ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► So anyway, so yeah, so I posted my mega review of my beloved Tom Bihn Cadet,

00:00:04 ◼   ► which I've just put in the chat. You may shower me with praise about how marvelous it is.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Is this one of those bags that's just covered in like

00:00:13 ◼   ► various like buckles and straps and nylon things and...

00:00:17 ◼   ► I don't know. There's plenty of pro-level photography. By pro-level photography, I mean...

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hmm. How would Sean Blanc and Marco take pictures of this?

00:00:27 ◼   ► Well, this isn't it because it's just not but how would I take pictures of this when I'm pretending to be Sean Blanc and Marco?

00:00:35 ◼   ► Oh, okay, that'll work. These pictures are actually pretty good there

00:00:37 ◼   ► I mean I can nitpick them if you'd like one of them

00:00:40 ◼   ► I didn't have the the folk or the aperture was all wrong the one where the bag is open the big part of the bag

00:00:45 ◼   ► It's the bits of it are out of focus. I should have the very last one. No, no, no, no

00:00:49 ◼   ► What's wrong with the very last one? No, no

00:00:50 ◼   ► I was I was all the way down some of the bad photos aren't your fault because I was looking at these on my phone

00:00:55 ◼   ► And the like that the fabric pattern does that repeating a pattern thing when it shrunk to small sizes, and it looks crazy

00:01:02 ◼   ► I thought I didn't realize until I looked at it on my Mac here that it actually is a uniform color

00:01:07 ◼   ► And it is not like paisley or plaid

00:01:09 ◼   ► Is it the more hey is that how you pronounce that the more effect like when it scales it down

00:01:15 ◼   ► I cleverly avoided trying to pronounce it waiting for you suckers to fall on that sword

00:01:18 ◼   ► So she wanted to want to do some follow-up. We should probably do some follow-up

00:01:23 ◼   ► We could start with Adam Luther who wrote in to talk about

00:01:27 ◼   ► 802.11ac. John, would you like to correct the error in your ways?

00:01:32 ◼   ► Last episode I mentioned that I didn't need to have 802.11ac in my house because I don't have any 802.11ac devices

00:01:39 ◼   ► But Adam Luther was the first person to point out that that's not true. My iPhone 6 does 802.11ac

00:01:44 ◼   ► So there you go. It was with me all along. Other than that though

00:01:50 ◼   ► I think I don't have any because I don't think the 5s had it, right?

00:01:52 ◼   ► - Right.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - No, I think the iPhone 6 was the first one.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Well also, how useful is that?

00:01:58 ◼   ► Because typically transferring large files to the iPhone

00:02:02 ◼   ► is limited by a lot of factors, including wireless,

00:02:05 ◼   ► but also including the write speed of the flash.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Can it really write any faster than 802.11n speeds,

00:02:11 ◼   ► or is it just more like,

00:02:13 ◼   ► well if you have crappy range to the base station,

00:02:17 ◼   ► or if you have a crappy signal,

00:02:18 ◼   ► then you'll get a little bit faster on AC

00:02:20 ◼   ► than you would under end.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't even know if that's true.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Speaking of, I guess we could put this in the section

00:02:27 ◼   ► of the follow-up of my Wi-Fi base station story.

00:02:31 ◼   ► The Wi-Fi base stations have started arriving.

00:02:33 ◼   ► I say multiple because Marco,

00:02:35 ◼   ► despite saying that he was going to get back to me

00:02:37 ◼   ► on which exact base station he had,

00:02:39 ◼   ► instead of getting back to me, he just sent what he had.

00:02:41 ◼   ► - Yep, you'd say no.

00:02:43 ◼   ► I wanted to get rid of it.

00:02:44 ◼   ► - Right, and so it arrived.

00:02:46 ◼   ► So I've got that stupid tall tower thing.

00:02:50 ◼   ► That's Apple's current thing, right?

00:02:51 ◼   ► like yours is the current generation.

00:02:53 ◼   ► - Did you enjoy the Nexus 7 as well or whatever that is?

00:02:56 ◼   ► - God, it took so long to charge.

00:02:57 ◼   ► The only charger we have that has that plug in it

00:02:59 ◼   ► was like the Kindle charger

00:03:01 ◼   ► and it must be not like not high voltage enough.

00:03:03 ◼   ► So I left it plugged in for like a day and a half

00:03:04 ◼   ► till it finally started up.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I tried, this is the Nexus 7.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I tried it out.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I was using the YouTube app.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Like maybe I can just use it to watch YouTube videos.

00:03:11 ◼   ► It's just another little thing to toss around the house.

00:03:13 ◼   ► But the YouTube app was like,

00:03:14 ◼   ► there's an updated version of this app available.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And it was weird to be told that like inside the YouTube app

00:03:19 ◼   ► in the, I guess, the little web page it was rendering

00:03:22 ◼   ► for the video, so I was like, all right,

00:03:24 ◼   ► I'll tap the thing that it wants me to go to,

00:03:26 ◼   ► and it took me to the Google Play store or whatever it is,

00:03:29 ◼   ► and then it says, this version of the YouTube app

00:03:30 ◼   ► is not compatible with your device,

00:03:31 ◼   ► and I said, well, nevermind.

00:03:33 ◼   ► So it was kind of disappointing.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I got an email with it, you forgot to delete

00:03:37 ◼   ► all your accounts, and I tried to delete them

00:03:39 ◼   ► by swiping sideways on them, and all my iOS gestures

00:03:41 ◼   ► are not working, you know, so I don't know how to use Android

00:03:45 ◼   ► but it's not bad for something to just

00:03:47 ◼   ► Maybe check your email.

00:03:48 ◼   ► I think I like the iOS Gmail app better

00:03:50 ◼   ► than the Android one, which surprised me.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Maybe I just need to get used to it,

00:03:53 ◼   ► or this could be an ancient version.

00:03:54 ◼   ► But it plays YouTube videos,

00:03:56 ◼   ► so it will probably find some home in our house,

00:03:59 ◼   ► give them to some child to watch YouTube on.

00:04:01 ◼   ► I don't think that one's 802.11ac either.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - Hey, can you answer some of my support email

00:04:05 ◼   ► while you're in there?

00:04:06 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Wow.

00:04:07 ◼   ► - And of course, a bunch of other people

00:04:09 ◼   ► who saw my tweets are shipping me their old flat,

00:04:13 ◼   ► like the flat airport extreme, the ones that I like.

00:04:17 ◼   ► One of those arrived and I hooked it up and used it.

00:04:20 ◼   ► And I actually had to call Verizon to get the,

00:04:22 ◼   ► to release the IP cause I didn't feel like waiting

00:04:24 ◼   ► a long time.

00:04:25 ◼   ► I just couldn't like,

00:04:26 ◼   ► I used to be able to with the Verizon one,

00:04:27 ◼   ► get it to release before I disconnected.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And this time nothing I did would get it to release.

00:04:32 ◼   ► So I actually had to call them and it was pretty painless.

00:04:34 ◼   ► I didn't, I talked to one person.

00:04:36 ◼   ► They knew what I was talking about.

00:04:37 ◼   ► - Told you so.

00:04:38 ◼   ► - Knew what I was talking about immediately

00:04:40 ◼   ► and they just did it.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And that was fine.

00:04:42 ◼   ► I mean, it wasn't, you know, wasn't that painless.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I had to still wait for the on hold time of like

00:04:46 ◼   ► five minutes or whatever and then... anyway. So the flat one, this is the model 1408 I

00:04:55 ◼   ► believe, A1408. Works better than my other one, the signal travels farther. I can, you

00:05:01 ◼   ► know, because there's some rooms in our house that we just couldn't get the signal before

00:05:03 ◼   ► and now we can. So that was exciting.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Well, because that one had, I think it had two revisions and they looked the same identically

00:05:10 ◼   ► on the outside but the newer one, there were some tests maybe on an OnTech a long time

00:05:15 ◼   ► ago. And that's why I had initially bought that one, because they had shown that the

00:05:19 ◼   ► range was dramatically improved in the later version of it.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Yeah, mine was really, really old. And in general, Apple's things are not known for

00:05:27 ◼   ► having good range. And it was a big deal when Apple started improving it, because finally

00:05:30 ◼   ► the range was not horrendous. It's merely middle of the pack. The Mac-oriented websites

00:05:37 ◼   ► would review it in comparison to the old AirPorts. And compared to the old AirPorts, it was a

00:05:41 ◼   ► huge improvement but compared to contemporary even compared to just the

00:05:45 ◼   ► Verizon router with a little you know that what seven-year-old router that

00:05:49 ◼   ► they gave me that one had better range than any of the airports anyway the new

00:05:52 ◼   ► flat airport work great then eventually Marcos arrived I remember Marcos the

00:05:56 ◼   ► reason I didn't want it well two reasons one it's like that big vertical tower

00:06:00 ◼   ► thingy because it's the same case that they use to put the hard drive in for

00:06:03 ◼   ► the time capsule only the the plain old router one doesn't have a hard drive in

00:06:09 ◼   ► it but it's got the same case with the place where the hard drive would be

00:06:11 ◼   ► with just nothing in it, which is just silly.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I mean, it's economies of scale,

00:06:14 ◼   ► so they don't have to have two different devices

00:06:17 ◼   ► to manufacture, but anyway.

00:06:19 ◼   ► And it's really tall, and the place I have mine is,

00:06:22 ◼   ► you know, I was envisioning it being kind of like

00:06:25 ◼   ► the flat one but gone up vertically.

00:06:26 ◼   ► It's actually smaller than that.

00:06:28 ◼   ► The footprint, so the footprint is smaller,

00:06:29 ◼   ► but it's taller vertically.

00:06:30 ◼   ► And the second thing is, of course, that this thing

00:06:32 ◼   ► has a fan, and that offends me, you know.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I don't wanna have fans.

00:06:37 ◼   ► I don't like the idea that it needs a fan,

00:06:39 ◼   ► because it means that it gets so hot

00:06:40 ◼   ► that passive cooling isn't enough, that it needs to have active cooling in it.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Of course, the design of the thing doesn't have any holes on the top of the case, so

00:06:46 ◼   ► if they had just made it a chimney case, then passive cooling would have been fine, nevermind

00:06:50 ◼   ► all the empty space in there where the hard drive was supposed to be.

00:06:53 ◼   ► And then there's a question, do they even need the fan?

00:06:54 ◼   ► Is the fan only there for the hard drive in a time capsule version, and there's no point

00:06:58 ◼   ► in it to the other one?

00:06:59 ◼   ► Could you stop the fan with the thing overheat?

00:07:01 ◼   ► But of course, the main thing is I don't want anything that makes noise, anything else that

00:07:04 ◼   ► makes noise around here, especially since when I'm playing Destiny, it's within non-

00:07:10 ◼   ► Outstretched arm's reach it's like right next to the monitor that I play destiny on so it was gonna make any noise

00:07:15 ◼   ► I was gonna hear it well

00:07:17 ◼   ► Let me tell you the fan in this thing totally passes my 40 year old years test of silent wow

00:07:23 ◼   ► I am surprised you could a/b test this thing behind a screen is it turned on is it not I could not tell you I

00:07:28 ◼   ► Could absolutely not tell you well now

00:07:30 ◼   ► Maybe if you were a younger person and you had better hearing you could tell but like no one was home in my house

00:07:35 ◼   ► No cars on the road complete silence

00:07:38 ◼   ► I put it on, moved like, you know, an arm's length away from it. I can't tell that it's on.

00:07:42 ◼   ► Put it right up to your ear. Yeah, you can hear it. It does make noise. Like there is noise there,

00:07:46 ◼   ► but from from arm's distance, I am now old enough that I can't hear it. So getting old does have some benefits.

00:07:52 ◼   ► Your hearing slowly starts to go.

00:07:54 ◼   ► Nice.

00:07:55 ◼   ► And so I was testing, I'm testing the signal strength between like the flat one and the tall one, and

00:07:59 ◼   ► like AC and not AC and separate 5 gigahertz network and non-5 gigahertz network.

00:08:05 ◼   ► And it's kind of a wash like it's hard to without real devices for testing or whatever if you just go up and do like

00:08:11 ◼   ► Speed tests and signal strength tests going by the number of bars

00:08:14 ◼   ► There's too many variables involved here for me to tell I don't know what it is

00:08:17 ◼   ► Is it the neighbors what their Wi-Fi is doing? Is it some neighbor using a microwave oven like who knows?

00:08:21 ◼   ► Both of them have much better signal than the previous one

00:08:25 ◼   ► But I can't definitively say the tall one in my house anyways any better than the flat one

00:08:30 ◼   ► So anyway, I'm going to eventually decide on which one anything they're gonna keep they all work with my printer

00:08:34 ◼   ► They all, you know, imported my router configuration just fine.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Like they're all, they all work and all the ones that I don't use I will just give away

00:08:42 ◼   ► to someone else.

00:08:43 ◼   ► >> You can pack them all in a box with nothing between them and just make a big brick.

00:08:47 ◼   ► >> And send it to Casey.

00:08:48 ◼   ► >> Yep.

00:08:49 ◼   ► >> Yeah, like Apple, even with this tall one, I still don't think Apple is like at the top

00:08:54 ◼   ► of the class in terms of signal strength and distance and stuff.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Every time they do a test of just the entire world of third party routers, there's always

00:09:02 ◼   ► some other model that gets better signal strength and better distance than the Apple ones. But

00:09:06 ◼   ► what the Apple ones have going for them is I can use Apple's apps to manage them, I can

00:09:10 ◼   ► import my old configuration and it works with my printer plugged in via USB.

00:09:14 ◼   ► I would also like to point out in the realm of very, very quiet fan technology, when Tiff

00:09:21 ◼   ► got her 5K iMac last fall, in order to expand the storage, we bought a little Thunderbolt

00:09:28 ◼   ► SSD enclosure. It holds four SSDs and it had this really loud

00:09:32 ◼   ► 40 or 60 millimeter fan in it. I went online and did some research. I used to be a quiet PC nerd

00:09:39 ◼   ► I have purchased dynamat before and it was not for my car

00:09:42 ◼   ► anyway, so I did some research on what what what is the quiet fan to buy today and

00:09:47 ◼   ► I discovered Noctua fans. So all I did was I took out the old fan

00:09:53 ◼   ► It was a standard fan standard plug put in one of these Noctua things in there and the sound difference

00:09:58 ◼   ► is incredible. Same airspeed really that I could tell like you know roughly I mean

00:10:02 ◼   ► it is just incredible how quiet fans are today when they're designed to be quiet

00:10:07 ◼   ► and it's kind of sad how many still aren't designed to be quiet like the one

00:10:12 ◼   ► that came in this multi hundred dollar Thunderbolt enclosure for no reason at

00:10:15 ◼   ► all is incredibly loud. Anyway so yeah not too a fan's good stuff. That's another

00:10:21 ◼   ► way speaking of bags and enclosures and I don't know if I ever blogged about this

00:10:26 ◼   ► I probably should but I'm sure I've talked about in the show one of the ways to build loyalty

00:10:31 ◼   ► For any product that you're selling that is a physical good

00:10:35 ◼   ► Over the long term. It's not a good way to like get your company off the ground

00:10:39 ◼   ► Maybe but over the long term is to pick a few essential things about it that you won't compromise on

00:10:44 ◼   ► Mostly having to do with durability. So if you're selling enclosures aside, we're going to use the absolute most expensive fans

00:10:52 ◼   ► we could possibly find and we are just going to either raise our price by the amount that

00:10:57 ◼   ► that hurts us in terms of how much extra that fan costs or eat into our profit margins with

00:11:04 ◼   ► it or like bags.

00:11:05 ◼   ► We are going to find the world's most reliable zippers and buckles and we're going to be

00:11:10 ◼   ► like Volvo like every time one of our bags gets damaged in some way we're going to replace

00:11:15 ◼   ► it for free, we're going to ask them to send us the one that broke and we're going to look

00:11:18 ◼   ► at the failure and try to figure it out and keep improving and improving so that eventually

00:11:21 ◼   ► if your company stays in business, and you know, for a couple years you start getting

00:11:25 ◼   ► a reputation of get blah blah blah enclosures. They're solid, their power supplies never

00:11:30 ◼   ► fail, their fans are silent. Get blah blah blah bags, the seams don't rip, the zippers

00:11:35 ◼   ► don't break, all the buckles work and if they don't they replace them. Like, this is going

00:11:39 ◼   ► to be like, oh you're just telling everybody to be high end. It isn't great to be high

00:11:42 ◼   ► end, everyone needs to be snap on, right? You need to be the world's most expensive

00:11:45 ◼   ► whatever you're going to be. But I don't think that's the case. I think you just have to

00:11:48 ◼   ► to have a reasonable reputation for quality.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I mean, I think this does eventually push you upmarket,

00:11:54 ◼   ► kind of like Weber grills or whatever,

00:11:56 ◼   ► or eventually you're kind of cashing in on your name

00:11:58 ◼   ► and even though your product may be reasonably good,

00:12:01 ◼   ► you just keep charging more and more for it.

00:12:03 ◼   ► You have to try to stay in the middle,

00:12:04 ◼   ► like I would say Craftsman tools,

00:12:07 ◼   ► not the best quality tools in the world,

00:12:09 ◼   ► but they gain their reputation for being,

00:12:13 ◼   ► if you break our tool,

00:12:13 ◼   ► you can bring it in and we'll replace it for free forever

00:12:16 ◼   ► and we'll make it reasonable quality

00:12:18 ◼   ► and I think they have a good reputation among customers.

00:12:21 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of other brands that are like this.

00:12:23 ◼   ► - L.L. Bean is very similar, I'd say.

00:12:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, again, it starts to push high end,

00:12:27 ◼   ► but I'm trying to think of like, I mean, Apple,

00:12:29 ◼   ► Apple is one example, but like,

00:12:32 ◼   ► they've gone for something else.

00:12:32 ◼   ► They've gone for like aesthetics and that type of quality.

00:12:35 ◼   ► They haven't really gone for durability.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Maybe like, I don't know,

00:12:39 ◼   ► I'm thinking of like that Sony Walkman that was like yellow

00:12:42 ◼   ► with the big rubber gaskets all over.

00:12:43 ◼   ► - Oh, yep, yep, yep.

00:12:44 ◼   ► - Not that Sony ever had their reputation,

00:12:45 ◼   ► but that particular thing had their reputation.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Or I'm thinking more of like power tools

00:12:50 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:12:50 ◼   ► But anyway, in the world of computers,

00:12:52 ◼   ► I wish there were more manufacturers who,

00:12:54 ◼   ► more successful manufacturers

00:12:56 ◼   ► who differentiated themselves on durability.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And I guess, I mean, it's been tough in the PC industry

00:13:03 ◼   ► at least where even the phone industry with consolidation,

00:13:05 ◼   ► it's just been a cutthroat business

00:13:07 ◼   ► and just if there were companies

00:13:08 ◼   ► that distinguished themselves in that way,

00:13:09 ◼   ► they eventually got gobbled up

00:13:10 ◼   ► because it wasn't enough to sustain them.

00:13:12 ◼   ► But I'm hoping as the insides of electronic components

00:13:15 ◼   ► become more and more a commodity,

00:13:18 ◼   ► that there will be somewhere room to differentiate

00:13:21 ◼   ► on these axes.

00:13:22 ◼   ► Can you think of a phone with a reputation for durability?

00:13:26 ◼   ► I can't.

00:13:27 ◼   ► - No.

00:13:29 ◼   ► - I mean the Samsung one that's waterproof,

00:13:31 ◼   ► I think is an interesting thing.

00:13:32 ◼   ► Samsung changes what it does every year.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Like, you know, they're just very, they're not,

00:13:36 ◼   ► there's no coherent vision for the reputation

00:13:39 ◼   ► they wanna do, except for the reputation

00:13:41 ◼   ► as we make good phones that you wanna buy,

00:13:43 ◼   ► please give us money.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And Apple is so concentrated on thin and sleek

00:13:47 ◼   ► and beautifully designed, which is fine.

00:13:50 ◼   ► That's the reason we like all their stuff and everything,

00:13:52 ◼   ► but they're not kind of like the ruggedized,

00:13:56 ◼   ► craftsman, L.L. Bean type of aesthetic.

00:13:59 ◼   ► There is no manufacturer that's like that for electronics.

00:14:03 ◼   ► I think there should be,

00:14:04 ◼   ► because we're kind of at that stage now

00:14:05 ◼   ► where it's like maybe some people want that.

00:14:07 ◼   ► I bet there is a manufacturer like that

00:14:09 ◼   ► for camping supplies, for mountaineering equipment,

00:14:13 ◼   ► for car repair tools, I mentioned Snap-on,

00:14:15 ◼   ► they're like, those manufacturers do exist

00:14:18 ◼   ► in the more sort of rugged manly fields,

00:14:19 ◼   ► but I think there's a place for them in electronics,

00:14:22 ◼   ► 'cause it's such a quality of life issue.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Like I said, you buy that multi-hundred dollar

00:14:25 ◼   ► Thunderbolt enclosure and they have like a two cent fan

00:14:27 ◼   ► in there or whatever, it's like, please just

00:14:29 ◼   ► spend the extra $15 for the expensive fan

00:14:31 ◼   ► and add it to the price.

00:14:33 ◼   ► If it's a multi-hundred dollar thing, like I'll pay it,

00:14:35 ◼   ► and if you keep doing that consistently, I'll say,

00:14:36 ◼   ► hey, if you wanna buy enclosure,

00:14:38 ◼   ► same thing with power supplies,

00:14:39 ◼   ► if you wanna buy an enclosure, buy this enclosure,

00:14:41 ◼   ► because the stupid power supply brick,

00:14:43 ◼   ► Oh, that's, speaking of power supply, doesn't die.

00:14:45 ◼   ► And speaking of that, my Wi-Fi router,

00:14:47 ◼   ► is just as I was about to open up my Wi-Fi router

00:14:50 ◼   ► with my son, which is a thing that we do

00:14:52 ◼   ► when electronics dies, tear them apart.

00:14:54 ◼   ► I thought, you know, before I crack this thing open,

00:14:58 ◼   ► why don't I try plugging it into one of the power supplies

00:15:00 ◼   ► that came with one of the replacement ones

00:15:02 ◼   ► to see if it was the power supply that died

00:15:04 ◼   ► or the router that died.

00:15:05 ◼   ► It turns out it was the power supply that got fried,

00:15:08 ◼   ► not the router.

00:15:09 ◼   ► - So. - Aw, that's so sad.

00:15:11 ◼   ► My old one, I mean, I didn't test it, test it, but my old one turns on the light, does

00:15:15 ◼   ► it, you know, like, before, the amber light wouldn't come on at all.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Now it starts up, eventually turns green.

00:15:20 ◼   ► So I'm pretty sure it was the power supply.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Which still means I would have been out of router because I was, no, I was going to buy

00:15:24 ◼   ► like a separate power supply for it.

00:15:28 ◼   ► But we took apart the power brick, Apple's power brick, you know what that looks like?

00:15:32 ◼   ► That's kind of like, well, it looks like everything else they make, like a white rounded rectangle

00:15:36 ◼   ► thing.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Boy, those are hard to open.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Like, I didn't look at the iFixit guide, I'm assuming it involved.

00:15:41 ◼   ► heat gun, you don't have to loosen the adhesive, but I don't have a heat gun, all I have is

00:15:45 ◼   ► pliers, screwdrivers, and other blunt instruments and that was difficult to get open. But inside

00:15:52 ◼   ► it looked pretty nice. And that thing lasted at least seven years, probably longer, before

00:16:01 ◼   ► power surge when not connected to a surge suppressor killed it. So Apple usually makes

00:16:06 ◼   ► pretty good power supplies. I've bought external hard drive enclosures that have gone through

00:16:10 ◼   ► multiple of these power brick things. So those are usually the weak link.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Yeah, in fact, like, those power bricks are usually such cheap pieces of crap that I really

00:16:19 ◼   ► have tried to avoid buying peripherals that use them. Like, anything that can be bus-powered,

00:16:25 ◼   ► I will almost always pick that option now, because power supplies, like, either they

00:16:30 ◼   ► die early or they start, like, they start a whine or a buzz, and I've had so many, like,

00:16:36 ◼   ► cheap, crappy power supplies.

00:16:38 ◼   ► - Apple does well here, like remember that article

00:16:40 ◼   ► showing what it looked like inside

00:16:42 ◼   ► Apple's laptop power adapter and then inside like a knockoff

00:16:46 ◼   ► it's supposed to have made to look like.

00:16:47 ◼   ► And the knockoff, they just showed all the components

00:16:49 ◼   ► they were missing and you know, it's just.

00:16:51 ◼   ► - The knockoff basically ran wires from one end to the other.

00:16:54 ◼   ► - And Apple says filled with tons of like tiny surface mount

00:16:56 ◼   ► resistors and trying to, you know,

00:16:58 ◼   ► like Apple does a good job with those things.

00:17:00 ◼   ► They'll, I mean, they're still, you know,

00:17:02 ◼   ► get it, you can healthy profit margins

00:17:04 ◼   ► when you bought them from them,

00:17:05 ◼   ► but that is a wise investment in money.

00:17:07 ◼   ► They look silly on the outside, they're just these white, you know, rounded rectangle things

00:17:12 ◼   ► with plugs and you think they're all the same.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And it could be argued that Apple cheeps out on the wires themselves because they have

00:17:16 ◼   ► to be thin and beautiful and the strain relief isn't there or whatever.

00:17:19 ◼   ► But inside the actual brick parts of the power bricks, for the most part Apple has done a

00:17:24 ◼   ► good job with that over the years.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Well, and to be fair, one of the reasons why the Apple wires tend to die over time, you're

00:17:31 ◼   ► right, part of it is they need more strain relief really and strain relief is ugly so

00:17:35 ◼   ► they don't do it.

00:17:36 ◼   ► also part of it is they go on their environmental checklist and they want to be like everything

00:17:39 ◼   ► free and some of those things they've checked off the environmental checklist over the years

00:17:43 ◼   ► are things that make really good long-lasting power cords but also might cause cancer or

00:17:46 ◼   ► something so you know like they have actually had to change the materials over time to be

00:17:52 ◼   ► things that are that maybe are more brittle like some of the soft plastics and rubbers

00:17:56 ◼   ► are like more brittle now and they're a little stiffer and they crack and yeah.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Yeah they change the material like I mean you've got a collection of Apple hardware

00:18:04 ◼   ► particularly the cords, power cords, USB cables,

00:18:08 ◼   ► lightning cables, 30 pin connector cables.

00:18:10 ◼   ► If you have been buying Apple devices for a long time

00:18:12 ◼   ► and you actually save this stuff like I do,

00:18:14 ◼   ► there's two aspects of it.

00:18:16 ◼   ► One, obviously some of them might age differently

00:18:19 ◼   ► because something that is five, 10 years old,

00:18:23 ◼   ► it's like, was it always like this

00:18:25 ◼   ► or did it just get like this

00:18:26 ◼   ► because it kind of dried out over time

00:18:27 ◼   ► so you can't really tell.

00:18:28 ◼   ► But two, even when relatively new things,

00:18:30 ◼   ► the difference in sort of the bendability,

00:18:33 ◼   ► the surface texture, if it holds a kink,

00:18:36 ◼   ► like they're always wrapped up in a tight little bundle

00:18:38 ◼   ► in the package, when you unwrap it,

00:18:39 ◼   ► how long does it take to get unkinked?

00:18:41 ◼   ► I have some cables that are like a year old

00:18:43 ◼   ► that are still kinked,

00:18:44 ◼   ► other ones curled right out into a smooth thing.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Some of them feel smooth,

00:18:48 ◼   ► some of them feel rough on the outside,

00:18:49 ◼   ► some of them are stiff, some of them are floppy,

00:18:51 ◼   ► they're different thicknesses.

00:18:52 ◼   ► I always wonder, is like,

00:18:54 ◼   ► I guess it's probably intentional,

00:18:55 ◼   ► but it's like you said, Margo,

00:18:56 ◼   ► which part of this is we were moving home from materials

00:18:59 ◼   ► and this is the best we could do,

00:19:00 ◼   ► and then next year we figured out

00:19:01 ◼   ► we can do even better than that,

00:19:03 ◼   ► still without the harmful materials, which ones had the harmful materials in it, and

00:19:06 ◼   ► so they were like nice, as nice as they could make them without the constraints of environmental

00:19:10 ◼   ► correctness and everything.

00:19:12 ◼   ► So large variety in cables from Apple.

00:19:16 ◼   ► I'm assuming the insides are similar.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Like I was worried when they got rid of the, whatever, the lead in the solder or whatever,

00:19:22 ◼   ► because the alternatives are known to not be as strong, but so far so good on that front,

00:19:28 ◼   ► I guess.

00:19:29 ◼   ► Our first sponsor this week is Fracture.

00:19:31 ◼   ► to fractureme.com and use code ATP15 for 15% off your first order.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Fracture is vivid color prints of your photos printed directly on glass.

00:19:45 ◼   ► And this is really cool.

00:19:46 ◼   ► So I have a bunch of these hanging around our house here.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Fracture prints, so you know, they know, we take so many photos these days.

00:19:53 ◼   ► And your photos usually end up trapped somewhere down, you know, an Instagram or Facebook feed

00:19:57 ◼   ► somewhere and you know, they're on the feed for two seconds and then they scroll past

00:20:01 ◼   ► and then they're gone. And yeah, you still have them, but you never actually really look

00:20:05 ◼   ► at them. You never really enjoy them. You never really show anyone else those pictures.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Once they're off the stream, they're gone. And so Fracture wants people to actually take

00:20:13 ◼   ► some photos, take some special photos, or some non-special ones, it doesn't matter,

00:20:16 ◼   ► take some photos and get them printed and hang them up somewhere in your house. Or,

00:20:20 ◼   ► send them to loved ones as gifts. And it is so easy to do. Their website is great. You

00:20:24 ◼   ► know, you upload the photos, they preview everything, you get the scale or whatever,

00:20:28 ◼   ► crop, whatever, so easy to do.

00:20:30 ◼   ► And you get these beautiful prints.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Now, this is really vivid color photo prints

00:20:35 ◼   ► printed directly on glass.

00:20:37 ◼   ► So here's how this works.

00:20:38 ◼   ► There's a very, very thin piece of glass on the front.

00:20:41 ◼   ► The photo's printed on the backside of it,

00:20:43 ◼   ► facing through, facing the front.

00:20:45 ◼   ► So it can't scratch off.

00:20:47 ◼   ► And the front is nice and glossy glass.

00:20:49 ◼   ► So it looks great, and it's so thin

00:20:51 ◼   ► that it looks like the photo is printed on the top surface,

00:20:55 ◼   ► you know, from any distance.

00:20:56 ◼   ► it looks like the photo is printed on the top. And because it's so thin, it also is

00:21:01 ◼   ► extremely lightweight. You don't have to worry about like some giant heavy pane of glass

00:21:05 ◼   ► ripping the nail out of your wall and crashing down on the floor. These things are very lightweight

00:21:08 ◼   ► for their size. And so behind the glass is a thin piece of like foam board and that has

00:21:14 ◼   ► like little holes in it so then you can hook picture hanging screws in that. They even

00:21:18 ◼   ► give you one in the box if you need it or you can go to the hardware store and get you

00:21:21 ◼   ► know, ten for a buck or whatever. But you know, they, these things are nice solid lightweight

00:21:26 ◼   ► pictures that hang on your wall and look great. Every time somebody's in my office and they

00:21:31 ◼   ► see my Fracture prints, they always compliment them and they always ask about them. These

00:21:35 ◼   ► make great gifts, Fracture, vivid color prints directly on glass. Use code ATP15 at FractureMe.com.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Code ATP15 for 15% off your first Fracture order. Price to start at just 15 bucks for

00:21:49 ◼   ► the small ones. They're like a 5x5 square. It's about the size of a little smaller than

00:21:54 ◼   ► a CD case, if anyone even knows what those are anymore. Do you guys remember the trick

00:21:58 ◼   ► to open jewel cases properly? You ever learn that?

00:22:01 ◼   ► Is there a trick? Yeah, the three finger thing.

00:22:03 ◼   ► What? You just open them? Yeah.

00:22:05 ◼   ► No, it's on the right edge. So when you open a CD case, does it like snap open after some

00:22:12 ◼   ► force? Are you pulling from the middle? I don't have this problem. I just open them.

00:22:16 ◼   ► They're a hinge in the back. They open like books, right?

00:22:19 ◼   ► No, they snap open if you don't do it right.

00:22:22 ◼   ► So the way to do it right is, so take your left hand,

00:22:26 ◼   ► take your middle finger straight up, thumb straight down,

00:22:28 ◼   ► index finger kind of out, so as if you're making

00:22:30 ◼   ► like a three, like a peace sign with your thumb out, okay?

00:22:33 ◼   ► Take your middle finger up top, your thumb,

00:22:35 ◼   ► you pull up the corners of the case lid from that

00:22:39 ◼   ► as you're pushing down on the case with your index finger.

00:22:43 ◼   ► So you pull up the top and bottom

00:22:44 ◼   ► while you're pushing down the center of the right edge,

00:22:47 ◼   ► and then it swings right open.

00:22:48 ◼   ► actually can find a jewel case to try this on. It will change your life if you still

00:22:52 ◼   ► ever open jewel cases, but you probably don't anymore.

00:22:55 ◼   ► This is unbelievably useful information for 15 year ago Casey.

00:23:01 ◼   ► How did you not know this?

00:23:02 ◼   ► No, I did know this, and I think that is how I opened a jewel case, but I didn't realize

00:23:06 ◼   ► there was a right and wrong way. To John's point, I just kind of opened it.

00:23:09 ◼   ► I've got a jewel case with me right here, and either, like, I don't see a wrong way

00:23:13 ◼   ► to open it. I don't see what, like, I'm trying to open it in all sorts of wrong ways, like,

00:23:18 ◼   ► Like if I just take my finger and flick it on the set,

00:23:20 ◼   ► it opens every time.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Like it's not--

00:23:22 ◼   ► - What most people will do is they will just take one finger

00:23:25 ◼   ► like the index finger and try to pull up the center

00:23:27 ◼   ► of the right edge.

00:23:28 ◼   ► And then it kind of like snaps open.

00:23:30 ◼   ► - I've never seen that technique.

00:23:32 ◼   ► I always have fingers on the top edge

00:23:34 ◼   ► and fingers on the bottom edge.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And the other hand crosswise on it.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Pressing in the middle thing does disengage the little hooks

00:23:39 ◼   ► but even if you don't press in the middle,

00:23:40 ◼   ► if you just pull up with your fingers that way,

00:23:42 ◼   ► it comes off pretty much as easily.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Like they're not stiff.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Anyway, thanks a lot to Fracture for sponsoring our show once again.

00:23:51 ◼   ► So we are in August and we are in the slump, the doldrums of August, and we have little

00:23:58 ◼   ► to nothing to talk about.

00:24:00 ◼   ► So with that in mind, we're going to try to entice you to listen to the rest of this episode

00:24:06 ◼   ► by discussing a couple of different things.

00:24:09 ◼   ► And we thought we would start by me having an existential crisis about what kind of computer

00:24:15 ◼   ► I want to replace my personal 15-inch high-res anti-glare MacBook Pro.

00:24:20 ◼   ► And if you recall, I've just gotten a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro for work, but I've been

00:24:27 ◼   ► telling myself that I'm waiting for the Skylake 15-inch refresh to get a new personal machine.

00:24:36 ◼   ► But I was thinking about it recently, and I started to wonder why.

00:24:42 ◼   ► What I use my personal computer for, my personal Mac, is almost nothing.

00:24:46 ◼   ► It is unbelievably slow as compared to both the new work computer and even the work computer

00:24:52 ◼   ► that the new one replaced, because my personal one is still using a platter hard drive, which

00:24:58 ◼   ► is unusable.

00:25:00 ◼   ► I don't know how anyone does this anymore.

00:25:01 ◼   ► It's unusable.

00:25:03 ◼   ► So the reason I have both a work and a personal machine is because I like to tell myself that

00:25:08 ◼   ► I'm keeping my personal files on my personal machine and my work files on my work machine,

00:25:14 ◼   ► and they will never mix or anything like that.

00:25:17 ◼   ► Do you want to guess how often I really do a good job of keeping my personal files off

00:25:23 ◼   ► my work computer?

00:25:25 ◼   ► Not at all.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Everything in my Dropbox was on there.

00:25:28 ◼   ► 1Password is on there.

00:25:29 ◼   ► A lot of my pictures are on there.

00:25:31 ◼   ► All of my music is on there.

00:25:33 ◼   ► Everything is intertwined.

00:25:34 ◼   ► So, I'm wondering if there's, what is the point in insisting on having a 15-inch laptop

00:25:41 ◼   ► for my personal machine, when really the only thing this machine consistently gets used

00:25:46 ◼   ► for is as a Plex server?

00:25:48 ◼   ► Which started me down the line of, do I even really need a laptop, and if not, what do

00:25:54 ◼   ► I get?

00:25:55 ◼   ► I don't think I want a Retina iMac, for reasons I can't put my finger on, but I just don't

00:26:00 ◼   ► think I want that.

00:26:01 ◼   ► They still sell the non-Retina one.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Well, okay, sure, but if I was going to get an iMac—I don't want an iMac is what I should have said—

00:26:07 ◼   ► Do I want a Mac Mini?

00:26:10 ◼   ► Maybe you want a Mac Pro?

00:26:12 ◼   ► Oh, God, that would be a

00:26:14 ◼   ► hysterical turn of events, but no, I do not want a Mac Pro.

00:26:17 ◼   ► But I guess what I'm driving at is, like, what is the purpose in maintaining a personal machine that is portable,

00:26:23 ◼   ► that I could take places when I'm never ever ever going to take that machine places? Even if I had a

00:26:30 ◼   ► unbelievably awesome personal machine, in all likelihood, I'd probably take the work

00:26:34 ◼   ► machine, so on the slim chance that I have to do work when I'm on this phantom, you know,

00:26:38 ◼   ► theoretical vacation, I could do so. So why do I need a 15-inch laptop when really I could

00:26:45 ◼   ► probably save $2,000 and just get a Mac Mini?

00:26:49 ◼   ► Well, first of all, you couldn't, because it is impossible to get a nicely configured

00:26:53 ◼   ► Mac Mini for much under a thousand bucks.

00:26:56 ◼   ► I mean, we're still looking at the work computer

00:26:58 ◼   ► that work gave me was something like $3,100.

00:27:02 ◼   ► - Right, well, yeah, but the difference

00:27:03 ◼   ► between the base model, which is 2,000,

00:27:07 ◼   ► and that is, I wouldn't say it's 50% better.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Anyway, it doesn't matter.

00:27:12 ◼   ► So, number one, you answered this already.

00:27:15 ◼   ► Number one is, are you sure you don't need

00:27:19 ◼   ► for it to be portable?

00:27:20 ◼   ► And you said, you just bring the work laptop,

00:27:23 ◼   ► and that makes a lot of sense.

00:27:24 ◼   ► What I recommend, if you can, you know,

00:27:27 ◼   ► if this works for you, I recommend whatever you get,

00:27:31 ◼   ► consider that you will leave, if your job allows this,

00:27:35 ◼   ► leave your work computer at work.

00:27:37 ◼   ► If you bring your work computer at home,

00:27:39 ◼   ► then obviously you're blurring a line between home and work,

00:27:42 ◼   ► and that's, as you said, that's something that's not ideal,

00:27:45 ◼   ► ideologically, if that's not a redundant phrase.

00:27:49 ◼   ► And obviously, whether your job expects you

00:27:54 ◼   ► to be working on the side is that's up to you and your job.

00:27:56 ◼   ► But if you can leave your work computer at work

00:27:59 ◼   ► most of the time, that's worth considering

00:28:02 ◼   ► 'cause that gives you really good isolation then.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Then you can't bring your work home with you.

00:28:06 ◼   ► You can leave it connected to the monitor and stuff at work

00:28:08 ◼   ► and have all your windows stay in place, John.

00:28:10 ◼   ► And it's really nice to have that separation, honestly,

00:28:14 ◼   ► unless you have to be frequently doing work at home.

00:28:16 ◼   ► Then it's different.

00:28:17 ◼   ► But if that's not a frequent occurrence,

00:28:19 ◼   ► if you can usually do work at work only,

00:28:22 ◼   ► then that can be really nice.

00:28:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think I could get away with it.

00:28:26 ◼   ► I understand and completely agree

00:28:28 ◼   ► with everything you just said,

00:28:29 ◼   ► but I work from home often enough,

00:28:32 ◼   ► even like in the evenings or occasionally on the weekends

00:28:36 ◼   ► or just to quickly, well, I guess I was going to say

00:28:39 ◼   ► quickly fire off an email,

00:28:41 ◼   ► but I could do that on any computer.

00:28:42 ◼   ► That doesn't require a full-bore work machine.

00:28:45 ◼   ► - Does the work that you occasionally have to do at home

00:28:47 ◼   ► require that it be done on your work computer

00:28:50 ◼   ► Or can you log into the stuff you need to log into

00:28:52 ◼   ► on any computer?

00:28:53 ◼   ► - I was going to say I suppose I could like,

00:28:57 ◼   ► what was almost said RDP

00:29:00 ◼   ► because I'm showing my Windows colors now.

00:29:01 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:29:02 ◼   ► - But I could yell VNC into a machine at work

00:29:06 ◼   ► if I can punch a hole through the firewall.

00:29:09 ◼   ► I suppose I could put the work VPN on my home machine.

00:29:12 ◼   ► - This sounds like too much work.

00:29:13 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:29:14 ◼   ► - Supposed to be saying ARD

00:29:15 ◼   ► if you wanna get your Mac grid up.

00:29:17 ◼   ► - Whatever, Apple remote desktop, right.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Anyway, the point is, I probably could do that, but in all likelihood, if I have a work

00:29:24 ◼   ► laptop, I would almost certainly take it home, in no small part because in this theoretical,

00:29:31 ◼   ► I'm not going to have a laptop of my own.

00:29:36 ◼   ► And I'm going to have either an iMac or a Mac Mini, and so I'm going to want a laptop

00:29:41 ◼   ► to use in the house, even for personal things.

00:29:44 ◼   ► And so I would want to have the work computer at home anyway.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Okay, so then that's the other question. So we know Aaron has a MacBook Air that is usually

00:29:53 ◼   ► dry. Now, are there times when you take your work computer out of your home office and

00:30:01 ◼   ► work around the house with it?

00:30:02 ◼   ► Yes, yes there are.

00:30:04 ◼   ► That happens frequently?

00:30:05 ◼   ► Eh, well, for example, the blog post that we talked about earlier that may or may not

00:30:09 ◼   ► have made it into the show, that was done sitting on the couch next to Aaron on my work

00:30:14 ◼   ► laptop.

00:30:16 ◼   ► As long as you're comfortable continuing to have

00:30:19 ◼   ► the work laptop have this dual role

00:30:21 ◼   ► of being the work computer and also your half/even

00:30:26 ◼   ► maybe primary home computer,

00:30:28 ◼   ► if that's something you wanna continue,

00:30:31 ◼   ► then sure, get a Mac Mini for your home server.

00:30:35 ◼   ► If you actually, and consider running it headless,

00:30:39 ◼   ► 'cause at that point, it's like,

00:30:40 ◼   ► well, what are you really even doing with the Mac Mini?

00:30:42 ◼   ► Like, I have a Mac Mini here running headless.

00:30:44 ◼   ► It's doing our livestream.

00:30:45 ◼   ► It serves my iSCSI giant share from the NAS and then it runs backblaze to back it up over

00:30:50 ◼   ► iSCSI.

00:30:51 ◼   ► It runs a couple other like, you know, task type things.

00:30:56 ◼   ► Like I have that, and it runs Plex, which I never use because I hate it because it turns

00:30:59 ◼   ► out you're the only person in the world who likes Plex.

00:31:02 ◼   ► Please email Casey.

00:31:03 ◼   ► Oh, you are going to get so much email, my friend.

00:31:06 ◼   ► The truth is that I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like it.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I think that's more accurate.

00:31:08 ◼   ► I think that is more accurate.

00:31:09 ◼   ► That's more accurate.

00:31:11 ◼   ► But anyway, the Mac Mini is fine for that if you plan to run it headless, but it is

00:31:14 ◼   ► is not a good deal. Performance wise, a 15 inch comes very, very close to the performance

00:31:20 ◼   ► of most of the iMacs and really the whole lineup. Like a 15 inch, even the base model

00:31:28 ◼   ► performs extremely well relative to the rest of the lineup. The Mac Mini is kind of the

00:31:33 ◼   ► opposite. The Mac Mini, you pay, what is relatively speaking, you pay a lot and you kind of get

00:31:38 ◼   ► a little for it. It's also very rarely updated. Obviously the current model is very old. Even

00:31:43 ◼   ► Even when it's updated, it still doesn't get to be a great deal. It just gets to be a less

00:31:47 ◼   ► bad deal for a couple of months. But it is never a good deal. You look at what it actually

00:31:52 ◼   ► costs to spec one out to be reasonable. For instance, I don't think you want a platter

00:31:58 ◼   ► hard drive in that either. Because this is not a fast computer. What decade is this?

00:32:04 ◼   ► You want this to be running 24/7? I would put an SSD in it. I did. I put the, I think

00:32:09 ◼   ► It's 256.

00:32:11 ◼   ► I didn't go crazy with it,

00:32:12 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't need that much space on it.

00:32:13 ◼   ► But your mileage will vary with that.

00:32:15 ◼   ► You have the NAS for your bulk storage anyway,

00:32:18 ◼   ► so I don't know how Plex deals with that,

00:32:20 ◼   ► but probably in a way that I hate.

00:32:22 ◼   ► But if you want to actually do work

00:32:25 ◼   ► on this new computer at home,

00:32:27 ◼   ► and really make it your home computer,

00:32:30 ◼   ► I would say either get an iMac,

00:32:32 ◼   ► or get another 15 inch the way you've been doing it.

00:32:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's the thing is that

00:32:36 ◼   ► I just, I don't know what it is.

00:32:39 ◼   ► It's some sort of mental hurdle that I can't get over, but I think to myself, if I'm going

00:32:45 ◼   ► to buy like a, if I'm going to buy an iMac, I would always choose a 15-inch Retina MacBook

00:32:53 ◼   ► Pro over the iMac.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And I wish I could explain why, but it's just, the iMac for me seems so silly.

00:33:00 ◼   ► It's so big and unwieldy.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Maybe that's why I'm landing on the Mac Mini is because it's not big.

00:33:04 ◼   ► It's not unwieldy.

00:33:06 ◼   ► I could run it headless if I so desired.

00:33:10 ◼   ► And I guess if I'm going to get something that's such a physically large machine, I'm

00:33:16 ◼   ► going to want it to be something I could take around the house.

00:33:20 ◼   ► And you can't take an iMac around the house.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I'm sure everyone has had that story of seeing—yeah, everyone has seen that guy at Starbucks.

00:33:27 ◼   ► But for the purposes of this conversation, you cannot move it around the house.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And so that—I guess what we're saying then, and I'd like to hear Jon's two cents

00:33:35 ◼   ► in a moment, but I guess what we're saying is,

00:33:37 ◼   ► probably go ahead and get the 15 inch MacBook Pro,

00:33:40 ◼   ► even if all it does is sit there and run Plex nonstop,

00:33:45 ◼   ► and do almost nothing else.

00:33:47 ◼   ► - Or, if that really is the main reason you need it,

00:33:51 ◼   ► just get a Mac Mini, because a laptop is not always on.

00:33:54 ◼   ► It is really, really nice having an always on Mac server

00:33:57 ◼   ► for roles like that.

00:33:58 ◼   ► If you're really gonna keep your main personal use

00:34:01 ◼   ► on your work computer, if you're not gonna be like,

00:34:04 ◼   ► using this computer much at home,

00:34:06 ◼   ► then get a cheap Mac Mini and be done with it.

00:34:09 ◼   ► But you have to decide, is that really what this is for?

00:34:11 ◼   ► Because a Mac Mini is a better home Plex server

00:34:15 ◼   ► than a 15-inch MacBook Pro.

00:34:17 ◼   ► I guess maybe transcoding,

00:34:18 ◼   ► if it's doing heavy transcoding, it wouldn't be.

00:34:20 ◼   ► But although it would do that in silence,

00:34:22 ◼   ► and it has hardware ethernet port, so keep that in mind.

00:34:26 ◼   ► But, and you can even put it next to your TV and use HDMI

00:34:29 ◼   ► and use a bunch of crazy stuff on there if you want.

00:34:32 ◼   ► I wouldn't, but you can.

00:34:33 ◼   ► But anyway, Mac Minis are great for home servers

00:34:38 ◼   ► if what you really want is a home server.

00:34:40 ◼   ► They're not good deals.

00:34:42 ◼   ► You can never find good deals on them used either

00:34:44 ◼   ► because everybody wants a cheap Mac Mini,

00:34:47 ◼   ► so the used pricing on them is not that much cheaper

00:34:50 ◼   ► than getting them new. (laughs)

00:34:52 ◼   ► So it will never be a good deal.

00:34:54 ◼   ► But for the role of a home server, it is really nice.

00:34:57 ◼   ► And mine, it is as silent as the Mac Pro under load.

00:35:01 ◼   ► It isn't as fast.

00:35:03 ◼   ► It's one of the reasons why it can be.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Mine only has dual cores.

00:35:06 ◼   ► I think they stopped selling the quad core ones.

00:35:08 ◼   ► So these aren't amazingly fast machines,

00:35:11 ◼   ► but they're really small.

00:35:13 ◼   ► You can put them anywhere.

00:35:14 ◼   ► They have, they're all hardware.

00:35:16 ◼   ► It's all hardware, ethernet, hardware,

00:35:18 ◼   ► sound ports, hardware, HDMI, and everything.

00:35:20 ◼   ► You don't have to have a bunch of dongles

00:35:21 ◼   ► or Thunderbolt adapters or anything.

00:35:23 ◼   ► And it'll just sit there in silence and not bother you.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Whereas a laptop, running a laptop headless

00:35:29 ◼   ► or in clamshell mode rather, is not a great idea for long.

00:35:33 ◼   ► I know people do it, I know,

00:35:35 ◼   ► but it's not a great idea for long.

00:35:36 ◼   ► They don't tend to last as long that way

00:35:38 ◼   ► and there's lots of like, they kinda fight you on it.

00:35:40 ◼   ► They don't really want to be run that way

00:35:42 ◼   ► and you have to always kinda like work around,

00:35:43 ◼   ► oh, is the screen actually on under there?

00:35:44 ◼   ► Is the OS trying to fight me and keep the screen on

00:35:46 ◼   ► or did it not see that I put it to sleep?

00:35:48 ◼   ► And it's always kind of a mess

00:35:52 ◼   ► trying to get a 15 inch to be,

00:35:55 ◼   ► to run headless on a regular basis.

00:35:57 ◼   ► and a Mac Mini will always just do that for you.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Like it will serve that role better

00:36:02 ◼   ► if that's what you really want.

00:36:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and really quickly I should point out,

00:36:06 ◼   ► and the chat room is already giving me grief

00:36:09 ◼   ► about this justifiably, the right answer for a Plex server

00:36:13 ◼   ► is absolutely without a shadow of a doubt

00:36:15 ◼   ► a really cheap PC that's just sitting there

00:36:18 ◼   ► and doing nothing but serving Plex.

00:36:19 ◼   ► - No, then you have to manage a PC.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - Honest to God, that's exactly right.

00:36:23 ◼   ► That is exactly why I do not want that.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I'd have to manage the PC, I'd have to worry about it.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Yes, I know a lot of people, the PC fans are saying, "You have to do all those with a Mac."

00:36:32 ◼   ► Well, you know what, you're right, but I'm used to it.

00:36:35 ◼   ► It's just another one that I have to think about.

00:36:37 ◼   ► Whereas managing a PC, that would be the only PC in the house that's actively being used.

00:36:42 ◼   ► It's making me think about a bunch of things that I really just don't want to have to worry

00:36:46 ◼   ► about.

00:36:47 ◼   ► I'm already worrying about the El Capitan upgrade for my machine, for my work machine,

00:36:54 ◼   ► for Aaron's MacBook Air, it's not gonna hurt me

00:36:57 ◼   ► to worry about it for one more computer.

00:36:59 ◼   ► So I understand that that is unquestionably

00:37:02 ◼   ► the right answer, on paper it is not the right answer for me.

00:37:05 ◼   ► John, how would you handle this?

00:37:07 ◼   ► - Where is your, where are your photos?

00:37:09 ◼   ► Where's your photo library?

00:37:11 ◼   ► - The Canonical photo library is on the 15 inch

00:37:15 ◼   ► personal MacBook Pro, on the spinning platter hard drive

00:37:19 ◼   ► that never turns off.

00:37:22 ◼   ► I don't like laptops.

00:37:24 ◼   ► I think this is, I think one of your things

00:37:27 ◼   ► that you alluded to before is you don't like the idea,

00:37:30 ◼   ► and a lot of people I think who are not,

00:37:32 ◼   ► especially people who aren't tech nerds,

00:37:34 ◼   ► don't like the idea of a large piece of furniture

00:37:37 ◼   ► basically in their house being a computer.

00:37:40 ◼   ► Like I think you like the idea that the laptop,

00:37:42 ◼   ► when you close it, it's basically,

00:37:44 ◼   ► you can't even see it, it's just a little flat thing

00:37:45 ◼   ► on the desk, when it's open it's not that big.

00:37:47 ◼   ► You don't want to dedicate,

00:37:48 ◼   ► like most tech nerds don't mind this.

00:37:51 ◼   ► I mean, just look at Marco's computer room

00:37:53 ◼   ► or even mine for that matter.

00:37:54 ◼   ► You don't want the thing where the dominant piece

00:37:56 ◼   ► of furniture in a room or on a desk or whatever

00:37:59 ◼   ► is computer related.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Like I've got my big tower on the floor,

00:38:02 ◼   ► I've got my monitor, I've got the speakers,

00:38:03 ◼   ► Marco's got monitors and stuff all over the place.

00:38:05 ◼   ► That's what some people like,

00:38:06 ◼   ► but it sounds like you don't want that.

00:38:07 ◼   ► So that's why you're kind of resistant to the idea

00:38:09 ◼   ► of an iMac or something,

00:38:10 ◼   ► 'cause it's physically imposing

00:38:12 ◼   ► and that you can't put it away

00:38:13 ◼   ► when you're not using your iMac.

00:38:15 ◼   ► It is still, especially the big Retina one,

00:38:17 ◼   ► still a big 27 inch screen that you just can't get rid of

00:38:20 ◼   ► and it's just blocking your view out the window

00:38:21 ◼   ► and you know, whatever.

00:38:22 ◼   ► But I would think of that for two things.

00:38:25 ◼   ► I think every home, every tech nerd home anyway,

00:38:28 ◼   ► needs to kind of have like a digital hearth,

00:38:30 ◼   ► which is like the biggest, nicest screen

00:38:33 ◼   ► where you can look at photos in movies

00:38:34 ◼   ► and the family could gather around them

00:38:35 ◼   ► if they wanted and look at them.

00:38:37 ◼   ► That doesn't move, that is like sort of the main repository

00:38:42 ◼   ► of the things that you care about in the home.

00:38:44 ◼   ► So it's constantly connected to both network

00:38:45 ◼   ► and local backups.

00:38:47 ◼   ► It's got a really big screen.

00:38:48 ◼   ► It's probably the fastest computer.

00:38:50 ◼   ► And that's where you would do all that.

00:38:53 ◼   ► You'd go there to, I don't know, pay your bills,

00:38:58 ◼   ► sort through your photos, edit your photos,

00:39:01 ◼   ► look at a funny YouTube video with the family or the kids

00:39:03 ◼   ► or whatever, watch a new movie trailer that comes out.

00:39:07 ◼   ► I guess you could do this all in front of your TV.

00:39:08 ◼   ► If Apple got off its butt,

00:39:09 ◼   ► I mean, it's TV products worth a damn.

00:39:10 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:39:11 ◼   ► - I wouldn't hold your breath on that.

00:39:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:39:13 ◼   ► But that's what I'm thinking of for the iMac.

00:39:15 ◼   ► But you're right that it is going to be

00:39:16 ◼   ► large imposing physical presence right and then I think you should have a very

00:39:23 ◼   ► small light laptop like an air or the MacBook one that you use for hey I don't

00:39:27 ◼   ► want to be stuck on my desk I want to be able to run around the house but on

00:39:30 ◼   ► that small light laptop you should not have your family photo collection you

00:39:34 ◼   ► shouldn't have anything you really care about there it should just be like your

00:39:36 ◼   ► Dropbox and your other network connected stuff and if you drop it and it cracks

00:39:39 ◼   ► in half it's not a big deal because the stuff that you care about it's more

00:39:42 ◼   ► stationary and then you should also have a Mac mini or something like that doing

00:39:45 ◼   ► your data serving and a network attack.

00:39:46 ◼   ► And it's like, it starts getting expensive at that point.

00:39:49 ◼   ► So what you're trying to do is like,

00:39:51 ◼   ► I don't wanna have a big giant desktop computer

00:39:53 ◼   ► with a big screen and a small light laptop

00:39:55 ◼   ► and a little server.

00:39:56 ◼   ► You're just trying to find one machine that's gonna do it.

00:39:59 ◼   ► And as far as that's concerned,

00:40:00 ◼   ► if you don't want a big imposing piece of furniture

00:40:02 ◼   ► and the iMac is out,

00:40:03 ◼   ► I would not do any personal stuff on your work computers.

00:40:08 ◼   ► I would resist that urge

00:40:09 ◼   ► because that just gets you into a bad pattern, I think.

00:40:12 ◼   ► I don't like the idea of a family photo library

00:40:14 ◼   ► being on a portable machine because then I'm like when are you gonna remember to

00:40:18 ◼   ► hook it up to your local hard drive to back up probably not as often as you

00:40:21 ◼   ► want and and network backups are kind of trickling and happening over time but if

00:40:25 ◼   ► you're not careful the machine could be asleep for a lot of the time or the lid

00:40:29 ◼   ► closed or some other way where you're just not backing up as much as you

00:40:31 ◼   ► should be and I don't feel comfortable with like your entire family's photos

00:40:35 ◼   ► your main local copy as of like two or three days ago being on this thing that

00:40:41 ◼   ► you could drop accidentally or something.

00:40:43 ◼   ► But it sounds to me like that you basically

00:40:46 ◼   ► kind of made up your mind and that you wanna be able to,

00:40:48 ◼   ► you don't want a big I'm exiting a desk

00:40:50 ◼   ► and you wanna be able to run around the house

00:40:51 ◼   ► for whatever reason with a giant 15 inch laptop

00:40:53 ◼   ► instead of a small sleek light one.

00:40:56 ◼   ► So that's what you gotta get.

00:40:57 ◼   ► It just feels like a terrible compromise to me

00:40:59 ◼   ► because it is a machine that is not really good at anything.

00:41:02 ◼   ► Like you're just wandering around your house with it.

00:41:04 ◼   ► You've already got a portable laptop just like that

00:41:06 ◼   ► to go to and from work.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And this one is just so you can wander

00:41:09 ◼   ► around your house with it.

00:41:09 ◼   ► I just feel like you would separate your concerns better

00:41:13 ◼   ► if you had a big, mostly stationary computer

00:41:16 ◼   ► that looks nicer and performs better,

00:41:18 ◼   ► and then a really small, thin, light one,

00:41:20 ◼   ► then you could take to WLDC with you.

00:41:22 ◼   ► - See, there's no chance that I'm going to rock

00:41:26 ◼   ► a three-computer solution where one is work,

00:41:29 ◼   ► one is an iMac, and one is an Air.

00:41:31 ◼   ► It's just not happening.

00:41:32 ◼   ► - Well, you leave the work when it works, like Marco said.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Like, I'd say no reason to bring that home.

00:41:35 ◼   ► - No, no.

00:41:37 ◼   ► That has nothing to do with moving things.

00:41:39 ◼   ► It's just, that's stupid.

00:41:41 ◼   ► There's no need for that.

00:41:43 ◼   ► I would definitely choose a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro

00:41:47 ◼   ► over a 27-inch iMac or whatever it is,

00:41:51 ◼   ► and a Air/Macbook One.

00:41:54 ◼   ► That being said, the more we talk about it,

00:41:56 ◼   ► the more I'm starting to come to grips with the idea

00:41:59 ◼   ► that maybe an iMac is really what I'm looking for,

00:42:02 ◼   ► even if I don't want to admit it to myself.

00:42:04 ◼   ► - Well, because here's the thing.

00:42:05 ◼   ► An iMac can serve all the same roles the Mac Mini serves,

00:42:09 ◼   ► 'cause it's stationary, it's always connected,

00:42:11 ◼   ► it can be always on, or at least in the Power Nap

00:42:14 ◼   ► kind of weirdo thing, I don't know,

00:42:15 ◼   ► does anybody use that?

00:42:16 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:42:18 ◼   ► Mine's always on, it just has the screen turned off.

00:42:20 ◼   ► So it can serve all those home server roles

00:42:23 ◼   ► and also be your digital heart, as Jon said,

00:42:27 ◼   ► because I love that, that's a great analogy.

00:42:29 ◼   ► Another thing to consider, and this could go

00:42:31 ◼   ► either for or against it, depending on how you look at it,

00:42:33 ◼   ► you have this, you're looking at this computer

00:42:36 ◼   ► to be purchased now, your kid is almost one.

00:42:38 ◼   ► So you will probably have this computer for what,

00:42:40 ◼   ► four years, let's say four years.

00:42:43 ◼   ► You'll probably even have it for longer honestly,

00:42:45 ◼   ► if you're looking at like an Apple desktop

00:42:46 ◼   ► and just knowing that you're not me,

00:42:49 ◼   ► you're probably gonna have it for a while.

00:42:50 ◼   ► So that means that whatever computer that you choose here,

00:42:54 ◼   ► you're probably gonna have from your kid's ages,

00:42:58 ◼   ► you know, one through five or something.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And so you have to be like, when you have a three

00:43:04 ◼   ► to five year old running around your house,

00:43:06 ◼   ► are you really gonna be getting a lot of work done

00:43:08 ◼   ► on a laptop?

00:43:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

00:43:11 ◼   ► - I doubt that severely.

00:43:13 ◼   ► I mean, I just know, John, you can tell us

00:43:15 ◼   ► 'cause you have twice the experience,

00:43:16 ◼   ► but I just know from having my one kid

00:43:18 ◼   ► and him being three right now,

00:43:21 ◼   ► I can never get worked on on a laptop

00:43:23 ◼   ► anywhere outside of my office.

00:43:24 ◼   ► I have tried.

00:43:25 ◼   ► It doesn't happen.

00:43:26 ◼   ► It's like, it's just, that's not,

00:43:28 ◼   ► that is not compatible with the reality

00:43:30 ◼   ► of having kids at home.

00:43:30 ◼   ► That's not a good or bad thing, that's just how it is.

00:43:33 ◼   ► There's nothing you can do to change that.

00:43:35 ◼   ► So consider your next three to five years

00:43:38 ◼   ► of the kind of work you'll be doing in your house

00:43:42 ◼   ► and where in your house you'll be doing it.

00:43:44 ◼   ► What kind of situations.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Maybe you won't want a laptop

00:43:47 ◼   ► because you'll recognize that you can't really use a laptop

00:43:50 ◼   ► with a kid running around and get much done.

00:43:53 ◼   ► Or maybe you'll want a laptop because your home office

00:43:56 ◼   ► that you would have a desktop in is upstairs

00:43:59 ◼   ► near your kid's bedroom

00:44:00 ◼   ► and maybe you won't want to be up there while your kid's asleep and you're trying to get

00:44:03 ◼   ► work done.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Yeah, where you do things is a big factor because if you're kind of, especially if you

00:44:07 ◼   ► have the habits sort of like honed over years of having laptop use, like where do you find

00:44:12 ◼   ► yourself doing your desktop web browsing, if at all?

00:44:14 ◼   ► The answer is sitting in my bed with my laptop on my lap.

00:44:17 ◼   ► Well the iMac's not going to help you there.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Like if you don't have the habits to think about where you use your laptop at home.

00:44:23 ◼   ► Are you sitting on the couch?

00:44:24 ◼   ► Are you sitting on your bed or you're sitting in your favorite chair and expecting to use

00:44:28 ◼   ► a Mac in those locations, then those habits are going to be very difficult to break. If

00:44:32 ◼   ► you've always been a desktop person, you know when I want to use my serious computer, I

00:44:36 ◼   ► go sit down at like, you know, with Marco set up in my computer chair in my computer

00:44:40 ◼   ► room at my computer desk to use my computer and then everything else is iPads or phones.

00:44:48 ◼   ► And then if you happen to have a spare laptop around if you need it, that's fine. But mostly

00:44:51 ◼   ► the laptops for travel, whatever. But if your habits are the reverse of that, you're going

00:44:54 ◼   ► to be sad if you get an iMac because you're going to be like, "Oh, I was so used to sitting

00:44:58 ◼   ► down in front of the TV and watching football, but also noodling around with Node on my laptop."

00:45:03 ◼   ► Well, you're not going to be able to do that with an iMac, which is why you should also

00:45:06 ◼   ► have an Air, by the way.

00:45:08 ◼   ► And you're describing exactly the correct situation in that I have only ever had laptops

00:45:13 ◼   ► since my junior year of college, I think.

00:45:17 ◼   ► And so because of that, I'm used to sitting on the couch next to Erin, and maybe we're

00:45:21 ◼   ► watching TV, maybe we're watching football, maybe she's not watching TV, while I am, but

00:45:26 ◼   ► I'm also fiddling with Node. One way or another, if I have a laptop, I can be around Erin,

00:45:33 ◼   ► even after Declan goes to bed. Whereas, if I have this iMac, I'm implicitly ignoring

00:45:41 ◼   ► Erin because I'm up in the office doing whatever I want to be doing, and she's downstairs,

00:45:46 ◼   ► maybe reading on the couch, maybe watching TV, maybe doing something else entirely.

00:45:51 ◼   ► But that's probably where the iMac falls down the most, is that I would be implicitly ignoring

00:46:00 ◼   ► Aaron anytime I wanted to use the computer that I would want to use so very much.

00:46:03 ◼   ► Because I'm sure that once I saw it, I would know how beautiful it was and how much I enjoyed

00:46:09 ◼   ► using it, but I think it would end up—I would end up hating it because I would be

00:46:14 ◼   ► ignoring Aaron so much.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Well you can always do the setup I have here which has had its bumps but maybe it will

00:46:21 ◼   ► get better going forward which is a big really nice Apple display hooked up to a really small

00:46:26 ◼   ► thin light laptop.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And so right now my wife wanted to do stuff with her laptop so she took it out of the

00:46:32 ◼   ► room and she's working with it upstairs but most of the time she does her work in front

00:46:36 ◼   ► of a big giant screen, you know the iPhoto library is on her computer that's where we

00:46:40 ◼   ► sort through all the photos on the big 27 inch screen.

00:46:43 ◼   ► It's non-retina, but yeah, what can you do?

00:46:46 ◼   ► But when she needs to, she can detach and have a thin light laptop to go into the kitchen

00:46:52 ◼   ► and do stuff on the dining room table or go up in the bedroom where she is now and do

00:46:56 ◼   ► whatever she's doing with the laptop.

00:46:58 ◼   ► That's an interesting sort of hybrid setup.

00:47:01 ◼   ► I don't know how, like the Thunderbolt display, I had some problems with flakiness and everything

00:47:05 ◼   ► and it was a little bit annoying.

00:47:06 ◼   ► The USB-C potential future Apple display that supports all this stuff could be nicer or

00:47:14 ◼   ► it could be just as flaky or it could be worse, but it's an interesting way to get you both,

00:47:19 ◼   ► to get you the big digital hearth, which I really think if you're ever going to spend

00:47:22 ◼   ► any time sorting through your photos or editing your photos, doing anything having to do with

00:47:26 ◼   ► photos or movies, I don't know how you live in a laptop.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I just feel like it would be doing everything inside a phone booth.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Marco probably feels the same way.

00:47:34 ◼   ► You just feel like to do any real computer,

00:47:36 ◼   ► I don't even know how you do programming.

00:47:37 ◼   ► I don't even do anything with Node.

00:47:38 ◼   ► You gotta have the web browser and then your text editor

00:47:41 ◼   ► and then everything else all cramped

00:47:42 ◼   ► under this little 15 inch screen.

00:47:43 ◼   ► It's nice to be able to spread your stuff out.

00:47:46 ◼   ► - Well, right, and that's why if I'm doing serious work,

00:47:49 ◼   ► I'm up in my office where I am now

00:47:51 ◼   ► where I have a actually probably only 17,

00:47:54 ◼   ► maybe 20 inch external display

00:47:57 ◼   ► hooked up to my work computer.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And so if I'm really getting serious about

00:48:03 ◼   ► doing some node work or doing work work,

00:48:05 ◼   ► then I'll be upstairs in the office

00:48:06 ◼   ► hooked up to an external display.

00:48:07 ◼   ► A very unremarkable external display,

00:48:09 ◼   ► but an external display nevertheless.

00:48:11 ◼   ► But I mean, when I was doing the blog post,

00:48:13 ◼   ► that's why, you know, Command Tab is a thing.

00:48:16 ◼   ► That's why spaces are a thing.

00:48:18 ◼   ► And I'm used to it.

00:48:20 ◼   ► This is what I'm used to.

00:48:21 ◼   ► So the lack of real estate doesn't bother me,

00:48:23 ◼   ► but this is the same reason

00:48:25 ◼   ► why I could never have a 13-inch laptop ever again,

00:48:27 ◼   ► because 15 is the bare minimum amount of real estate

00:48:30 ◼   ► I can have without getting frustrated.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And when I use Aaron's computer for anything more serious

00:48:35 ◼   ► than just light web browsing,

00:48:37 ◼   ► I get very frustrated very quickly

00:48:38 ◼   ► because the screen is so small.

00:48:40 ◼   ► - You know what, don't get an iMac.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Because, first of all, it'll ruin you for everything, ever.

00:48:47 ◼   ► Second of all, your camera, I believe,

00:48:50 ◼   ► is 16 megapixels, right?

00:48:52 ◼   ► - I think that's right, yeah, off the top of my head.

00:48:54 ◼   ► - It will not fill the iMac screen at one to one.

00:48:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you have a much more critical eye for that

00:48:59 ◼   ► than I do, I think that'd be fine.

00:49:01 ◼   ► I don't want your computer to ruin your camera.

00:49:03 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:49:05 ◼   ► - Well, I certainly don't want to spend $34,000

00:49:07 ◼   ► on a camera like you just did, so maybe you're right.

00:49:10 ◼   ► - And there's nothing between 16 and 42 megapixels?

00:49:13 ◼   ► - Yes, nothing at all.

00:49:14 ◼   ► I have a genuine question.

00:49:16 ◼   ► I went to spec out the iMac with Retina display

00:49:20 ◼   ► just to see what it would come up to,

00:49:21 ◼   ► and it's about the same money as a 15 inch,

00:49:23 ◼   ► the way I would build it, it's roughly the same money

00:49:26 ◼   ► as a 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro.

00:49:27 ◼   ► In the different options they have,

00:49:31 ◼   ► choose your processor, choose memory.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Did you get 16 or 32, Marco?

00:49:35 ◼   ► - I got 32, but it doesn't matter,

00:49:37 ◼   ► because they're probably gonna update them

00:49:38 ◼   ► in the next few months, so whatever the options are now,

00:49:41 ◼   ► you shouldn't buy a Mac right now.

00:49:43 ◼   ► - Oh, no, no, I wouldn't.

00:49:44 ◼   ► I'm just, you know, I'm piddling for the fun of it.

00:49:46 ◼   ► And what hard drive did you get?

00:49:48 ◼   ► - I went for the terabyte SSD.

00:49:50 ◼   ► If you're gonna go iMac, I'd say go 100% SSD,

00:49:53 ◼   ► don't go Fusion, and so then just buy whatever

00:49:56 ◼   ► you're willing to spend among the all SSD option.

00:49:59 ◼   ► All right, so anyway, so I'm bringing this up because I got down to number five.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Choose mouse and trackpad.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Apple Magic Mouse, which is what I would choose.

00:50:07 ◼   ► Magic Trackpad for crazy people.

00:50:09 ◼   ► There's a third option.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Apple Mouse.

00:50:12 ◼   ► What the hell is that?

00:50:13 ◼   ► Is that the thing with the little ball in the middle?

00:50:16 ◼   ► Is it?

00:50:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:50:18 ◼   ► I thought that was the Mighty Mouse.

00:50:19 ◼   ► No, I think that's just what they call it now.

00:50:21 ◼   ► It's the white one with the little ball that gets gunked up on the top of it.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I think.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Why do they—who buys that?

00:50:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I have no idea.

00:50:28 ◼   ► I had no idea this was still a thing.

00:50:30 ◼   ► - But the important thing is you wanna get

00:50:31 ◼   ► the Apple extended keyboard and not the stupid wireless one

00:50:33 ◼   ► with the half size arrow keys.

00:50:35 ◼   ► - Oh God, you're intolerable.

00:50:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, this was the one that was originally

00:50:38 ◼   ► called the Mighty Mouse, right?

00:50:39 ◼   ► - I thought so, yeah.

00:50:40 ◼   ► - That thing was miserable.

00:50:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was gonna say, I didn't know anything about Macs

00:50:44 ◼   ► back when this was a modern mouse,

00:50:46 ◼   ► and even I knew that it was a terrible freaking mouse.

00:50:48 ◼   ► - Oh my God, that is horrendous.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Oh, Sam the Geek in the chat points out why you'd want this.

00:50:54 ◼   ► If you need to use it somewhere

00:50:55 ◼   ► where you can't use Bluetooth, that is interesting.

00:50:57 ◼   ► - That's weird.

00:50:59 ◼   ► - For security reasons, yep.

00:51:01 ◼   ► - Wow, that is a really good point.

00:51:02 ◼   ► - Sell to governments that you need to continue

00:51:04 ◼   ► to have a wired mouse that doesn't work with Bluetooth

00:51:06 ◼   ► and why not sell them this finger lint collecting ball thing.

00:51:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean like of all the wired mice in the world,

00:51:14 ◼   ► of all the wired mice that I've used,

00:51:16 ◼   ► I would say this is worse than all of them.

00:51:18 ◼   ► - Nope, nope, I used the Puck mouse when I was in college.

00:51:21 ◼   ► - Oh, geez.

00:51:22 ◼   ► - That was as bad as people said.

00:51:23 ◼   ► - Here's the thing, with like, you have the mice,

00:51:26 ◼   ► Apple's mice before they had a thing on top for scrolling,

00:51:30 ◼   ► those were like better because they didn't have

00:51:32 ◼   ► a crappy thing on top that got gunked up,

00:51:35 ◼   ► but worse of course because you couldn't scroll.

00:51:36 ◼   ► So it's like choose your poison.

00:51:38 ◼   ► So the Puck mouse didn't have a scroll wheel on it,

00:51:40 ◼   ► so you didn't have a scroll wheel,

00:51:41 ◼   ► but then you couldn't tell which way it was orienting.

00:51:43 ◼   ► But like the Apology mouse,

00:51:45 ◼   ► one of the best looking mice that Apple ever made,

00:51:50 ◼   ► I think was one of their best mice period,

00:51:53 ◼   ► because it was in the days before Macs anyway,

00:51:55 ◼   ► and PC says scroll wheels forever,

00:51:56 ◼   ► but it's in the days before Mac users

00:51:59 ◼   ► were brought into the world of scroll wheels.

00:52:00 ◼   ► And so you didn't know what you were missing

00:52:02 ◼   ► and you're like, oh, this is, it's beautiful to look at.

00:52:05 ◼   ► It's nicely shaped.

00:52:06 ◼   ► It works very well.

00:52:09 ◼   ► It matches the hardware and it is not circular

00:52:13 ◼   ► so I can tell which direction is up.

00:52:15 ◼   ► It was great.

00:52:16 ◼   ► But yeah, once they got into the scroll wheels,

00:52:18 ◼   ► Apple never made a good scroll wheel

00:52:20 ◼   ► until basically the Magic Mouse.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And they said, well, we're not gonna do a wheel.

00:52:24 ◼   ► we're just gonna have a swipey surface thing.

00:52:25 ◼   ► - Well honestly, the Magic Mouse swipey surface

00:52:28 ◼   ► is what convinced me to finally use an Apple mouse.

00:52:32 ◼   ► Because before that I was using some,

00:52:33 ◼   ► I was using the Logitech MX Revolution.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And many of Logitech's high-end mice,

00:52:38 ◼   ► I think still have something like this.

00:52:40 ◼   ► But it had this cool feature where it had a really heavy,

00:52:42 ◼   ► like a flywheel kind of weighted scroll wheel.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And so if you flicked really quickly,

00:52:47 ◼   ► it would unlatch and just spin freely

00:52:49 ◼   ► rather than having little detents along the way.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And then you could stop it.

00:52:53 ◼   ► and during that spinning it would do similar to when you swipe it,

00:52:56 ◼   ► have like you know, have the actual inertia of this weighty flywheel thing

00:53:00 ◼   ► spinning around. It was great, but now the Magic Mouse does that same thing with no

00:53:07 ◼   ► moving parts and it's easy to find and buy anywhere and doesn't have its

00:53:12 ◼   ► own special proprietary charger and doesn't have its own proprietary receiver

00:53:16 ◼   ► and doesn't have crappy software that fails constantly under Macs. So it's

00:53:22 ◼   ► better in every way to me, so that's why I switched.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Going back for a second to the formerly Mighty Mouse,

00:53:29 ◼   ► did you guys ever use the squeeze side buttons?

00:53:32 ◼   ► Remember that?

00:53:33 ◼   ► You could squeeze these side buttons

00:53:34 ◼   ► as like a third mouse click.

00:53:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, they were pretty terrible.

00:53:37 ◼   ► - You ever actually, I remember,

00:53:38 ◼   ► I tried it a couple times when I used these,

00:53:40 ◼   ► and you had to squeeze really hard, and it was kinda--

00:53:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was too awkward for me to use,

00:53:45 ◼   ► although that's the problem I have with most PC mice,

00:53:48 ◼   ► is they have buttons everywhere on them.

00:53:49 ◼   ► You can't grab them without touching a button.

00:53:52 ◼   ► And that's too many buttons for me.

00:53:54 ◼   ► I can't use the Magic Mouse because it's too low.

00:53:57 ◼   ► And that's just a difference in mousing,

00:53:59 ◼   ► like what you're trained on the mousing.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Some people like a low mouse.

00:54:02 ◼   ► The Puck Mouse was made for low mouse people too.

00:54:04 ◼   ► It just was unfortunately circular.

00:54:05 ◼   ► But there's different ways that you could hold a mouse.

00:54:08 ◼   ► And for better or for worse,

00:54:09 ◼   ► my way of holding the mouse was trained

00:54:11 ◼   ► on the original Macintosh mouse in 1984,

00:54:14 ◼   ► which basically looked like a box.

00:54:16 ◼   ► and the way my nine year old hands learn to use that mouse

00:54:20 ◼   ► and all mice after it is I grab the sides of the mouse

00:54:24 ◼   ► with my thumb and my ring finger.

00:54:27 ◼   ► - Yep, same here. - Same thing.

00:54:28 ◼   ► - And with a low mouse, I find myself,

00:54:31 ◼   ► especially with the Magic Mouse,

00:54:33 ◼   ► because the sides are like cut in a little bit,

00:54:35 ◼   ► it's narrower on the bottom than it is on the top,

00:54:38 ◼   ► and it's very low down, I feel like I'm kind of grabbing,

00:54:41 ◼   ► it's like kind of grabbing a dinner plate by the sides

00:54:44 ◼   ► and there's this big air gap where my,

00:54:45 ◼   ► Like I don't, my palm doesn't rest on it.

00:54:47 ◼   ► - Oh, it's terrible.

00:54:48 ◼   ► - And I find it very uncomfortable.

00:54:49 ◼   ► It's a really nice mouse.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Like it's high quality, the swiping stuff.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I see the people who love that.

00:54:54 ◼   ► It's just not the way I hold a mouse.

00:54:56 ◼   ► So I'm forced to buy,

00:54:58 ◼   ► I've been using Logitech mice for years

00:54:59 ◼   ► and I have what I think is called the Logitech wheel mouse.

00:55:04 ◼   ► It didn't even have like an MX designation,

00:55:06 ◼   ► like MX 200, 300 or anything like that.

00:55:08 ◼   ► It's just like the Logitech wheel mouse.

00:55:10 ◼   ► It has two buttons on top and a scroll wheel

00:55:12 ◼   ► that you can also press as a third button

00:55:13 ◼   ► and no other buttons on it, it has flat vertical sides

00:55:16 ◼   ► that I can grab.

00:55:17 ◼   ► And every other mouse that I've tried

00:55:18 ◼   ► that's shaped like a snail that has buttons all over it,

00:55:21 ◼   ► I just can't find a nice way to grip it.

00:55:24 ◼   ► I even bought like, I have a series of wireless mice

00:55:26 ◼   ► that we use on my wife's computer,

00:55:29 ◼   ► and they have like grippy rubber edges on the side,

00:55:31 ◼   ► but they all kind of like curve in or whatever,

00:55:33 ◼   ► and just, they don't feel right in my hand.

00:55:35 ◼   ► So that's the thing about mice, they're very,

00:55:38 ◼   ► it's difficult to say like what's a good mouse

00:55:40 ◼   ► and what's a bad mouse,

00:55:41 ◼   ► because it all depends on what your habits are,

00:55:42 ◼   ► and it's difficult to break those habits.

00:55:44 ◼   ► And if you try to use your mousing habits

00:55:46 ◼   ► with a mouse that is not designed to work that way,

00:55:49 ◼   ► it can be very uncomfortable.

00:55:50 ◼   ► So a lot of these, the sort of snail ones,

00:55:52 ◼   ► they want you to grip them in a particular way.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And if that's how you do hold a mouse,

00:55:56 ◼   ► then that mouse fits your hand and it's great.

00:55:57 ◼   ► But if you fight against that, it will not feel great.

00:56:01 ◼   ► So if you try to grip one of these weird snail mice

00:56:02 ◼   ► from the side, it's just not the way

00:56:04 ◼   ► it's meant to be used.

00:56:05 ◼   ► And if you try to use the magic mouse without,

00:56:08 ◼   ► I don't know, how do low mouse people use it?

00:56:09 ◼   ► I guess they sort of rest their entire fingers,

00:56:11 ◼   ► - Long fingers over the thing?

00:56:13 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:56:13 ◼   ► - No, I have like an air gap.

00:56:16 ◼   ► So I do hold, I hold the sides with my thumb and ring finger

00:56:19 ◼   ► but then my index and middle finger kind of just hover over

00:56:23 ◼   ► like almost an inch, like pretty high over the mouse.

00:56:26 ◼   ► And it's like, same way like how like when you're taught

00:56:28 ◼   ► to play piano, you're taught not to rest your hands

00:56:30 ◼   ► on the keys, you're taught to kind of arch your hands up.

00:56:32 ◼   ► Same kind of thing, like that kind of grip

00:56:33 ◼   ► where like you're kind of, you're holding the mouse

00:56:36 ◼   ► with those, with the thumb and ring

00:56:37 ◼   ► but then your first two fingers are really hovering

00:56:40 ◼   ► pretty far above it.

00:56:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's not how that's sort of intended

00:56:44 ◼   ► to be used.

00:56:44 ◼   ► We should ask some of the low mouse men in yellow coats,

00:56:47 ◼   ► another reference that Casey won't get,

00:56:49 ◼   ► how they use their mice.

00:56:50 ◼   ► I think I've seen people doing it where they,

00:56:51 ◼   ► like even with the puk mouse, where they,

00:56:53 ◼   ► where it's almost like they're just resting their fingers

00:56:55 ◼   ► on it and their palm is not even, it's behind the mouse.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And so they're just kind of resting,

00:57:00 ◼   ► laying their hand on top of the mouse

00:57:02 ◼   ► and kind of moving it around.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Maybe their palm is even on the ground.

00:57:05 ◼   ► But, you know, anyway, people, as I said last time,

00:57:08 ◼   ► people send me pictures of it.

00:57:09 ◼   ► People use mice in crazy ways, including the one where you use the mouse upside down and

00:57:13 ◼   ► press the buttons with your palm.

00:57:17 ◼   ► Did you see all the things that people were treating me?

00:57:19 ◼   ► Like the pictures of Heather?

00:57:20 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a large variety out there.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Yeah, for what it's worth, I would kill everyone I knew except my family if someone came out

00:57:29 ◼   ► with a magic mouse that was more bulbous and had a place for like my palm to rest.

00:57:35 ◼   ► I use the Magic Mouse because I cannot survive without the two-finger flicks side to side

00:57:40 ◼   ► to go between spaces. I'm a very heavy spaces user and I am completely useless at a computer

00:57:46 ◼   ► if I can't flick between spaces.

00:57:48 ◼   ► David: You would literally die.

00:57:49 ◼   ► I literally can't even. But anyway, I wish so desperately that there was a more bulbous

00:57:58 ◼   ► Magic Mouse because I would buy that instantly. So if anyone wants a Kickstarter idea, there

00:58:04 ◼   ► There you go.

00:58:05 ◼   ► Make a, make some sort of god-awful bulbous magic mouse that isn't just completely disgusting

00:58:14 ◼   ► to look at.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Good luck.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And I will pay obscene amounts of money for it.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Yeah, did you see this picture that someone put in the chatroom of them trying to use

00:58:21 ◼   ► the magic mouse like a traditional mouse holding it from the side?

00:58:23 ◼   ► Maybe this person has very large hands, but I'd forgotten like just how darn small the,

00:58:28 ◼   ► the Apple Magic Mouse is a beautiful piece of industrial design.

00:58:31 ◼   ► It looks like a piece of sushi like a piece of fish laying on top of like a bed of rice or something

00:58:35 ◼   ► It is it is a beautiful sculpture

00:58:37 ◼   ► It is not shaped like a mouse that works with my hand and I don't think you're supposed to grip it the way this person

00:58:42 ◼   ► Is gripping it. I don't think you're supposed to grip it the way you're gripping it Marco. I think that is an

00:58:44 ◼   ► uncomfortable kind of

00:58:47 ◼   ► Keeping your hand just it just doesn't look like the way I imagined them when they made this product

00:58:52 ◼   ► It's supposed to be used and I've seen people use them with the flat hand technique that looks more comfortable to me

00:58:56 ◼   ► I mean you can get away with it. It doesn't bother your hand doesn't bother your hand. It's fine

00:58:59 ◼   ► It just doesn't seem ideal to me.

00:59:01 ◼   ► It does bother my hand.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Like I, having this sort of static contraction

00:59:04 ◼   ► of having your muscles just sort of in that position

00:59:06 ◼   ► for a long period of time, I need them to relax

00:59:08 ◼   ► and I need to have something supporting my hand.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And I need, and I definitely need to feel

00:59:13 ◼   ► a secure grip on the sides.

00:59:14 ◼   ► A lot of my mouse movement is, like for small movements,

00:59:18 ◼   ► just moving my ring and thumb and having like

00:59:21 ◼   ► the palm of my hand resting on the mouse

00:59:23 ◼   ► or even partially on the table,

00:59:25 ◼   ► moving fine adjustments on the mouse.

00:59:27 ◼   ► with a little piece of sushi underneath my hands.

00:59:31 ◼   ► I just, I don't know.

00:59:32 ◼   ► And plus that mouse is pretty darn heavy

00:59:33 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things.

00:59:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, the heaviness is not great,

00:59:36 ◼   ► especially if you switch to rechargeable batteries.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Nickel metal hot dry batteries are pretty dense

00:59:41 ◼   ► compared to other kinds, so that's no good.

00:59:43 ◼   ► But one thing I find,

00:59:45 ◼   ► it probably comes into a lot of what you're used to

00:59:47 ◼   ► because you're citing what sound like

00:59:49 ◼   ► ergonomic concerns, really.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And for me, I actually like the ergonomics of it

00:59:53 ◼   ► because I can move it with my fingers.

00:59:56 ◼   ► I'm not really moving my wrist as much.

01:00:00 ◼   ► I'm doing most of the movements with my whole arm

01:00:03 ◼   ► almost all stationary.

01:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm moving the mouse around

01:00:06 ◼   ► just with the thumb and the index finger

01:00:08 ◼   ► kinda slide it back and forth.

01:00:09 ◼   ► - That's what I was just describing.

01:00:11 ◼   ► I was doing it with my mouse.

01:00:12 ◼   ► It's just that you don't have any support

01:00:14 ◼   ► for the rest of your hand.

01:00:15 ◼   ► The mouse is doing nothing to support you.

01:00:17 ◼   ► You are attacking the mouse with your fingers.

01:00:19 ◼   ► You are gripping it and you are pressing it,

01:00:21 ◼   ► but the mouse is not supporting

01:00:22 ◼   ► any part of your body whatsoever.

01:00:24 ◼   ► No part of your body is resting on the mouse.

01:00:26 ◼   ► you are merely manipulating with the sides.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Whereas if you have something like casea

01:00:28 ◼   ► that's more bulbous, you can rest the, you know,

01:00:32 ◼   ► some part of your hand and some of the weight

01:00:33 ◼   ► on the actual mouse and still have your fingers

01:00:36 ◼   ► in that position too at a moment's notice,

01:00:37 ◼   ► wiggle it back and forth with your ring and your thumb.

01:00:40 ◼   ► - So real-time follow-up, Jelly in the chat room

01:00:44 ◼   ► has given us a link to the Magic Mouse Fixed,

01:00:47 ◼   ► which is at mmfixed.com.

01:00:50 ◼   ► This is the exact, it is fixing the exact problem

01:00:53 ◼   ► want fixed in the most hideous possible way. So it's apparently a piece of silicone that

01:00:59 ◼   ► has a suction cup on the bottom that you just drop on top of your Magic Mouse and then magically

01:01:03 ◼   ► all your problems go away. It is fixing what I want fixed, but that is unbelievably ugly.

01:01:09 ◼   ► I mean, that's just that just goes to show like I think the the Magic Mouse was so clearly

01:01:13 ◼   ► designed with a particular use case in mind like they wouldn't have made it so low profile

01:01:17 ◼   ► if they expected you to grip it from the side. So if you're coming at it trying to do the

01:01:21 ◼   ► grip from the side, you're fighting against the design as it was made.

01:01:24 ◼   ► And if you want something bulbous to be resting in the palm of your hand, the Magic Mouse

01:01:27 ◼   ► is not it.

01:01:28 ◼   ► It's not like they accidentally made it like that.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Like, it is not made to be like other mice.

01:01:32 ◼   ► Other mice are bulked up for a reason.

01:01:34 ◼   ► There's just air in there.

01:01:35 ◼   ► There's not like, you know, they needed room for the batteries or anything.

01:01:37 ◼   ► This mouse is low profile.

01:01:39 ◼   ► It's meant to be used in a different way.

01:01:40 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure what way it is because I don't use a mouse that way.

01:01:44 ◼   ► But it's not like a mistake where they just made it a little bit too low.

01:01:48 ◼   ► It's super low with a purpose, I think.

01:01:50 ◼   ► Well, and the purpose is definitely, you know, aesthetics.

01:01:53 ◼   ► It could be aesthetics, but it could also be mousing technique.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Like, have you seen people use the puck where they would...

01:01:58 ◼   ► Part of the fix for the puck would be that people would creep their fingers over the

01:02:02 ◼   ► edge and arrest their two fingers around the wire so they could tell which end was up on

01:02:06 ◼   ► the thing.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And that led to a kind of mousing with like a kind of a flat hand mousing technique with

01:02:11 ◼   ► your entire hand draped.

01:02:12 ◼   ► It wouldn't work with a magic mouse because if your entire hand is draped over it, you

01:02:15 ◼   ► have to pick your fingers up and get them over the swiping surface to do your gestures,

01:02:19 ◼   ► you know?

01:02:20 ◼   ► All right, what else is awesome these days?

01:02:22 ◼   ► - Can you tell it's August?

01:02:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, for real.

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01:05:29 ◼   ► - All right, so Marco,

01:05:30 ◼   ► what did you do to the Overcast database?

01:05:32 ◼   ► - Oh, nothing, I did a line-on migration.

01:05:35 ◼   ► I migrated to a bigger line-ode.

01:05:36 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:05:37 ◼   ► That's what it was.

01:05:39 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:05:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, so line-on, they upgraded their hypervisor

01:05:43 ◼   ► whatever, whatever, from whatever it was before Zen, maybe? Yeah, from Zen to KVM. And I don't

01:05:49 ◼   ► follow any of this stuff. I don't know what the differences are. And they say it's faster

01:05:54 ◼   ► by a lot. So I said, "Okay, great. Upgrade for free." So to upgrade it, you just have

01:05:58 ◼   ► to turn off the VPS and then they have to migrate the disk images over to the new system.

01:06:05 ◼   ► So you're basically waiting on disk images to migrate. And they do it at maybe 150 megs

01:06:09 ◼   ► a second. So when you have like a 200 gig database for your, you know, it's a pretty

01:06:14 ◼   ► lengthy process. I think it was down for like 45 minutes or something. But that's what I

01:06:19 ◼   ► was doing. I was upgrading all my servers to KVM from Xen and I was also upgrading a

01:06:26 ◼   ► couple of them to be higher capacity VPSs from Linode, which also requires the same

01:06:31 ◼   ► migration to happen. That's it. So I took everything down, upgraded a bunch of them.

01:06:36 ◼   ► And I've been doing a few over time without taking anything down, but this one of all

01:06:39 ◼   ► the master database and I know, believe me, I know more than you probably need to explain

01:06:47 ◼   ► right now, I know how to make databases that you can take down to master and the site stays

01:06:52 ◼   ► up. I know. Please don't tell me about that, those schemes, I know. I even know that there

01:06:58 ◼   ► are fancy new storage things where there is no master and you can just take anything down

01:07:02 ◼   ► whenever you want and they're eventually consistent and they usually work and they usually don't

01:07:06 ◼   ► need any maintenance and they usually perform well. Yeah, that's nice too. Please don't

01:07:12 ◼   ► tell me about those either. Yeah, so that's what I was doing, taking another master database,

01:07:18 ◼   ► updating it to those things, making everything bigger and faster and then turning everything

01:07:22 ◼   ► back on. And with Linode, this is literally like you click a few links in the web interface

01:07:26 ◼   ► and you wait and then they tell you when they're done. It's really ridiculously easy. This

01:07:31 ◼   ► is not an ad but it should be. I love Linode so much. Like I have used so many other hosts

01:07:35 ◼   ► And man, I will now, everything that I can

01:07:40 ◼   ► reasonably do on Linode, I do now.

01:07:44 ◼   ► And before, I forget when it was, like last,

01:07:46 ◼   ► I think it was last year when they upgraded,

01:07:48 ◼   ► or maybe it was two years ago,

01:07:49 ◼   ► when they upgraded to their like next generation hardware.

01:07:52 ◼   ► And when they basically went to Xeon E5s,

01:07:55 ◼   ► to really nice ones.

01:07:57 ◼   ► And when they, before they did that,

01:08:00 ◼   ► they still had like the nicest, easiest control panel

01:08:03 ◼   ► of everything and they had just good hosting overall.

01:08:08 ◼   ► They were still very good.

01:08:09 ◼   ► But they weren't a great deal before that.

01:08:11 ◼   ► They were an okay deal.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Ever since that upgrade, and I believe a lot of this

01:08:15 ◼   ► was prompted by DigitalOcean because DigitalOcean

01:08:17 ◼   ► is a very similar kind of service.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I don't think it's as good.

01:08:20 ◼   ► I think it's still good, but Linode has a number

01:08:23 ◼   ► of advanced features that DigitalOcean doesn't offer,

01:08:25 ◼   ► many of which I use and enjoy.

01:08:27 ◼   ► And DigitalOcean is also just, they're young.

01:08:31 ◼   ► I tried them in the past, they're fine, but they're young

01:08:35 ◼   ► and when I tried them they were going through

01:08:37 ◼   ► some growing pains, I assume they're more stable now

01:08:40 ◼   ► 'cause that was like a year and a half or two years ago.

01:08:42 ◼   ► Anyway, it doesn't matter.

01:08:43 ◼   ► Linode, right now, ever since they did that big SSD upgrade

01:08:46 ◼   ► to match DigitalOcean's performance and pricing,

01:08:49 ◼   ► I would say Linode is the best deal

01:08:51 ◼   ► in the hosting business.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Now, I have always loved going and leasing dedicated servers

01:08:56 ◼   ► from cheap unmanaged server vendors,

01:08:58 ◼   ► so that, you know, please, I don't need your tech support,

01:09:00 ◼   ► I don't need you to install WordPress for me.

01:09:02 ◼   ► I just want a cheap server that I don't have to manage

01:09:04 ◼   ► the hardware for.

01:09:05 ◼   ► You manage the hardware, I will do the entire

01:09:06 ◼   ► software management, please.

01:09:08 ◼   ► And Linode is now, for most things, even cheaper

01:09:12 ◼   ► than going to a cheap dedicated host.

01:09:14 ◼   ► So something like Limestone Networks or High Velocity,

01:09:19 ◼   ► like Linode is actually even cheaper than those

01:09:21 ◼   ► for what you get a lot of the time.

01:09:23 ◼   ► It's incredible.

01:09:23 ◼   ► I still have no idea how it's so cheap, but it is.

01:09:26 ◼   ► You know, it's not perfect, no host is perfect.

01:09:28 ◼   ► I've occasionally had network issues with them,

01:09:30 ◼   ► but of all the hosts I've tried over the years,

01:09:33 ◼   ► they are the one I am by far most happy with.

01:09:35 ◼   ► - So because it's August,

01:09:38 ◼   ► the story that sounded like it would be so interesting

01:09:41 ◼   ► and so salacious was I moved to databases

01:09:45 ◼   ► and I moved to VPSs.

01:09:46 ◼   ► - It was literally, I clicked a few links

01:09:48 ◼   ► in the web interface and waited.

01:09:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:09:51 ◼   ► - You know, you're not helping our August doldrums at all.

01:09:53 ◼   ► - It would have been a lot bigger of a deal

01:09:55 ◼   ► had I actually been on dedicated servers and not VPSs,

01:09:58 ◼   ► but this is one of the reasons why I use VPSs now.

01:10:01 ◼   ► Now the bad news is that I was upgrading

01:10:06 ◼   ► from eight gigs of RAM to 16 on my database.

01:10:11 ◼   ► In dedicated server terms,

01:10:12 ◼   ► unless you're somewhere incredibly expensive

01:10:14 ◼   ► like SoftLayer or Rackspace,

01:10:16 ◼   ► if you're somewhere reasonably priced for automatic servers,

01:10:20 ◼   ► 16 gigs of RAM should not cost a lot of money.

01:10:23 ◼   ► But for Linux, that's a big deal,

01:10:25 ◼   ► but it's still only 160 bucks a month for this VPS.

01:10:27 ◼   ► and it's like, well if you look at what can you get

01:10:30 ◼   ► for 160 bucks a month on dedicated host,

01:10:33 ◼   ► you can't get much closer to this.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I still can't believe how much you get for your money

01:10:41 ◼   ► with these Linode VPSs.

01:10:43 ◼   ► And again, this is not an ad.

01:10:44 ◼   ► They've never sponsored me.

01:10:45 ◼   ► I have a referral link, I think, somewhere.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I have a referral link for Linode.

01:10:49 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes so that, I don't know,

01:10:51 ◼   ► we can make some money off of this giant non-ad,

01:10:53 ◼   ► but man, it is so good.

01:10:55 ◼   ► I like it a lot.

01:10:57 ◼   ► - All right.

01:10:58 ◼   ► - Wanna talk iPad Pro?

01:11:00 ◼   ► - Actually, I just looking for a little bit

01:11:02 ◼   ► of a real-time follow up on the last topic about mice.

01:11:04 ◼   ► The wire, in the Wirecarters mouse review,

01:11:05 ◼   ► they have this graphic that I,

01:11:07 ◼   ► that's from Razer actually showing the contact patch

01:11:10 ◼   ► of these little hand diagrams,

01:11:14 ◼   ► three, for three grips of the mouse,

01:11:16 ◼   ► one called the palm grip, then the claw grip,

01:11:18 ◼   ► and then the fingertip grip.

01:11:19 ◼   ► I wish they'd showed actual photos of hands doing it,

01:11:21 ◼   ► but someone placed this link in the chat room.

01:11:25 ◼   ► It's worth checking out that this review

01:11:27 ◼   ► at least acknowledges the different ways

01:11:29 ◼   ► that people hold mice.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And I bet there is a much larger variety

01:11:32 ◼   ► than just those three.

01:11:34 ◼   ► I think they're just trying to capture

01:11:35 ◼   ► the three most common, but it really influences

01:11:38 ◼   ► how you shape the mouse, how you're expecting people

01:11:41 ◼   ► to hold it, and there's not just one way.

01:11:43 ◼   ► And that's before you even get into things like hand size,

01:11:45 ◼   ► like before you're even considering variations in hand size,

01:11:48 ◼   ► just like within one hand size,

01:11:50 ◼   ► you can be holding it in very different ways.

01:11:52 ◼   ► So anyway, that's, and I've put in more links, Casey,

01:11:55 ◼   ► for the different.

01:11:57 ◼   ► mice that I own and pictures of them and stuff like that.

01:11:59 ◼   ► - Wait, so on this Razer thing, this mouse on the left,

01:12:02 ◼   ► is that a number pad on the mouse?

01:12:03 ◼   ► What the heck is that?

01:12:05 ◼   ► - That's a gaming thing, I don't know.

01:12:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:12:08 ◼   ► - There's like this little like 12 button grid

01:12:11 ◼   ► of buttons in the thumb area on this crazy gaming mouse.

01:12:16 ◼   ► Oh my God, it's like a Jaguar controller.

01:12:18 ◼   ► - That's what I'm talking about,

01:12:19 ◼   ► like they have buttons everywhere.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Like how can you even grab them

01:12:22 ◼   ► without accidentally hitting a button?

01:12:23 ◼   ► Especially when they put buttons on the side,

01:12:25 ◼   ► like that's where I hold it.

01:12:26 ◼   ► I don't want to have buttons on the side and then they have buttons they have buttons on top of the buttons

01:12:29 ◼   ► So you can't even rest your finger on a button or else you accidentally hit another button. Oh my goodness

01:12:34 ◼   ► Oh my god, people are crazy gamers. Yo dog. I heard you like buttons with your buttons. Nice

01:12:38 ◼   ► Yeah, that's why I've never been able to get into the razor mice

01:12:40 ◼   ► Some of it like the first-person shooter appeal for like the high resolution and like that whatever they're trying to do with low latency and

01:12:48 ◼   ► all this other stuff

01:12:49 ◼   ► but it just as a thing to grab and mouse around with it just never looked particularly comfortable for me whenever I go into the

01:12:54 ◼   ► store and see them and spread my germs by going up into the huge display of mice and

01:13:00 ◼   ► grabbing each one of them and clicking around.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Nothing ever feels quite right to me.

01:13:05 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm going to do.

01:13:07 ◼   ► My mouse at work died.

01:13:08 ◼   ► This Logitech wheel mouse thing that we'll put in the show notes before they even had

01:13:12 ◼   ► the MX numbering scheme.

01:13:14 ◼   ► It died and I bought a new modern one that I thought looked like it and I used it for

01:13:18 ◼   ► a couple days and I just didn't like it so I had to go on eBay and find someone selling

01:13:23 ◼   ► the exact old model of mouse that I had before.

01:13:27 ◼   ► And I got it and it works,

01:13:28 ◼   ► and that's what I'm using now at work.

01:13:30 ◼   ► - You can always get people to send in

01:13:31 ◼   ► their gross old used mice to you.

01:13:33 ◼   ► - I know, but it's like a very specific model.

01:13:35 ◼   ► But no, I bought it on eBay.

01:13:36 ◼   ► It was like 20 bucks or something.

01:13:37 ◼   ► I'm like, you know what, let me just get that same,

01:13:39 ◼   ► that age where, I mean, there's probably a modern mouse

01:13:42 ◼   ► out there that I would like, but I tried.

01:13:45 ◼   ► Like, I tried my best.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Like, I went to, you know, I like Logitech mice.

01:13:49 ◼   ► I went to their website.

01:13:49 ◼   ► I looked at a bunch of other things.

01:13:50 ◼   ► I think I might even look at this Wirecutter review.

01:13:52 ◼   ► I tried a bunch of mice in person and I'm like,

01:13:54 ◼   ► you know what, let me get this one.

01:13:55 ◼   ► It's so close to what I get now.

01:13:57 ◼   ► It's made by the same company.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I'm sure it will be just the same and it wasn't.

01:14:00 ◼   ► It was just different enough to annoy me.

01:14:02 ◼   ► So I said, I'll just get the same mouse.

01:14:04 ◼   ► - Do they include an Android tablet

01:14:06 ◼   ► when you bought from them?

01:14:07 ◼   ► - No, but what I'm always afraid of with,

01:14:09 ◼   ► I'm buying things in eBay.

01:14:10 ◼   ► I guess when people buy things in eBay,

01:14:11 ◼   ► they're afraid of like someone, you know, it's a scam.

01:14:15 ◼   ► They're just gonna take my money and not send me anything.

01:14:17 ◼   ► They're gonna send me something

01:14:18 ◼   ► that didn't look like it did in the picture.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Like all the things that you're worried about

01:14:21 ◼   ► when you do eBay, right?

01:14:22 ◼   ► Are you afraid of secret fans?

01:14:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know what I'm worried about

01:14:26 ◼   ► when I do things on eBay?

01:14:27 ◼   ► That it's going to be sent to me by someone who smokes.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Because then the box will smell like smoke

01:14:32 ◼   ► and the item will smell like smoke forever

01:14:34 ◼   ► and ever and ever and I just won't be able to use it

01:14:36 ◼   ► because it will smell like an ashtray.

01:14:37 ◼   ► - Yep, that's a, in many online,

01:14:40 ◼   ► so I've recently been selling some headphones and stuff.

01:14:42 ◼   ► In a lot of these online marketplaces,

01:14:45 ◼   ► you will see almost every ad say,

01:14:46 ◼   ► non-smoking household, no pets.

01:14:49 ◼   ► Smoking, that's a huge thing.

01:14:51 ◼   ► I can always tell if like a box was in somewhere that smoked or somewhere with cats. Like I'm

01:14:58 ◼   ► allergic to cats. I don't have cats. I am very sensitive to the smell of cat houses

01:15:04 ◼   ► and I can always tell. Like it isn't as strong as smoking but it's there, you know. Anyway,

01:15:11 ◼   ► no smoking, no pets.

01:15:12 ◼   ► I don't know if I've ever had one with a pet smell because that, I mean, obviously if it's

01:15:16 ◼   ► something with fabric or something but I'm thinking like something that is like hard

01:15:19 ◼   ► shiny plastic or electronics or something. Maybe I guess if cat hair is

01:15:22 ◼   ► sucked up into the thing. I remember someone I used to work with had a... it

01:15:26 ◼   ► wasn't the wind tunnel, I think it was the mirror drive door. You guys don't remember

01:15:30 ◼   ► these names. Anyway, one of the tower Macs that had like intake ports. It wasn't

01:15:35 ◼   ► like the cheese grater, it was pre-cheese grater. It was back when they had the four

01:15:38 ◼   ► handles and the sides of the things. It had an intake in the front and it would blow air out

01:15:41 ◼   ► the back. And he opened up his computer to clean out one day and like the

01:15:44 ◼   ► intakes in the front all led into this big like wedge type thing and the wedge

01:15:48 ◼   ► was just filled with a solid wedge of cat hair. They could just pull out and it was

01:15:51 ◼   ► just like, it was like a perfectly structured, it was like taking a mold of the inside of

01:15:55 ◼   ► the intake vent. So yeah, cat hair. I can imagine electronics smelling like that, but

01:16:00 ◼   ► it's not even like a mouse. There's no place you can go inside of it, there's no ball or

01:16:04 ◼   ► anything. I can imagine that smelling like a cat. But the thing about cigarette smoke

01:16:07 ◼   ► is it just permeates, especially if there's any kind of like rubber. Even if there's plastic,

01:16:11 ◼   ► it just never goes away. It's bad. Even Lego can smell like smoke if it's been in a smoking

01:16:17 ◼   ► - Gross.

01:16:18 ◼   ► - But anyway, my mouse I bought for work, non-smoking.

01:16:21 ◼   ► It does not smell like anything.

01:16:23 ◼   ► And pretty much brand new.

01:16:24 ◼   ► Like it wasn't any original blister pack,

01:16:26 ◼   ► but if it was used, I couldn't tell.

01:16:27 ◼   ► - So John, since you're not doing your review this summer,

01:16:31 ◼   ► much to the sadness of all of us,

01:16:35 ◼   ► what have you been wasting, no, spending your time on

01:16:39 ◼   ► for the last, I don't know, two or three weeks?

01:16:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, every once in a while I remember

01:16:43 ◼   ► that I have El Capitan installed and I boot into it

01:16:45 ◼   ► and then I wait 45 minutes for the seven updates

01:16:48 ◼   ► that I haven't installed to be installed,

01:16:49 ◼   ► which by the way, Crayhawk and Barry

01:16:51 ◼   ► already filed the radar on this,

01:16:52 ◼   ► and I think it's kind of annoying too.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Why is it that I can't just jump right to the latest beta?

01:16:56 ◼   ► Why do I have to go through all the different updaters?

01:16:58 ◼   ► It takes a really long time.

01:16:59 ◼   ► If you are, if the current beta is beta seven

01:17:02 ◼   ► and you have beta four,

01:17:04 ◼   ► then you have to install beta five and reboot,

01:17:06 ◼   ► install beta six and reboot, install beta seven and reboot.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And each one of these betas is like a gig or more downloaded

01:17:11 ◼   ► and then you gotta wait for it to install.

01:17:13 ◼   ► I don't quite understand why they're doing that this year.

01:17:15 ◼   ► And I'm glad I don't really have to deal with it.

01:17:17 ◼   ► I mean, I guess if I was doing the review,

01:17:18 ◼   ► I would never have to do more than one update

01:17:19 ◼   ► because I would literally be on the latest.

01:17:20 ◼   ► But anyway, occasionally I reboot into it and fiddle around.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And one of the things that came to my attention,

01:17:27 ◼   ► I think Jason Snell brought it up

01:17:29 ◼   ► in one of the Slack channels, was like,

01:17:31 ◼   ► you know Safari 9's new pinned tab feature

01:17:34 ◼   ► that they demoed in the keynotes where you can,

01:17:37 ◼   ► same thing as like Chrome and the other things,

01:17:38 ◼   ► everywhere you can take a tab and then pin it

01:17:40 ◼   ► and it becomes a tiny icon in the left-hand side

01:17:43 ◼   ► of your tab bar and it's there all the time.

01:17:45 ◼   ► When you do that, Apple has, of course,

01:17:48 ◼   ► for whatever crazy reason, a new way for you

01:17:52 ◼   ► to specify what your icon is.

01:17:53 ◼   ► When it's pinned, they don't just use your favicon thing.

01:17:56 ◼   ► I don't know why they don't use it, they just don't.

01:17:58 ◼   ► What they want you to use is to put an SVG,

01:18:02 ◼   ► and apparently it has to be an SVG,

01:18:04 ◼   ► somewhere on your site and then specify in this meta tag

01:18:06 ◼   ► that there's two different versions.

01:18:08 ◼   ► I'll put them both in the show.

01:18:08 ◼   ► It says two different versions on Apple's site.

01:18:10 ◼   ► One of them is develop it at apple.com/library/safari.

01:18:14 ◼   ► Safari release notes and the other one is developer dot apple comm slash library slash pre-release slash Mac slash release notes

01:18:21 ◼   ► They disagree about what you're supposed to do. I put both of them in there

01:18:25 ◼   ► I think one of them does nothing but whatever until they get their acts together

01:18:28 ◼   ► Put both of them in and by the way, if you're gonna try to do this yourself

01:18:31 ◼   ► People to whatever seeing me complain about this

01:18:34 ◼   ► They're having trouble doing it like anything if you dealt with Safari before you would know this but if you haven't it may be a surprise

01:18:40 ◼   ► Safari for fav icons or anything having to do with icons

01:18:44 ◼   ► Once it downloads one or once it decides there is not one to download

01:18:47 ◼   ► You will not convince it that it needs to download it again

01:18:51 ◼   ► You have to go to tilde slash library slash Safari slash

01:18:54 ◼   ► Template space icons and delete everything in that directory and then relaunch Safari

01:18:58 ◼   ► If you don't do that

01:18:59 ◼   ► You'll spend an hour saying why isn't it reading my SVG and keep reloading it will never

01:19:03 ◼   ► Reload your SVG probably like 30 days from now or something

01:19:06 ◼   ► Quit Safari delete everything in that directory relaunch Safari. That's the way you have to do this. Anyway, I

01:19:13 ◼   ► I don't in my blog that I never updated in hypercritical.co

01:19:17 ◼   ► My icon is this little pixelated original Mac that I drew way back when

01:19:22 ◼   ► and I wanted that to be my little pin tab icon and

01:19:26 ◼   ► there's a problem because the format is SVG and my thing is pixel art and

01:19:31 ◼   ► Apple nowhere and its documentation tells you even what size your SVG is going to be displayed at

01:19:37 ◼   ► So first I had to get it working at all that took a little bit of noodling and everything and finding an app that can

01:19:43 ◼   ► do SVG, I downloaded a trial of Illustrator for this which is ridiculous.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Isn't it incredibly mediocre?

01:19:51 ◼   ► God, I had Illustrator CS6, I have Photoshop CS6 which I like for the most part.

01:19:58 ◼   ► Illustrator CS6 I had a trial of, no I was paying for it month by month.

01:20:01 ◼   ► Remember when Adobe let you do like one app per month and you pay like $10 and use Illustrator

01:20:06 ◼   ► for a month or whatever?

01:20:07 ◼   ► Anyway it said, "Oh your Illustrator CS6 thing is expired, go renew it or whatever."

01:20:12 ◼   ► I could not for the life of me figure out

01:20:14 ◼   ► how to pay Adobe another $10

01:20:16 ◼   ► to use Illustrator CS6 for a month.

01:20:19 ◼   ► I just couldn't figure it out.

01:20:20 ◼   ► All it could lead me to was signing up

01:20:23 ◼   ► for some crazy subscription thing

01:20:25 ◼   ► or just downloading a trial of Illustrator CC,

01:20:28 ◼   ► which is what I did.

01:20:30 ◼   ► - Even if you do exactly what Adobe wants you to do,

01:20:33 ◼   ► even if you say, okay,

01:20:34 ◼   ► I will sign up for the subscription,

01:20:35 ◼   ► it is so incredibly difficult to navigate Adobe's site

01:20:38 ◼   ► and their store and the whole creative cloud suite mess,

01:20:42 ◼   ► Even if you do everything right,

01:20:45 ◼   ► it's still miserable and confusing.

01:20:47 ◼   ► Whoever designed all of that

01:20:49 ◼   ► should really go back and rethink it

01:20:50 ◼   ► because it's just a disaster.

01:20:52 ◼   ► Not to mention, if you do want to do anything

01:20:54 ◼   ► besides the ideal thing of signing up for everything,

01:20:58 ◼   ► if you want one of these smaller subscriptions

01:21:00 ◼   ► where it's only one app or it's one of the little bundles,

01:21:03 ◼   ► that's even worse.

01:21:05 ◼   ► I can't even imagine what you were trying to do,

01:21:06 ◼   ► which is one app, an old version of that app, no less,

01:21:10 ◼   ► trying to get a one month subscription,

01:21:12 ◼   ► yeah, you didn't stand a chance.

01:21:14 ◼   ► - Well, see, here's the worst thing.

01:21:15 ◼   ► The stupid Adobe CC menu bar icon

01:21:18 ◼   ► that nags you about this stuff,

01:21:20 ◼   ► like it shows you the big thing that you sign in,

01:21:23 ◼   ► it shows you all your apps and whatever.

01:21:25 ◼   ► Inside that thing, it said Illustrator CS6,

01:21:28 ◼   ► you know, whatever, like renew, need to renew or whatever.

01:21:31 ◼   ► Like it had a link on it that was saying,

01:21:33 ◼   ► click this link to go and pay us more money.

01:21:35 ◼   ► But if you click the link,

01:21:36 ◼   ► it didn't take you any place to get CS6.

01:21:38 ◼   ► It took you like through three redirects

01:21:39 ◼   ► some illustrator page where you could try to get illustrator CC so it's like

01:21:42 ◼   ► that your little menu bar thing is trying to tell me that I can somehow

01:21:46 ◼   ► give you more money to keep using illustrator CS6 but when I click through

01:21:49 ◼   ► the link that it provides to me it takes me to your website and makes it seem

01:21:51 ◼   ► like it's not there and I search for a while and anyway that's a tangent

01:21:55 ◼   ► Adobe stuff is weird that's one of the reasons I got CS6 it was like the last

01:21:58 ◼   ► non creative cloud version like it's just plain old software that you can

01:22:02 ◼   ► install it's still phones home to check its authentication or whatever but

01:22:05 ◼   ► But anyway, happy with Photoshop,

01:22:08 ◼   ► not really happy with Illustrator.

01:22:11 ◼   ► And really, I'm drawing a little icon here.

01:22:13 ◼   ► So I had my outline image, here's the other thing,

01:22:17 ◼   ► 'cause I'm gonna get into more of how terrible I am

01:22:19 ◼   ► with the graphics apps.

01:22:20 ◼   ► My outline image that I used for my T-shirt,

01:22:22 ◼   ► if you bought a hypercritical T-shirt back in the day,

01:22:24 ◼   ► this is the little Mac logo that's on top of it.

01:22:26 ◼   ► So all I did was take my T-shirt graphic,

01:22:28 ◼   ► which was a vector image, and I deleted the text,

01:22:31 ◼   ► and I'm just left with the icon part of it.

01:22:33 ◼   ► And I thought I was all set,

01:22:35 ◼   ► but apparently those vectors are weird and SVG,

01:22:38 ◼   ► like when I saved it as SVG in Illustrator,

01:22:39 ◼   ► I looked at the source 'cause it's just an XML file.

01:22:41 ◼   ► I could see it was doing all sorts of strange things.

01:22:44 ◼   ► And I was like, this, this SVG is much more complicated

01:22:47 ◼   ► than it needs to be.

01:22:48 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what Illustrator is doing,

01:22:49 ◼   ► but apparently this outline that I used for the T-shirt

01:22:52 ◼   ► is much more complicated than it needs to be.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And honestly, like the entire image is made of,

01:22:59 ◼   ► it's a pixel image, it's made of squares basically,

01:23:02 ◼   ► or if you want rectangles, that's all the entire thing is.

01:23:04 ◼   ► So I'm like, I just need to set up a grid.

01:23:06 ◼   ► I can redraw this by hand.

01:23:08 ◼   ► I can draw this icon on graph paper for you.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Like I know how many dots are in every dimension.

01:23:11 ◼   ► There's a certain number of dots.

01:23:12 ◼   ► I know exactly where they are.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Give me a piece of graph paper

01:23:15 ◼   ► and I can color it in for you.

01:23:16 ◼   ► So I'm like, that should be easy to do.

01:23:17 ◼   ► But Illustrator is really not made for that type of thing.

01:23:19 ◼   ► I am absolutely sure that you could do it in Illustrator.

01:23:21 ◼   ► I'm sure an Illustrator expert,

01:23:23 ◼   ► but it's seven keystrokes,

01:23:24 ◼   ► have the grid set up the way,

01:23:25 ◼   ► you know, and then just go down,

01:23:27 ◼   ► doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,

01:23:28 ◼   ► Oh, done, done, done.

01:23:29 ◼   ► I'm not an Illustrator expert.

01:23:31 ◼   ► The app was imperative for me.

01:23:32 ◼   ► Last time I understood Illustrator was Illustrator 88.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Anything after that, I was like--

01:23:38 ◼   ► - As in 1988?

01:23:39 ◼   ► - Yes, everything after that was me--

01:23:41 ◼   ► - I was six.

01:23:41 ◼   ► - Was me just poking around and not knowing how to use it.

01:23:45 ◼   ► But anyway, I got the job done eventually on Illustrator.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Got the SVG to something that was saying it worked.

01:23:50 ◼   ► Put it up on the site, rebooted into LCAP, launched Safari,

01:23:56 ◼   ► pinned my tab and saw the world's blurriest,

01:23:58 ◼   ► disgusting looking, you know,

01:23:59 ◼   ► like nothing on a pixel edge boundary,

01:24:02 ◼   ► just a terrible blurry blob.

01:24:05 ◼   ► And then I was like, all right, well,

01:24:06 ◼   ► do I really care if it's blurry?

01:24:07 ◼   ► All I really care about is if it's clear in retina mode,

01:24:09 ◼   ► even though I have no retina max,

01:24:10 ◼   ► I know most people who are gonna be, you know, pinning it.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I mean, no one's gonna pin my set anyway.

01:24:15 ◼   ► This is the absurdity of all this.

01:24:16 ◼   ► The site never gets updated.

01:24:18 ◼   ► No one's gonna pin the tab because why would you?

01:24:20 ◼   ► I just, you know, it's a diversion,

01:24:21 ◼   ► something I wanted you to do.

01:24:23 ◼   ► So I tried to switch into retina node,

01:24:24 ◼   ► but high DPI mode wasn't available

01:24:26 ◼   ► and the quartz debug thing also was not available

01:24:30 ◼   ► and the old version of quartz debug didn't work

01:24:32 ◼   ► so I had to find the plist key

01:24:33 ◼   ► to enable the high DPI setting.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Anyway, eventually did that, turned on high DPI mode,

01:24:37 ◼   ► put monitor to that mode, launched Safari,

01:24:40 ◼   ► looked at the pin tab and it was blurry in retina too.

01:24:42 ◼   ► So I was like, oh, I'm just, I gave up for a while.

01:24:45 ◼   ► This was several weeks ago.

01:24:45 ◼   ► I was like, all right, well, I've got the icon for it.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Doesn't look great.

01:24:49 ◼   ► Jason said it looked good in his retina iMac

01:24:51 ◼   ► but I think he has, he's an old person with bad vision.

01:24:53 ◼   ► Like seriously, it's like nothing is on a pixel edge.

01:24:55 ◼   ► It does not look good.

01:24:57 ◼   ► Maybe when it's retina, you can't tell as much,

01:24:59 ◼   ► like on a real retina screen,

01:25:00 ◼   ► instead of like my, you know,

01:25:01 ◼   ► two X mode on my regular non-retina screen,

01:25:03 ◼   ► you can really see how blurry it is.

01:25:05 ◼   ► But this weekend I took another run at it.

01:25:08 ◼   ► Inspired by a couple of things.

01:25:09 ◼   ► First of all, I was inspired by the release of Acorn 5,

01:25:12 ◼   ► which is Gus Mueller's new version

01:25:15 ◼   ► of his drawing application,

01:25:17 ◼   ► which is way friendlier than illustrator.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And like, it was really easy for me to draw my icon.

01:25:22 ◼   ► That's one of my tests now of drawing apps.

01:25:24 ◼   ► Can I draw my icon really quickly?

01:25:26 ◼   ► 'Cause it's the easiest thing in the world to do.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Just set up a grid, take a bunch of rectangles

01:25:30 ◼   ► with a fill in, no stroke.

01:25:31 ◼   ► I know how many dots it's supposed to be.

01:25:33 ◼   ► This should be really easy to do.

01:25:34 ◼   ► Make the canvas the size I want.

01:25:36 ◼   ► It is really easy to draw in Acorn.

01:25:37 ◼   ► Unfortunately Acorn doesn't have SVG export,

01:25:39 ◼   ► which made me sad.

01:25:40 ◼   ► So I drew it in like two seconds,

01:25:42 ◼   ► it was all excited, no SVG export.

01:25:45 ◼   ► I think I complained about it on Twitter.

01:25:47 ◼   ► It's the magic of Twitter.

01:25:48 ◼   ► I got up on a suggestion.

01:25:48 ◼   ► Someone suggested Affinity Designer,

01:25:50 ◼   ► which I'd never heard of before.

01:25:51 ◼   ► Have you guys ever heard of this app?

01:25:52 ◼   ► - No.

01:25:54 ◼   ► - Really impressive app.

01:25:55 ◼   ► Like I've never heard of this developer, this company,

01:25:59 ◼   ► but it's clear that they mostly understand the Mac.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Like they're trying to be very Mac-like,

01:26:06 ◼   ► but at the same time, they do a lot of custom UI.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And you can say, how could that be the same?

01:26:09 ◼   ► How can you be trying to be like all Yosemite and Mac-like,

01:26:12 ◼   ► but also use custom UI for all your widgets,

01:26:14 ◼   ► like pop-up menus and everything?

01:26:16 ◼   ► It's kind of the same way.

01:26:18 ◼   ► I mean, you've all used Photoshop and Illustrator,

01:26:20 ◼   ► or at least Margot has, but you know how Adobe's

01:26:22 ◼   ► got their own UI for their pop-up menus

01:26:24 ◼   ► and their text fields and all this other stuff,

01:26:25 ◼   ► and you can even change it to different sizes.

01:26:27 ◼   ► - And they're all terrible.

01:26:29 ◼   ► - Right, and it's like, it's kind of,

01:26:31 ◼   ► they're trying to be cross-platform,

01:26:32 ◼   ► so it looks the same everywhere,

01:26:33 ◼   ► but there's the history of them doing

01:26:35 ◼   ► their own widget toolkits, and you could change

01:26:36 ◼   ► the color of the UI to be black or gray or light color,

01:26:40 ◼   ► you know how they added that option,

01:26:41 ◼   ► I think around CS6 they started adding that option,

01:26:43 ◼   ► you could change the color of the UI and stuff.

01:26:46 ◼   ► Affinity is like that, but their custom UI

01:26:49 ◼   ► looks much better than Adobe's, first of all.

01:26:51 ◼   ► Doesn't quite look like native UI,

01:26:53 ◼   ► but it looks like, I mean, it's kind of like Final Cut,

01:26:57 ◼   ► but the ProKit, if you use Final Cut Pro,

01:26:59 ◼   ► Apple has its own custom widget toolkit

01:27:01 ◼   ► that he used to use for Final Cut Pro,

01:27:03 ◼   ► which also didn't look like the system widgets,

01:27:05 ◼   ► but looked kind of like them.

01:27:06 ◼   ► This is like that.

01:27:07 ◼   ► But anyway, Affinity Designer,

01:27:09 ◼   ► incredibly full-featured application, super confusing,

01:27:12 ◼   ► but not as confusing as Illustrator.

01:27:14 ◼   ► So it's like, there's Acorn, which is super friendly,

01:27:17 ◼   ► and you should get,

01:27:18 ◼   ► if you just want to draw something and be done

01:27:19 ◼   ► you don't need to export from SVG.

01:27:20 ◼   ► I just would have used Acorn

01:27:21 ◼   ► if I could have gotten away with it.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Then there's Illustrator, which defeats me

01:27:24 ◼   ► because I'm not a professional designer.

01:27:25 ◼   ► And then Affinity, professional designers were tweeting me

01:27:28 ◼   ► and saying, "I use this instead of Illustrator

01:27:30 ◼   ► "and I do my work in it."

01:27:31 ◼   ► So I think it has the capability

01:27:32 ◼   ► to be a full-fledged professional design app,

01:27:34 ◼   ► but it is much more complicated

01:27:36 ◼   ► and has lots of floating palettes and windows

01:27:38 ◼   ► with tons and tons of options.

01:27:40 ◼   ► But the thing is, I know which options I want.

01:27:42 ◼   ► I just need to be able to find them.

01:27:43 ◼   ► And in Affinity Designer, I could pull up the giant,

01:27:45 ◼   ► they have a snapping manager and a separate grid manager.