ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Have either of you ridden in a driverless car yet?

00:00:04 ◼   ► No.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Nope.

00:00:05 ◼   ► I had the opportunity to ride my first Waymo.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

00:00:09 ◼   ► How was that?

00:00:10 ◼   ► It was really so it's exactly what everyone says.

00:00:14 ◼   ► It was really weird for like the first few minutes and then I got

00:00:18 ◼   ► bored and looked at my phone.

00:00:20 ◼   ► And it was just a taxi.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And then on the way home, I'm like, let's book another one.

00:00:24 ◼   ► And I booked another one home.

00:00:26 ◼   ► So I'm like, well, as long as Waymo's available I know like mathematically it's

00:00:31 ◼   ► probably safer for me to take a Waymo than a human-driven car.

00:00:35 ◼   ► And so I literally immediately was converted.

00:00:38 ◼   ► So one thing to know: like I was staying at a hotel and the

00:00:41 ◼   ► Waymo would not come into the hotel's little like loop driveway thing.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

00:00:47 ◼   ► It would only pick me up like outside, like across the street.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Uh so I and I I'm sure there's probably some reason maybe maybe Waymo

00:00:54 ◼   ► doesn't go into private property.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I d I don't Um because I was thinking like even like where it

00:00:59 ◼   ► should pull over to drop you off or pick you up, that is itself

00:01:03 ◼   ► a very difficult problem.

00:01:04 ◼   ► And I was thinking like, wow, everything about this is a very difficult problem.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Like you you know, you get past the entire self driving thing, which is

00:01:12 ◼   ► not a small thing.

00:01:13 ◼   ► And then you're like, Oh, but where do you park?

00:01:15 ◼   ► Like even that is a difficult problem.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Um but it was really nice.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Like it pulled up and you know it it the the app is fine.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Like it's it's a modern, decently, seemingly well made app.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Um price wise, I I compared like you know, comparing the Waymo to an

00:01:34 ◼   ► Uber or a Lyft at the same time You know the prices jump around

00:01:38 ◼   ► a lot, but they were all within the same ballpark of each other.

00:01:40 ◼   ► So it wasn't it wasn't significantly cheaper or significantly more expensive.

00:01:43 ◼   ► And Waymos are everywhere.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Like they're there are tons of them.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And you just don't re like you stop noticing after a while.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Uh even like like you know, like we had we had rented our own

00:01:55 ◼   ► car and so we were also like driving that around.

00:01:57 ◼   ► But like when you're a driver on the road surrounded by Waymo's, it was

00:02:02 ◼   ► fine.

00:02:03 ◼   ► And being a passenger in a Waymo was fine.

00:02:06 ◼   ► It was unbelievable.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Like 'cause I know I have said on this show years ago that I

00:02:13 ◼   ► think it's gonna be a very long time before we have fully self driving

00:02:16 ◼   ► cars on all roads, the way you know the way that we think.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Waymo is not that.

00:02:20 ◼   ► It is not on all roads, all like everywhere.

00:02:23 ◼   ► You can't you can't have Waymo pick you up anywhere and it can't drive

00:02:26 ◼   ► you anywhere.

00:02:27 ◼   ► But in the in the places it operates, it seems remarkably good.

00:02:33 ◼   ► And, you know, and that's super cool.

00:02:35 ◼   ► And there was even like I I was worried like you know, like there

00:02:38 ◼   ► was one time during the Waymo ride where like it had to make what

00:02:41 ◼   ► what seemed like a a fairly difficult left turn into like s you know,

00:02:46 ◼   ► you know, pretty moderate volumes of traffic that I was like, well when how

00:02:50 ◼   ► conservative is like is it gonna be really conservative and be sitting here forever?

00:02:54 ◼   ► And nope, it just did it like basically the same way humans would do

00:02:58 ◼   ► it.

00:02:59 ◼   ► You know, it it wasn't aggressive, it wasn't overly like weirdly conservative.

00:03:04 ◼   ► It just did it at a safe time and it was fine.

00:03:07 ◼   ► And that's how the entire ride was.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Like the reason it was so easy for me to stop paying attention to

00:03:12 ◼   ► the fact that it was a Waymo was that it just drove like a

00:03:17 ◼   ► human.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And I know like, you know, c if you compare to like, you know,

00:03:21 ◼   ► Tesla self driving, I I haven't followed that recently.

00:03:24 ◼   ► I've heard Tesla self-driving has gotten very good, but it's not Waymo good.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Like by the by by the sheer numbers of it all, like it's not

00:03:33 ◼   ► Waymo good.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And frankly, I don't trust Tesla and the way they have handled safety and

00:03:38 ◼   ► problem incidents and stuff before.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Like I don't trust them to be as safe as Waymo.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Can I jump in here?

00:03:45 ◼   ► I don't really disagree, but I don't to be fair, I don't really know

00:03:48 ◼   ► what I'm talking about.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I just want to get ahead of all the feedback.

00:03:51 ◼   ► I have understood and actually Marco and I talked either earlier today or yesterday

00:03:55 ◼   ► and we'll talk more about that in the post show or in the after

00:03:58 ◼   ► show, but I have heard, Marco has heard, we have heard, all three of

00:04:02 ◼   ► us have heard, that Tesla self-driving is truly incredible these days.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I get that.

00:04:07 ◼   ► We understand that.

00:04:08 ◼   ► We hear you.

00:04:09 ◼   ► You don't need to write us.

00:04:11 ◼   ► But if for no other reason, I feel more comfortable in a Waymo because

00:04:16 ◼   ► it has a broader array of sensors.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Like it has LiDAR, it has all of these things.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And I'm not saying Marco's right or wrong about which is safer, but I

00:04:25 ◼   ► will agree with you, Marco, that I certainly handle the bad times that Waymo

00:04:29 ◼   ► has gone through a lot better than I than I trust the bad times

00:04:31 ◼   ► that Tesla's grough.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Yeah, 'cause like Waymo's safety record is shockingly good.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And even I'm sure Tesla, like, compared to person miles for human drivers, they're

00:04:43 ◼   ► probably better than human drivers, like per per mile driven.

00:04:47 ◼   ► But you know, it's obviously the th there's obviously some degree of like, you

00:04:52 ◼   ► know, irrationality in the same way that people are afraid of flying but not

00:04:55 ◼   ► afraid of driving to the airport in this at the same way despite the

00:04:58 ◼   ► math showing like they sh probably should be more afraid of driving to the

00:05:00 ◼   ► airport.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Similarly, like I think people are more afraid about self driving cars than they

00:05:05 ◼   ► are by human drivers in in a way that is mathematically, you know, not

00:05:08 ◼   ► supportive of the data.

00:05:10 ◼   ► But yeah, at the Waymo it just was so remarkably normal and like r

00:05:18 ◼   ► it was a regular good driver.

00:05:20 ◼   ► I couldn't believe it.

00:05:21 ◼   ► It to people who live in cities that are served by them all the

00:05:25 ◼   ► time, this there you probably done this years ago and you probably're probably like,

00:05:28 ◼   ► yeah, what else is new?

00:05:29 ◼   ► And literally I took two of them and now I'm like, yeah, what else

00:05:31 ◼   ► is new?

00:05:32 ◼   ► That's all it took.

00:05:34 ◼   ► But if Waymo was available in New York, I would take it all the

00:05:38 ◼   ► time.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And certainly anywhere that I'm going that is where anywhere that I'm going where

00:05:43 ◼   ► it would make sense to have an Uber drive me there, if Waymo serves

00:05:48 ◼   ► that area, I'm going to use Waymo instead.

00:05:50 ◼   ► It's that good.

00:05:52 ◼   ► That's super cool.

00:05:54 ◼   ► John, no thoughts?

00:05:55 ◼   ► I'm surprised.

00:05:56 ◼   ► Uh not for me.

00:05:58 ◼   ► I don't like doing just to be clear, I don't like taking human driven

00:06:00 ◼   ► Uber as a lifts either.

00:06:02 ◼   ► So I'm an equal opportunity hater of other people driving.

00:06:06 ◼   ► All right.

00:06:07 ◼   ► I have some follow-up to start the show.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Uh I have been hacking on my BMW, or really my BMW's app.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Uh the short short of this is I think we covered this in the

00:06:16 ◼   ► post show from last show.

00:06:17 ◼   ► I forget exactly when it was.

00:06:18 ◼   ► It's been a minute

00:06:20 ◼   ► But I really would like to, for no good reason, to be completely honest,

00:06:24 ◼   ► have information about my BMW and home assistant.

00:06:26 ◼   ► This is so if I want to, and I don't have this particular desire,

00:06:30 ◼   ► but I want to know I can.

00:06:31 ◼   ► If I want to say, oh, if it's you know, less than forty degrees

00:06:36 ◼   ► and over seventy degrees when I know I'm gonna leave the house in the

00:06:39 ◼   ► morning, go ahead and pre condition the car.

00:06:41 ◼   ► You know, if it's not in pretty decent in a pretty decent temperature range,

00:06:44 ◼   ► go ahead and pre pre precondition the car.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And I do this for Erin's car because she has a much more reliable

00:06:48 ◼   ► schedule for leaving the house.

00:06:50 ◼   ► But I want to be able to do stuff like that.

00:06:52 ◼   ► Or, you know, be able to know if the car is charging or whatnot.

00:06:55 ◼   ► And you know, maybe I can put a light on the um on the

00:06:58 ◼   ► status board in the kitchen, uh whether or not the BMW's charging, all these

00:07:02 ◼   ► sorts of things, right?

00:07:03 ◼   ► I want to be able to do that.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Do I need to?

00:07:05 ◼   ► No, but I want to.

00:07:06 ◼   ► So uh there were a bunch of suggestions after last week's show, many of

00:07:09 ◼   ► which were very, very good.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Um first of all, a couple of people asked about you know, my theory

00:07:14 ◼   ► about certificate pinning and a couple other things.

00:07:17 ◼   ► And I had Claude decompile a copy of the IPA that I extracted with

00:07:23 ◼   ► what was oh shoot, I can't remember the name of the app.

00:07:25 ◼   ► Like uh imazing or something.

00:07:27 ◼   ► Yeah, iMazing, I believe it was.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Um so I was able to copy the app off of one of my

00:07:32 ◼   ► phones and I had Claude go through and try to decompile it and just

00:07:37 ◼   ► figure out in a broad sense, like can can you extract useful API information

00:07:41 ◼   ► from here?

00:07:42 ◼   ► And the answer is yes.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And it was bad news because what Claude discovered is the app uses something

00:07:48 ◼   ► called approve spelled A-P-P-R-O-O-V.

00:07:51 ◼   ► And I'll put a link in the show notes.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And what this is an attestation service.

00:07:56 ◼   ► So basically I I I don't know much more than the following, but my

00:07:59 ◼   ► understanding is there's some sort of communication between the app and I guess the

00:08:04 ◼   ► approved servers to verify this is an honest to goodness app on an honest

00:08:08 ◼   ► to goodness phone that's not being tampered with and blah blah blah.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And then I think it gives like a short-lived access token or something along

00:08:13 ◼   ► those lines.

00:08:15 ◼   ► All this to say I can't just like man in the middle of this

00:08:18 ◼   ► thing short of doing some maybe some wonkiness with like a with an Android

00:08:22 ◼   ► phone where you have a little more access to this sort of thing.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Um but it seemed like it was not likely that this was going to

00:08:28 ◼   ► work because there's some attestation that I would never be able to fake.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Uh a lot of people said, hey, you talked about how you do the

00:08:35 ◼   ► high um High fidelity, I forget what it's actually called.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Uh screen sharing in Mac OS.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Have you tried low fidelity?

00:08:41 ◼   ► And what I didn't remember when I was speaking about this last week is

00:08:44 ◼   ► that the high fidelity screen sharing, I think, actually makes a virtual display when

00:08:47 ◼   ► you do it rather than just re-emitting the regular display or or something there's

00:08:52 ◼   ► some way that virtual displays are involved.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I encounter that now that all my machines are uh up on 27 and

00:08:58 ◼   ► I'm using um screen sharing.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Uh the other downside, I mean one of the downsides you're about to talk

00:09:03 ◼   ► about about the high performance virtual display thing, uh disconnecting, but the other downside

00:09:07 ◼   ► is you can no longer like go and sit in front of the computer

00:09:12 ◼   ► that is being controlled.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Like that they're within two feet of each other.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Sometimes I'm going back and forth, right?

00:09:15 ◼   ► If you go over to the computer that is being shared with high performance

00:09:18 ◼   ► screen sharing, it just has a black screen.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And if you try to press a button or something, have either of you

00:09:23 ◼   ► experienced this?

00:09:24 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:09:25 ◼   ► I believe that's right.

00:09:26 ◼   ► If you are using high fidelity screen sharing, like you said, the physical hardware

00:09:30 ◼   ► is black blackened or blanked or whatever while you're doing the screen.

00:09:33 ◼   ► So you don't know the next thing that happens, Marco?

00:09:35 ◼   ► Have you seen this?

00:09:36 ◼   ► Um I don't think so.

00:09:38 ◼   ► This is I think this is the first time that I've seen a Mac

00:09:41 ◼   ► do this maybe in a long time.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I'm sure there's some precedent for it.

00:09:44 ◼   ► But if you stand in front of you like, all the screens black.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Smack the space bar or whatever, like try to touch ID on it or

00:09:49 ◼   ► something.

00:09:49 ◼   ► You know, like just I basically say, Hey, wake up.

00:09:52 ◼   ► Like the first time it happened, I just thought the screensaver had come on

00:09:54 ◼   ► or something.

00:09:55 ◼   ► It talks to you, it speaks out loud and says, This Mac is being

00:10:00 ◼   ► controlled by screen sharing.

00:10:01 ◼   ► If you want to end the screen sharing session, hit the escape key.

00:10:04 ◼   ► What?

00:10:04 ◼   ► And the awesome thing is that it says that over its audio output, but

00:10:09 ◼   ► the computer you're screen sharing from also says the audio because you know you

00:10:13 ◼   ► can hear the audio of the computer screen sharing.

00:10:15 ◼   ► And when they're within two feet of each other, it's like stereo slightly delayed.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Really weird.

00:10:20 ◼   ► So yeah, it that that's it because I can't show anything on the screen.

00:10:23 ◼   ► I can't put up a dialogue.

00:10:24 ◼   ► You know what I mean so it it it's it's like the thing when

00:10:27 ◼   ► it says, you know, picking the Margot pr surely has seen this one.

00:10:30 ◼   ► If you leave it on the like pick your language uh too long on

00:10:33 ◼   ► the setup process it talks to you.

00:10:34 ◼   ► The it starts telling you about voiceover.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Voiceover is the bubble.

00:10:38 ◼   ► I'm heard it before.

00:10:39 ◼   ► Uh but yeah, if it talks to you.

00:10:40 ◼   ► So yeah, the high performance one is high performance, but it's weird.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Yeah, it is weird for sure.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Uh but people theorized, hey, maybe if you go to the low fidelity one,

00:10:48 ◼   ► maybe that'll work.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Uh and what ended up happening was if I were to configure everything the

00:10:53 ◼   ► way you're not supposed to, with like leaving the screen on forever, blah blah

00:10:56 ◼   ► blah.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Uh it did work, but it seemed that after a couple of minutes, iPhone

00:11:00 ◼   ► mirroring timed out and locked itself, which was a bummer.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Um I also did try using an HDMI dongle.

00:11:05 ◼   ► I don't recall if I said that last week.

00:11:07 ◼   ► That didn't make a difference.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Um a few people have suggested an OBD two dongle.

00:11:12 ◼   ► This is a dongle that you plug into your car, but that's read-only and

00:11:15 ◼   ► I'd rather be able to affect the car, like I was saying.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Um a few people reached out and talked about, well, what about BMW's car

00:11:21 ◼   ► data and or I think it's BMW's car data and or there's also a

00:11:24 ◼   ► third party service with a similar name, Smart Car, I think.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Um the car data service is also read-only and not offered in the US.

00:11:31 ◼   ► So now I know how all you EU folks feel.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Um and again, read-only.

00:11:36 ◼   ► Uh then uh I forget, forgive me, I'm gonna butcher the name here, but

00:11:40 ◼   ► uh Chaos Tion uh from uh Mastodon, you know them from a bunch of

00:11:45 ◼   ► very interesting work.

00:11:46 ◼   ► That they've done um with reverse engineering and things like that.

00:11:49 ◼   ► Or at least I'm pretty sure that's right.

00:11:50 ◼   ► I hope I'm lying.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Uh anyway, they pointed out, and they were not the only one, but they

00:11:53 ◼   ► they were the one I remembered, pointing out, hey, what you could do is

00:11:56 ◼   ► you could use automations to intercept a push notification and then use, like use

00:12:02 ◼   ► shortcuts, I should say, to intercept a push notification and then have the phone

00:12:07 ◼   ► do whatever you want it to do using the MyBMW apps, um, intents and

00:12:13 ◼   ► shortcut actions or whatever.

00:12:15 ◼   ► I didn't try this, but I know it should have worked.

00:12:17 ◼   ► There it should work, um, which is a really great solution.

00:12:19 ◼   ► I didn't try because or a couple other things I wanted to try.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Number one, I wanted to try, well, could I like tickle the iPhone mirroring

00:12:26 ◼   ► app and just have it like refresh itself every couple of minutes to try

00:12:28 ◼   ► to prevent that timeout.

00:12:30 ◼   ► But as it turns out, uh Marco was in town uh literally this morning,

00:12:36 ◼   ► um late yesterday into today.

00:12:38 ◼   ► So we uh hugged it out like 10 hours ago.

00:12:40 ◼   ► But anyways, um, and Marco brought a couple of gifts.

00:12:43 ◼   ► One of the things he brought is a 3D printed trinket, which we don't

00:12:46 ◼   ► in the show notes, but we should talk about at some point.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Uh but the other gift he brought is a uh GLI Net Comet Q,

00:12:52 ◼   ► um, which I which is the one that works with uh display port or

00:12:57 ◼   ► whatever it is, uh capable iPhones.

00:12:59 ◼   ► And the iPhone that I was using for this sorts of these sorts of

00:13:02 ◼   ► things was an iPhone 15, I believe, um, that I that I was previously

00:13:07 ◼   ► using as a webcam.

00:13:08 ◼   ► So I hooked the comic Q up to the iPhone, did all the instructions

00:13:11 ◼   ► you need to do to get like mouse and keyboard support working.

00:13:14 ◼   ► And then I set Claude off and say, Hey, instead of using iPhone mirroring,

00:13:18 ◼   ► could we use this?

00:13:20 ◼   ► And I sent a screenshot of Safari using their basically web-based VNC in order

00:13:27 ◼   ► to affect the you know read and affect the phone.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And I said, hey, and it doesn't be Safari, it can be Chrome or

00:13:33 ◼   ► Firefox if those APIs are better.

00:13:36 ◼   ► And this is one of those times that even as someone who has very

00:13:39 ◼   ► mixed emotions about AI, I was blown away because it basically churned for a

00:13:45 ◼   ► few minutes and said, In so many words, why are we even f around

00:13:49 ◼   ► with a browser?

00:13:50 ◼   ► Why don't we just go directly to the KVM hardware and see if it

00:13:55 ◼   ► has an API?

00:13:56 ◼   ► Oh, okay, let's see.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And it dug.

00:13:59 ◼   ► And it turns out and it and it turns out that the Comet Q

00:14:03 ◼   ► is like a rebranded Pi VPN.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Yes.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Or right uh Pi KVM.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Thank you, Pi KVM, thank you.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Uh and so it said, Why don't I just do that?

00:14:14 ◼   ► And I said, Yeah, why don't you just do that?

00:14:17 ◼   ► So now I spent the afternoon after I dropped Marco off at the airport

00:14:21 ◼   ► saying, okay, let's see if that can work.

00:14:24 ◼   ► And it does.

00:14:25 ◼   ► And then I thought to myself, wait a second, this iPhone 15, I think,

00:14:28 ◼   ► is OLED.

00:14:29 ◼   ► I forget where the transition was.

00:14:30 ◼   ► I don't like the idea that this thing is going to be on, even

00:14:33 ◼   ► if dimmed, because I am begging for burn-in, right?

00:14:36 ◼   ► So I said to it, Well hey, can I give you this iPhone's passcode

00:14:40 ◼   ► and can you make the KVM lock it when it's done doing a refresh

00:14:44 ◼   ► and then unlock it when it needs to do a refresh.

00:14:47 ◼   ► And it said, yeah fam, I got you.

00:14:50 ◼   ► And now it's doing that.

00:14:51 ◼   ► So this is hot off the presses like 10 minutes ago.

00:14:55 ◼   ► But I think I've got it.

00:14:56 ◼   ► I think I've got it.

00:14:57 ◼   ► So I use the comet Q, which just lives attached to the phone.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Then the Comet Q so the Comet Q is going into the iPhone's uh

00:15:03 ◼   ► the US V C port.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Comet Q is plugged into power and it passes the power onto the iPhone

00:15:09 ◼   ► and my Mac.

00:15:10 ◼   ► Mini will every like minute or two wake up the phone, unlock it, check

00:15:16 ◼   ► it and see what the state of the world is, and then relock it.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Or if I'd like to lock my car, start climatization, whatever, whatever, it will

00:15:22 ◼   ► unlock the phone, it will do whatever it needs to do and relock it.

00:15:26 ◼   ► And I turned off the always-on display, so the display is completely blank.

00:15:30 ◼   ► This is very early news.

00:15:31 ◼   ► This, you know, I I'm reserving the right to change my mind on this,

00:15:34 ◼   ► but I think I've got it.

00:15:35 ◼   ► And it was all thanks to Marco giving me the comic cue.

00:15:38 ◼   ► So thank you.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Marco.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions.

00:15:41 ◼   ► But I think Claude and I have gotten there.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And let me tell you, I'm not asking you to love AI.

00:15:45 ◼   ► I'm not asking you to think this is the coolest thing in the world.

00:15:48 ◼   ► I'm not, I don't think I think it's coolest thing in the world, but

00:15:51 ◼   ► it's really freaking cool that I was able to make this work.

00:15:54 ◼   ► And I was in the same way that Lex Friedman, you know, has talked

00:15:58 ◼   ► about, I'll try to remember to put his post in the in the show

00:16:00 ◼   ► notes, was talking about how he's kind of uh an author.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Uh uh I think that was the word he used, I might be m

00:16:05 ◼   ► misrepresenting him.

00:16:06 ◼   ► But you know, he was saying I do a lot of almost all my

00:16:08 ◼   ► games and apps and whatnot are LLM coded, but says Lex, I'm the author.

00:16:13 ◼   ► I'm the producer, if you will.

00:16:15 ◼   ► I'm directing them.

00:16:16 ◼   ► And if you don't have me, these apps would be trash.

00:16:18 ◼   ► And this app is trash because I don't care.

00:16:21 ◼   ► I just needed to get stuff into MQTT so home assistant can read it.

00:16:25 ◼   ► But the point is I was able to direct Claude to do exactly what

00:16:29 ◼   ► I wanted it to do.

00:16:30 ◼   ► And in some cases, like saying, stop messing about with the browser, you idiot.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Just go direct to the source.

00:16:35 ◼   ► It was even better than what I could have come up with.

00:16:37 ◼   ► So I'm not asking you to love A AI.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I'm not asking you to think it's greatest thing.

00:16:41 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's the greatest thing but damned if it isn't really freaking

00:16:44 ◼   ► cool.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Okay.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I have so much to say.

00:16:45 ◼   ► All right.

00:16:45 ◼   ► So first Yes sorry, carry on.

00:16:48 ◼   ► First, uh so the GLINET Comic Q.

00:16:50 ◼   ► GLINET actually sent me a Comic Q and one of the other POE ones

00:16:53 ◼   ► um as a freebies.

00:16:54 ◼   ► So thank you for that.

00:16:55 ◼   ► Yeah, they they sent me a couple as a couple of these sorts of

00:16:57 ◼   ► devices as well.

00:16:58 ◼   ► And what happened was I so they uh they have this I had one

00:17:01 ◼   ► Comic Q and one the power over Ethernet one.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Which is great, by the way.

00:17:04 ◼   ► I really love that one a lot.

00:17:05 ◼   ► And the Comic Q I'm like, this is so amazing.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And f and you know, you said it was a rebranded um Pi KVM.

00:17:10 ◼   ► It's more like in the way that Mac OS is rebranded Unix.

00:17:14 ◼   ► It's like it it is based on Pi KVM, but they did a really

00:17:18 ◼   ► nice job around it.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Yeah yeah yeah yeah that's fair.

00:17:20 ◼   ► That's fair.

00:17:20 ◼   ► Um and it's it's a very it's like a much more, you know, polished

00:17:24 ◼   ► finished product than any of the Pi KVM stuff out there, of course you

00:17:27 ◼   ► know what you'd expect.

00:17:27 ◼   ► So anyway I I love the the comic cue so much.

00:17:30 ◼   ► I I plugged it into my data center uh hardware and I'm like, Oh

00:17:33 ◼   ► my god, I want one of these on every one of my Mac mini

00:17:36 ◼   ► locations.

00:17:36 ◼   ► Like right now I keep Mac Minis in three different locations.

00:17:38 ◼   ► I'm like, I want one of these at least one in each location.

00:17:41 ◼   ► Plus what these would have made it so much easier to set them up.

00:17:44 ◼   ► So I want one that I can like bounce around to.

00:17:46 ◼   ► So I go and of course they're back ordered because like when they first

00:17:50 ◼   ► launched uh earlier, I think like August when they launched, um, they were back

00:17:53 ◼   ► ordered forever and I'm like, Oh God.

00:17:54 ◼   ► So I I'm like, I really want another one.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Let me see what eBay is doing.

00:17:58 ◼   ► I I go on eBay and they're selling you know their retail price is

00:18:01 ◼   ► like a hundred and forty bucks or so.

00:18:03 ◼   ► They're on eBay for like one seventy, one seventy five, and I'm like, Oh,

00:18:08 ◼   ► I do I really could use one more at least so I can like

00:18:11 ◼   ► move it around my servers.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Like, let me get one more on eBay and I'm bidding and I bid

00:18:14 ◼   ► all the way up, and at the last minute somebody snipe my bid for

00:18:17 ◼   ► like 175.

00:18:18 ◼   ► I'm like, oh geez.

00:18:20 ◼   ► The next day, they're in stock at Amazon for regular price.

00:18:26 ◼   ► So I had ordered five.

00:18:27 ◼   ► I'm just like, just go.

00:18:28 ◼   ► I just want so many of these.

00:18:31 ◼   ► And as it turns out, I don't need five.

00:18:33 ◼   ► That's why I gave one to Casey.

00:18:34 ◼   ► But I will mention they are at this moment still in stock on Amazon,

00:18:38 ◼   ► actually on sale for only a hundred and nineteen dollars.

00:18:41 ◼   ► And if you are a nerd who needs a KVM of any kind, like

00:18:45 ◼   ► a remote KVM, 'cause the other thing too is like all the the Comet

00:18:48 ◼   ► uh series of KVMs, they are themselves able to run tail scale clients.

00:18:54 ◼   ► So you're able to connect it to your tailnet, and then you can from

00:18:58 ◼   ► anywhere log into this KVM and you know whatever the machine that it's controlling

00:19:02 ◼   ► is, which is very useful because the KVM itself is a tail scale node.

00:19:06 ◼   ► So once you're in like the tail scale ecosystem, if you manage any computers

00:19:11 ◼   ► remotely, especially if you're in like a Mac mini in a closet kind of

00:19:14 ◼   ► situation or somebody else's house or a data center, something like this can be

00:19:19 ◼   ► awesome to save your butt if something breaks screen sharing.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Or if you don't want to leave screen sharing open for maybe macOS security

00:19:26 ◼   ► hole reasons.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Um you can you can not you can just not even have screen sharing

00:19:31 ◼   ► enabled and just use this as the KVM.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Um, you know, obviously you do your own security research and stuff, but like

00:19:38 ◼   ► it's such a fun little product.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Um so I can strongly recommend like if you if you're nerdy enough to

00:19:42 ◼   ► listen to our show, the odds that you are nerdy enough to want one

00:19:45 ◼   ► of these I think is pretty are pretty high.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Um so I would I would snag one while you can.

00:19:50 ◼   ► Um anyway, so yeah, thank you to GLNet for sending the original freebie and

00:19:54 ◼   ► I bought five more and gave one to Casey.

00:19:56 ◼   ► All right.

00:19:56 ◼   ► Um now, you were you just were disclaiming your your AI coding work and

00:20:02 ◼   ► I know look, I'm I'm gonna piss off everybody.

00:20:05 ◼   ► First the Tesla people.

00:20:07 ◼   ► Now they're I'm sure they're they're already writing in.

00:20:11 ◼   ► Um and now everyone else who doesn't like Tesla, you know, they tend to

00:20:16 ◼   ► hate AI.

00:20:17 ◼   ► Um so now I'm gonna piss them off.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Sorry about that.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Um I'll I'll do my best.

00:20:20 ◼   ► But you know, you you said that, you know, like like Lex was saying

00:20:22 ◼   ► that like you know you like being the director of the AI is where

00:20:26 ◼   ► the value is now.

00:20:27 ◼   ► And the more I use AI coding tools, the more I see like

00:20:34 ◼   ► it is obviously not the same thing as like, you know, compare it like

00:20:39 ◼   ► making it making an analogy to assembly language versus higher level languages.

00:20:43 ◼   ► It's it's not quite that.

00:20:44 ◼   ► It's it's a it's a larger and more profound jump than that.

00:20:48 ◼   ► But the reality is that AI generally is not very good at figuring out

00:20:54 ◼   ► what to do on its own.

00:20:57 ◼   ► It is, however, very good at executing on your ideas.

00:21:01 ◼   ► And it's also not very good at doing a lot of polished, nice behavior.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Behaviors, it's not very good at coming up with thoughtful features, it's not very

00:21:09 ◼   ► clever, it's not very good at like making nice designs.

00:21:14 ◼   ► And these are all things that you as the human can be responsible for

00:21:18 ◼   ► making and and directing and coming up with.

00:21:22 ◼   ► What AI is really good at is kind of the worst parts of programming

00:21:26 ◼   ► to a lot of people of like, oh I have to I have to

00:21:29 ◼   ► build this stupid form and I I have to debug this really tricky thing

00:21:33 ◼   ► like it's really great at that.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Uh and that's the parts that we kind of suck at.

00:21:37 ◼   ► It's really bad at the parts that we are good at of like, hey,

00:21:39 ◼   ► what if I had an app that did this?

00:21:41 ◼   ► Like the idea parts.

00:21:42 ◼   ► And

00:21:43 ◼   ► as like first of all, as you know, good idea people but also as

00:21:48 ◼   ► experienced programmers.

00:21:51 ◼   ► We bring skill to using AI that the average person does not have.

00:21:58 ◼   ► And that skill is still valuable, and I don't think we need to be

00:22:01 ◼   ► sorry about using AI.

00:22:02 ◼   ► I I think using AI is helping us deliver great software, but we are

00:22:07 ◼   ► the ones still coming up with the ideas, figuring out what's even good to

00:22:12 ◼   ► do, and then figuring out all the things to ask it to do.

00:22:16 ◼   ► And then when it gives you the results, we are the ones that are

00:22:19 ◼   ► like, This button should not be here.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And this is hey, this feature kind of sucks.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Why don't you move it into this kind of navigation?

00:22:25 ◼   ► Or why this should really be redesigned to you know fit this other pattern

00:22:28 ◼   ► here.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Like we are the ones who know what to ask it to do.

00:22:32 ◼   ► And if you look at the AI assisted coding output like as a product,

00:22:38 ◼   ► what you or I are able to have AI make with us is so

00:22:43 ◼   ► much better than what a random person who has no experience developing software is

00:22:47 ◼   ► able to make.

00:22:47 ◼   ► Because we know what to ask it to do and we know what kind

00:22:51 ◼   ► of standards to hold it to.

00:22:52 ◼   ► People who are like, oh it's useless, like uh anybody could make that with

00:22:56 ◼   ► like it's it's almost like when um it like in the in the abstract

00:23:00 ◼   ► art world, you know, like somebody can make abstract art and a casual observer

00:23:07 ◼   ► can you know, look at some, you know, some painting of some really cool

00:23:11 ◼   ► looking circles and be like, Well, I could have done that.

00:23:14 ◼   ► That sold for twenty thousand dollars.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Ugh.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Anyway, I could have done that.

00:23:18 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, but you didn't do that.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And the person who did that, their artistic contribution was not that they were

00:23:25 ◼   ► the first people to ever think of putting circles on paper.

00:23:28 ◼   ► They put those circles on paper in that way.

00:23:32 ◼   ► They had that idea to do it at that time with those details and

00:23:35 ◼   ► those methods and with that kind of story around it and that kind of

00:23:38 ◼   ► marketing.

00:23:39 ◼   ► And all of that, those are all really important parts of app development and

00:23:44 ◼   ► product making.

00:23:45 ◼   ► There's lotta people out there who who just keep one starring everything I make.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Oh it he said it you made it with AI, so it's how dare

00:23:52 ◼   ► he charge money.

00:23:52 ◼   ► You know, that and these people I uh look, I'm probably gonna be dealing

00:23:55 ◼   ► with these people for the rest of my career.

00:23:56 ◼   ► We all will.

00:23:57 ◼   ► But the reality is what people want is good products that are thoughtfully made

00:24:03 ◼   ► that work well, and that solve their problems or delight them in some way.

00:24:08 ◼   ► It doesn't matter the code.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Whether it's some AI model churning out the actual code behind that doesn't matter

00:24:14 ◼   ► at all to the customers.

00:24:16 ◼   ► All that matters is do we do a do we make something good and

00:24:20 ◼   ► does it work for them or to make them happy or both.

00:24:22 ◼   ► And if AI helps us do that better, that's great for everybody.

00:24:26 ◼   ► I honestly I am past the point of apologizing for using AI.

00:24:31 ◼   ► I don't think any of us should really be apologizing anymore if it helps

00:24:35 ◼   ► us achieve those goals.

00:24:37 ◼   ► And I know that's gonna be a little unpopular, but the the goals speak

00:24:41 ◼   ► for themselves.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Because what almost all those people also want is for us for us to

00:24:45 ◼   ► fix bugs in our software or to not ship them in the first place

00:24:48 ◼   ► or to work on their pet features or it like they they want us

00:24:52 ◼   ► to have the skill and bandwidth that AI gives us.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Uh and but they just, you know, they're uncomfortable with the r with you

00:24:59 ◼   ► know some of the realities of that.

00:25:00 ◼   ► And and I think look, there's only so much we can do to keep

00:25:03 ◼   ► those people on board.

00:25:04 ◼   ► Yeah I I'm sure I've already lost them.

00:25:06 ◼   ► So sorry.

00:25:07 ◼   ► Um and I don't I don't mean to be, you know, flippant about this.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I I I mean this really seriously, that like the skill of making software

00:25:15 ◼   ► is now involving using AI agents to help you.

00:25:19 ◼   ► And that results in more better software.

00:25:23 ◼   ► So that's great.

00:25:25 ◼   ► And I I don't think we need to be apologizing for that.

00:25:29 ◼   ► I mean, I hear you.

00:25:30 ◼   ► And certainly it's been a real help for me in call sheet and I

00:25:36 ◼   ► think that, you know, in tell in talking to my peers and talking Marco

00:25:39 ◼   ► over the last 24 hours and talking to like underscore and talking to other

00:25:42 ◼   ► people, it sure seems like a alm not all of my peers, but a

00:25:45 ◼   ► lot of my peers are actually further along in their AI journey than I

00:25:49 ◼   ► am, and I am a couple of two to four months behind them.

00:25:52 ◼   ► But I can tell you that a lot of great stuff has been delivered

00:25:55 ◼   ► in call sheet that would not have been del just straight up would not

00:25:58 ◼   ► have happened were it not for Claude and Claude Code.

00:26:00 ◼   ► So and they are uh actually a lot of things we've talked about in

00:26:03 ◼   ► this segment are former and potentially future sponsors, Tailscale, I think is coming up

00:26:06 ◼   ► next week.

00:26:07 ◼   ► Claude is sponsored in the past and I think is sponsoring the future.

00:26:10 ◼   ► GLINET has sent us free stuff and never ask for anything.

00:26:12 ◼   ► It's just it ended up that we legitimately like it.

00:26:15 ◼   ► Um so I mean consider that when you you know listen to this segment.

00:26:19 ◼   ► But um genuinely there's a lot of great stuff that I've shipped specifically because

00:26:23 ◼   ► of Claude and and I uh I'm struggling I'm I'm finding it harder to

00:26:28 ◼   ► feel sorry for that, you know.

00:26:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:26:32 ◼   ► John, any thoughts before we move on?

00:26:34 ◼   ► I do not.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Okay.

00:26:37 ◼   ► John is like walking away slow at the homer in the bushes, like just

00:26:41 ◼   ► I'm out.

00:26:41 ◼   ► No, I'm not I d I don't disagree with anything if I disagreed I

00:26:44 ◼   ► would have something to say.

00:26:44 ◼   ► I'd But you know, I'm I'm more or less on the same page.

00:26:46 ◼   ► I mean we've uh if and when I eventually ship the app that I'm

00:26:50 ◼   ► now I'll have more to say about it then, but uh this might be

00:26:53 ◼   ► a while.

00:26:55 ◼   ► All right.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Last week we talked about an air air powered desk video that was very,

00:26:59 ◼   ► very cool and there was some doubt I think from certainly John and me

00:27:02 ◼   ► that maybe this was AI.

00:27:04 ◼   ► We didn't, but maybe.

00:27:05 ◼   ► And Elijah Yap writes in in episode 711, John mentioned the Chinese YouTuber HTX

00:27:09 ◼   ► Studio and his air power inspired desk.

00:27:11 ◼   ► And Elijah also provided I think it was Elijah provided a long form link

00:27:15 ◼   ► to the I think we had had one of those like YouTube shorts in

00:27:18 ◼   ► the show notes.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I found the real link.

00:27:19 ◼   ► Oh, thank you.

00:27:20 ◼   ► All right.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Uh one John Syracuse found the real link.

00:27:22 ◼   ► Anyways, uh Elijah continues, I confirm he's real and not AI.

00:27:25 ◼   ► He even in Interviewed Tim Cook in 2021, and we'll put a link to

00:27:28 ◼   ► that in the show notes.

00:27:30 ◼   ► Uh additionally, Adiko writes the air power table is real.

00:27:33 ◼   ► The video is actually four years old.

00:27:34 ◼   ► It was origin it originally debuted on Billy Billy, I think, uh, which is

00:27:38 ◼   ► apparently Chinese YouTube.

00:27:39 ◼   ► HTX recently started posting their Billy Billy videos translated to English.

00:27:43 ◼   ► The original video has forty million views.

00:27:44 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes to that.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And John also found another video.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Can you tell us about this one, please?

00:27:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:50 ◼   ► I mean, so I've been looking at this channel now.

00:27:52 ◼   ► And by the way, Elijah sent a picture of himself with the person from

00:27:56 ◼   ► the video.

00:27:57 ◼   ► So he knows first hand, real person.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And then you know I'm pretty sure Tim Cook was talking to a real

00:28:01 ◼   ► person too.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Anyway, and that was from 2021.

00:28:03 ◼   ► So pre AI ish.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Um but yeah I was looking other everyone's been sending a look.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Here is their latest video on the channel.

00:28:08 ◼   ► And similar to I when I watched this video, I didn't know the story

00:28:11 ◼   ► about that other video being four years old, but um that makes sense with

00:28:15 ◼   ► the air power reference as well.

00:28:16 ◼   ► But similar to the other uh video, it's like they they make these videos

00:28:20 ◼   ► for Chinese language YouTube and then HTX Studio like other people might even make

00:28:25 ◼   ► them but then HDX Studio takes them and says, Hey, we'll translate them to

00:28:28 ◼   ► English, right?

00:28:29 ◼   ► And so and narrate them and do all that stuff.

00:28:31 ◼   ► So at the beginning of this video, we're gonna like in the show notes,

00:28:33 ◼   ► they say this video is by such and such, and we're English.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Anyway, this is a video about uh high bandwidth memory.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Um and seeing the style of like I watch a lot of like science

00:28:45 ◼   ► technology explainer videos on YouTube.

00:28:47 ◼   ► The the style of this video definitely seems different than the ones I normally

00:28:51 ◼   ► watch.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I'm not, I, you know, I don't know enough to say this is a

00:28:55 ◼   ► Chinese style tech video, 'cause it's one video I've seen.

00:28:57 ◼   ► I have no idea, right?

00:28:58 ◼   ► But it definitely is a slightly different style.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Um and the production value is very high.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Uh and it looks really cool.

00:29:05 ◼   ► And I think they do a good job of explaining it.

00:29:07 ◼   ► And so I'm putting it in the notes just to say hey, if you

00:29:10 ◼   ► want to know about high bandwidth memory, you've heard us talking about it a

00:29:13 ◼   ► lot.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Um, and you know about it because of the RAM apocalypse, and that's all

00:29:17 ◼   ► the uh manufacturers are making high bandwidth memory for AI things.

00:29:20 ◼   ► What is that memory and how is it different than the regular memory that

00:29:23 ◼   ► we have on our computers?

00:29:24 ◼   ► And also some of the technology behind fabrication.

00:29:28 ◼   ► I know we talked uh a while back about the ASML machines and how

00:29:31 ◼   ► they produce uh the light source they use for masking chips and how insane

00:29:35 ◼   ► that process is.

00:29:36 ◼   ► This process isn't as ridiculous, but it does give you an appreciation for what

00:29:40 ◼   ► goes into something as simple as making a memory chip and sticking it on

00:29:44 ◼   ► a big GPU in a data center somewhere and why those things cost $300,000

00:29:48 ◼   ► each, right?

00:29:49 ◼   ► You know, where how could it cost that much money?

00:29:50 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense it they're hard to manufacture.

00:29:52 ◼   ► So anyway, check out the video.

00:29:53 ◼   ► The link will be in the notes.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Yep.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Very good stuff.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Uh we got some feedback with regard to ubiquity home Wi-Fi versus hero.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Uh we talked about this in episode seven tens overtime with regard to Ubiquiti's

00:30:04 ◼   ► new Wi-Fi uh thinger.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Uh anyways, Roland LeBron writes, I got the Ubiquity home Wi Fi thing right

00:30:10 ◼   ► when it was announced.

00:30:11 ◼   ► I was looking at converting my home to Ubiquity Gear for a while, but

00:30:14 ◼   ► I couldn't get from their website.

00:30:15 ◼   ► So this was perfect for me.

00:30:16 ◼   ► It's good starting point in the Ubiquity system.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I've been adding various POE switches in the house since and it's glorious.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Installation was easier than my old CP Link mesh setup.

00:30:24 ◼   ► And yeah, I mean it's it's been really great for me, especially once I've

00:30:28 ◼   ► solved my Sonos issues, which we talked about in the past, but short, short

00:30:31 ◼   ► version, I turned off SonosNet and everything got great.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Uh however, in contrast to that, Miles writes, I switched from Eero to Ubiquity

00:30:37 ◼   ► and I miss Eero greatly.

00:30:38 ◼   ► So much constant tweaking and fiddling is necessary and it doesn't feel as solid,

00:30:41 ◼   ► even with an all-wired backhaul.

00:30:43 ◼   ► I also got the travel router everyone loves, and it conks out constantly.

00:30:45 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm lucky or people just like the amount of control

00:30:47 ◼   ► and info they give you and let the fragility and fickleness uh slide.

00:30:52 ◼   ► I understand to a point what Miles is saying.

00:30:54 ◼   ► That has not been my experience though.

00:30:55 ◼   ► I traveled last week to the podcast a thon which, oh by the way,

00:30:59 ◼   ► I meant to put this in the show notes.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Thank you to everyone who donated.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Uh I forgot I don't have the numbers in front of to put it

00:31:04 ◼   ► in the show notes, but it was something to the effect of like $756,000

00:31:07 ◼   ► for the year or for the for the campaign.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Uh we're like just so short, it's so close to 5.6 million lifetime, I

00:31:16 ◼   ► believe.

00:31:16 ◼   ► And I really, really, really want to thank all of the ATP listeners who've

00:31:19 ◼   ► even considered donating.

00:31:20 ◼   ► It's very kind of you, and I really appreciate it.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Anyways uh I when I was in Memphis, I used both my UTR and

00:31:25 ◼   ► UTR LR, which we'll talk about in a pre-show in 10 weeks when I

00:31:29 ◼   ► finally get there.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Uh, and they all worked great.

00:31:31 ◼   ► Uh so I'm not saying Miles is wrong.

00:31:33 ◼   ► I'm not saying that's not what their experience was, but for me, it's been

00:31:36 ◼   ► great.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And I haven't other crummy experiences.

00:31:39 ◼   ► Certainly, your or excuse me, Ubiquity is way more fiddly, but I don't actively

00:31:45 ◼   ► fiddle with things unless I desire to.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Like I I wouldn't say I'm doing maintenance or anything like that.

00:31:50 ◼   ► Yeah I think ubiquity gives you a lot of fiddling that you can do,

00:31:54 ◼   ► but you don't need to.

00:31:56 ◼   ► Uh you used to need to like it it used to be a lot

00:31:58 ◼   ► harder to set up a ubiquity system.

00:32:00 ◼   ► It was much harder to know what to buy.

00:32:02 ◼   ► It was much harder to set it up because it w you know was

00:32:04 ◼   ► it was much less polished.

00:32:06 ◼   ► Now it's really like the the app is super easy it's really well done.

00:32:11 ◼   ► Like, yeah, I mean I I wouldn't like, you know, send a router to

00:32:15 ◼   ► totally non technical people to set up, but honestly, I don't think I'd do

00:32:18 ◼   ► that sh for any brand of router.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Um it it's just ubiquity stuff is really good now and it's way nicer

00:32:24 ◼   ► to use than it used to be.

00:32:27 ◼   ► I put these two in there.

00:32:28 ◼   ► There were a couple of other feedbacks on on both sides of this, just

00:32:30 ◼   ► to show that the same product can get such different reactions from people.

00:32:34 ◼   ► And I mean I I'm not since I don't have personal experience with this,

00:32:37 ◼   ► I can't say who's closer to being right.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Um, but I d one theory that seems plausible to me is that because

00:32:42 ◼   ► there are a lot of things to fiddle, sometimes people will go fiddle with

00:32:46 ◼   ► things that they shouldn't be fiddling with, and that causes a problem, and then

00:32:48 ◼   ► future fiddling to fix the fiddling, you know what I mean?

00:32:51 ◼   ► Like enough rope to hang yourself kind of thing.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Where I mean I'm not sure if that's going on or whether things really

00:32:57 ◼   ► are flaky.

00:32:57 ◼   ► I mean things like the travel router, there's not much to fiddle with anyway.

00:33:00 ◼   ► So I don't understand why that would be flaky.

00:33:01 ◼   ► But anyway, I do hear both sides of this, and people people say, I

00:33:05 ◼   ► mean, these are totally, totally opposite experiences.

00:33:08 ◼   ► And of course you two uh are both uh in favor of it as

00:33:10 ◼   ► well.

00:33:10 ◼   ► But I still hold up Casey's situation as an example of a sort of

00:33:15 ◼   ► a miles type of thing.

00:33:16 ◼   ► And you're like, oh, I turned off Sonosnet and it was fine.

00:33:18 ◼   ► But here's you didn't have to turn off Sonosnet when you had Euro.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Why?

00:33:21 ◼   ► Like is is Eero work is Eero working around the crappiness whereas Ubiquity is

00:33:25 ◼   ► just sti sticking to the straight and narrow?

00:33:27 ◼   ► Like I don't I don't know the answer to those questions, but I do

00:33:30 ◼   ► know that the two first people I knew who dealt with ubiquity, one had

00:33:33 ◼   ► this weird experience where it wasn't as good as zero in a way that

00:33:36 ◼   ► really mattered to them until they figured out a workaround and that doesn't fill

00:33:39 ◼   ► me with confidence.

00:33:40 ◼   ► But you know, anyway, I'm I'm not in the market for one, but I

00:33:43 ◼   ► will still definitely keep my eye on this because I like the tech specs

00:33:46 ◼   ► and uh I you know, I don't mind a little bit of fiddling.

00:33:48 ◼   ► So I will consider this for four years from now when I replace my

00:33:51 ◼   ► Wi Fi setup again.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I if I recall correctly, um shoot I can't remember the acronym.

00:33:56 ◼   ► I believe it starts with an S, but basically there's some sort of thing

00:34:00 ◼   ► that lets you kind of cross between networks and and assign priorities to different

00:34:04 ◼   ► network nodes where you uh was Yeah, right.

00:34:08 ◼   ► Uh Eero was way more forgiving and Sonos's implementation was straight up incorrect.

00:34:13 ◼   ► And Eero would roll with it.

00:34:15 ◼   ► I think in part because it just didn't really care about that sort of

00:34:17 ◼   ► thing, because it wasn't it wasn't um not smart enough, but I can't think

00:34:21 ◼   ► of a better turn of phrase, but it wasn't smart enough to care about

00:34:24 ◼   ► these sorts of things.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Whereas Ubiquity does care about those sorts of things.

00:34:28 ◼   ► And because uh Sonos's implementation was unequivocally wrong, it caused problems.

00:34:33 ◼   ► Um and so what ended up happening was when I s when I told

00:34:37 ◼   ► the Sonos to stop trying to make your own faux network within the actual

00:34:42 ◼   ► network, everything worked great.

00:34:44 ◼   ► And so I understand why Sonos was acting the way it was.

00:34:47 ◼   ► I'm I'm sad that it took them this long to finally do the switch

00:34:50 ◼   ► or the pr provide a switch to turn off SonosNet.

00:34:53 ◼   ► But once they did, it's

00:34:55 ◼   ► but I I hear what you're saying, John.

00:34:56 ◼   ► And yeah, like that's definitely a consumer thing of like some product is doing

00:34:59 ◼   ► something wrong, but you've got to deal with it.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Like 'cause you're a consumer product and people are going to complain that some

00:35:03 ◼   ► of the scrap doesn't work, so fix it.

00:35:04 ◼   ► And Ubiquity is more of like, Well, they're ones that are wrong, why don't

00:35:07 ◼   ► they just fix their stuff?

00:35:07 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:35:08 ◼   ► Yeah, they're they're the no talent ass clown.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Why should I change?

00:35:11 ◼   ► He's there it is.

00:35:12 ◼   ► So that's that's a di a i a different mindset, but you know, who

00:35:14 ◼   ► knows?

00:35:14 ◼   ► Maybe Ubiquity's coming over to the other side and they're gonna start doing weird,

00:35:17 ◼   ► weird workarounds for broken consumer products too.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Yeah, you never know.

00:35:21 ◼   ► All right, continuing on as we try to speed run the m rest of

00:35:24 ◼   ► this, because I can tell John is very upset with me.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Uh one AirPod versus two AirPod audio settings.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Uh we've been been talking about this with regards to some to some funky

00:35:32 ◼   ► noises when you go mono?

00:35:34 ◼   ► Is that right, John?

00:35:34 ◼   ► Remind me what the situation was here.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Yeah, like when you only have one AirPod in it was it was in

00:35:39 ◼   ► transparency mode and then my finger would touch the microphone or it would make

00:35:41 ◼   ► a fuzzy noise.

00:35:42 ◼   ► I we talked about this last week seemed like I had solved my problem.

00:35:45 ◼   ► But then everyone was writing in saying, uh, hey, I did the thing that

00:35:48 ◼   ► you said, uh, where there's like one AirPod mode and two AirPod mode, but

00:35:52 ◼   ► it turns out in one AirPod mode I have very limited options.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Well there's a setting for that too and I forgot to mention it.

00:35:57 ◼   ► All right.

00:35:58 ◼   ► So if you go into settings, accessibility, airpods, and then choose your AirPods, there's

00:36:02 ◼   ► a noise control section.

00:36:04 ◼   ► And within that section, there is noise cancellation with on one AirPod on or

00:36:08 ◼   ► off.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And if you don't, it's off by default.

00:36:11 ◼   ► And if you don't turn it on, you don't even get the option to

00:36:14 ◼   ► do noise canceling with one AirPod.

00:36:16 ◼   ► It the only options you get are off in transparency, which is another reason

00:36:19 ◼   ► people thought, Oh, one AirPod is always transparency.

00:36:21 ◼   ► It's not.

00:36:22 ◼   ► That's just the default.

00:36:23 ◼   ► And it is a fairly constrained default because your only other choice is off.

00:36:26 ◼   ► But if you turn on this accessibility option, then you have all the options.

00:36:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:30 ◼   ► I had no idea that that like I I knew that it was by

00:36:33 ◼   ► default, it would always go transparency, like when you took one of your one

00:36:35 ◼   ► of your butt out.

00:36:36 ◼   ► And I knew that there was an option to turn that off but I

00:36:38 ◼   ► did not know that detail that like, well, if you want this other behavior,

00:36:42 ◼   ► like yeah, it's it's kind of a mess.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Yeah and of course this is spread in like seven different places and not

00:36:46 ◼   ► explained anywhere or whatever, but just that's what this podcast is for.

00:36:48 ◼   ► So just so you know, it seems to me from what I've been able

00:36:51 ◼   ► to tell there are in fact two different settings.

00:36:52 ◼   ► There's the one AirPod setting and the two AirPod setting.

00:36:54 ◼   ► And then the one AirPod setting is artificially constrained by having an extra option

00:36:58 ◼   ► into accessibility that you have to turn on to get more options there.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Fun.

00:37:02 ◼   ► All right.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Uh John, you have done the unthinkable and you've beaten me to it, and

00:37:07 ◼   ► I am in my own head, I'm playing taps as we speak.

00:37:11 ◼   ► What have you done?

00:37:12 ◼   ► Yeah, well, so for reasons that listeners to recdiffs know, I've been spending a

00:37:16 ◼   ► lot of time on phone with customer support and that continues and I guess

00:37:20 ◼   ► I just kinda get you know, you know when you're like cleaning, you're well

00:37:23 ◼   ► I'm cleaning, I might as well clean all the things.

00:37:25 ◼   ► If I'm gonna be stuck on the phone listening to whole music and and

00:37:27 ◼   ► dealing with customer support, shouldn't I also do the thing where I call Verizon

00:37:31 ◼   ► and and deal with my cable card discontinuation?

00:37:35 ◼   ► Like November fifth is the cutoff date, isn't it?

00:37:38 ◼   ► I think I don't remember off the end.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Anyway, to to g catch everyone up, uh Verizon uh is my ISP and

00:37:43 ◼   ► they are dropping support for cable card, which is how my TiVo gets its

00:37:46 ◼   ► television signal.

00:37:47 ◼   ► They're dropping support because the law that required them to support it lapsed and

00:37:51 ◼   ► was not renewed.

00:37:52 ◼   ► And so they don't support it anymore.

00:37:54 ◼   ► And so they're not.

00:37:55 ◼   ► So they basically said, hey, we were forced to give you this cable card

00:37:57 ◼   ► and you enjoyed a decade or two of amazing third-party products that made our

00:38:01 ◼   ► uh TV product better, but that time is over.

00:38:04 ◼   ► Your cable card will no longer be supported.

00:38:06 ◼   ► If you want to keep getting television from us, you're finally going to have

00:38:09 ◼   ► to let us put a stupid box in your house, which is essentially just

00:38:11 ◼   ► a

00:38:13 ◼   ► much worse uh, you know, uh TCP IP based video streaming box uh branded

00:38:19 ◼   ► by Verizon.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And I don't want to do that.

00:38:21 ◼   ► So my plan was all right, I'll just, you know, before November 5th, I'll

00:38:24 ◼   ► call them up and I'll try to get rid of my TV service.

00:38:28 ◼   ► I tried on the website before that, you know, can I just see if

00:38:31 ◼   ► I if I drop down to like the cheapest TV service they have or

00:38:35 ◼   ► something?

00:38:35 ◼   ► And it kept telling me that my bill would go up and not down.

00:38:37 ◼   ► So I'm like, I'm gonna have to call.

00:38:39 ◼   ► But you know, you don't wanna call Verizon.

00:38:40 ◼   ► So my plan was to wait sometime between when they gave us the November

00:38:43 ◼   ► fifth date and the date itself, somewhere in the middle, because I didn't be

00:38:47 ◼   ► doing it on November fourth when everyone else is scrambling and they're all messed

00:38:50 ◼   ► up and I didn't want to do it when they sent the email to

00:38:52 ◼   ► everybody.

00:38:52 ◼   ► So here we are, kind of in the middle.

00:38:54 ◼   ► I called them.

00:38:56 ◼   ► A nice person uh at Verizon after uh penetrating their various systems to get

00:39:00 ◼   ► to a human being, um told me uh that I could save money by

00:39:04 ◼   ► not having TV uh, you know, because that's what I asked.

00:39:06 ◼   ► Like can you just get rid of the TV?

00:39:07 ◼   ► Am I allowed to do that?

00:39:08 ◼   ► I said, Yeah, sure.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Um, because and they they noted some that I had some ancient plan and

00:39:13 ◼   ► they noted I had been a customer forever and stuff like that.

00:39:15 ◼   ► I'm like yeah I know.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Um they said what everyone else what the email said and what everyone else

00:39:20 ◼   ► who has done this said, which is normally we want your uh equipment back.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Don't even bother, just keep the cable cards.

00:39:27 ◼   ► They're yours.

00:39:29 ◼   ► We don't even want 'em.

00:39:30 ◼   ► Recycle 'em, do whatever you want.

00:39:32 ◼   ► We you can't even return them to us.

00:39:34 ◼   ► We don't want them back.

00:39:35 ◼   ► So thanks for that.

00:39:36 ◼   ► That's how much they hate the cable car.

00:39:38 ◼   ► That's that's right.

00:39:38 ◼   ► What are they gonna do with them though?

00:39:39 ◼   ► It's useless.

00:39:40 ◼   ► It's just recycling.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Um uh yeah, so they uh and I all at first I said, Isn't

00:39:45 ◼   ► there there's not a way that I could have like a really cheap TV

00:39:49 ◼   ► plan without having any Verizon equipment in my house?

00:39:52 ◼   ► And they said no, there's that's not a thing that you can do anymore.

00:39:55 ◼   ► So I'm like, all right, fine, just kill the TV entirely.

00:39:57 ◼   ► We used to call that cutting the cord, which never made a lot of

00:40:00 ◼   ► sense and has made increasingly less sense as time has gone on.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Um, because obviously no cords are being severed.

00:40:09 ◼   ► Although it is funny, when I first moved into this house, the people who

00:40:11 ◼   ► owned this house before me had uh RCN internet.

00:40:15 ◼   ► I don't even know if they still exist or somebody bought them, but they

00:40:17 ◼   ► had RCN uh cable-based internet.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And uh they had canceled that service apparently.

00:40:23 ◼   ► And I know this because outside the house where the R C N coaxial

00:40:26 ◼   ► cables came in, they were literally cut, like cut ends of the cable were

00:40:29 ◼   ► sticking up.

00:40:30 ◼   ► I saw where they had cut them.

00:40:32 ◼   ► Like, wow.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Someone really did cut the cord.

00:40:35 ◼   ► But anyway, uh the fiber operated cable that comes into my house that uh

00:40:38 ◼   ► is currently or was providing television, telephone, and internet has not been cut, thankfully,

00:40:44 ◼   ► and still exists.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Only now it just provides internet and telephone.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And yes, I still have a quote unquote landline telephone.

00:40:51 ◼   ► Don't add me as they say.

00:40:52 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:40:53 ◼   ► I I have a cool number, I want to keep it.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Um That's you know you can transfer those anyway.

00:40:58 ◼   ► Yeah, everyone's like you can transfer that to a voiceover IP, but honestly the

00:41:01 ◼   ► voiceover IP things weren't any cheaper than what Verizon is giving.

00:41:04 ◼   ► You know, like I could transfer one and it would be a big hassle

00:41:07 ◼   ► and it would cost me the same amount per month.

00:41:08 ◼   ► So I I looked into it.

00:41:10 ◼   ► I done didn't see a lot of savings there.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Um anyway.

00:41:13 ◼   ► So yeah, now I have no more TV and my bill was reduced.

00:41:17 ◼   ► My monthly bill will or will be reduced once the new monthly bill comes

00:41:21 ◼   ► from 250 per month to drum roll 100 per month.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Not bad.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Pretty good.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Pretty, pretty good.

00:41:29 ◼   ► And they also said, and by the way, uh, we have a new five

00:41:32 ◼   ► gigabits PhIOS option.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Oh

00:41:36 ◼   ► and I said, How much more per month is that?

00:41:37 ◼   ► And they said it's ten dollars more per month.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Fee, John.

00:41:41 ◼   ► Oh, I'm so mad at you Do you remember?

00:41:43 ◼   ► 'Cause you know, they're do they're doing the to to the to the credit

00:41:45 ◼   ► of the person who I talked to of Verizon they did not try to

00:41:48 ◼   ► convince me not to cancel my TV service.

00:41:50 ◼   ► They didn't do anything, but they try did try one upsell and I was

00:41:53 ◼   ► a s receptive to that potential upsell of the ten you know, try to

00:41:57 ◼   ► sell this person more and faster internet access.

00:41:59 ◼   ► But here's the thing.

00:42:00 ◼   ► Two things.

00:42:01 ◼   ► One, they have to come into your ass and change the equipment.

00:42:03 ◼   ► I'm really?

00:42:04 ◼   ► I just got the equipment changed for the one gigabit upgrade.

00:42:06 ◼   ► Didn't seem that long ago.

00:42:07 ◼   ► This this equipment can't handle five.

00:42:09 ◼   ► They said, yeah, we need to go in and change the little box with

00:42:12 ◼   ► probably an even smaller box.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Um And two, I can't use five gigabyte Ethernet.

00:42:18 ◼   ► All my whole home network is one gigabit.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I don't have any switches.

00:42:22 ◼   ► I don't even have 2.5 gig switches.

00:42:23 ◼   ► I have everything is one gigabit in my house.

00:42:25 ◼   ► So I just tuck that one into my back pockets.

00:42:27 ◼   ► Okay.

00:42:28 ◼   ► See, I do not actually have five gigabit per second PhIOS for both of

00:42:32 ◼   ► those reasons.

00:42:32 ◼   ► One, uh it's required someone to come to house and change equipment, but two,

00:42:36 ◼   ► I would need to change all my switches.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Uh and it's not that many.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Like I have maybe have three switches that I would have to upgrade.

00:42:42 ◼   ► I could probably leave like the the TV entertainment center as a one gigabit

00:42:45 ◼   ► switch because who cares?

00:42:46 ◼   ► But the computer room and the Synology and like, you know, I might need

00:42:50 ◼   ► to fish out all the cable.

00:42:51 ◼   ► I don't know the cable could handle five gigabits.

00:42:53 ◼   ► I don't remember if it's cat six or cat five E.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Um uh but yeah, I'm gonna before everybody writes in, we know cat five

00:42:59 ◼   ► E can do faster over shorter distances.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Go ahead and well it but it's a pretty long distance.

00:43:04 ◼   ► I'm uh a hundred feet.

00:43:05 ◼   ► Uh it's a long like and it's not coiled up somewhere it's a hundred

00:43:08 ◼   ► legit hundred feet because of course the five The fiber optic cable comes into

00:43:11 ◼   ► my house at the far opposite corner of where I'm sitting right now.

00:43:14 ◼   ► So there's a significant amount of routing through the basement to get to where

00:43:18 ◼   ► I am.

00:43:18 ◼   ► So anyway, um, the main barrier is like I haven't really found any even

00:43:23 ◼   ► 2.5 gig or or 5 gig switches that are uh inexpensive and not hot

00:43:29 ◼   ► and don't have fans and are reliable and blah blah blah.

00:43:31 ◼   ► So I'm just gonna let this sit for a while.

00:43:33 ◼   ► But it's good to know that if and when I decide that one gigabit

00:43:37 ◼   ► uh internet is not fast enough for me.

00:43:39 ◼   ► This is out there waiting for me and I'm excited about that.

00:43:42 ◼   ► I'm very jealous that the five gig is there.

00:43:44 ◼   ► I looked like a month or two ago and we couldn't even get two

00:43:46 ◼   ► gig internet here.

00:43:47 ◼   ► So I am jealous.

00:43:48 ◼   ► But I can tell you that my ubiquity equipment a small, small amount of

00:43:53 ◼   ► it, is ten gig capable.

00:43:55 ◼   ► So I have ten gigabit betwe uh not e internet, but uh intranet between

00:44:00 ◼   ► my computer and my Synology.

00:44:02 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:44:03 ◼   ► And I think I have one more port available that can go more than

00:44:06 ◼   ► uh one gigabit, I believe.

00:44:08 ◼   ► I I have to figure over time that the the you know that type

00:44:11 ◼   ► of speed will come down in price to more consumer things.

00:44:15 ◼   ► It'll be used, you know, chips will be fabbed on a better process someday,

00:44:18 ◼   ► you know, the things won't be as hot, they won't need as many fans

00:44:20 ◼   ► or ideally any fans and just like uh gigabit switches used to be expensive

00:44:25 ◼   ► way back in the day and now they're just commodity junk that you can

00:44:27 ◼   ► find anywhere.

00:44:28 ◼   ► That'll happen with two point five gig and five gig and ten gig eventually.

00:44:31 ◼   ► So maybe I will upgrade eventually.

00:44:33 ◼   ► I'm just keeping that one in my back pocket for now.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I it's funny, like I honestly like I cannot think of any reason

00:44:39 ◼   ► why I would need faster than gigabit.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Like I don't I I don't want to like buggate myself here.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Like I I don't think I'd need that for anything.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Po uh no I wouldn't say ever, but like I I am never limited

00:44:52 ◼   ► by my gigabit speed.

00:44:53 ◼   ► However, it's always the server on the other end that's like you weren't I'm

00:44:56 ◼   ► it's it's very difficult to max out my connection during normal work.

00:45:00 ◼   ► You really need to do some sort of like peer peer-to-peer bit torrent or

00:45:03 ◼   ► Steam download or something to really actually saturate my gigabit.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And it's a faster connection, it would just be even harder for me to

00:45:10 ◼   ► find things on the other on the wider internet that can fill that pipe.

00:45:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:13 ◼   ► But uh however of course I want it.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Like there's there's no reason uh ten dollars a month, yeah.

00:45:20 ◼   ► If I had the routers I would have immediately upgraded.

00:45:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:22 ◼   ► I would it like I would definitely pay the ten dollars a month and

00:45:25 ◼   ► just start like, you know, buying hundreds of dollars worth of new switches

00:45:32 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:33 ◼   ► Like I would definitely like that would definitely trigger like an upgrade of all

00:45:36 ◼   ► the switch infrastructure of it.

00:45:39 ◼   ► And I really don't need it.

00:45:40 ◼   ► And that's that's a thing.

00:45:41 ◼   ► But boy would that be cool.

00:45:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:43 ◼   ► No, I I I feel like I mostly agree with you, but the one

00:45:46 ◼   ► thing that consistently, consistently maxes out my downstream bandwidth, downloading a new Xcode every

00:45:53 ◼   ► time.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:45:55 ◼   ► I I don't have great luck with Apple.

00:45:56 ◼   ► People's stupid Akamai, CDN, whatever thing they're every time.

00:45:59 ◼   ► You don't get the best speeds from them.

00:46:01 ◼   ► You know what this means, Casey?

00:46:02 ◼   ► We need this for our work.

00:46:04 ◼   ► We need it for our work.

00:46:05 ◼   ► That's exactly right.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Well uh unlike of the other consumer products that you can buy, you can't

00:46:09 ◼   ► just actually choose to have five gigabit fiots you got away from.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Verizon or some other uh ISP to offer it in your area.

00:46:15 ◼   ► Yeah, the only other choice we have around here is uh Comcast, and it's

00:46:19 ◼   ► never gonna be that fast, or at least not symmetric anyway.

00:46:23 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:46:23 ◼   ► That's all right.

00:46:24 ◼   ► All right, so speaking of TiVo, uh they're getting a little desperate, John.

00:46:27 ◼   ► I wonder why.

00:46:27 ◼   ► Uh you got an interesting e uh email recently.

00:46:29 ◼   ► Can you tell me about this?

00:46:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not gonna read the whole email, but it was like kind of

00:46:33 ◼   ► coincident with uh me deciding to make this call.

00:46:35 ◼   ► They sent out an email to all their existing customer or their remaining customers

00:46:39 ◼   ► let's say, and said, Hey, you know that feature where you can skip commercials

00:46:42 ◼   ► by hitting a button, uh, we're gonna charge money for that now.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Which is hilarious.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Like it the the whole, you know, not to rewind all of D VR

00:46:50 ◼   ► history, but like replay TV came out and let you skip commercials and they

00:46:53 ◼   ► got sued out of existence.

00:46:54 ◼   ► And TiVo was like, We don't let you skip commercials, we just let you

00:46:56 ◼   ► skip forward thirty seconds.

00:46:57 ◼   ► It just so happens that most commercials come in multiples of thirty seconds.

00:47:00 ◼   ► So hit the buttons as many times as you want, right?

00:47:02 ◼   ► Um eventually, late, late in the life of TiVo, TiVo said, You know what?

00:47:06 ◼   ► Let's just give them a button to skip commercials.

00:47:08 ◼   ► We know where the commercials are.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Let's just let's just give them a button.

00:47:10 ◼   ► And so they made one button on their remote skip all the commercials.

00:47:13 ◼   ► So what used to be knowing how many times you had to hit 30

00:47:16 ◼   ► seconds skip, and often was also like, enter the secret code to enable 30

00:47:20 ◼   ► second skip.

00:47:20 ◼   ► Anyway, um, they just gave you one button in the remote that would skip

00:47:23 ◼   ► all the commercials, and that was pretty cool.

00:47:25 ◼   ► And yeah, now that they're taking their remaining customers to say, Hey, do you

00:47:29 ◼   ► happen to live somewhere that can still use TiVo?

00:47:31 ◼   ► Maybe using TiVo over the air because they can do it over the air

00:47:33 ◼   ► as well.

00:47:33 ◼   ► So if you're using Tivo with an antenna, but you still have commercials, we

00:47:36 ◼   ► know where the commercials are.

00:47:38 ◼   ► And we were giving you a button to skip them, but now we're gonna

00:47:40 ◼   ► charge you a fee.

00:47:41 ◼   ► So instead of you watching commercials and like people making money by showing you

00:47:45 ◼   ► ads, we're gonna charge you money to skip those commercials.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And if TiVo was in any way relevant in the world, they would be

00:47:52 ◼   ► sued out of existence.

00:47:53 ◼   ► But no one cares about them anymore.

00:47:54 ◼   ► So they'll probably with this right before they die.

00:47:58 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Coex.

00:48:01 ◼   ► So imagine you're a child of the eighties and nineties, like I don't know,

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00:50:05 ◼   ► All right.

00:50:05 ◼   ► So we have a bunch of details about the M6 and A20.

00:50:08 ◼   ► And I could take a stab at this, but I think it's served for

00:50:12 ◼   ► John.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Why don't you just uh take us through this, please?

00:50:14 ◼   ► Yeah, this is from the high yield and semi-analysis YouTube channels.

00:50:18 ◼   ► And YouTube does this weird thing where you're okay, what channel is this from?

00:50:21 ◼   ► So I can put it in the notes.

00:50:22 ◼   ► And it shows it as being attributed to both.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Like they have like some kind of collaboration feature.

00:50:26 ◼   ► So I don't even know which like which channel is the primary channel for

00:50:29 ◼   ► this, but I'm telling you what it says.

00:50:30 ◼   ► We'll link in the show notes.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Obviously, we'll also include timestamp links to the sections that we're going to talk

00:50:35 ◼   ► about.

00:50:35 ◼   ► But suffice it to say, I think one of these channels is the place

00:50:38 ◼   ► that like gets the chips and cuts them open, right?

00:50:40 ◼   ► And the other channel is someone who gives like commentary and analysis.

00:50:43 ◼   ► And I'm not sure which is which.

00:50:45 ◼   ► But anyway, they got the chips and cut them open, which is what we

00:50:48 ◼   ► always want to do.

00:50:49 ◼   ► It's like, let's see what the heck is in there.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And obviously, once they do that, they're using informed not gonna say speculation, but

00:50:57 ◼   ► educated guesses about what everything is.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And some things are very sure, but this is definitely this, this is definitely

00:51:01 ◼   ► that.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And other parts of the chip they say in the videos, like, we don't

00:51:05 ◼   ► know what this is, and we're not gonna guess.

00:51:07 ◼   ► So there is a large amount of unlabeled area, but it's probably this stuff.

00:51:11 ◼   ► But anyway, here are some tidbits.

00:51:13 ◼   ► I've I've pulled the highlights that I thought were interesting from this video again

00:51:16 ◼   ► with timestamp links.

00:51:18 ◼   ► So the first bit is that the M6 uses the same super cores as

00:51:22 ◼   ► the A20 Pro, and also the same E cores as the A20 Pro, with

00:51:26 ◼   ► only small changes, likely due to chipped area optimizations rather than core differences, according

00:51:30 ◼   ► to the video.

00:51:31 ◼   ► So that answers the question we kept speculating about and has changed over time.

00:51:34 ◼   ► It used to be that the M-chips would have the like the big the

00:51:39 ◼   ► you know they weren't called super cores then, but the big the power cores

00:51:42 ◼   ► from the previous phone chip.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And then when the new phone chip comes out, it would be one core

00:51:46 ◼   ► generation ahead of the M chips.

00:51:48 ◼   ► But since then, the scheduling of everything having to do with silicon from Apple

00:51:52 ◼   ► has just been all over the map.

00:51:54 ◼   ► And right now the M six and the A twenty pro are in sync.

00:51:57 ◼   ► They've got the same supercores and the same e cores.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Question and again, we'll put a link in the show notes to a stamp

00:52:03 ◼   ► stamp.

00:52:03 ◼   ► You know that because they look exactly the same when you when you cut

00:52:07 ◼   ► the chips open and you look at them like there's a very sort of

00:52:09 ◼   ► telltale pattern.

00:52:09 ◼   ► You can just eyeball and go, yeah, that's the same.

00:52:11 ◼   ► I see that's the same core.

00:52:13 ◼   ► Um so there's that answer.

00:52:15 ◼   ► Second, the A20 Pros e cores have eight megabytes of L2 cache.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And they go through this in the video.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Trying to label the cache levels as L1, L two, L3, L4.

00:52:26 ◼   ► It's difficult because Apple keeps adding layers.

00:52:28 ◼   ► So now they're like, this is L2P.

00:52:30 ◼   ► P versus regular L2 because they don't want to go like L5.

00:52:33 ◼   ► L.

00:52:34 ◼   ► There's a lot of cash in these chips.

00:52:35 ◼   ► But anyway, the the A20 uh Pro cores have eight megabytes of L2 cache.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And that is the L2 cache in the phone chip and the pro phone

00:52:44 ◼   ► chip has been on quite a journey.

00:52:46 ◼   ► The A eighteen pro four megabytes, the A nineteen pro six megabytes, the A

00:52:49 ◼   ► twenty pro eight megabytes.

00:52:51 ◼   ► That is not a normal progression for the amount of cash and it let

00:52:54 ◼   ► me just tell you, because cash on chip takes space and it costs a

00:52:57 ◼   ► lot of money because it takes space and it's not the same as the

00:52:59 ◼   ► RAM that in the RAM chips or whatever.

00:53:02 ◼   ► So Apple has apparently found that giving more cash to the e cores in

00:53:07 ◼   ► particular is beneficial and it is doubled in only a couple of years.

00:53:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:11 ◼   ► Well, it makes a huge difference to performance usually.

00:53:13 ◼   ► Like that that's why it's a big deal when chips increase the caches, because

00:53:18 ◼   ► it it usually helps performance substantially.

00:53:20 ◼   ► And it's it's a way that Apple will often use it to give a

00:53:24 ◼   ► chip generation a boost where the core itself didn't get that much better, like

00:53:31 ◼   ► in kind of non-cacheable or non-cache workloads.

00:53:34 ◼   ► But they like uh and oftentimes it is like during a process shrink like

00:53:37 ◼   ► this, where like, oh, we have more real estate to spend now because of

00:53:39 ◼   ► the process shrink, we can throw more cash at it, and that makes the

00:53:43 ◼   ► speed difference even better for most workloads.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:47 ◼   ► And the tricky bit with cash is it's like I mean, Apple has less

00:53:51 ◼   ► of this problem than other people, but you're like, how much is the right

00:53:53 ◼   ► amount of cash for what level cash?

00:53:55 ◼   ► For what course?

00:53:56 ◼   ► For blah blah blah.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Like what is the right amount?

00:53:58 ◼   ► And so that's why you end up with something like A team with four.

00:54:01 ◼   ► They're like, you know, I I I didn't look up what the 17 was,

00:54:03 ◼   ► but then they go to A nineteen and be like, We think the e

00:54:06 ◼   ► cores can benefit from more cash.

00:54:07 ◼   ► So they go to A nineteen and they go to six.

00:54:09 ◼   ► And like what they're looking for is like, Okay, we don't we can't just

00:54:12 ◼   ► say like, Oh, just give it as much as it wants, because every every

00:54:15 ◼   ► tiny little square millimeter on that chip is so precious and so expensive.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Any millimeter you use for cash is not used for something else.

00:54:21 ◼   ► So you really wanna wisely.

00:54:22 ◼   ► You don't wanna give like the e cores this huge amount of cash and

00:54:25 ◼   ► like turns out they use like one eighth of it.

00:54:27 ◼   ► It's just a waste of space, a waste of power it's a waste of

00:54:30 ◼   ► everything.

00:54:30 ◼   ► So you're cautious, like let's go from four to six.

00:54:33 ◼   ► But then they said, actually, six wasn't enough.

00:54:35 ◼   ► We should give them more.

00:54:36 ◼   ► Like and they're determining from real world use, like how much of that cash

00:54:39 ◼   ► are they using?

00:54:40 ◼   ► How much does it benefit?

00:54:41 ◼   ► And you know, with simulations and stuff like that.

00:54:43 ◼   ► But also like what are real workloads that are running on our phone chips?

00:54:46 ◼   ► Do they actually benefit from more cash?

00:54:48 ◼   ► Does it make them faster?

00:54:49 ◼   ► Does it make them more power efficient?

00:54:50 ◼   ► Like whatever.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Does it produce less heat?

00:54:52 ◼   ► Does they have to go to DRAM less often?

00:54:54 ◼   ► And so they've decided from the A18 to the A twenty that the e-cores

00:54:58 ◼   ► need double the amount of uh cache.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And uh in comparison, if you look at the shared S slash P core

00:55:03 ◼   ► L2 cache that has stayed at 16 megabytes that entire time.

00:55:06 ◼   ► So the e-cores got went from four to six to eight.

00:55:09 ◼   ► And the SP cores, 16.

00:55:11 ◼   ► That seems to be the right amount.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Uh you know, and it's obviously it's more, right?

00:55:14 ◼   ► But the right amount for them.

00:55:15 ◼   ► So keep an eye on the caches, let's you know where Apple feels like

00:55:18 ◼   ► they've been underperforming in the past and where it's spending diarya on in the

00:55:21 ◼   ► future.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Uh and speaking of memory, let's uh go on to uh memory bandwidth.

00:55:27 ◼   ► I forget if this was in the specs when we looked it up, but

00:55:30 ◼   ► I don't recall it being there.

00:55:31 ◼   ► But just in case it wasn't, uh when we were looking at the chips

00:55:34 ◼   ► when Apple released the products like on their on their web pages.

00:55:36 ◼   ► But uh what they say from looking at the chips is that the 16

00:55:40 ◼   ► gigabyte m6 has the same memory bandwidth as the m5, which is 154.6 gigabits

00:55:45 ◼   ► uh gigabytes per second.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Only the twenty-four gigabyte and thirty two gigabyte m6 have the increased memory bandwidth

00:55:52 ◼   ► lengths to the faster 1066, 10667 megabits DRAM, and they have 170.7 gigabytes per

00:55:59 ◼   ► second.

00:55:59 ◼   ► And so if that we didn't say that before it's worth knowing you're Your

00:56:03 ◼   ► RAM speed depends on how much RAM you get your Mac with.

00:56:06 ◼   ► If it doesn't matter to you, it doesn't matter.

00:56:08 ◼   ► But if you're doing like AI workloads and you actually are bandwidth limited, um

00:56:13 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know if you'd try to a AI workload with 16

00:56:16 ◼   ► gigabytes of RAM, but who knows maybe using a small model.

00:56:18 ◼   ► But keep in mind the twenty four gigabyte and thirty two gigabyte M6 have

00:56:22 ◼   ► faster memory bandwidth than the sixteen because they just use faster RAM chips.

00:56:25 ◼   ► That's a choice that Apple made.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Um moving on to the GPU, uh the core counts for the base no

00:56:32 ◼   ► suffix m chips.

00:56:34 ◼   ► The M1 had eight cores.

00:56:36 ◼   ► The M2, M3, M4, M5 had 10 cores, and the M6 has increased the

00:56:40 ◼   ► core count for the first time in four years, going to twelve.

00:56:42 ◼   ► So that's significantly advanced.

00:56:43 ◼   ► M1 had eight and they just said ten cores is enough for anybody for

00:56:46 ◼   ► the whole rest of the time.

00:56:47 ◼   ► M6 says, you know what?

00:56:49 ◼   ► It's a shrink.

00:56:50 ◼   ► We think maybe more cores would be worthwhile, especially now that they have this

00:56:53 ◼   ► AI, neural accelerator, or whatever things in them.

00:56:55 ◼   ► So that's worth noting as well.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Um, we've uh finally moved beyond 10 cores in the GPU.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Uh and speaking of cores, the M6 chip is the first M chip to

00:57:07 ◼   ► come with all three kinds of cores.

00:57:09 ◼   ► It's got S, P, and E.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Uh and I didn't realize this when we were talking about it, but it's

00:57:14 ◼   ► oh I didn't either.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Right.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Because it like this is a stupid naming.

00:57:17 ◼   ► You're like what the hell?

00:57:17 ◼   ► But anyway, the M5 only has S and E cores.

00:57:20 ◼   ► They renamed S and E cores.

00:57:22 ◼   ► The M5 Pro Max and Ultra only have S and P cores.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And remember, P is the medium now.

00:57:27 ◼   ► So like we've got the one that has really big and little, that's M5.

00:57:31 ◼   ► And then the Pro Max and Ultra have really big and medium.

00:57:33 ◼   ► They don't have any of the E cores.

00:57:36 ◼   ► But the M6 traded two of its S-cores for four P cores.

00:57:40 ◼   ► So they traded two big cores for four mediums.

00:57:43 ◼   ► And they share that they share the same cluster with the S-cores and most

00:57:46 ◼   ► of the cash.

00:57:46 ◼   ► So if you look if you look at the chip layout, like the what

00:57:49 ◼   ► used to be like the power core cluster, like the big cores, they have

00:57:53 ◼   ► their own set aside bunch of cash that is only shared by however many

00:57:57 ◼   ► S cores there are.

00:57:59 ◼   ► And when they trade when the M6 traded out S for P cores, those

00:58:02 ◼   ► P cores share that same cache with the S cores.

00:58:04 ◼   ► So they're in these little like clusters.

00:58:05 ◼   ► The E cores have their own cluster and they've got their own cache that

00:58:08 ◼   ► we just talked about.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And then of course there's the system level cache that's below that above that.

00:58:12 ◼   ► There's lots of levels of caching in these chips.

00:58:14 ◼   ► But you can see physically speaking, like and and the you know, why they

00:58:17 ◼   ► made that trade, right?

00:58:18 ◼   ► Because yes, you drop two of the biggest cores, but in exchange you get

00:58:22 ◼   ► four of the medium cores.

00:58:24 ◼   ► And apparently that trade off on the M six has been beneficial for the

00:58:27 ◼   ► workloads of that chip sees, as evidenced by Marco doing his benchmarks and other

00:58:30 ◼   ► people benchmarks on these chips.

00:58:32 ◼   ► So, but yeah, it's only one with all three sizes because it's got the

00:58:35 ◼   ► biggest ones, a bunch of mediums, and a bunch of littles as well.

00:58:37 ◼   ► And it'll be interesting to see for like the future generations, the M7 and

00:58:40 ◼   ► so on.

00:58:41 ◼   ► Do they keep this thing where like the Pro Max and Ultra only have

00:58:44 ◼   ► big and medium and the littles are only for the no suffix one, or

00:58:47 ◼   ► do they mix it up on all of them?

00:58:50 ◼   ► Um yeah, and I stu we'll put uh timestamp links to a bunch of

00:58:53 ◼   ► uh essentially frames from the video that show all these different cores and you

00:58:58 ◼   ► can see what they look like.

00:58:58 ◼   ► You can see the the actual relative sizes of a small, medium, and large

00:59:02 ◼   ► core and how much bigger the uh the large cores are than anything else.

00:59:06 ◼   ► And then you can see for yourself that the cores are the same because

00:59:08 ◼   ► they look like little maps of a city and then when the maps match,

00:59:10 ◼   ► it's the same core.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Uh there is a rumored October event.

00:59:15 ◼   ► It is the seventh of October as we sit here recording, and there is

00:59:18 ◼   ► a rumor that there was going to be an event, I think on the

00:59:21 ◼   ► 13th, something like that.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Uh we don't plan to do a full preview or anything like that this

00:59:26 ◼   ► episode, but there were a couple of tidbits we wanted to talk about.

00:59:28 ◼   ► So on the 4th of October, uh German posted, I'm told the new OLED

00:59:33 ◼   ► touchscreen MacBook Pros are lighter, significantly lighter.

00:59:36 ◼   ► Apple's reengineered the machine's interior, miniaturizing parts and rearranging components to make the computer

00:59:41 ◼   ► much easier to carry.

00:59:42 ◼   ► The current 16 inch MacBook Pro weighs as much as 4.8 pounds compared with

00:59:45 ◼   ► the 3.3 point three pounds for the 15 inch MacBook Air.

00:59:49 ◼   ► So any meaningful reduction would be immediately noticeable.

00:59:52 ◼   ► Are you scared?

00:59:52 ◼   ► This is not new information.

00:59:54 ◼   ► I believe when the OLED um touchscreen MacBook uh pros were first rumored, I

01:00:00 ◼   ► think more than a year ago, maybe two years ago, the it was like

01:00:03 ◼   ► this is gonna be a new case design and also the case is gonna

01:00:06 ◼   ► be thinner and lighter.

01:00:07 ◼   ► But this is like late breaking and I didn't add these italics.

01:00:09 ◼   ► German put these italics in there.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Significantly lighter, which I have to say, as I mean, I'm not really I

01:00:15 ◼   ► was gonna say as a MacBook Pro fan, I'm not I'm not a laptop

01:00:18 ◼   ► fan, but uh as someone who cares about uh pro level Macs, anytime I

01:00:23 ◼   ► see uh something about the pro level laptops getting thinner and lighter, I worry.

01:00:28 ◼   ► Yep.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Me too.

01:00:30 ◼   ► That's an interesting point.

01:00:31 ◼   ► That that's your desktop.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:33 ◼   ► Cause like and like their track record is is not amazing in this area

01:00:36 ◼   ► because last time they made the MacBook Pros thinner and lighter, that was the

01:00:39 ◼   ► wonderful 2016 generation that we all hated and it made them significantly worse as

01:00:44 ◼   ► MacBook Pros.

01:00:45 ◼   ► And when they when they like finally redesigned them in the M generation to

01:00:49 ◼   ► be better, they made them a little bit thicker and heavier.

01:00:52 ◼   ► And that that allowed them to give them a good a better keyboard, all

01:00:57 ◼   ► the ports we needed, the uh you know great battery life and great cooling.

01:01:01 ◼   ► So what I'm wondering here is, you know, this is this is kind of

01:01:04 ◼   ► what is what is at stake here.

01:01:06 ◼   ► So to make them significantly lighter, you don't change the keyboard for that.

01:01:10 ◼   ► So that's probably is i at least for that reason, the keyboard is safe.

01:01:15 ◼   ► You hope.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Right.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Like they you do need to change the keyboard to make it super thin,

01:01:19 ◼   ► but maybe they don't maybe let's let's hope that's not on the table right

01:01:23 ◼   ► now.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Okay.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Weight comes mostly from the metal and the battery.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Now, maybe you know, if they have like different ways to design the frame

01:01:34 ◼   ► to save weight, sure, uh, but like wouldn't they have done that already if

01:01:38 ◼   ► if it was that easy?

01:01:40 ◼   ► Like that's kind of what I think.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Like I'm a little worried about it coming from that.

01:01:43 ◼   ► I think the most likely answer is that it comes from making less battery

01:01:48 ◼   ► in there.

01:01:49 ◼   ► And that is not something that I want.

01:01:52 ◼   ► So I But you shouldn't care that much about if you're on your desk

01:01:55 ◼   ► all the time.

01:01:55 ◼   ► It's plugged in.

01:01:56 ◼   ► That one, yeah.

01:01:57 ◼   ► But the one that I like travel with, the my my wonderful little M

01:02:00 ◼   ► four fourteen inch, um I worry about that.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Like the 14 inch one is where I'm concerned about the battery life.

01:02:07 ◼   ► The sixteen inch I I'm you know, because I use it plugged in most

01:02:11 ◼   ► of the time and because it has great battery life, it'll probably be okay.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Um i you know, if Apple had to thin it down a little bit

01:02:19 ◼   ► um and maybe cut the battery by like, I don't know, ten percent.

01:02:23 ◼   ► I I'd be willing to give that up, but uh probably not more than

01:02:26 ◼   ► that.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Because you know, the other thing is what they used to do with um

01:02:30 ◼   ► with their thinning efforts to the laptops back when battery life was you know

01:02:35 ◼   ► pretty pretty rough a lot of the time.

01:02:38 ◼   ► Is they would d figure out some benchmark.

01:02:41 ◼   ► And they would say, okay, the laptop, when doing this benchmark, now it has,

01:02:46 ◼   ► you know, twenty seven hours of battery life or whatever.

01:02:49 ◼   ► So we have excess battery that we can get rid of.

01:02:52 ◼   ► And all we need is quote all day battery life, the definition of Wick

01:02:55 ◼   ► shifts around constantly.

01:02:56 ◼   ► But what they do is like they they'll optimize the battery life for that

01:02:59 ◼   ► benchmark.

01:03:00 ◼   ► And they'll say, Okay, well if you're doing this, you know, web mixed workflow,

01:03:03 ◼   ► whatever, your laptop only needs to last eight hours or twelve hours, so we

01:03:08 ◼   ► have too much we can shed it.

01:03:09 ◼   ► But what happened in the past was the power consumption of the chips in

01:03:15 ◼   ► the laptop had a pretty big range between relatively idle and when it's working

01:03:22 ◼   ► at full blast.

01:03:23 ◼   ► And when it was working at full blast, you would get nowhere near the

01:03:27 ◼   ► battery life they would claim because they were optimizing for that idle time.

01:03:31 ◼   ► And as the chips got more efficient at being idle, I know that's a

01:03:34 ◼   ► weird thing to say, but like as as chip design has gone on, we've

01:03:38 ◼   ► gotten much better over time at reducing the idle power usage or like the

01:03:41 ◼   ► low power usage.

01:03:42 ◼   ► And we have that, you know, with the e-cores and everything.

01:03:44 ◼   ► We see a lot of that.

01:03:46 ◼   ► The problem is a lot of things would a lot of things that people

01:03:49 ◼   ► did all the time with pro machines, like developing software, editing video, like the

01:03:54 ◼   ► you know things that push the machine.

01:03:57 ◼   ► A lot of that you it like that's what pro people buy their pro

01:04:01 ◼   ► consumer computers for and whatever benchmark Apple tested the battery on, it would be

01:04:06 ◼   ► nowhere near reflective of that kind of use.

01:04:09 ◼   ► And that kind of use you'd get like two hours and whereas the mixed

01:04:12 ◼   ► web you might get twelve hours or you know, whatever.

01:04:15 ◼   ► This is th most of that problem was a long time ago.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Chips now are different, computers now are different, but I do worry a little

01:04:22 ◼   ► bit.

01:04:23 ◼   ► If they are gonna save significant weight, they almost certainly have to do it

01:04:27 ◼   ► by cutting the battery life.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Or at least by cutting the battery capacity, I should say.

01:04:32 ◼   ► But

01:04:33 ◼   ► in do we really want that?

01:04:36 ◼   ► Is that a really good trade off for for people on the pro?

01:04:39 ◼   ► Like it makes total sense on the lower end stuff on the air, or

01:04:43 ◼   ► if they're gonna have like you know, if they're gonna like have like a

01:04:46 ◼   ► a kind of a a mid level where they currently have the 14 inch

01:04:49 ◼   ► with the M4, like do they cut that down a little bit?

01:04:52 ◼   ► I who knows.

01:04:53 ◼   ► But like I excuse me, the M5 or and I guess soon the M

01:04:57 ◼   ► six.

01:04:58 ◼   ► But I really worry if they cut this, are they cutting into the battery

01:05:03 ◼   ► life significantly of actual pro workflows on their pro hardware?

01:05:08 ◼   ► And if they don't battery life, are they cutting into the cooling?

01:05:11 ◼   ► Because what's also heavy are things like heat pipes and heat sinks.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Those Those are also heavy.

01:05:16 ◼   ► And the the better the cooling uh usually it comes from either larger heat

01:05:22 ◼   ► sinks with more fins and stuff, um, and or different materials like copper that

01:05:26 ◼   ► are I think I think copper's heavier than aluminum.

01:05:28 ◼   ► I I could be wrong.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Um but are they gonna also make the cooling worse?

01:05:33 ◼   ► Are th I am I gonna hear the fan more on my pro my

01:05:36 ◼   ► pro desktop laptop that I'm using here uh as it's under a load?

01:05:39 ◼   ► Because when it was new, I never heard the fan at all.

01:05:42 ◼   ► Um, now that it's, I guess, three years old, like I'm starting to hear

01:05:45 ◼   ► the fan.

01:05:45 ◼   ► Sometimes I'm sure it's filled with dust.

01:05:47 ◼   ► But like these are are these gonna be are they going to be able

01:05:51 ◼   ► to do this in a way that doesn't compromise factors that are really important

01:05:57 ◼   ► to a pro machine.

01:05:58 ◼   ► And I d I'm a little skeptical of that.

01:06:02 ◼   ► I'm more than a little skeptical of that.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Like I I'm a little scared of what this means.

01:06:06 ◼   ► You know, I think I'm with you

01:06:09 ◼   ► uh uh almost all the way there.

01:06:11 ◼   ► But the thing that I keep wondering and and maybe I'm too optimistic, but

01:06:16 ◼   ► if these new computers come with the two nanometer chips with a you know

01:06:20 ◼   ► a process shrinker, what have you If these new chips are considerably more efficient,

01:06:25 ◼   ► then maybe the net change is nothing.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And you can make a strong argument.

01:06:31 ◼   ► I could make a strong argument.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Well, then let's have more battery life.

01:06:35 ◼   ► You know, like instead of removing battery, let's more battery life.

01:06:38 ◼   ► And I I'm not here to say that that's wrong.

01:06:40 ◼   ► And I I I honestly don't know if I would prefer lighter or more

01:06:43 ◼   ► battery life.

01:06:44 ◼   ► I think for me I'd actually prefer lighter because I'm so infrequently in a

01:06:47 ◼   ► position where I need a lot of battery life but that's not the same

01:06:50 ◼   ► trade-off everyone else would make.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Well but also like but like you know th I I think what you

01:06:55 ◼   ► like you you said that like, you know, if if they shrink the process,

01:06:58 ◼   ► uh, you know, that that makes the chips save power.

01:07:01 ◼   ► It does at idle.

01:07:03 ◼   ► But what usually happens is whatever the like the total like full blast wattage

01:07:09 ◼   ► that they engineer the chips and the thermal uh envelopes around them for, usually

01:07:13 ◼   ► that ceiling, that thermal ceiling stays the same.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Having the smaller process saves them on idle power and it and it usually

01:07:21 ◼   ► allows them to just cram more in there.

01:07:23 ◼   ► As you say earlier, more cash, more cores, you know, that they can maybe

01:07:27 ◼   ► ramp the clock speeds up a little bit, like whatever it is.

01:07:30 ◼   ► They the top of the power budget, they usually keep in the same range

01:07:35 ◼   ► for a given computer family, because it's it's designed around the thermals and the

01:07:38 ◼   ► enclosure and you know everything else.

01:07:40 ◼   ► So that's what I worry, like at Idle they might say, Oh look, we

01:07:43 ◼   ► have all this excess battery because we measured in this web, you know, this

01:07:46 ◼   ► like web and AI usage benchmark that's non local AI models, um, which so

01:07:50 ◼   ► they're basically web browsers.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah, it's getting great great battery life.

01:07:53 ◼   ► It's like, okay, great.

01:07:54 ◼   ► But what if we push it?

01:07:56 ◼   ► Is it still getting great battery life if we push it?

01:07:57 ◼   ► And we if we actually do the things that Apple demonstrates their machines doing

01:08:01 ◼   ► in their marketing videos?

01:08:02 ◼   ► That's the question.

01:08:03 ◼   ► No, that's totally fair.

01:08:05 ◼   ► The other thing I'm thinking about is um, you know, as John has had

01:08:08 ◼   ► us just comparing like you know, uh uh phone chips with with Mac chips,

01:08:12 ◼   ► we haven't or Apple hasn't explored the um the thermocouple thing.

01:08:17 ◼   ► What's it called?

01:08:17 ◼   ► I can't remember the darn name of the vapor chamber?

01:08:19 ◼   ► Vapor chamber, thank you.

01:08:21 ◼   ► We haven't

01:08:22 ◼   ► laptops, have we?

01:08:23 ◼   ► Because we have fans.

01:08:24 ◼   ► But would that help?

01:08:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:08:26 ◼   ► And would that reduce power usage?

01:08:28 ◼   ► Well reduce thermals, reduce power usage, reduce uh battery draw.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I'm not a hardware engineer and now that's obvious, but maybe that would be

01:08:36 ◼   ► helpful.

01:08:36 ◼   ► I'm sure.

01:08:37 ◼   ► I don't know if they can scale up like that.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Maybe they should put a thermal pad on the MacBook Air first.

01:08:42 ◼   ► They're so they're so behind and uh not behind, but they're so not particularly

01:08:46 ◼   ► caring about thermals on the uh the on some of their consumer laptops.

01:08:50 ◼   ► But I I do think that Intel and Johnny I have really screwed us

01:08:53 ◼   ► all up on this front because we just had this this past trauma of

01:08:56 ◼   ► the MacBooks that Marco just uh you know mentioned, like the the twenty sixteen

01:09:01 ◼   ► models and it just you know, the whole that whole era of taking the

01:09:04 ◼   ► ports off the computers and making them thin and coinciding with Intel being crappy

01:09:08 ◼   ► and it was just it was just bad all around.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Um and I think this is making all of us understandably worried worried about

01:09:15 ◼   ► what is otherwise just the normal progression of laptop advancement.

01:09:18 ◼   ► I mean if you just look at the history of of the laptop period

01:09:21 ◼   ► from like the PowerBook 100 series up till today, it is that exact tension

01:09:25 ◼   ► that Marco was just talking about, which is like, oh, so you've got something

01:09:28 ◼   ► that takes less power.

01:09:29 ◼   ► Are you gonna use that and spend it on increasing your battery life?

01:09:32 ◼   ► Are you gonna spend some of it on making the thing thinner and lighter?

01:09:35 ◼   ► And it's a trade-off.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Like if you just spent it on battery life, we'd have laptops that last

01:09:40 ◼   ► seven days and they'd be as thick as the PowerBook 100 and no one

01:09:43 ◼   ► would want them, right?

01:09:44 ◼   ► 'cause they're just no one wants to care.

01:09:45 ◼   ► I it always uh cracks me up whenever I see these in my attic

01:09:48 ◼   ► and just pick one of them up.

01:09:49 ◼   ► I'm like, Holy cow, these things are big.

01:09:51 ◼   ► You don't remember how big they were compared to today's until you see one

01:09:54 ◼   ► of them, you're like, Is this a joke?

01:09:56 ◼   ► Like it doesn't you know, they were so b and I'm not talking about

01:09:59 ◼   ► the sixteen pound Mac portable, which I also have in my attic.

01:10:02 ◼   ► Not even talking about that.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I'm talking about the thin and light power books, which were a revelation.

01:10:06 ◼   ► They're so huge, right?

01:10:07 ◼   ► So we always spend some of our technological dividend on making them thinner and

01:10:12 ◼   ► we balance that with how much more battery life that we want.

01:10:15 ◼   ► And the same thing's true of shrinks.

01:10:16 ◼   ► You know, we do how much do you spend on increasing the clock speed?

01:10:19 ◼   ► Like, well we have we have we can dissipate fifteen watts.

01:10:22 ◼   ► Why should we ever not dissipate fifteen watts?

01:10:24 ◼   ► Let's just crank up the clock speeds speed so that yeah, it's lower power

01:10:27 ◼   ► when it's idle, but why don't we crank up the clock so it is

01:10:30 ◼   ► the same power usage as the other one and the chip will be faster

01:10:33 ◼   ► and it will get more work done.

01:10:34 ◼   ► And sometimes thanks to race to sleep, that can actually even save you power

01:10:38 ◼   ► because you're like, well, I'm

01:10:40 ◼   ► though my peak is still 15 watts, I'm at 15 watts for five seconds

01:10:44 ◼   ► instead of 10.

01:10:44 ◼   ► So it actually does save battery life.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And how do we want to spend that dividend?

01:10:48 ◼   ► And we just have so little faith now in Apple ever wanting to go

01:10:52 ◼   ► in the other direction.

01:10:53 ◼   ► We're like Apple you are not allowed to spend the dividend on making it

01:10:58 ◼   ► thinner and lighter because the last time you did that, you way overspent on

01:11:01 ◼   ► thin and light and gave us a laptop that was out of balance.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Um so I'm not particularly opposed you know, I'm not saying uh laptop progress

01:11:09 ◼   ► must stop and they can never get any thinner and lighter and all future

01:11:12 ◼   ► gains must be spent on battery life.

01:11:13 ◼   ► But that's not a tenable position.

01:11:15 ◼   ► We're just worried that Apple will make the wrong choice because they very recently

01:11:18 ◼   ► did and it sucked for a long time given how long it takes Apple

01:11:21 ◼   ► to rev these.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Like we've been on this um case design since they basically quote unquote fixed

01:11:28 ◼   ► the laptops, right?

01:11:28 ◼   ► Since they ditched the old one, put the ports back on, made them a

01:11:31 ◼   ► little bit thicker and heavier.

01:11:33 ◼   ► And so it makes sense that like after many, many years of using this

01:11:36 ◼   ► design, which people generally like, uh, that maybe we are at the point where

01:11:40 ◼   ► we can make a new case that is thinner and lighter.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Because that's part of where the lightness comes in.

01:11:43 ◼   ► It's some people are chatter saying batteries aren't that heavy.

01:11:46 ◼   ► What happens when you make the case smaller is there's less room for battery.

01:11:49 ◼   ► So even if you're like save money on the case or save weight on

01:11:52 ◼   ► the case, make less case.

01:11:54 ◼   ► Once you make less case, there's less room in the case for battery, and

01:11:57 ◼   ► then you lose battery there too, as well.

01:11:59 ◼   ► So, you know, I I'm not sure what they're gonna do here.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Now, Casey's point about two nanometer.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Remember that the rumor is, and I've seen nothing contradicting this, the plain old

01:12:08 ◼   ► no suffix M6 is it.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And so if any of these OLED touchscreen MacBooks are gonna have any chip

01:12:14 ◼   ► in them that is quote unquote better than the plain old No Suffix M6,

01:12:18 ◼   ► it's gonna be an M5 Pro and M5 Max.

01:12:21 ◼   ► And they're not two nanometer.

01:12:22 ◼   ► So don't won't look to those chips to save you anything because they don't

01:12:26 ◼   ► get a shrink.

01:12:27 ◼   ► They're the same chips we've had, which is fine, but like there's not really

01:12:30 ◼   ► a two-nanometer dividend to spend in that case.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Uh it could be that only the plain no suffix m6

01:12:39 ◼   ► MacBook Pro will be the one that is significantly thinner and lighter because it's

01:12:44 ◼   ► got the two nanometer chip and it is the low end MacBook Pro.

01:12:47 ◼   ► It is, you know, again a no isn't that what you use, Marco?

01:12:49 ◼   ► Isn't your fourteen inch and no suffix M chip?

01:12:51 ◼   ► Yep, it's the M f the regular M4 and and for that purpose it

01:12:54 ◼   ► I've actually been very happy with it.

01:12:56 ◼   ► It is a little slower to build, uh, you know, than than my my

01:12:59 ◼   ► big one is, but like it was a lot less expensive and it uh

01:13:04 ◼   ► has very good battery life.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And that like and I do actually use the battery life of my laptop

01:13:09 ◼   ► Top.

01:13:09 ◼   ► So I that's why I'm a little nervous like about them possibly shrinking it

01:13:14 ◼   ► down.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Um, because this is you know, I I I love the balance of this

01:13:18 ◼   ► machine currently.

01:13:19 ◼   ► If it could get lighter, yeah, that'd be nice.

01:13:22 ◼   ► But again, it these but when these things are in contention, I'd rather keep

01:13:27 ◼   ► the battery than than make it a little bit lighter.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:29 ◼   ► So well it on the plane M six one, I mean, it has the

01:13:33 ◼   ► potential market advantage of the fact that Apple is uh uh not rumored to

01:13:38 ◼   ► roll out the m six based MacBook Air anytime soon.

01:13:41 ◼   ► But also what diff differentiates an M six based MacBook Air from an M6

01:13:45 ◼   ► uh no suffix M6 MacBook Pro?

01:13:47 ◼   ► Well in this case, OLED and touchscreen.

01:13:49 ◼   ► OLED is another potential power savings, especially if you've got a lot of black

01:13:52 ◼   ► pixels on your screen, I guess.

01:13:54 ◼   ► And you know, I don't know what the power differences with the with the

01:13:57 ◼   ► tandem OLEDs versus an L C D.

01:13:59 ◼   ► So maybe it's a wash, but that is another potential thing out there.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Uh and obviously the touch screen.

01:14:03 ◼   ► That's That's another feature that is going to differentiate, presumably, the plain No Suffix

01:14:08 ◼   ► M6 MacBook OLED MacBook Pro from an an M6 MacBook Air at some point

01:14:13 ◼   ► in the future.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Um remains to be seen if the redesign does actually make a thinner chassis

01:14:19 ◼   ► for the M5 Pro and Max models.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Maybe it will have a thinner chassis and these will be crappy ones because

01:14:23 ◼   ► that chassis is made for the next four years and it will come into

01:14:26 ◼   ► its own when the M7 Pro and Max come out because they will be

01:14:30 ◼   ► on two nanometer.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Lot of open questions here but yeah, just you know, with a late breaking

01:14:34 ◼   ► German rumor, like again, we're not going through every product they're gonna announce next

01:14:37 ◼   ► by next episode they will in theory have announced all these and we'll be

01:14:40 ◼   ► talking about the actual product, so there's no point.

01:14:42 ◼   ► But with him re-emphasizing the significantly lighter thing uh It it is it is

01:14:47 ◼   ► something to watch for because we're all traumatized.

01:14:49 ◼   ► That's what it comes.

01:14:49 ◼   ► That's what it comes down to.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Mildly technologically traumatized.

01:14:53 ◼   ► Additionally, on the sixth of October, so this was yesterday's we record, two days

01:14:58 ◼   ► after the other report, German writes, Apple's upcoming push into smart home devices will

01:15:02 ◼   ► include a doorbell, thermostat, and other accessories developed through an unusual partnership with LG

01:15:06 ◼   ► Electronics Inc.

01:15:07 ◼   ► The products will be part of an ecosystem of devices that work with Apple's

01:15:10 ◼   ► new smart home hub, as well as an upgraded home pod mini and fresh

01:15:13 ◼   ► TV set top box.

01:15:14 ◼   ► Please Apple.

01:15:16 ◼   ► Please, new Apple TVs.

01:15:17 ◼   ► The products developed with LG will include a smart deadbolt lock, in bold indoor

01:15:21 ◼   ► security camera, outdoor security camera, and floodlight camera.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Though the two companies work together to develop the accessories, the products will carry

01:15:27 ◼   ► the LG brand.

01:15:28 ◼   ► LG is handling manufacturing and product support.

01:15:31 ◼   ► So this is another late breaking, very late breaking rumor of like home stuff

01:15:35 ◼   ► that's going to be announced.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Again, we're going through all the products, but it's this was rumored for months

01:15:39 ◼   ► and months.

01:15:39 ◼   ► But this wasn't in the the the rumors right up until now, because they're

01:15:43 ◼   ► not really Apple products.

01:15:44 ◼   ► I mean Apple does this with a bunch of things.

01:15:46 ◼   ► They they partner with Belkin to make a bunch of stuff that they don't

01:15:49 ◼   ► make.

01:15:49 ◼   ► They shuffle a lot of stuff off to beats.

01:15:51 ◼   ► I think they do stuff with Logitech as well.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Um, you know, there's there's always lots of rumors about how much of this

01:15:58 ◼   ► product that is not Apple branded was actually designed by Apple.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Um, I've a lot of people writing about the story have said, hey remember

01:16:05 ◼   ► when Apple part went with LG to make a 5k display back when they

01:16:08 ◼   ► didn't make any displays?

01:16:09 ◼   ► I hope Apple wasn't involved with that product, 'cause it wasn't a great product.

01:16:14 ◼   ► Uh it wasn't particularly reliable and it had a lot of problems and it

01:16:18 ◼   ► was ugly and the stand sucked.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Although Apple's really great at making sucky sands.

01:16:22 ◼   ► So maybe they didn't have a hand in it.

01:16:23 ◼   ► And the ones.

01:16:25 ◼   ► Yeah, other products, like you look at the Belcons one, it's like, oh, this

01:16:27 ◼   ► is you know, i it again the rumors are this Belkin product is literally

01:16:30 ◼   ► Apple designed this product, but they just don't want to deal with it.

01:16:32 ◼   ► So they say, Belkin, it's your thing, you brand it, you support it, you

01:16:35 ◼   ► manufacture it.

01:16:35 ◼   ► We just gave you the design.

01:16:37 ◼   ► Go and we'll put you in our store.

01:16:39 ◼   ► These LG products I'm not getting particularly excited about because it's just like another

01:16:44 ◼   ► one of those partnership deals, but it really does make it seem like Apple,

01:16:48 ◼   ► you know, Apple w always wants to encourage home kit stuff and but they're

01:16:52 ◼   ► pushing to the home with the home pod with the screen and blah blah

01:16:54 ◼   ► blah.

01:16:55 ◼   ► Well we'll talk about that next week presuming they announce it.

01:16:58 ◼   ► It's like, well, we want a whole ecosystem of home kit devices.

01:17:01 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of third parties that make home kit devices.

01:17:03 ◼   ► But it's like Apple does feel some responsibility especially with the supposedly new HomeKit

01:17:08 ◼   ► architecture.

01:17:09 ◼   ► So like we want like good devices and all the important product categories.

01:17:14 ◼   ► But we don't want them so much that we want to make them.

01:17:17 ◼   ► It's them with the Wi Fi hubs.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Like, well, presumably Mac users need to have Wi-Fi in their home, but we

01:17:23 ◼   ► don't care enough to actually make it.

01:17:24 ◼   ► So you're on your own.

01:17:26 ◼   ► And here it's like, well, I hear people like smartlocks and you know, yeah

01:17:32 ◼   ► smoke detectors and thermostats, but we don't care enough about that to even bother.

01:17:35 ◼   ► Hell, we can barely get ourselves to make smart speakers.

01:17:39 ◼   ► But we do want them to exist and we want to show them on

01:17:41 ◼   ► stage.

01:17:42 ◼   ► So who's willing to partner with us to do this?

01:17:44 ◼   ► And as a couple of commenters pointed out.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Kind of like home Wi-Fi stuff.

01:17:49 ◼   ► It's like Apple.

01:17:50 ◼   ► Some of these devices are the type of thing where maybe people would want

01:17:54 ◼   ► to buy from a brand with the that they trust and believe in, especially

01:17:58 ◼   ► when it comes to privacy, like a a lock, you know, or like a

01:18:02 ◼   ► security camera.

01:18:04 ◼   ► And the fact that they chose LG, which is currently going through a scandal

01:18:07 ◼   ► where their TVs are listening to you even when they're turned off, um maybe

01:18:11 ◼   ► not great from a privacy's perspective.

01:18:14 ◼   ► But like that's that's the problem with Apple.

01:18:16 ◼   ► I mean, we have this topic keeps getting pushed down and it will surely

01:18:18 ◼   ► not be probably not be next week because it'll be an event video, but

01:18:20 ◼   ► maybe the week after that.

01:18:22 ◼   ► The whole uh push by new management slash Turnus to change the way Apple

01:18:27 ◼   ► um releases products and how many products they release and how often and so

01:18:31 ◼   ► on and so forth.

01:18:32 ◼   ► There's just kind of like this really old, tired-looking elephant in the room, which

01:18:36 ◼   ► is like, Why doesn't Apple make Wi-Fi things?

01:18:39 ◼   ► Everybody needs Wi-Fi and it's so annoying picking from third-party products.

01:18:42 ◼   ► People were sad when they gave up printers, although Apple really was just rebranding

01:18:45 ◼   ► other people's printers then.

01:18:47 ◼   ► But yeah, h home security cameras, locks.

01:18:50 ◼   ► If ever there was a product where Apple's privacy focused design and reputation would

01:18:55 ◼   ► be a marketing advantage for those products.

01:18:57 ◼   ► That would be those would be great candidates.

01:19:00 ◼   ► And it seems clear that Apple wants to make sure that they have good

01:19:04 ◼   ► products in those categories available, but again, they don't care enough to do it

01:19:08 ◼   ► themselves, so they're outsourcing it.

01:19:09 ◼   ► So I'm currently left wondering based on this rumor.

01:19:12 ◼   ► And by the way there's CC diagrams.

01:19:13 ◼   ► You can see what these things look like.

01:19:14 ◼   ► They just they don't look like Apple products, they look like LG products.

01:19:17 ◼   ► I'm wondering if any of this will be mentioned at all in any significant

01:19:21 ◼   ► way in the presentation, or whether it will just be a slide and say

01:19:24 ◼   ► and lots of third party you know manufacturers are making products as well.

01:19:28 ◼   ► Like I can't imagine Apple actually featuring these.

01:19:30 ◼   ► It's not like they feature the the Belkin products they just mentioned oh and

01:19:33 ◼   ► also these are available.

01:19:34 ◼   ► If you want a thing that does this you can buy this in our

01:19:36 ◼   ► store and it's made by milk.

01:19:38 ◼   ► And it that seems more likely than anything else.

01:19:41 ◼   ► But this story just made me sad about all the products that Apple has

01:19:45 ◼   ► decided are important enough to have, but not important enough for them to make

01:19:49 ◼   ► and do a good job.

01:19:50 ◼   ► And maybe I shouldn't be complaining because if we look at

01:19:53 ◼   ► Casey, what quote unquote good job they're doing on streaming boxes and uh smart

01:19:58 ◼   ► speakers.

01:19:59 ◼   ► All those categories, Apple sometimes takes a little bit longer than we would like

01:20:03 ◼   ► to make significant updates to them.

01:20:05 ◼   ► So maybe I'm wishing for them to come and do the same thing to

01:20:08 ◼   ► these products and maybe to be better in the hands of LG, but from

01:20:11 ◼   ► a privacy perspective, probably not.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Well and and their track record in this area is really mediocre.

01:20:17 ◼   ► Uh you know, they they have as you mentioned, like, you know, they've done

01:20:20 ◼   ► this with Belkin and LG before.

01:20:22 ◼   ► And those products have usually been pretty mediocre.

01:20:26 ◼   ► And i they it it is Apple kind of like half-assing an initiative.

01:20:31 ◼   ► Like, yeah we're we want all these smart home devices.

01:20:33 ◼   ► Well we're not going to like make an ecosystem that actually attracts people to

01:20:37 ◼   ► make these products on their own.

01:20:39 ◼   ► And also we're not going to make our own versions.

01:20:42 ◼   ► So we will yeah, we'll co-develop or you know, whatever it is with LG

01:20:46 ◼   ► or Belkin or whatever.

01:20:47 ◼   ► But then what you get at the end is products that neither company really

01:20:52 ◼   ► gives that much of a crap about.

01:20:55 ◼   ► And it shows.

01:20:56 ◼   ► You know, I've had many of these products.

01:20:58 ◼   ► I've I've bought like the random Belkin things in the past.

01:21:00 ◼   ► I had the LG Ultrafine monitors that are now somewhere in Casey's house.

01:21:04 ◼   ► And I've had in front of me.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:06 ◼   ► And I've had the LG home kit cameras.

01:21:11 ◼   ► I think I had four of them.

01:21:13 ◼   ► They all sucked and broke after reasonably short times.

01:21:17 ◼   ► And this is exactly what we're doing again, it sounds like why?

01:21:22 ◼   ► Well it's all gonna work this time because it's the new home kit.

01:21:24 ◼   ► It's so much better than the old one.

01:21:25 ◼   ► That's the thing, like h the entire path of Home Kit so far has

01:21:29 ◼   ► been like Apple kind of half assing stuff that they occasionally care about for

01:21:34 ◼   ► two seconds to put it in some, you know, event video and then they

01:21:39 ◼   ► never touch it for, you know, months or years after that and the products

01:21:42 ◼   ► all kind of suck or don't really ever pan out or only work briefly.

01:21:47 ◼   ► Like or like the ecosystem itself doesn't pan out and all the things that

01:21:50 ◼   ► are promised, like no one ever makes them, or one company makes them and

01:21:53 ◼   ► then stops making them.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Like it this is how this has ho this has gone for years.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Why would this time be any different?

01:22:02 ◼   ► It sounds like they're they're basically running the same playbook.

01:22:05 ◼   ► So like what why would it work this time when it hasn't worked before?

01:22:09 ◼   ► There's a couple things in favor of it now, is first being that Siri

01:22:12 ◼   ► is no longer embarrassingly terrible.

01:22:14 ◼   ► It it is it is merely slightly behind the competition.

01:22:17 ◼   ► But like that I mean there's the whole reason the the home pod by

01:22:20 ◼   ► the screen, whatever they end up calling it, has been delayed as long as

01:22:22 ◼   ► it has, because the rumors are this hardware's been done forever, but the software

01:22:25 ◼   ► wasn't but now Siri AI is here and you can talk to it in

01:22:29 ◼   ► a more sane manner.

01:22:30 ◼   ► Although recently today I set two reminders on my phone with voice and both

01:22:34 ◼   ► times it asked me what app do you want to use.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Cool.

01:22:38 ◼   ► It had never asked me that before I've been using the phone since launch

01:22:41 ◼   ► day.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Infuriating.

01:22:43 ◼   ► Anyway, um in theory there's a software story here that makes it so that

01:22:47 ◼   ► the products like we'll see, we'll see when they what present the whatever their

01:22:51 ◼   ► smart home hub thing is.

01:22:52 ◼   ► How they presented it.

01:22:53 ◼   ► Is it presented like a weird off to the side hobby like Apple T

01:22:56 ◼   ► V?

01:22:56 ◼   ► Is it presented like a new big thing?

01:22:59 ◼   ► But the fact that they have a voice assistant that could conceivably power a

01:23:03 ◼   ► non-sucky product of that type does mean that there are some things that are

01:23:08 ◼   ► different.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Now, does that help at all with smart locks and cameras?

01:23:12 ◼   ► No, not at all.

01:23:12 ◼   ► It's unrelated, but it does mean that maybe Apple will be more interested in

01:23:16 ◼   ► home kit now that they have like more of the pieces to provide a

01:23:21 ◼   ► successful solution, I mean the home pods are still a problem.

01:23:24 ◼   ► There's still a rumor they're gonna make another big home pod and then maybe

01:23:27 ◼   ► they're gonna make a new mini, but those are so small and underpowered and

01:23:29 ◼   ► can't do any series AI stuff anyway.

01:23:31 ◼   ► So maybe they're it's gonna be a while before they get dragged into it.

01:23:33 ◼   ► But this new thing is like, here's our new approach.

01:23:36 ◼   ► This presumably has the smarts to run C AI in a reasonable way.

01:23:41 ◼   ► It is much more capable, it has a screen on it, and it potentially

01:23:45 ◼   ► could be the hub for your home to talk to these other devices, which

01:23:48 ◼   ► are admittedly lesser and maybe just featured on a slide somewhere.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Um but yeah, like the actual products themselves, like it all depends on how

01:23:55 ◼   ► good the home kit standard is and all that other stuff.

01:23:58 ◼   ► We'll see how it goes but it's kind of like, you know, when they

01:24:01 ◼   ► outsourced a Belkin for like um like a dongle, fine.

01:24:04 ◼   ► Like it's literally the same dongle that Apple would sell.

01:24:07 ◼   ► Just got it like a Belkin stamp on it somewhere and the and the

01:24:09 ◼   ► color of the plastic is different.

01:24:11 ◼   ► Like I don't think anyone cares too much about that.

01:24:13 ◼   ► It's when they do it for things like monitors, where you're like, Apple, we

01:24:18 ◼   ► would kind of prefer that you make a good one of these instead of

01:24:20 ◼   ► something where the USB C port flakes out after two years and the things

01:24:24 ◼   ► burn in and stuff like that.

01:24:25 ◼   ► And not again, not that Apple's track record is stellar, but like, and of

01:24:28 ◼   ► course they would charge a hajillion dollars for it.

01:24:30 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm not jazzed by a bunch of LG uh home kit products,

01:24:34 ◼   ► but I am actually interested in the

01:24:38 ◼   ► I I don't even I haven't even kept up with the rumors what they're

01:24:40 ◼   ► gonna call us.

01:24:41 ◼   ► I keep calling it home pop with a screen.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Have you heard rumors of what the supposed name is, or is that still?

01:24:45 ◼   ► No, everyone's just guessing like homepad or whatever, but it's just the they're just

01:24:48 ◼   ► people's guesses.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Uh home pad.

01:24:49 ◼   ► God, I hope it's not.

01:24:50 ◼   ► Oh, and speaking of names, uh uh micro Microsoft uh uh announced the um

01:24:56 ◼   ► Surface Pro no Surface Microsoft Surface Ultra today-ish.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Um like the next line of laptops and they're using Ultra and the thing.

01:25:04 ◼   ► And people are like, well, that means the the MacBooks won't be called Ultra.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I mean, maybe, but maybe Apple doesn't.

01:25:10 ◼   ► So just keep that in mind.

01:25:11 ◼   ► Apple absolutely would not care in that case.

01:25:13 ◼   ► Like it is funny it if if they are called Ultra, it is funny

01:25:16 ◼   ► that that Microsoft is preempting them by like a week with its own ultra

01:25:19 ◼   ► pro it's not like other companies aren't also doing pro and max and ultra

01:25:22 ◼   ► like yeah Apple on for for good or for ill Apple sets these stupid

01:25:27 ◼   ► trends and people follow them and then you know Apple even rumors of what

01:25:32 ◼   ► Apple might name their things causes trends and are like we're gonna beat them

01:25:35 ◼   ► to the pulch punch and call our computers ultra, even though Apple already called

01:25:38 ◼   ► its watch ultra, but then didn't call its folding phone ultra.

01:25:40 ◼   ► We don't know what's going on.

01:25:41 ◼   ► Ultra all the things just to be safe.

01:25:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Anyway, tune in next week we'll find out what they actually announced and if

01:25:47 ◼   ► LGE is featured at all anywhere.

01:25:50 ◼   ► All right, so uh I apologize that we're probably gonna end on a maybe

01:25:54 ◼   ► not stupendously happy segment, but we we really need to talk about it before

01:25:57 ◼   ► it becomes stale and before we forget about it.

01:26:00 ◼   ► So uh sometime in the last week, I forget exactly when it was, uh

01:26:04 ◼   ► Apple put up a fairly vague post on their developer website.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And I would like to read to you the entirety of that post because

01:26:13 ◼   ► it's not that long.

01:26:14 ◼   ► It reads as follows: We give developers powerful APIs to build incredible capabilities into

01:26:19 ◼   ► their apps for Apple products, backed by a set of controls designed to protect

01:26:22 ◼   ► users' private data.

01:26:23 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Full disk access largely sidesteps these controls in order to allow backup apps to

01:26:29 ◼   ► function properly on the Mac.

01:26:31 ◼   ► Some developers are using full disk access in ways that could put users at

01:26:34 ◼   ► risk, exposing everything on their systems, including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history,

01:26:38 ◼   ► without users' full knowledge and understanding.

01:26:40 ◼   ► For communication apps, this could also compromise privacy of the people Users are communicating

01:26:45 ◼   ► with.

01:26:45 ◼   ► Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish

01:26:49 ◼   ► to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with

01:26:52 ◼   ► explicit user action.

01:26:54 ◼   ► Addressing this is critical as AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous.

01:26:58 ◼   ► The risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially.

01:27:01 ◼   ► We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access

01:27:06 ◼   ► so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Thus ends their entire post.

01:27:12 ◼   ► So the adjective I would use to describe this post is ominous.

01:27:16 ◼   ► Yes.

01:27:17 ◼   ► Like you tr yeah, like first I don't really understand what what possessed them

01:27:21 ◼   ► to do this other than as a PR move because it's clear that they're

01:27:24 ◼   ► not ready to tell us what they're gonna do, but they're like We're gonna

01:27:27 ◼   ► do something.

01:27:28 ◼   ► I mean, it you know, it is obviously uh I I think it is

01:27:31 ◼   ► spurred on m um by the AI agents that are that you know, like

01:27:36 ◼   ► meta release theirs.

01:27:37 ◼   ► I know there was an article where the guy said it read his messages,

01:27:39 ◼   ► although that's kind of disputed.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Um I don't think it's disputed that he wrote his messages, it's disputed what

01:27:43 ◼   ► his story is.

01:27:44 ◼   ► But yeah, like there's a there's a press there's a public relations angle to

01:27:47 ◼   ► this, which is there's been a series of stories recently from people using Macs

01:27:52 ◼   ► with AI agents and being surprised that the AI agents were able to access

01:27:56 ◼   ► things on their Macs that they thought they shouldn't have been able to access,

01:28:00 ◼   ► even though from a technical perspective, I'm sure they could.

01:28:02 ◼   ► And so they make this announcement, which is like basically saying, we know about

01:28:06 ◼   ► this.

01:28:07 ◼   ► And we're gonna do something about it.

01:28:09 ◼   ► Well we're not ready to tell you what we're gonna do about it.

01:28:12 ◼   ► But again, uh based on past experience, Mac users and developers are worried.

01:28:18 ◼   ► The most recent precedent that is cited in a lot of the stories about

01:28:20 ◼   ► this is what they did to screen screen recording or screen um I don't

01:28:24 ◼   ► forget what it was written called but the the the thing where it lets

01:28:27 ◼   ► uh Mac apps see other pixels on the screen.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Um and I think it was in was it in Sequoia or something?

01:28:35 ◼   ► They change that to make it more onerous.