0:00:00It's not as exciting as it sounds because you made me stop before I explained, but now
0:00:03I'll explain and you'll see that it's not exciting.
0:00:07So I've been looking at getting a different video card for my Mac to sort of tide me over
0:00:11and looking into getting an SSD and doing all sorts of other things since it doesn't
0:00:15look like I'm getting a Mac Pro anytime soon.
0:00:18And a lot of people have been emailing me with suggestions of things to get and one
0:00:21person emailed me with an offer of an old video card they had out of their 2008 Mac
0:00:26Pro.
0:00:27I don't remember if it was through the feedback form so I don't know if this person wants
0:00:29me to give out his name, so I won't, but someone said, "Hey, I've got a Radeon 4870 sitting
0:00:35in my closet that I'm not using.
0:00:37Do you want it?"
0:00:38And I said, "Sure."
0:00:40And so they sent it along, and it just arrived today.
0:00:41I haven't installed it yet, but that was a very nice thing to do, and it is, instead
0:00:46of being a seven-year-old video card, it's like a six- or five-year-old video card, but
0:00:51it's twice as fast as the one I have in there now, and it's an Apple-supplied card, so it's
0:00:56not like a weird flash PC card or anything like that.
0:00:59So I think it should work, and if it works, I just doubled my video card speed.
0:01:04Wow.
0:01:05Told you it's not very exciting, but, you know.
0:01:08I also have a boring update to mine, which nobody will care about.
0:01:11Basically, I changed my order.
0:01:13I previously said on the show that I ordered the 8-core D700 because what the hell, it's
0:01:17not, you know, the 8-core is a big jump, but the D700, once you're at that level, relatively
0:01:22speaking, really isn't.
0:01:23I stepped back to the 6-core and D500 because after evaluating what was going on and the
0:01:28actual press I realized, you know, I don't really want to have spent $2,100 total extra
0:01:34just for those two upgrades and that my actual usage of the thing, I'm probably not going
0:01:39to see that much of the benefit going from the 6-core to the 8-core to be worth so much
0:01:44more money. If it was only a few hundred dollars I would have gone for it, but for $1,500 just
0:01:48for that and for $600 for the D700, which I'll probably never use to its full capacity,
0:01:54I realized I'd be happier having spent a lot less on the computer, and then if I want to
0:02:00upgrade it in two or three years instead of five, I'll feel less bad about selling a two
0:02:05or three old one that was only just under $5,000 instead of one that was just over $7,000.
0:02:11So that's a pretty big price difference.
0:02:12I didn't think it was worth the other ones for me.
0:02:15When the Retina displays come out and you ditch this trash can for a newer trash can,
0:02:19It would have been better if you had the 700 in there, so it would be more attractive to
0:02:24me to buy your old one off you.
0:02:26Yeah, but, so I wrote a big blog post about an hour ago, mostly so we wouldn't have to
0:02:32go into this in too much depth on the show.
0:02:34I love you.
0:02:35Mostly to save Casey, I know.
0:02:36This is entirely a favor to Casey.
0:02:38I wrote this up in a blog post instead.
0:02:40Basically the gist of it is I think that the way they're going to do Retina is not, you
0:02:46two years off doing 5120 by 2880,
0:02:50I think what they're actually going to do is using 4K
0:02:53and just using software scaling,
0:02:54as we actually talked about like two months ago.
0:02:57I think that's what they're gonna do
0:02:58and I think that's probably coming up soon.
0:03:01Like that could easily happen this year.
0:03:03I mean, they could release the display today
0:03:04if they wanted to.
0:03:06Other manufacturers are releasing very similar displays
0:03:08at very good price points.
0:03:09So I think that's how they're gonna do Retina
0:03:12and therefore I think it will be compatible
0:03:13with the current Mac Pro.
0:03:15>> All right, so follow-up time? >> Let's do it. We need a sound effect for
0:03:20that. The prompt has a sound effect, and I kind of wish—I don't know if we could
0:03:24pull it off. They could pull it off, because those guys are cool, but I don't know if
0:03:27we can. >> Follow-up has no sound effect.
0:03:31>> That is the sound effect. All right, get it.
0:03:33>> Oh, yeah, so the top item, a couple weeks ago, maybe—I don't remember when, maybe
0:03:38it was even last week—we talked about—I talked about one of my pet peeves about software
0:03:44development and that's having a group of people make a product and then having all those people
0:03:49leave and just having like a skeleton crew there to deal with the product.
0:03:53And we were talking about this in the context of Apple's iLife apps and their iWork apps
0:03:57and all the other apps that have seemed sort of languish and as years have gone by and
0:04:01we're speculating maybe it's because most of the people who are on that product were
0:04:05taken off to go someplace else.
0:04:06And I said, "You got to leave the development team on a product.
0:04:10Once you make a product, you can't take those people off."
0:04:13And one person wrote in to disagree with me that it wasn't a good idea to make people
0:04:18get stuck on a product like that because what if they want to go off and do something else,
0:04:22they shouldn't have to stay with the product they created, and so on and so forth.
0:04:24And I tried to clarify this in the program, but apparently it wasn't clear enough, so
0:04:27I just want to say it again.
0:04:29It's not that the people who make the product have to stay with the product, it's that the
0:04:32company has to dedicate manpower to that product as long as it exists.
0:04:38So you can't-- like, a similar level of effort and manpower
0:04:41has to be applied to a product.
0:04:43You're like, well, what are all those people doing?
0:04:45I don't want to have a full-sized team on a product
0:04:47that's just going through minor revisions year after year.
0:04:50As any single developer knows, even just keeping up
0:04:53with OS revisions is almost as big a job
0:04:55as writing the app in the first place.
0:04:57In some ways, it's worse.
0:04:58In some ways, it's easier.
0:04:59But presumably, you're also going to improve the product
0:05:02as time goes on.
0:05:02And if you don't put a team similar in size and capability
0:05:06to the team that made the product on the product,
0:05:08you know, permanently, more or less,
0:05:10it will slowly get worse in relation to the competition
0:05:14and in relation to other applications.
0:05:16And that seems to be what's happening
0:05:17with a lot of Apple's applications.
0:05:18So just to clarify, it's not saying that
0:05:20if you are a developer and you make an image editing app,
0:05:22you are doomed forever in that company
0:05:24to work on an image editing app forever.
0:05:26You are not, but you have to leave a team behind,
0:05:29more or less, and not a tiny little maintenance team
0:05:32or a team of like B and C players
0:05:34or any other way where you think you're going to save money or time, you're doing your company
0:05:38and your customers a disservice.
0:05:40That's hard.
0:05:41And it's also interesting with consulting because in my experience, what happens is
0:05:47a company will either not have the manpower or perhaps the expertise to do some sort of
0:05:55project.
0:05:56And so in my day job, they'll call in some of our people.
0:06:02We don't do staff aug despite the way I just described it.
0:06:04What we really do is that we get a team of our own people together and we'll work on
0:06:10this project for usually a few months.
0:06:12And then at the end of that project, typically what happens is we'll have a very small
0:06:16crew that stays behind, figuratively speaking, in order to do some final maintenance and
0:06:23warranty work.
0:06:24But then after that, we usually punt it back to the client and their internal team in order
0:06:28to maintain.
0:06:29And sometimes it goes really well when clients have really good internal teams and kind of
0:06:33know what's up.
0:06:34But sometimes that does not go well at all.
0:06:37And we hear later on through the grapevine that the client doesn't have the appropriate
0:06:41expertise even when they think they do.
0:06:45And that creates some real problems.
0:06:46But there's not much we can do about that because it sounds extremely self-serving.
0:06:51And it is kind of self-serving for us to say, "Oh, well, why don't you keep us on retainer
0:06:55forever?"
0:06:57And we'll be around just in case.
0:07:00It's just not the way it works.
0:07:01And especially when you work for a fairly progressive firm like I do.
0:07:04Well, granted we do the Microsoft Stack, which some of you probably don't think is progressive,
0:07:08but within our Microsoft world, we're very progressive.
0:07:12And in a lot of our code, a novice or even intermediate level programmer would probably
0:07:17have a hard time digesting.
0:07:20And doubly so if it's a programmer that's never seen the code until the time in which
0:07:25which we throw it over the wall and walk away.
0:07:28That happens even inside a single company. Forget about outside consultants or anything.
0:07:32Very often, and maybe this even happens at Apple, I don't know, but you'll have a team
0:07:36that will make a product, and it's not like the team that made the product is necessarily
0:07:39more experienced or better programmers or anything than any other people, but they understand
0:07:44the product. They understand why it was designed the way it was designed. They understand the
0:07:47design itself. And if those people go off without transitioning, it's like, "Oh, you
0:07:52work on the product and then it goes into whatever maintenance mode or into general
0:07:57purpose release where anyone in the company is allowed to address bugs in it or whatever.
0:08:02If it's sort of like, "Okay, now any developer in the company can fix a bug," those developers
0:08:08likely don't understand the design of the application, how it puts together, what the
0:08:11invariants are supposed to be.
0:08:12And you're like, "Well, it should be documented and there should be design documents and there
0:08:16should be good comments and it should be..."
0:08:17Yeah, all should, should, should.
0:08:18But the reality is, programmers are not interchangeable parts.
0:08:22And there's a core team of people who understand the product.
0:08:24And unless you transition them away from the product,
0:08:27assuming they want to go away from it, by socializing the new developers,
0:08:30about bringing the new guy on board, teaching him how everything works,
0:08:33have that person improve the documentation.
0:08:35So you can't just throw it out into the wild.
0:08:37Because then you get people doing things in the code
0:08:39where it looks perfectly fine, and it's simple enough,
0:08:41and they understand it, and it works.
0:08:43But they've violated some unspoken invariant
0:08:45that everybody who was on the original team understands has to be true.
0:08:48but there were no assertions for it,
0:08:50or there was no design documents specifying,
0:08:51or maybe there was and they didn't see it.
0:08:53And the accumulation of those just eats away
0:08:56at the quality of the code,
0:08:57makes it more difficult to change down the line.
0:09:00There's no such thing as like,
0:09:02except for for like a government software,
0:09:04defense department software,
0:09:05there's no such thing as maintenance mode.
0:09:06If you have a product and you're selling it to customers,
0:09:08you need developers who understand it
0:09:09actively working on it.
0:09:10Another follow-up item, we were talking about
0:09:13where computers are going in the future
0:09:16in the last show, I think,
0:09:17And I was talking about unification of the memory
0:09:21and storage hierarchies.
0:09:24So the hierarchy would still be there,
0:09:25but from a software perspective, everything
0:09:27is addressable as an address in memory,
0:09:29even if it's backed by flash or regular RAM or caches on a chip
0:09:35or registers, the whole hierarchy,
0:09:37but addressable in the same way, sort of homogeneous view
0:09:40of heterogeneous hardware.
0:09:43And a lot of people were in with examples
0:09:44of systems that do that.
0:09:47Last time I brought this up, a lot of people wrote in
0:09:48talking about memory mapping files and stuff like that.
0:09:51And of course, there are many, many examples
0:09:53on the computers that we're all sitting in front of
0:09:54right now and even on our iPods
0:09:56or whatever you're listening to those on,
0:09:58of miniature versions of those.
0:09:59Memory mapping files is the most common example
0:10:02where you, instead of doing IO on a file,
0:10:04you just pretend, hey, now the entire contents of that file
0:10:06is mapped into memory.
0:10:07It's not really, but that's how you address it.
0:10:09And when you address those pieces of memory,
0:10:11it just says, okay, well,
0:10:11I don't actually have that information.
0:10:13It's still on disk, so I'm gonna go get it from disk,
0:10:14pull it in for you, and then make it look like
0:10:16it was in that memory all along.
0:10:18And virtual memory works in a similar manner
0:10:21with memory mapping.
0:10:23And we talked about the PlayStation and the game
0:10:26consoles, where they don't have separate pools of RAM and VRAM.
0:10:29And of course, there's the good version
0:10:30of that, where it's one big giant pool of fast RAM.
0:10:32And there's the crappy version of that,
0:10:34which PCs used to do in the bad old days,
0:10:36where they didn't want to give you dedicated VRAM.
0:10:38They would use your main memory as video RAM.
0:10:39And it was really bad performance,
0:10:41because video memory could be tuned to video tasks better.
0:10:44And on the older computers, there used to be regions of memory that corresponded to
0:10:49IO interfaces, regions of memory that corresponded to the screen.
0:10:52So when you wrote to that region of memory, you were really writing to video memory.
0:10:55They would show up on the screen directly and all sorts of other things.
0:10:58The big one that most people wrote about was the AS400, which I had completely forgotten about.
0:11:04And I'm sure most people don't work on it and have completely forgotten about it.
0:11:07In fact, they renamed AS400 to I5 or System I or some-- I don't know.
0:11:12I don't know, IBM's always changing their name stuff.
0:11:14I haven't kept up with this stuff.
0:11:15But anyway, this is a very old system based on an even older system from the
0:11:19sixties that does what they call a single level store, which is exactly what I was
0:11:22talking about.
0:11:23Uh, just addressing everything as if it was a memory address, even when it's not,
0:11:29uh, we should put these links in the show if people want to read about it.
0:11:32But a lot of the technology that you've heard this before of like, uh, in other
0:11:36realms where things appear on supercars and, or Mercedes or whatever, like
0:11:40Candy Lock breaks in airbags and gradually trickle their way down until your Ford Festiva
0:11:43has all those features a decade later.
0:11:46The trickle down happens similarly in computers.
0:11:48We're going from mainframes and supercomputers down to your phone.
0:11:53But it happens unevenly and it seems like sometimes a little bit slower.
0:11:56And there are still things that mainframes or whatever you would call mainframes today
0:11:59or whatever, still things those systems can do that our systems can't do and we're
0:12:05still waiting for them to trickle down.
0:12:06like being able to hot-swap CPUs and hardware redundancy and sort of self-healing type features.
0:12:13And it's like, "Well, you don't need that on my PC," or, "It's only for things that have to run
0:12:1724/7." There's lots of excuses for why these things haven't trickled down, and they make sense.
0:12:20But I would think that, inevitably, anything that's a good idea up there is eventually going
0:12:25to find its way down. So a single-level store, I think, is a reasonably good idea and will
0:12:29eventually find its way down into your wristwatch, pinky ring, contact lens computer in the decades
0:12:36needs to come. And the other features like hardware redundancy and the ability to heal
0:12:42and stuff, I think that's a whole other topic for another day that I'll maybe throw in there.
0:12:45But I have some other interesting ideas about the future of computing, but I don't think
0:12:49the follow-up is the place for them.
0:12:51If it ends up being pinky rings, I think I'm out.
0:12:54It'll be so old by then, it probably won't be safe for us to put on pinky rings. Our
0:13:00fingers will swell and they'll get stuck on. We'll have to go to the ER to get them cut
0:13:04off.
0:13:05Oh goodness. Alright, so do we want to talk about PlayStation 4s now?
0:13:08Yeah, that's one little item I threw in. I'm trying not to pay too much attention to CES.
0:13:12I mean, CES is just so gross. Like, I've never been interested in it.
0:13:16It's disappointing to me, even when I had an interest, like, I would like to see what the new TVs coming out are,
0:13:22but that is such... that's the worst possible venue. I would like to know about new TVs.
0:13:25I've, you know, redecided the sales, but the spectacle of CES adds nothing to that.
0:13:30In fact, it subtracts from it. I wish all the companies making announcements that I'm interested in at CES
0:13:34made those same announcements with a YouTube video or a press
0:13:37release.
0:13:39Anything other than a staged presentation at CES.
0:13:41It seems like CES represents the worst of the hardware
0:13:45industry.
0:13:46It's so much tone deafness, sexism, weird products.
0:13:53It's not the worst of the hardware industry.
0:13:55It's the worst of humanity.
0:13:57Well, and the products that are announced there--
0:14:02and people are now doing the best of CES
0:14:04and stuff like that, the products that are announced there
0:14:06so rarely make it into production,
0:14:09or when they do make it into production,
0:14:11they have a lot of problems that the CES version
0:14:14glossed over or didn't have, or a lot of limitations,
0:14:17or something like that.
0:14:18It's basically like, it's a way for the industry
0:14:22to celebrate itself under the guise of announcing
0:14:25things to the world and showing off what's new,
0:14:27but in reality, most of the things shown off
0:14:28there either aren't interesting, or are interesting,
0:14:31but are also fantasies that will never hit the market.
0:14:34It seems like the press has a real hard time covering CES.
0:14:37And the problem with CES seems to be that no one, including the people presenting and
0:14:42the people covering it, can differentiate, seems to be able to differentiate between
0:14:46the stuff that is obviously ridiculous crap and that in the light of day when you wake
0:14:50up when it's all over you go, "Why the hell were we ever paying attention to that?"
0:14:53And things that are interesting news, because it all starts to look the same in this big
0:14:58funhouse atmosphere.
0:15:00Whereas if you had just looked at those things individually, there's no way you would cover
0:15:03that.
0:15:04If someone put out a press release on their site and put up this information about some
0:15:06crazy thing that no one's ever going to use, you would skip it.
0:15:10But because it's at CES, everything sort of gets equal treatment.
0:15:12So I don't know.
0:15:15Like I'm interested in what Valve is saying there.
0:15:17I'm interested in the new television technology.
0:15:19I'm interested in some of the new, you know, the Steam Box stuff and the camera tech and
0:15:24stuff.
0:15:25But all that stuff doesn't need that surrounding dazzle and ridiculousness.
0:15:30If you just have interesting products to announce them, I don't know.
0:15:34Anyway, this isn't really CES related.
0:15:36I don't know why it went off on that tangent, but maybe they did announce it in CES.
0:15:40I don't know.
0:15:41There's a story that Sony announced how many PlayStation 4s they sold, and they said it's
0:15:464.2 million.
0:15:49And Microsoft announced about a week ago that they had sold 3 million Xbox One consoles.
0:15:53So we talked when the PlayStation 4 launched, they sold a million in 24 hours, and the Xbox
0:15:58Similar numbers from like oh, that's fine as the early adopters. Let's see if they can sustain that it looks like they're both consoles
0:16:03They're doing pretty well
0:16:05More or less neck-and-neck PlayStation 4 may be a little bit ahead
0:16:08But I think I think the PlayStation 4 is still supply constrained and it seems like from pictures
0:16:13I see of people in Twitter that if you wanted an Xbox one you could go into a store and see a big stack of
0:16:17Green boxes and pick one. I'm not sure if that's entirely true, but I know from experience
0:16:21That you cannot just stroll into a store and pick up a ps4 at this point because I've looked online
0:16:27I looked at it not hard, but you know I'm just curious like if I'm in a store that sells
0:16:30but I'll just look and see if they have any and they don't and
0:16:32Occasionally, I'll look online and see oh do any of these things have it available for order and they don't
0:16:36So I think it's still harder to get a PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 is selling more
0:16:41So maybe they're farther ahead than we think but either way both of them doing very very well
0:16:45I would say that this new console generation is off to a strong start
0:16:47Are there any games that people actually want yet?
0:16:50That's the thing like I don't think there's there's some good games coming out like I mean Sony was showing us
0:16:55Microsoft showing off Titanfall, and Sony has a couple of good titles in the works,
0:16:59but there's no big system seller games.
0:17:02The typical franchise games that are on all the platforms that you could also play on
0:17:05a PC, but who cares?
0:17:06It's not like either one of these platforms is being propelled by some must-have exclusive
0:17:10game like Halo or something.
0:17:12People just want new consoles.
0:17:14Now I wonder, so in previous launches there's usually been maybe one system out of the bunch
0:17:20that didn't have any must-have games on launch.
0:17:23Has there ever been a generation before this where none of them had any must-have games
0:17:27on launch?
0:17:28Oh yeah, sure.
0:17:29I mean, well, like, a lot of times they would launch with a couple of, like, I mean, let's
0:17:35think of the GameCube did not have must-have games at launch.
0:17:38Like, the Xbox One, you say, "Oh, it had a must-have game, it had Halo."
0:17:42Well, people didn't know if Halo was going to be any good.
0:17:44It was the first Halo game.
0:17:45Like, I don't think that was making people go out and buy an original Xbox, because it
0:17:50it was kind of an unknown quantity. Maybe a few Mac users who had followed Bungie thought
0:17:54it was awesome, but everyone else was like, "Halo? What? I don't know about that." I mean,
0:17:58I don't remember if the PS2 had, I guess, had a Ridge Racer or something. But consoles
0:18:02settle in. And the reason I thought these two new consoles would do well is, as I said
0:18:07I think on a previous show, that for many people of the age to be having enough of disposable
0:18:13income to buy their own consoles or to get their parents to buy them, this is their first
0:18:16new console generation. Their whole life they've been using, like their PlayStation 3s and
0:18:21Xbox 360s and maybe the previous generation from their older siblings or whatever, this
0:18:25is the first console generation they're living through after seven or eight long years of
0:18:29using all the past tech. So I think the market was ripe for tons and tons of people who want
0:18:35a shiny new thing, people who aren't grizzled veterans of many console generations. And
0:18:41it seems like that was the case.
0:18:42I have to imagine this must be building a lifelong disappointment in game systems for
0:18:47some of these people, though. If the very first awesome thing they're looking forward
0:18:51to getting this game system, the very first new game system comes out for some eight-year-old,
0:18:56and they get it, and there's only four games for it, and they're all kind of mediocre,
0:19:02is that a great experience?
0:19:04That's part of the experience. Having been through many console generations, part of
0:19:08the experience is getting super excited about the console and then even if you're lucky,
0:19:12even if you get it and you're like, "I'm getting a Nintendo 64 and it's going to have
0:19:14Mario 64, it's going to blow my brains out." And it totally does. It's an amazing game.
0:19:19Everybody loves it. And then you play it and you're like, "Okay, what else can I get?"
0:19:23It's like, "And pilot wings." It's like nothing. And then you're like, "Well, I guess..."
0:19:29Well, there was Wave Race. That wasn't bad.
0:19:31Oh, Wave Race is great.
0:19:33But the launch games are usually not the best games. And even if there's one that's really
0:19:37great. Maybe if you're lucky you get one that's really great. Consoles have a life cycle,
0:19:42and for kids who don't know this, they're going to learn the hard lesson. Also, the
0:19:45hard lesson of the software in the modern age, the software that comes at launch day
0:19:48sucks and needs to be patched a million times and doesn't have half the features you want
0:19:51and is buggy as hell. And just wait. There's a life cycle. This is the beginning part.
0:19:56It has good parts. Exciting to get it on launch day. Exciting to be the first one to have
0:19:59it. And bad because the games are just ports or multi-platform titles and the few exclusives
0:20:04you play through or aren't interested in and then you just wait. It's all part of the process.
0:20:09I think it's making a new generation of gamers.
0:20:13And now we even have a lot of hardware problems, too. Have you been following Matthew Panzareno's
0:20:17saga of trying to get an Xbox One?
0:20:20Yes!
0:20:21He's gotten five of them broken so far.
0:20:23You would think of all the companies in the entire world that should be wary of carefully
0:20:28designed hardware, but it would be Microsoft. And this is probably just a fluke, because
0:20:31I haven't heard any.
0:20:32You know, he's just getting unlucky, but after the Red Ring of Death and billions of
0:20:37dollars in write-downs for hardware replacements and people being on their sixth and seventh
0:20:41Xbox 360, surely Microsoft got it right this time.
0:20:45Apparently not.
0:20:46Well, the funny thing is, too, apparently the biggest source of their problems is the
0:20:49disk drive.
0:20:51You would think, I mean, is it that new of a thing?
0:20:54Like, you would think we would know how to make reliable optical disk drives in 2014.
0:20:59Every time I think about this, I just keep thinking back and back to PlayStation 3, and
0:21:02that machine should have fallen apart in people's hands.
0:21:05Like the crazy cell processor, and the first thing with the Blu-ray drive, and waiting
0:21:09for the stupid blue lasers, and all this like, I don't understand.
0:21:12And then, like, PlayStations have just, you know, been fine.
0:21:16And it doesn't make any sense that Microsoft screwed it up with the much more conservative
0:21:20approach.
0:21:21They're going even more conservative now, and they're having these hard drive problems.
0:21:23I don't understand.
0:21:24I mean, there's something to be said for Sony's decades and decades of experience building
0:21:29consumer electronics and Microsoft's considerably smaller amount of experience.
0:21:33Yeah, I guess the real Xbox One was just a fluke because it was fine.
0:21:38Like, the very first Xbox, it was a PC crammed into a not-that-small box, and it was fine.
0:21:43Like, you know, you would think it would have overheated somewhat or had other problems.
0:21:46Nope, it was fine.
0:21:47I'd never heard of widespread problems, although I guess it didn't sell that well either, so.
0:21:50Well, I mean, they're cursed by the 360.
0:21:53The reason it's shaped the way it was is because Xbox is huge, LOL, right?
0:21:57And so they made the successor...
0:21:59It's pronounced "LOL."
0:22:00All right.
0:22:01Well, anyway, they made the successor.
0:22:03It's skinny.
0:22:04See, it's practically like an hourglass.
0:22:05Look how skinny it is, and maybe you shouldn't have quite made it so skinny because you could
0:22:08have more room for cooling, and yeah.
0:22:10It wasn't even that skinny.
0:22:11Well, I know, but you saw what they were going for.
0:22:14We don't want to make a gigantic bot, and they should have.
0:22:16The Xbox One is pretty big, and so is the PlayStation 4, for that matter.
0:22:20We'll see.
0:22:21I still think Panzer's thing could just be bad luck.
0:22:25It's not like if we start seeing stories and if this gets a name like Red Ring of Death,
0:22:29then we'll know it's an issue.
0:22:32Do we want to answer the question, "Who needs a Mac Pro?"
0:22:35Yeah, I threw this in there because, again, with me whining about what kind of computer
0:22:42I'm going to get and whether I'm going to buy a new Mac Pro, lots of people—this
0:22:44one common strain of feedback, which is, "What do you need a Mac Pro for?"
0:22:51And for Marco, too, "What does Marco need a Mac for?
0:22:53You guys don't need this computer."
0:22:55And this kind of logic and argument and questioning, like, "What is it that you're doing that you
0:23:00need a Mac Pro?"
0:23:01"I was getting it even for my current computer."
0:23:03"What games are you playing specifically that you need a fancy video card?"
0:23:07And there's a snarky answer, like I just gave on Twitter, which is, well, for future games,
0:23:11for games I don't have now.
0:23:12That's why you buy, that's why one of the reasons I buy a big fancy computer is not
0:23:16for the games that are out now, but for the games that are going to be out two, three,
0:23:19four years from now, I want to be able to play those two without getting a new computer.
0:23:21But anyway, that's besides the point.
0:23:23This line of reasoning of like, you need to have a practical reason for this thing that
0:23:31you're getting, otherwise you shouldn't get it, only seems to apply in certain situations.
0:23:36Certainly it applies in the situation where we're talking about big expensive computers,
0:23:40but I was trying to think of other situations where people are comfortable with it not applying.
0:23:45Having trouble coming up with good examples, I guess I thought of like, if you get a bigger
0:23:48TV, occasionally I guess someone might ask, "What do you need a TV that big for?"
0:23:54For the most part, people understand you're not getting a big TV because like, "Well,
0:23:56I watch golf a lot and I was having trouble seeing the ball, so I need a bigger television
0:24:00so the ball is bigger."
0:24:02People kind of intuitively understand that it's more sort of immersive and exciting to
0:24:08look at a bigger screen than a smaller one.
0:24:09So when you say you got a bigger TV, people don't say, "Why did you get a bigger one?
0:24:14What is it that you want?"
0:24:15Like, literally asking, like, "Is there some kind of program that you watched that was
0:24:18not working correctly with your smaller television and now will work with a bigger one?"
0:24:23Or, "Why do you need granite countertops?
0:24:25What was wrong with your other?
0:24:26Do you do something?
0:24:27Do you do certain kind of cooking that only works on granite?
0:24:29Do you do pastry dough where you need to suck away the heat?"
0:24:31And it's like, sometimes you just want to have countertops that look like nice shiny
0:24:34granite.
0:24:35Like, that's the answer.
0:24:36And the same thing with the computer.
0:24:38I feel like saying it—there are reasons why I might want to get it, but not everything
0:24:44has to be in need.
0:24:45There's such an idea of a luxury item, and everyone chooses what their luxury items are.
0:24:50Maybe your luxury item is very fancy furniture or a nice house or jewelry or a really expensive
0:24:55watch or lots of vacations or whatever.
0:24:58But yeah.
0:24:59But it's like, certainly, I think, you know, I think that's a good thing.
0:25:00I think that's a good thing.
0:25:01I think that's a good thing.
0:25:02I think that's a good thing.
0:25:03I think that's a good thing.
0:25:04I think that's a good thing.
0:25:05I think that's a good thing.
0:25:06certain things people accept as indulgences or as a hobby interest or whatever, and other
0:25:11things people don't accept as an indulgence and demand justification. You must have an
0:25:15actual need. Are you running Maya? Maybe you just want to have a fast computer because
0:25:19you're into technology and fast computers are fun to have. I think that's a perfectly
0:25:23valid reason. It's a large part of my reason and I assume a large part of Marco's reason.
0:25:27I don't think anyone should ever get caught in the idea where they have to justify through
0:25:32work-related examples, or even leisure-related examples, like, "Well, show me the game that
0:25:36needs this video card." That's a ridiculous example anyway, because you don't need to
0:25:40play games, period. If I gave you one, you're like, "All right, well, now I see why you
0:25:42need one." Why? Because I need to play this first-person shooter? Why do you need to play
0:25:45the first-person shooter? That we accept as fun. You're allowed to play a game just because
0:25:48it's fun, but you're not allowed to have a fast computer just because it's fun. So the
0:25:51only way you can justify the computer is to point to the game you're going to play, which
0:25:55I accept that you're allowed to use because it's fun.
0:25:57Yeah, I think part of it is it's a combination of a few factors. Like part of that, like
0:26:01why do you need this, is that these are very expensive items. And so it's alienating to
0:26:07say, you know, like buying expensive cars, it's alienating to say like, "Oh, I got this
0:26:11car that's really, really expensive that you can't afford." Like that's, people don't like
0:26:15hearing that. It's not a great thing to spread around. And computers are not as expensive
0:26:20as cars, but they're still very expensive. And they're like, computers like the Mac Pro
0:26:24are unaffordable to many people. And so there's that aspect.
0:26:29The other aspect is that computers do have this weird blend of some people need it for.
0:26:34Like, you know, nobody needs a TV for work except J.D. Harmeyer. Nobody else needs a
0:26:39TV for work. And, you know, we all use computers for work nowadays. I mean, not everybody,
0:26:44but everyone talking on this show and probably a lot of the listeners. We all use computers
0:26:49for work. And we also use computers for hobbies and for leisure and for entertainment. And
0:26:55so it's... there are people who do need the Mac Pro for work. You know, if you're a professional
0:27:00video editor that's working with 4K content, you are probably going to need it. You know,
0:27:07if you're doing certain other things, you probably need it too, but it's... the number
0:27:10of people who need the Mac Pro or who need, like, all the way decked out, laptop or iMac,
0:27:17a pretty small number, really. But you're right, you know, I think it's just distorted because
0:27:21some people do need them for work, but for most of us, it's just we want things to be nicer and
0:27:26a little bit faster. I mean, the granite countertop is an example too. Some people need a granite
0:27:30countertop if they're pastry chefs or, you know, because you, what is it, because it doesn't take
0:27:35the heat out of the dough as fast or something? I don't remember. There's a reason why you need
0:27:38granite countertops. Does it melt the butter? You could conceivably, yeah, you could conceivably
0:27:42needs one. But then most people don't get them for that reason. In the chat room, one
0:27:47person pointed out that like, well, the difference between not needing to play a game is that
0:27:52games are less expensive than a Mac Pro. Well, super high end games, like you want to play
0:27:57Crysis 3, the game may not be expensive, but the computer that you need to run it decently
0:28:00certainly is. But anyway, you know, prices are relative. Like, this Mac Pro may seem
0:28:05like a super expensive thing where I had to buy it, but compare it to the cost of living
0:28:09living in a nicer neighborhood, going on more vacations, or like all the other things that
0:28:13people can spend their money on. Like, you know, if we all wanted to live as cheaply
0:28:17as possible, we would not have half of the things that we have. I mean, we would get
0:28:21into a career that doesn't involve computers and we'd all be farmers or something.
0:28:25Right. And, you know, it's all about, like, you know, how you spend your time. Like, you
0:28:29know, for me, like, I spend so much time in front of a computer every day. Like, you know,
0:28:34there's a thing I tweeted forever ago that has gotten the most retweets of anything I've
0:28:39tweeted and it's something on the lines of if you sit on, look at, or touch something
0:28:45for more than two hours a day, spend whatever it takes to get the best. And so that includes
0:28:49keyboards, mice, your chair. If you sit at a desk all day, you better have a nice chair,
0:28:54a nice keyboard, a nice mouse, and a nice monitor. You know, the things that you use
0:29:00all the time, you should get nice things. It's always good to get a good mattress to
0:29:04sleep on. You know, like that for lots of reasons including comfort, but also like,
0:29:07like your back and stuff like that.
0:29:09If you have the ability to spend,
0:29:16to get a premium version of something,
0:29:18the wisest things to spend that on
0:29:20are the things that will have the most impact
0:29:22to your everyday life, generally speaking.
0:29:24And so the difference between a good monitor
0:29:28and a horrible monitor,
0:29:29you'll notice that every single day for hours.
0:29:31The difference between a good bed and a crappy bed,
0:29:34you're gonna be lying in it for eight hours a day, you hope.
0:29:37that's going to catch up with you.
0:29:40And so the computer, for people like us,
0:29:42is one of those things.
0:29:43If you actually will even notice the difference, ever,
0:29:49it's probably worth it.
0:29:50Like it's probably worth it to get a really nice computer.
0:29:52If you do anything at all, for any reasonable amount of time
0:29:55during the day, that might stretch your computer.
0:29:57It's worth it to get the best one that you
0:29:58can get that fits your needs.
0:30:00By bringing in the time spent in front of device metric,
0:30:04you're trying to drag this back to pragmatism.
0:30:06I'm trying to take it away.
0:30:07I'm trying to say, "No, there's no reason to justify it in a pragmatic, rational manner
0:30:12for things like this."
0:30:14Some people just want a really fancy table saw.
0:30:17What do they do with that fancy table saw?
0:30:19They make little wooden things that they never give to anyone, don't sell, and aren't useful
0:30:23in any way.
0:30:24That's their hobby.
0:30:25That's what they want to do.
0:30:26"Oh, you don't need a $10,000 table saw."
0:30:27No, he does not need a $10,000 table saw because he's not making money from it.
0:30:31In fact, it's a money sink.
0:30:33He just makes little wooden things and puts them in his house and it makes him happy.
0:30:36And that's what he wants to spend his money on.
0:30:38Ten thousand dollar table saw.
0:30:39I'm not saying that you should justify what you spend extra money on by how much it will
0:30:46make you money-wise.
0:30:47I'm saying just by how much you will enjoy it.
0:30:50That example fits my rationale perfectly.
0:30:52If you're going to actually use a table saw more than once a year, get a great one.
0:30:58Why not?
0:30:59If you can, if you have the ability to, and that will make you that happy, then that's
0:31:04worth doing for you.
0:31:06If you don't care, that's fine.
0:31:08If you can't afford it, do your best.
0:31:11If you want to spend the money elsewhere, fine.
0:31:14I get zero enjoyment out of wearing fancy clothes.
0:31:17So every day I wear a $7 t-shirt and a very worn out pair of jeans that I bought from
0:31:22Amazon.
0:31:23Everything I wear I can buy from Amazon when it wears out, which I love.
0:31:26I've worked for years to get to this point.
0:31:27It's amazing because I hate shopping.
0:31:30All that stuff, like I drive a really nice car, I have a really nice computer, but I
0:31:33wear crap clothes.
0:31:35There's a lot of things I don't care about because this is where I spend my time, this
0:31:40is where I get my enjoyment.
0:31:41So it is a combination of luxury and treating yourself to the things you like and being
0:31:48kind of analytical about where you spend that extra money to give you the maximum fun or
0:31:55happiness benefit.
0:31:56Okay, KJ Healey posted two four-line posts in the chat room, so that means he demands
0:32:03to be heard, so I'll address his point here.
0:32:05Is that all it seems?
0:32:07The problem is that Mac Pro, for hobbyists who could afford it, is that it's still not
0:32:10the premium thing they wanted.
0:32:11It's like you wanted the best granite countertops to cook on, but Apple gave you decent countertops,
0:32:15but also two huge fridges you don't have much use for.
0:32:19That may be true of some people.
0:32:20For me, specifically, it's like Apple gave me the granite countertops I wanted, but they
0:32:24They cost 10 times more than I thought they would.
0:32:27Because underneath them are two graphics cards, two GPUs that I'm not going to use most of.
0:32:31Yeah.
0:32:32Again, as I said before, there are parts of the Mac Pro that appeal to me way more than
0:32:38if I had gotten exactly the computer that I wanted with internal storage and everything.
0:32:41I like that it's super small.
0:32:43I like that there's only one fan.
0:32:44I never dreamed of those things when I was thinking, "Oh, boy, Apple revises the Mac
0:32:48Pros."
0:32:49And it has to have internal storage and it has to have card slots.
0:32:53could be smaller and nicer, and of course they'll get rid of the optical. That's what I was
0:32:56envisioning. And they'll be like, "Hey, that's exactly the machine to you." Instead, they gave
0:32:59me this other machine that has things that I didn't even dream I could ask for. Only one fan,
0:33:03as quiet as a Mac Mini? You better bet that appeals to me tremendously. But it costs so
0:33:08darn much money. It's getting into like, "Oh, if you can afford it, do you want a really fancy
0:33:13computer just because you like a fancy computer?" Yes, but I have a budget too, and it costs so much
0:33:18money. So that, for me specifically, is the problem. And me railing against all the people
0:33:24saying, "What do you need that computer for?" or "What do you need a high-end GPU for?"
0:33:28or anything like that, I'm just saying, you don't need to need it. You just need to want
0:33:32it. And I certainly do want a Mac Pro, but you always have to balance what you want with
0:33:36what you can afford, and so on and so forth. So I think these are two separate issues.
0:33:39I think also, and with all due apologies to Casey to talk more about the Mac Pro just for
0:33:44a minute. I swear it'll be fast. He's already left. He's lopped it. I think the new Mac
0:33:52Pro, it's kind of like when the first MacBook Air came out, in that we're looking at it
0:33:58now and we're saying there's no drive bays, there's no card slots, the RAM ceiling is
0:34:03actually lower than the previous one. And so you look at all that and you say, "Well,
0:34:07this isn't really what we wanted and it's kind of limited." Everyone said the same things
0:34:12about the first MacBook Air when it came out, although it had the additional problem that
0:34:15it was incredibly slow. The Mac Pro won't have that problem. Now, with the MacBook Air,
0:34:22we have eventually, like, when it first came out, we were like, you know, I still use DVD
0:34:25drives every so often, and maybe I want that port that it doesn't have or whatever, but
0:34:31over like the next year and a half, those things basically vanished. And then two years
0:34:35after the first one came out, the next one came out, it was awesome and everybody bought
0:34:38it and it became like the new Mac to have. And I think that the current Mac, or the new
0:34:43Mac Pro, which is humorously called the 2013 one, even though nobody actually got it in
0:34:492013, the new Mac Pro is a similar kind of jump as the first MacBook Air, which is, although
0:34:55with a lot fewer downsides I think, you know, my current Mac Pro, the big choose-grader
0:35:01one, it has four internal drive bays that you can put hard drives in, you can put two
0:35:06two optical drives in it, well, I even use both optical drives. I put a Blu-ray
0:35:10burner in the bottom one. I use it approximately never. I have four internal
0:35:16drive bays, one of them is full. And like I, over time I'm finding like, oh and the
0:35:24card slots? I've never put an expansion card on a Mac Pro. I've owned two for
0:35:29myself, one for my wife, never put an expansion card in it. And what a lot of
0:35:34put in the expansion slots are more GPUs. And so the new one addresses that even.
0:35:38So there's a lot of Mac Pro users who even
0:35:42having the expandability of the previous generations didn't use it that much.
0:35:46Oh, actually Sam the Geek just corrected me. Apparently my SSD is
0:35:50a PCI express card that I forgot about. Oops. So once I have used
0:35:54one card that, by the way, the new Mac Pro has that exact same thing, a 1 terabyte
0:35:58SSD built in and it's faster and cheaper. So
0:36:02The point is, I've had all this expandability, but over time, I've used less and less and less of it.
0:36:09And I think Apple, looking at their customers, I believe they've found similar things among other Mac Pro buyers.
0:36:14Saying things like, "Yeah, it's true that a lot of video editors don't use local storage. They'll use a SAN or something like that."
0:36:21The need for the internal bays has shrunk over time.
0:36:26And so the compromises the new machine makes, the compromises that are about hardware,
0:36:31There's compromises about pricing and requiring two GPUs that increases the pricing. That's a separate issue
0:36:38that's perfectly valid, but the compromise is about
0:36:40internal expendability and space and ports and things. I think they're actually doing the right thing.
0:36:47I don't think that's gonna really be a problem that anyone cares about in six months.
0:36:50Yeah, perhaps not.
0:36:53Firstly, I have to apologize. I was trying to interject and say it was fine for you to continue talking about Mac Pro stuff,
0:36:58but I left myself muted like a moron.
0:37:01Well, because you didn't object, I just kept going.
0:37:04Well, I noticed. And that's fine. No, it's not a problem.
0:37:06But I would really, really love for you to tell me about something that's awesome.
0:37:09I completely agree, because it's 40 minutes in.
0:37:12That's alright. We'll just have a short show.
0:37:15So, our first sponsor—I'm going to paste the link in the chat.
0:37:18You guys can see. I'll put this in the show notes too.
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0:40:15Yep, thank you, Fracture.
0:40:17Now, did you—this is not a loaded question—did you have anything more on the Mac Pro, because
0:40:21I sort of kind of cut you off there?
0:40:23Me?
0:40:24I actually—I think for now I'm done.
0:40:26I mean, I'm sure by next episode I'll come up with more, maybe even in ten minutes.
0:40:30But I think for now I'm done.
0:40:32All right, John, anything about the Mac Pro specifically?
0:40:35No.
0:40:36Okay.
0:40:37Tell me about Panasonic LCD TVs, if you don't mind.
0:40:40Oh, and we're back to CES.
0:40:41This is worse than the Mac Pro.
0:40:44I threw this in there because this is a story that I saw in the CES news, and I was interested
0:40:50with TV tech and particularly what Panasonic was going to do.
0:40:53We all knew that Panasonic was leaving the Plasma business, and of course they were going
0:40:57to make LCD TVs, and they have.
0:41:00And the most interesting thing about this, I think, is, well, I mean, of course they're
0:41:05touting 4K.
0:41:06Everyone's touting 4K.
0:41:07Last year, they were doing, everyone was touting 4K as well.
0:41:10But it was interesting to me to see how they're going to pitch these new televisions.
0:41:15And the way they pitched it, they kind of did a little bit of marketing judo.
0:41:20On the one hand, you could say, well, they went right up and they hit right to their
0:41:25opponent's forehand.
0:41:27They knew that everyone was going to say, these TVs aren't as good as your old TVs.
0:41:32So they addressed that immediately.
0:41:33Their marketing message was, we're making 4K LED televisions, LCD with an LED backlight.
0:41:39That sucks crap.
0:41:40that so much? I know. It's a convenient shorthand, but anyway. And what we're going to say about
0:41:45them is they're as good as or better than our plasma TVs. But they said it in a kind
0:41:50of marketing weasel-worthy way. They were showing a color chart saying the color reproduction
0:41:58is better than even our best previous plasma, the ZT60. The thing about that is that color
0:42:05Color reproduction for televisions, for plasmids and everything, plasmids that Panasonic has
0:42:10been selling for years can already show colors outside the range that you're "supposed" to
0:42:16show when reproducing Blu-rays and television signals.
0:42:20The color range in the content is not as wide as can be displayed by TVs.
0:42:25In fact, most TVs have a setting that lets you say, "Do you want me to show the colors
0:42:28as intended by the author according to this narrow range of colors that they expected
0:42:32to be able to reproduce on output? Or do you want me to use the entire color range of the
0:42:36set and just kind of smear the source colors across that? And you could choose whichever
0:42:41you want. You want accuracy or sort of like a wider color band. So the fact that there
0:42:44are LCD television has an ever so slightly even wider range of colors than the plasmas
0:42:51doesn't really make that much of a difference with current content. Maybe it'll make a difference
0:42:54down the line with different content, but for now it doesn't really make that much.
0:42:58And they didn't, as far as I know, say anything about black levels and motion interpolation
0:43:02and all the other areas where we know LCDs have problems compared to plasmas.
0:43:05So I'm kind of disappointed that they pulled that, but it seems to have worked on everyone
0:43:11because everyone just keeps parroting the line and says, "Oh, Panasonic says they're
0:43:13as good as or better than their previous plasmas."
0:43:16In some respects, I'm sure they are as good.
0:43:18In some respects, they're probably better.
0:43:19They probably use way less power, they're thinner, so on and so forth.
0:43:22But in some respects, I fully expect that they are worse.
0:43:25I guess the jury's still out until independent third parties get their hands on these TVs
0:43:29and start testing them, and we'll see.
0:43:31But this is not the first time this has happened.
0:43:34Way back in the day, Pioneer used to make plasmas, and they made a line of plasmas that
0:43:38was widely acknowledged to be the best TV you could buy for any price.
0:43:41There wasn't a projection TV, and it was the Pioneer Kuro Elite line of televisions, and
0:43:47then Pioneer stopped making plasmas.
0:43:49And for many, many years after that, every new television from any manufacturer that
0:43:53was reviewed, they would say, "Oh, this is a great new TV.
0:43:56It's the best one you can buy right now, but it's still not as good as the Kuro Elite."
0:43:59And that would happen year after year, and that's kind of very strange in technology,
0:44:02where it would be like if the new Mac Pro came out and they said, "Well, this Mac Pro
0:44:07is great, but it's not as good as the Mac Pro that was out four years ago."
0:44:09That never happens.
0:44:10Like, it's...
0:44:11That doesn't happen in computers, and happening in television is also very strange.
0:44:14So for a long, long time, the Kuro Elite was the king, and it could be for a long time
0:44:18that the Panasonic Plasmids would be the king.
0:44:21But I suspect that the 4K difference will be a factor here.
0:44:25And it's like, well, you know, all those plasmas weren't 4K, so who cares about them?
0:44:29And all that matters is 4K.
0:44:31So serious question.
0:44:32Do you suspect that you will—I'm going to use the word "regret," but I think
0:44:37that's too strong—that you'll regret the purchase of your TV from just a month
0:44:40or so ago sooner because some newer, better TV will come out or because there will be
0:44:50proliferation of 4K TV shows and movies, thus actually making a 4K display worth it.
0:44:57Yeah, how do you, not to avoid that question because I think I'll get to it eventually,
0:45:02but how do you guys feel about 4K?
0:45:04Well, it's one of those things. It's a lot like Super Audio CD and DVD audio, which
0:45:10is, you know, and I don't mean to predict its sales, although I think, well, screw it,
0:45:16I do. I don't need to be diplomatic here.
0:45:21When you look at various consumer electronics AV formats over time, the audio world is a
0:45:27great way to look at this, although it applies to video as well. Every time there's been
0:45:32a major quality increase that has been successful in the market, it has also come with other
0:45:37benefits besides the quality that have made people want to buy it. So when going from
0:45:43to CDs, there was a major increase in so many other factors besides the audio quality. It
0:45:48was more convenient, it was more reliable, it was faster to seek around and no rewinding.
0:45:54Similar thing going from VHS to DVD. Everything is faster, easier, better, more versatile,
0:46:00you can put it in more places, computers can read it, you can play it in the car, all that
0:46:03stuff. And so then you look at then going from DVD to Blu-ray. And DVD to Blu-ray was
0:46:11much slower transition. I would still say it's not really complete.
0:46:15Because the only difference between DVD and Blu-ray
0:46:20is Blu-ray is better quality and is more annoying in all the ways the DVDs are
0:46:25annoying, Blu-rays are worse.
0:46:27That's the only major difference. There's no like,
0:46:30they aren't all of a sudden more versatile or easier to use
0:46:33or available in more places or cheaper or smaller or anything like that.
0:46:37So looking at all that, look at TVs.
0:46:40When we moved from SD to HD, we also were moving from CRTs, the giant, heavy, horrible
0:46:50things to nice, thin LCDs and plasmas that were much bigger, much thinner, much lighter,
0:46:57much cooler looking, and much better looking.
0:46:59So there were a lot of other reasons for people to move from SD to HD.
0:47:04Also the wide screen aspect ratio was another big factor.
0:47:07Exactly.
0:47:08all these other factors that went along with it that made it a success in the market and
0:47:13that made people want to have it besides just picture quality. In fact, as most people know,
0:47:20almost everyone who cares about TV picture quality has probably gone to a relative's
0:47:24or parent's house and seen that they are running their cable box or something into the TV that
0:47:29supports high def, but they have it hooked up with the wrong cables, using the wrong
0:47:31input or the wrong settings, and they are not even watching HD content, and they don't
0:47:35care and it drives you nuts. So obviously the picture quality alone is not enough to
0:47:41drive major adoption very quickly of anything.
0:47:45Same thing, so in the audio world when SACD and DVD audio came out they both flopped,
0:47:51first of all because of the format war, but mostly because nobody cared that much. It
0:47:54was the exact same as CDs, but less things were supported. You had to get new players,
0:47:59you couldn't do it in your computer or your car or anything, so it flopped.
0:48:034K is, you know, at least you have backwards compatibility with newer types of TV sets,
0:48:08that's less of a problem, but you look at 4K and it's like, well, we already have HD,
0:48:141080p. It's very mature by now. We have great, we have tons of great HD source material and
0:48:21source devices, tons of HD broadcast cable, like everything is HD now basically, which
0:48:26was not the case even like five years ago. You have very good HD support in the industry.
0:48:32And the move to 4K, what is that really going to bring us?
0:48:37It's going to bring a new type of disk format, probably.
0:48:41I don't think Blu-ray can do it, right?
0:48:42So probably a new kind of disk format, new kinds of TVs, new disk players if we're still
0:48:46using disks.
0:48:47God, I hope we're not, but we probably still will for a little while.
0:48:51Much larger file sizes for internet streamed media.
0:48:56A whole other round of everybody, cable companies, TV companies, everybody being able to screw
0:49:01everything up again. So it's like this big disruption. It's going to make everything
0:49:05that was mature, it's going to become immature again. You know, like, why go through all
0:49:10that? And the reason is an increase in picture quality that you probably won't notice ever,
0:49:16but the people who do notice it will only notice it on like an 80-inch TV. I mean, that's
0:49:21how compelling is that really? And I think it's going to take off similarly to Blu-ray
0:49:26in that it will be the high end, so people will buy it, but it's not going to be explosively
0:49:32growing very quickly the way DVDs and CDs did, because to most people it doesn't bring
0:49:38any noticeable benefit except saying you have the high end thing.
0:49:42Now, the audio CDs and the Blu-ray and stuff had two things going against them that 4K
0:49:50at least doesn't have, and both of those were physical media being introduced right
0:49:55around the time when physical media was going away for their respective mediums, like DVD
0:49:59audio and Super Audio CD.
0:50:00Yes, the old things said the format war was stupid and nobody cared, but also MP3s came
0:50:06along.
0:50:07And so they were just wiped out.
0:50:08And Blu-ray, it's amazing that it has been as successful as it has been, but it came
0:50:12out around the time that streaming video became a thing.
0:50:15And now only crazy people buy Blu-rays and everyone else just streams it if they can.
0:50:19So those were all media distribution formats that were coming up against a "Hey, we don't
0:50:23need physical media anymore.
0:50:25Television is luckily have the advantage of there's no downloadable TV.
0:50:28You need to have an actual TV set.
0:50:30You can't make a TV set appear in your house over a wire.
0:50:33So that still at least has a place in the ecosystem.
0:50:36It's not being wiped out by like, I mean I guess the equivalent would be like head-mounted
0:50:40displays or something or something else that's not wiping it out.
0:50:42People still want to look at a screen.
0:50:44So they have that going for them.
0:50:46The 4K thing, sometimes I think it's kind of like retina where it's like, yeah, nobody
0:50:50will care and only nerds will be able to tell, but it'll happen anyway just because it's
0:50:55cheap enough to double the resolution of LCDs at that size. That could happen. I can totally
0:51:01envision a world where every TV you buy is 4K and almost all content is still 1080p,
0:51:06because the content and everything else didn't catch up with it. But mostly what I think about
0:51:114K is that kind of like SuperE audio CD and DVD audio, they enhance the wrong thing. They enhance
0:51:19That's the thing that the fewest number of people are able to detect as even being different,
0:51:25let alone better.
0:51:26Because if you play an audio CD for someone and play a DVD audio or a Super Audio CD,
0:51:30no, people can't tell.
0:51:31Even audio files can probably be fooled.
0:51:32It depends on the mastering, it depends on everything else, and all those excuses you're
0:51:35going to make for not being able to tell between a CD and Super Audio CD, all those same excuses
0:51:39apply to television.
0:51:40"Well, it depends on how the content is mastered.
0:51:42Well, it depends on how it's distributed.
0:51:43Well, it depends on the authorship."
0:51:44Yes, that's true of video as well.
0:51:46And that's why I think doubling the resolution
0:51:50may not be better in enough ways that people can tell.
0:51:52Now, 4K has a couple saving graces.
0:51:54Everyone concentrates on the resolution,
0:51:56but that also has support for different frame rates.
0:51:59And that I think people probably could notice
0:52:01if based on people's impression of seeing The Hobbit
0:52:03in 48 frames per second and how they said it looked crazy.
0:52:05At least people noticed, at least people could tell,
0:52:07hey, this is 48 frames per second
0:52:08and I could tell it's different.
0:52:10Or as someone in the chat room points out,
0:52:12sports at 120 frames per second.
0:52:15Those are things that maybe people will be able to tell,
0:52:18and that may be able to drag along the content producers
0:52:20to say, who's motivated to make 4K content?
0:52:23Well, maybe the NFL isn't motivated to make 4K content.
0:52:26And if the NFL is motivated to make 4K content
0:52:28and people will buy the TVs,
0:52:30and that will kind of go along together,
0:52:31and it may just be kind of an inevitable thing.
0:52:33But the other people making noise at CES this year
0:52:36were trying to say, hey, we're over here,
0:52:39and we're trying to improve the other stuff
0:52:41that needs to be improved about TV,
0:52:42like I just mentioned, the color gamut.
0:52:43Like what is the maximum dynamic range
0:52:46between the brightest and the darkest spot
0:52:47on a television set?
0:52:48What are the range of colors that you can display?
0:52:51All those things are areas that desperately need
0:52:54to be improved in television,
0:52:56but you know, the television color standards,
0:52:57even the HD standards are way behind
0:52:59what the current technology can display.
0:53:01And those people will notice way more than 4K.
0:53:03If you showed someone that Dolby demo
0:53:05with like the huge dynamic range and everything,
0:53:09and then showed somebody 4K TV,
0:53:11everyone will be able to tell Dolby thing is different,
0:53:13even if it was running at 1080p.
0:53:15And if you just show 4K versus non-4K
0:53:17from a certain distance, you can't tell anymore.
0:53:19Because if resolution is the only thing,
0:53:22that's not gonna save you.
0:53:23So I think this is interesting, but I really wish,
0:53:26kinda like the cameras with the megapixel wars,
0:53:30I really wish that the side that was going for
0:53:33not more pixels but better pixels basically
0:53:35was a little bit stronger in this fight.
0:53:37But it seems to me that 4K will probably happen
0:53:41kind of inevitably, but not nearly in enough time
0:53:44for me to regret my Plasma purchase
0:53:45to finally answer Casey's question,
0:53:47because I'm gonna be enjoying 1080p content
0:53:51with fewer of the compromises that bother me about LCDs
0:53:55for many years to come.
0:53:57The only thing that could possibly annoy me, I think,
0:53:59is that if game consoles start putting out 4K
0:54:02and it's noticeable for like frame rate reasons,
0:54:05if that happens, maybe I'll regret it in a couple years,
0:54:07but I really, I would feel much, much worse
0:54:10if I had my old TV, which was not nearly as good a quality
0:54:13as any plasma in the past couple of years,
0:54:16I would have really regretted keeping that
0:54:18and knowing now I'm stuck.
0:54:20Now if this TV breaks or if I just get sick
0:54:22of looking at bad black levels,
0:54:24I will never, there's nothing out there for me to buy.
0:54:26I just have to sit here and wait.
0:54:27Now at least I know I'm set as long as this thing
0:54:29keeps working for many, many years
0:54:31and I can sort of do what I like to do,
0:54:32which is bide my time and look for that one perfect time
0:54:34to buy the cool new thing.
0:54:36- That's fair.
0:54:38Yeah, and I think you have a long time before any 4K TV is so good and so compelling and
0:54:45so supported by the surrounding ecosystem that it would be really compelling for you
0:54:50to upgrade.
0:54:51I mean, HDTV came out when?
0:54:54Like 2001 or something?
0:54:56It's pretty old.
0:54:58But most people didn't get them that year.
0:55:01They got them like five years later or more.
0:55:04And it was a few years after that before they were actually very good.
0:55:09And I think we're going to see a lot of the same things.
0:55:10I mean, granted, that was also, again, that was changing over a lot of legacy old stuff,
0:55:15making LCDs get better, making plasmas get better, modernizing lots of the signals, digitizing
0:55:19lots of stuff.
0:55:20So there was more to do during that transition.
0:55:23The HD content is terrible, though.
0:55:25Like the compression artifacts on your cable provider or Netflix streaming, they can't
0:55:29even put a signal that doesn't look like crap on 1080 sometimes.
0:55:33and 1080i they're sending it as,
0:55:35they're not even sending full 1080p.
0:55:36So it's gonna be a long time for the,
0:55:38you know, sort of non, if you don't have a good reason,
0:55:40if you're not like the Discovery Channel,
0:55:42the NFL or something, you have some compelling reason
0:55:44to go to 4K high frame rate as soon as you possibly can,
0:55:48we're still in for a long, long road of supposedly 4K
0:55:52content, supposedly HD content that technically
0:55:54fulfills the requirements, but mostly is gross.
0:55:57- Well, a couple things to consider.
0:55:59Firstly, the NFL already films in 4K,
0:56:01at least I think it was Fox does. Somebody, it may have been Engadget, I don't recall
0:56:06who it was, but they had talked to, and I believe it was Fox, about how they were going
0:56:11to film a Patriots game. And one of the things they said was, "We actually film in 4K so
0:56:19that when you zoom," and Slade 401 in the chat is saying it was the Verge, whatever
0:56:24So when you zoom on a instant replay
0:56:27You'll get a full 1080 image out of the source, which was 4k and so
0:56:33To some degree this is already happening even though it's not making it all the way to the consumer
0:56:39And the other thing I wanted to point out was part of the reason that Aaron and I didn't upgrade to an HD
0:56:46Setup initially was because not only did we need a new TV
0:56:51But we also needed a different cable box and to get the different cable box
0:56:57We needed to pay at the time Comcast more money, and I can't speak for everyone else, but I know
0:57:02Similar to the the retina discussion we had last week. I didn't really at the time know what I was missing and
0:57:10So I didn't really see an urgent need to upgrade and Aaron doesn't really care for
0:57:1499% of all TV and so she didn't see a terribly strong reason to upgrade and so we didn't have we had
0:57:21We had an HDTV in 2007, and I don't think we actually had HD pumping into the house
0:57:28until we moved a year later and we're getting Fios anyway.
0:57:31So I can't speak for everyone, but that makes it a little different.
0:57:36Another thing it made me think of was, I wonder if adoption of LTE bands would have been a
0:57:43lot slower if it cost more money from the carriers to get LTE service.
0:57:50and I can only speak for AT&T, but on AT&T there's no difference in price. And I believe
0:57:55that's the same for Verizon. I am not sure that's the same for T-Mobile. And nobody
0:57:59uses Sprint. So I'm not saying there's an answer and it's a rhetorical question,
0:58:04but I wonder if LTE adoption would have been slower if it was more expensive.
0:58:08Right. I think, you know, the way most people go to new technologies is when they have to
0:58:13buy a new one anyway, they get a decent one at the time. And so with phones, we move very
0:58:19quickly because so many people are on subsidized phone plans where you're pretty much encouraged
0:58:24to get a new phone every one to three years. So that's why the phone market moves so quickly.
0:58:30TVs move very slowly. You said like the cable box thing. A lot of people don't have to pay
0:58:35for their cable box, but you might have to go through a hassle for an upgrade, like bringing
0:58:40it to some place in the middle of nowhere next to the UPS depot or whatever. I've cut
0:58:44I've cut it down so many times.
0:58:47But even if you do have to pay for it, yeah, you're right.
0:58:49Usually there's a premium.
0:58:50If you have, well, if TiVo is still alive and you have a TiVo, then you've got to pay
0:58:54extra for the new HD or 4K one, and then Jon's going to complain about that for the next
0:58:58ten years because it's going to suck.
0:59:00You think that will have HD menus everywhere?
0:59:02No one will be complaining, "These menus are only 1080p!"
0:59:05Exactly.
0:59:06I would be glad if we ever get to that point.
0:59:08It seems like that may never even happen.
0:59:11Yeah.
0:59:12you know, the rate at which people normally upgrade TV equipment is pretty slow, because
0:59:17TVs are large and they at least used to be pretty expensive, but they're getting pretty
0:59:21cheap now, but there's still these large kind of fixtures, like furniture pieces, that you
0:59:26tend...like, no one gets a new TV every year except Jon.
0:59:29I've waited four years. Give me a break. Four years I've waited. The TiVo menus, by the
0:59:35way, they're not even 1080p now, they're 720p. Not that that makes a big difference, but,
0:59:39you know.
0:59:40And by the way, lots of TVs are still sold at 720p.
0:59:43I don't think that... do they still make 720p?
0:59:46I think every TV is 1080p now.
0:59:48No!
0:59:49Last year when I bought that LCD, that small 37-inch LCD for the back room, I had to look
0:59:55pretty hard to get a 1080p one.
0:59:57So many of them were 720p.
0:59:58I think you need to re-research that.
1:00:01I think they're almost all.
1:00:03I'm sure you can still find a 720p somewhere, especially if you start going to the no-name
1:00:07brands, but I think any name brand probably has zero 720p television sets.
1:00:12No, I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the case.
1:00:14You are wrong. Once you go to the smaller sizes, like in the 30s—
1:00:18Exactly.
1:00:18You go to the 30s and you go to those LCDs in the 30s and there's a lot of 720p.
1:00:23Who's buying a 30-inch TV that's the size of your monitor?
1:00:26Well, actually, I had to fit this into one area within an existing built-in bookshelf.
1:00:34And so I had a size cap.
1:00:35So this 37-inch Panasonic was like the biggest that would fit into this little spot.
1:00:39Well, is this a Batcave?
1:00:41You can say.
1:00:42It's all right.
1:00:43I'm not allowed to say.
1:00:44Wow.
1:00:45No, it's true, though.
1:00:46Like, I think I said on a previous show, our biggest TV in the house is 40 inches.
1:00:51And there is no part of me that wants a bigger one.
1:00:55And that one is 1080.
1:00:56But the one we have in our bedroom, and the only reason it's in our bedroom is because
1:01:01as we got the 40-incher to replace it.
1:01:04That one's 32 inches.
1:01:05And granted, it's a bit older, but it's 720 only.
1:01:08And I have no desire to upgrade it to a 1080 TV.
1:01:11Now, granted, I'm either very weird or very normal,
1:01:15depending on how you look at it.
1:01:17But as soon as you go to lower sizes,
1:01:19I think Marco's dead on.
1:01:21It's a little bit challenging to find a 1080 TV.
1:01:24I don't look at small television.
1:01:28I was disappointed that I couldn't find a plasma that
1:01:31was small because the plasma is-- speaking of the sizes of the televisions, these Panasonic
1:01:35LCDs, the new 4K televisions, the smallest size that comes in is now 58. You were surprised
1:01:41that the smallest size my TV came in was 55. Now the smallest size is 58. Soon the smallest
1:01:45size is going to be 100 inches.
1:01:48And the problem is all these really nice ones, like the VT60, they only come in larger sizes,
1:01:54and those keep going up. So when my TV-- I have a really nice TV for when I bought it.
1:01:59When it dies, I'm going to have to either get a giant wall of TV, which I don't want
1:02:04and which TIFF would kill me if I got, or get a crappy one.
1:02:09I think they have to—well, part of it is it's more expensive to make something.
1:02:13With the plasmas in particular, the reason you couldn't make a 4K plasma is because
1:02:17then the little tiny pits where the little particles are emitted and hit against the
1:02:23phosphorescent material would have to be super-duper small, and that's like a technical limitation.
1:02:27They probably could have done it if they wanted to invest tons and tons more money, but they didn't so they didn't but yeah
1:02:31As you get as the resolution goes up
1:02:33It's actually cheaper to make that's why like the 28 inch Dell 4k monitor that people want us to talk about
1:02:38It's actually cheaper to make a high resolution monitor bigger because then you don't have to make the pixel so darn small
1:02:43And it's you know this fewer errors, and it's easier to manufacture and all that stuff
1:02:47So I think I'm hoping that will take care of itself, but yeah when I'm shopping for a television
1:02:51I'm always shopping at the high end and they're all big and they're all 1080
1:02:54I guess wait as you get smaller
1:02:56I mean in a certain point you get a certain size you you know it becomes like
1:03:00You can't see you can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 and as I'm surprised
1:03:05No one has said in the chat room yet, or maybe I missed it
1:03:07I think if you do the math 720p has more pixels per second than 1080i but
1:03:11With all the processing that goes on who knows and yeah most most broadcast television is still 1080i not 1080p
1:03:18Yeah, but getting back to what Casey said about the source material like NFL games filmed in 4k
1:03:24I mean they do the same thing with the movies with the digital cameras like and you know
1:03:27They've always done even for TV. They would record TV on video at a much higher quality
1:03:31Than you'll ever be able to broadcast. That's you know, that's par for the course
1:03:35Those are the people out there
1:03:36Testing out the new format and everything by the time 4k makes its way down and there's some story on the evening use assuming
1:03:43The evening news still exists that says oh the 4k transition is coming
1:03:47Cable companies are turning off their old HD signal and now you can only get for it
1:03:51Remember the whole transition from analog and all that stuff?
1:03:55When we see that story in 10, 20 years, by that point, everyone will be recording everything
1:03:59in like 8K or whatever the hell the next standard is.
1:04:01So the content producers are always, you know, "I hope someone did the math and said 1080
1:04:05AI has slightly more pixels per second than 720p."
1:04:09I hope that in—somebody please tell me, and I hope this is the case—in the entire
1:04:134K standard, is there any allowance anywhere for interlaced anything?
1:04:18Because I hate interlacing so much in so many ways.
1:04:23The artifacts it makes are horrible.
1:04:24When you deinterlace, when you watch on something progressive, I hate getting interlaced DVDs
1:04:28and then when I rip them they look bad and interlaced TV.
1:04:32It's like, oh god, interlacing is the devil.
1:04:34Sam the Geek in the chat says, "Nope, it is not in the spec."
1:04:37I really hope that is true.
1:04:39God, interlacing needs to die.
1:04:42I hate interlacing so much.
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1:07:01Thanks a lot for sponsoring the show.
1:07:04So the helpful chat room has put in a link
1:07:06to an article showing the color spaces,
1:07:07showing the Rec. 709, which is the current HD color space.
1:07:11and most TVs already go bigger than that.
1:07:14And Panasonic was showing how this TV goes ever so slightly bigger.
1:07:17But there's also Rec. 2020, which is part of the 4K UHD standard, which is way bigger,
1:07:23has a much larger range.
1:07:24It's not as big as the dynamic range of brightness that Dolby was showing off with their crazy
1:07:28experimental water-cooled thing or whatever.
1:07:31But it does show that-- this is what I was getting at before-- that 4K brings more than
1:07:34just resolution.
1:07:35It brings for Marco, progressive scan mode only.
1:07:39And for me and a lot of other people, much higher frame rates.
1:07:42Well, someone was mentioning rectangular pixels.
1:07:43I have no idea if 4K still has rectangular pixels, or has rectangular pixels at all.
1:07:49Maybe they're dead too.
1:07:50Yeah, because my old HDTV that was a 4x3 CRT that you didn't think existed, which did exist,
1:07:57that was possible because of all these weirdnesses in the HD spec to allow for all this old stuff.
1:08:02But yeah, 4K is, at least I hope, it is taking its opportunity of dropping tons of legacy
1:08:08crap like that and just going for now and future looking good technology that's relatively
1:08:14simple.
1:08:15And as for the 720p versus 1080i, again, it depends on the frame rate if you do 720p.
1:08:19At 60 frames versus 1080i over 30, you can all do the math yourself, but as someone pointed
1:08:23out in the chat room and now I can't scroll back to find where it is, but 720p—I want
1:08:28to get it right so I don't want to—it was saying that 720p has more temporal resolution,
1:08:34as in motion over time, because it's not interlaced, obviously, and 1080i has more
1:08:37spatial resolution. So it depends on what you want. But that whole distinction with
1:08:42the I and P and stuff will hopefully be a relic of history. I mean, this is kind of
1:08:47one of the reasons in favor of 4K. You know, in 4K's corner is a lot of the legacy crap
1:08:53left over from the bad old non-HD days still infects the HD standards. Yes, DudeX, I know
1:08:59it was you in the chat room. I just couldn't find your line. I couldn't find it. I was
1:09:02I was going to read it.
1:09:03Anyway, making 4K, like what makes 4K inevitable is that it actually does get rid of a lot
1:09:12of the annoying crap and a lot of the details that people then need to care about.
1:09:15They didn't care about interlace versus progressive.
1:09:18They don't care about all these details of color spaces and stuff, but if they can make
1:09:21it so that it looks better to people and so that they have a reason to view it.
1:09:25Like if you go over to your friend's house and you watch NFL and 4K at higher frame rate
1:09:29you notice that's different, you're going to want that.
1:09:31Because now there's content that you're interested in.
1:09:33And if panel makers--
1:09:354K just becomes, well, it's actually cheaper now
1:09:37to make a 4K panel since all the factories are ramped up
1:09:41on it or whatever.
1:09:42It may be inevitable, but I still
1:09:43think it'll take a long time before cable companies start
1:09:47broadcasting 4K for anything except for a few special--
1:09:50you know, content is still going to be
1:09:521080 on all the cheap shows for a long, long, long time.
1:09:56And even on the 4K channels, if the first person says,
1:09:59every piece of our broadcast is 4K, some of those channels are going to look awful. Because
1:10:04they're, like, some of the channels look awful today at 1080i because they're just super
1:10:07over-compressed and gross.
1:10:08So, do you have anything else to talk about?
1:10:11I saw a lot of feedback fly through regarding Steam Boxes, and when Jon was lamenting having
1:10:20to buy a PC just for games, I saw a few people say, "Well, why not get a Steam Box?" So,
1:10:27Jon, why not?
1:10:28Well first, so let's just assume that somebody, not me, but that a friend of mine has no clue
1:10:34what a Steam Box is and hasn't been following this.
1:10:36Could you maybe explain what it is first?
1:10:39I could, but I'll do a terrible job of it because I don't really believe in games,
1:10:42Jon.
1:10:43They exist whether you believe in them or not.
1:10:47By explaining Steam Box, it's hard to explain it without revealing my views on it, but anyway.
1:10:53Valve is a company that started off making games and like many other good companies they
1:10:58realized that there's more to the market they were in than just making games.
1:11:02They also made a digital distribution platform which sounds like outside of their core competency,
1:11:07"Hey, you just make great games.
1:11:08What are you making a digital distribution platform for?"
1:11:10Well, they were making it because that's the future of gaming and they saw it before everyone
1:11:13else and they spent a long time working on their digital distribution thing called Steam,
1:11:18which if you're not familiar with this type of thing, it's like the app store for games.
1:11:22You don't have to go to a store and buy a disc.
1:11:23You just log on to something and download it
1:11:25and the game goes right onto your computer.
1:11:27Steam is available for the Mac,
1:11:28but even though it started out on the PC,
1:11:30and it's a great way to buy games for all the same reasons
1:11:32that the app stores are a great way for consumers
1:11:34to buy apps because who wants to go to the store
1:11:36and get a stupid disc?
1:11:38So the Steam box is Valve's next step in this process,
1:11:42which is, all right, why don't we make hardware as well?
1:11:45Because not everyone has or wants to make a PC
1:11:48that can play games.
1:11:50we will, I guess they're setting some kind of standard or whatever and saying you want
1:11:53to make a Steam Box.
1:11:54It's basically like a little PC that comes preconfigured to connect to Steam and it comes
1:11:59with a little controller if you want or you can use like an Xbox 360 controller or whatever.
1:12:03And it's sort of a turnkey way for you to get a gaming PC to play games from Steam.
1:12:09And people were suggesting a Steam Box to me.
1:12:11I'm not quite sure whether they were suggesting it or they were just asking me what I thought
1:12:15of it, but I think a lot of the coverage pinpoints the reasons to be skeptical about it, although
1:12:21those reasons may not end up mattering in the end. The reasons I'm not all that interested in a Steam
1:12:27Box is because, as many of the stories have said, it does less than a PC for a similar price. I mean,
1:12:33it's just a PC. It's PC hardware, PC video cards, and a PC box. That's all it is, is just sort of
1:12:41pre-configured and certified to work in this sort of thing. And they vary wildly. You can get super
1:12:45cheap ones that are like a super cheap PC. You can get super expensive ones that are like a
1:12:48super expensive PC. And I imagine, as many people pointed out, the most useful thing you can do with
1:12:53this is just reboot it into Windows, because the Steam Box runs Linux, by the way, which helps keep
1:12:58us close to that. Reboot it into Windows, and then you have a gaming PC. Why don't you just buy a
1:13:01gaming PC? If you want a gaming PC, buy a gaming PC. Well, non-nerds don't want to buy a gaming PC
1:13:06and don't know anything about them.
1:13:07So this feature that people think is silly,
1:13:11so what, it comes pre-configured to connect to Steam
1:13:13and runs this free OS so you don't have to play
1:13:15Windows license, who cares?
1:13:16Like, I don't care about that,
1:13:17I know how to install software, I know how to do this.
1:13:19Like, just the mere fact that you can buy something,
1:13:22call the Steam Box and have some sort of guarantees
1:13:24about the experience, not guarantees,
1:13:26like 'cause they do very wildly,
1:13:27but if Valve can manage the expectations when you know,
1:13:32I don't wanna get into PC gaming,
1:13:33but my friend got a Steam Box
1:13:35seems to be fewer problems, I'll get one of those. It's kind of like, I don't know anything
1:13:40about digital music, but my friend got one of those iPod things and he's able to listen to music
1:13:44digitally. So I'm going to try that. I'm not going to say Steambox has no chance.
1:13:51They're trying to thread a pretty narrow, thread the needle here between the world of game consoles,
1:13:59which is fixed hardware, doesn't change over time, easy to develop against because developers know
1:14:03know what everybody has, plus or minus a couple of accessories, and on the other side of the
1:14:07spectrum, full-fledged gaming PCs.
1:14:09They're thinking there's something in the middle there where we can get you something
1:14:13that's better than a console because you can spend more money and get a faster experience
1:14:18and upgrade it over time in part or in whole and have access to all these games we have
1:14:23available on Steam, but it's not as complicated as a gaming PC.
1:14:27I'm not sure if that little narrow valley between those two things is going to work
1:14:31for them, but it could very well be that the people who make gaming PCs will slowly become
1:14:37smaller and smaller and smaller and sort of dwindle and die out, and it will turn out
1:14:41that most of the people playing PC games actually weren't interested in building gaming PCs,
1:14:45actually weren't interested in maintaining gaming PCs.
1:14:47And this could really be a sort of a backdoor way to remake the PC industry, for people
1:14:52who play games anyway, to be more like the iOS device industry, where people aren't interested
1:14:59and tinkering them. They just want to get them, sit down in front of them, and use them.
1:15:03So I'm not quite sure how this is going to turn out, but for me, as someone who, you
1:15:09know, not that I'd be interested in tinkering to things, but I would be able to if I wanted
1:15:13to. If I wanted to get a gaming PC, I would build a gaming PC. I don't want one, but if
1:15:17I did, the things stopping me wouldn't be like, "Oh, I wish someone did all this work
1:15:21for me." Because people do it, you can just go to Alienware and click a bunch of buttons
1:15:24and get a super expensive gaming PC, and you could build a better one for half the money
1:15:28if you wanted to, but if you don't want to,
1:15:30you know, it's the same as anything else.
1:15:31So we'll see.
1:15:32I enjoy playing games from Steam on my Mac.
1:15:35I enjoy playing them, games from Steam on my Mac
1:15:37when it's booted into Windows,
1:15:38when it pretends that it's a gaming PC.
1:15:41I like having one computer that does both of those things.
1:15:44I also really like game consoles,
1:15:45so I'm probably not the target market for the Steam Box.
1:15:48But there's a lot of noise about them,
1:15:51and we'll wait a year and see how well
1:15:53all those different vendors who are feeling Steam Boxes
1:15:55feel about their contribution to Valve's platform.
1:15:58I'm kind of surprised that anybody thinks there's going to be a market for more than
1:16:02one of these things.
1:16:03Like, why is it a category and not just one box?
1:16:06If it was one box, it would be a game console.
1:16:09Right.
1:16:10Well, isn't-- I mean, but it kind of is.
1:16:11It's kind of a game console for Steam PC games.
1:16:14I mean--
1:16:15But for-- but they wanted to have some of the advantages of gaming PCs.
1:16:19And one of those advantages is it's not the same hardware for everybody.
1:16:22It changed every year.
1:16:23You can get a new, faster, better one that makes the games prettier.
1:16:26And that's not true of consoles.
1:16:27That's true.
1:16:29Like I said, the threading a needle.
1:16:31I don't know how much room there is between
1:16:33a gaming PC and a game console. It could be
1:16:35they get squished from above or below,
1:16:37depending on how you draw this diagram, by
1:16:39the consoles and just the entire world
1:16:41of PC gaming gets squished away. Or it could be
1:16:43that they get squished by real PC gaming
1:16:45and it turns out the only people left who aren't just
1:16:47exclusively playing consoles really want a full-fledged
1:16:49gaming PC and they don't want the
1:16:51Steam Box. I don't think it's entirely
1:16:53crazy and I think it is smart for Valve
1:16:55to get into hardware because they've shown that they understand that there's more to
1:16:59the world than what they're currently doing, and Steam was a great idea and a smashing
1:17:02success and they continue to also make great games on top of that.
1:17:06If they can also make great hardware that's popular, more power to them.
1:17:10But having third parties do it for you kind of looks like the Windows Phone strategy,
1:17:14where we're going to encourage this ecosystem of compatible hardware and I don't know.
1:17:18We'll see.
1:17:19Do you think it's a problem, am I correct, that the Steam boxes all have gamepad controller
1:17:26types and not like keyboard mouse kind of schemes?
1:17:29That's another problem, like the controller that they have is interesting and it's trying
1:17:33to make up for the fact that you don't have a keyboard and a mouse, and again, a lot of
1:17:37the people who play PC games, maybe, you know, they like mouse and keyboard, and if you take
1:17:42that away, maybe they're not interested anymore, but maybe they weren't really wed to mouse
1:17:46and keyboard, maybe they just wanted something that lets them play first person shooters
1:17:49and if we can give them a better first person shooter control, I don't know. This is all
1:17:52a big experiment with, you know, and that's kind of why Valve must like the fact that
1:17:57they're not the ones sort of doing the experiment. You guys make the hardware up, you might sell
1:18:01some. I mean, yeah.
1:18:02Well, the software is not easy either. I mean, I think that, I think the input and like monitor
1:18:08class, like how far you sit and the input devices you use, I think that will sink this
1:18:13thing because I think if you want to play a first person shooter using a gamepad on
1:18:17on a TV, you'll buy a game console. They're probably going to be better at it, and they're
1:18:20cheaper and they're better managed and they're more popular and everything else.
1:18:24They're mapping their control scheme to keyboard and mouse. Have you seen the controller? It
1:18:28looks like two big flat touchpad areas. One of them is the mouse and one of them is WASD,
1:18:34basically, for legacy games. Because you have to be able to play Half-Life 2, Portal, and
1:18:40all that stuff. You have to be able to make the legacy games work, otherwise how can you
1:18:43get a Steam box to have access to zero games? In theory, in the future, games can come out
1:18:47that controller in mind if it becomes popular, but they have to be able to support the old
1:18:50games.
1:18:51And that's what they're trying to do.
1:18:52And supposedly it works better than using like an Xbox 360 controller if you're playing
1:18:57first person shooters.
1:18:58It's more like a keyboard and a mouse.
1:19:00But I don't know if like, I don't know if it's going to be worthwhile.
1:19:05Who is the customer for these Steam boxes?
1:19:07There sure are a lot of them.
1:19:08They sure come in a lot of different sizes and shapes and price points.
1:19:10And PC gamers really do love Steam, but I'm not sure what their prospects are.
1:19:15Yeah, I mean looking at this controller. I just looked it up first of all it looks ridiculous
1:19:18but I mean like and and I
1:19:21I'm really out of touch with this stuff because I haven't I haven't been heavily into games in a while
1:19:25But when I was heavily into games
1:19:27I loved PC games
1:19:29And I really didn't get that much enjoyment out of console games because I loved not only did
1:19:34I love the kind of games that just work a lot better with keyboard mouse and big monitor big high-res monitor in front of your
1:19:39face like RTS's
1:19:41And builders like Sim City and stuff like that like not only did I love that kind of game more
1:19:45But even for the kind of games that work on both, I just liked having a mouse better than
1:19:51a gamepad.
1:19:52And I was always, and maybe because I was just used to it, I was better at it with the
1:19:54mouse.
1:19:55I was more precise with the mouse.
1:19:56And playing, even playing shooters on gamepads, like it always felt like, yeah, I'm glad
1:20:00I didn't have to like set up a LAN to play this with my friends or anything, but I'm
1:20:04not enjoying it as much.
1:20:06You know, like, and, like I feel like, and by the way, and I did love building my own
1:20:10PCs.
1:20:11If I was going to go back to being a PC gamer,
1:20:15I mean, being a PC gamer takes a lot of time investment
1:20:19just to manage all the software crap you have to deal with. And the Steam Box will, of course,
1:20:23solve a lot of that in theory, but
1:20:27if you're already going to devote a bunch of time into this hobby because you love it so much, you probably
1:20:31are very likely to also want to build your own computer. Or, like, you know,
1:20:35I think the market for people who are going to want to buy a
1:20:39pre-made gaming PC that they had no part in building and that they might not be able to
1:20:43upgrade very easily, if at all, to play games on a TV that aren't console games on a kind
1:20:49of console controller that is not a keyboard and mouse.
1:20:52There's so many big leaps here that I think are just leaping right out of the market.
1:20:57Well, there's another strategic reason that Valve kind of has to do this to sort of protect
1:21:01itself, and it's that Microsoft has been less and less interested in making Windows
1:21:05a hospitable environment for gaming.
1:21:08And if you look at Valve's business, I'm sure they sell a lot of Mac games too, but they're
1:21:13mostly selling quote-unquote "PC" games.
1:21:15And so the part of Steam Box that's maybe the least interesting to consumers, maybe
1:21:20the most interesting from Valve's perspective, which is we need to sell our games on Linux
1:21:24or an OS that we have some control over to get away from Windows.
1:21:28Because Valve has whined about Windows 8 not being particularly hospitable for games in
1:21:33the early going.
1:21:34And just in general—
1:21:35To be fair, Windows 8 is particularly inhospitable for everybody.
1:21:38For humans, yeah.
1:21:39So, like, if all that comes out of this is that Steam Box is a total flop, but a huge
1:21:45portion of games available on Steam run on, like, maybe they don't call it a Steam Box
1:21:50anymore, but like, if you mostly use your PC for gaming, Valve can say, "Oh, when you
1:21:56play our games, you should play them, like, in the Steam OS," or whatever they call the
1:22:00Linux thing that they're going to use there.
1:22:02it's kind of a hedge against like our future shouldn't depend on Microsoft because Microsoft
1:22:07cares about Xbox One, you know, with gaming, they care slightly less about Windows and who knows
1:22:13with Microsoft's new CEO search what kind of direction the company will be taken in.
1:22:16So this is probably a smart hedge just to say we should really look into if we're going to be a
1:22:22platform, we should really look into having more control and not being beholden to Microsoft for
1:22:27so much of our business because certainly Sony is not beholden to Microsoft for its gaming business,
1:22:31right and you know
1:22:32Microsoft doesn't beholden to anyone else and so on so I think it's a wise strategic move for valve to be doing this and I
1:22:39Think it matters less whether the steam boxes
1:22:41Competes with game consoles or anything it just like it's kind of like steam itself
1:22:45The payoff will be many many years now, and it may not be the same payoff that they expected
1:22:49But it's worth doing I think
1:22:51Marco I'd like to ask you guys about some of your past game experiences, but before we do that would you it's all moon-based commander
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1:24:51So I wanted to ask you, you had said something a minute ago about how you didn't have to
1:24:57set up your own network and it just made me remember.
1:24:59So when I was a kid I used to play quite a lot of games in both all of the Nintendo consoles
1:25:06and many, many, many PC games.
1:25:09And I was just curious if you guys had the hilarious experiences of having your friends
1:25:14over where they would bring their mini towers and their CRT monitors that weighed a thousand
1:25:20and you're in like sixth or seventh grade at the time, so you can barely lift them on
1:25:24your own. And you would get like these 40-foot null-modem cables and string them together
1:25:29and play Wolf 3D or Doom against each other or whatever the case may be. Like, I just,
1:25:34God, I have such fond memories of that and I was curious if I was the only one.
1:25:38Yeah, it was a nightmare. I mean, part of the fun of being a high school kid and trying
1:25:44to hang out with my geek friends and set up some kind of land at somebody's house to
1:25:48to play Total Annihilation, which is all I did in high school, which actually turned
1:25:52out to be a pretty good experience.
1:25:56It was funny because, and I think this is kind of a motto for a lot of PC gaming, or
1:26:00not a motto, it's a common result of all PC gaming, is like, you have to deal with so
1:26:06much crap to set it up.
1:26:08And ours was like a lot of physical moving stuff around, physical plugging stuff in,
1:26:12figuring out, oh god, why does this network cable that we just made yesterday, and we've
1:26:17we've never made a network cable before,
1:26:18why does this all of a sudden not work?
1:26:20Or why can your computer see the other three
1:26:23but then one of them can't see you?
1:26:26And oh God, you didn't install the map.
1:26:28Or like you start, you get all into the game
1:26:30and you realize one guy doesn't have the newest patch
1:26:32and so half the units are disabled.
1:26:34You know, there's, it was a whole bunch of crap.
1:26:37It was a whole bunch of time wasting crap,
1:26:40system administration stuff, rebooting, installing patches,
1:26:42installing new versions of the game, installing new maps,
1:26:45getting everything, it was such a nightmare that we would
1:26:48we would start bringing, and all of these computers were like
1:26:52our computers or our family's computers so that we couldn't really leave them there
1:26:56for the next week or anything like, so we would like every weekend
1:27:00me and a couple friends would bring all our computers over to
1:27:04one of the two houses that had network switches because
1:27:07like two of the houses had two computers because the parents like had two computers
1:27:10so
1:27:10you know we'd go to, we'd congregate on those houses, plug in, try to figure everything out
1:27:14we wouldn't even start playing until 12 or 1 in the morning.
1:27:18Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
1:27:20Because by the time the game actually launches and you're actually in it, it would be 1 AM
1:27:23because we would have started setting up at 8 and, you know, been installing patches and
1:27:29crap until then. And that's... this is like the view of PC gaming that I still have because
1:27:34I didn't play a lot of games after mid-college or so because I just kind of ran out of time
1:27:40and then after college I got a job and didn't have time then and all my friends were in
1:27:42different places, so it kind of fell out of gaming. But is PC gaming, I mean, obviously
1:27:48nowadays you could bring over LCDs or a laptop, which would be amazing. I mean, we all had
1:27:55home-built desktops with 19-inch CRT monitors, so it was quite an ordeal. These days I imagine
1:28:03it's a lot better, but I bet you still have a lot of that software crap to deal with.
1:28:07Is that still the case?
1:28:08It's not as bad as it used to be, and for the most part, if you're lucky and you have
1:28:15some minimum amount of knowledge, you can get a similar experience to that as what people
1:28:19are getting these days on their PCs.
1:28:21You get a headset mic, you get the internet for your networking problems, everyone has
1:28:25their own screen, you're not all physically in the same place, but it's close-ish.
1:28:29People still have LAN parties, like at the PAX conference they have a giant LAN room
1:28:34where you can bring your own PC or use the ones that you have there, and they still do
1:28:37that.
1:28:38I see people in the giant LAN rooms at conventions and stuff, it's just row after row of people
1:28:43sitting at PCs looking at their screens wearing headset mics, I think, how important is it
1:28:47that these people are all in the same room?
1:28:48And it's not as important as it was when you and your friends were all in the same room,
1:28:51because the technology, like it's now just you, the screen, the mouse, the keyboard,
1:28:55and the headset mic, and the fact that the guy you're yelling at is four seats away means
1:28:57nothing because you never even look at him.
1:29:00Maybe in smaller atmospheres it would be more important, but I think for the most part that
1:29:04internet and technology has come to make most of that unimportant.
1:29:09One thing that the younger people might remember is that the original Xbox, you could bring
1:29:12that over to someone's house, hook it up, and play Halo, sort of a multi-room, multi-player
1:29:17Halo experience.
1:29:19And that, I think, was maybe the last thing to be lugged from house to house for original
1:29:23Xboxes.
1:29:24But nowadays, no one lugs their consoles.
1:29:26I think they basically keep them in their house and use the magic of the internet to
1:29:29do that stuff.
1:29:30It's funny to me because channeling my inner bitter old man, like we were talking about
1:29:36last episode, I just remember so vividly the pain of finding a null-modem cable, which
1:29:42looked in many ways like a serial cable, but it was different.
1:29:46And then you had to string them together, and then you had to set up everyone in the
1:29:49same really, really hot room because no matter how big the room was and how good the air
1:29:54air conditioning was, when you put all of these humongous machines with these CRTs that
1:30:00weren't exactly cool either, and you put them all in this little room with all these teenage
1:30:04dudes that probably don't have the best hygiene anyway, and then you sit there and eat Doritos
1:30:09and Mountain Dew for hours, and just playing these games like Doom and whatnot, when you
1:30:15can scream and yell at each other and you're right next to each other.
1:30:19And then I remember, somebody mentioned in the chat, and one of my all-time favorites
1:30:22was playing Descent, the first Descent, and playing that not only against your friends,
1:30:30but locally, but also playing it via modem directly between two friends.
1:30:36And then eventually when Kali or Cali or whatever it was called came out and it would let the
1:30:44internet masquerade as an IPX network, which was all that most of these games supported
1:30:48at the time.
1:30:49And oh my god, it was so much fun.
1:30:51And it was such a defining part of my childhood,
1:30:55like between that and all of the Nintendo consoles.
1:30:58I know I jokingly begrudged it as recently as earlier
1:31:02this episode, the whole game thing.
1:31:04But god, it was such a big part of my upbringing
1:31:07in my childhood.
1:31:08And I spent so much time playing these games.
1:31:10And it's just so weird to me not to get all--
1:31:13What happened to you, Gaze?
1:31:15I don't know.
1:31:15I just grew out-- I don't mean this to be dismissive,
1:31:18But I guess I just grew out of it.
1:31:20Like it just wasn't a priority to me anymore.
1:31:22And I can't even remember the last game that I played that I was really, really into.
1:31:28I guess maybe Metal Gear Solid on the original PlayStation?
1:31:31And it was probably not the first Metal Gear Solid either.
1:31:34Well, when PlayStation 3s are $99 in a couple of years, I'll send you one and you can
1:31:38play Journey.
1:31:42You're not going to leave me alone until I play Journey, are you?
1:31:44You're not going to leave anybody alone.
1:31:45Marco, you're still on your schedule too.
1:31:48Wait, what was Marco's schedule?
1:31:51It's the whenever the hell Marco gets around to it schedule.
1:31:54Like most things in his life.
1:31:56It's very different these days that networking is ubiquitous, or if not ubiquitous, darn
1:32:03near ubiquitous.
1:32:05And it's such a far cry from what we had to deal with.
1:32:09And I'm not saying that to make it sound like I walked uphill both ways.
1:32:12That's not at all the point.
1:32:13It's surprising to me how much technology has changed in so little time, where our children
1:32:19will not have any of these woes that we had.
1:32:23I remember, to connect to the internet originally, my dad and I spent literally a couple of weeks
1:32:29trying to figure out, I believe, not only the modem initialization string, or whatever
1:32:33you called it, the AT whatever, whatever, whatever string, but then also the correct
1:32:37What was it? Was it SLIP? S-L-I-P? To figure out the correct SLIP script to write. I've
1:32:46probably told the story before and I'm sorry. But oh my goodness, it was such pain. When
1:32:52we finally got it, it was such a sense of accomplishment. It's not the same anymore.
1:32:59Not that any of the kids these days have different issues that they have to overcome like Windows.
1:33:02But, nevertheless, it's just so funny to me how different things are today.
1:33:08I mean, ultimately it's better today.
1:33:10Oh yeah.
1:33:11But, you know, I, well, hold on.
1:33:13Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, Ting, and Squarespace.
1:33:17And we'll see you next week.
1:33:18Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin.
1:33:19Cause it was accidental.
1:33:20Oh it was accidental.
1:33:21John didn't even mean to be.
1:33:22over they didn't even mean to begin cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental. John
1:33:29didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him cause it was accidental, it was accidental.
1:33:39And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm and if you're into Twitter you can follow
1:33:51Follow them @CASEYLISS
1:33:56So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:34:00Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C
1:34:06USA, Syracuse
1:34:08It's accidental
1:34:11They didn't mean to
1:34:14Accidental
1:34:16Tech broadcast so long
1:34:21I disagree with something that John said a few minutes back, which is about how network
1:34:26play kind of replaced in-person play.
1:34:30I don't think it's anywhere near the same thing.
1:34:32And the headset and the constant voice chat does improve things a lot, but I don't know.
1:34:38There's something about just being in the same room or being in the next room over from
1:34:44the people who you're playing against, and when you start marching into their base and
1:34:48you can hear them swear and get all upset about it.
1:34:52Or we had a rule during our LAN games for total annihilation.
1:34:56We had a rule that you were not allowed to mute the sound
1:35:00or to wear headphones.
1:35:00You had to use audible sound.
1:35:03You can turn it down, but it had to be audible.
1:35:06And so you could, there was even strategy in that.
1:35:09Be careful what you click,
1:35:10because the other person might hear you click on a big unit
1:35:12that makes a certain sound and they'll know you have one.
1:35:14Or something like that.
1:35:15There's all these little factors you could add in
1:35:17or that just kind of happened, that made it a more interesting, more rich experience to
1:35:23like be in the same room as people and be playing with people as opposed to just everyone
1:35:27meeting on the same server together, you know?
1:35:30And I think looking at that, what probably really killed the LAN party as being a thing,
1:35:36besides how incredibly expensive and complicated and time consuming it was, was the N64 getting
1:35:43four players.
1:35:46like because the N64 came out at roughly the same time that we were doing all this stuff and
1:35:50Or a little before but it really came into its own by that time. So like we were faced with all right
1:35:56Well, what do you want to do tonight?
1:35:57Do you want to all bring your computers over and stick around with Windows for two hours?
1:36:01Or do you want to just come over and play Goldeneye like yeah, it's already here and Mario Kart, right?
1:36:08You know, hey, you know you two guys bring controllers. We only have two otherwise, we're finally yeah
1:36:13You know, like it was like I feel like in person playing of
1:36:16Four player good n64 and forward games. I think that really did more to kill the LAN party
1:36:24Well, I didn't say that it was the same but it did replace it in the same way that when you went from what?
1:36:29Replaced your LAN parties what replaced it was four player script screen for player script split screen is not the same because everybody can see
1:36:36Everybody else's screen, but it did replace it
1:36:38So, like I said, if you look at how are people doing most of their multiplayer gaming it used to be
1:36:42be that the super hardcore gamers were having LAN parties.
1:36:46Nowadays, the super hardcore gamers
1:36:48are sitting in front of a screen with a headset on.
1:36:50So it replaced it.
1:36:51And I was thinking of the in-person thing,
1:36:53like the places where LAN parties still exist.
1:36:55At conventions, often when I see people playing at giant LAN
1:36:58parties at conventions, they're playing at the LAN party
1:37:00the same way they play at home, which
1:37:01is headphones on, headset on, staring
1:37:04at the screen in front of them.
1:37:05Which is not the same, you're right.
1:37:07But that is what has replaced-- those other aspects that
1:37:11different were deemed not as important as the aspects that they like.
1:37:15Just like when you went to four-player split-screen GoldenEye, the aspects that you were missing
1:37:19having private screens were significant but were not the most important thing.
1:37:23The most important thing is you were having fun with your friends.
1:37:26For most people, the inconvenience of traveling to be the same place, a lot of that has to
1:37:32do with scheduling.
1:37:34Getting everybody when they're all free at the same time and can travel to someone's
1:37:37house to sit on their couch together to play a game, even when you've eliminated all
1:37:42LAN party stuff, it's harder to do that than it is to, "Hey, when dinner is done
1:37:47and the kids are in bed, let me just wander into my computer room and everyone get online
1:37:51the same way we do our podcast.
1:37:52Everyone just get online at nine o'clock and that works out."
1:37:55So it is definitely different and there are aspects that are not as good and you're
1:37:59missing things, but convenience wins out eventually.
1:38:02And that's true, but to me, some of my favorite memories of doing these "land parties" or
1:38:08"null modem parties" or whatever you want to call them, was if not the hooping and hollering
1:38:13that happened during the games like Marco was describing, but man, the trash talk afterwards,
1:38:18like after a session or a game or a round or whatever was over, when you would just
1:38:24happily fun getting each other's faces and start screaming and yelling about "Oh, I can't
1:38:28believe you did that, you wuss!" and "Oh, I totally slaughtered you on that level" and
1:38:32blah, blah, blah. Maybe it's just because I'm obnoxious, but oh, that was the most fun
1:38:36in the world. And that just, I don't see, and it's hard for me to say because I don't
1:38:40really play games that much anymore, but I don't see that happening at a LAN party, or
1:38:44especially if you're not co-located.
1:38:47Well, I'm pretty sure trash talk still works over headset mics. Someone who plays PC games
1:38:52can confirm to me that perhaps trash talk still is a thing on the internet.
1:38:56You know what I mean.
1:38:57I'm pretty sure trash talk is the only thing that goes over headset mics.
1:39:00true. You know what I'm saying? I was trying to do like verbal sarcasm tags because sometimes
1:39:05people don't catch it like when when I said the Mac Mini has a core tube duo and people correct
1:39:10corrected me as if I was serious. That was sarcasm folks. We invented it in New York I think.
1:39:15Well everything comes from New York because we're the best. Oh god. We? We? Mr. Ohio? I'm sorry.
1:39:23Accepting this. Well I- you left so I'm at least here now. It's more important to be from there
1:39:29than to be there.
1:39:30Hey, hey, John, where were you born?
1:39:33What does your birth certificate say?
1:39:35What state?
1:39:36New York.
1:39:37And would you ask me?
1:39:38Oh, I don't know, Virginia, right?
1:39:40Connecticut?
1:39:41I don't know, some crazy state.
1:39:43New York, John, New York.
1:39:45How long were you in New York?
1:39:46At least a few minutes, right?
1:39:47You have to have your formative years there.
1:39:49The thing that molds you into the man that you are, your formative years are called formative
1:39:53for a reason.
1:39:54Where did you spend those years, Casey?
1:39:56So, well, not New York.
1:39:58So I was zero through two in Fort Montgomery, New York.
1:40:03Then we bounced around for a little bit.
1:40:05When I was a really young kid from kindergarten through second grade, I believe it was, I
1:40:11was in Carmel, New York.
1:40:13Carmel, New York is not New York.
1:40:15Come on, it's upstate.
1:40:17It's not that upstate.
1:40:18My God, it's…
1:40:19Yeah, that's basically Canada.
1:40:20Marco is practically upstate.
1:40:21Carmel is like an hour and a half from New York City.
1:40:26It is not that upstate.
1:40:28You can get pretty out there in an hour and a half from New York City.
1:40:31The only way you can get an hour and a half from New York City and not be upstate is by
1:40:34going east.
1:40:35So into the ocean?
1:40:37Oh, Long Island, I guess.
1:40:39Yeah.
1:40:40There's bridges and tunnels.
1:40:41You can get there.
1:40:42It's traffic and wine.
1:40:43Oh, goodness.
1:40:44One thing, actually, that I wanted to mention here, only because we were talking about this
1:40:48LAN party and PC gaming crap, is that one of the four core guys that I had these LAN
1:40:55with is getting married this spring and as part of the bachelor party we're like renting
1:41:00a beach house somewhere for like a weekend and we want to play land games again. So I
1:41:04think what I'm going to do to have this done is, and we don't want to play new games, we
1:41:10want to play Total Annihilation and maybe Supreme Commander at the newest which came
1:41:14out in like 2004 or something. So not new games by any stretch. So what I'm thinking
1:41:22is I'm thinking of configuring, because I don't want to have to spend this whole weekend
1:41:27downloading stuff over God knows what connection and configuring stuff there. That's not a
1:41:31good use of a weekend in a beach house. So I was thinking TechServe will rent you MacBook
1:41:37Pros like by the day or by the week and for a pretty reasonable price. So I was thinking
1:41:42I could just like rent like six MacBook Pros and have like a pre-configured Parallels VM
1:41:50that I could just, that I would set up beforehand and just copy to all of them and play that
1:41:56way. Is that plausible, you think? You could try Boxer. Like, it's a DOS game,
1:42:00right? You could try Boxer. No, no, no. Unfortunately, these are Windows
1:42:04games. These are like, like, Total Annihilation is like a Windows 98 era game, but it works
1:42:08on, it still works on modern Windows. It doesn't run on DOS?
1:42:11No. And Supreme Commander is like a DirectX 9 game. It's pretty, relatively recent. It's
1:42:17it's ten years old, but relatively recent.
1:42:20Why don't you just boot the MacBook Pros into Windows to play the game?
1:42:24Because I don't know how—I think that that might take too long to get a real boot camp
1:42:30partition.
1:42:31I guess I could image it somehow.
1:42:33I don't know how to do that, though.
1:42:35I don't know.
1:42:37Those imaging products for the PC.
1:42:39Anyway, either of those things should probably work.
1:42:41For a total annihilation, any one of those things should work.
1:42:43It should run reasonably in a VM.
1:42:45Just try it once on your Mac Pro to see if it does fine in VMware.
1:42:51And to answer the chat people, the reason I don't just get Windows machines is because
1:42:56I want to have all this set up before I rent the computers and before I get there.
1:43:01Have a VM set up so I can just copy it over and be done with it and not spend hours and
1:43:05hours and hours making this work.
1:43:08I predict that no matter what you do to prepare for this, part of the LAN party experience
1:43:13will be preserved and that will be the part of you dicking around with the computers.
1:43:16Almost definitely.
1:43:17No matter what.
1:43:18So be glad.
1:43:19That shouldn't be a failure.
1:43:20That should be considered part of the success.
1:43:24You know, I've tried to get so back into games so many times.
1:43:27There's this great other podcast called Three Moves Ahead, and it's like a strategy gaming
1:43:31podcast, and it's also a lot of good stuff just about people.
1:43:34They have good chemistry there, so it's an interesting show.
1:43:37But I try to get into that, and I listen to the episodes that were about ancient games
1:43:41that I'm aware of, but all the ones about new games, I don't know what the heck they're
1:43:45talking about.
1:43:46And it's like this whole world that's happened that's had us moved on for like ten years
1:43:51since I stopped paying attention to it, and I feel like I can't get back into it now.
1:43:57Like I'm excited to play ancient games with my ancient friends on this one occasion.
1:44:03I'm excited about that, but like I don't want to play Total Annihilation against strangers
1:44:06on the internet today.
1:44:07Well, you can look at it the good way and the bad way.
1:44:12The bad way is that you're missing out on all these great games and you are missing
1:44:14out on them.
1:44:15But the good way is that by being ignorant for so long, in your future somewhere lies
1:44:20a time when you're going to somehow stumble upon or find yourself playing a modern game,
1:44:26and you're going to be like, "Oh my god, I didn't know.
1:44:28When did this happen to games?"
1:44:30And it will be interesting.
1:44:31Like, it happened to me with console games, because I never owned game consoles because
1:44:34because my parents didn't let me have one,
1:44:36and I stopped kind of playing them over my friend's house
1:44:38once I really got into computers,
1:44:40because that sort of dominated my life.
1:44:41And around the SNES era, I kind of faded away from consoles.
1:44:45And the next time I paid any attention at all to consoles
1:44:48was when I saw on my cousin's Nintendo 64, Mario 64,
1:44:51I'm like, "Oh my God, when did this happen?"
1:44:53It's not like I hadn't seen 3D graphics before,
1:44:54like we were all playing Quake with Voodoo cards
1:44:56or whatever, or a friend's house.
1:44:58But seeing a game console with an analog stick
1:45:00and seeing Mario 64 was just like a shock to my system
1:45:03totally brought me back to console gaming and it also helped at that point I was old enough to buy my own so in your
1:45:07Future somewhere you will have your mario 64 a moment and you will probably get back into it
1:45:12But in the meantime, you should have used my strategy with cars
1:45:14Which is I'll never drive or you know with the exception of seeing here
1:45:18I'm 5 see any of these cars in real life or have anything to do with them
1:45:21But I've been reading car magazines since I was like 10 years old like continuously. So despite the fact that I
1:45:27Didn't own any cars until many many years and then now I've only had a couple of cars in my entire life
1:45:32I still feel like I'm in the car scene just by reading car magazines every month for my entire
1:45:39Adult and half of child life, so you could have been doing that if you really cared
1:45:43I mean I kind of do it too. I read all the game. I read the gaming news
1:45:47I read the game console magazines and granted I have like five consoles like those with my TV
1:45:51But I don't have all of them, and I don't play all the PC games, but I'm aware of them
1:45:54So it's kind of like a you know
1:45:57What point is there reading car magazines about cars you never gonna own what point is there reading game magazines about games?
1:46:02never going to play. It's both kind of the same thing. I do both of them. You know, hearing you
1:46:06say Voodoo Card, it made me remember, as I'm getting on this nostalgic kick, that one 3D
1:46:12card that we had, I think it was the first one we got, where you would take this short little stubby
1:46:17cable and plug it into the VGA out of your actual video card, and then plug it into a VGA in on the
1:46:243D daughter card, and then the VGA out that goes to your monitor was on that 3D daughter card. Oh
1:46:30Oh my goodness, it was so terrible.
1:46:33- Yeah, that was the crappy old days.
1:46:35Like the Voodoo 2, I think, did that.
1:46:37My first good 3D card was the Voodoo 3
1:46:39because like the first one, I think,
1:46:40that was all integrated and didn't have that stupid hack.
1:46:43- I remember back in the day when I was excited
1:46:45to get a Sound Blaster so I could listen
1:46:47to like the sound effects on Carmen Sandiego
1:46:50as like a 10-year-old or whatever I was.
1:46:52- Those were the good old days of baiting PC users
1:46:54when their computers couldn't do basic things
1:46:58like have an auto switching 10/100 ethernet cable,
1:47:01you mentioned the Xbox, or a sound card.
1:47:04What do you need a sound card for?
1:47:06My computer can make sounds.
1:47:07- Except our computers could play games
1:47:09and my very first mouse came with two buttons.
1:47:11(laughing)
1:47:13- That's not a feature.
1:47:14[BLANK_AUDIO]