0:00:00We're actually three minutes early today for I think the first time ever.
0:00:04Might be.
0:00:05Are we supposed to kill time to give people a chance to actually tune in? Hello, computers are good.
0:00:09No, we just start early.
0:00:10We don't want to vamp? We can vamp.
0:00:12No.
0:00:12Doesn't that kind of disrespect people who try to get here on time?
0:00:16It does not. It so rarely happens. We have to take advantage of it because we got stuff to do.
0:00:20[Laughter]
0:00:21It's two minutes! What are they going to miss in two minutes? It's nothing.
0:00:25It could be the best two minutes in ATP history. You never know.
0:00:28Odds are low.
0:00:28Yeah, well apparently we're just getting started, so here we go.
0:00:31[Music]
0:00:33All right, so as you hear this, it is likely September, or if it's not September, it is really, really close to September.
0:00:41Which means it is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
0:00:44And for the nth consecutive year, I don't know how many it's been now, that's okay.
0:00:49For a few years now, we have joined ourselves/our friends at Relay FM
0:00:55in order to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
0:00:58So if you're new here, let me explain it to you. If you've been here before, well you know what?
0:01:03You should be excited about this. This is a great time of year.
0:01:05So St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee
0:01:10that our mutual dear friend Stephen Hackett, he and his family went there
0:01:15when their eldest son was afflicted with childhood cancer at like six months old.
0:01:20And they got literally millions of dollars of treatment from St. Jude.
0:01:24And what's magical about St. Jude, and one of the many things that's magical about St. Jude,
0:01:27is that they don't charge their patient families anything at all.
0:01:32They don't charge for travel in some cases. They don't travel to put them up, or excuse me, charge to put them up.
0:01:38They don't, certainly don't charge for the services. It's really unbelievable.
0:01:41And especially in a broken freaking country like ours is, it's doubly unbelievable.
0:01:47So here's the thing, even if you're not from America though, it's a research hospital, right?
0:01:53And so, you know, childhood cancer research can take five to ten years per project to complete,
0:01:58and it can cost millions and millions and millions of dollars.
0:02:02So just as a silly example, well maybe not a silly example at all, but an example,
0:02:05the St. Jude Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, which is revolutionizing how cancer is treated worldwide,
0:02:11began in 2010, and it's cost more than 100 million dollars.
0:02:16100 million dollars that St. Jude has put into this.
0:02:19And they share these results, and they make these public so that other people, other doctors can use this stuff.
0:02:26So here's the thing, and I'm gonna let Marco take over here in a second and do his normal annual iPhone Time speech,
0:02:33but 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.
0:02:41Don't feel like five bucks isn't enough. Five bucks is great. You know, ten bucks is better.
0:02:45100 bucks is even better than that, and so on and so forth. Whatever you can, whatever you can spare,
0:02:50even if it's just a few bucks, that doesn't matter. It adds up.
0:02:54I 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.
0:03:01So please, if you have any money to spare, go ahead and go to stjude.org/atp,
0:03:10and I believe that will dump you directly into the "Here's My Money" page, which is what we want.
0:03:15We want you to give St. Jude your money. Please and thank you.
0:03:19So perhaps, Marco, you can talk about why this is a good idea in September,
0:03:24and then John, you can talk about what the three of us have done. Please.
0:03:27So, you know, there's not really a bad month to donate to help childhood cancer curing and research.
0:03:33That's a pretty substantially great cause, and it can be difficult if you want to donate money to a good cause.
0:03:42It can be difficult to kind of suss out, like, "What is a good cause?" and "Is this thing a big name thing?"
0:03:48"Is that really good?" "Is the money really used well?" and everything else.
0:03:51This actually stands up to that kind of scrutiny. St. Jude is a great organization.
0:03:57They 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,
0:04:05probably millions of people around the world. And again, the research component is important.
0:04:10So 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,
0:04:20but again, they also do research, which they share with the world, to try to help improve everyone's success rates.
0:04:27And try to really, you know, make a huge difference for everyone around the world. So this is a great cause.
0:04:33Now, here's what's about to happen. In about two weeks, most people listening to this show are going to watch an Apple event.
0:04:42And they're going to see a bunch of new iPhones and possibly Apple watches get announced at this event.
0:04:49Most of the people who are hearing this message already have an iPhone that works just fine.
0:04:54And Apple's going to show us why we really should probably spend another $1200 or whatever on a new iPhone,
0:05:02even though the one that we already have pretty much works fine. And many of us are going to rationalize this.
0:05:09We're going to say, "You know what? I need this." Or, "I deserve this." Or simply, "I just want this and don't care."
0:05:15And that's great. I'm going to be one of those people. Casey's going to be one of those people.
0:05:20John, 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.
0:05:27Exactly. 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.
0:05:32Oh, yeah. Well, okay. Everyone except John is going to rationalize some kind of big purchase.
0:05:37And here's the thing. You'd be fine without the new iPhone this year. Unless your phone is actively broken.
0:05:46You don't really need it. It's a discretionary fun purchase because you're probably some kind of working professional.
0:05:52And look, you deserve a new phone sometimes. They're nice. We're not going to argue with that.
0:05:56However, I would encourage you to help rationalize that decision in your mind. To help justify your shameless consumerism.
0:06:04And when I say "your," I mean "our shameless consumerism." Especially my own. I'm not even coming anywhere near not owning this myself.
0:06:12I am as bad as anyone on this. To help justify our shared shameless consumerism, please donate something to St. Jude.
0:06:21And 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.
0:06:28It'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.
0:06:40My 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."
0:06:55That'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.
0:07:03So 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.
0:07:14And 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.
0:07:22So, 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.
0:07:37No, 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.
0:07:47That'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.
0:07:59Whatever you can, whatever makes you feel better about your rampant consumerism, I strongly suggest please donate what you can. Thank you.
0:08:07John, can you talk about what we've done please?
0:08:10As 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.
0:08:18And we've also donated as usual. Collectively, ATP has donated $21,000 to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital this year.
0:08:27The 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.
0:08:33And 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.
0:08:44I'm tired, okay? It's been a long day.
0:08:46That 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.
0:08:53And the pledge drive has just started. It's September, we're doing it the whole month or whatever, so we're just beginning September.
0:08:59And so there is a chance for one of us to be the top donor at this time.
0:09:04And so we said, "Okay, everyone enter your amount, which is 21K divided by three."
0:09:09And we entered our amounts and then we hit the buttons and Marco, we're going to do DNF did not finish.
0:09:16Oh my god.
0:09:18He donated exactly $7,000, which is not even playing the game.
0:09:22Casey 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.
0:09:34And each of us said to each other, "$7,000, right? Yes. $7,000, right? Yes. $7,000, right? Yes."
0:09:40So 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.
0:09:49And then some apple swoops in and decides that it's not just one cent to get the padding. What did you do, Siracusa?
0:09:58I 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."
0:10:04Like 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.
0:10:11And once again, for the second year in a row, I have won with my $11 bonus donation.
0:10:16So please follow our example and compete amongst your friends to see who can donate the most to St. Jude.
0:10:22You 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.
0:10:29So I will enjoy my brief time at the top of the leaderboard.
0:10:31So if I donate another like 50 bucks now, is that him?
0:10:35No, no. The game has, I mean, you can totally donate more.
0:10:38You have to donate another $7,000 though.
0:10:40Exactly. It doesn't get added to your total. It's individual line items.
0:10:45How badly do you want to be up there?
0:10:46Yeah. Oh gosh, I'll have to think about it.
0:10:49Anyway, stjude.org/atp. S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash ATP.
0:10:55You're going to hear this at the beginning of each show for the month of September.
0:10:58And I would apologize for that, but I'm not going to because you know what? Sick kids need our help.
0:11:03And like Marco has said, we are all at some time or another. We are all guilty of rampant consumerism, even John.
0:11:10So give the sick kids some help. Stjude.org/atp.
0:11:16Thank you so much, everyone, for even thinking about donating or actually donating.
0:11:21All right, let's do some follow up. First of all, I wanted to call attention to this is breaking news.
0:11:26My good friend Ben McCarthy has released Obscura 4.
0:11:32Obscura is a absolutely bananas camera app for your phone.
0:11:37It is amazing what you can do with this thing.
0:11:39There are so many tweaks and features and fiddly bits, but yet it's very, very straightforward to use.
0:11:45It's excellent. I wanted to congratulate Ben, who helped me out a lot with the design on CallSheet.
0:11:51Most of the things, if not all of them, that look good on CallSheet are because Ben said,
0:11:54"Hey, why don't you try this?" or "Why don't you do that?"
0:11:56So any of the good parts are Ben's fault. Any of the bad parts are my fault.
0:12:00And so if you want to see what it's like when you have someone that not only has a good design eye,
0:12:05but also is a good developer and can run free with their own ideas,
0:12:09check out Obscura. It's worth looking at, if not actually purchasing, which I strongly suggest as well.
0:12:15So we'll put links in the show notes. The website is obscura.camera, O-B-S-C-U-R-A,
0:12:21which is actually a very good URL, not only because it's .camera, but because camera Obscura.
0:12:26Anyways, and we'll also put an app store link in the show notes.
0:12:28My thanks to Ben for not only helping me with CallSheet while they were supposed to be working
0:12:33on Obscura, but also for making Obscura because it really is just phenomenal.
0:12:38So Obscura.camera, check it out.
0:12:40Also, we had some feedback from Chris Berryhill with regard to TCL TVs with flashing LEDs.
0:12:47Chris writes, "I too have a TCL Roku TV that I bought around 2018. I have it blocked at my
0:12:54router and have been dealing with the flashing LED for years. I tried early on to disable the
0:12:58LED as well, but could not find a setting to turn it off. I recently had a discussion with a friend
0:13:02who's super into TVs. I mentioned to him that I don't let any of my TVs connect to the internet.
0:13:06He implored me to allow it to connect every now and again to get firmware updates in order to have
0:13:12the best picture. I followed his advice and updated all my TVs over the past week. When I
0:13:16updated the TCL Roku, it went from 10.x to 12.x. I played around with the settings on it last night,
0:13:22and lo and behold, under the power menu, there's a setting to disable the LED. Not sure if it was
0:13:27there before I updated, but it certainly is now and it works as expected. So number one, great
0:13:32tip. Number two, John, corollary question, is this an acceptable approach to never, but great once in
0:13:39a while, connect your TV to the internet? Like your beloved Sony TV, is it on the internet? I
0:13:43don't recall. Just like Chris's friends who's quote "super into TVs," I also recommend periodically
0:13:48connecting your TV to get firmware updates because they fix stuff. They fix stuff having to do with
0:13:51pictures quality. They fix bugs in their features. Like these are little computers at this point.
0:13:55Forget about like the online stuff, just the features of the television for playing video
0:13:59in terms of how does it handle all the various features of HDMI 2.1. There's bugs and it's like
0:14:04variable refresh rate code and like, and they improve picture quality. Like they can change
0:14:09this thing over time. So I would encourage you to connect it periodically to get firmware updates,
0:14:12but of course that's how they get you, right? So you, you know, you don't want to have it
0:14:16connected to the internet, but you do want the firmware updates. But this, I thought this was
0:14:19great because connecting to the internet actually fixed an annoying problem with the stupid blinking
0:14:23LEDs. And I did get an answer from some people like, why aren't people just putting tape over
0:14:26it? Like what's the big deal with the LED? Why are they yanking it out of the circuit board? Why
0:14:29don't they just put some tape over it? I think what these manufacturers do, at least some of them,
0:14:33is they put the blinking LED inside the same sort of plastic housing as the IR receiver.
0:14:39So you can't really block it without also blocking the IR receiver. It bothers me why these TVs don't
0:14:44have Bluetooth remotes all the time. But anyway, that's why they don't just put a piece of tape
0:14:48over it because apparently to put enough tape to actually block the light, your remotes don't work
0:14:53anymore. So yeah, my television is connected to the internet. I do not fear the internet connection,
0:14:58although I do have a bunch of features turned off on it. So it is nicer with an internet service.
0:15:03But in general, I don't use the smart features on my TV, but I do do the firmware updates every
0:15:07time I'm prompted for them. And I would encourage everyone else to at least periodically, let's say
0:15:12every six months or so, see if there's a firmware update for your TV. And I would argue, I mean,
0:15:17I know you can, you can exert some control over your network with fancy Wi-Fi stuff, but I would
0:15:21say when you're gonna, if you're gonna temporarily connect your TV to the internet for this purpose,
0:15:26use wired ethernet. That way when you unplug it, it's really offline. There's no like,
0:15:31oh, you told me not to remember your Wi-Fi password, but I actually did remember your
0:15:35Wi-Fi password. Like you can't, it can't be anything like that. You know, you really,
0:15:39you can really physically connect it. And then when you're done physically disconnect it.
0:15:42That's a really good tip. You know, something that this is a total tangent Marco style,
0:15:47so I'll be the Marco this episode. When I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, when we went
0:15:54to Pennsylvania, I don't remember how much we talked about this on the show, but this is when
0:15:58I was talking about my travel router, I think. Well, anyways, I typically will bring an Apple
0:16:03TV when we're traveling for more than just a day or two. So if Aaron and I want to watch something,
0:16:07or if the kids, if we have enough downtime, the kids want to watch something, we can just do that
0:16:11on the Apple TV. Well, we were in this very cool and very unique hotel that was a bunch of converted
0:16:20railroad cars, which in America, seeing a railroad car at all is kind of unique and interesting,
0:16:26but leaving that aside. Don't worry. It was very low speed. Yeah, right. But even staying in one
0:16:33is extremely cool. And that's not an opportunity that you generally get to have. Well, we were in a
0:16:37converted mail car, which had just been refurbished or redone or whatever. And they had this like
0:16:44obscenely large TV that was up against one of the walls. It was like a 60 or 70 inch TV for a,
0:16:51that was on the side of a train car. The whole damn train car is what, like 10 feet wide? Like,
0:16:56I don't know why we needed a TV this big, but whatever. Well, anyway, so I go to hook up a HDMI
0:17:03port or HDMI cord to it. And I brought my own cord that that wasn't the issue, but the damn thing was
0:17:10like stuck to the exterior wall, which makes sense since it's so short. So, you know, squat,
0:17:16but I couldn't reach my hand behind it to put the damn cable in. And so although I am in full
0:17:22support Marco of the idea of using ethernet, sometimes that just ain't possible. Now I know
0:17:27that John will now jump in and tell you it's barbaric to put your TV on the wall,
0:17:30but I'm not here to have that argument. It's not barbaric to put your TV on the wall,
0:17:33it's barbaric to put it over your fireplace. Well, you know, you do what you gotta do.
0:17:37I would also argue that ethernet cables typically have two ends.
0:17:40That's true. So you could just leave the other end unplugged?
0:17:45Yeah, but that is true. That is true. But in this particular case, I know I'm taking your example
0:17:50and completely bending it over until it breaks, but I couldn't get behind the damn TV in the
0:17:54first place. So what if you mounted your TV like that, perhaps not above the fireplace,
0:17:57and now you gotta unmount the damn thing just to plug in the ethernet cable that one time?
0:18:00It's very frustrating. All right, let's talk child Gmail accounts. So Henry Sivanen writes,
0:18:06"There is a significant gotcha with recommending a Gmail address for a child. Children are not
0:18:10allowed to set up email forwarding, so there's a rather serious risk of lock-in." We'll put a link
0:18:15in the show notes to some information about this. And from Google's FAQ page or whatever,
0:18:22"For the most part, Gmail will be the same for children as it is for adults.
0:18:27There are only a few Gmail features that aren't available to children under 13 or the applicable
0:18:31age in your country." And so those features are ads. Google will not serve ads in Gmail or process
0:18:36Gmail messages for advertising purposes. Automatic forwarding. Children can't automatically forward
0:18:40emails to another email address. Gmail offline. If their device isn't connected to the internet,
0:18:43children can't read, send, or search their Gmail emails. Labs. The children cannot turn on
0:18:49experimental Gmail features. Mail delegation. Children can't give someone else access to read,
0:18:53send, or delete their emails. And spam. If Gmail identifies an email as spam, it won't get delivered
0:18:57to your child's inbox or spam folder. Note that these restrictions don't apply if your child is
0:19:03over 13 or the applicable age in your country or had supervision added to their previously existing
0:19:08Google account. Oh, so wait. So that seems like a big way out. If you have them create an account
0:19:15separately and then you add supervision to it, is that a way out? I mean, you could just lie about
0:19:19your kid's age, which is what you talked about doing. But honestly, I always tell the truth
0:19:23about my kid's age and these features that are in there for kids. I don't mind the not having
0:19:27automatic forwarding, I think is not a problem because it's not like children again, they're not
0:19:30like, oh, I need to have all my email funnel into a single place. So it's really important that I
0:19:33have automatic forwarding. No, they don't care. They're just, they should just be there for them
0:19:37and they can use it as their address. They'll be over 13 before you know it. And until they are,
0:19:41they're probably not going to be using their email directly anyway, but they might still need to have
0:19:45an email account to use to sign up for things. I mean, they're going to want to, you know,
0:19:51register for the, I don't know, the web forum on the Minecraft mod thing, Minecraft mod web forum
0:19:57that they want to be part of. And they don't know that you need an email. I just register. So
0:20:01basically you're going to be using this as an adult, but I've, I've, I told the truth about
0:20:05my kid's age and didn't regret it. If you want to lie about their age and just say your kids start
0:20:09off as being older, over 18, you can do that too. But I don't know if that will cause problems later
0:20:13when you try to recorrect their birthday, but it's good to know what these restrictions are. Again,
0:20:16we'll link to the document. You can decide whether you want to tell the truth about their age or not.
0:20:21Then additionally, Sri Ramkara writes, "I work in the sign-in and account recovery team at Google.
0:20:26You'd be surprised how often this happens. A parent would create the quote-unquote perfect
0:20:30Gmail account for their newborn a few years old by before they feel the need to actually use it
0:20:33for something, by which time they have long forgotten the account password. And of course,
0:20:37they haven't set up a recovery phone or recovery email in that account. The result is that they
0:20:41can't access the quote-unquote perfect Gmail account that they lovingly created, and there's
0:20:45nothing anyone can do to help them. It sucks for everyone. For many years now, when you create a
0:20:49new Google account, you can mark it as an account you're creating for your child. This gives you
0:20:53some parental controls, including the ability to reset their account password if needed.
0:20:56As for your own Google accounts, please turn on two-step verification and save those backup codes,
0:21:00as John rightly, as always, pointed out. In addition, do add a recovery phone and recovery
0:21:05email address for the same added redundancy in case you forget your password." Yeah, like Apple
0:21:10has a lot of things for iCloud now too. If you could designate somebody as your backup or, you
0:21:15know, put someone else's email as a recovery thing, these are all things you can do to protect yourself.
0:21:19And of course, if you use a password manager of some kind, hopefully you won't have to worry about
0:21:22remembering that password. Aaron Walker writes, "I enjoyed the iMac special episode but was
0:21:27disappointed that you completely missed one of the main benefits of the iMac G5. The iMac G5 was one
0:21:32of the few Apple products that was incredibly user serviceable. It was definitely not sleek,
0:21:37but you could remove the back panel and replace components easily. Later iMacs are sleeker and
0:21:41prettier, but any modifications or upgrades are ludicrously more complex than they were in the iMac
0:21:46G5." Yeah, I mean this is a fair criticism because the iMacs really did get awfully unserviceable
0:21:53towards the end there. Like any of the big, you know, glass front with the metal chin.
0:22:00For typically to do almost anything to those, you had to take the screen off and get in from the
0:22:06front. And that was not an easy or safe process for almost anyone to do themselves. So that is
0:22:17definitely a big bonus for the G5. That being said, it was so hideous looking that you wouldn't
0:22:23probably keep it long enough to actually have it break. Yeah, so it's not just that this was
0:22:27a thing for iMac specifically, but I don't know what happened with the machine. I would love to
0:22:31see the story on it, but this was the first Mac in ages and the last Mac in ages where Apple
0:22:39officially supported the person who bought the computer doing tons of stuff to it. Like not just
0:22:45changing the RAM, changing the hard drive, like just like any kind of thing. They're like, "Yep,
0:22:49sure, no, this is totally a normal thing that you can do. You don't have to send away for special
0:22:54tools in a Pelican case. We'll have instructions right on the website. You don't need like a heat
0:22:59gun to like unglue something from something." And I don't know what happened. It was like,
0:23:04when they did this, it was like, "Is this a new A-Trapel? Are they going to be selling Macs
0:23:07that are user serviceable without special tools like designed to be that way?" And the answer was,
0:23:12"No, they're not going to do that." Somehow this machine came out being officially user serviceable
0:23:19without having to do anything complicated and then they just never did that again. And I don't
0:23:23remember if it was the back panel or the front panel, but I do remember looking at them and
0:23:27thinking, "That's great. It's real easy to upgrade." But also thinking like Marco said,
0:23:31"But I don't want this computer." I mean, to be fair, I mean, I think this was a couple
0:23:36years before, but in 2006, when the plastic MacBook came out with the wonderful Core Duo processor,
0:23:44Jon, that computer, the era of the plastic MacBook before they went all unibody was also,
0:23:52like you could very easily, and I did very easily, not only replace the RAM, but also the hard drive.
0:23:58They had that little secret hard drive door where the hard drive would pop out into the battery bay.
0:24:01Yeah. And there was no adhesive. You didn't need special tools. It was just like a small
0:24:07Phillips head, I believe. So I upgraded so many hard drives and plastic MacBooks for both myself
0:24:12and for other people. It was so easy. And back then also, that was when two and a half inch hard
0:24:18drives were really growing rapidly in capacity in the market to the point where for much of that
0:24:24laptop's lifespan, you could buy a larger hard drive from third parties than Apple would sell
0:24:30you. So you'd get it with, I forget, it was something like you'd get it with the 60 gig
0:24:35hard drive and you could upgrade it to 120 gig or something like that. And because it was third
0:24:39party hardware, it was really cheap to do that too. Whatever the hardware would have been would
0:24:43have been $150, $200 for a much larger amount of space. So it was very serviceable back then.
0:24:51And then all of that went away when we went to unibodies. And of course, SSDs ruined it further.
0:24:56That one was kind of like more targeted. Like you could do the specific things they allowed you. My
0:24:59recollection of the iMac G5 is like the entire thing was open and like every single thing inside
0:25:04of it was user serviceable because it was just right there in front of you. But I may be misremembering.
0:25:08But anyway, that did not become a trend. Also, to be fair, RAM was user serviceable on almost
0:25:15all of those iMacs until the iMac Pro. The iMac Pro didn't have any door whatsoever. But all the
0:25:20rest of them, all the rest of the metal era all had your serviceable RAM. Yeah, but you would do
0:25:25that at your own peril. Yes, you would. All right. I don't know. I think Marco, you are the keeper of
0:25:33the ATP YouTube channel, but I think it's mostly John that's doing any of the work on it. So Marco
0:25:40tried to let me have access to it. But YouTube has a feature that says let other people help
0:25:44administer your channel. Just enter their email address here. And he's done it like twice and
0:25:47nothing happens. So bad show, YouTube. Cool. It seems I mean, I am not a professional YouTubist,
0:25:53but it seems like about a third of the features in the YouTube creator control panel are always
0:26:00broken at any given time. Like I've only used it a handful of times. Like I've uploaded a couple of
0:26:05videos myself. I had the our Minecraft gaming channel for our family where I did a lot more of
0:26:09them. And then you know, a couple of little ATP things that John has created. And then I upload
0:26:14them because we can't figure out how to give them access to the account. And it just seems like the
0:26:18YouTube creator studio control panel, whatever it is, it just is so broken all the time in various
0:26:24small ways that change over time. And then you go you go search for like if a lot of times I will
0:26:28have to literally Google for how to do something in the YouTube control panel because I can't find
0:26:33something. And even Google's own documentation on YouTube, which they own is out of date. And
0:26:39like things have moved since then. And yeah, exactly. It's honestly Swift's documentation,
0:26:43I think is better than Google's YouTube. There for so many reasons. I'm very happy to be a podcaster
0:26:49and not a YouTuber. Yeah, I mean, the I think the experience of using YouTube's admin interface is
0:26:56not uniform. You know, and I think the people who have like real channels with lots of subscribers
0:27:02have a different experience. I know the very, very top super duper elite have entirely other features
0:27:08that other people would kill for like, I think, I think CGP Grey has talked about like, how he
0:27:15how you can't replace a video. Like if you have a video that has an error in it, you can't replace
0:27:18that video, you can upload a new one, but then you lose all the views on that one. And it doesn't,
0:27:22you know, you lose all your search juice or whatever you've got the whole thing.
0:27:26But if you are super duper elite, guess what you can replace videos,
0:27:31really. And so whatever that is the super duper elite, the ATP channel is the opposite of that.
0:27:37This is a channel with no listed video. So if you go there is literally empty. The only reason we
0:27:43have it is because we needed someplace to upload, like the video recordings of our member special,
0:27:47we do tier lists. And honestly, there's not much video content. It's just us dragging things up
0:27:51onto a tier list. But it's a visual thing. If you want to see that, that's fine. So we've been doing
0:27:54that just because it's a nice thing to do. And then people like I tried to watch the tier list
0:27:58video, but every five minutes an ad comes up, can you stop that from happening? And I'm like,
0:28:02oh, that's terrible. We should stop that. And the answer is no, we can't stop that. And why can't
0:28:06we stop that? Because, again, whatever the opposite of having the super duper elite features is,
0:28:11we have no views, we have no subscribers, we have no videos. And so the feature that lets you turn
0:28:16off ads like, hey, don't show any ads on this, we're not trying to monetize anything, not that
0:28:20we would get money from those ads anyway, mind you, because to get any money from YouTube,
0:28:23there's a threshold before you can turn on monetization so that you get money.
0:28:27We're not even close to that. Like, I think it's like you have to like 1000 subscribers or
0:28:31something. We're not even close to that. So not only are we not getting any money, but because
0:28:35we don't have monetization turned on, we can't stop YouTube from running its own ads on our videos,
0:28:40which is kind of sucky. So maybe we'll look at Vimeo next time or something. But anyway,
0:28:44we just want to apologize to everybody. We're not trying to run ads on these videos. They're
0:28:47just there as a fun and nice to have thing for the members. Sorry about the ads, we would turn them
0:28:54off if we could, but we haven't figured it out yet. I'm not honestly interested in Vimeo. But
0:29:00whenever I tried to use Vimeo in the past, I would always get yelled at by somebody who worked there
0:29:05for using it wrong. This is not the kind of video we want. Yeah, no matter what it was,
0:29:09it was not what they wanted. So I'm pretty sure that's not the site for us. We don't want to see
0:29:12it like a static tier list screen with us dragging icons up onto it occasionally. I seriously doubt
0:29:16it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not sure what this is. We'll probably we'll probably continue uploading
0:29:20to the YouTube channel. This is I mean, I'm not gonna say this is the reason to subscribe to
0:29:23YouTube premiums. You don't have to see ads, but not seeing ads on YouTube is a nice upgrade to the
0:29:27experience. Maybe if we get more than 1000 subscribers, we'll be able to turn on monetization
0:29:33and then turn use that newfound ability to turn off ads. YouTube is weird. Anyway, we just want to
0:29:40apologize. Indeed. All right, let's go to truck GPS corner. So Ezekiel Ellen has a hat trick of
0:29:46feedback at this point. Ezekiel writes truck maps, which we'll put a link in the show notes, has a
0:29:51skip button below the phone number prompt. It's practically invisible. I'm sorry, I should have
0:29:55given some context. This is I believe Marco what you used and you were complaining justifiably
0:30:00about having to issue them or hand them your phone number in order to use the app. And it turns out,
0:30:05apparently, if you have eagle eyes, you could have hit the skip button. Yeah, which I apparently
0:30:11did not see. Was it like super duper light gray and a white background? Probably. I mean, look,
0:30:16Apple uses a lot of those these days too themselves. But, uh, but yeah, Apple's not doing it on purpose
0:30:20though. Yeah. So anyway, I missed that. Sorry again, app review. Where were you? But hey,
0:30:24does you know? Here we go. Um, and that's all right. That was the app that would announce a
0:30:28turn once four miles at a time and then never tell you about it again. So I didn't spend too
0:30:32much time with that one. All right then. Jonathan Lamas. Yamas writes, I'm a semi-longtime listener
0:30:38and I have a CDL, a commercial driver's license. I've sent countless emails to Tim Cook requesting
0:30:43truck routes be baked straight into Apple maps. I've tried using the same truck route map Marco
0:30:47or app that Marco used. And it was frustrating to say the least. Garmin sells GPS navigators
0:30:52specifically made for truck routes. You can input the height, width and length of your vehicle and
0:30:57the device routes you the safest way. But personally, I don't want to fork over $300 for a device that
0:31:02has the UI of the early two thousands. I wait with bated breath until Apple implements truck routes
0:31:07and Apple maps. Until then I'll stick to using my iPad pro 11 inch mounted on my dashboard.
0:31:12Yeah. And we actually, we got a number of emails from people who drive trucks for a living, who,
0:31:16who almost all said that pretty much the big, the big dog in this space is still hardware GPS units
0:31:23that are, you know, these ones that Jonathan's talking about, like that Garmin makes them
0:31:26specifically made for trucks and like, because the apps are so bad, many people still use hardware
0:31:31GPS units. Which, I mean, it does make sense, but that is a bummer that that's the state of the art.
0:31:35Yeah. I mean, basically that because once the, you know, once smartphones chased all these things out
0:31:41of the dashboards of regular people's cars, they retreated to smaller and more lucrative markets,
0:31:48like this thing. And some people said about these GPS device things that they like the idea
0:31:53of you just buy this one dedicated device, you pay a couple hundred bucks for it, and that's it.
0:31:57As opposed to like the crappy app that Marco was trying to use, where it was like $250 a year. I
0:32:01don't think there is an expensive subscription or if there is any subscription, it's less expensive
0:32:05than that. So yeah, I don't know. Some people were very satisfied with these. Some people thought
0:32:10they were crappy and anachronistic and some people were very satisfied with them because they were
0:32:14crappy and anachronistic. So there you go. Then Andrew Larson writes, I genuinely, I know I've
0:32:20said this a couple of times. I love that we have listeners in every freaking corner of the universe.
0:32:26I really think at this point, I know Hello Internet has been defunct for a while, but I really
0:32:29think we're getting to Hello Internet levels of coverage in terms of our listeners. I don't think
0:32:34we have any astronauts yet, right? That's true. Not to my recollection. We'll work on the astronauts,
0:32:39but yeah. Anyways, Andrew Larson writes, I'm a general manager at a U-Haul retail store.
0:32:43For apps for routing, I recommend two things. There's an app called Inroute. That's I-N-R-O-U-T-E.
0:32:49This app is super cool and has many features you've maybe never thought to have in an app for
0:32:54routing. It's affordable and includes something called RV mode, which may help. For anyone super
0:32:59concerned about the routes that allow or don't allow trucks, I recommend the out-of-app purchase
0:33:04of a hardware GPS. Long after the average consumer driving, their Honda, moved on from TomTom and
0:33:10Garmin, the market specialized in more niche features such as these, as well as marine-focused
0:33:15models for Marco's inevitable future boat purchase. That's the other market to retreat to.
0:33:20Yeah, right. So speaking of listeners in all sorts of places, not only is Andrew's recommendation of
0:33:26the Inroute app, you know, pretty apt, I heard about it from a few people. We also heard from
0:33:30the developer of the Inroute app. It's made by an indie developer. And the developer, Rob, wrote in,
0:33:37"Unlike the two apps that I tested, it reroutes you if you go off route and there's no pricing
0:33:43tricks. After its seven-day trial, it renews for $5 a month, discounted plans, blah, blah, blah.
0:33:47There's apps for CarPlay, Mac, Under Catalyst, and iPad. And unlike most navigation apps,
0:33:52your data is completely private." And Rob links to the whole, you know, the whole privacy policy
0:33:56thing. So pretty cool that like, you know, not only do we hear from people who can tell us like
0:34:01which apps and GPS things are better, but literally the author of one of them is also a listener of
0:34:06our show and wrote in. That is very cool. Yeah. And you can see it from the screenshot of this
0:34:09app here. It lets you enter the height, width, and length, and weight of your vehicle. You have
0:34:13options to avoid tolls, avoid ferries, because you might not want to drive a big truck onto a ferry,
0:34:18avoid highways, and you can have routes that are the most curvy or the least curvy or the least
0:34:22ascent of elevation. So exactly the options you'd want to have, because you have all those things.
0:34:28It's more than just like, "Hey, will I shear off the top of my truck on a bridge?"
0:34:32Stuff like how curvy it is and how much it goes up and down and avoiding ferries are things you would
0:34:37not think of for regular routing, but are very relevant if you're driving a big truck. So yeah,
0:34:43this is definitely an area where the platform owners probably need to get a little better,
0:34:48especially since in America anyway, pretty much everybody is driving these monstrous vehicles
0:34:54that can't park in normal parking spots. I mean, maybe they don't care about curves or shearing off
0:34:58the top of their things, but if the current trends continue, they're not going to be able to fit in
0:35:01parkways either. Yeah. So anyway, next time I rent some kind of truck or RV, I will try in route,
0:35:09because that sounds like the best option. Again, I love the coverage that we have. It makes me so
0:35:14very happy. Yeah. All right. And then finally, Jon, how is your gift box coming along? How are
0:35:20things going in HomePod land? Shortly after the end of the show, I did come up with the use. I
0:35:24think I might have come up with this on the program or maybe on the bootleg. I don't remember.
0:35:27I'm like, "Oh, I know what I'll do with these. I'll put them in my wife's office," because she
0:35:31currently uses a very small, not very good sounding Sonos Toblerone thing. I think I did
0:35:35talk about this on the show anyway. I'll put them down there for her. And so the day after we
0:35:40recorded, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to get these two HomePods. I know where they're going now.
0:35:43Bring them down to the office. Set them up on our desk as a stereo pair. This should take five
0:35:47minutes, right?" No, of course not. I don't even think you can reset them in five minutes.
0:35:53Well, so first I was trying to be like, "Okay, so it should just work." I plug it in, and of course,
0:35:58it's not showing up. And I go to Home app and I try to add accessory, and they're not showing up.
0:36:02I'm like, "I probably have to factory reset these." So I look up the instructions and how
0:36:05to factory reset them. And I do it three or four times, and it doesn't work. And then I even got
0:36:11to the point where I messaged Marco and I said, "Are these still attached to your Apple ID? Can
0:36:14you delete them from your Apple ID?" So I was like, "Maybe he needs to do something at his end."
0:36:17Wait, I didn't get those messages. Where'd you message me?
0:36:20It's in one of the many places that you don't look, apparently.
0:36:22Was it in the document? No, it was in Slack.
0:36:27No, it was in Slack. I believe you were @ mentioned.
0:36:29Oh my God, Marco. So the listeners missed. So we got to back up because this is a good story. So
0:36:36we had agreed to talk about and do before the show our St. Jude donations, as we talked about.
0:36:41And so a few days ago, John had said to the two of us, "Hey, let's do this 15 minutes early." And
0:36:47that was cool with everyone. I said, "Yeah, sure." So I am sitting at 7.45 our time, waiting for
0:36:53Marco to hit go on the Zoom room. And then Marco shows up, and I'm immediately there. He goes, "Oh,
0:37:02what are you doing here?" I said, "Well, we agreed to be early." "We did?"
0:37:07So it is made clear to me that Marco, you either need to move our Slack communications to like
0:37:16iMessage or something, or you just never care about what we say. And that makes me sad.
0:37:22No, normally I am better at this, but it's been, look, I'm like selling one house, renovating
0:37:28another house, doing all this back and forth. It's been quite a few weeks.
0:37:33I mean, it's not that I didn't have an expectation that you'd immediately respond to me or whatever,
0:37:37but I figured you would have seen it eventually within a week. That's all I'm saying. And when I
0:37:41did send that message, I thought about how should I send this? And I briefly thought, "Oh, I'll use
0:37:47iMessage." But I'm like, "No, in the hierarchy of importance, this is not that important. I don't
0:37:51care if he ever doesn't respond to me immediately. I'll just send it through Slack." And what
0:37:56happened was before I could get a response, I figured it out. So it didn't matter anyway,
0:38:01but that's the level I was thinking. But, you know, so I'm not, who cares that you didn't
0:38:05respond to it, but I figured you would have at least seen it a week later. But that's the hole
0:38:08in your system. Although actually, in Marco's defense, I can't come, I can't put my finger
0:38:13on this message because I was going to try to figure out when it was. Oh, I deleted them.
0:38:16I deleted them. Oh, all right. Oh, so, okay. So I can't be at fault for not seeing it in like...
0:38:21I deleted them like 24 hours later. I figured I didn't want you to be distracted because I'm like,
0:38:25I know you're busy and maybe if you saw it 24 hours later, you're like, oh, I need to help John.
0:38:28You don't. I got it figured out. So first I put a message that said, don't worry. I figured it out.
0:38:33And I left that there for 24 hours. After 24 hours, I said, I don't want you to accidentally
0:38:36see the other ones and not see that I figured it out. And so I deleted them all. You know,
0:38:40I'm all, I am so here for busting Marco's chops, but in this one, I think he might get a pass on
0:38:45this particular. Well, this doesn't explain the let's get online 15 minutes early thing.
0:38:50Just still sitting in there. Anyway. So I did figure out the factory reset. And for people who
0:38:55don't know, if you read the instructions and it's like, you know, unplug your thing for 10 seconds,
0:38:59plug it in, wait 10 seconds, then hold your finger on the thing for 10 seconds. And it's, uh,
0:39:03you would think it's like, okay. Yeah. They want me to unplug it, plug it in, then hold my finger
0:39:06on the top of it. Right. If you do that and don't exactly follow their instructions, nothing happens.
0:39:11Yep. So you have to plug it in, wait 10 seconds. And then if you plug it in and then just lazily
0:39:16wander over to it later and put your fingers on it, it doesn't work anyway. My bad. Um, so I reset
0:39:22the thing, uh, configured it and I'm doing like the right one, uh, you know, uh, it gets set up.
0:39:28It takes a long time and asked me a bunch of stuff. I give it a name, blah, blah, blah, you know,
0:39:32fine, whatever. Then I go to do the left one and it is not happy. Like it does screw all the steps
0:39:38to go as a reset, uh, add device. It shows up, set set up, blah, do all the things, blah, blah, blah.
0:39:43You don't really have any options. Like basically you're just tapping through a wizard where there
0:39:45are no choices. It's like, do you want to transfer settings? It's like, well, it's literally the only
0:39:49button and there's no X or closed box or whatever. So yeah, I guess I'm transferring settings.
0:39:54Anyway, the left home pod gets stuck on a thing where it just says configuring. Uh, and like the
0:40:01other one said configuring for a while too, but then it didn't say configuring and it said, and
0:40:04when it's in configuring, you can go to the options and it says not all the features of this
0:40:07home pod are available yet, but when it's done configuring, they will be, and you can do stuff
0:40:11with it, like play audio, but you can't put it in a stereo pair. You can't do timers. You can't do all
0:40:15sorts of other stuff. Whatever. I'm sure it will be fine. I just leave it down there. I come back
0:40:21down an hour later. It's still configuring, whatever. Go back through some other stuff.
0:40:24Come down two hours later, it's still configuring. Now I'm Googling for home pod configuring for
0:40:29hours, million results. Everyone's home pods are configuring configuring for hours. What should I
0:40:34do? Oh, uh, you know, burn down your home and move to a new country and get a new identity. Like that's
0:40:39always the answer. Cause like when people have computer problems, they're like delete your Apple
0:40:42ID, you know, marry someone else, like send your children for all for adoption. Like it's just reset
0:40:48the world and like, maybe they do that and it solves their problem, but I'm not going to delete
0:40:52my Apple ID. I'm not even going to sign out of my Apple ID. I'm not going to reinstall my operating
0:40:56system. Like I'm not going to, you know, I'm not doing those because I'm like, that doesn't make
0:41:00any sense why that would work. Uh, and they're like, Oh, it's configuring because they just
0:41:05updated a new version. And if you have the old version of, because you know, they did the thing
0:41:08where you update your, uh, your, uh, home, the Apple home thing or whatever updated quick aside,
0:41:13is that safe? Cause I've been staring at this thing for probably months now and I'm so scared
0:41:18to do it. Is that safe to do? I think it is. I did. I finally did it on mine. Okay. But when
0:41:22that just came out, people were like, Oh, don't upgrade your home because if you have some old
0:41:25home pods, they won't be able to join the new home and blah, blah, blah. One of the things that is
0:41:29just that it did try was like try making a new home, like in the home app and then try setting
0:41:33up the, the new home, the home pod on the new home. And I did notice that this home pod was running,
0:41:39whatever the O S is called version 15 and the current version is like 16.6 or something.
0:41:43So I'm like, it just needs a software update. So I just need to, maybe I just put it in my,
0:41:47in the fake home and get it to update. Uh, and eventually I got it to the point where I would
0:41:52try setting it up. I've reset the thing so many times now, try to set it up and it would be like,
0:41:55it would go through all the steps and it would be like, okay, we're going to update your home
0:41:58pod. I'm like, yes, yes. Update it to 16. Uh, but then it would just be stuck on configuring.
0:42:03And so I gave it like eight hours and it was still configuring and then I gave it 24 hours and it was
0:42:07still configuring. And again, if you Google for this, so many people are like my home pod stuck
0:42:11in configuring, what do I do? And so I figured, all right, I'm going to make a genius bar appointment.
0:42:16I'm going to make an appointment. Oh my God, this is so much worse of a gift than mine.
0:42:21Well, oh yeah, that's great. My word. Uh, you know, I'm going to make a genius bar appointment
0:42:25and what am I going to do? I'm going to carry my home pod to the Apple store and I'm going to put
0:42:28it on the counter and say, can you please update this to whatever OS 16? That's the
0:42:32only thing I wanted them to do because I figured the problem has got to be that it's running 15 or
0:42:36something and it just needs to be running 16. Maybe it can't be in a stereo pair with one that's on 16
0:42:40or like maybe you can't join to the new house, but I just wanted to run a software update,
0:42:44but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get this thing to just do a software update.
0:42:50Like that's all I want. I don't want it to join anything. I don't need to just like,
0:42:52just run a software update. It's this actually a little bit easier on the home pod mini by the way,
0:42:57because the home pod mini has like a, what is it? Yeah, Marco probably knows a USB,
0:43:00a micro USB connection. What does it have on it? It, wait, the mini has a connection. I thought
0:43:06it was a, it was a fixed wire. No, there's, there's a, there's a USB port on the home pod mini because
0:43:11one of the options was, Hey, do you want to do basically you want to update the OS by doing a
0:43:15restore by connecting it to the finder, you know, to connect to your Mac with USB launch the finder
0:43:20and basically do like an OS restore. Oh yeah. The, the, the end of the power cable is, is a USB-C
0:43:26plug. Yeah. All right. That was anyway, there is a way to sort of hardware restore. Cause I was like,
0:43:30let me just, can I just get these, the version 16 of this OS and just blast it onto there with
0:43:35the wire. But with the original home pod, the answer is no. So I made the genius bar appointment.
0:43:39And then it was like the day before the genius bar appointment was supposed to come. And then I went
0:43:43down there to get the home pod. But before I did it for you, let me just look at the home app to
0:43:46see what it's like. Maybe take a screenshot of it being in configuring and it wasn't configuring
0:43:50anymore. Hooray. So it updated itself. And the answer is how long does an original home pod take
0:43:55to update itself from the, whatever the OS is called version 15 to 16? The answer is somewhere
0:44:01between 24 and 48 hours with no progress indication whatsoever that it's doing anything. It just says
0:44:10configuring. And then of course, once it updated itself, it, it joined into a stereo pair, just
0:44:15fine or whatever. So these products, boy, just a combination of so many of Apple's greatest hits,
0:44:20just completely opaque, no progress indication. And just, it just took way too long. Like it
0:44:25shouldn't take that long. What is it? I know they're slow. I know they're like little crappy
0:44:28watch processors, but more than 24 hours for an OS update. I think my series zero watch updates.
0:44:34It's always faster than that. It was ridiculous. Uh, they are configured now still haven't gotten
0:44:39any pains for my wife on them. I'm not sure if she's even actually used them because she hasn't
0:44:43actually been working from home recently. She's had, she's been traveling for work and has been
0:44:46going into the office. So, uh, I await reviews, but there are at least configured. Oh, and by the
0:44:51way, out of sympathy, my upstairs home pod decided that it was not going to work correctly anymore.
0:44:55I asked him to turn off the lights and it's like, I had some BS excuse about like, I'm not on the
0:44:59network and don't know what you're talking about. So anyway, I asked the Google thing to turn off
0:45:03the lights and then luckily I'm now an expert in resetting home pods and I reset the one upstairs
0:45:07and restored that to factory configuration and, and reinstalled everything. The one upstairs is
0:45:13on the thing where it's like, you're not signed into your Apple ID, please enter your Apple ID
0:45:17password. Have you seen that one Marco in your life? Um, like on the iPhone. Yeah. Like if you
0:45:22go to the home app on the iPhone, it would be like your home pod is not signed into your Apple ID.
0:45:26And if you go to the settings, you go to the settings for the home pod and it will say,
0:45:29please enter your Apple ID password. I've been doing that for years. Every once in a while,
0:45:32it just forgets my Apple ID password or thinks it does. So I manually reenter it on the phone.
0:45:37This time it said, I don't know. I'm not signed into your Apple ID, please enter your Apple ID
0:45:40password. So you go to settings and has a little button, basically some blue text that says enter
0:45:45password. I tap that. Does it prompt me to enter a password? No, it does not. No text field appears.
0:45:50Instead. I get an indeterminate spinner and it says authenticating. I'm like authenticating with
0:45:54what I haven't entered a password yet. The button says enter password. And normally it shows a text
0:45:58field, but now I just kept showing a spinner, but don't worry that spinner spins for like three
0:46:01minutes and then just goes away. And you're back at seeing the screen that says enter password.
0:46:05So that's why I factory reset that one. So now all my home pods have been factory reset
0:46:09on average, let's say seven times. And so far so good. Wow. That sounds fun. I got to tell you,
0:46:16this is definitely making me love my Sonos stuff even more because that stuff really does just
0:46:24work. It's incredible how I've never owned a home pod. And it's because all I've heard is that
0:46:29they're garbage. Like I know they sound great. It's you know what it is? It sounds like me
0:46:34describing my BMW, which to this day I will say, God, I love that car so much. God, it was such a
0:46:40good car, but it was only running for about 10 minutes at a time. And that's how all of you sound
0:46:45when you describe your home pods. That is very apt. Like it's the home pod. Look, so I have a
0:46:52long history with home pods. I'm back on the down, you know, on the roller coaster, the roller coaster
0:46:57of home pod opinions. It's it is roller coaster because when they work, they sound so good and
0:47:04they do sound better than almost anything else in their category, especially if you care about size.
0:47:09Like if you're looking for something that is small and sounds good, there is almost nothing else in
0:47:15the market. That being said, I am currently testing a pair of Sonos Aera 100s in replacement of my
0:47:23home pods. Oh, really? I have, I will have more to say on that in a future episode. Just to be clear
0:47:32though, I am becoming one of those Sonos A holes that I will perhaps quit the show if you tell me
0:47:38that you don't absolutely love them. So consider, consider your opinions wisely. Let me just say
0:47:43that I, I, the, the relationship with them is, is more complicated than I would have expected.
0:47:49Oh really? But, but not in bad ways for the most part. So anyway, I will have more to say on my
0:47:57Sonos Aera 100s in a future episode, but they are still in the place that my two new home pods were.
0:48:04So the experiment hasn't failed. But it's also, it isn't all roses, but there are some surprising
0:48:11roses. So anyway, we'll get to that in another time. And just keep in mind, by the way, these
0:48:16home pods that I have are mine is like the very first one off the, you know, like when they just
0:48:21were released and probably at least one of Marco's is like that. I think both of the ones I sent you
0:48:27I had four of that, of the first gen home pods. I sent you two of them. I still have two. And I,
0:48:33I bought them all fairly early on in the home pods life. Yeah. You can kind of tell, because I've
0:48:38spent so much time in the stupid home app that if you look at the model number, like the model
0:48:42number looks way shorter than you think it should on these things. Like the normal model numbers for
0:48:46Apple things is like MLA something, something slash a, you know, those things, the model for
0:48:51these things is MQHV2. That's it. That's the whole model number. It's way shorter than like,
0:48:56if you look at what the model number is, I think on the version two ones or any of the modern
0:48:59products. So that's my indication that all the ones I have are super duper first generation. I'm
0:49:03just glad they work at all, I guess. Well, do they? I mean, and by the way, what is the OS called?
0:49:09I know it used to be called audio OS, but is it not called that anymore? What is it? It doesn't
0:49:13say what the name of it is. What is the OS? It was, it never had a public facing name and it
0:49:17still doesn't when Apple refers to it, they will always refer to it obliquely with they'll say
0:49:21something like, like our home platform or something like they will always refer to it not by name
0:49:26because it officially does not have a public name. But it was called audio OS internally for a while.
0:49:32I'm just not sure if it's still called that. It was. And I'm not even sure if the HomePod mini
0:49:37and HomePod two even run that. Like that was what it was called on the HomePod one, the original one.
0:49:42But I think they might've changed the software stack for the mini and the two, but it's,
0:49:46no one really talks about it. We are sponsored this week by Celtrios, a shoot 'em up slash shmup
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0:51:43iOS and tv OS. Thank you so much to Celtrios for sponsoring our show. All right, we got news
0:51:53yesterday, I believe that the next Apple event, which is presumably the iPhone event is on
0:51:59September 12. It will be at 10 o'clock in the morning Pacific, which is one o'clock in the
0:52:04one room time zone. As expected, none of us got an invite to be there, but that's okay. We'll watch.
0:52:11We're going to talk about predictions next week. But for now, Marco reminded us that we should
0:52:18probably do some exit interviews. So Marco, do you want me to quarterback this? Or would you like to?
0:52:22I can do it. So yeah, so this is the this is the, even though I have the least experience of the
0:52:29three of us working in corporate jobs, I came up with this idea a few years ago to do an exit
0:52:33interview of the outgoing devices that we've been using for the past year on the eve of the new ones
0:52:39presumably being released or announced. And because I feel like you know, it's one thing when
0:52:44in this case, you know, we're gonna talk about the iPhone 14, the Apple Watch Ultra, and the Apple
0:52:49Watch Series 8, and maybe some other stuff like the lightning port. It's interesting, you know,
0:52:55when these things come out, you can talk about Oh, we know that and we will when you know, when the
0:52:59iPhone event show happens in a few weeks, we will talk about like, oh, here's the cool new stuff.
0:53:04This sounds good. This looks good. You know, the reviews say this is pretty good. Then you get it
0:53:07like, oh, yeah, this feels good. This looks nice, whatever. But it's different after a year, you
0:53:11know, after a year, the novelty has worn off. And you get to really evaluate like, how was the iPhone
0:53:1714 Pro or how was the Apple Watch Ultra version one actually living with it for a longer term?
0:53:23How does it how does it perform long term? Are there any, you know, flaws that that didn't seem
0:53:28like a big deal at the beginning, but became a big deal later? Things that you thought would be a big
0:53:32deal that weren't a big deal later? So I feel like this is kind of a fun segment to do. And I don't
0:53:37think anyone else really does it. So this is kind of like, the ATP innovation besides one of us, I
0:53:43think might have been a follow up at some point. That was me. It was me just Oh, yeah, it was. Yeah,
0:53:47that makes sense. So anyway, you can't put that on the record, it's just gonna confuse the AI's.
0:53:53They're already confused. You now need to make very neutral direct statements correcting the record.
0:53:59No, they're already hallucinating, like as if they're at a fish concert, which we will also get
0:54:02to later. But anyway. So exit interviews. First, the big one, the iPhone 14 slash 14 Pro. Now,
0:54:13john, you have the 14 right? I have the 14 Pro for Yes, 14 Pro. Yeah. All right. And so do I and Casey,
0:54:21you haven't dropped this into a well yet, right? You still have a 14 Pro. That is true. There is a
0:54:26couple of there. There are a couple of very, very, very hairline scratches, not impacts,
0:54:31but scratches on the screen. But But yes, it is for all intents and purposes, a fully,
0:54:35fully functional, unshattered iPhone 14 Pro. I will say the screen on my 14 Pro, you know,
0:54:44every year, the phone tweaks the screen glass formulation in such a way to try to make it more
0:54:51drop and shatter resistant. And some years, and even even within variations within certain years,
0:54:57some years, you get a screen that just scratches like crazy. Because usually to make things more
0:55:03shatter resistant, sometimes they have to tweak the properties of the glass in some ways that
0:55:07make it a little bit softer and make it more scratch prone in exchange for not shattering as
0:55:11easily. My 14 Pro has been either the most or the second most scratch prone iPhone I've ever had.
0:55:18This screen was what like it had visible scratches on the screen within I think two weeks of owning
0:55:25it. And it's only gotten worse over time. And like, I know it's not just I don't just carry
0:55:29around sand in my pocket because Are you sure? Yeah, exactly. Are you sure there's not sand in
0:55:34your pocket? I mean, granted of the three of us, I'm the most likely one to have sand in my pocket.
0:55:38But this doesn't happen with any of my other devices. It hasn't happened with past phones,
0:55:42with a couple of exceptions from long before, like before I was at the beach. It doesn't happen
0:55:46with other devices. Like it's just certain phones have very scratch prone glass for whatever reason.
0:55:50And the iPhone 14 Pro for me has been the worst for in a long time. So I have scratched my screens
0:55:58minor scratches over the years. So I know it's not like I it's impossible for me to scratch the
0:56:03screen. But I'm looking at this and I'm cleaning it off with my shirt while you're talking. I can't
0:56:07find a single scratch of any kind, any size, any lightness anywhere in my screen. And I'm not super
0:56:14careful with my phone. I just use it as a phone. It's fallen off my nightstand 50 times onto the
0:56:20ground in front of it. Like I've dropped it while walking down the stairs like you got us mag safe,
0:56:25man. I put it in pockets all the time. All I put it in jacket pockets. I put it in my jeans pockets.
0:56:30I put it down on surfaces right side up and front side down. Not a single scratch anywhere on it. So
0:56:35I'm I like the sand in the pocket there. I don't know what you're doing to your phone.
0:56:38And usually that my phones usually are like that they're usually scratch free.
0:56:43And that's why it's notable when one isn't. But anyway, we've heard we've heard before like
0:56:49some years like there will there will actually be variations in this property within different
0:56:54phones of the same year like with it like different iPhone 14 pros might actually vary in
0:56:58this way. So I can't fault the whole line for it. But it has it that was a very kind of unfortunate
0:57:03thing about this phone right from the start for me. But moving on from that, physically speaking,
0:57:08this phone is heavy and dense. And I really don't like it. And I really am very excited about
0:57:15the rumors of the next ones being more used more using to take titanium and for the frame instead
0:57:20of stainless steel. Steel is really heavy. titanium is less so aluminum is even less so and actually,
0:57:26in a few months ago, I bought a yellow aluminum iPhone 14 non pro as a test device because I
0:57:36needed more test devices as discussed previously. And the 14 non pro feels great in the hand in
0:57:43large part because it is noticeably lighter weight than the 14 Pro. It's not a small difference. Like
0:57:49if you look at the actual weight numbers, the weight numbers make it seem like Oh, maybe that's
0:57:53maybe a moderate deal. When you hold it in hand. It's a huge difference. The 14 non pro feels
0:58:00fantastic. And it still has the giant glass back glass is heavy, but it has obviously a much simpler
0:58:06camera module because there's only there's only two cameras, not three and they're smaller. So
0:58:09that's probably some of the weight right there. But it also doesn't have the stainless steel edges,
0:58:13it has aluminum and aluminum is actually even lighter than titanium in most uses depending on
0:58:17you know, structure and everything. But, you know, if you if you think that the new phones
0:58:21using titanium are going to automatically get as light as the non pro phones, probably not,
0:58:27because not only will they still have giant cameras and non non pros probably won't,
0:58:31or less giant, but also aluminum is still lighter than even titanium, which we actually see in the
0:58:38Apple Watch, which we'll get to in a little bit. So anyway, the 14 Pro is super heavy and dense. And
0:58:44I really, I'm glad to hear rumors that they're going to maybe address that. I hope they go
0:58:50as far as they can with with addressing that. One of the reasons they might not want to address that
0:58:55is battery life. I have found the 14 Pro to have okay battery life. It's not great. It's not bad.
0:59:02It's okay. And batteries are very heavy and very dense. So maybe that's part of the reason why this
0:59:09phone has to be so much heavier because it needs that additional battery power. It needs that
0:59:15additional battery power to power the always on screen. And I think of all the features and updates
0:59:22to the iPhone 14 Pro Pro line or 14 at all line. The always on screen of the 14 Pro to me is the
0:59:30single standout feature of this generation. Because we promotion that was last year, wasn't it? We
0:59:36didn't. Yeah, it's been around for a while. Yeah, promotion launched on the 12 or 13 Pro. So so that
0:59:40that wasn't new this year. But the always on screen that was the big new thing. And that changes
0:59:46so much about how many of us not all of us, but how many of us can get value out of our phones.
0:59:52A lot of people don't use it. You know, a lot of people, they just kind of don't have their phone
0:59:56resting in a place where they would see the screen. So they don't really use it or they don't like
1:00:00how it how it behaves in some ways that they turn it off. I turned it off. I tried it for a couple
1:00:06weeks. I turned it off. I've never looked back. I just do not want that feature. And the extra
1:00:11battery life is a bonus. But I have to say my battery life has also been weirdly variable,
1:00:16kind of like when you run betas and you're like, Oh, I'm running a beta, something must have gone
1:00:19nuts in the background and like burned down my battery every once in a while. I have a day where
1:00:24I'll look. It'll be like 5 p.m. and I look at my battery power. I'm like, what the hell happened
1:00:27today? Like why? Why do I so low on battery? But that's rare. Most days I talked about this when
1:00:33we first got the phones. Part of it is because of my my mag safe charger in my car. You know,
1:00:40it's a mag safe mount, but it also charges the phone. So if I'm driving anywhere, it's like 8
1:00:44p.m. and I have 85 percent battery. Right. Because I've been just driving around running errands and
1:00:48every time I'm in the car, the thing is stuck to the charger. But even days when I don't drive
1:00:51anywhere, just battery life is a non issue. Like, I mean, and maybe also because I'm on Wi-Fi a lot,
1:00:57like my boy, I go for dog walks and stuff like that. Just battery life has been fantastic,
1:01:01except every once in a while, it'll just be like, where did my battery life go? I don't know what's
1:01:05going on. I think obviously I think it's a software issue. I think what it shows is the 14 Pro has
1:01:09a good sized battery and it's only betrayed occasionally by software features, whether that
1:01:16be just the baseline overhead of always on screen, which again, I don't use. But if you do use it,
1:01:21you're spending some battery on that, obviously. Or the something weird has gone on with some app
1:01:27or some part of the OS on this particular day and the Birdmind battery. But in general,
1:01:30I would say the battery life of this is, I think, probably the best it's been in recent years for me
1:01:35on phones. I remember my 12 being worse. And, you know, I agree this phone is big and dense and
1:01:42heavy, but that's a trade off I'm willing to make to basically not have to worry about battery life
1:01:47anymore. Yeah, my battery life, I think I echo what Jon is saying now. It's also hard for me because I
1:01:54often have my phone plugged in for doing testing or whatever. So consider your source. I am at best
1:02:01an unreliable narrator for this. But I echo what you're saying, Jon, that there are days that like
1:02:07a process just runs away or something happens that I feel like something wrong has gone on and
1:02:15my battery is just slaughtered. And Erin has actually been saying, because she doesn't have
1:02:19her phone, her 14 Pro on a charger very often during the day. And she has been saying that her
1:02:25battery life has gotten real bad recently. And I've taken a couple of glances at the battery
1:02:31stuff in settings. And I can't say I've come up with anything obvious that, you know, oh,
1:02:36this is exactly what it is. And when I've looked at it on my own phone, I've definitely seen some
1:02:41occasions where Instagram has seemingly gone kind of bananas. But my goodness, I feel like normally
1:02:48my battery is pretty darn good. Her battery, I think like Marco, because Marco, you said yours
1:02:53was really crummy, right? Her battery is okay. It's not great. It's not bad. It's okay. All right.
1:02:59Well, hers is like crummy to okay. And then yeah, mine waffles and varies between the two. It's very
1:03:05unusual. Well, that's been a story recently. People were like, oh, the 14 to the 14 Pros have some
1:03:10kind of manufacturing problem with the battery and they're only a year old and the battery, like that
1:03:14battery health number they give you, it's like lower than people expect. Whereas I'm trying to
1:03:17find it in settings and I can't find it. Settings and then battery. So what all our phones are
1:03:22basically a year old. Cause we all got them on the lunch day. Right. And here they're actually,
1:03:26mine is a little bit younger because I got to replace because of the camera within like the
1:03:28first month. But anyway, what is your battery health at on your year old iPhone 14 Pro?
1:03:35100%. I'm kidding. Mine's at 90. 93. That's a mine's like 97. Oh wow. Goodness. Again. I think,
1:03:44I think, you know, I did get my replaced. I forget when it was, you go back in the archives. Remember
1:03:48my camera was weird. That's another thing about this phone. This is the first iPhone I think I've
1:03:51ever gotten that basically had a manufacturing defect, which is, you know, it's a lottery,
1:03:55whatever, you know, but I've had a lot of iPhones and this year I got unlucky.
1:03:58I had that fogginess to the camera. And so it was in, it was within like the first month or two
1:04:04that I had the phone. But yeah, their solution was to give me an entirely new phone because
1:04:09apparently I didn't want to replace the camera module and they, and a couple other people have
1:04:12that problem as well. So whatever. So mine is actually younger than a year, but 97% after,
1:04:17you know, nine months or whatever, still pretty good. And both of your numbers seem reasonably,
1:04:21but some people like, Oh, I've had it for a year and it's like an 81% and this is the
1:04:24manufacturing defect. Batteries are kind of one of those things, even more so than the screens that
1:04:30Margaret was talking about where, you know, you never know what you're going to get. You might
1:04:33get lucky or unlucky with the build quality on the battery. There are complicated delicate sandwiches
1:04:40of chemicals that can go wrong in all sorts of ways. Solid state batteries can't get here soon
1:04:45enough, but in the meantime, we got these pretty complicated little lithium iron sandwiches shoved
1:04:51inside our phones. And you know, I don't know, maybe there was a manufacturing problem. Maybe
1:04:55they've changed suppliers midway through or whatever. But my personal experience is, you know,
1:04:59after, after less than a year, you know, nine months or whatever it is, 10 months, 97% capacity
1:05:04and pretty good battery life, except for when the software goes off the rails.
1:05:08Jared Ranerelle So going back to the always on screen for a moment,
1:05:12I think what if you were one of the people who was turned off by it initially and then
1:05:15turned it off initially. In one of the later point updates of iOS 16, they added the option to make
1:05:22the background of the sleep screen just black, instead of showing your wallpaper in like a dimmed
1:05:29state. And I found, as soon as that came out, I turned it on and I've left it on since then.
1:05:34Not only does that probably save some tiny amount of battery life, because it's not lighting up all
1:05:37those pixels, but also... David Erickson
1:05:39Not so, not so tiny amount of battery because it literally isn't lighting them up.
1:05:41Jared Ranerelle Right. But I mean, but it's
1:05:43lighting up very little in the other mode. But anyway, I have found that helps a lot with the
1:05:48awkwardness and downside of always on when we were first all getting used to it was sometimes
1:05:53it was difficult to tell whether the phone was active or not, and you had to like tap it to like
1:05:57brighten it up. That distinction is much easier to see and detect when the background is black when
1:06:04it's in the in like the sleep mode. So I have found that option significantly improves the
1:06:10always on screen for me. And so if you haven't tried that option, I would say try it.
1:06:14David Erickson Yeah, I did. I did try that one. And when it
1:06:16came out, it didn't really change it for me. I don't know what it is. It's not like that I
1:06:19hated or anything. But it's just that I just don't want the screen on my phone on when I'm not using
1:06:24it. Like, it's never in a context where I would look at it to provide useful information. And I
1:06:28can never build that habit by like, you know, putting it on it was I wasn't doing it for
1:06:33battery life. It was entirely just the user experience of like, I just want my phone to be
1:06:37off and completely black when I'm not using it. And and I like the idea of tapping to wake it up.
1:06:42And I don't just don't want anything on the screen. So I don't think I'm ever going to go
1:06:46back on this feature because it's just not I just haven't been able to build the habit of
1:06:50looking to my phone to see useful things on it when I'm not using it.
1:06:55Trenton Larkin Yeah, Aaron Aaron is in the same boat. Like she
1:06:58almost immediately turned off the always on display, which is why I it's even more striking
1:07:04that that that her battery life is such garbage because her display is off a lot. So I don't know
1:07:12what's going on there. But it's it's it's frustrating for her and I don't blame her at all.
1:07:16Aaron Alexander So overall, I would say iPhone 14 series,
1:07:20pretty good. The main areas I hope to see improvement are weight, and maybe some of this,
1:07:27you know, battery inconsistency management in some way, well, that is very likely to be software
1:07:33influenced, if not 100% software related. But yeah, the size and weight, I would love to see
1:07:37this thing get a little bit lighter. Yeah, I would agree with that.
1:07:40One of my concerns about this generation of phone, this is probably not a real concern,
1:07:45but it's the thing I think about a lot is the camera system. Okay, obviously, the 3x camera
1:07:49is still not great, which is disappointing because sometimes I want that reach, but I tend to avoid
1:07:53it because I know how much worse the 3x camera is. And it's it didn't get any better this year
1:07:58from last year, I think. And I would like to see some advancement in 3x camera. And then the two
1:08:03x camera, like the two x camera being also the two x camera is worse than the one x camera. But I
1:08:12think you could it also does a thing where it will take a crop of the one x camera at certain
1:08:16distances for two x. That's what it is that no that there is that is the three eight there's
1:08:20a three x ultra wide you're right. Alright, so it's a crop of the camera to x is always a crop.
1:08:25Yeah, okay. So and like the thing is, I never like when I when I find myself at two x,
1:08:31I'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
1:08:35it myself because why it's it's like, you know, I have cameras that can go into crop mode too. And
1:08:40if I had to put an APS-C lens on it, yes, of course, you need to use crop mode. But otherwise,
1:08:45I would never use crop mode, just take the full shot and I'll crop it later. Why Why make that
1:08:49decision ahead of time and lose information. So every time I go to take a two x picture, I'm like,
1:08:54I should change to one x and just crop it myself later. And I don't like that tension. I mean,
1:09:00half this is a me problem, not the phone problem. But two x is a convenient distance a lot of the
1:09:05time for me. And I really wish I didn't have to make that trade off. Like I didn't. I wish that
1:09:11wasn't a thing. I wish I could get like basically, I guess I'm asking for a two x camera like the
1:09:18ultra wide. I know it's the third, you know, third camera on here. And I do use it like when taking
1:09:22pictures of like my son's dorm room when you want to get the whole room or whatever. But I don't
1:09:27know. I'm dissatisfied with zoom ranges is what I'm trying to say with the camera. And it's not
1:09:31a particular fault of the 14 Pro because it's not much different than the 13 Pro before it or like
1:09:36the Apple has been doing this thing. The difference here is you got the 48 megapixel thing where you
1:09:40can take the full 48 megapixels and I have to have done that a few times. That's fun or whatever.
1:09:44But I'm dissatisfied with given the amount of area they use here and given the amount of cost
1:09:49and everything on all these cameras. I wish there was a better balance of zoom ranges for me to take
1:09:57photos with that were more satisfying to me. I don't I don't again this is this is just a me
1:10:01thing probably because of the way I take pictures and and the fact that I'm used to using my quote
1:10:06unquote real cameras much more often than when I'm using the iPhone. I find my camera choices somewhat
1:10:12frustrating and I fluctuate between them. And so if they if they could resolve that or like
1:10:17improve on that measurably, I'd appreciate it like a better 3x camera would be a step in the
1:10:22right direction a better balance between 1x and 2x. You know, I was a ditch the the 0.5x but I
1:10:29wouldn't ditch it. Maybe just make that camera a little bit better to be honest with those pictures
1:10:33don't come out great. I don't know I'm very picky. Well, I'm glad you brought up the cameras because
1:10:37I actually I forgot to mention this and this is kind of a big thing. I I'm not a huge fan of the
1:10:43the default photo processing on the 14 pros cameras. And in particular, it tends to look
1:10:49like too much like 1990s unsharp mask usage. You know, like it's like it tends to crank up the
1:10:57contrast on edges too much. And and it makes photos look a little bit too like over sharpened
1:11:05and unrealistic and over processed by default. And whenever I've whenever I'm like seeing an iPhone
1:11:12photo in my library at anything bigger than the phone screen size, so maybe I'm viewing it on my
1:11:17Mac or on an iPad or something that jumps out at me like oh, that's that looks a little harsh.
1:11:23Like and that's that's the word I would use for it is harsh. Now, the iPhone still remains the best
1:11:29camera for weird or variable conditions or poor conditions. Because you know what it does
1:11:35computationally is still excellent. And it's it's much easier and faster and more consistent
1:11:41to get a usable shot from an iPhone in weird or poor conditions than from any other camera really.
1:11:49But in good lighting, the iPhone looks really weirdly over sharpened now like the picture from
1:11:56the iPhone 14 Pro. And I know that you know, they did all this stuff with the 48 megapixel sensor
1:12:01with the with the weird like pixel splitting thing. Frankly, I have not seen what appears to
1:12:07be a noticeable improvement from that I don't shoot raw, maybe that's my problem. Maybe I should be
1:12:12using a pro camera app and I should be shooting raw and doing that kind of processing and everything
1:12:15to have, you know, better control over it. But whatever it is, I am not super happy with the
1:12:21photos I've gotten out of the 14 Pro. So I'm hoping you know, every every iPhone that comes out Apple
1:12:26tweaks the the treatment of the camera, you know, whatever the built in filters and stuff are,
1:12:33they tweak it all to match whatever the sensors and ispr that year. And and that's great. And that
1:12:38and some years, it's better than others. And I think this is one of the kind of down years.
1:12:42Well, I think part of the problem with the what they do with those tweaks, because, you know,
1:12:47they do they change it off every year. And it's not just to match the hardware, but they make
1:12:50different artistic decisions essentially, of like, I assume, probably internally chasing like the,
1:12:56the worst case scenarios, like, oh, when you take a picture in this kind of lighting it,
1:12:59our current algorithm for sharpening your edge enhancement, really just overdoes it,
1:13:04and it looks terrible. So we should tweak it so that that worst case scenario is not as bad.
1:13:09And all that adjustments to software, you know, and they brag about them in the keynotes. And they
1:13:14will again, say, look at our processing, look at what a great job it does on this thing, right?
1:13:18Think the fundamental problem that both that I probably have a new Marco will do as well,
1:13:25maybe Casey won't mind is that they, their target, like, what is the goal if we've done a good job
1:13:31at this, their target is, we want this camera to take photos that most people are happy with.
1:13:36And kind of like all the TVs that people have in vivid mode all the time, or whatever,
1:13:42or with motion smoothing turned on, what most people are happy with is not what we're going
1:13:47to be happy with. And so like their default processing may be getting closer and closer
1:13:52to succeeding. But as it gets closer and closer to that, it's not what we want. Like we, you know,
1:13:56if you want the cameras to look neutral and not too enhanced, use a third party app like Obscura
1:14:02or like, what is that other one? The halide? Yeah, there you go. Like there are there are other
1:14:07choices. You don't have to use the Apple and Apple does make it very convenient to use the Apple.
1:14:12Maybe you can use the action button on the new iPhones to launch the camera app of your choice.
1:14:16But I but I feel like their goal is to achieve something that we don't want that most people
1:14:22will find the look of over enhanced over sharpened very contrasty photos to give a thumbs up and say,
1:14:29I like that better. It looks good. But that's just not what we want out of it. So I feel like we are,
1:14:33it's hard to fault Apple for that. Like they should make things that that make most people
1:14:39happy. But if you have different tastes in photos, or like don't want them to look that way,
1:14:44you're going to have to try third party app. I don't know. I I'm certainly a less sophisticated
1:14:51photographer than either of you two. But I don't think the camera is bad at all. And I don't
1:14:58generally disagree with the choices that it makes. And in fact, to my eyes, I think that my 14 Pro
1:15:06camera is except in like perfect sunlight, the best camera we have in the house like I love my
1:15:12Olympus, my Olympus Micro Four thirds, but indoors, it's not even a contest. It's not even in the
1:15:17ballpark and outdoors. The Olympus is better for sure. Unless I want an HDR photo or, you know,
1:15:26or whatever the case may be like. There are other times that the iPhone is again better than the
1:15:30Olympus, even outside, although it's much, much, much more rare. I quite like the iPhone camera,
1:15:37although I desperately want a longer reach. Like I would love a 6x camera. And so I don't think I've
1:15:45told either of you this yet, but if we do get that periscope camera, and if it is only on the max,
1:15:49I am strongly considering going for the obscenely oversized phone for next year, because I really
1:15:57just would love to have a much, much deeper zoom. And I think I might be willing to try it to see if
1:16:03it's, it's just try the big one. Have you been keeping up on the rumors? I don't remember what
1:16:07the rumored zoom range is, but I don't recall it being 6. I thought 6x? I thought, no. Well,
1:16:11there's some, we'll do more research on it for next week's episode when we actually do our
1:16:14predictions, but as usual, pretty much everything about all these phones is leaked. Yeah, exactly.
1:16:19All right, we should move on from the iPhone. I do not have an Apple Watch Ultra, so I have nothing
1:16:23to say about that. John does not have an Apple Watch Ultra, so he has nothing to say about that.
1:16:27So Marco, what do you think? I do have an Apple Watch Ultra, and it is better than I expected.
1:16:34I did end up switching away from it during beta season. I devoted it to a different beta path than
1:16:41my main watch, because you can't back restore watches to previous versions. So I haven't really
1:16:49worn the Ultra since the summer began, for the most part, but it's very interesting. I think the
1:16:56Ultra has largely succeeded at being a new market for the Apple Watch. I don't know to what degree
1:17:04it has succeeded in being an extreme watch for extreme sporting people who were previously buying
1:17:11garments and stuff. I have a feeling it probably hasn't eaten too much into that market, because
1:17:16a lot of that market, it still doesn't have certain features or characteristics to address.
1:17:23But just anecdotally, I see tons of Ultras out in the world. Tons. It seems like this has been a very
1:17:32successful and well-selling product, and I have to give Apple credit for it being the first really
1:17:38new and different Apple Watch since the introduction of the Apple Watch. It was a major change, a major
1:17:44departure in lots of different ways, especially in the physical design of it, and I think they largely
1:17:50succeeded. I assumed when they announced the specs and the size, I assumed it would be comically way
1:17:57too big on me, and it isn't. It's not small. I would say it couldn't get any bigger on me,
1:18:03but it actually works because of the design of it. Some of the angle that the straps exit the sides,
1:18:11certainly some of the dimensions and some of the way it falls on your wrist, it actually fits on
1:18:17more wrists than you would expect based on its stated measurements. So fit-wise, it's great.
1:18:22I think the industrial design of it succeeds in making it look more rugged and hardcore,
1:18:29and in certain ways it is. Not in all ways, but in certain ways it is, and that's good.
1:18:35Battery life on the Ultra is indeed great because it is a much bigger battery. I love the use of
1:18:39titanium as the only choice of material because that made it light enough still, because you would
1:18:44think it would be really big and heavy. It's not light, but it's not noticeably too heavy. It's
1:18:51right in the middle. It's right where you want it to be. So that's really nice. I love the orange
1:18:56accents on the action button and on the crown. One of the downsides, though, is that this watch,
1:19:02having these prominent orange-themed accents, that restricts what strap colors look good with it.
1:19:09And also the design of the Ultra, the watch being larger to begin with and a slightly different
1:19:16strap exit angle on it to make it fit better with its big size, that actually changes what straps
1:19:23look good on it compared to other Apple watches. And it has its own collection, but I would say
1:19:27it needs more. The strap selection for the Ultra is still pretty limited in terms of what both
1:19:37looks okay with it and works well with it physically. I think the rubber straps,
1:19:44is it the ocean band? Is that what they call it? The rubber ones with all the rod holes throughout
1:19:52them. Those, I think, are the best strap for it overall. And the navy blue one, I think,
1:19:59is the easiest and the best looking one overall. I wore that most of the time with it. I also later
1:20:04on put the silicone loop on it, which doesn't quite look as right, but it was a little more
1:20:11comfortable on my wrist. But I would love to see more strap options and maybe, I know this is
1:20:16heresy for people who love orange, and I love orange in case you haven't noticed with my app
1:20:21icon and everything, but maybe an option where the side button is not orange to give it a few
1:20:26more color options with straps. We'll see about that. But anyway, the speaker on it is nice and
1:20:32clear and loud. I don't personally use it for anything, but I'm glad it's there. Different
1:20:35hardware is good. The crown guard on it, the protrusion around the digital crown and side
1:20:41button to make them harder to hit off, basically, if you're climbing a wall. I was hoping the crown
1:20:47guard would make it more difficult for the buttons to be pushed, say, if you were wearing
1:20:53weightlifting gloves and your hand tilts up, like if you're in a high plank or a push-up,
1:20:57so your hand's up relative to your wrist, it's very easy for the corner of a weightlifting glove
1:21:03to accidentally push the crown or the side button if you're wearing your wrist, if you're wearing
1:21:07your watch in the regular orientation on your left wrist. And I was hoping that the crown guard on
1:21:12the Ultra would prevent that kind of accidental crown and button pushing from happening with
1:21:17certain workout gear, and it doesn't, because the crown and buttons still protrude out slightly from
1:21:23the guard, and so something that pushes flat against the guard will still push those buttons.
1:21:28Casey Johnston would want me to tell you you're not supposed to wear gloves when you lift weights.
1:21:31I'm sorry. That would solve your problem, though, right?
1:21:35That would solve it sometimes. I mean, certain positions of my wrist, like even the skin bunching
1:21:41up, could theoretically push those buttons, but it certainly happens a lot more while wearing gloves.
1:21:45Speaking of this guard, the crown guard, and what it's supposed to do and how it's working for you,
1:21:50this whole watch kind of reminds me of, I mean, I don't know a lot about the watch world, so maybe
1:21:54this is a non-apt analogy, and maybe there's a better one in cars, but for it being for extreme
1:22:02sports or whatever, it seems like the Apple Watch Ultra is the watch that people buy because it
1:22:11looks like a watch that someone who did extreme sports would use, but of course they're not going
1:22:15to do it. It's kind of like the, you know, the- Yeah, it's aspirational. It's like aspirational off-road
1:22:20SUVs. Yeah, like the Rolex Submariner. You're not going to go diving with that watch, right?
1:22:24Of course. Almost no one does. It's a diving watch, but you're right, and so it seems like the Apple
1:22:28Watch Ultra, I mean, I guess it does probably have more abilities for the supposed purpose than maybe
1:22:34some of the other watches, but the entire watch market seems to me to be, get this watch that looks
1:22:39like a watch that a mountain climber would use, but you're not a mountain climber. Get this truck
1:22:43that looks like someone who's going to go off-road would use, but you're not going to go off-road.
1:22:45You're going to drive to Starbucks, right? And so get the Apple Watch Ultra because it looks,
1:22:49I mean, and the watch market, every watch to me looks like, why does this watch look this way?
1:22:53The explanation is like, oh, that's for like when you're climbing a mountain or when you're under
1:22:56the water that you could just like, but you're never doing those things. It's like, yeah,
1:22:59but you don't understand. Like the whole watch market seems to be like that. So to me, the Apple
1:23:04Watch Ultra seems like it hit that bullseye perfectly, which is no one's actually going to
1:23:08take this thing diving, but you see so many of them around for the same reason you see all those
1:23:12other ridiculous watches around that have features and looks to them and crown guards or whatever.
1:23:16It's like, well, you know, when I'm, when I'm picking up my coffee from the desk, what if I
1:23:20hit my wrist on the edge of the desk, this crown guard will prevent me from accidentally hitting
1:23:23a button. No, I mean, there are legitimate reasons for the crown guard to be there for some people.
1:23:29You are right that the vast majority of Apple Watch Ultra buyers will never do anything extreme
1:23:34enough to justify them. And that's okay. People buy watches, number one, because they look cool.
1:23:39And then number two, because they provide some kind of utility and that utility usually is not
1:23:43super ultra, you know, damage protection in, in your extreme sports. Although you have talked
1:23:47about like the actual utility the spot provides is a big flat screen, which has nothing to do with
1:23:52extreme sports and has everything to do with like, Oh, do you actually want to use apps on your watch
1:23:56because you get utility from them while using the apps on this screen is nice because it's big and
1:24:00it's flat. Yes. And that is one area where the ultra really excels. If you are using your, your
1:24:05smartwatch like a computer, it's simple as that. Like, you know, for many people, the Apple Watch is
1:24:09mostly doing passive, like, you know, tracking, tracking your activity, maybe popping up on
1:24:14occasional notification, but you're not really like interacting with it that much for most
1:24:17people. But if you're, if you're a nerd and you're actually like interacting with apps on a regular
1:24:21basis on the watch, you're trying to read long texts or whatever, like having that larger and
1:24:26totally flat edge to edge screen actually makes those things a lot better. So from that point of
1:24:31view, it's like the max phone in the sense that like, if you're actually, if you're really heavily
1:24:34using it as a computer device, having a bigger screen is nicer. So from that point of view,
1:24:38the ultra succeeds as well. The last thing I'll say about the ultra is I think the action button
1:24:43has been kind of a miss both in the physical placement of it and in the software abilities
1:24:50that it offers. It's very difficult to use the action button well. And, and also it is in my
1:24:58experience wearing the ultra. I hit it accidentally all the time. And I think that could be
1:25:04significantly improved right now. The action button is on it's. If you're looking at the watch
1:25:09and the regular orientation, it's on, it's kind of in like the bottom left side of the watch.
1:25:13I think if they swap it with the speaker and put it at the top left, that will improve it because
1:25:17right now it's very difficult. If you, if the wrist, if the watch is on your left wrist, like
1:25:21as it usually is for most people, if you want to push the crown in, what you will typically do
1:25:27is using your right hand, pinch the watch with your index finger on the crown and your thumb
1:25:33right on the action button. So even after wearing this watch for months, I never got used to that.
1:25:42I know I would constantly still hit the action button inadvertently. And so I ended up turning
1:25:47off its function. Like I, and I tried, that's the other thing, like there, the functions that it
1:25:50offers are very specific to certain workout needs and I didn't have any of this particular needs.
1:25:55So I tried things like maybe I should have it start, start the stopwatch or stuff like that.
1:26:00And I never found a good use for it that first of all would tolerate accidental input without
1:26:06being too annoying. And second of all, that justified the kind of clunky nature of using it.
1:26:12So I think the action button, it's a good idea to have more buttons on the watch that are software
1:26:16programmable. That's great. It needs some tweaks, both in its physical design and its software
1:26:21design. And maybe we'll see that in future versions. But other than that, I really think
1:26:25the Apple watch ultra was extremely successful in what it, what it set out to do. It seems to be very
1:26:30popular. And I think I'm looking forward to, you know, where it goes next. That being said,
1:26:37for most of the year, I was spending much more time wearing my Apple watch series seven. I'm
1:26:44not talking about the series eight, which we're about to mention because the Apple watch series
1:26:49seven is the one I prefer over the eight. The Apple watch series eight now deserves an exit
1:26:54interview. Um, it was just like the seven with almost nothing changed. So why do you prefer the
1:27:01seven? Because I guess they don't have enough titanium to make all their watches out of it.
1:27:05So they removed, they removed the titanium option from the regular Apple watch series eight and the
1:27:11series seven comes in titanium. So that's what I've been wearing. And I, titanium is by far my
1:27:16preferred Apple watch metal these days. It is almost as light as the aluminum. Not quite, but
1:27:21it's, it's in the ballpark of as light as the aluminum. It looks very nice. I think it looks
1:27:24significantly nicer than the aluminum and with its, its nice brushed pattern and the way it
1:27:28reflects light and everything. Um, and it's a little bit less flashy and less, um, noticeable
1:27:34with scratches than the steel. So I love the titanium. And if I'm, if I was going to buy a new
1:27:40Apple watch today of the regular series, I guess I'd get steel, but, and I wore steel for years and
1:27:47I love it, but I love titanium more. Um, and they got rid of it with the eight and presumably because
1:27:52they don't, they probably didn't sell a ton of it and maybe because they wanted to save it all for
1:27:54the ultra. But I'm hoping in future Apple watches, that makes a comeback as a, as an available metal
1:28:00for the regular Apple watch series. Um, because ultimately the regular Apple watch series is more
1:28:05comfortable on me. That's why I used it more than the ultra for the last half of the year. Um, it's
1:28:09more comfortable on me. It kind of fits my wrist a little bit more, more gently. And I liked the way
1:28:14the straps work a little bit better on it. So that's why I went back to the series seven and not
1:28:18the series eight and the series eight really doesn't offer a whole lot over the seven. In fact,
1:28:24between six, seven and eight, there have been very few changes. They're all even running the same,
1:28:29uh, system on a chip, the same processor. So I'm, and rumors are they're going to finally update it
1:28:34for the nine. We'll see. But the grade I would give the series eight is it wasn't even interesting
1:28:41enough for me to buy. And that's saying a lot because I buy fricking everything. And even the
1:28:46series eight, I couldn't justify. So I have a series eight and I mostly agree with you. I like
1:28:55it. It's not terribly interesting. Uh, I wish I had a better battery. That's all I got. I am the
1:29:00small series eight. Uh, I am on the 41 or whatever it is. Millimeter. Um, the battery is sufficient.
1:29:07Um, I typically work out half an hour to 45 minutes every single day. And I will top up when
1:29:15I'm showering. And if I do take a little siesta, which is, which used to be fairly common, but now
1:29:20is fairly uncommon, uh, I'll top it up. All that's happening. But you know, today I didn't lay down
1:29:25or anything like that. And I had a fairly busy day. I did a 45 minute workout and I'm at a 14%
1:29:31and it's about nine 30 at night. So it is enough to get me through a day, but not with a lot of
1:29:38breathing rooms. So I would love either a watch with a much bigger battery. And that is not the
1:29:45ultra. I'll have to try the ultra on again whenever I do upgrade, because maybe it would work on my
1:29:49wrist, but nevertheless, I would love either a much bigger battery if possible, or perhaps more
1:29:55likely a much more power efficient CPU because these watch batteries really are beats to the
1:30:02stay are still being stretched to their breaking point, I think. And I would love to have, have
1:30:07more, just give me more. Yeah. It does depend a lot on what you do. Like, especially it depends
1:30:12a lot on things like, um, how, how long in a day you're running it in a workout mode. Um, and then,
1:30:17and certain, certainly like whether that workout mode is using GPS. So like if you're going on an
1:30:21outdoor run, Oh yeah, that's not typically what I'm doing, but yeah, especially if you are like
1:30:26using cellular to stream the music, like that's, that's just about the most power intensive thing
1:30:30you can do on the watch is like workout mode plus GPS plus cellular that will drain it significantly.
1:30:36Whereas if you are, you know, just mostly like in regular watch mode, sitting around somewhere
1:30:42where you have wifi, not doing a whole lot with it, that'll last a long time. Um, and, and certainly,
1:30:47you know, I never really got into sleep tracking, so I don't do that, that whole, that whole, um,
1:30:52game where you try to charge it when you're in the shower. Like I never, I never got into that.
1:30:55Um, I'm just charging it overnight and when I'm in the shower. So mine, my battery life has been
1:30:59great. I'm also using the larger one, the 45 millimeter, um, series seven. But, um, okay,
1:31:05this is a song about Alice. We're talking about the series eight, uh, uh, series at Apple watch.
1:31:10It's totally fine, but it's barely anything changed from the seven, which itself was not
1:31:15a massive change from the six. So, uh, hoping, hoping for better things with the nine, but the
1:31:20series eight is still a great watch overall. It's just, it doesn't really provide much over the,
1:31:25over the predecessor. And then finally, uh, Marco made a really good point. All the rumors are
1:31:31pointing to this is, this is the year of USB-C it's finally happening. So the iPhones that we
1:31:38have in hand are the last iPhones with lightning ports, RIP, the lightning port. And I will start
1:31:45by saying this can't come soon enough. I am, I am so ready for this. Um, so anyway, I am so ready to
1:31:54ditch lightning. Like I don't have any particular problem with lightning. And I think in the context
1:31:58of a phone, it actually is really, really nice. But at this point I will take ubiquity over any
1:32:06niceties of the lightning port. And I think that's probably no small part influenced by the fact
1:32:12that I use Qi charging overnight. Uh, I, I do have a dock that I'll have to replace on my desk for
1:32:19when I'm working, but other, the only time I ever really plug in my phone because I have that,
1:32:25you know, wireless CarPlay dongle, it's the Carlinket one. I don't, mine is ancient. Just
1:32:30get Carlinket and that's the one, because I put this in the show notes and every single time
1:32:33people are like, what one do you have? Carlinket, C-A-R-L-I-N-K-I-T. Well, anyways, um, I have
1:32:39wireless CarPlay for me now, Erin, I could get her one of these, but I don't think she cares.
1:32:43Um, so her car would, we will need to get a different cable presumably, but by and large
1:32:49in my day-to-day life, the only time I'm plugging in my phone is when I'm having one of those
1:32:53Syracuse style off days with my battery. And we have one of the iPad or whatever, watt chargers,
1:32:58you know, hooked up to a USB to lightning, uh, USB-C to lightning cable down in the living room.
1:33:03And so we'll use that as like our emergency top-up station. That's about the only time I plug in my
1:33:08phone and any other time I am wirelessly charging or doing development on it. So whatever, um, I am
1:33:15so here for USB-C, I would love to not have to worry about lightning anything. And I say that
1:33:22as someone who never touches lightning, even my travel setup, as we talked a couple of weeks ago,
1:33:25is that Qi based, uh, Mophie three-in-one thing. So I don't even bring lightning cables when I go
1:33:30traveling, but, but still it would be so nice to go USB-C only. I mean, hell, when I go to Wegmans
1:33:37or whatever to do work, because I want to get out of the house, I would love to not have to bring a
1:33:41lightning cable and worry about that. It's just the ubiquity is what does it for me. The world has
1:33:47moved on, although not from micro USB, but that's neither here nor there. Uh, the world has mostly
1:33:52moved on, uh, asterisk dagger, double dagger. So please, please, please give me the USB-C iPhone.
1:33:59The lightning port was great. It served its purpose well, but it's time. You know, for
1:34:04exit interviews, I think we could give, I think I would like to give an exit salute to lightning
1:34:09because I feel like it has served its purpose very well. Uh, people who don't remember how old this
1:34:16is. So 30 pin lasted, what, like almost 10 years. Now we're like 11 years for lightning.
1:34:21Yeah. It was the iPhone five that launched with lightning. Yeah. So, so for, in terms of how long
1:34:25a connector lasts, it's about average. And as Casey pointed out, like this one, Apple has been
1:34:31essentially drag kicking, screaming it's upgrading. Like it's not like they did it super fast. And I
1:34:35bring this up because the story about these connections is always everyone's annoyed when
1:34:39things change, right? You know, people don't like change. I understand that, but timing wise,
1:34:43this makes some kind of sense. And if you go back to the beginning of when the light lightning came
1:34:48out, it was replacing 30 pin, which there are people listening to this program. Don't know what
1:34:52that is. Go find fun and look at it. You'll be like people used to connect their phones with
1:34:57this. It is it's hilarious. And like in the way that like a VHS tape would be hilarious to someone
1:35:01who watches Netflix. It basically looks like a SCSI cable like compared to like, it's just so big
1:35:07and so awkward and delicate and weird and Apple replace it with this one extremely tight. They
1:35:13didn't just make it a little bit smaller. They made it smaller enough that it's, you know, we're
1:35:17not going to have to worry about the size of this connector for the foreseeable future. They made it
1:35:20so there's no wrong way to plug it in micro USB and basically every USB except for USB C. No wrong
1:35:26way to plug in. It works both directions. They made the little connectors or a little tiny solid
1:35:30piece of metal that is not going to bend or break or whatever like the connector itself was the
1:35:35thing that you plug in was very solid. And this was coming into a world where there was no equivalent
1:35:40USB C didn't exist at that point. So they had to make something themselves, which is people say,
1:35:45you know, might think it's Apple at its best and worst. It's at its best because they're like,
1:35:49they saw a technical problem, they solved it in a very clever way with something that was better
1:35:53than anything else in the market. And it's worse because lighting was 100% proprietary. You had to
1:35:57pay Apple money if you wanted to sell accessory that had the made for iPhone, whatever, you know,
1:36:01that for a while I think Apple was like, have the only factories that made this connector. Maybe
1:36:05they still do. And like it's proprietary and you know, Apple made money off of it and no other
1:36:11phone in the entire world use this but the Apple sells a lot of iPhones so it was fine, right?
1:36:15And the thing is they made the proprietary connector. And eventually USB C came out with
1:36:21some help from Apple that had many of the same advantages but was industry standard. And eventually
1:36:25that rolled out across the industry. But what Apple didn't do was, as soon as lightning had
1:36:30essentially served its purpose, and now we have an industry standard connector that we can all go to,
1:36:34they didn't immediately leave that part of that was because they don't want to give up that made
1:36:37for iPhone money, right? I get that part of it was because they're putting off the painful change
1:36:42because whenever you change people complain and it's painful. But part of that I think is,
1:36:46let's just give lightning its natural lifetime. One new connector for your phone every decade is
1:36:52a reasonable cadence for technological progress. 30 pin lightning USB C. If each of those three gets
1:36:5910 years, that's fine. I know everyone's going to complain because they're gonna be like, "Oh,
1:37:03I just got this phone and now the connector changed and you know, like, you haven't had
1:37:06that phone for 10 years. Maybe this is your very first phone and all and you buy all these lightning
1:37:09accessories and you didn't know this event was coming. And then it comes out and the phones are
1:37:13all using different things. And next year you got to get rid of all your like, change is always going
1:37:16to be hard for somebody. I get it. But Apple did not make a proprietary connector and then say,
1:37:22"Oh, nevermind. We don't need that anymore and switch after two years." Because that would have
1:37:25been worse for customers that wouldn't have allowed the ecosystem to build. The whole ecosystem
1:37:29of docs and other things that work with lightning connectors. And on top of that, Apple did improve
1:37:34the lightning connector over the course of its life. They couldn't fix some of the fundamental
1:37:38things about it. In particular, I think we've talked about this before, but all kinds of
1:37:42connectors or most kinds of computer connectors have some part of it that's springy and some part
1:37:48of it that is rigid and the springy things grip on to the rigid part. The rigid part doesn't move.
1:37:53It just is there to be solid and the springy parts grip it, right? And in lightning, the springy
1:37:59parts are inside the phone and the rigid part is of course the connector. If you look at a lightning
1:38:02connector, nothing on it flexes. It is just a solid piece of metal with little divots in the
1:38:06side and the springy parts are in the phone. USB-C is the opposite. I believe in USB-C,
1:38:11the springy parts are inside the connector and the rigid parts are inside the phone.
1:38:14In practice, that hasn't been that big of a deal, but in general, the USB-C
1:38:18design is smarter because if something, if some springy thing is going to get loose from constantly
1:38:23having, you know, the connector put in and taken out, it'd be better if that thing that gets loose
1:38:28is on a cable that you can throw away versus inside the phone that you can't really replace
1:38:32the plug on it that easily. Right? The other thing is we all remember, and probably many of you are
1:38:38still experienced to this day. I know I am. You can look at a lightning connector and see those
1:38:41little like black smudges on them. That is a thing that as far as I know, Apple did fix in later
1:38:49revisions of their devices and cables that are, that work with lightning. Because I think that
1:38:54was because one of the pins constantly had some amount of power on it and get these little black
1:38:58scorch marks. And there was a period when the lightning cable went from like the little part,
1:39:03the little plastic part that wraps around the metal thing with the contacts on it,
1:39:08that plastic part got thicker. And I think it's because they changed the chip that was in there.
1:39:12People might not know, but a lot of Apple's cables have actual computer chips inside them,
1:39:16which doesn't really justify their price, but anyway, it's not just a bunch of wires with the
1:39:20connector. And I think they changed it to make whatever that pin was that was getting the black
1:39:25marks like pulse its energy instead of being con, I'm probably getting the details wrong here,
1:39:30but the point is Apple revised lightning somewhere within its lifetime to fix one of the few actual
1:39:36flaws that it had. And even that flaw wasn't that bad because we all have these little marked
1:39:40lightning cables. I use them all the time. They still work fine. They don't damage your phone.
1:39:44They don't cause your, you know, it's not a hardware virus that infects all your phones and
1:39:47now nobody can charge. The main problem that people have with lightning, which I'm not sure
1:39:52we'll get any better with USB-C is pocket lint and crap getting jammed up there. And that is more of
1:39:56a mechanical issue than an electronic one, but it is a issue with all these types of connectors.
1:40:01I'm not sure how USB-C will go because I've never had a USB-C phone before, but fingers crossed. But
1:40:05anyway, that electrical problem with it, they fixed in a later revision. And you might not know that
1:40:10because if you still are using your old cable with the very small, very slim piece of plastic around
1:40:15the lightning connector, you're not getting the advantage of that. I think you have to have the
1:40:19newer cables that are identifiable by me anyway, among Apple's cables as being a little bit thicker
1:40:23around that thing. And for those ones, I've tried it. I have some of those cables and I have some
1:40:27that aren't and the newer cables with the thicker thing, never get the black marks and the old ones
1:40:32still do. So I think Apple has been an excellent steward of this proprietary connector. I don't
1:40:39really begrudge them the made for iPhone thing. So there's plenty of third party rip off things that
1:40:43didn't pay for it or whatever, but it's had its run. It did its job. I'm glad it was there. I'm
1:40:50glad I didn't ever have an iPhone with micro USB on it, God forbid. I'm glad we didn't have 30 pin
1:40:57for longer and I was happy to use lightning for all this time. But of course, as all we tech nerds
1:41:02agree, 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.
1:41:06Lightning is still a tiny bit smaller, a tiny bit thinner, but it's time. I'm ready to take the hit.
1:41:15I'm not sure what the public reaction to it will be, but there's really just no alternative.
1:41:19Setting aside the EU stuff and all them being forced to do it or whatever, lightning has run
1:41:24its course. And of all the things that Apple has done hardware standard wise, I think they did a
1:41:29pretty good job of this. Not perfect. Again, the little black marks and the many cables they made
1:41:34with inadequate strain relief and all the other things they've done, but there's been a pretty
1:41:38good third party ecosystem for lightning. I don't think it has ever had any catastrophic errors
1:41:43where like, oh, we screwed up with the connector and it just doesn't work. The pocket length thing,
1:41:47again, I don't know if that's going to be better or worse with USB-C, but I'm trying to think of
1:41:52everything in terms of tier lists. I don't know if lightning would be S tier, but it would definitely
1:41:57be A. I think it did a great job. I salute lightning as it is on its way out the door.
1:42:02I think the key innovation of lightning was the reversible connector. That was unheard of before.
1:42:11Like I don't think any major computer connector was reversible before that.
1:42:14Well, you know what did that? The headphone jack. Couldn't put it in the wrong way unless you had an
1:42:19original iPhone and tried to use a regular headphone, but setting that aside, like there
1:42:23have been connectors where you don't have to worry about how to put them in. I think it was a computer
1:42:27innovation to say, oh, guess what? We have connectors, but they only fit one way. It's
1:42:31like a kid's shape sorter. Isn't that easy? And it was like, okay, maybe for literal SCSI cables,
1:42:36it's pretty obvious which way the shape sorter goes. By the time they're the size of micro USB,
1:42:40or God forbid USB-A where it's externally symmetrical and internally asymmetrical,
1:42:44mistakes were made and Apple corrected that and Apple helped correct that with USB-C as well.
1:42:49Yeah. Like the only reason why we are down on lightning now is that the rest of the world went
1:42:55to USB-C and now we are so close to the, you know, one cable, basically, although a million asterisks
1:43:00on it. The rest of the world and also Apple. Apple everywhere, except for the iPhone and the AirPods
1:43:05and the keyboards and the mouse. Yeah. Right. But, you know, even, even setting aside all of those
1:43:11accessories, which, you know, I know there's rumors they're going to do new AirPods cases. That makes
1:43:15sense. You know, probably with AirPods cases with USB-C, I'm sure we'll be able to buy the case for
1:43:20like 70 bucks. Yeah. You have to get rid of lightning everywhere. Like I know we'll talk
1:43:24about predictions, but like getting rid of lighting on the phones, like that's the big one,
1:43:28but it has to go everywhere. And eventually I'm assuming it will go everywhere. I just hope they
1:43:32don't drag their feet on it and have like keyboards that connect with lightning four years from now
1:43:36on max. Yeah. And that's, that's my fear because they, they really don't update the peripherals
1:43:41that frequently. I mean, the magic mouse hasn't been updated since it used AA batteries and the,
1:43:46the, you know, track pad, I think was never updated until it, well, the current design of it.
1:43:51You know, it's, it's many years old now. You know, the keyboards got updated with touch ID
1:43:55that fairly recently. So I don't know how much they're going to update them again. Who knows?
1:43:59But anyway what's great about this move, if this happens is that you know, I'm going to be able to
1:44:05get rid of like maybe 40% of the cables that are in use in my backpack and around my house.
1:44:11So that's, you know, traveling is going to be so much easier. I can't tell you how often I go to
1:44:17reach for either a USB-C cable or a lightning cable. And the one I find is the other one.
1:44:23And so that's going to be really, really nice. Also a great thing about USB-C over lightning is
1:44:29that both ends of the cable are the same. It's going to be great when it comes, but yes,
1:44:33the lightning port itself, you know, for when it was designed, it was way ahead of its time.
1:44:39And it has really served us pretty well with surprisingly few downsides all this time.
1:44:45And so it really has been extremely successful. And yeah, I think giving it an exit salute is
1:44:51totally warranted. I won't even like put one finger down to simulate the blackened pin. Like,
1:44:56no, I'll give it all the fingers. That's the thing about the blackened pin. Like none of us like it
1:45:02because no one likes to see anything blackened on a piece of electronics. But practically speaking,
1:45:06like I think that is basically a cosmetic issue that only annoys people who want things to be
1:45:11perfect. Like I've never even heard of it causing problems. Again, the problem people have is lint.
1:45:16Lint fills the things and they don't work. Oh no, it caused me problems. The blackened pin,
1:45:20it would eventually make a device or its cable not charge anymore. Really? I've never seen that
1:45:25happen. And we have, I like to have like original lightning cables that are blackened, just
1:45:30completely messed up with it, but they still work. So I don't know. Maybe I've just been lucky.
1:45:35I'm between the two of you. It happened to me. I don't remember if it was devices,
1:45:39but certainly the cables, but it was very rare when it did happen to me.
1:45:43Yeah. And it was, it was usually on older things to avoid it. You have to use one of the new cables
1:45:48with one of the new phones. And it's so easy not to do that because we just have all these
1:45:51cables around and you just mix and match or whatever. And you're like, what are you talking
1:45:54about? They never fix us. All my cables are blackened. I did the test myself several years
1:45:58ago and I said, I'm only going to use this new, what I know to be one of the supposedly fixed
1:46:04cables on my nightstand with my phone. And I've used it for years. It's perfect. No blackened
1:46:08things on it. The lightning, the lightning cable, it was a little annoying to be its own thing. You
1:46:15know, it was a little frustrating to run into someone with an Android phone and not be able
1:46:20to charge your phone because they had, you know, like micro USB or whatever garbage connector.
1:46:25But even still, I think it's an S tier cable slash port slash whatever for me, it really did serve
1:46:32its purpose well. It's riding into the sunset. It's riding high into the sunset, happy and
1:46:37accomplished. I salute you lightning port. I salute you. Oh man. All right. Next member special
1:46:42tier list, different connectors. That's not a bad idea. I know I'm literally putting on the list.
1:46:50Thanks to our sponsor this week, Celtrios. And thanks to our members who support us directly.
1:46:58You can join us at ATP.FM/join and we will talk to you next week.
1:47:02Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin.
1:47:10Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey
1:47:19wouldn't let him cause it was accidental. It was accidental. And you can find the show notes at
1:47:29ATP.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
1:47:42M-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.
1:47:56They didn't mean to. Accidental. Accidental. Tech podcast. So long.
1:48:06So this is going to be quick partially because we're running long and partially because I don't
1:48:09actually have that much to say yet. But last week I had teased, certainly in the bootleg,
1:48:13I don't recall if that made the released version, but I teased that, are you ready Marco? I'll give
1:48:17you a moment to grab what you need to grab. I teased that I have bought a new Synology.
1:48:24I did get a new Synology. I did get a slight discount on it from the Synology folks,
1:48:28which is very kind of them. Synologists?
1:48:31Yeah, the Synologists. I will talk about what I got and briefly describe why, but I haven't really
1:48:40started using it that much. And I'd like to get this off my chest first because I'm very annoyed
1:48:44and frustrated. I love Synology products. I love, love, love them. I talk about them incessantly
1:48:50because I love them so darn much. I adore them. And also, you can hear the comma right now.
1:48:59Also, I am real crabby about their migration story. Now I will probably get the details wrong
1:49:07because I was doing this in haste and I was doing it like a week ago. Now I did take some notes for
1:49:11myself, but the migration story for Synology, the, the thing they want you to do, and this is
1:49:18genuinely very cool that they support this, but what they want you to do is take all the drives
1:49:22from one Synology, slap them in the new one, call it a day, which that's what they want you to do.
1:49:28That's like the easy peasy way to do it. I would assume that wouldn't work. I know exactly. So
1:49:32that's why I do genuinely think it's pretty cool that that's supported. No, no BS. I really mean
1:49:36that, but I have noticed in the intervening 10 years. So we were gifted from Synology.
1:49:45Each of us got a DS1813+ and 18 indicates 8 bay, if I understand Synology nomenclature properly,
1:49:54the 8 indicates 8 bay, the 13 indicates that it was new on or around 2013. And this is a
1:50:02like extremely beefy for home use or really meant for like small office use Synology. 8 drives.
1:50:10Ours all came preloaded, I believe with 3 terabyte drives. I know mine is a darn ship of Theseus at
1:50:16this point. I can't speak for Marcos. I think John, you said you've only replaced a couple, but
1:50:20I've replaced zero. Oh, that's nuts. I seriously, most minor replaced, but anyways,
1:50:25I adore my Synology. It's run great, but it's getting longer than tooth and I wanted to get
1:50:31a new one. And so what I decided was I'm going to get a slightly smaller one. I will get a 6
1:50:37bay Synology and I got a 1621+. And I did that because, hey, guess what fellas? In the last
1:50:4310 years since we got our Synologies, our jobs have gotten big. Old school platter spinning
1:50:49disk drives have gotten freaking big. And Prime Day rolled around. And I think, I genuinely don't
1:50:56remember, but I think it was something like $1,200 all in, which is unquestionably a butt
1:51:00load of money. It's a mountain of money, but you know, once every 10 years, I don't think that's so
1:51:04bad. So I got four Western Digital Red 18 terabyte drives. If you don't care for Western Digital Red,
1:51:11I don't want to know. Ignorance is bliss. It's fine. This is what I've chosen. Please don't
1:51:16scare me with horror stories about Western Digital because I can already hear you clacking on your
1:51:19keyboards, writing emails. Nevertheless, I bought four 18 terabyte Western Digital Reds,
1:51:24and that's what I put in this new Synology, four drives. And not only could I not move
1:51:32all eight drives from the old Synology, but now this new Synology supports BTRFS,
1:51:38butter file system, whatever you want to call it. And I would like to move to that because I do a
1:51:43podcast with a Mr. John Sirquist, who is very opinionated about file systems. And my impression
1:51:47from John was that butter or whatever it's called is better. So I wanted to do that.
1:51:51You could have used that on your own one too. Some of my things are BTRFS, I think.
1:51:55I don't, not if I don't, not without reestablishing the entire volume.
1:51:58Yeah, you got to reformat stuff.
1:51:59Exactly. So I go to install the drives on the new Synology and that works fine. It does say,
1:52:09"Oh, these aren't the drives we prefer," because Synology has very annoyingly
1:52:13gone and started selling their own hard drives. So of course they get very picky,
1:52:17or they can get very picky about what drives you use. And in fact, part of the reason I didn't get
1:52:23a newer Synology was because they have cranked that up as the hardware has gotten newer. The
1:52:29annoyance and like, "Oh, you're not using our drives. You're not using our drives."
1:52:32And I didn't want anything to do with that.
1:52:33So it's kind of crappy.
1:52:35It is undesirable to say the least. And trust me. Oh, trust me. I have lit up my context
1:52:42at Synology about how I think this is really gross. Don't you worry. I cannot believe they
1:52:48didn't send this with like a bomb inside of it after all the complaining and moaning I've
1:52:51done to them. But nevertheless, I put in the drives that works no sweat. It installs DSM,
1:52:56DiskStation Manager, which is their operating system, whatever. All well and good.
1:53:00So I go to make the volume, which is Synology-speak for basically binding all these four
1:53:06drives together. I chose Synology Hybrid RAID 2, which is to say I could lose two drives and still
1:53:14have enough data in the remaining drives and parity checks and whatnot that I could recover.
1:53:19That's because I did SHR1 in the 8-base Synology. And you will recall right at the beginning of
1:53:24COVID, I lost a drive. And then in replacing that, almost lost a second drive and almost lost my
1:53:29entire dataset, which would have been absolutely terrible. So refresh our memory, though, both your
1:53:35old one and your new one, you're essentially setting up as a single volume. No. Well, yes to
1:53:39the new one. No to the old one. The old one, six of the physical drives was one massive volume.
1:53:45And then two of them, I did whatever the equivalent, whatever the RAID is that it's just
1:53:49it's two physical hard drives. Thank you. Treat it as one. And the only thing that goes on that
1:53:53volume is Time Machine. And so that's all redundant. If I lose it, I lose it. Not the end of the earth.
1:53:58I am issuing Time Machine entirely on this. Or maybe I will choose like, maybe I'll get
1:54:03like an external drive or something to do Time Machine in the future. But I am not doing anything
1:54:08with it on the new Synology. So it is four drives, two empty bays, one giant volume of what is,
1:54:16I think it's like 34, 36 terabytes, because it's two times 18 minus some overhead. I want to say
1:54:22it's like 34 terabytes. And my current Synology, the volume is something like 12 or 15 terabytes,
1:54:28and I'm using 10-ish. So I have two spare bays, and I have something like 20 terabytes, 20 extra
1:54:35terabytes of free space anyway. So I make the volume and it says, "Oh, these aren't Synology
1:54:40drives." I say, "I don't care." And it's okay. Fine. I established my SHR2 volume with butter,
1:54:46BTRFS, whatever, whatever, all is well. I go to do Migration Assistant, and the first thing it said
1:54:52was, "Well, you should really just move the physical drives." I said, "I can't do that,
1:54:55because I have two freaking less spots." Okay, fine. So then I go to do the Migration Assistant
1:54:59again, and I can't get it to work. And the reason is, is because I have two-factor auth on my old
1:55:06Synology. And I will on the new one when I finally get it up and running. But I have two-factor auth
1:55:10on the old Synology. And the old Synology is so long in the tooth now that when the Migration
1:55:15Assistant goes and does whatever verification it does for the two-factor auth, it doesn't complete
1:55:20in time, and the two-factor auth times out. So I created another user that doesn't have two-factor
1:55:28auth, and I go to do that whole dance with Migration Assistant, and it's like, "Yep,
1:55:33you're good. Oh, oh, no, you're not good." You're not good because your old Synology is on,
1:55:41I don't even, I genuinely don't remember what file system, I guess, the X2 or whatever, like the...
1:55:45Yeah, the X-T4. The X-T4. The X-T4, there you go. Thank you. The old Synology is the X-T4,
1:55:51your new volume's BTRFS. So guess what? Get f...
1:55:54Beeped. So...
1:55:56Oh, actually, so, wait, replacing the drives. You mentioned that a couple of times,
1:56:00now that that's what they want you to do. And at first I was like, "Oh, that's dumb." Because
1:56:04the whole point is you want to get a new Synology that could store more. And if you get a new
1:56:07Synology and put the old drives in it, but here's what I think they want you to do,
1:56:09which is even worse. I think the idea is take the old drives, put them in the new thing. Let's say
1:56:13you had the right number of bays to do it. And then what they expect you to do is to basically
1:56:19swap them one at a time, take out one, put in a new bigger one, take out another one, put in another.
1:56:24But remember how long it took for you to replace one drive on your old Synology?
1:56:27Literally days. Literally days.
1:56:29And that had a third of the storage under this one. So it would take you like a year and a half
1:56:34to replace all the drives, during which time the thing would just be thrashing constantly.
1:56:40Like, I don't know what they expect you to do. So it's very disappointing to hear that
1:56:43their migration assistant for what I think is the more sane approach is not ideal.
1:56:47Yeah. So if you are someone who has a better answer for this, I am all ears. But basically
1:56:56what I did was I said, "All right, here we go." So the way I have my files organized on my Synology
1:57:01is that the top level has a handful of folders, but the primary one I happened to name Archive
1:57:0810 years ago. And within my archive is like everything that's in Plex and all sorts of
1:57:13other junk. Like basically 98% of the data in my Synology is in the archive folder. Maybe not
1:57:19literally 98, but a lion's share of that data is in the archive folder. And I mounted the old
1:57:25Synology as a network share from the new Synology and said, "Go." And a day and a half, I think it
1:57:30was later, because I'm running this. The old Synology is on a bonded two connection gigabit
1:57:38Ethernet to the switch. This new one, I only connected one of them. I don't know if it really
1:57:44makes a difference anyway, but it took like a day and a half to transfer something like eight
1:57:48terabytes. But the problem that I have and why I've been kind of kicking this can down the road
1:57:53a little bit for the last week is that the old Synology is a moving target. Like I'm constantly
1:57:59adding, updating, changing, whatever on the old Synology. So I think what I have to do is either
1:58:06log into one of these via the terminal, which you can do and is very easy, or somewhere else set up
1:58:11some sort of like fairly regular R sync. Synology can do that. They have a feature that can, because
1:58:19I sync one of my Synology volumes to another separate physical Synology with a feature built
1:58:24into their operating system to do that for you. Well then you and I need to talk after the show.
1:58:27See me after class. You think I actually know where that setting is in the settings? No,
1:58:31I set that up 10 years ago, but yeah, I could probably find it again. Well, let's, let's,
1:58:34yeah, let's talk about this after class. But, um, but yeah, so I'm going to need to do something
1:58:40like that to do, to, to, to some degree have a, not a literal, but a figurative like hot swap
1:58:46between these two, because at some point I'm just going to need to move from one to the other. And
1:58:51my intention is that the old one will be a maybe, not maybe a hot swappable, but a local backup in
1:58:58the same way that I have a Synology remotely at my parents that has a full backup. I, I'm hoping that
1:59:04the 8 bay one I'll move to a different room or put in the garage or something like that. And that'll
1:59:08become a local backup for, you know, emergency purposes. But nevertheless, at some point I need
1:59:12to cut everything over, which means I need to get all the data in sync between the two, which isn't
1:59:17that big a deal, but is something that would require some sort of automated thing like our sync
1:59:23or whatever Synology is bespoke thing is. And actually I believe that one of the, uh, one of the
1:59:29migration assistant approaches is basically our sync under the hood or something like that,
1:59:33or maybe it's not my migration assistant, maybe it's something else, but nevertheless, I'm gonna
1:59:36have to do something along those lines. But as much as I am super jazzed for this new Synology,
1:59:41and I mean that, and I, and I, they still have a full throated endorsement from me, or maybe a,
1:59:47maybe not a full throated, maybe almost full throated endorsement. The one gotcha that I've
1:59:51had in the 10 years of Synology bliss is, wow, is this migration story real bad? And it really,
1:59:59really bums me out and it's, I'll get through it. I'll get past it. And as with many things,
2:00:04if this is the most of my problems right now, I am so very incredibly lucky, but golly, what a pain
2:00:09in the butt it is. And so at some point I will have more to say about this, but that's basically
2:00:13all I got for right now. I was thinking about what if I, because I was thinking about getting
2:00:16a new Synology and someday my thing is going to blow up and I'm going to be sad. Um, but like,
2:00:20what I think about is like, oh, you know, I kind of made a mess of my various volumes and stuff.
2:00:24I'm like, oh, I wouldn't want the new one set up this way. And what I periodically do,
2:00:27cause I'm paranoid is I do the thing in Synology where you can essentially back up your system
2:00:31settings to a single file. Right. Have you done that? I know of what you speak and I think I did
2:00:35it like a couple of years back, but I don't think I've done it since. Yeah. You can do it to the
2:00:39network and you also download a local file. And this is just like the settings of like,
2:00:43I guess it's stuff like what network am I on? And like, you know, I don't know,
2:00:46it can't be that much. Obviously it's not the data, right? It's just a tiny little file that
2:00:50does the configuration. So my thought would be, I'd get a new one. I would do a backup of my old
2:00:55system settings, restore that back up onto the new one, set up all the volumes how I want. And then I
2:00:59would essentially do like the, I guess the equivalent of a clean install on a Mac where I
2:01:03manually, well, you know, with our sink or whatever, copy the files from like, oh, here's all my Plex
2:01:07stuff manually copy those to where the Plex stuff is in my new thing. I'm not sure how it handled
2:01:12like the Plex metadata. Cause I honestly don't even know where the heck that is hiding on my Synology,
2:01:15but like basically take all the files and app configuration from my old one and put it in
2:01:22where their new home is going to be on the new one myself, one batch of things at a time until
2:01:27I had everything updated. And because that process would involve something like our sync to catch up
2:01:33to essentially, you know, to say, okay, now I need the last little bit before I cut over. I just
2:01:36repeat those same commands that I ran before. And hopefully they just take less time now because most
2:01:40of the time they're saying, I already got that, got that, got that, you know? And that, that was
2:01:46my plan. And you describing their migration system makes me think that I should continue to have that
2:01:51be my plan because at least that's a plan that's a hundred percent under my control. And it probably
2:01:56would be slower and less thorough, but because I'm not getting rid of the old Synology, it, you know,
2:02:01I just got to do that to the point where I think I got it set up, do the cut over and the old
2:02:06Synology for a long time, we'll probably still be there. And I won't use it as a local backup of
2:02:10anything. I'll just let it sit there exactly as it is encased in Amber. And if I'm like,
2:02:14Oh, something's not set up. How is that set up on the old Synology? I'll just go look until a year
2:02:18has passed and I'm satisfied that the new one does everything the old one did. And then I'll wipe the
2:02:23old one and, you know, use it as a backup or something. Yeah, no, I completely agree with
2:02:26that approach. The only thing I would say is I'm not sure what the right or answer is. Should you
2:02:32put the data there first or should you restore the settings? I I'm quibbling over a minor issue at
2:02:38this point. You got to do the settings first. Got it. Well, I don't know because like the settings
2:02:42aren't, they're going to do, I'm going to do restore the settings and they're not going to be
2:02:45quite right. And things are going to be screwed up and this is going to, maybe you'll even conflict
2:02:48with the old one because it'll just be like, I want that IP. No, I want it. I don't know.
2:02:51The dynamic DNS or like I'd want it to be entirely empty while I'm screwing with getting the system
2:02:56settings right and changing my mind about how to format things and looking at all the different
2:03:00features. And they're like, the data would be the last thing I would do. We're like, okay,
2:03:04now it's set up the way it's named the way I want dynamic DNS to set up the networking is the way
2:03:08I want. I figured out the ethernet connection. Everything's all good. It's in physically the
2:03:12place where it's supposed to be. Then I would start copying data or the only, the only big
2:03:16question for me is the only app I really care about that has metadata is like, where is the
2:03:19Plex database? Where is that Plex thing hiding? I don't actually know. There's a really good
2:03:25writeup that I'm not going to be able to find and we'll put in, forget to put in the show notes, but
2:03:29Plex does have a migration like FAQ or instructions doc or whatever somewhere online. And I've
2:03:35followed it before. And I think I've done this like four or five or six times and I think all
2:03:40but one, it worked pretty much flawlessly. And it will describe to you where you need to look for
2:03:45the metadata and things of that nature. And if you follow the instructions and if you follow them
2:03:50fairly religiously, it turns out it will generally work. So you're going to have to dig it up
2:03:55somewhere, but if you follow those directions, it should be fine. Well, that's good to hear.
2:03:59Yeah. Plex is pretty good. I just haven't ever tried it before, but it occurs to me that I have
2:04:03no idea where it is. And also every time you install Plex in the Synology, it makes a bunch
2:04:07of directories where it thinks you should put stuff. And of course I never put my stuff there.
2:04:11So I don't know how many of those directories I have hanging around. It's like decoys with this
2:04:15little tiny, like trivial empty databases and metadata stores that are just waiting to trip
2:04:19me up. Well, that's not the real location. That was five versions ago where I put it.
2:04:23Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so I am excited. I am genuinely excited. And, and again, I don't,
2:04:29don't take this one faux pas. I mean, that's not what I'm looking for. This one stumbling block is,
2:04:34as a reason not to get a Synology because they didn't ask me to say anything about this.
2:04:39And I'm telling you the honest truth, but I really do advise these, these devices are so nice to have
2:04:46and they're, it's so wonderful to not have to worry about hard drive space, but golly,
2:04:50if you're looking to upgrade, tread carefully because it is a bit of a pain.
2:04:55Yeah. Everyone sent hate mail to Synology that say it's unconscionable that you don't let people
2:04:59use third party drives. Like I don't begrudge them selling their own drives and like they can
2:05:03even say this is the easiest way to do it. And we get, oh, they should offer like a better guarantee.
2:05:08That's exactly what I said when I was lighting up my couple of contacts at Synology, I was like,
2:05:12look, if you want to sell your own drives, fine. If you want to say that you get more or better
2:05:16support when you use your, you know, Synology branded drives, fine. But to be sounding the
2:05:21alarm, oh my God, oh my God, you're going to blow up your Synology. Like that's just not necessary.
2:05:26Yeah. I mean, like we were saying, when we talked about this, like they they'll mark the volume as
2:05:29degraded and you can't even replace drives on it in the extreme cases. And you know, this third
2:05:33party way is to hack around this, but it's just, you don't want to have a business where it's just
2:05:36routinely understood that you have to install a third party hack to allow you to use drives
2:05:40to work perfectly fine. So shame on you Synology.
2:05:45(beep)