0:00:00Alright, so I guess do you want to get started on the actual show?
0:00:04We do a show, you know.
0:00:05Oh, we do?
0:00:06This is a song about Alice.
0:00:08Oh, is that Alice's restaurant?
0:00:11Wow.
0:00:12Were you seriously quoting Guthrie?
0:00:15Arlo Guthrie?
0:00:16Is that right?
0:00:17We all did music podcasts in like the last week, didn't we?
0:00:19A week or two.
0:00:20You did one too, John?
0:00:21Yeah, no, everyone's doing it.
0:00:24So alright, let's do some follow-up.
0:00:26John, why don't you tell us about LLVM IR?
0:00:29week, it got so long ago, whenever it was, we talked about LLVM IR, which is also known
0:00:35as bitcode in its sort of binary representation, and whether or not that helps Apple to be
0:00:40able to move any of their platforms to different CPU architectures in the future.
0:00:45We basically decided that it doesn't help or hurt, that it is an orthogonal concern,
0:00:52mostly having to do with taking advantage of new instructions and new processors, being
0:00:56Being able to remove instructions from processors when they're no longer needed, all without
0:01:00asking developers to re-upload new binary versions of their applications and recompile
0:01:05them for new architectures and stuff.
0:01:07So a bunch of people sent me good links.
0:01:09Someone sent me -- I forgot who this was, unfortunately -- a 2011 -- I think it's Usenet
0:01:15post -- no, a mailing list post from Dan Goleman at Apple.
0:01:20Presumably he works on the LLVM team, or did at least in 2011.
0:01:23I'll put the link in the show notes.
0:01:25can read it. He outlines the reasons why he thinks LLVM IR is a poor system for building
0:01:30a platform, by which he means any system where LLVM IR would be a format in which programs
0:01:35are stored or transmitted for subsequent use on multiple underlying architectures, which
0:01:39is exactly the question we were asking before. Again, this is 2011, things may have changed,
0:01:44but in general he says if you're going to make some kind of a multi-CPU architecture
0:01:50intermediary form LLVM IR would not be it and he lists the reasons.
0:01:57Someone named Jacob Stokelyn Olson, hope I got that right, sent us an email with some
0:02:03more good information about what is platform specific about bitcode, what is it that makes
0:02:08bitcode not portable.
0:02:09It says one of the biggest sources of bitcode differences is the target ABI, meaning Application
0:02:14Binary Interface.
0:02:16generates functions that are able to call C functions
0:02:18compiled by other compilers by following the ABI
0:02:21for that platform.
0:02:21That's basically what an ABI is like.
0:02:23So that everything doesn't have to be compiled
0:02:24by the same compiler.
0:02:25You compile with one compiler
0:02:27or have a compiled library or whatever,
0:02:28I can call you, you can call back into me.
0:02:30Like we all know how we're gonna call each other's functions
0:02:32is the ABI defines how function arguments
0:02:34and return values are laid out in memory or register
0:02:36is like, you know, you put your address here
0:02:38and the return value is gonna be in this register.
0:02:40That's the ABI.
0:02:41Everyone has to agree on that
0:02:42or you can't call into other code.
0:02:43And one of the requirements for a bit code
0:02:46and for any of Apple's compiler stuff
0:02:47is that you have to be able to compile code
0:02:49and has to be able to call functions
0:02:50that were compiled with another compiler,
0:02:52even if it's just an earlier version of the same compiler.
0:02:54Otherwise, every time a new OS came out
0:02:56that was compiled with a new compiler,
0:02:57everyone would have to recompile their apps
0:02:59if the ABI changed.
0:03:00It doesn't, and so this is a sort of hard
0:03:01and fast requirement of what Apple does with its compilers.
0:03:05Now, Jacob goes on.
0:03:06"In general, the Clang front end is using
0:03:08a combination of LLVM types and argument flags
0:03:10to get the code generator to generate
0:03:11the correct function calling sequence.
0:03:13It knows how the code generator
0:03:14if a selected target architecture behaves.
0:03:17He says you can even get different bitcode
0:03:18when using different ABIs
0:03:20on the same instruction set architecture.
0:03:22So even on a single chip,
0:03:23you could have multiple ABIs defined
0:03:25and you get different bitcode if you target different ABIs.
0:03:27He ends here by saying it would be possible
0:03:30to create LLVM IR that can be compiled
0:03:32on multiple CB architectures only by giving up
0:03:34on the ability to call native functions
0:03:35compiled with other compilers.
0:03:37You could define a virtual ABI that specifies the layouts,
0:03:40the struct layouts and how C function calls
0:03:42are mapped to LLVM IR.
0:03:43This is essentially what Google's PNACL, the Portable Native Client Project, does.
0:03:48It works since the code only has to run inside Chrome sandbox and calling functions provided
0:03:51by Chrome.
0:03:52So lots of theoretical possibilities, but in the practical real world of what Apple
0:03:57uses its compilers for, bitcode and LLVM IR are not the answer to portability across platforms.
0:04:04Okay then.
0:04:05And why don't you tell us about what Chris Latner has been saying lately?
0:04:10This is some info from Kai Shin, who says,
0:04:13"Chris Latner was asked a question."
0:04:14These are all paraphrases.
0:04:15"Was asked a question, and I'm assuming this is a WWDC,"
0:04:17he didn't say.
0:04:19"Any plans to write Swift in Swift?"
0:04:20We talked about self-hosting last week.
0:04:22Self-hosting turns out to be the right definition.
0:04:24I just failed to read the Wikipedia page correctly.
0:04:26Anyway, and what he said was,
0:04:29what Chris Latner said was,
0:04:30"His goal is to make the best language
0:04:31"for writing consumer-facing software, not compilers."
0:04:34And he mentioned that if you started writing a compiler
0:04:35in Swift, it would end up being a great language
0:04:38for writing low-level code,
0:04:39but inadequate for writing iOS and Mac apps, which is kind of like the politically correct
0:04:43answer.
0:04:44For self-hosting, I thought it would be neat.
0:04:47It's kind of a shame that the people who are actually writing Swift are spending their
0:04:50whole day writing C++ when they love to use this new language they've invented to do
0:04:55their work as well.
0:04:56And I got a lot of replies like this.
0:04:58It's like, "No, I asked Chris Latner that and he says, 'If we did that, then Swift
0:05:02would be a really good language for writing compilers.'"
0:05:04And that's not what they're making.
0:05:05They're trying to make a really good language for writing iOS and Mac apps, which technically,
0:05:09According to a submission statement in the Apple book published on the topic, they're
0:05:12trying to make a language that spans the range.
0:05:15Compilers would be in that range.
0:05:16I think it would prove the language can do that type of task.
0:05:20But anyway, luckily we live in the age of Twitter and the new age of the open Apple,
0:05:25not the one from the Apple II keyboard.
0:05:27Nice.
0:05:28Yeah.
0:05:29And Chris Latner replied on Twitter to a thread involving us and he said, we'll put links
0:05:32to his tweets, "Many of us would love to rewrite the Swift compiler at Swift.
0:05:36It would crash a lot less and be a lot more dreadful for us."
0:05:39That said, we have a ton of higher priorities that affect users of Swift.
0:05:43Poor compiler hackers would just have to suffer for now.
0:05:45So the cobbler's children have no shoes or whatever that expression is.
0:05:49So contrary to the many tales of Chris Latner saying, I'm sure he did say this, that if
0:05:56we wrote our compiler in Swift, if that's what we were using sort of to dogfood our
0:06:02language, we would end up making a language that's really good at writing compilers, which
0:06:04Which is true if they did it to exclusion or everything else, but in the grand scheme
0:06:08of things, Chris Latterly says that many of us would love to write the compiler in Swift.
0:06:12Like, of course they would like that they're making this new language, of course they like
0:06:14the language, of course they like to use it in their work, but it is not really a high
0:06:17priority, their main priority of course is making it a great language to write iOS and
0:06:21Mac apps, because that's the most important part of Swift.
0:06:25So there you have it.
0:06:26I think this is a great example of like, direct, accurate quotes from people can be misleading
0:06:31if the only thing you ever hear is that, and which is why I think Chris felt the need to
0:06:34say even though I said that and it's true it's not the entire story like there are many dimensions to
0:06:39all these decisions it's not like oh Chris Latner hates Swift and would never want to write his
0:06:42compiler in it or the reverse Chris Latner would love to write it in Swift but mean old apple won't
0:06:46let him like everyone is always looking for the sensational headline type story especially if
0:06:50something gets repeated around and around and if everyone in apple like if the people who the
0:06:55source of information were silent any one of these things could have like spiraled into like three
0:06:59years from now it becomes accepted wisdom that Chris Latner never wanted to write the compiler
0:07:03and Swift, which is just BS.
0:07:05And I just love the fact, in the age of Twitter,
0:07:07he can say, you know what, tweet, tweet, done.
0:07:10I have now sort of like adjusted the record
0:07:13to more accurately represent the complex nuanced position
0:07:17that I have.
0:07:18And you can do that in two tweets, right?
0:07:19Combined with all the things he apparently said to people,
0:07:21WLDC.
0:07:23- That is yet another example of a whole new Apple PR world,
0:07:27which is exciting.
0:07:29Final bit of follow up,
0:07:30why don't you tell us about Trim Support?
0:07:32I think it was also last episode where we talked about trim force, the command that
0:07:36will let you enable trim on your SSDs even though Apple doesn't want to and it has that
0:07:40big scary warning that says, "You can enable it, but if you lose data, don't blame us."
0:07:44So 10.10.4 is out now.
0:07:47It has this thing in it, I believe.
0:07:48I upgraded it at work.
0:07:49I didn't upgrade it at home yet.
0:07:50I didn't look for the command, but I'm assuming it's there.
0:07:53And the last show I said, "You know, like, I'm not going to use it until I have problems."
0:07:58And I had said something like, "I know probably people have the same SSD as me and they have
0:08:01trim-enabled and everything is fine, but I don't want to be the guinea pig and I'm not
0:08:05going to take the risk until I have problems.
0:08:07And a bunch of people sent me links to a couple of stories that describe some of the solid
0:08:15state drives that do have problems with the trim command.
0:08:17If you enable trim on them, they accidentally erase the wrong blocks of data and just destroy
0:08:22your data for you.
0:08:24And on that list of drives that may or may not have this problem according to various
0:08:27people's stories is my drive.
0:08:30And so I'm very glad that I didn't enable TRIM and now I'm probably not going to enable
0:08:34TRIM.
0:08:35I don't know the technical details of the thing, like does it depend on firmware version,
0:08:39is it just for queued TRIM requests or for all of them, or some people think it doesn't
0:08:44matter that Drive reports that supports queued TRIM commands, but it really doesn't.
0:08:49And most of the stories involve Linux, not OS X, so I don't know what to think, but safe
0:08:53bet, don't mess with TRIM force unless you're feeling adventurous and don't mind losing
0:08:57any data or unless you have some amount of information that you're sure that like other
0:09:02people are doing this it's safe it's been taught or tested so yeah I'm kind of leaving
0:09:07my drive the way it is for now. And for the record don't you have a very popular and well-regarded
0:09:12Samsung SSD? Yeah it's like super expensive it's a terabyte it's their it's their latest
0:09:18greatest best model and you know it works. It's an 850 Pro? Yeah it's the 850 Pro. That's
0:09:23That's a very common, popular, well-regarded SSD.
0:09:27That's a little scary that that's on that list.
0:09:29- Well, I mean, it's scary,
0:09:31but the OSes are doing the right thing.
0:09:33It's blacklisted in Linux.
0:09:34I'm assuming Windows does the right thing.
0:09:35OS X does the right thing with it.
0:09:37The right thing, in this case, turns out to be luck.
0:09:38Apple didn't test it and verify that it behaves correctly,
0:09:40so no trim for you, right?
0:09:42And it's bad because we know that eventually
0:09:45the thing's gonna fill up and slow down and everything,
0:09:47but it's better than losing data, so I don't know.
0:09:50This is thread that you can follow.
0:09:52I put a link to a comment thread in Ars Technica that
0:09:55has links that you can chase down to a Samsung bug reporting
0:09:59website where Linux users are complaining about it.
0:10:02And Samsung's like, this isn't our problem.
0:10:03Linux is open source.
0:10:04Fix it yourself or whatever.
0:10:07That's not what they say.
0:10:08They basically end up saying, it's not a supported platform.
0:10:11That's what they end up saying.
0:10:12And they mention open source in that.
0:10:13And people are like, what are you saying?
0:10:14Because it's open source, we have to fix it ourselves.
0:10:16What it comes down to is Samsung doesn't care
0:10:17that it doesn't work on Linux.
0:10:18But OS X, that's an Apple's court.
0:10:21Apple can validate this or not, and Apple can file bugs,
0:10:24or, 'cause anyone can file bugs against it,
0:10:26like they can enable it on OS X
0:10:27and you get a reproduction of a problem
0:10:29and say, "Hey, your drive with this firmware
0:10:31does this thing wrong."
0:10:32I don't know, anyway, I'm happy with my SSD.
0:10:35It's still really fast, it's still nice and quiet,
0:10:38it's still got a terabyte of storage.
0:10:39As far as I'm aware, it has not corrupted my data yet,
0:10:42so, so far so good.
0:10:44- Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
0:10:47Wasn't the whole point of the more advanced SSD controller,
0:10:51starting with the Sand Forest thing forever ago.
0:10:53Wasn't the whole point of that to kind of like
0:10:56use different tricks, like different leveling techniques
0:10:59and everything to keep drive performance pretty good
0:11:02even without trim support?
0:11:03- All those things are true, that they're trying
0:11:06to make performance better by doing tricks,
0:11:07but you need to have trim because when you,
0:11:11that episode we talked about trim,
0:11:12when the operating system deletes a file,
0:11:14it doesn't go and overwrite every block with zeros
0:11:17or it doesn't tell the SSD that all those blocks are gone.
0:11:21It just updates like a single little piece of information
0:11:24and its file system metadata structure that says,
0:11:26you know what, this area that was previously taken
0:11:28is now free, so it updates a bitmap thing
0:11:31and an HFS+ or some other metadata and some other,
0:11:33and the only thing that gets written to the disk,
0:11:35as far as the disk mechanism is concerned,
0:11:36it sees right to this area of the disk,
0:11:39and that area of the disk is the metadata area.
0:11:41It's not actually touching the data of the file.
0:11:43It just says, oh, I received a write to this metadata area.
0:11:45The disk has no idea what that write is.
0:11:48It just says that's write to address 123.
0:11:50It has no idea what's in address 123.
0:11:52It has no idea that address 123 is the thing
0:11:54that tells you that these blocks are allocated.
0:11:56It doesn't know where those blocks are.
0:11:57It doesn't understand the file system.
0:11:59It's just a big block addressable storage device.
0:12:02The SSD mechanism has no way to know,
0:12:06oh, by the file system writing that piece of information,
0:12:09what that means is all these blocks
0:12:11that belong to this one gig file are now technically free.
0:12:14I should feel free to reuse them for any other rights that get sent to me.
0:12:17It doesn't know that.
0:12:18It's just like, if it sees a write come in, it says, "Where can I put this data?
0:12:21Where can I put this data?"
0:12:22It doesn't think it can put it where that 1 gig file was, because the only write that
0:12:26got sent was the "Hey, write to address 123 with these numbers."
0:12:30It doesn't know what those numbers mean, that 1 gig of space is now being freed up.
0:12:33That's what the TRMM command is for, to send it to say, "By the way, the operating system
0:12:38would say, 'Write to this area of the disk to note that this file is gone now, and also
0:12:42send the disk controller a command to mark all of these blocks of data as you can use
0:12:48those again if a subsequent write comes in.
0:12:50So there is literally no way that the drive can know, it's a different layer of the storage
0:12:55hard, the drive can know that.
0:12:56So inevitably, without TRIM, no matter what tricks you do, everything will fill up, which
0:13:00will mean every single write also involves clearing out some area first.
0:13:05Our first sponsor this week is Cards Against Humanity.
0:13:09And they asked us not to read a sponsor read and instead sent Jon another toaster to review.
0:13:14[music]
0:13:25Jon, what is the toaster this week?
0:13:26This week's toaster is another one from Black & Decker, model T-01322SBD.
0:13:33This thing is a two-knob, fairly small toaster.
0:13:36I remember we had the three knob blackened decker early on, and it was kind of like middle
0:13:40of the road.
0:13:41This two knob thing does most of the bad things that have been discussed previously in all
0:13:46other toasters, right?
0:13:47It's a nice tour of things that are wrong with toaster ovens.
0:13:50So you like it.
0:13:52Yeah, so it's got two knobs, one of which is a timer knob that you have to repeatedly
0:13:56turn to a precise angle for consistent toasting.
0:13:59That's a common flaw.
0:14:01The other knob also has to be in the right mode.
0:14:03So you still have to make sure two knobs are adjusted to the right thing to make it to
0:14:06toast anything you gotta make sure the top one's on toast because if you just
0:14:08turn the bottom one oh I forgot to turn the top one it was on bacon I'm slowly
0:14:12making my bread warm instead of toasting it it's got a single heating element on
0:14:16the top and the bottom right in the middle they are shielded at least so
0:14:19that's good but the single heating on top and bottom are just not adequate for
0:14:23a toaster of this size leading to a ridiculous five minute plus toast time I
0:14:27thought it was broken I tried it multiple times maybe the bread was a
0:14:30little bit cold maybe it was thicker like crazy long toast time it's just got
0:14:34One helmet on top, one helmet on the bottom,
0:14:35there's just not enough for a toaster of the size.
0:14:37It's not a big toaster,
0:14:38but whatever it is, it's not getting the job done.
0:14:40Really, really thin wire rack.
0:14:42Like I feel like I could crumple it up in my hand,
0:14:45that kind of thing, you know, not that it matters.
0:14:47It's not like the bread is gonna fall through the rack,
0:14:49but sort of like the, I was gonna say intangibles,
0:14:52but it's not, it's the opposite, it's tangible.
0:14:54Like the things that signal quality and durability,
0:14:57that really thin rack is not it.
0:14:59The door doesn't really open all the way to 90 degrees.
0:15:03like it opens almost to 90 degrees,
0:15:05and at the limit of its travel,
0:15:07it's like springy and bendy,
0:15:08it felt like it was gonna break off,
0:15:10it's just not a nice feeling door.
0:15:12The crumb tray that's underneath,
0:15:14like a little metal crumb tape,
0:15:16you have to tilt the crumb tray to get it out,
0:15:17another flaw that we've seen in other toasters,
0:15:19which is terrible because if you're not careful,
0:15:21you'll tilt it and just spill all the crumbs
0:15:22that are on the crumb tray back into the toaster,
0:15:24and now how do you get them out?
0:15:25It's the whole point of the crumb tray,
0:15:27you're supposed to take the crumb tray out
0:15:28with the crumbs on it and dump them
0:15:29so you don't have to take your whole toaster
0:15:30over the garbage or sink or shake it
0:15:32to get the crumbs out.
0:15:33I mean, it's not as bad as that hybrid toaster,
0:15:35which was just terrible.
0:15:35Like if you bought this, it would be okay.
0:15:38It would get the job done.
0:15:39The three knob black conductor is way better.
0:15:41I didn't look at the price of this one.
0:15:42What is the price on this?
0:15:43- 38 bucks on Amazon right now.
0:15:45- It seems, I don't know what the three knob one was.
0:15:47The three knob one was better than this one
0:15:48in all possible ways.
0:15:50This is not a great toaster.
0:15:51It's like, and I was in a department store recently
0:15:54looking at like the toaster oven section.
0:15:56- Of course you were.
0:15:57- A lot of the ones that were in there,
0:15:59I had actually reviewed.
0:16:00So that was interesting.
0:16:01I was just looking at them again to survey the field of all these things we're seeing.
0:16:04Am I just getting crappy toasters?
0:16:06Because still, none of them have been as good as my super expensive toaster.
0:16:09And even my super expensive toaster I have complaints about.
0:16:11So I saw the fancier version of my super expensive toaster in the store.
0:16:15It has crappy knobs too.
0:16:16They're better than my knobs a little bit, but still pretty crappy.
0:16:19Lots of just terrible knobs in very expensive toasters.
0:16:21It's not hard, people.
0:16:22Remember when we had the Hamilton Beach one that actually had good knobs even though they
0:16:27felt good to turn, even though you couldn't tell where the heck they were pointing?
0:16:30always blow it. Yeah there was no indicator. There was but it's really hard
0:16:33to see. They always blow it in some way like lots of bad doors like if I was if
0:16:39I could talk to the people who are designing toasters like I understand you
0:16:42have to make it cheaply you know you have to have your margins I'm not saying
0:16:45every toaster has to be $200 right? I think you can make a decent 40 or $50
0:16:50toaster if you just concentrate on the right things make make the controls
0:16:54reasonable it doesn't cost any more money to have a good control you don't
0:16:58have to put a fancy LCD screen or whatever, if you're just going to have a bunch of knobs,
0:17:01just don't make the mistakes of like having to turn a little ticking thing to the right
0:17:04angle every time.
0:17:05Oh, and by the way, this toaster also ticks.
0:17:07It's a quieter tick, but it does tick.
0:17:10Like having buttons, like I feel like you can do a reasonable set of controls that combines
0:17:15the best of knobs and buttons.
0:17:17Have a door that feels good to open and close.
0:17:19Have a wire rack that feels like it's sturdy.
0:17:21Does that really cost that much more?
0:17:22It's like it's a box with a door and some knobs and a tray.
0:17:27Concentrate on those things.
0:17:29Make a nice door.
0:17:30Make some nice knobs.
0:17:31Make a nice tray.
0:17:33I don't think that's asking for everything.
0:17:35And I feel like it's almost like they should take some lessons from kids' toys, which also
0:17:40have to be cheap, but they also have to be durable.
0:17:42The toys on the doors and stuff, on the little Fisher Price toys and everything, feel so
0:17:47much better than all these toasters.
0:17:48So I continue to be disappointed with the state of toaster ovens.
0:17:51This one is not as bad as the hybrid toaster, which is the new low bar, but I do not recommend
0:17:55it.
0:17:56- I mean, it seems like there's only basically two prices
0:18:00that toaster ovens are.
0:18:01They're either $40 or $200.
0:18:04And it seems like among the $40 ones that you've reviewed,
0:18:08that they almost all, like you can get good elements
0:18:12in all of them.
0:18:13Like, if you take the best parts of each one
0:18:16and put them all together, you could make a good toaster.
0:18:19So it seems like it is--
0:18:20- Or an okay toaster.
0:18:21Like, we're not asking for it, it's not amazing,
0:18:23but there's nothing in it that's embarrassing.
0:18:25doesn't feel like it's gonna fall apart.
0:18:27It does the job consistently and in a reasonable manner.
0:18:32- Now this toaster I see on the front here,
0:18:34it's advertising that it has even toast technology.
0:18:38Were you able to test the even toast technology
0:18:40and does it stand up to that claim?
0:18:41- It was reasonably even, but for five minutes,
0:18:44it's probably pretty easy to do even toasting
0:18:46if you do it super slow.
0:18:49When you have a really hot element,
0:18:50that's when you get hot spots.
0:18:51If you take five minutes, sure, yeah,
0:18:53it's nice and even across the bread.
0:18:54And being right in the middle of each thing probably helps.
0:18:58Because if you have four elements,
0:18:59if you have two on bottom and two on top
0:19:00and you just have the two pieces of toast,
0:19:03if you don't sort of center them over the elements,
0:19:05but this toaster is small enough
0:19:06and there's only one element and it's in the middle
0:19:08that if you just stick toast in there and don't think about it
0:19:10you're probably gonna stick it somewhere around the middle,
0:19:11back to front wise and it will come out even.
0:19:13So it was fine.
0:19:14If you wanna wait five minutes for your toast,
0:19:17it will get the job done.
0:19:18- And finally, did the staff at the store recognize you?
0:19:22No, this was just a Kohl's.
0:19:25But how many professional toaster oven reviewers are there in the world?
0:19:29Maybe like three?
0:19:30Yeah, I don't know.
0:19:32No one came to help me at all, which is what Kohl's is like.
0:19:35I didn't need any help, which is fine.
0:19:39You mentioned the two price ranges, like $40 and $200.
0:19:42The other thing that kills me is the $200 ones don't feel like $200 appliances.
0:19:45Again, if you had to make a metal box with a door and knobs and you gave me $200 to do
0:19:49it, I would make damn sure that those doors...
0:19:51The doors are better.
0:19:52The doors have little rubber stops in them, they open and close in a reasonable way except
0:19:56for the door on my actual toaster which still springs closed and tries to burn you.
0:19:59But like I said, I think that's just my particular unit and not all of this model.
0:20:05Because everyone else I ask who has this toaster, they say, "No, my door stays open fine."
0:20:08But anyway, the doors are better, but the knobs, they're just… and maybe it's
0:20:12just the Breville ones.
0:20:13How can you make such a terrible knob?
0:20:14It feels like a snapped together plastic model from the 80s.
0:20:18The knobs are just barely hanging on there.
0:20:20they feel terrible to turn, they're wobbly.
0:20:22Like on the fancy one they made them like fake chrome,
0:20:24like shiny, you know, again like a snap together model,
0:20:27like when you have the chrome finished wheels
0:20:30on your snap together model car.
0:20:32Like they're shiny plastic for $250.
0:20:36I'm not saying you have to give me a metal knob,
0:20:38but give me a knob that at least feels good to turn
0:20:40and doesn't wobble in my hand.
0:20:42- Well this is, I mean this is like,
0:20:44what you've identified here is like,
0:20:46this applies to so many different categories of things.
0:20:48where like, you know, well, thanks to Left of Cards
0:20:51Against Humanity for sponsoring our show once again.
0:20:54So what, this applies--
0:20:56- Way to get out of the ad.
0:20:56- Yeah, so, well, 'cause I'm gonna run over the time
0:20:59that I allot for the ads now, so.
0:21:01♫ Syracuse and Toaster
0:21:04♫ Reviews all day every single day
0:21:06♫ Hear 'em talk about Toaster
0:21:09♫ And I'm whisked away
0:21:11♫ I can love my toaster
0:21:12But like, this applies to so many things,
0:21:14like, you know, you have, you have like,
0:21:17It used to have like, you know, cheap, good,
0:21:20and then commercial/pro in so many things.
0:21:23Electronics, you know, appliances, stuff like that.
0:21:26And now you still have cheap, good,
0:21:29and commercial/pro price points on things,
0:21:33but it seems like the middle tier there,
0:21:35like the prosumer kind of level,
0:21:39that in so many things is now just like
0:21:42the same cheap garbage that the cheap one is made out of
0:21:46doesn't last any longer, isn't of much higher quality,
0:21:49just has more bells and whistles on it.
0:21:51But it's still a cheap, quality thing
0:21:54that you're just paying $200 for.
0:21:56- And I think toaster ovens in particular,
0:21:58the original Hyper Critical episode about this
0:22:00was titled "Worse and More Diverse"
0:22:01because there are so many more toasters
0:22:03in all different shapes and sizes,
0:22:05but all of them are crappier.
0:22:06And I don't think that's true across the board.
0:22:08The great example is any Japanese car,
0:22:11Honda Toyota cars, the knobs and stuff in those
0:22:13feel great compared to toaster knobs.
0:22:15They're not as nice as obviously BMW or Lexus or Mercedes controls, but they are really,
0:22:20really good.
0:22:21They put every toaster to shame.
0:22:22And you can get that in a Honda Fit for like $15,000.
0:22:24The cheapest car you can get.
0:22:26They still have nice turn stalks.
0:22:29In the grand scheme of things, nothing like just these pieces of crap that are on a $200
0:22:34toaster.
0:22:35I feel like it is possible at the price points they want to hit if they cared about it, because
0:22:40you don't have to do all the bells and whistles.
0:22:41You don't have to do the actual expensive things of having more healing elements, of
0:22:44having a little computer and having an LCD screen and crap like that.
0:22:47Like we understand you have to hit a price point.
0:22:50Pair it down to just heating elements, simple, you know, mechanical analog controls for them,
0:22:56a box and a door, and just concentrate on the few elements that you touch and make them
0:22:59nice.
0:23:00And that's what the cheap car companies do.
0:23:01These cars don't have fancy features.
0:23:02A Honda Fit does not have a camera that shows you all around your car, but composited out
0:23:06of a bunch of cameras at the corners of your car so you can park without scraping your
0:23:09--
0:23:10It's such a great feature.
0:23:11-- your wheels and things.
0:23:12I know it is.
0:23:13money for that. They have the money for a bunch of plastic on a dashboard, a plastic
0:23:18wheel, and they find a way to make parts that are cheap, that are simple to assemble, and
0:23:25that feel not like pieces of crap.
0:23:28Okay. So, what's our first topic this week?
0:23:31We have follow-up from the chat room. Do you want to – I missed this one. I'm assuming
0:23:35Casey put this in there.
0:23:36I have no idea what you're talking about.
0:23:37The SSG thing.
0:23:38Yeah, if they say it in the chat room, we say it's real-time follow-up from our secret
0:23:42anonymous tipster who foolishly hangs out in the chatroom every week or as far as we're
0:23:46able to tell, same guy, says "Apple Samsung 800, 8xxx meaning the 840, 850, whatever series
0:23:52firmware is not the same as retail drives, we fix the bugs." I don't know what that means
0:23:57because I bought mine from Amazon or whatever, it's not Apple's thing, but does Apple ship
0:24:01devices with Samsung 800 series SSDs in them? Well they have like Samsung manufactured sticks
0:24:08in their various, like the Mac Pro, I think that's a Samsung SSD stick and stuff like
0:24:14that, but it's not packaged in a 2.5 inch drive enclosure with the serial ATA port in
0:24:18the back. It's just like, it's in those little sticks they put in all their computers.
0:24:22So that counts as like the 800 series, even though obviously it looks nothing like the
0:24:25things you buy from retail?
0:24:26Yeah, I mean, yeah, the tips are saying now, those are just variants of normal Samsung
0:24:31SSDs, so yeah, I'm sure like, you know, the Samsung giant serial number, you know, MSATA
0:24:36thing is, say, a rebranded 840 Pro or something.
0:24:40Yeah, well, that doesn't help me or doesn't help anyone else who bought a, you know, commercial
0:24:44third party, buy it directly from, you know, Samsung branded thing that looks like a, you
0:24:50know, little two and a half inch drive but actually has a bunch of chips inside it. But
0:24:53anyway, yeah, Apple tends to do that. That's what it means. You know, Apple qualifies their
0:24:56drives to work with trim or not. And, you know, they test them and they make sure they
0:25:02and so if you're buying third-party stuff,
0:25:04Apple's default is, "No, we won't enable trim for you
0:25:07"because we haven't tested your thing,
0:25:09"and be careful if you haven't tested it either."
0:25:12I don't know if people have the option
0:25:15of trying to fix the firmware
0:25:16in their Samsung 850 retail drives.
0:25:18I would not recommend that.
0:25:19- And the tipster is saying that, yes,
0:25:23the Apple drives are just variants of normal Samsung SSDs.
0:25:28- Have you guys ever run a firmware update
0:25:30on a disk of any sort?
0:25:32- I think I have in the past.
0:25:34You used to have to boot into DOS to do it,
0:25:36like give you a floppy drive, do you remember that?
0:25:38And so I would use like virtual PC,
0:25:41this is back in the day, you know, before x86 Max,
0:25:43use virtual PC to be able to use
0:25:47the virtual floppy drive thing to get it to see my drive.
0:25:50It was this convoluted, terrifying thing.
0:25:52But at that point, the drive is empty.
0:25:54I would make sure, before I attempt this,
0:25:56get all the data off the drive,
0:25:57so then I guess worst case scenario,
0:25:59I brick it and have to send it back
0:26:01and they send me a new one, but I have done it.
0:26:03- I don't think I have.
0:26:04- Yeah, I did it like once and it was one of those,
0:26:07it was like, it was embarrassingly late in technology
0:26:10that it was requiring me to use a DOS floppy.
0:26:13It was like to the point where I had to figure out
0:26:15how to boot a DOS floppy image
0:26:17because the computer I had of course didn't have,
0:26:19it was like 2007, it was like something very late time
0:26:23that's like, wow, we stopped using floppies
0:26:25like 10 years beforehand.
0:26:26- You have to edit your config.sys, right?
0:26:28(laughing)
0:26:29- Wow, that's, I actually never was brave enough
0:26:31to do that, even when I was a PC guy.
0:26:32- I think that the line was in an Apple ad,
0:26:34back when they were trying to make fun of DOS,
0:26:36which was, you know, the appropriate thing to do,
0:26:38because it was ridiculous at the time,
0:26:39but they had some kid in the ad say,
0:26:41you need to add it to your config.sys.
0:26:42- Nice.
0:26:43So, Apple Music.
0:26:48- Yeah.
0:26:48- Have you guys listened to Taylor Swift yet?
0:26:50- Nope.
0:26:51- What do you mean yet?
0:26:52Most of us have heard Taylor Swift already,
0:26:54but I like the fact that it took a large new product
0:26:57initiative from Apple to get you to listen to the songs that everyone has been listening
0:27:01to.
0:27:02To get me to listen to like the number one selling album of like the last two years or
0:27:06whatever.
0:27:07Yeah.
0:27:08Yeah, well, yeah.
0:27:09So it seems like a pretty good service.
0:27:11I mean, did you guys, have you guys used streaming services before?
0:27:15Mm-hmm.
0:27:16Yeah, I'm a Spotify user and a fairly devout one.
0:27:20Devout enough that I'm happy enough with it that I've never tried Beats.
0:27:24I've never tried RDO.
0:27:26That doesn't mean they're not better, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't like them more, it's
0:27:30just I've been happy with Spotify and I haven't had any compelling reason to mess with my
0:27:34setup.
0:27:35And so I've been fiddling with Apple Music over the last 24 hours as we record this,
0:27:40we're recording it on Wednesday night and Apple Music launched roughly midday yesterday.
0:27:46And I didn't play much with the streaming portion of it until today.
0:27:51I was mostly just listening to Beats 1 because I was really curious to hear how it was.
0:27:56Like Beats 1 I thought it was entertaining. I thought the music selections were good and varied
0:28:00pretty early on
0:28:03They played a
0:28:06Non English song which took me aback and then I thought you know what that's pretty cool
0:28:11Actually if this really is worldwide I forget the slogan they use over and over and over again
0:28:16But apparently not enough yeah, that's right because it would have been burned in by now
0:28:23But anyways, since it's a worldwide radio station or so they say
0:28:26The fact that they were playing non English songs, I thought was kind of cool
0:28:31I don't know Zane Lowe or any of the other DJs from anything, but they all seem pretty entertaining
0:28:37Today, however, I started playing with what I would call the Spotify like
0:28:42features of
0:28:45Apple music so that is to say I want to play
0:28:48such-and-such album by such-and-such artist right now and
0:28:53And it worked just fine, but I've been thinking about it a lot since I've been fiddling with
0:29:00it around lunchtime today, and I haven't come up with a good way to describe it, but I don't
0:29:05like it.
0:29:07And I feel the best way I can describe it, and I can't decide if this was the opinion
0:29:14I had before I even tried it, and so now I'm just fitting my experience to my previously
0:29:19held opinion, but it felt like it's a bunch of stuff just stapled onto the side of iTunes,
0:29:25which is already relatively confusing to me to begin with because I don't use iTunes very
0:29:30often.
0:29:31And it just felt weird.
0:29:34Whereas Spotify, it has many of its own UI issues.
0:29:38It has many, many problems and many, many poor choices.
0:29:43But by and large, it does not take me long to figure out how to go to a particular album
0:29:48to a particular artist or to perform a particular operation.
0:29:52Whereas, as an example, I wanted to listen to,
0:29:56or I wanted to see the activity-based playlists that they had set up.
0:30:00A friend of the show, Underscore, had snarkily pointed out that
0:30:04they have a "Getting It On" playlist, I believe it's called.
0:30:08And so I was going to look and see what these playlists were and what options they were,
0:30:11and it took me literally five minutes to find it.
0:30:14Because I thought it would be in the, either the playlists section,
0:30:17section, but no, that was my playlist in iTunes, traditional iTunes. Then I thought it would
0:30:22be in the "For You" section, but no, they weren't for me. And so I went looking in every
0:30:28section except the section that it was in, which was, I think, new. Because clearly all
0:30:32these playlists should be in the "New" section. And so, I don't know, I just, I'm not saying
0:30:38I don't like it, I'm not saying I'm not going to switch to it. I very well may switch to
0:30:42But my initial impression is Beats 1 thumbs up, Apple Music as a streaming on-demand service,
0:30:49thumb to the side.
0:30:51Haven't really decided yet.
0:30:52You know, when Apple did photos recently, I felt like they kind of wiped the slate clean
0:30:59of all their past efforts.
0:31:02Like they had accumulated a lot of history with Aperture and iPhoto, and clearly they
0:31:05were like, "All right, do over.
0:31:06Start over from scratch.
0:31:08Let's bring only what we need with us and give it a sort of migration path.
0:31:13And the same thing with the photo streams, they kind of kept those on, but they get reconceptualized
0:31:17a little bit in the new service with an icon photo library.
0:31:22It was their chance to put a big reset button.
0:31:25And Apple Music, product naming-wise, looks like, oh, what crap are we doing with iTunes
0:31:30and iTunes match and this, that, and the other thing.
0:31:32Apple Music, let's reset, new name, we're just going to start over.
0:31:36But as Casey just pointed out, they didn't.
0:31:38What they did was took the existing mess, which involves iTunes and a bunch of other
0:31:41crap, and added more stuff to it.
0:31:44Even iTunes Match is still around and is confusingly different.
0:31:47We should put this link in the show.
0:31:48Not Serenity had a good article today explaining, "Do I need iTunes Match if I have Apple Music?
0:31:53Do I just want one or the other?
0:31:55Are there differences?
0:31:56What are those differences?"
0:31:57It's super confusing.
0:31:58That's before you even get into, "So the little icon on my iPhone has changed and now I can't
0:32:02find anything anymore.
0:32:03And by the way, iTunes 12.2 continues, you know, doesn't even have Apple Music in it,
0:32:07but continues to have more different changes.
0:32:10It doesn't have Apple Music, right?
0:32:11Like it doesn't have the streaming stuff in it?
0:32:13iTunes, now, iTunes on the desktop, the new version that came out like a few hours after
0:32:17Beats launched, sorry, Apple Music launched, that has everything.
0:32:20Oh, all right.
0:32:21So it must have been one before it had been updated because the one came out for iOS first.
0:32:25Yeah, yeah.
0:32:26But anyway, like, this is, these are features on top of all the existing other features.
0:32:30Some features are superseded and replaced by new ones.
0:32:32Some are not, and some things have different names and they're in different places, so
0:32:36it's not the sort of clean sheet reset.
0:32:38Which makes some sense because it is an additive thing.
0:32:40It's like, well we already had the thing where you could download and buy music, and we already
0:32:43had the thing where you could rip your CDs and organize music, and we already had all
0:32:46these other things in podcasts and syncing your iOS devices and all the other crap you
0:32:50can do in iTunes.
0:32:51But we didn't have a streaming service, now we have a streaming service and we also have
0:32:55this radio station and we also have, like, boy there's a lot of crap in there.
0:32:59And for someone like me who doesn't, like I have Spotify installed and I've used it
0:33:02a few times, but for someone like me who's not, like I tend to just want to listen to
0:33:05my music.
0:33:07All this other stuff is, I look at all this other stuff and think, in what way does this
0:33:14either help or hurt my ability to listen to music the way I normally listen to it?
0:33:18Is it going to, for example, scramble all my album and artist metadata as some people
0:33:21are reporting the new version of iTunes has done to them, if they had previously used
0:33:24it, iTunes match?
0:33:25Will it let me say get higher bit rate DRMP versions of songs that I ripped from CD many
0:33:30years ago?
0:33:31iTunes match did that.
0:33:32That was a good feature.
0:33:33It was a plus.
0:33:34Will it let me not have access to all of my music on my iPhone but not have to have all
0:33:38my music on my iPhone?
0:33:39Again, iTunes match did that.
0:33:40That was a plus.
0:33:41Apple Music stuff I feel like is neutral or a minus because it makes it harder for me
0:33:44to find things that I want to find and the sort of teething bugs .0 release or whatever
0:33:51even though this is kind of like Beats Music 2, or whatever their service was called before,
0:33:56make me worry about it.
0:33:58So I did sign up for the trial, but I'm a little bit afraid of the new version of iTunes
0:34:02on my Mac, and I guess maybe I'll look into the streaming things and try it, but it's
0:34:08not a slam on their service, I can't really judge it because I'm not a streaming music
0:34:11kind of person, like I was never into any of the other ones I installed either.
0:34:14I'm mostly looking at it as a potential harm to my existing music listening habits, which
0:34:21you know, to Apple's credit, they're still trying to support that.
0:34:23Like, you can still listen to music that way if you want to.
0:34:26And maybe you might still want to subscribe to Apple Music for the iCloud syncing features,
0:34:31but maybe not if you already subscribe to iTunes Match, which is way cheaper.
0:34:36So anyway, I feel like this is a very confusing situation for me, and I'm not sure what to
0:34:40make of it.
0:34:41Yeah, it seems like, you know, I totally agree with you on, you know, the problem of bolting
0:34:46all this onto their existing very complicated iTunes/music setup that, you know, they have
0:34:53so much legacy there. And, you know, comparing it with Photos was apt, you know, but, you
0:34:58know, with Photos, they did a clean start and that was a massive engineering effort,
0:35:03it seems. I mean, it seemed like it, first of all, I think it was late, but it was also,
0:35:09you know, just it was a massive effort, I would imagine, to get to basically, you know,
0:35:16try to replace iPhoto and Aperture with this new thing
0:35:19and do a pretty decent job at a 1.0,
0:35:21plus this massive cloud backend stuff
0:35:23and having iOS match up the whole time with the desktop,
0:35:27like that's just a massive effort
0:35:29that had to go into photos to make that happen.
0:35:32I would love if they did the same thing with iTunes
0:35:35and deprecate iTunes and have a new app
0:35:38just called Music, even on Mac,
0:35:41and have a new music.app that only does music,
0:35:45and even leave videos and stuff, make a separate videos app.
0:35:51Just like they split off iBooks, and that was fine.
0:35:54They even now kicked audiobooks out of the music on iOS
0:35:59and left that in the iBooks app now.
0:36:01They can do the same thing on Mac.
0:36:03Basically, slowly divest iTunes of the things
0:36:06that it does that aren't music.
0:36:08- And fold iTunes Match into it.
0:36:10- The fact that iTunes Match still exists,
0:36:13there should be one new thing that encompasses,
0:36:15functionality is fine, but there should be one new thing
0:36:18with various different price points and features.
0:36:21It should supersede iTunes Match.
0:36:22In the same way that photo streams still exist
0:36:25in the new photos things, but they're re-conceptualized
0:36:27as a share section of iPhoto.
0:36:29So if you had existing ones, they're there,
0:36:30and you can make new ones, but it's like,
0:36:32it's under a new umbrella, a new name,
0:36:35a new pricing structure, there's just one thing
0:36:37you have to know about, not seven layers of legacy things
0:36:39that you have to know about and understand
0:36:40how they interact.
0:36:42That's how it should be presented and conceptualized.
0:36:44And like you said, the implementation-wise,
0:36:46if you're gonna try to conceptualize it,
0:36:47is that you also have to get it out of the app
0:36:49that you use to sync your iPod Shuffle or whatever.
0:36:52- Exactly, and I think that's the main problem,
0:36:54is they have all this massive legacy stuff
0:36:56that iTunes still has to do.
0:36:58There's still nothing else that can do a lot of these roles.
0:37:01And yes, you have iOS devices that can set themselves up now
0:37:06without a computer and never be synced to iTunes at all,
0:37:08but there's still, A, there's still a lot of people
0:37:11who do sync it to iTunes, or who do use iTunes
0:37:13to manage their iOS devices, and B,
0:37:15there's all those devices they keep selling called iPods
0:37:18that still need iTunes, so it's like,
0:37:20there's still, and granted, they're not selling
0:37:22a ton of iPods, but they are still selling them,
0:37:24and they might be getting new colors
0:37:25in a couple of weeks or whatever,
0:37:26like it doesn't, it seems like the massive amount
0:37:30of engineering effort that was required
0:37:33to dump iPhoto in Aperture and make this new photos thing
0:37:37with this new iCloud photos library, the corresponding scale of the job to do
0:37:44that for iTunes and music was probably just too big to do in a reasonable amount
0:37:49of time, and it's just it's not time for that yet. I don't know if it ever will
0:37:52be, but it's I think it's clear that Apple believed it was not time for that
0:37:57yet and that they probably had to move faster to get you know they were clearly
0:38:02like like the relevance of of the iTunes music store to to buy music outright. I
0:38:07I think was declining faster than they probably expected.
0:38:10- Well, they had plenty of time to react.
0:38:12That's something we need to say for the context here.
0:38:15This is a me too move.
0:38:16Apple should have had a streaming service long ago.
0:38:19They spent a long time getting one.
0:38:20They ended up having to acquire a company
0:38:22to accelerate their ability to have one.
0:38:24But if you had asked, the rise of all the streaming services,
0:38:28it's not like this happened overnight.
0:38:30It seems to have caught Apple flat-footed,
0:38:33but it shouldn't have because there was plenty of time
0:38:35for them to realize this is a thing they should have
0:38:37it seems like they just couldn't get it together and ended up having to make an acquisition
0:38:42to bring that to bear.
0:38:43And my favorite hobby horse with the whole server-side stuff, and which to Apple's credit
0:38:48they're actually making some motions on, is like, "Oh, we did that thing with photos.
0:38:52It was a big effort.
0:38:53We've got to do it for music too.
0:38:54We don't have time.
0:38:55It's too much effort."
0:38:56If you concentrate on producing infrastructure for network services, instead of concentrating
0:39:03"Oh, we've got to redo photos." If you make infrastructure, like say CloudKit, that is
0:39:07an example of infrastructure. If you do a good job with your general purpose infrastructure,
0:39:12lots of sort of online powered applications have similar needs. And I've hammered on this
0:39:15again and again, that's like all Google does it seems like is make incredibly powerful
0:39:19infrastructure upon which they can build all sorts of applications. Each one of those applications
0:39:24doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and find a new way to store its data and stuff. So
0:39:27I would hope that some of the effort they put into the backend for photos would give
0:39:32them a leg up on potentially in the future rejiggering it.
0:39:37It's tough to think if they bought it, it's not something they did in house.
0:39:39Beats is what it is, they can't rewrite all of Beats code overnight or whatever.
0:39:43But I'm hoping some of that infrastructure work that they're finally doing will pay dividends
0:39:47in like, now it shouldn't be such a herculean effort to do the same thing you did for Fotos
0:39:51for iTunes because A, you've done it once before, and B, you should be able to reuse
0:39:55a lot of that work, a lot of the expertise, a lot of the experience, a lot of the code,
0:39:59a lot of the server-side stuff, a lot of the frameworks,
0:40:02that should help you accelerate the-- when they have
0:40:05to do the music app that is like, oh, it's a total rewrite
0:40:08or whatever, all the things they did for the Photos app,
0:40:12that's like framework stuff.
0:40:13They seem to understand that.
0:40:13Like, oh, Collection View, that would be useful everywhere.
0:40:15We should make that and have it everywhere.
0:40:17Core Animation, that's client-side infrastructure.
0:40:19We talked about this before.
0:40:20Server-side infrastructure, how do you store a bunch of data?
0:40:23How do you get it on demand in a reliable way?
0:40:26and I have a database to store all the metadata,
0:40:29how do I make all your stuff be in the cloud
0:40:31and only parts of it on your devices?
0:40:32And that's what they're trying to do with photos
0:40:34and music is actually data volume wise an easier problem
0:40:37because photos are bigger than music, so for the most part.
0:40:41- Yeah, I mean, I think really the challenges we see here
0:40:43are purely that, it's the same thing like every time iTunes
0:40:47gets a redesign, like the desktop,
0:40:49every time there's a new design for iTunes,
0:40:52it really just makes the app harder and more confusing
0:40:54to use because they can't actually remove features
0:40:58from it for various reasons.
0:41:00So instead, they just hide things in different modes
0:41:04and drawers and stuff.
0:41:05And it's just like, it's weird.
0:41:07You just get this impossible to use application
0:41:09that is extremely complicated but is trying to look simple.
0:41:12And they move things around a lot.
0:41:14And that upsets people who are like,
0:41:15I knew where that was before.
0:41:16And now I don't.
0:41:17And it's like, I bet if you asked them, they'd say, OK.
0:41:20If you knew where it was before, it's weird that we moved it.
0:41:23But if you've never used it before,
0:41:24the new location is better for reasons X, Y, and Z.
0:41:26And maybe they're right, but for,
0:41:29and maybe they're even right that there are more new users
0:41:32than there are existing ones.
0:41:33But just constantly reshuffling the deck chairs,
0:41:35especially kind of like when they change
0:41:38the whole iTunes DJ functionality
0:41:40and replace it with Up Next.
0:41:42Not only do people know how the iTunes DJ functionality
0:41:45worked, but it was around long enough that people
0:41:46were like, kind of get into a groove with it.
0:41:48They have kind of like a workflow of how they play music
0:41:50at parties or whatever involving iTunes DJ
0:41:52or whatever that feature was called,
0:41:53and then it was replaced with UpNext,
0:41:55they can say, "Oh, UpNext is better for reasons X, Y, and Z."
0:41:58It's like, "But I can't reproduce my workflow."
0:42:00It's, you know, not that iTunes is, you know,
0:42:02like a desktop publishing application
0:42:05or Photoshop or whatever,
0:42:06but you're just constantly moving things around
0:42:10to try to find, maybe this arrangement
0:42:12will be more pleasing, but like you said, Marco,
0:42:14there's only, if you keep the same set of things
0:42:17and you don't wanna give up anything,
0:42:19which you probably don't because it's not like
0:42:20there's lots of unessential functionality.
0:42:22It's just like the functionality of seven apps in one.
0:42:26Moving it around just pisses people off
0:42:28who you're experienced loyal users,
0:42:30and you can't actually make it that much simpler,
0:42:33because all the crap is still there somewhere.
0:42:35- Right, exactly, and by the way,
0:42:37there's the big Windows question
0:42:39of how do you enable these things for people on Windows,
0:42:42so they need a bunch of crap for that.
0:42:44There's obviously tons of technical debt here
0:42:47for things like I still have to quit my music player
0:42:51when I upgrade my developer compiler tools
0:42:54because they're related.
0:42:55It's like there's so many weird little tie-ins to iTunes
0:42:59that have been accumulating over the years
0:43:01that I think any kind of meaningful change to it
0:43:05is extremely unlikely to happen
0:43:07just because it seems like it's never going to be worth
0:43:11the probably surprisingly large engineering effort
0:43:14to substantially improve it and break things up
0:43:17and start clean.
0:43:19- Well, you said never and we know about that.
0:43:21But anyway.
0:43:22- On a limited time scale.
0:43:23- Thus far, yeah, that's come up recently.
0:43:26I'm trying to figure out if I ever actually said that
0:43:28or if you guys said it as an attempt to characterize
0:43:30and mock my line of reasoning.
0:43:33And so far no one has found, they found me saying it
0:43:36in reply to Casey saying it back to me,
0:43:37but I don't know if I ever said that.
0:43:39But anyway.
0:43:40- Underscore will find it.
0:43:41He finds everything. - Someone tried
0:43:42and they thought they had found it,
0:43:43really they just found Casey saying it snidely.
0:43:46So it was obvious that at some point previously
0:43:48that it had come up before.
0:43:50- If I remember correctly, I think it was
0:43:52when I was saying Apple didn't really need
0:43:55to replace Objective-C, and you were saying
0:43:58on an infinite time scale, yeah.
0:43:59- The argument you're getting at I did make,
0:44:01but I'm saying those exact words.
0:44:03- Okay.
0:44:03- Because it keeps being called
0:44:04my infinite time scale argument,
0:44:06and I guess it's more like that's Marco's name,
0:44:10Marco's snide characterization of my much more subtle
0:44:13and nuanced argument.
0:44:15- Right, yeah, Derpy, Mud Lake.
0:44:17- Or maybe I actually said that.
0:44:18I'm willing to believe that I actually said it too,
0:44:20I just don't remember it because so long ago.
0:44:24But anyway, yeah, iTunes,
0:44:25something's gonna have to be done eventually for now.
0:44:29They just are content to keep changing the icon
0:44:31and moving crap around in the UI.
0:44:33But iOS got, I mean, I don't know how new the iOS app is.
0:44:36Like it's newish, certainly there's less technical debt
0:44:39in the iOS one and they did move crap around a lot.
0:44:42And if you, that's the thing, like if you,
0:44:45even if you don't sign up for Apple Music,
0:44:47a lot of the options it seems like are moved around
0:44:50or hidden or not there and you actually have to go
0:44:51into the settings app and say Apple Music off
0:44:54and then it looks more like the old music player app.
0:44:57I did sign up for the trial, and by the way,
0:45:01if you sign up for the free trial,
0:45:02there's like a three month free trial,
0:45:03which is pretty generous as far as free trials go.
0:45:08It will auto renew for whatever price you sign up for,
0:45:11but you can turn off the auto renewals.
0:45:12Somebody tweeted instructions for doing that.
0:45:14I followed their instructions and it wasn't that bad.
0:45:16It was like, go to your Apple ID, go to manage,
0:45:18and then go turn off auto renew.
0:45:20So it's kind of slimy that they turn auto renew on
0:45:23by default, I'd rather have it say,
0:45:25you know, like a Squarespace real free trial,
0:45:27like it's a free trial, and at the end of that,
0:45:29then we'll do this, say hey, you've been using this
0:45:31for three months, if you like it, pay money,
0:45:32rather than just saying, oh, we're just gonna sign you up
0:45:36for auto renew. I suppose it would pop up, send the email or whatever like all the subscriptions
0:45:40do and say, "By the way, your iCloud storage is about to renew in six days to give you
0:45:45a chance to cancel or whatever." But it would be nicer if they didn't have the auto renew.
0:45:48But apparently Apple is not that far on the light side of the forest that they're not
0:45:52going to have any auto renew. But you can turn it off. But anyway, I have signed up
0:45:56to do that. I can still find my music. I am now slightly fearful from reading the horror
0:46:01stories of what it might do to my metadata and stuff for all my songs.
0:46:04So I'm kind of warily watching it and being careful with how I play back my music.
0:46:10So to turn off this auto-renew, if you are in Apple Music in just about any tab, it looks
0:46:18like you hit the little avatar profile person in the upper left.
0:46:23And then there's a button for a row for "view Apple ID."
0:46:28And then in there, there's a subscription section, there's a manage button, and then
0:46:32in there, you can say, it says your membership, Apple Music membership, and you can turn it
0:46:38off in there.
0:46:39So, just FYI.
0:46:40>> Yeah, it seems like it's very, very similar to the auto-renewing subscriptions that they
0:46:44have in iOS for things like Newsstand publications.
0:46:46By the way, Newsstand is dead, yay!
0:46:48And other things, any kind of auto-renewing thing.
0:46:51>> It's funny you bring that up because as I went through the stance to confirm I knew
0:46:55how to do it, I noticed that I had one other thing in subscriptions. Would you like to
0:46:59guess what it is?
0:47:00The magazine?
0:47:01That's correct.
0:47:02Nice. Although it shouldn't be billing anymore. I think it's...
0:47:05No, no, no. It's expired. Yeah. But either way, I thought that was kind of funny. So
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0:50:24- All right, so anything else about Apple Music?
0:50:27- Yeah, I thought the sort of first run experience
0:50:30where it shows you the artist bubbles,
0:50:33you can tap them multiple times to make them bigger
0:50:35and it shows the picture of the artist on them.
0:50:37They demoed that in the keynote
0:50:39when they were introducing it and I went through it
0:50:41and I was disappointed for a couple reasons.
0:50:43One, the little bubbles it gave me,
0:50:46I was looking for my favorite bands and they were not there.
0:50:49So I'm not sure how it was coming up with the button.
0:50:51You could do like more artists,
0:50:52I kept hitting more artists,
0:50:53hoping eventually it would rotate in
0:50:54some of my favorite bands because I think that,
0:50:56if it's trying to get an idea of what kind of music I like,
0:50:59I'd like to tap the bubbles for U2R
0:51:01Bruce Springsteen Radiohead, like that's a good start right there, right?
0:51:04You know, we can branch out and keep going, right? And those just weren't there.
0:51:07But two, I don't think it should have had to ask me at all because I've been an iTunes match
0:51:12subscriber for a long time. It's got all my play counts for like for years worth of play,
0:51:18cumulative play counts across all devices. It's got that in the cloud somewhere, right?
0:51:24Why does it have to ask me who my favorite artists are? Don't ask me. You've got the actual data.
0:51:28No matter what I say, like I mean you can have both.
0:51:31I tweeted this, I thought it was ridiculous
0:51:32that they didn't use this information.
0:51:33There's a couple of angles to this.
0:51:34One, the angle is you don't have to do that bubble thing
0:51:37and if you don't do it,
0:51:38maybe they do use your thing in the cloud.
0:51:39If that's the case, then their sort of onboarding process
0:51:43did not make that clear to me.
0:51:44That if I just skip the bubbles entirely
0:51:47and don't deal with it,
0:51:48it will just use the information
0:51:49it has about my listening habits.
0:51:51I didn't, that was not made clear to me during the thing,
0:51:53if it's even true.
0:51:54And the second thing is like,
0:51:57having both of those options,
0:51:58Maybe I don't want you to use my usage data.
0:51:59Maybe I think my tastes have changed recently.
0:52:01Maybe I want to give a time window.
0:52:02There's lots of, I just felt like there's lots of things
0:52:05they could have and should have done,
0:52:07and if they are doing them,
0:52:08they could have communicated it better.
0:52:09It wasn't a nice first run experience.
0:52:11And a lot of people said, well,
0:52:12that's a Google kind of thing to do,
0:52:14where they make it clear
0:52:16that they know you're listening experience.
0:52:17We know they know.
0:52:19How do you think your play count,
0:52:20when you play something on your phone,
0:52:22that you look at the play count in iTunes,
0:52:23because you have iTunes matches, it increments over there.
0:52:26We know they know this information.
0:52:27We have, that's how iTunes match works, right?
0:52:30And even if it wasn't in the cloud,
0:52:31even if it was just on your device,
0:52:32even on a given device, you have at least like
0:52:35a couple of weeks or months of years of play count data,
0:52:38depending on how long you've had the device.
0:52:39So even if you stayed on device,
0:52:41you could still look up that information.
0:52:43I would have liked the onboarding process to say,
0:52:45we do or do not know something about your habits,
0:52:47either because you just got this phone,
0:52:49you've never subscribed to iTunes match,
0:52:50you don't listen to iTunes, you listen to Spotify.
0:52:52Like, let it tell the person how much it thinks it knows
0:52:55about your habits and say,
0:52:57would you like us to use what we know of your habits
0:52:59over the X number of months or the X number of,
0:53:02some way of presenting to them to say,
0:53:03this is how much we know about you.
0:53:04Do you want us to use that information
0:53:06to do your recommendations?
0:53:07Or do you want to pick new things?
0:53:09And then go through the bubbles process
0:53:10and then have the bubbles process be a little bit nicer
0:53:12about guessing which artist it wants to put in the mix.
0:53:16Maybe it's because, maybe it's just go by your age.
0:53:18Like that would be, I don't know what kind of algorithms
0:53:20they use, but age would probably give them a good start.
0:53:25Maybe they don't have that demographic information either, but again, I don't know how it's coming up with the bubbles
0:53:29But whatever algorithm it was using the bubbles were not matching up with me
0:53:32Like it was bands that I had not heard of that were probably bands that the youngsters like
0:53:36And it just would not bring up a bubble for any of my like top five or top seven
0:53:42Favorite bands no matter how many times I had more artists
0:53:46Yeah, so that was that was disappointing other people were saying that the recommendation bubbles led them to a bunch of playlists
0:53:53that really nailed their taste.
0:53:54And even after I went through the bubbles
0:53:56and picked the best ones that I could,
0:53:57when I saw the sort of page for you
0:53:59or recommendations for you, they weren't terrible.
0:54:02So that makes me think it really is using
0:54:04the iTunes match information behind the scenes,
0:54:06which again makes me question why the bubbles were there.
0:54:08But anyway, the bubbles are a neat UI,
0:54:11but the onboarding experience for Apple Music
0:54:14for me was not good.
0:54:15- So real-time follow-up, sort of, kind of.
0:54:20I was fiddling with Apple Music on my phone
0:54:22while I was listening to you guys talk, and I went to the Connect tab to see what was
0:54:28there. And I'll start by saying that I got subscribed to a bunch of artists I could not
0:54:32possibly care less about when I first got onboarded with the whole Connect thing. That
0:54:39said, I went through and unselected most of them, kept the ones I liked, and then selected
0:54:44a couple others that I really enjoy. And so if I were to pick my favorite band right now,
0:54:49and this has been the case for a few years, and I've mentioned it I think before, that's this band called Mute Math.
0:54:54And so I was scrolling through Connect, and the second item after Dave Matthews' entry is an entry from Mute Math
0:55:04where apparently a local magazine from here in Richmond sat down with them either before or after the concert that Aaron and I went to
0:55:13that was a couple hours away from here, I think it was last month. And I had no idea this existed.
0:55:18I follow the entire band on Twitter. I follow the band's account on Twitter. I had no idea
0:55:23that this was a thing. And so when the show's over tomorrow or something, I'm going to go
0:55:26ahead and read this interview with with pretty much my favorite band from a local magazine.
0:55:32I had no earthly idea. So that's a pretty cool thing so far. And, and the connect thing
0:55:37seems like it's being populated by a handful of people somehow to McGraw's in here. I'm
0:55:41not really sure why. But, but no, it's that I'm impressed that I've already discovered
0:55:47or it's something I would not have known about otherwise.
0:55:49- I think it just makes you follow everybody
0:55:50and every artist in your collection.
0:55:52Its initial follow list is everybody
0:55:54who you have music from.
0:55:55- Which I think that's great.
0:55:56I mean, for years I've had this problem
0:55:58where I will have five albums from a band
0:56:03and they'll come out with a new album
0:56:04that I won't know about
0:56:06'cause I don't follow the news that well.
0:56:08And I'll discover it months or years later,
0:56:12like, oh my God, I would've bought this years ago.
0:56:14Why didn't I know about this album?
0:56:16And they've had for a long time some kind of like artist alert system where you could
0:56:21say like, you know, alert me whenever this artist has a new release or something. But
0:56:24you had to like manually enable that for everything. And it just seemed like the obvious choice
0:56:29would be like just look at any music I have, any artist in my collection, especially any
0:56:35artist for which I own full albums, just notify me whenever, just like, you know, have some
0:56:39newsfeed area or some notifications somewhere, email me. You email me for all sorts of other
0:56:44Email me for like whatever the whenever any artist who I've bought music from in the past releases a new album
0:56:50Do you think that's the right default any artist because I have tons of things that like I have two tracks by his artist one track
0:56:56But as artists like I think it's okay to have that option because manually following all the artists and your thing would be tedious
0:57:02but I'm not entirely sure that should be the default like I feel like most people have a
0:57:08a handful of artists that they're really interested
0:57:10in new releases from, and a long tail of artists
0:57:13that they have one or two tracks from.
0:57:14- Yep, I agree.
0:57:16- Really?
0:57:17I don't know, maybe I'm weird
0:57:18'cause I'm a full album kind of person, but I don't know.
0:57:21- I don't know who some of these artists are.
0:57:22I'm going through it now.
0:57:24Maybe this is some tracks from my kids or whatever,
0:57:27but like, "The Secret Sisters,"
0:57:29I don't even know who that is.
0:57:30- Yeah, there definitely were entries
0:57:32that I did not know the artist,
0:57:35or maybe I had a single track from them
0:57:38from like back when I was in college
0:57:40or something like that.
0:57:41- Yeah, and I'm not gonna, you know,
0:57:42I know who Toto is, but I'm not gonna follow them.
0:57:45I'm not awaiting the new Toto album.
0:57:47That's gonna be, you know what I mean?
0:57:49Unfollow.
0:57:50- Yeah, I don't know.
0:57:51It's, I didn't like the onboarding experience,
0:57:55which should sound familiar,
0:57:57but by and large, I didn't think it was,
0:58:00I don't think it's bad so far, so we'll see.
0:58:03I don't know.
0:58:05anything else about music. Honestly, I I've only listened to it for you know
0:58:10what a day right now so it's not you know I haven't spent too much time with
0:58:13it but I like it a lot so far I've already listened to a few albums that I
0:58:19wouldn't have jumped to buy but because I can listen to them now for free slash
0:58:24no additional cost I will glad to listen to the album and in on for a couple of
0:58:29them I thought you know I might want to buy this for a couple of them I thought
0:58:33you know, I'm really glad I didn't buy this, but that was that was interesting,
0:58:35you know, like that or, you know, I enjoyed it for those five minutes or for
0:58:38that 40 minutes, but I don't want to hear it again. And, you know, this, I mean, this
0:58:43is obviously, you know, this is like me discovering what everybody else in the
0:58:47world discovered years ago when streaming services started to become a
0:58:50thing, but this is kind of nice. Like, I like this and I can see why it changes
0:58:57the way people buy and pay for music so much because it is very compelling and
0:59:02And this is, if everything they said pans out,
0:59:06you know, if what they are attempting to do
0:59:11ends up being what they're actually doing,
0:59:13in the way that they have the human curation aspect
0:59:16and the playlist and everything,
0:59:18if that ends up being good and staying good,
0:59:21this is gonna be great for me,
0:59:22because I've tried other services in the past.
0:59:26At first, a long time ago, I tried Pandora,
0:59:28I tried Spotify, I briefly tried Ardeo,
0:59:31and then for like a day I tried Beats
0:59:33before I realized they didn't even have a real Mac app.
0:59:36My problem is that I don't find new music
0:59:40on my own very well.
0:59:42And the systems they've had in the iTunes store to date,
0:59:47where they basically just have like,
0:59:49you know, people who bought this
0:59:50also bought this list of crap at the bottom,
0:59:53that has been terrible for me.
0:59:54I've spent so much time exploring those,
0:59:57previewing those albums, and trying to see like,
0:59:59okay, I'll go to a band I love,
1:00:00and I'll see the people who bought also bought section
1:00:03at the bottom, and it's just a bunch of garbage.
1:00:06Like I can't imagine why people buy
1:00:09those two things together.
1:00:11So the human curation aspect so far
1:00:14in the handful of playlists that I've listened to
1:00:17that have been like the featured playlists kind of things
1:00:18where it looks like some person was involved,
1:00:20I've liked it.
1:00:21It has given me new music.
1:00:22It has introduced me to new stuff in a way that
1:00:26all of the algorithmic things in the previous services
1:00:29tried plus the iTunes recommendations under their purchased albums, those have never gotten
1:00:35there for me. They've never been good enough to stick with me. So far this looks promising,
1:00:41so I'm looking forward to this. And that is, that's what everyone always was saying about
1:00:45beats music when it was called that, that they were very good at that. And the only
1:00:49reason I didn't give that a chance again was because they didn't really have a Mac app.
1:00:52Now this seems like this could really be something for people like me who are too old to find
1:00:59good music on their own. How do you find the recommendations of services
1:01:03that are better than Apple at doing this type of thing, like maybe Amazon or Netflix? Netflix,
1:01:06I guess, is the best example. People who like this movie also like this movie. Do you find
1:01:10that Netflix, you just sort of don't find the people who also like conceptually is a
1:01:18good thing, or is it just that Apple's implementation is crappy and it just says, "People who
1:01:21like this also bought Taylor Swift's 1989 because everybody bought it and their algorithm
1:01:25- I'm stupid.
1:01:26- I've generally found those recommendation type things
1:01:30to be better than my opinion of apples.
1:01:33- Can you tell us about one more thing that's awesome
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1:01:38and Jon might as well.
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1:04:34- All right, so I wanted to quickly build
1:04:36on what you were saying, Marco, about streaming services.
1:04:39I don't, I'm not surprised that neither of you
1:04:42necessarily said that streaming services
1:04:44had worked that well for you in the past.
1:04:47I used to be a music listener like I think you guys are, which is you have a batch of
1:04:52music that you tend to listen to, you have your library, and you stray here and there,
1:04:57but generally speaking you're pretty darn content with what you got.
1:05:00I don't know what switch flipped in my mind, but over time I got more and more into hearing
1:05:06more and more eclectic things and satisfying very random cravings at very random times.
1:05:12And what I love about being a Spotify user, and this should be applicable to Apple Music
1:05:16as well, is that I can listen to damn near anything I want, anytime I want, immediately.
1:05:21And that's what's so appealing to me about streaming services.
1:05:24I never even got that into Spotify in terms of, um, in terms of, like, their radio stations,
1:05:32in terms of whatever curation they may have.
1:05:35And I agree that I've heard constantly about how great the curation is on Beats Music.
1:05:40And so I just loved being able to listen to anything, anytime.
1:05:45Spotify also has some really great community features, particularly around playlists. So
1:05:49for example, Aaron and myself have football season tickets to the University of Virginia,
1:05:55and we have a shared playlist with the guy that we go with that we will, any one of the
1:06:01three of us can just add songs to that playlist on Spotify, which works out really well. I
1:06:05have no earthly idea if that's possible on Apple Music. I doubt it, but I haven't tried.
1:06:11And so in a lot of ways Spotify has worked really well for me and I really, really enjoy
1:06:15it.
1:06:16And I enjoyed enough that I think it took me a day or two to sign up for the $10 a month
1:06:19fee for Spotify that I've been paying for like two or three years now.
1:06:23So I would encourage you to do exactly what you did, Marco, and give it a shot and just
1:06:28kind of try poking around and seeing what you can find.
1:06:30Because I think you might be surprised at how much interesting and good music you can
1:06:34find, even if all that ends up happening is you quit, you common, or you very often fall
1:06:39back to the things you already know and love. And the other thing I wanted to ask both of
1:06:44you guys is, did you have a chance to listen to Beats 1 at all? And I'll start with you,
1:06:48Marco.
1:06:49You can probably predict my answer.
1:06:51You either didn't or you heard it for 10 seconds and decided you hated it.
1:06:56The latter, pretty much. I listened, you know, everyone's saying it's very good. So I listened
1:07:01for, I don't know, five or six songs. Didn't hear a single thing that I liked at all. Each
1:07:07Each song I wanted to turn it off during,
1:07:11but I figured, oh, let me give it a little bit more time.
1:07:14So it's fine.
1:07:15I'm sure it's great for a lot of people.
1:07:17It's just not the kind of music I like.
1:07:19- So now you know how everyone feels
1:07:20when they listen to Fish.
1:07:21- Yeah, exactly.
1:07:22I mean, I think it'll be interesting to see how this does
1:07:27because it really is bringing many of the benefits
1:07:31of radio stations kind of back or to a different area
1:07:36they weren't really before.
1:07:39But it also brings most of the drawbacks of radio stations.
1:07:41Everyone's already very tired of hearing their station ID
1:07:45and their overlay, their talkovers and everything.
1:07:49You can't skip a song if you don't like it
1:07:51because it's live.
1:07:53And there's like, you know, you can't really go back either.
1:07:57It seems like they have brought most of the annoyances
1:08:00and limitations of radio stations with them.
1:08:02And most of that's out of necessity.
1:08:04You know, if they're going to do this,
1:08:05they kind of have to do it that way for the most part, so
1:08:08it seems like it is bringing into the modern age a format
1:08:14that is it's almost like the skeuomorphism of radio. It's
1:08:18like they copied all of the limitations and an annoyances,
1:08:22along with the the you know the the core of it meant much of
1:08:26which is you know kind of inseparable, so you know it's
1:08:31fine. I'm sure people will like it. Maybe if I was having a
1:08:34I might put that on or something,
1:08:37where I just wanted to put on something
1:08:39that would make me sound cool,
1:08:40if that's even possible, probably isn't.
1:08:43But I don't see myself listening to it, really.
1:08:47- All right, Jon, have you listened to it at all?
1:08:49- I didn't bother listening to it,
1:08:51and my additional point on Apple Music
1:08:53is basically just made by Marco,
1:08:55that first of all, actually getting back
1:08:57to Casey's characterization of the
1:08:59I have my collection of music and that's that,
1:09:00I would adjust that slightly to say
1:09:02The way I listen to music is I have my collection of music,
1:09:06and I'm always on the lookout for additions,
1:09:08but the key is I'm looking for additions
1:09:11to my collection of music.
1:09:13So if I was ever sort of,
1:09:15one way you can do it is you can graze,
1:09:16like just listen to a bunch of music,
1:09:18travel around links or whatever.
1:09:19You can also do it the same way I find a lot of things now,
1:09:21which is recommendations from people who I know
1:09:23who have similar tastes to me
1:09:24and things you see on social media
1:09:27and sort of the overwhelming recommendation
1:09:29of a bunch of people,
1:09:30everyone's saying you gotta go see "Fury Road,"
1:09:32Maybe there's something to that if everybody, if a whole bunch of people in your circle
1:09:35tell you Lady Gaga is not just another manufactured pop star, even though that's what you think
1:09:40about them for the first six months they're out, maybe you should look at, you know.
1:09:43But the whole activity is do a bunch of crap and add to my collection of music.
1:09:48So it's not a static collection.
1:09:49It does grow and it grows slowly, right?
1:09:52But I add not just new songs, but entire new artists and new bands get added to the collection.
1:09:57So it is a dynamic growing thing, but the essential question is when it comes time to
1:10:01to listen to music, do you want to listen to a bunch of music picked by somebody else
1:10:05or listen to "your music"?
1:10:07And listening to your music doesn't mean that you don't ever want to change your music.
1:10:11You do.
1:10:12You want to discover, like Marco, you want to discover new music that you will like.
1:10:16It's just a difference in when it comes time to do the listening part, not the discovery
1:10:20part, what do you want to do?
1:10:21And I just want to listen to my music, right?
1:10:23So that's why I didn't even bother listening to Beats 1, which I think is probably fine,
1:10:27but it's just not how I listen to music.
1:10:28The other angle on Apple Music that Marco was getting at was, and I've seen a lot of other people talking about this,
1:10:33this is, you know, this, not that, you know, people talk about it as if Apple's the first one to do it,
1:10:37but this, Spotify, RDO, all these things are
1:10:40interesting in that they are bringing
1:10:43radio to a generation of people
1:10:45who are much younger than us, obviously, who didn't grow up with radio as
1:10:50as big a dominant force in their life as it was in our lives, right?
1:10:54Not that they didn't know what radio was and didn't listen to it or whatever, but it, but like,
1:10:57the kids of the iPod generation when it was technically feasible for you to have a huge collection of music with you at all times
1:11:05That enabled a lot more people to do what I do
1:11:07We just have a massive collection of your music and listen to that instead of just saying I'm gonna listen to these
1:11:12Things coming over the airwaves, you know, cuz you're on your little transistor ready
1:11:16You couldn't have your whole record collection with you is gigantic
1:11:18Like you need a record player and needs to be not bouncing around, you know
1:11:21Even the CD players with skip protection like you could have one or two CDs, right?
1:11:25The people who grew up in the iPod era, this whole concept of someone else is going to
1:11:30pick a bunch of songs and play them to me live is something that they're familiar with
1:11:35tangentially, but wasn't their primary interface to music.
1:11:39So there's some novelty to it, like the sort of the radio skeuomorphism, it's kind of retro
1:11:45and it's also novel.
1:11:47And some people like that type of thing, like if your taste aligns well with the taste of
1:11:50the person who is programming that radio station, that can be good for you.
1:11:54And also I'm hoping that these internet reincarnations of radio stations get rid of a lot of the
1:12:01crap that defined old radio stations in terms of the things that you were played had little
1:12:05to do with the taste of any individual person, whether that taste is good or bad, and much
1:12:08more to do with what record companies were pushing or possibly paying to be played.
1:12:14So I'm hoping it does away with that as well, but like Marco said, the iPod era for people
1:12:19who grew up with radio freed us from the tyranny of radio stations, because there's usually
1:12:23maybe only four or five radio stations that came in good at your house, and there's the
1:12:27classic rock station, the oldie station, the alternative station, the heavy metal station,
1:12:32and like NPR, and a few, like, your options were so limited, it's like, I don't want to
1:12:37listen to what other people want to play for me, I know the music that I like, I can bring
1:12:41my, like, the beauty of the iPod was that it freed us from all of that, and bringing
1:12:45it back is not tempting me to go back to that old world, but for the people who never experienced
1:12:49that world or never fled it to go to the iPod, the same people who are asking for an FM tuner
1:12:55to be added for their iPods for years and years, Beats 1 and that sort of internet radio
1:13:00station intentionally removing the ability to skip tracks or even pause or rewind or
1:13:06anything like that could be an interesting novelty.
1:13:08And if that format is actually a thing and not just an accident of history, not just
1:13:13like well, back in the old days we had to do radio this way because of these technical
1:13:16limitations but once we didn't we never did that again.
1:13:19Like if it turns out that it actually is a way people want to listen to music and not
1:13:23just a technical limitation, it's good that all these streaming services are also saying,
1:13:28by the way, not everything about radio is stupid.
1:13:32There may still be a mass appeal to a DJ'd programmed, you know, quote unquote radio
1:13:39station on the internet.
1:13:40So even though I still think it's not for me, it is definitely worthwhile for everyone
1:13:44to figure out whether that's still a thing.
1:13:48- Yeah, I mean, I would say in many ways,
1:13:51it is similar to the problem that newspapers
1:13:53and magazines face, especially magazines,
1:13:56where, and I know, having tried to run one,
1:13:58and not having succeeded, really,
1:14:02you know, one of the problems is, like,
1:14:03when you have something like a magazine
1:14:05or a radio station, and you are prescribing to people,
1:14:08here's what you're going to see,
1:14:11here's the package of things,
1:14:12you're gonna see this, then this, then this,
1:14:14and are you gonna hear this and this and this?
1:14:15And we have moved on from that technologically.
1:14:19People are accustomed to more freedom.
1:14:21People are accustomed to being able to pick and choose
1:14:23and seek around and do whatever they want.
1:14:25And if you say, in the case of a magazine,
1:14:29I'm going to charge you X every month
1:14:31and I'm gonna give you these 10 articles
1:14:34and they're gonna be on a variety of topics
1:14:36and you might care about one of them.
1:14:39That worked for a long time
1:14:40when there were really no good alternatives,
1:14:41but now people can just find the few good things
1:14:44they like online from all sorts of different sources,
1:14:48not even just you, and they like that better,
1:14:51and it's kind of better for everybody that way,
1:14:53except for maybe the publishers,
1:14:54but it's better for the readers, for the consumers.
1:14:59And radio, I think, has a similar problem of like,
1:15:02you already have this world where everybody can have
1:15:04their own program station tailored exactly to their likes.
1:15:07If they don't like a song, they can skip it.
1:15:09If they want to play it again,
1:15:10they can just play it again.
1:15:10if they want to buy, you know, it's all integrated and everything like the world
1:15:14we have that isn't radio stations is really nice and really advanced and we
1:15:18are all accustomed to that now. So to to try to go back to the way radio was and
1:15:25I'm using it in the past tense because let's face it radio has been dead for a
1:15:27long time to go back to the way radio was now once we've all moved on with how
1:15:34we think music should work and and how music does work everywhere else. I think
1:15:39it's really a problem.
1:15:40I think we're all listening right now
1:15:43'cause we wanna try it out 'cause it's cool and new.
1:15:45I'm really curious to see if this actually is something
1:15:48that has any influence really whatsoever.
1:15:50Does it have any cultural presence?
1:15:53Are a lot of people listening to it in six months?
1:15:56- Our resident secret betraying Apple employee
1:16:00wants to emphasize that Spotify does not have a DJ.
1:16:02They just have what he calls a Pandora clone.
1:16:05So I'm not sure, my familiarity with streaming service
1:16:08small but like maybe Apple is the first one to try to get you know actual human
1:16:12DJ's to pick things out as opposed to algorithms and stuff like that but yeah
1:16:16all like technologically speaking if this turns out to be a thing it's very
1:16:20presumably very easy for all the other streaming companies to hire their own
1:16:22people to be DJ like radio DJs I'm sure they're out there looking for work like
1:16:27it especially if you can pay them Apple size salaries or even Spotify or Pandora
1:16:32size salaries. So yeah, because I don't listen to music that way, it's hard for me to handicap
1:16:41the odds that DJs turn out to be a thing. Some other person in the chatroom also said
1:16:46that a lot of this is, again, as usual from an American perspective, because American
1:16:50radio stations are crappy and maybe they're not so bad in the rest of the world. And the
1:16:54idea of a person gaining fame by having good taste and choosing music that other people
1:17:00here and you sort of trusting them to pick good music for you and coming to have sort
1:17:05of a relationship with them as a DJ hasn't happened for as much in the US because of
1:17:12all the radio corruption and top 40 BS and all the other recent things get played in
1:17:16the radio, but maybe it does happen in the rest of the world.
1:17:18So maybe they already know the answer to the question I'm asking, which is, is it actually
1:17:22valuable for a human to program music for lots of people to listen to, even though technology
1:17:27makes it possible to not have to ever do that again?
1:17:29I don't know. But one thing I was wondering from earlier is, I don't see, I think part
1:17:38of the reason why I love Spotify so much is that even in the times when I want to listen
1:17:42to something that I own, that I have in my iTunes library, I'll just go to Spotify because
1:17:48it's what I'm used to and it's the first place I think of and I'll look up that album and
1:17:52I'll just play it. And so yes, like the old curmudgeon in me feels like I'm just renting
1:17:59access to all of my music, which is true, but nonetheless, I can listen to anything
1:18:05I want within reason, any time I want to.
1:18:08Well, yeah, anything I want.
1:18:10You've said that a few times, and that brings up another topic that has come up for both
1:18:13me and a few other people I've seen.
1:18:16Obviously no streaming service has, like, all the music, right?
1:18:19Sure.
1:18:20You know, Apple Music doesn't have Beatles, and, you know, what was it, Spotify didn't
1:18:23have Taylor Swift because of her streaming decision for that sort of thing. You don't
1:18:29have everything, everything, but they have most things, right? But for people with weird
1:18:34tastes, like if you're like Dan Morin and really like soundtracks, or if you're like
1:18:37me and you like basically illegal mashups or video game soundtracks.
1:18:42Nobody here has weird tastes in music.
1:18:44Right, well I mean, Phish you think is weird, but Phish is going to be on the iTunes Store.
1:18:48Not the ones I listen to.
1:18:50Well, probably not the live ones, right?
1:18:52But yeah, it's kind of a problem.
1:18:55Yeah, but yeah, like those things, the things I'm talking about, sometimes they're real
1:18:59albums that sometimes they're imports from Japan, but a lot of these things I have on
1:19:02CD, like they're not pirated anything.
1:19:04This is the official soundtrack for this game put out by the publisher of the game, and
1:19:08it's not going to be anywhere on their list of things.
1:19:10And I have, maybe I wouldn't want someone to DJ video game music for me, just like only
1:19:16the best orchestral arrangements of Zelda songs.
1:19:19I don't know, maybe that's not enough for someone to DJ a channel of or whatever, but
1:19:24these things aren't even for sale in the plain old 99 cents per track iTunes store, let alone
1:19:28available on Apple Music.
1:19:29So being able to have access to sort of the world's music, the only place that's still
1:19:33true is if you Google for something with, you know, in URL colon MP3, and then you can
1:19:38basically find every video game soundtrack you want.
1:19:43But on Apple Music, the percentage of my music that is available for streaming on Apple Music,
1:19:49Ignoring obviously like iTunes match and the fact that Apple Music will upload my music like all these things
1:19:53It's not like I can't listen to my music. I have it. It will let me stream it
1:19:56I can already do that with iTunes match for you know
1:19:5825,000 songs a month or whatever the limit is or a year or whatever
1:20:01but the catalog of music
1:20:04really relies on you having musical tastes that are
1:20:08Least vaguely mainstream as you start to wander into other realms. I can imagine
1:20:14I don't know anything about this but like classical music or opera
1:20:17I don't know what their selection is like in that like as you just start to wander away from
1:20:21Popular music for lack of a better term. It could be that Apple music's overlap with your library is
1:20:28Small enough that when you go. Oh, I really want to hear the blah blah blah from blah blah blah
1:20:33And if the blahs are a movie or a video game
1:20:36Apple music's like I don't know what you're talking about, dude
1:20:38And if you didn't previously upload that through iTunes match and stream it back down or part of the my music collection
1:20:44No, you can't like say it's I don't have something in my collection like you know what I have no
1:20:48Music from Street Fighter in my collection, but right now
1:20:52I would like to hear like you know the most popular or famous Street Fighter themes Street Fighter had music
1:20:57Yeah
1:20:58And if it's if it's not there
1:20:59Like then the one thing that I would think Apple music is for like Casey was saying like sometimes you just want to say
1:21:05There a song exists. I know the title. I know the artist type type type two seconds later. I'm listening to it
1:21:10That's amazing how it works, when it doesn't,
1:21:12it shakes my faith in the utility of the service for me
1:21:15in any way, 'cause I don't wanna listen to things
1:21:16that are DJ'd, I don't wanna listen
1:21:18to random streaming things, I basically just wanna listen
1:21:20to my music, the one utility you could have is,
1:21:24if there's just some song I think of that I haven't heard
1:21:25in years that I wanna hear right now, just type it in
1:21:28and it's there, and if that works for me,
1:21:29even only 80% of the time, that makes me think,
1:21:32definitely not $7 a month or whatever they're charging.
1:21:36- In general, you're right, it's worth pointing out
1:21:39that like you know if you have non mainstream tastes like this that these
1:21:43services are probably not going to help you discover a lot of new music in that
1:21:46in those areas and that's worth considering but for for other roles for
1:21:52for the music they did that does have the fact that Apple service is
1:21:56integrated with this uploads feature that they have whether it's iTunes match
1:22:00or whatever they're calling the new thing that's in music that basically
1:22:03does the same thing that the fact that this is all integrated that I think
1:22:08gives them a huge leg up on the other services that, like you
1:22:11know for me, you know, it was always useless for me to try
1:22:14the services because the I would have you know I would
1:22:17want to listen to normal people music sometimes and my crazy
1:22:21fish live shows at other times and I have to keep bouncing
1:22:23between two different apps and I then you know I'm a picky
1:22:26jerk and that would drive me crazy, whereas Apple stuff.
1:22:29They basically built a streaming service into the app.
1:22:34I was already stubbornly using for all my music listening, so
1:22:37That to me, and because it integrates all of my stuff
1:22:42with their stuff, that is very compelling.
1:22:45And I think, again, it's not, this is not gonna be
1:22:49a mainstream need, I bet the majority of users
1:22:53of Apple Music are never going to use these upload features.
1:22:55But for the people who will use them,
1:22:59this sets Apple Music apart from every other service.
1:23:02- I guess what I'm getting at with the catalog selection
1:23:04is that one of the advantages, one of the supposed
1:23:06and real, I think, advantages of the internet age is not only can we make the world's music
1:23:13available to you at your fingertips, but yeah, we can add the video game crap. We can add rights
1:23:18issues aside, but again, video games are the easiest because these are actual real press CDs
1:23:22officially from the companies that make the games. This is not illegal stuff or live recordings or
1:23:27anything of dubious origin. You don't have room for that in the record store. There's no shelf
1:23:33shelf space, blah, blah, blah.
1:23:34But there is no shelf space on the internet.
1:23:36There's no shelf space in Apple Store or in the cloud or whatever.
1:23:38Like, you know, chase down that long tail.
1:23:41Put all that crap in there.
1:23:43Like, why not?
1:23:44Like, that should be one of the advantages of this type of service is that you can have
1:23:49a longer, not an infinite tail, but a longer tail than you could have when you had to put
1:23:53things, when you had to, you know, put things on shelves in stores because then you really
1:23:57had to make some hard choices.
1:23:59You have more runway.
1:24:00That should be, like I said, it certainly is the dream of just Googling.
1:24:03can find any music anywhere, these streaming services, one of the advantages they should
1:24:08have among their many is now finally the tail can be longer.
1:24:11And I think it is.
1:24:12Obviously the iTunes Music Store has more music in it than any physical record store
1:24:16that probably ever existed.
1:24:18But I'm saying, you know, keep chasing that down.
1:24:20Don't be content with what you have.
1:24:21Go full-fledged on, you know, just start with like categories.
1:24:25Movie soundtracks, video game soundtracks, like that's all official music that you can
1:24:29probably get from somebody.
1:24:31And if something's not there because only five people are interested in it, I think
1:24:37that is an advantage that they should leverage.
1:24:39The size of their catalog should be a bragging right and not just 800 versions of the most
1:24:45popular top ten songs from every year, but chase down the long tail a little bit more.
1:24:50Well, and again, I think that's also an area where Apple has an advantage.
1:24:56Even though they have not done so well in streaming in the last few years and they've
1:25:00fallen behind in their relevance in music in the last few years as a result.
1:25:04Despite that, I think they are not only not only do they have like the right
1:25:09legacy, the right resources, and the right connections, but also now they have what
1:25:13appears to be what's probably going to be a very very popular and successful
1:25:17music service for streaming now. I think Apple has the best chances of any of the
1:25:22players in this game of getting really good deals. Like if the Beatles were ever
1:25:26going to be streamed anywhere, it's probably going to be Apple Music. You know
1:25:29stuff like that, like Apple is really good at getting deals,
1:25:32generally speaking, for this kind of stuff, and they're
1:25:34going to, you know, they're going to really like sit on
1:25:36everybody who they can't get until they can get them, and
1:25:40maybe that extends also to the long tail. I don't know, but I
1:25:43think if anybody has a chance as Apple and if you are a long
1:25:48tail rights holder for something and you are trying
1:25:51to see like where which of these services do you want to
1:25:54submit your stuff to or get your stuff on again, I think
1:25:58Apple's gonna have a pretty strong presence there. I mean,
1:26:01they aren't the biggest streaming service right now, but
1:26:03in a few years they might be, and they're certainly always
1:26:06going to be a sizable one that people will think about when
1:26:09they're trying to figure out, as publishers or as indies,
1:26:12where do I put my stuff? So, again, I'm pretty optimistic
1:26:16about Apple Music. I think, if anything, and I've seen only
1:26:20great things about it so far on Twitter and stuff, if
1:26:24anything, this all just highlights how clunky the
1:26:25presentation was because it seems like,
1:26:29it looks like it's a really good service,
1:26:31and people really like it, and it's had a lot of things
1:26:33that other services don't have.
1:26:36It's a shame that none of that came through, really,
1:26:38in the presentation, but it doesn't really matter now.
1:26:40- You don't think, I think that the presentation
1:26:43and the actual, like we talked about with the iTunes app
1:26:45and the music app, I think there is a,
1:26:48there are similar levels of confusion about them,
1:26:50because it is a very complicated thing
1:26:52that's difficult to explain.
1:26:53there shouldn't be this many like,
1:26:55FAQ articles and explainers about like,
1:26:59what is Apple Music and what does it really give you
1:27:01and what do you get and what do you get when you pay for it
1:27:03and how does it interact with iTunes match
1:27:05and what does it do with your files?
1:27:05Like the confusion of like, well, when,
1:27:07if you just have Apple Music and it matches your track,
1:27:09it downloads the DRM version,
1:27:10but if your iTunes match, it downloads the non-DRM version,
1:27:12but then if you enable iTunes match,
1:27:14while you still have Apple Music enabled,
1:27:15you can match against the things and get the non-DRM one
1:27:17and then not subscribe for it.
1:27:18Like, it is actually pretty darn complicated.
1:27:21Like, I think what you're saying is the benefits
1:27:23are there.
1:27:24They didn't do a good job of explaining what the benefits are, but I think the product
1:27:28offering and the touch points of like, "How do I use Apple Music?
1:27:33How do I use it on my Mac?
1:27:34How do I use it on my iOS device?
1:27:35What do I get when I pay my money?
1:27:37How can I access the things that I got?"
1:27:40That is just as muddled as the presentation.
1:27:43Underneath it all, once you start figuring out where everything is, the actual benefits
1:27:46of, "Oh, now I can listen to music that I like or discover new music," that seems to
1:27:51be good, but I think, like I said, it is not the clean sheet approach that Photos took
1:27:56conceptually or software-wise, and that I think is actually a reflection of their poorly
1:28:03explained at that time not finalized deal for all of their music with all of their products.
1:28:09So I think there's work to do there, and that may slow adoption.
1:28:13It doesn't doom Apple Music to a ping-like death.
1:28:16Basically, you could say pretty much anything that Apple does with music, just because it's
1:28:20Apple doing it, has a very high chance of succeeding.
1:28:24Ping is the counter example because that wasn't really about music, but a music streaming
1:28:29service is a thing.
1:28:30Apple is not the inventor of that thing, they're late to the game.
1:28:33Because it is a thing, any streaming service that Apple does, they had to try pretty hard
1:28:37not to end up being a major player a couple years down the road.
1:28:41So the complexity of this product offering and the weirdness of the presentation and
1:28:46the difficulty of really understanding what you're getting I think will only potentially
1:28:50slow adoption, but in the end, streaming services are the thing that people want, and Apple
1:28:58has one, and if you actually find your way to start using it, it seems like people think
1:29:02it's pretty cool.
1:29:03So I would project reasonable success for this thing over the next few years unless
1:29:08Apple really drops the ball somehow.
1:29:10Alright, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Cards Against Humanity, Harry's
1:29:16and Casper, and we will see you next week.
1:29:19Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was
1:29:30accidental.
1:29:31John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental,
1:29:38It was accidental, it was accidental, it was accidental
1:29:43And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm And if you're into Twitter, you can follow
1:29:52them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:30:01♪ A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N ♪
1:30:04♪ S-I-R-A-C ♪
1:30:06♪ U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A ♪
1:30:09♪ It's accidental ♪
1:30:10♪ It's accidental ♪
1:30:12♪ They didn't mean to ♪
1:30:14♪ Accidental ♪
1:30:15♪ Accidental ♪
1:30:17♪ Tech podcast ♪
1:30:19♪ So long ♪
1:30:21- You guys wanna talk about this whole
1:30:24Safari considered harmful thing?
1:30:25- Oh, poor Casey, he's so sick and wants to go to bed.
1:30:28- I know, and we gotta talk about Safari.
1:30:30I mean, we could save it for next week, but I feel like--
1:30:32- I think we should save it for next week,
1:30:34'cause I have a lot of things to say about it
1:30:35I don't wanna talk to poor Casey about.
1:30:37- Oh, I thought it was gonna be quick,
1:30:39and I was more than happy to entertain it
1:30:40if it was gonna be quick.
1:30:41- No, I don't think it's gonna be quick,
1:30:44'cause I have a lot of things to say about it.
1:30:46- Yeah, me too.
1:30:47Man, standards people are the worst.
1:30:50- Non-standard people is what I want.
1:30:52(laughing)
1:30:55- Wow.
1:30:56- Left-handed people, that means, I guess, right?
1:30:57- I don't know.
1:30:58Lefty slam.
1:31:00The one marginalized group you're still allowed to slam in America, lefties.
1:31:04Hey, so I was in Florida last week, and holy crap is it hot there.
1:31:10So you went to Florida in July.
1:31:13In June.
1:31:14In late late late June.
1:31:16What did possess you to go to Florida in late June?
1:31:18I'm going to be going in the summer too.
1:31:20It's going to be just as bad.
1:31:21Yeah, so a good friend of mine was getting married, and so we decided to go down the
1:31:26week prior, well, like the beginning of the week that he got married. And we went and
1:31:31visited family and then spent two days in Disney World with Declan, which was less of
1:31:35a disaster than I thought it would be, and then did the wedding thing. But holy hell,
1:31:41you know, on paper, I think it was approximately the same temperature, although the humidity
1:31:45in Florida is about 11 billion percent. And I don't know if it's just a mental thing,
1:31:51because it's not my weather,
1:31:53and so I am less tolerant of it.
1:31:55But one way or another, God was it hot.
1:31:58I would be outside for literally 45 seconds
1:32:00and I'd start to sweat.
1:32:02- Now is it possible, I don't know scientifically,
1:32:05but is it possible to have a supersaturation of humidity
1:32:08where you can actually exceed 100% in Florida?
1:32:11- You would just, when dust goes into the air,
1:32:13you get like a nucleation site
1:32:14and just water drops out of the air onto the ground?
1:32:16That's called rain.
1:32:17(laughing)
1:32:19literally in a cloud. I guess it's fog. No, but so I guess these all have things already,
1:32:26but let's learn about the dew point, kids. Yeah. So, so how was, how was traveling with
1:32:30Declan? It was fine. The plane was fine. Traveling with, traveling with an infant requires you
1:32:37to travel with a bunch of crap. We counted, I believe it was nine different items we were
1:32:43lugging through the airport. There was the stroller, the car seat, the breast pump, the
1:32:52diaper bag, Aaron's backpack, my travel bag, two suitcases, crap, there's one other thing.
1:33:02Oh! A portable Pack 'n Play.
1:33:04Oh my god.
1:33:06Yeah.
1:33:07That's, this is a large set of objects.
1:33:08So how many things did you actually carry onto the plane with you? Because you checked
1:33:12the bags and stuff so you bring onto the plane. No, I checked one bag. So you're bringing
1:33:16onto the plane the car seat, the baby, the stroller, the pack and play? Gate check the
1:33:20stroller? Correct. We gate checked the stroller and the car seat. He was... And the car seat?
1:33:25Oh, so you didn't get the lovely experience of having to install car seats while everyone
1:33:29else on the plane stares at the back of your head with daggers. Correct. Yeah, so, 'cause
1:33:34what is the deal? Is it required? Not if he's under two. Only if you love your children.
1:33:39Oh, that's cold.
1:33:41No, they say for like babies of a certain size that I think they have them on your lap.
1:33:46Under two, I believe it is. Maybe that's wrong, but he was considered a lap infant.
1:33:52He still had a boarding pass, which isn't entirely surprising,
1:33:57but I was a little bit surprised by, but the boarding pass had no seat on it.
1:34:01It just said like "inf" or something.
1:34:03Was he allowed to keep it in his pocket when he went through the scanner?
1:34:06Well, we actually this was my first time using pre check and pre check was pretty cool
1:34:10Does he have pre check? Yes, because he rides on our pre check. He does not however have his own global entry
1:34:18So we need to file for that shortly
1:34:20So when so when he's too old to be a lap infant in like two years or a year, whatever
1:34:25Yeah, can you and Aaron go through pre check or like yes, he gets it until he's like 18
1:34:31I think or something like that or quite a bit older that he is right now. Okay, that's good. All right
1:34:36So, man, the car seats, we have not flown with Adam yet,
1:34:41and one of the reasons why is that I heard on various,
1:34:46I believe it was your daily Lexes forever ago,
1:34:49Lex's accounts of traveling with kids
1:34:54in car seats on planes, and it just sounds awful.
1:34:57- Oh, it's lots of fun.
1:34:59I think at one point we did two.
1:35:00Two kids, two car seats, maybe we never did two.
1:35:03My wife will probably correct me, but anyway,
1:35:05the struggle of, like, car seat is big, it's heavy, whatever.
1:35:10Like, the real problem is getting it installed in the seat
1:35:15with the airplane buggers and then getting it out again.
1:35:17I can, the tip I'll give you,
1:35:18I haven't listened to the episodes
1:35:20of turning this car around or that you're referencing,
1:35:22I'm assuming for Lex,
1:35:23but you know when they showed a little demo
1:35:25of like lift the flap and the little thing goes into,
1:35:28you know, the car, you know,
1:35:29how seat belts work on planes, right?
1:35:31- Yeah, mm-hmm. - All right.
1:35:33you don't really pay much attention to that because you're like, "Whatever, I'm gonna put it on my lap,
1:35:37I'm gonna click it in, when I want to get out I'm gonna lift the buckle."
1:35:39When you're bringing the car seat on the plane, like, I guess some people probably don't even buckle it in at all,
1:35:45they just put it on the seat, put the baby in it, and that's done,
1:35:46which doesn't make much sense to me because then it's just your entire baby and the car seat hurtling up to the ceiling and turbulence
1:35:51and smashing it, right?
1:35:52So you really should be buckling the car seat in and you want to do this quickly because everyone is behind you, you know,
1:35:57wanting to get through and you've got your whole family blocking the aisle and all the crap everywhere,
1:36:02especially if you have two seats and the kids are screaming and everything, right?
1:36:04So you you try to buckle the the seat in by taking the seat fishing it through whatever stupid thing you're fishing it through
1:36:11You know behind and underneath the seat
1:36:14Clicking it in yanking the thing to tighten it good put the baby and you're done you think you're like we did it, right?
1:36:19When it comes time to unbuckle that especially if you're a crazy
1:36:23Parent who like pulls it really tight because you want to get the seat really tight because you've been trained by like the people
1:36:28the fire department who told you how to put your car seat into your car, you pull it really
1:36:32tight. When it's time to get off the plane and you're patiently waiting and everything
1:36:35and you're like, "Well, I don't want to disconnect this seat until we're ready to go, but someone's
1:36:38got to pick up the infant, then I got to take out the seat," and whatever, you go there
1:36:42and you realize, "I can't lift the flap because the flap is hard against the back of the plastic
1:36:47seat that I just tightened down as tight as I possibly could. How do I get this thing
1:36:53unbuckled?" And now you're like trapped. Again, the kids are screaming, everyone's upset.
1:36:57just want to get off this plane and you can't lift the flap because it's facing
1:37:01itself. I'm gonna tell you face the flap away from the seat when you tighten it.
1:37:06It's not probably the natural way you're gonna do it because if you think of how
1:37:09it is over your lap the flap is facing, it would be facing the back of the seat,
1:37:12face the flap the other way otherwise you will be super sad. Oh my god, so out of
1:37:17curiosity how was that resolved? That was resolved with with anger and muscles.
1:37:23You can imagine you can pull the belt away from the seat and then like pull it away as hard as you can try to
1:37:29Make a gap and then shove your hand in there to push but you got to lift the flap up
1:37:33It's not coming off unless that flapper goes up. So you basically have to as hard as you tightened it
1:37:37I hope you didn't tighten it as hard as you could be
1:37:38You have to have a little bit more leverage to like
1:37:40Pull the strap away from the back of the seat and push that little lever up just enough the thing releases and you know
1:37:46It goes shooting out the side of the seat probably
1:37:48puts a hole in the side of the plane as it springs out and then you release the seat and in my case put it
1:37:53Into a giant bag that goes on your back like like yeah the old woman from labyrinth the movie that neither one of you has seen
1:37:59Probably with David Bowie that one. Yeah, remember the late the junk lady. She's got a million things on her back
1:38:04She starts putting on Jennifer Connelly's back to so she'll become one of those hundred ladies
1:38:07well
1:38:08Anyway, when you have a car seat on your back and a rolling thing and a kid and all the other crap you feel like
1:38:12that lady
1:38:14But yeah, we did eventually get the seat off the plane
1:38:16And I've done several airplane flights with car seats and at no point was it easy
1:38:21But a few tips and a little bit of experience can make it easier. Also don't bring the baby because they scream all the time
1:38:27[BEEP]