00:00:05 ◼ ► Are we supposed to kill time to give people a chance to actually tune in? Hello, computers are good.
00:00:16 ◼ ► It does not. It so rarely happens. We have to take advantage of it because we got stuff to do.
00:00:33 ◼ ► All right, so as you hear this, it is likely September, or if it's not September, it is really, really close to September.
00:00:58 ◼ ► So if you're new here, let me explain it to you. If you've been here before, well you know what?
00:01:24 ◼ ► And what's magical about St. Jude, and one of the many things that's magical about St. Jude,
00:01:32 ◼ ► They don't charge for travel in some cases. They don't travel to put them up, or excuse me, charge to put them up.
00:01:47 ◼ ► So here's the thing, even if you're not from America though, it's a research hospital, right?
00:01:53 ◼ ► And so, you know, childhood cancer research can take five to ten years per project to complete,
00:02:05 ◼ ► the St. Jude Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, which is revolutionizing how cancer is treated worldwide,
00:02:19 ◼ ► And they share these results, and they make these public so that other people, other doctors can use this stuff.
00:02:26 ◼ ► So here's the thing, and I'm gonna let Marco take over here in a second and do his normal annual iPhone Time speech,
00:02:33 ◼ ► but I'll just tell you that no matter where you are in your life, you probably can spare a few bucks and throw it St. Jude's way.
00:02:41 ◼ ► Don't feel like five bucks isn't enough. Five bucks is great. You know, ten bucks is better.
00:02:45 ◼ ► 100 bucks is even better than that, and so on and so forth. Whatever you can, whatever you can spare,
00:02:54 ◼ ► I mean, Relay is on track to raise a lifetime total of two and a half million dollars, and that's because of all of you.
00:03:10 ◼ ► and I believe that will dump you directly into the "Here's My Money" page, which is what we want.
00:03:27 ◼ ► So, you know, there's not really a bad month to donate to help childhood cancer curing and research.
00:03:33 ◼ ► That's a pretty substantially great cause, and it can be difficult if you want to donate money to a good cause.
00:03:42 ◼ ► It can be difficult to kind of suss out, like, "What is a good cause?" and "Is this thing a big name thing?"
00:03:57 ◼ ► They do a huge amount of great work, and it doesn't merely affect our friends. It affects hundreds of thousands of people around the world,
00:04:05 ◼ ► probably millions of people around the world. And again, the research component is important.
00:04:10 ◼ ► So not only, you know, if you are a child with cancer, not only will they help to cure you and not charge your parents money, which is massive,
00:04:20 ◼ ► but again, they also do research, which they share with the world, to try to help improve everyone's success rates.
00:04:27 ◼ ► And try to really, you know, make a huge difference for everyone around the world. So this is a great cause.
00:04:33 ◼ ► Now, here's what's about to happen. In about two weeks, most people listening to this show are going to watch an Apple event.
00:04:42 ◼ ► And they're going to see a bunch of new iPhones and possibly Apple watches get announced at this event.
00:04:49 ◼ ► Most of the people who are hearing this message already have an iPhone that works just fine.
00:04:54 ◼ ► And Apple's going to show us why we really should probably spend another $1200 or whatever on a new iPhone,
00:05:02 ◼ ► even though the one that we already have pretty much works fine. And many of us are going to rationalize this.
00:05:09 ◼ ► We're going to say, "You know what? I need this." Or, "I deserve this." Or simply, "I just want this and don't care."
00:05:15 ◼ ► And that's great. I'm going to be one of those people. Casey's going to be one of those people.
00:05:20 ◼ ► John, I forget. Is it your year, John? It's not my year. I'm not going to do that. But I may put a new case on my existing phone.
00:05:27 ◼ ► Exactly. And a case, I mean, look, a new case for a good brand. It's a case that I already bought. Remember, I got two of them.
00:05:32 ◼ ► Oh, yeah. Well, okay. Everyone except John is going to rationalize some kind of big purchase.
00:05:37 ◼ ► And here's the thing. You'd be fine without the new iPhone this year. Unless your phone is actively broken.
00:05:46 ◼ ► You don't really need it. It's a discretionary fun purchase because you're probably some kind of working professional.
00:05:52 ◼ ► And look, you deserve a new phone sometimes. They're nice. We're not going to argue with that.
00:05:56 ◼ ► However, I would encourage you to help rationalize that decision in your mind. To help justify your shameless consumerism.
00:06:04 ◼ ► And when I say "your," I mean "our shameless consumerism." Especially my own. I'm not even coming anywhere near not owning this myself.
00:06:12 ◼ ► I am as bad as anyone on this. To help justify our shared shameless consumerism, please donate something to St. Jude.
00:06:21 ◼ ► And again, Casey said it well. If you don't have a lot of money, five bucks, ten bucks, twenty bucks, that's fine. That's great.
00:06:28 ◼ ► It's way better than zero. And that's awesome. I would encourage those of us in the audience who can afford to buy a new iPhone that is not super necessary in our lives, give a little bit more.
00:06:40 ◼ ► My rules in the past have been, "Hey, whatever kind of add-on that you tack on to the iPhone sale without really scrutinizing it too much, maybe that's sales tax. Maybe that's a case. Maybe that's AppleCare."
00:06:55 ◼ ► That's a good ballpark for what amount of money you could spend without missing it too much. I would say start there as your minimum for St. Jude.
00:07:03 ◼ ► So whether it's a hundred bucks, seventy bucks, whatever it is, more than that maybe if you have been fortunate in life, that's great. Start there and give what you can from there.
00:07:14 ◼ ► And that will help absolve your rampant consumerism guilt that we all will have in two weeks when we get phones we don't need that are still nevertheless very cool.
00:07:22 ◼ ► So, stjude.org/atp. Start in that price ballpark. Maybe whatever you would spend on a RAM upgrade for a Mac that you don't really think you need the RAM upgrade but you think you might someday maybe possibly use it.
00:07:37 ◼ ► No, no, no, no. Hold on. We're trying to get a lot of money. So what you would spend on an SSD upgrade, that's what we're talking about. Now we're cooking with gas.
00:07:47 ◼ ► That's it. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. If you're like, "Hmm, I think two terabytes enough but maybe four terabytes. I might use the four terabytes." Maybe that's your donation amount.
00:07:59 ◼ ► Whatever you can, whatever makes you feel better about your rampant consumerism, I strongly suggest please donate what you can. Thank you.
00:08:10 ◼ ► As always, we are trying to set an example on this program. We're not just here to tell you that you should donate because you're going to buy a new iPhone. We're going to buy new iPhones, at least some of us.
00:08:18 ◼ ► And we've also donated as usual. Collectively, ATP has donated $21,000 to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital this year.
00:08:27 ◼ ► The way we normally do it is we divide that amount by three and then all three of us donate that amount at the same time.
00:08:33 ◼ ► And it's a little game we play, although this year some people forgot we were playing that game because there's a leaderboard on the website for donations that shows who the top donor is.
00:08:46 ◼ ► That shows who the top donors are and it's kind of fun to be the top donor there if only briefly before the real big spenders come in.
00:08:53 ◼ ► And the pledge drive has just started. It's September, we're doing it the whole month or whatever, so we're just beginning September.
00:09:09 ◼ ► And we entered our amounts and then we hit the buttons and Marco, we're going to do DNF did not finish.
00:09:22 ◼ ► Casey knew the game existed but became very, very bad at it by donating $7,001.01, which is the lowest amount you could possibly donate and still be playing the game.
00:09:34 ◼ ► And each of us said to each other, "$7,000, right? Yes. $7,000, right? Yes. $7,000, right? Yes."
00:09:40 ◼ ► So I thought, you know what? These two, they're going to actually donate $7,000 and it's going to be even better that I snuck in with that one cent because those two knuckleheads will be on the nose.
00:09:49 ◼ ► And then some apple swoops in and decides that it's not just one cent to get the padding. What did you do, Siracusa?
00:09:58 ◼ ► I did $7,011. $7,011. You know, the whole point is you can't just go, "Oh, I'm going to do $7,500. I'm going to do $8,000."
00:10:04 ◼ ► Like we're not playing that game. It's supposed to be like, it's around the amount you want, but then some extra pocket change to see which one of us is coming ahead.
00:10:16 ◼ ► So please follow our example and compete amongst your friends to see who can donate the most to St. Jude.
00:10:22 ◼ ► You can get on the leaderboard. There's no reason you can't beat us. Normally, someone, I think like 1Password came in last year and beat us out pretty quickly.
00:10:58 ◼ ► And I would apologize for that, but I'm not going to because you know what? Sick kids need our help.
00:11:03 ◼ ► And like Marco has said, we are all at some time or another. We are all guilty of rampant consumerism, even John.
00:11:21 ◼ ► All right, let's do some follow up. First of all, I wanted to call attention to this is breaking news.
00:11:39 ◼ ► There are so many tweaks and features and fiddly bits, but yet it's very, very straightforward to use.
00:11:45 ◼ ► It's excellent. I wanted to congratulate Ben, who helped me out a lot with the design on CallSheet.
00:11:51 ◼ ► Most of the things, if not all of them, that look good on CallSheet are because Ben said,
00:12:00 ◼ ► And so if you want to see what it's like when you have someone that not only has a good design eye,
00:12:09 ◼ ► check out Obscura. It's worth looking at, if not actually purchasing, which I strongly suggest as well.
00:12:21 ◼ ► which is actually a very good URL, not only because it's .camera, but because camera Obscura.
00:12:28 ◼ ► My thanks to Ben for not only helping me with CallSheet while they were supposed to be working
00:12:40 ◼ ► Also, we had some feedback from Chris Berryhill with regard to TCL TVs with flashing LEDs.
00:12:47 ◼ ► Chris writes, "I too have a TCL Roku TV that I bought around 2018. I have it blocked at my
00:12:54 ◼ ► router and have been dealing with the flashing LED for years. I tried early on to disable the
00:12:58 ◼ ► LED as well, but could not find a setting to turn it off. I recently had a discussion with a friend
00:13:02 ◼ ► who's super into TVs. I mentioned to him that I don't let any of my TVs connect to the internet.
00:13:06 ◼ ► He implored me to allow it to connect every now and again to get firmware updates in order to have
00:13:12 ◼ ► the best picture. I followed his advice and updated all my TVs over the past week. When I
00:13:16 ◼ ► updated the TCL Roku, it went from 10.x to 12.x. I played around with the settings on it last night,
00:13:22 ◼ ► and lo and behold, under the power menu, there's a setting to disable the LED. Not sure if it was
00:13:27 ◼ ► there before I updated, but it certainly is now and it works as expected. So number one, great
00:13:32 ◼ ► tip. Number two, John, corollary question, is this an acceptable approach to never, but great once in
00:13:39 ◼ ► a while, connect your TV to the internet? Like your beloved Sony TV, is it on the internet? I
00:13:43 ◼ ► don't recall. Just like Chris's friends who's quote "super into TVs," I also recommend periodically
00:13:48 ◼ ► connecting your TV to get firmware updates because they fix stuff. They fix stuff having to do with
00:13:51 ◼ ► pictures quality. They fix bugs in their features. Like these are little computers at this point.
00:13:55 ◼ ► Forget about like the online stuff, just the features of the television for playing video
00:13:59 ◼ ► in terms of how does it handle all the various features of HDMI 2.1. There's bugs and it's like
00:14:04 ◼ ► variable refresh rate code and like, and they improve picture quality. Like they can change
00:14:09 ◼ ► this thing over time. So I would encourage you to connect it periodically to get firmware updates,
00:14:12 ◼ ► but of course that's how they get you, right? So you, you know, you don't want to have it
00:14:16 ◼ ► connected to the internet, but you do want the firmware updates. But this, I thought this was
00:14:19 ◼ ► great because connecting to the internet actually fixed an annoying problem with the stupid blinking
00:14:23 ◼ ► LEDs. And I did get an answer from some people like, why aren't people just putting tape over
00:14:26 ◼ ► it? Like what's the big deal with the LED? Why are they yanking it out of the circuit board? Why
00:14:29 ◼ ► don't they just put some tape over it? I think what these manufacturers do, at least some of them,
00:14:33 ◼ ► is they put the blinking LED inside the same sort of plastic housing as the IR receiver.
00:14:39 ◼ ► So you can't really block it without also blocking the IR receiver. It bothers me why these TVs don't
00:14:44 ◼ ► have Bluetooth remotes all the time. But anyway, that's why they don't just put a piece of tape
00:14:48 ◼ ► over it because apparently to put enough tape to actually block the light, your remotes don't work
00:14:53 ◼ ► anymore. So yeah, my television is connected to the internet. I do not fear the internet connection,
00:14:58 ◼ ► although I do have a bunch of features turned off on it. So it is nicer with an internet service.
00:15:03 ◼ ► But in general, I don't use the smart features on my TV, but I do do the firmware updates every
00:15:07 ◼ ► time I'm prompted for them. And I would encourage everyone else to at least periodically, let's say
00:15:12 ◼ ► every six months or so, see if there's a firmware update for your TV. And I would argue, I mean,
00:15:17 ◼ ► I know you can, you can exert some control over your network with fancy Wi-Fi stuff, but I would
00:15:21 ◼ ► say when you're gonna, if you're gonna temporarily connect your TV to the internet for this purpose,
00:15:39 ◼ ► you can really physically connect it. And then when you're done physically disconnect it.
00:15:42 ◼ ► That's a really good tip. You know, something that this is a total tangent Marco style,
00:15:47 ◼ ► so I'll be the Marco this episode. When I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, when we went
00:15:54 ◼ ► to Pennsylvania, I don't remember how much we talked about this on the show, but this is when
00:15:58 ◼ ► I was talking about my travel router, I think. Well, anyways, I typically will bring an Apple
00:16:03 ◼ ► TV when we're traveling for more than just a day or two. So if Aaron and I want to watch something,
00:16:07 ◼ ► or if the kids, if we have enough downtime, the kids want to watch something, we can just do that
00:16:11 ◼ ► on the Apple TV. Well, we were in this very cool and very unique hotel that was a bunch of converted
00:16:20 ◼ ► railroad cars, which in America, seeing a railroad car at all is kind of unique and interesting,
00:16:26 ◼ ► but leaving that aside. Don't worry. It was very low speed. Yeah, right. But even staying in one
00:16:33 ◼ ► is extremely cool. And that's not an opportunity that you generally get to have. Well, we were in a
00:16:37 ◼ ► converted mail car, which had just been refurbished or redone or whatever. And they had this like
00:16:44 ◼ ► obscenely large TV that was up against one of the walls. It was like a 60 or 70 inch TV for a,
00:16:51 ◼ ► that was on the side of a train car. The whole damn train car is what, like 10 feet wide? Like,
00:16:56 ◼ ► I don't know why we needed a TV this big, but whatever. Well, anyway, so I go to hook up a HDMI
00:17:03 ◼ ► port or HDMI cord to it. And I brought my own cord that that wasn't the issue, but the damn thing was
00:17:10 ◼ ► like stuck to the exterior wall, which makes sense since it's so short. So, you know, squat,
00:17:16 ◼ ► but I couldn't reach my hand behind it to put the damn cable in. And so although I am in full
00:17:22 ◼ ► support Marco of the idea of using ethernet, sometimes that just ain't possible. Now I know
00:17:45 ◼ ► Yeah, but that is true. That is true. But in this particular case, I know I'm taking your example
00:17:50 ◼ ► and completely bending it over until it breaks, but I couldn't get behind the damn TV in the
00:17:54 ◼ ► first place. So what if you mounted your TV like that, perhaps not above the fireplace,
00:17:57 ◼ ► and now you gotta unmount the damn thing just to plug in the ethernet cable that one time?
00:18:00 ◼ ► It's very frustrating. All right, let's talk child Gmail accounts. So Henry Sivanen writes,
00:18:06 ◼ ► "There is a significant gotcha with recommending a Gmail address for a child. Children are not
00:18:10 ◼ ► allowed to set up email forwarding, so there's a rather serious risk of lock-in." We'll put a link
00:18:15 ◼ ► in the show notes to some information about this. And from Google's FAQ page or whatever,
00:18:27 ◼ ► There are only a few Gmail features that aren't available to children under 13 or the applicable
00:18:31 ◼ ► age in your country." And so those features are ads. Google will not serve ads in Gmail or process
00:18:36 ◼ ► Gmail messages for advertising purposes. Automatic forwarding. Children can't automatically forward
00:18:40 ◼ ► emails to another email address. Gmail offline. If their device isn't connected to the internet,
00:18:43 ◼ ► children can't read, send, or search their Gmail emails. Labs. The children cannot turn on
00:18:49 ◼ ► experimental Gmail features. Mail delegation. Children can't give someone else access to read,
00:18:53 ◼ ► send, or delete their emails. And spam. If Gmail identifies an email as spam, it won't get delivered
00:18:57 ◼ ► to your child's inbox or spam folder. Note that these restrictions don't apply if your child is
00:19:03 ◼ ► over 13 or the applicable age in your country or had supervision added to their previously existing
00:19:08 ◼ ► Google account. Oh, so wait. So that seems like a big way out. If you have them create an account
00:19:15 ◼ ► separately and then you add supervision to it, is that a way out? I mean, you could just lie about
00:19:19 ◼ ► your kid's age, which is what you talked about doing. But honestly, I always tell the truth
00:19:23 ◼ ► about my kid's age and these features that are in there for kids. I don't mind the not having
00:19:27 ◼ ► automatic forwarding, I think is not a problem because it's not like children again, they're not
00:19:30 ◼ ► like, oh, I need to have all my email funnel into a single place. So it's really important that I
00:19:33 ◼ ► have automatic forwarding. No, they don't care. They're just, they should just be there for them
00:19:37 ◼ ► and they can use it as their address. They'll be over 13 before you know it. And until they are,
00:19:41 ◼ ► they're probably not going to be using their email directly anyway, but they might still need to have
00:19:45 ◼ ► an email account to use to sign up for things. I mean, they're going to want to, you know,
00:19:51 ◼ ► register for the, I don't know, the web forum on the Minecraft mod thing, Minecraft mod web forum
00:19:57 ◼ ► that they want to be part of. And they don't know that you need an email. I just register. So
00:20:01 ◼ ► basically you're going to be using this as an adult, but I've, I've, I told the truth about
00:20:05 ◼ ► my kid's age and didn't regret it. If you want to lie about their age and just say your kids start
00:20:09 ◼ ► off as being older, over 18, you can do that too. But I don't know if that will cause problems later
00:20:13 ◼ ► when you try to recorrect their birthday, but it's good to know what these restrictions are. Again,
00:20:16 ◼ ► we'll link to the document. You can decide whether you want to tell the truth about their age or not.
00:20:21 ◼ ► Then additionally, Sri Ramkara writes, "I work in the sign-in and account recovery team at Google.
00:20:26 ◼ ► You'd be surprised how often this happens. A parent would create the quote-unquote perfect
00:20:30 ◼ ► Gmail account for their newborn a few years old by before they feel the need to actually use it
00:20:33 ◼ ► for something, by which time they have long forgotten the account password. And of course,
00:20:37 ◼ ► they haven't set up a recovery phone or recovery email in that account. The result is that they
00:20:41 ◼ ► can't access the quote-unquote perfect Gmail account that they lovingly created, and there's
00:20:45 ◼ ► nothing anyone can do to help them. It sucks for everyone. For many years now, when you create a
00:20:49 ◼ ► new Google account, you can mark it as an account you're creating for your child. This gives you
00:20:53 ◼ ► some parental controls, including the ability to reset their account password if needed.
00:20:56 ◼ ► As for your own Google accounts, please turn on two-step verification and save those backup codes,
00:21:00 ◼ ► as John rightly, as always, pointed out. In addition, do add a recovery phone and recovery
00:21:05 ◼ ► email address for the same added redundancy in case you forget your password." Yeah, like Apple
00:21:10 ◼ ► has a lot of things for iCloud now too. If you could designate somebody as your backup or, you
00:21:15 ◼ ► know, put someone else's email as a recovery thing, these are all things you can do to protect yourself.
00:21:19 ◼ ► And of course, if you use a password manager of some kind, hopefully you won't have to worry about
00:21:22 ◼ ► remembering that password. Aaron Walker writes, "I enjoyed the iMac special episode but was
00:21:27 ◼ ► disappointed that you completely missed one of the main benefits of the iMac G5. The iMac G5 was one
00:21:32 ◼ ► of the few Apple products that was incredibly user serviceable. It was definitely not sleek,
00:21:37 ◼ ► but you could remove the back panel and replace components easily. Later iMacs are sleeker and
00:21:41 ◼ ► prettier, but any modifications or upgrades are ludicrously more complex than they were in the iMac
00:21:46 ◼ ► G5." Yeah, I mean this is a fair criticism because the iMacs really did get awfully unserviceable
00:22:00 ◼ ► For typically to do almost anything to those, you had to take the screen off and get in from the
00:22:06 ◼ ► front. And that was not an easy or safe process for almost anyone to do themselves. So that is
00:22:17 ◼ ► definitely a big bonus for the G5. That being said, it was so hideous looking that you wouldn't
00:22:23 ◼ ► probably keep it long enough to actually have it break. Yeah, so it's not just that this was
00:22:27 ◼ ► a thing for iMac specifically, but I don't know what happened with the machine. I would love to
00:22:31 ◼ ► see the story on it, but this was the first Mac in ages and the last Mac in ages where Apple
00:22:39 ◼ ► officially supported the person who bought the computer doing tons of stuff to it. Like not just
00:22:45 ◼ ► changing the RAM, changing the hard drive, like just like any kind of thing. They're like, "Yep,
00:22:49 ◼ ► sure, no, this is totally a normal thing that you can do. You don't have to send away for special
00:22:54 ◼ ► tools in a Pelican case. We'll have instructions right on the website. You don't need like a heat
00:22:59 ◼ ► gun to like unglue something from something." And I don't know what happened. It was like,
00:23:04 ◼ ► when they did this, it was like, "Is this a new A-Trapel? Are they going to be selling Macs
00:23:07 ◼ ► that are user serviceable without special tools like designed to be that way?" And the answer was,
00:23:12 ◼ ► "No, they're not going to do that." Somehow this machine came out being officially user serviceable
00:23:19 ◼ ► without having to do anything complicated and then they just never did that again. And I don't
00:23:23 ◼ ► remember if it was the back panel or the front panel, but I do remember looking at them and
00:23:27 ◼ ► thinking, "That's great. It's real easy to upgrade." But also thinking like Marco said,
00:23:31 ◼ ► "But I don't want this computer." I mean, to be fair, I mean, I think this was a couple
00:23:36 ◼ ► years before, but in 2006, when the plastic MacBook came out with the wonderful Core Duo processor,
00:23:44 ◼ ► Jon, that computer, the era of the plastic MacBook before they went all unibody was also,
00:23:52 ◼ ► like you could very easily, and I did very easily, not only replace the RAM, but also the hard drive.
00:23:58 ◼ ► They had that little secret hard drive door where the hard drive would pop out into the battery bay.
00:24:01 ◼ ► Yeah. And there was no adhesive. You didn't need special tools. It was just like a small
00:24:07 ◼ ► Phillips head, I believe. So I upgraded so many hard drives and plastic MacBooks for both myself
00:24:12 ◼ ► and for other people. It was so easy. And back then also, that was when two and a half inch hard
00:24:18 ◼ ► drives were really growing rapidly in capacity in the market to the point where for much of that
00:24:24 ◼ ► laptop's lifespan, you could buy a larger hard drive from third parties than Apple would sell
00:24:30 ◼ ► you. So you'd get it with, I forget, it was something like you'd get it with the 60 gig
00:24:35 ◼ ► hard drive and you could upgrade it to 120 gig or something like that. And because it was third
00:24:39 ◼ ► party hardware, it was really cheap to do that too. Whatever the hardware would have been would
00:24:43 ◼ ► have been $150, $200 for a much larger amount of space. So it was very serviceable back then.
00:24:51 ◼ ► And then all of that went away when we went to unibodies. And of course, SSDs ruined it further.
00:24:56 ◼ ► That one was kind of like more targeted. Like you could do the specific things they allowed you. My
00:24:59 ◼ ► recollection of the iMac G5 is like the entire thing was open and like every single thing inside
00:25:04 ◼ ► of it was user serviceable because it was just right there in front of you. But I may be misremembering.
00:25:08 ◼ ► But anyway, that did not become a trend. Also, to be fair, RAM was user serviceable on almost
00:25:15 ◼ ► all of those iMacs until the iMac Pro. The iMac Pro didn't have any door whatsoever. But all the
00:25:20 ◼ ► rest of them, all the rest of the metal era all had your serviceable RAM. Yeah, but you would do
00:25:25 ◼ ► that at your own peril. Yes, you would. All right. I don't know. I think Marco, you are the keeper of
00:25:33 ◼ ► the ATP YouTube channel, but I think it's mostly John that's doing any of the work on it. So Marco
00:25:40 ◼ ► tried to let me have access to it. But YouTube has a feature that says let other people help
00:25:44 ◼ ► administer your channel. Just enter their email address here. And he's done it like twice and
00:25:47 ◼ ► nothing happens. So bad show, YouTube. Cool. It seems I mean, I am not a professional YouTubist,
00:25:53 ◼ ► but it seems like about a third of the features in the YouTube creator control panel are always
00:26:00 ◼ ► broken at any given time. Like I've only used it a handful of times. Like I've uploaded a couple of
00:26:05 ◼ ► videos myself. I had the our Minecraft gaming channel for our family where I did a lot more of
00:26:09 ◼ ► them. And then you know, a couple of little ATP things that John has created. And then I upload
00:26:14 ◼ ► them because we can't figure out how to give them access to the account. And it just seems like the
00:26:18 ◼ ► YouTube creator studio control panel, whatever it is, it just is so broken all the time in various
00:26:24 ◼ ► small ways that change over time. And then you go you go search for like if a lot of times I will
00:26:28 ◼ ► have to literally Google for how to do something in the YouTube control panel because I can't find
00:26:33 ◼ ► something. And even Google's own documentation on YouTube, which they own is out of date. And
00:26:39 ◼ ► like things have moved since then. And yeah, exactly. It's honestly Swift's documentation,
00:26:43 ◼ ► I think is better than Google's YouTube. There for so many reasons. I'm very happy to be a podcaster
00:26:49 ◼ ► and not a YouTuber. Yeah, I mean, the I think the experience of using YouTube's admin interface is
00:26:56 ◼ ► not uniform. You know, and I think the people who have like real channels with lots of subscribers
00:27:02 ◼ ► have a different experience. I know the very, very top super duper elite have entirely other features
00:27:08 ◼ ► that other people would kill for like, I think, I think CGP Grey has talked about like, how he
00:27:15 ◼ ► how you can't replace a video. Like if you have a video that has an error in it, you can't replace
00:27:18 ◼ ► that video, you can upload a new one, but then you lose all the views on that one. And it doesn't,
00:27:31 ◼ ► really. And so whatever that is the super duper elite, the ATP channel is the opposite of that.
00:27:37 ◼ ► This is a channel with no listed video. So if you go there is literally empty. The only reason we
00:27:43 ◼ ► have it is because we needed someplace to upload, like the video recordings of our member special,
00:27:47 ◼ ► we do tier lists. And honestly, there's not much video content. It's just us dragging things up
00:27:51 ◼ ► onto a tier list. But it's a visual thing. If you want to see that, that's fine. So we've been doing
00:27:54 ◼ ► that just because it's a nice thing to do. And then people like I tried to watch the tier list
00:27:58 ◼ ► video, but every five minutes an ad comes up, can you stop that from happening? And I'm like,
00:28:02 ◼ ► oh, that's terrible. We should stop that. And the answer is no, we can't stop that. And why can't
00:28:06 ◼ ► we stop that? Because, again, whatever the opposite of having the super duper elite features is,
00:28:11 ◼ ► we have no views, we have no subscribers, we have no videos. And so the feature that lets you turn
00:28:16 ◼ ► off ads like, hey, don't show any ads on this, we're not trying to monetize anything, not that
00:28:20 ◼ ► we would get money from those ads anyway, mind you, because to get any money from YouTube,
00:28:27 ◼ ► We're not even close to that. Like, I think it's like you have to like 1000 subscribers or
00:28:31 ◼ ► something. We're not even close to that. So not only are we not getting any money, but because
00:28:35 ◼ ► we don't have monetization turned on, we can't stop YouTube from running its own ads on our videos,
00:28:40 ◼ ► which is kind of sucky. So maybe we'll look at Vimeo next time or something. But anyway,
00:28:44 ◼ ► we just want to apologize to everybody. We're not trying to run ads on these videos. They're
00:28:47 ◼ ► just there as a fun and nice to have thing for the members. Sorry about the ads, we would turn them
00:28:54 ◼ ► off if we could, but we haven't figured it out yet. I'm not honestly interested in Vimeo. But
00:29:00 ◼ ► whenever I tried to use Vimeo in the past, I would always get yelled at by somebody who worked there
00:29:05 ◼ ► for using it wrong. This is not the kind of video we want. Yeah, no matter what it was,
00:29:09 ◼ ► it was not what they wanted. So I'm pretty sure that's not the site for us. We don't want to see
00:29:12 ◼ ► it like a static tier list screen with us dragging icons up onto it occasionally. I seriously doubt
00:29:16 ◼ ► it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not sure what this is. We'll probably we'll probably continue uploading
00:29:20 ◼ ► to the YouTube channel. This is I mean, I'm not gonna say this is the reason to subscribe to
00:29:23 ◼ ► YouTube premiums. You don't have to see ads, but not seeing ads on YouTube is a nice upgrade to the
00:29:27 ◼ ► experience. Maybe if we get more than 1000 subscribers, we'll be able to turn on monetization
00:29:33 ◼ ► and then turn use that newfound ability to turn off ads. YouTube is weird. Anyway, we just want to
00:29:40 ◼ ► apologize. Indeed. All right, let's go to truck GPS corner. So Ezekiel Ellen has a hat trick of
00:29:46 ◼ ► feedback at this point. Ezekiel writes truck maps, which we'll put a link in the show notes, has a
00:29:51 ◼ ► skip button below the phone number prompt. It's practically invisible. I'm sorry, I should have
00:29:55 ◼ ► given some context. This is I believe Marco what you used and you were complaining justifiably
00:30:00 ◼ ► about having to issue them or hand them your phone number in order to use the app. And it turns out,
00:30:05 ◼ ► apparently, if you have eagle eyes, you could have hit the skip button. Yeah, which I apparently
00:30:11 ◼ ► did not see. Was it like super duper light gray and a white background? Probably. I mean, look,
00:30:16 ◼ ► Apple uses a lot of those these days too themselves. But, uh, but yeah, Apple's not doing it on purpose
00:30:20 ◼ ► though. Yeah. So anyway, I missed that. Sorry again, app review. Where were you? But hey,
00:30:24 ◼ ► does you know? Here we go. Um, and that's all right. That was the app that would announce a
00:30:28 ◼ ► turn once four miles at a time and then never tell you about it again. So I didn't spend too
00:30:32 ◼ ► much time with that one. All right then. Jonathan Lamas. Yamas writes, I'm a semi-longtime listener
00:30:38 ◼ ► and I have a CDL, a commercial driver's license. I've sent countless emails to Tim Cook requesting
00:30:43 ◼ ► truck routes be baked straight into Apple maps. I've tried using the same truck route map Marco
00:30:47 ◼ ► or app that Marco used. And it was frustrating to say the least. Garmin sells GPS navigators
00:30:52 ◼ ► specifically made for truck routes. You can input the height, width and length of your vehicle and
00:30:57 ◼ ► the device routes you the safest way. But personally, I don't want to fork over $300 for a device that
00:31:02 ◼ ► has the UI of the early two thousands. I wait with bated breath until Apple implements truck routes
00:31:07 ◼ ► and Apple maps. Until then I'll stick to using my iPad pro 11 inch mounted on my dashboard.
00:31:12 ◼ ► Yeah. And we actually, we got a number of emails from people who drive trucks for a living, who,
00:31:16 ◼ ► who almost all said that pretty much the big, the big dog in this space is still hardware GPS units
00:31:23 ◼ ► that are, you know, these ones that Jonathan's talking about, like that Garmin makes them
00:31:26 ◼ ► specifically made for trucks and like, because the apps are so bad, many people still use hardware
00:31:31 ◼ ► GPS units. Which, I mean, it does make sense, but that is a bummer that that's the state of the art.
00:31:35 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, basically that because once the, you know, once smartphones chased all these things out
00:31:41 ◼ ► of the dashboards of regular people's cars, they retreated to smaller and more lucrative markets,
00:31:48 ◼ ► like this thing. And some people said about these GPS device things that they like the idea
00:31:53 ◼ ► of you just buy this one dedicated device, you pay a couple hundred bucks for it, and that's it.
00:31:57 ◼ ► As opposed to like the crappy app that Marco was trying to use, where it was like $250 a year. I
00:32:01 ◼ ► don't think there is an expensive subscription or if there is any subscription, it's less expensive
00:32:05 ◼ ► than that. So yeah, I don't know. Some people were very satisfied with these. Some people thought
00:32:10 ◼ ► they were crappy and anachronistic and some people were very satisfied with them because they were
00:32:14 ◼ ► crappy and anachronistic. So there you go. Then Andrew Larson writes, I genuinely, I know I've
00:32:20 ◼ ► said this a couple of times. I love that we have listeners in every freaking corner of the universe.
00:32:26 ◼ ► I really think at this point, I know Hello Internet has been defunct for a while, but I really
00:32:29 ◼ ► think we're getting to Hello Internet levels of coverage in terms of our listeners. I don't think
00:32:34 ◼ ► we have any astronauts yet, right? That's true. Not to my recollection. We'll work on the astronauts,
00:32:39 ◼ ► but yeah. Anyways, Andrew Larson writes, I'm a general manager at a U-Haul retail store.
00:32:43 ◼ ► For apps for routing, I recommend two things. There's an app called Inroute. That's I-N-R-O-U-T-E.
00:32:49 ◼ ► This app is super cool and has many features you've maybe never thought to have in an app for
00:32:54 ◼ ► routing. It's affordable and includes something called RV mode, which may help. For anyone super
00:32:59 ◼ ► concerned about the routes that allow or don't allow trucks, I recommend the out-of-app purchase
00:33:04 ◼ ► of a hardware GPS. Long after the average consumer driving, their Honda, moved on from TomTom and
00:33:10 ◼ ► Garmin, the market specialized in more niche features such as these, as well as marine-focused
00:33:15 ◼ ► models for Marco's inevitable future boat purchase. That's the other market to retreat to.
00:33:20 ◼ ► Yeah, right. So speaking of listeners in all sorts of places, not only is Andrew's recommendation of
00:33:26 ◼ ► the Inroute app, you know, pretty apt, I heard about it from a few people. We also heard from
00:33:30 ◼ ► the developer of the Inroute app. It's made by an indie developer. And the developer, Rob, wrote in,
00:33:37 ◼ ► "Unlike the two apps that I tested, it reroutes you if you go off route and there's no pricing
00:33:43 ◼ ► tricks. After its seven-day trial, it renews for $5 a month, discounted plans, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:47 ◼ ► There's apps for CarPlay, Mac, Under Catalyst, and iPad. And unlike most navigation apps,
00:33:52 ◼ ► your data is completely private." And Rob links to the whole, you know, the whole privacy policy
00:33:56 ◼ ► thing. So pretty cool that like, you know, not only do we hear from people who can tell us like
00:34:01 ◼ ► which apps and GPS things are better, but literally the author of one of them is also a listener of
00:34:06 ◼ ► our show and wrote in. That is very cool. Yeah. And you can see it from the screenshot of this
00:34:09 ◼ ► app here. It lets you enter the height, width, and length, and weight of your vehicle. You have
00:34:13 ◼ ► options to avoid tolls, avoid ferries, because you might not want to drive a big truck onto a ferry,
00:34:18 ◼ ► avoid highways, and you can have routes that are the most curvy or the least curvy or the least
00:34:22 ◼ ► ascent of elevation. So exactly the options you'd want to have, because you have all those things.
00:34:32 ◼ ► Stuff like how curvy it is and how much it goes up and down and avoiding ferries are things you would
00:34:37 ◼ ► not think of for regular routing, but are very relevant if you're driving a big truck. So yeah,
00:34:43 ◼ ► this is definitely an area where the platform owners probably need to get a little better,
00:34:48 ◼ ► especially since in America anyway, pretty much everybody is driving these monstrous vehicles
00:34:54 ◼ ► that can't park in normal parking spots. I mean, maybe they don't care about curves or shearing off
00:34:58 ◼ ► the top of their things, but if the current trends continue, they're not going to be able to fit in
00:35:01 ◼ ► parkways either. Yeah. So anyway, next time I rent some kind of truck or RV, I will try in route,
00:35:09 ◼ ► because that sounds like the best option. Again, I love the coverage that we have. It makes me so
00:35:14 ◼ ► very happy. Yeah. All right. And then finally, Jon, how is your gift box coming along? How are
00:35:20 ◼ ► things going in HomePod land? Shortly after the end of the show, I did come up with the use. I
00:35:24 ◼ ► think I might have come up with this on the program or maybe on the bootleg. I don't remember.
00:35:27 ◼ ► I'm like, "Oh, I know what I'll do with these. I'll put them in my wife's office," because she
00:35:31 ◼ ► currently uses a very small, not very good sounding Sonos Toblerone thing. I think I did
00:35:35 ◼ ► talk about this on the show anyway. I'll put them down there for her. And so the day after we
00:35:40 ◼ ► recorded, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to get these two HomePods. I know where they're going now.
00:35:43 ◼ ► Bring them down to the office. Set them up on our desk as a stereo pair. This should take five
00:35:47 ◼ ► minutes, right?" No, of course not. I don't even think you can reset them in five minutes.
00:35:53 ◼ ► Well, so first I was trying to be like, "Okay, so it should just work." I plug it in, and of course,
00:35:58 ◼ ► it's not showing up. And I go to Home app and I try to add accessory, and they're not showing up.
00:36:02 ◼ ► I'm like, "I probably have to factory reset these." So I look up the instructions and how
00:36:05 ◼ ► to factory reset them. And I do it three or four times, and it doesn't work. And then I even got
00:36:11 ◼ ► to the point where I messaged Marco and I said, "Are these still attached to your Apple ID? Can
00:36:14 ◼ ► you delete them from your Apple ID?" So I was like, "Maybe he needs to do something at his end."
00:36:29 ◼ ► Oh my God, Marco. So the listeners missed. So we got to back up because this is a good story. So
00:36:36 ◼ ► we had agreed to talk about and do before the show our St. Jude donations, as we talked about.
00:36:41 ◼ ► And so a few days ago, John had said to the two of us, "Hey, let's do this 15 minutes early." And
00:36:47 ◼ ► that was cool with everyone. I said, "Yeah, sure." So I am sitting at 7.45 our time, waiting for
00:36:53 ◼ ► Marco to hit go on the Zoom room. And then Marco shows up, and I'm immediately there. He goes, "Oh,
00:37:07 ◼ ► So it is made clear to me that Marco, you either need to move our Slack communications to like
00:37:16 ◼ ► iMessage or something, or you just never care about what we say. And that makes me sad.
00:37:22 ◼ ► No, normally I am better at this, but it's been, look, I'm like selling one house, renovating
00:37:33 ◼ ► I mean, it's not that I didn't have an expectation that you'd immediately respond to me or whatever,
00:37:37 ◼ ► but I figured you would have seen it eventually within a week. That's all I'm saying. And when I
00:37:41 ◼ ► did send that message, I thought about how should I send this? And I briefly thought, "Oh, I'll use
00:37:47 ◼ ► iMessage." But I'm like, "No, in the hierarchy of importance, this is not that important. I don't
00:37:51 ◼ ► care if he ever doesn't respond to me immediately. I'll just send it through Slack." And what
00:37:56 ◼ ► happened was before I could get a response, I figured it out. So it didn't matter anyway,
00:38:01 ◼ ► but that's the level I was thinking. But, you know, so I'm not, who cares that you didn't
00:38:05 ◼ ► respond to it, but I figured you would have at least seen it a week later. But that's the hole
00:38:08 ◼ ► in your system. Although actually, in Marco's defense, I can't come, I can't put my finger
00:38:13 ◼ ► on this message because I was going to try to figure out when it was. Oh, I deleted them.
00:38:16 ◼ ► I deleted them. Oh, all right. Oh, so, okay. So I can't be at fault for not seeing it in like...
00:38:21 ◼ ► I deleted them like 24 hours later. I figured I didn't want you to be distracted because I'm like,
00:38:25 ◼ ► I know you're busy and maybe if you saw it 24 hours later, you're like, oh, I need to help John.
00:38:28 ◼ ► You don't. I got it figured out. So first I put a message that said, don't worry. I figured it out.
00:38:33 ◼ ► And I left that there for 24 hours. After 24 hours, I said, I don't want you to accidentally
00:38:36 ◼ ► see the other ones and not see that I figured it out. And so I deleted them all. You know,
00:38:40 ◼ ► I'm all, I am so here for busting Marco's chops, but in this one, I think he might get a pass on
00:38:45 ◼ ► this particular. Well, this doesn't explain the let's get online 15 minutes early thing.
00:38:50 ◼ ► Just still sitting in there. Anyway. So I did figure out the factory reset. And for people who
00:38:55 ◼ ► don't know, if you read the instructions and it's like, you know, unplug your thing for 10 seconds,
00:38:59 ◼ ► plug it in, wait 10 seconds, then hold your finger on the thing for 10 seconds. And it's, uh,
00:39:03 ◼ ► you would think it's like, okay. Yeah. They want me to unplug it, plug it in, then hold my finger
00:39:06 ◼ ► on the top of it. Right. If you do that and don't exactly follow their instructions, nothing happens.
00:39:11 ◼ ► Yep. So you have to plug it in, wait 10 seconds. And then if you plug it in and then just lazily
00:39:16 ◼ ► wander over to it later and put your fingers on it, it doesn't work anyway. My bad. Um, so I reset
00:39:22 ◼ ► the thing, uh, configured it and I'm doing like the right one, uh, you know, uh, it gets set up.
00:39:28 ◼ ► It takes a long time and asked me a bunch of stuff. I give it a name, blah, blah, blah, you know,
00:39:32 ◼ ► fine, whatever. Then I go to do the left one and it is not happy. Like it does screw all the steps
00:39:38 ◼ ► to go as a reset, uh, add device. It shows up, set set up, blah, do all the things, blah, blah, blah.
00:39:43 ◼ ► You don't really have any options. Like basically you're just tapping through a wizard where there
00:39:45 ◼ ► are no choices. It's like, do you want to transfer settings? It's like, well, it's literally the only
00:39:49 ◼ ► button and there's no X or closed box or whatever. So yeah, I guess I'm transferring settings.
00:39:54 ◼ ► Anyway, the left home pod gets stuck on a thing where it just says configuring. Uh, and like the
00:40:01 ◼ ► other one said configuring for a while too, but then it didn't say configuring and it said, and
00:40:04 ◼ ► when it's in configuring, you can go to the options and it says not all the features of this
00:40:07 ◼ ► home pod are available yet, but when it's done configuring, they will be, and you can do stuff
00:40:11 ◼ ► with it, like play audio, but you can't put it in a stereo pair. You can't do timers. You can't do all
00:40:15 ◼ ► sorts of other stuff. Whatever. I'm sure it will be fine. I just leave it down there. I come back
00:40:21 ◼ ► down an hour later. It's still configuring, whatever. Go back through some other stuff.
00:40:24 ◼ ► Come down two hours later, it's still configuring. Now I'm Googling for home pod configuring for
00:40:29 ◼ ► hours, million results. Everyone's home pods are configuring configuring for hours. What should I
00:40:34 ◼ ► do? Oh, uh, you know, burn down your home and move to a new country and get a new identity. Like that's
00:40:39 ◼ ► always the answer. Cause like when people have computer problems, they're like delete your Apple
00:40:42 ◼ ► ID, you know, marry someone else, like send your children for all for adoption. Like it's just reset
00:40:48 ◼ ► the world and like, maybe they do that and it solves their problem, but I'm not going to delete
00:40:52 ◼ ► my Apple ID. I'm not even going to sign out of my Apple ID. I'm not going to reinstall my operating
00:40:56 ◼ ► system. Like I'm not going to, you know, I'm not doing those because I'm like, that doesn't make
00:41:00 ◼ ► any sense why that would work. Uh, and they're like, Oh, it's configuring because they just
00:41:05 ◼ ► updated a new version. And if you have the old version of, because you know, they did the thing
00:41:08 ◼ ► where you update your, uh, your, uh, home, the Apple home thing or whatever updated quick aside,
00:41:13 ◼ ► is that safe? Cause I've been staring at this thing for probably months now and I'm so scared
00:41:18 ◼ ► to do it. Is that safe to do? I think it is. I did. I finally did it on mine. Okay. But when
00:41:22 ◼ ► that just came out, people were like, Oh, don't upgrade your home because if you have some old
00:41:25 ◼ ► home pods, they won't be able to join the new home and blah, blah, blah. One of the things that is
00:41:29 ◼ ► just that it did try was like try making a new home, like in the home app and then try setting
00:41:33 ◼ ► up the, the new home, the home pod on the new home. And I did notice that this home pod was running,
00:41:39 ◼ ► whatever the O S is called version 15 and the current version is like 16.6 or something.
00:41:43 ◼ ► So I'm like, it just needs a software update. So I just need to, maybe I just put it in my,
00:41:47 ◼ ► in the fake home and get it to update. Uh, and eventually I got it to the point where I would
00:41:52 ◼ ► try setting it up. I've reset the thing so many times now, try to set it up and it would be like,
00:41:55 ◼ ► it would go through all the steps and it would be like, okay, we're going to update your home
00:41:58 ◼ ► pod. I'm like, yes, yes. Update it to 16. Uh, but then it would just be stuck on configuring.
00:42:03 ◼ ► And so I gave it like eight hours and it was still configuring and then I gave it 24 hours and it was
00:42:07 ◼ ► still configuring. And again, if you Google for this, so many people are like my home pod stuck
00:42:11 ◼ ► in configuring, what do I do? And so I figured, all right, I'm going to make a genius bar appointment.
00:42:16 ◼ ► I'm going to make an appointment. Oh my God, this is so much worse of a gift than mine.
00:42:21 ◼ ► Well, oh yeah, that's great. My word. Uh, you know, I'm going to make a genius bar appointment
00:42:25 ◼ ► and what am I going to do? I'm going to carry my home pod to the Apple store and I'm going to put
00:42:32 ◼ ► only thing I wanted them to do because I figured the problem has got to be that it's running 15 or
00:42:36 ◼ ► something and it just needs to be running 16. Maybe it can't be in a stereo pair with one that's on 16
00:42:40 ◼ ► or like maybe you can't join to the new house, but I just wanted to run a software update,
00:42:44 ◼ ► but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get this thing to just do a software update.
00:42:52 ◼ ► just run a software update. It's this actually a little bit easier on the home pod mini by the way,
00:43:00 ◼ ► a micro USB connection. What does it have on it? It, wait, the mini has a connection. I thought
00:43:06 ◼ ► it was a, it was a fixed wire. No, there's, there's a, there's a USB port on the home pod mini because
00:43:11 ◼ ► one of the options was, Hey, do you want to do basically you want to update the OS by doing a
00:43:15 ◼ ► restore by connecting it to the finder, you know, to connect to your Mac with USB launch the finder
00:43:20 ◼ ► and basically do like an OS restore. Oh yeah. The, the, the end of the power cable is, is a USB-C
00:43:26 ◼ ► plug. Yeah. All right. That was anyway, there is a way to sort of hardware restore. Cause I was like,
00:43:30 ◼ ► let me just, can I just get these, the version 16 of this OS and just blast it onto there with
00:43:35 ◼ ► the wire. But with the original home pod, the answer is no. So I made the genius bar appointment.
00:43:39 ◼ ► And then it was like the day before the genius bar appointment was supposed to come. And then I went
00:43:43 ◼ ► down there to get the home pod. But before I did it for you, let me just look at the home app to
00:43:46 ◼ ► see what it's like. Maybe take a screenshot of it being in configuring and it wasn't configuring
00:43:50 ◼ ► anymore. Hooray. So it updated itself. And the answer is how long does an original home pod take
00:43:55 ◼ ► to update itself from the, whatever the OS is called version 15 to 16? The answer is somewhere
00:44:01 ◼ ► between 24 and 48 hours with no progress indication whatsoever that it's doing anything. It just says
00:44:10 ◼ ► configuring. And then of course, once it updated itself, it, it joined into a stereo pair, just
00:44:15 ◼ ► fine or whatever. So these products, boy, just a combination of so many of Apple's greatest hits,
00:44:20 ◼ ► just completely opaque, no progress indication. And just, it just took way too long. Like it
00:44:25 ◼ ► shouldn't take that long. What is it? I know they're slow. I know they're like little crappy
00:44:28 ◼ ► watch processors, but more than 24 hours for an OS update. I think my series zero watch updates.
00:44:34 ◼ ► It's always faster than that. It was ridiculous. Uh, they are configured now still haven't gotten
00:44:39 ◼ ► any pains for my wife on them. I'm not sure if she's even actually used them because she hasn't
00:44:43 ◼ ► actually been working from home recently. She's had, she's been traveling for work and has been
00:44:46 ◼ ► going into the office. So, uh, I await reviews, but there are at least configured. Oh, and by the
00:44:51 ◼ ► way, out of sympathy, my upstairs home pod decided that it was not going to work correctly anymore.
00:44:55 ◼ ► I asked him to turn off the lights and it's like, I had some BS excuse about like, I'm not on the
00:44:59 ◼ ► network and don't know what you're talking about. So anyway, I asked the Google thing to turn off
00:45:03 ◼ ► the lights and then luckily I'm now an expert in resetting home pods and I reset the one upstairs
00:45:07 ◼ ► and restored that to factory configuration and, and reinstalled everything. The one upstairs is
00:45:13 ◼ ► on the thing where it's like, you're not signed into your Apple ID, please enter your Apple ID
00:45:17 ◼ ► password. Have you seen that one Marco in your life? Um, like on the iPhone. Yeah. Like if you
00:45:22 ◼ ► go to the home app on the iPhone, it would be like your home pod is not signed into your Apple ID.
00:45:26 ◼ ► And if you go to the settings, you go to the settings for the home pod and it will say,
00:45:29 ◼ ► please enter your Apple ID password. I've been doing that for years. Every once in a while,
00:45:32 ◼ ► it just forgets my Apple ID password or thinks it does. So I manually reenter it on the phone.
00:45:37 ◼ ► This time it said, I don't know. I'm not signed into your Apple ID, please enter your Apple ID
00:45:40 ◼ ► password. So you go to settings and has a little button, basically some blue text that says enter
00:45:45 ◼ ► password. I tap that. Does it prompt me to enter a password? No, it does not. No text field appears.
00:45:50 ◼ ► Instead. I get an indeterminate spinner and it says authenticating. I'm like authenticating with
00:45:54 ◼ ► what I haven't entered a password yet. The button says enter password. And normally it shows a text
00:45:58 ◼ ► field, but now I just kept showing a spinner, but don't worry that spinner spins for like three
00:46:01 ◼ ► minutes and then just goes away. And you're back at seeing the screen that says enter password.
00:46:05 ◼ ► So that's why I factory reset that one. So now all my home pods have been factory reset
00:46:09 ◼ ► on average, let's say seven times. And so far so good. Wow. That sounds fun. I got to tell you,
00:46:16 ◼ ► this is definitely making me love my Sonos stuff even more because that stuff really does just
00:46:24 ◼ ► work. It's incredible how I've never owned a home pod. And it's because all I've heard is that
00:46:29 ◼ ► they're garbage. Like I know they sound great. It's you know what it is? It sounds like me
00:46:34 ◼ ► describing my BMW, which to this day I will say, God, I love that car so much. God, it was such a
00:46:40 ◼ ► good car, but it was only running for about 10 minutes at a time. And that's how all of you sound
00:46:45 ◼ ► when you describe your home pods. That is very apt. Like it's the home pod. Look, so I have a
00:46:52 ◼ ► long history with home pods. I'm back on the down, you know, on the roller coaster, the roller coaster
00:46:57 ◼ ► of home pod opinions. It's it is roller coaster because when they work, they sound so good and
00:47:04 ◼ ► they do sound better than almost anything else in their category, especially if you care about size.
00:47:09 ◼ ► Like if you're looking for something that is small and sounds good, there is almost nothing else in
00:47:15 ◼ ► the market. That being said, I am currently testing a pair of Sonos Aera 100s in replacement of my
00:47:23 ◼ ► home pods. Oh, really? I have, I will have more to say on that in a future episode. Just to be clear
00:47:32 ◼ ► though, I am becoming one of those Sonos A holes that I will perhaps quit the show if you tell me
00:47:38 ◼ ► that you don't absolutely love them. So consider, consider your opinions wisely. Let me just say
00:47:43 ◼ ► that I, I, the, the relationship with them is, is more complicated than I would have expected.
00:47:49 ◼ ► Oh really? But, but not in bad ways for the most part. So anyway, I will have more to say on my
00:47:57 ◼ ► Sonos Aera 100s in a future episode, but they are still in the place that my two new home pods were.
00:48:04 ◼ ► So the experiment hasn't failed. But it's also, it isn't all roses, but there are some surprising
00:48:11 ◼ ► roses. So anyway, we'll get to that in another time. And just keep in mind, by the way, these
00:48:16 ◼ ► home pods that I have are mine is like the very first one off the, you know, like when they just
00:48:21 ◼ ► were released and probably at least one of Marco's is like that. I think both of the ones I sent you
00:48:27 ◼ ► I had four of that, of the first gen home pods. I sent you two of them. I still have two. And I,
00:48:33 ◼ ► I bought them all fairly early on in the home pods life. Yeah. You can kind of tell, because I've
00:48:38 ◼ ► spent so much time in the stupid home app that if you look at the model number, like the model
00:48:42 ◼ ► number looks way shorter than you think it should on these things. Like the normal model numbers for
00:48:46 ◼ ► Apple things is like MLA something, something slash a, you know, those things, the model for
00:48:51 ◼ ► these things is MQHV2. That's it. That's the whole model number. It's way shorter than like,
00:48:56 ◼ ► if you look at what the model number is, I think on the version two ones or any of the modern
00:48:59 ◼ ► products. So that's my indication that all the ones I have are super duper first generation. I'm
00:49:03 ◼ ► just glad they work at all, I guess. Well, do they? I mean, and by the way, what is the OS called?
00:49:09 ◼ ► I know it used to be called audio OS, but is it not called that anymore? What is it? It doesn't
00:49:13 ◼ ► say what the name of it is. What is the OS? It was, it never had a public facing name and it
00:49:17 ◼ ► still doesn't when Apple refers to it, they will always refer to it obliquely with they'll say
00:49:21 ◼ ► something like, like our home platform or something like they will always refer to it not by name
00:49:26 ◼ ► because it officially does not have a public name. But it was called audio OS internally for a while.
00:49:32 ◼ ► I'm just not sure if it's still called that. It was. And I'm not even sure if the HomePod mini
00:49:37 ◼ ► and HomePod two even run that. Like that was what it was called on the HomePod one, the original one.
00:49:42 ◼ ► But I think they might've changed the software stack for the mini and the two, but it's,
00:49:46 ◼ ► no one really talks about it. We are sponsored this week by Celtrios, a shoot 'em up slash shmup
00:49:53 ◼ ► game for Apple's platforms. This category, this is, I first learned about this back in the Super
00:49:58 ◼ ► Nintendo days with Gradius three. And this is this, it's that kind of game you've seen these
00:50:02 ◼ ► before where you have the little ship and it's a side scroller and just waves of enemies keep
00:50:07 ◼ ► coming at you and you have to blow them all up with these, you know, big customizable weapons
00:50:10 ◼ ► and everything. You pick up power ups, you got to go around obstacles, that kind of game. It's
00:50:15 ◼ ► super fun. I love shoot 'em up slash shmup games. I love them. And what's great about Celtrios is
00:50:21 ◼ ► unlike many modern games, there are no ads, there's no in-app purchases, there's no subscriptions
00:50:28 ◼ ► and nothing is locked. You can play it over and over again for as long as you want with lots of
00:50:33 ◼ ► customization options to keep it fresh and available exclusively for Apple platforms, Mac,
00:50:39 ◼ ► iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Celtrios has 13 stages. You can start from any of them. You don't have to
00:50:45 ◼ ► worry about like losing your progress or anything. If you actually, if you quit the app, you can
00:50:48 ◼ ► resume play later. And they have all sorts of abilities. They have customizable ship configurations,
00:50:55 ◼ ► randomizing, so kind of keep it fresh, all sorts of varieties of ways to play. And this has a huge,
00:51:00 ◼ ► high quality soundtrack. When I first played this, I played it with no sound. And then I played it
00:51:04 ◼ ► later with sound like, Oh, that was a mistake the first time. The soundtrack is awesome. It's over
00:51:08 ◼ ► 45 minutes of music and Celtrios. They keep expanding the game over 75 free updates have
00:51:13 ◼ ► been released so far. And the entire game all of Celtrios was made by an independent developer.
00:51:18 ◼ ► They support one or two player play on the Mac, you have various inputs on the iOS, you need to
00:51:24 ◼ ► use game controller for two player, which makes sense. So it is just it is a great game. Check it
00:51:28 ◼ ► out, get Celtrios. If you love traditional shmups, or you just want a quality game, it's fun to play
00:51:33 ◼ ► again and again, with none of the usual annoyances of other modern games. Mac on Celtrios Mac is
00:51:39 ◼ ► available on Steam with a free demo. Or you can go over to the Apple App Store to get Celtrios for
00:51:43 ◼ ► iOS and tv OS. Thank you so much to Celtrios for sponsoring our show. All right, we got news
00:51:53 ◼ ► yesterday, I believe that the next Apple event, which is presumably the iPhone event is on
00:51:59 ◼ ► September 12. It will be at 10 o'clock in the morning Pacific, which is one o'clock in the
00:52:04 ◼ ► one room time zone. As expected, none of us got an invite to be there, but that's okay. We'll watch.
00:52:11 ◼ ► We're going to talk about predictions next week. But for now, Marco reminded us that we should
00:52:18 ◼ ► probably do some exit interviews. So Marco, do you want me to quarterback this? Or would you like to?
00:52:22 ◼ ► I can do it. So yeah, so this is the this is the, even though I have the least experience of the
00:52:29 ◼ ► three of us working in corporate jobs, I came up with this idea a few years ago to do an exit
00:52:33 ◼ ► interview of the outgoing devices that we've been using for the past year on the eve of the new ones
00:52:39 ◼ ► presumably being released or announced. And because I feel like you know, it's one thing when
00:52:44 ◼ ► in this case, you know, we're gonna talk about the iPhone 14, the Apple Watch Ultra, and the Apple
00:52:49 ◼ ► Watch Series 8, and maybe some other stuff like the lightning port. It's interesting, you know,
00:52:55 ◼ ► when these things come out, you can talk about Oh, we know that and we will when you know, when the
00:52:59 ◼ ► iPhone event show happens in a few weeks, we will talk about like, oh, here's the cool new stuff.
00:53:04 ◼ ► This sounds good. This looks good. You know, the reviews say this is pretty good. Then you get it
00:53:07 ◼ ► like, oh, yeah, this feels good. This looks nice, whatever. But it's different after a year, you
00:53:11 ◼ ► know, after a year, the novelty has worn off. And you get to really evaluate like, how was the iPhone
00:53:17 ◼ ► 14 Pro or how was the Apple Watch Ultra version one actually living with it for a longer term?
00:53:23 ◼ ► How does it how does it perform long term? Are there any, you know, flaws that that didn't seem
00:53:28 ◼ ► like a big deal at the beginning, but became a big deal later? Things that you thought would be a big
00:53:32 ◼ ► deal that weren't a big deal later? So I feel like this is kind of a fun segment to do. And I don't
00:53:37 ◼ ► think anyone else really does it. So this is kind of like, the ATP innovation besides one of us, I
00:53:43 ◼ ► think might have been a follow up at some point. That was me. It was me just Oh, yeah, it was. Yeah,
00:53:47 ◼ ► that makes sense. So anyway, you can't put that on the record, it's just gonna confuse the AI's.
00:53:53 ◼ ► They're already confused. You now need to make very neutral direct statements correcting the record.
00:53:59 ◼ ► No, they're already hallucinating, like as if they're at a fish concert, which we will also get
00:54:02 ◼ ► to later. But anyway. So exit interviews. First, the big one, the iPhone 14 slash 14 Pro. Now,
00:54:13 ◼ ► john, you have the 14 right? I have the 14 Pro for Yes, 14 Pro. Yeah. All right. And so do I and Casey,
00:54:21 ◼ ► you haven't dropped this into a well yet, right? You still have a 14 Pro. That is true. There is a
00:54:26 ◼ ► couple of there. There are a couple of very, very, very hairline scratches, not impacts,
00:54:35 ◼ ► fully functional, unshattered iPhone 14 Pro. I will say the screen on my 14 Pro, you know,
00:54:44 ◼ ► every year, the phone tweaks the screen glass formulation in such a way to try to make it more
00:54:51 ◼ ► drop and shatter resistant. And some years, and even even within variations within certain years,
00:54:57 ◼ ► some years, you get a screen that just scratches like crazy. Because usually to make things more
00:55:03 ◼ ► shatter resistant, sometimes they have to tweak the properties of the glass in some ways that
00:55:07 ◼ ► make it a little bit softer and make it more scratch prone in exchange for not shattering as
00:55:11 ◼ ► easily. My 14 Pro has been either the most or the second most scratch prone iPhone I've ever had.
00:55:18 ◼ ► This screen was what like it had visible scratches on the screen within I think two weeks of owning
00:55:25 ◼ ► it. And it's only gotten worse over time. And like, I know it's not just I don't just carry
00:55:29 ◼ ► around sand in my pocket because Are you sure? Yeah, exactly. Are you sure there's not sand in
00:55:34 ◼ ► your pocket? I mean, granted of the three of us, I'm the most likely one to have sand in my pocket.
00:55:38 ◼ ► But this doesn't happen with any of my other devices. It hasn't happened with past phones,
00:55:42 ◼ ► with a couple of exceptions from long before, like before I was at the beach. It doesn't happen
00:55:46 ◼ ► with other devices. Like it's just certain phones have very scratch prone glass for whatever reason.
00:55:50 ◼ ► And the iPhone 14 Pro for me has been the worst for in a long time. So I have scratched my screens
00:55:58 ◼ ► minor scratches over the years. So I know it's not like I it's impossible for me to scratch the
00:56:03 ◼ ► screen. But I'm looking at this and I'm cleaning it off with my shirt while you're talking. I can't
00:56:07 ◼ ► find a single scratch of any kind, any size, any lightness anywhere in my screen. And I'm not super
00:56:14 ◼ ► careful with my phone. I just use it as a phone. It's fallen off my nightstand 50 times onto the
00:56:20 ◼ ► ground in front of it. Like I've dropped it while walking down the stairs like you got us mag safe,
00:56:25 ◼ ► man. I put it in pockets all the time. All I put it in jacket pockets. I put it in my jeans pockets.
00:56:30 ◼ ► I put it down on surfaces right side up and front side down. Not a single scratch anywhere on it. So
00:56:43 ◼ ► And that's why it's notable when one isn't. But anyway, we've heard we've heard before like
00:56:49 ◼ ► some years like there will there will actually be variations in this property within different
00:56:54 ◼ ► phones of the same year like with it like different iPhone 14 pros might actually vary in
00:56:58 ◼ ► this way. So I can't fault the whole line for it. But it has it that was a very kind of unfortunate
00:57:03 ◼ ► thing about this phone right from the start for me. But moving on from that, physically speaking,
00:57:08 ◼ ► this phone is heavy and dense. And I really don't like it. And I really am very excited about
00:57:15 ◼ ► the rumors of the next ones being more used more using to take titanium and for the frame instead
00:57:20 ◼ ► of stainless steel. Steel is really heavy. titanium is less so aluminum is even less so and actually,
00:57:26 ◼ ► in a few months ago, I bought a yellow aluminum iPhone 14 non pro as a test device because I
00:57:36 ◼ ► needed more test devices as discussed previously. And the 14 non pro feels great in the hand in
00:57:43 ◼ ► large part because it is noticeably lighter weight than the 14 Pro. It's not a small difference. Like
00:57:49 ◼ ► if you look at the actual weight numbers, the weight numbers make it seem like Oh, maybe that's
00:57:53 ◼ ► maybe a moderate deal. When you hold it in hand. It's a huge difference. The 14 non pro feels
00:58:00 ◼ ► fantastic. And it still has the giant glass back glass is heavy, but it has obviously a much simpler
00:58:06 ◼ ► camera module because there's only there's only two cameras, not three and they're smaller. So
00:58:09 ◼ ► that's probably some of the weight right there. But it also doesn't have the stainless steel edges,
00:58:13 ◼ ► it has aluminum and aluminum is actually even lighter than titanium in most uses depending on
00:58:17 ◼ ► you know, structure and everything. But, you know, if you if you think that the new phones
00:58:21 ◼ ► using titanium are going to automatically get as light as the non pro phones, probably not,
00:58:31 ◼ ► or less giant, but also aluminum is still lighter than even titanium, which we actually see in the
00:58:38 ◼ ► Apple Watch, which we'll get to in a little bit. So anyway, the 14 Pro is super heavy and dense. And
00:58:44 ◼ ► I really, I'm glad to hear rumors that they're going to maybe address that. I hope they go
00:58:50 ◼ ► as far as they can with with addressing that. One of the reasons they might not want to address that
00:58:55 ◼ ► is battery life. I have found the 14 Pro to have okay battery life. It's not great. It's not bad.
00:59:02 ◼ ► It's okay. And batteries are very heavy and very dense. So maybe that's part of the reason why this
00:59:09 ◼ ► phone has to be so much heavier because it needs that additional battery power. It needs that
00:59:15 ◼ ► additional battery power to power the always on screen. And I think of all the features and updates
00:59:22 ◼ ► to the iPhone 14 Pro Pro line or 14 at all line. The always on screen of the 14 Pro to me is the
00:59:30 ◼ ► single standout feature of this generation. Because we promotion that was last year, wasn't it? We
00:59:36 ◼ ► didn't. Yeah, it's been around for a while. Yeah, promotion launched on the 12 or 13 Pro. So so that
00:59:40 ◼ ► that wasn't new this year. But the always on screen that was the big new thing. And that changes
00:59:46 ◼ ► so much about how many of us not all of us, but how many of us can get value out of our phones.
00:59:52 ◼ ► A lot of people don't use it. You know, a lot of people, they just kind of don't have their phone
00:59:56 ◼ ► resting in a place where they would see the screen. So they don't really use it or they don't like
01:00:00 ◼ ► how it how it behaves in some ways that they turn it off. I turned it off. I tried it for a couple
01:00:06 ◼ ► weeks. I turned it off. I've never looked back. I just do not want that feature. And the extra
01:00:11 ◼ ► battery life is a bonus. But I have to say my battery life has also been weirdly variable,
01:00:16 ◼ ► kind of like when you run betas and you're like, Oh, I'm running a beta, something must have gone
01:00:19 ◼ ► nuts in the background and like burned down my battery every once in a while. I have a day where
01:00:24 ◼ ► I'll look. It'll be like 5 p.m. and I look at my battery power. I'm like, what the hell happened
01:00:27 ◼ ► today? Like why? Why do I so low on battery? But that's rare. Most days I talked about this when
01:00:33 ◼ ► we first got the phones. Part of it is because of my my mag safe charger in my car. You know,
01:00:40 ◼ ► it's a mag safe mount, but it also charges the phone. So if I'm driving anywhere, it's like 8
01:00:44 ◼ ► p.m. and I have 85 percent battery. Right. Because I've been just driving around running errands and
01:00:48 ◼ ► every time I'm in the car, the thing is stuck to the charger. But even days when I don't drive
01:00:51 ◼ ► anywhere, just battery life is a non issue. Like, I mean, and maybe also because I'm on Wi-Fi a lot,
01:00:57 ◼ ► like my boy, I go for dog walks and stuff like that. Just battery life has been fantastic,
01:01:01 ◼ ► except every once in a while, it'll just be like, where did my battery life go? I don't know what's
01:01:05 ◼ ► going on. I think obviously I think it's a software issue. I think what it shows is the 14 Pro has
01:01:09 ◼ ► a good sized battery and it's only betrayed occasionally by software features, whether that
01:01:16 ◼ ► be just the baseline overhead of always on screen, which again, I don't use. But if you do use it,
01:01:21 ◼ ► you're spending some battery on that, obviously. Or the something weird has gone on with some app
01:01:27 ◼ ► or some part of the OS on this particular day and the Birdmind battery. But in general,
01:01:30 ◼ ► I would say the battery life of this is, I think, probably the best it's been in recent years for me
01:01:35 ◼ ► on phones. I remember my 12 being worse. And, you know, I agree this phone is big and dense and
01:01:42 ◼ ► heavy, but that's a trade off I'm willing to make to basically not have to worry about battery life
01:01:47 ◼ ► anymore. Yeah, my battery life, I think I echo what Jon is saying now. It's also hard for me because I
01:01:54 ◼ ► often have my phone plugged in for doing testing or whatever. So consider your source. I am at best
01:02:01 ◼ ► an unreliable narrator for this. But I echo what you're saying, Jon, that there are days that like
01:02:07 ◼ ► a process just runs away or something happens that I feel like something wrong has gone on and
01:02:15 ◼ ► my battery is just slaughtered. And Erin has actually been saying, because she doesn't have
01:02:19 ◼ ► her phone, her 14 Pro on a charger very often during the day. And she has been saying that her
01:02:25 ◼ ► battery life has gotten real bad recently. And I've taken a couple of glances at the battery
01:02:31 ◼ ► stuff in settings. And I can't say I've come up with anything obvious that, you know, oh,
01:02:36 ◼ ► this is exactly what it is. And when I've looked at it on my own phone, I've definitely seen some
01:02:41 ◼ ► occasions where Instagram has seemingly gone kind of bananas. But my goodness, I feel like normally
01:02:48 ◼ ► my battery is pretty darn good. Her battery, I think like Marco, because Marco, you said yours
01:02:53 ◼ ► was really crummy, right? Her battery is okay. It's not great. It's not bad. It's okay. All right.
01:02:59 ◼ ► Well, hers is like crummy to okay. And then yeah, mine waffles and varies between the two. It's very
01:03:05 ◼ ► unusual. Well, that's been a story recently. People were like, oh, the 14 to the 14 Pros have some
01:03:10 ◼ ► kind of manufacturing problem with the battery and they're only a year old and the battery, like that
01:03:14 ◼ ► battery health number they give you, it's like lower than people expect. Whereas I'm trying to
01:03:17 ◼ ► find it in settings and I can't find it. Settings and then battery. So what all our phones are
01:03:22 ◼ ► basically a year old. Cause we all got them on the lunch day. Right. And here they're actually,
01:03:26 ◼ ► mine is a little bit younger because I got to replace because of the camera within like the
01:03:28 ◼ ► first month. But anyway, what is your battery health at on your year old iPhone 14 Pro?
01:03:35 ◼ ► 100%. I'm kidding. Mine's at 90. 93. That's a mine's like 97. Oh wow. Goodness. Again. I think,
01:03:44 ◼ ► I think, you know, I did get my replaced. I forget when it was, you go back in the archives. Remember
01:03:48 ◼ ► my camera was weird. That's another thing about this phone. This is the first iPhone I think I've
01:03:51 ◼ ► ever gotten that basically had a manufacturing defect, which is, you know, it's a lottery,
01:03:58 ◼ ► I had that fogginess to the camera. And so it was in, it was within like the first month or two
01:04:04 ◼ ► that I had the phone. But yeah, their solution was to give me an entirely new phone because
01:04:09 ◼ ► apparently I didn't want to replace the camera module and they, and a couple other people have
01:04:12 ◼ ► that problem as well. So whatever. So mine is actually younger than a year, but 97% after,
01:04:17 ◼ ► you know, nine months or whatever, still pretty good. And both of your numbers seem reasonably,
01:04:24 ◼ ► manufacturing defect. Batteries are kind of one of those things, even more so than the screens that
01:04:30 ◼ ► Margaret was talking about where, you know, you never know what you're going to get. You might
01:04:33 ◼ ► get lucky or unlucky with the build quality on the battery. There are complicated delicate sandwiches
01:04:40 ◼ ► of chemicals that can go wrong in all sorts of ways. Solid state batteries can't get here soon
01:04:45 ◼ ► enough, but in the meantime, we got these pretty complicated little lithium iron sandwiches shoved
01:04:51 ◼ ► inside our phones. And you know, I don't know, maybe there was a manufacturing problem. Maybe
01:04:55 ◼ ► they've changed suppliers midway through or whatever. But my personal experience is, you know,
01:04:59 ◼ ► after, after less than a year, you know, nine months or whatever it is, 10 months, 97% capacity
01:05:15 ◼ ► turned it off initially. In one of the later point updates of iOS 16, they added the option to make
01:05:22 ◼ ► the background of the sleep screen just black, instead of showing your wallpaper in like a dimmed
01:05:29 ◼ ► state. And I found, as soon as that came out, I turned it on and I've left it on since then.
01:05:34 ◼ ► Not only does that probably save some tiny amount of battery life, because it's not lighting up all
01:05:43 ◼ ► lighting up very little in the other mode. But anyway, I have found that helps a lot with the
01:05:48 ◼ ► awkwardness and downside of always on when we were first all getting used to it was sometimes
01:05:53 ◼ ► it was difficult to tell whether the phone was active or not, and you had to like tap it to like
01:05:57 ◼ ► brighten it up. That distinction is much easier to see and detect when the background is black when
01:06:04 ◼ ► it's in the in like the sleep mode. So I have found that option significantly improves the
01:06:16 ◼ ► came out, it didn't really change it for me. I don't know what it is. It's not like that I
01:06:19 ◼ ► hated or anything. But it's just that I just don't want the screen on my phone on when I'm not using
01:06:24 ◼ ► it. Like, it's never in a context where I would look at it to provide useful information. And I
01:06:28 ◼ ► can never build that habit by like, you know, putting it on it was I wasn't doing it for
01:06:33 ◼ ► battery life. It was entirely just the user experience of like, I just want my phone to be
01:06:37 ◼ ► off and completely black when I'm not using it. And and I like the idea of tapping to wake it up.
01:06:42 ◼ ► And I don't just don't want anything on the screen. So I don't think I'm ever going to go
01:06:46 ◼ ► back on this feature because it's just not I just haven't been able to build the habit of
01:06:58 ◼ ► almost immediately turned off the always on display, which is why I it's even more striking
01:07:04 ◼ ► that that that her battery life is such garbage because her display is off a lot. So I don't know
01:07:12 ◼ ► what's going on there. But it's it's it's frustrating for her and I don't blame her at all.
01:07:20 ◼ ► pretty good. The main areas I hope to see improvement are weight, and maybe some of this,
01:07:27 ◼ ► you know, battery inconsistency management in some way, well, that is very likely to be software
01:07:33 ◼ ► influenced, if not 100% software related. But yeah, the size and weight, I would love to see
01:07:40 ◼ ► One of my concerns about this generation of phone, this is probably not a real concern,
01:07:45 ◼ ► but it's the thing I think about a lot is the camera system. Okay, obviously, the 3x camera
01:07:49 ◼ ► is still not great, which is disappointing because sometimes I want that reach, but I tend to avoid
01:07:53 ◼ ► it because I know how much worse the 3x camera is. And it's it didn't get any better this year
01:07:58 ◼ ► from last year, I think. And I would like to see some advancement in 3x camera. And then the two
01:08:03 ◼ ► x camera, like the two x camera being also the two x camera is worse than the one x camera. But I
01:08:12 ◼ ► think you could it also does a thing where it will take a crop of the one x camera at certain
01:08:16 ◼ ► distances for two x. That's what it is that no that there is that is the three eight there's
01:08:20 ◼ ► a three x ultra wide you're right. Alright, so it's a crop of the camera to x is always a crop.
01:08:31 ◼ ► I'm like, oh, but I don't want to crop of the one x camera. I should just take this at one x and crop
01:08:35 ◼ ► it myself because why it's it's like, you know, I have cameras that can go into crop mode too. And
01:08:40 ◼ ► if I had to put an APS-C lens on it, yes, of course, you need to use crop mode. But otherwise,
01:08:45 ◼ ► I would never use crop mode, just take the full shot and I'll crop it later. Why Why make that
01:08:49 ◼ ► decision ahead of time and lose information. So every time I go to take a two x picture, I'm like,
01:08:54 ◼ ► I should change to one x and just crop it myself later. And I don't like that tension. I mean,
01:09:00 ◼ ► half this is a me problem, not the phone problem. But two x is a convenient distance a lot of the
01:09:05 ◼ ► time for me. And I really wish I didn't have to make that trade off. Like I didn't. I wish that
01:09:11 ◼ ► wasn't a thing. I wish I could get like basically, I guess I'm asking for a two x camera like the
01:09:18 ◼ ► ultra wide. I know it's the third, you know, third camera on here. And I do use it like when taking
01:09:22 ◼ ► pictures of like my son's dorm room when you want to get the whole room or whatever. But I don't
01:09:27 ◼ ► know. I'm dissatisfied with zoom ranges is what I'm trying to say with the camera. And it's not
01:09:31 ◼ ► a particular fault of the 14 Pro because it's not much different than the 13 Pro before it or like
01:09:36 ◼ ► the Apple has been doing this thing. The difference here is you got the 48 megapixel thing where you
01:09:40 ◼ ► can take the full 48 megapixels and I have to have done that a few times. That's fun or whatever.
01:09:44 ◼ ► But I'm dissatisfied with given the amount of area they use here and given the amount of cost
01:09:49 ◼ ► and everything on all these cameras. I wish there was a better balance of zoom ranges for me to take
01:09:57 ◼ ► photos with that were more satisfying to me. I don't I don't again this is this is just a me
01:10:01 ◼ ► thing probably because of the way I take pictures and and the fact that I'm used to using my quote
01:10:06 ◼ ► unquote real cameras much more often than when I'm using the iPhone. I find my camera choices somewhat
01:10:12 ◼ ► frustrating and I fluctuate between them. And so if they if they could resolve that or like
01:10:17 ◼ ► improve on that measurably, I'd appreciate it like a better 3x camera would be a step in the
01:10:22 ◼ ► right direction a better balance between 1x and 2x. You know, I was a ditch the the 0.5x but I
01:10:29 ◼ ► wouldn't ditch it. Maybe just make that camera a little bit better to be honest with those pictures
01:10:33 ◼ ► don't come out great. I don't know I'm very picky. Well, I'm glad you brought up the cameras because
01:10:37 ◼ ► I actually I forgot to mention this and this is kind of a big thing. I I'm not a huge fan of the
01:10:43 ◼ ► the default photo processing on the 14 pros cameras. And in particular, it tends to look
01:10:49 ◼ ► like too much like 1990s unsharp mask usage. You know, like it's like it tends to crank up the
01:10:57 ◼ ► contrast on edges too much. And and it makes photos look a little bit too like over sharpened
01:11:05 ◼ ► and unrealistic and over processed by default. And whenever I've whenever I'm like seeing an iPhone
01:11:12 ◼ ► photo in my library at anything bigger than the phone screen size, so maybe I'm viewing it on my
01:11:17 ◼ ► Mac or on an iPad or something that jumps out at me like oh, that's that looks a little harsh.
01:11:23 ◼ ► Like and that's that's the word I would use for it is harsh. Now, the iPhone still remains the best
01:11:29 ◼ ► camera for weird or variable conditions or poor conditions. Because you know what it does
01:11:35 ◼ ► computationally is still excellent. And it's it's much easier and faster and more consistent
01:11:41 ◼ ► to get a usable shot from an iPhone in weird or poor conditions than from any other camera really.
01:11:49 ◼ ► But in good lighting, the iPhone looks really weirdly over sharpened now like the picture from
01:11:56 ◼ ► the iPhone 14 Pro. And I know that you know, they did all this stuff with the 48 megapixel sensor
01:12:01 ◼ ► with the with the weird like pixel splitting thing. Frankly, I have not seen what appears to
01:12:07 ◼ ► be a noticeable improvement from that I don't shoot raw, maybe that's my problem. Maybe I should be
01:12:12 ◼ ► using a pro camera app and I should be shooting raw and doing that kind of processing and everything
01:12:15 ◼ ► to have, you know, better control over it. But whatever it is, I am not super happy with the
01:12:21 ◼ ► photos I've gotten out of the 14 Pro. So I'm hoping you know, every every iPhone that comes out Apple
01:12:26 ◼ ► tweaks the the treatment of the camera, you know, whatever the built in filters and stuff are,
01:12:33 ◼ ► they tweak it all to match whatever the sensors and ispr that year. And and that's great. And that
01:12:38 ◼ ► and some years, it's better than others. And I think this is one of the kind of down years.
01:12:42 ◼ ► Well, I think part of the problem with the what they do with those tweaks, because, you know,
01:12:47 ◼ ► they do they change it off every year. And it's not just to match the hardware, but they make
01:12:50 ◼ ► different artistic decisions essentially, of like, I assume, probably internally chasing like the,
01:12:56 ◼ ► the worst case scenarios, like, oh, when you take a picture in this kind of lighting it,
01:13:04 ◼ ► and it looks terrible. So we should tweak it so that that worst case scenario is not as bad.
01:13:09 ◼ ► And all that adjustments to software, you know, and they brag about them in the keynotes. And they
01:13:14 ◼ ► will again, say, look at our processing, look at what a great job it does on this thing, right?
01:13:18 ◼ ► Think the fundamental problem that both that I probably have a new Marco will do as well,
01:13:25 ◼ ► maybe Casey won't mind is that they, their target, like, what is the goal if we've done a good job
01:13:31 ◼ ► at this, their target is, we want this camera to take photos that most people are happy with.
01:13:42 ◼ ► or with motion smoothing turned on, what most people are happy with is not what we're going
01:13:47 ◼ ► to be happy with. And so like their default processing may be getting closer and closer
01:13:52 ◼ ► to succeeding. But as it gets closer and closer to that, it's not what we want. Like we, you know,
01:13:56 ◼ ► if you want the cameras to look neutral and not too enhanced, use a third party app like Obscura
01:14:02 ◼ ► or like, what is that other one? The halide? Yeah, there you go. Like there are there are other
01:14:07 ◼ ► choices. You don't have to use the Apple and Apple does make it very convenient to use the Apple.
01:14:12 ◼ ► Maybe you can use the action button on the new iPhones to launch the camera app of your choice.
01:14:16 ◼ ► But I but I feel like their goal is to achieve something that we don't want that most people
01:14:22 ◼ ► will find the look of over enhanced over sharpened very contrasty photos to give a thumbs up and say,
01:14:29 ◼ ► I like that better. It looks good. But that's just not what we want out of it. So I feel like we are,
01:14:33 ◼ ► it's hard to fault Apple for that. Like they should make things that that make most people
01:14:39 ◼ ► happy. But if you have different tastes in photos, or like don't want them to look that way,
01:14:44 ◼ ► you're going to have to try third party app. I don't know. I I'm certainly a less sophisticated
01:14:51 ◼ ► photographer than either of you two. But I don't think the camera is bad at all. And I don't
01:14:58 ◼ ► generally disagree with the choices that it makes. And in fact, to my eyes, I think that my 14 Pro
01:15:06 ◼ ► camera is except in like perfect sunlight, the best camera we have in the house like I love my
01:15:12 ◼ ► Olympus, my Olympus Micro Four thirds, but indoors, it's not even a contest. It's not even in the
01:15:17 ◼ ► ballpark and outdoors. The Olympus is better for sure. Unless I want an HDR photo or, you know,
01:15:26 ◼ ► or whatever the case may be like. There are other times that the iPhone is again better than the
01:15:30 ◼ ► Olympus, even outside, although it's much, much, much more rare. I quite like the iPhone camera,
01:15:37 ◼ ► although I desperately want a longer reach. Like I would love a 6x camera. And so I don't think I've
01:15:45 ◼ ► told either of you this yet, but if we do get that periscope camera, and if it is only on the max,
01:15:49 ◼ ► I am strongly considering going for the obscenely oversized phone for next year, because I really
01:15:57 ◼ ► just would love to have a much, much deeper zoom. And I think I might be willing to try it to see if
01:16:03 ◼ ► it's, it's just try the big one. Have you been keeping up on the rumors? I don't remember what
01:16:07 ◼ ► the rumored zoom range is, but I don't recall it being 6. I thought 6x? I thought, no. Well,
01:16:11 ◼ ► there's some, we'll do more research on it for next week's episode when we actually do our
01:16:14 ◼ ► predictions, but as usual, pretty much everything about all these phones is leaked. Yeah, exactly.
01:16:19 ◼ ► All right, we should move on from the iPhone. I do not have an Apple Watch Ultra, so I have nothing
01:16:23 ◼ ► to say about that. John does not have an Apple Watch Ultra, so he has nothing to say about that.
01:16:27 ◼ ► So Marco, what do you think? I do have an Apple Watch Ultra, and it is better than I expected.
01:16:34 ◼ ► I did end up switching away from it during beta season. I devoted it to a different beta path than
01:16:41 ◼ ► my main watch, because you can't back restore watches to previous versions. So I haven't really
01:16:49 ◼ ► worn the Ultra since the summer began, for the most part, but it's very interesting. I think the
01:16:56 ◼ ► Ultra has largely succeeded at being a new market for the Apple Watch. I don't know to what degree
01:17:04 ◼ ► it has succeeded in being an extreme watch for extreme sporting people who were previously buying
01:17:11 ◼ ► garments and stuff. I have a feeling it probably hasn't eaten too much into that market, because
01:17:16 ◼ ► a lot of that market, it still doesn't have certain features or characteristics to address.
01:17:23 ◼ ► But just anecdotally, I see tons of Ultras out in the world. Tons. It seems like this has been a very
01:17:32 ◼ ► successful and well-selling product, and I have to give Apple credit for it being the first really
01:17:38 ◼ ► new and different Apple Watch since the introduction of the Apple Watch. It was a major change, a major
01:17:44 ◼ ► departure in lots of different ways, especially in the physical design of it, and I think they largely
01:17:50 ◼ ► succeeded. I assumed when they announced the specs and the size, I assumed it would be comically way
01:17:57 ◼ ► too big on me, and it isn't. It's not small. I would say it couldn't get any bigger on me,
01:18:03 ◼ ► but it actually works because of the design of it. Some of the angle that the straps exit the sides,
01:18:11 ◼ ► certainly some of the dimensions and some of the way it falls on your wrist, it actually fits on
01:18:17 ◼ ► more wrists than you would expect based on its stated measurements. So fit-wise, it's great.
01:18:22 ◼ ► I think the industrial design of it succeeds in making it look more rugged and hardcore,
01:18:29 ◼ ► and in certain ways it is. Not in all ways, but in certain ways it is, and that's good.
01:18:35 ◼ ► Battery life on the Ultra is indeed great because it is a much bigger battery. I love the use of
01:18:39 ◼ ► titanium as the only choice of material because that made it light enough still, because you would
01:18:44 ◼ ► think it would be really big and heavy. It's not light, but it's not noticeably too heavy. It's
01:18:51 ◼ ► right in the middle. It's right where you want it to be. So that's really nice. I love the orange
01:18:56 ◼ ► accents on the action button and on the crown. One of the downsides, though, is that this watch,
01:19:02 ◼ ► having these prominent orange-themed accents, that restricts what strap colors look good with it.
01:19:09 ◼ ► And also the design of the Ultra, the watch being larger to begin with and a slightly different
01:19:16 ◼ ► strap exit angle on it to make it fit better with its big size, that actually changes what straps
01:19:23 ◼ ► look good on it compared to other Apple watches. And it has its own collection, but I would say
01:19:27 ◼ ► it needs more. The strap selection for the Ultra is still pretty limited in terms of what both
01:19:44 ◼ ► is it the ocean band? Is that what they call it? The rubber ones with all the rod holes throughout
01:19:52 ◼ ► them. Those, I think, are the best strap for it overall. And the navy blue one, I think,
01:19:59 ◼ ► is the easiest and the best looking one overall. I wore that most of the time with it. I also later
01:20:04 ◼ ► on put the silicone loop on it, which doesn't quite look as right, but it was a little more
01:20:11 ◼ ► comfortable on my wrist. But I would love to see more strap options and maybe, I know this is
01:20:16 ◼ ► heresy for people who love orange, and I love orange in case you haven't noticed with my app
01:20:21 ◼ ► icon and everything, but maybe an option where the side button is not orange to give it a few
01:20:26 ◼ ► more color options with straps. We'll see about that. But anyway, the speaker on it is nice and
01:20:32 ◼ ► clear and loud. I don't personally use it for anything, but I'm glad it's there. Different
01:20:35 ◼ ► hardware is good. The crown guard on it, the protrusion around the digital crown and side
01:20:41 ◼ ► button to make them harder to hit off, basically, if you're climbing a wall. I was hoping the crown
01:20:47 ◼ ► guard would make it more difficult for the buttons to be pushed, say, if you were wearing
01:20:53 ◼ ► weightlifting gloves and your hand tilts up, like if you're in a high plank or a push-up,
01:20:57 ◼ ► so your hand's up relative to your wrist, it's very easy for the corner of a weightlifting glove
01:21:03 ◼ ► to accidentally push the crown or the side button if you're wearing your wrist, if you're wearing
01:21:07 ◼ ► your watch in the regular orientation on your left wrist. And I was hoping that the crown guard on
01:21:12 ◼ ► the Ultra would prevent that kind of accidental crown and button pushing from happening with
01:21:17 ◼ ► certain workout gear, and it doesn't, because the crown and buttons still protrude out slightly from
01:21:23 ◼ ► the guard, and so something that pushes flat against the guard will still push those buttons.
01:21:28 ◼ ► Casey Johnston would want me to tell you you're not supposed to wear gloves when you lift weights.
01:21:35 ◼ ► That would solve it sometimes. I mean, certain positions of my wrist, like even the skin bunching
01:21:41 ◼ ► up, could theoretically push those buttons, but it certainly happens a lot more while wearing gloves.
01:21:45 ◼ ► Speaking of this guard, the crown guard, and what it's supposed to do and how it's working for you,
01:21:50 ◼ ► this whole watch kind of reminds me of, I mean, I don't know a lot about the watch world, so maybe
01:21:54 ◼ ► this is a non-apt analogy, and maybe there's a better one in cars, but for it being for extreme
01:22:02 ◼ ► sports or whatever, it seems like the Apple Watch Ultra is the watch that people buy because it
01:22:11 ◼ ► looks like a watch that someone who did extreme sports would use, but of course they're not going
01:22:15 ◼ ► to do it. It's kind of like the, you know, the- Yeah, it's aspirational. It's like aspirational off-road
01:22:20 ◼ ► SUVs. Yeah, like the Rolex Submariner. You're not going to go diving with that watch, right?
01:22:24 ◼ ► Of course. Almost no one does. It's a diving watch, but you're right, and so it seems like the Apple
01:22:28 ◼ ► Watch Ultra, I mean, I guess it does probably have more abilities for the supposed purpose than maybe
01:22:34 ◼ ► some of the other watches, but the entire watch market seems to me to be, get this watch that looks
01:22:39 ◼ ► like a watch that a mountain climber would use, but you're not a mountain climber. Get this truck
01:22:43 ◼ ► that looks like someone who's going to go off-road would use, but you're not going to go off-road.
01:22:45 ◼ ► You're going to drive to Starbucks, right? And so get the Apple Watch Ultra because it looks,
01:22:49 ◼ ► I mean, and the watch market, every watch to me looks like, why does this watch look this way?
01:22:53 ◼ ► The explanation is like, oh, that's for like when you're climbing a mountain or when you're under
01:22:56 ◼ ► the water that you could just like, but you're never doing those things. It's like, yeah,
01:22:59 ◼ ► but you don't understand. Like the whole watch market seems to be like that. So to me, the Apple
01:23:04 ◼ ► Watch Ultra seems like it hit that bullseye perfectly, which is no one's actually going to
01:23:08 ◼ ► take this thing diving, but you see so many of them around for the same reason you see all those
01:23:12 ◼ ► other ridiculous watches around that have features and looks to them and crown guards or whatever.
01:23:16 ◼ ► It's like, well, you know, when I'm, when I'm picking up my coffee from the desk, what if I
01:23:20 ◼ ► hit my wrist on the edge of the desk, this crown guard will prevent me from accidentally hitting
01:23:23 ◼ ► a button. No, I mean, there are legitimate reasons for the crown guard to be there for some people.
01:23:29 ◼ ► You are right that the vast majority of Apple Watch Ultra buyers will never do anything extreme
01:23:34 ◼ ► enough to justify them. And that's okay. People buy watches, number one, because they look cool.
01:23:39 ◼ ► And then number two, because they provide some kind of utility and that utility usually is not
01:23:43 ◼ ► super ultra, you know, damage protection in, in your extreme sports. Although you have talked
01:23:47 ◼ ► about like the actual utility the spot provides is a big flat screen, which has nothing to do with
01:23:52 ◼ ► extreme sports and has everything to do with like, Oh, do you actually want to use apps on your watch
01:23:56 ◼ ► because you get utility from them while using the apps on this screen is nice because it's big and
01:24:00 ◼ ► it's flat. Yes. And that is one area where the ultra really excels. If you are using your, your
01:24:05 ◼ ► smartwatch like a computer, it's simple as that. Like, you know, for many people, the Apple Watch is
01:24:09 ◼ ► mostly doing passive, like, you know, tracking, tracking your activity, maybe popping up on
01:24:14 ◼ ► occasional notification, but you're not really like interacting with it that much for most
01:24:17 ◼ ► people. But if you're, if you're a nerd and you're actually like interacting with apps on a regular
01:24:21 ◼ ► basis on the watch, you're trying to read long texts or whatever, like having that larger and
01:24:26 ◼ ► totally flat edge to edge screen actually makes those things a lot better. So from that point of
01:24:31 ◼ ► view, it's like the max phone in the sense that like, if you're actually, if you're really heavily
01:24:34 ◼ ► using it as a computer device, having a bigger screen is nicer. So from that point of view,
01:24:38 ◼ ► the ultra succeeds as well. The last thing I'll say about the ultra is I think the action button
01:24:43 ◼ ► has been kind of a miss both in the physical placement of it and in the software abilities
01:24:50 ◼ ► that it offers. It's very difficult to use the action button well. And, and also it is in my
01:24:58 ◼ ► experience wearing the ultra. I hit it accidentally all the time. And I think that could be
01:25:04 ◼ ► significantly improved right now. The action button is on it's. If you're looking at the watch
01:25:09 ◼ ► and the regular orientation, it's on, it's kind of in like the bottom left side of the watch.
01:25:13 ◼ ► I think if they swap it with the speaker and put it at the top left, that will improve it because
01:25:17 ◼ ► right now it's very difficult. If you, if the wrist, if the watch is on your left wrist, like
01:25:21 ◼ ► as it usually is for most people, if you want to push the crown in, what you will typically do
01:25:27 ◼ ► is using your right hand, pinch the watch with your index finger on the crown and your thumb
01:25:33 ◼ ► right on the action button. So even after wearing this watch for months, I never got used to that.
01:25:42 ◼ ► I know I would constantly still hit the action button inadvertently. And so I ended up turning
01:25:47 ◼ ► off its function. Like I, and I tried, that's the other thing, like there, the functions that it
01:25:50 ◼ ► offers are very specific to certain workout needs and I didn't have any of this particular needs.
01:25:55 ◼ ► So I tried things like maybe I should have it start, start the stopwatch or stuff like that.
01:26:00 ◼ ► And I never found a good use for it that first of all would tolerate accidental input without
01:26:06 ◼ ► being too annoying. And second of all, that justified the kind of clunky nature of using it.
01:26:12 ◼ ► So I think the action button, it's a good idea to have more buttons on the watch that are software
01:26:16 ◼ ► programmable. That's great. It needs some tweaks, both in its physical design and its software
01:26:21 ◼ ► design. And maybe we'll see that in future versions. But other than that, I really think
01:26:25 ◼ ► the Apple watch ultra was extremely successful in what it, what it set out to do. It seems to be very
01:26:30 ◼ ► popular. And I think I'm looking forward to, you know, where it goes next. That being said,
01:26:37 ◼ ► for most of the year, I was spending much more time wearing my Apple watch series seven. I'm
01:26:44 ◼ ► not talking about the series eight, which we're about to mention because the Apple watch series
01:26:49 ◼ ► seven is the one I prefer over the eight. The Apple watch series eight now deserves an exit
01:26:54 ◼ ► interview. Um, it was just like the seven with almost nothing changed. So why do you prefer the
01:27:01 ◼ ► seven? Because I guess they don't have enough titanium to make all their watches out of it.
01:27:05 ◼ ► So they removed, they removed the titanium option from the regular Apple watch series eight and the
01:27:11 ◼ ► series seven comes in titanium. So that's what I've been wearing. And I, titanium is by far my
01:27:16 ◼ ► preferred Apple watch metal these days. It is almost as light as the aluminum. Not quite, but
01:27:21 ◼ ► it's, it's in the ballpark of as light as the aluminum. It looks very nice. I think it looks
01:27:24 ◼ ► significantly nicer than the aluminum and with its, its nice brushed pattern and the way it
01:27:28 ◼ ► reflects light and everything. Um, and it's a little bit less flashy and less, um, noticeable
01:27:34 ◼ ► with scratches than the steel. So I love the titanium. And if I'm, if I was going to buy a new
01:27:40 ◼ ► Apple watch today of the regular series, I guess I'd get steel, but, and I wore steel for years and
01:27:47 ◼ ► I love it, but I love titanium more. Um, and they got rid of it with the eight and presumably because
01:27:52 ◼ ► they don't, they probably didn't sell a ton of it and maybe because they wanted to save it all for
01:27:54 ◼ ► the ultra. But I'm hoping in future Apple watches, that makes a comeback as a, as an available metal
01:28:00 ◼ ► for the regular Apple watch series. Um, because ultimately the regular Apple watch series is more
01:28:05 ◼ ► comfortable on me. That's why I used it more than the ultra for the last half of the year. Um, it's
01:28:09 ◼ ► more comfortable on me. It kind of fits my wrist a little bit more, more gently. And I liked the way
01:28:14 ◼ ► the straps work a little bit better on it. So that's why I went back to the series seven and not
01:28:18 ◼ ► the series eight and the series eight really doesn't offer a whole lot over the seven. In fact,
01:28:24 ◼ ► between six, seven and eight, there have been very few changes. They're all even running the same,
01:28:29 ◼ ► uh, system on a chip, the same processor. So I'm, and rumors are they're going to finally update it
01:28:34 ◼ ► for the nine. We'll see. But the grade I would give the series eight is it wasn't even interesting
01:28:41 ◼ ► enough for me to buy. And that's saying a lot because I buy fricking everything. And even the
01:28:46 ◼ ► series eight, I couldn't justify. So I have a series eight and I mostly agree with you. I like
01:28:55 ◼ ► it. It's not terribly interesting. Uh, I wish I had a better battery. That's all I got. I am the
01:29:00 ◼ ► small series eight. Uh, I am on the 41 or whatever it is. Millimeter. Um, the battery is sufficient.
01:29:07 ◼ ► Um, I typically work out half an hour to 45 minutes every single day. And I will top up when
01:29:15 ◼ ► I'm showering. And if I do take a little siesta, which is, which used to be fairly common, but now
01:29:20 ◼ ► is fairly uncommon, uh, I'll top it up. All that's happening. But you know, today I didn't lay down
01:29:25 ◼ ► or anything like that. And I had a fairly busy day. I did a 45 minute workout and I'm at a 14%
01:29:31 ◼ ► and it's about nine 30 at night. So it is enough to get me through a day, but not with a lot of
01:29:38 ◼ ► breathing rooms. So I would love either a watch with a much bigger battery. And that is not the
01:29:45 ◼ ► ultra. I'll have to try the ultra on again whenever I do upgrade, because maybe it would work on my
01:29:49 ◼ ► wrist, but nevertheless, I would love either a much bigger battery if possible, or perhaps more
01:29:55 ◼ ► likely a much more power efficient CPU because these watch batteries really are beats to the
01:30:02 ◼ ► stay are still being stretched to their breaking point, I think. And I would love to have, have
01:30:07 ◼ ► more, just give me more. Yeah. It does depend a lot on what you do. Like, especially it depends
01:30:12 ◼ ► a lot on things like, um, how, how long in a day you're running it in a workout mode. Um, and then,
01:30:17 ◼ ► and certain, certainly like whether that workout mode is using GPS. So like if you're going on an
01:30:21 ◼ ► outdoor run, Oh yeah, that's not typically what I'm doing, but yeah, especially if you are like
01:30:26 ◼ ► using cellular to stream the music, like that's, that's just about the most power intensive thing
01:30:30 ◼ ► you can do on the watch is like workout mode plus GPS plus cellular that will drain it significantly.
01:30:36 ◼ ► Whereas if you are, you know, just mostly like in regular watch mode, sitting around somewhere
01:30:42 ◼ ► where you have wifi, not doing a whole lot with it, that'll last a long time. Um, and, and certainly,
01:30:47 ◼ ► you know, I never really got into sleep tracking, so I don't do that, that whole, that whole, um,
01:30:52 ◼ ► game where you try to charge it when you're in the shower. Like I never, I never got into that.
01:30:55 ◼ ► Um, I'm just charging it overnight and when I'm in the shower. So mine, my battery life has been
01:30:59 ◼ ► great. I'm also using the larger one, the 45 millimeter, um, series seven. But, um, okay,
01:31:05 ◼ ► this is a song about Alice. We're talking about the series eight, uh, uh, series at Apple watch.
01:31:10 ◼ ► It's totally fine, but it's barely anything changed from the seven, which itself was not
01:31:15 ◼ ► a massive change from the six. So, uh, hoping, hoping for better things with the nine, but the
01:31:20 ◼ ► series eight is still a great watch overall. It's just, it doesn't really provide much over the,
01:31:25 ◼ ► over the predecessor. And then finally, uh, Marco made a really good point. All the rumors are
01:31:31 ◼ ► pointing to this is, this is the year of USB-C it's finally happening. So the iPhones that we
01:31:38 ◼ ► have in hand are the last iPhones with lightning ports, RIP, the lightning port. And I will start
01:31:45 ◼ ► by saying this can't come soon enough. I am, I am so ready for this. Um, so anyway, I am so ready to
01:31:54 ◼ ► ditch lightning. Like I don't have any particular problem with lightning. And I think in the context
01:31:58 ◼ ► of a phone, it actually is really, really nice. But at this point I will take ubiquity over any
01:32:06 ◼ ► niceties of the lightning port. And I think that's probably no small part influenced by the fact
01:32:12 ◼ ► that I use Qi charging overnight. Uh, I, I do have a dock that I'll have to replace on my desk for
01:32:19 ◼ ► when I'm working, but other, the only time I ever really plug in my phone because I have that,
01:32:25 ◼ ► you know, wireless CarPlay dongle, it's the Carlinket one. I don't, mine is ancient. Just
01:32:30 ◼ ► get Carlinket and that's the one, because I put this in the show notes and every single time
01:32:33 ◼ ► people are like, what one do you have? Carlinket, C-A-R-L-I-N-K-I-T. Well, anyways, um, I have
01:32:39 ◼ ► wireless CarPlay for me now, Erin, I could get her one of these, but I don't think she cares.
01:32:43 ◼ ► Um, so her car would, we will need to get a different cable presumably, but by and large
01:32:49 ◼ ► in my day-to-day life, the only time I'm plugging in my phone is when I'm having one of those
01:32:53 ◼ ► Syracuse style off days with my battery. And we have one of the iPad or whatever, watt chargers,
01:32:58 ◼ ► you know, hooked up to a USB to lightning, uh, USB-C to lightning cable down in the living room.
01:33:03 ◼ ► And so we'll use that as like our emergency top-up station. That's about the only time I plug in my
01:33:08 ◼ ► phone and any other time I am wirelessly charging or doing development on it. So whatever, um, I am
01:33:15 ◼ ► so here for USB-C, I would love to not have to worry about lightning anything. And I say that
01:33:22 ◼ ► as someone who never touches lightning, even my travel setup, as we talked a couple of weeks ago,
01:33:25 ◼ ► is that Qi based, uh, Mophie three-in-one thing. So I don't even bring lightning cables when I go
01:33:30 ◼ ► traveling, but, but still it would be so nice to go USB-C only. I mean, hell, when I go to Wegmans
01:33:37 ◼ ► or whatever to do work, because I want to get out of the house, I would love to not have to bring a
01:33:41 ◼ ► lightning cable and worry about that. It's just the ubiquity is what does it for me. The world has
01:33:47 ◼ ► moved on, although not from micro USB, but that's neither here nor there. Uh, the world has mostly
01:33:52 ◼ ► moved on, uh, asterisk dagger, double dagger. So please, please, please give me the USB-C iPhone.
01:34:04 ◼ ► exit interviews, I think we could give, I think I would like to give an exit salute to lightning
01:34:09 ◼ ► because I feel like it has served its purpose very well. Uh, people who don't remember how old this
01:34:16 ◼ ► is. So 30 pin lasted, what, like almost 10 years. Now we're like 11 years for lightning.
01:34:21 ◼ ► Yeah. It was the iPhone five that launched with lightning. Yeah. So, so for, in terms of how long
01:34:25 ◼ ► a connector lasts, it's about average. And as Casey pointed out, like this one, Apple has been
01:34:31 ◼ ► essentially drag kicking, screaming it's upgrading. Like it's not like they did it super fast. And I
01:34:35 ◼ ► bring this up because the story about these connections is always everyone's annoyed when
01:34:39 ◼ ► things change, right? You know, people don't like change. I understand that, but timing wise,
01:34:43 ◼ ► this makes some kind of sense. And if you go back to the beginning of when the light lightning came
01:34:48 ◼ ► out, it was replacing 30 pin, which there are people listening to this program. Don't know what
01:34:52 ◼ ► that is. Go find fun and look at it. You'll be like people used to connect their phones with
01:34:57 ◼ ► this. It is it's hilarious. And like in the way that like a VHS tape would be hilarious to someone
01:35:01 ◼ ► who watches Netflix. It basically looks like a SCSI cable like compared to like, it's just so big
01:35:07 ◼ ► and so awkward and delicate and weird and Apple replace it with this one extremely tight. They
01:35:13 ◼ ► didn't just make it a little bit smaller. They made it smaller enough that it's, you know, we're
01:35:17 ◼ ► not going to have to worry about the size of this connector for the foreseeable future. They made it
01:35:20 ◼ ► so there's no wrong way to plug it in micro USB and basically every USB except for USB C. No wrong
01:35:26 ◼ ► way to plug in. It works both directions. They made the little connectors or a little tiny solid
01:35:30 ◼ ► piece of metal that is not going to bend or break or whatever like the connector itself was the
01:35:35 ◼ ► thing that you plug in was very solid. And this was coming into a world where there was no equivalent
01:35:40 ◼ ► USB C didn't exist at that point. So they had to make something themselves, which is people say,
01:35:45 ◼ ► you know, might think it's Apple at its best and worst. It's at its best because they're like,
01:35:49 ◼ ► they saw a technical problem, they solved it in a very clever way with something that was better
01:35:53 ◼ ► than anything else in the market. And it's worse because lighting was 100% proprietary. You had to
01:35:57 ◼ ► pay Apple money if you wanted to sell accessory that had the made for iPhone, whatever, you know,
01:36:01 ◼ ► that for a while I think Apple was like, have the only factories that made this connector. Maybe
01:36:05 ◼ ► they still do. And like it's proprietary and you know, Apple made money off of it and no other
01:36:11 ◼ ► phone in the entire world use this but the Apple sells a lot of iPhones so it was fine, right?
01:36:15 ◼ ► And the thing is they made the proprietary connector. And eventually USB C came out with
01:36:21 ◼ ► some help from Apple that had many of the same advantages but was industry standard. And eventually
01:36:25 ◼ ► that rolled out across the industry. But what Apple didn't do was, as soon as lightning had
01:36:30 ◼ ► essentially served its purpose, and now we have an industry standard connector that we can all go to,
01:36:34 ◼ ► they didn't immediately leave that part of that was because they don't want to give up that made
01:36:37 ◼ ► for iPhone money, right? I get that part of it was because they're putting off the painful change
01:36:42 ◼ ► because whenever you change people complain and it's painful. But part of that I think is,
01:36:46 ◼ ► let's just give lightning its natural lifetime. One new connector for your phone every decade is
01:36:52 ◼ ► a reasonable cadence for technological progress. 30 pin lightning USB C. If each of those three gets
01:36:59 ◼ ► 10 years, that's fine. I know everyone's going to complain because they're gonna be like, "Oh,
01:37:03 ◼ ► I just got this phone and now the connector changed and you know, like, you haven't had
01:37:06 ◼ ► that phone for 10 years. Maybe this is your very first phone and all and you buy all these lightning
01:37:09 ◼ ► accessories and you didn't know this event was coming. And then it comes out and the phones are
01:37:13 ◼ ► all using different things. And next year you got to get rid of all your like, change is always going
01:37:16 ◼ ► to be hard for somebody. I get it. But Apple did not make a proprietary connector and then say,
01:37:22 ◼ ► "Oh, nevermind. We don't need that anymore and switch after two years." Because that would have
01:37:25 ◼ ► been worse for customers that wouldn't have allowed the ecosystem to build. The whole ecosystem
01:37:29 ◼ ► of docs and other things that work with lightning connectors. And on top of that, Apple did improve
01:37:34 ◼ ► the lightning connector over the course of its life. They couldn't fix some of the fundamental
01:37:38 ◼ ► things about it. In particular, I think we've talked about this before, but all kinds of
01:37:42 ◼ ► connectors or most kinds of computer connectors have some part of it that's springy and some part
01:37:48 ◼ ► of it that is rigid and the springy things grip on to the rigid part. The rigid part doesn't move.
01:37:53 ◼ ► It just is there to be solid and the springy parts grip it, right? And in lightning, the springy
01:37:59 ◼ ► parts are inside the phone and the rigid part is of course the connector. If you look at a lightning
01:38:02 ◼ ► connector, nothing on it flexes. It is just a solid piece of metal with little divots in the
01:38:06 ◼ ► side and the springy parts are in the phone. USB-C is the opposite. I believe in USB-C,
01:38:18 ◼ ► design is smarter because if something, if some springy thing is going to get loose from constantly
01:38:23 ◼ ► having, you know, the connector put in and taken out, it'd be better if that thing that gets loose
01:38:28 ◼ ► is on a cable that you can throw away versus inside the phone that you can't really replace
01:38:32 ◼ ► the plug on it that easily. Right? The other thing is we all remember, and probably many of you are
01:38:38 ◼ ► still experienced to this day. I know I am. You can look at a lightning connector and see those
01:38:41 ◼ ► little like black smudges on them. That is a thing that as far as I know, Apple did fix in later
01:38:49 ◼ ► revisions of their devices and cables that are, that work with lightning. Because I think that
01:38:54 ◼ ► was because one of the pins constantly had some amount of power on it and get these little black
01:38:58 ◼ ► scorch marks. And there was a period when the lightning cable went from like the little part,
01:39:08 ◼ ► that plastic part got thicker. And I think it's because they changed the chip that was in there.
01:39:12 ◼ ► People might not know, but a lot of Apple's cables have actual computer chips inside them,
01:39:16 ◼ ► which doesn't really justify their price, but anyway, it's not just a bunch of wires with the
01:39:20 ◼ ► connector. And I think they changed it to make whatever that pin was that was getting the black
01:39:25 ◼ ► marks like pulse its energy instead of being con, I'm probably getting the details wrong here,
01:39:30 ◼ ► but the point is Apple revised lightning somewhere within its lifetime to fix one of the few actual
01:39:36 ◼ ► flaws that it had. And even that flaw wasn't that bad because we all have these little marked
01:39:40 ◼ ► lightning cables. I use them all the time. They still work fine. They don't damage your phone.
01:39:44 ◼ ► They don't cause your, you know, it's not a hardware virus that infects all your phones and
01:39:47 ◼ ► now nobody can charge. The main problem that people have with lightning, which I'm not sure
01:39:52 ◼ ► we'll get any better with USB-C is pocket lint and crap getting jammed up there. And that is more of
01:39:56 ◼ ► a mechanical issue than an electronic one, but it is a issue with all these types of connectors.
01:40:01 ◼ ► I'm not sure how USB-C will go because I've never had a USB-C phone before, but fingers crossed. But
01:40:05 ◼ ► anyway, that electrical problem with it, they fixed in a later revision. And you might not know that
01:40:10 ◼ ► because if you still are using your old cable with the very small, very slim piece of plastic around
01:40:15 ◼ ► the lightning connector, you're not getting the advantage of that. I think you have to have the
01:40:19 ◼ ► newer cables that are identifiable by me anyway, among Apple's cables as being a little bit thicker
01:40:23 ◼ ► around that thing. And for those ones, I've tried it. I have some of those cables and I have some
01:40:27 ◼ ► that aren't and the newer cables with the thicker thing, never get the black marks and the old ones
01:40:32 ◼ ► still do. So I think Apple has been an excellent steward of this proprietary connector. I don't
01:40:39 ◼ ► really begrudge them the made for iPhone thing. So there's plenty of third party rip off things that
01:40:43 ◼ ► didn't pay for it or whatever, but it's had its run. It did its job. I'm glad it was there. I'm
01:40:50 ◼ ► glad I didn't ever have an iPhone with micro USB on it, God forbid. I'm glad we didn't have 30 pin
01:40:57 ◼ ► for longer and I was happy to use lightning for all this time. But of course, as all we tech nerds
01:41:02 ◼ ► agree, it's time to go to USB-C. I'm not sure if when we go to USB-C, I'm going to miss lightning.
01:41:06 ◼ ► Lightning is still a tiny bit smaller, a tiny bit thinner, but it's time. I'm ready to take the hit.
01:41:15 ◼ ► I'm not sure what the public reaction to it will be, but there's really just no alternative.
01:41:19 ◼ ► Setting aside the EU stuff and all them being forced to do it or whatever, lightning has run
01:41:24 ◼ ► its course. And of all the things that Apple has done hardware standard wise, I think they did a
01:41:29 ◼ ► pretty good job of this. Not perfect. Again, the little black marks and the many cables they made
01:41:34 ◼ ► with inadequate strain relief and all the other things they've done, but there's been a pretty
01:41:38 ◼ ► good third party ecosystem for lightning. I don't think it has ever had any catastrophic errors
01:41:43 ◼ ► where like, oh, we screwed up with the connector and it just doesn't work. The pocket length thing,
01:41:47 ◼ ► again, I don't know if that's going to be better or worse with USB-C, but I'm trying to think of
01:41:52 ◼ ► everything in terms of tier lists. I don't know if lightning would be S tier, but it would definitely
01:42:02 ◼ ► I think the key innovation of lightning was the reversible connector. That was unheard of before.
01:42:14 ◼ ► Well, you know what did that? The headphone jack. Couldn't put it in the wrong way unless you had an
01:42:19 ◼ ► original iPhone and tried to use a regular headphone, but setting that aside, like there
01:42:23 ◼ ► have been connectors where you don't have to worry about how to put them in. I think it was a computer
01:42:31 ◼ ► like a kid's shape sorter. Isn't that easy? And it was like, okay, maybe for literal SCSI cables,
01:42:36 ◼ ► it's pretty obvious which way the shape sorter goes. By the time they're the size of micro USB,
01:42:44 ◼ ► mistakes were made and Apple corrected that and Apple helped correct that with USB-C as well.
01:42:49 ◼ ► Yeah. Like the only reason why we are down on lightning now is that the rest of the world went
01:42:55 ◼ ► to USB-C and now we are so close to the, you know, one cable, basically, although a million asterisks
01:43:00 ◼ ► on it. The rest of the world and also Apple. Apple everywhere, except for the iPhone and the AirPods
01:43:05 ◼ ► and the keyboards and the mouse. Yeah. Right. But, you know, even, even setting aside all of those
01:43:11 ◼ ► accessories, which, you know, I know there's rumors they're going to do new AirPods cases. That makes
01:43:15 ◼ ► sense. You know, probably with AirPods cases with USB-C, I'm sure we'll be able to buy the case for
01:43:20 ◼ ► like 70 bucks. Yeah. You have to get rid of lightning everywhere. Like I know we'll talk
01:43:24 ◼ ► about predictions, but like getting rid of lighting on the phones, like that's the big one,
01:43:28 ◼ ► but it has to go everywhere. And eventually I'm assuming it will go everywhere. I just hope they
01:43:32 ◼ ► don't drag their feet on it and have like keyboards that connect with lightning four years from now
01:43:36 ◼ ► on max. Yeah. And that's, that's my fear because they, they really don't update the peripherals
01:43:41 ◼ ► that frequently. I mean, the magic mouse hasn't been updated since it used AA batteries and the,
01:43:46 ◼ ► the, you know, track pad, I think was never updated until it, well, the current design of it.
01:43:51 ◼ ► You know, it's, it's many years old now. You know, the keyboards got updated with touch ID
01:43:55 ◼ ► that fairly recently. So I don't know how much they're going to update them again. Who knows?
01:43:59 ◼ ► But anyway what's great about this move, if this happens is that you know, I'm going to be able to
01:44:05 ◼ ► get rid of like maybe 40% of the cables that are in use in my backpack and around my house.
01:44:11 ◼ ► So that's, you know, traveling is going to be so much easier. I can't tell you how often I go to
01:44:17 ◼ ► reach for either a USB-C cable or a lightning cable. And the one I find is the other one.
01:44:23 ◼ ► And so that's going to be really, really nice. Also a great thing about USB-C over lightning is
01:44:29 ◼ ► that both ends of the cable are the same. It's going to be great when it comes, but yes,
01:44:33 ◼ ► the lightning port itself, you know, for when it was designed, it was way ahead of its time.
01:44:45 ◼ ► And so it really has been extremely successful. And yeah, I think giving it an exit salute is
01:44:51 ◼ ► totally warranted. I won't even like put one finger down to simulate the blackened pin. Like,
01:44:56 ◼ ► no, I'll give it all the fingers. That's the thing about the blackened pin. Like none of us like it
01:45:02 ◼ ► because no one likes to see anything blackened on a piece of electronics. But practically speaking,
01:45:06 ◼ ► like I think that is basically a cosmetic issue that only annoys people who want things to be
01:45:11 ◼ ► perfect. Like I've never even heard of it causing problems. Again, the problem people have is lint.
01:45:16 ◼ ► Lint fills the things and they don't work. Oh no, it caused me problems. The blackened pin,
01:45:20 ◼ ► it would eventually make a device or its cable not charge anymore. Really? I've never seen that
01:45:25 ◼ ► happen. And we have, I like to have like original lightning cables that are blackened, just
01:45:30 ◼ ► completely messed up with it, but they still work. So I don't know. Maybe I've just been lucky.
01:45:43 ◼ ► Yeah. And it was, it was usually on older things to avoid it. You have to use one of the new cables
01:45:48 ◼ ► with one of the new phones. And it's so easy not to do that because we just have all these
01:45:51 ◼ ► cables around and you just mix and match or whatever. And you're like, what are you talking
01:45:54 ◼ ► about? They never fix us. All my cables are blackened. I did the test myself several years
01:45:58 ◼ ► ago and I said, I'm only going to use this new, what I know to be one of the supposedly fixed
01:46:04 ◼ ► cables on my nightstand with my phone. And I've used it for years. It's perfect. No blackened
01:46:08 ◼ ► things on it. The lightning, the lightning cable, it was a little annoying to be its own thing. You
01:46:15 ◼ ► know, it was a little frustrating to run into someone with an Android phone and not be able
01:46:20 ◼ ► to charge your phone because they had, you know, like micro USB or whatever garbage connector.
01:46:25 ◼ ► But even still, I think it's an S tier cable slash port slash whatever for me, it really did serve
01:46:32 ◼ ► its purpose well. It's riding into the sunset. It's riding high into the sunset, happy and
01:46:37 ◼ ► accomplished. I salute you lightning port. I salute you. Oh man. All right. Next member special
01:46:42 ◼ ► tier list, different connectors. That's not a bad idea. I know I'm literally putting on the list.
01:46:50 ◼ ► Thanks to our sponsor this week, Celtrios. And thanks to our members who support us directly.
01:47:10 ◼ ► Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey
01:47:19 ◼ ► wouldn't let him cause it was accidental. It was accidental. And you can find the show notes at
01:47:29 ◼ ► ATP.FM. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey Liss
01:47:42 ◼ ► M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T. Marco Arman S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A. Syracuse. It's accidental. It's accidental.
01:48:06 ◼ ► So this is going to be quick partially because we're running long and partially because I don't
01:48:09 ◼ ► actually have that much to say yet. But last week I had teased, certainly in the bootleg,
01:48:13 ◼ ► I don't recall if that made the released version, but I teased that, are you ready Marco? I'll give
01:48:17 ◼ ► you a moment to grab what you need to grab. I teased that I have bought a new Synology.
01:48:31 ◼ ► Yeah, the Synologists. I will talk about what I got and briefly describe why, but I haven't really
01:48:40 ◼ ► started using it that much. And I'd like to get this off my chest first because I'm very annoyed
01:48:44 ◼ ► and frustrated. I love Synology products. I love, love, love them. I talk about them incessantly
01:48:50 ◼ ► because I love them so darn much. I adore them. And also, you can hear the comma right now.
01:48:59 ◼ ► Also, I am real crabby about their migration story. Now I will probably get the details wrong
01:49:07 ◼ ► because I was doing this in haste and I was doing it like a week ago. Now I did take some notes for
01:49:11 ◼ ► myself, but the migration story for Synology, the, the thing they want you to do, and this is
01:49:18 ◼ ► genuinely very cool that they support this, but what they want you to do is take all the drives
01:49:22 ◼ ► from one Synology, slap them in the new one, call it a day, which that's what they want you to do.
01:49:28 ◼ ► That's like the easy peasy way to do it. I would assume that wouldn't work. I know exactly. So
01:49:32 ◼ ► that's why I do genuinely think it's pretty cool that that's supported. No, no BS. I really mean
01:49:45 ◼ ► Each of us got a DS1813+ and 18 indicates 8 bay, if I understand Synology nomenclature properly,
01:49:54 ◼ ► the 8 indicates 8 bay, the 13 indicates that it was new on or around 2013. And this is a
01:50:02 ◼ ► like extremely beefy for home use or really meant for like small office use Synology. 8 drives.
01:50:10 ◼ ► Ours all came preloaded, I believe with 3 terabyte drives. I know mine is a darn ship of Theseus at
01:50:16 ◼ ► this point. I can't speak for Marcos. I think John, you said you've only replaced a couple, but
01:50:25 ◼ ► I adore my Synology. It's run great, but it's getting longer than tooth and I wanted to get
01:50:31 ◼ ► a new one. And so what I decided was I'm going to get a slightly smaller one. I will get a 6
01:50:37 ◼ ► bay Synology and I got a 1621+. And I did that because, hey, guess what fellas? In the last
01:50:43 ◼ ► 10 years since we got our Synologies, our jobs have gotten big. Old school platter spinning
01:50:49 ◼ ► disk drives have gotten freaking big. And Prime Day rolled around. And I think, I genuinely don't
01:50:56 ◼ ► remember, but I think it was something like $1,200 all in, which is unquestionably a butt
01:51:00 ◼ ► load of money. It's a mountain of money, but you know, once every 10 years, I don't think that's so
01:51:04 ◼ ► bad. So I got four Western Digital Red 18 terabyte drives. If you don't care for Western Digital Red,
01:51:11 ◼ ► I don't want to know. Ignorance is bliss. It's fine. This is what I've chosen. Please don't
01:51:16 ◼ ► scare me with horror stories about Western Digital because I can already hear you clacking on your
01:51:19 ◼ ► keyboards, writing emails. Nevertheless, I bought four 18 terabyte Western Digital Reds,
01:51:38 ◼ ► butter file system, whatever you want to call it. And I would like to move to that because I do a
01:51:43 ◼ ► podcast with a Mr. John Sirquist, who is very opinionated about file systems. And my impression
01:51:59 ◼ ► Exactly. So I go to install the drives on the new Synology and that works fine. It does say,
01:52:17 ◼ ► or they can get very picky about what drives you use. And in fact, part of the reason I didn't get
01:52:23 ◼ ► a newer Synology was because they have cranked that up as the hardware has gotten newer. The
01:52:35 ◼ ► It is undesirable to say the least. And trust me. Oh, trust me. I have lit up my context
01:52:42 ◼ ► at Synology about how I think this is really gross. Don't you worry. I cannot believe they
01:52:48 ◼ ► didn't send this with like a bomb inside of it after all the complaining and moaning I've
01:52:51 ◼ ► done to them. But nevertheless, I put in the drives that works no sweat. It installs DSM,
01:53:00 ◼ ► So I go to make the volume, which is Synology-speak for basically binding all these four
01:53:06 ◼ ► drives together. I chose Synology Hybrid RAID 2, which is to say I could lose two drives and still
01:53:14 ◼ ► have enough data in the remaining drives and parity checks and whatnot that I could recover.
01:53:19 ◼ ► That's because I did SHR1 in the 8-base Synology. And you will recall right at the beginning of
01:53:24 ◼ ► COVID, I lost a drive. And then in replacing that, almost lost a second drive and almost lost my
01:53:29 ◼ ► entire dataset, which would have been absolutely terrible. So refresh our memory, though, both your
01:53:35 ◼ ► old one and your new one, you're essentially setting up as a single volume. No. Well, yes to
01:53:39 ◼ ► the new one. No to the old one. The old one, six of the physical drives was one massive volume.
01:53:45 ◼ ► And then two of them, I did whatever the equivalent, whatever the RAID is that it's just
01:53:49 ◼ ► it's two physical hard drives. Thank you. Treat it as one. And the only thing that goes on that
01:53:53 ◼ ► volume is Time Machine. And so that's all redundant. If I lose it, I lose it. Not the end of the earth.
01:53:58 ◼ ► I am issuing Time Machine entirely on this. Or maybe I will choose like, maybe I'll get
01:54:03 ◼ ► like an external drive or something to do Time Machine in the future. But I am not doing anything
01:54:08 ◼ ► with it on the new Synology. So it is four drives, two empty bays, one giant volume of what is,
01:54:16 ◼ ► I think it's like 34, 36 terabytes, because it's two times 18 minus some overhead. I want to say
01:54:22 ◼ ► it's like 34 terabytes. And my current Synology, the volume is something like 12 or 15 terabytes,
01:54:28 ◼ ► and I'm using 10-ish. So I have two spare bays, and I have something like 20 terabytes, 20 extra
01:54:35 ◼ ► terabytes of free space anyway. So I make the volume and it says, "Oh, these aren't Synology
01:54:40 ◼ ► drives." I say, "I don't care." And it's okay. Fine. I established my SHR2 volume with butter,
01:54:46 ◼ ► BTRFS, whatever, whatever, all is well. I go to do Migration Assistant, and the first thing it said
01:54:52 ◼ ► was, "Well, you should really just move the physical drives." I said, "I can't do that,
01:54:55 ◼ ► because I have two freaking less spots." Okay, fine. So then I go to do the Migration Assistant
01:54:59 ◼ ► again, and I can't get it to work. And the reason is, is because I have two-factor auth on my old
01:55:06 ◼ ► Synology. And I will on the new one when I finally get it up and running. But I have two-factor auth
01:55:10 ◼ ► on the old Synology. And the old Synology is so long in the tooth now that when the Migration
01:55:15 ◼ ► Assistant goes and does whatever verification it does for the two-factor auth, it doesn't complete
01:55:20 ◼ ► in time, and the two-factor auth times out. So I created another user that doesn't have two-factor
01:55:33 ◼ ► you're good. Oh, oh, no, you're not good." You're not good because your old Synology is on,
01:55:41 ◼ ► I don't even, I genuinely don't remember what file system, I guess, the X2 or whatever, like the...
01:55:45 ◼ ► Yeah, the X-T4. The X-T4. The X-T4, there you go. Thank you. The old Synology is the X-T4,
01:56:00 ◼ ► now that that's what they want you to do. And at first I was like, "Oh, that's dumb." Because
01:56:04 ◼ ► the whole point is you want to get a new Synology that could store more. And if you get a new
01:56:09 ◼ ► which is even worse. I think the idea is take the old drives, put them in the new thing. Let's say
01:56:13 ◼ ► you had the right number of bays to do it. And then what they expect you to do is to basically
01:56:19 ◼ ► swap them one at a time, take out one, put in a new bigger one, take out another one, put in another.
01:56:29 ◼ ► And that had a third of the storage under this one. So it would take you like a year and a half
01:56:34 ◼ ► to replace all the drives, during which time the thing would just be thrashing constantly.
01:56:47 ◼ ► Yeah. So if you are someone who has a better answer for this, I am all ears. But basically
01:56:56 ◼ ► what I did was I said, "All right, here we go." So the way I have my files organized on my Synology
01:57:01 ◼ ► is that the top level has a handful of folders, but the primary one I happened to name Archive
01:57:13 ◼ ► other junk. Like basically 98% of the data in my Synology is in the archive folder. Maybe not
01:57:19 ◼ ► literally 98, but a lion's share of that data is in the archive folder. And I mounted the old
01:57:25 ◼ ► Synology as a network share from the new Synology and said, "Go." And a day and a half, I think it
01:57:30 ◼ ► was later, because I'm running this. The old Synology is on a bonded two connection gigabit
01:57:38 ◼ ► Ethernet to the switch. This new one, I only connected one of them. I don't know if it really
01:57:44 ◼ ► makes a difference anyway, but it took like a day and a half to transfer something like eight
01:57:48 ◼ ► terabytes. But the problem that I have and why I've been kind of kicking this can down the road
01:57:53 ◼ ► a little bit for the last week is that the old Synology is a moving target. Like I'm constantly
01:57:59 ◼ ► adding, updating, changing, whatever on the old Synology. So I think what I have to do is either
01:58:06 ◼ ► log into one of these via the terminal, which you can do and is very easy, or somewhere else set up
01:58:11 ◼ ► some sort of like fairly regular R sync. Synology can do that. They have a feature that can, because
01:58:19 ◼ ► I sync one of my Synology volumes to another separate physical Synology with a feature built
01:58:24 ◼ ► into their operating system to do that for you. Well then you and I need to talk after the show.
01:58:27 ◼ ► See me after class. You think I actually know where that setting is in the settings? No,
01:58:31 ◼ ► I set that up 10 years ago, but yeah, I could probably find it again. Well, let's, let's,
01:58:34 ◼ ► yeah, let's talk about this after class. But, um, but yeah, so I'm going to need to do something
01:58:40 ◼ ► like that to do, to, to, to some degree have a, not a literal, but a figurative like hot swap
01:58:46 ◼ ► between these two, because at some point I'm just going to need to move from one to the other. And
01:58:51 ◼ ► my intention is that the old one will be a maybe, not maybe a hot swappable, but a local backup in
01:58:58 ◼ ► the same way that I have a Synology remotely at my parents that has a full backup. I, I'm hoping that
01:59:04 ◼ ► the 8 bay one I'll move to a different room or put in the garage or something like that. And that'll
01:59:08 ◼ ► become a local backup for, you know, emergency purposes. But nevertheless, at some point I need
01:59:12 ◼ ► to cut everything over, which means I need to get all the data in sync between the two, which isn't
01:59:17 ◼ ► that big a deal, but is something that would require some sort of automated thing like our sync
01:59:23 ◼ ► or whatever Synology is bespoke thing is. And actually I believe that one of the, uh, one of the
01:59:29 ◼ ► migration assistant approaches is basically our sync under the hood or something like that,
01:59:33 ◼ ► or maybe it's not my migration assistant, maybe it's something else, but nevertheless, I'm gonna
01:59:36 ◼ ► have to do something along those lines. But as much as I am super jazzed for this new Synology,
01:59:41 ◼ ► and I mean that, and I, and I, they still have a full throated endorsement from me, or maybe a,
01:59:47 ◼ ► maybe not a full throated, maybe almost full throated endorsement. The one gotcha that I've
01:59:51 ◼ ► had in the 10 years of Synology bliss is, wow, is this migration story real bad? And it really,
01:59:59 ◼ ► really bums me out and it's, I'll get through it. I'll get past it. And as with many things,
02:00:04 ◼ ► if this is the most of my problems right now, I am so very incredibly lucky, but golly, what a pain
02:00:09 ◼ ► in the butt it is. And so at some point I will have more to say about this, but that's basically
02:00:13 ◼ ► all I got for right now. I was thinking about what if I, because I was thinking about getting
02:00:16 ◼ ► a new Synology and someday my thing is going to blow up and I'm going to be sad. Um, but like,
02:00:20 ◼ ► what I think about is like, oh, you know, I kind of made a mess of my various volumes and stuff.
02:00:27 ◼ ► cause I'm paranoid is I do the thing in Synology where you can essentially back up your system
02:00:31 ◼ ► settings to a single file. Right. Have you done that? I know of what you speak and I think I did
02:00:35 ◼ ► it like a couple of years back, but I don't think I've done it since. Yeah. You can do it to the
02:00:39 ◼ ► network and you also download a local file. And this is just like the settings of like,
02:00:46 ◼ ► it can't be that much. Obviously it's not the data, right? It's just a tiny little file that
02:00:50 ◼ ► does the configuration. So my thought would be, I'd get a new one. I would do a backup of my old
02:00:55 ◼ ► system settings, restore that back up onto the new one, set up all the volumes how I want. And then I
02:00:59 ◼ ► would essentially do like the, I guess the equivalent of a clean install on a Mac where I
02:01:03 ◼ ► manually, well, you know, with our sink or whatever, copy the files from like, oh, here's all my Plex
02:01:07 ◼ ► stuff manually copy those to where the Plex stuff is in my new thing. I'm not sure how it handled
02:01:12 ◼ ► like the Plex metadata. Cause I honestly don't even know where the heck that is hiding on my Synology,
02:01:15 ◼ ► but like basically take all the files and app configuration from my old one and put it in
02:01:22 ◼ ► where their new home is going to be on the new one myself, one batch of things at a time until
02:01:27 ◼ ► I had everything updated. And because that process would involve something like our sync to catch up
02:01:33 ◼ ► to essentially, you know, to say, okay, now I need the last little bit before I cut over. I just
02:01:36 ◼ ► repeat those same commands that I ran before. And hopefully they just take less time now because most
02:01:40 ◼ ► of the time they're saying, I already got that, got that, got that, you know? And that, that was
02:01:46 ◼ ► my plan. And you describing their migration system makes me think that I should continue to have that
02:01:51 ◼ ► be my plan because at least that's a plan that's a hundred percent under my control. And it probably
02:01:56 ◼ ► would be slower and less thorough, but because I'm not getting rid of the old Synology, it, you know,
02:02:01 ◼ ► I just got to do that to the point where I think I got it set up, do the cut over and the old
02:02:06 ◼ ► Synology for a long time, we'll probably still be there. And I won't use it as a local backup of
02:02:10 ◼ ► anything. I'll just let it sit there exactly as it is encased in Amber. And if I'm like,
02:02:14 ◼ ► Oh, something's not set up. How is that set up on the old Synology? I'll just go look until a year
02:02:18 ◼ ► has passed and I'm satisfied that the new one does everything the old one did. And then I'll wipe the
02:02:23 ◼ ► old one and, you know, use it as a backup or something. Yeah, no, I completely agree with
02:02:26 ◼ ► that approach. The only thing I would say is I'm not sure what the right or answer is. Should you
02:02:32 ◼ ► put the data there first or should you restore the settings? I I'm quibbling over a minor issue at
02:02:38 ◼ ► this point. You got to do the settings first. Got it. Well, I don't know because like the settings
02:02:42 ◼ ► aren't, they're going to do, I'm going to do restore the settings and they're not going to be
02:02:45 ◼ ► quite right. And things are going to be screwed up and this is going to, maybe you'll even conflict
02:02:48 ◼ ► with the old one because it'll just be like, I want that IP. No, I want it. I don't know.
02:02:51 ◼ ► The dynamic DNS or like I'd want it to be entirely empty while I'm screwing with getting the system
02:02:56 ◼ ► settings right and changing my mind about how to format things and looking at all the different
02:03:00 ◼ ► features. And they're like, the data would be the last thing I would do. We're like, okay,
02:03:04 ◼ ► now it's set up the way it's named the way I want dynamic DNS to set up the networking is the way
02:03:08 ◼ ► I want. I figured out the ethernet connection. Everything's all good. It's in physically the
02:03:12 ◼ ► place where it's supposed to be. Then I would start copying data or the only, the only big
02:03:16 ◼ ► question for me is the only app I really care about that has metadata is like, where is the
02:03:19 ◼ ► Plex database? Where is that Plex thing hiding? I don't actually know. There's a really good
02:03:25 ◼ ► writeup that I'm not going to be able to find and we'll put in, forget to put in the show notes, but
02:03:29 ◼ ► Plex does have a migration like FAQ or instructions doc or whatever somewhere online. And I've
02:03:35 ◼ ► followed it before. And I think I've done this like four or five or six times and I think all
02:03:40 ◼ ► but one, it worked pretty much flawlessly. And it will describe to you where you need to look for
02:03:45 ◼ ► the metadata and things of that nature. And if you follow the instructions and if you follow them
02:03:50 ◼ ► fairly religiously, it turns out it will generally work. So you're going to have to dig it up
02:03:55 ◼ ► somewhere, but if you follow those directions, it should be fine. Well, that's good to hear.
02:03:59 ◼ ► Yeah. Plex is pretty good. I just haven't ever tried it before, but it occurs to me that I have
02:04:03 ◼ ► no idea where it is. And also every time you install Plex in the Synology, it makes a bunch
02:04:07 ◼ ► of directories where it thinks you should put stuff. And of course I never put my stuff there.
02:04:11 ◼ ► So I don't know how many of those directories I have hanging around. It's like decoys with this
02:04:15 ◼ ► little tiny, like trivial empty databases and metadata stores that are just waiting to trip
02:04:29 ◼ ► don't take this one faux pas. I mean, that's not what I'm looking for. This one stumbling block is,
02:04:34 ◼ ► as a reason not to get a Synology because they didn't ask me to say anything about this.
02:04:39 ◼ ► And I'm telling you the honest truth, but I really do advise these, these devices are so nice to have
02:04:55 ◼ ► Yeah. Everyone sent hate mail to Synology that say it's unconscionable that you don't let people
02:04:59 ◼ ► use third party drives. Like I don't begrudge them selling their own drives and like they can
02:05:03 ◼ ► even say this is the easiest way to do it. And we get, oh, they should offer like a better guarantee.
02:05:08 ◼ ► That's exactly what I said when I was lighting up my couple of contacts at Synology, I was like,
02:05:12 ◼ ► look, if you want to sell your own drives, fine. If you want to say that you get more or better
02:05:16 ◼ ► support when you use your, you know, Synology branded drives, fine. But to be sounding the
02:05:21 ◼ ► alarm, oh my God, oh my God, you're going to blow up your Synology. Like that's just not necessary.
02:05:26 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, like we were saying, when we talked about this, like they they'll mark the volume as
02:05:29 ◼ ► degraded and you can't even replace drives on it in the extreme cases. And you know, this third
02:05:33 ◼ ► party way is to hack around this, but it's just, you don't want to have a business where it's just