ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Someone trying to spell took us and they're spelling it T you Q you a ass it is not derived from Spanish to quads

00:00:06 ◼   ► Oh, that is not the way to spell

00:00:08 ◼   ► You are the wrong region of the world for the origin of that. That's magnificent

00:00:13 ◼   ► I love Sean people to the chat earlier people who truck equals truck ists

00:00:17 ◼   ► Somehow I missed that joke

00:00:21 ◼   ► That's people who are prejudiced against trucks. We already established that. Yes

00:00:25 ◼   ► Like me with the stupid Cherokee with a would you stop with that lowered and big it's so ridiculous

00:00:31 ◼   ► It's the worst thing ever didn't I tell this story on neutral?

00:00:34 ◼   ► I'm it's it's December in Connecticut and for those who are not aware Connecticut doesn't believe in salting the roads

00:00:40 ◼   ► They believe in sanding the roads. So the entire state is just one big sandbox. It's December

00:00:45 ◼   ► It's Connecticut and there's sand everywhere and we're at a T, you know, so we have to make either a left or right

00:00:51 ◼   ► It's my friend's SRT8 Grand Cherokee and similarly to the Eclipse turbo that we were talking about earlier

00:00:57 ◼   ► He looks over and says are you holding on? I'm like what the fuck are you talking about? We're about to do a 90-degree turn

00:01:01 ◼   ► Why would I need to hold on? I was like, yeah, okay sure next thing

00:01:05 ◼   ► I know he stands on the gas and

00:01:06 ◼   ► We make this 90-degree turn like we were getting shot out of a cannon. It was the most amazing thing in the world

00:01:12 ◼   ► No, no fast car fine, but like it's like let's make something that is not designed to go fast

00:01:17 ◼   ► but let's make it go fast.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - No, that's the beauty of it.

00:01:20 ◼   ► - There is a perverse thing in that,

00:01:22 ◼   ► but in the end it's an abomination.

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's just like, let's take a chihuahua,

00:01:26 ◼   ► but make it a pack animal.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Like, we'll have it carry all our suitcases

00:01:30 ◼   ► down to the Grand Canyon.

00:01:31 ◼   ► And if you could do that, it's like,

00:01:32 ◼   ► wow, that's the world's strongest chihuahua,

00:01:33 ◼   ► but like, that is the wrong tool for the job.

00:01:36 ◼   ► - That is a terrible analogy.

00:01:37 ◼   ► I am disappointed.

00:01:38 ◼   ► You are usually so good at coming up with decent analogies

00:01:43 ◼   ► in a way that I am terrible.

00:01:44 ◼   ► - It was reversed, because I'm taking the small thing

00:01:46 ◼   ► making it big, but it's like making a hippo dance.

00:01:48 ◼   ► That's what you're trying to do,

00:01:49 ◼   ► and it's just, like, why would you do that?

00:01:52 ◼   ► There's perfectly good cars that are not big, tall,

00:01:54 ◼   ► tippy, gross things made to go off-road.

00:01:56 ◼   ► They want to go fast.

00:01:58 ◼   ► The Jeep Cherokee doesn't want to go fast.

00:02:00 ◼   ► What are you doing?

00:02:01 ◼   ► Oh, and they lower it.

00:02:02 ◼   ► They take a car with good ground clearance,

00:02:04 ◼   ► and then you lower it.

00:02:05 ◼   ► What are you even doing?

00:02:07 ◼   ► Why?

00:02:07 ◼   ► You're just ruining a car.

00:02:09 ◼   ► - No, it's porque no los dos.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Why can't you have both?

00:02:11 ◼   ► Why can't you have this convenient car that's--

00:02:14 ◼   ► - Because you can't,

00:02:15 ◼   ► because the thing is like 17 feet high and rolls over.

00:02:17 ◼   ► You can't. - No, it doesn't.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I just explained to you.

00:02:20 ◼   ► We did a 90 degree turn at like 30.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - You can lower it as much as you want.

00:02:23 ◼   ► The center of gravity of that car is not the same

00:02:25 ◼   ► as the center of gravity of a sports car that's down low.

00:02:28 ◼   ► - So if somebody offered you a Porsche,

00:02:31 ◼   ► it's not the Cayman, the Cayenne.

00:02:34 ◼   ► The Cayenne Turbo. - And the McCann

00:02:35 ◼   ► is the even bigger one.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I would sell it and use that money

00:02:37 ◼   ► to probably not buy a better car.

00:02:39 ◼   ► But if I was forced to, if I was forced to,

00:02:41 ◼   ► I said, "You have to get a car,"

00:02:42 ◼   ► I would immediately sell it

00:02:43 ◼   ► I would use that money to buy a million other cars that I'd rather have why why do you hate fun John?

00:02:49 ◼   ► Why do you hate fun?

00:02:50 ◼   ► And what's the next suggestion a monster truck Ferrari? Why can't I have both look it's like a Ferrari?

00:02:54 ◼   ► But also you can crush cars with it. No now it's bad

00:02:57 ◼   ► What have you done and a monster truck Ferrari would still look cooler than that Jeep?

00:03:02 ◼   ► Hate you so much and yet I don't

00:03:11 ◼   ► So we should get this show started and as per usual we have to start with some follow-up and you know

00:03:17 ◼   ► Here's the thing you guys we've been doing the show for what almost three and a half years now

00:03:22 ◼   ► is that right because it was 2013 if I'm not mistaken and

00:03:25 ◼   ► And you know, I knew both of you guys pretty well when we started I knew Marco a little bit better

00:03:30 ◼   ► But I knew both you guys pretty well, but had you told me in in 2013?

00:03:34 ◼   ► Yeah, you know you're still gonna be doing this in 2017. I'd probably been like that's surprising but okay

00:03:40 ◼   ► I'll believe it. If you had told me in 2013, "Well, you will have multiple episodes of follow-up about Marco's hindquarters,"

00:03:46 ◼   ► I'm not sure I would have believed that one.

00:03:49 ◼   ► He's got a horse. I don't know if he has hindquarters, exactly.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Marco's tushy.

00:03:55 ◼   ► I was gonna go with tushy.

00:03:57 ◼   ► We keep riffing on all the different-- his posterior, his derriere, his fanny, but fanny means something different in the UK, so.

00:04:04 ◼   ► You really did grow up in a mixed environment if you know tuchus. I'm very proud of you, John.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Tush is derived from that, I think. It's all just, you know.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Well, anyway, so let's talk about Marcos Tuckus. Why don't you tell me about whether

00:04:17 ◼   ► cushioned saddles are good or bad? And I don't know if I'm talking to Marco or John, but

00:04:21 ◼   ► whoever put this in the show knows.

00:04:22 ◼   ► I'm talking to me. So this is from Ahmad Al-Hashimi, who says, "Cushioned saddles are bad." You

00:04:26 ◼   ► can tell it's a bike person when they say "saddles," because regular people call them

00:04:31 ◼   ► seats, but "bike-ist," does Mark say. Mark. Marco, whatever that guy's name is. They're

00:04:36 ◼   ► They're good dogs, Mark.

00:04:37 ◼   ► They're saddles.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Anyway, he says, "When you sit on a large cushion seat, the cushioning material ensures

00:04:44 ◼   ► pressure is placed over the entire region.

00:04:46 ◼   ► It goes into the nooks and crannies between your thighs and finds all the sensitive areas

00:04:50 ◼   ► to ensure maximum pressure."

00:04:52 ◼   ► Yikes.

00:04:53 ◼   ► "What you want instead," and this was repeated by many people who sent in feedback, but I

00:04:59 ◼   ► just picked this one as representative.

00:05:00 ◼   ► "What you want instead is contact at your sit bones and nothing else."

00:05:03 ◼   ► Did you know you have sit bones?

00:05:04 ◼   ► If you read the dozens of emails that talk about sit bones that were sent to our show,

00:05:09 ◼   ► you would know.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I thought this was a term the first person was making up, but then we got multiple people

00:05:14 ◼   ► telling us about sit bones.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Apparently, I mean, I haven't done any more medical research on this topic, but multiple

00:05:19 ◼   ► people seem to think these are real things.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:23 ◼   ► And so he says, with some honesty, soreness at the contact areas, ideally the sit bones,

00:05:26 ◼   ► is to be expected for the new cyclist.

00:05:28 ◼   ► By the way, many people wrote in to tell Marco that it's not a bikist, as if he didn't know

00:05:32 ◼   ► that.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Sometimes it's hard to tell if Arko's joking.

00:05:35 ◼   ► I myself have difficulty sometimes.

00:05:37 ◼   ► But rest assured, he knows.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Bicus is a bad joke.

00:05:41 ◼   ► He likens it to the soreness in your feet when you first start using a standing desk.

00:05:47 ◼   ► Numbness is much more ominous sign.

00:05:49 ◼   ► It means pressure is being placed on the wrong spots, cutting off blood supply or pressing unnerved.

00:05:52 ◼   ► So the consensus seems to be, padding aside, what you want is most of your weight to be on these sit bones

00:06:00 ◼   ► and not sort of distributed across all the different parts because then no

00:06:05 ◼   ► matter how you sit it's like squishing all your soft tissues together and

00:06:08 ◼   ► cutting off blood flow whereas apparently I'm guessing there's a path

00:06:12 ◼   ► from the sit bones you know it's kind of like jacking a car put it that way when

00:06:16 ◼   ► you jack up a car you put it on the jack points you don't take the jack and put

00:06:18 ◼   ► it in a soft squishy part underneath your car and start cranking it because

00:06:21 ◼   ► bad things will happen so anyway I debated even putting this in here but I

00:06:26 ◼   ► feel like this is good information for other people who are getting into

00:06:30 ◼   ► bikes or not into bikes and are wondering about bike seat stuff, there was very loud

00:06:35 ◼   ► consensus that it's all about you and your sit bones and then making good contact and

00:06:38 ◼   ► that not having pressure on other places. So, there you go.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Thank you for all the bikest for your feedback about my James Damore.

00:06:48 ◼   ► It sounds like they're like, yeah, well, it sounds like they're prejudiced against bikes,

00:06:51 ◼   ► they're bikest.

00:06:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:55 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Speaking of jacking up cars,

00:06:57 ◼   ► it always drove me nuts because anytime I wanted to jack up,

00:07:01 ◼   ► I think it was the Subaru, I don't think it was the BMW,

00:07:03 ◼   ► the official jack point for the rear of the car

00:07:06 ◼   ► was to jack up by the rear differential,

00:07:08 ◼   ► which just seems like a terrible idea to me.

00:07:12 ◼   ► They were like, "Yeah, just put it onto the rear pumpkin

00:07:13 ◼   ► "and go to town, you'll be fine."

00:07:15 ◼   ► Just seems bananas.

00:07:16 ◼   ► - Probably a pretty strong part of the car.

00:07:17 ◼   ► I mean, I presumably didn't know

00:07:19 ◼   ► what they're talking about.

00:07:20 ◼   ► They made the car, they're not gonna, you know.

00:07:21 ◼   ► - I know, one would think,

00:07:22 ◼   ► But it just struck me as wrong.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Anyway, Mo Rubinsal wants to talk about Backblaze backup limits and also wants to know, "How

00:07:30 ◼   ► do folks back up their applications folder?

00:07:32 ◼   ► Because Backblaze exempts it and restructuring it would be hell."

00:07:36 ◼   ► I don't.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Or at least, I don't think I would want to.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Because if I wanted to back everything up in my applications folder, I would rather

00:07:46 ◼   ► just recreate it by hand, because I don't think I want any of this stuff in there.

00:07:49 ◼   ► In fact, one of my favorite blog posts that I wrote, which is mostly for myself, as kind

00:07:54 ◼   ► of a long-term memory, but it's talking about here's all the things I would install when

00:08:00 ◼   ► reinstalling a new Mac, or starting a new Mac.

00:08:03 ◼   ► So I used that for the Mac with Adorable, I used it for the 5K iMac.

00:08:07 ◼   ► I don't use Migration Assistant, generally speaking, because even though it's unlike

00:08:11 ◼   ► the Windows when I was using Windows, and this is probably Marco's era as well, that

00:08:15 ◼   ► had to reinstall everything, we had to just destroy everything and start anew every six

00:08:20 ◼   ► months to clear out all the cruft that just magically appears. You know, Mac OS is not

00:08:25 ◼   ► like that, but when I get a new machine, eh, it's time.

00:08:29 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I also don't ever back up my applications folder unless it's like from like automatically

00:08:35 ◼   ► doing it from things like Time Machine or a disk clone. I think the main advantage to

00:08:39 ◼   ► backing up your applications folder is if you're literally just cloning your entire

00:08:43 ◼   ► and if you want fast recovery after a disaster.

00:08:47 ◼   ► And there is definitely a role for that.

00:08:50 ◼   ► You should have some, like one of your backup methods

00:08:52 ◼   ► should be like a straight up copy of your entire disc

00:08:56 ◼   ► because then if you do have a disc failure,

00:08:58 ◼   ► you can restore that onto a new disc or a new computer

00:09:01 ◼   ► very quickly compared to downloading things

00:09:03 ◼   ► off of an internet backup.

00:09:05 ◼   ► An internet backup is like a last resort

00:09:07 ◼   ► because it is slower, it goes over the internet,

00:09:10 ◼   ► you might have limited upstream

00:09:12 ◼   ► so you might not want to upload every single thing

00:09:14 ◼   ► you have on your disk if you can easily get it

00:09:16 ◼   ► through other means.

00:09:18 ◼   ► So there is definitely a role for including

00:09:21 ◼   ► applications folders in backups, but I totally see

00:09:24 ◼   ► why it's not included in Backblaze's cloud backup by default.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Again, we should disclose that Backblaze

00:09:31 ◼   ► is a frequent sponsor of our show,

00:09:33 ◼   ► but I'm saying this probably to defend them,

00:09:36 ◼   ► but also not because they are paying us sometimes,

00:09:40 ◼   ► but simply because I think that it makes sense

00:09:44 ◼   ► to exclude that for a cloud backup

00:09:45 ◼   ► because the purpose of cloud backup is like last resort

00:09:48 ◼   ► where, and applications folders are really easy

00:09:51 ◼   ► to reconstruct with just time.

00:09:53 ◼   ► You're not permanently losing data there,

00:09:55 ◼   ► you're just losing some time to redownload applications,

00:09:58 ◼   ► reinstall applications and everything.

00:09:59 ◼   ► But yeah, for a full disk copy method

00:10:02 ◼   ► like Time Machine or Super Duper, Carbon Copy Clone

00:10:05 ◼   ► or things like that, any kind of disk cloning method,

00:10:07 ◼   ► it makes sense to include that, just for speed of recovery.

00:10:11 ◼   ► - So we talked about this a long time ago,

00:10:12 ◼   ► one of our earlier shows about backups.

00:10:14 ◼   ► I think it was when we were all just started

00:10:16 ◼   ► using Backblaze, actually even before

00:10:17 ◼   ► maybe they sponsored the show.

00:10:18 ◼   ► - It was.

00:10:19 ◼   ► - This is, I was discussing like the fact

00:10:21 ◼   ► that Backblaze excludes a lot of stuff.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And they had like a hard coded,

00:10:25 ◼   ► they have a thing where you can say what you want to exclude,

00:10:27 ◼   ► but they have a hard coded exclude list

00:10:29 ◼   ► and it excluded stuff that I wanted backed up.

00:10:31 ◼   ► So at that time I hacked up whatever XML file

00:10:34 ◼   ► they had buried somewhere in the /library folder,

00:10:37 ◼   ► not the home directory one, but the one at the top level of the disk.

00:10:39 ◼   ► There was some XML file somewhere that you could mess with to make it back up things

00:10:44 ◼   ► that are in the quote unquote hard-quoted exclude list.

00:10:49 ◼   ► And I think that technique still works, and it's just as unsupported and dangerous and

00:10:56 ◼   ► do at your own risk, but it is a thing that I do.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Frequently that file moves around and changes or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it's still

00:11:02 ◼   ► working for me.

00:11:05 ◼   ► So basically you can make backblaze back up stuff that it says it doesn't want to back

00:11:09 ◼   ► up if you're willing to live a little dangerously.

00:11:14 ◼   ► But like Mark said, you should just be losing time.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Because applications, it's annoying, but none of your data is there.

00:11:20 ◼   ► You didn't write those applications, right?

00:11:22 ◼   ► And these days, the chances are very good that you have some reasonably convenient way

00:11:28 ◼   ► to get those applications back.

00:11:30 ◼   ► The company you bought it from has some record that you bought it.

00:11:32 ◼   ► They can let you re-download it.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Even if it came on plastic disks, I'm hoping you're saving those plastic disks somewhere.

00:11:37 ◼   ► And if you're not saving them, I'm hoping you can contact the vendor that you bought

00:11:40 ◼   ► it from and say, "Hey, my house burned down.

00:11:41 ◼   ► I lost my plastic disks and I got the software back."

00:11:44 ◼   ► But realistically speaking, most applications you're going to want to launch these days,

00:11:47 ◼   ► you have to be able to download them some way.

00:11:49 ◼   ► And if you can download them, there's probably some record on their servers about the fact

00:11:52 ◼   ► that you own it.

00:11:53 ◼   ► So it may be annoying, but like Margo said, if you find yourself restoring from an internet

00:11:58 ◼   ► backup, many, many things have gone wrong and you're probably just so happy that you

00:12:01 ◼   ► have your precious data preserved in any form that you're not, you know, you're

00:12:04 ◼   ► gonna be spending like days and days possibly weeks restoring anyway so don't

00:12:08 ◼   ► worry about it but yeah but I but I because it's unlimited backups I'm like

00:12:11 ◼   ► you know what go ahead back up my applications folder why not. So crash plan

00:12:16 ◼   ► does have a native client for Macs maybe so we've got a lot of feedback saying

00:12:23 ◼   ► that the enterprise crash plan client is actually native and if you recall one of

00:12:28 ◼   ► One of the things that really drives me freaking bananas about CrashPlan as a consumer is that

00:12:34 ◼   ► it's a Java-based, cross-platform, utter garbage app.

00:12:39 ◼   ► I guess saying Java-based and utter garbage is redundant, but here we are.

00:12:43 ◼   ► That joke will never stop being funny, I'm sorry.

00:12:45 ◼   ► So anyway.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And we got zero negative feedback on it.

00:12:47 ◼   ► I know.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I'm surprised.

00:12:49 ◼   ► I'm not.

00:12:50 ◼   ► So anyway, there's been a lot of people coming to us saying, "Hey, the Enterprise client

00:12:56 ◼   ► is actually native."

00:12:57 ◼   ► it may not be so bad once you do the migration.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Except maybe not.

00:13:01 ◼   ► So Phil Stollery wrote in to say to us

00:13:03 ◼   ► that he just upgraded to CrashPlan for small business,

00:13:06 ◼   ► which, to be fair, is not necessarily

00:13:08 ◼   ► the same as Enterprise.

00:13:10 ◼   ► And he said it's the same crappy Java app.

00:13:12 ◼   ► And he said that he was only allowed

00:13:14 ◼   ► to use version 4.9, which I guess is still Java,

00:13:17 ◼   ► not the Enterprise version, which is 6.x.

00:13:20 ◼   ► So tread carefully.

00:13:22 ◼   ► I still haven't taken any action on my backup strategy

00:13:25 ◼   ► yet because I'm procrastinating and sticking my head in the sand like an ostrich trying

00:13:29 ◼   ► to pretend that it's not an issue. But be wary that things may not be all roses and

00:13:36 ◼   ► daffodils in the crash plan for small business category.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I'm wondering how you can get, if it's possible to get that native version even if you're a small

00:13:46 ◼   ► business customer. But I've been running the Java version forever and I said it's not,

00:13:49 ◼   ► like it doesn't bother me. I don't see the application. I just see the icon in the menu

00:13:53 ◼   ► your bar it's probably using a lot more memory and CPU than I want but it has pretty good

00:13:56 ◼   ► controls about you can tell it don't even start doing a backup unless the machine has

00:14:00 ◼   ► been idle for a certain period of time you can always stop it if it's in the middle of

00:14:03 ◼   ► doing something and honestly with a with a big Mac with lots of RAM and an SSD you just

00:14:09 ◼   ► don't notice it running even though it's a bloated Java application and you know it's

00:14:13 ◼   ► probably doing ridiculous things and if you bring up activity monitor you may get sad

00:14:16 ◼   ► about it but you know you can always pause it and tell it not to run now and then just

00:14:20 ◼   ► do your stuff and then let it run when you're away where you don't have to see what it's

00:14:23 ◼   ► doing to your computer? Fair enough. Speaking of CrashPlan, there is a 5 terabyte migration

00:14:29 ◼   ► limit, which I was not aware of. So this is a CrashPlan support article entitled "Migrate

00:14:34 ◼   ► Your CrashPlan for Home Accounts to CrashPlan for Small Business." It's dated a little over

00:14:39 ◼   ► a week ago. And it says that, "Hey, your backup, do my backups continue automatically?" And

00:14:46 ◼   ► the backup type, "Cloud backups to CrashPlan Central," CrashPlan Central being their cloud

00:14:50 ◼   ► offering. Does it continue? Yes, except very large backups over 5 terabytes. And just seconds

00:14:55 ◼   ► ago I took a look to see how big my latest backup was to CrashPlane Central. Would anyone

00:15:00 ◼   ► like to guess how big it was?

00:15:01 ◼   ► >> 5.1.

00:15:02 ◼   ► >> 5.3 terabytes, woo!

00:15:04 ◼   ► >> 3, yeah. I'm just under 5. I'm like 4.8 or something, so I'm happy. I've already done

00:15:09 ◼   ► this conversion. It already updated my client. It updated my client to the--it's still the

00:15:13 ◼   ► Java client, but the color scheme is different. I'm pretty sure that's the only change.

00:15:16 ◼   ► >> Oh, interesting.

00:15:17 ◼   ► >> So I'm running 4.9 or whatever. But yeah, it just continued my backups.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Oh man, that's, that's, I'm jealous.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Because apparently I'm, so it's not that I can't use this new home and business, or small

00:15:28 ◼   ► business thing, but apparently I'm going to have to re-upload everything.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Hooray.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Maybe you should contact them and say, "Very large backups over 5 terabytes?

00:15:37 ◼   ► Well, I'm a little bit over.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Like how, how, you know, can't you just, you know, grandfather me in?

00:15:44 ◼   ► I'm close."

00:15:45 ◼   ► Like, I don't know.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Yeah, something like that.

00:15:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:48 ◼   ► I'm sad.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I'm sad. I need to take action on this. I just, I really don't want to. I just want

00:15:53 ◼   ► it to go away. And ignoring it does not make it go away, but I wish it did.

00:15:58 ◼   ► All right. So ARQ versus Backblaze versus Crash Plan on saving Mac metadata. So this

00:16:05 ◼   ► is something I've never paid attention to because I don't really care enough, even

00:16:09 ◼   ► though I probably should. So as the person who is most likely to care about this, John,

00:16:14 ◼   ► why don't you tell me about what's going on here?

00:16:16 ◼   ► This was a larger story like maybe two years ago.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I think Backblaze was starting to come to prominence and Arc was a lot newer than it

00:16:24 ◼   ► is now.

00:16:25 ◼   ► And one of Arc's big selling points was, "Hey, we back up all your Mac metadata, like every

00:16:30 ◼   ► little bit of it, all the labels and the dates and the comment field and like every little

00:16:34 ◼   ► weird bit, the finder flags and all the other stuff, we back it all up."

00:16:38 ◼   ► And there's another program, I'm not sure if it's associated with Arc, if it's written

00:16:41 ◼   ► by the same guy or if it's totally independent, but it called Backup Bouncer that was trying

00:16:45 ◼   ► to say, if you make a backup and restore the backup,

00:16:50 ◼   ► is it exactly like it was before, down to the bit,

00:16:52 ◼   ► down to every single piece of metadata?

00:16:55 ◼   ► And you could care more or less about different things

00:16:58 ◼   ► at various times.

00:16:59 ◼   ► People who use labels, like Mac OS's labels,

00:17:03 ◼   ► where you can label your items in the Finder

00:17:05 ◼   ► with different colors and give the colors

00:17:06 ◼   ► names and stuff like that.

00:17:08 ◼   ► If you use that extensively, or tags,

00:17:11 ◼   ► which is the expansion of labels,

00:17:13 ◼   ► If you use that stuff extensively and you do a backup,

00:17:16 ◼   ► but that's how you organize your files, right?

00:17:18 ◼   ► And you do a backup and you restore

00:17:19 ◼   ► and all that stuff is gone,

00:17:21 ◼   ► that is essentially data loss for you.

00:17:22 ◼   ► So you care a lot about that metadata.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Backup Bouncer is down to the bit thing.

00:17:28 ◼   ► I remember like SuperDuper would fail on Backup Bouncer

00:17:31 ◼   ► because it didn't restore permissions on things

00:17:34 ◼   ► that didn't have the rights to restore,

00:17:37 ◼   ► like it changed the ownership or changed some,

00:17:40 ◼   ► like it's very picky about exactly what you wanna have,

00:17:43 ◼   ► But the general line from these companies about why their products don't do well on

00:17:49 ◼   ► BackupBouncer is like, "Well, we are not a bit-for-bit imaging system.

00:17:54 ◼   ► We are a data backup solution.

00:17:57 ◼   ► So you're not going to get your disk back bit-for-bit exactly how it was.

00:18:00 ◼   ► You're just going to get your data back."

00:18:02 ◼   ► CrashPlan reportedly backs up metadata better than Backblaze.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Backblaze drops almost all of it on the floor and just backs up your data.

00:18:10 ◼   ► CrashPlan does better.

00:18:11 ◼   ► is apparently 100%, like it'll get every single little bit

00:18:14 ◼   ► 'cause that's, you know, it's the bespoke,

00:18:17 ◼   ► artisanal handcrafted backup program just for Mac users.

00:18:20 ◼   ► And a lot of people ask me how I feel about this

00:18:22 ◼   ► since I love all my metadata and everything.

00:18:23 ◼   ► Well, one of the reasons is I don't use labels and tags,

00:18:26 ◼   ► A, is because I know how they're implemented and it's gross,

00:18:28 ◼   ► but B, I fear how that stuff will,

00:18:33 ◼   ► if that stuff will survive.

00:18:34 ◼   ► So I wouldn't want to rely on it

00:18:36 ◼   ► and then have it get lost in some kind of backup thing.

00:18:39 ◼   ► And like we said before, online backup is absolutely the last resort.

00:18:43 ◼   ► So it being the lowest fidelity backup I have, SuperDuper being the highest

00:18:46 ◼   ► fidelity where it's pretty much exactly bit for bit the disk that I had.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Time machine kind of being in the middle and then backblaze being the lowest

00:18:56 ◼   ► fidelity.

00:18:56 ◼   ► I'm okay with that, right?

00:18:58 ◼   ► There's trade-offs.

00:18:59 ◼   ► You're paying $5 a month to store some obscene amount of memory on someone else's

00:19:03 ◼   ► server.

00:19:03 ◼   ► You know, I'm, I understand again, if that, if I find myself restoring from that so

00:19:09 ◼   ► So many things have gone wrong that I just accept that, you know, every little bit of

00:19:13 ◼   ► metadata won't be there.

00:19:14 ◼   ► But because of that, I also don't use the metadata for any, it's not an essential part

00:19:19 ◼   ► of my workflow for organizing my files.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Just because so many things, not just backup software, but so many things are not, won't

00:19:26 ◼   ► honor and copy that metadata.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Like the Apple's own CP commands and MV commands and stuff will for the most part honor it.

00:19:32 ◼   ► But lots of other tools, like even if you install the third party build of our sync

00:19:35 ◼   ► and haven't compiled it with the right options that might not bring your extended attributes

00:19:39 ◼   ► over unless you don't pass the right flags and stuff.

00:19:41 ◼   ► I just can't rely on myself to be careful to preserve that stuff, so I never put in

00:19:45 ◼   ► anything I really care about in metadata like that, which is sad because I wish it was pervasive

00:19:51 ◼   ► and supported everywhere, but the lowest common denominator, which is a mathematically incorrect

00:19:55 ◼   ► expression, but you all know what I mean, is so much lower than what it is on the Mac.

00:20:00 ◼   ► So the common set of metadata that you can be confident is going to survive everywhere

00:20:05 ◼   ► is higher than it has ever been, but still way lower than what macOS supports. So backup programs,

00:20:13 ◼   ► being on that lower end, I just accept as another sad reality, just like, file name extensions.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Sorry, Jon.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Someday we'll get there. Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection.

00:20:23 ◼   ► That went right over my head.

00:20:26 ◼   ► I know I've heard it before. I think it's a Beatles lyric?

00:20:29 ◼   ► Have you — yeah, close, close, Margot. Have you shown Adam the Muppet Movie?

00:20:34 ◼   ► Oh, there we go. No.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a little bit slow pace for kids because it's like a 70s movie and movies were slower back

00:20:42 ◼   ► then, but still got some good songs. You know what I loved? Charles Bronson was in like the

00:20:49 ◼   ► Great Muppet Caper or something like that. It was another Muppets movie. I forget what the official

00:20:54 ◼   ► title was, but I remember loving that as a kid and like many years ago I watched it with Aaron

00:21:00 ◼   ► and you know as an adult and I was like oh this movie is not that good.

00:21:03 ◼   ► The original NOM movie though is very sweet and has good songs in it and has good production

00:21:08 ◼   ► values and Kermit rides a bicycle so Marco can watch it and feel some kinship.

00:21:11 ◼   ► What kind of saddle does he use?

00:21:13 ◼   ► Yeah it's hard to tell.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Is he properly fit on his sit bones?

00:21:16 ◼   ► I don't know if frogs have sit bones.

00:21:18 ◼   ► I'm still not sure if people have sit bones.

00:21:20 ◼   ► Technically he's got someone's hand up his butt but through the magic of special effects

00:21:26 ◼   ► he's riding a bike.

00:21:27 ◼   ► It's pretty cool.

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00:23:23 ◼   ► All right, so let's talk about—a lot of people have written in with a lot of anger

00:23:32 ◼   ► about Backblaze's 30-day retention policy.

00:23:36 ◼   ► So this is something that I could not possibly care less about, but there's a lot of very

00:23:42 ◼   ► grumpy people about it.

00:23:43 ◼   ► So if I understand things right, Backblaze has said, if you have a, say, external hard

00:23:51 ◼   ► drive that is physically connected to your computer and thus qualifies for Backblaze

00:23:56 ◼   ► backups, if you don't plug it in every 30 days, then they will delete those backups.

00:24:03 ◼   ► So let's say, you know, I have an external hard drive that has a bunch of pictures on

00:24:08 ◼   ► it.

00:24:09 ◼   ► If I don't plug it in at least once a month, at the end of a month, if I haven't plugged

00:24:12 ◼   ► it in, Backblaze will delete all those files.

00:24:15 ◼   ► And there's a lot of people that are really, really grumpy about this that have written

00:24:18 ◼   ► us and are like, "Why aren't you talking about this?

00:24:20 ◼   ► How can you let this stand?

00:24:22 ◼   ► I just don't care.

00:24:24 ◼   ► I don't understand why people think it's acceptable

00:24:27 ◼   ► for Backblaze to hold onto this data in perpetuity

00:24:30 ◼   ► just because they're paying them $5 a month

00:24:34 ◼   ► or whatever it is.

00:24:34 ◼   ► - Crash Plan does it for $10 a month.

00:24:36 ◼   ► I mean, it all comes down to the business model.

00:24:38 ◼   ► - Oh, they did it.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - Backblaze, the corporate,

00:24:40 ◼   ► for $10 is the new plan that they are doing, right?

00:24:43 ◼   ► So Backblaze has been on Twitter talking to people

00:24:46 ◼   ► and they say like,

00:24:47 ◼   ► "Oh, we consider revisiting this policy, blah, blah, blah."

00:24:49 ◼   ► But yeah, it just comes down to the economics.

00:24:50 ◼   ► If this is a way for Backblaze to make it

00:24:54 ◼   ► so they don't lose money and cancel this plan,

00:24:56 ◼   ► because you can imagine just hooking up every hard drive

00:25:00 ◼   ► you have and pushing it up

00:25:01 ◼   ► and then just never reconnecting it.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I'd do it because I keep most of my hard drives unmounted.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And occasionally Backblaze yells at me

00:25:07 ◼   ► and tells me I haven't mounted one in a while.

00:25:08 ◼   ► I just mount it and it's fine.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Like it sends you a reminder.

00:25:10 ◼   ► You're not gonna not know that it's happening.

00:25:12 ◼   ► But if Backblaze wanted to like revisit this,

00:25:15 ◼   ► what they would have to do is say,

00:25:17 ◼   ► you can store as much as you want,

00:25:18 ◼   ► but now we're gonna have to charge you

00:25:19 ◼   ► on some sort of usage basis.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Maybe there's a flat fee up to a certain size,

00:25:23 ◼   ► but once you get beyond that,

00:25:24 ◼   ► you have to pay an additional X number of dollars

00:25:26 ◼   ► for a different, you know what I mean?

00:25:28 ◼   ► Like it doesn't have to be exactly a la carte,

00:25:29 ◼   ► you pay for every byte like S3.

00:25:31 ◼   ► It can still be the insurance model

00:25:33 ◼   ► where everybody pays the same amount

00:25:35 ◼   ► and most people do very little,

00:25:36 ◼   ► but a few people do a lot and it all evens out,

00:25:38 ◼   ► like that's their business model.

00:25:39 ◼   ► To support your ability to just hook up a hard drive,

00:25:42 ◼   ► two terabyte hard drive once,

00:25:44 ◼   ► let it back up over the course of the week

00:25:45 ◼   ► and then file it away in a shelf,

00:25:47 ◼   ► confident that those two terabytes will be there forever,

00:25:49 ◼   ► Backblaze will store those two terabytes for you no problem.

00:25:51 ◼   ► You just gotta give them enough money

00:25:52 ◼   ► to make it worth their while.

00:25:54 ◼   ► And how much more do you have to give it

00:25:55 ◼   ► than $5 a month?

00:25:56 ◼   ► I don't know, they can figure out how the math works.

00:25:58 ◼   ► But for all the people asking for that feature,

00:26:00 ◼   ► it's going to cost you more money.

00:26:02 ◼   ► And I think those people will be willing to cost more money.

00:26:03 ◼   ► So I think Backblaze should come up with a plan

00:26:06 ◼   ► that has slightly different policies,

00:26:08 ◼   ► that is priced slightly differently,

00:26:10 ◼   ► and for its extreme users, they would use that.

00:26:13 ◼   ► They would get more money out of the extreme users.

00:26:15 ◼   ► And I think they would just have happy customers overall, because most people don't care about

00:26:18 ◼   ► this, but the people who do, as we noted, are very worked up about it.

00:26:23 ◼   ► So Backblaze, you're leaving money on the table.

00:26:25 ◼   ► Go take some money from the people who want their stuff to be stored forever.

00:26:29 ◼   ► I think one of the main roots of that anger is like, you know, Backblaze advertises unlimited.

00:26:36 ◼   ► And unlimited in computers is never really unlimited.

00:26:40 ◼   ► There's always exceptions to that, because it's impossible to build a business on being

00:26:44 ◼   ► truly unlimited. It's easy to understand business models that don't claim to be unlimited and

00:26:53 ◼   ► just show you their pricing and their limits right up front. I think the people who are

00:26:57 ◼   ► angry about that are probably angry because they expect truly unlimited because that's

00:27:03 ◼   ► how it's advertised. This is an exception to that. I think you put it well, that's why

00:27:11 ◼   ► they're able to stay in business is because of limitations like that that are, I think,

00:27:15 ◼   ► pretty reasonable limitations.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Yeah, and like I said, it's not a secret. They're gonna pop dialogues in your faces.

00:27:19 ◼   ► I think they pop the first dialogues in like 10 days or 14 days like, "Hey, I haven't seen

00:27:23 ◼   ► this disc in 10 days. Perhaps you want to plug it back in." Like, they're not secretly

00:27:27 ◼   ► trying to delete all your data, but this is the way the economics work for $5. You can

00:27:32 ◼   ► really store as much as you want for $5, but you can't, like, briefly connect a hard drive

00:27:36 ◼   ► to your computer. Like, have your friends come and bring their hard drives. Hook them

00:27:40 ◼   ► to your computer, let them back up, and then take their hardware back to their house and

00:27:42 ◼   ► never visit it again. Now you have a permanent backup of their stuff just in case they lose

00:27:45 ◼   ► it. Like that's the model they're trying to avoid. People just, you know, using it as

00:27:50 ◼   ► a weigh station to drop off a couple terabytes, right? That's not sustainable for $5 a month

00:27:55 ◼   ► flat fee.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Yep. So a lot of other people have written in and said, "Hey, you know, I don't know

00:28:02 ◼   ► if you guys were aware, but you all have Synologies." And Synology does have a peer-to-peer backup

00:28:09 ◼   ► system, strategy, etc. Why don't you do that? And I will be the bad guy and say, I don't

00:28:16 ◼   ► want to share my space with you two jerks. And it's mine and I don't want to share. And

00:28:21 ◼   ► I would probably, if either of you asked me, be willing to offer up what I could. But last

00:28:30 ◼   ► I heard, Jon, you said last episode or the one before.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Jon Sorrentino There's no room in the end. I don't have

00:28:35 ◼   ► a square to spare. Insert your own reference here.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. So John doesn't have any excess space to offer, and thus if you don't have

00:28:46 ◼   ► any excess space, I won't have enough to offer you a backup. Marco and I maybe could set

00:28:51 ◼   ► this up, but I don't know. I feel like this is the sort of thing where I should be paying

00:28:57 ◼   ► a company to handle this for me, which is what I will probably end up doing. And I don't

00:29:05 ◼   ► feel comfortable asking even you guys, who I think would probably say, you know, all

00:29:09 ◼   ► things being equal, would probably say, "Yeah, sure, you can back up to mysology." I don't

00:29:13 ◼   ► feel comfortable talking to you guys about it, let alone, you know, anyone else I might

00:29:17 ◼   ► know. So I don't really view this as a reasonable option for me, but maybe I'm just being a

00:29:22 ◼   ► big baby.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't, it's not a reasonable option for most people, and I wouldn't say yes, because

00:29:27 ◼   ► I don't want the responsibility of holding your data. Like, the whole point of cloud

00:29:30 ◼   ► backup is I want it to be far away from my house so if the house burns down it's

00:29:34 ◼   ► okay and I want it to be someplace where it's somebody's job to make sure my data

00:29:40 ◼   ► is actually there. A lot of people do this where they do a hard drive and back

00:29:44 ◼   ► it up and put it at a relative's house that is better than nothing I'm not

00:29:47 ◼   ► going to discourage you from doing that but in that situation and I've been in

00:29:50 ◼   ► many times what always happens is you forget to keep bringing the hard drive

00:29:55 ◼   ► back and forth because it's a pain and if it's network based like oh you don't

00:29:58 ◼   ► have to do that. It's all magic over the network. Is the person at the other end invested in

00:30:03 ◼   ► making sure that your backup continues to be successful and that the hard drive that's

00:30:08 ◼   ► doing it isn't filling up or doesn't have some bad sectors and stuff like that? It's

00:30:11 ◼   ► not their job. And they don't want to be responsible for that. And if something goes wrong, now

00:30:15 ◼   ► you're mad at a friend or a relative. And there have been products on Kickstarter and

00:30:19 ◼   ► stuff that try to do with strangers. Like, "We'll all share our data and it'll be a big

00:30:22 ◼   ► distributed P2P cloud. So far that hasn't worked out. It's a good idea. I think if space

00:30:28 ◼   ► was cheaper and bandwidth was more, it would work out. But right now I heartily recommend

00:30:33 ◼   ► sending your data to some company whose job it is to make sure your data is safe. It doesn't

00:30:37 ◼   ► mean the company is going to be perfect either. But A, if the company screws things up, you

00:30:41 ◼   ► can feel fine about being mad at the company. B, you can sue the company. Maybe, probably

00:30:45 ◼   ► not because of their user agreement. But anyway, you can get as mad as you want about them.

00:30:49 ◼   ► They have deep pockets, so if you want some sort of recourse, you can get it.

00:30:52 ◼   ► You would never want to be in this relationship with a relative or a friend where through

00:30:56 ◼   ► some fault that you will argue about, your offsite backup is corrupt or not there or

00:31:03 ◼   ► something goes wrong or whatever.

00:31:05 ◼   ► And then people being bitter about the hard drive space you're using, that they want to

00:31:08 ◼   ► reclaim that to put more of their ripped Blu-rays on.

00:31:11 ◼   ► It is not a relationship you want to be in.

00:31:15 ◼   ► I do not recommend this, even though there's lots of good software for it that makes it

00:31:18 ◼   ► easy. But like I said, all that said, if that's your only option, like if that's the only thing

00:31:24 ◼   ► you can do, whether it's carrying hard drives back and forth in a car or having your two

00:31:27 ◼   ► Synologies to talk to each other, it is better than nothing, but I really recommend making a

00:31:32 ◼   ► company do it. You know, I think I would almost feel, not even almost, I think I would probably

00:31:38 ◼   ► feel more comfortable saying to one of you guys, "I am shipping a Synology to your house,

00:31:44 ◼   ► a second Synology." I don't want to run your Synology. I don't want to run your hardware

00:31:48 ◼   ► in my house. It's hard enough for me to run my own stuff. My kid's gonna spill peanut

00:31:52 ◼   ► butter on it, my basement's gonna flood, the mice are gonna poop in it, it's just no.

00:31:57 ◼   ► I totally understand that, yeah. Yeah, I also don't want the responsibility. It's much less

00:32:03 ◼   ► about the physical having the hardware or having the space or the money required to

00:32:10 ◼   ► run and power it. It's more about I don't want you to depend on this box in my house

00:32:16 ◼   ► connected, you know, in my garage,

00:32:18 ◼   ► that's probably overheating itself slowly.

00:32:20 ◼   ► Like, I don't need the stress of that.

00:32:23 ◼   ► And I would hate to be in a position

00:32:27 ◼   ► where your stuff went bad and you were depending on me

00:32:30 ◼   ► and this thing being perfectly operating in my house

00:32:32 ◼   ► to fix that.

00:32:33 ◼   ► And talk about like, you know,

00:32:35 ◼   ► that's fine for the three of us.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Like, most people don't have friends

00:32:39 ◼   ► with giant NAS boxes in their garages or closements.

00:32:42 ◼   ► Like, this is not a generalizable solution.

00:32:45 ◼   ► It barely would even work for us.

00:32:48 ◼   ► And we have giant NAS boxes with giant hard drives

00:32:51 ◼   ► and fast internet connections, and we're all friends.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Most people don't have that kind of setup,

00:32:56 ◼   ► and even the ones like us who do

00:32:58 ◼   ► probably shouldn't do that if we have other options.

00:33:01 ◼   ► - I think it's safer to lend people money

00:33:03 ◼   ► than to store their backups.

00:33:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:06 ◼   ► Because if you give people money,

00:33:07 ◼   ► you can just say, "This is just a gift.

00:33:08 ◼   ► "You never have to pay me back.

00:33:09 ◼   ► "Here it is, we're friends."

00:33:10 ◼   ► Whereas the data, it's like,

00:33:12 ◼   ► "You're keeping this safe for me, right?"

00:33:14 ◼   ► Like it's easier to keep people's children safe than their data because you forget the

00:33:19 ◼   ► stupid hard drive is there, you forget if it's still running, you forget if things are

00:33:23 ◼   ► going bad, the person on the other end doesn't know that their thing is failing because you

00:33:27 ◼   ► have some -- it's just -- it's not -- you are not a data center.

00:33:30 ◼   ► You don't have a climate control thing with aisles and aisles of racked computers, you

00:33:35 ◼   ► know, like you just -- you don't have that.

00:33:37 ◼   ► You don't have redundant power backups.

00:33:39 ◼   ► You don't -- just you're not in the business of being a backup thing.

00:33:42 ◼   ► So it's just going to be sad all around because if something goes wrong, then what do you

00:33:47 ◼   ► do?

00:33:48 ◼   ► You just sit there and try not to blame each other, but then you do feel bad about it.

00:33:51 ◼   ► I feel like it's a much better feeling for you to back up stuff to back blaze and then

00:33:55 ◼   ► all your data goes corrupt on back blaze at the last moment.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Then you just be righteously mad at back blaze.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Being mad at cooperation is what Americans are best at.

00:34:01 ◼   ► We don't want to ruin your relationships.

00:34:03 ◼   ► Just I'm never flying Delta again.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Like you can do that all you want and be fine.

00:34:07 ◼   ► You don't want to sacrifice your personal relationships, but you'll keep you vibrant

00:34:11 ◼   ► and extend your life according to all the studies.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's funny you bring that up because the unfortunately named Pahishfood in the

00:34:18 ◼   ► chat said backing up each other's storage is like lending money. Don't do it with your

00:34:22 ◼   ► friends, do it with the business, and I agree with that.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Like I said, I think lending money is better because you can say it's better than backing

00:34:29 ◼   ► up because lending money you can lend it and say, "Oh, well, I'm pretending this is a loan,

00:34:33 ◼   ► but in my heart of hearts I'm realizing this is a gift," and just say, "I never expect

00:34:36 ◼   ► to see this money back and I'll be fine with it because it's a nice thing to do." There's

00:34:39 ◼   ► There's no ongoing relationship where you're like maintaining that money for the person

00:34:42 ◼   ► or anything.

00:34:43 ◼   ► It'd be more like if they gave you, instead of putting their money into savings, they

00:34:46 ◼   ► gave the money to you to invest, then that would be the kind of responsibility you're

00:34:50 ◼   ► getting for data.

00:34:51 ◼   ► It's like, and then they come back and say, "How's all that money I gave you?

00:34:54 ◼   ► How's that investment going?"

00:34:55 ◼   ► You're like, "Eh."

00:34:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:57 ◼   ► It's going okay.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And then they get mad at you.

00:34:59 ◼   ► "Why didn't you do a better job of investing my money?"

00:35:02 ◼   ► It's like, "Just why didn't you not make me do this?"

00:35:06 ◼   ► No.

00:35:07 ◼   ► No.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and I mean, to be clear, I agree with you that lending money to a friend is maybe

00:35:14 ◼   ► not the best thing in the world, but it is way better than being a backup strategy.

00:35:19 ◼   ► So to hopefully come to the end of this, there's only a couple more things about backups.

00:35:23 ◼   ► Jon, tell me about Synology C2 backups.

00:35:26 ◼   ► This is still in beta, and it is apparently a Synology thing.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I think it's only in Germany too, so it's not really relevant to us, but Synology has

00:35:32 ◼   ► their own.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Everyone wants to riff on S3.

00:35:34 ◼   ► You got B2, and now you got C2.

00:35:36 ◼   ► we're running out of letters and number combos here.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Your Synology will do a backup of itself

00:35:42 ◼   ► to Synology's own cloud storage.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Are they just reselling S3?

00:35:45 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:35:46 ◼   ► But anyway, if everyone wanted to know, that's a thing.

00:35:48 ◼   ► We'll put the link in the show notes

00:35:49 ◼   ► if you have a Synology and you're interested

00:35:50 ◼   ► in looking at the C2 beta,

00:35:51 ◼   ► especially if you live near Frankfurt, Germany

00:35:53 ◼   ► or wherever the hell this is, check it out.

00:35:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's expensive though.

00:35:59 ◼   ► - Maybe they are reselling S3.

00:36:01 ◼   ► It's 70 euros per terabyte per year.

00:36:06 ◼   ► So that's $83-ish, according to DuckDuckGo,

00:36:10 ◼   ► per terabyte, and if I have five,

00:36:12 ◼   ► that's $415 a year for me.

00:36:14 ◼   ► That is not inexpensive.

00:36:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think Backblaze B2 is still probably

00:36:19 ◼   ► the cheapest option I know of for actual pay-per-gig,

00:36:24 ◼   ► but otherwise, you know, unlimited in usage

00:36:26 ◼   ► as long as you pay for it kind of thing.

00:36:29 ◼   ► I don't know of anything cheaper than B2 yet, but I'm happy to hear suggestions.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:34 ◼   ► Additionally, a friend of the show, Dan Morin, has written a post for Macworld, which is

00:36:39 ◼   ► apparently still a thing, saying why the Mac needs iCloud backup.

00:36:43 ◼   ► So why not, I guess, right?

00:36:46 ◼   ► I mean, iCloud is foolproof and definitely is a justifiable use, is backing up all of

00:36:51 ◼   ► your data that you cannot possibly lose.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Why wouldn't that work?

00:36:54 ◼   ► It's backing up a lot of data.

00:36:55 ◼   ► A lot of iOS devices are backed up.

00:36:57 ◼   ► It's not like that only Apple knows for sure how many of them. I mean you get some amount

00:37:01 ◼   ► of iCloud backup stuff. I forget. It's some obscenely small amount that you get free.

00:37:04 ◼   ► Five gigs? I think it's five gigs, yeah.

00:37:07 ◼   ► Right. But anyway, and you could pay for more. But the Mac just doesn't have that. And this

00:37:11 ◼   ► is just one of those cases where the Mac doesn't have a feature that iOS has had for years

00:37:14 ◼   ► and years. And a lot of people asked about like when is Apple going to do iCloud backup

00:37:19 ◼   ► for the Mac. It seems inevitable if they eventually get around to it because they already do iCloud

00:37:23 ◼   ► backups. It's not a new business. They would do the same model of giving you a useless

00:37:27 ◼   ► amount of storage for free and then you pay for more and I bet people would use it because

00:37:32 ◼   ► why shouldn't Apple be in the cloud backup business for all of its devices? It's basically

00:37:36 ◼   ► in the cloud backup business for all of its devices minus a rounding error which we call

00:37:41 ◼   ► the Mac these days. So I hope Apple does do that because I mean first of all what choice

00:37:45 ◼   ► do we have for cloud backups on the phone? It's not like we can use Backblazer Crashplant

00:37:48 ◼   ► on our phone. We all do iCloud backups even if we also do iTunes backups and for the most

00:37:54 ◼   ► part it seems to sort of work and it's certainly better than nothing. So Apple should do that

00:37:58 ◼   ► eventually.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And also just like, you know, you can make jokes about like how bad Apple services have

00:38:04 ◼   ► been so far in the past and everything like that, but I think iCloud backup is pretty

00:38:08 ◼   ► solid. Like, and most of their recent services are pretty solid. You know, some of their

00:38:13 ◼   ► intelligence based things like Siri and things like that could use some work, but like the

00:38:19 ◼   ► stuff that's about just like storing your data responsibly and syncing it and everything,

00:38:23 ◼   ► stuff has been pretty solid for a while now. So I am totally fine with the idea of Apple

00:38:30 ◼   ► offering this. And it's one of those things, it's similar to, like when they launched Time

00:38:34 ◼   ► Machine, there was a lot of criticism about various limitations or requirements Time Machine

00:38:41 ◼   ► had, but like the one thing you can always say in defense of moves like this is, "Well,

00:38:45 ◼   ► it's better than people who use nothing at all." Like it's better than nothing, right?

00:38:50 ◼   ► And so with iOS devices backing up to iCloud,

00:38:53 ◼   ► like, you know, that's another situation where like,

00:38:56 ◼   ► it's better than not having,

00:38:57 ◼   ► even the five gigs they give you is better than nothing.

00:39:00 ◼   ► It'd be nice to have more by default

00:39:02 ◼   ► because it would be nice to have a reasonable amount

00:39:05 ◼   ► for all iPhones sold that just came

00:39:07 ◼   ► with the price of the iPhone.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I think that would be a wonderful thing for Apple to do.

00:39:11 ◼   ► I'm not holding my breath on that,

00:39:13 ◼   ► but I wish they would do things like that.

00:39:15 ◼   ► But, 'cause you know, having any backup

00:39:17 ◼   ► is better than having no backup.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And this would be the kind of thing where like,

00:39:21 ◼   ► yeah, not every Mac owner would or should

00:39:24 ◼   ► use an iCloud backup service if it were offered on the Mac,

00:39:27 ◼   ► but it would be a really easy, fast way

00:39:30 ◼   ► to get lots of Mac users to have a backup

00:39:33 ◼   ► who otherwise would have had nothing at all.

00:39:35 ◼   ► And that's good that you want that.

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00:41:09 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:41:12 ◼   ► - All right, so that's the end of the follow up

00:41:14 ◼   ► and we should move on to Ask ATP.

00:41:17 ◼   ► - I don't know, no.

00:41:18 ◼   ► - What do you mean no?

00:41:19 ◼   ► - One more item, quickie for you.

00:41:21 ◼   ► - Oh no, there's nothing else.

00:41:23 ◼   ► - I believe there is.

00:41:24 ◼   ► - So Casey, I heard that you might've had a keyboard flaw

00:41:29 ◼   ► on your new MacBook Adorable that has this wonderful keyboard

00:41:34 ◼   ► that everyone loves so much that definitely

00:41:36 ◼   ► doesn't have constant flaws for almost everybody.

00:41:38 ◼   ► No, no, no, that's fake news.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Oh, oh, okay.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Just wanted to make sure.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Yeah, so my beloved MacBook Adorable apparently got an infinitesimally small piece of dust

00:41:48 ◼   ► under the numeral four key.

00:41:51 ◼   ► And because of that, it was mushy for days until I finally had the time to go to Target

00:41:59 ◼   ► and buy myself compressed air, which is something I haven't bought in probably five, maybe ten

00:42:04 ◼   ► years.

00:42:05 ◼   ► And then take the compressed air to my MacBook and blow out the infinitesimally small piece

00:42:11 ◼   ► of dust.

00:42:12 ◼   ► And then subsequent to that, it took me a few hours to realize I had not really removed

00:42:17 ◼   ► the dust but simply relocated it to under the caps lock key, which I don't generally

00:42:23 ◼   ► use, but I happened to use a few hours later and was like, "Oh, well that's mushy and

00:42:27 ◼   ► gross.

00:42:28 ◼   ► I guess I know where that dust went."

00:42:30 ◼   ► And then I had to take the compressed air again to the caps lock key in order to blow

00:42:34 ◼   ► it out again.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And now I think my keyboard is fully functioning once more.

00:42:38 ◼   ► But yeah, very frustrating, because the difference between the regularly functioning keys and

00:42:45 ◼   ► a key that has just an iota of dust under it is night and day.

00:42:52 ◼   ► It is disgusting to use a key that has dust under it because it feels mushy and gross

00:42:56 ◼   ► and terrible.

00:42:57 ◼   ► So I still love my MacBook Adorable.

00:43:00 ◼   ► I still do recommend it, especially as like an accessory Mac.

00:43:03 ◼   ► But the tolerance for dust and debris on this thing is approaching zero, which is really

00:43:11 ◼   ► unfortunate.

00:43:12 ◼   ► It's like the opposite of that Panasonic Toughbook.

00:43:14 ◼   ► Remember that?

00:43:15 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, I do.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, I do.

00:43:17 ◼   ► The yellow laptop.

00:43:18 ◼   ► Yeah, the laptop meant to work in all sorts of environments.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Maybe you should get one of those glass boxes with the little holes with the gloves in them

00:43:24 ◼   ► that the scientists use when they're working with hazardous materials.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Just put the MacBook Adorable inside the box, and when you want to use it, just put your

00:43:30 ◼   ► hands into those gloves.

00:43:32 ◼   ► I hear you.

00:43:33 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, so that was sad times.

00:43:34 ◼   ► - I'm about to get one of these at work, by the way.

00:43:36 ◼   ► I'm about to get a 2017 MacBook Pro at work.

00:43:40 ◼   ► I'll let you know if and when my key,

00:43:41 ◼   ► I think my keyboard will be fine

00:43:42 ◼   ► because I plan to never touch it.

00:43:44 ◼   ► I plan to keep the thing closed

00:43:45 ◼   ► and use it hooked up to a monitor

00:43:46 ◼   ► and just use it as like a three times more powerful version

00:43:50 ◼   ► of my Mac Pro that I have at work now.

00:43:52 ◼   ► Hooked up to the very same monitor, mouse and keyboard.

00:43:54 ◼   ► But we'll see.

00:43:56 ◼   ► - You say that, but as Marco and I were just recounting

00:43:58 ◼   ► an episode or two ago, clamshell mode is the worst.

00:44:02 ◼   ► I'll leave it cracked, but the point is,

00:44:04 ◼   ► I'm gonna not use that keyboard if I can help it.

00:44:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's-- - I mean, the thing is,

00:44:09 ◼   ► like, and I, I'm obviously always tempted

00:44:12 ◼   ► to launch another rant about how this keyboard is awful

00:44:15 ◼   ► to be on all the computers, but it makes some sense

00:44:19 ◼   ► for this awful keyboard to be on that computer.

00:44:22 ◼   ► The one you have, Casey, not the one John's getting

00:44:24 ◼   ► and the one that I have, but it makes sense.

00:44:27 ◼   ► The MacBook Adorable One 12 inch, whatever we're calling it,

00:44:30 ◼   ► is super, super small and thin at all other costs.

00:44:34 ◼   ► That is what that computer is for.

00:44:36 ◼   ► So I honestly can't complain that much

00:44:39 ◼   ► that they put this incredibly controversial,

00:44:43 ◼   ► unreliable keyboard in that model.

00:44:45 ◼   ► - Well, you can complain about the reliability.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Like, it's fine to make it super slim

00:44:49 ◼   ► and compromise and everything,

00:44:50 ◼   ► but reliability, no matter what you do,

00:44:52 ◼   ► that should be the one thing,

00:44:53 ◼   ► like, the job of the keyboard is when you press the key,

00:44:55 ◼   ► it makes a letter on your screen, right?

00:44:56 ◼   ► So it can't, we shouldn't be accepting

00:45:00 ◼   ► this big of a downgrade in expected reliability.

00:45:02 ◼   ► 'Cause every keyboard goes bad eventually.

00:45:04 ◼   ► I've broken a bunch of the flat aluminum ones,

00:45:06 ◼   ► but they last for years before something goes wrong.

00:45:09 ◼   ► And I mean, it could be whatever the thing is,

00:45:12 ◼   ► not confirmation bias, but where you're hyper aware

00:45:16 ◼   ► of people telling you tales of woe about their keyboards.

00:45:18 ◼   ► But boy, we've heard a lot of them

00:45:19 ◼   ► from people who have this keyboard.

00:45:21 ◼   ► And it just seems like a big change in reliability,

00:45:25 ◼   ► in keyboard reliability.

00:45:28 ◼   ► All laptop keyboards are gonna go crappy eventually,

00:45:31 ◼   ► probably, but within the first several months

00:45:34 ◼   ► to have a key stop working to the point where it affects,

00:45:36 ◼   ► it's not like, oh, it feels weird when I type,

00:45:38 ◼   ► like to the point where it doesn't make the letter

00:45:40 ◼   ► on the screen, that's just not acceptable,

00:45:42 ◼   ► even for the slim one.

00:45:44 ◼   ► - That's true, yeah.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Because it's like, again, it's like,

00:45:46 ◼   ► this is a problem that we didn't used to have.

00:45:49 ◼   ► And, or like, you know, if you had a laptop

00:45:52 ◼   ► that had a key break or die on it,

00:45:54 ◼   ► it was maybe after like five years,

00:45:56 ◼   ► or after you had abused it or dropped a whole bunch

00:45:58 ◼   ► of crap in it.

00:45:59 ◼   ► And so that's one thing, that's probably unavoidable.

00:46:03 ◼   ► But to have laptops where now this keyboard

00:46:06 ◼   ► is on the entire line of laptops,

00:46:08 ◼   ► and that entire line of laptops has significant

00:46:12 ◼   ► reliability problems with the primary interface method,

00:46:16 ◼   ► that is a big problem.

00:46:18 ◼   ► That is a massive design flaw that shouldn't have shipped

00:46:20 ◼   ► the first time, let alone the second and,

00:46:23 ◼   ► in the case of the 12 inch, third times.

00:46:25 ◼   ► So, I really, you know, there was,

00:46:28 ◼   ► remember that Reddit thread that was a couple months ago

00:46:30 ◼   ► that was allegedly from some manufacturing insider

00:46:33 ◼   ► that was spilling details about who knows what about Apple?

00:46:35 ◼   ► One of the things that said in there was that

00:46:38 ◼   ► there's gonna be a new key switch mechanism

00:46:39 ◼   ► for the 2018 MacBook Pro revision

00:46:42 ◼   ► that allegedly it's going to be similar

00:46:44 ◼   ► in thickness and travel,

00:46:46 ◼   ► but it's gonna be magnetic or something.

00:46:48 ◼   ► There's gonna be some kind of significant key switch change.

00:46:51 ◼   ► I hope that is, you know,

00:46:54 ◼   ► I hope something like that is going to happen.

00:46:56 ◼   ► I hope Apple sees the way we do that, you know,

00:46:59 ◼   ► we can't convince them to make this keyboard thicker

00:47:01 ◼   ► to make it feel better.

00:47:02 ◼   ► That's never gonna happen.

00:47:03 ◼   ► So I'll take what we can get.

00:47:04 ◼   ► Let's just make this, if we're gonna have this super thin

00:47:07 ◼   ► keyboard that sacrifices the key travel

00:47:10 ◼   ► for Johnny Ive's ThinWorld, at least make it work reliably.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Like there is no way in 2017 and 2018

00:47:19 ◼   ► we should not have unreliable laptop keyboards

00:47:22 ◼   ► on brand new $2,000 and up laptops.

00:47:24 ◼   ► That is completely unacceptable and ridiculous

00:47:28 ◼   ► in this day and age.

00:47:30 ◼   ► - How to clean the keyboard of your MacBook or MacBook Pro.

00:47:33 ◼   ► If your MacBook 2015 and later,

00:47:34 ◼   ► or MacBook Pro 2016 and later has an unresponsive key

00:47:37 ◼   ► or a key that feels different than the other keys

00:47:39 ◼   ► when you press it, follow these steps

00:47:41 ◼   ► to clean the keyboard with compressed air.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Number one, hold your Mac notebook at a 75 degree angle

00:47:47 ◼   ► so it's not quite vertical.

00:47:48 ◼   ► That's 75 kids, not 80, not 70.

00:47:50 ◼   ► We covered this exact article on this show.

00:47:53 ◼   ► You were there.

00:47:54 ◼   ► It's so preposterous.

00:47:55 ◼   ► I cannot believe that this is a thing.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Number two, use compressed air to spray the keyboard or just the affected keys in a left-to-right

00:48:01 ◼   ► motion.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Number three, rotate your Mac notebook so it's right side and so it's right side.

00:48:08 ◼   ► That's not even a full sentence.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Rotate your Mac keyboard so it's right.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Oh, to its right side.

00:48:12 ◼   ► I can't read.

00:48:13 ◼   ► My apologies.

00:48:14 ◼   ► To its right side and spray the keyboard again.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Apple can't make keyboards.

00:48:16 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:48:17 ◼   ► And spray the keyboard again from left to right.

00:48:19 ◼   ► Number four, repeat the action this time with your Mac notebook rotated to its left side.

00:48:23 ◼   ► This is asinine that this is a thing.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Now to be fair, my keyboard still worked, it just felt like garbage.

00:48:30 ◼   ► But - or one key felt like garbage.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And by and large, I actually do still very much like this keyboard.

00:48:35 ◼   ► I know Marco you don't, and that's fine, but in general, when it's working, I really like

00:48:40 ◼   ► this keyboard.

00:48:41 ◼   ► Similarly, when my car's valvetrain hasn't exploded, it's a very nice car.

00:48:45 ◼   ► But yeah, it's just frustrating.

00:48:47 ◼   ► It's very frustrating that I've had this computer for two and change months and I'm already

00:48:53 ◼   ► having to take restorative action to get the keyboard to work again.

00:48:58 ◼   ► - Right, and again, I've resigned myself to this new thin key switch thing that feels

00:49:04 ◼   ► to me crappy, but I've resigned myself to that.

00:49:09 ◼   ► I've been constantly reducing my expectations.

00:49:11 ◼   ► Fine, I'll carry a dongle bag.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Fine, I'll pay a little bit more.

00:49:16 ◼   ► "Fine, I'll have this touch bar on the big ones

00:49:18 ◼   ► "that I really don't like."

00:49:20 ◼   ► At least make it reliable.

00:49:22 ◼   ► Like, just make it work reliably.

00:49:24 ◼   ► If you're gonna make me swallow

00:49:26 ◼   ► all of these other jagged, bitter pills,

00:49:28 ◼   ► at least make the thing reliable.

00:49:30 ◼   ► That's all, like, I'm not asking for much here.

00:49:33 ◼   ► I've reduced my expectations and given up

00:49:35 ◼   ► on every other battle on these laptops.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Just give me that. (laughs)

00:49:39 ◼   ► - Lana Smore said.

00:49:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, jagged little pill, though, thank you very much.

00:49:43 ◼   ► - I know, I'm just saying, like,

00:49:44 ◼   ► I think that's Marco's brain farting out some references without his knowledge.

00:49:49 ◼   ► I know. No, honestly, not only is that a great album, but I was arguing with Tiff about this

00:49:54 ◼   ► a few days ago. I would say that is possibly one of the most influential albums of the

00:50:00 ◼   ► 90s.

00:50:01 ◼   ► You 90s kids. Who cares?

00:50:03 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

00:50:05 ◼   ► You've got to wait 20 years before you can be nostalgic like we are about the 80s.

00:50:10 ◼   ► You know, there are times, Jon-

00:50:11 ◼   ► That's right, not 10 more years, but actually 20. It's not a linear scale.

00:50:15 ◼   ► So you are, what are you, like six or seven years older than we are? And usually that

00:50:21 ◼   ► feels like six or seven minutes, but then there are times that it feels like six or

00:50:25 ◼   ► seven decades, and this is one of those times.

00:50:28 ◼   ► It's when you listen to Margo and Tiff talk about it, and you for that matter talk with

00:50:32 ◼   ► nostalgia about 90s music and just it's just like, "What?"

00:50:37 ◼   ► It was more than 20 years ago for most of it.

00:50:38 ◼   ► I know, I know, it just seems weird.

00:50:41 ◼   ► Did it all come out in like '95, '96, something like that?

00:50:44 ◼   ► I mean, maybe, I'm assuming people from the '70s feel the same way with people in this

00:50:47 ◼   ► algebra '80s music, because, you know, it's all the '70s was good music and '80s was all

00:50:50 ◼   ► this crap, but you know, whatever, it's what age you are, I understand how it works.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Just Alanis Morissette, influential album.

00:50:57 ◼   ► '95, alright.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Geez, alright.

00:50:59 ◼   ► That should be a top four, top four albums in the '90s.

00:51:03 ◼   ► I knew her when she was on, you can't do that on television, you didn't know her then.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I sure did. I loved that show.

00:51:09 ◼   ► That was a great show. Don't even start with me.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Were you watching reruns?

00:51:13 ◼   ► Oh, you are such a turd.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Alright, let's just move on.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Let's just move on. Alright, Ask ATP. Can we slime John somehow?

00:51:21 ◼   ► Oh, I would love to. Oh my god, we should kickstart sliming John and give the money

00:51:25 ◼   ► to Houston or something like that.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Oh, my word. Somebody get on that. Anyway, Joe Lyon writes in to Ask ATP.

00:51:32 ◼   ► This is a little bit long, so I remember seeing this, but it must have been an email or something.

00:51:36 ◼   ► What is the long game in photo storage?

00:51:40 ◼   ► Not just which cloud service do I use for the next five years, but how will photos be

00:51:44 ◼   ► managed, stored, and handed down between generations?

00:51:46 ◼   ► We take more pictures than ever, but then we lock them all into personal devices and

00:51:49 ◼   ► accounts and print very few of them.

00:51:52 ◼   ► I think our family histories are actually at more danger than previously, ironically.

00:51:56 ◼   ► Hundreds of thousands of pictures from a family can be lost when someone dies and doesn't

00:51:59 ◼   ► leave behind a password, or a cloud service goes belly up and local backups weren't made,

00:52:04 ◼   ► photos or hard disks crash or data isn't carried to new devices.

00:52:08 ◼   ► Coincidentally, I was thinking about this recently because I have really been wondering

00:52:16 ◼   ► like if I were to suddenly pass away, what would happen to the things that I care about,

00:52:22 ◼   ► like our pictures?

00:52:23 ◼   ► And because of that, that's yet another reason why I recommend the 1Password family plan because

00:52:29 ◼   ► you know, Erin has my password via 1Password. She has my password for like Google Photos, for example.

00:52:36 ◼   ► But, you know, Joe Lyon's point is exactly right. Like, it used to be that you would print all these

00:52:41 ◼   ► pictures and create albums, and granted there would be far fewer pictures than you would have

00:52:45 ◼   ► in this digital age, but at least there was something you can physically give to somebody else.

00:52:50 ◼   ► What does the future bring? And I'll start with the semi-pro photographer. Marco, what do you think

00:52:55 ◼   ► think about this?

00:52:56 ◼   ► - I'm barely even mad anymore, but it's a bigger question of lots of things regarding

00:53:04 ◼   ► your data integrity and everything else.

00:53:07 ◼   ► It goes way beyond just photos, but lots of your other data as well.

00:53:11 ◼   ► But I mean, largely, once I'm gone, I won't care.

00:53:16 ◼   ► I won't be able to care.

00:53:17 ◼   ► So it's largely not my problem with my particular stuff, but I think it relies--

00:53:22 ◼   ► - There's the Nihilus Guide to Photo Backup by Mark De Laarman.

00:53:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:26 ◼   ► - But like, you know, I think it relies on your family

00:53:31 ◼   ► and people who come after you.

00:53:33 ◼   ► It relies on them caring.

00:53:35 ◼   ► Just like preservation of anything

00:53:36 ◼   ► from previous generations.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Like, if they care, you know, it basically, you know,

00:53:41 ◼   ► we as the people who have this data now,

00:53:44 ◼   ► I think we do have some responsibility

00:53:46 ◼   ► to have some kind of recovery, you know,

00:53:49 ◼   ► that our heirs will have access to after we're gone.

00:53:52 ◼   ► So you know, things like making sure that our family has access to passwords and data

00:53:55 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:53:57 ◼   ► But beyond that, like, it's up to the next generations to care.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And it always has been.

00:54:02 ◼   ► Like every family, you know, like, you know, you only know what your relatives have been

00:54:08 ◼   ► able to pass on to you.

00:54:09 ◼   ► You only have what they've carried with them and what they still have in their possessions

00:54:13 ◼   ► from previous generations.

00:54:16 ◼   ► And the same thing is going to apply to this.

00:54:19 ◼   ► Like in some ways it is easier than ever to keep this stuff.

00:54:23 ◼   ► And especially as time goes on, like my entire photo collection from the first year I was

00:54:29 ◼   ► taking photos with the digital camera, which was like 2004, I think, or no 2000 really.

00:54:35 ◼   ► But my entire photo collection from that year is like a few hundred megs.

00:54:40 ◼   ► Like it's at most like it's nothing compared to like, and as time goes on, every year that

00:54:45 ◼   ► goes by, hard drives get bigger, and cameras get better, and photos get bigger, and so

00:54:50 ◼   ► it seems like everything's always really big, but like, what was taken in the past, with

00:54:54 ◼   ► low resolution cameras, lower resolution sensors, like less data being captured, less video,

00:55:00 ◼   ► more stills, like, I don't know, I feel like it's not that hard if you care, and if your

00:55:05 ◼   ► heirs and relatives care, it isn't that hard to keep stuff, and to pass it down, it's just

00:55:11 ◼   ► an issue of will the people who inherit your things actually care to keep them? And that's

00:55:18 ◼   ► always been a problem.

00:55:19 ◼   ► - And photos don't get bigger all the time. Like you said, photos get bigger every year

00:55:23 ◼   ► and cameras get better. But we are probably already very close to limits of human visual

00:55:29 ◼   ► acuity on the highest end cameras and we're just waiting for that to trickle down. Once

00:55:32 ◼   ► your phone is taking 42 megapixel images, do you think in 10 years they're gonna be

00:55:38 ◼   ► taking 84 megapixel images they will not like there what are we gonna do blow it

00:55:42 ◼   ► up to a poster the size of a football stadium like there we are close to the

00:55:46 ◼   ► limits and if storage continues to increase at any rate while the size of

00:55:52 ◼   ► photos stays more or less the same maybe even get smaller if we have better

00:55:54 ◼   ► compression tech this is the storage of photos is a problem that will solve

00:56:00 ◼   ► itself essentially as storage size increases so just in the same way it's

00:56:05 ◼   ► easy for Marco to take his 100 megs of photos from 2000, in 50 years, it will be much easier

00:56:11 ◼   ► to take our "massive" photo libraries and put them in the storage of the day. And 50

00:56:18 ◼   ► years, they will not be taking 10,000 megapixel photos. They'll probably be like 50 to 100

00:56:24 ◼   ► megapixel photos, if even that, probably not even that. It's going to stop because there's

00:56:29 ◼   ► no point in more pixels. Like again, you're not blowing it up to a poster that covers

00:56:33 ◼   ► your entire house. So that little, that part of the problem will take care of itself. I

00:56:38 ◼   ► have some faith in that. Kind of like music did. Like music files, like, you know, even

00:56:43 ◼   ► if they go to flack, that's it. Like limits of human acuity, bit depth, bit rate, all

00:56:48 ◼   ► things we talk about. Take the biggest audio file you could have. Is there a benefit to

00:56:52 ◼   ► making something a hundred times bigger? No, there isn't. Because we can't hear anything

00:56:56 ◼   ► better than that. That's it. The audio will never get bigger than that, you know, and

00:57:01 ◼   ► multi-channel and so on and so forth.

00:57:02 ◼   ► So I'm optimistic about that.

00:57:05 ◼   ► And it's a thing to remember about trends like this,

00:57:07 ◼   ► where it's like, oh, we're just, it's never, you know,

00:57:09 ◼   ► it's just gonna continue on and on.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Some of the lines in the graph level off,

00:57:12 ◼   ► and that is a saving grace.

00:57:14 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:57:15 ◼   ► - And the thing I would add though,

00:57:16 ◼   ► this is just a backup problem like anything else.

00:57:18 ◼   ► Aside from the social things of like, oh, passing it on

00:57:20 ◼   ► and having, you know, sharing your passwords,

00:57:22 ◼   ► that you should definitely do that.

00:57:23 ◼   ► But like any other backup problem,

00:57:25 ◼   ► it's all about diversity, right?

00:57:26 ◼   ► So print some pictures, first of all,

00:57:28 ◼   ► because that is a diversified backup strategy.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Physical things versus digital things.

00:57:34 ◼   ► The physical things are worse,

00:57:34 ◼   ► they deteriorate, that you can lose them,

00:57:37 ◼   ► they take up space, so on and so forth.

00:57:39 ◼   ► But it's an important diversification to reach out.

00:57:41 ◼   ► You print some books from Apple's Photos app,

00:57:43 ◼   ► go to Shutterfly or whatever,

00:57:45 ◼   ► print some pictures from one of our sponsors

00:57:48 ◼   ► of this episode, right?

00:57:49 ◼   ► That is a diversification.

00:57:51 ◼   ► That's also, as Marco will surely say in the ad read,

00:57:53 ◼   ► not just diversification of backup,

00:57:56 ◼   ► but it lets you look at your pictures.

00:57:58 ◼   ► Like, you know, we all have so many pictures,

00:58:00 ◼   ► but if they're in a digital thing,

00:58:01 ◼   ► like how often do you even look at them?

00:58:03 ◼   ► I think I spent more time looking at the pictures

00:58:05 ◼   ► on my phone in the new Uncharted game

00:58:07 ◼   ► than I do looking at the pictures on my actual phone.

00:58:09 ◼   ► So printing them and hanging them on your wall

00:58:11 ◼   ► lets you enjoy them for the time you're alive

00:58:12 ◼   ► before you don't care like Margo when he's dead.

00:58:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:17 ◼   ► And diversification of backup means also,

00:58:19 ◼   ► perhaps winnowing your collection down

00:58:22 ◼   ► to some really good pictures

00:58:23 ◼   ► and sharing them with your relative.

00:58:24 ◼   ► This is a case where you're not doing it for a backup,

00:58:26 ◼   ► but you just want to give other people your photos.

00:58:28 ◼   ► And I think we're in a much better situation

00:58:30 ◼   ► than we were in the past because it's harder,

00:58:32 ◼   ► I think, for the shoe box full of photos or photo albums

00:58:35 ◼   ► to transfer from the elderly relative who's died

00:58:38 ◼   ► to the rest of the family because people don't want,

00:58:39 ◼   ► here's like 50 pounds of photo albums,

00:58:42 ◼   ► or even just a shoe box.

00:58:43 ◼   ► Like people don't want that junk,

00:58:44 ◼   ► like especially when you're trying to clear out

00:58:45 ◼   ► all the belongings and everything like that,

00:58:47 ◼   ► and you're trying to save the few precious things

00:58:49 ◼   ► like one or two wedding photos.

00:58:51 ◼   ► Them being digital and us having a fighting chance,

00:58:54 ◼   ► least, of losslessly carrying them across generations is merely a matter of making

00:58:59 ◼   ► that process easy enough to do.

00:59:00 ◼   ► And I think as we all die and the people who grew up in the sort of the cusp of the

00:59:06 ◼   ► digital age die off, the process of figuring out how to get our crap to continue on

00:59:10 ◼   ► will be worked out in a generation or two.

00:59:13 ◼   ► And so I have a lot of confidence that a sort of permanent growing archive of things

00:59:18 ◼   ► associated with the family will be passed on from generation to generation again,

00:59:22 ◼   ► because storage sizes will keep going up, not forever,

00:59:24 ◼   ► but they'll keep going up long after the size

00:59:27 ◼   ► of the things we're doing go up.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And by the way, I also think there's a limit

00:59:29 ◼   ► on number of photos we'll take too,

00:59:31 ◼   ► because I mean, I guess you could just switch

00:59:33 ◼   ► to constantly recorded video,

00:59:34 ◼   ► but there's some social parts that I think

00:59:36 ◼   ► won't make it happen.

00:59:37 ◼   ► But we take so many more pictures now than we used to,

00:59:39 ◼   ► especially that we have kids, but in 300 years,

00:59:43 ◼   ► we're not gonna be taking a thousand times more photos.

00:59:45 ◼   ► Like you just can't do that.

00:59:46 ◼   ► We'll be taking a photo every half a second

00:59:47 ◼   ► for our entire lives, 24 hours a day.

00:59:49 ◼   ► That's just video.

00:59:50 ◼   ► and I don't think we were gonna record

00:59:51 ◼   ► every second of our lives.

00:59:52 ◼   ► So I am much more optimistic than Joe Lyon about this,

00:59:55 ◼   ► but I would recommend people think about the password

00:59:57 ◼   ► sharing thing like Casey said,

00:59:59 ◼   ► diversify your photo backups,

01:00:01 ◼   ► and maybe get a couple of them and print them

01:00:03 ◼   ► and hang them on your wall

01:00:04 ◼   ► so you can look at them while you're still alive.

01:00:06 ◼   ► - Brad Ringel asks, it's been discussed a bit,

01:00:09 ◼   ► but can you give a brief rundown of how you decided

01:00:12 ◼   ► on a camera to buy and suggestions for a beginner?

01:00:14 ◼   ► I will start and say that what I had done

01:00:19 ◼   ► was look around at my friends and try to figure out

01:00:22 ◼   ► what was something that felt kind of entry level

01:00:26 ◼   ► and approachable with,

01:00:28 ◼   ► and also was reasonably easy to carry physically

01:00:32 ◼   ► because it wasn't the size of a DSLR.

01:00:33 ◼   ► And so I have an Olympus OM-D E-M10.

01:00:37 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes to a couple of,

01:00:39 ◼   ► actually two or three year old review now of that camera.

01:00:42 ◼   ► It's the one I still use.

01:00:43 ◼   ► This is a Micro Four Thirds camera

01:00:47 ◼   ► and it has interchangeable lenses.

01:00:49 ◼   ► And so I spent a fair bit of money on,

01:00:52 ◼   ► well, what I thought was a fair bit of money

01:00:53 ◼   ► on both the body and one really nice prime lens.

01:00:56 ◼   ► That prime lens lasted me for the first couple of years

01:00:59 ◼   ► I had the camera.

01:01:00 ◼   ► And then about a year ago, I added a zoom lens.

01:01:03 ◼   ► I chose this because Sean Blanc,

01:01:06 ◼   ► Blanc, Blanc, I forget how you pronounce her name.

01:01:08 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:01:10 ◼   ► Sean Blanc had recommended it very, very strongly.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And I love this camera.

01:01:15 ◼   ► By no means is it the best camera in the entire world, but I love it and it is done right

01:01:21 ◼   ► by me and helped me get better as a photographer because it allows, and not to say it's unique

01:01:27 ◼   ► to this camera by any stretch, but this one is very good because it allows interchangeable

01:01:31 ◼   ► lenses and it allows me to do things like shoot an aperture priority, which is to say

01:01:36 ◼   ► I can concentrate on getting one thing right and the rest of it will just automatically

01:01:39 ◼   ► happen.

01:01:40 ◼   ► Again, I'm not saying that's unique to this camera, but that's kind of how I got started,

01:01:44 ◼   ► that's generally speaking how I still shoot today. And suggestions for a beginner, you

01:01:49 ◼   ► know, everyone says this, and I remember Marco, you and you and me and Aaron and Tif were

01:01:53 ◼   ► sitting in some restaurant in New York forever ago, and we were talking about cameras. And

01:01:58 ◼   ► I remember you and Tif saying to me, there are two rules to being a good photographer.

01:02:03 ◼   ► Number one, never use the flash. And number two, take a bazillion pictures, because if

01:02:08 ◼   ► If you take a bazillion pictures, at least one of them will be okay.

01:02:12 ◼   ► And I really think, as cliche and as silly and as frustrating as that may sound to a

01:02:18 ◼   ► beginner, that really, really is the case.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I would recommend getting enough of a camera that you feel like you've got something interesting

01:02:27 ◼   ► and special.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And that doesn't have to be very expensive by any means, but enough that maybe you can

01:02:31 ◼   ► get a little Boca Boca, however you pronounce it.

01:02:35 ◼   ► But other than that, just try to avoid the flash and take a lot of pictures.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And I think that's sufficient.

01:02:41 ◼   ► So Jon, let's go to you next.

01:02:43 ◼   ► What do you recommend?

01:02:44 ◼   ► I basically bought the camera Marko told me to.

01:02:46 ◼   ► It's a good strategy for many things in life.

01:02:50 ◼   ► But the caveat though, I did, he also told me about lens rentals.

01:02:54 ◼   ► And so before I bought it, I'm pretty sure you guys may remember that.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Didn't I rent that camera first before I decided to plunk down the money for it?

01:03:01 ◼   ► I believe you did.

01:03:02 ◼   ► It was either that one or its predecessor.

01:03:04 ◼   ► And I did the same, by the way.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it was a 63. And I remember when Marco recommended it, I wasn't that keen on it,

01:03:10 ◼   ► because I wanted, like, I basically wanted a fancier camera, but then I used Marco's

01:03:14 ◼   ► A7R II or whatever it used to have, and it just seemed too big. And so then I'm like,

01:03:18 ◼   ► "Ah, maybe he was right, the small one." So I rented it and liked it and bought it. And I

01:03:22 ◼   ► didn't, honestly, I didn't shop around that too much, because that's a service both Wirecutter

01:03:25 ◼   ► and Marco provide. If you don't want to spend a year researching stuff, I did actually spend a

01:03:30 ◼   ► very long time researching Super Zooms, because I had experience with a couple of them, and I'm

01:03:33 ◼   ► I'm like, let me just find the successor to my family camera and I get my super zoom and I could never find one that

01:03:38 ◼   ► Seemed like it was a win over what I was doing. So yeah, so ask friends who know stuff about cameras and

01:03:44 ◼   ► Before you plunk down a large amount of money. It seems large as someone who doesn't buy fancy cameras

01:03:51 ◼   ► Consider something like lens rentals where it seems like oh my god

01:03:54 ◼   ► How much am I paying to rent this but it's cheaper than buying the camera and realizing you don't want it and having to you

01:03:59 ◼   ► Know find a way to sell it at a loss and everything. So

01:04:03 ◼   ► That that that I think that works man. And yeah, honestly the agent internet, you know, if you don't know Marco personally

01:04:09 ◼   ► There is the the wire cutter. There is DP review

01:04:12 ◼   ► You can find the information out there and then just come up with a couple candidates

01:04:16 ◼   ► Borrow or rent them to see which one you like and and then go for it. I agree with Casey

01:04:22 ◼   ► Go like kind of like a Mac storage go a little bit more than you think like save money for an extra six months if you

01:04:29 ◼   ► have to because you will never regret getting a slightly nicer camera. You may regret getting

01:04:33 ◼   ► a slightly bigger camera, so that's why I say use it and see if you feel like, "Does

01:04:37 ◼   ► this camera fit into my life?" But make it something special, especially in the age of

01:04:42 ◼   ► our phone cameras are also good. If you're going to buy a camera camera that all does

01:04:46 ◼   ► is camera stuff, make it better enough than your phone camera that it's not close. And

01:04:52 ◼   ► that will make you excited to use your "good camera." Like, I do take a lot of pictures

01:04:57 ◼   ► with my phone, I take video with my phone.

01:04:59 ◼   ► But I really like my fancy, and not that fancy,

01:05:02 ◼   ► but my quote unquote real camera.

01:05:04 ◼   ► I really like that I use it a lot.

01:05:07 ◼   ► Not all the time, not every day,

01:05:08 ◼   ► but I like knowing that it's there.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And when I do use it, like I said,

01:05:11 ◼   ► 2,000 pictures coming home from the ocean from one day,

01:05:14 ◼   ► that's a good time for me.

01:05:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I would just like to quickly double down

01:05:19 ◼   ► on what you said about lens rentals.

01:05:21 ◼   ► I've used lensrentals.com, they've never sponsored.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I rented the camera that I now have before we bought one and got a chance to play with

01:05:29 ◼   ► it for a few days.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And in fact, I rented it to take, well, I had my dad do it, but to take maternity shots

01:05:35 ◼   ► for Aaron before Declan was born.

01:05:39 ◼   ► And I got to spend some time with it.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Dad took these really beautiful pictures with it and he's not a photographer.

01:05:45 ◼   ► He just was able to take really good shots with a combination of this body and this lens.

01:05:49 ◼   ► And so I completely agree with Jon, and I think Marco was the one who originally recommended

01:05:54 ◼   ► it to me as well.

01:05:55 ◼   ► You know, take a spin with whatever camera you're looking at, and it cost me like 150

01:06:00 ◼   ► bucks or something like that to get the camera for a few days and the lens I wanted for a

01:06:03 ◼   ► few days, but it was worth its price in gold because it made me know that this like $1500

01:06:08 ◼   ► or $2000 expenditure I ended up spending was worth it.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So Marco, what would you say about this?

01:06:15 ◼   ► You know, what's a good set of tips for a beginner?

01:06:19 ◼   ► - You guys have actually covered it really well.

01:06:21 ◼   ► I don't have that much more to add.

01:06:23 ◼   ► You can be talking for 20 minutes now.

01:06:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:06:26 ◼   ► I mean, I know myself pretty well.

01:06:28 ◼   ► So, yeah, I mean, definitely renting before you buy

01:06:33 ◼   ► is very valuable, 'cause you spent the 150 bucks,

01:06:36 ◼   ► and go to lensrentals.com.

01:06:39 ◼   ► I think there are other sites,

01:06:40 ◼   ► but I've always used Lensrentals,

01:06:41 ◼   ► and I've had excellent experiences with them over the years

01:06:44 ◼   ► over a pretty long time, over lots of different rentals,

01:06:47 ◼   ► of lots of different things.

01:06:49 ◼   ► A few times I needed the customer service,

01:06:50 ◼   ► it was excellent every time,

01:06:53 ◼   ► and they're a pretty big operation and pretty reputable.

01:06:55 ◼   ► So highly recommend LensRentals.

01:06:56 ◼   ► You're right, they have never sponsored us.

01:06:58 ◼   ► I don't think they ever would sponsor us,

01:06:59 ◼   ► but now they don't need to

01:07:01 ◼   ► 'cause we're giving this away for free.

01:07:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:04 ◼   ► So, 'cause not only did you learn what,

01:07:09 ◼   ► you basically got confirmation that what you wanted to buy

01:07:12 ◼   ► was probably a good idea,

01:07:14 ◼   ► but in some cases it can teach you

01:07:16 ◼   ► that you don't want to buy something.

01:07:18 ◼   ► Like if you rent it and you learn,

01:07:20 ◼   ► you know, actually this is too big,

01:07:21 ◼   ► or the handling doesn't work out for me, or whatever.

01:07:23 ◼   ► Like it's useful for that.

01:07:24 ◼   ► It's also useful for like,

01:07:26 ◼   ► if there's some really expensive piece of gear,

01:07:29 ◼   ► whether it's a camera or a lens,

01:07:30 ◼   ► usually more often, hence the name.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Something that you don't need very often.

01:07:35 ◼   ► Like there was a, like I was shooting the talk show live

01:07:39 ◼   ► at WBC two years ago,

01:07:41 ◼   ► and I shot it with a rented lens,

01:07:43 ◼   ► because I knew I would need a certain type of zoom lens

01:07:47 ◼   ► to do a really good job with it.

01:07:49 ◼   ► But it's a lens that I hardly ever need in my daily life

01:07:51 ◼   ► and it was very expensive to buy.

01:07:53 ◼   ► So I just rented it for the week

01:07:54 ◼   ► and it was way less money.

01:07:56 ◼   ► And I learned as I was renting it,

01:07:58 ◼   ► like wow, I'm so glad I don't own this lens

01:07:59 ◼   ► because it's giant and heavy

01:08:01 ◼   ► and I really don't want to have this most of the time.

01:08:04 ◼   ► I only very rarely need it.

01:08:06 ◼   ► So it's nice to actually consider the possibility

01:08:09 ◼   ► of renting things just as part of the way you operate

01:08:13 ◼   ► in the camera world because there is so much

01:08:16 ◼   ► incredibly specialized gear that you might need

01:08:20 ◼   ► twice or once and it's probably not worth buying it for that

01:08:24 ◼   ► but for those one or two times, it's really, really nice.

01:08:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that actually is a really great point as well

01:08:32 ◼   ► because after I'd had my camera for a couple of years,

01:08:35 ◼   ► I had my eye on a zoom lens and I forget the specifics

01:08:39 ◼   ► but I wanna say it was like a 100 to 300 millimeter zoom

01:08:41 ◼   ► which is something like double that in a DSLR, or maybe half that.

01:08:45 ◼   ► I forget how it all works out.

01:08:46 ◼   ► But it ended up that it was like a really, really, really strong zoom.

01:08:52 ◼   ► And so you had to be like, you know, 20, 30, 40 feet away from your subject before it was

01:08:58 ◼   ► even useful.

01:08:59 ◼   ► And then that's when it started to be useful.

01:09:01 ◼   ► And again, I'm making up the details here, but it was something along those lines.

01:09:04 ◼   ► And so I rented it for a week.

01:09:06 ◼   ► And actually, strictly speaking, Erin rented it for me for like a birthday present or something,

01:09:09 ◼   ► because she knew I was looking at it.

01:09:11 ◼   ► And it turns out it was a terrible lens.

01:09:14 ◼   ► And I was so thankful that Aaron had spent the money to rent it for me because I then

01:09:17 ◼   ► knew that it wasn't worth like $800 or whatever it cost to get that lens.

01:09:21 ◼   ► And the zoom lens I ended up with was quite a bit different.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And I knew that because I then rented that lens and spent some time with it and knew

01:09:29 ◼   ► that it was worth the money.

01:09:31 ◼   ► So yeah, I completely, completely doubled down, tripled down even on the lens rentals

01:09:35 ◼   ► idea.

01:09:36 ◼   ► I couldn't recommend it enough.

01:09:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, and to expand a little bit on what John said

01:09:41 ◼   ► about renting it or getting a handle on how it feels

01:09:46 ◼   ► and possibly regretting things like size and weight

01:09:51 ◼   ► down the road.

01:09:53 ◼   ► - Or battery life.

01:09:54 ◼   ► - Yes, or battery life.

01:09:57 ◼   ► I would say one of the best things you can do

01:09:59 ◼   ► if you're in the market for a camera

01:10:00 ◼   ► is to go to a store that has them in person

01:10:03 ◼   ► and to actually be able to look at them in person,

01:10:06 ◼   ► next to each other, do some basic research

01:10:09 ◼   ► before you get to the store, just so you know

01:10:11 ◼   ► roughly what models offer the kinds of things

01:10:13 ◼   ► that you're looking for, but actually pick them up

01:10:15 ◼   ► and see them in person, see them next to each other,

01:10:17 ◼   ► try to handle them, see certain ones.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Cameras these days have so many capabilities,

01:10:22 ◼   ► but they're also oftentimes very small.

01:10:25 ◼   ► And so ergonomics become a pretty big challenge

01:10:28 ◼   ► in a lot of them.

01:10:29 ◼   ► Usability of the various menus and controls

01:10:32 ◼   ► and dials and everything, these are all

01:10:34 ◼   ► pretty major factors that differ significantly

01:10:37 ◼   ► between different models.

01:10:38 ◼   ► And so anything you can do to get your hands on,

01:10:42 ◼   ► you know, it's the precursor to renting, basically.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Anything you can do to get your hands on them

01:10:46 ◼   ► and see them in person before you decide.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Because you can read a review,

01:10:53 ◼   ► or you can hear me say something about a certain model,

01:10:55 ◼   ► or you can go to the wire cutter,

01:10:57 ◼   ► and you can go to DP Review,

01:10:58 ◼   ► and you can spend hours and hours and hours,

01:10:59 ◼   ► I have, on these sites,

01:11:01 ◼   ► like when you're trying to make a decision

01:11:03 ◼   ► on what camera to buy for you or what's right for you.

01:11:06 ◼   ► That's good, you should do some of that,

01:11:11 ◼   ► but the model of trying to figure out

01:11:15 ◼   ► what is the one camera you should buy in this price range,

01:11:19 ◼   ► that really is not a great model for this

01:11:22 ◼   ► because different cameras will work for different people

01:11:25 ◼   ► and there really isn't one great model

01:11:29 ◼   ► that everyone should buy in each price range

01:11:31 ◼   ► or in each size category.

01:11:32 ◼   ► I was able to give John a decent recommendation for him

01:11:36 ◼   ► because I had more information about what he wanted

01:11:39 ◼   ► and he had used my medium-sized one.

01:11:42 ◼   ► And so there was more to go on.

01:11:45 ◼   ► But if you just go to some site that tries to pick like,

01:11:47 ◼   ► here's the one camera you should get in this category,

01:11:50 ◼   ► that might not be right for you.

01:11:51 ◼   ► So anything you can do to see them in person to use them,

01:11:54 ◼   ► whether it's going to a store or renting one

01:11:57 ◼   ► that you think you might wanna buy or both,

01:11:59 ◼   ► ideally you kinda narrow down as you go,

01:12:02 ◼   ► it's invaluable because really the cameras

01:12:05 ◼   ► that are out there, they are so different

01:12:07 ◼   ► in how they handle.

01:12:09 ◼   ► And a lot of times a camera that might not have

01:12:12 ◼   ► the best sensor or the best technical specs

01:12:15 ◼   ► in certain areas, a lot of times if it just handles better,

01:12:19 ◼   ► you will end up using it more or you will enjoy

01:12:21 ◼   ► using it more because of the physical differences

01:12:26 ◼   ► or the other differences that aren't just

01:12:28 ◼   ► the sensor quality.

01:12:30 ◼   ► And this is a lesson I've often not learned fully

01:12:32 ◼   ► when I've made certain decisions,

01:12:33 ◼   ► but I try to recover from that,

01:12:36 ◼   ► try to get better over time,

01:12:38 ◼   ► because it matters so, so much,

01:12:42 ◼   ► just how it handles, how it behaves,

01:12:44 ◼   ► how it performs in your hand,

01:12:46 ◼   ► in the mechanics of using it.

01:12:48 ◼   ► One of the ones that I have heard great things about,

01:12:52 ◼   ► and I have very little experience with them,

01:12:55 ◼   ► is the Fuji X line.

01:12:57 ◼   ► People love these things.

01:12:58 ◼   ► There was the X-T1, the X-T2, the X-100.

01:13:02 ◼   ► I haven't followed them too closely,

01:13:05 ◼   ► but these are cameras that,

01:13:07 ◼   ► they often don't perform top notch

01:13:09 ◼   ► in certain spec comparisons,

01:13:11 ◼   ► but people just love them because of their ergonomics

01:13:14 ◼   ► and their mechanics and things like that.

01:13:16 ◼   ► That's the kind of thing you want to look for.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Similarly, it's hard to understand the appeal

01:13:21 ◼   ► of Leica cameras, because Leicas are very, very expensive.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Like, eye-wateringly expensive.

01:13:27 ◼   ► and you think why would anybody buy that

01:13:29 ◼   ► when the sensor doesn't perform any better

01:13:31 ◼   ► than a Sony sensor or something like that.

01:13:33 ◼   ► And a couple of times I've had a chance

01:13:35 ◼   ► to actually handle a camera,

01:13:38 ◼   ► and there is a certain degree of like,

01:13:41 ◼   ► wow, this is just really nicely handling.

01:13:44 ◼   ► It's responsive, it feels good, I feel good using it.

01:13:48 ◼   ► There is some degree of that.

01:13:49 ◼   ► And so there are these other factors

01:13:52 ◼   ► when you're looking at the,

01:13:53 ◼   ► and by the way, this does not apply just to cameras,

01:13:56 ◼   ► But there are these other factors when you look at

01:13:58 ◼   ► a buying decision like this where you can do

01:14:01 ◼   ► as many spec comparisons as you want on paper

01:14:03 ◼   ► and on websites and everything,

01:14:05 ◼   ► but it's really hard to do a really,

01:14:07 ◼   ► it's really hard to know how much you're gonna actually

01:14:11 ◼   ► love using it until you actually get a chance to try it.

01:14:13 ◼   ► And that's, again, that's why we say,

01:14:16 ◼   ► go see these things in the store.

01:14:17 ◼   ► If you can, rent one.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Like, those are great options.

01:14:21 ◼   ► And for something like this that's so personal

01:14:23 ◼   ► and where not everyone has the same requirements.

01:14:27 ◼   ► That's pretty good.

01:14:28 ◼   ► And then finally to definitely, definitely echo

01:14:30 ◼   ► what Jon said, you want a camera that is going to be

01:14:35 ◼   ► a lot better than your phone.

01:14:37 ◼   ► If it isn't a lot better than your phone,

01:14:40 ◼   ► you should not buy it.

01:14:41 ◼   ► There is no reason for you to buy a camera

01:14:42 ◼   ► that's only a little better than your phone.

01:14:44 ◼   ► And phone cameras are really good

01:14:46 ◼   ► and they keep getting better at an alarming pace.

01:14:50 ◼   ► They keep getting remarkably better.

01:14:52 ◼   ► And so I would say, generally speaking,

01:14:56 ◼   ► I mean there are exceptions, it's hard to give a firm,

01:14:58 ◼   ► like a price floor here that's meaningful.

01:15:01 ◼   ► But I would say if you're spending less than probably

01:15:04 ◼   ► a thousand dollars, you're probably not getting

01:15:07 ◼   ► a quality jump that makes sense

01:15:10 ◼   ► in the world of today's smartphones.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Especially if you're listening to this show,

01:15:13 ◼   ► you're probably an iPhone user,

01:15:15 ◼   ► you're probably a user of a fairly recent iPhone,

01:15:17 ◼   ► and that's, yeah, that's gonna be hard to beat

01:15:21 ◼   ► with anything below $1,000 in a lot of situations.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Most of the recommendations that I give

01:15:27 ◼   ► are in the one to $3,000 range.

01:15:31 ◼   ► And that's a lot of money.

01:15:32 ◼   ► And you have to ask yourself, is that really worth it?

01:15:35 ◼   ► For a lot of people, it isn't.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Or you might go through all this and realize,

01:15:40 ◼   ► actually, I still take most of my pictures on my phone

01:15:42 ◼   ► because my phone's always with me

01:15:43 ◼   ► and the cameras keep getting better

01:15:45 ◼   ► and they offer more interesting features in a lot of cases,

01:15:48 ◼   ► like live photos and automatic HDR and stuff

01:15:52 ◼   ► that other cameras can do sometimes

01:15:55 ◼   ► or can do some of these things,

01:15:56 ◼   ► but they're clunky or don't work as well

01:15:57 ◼   ► or harder to use.

01:15:59 ◼   ► So it's like a standalone camera these days

01:16:02 ◼   ► has to be way better than your phone

01:16:05 ◼   ► to make it worth buying and to make sure

01:16:07 ◼   ► you'll actually use it on a regular basis.

01:16:10 ◼   ► So if you're not willing or able to spend

01:16:13 ◼   ► over $1,000, I would say, easily,

01:16:17 ◼   ► on a camera and a couple of lenses for it.

01:16:20 ◼   ► I would say it's probably not worth it.

01:16:22 ◼   ► You should probably just get the best phone you can

01:16:24 ◼   ► and use its camera.

01:16:25 ◼   ► - I'd agree with that.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Oplez writes, "Have any of you used or played

01:16:31 ◼   ► "the notoriety card in your day-to-day life

01:16:33 ◼   ► "to get something you wanted?"

01:16:34 ◼   ► And I will start with Jon.

01:16:36 ◼   ► - I put this question in here because I want to reemphasize

01:16:42 ◼   ► people exactly how little notoriety we have. Like maybe it seems like there is no card to play.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Even at WWDC where we are, that is the maximum of our fame and notoriety. We're there with

01:16:58 ◼   ► the highest percentage chance that people know who we are is like at WWDC. Even there, I have never

01:17:05 ◼   ► had a way to parlay my notoriety into pretty much anything except for perhaps giving me the

01:17:15 ◼   ► confidence to go up and talk to somebody who I might not otherwise, even though I don't have

01:17:19 ◼   ► any expectation they're going to know who I am, I guess that's my answer. I have never played the

01:17:25 ◼   ► notoriety card because there's no card to be played, but my impression of my own notoriety

01:17:30 ◼   ► in very specific circumstances where a specific kind of nerd gathers for a week, it has given

01:17:36 ◼   ► me the confidence to overcome what would normally be my inclination to never talk to another human

01:17:40 ◼   ► being, to go talk to somebody and introduce myself. Most people, you know, if you don't have

01:17:45 ◼   ► my personality, you don't need that extra boost of confidence. But I really want to emphasize

01:17:49 ◼   ► listeners, we have no notoriety. No one knows who we are. No one knows what a podcast is. Well,

01:17:53 ◼   ► maybe not with cereal they do. Podcast? What's that? You know, cereal? Oh, I think I heard of

01:17:57 ◼   ► Anyway, that's my answer.

01:17:59 ◼   ► - Marco?

01:18:00 ◼   ► - I don't think I have used it in a useful way

01:18:03 ◼   ► because of what John said.

01:18:04 ◼   ► It's like, if you actually would take that risk

01:18:09 ◼   ► and say, do you know who I am?

01:18:11 ◼   ► Like, chances are the answer you're gonna get back is nope.

01:18:14 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:18:15 ◼   ► And that's not a good risk to take,

01:18:18 ◼   ► even if you can get over the fact that,

01:18:20 ◼   ► best case scenario, they do know who you are,

01:18:23 ◼   ► and you've just been a huge jerk.

01:18:24 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:18:25 ◼   ► That's not my style, that's not how I interact with the world.

01:18:30 ◼   ► Even if I knew I could get away with it, I would still not try to do it because I don't want to do that.

01:18:39 ◼   ► But, Jon is correct, in reality there is almost nowhere where we could be,

01:18:44 ◼   ► where we could pull a card like that and have it actually work.

01:18:48 ◼   ► Like maybe, maybe at our own live show,

01:18:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:54 ◼   ► like in the room, seconds after we've walked off stage,

01:18:59 ◼   ► maybe then, but anywhere else that would not work at all.

01:19:04 ◼   ► And yeah, that's not, we don't have any degree

01:19:07 ◼   ► of actual fame in any context where this would even be

01:19:12 ◼   ► a possibility, let alone the fact that I think

01:19:15 ◼   ► none of the three of us have the personality type

01:19:17 ◼   ► to actually try to pull a card like that?

01:19:19 ◼   ► - Well, there was that one time where I wished

01:19:21 ◼   ► that it worked, where I forgot my wallet

01:19:22 ◼   ► and I couldn't pick up my hardware

01:19:23 ◼   ► and I had to drive all the way back home.

01:19:25 ◼   ► And it's not because I wanted any special treatments,

01:19:26 ◼   ► it's because I didn't want to drive all the way back home.

01:19:28 ◼   ► 'Cause A, I felt dumb for leaving my wallet at home.

01:19:31 ◼   ► Like I couldn't pick up my thing at the Apple store.

01:19:32 ◼   ► I didn't actually do it.

01:19:34 ◼   ► I did jokingly offer,

01:19:36 ◼   ► well, just Google my name and my picture will come up.

01:19:39 ◼   ► And I was half joking, but I was kinda half serious.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Like you need to know who I am, who I am.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Type my name into a Google search box,

01:19:47 ◼   ► but just I had to drive all the way back home.

01:19:49 ◼   ► And that's, again, that's just me trying

01:19:51 ◼   ► to save myself commuting time

01:19:53 ◼   ► so I don't feel quite as dumb

01:19:54 ◼   ► for leaving home without my wallet.

01:19:56 ◼   ► But that is the one time.

01:19:57 ◼   ► And note that it's like,

01:19:59 ◼   ► I didn't say why they should Google my name

01:20:01 ◼   ► and why I might come up.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Of course I would never do that.

01:20:03 ◼   ► And they didn't know who I am and didn't care

01:20:05 ◼   ► and I had to get my freaking wallet.

01:20:07 ◼   ► - I think it is really, really gross

01:20:11 ◼   ► to try to be like, oh, don't you know who I am?

01:20:16 ◼   ► So let me tell you about the three times that I did it.

01:20:18 ◼   ► The first time was, the first time was,

01:20:22 ◼   ► I forget, I guess was, I don't remember what year it was,

01:20:26 ◼   ► but maybe it was 2016, I guess,

01:20:28 ◼   ► that I tried emailing a few people at Apple

01:20:31 ◼   ► and being like, "Hey, I don't have a WWDC ticket.

01:20:34 ◼   ► "Maybe I could do something about that?"

01:20:38 ◼   ► Didn't work.

01:20:39 ◼   ► The second time was when I was trying to get my current job,

01:20:42 ◼   ► and I don't know if it's really being like,

01:20:45 ◼   ► do you know who I am?" But I definitely mentioned that I had a popular Apple podcast on my resume.

01:20:48 ◼   ► And the reason I did that was because I was trying to switch careers from being a Microsoft developer

01:20:53 ◼   ► to being an Apple developer, and I was trying to figure out any justifiable reason to hire me at

01:21:01 ◼   ► that point and to take a risk on me. The final time is one that you two did not know about,

01:21:07 ◼   ► and I wasn't planning on telling you about. And I'm only going to talk about it very lightly,

01:21:13 ◼   ► because, I'm trying to think of how to describe this without giving it away.

01:21:18 ◼   ► It was offered to me because of the show. So it was not really a "do you know who I am?"

01:21:25 ◼   ► But it was offered to me because of the show, and because of a friend that listens to the show.

01:21:32 ◼   ► Would you like to get access to a car from the press fleet from a manufacturer that

01:21:43 ◼   ► none of us would normally have access to.

01:21:45 ◼   ► To which I said, yes, absolutely.

01:21:48 ◼   ► That car was supposed to arrive the week after WWDC,

01:21:52 ◼   ► and by happenstance, something happened,

01:21:54 ◼   ► and it didn't work out.

01:21:56 ◼   ► Then that car was supposed to arrive a few weeks later,

01:21:58 ◼   ► and when it was traveling from the press pool in DC down to me,

01:22:03 ◼   ► it caught a chip in the windshield,

01:22:05 ◼   ► and they had to turn around.

01:22:09 ◼   ► I haven't heard much since then, and it's been a month or two.

01:22:11 ◼   ► So I'm guessing that this didn't work out.

01:22:14 ◼   ► In a few months, like by the end of the year,

01:22:16 ◼   ► if I haven't had access to this press car,

01:22:18 ◼   ► I will concede maybe privately, maybe publicly what it was.

01:22:23 ◼   ► But on the slim chance that I actually do get a week

01:22:27 ◼   ► with this particular car,

01:22:29 ◼   ► which is a car that I would never generally have access to,

01:22:32 ◼   ► I don't want to spoil the surprise.

01:22:34 ◼   ► But that is somewhat sort of kind of me leveraging my,

01:22:39 ◼   ► do you know who I am?

01:22:40 ◼   ► Even though it was offered to me,

01:22:41 ◼   ► I did not request it.

01:22:42 ◼   ► And that is all I'm going to say.

01:22:44 ◼   ► - Is it some garbage car that we're gonna laugh at,

01:22:46 ◼   ► like the stupid Jeep Cherokee

01:22:48 ◼   ► with like a big engine in it or some crap?

01:22:51 ◼   ► - First of all, the Cherokee SRT8 is not stupid,

01:22:54 ◼   ► you big jerk. - It is stupid and gross.

01:22:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:58 ◼   ► - Second of all. - Anyway,

01:22:59 ◼   ► is it the type of car, and we know you're excited about it,

01:23:01 ◼   ► is it the type of car that we're gonna be excited about it,

01:23:03 ◼   ► or is it just the type of car where it's gonna be

01:23:04 ◼   ► like a KC car, like a Camaro ZL1?

01:23:07 ◼   ► Like, I guess I would kind of be excited about it.

01:23:08 ◼   ► I would not be excited about it.

01:23:09 ◼   ► - Why are you so mean to me, Jon?

01:23:11 ◼   ► I would not be excited about a Veyron.

01:23:12 ◼   ► I just want to put that out there,

01:23:13 ◼   ► 'cause I think the Veyron is also stupid and gross.

01:23:16 ◼   ► - So I only have one question about the car,

01:23:18 ◼   ► and you know what it is.

01:23:19 ◼   ► - It is not a Tesla.

01:23:21 ◼   ► - That wasn't the question. - If that's what you're looking.

01:23:23 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:23:24 ◼   ► - What color is it?

01:23:25 ◼   ► - I don't know, but I would guess,

01:23:28 ◼   ► I would guess that it is red, and that is all I will say.

01:23:31 ◼   ► - Interesting.

01:23:33 ◼   ► - I'm interested in Ferraris.

01:23:34 ◼   ► - It is not a Ferrari.

01:23:35 ◼   ► - Unless it's the California.

01:23:36 ◼   ► I don't like that one.

01:23:37 ◼   ► And then the replacement for the California,

01:23:39 ◼   ► The replacement for the California is also gross.

01:23:41 ◼   ► What the hell is the California replacement, chat room?

01:23:43 ◼   ► - I love that you'd even be picky about like

01:23:45 ◼   ► which Ferrari you got to borrow for a week.

01:23:46 ◼   ► - Exactly. - It's totally true.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Like I've thought about that.

01:23:48 ◼   ► Like, but wouldn't you care?

01:23:49 ◼   ► Like, wouldn't you be excited by it?

01:23:50 ◼   ► And I'd be like, no, not that one.

01:23:52 ◼   ► - Sean, you're the worst.

01:23:53 ◼   ► - I don't like that one.

01:23:55 ◼   ► And the replacement has similarly got,

01:23:58 ◼   ► come on chat room.

01:23:59 ◼   ► What's the replacement for the California?

01:24:01 ◼   ► Portofino, there we go, thank you.

01:24:03 ◼   ► - You're the worst, Sean. - Portofino is a better name

01:24:06 ◼   ► and it does look nicer than the California,

01:24:07 ◼   ► but it's still, it's like the Ferrari that I don't want.

01:24:11 ◼   ► I'd rather have the weird four-wheel drive FF thing

01:24:14 ◼   ► and well, the replacement, you just said it,

01:24:16 ◼   ► the GT4 or Lusso and the pre-pre show that won't be there.

01:24:18 ◼   ► I'd rather have that than the Portofino or California.

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01:26:11 ◼   ► - All right, so 90 minutes in, you wanna start the show?

01:26:18 ◼   ► 'Cause I think it's time.

01:26:20 ◼   ► - All of our topics are short today, so.

01:26:23 ◼   ► - Oh, really?

01:26:24 ◼   ► Okay, listeners, buckle up.

01:26:26 ◼   ► Let's talk about APFS.

01:26:28 ◼   ► - We are really good at short topics here on ATV.

01:26:31 ◼   ► Seriously.

01:26:32 ◼   ► Okay, so let's talk about this short topic, Jon.

01:26:34 ◼   ► The clock is ticking.

01:26:35 ◼   ► Tell me about APFS conversion in High Sierra.

01:26:38 ◼   ► This is a bit of news that was officially published by Apple this week, or very recently

01:26:42 ◼   ► anyway, between the show and last show.

01:26:44 ◼   ► They have an article, we'll link in the show, it's official Apple documentation, not about

01:26:48 ◼   ► like betas or whatever, but like, "Hey, when you upgrade to macOS High Sierra, systems

01:26:53 ◼   ► with all flash storage will be converted automatically to APFS."

01:26:57 ◼   ► So if you have a Mac and it has flash storage and you upgrade to the Mac OS High Sierra,

01:27:03 ◼   ► you are getting converted to APFS.

01:27:05 ◼   ► You cannot opt out of the transition to APFS.

01:27:08 ◼   ► This is right from their documentation.

01:27:09 ◼   ► So it's not like as in the betas, like, oh, you can convert or not convert and decide

01:27:14 ◼   ► later whatever.

01:27:15 ◼   ► If you upgrade to High Sierra and you have flash, you're going to get it.

01:27:17 ◼   ► Even if you have a third party flash drive, we have one listener write in to say, I have

01:27:20 ◼   ► a Mac that shipped with a spinning disk, but I replaced it with SSD upgrade to High Sierra,

01:27:25 ◼   ► automatic upgrade to APFS.

01:27:26 ◼   ► A lot of people installed one of the later High Sierra betas and didn't even realize

01:27:30 ◼   ► they had been converted to APFS because like how would you even tell because it doesn't

01:27:33 ◼   ► ask you anything about it, it just does it, right?

01:27:37 ◼   ► If you have a hard disk or a fusion drive, you won't be converted.

01:27:41 ◼   ► I don't know if that means you can't be, I think you can still go to Disk Utility and

01:27:44 ◼   ► decide to convert your thing, but anyway, that's what they're doing.

01:27:47 ◼   ► It's a very simple straightforward policy and there's no choice in the matter and we're

01:27:52 ◼   ► all just going to deal with it.

01:27:53 ◼   ► A couple people have reported their Macs being unbootable, but it's still in beta, and who

01:27:57 ◼   ► knows, but I suspect the Mac transition will be rockier than the iOS one.

01:28:01 ◼   ► And then the only other minor item on this page that we'll link is Boot Camp doesn't

01:28:05 ◼   ► read or write APFS, in case you were wondering.

01:28:08 ◼   ► I really hope Boot Camp continues to be supported.

01:28:10 ◼   ► I hope they write a read-only driver for APFS so you can at least read your stuff, but right

01:28:15 ◼   ► now you won't be able to.

01:28:17 ◼   ► Did Boot Camp read HFS?

01:28:19 ◼   ► I think there was a read-only driver for HFS.

01:28:22 ◼   ► I'm thinking of the other way where they had a read-only driver for NTFS.

01:28:25 ◼   ► But either way, there is some way I think you can get HFS volumes, you can at least

01:28:28 ◼   ► read from them on Windows, even if it's not through Apple stuff.

01:28:31 ◼   ► But APFS is just too new, and if anyone was going to do it, it was going to be Apple,

01:28:34 ◼   ► and they didn't yet anyway.

01:28:35 ◼   ► Yeah, this is totally a fine change to me.

01:28:40 ◼   ► They have this—APFS was automatically converted to and deployed very widely on iOS devices.

01:28:47 ◼   ► And as far as we know, nothing bad happened.

01:28:50 ◼   ► And yes, the problem set is much smaller on iOS devices.

01:28:54 ◼   ► The number of possible configurations is much smaller.

01:28:58 ◼   ► The edge case count is way smaller on iOS.

01:29:02 ◼   ► But also the install base is way bigger.

01:29:04 ◼   ► The usage is way bigger.

01:29:06 ◼   ► So it seems like APFS is pretty solid.

01:29:10 ◼   ► And I'm sure there are areas like, I believe, they still haven't done automatic integrity

01:29:16 ◼   ► checking, right?

01:29:17 ◼   ► At the file system level in APFS?

01:29:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:20 ◼   ► - Yes sir, the checksum's on metadata only, not on data.

01:29:23 ◼   ► - Right, so there are areas of the file system

01:29:25 ◼   ► that still could be improved, ideally,

01:29:28 ◼   ► but what is there seems to be pretty solid.

01:29:33 ◼   ► The fact that they deployed it to every iOS device

01:29:36 ◼   ► and that's been running now for months

01:29:39 ◼   ► and it's been totally fine, that's pretty great.

01:29:42 ◼   ► So we know they're doing this carefully.

01:29:44 ◼   ► We know, like Craig Federighi mentioned

01:29:47 ◼   ► in the talk show live at ABC this year,

01:29:49 ◼   ► how a couple of versions before that,

01:29:53 ◼   ► when they deployed to iOS,

01:29:54 ◼   ► they would do test migrations and roll them back,

01:29:57 ◼   ► and then report back if anything failed to Apple.

01:30:00 ◼   ► So they knew what was happening there.

01:30:02 ◼   ► There have been some reports,

01:30:04 ◼   ► somebody pointed out that the latest Mac OS X update

01:30:07 ◼   ► seemed to take a very long time to apply.

01:30:10 ◼   ► And so there was a theory that maybe it was doing

01:30:13 ◼   ► the same thing, maybe it was doing those test migrations

01:30:15 ◼   ► that would then get rolled back before it completed.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Like, it seems like Apple knows how to do this.

01:30:22 ◼   ► It's already been done on a very, very large scale,

01:30:25 ◼   ► and this will be, relatively speaking,

01:30:27 ◼   ► a drop in the bucket.

01:30:29 ◼   ► Again, there are more edge cases on the Mac,

01:30:31 ◼   ► more different configurations that can be used,

01:30:32 ◼   ► more ways people use the file system

01:30:34 ◼   ► or depend on things working a certain way,

01:30:35 ◼   ► but I think they're doing a pretty good job of it,

01:30:38 ◼   ► and I trust them to do this correctly and carefully,

01:30:42 ◼   ► so I don't think this is bad at all.

01:30:45 ◼   ► - You know, that was pretty quick.

01:30:46 ◼   ► I have to concede, I am stunned.

01:30:49 ◼   ► - All right, so Marco, tell me about the lack of home button

01:30:52 ◼   ► on the iPhone Pro slash eight slash whatever it's called,

01:30:56 ◼   ► because there seems to have been some news from Bloomberg

01:30:58 ◼   ► that there will be no physical home button

01:31:00 ◼   ► on the new iPhone.

01:31:02 ◼   ► - Well, we already knew there would be no physical home

01:31:04 ◼   ► button, but this was more about like,

01:31:06 ◼   ► this is today's rumor that came out that basically is

01:31:09 ◼   ► claiming a certain way that the software-based home button

01:31:14 ◼   ► will work, that is different from what we've heard

01:31:16 ◼   ► or assumed in the past.

01:31:17 ◼   ► So what we've assumed up till now,

01:31:19 ◼   ► or heard up till now as rumors,

01:31:21 ◼   ► is basically that there would be an area,

01:31:24 ◼   ► basically where the home button is now,

01:31:26 ◼   ► but there would be an area on the phone

01:31:29 ◼   ► that you would push firmly there and it would go home.

01:31:34 ◼   ► And how that would be represented on the screen

01:31:36 ◼   ► was up for debate.

01:31:37 ◼   ► There was some speculation from the HomePod firmware

01:31:39 ◼   ► that maybe there was some kind of home indicator

01:31:42 ◼   ► that could show or hide at different times,

01:31:46 ◼   ► whether it's like a little circle down there,

01:31:47 ◼   ► or a dot, or who knows.

01:31:50 ◼   ► This whole area, we know a lot from the HomePod leak

01:31:55 ◼   ► and from all the rumor sites.

01:31:56 ◼   ► We know some things pretty firmly about like

01:31:58 ◼   ► the physical design of the next iPhone.

01:32:01 ◼   ► But the whole area that I think is most interesting to me

01:32:05 ◼   ► is how the software will actually deal

01:32:07 ◼   ► with this physical design.

01:32:09 ◼   ► And that is still mostly unknown to us.

01:32:13 ◼   ► of all the leaks, including the HomePod firmware,

01:32:16 ◼   ► not to mention all the rumors,

01:32:18 ◼   ► you would think at first,

01:32:20 ◼   ► there's not much surprise left for the event.

01:32:23 ◼   ► But actually, to me, there's tons of surprise left,

01:32:25 ◼   ► because we still don't have concrete, solid information,

01:32:29 ◼   ► and we still haven't seen how the software

01:32:31 ◼   ► will actually deal with this bizarre all-screen phone

01:32:34 ◼   ► with this notch on the top.

01:32:35 ◼   ► That, to me, is the most interesting part,

01:32:37 ◼   ► and I think most of that's going to remain a surprise.

01:32:39 ◼   ► Anyway, Bloomberg's trying to ruin that a little bit

01:32:41 ◼   ► by claiming that the home button is going to work

01:32:44 ◼   ► a totally different way that basically,

01:32:46 ◼   ► instead of having an area that you push at the bottom,

01:32:48 ◼   ► that you're gonna have a swipe up kind of gesture,

01:32:52 ◼   ► not that different from what the iPad does

01:32:53 ◼   ► in iOS 11 with the dock,

01:32:56 ◼   ► like a big swipe up gesture to go home

01:32:58 ◼   ► instead of pushing that area at the bottom.

01:33:00 ◼   ► And that therefore the entire screen

01:33:04 ◼   ► basically will be usable as regular application area,

01:33:07 ◼   ► not just having that hole in the bottom for a home button

01:33:11 ◼   ► and maybe like a toolbar area to the left and right of it.

01:33:15 ◼   ► And if this is true, obviously this raises a lot

01:33:18 ◼   ► of questions about implementation details,

01:33:21 ◼   ► if this is the direction they go,

01:33:23 ◼   ► I am certainly, that's gonna be a major change,

01:33:26 ◼   ► so I'm certainly a little wary of it,

01:33:30 ◼   ► but it would avoid a lot of issues.

01:33:33 ◼   ► Because if you think about, if they do the method

01:33:37 ◼   ► that we assumed before this, which is they have

01:33:40 ◼   ► like a home area that if you push there,

01:33:42 ◼   ► it works like a home button,

01:33:43 ◼   ► which I think is roughly what Samsung does

01:33:45 ◼   ► with their edge-to-edge thing, right?

01:33:46 ◼   ► Like I use one in the store

01:33:47 ◼   ► and I just kinda push down there and it seemed to work.

01:33:50 ◼   ► So I think that's basically what Samsung does

01:33:51 ◼   ► and that worked fine as far as I could tell

01:33:54 ◼   ► when I used it for two seconds in a Best Buy.

01:33:55 ◼   ► But if they do that, it does raise a lot of questions

01:34:00 ◼   ► about things like what happens to app UI that's down there?

01:34:05 ◼   ► You know, do you have tab bars still?

01:34:08 ◼   ► If so, does the tab bar just go completely on top of that

01:34:13 ◼   ► so that that whole bottom half of the screen

01:34:15 ◼   ► is just a home button and maybe something

01:34:16 ◼   ► on the left and right of it that maybe you can't control

01:34:19 ◼   ► or you don't have full control or you can only put

01:34:21 ◼   ► maybe a navigation item down there or something like that.

01:34:24 ◼   ► Is it like that?

01:34:25 ◼   ► 'Cause if that's the case, then that whole bottom area

01:34:28 ◼   ► is fairly significantly wasted.

01:34:32 ◼   ► It's not totally wasted, but it raises the question

01:34:35 ◼   ► of why even make it a screen if you're not gonna have

01:34:37 ◼   ► much use for that area.

01:34:40 ◼   ► If they let applications put content down there,

01:34:43 ◼   ► but also have like a big home button hole

01:34:45 ◼   ► in the middle of that bottom row,

01:34:47 ◼   ► then you have to think, what happens with things

01:34:50 ◼   ► like tab bars, where you typically have like, you know,

01:34:53 ◼   ► this row of four or five buttons

01:34:56 ◼   ► across the bottom of the screen?

01:34:58 ◼   ► Do you go with like a two on the left, two on the right,

01:35:01 ◼   ► nothing in the middle kind of arrangement,

01:35:02 ◼   ► or something like that, and just have a big hole

01:35:05 ◼   ► in the middle of any tab bar that goes in there?

01:35:06 ◼   ► You can, that's one option, it's not a great option,

01:35:09 ◼   ► but you know, you can do that.

01:35:11 ◼   ► The claimed method by this Bloomberg article

01:35:14 ◼   ► is that it's going to be swipe-based

01:35:17 ◼   ► and that basically that the entire screen

01:35:19 ◼   ► will be usable for apps, or the vast majority

01:35:21 ◼   ► of the screen will be usable by apps most of the time,

01:35:23 ◼   ► and there won't be this hole in the middle of the bottom

01:35:26 ◼   ► that is reserved for the home button,

01:35:28 ◼   ► that some kind of swipe up from the bottom

01:35:30 ◼   ► will be used instead to go home.

01:35:32 ◼   ► If so, I'm interested to see that.

01:35:36 ◼   ► that sounds like it would solve some of these problems,

01:35:39 ◼   ► I think it might introduce new problems,

01:35:41 ◼   ► but I don't think we know enough as actual fact,

01:35:46 ◼   ► not just speculation, to say for sure,

01:35:48 ◼   ► obviously this is what they're doing,

01:35:51 ◼   ► we don't know that yet,

01:35:51 ◼   ► but we don't have enough information here

01:35:54 ◼   ► to really know for sure what they're going to do.

01:35:57 ◼   ► I would also say that Bloomberg and Germin's record

01:36:01 ◼   ► on things like this in recent times has been pretty spotty.

01:36:05 ◼   ► So I would not take this as fact

01:36:07 ◼   ► and would definitely not take this as a given.

01:36:09 ◼   ► - The thing he does lately, which I don't understand

01:36:11 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't seem like he needs to do this,

01:36:14 ◼   ► is writes about things in the present tense.

01:36:17 ◼   ► Like Apple is experimenting with different ways

01:36:20 ◼   ► that the home button can work.

01:36:21 ◼   ► It's like Apple perhaps did experiment

01:36:23 ◼   ► with different ways that the home button would work.

01:36:25 ◼   ► But at this point, with the event like a week or two away,

01:36:29 ◼   ► Apple's not experimenting with different ways

01:36:31 ◼   ► of the home button.

01:36:32 ◼   ► Different fundamental ways

01:36:33 ◼   ► to use that bottom half of the screen.

01:36:34 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure they know.

01:36:36 ◼   ► Yeah, like they've picked one by now.

01:36:38 ◼   ► Or even like worst case,

01:36:39 ◼   ► they have two complete implementations

01:36:41 ◼   ► that they're gonna pick between,

01:36:42 ◼   ► but they're not in the experimental stage anymore.

01:36:44 ◼   ► Like that ship is sailed.

01:36:45 ◼   ► Anyway, on this particular thing about the home button,

01:36:49 ◼   ► this gives a little bit more of the answer

01:36:51 ◼   ► of what the heck do we get with Edge Data Screen?

01:36:52 ◼   ► Because if they don't have to dedicate

01:36:53 ◼   ► any of the bottom of the screen to essentially to UI,

01:36:56 ◼   ► but the app can use it all,

01:36:57 ◼   ► hey, I got, and now I can see more tweets, right?

01:36:59 ◼   ► Whatever, like it's a benefit.