0:00:00I'm sorry, I ruined follow-up.
0:00:05So I feel like we should start tonight's programming with a tale of woe.
0:00:10I'll start by saying I bought a computer.
0:00:14I bought a 5K iMac.
0:00:16Whoa, okay, so first of all, congratulations.
0:00:20Well, eh, maybe not.
0:00:21So, hand on heart, Jon and Marco did not know that this happened.
0:00:25I've been keeping this a secret from them so I could spring it on the show.
0:00:29I bought a 5K iMac.
0:00:30- Is it in your possession yet or did you just order it?
0:00:33- Oh, it's here.
0:00:34It's in my trunk.
0:00:36- You didn't unpack it yet?
0:00:37- Oh no, I did.
0:00:38- Uh oh.
0:00:39- This is my tale of woe.
0:00:40- Does it fit in your trunk?
0:00:41You only have three series.
0:00:42- Oh, stop.
0:00:43(laughing)
0:00:45I bought this 5K iMac, I don't know, like a week ago.
0:00:48And I watched it march across the United States
0:00:50via FedEx ground, which was infuriating.
0:00:53I mean, I did it to myself,
0:00:55'cause I didn't pay for the super fast shipping,
0:00:57But I'm not a patient man, and it was infuriating watching it march across the US.
0:01:01But anyway, it arrived yesterday.
0:01:04And I booted it.
0:01:06I set it up.
0:01:07I moved files from my personal computer with my beloved yet very old Circa 2011 Hi-Res
0:01:15Antigler 15-inch MacBook Pro.
0:01:17I moved files from my work computer, my retina MacBook Pro, my 15-inch retina MacBook Pro.
0:01:26I got everything set up, I put all the software I wanted on it, at least at a glance anyway.
0:01:32Everything seemed okay.
0:01:34I then performed a software update.
0:01:38I let the software update go, I walked away from the computer, I came back to the computer,
0:01:42it seemed like everything had hung after like 20 minutes or something like that, which was
0:01:47well under the, or well over the time it had estimated to take the software update to run.
0:01:52There was nothing on the screen, the backlight was on, the computer had not, to my knowledge,
0:01:55everything was just there. Or I should say nothing was there actually. So I powered the machine off,
0:02:02which to be clear may have been the fatal mistake. We'll come back to that. I powered the machine off,
0:02:06I powered it back on. The chime sounds. That's it. The backlight's on, the chime sounds, nothing else.
0:02:14Okay. Turn the computer back off after having let it sit for a while. Turn it back on. The chime sounds.
0:02:22sounds and that's it. Hmm this is not good. Okay let's go through the steps. PRAM
0:02:31reset no good. SMC reset no good. Make a USB boot disk no good. Mash down on the
0:02:38D key to try to get to diagnostics no good. Recovery no good. Internet recovery
0:02:42no good. It's in a trunk. I have a Genius Bar appointment tomorrow although I may
0:02:46just end up returning it and buying a different one because it's already
0:02:48completely hosed. I have no idea what I did. It might have been me. I'm not saying
0:02:52it wasn't me. I am not looking for the internet to tell me what it was with respect to the
0:02:57internet. It will be figured out tomorrow. I have engaged two ex-Apple geniuses. I have
0:03:04engaged a friend of the show. Nobody could tell me a good answer as to what I could do
0:03:10to resuscitate it. I think something just genuinely broke.
0:03:14>>Trevor
0:03:14During the problem, were there any USB or other devices connected to it that you could
0:03:20have unplugged, and did you try unplugging them?
0:03:21Oh yes.
0:03:23So I had my microphone installed because I was all smug and happy, because the way this
0:03:28episode was supposed to go was I was supposed to say to you, "Guess what, guys?
0:03:34I am now talking to you on my 5K iMac."
0:03:38The way this episode is actually going is, "Guess what, guys?
0:03:42I actually have to either return or get this thing repaired tomorrow, which is exactly
0:03:47what I'm going to do.
0:03:48I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet.
0:03:50I'm very sad.
0:03:51I did try target disk mode.
0:03:54Somebody is asking in the chat, I tried target disk mode.
0:03:56I have tried everything in my repertoire and everything that two ex-geniuses and a friend
0:04:02that works at Apple has asked me to try.
0:04:05None of it has worked.
0:04:07I'm very sad.
0:04:08But I will tell you, in the two or three hours that it was working, it was a magnificent
0:04:13computer, and I cannot wait to hopefully get one that works sometime in the next week.
0:04:20Yeah, so I'm very sad.
0:04:22It's a sad, sad day for me.
0:04:23This is kind of like when my grandfather would complain that modern cars—actually, his
0:04:28specific complaint was modern car engine bays don't have any place for you to get your
0:04:32hands down in them, you know?
0:04:34Like because everything was all packed together really tightly, and then he would complain
0:04:36about the plastic shrouds covering everything up and complaining about how hard it is to
0:04:40replace things like air filters and they don't have carburetors anyway.
0:04:43But the related complaint to your 5k iMac is like back in the days of my most feverish
0:04:50trying to diagnose problems, one of the things that I would do in this situation, and I almost
0:04:55suggest it until I realize it's pointless, is to try to figure out what the hell is going
0:04:59on.
0:05:00Like you hear the chime, it passes the post-test, right?
0:05:02And then what happens?
0:05:03Like, can it not find the disk?
0:05:06Are you getting into the boot process?
0:05:07And the way you usually tell that is you could hear
0:05:10whether it had started accessing the hard drive
0:05:12and you knew by the series of ticks and sounds,
0:05:14is it looking for a boot sector?
0:05:16Is it just cycling disks on and off?
0:05:19Or is it actually beginning the boot process,
0:05:21which has a distinctive sound to it?
0:05:23Or in the old days with the floppy drive,
0:05:24you could tell what the computer was doing
0:05:25and at what point things went wrong.
0:05:27But with an SSD and nothing on the screen
0:05:30and definitely no indicator lights or anything like that,
0:05:32you know, hardware indicator lights for the PC folks,
0:05:35You have no idea what's going on.
0:05:37They post, there's no image on the screen.
0:05:39Has it begun the boot process?
0:05:41Can it not find the hard drive?
0:05:43If it couldn't find the hard drive,
0:05:44you'd have the blinking question mark.
0:05:47But it did pass post,
0:05:48because I think that the chime only sounds
0:05:50after it does the whole,
0:05:51post is power on self-test.
0:05:53Like the whole, if you have bad RAM or whatever,
0:05:56you'd get one of the bad chimes or something like that.
0:05:59So like all my old diagnostic tools
0:06:02are useless for these computers
0:06:03that don't make any noise except for the stupid fan.
0:06:05Is the fan going? There we go. We can ask that. Is the fan turning?
0:06:07Yes, yes it was. As far as I can tell.
0:06:09Does it crank up to full speed if you let it sit there?
0:06:11No it does not. And I actually let it sit overnight
0:06:13just to be extra specially sure
0:06:15that that wasn't just me being impatient.
0:06:17Did you spill water into it?
0:06:19I did not. Thank you for asking, but I did not.
0:06:21It's important to establish that.
0:06:23Where? I mean, are there any openings that face upwards?
0:06:25Is there one in the back maybe?
0:06:27No, he can get water in there.
0:06:29I have faith.
0:06:31Because there's openings in the bottom here. I'm going to look behind my eyes.
0:06:33- Oh God, that's funny.
0:06:36- There are no openings that face upward that I can find.
0:06:38- There's not, there's not like a slit on the top part?
0:06:40- I don't see one.
0:06:41- I didn't think so.
0:06:42So yeah, so it's sitting in my trunk.
0:06:43To be honest with you, I'll probably just return it
0:06:46and probably just order a new one
0:06:47because I feel like it's already tainted.
0:06:49- I'm still hoping or thinking or suspecting
0:06:51like this is actually a software,
0:06:53like it's not a hardware problem, it's a software problem.
0:06:55Did you, I know you said you tried a million things,
0:06:57the only other one that you didn't mention
0:06:58that I could think of, well, two things I could think of.
0:07:00One, I'm assuming since you consulted all these experts,
0:07:03you made sure that they all had the most recent up-to-date knowledge about the keys that you
0:07:07have to mash because those have changed over the past couple of years and a lot of people
0:07:11might give you advice to hold down key combinations that are no longer the correct ones for the
0:07:15same operations.
0:07:16But assuming that's handled, the only one I didn't hear you mention is verbose booting
0:07:21mode.
0:07:22I believe it's command V. You should look it up.
0:07:23The one that spews, you know, the Unix console text to your screen during the boot process.
0:07:30That's a good way to find out at what point things go off the rails during the boot process,
0:07:34assuming the boot process even began.
0:07:36I did not try that.
0:07:37However, I did not mention that I also phoned AppleCare at like—
0:07:41They're not going to help you.
0:07:43Well, my thought was, let me give them a shot, see what they could figure out.
0:07:48And I started the conversation slightly—well, mildly passive-aggressively, and I said, "Here's
0:07:53what I've tried.
0:07:54PRM reset, SMC reset, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to try to establish
0:07:57we really don't need to go through all of this again if you please.
0:08:00Have you tried blowing the dust out of the plug?
0:08:05Well if the SMC reset apparently on these Macs is to unplug it, wait 15 seconds and
0:08:10plug it back in or something along those lines.
0:08:12In any case, I tried everything I knew how to try, I tried everything that the Apple
0:08:17Care person told me to do, so in all likelihood I will just return it tomorrow.
0:08:22I have not yet cancelled my Genius appointment, we will see what happens.
0:08:26I cannot stress enough, internet, that by the time you hear this episode, this will
0:08:30already be resolved one way or another.
0:08:33Well, it'll be in the process of being resolved.
0:08:35Well, it'll be in the process of being resolved.
0:08:37Please, internet, I appreciate your feedback, but it is too late by the time you've heard
0:08:42this.
0:08:43You can use the fast shipping for the replacement?
0:08:45If I order a new one, I will absolutely spring for the fast shipping, because now I'm really,
0:08:50really sad that my—literally, I used the thing—let's see, it was seven o'clock,
0:08:55was after Declan went to bed that I booted it and started transferring everything, and
0:09:00at 10 o'clock or thereabouts was when I was calling AppleCare. So I used it for three
0:09:05hours.
0:09:06I feel so bad for you for this, because, like—
0:09:08Well, and let's not forget, this is the first desktop I've bought in easily a decade.
0:09:12Yeah, and we will definitely interrogate you about why you chose to do this and why you
0:09:16did it now and et cetera, because I really want to know all these things. But first of
0:09:20all, I do want to express my sincere condolences, because, like, I hate it. Like, it can't—it's
0:09:25puts a damper on like, you know, a big purchase of a thing you're really excited about that
0:09:30you hardly ever get to buy, and all of it, and like it comes and it has some problem
0:09:35that you have to deal with. Like that sucks. It puts such a damper on the whole thing.
0:09:38Yeah, it really does. And you know what I thought about, so yesterday obviously I was
0:09:41much more angry and pissed off than I am now. But yesterday I was thinking about it and
0:09:46I thought, what if, for the sake of conversation, this was my very first Mac? Like that's a
0:09:53terrible experience. Now, admittedly, this is definitely a fluke. This is weird. This
0:10:00is not something that normally happens. To my recollection, in my eight years of owning
0:10:05Macs, I think that's right, eight-ish years of owning Macs, I have never had a software
0:10:09update fail. So, to be clear, this is a fluke. It's weird. But, damn if it isn't frustrating.
0:10:18And oh my goodness, if this was my first Mac,
0:10:21I would go running back to Dell.
0:10:24Now, I'm not an idiot, so I'm not going to do that.
0:10:27- I'm not going crazy here.
0:10:28- No, I agree, I agree.
0:10:30But I'm just saying, imagine if your first experience
0:10:33with this, it was like the $3,000, $3,200 computer.
0:10:38Imagine your first experience is,
0:10:39oh, it works for three hours and then it's dead.
0:10:41- Well, it doesn't really matter.
0:10:43That experience doesn't really matter
0:10:45unless it's some kind of epidemic,
0:10:47which I'm assuming it isn't, right?
0:10:48But every company has like the DOA things.
0:10:51All that matters is what happens after.
0:10:53That's all that, that's what, you know what I mean?
0:10:55Like for Dell, the reason, speaking of Dell,
0:10:56the reason a lot of people like Dell
0:10:57in the enterprise anyway, is that when something happens,
0:11:01when someone drops their Dell laptop,
0:11:03when something breaks or whatever,
0:11:04you can have new hardware in your hands
0:11:07in a shockingly small amount of time.
0:11:09And so it's not, you know, things are gonna happen.
0:11:12You're gonna get, you're gonna buy 50 Dell laptops
0:11:15and one of them's gonna be DOA.
0:11:17That's not the thing that annoys you.
0:11:18It would annoy you, for example,
0:11:20if you were going through Apple,
0:11:21if you had to wait a week to get the new one.
0:11:22It doesn't annoy you if the next morning
0:11:24when you come into work,
0:11:25somebody from Dell is there with a box and says,
0:11:27"Give me your old one, here's your new one later."
0:11:29And you're like, "Oh, that was easy."
0:11:30And so for Apple, the thing that counts is
0:11:34how good was your Apple Care phone experience,
0:11:36which in my experience is not that great.
0:11:38How, when you go to the Genius Bar,
0:11:39how is that experience going to be?
0:11:41And how much fuss do they give you?
0:11:44How sympathetic are they?
0:11:45This matters too.
0:11:46pathetic as the person to your frustration about getting a DOA computer, which is basically
0:11:51how it's categorized this, because assuming this is a hardware thing, it's not like
0:11:53the software update broke it, it's just, you know, if it's a hardware problem, this
0:11:57machine was just DOA, and it's best to find this out now, right? It's all about how
0:12:01it's handled after the fact. And my one—I have two Apple stories about this, I think
0:12:05I told the other one on a past podcast, but when I got my SC30, the power supply made
0:12:10a high-pitched noise that only people under 30 could hear.
0:12:12I do remember this.
0:12:13Yeah, and that was my most disappointing one because I was a kid.
0:12:18And when you're a kid, or like when you're a kid at heart like Casey, you get your hopes
0:12:21all from this exciting new shiny computer and it comes and you're sad.
0:12:25Right, so that was the most crushing one.
0:12:27And the other one, which I may have mentioned in the past, is when, this was the Pizzabock
0:12:31PowerPC Performer actually, Performer 61 something CD.
0:12:38that for Christmas and, or it was a family computer but whatever it's mine, and the terrible
0:12:46gross PC sourced 15 inch multi sync Apple monitor that came with it was DOA, like the
0:12:53monitor just didn't work, you plugged it in, nothing happened, no lights came on the screen,
0:12:57so I got that on Christmas day, and I was older so I wasn't totally, you know, devastated,
0:13:02I didn't have any other monitors that could fit it because of the differences in the connectors,
0:13:06was a multi sync monitor, it's basically a PC monitor connector, but with a slight difference,
0:13:10and anyway all my other ones wouldn't work with it. So you get something on Christmas
0:13:14and you can't use it on Christmas, you're sad too. Apple had a new monitor on our front
0:13:19doorstep the morning after Christmas. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, so not only did they
0:13:25not wait for us to ship it back, or you know, ship it to us and get it a few days later,
0:13:30it was like, you're sad on Christmas Day, you go to sleep, you wake up the next morning,
0:13:33monitors on your doorstep. And so that was pretty amazing.
0:13:36Yeah, I'm curious to see how this works out, but you're absolutely right that it's all
0:13:43about how sympathetic people are and how people react to it, and I think it'll be fine, it'll
0:13:51all work itself out, but man, what a bummer. What a serious bummer.
0:13:56And how much hassle it is. Like, do you have to convince anyone of anything? Is there a
0:14:00a lot of paperwork to fill out,
0:14:02how long does it take for you to have the situation
0:14:05remedied to your satisfaction?
0:14:07Like, it can make a big difference.
0:14:08Even if like you got it fixed the next day,
0:14:11but to do that you had to like argue with someone
0:14:13on the phone, that's a terrible experience.
0:14:14But if you go through it and someone is sympathetic
0:14:17and just, you know, it seems like bump, bump, bump,
0:14:20oh, that's it, yep, that's it,
0:14:21you'll have a new computer on day X.
0:14:23You're like, oh, that was easy.
0:14:24And you come away from that experience
0:14:26if everything has gone well,
0:14:28actually liking the brand more than you would have
0:14:30if you had just gotten the thing and it worked out of the box.
0:14:32Yeah, yeah, totally.
0:14:33The perverse way that human nature works.
0:14:35The worst one though, the one you can't recover from, luckily we're all out of this phase,
0:14:40is like when I got my obscenely expensive Apple 22 inch LCD monitor and had dead pixels
0:14:46on it.
0:14:47And I tried not to look for them, but I could see them.
0:14:50And there's nothing you can do about that because I knew going in what the policy was.
0:14:53The policy is if there's an X number of pixels and they're this far apart or whatever, sorry,
0:14:56luck of the draw, you got unlucky.
0:14:58And I guess I suppose I could have returned it and tried again and returned it and tried
0:15:03again and returned it and tried again, but I was just not up for that.
0:15:06You know, yesterday I was really upset.
0:15:09Not even just angry.
0:15:10I was genuinely upset.
0:15:12But today, with a little bit of clarity now, I can see that this is like the most first
0:15:18world of first world problems.
0:15:19The most shiny new computer didn't work immediately.
0:15:22Oh well, like get over yourself.
0:15:24But man, it did bum me out a little bit.
0:15:27You paid good money for that thing.
0:15:28you know, don't diminish this.
0:15:30- Yeah, so hopefully it'll rectify itself.
0:15:33We don't need to talk about this anymore.
0:15:35If you guys don't have anything to say,
0:15:37we can move on to follow up,
0:15:38but if you have any other questions,
0:15:39I'm happy to field them.
0:15:40- I have so many questions, but first,
0:15:41(laughing)
0:15:42we have to do a sponsor review.
0:15:44- Fair enough.
0:15:45- And first, a quick correction.
0:15:46A couple weeks ago, I did a read for Casper,
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0:16:03Casper dot com slash ATP for 50 bucks off. So anyway, thank you Casper, sorry about the
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0:18:00One of my questions was about, I know you're not going to mess with it yourself, but RAM
0:18:05that wiggles loose as the thing took its bumpy little journey across the entire country?
0:18:10It's funny you say that.
0:18:11I reseated the RAM just to be safe, no difference.
0:18:13Ah, see I would have said the safe thing is to not try to do that because, I don't know,
0:18:19Like you just got your feet on the carpet and like, I don't know.
0:18:22I would be like, look, I just can't, I haven't touched the thing that came out of the box.
0:18:26I've been using it like you use a computer by pressing buttons on the keyboard and mouse
0:18:29or trackpad and now it's fried.
0:18:31Like, oh, you opened it up.
0:18:32Well, but you're supposed to be able to open it up.
0:18:35So I just, I'm always paranoid with Apple, so I would not have even tried that.
0:18:37I would have just brought it in instead of the RAMs unseated.
0:18:39It's not my problem.
0:18:41I didn't touch it.
0:18:42Fair point.
0:18:43And actually that brings up a really interesting point.
0:18:45Let me tell you how I know I'm old.
0:18:47I was extremely, and remain actually, extremely skeptical that me doing like Command-R for
0:18:55recovery, I believe that's right, I was looking at the documents when I was doing these keystrokes,
0:19:00so if I get them wrong now I apologize, but like Command-R, Option-Command-R, whatever
0:19:03it is for internet recovery, and D for diagnostics, all these things that I was mashing, I initially
0:19:08was doing that on the new Bluetooth keyboard that came with it, which by the way I like
0:19:12quite a bit.
0:19:13I really liked it a lot a lot.
0:19:15This is the new like semi-skinny one right? That's correct, but anyway, so I'm doing all of this and
0:19:20I'm doing it on a Bluetooth keyboard and
0:19:23The old man in me is so damn skeptical that this keyboard is even
0:19:29Connected to the computer that I first plugged it in with the lightning cable then I decided no
0:19:36I'm not even convinced that's good enough, and I have a hundred and one key Apple keyboard that I got from God knows where that's USB
0:19:43I plugged that in and did all these keystrokes again just to be safe, but it weirded me out
0:19:50to be relying on wireless devices in order to try to kick off these extremely low-level
0:19:55like boot sequences.
0:19:56I don't know, just that's me being old and weird I suppose.
0:20:01Anyway, any other questions or should we do some follow-up?
0:20:03Why'd you get this computer?
0:20:05Right, so I knew it was time to get a different computer.
0:20:09I hadn't bought a computer since my—I already mentioned 2011 Hi-Res Antigler MacBook Pro.
0:20:18That thing sits on my desk constantly.
0:20:20That's all it does, is sit on the desk.
0:20:23And even though I've been a laptop guy for easily a decade and change—in fact, I think
0:20:28I made the switch during school, so somewhere in the early 2000s was when I really became
0:20:32a laptop kind of guy.
0:20:34And I thought to myself, I will have a work laptop, as we discussed quite a bit several
0:20:41episodes back.
0:20:42I'll have a work laptop.
0:20:43And it occurred to me just yesterday that I have my high-res anti-glare MacBook Pro
0:20:49that I could put an SSD in, like we were just talking about.
0:20:52So I will still have a laptop, and even in a real pinch, I can take Aaron's scuba diving
0:20:59MacBook Air and use that if I really wanted to use a laptop.
0:21:04Beyond that, as I've also talked about on the show, Erin got me a brand new iPad Mini
0:21:10for Christmas.
0:21:12And for a lot of things, especially when mated to a Bluetooth keyboard, that's probably sufficient.
0:21:17So say I wanted to write a blog post downstairs while I'm sitting next to Erin on the couch,
0:21:22I could use my iPad, I could use her laptop, I could use my old laptop, I could use my
0:21:26work laptop.
0:21:27So if I have like 84 portable devices rolling around the house, do I really need another?
0:21:32But I have a couple of things that I really want running all the time, like Plex, for
0:21:36example.
0:21:37Why not have that running on a desktop rather than running on my laptop?
0:21:43And so it seems to me like I'm running out of good reasons to have a laptop.
0:21:50And so if I'm gonna get a desktop, and damned if I don't lust after these Apple Cinema displays
0:21:56that are all over the place, the client that I'm working at, which we've talked about in
0:21:59the past. Why not just bite the bullet and get a damn iMac? And that's what I did. And
0:22:04I tell you what, it's weird only having one monitor because at home, not right now actually,
0:22:09because I put it away, but at home I typically have two monitors. At work, I always have
0:22:13two monitors. It's weird only having one monitor.
0:22:16>> Steve - He knows you can have two. Don't email him.
0:22:18>> John - Yeah, I know you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh my God. Thank you. I know you can
0:22:21have two. But when it's a 27-inch screen, you really don't need it. It's really okay.
0:22:28"Oh my god, is that screen beautiful?"
0:22:30Did you guys know that that screen is really pretty?
0:22:33I feel like we should have talked about this
0:22:34in the past or something.
0:22:35- Well, Marco has the worst one,
0:22:37but I have the same one as you, so.
0:22:38(laughter)
0:22:40- You know, if only somebody would have told you
0:22:43about a month ago about all the benefits of desktops.
0:22:45- Yes, yes, yes.
0:22:46So eventually I thought, you know,
0:22:48so all kidding aside, I thought,
0:22:49"You know, let me just try this desktop thing,"
0:22:51'cause you know what?
0:22:52It's a lot of, no question, full stop.
0:22:55It's a lot of money.
0:22:57What I got was, I don't know, I apologize if I said this already, but I got a middle-of-the-road
0:23:00one.
0:23:01I got it with 8 gigs of RAM because I was planning on putting some aftermarket RAM in
0:23:05it.
0:23:06Did you get the good CPU?
0:23:07I got the 4 gigahertz CPU.
0:23:09Yes.
0:23:10And I got the 1 terabyte SSD.
0:23:14So basically, a fairly loaded, middle-of-the-road 5K iMac because I didn't see the need for
0:23:21a really fancy graphics card because I don't ever play games.
0:23:25So I loved the machine for the three hours I got
0:23:30to use it before it died.
0:23:32And I'm really looking forward to sticking with it.
0:23:34I really think this is probably gonna be
0:23:36the right answer for me.
0:23:38Asked me again in a few months, obviously,
0:23:39and I say that both sarcastically and seriously
0:23:42because I'm curious to see if I miss it.
0:23:43- If it works yet?
0:23:44- Yeah, if it works.
0:23:46But I'm really thinking that this was probably
0:23:50the right answer, especially if I start doing
0:23:52a little more iOS development,
0:23:53which I'm hoping to be doing soon,
0:23:56that's a pretty good way to do it.
0:23:57And I will say that after having used
0:24:01this 27-inch 5K iMac for two and a half to three hours,
0:24:05as I was going to troubleshoot,
0:24:08I got out my work 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro,
0:24:12and hand on heart, the first thing I thought to myself was,
0:24:15"Holy God, this screen is tiny."
0:24:18And I had never thought that about a 15-inch laptop
0:24:21before in my life.
0:24:24- Yeah, so two things you and I ruined on.
0:24:26First of all, the screen quality of the 5K
0:24:29is still way better, even the one I have
0:24:33that has the worst color gamut than yours.
0:24:36The screen on the 5K is way better than the screen
0:24:39on any of the laptops, including the newest 15s.
0:24:42We'll see if that changes when they go to Skylake
0:24:44in a few months or whatever, but as of today,
0:24:48the iMac screen is by far the nicest screen
0:24:51that Apple sells.
0:24:52Maybe the iPad Pro, I haven't looked too much at it, but--
0:24:54- I thought the iPad Mini was actually
0:24:56the best of the portables.
0:24:57- I mean, maybe, you know, for certain metrics,
0:24:59I know the tests you're talking about,
0:25:01but among Macs, I think the 5K iMac is just far and away,
0:25:06far ahead of the other ones,
0:25:07because just everything about it,
0:25:09like the color, the contrast, the pixel density,
0:25:13I don't know, a bunch of stuff I don't understand,
0:25:15it just looks great,
0:25:16and once you're accustomed to looking at a 5K,
0:25:19when you look at a Retina MacBook Pro,
0:25:21you can tell the Retina MacBook Pro screen
0:25:24almost seems blurry by comparison.
0:25:25It is a very different look,
0:25:28and it looks fantastic on the 5K.
0:25:30So first of all, you are now ruined.
0:25:32So yes, you can plug in additional monitors to it,
0:25:36but you won't want to,
0:25:37because anything else you plug into it
0:25:39will look like garbage.
0:25:40And Apple is not yet shipping
0:25:42a standalone version of this monitor.
0:25:44I hope they do in the future,
0:25:45for people who do want multi-monitor,
0:25:46or who don't have a 5K but have a laptop or something.
0:25:50But for now, this is the best screen Apple sells
0:25:53and the only way you can get it is inside a 5K iMac
0:25:55and nothing else matches it.
0:25:58And even having a laptop next to it is just no contest.
0:26:01So A, you're ruined on screen quality
0:26:03and B, you're definitely ruined on screen size.
0:26:05And this is how I feel, how I felt for years
0:26:08ever since I got a giant monitor like this.
0:26:10I can do work on my 15 inch MacBook Pro
0:26:13and I have and I need to usually a few times a year.
0:26:16I need to do something really heavy on the MacBook Pro,
0:26:18I'm glad I have it.
0:26:19But every time I do work on the MacBook,
0:26:22or I'm tempted to work on the MacBook Pro,
0:26:23and I can work on the desktop,
0:26:25like either it's just on the other side of the house,
0:26:29or I'll be back home in a couple days and I can do it then,
0:26:32I will just put off work until I can do it on the big screen
0:26:35because I know that I will be way happier
0:26:38and more productive doing it on the big screen.
0:26:40So you will probably follow a similar path
0:26:44you'll be like, "Well, I could work on this laptop, but the screen is so cramped.
0:26:50I might as well just wait until I can go upstairs and do it on the iMac."
0:26:53Yeah, yeah, we'll see.
0:26:55I am genuinely a little—I'm going to use the word "worried" because I can't think
0:26:59of a better word—but I'm a little worried about what this means for my home life and
0:27:05for my relationship with Aaron.
0:27:06Because I don't often sit with a laptop downstairs next to Aaron, but I wouldn't
0:27:11say it's uncommon either.
0:27:13And now, if I want to use my computer, I'm going to have to be upstairs in one of our
0:27:18bedrooms, which is my in-home office.
0:27:21And that's where I'm sitting right now to record.
0:27:23And so, I don't want to ignore Aaron on a regular basis, just because I want to be upstairs
0:27:29on my fancy new iMac.
0:27:30But we'll see what happens.
0:27:32I mean, if that's the most of my problems, I'm in pretty damn good shape, aren't I?
0:27:35So we'll see.
0:27:36But I don't mean this to be snarky.
0:27:38I mean, genuinely.
0:27:39And in the two and a half, three hours I used the thing.
0:27:43I really, really, really loved it.
0:27:45I really did.
0:27:46And admittedly, some of that was like, ooh, shiny.
0:27:49But it was fast.
0:27:51It worked well.
0:27:53I was transferring things from both laptops to the iMac.
0:27:57God knows what's going to happen with that data if I
0:27:59return it.
0:28:00But anyway, I was transferring stuff to the iMac at
0:28:04ridiculous speeds.
0:28:05I was doing like 18 things at once.
0:28:07I'm a really heavy user of, what is it, Spaces, the multiple virtual screens.
0:28:11I know it's all wrapped into mission control now, but I barely use them on this iMac because,
0:28:17God help me, I have like 10 different windows open at once.
0:28:21Shut up, John.
0:28:22I had like 10 different windows open at once, which is like eight more than I usually have.
0:28:27I don't know, maybe I just have a simple mind.
0:28:29I think you're not the only one with Spaces.
0:28:31I see with all these youngsters at work who, like, we have many more Macs at work now and
0:28:35have many more youngsters at work. And it's very easy to get multiple monitors at work.
0:28:40So the main, like the way young people, I'm generalizing, the way of young people I see
0:28:48at my work, kids these days, right? Exactly, use their max is they have multiple monitors,
0:28:54they like lots of monitors, like the more the better. One guy had like six, it was ridiculous.
0:28:58And they full screen everything and they attempt to use spaces and mission control
0:29:05to cycle through things. Like I'll be sitting there and watching somebody do something at their
0:29:09they'll be demonstrating something and they'll have they'll have a text editor full screen on one
0:29:1317 inch monitor and another text editor or web browser full screen another 17 inch monitor and
0:29:18sometimes it'd be like well go to this web page go to the source file go to this go to that go to
0:29:22that terminal window all these things would fit in like one 17 inch screen if the person like used
0:29:27windows the way they're supposed to be done because really the terminal a terminal filling an entire
0:29:32letterbox format 17 inch screen is ridiculous, right?
0:29:36But instead it's like, where's that window again?
0:29:38Where's that window?
0:29:39Lots of gestures and keyboard combinations to, you know,
0:29:42go through spaces with the control arrow keys
0:29:44and gestures to swipe from one to the other
0:29:45to try to make the thing they're looking for
0:29:48appear on one of the two screens.
0:29:50And they can't see what's in front of behind.
0:29:52They just have to like,
0:29:53and they don't seem to have an awareness.
0:29:54There's no like, like it used to be where spaces were 2D
0:29:57instead of just like a 1D strip.
0:29:59Remember the 2D spaces things
0:30:00where you go up, down, left, and right.
0:30:01then at least I'd have a fighting chance. Instead, what I see is two screens that I
0:30:05see hands moving furiously and I see two screens blink blink blink blink blink blink blink.
0:30:09Oh, I found it. There it is. And then we'll go back to the other thing. OK. Blink blink
0:30:13blink, blink, blink, blink, blink. Oh, I found it. This is this does not seem efficient.
0:30:20So yeah. Anyway, people like we should we should know this from from Windows. Windows
0:30:25taught us that people like to maximize everything. And the Mac users like well Mac users don't
0:30:29maximize everything. Well guess what? Now that Macs are more common, the people who
0:30:33maximize everything have Macs and they try to work the same way. So don't do that, Casey.
0:30:37It's a waste of your screen space.
0:30:39I don't typically maximize everything, but what I typically do is have spaces kind of
0:30:45orient like things. So as an example, probably the best example is I have one space that
0:30:52has my work IM, the relay Slack, and iMessages in three tiles on that space that take up
0:31:00the whole screen.
0:31:01So the left half of the screen is work IM, this is on my work computer of course.
0:31:06The left half of the screen is work IM, and then the right half of the screen is split
0:31:09in half.
0:31:10So the top half is relay Slack, and the bottom half is iMessages.
0:31:15And that's actually what's going on right now.
0:31:17So that's just a simple example.
0:31:19I like spaces, it's not for everyone, but like I said, when I was using the Saimak,
0:31:24I found that I could just tile damn near everything on the one space, which is a weird thing for
0:31:30me.
0:31:31But my love of spaces is also the reason that I feel like I can't use any other mouse other
0:31:36than the Magic Mouse, because I am addicted to the two-finger swipe.
0:31:40I understand that Mike's beloved MX Revolution or whatever it is has configurations in which
0:31:45you can swap spaces with buttons and whatnot. But for me, I've always used the Magic Mouse
0:31:51and I love it.
0:31:52Plus, that mouse crippled him, so.
0:31:53And that mouse also crippled him, so there's that too.
0:31:55Minor details.
0:31:56Right, no big deal, right? So anyway, so yeah, in my brief usage, and again, I know I sound
0:32:02snarky, but I'm not trying to be. In my very brief usage of this machine, I actually really,
0:32:06really, really liked it. And if I return it tomorrow, if I get it repaired tomorrow one
0:32:11way or the other, I am looking forward to having some honest-to-goodness time with it.
0:32:16But it was fast, it was nice, it was pretty, the screen was beautiful, I really enjoy the
0:32:23new peripherals.
0:32:25The new Magic Mouse seemed roughly the same to me, I couldn't tell any major differences.
0:32:30Like I understand what the differences are, but just from feel and whatnot, I couldn't
0:32:34really tell the differences.
0:32:36The new keyboard though, I really, really liked a lot.
0:32:38I feel like every single Apple keyboard in the house, I have the 2011 MacBook Pro, I
0:32:43have the 2015 MacBook Pro, I have the 101-key keyboard, I have a four-battery Bluetooth
0:32:52keyboard, I have Aaron's MacBook Air.
0:32:55Every single one of those keyboards, I swear to you, feels just a little bit different.
0:32:58But I really liked the new Bluetooth one.
0:33:02What is it, the Magic Keyboard or something?
0:33:04I always get the names wrong.
0:33:05Anyway, whatever the brand new one is.
0:33:07I really liked it a lot.
0:33:08So the hardware, excepting the fact that it died, was wonderful.
0:33:15And I, you know, to a quick personal anecdote, my office is a disaster.
0:33:21The one in my house is a disaster.
0:33:22You could barely see the carpet and there was like a path between the door and the chair
0:33:26and that was about it.
0:33:28And in preparation for this thing, as it was marching across the country, I finally did
0:33:32what Aaron has been begging me to do for like two years now, and I cleaned up my office
0:33:37And my desk was all clean.
0:33:38I have a glass desk because I've had it for forever, but I guess I'm that kind of a loser.
0:33:43And so I have this glass desk, it was all cleaned off.
0:33:45I moved my mic from one side of the desk to the other, which if you're a podcaster, is
0:33:49like a really big deal.
0:33:50And I was all ready to go, and it was going to be great.
0:33:54And now it's in my trunk to get repaired or returned tomorrow.
0:33:58That sucks.
0:33:59Yeah, I'm very sad.
0:34:01I really do feel so bad for you because I just,
0:34:05as I said earlier, the idea of having thought about it
0:34:09and saved up and then finally ordered and tracked
0:34:11and received this thing only to have it then just be broken,
0:34:14it's such a damper on what should be the exciting time
0:34:18that you finally got.
0:34:20You paid for it, you waited patiently, you got it.
0:34:23- Like I said, as silly as it is,
0:34:25one of the things I was most excited for
0:34:27was to say to the two of you, guess what?
0:34:30- Right.
0:34:31of my new iMac. Like I said, when I was doing all of this installation, I already had my
0:34:36mic connected because there's no reason not to. And then, never mind. Sad times. So anyway,
0:34:43we've talked about this far too long. We should probably do some follow-up, especially since
0:34:47we have a fair bit of it. But I appreciate you indulging me, and next week we will have
0:34:52some amount of follow-up. Either I returned it, or maybe I got it repaired. We'll see
0:34:57what happens but we'll follow back up next week.
0:35:00Before you move on, do you want to preemptively apologize to Declan for his bad Minecraft 2.3 frame rates?
0:35:07[laughter]
0:35:09Well, given that he's, what, 14 and a half months now, I'm not too worried about that.
0:35:14I said Minecraft 2.3. By the time he reaches Minecraft age, you'll still have that computer,
0:35:18he'll be using it, and the new version of Minecraft will probably not get great frame rates,
0:35:22and he'll ask why, and then you'll have to explain to him, "Daddy didn't want the good graphics card."
0:35:27Do you really think the good graphics card would make a difference when he's playing a game on a seven-year-old computer?
0:35:32I think it will because Minecraft is like I assume there will be no Minecraft 2, but who knows at that point in his life
0:35:38but minecraft does can be surprisingly demanding if you crank everything up to max on my
0:35:445k iMac which has the best video card that you can get in that particular machine
0:35:48You can make it chug occasionally like it can happen
0:35:51You know obviously he's not gonna have the graphics settings max
0:35:54But I think even at standard graphics settings with a reasonable draw distance, by the time
0:36:00he is of age and Minecraft has evolved to have slightly fancier graphics perhaps, it's
0:36:04not going to get great frame rates.
0:36:07And someone's going to have to answer for that.
0:36:09And I guess I'll explain it to him if you don't want to.
0:36:11Because it's not like you're going to get rid of that beautiful screen.
0:36:13Like you're going to use that thing for as like it'll be a viable computer for a really
0:36:17long time, except maybe for Minecraft.
0:36:19Okay, first of all, I need to teach you guys about selling computers while they're still
0:36:23worth something.
0:36:24Second of all, I love, Jon, that you assume there might not be a Minecraft 2.
0:36:31I know, Microsoft bought them, I understand.
0:36:34It's a billion dollar business.
0:36:36There will definitely be a Minecraft 2.
0:36:38It might not be good, and it might not be for a while, but there will definitely be
0:36:42a Minecraft 2.
0:36:43Well, it's already on the App Store, did you see it?
0:36:46Yeah.
0:36:47Alright, no, I mean, put it this way.
0:36:49If Notch still owned it, I mean, there should have already been a Minecraft 2 and 3, but
0:36:53wasn't because the company and the person who owned it just continued to revise the
0:36:57program and continued to sell the original program.
0:37:01Now that Microsoft owns it, you're right, there will surely be a Minecraft 2 at some
0:37:05point, but I'm not quite sure when that will be.
0:37:08It could be borderline.
0:37:10I don't know what kind of priority it is for them to get their Minecraft 2 out versus just
0:37:16revising and continuing to sell Minecraft on every single new platform.
0:37:19Because they are selling the same game over and over again.
0:37:21They'll sell it on PS4, they'll sell it, well, you know, less so now, but they'll sell it
0:37:24on Xbox One, they'll sell it on the PC version, they'll probably sell a Windows Phone version,
0:37:29you know, they'll sell, they keep selling the iOS version.
0:37:33So I don't know if there, there is a burning need to make Minecraft 2 before Declan reaches
0:37:38that age, but we'll see.
0:37:39We are sponsored this week by Blue Apron, helping you cook better at home.
0:37:43Go to BlueApron.com/ATP to get your first two meals for free.
0:37:47Now look, you need to know how to cook.
0:37:49Not only should you know your way around the kitchen, but cooking at home means eating
0:37:52healthier and saving money instead of ordering an expensive unhealthy takeout every night.
0:37:57But where do you start?
0:37:58Blue Apron has you covered.
0:37:59For less than $10 per meal, they deliver all the fresh ingredients you need to create home-cooked
0:38:04meals.
0:38:05Just follow the easy step-by-step instructions they give you for each recipe, with pictures
0:38:08of every step right on the recipe cards so you can see exactly what it's supposed to
0:38:11look like.
0:38:12It comes with exactly the ingredients you need.
0:38:14There's no like massive amount of extra like some herb that you need to throw away in a
0:38:18week when it goes rotten. Regardless of your dietary preferences, they have lots of options.
0:38:22They make it a breeze to discover and prepare dishes right in your own kitchen. So this
0:38:27week they have things like Garganelli pasta and tomato sauce with fresh mozzarella and
0:38:31arugula orange salad. That's a mouthful, literally. And buffalo chicken sandwiches with endive
0:38:37and blue cheese salad. You'll also cook with ingredients that you've probably never used
0:38:41before, like this week's poblano chili or baby bok choy or pearl onions. Now all these
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0:38:55at blueapron.com/atp.
0:38:57That's blueapron.com/atp.
0:39:00Blue Apron, a better way to cook.
0:39:02I am still thinking about that Thai soup
0:39:03they had like two months ago.
0:39:04Man, that was good.
0:39:05- Yeah, you know, it's funny you bring that up.
0:39:07So as part of Blue Apron sponsoring us,
0:39:09they gave us a few weeks of free meals.
0:39:11And I have been wanting to try Blue Apron
0:39:14for the longest time.
0:39:15It took us all of one week for Aaron and I to look at each other and say, "This might
0:39:18be worth it, because this is really, really, really good."
0:39:22And tonight we had Korean—and I'm going to butcher this—Korean T'yak and spicy
0:39:26pork ragu.
0:39:28And this was one of those things that it's not totally out of our comfort zone, but not
0:39:32in our comfort zone, if that makes sense.
0:39:35And oh man, was it really good.
0:39:37And last week was our first week.
0:39:39We had a few different things and they were all good.
0:39:41No, I'm really loving Blue Apron so far,
0:39:44and I think it's a pretty much done deal
0:39:47that Aaron and I are gonna end up signing up
0:39:49and actually using our own money to pay for it,
0:39:51'cause it's awesome.
0:39:52- Casey, we had the same dinner today.
0:39:54- Oh, did we?
0:39:55Oh, that's delightful.
0:39:55- I had the exact same thing.
0:39:56I had the exact same Blue Apron meal, yeah.
0:39:59- Did you like it?
0:39:59- I did.
0:40:00It was one of my favorite ones that I've had so far.
0:40:02- Yeah, same here.
0:40:03It was one of those things where we were both like,
0:40:05"Yeah, we'll try it.
0:40:06"We'll see how it goes."
0:40:07And then Aaron and I looked at each other
0:40:08after having had a few bites,
0:40:09We were like, "Wow, is this good!
0:40:12We didn't expect it!"
0:40:13Yeah, I found that I've not been able to predict ahead of time which ones I'm going to like
0:40:17and which ones I'm not going to, mostly because they're so varied that you really have no
0:40:25baseline to say, "Well, I like that.
0:40:27I don't know.
0:40:28I've never had anything like that before."
0:40:30The other thing—this is getting out of the Ed
0:40:36Read, but into Blue Apron hacks.
0:40:37I don't know if this is a thing that people do.
0:40:38So say you sign up for Blue Apron and you do it for a while, and it's interesting.
0:40:39reasons I think you should do it even if you just do it for a short time is just to see
0:40:43it try a bunch of different new foods or whatever and they give you like they give you the ingredients
0:40:47and they also give you like oh it's always one page marker would know like a one page
0:40:51thing on how to cook it. I've never seen it be more than one page it's always been it's
0:40:55always one sheet of paper with about eight steps in the back. Right and it has the ingredients
0:40:59on the other side right? Well the front of it has like a big picture and then it lists
0:41:02the ingredients and then the back of it has like like a two column grid of instructions
0:41:06with photos at each step.
0:41:08- Right, so when you're done with Blue Apron,
0:41:09say you decide not to pay for it anymore,
0:41:11you still have all those recipes.
0:41:13So if you liked one of them, in theory,
0:41:15you could go and make it yourself.
0:41:16Go buy the ingredients yourself.
0:41:17I mean, you're not gonna get the perfect little portions
0:41:19that Blue Apron gave you,
0:41:20so you'll have to adjust the amounts
0:41:21and maybe you'll have leftovers
0:41:22and maybe you will have that rotting herbs
0:41:24in the refrigerator.
0:41:27But you can make these again yourself.
0:41:29Like, there's no reason.
0:41:30Like, if you find one that's a super favorite,
0:41:32just add it to your collection of things
0:41:33that you regularly make for yourself.
0:41:35- Yeah, we've been with Blue Aprons for, I don't know,
0:41:37maybe six months now?
0:41:39Long before they were a sponsor, we've been using them.
0:41:41And we've been doing that since the start.
0:41:43We've collected all the recipes we like,
0:41:45we just have this giant stack of them
0:41:47accumulating on our bookshelf.
0:41:48- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah.
0:41:49And the problem I had though, I wanted to make the awesome,
0:41:52I think it's like chicken kasoule or something, I'm sorry,
0:41:54I forgot exactly what the name of it is,
0:41:57but it's this awesome chicken Thai soup.
0:41:59And I tried to go buy the ingredients for it last week,
0:42:01and just like, my store had almost none of them.
0:42:05But yeah, we've been using it a long time,
0:42:08and that should tell you all you need to know.
0:42:09I mean, we keep using it.
0:42:10What I like about it, this is way too long
0:42:12for a sponsor, Reid, but sorry.
0:42:13What I like about it is that the reason we did it
0:42:16was that we don't like to have to think about
0:42:19what are we making this week,
0:42:20and then plan a huge version of this.
0:42:22We lasted two weeks trying to do that,
0:42:24and every six months we would try to do that again,
0:42:26and we would just fail so soon afterwards.
0:42:28They'd take all the decision-making out of it for you,
0:42:31which is really nice when you just don't wanna have
0:42:34make all of these decisions about what are we having every single night, you know? So
0:42:38it's really nice for that.
0:42:39So, the chat room says the recipes are actually available online for free. Blueapron.com/cookbook.
0:42:45And also their logo looks like Totoro. So there you go. What more could you ask for?
0:42:48All right. So…
0:42:49All right. So we should do some follow-up. And we have a fair bit, so let's buckle
0:42:54up kids. Let's start with—we talked about Plex a little bit last episode in—or maybe
0:42:59it was the episode before, but regardless, we got a lot of people writing in to ask,
0:43:03Have you tried Infuse for the Apple TV?
0:43:06And we'll have a link in the show notes.
0:43:08The idea with Infuse is that it's somewhat Plex-like in
0:43:11that it will auto discover metadata about your media
0:43:16collection.
0:43:17So it'll show you your list of movies with movie posters and
0:43:21things of that nature.
0:43:23But the real kick and the party trick that Infuse has,
0:43:28from what I've gathered, is that it will actually do the
0:43:31transcoding on your device.
0:43:33So really, there's no reason that you couldn't just sit a
0:43:38bunch of files on an underpowered Synology and let
0:43:44Infuse just look at it and then do the transcoding right
0:43:47on the Apple TV.
0:43:48That is excellent, and it sounds great.
0:43:50I haven't tried it yet, but it does sound good.
0:43:52The problem I have with this, though, is that it doesn't
0:43:53solve a couple of the other problems that Plex does fix,
0:43:59which is, number one, it doesn't give you external access to your media. So one of the
0:44:03greatest pieces of Plex is that you can get to your media from outside of your home if
0:44:08you set it up properly. And secondly, you can't share other people's libraries. So like
0:44:14Marco and John and I, we have all shared our libraries with each other so that Marco, for
0:44:19example, could stream one of the movies that I have—
0:44:22John: Been doing it all week.
0:44:23[laughs]
0:44:24Steven: —from my house to his house.
0:44:25John; We've been watching through your top gear.
0:44:27Well, right, and the reason that it hasn't worked for the last 24 hours is because I
0:44:30moved all my Plex stuff to the iMac that's now in my trunk. But anyway, so yeah, so it
0:44:36doesn't do that. It doesn't do external access and doesn't do sharing.
0:44:38Yeah, I tried Infuse as soon as people suggested it, because I'll jump on top of anything.
0:44:41Like, as soon as we talked about it, I don't know, it was like many, many shows ago. Like,
0:44:44oh great, Infuse, I immediately bought the $10, like, pro version or whatever. Yes, sure,
0:44:49come right on, I'll give it a try, sight unseen, you know, because I got two recommendations
0:44:52from it from random strangers. But the whole reason the whole reason I wanted it, I'm trying
0:44:58to support the app economy, the whole reason I wanted it was to... You're the one. I had this
0:45:02file that I was trying to play that I had to eventually end up using my... This is one that
0:45:08I had to use my iMac as the Plex server for because the iMac has no problem transcoding it.
0:45:11Plex served from the iMac to my Apple TV was the only thing that played this thing with all,
0:45:18you know, played it all period, but played it smoothly and everything. So I tried to
0:45:22fuse, I immediately looked at those, that exact file, which turns out is, this is the
0:45:26info from MPlayer, so I don't know how to parse it, but it's HEVC, which I think is
0:45:31H.264, particular profile, 1920 by 1080, so 1080, I don't know if it's I or P, I assume
0:45:37it's P, because it's all a video file. 24 frames per second, about 1100 kilobits per
0:45:43second, two-track 48 kilohertz AAC audio, the Apple TV can't play without
0:45:50stuttering. So if it's decoding it on the device, it can't handle this. So I
0:45:56was sad because that was the one reason I bought it. But aside from that, it's a
0:46:00reasonable way, like Casey said, if you have a whole bunch of folders full of
0:46:05video files sitting somewhere on your network, this will go through the folders
0:46:09and play stuff for you.
0:46:12And so I'm not sad that I purchased it, I am sad that apparently their software combined
0:46:17with the wimpy A8, relatively wimpy A8 CPU system on a chip thing inside my Apple TV
0:46:24can't play this fairly demanding file.
0:46:27And I already watched the whole show.
0:46:28I watched it on my iPad by the way, because what I did was I went into Plex and finally,
0:46:31I finally had to give in and say "fine Plex, you can optimize this" quote unquote "optimize
0:46:37by re-encoding it to a smaller size, and then I watched it on my TV and on my iPad over
0:46:41the course of a few days.
0:46:43Wait, so you said this was HEVC video?
0:46:45'Cause that's H.265, that's kind of a big deal.
0:46:49That's like, it's very reasonable to not be strong enough to play that.
0:46:52Oh, well that's probably, it doesn't have the hardware?
0:46:55I remember reading about some Apple thing that actually has H.265 hardware, but it isn't
0:47:00actually used, but anyway, that would make sense in that, like, Infuse probably does
0:47:05great because the aid has dedicated H.264 decode hardware.
0:47:09But if it's not H.264 and instead it's H.265 and either the system on a chip doesn't have
0:47:13hardware for it or the hardware isn't enabled by Apple's OS, then yeah, it would have to
0:47:18be trying to do it all on the CPU and I can understand why it would choke to death.
0:47:21Yeah, I also should point out that just earlier today I listened to MacPowerUser's episode
0:47:29299, which we will put a link in the show notes.
0:47:32And if you've ever wanted an unbiased opinion about, or certainly not biased by me, opinion
0:47:37about Plex, if you've wondered how to get started with it, if you've wondered what it
0:47:43brings to the table, listen to Back Hour Users 299.
0:47:45It's a really great episode that goes all into Plex.
0:47:48So you should check that out.
0:47:49Here's one more drive-by complaint about Plex, which I cannot believe that they don't do.
0:47:53I just assume they did, and maybe I haven't found it yet.
0:47:55So you have a blog post, which maybe you can link in the show notes, Casey, about like
0:47:58introduction to Plex that you did a while ago, like how to name your files, linking
0:48:02to like the Plex file naming guide and figuring out, I'm like, and I wondered when I read
0:48:06that at the time, like, because I wasn't using Plex that much, I'm like, this seems weird,
0:48:10mate. Why is he doing this? Just because like, Oh, if you want to have everything perfect,
0:48:13just do it this way. But like surely there's a feature in this thing where you can essentially
0:48:16just find some media that it either has shrugged its shoulders at or has misidentified and
0:48:21say, Oh, well you got it wrong. And go in there and just type some random words in a
0:48:25a search box until you find the search result you want and go, "Oh yeah, it's that one."
0:48:29So like, say you mislabeled Star Wars or something and it's confused about what it is, and you're
0:48:34like, "Oh, well, you don't know what this is because I have the files named weird or
0:48:37whatever, so I'm just going to go in to your search box and type 'Star Wars' and see the
0:48:418,000 results for Star Wars and find the one that is not the special edition but the original
0:48:451977 version and just click on that one and say, 'Yeah, this is that one.'" Is that feature
0:48:49not existent Plex? If it exists, I can't find it.
0:48:51No, it does.
0:48:52I can't find it.
0:48:53- I swear it does, but I can't walk you through where it is
0:48:55because my iMac is in my trunk right now.
0:48:58- All right, well anyway, maybe I haven't found it yet,
0:48:59but like every time I go to edit the metadata,
0:49:01it's like, you know, if I name the file,
0:49:04then yeah, we'll figure it out.
0:49:05If I don't name the file right,
0:49:06all I can do is like pick cover art and stuff.
0:49:08If it is totally wrong about the metadata,
0:49:11I can't do a search and say,
0:49:13surely the database that you are using has this metadata
0:49:15and that you're just not finding the right one.
0:49:17So rather than me editing the individual metadata,
0:49:19which I don't wanna do, I just wanna say,
0:49:21let me do a search of your big database full of stuff,
0:49:24like a pretty broad search,
0:49:26and let me pick the blob of metadata
0:49:28that I'm telling you is this one,
0:49:29so that I can manually fix everything that I had.
0:49:31Like, so that if I didn't know how to label,
0:49:33like some, you know, special of a show,
0:49:36like a Christmas special of a show,
0:49:37that's not part of any particular season,
0:49:39if I didn't know the secret season zero weird,
0:49:41you know, convention they have,
0:49:43I can be like, oh, well,
0:49:43let me just do a chronological search
0:49:46of the most recent episodes from this series,
0:49:48and I will find whatever blob of metadata corresponds
0:49:51to this and then click on it
0:49:52and it will automatically label it as like season zero.
0:49:54I'm like, oh, I would never figure that on my own.
0:49:57Anyway, I'm still working through my Plex expertise.
0:50:00- Yeah, you know, the thing with Plex is it's very
0:50:02opinionated about file names and file conventions.
0:50:05But once you understand its opinions,
0:50:07it's actually very simple to work with.
0:50:09And that's what my blog post was about.
0:50:11I am almost positive the feature that you're talking about,
0:50:13John, about fixing mismatches, I'm almost sure it's there,
0:50:17but I don't want to say that for certainty
0:50:19because I can't try it right now,
0:50:21because again, my Plex server is currently
0:50:22in the trunk of my car.
0:50:23- Yeah, I'll keep looking for it,
0:50:25but the thing with the opinionated naming,
0:50:28its opinions are wrong, so.
0:50:29(laughing)
0:50:30I refuse to comply.
0:50:31I know the naming scheme now.
0:50:33I've read the documentation,
0:50:34but there's no way in hell I'm putting a year in parentheses
0:50:36at the end of my movies or television shows, no.
0:50:39And I object to season zero.
0:50:41I don't like it.
0:50:42(laughing)
0:50:43- For the record, season zero for TV shows,
0:50:46specials. So like the Top Gear Polar special, for example, would be a season zero entry.
0:50:51Anyway, we have a fair bit of feedback about Swift and Default Final, and I'm stunned.
0:50:57I'm flabbergasted. It appears that Marco has done some homework and has put something
0:51:01in the show notes.
0:51:02I flagged an email, yeah.
0:51:03Wow.
0:51:04Yeah, I hit three keys to make this happen.
0:51:05Are you okay? Do you feel all right?
0:51:07No.
0:51:08All right, so this was feedback from Nick Matsakis from a longer email. It's very
0:51:15very thoughtful. I'm going to read just a quote here. He said, so we were talking about
0:51:18Swift basically having classes be default final as a proposed change to the language
0:51:24during the revolution. That's kind of a debate raging on right now. And this would mean basically
0:51:28that by default classes couldn't be sub-classed. That you could, sub-classing would still exist
0:51:33in the language but the default, unless the class was specially marked with whatever keyword
0:51:38would say, you know, extensible or whatever, the default would be you can't sub-class things.
0:51:43Nick says, "The late 80s and early 90s were the heyday for object-oriented programming,
0:51:48and in languages designed in that time, like C++, Objective-C, and Java, it was taken as
0:51:52a given that subclassing was a good thing and should be used pervasively. However, a
0:51:56couple of decades of experiences with such languages has led to two key insights I think
0:52:00we've learned as an industry. The first is that in order to write classes that can be
0:52:03robustly extended through inheritance, allowing both the base and derived classes to evolve
0:52:08with minimal risk of breaking each other, see also the fragile base class problem, careful
0:52:12for consideration should be given at the time the class is designed and written. I think
0:52:16this argues for default closed. I think we've learned an even more important lesson though,
0:52:20which is that class inheritance should be thought of as a limited tool to solve a prescribed
0:52:24set of problems, not a general mechanism for code reuse. So this makes a lot of sense to
0:52:30me. Like this, I totally agree with Nick. You know, I think I kind of breezed by when
0:52:34we were talking about this last week, a quick statement of basically saying like I think
0:52:38we've seen a lot of anti-patterns and dysfunction
0:52:40that subclassing everywhere can bring,
0:52:43and some of the challenges it brings, some of the,
0:52:45I think I agree that what we've seen
0:52:48is that it basically shouldn't be the default
0:52:50that's everywhere, and the Java people
0:52:53will have to find a different way to program, I guess.
0:52:56And they can, and the PHP people
0:52:58have to find somebody else to copy.
0:53:00- This is actually a pretty old nugget of wisdom,
0:53:04the whole, the downsides of subclassing.
0:53:07And you can tell it's old because Objective-C is,
0:53:12in many ways, a reaction to it.
0:53:13Objective-C is like 1989-ish.
0:53:15Like it is itself a very old language.
0:53:17And not Objective-C so much,
0:53:19but like the frameworks built on it,
0:53:20AppKit or whatever it was called.
0:53:22I think it was maybe it was always called AppKit.
0:53:23But anyway, the next step frameworks,
0:53:27especially the UI frameworks, use delegation a lot,
0:53:30a lot more than contemporary frameworks
0:53:33for doing similar things that were all about subclassing.
0:53:35They were either functional,
0:53:36in which case they didn't have object classes at all,
0:53:39or they were enamored of the idea of subclassing.
0:53:42But the next APIs and frameworks
0:53:45heavily use delegation patterns to avoid subclassing
0:53:49and to say this is a better way.
0:53:50That way we have understandable individual objects
0:53:53that just use each other to do things.
0:53:55And the way you alter behavior
0:53:57is by giving it a different delegate.
0:53:59I mean, hell, that's essentially,
0:54:01Marco can correct me if I'm wrong,
0:54:03the next equivalent of like, you know,
0:54:06you don't write a main routine,
0:54:07there is a main routine obviously,
0:54:08but your app delegate is basically your application.
0:54:12Am I correct in my vague understanding
0:54:14of the Cocoa frameworks?
0:54:16- Yeah, you don't subclass UI application.
0:54:19You provide an app delegate that conforms to the protocol
0:54:22and you get messages delivered there
0:54:23and if you don't pay attention it bloats over time
0:54:26and eventually all of the code in your app
0:54:28is in the app delegate.
0:54:29- Well, that's like writing all of your code in main,
0:54:31like a rookie mistake, right?
0:54:33But yeah, but like so even like the very simplest starting
0:54:38point of your program is done through delegation.
0:54:40And lots of the UI frameworks are done through delegation.
0:54:43And then delegation eventually--
0:54:47not specifically delegation, but trying to avoid inheritance
0:54:51can lead you to a sort of the inversion of a control pattern,
0:54:55which can get kind of weird and nasty,
0:54:57speaking of Java, where you're trying to use composition
0:55:00instead of inheritance, but you want
0:55:01to give people access to the different pieces that get composed into the whole, and so your
0:55:07entire program is dictating what things are composed into what to get your classes into
0:55:12the parts we need to go.
0:55:13Anyway, any sort of code reuse, essentially, technology, a code reuse technique, whether
0:55:19it's inheritance or delegation or composition or any of the other patterns in the little
0:55:22big pattern of books, can go awry.
0:55:24But I think pretty early on in the histriology-oriented programming, the downsides of inheritance
0:55:31clear and anything that came after that sort of understanding has tried to do something
0:55:36different including the things that were the precursors to the frameworks that Apple now
0:55:40uses.
0:55:41But we were talking about in the context of like even AppKit and UIKit and all these frameworks
0:55:44that use delegation patterns as application programmers often use subclass either because
0:55:50that's the intended use of the thing still in some cases or because you like that thing
0:55:55but you just want it to be a little bit different or you need to just override this but just
0:55:59You know, like, because it's possible, it is a tool that's in the tool belt of programmers
0:56:03to get what they want out of frameworks, whether or not their framework really ever intended
0:56:06you to subclass that thing.
0:56:08Yep.
0:56:09All right.
0:56:10So another thing that was written in Andreas Hartl, he made some great points about mocking
0:56:16using Swift.
0:56:17He said there's another unforeseen consequence of going final by default.
0:56:21Tests that could have used mocks to ensure their framework method was called can't do
0:56:25that anymore.
0:56:26because mocks rely on subclassing to replace all API functionality with noops.
0:56:30I'm not going to get into what mocking is if you're not familiar with it, but suffice
0:56:34to say that in the last couple of years I've really gotten into unit testing, like formal
0:56:40unit testing, and mocking is kind of your path to happiness there.
0:56:44And it's what really made me understand why designing to interfaces or protocols, if you
0:56:49will, is really kind of the right idea.
0:56:52And that's not an insignificant problem
0:56:54if this is the way that Swift goes.
0:56:57So I thought that was a very astute point.
0:56:59- It seems like it's a not insignificant problem to me
0:57:01because I assume there would always be a compiler mode
0:57:05that says disregard the final keyword.
0:57:07You know what I mean?
0:57:07Like for when you run your unit tests,
0:57:10don't seal anything up as final
0:57:12because it shouldn't affect functionality.
0:57:14Maybe you would disable some optimizations
0:57:16and maybe you wouldn't have a bug for bug compatible thing
0:57:18in terms of maybe there's like a bug in the compiler
0:57:20because the optimization goes awry,
0:57:22but it seems trivial to me to have a compiler option
0:57:26that says either just ignore final entirely,
0:57:31like don't seal up any classes,
0:57:32or change what the default is,
0:57:35or something like that that allows you
0:57:36to mock in your unit tests.
0:57:38- Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting point.
0:57:40I don't know how that would be handled.
0:57:42Moving on, Neil Cronin was one of a few people
0:57:45to write in and point out the error in what I,
0:57:47or potential error in what I had said.
0:57:48I don't recall exactly how I'd phrase things,
0:57:50but it sounds like I probably got it a little wrong.
0:57:53He pointed out that C# methods are final by default,
0:57:58but classes are not.
0:58:00And so I think I might have interspersed classes and methods
0:58:03a little bit last episode, but to be absolutely clear,
0:58:06classes are not final by default, but methods are.
0:58:09So that's my bad on that.
0:58:11We'll have a link in the show notes to that.
0:58:13Also, Chris D.,
0:58:16I'm not gonna even try to pronounce your surname.
0:58:19- Zomback, I mean, I go with Zomback.
0:58:21- Okay, there you go.
0:58:23Pointed out that you can do something like final
0:58:25and Objective-C with a couple of fancy compiler directives.
0:58:30- You put enough underscores and anything is possible in C/C++.
0:58:35(laughing)
0:58:35Underscore, underscore, attribute, underscore, underscore,
0:58:38double open parens, objc, subclassing restricted,
0:58:41double close parens.
0:58:43Yes, there are so many attributes you can add.
0:58:46You could annotate all your things with nullability information for the Swift bridging and you
0:58:50can say Objective-C subclassing restricted.
0:58:54That's from Jesse Squires, gave that little attribute.
0:58:56Yikes.
0:58:57Goodness.
0:58:58All right, and then one of you guys wanted to talk about Rust versus Swift versus Go.
0:59:03Yeah, that was me.
0:59:05The Rust people have come out to defend the honor of their language and to differentiate
0:59:10it from those other things, Go and Swift.
0:59:12we were talking about, the languages that are kind of in a little group of these static
0:59:17compiled languages with an eye towards being a better C++ without all the downsides of
0:59:24C or C++, you know, being like Swift essentially.
0:59:29And Benjamin Sago, yes, points out that Rust—I mean, I think we mentioned in the show, but
0:59:35he's emphasized by a lot of Rust people—Rust is not garbage collected.
0:59:39Go uses garbage collector at runtime, Swift of course uses reference counting.
0:59:43That means there are programs you can write in Rust that you couldn't write in Swift or
0:59:46Go, such as graphics intensive game, a browser engine, an OS or device driver or a garbage
0:59:50collector, anything that has to interact with the language that has its own garbage collector.
0:59:53Now I would imagine the Swift people at the very least would object to the idea that you
0:59:58can't write a graphics intensive game or browser engine or an OS because those are some of
1:00:02the stated goals of Swift.
1:00:03Oh yeah, I would even object to his characterization of reference counting as a form of garbage
1:00:08collection.
1:00:09I don't think I agree with that.
1:00:10>> But what he's talking about is like my understanding, I'm sure we'll get more email
1:00:14about this with Russ because I haven't done enough of my homework, is that the way Russ
1:00:17gets around not having a garbage collector and not doing reference counting is at compile
1:00:21time it figures out what it has to do with memory rather than at run -- you know, in
1:00:29other words, it's not like the thing against garbage collection we know is like at some
1:00:32point you have to go wander all of your stuff and clean out the garbage and that takes time
1:00:36and even if you do it on another thread,
1:00:39at some point you may need to pause the program.
1:00:42And if you don't need to pause it
1:00:43and you have a pause-free garbage collection,
1:00:44there's always some kind of overhead
1:00:46of having to do the garbage collection
1:00:49while your program is running.
1:00:51And the SWIFT solution,
1:00:53and the objective solution for that matter,
1:00:55but the SWIFT solution is figure out,
1:00:59use reference counting to figure out
1:01:00when things aren't needed anymore
1:01:01and put the reference count,
1:01:04put the stuff that deals with the reference counting
1:01:05in line with your program.
1:01:07So while your program is running,
1:01:08it will do this thing, do this thing,
1:01:10increment this reference count,
1:01:11do this thing, do this thing, do this thing,
1:01:12decrement this reference count.
1:01:13And like when the reference count goes to zero,
1:01:14you can get rid of that memory.
1:01:18So it's in line in your program.
1:01:20It's actual code execution.
1:01:21It's not another thread
1:01:22running in a garbage collector or anything like that.
1:01:23It's like, it's as if you had written in your program
1:01:25in C parlance, you're writing malloc and free, right?
1:01:28You know when you can free the memory
1:01:29'cause that's when you write the free thing.
1:01:30And you know when you're allocating memory
1:01:32'cause you write malloc and you have to figure out,
1:01:34Now, it's reference counting, but it's inline.
1:01:36And so in some code, you don't want this bookkeeping
1:01:40of incrementing and decrementing this number
1:01:42to keep track of how many references there are to it.
1:01:45You just don't.
1:01:46Like when you're writing the kernel of an operating system
1:01:48in C, most of the time, you're not
1:01:50implementing your own reference counting system.
1:01:52You're just putting the mallocs in the right place
1:01:53and putting the threes in the right place.
1:01:54Or if you're in a particular part of the kernel,
1:01:57you can't use malloc or free.
1:01:59You've got to do everything with wired down memory.
1:02:01And so you can't have anything having to, you know,
1:02:04like it's not appropriate to have automated
1:02:08memory management in that way.
1:02:10I would imagine the answer for Swift is
1:02:12that you can write those parts of the program.
1:02:15If you understand enough about how Swift manages memory,
1:02:18even though you don't see any of the memory management,
1:02:20you can do it in such a way that you know
1:02:22that all of the silly reference counting,
1:02:25increment decrement stuff will be removed by the optimizer
1:02:28as no ops, because you know exactly how, you know,
1:02:30how things are gonna get sorted out
1:02:32and this thing will run straight through
1:02:33without any memory access stuff.
1:02:34But still Rust is heavily focused on the idea
1:02:37that it does not use a garbage collector
1:02:39and it doesn't use reference counting.
1:02:40So it's really trying to be like C and C++.
1:02:43Both of them do not have garbage collections
1:02:45and they don't use reference counting
1:02:46unless you write it yourself.
1:02:47So Rust is definitely a closer match
1:02:51to a replacement for those programs.
1:02:53And I do believe that there are probably some programs,
1:02:55especially now with Swift as young as it is,
1:02:59that could be written in Rust
1:03:00could not be written as efficiently in Swift. But long term, I think that'll be quite a battle.
1:03:04All right. Anything else about Swift? Please no.
1:03:08All right. How about MagSafe and USB-C ports? Last episode, I think, we were talking about
1:03:16the MacBook One connector with that MagSafe adapter that fits in the little USB-C port on
1:03:22the side and whether it was really necessary. And none of us had MacBook Ones that we had tripped
1:03:26over or yanked the cord out of, and I said I thought that nobody had done that experiment.
1:03:31Well, Glenn Fleischmann didn't do the experiment, but did delve into the science behind the
1:03:36USB-C connector to try to figure out, with a thought experiment and some basic physics
1:03:42calculations and some numbers from the USB-C spec, what would happen if you tripped over
1:03:47a MacBook One cord that was plugged in, as compared to what would happen if it had a
1:03:51MagSafe connector.
1:03:52And the conclusion of this article, which again, this is an older article, might have
1:03:55been even before the MacBook One was out, but it had been announced obviously, was that
1:04:00your laptop will fall on the ground.
1:04:02That yes, you totally can pull a MacBook One off of a surface onto the ground by tripping
1:04:07over the cord just based on the forces involved and the speed of the yanking and the angle
1:04:15and all these other things.
1:04:16You can read the article to find out.
1:04:18Perhaps not as good as actually doing the experiment, perhaps not as good as a bunch
1:04:21of people who own MacBook Ones having their children trip over the cords and find out
1:04:25what happens, but so far no one has written in about that happening, so all we have is
1:04:28this speculation by Glenn Fleischman. But there you go, there's an answer.
1:04:31All right, and why don't you tell us about UpThere and whether or not they use AWS?
1:04:35Yeah, just a quickie follow-up. Last time, someone had said they used AWS, and UpThere
1:04:40had replied on Twitter, "No, we don't. We host all our own stuff." And so a couple
1:04:43people went back and forth on Twitter trying to figure out, well, then why is UpThere connecting
1:04:47to AWS? And a theory was that it was because of Crashlytics, which was a crash reporting
1:04:51thing, and up there confirmed they do use Crashlytics and Crashlytics said if you use
1:04:57Crashlytics you will connect to AWS, so there's your answer to why up there is connecting
1:05:01to AWS, it's for Crashlytics.
1:05:04Excellent.
1:05:05That's the magic of Twitter by the way, random podcast that we do, random listener of the
1:05:10podcast uses a little snitch software to say they saw it connecting to AWS, and then the
1:05:15three companies that replied, the three sort of corporate Twitter accounts, the little
1:05:19Snatch account, the Crashlytics account, and the UpThere account. It's the magic of Twitter.
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1:07:24- Excellent.
1:07:25So you went to a tech talk?
1:07:27- Yeah, I went yesterday to the Apple TV tech talk
1:07:30in New York.
1:07:31So the tech talks are basically,
1:07:32Apple goes around the country
1:07:33with the developer relations team,
1:07:36maybe not every year, maybe every couple of years,
1:07:38it depends on like when they can do it,
1:07:39but they basically send the team around,
1:07:41kind of as like a halfway point between WWDCs.
1:07:46And they put on these little,
1:07:47it's basically a one day mini WWDC
1:07:51that is usually focused on just one relatively new platform.
1:07:56So I went to one a few years ago that was just for iOS.
1:07:58I believe last year, I might have watched one, I forget,
1:08:01but this year they're doing Apple TV tech talks.
1:08:04And so it's free, it's one day,
1:08:06you sign up, it's just picked by lottery,
1:08:08and it's in a bunch of cities around the world,
1:08:11and you just go and it's in like a hotel meeting room
1:08:14or whatever, it looks exactly like mini WWDC.
1:08:18It's great and very well presented,
1:08:20high quality presentations,
1:08:22but only like a few hundred people in attendance
1:08:25rather than 5,000 in the giant Moscone Center.
1:08:27So it's a nice small scale, you actually get to talk
1:08:31to the Apple people and meet other developers
1:08:33on a nicer, smaller, shorter,
1:08:36and way less expensive scale.
1:08:38So I went and it was great.
1:08:40I still am not entirely convinced
1:08:44that I want to be developing for the Apple TV yet.
1:08:46I would like to do it sometime.
1:08:48I'm not sure that time is now.
1:08:50I'm very excited to develop for it.
1:08:52I just, I don't know.
1:08:54I'm not seeing the market demand for it yet, really.
1:08:59So if you really want overcast on the Apple TV,
1:09:01I guess let me know, but right now,
1:09:04I just haven't heard from enough people
1:09:06who really want that, and other things,
1:09:08I think, are more important for now.
1:09:10But I do look forward to it.
1:09:11It's a great platform.
1:09:13And the talks were all about basically
1:09:17video playback and games.
1:09:19Like that was like the main areas that they focused on.
1:09:21Because that is what the Apple TV is best at,
1:09:23video playback and games.
1:09:25As an audio only podcast app,
1:09:27I'm not sure there's much for me to do there
1:09:29besides get people's audio into their
1:09:33like home theater system.
1:09:33Which people do occasionally request,
1:09:35but it doesn't seem like there's much demand for me there.
1:09:38But we will see.
1:09:39IOS 9.3 and tvOS, whatever, is it also 9.3?
1:09:42The new beta that we should talk about.
1:09:44They added a podcast app,
1:09:46like their own Apple podcast app finally.
1:09:47So I guess we'll see if a lot of people use that
1:09:51and I started hearing people saying,
1:09:51"Oh, I switched back to the podcast app
1:09:53"so I could play it on my Apple TV."
1:09:55If that happens a lot, I will definitely respond to that
1:09:58and I'll make it happen.
1:09:59But I think eventually it might,
1:10:03but I don't think the time is yet.
1:10:05So I guess we'll see.
1:10:06if you're somebody who makes the app for a video owner.
1:10:11A lot of the people there I talked to,
1:10:13they were the iOS programmer or on the iOS programming team
1:10:16for a TV network or something like that.
1:10:19That makes sense.
1:10:20For them to be making apps, that makes total sense.
1:10:23But for me, I'm not sure it makes sense yet, but we'll see.
1:10:27Anyway, so I think we should honestly talk about iOS 9.3.
1:10:31Do you guys--
1:10:32- I was just gonna second your endorsement of Tech Talks.
1:10:34I've only been to one, but it was exactly what you said.
1:10:37It's like a little mini WWDC in a worse venue.
1:10:41- Yeah, but it's free, and it's one day, it's great.
1:10:43- With slightly worse food.
1:10:45- Honestly, the food here was better by a lot.
1:10:48- Maybe things have changed.
1:10:49I guess it probably depends on the hotel.
1:10:50Maybe they have to use the hotel's catering,
1:10:52but the one I went to,
1:10:53they had these terrible little box lunches,
1:10:55which granted, the box lunches at WWDC
1:10:56aren't that great either, but these were even worse.
1:10:58- No, we had a hot buffet, and it helped.
1:11:02I didn't even try the coffee
1:11:03because there was a Cafe Grumpy downstairs.
1:11:05So I just went to the Cafe Grumpy
1:11:07and get excellent coffee there.
1:11:09Anyway, so yeah, 9.3.
1:11:13So this was weird.
1:11:14- This was very weird.
1:11:16- Monday or yesterday, I forget.
1:11:17Anyway, this week, earlier this week,
1:11:19Apple unveiled a page on their website
1:11:23called iOS 9.3 Preview.
1:11:26So, and they released, I guess, Beta 1,
1:11:28or I hadn't even looked at it yet,
1:11:29but they released Beta 1 of iOS 9.3,
1:11:33whatever version of watchOS I think corresponds to that,
1:11:35and then tvOS the same,
1:11:37whatever version corresponds to that.
1:11:38And so there's a few very interesting things about this.
1:11:43So first of all, Apple has never given this public unveiling
1:11:48of a beta OS before, and in a marketing way.
1:11:54- They do it in OS X.
1:11:55Like at a certain point in the OS X beta release cycle
1:11:57for many, many years now, they've had a page
1:11:59It's basically apple.com/OS with a little x, /preview or some other word and it shows
1:12:06you the features of the upcoming as yet unreleased.
1:12:09This is even before they had the public betas.
1:12:10They wouldn't do it for the very first build.
1:12:12Very often they'd wait until it was a WWDC announcement but they would have an entire
1:12:16section of their site dedicated to the OS that you cannot yet download.
1:12:20The weird thing for iOS is, I don't know if they've ever done it for iOS because they
1:12:23don't pay that much attention, but they did it pretty much simultaneously with the beta
1:12:27release to developers.
1:12:29So it's not like developers would go to Apple's public website to see the features of the
1:12:32beta that they are just able to download now.
1:12:35Yeah, like it's great.
1:12:37And what would usually happen in the past iOS is like the beta would come out and then
1:12:42immediately all the rumor sites would have people digging through it and then like within
1:12:46hours of it being released, rumor sites would have like 10 articles about each little minor
1:12:50change somewhere in the settings screen or an app got a new tweak or whatever.
1:12:55So this makes sense as a way for Apple to basically
1:12:58just kind of own that and control the message
1:13:00and have it be a proper marketing handling
1:13:04of this kind of event rather than just letting
1:13:07the rumor sites dictate everything.
1:13:09So that's good.
1:13:10It's kind of like legalizing pot.
1:13:12It's like if you want to discourage the bad behavior,
1:13:14just take away the value.
1:13:17Apple just, here, here's everything that's new.
1:13:19Here you go.
1:13:20- Well, not everything that's new.
1:13:21I still hope, I assume the rumor sites found all the new.
1:13:23'cause that little change in that settings screen,
1:13:25Apple's not gonna put it on their giant preview page.
1:13:27- What, the Wi-Fi Assist label of how much data's used?
1:13:30- Yeah, or stuff like that.
1:13:31Like, there's still plenty of fodder
1:13:32for rumor sites to dig into, but they hit the highlights.
1:13:35- Yeah, but it's plenty of boring fodder
1:13:37for them to dig into, and yeah, Apple--
1:13:39- Well, that's their core, the core audience needs to know,
1:13:42tell me every screen that changed,
1:13:44did they change the spacing on this label?
1:13:46- One of the most high-profile changes they've made
1:13:51is called Night Shift. And Apple was the very first people to ever come up with this idea
1:13:58of changing the color balance on your display, changing the white balance, so that it's cool
1:14:05temperature and what we consider now to be neutral during the day. And then at night,
1:14:10it slowly changes to a warmer color temperature. So you don't have your eyes be shown blue
1:14:15light that keeps you awake and makes you sleep worse. So it slowly warms the color temperature
1:14:20on the display until you go to bed
1:14:22and then changes automatically the next day.
1:14:24I wish this was available on my Mac.
1:14:27For years I've wanted something like this
1:14:29and no one has ever thought of it before.
1:14:31- If only.
1:14:32- Your tone of voice makes me think
1:14:33you suddenly support patents.
1:14:34- Yes, other people have had this idea before
1:14:37but you can't, an idea is out there for anybody to take.
1:14:40So I really hope, I forgot if they even did have a patent
1:14:43or whatever but this is an obvious enough idea
1:14:46that I would not call this a Sherlocking.
1:14:49I would not call this a case where Apple is taking an application wholesale, like, you
1:14:54know, the Watson application and making their own equivalent that's named based on the same
1:15:00theme as the original application that looks like the other application that works like
1:15:03the other.
1:15:04This is not an application.
1:15:05This is a fairly simple idea that was not invented, I'm sure, by the creators of the
1:15:10Flex application that you're referring to.
1:15:12Yes.
1:15:13That I'm totally okay with Apple taking because it's a good idea, and I don't think anyone
1:15:18on that idea, even if someone actually does.
1:15:20- Well, I think I might disagree with both of those points.
1:15:22So yeah, I was being sarcastic, obviously.
1:15:26What we're talking about is there's been this application
1:15:28called Flux, spelled F dot L-U-X,
1:15:31and it's been available on computers forever.
1:15:34And they had an iOS hack version where you couldn't,
1:15:38they couldn't put it in the app store,
1:15:41so they did a silo where you could download
1:15:43a binary library with a project into Xcode,
1:15:47and have it installed onto your phone.
1:15:50And they did this back in November,
1:15:53and it got thousands or millions,
1:15:55there are tons of downloads.
1:15:57And then on November 12th, two months ago,
1:16:01they posted saying that Apple had contacted them
1:16:06and had said that the iOS download
1:16:10of their kind of sideloaded app here
1:16:12was in violation of the developer agreement.
1:16:15So this method of install is no longer available.
1:16:18Apple has indicated this should not continue.
1:16:21So they don't really say like if Apple like legally threatened them or anything because
1:16:27technically they could have continued to distribute it probably.
1:16:32So this was all just two months ago.
1:16:34And then all of a sudden now in what is the next major iOS feature update, that next update
1:16:42has a feature that is a direct copy of what this does.
1:16:46So I wonder if they actually made some kind of small deal
1:16:49where maybe Apple said, "We don't want you doing this.
1:16:52"Shut it down and we're gonna do it ourselves
1:16:54"and we won't sue you, or shut it down,
1:16:57"we'll give you a small amount of money
1:16:58"and we'll do it ourselves and you won't say anything."
1:17:00You know, it's probably something like that, but--
1:17:02- The only reason they have to give them some money
1:17:04is if they have a super dumb patent on this idea, right?
1:17:06There's two separate issues here.
1:17:07One, being mean to the makers of Flux
1:17:10and not letting them use sideloading to this.
1:17:12Not allowing sideloading at all.
1:17:14Like that's a whole separate issue of like,
1:17:15hey Apple, why is the only way
1:17:17that people can get applications on their devices
1:17:19through the App Store?
1:17:20What about a way that you won't complain about
1:17:23that expert users can use?
1:17:25Not a lot of people are gonna use it.
1:17:26No one's gonna download Xcode
1:17:27and build their own thing and sideload.
1:17:29Like only, you know, only the nerds are gonna do it.
1:17:31Why not just let that go?
1:17:32That is a separate issue.
1:17:34The separate issue from, is it okay for Apple
1:17:37to take this idea that again,
1:17:40I think the inventors of flux probably did not invent,
1:17:43of changing the color temperature of your display
1:17:45based on the time of day,
1:17:47and incorporate that into their OS
1:17:49for their most popular platform.
1:17:50That seems like a no-brainer slam dunk,
1:17:52and the only thing that Apple would trip across
1:17:54is if someone has a super dumb patent on it
1:17:56and they have to pay somebody for it.
1:17:57I have no idea about those legalities,
1:17:59but I think that whole system of the law is stupid.
1:18:01I am totally okay with Apple incorporating this idea,
1:18:03because it's a good idea,
1:18:04and because nobody should own this idea.
1:18:06- First of all, I think the way they're doing it,
1:18:08Just the timing of this and the way they came down
1:18:11so hard on Flux and then immediately made their own thing,
1:18:14I think that makes Apple look like a jerk, really.
1:18:16- Did they make their own thing
1:18:17or were they already making it?
1:18:19Had they, like how long has this feature been,
1:18:21you know, again, Flux is an old application
1:18:23and there have probably been applications before it,
1:18:25but I don't think the timing is they saw people
1:18:27side loading Flux and then they said,
1:18:29"Oh, we gotta get on that," and decided to add the feature.
1:18:32It seems like the type of thing that might have been
1:18:33in the works for a while, but who knows?
1:18:35- Honestly, I disagree.
1:18:36I think it's exactly, it's a simple enough feature
1:18:39that that is exactly what probably happened.
1:18:40- All right, so even if they did it,
1:18:42then what difference does it make?
1:18:43Like, someone saw the idea, this is a thing
1:18:46that users want, again, separate from the notion
1:18:49of telling Flux they can't do it,
1:18:50because that I agree is kind of jerky and annoying, right?
1:18:53Telling Flux they can't do it is separate from the idea
1:18:55of, oh, that's a good idea, we should build that in,
1:18:57because that's exactly how they should work.
1:18:58If there's something that's a really popular idea
1:19:00that is very much a system-level thing,
1:19:02which I'm amazed that Flux could even do what they did,
1:19:04it seems so much like a system level thing, right? That should be built into the operating
1:19:08system. And how do you find those things? You either think of them yourself, or you
1:19:10see that there's lots of user demand for this type of thing. Oh, lots of people are interested
1:19:13in this feature. We should build it into the stupid OS. And so they do.
1:19:17- Like, I'm not saying Apple shouldn't have been allowed to do this, or that they shouldn't
1:19:21have even, I'm not even saying they shouldn't have done it, but the timing of it, the way
1:19:25they did it and the timing of it, I think is distasteful and makes them look pretty
1:19:29jerky. - I disagree. I don't think they look any
1:19:32more or less like jerks. The thing that makes them look like jerks is not letting them sideload.
1:19:36Incorporating the feature in the OS makes them look like smart OS vendors. I don't think it makes
1:19:40them look like jerks. I don't think there's any timing. I don't think if they even said,
1:19:44"We exactly copied this. We were inspired by Flux," and if they came out publicly and said
1:19:49that the story you're surmising is true, I still think that would be fine. Because I think that's
1:19:52like, that's, this is a consequence of the idea of people not owning ideas. Like, you want people
1:19:57to not own ideas, but it still seems distasteful to you that someone came up with this thing and
1:20:01and that they immediately copied it from them.
1:20:04There's nothing, you know, they didn't own it.
1:20:07It's the transfer of ideas.
1:20:09It's the reason I, at least, am against patents
1:20:11is the idea that someone will have an idea
1:20:13and another person will hear that idea
1:20:14and say that's a good idea and take that idea
1:20:16and run with it and it's not theirs to own
1:20:20and there's no copying going on.
1:20:21It's a shared, anyway, whatever, hippy-dippy stuff.
1:20:25- I should point out, I did a very similar feature
1:20:27at Instapaper like five years ago.
1:20:29Like, it's not new.
1:20:31Yeah, it's not, like I said, it's not a new idea to computing, it's not a new idea to
1:20:35like non-computing related lights, like the whole light theory, I don't know, there was
1:20:39probably some study many, many, many years ago about color temperature and light affecting
1:20:43sleep patterns that all this has spun out from.
1:20:47But yeah, and that's why I fear, if I remember, I don't know if someone will send us the link,
1:20:52I fear that Flux actually does have a patent on this because seriously, like, it should
1:20:56not be patentable, period. And even under the rules of our current patent system, it
1:21:01should have been rejected based on prior art, but you know, that never happens.
1:21:04It doesn't mean anything. But anyway, so I do want to get into a slightly a discussion
1:21:09of the assumption or the scientific basis of this. So first of all, just to clarify,
1:21:16when we say it changes the color temperature, for anybody who doesn't know, if you've
1:21:19ever seen somebody buy a CFL or LED light bulb that looks really blue when you put it
1:21:24in the house, especially at night, or if you have one that was way too yellow or orange,
1:21:30you're kind of seeing the issues of color balance and our expectations. So basically,
1:21:36in the middle of the day during daylight, daylight colored light is more towards the
1:21:42blue end of the color balance spectrum the way we normally think about it. And then at
1:21:46night, things like fires and old street lights and incandescent bulbs, those we think of
1:21:54especially like the bulbs, we think of those as making white light, but in reality it's
1:22:00more yellow tinted than daylight is. And so our eyes adjust for this, cameras adjust for
1:22:05this, this is about white balances and cameras, our eyes adjust for this. And so we think
1:22:10when we're sitting in a room lit by slightly yellow incandescent lights at night time when
1:22:15it's dark outside, we don't think of it as being a yellow light, we think of it as being
1:22:19a neutral white light, but then if you see something that is neutral colored like daylight,
1:22:25it looks blue to you by comparison because you've adjusted to that orange. So anyway,
1:22:30the principle behind this is that your computer screens, they don't change their color tone
1:22:35without this. They don't change their color tone throughout the day so that what looks
1:22:38like a neutral white color balance during the day on a computer screen does look bluish
1:22:43and or too bright it can be perceived as, and it's kind of tricky, but it looks like
1:22:48too harsh or too blue or too bright in a dimly lit nighttime room, for the most part. And
1:22:54the idea here is that this can confuse your body into not preparing for sleep or not sleeping
1:23:02as well or something like that. And I've looked into, I've tried to see what the scientific
1:23:11basis for this is, because the idea is that if you can make the screen shift its color
1:23:17temperature into the warm area. So basically make your computer devices change their own
1:23:23white balance along with what's going on in your house and around you and your environment
1:23:27so that in the daytime they're neutral and what we might consider a bluish or a cold
1:23:31white but then at night they shift and everything gets tinted yellow. The idea that that will
1:23:37help you sleep, I'm not entirely sure that the evidence I've seen so far proves that.
1:23:43I think it's a good theory, it might be true.
1:23:47The studies that are cited everywhere mostly seem to indicate that brightness of light
1:23:53is important.
1:23:54So it might not be important to change your lights to be more yellow at night, it might
1:24:00just be important to avoid bright screens at night and using bright screens like in
1:24:05bed or before bed or whatever.
1:24:08That I think makes, from the actual study I've been able to find which is pretty few
1:24:12and far between, but the Flux site has a good list of them. Bright light emitting devices
1:24:18are a problem to use late at night for this purpose, but it doesn't necessarily follow
1:24:23that changing the color temperature of those screens fixes that problem. The studies I'm
1:24:28looking at, like the one that Flux post posted most recently on, is it Public National Academy
1:24:33of Sciences? Anyway, I read that one and that was like, you know, iPad versus book. And
1:24:36it's like, if you read an iPad for four hours before bed versus if you read a book for four
1:24:41before going to bed, the iPad users measurably had worse sleep and related issues. I thought
1:24:48at first, if you're bouncing around with apps, that's engaging your brain in a different
1:24:52way, but no, it sounds like they controlled for that. They had people watching to make
1:24:56sure that you're actually reading a book, but it's like, if you're staring at an iPad
1:24:59screen before bed versus reading a book, reading the book is better. But they didn't test if
1:25:03you stare at an iPad screen with neutral color temperature versus one that is slowly shifting
1:25:08itself yellow, they didn't say that was better. So it seems like this is two separate
1:25:13things that the studies that have been done so far show that bright lights at night can
1:25:19hurt your sleeping. And also we think it's more pleasant and easier on your brain to
1:25:24tint things yellow, but nothing has actually proven that. And Apple's wording on the
1:25:28feature is actually very carefully aligned with this. So it says, "Many studies have
1:25:32shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms
1:25:37and make it harder to fall asleep.
1:25:39Night shift uses your iOS device's clock
1:25:40and geolocation, blah, blah, blah.
1:25:42It automatically shifts the colors in your display
1:25:43to the warmer end of the spectrum,
1:25:45making it easier on your eyes.
1:25:47It doesn't say that the color shift
1:25:49will make it easier to fall asleep.
1:25:52It says bright lights have been shown
1:25:54to make it harder to fall asleep,
1:25:56and this will be easier on your eyes,
1:25:59but there's no connection to sleep there.
1:26:01- I'm surprised they can't get sued for easier on your eyes,
1:26:04'cause I don't even know if that's supportable.
1:26:06more yellowish is easier on your eyes, how is that?
1:26:09Maybe it's because it's not measurable,
1:26:10that's why it's supportable, because it's vague enough
1:26:13that you're like, well, what does easier mean?
1:26:16So maybe it's vague enough that they're okay, but.
1:26:19- Right, and there's all sorts of theories about,
1:26:22that's why you see a lot of yellow-tinted sunglasses,
1:26:25theories about if you reduce the blue light
1:26:27more than the other colors, it's easier on the eyes.
1:26:29There are other things about that, but I don't,
1:26:31and so I think that's probably backed up,
1:26:34but it doesn't seem like this is connected necessarily.
1:26:37So I think if you're concerned about this,
1:26:40sure, try Flux or try this, try Night Shift.
1:26:43If you find it pleasant, great, that's a separate thing.
1:26:47It might not be helping you sleep,
1:26:49but I think if you want to sleep,
1:26:51we do have evidence so far, it seems,
1:26:53that either reducing the brightness of the screen
1:26:56is probably way more important.
1:26:58- The screen already does that automatically,
1:26:59to some degree.
1:27:00You can pick your brightness, but it does adjust
1:27:02based on ambient temperature within some range.
1:27:04So it does-- - Sure, but I would say
1:27:06reduce the brightness, especially at night.
1:27:08Either keep it low all the time like I do,
1:27:10or just set it lower at night,
1:27:13even set it at the middle point lower.
1:27:15Or just if you're concerned about this,
1:27:17and maybe you should be,
1:27:18just don't use your devices before bed,
1:27:21because the studies are pretty clear that that helps a lot.
1:27:23But I don't think we know that changing it to yellow
1:27:26has a meaningful effect on the quality of your sleep.
1:27:28It might be more pleasant,
1:27:29but it might not have a meaningful effect here.
1:27:32But if you believe it will, then it will. Because the placebo effect is incredibly strong.
1:27:36And so like there's two aspects. One, some people just find it more pleasant. Like it,
1:27:40they just like it. It's like, call it fashion or aesthetics or just gives them a warm fuzzy
1:27:44feeling, they just like it.
1:27:45Right, and that's fine.
1:27:46They're fine, right? And the other one is, if they believe it will give them better sleep,
1:27:49there is a chance that that belief will cause them to have better sleep.
1:27:52Maybe. But you know, it could be, you know, just like if you start thinking about having
1:27:56better sleep and wanting to make changes in your life to give you better sleep, you will
1:28:00probably make other changes that will also give you better sleep. So if you want better
1:28:05sleep, chances are you should be doing multiple things. And one of those might be don't
1:28:09be reading your phone every single second at night until the second you go to bed.
1:28:14I have the opposite of the placebo effect because I do, usually the last thing I do
1:28:18right before I go to bed is look at an iOS device which is pretty bright in a pretty
1:28:23dark room. And I've been doing this for years and years and years, since iOS has
1:28:27has existed as a thing, since the iPod Touch has existed.
1:28:30And every so often, I think, this is exactly what they tell
1:28:34you what not to do, like a bright, mostly white light
1:28:38in your face, like right before bed.
1:28:41I wonder if this is making me not be able to sleep,
1:28:43and then I go to sleep instantly.
1:28:44So everyone's gonna know how I think about it.
1:28:47It's like I'm trying to convince myself that what I'm doing
1:28:49is going to be harmful, and I sleep fine.
1:28:52So it's not-- - Yeah, it's funny
1:28:53how that is. - If Apple,
1:28:55maybe the Apple feature does more,
1:28:56Like maybe it also adjusts the brightness.
1:28:59If not, maybe it should.
1:29:00Like that would be like, if it also,
1:29:03like what I just said, like you know,
1:29:04reduce the brightness of your screen at night also
1:29:06in addition to like the automatic thing.
1:29:09- The brightness range, yeah.
1:29:10Like basically move the slider for you.
1:29:12- Yeah, like move like the set point down also.
1:29:15Or yeah, move the whole range down.
1:29:17If it also does that automatically,
1:29:19that's a lot more valuable and maybe it does.
1:29:20I haven't tried it yet.
1:29:22- Although I'd be like, is my device getting dim?
1:29:24What the hell?
1:29:25Oh, it's that stupid thing again.
1:29:26(laughing)
1:29:27I hate when my display looks too dim
1:29:29and I realize that I've acted like a kid
1:29:30has leaned on the brightness button
1:29:31on my keyboard or something, you know?
1:29:33- Yeah, and like for a long time,
1:29:35people have complained, many people have complained,
1:29:38that, and I agree with this complaint,
1:29:41that the lowest brightness setting on iOS device screens
1:29:45often isn't low enough.
1:29:46That if you're in a room where that is the only illumination,
1:29:50like if you're reading in bed at night,
1:29:52the lowest brightness setting is often still too bright,
1:29:55especially if you're using an app with a white background.
1:29:58And there's been all sorts of people
1:29:59who will use the accessibility toggles
1:30:02to try to make it even dimmer,
1:30:03which messes with my app,
1:30:05and then they send me bug reports.
1:30:07There's all sorts of people,
1:30:09like people who've been doing this for years,
1:30:10of using special accessibility settings
1:30:13or special app features to try to reduce it even further.
1:30:16I mean, in an old version of Instapaper,
1:30:18when I first introduced dark mode,
1:30:20in order to get around this problem,
1:30:21I actually had a translucent black layer
1:30:25that I could put over the entire window.
1:30:27Just a giant UI view over the entire window,
1:30:30or a layer, I forget which one,
1:30:31but just a giant overlay that I could just dim
1:30:36as necessary in dark mode,
1:30:37because the entire interface was not dim enough,
1:30:41especially on an iPad where you have this giant bright screen
1:30:44that's way more of a problem on iPads than it is on iPhones.
1:30:46- Most people should just go into another room,
1:30:47because I think the bottom brightness setting
1:30:49is too dim to look at.
1:30:51Like there's two things that are here.
1:30:53One is, is it putting off enough light
1:30:55to annoy another person who's trying to sleep in the room?
1:30:57Yes, I grant you it's doing that.
1:30:58But the other is, does it look like a normal screen
1:31:01or does it look like a screen that's broken?
1:31:02And when you put the brightness of the bottom setting
1:31:04in any iOS device, it basically looks broken.
1:31:06Like things don't look right anymore.
1:31:08It's not just a dimmer version of the screen.
1:31:09Now you're changing it in a material way.
1:31:11Like there are things that you can't read
1:31:13because the contrast is too low.
1:31:15Everything is super dark.
1:31:16It does not look like a slightly dimmer version.
1:31:18I thought you were going to say about the screens is,
1:31:21and I've heard this complaint as well,
1:31:22is that with the dawning of LED backlights
1:31:24many years ago on most devices, they go way too high.
1:31:28Like the top brightness setting is blinding in noon.
1:31:31In the noonday sun, you have to just put it on max brightness
1:31:33and like these like monitors from random brands
1:31:38that are not like Apple monitors or Dell or HP,
1:31:41but just, I mean, you know,
1:31:43brands that you've never heard of,
1:31:45they have these really cheap monitors
1:31:46and they're top brightness setting.
1:31:47you can like cook eggs with it.
1:31:49They get really, really bright.
1:31:51- Oh yeah, I mean even apples.
1:31:53I have my 5K, I should have,
1:31:54my 5K is set to just one notch above the middle.
1:31:57Because it's way too bright if I set it up more than that.
1:32:00- Yeah, it's just crazy bright, which is good.
1:32:02I like having that headroom, I guess.
1:32:04I mean, and maybe you still want it,
1:32:05like I said, noon day sun,
1:32:07but if you actually have your iPhone 6 out
1:32:09in the noon day sun and put it at max brightness,
1:32:11you'll see it's actually not that bright after all,
1:32:12compared to the sun.
1:32:13- Right, I mean that's the thing.
1:32:15They do this, it makes a lot of sense
1:32:17portable devices especially because if you have to use it outside in sunlight
1:32:22it you really need every bit of brightness you can get. But what you need
1:32:25there, what you need there is a different display tech because LCDs as you crank
1:32:29the brightness you just get like if you have a completely black screen and you
1:32:32crank the brightness to max that you can use a black LED backlit screen
1:32:37completely black one as a flashlight in a dark room because that's how much
1:32:40light just comes through it is it because it's basically the backlight is
1:32:42on behind every single pixel and the little liquid crystal things are trying
1:32:45not to light the light through, but they do, which is why plasma TVs look better.
1:32:49So OLED doesn't have that problem because it is just not causing the pixels that are
1:32:54not lit up, they're just not emitting any light.
1:32:56There's no light behind them, they don't have to block anything, they're just not putting
1:32:58it like a plasma, they're just not putting out any light.
1:33:01So the move to OLED could help because if you did have like, "Oh, I'm cranking my iPhone
1:33:056 brightness in the noon day sun and I still can't see the screen," even if you put a backlight
1:33:09behind there that was this gigantic super bright backlight, the contrast between the
1:33:14the white regions and the black would still be basically the same ratio and so it would
1:33:18still look all washed out in the noonday sun.
1:33:20What you really need is to say this is, you know, you can turn the backlight down to a
1:33:24degree where the LCD screen can block the light going through because the light is so
1:33:29wimpy that it doesn't go through but the room is so dark that where it does come through
1:33:34you get a better contrast ratio.
1:33:35So different display tech, and this is even before you get to reflective display tech,
1:33:39which of course is a real way to go where there's not actually light coming from behind
1:33:41it but like a kindle you're relying on the sunlight coming down and bouncing off and
1:33:46you just make regions of it black so it doesn't bounce off as much and then you get something
1:33:49that acts like yay an actual book a paper book where it becomes more readable in sunlight
1:33:53instead of less but we do not have a good hybrid between backlit and reflective screens
1:33:59there are a lot of ones that have been tried involving either ink and lcd or combinations
1:34:03of various other tech and none of them are mainstream yet so we'll still wait for that
1:34:07but in the meantime oled is the next significant step in this area that should really help
1:34:10On this week's Connected, Federico talks a bit about night shift. And he had said that he had
1:34:18been using it for a while, and then he went back to—I think he had turned it off or something like
1:34:23that—and he said—I think he had said that it was like getting stabbed in the eye, because,
1:34:27you know, Federico doesn't believe in sleeping when the rest of Italy sleeps. He sleeps when we
1:34:32sleep. And so he said it was really jarring when he had turned it off in the middle of the night.
1:34:37So whether or not it's real, it certainly is a strong placebo from what I can tell.
1:34:42I mean, it's also just like, you know, as I mentioned, like your eyes adjust to it.
1:34:46Your eyes have, you know, auto white balance, you know, in camera terms.
1:34:49The difference when you're not adjusted, it's a huge difference.
1:34:53You know, and the easy way to see this difference is if you have a camera,
1:34:58set the white balance on it manually to daylight and take a picture outside during daylight,
1:35:05and it should look normal.
1:35:07Then, with it still set to daylight,
1:35:10take a picture inside your house at night,
1:35:11and everything will look insanely yellow.
1:35:14It's a huge difference.
1:35:16This is not a subtle shift in colors.
1:35:18It's a massive difference.
1:35:20If you are just using your device one night
1:35:23with this feature enabled the whole night,
1:35:25and the next night you have the feature disabled
1:35:27the whole night, you might not even notice the difference
1:35:29'cause your eyes are adjusting as night falls
1:35:32the entire time as this thing is happening.
1:35:34it's a slow change. But if you then immediately, while your eyes are adjusted to the warm color,
1:35:39immediately see cool colors, then it's going to be very jarring. I don't think that necessarily
1:35:45says like how big of a difference this makes or whatever. I think that just like, yeah,
1:35:49the shift is a big shift, you know, but I still don't, I don't think we have anything
1:35:56to show that this is like super effective. I think, you know, it's primarily an aesthetic
1:36:01preference and then it might be related to eye strain or the ease on your eyes, but the
1:36:10connection to sleep quality I think is still very unproven.
1:36:14So we're running a bit long and I'd like to wrap somewhat soon, but I really wanted to
1:36:19at least bring up this multi-user iPad thing for the classroom.
1:36:23So apparently there's going to be a whole bunch of changes for using iPads in the classroom,
1:36:30And again, this was covered in the most recent episode of Connected where Frasier Spears
1:36:34showed up.
1:36:35And it genuinely seems really, really interesting, some of the stuff they're doing.
1:36:40Teachers can look at their pupil screens.
1:36:43We're not sure if that's live or if it's just like a snapshot.
1:36:48There's multi-user iPads, so a user can log into any iPad and get their home folder, so
1:36:54to speak, on that iPad.
1:36:56We don't know a whole lot about it, but it seems really interesting.
1:36:59I'm fascinated to hear the reports from the field how this works, but I'm very skeptical
1:37:06it'll ever land on regular consumer iPads.
1:37:09What do you guys think?
1:37:10Oh, it's gotta come to regular.
1:37:12This is one of the bigger iPads.
1:37:14Like it's guaranteed this is gonna come eventually.
1:37:16It's just a question of when.
1:37:18Because us, enough iPads are shared devices in families, even if it's just like the three
1:37:22kids fighting over the two generations old iPad that has been handed down to them.
1:37:27Yeah, they just need that, like, they've needed this feature for a long time and it seems
1:37:34like it's not, it seems like it shouldn't be too hard to do, like it doesn't break any
1:37:38sort of UI paradigm, they could just have an app for switching or whatever, like it's,
1:37:45because once you're using it as a user it's just like a regular iPad and the only context
1:37:48switch is "oh well, you know, now your sister wants it so give it to her" and then she launches
1:37:52that same app and taps on her icon and now it's her iPad.
1:37:57And they have to fight over storage space and you can use iCloud to mitigate that and
1:38:00what happens if you don't have enough room in iCloud then when your sister logs in you
1:38:04lose your saved data because it couldn't get uploaded to iCloud and you know there are
1:38:07details to work out here and there.
1:38:10But this seems like a very obvious feature that needs to come to, especially if iPads
1:38:15continue to you know be more sophisticated and the iPad Pro and everything.
1:38:19users is a thing that we know is useful for large devices that multiple people might use,
1:38:26like iMacs or even laptops or even iPad Pros?
1:38:29- I'm not sure I would assume that it's definitely coming to regular consumer iPads. I mean,
1:38:36setting up the education environment is presumably a big provisioning thing. I would imagine
1:38:42this is the kind of thing that, it does look like it's very useful for education, but I'm
1:38:46I'm not really sure Apple cares enough
1:38:49about enabling multi-user iPads for in people's houses.
1:38:53'Cause right now, the way it's solved is,
1:38:55either it's not solved and you just stay logged in
1:38:58as one person and everyone just ruins all your high scores,
1:39:00or people get different iPads for different people.
1:39:03And that's presumably what Apple wants.
1:39:05Apple wants everyone to have their own iPad.
1:39:07I'm not sure, 'cause if you think about what's involved
1:39:09in this in a home environment,
1:39:12without the central management of what the school's doing,
1:39:15In a home environment, what's involved here is things that are really messy in iOS today,
1:39:21such as having multiple iTunes Store accounts logged in with the same device, apps from
1:39:26different people installed or from different accounts installed.
1:39:28Yeah, but that's all been solved in OS X.
1:39:31It's the same underpinnings.
1:39:33It's a multi-user system.
1:39:34You have separate directories and accounts and sandboxes, and yeah, you can have two people
1:39:40logged in to different Apple IDs and different accounts into the store.
1:39:44seems like this is all there's no tech reason there's very little UI reason the
1:39:48only reason it hasn't been done so far is because it's not really an important
1:39:51feature but it's one of those ones that I feel like they're gonna get around to
1:39:53eventually and I don't think anyone has ever not purchased another iPad because
1:39:59their current one like they would say well we were going to get another iPad
1:40:01but this one has multiple users no kids will still complain even with multiple
1:40:05users like forget it like no if you can afford it you buy one if you can afford
1:40:09it you want it you buy one if you can't afford it and don't want it you don't
1:40:11buy one. All this is going to do is make lives a little bit better for people who don't want
1:40:17to buy another iPad and do want their kids to share it and are sick of hearing people
1:40:21complain about it that he broke my Minecraft castles or he messed with my high scores or
1:40:26deleted the app that I want or read my texts or whatever complaints people are going to
1:40:31have. I just think it has to come. Not anytime soon, I'm not saying it's even this year or
1:40:37next year, but, you know, eventually there's going to be iOS version 13 and they're going
1:40:42to need features for it and this is going to be one of them.
1:40:45>> Maybe, but it's the kind of thing where like the amount of work it takes to have like,
1:40:52you know, to separate out like all the iCloud and App Store stuff with multiple logins and
1:40:57iOS, like the amount of work that's going to take--
1:40:59>> But isn't that already done? Don't you think it's already done? Like aren't we essentially
1:41:04using a multi-user system that just has one user on it?
1:41:07- Well, it's done at the level of the Unix user level, sure,
1:41:11but I don't think it's done at the services
1:41:15integrations level.
1:41:17I don't think--
1:41:17- Yep, but why wouldn't it be done at that level?
1:41:19Because those same demons are running on OS X.
1:41:23- Well, first of all, it doesn't work that great
1:41:24on OS X a lot of times, but it's a very different
1:41:26environment, but keep in mind on iOS,
1:41:28this is also the part of iOS that not only relies
1:41:32on that big, messy store and iCloud backend
1:41:36that's really hard to get anything out of,
1:41:37but also, this seems to be the buggiest part of iOS,
1:41:41is like the part that manages your account logins
1:41:43to these backends.
1:41:45That is, it is so always fraught with minor bugs
1:41:50that pop up at the dialogs for you
1:41:51to log in all the time and everything.
1:41:53- Yeah, like you said, it does it on the Mac too, but.
1:41:55- Yeah, and that part of iOS is a mess,
1:41:58and it's probably a mess for a good reason.
1:42:00it's probably a mess because it would be so much work
1:42:04to fix it that they just will never get around
1:42:07to improving it, like I don't even have a timescale.
1:42:10I'm exactly what you're saying, never, but like--
1:42:11- But why is it a mess on the Mac?
1:42:14It just seems like what I would expect
1:42:15for them to implement the multi-user feature,
1:42:17there may be some things where they cut corners
1:42:19where they'd have to go back in and fix stuff,
1:42:21but for the most part, what you'd end up with
1:42:22is with two separate messes.
1:42:24You'd have multiple users, both of which would experience
1:42:26the weather that we talked about on the past show
1:42:28where sometimes it keeps asking you for your password,
1:42:29And they would both experience that.
1:42:31They would both get their own little private experience
1:42:33of those bugs.
1:42:34But I don't see that as an impediment
1:42:36to them both having their own private experience
1:42:38of those bugs.
1:42:39- I think you're making very bold assumptions
1:42:43that, like Marco said, the Unix underpinnings of iOS
1:42:47have ridden all the way to the user-facing portions of iOS.
1:42:51If I were Apple and I was writing iOS code way back when,
1:42:55when it wasn't even a thought
1:42:57that there would be multiple users,
1:42:59You bet I would probably be taking shortcuts
1:43:01to try to get things out the door quickly
1:43:03that assume that there will only ever be one user
1:43:06to any of these systems.
1:43:07I really think that Marco is right.
1:43:11It's gonna be a long time before we see this.
1:43:13- No, but it's here, so I agree with that,
1:43:15that they did take those shortcuts.
1:43:17iOS 1.0 or iPhone OS, the original iPhone OS,
1:43:20all it was was just a massive collection of shortcuts.
1:43:22It had to be to even get things to work.
1:43:24But this feature in iOS 9.3
1:43:27shows that they've actually done the work already.
1:43:29And it's only a question,
1:43:30like they had to have done the work
1:43:31because hey, look, multiple users.
1:43:32And yeah, it's for enterprise and classroom
1:43:34and server and cloud,
1:43:35and it's aimed at a different user base or whatever,
1:43:37but they had to have done that work.
1:43:39They had to have gotten through everything
1:43:40and said, "Find all those places where we cut corners
1:43:42'cause this thing isn't gonna work at all
1:43:44if when one student logs in,
1:43:45it sees the other person's stuff,
1:43:46or if they can't log in to the..."
1:43:48They're doing that, it is being done.
1:43:50And so once that's done, it's only a matter of time
1:43:53where they decide to eventually get around
1:43:56giving you the version of this that's not just for classrooms?
1:43:59Well, it's done to some degree. I mean, none of us know. We should ask Fraser Spears. None
1:44:04of us know to what degree this is done. What is kept per user? What isn't? But is it down
1:44:13to the iCloud account level? Does every kid have their own iCloud account or just their
1:44:17own files? I don't know. I would guess it is done to a fairly shallow level. I would
1:44:23not expect this to be an easy way to just say, "Oh, well, just take this and just enable
1:44:28it for everybody."
1:44:29I don't think it's going to be that simple.
1:44:30I just had a sad thought, which is their multi-user switching could basically be erase everything
1:44:36about the previous user and go through a really fast first setup process.
1:44:39Like, in other words, there's only ever one user, and switching involves deleting the
1:44:44user that was there and putting in another user.
1:44:46So it really is single user all the time, and all they do is delete everything having
1:44:49to do with one user, really.
1:44:50I hope they didn't implant it that way, but that would probably work.
1:44:52I think Fraser said that might be actually how it is done.
1:44:55He was saying like if there's not a room for your stuff, the idea is that it'll take your
1:44:59stuff and put it in iCloud, which makes sense because it's like if you switch accounts to
1:45:02somebody who has more stuff than can fit on the current iPad, you have to purge the old
1:45:06person's stuff, especially with a classroom because the iPad in a classroom doesn't have
1:45:11three users. It can have like 15 or 20. And so you can't fit 15 or 20 people's stuff on there.
1:45:16So as you change users, eventually someone's stuff's got to get purged. But I'm thinking
1:45:20of like the scenario where every time you switch user it says, "There used to be another
1:45:24user of this iPad, but forget they ever existed. Delete all their stuff, push it up to the
1:45:28cloud, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and create a new user." And it's only ever a single user
1:45:34iPad. As far as the iPad is concerned, there's only ever been one user. It just changes periodically.
1:45:38And that would be depressing, and that would be a way to implement this as a shortcut,
1:45:41but I really hope they didn't do that.
1:45:42No, and honestly, I do think that in this day and age, you know, it makes sense to do
1:45:47this in classrooms where you might have a bunch of devices like stationary installed
1:45:53in a classroom like in a lab or something like that or you have to share them between
1:45:57people because you don't have enough.
1:45:59That probably happens a lot in education.
1:46:00I think in this day and age, I don't think we really need to be that concerned with multi-user
1:46:06use of today's iPads, iPhones, and laptops.
1:46:11Like desktops, maybe.
1:46:13laptops like most people I would love to have data on like what percentage of Macs out there
1:46:21have more than one user account that ever get used.
1:46:23- You wait till Adam gets older and he wants to use your computer and suddenly you'll be
1:46:27thankful that you can give him his own account.
1:46:29- I'll just buy cases on my Mac at that point and give him that.
1:46:32- You'll just buy him his own computer right yeah you're gonna put a computer in your seven
1:46:37year olds room and then come back and scrape the peanut butter off the screen periodically.
1:46:40That's what I do on iPads now.
1:46:42Well, not in this room, but yeah, I have to clean the peanut butter off of my iPad Air
1:46:462 now, whenever he uses it.
1:46:49Anyway, multiple accounts I think is a good idea.
1:46:53I don't think it's going away.
1:46:54And whether you think it's important for iPhones and iPads as they exist now, as the iPad Pro
1:46:59continues to develop in that direction, as it becomes a more viable desktop and laptop
1:47:04replacement, I think it's inevitable.
1:47:06I concede that I may be overestimating the sophistication of this multi-user implementation.
1:47:11There may be a massive amount of work to be done.
1:47:13I still think it will happen, but let's just push the timeline out a few more years.
1:47:16All right, we good?
1:47:18All right, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, Blue Apron, and Hover.
1:47:24And we will see you next week.
1:47:26Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.
1:47:36Oh it was accidental.
1:47:39John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
1:47:44Cause it was accidental.
1:47:47Oh it was accidental.
1:47:50And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
1:47:55And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
1:48:04That's Casey Liszt, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:48:08Anti-Marco Arman, S-I-R-A-C
1:48:13USA, Syracuse, it's accidental
1:48:17Accidental
1:48:19They didn't mean to
1:48:21Accidental
1:48:23Accidental
1:48:24Tech podcast so long
1:48:29I'm tired.
1:48:30You're probably looking at too many blue screens.
1:48:32Yeah, probably.
1:48:33I feel like the last couple episodes have been pretty good.
1:48:35We can't put that in the show because that's too self-congratulatory.
1:48:38That's like saying, "It's going to be a short show."
1:48:41Yeah, really.
1:48:42It's true.
1:48:43Yeah, well, we had all this follow-up.
1:48:45Follow-up is back.
1:48:46Follow-up was back with a vengeance today.
1:48:48That's true.
1:48:49Well, the Plex one was really a topic.
1:48:51That was just like, "More about Plex."
1:48:52Well, I mean, both of you have lots of difficulties with the concept of follow-up in the format.
1:48:58Why?
1:49:00Please educate us.
1:49:02Casey's Tale of Woe, like it's just like, well, we usually start with follow-up, but
1:49:05instead we're going to start with this other thing, which is properly a topic.
1:49:08And then Plex and the Infuse app.
1:49:10The Infuse app is a follow-up item.
1:49:12Let's talk about the Infuse app that people recommended.
1:49:13Here's how it worked for us, blah, blah, blah.
1:49:15But then the spinning off into hair is what you, you know, my complaints about Plex.
1:49:20I'm guilty, too, because you would lead me into it.
1:49:21Oh, yeah, it's all our fault.
1:49:23How you use Plex and your guide to Plex and what you've heard.
1:49:26Like Plex is a topic.
1:49:28Your Tale of Woe was a topic.
1:49:29The follow-up item, you could have cleared this infuse item
1:49:31in like two and a half minutes
1:49:33if we had just hit the bullet points.
1:49:34Anyway, we survive, the show survives, we soldier on.
1:49:38- I was actually thinking as we were,
1:49:40I noticed as we were talking about Casey's iMac
1:49:42for 40 minutes before we even began follow-up,
1:49:45I thought, you know, this is actually a better format.
1:49:48I kinda like having the follow-up after topic one.
1:49:51'Cause it gives you a chance to get into the show
1:49:53with something new first.
1:49:56- No, it doesn't. (laughing)
1:49:58- Cryologically speaking, you hear the previous show
1:50:00and you're angry because they got a bunch of stuff wrong.
1:50:02When the next episode starts, you wanna hear immediately
1:50:05that Casey knows that he got the C# thing wrong.
1:50:08- Eh, I don't know.
1:50:09I put the tale of woe first
1:50:11because I thought it was more dramatic that way,
1:50:14but I did kinda like having a little something,
1:50:18a little appetizer before the follow-up.
1:50:20- But you always do that, yeah.
1:50:21I mean, you always, that's the format of this show,
1:50:23is one of you has something to say
1:50:25before we begin the follow-up,
1:50:26and how long the thing is is fine,
1:50:27This was in an hour.
1:50:31This was my time to shine, Jon.
1:50:32Don't take it away from me.
1:50:34It's your time to cry about your poor iMac.
1:50:36How about that case, the box, though?
1:50:39The little trapezoidy box thing?
1:50:40Yeah, very weird.
1:50:41I liked it, but very weird.
1:50:43Although, I tell you what, putting that junk back into the styrofoam, what a disaster.
1:50:47Mostly because I'm an idiot when it came to that, but...
1:50:50Really?
1:50:51I found it very easy to repack an iMac.
1:50:52Yeah, I found it pretty easy, too.
1:50:54You just need practice.
1:50:55Yeah, well, I've never had to deal with it before.
1:50:57I've had to bring my Thunderbolt display back to the Apple Store many times, so I have lots
1:51:00of practice with it.
1:51:01With that size and shape.
1:51:02Yeah, yeah.
1:51:03Yeah, no, I've just never done it before with something that shape.
1:51:07I mean, the last time I've had a desktop, it was a tower, which is a big rectangle,
1:51:11so it was very different for me.
1:51:13I don't quite understand the, like, aesthetically I understand the box, but usually the things
1:51:18Apple does with boxes are about fitting more in a shipping container, you know, basically
1:51:21like in less environmental waste, more things,
1:51:24more product and less volume, right?
1:51:27But I really don't think they're packing these things up
1:51:30like top bottom, top bottom, top bottom
1:51:33to try to get space savings.
1:51:34So all I see is that that wedge they've cut out of it
1:51:36is just empty space in the shipping containers
1:51:38when they ship these.
1:51:39And you can only stack them on the way now.
1:51:41Anyway, it seems like it's just an aesthetic thing,
1:51:44which I can buy, but if there's some shipping related reason
1:51:48why they want that taper, I'd love to hear it.
1:51:51Why would you wouldn't stack them like one right side up the next right upside down?
1:51:55No, no
1:51:55I don't I don't think they do that like I would imagine that they're not meant to be shipped upside down right side up upside
1:52:00Down rise it up. It seems I think they're I bet they are I bet they
1:52:03I think so because like like what do you think they fill the gaps with like a whole bunch of mighty mice like
1:52:08Just tosses fill the little triangles plus that's what I'm saying
1:52:12Like it just it just seemed like the apps the apps would be air
1:52:15I would imagine that these things ship only in one orientation for just for like the security of like
1:52:21Bouncing around and cargo containers, but maybe they do ship fine upside down and they do alternate
1:52:25The chat room is very upset because you are very wrong John. Oh, they've wrong
1:52:30They don't do upside down right set up. You are wrong in saying that they are all right set up
1:52:34They are they are wedged in one right side up one upside down as as Marco and I suspected. Yeah
1:52:40I don't know. I just thought they wouldn't do that. I thought they like that shipping them upside down would be bad
1:52:44You know, the whole thing with the side up arrows on boxes that no one pays attention
1:52:48to.
1:52:49I still see them on boxes that come to my house, usually not facing up anymore.
1:52:53Well, imagine how bad it would be, though.
1:52:57However Apple ships them, that's definitely not how UPS and FedEx are going to ship them.
1:53:01So imagine if you designed a computer and a shipping method of that computer such that
1:53:06it had to be kept a certain way up.
1:53:08Otherwise it would just break.
1:53:09Well, it doesn't have to be.
1:53:10It's just like that's the best orientation.
1:53:12It's the most secure.
1:53:13So when Apple controls the shipment, it's like that, but in the last mile, it's all
1:53:16over the place.
1:53:17Because they still double box it, though, right?
1:53:18Yes, it's double—but the outer box is also that same shape.
1:53:21Yeah.
1:53:22Yep.
1:53:23The real reason for this, of course, is to make the giant wheel of IMAX that those guys
1:53:26made.
1:53:27If you just put them together, not alternating, eventually you get a big wheel that you can
1:53:33stand in and run around.
1:53:34Oh, that's awesome.
1:53:35And out on the quad in their, what I assume is their college, because this is where people
1:53:38have, A, this many IMAX and, B, this much free time.
1:53:41Yeah.
1:53:42I think the key thing that they did either right or wrong,
1:53:46depending on your look at it, is they used empty boxes.
1:53:48And so they were held together with clear packing tape
1:53:52and everything.
1:53:52And eventually, the packing tape and the boxes themselves,
1:53:55structural and trigonometric-- if you
1:53:56put an iMac in each one of those things,
1:53:58that would have had some serious momentum
1:54:00if you could have ever got it moving.
1:54:01Yeah, it would have been very heavy.
1:54:02That'd be a very expensive wheel.
1:54:04(laughing)
1:54:06(beep)