Motel joke,

00:11:44   but you tried to make the Hotel California.

00:11:47   I think the Roach Motel is better,

00:11:48   but that may be before your time.

00:11:49   - No.

00:11:50   First of all, it is slightly before our time.

00:11:52   But second of all, come on.

00:11:54   Hotel California is so good.

00:11:55   Anyway. - That's fantastic.

00:11:57   - All in the chat room has an interesting question,

00:12:00   which I think we should cover real quick before we move on.

00:12:02   Do you guys think this is an acceptable solution?

00:12:04   And taking that word specifically, acceptable,

00:12:08   I think this is acceptable.

00:12:10   I'm not in love with it.

00:12:11   I think that everyone is still worried

00:12:14   about keyboard reliability,

00:12:15   in part because we haven't really heard

00:12:17   what the reliability is like.

00:12:18   You know, these machines have only been in people's hands

00:12:19   for what, a week, two weeks?

00:12:21   But it's not, well, I feel like it's acceptable.

00:12:26   It is enough to make me think it's worth trying

00:12:29   these new keyboards if you've had a problem in the past.

00:12:32   But it certainly seems like the Achilles heel status

00:12:36   of these keyboards hasn't changed.

00:12:38   And that's a problem.

00:12:39   And it's also tough because I've been going back and forth

00:12:42   between my MacBook Adorable and my full Darth Vader,

00:12:47   you know, 104 whatever key wireless keyboard.

00:12:52   And although I do love this magic keyboard

00:12:54   that Apple makes, and I've said that many, many,

00:12:55   many times on the show,

00:12:57   I still like the feel of my Adorable a little bit more,

00:12:59   which is weird 'cause I never thought I'd like anything

00:13:02   more than this magic keyboard.

00:13:04   So it's acceptable, but I feel like time will tell

00:13:09   to see if it's really enough.

00:13:12   I don't know, Marco, obviously you have thoughts on this,

00:13:13   so let's start with Jon,

00:13:14   and then Marco, maybe you can bring us home afterwards.

00:13:17   - So what was the question again?

00:13:18   Is it acceptable?

00:13:19   - Yeah, so do you guys think this is an acceptable solution?

00:13:23   - I don't really know what acceptable means.

00:13:25   I think the question for me is would I recommend

00:13:28   these laptops to people, right?

00:13:30   Like is, you know, say yeah, go ahead and buy one,

00:13:33   they're good, like it's okay,

00:13:35   they fixed the keyboard things.

00:13:36   And the answer to that is the jury's still out

00:13:38   as far as I'm concerned.

00:13:39   Like I don't know yet, it's too early.

00:13:40   It would make me more comfortable, surprisingly,

00:13:44   like I know they're not gonna do this,

00:13:45   but like if these were included in the repair extension,

00:13:48   just because you have this keyboard

00:13:49   and it's supposed to be better about reliability,

00:13:51   and it probably is, but if it isn't,

00:13:54   I don't wanna pay for a new top case after a year, right?

00:13:56   I want the, it's almost like the 2017 and '16 and '15 models

00:14:01   have the assurance that like, well, you get one,

00:14:02   and if you do have a problem, don't worry,

00:14:04   they'll cover it for four years, right?

00:14:05   And that's probably how long your laptop will last anyway

00:14:07   before the battery's hosed.

00:14:09   Whereas this one, it's like, oh, that problem's probably gone

00:14:12   so you're probably fine.

00:14:13   But if it turns out the problem isn't gone,

00:14:14   and again, with the sprinkling of sand,

00:14:16   we see that it actually isn't entirely gone

00:14:18   and they're under the worst possible conditions.

00:14:20   Oh, someone spilled some sand on your laptop, right?

00:14:22   And you typed on it for two seconds.

00:14:25   And I don't wanna be stuck having to replace it.

00:14:27   So it's an improvement, it's better.

00:14:32   I particularly like the idea that you can replace a keycap

00:14:34   without replacing the whole keyboard.

00:14:35   That I think is a big possibility of like,

00:14:37   you won't have to pay for a whole new top case.

00:14:39   You'll just bring it in, yeah, it's annoying,

00:14:40   but you got some sand under your keyboard,

00:14:41   they'll pop it, I'll give you a new key cap,

00:14:43   or you break a key cap by dropping something heavy

00:14:45   in your keyboard and they can fix it.

00:14:47   But I feel like it's still not up to the bar of the 2015,

00:14:51   which is basically a keyboard that,

00:14:53   I'm sure people had problems with it

00:14:54   and people broke key caps off and stuff like that,

00:14:56   but it didn't raise to the level of,

00:14:59   some high percentage of people you know

00:15:01   with 2015 MacBook Pros had one or more keyboard problems.

00:15:05   Like, no one ever talked about the keyboard.

00:15:06   It was like, the keyboard was the keyboard and whatever.

00:15:09   I don't think this one has crossed that bar yet.

00:15:11   I feel like it's just the, as we said in the past,

00:15:13   Rose, it's just the accumulation of Band-Aids.

00:15:16   This is like the maximum number of Band-Aids

00:15:18   all piled on top of this little wound,

00:15:20   but the scab is kinda still there.

00:15:22   (laughing)

00:15:23   Well said.

00:15:25   - I think the jury is still out on this.

00:15:27   I really, I can't wait for, you know,

00:15:29   I did order one of these machines,

00:15:31   we can talk about that later if you want.

00:15:32   Tell you one thing I did when I ordered it,

00:15:34   I also ordered one of those silicone covers

00:15:35   for the keyboard for like 10 bucks on Amazon.

00:15:37   - Oh no.

00:15:39   - Because I just don't know.

00:15:40   And here's the thing, like, you know,

00:15:42   it's basically a $10 insurance policy.

00:15:45   Like, I can spend $10 on this stupid silicone cover.

00:15:48   This problem might have been solved, but we don't know yet.

00:15:51   It sure seems like it hasn't really been fully solved,

00:15:54   but maybe it's been improved enough that we'll stop caring.

00:15:57   The correct solution to this problem

00:15:58   is to design a keyboard that either

00:16:00   dust can get in and out freely,

00:16:02   so that dust getting in for a second isn't a big deal

00:16:05   'cause it can just come right back out again,

00:16:07   like the old ones, or design a keyboard

00:16:10   that dust can't get into at all.

00:16:12   You know, like, if you look at the design of

00:16:14   like the smart keyboard for iPads,

00:16:16   where it's basically like a cloth membrane

00:16:18   over the whole thing covering the key,

00:16:20   like one big thing over the whole keys,

00:16:22   so that even like, you know,

00:16:23   you can basically spill water on it,

00:16:24   and you know, it doesn't really go in anywhere.

00:16:26   I feel like those two extremes are the way to go here.

00:16:28   Either make it so dust can come in and out freely,

00:16:30   or make it so dust can't get in at all.

00:16:32   And they haven't done that yet.

00:16:34   As John said, this is still a bandaid

00:16:36   on this keyboard design.

00:16:37   I still really want to know what the next design is.

00:16:41   Like, what's the next major keyboard here?

00:16:43   This keyboard, they took a lot of risks,

00:16:44   they did a lot of crazy things,

00:16:46   they optimized for factors I don't give two craps about.

00:16:49   Like, great, my keyboard is precise and stable.

00:16:51   Two things I have never once pushed the key

00:16:54   on any other keyboard and said,

00:16:54   "This is too imprecise and unstable."

00:16:58   That has never, like, I've never had

00:16:59   that opinion of anything.

00:17:00   So, I wanna see where they go next.

00:17:02   - So would you say it's acceptable?

00:17:04   I'm not trying to snark, I'm genuinely asking.

00:17:05   Like, I feel like you're kind of on both sides of that.

00:17:08   So, yes, no, acceptable?

00:17:10   - With the caveat that it's still way too early to tell,

00:17:14   just by the way it seems, by the way it looks,

00:17:17   like, based on iFixitate and stuff, and their testing,

00:17:20   I give it like a B.

00:17:22   Like, this seems like it's probably a decent solution,

00:17:25   but it's not the best solution.

00:17:26   - Fair enough.

00:17:27   - By the way, with your little silicone cover thing,

00:17:29   I'm wondering if you have just increased

00:17:31   the amount of finger grease

00:17:32   that's gonna appear on your screen.

00:17:33   - We're already past that point.

00:17:35   (laughing)

00:17:35   - You're all on board with it.

00:17:37   - I've fought that for years.

00:17:38   Like, when I had my very first PowerBook, my first laptop,

00:17:42   I was very careful with how I arranged the backpack.

00:17:44   I made like a whole custom padded compartment

00:17:46   out of black felt, so it was never squished against.

00:17:50   So, I told you before my theory about what causes

00:17:53   the keyboard imprint on the screens.

00:17:55   When it's closed flat, like on top of a desk,

00:17:57   they don't make contact, but if it's compressed

00:18:00   slightly in a bag, I think the screen lid flexes slightly

00:18:02   inwards, and that compresses the keyboard against the screen.

00:18:05   So, I think that's where, so it really depends on like

00:18:07   what kind of bag you're putting it in,

00:18:08   whether anything is on top of it or pushing against it.

00:18:11   So, I used to care a lot about that.

00:18:13   In the last few years, I just started losing that fight

00:18:15   more and more as I got like different backpacks

00:18:17   and different bags and everything,

00:18:18   and now I just don't care anymore.

00:18:20   - Yeah, the other thing I noticed

00:18:21   of looking at laptops around work is,

00:18:23   I think it was the 2015s and maybe the couple years before,

00:18:26   like the anti-glare coating would start coming off.

00:18:27   Have you seen that?

00:18:28   - Oh yeah, the delamination, yes.

00:18:30   - Yeah, a bunch of the ones at work have it,

00:18:32   but surprisingly, it's one of those problems

00:18:33   that if you don't, like people don't notice it

00:18:35   until I point it out to them and say,

00:18:37   "You realize your anti-glare thing is,"

00:18:39   I don't know if it's the anti-glare or delamination

00:18:40   or whatever, but you can tell.

00:18:42   It looks kind of like there's like grease on the screen,

00:18:44   but it's not grease.

00:18:45   It's that you can't clean it off,

00:18:46   and it tends to happen around the edges or whatever.

00:18:49   But people are like, "Eh, they shrug,"

00:18:50   and one of the reasons they shrug is the rest of their screen

00:18:53   is covered with finger grease from the keyboard

00:18:55   and directly from their fingers.

00:18:56   So, their entire screens look like a mess anyway,

00:18:58   and they're just used to it.

00:19:00   - All right, Marco, you have something to smile about though

00:19:02   because a little birdie has told us

00:19:04   something very, very interesting.

00:19:05   Can you tell us about this?

00:19:07   - Yes, so as I've ranted a lot about before,

00:19:09   the USB-C ecosystem is just not really panning out,

00:19:13   and for me, one of the biggest problems is that,

00:19:15   yes, you can convert everything.

00:19:17   If you go out and buy all new cables,

00:19:19   you can get all cables that have USB-C on one end

00:19:22   and whatever you need on the other end for all your stuff.

00:19:24   So, you can convert your cables pretty easily,

00:19:26   but you can't convert hubs 'cause there doesn't seem

00:19:28   to be any kind of actual USB-C hub

00:19:31   that just takes one USB-C port

00:19:33   and makes four other USB-C ports out of it.

00:19:36   And there's lots of complexity to the USB-C spec

00:19:40   with things like Thunderbolt and DisplayPort and power.

00:19:43   It's very, very complex, so making such a thing

00:19:45   is apparently very difficult,

00:19:46   which is why they don't really seem to exist.

00:19:48   There are a few products in the market,

00:19:50   a couple of those $300 docks

00:19:52   that have two output ports maybe,

00:19:55   but that's usually about your only option.

00:19:58   And I think USB-C requires hubs

00:20:01   that just take one port to multiple C ports

00:20:03   for it to really finally take over.

00:20:07   And we've heard from an anonymous person

00:20:09   that Intel is finally releasing a hub chip

00:20:12   for USB-C next year, so this would be a chip

00:20:14   that could be put into hubs.

00:20:16   We may not see products based on it until 2020.

00:20:19   I don't know enough about this kind of stuff

00:20:22   to say whether this is it, whether this is all we need,

00:20:24   whether this is even true or plausible,

00:20:27   but typically the chips that are in USB hubs

00:20:31   and Thunderbolt hubs and everything,

00:20:32   they tend to be made by very few manufacturers.

00:20:35   That's why you have a million different brand names

00:20:37   on Amazon for what appears to be about the same hub

00:20:41   or the same kind of thing.

00:20:42   It's 'cause there's one company

00:20:43   that makes those chips in there,

00:20:44   and usually it's somebody like Intel or Vya

00:20:47   or something like that, like one of the big chip makers.

00:20:50   And so apparently, if the chip to make USB-C hubs

00:20:54   hasn't really existed yet,

00:20:55   that would certainly explain the problem that we have.

00:20:57   And if Intel's making one in the next couple of years,

00:20:59   that's probably good news,

00:21:01   although I kinda wish it was out now,

00:21:02   and I kinda wonder, we've had USB-C ports

00:21:05   on MacBook since 2015, what are we waiting for?

00:21:07   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:10   Do we wanna talk about the history lesson

00:21:12   that was also associated with this?

00:21:14   - Yeah, I thought this was a good summary,

00:21:15   'cause the larger issue,

00:21:17   I mean, it's not really related to throttling,

00:21:19   but what's the deal with Intel CPUs these days?

00:21:21   There's the bigger picture of Moore's Law

00:21:24   and everything we've talked about,

00:21:25   but Intel CPUs haven't been getting that much faster

00:21:28   or that much better in recent years for a variety of reasons,

00:21:31   and one of the reasons is that they haven't been able

00:21:34   to get their new processor, 10-nanometer process online,

00:21:37   so they've just been making part after part after part

00:21:39   out of 14 nanometers, and there's only so much you can do

00:21:42   by rearranging the deck chairs.

00:21:44   I think they're adding more cores,

00:21:46   I think they're adding eight cores in the same CPUs

00:21:48   that we have six cores in now,

00:21:49   'cause what else can they do,

00:21:51   because they don't have a smaller process?

00:21:53   And this sort of semi-brief history,

00:21:56   I think, is a good rundown of what the deal was

00:21:59   and why Apple might find itself in a difficult situation

00:22:03   designing its laptops around these chips.

00:22:04   So 2016, when the Skylake MacBook Rosie released,

00:22:08   Cannon Lake was supposed to be around the corner in 2017

00:22:11   with an LPDDR4 controller supporting 32 gigs, right?

00:22:14   So in 2016, they're like, "Oh, no problem.

00:22:16   "Next year, 2017, we'll be able to support 32 gigs

00:22:20   "with low power," that didn't happen, right?

00:22:23   And then Cannon Lake got pushed to 2018,

00:22:24   Kaby Lake was inserted,

00:22:26   which is just Skylake with HEVC and HDCP 2.2,

00:22:29   then Coffee Lake got added in 2018,

00:22:31   which is just Kaby Lake with more cores,

00:22:32   and Cannon Lake was canceled,

00:22:34   although this person says the same and honest person,

00:22:37   "Yes, really, although Intel hasn't fessed up yet.

00:22:39   "Now, Ice Lake is teetering on the edge of failure

00:22:41   "and Intel is prepping yet more

00:22:42   "in 14-nanometer parts for 2019,

00:22:44   "and here we still are, 14-nanometer

00:22:46   "with Skylake memory controller."

00:22:48   And the new 15-inch MacBook Pro uses

00:22:50   the built-in memory controller,

00:22:51   which works just fine with DDR4,

00:22:52   which is what we're seeing right now.

00:22:54   Apple has made plenty of own goals

00:22:56   in soccer parlance, football parlance,

00:22:59   in the MacBook Pro, primarily due to design hubris,

00:23:02   sorry, but trying to plan products

00:23:04   on Intel's roadmap has become masochistic.

00:23:07   Like, what do you do if you're gonna plan,

00:23:09   like, this is the new generation of MacBook Pro,

00:23:11   and we're gonna design three models for the next three years

00:23:13   and Intel tells us this is their roadmap,

00:23:15   and then they just miss that roadmap entirely

00:23:17   and just keep releasing 14-nanometer parts.

00:23:20   It's not a great situation to be in.

00:23:21   And you can argue that the correct choice

00:23:23   is to scrap everything and redesign a new case

00:23:27   to handle 14-nanometer things,

00:23:28   but the lead times might just not have been

00:23:31   good enough to do that, so.

00:23:32   We're all in the same boat here.

00:23:35   It's not like someone else has

00:23:36   secret better Intel CPUs than Apple.

00:23:38   Apple gets the same ones as everyone else,

00:23:41   and Intel really needs to get its process online,

00:23:43   and we have a topic about that we might get to later,

00:23:46   but it's yet another reason why people continue

00:23:50   to entertain fantasies of ARM-based Macs,

00:23:53   because one thing that has happened in recent years

00:23:55   is Apple's ARM CPUs are getting better all the time,

00:23:58   and they're really, really good.

00:24:00   And, like, every time I go to a Geekbench or whatever

00:24:02   and look at the scores for, like, the iPhone X

00:24:05   versus Apple's MacBooks, like, Apple's 2018 MacBooks,

00:24:09   they're not that far apart.

00:24:10   And I think about exactly how many fans there are

00:24:14   in an iPhone X, right?

00:24:16   How big it is, how big the battery is,

00:24:19   and then I look at the Geekbench scores,

00:24:21   like, ARM Macs are looking, you know,

00:24:25   I know it's not Apple's to Apple's,

00:24:26   I know it's not the same, I know it doesn't have

00:24:28   32 gigs of RAM in the phone, like, I understand,

00:24:30   I know it's not a giant monster GPU, discrete GPU in there,

00:24:33   but, boy, Intel is really making ARM Macs

00:24:37   look more and more attractive every year.

00:24:39   - We are sponsored this week by the Aftershokz

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00:24:43   Go to ATP.Aftershokz.com to learn more,

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00:25:00   or has a big cup around your ear,

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00:25:05   The in-ear ones just hurt me,

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00:25:09   The ones that go around or on your ears

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00:25:13   And when you're walking around outside,

00:25:15   it's hard to hear things like cars driving by,

00:25:17   or if someone's trying to talk to you

00:25:19   when you're wearing big headphones.

00:25:21   Bone conduction headphones solve these problems.

00:25:23   First of all, there's nothing in or on or around your ears.

00:25:27   Instead, they have these little transducers,

00:25:29   they're very small,

00:25:30   they have like a little wraparound neckband,

00:25:32   and these little transducers that rest

00:25:34   kind of in front of your ears on your cheekbones.

00:25:37   And they send little vibrations

00:25:38   that your eardrums pick up as sound,

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00:25:42   And in addition, because nothing is blocking your ears,

00:25:45   you can still hear the world around you.

00:25:47   So it's very practical when you're doing outdoor activities,

00:25:49   walking, cycling, even just doing stuff around the house,

00:25:52   if you wanna hear if someone knocks on the door,

00:25:54   or if someone else in your house is calling your name,

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00:25:57   And the Aftershokz Trekz Air are just great headphones too.

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00:26:05   Like they say they weigh like an ounce,

00:26:06   but honestly, the weight is nothing,

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00:26:12   there's a great warranty if you need it.

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00:26:18   The Trekz Air are the only headphones I wear in the summer.

00:26:21   I like them so much that this summer I'm testing a lot

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00:26:56   Thank you so much to Aftershokz

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00:27:00   and for sponsoring our show.

00:27:02   (upbeat music)

00:27:06   In one of my big rants last episode

00:27:08   on this throttling thing,

00:27:09   you know, I've honestly, I've mostly tried to stay out

00:27:12   of the i9 throttling thing

00:27:14   because I just didn't know much about it

00:27:15   and it was a configuration I didn't have

00:27:17   and I couldn't get access to

00:27:18   and it just seemed like a, you know,

00:27:20   it was mostly playing out on YouTube and Reddit.

00:27:22   But one of the big, you know, lines I drew in the sand

00:27:25   was a CPU should never run below its base clock.

00:27:28   Like it should never have to do that in normal operation.

00:27:30   It should be able to sustain its base clock indefinitely

00:27:33   and if it can't, there's something seriously wrong

00:27:34   with the thermal design around it.

00:27:37   And it turns out that was not a complete picture

00:27:40   of how things work anymore.

00:27:41   So we've learned a lot since the last episode

00:27:45   and so I wanted to go over a few things.

00:27:46   First of all, we pointed out last episode

00:27:50   the 800 megahertz clock,

00:27:52   like where the CPU would drop down to 800 megahertz.

00:27:54   Now in the throttling problem

00:27:57   where it would cause like the big sawtooth graph basically

00:27:59   of like constant spikes up and down,

00:28:01   that actually was the real problem.

00:28:03   But sometimes the CPU will drop to 800 megahertz

00:28:05   because it's idle.

00:28:07   800 megahertz is simply the lowest clock

00:28:09   the CPU will typically use in just power save mode.

00:28:13   It is also used in very extreme cases

00:28:15   for throttling for thermal reasons.

00:28:17   But if your CPU hits 800 megahertz,

00:28:20   that might just be because it wasn't doing that much

00:28:22   and it clocks itself down to save power.

00:28:24   Secondarily, so going back to a CPU must always maintain

00:28:27   its base clock no matter what.

00:28:29   Well, it turns out that when Intel's recent AVX instructions

00:28:34   are being used, their processors reduced their base clock

00:28:37   because AVX instructions are apparently so like heavy duty

00:28:41   and complicated to execute that the processors are designed

00:28:44   to actually reduce their base clock

00:28:46   while running AVX instructions.

00:28:48   And I honestly don't know that much about AVX,

00:28:50   but it's kind of like the continuation of like MMX,

00:28:52   like back in the old days, MMX,

00:28:54   and then what were the other ones?

00:28:56   There were like a bunch of SSE

00:28:57   and all those like extra instructions,

00:29:00   like big vector instructions to process lots of data at once.

00:29:03   So AVX is like the recent version of that kind of idea.

00:29:06   - Doesn't even mention Altavec, but I'll do it

00:29:08   because I have to.

00:29:09   (laughing)

00:29:10   - Yeah, your Altavec really took over the world there, John.

00:29:13   - Altavec was awesome.

00:29:14   So much better than MMX.

00:29:17   - So among the valid reasons that a CPU might operate

00:29:20   below base clock are either it's saving power

00:29:23   'cause it's idle or it's using AVX instructions,

00:29:26   even if it's at full load.

00:29:28   And then finally, we talk a lot about the CPU's TDP.

00:29:33   I mean, this is a figure in watts,

00:29:34   which is the maximum power draw or heat generation,

00:29:37   which is kind of the same thing, that a CPU will issue.

00:29:40   And it turns out my view of TDP

00:29:42   and my definition of TDP was outdated.

00:29:44   The 15 inch is usually like a 45 watt TDP on those processes,

00:29:48   which I thought would mean that at peak load,

00:29:50   no matter what, it would not exceed 45 watts of heat output

00:29:53   and therefore power usage.

00:29:55   It turns out that's not the case.

00:29:56   It turns out TDP is the expected maximum average power draw

00:30:02   with all cores operating at the base frequency.

00:30:06   If turbo boost is being used,

00:30:08   it can exceed TDP all the time.

00:30:11   Like it can exceed TDP constantly.

00:30:13   It can do it whenever it wants.

00:30:15   TDP is just when turbo boost is not being used,

00:30:17   when it's the base frequency and all cores are maxed out,

00:30:21   that's roughly what you can expect

00:30:23   the maximum power output to be.

00:30:25   Now, we've been told by people who know more

00:30:27   about this than us, thank goodness they exist,

00:30:29   that before Coffee Lake, which is this generation,

00:30:33   and before Kaby Lake, which is the 2017 generation,

00:30:36   there actually used to be a lot more headroom in practice

00:30:39   before the CPUs would really hit TDP.

00:30:42   The TDP figures were apparently very conservative.

00:30:44   CPUs would not normally surpass them much under load,

00:30:47   even using turbo.

00:30:48   But as we mentioned a few minutes ago,

00:30:52   Intel not being able to get to their 10 nanometer process,

00:30:55   get those chips out the door,

00:30:56   has had to cram more and more transistors and chips

00:30:59   into this old 14 nanometer process,

00:31:01   which means that they're cramming more cores and more stuff

00:31:05   into the chips without shrinking their process size,

00:31:09   which means they're just gonna use more power.

00:31:11   Simple as that.

00:31:12   Like the design of each core hasn't changed substantially

00:31:15   to make them more efficient,

00:31:17   and there's no process shrink size,

00:31:19   or process size shrink to give us a cooling benefit there,

00:31:22   so basically these chips are gonna be more and more

00:31:24   complicated without increasing their efficiency much.

00:31:26   So they are using more power.

00:31:29   So we didn't just get two cores for free,

00:31:32   we got two more cores by basically Intel is now

00:31:36   approaching and surpassing the quoted TDP figures

00:31:38   much more often.

00:31:39   So when a CPU's under load,

00:31:41   that 45 watt TDP processor in the 15 inch

00:31:44   can use way more than 45 watts.

00:31:46   It probably won't sustain it for very long,

00:31:49   but it frequently and will easily pull 65 watts.

00:31:53   I think somebody even said it could pull 100 watts

00:31:55   at max load, like if max turbo is on.

00:31:58   This is pulling massive amounts of power,

00:32:00   it's generating massive amounts of heat,

00:32:02   and this is not just the i9,

00:32:04   but all of the Coffee Lake CPUs,

00:32:07   even down to the 13 inch ones.

00:32:08   So basically, everything I knew about both clock speed

00:32:11   and TDP was outdated and wrong.

00:32:13   (laughs)

00:32:15   I say this because it's something I really

00:32:20   am trying to get better at.

00:32:21   We wanna make sure our hot takes are well informed.

00:32:24   And you know, 'cause I,

00:32:26   it's hard, because whenever there's something like this,

00:32:29   whenever there is some kind of big Apple drama,

00:32:32   like when that annoying guy on YouTube broke his iMac Pro

00:32:36   and cleaned up and wouldn't fix it because it was broken,

00:32:39   not because he destroyed it.

00:32:40   (laughs)

00:32:42   Like everyone, whenever anything like that happens,

00:32:45   everyone comes to people like us on Twitter and is like,

00:32:48   hey, what do you think of this?

00:32:49   This is crazy, right?

00:32:50   Oh my God.

00:32:50   And I try to get a really fast opinion out there,

00:32:54   because everybody wants it,

00:32:54   and because I wanna give it,

00:32:55   because I'm excited too.

00:32:56   And if Apple has done something wrong,

00:32:58   I wanna call the Mona 2, you know?

00:33:00   I thought I knew enough about this stuff

00:33:02   to be able to say like,

00:33:04   this should never happen,

00:33:05   XYZ should never happen, and they're wrong.

00:33:08   And I just didn't in this case.

00:33:09   Like there's so much about this

00:33:10   that's way more complicated than I thought it was.

00:33:13   Some of it has changed recently,

00:33:14   some of it I just didn't know.

00:33:16   And so it's just nice to be able to step back for a minute

00:33:19   and try to get a little bit better

00:33:21   at not jumping to so many like

00:33:24   absolute conclusions about this stuff so quickly.

00:33:26   So I apologize for doing that so often.

00:33:28   I'm trying to get better at that.

00:33:29   And this is one example where I think maybe

00:33:32   we could all get a little bit better at that.

00:33:33   - So Intel is kind of in a similar situation

00:33:36   in that they had existing definitions

00:33:37   based on the way their chips used to work.

00:33:39   And as things have changed about chips,

00:33:44   as they always do, as the process shrinks,

00:33:45   the things that used to be steady or reliable before

00:33:50   now become more variable

00:33:51   and different things become important.

00:33:53   And as they've had to spend more and more time

00:33:55   on 14 nanometer, they've had to fudge things

00:33:57   just because you can't get blood from a stone.

00:33:59   Like you were saying, you're gonna put more cores on,

00:34:02   you're not getting that for free.

00:34:03   You gotta put more area and your things get bigger

00:34:05   and they dissipate more heat.

00:34:06   And there's more transistors

00:34:08   and they're the same size as they were before.

00:34:09   So where do you think you're getting any savings from?

00:34:11   And whatever headroom you had, you're eating it.

00:34:12   So a couple of people wrote in to pull the definitions

00:34:16   of like TDP and base clock and stuff

00:34:19   from Intel's documentation.

00:34:20   And what used to be a straightforward definition

00:34:23   is now a little bit more wishy-washy

00:34:25   and has more caveats and more special cases.

00:34:28   And in some cases it's somewhat circular.

00:34:29   Like the base clock is the clock that can maintain

00:34:32   while satisfying TDP.

00:34:34   And TDP is the power used when it's running a base clock.

00:34:37   Like you just go around in circles

00:34:39   with an asterisk, asterisk, except for AVX instructions.

00:34:43   And as we've seen from the fix,

00:34:46   which I think we'll get to in a little bit,

00:34:48   there's the whole profile of how the cooling system works

00:34:50   and how the hardware deals with changes in load and heat

00:34:55   and how that integrates with the cooling system

00:34:59   and what the optimal arrangement is.

00:35:01   And it's not just as simple as

00:35:03   if CPU gets hot make cool now please, right?

00:35:06   There's a bunch of curves and there's settings

00:35:08   and like it's very complicated, right?

00:35:10   So it was so much simpler when there was no turbo boost

00:35:14   and the CPU had a speed and maybe you could overclock it,

00:35:17   but either way just stay to that speed all the time

00:35:19   and there was no speed step and there was no throttling.

00:35:22   And it was just, and we still use those same terms

00:35:25   and those same sort of measurements

00:35:26   and the same conception of how they work.

00:35:29   But in this modern age, like I was saying before

00:35:31   with the thin and light laptop and the over provisioning,

00:35:33   like things are more complicated

00:35:35   and everything is trying to some kind of compromise

00:35:39   because you can't have a laptop like this

00:35:43   with a CPU like this that behaves like one from a decade ago

00:35:48   or it can run at maximum power all day

00:35:50   and that's how you can measure battery life, right?

00:35:53   Everything is a very complicated compromise

00:35:55   involving hardware and software management

00:35:59   and various curves and specific loads,

00:36:03   specific applications, sets of instructions,

00:36:06   just everything is much more complicated than it used to be.

00:36:10   And I can only imagine what it's like in phones.

00:36:12   Like the only reason we don't know

00:36:13   about the world's going inside there

00:36:14   is 'cause it's like just a sealed box to us

00:36:16   and we don't have a history of smartphones

00:36:18   where things were replaceable and we could talk about them

00:36:20   in this sort of a modular way.

00:36:23   But on laptops we do, but most of that is out the window now

00:36:26   so we're grappling with it and so I think is Intel

00:36:30   because they have to sell these things and sell a benefit.

00:36:33   And the last thing you wanna do when selling a benefit

00:36:35   is to explain all the nuances.

00:36:37   Like it's faster under these conditions with these caveats

00:36:41   assuming you did this, that and the other thing.

00:36:43   It's better to just say it's faster, right?

00:36:46   And then when people find, but what about this?

00:36:48   What about that?

00:36:49   And you look at Intel's documentation and it says,

00:36:50   yeah, no, that's in the docs, but it's very nuanced

00:36:52   and we didn't feel like explaining that

00:36:53   to you in the sales brochure.

00:36:55   - Yeah, ultimately what this boils down to is the numbers

00:36:58   that Intel quotes on the CPUs.

00:37:00   Like this is a 2.9 gigahertz processor.

00:37:03   It basically means nothing.

00:37:04   (laughing)

00:37:05   Basically like you can't take anything as absolute anymore.

00:37:08   - It means it can run faster than the 2.71 or the 2.21.

00:37:12   Like the numbers are still comparable for the most part,

00:37:15   although it was a story I just saw fly by

00:37:16   right before we recorded.

00:37:17   - But they aren't even proportional.

00:37:18   Like the 2.9 is not like 40% of whatever it is

00:37:22   faster than the 2.2.

00:37:24   - Yeah, well, because you have to look at the turbo things

00:37:26   and they might not be proportional to the base clocks.

00:37:28   Well, here's one that makes it even worse.

00:37:29   The story I just saw before we recorded is that

00:37:31   in the upcoming generation, which I think they're gonna go

00:37:34   to eight cores instead of six, again on the same process

00:37:36   as far as I could tell.

00:37:37   - Oh, geez.

00:37:38   - They're taking hyper-threading out of the i7s.

00:37:41   So now instead of it being a six core,

00:37:44   like 12 thread, it'll be an eight core, eight thread.

00:37:47   Just to confuse you even more.

00:37:49   And it should still end up being faster than the old ones,

00:37:53   but people are gonna run their CPU meters and be like,

00:37:55   "Hey, there's fewer lines."

00:37:57   This 14 nanometer forever thing is kind of like the,

00:38:03   what the hell was it?

00:38:04   A chat room could help me.

00:38:04   533 megahertz front side bus on the G4

00:38:07   for like years and years, even when it was obscene.

00:38:11   So to take a half step back, there was a Reddit post

00:38:16   that got really, really popular a few days ago,

00:38:18   where somebody who strikes me as very intelligent

00:38:21   and very well read, and I don't say that sarcastically,

00:38:25   had come up with a theory as to why

00:38:28   this throttling was happening.

00:38:30   And they have since edited their posts

00:38:32   with some new information, which we'll get to in a minute.

00:38:34   But if you scroll down on the link we'll put

00:38:36   in the show notes, you'll see where it says,

00:38:37   "Original post below."

00:38:39   So what they said was they think the problem

00:38:42   is the voltage regulator module being unable

00:38:47   to satisfy the power desires of the i9 CPU.

00:38:49   And they did a bunch of crazy stuff with setting some

00:38:54   switches in either the CPU or the VRM in order to get it

00:38:59   to not limit the power of going to the CPU.

00:39:02   Which from what I can tell, having obviously not tried,

00:39:05   this seems to have worked.

00:39:07   If you're willing to disable SIP and install a Kext,

00:39:11   kernel extension, all this other crazy stuff.

00:39:13   So that worked reasonably well for a little bit

00:39:18   until, I believe it was yesterday,

00:39:21   as one of you said earlier, Apple released an official fix.

00:39:23   So I feel like this has been mostly resolved,

00:39:28   but do we have any thoughts on this Reddit thread

00:39:30   or the fix that came out of Apple just yesterday?

00:39:33   - I think the Reddit thread is a good example

00:39:34   of people trying to figure it out on their own.

00:39:37   They don't know what the problem is,

00:39:38   but they can see, we have measurements,

00:39:40   we have some tools that we can use,

00:39:42   and there's a thing about the tools

00:39:43   that we'll get to in a little bit too.

00:39:44   But we're like, what's the problem here?

00:39:46   What could be the problem?

00:39:47   Because it's not as simple as just an on/off switch

00:39:51   or it's always running at maximum cooling.

00:39:54   There's lots of decisions to be made exactly

00:39:56   how much power should the CPU draw for how long?

00:39:59   When it turbos, when should it decide to turbo

00:40:02   and when should it say, I've turboed enough,

00:40:03   I should go down, right?

00:40:05   And there are other chips involved in the motherboard,

00:40:07   not just the CPU that could be involved

00:40:09   in a cooling decision.

00:40:10   And so someone was just poking in some registers

00:40:12   or firmware or something and changing a bunch of value,

00:40:15   hex values in some big bit mask thing

00:40:18   and saying this controls how long it turbos to maximum speed

00:40:21   or how you're allowed to draw 100 watts for 30 seconds

00:40:24   and you're allowed to draw 150 watts for five seconds

00:40:27   and just playing with those numbers

00:40:29   with the goal of taking some workload,

00:40:31   I forget what they were doing as the workload,

00:40:32   and making that workload complete faster

00:40:34   because it's inefficient to bump really hard

00:40:37   up against your thermal ceiling and throttle way, way down

00:40:39   and then bump right back up against it

00:40:41   and throttle way, way down.

00:40:42   It's much better to oscillate with smaller moves

00:40:45   like turbo for a shorter period

00:40:47   so you don't hit your ceiling and don't bump way, way down

00:40:50   and so you can just bump from your base clock up to turbo,

00:40:52   base clock up to turbo or whatever.

00:40:53   It's better than going from turbo all the way down

00:40:56   to like 800 megahertz or whatever.

00:40:57   Again, like Mark was saying before,

00:40:58   if you say, oh, it's not actually the CPU,

00:41:01   it's the voltage regulation module

00:41:03   and that overheats, it responds by pulling power

00:41:06   from the CPU and all sorts of theories

00:41:08   and there's a lot more going on inside there

00:41:10   than anyone outside Apple's probably gonna be able to tell.

00:41:14   So Apple's fix, as the new updated thread says,

00:41:18   doesn't just operate on the CPU

00:41:20   but takes the entire system into account

00:41:21   so it can handle cases where what if your GPU

00:41:24   is making really hot because it's something

00:41:25   in your application is using the GPU.

00:41:27   Like it's all the same kind of cooling system inside there

00:41:30   and an excess of heat can make everything hot

00:41:32   'cause it's all next to each other

00:41:33   inside the same case or whatever.

00:41:34   So Apple's patch takes a more holistic view of the system

00:41:37   as it always does and tries to balance the heat

00:41:40   and tries to make the components,

00:41:43   not slam hard against their thermal ceiling

00:41:44   but just creep right up to it

00:41:46   but have the cooling system keep them below it

00:41:48   and have them oscillate back and forth as you'd expect.

00:41:50   Basically saying if it gets too hot,

00:41:52   go back down to your base clock, cool off for a while

00:41:54   and then go, you know.

00:41:56   So it's some heroic armchair attempts at fixes

00:42:01   without access to source code or anything like that

00:42:03   but just access to a machine.

00:42:04   But it's, you know, I would never recommend

00:42:08   someone do something like that,

00:42:09   not at least because it requires a kernel extension

00:42:12   and disabling system integrity protection,

00:42:15   all sorts of other stuff.

00:42:17   And if it really is a real problem,

00:42:19   you should have some confidence

00:42:20   that Apple will do something about it

00:42:21   and in this case they did within days.

00:42:23   So this is a pretty fast turnaround time from Apple

00:42:26   and it's some interesting experiments

00:42:30   by people out in the field

00:42:31   but I would warn people, if you have one of these,

00:42:36   give it some time, give it a few days, give it a week,

00:42:39   don't rush out and install software

00:42:42   that some person posted on Reddit,

00:42:44   even if it might look cool.

00:42:45   - Well but you know, I think there is some value

00:42:49   to the side of that of like,

00:42:51   you know, when you look at what we mentioned earlier

00:42:53   about how the alleged reason that Apple PR gave

00:42:57   for the keyboard membrane was to make this keyboard quieter

00:43:01   when that appears to be pretty, you know, BSE, right?

00:43:05   So whatever Apple says or doesn't say

00:43:07   about problems like this,

00:43:09   it's hard to know whether it's accurate or not

00:43:11   without, you know, people playing around with stuff like this

00:43:13   One of the reasons I was watching this thread

00:43:15   was like, alright, so they say that the VRM throttling

00:43:18   is at fault here, that basically that the thermal settings

00:43:21   were not good for that processor

00:43:24   and that changing the thermal settings

00:43:25   would fix this problem.

00:43:27   So the very first thing I wanted to know

00:43:28   when the patch came out was, did they change those settings?

00:43:31   Because like with this method,

00:43:33   you're like using some utility to read the settings

00:43:36   and then you figure out what the value should be

00:43:37   and write new settings back.

00:43:38   So I was very, very curious to go back to this thread

00:43:41   once that patches out to see like, alright,

00:43:43   has this person who wrote this like gone back

00:43:46   and updated it with the new one?

00:43:48   Because if the value has changed with this new,

00:43:52   you know, with the patch that Apple released,

00:43:54   Apple's reason was, you know, BS that this is actually

00:43:57   the real reason here, that this value is wrong.

00:43:59   And it would still be great if they fixed it,

00:44:01   but if the value had changed and that was the real reason,

00:44:03   that would be like, you know, worth knowing,

00:44:05   worth experimenting to find out.

00:44:07   Fortunately, that wasn't the case.

00:44:08   Fortunately, that, you know, the value has not changed

00:44:11   of this VRM profile thing of like how much heat

00:44:14   it can draw for how long.

00:44:16   So fortunately, the PR explanation appears to be correct.

00:44:19   And we'll get to that, I guess, now.

00:44:22   - Indeed, so Apple has released a software fix

00:44:26   and we'll put a link to Jason Snell's coverage

00:44:29   on six colors.

00:44:30   But the quote from Apple is as follows,

00:44:33   "Following extensive performance testing

00:44:35   under numerous workloads, we've identified

00:44:37   that there is a," this is from them,

00:44:39   "missing digital key in the firmware

00:44:41   that impacts the thermal management system

00:44:43   and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads

00:44:45   on the new MacBook Pro.

00:44:47   A bug fixes including today's macOS High Sierra

00:44:50   10.13.6 supplemental update and is recommended.

00:44:52   We apologize to any customers who experience

00:44:54   less than optimal performance on their new systems."

00:44:56   And then there's some marketing drivel after that.

00:44:58   So Macworld took a look at it

00:45:00   and they said their preliminary results

00:45:03   from our 4K Premiere test is that the 2017 2.9 gigahertz

00:45:07   Core i7, 90 minutes to do this thing.

00:45:11   The 2018 Core i9 before the patch, 80 minutes,

00:45:14   so a delta of 10 minutes.

00:45:16   The 2018 Core i9 after the patch is 72 minutes,

00:45:20   which is eight minutes quicker.

00:45:22   So, and additionally they also saw that the clock speeds

00:45:25   were pretty flat, which indicated that things

00:45:28   were operating as they should have been.

00:45:30   - Yeah, because before the patch, the symptom was basically

00:45:32   you have this, as I mentioned, the sawtooth graph

00:45:34   of the, if you look at the processor frequency

00:45:36   where it would peak really high

00:45:38   and then drop all the way down to 800 megahertz

00:45:40   and then peak really high again

00:45:42   and then drop all the way back down

00:45:43   and just like constant fluctuations

00:45:45   and something was clearly overheating or being mismanaged.

00:45:48   That's not normal, it's not supposed to be

00:45:50   that spiky and crazy.

00:45:52   So the patch did indeed fix the problem.

00:45:55   I actually talked to Apple about this.

00:45:57   I had a call, I asked about the VRM thing,

00:46:00   they said that was not it.

00:46:02   But ultimately I don't really have any more information

00:46:03   than that that isn't in the statement.

00:46:05   I'm really, really curious to know,

00:46:08   just like some more technical detail

00:46:10   about like a missing digital key

00:46:12   in the thermal management system firmware.

00:46:14   Like I'm curious what that means.

00:46:16   - Didn't ask Apple about it?

00:46:18   - I did, but you know, it was, you know,

00:46:20   I didn't get a lot of technical detail.

00:46:22   You know, they were very friendly

00:46:24   and open to whatever they knew how to answer.

00:46:27   But unfortunately, this statement really covers it all.

00:46:30   There's not, besides that I was able to confirm

00:46:32   that the VRM thing was not it.

00:46:34   I don't really have any other information

00:46:36   that wasn't in the statement.

00:46:37   But it was nice, I talked to them,

00:46:39   they seemed genuinely concerned.

00:46:40   I asked them if they bought a freezer

00:46:42   to rerun the YouTube test.

00:46:44   They did not.

00:46:45   They didn't seem to think that was very funny.

00:46:47   (laughing)

00:46:49   Otherwise, yeah, so it's,

00:46:51   I would like to hear from any listeners who know

00:46:54   about like just how this stuff works at this low level.

00:46:56   Like what is that, a missing digital key?

00:46:58   Does that just mean like whatever their method

00:47:02   of controlling this in software,

00:47:04   maybe like it was not running,

00:47:06   or if it was not being loaded by some like firmware download

00:47:10   at the CPU level, if the CPU was like falling back

00:47:13   to its like built-in profiling instead

00:47:15   of having Apple customize it,

00:47:16   which I think might be what's going on.

00:47:17   But I just wanna know more about this at a low level,

00:47:20   just out of curiosity's sake.

00:47:21   But the reality is that the problem is fixed

00:47:24   in the sense that it is, like you know,

00:47:26   before it had these weird thermal characteristics

00:47:28   and in many tests it was slower than the one

00:47:31   that came before it or was at least not faster by very much.

00:47:35   And now the performance graphs have smoothed out

00:47:38   and it is faster than, basically it is,

00:47:42   as what you'd expect, the fastest CPU option

00:47:44   is the fastest performing in real-world tests.

00:47:48   So that like, that was the real problem

00:47:50   and that problem seems to have been fixed.

00:47:52   They did tell me that this problem affected

00:47:55   all of the 2018 MacBook Pros.

00:47:57   So not just the i9 and the 15 inch,

00:47:59   but also the i7s and the 15 inch

00:48:01   and the 13 inch options as well.

00:48:03   This bug apparently affected all of them,

00:48:06   which does lend more credence to the fact

00:48:08   that they are most likely telling the truth on the source.

00:48:10   It isn't like some weird thermal thing with the i9

00:48:12   that it affects all of them.

00:48:14   But I don't think people really saw it

00:48:15   that much with 13 inches yet.

00:48:16   So I don't know if we have a lot of test results

00:48:19   to confirm like maybe how bad it was before

00:48:21   and where it is now.

00:48:23   But regardless, it's fixed, I'm happy,

00:48:26   and it seems like it's pretty much a closed book.

00:48:30   - I have the same academic curiosity about the explanation

00:48:32   because the fact that like this one paragraph thing

00:48:35   doesn't have technical details but does decide

00:48:37   to say a missing digital key,

00:48:38   which is just enough to intrigue you,

00:48:40   say really, like what does that even mean?

00:48:42   The theory that I've heard, like you just said,

00:48:45   the most prevailing one is some piece of software

00:48:47   that's supposed to be signed and wasn't

00:48:49   and so didn't get loaded or something.

00:48:50   But yeah, I don't know.

00:48:51   I mean, they're not into giving you the technical explanation

00:48:55   but I think the most interesting part about this,

00:48:57   again, it's not interesting consumers,

00:48:58   all you care is that the thing is fixed

00:49:00   and it is so great, right?

00:49:01   But it's not actually like,

00:49:04   it's one of those boring software problems

00:49:06   where it's basically like a build system problem

00:49:08   or like a CI pipeline problem or a packaging problem.

00:49:13   Like it's not actually a problem with the technology,

00:49:15   it's a problem with the boring part of the system

00:49:17   where you package up the bits for sale

00:49:20   and make sure that those are the same exact bits

00:49:23   that you tested but of course you have internal only things

00:49:25   and so it was like,

00:49:26   like what they were selling to consumers

00:49:30   was not exactly the bits they thought they were.

00:49:32   And it's great 'cause you can fix a problem like this.

00:49:34   It's not a hardware problem,

00:49:35   it's like purely a software thing

00:49:36   and they can send you a software patch and it fixes it,

00:49:38   right, there must be relief

00:49:39   to all the hardware people involved.

00:49:41   Like everything's fine, the cooling system is fine,

00:49:43   it's not a catastrophic failure of thermal paste

00:49:46   or something, it's just the software

00:49:48   we thought we were sending out to you on your laptop

00:49:50   is not actually the software that you got

00:49:52   so here's a patch and everyone's relieved.

00:49:55   It's kind of like how a lot of the recent leaks from Apple

00:49:59   have been like,

00:50:01   it's similarly related to like the build system

00:50:04   or like putting things on URLs temporarily

00:50:07   where they shouldn't be or like just sort of mundane

00:50:11   human error unrelated to the creation of the product.

00:50:14   'Cause people creating their product

00:50:15   are working really hard and doing all the things

00:50:16   and doing everything right as best they can

00:50:18   and then someone goes and accidentally puts like

00:50:21   an unreleased version of operating system

00:50:22   up on a public URL or like the build system builds something

00:50:26   that they think is an exact match for what they tested

00:50:27   but actually isn't and they ship these laptops to people

00:50:30   and they have the wrong bits on them.

00:50:32   Stuff like that happens, like it's not a big deal,

00:50:34   this is a pretty fast turnaround time

00:50:35   but I'm still technically curious about the details

00:50:38   and somebody's boring tell all nerd book

00:50:42   about Apple 20 years from now can include this in a chapter.

00:50:44   - This will be the most boring chapter.

00:50:46   - And be like let me tell you about the time

00:50:47   that the build system screwed up somehow.

00:50:49   (upbeat music)

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00:52:48   and supporting our show.

00:52:49   - All right, and then we have one final piece of drama

00:52:54   over the last few days that luckily this show has avoided.

00:52:58   The Intel Power Gadget Utility,

00:53:01   which I guess is a way I've not used this.

00:53:02   Marco, have you used this?

00:53:04   - I have actually.

00:53:05   So it's Intel's kernel extension that you have to install.

00:53:10   Basically it becomes an app that you can run

00:53:13   that simply shows you nice little graphs and numbers

00:53:16   about what your processor is doing,

00:53:18   how fast it's going, what kind of utilization it has,

00:53:21   like as a percentage, and how much power it's drawing.

00:53:24   So that's how we're able to see things like,

00:53:27   oh, this CPU is spiking to this peak frequency

00:53:31   and then dropping and then spiking again and then dropping

00:53:32   and the water is just going crazy and the temperature is not

00:53:35   and you can see all things like that

00:53:37   because of this utility from Intel

00:53:39   called the Intel Power Gadget.

00:53:41   And as far as I know,

00:53:42   I don't think there's another way to get,

00:53:44   you can get heat from various system settings reading apps

00:53:49   but I don't think you can get clock speed and CPU wattage

00:53:52   that easily or that precisely from anything else.

00:53:54   - Right, so this thing existed and then didn't

00:53:58   and now does again.

00:53:59   So apparently it was pulled from Intel's site

00:54:03   right around the time everyone was trying to grab it

00:54:06   to figure out what the hell was going on

00:54:07   with these new Mac or Pros.

00:54:09   And then I guess was version three,

00:54:13   just appeared in the last 48 hours.

00:54:16   That sort of does the same thing

00:54:19   but one of you guys was kind enough

00:54:20   to put a quote in the show notes.

00:54:21   In version three, there are additional features

00:54:23   that include estimation of power on multi-socket systems

00:54:25   as well as externally callable APIs

00:54:27   to extract power information within sections of code.

00:54:30   And apparently it's important to note the latest release

00:54:32   also includes support for Windows 10.

00:54:34   - That's like the entire change log.

00:54:35   So the mystery again with the,

00:54:37   if you wanted to assume that Apple is evil,

00:54:39   it's like, oh, they found this problem

00:54:40   and their solution is to get on the phone

00:54:42   and tell Intel to pull the power gadget.

00:54:45   But then it's back a day later or whatever

00:54:47   and when it comes back, the changes have nothing to do

00:54:50   with like, 'cause it's not multi-socket system,

00:54:52   it's not Windows 10

00:54:53   and it's not about instrumenting sections of code.

00:54:55   Like why did it disappear?

00:54:58   And why did they then release version three?

00:55:01   Who knows?

00:55:02   It could have been just a coincidence

00:55:03   but either way, all the people screaming

00:55:05   that it was a conspiracy theory

00:55:07   about some terrible problem Apple had.

00:55:09   The problem Apple had was actually not terrible.

00:55:12   It was actually easy to fix and they fixed it immediately

00:55:14   and then the power gadget is back.

00:55:15   So don't always assume that Apple's out to get you.

00:55:18   - Well, but at the same time,

00:55:20   you could see why people got here, right?

00:55:22   Because Apple's solution, when the 2016 MacBook Pro came out

00:55:25   and had weird terrible battery life,

00:55:28   depending on what you were doing,

00:55:29   was to hide the battery life remaining indicator

00:55:32   in the menu bar forever.

00:55:33   So their solution there was,

00:55:36   here's this thing that's showing people

00:55:38   how weird our battery life is

00:55:39   with these new complicated laptops.

00:55:41   We're just gonna hide that information.

00:55:43   So it actually was totally plausible

00:55:46   that Apple's solution to people are seeing weird things

00:55:50   in the frequency graph might be convince your partner Intel

00:55:54   to pull the frequency graph utility from your website.

00:55:56   Like that is a totally plausible outcome

00:55:58   based on their past performance.

00:56:00   So I can see why people thought that.

00:56:02   - Don't you think hiding the number though

00:56:06   is partly because the numbers weren't accurate

00:56:08   and they were misleading?

00:56:09   Like the thing with the speed thing is like,

00:56:11   look, you can hide the power gadget

00:56:13   or not let people install the power gadget all you want.

00:56:15   They still have a stopwatch.

00:56:16   They could still run a workload and time it

00:56:18   versus the old version and say,

00:56:20   I don't need to see what the frequency is.

00:56:22   I don't know what the problem is.

00:56:23   All I know is this thing is slower than it should be.

00:56:25   Like you can't stop people from doing that.

00:56:27   And like the battery power thing is like,

00:56:30   we have bad estimates of battery power

00:56:32   and people are flipping out about,

00:56:34   because they're flipping out when they see the bad estimate,

00:56:36   they never actually say, okay,

00:56:38   is that actually how much time I have remaining?

00:56:40   Start a stopwatch now.

00:56:41   Like they were just flipping out on the numbers.

00:56:42   So like the fact that it was back like a day later,

00:56:46   I don't, it just doesn't add up to me.

00:56:49   I like, and maybe they did,

00:56:50   maybe some panic PR person did call and ask them to pull it.

00:56:54   But I don't think it was part of some grand conspiracy

00:56:57   to hide a big problem because there wasn't a big problem.

00:57:00   There just wasn't, like the problem was a small problem

00:57:03   and it was fixed.

00:57:04   And it was like, it was not unexpected.

00:57:05   They didn't have to research it for a month.

00:57:07   They didn't have to do extended testing.

00:57:08   I bet it was pretty quick when someone said,

00:57:10   I figured out the problem.

00:57:11   People don't have the right bits on their computer.

00:57:14   Like it's the best problem to have.

00:57:15   Like we, this is not actually a problem.

00:57:16   It was the build system or whatever.

00:57:18   I'm calling it the build system.

00:57:19   That's probably the wrong word.

00:57:20   I'm sure there's some Apple word for like

00:57:22   the way things get onto the computers that you buy.

00:57:27   So, I don't think you can,

00:57:31   I can see where people got there because again,

00:57:32   people assume Apple is always evil or whatever,

00:57:34   but just things happen so fast

00:57:36   and we're so quickly disproved in this case

00:57:38   that I don't think people even had enough time

00:57:40   to get up a full head of steam about being angry

00:57:41   about the conspiracy theory about Apple,

00:57:44   Apple making Intel pull its gadget

00:57:45   and then re-add it with Windows 10 support.

00:57:48   It could be like the sticky note on the store

00:57:49   where it's like, this is every time they have to

00:57:51   update the power gadget utility, it's always gone for a day.

00:57:54   - All right, so moving on,

00:57:56   let's talk a little bit more about Intel

00:57:58   because about a month ago,

00:58:00   friend of the show Ben Thompson wrote a really, really,

00:58:02   really great article at Stratechery

00:58:04   with regard to kind of Intel's problems

00:58:06   and how they got in this, I guess, mess that they're in today

00:58:10   it's been a while since I've read this

00:58:11   although I certainly did read it.

00:58:12   John, I think you might've added this to the show notes.

00:58:15   Can you come take it away and tell us about this?

00:58:17   - On this show, we've talked about Intel,

00:58:21   I think most of the time in the context of like ARM stuff,

00:58:25   ARM Macs or Intel chips and phones,

00:58:29   just kind of the comparison

00:58:34   between what Intel offers Apple

00:58:37   and what Apple is essentially offering itself

00:58:39   by like buying PA semi and making its own chips

00:58:42   and making its own GPUs and doing all of this stuff.

00:58:44   I think maybe a year or two ago,

00:58:47   one of the focuses was that

00:58:50   Intel had a big strategic advantage to Apple

00:58:56   and that their process technology,

00:58:59   meaning how small they can make the features on their chips

00:59:02   was a generation ahead of everybody else.

00:59:05   And so no matter how much more efficient ARM CPUs were

00:59:09   and no matter how much Apple could custom tailor them

00:59:11   to their exact needs, it's very hard to overcome

00:59:15   the fact that Apple had to make all of its ARM chips

00:59:18   using larger feature sizes, bigger transistors

00:59:21   than Intel did.

00:59:23   So even though Intel may have old and creaky chips

00:59:25   and x86 is old and creaky, even x86-64

00:59:29   and it's inefficient and all these reasons

00:59:31   why ARM is better than Intel,

00:59:33   Intel has this advantage of like they take

00:59:35   whatever their designs are and they can make them

00:59:37   much smaller than everyone else and they use less power

00:59:39   and they just have all these advantages.

00:59:42   And the discussion then was, wouldn't it be great

00:59:46   if Apple could get its like its ARM CPUs

00:59:50   or system-mounted chips or iPhone stuff

00:59:52   and design them, but then have Intel make them.

00:59:57   Say we have designs, Intel,

00:59:59   we don't actually want your chips,

01:00:02   we just want you to be a fab for us.

01:00:05   Here's the design, you make it for us

01:00:07   and you make it on your industry-leading

01:00:08   small than everybody else, always ahead by a year and a half,

01:00:11   two years ahead of everybody else

01:00:13   and that would be the best of both worlds.

01:00:15   It would be the best chip designs

01:00:18   and then the smallest fabrication size.

01:00:20   And the discussion then was like, yeah,

01:00:22   but why the hell would Intel do that?

01:00:23   Because they can't charge you as much.

01:00:25   They can charge you way more for their high-end Intel CPU

01:00:29   or Xeons or Inines or whatever,

01:00:32   because it's like that's our intellectual property,

01:00:34   we design it and we fab the chip

01:00:36   and so we can double dip there.

01:00:39   Whereas if we're just a dumb fab and we just say,

01:00:41   oh, we'll manufacture things for you

01:00:43   and you'll bring the thing yourself,

01:00:44   we can't get as much money from you.

01:00:46   So, and we're ahead of everybody else,

01:00:48   so I bet everybody would love for us to fab

01:00:50   their stupid designs, but we're only gonna fab our designs.

01:00:52   That's our competitive advantage,

01:00:53   you all suck, Intel is great.

01:00:55   And that seems like such a long time ago,

01:00:58   maybe it wasn't as long ago as I thought,

01:01:00   but it seems like such a long time ago.

01:01:02   And over the time since then,

01:01:05   there's been smaller stories about Intel

01:01:07   willing to fab chips for other people,

01:01:09   which I think that have appeared in our show notes

01:01:10   at various times and maybe we haven't actually talked about,

01:01:12   maybe they just got booted out

01:01:13   because they became irrelevant.

01:01:16   But the most recent story,

01:01:17   as we've talked about on the past few shows,

01:01:18   is Intel, it's supposed cadence,

01:01:23   it used to be the TikTok where it would be like

01:01:25   they do an architecture change, then a shrink,

01:01:26   then architecture change, then a shrink

01:01:28   on like a yearly cadence or an 18 month cadence

01:01:30   or whatever the hell it was,

01:01:32   had been slowing down and they made all these PR things,

01:01:34   it used to be TikTok and now it's like process optimized,

01:01:39   but like they made a three step process,

01:01:40   and then as Marco said a few shows ago,

01:01:42   now it's TikTok, tok, tok, tok, tok, tok.

01:01:44   They've been stuck at 14 nanometers for a really long time,

01:01:48   for longer than anyone thought they would be,

01:01:50   including Intel, Intel had grand plans

01:01:52   for that 10 nanometer thing.

01:01:54   Now about six months ago, we were hearing like TSMC,

01:01:58   Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation,

01:02:01   they've made it to 10 nanometers or seven nanometers

01:02:04   or whatever, they're ahead of Intel,

01:02:06   and then people were quick to say,

01:02:07   well, again, kind of like base clock speed and TDP,

01:02:12   feature size is another one of those things

01:02:14   that used to have perhaps a more common

01:02:17   and simpler definition than it does these days,

01:02:19   because now people are arranging,

01:02:21   are making transistors with these strange 3D arrangements

01:02:24   of elements at the microscopic level,

01:02:27   like building these little pyramids and structures and fins,

01:02:31   and it's not as easy to say, well,

01:02:33   what is your feature size?

01:02:34   What are you measuring between?

01:02:35   What is your, it's like dot pitch on a monitor

01:02:37   or versus dot pitch on a trinitron,

01:02:39   like it's all kind of fuzzy,

01:02:40   and the gist of it was that Intel's 10 nanometer

01:02:44   is actually smaller than TSMC's 10 nanometer,

01:02:47   or maybe even smaller than TSMC's seven nanometer

01:02:49   or whatever, and so there was, you know,

01:02:52   maybe six months ago still a reason to say,

01:02:54   yeah, it looks like Intel might've lost its fab lead,

01:02:56   but it's not actually true,

01:02:57   but at this point, with Intel still unable

01:03:00   to deliver 10 nanometer stuff,

01:03:02   and TSMC making, I think they call their seven nanometer

01:03:05   or whatever, like it doesn't matter

01:03:07   that Intel's 10 nanometer, it may be as good as

01:03:10   or better than a similar number from TSMC.

01:03:13   TSMC looks like it's gonna actually deliver its process

01:03:17   in shipping products for customers,

01:03:20   and Intel still can't, and so, I mean,

01:03:25   Ben Thompson's article's more about the history of Intel

01:03:27   and like how it got to this point,

01:03:30   but I feel like Intel's strategy,

01:03:33   aside from like selling their arm holdings and losing,

01:03:37   and opting out of the contract to make the CPU

01:03:40   for the original iPhone and various other strategic mistakes,

01:03:44   if Intel was still ahead of everybody on process,

01:03:47   their, you know, their integrated design,

01:03:50   as Ben calls it, where they make the CPUs and have the fab,

01:03:55   would still be a viable strategy,

01:03:58   but if you're not the best fab in the world,

01:04:01   and when you were, you also refused to fab things

01:04:06   for other people, all you're left with now is x86

01:04:10   and its legacy of compatibility,

01:04:12   and a fab that is not helping you at all.

01:04:16   I mean, at a certain point, it might be better for Intel

01:04:21   to have TSMC manufacture their chips for them

01:04:25   if they can never get 10 nanometers out.

01:04:26   Like, it's just, they're in a bad situation,

01:04:30   and it's one of those best situations that's explicable.

01:04:32   It's like, this stuff is very difficult to do.

01:04:35   You make some bad bets seven years ago or five years ago,

01:04:38   whatever the crazy lead times are,

01:04:40   deciding how you're gonna fab your 10 nanometer,

01:04:43   and sometimes it just doesn't work out.

01:04:45   Like, it's a bummer.

01:04:46   It's a bummer for Intel, but it's an honest loss.

01:04:49   I feel, to me, it feels honest.

01:04:53   It feels more honest to me than boneheaded decisions

01:04:57   like sticking, like, Itanium, their instruction set

01:05:01   that was gonna compete with x86-64,

01:05:03   and opting out of the iPhone and all that other stuff,

01:05:07   and maybe also feels like a more honest loss

01:05:10   than refusing to fab for other people,

01:05:14   because I feel like there was a way,

01:05:16   because they were a leader,

01:05:17   their fab was in the lead for so long,

01:05:19   there should have been a way for them to leverage that

01:05:21   to make money while also maintaining their top-end deals.

01:05:26   Like, we'll fab for certain other people,

01:05:28   but we won't fab things to compete with their own chips.

01:05:30   And I'm sure they did that to a limited degree,

01:05:32   and that's what those stories were about a few months ago.

01:05:34   But now, they're in a really rough place

01:05:36   where they need to get their 10-nanometer process online,

01:05:41   'cause they can't just keep making new arrangements

01:05:44   of the same cores in 14-nanometer forever.

01:05:47   Eventually, if they get stuck like this for much longer,

01:05:50   Apple will have no choice but to leave.

01:05:53   It's kind of like the Power Mac G5 situation all over again,

01:05:56   where Apple just couldn't get better parts.

01:05:59   They couldn't get laptop parts, period,

01:06:01   and they couldn't get faster chips

01:06:03   for their high-end things.

01:06:04   So it's like, what choice do we have?

01:06:05   We have to go to Intel, essentially,

01:06:07   'cause the option would be,

01:06:08   I guess we'll just keep shipping

01:06:09   water-cooled Power Mac G5s forever at the same exact speed,

01:06:12   because we have no one to buy a faster CPU from.

01:06:15   And Intel said, "We have faster CPUs,

01:06:17   "and we make them faster every year,

01:06:18   "and so you should come to us," and they did.

01:06:21   Say Intel comes out with these eight-core i9s, right?

01:06:25   What happens next year?

01:06:28   12-core i9s?

01:06:29   Eventually, it becomes the size

01:06:32   of a Kraft American cheese slice inside your computer.

01:06:36   You can't just keep adding cores,

01:06:39   and there's not enough parallelism into workloads

01:06:41   to deal with that anyway.

01:06:42   I don't think they're in that situation.

01:06:43   I think they probably will get their process online.

01:06:45   They're highly motivated to do so.

01:06:47   It's probably safe to say that Intel

01:06:52   has lost the massive lead they used to have,

01:06:55   and not that we're onboard this sinking ship,

01:06:58   because, again, the ARM CPUs that we're imagining

01:07:01   are theoretical, like, "Hey, where is the ARM CPU

01:07:03   "to compete with the Xeon?"

01:07:04   Doesn't exist.

01:07:05   It could, maybe it does inside Apple,

01:07:07   but you can't say there's an obvious thing to go to.

01:07:09   And, of course, there's AMD, which is resurgent,

01:07:12   and which does not fab its own chips.

01:07:14   It uses GlobalFoundries, which is the fab part of AMD

01:07:17   that they spun off, and I think GlobalFoundries

01:07:19   also might be catching up to/matching Intel

01:07:23   in process at this point.

01:07:24   I haven't been keeping up with them as much as TSMC.

01:07:28   But, yeah, the world order in the silicon chip CPU world

01:07:33   has really, really turned upside down

01:07:37   from even just a few years ago.

01:07:40   And we just, you know, we collectively as consumers,

01:07:44   and Apple, are all kind of stuck having to make

01:07:48   some very difficult decisions, which is like,

01:07:50   our decision is, do I keep buying these new computers

01:07:53   every year, even though they aren't getting

01:07:55   that much faster or better, right?

01:07:56   At a certain point, it's like, what's the point

01:07:58   of me buying a new laptop if it's about the same

01:08:00   as the one I bought last year?

01:08:01   Or if my phone is faster?

01:08:03   Again, look at the Geekbench scores for the iPhone X

01:08:05   and compare them to Apple's entire current MacBook

01:08:08   and MacBook Pro line, you will be depressed, right?

01:08:11   (laughing)

01:08:12   And Apple's choice is, do we, so, like,

01:08:15   do we basically have to, you know,

01:08:18   should we have started a project to switch the Macs

01:08:20   to ARM three years ago?

01:08:22   And in retrospect, we only realize it now,

01:08:23   and now we're kind of screwed too,

01:08:25   because it's not like we have alternatives.

01:08:27   Did we start talking to AMD and see if they can make

01:08:29   some kind of, you know, Ryzen technology laptop chips for us?

01:08:32   Like, you know, it's so much easier when you're like,

01:08:35   we have the best CPUs, and every year Intel comes out

01:08:38   with new ones, and we're on this great gravy train

01:08:40   that lasted a long time, but it's, you know,

01:08:43   the smooth ride is over, and some hard decisions

01:08:46   are gonna be coming soon, and it's not really

01:08:48   anybody's fault, like, except for maybe you could say

01:08:54   Apple should have had more contingency plans,

01:08:57   but yeah, things are about to get real interesting,

01:09:00   it seems like.

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01:10:59   - Greg Kolodiejic, he writes,

01:11:01   "Do you ever use higher than default scaling

01:11:03   "on retina screens?

01:11:04   "If so, when?"

01:11:06   So let me see if I can figure out

01:11:08   the right way to summarize this.

01:11:09   So since retina is by default

01:11:12   just kind of pixel doubling everything,

01:11:14   so you have two pixels worth of information

01:11:16   where one would have been before.

01:11:18   That's a summary, I'm sure it's somehow technically inaccurate

01:11:21   but you get the idea.

01:11:22   So what you can do is if you have good eyes,

01:11:24   which I do not, then you can actually go in some laptops,

01:11:29   you can go to the native resolution

01:11:30   such that you can get everything to be really, really tiny

01:11:34   and you can fit a whole bunch of stuff on your screen.

01:11:36   So I have terrible eyes and I never do that.

01:11:41   And in fact, I think on my,

01:11:43   actually maybe on my adorable, I do now that I,

01:11:45   no, I'll have to double check that.

01:11:46   But on my old work laptop, which is a 15 inch laptop,

01:11:50   I absolutely left it as the default

01:11:52   and that's because I have terrible eyes.

01:11:55   John, you now have a laptop, what are you doing with this?

01:11:58   - I do run mine at non-native res

01:12:00   because I never look at that screen

01:12:01   and remember my goal was to have my external monitor

01:12:05   be exactly the same resolution as my internal monitor

01:12:07   because I mirror them

01:12:08   because then every time I connect my external monitor,

01:12:10   none of my windows move.

01:12:11   So that's what I do.

01:12:12   My internal monitor, I run it at a non-native 1920 by 1200

01:12:16   and I just never look at that screen.

01:12:18   And that's exactly what my external monitor, 24 inch,

01:12:20   runs at and so yeah, I don't like non-native res

01:12:24   when I have to take my laptop to the meeting

01:12:26   and I have to look at the non-native res.

01:12:27   A, it's too small for me and B, it's blurry.

01:12:30   So it's not what I prefer,

01:12:32   but I do it at work for that particular reason.

01:12:35   - So it is worth pointing out

01:12:38   that the default scaling has changed.

01:12:40   The 2016s didn't actually change the number of pixels

01:12:43   or the size of the screens,

01:12:44   but they did change the default

01:12:46   to be one notch higher than native.

01:12:48   Rather than saying do you use higher than default scaling,

01:12:51   what we really should be doing

01:12:52   is do you use higher than native 2X scaling,

01:12:55   which by default with the new ones, you do.

01:12:58   So anyway, so on the 15 inch,

01:13:01   that would be if you use the one

01:13:02   that simulates 1680 instead of 1440,

01:13:05   that would be one notch up, that is the current default,

01:13:08   but the actual native pixels are 1440 times two.

01:13:11   I use the 1440 setting most of the time on my 15 inch

01:13:14   because even though things are kind of big

01:13:17   and kind of chunky, I like the scale that it's at.

01:13:21   When I'm doing work, like heavy work,

01:13:23   like Xcode or Logic, I will bump it up.

01:13:26   I use a utility called iFriendly,

01:13:28   that's E-Y-E, not I, you know the letter.

01:13:32   So iFriendly is, I've mentioned it before,

01:13:34   it's a utility where you can just assign

01:13:36   a certain combination of modifier keys

01:13:38   and then the up and down arrows

01:13:39   to next resolution, the up or next resolution, down,

01:13:43   so you can change resolutions really quickly

01:13:45   just with a key command.

01:13:46   And so I will use that to oscillate

01:13:48   between the super high one that Jon uses,

01:13:51   the 1920 simulated one if I'm doing

01:13:53   podcast editing in Logic, or the 1680 one,

01:13:56   which is the one step above default,

01:13:58   or one step above native, which is the new default.

01:14:00   I'll use that one doing coding, Xcode, stuff like that.

01:14:03   Or if I'm just doing like email and Twitter

01:14:05   and wasting time like that,

01:14:06   I will use the 1440, which is the native 2X mode,

01:14:09   where everything's a little bit bigger.

01:14:11   - Real time follow up, on my adorable,

01:14:13   I actually do have it set to more space.

01:14:15   So the default is 1280 by 800,

01:14:17   I have it set to 1440 by 900.

01:14:20   I guess my eyes aren't as bad as I thought, go me.

01:14:22   - An actual 2X pixels on that,

01:14:24   or something like, it's like the 1152 by whatever,

01:14:27   that's the actual 2X pixels on that screen.

01:14:29   - Yeah, 1152 by 720.

01:14:31   - Your eyes are bad though Casey,

01:14:32   because you couldn't tell it was non-native.

01:14:34   - Yeah, it's real blurry.

01:14:35   (laughing)

01:14:36   And again, I really, I hope so badly,

01:14:39   that when they do a major redesign of these laptops,

01:14:41   I really wanna see the 2X pixel,

01:14:45   actual pixel nativeness move up one step.

01:14:49   Like I want the 15 inch to actually have,

01:14:52   you know, 1680 times two.

01:14:54   I want, and you know, similar,

01:14:55   like I want the 13 inch to have 1440 times two.

01:14:57   Like I want them to actually move up a step in pixels

01:15:00   to match their current space setting defaults.

01:15:03   - Do they ever do that on the plus phones?

01:15:05   - Oh, that's a good question.

01:15:06   - The plus phones are still using their like 3X scaling

01:15:09   down to a 1080p screen,

01:15:12   but the iPhone 10 actually has those 3X pixels.

01:15:17   - Yeah, that's kind of a shame about the plus,

01:15:18   I was hoping that eventually there was like a stop gap

01:15:21   and eventually they would just do native,

01:15:22   but I guess they did, but just on the 10.

01:15:24   So maybe when they're all 10ish phones,

01:15:26   will we finally be done with that non-native?

01:15:27   Not that it's bad, it looks fine on the pluses,

01:15:29   but it bothers me at like a anal retentive level.

01:15:34   - No, honestly, I think like on the 15 inch,

01:15:37   you know, when you run it at the one step above

01:15:39   at the 1680 step, I think it looks okay.

01:15:42   I can usually stop noticing it after a little while,

01:15:45   but when I spent that, you know, day owning the 12 inch,

01:15:49   I never stopped noticing that the screen

01:15:51   just looked kind of blurry and crappy.

01:15:52   Like I think the smaller the screen is,

01:15:54   the more apparent that difference is,

01:15:56   and the 12 inch I think looks noticeably bad in that way.

01:16:01   - I am glad I cannot see it.

01:16:03   - Yeah.

01:16:04   - James asks, what tech related opinions

01:16:06   that you once strongly held do you now cringe about?

01:16:09   For example, saying something like the original iPhone size

01:16:11   was the optimum size, which I think I might have said.

01:16:13   - Me too.

01:16:14   - And the bigger Android phones were ridiculous,

01:16:16   which I think I also said.

01:16:17   - Me too.

01:16:18   - What else, or what other opinions did you have

01:16:21   that maybe you were wrong about?

01:16:23   And I was thinking about this earlier today,

01:16:26   and it occurred to me that not only do I have

01:16:29   a great opinion to share with everyone,

01:16:32   but I have documentation to prove it.

01:16:35   So when I was big into Tumblr back in like 2008,

01:16:40   and I at the time was running Ubuntu on a ThinkPad,

01:16:44   and I did a distro upgrade from like,

01:16:47   I got to give into Hardy Heron or something like that.

01:16:49   I forget exactly which one it was,

01:16:50   but everything crapped the bed, and I decided I'm over it.

01:16:53   And meanwhile, I was going back and forth

01:16:56   with one Marco Arment via Tumblr,

01:16:59   discussing what really, why do you like Macs?

01:17:02   Like, it's just, you're paying for the name,

01:17:04   you're paying for the design, whatever that means.

01:17:07   Like, they're just a big waste of money.

01:17:08   I can build something much cheaper.

01:17:10   And you and I, Marco, basically had this back and forth

01:17:13   over the course of like a month over Tumblr,

01:17:16   like quote tweet, or not quote tweets, good grief,

01:17:19   Tumblr re-blogs and things of that nature,

01:17:22   and it is all there for you to see, my friends.

01:17:24   If you go to the URL in the show notes,

01:17:26   you can laugh at how ignorant and silly I was

01:17:29   back in the day, and that is something

01:17:31   that I probably shouldn't put in the show notes

01:17:32   because I'm pretty embarrassed by it,

01:17:34   but you know what, it's part of me,

01:17:36   and that was me 10 years ago.

01:17:38   So Marco, what do you regret having said?

01:17:41   - I mean, a lot.

01:17:42   (laughing)

01:17:44   I regret most of what I said like by the next day,

01:17:49   let alone like-- - Preach.

01:17:50   - If I look at like my old blog post,

01:17:52   I mean, you're really playing on hard mode here, Casey,

01:17:53   like looking at your own blog post,

01:17:55   like yeah, everyone's old blog posts

01:17:56   aren't embarrassing to them,

01:17:57   or any, well, they should be, if they're not.

01:17:59   - Luckily, yours are dead links.

01:18:02   Tumbleblog, which is not a word,

01:18:03   .marco.org/post/bignumber is 404,

01:18:08   or actually, the host name doesn't even resolve.

01:18:10   - And actually, speaking of that,

01:18:12   I found a link on one of my posts

01:18:15   to an old marco.org post, like the old, old, old marco.org.

01:18:19   - Oh, those are rough.

01:18:19   - Marco.org/number, and those are very broken as well.

01:18:23   - They're very rough.

01:18:24   The links are still up, maybe some redirects are broken,

01:18:27   but like those pages are still up somewhere.

01:18:29   Oh, God, they're bad, please don't find them.

01:18:31   There's one where it was like right after the iPhone

01:18:33   was announced, and I'm like, I'll care later

01:18:35   about the iPhone.

01:18:36   It's actually called like the iPhone I Will Care Later,

01:18:38   and it's like, yeah, it's expensive.

01:18:40   I just got this awesome new Sprint Motorola Q.

01:18:44   I don't need the iPhone.

01:18:46   Yeah, that lasted like three months,

01:18:49   but yeah, I mean, look, I've always been an idiot

01:18:53   with this stuff, so like, a lot of what I say,

01:18:56   I look back on very poorly.

01:18:58   If I can try to pick out some major themes,

01:19:00   I think one major theme is that I've always still,

01:19:04   I still view phones as these like secondary

01:19:08   and inferior devices, but a whole lot of people out there

01:19:13   view phones as their primary device,

01:19:15   and I still need to get a little bit more on board with that.

01:19:18   Also, I think kind of a major theme of my mistakes

01:19:23   and misstatements and regretted opinions

01:19:27   is something that I think is pretty common here.

01:19:31   Judging new tech primarily by its specs or its pricing,

01:19:35   and this is kind of like what you were saying

01:19:37   in Second Hope Casey about like when you were judging Macs,

01:19:39   like before you saw the light.

01:19:42   Like, it's so common for people like us

01:19:45   to react to some new device or tech or announcement

01:19:50   or whatever as like, oh, you can, like, you know,

01:19:52   the iPad or the iPod has less space than a Nomad, lame.

01:19:55   Like, there's like, to judge tech based on like,

01:19:59   oh, that's a terrible deal.

01:20:00   I can build a cheaper machine than that.

01:20:01   You know, why does anybody buy this thing or whatever?

01:20:05   And kind of a larger theme of that is like,

01:20:07   you know, understanding the reasons why things

01:20:11   can be good or compelling or the reasons

01:20:12   why people might choose to buy something

01:20:15   go beyond specs and pricing.

01:20:16   You know, there are lots of other factors.

01:20:18   There are lots of utility factors

01:20:20   that we might not know about that aren't just raw specs.

01:20:23   There are, you know, pricing things that like, you know,

01:20:27   the price might matter a lot more to somebody

01:20:29   than somebody else or, you know, whether it's like,

01:20:32   you know, people at different income levels

01:20:33   or whether it's like, you know, a business buying something

01:20:35   versus a person buying something or, you know,

01:20:37   the value something might have to somebody

01:20:38   might be very different depending on who they are,

01:20:40   what their needs are.

01:20:42   And even things like underestimating fashion

01:20:46   and visual appeal of things.

01:20:47   Like, one of the big reasons why the 12-inch MacBook

01:20:51   has been pretty well selling as far as I can tell

01:20:54   is that it's cute.

01:20:56   It's really cool.

01:20:56   Like, it's just like, it really does hit that fashion

01:21:00   and visual appeal thing in addition to, you know,

01:21:02   the practical nature of having something very small.

01:21:04   Like, there's a reason why people buy

01:21:06   this incredibly compromised machine.

01:21:08   And it's not because it's incredibly compromised.

01:21:10   It's because like, there is some practical aspect

01:21:12   to it being so small and light, but also it's really cute

01:21:15   and a lot of people like that and it just looks cool.

01:21:18   And then finally, to kind of close this out,

01:21:20   just generally my biggest,

01:21:23   the biggest ways I get things wrong

01:21:25   are assuming that whatever the important factors are

01:21:30   in evaluating things like this today

01:21:33   will be equally important tomorrow.

01:21:35   That basically assuming that the factors that matter

01:21:40   won't shift over time.

01:21:43   When in fact, if you look at what happens in tech,

01:21:45   they always shift over time.

01:21:46   Like, everything is constantly shifting.

01:21:49   We are standing on quicksand.

01:21:50   Like, everything is constantly moving around.

01:21:52   But I too often assume that whatever the situation is now,

01:21:56   it'll just be that way indefinitely.

01:21:58   And that's far from true.

01:22:00   - Jon?

01:22:01   - It's a burden being on the right side

01:22:04   of tech history so much.

01:22:05   (laughing)

01:22:06   Because while you two were toiling in the PC mines,

01:22:10   I was trying to tell anyone who listened

01:22:13   that gooey's been the future.

01:22:15   That mice were awesome.

01:22:17   - This is like the best statement ever on this show.

01:22:19   - I just, like, but no, seriously,

01:22:21   I was trying, not trying to be silly.

01:22:24   I was trying to think of an opinion

01:22:27   that I would cringe about.

01:22:28   So part of it is, yeah--

01:22:29   - And you thought of none?

01:22:30   - I've been an Apple fan from the start, so--

01:22:33   - My opinion is that it's so hard being right all the time.

01:22:36   - Well, no, but if you're an Apple fan from the start,

01:22:39   you had to endure a decade of everyone telling you

01:22:41   you were nuts and that you knew nothing about technology

01:22:44   and that only toy computers had mice

01:22:47   and the gooey was stupid, right?

01:22:49   And there was, it wasn't actually that long,

01:22:51   but it seemed like a long time,

01:22:52   and it seemed like everyone else said that

01:22:54   and you were in this, but we were eventually proven right.

01:22:56   Cringe-worthy opinions, I was thinking about

01:23:00   how much I preferred, essentially, 72 dpi

01:23:04   black and white screen on the original Mac.

01:23:07   Pixels could be black or white.

01:23:08   There was no gray, like to be clear to the people listening

01:23:10   who don't remember this, right?

01:23:11   That was it, black or white.

01:23:13   But the pixels were really, really small.

01:23:14   Like they were essentially 72 dpi, like 1x.

01:23:16   What we would consider 1x in today's retina parlance,

01:23:19   not 2x retina, but 1x like the half of that resolution.

01:23:23   And I preferred that to CGA, 320 by 200

01:23:29   with pixels the size of boulders,

01:23:31   even though they had color, right?

01:23:33   Whatever it was, CGA, eight color, 16 color?

01:23:35   Eight color, I think, maybe.

01:23:37   Eight ugly colors.

01:23:38   And you would think, well, okay, well later,

01:23:42   you'll look back on that and say,

01:23:43   how could you have preferred black and white?

01:23:46   But I look back on it and say, I still think that was,

01:23:49   you know, for my taste, my personal taste,

01:23:51   that's what I preferred, and I don't regret it,

01:23:53   and saying, oh, you were just saying that

01:23:54   because your computer couldn't have color

01:23:55   because there was no option for color

01:23:57   on the original Macs until the Mac 2, right?

01:23:59   Which I didn't have, even when it came out.

01:24:02   So was it motivated by just the things I can't have?

01:24:06   I look back on it now, many, many years distant,

01:24:09   and say, I kind of do prefer the precision

01:24:12   of the monochrome screen than having

01:24:16   eight very ugly colors in CGA with like,

01:24:18   whatever, rectangular pixels or whatever.

01:24:20   I still hold that opinion.

01:24:22   And that gets to the heart of this whole cringe about now.

01:24:26   I don't regret having opinions that were based

01:24:31   on the best information available at the time, right?

01:24:35   Like that I couldn't have been expected to know the future,

01:24:38   and so I don't regret, like, I mean,

01:24:41   maybe you could say I lack a foresight or whatever,

01:24:44   but it's difficult for me to think of,

01:24:48   big phones are a good example.

01:24:50   I still don't like big phones.

01:24:51   And you could say, well, I never made a proclamation

01:24:54   that the world won't like them,

01:24:55   or that no one should have one, right?

01:24:57   But I made a proclamation that I don't like them,

01:24:59   and I still don't like them, they're just not for me, right?

01:25:02   If I had made a proclamation that Apple

01:25:04   should never make a big phone,

01:25:05   because no one will ever buy them,

01:25:07   maybe I would cringe about that,

01:25:10   but I don't think I ever did that.

01:25:11   Like, I tend, I'm so, you know, retentive about this,

01:25:14   maybe it comes from writing all those articles

01:25:15   and getting old people yelling at me about them early on,

01:25:17   but it's like, I'm pretty careful

01:25:19   in what I say to be measured.

01:25:21   It may not be what people hear,

01:25:23   but it's what I, definitely what I always wrote,

01:25:25   because my greatest joy in the world

01:25:27   was quoting myself back to people,

01:25:29   because they would say, you said the blah, blah, blah,

01:25:31   and I just copy and paste from the article

01:25:32   in the comment section and say,

01:25:34   here's the sentence that I wrote,

01:25:35   and they would say, but that sentence has whatever,

01:25:37   and then I would paste the same sentence

01:25:38   and I'd put a word in bold,

01:25:39   and be like, reading comprehension, people, right there.

01:25:42   That's not what I, you know, I try to be precise,

01:25:44   and podcasts is obviously harder to be precise,

01:25:46   but in general, I feel like I've been

01:25:48   mostly measured with things.

01:25:49   The best I came up with, and I think it's a pretty good one,

01:25:52   although still I feel like it falls under the category

01:25:54   of best information available at the time.

01:25:56   I don't think it's cringe-worthy,

01:25:57   but it's probably my worst call ever.

01:25:59   It was a call, it wasn't like a strongly held opinion,

01:26:03   'cause this thing was stated as like,

01:26:05   what strongly held, this wasn't a strongly held opinion,

01:26:07   this was more like a one-off,

01:26:08   which is perhaps just as damning or whatever.

01:26:12   But I feel like it was something, an opinion,

01:26:16   a prediction based on the best information

01:26:18   available at the time, and it was back before,

01:26:22   you know, like Steve Jobs, I think they had bought Next

01:26:24   or whatever, right, Apple had bought Next, right,

01:26:26   and Steve Jobs is not really back, he's like, you know,

01:26:29   I don't think he was even iCEO, interim CEO

01:26:31   of that board or whatever, it was like, so what's the deal?

01:26:34   So Apple got Next, you know, they were looking at B,

01:26:36   they got Next, Next is cool, B was cool, they went with Next,

01:26:40   and hey, you get Steve Jobs back, isn't that great too?

01:26:43   And the reason I remember this one is because I wrote it

01:26:45   and people like quoted back to me occasionally,

01:26:47   and it was like, I was not optimistic about the chances

01:26:51   of Steve Jobs coming back to Apple, I was like,

01:26:53   I give him a few years, he'll burn out,

01:26:55   'cause he's such a loser, he's such a burnout,

01:26:57   he burned out of Apple, right, 'cause he, you know,

01:27:01   he did the Mac and then just got ousted

01:27:03   and just was a big baby about it and started Next,

01:27:05   and that company basically failed to do anything

01:27:09   that they wanted it to do and just got acquired by Apple,

01:27:11   and so yeah, you got Next and it's a cool operating system,

01:27:13   you got some great technology, and you got Steve Jobs,

01:27:15   but what are you expecting Steve Jobs to do for you?

01:27:17   He's a two-time loser, right, like he's not cut out

01:27:20   to lead this company, and so I had like a one-off line

01:27:24   and one-on-one article, so it was like, yeah,

01:27:25   Steve Jobs is back, but I'm not sure how great he'll do,

01:27:28   I'll give him, I give him a few years, right?

01:27:30   And based on Steve Jobs' entire history as, you know,

01:27:34   an entrepreneur and a manager of corporations

01:27:38   and as a CEO, up to that point, that was to save money,

01:27:42   right, not, it was the wrong call, obviously,

01:27:44   and perhaps the wrongest call ever to be wrong,

01:27:47   but it was based on the best information available

01:27:49   at the time, it's not like I was ignorant of Steve Jobs,

01:27:51   I'd read everything about him,

01:27:52   I'd been following his entire career,

01:27:53   he was like my idol, right, I loved the Mac,

01:27:55   I loved everything about it, but as a great person

01:27:59   to lead a company in the right direction,

01:28:01   he had not proven to be that at all, right,

01:28:05   so that's probably my worst call,

01:28:07   and I don't cringe about it too much,

01:28:09   but it's just, I'm just so incredibly fantastically wrong,

01:28:14   and again, just a one-liner, I throw a bottle,

01:28:16   but all my other tech opinions, I feel like mostly

01:28:18   are founded on reasonable conclusions

01:28:22   based on the information available,

01:28:23   I'm gonna throw this to you too,

01:28:25   because maybe I'm just terrible at remembering

01:28:27   places where I made a terrible call,

01:28:29   is any that you can recall in the history of ATP

01:28:31   or before that you wanna remind me of that I'm forgetting?

01:28:34   - Bazzell, moving on, Ian Bradbury writes--

01:28:37   - It's a strongly held opinion.

01:28:39   - Come on, don't ruin my joke, that was a good joke.

01:28:41   - That's all you got, you got nothing?

01:28:42   - I honestly don't know, I mean--

01:28:45   - Oh, remember when Jon thought that one-star reviews

01:28:47   are only left by old people, or by young people,

01:28:50   what was it, like, you were totally wrong,

01:28:53   like, it was so comically wrong.

01:28:55   - I think that was a case where I was more precise

01:28:58   than you thought I was.

01:29:00   - Yeah, okay.

01:29:01   - That's what the subsequent debate was about,

01:29:03   about the precision, about what you heard versus what I said

01:29:06   but anyway, we already had that debate,

01:29:08   and no, that's not a cringe-worthy thing,

01:29:10   and we didn't have any good information

01:29:12   in one direction or the other, so it was inconclusive.

01:29:15   - I mean, honestly, I can't think of anything

01:29:20   that you've said that has been just unequivocally wrong,

01:29:23   and I'm sure there have been things said,

01:29:25   but I can't-- - Well, that's factual,

01:29:26   Iris, but this is a strongly held opinion.

01:29:29   - No, I remember, you were saying that negative reviews

01:29:33   and badly written reviews were all young people,

01:29:35   that old people would never do that,

01:29:36   that's what you were arguing. - I'm sure I said

01:29:38   all young people, I'm sure I said never.

01:29:40   - Yep, that was you.

01:29:42   - You know, I'm always going with the absolutes.

01:29:44   That sounds like you.

01:29:45   (laughing)

01:29:46   - Moving on before we all divorce each other,

01:29:48   Ian Bradbury writes, "Can we get an update

01:29:50   "on your crash plan situation?"

01:29:52   Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

01:29:53   who rearranged this?

01:29:55   This was done on purpose.

01:29:56   See, I'm just a monkey. - I put the most frivolous

01:29:57   one at the end.

01:29:58   - But there was a reason it was in that order, John.

01:30:01   You're messing with my system.

01:30:02   All right, well, now we're committed.

01:30:03   - I always put the most frivolous at the end.

01:30:05   - Oh, but there was a purpose for this, but that's okay.

01:30:08   - This purpose is not discernible to me,

01:30:10   so feel free to rearrange.

01:30:11   Is this one of your biggest regrets?

01:30:13   (laughing)

01:30:15   - All right, now we just gotta reboot this whole darn thing,

01:30:17   because, well, we'll just see how this turns out.

01:30:19   Okay, here we go.

01:30:20   Where's the little clapper?

01:30:21   Take two, clap.

01:30:23   James Evans writes, "There are too many recipes online,

01:30:25   "and I'm clueless.

01:30:26   "Would Syracuse have shared the secrets

01:30:27   "of his favorite pasta sauce?"

01:30:29   - I think I've talked about this on other shows.

01:30:31   No, I don't put the recipe over my family's

01:30:34   pasta sauce recipe.

01:30:35   It's boring.

01:30:36   Most people wouldn't like it.

01:30:37   It's not exciting.

01:30:38   It doesn't have anything interesting.

01:30:40   There's no secret ingredient.

01:30:41   It is not novel.

01:30:42   It doesn't taste any different than anything you've seen.

01:30:44   It's very straightforward.

01:30:45   And so I say, "No reason to put it up,"

01:30:47   because if I put it up, it'll be like an endorsement.

01:30:49   You should try this recipe.

01:30:50   You'll love it.

01:30:51   You probably won't love it.

01:30:51   You'll just be like, "Why would I ever do this?"

01:30:53   It's like, I'd rather have it out of a jar,

01:30:55   'cause that's what you want.

01:30:55   But it's the pasta recipe that I want,

01:30:57   and it's the pasta recipe that I feed my family,

01:30:59   and that's fine with me.

01:31:00   I feel no reason to share my incredibly boring

01:31:03   family pasta recipe with anybody.

01:31:05   - Knowing full well that you would say something

01:31:07   along those lines, I have a bonus question.

01:31:09   (laughing)

01:31:10   Bradbury writes.

01:31:12   - That's the most BS answer ever.

01:31:13   - But it's true.

01:31:14   I don't want the burden of people saying,

01:31:17   "Hey, I tried your recipe.

01:31:18   "I didn't like it."

01:31:19   Good, fine, whatever.

01:31:20   You don't like this.

01:31:21   It's not worth, you're not missing anything.

01:31:24   You'll find any recipe online.

01:31:26   Try it, find the one you like.

01:31:27   Go with that one.

01:31:28   - What should sauce absolutely have in it,

01:31:30   and what should sauce absolutely not have in it?

01:31:32   - We're talking about tomato sauce.

01:31:34   It should probably have tomatoes.

01:31:35   - Okay.

01:31:36   - I'm gonna say that.

01:31:37   I feel like a safe bet tomato sauce should have tomatoes.

01:31:38   - Fresh, crushed, cubed, diced.

01:31:42   - Not diced.

01:31:44   What do you mean?

01:31:45   Canned, I assume?

01:31:46   - You can do it with, I've done it with fresh.

01:31:48   I've done it with canned.

01:31:50   I think fresh is probably better,

01:31:52   but it's really difficult.

01:31:54   It has to be just the right tomatoes

01:31:56   at just the right time.

01:31:57   We grew them ourselves in our backyard for a little while,

01:31:59   and even then, it was depending on the crop

01:32:02   and when you pick them and what you got.

01:32:05   It was variable.

01:32:05   Canned is much more reliable,

01:32:07   and that's what we use all the time.

01:32:08   So either way, what should not go in it, tons of stuff.

01:32:11   - Before we leave, so what kind of tomato?

01:32:13   Are we talking fancy San Marzano kind of thing?

01:32:16   Is there a certain kind that you like?

01:32:17   Is there a certain brand?

01:32:18   'Cause there's a brand that's called San Marzano,

01:32:21   but they aren't actually San Marzano tomatoes.

01:32:22   - Yeah, I think we talked about this

01:32:24   with the olive oil thing.

01:32:25   Olive oil and San Marzano tomatoes,

01:32:27   it's very difficult to know

01:32:28   whether you're getting the authentic article.

01:32:30   I don't have any secret techniques for doing so.

01:32:32   We just try to get legit San Marzano ones,

01:32:35   'cause we feel like there is a small difference in taste

01:32:37   that makes it, but your mileage may vary.

01:32:39   Maybe you like ones from New Jersey better.

01:32:41   Maybe you like ones from California better.

01:32:42   I think it's personal preference,

01:32:44   but there are good ones and bad ones, so try different ones.

01:32:47   - Are there any other tomato products

01:32:48   that you mix in with the canned tomatoes,

01:32:49   like adding additional tomato paste or something like that?

01:32:52   - Nope, nope, you can do that.

01:32:54   I mean, we do that with bolognese and stuff,

01:32:56   but that's not a recipe, that's just from a book.

01:32:58   But no, our family recipe does not add

01:32:59   any tomato paste or anything.

01:33:00   But I wouldn't, you know,

01:33:02   it's part of the recipe that you like, go for it, whatever.

01:33:04   - Garlic, onions, both?

01:33:06   - Both in mine, yeah.

01:33:08   - Some people add sugar to sauce.

01:33:10   Are you one of those, or do you have an opinion about that?

01:33:12   - I am not one of those.

01:33:13   I know people do that.

01:33:15   If that's what you like, whatever.

01:33:17   Like, I don't do it.

01:33:18   - Do you cook the meat in the sauce with the sauce,

01:33:22   or do you cook them separately

01:33:24   and apply the sauce to the meat table side?

01:33:27   - So this is an interesting thing.

01:33:29   So the recipe that we use is basically

01:33:31   my father's mother's recipe, slightly modified,

01:33:36   but my mother's mother also had a recipe.

01:33:39   My mother's mother baked the meatballs in the oven,

01:33:43   did not cook them in the sauce.

01:33:44   My father's mother fried them in a pan

01:33:47   and then let them cook the rest of the way

01:33:49   through in the sauce.

01:33:50   And so that's what we do.

01:33:51   Form them, fry them in a pan to brown the outside,

01:33:55   and then they cook the rest of the way in the sauce.

01:33:56   - That seems like the most common.

01:33:58   - But I've had my mother's mother did the baked ones,

01:34:02   and I like those too,

01:34:03   and her sauce was a little bit different as well.

01:34:04   So I can picture in my mind her sauce and my other,

01:34:08   because I had both of them all the time.

01:34:09   You go over to one grandparents' house,

01:34:10   you have one sauce, you go over to the other grandparents'

01:34:11   house, you have the other sauce.

01:34:12   I prefer the one that we have now,

01:34:14   but I like both of them.

01:34:15   - Do you prefer a sauce with a prominent note of oregano

01:34:18   or other spices like that,

01:34:20   or do you prefer it more just to be like,

01:34:22   tomato, garlic kind of thing?

01:34:23   - Oregano for me brings to my, I like oregano.

01:34:26   I like tons of oregano.

01:34:27   I put tons of oregano on my pizza.

01:34:29   So oregano, a prominent oregano flavor in pasta sauce

01:34:32   makes me think of pizza sauce,

01:34:33   so I tend not to go in that direction.

01:34:35   But lots of fresh herbs, parsley, basil, stuff like that.

01:34:39   I like that to be a flavor in the sauce,

01:34:41   and it is a big component of my sauce.

01:34:44   But not so much on the oregano.

01:34:45   'Cause like I said, I love oregano.

01:34:47   I probably put way too much oregano on my pizza.

01:34:49   My family hates it, but I love oregano.

01:34:51   But it makes me think pizza,

01:34:52   and that's not where I wanna go.

01:34:53   - If you were forced, if you were somehow compelled

01:34:57   in a way that you couldn't just weasel out of

01:34:59   to have a jarred sauce, for some reason you're desperate,

01:35:03   you need tomato sauce, you have to buy one of the jarred ones

01:35:06   that would be in a typical grocery store,

01:35:08   what do you buy?

01:35:10   - That would never happen, I would not.

01:35:11   - I know, I don't care.

01:35:12   - You're forced, somehow you're forced.

01:35:14   - I don't know, I don't even know what brands are,

01:35:16   what are available, I would not eat it,

01:35:18   I would not buy it, I wouldn't do it.

01:35:20   I just wouldn't do it.

01:35:21   - When's the last time you have even had canned sauce?

01:35:23   - My wife bought jarred sauce that she used

01:35:27   in one of her family recipes.

01:35:30   It wasn't just on pasta, it was some family recipe she had

01:35:32   that one of the ingredients was a jarred sauce.

01:35:36   Probably the last time I had it

01:35:37   is in whatever that recipe was,

01:35:39   which I don't think we've made in years.

01:35:42   - I don't think I have ever had,

01:35:45   other than being a guest over someone's house

01:35:47   when I was a kid, jarred sauce on pasta,

01:35:49   like in my own home under my own control.

01:35:53   - Wow.

01:35:54   - What would you say to that question?

01:35:57   Do you have a preferred sauce, jarred sauce?

01:35:59   - I'd go Rao's, there's a lot of decent sauces these days.

01:36:02   - Rao, I've never heard of this.

01:36:03   - R-A-O, it's common now.

01:36:06   It's a little expensive, one of the big jars

01:36:08   might often be like eight bucks if it isn't on sale,

01:36:11   but it's really good.

01:36:13   Their vodka sauce is also fantastic.

01:36:15   - It's really easy to make sauce though,

01:36:17   and it's really easy to make a huge amount of it

01:36:18   for not a lot of money and freeze it.

01:36:20   There's no reason anyone should have jarred sauce,

01:36:22   don't do it.

01:36:22   (laughing)

01:36:25   - So was there anything else that people

01:36:27   should absolutely not put in their sauce?

01:36:30   - I mean, there's a million things.

01:36:31   Don't put a whole turkey in it.

01:36:33   Don't put donuts in it.

01:36:35   I mean, what kind of question is this?

01:36:36   Thanks.

01:36:38   - You have fulfilled all of my expectations

01:36:39   for this question.

01:36:40   (laughing)

01:36:42   - You kept telling me that what should absolutely

01:36:44   not go in it?

01:36:44   Like, I don't know, your cat.

01:36:46   Come on.

01:36:47   (laughing)

01:36:48   Is there some specific thing you're trying to get at?

01:36:50   You tried to ask the sugar thing.

01:36:52   I don't think there's anything commonly used

01:36:55   that's particularly controversial that you can come up

01:36:58   with ridiculous stuff, but there's no commonly used

01:37:00   ingredient that I'm gonna say you should definitely not do.

01:37:02   I mean, sugar's the closest, 'cause I feel like

01:37:03   you probably shouldn't do that, but some people do,

01:37:06   so whatever.

01:37:07   Are we done, or do you wanna do the last question?

01:37:10   - Let's do the bonus question, since it'll hopefully

01:37:12   be quick, although now my whole joke is ruined,

01:37:14   'cause I put this question in expecting John

01:37:16   to not say anything about his sauce,

01:37:18   and I'm actually kind of proud of you, Marco,

01:37:19   because you were able to tease out some facts,

01:37:21   despite all that, so.

01:37:23   - Made with tomatoes, basil, and oregano,

01:37:27   and onions and garlic.

01:37:28   You've cracked it.

01:37:29   You've cracked the code.

01:37:30   (laughing)

01:37:31   - Hey, it's more than you were willing to share

01:37:32   just a few minutes ago. - It's boring, I told you.

01:37:34   Like, and just all those in reasonable proportions,

01:37:36   and you're fine.

01:37:37   - Anyway, Ian Bradbury writes, "Can we get an update

01:37:40   "on your crash plan situation?"

01:37:41   - How do we come back from that?

01:37:43   - We don't have to, you cut it.

01:37:45   This is why you haven't had it.

01:37:45   - No, go for it, go for it.

01:37:47   We're talking about crash plan.

01:37:48   - Yeah, let's talk about crash plan.

01:37:49   - By the way, response to this week by back place, go ahead.

01:37:51   (laughing)

01:37:54   - Can we get an update on your crash plan situation?

01:37:56   Are you still using them, or have you bailed?

01:37:58   I am still using them on the small business account

01:38:01   for reasons, and most of them are laziness.

01:38:04   John, what are you doing?

01:38:05   - I'm still using it, and I think I got upgraded

01:38:07   to the non-Java client.

01:38:08   It's weird that I can't actually tell,

01:38:11   because it doesn't, like, I don't know.

01:38:12   I don't think that the non-Java client,

01:38:14   if that's what I indeed have, is any better or worse

01:38:17   than the other one.

01:38:18   Maybe I just have too much RAM on my Mac,

01:38:20   and I don't notice it.

01:38:21   It's a little bit weird that I can't seem

01:38:23   to get the menu bar thing to stay in the menu bar.

01:38:27   Like, I think, yeah, the menu bar icon for crash plan.

01:38:29   Like, it's not there a lot of the time,

01:38:31   and I'm like, does that mean it's not backing up?

01:38:32   But then I launch the app, and then I tell it

01:38:34   to put the menu bar thing in, and it's like,

01:38:35   oh, my last backup was like 10 minutes ago.

01:38:37   So it's working, and it's doing its thing,

01:38:38   and I can confirm that the backups are there,

01:38:40   but it seems a little bit weird and flaky.

01:38:42   Anyway, I'm still using it.

01:38:43   I think it's still backing up my external volumes.

01:38:47   Again, sometimes it seems like it's not.

01:38:49   It's like, wait, it's unchecked.

01:38:50   It's not backing up my external volume,

01:38:51   but then I go look for a file that I put

01:38:53   on my external volume like a week ago,

01:38:55   and it's in the backup.

01:38:56   So it's a little bit weird and flaky,

01:38:58   but the price is still right, and it's still doing it.

01:39:01   - Why, okay, we're sponsored this week by Backblaze,

01:39:03   and I like them a lot better than Crash Plan.

01:39:05   That aside, why in God's name would you want

01:39:09   your backup program, your last line of defense,

01:39:12   to be a little bit flaky and to not be

01:39:14   entirely sure it's working?

01:39:15   - That's not my last line of defense.

01:39:16   You know how many lines of defense I have.

01:39:17   That's like one of many lines of defense.

01:39:20   There's no other thing that will do my backup drive

01:39:23   without me doing iSCSI or something.

01:39:25   The drive I'm backing up, to be clear,

01:39:26   is my media drive, which really I don't care that much about.

01:39:29   It's mostly just stuff I rip from disk.

01:39:30   So it's not, there is no essential data

01:39:33   that I'm questioning.

01:39:35   I'm not sure if it got backed up or anything.

01:39:37   It's just that I have no other way to back this up

01:39:39   for such a low price, and Crash Plan continues to do it,

01:39:42   so I let it, and that's mostly just for convenience

01:39:44   so that if I do lose everything,

01:39:45   I can get all my media back from my backup

01:39:48   without having to worry about rebuilding that whole thing.

01:39:51   But if I lose my media 'cause it didn't back up

01:39:53   or something, I don't care.

01:39:54   It's just movies and stuff.

01:39:56   Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:39:57   Aftershocks, Backblaze, and Linode,

01:40:00   and we'll see you next week.

01:40:01   (upbeat music)

01:40:04   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:40:06   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:40:09   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:40:12   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:40:15   ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:40:16   ♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

01:40:19   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:40:22   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:40:25   ♪ And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM ♪

01:40:30   ♪ And if you're into Twitter ♪

01:40:33   ♪ You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S ♪

01:40:38   ♪ So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M ♪

01:40:44   ♪ Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:40:49   ♪ USA, Syracuse, it's accidental ♪

01:40:53   ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:40:54   ♪ They didn't mean to accidental ♪

01:40:58   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:40:59   ♪ They've been podcasting so long ♪

01:41:04   - And my media is also duplicated to a second sonology

01:41:06   that's sitting right next to it.

01:41:07   So it's not like it's just--

01:41:09   - Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

01:41:11   Wait, time out.

01:41:12   - I have a lot of backups.

01:41:13   - Oh my God.

01:41:14   - Which two sonologies do you have?

01:41:15   You have a play--

01:41:16   - I have a play whatever, play number something.

01:41:20   - I think it's 214, if I'm not mistaken.

01:41:22   - I think it's like a two drive or a three drive or something.

01:41:25   - You don't have enough media to long over,

01:41:27   like I have enough junk.

01:41:29   - But my giant sonology with eight bays,

01:41:32   only two or three drives are dedicated to media.

01:41:34   And those two or three drives are duplicated

01:41:36   to the second sonology.

01:41:38   - Huh.

01:41:39   - And it's also, I believe it's also,

01:41:41   they're both also in some kind of rate arrangement

01:41:43   where you don't see.

01:41:44   - Oh my God.

01:41:45   - I have a lot of backups.

01:41:46   Like the chances of, and that's for my media

01:41:49   that I don't even care about.

01:41:50   It's just ripped movies and stuff.

01:41:51   Like it's not even I care about.

01:41:52   The data that I care about is backed up like a thousand times

01:41:55   so I think I'm good.

01:41:57   - When you make the meat in the sauce,

01:41:59   are you talking just, is it just meatballs?

01:42:02   And we'll get to meatballs in a second.

01:42:03   Or is it meatballs and sausage?

01:42:06   And if it includes sausage, do you get sweet sausage,

01:42:11   hot sausage or a mix of both?

01:42:13   - For most of my childhood, it was just meatballs.

01:42:17   But when I would go over to my mother's mother's house,

01:42:21   she would do sausage too and I like that.

01:42:23   So in my own life, we have in recent decades gone to both.

01:42:28   'Cause my wife really likes the sausage.

01:42:29   So we do sausage and meatballs, mostly meatballs

01:42:32   but with a little bit of additional sausage.

01:42:34   I go with sweet sausage.

01:42:36   - No hot at all.

01:42:37   - That's no hot at all.

01:42:38   It's just, that's what I prefer.

01:42:39   I think it works better for me.

01:42:42   - I would argue you're missing out.

01:42:43   I prefer a 50/50 split, but I like it.

01:42:46   It's fine, but it's not what I'm looking for.

01:42:48   I'm looking for something that tastes like what I remember.

01:42:50   And when I was a kid, my grandmother always

01:42:53   did sweet sausage, that's what I like.

01:42:55   - Now, the meatballs.

01:42:58   Similar to before, what definitely goes into the meatballs

01:43:01   and what definitely does not that some people

01:43:03   might frequently put in?

01:43:05   - Did either one of you ever have my pasta sauce

01:43:07   and meatballs and I feed it to you

01:43:08   when you were over here maybe?

01:43:09   - I did, they were delicious.

01:43:11   But I forgot about what's in them

01:43:12   'cause that was a long time ago.

01:43:14   - Let me just add my rule of meatballs.

01:43:17   For me, but I feel like it's applicable to other people

01:43:20   and it's not related to making them at home.

01:43:23   It's that of all the things that you can order

01:43:26   in an Italian restaurant.

01:43:28   The one that someone like me most often avoids

01:43:33   and I would argue most people should avoid is meatballs.

01:43:35   I have never had a meatball at a restaurant

01:43:40   in my entire life that was to my liking.

01:43:43   It's not because they were bad,

01:43:45   they were just different than what I wanted.

01:43:48   Usually because they were fancier or weirder

01:43:51   or they're trying, but the variability of meatballs

01:43:54   in restaurants is astounding.

01:43:56   It is way bigger than the variability

01:43:58   of any other thing I can think of.

01:43:59   You never know what you're gonna get.

01:44:01   Meatball could mean anything.

01:44:03   You have no idea what the predominant taste is gonna be,

01:44:05   what the size is gonna be, the consistency is gonna be.

01:44:07   You know nothing about it.

01:44:09   It is totally a black box.

01:44:11   And if you like just rolling the dice

01:44:12   and it's fun to do or whatever,

01:44:14   I feel like Swedish meatballs have more consistency

01:44:17   in restaurants than Italian meatballs.

01:44:19   'Cause Swedish meatballs, they taste like Swedish meatballs.

01:44:21   Italian meatballs, you have no idea what you're getting.

01:44:23   So that's just my tip for meatballs.

01:44:25   My meatballs are boring.

01:44:26   They are beef only and like breadcrumbs

01:44:31   and parsley and like all, just like it's not, that's it.

01:44:36   No pork.

01:44:37   - Do you use an egg to bind it?

01:44:39   - Yeah.

01:44:40   - Okay, so you have your ground beef,

01:44:42   you got an egg, parsley, breadcrumbs,

01:44:44   salt and pepper, salt and pepper, okay.

01:44:46   Like they're very boring.

01:44:48   Like that's the problem.

01:44:48   The reason I'll never go in a restaurant

01:44:50   is if you serve this at a restaurant,

01:44:51   they'll be like, "Those meatballs are kind of bland."

01:44:53   That's my meatballs, sorry.

01:44:54   That's why, you know, that's it.

01:44:56   They are very boring.

01:44:57   No, I've made the fancier ones at home

01:44:59   just to see if like I'm missing out on anything.

01:45:01   Like the whole, you know, bread soaked in milk

01:45:03   and see if you ever do that whole big thing.

01:45:05   - Yeah, I mean, Tiff is our meatballer in the family

01:45:08   and she's very good at it,

01:45:08   but she doesn't do that, I don't think.

01:45:10   - And I've done it and those are fine.

01:45:12   It's just not what I'm personally looking for in a meatball.

01:45:14   Like I like them, I'll eat them.

01:45:16   And sometimes, you know,

01:45:17   other people have ordered meatballs in restaurants.

01:45:19   Occasionally I've had one and I go,

01:45:20   "Well, that's a pretty good meatball."

01:45:21   But it's not what I want.

01:45:22   Mine are boring.

01:45:23   They are what I want.

01:45:25   It has taken me 20 years of marriage

01:45:27   to get my wife who is the meatballer,

01:45:30   she's the former of the meatballs in our chain, right?

01:45:33   I'm the cooker of them, she's the former,

01:45:34   to form them at the expected size

01:45:37   'cause I have a specific size that I want them to be.

01:45:39   - See, and that was gonna be my next question.

01:45:40   So like, is it like, you know, golf ball size

01:45:42   or, you know, bigger, smaller?

01:45:44   - She's got it down to a weight.

01:45:46   She uses a food scale now.

01:45:47   She's hacked the system.

01:45:48   - All right, what's the weight?

01:45:49   - I don't know what the weight is.

01:45:50   I can do it by eye, right?

01:45:52   But she's the one who forms them,

01:45:53   so she uses the food scale.

01:45:55   And if she was here, she would tell me the exact weight.

01:45:57   Maybe it'll be fall up in next week.

01:45:58   It is bigger than a golf ball.

01:46:00   It is smaller than a tennis ball.

01:46:03   - Yeah, that seems about right.

01:46:05   'Cause like, one of the ways that restaurants often go wrong

01:46:09   is by making them really big.

01:46:11   No, like a lot of restaurants, you'll get like two--

01:46:12   - Oh, the giant one, the American like--

01:46:14   - Yeah, like baseball-sized ones, right?

01:46:17   - Yeah, that's like a meatloaf.

01:46:18   It's like a bad meatloaf.

01:46:19   - And like, 'cause there's no good way to cook that.

01:46:21   Like, something that's that big--

01:46:23   - Yeah, you have to bake it

01:46:24   or you have to leave it in the sauce forever.

01:46:25   - Yeah, like it's never gonna cook enough

01:46:27   without overcooking the outside,

01:46:28   or you'll just cook it forever and kill it.

01:46:31   And it'll just taste like nothing.

01:46:32   Like, there's no good way to do that.

01:46:34   - I see more often in restaurants the tiny ones,

01:46:36   like golf ball or smaller.

01:46:38   That's too small.

01:46:39   - Those, I think, I have found those are usually frozen.

01:46:41   I bet they're usually brought in.

01:46:42   'Cause like, when you buy a big bag

01:46:44   of like bulk meatballs at Costco, or if you--

01:46:46   - Which you should also not do.

01:46:47   Do not buy bags of meatballs.

01:46:49   - All those Costco meatballs are good.

01:46:50   - Oh, come on.

01:46:51   - Of course you think they're good.

01:46:53   Meatballs are so easy to make.

01:46:54   You take meat, you put it in a ball.

01:46:56   Like, it could not be easier.

01:46:57   - I'm pretty sure it's the Costco ones

01:47:00   that I have realized over the last year or so

01:47:02   are friggin' delicious.

01:47:04   I love those things.

01:47:05   I'll have to look and see what we have.

01:47:06   - I feel like if you have meatballs

01:47:09   for some not very important purpose,

01:47:11   like if you're making a meatball sub,

01:47:13   I love a good meatball sub.

01:47:14   But honestly, the quality of the meatballs

01:47:16   on a meatball sub is not as important

01:47:19   as the quality of meatballs

01:47:20   if you're having pasta meatballs as your entree.

01:47:22   - If anything, you want the meatballs on a meatball sub

01:47:25   to be like the crappiest meatballs they could possibly be

01:47:27   because it's like fast, crappy fast food.

01:47:30   Like it's, you know.

01:47:32   It's like wanting American,

01:47:33   it's like wanting processed American cheese

01:47:35   on your grilled cheese

01:47:35   'cause that's what a grilled cheese is supposed to be.

01:47:37   - Right, or like a cheesesteak with Cheez Whiz

01:47:39   'cause like that actually--

01:47:40   - Everyone's got their line.

01:47:41   - No, no, like I've been converted on this over time.

01:47:44   Like I used to be solidly provolone on the cheesesteak.

01:47:47   But I tried, with a couple trips to Philly

01:47:50   in the last few years, I finally tried Cheez Whiz

01:47:52   and I had to admit, like I even did,

01:47:55   Tiff and I, like I got a provolone one,

01:47:57   she got a Cheez Whiz one,

01:47:58   and we each traded half of the other

01:48:00   so that we could each have half of one, half of the other.

01:48:02   It was unanimous, we both agreed.

01:48:04   Yeah, the provolone's good,

01:48:05   but the Cheez Whiz was definitely better.

01:48:07   - Well, we learned about both yours

01:48:10   and Tiff's junk food tendencies from top four

01:48:13   so that kind of fits with my new culinary vision

01:48:15   of both of your palates.

01:48:17   Real time follow up with regard to the meatballs,

01:48:19   Little Birdie has told me that the correct weight

01:48:22   is three and a half ounces.

01:48:23   - All right, thank you, Little Birdie.

01:48:25   So I'm curious, you mentioned, you know,

01:48:27   what goes into it, breadcrumbs and egg and everything.

01:48:30   I don't remember hearing you mention onion.

01:48:32   Do you not put onion in meatballs and if not, why?

01:48:34   - I do not.

01:48:36   - Why?

01:48:37   - I don't know why, it's because my parents didn't, right?

01:48:40   That's literally why, like I'm not making this.

01:48:42   Again, I wanted to make it because we had,

01:48:45   we had pasta and meatballs every week of my life,

01:48:48   essentially, like not on the same day every day,

01:48:50   but pretty much once a week for my entire life

01:48:52   until I left home, right?

01:48:54   So it was a staple and a staple like that,

01:48:57   like I liked it, it was good.

01:48:58   It was one of my favorite meals.

01:48:59   I want to keep having that meal.

01:49:01   Why do I not put onions in it?

01:49:02   Because they weren't in it when I was a kid

01:49:04   and neither one of my grandparents put onions in it.

01:49:05   That's why I don't do it.

01:49:06   I'm sure it would taste good and it would be fine.

01:49:09   It would change it, it would make them a lot more moist

01:49:11   and that's not what my meatballs are like.

01:49:13   So that's not what I do.

01:49:14   - Are there any ways in which you deviate

01:49:16   from your parents' recipe on this traditional meal?

01:49:19   - Yeah, like the sausage is like combining

01:49:23   'cause my mother's, my father's,

01:49:25   well, I didn't do that, we put that in.

01:49:27   The recipe I got from my dad,

01:49:29   'cause he was the one who always made sauce at home,

01:49:32   like, you know, my wife can tell you by,

01:49:36   you know, I message Casey, like,

01:49:37   the amounts that he wrote down seemed to be like off

01:49:41   and we like mess with them a little bit

01:49:43   'cause they don't seem to be right.

01:49:45   What really we need to do is write down

01:49:47   a more accurate recipe for our children.

01:49:49   At this point, like, I don't even know,

01:49:51   'cause my wife's the mixer of ingredients, right?

01:49:54   So she's the one measuring out all the stuff

01:49:56   and dumping into the big thing

01:49:57   and she's the one mixing up the meatballs

01:49:59   and forming them into balls, right?

01:50:00   Following the recipe, supposedly, quote unquote following

01:50:03   from what my dad wrote in our cookbook,

01:50:05   like when it was like, you know,

01:50:06   take this cookbook out for you to be an independent adult,

01:50:08   but he didn't write down,

01:50:10   like what we do is not what he wrote down,

01:50:12   so we really need to nail this down in some reproducible way.

01:50:15   Now we just do it out of habit.

01:50:17   It's like, this is just a thing we do

01:50:19   and it's just like an assembly line and it just happens,

01:50:21   but we have honed it a little bit

01:50:23   to the point where when my dad visits

01:50:24   and he makes his, quote unquote, his sauce,

01:50:27   he doesn't make it as good as ours,

01:50:28   so we must have done something to change it.

01:50:30   Maybe we're changing the ratio of like,

01:50:34   it could just be as simple as like salt and pepper

01:50:36   or like using pre-seasoned breadcrumbs versus not pre-seasoned,

01:50:40   but anyway, what we make is now what I like

01:50:42   and I think it's actually has drifted

01:50:45   from what I had when I was a kid,

01:50:46   but it matches like,

01:50:48   because it's been a continuous gradual thing,

01:50:49   like it matches my memory of what it should be.

01:50:52   - Like your accent.

01:50:53   - Kind of, like yeah, it changes over time,

01:50:56   but I honestly, I think we've improved it.

01:50:58   I think now I think I would rather make my sauce for myself

01:51:02   than have anyone else make it.

01:51:04   - Well, that's good.

01:51:06   Like that's kind of how you want it to be, right?

01:51:08   - 'Cause if you're not doing that,

01:51:08   then like if you have some recipes like,

01:51:11   oh, but I can never make it like my mom makes it,

01:51:13   figure out how your mom makes it, right?

01:51:15   (laughing)

01:51:15   - Or figure out a better way to do it

01:51:17   that you end up like,

01:51:18   'cause like, you know, don't assume that like the way

01:51:19   that your family's done it forever is the best it can be,

01:51:21   like find your own path.

01:51:23   - Yeah, that's kind of why we did it with Fresh

01:51:25   'cause my parents, to my knowledge,

01:51:26   no one ever made it with Fresh,

01:51:27   but we had a tomato garden in our house

01:51:29   when we got our house and we're like,

01:51:30   "Let's try making it with Fresh,"

01:51:31   and boy, it was a lot of work

01:51:32   and a couple of them were really good,

01:51:34   but a couple of them we made with Fresh

01:51:35   were kind of stinkers and we were like,

01:51:36   overall, the math doesn't add up to get that one great one,

01:51:41   but those five cruddy ones

01:51:43   and then our neighbors built a bigger fence

01:51:45   and put too much shade for us to grow tomatoes,

01:51:46   but anyway, yeah, same thing with the cans.

01:51:48   We're always pursuing like,

01:51:50   what are the best tomatoes to get?

01:51:51   Where can we get what we think are real

01:51:53   San Marzano tomatoes and are they actually better?

01:51:55   I'm always reading articles about different canned tomatoes,

01:51:58   and cost-wise, 'cause we still make it a lot,

01:52:00   so we're looking for the big ones

01:52:01   that we can buy in bulk, you know?

01:52:03   Cheap, we don't wanna pay $8 for a tiny 16 ounce can

01:52:06   'cause we will break the bank on that,

01:52:08   so we'd much rather get the,

01:52:09   we get like a giant restaurant size,

01:52:11   like barrel type canned things.

01:52:13   - Nice.

01:52:14   - 'Cause that's what works out,

01:52:15   'cause we make it in big batches.

01:52:17   - So you mentioned earlier that you don't like

01:52:20   ordering spaghetti and meatballs at a restaurant,

01:52:22   and I agree with, like,

01:52:23   if you're going to an Italian restaurant,

01:52:24   to me, like, ordering spaghetti and meatballs is,

01:52:28   it's like going to a bagel shop

01:52:29   and ordering a plain bagel with plain cream cheese.

01:52:31   It's like, okay, like, that's probably gonna be all right,

01:52:35   but that's like the most boring choice you can make,

01:52:37   and you're probably missing out on much better options.

01:52:39   - Well, the other thing is this, the red sauce,

01:52:41   the tomato sauce in Italian restaurants,

01:52:43   really hit or miss, even good Italian restaurants,

01:52:46   because the difference is in taste.

01:52:47   Some people like it spicy, some people don't.

01:52:49   Some people like a bland, some people like lots of oregano,

01:52:51   so we have lots of garlic, no, you know,

01:52:52   like there's so much variability,

01:52:54   you just don't know what you're getting.

01:52:55   So the meatballs are very variable,

01:52:57   but even the red sauce is pretty variable in my experience.

01:52:59   So I do not order that ever at any Italian restaurant.

01:53:03   - Okay, so my question is,

01:53:06   you go to an Italian restaurant,

01:53:07   you know it's a pretty good one, what do you order?

01:53:10   - When I was a kid, growing up on Long Island,

01:53:12   we would go to Italian restaurants all the time,

01:53:14   'cause that's the kind of restaurant my dad liked,

01:53:17   and my wife can relate, it's interesting.

01:53:17   - I'm shocked. - I like to.

01:53:19   The kid thing to get, the thing that I and my siblings

01:53:25   always got, and I just associated in my mind,

01:53:26   like, this is what kids get at Italian restaurants.

01:53:28   I have no idea if this is true,

01:53:29   but what we always got was baked ziti.

01:53:31   - Oh, that's a good choice.

01:53:32   - All the time, and it came in an oval--

01:53:34   - No, it's not. - Ceramic thing.

01:53:36   - Oh, God, what a waste, oh my God.

01:53:39   - That's what we did on Long Island, we get baked ziti.

01:53:41   - If your children, I understand,

01:53:43   children have terrible food at restaurants,

01:53:45   what do you order now as an adult?

01:53:46   - All right, so as an adult, first of all,

01:53:49   I hardly ever see decent baked ziti, right?

01:53:51   So I don't order that anymore.

01:53:52   I still like it.

01:53:53   Recently I was in Colorado visiting my parents,

01:53:56   and they have a hard time finding good Italian food there,

01:53:58   and they had baked ziti, listen, on the menu.

01:53:59   My parents said, yeah, it's actually,

01:54:00   well, like what you remember,

01:54:01   I got it out of pure nostalgia, and it was.

01:54:03   It was in the same sort of oval-shaped oven,

01:54:06   safe ceramic thingy on top of another plate,

01:54:08   'cause it's super hot with the cheese,

01:54:10   really crunchy on it.

01:54:12   It's good comfort food, so I have ordered that recently,

01:54:16   but mostly what I get, my go-to is always,

01:54:19   and everyone's gonna hate me for this, but it's the truth,

01:54:22   veal parm, I know about the cows.

01:54:24   Believe me, my mother is a vegetarian.

01:54:25   Every time I ordered veal parm my entire life,

01:54:27   she told me about the poor cows

01:54:29   taken away from their mother.

01:54:30   I know about the cows.

01:54:31   You don't have to tell me.

01:54:32   She's literally told me my entire life.

01:54:33   (Kasey laughs)

01:54:34   The only time I ever get it as an Italian restaurant,

01:54:37   I do get it a lot.

01:54:39   Kasey, I'm afraid to ask you.

01:54:41   (laughs)

01:54:42   - Oh, if I go to an Italian restaurant, what do I get?

01:54:44   - Velveeta? - Velveeta shells and cheese.

01:54:46   - Yes! (laughs)

01:54:46   - Oh, if only, oh, that'd be me.

01:54:48   So I actually had that for dinner last night, coincidentally.

01:54:51   No, if I go to an Italian restaurant,

01:54:53   and do I have to answer this question?

01:54:56   I feel like-- - Yes, honestly.

01:54:57   - All of a sudden, I feel like, (sighs)

01:54:59   all right, so if I go to an Italian restaurant,

01:55:01   in my personal opinion,

01:55:02   which the entire internet is now going to write me,

01:55:04   and tell me how wrong I am, and I don't care.

01:55:05   Just save your keyboard fingers.

01:55:08   I don't care.

01:55:08   Don't tell me.

01:55:09   I like lasagna.

01:55:10   I like lasagna a lot.

01:55:12   I think you can get good lasagnas at a restaurant.

01:55:14   You can get bad lasagnas at a restaurant,

01:55:16   and I feel like it's a good metric.

01:55:17   And so, because of that, I will often order lasagna.

01:55:21   - It's a little risky,

01:55:22   but less risky than spaghetti and meatballs.

01:55:26   I was never a big lasagna fan as a kid

01:55:28   at restaurants or whatever,

01:55:28   but I've been making Lydia's lasagna recipe at home,

01:55:32   and it is amazingly good.

01:55:34   - Wait, Lydia's?

01:55:35   - You don't know Lydia?

01:55:36   - No. - No.

01:55:37   - The famous TV chef, Lydia Bastianich,

01:55:40   I think her last name is.

01:55:41   She's my favorite television Italian chef.

01:55:43   I really do like her recipes.

01:55:45   She has a lasagna recipe, which is, guess what?

01:55:47   Really boring.

01:55:48   Like, it is straightforward.

01:55:49   Like, this is lasagna.

01:55:51   There is nothing weird about it.

01:55:52   It is just plain.

01:55:54   I make her bolognese recipe also very straightforward.

01:55:56   I just made her bolognese recipe like two days ago.

01:56:00   She's my favorite other person to get Italian recipes from,

01:56:03   because she's from the same sort of geographic

01:56:06   and culinary background as my grandparents, right?

01:56:10   New York City, New York, metro area, Italian-American,

01:56:12   same generation of immigrant, more or less.

01:56:15   And she makes food like they made food and like I like.

01:56:19   And yeah, that's, you know.

01:56:21   But Italian restaurant are all sorts of things.

01:56:23   I love all kinds of pasta dishes,

01:56:25   like all kinds of like, again, boring pasta dishes.

01:56:29   At one of my favorite Italian restaurants,

01:56:31   I'll order pasta with garlic and oil.

01:56:34   I'll order pasta with tomato, garlic, and oil.

01:56:37   Like, just very simple.

01:56:39   I love pasta.

01:56:40   I'll order that if it's on the menu.

01:56:42   Not exciting recipes.

01:56:44   It's just a question of something that catches my eye

01:56:47   at a particular time.

01:56:48   I will wander an Italian menu much more than I will

01:56:51   in another restaurant where I feel like

01:56:52   there's only a few safe havens.

01:56:54   - First of all, that reveals a lot of like,

01:56:56   about your psychology of restaurants that like,

01:56:59   you look at this as like, this is a safe haven.

01:57:01   Like, I can only order these things that are safe

01:57:03   on the menu for things I don't know.

01:57:04   - Yeah, well, if you go to a fish place

01:57:06   and you don't like fish, you're looking for like,

01:57:07   the one, you know, fish option or, you know,

01:57:10   like lots of, I'm not particularly adventurous with food.

01:57:14   So looking at a menu, there's often very only like

01:57:17   two or three things that I think I would even

01:57:18   potentially like, but an Italian restaurant,

01:57:21   I'll like almost anything that's not fish.

01:57:24   - I'm being told by the arbiter that you do indeed order

01:57:27   a lot of veal parm, but not as consistently as you used to.

01:57:30   - Sometimes it's not always on the menu

01:57:31   and sometimes I have a crisis of faith and I'm like,

01:57:34   this veal parm is not gonna be good.

01:57:35   I can't order this, I have to, you know.

01:57:37   (laughing)

01:57:38   You just don't know, like you see it on the menu,

01:57:40   but you're like, hmm, maybe not.

01:57:43   - Does it not bother you, like you mentioned a minute ago,

01:57:45   like you know, that you often will just like get pasta

01:57:47   with, you know, garlic and oil or whatever.

01:57:48   Like, does it bother you to order something

01:57:51   that you could very easily make at home?

01:57:53   - Oh no, it doesn't bother me at all,

01:57:54   'cause someone else makes it for you,

01:57:55   that's what you pay them for.

01:57:56   (laughing)

01:57:57   Like, I mean, I will very often complain

01:58:00   when I order an exact dish that I make at home

01:58:03   and I order it and I go, mine is 10 times better than this.

01:58:05   - See, that, to me like that's the risk.

01:58:07   Like, you know, ordering like a veal parm,

01:58:09   that makes sense because that's something that like,

01:58:11   most home cooks are not gonna make, right?

01:58:13   Like that's so that you--

01:58:13   - You're not gonna buy veal 'cause you're too guilty

01:58:15   in the store, but at the restaurant I'll do it.

01:58:16   - Right, yeah, the restaurant's like,

01:58:17   well, you think, well, they already have it back there.

01:58:19   I know it's terrible, but you know,

01:58:21   and like, you know, to me, like, you know, I'll go for,

01:58:23   usually if I'm in an Italian restaurant,

01:58:25   which honestly isn't that often,

01:58:26   but when I'm in an Italian restaurant,

01:58:28   I'll usually go for some kind of fancy pasta dish.

01:58:31   So like, maybe a ravioli or a tortellini

01:58:33   or just like a cool shaped pasta,

01:58:35   like a orecchiette or something,

01:58:36   with sausage and vegetables or something like that.

01:58:39   Like some kind of like, a fairly complex dish

01:58:42   that like, I probably could make this at home,

01:58:44   but it would be like a lot of chopping

01:58:45   and a lot of, like a lot of, it'd be like a lot of steps,

01:58:47   so like, I'm probably not going to.

01:58:49   And you know, something like that, like fresh flavors,

01:58:52   fresh tomato, fresh mozzarella, stuff like that.

01:58:54   I wouldn't go for something as simple as just like,

01:58:56   pasta with garlic, because I would be afraid

01:59:00   of that happening, of like, I don't want to

01:59:04   order something in this restaurant

01:59:05   that I could go make at home for 50 cents

01:59:07   that would be better.

01:59:09   - Yeah, I mean, sometimes a failure of just,

01:59:11   even if I feel like I could do it slightly better,

01:59:12   as long as it's good enough, I'm fine with it.

01:59:14   And yeah, it is a waste of my,

01:59:15   we don't go out to eat that often.

01:59:16   We very rarely go out to eat,

01:59:18   so I don't mind paying $16 for something

01:59:20   that costs them 10 cents to make, like I don't care.

01:59:23   It's fine, that's the whole point of going out.

01:59:25   But occasionally, like one of my favorite things

01:59:27   I make at home is like a pasta with sausage

01:59:30   and broccoli rabe, which is,

01:59:32   that's probably my favorite thing that I make.

01:59:34   And lots of restaurants are starting to have it,

01:59:36   and I make the mistake of ordering it,

01:59:38   and every time I'm disappointed, I'm like,

01:59:40   and sometimes it's like, it's okay, but I eat it,

01:59:43   and I'm like, I just think mine is just so much better.

01:59:46   Often because mine is simpler,

01:59:47   like they add more stuff to it,

01:59:48   they put cream or peas in it,

01:59:50   it's like, what are you even doing?

01:59:51   Like, stick to the basics.

01:59:53   - Those are good.

01:59:54   Cream and peas and maybe like onions and prosciutto maybe.

01:59:57   Oh man.

01:59:58   - I would rather be having my,

02:00:00   I've ruined my wife with the carbonara.

02:00:01   She always asks me to make carbonara,

02:00:03   which isn't actually carbonara, it's a modified,

02:00:05   it's a modified Lydia recipe

02:00:07   that isn't actually called carbonara,

02:00:08   but anyway, that's what we call it.

02:00:09   - Oh no, you butcher carbonara?

02:00:11   - She orders it at restaurants,

02:00:13   and then her complaint is always,

02:00:14   this is not as good as what we make at home.

02:00:15   So now at this point, she's stopped ordering it.

02:00:17   She just can't, she doesn't do it anymore.

02:00:18   She's like, I know I'm gonna be disappointed by this,

02:00:20   I'm not gonna order it.

02:00:21   - Oh, you're lucky.

02:00:22   I've tried to make carbonara a number of times,

02:00:24   and I butcher it.

02:00:26   It's so bad.

02:00:27   - It's my wife's favorite recipe.

02:00:29   She periodically gets like,

02:00:30   uncontrollable cravings for it.

02:00:32   I'd be like, I need carbonara today,

02:00:33   and so I have to make it for her.

02:00:35   - There's, that's actually a good point,

02:00:36   as I've forgotten that, you know,

02:00:38   for years my go-to was lasagna, as stated earlier,

02:00:40   but in the last handful of years,

02:00:43   I have started getting really into carbonara,

02:00:45   and I try not to have it often,

02:00:46   because it is extremely, extremely bad for you.

02:00:49   - It's not health food.

02:00:50   Oh yeah, it's horrible for you.

02:00:52   - Oh man, is it good.

02:00:53   And Tina is writing me now to say

02:00:55   that John's carbonara is awesome, and now I want it.

02:00:57   So it sounds like you're making carbonara tomorrow.

02:01:00   - I may have triggered it again.

02:01:02   - You're making carbonara tomorrow,

02:01:04   and I'm coming over for dinner,

02:01:05   because I want some of that.

02:01:07   - Yeah, next time we're at your house,

02:01:09   here's the menu, right?

02:01:10   We figured it out.

02:01:12   That's the thing about a carbonara though,

02:01:14   is even though my wife loves it, and I really like it,

02:01:16   and one of my children will tolerate it,

02:01:18   I don't serve it to guess,

02:01:21   because I assume everyone else will find it just disgusting,

02:01:23   because honestly, it is disgusting in a unhealthy way,

02:01:28   and it is very, what I make is very, it's oppressive.

02:01:31   It is like, it is heavy.

02:01:35   I would never serve it to guess, because you'd be like--

02:01:37   - But that's carbon, okay, so normally carbonara,

02:01:39   feel free to correct me,

02:01:40   normally carbonara is some kind of pasta,

02:01:42   often linguine, I think, or whatever the broad version is,

02:01:46   usually pancetta, peas, onions,

02:01:49   some kind of cream and egg, right?

02:01:52   - You are making the restaurant version of it.

02:01:54   - Right, so how do you, how does yours differ?

02:01:57   - So the, and again, what I'm making

02:01:59   is not actually carbonara.

02:02:00   Actual carbonara is like parmesan cheese, egg,

02:02:05   you can either do whole egg or just the yolks,

02:02:08   and then spaghetti and black pepper, and that's it,

02:02:14   and like no peas, no cream.

02:02:19   - No peas and no cream, that is the carbonara at all.

02:02:22   - And pancetta and guanciale, right?

02:02:24   - Wait, I can be taught that of cheese, not peas.

02:02:27   - Yeah, so the peas are not, go look at like,

02:02:29   what is traditional carbonara, or go to Italy,

02:02:32   you're not gonna get cream and peas in it, right?

02:02:34   So that's it, that's the basics,

02:02:35   and then American restaurants, to try to kick it up a notch,

02:02:39   boom, Emeril, add all sorts of other crap to it.

02:02:42   The cream is in addition to like, add to the richness,

02:02:45   and I'm sure there's some variation of it in Italy

02:02:47   that's like that, but anyway, Italian-American carbonara

02:02:49   does not have cream, but adding it, it's like, it fits,

02:02:51   like you see how it works with it, like,

02:02:53   and it's cheaper to add cream

02:02:54   than to add more parmesan cheese.

02:02:55   - Ah, that's why.

02:02:56   - What I'm actually making is a variant of Lydia's recipe,

02:03:00   which is not called carbonara, I think she calls it with,

02:03:02   like, she calls it like linguine with, I don't know,

02:03:06   I forget the hell the name of it,

02:03:07   it's some descriptive name that's just like

02:03:09   listing the ingredients.

02:03:11   I do not add cream, but I do add onions,

02:03:14   and I add chicken stock, which is not on the menu,

02:03:17   but it's something that I add to my thing.

02:03:18   I only use yolks, no whites,

02:03:22   and I use way, way too much parmesan cheese.

02:03:24   And the meat has changed, I used to use plain old bacon

02:03:27   'cause it's all we could get when we were in Georgia

02:03:28   and we just kinda stuck with it,

02:03:29   'cause hey, bacon is good tasting,

02:03:30   only a specific kind of bacon.

02:03:32   Now we switch over to pancetta, I'd use guanciale

02:03:35   if you could ever find it,

02:03:36   but it's like impossible to find it.

02:03:37   - That sounds pretty awesome.

02:03:38   - Yeah, so it is not really,

02:03:40   the reason we call it carbonara is the predominant flavor

02:03:43   is parmesan cheese and egg yolk.

02:03:45   - I mean, I'm on board with that,

02:03:46   but that is very different than what I envision as carbonara.

02:03:49   - Yeah, 'cause you're all thinking of the restaurant one

02:03:52   that has cream and peas in it.

02:03:53   - Yes, exactly.

02:03:54   - Yeah, basically add peas to yours and I'm sold.

02:03:56   - Even, I just went to,

02:03:57   so our favorite Italian restaurant

02:03:59   that we've been going to since 1994,

02:04:03   I don't know how many years that is, but it's a lot,

02:04:04   that still exists and is great

02:04:06   because they no longer even have a sign on it,

02:04:08   like there's no word on the outside of the restaurant

02:04:11   that says the name of the restaurant at all.

02:04:13   So it's very small. - Did you just say restaurant?

02:04:16   - This has nothing, literally says nothing,

02:04:17   there's no words.

02:04:18   But anyway, it's still there, we still go to it

02:04:21   and they make a thing that they call chicken carbonara,

02:04:23   which has chicken, mushrooms, cream, pancetta,

02:04:28   and rigatoni.

02:04:31   And it's like, how is that carbonara?

02:04:33   I guess because it has the, you know,

02:04:35   like it has the pancetta and it has cream

02:04:39   and that kind of counts.

02:04:40   It's a great meal, I love it, I love the taste of it,

02:04:42   but it's just, it's like, it's a restaurant variation.

02:04:46   - Yeah. - And it has cheese on it.

02:04:47   And honestly, I think the cream is because it fits in

02:04:50   with the richness and it kind of works,

02:04:52   but it's much cheaper than adding more

02:04:53   of the $21 a pound parmesan cheese to it.

02:04:57   - Similarly, there's an Italian restaurant by me

02:04:59   that serves a farfalle carbonara,

02:05:02   which seems wrong in every measurable way.

02:05:04   - Those are the bow ties, right?

02:05:05   - Correct.

02:05:06   - Now see, honestly, I like bow tie pasta for saucy dishes

02:05:09   because it picks up the sauce really well.

02:05:11   - Mm-hmm, so there's, as described on their menu,

02:05:14   is chicken sauteed in a cream sauce with prosciutto,

02:05:16   peas, and farfalle pasta.

02:05:17   And oh man, it may be like terrible restaurant carbonara,

02:05:21   but it is delicious, terrible restaurant carbonara.

02:05:24   It is so good.

02:05:25   - Yeah, that sounds great, I would probably order that.

02:05:27   - Yeah, and the reason my wife doesn't like them

02:05:28   is because they're not what she's expecting.

02:05:30   She's not expecting cream.

02:05:31   And so even though it may be like,

02:05:33   oh, this is a good creamy pasta dish,

02:05:34   it's not what she wants when she wants carbonara,

02:05:36   she wants the thing that I make,

02:05:37   which also isn't carbonara, but you know.

02:05:39   Anyway, there's probably some good,

02:05:41   you can just probably look up Lydia's thing

02:05:42   of like watching her make carbonara.

02:05:44   There are very few ingredients, it's very simple.

02:05:46   It's easy to screw up, you can obviously scramble the eggs,

02:05:48   but a little bit of practice, you'll get it.

02:05:49   And at least then you'll know like this is the base.

02:05:52   And then if you wanna start adding stuff after that, fine.

02:05:54   But I would say draw the line at cream,

02:05:55   because if you're adding cream, that's a different thing.

02:05:58   Maybe good, maybe great,

02:05:59   but just maybe call it something different.

02:06:00   - Now I really want carbonara, something awful.

02:06:03   I was just glad you didn't say you put Velveeta in yours.

02:06:05   - No.

02:06:06   Well, I would never cook it, but.

02:06:08   - It just puts it on top at the end.

02:06:10   (laughing)

02:06:12   - Shells and cheese are good, man.

02:06:14   Don't knock it till you try it.

02:06:15   - I have tried it.

02:06:16   - I've tried it, I've tried it.

02:06:17   - No, it's good.

02:06:19   (beeping)