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289: ā€˜Iā€™m Batman. America. Freedom.ā€™ With Adam Lisagor

 

00:00:00   Welcome to the show.

00:00:01   I can't believe how long it's been since I've had you on the show.

00:00:05   It's been a bit. Yeah.

00:00:06   You're you're I mean this sincerely, and I don't mean, I'm not just saying this

00:00:12   because you're on the show. You you're one of the nicest and most empathetic,

00:00:17   um, people I've ever met. You're, you're truly,

00:00:21   you're just a good person. And you, the way you brought,

00:00:24   the way you brought this up to me,

00:00:26   was excruciating.

00:00:31   Yeah, it was hard for me too.

00:00:34   So we're working together on my show, my WWDC show.

00:00:40   And then you mentioned this and I was, you know, something to the,

00:00:43   I can't even do it. I can't even be as exquisitely nice and sensitive as you.

00:00:49   I can't even paraphrase it, but you mentioned it. And I thought, well, that's,

00:00:52   you know, probably is true in the back of my head.

00:00:55   I'll bet it's been at least a year since I've had Adam on.

00:00:57   And then I looked at my podcast feed and then like searched for your name.

00:01:02   And it was like 13 years ago.

00:01:05   Yeah. And you know, you start to wonder, like I start to wonder, wow. Uh, did I,

00:01:12   did you get some, did you get some complaints about me as a guest? I mean,

00:01:16   that was my, that was the way I phrased the question I think was like, Hey,

00:01:20   cause I love being on your show.

00:01:22   I love doing this type of format way,

00:01:25   way more than one in which I have to improvise and be funny because I'm not

00:01:29   great at that. But I like,

00:01:30   I don't mind talking about things that I'm thinking about. So I like doing,

00:01:34   I like being a guest and have been a guest a number of times. And then,

00:01:38   and then it has, it's been a while. So I started thinking, Oh God did. Um,

00:01:42   cause you have a, a vocal, you know, fan base listenership. And I wondered if they,

00:01:47   if they just like wrote you one too many emails that said, do not,

00:01:51   do not have that guy back on your show again.

00:01:53   Well, and then the worst part is,

00:01:55   cause I'm nowhere near as good a person as you or as empathetic,

00:02:00   but I remember things and I have a terrible, uh, uh,

00:02:05   Catholic guilt, even though I'm not the least bit religious, it's like, I did.

00:02:09   That's the one thing I picked up. And I remember from years ago,

00:02:14   literally no joke years ago,

00:02:16   there was a time when you were on the show and I just,

00:02:21   I purely absentmindedly forgot to do the thing where I post a link to the show on

00:02:26   the daring fireball blog.

00:02:28   So like the show went into the talk show feed and it's on the talk show section

00:02:33   of the site and anybody who subscribed goes in their podcast player.

00:02:36   But I just never did the thing which I do for every new show,

00:02:39   which is then I post a link list item to the show and I repeat the description

00:02:44   and thank the sponsors to, you know, give them some extra love. Uh,

00:02:49   and I just, you know, idiot that I am completely forgot to do it.

00:02:53   And you thought maybe it was cause I thought the show sucked.

00:02:57   Oh man. Do you remember that's embarrassing. That's embarrassing.

00:03:01   But you didn't say it that way, of course, because you're a good person,

00:03:05   but I could read between the lines and thought, Oh God,

00:03:08   Adam's worried that I thought the show was terrible that I had to post it

00:03:12   anyway. When in fact it was just me being an idiot and having this terrible

00:03:16   system, me being self aware that I'm absentminded

00:03:21   and then having a production system for posting the show that depends upon me

00:03:26   remembering to do X, Y, and Z.

00:03:29   You know what? We're both great. We're both flawed and great.

00:03:33   And this is going to be a fun show. There was one,

00:03:37   there was one episode that we'd,

00:03:39   that I was a guest on where I remember I did zero prep for it.

00:03:43   I didn't read up on the latest stuff. I, I, I,

00:03:46   I'd been sort of out of the Apple loop for a bit and

00:03:51   then we just, and then I just kind of bullshit for like, you know,

00:03:55   an hour and a half.

00:03:55   I think we talked about the latest Apple TV or something and it was just,

00:03:59   didn't feel great about it. So I, I've like, I should actually do some,

00:04:04   you know, I do some research this time,

00:04:07   potentially install the beta OS and break my laptop

00:04:11   just so I have something to talk about.

00:04:16   Uh, well, speaking of sponsors and speaking of, uh,

00:04:20   you, Adam, I, I got a, uh, extra sponsor this week.

00:04:25   Um, and I'm really happy to tell you about them, but it's ATOMS, A T O M S.

00:04:31   They're, uh, yeah, they make great shoes, uh,

00:04:36   which is very funny because ever since they started sponsoring the show last

00:04:39   year, remember when we used to meet face to face, uh,

00:04:43   at WWDC last year, just 2019,

00:04:47   I saw a bunch of people at WWDC who had Adam's shoes on and I was like, wow,

00:04:52   they're really popular. And then like,

00:04:54   I worked up the gumption to ask somebody and they're like, yeah, I got them.

00:04:56   I heard about them from your website and I was, Oh, I'm at WWDC.

00:05:01   Somehow I kind of know that sponsorships work,

00:05:07   but I don't often see the results of it. You know,

00:05:10   like somebody can advertise an app on daring fireball. I don't know who's,

00:05:13   who's running the app, but people had the shoes. They're great shoes.

00:05:16   I wear them almost every day. I love them.

00:05:18   But the other thing they're making out,

00:05:20   I want to tell you about is the Adam's everyday face mask. Look,

00:05:24   Adam stands for quality.

00:05:26   Their mask is made with the same premium materials as their shoes,

00:05:30   combining innovation and comfort with the anti microbial properties of

00:05:35   copper, making it one of the most effective masks on the market.

00:05:38   It's available in a variety of colors. It's breathable, washable,

00:05:42   reusable, and every time you buy a mask,

00:05:46   they donate a mask to charity with each purchase.

00:05:49   They've also got the sneaker. You can check them out. Great.

00:05:53   The genius of their thing is that they, they sell the sneakers in quarter size,

00:05:58   which sounds really finicky, but I'm telling you,

00:06:01   I've known this since I was a kid, always felt very self-conscious about it.

00:06:05   My left foot has always been a half size larger than my right foot.

00:06:08   I don't know why I feel so conscious about it.

00:06:12   But it's kind of awesome to be able to buy shoes where you can do this.

00:06:17   And then you don't know what your quarter size is. You can just buy like,

00:06:20   you know, order, like it's like Warby Parker a little bit,

00:06:22   where you can order two sizes,

00:06:24   try them on at home and then send the ones back that you don't need the sizes

00:06:28   you don't want. Anyway, I love their masks.

00:06:30   The masks also come in different sizes. I have a big fat head.

00:06:34   I need the size large. Most people would take a medium.

00:06:37   Anytime I'm out and about in Philadelphia,

00:06:40   I'm almost certainly wearing my Adams mask. I really do like it.

00:06:43   Go to Adams,

00:06:45   atoms.com/dfm,

00:06:46   daring fireball mask,

00:06:50   DFM,

00:06:51   adams.com/dfm.

00:06:52   Check them out.

00:06:54   Is, is it the ear loop style of mask?

00:06:57   It is an ear loop style of mask. It's sort of two pieces of,

00:07:01   it's not cotton. It's a sort of a foamy type thing,

00:07:06   sort of like the insert to a shoe and then stitch together in the middle.

00:07:11   So you get a little bit of a conical effect in front of your mouth,

00:07:14   which to me is key for me personally, with a mask key,

00:07:18   get a little bit away from my mouth, your loop style around the, around the,

00:07:21   around the ears.

00:07:23   Well, that makes sense. Cause their shoes have those stretchy laces so that you,

00:07:27   you would, you would expect them to innovate and they in the loop,

00:07:30   manufacturer. I,

00:07:34   I think that's the thing that makes a mask most comfortable for me is the,

00:07:38   you know,

00:07:38   when there was a shortage of masks and nobody really knew how to get go out and

00:07:42   get a mask and you just kind of like grabbed what was available.

00:07:46   It was like the first ones that I tried on on my big fat head as well would pull

00:07:51   my ears forward and they were uncomfortable and it really sucked.

00:07:54   And I thought that this is not sustainable.

00:07:56   But then as soon as I found a mask with the right material on the loops,

00:07:59   you know, it was, it was game over. These days I've been doing a,

00:08:03   like more of a neck Gator style, the ones that, you know,

00:08:06   the tube that you pull over your whole thing. Cause I feel,

00:08:08   I feel like it's a kind of a cool look, you know?

00:08:11   Well, it's, you know, as we,

00:08:15   as we go on and without even delving into the political

00:08:19   aspects of it, if we're just going to all wear masks, our faces are,

00:08:23   you know,

00:08:25   they vary in size and we all wear different shoes because we like different

00:08:29   styles and we have different feet that feel comfortable and different shoes.

00:08:33   It's no surprise that we need different masks.

00:08:35   And so I've found it to be fascinating here in the Gruber household,

00:08:39   what the various members find more comfortable.

00:08:43   I do. I re you know, and you know, you can't, in some ways you can't beat those paper ones,

00:08:49   you know, that is just the like, but they're hard to get there.

00:08:51   They're still hard to get and they're not, you know, N95 medical, you know,

00:08:55   they're just, you know, the ones that look like the light blue surgical ones,

00:08:59   right? Come in a box of 12. Yeah. They're pretty good for the heat.

00:09:02   Amy likes those now that it's, you know,

00:09:04   literally like heat index is like a hundred degrees, 98 degrees today. Uh,

00:09:08   pretty hot. Anyway, masks. I like those.

00:09:12   I like those a bandana type things. That's what you're talking about.

00:09:15   Like you put the tube over your head.

00:09:17   Yeah. You pull it down. There's fun colors. Um, I don't know.

00:09:22   I got one with a galaxy kind of a pattern on it, sort of like the early, um,

00:09:26   you know, Mac OS wallpaper, you know, you remember the, like sort of like,

00:09:31   Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got one with that sort of thing. I wasn't,

00:09:35   it wasn't like an homage to the Mac desktop or anything,

00:09:38   but I just kind of liked it. It was on Amazon for like $11. And I, uh,

00:09:42   put it on and, uh, Roxanne on my partner said, Oh,

00:09:46   Ooh, no, no, no, no, no, no. But they wore it anyway. Whatever

00:09:50   important thing is that I feel good. Right? Yeah, exactly.

00:09:56   Um,

00:10:00   I do think it's interesting. I think it's kind of interesting when you go out,

00:10:03   like I just saw a survey, um,

00:10:06   that Philadelphia, I don't know who knows these, these surveys. I always,

00:10:10   you know, I don't know how they conduct them. I don't think it's the, you know,

00:10:13   the rigorous people at Gallup, but there was some kind of survey of, um,

00:10:17   what percentage of people in each city around the country are wearing masks and

00:10:23   Philadelphia was like at the top or near the top. Um,

00:10:26   but it's like the old analogy about Pennsylvania, um,

00:10:30   which I'll never forget. And which is very true,

00:10:33   which is that Pennsylvania is sort of a microcosm of the United States where you

00:10:37   got Philadelphia on the one coast, Pittsburgh on the other,

00:10:40   and Alabama in the middle. Um,

00:10:43   like the Pennsylvania state capital Harrisburg, which is, you know, again,

00:10:47   picked to be the capital, I guess, cause it's in the middle.

00:10:49   It has like one of the lowest rates of mask wearing in the country. But anyway,

00:10:53   you go out for a walk in Philadelphia, you, you really do.

00:10:56   It's really rare not to see some, see somebody not wearing a mask now.

00:11:00   And if they're not there, you know,

00:11:03   they usually it's like around their chin or something like that.

00:11:05   And they're just taking it off in the heat. And then when, as people come by,

00:11:09   they lift it up. Uh, it's interesting to me,

00:11:12   cause it's same thing as like, I look at people's phones when I'm in airports,

00:11:15   remember airports.

00:11:16   I like to see what people pick for their mask and it is sort of like

00:11:22   phone cases. You know, people it's it, you,

00:11:24   you could go all day and you might not see the same mask twice.

00:11:28   That's right. It's a style choice that no,

00:11:31   but he expected that we would be making.

00:11:33   It's a combination style choice and comfort choice. Right.

00:11:37   And you can kind of,

00:11:38   if you're a nerd like me and you just preoccupy yourself thinking about stuff

00:11:42   like that,

00:11:42   and then almost get hit by a bus crossing the street cause you're looking at

00:11:46   people's masks. Um, you, I like to play the game. I did,

00:11:50   did that fellow pick that mask cause he thinks it's comfortable or did he,

00:11:53   did he pick it cause the way it looks or a little bit of column a little bit of

00:11:57   column B. Um, yeah, yeah. I think it's, yeah, you're right.

00:12:02   It's a little bit of both. It's a mix, but I, but I always, you know, you, we,

00:12:06   we universally appreciate it seeing, seeing it on each other. Cause sometimes,

00:12:11   you know, we have our preconceptions about people and you know,

00:12:15   just from whatever, from their, their other style choices or, you know,

00:12:19   whatever it's, we, we sort of formed these biases.

00:12:23   But so when you see somebody that you would, maybe you, you would think, Oh,

00:12:28   that person

00:12:29   looks a little bit more like somebody in the,

00:12:33   in the places where they wouldn't wear masks and they are wearing a mask and

00:12:37   you're like, yeah, yes, one love. We are all, we are all the same. And,

00:12:42   and that I, I just appreciate it. I think it's great.

00:12:45   So it's like a good signifier that we're, you know, we're in this together.

00:12:50   Yeah. I, and it was more of a thing weeks ago, months ago,

00:12:54   who knows in this time,

00:12:55   but like when it was a sort of a non

00:13:00   majority of people out, although at that time it was also more, you know,

00:13:05   here in Philadelphia, it was a lot more like, Hey,

00:13:07   you should really only be going out for like emergency rations, uh,

00:13:12   rations, rations. I've, how do you say rations? Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I guess.

00:13:17   Um, but you would, you'd see people with a mask and then you just give them the,

00:13:21   not, you know, it's like, yeah, team mask. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff.

00:13:26   I remember, I don't know if you,

00:13:27   if you recall the first person out there in the world that you saw wearing a

00:13:32   mask, but it was striking. Um, yeah. Cause I've, I've been to Japan,

00:13:35   I've been to places where it's, it's just normal practice. If you're,

00:13:40   if you have a cold or something,

00:13:41   you wear a mask to protect other people from your germs. But, um,

00:13:46   really had never seen somebody out on the street.

00:13:48   And I was in the neighborhood where my office is in downtown and I saw

00:13:53   somebody, a very stylish young person. Um,

00:13:56   I was driving and I saw them walking and they had a mask on. And if,

00:14:01   if for like that very brief moment, it felt like, Oh,

00:14:04   this is a glimpse into the future. It felt sci-fi in that way. And I also,

00:14:09   I had a reaction that was like, Oh, that's overkill.

00:14:11   Because at the time we were hearing, you know, you don't need to wear a mask.

00:14:15   It's, uh, you know, wash your hands for 20 minutes and then take care of it.

00:14:19   I remember the first people I saw wearing a mask here.

00:14:22   I forget exactly where it was, you know,

00:14:26   late March or early April. I forget in that timeframe, but I was out.

00:14:30   I remember exactly where I was, uh, around the corner.

00:14:34   I don't remember which errand I was running, probably going to Trader Joe's,

00:14:37   but, um,

00:14:38   I saw two people walking and they

00:14:44   were both young, younger than me. Anybody younger than me is now young.

00:14:48   Uh, they were both young,

00:14:51   they were both Asian and they both had masks on. And

00:14:56   I, I just, I guess I've seen it before, you know, and, you know, again,

00:15:02   it's, it, everybody knows it's common in a lot of Asian countries. Um,

00:15:07   I've seen it in Philadelphia before,

00:15:10   but this was definitely in the context of COVID-19 and I thought,

00:15:15   do they think they have it? Did I just walk by two people who,

00:15:18   who think they have it or they, you know, what is, you know, and I wasn't,

00:15:23   you know, like running away from them or anything. It just,

00:15:25   but it was very striking to me, right? It just was like, what, what was that?

00:15:30   That was very strange. I just haven't seen people wearing masks.

00:15:33   And like you said at the time here in the U S every, the experts were all saying,

00:15:38   you know, ah, you don't need a mask. In fact,

00:15:40   you shouldn't be buying masks. Let them, you know,

00:15:42   keep them for the healthcare workers.

00:15:43   Right. Which, which seems like it was, it was, it caused a huge,

00:15:48   huge setback and even, you know,

00:15:50   probably feeling the residuals in the culture war right now.

00:15:54   I wonder if they had just come out at the beginning and said,

00:15:56   masks are the thing that will, you know, do the most to protect you from this,

00:16:01   whether we'd still be seeing all the pushback.

00:16:04   Yeah, I think I, I don't know.

00:16:06   You had a tweet a while a couple of weeks ago, a week or two ago,

00:16:09   where you were talking about masks and, and again,

00:16:12   good empathetic person that you are, you were observing that look it,

00:16:16   when you first see it and you're not used to it,

00:16:18   it is weird to see people with their faces covered and we're, we're,

00:16:22   it's not even a cultural thing.

00:16:25   It's clearly an evolutionary thing that we've evolved to see

00:16:29   people's faces and read their faces.

00:16:32   And we are finally attuned.

00:16:35   Our brains are finally attuned to noticing incredibly small differences

00:16:40   in people's faces to detect their emotion and to identify the

00:16:45   people we know, and especially the people we love.

00:16:48   Um, and so not seeing people's faces is striking and

00:16:53   weird in both the sociological way and just

00:16:57   evolutionary way.

00:16:59   And it is from the first person perspective,

00:17:03   it is weird to put one on and go out in public.

00:17:06   Uh, it's just a very strange physical sensation and it is

00:17:11   very, it makes you self-conscious.

00:17:13   Yeah, it makes you self-conscious. That's right.

00:17:16   It's it's like putting on a hat that you're not sure is like,

00:17:19   you're the right fit or the right shape for you, but it makes you, you know,

00:17:23   you're sort of testing it out, um, as a style choice, but you're worried,

00:17:27   you know, you maybe this, maybe people think I look dumb and that,

00:17:31   that's just kind of like a normal thought process that all of us kind of go for,

00:17:35   go through, but you sort of weigh that against the benefits of wearing one

00:17:39   and the safety, and you sort of have to discard all that in it.

00:17:44   And it feels like there might be some element in the decision-making of

00:17:49   whether or not to wear, you know, whether wear one or not, um, that,

00:17:53   where people's sort of self-imposed shame about their,

00:17:57   this choice or their, the look might say more to them than,

00:18:02   you know, the,

00:18:03   the very simple calculation of whether it's going to be safe,

00:18:08   safer for them and for other people.

00:18:10   Uh, yeah, I think that that's very true and it's, you know,

00:18:15   so for me, I am not a, uh,

00:18:20   dressed up in a costume person. Yeah. I don't, I,

00:18:25   it's been a very long time since I've like, I don't dress up for Halloween.

00:18:29   I didn't dress up for Halloween when my son was young. Um,

00:18:32   but I pass no judgment when I was younger. I would have, I was a jerk.

00:18:36   I'll admit it. Uh, but I pass no judgment and, and I,

00:18:41   I in the course of becoming older and far more open-minded in

00:18:46   many, many ways,

00:18:47   but almost entirely reducible in all regards

00:18:53   to the concept of, Hey man, whatever floats your boat, right?

00:18:57   It's all cool with me. Um, you know,

00:19:00   like people who like to go to comic con and, and dress up as a superheroes.

00:19:05   Did you see the thing, by the way, where John Lewis went comic con?

00:19:09   I didn't know this until he died a couple of days ago.

00:19:11   John Lewis went to comic con a couple of years ago cause he had,

00:19:14   he had co-authored or he wrote, he wrote a graphic novel,

00:19:18   um, wrote the script for a graphic novel depicting, you know,

00:19:22   some of his actions in the, back in the sixties and the civil rights era.

00:19:26   And then he went to comic con to promote it and dressed as his self,

00:19:30   his younger self from like 1961,

00:19:32   which is like the baddest thing I've ever heard in my life. But anyway,

00:19:38   not really a costume where I feel self-conscious about things like that.

00:19:42   So let's just say for example,

00:19:43   somebody who's having a retirement party or something like that,

00:19:47   and it's a surprise party and you get there and you know,

00:19:50   an hour before because you know, it's a surprise and the host says, Hey,

00:19:54   everybody's going to wear this hat. And it's like, you know, like a,

00:19:57   like a novelty hat and we want everybody to wear one. Well,

00:20:00   I would put it on because I don't want to be, you know what I mean?

00:20:03   I'm going to go with the flow, but I would think like,

00:20:05   do I look like in the back of my head would be the idea of,

00:20:08   do I look like a jerk with this hat on? And I would think I probably do.

00:20:12   Cause I look around and sort of think that maybe everybody else looks a little

00:20:16   bit like a jerk with their hats on.

00:20:18   And it would make me feel self-conscious and then I would get, you know,

00:20:22   I'd get over it. Uh, uh, I think it's, it's, it's certainly,

00:20:26   the mask thing is certainly exacerbated because again,

00:20:30   your face is you, right? This is how we, you know,

00:20:34   we identify each other. It is, it is our personality. It's,

00:20:38   it's how everybody with vision, you know,

00:20:42   can identify people covering up your face is, you know,

00:20:47   it's a lot different than putting on a novelty hat and it is a constant

00:20:51   reminder. This is not a retirement surprise party.

00:20:54   This is a pandemic that is making people terribly ill,

00:20:59   filling hospital ICUs and killing a hundred, you know,

00:21:03   hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

00:21:05   So you got to do it. Yeah. So, but it's like a weird thing to be reminded of,

00:21:10   right? And so you get all the self-consciousness of a novelty mask with

00:21:15   combined with the stress and anxiety of the,

00:21:19   it's just, could not be a more prominent reminder that we're in a pandemic.

00:21:24   Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it,

00:21:27   it doesn't feel awesome losing all that real estate on your face with, you know,

00:21:31   that you use to express yourself and then interpret other people's expression.

00:21:36   It's like very, sorry for the ham-fisted, uh, analogy, but it's you,

00:21:40   your face is UI, right? Right. Um,

00:21:43   so it's kinda like, you know,

00:21:45   designing something with only two thirds of the available,

00:21:49   you know, screen real estate. You're just conveying far less information.

00:21:55   I just, last week I shot of, um,

00:21:58   like one of my commercial video things.

00:22:02   And the product was specifically for, um,

00:22:07   restaurants to be able to do contactless menus and contactless

00:22:11   payments really fluidly. Um, and, but,

00:22:15   but because the setting and the context of the story is in an open air

00:22:18   restaurant where it's very, um, important to be wearing,

00:22:23   you know, masks, then all of our talent, including myself, I was in this one,

00:22:27   had our masks on for, for most of it. And, uh, as a director,

00:22:31   when you don't have the full face available to you to convey all of the,

00:22:35   all of the information that you need an actor to convey,

00:22:39   it's really a different thing. It's really hard. You have to do,

00:22:41   so much more with the eyes, obviously, um, so much more with the lens, you know,

00:22:46   just get in there. Um, and, uh, but I mean,

00:22:49   unfortunately it's something that we're,

00:22:51   we're all getting more accustomed to or sort of like learning to draw more

00:22:54   information out from that limited real estate.

00:22:57   Yeah. It's sort of like the opposite of directing a Batman movie, right?

00:23:00   Cause Batman,

00:23:01   Batman's cowl leaves open exactly the surface area

00:23:06   that we need to cover. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

00:23:10   That's what the assholes who don't wear masks should be wearing.

00:23:13   They should just put it in. I like a fake, you know,

00:23:15   an upper face mask on just like lean all the way into it. I'll bet, man,

00:23:20   America freedom.

00:23:22   We could get into that. Um, but why don't before we do, uh,

00:23:33   why don't I move on and, uh,

00:23:36   keep the business flowing and thank our next sponsor. It's our good old friends.

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00:25:46   So go check them out next time you need to build a website.

00:25:49   squarespace.com/talk show. Hey,

00:25:53   speaking of websites, how about the Twitter? Twitter got hacked.

00:25:57   Yeah, that was silly.

00:25:58   It was, I do you, you didn't got, you didn't get locked out. Did you not,

00:26:07   it didn't affect you in any way. No. Well,

00:26:09   I was unable to tweet during the, oh, right. Yeah, they, they, yeah,

00:26:14   that's right. For verified. It's they, they, they locked you out of tweeting,

00:26:18   but that, that lasted what? A few hours. Yeah. Something like that.

00:26:21   But I did not get locked out. You got locked out, right?

00:26:25   I did because I was one of the dumb dumbs who like changed my password right

00:26:29   after it was, I, I,

00:26:31   I took the extra security precaution of changing my password on both of my

00:26:35   accounts, both my, my personal and my, my business account. And, uh,

00:26:40   you know, surprise, surprise. They, I, the next two days I was locked out.

00:26:45   I think Todd Vizzier experienced the same.

00:26:47   I don't even know if he's back in business. Yeah, he was. Yeah.

00:26:49   He was out of business for a couple of days. Todd Vizzier, he'll listen to this.

00:26:52   He'll hear this and get a, get a kick out of that.

00:26:55   But he won't be able to tweet about it.

00:26:56   Sorry, Todd. Yeah. So not a bad idea, right?

00:27:04   Like you think like, holy hell, Twitter is the whole thing is, you know,

00:27:08   uh, you know, there's,

00:27:10   there's an unknown number of hackers running around doing crazy stuff with

00:27:14   Twitter accounts. Why don't I go in and change my password? You know,

00:27:17   just seems like the least you can do, right. Just do something, right.

00:27:22   I get, if I was a locksmith and something crazy like this was going on,

00:27:26   maybe I would change the locks on my door, right? I mean, you can do it.

00:27:29   If you could change your locks on your door,

00:27:31   as easy as you can change your password on Twitter, I would do it. Right.

00:27:35   But it turns out then that after this was over, they were like, any,

00:27:39   we don't even know what the hell happened Twitter wide.

00:27:43   So let's just flag every account whose password has been changed and

00:27:48   lock it down. Right. So, uh,

00:27:52   I mean, I get it. It was, it's probably, yeah, if you're a hacker and you, um,

00:27:56   you would change people's passwords, I guess on their behalf.

00:27:59   And then I guess it seems like a smart thing to do.

00:28:02   It just totally counterintuitive that if I had done nothing to secure

00:28:06   myself, then I would have been, uh, I would have been back, you know,

00:28:10   back using the app again. Um, but you know, people were wondering what was,

00:28:14   what, what, what would the,

00:28:16   the motivation be if it weren't purely to steal, what was it?

00:28:20   180,000 something like $180,000 with a Bitcoin,

00:28:24   which was not that big of a take. Yeah. Uh,

00:28:27   end of the day for something like for the,

00:28:29   the biggest hack that Twitter has ever experienced, um,

00:28:33   taking what was taking complete control. Right. One of the, you know,

00:28:37   second only to Facebook,

00:28:39   maybe social network on the planet with perhaps greater

00:28:44   media influence than Facebook. Right. Like,

00:28:47   so Facebook as a company is worth way more than Twitter as a company,

00:28:51   but like Twitter's the one that we're always worried about, you know,

00:28:54   who tweeting something dumb that starts a war. Right. Right. Cause it doesn't,

00:28:59   it's not the walled garden that Facebook is,

00:29:01   is that way more of a sort of an amplification machine or a broadcast.

00:29:05   And it is sort of fundamentally simpler, right?

00:29:08   This is the sort of thing I know that you get, like at its core,

00:29:12   it's really hard to explain what Facebook is. I honestly still don't understand it.

00:29:16   I don't really quite understand what the hell it is. Like,

00:29:20   Twitter is actually kind of easy to understand. You sign up, you get a name,

00:29:25   and you know, by convention, we just put an ad sign in front of it.

00:29:29   And then you can tweet,

00:29:31   which is that you get to write up to 280 characters and hit send.

00:29:35   And then it goes.

00:29:37   And then anybody who looks at your account can see the things you've sent.

00:29:40   That's it. That's the whole thing really.

00:29:43   And then everything else is just sort of butter on that in terms of like,

00:29:47   you know, you can, you know,

00:29:49   reply to somebody by putting their name in it and threads it somehow.

00:29:53   But it's all just tweets. The replies are tweets. Everything's tweets.

00:29:58   It's, it's just tweets all the way down.

00:30:00   And tweets are just little blurbs of text that you just throw out into the ether.

00:30:05   Right. That's it. It's very easy to understand.

00:30:08   And I feel like that is sort of what makes it more powerful in terms of like,

00:30:12   if somebody influential is just going to post a message,

00:30:16   you just post it on Twitter. There it is.

00:30:18   It goes out and everybody can point to it. Anybody who, you know, somebody says,

00:30:23   did you see what Adam, Lisa Gore said?

00:30:25   They just post the link and you don't even have a Twitter account. Maybe you just hit the link.

00:30:29   You can read what, what it's there. You don't have to, you know,

00:30:31   there's no goofy thing that pops up. That's like, Hey,

00:30:34   sign up and tell me where you went to high school to sign into Facebook or whatever.

00:30:38   No, it's just there. And then they can put it, you know, you, you show up on CNN.

00:30:42   They can put at Gruber underneath your name or whatever.

00:30:45   And the people know where your Twitter is.

00:30:47   That simplicity is sort of the core of what makes it so powerful.

00:30:51   These guys took control of it and decided to use it to scam Bitcoins.

00:30:57   Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, if you're a little bit conspiracy minded,

00:31:01   that it was sort of a, people are saying, people are saying, you know, it's, Oh God,

00:31:07   that's what a terrible expression.

00:31:09   It's a ruined, it's been ruined by, you know, who?

00:31:13   Yeah. But like, you know, there, there's, there's speculation out there that,

00:31:17   um, it was a test run for something bigger.

00:31:20   I just realized while we're talking about this,

00:31:22   because I watched the movie Sneakers, um, a couple of days ago,

00:31:26   I do remember the movies meet sneakers. It all starts out with a,

00:31:31   with a robbery, a heist. Um, uh,

00:31:35   I forget the specifics. It's been a couple of days, but, um,

00:31:38   and then you learn, and then you learn that the whole thing was an actual inside

00:31:43   job that he, that they were, that this ragtag, uh, gang of, uh,

00:31:48   of, uh, you know, essentially old school hackers, um,

00:31:54   had been paid for, you know,

00:31:56   paid by the bank to pull off in order to discover, uh,

00:32:00   and patch security flaws.

00:32:01   So what if this was a similar kind of an inside job, you know,

00:32:05   and it wasn't that much of an investment to lose 180 K in Bitcoin.

00:32:10   Um, but now they know, I don't know, I kind of think like I,

00:32:14   it's fun to have to theorize about conspiracies like this. I don't,

00:32:17   I think it's end of the day completely false. And I would never, um,

00:32:22   I would never hang my, you know, any, any reputation on this kind of thing,

00:32:27   but it would be an interesting way to sort of in, in, you know,

00:32:31   get people used to the idea that these platforms are not foolproof or,

00:32:36   you know, they're not airtight,

00:32:37   they can be exploited and we should be a little bit more security minded about

00:32:42   that. Um, you know,

00:32:43   I think it's really important leading up to the selection that we don't

00:32:48   consider this platform as airtight and, you know, solid truth.

00:32:52   And, um,

00:32:53   I think that if this little hack causes people to give it a second

00:32:58   thought in terms of even the discussion of what's true and what's false,

00:33:02   then I think it served its purpose.

00:33:04   So, uh,

00:33:06   Ben Thompson brought this up on,

00:33:10   on our dithering show the other day and Sunday we recorded Sunday night

00:33:15   and then that show came out Monday. That was about yesterday.

00:33:18   I don't know who the hell knows what day it is, but then late Sunday night, uh,

00:33:22   Amy and I watched the John Oliver, the, uh, last,

00:33:26   last week tonight with John Oliver. Do you like the John Oliver?

00:33:29   I do. I don't watch it regularly, but I think he's great.

00:33:32   I think he's great, but he had a bit. It was amazing because I wished,

00:33:36   I kind of, I was like, I don't buy the conspiracy theory thing at all.

00:33:39   And Ben was more like, I don't really buy it, but who knows? Maybe.

00:33:44   And then it was just amazing. It was just like in the way like this sort of,

00:33:48   Hey, am I living in some kind of weird,

00:33:50   slip cystic simulation of the universe? Because I was just talking, I mean,

00:33:54   Ben and I recorded like 10 at night and I was late, of course, 10 Eastern.

00:33:59   Um, it's like 10 AM over in Taipei.

00:34:02   And then the John Oliver show comes on at 11. And so it was just like, you know,

00:34:06   I don't know, literally like 30 minutes after I just talked to Ben about it on

00:34:10   our show, John Oliver had a bit talking about conspiracy theories.

00:34:13   And I'm not going to remember it here,

00:34:16   but the name of this psychological thing off, I swear to God,

00:34:20   I'll find it for the show notes, but it doesn't matter.

00:34:22   But the gist of it is that there's a well-known psychological effect

00:34:25   in the, in regarding conspiracy theories. Um,

00:34:30   that's something that has a great effect.

00:34:35   The human mind assumes there must be an equally great cause for it.

00:34:40   And the example,

00:34:44   which I have never thought of and never heard anybody mention,

00:34:47   or at least don't recall anybody mentioning, but which is like, Whoa,

00:34:51   mind blown was comparing the Kennedy

00:34:55   assassination with Reagan getting shot where

00:34:59   Kennedy gets shot.

00:35:03   And the official story is it was a lone kook gunman.

00:35:08   And the whole world thinks, well, that can't possibly be it.

00:35:13   And is, you know,

00:35:15   quite possibly the conspiracy theory of all conspiracy theories, right?

00:35:19   It's certainly up there in the greatest, if you're going to make a greatest hits

00:35:21   of conspiracy theories, the Kennedy assassination is up there, right? I mean,

00:35:25   I don't see anybody can dispute it. Right.

00:35:28   But what happened with Reagan with John Hinckley Jr.

00:35:31   It was a lone kook gunman who went and shot him.

00:35:36   And it, the difference of course,

00:35:38   is that Kennedy was killed and the effects were therefore profound and Reagan

00:35:43   recovered. And you know, most people,

00:35:48   it's not when you think like Ronald Reagan's presidency,

00:35:51   like him getting shot is like,

00:35:54   not even at the top of the list of things that happened, which is kind of crazy.

00:35:58   Right. And there's zero conspiracy theories, right? There is not one.

00:36:01   Have you ever heard a conspiracy theory about Reagan's shooting? Everybody,

00:36:06   but, but, but, but, but, but, but,

00:36:08   because we got a psychological profile of, of his killer, if it is John David,

00:36:13   no, it's not John Hinckley, John Hinckley, John Hinckley, John Hinckley Jr. Yeah.

00:36:17   Which, which seemed so entirely plausible,

00:36:19   which was that he was a nutso who wanted to impress a movie star.

00:36:24   Right. And that seemed very plausible. Okay. So look at it,

00:36:28   like look at the incels of art of today. It, that makes sense. You know,

00:36:33   you could see somebody doing something really evil for the dumbest of all

00:36:37   reasons. And, uh,

00:36:39   I guess the world needed no further explanation at the time.

00:36:42   Well, and I get it too. And the thing that Oliver didn't mention, and I was like,

00:36:46   well, there is the crazy aspect though, where Hinckley also,

00:36:50   oh, shot him at like point blank range. Like he just,

00:36:54   Reagan was just walking out of like the Hilton after giving a speech. And it just,

00:36:58   they just phrase it. It was like the last time it's ever happened where like,

00:37:02   the president just sort of left the president of the United States,

00:37:04   just left a building, like a normal celebrity with just, you know,

00:37:08   a couple of security export experts around him. But like the,

00:37:12   the crowd on the sidewalk was there to, you know,

00:37:14   shout and say hi to him and everything. Uh, you know,

00:37:18   and Hinckley was just there with a gun in his pocket and shot him. Whereas,

00:37:22   you know,

00:37:22   like the mechanics of the shooting are actually very simple. And if you under,

00:37:27   if you understand how the president and through the 60,

00:37:31   which is crazy after all, you know, Kennedy getting shot, you know, that,

00:37:35   that they still just let the president walk out in the sidewalk,

00:37:38   get into a car himself. Um,

00:37:41   but the mechanics of it weren't crazy, just a guy. And,

00:37:44   and the fact that he wasn't a trained shooter, you know,

00:37:48   and just shot him in the stomach or the chest. Whereas the Hinckley thing,

00:37:51   it does involve, you know, some rather preposterous or rather not preposterous,

00:37:55   but hard to believe marksmanship and number of bullets and you know what I mean?

00:38:00   Totally Harvey Oswald. Yeah. So I don't want to,

00:38:01   I don't want to derail this whole thing into some of the stuff around the

00:38:06   Kennedy assassination, but you know,

00:38:09   yeah, there's other assassinations to talk about, right. But just,

00:38:11   just thinking about the mechanics of the shooting, it, you know,

00:38:16   it required even people who believe that there was, you know, that, that, uh,

00:38:20   Lee Harvey Oswald, what's with these guys with the names that are hard to

00:38:24   remember Lee Harvey Oswald, you know,

00:38:26   even if you believe that he did it all on his own,

00:38:29   you still have to fundamentally believe that he was a tremendous marksman,

00:38:32   you know, who can, you know, so I get it. It's, but the,

00:38:36   the bigger point though I think is true, which is that if Reagan had been killed,

00:38:41   there would have been conspiracy theories about it. Right. And it's,

00:38:47   it's certain, you know, and I think that's sort of at the heart of this Twitter

00:38:51   thing. I just, I think it's exactly where it, it was so prof,

00:38:55   their ownership of Twitter's platform was so profound where they could literally

00:39:00   pick any account, almost any account they wanted to. Like there's just,

00:39:05   nobody even knows which ones are locked.

00:39:06   Everybody knows that Trump's is locked behind a key because,

00:39:10   because a couple of years ago, a contractor,

00:39:13   a contractor who worked at Twitter security team part time,

00:39:18   or as a temporary worker on his last day of work,

00:39:21   deactivated Trump's account.

00:39:23   That was wonderful.

00:39:25   So Trump's is under some kind of special lock and key.

00:39:29   I guess Jack Dorsey's is, I only guess because, you know,

00:39:34   he is the CEO and his account wasn't apparently tweeting,

00:39:39   you know, the Bitcoin scam, maybe not. I don't know who else is there.

00:39:43   I, it seems crazy that,

00:39:44   that Trump's would be under this and Joe Biden's wouldn't at this point.

00:39:48   I mean, I'll bet it is right now. I bet as you and I record that, uh,

00:39:52   they were like, Hey, we better, you know,

00:39:54   better put Biden's account under the same thing as Trump's. Um, yeah.

00:39:59   But I, I, how about make everybody's that safe? How, you know,

00:40:03   I think that's the main point here is, Hey jerks,

00:40:06   we're all spending all this time on your platform. Like, you know, a big,

00:40:10   a large portion of society is using this platform to express and learn

00:40:15   information. How about keep us safe? How about don't make this happen?

00:40:20   Well, I think the craziest thing is that you could have,

00:40:24   everybody says over and over again with everything do two factor, two factor,

00:40:28   two factor. I mean, and I've done it. I have gone through,

00:40:32   I'm not going to say every single account I have that I could have two factor on.

00:40:36   I have it on, but every one that I think is important, I do.

00:40:40   Right. Like I've got it on my bank, I've got it on my credit cards.

00:40:46   Um, you know, my Twitter accounts have it. Uh,

00:40:51   my Gmail account has it any, you know, so email,

00:40:55   Twitter, banking, credit cards, and I mean, pretty much anything serious.

00:41:01   I mean, you know, like my account@jcrew.com does not have two factor

00:41:05   authentication.

00:41:06   I am going to order you so many chinos, not going to be flattering to you.

00:41:13   Somebody breaks into my account there and they're going to find the least

00:41:18   surprising order history that they've ever seen. It's a bunch of,

00:41:22   you know, flashy Navy blue polos

00:41:25   and a bunch of gray shorts.

00:41:30   Uh, but if you had two factor on your Twitter account and everybody was like,

00:41:35   well, what's the,

00:41:38   and when this first thing went wild and all these, you know,

00:41:41   this great obvious scams are coming out of these accounts, everybody's like,

00:41:45   Oh my God, that is nuts.

00:41:46   That so-and-so didn't have two factor on their account because everybody just

00:41:50   assumed two factor would protect you. Right. Um,

00:41:54   turns out that the same interface that let them like just change the email

00:41:58   associated with an account. Also let them just,

00:42:00   just like click a checkbox to turn off two factor,

00:42:04   which is sort of like,

00:42:06   you would think they should lock that down.

00:42:12   And it was all social engineering, right. To hack in the first place.

00:42:16   It's like having a vault where, you know, like with a big thick,

00:42:21   you know, caper movie,

00:42:25   three foot thick door for the vault door and a crazy,

00:42:29   you know, combination lock,

00:42:31   but it's just a panel and you could just walk around the side.

00:42:35   It's just like one face out of the four. It's not actually a box. It's like,

00:42:41   yeah, the door, you know, the, the vault door is super secure,

00:42:44   but you could just walk around the side and just turn it off.

00:42:46   There's a guy, there's a security guard, but you just kind of,

00:42:50   you throw a piece of meat around the corner and he goes and chases it.

00:42:56   Well, the other thing that was so wild about, so everybody, I, again,

00:42:59   I think that this fundamental theory,

00:43:00   the reason people are thinking there must be a greater conspiracy is it was so

00:43:04   bizarre.

00:43:07   And it really seems like the Bitcoin part was secondary and it was something

00:43:11   that one of the hackers involved, I don't know if he had it in mind all along,

00:43:16   but like the things that they did first before the Bitcoin thing,

00:43:20   we're just trying to steal what they call OG Twitter handles.

00:43:24   Which I was unaware. I realized that they are few and far between.

00:43:29   These are the one character names like at six,

00:43:36   like just add the character six. Uh, you know,

00:43:40   obviously there's only like 40 or so,

00:43:44   I don't know how many, maybe only 37, one character, Twitter names,

00:43:50   the 26 letters of the alphabet, the 10 digits. And then our friend,

00:43:54   Dave, Dave Rutledge, who runs, uh, created,

00:43:57   co-created meh.com as at underscore.

00:44:02   Oh, wow. Yeah. That's a, that's been a mess for him. Yeah.

00:44:06   You think like that's clever. His, his Twitter handle is underscore,

00:44:09   just one underscore. Uh,

00:44:11   and I believe his wife is two underscores and he secured three underscores for

00:44:17   one of their kids, I believe. Yeah. But guess,

00:44:21   guess whose account gets hacked all the time. Oh man, that sucks. Yeah.

00:44:26   And so this was that, so that was the big heist, huh?

00:44:29   Just getting single character accounts.

00:44:31   And then once they realized they had something, then they did,

00:44:34   this was their version of the checkout. My sound cloud,

00:44:37   when you have a tweet go viral. Yeah. Interesting and terrible.

00:44:41   And it's very stupid. Yeah. Well, and I think that that's ultimately,

00:44:45   I think that one of the things that's forgotten in Twitter hacking history,

00:44:50   everybody remembers the saga of, again, friend of the show. I don't know.

00:44:53   Yeah. I don't think he's ever been on, but Matt Honan, who's, uh, you know,

00:44:57   a big wig over at Buzzfeed news now. Um, but who,

00:45:01   uh, quite unusually in my opinion, spells his name M A T.

00:45:06   He doesn't have the second T, um, uh,

00:45:12   you know, which is a lot less common than say being a John without the

00:45:16   H, um,

00:45:18   but not quite as uncommon as being an Adam without like the second day.

00:45:23   Yeah. That'd be weird. Although it's, you know,

00:45:27   do you well in it for a career in the Navy. Yeah.

00:45:30   But anyway, Matt Honan years ago, I mean,

00:45:37   this might be 10 years ago at this point got hacked, uh, his and,

00:45:41   and badly like this, everything you remember,

00:45:44   as Apple. Cause they, and they only took his Apple ID,

00:45:48   I think to get his Twitter, but, uh, he wrote about it eventually,

00:45:52   but it really was devastating at a personal level cause they took his Apple ID

00:45:56   and he had everything else like his banking and everything was all through his

00:46:01   Apple ID, but he lost his Apple ID to these hackers. Um,

00:46:05   and it seemed like Twitter's initial reaction was to assume that Honan got

00:46:10   hacked because he was in the media. And that's when I got verified. Uh, I did,

00:46:14   I never asked for the ad Gruber account to get the blue check Mark.

00:46:18   They just gave,

00:46:18   I just logged in one day and I had it because they were going through,

00:46:22   they had some assembled some sort of list of people like Matt

00:46:27   Honan. And you know, for obvious reasons,

00:46:30   I am vaguely like him in terms of the number of people following me and that I

00:46:36   write stuff that people read. But I think it's clear in hindsight,

00:46:40   that the reason Honan got hacked wasn't because he was in the media,

00:46:43   but because his username was M a T it was one of these O G

00:46:48   Twitter accounts.

00:46:49   I can only, I had no idea that there was so much value in these short handles.

00:46:54   Right. Well, and, but the value cannot be seen as permanent because surely,

00:46:58   you know, it, it, it, it, no matter what, how,

00:47:02   how quietly they had tried to play this, if they had really just tried to steal,

00:47:07   and they were selling these things according to New York, New York times,

00:47:10   you know, there was like 1500 bucks or 2,500 bucks would get you like a two

00:47:13   character username.

00:47:15   Surely they didn't expect it to be permanent, I guess, unless it's like a,

00:47:20   maybe if it's a Twitter account that was abandoned and that nobody used

00:47:25   and, uh, you know, but if it's somebody was using it, surely Twitter, you know,

00:47:30   this was going to come to their attention and they would see, Oh,

00:47:33   this person says their Twitter account was stolen on this day.

00:47:37   And that was the day we got hacked and there, yes,

00:47:40   that's when the email address and everything was changed.

00:47:42   So we'll just give it back to this person.

00:47:44   Surely they didn't expect it to be permanent. You know,

00:47:48   I think it's just like a typical prank where you, you know,

00:47:51   think you're going to get away with it for an hour and, uh,

00:47:55   just all very bizarre.

00:47:57   And I just think people have a hard time grasping that like 20 year old computer

00:48:02   hackers would do it,

00:48:04   would have this power in their hands and use it to steal the LOL account.

00:48:08   Yeah. Yeah. It was real dumb, but I think again,

00:48:13   silver lining is now we're all just a little bit more aware of the,

00:48:17   of the security flaw. Yeah. Um,

00:48:21   yeah, I don't know. I do wonder what Twitter is going to do.

00:48:25   It's pretty embarrassing for them, especially, you know, and people do,

00:48:28   and I know we're, we're joking about it. Um, but you know,

00:48:31   that's the thing that people get is, you know, what if they had, you know,

00:48:35   tweeted from somebody's account that, you know, like, you know,

00:48:39   at Joe Biden's I'm dropping out of the race or something like that,

00:48:42   you know, or stock manipulation. Right. I mean, people go, you know,

00:48:47   money, yeah. The Tesla being shorted or, or, um,

00:48:52   or other right. And, you know, and Tesla in particular comes to mind because

00:48:57   their stock is, uh, you know,

00:49:01   on a rocket and it is,

00:49:02   so it is volatile and we know for a fact that Elon Musk

00:49:07   tweets goofy things like, yeah,

00:49:10   gets high and tweets that he's taking the couple at the company private at

00:49:16   $420 a share. He did that like,

00:49:20   that wasn't a hack. So, you know,

00:49:23   something just every bit as similar as that would have, you know,

00:49:28   it certainly seemed to be believable. I think, uh,

00:49:31   I think Matt Levine who writes the great money stuff newsletter for Bloomberg,

00:49:36   you know, his idea was have, have, you know,

00:49:39   if you wanted to really try to make some money, um,

00:49:42   it's either short the stock or long the stock. If you wanted to long it and,

00:49:48   and assume it was going to go up, uh, have, uh,

00:49:52   the just hack two accounts, Elon Musk and say, Hey, this time for real,

00:49:57   I'm taking the company public at blank,

00:49:59   put the target number in with the help of, um,

00:50:03   Warren buffet and then just take the buffet account and say,

00:50:07   I'm happy to help Elon Musk take the great company Tesla private would, you know,

00:50:11   we've heard all the financing, boom, the stock jumps up,

00:50:15   you cash out and you know,

00:50:18   and maybe the sec finds you,

00:50:21   but there's so many people who are on a daily basis shorting and long. I mean,

00:50:25   it's like become like a coronavirus quarantine hobby is day

00:50:30   trading stocks. Uh, you know,

00:50:34   you know, if you did it for enough money that it might be worth it to you,

00:50:37   but not so much that it really sticks out among the zillions of trades, people,

00:50:42   crazy trades people do with Tesla every day, you could have gotten away with it,

00:50:46   but instead they just took, took goofy usernames.

00:50:51   So dumb.

00:50:53   Uh, well let's, uh, uh, let's talk about, uh,

00:50:59   my show before I forget. So you helped. Yeah. So I wrote,

00:51:04   yeah, you're remote show. Yeah. Um, and I just want to,

00:51:08   I want to thank you really. I want to thank you personally. Um,

00:51:12   no, absolutely. No sweat. Cause I here's, here's here. I mean, I mean,

00:51:16   I mean relay how this came to be as I best I recollected,

00:51:20   I started talking with Apple, you know, I dunno, six weeks before WWDC,

00:51:25   maybe a little bit before that, you know, just sort of, Hey,

00:51:28   like, I think maybe around the time when they first announced that WWDC was going

00:51:34   to be virtual, I had some preliminary talk with, well, look, this, you know,

00:51:38   we're obviously not, you, I don't, you know,

00:51:40   you're obviously not going to do a show traditionally.

00:51:42   We still will probably be interested in doing something with you if you would

00:51:47   like to, you know, but it would have to be remote. And I said, yeah,

00:51:50   I would like to, I, you know, it's too good of a tradition to, to let fall.

00:51:54   Let's figure it out when we get closer, get closer. And you know,

00:51:59   it's like, okay, here's what we were thinking, you know, um, what if we did,

00:52:04   what if, what if Jaws and Craig come on the show again?

00:52:08   And even in normal years, it's,

00:52:12   it, it is them suggesting,

00:52:16   here's who maybe would be a good idea for the show. And, you know,

00:52:21   Federighi doesn't really spill anything.

00:52:23   Everybody knows Federighi is going to be involved.

00:52:25   But like a couple of years ago when Mike Rockwell,

00:52:27   who's in charge of all the machine learning stuff at Apple,

00:52:32   um, when they were like, we're thinking about Mike Rockwell, he's, you know,

00:52:36   in charge of this, it was sort of a, uh, you know,

00:52:41   there's sort of like a handshake deal,

00:52:43   preliminary to the show that I'm not going to go blab and say, Mike, you know,

00:52:48   part of the thing is that I'm going to keep the guest secret.

00:52:51   Part of it is that it's a lot of fun to come out on stage and nobody in the

00:52:55   audience even knows who's coming out.

00:52:57   And part of it is like, if it's Mike Rockwell,

00:53:01   and I announced it in advance,

00:53:03   it would sort of suggest that maybe the WWDC keynote is going to have a lot of

00:53:08   machine learning AI.

00:53:11   Yeah.

00:53:12   There's some corporate secret stuff that they can't, they don't want,

00:53:15   that's going to indicate you don't want to divulge.

00:53:17   Right. Uh, yeah. But you know, and it was like, you know, and what do,

00:53:22   what are we going to do? And the basic conversation I had with,

00:53:26   with Bill Evans at Apple PR was, uh,

00:53:32   that I'm, I watch a lot of these late night shows. I watched the Colbert,

00:53:37   we watched the Seth Meyers late night show. Uh,

00:53:40   I peek in at the Jimmy Kimmel sometimes. I like, you know, I, I'm a, you know,

00:53:43   that's why this show is called the talk show. I like talk shows.

00:53:45   I find the production value of the shows during quarantine to be,

00:53:51   uh, overall to be, uh, unbelievably poor. I can't believe it.

00:53:59   I could believe it like the end of March when it was new and it was like,

00:54:04   nobody saw this coming.

00:54:05   Yeah. It's like, oh shit, we got to get something up and running like now,

00:54:08   six hours till, till showtime. But yeah, they could easily,

00:54:12   in this amount of time, they could have easily built a little studio for each of

00:54:17   the, uh, you know, a little home studio for each of the,

00:54:19   Right. And where it particularly falls flat is the interviews when they have

00:54:26   guests on and they just look, I mean,

00:54:29   and not even talking about the editing,

00:54:31   but just the compression artifacts that you're actually just looking at the

00:54:36   compression artifacts of a zoom call over mediocre bandwidth and a terrible,

00:54:42   sometimes a terrible like Mac book webcam. Um,

00:54:49   I just can't believe that they don't have, and this,

00:54:53   we can talk about this with you, but you know,

00:54:55   the way that it would be more self-contained, but like the way that,

00:54:59   that you guys at sandwich have put together a kit that you can send around to

00:55:03   shoot stuff remotely. Like why don't they have an interview kit?

00:55:06   And they can just send it in a box with some instructions.

00:55:09   And then as the weeks go on, they can, you know,

00:55:12   here's where people got hung up. Oh,

00:55:14   people got confused about this and this and then you get it down and then

00:55:18   everybody could have like a nice light or two and a nice camera and a good

00:55:24   microphone.

00:55:24   And maybe we wouldn't record the actual compressed stuff going over the

00:55:29   internet. Just basically, I find it very hard to watch. I really do.

00:55:33   I don't watch the interviews anymore because I really,

00:55:36   I can't, it's, I just, it's too hard.

00:55:41   It feels like I'm like reading, reading subtitles.

00:55:45   It's a quandary for them, for these shows, because if they, if,

00:55:49   let's say they do figure out a really good mobile production kit and then some

00:55:54   of like, then the interviews,

00:55:56   the other side of the interview starts looking and sounding better or even like

00:56:01   looking and sounding great,

00:56:02   then they're kind of stuck at that level of that, that,

00:56:06   that production quality standard.

00:56:08   And then anything that falls short of that is going to really stick out and look

00:56:12   terrible by comparison. So they, they're almost,

00:56:15   I feel like they're doing themselves a favor acknowledging that, that, Hey,

00:56:19   it's a free for all. We're going to get what we're going to get limited,

00:56:23   not only by the capture gear,

00:56:25   but the actual bandwidth that people have available to them.

00:56:28   And the physical, we're just having to, what's that?

00:56:33   Well, the physical space that people are quarantining in, right?

00:56:35   Not everybody has the luxury of having a space available with say,

00:56:40   like I did nice natural light or space at all. Right. I mean,

00:56:45   there's people who live in small apartments, you know,

00:56:47   with kids or pets and yeah.

00:56:49   And also most people prioritize different things in their home office.

00:56:53   They don't care about what it looks like behind them.

00:56:55   Cause they're looking in front of them all day long, you know, they,

00:56:57   so they don't care.

00:56:58   Usually people sort of sit with a back against the wall and a bunch of framed,

00:57:03   you know, commemorative things. And those things don't look good on camera.

00:57:08   Yeah. So anyway,

00:57:09   that was my basic thing is I didn't want it to look like that because part of it

00:57:13   was simple vanity.

00:57:15   I don't want to put out a show that looks like garbage,

00:57:17   but also if I have trouble following along with a

00:57:22   very poor,

00:57:23   just sort of record the actual zoom or FaceTime,

00:57:28   or it doesn't even matter which of the things you're using,

00:57:31   if you just record it to disc, I really,

00:57:34   I just have a hard time following along. I,

00:57:38   I wanted people to enjoy it. You know, and that was my basic thing was let's,

00:57:43   let's, you know, we don't do anything fancy,

00:57:45   but let's make it look good and sound good and let's figure this out.

00:57:47   And we figured out the mechanics of basically long story short. And then,

00:57:51   you know, I wrote all the technical details, but do it as a double ender

00:57:55   and have a camera. That's not even the webcam recording it.

00:58:00   We just used iPhones, but the iPhones are great people. Uh, and again,

00:58:04   that was, it wasn't like a, uh, an advertisement for iPhones.

00:58:09   I wasn't even under any obligation to say that I shot my end with an iPhone

00:58:14   11 and that I did what I could have used a different camera.

00:58:18   I could have used any camera I wanted to. They just said,

00:58:20   we're going to use iPhones. And I was like, I was going to use an iPhone too,

00:58:23   cause it's actually the best video camera I own.

00:58:26   And I didn't really feel like buying a new camera just for this. Um,

00:58:31   not because I'm cheap either. I love buying cameras,

00:58:34   but I just was afraid to buy something and learn something new.

00:58:36   I want something dependable. Um,

00:58:39   people couldn't believe that they were just shot with iPhone 11s. I mean,

00:58:42   cause both ends looked great. Yeah. Yeah. They, they, they looked,

00:58:46   they look and sound great right out of the box. You know,

00:58:49   all the default computational math is there for a reason.

00:58:53   It's to take any material and automatically automatically make it look

00:58:58   incredible without having to do anything. And then when, you know,

00:59:01   and then if you have actual post-production involved,

00:59:04   you can take that and elevate it just that couple of notches better.

00:59:08   And that's when people start to say, Oh,

00:59:10   that didn't even look like an iPhone that looked like a professional camera.

00:59:13   And so a lot of the weight was off my shoulders though. I think we got this.

00:59:17   I think we can do it mechanically. I think I know what equipment we'll use.

00:59:22   I know that I've got a good rapport with Federighi and Jaws, you know,

00:59:27   this is going to work. Um, and then they were like, well,

00:59:32   what are you going to do about editing? And again, you know, and it, it,

00:59:36   it did not like I said that came out like they were,

00:59:41   confrontational about it. And I was like, ah, I've got it. And they're like, well,

00:59:44   we could suggest like, we can suggest contractors we've worked with,

00:59:48   worked with for editing. I was like, I think, I think I'll, you know, and,

00:59:52   and again, it wasn't like they were trying to take ownership of it.

00:59:55   It's my show. And, you know, and they're like, okay, cool.

00:59:58   And I thought I had in the back of my head, I'm going to ask,

01:00:01   I'm going to ask Adam and sandwich because I,

01:00:05   I just know that you knock it out of the park.

01:00:07   But then I put it off a little too long.

01:00:09   And then I got all real nervous about it. I was like, Oh my God,

01:00:12   what if they're busy? You know? And it's like, what a terrible ask.

01:00:15   And I really, I didn't know, I didn't really have a plan B,

01:00:20   but I was like, well, I could figure out a plan B. I mean, you know,

01:00:25   well, you know, you have an army at your disposal, like a little army of, of,

01:00:30   of, of people, of fans that would just mobilize right here. Right.

01:00:34   I'm not, I'm not toiling on obscurity. So I wasn't like,

01:00:38   it's sandwich or nothing, but it's like sandwich or the unknown.

01:00:43   And, but I reached out and you were like, yeah, we could do that. It'd be great.

01:00:46   And then as we got into it and I, I just realized,

01:00:53   Oh my God, if I, if this weren't you and your,

01:00:57   your colleagues, a sandwich, I would just be,

01:00:59   I'd be on the edge of a cliff thinking about jumping off because it,

01:01:04   it was such a tremendous relief to know that it was in good hands and

01:01:09   to give what I thought were just sort of like the equivalent,

01:01:13   almost literal equivalent of like a pen on a napkin

01:01:18   instructions. Here's, you know, basically,

01:01:21   you guys took it and just completely got it.

01:01:24   You knew exactly what I meant and cut it together. And,

01:01:29   and you know, like you said, just, you know,

01:01:31   a little bit of color correction and stuff to just, you know,

01:01:34   sweeten it just the right amount.

01:01:36   Yeah. Just make the conversation flow. There's three, there's three,

01:01:41   literally three video sources that you're sort of in there in this case, what,

01:01:45   five. Yeah. Cause they each had two cameras. Right. Then you're just,

01:01:49   you're just making sure everything flows together and doesn't impede the

01:01:52   conversation.

01:01:53   Yeah. And I, you know, came out great, but it was,

01:01:56   what a relief and what a tremendous.

01:01:59   Fun to be asked because I've obviously been to, you know,

01:02:02   many of your live shows in the Bay and you always have like

01:02:06   Caleb Sexton and you know, Jake Schumacher,

01:02:10   sort of doing the live,

01:02:11   the live event coverage of stuff from the audio and video standpoint.

01:02:16   And then, and those guys are all great and very talented. And of course,

01:02:20   Caleb works with you on the audio side of things still,

01:02:23   but I wouldn't have been well suited to, or set up to do that kind of thing.

01:02:27   Live events is not our, our bag at sandwich, but this,

01:02:32   this kind of thing, especially having just come off the project with,

01:02:35   for Slack where literally it was all done remotely and you know,

01:02:38   figuring out how to shuffle data around and capturing from many locations,

01:02:43   et cetera. So it just felt like a fun thing to do. Let's try this out.

01:02:47   And the only thing that we didn't really account for was like working with an

01:02:50   hour plus of how long was the final thing?

01:02:53   I'm going to say it was around 80 minutes.

01:02:57   Yeah. Yeah. 80 minutes of 80 minutes of program instead of our typical 90 seconds.

01:03:02   Data is a lot heavier as we, as we all experienced.

01:03:05   Otherwise we would have gotten it out that first night. Right. Oh God,

01:03:09   that was harrowing.

01:03:10   Oh, it was so bad. I had, I,

01:03:14   I've talked about it before, but yeah,

01:03:16   my 10 megabit per second upstream here in Capletown has,

01:03:21   hasn't really been an issue. Like Ben Thompson, you know,

01:03:25   the video goes up to Dropbox and we use a thing called Zen caster for dithering,

01:03:29   but we, you know,

01:03:29   we're literally really record like 16, 17 minutes to do a 15 minute show.

01:03:34   And you know,

01:03:35   he's always making fun of me for how long it takes for my 17 minutes of nothing

01:03:39   but wave audio to upload like

01:03:44   and four key, 30 frames per second,

01:03:48   4k video. Yeah, it was heavy. Yeah.

01:03:53   I did have the thought when we were doing, I did have the thought as we were

01:03:56   waiting for the six or seven hours for my stuff to go to where you guys could

01:04:00   access it. I thought, well,

01:04:01   this makes me feel a lot better about the fact that I only shot my side from one

01:04:06   camera instead of two. They did with theirs cause it would have doubled it.

01:04:10   Yeah. And of course on their end they, you know, we get, we,

01:04:16   they had the same, I think frame IO, um,

01:04:19   destination that we gave you and there's was up in like 14 seconds flat.

01:04:24   Like I wisecracked that, you know, I,

01:04:29   that they apparently have better internet than I do, but you know,

01:04:32   I suspect it's really no joke that, you know, Apple's

01:04:36   not just Apple period, but their new, new facility has, you know,

01:04:41   very fast internet. Uh, what do you think?

01:04:46   Here's a technical question for you. So we shot 4k 30 frames per second, um,

01:04:50   which may or may not be 29.97, whatever. I don't care. It's 30 frames per second.

01:04:55   Do you think we should have shot 24 frames per second?

01:04:58   No. Oh, such a great question. I love talking about frame rates. Um,

01:05:04   and I'm dealing with that with my own home set up too. Uh,

01:05:07   there's a time and a place for, uh, 24 frames per second.

01:05:12   And I think for most purposes when you're trying to make something

01:05:16   feel, um,

01:05:18   greater than contemporaneous when,

01:05:22   when you're trying to lend some weight or some archival importance to something.

01:05:26   Yeah. 24 frames per second is great because films are shot in 24 and

01:05:31   you, the, the, the,

01:05:34   the eye and the mind can pick up on the subtle differences between 24 and 30

01:05:39   where we all grew up with 30 frames per second or, um,

01:05:43   and so we know that that represents, um, essentially video,

01:05:48   which often, especially when we were kids, video was used for,

01:05:53   you know, live event type of things or, you know, news or,

01:05:57   um, you know, SNL kind of things,

01:06:01   live to tape kind of things.

01:06:04   And it makes you feel more present as though it's, it's, it's happening in the

01:06:09   moment. Um, so with, with something like a zoom call, yeah,

01:06:13   I could easily switch my camera to 24 frames per second, but then I just,

01:06:17   I feel like it lends almost like a self-importance to my image that I don't

01:06:22   really need to be in most of my business calls.

01:06:25   Maybe if I'm trying to say something very, very important, profound,

01:06:29   then I'll switch it over to 24. But then again,

01:06:32   I'm talking to people who are all mostly, you know,

01:06:35   with their Mac book camera and you know, the, the same 29 97 frame rate.

01:06:40   So I'll,

01:06:41   I'll just be the odd man out and it'll look weird and everything.

01:06:45   But years and years ago when I was at Coachella, I noticed, and they start,

01:06:50   and they,

01:06:51   it was one of the first years that they had giant video screens up on the main

01:06:55   stage, you know, like they do in so many concerts now,

01:06:58   every concert, every concert has giant video screens on at least the left and

01:07:03   right of the stage so that if you're far away,

01:07:07   you can experience the event in person.

01:07:10   And for those first, uh,

01:07:13   it might've been just the first year that they had basically an actual crew,

01:07:18   like an, you know,

01:07:19   an actual like multi-camera video crew up there on the stage shooting with

01:07:24   cranes, getting the cap, you know, capturing the,

01:07:27   the audience footage and everything meant to feel like a real time documentary

01:07:32   crew. Well, they, it was weirdest phenomenon, but they, they,

01:07:36   uh, oh man, I, I'm feeling like, um, Deja Vu,

01:07:41   like we've talked about this on your show before. And if so, shame on me.

01:07:45   Okay. But anyway, so that, that first year they,

01:07:51   it was in the very beginning of video cameras,

01:07:53   pro video cameras being able to capture in 24 frames per second,

01:07:57   which was a huge game changer for filmmakers back then. Right. And so they,

01:08:02   um, they captured and displayed their live, you know, doc, um,

01:08:08   you know,

01:08:09   filmmaking in 24 frames per second so that everything that you were watching on

01:08:14   the video screens up there was 24 frames per second.

01:08:16   And the unintended consequence of that or the psychological effect of that is

01:08:21   that people in the audience felt like they were watching a movie instead of a

01:08:25   concert. And when you feel it, when you're watching a movie,

01:08:28   you don't really like scream and dance and shout a lot.

01:08:32   So what I noticed was that the, the audience was, or the,

01:08:35   the crowd was way more subdued in ways that aren't, you know,

01:08:39   don't lend themselves to a good concert. And, uh,

01:08:44   it was just the weirdest thing. And then the next year they flipped it back to 30

01:08:47   frames per second. And it felt again, like in real time,

01:08:50   it felt real time. Like you're supposed to be reacting.

01:08:53   You're not intended to stay sort of quiet and, and spectate.

01:08:57   You're supposed to participate.

01:08:58   I remember the first time I saw something like this and it wasn't live in an

01:09:03   audience. It was, and I know it was on MTV. I'm going to just say it was the,

01:09:07   yeah, the movie award. No, yes. It was, it was, or maybe the movie awards.

01:09:12   I totally remember that. Yeah. They did 24 the first, the first time. Yeah.

01:09:17   Maybe it was. So I don't know. It was one of their award shows,

01:09:19   but they did 24 and I have very vivid memories

01:09:24   of watching it with Amy. And I don't even watch a lot of award shows.

01:09:27   I maybe I used to watch more, I think, but, uh,

01:09:30   well, they used to be more of events and now it just, everything disappears.

01:09:34   But I remember it on, in a,

01:09:36   in a couple of different ways is I remember, I remember watching it.

01:09:40   I remember being blown away by the quality at first and thinking,

01:09:45   what are they, how are they doing this? And then like very quickly realized,

01:09:49   Oh, they're shooting 24 frames per second.

01:09:51   That's what's giving it this film look. Um, you know,

01:09:55   and calling it a film look is the thing we don't even talk about anymore because

01:09:59   it's gotten so good.

01:10:00   But there was a while there in the late nineties through the early

01:10:05   two thousands where film look, film, look, film,

01:10:08   look was something that all anybody, I mean,

01:10:11   you certainly know more than I do because you went into it professionally.

01:10:14   But even as like somebody, like a nerd following along,

01:10:17   it was something I, you know, I was aware of.

01:10:20   Everybody was looking for filters and things you could throw video through to

01:10:24   make it look like film. And of course the biggest is just shoot 24 instead of 30

01:10:29   frames per second. Um, I figured this out.

01:10:33   And of course I start yapping to Amy about it.

01:10:35   And she's like there to see Johnny Depp. She's not,

01:10:38   does not want to hear about frame rate. Yeah.

01:10:43   And at first my first feeling was technical

01:10:47   euphoria of this is amazing. They're shooting something live in 24.

01:10:52   And it does look like a movie and it does look like film,

01:10:55   even though it can't be film because it's live, you know,

01:11:00   and I'm amazed. And then very quickly I was like, but this is all wrong.

01:11:04   Like this doesn't feel live at all.

01:11:07   This feels like I'm watching a movie years from now about the

01:11:12   whatever year it was the 2003 video music awards or whatever. Like it,

01:11:16   it just totally broke the illusion that I was watching a live broadcast of a,

01:11:20   of an award show.

01:11:21   Right. And it took the,

01:11:23   it took the experimentation in order to figure out that that was wrong. That's,

01:11:27   that's, that's what's kind of fun is that that feeling that where they were with

01:11:31   all these, the introduction of these new tools,

01:11:33   the new tech to do 24 frames per second, they were learning it as,

01:11:37   as the rest of us were too.

01:11:40   And then like 20 minutes would go by and I would just say to Amy after like,

01:11:44   keep my mouth shut, but do you, do you see what I mean?

01:11:47   It doesn't feel alive. It's like, don't just like leave. She's like,

01:11:51   get out of here.

01:11:52   Right. Well, I mean,

01:11:53   and it's even the same phenomenon in reverse of the H high frame rate stuff

01:11:58   that, you know,

01:11:59   Peter Jackson or Ang Lee was experimenting with where it seems like it might be a

01:12:03   good idea, but then you quickly discover, Oh, I thought it was a bad idea.

01:12:06   Because, because what, like the brain associates, it was,

01:12:10   was something that it's already experienced, you know, in our,

01:12:13   in the case of MTV or Coachella,

01:12:15   the brain associates it with watching a movie.

01:12:19   And in the case of Peter Jackson movie the brain associates

01:12:24   it with watching a soap opera or you know,

01:12:29   motion smoothing on your TV.

01:12:30   All right. So I will say, I'll never find it in, I,

01:12:34   I didn't bookmark it, so I'll never find it. But, um,

01:12:37   at some point within the last month,

01:12:40   and it was more like a month ago when the protests were more of an ongoing,

01:12:45   uh, thing around the country. Uh, and there,

01:12:50   of course, one of the, the very notable,

01:12:54   I mean, just remarkable. And it's unlike anything else anybody's ever seen in

01:12:58   history,

01:12:59   aspects of protests in 2020 is the fact that

01:13:04   almost every,

01:13:06   the overwhelming majority of the people involved in the protests are

01:13:11   carrying extraordinarily good video cameras with them at all times.

01:13:16   Um, but the default and you know, the, the,

01:13:21   the defaults are the defaults for a reason. Um,

01:13:26   the default doesn't change for most people in the default for just about every

01:13:31   camera I'm aware of. And certainly all iPhones is 10, 80 P,

01:13:35   30 frames per second, but you can go to 60. Um,

01:13:40   and I saw one of the things here in Philadelphia, um,

01:13:45   you know, the, the famous art museum we have on our park,

01:13:49   our Ben Franklin Parkway,

01:13:51   where the steps are that Rocky Balboa ran up and cinematic.

01:13:56   Fame, um, is it,

01:13:59   but it's also where we have big public events like, uh,

01:14:03   big concerts for the 4th of July when you can have concerts for the 4th of July.

01:14:08   And it's also a great spot for protests because it's just this big,

01:14:13   wide Boulevard Parkway. And anyway, somebody shot, um,

01:14:18   a scene there and they clearly had their phone at 60 frames per second.

01:14:23   And the difference, the,

01:14:25   the you are there aspect of it was just unbelievable.

01:14:30   It was like, holy crap. Like if you've got this,

01:14:34   if you're going to shoot a protest footage or like news event footage and you

01:14:39   can quick put your phone in 60 frames per second,

01:14:42   that might be a fantastic idea.

01:14:44   And it really also really helped with the handheld nature of it.

01:14:50   And it wasn't that the footage that I saw that was 60 wasn't any kind of incident.

01:14:55   It wasn't like, oh, here's the cops, you know,

01:14:59   beating on a guy or, or here's protesters setting a car fire.

01:15:03   It was just, Hey, look at this amazing crowd of people.

01:15:07   But it was panning around, obviously handheld.

01:15:10   And the panning just was just unbelievable at 60 frames per second in terms of

01:15:16   convey conveying a sense of this is what it would be like to stand on that spot

01:15:20   and pan your head.

01:15:21   Yeah, that's incredible that what the subtleness,

01:15:25   the subtlety that our brains can pick up on in terms of like the space between

01:15:29   the frames. And I agree 60 frames per second for something like that is so much

01:15:34   more immersive. Um, where, you know, and, and, and you started to,

01:15:38   you start to think about like what, what are,

01:15:42   what is the max where it doesn't matter anymore? Where is that?

01:15:44   Where did the return start diminishing? Um, you know, you know,

01:15:48   and then think about the fact that Canon just released an eight K pro consumer

01:15:53   camera. Uh, and like, what, what,

01:15:57   is that going to make everything feel that much more immersive or, or not?

01:16:01   Yeah. Um, you know,

01:16:03   typically high frame rates are so that you can slow them down to, um,

01:16:08   you know, 24 and, and, and, and, uh, you know,

01:16:11   distort time in that way and sort of make, make, uh,

01:16:15   make a moment feel differently. But, um, I really like the,

01:16:19   this idea because it starts to approach at 60 frames per second.

01:16:22   It starts to approach sort of VR feeling without the VR.

01:16:26   Yeah, definitely. That's absolutely the effect. It is sort of a,

01:16:30   just looking at it on a simple,

01:16:34   I say simple and there's somebody at Apple who's worked on like the HDR aspects

01:16:39   with the OLED screen. It was like, that's not simple, but you know what I mean?

01:16:43   It doesn't involve goggles or a curved screen or you know, any kind of 3d,

01:16:47   but there is a VR like aspect to 60 frames per second.

01:16:50   And I have to say before I forget, because I, I, again,

01:16:54   I should have put it in the notes, but now I'll remember it.

01:16:56   My funniest behind the scenes aspect of my show, um,

01:17:01   which I have to say, and you say, well, why would you ever need an AK camera?

01:17:06   You know, you can't, maybe you can't see it and the minimum screen size,

01:17:11   you would need to be able to see the difference in quality from 4k is

01:17:16   enormous, you know, and certainly wouldn't, you know,

01:17:19   even if you had like a wall to wall TV in your living room,

01:17:23   quite possibly wouldn't be large enough to see the difference and how many

01:17:26   people are going to project their consumer shot video onto an

01:17:31   actual cinema movie screen where maybe 8k would make a

01:17:35   difference. But one thing you can do with 4k footage is you can crop.

01:17:40   And so if you have a cave footage and you have, and it's, you know,

01:17:44   you may not do it so much in a professionally shot thing,

01:17:48   like what you do, because you're going to, you can plan everything out,

01:17:51   but certainly if you're shooting news footage or like a protest or something

01:17:56   like that, if you happen to capture something on 8k,

01:17:59   but the detail is only a portion of the frame you can crop and you,

01:18:03   instead of losing resolution, you can still keep it and broadcast it.

01:18:07   And if you're broadcasting at 1080, you know,

01:18:10   just a tiny fraction of the frame is, is, isn't losing any fidelity at all.

01:18:14   And anyway, the thing I'm reminded of is

01:18:17   the soda can. Yeah. So we,

01:18:23   what was it a La Croix or something? What was the, I forget what it was.

01:18:26   Not La Croix. I don't drink La Croix. It was a San Pellegrino.

01:18:30   The San Pellegrino sells these fruity things.

01:18:33   So I stressed inordinately probably too much over where to frame my end of the

01:18:40   video and got some great advice from you,

01:18:44   which was I had showed you a couple of places around my house and you're like,

01:18:47   Hey dummy, just shoot it right here in the corner of your office.

01:18:50   That looks great because that looks great. It's simple. It's you don't even,

01:18:54   these other ideas are bad, you know? And again, that's not how,

01:18:58   those aren't the words you said.

01:18:59   The words you said made it seem like maybe I wasn't an idiot for suggesting some

01:19:03   of the other spots, but I could read between the lines and figure it out.

01:19:06   And then I shot it by my wife and my wife Amy. And she was like, yeah, he's right.

01:19:11   That does look great. Why, you know,

01:19:12   why do we pay all this money to get these nice slats on the side that we've got

01:19:16   the cool thing on the one side of my office? Uh, why wouldn't you shoot there?

01:19:20   And I was like, Oh yeah,

01:19:21   I don't know why I went and shot footage in every other room in my house. Uh,

01:19:26   so I set it up and of course it was nothing was looked like it was right.

01:19:30   You saw the shot from like two days before and it was like, just like a,

01:19:33   you know, like boxes and stuff. And I was like, well, Hey, you know, Amy,

01:19:36   can you make this look good? And she was like, yes, I will make it look good.

01:19:39   And I think your advice was just make sure there's some color. Uh,

01:19:44   I think she did a good job. We had some nice stuff in there. She did great.

01:19:47   It looked great. Um, but she really did. And she knocked her so, I mean she,

01:19:51   and she didn't half ass it.

01:19:52   She really spent a lot of time and because we had actually done the backstory is

01:19:56   that my office got renovated, uh,

01:19:59   the end of last year through the beginning of this year and literally wrapped up

01:20:03   right when quarantine hit,

01:20:05   like the timing could not have been more serendipitous in terms of like,

01:20:10   if quarantine had hit like two weeks earlier, you know,

01:20:12   and like whenever you have any kind of, uh,

01:20:15   home improvement type stuff, the last like couple of days,

01:20:18   everything comes together, you know,

01:20:20   like there's all sorts of stuff that's mostly done,

01:20:24   but then it doesn't get the finishing touch until the very end.

01:20:27   So like two weeks would have been like,

01:20:29   we would have had like the whole quarantine in a house that's covered with tarps

01:20:33   and stuff like that. And instead we weren't. Um,

01:20:36   but I've never, because I'm me,

01:20:40   I've never fully unpacked my office stuff from the basement.

01:20:44   So like I've got all this stuff I need to put on the shelves,

01:20:48   the nice new shelves I have in my office, but haven't,

01:20:52   and to look for nice stuff to put on the shelves.

01:20:55   My wife really had to do a lot more work than you might think in terms of going

01:20:59   through cardboard boxes with unhelpful

01:21:04   names. And she made it look really nice.

01:21:08   I really think it looked great.

01:21:09   And I shot the interview with Jaws and Craig first,

01:21:13   and then I had to shoot my opening, uh, where I thank the sponsors, uh,

01:21:18   second and in between I was parched and got, got a soda and

01:21:22   left it in, left it behind me

01:21:25   and really just did not have it in theory.

01:21:31   I could have just rerecorded the opening, but I just didn't have it in me.

01:21:34   I was emotionally spent. I just, and I need,

01:21:37   I wanted to turn this around quickly. And, but

01:21:40   if it had been all me, I would have just said, ah,

01:21:44   the hell with it is just soda can in the back. It's like a gag.

01:21:47   But my wife had really knocked herself out to make it look as perfect as

01:21:51   possible.

01:21:51   I really felt like I'd be letting her down and you told me, don't worry,

01:21:56   we can crop it out.

01:21:57   Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was, that was, uh, that was plan A.

01:22:01   Plan B was actually just to patch it out, you know, just to

01:22:05   motion Photoshop it, which wouldn't have been that hard either, but the crop,

01:22:11   the crop did fine. Um, and yeah, we, we shoot in usually art,

01:22:16   we shoot our commercials in either 4k or 3k and it's not really because they're

01:22:20   planned out professionally. It, we do,

01:22:23   we punch into shots all the time, um, to get, you know,

01:22:26   closer or whatever, just, um, to be able to reframe.

01:22:30   So it's really nice to have the extra, the extra resolution.

01:22:33   Right. Yeah. I didn't mean to, I guess I didn't think about that, but yeah,

01:22:38   I guess I do notice sometimes when I'm watching stuff that it probably wasn't a

01:22:41   different setup,

01:22:42   but just punched in to get slightly closer in an interview.

01:22:46   Yeah. You can probably tell a little bit in very,

01:22:48   very subtle ways by how,

01:22:50   if you're cropping out the optical edges of the lens, um,

01:22:54   you can sort of tell though,

01:22:57   that's not what any actual lens looks like on the edges of the frame, right?

01:23:01   But you know, not, not in, not in a way that you would ever really think about.

01:23:05   Right. And if you're interested in the subject matter, that's the last, you know,

01:23:09   if you're looking at the edges of the frame for optical distortion,

01:23:15   the telltale sign of like an anamorphic lens or something like that,

01:23:18   you're probably bored by whatever it is you're watching. Right.

01:23:22   And that's very different from like your side as, you know, when,

01:23:26   when you're in editing and you become so intimately familiar with every single

01:23:31   shot in a way that you almost lose sense of the flow of the cinema when you get

01:23:38   caught up on, you know,

01:23:41   the specifics of how do we cut between these three things or, uh,

01:23:45   but when you're just watching, you really should,

01:23:47   if you're noticing the edges of the frame, you're probably bored.

01:23:50   Yeah. Something, something went wrong. Yeah. So I rewatched the, um,

01:23:54   the keynote this year and I, and I was just cause I, I,

01:23:59   when we were talking about frame rates, I was got curious what,

01:24:02   when if you had to go, if you had to guess, what would you say?

01:24:05   Was it shot in 24 or 30?

01:24:08   That's a partly what made me think about it because there was a sort of

01:24:12   cinematic look to it, but I don't think it was 24.

01:24:17   I think it was 30, but I don't know what they did. That's my guess.

01:24:20   And I have not, I swear to you, I haven't cheated and looked,

01:24:23   but my guess is they shot the keynote in 30,

01:24:26   but there is something going on in post or some things going on in post that give

01:24:31   it a movie like feel that makes me wonder.

01:24:38   That's my guess. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean,

01:24:40   I love that there was the whole meticulously composed sort of premeditated,

01:24:45   um, feel to the whole thing. I actually do think, I mean,

01:24:50   I'm going to guess, but I could be wrong and whatever.

01:24:52   Then I lose my filmmaker license,

01:24:54   but I do think it was shot in 24 frames per second. Um,

01:24:58   I'm almost positive,

01:25:00   especially looking at the opening stuff with Tim Cook in the, you know, in the,

01:25:06   in the theater. Right.

01:25:09   Well, hold that thought. I want to get back.

01:25:10   Let's just go deep on the keynote and how they did it. But let me,

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01:26:54   This is a real interesting brand color. I'm on the website.

01:26:59   I don't think I've ever seen that as a brand color before.

01:27:02   Kind of like that bright beige foundation, like makeup foundation color.

01:27:07   Hmm. It is. And it sort of has like a hint of orange to it.

01:27:11   Yeah. A little orange. Yeah. It is an interesting brand color.

01:27:15   Kind of like it.

01:27:17   I look at that and you look at that. It's seed. Now you've got me thinking,

01:27:21   you got me thinking like you, uh, but if you scroll down, there's,

01:27:26   there's a young woman here about halfway down the page and, uh,

01:27:29   she's got like a potted plant next door. The pot. Oh yeah. Same color.

01:27:34   Yeah. Picks up the color. Yeah. You're right. Yeah.

01:27:36   Right there with the package. Um, so the keynote,

01:27:43   I, yeah, this is, it was in hindsight,

01:27:47   and I've rewatched the actual keynote again. So I watched it live.

01:27:52   Nobody knew it was gonna, what it was going to be like.

01:27:56   Uh, I expected something sort of like this.

01:28:00   I know there were a lot of people and I was, I guess I should have to,

01:28:04   to get my being right points should have posted about it on daring fireball.

01:28:09   Um, but like the night before I tweeted my predictions for how they would do it,

01:28:14   like the basic mechanics of how they would do it.

01:28:16   And most of the people seem to be under the belief that I was crazy.

01:28:19   Cause I thought it was going to look like, you remember,

01:28:21   did you see the video when they did the, um,

01:28:24   they came out with the magic keyboard, uh, for the iPad in March,

01:28:28   you know, the keyboard cover and you can snap it in. And then they, they,

01:28:32   they had like a little video where they showed everybody in it.

01:28:35   And then they had a video of Craig Federighi somewhere in apple park with the

01:28:39   glass, you know,

01:28:41   atrium behind them in the sunny area of apple park behind them introducing it

01:28:46   pre-filmed obviously, you know, very professional looking,

01:28:51   sort of like what you would vaguely think Craig Federighi in an office at apple

01:28:56   park doing a commercial for the magic keyboard would look like.

01:29:01   I, you know, I was like, I think that's what the whole keynote will be like.

01:29:05   And I was a little off because I didn't,

01:29:08   I didn't really foresee that they would actually shoot it in the Steve jobs

01:29:12   theater, which is like the main staging ground for most of it. Um,

01:29:16   but most people seem to think what they would do is just do it like a regular

01:29:20   in-person keynote and just not have an audience or have an audience of apple

01:29:25   employees wearing masks and sparsely spread apart, which I was like,

01:29:30   there's no way they're going to do that. A it's illegal in California. I mean,

01:29:34   really it's, it's, you know, it just shows again,

01:29:37   without getting political about it, how people in America,

01:29:41   so many people don't understand the seriousness of the quarantine.

01:29:47   But even if it wasn't by the books, illegal in Cupertino,

01:29:51   California to have people have your employees deem them essential,

01:29:55   come in and clap. Uh,

01:29:59   it's just bad optics. If you're trying to, you know, be on team,

01:30:04   let's take this serious and truly, you know,

01:30:07   isolate people and shoot this in the safest way possible. You can't do it.

01:30:10   And having a truly empty audience and doing the keynote,

01:30:15   like just filming the day before rehearsal,

01:30:19   it would come across like death on video, right?

01:30:23   Like something that's meant to have an audience and applause

01:30:28   can't just be photographed without the audience and applause. It's,

01:30:33   it's just, I don't even know how to explain why that wouldn't work,

01:30:36   but it wouldn't work. And of course that's not what they did.

01:30:39   It would have been like that. Do you remember the, uh,

01:30:44   the rip mix burn commercial where the,

01:30:46   that the kid sits in the audience and then invites all his favorite artists to

01:30:51   come up on stage? I don't think I do. Oh yeah. This was,

01:30:55   uh, this is, it was an iTunes commercial and I, you know,

01:30:59   I want to say maybe 2000, 2001.

01:31:02   And this teenage kid who's the user,

01:31:05   the Apple user sits in the audience of a big, you know, classic theater.

01:31:10   And then like George Clinton. Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't know who else,

01:31:15   you know, but you know, probably smash mouth or something. Uh,

01:31:18   I'll come up on the stage cause he's, cause he's putting together his, uh,

01:31:23   you know, his playlist. George Clinton triggered it for me because yeah,

01:31:27   it cuts a very distinctive figure. Yeah. Right.

01:31:31   There was only one Apple commercial with George Clinton. Right. And it, uh,

01:31:35   cuts. Yeah. But, uh, you know,

01:31:38   what they did was so super high production value. I mean, it's just a crazy.

01:31:43   And you know, and it's in contrast,

01:31:47   it just is very appley to do it that way,

01:31:50   to take it as seriously as they can and not use this as an excuse to cut corners

01:31:55   and sort of phone in the keynote,

01:32:00   but to actually quite possibly put significantly more effort into the staging.

01:32:07   I, you know, to be honest, I guess it's incredible. It's a feat. It's a,

01:32:12   it's like an incredible feat what they pulled off. I don't know how,

01:32:15   how they did it, but, and I'm, I'm, I'm actually looking at this, uh,

01:32:19   the Apple, uh, sorry,

01:32:21   the magic keyboard video that you referenced and interestingly enough,

01:32:26   it looks like a lot of the same setup except this one is 30 for,

01:32:29   I would say this is 30 frames per second, the magic keyboard one.

01:32:32   And you can sort of see it, the,

01:32:35   the subtle difference between the that and dub dub keynote, which is,

01:32:40   now I I'm pretty convinced is 24,

01:32:42   but the lighting and the lensing and everything looks pretty similar.

01:32:46   Yeah, that was my guess. Uh, and I think it was sort of a dry run, but I do,

01:32:51   but I also feel though that they,

01:32:54   they plussed it up a lot for the keynote and what that magic video looks like.

01:33:00   Did you watch any just regular WWDC sessions?

01:33:04   I didn't. Uh, but that, that's what most, a lot of them look like, uh,

01:33:08   and the sessions just, you know, are staged,

01:33:11   but they're not all in the same room either.

01:33:13   There's a tremendous amount of variety in where they shot them at Apple park

01:33:18   just to have the speakers in different backgrounds. Um, yeah,

01:33:22   there's the funny,

01:33:23   the funniest part for me of the keynote was,

01:33:28   I don't know if you remember, but they, when they, um,

01:33:32   when they, they cut from Craig to, uh,

01:33:36   like a drone fly out,

01:33:38   like some high speed drone flyovers of Apple park and then it's sort of like the

01:33:42   camera goes into the fitness center and you land,

01:33:46   it sort of comes around the corner. And the funny,

01:33:49   the part that makes it funny is that they've got this very matrixy music like

01:33:53   down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, like that,

01:33:55   like an I speed action movie and it comes around the corner and then just

01:34:00   reveals, you know, Kevin Lynch,

01:34:02   who is not an action hero by any stretch.

01:34:07   It was almost like a comic reveal, but I don't think it was intended to be. Right.

01:34:11   But I kind of loved that.

01:34:13   I love that there was that amount of care and like sort of cinema cinematic

01:34:17   forethought into, into every move, into every cut and like swish, you know,

01:34:21   matching swish pans and all that and all that stuff.

01:34:24   I just thought it was really excellent. And I tried to, um,

01:34:28   I got in touch with the one person I know who's on the inside at the, you know,

01:34:33   at Apple in the video, um,

01:34:35   the video realm and tried to get some insight information, but,

01:34:39   but exactly what you said there being tight lipped about it was how it was

01:34:42   actually executed. Yeah. Which is kind of stinks because it,

01:34:47   it's my explanation for a lot of Apple's secrecy is

01:34:53   it really comes down to the adage that

01:34:58   you know how you create a culture of being able to keep a secret.

01:35:02   You just don't talk about anything. Right.

01:35:06   It's actually not that complicated and it, you know, and it's sort of like the,

01:35:10   the whole COVID-19 thing, like, you know what the best thing we can do is it sucks.

01:35:15   It's really sucks, but it's actually not complicated.

01:35:19   Stay home. If you do go out, stay apart and wear a mask and wash your hands a lot.

01:35:26   And it's like that actually would knock it out if everybody did it.

01:35:29   So it's like the basic idea that they've internalized is they do want to keep

01:35:34   important strategic stuff or marketing stuff, right?

01:35:38   Like they don't want to talk about products cause they want to unveil them with

01:35:42   a big surprise and they don't want to talk about the things that they consider

01:35:47   trade secrets to how they do what they do.

01:35:50   But then that leads them to also be secretive about things that I don't think

01:35:56   there's any even strategic value in being secret about.

01:35:59   But they just like, yeah, why take a chance? You know?

01:36:04   Yeah. I mean,

01:36:05   it could be really interesting and educational to a lot of people to learn how

01:36:09   they pulled this off. And I'm, I'm, I mean, some of it is obvious.

01:36:14   They, they obviously have one of the most beautiful campuses in the,

01:36:18   in the world as their soundstage. Right. And, you know,

01:36:22   they use pretty probably commonly available production gear and an actual crew.

01:36:27   And then they like, you know,

01:36:29   they did things that you wouldn't normally do in a, in a, in a live event,

01:36:33   which is that they have it on the cap,

01:36:34   the camera on a dolly or a slider and they're just moving the slider back and

01:36:38   forth because, you know,

01:36:39   that keeps the camera feeling alive and dynamic and that's almost like one Oh

01:36:44   one film, you know, kickstarter filmmaking kind of stuff.

01:36:49   But then then you get into the question of whether they did any sort of live or

01:36:54   more, more robust compositing of virtual elements against the live action

01:37:01   people. And that's where my mind started going.

01:37:05   And that's where it started to get interesting to me.

01:37:07   And I think you and I even probably texted about it,

01:37:10   which is how much if any of this environment that Craig is in for the main stuff

01:37:17   is is virtual, like is it,

01:37:19   is this the actual live set and every reflection and every, you know,

01:37:24   piece of architectural detail is actually there and real including the,

01:37:30   the video display behind him.

01:37:31   Cause I have no doubt that Apple probably has the display technology to,

01:37:35   you know, throw you know, in real time throw incredible,

01:37:40   you know augmented visuals behind him like a concert or something.

01:37:46   But I don't think that that happened.

01:37:48   So I'm thinking that at least that was composited behind him and which is

01:37:53   interesting cause then you see the reflections of the thing on the floor,

01:37:57   which helps sell the effect.

01:37:59   But then there's a world in which they did something sort of like the

01:38:02   Mandalorian, which is not necessarily with you know,

01:38:07   what Mandalorian did,

01:38:08   which is the highest level of what's called virtual production,

01:38:12   which is where the entire studio is, is filled, is surrounded by these led displays,

01:38:17   these really powerful,

01:38:20   super bright led displays that are rendering in real time with this in CG,

01:38:25   what the environment would be of the world they're shooting in,

01:38:28   because then that ends up lighting the the characters in the foreground.

01:38:32   So I don't think that that's what's going on because really the lighting set up

01:38:36   for Craig or for any of the that quote unquote talent in the keynote,

01:38:41   the lighting is pretty simple. It's, it's sort of like just overhead lighting.

01:38:46   And it's like slightly directional and soft.

01:38:49   So they wouldn't have to do anything fancy with interactive lighting,

01:38:53   but they could have been on a green stage. And you know,

01:38:58   like sort of the middle level of the,

01:38:59   a virtual production is where you're shooting against green with a live action

01:39:04   performer and the camera moves around on a,

01:39:07   on a crane or a dolly like it is in this.

01:39:10   And the background is tracking in real time to, to,

01:39:15   to that live action footage. And you know, it's really not,

01:39:19   it's we architectural stuff and environments can be rendered

01:39:24   so well with pretty democratized tools these days.

01:39:28   I even like,

01:39:31   I did a pro like a design project in my backyard with a landscape company and

01:39:36   they used some software to rent to pre-visualize what this design would look like

01:39:40   in my, in my backyard and with like off the shelf tools.

01:39:43   And it looked so astoundingly real like photo real with lens flares and

01:39:48   everything. So, I mean,

01:39:49   there's a part of me that kind of wants to believe that this is how they did it

01:39:53   or at least part of it with this keynote. And if they didn't do it this time,

01:39:57   then certainly they will in the future.

01:39:59   Or certainly like a lot of us in production will be doing stuff like that.

01:40:02   Yeah.

01:40:04   I think when you and I first started texting about it,

01:40:06   we were specifically wondering if the displays, the big, you know,

01:40:11   mostly black slide displays behind the presenters were really

01:40:16   there. And, you know, again, like you said, they certainly could,

01:40:21   it would be well within their budget to do it and well within,

01:40:25   and if that was the answer, if they decided this is what we want it to look like,

01:40:30   what's the best way to make it look like it.

01:40:32   And the answer was to do it practically. Let's put a real screen there.

01:40:36   They would have done it. I mean, it's within certainly Apple would do it.

01:40:40   I mean, I've heard stories about the screen at the main screen in the Steve Jobs

01:40:45   theater where, you know, they had a fantastic screen and then they,

01:40:49   they replaced it. Not because there was something wrong with the other screen,

01:40:52   but that they already figured out that they could get a better screen.

01:40:56   And so they did like,

01:40:57   they couldn't stand not having the best screen they could possibly have.

01:41:00   So they replaced it and I'm sure, I guess somebody else could buy it.

01:41:03   I don't know. Or if it's just, are you in the market? Yeah.

01:41:07   Just for 120 or just slice it up into, you know,

01:41:11   like a hundred pieces and send it out to your, to the biggest supporters. Right.

01:41:15   But I think they give away, they had it, but they had that screen.

01:41:19   If it was practical, they had one behind Tim Cook on the stage,

01:41:23   which is permanent. So there's a real screen there. That's no problem.

01:41:25   But then they had one out in what I call the hands-on area,

01:41:29   which is underground,

01:41:31   which is where we first you pull out of the back of the theater.

01:41:34   And then there you're there in this big white circular room, um,

01:41:39   which is lit from above by, by some natural light.

01:41:43   And then they went up the stairs, you know,

01:41:46   with the gag where Craig runs up the stairs,

01:41:48   but he runs and that's where you're in what I, I,

01:41:51   I don't know if they have official names for these rooms.

01:41:53   I call that the atrium. It's like the lobby, you know, like they don't,

01:41:57   like when you go to an event there,

01:41:59   that area where you are surrounded by glass walls and you can

01:42:04   see the,

01:42:06   the actual park aspects of Apple's campus,

01:42:12   you know, the grass and the trees and everything,

01:42:15   that's just for mingling. Like there's nothing really there.

01:42:20   So would they set up a screen there too? Well, Apple might,

01:42:23   but once you put it in my head that maybe the screen wasn't there,

01:42:26   I was like, whoa. And then, then you get into, wait,

01:42:31   are they even there? Like maybe it's not just the screen,

01:42:34   but are the presenters actually there?

01:42:37   And it's not that the footage looks phony.

01:42:40   It's that it looks so glossy and well-produced that it's,

01:42:45   I don't know how you would tell.

01:42:48   Yeah. I don't know.

01:42:49   Like the giveaway for the screen being a replaced screen is probably just how

01:42:53   deep the blacks were behind him. Cause, cause you wouldn't,

01:42:56   you wouldn't really,

01:42:57   if you're photographing and exposing every other shadow the way they're exposed

01:43:01   in this, in the footage,

01:43:03   then you wouldn't be able to underexpose the screen that that deep.

01:43:07   Right.

01:43:09   That's probably why I would, I would vote for that.

01:43:11   The screen was all replaced and then they don't have to pre-program and live,

01:43:15   you know, live display everything timed to his performance.

01:43:19   Cause I don't think that that's in, that's definitely not any breezy task either,

01:43:24   is getting all of these non-professional actors to do that much dialogue.

01:43:28   Obviously they have teleprompters and stuff, but just the, the,

01:43:31   the inordinate number of takes that they must do to get each line in the

01:43:36   script for what is essentially a feature length presentation.

01:43:40   Well, and I know that even for a normal keynote,

01:43:45   that they rehearse a lot,

01:43:47   like that's another one of those very simple answers to a very seemingly very

01:43:51   complex question of how do they put out these polished keynotes and

01:43:56   it's rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

01:43:58   But I can't help, but think that like,

01:44:02   however much time Craig Federighi spends preparing and rehearsing

01:44:07   for a regular WWDC keynote,

01:44:10   he'd spent more time on this because it,

01:44:14   it's just the production aspects of it are just on top of

01:44:19   however much content he's delivering, which is the same or more,

01:44:24   you know, the,

01:44:25   the actual mechanics of doing the production are more complicated.

01:44:29   But then how, you know, I guess on my list, I always come up with,

01:44:34   you know, and I don't know that again,

01:44:35   it falls under things they probably don't want to talk about,

01:44:38   but how in the world are you still doing your job?

01:44:41   Which I'm, I really have a good sense is probably keeps him busy as

01:44:47   the senior vice president of all software that they're producing.

01:44:52   Well, this is interesting. Yeah.

01:44:54   This is an interesting point because I don't know if you picked, if you,

01:44:57   if you had the same you know, feeling, but later on in the keynote,

01:45:02   when he gets to the Mac OS stuff, to me,

01:45:04   that's where he feels most comfortable.

01:45:06   And I don't know if that's because of the history,

01:45:09   his history of the actual, his actual day job.

01:45:12   You would know more about this than me, but,

01:45:16   everything leading up to that,

01:45:17   all the iOS stuff and the other platforms felt

01:45:22   more like showmanship to him. And then when, to me,

01:45:26   when it gets into the Mac OS,

01:45:27   that's where he feels like he's speaking his native language.

01:45:30   I don't know that I ever thought of that directly,

01:45:34   but I, I agree with you in thinking about it.

01:45:38   And I think you're exactly right.

01:45:40   Why is that he is a tremendous

01:45:44   stage presence is, you know, very, as his face is a handsome son of a bitch.

01:45:49   And he has a great voice and a very wide stance.

01:45:54   And he just is, you know,

01:45:56   he's very good on camera and he's good on stage,

01:45:58   but he's good on stage for someone who is

01:46:04   an incredibly competent and

01:46:07   believably, deeply knowledgeable

01:46:13   software executive. I mean, like, I mean,

01:46:16   and his multiple appearances on my show, I mean,

01:46:18   my favorite was the one a couple of years ago where we went into the

01:46:22   differential privacy aspects

01:46:27   and the explaining this sort of comp,

01:46:33   you know, the way that the encryption and can be used to

01:46:39   aggregate the collection of data for the good of all users.

01:46:43   But in a way that isn't just take our word for it privacy,

01:46:47   but it's like mathematically provable privacy that we,

01:46:51   we can't make a bug or have an error or have a, you know,

01:46:55   like Twitter have a controls panel where there's a switch that some doofus or,

01:47:00   you know, crook with a hundred dollar bill slipped in his pocket can uncheck to

01:47:05   reveal the address of the user who submitted this information,

01:47:09   thinking it was going to be submitted privately.

01:47:11   His explanation for how that worked is like, I can't believe, you know, that,

01:47:15   you know, that you just have this on the tip of your tip of your mind.

01:47:18   Yeah. Incredibly smart, dude. That was before they went,

01:47:21   they went to San Jose, right? That was when you're still in San Francisco.

01:47:24   I think that was the last one in San Francisco. Right.

01:47:27   And he really, I mean, he really knows it. I mean, it really, I mean,

01:47:31   it's like he knows this stuff and it's like all the way across the board of

01:47:35   everything Apple is doing and you know,

01:47:37   the graphics stuff and he can speak at length at all of that.

01:47:40   And yet he's got time to, to star in a movie.

01:47:44   Yeah. Well, I think that they all know, including all the, you know,

01:47:49   senior execs and everything, they all know that this is part of the job.

01:47:52   This is sort of what you sign up for when your Apple, um, leadership is,

01:47:57   that it's, you're, you're an evangelist and not, not just in a trade show,

01:48:02   kind of way, but really you rep in a, in a global way, you represent the,

01:48:06   the products you're working on to the world, which makes me,

01:48:10   I mean, obviously they're all working executives in,

01:48:14   in the technology industry,

01:48:16   so they can't be expected to be brilliant presenters.

01:48:21   I do wish that they would sort of shake up the cadence,

01:48:24   the Apple presentational cadence a little bit, um, uh,

01:48:28   and not feel the pressure to

01:48:33   maybe like reproduce or mimic the, you know, the standard,

01:48:39   if you did, does that make sense what I'm saying? That sort of like,

01:48:43   we can't wait to show you what we're working on and that's, you know,

01:48:49   FaceTime, you know, like that cadence that they all kind of like,

01:48:52   it's almost like in, in, um, they're doing it because they're,

01:48:56   they feel like that's the only solution, but there are, well,

01:49:01   first of all, going back to Steve and his presentational style was not that at

01:49:05   all. We, Claude and JP and I, uh,

01:49:09   who worked for me, we were just this last weekend, we, um,

01:49:14   we watched, uh, the G4 Cube, um, keynote,

01:49:19   and we're just marveling at, uh,

01:49:22   how natural and unrehearsed and unscripted Steve

01:49:27   seems. And we were just, you know, just kind of like all of our,

01:49:32   our hearts sort of, you know, like kind of exploded a little bit when we watched

01:49:37   that and just remembering where we were at the time. But,

01:49:39   but also like it was the antithesis of this extremely meticulously

01:49:44   composed, um, uh, you know,

01:49:46   just style of speech and presentation that they have now.

01:49:49   But there are a few, I don't know, I took note of a few of the outliers, um,

01:49:54   in the, in the whole cast of characters that presented and like,

01:50:00   um, I don't know if you remembered, um, Vera Carr, but she's the, uh,

01:50:04   the health software manager. She's, she's sort of in a yoga position.

01:50:08   Oh yes. On the floor. Yeah. She was awesome.

01:50:11   Like she just came off as very natural and looked and sounded great, um,

01:50:15   in her environment. And then, um, the guy in the home, in the living room too,

01:50:20   Yoc Kaysen, I think the home kit guy was awesome.

01:50:23   I, what I remember about Vera Carr was that she felt very

01:50:28   natural, but also it was more striking about that was that it also seemed like

01:50:32   she was in the most unnatural position of any of them. Right.

01:50:35   Yeah. Which is good, which is good. I mean, from a directorial standpoint,

01:50:40   sometimes sometimes that's what you do to shake somebody out of their

01:50:45   complacency.

01:50:46   Yeah, I do think,

01:50:49   and it is an interesting thing from a film school perspective of sort of,

01:50:55   uh, what's the word did the deconstruct deconstructing the,

01:51:00   the Apple keynote style that they went from the Steve notes to where they are

01:51:06   now without any sort of needle on a record scratching.

01:51:13   Here's where Steve left, right? Yeah. You know,

01:51:19   there was never any,

01:51:21   sort of, Oh, as soon as he left, they got different.

01:51:24   They evolved to this sort of platonic ideal of the modern post Steve jobs

01:51:30   keynote. Right. Um,

01:51:35   one of the ones that really sticks out to me in terms of like,

01:51:39   you know, and it's that whole slow boiling frog phenomenon,

01:51:45   which I whenever I mentioned is actually not true,

01:51:48   that if you're going to be a director,

01:51:49   and is actually not true, that if you put frogs in a pot and slowly boil it,

01:51:53   they will jump out. They're like, Oh shit.

01:51:56   It's just like when you're in a hot tub and it's like,

01:52:01   if somebody does have it too hot, it's like, you know, you're like, Hey,

01:52:04   turn that down. And then if nobody turns it down, you do get out, you know,

01:52:07   but it is in a useful analogy and people, you know what I'm talking about.

01:52:12   And I always, the thing I always bring it up with is whenever I try a new iPhone

01:52:16   and I, you know, like the, you know, idiot tech reviewer that I am,

01:52:21   I get to review one every year.

01:52:22   I never really noticed that the new ones faster until like 10 days after I start

01:52:28   using it and I put it down and go back to my year, one year old,

01:52:34   I've personal iPhone because I, you know, I've got the review one, you know,

01:52:39   10 days before they come out. So I don't own a new one yet.

01:52:42   And I go back to my old one and then I'm like, Oh, this,

01:52:45   it's like a little slower. Like I can tell when I'm typing on the thumb keyboard,

01:52:49   you know, wow. You know, and every year it's the same.

01:52:52   And every year I can tell it's a little faster, but you know, five, six,

01:52:56   seven, eight years ago, it was even more noticeable year over year.

01:52:59   But it's always when you go back and I think when you go back to older

01:53:03   keynotes, you can see the difference a lot more than when,

01:53:05   as we go forward.

01:53:06   And the one that sticks out to me is the greatest keynote of all time.

01:53:11   The one that everybody always wanted, then it was happened.

01:53:15   And then everybody wants it to happen again,

01:53:17   which was the unveiling of the iPhone. Right.

01:53:20   Everybody always wanted a keynote where Apple,

01:53:23   it shows us something that seems not just too good to be true a little

01:53:28   bit, but like, this can't possibly be real.

01:53:31   People are passing out in the aisles like a, you know, you know,

01:53:35   preacher thing where they're taking demons out of you. People are fainting,

01:53:40   gasping, uh, you know, the Blackberry rivals hold a meeting the next day

01:53:46   and conclude that the whole thing, believe it or not,

01:53:49   must be a fraud because there's no way that they could be, they,

01:53:52   that this could be a real device, uh, that keynote.

01:53:56   But when you actually rewatch that whole keynote,

01:54:00   not just the clips of Steve jobs unveiling the phone,

01:54:03   but watch the whole thing it's paced so bizarrely by

01:54:08   modern standards.

01:54:09   He just comes out and like does like us do an update on iTunes and I forget what

01:54:14   it is first. I don't even remember, but it's like,

01:54:15   there's like 20 to 30 minutes of just like crazy,

01:54:20   just run of the mill stuff before he, well,

01:54:25   which, which were, which we had patients for back then. Right. You know,

01:54:29   which in the same way that, um,

01:54:32   a late night talk show could be Dick Cavett and like 15 second pauses in between

01:54:37   a question and an answer and, and people smoking cigarettes.

01:54:40   We just had patients in ways that we don't have patients these, these days.

01:54:44   And that's why this is kind of like modern day format for the keynote makes more

01:54:47   sense.

01:54:48   It does make more sense. And there's an absolute, if they had,

01:54:52   let's just say, you know, that they've got AR goggles and that they're,

01:54:57   they know it, they've, they're in the lab and the people work.

01:55:00   Maybe there's some of the same people even, right.

01:55:02   It hasn't been that long, same people.

01:55:04   And they've got that sense that this is, this is the iPhone again, right?

01:55:08   These goggles are way beyond what people are thinking. Um,

01:55:13   you know,

01:55:13   like people think you're just going to put glasses on and in the corner of your

01:55:16   eye, it'll tell you what the air temperature is, you know,

01:55:19   and if you get a text message, there's a notification at the top.

01:55:22   And that's what everybody thinks in the way that everybody thought in 2006,

01:55:26   that they were going to make an iPod that can make phone calls. Right.

01:55:31   And instead they had the iPhone,

01:55:34   maybe the goggles are that good. Yeah.

01:55:37   There is no way that they would announce that like they announced the iPhone.

01:55:41   It's it just,

01:55:43   it just would be such a totally different event. It would be,

01:55:48   it would be tasteful. So I was going to use the word bombastic,

01:55:53   and that's not right. Cause bombastic implies a sort of crassness,

01:55:57   but it would be, I don't know,

01:56:02   it would be dramatic in a way that this wasn't

01:56:07   dramatic. Like I just can't.

01:56:09   I think that Steve's Steve's Steve's gift was, I mean,

01:56:14   of many was to shape a narrative,

01:56:16   like to frame a piece of technology in a narrative

01:56:21   involving all of technology.

01:56:23   And I think that that's why the iPhone introduction made

01:56:27   such beautiful, um,

01:56:30   evolutionary sense in the way that it did. And you watch this keynote, you know,

01:56:34   I mean, obviously this is dub dub. This is,

01:56:36   this is not a product announcement type of a keynote, but

01:56:40   um, I feel like if they're, if they're honoring, um,

01:56:45   Steve and the story that is Apple,

01:56:48   then they're going to figure out how to frame the new device,

01:56:52   whatever it is in the context of an entire history of Apple and of

01:56:56   tech in general.

01:56:58   Yeah. I wonder if this

01:57:02   quarantine induced novel, new keynote might not,

01:57:09   I know a lot of people are wondering if,

01:57:11   if Apple liked it enough that maybe they're always going to do virtual WWDCs

01:57:16   again, quarantine or not.

01:57:19   And I can kind of see it from the, uh, you know,

01:57:23   I think the keynote, I don't,

01:57:25   I think that they like the crowd and they like doing it on stage.

01:57:29   Um, so I don't see them doing away with that for everything for the

01:57:35   actual conference for developers and the presentations.

01:57:40   I could see that. Um, I,

01:57:43   the sessions I've watched so far are so they're, they're always good.

01:57:47   And again, and, and it's always very cool because the people,

01:57:52   this is just, I mean, this is as long as there's been WWDC,

01:57:56   the people doing the presentations of the people responsible for the work,

01:57:59   right? Like they don't have like a presentation team and you know,

01:58:04   Joe and Kate from the presentation team are told, okay,

01:58:07   you're going to do the new, you know,

01:58:09   text editing for right to left languages, hired talent.

01:58:14   Right.

01:58:15   They're the actual engineers who worked on this new thing and it's

01:58:20   always very cool. And sometimes the enthusiasm really spills over,

01:58:25   and really helps polish over the fact that they're not professional presenters.

01:58:29   It's because, Hey, you know,

01:58:31   they've been working on this thing for three years and it's,

01:58:34   it wasn't even there,

01:58:36   even in their wildest dreams wasn't going to be in the keynote because it's

01:58:39   super technically nerdy type thing. Um, you know,

01:58:43   WWDC sessions are full of stuff like that,

01:58:46   but the people watching the session are self-selective.

01:58:50   The only people who are going to watch the session on a new right to left

01:58:54   language API, uh, or you know,

01:58:57   something that'll let you write Swift UI code that will run both on a watch and

01:59:02   on the phone, um, and on the iPod,

01:59:08   our iPad and on the Mac and Holy crap,

01:59:11   it's one UI system for all of that, blah, blah, blah.

01:59:13   The only people who are going to watch that are the people who want to use it.

01:59:16   You're right. That's, they're speaking to their people.

01:59:20   It's all very cool, but I think that letting them prerecorded,

01:59:24   you know,

01:59:25   and it would only be better without quarantine where they don't have to worry

01:59:29   about onset all of the precautions that have to be done.

01:59:33   It would be so much more comforting for them to have a normal set where people

01:59:38   can come up and, and fix their hair, you know, and, and just,

01:59:42   you know what I mean? Do you do that?

01:59:44   You see this a thousand times every single day that you're in production is

01:59:49   somebody will go up and say, Hey, you know what? His collar is not right.

01:59:53   And then it fixed the collar. Yeah. Get the hair. Yeah.

01:59:55   And you can't do that with the quarantine. Right. It's, or you gotta, you know,

01:59:58   no, we literally on our, on the thing we just shot,

02:00:01   which was our first thing back on a small set was we,

02:00:04   we couldn't have hair and makeup because that person would have to be too close

02:00:08   to people. Right. So it would only be better, but then it takes away.

02:00:12   The thing that was so palpable to me watching the sessions I've watched is that

02:00:15   the stage fright being in front of 500 live people in front of you,

02:00:20   or even if it's a smaller session, a hundred people, it's just people who,

02:00:23   I get nervous and I do talks every once in a while.

02:00:27   Somebody who's never spoken in front of 300 people before,

02:00:31   you're going to be nervous, right? It, that nerves is all out of there.

02:00:34   And I think that the sessions I've,

02:00:36   I hadn't seen anybody who thought otherwise every single comment I've seen on

02:00:40   the sessions themselves this year was that it was better and more palatable and

02:00:45   more enjoyable and more informative to watch.

02:00:48   And the other thing that they did, which was really awesome,

02:00:52   in the physical conference of WWDC there, it's like,

02:00:56   it's like scheduling TV.

02:00:58   You've got half hour blocks and you can have an hour session or a half hour

02:01:03   session,

02:01:03   but there's WWDC videos this year that are like 13 minutes because it's,

02:01:08   you have 13 minutes worth of stuff,

02:01:10   do a 13 minute video and there's no reason to pad it out to 30 or say,

02:01:15   we can't really do this at WWDC because it doesn't fill a 30 minute slot.

02:01:19   You know?

02:01:20   Yeah. Oh, that's so fascinating. I'm so glad it worked out. Yeah.

02:01:24   I love it. All right. Let me take one last break here.

02:01:28   Thank our good friends at Linode L I N O D E.

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02:02:25   But the servers around the world, it's important.

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02:03:50   you don't have to worry about it. Uh,

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02:04:52   My thanks to Linode for sponsoring the show. Um,

02:04:57   the last thing I wanted to talk to you about, and I think I,

02:05:02   I don't even know who else in the repertoire of friends,

02:05:07   and guests I've had on the show who I would,

02:05:10   who I would love to hear thoughts on this enough.

02:05:13   You've already changed my mind in the last 24 hours on some of this,

02:05:16   are the sounds in Mac OS X Big Sur. Um,

02:05:21   so for the first time in a very long time,

02:05:23   maybe some of these sounds are like back to classic Mac OS,

02:05:28   like Sosumi, uh,

02:05:31   for all of the visual changes that Mac OS X just used the

02:05:36   original name and carry it through through OS X and Mac OS and everything.

02:05:41   But what we now call Mac or Mac OS was OS X.

02:05:45   And before that was Mac OS X.

02:05:46   The sounds like for like the default alerts and what happens when you move

02:05:50   something to the trash, haven't really changed in a very long time.

02:05:54   And they did in Big Sur.

02:05:55   And people have strong feelings about these sounds.

02:05:59   And, and what, what are your strong feelings?

02:06:05   Well, so there's two sets and I've got these videos. Uh,

02:06:10   I'm not even sure. What do you think? Should we play them on the show?

02:06:13   I think maybe we should. It's like,

02:06:15   it seems like if you're listening to a podcast, you should be able to hear them.

02:06:18   Yeah, that makes sense. Or, uh, or, or Caleb can cut them in.

02:06:22   Hey, Interlude here.

02:06:25   I'm going to play the sound effects from Big Sur that Adam and I are going to be

02:06:28   talking about.

02:06:29   You can hear them right here in your own ears and then you'll know what we're

02:06:32   talking about. Um,

02:06:35   so there's two sets first are the system sounds,

02:06:38   which are for events like moving something to the trash or taking a screenshot.

02:06:43   And then there are the alerts,

02:06:44   which are just the sounds you can pick for the system beep. Um,

02:06:49   I'll run through them all. I'll introduce them. But in both cases,

02:06:52   we'll play the Catalina Mac OS 10.15 version first,

02:06:56   and then the new Mac OS 11 Big Sur sound

02:07:02   second, but the Catalina ones are really the same going back, like seriously,

02:07:06   like 20 years. But, um, I think these are all taken from Catalina.

02:07:10   So first we have the system sounds and we

02:07:15   have, uh, sending something to the trash,

02:07:18   emptying the trash,

02:07:22   moving a file or folder,

02:07:32   and taking a screenshot,

02:07:34   which is the most interesting change. Okay. Now the alerts.

02:07:41   So I'm going to give them, they all have new names.

02:07:44   So I'll just give you the names. The names are Catalina, uh,

02:07:48   classic old school Mac OS first,

02:07:50   and then the new name for the corresponding sound from Big Sur second.

02:07:54   We've got tink and boop,

02:07:56   blow and breeze,

02:08:01   pop and bubble,

02:08:06   glass and crystal,

02:08:11   funk and funky,

02:08:16   hero and heroin,

02:08:21   frog and jump,

02:08:31   basso and mezzo,

02:08:33   bottle and pebble,

02:08:39   per and pluck,

02:08:44   Morse and pong,

02:08:49   ping and sonar,

02:08:58   submarine and submerge.

02:09:01   And last slightly out of alphabetical order,

02:09:08   the one sound that didn't change name for good reason.

02:09:12   So Sue me and so Sue me.

02:09:15   And my thought at first was I like all the new alert sounds like the beeps you

02:09:24   picked from. Um, and I didn't like,

02:09:29   the system sounds like the trash and the screenshot.

02:09:33   And you, you said you liked them. And I was like, see, you know that, that,

02:09:38   that, that threw me off. That made me see it. And I'm, you know, this is, I,

02:09:42   I've got a big, a big open mind. I thought, well, I trust Adam. Let me,

02:09:46   let me think about this. And I tried to live with it a little more.

02:09:49   And I think you're right. I think they're, I think they're good.

02:09:52   That's that's nice to hear. I think that, yeah. I mean,

02:09:57   obviously there's going to be resistance to anything that, that,

02:10:01   that, um,

02:10:04   swaps out something that you're so well used to and have such an possibly

02:10:08   emotional attachment to, but I always kind of hate it.

02:10:12   And I'll just take as the very basic,

02:10:13   like the trash can and the empty trash sound from the system.

02:10:18   I, for step one, I, you know,

02:10:21   some of our friends probably said said this to step one of a new Mac is you turn

02:10:25   off that you turn off those systems sounds. Cause they're, I don't know,

02:10:30   they're, they're like a little bit showy. They're a little bit, um, what's,

02:10:34   what's the word like, I want to say aggressive or sharp. They like,

02:10:39   they want to draw attention to themselves. They don't, they don't feel,

02:10:43   um, feng shui.

02:10:45   They don't feel like they're supposed to like live comfortably in the

02:10:49   environment of the user experience.

02:10:53   But these new ones feel just like that little extra bit softer and

02:10:57   comfortable and, um, not disruptive, um, to me,

02:11:02   but still representing the things that they are with the exception of the,

02:11:05   of the screen cap one, the screenshot sound,

02:11:10   which is something new. But, you know,

02:11:13   it's an interesting discussion because we, you know,

02:11:17   we were talking about this a little bit, um, offline, but,

02:11:22   um, this idea that sound effects can be skeuomorphic or not as well.

02:11:27   Right. Um, and that's exemplified by the screenshot.

02:11:31   Yeah, absolutely. By the screenshot, which is, you know,

02:11:35   they wanted to make, it's very much like the save icon being a disc,

02:11:40   a floppy disc.

02:11:41   They wanted to make the sound of a screen capture like a camera shutter

02:11:47   clicking and saving an image. Um, which makes sense, you know,

02:11:51   conceptually, but do we really need that anymore?

02:11:54   Especially when the association of a shutter sound is now just referential to

02:11:59   itself. It doesn't refer to a camera that any of us own, right?

02:12:02   So if you, if you can sort of redefine that and, you know,

02:12:06   self-define a shutter sound as something new,

02:12:08   that's like almost more digital or bloopy sounding,

02:12:11   then why not take that opportunity? If it's like a once in a decade thing,

02:12:15   It's funny to imagine an alternate universe where the sounds

02:12:21   changed as frequently and dramatically as the UI theme

02:12:26   of Mac OS X, but the UI theme hadn't changed at all.

02:12:30   Maybe other than going retina,

02:12:32   which I think even in the alternate universe would have had to happen.

02:12:35   But like imagine a world where until a month ago,

02:12:39   Mac OS still looked like the candy Aqua Mac OS

02:12:45   10.0 from 2002 with the stripes

02:12:49   and the lollipop looking red, yellow, green, all the buttons.

02:12:54   And then never higher res.

02:12:58   But the sound, the sounds changed every four years.

02:13:01   And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden in June, they unveiled Big Sur.

02:13:06   It looks like what Big Sur looks like.

02:13:08   I think people would, I think people's heads would have exploded.

02:13:11   It's kind of hard to imagine, you know.

02:13:14   Yeah. And I and I mean, the very basic answers,

02:13:17   because the sounds aren't as important as the visuals, right? Right.

02:13:20   Nobody, you know, people say turn off the sounds.

02:13:24   First thing you do is turn on.

02:13:24   Nobody says first thing you do is turn off your display.

02:13:27   Right. It just doesn't work.

02:13:31   Yeah. But it's terminal. It's just as good.

02:13:33   All right. So the the alerts, I think they they all sound better.

02:13:38   I don't think any of them is worse.

02:13:41   I guess a friend of the show, I think Molt's.

02:13:46   We're on a slack. That's what we're talking about.

02:13:47   We're on a slack where we talk.

02:13:49   And I think Molt thinks that the Breeze one sounds like a Windows sound.

02:13:54   But it doesn't sound bad.

02:13:57   But I think it's interesting that they all have parallels, you know,

02:14:01   that there were the old alerts and now each one, there's like a one to one

02:14:04   correlation between the old and the new.

02:14:08   And I have to admit, big dummy, that I am and overwhelmed

02:14:11   by all of the new stuff in Big Sur.

02:14:13   I didn't even notice that at first, that it's one to one.

02:14:16   And then it's like, well, how did you not notice that?

02:14:19   You know, because like the one is, you know, like the names are, you know, like

02:14:23   Ping is now Sonar and

02:14:25   Submarine is now Submerge.

02:14:31   I mean, it's you know, it's kind of obvious.

02:14:34   But yet I missed it.

02:14:36   Yeah, I think the first sound in Mac and the Mac OS that I noticed

02:14:41   was the startup sound, which is correct me if I'm wrong,

02:14:44   but there hadn't been a startup sound in the last.

02:14:47   They got away from it.

02:14:48   They I think I think starting and again, I could get it wrong,

02:14:52   but it almost doesn't matter what the technical explanation.

02:14:54   But I think it started with the ones that have the T2 chip for security

02:14:58   stopped, including the boot sound by default.

02:15:02   And then there was a secret, scary

02:15:05   pseudo command you could issue at the command line, which is seriously scary

02:15:10   because it's like you're actually using a command that like changes

02:15:13   the firmware in your computer.

02:15:15   And so, yeah, you use everybody just copies and pastes it.

02:15:18   But it's like you kind of have to trust who you're copying and pasting

02:15:21   that you're not like rendering your Mac unable to boot.

02:15:24   Well, you could turn it back on.

02:15:27   But now they can't.

02:15:28   And in this in Big Sur, in the beta, at least there's there's now

02:15:32   I mean, by default, a startup.

02:15:34   And I know that only because a half hour before we started recording,

02:15:38   I finally got the beta to install so that we'd have something to talk about.

02:15:42   And then so I turned it on and it and I heard the startup sound

02:15:47   for the first time, which has it's very similar to the to the prior one that

02:15:51   except that it's got a much softer

02:15:55   timbre and a much softer attack, like the ramp up to the beginning

02:16:00   in the beginning of the sound is a little bit of a ramp.

02:16:03   So it's it's a little bit more like

02:16:06   in which for me right away

02:16:09   drew an association with HBO,

02:16:13   you know, network tone or whatever the promo tone,

02:16:16   which is a nice sound. It's great.

02:16:19   So I don't mind that at all.

02:16:22   What you want is that you I think what you want in a sound

02:16:25   more than anything else is if your volume is turned all the way up on accident

02:16:30   and everybody in your home is asleep.

02:16:35   And you do something on your computer and it barks,

02:16:38   you know, with a sound effect, like you throw something in the trash.

02:16:41   You don't want it to wake everybody up

02:16:45   or you don't want to at least have to clench your butt because you're worried

02:16:48   that it and those like some of these sounds like the glass or the

02:16:53   you know, like the just very cavernous metallic throwing something away

02:16:58   or the crinkle, the the Pringles, you know, when you when you empty the trash.

02:17:03   Those are harsh, harsh sounds.

02:17:04   Those are waking your family up.

02:17:06   They're not going to be happy.

02:17:08   I do. I do wonder.

02:17:12   Well, you know what?

02:17:14   I have to mention this because I know I've gotten so many emails over

02:17:17   and I've never actually mentioned it, but there's a lot of people who think

02:17:21   that the Apple TV plus promo sound, whatever I thought.

02:17:26   I was hoping you would know what those things are called.

02:17:28   You know, like every streaming service has their own distinctive thing

02:17:33   like the HBO one or Netflix is to done.

02:17:36   Yeah, I think that I've always called them as logo tones.

02:17:41   Yeah, I like promo tones, but logo tones, because like

02:17:44   when the iPhone first let you make your own ringtones, I made

02:17:48   I made ringtones out of all of those like old school network tones.

02:17:53   Well, let's make let's make logo tones a thing.

02:17:55   That's our that's our mission.

02:17:57   Everybody listening.

02:17:58   That's our mission is to get these things called logo tones,

02:18:01   because that's what they are.

02:18:01   They're audio logos, right?

02:18:03   That you can you can't you're not even looking at the screen.

02:18:06   But if your friend or partner or kid starts playing something,

02:18:11   you know, if it's on Netflix, because it starts, you have your back to the TV,

02:18:15   but you hear the sound and you know, bum, bum, it's on Netflix.

02:18:19   So it's a little bit.

02:18:21   Yeah. And I just found the Apple one.

02:18:23   It's the if you search for Apple TV plus logo HD, it's

02:18:27   it's kind of like a single tone of like piano with a bass.

02:18:33   Yeah, there's people who think it's there's

02:18:36   but there's people who think that's the Mac startup chime and it's not.

02:18:39   It is. It's in the vein of it.

02:18:44   And I kind of wonder if there wasn't at least some deliberate

02:18:48   homage or I don't know, but it's definitely not it.

02:18:52   And it surprises me that some people think it is.

02:18:56   And I think if you heard them back to back, you'd say, oh, yeah,

02:18:58   that's not the same thing at all.

02:18:59   But it's it it's familiar enough that you might you know, I can see

02:19:05   why people think it, but not if you actually listen to it side by side.

02:19:08   But anyway, anyway, if you get a new Mac now, I guess, I don't know

02:19:13   if you have to wait for Big Sur or not, but apparently the startup

02:19:15   sounds are coming back for all Macs by default.

02:19:18   Which I think is the right way to do it,

02:19:21   and I know that this is polarizing because I've mentioned this.

02:19:24   I get it why your phone when you power off your phone and start up your phone.

02:19:29   It doesn't make a noise.

02:19:31   But your Mac is not your phone. It's different.

02:19:33   Your Mac. I don't know.

02:19:34   There's something about it and maybe it is just nostalgia.

02:19:38   But I think your Mac, if it's powered off when you power it on,

02:19:41   it should make a noise.

02:19:43   And if you work in an environment and this is what you hear from

02:19:48   and I'm going to hear from it just by saying this right now.

02:19:50   There are people who work in environments where any noise is unwelcome

02:19:54   and they've had at least one unfortunate circumstance

02:19:58   where the computer locked up or they had to restart it

02:20:01   after installing something or something and they did it

02:20:03   and it made a noise and they were embarrassed

02:20:06   and they were very happy that Apple did away with it.

02:20:11   But yeah, as long as you can easily mute it or disable it, then I'm good.

02:20:16   Do you remember this?

02:20:17   It was I'm looking at YouTube.

02:20:19   It was 13 years ago, but like a hidden camera

02:20:23   prank video in a library where a guy turns on his laptop

02:20:28   and the startup chime goes off.

02:20:31   But it and it's very loud, like they had some hidden speakers or something.

02:20:36   It's very loud and it lasts like easily 60 seconds.

02:20:40   And people keep, oh my God, I'll send it to you.

02:20:43   All right, you got it.

02:20:43   And that's so good.

02:20:45   Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes.

02:20:47   OK.

02:20:48   Here's so you like the new sounds, too.

02:20:55   And you know which one in particular you've totally you've made me go from.

02:20:59   Why did they do this?

02:21:00   Why are they ruining my life, too?

02:21:02   OK, I actually am with Adam.

02:21:04   I think this is smart is the screenshot one. Yeah.

02:21:07   And it shouldn't be a camera.

02:21:10   And it's not just the phasing out of clickety clack cameras.

02:21:16   And the fact that have you seen I mean, I don't know.

02:21:19   I know you shoot with really, you know, serious big boy cameras,

02:21:22   but a lot of like prosumer cameras have like the option to have a fake shutter

02:21:27   sound. Sure. Yeah, I really don't get I mean, and I guess I get in the sense

02:21:34   that, well, if a screenshot on a computer makes an old timey shutter camera sound,

02:21:38   why wouldn't a camera camera have the option of doing it digitally?

02:21:42   But to me, that was always the absolute worst part of cameras

02:21:46   is that they made this noise and distracted people.

02:21:49   If you're trying to shoot, you know, not surreptitiously like a creeper, but

02:21:54   casually at an event and just capture people without making them self-conscious

02:22:00   and to sort of capture this and having this big, loud click clack was not good.

02:22:04   And then when you're ever you're watching a professional media event

02:22:08   and there's the nonstop stream of people with digital SLRs

02:22:14   that actually have this still have the mirror.

02:22:17   And they have these giant CF cards that can shoot an infinite number of images.

02:22:22   And they just hold down the shutter.

02:22:24   And it's it it really sounds like an attack of some sort, like a

02:22:29   like a machine gun nerf gun is going.

02:22:31   It doesn't sound like a gun gun, but it sounds like some kind of, you know,

02:22:36   I don't know. It just always sounds like like the photographers

02:22:40   are attacking the subject.

02:22:42   Yeah, very aggressive.

02:22:44   And why? It just is so frustrating at this point,

02:22:46   like when it was technically necessary, it was one thing.

02:22:49   But we know that we can make truly excellent cameras

02:22:52   that don't make any physical noise.

02:22:54   So why not? It would be so create such a more pleasant moment

02:22:58   if everybody just agreed not to use cameras that have mirrors.

02:23:03   So I get it. And I actually like I like the new screenshot

02:23:07   and it's something that happened.

02:23:09   And this is where I'm getting it.

02:23:10   The question I have for you is where do you draw the line

02:23:13   for which events in the in the user interface

02:23:17   make a noise and which ones don't?

02:23:19   Right. I think it's just if you need feedback to know that it worked.

02:23:24   That's right. Like that's the whole point of a of a UI sound rise.

02:23:29   If you if it doesn't make a sound or there's not some sort of a tactile

02:23:33   feedback, then you wonder you're stuck with that nanosecond

02:23:37   of an anxiety where it didn't do the thing you needed it to do.

02:23:40   Yeah, I think that's why I leave them on, you know,

02:23:43   and I, you know, as a self-professed, you know, expert user, I still use it.

02:23:48   I don't I don't really move that many files to the trash.

02:23:52   I don't empty my trash very often.

02:23:54   So it's not like I'm constantly badgered with the sound of things

02:23:59   being rattled around the fake trash can.

02:24:01   But I kind of like the confirmation of it.

02:24:04   And for a screenshot, it's it's almost like a warning to write.

02:24:09   It's not just confirmation that you took the screenshot,

02:24:12   but it's like a warning in case you did it by accident that, hey,

02:24:15   you know, whatever you were doing just got screenshotted.

02:24:17   You should be aware, you know, you should be aware of it.

02:24:20   Maybe warning isn't the right word, but sort of just like, hey, you know,

02:24:24   just say, you know, whatever you're doing is just been captured to an image.

02:24:28   Yeah. In iOS 14, I installed the beta last night of iOS,

02:24:34   iOS 14, and I discovered a system sound that is the first time

02:24:38   that I think I will ever leave a system sound on

02:24:41   which is and I don't know what you call it.

02:24:44   It's like a push pop.

02:24:45   Is that what do you call it?

02:24:46   Where you you you tap hold on a link and it pops up,

02:24:50   you know, you know, like when I like I don't know, three long press.

02:24:54   Yeah. You long, long press on a link in it and it pops up a preview.

02:24:58   Yeah. And when you do that in iOS 14, it vibrates.

02:25:03   It just and then and I'll try to hold it up to the mic right now

02:25:07   so you can maybe hear it. But.

02:25:10   Did you hear that? Yeah.

02:25:11   Yeah. A little tick.

02:25:12   Yeah. Just it's barely audible.

02:25:14   But and I think that the reason I'll leave it on is because if I did that

02:25:19   in a very silent room, nobody would ever think that that was that

02:25:23   that came out of my phone.

02:25:24   It could have easily just been like my bone cracking or something like that

02:25:29   or the chair.

02:25:30   But it's that extra little bit of audible slash tactile feedback

02:25:36   or haptic feedback that makes me know that I'm that I just interacted

02:25:40   with with a piece of software in an interesting way.

02:25:43   Yeah, it's it's not quite haptic.

02:25:46   It's but it is sensory, right?

02:25:48   It's right. That's what it is.

02:25:49   And I do feel that Apple is sort of it's an interesting

02:25:53   walk back where Apple is sort of introduced

02:25:58   all of this pressure sensitive stuff that they called forced

02:26:02   touch on some devices and 3D touch on others.

02:26:05   And it's all sort of going away.

02:26:07   Apparently, the watch OS six or whatever version the new one is seven or seven

02:26:14   has deprecations about assuming that 3D touch or force touch

02:26:19   or whatever it's called on the watch is going to be there, which has everybody.

02:26:22   You know, I think rightly so, thinking that either the next watches this year

02:26:28   or the ones next year are going to do away with that.

02:26:32   You know, and the phones already did it, and it was sort of painful

02:26:36   because it's in some ways the experience took a hit because being able to just force

02:26:42   touch the shortcut I used all the time was being able to force touch

02:26:46   on the keyboard and turn it into a track pad for the cursor.

02:26:50   And you can still get it, but you like long press on the space bar

02:26:54   or below the space bar, which is a nice trick on the iPhone

02:26:57   10 that you don't even have to hit the space bar exactly.

02:26:59   You can go below it.

02:27:01   But like the fact that you have to like press and wait

02:27:05   is like and I think they've dialed in the weight to like

02:27:09   an exquisitely perfect number of milliseconds where you don't get it

02:27:14   by accident, but it's the minimum weight they could possibly do.

02:27:17   So it's as fast as it can possibly be without being accidentally triggerable.

02:27:21   But it still isn't as cool as being able to just press hard and have it right away.

02:27:25   Like I still feel like I'm now of a sudden I'm faster than my phone,

02:27:29   which is ridiculous because I'm a very slow person.

02:27:33   Related, I and again on our slack, our friend

02:27:36   John Sirakusa, I'll just call him out by name,

02:27:40   vehemently opposed to the keyboard clicks on the iPhone keyboard.

02:27:44   I like I keep them on.

02:27:47   And to me, to me, the ringer switch on the phone.

02:27:52   I don't really think of it as a ringer switch.

02:27:54   I think of it as a keyboard click switch

02:27:58   because I will turn it off when it's always appropriate,

02:28:02   you know, generally appropriate not to have your phone ringing and beeping

02:28:05   and booping and bopping.

02:28:07   But I like to turn it on when I'm writing.

02:28:08   If I'm going if I'm going to like do some email or like extensive

02:28:12   texting with somebody on my phone, I'll flip it up.

02:28:15   And so that when I'm typing, I can hear the taps.

02:28:17   But I have to immediately tap it off if I'm anywhere near my wife because

02:28:22   she drives your bonkers.

02:28:24   That's great.

02:28:25   That's great.

02:28:25   You need that feedback. And it's good to that's good to know that kind of thing.

02:28:28   I don't think I I know.

02:28:32   I bet that if you secret camera'd me and stop watched it,

02:28:36   I don't type faster or more accurately with the clicks.

02:28:40   But I feel like I type more accurately and faster with the clicks.

02:28:44   And that's really all that matters.

02:28:47   I would actually keep doing it.

02:28:49   Even if your stopwatch secret camera footage of me

02:28:52   proved the opposite, that I actually am more effective without it,

02:28:57   without the clicks, because I it matters more to me that I feel like I'm productive.

02:29:04   All right.

02:29:05   Does that make sense?

02:29:06   Oh, absolutely.

02:29:07   It's all emotional.

02:29:08   UI is definitely emotional.

02:29:09   So I'm going to say one more thing that I just thought of about the system,

02:29:14   about the new sounds in terms of like.

02:29:18   Evolution of sound design, and I think it's this,

02:29:23   I think that the future of this type of of human computer and

02:29:29   what's the I stand for interaction interaction.

02:29:33   Yeah.

02:29:34   Is going to resemble augmented reality more and more than, you know,

02:29:40   as opposed to less like AR wasn't a trend.

02:29:42   And I think that that goes for visuals as well as for the visual.

02:29:46   I think that that goes for visuals as well as sounds,

02:29:51   where we're going to become more used to the idea that, you know,

02:29:57   digital visual stuff is it has to blend in with our environments for obviously reason.

02:30:02   You know, if the glasses are a real thing, then yes, visual digital stuff is going to

02:30:06   blend in in our environments and track to the environment.

02:30:09   So that's sort of a no brainer.

02:30:11   But I think it's interesting to think about sounds the same way.

02:30:14   And I even think that, you know, the first generation of air pods, what was striking

02:30:20   to me was that they sort of, you know, because they let a certain amount of sound in to your

02:30:24   eardrums, it always felt to me like an overlay of sound rather than a replacement of sound,

02:30:30   which is how I prefer to experience, you know, sound through through headphones or whatever.

02:30:34   I don't want to be isolated or noise cancellation or anything.

02:30:39   So I like to think of sound in that that way of augmented rather than replacing or like,

02:30:46   you know, VR type of sound.

02:30:48   So I think that these new sounds that I'm hearing from the system and the alert sound

02:30:53   in Big Sur are meant are like sort of like engineered or sound designed to augment sound

02:31:00   around us rather than replace it.

02:31:02   And that's the last thing I'll say about that.

02:31:04   Do you have I AirPods Pro or do you still have the

02:31:07   No, I don't because I really do like my AirPods.

02:31:09   I've always been sort of a I don't know, like middle, like a like a middling taste of of

02:31:19   like headphones and stuff like I loved the wired earbuds that came with the iPhone and

02:31:26   the iPods for so many years.

02:31:27   And I love the first generation, second generation of AirPods.

02:31:30   So I don't really feel like for that same reason.

02:31:33   I don't want to replace what's around me.

02:31:34   I just want to augment it.

02:31:35   Yeah, I have the pro.

02:31:38   I would say for anybody who still has the regular ones and you thinking about the pro,

02:31:43   if you like if you're like you like I would say to you, don't even worry about it.

02:31:47   If you like your regular AirPods, you're good.

02:31:49   If you you know, and to me, the big area where I love the noise canceling

02:31:53   on the AirPods Pro is being on an airplane or a train.

02:31:57   And guess who hasn't been on an airplane or a train and four and a half months

02:32:03   when I'm out on the street here in Philly, I always have my AirPods Pro in whatever

02:32:09   they call pass through mode where it's not noise canceling.

02:32:13   A, I'm scared of the noise canceling as a pedestrian.

02:32:17   I genuinely worry about I feel like I'm lucky enough when I don't have any

02:32:22   headphones in at all that I don't get hit by a car.

02:32:25   But yeah, I I like all of these extra.

02:32:30   I like to use as many of my senses as possible to avoid getting hit by a car

02:32:34   or anything untoward like that.

02:32:37   But I also just like it. I just prefer it.

02:32:39   I just like to be part of the world.

02:32:41   I don't want to cancel out stuff like that.

02:32:43   And with the AirPods Pro, it really is like it turns the whole world into AR

02:32:50   for audio where that's the trick is like so like and for me as a pedestrian,

02:32:55   all this all of my use cases involve being a pedestrian in a center city,

02:33:00   Philadelphia, so like a bus goes by.

02:33:02   Well, a bus is very noisy

02:33:05   and you hear the bus when you're with AirPods Pro in pass through mode.

02:33:11   But unlike regular AirPods, where the pass through is the actual sound

02:33:14   of the bus, it's virtual and it knows to turn it down.

02:33:18   So, you know, the bus is going by, but it doesn't mean you have to like

02:33:22   pause the podcast you're listening to wait for the bus and then hit play

02:33:25   to or go back 15 seconds.

02:33:28   It turns the bus down to a level where you doesn't keep you

02:33:32   from continuing to hear the podcast you're listening to.

02:33:34   That's awesome.

02:33:35   It blows me away every time it happens.

02:33:38   I'm blown away because I'm like, you know, for years,

02:33:41   you know, and even going back to wired earbuds, every single time

02:33:45   a bus or truck went by me while I was out in the city,

02:33:49   I would have to go back 15 seconds to hear what the hell I just missed

02:33:52   on the podcast.

02:33:54   And now I don't have to do that.

02:33:55   And it blows me away.

02:33:56   Yeah, that's just super, super cool.

02:33:59   Smart engineering. I love it.

02:34:00   All right. Last question.

02:34:02   And then we're done on this subject.

02:34:04   Why do movies still have when you're when somebody is using a computer

02:34:08   in a movie, does it make ridiculous sounds for everything?

02:34:11   Oh, that's a good question.

02:34:15   When I thought this was the thing.

02:34:17   Here's what I thought.

02:34:18   I thought as like when I was in my 20s and this was still happening,

02:34:22   I was like, well, wait until my generation is making the movies

02:34:26   and is in charge of things and will finally get done with this.

02:34:29   Right. No, because I mean, sound designers have to reinforce

02:34:36   the idea of the world that's being captured on camera like that.

02:34:40   They're there. It's not meant to be the most realistic,

02:34:43   although I'd argue that when devices when when hardware devices

02:34:47   are truly silent, then we'll no longer need

02:34:49   you know, them to be sound designed in movies and commercials.

02:34:53   And so I think that's that's the main thing is that

02:34:57   it feels weird if you see something but don't hear it.

02:35:00   And also there's this idea that all of

02:35:03   you know, all of that medium, all of cinema through,

02:35:09   you know, through a lens is illusory.

02:35:12   So you have to always reinforce the illusion.

02:35:15   So it's not it's not about replicating reality.

02:35:18   It's about convincing people that what they're seeing in that box

02:35:22   is pretty close to real life.

02:35:24   So sound designers take that opportunity to not only reinforce, but make better.

02:35:30   And it's an additive thing. It's not subtractive.

02:35:33   There we go. Adam, I'm going to have you back on the show within the next five years.

02:35:40   Oh, good. Wasn't that something right then?

02:35:45   Everybody can check you out.

02:35:48   You're what your Twitter handle is now, Adam.

02:35:51   It's just my name, Adam.

02:35:52   Let's go. Yeah. And of course, your excellent company that was instrumental in

02:35:57   making me not jump off a cliff sandwich

02:36:02   is at sandwich dot co, which is absolutely fabulous.

02:36:06   And you guys are continuing to do killer work.

02:36:10   Even in this, you guys have figured it out how to do work.

02:36:13   Anything you want to promote anything new?

02:36:14   I know the slack video was about a month ago.

02:36:17   But yeah, yeah, I was maybe getting up on two months.

02:36:20   But what is time anymore?

02:36:22   Yeah, I guess a month ago was my show and it was definitely out

02:36:26   for a month when my show came out. So, yeah, two months. All right.

02:36:28   Yeah. So I guess that slack project is on our site.

02:36:31   If you if you would if you get to know the team

02:36:35   and the company a little bit or our culture, we've done a few more of those.

02:36:39   We call them lunchbox style remote shoots since this started happening.

02:36:44   And then we just did our first like real commercial

02:36:47   for a company called OutPay, which I'm very excited about.

02:36:50   OutPay is again, they're they're they're facilitating

02:36:54   contactless menu and payment in restaurants for

02:36:59   because it's all it's all sorts of dangerous for everybody involved

02:37:04   at a restaurant right now if you're just handling everything.

02:37:08   And and there's all these regulations and restrictions.

02:37:11   So that so they've been working for a few years on a clever solution

02:37:15   to all this problem.

02:37:17   And the timing was interesting and correct.

02:37:20   So we made a commercial for them.

02:37:23   And what else? Yeah, just

02:37:26   probably vote vote in the election.

02:37:29   And well, vote for sure.

02:37:31   And last but not least, you and

02:37:34   friends of the show, Merlin Man and Scott Simpson,

02:37:38   have put the band back together for You Look Nice Today.

02:37:41   Yeah. And that is now well, hey, you could just look for it

02:37:45   in your favorite podcast app, but the website is.

02:37:48   I think that we it's all at California King dot org.

02:37:53   Now we sort of like we set out to do something new when we got

02:37:57   that we got back together.

02:37:59   We started discussing, you know, what could we do?

02:38:01   It doesn't have to be the old thing.

02:38:02   Let's just get let's just record.

02:38:05   So we branded it as a new thing that Scott came up with

02:38:08   the name California King, and it was it was so funny.

02:38:11   We couldn't disregard it.

02:38:14   And and so then we started recording them and then we realized,

02:38:18   oh, this is You Look Nice Today.

02:38:19   This is the same damn thing.

02:38:21   So whoops.

02:38:24   And anyway, we started doing them as we started the one,

02:38:27   the way we could differentiate was we started shooting them,

02:38:29   shooting video for them, too.

02:38:31   So now they're all the episodes are slightly less edited than they used to

02:38:36   used to be, and they're all on video on YouTube.

02:38:38   So California King, it's for the kids, huge amounts of fun.

02:38:43   Yeah, huge amounts of fun for me.

02:38:46   And we just we do it weekly now instead of maybe every few years.

02:38:51   And it's really fun to be a podcaster again.

02:38:54   Yeah. Well, I couldn't be happier that it's back.

02:38:57   I don't know what I'm happier about.

02:38:59   You Look Nice Today, California King or Gary Larson.

02:39:02   Bring it back.

02:39:04   But you guys have more episodes than he has cartoons.

02:39:07   So I'm going to give the credit to you.

02:39:10   Yeah, well, we should do a calendar.

02:39:13   Although now that I think about it,

02:39:15   the far side has also made copious use of Cooper Black, the typeface.

02:39:20   Oh, neat. Yeah. Yeah.

02:39:22   I wonder if that's what made me think of it is that I'm looking here

02:39:24   and I see it. California King.

02:39:26   But anyway. Right on.

02:39:29   Well, this has been a dream.

02:39:30   Thank you so much, John Gruber in the observation that anybody,

02:39:35   anybody, including me, has ever made.

02:39:38   Yeah, we really took Cooper Black and made it our own, I guess.

02:39:42   I think that was Merlin's unique innovation when we started.

02:39:46   You Look Nice Today.

02:39:48   All right, Adam.

02:39:50   Thanks, man. Thanks for having me on.

02:39:52   Oh, you're the best.