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The Talk Show

214: ‘Only Wireless. Less Smart Than an Echo. Lame.’ With Paul Kafasis

 

00:00:00   [DRUM ROLL]

00:00:03   [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:06   Oh, yeah, I love it.

00:00:07   I love that beat.

00:00:08   Good.

00:00:11   God, this is going to be a nightmare to edit.

00:00:13   [LAUGHTER]

00:00:16   Sorry, Caleb.

00:00:18   Good thing neither of us are editing the show.

00:00:20   [LAUGHTER]

00:00:22   Paul Kefasis is back on the show,

00:00:24   co-founder of Rokomiba Software.

00:00:27   Paul, you've been on the show many times.

00:00:28   I don't think you've been on in quite some time.

00:00:31   - I think I was on some kind of a list.

00:00:33   I'm not sure what I did.

00:00:35   I didn't rip up a picture of the Pope or anything,

00:00:37   but I don't know what I did, but I'm back.

00:00:40   - All right, let me see here.

00:00:40   I've got a list of former guests.

00:00:44   This is episode 214.

00:00:46   You were just on, you were on episode 112.

00:00:49   (laughing)

00:00:50   - Well, we should have waited 10 more episodes.

00:00:52   We could have doubled the number.

00:00:54   - Or we should have done it two episodes ago

00:00:55   and made it a centennial.

00:00:57   Oh, there you go.

00:00:58   - Yeah, I don't know.

00:01:00   Well, I don't know what took so long.

00:01:01   I will have to speak to the scheduler,

00:01:03   but it is good to have you back.

00:01:05   And it's not a complete coincidence.

00:01:07   We're celebrating the release of a new rogue Amoeba app,

00:01:10   Farago, am I pronouncing that correctly?

00:01:12   - You are.

00:01:14   - F-A-R-R-A-G-O.

00:01:17   - That's right.

00:01:19   - And where does the name come from?

00:01:20   - Well, it's actually a word that means,

00:01:23   it's a word that nobody knows.

00:01:24   It's an English word that means basically

00:01:26   sort of a melange or a jumble or, you know, just an assortment of things.

00:01:31   We were, you know, toying around with a whole bunch of different names as I'm

00:01:36   sure anyone who's named anything has experience with you, you try everything.

00:01:39   The Mac OS X dictionary says it's a confused mixture.

00:01:44   Yeah, it's got slightly negative connotations, so it's not quite like, you

00:01:49   know, a medley, but most people don't know the word, so we're hoping to get away with it.

00:01:54   All right.

00:01:54   any app, it's a Mac app that is a soundboard app.

00:01:58   And if you don't know what a soundboard app is,

00:02:00   a soundboard app is, that's my handing it off to you.

00:02:03   - Oh, I mean, it's the perfect thing for, you know, just,

00:02:07   (dramatic music)

00:02:09   basically if you want any sort of audio effects

00:02:12   in your audio, you're recording a podcast

00:02:15   and you just wanna have some great sound effects like,

00:02:17   (imitates sound effects)

00:02:19   (burps)

00:02:20   - I really think this is just what my show needs, I do.

00:02:23   I think you need to get 10 times as many sound effects as you have now,

00:02:28   and that's really going to draw the listeners in.

00:02:31   >> I think it'll greatly reduce the complaints about the speed at which I speak and the number

00:02:38   of times I pause before speaking. Marco --

00:02:42   >> If you can just toss in sound effects any time you need a break, yeah.

00:02:45   >> I've long suspected that Marco added that smart speed thing just for my show.

00:02:49   >> For you? Solely for you.

00:02:51   [laughs]

00:02:52   Right.

00:02:53   It should be like the talk show, the Gruber filter.

00:02:55   Just take out the long pauses.

00:02:58   And now we can fill them with farts.

00:02:59   Absolutely.

00:03:00   Well, so we were talking about this before the show, and I pulled up, you know, half

00:03:06   a dozen, couple dozen different audio effects to fiddle around with.

00:03:10   So I got to figure out how to sprinkle them in lightly.

00:03:13   I don't want to go too nuts with it.

00:03:14   Right.

00:03:15   But the idea here is not just that you can play sounds at any point, but you've obviously,

00:03:21   everybody listening can hear. You've piped it into the audio pipeline that you're recording.

00:03:26   You know, it's, you know, and that's, we could talk about it, just for people who aren't familiar,

00:03:33   some of the other apps, or what Amoeba has, that's right up your alley. But then, you know,

00:03:38   so at a technical level, you got to understand the way sound works on a Mac. But I think more

00:03:44   importantly is that it has gorgeous user interface. Effectively, I you know, correct me if you

00:03:51   if you think, you know, you've obviously put tons of thought in this and I've put about

00:03:54   five minutes into like looking at it and saying cool. But in effect, it is sort of like a

00:04:02   user interface design app for people who need to play sounds at a moment's notice. So you

00:04:08   You can arrange, pick the sounds you need,

00:04:11   arrange them in the way you want them to be

00:04:14   or that makes logical sense to you,

00:04:17   maybe not to anybody else,

00:04:18   but you can pick this logical order

00:04:19   and you have a big visual interface

00:04:21   and you can color code the sounds by category or whatever

00:04:25   and you've got these big click targets.

00:04:28   So it's not like a little tiny thing you have to do.

00:04:30   So if you really wanna play a sound right away,

00:04:32   it's got a big Fitz's Law target as they would say.

00:04:37   Yeah, and also the way we sort of anticipate people to be using it is via the keyboard.

00:04:42   So everything's mapped right to your keyboard. So it sort of turns your keyboard into basically

00:04:47   like a sample machine.

00:04:48   Right.

00:04:49   So if you're looking at the visual on screen and you say, "Okay, I know what I need,"

00:04:53   and you can see what key you need to hit right away. So that's, it's certainly playable

00:04:57   via the mouse, but the keyboard is really the sort of the primary way to use it, I think.

00:05:01   And by default, like when you first run the app, does F map to FART?

00:05:05   >> Our sample set actually does not have a fart sound in it. I had to download that separately.

00:05:12   You know, we've got the -- you know, we've got all sorts of -- we came up with -- I'm trying to

00:05:22   look at our sample set. I think it's 25 sounds. And we were scouring the internet to find good

00:05:28   sounds and to find things that we wanted. And some of the feedback I got after the app was

00:05:32   was released, probably about a dozen different people said, "Oh, this is great. It just needs

00:05:37   X sound, and it's like fart noise it needs. It needs a toilet flush." So really, we need

00:05:42   another sample pack of the really goofy or juvenile noises that we did not include in

00:05:47   the first go-round.

00:05:48   I had a brainstorm, and as usual, it came way too late. We started recording roughly

00:05:56   an hour and 20 minutes after I told you we would be starting to record. I had an eye

00:06:02   doctor appointment that ran late, and various other shenanigans going on here in the city

00:06:07   of Philadelphia, which we will get to in a bit.

00:06:10   And of course, so an hour and 20 minutes after we were set to record as I come down to the

00:06:14   podcast cave, shuffling my various beverages and trying not to trip and fall, I suddenly

00:06:21   realized what we should have loaded the soundboard up with.

00:06:23   And it's clips of my wife laughing on just the tip.

00:06:28   and we could make it sound as though she was here with us and just loving what we're saying.

00:06:38   Just dying of laughter every step of the way.

00:06:40   Which probably would have driven her nuts.

00:06:46   Because I mean, when she listens to the show, all she hears is [sad trombone sound]

00:06:51   Yeah, pretty much.

00:06:54   If you could make her look a fool, that'd be pretty good.

00:06:57   Yeah, that would have been pretty good. Anyway, as usual, a dollar a day late and a dollar short.

00:07:02   Forago, Forago? Forago? Forago came out two weeks ago, right?

00:07:09   John "Slick" Baum: Two weeks ago today, actually.

00:07:11   Pete: How's it doing?

00:07:12   John "Slick" Baum I haven't bought a boat yet. So,

00:07:16   if the listeners are intrigued, get your 1000 copies and then I can each and then I can get my

00:07:24   boat. Pete I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it as

00:07:27   though I don't. Direct download, direct purchase, Mac App Store, or both?

00:07:33   >> Direct download for free trial, as with all of our software. Direct purchase from our store.

00:07:40   And this app actually could potentially be in the Mac App Store, but it is not in the Mac App Store.

00:07:44   I mean, I don't know how deep you want to get into this, but we've had two applications in the Mac

00:07:49   App Store, and we pulled one of them out because the changes that they made in terms of the rules

00:07:55   in the Mac App Store made it not viable to stay there.

00:07:58   And so we have one remaining app.

00:08:00   - That app was Piezo, right?

00:08:02   - Yep, so that's our simple audio recorder,

00:08:04   which is actually the recorder that I'm using right now,

00:08:06   because my version of Audio Hijack was all,

00:08:09   eh, let's just call it messed up.

00:08:11   So that was in the Mac App Store,

00:08:14   specifically to make it possible to have a recorder

00:08:17   that was, that skirted the, sorry,

00:08:20   that followed the rules of the Mac App Store.

00:08:23   And then those rules changed,

00:08:25   and so we eventually had to pull it out because the app was not able to be updated. So we said,

00:08:31   all right, we'd rather have a functioning app, a properly functioning app that is available directly

00:08:37   than a crippled app that is also in the Mac App Store.

00:08:39   Ted

00:08:51   connection, file serving connection stuff, effectively had to be pulled at one point

00:08:57   from Mac App Store, even though it's an acclaimed app.

00:09:01   It's an FTP and a web editor. I mean, like, you wouldn't think this sort of thing would

00:09:05   run afoul of App Store rules, but here we are.

00:09:09   But you've written publicly, I believe, about Piezo's success after being just going direct

00:09:15   download, direct sale only, right?

00:09:17   >> Yeah, absolutely. So, I actually just this afternoon, we posted a review of last year, 2017,

00:09:23   and I was rereading the post that you're referring to. It was a post from February of last year, just

00:09:27   about a year ago. And two years ago is when we pulled Piazzo out of the Mac App Store. And so,

00:09:32   after a year, I compared our revenue from the year, the last year when it was in the Mac App

00:09:38   Store and the first year when it was no longer in the Mac App Store. And the result was that we

00:09:42   actually earned more revenue because our sales were -- our raw unit sales were slightly down,

00:09:49   but the difference was not so great that we didn't earn more revenue because Apple takes 30 percent

00:09:54   of every sale that you get in the Mac App Store. And when we sell it directly, we're getting

00:10:00   somewhere around 95 percent of the revenue. So, it's not terribly difficult to make more money,

00:10:06   even if you have slightly lower sales. You're probably going to earn more money on those sales.

00:10:11   So and as you're where we are, as usual, many caveats apply that the rules for games might

00:10:19   be entirely different than for utilities like piezo.

00:10:26   But the bottom line is that the Mac App Store, wherever it is on the scale of zero to 100

00:10:33   as a success for the Mac development community, it is absolute I think I can't I think it's

00:10:40   undeniably not at the point where it is eating the non Mac App Store market. If anything,

00:10:49   the non Mac App Store market is as strong as ever. Like, well, and I think has has started to eat

00:10:57   some of the App Store. Because you mentioned you mentioned panic and we pulled an app out and you

00:11:02   know, I'd have to look back but there's you can probably find a good dozen fairly major apps.

00:11:06   the app store that then left, exactly, just like that.

00:11:11   - Right, right.

00:11:12   I should try to find it.

00:11:15   Rich Segal, founder of BB, co-founder of BB Edit,

00:11:19   Bearbound Software, had a great talk at Singleton,

00:11:22   but got-- - At Singleton,

00:11:23   his Max Q talk, yeah.

00:11:24   - Yeah, but Singleton, how many years ago was that?

00:11:26   Jeez.

00:11:27   - I think it's probably about three or four.

00:11:30   - At least, so it's not even that recent.

00:11:32   And it was a great talk because effectively,

00:11:35   It was like a half hour talk about why he took BB Edit out of the Mac App Store and

00:11:40   went back to Direct Downloads.

00:11:42   And I don't even want to try to summarize it because what made it such a great talk

00:11:46   was it really did take half an hour for him to make his point.

00:11:50   And, you know, and that's there.

00:11:52   I won't summarize it either, but it's right.

00:11:54   I'm sure you can find a link and it's definitely worth a watch if you're at all interested

00:11:57   in the Mac App Store or leaving the Mac App Store.

00:12:00   Right.

00:12:01   peak Mac App Store was early on in the days of App Store.

00:12:05   And one of the fears a lot of us had was that,

00:12:08   man, if the Mac App Store really takes off,

00:12:11   and Mac users just abandon direct downloads

00:12:14   and outside the Mac App Store payments

00:12:18   and only buy stuff from the App Store,

00:12:21   it really, it's not about the 30%,

00:12:24   or certainly not only about the 30%,

00:12:27   but it's just about, boy, would that make people

00:12:30   whose livelihood depends on selling independent Mac App Store

00:12:32   feel uncomfortable about having their entire livelihood

00:12:37   in a store that is clearly never going to be better

00:12:41   than the second favorite at Apple.

00:12:43   - Right, absolutely.

00:12:45   Yeah, the iOS App Store is clearly what they're focused on

00:12:48   and the Mac App Store sort of seemed like,

00:12:50   hey, we did this on the phone,

00:12:52   so we might as well try it on the Mac.

00:12:54   And I think you made a great point that, let's see,

00:12:57   I think it's been, was it 2010 or 2011

00:12:59   that the Mac App Store came out.

00:13:01   I don't want to screw it up.

00:13:03   It was one of those two, I'm fairly certain.

00:13:06   But it was quite a while ago at this point.

00:13:07   And when it came out, everyone said,

00:13:09   "Okay, let's get in there."

00:13:10   The iOS App Store has been such a success.

00:13:13   Let's get in there and this will get our app

00:13:15   in front of everyone.

00:13:16   And I think a lot of apps did get in there

00:13:19   and then over time realized, you know what?

00:13:21   This isn't doing a whole lot for us

00:13:23   and it's taking a decent chunk of both our money

00:13:26   and our energy.

00:13:27   And that's when you've seen apps sort of peel back.

00:13:30   And like you said, the peak was early on.

00:13:33   And I think since then it's been fairly slow.

00:13:37   And there certainly hasn't been any major app that I've seen

00:13:40   that has only been in the Mac App Store.

00:13:42   - Is Pixelmator Mac App Store only?

00:13:47   - Ooh, that's a good question.

00:13:49   It's certainly possible,

00:13:50   but I would bet that they focus on the Mac App Store,

00:13:54   but still have a direct download.

00:13:55   - Anyway, your memory is excellent.

00:13:57   the Mac App Store was announced at Apple's

00:13:59   Back to the Mac event October 2010.

00:14:03   That was the episode, that was the event

00:14:06   where I believe Craig Federighi first appeared on stage

00:14:09   and he had a sort of a shaky demo.

00:14:14   - He's gotten much better at the on-stage performances.

00:14:20   - Yeah, the backstory behind that wasn't really so much

00:14:24   that he was nervous, but that there was like a last minute

00:14:28   software change and he realized that it didn't work

00:14:31   the way they thought it would.

00:14:32   It was sort of like, you know, like the rule,

00:14:33   like don't change anything in between rehearsals and demo.

00:14:37   And it was like, they thought, well, we can change that.

00:14:39   And then he realized on stage that

00:14:41   we shouldn't have changed that.

00:14:42   Anyway, he has gotten a little,

00:14:45   he went from being like, wow,

00:14:46   why did they put him on stage to,

00:14:48   wow, he should be on TV, right?

00:14:50   Anyway, October 20th, 2010 was when it was announced,

00:14:54   They began taking submissions in November 2010,

00:14:57   and then it launched in January 2011.

00:15:01   So your 2010, 2011 confusion was actually more accurate

00:15:04   than picking one or the other.

00:15:06   - Yeah, and you're right.

00:15:07   I was just looking at Pixelmator Pro is,

00:15:10   it looks like only in the Mac App Store.

00:15:11   So that is certainly one that is sort of,

00:15:15   the exception that proves the rule maybe.

00:15:17   - Well, it's a complicated story.

00:15:20   I think Sketch is in there.

00:15:21   I don't think Sketch is only Mac App Store,

00:15:23   but it is-- - No, it's definitely not.

00:15:25   Sketch definitely isn't.

00:15:26   - Yeah, well, it's worked out in a weird way.

00:15:30   I don't wanna spend too much time on the Mac App Store here,

00:15:32   but it just seems like, gosh, now we're seven years in,

00:15:37   and seven years in, it's sort of like a nowhere.

00:15:42   You know, like it's not a failure,

00:15:45   but it is absolutely not put a dent

00:15:47   in the independent marketplace. - Not a success,

00:15:48   or not a big success.

00:15:50   - Right, it's just sort of weird.

00:15:52   I don't think that was expected.

00:15:54   - I don't wanna, you know, I'm not,

00:15:57   I just looked at that one too.

00:15:58   Sketch actually is one of the ones that left the store.

00:16:00   - Oh, that's right, that's right.

00:16:01   - That's what I remember.

00:16:02   They're one of the fairly large ones that left.

00:16:04   - That's right, because they wanted to switch

00:16:06   to a subscription model that the app store

00:16:09   doesn't really support or something like that.

00:16:11   - Exactly. - Right.

00:16:13   Yeah, that's right, that's right.

00:16:14   That's why I knew that Sketch was on the--

00:16:17   - There was something about it, exactly.

00:16:18   - Yeah, something about it.

00:16:19   - Well, so all of this is sort of tangential

00:16:23   to what you originally asked.

00:16:25   And, you know, Forago is something that fits

00:16:28   within the confines of the App Store, at least currently.

00:16:30   But for us as a developer, as developers,

00:16:34   it has not been a priority to get it there.

00:16:37   And I was looking back at a post from several years ago

00:16:41   and somebody was saying, oh, you know,

00:16:42   this isn't in the Mac App Store.

00:16:43   You know, no one's gonna buy it, or I'm not gonna buy it.

00:16:45   And you're crazy.

00:16:46   This is where the puck is going, et cetera.

00:16:49   and it was pretty amusing to read

00:16:51   because that's not the way that it's worked out.

00:16:54   And fortunately for us, we've been able to continue

00:16:56   selling this stuff directly.

00:16:58   - I mean, there's a part of it.

00:17:00   I've been in the racket, as they say,

00:17:02   and I understand the...

00:17:04   When you're on the side where Apple's taking 30%

00:17:10   from the price you set for the app you made,

00:17:12   it feels a little high.

00:17:17   But I totally understand from the user's point of view,

00:17:20   'cause I personally still enjoy buying apps

00:17:22   from the Mac App Store,

00:17:23   because I love the simplicity of knowing,

00:17:26   if I bought it from the Mac App Store,

00:17:27   there's one place to go to redownload it

00:17:29   on a different machine, or, you know what I mean?

00:17:33   There's just one central place to check for that.

00:17:36   And that is very convenient, and I do trust it,

00:17:39   and I know I'm not gonna get spam

00:17:40   from the developer afterwards.

00:17:43   Not that I buy a lot of apps that I suspect

00:17:44   I'm gonna get spam from the developer for,

00:17:46   but I understand the convenience of it, but.

00:17:49   - No, absolutely.

00:17:50   And it's certainly something where,

00:17:52   it's not something we shied away from.

00:17:54   And we've mentioned that 30% a bunch.

00:17:56   That was never a sole reason to avoid it

00:17:59   or anything like that.

00:17:59   It's a high number, but it's not so high that you'd say,

00:18:02   well, the heck with that.

00:18:03   But that coupled with a half dozen other issues

00:18:07   that you face as a developer

00:18:08   makes it a whole lot less appealing right now.

00:18:10   And it's not something where like iOS,

00:18:12   you have to be there to get to users.

00:18:14   So, fortunately we can avoid it.

00:18:17   - All right, let me take a break here

00:18:18   and thank our first sponsor.

00:18:19   You are never gonna believe who it is,

00:18:21   it is our good friend.

00:18:22   - It's the Mac App Store.

00:18:23   - It's the Mac App Store.

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00:20:43   And when you do sign up to pay,

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00:21:07   So my thanks to Squarespace.

00:21:08   (laughing)

00:21:11   I've got some follow up.

00:21:15   I've got some important follow up from last week's episode,

00:21:18   episode 213 with John Moltz,

00:21:21   who hadn't been on for a long time either.

00:21:23   I mentioned, there was a podcast a few years back.

00:21:29   Do you remember the show, Paul,

00:21:30   it was called You Look Nice Today?

00:21:32   - I am familiar.

00:21:33   - It's a show, I figured you would be.

00:21:35   It's a show that was the,

00:21:37   was actually, this is actually, people don't know this, it was actually the first podcast.

00:21:43   These three lads invented podcasting a little over 10 years ago, featuring Scott Simpson,

00:21:53   Merlin Mann and Adam "Lonely Sandwich" Lisagor, all three of whom have been on this

00:21:58   show I think a few times, including Scott, who happens to have been on a very special

00:22:05   episode of this show that was recorded with you. It was me, you, and Scott Simpson.

00:22:12   That's right. The Velocity Hotels episode.

00:22:15   That was the Velocity Hotels episode. We came up with the idea. It was a fantastic idea that

00:22:19   we never really followed up on. But we were going to—

00:22:21   Well, now has been stolen.

00:22:23   Now it's been stolen.

00:22:24   I have lawyers working on this, but I don't know if we're going to see any money out of it.

00:22:29   The idea, if you don't remember this in the Velocity Hotels episode,

00:22:34   that we came up with the idea that, you know, why are hotels only fixed in fixed locations?

00:22:40   And what if, you know, you're on a trip and you need to get from point A to point B,

00:22:44   we stay in a hotel at point A, you get into good night's sleep, you wake up, and then you've still

00:22:50   got to get to point B. Well, what if your hotel could be a bus, a large motorcoach, perhaps,

00:22:56   but not like you're sleeping on like a Greyhound and just reclining in a chair, you'd get a nice

00:23:02   little luxury seats sort of like those first class cabins on Emirates.

00:23:06   Oh yeah, like a light flat bed.

00:23:07   Yeah, and maybe there's a lobby bar in the back of the bus so before you tuck in you could have

00:23:13   a nightcap. It was a fantastic idea. And the truth is, as you've pointed out, that there's

00:23:21   some competitors. While we've been sitting on the idea, some competitors have come out.

00:23:24   Do we have lawyers on this?

00:23:29   I do. They I don't know exactly what they're doing.

00:23:33   I got laughed at kind of a lot.

00:23:35   So I'm not it's not clear if that was laughter as you know, they're going to take these people to the cleaners or I hope that's what it was.

00:23:43   Well, anyway, while John Moltz was telling a story on the show last week about how he does not enjoy cherries,

00:23:50   but he does enjoy cherries when they are soaked in bourbon and put into a cocktail, which does sound good.

00:23:57   And I asked him, just for specificity, even though I knew, I kind of knew the answer.

00:24:02   I suspected that he was talking about regular cherries.

00:24:04   I wanted to make sure he didn't mean maraschino cherries, which are often used as a garnish

00:24:08   in cocktails.

00:24:09   And he said, "No, regular."

00:24:10   And that reminded me of an episode of You Look Nice Today, and I brought it up, where

00:24:16   the lads on You Look Nice Today were talking about a cocktail they invented just for the

00:24:21   listeners of the show.

00:24:23   And I conflated two cocktails, unfortunately, and that's what I need to follow up.

00:24:27   I said it was called the Aunt Nancy,

00:24:29   like your dad's sister Nancy, the Aunt Nancy,

00:24:33   and that involved a fistful of maraschino cherries,

00:24:38   ice, and top it off with Maker's Mark.

00:24:42   Turns out that's not the Aunt Nancy.

00:24:46   That was from a later episode of You Look Nice Today.

00:24:49   That drink was called,

00:24:50   they called the Shirley Temple of Doom.

00:24:53   - I think there's some ginger ale in that, is there not?

00:24:55   - Nope, that's the Aunt Nancy.

00:24:56   The Aunt Nancy.

00:24:58   - Oh, is that, okay, this is why you conflated it, I see.

00:25:00   - Right, this is why I conflated it.

00:25:02   The Aunt Nancy, in fact,

00:25:04   and I will put this link in the show notes,

00:25:05   there's a gentleman who runs a You Look Nice Today index,

00:25:10   where he went back and re-listened to their episodes

00:25:12   and indexed topics.

00:25:13   Unfortunately, the Aunt Nancy,

00:25:16   I happened to re-listen to the episode

00:25:19   on the HomePod I've got upstairs, as a matter of fact.

00:25:22   It was-- - I also gave it a listen

00:25:25   because it was better than anything else that was going on.

00:25:28   - It was ambiguously defined in the episode.

00:25:31   But as best as anybody can determine,

00:25:35   the Aunt Nancy is ginger ale and maker's mark,

00:25:38   served with lots of cherries.

00:25:39   - But also.

00:25:41   - A plastic drink sword.

00:25:43   You know those little swords they use to spear a garnish?

00:25:47   So on one of those, you put a buffalo chicken wing,

00:25:53   - Predipped in ranch dressing.

00:25:55   And then a second sword kebab

00:25:57   with eight, spearing eight mentos.

00:26:02   And then you put that together and there you got it.

00:26:05   That's the best definition anybody has of an aunt Nancy.

00:26:07   The only required elements,

00:26:09   this is sort of like when you're talking about

00:26:10   like an old fashioned and you know,

00:26:13   there's bourbon or rye.

00:26:15   - 20 different variations on it.

00:26:16   - Sugar and bitters.

00:26:19   But then other variations on the old fashioned,

00:26:21   Some will include a muddled up orange or cherry

00:26:23   or something like that.

00:26:24   The required parts are not the ginger ale or the maker's mark

00:26:29   it's just the speared buffalo chicken wing

00:26:33   pre-dipped in ranch dressing

00:26:34   and the second sword of eight Mentos.

00:26:37   And you could pretty much mix that with any alcohol

00:26:39   that you wanted to

00:26:40   and I think you could still call it an Aunt Nancy.

00:26:43   And I also believe there's some ambiguity

00:26:46   about whether you can also substitute a chicken tender

00:26:50   Right, there was definitely a beauty about chicken finger versus chicken wing.

00:26:53   Yeah.

00:26:54   And I, while I was listening to this, I had to raise a couple objections because my parents are

00:27:00   from Buffalo and they would roundly chastise me for not pointing out that it's a chicken wing,

00:27:04   it's not a Buffalo wing. So, it's the Philly cheesesteak kind of thing. But, you know,

00:27:10   my mom always makes sure to point out that Buffalo's do not have wings in case anyone is

00:27:15   confused. And ranch dressing is all wrong. It's blue cheese or it's nothing. And then the third

00:27:23   issue is I don't think you can spear Mentos. Mentos have a hard shell. So, this is a 10-year-old

00:27:32   episode of a mildly popular podcast. But we are doing some deep cut criticism and critiquing of

00:27:41   of it. Staring up some significant controversy. Absolutely. But I do I do want to praise them

00:27:47   because in the episode, there was a reference to a domain, buttholevideo.com, which a decade

00:27:56   later, almost one full decade later still leads to this episode. Buttholevideo.com.

00:28:05   Buttholevideo.com. You know, click that and it will take you directly to this episode.

00:28:09   I'll bet you 10 bucks Merlin registered the domain.

00:28:12   Merlin is--

00:28:14   - He's a domain hoarder.

00:28:15   - And he's also very good at it.

00:28:17   If by good you mean actually keeps them

00:28:20   and keeps paying for them, perhaps--

00:28:22   - For forever.

00:28:24   - By some people's definitions,

00:28:26   the people who are good at domains

00:28:27   are the ones who forget the ones they've never used

00:28:30   and stop paying for them, but--

00:28:32   - I was gonna say I bought velocityhotels.com

00:28:35   for that episode that we did.

00:28:37   and I checked it and I have not been paying for it.

00:28:41   So I guess it's a question of whether or not I'm good at it,

00:28:44   but I have kept the 30 or $40 that I would have been paying.

00:28:49   So my wallet thanks me at least.

00:28:51   - So in the show notes for this episode,

00:28:54   do I just leave buttholevideo.com as an item

00:28:57   in the list of links without any explanation?

00:28:59   I think I must.

00:29:00   - No context, no context.

00:29:06   - I also, and a minor correction on the Shirley Temple

00:29:08   of Doom is that I believe the official definition

00:29:13   is not a fistful of maraschino cherries,

00:29:17   but instead a shitload of maraschino cherries.

00:29:20   It's sort of like mixing up teaspoons and tablespoons.

00:29:25   So you don't wanna get the wrong proportion.

00:29:26   You want a shitload of maraschino cherries

00:29:29   and Maker's Mark and I guess some ice and that's it.

00:29:32   And that is the drink I have in fact seen Scott Simpson

00:29:35   order several times.

00:29:37   - Oh, frequently.

00:29:39   But I'm looking at Merlin's picture

00:29:40   of a Shirley Temple of Doom and there is ginger ale.

00:29:43   So I think the Shirley Temple of Doom

00:29:44   and the Aunt Nancy are remarkably similar,

00:29:47   save for the speared meats and candies.

00:29:51   - Yeah, and then I actually was trying to Google this

00:29:53   and it's actually impossible to Google.

00:29:57   You can get to the Aunt Nancy,

00:30:00   even though usually most of the Google,

00:30:02   like Aunt Nancy recipe,

00:30:03   and it's seriously like somebody's Aunt Nancy's recipe

00:30:06   for pumpkin pie.

00:30:07   (laughing)

00:30:08   And there's absolutely no.

00:30:10   (laughing)

00:30:12   There are no Mentos involved.

00:30:14   Oh, and I should also mention,

00:30:16   for those of you who are curious

00:30:17   about the chicken wing garnish,

00:30:21   that their idea for that is not necessarily

00:30:25   that it's a flavor enhancer for the cocktail.

00:30:27   It's something that while,

00:30:29   like a mixed crowd of adults and children.

00:30:32   - Right, it's a distraction.

00:30:33   - Right, that you could, if mommy needs a moment,

00:30:36   mommy needs a drink, she can order an Aunt Nancy

00:30:39   and then take the chicken wing out

00:30:40   and hand it to little Joey and he'll have something

00:30:43   to keep him quiet.

00:30:44   Anyway, which I think is a genius idea, quite frankly.

00:30:49   Here's my point, if you Google Shirley Temple of Doom,

00:30:52   there's a ton of people who've come up with,

00:30:54   it's too obvious a name, the pun,

00:30:59   I don't know what you call that

00:31:00   when you connect Temple of Doom with Shirley Temple.

00:31:02   And you Google it and there's actually an entire slew

00:31:05   of people who've used this name to define a cocktail.

00:31:08   And the cocktail, they bear no similarity whatsoever.

00:31:10   They're just people who thought of the name.

00:31:13   Whereas the Aunt Nancy to me is a genius name

00:31:15   for a cocktail.

00:31:16   And I kind of feel like,

00:31:18   I kind of feel like it's up to me and you, Paul,

00:31:19   to sort of,

00:31:20   I kind of feel like this definition in the guy's index

00:31:25   of you look nice today ought to become

00:31:26   the official Aunt Nancy.

00:31:27   Let's combine them together.

00:31:30   We'll have ginger ale, Maker's Mark.

00:31:32   I would just go with a splash of ginger ale, frankly.

00:31:35   You don't wanna put a lot of ginger ale on a drink.

00:31:38   - Mostly Maker's Mark is what we want.

00:31:40   - Yeah, a splash of ginger ale, Maker's Mark,

00:31:45   a shitload of cherries,

00:31:47   a kebab with a buffalo chicken wing or small chicken finger.

00:31:52   Now, do you think that we should say

00:31:55   ranch dressing or blue cheese?

00:31:58   - I wanna nix the ranch.

00:31:59   - I say blue cheese or nothing.

00:32:01   - All right, blue cheese or nothing.

00:32:02   But remember this is for children.

00:32:04   And blue cheese is a pretty strong flavor for children.

00:32:10   - You make a good point.

00:32:12   - I'm gonna say that--

00:32:15   - Well, if we're making the cocktail for children,

00:32:17   we can go with ranch.

00:32:18   - Let's just nix the dressing.

00:32:21   Let's just nix it as a, you know,

00:32:23   and then it can be--

00:32:24   - As a required element.

00:32:25   Dressing of your choice.

00:32:26   - You know what I mean?

00:32:27   Like you can get a martini with a blue cheese stuffed olive

00:32:29   and that's not necessarily canonical,

00:32:30   but nobody would question that it's still

00:32:32   a legitimate martini, it's just up to the choice.

00:32:34   - Right, absolutely.

00:32:36   - And what do we do about the Mentos?

00:32:38   - I really don't think you can spear Mentos

00:32:41   with a plastic sword, and I don't wanna make that

00:32:44   a requirement and then suddenly no one can make this drink.

00:32:46   - Is there a spearable candy?

00:32:48   - Ooh, starbursts that have been sitting in your back pocket.

00:32:54   - Yeah, I don't think the bartend,

00:32:55   I think that's against, I think that's gonna,

00:32:58   I think the bar's gonna lose their A rating, Paul.

00:33:00   (laughing)

00:33:02   I think Starbursts are a legitimate,

00:33:04   I think Starbursts are a legitimate substitute.

00:33:08   I hate to speak for the You Look Nice Today boys,

00:33:10   because they're all good friends

00:33:11   and I don't wanna stomp on their intellectual property

00:33:13   and I know that they have very good attorneys.

00:33:16   But I think Starbursts, off the top of my head,

00:33:19   is a good idea and I'll tell you what,

00:33:20   it adds a little bit of chance to the drink

00:33:26   because you don't know what flavor

00:33:28   Starbursts are gonna get.

00:33:30   - And it's gonna help the kids even more.

00:33:33   They get their dinner, they get their chicken wing

00:33:36   or chicken tender, and then they get a little dessert.

00:33:38   - Yeah, and they're gonna be barking for those Starbursts,

00:33:40   but you gotta tell 'em, not until you eat that chicken wing.

00:33:43   I like it.

00:33:45   All right, I say we redefine this, see what the boys say,

00:33:48   see if we can get an official,

00:33:50   and then see if we can get this into some cocktail books.

00:33:53   - Some cocktail books, exactly.

00:33:54   - All right.

00:33:55   - All right, what else do we have to follow up?

00:33:59   This one's, nowhere near as fun.

00:34:01   - This one is so much nerdier.

00:34:02   - There's an app called Nuzzle that Milt and I talked about,

00:34:06   which is an app that it's, I really like.

00:34:09   It's, you let it have your Twitter credentials,

00:34:13   and then Nuzzle keeps track of the people you follow.

00:34:16   And at a threshold, you can specify if four people

00:34:20   that you follow in the last four hours

00:34:21   have posted the same link,

00:34:23   Nozzle will send you a notification of it.

00:34:25   And then when you just want to see what's up,

00:34:29   you can go and there's like a homepage

00:34:31   where maybe they haven't reached the point

00:34:34   where they would have sent you a notification,

00:34:36   but you can see a list of linked articles

00:34:39   in order of how many people you follow

00:34:42   have recently tweeted the link.

00:34:44   And it's truly, for me at least,

00:34:46   the people I follow an interesting source of information,

00:34:49   a way to find interesting breaking news.

00:34:51   I said that they don't use the WebKit browser.

00:34:54   Turns out they do, there's an option that you can turn on

00:35:01   so that it does support the new SF Safari view controller,

00:35:05   which is the in-app browser that looks like Safari

00:35:09   and supports content blockers and stuff like that.

00:35:14   You have to go to settings, view stories with Safari,

00:35:19   and in most cases they'll use Safari View Controller,

00:35:21   but even then they don't use it all the time

00:35:23   because they also have a view

00:35:25   that includes a little dingus at the bottom

00:35:27   that shows you which Twitter people you follow

00:35:31   are the people who linked this that you can,

00:35:34   so you can see who are the people who linked this

00:35:37   so that it's in your list,

00:35:38   and you can tap on them to see what their commentary was

00:35:41   on the link too.

00:35:42   And when they show that view,

00:35:43   they still use the old web view that's kind of janky

00:35:46   and shows a lot of ads.

00:35:47   But anyway, that's my follow-up on this.

00:35:51   There's a reason I don't do follow-up most weeks.

00:35:53   I just let the--

00:35:54   - And yet we've got three of them today.

00:35:56   - Let the errors fall.

00:35:57   This next one I think is gonna be very interesting to you.

00:35:59   This seems like something that knowing you,

00:36:00   you're gonna have strong opinions on.

00:36:02   This one I might have let fly,

00:36:03   except I knew that with you on the show,

00:36:05   we could have a good conversation about it.

00:36:06   And this was that Molson and I were talking about

00:36:09   me complaining about a trip to the bank to deposit a check.

00:36:13   And I knew this, I knew this,

00:36:15   But it kind of slipped my mind during the show

00:36:18   because I can't help it.

00:36:19   I try not to be too American-centric,

00:36:22   especially these days.

00:36:23   But I knew this and it kind of slipped my mind,

00:36:28   which is that, and then maybe this is news

00:36:30   to some of you who are Americans,

00:36:32   that the rest of the world,

00:36:33   the rest of Western civilization moved away from checks

00:36:37   as a means of conducting banking about 20 years ago.

00:36:43   And so the idea that we still conduct business by checks,

00:36:47   there were numerous listeners of the show

00:36:49   who simply expressed laughter.

00:36:53   It's like finding out that in America

00:36:56   they still don't have indoor plumbing.

00:36:58   (laughing)

00:37:01   And that literally what I want to do,

00:37:03   what I would like to be able to do,

00:37:05   is write myself a check and then take a picture of it

00:37:09   and submit it through an app

00:37:11   so I don't have to go to the bank.

00:37:12   effectively do it electronically, but even in that scenario, I still have to rip out a check,

00:37:19   a piece of paper, and write it and sign it and then authorize it on the back just to do it. So...

00:37:27   John "Slick" Baum: Well, that's what I was going to say is I've got -- I'd have to think about how

00:37:32   many checks I get in a year. It's not a lot, but I can do bill pay or, you know, an online deposit

00:37:37   of them by taking a picture with my phone. But the fact that I have to get this artifact in the

00:37:43   first place and then I digitize it with my, you know, $1,000 pocket computer, send it to the bank.

00:37:51   I mean, that's -- we're still dependent on this ridiculous piece of paper that has almost no

00:38:00   security features. So, what's the follow-up on this, though? Just, yeah, we're backwards and

00:38:06   - Yeah, and it's embarrassing, it truly is.

00:38:09   But don't you also think, just looking back on it,

00:38:13   the idea of checks are absurd.

00:38:15   I mean, at a certain point, the concept of money,

00:38:18   it's like, we can--

00:38:19   - You don't wanna think about it too much.

00:38:20   - You don't wanna think about it too much.

00:38:21   It's a collective shared illusion.

00:38:24   But checks in particular just seem,

00:38:29   it just seems crazy that when I was a kid,

00:38:34   half the time I'd go to the supermarket with my mom.

00:38:38   You know, somebody in front of us

00:38:41   was paying for the groceries with a check

00:38:43   and it was just, they would just let the person

00:38:45   walk out of the store with $150 worth of groceries with,

00:38:49   here, I put my name on this piece of paper, I'm good.

00:38:52   Yep, you're good.

00:38:53   - But John, they usually made them write

00:38:55   a phone number on there too.

00:38:57   Not necessarily their phone number, but a phone number.

00:39:00   - We're gonna call this number that you wrote on here

00:39:04   if there's any problems with this check.

00:39:06   It was kind of crazy.

00:39:11   I mean, and it's just crazy now.

00:39:13   Like imagine if like one of these new payment systems

00:39:15   came out, like Apple Pay came out,

00:39:17   and Eddy Cue is up there on stage.

00:39:20   He's like, we've got, this is a great new system.

00:39:25   You just type in how much you want in your iPhone,

00:39:30   and then you go down to the share menu and you hit print.

00:39:33   (laughing)

00:39:35   Go over to your printer and now you've got

00:39:38   an Apple Pay certificate and you can take that to any store

00:39:42   and they're gonna take it and they're gonna file it away

00:39:45   in a register and they're gonna take it

00:39:47   to their nearest Apple store at their nearest convenience

00:39:50   and we'll turn it into cash.

00:39:51   The idea that there's paper involved in this

00:39:57   is just nonsensical, it's crazy.

00:39:59   So anyway, we understand--

00:40:01   What was the check you were depositing?

00:40:03   - It was just a payment, a partner payment

00:40:05   from my daring firewall company

00:40:07   to me and Amy's personal account.

00:40:11   - So it was even your own money.

00:40:13   You're transferring money between your own accounts

00:40:15   and you still had to do it with a check.

00:40:17   - Well, and bottom line of this,

00:40:18   and there were a couple other people who commented on this.

00:40:20   One of them said, and the problem,

00:40:22   we can't do the electronic thing

00:40:23   because our personal checking has like a $500 limit

00:40:26   on the checks that we can scan.

00:40:29   So like relatives--

00:40:30   - Yeah, you don't wanna get too much money

00:40:31   your own account.

00:40:32   That's a good...

00:40:33   Right.

00:40:34   Like a grandparent sends Jonas a check for his birthday or whatever.

00:40:38   We can scan that and it goes right into our account because we're not going to give the

00:40:42   money to him.

00:40:43   No, of course not.

00:40:46   But any kind of serious...

00:40:48   Anything that would count as a paycheck is over the limit.

00:40:51   But a couple of people have said that they had the same problem, but you just go to your

00:40:54   bank and say, "Hey, I want a higher limit on this," that they have a lot of discretion.

00:40:58   I never tried that.

00:40:59   It never occurs to me to try stuff like that.

00:41:01   Like a bank tells me, I don't know, I don't think I'm, you know me, Paul, I'm not really

00:41:05   like a strict toe-of-the-line rules follower, but I just assume that when—

00:41:11   But a bank's rule just seems like that's it, right?

00:41:14   That doesn't seem negotiable.

00:41:15   When a bank tells me you can deposit up to $500, I just think, well, that's a stupid

00:41:20   rule.

00:41:21   It doesn't even occur to me that you can't do it.

00:41:25   Do you think we should be trying to negotiate like better interest rates?

00:41:28   - Yeah.

00:41:30   - Is that an option too?

00:41:31   - Hey, can I do the same thing with my mortgage?

00:41:34   Is that possible?

00:41:35   Can I just go and say--

00:41:36   - I'm just not gonna pay one month.

00:41:38   So what are you gonna do about it?

00:41:40   Can we make this work?

00:41:41   - Well, what do you say I only pay in a month

00:41:43   that I have 31 days?

00:41:44   'Cause that seems like the full value of a month.

00:41:46   I'll still pay the same number.

00:41:50   - Now I got a task for after the show.

00:41:52   This is good, I'm gonna call my bank, see what happens.

00:41:54   - Well, that's it for follow up.

00:41:57   Anyway, checks are ridiculous.

00:41:58   We know it and we don't know what to do about it.

00:42:01   I'm sure Trump will get on it.

00:42:03   - We'll fix that right after we fix our healthcare system

00:42:05   and our immigration system.

00:42:07   - And our elections being hijacked by Russian propaganda.

00:42:11   - But it's fourth on the list, right after those three.

00:42:14   - We'll get right on the check.

00:42:16   Well, I don't know, why don't I,

00:42:22   I'll take another break here.

00:42:24   Seems like as good a time as ever.

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00:44:24   - Yeah, a real lumpy mattress in the guest bed.

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00:45:24   All right, HomePod is coming out on Friday,

00:45:28   two days from now, probably a day after the show airs.

00:45:31   I've had one for a little over a week now,

00:45:32   a review unit from Apple after a trip to California

00:45:37   where I also got a tour of Apple's quote unquote audio lab,

00:45:42   which I didn't really talk about in my review too much.

00:45:43   A couple other people did.

00:45:44   I've got some links in here.

00:45:46   I thought Dalrymple's review had a good look at the,

00:45:51   good summary of the behind the scenes.

00:45:54   That's what I was hoping.

00:45:55   I was hoping that somebody else who was on this tour

00:45:57   would have written that aspect of it up

00:46:00   'cause it was pretty interesting.

00:46:02   I don't know, what are you curious about?

00:46:07   - Wow, I think I'm most curious to see how it does.

00:46:13   I mean, we've seen, like you said, these reviews are out now

00:46:15   there's probably a good half dozen to dozen of them. And certainly none of them are glowing

00:46:22   reviews that say you have to get this device. And I think, you know, that's a pretty high bar,

00:46:27   obviously. But you know, that's something that I guess I maybe I've got rose-colored glasses on,

00:46:32   but like when the iPhone came out, were there, do you remember what the reviews were like for

00:46:38   the first iPhone? Well, they were severely limited. There were only four people who got it. It was

00:46:43   Pogue, Ed Begg, Mossberg, and Steven Levy,

00:46:48   who was at the time at Newsweek.

00:46:51   I don't think they quite knew what to make of it.

00:46:54   I do remember that the four of them got together

00:46:57   and on the 10th year anniversary,

00:46:59   and I did reread them,

00:47:00   and none of the reviews had any clunkers in them.

00:47:04   And I think Apple was wise,

00:47:08   and they knew they were getting four smart people

00:47:11   to review it.

00:47:12   So nobody had the knee-jerk reaction

00:47:15   of every other phone on the market

00:47:18   has a hardware green button for making calls

00:47:21   and a red one for hanging up and wine,

00:47:24   something stupid like that.

00:47:25   Wine World doesn't just have this.

00:47:28   - The classic iPod slash dot review of,

00:47:32   I can't even remember exactly what it was,

00:47:33   but like less space than a Nomad, something.

00:47:37   - Yeah, 300 hours.

00:47:39   - It was like 10 words that they all turned out to be

00:47:42   just foolish sounding after the fact.

00:47:44   - Right, and nobody wants to touch on GLAAD.

00:47:48   The reviews were good.

00:47:49   I think the reviews saw the potential.

00:47:51   All four of them saw the potential and were pretty good,

00:47:53   but none of them were like, "You should run out and buy it."

00:47:55   Because I feel like the $699 or $599 starting price

00:48:00   of the four gig model was still exceedingly high

00:48:06   by cell phone standards, because it wasn't on any kind

00:48:08   contract. And I know a lot of people today are no longer buying their phones on contract,

00:48:14   but that's after 11 years of weaning us towards having 500 to $1,000 cell phones. Whereas

00:48:27   10 years ago, everybody was used to buying quote unquote $29 cell phones that were $29

00:48:34   contract from Nokia and your carrier or whoever. But everybody had this mental

00:48:40   model that your cell phone cost you know like $29 or maybe if you got an expensive

00:48:45   one like a razor or something like a few hundred dollars but the idea of a $700

00:48:51   cell phone was so seemed so outlandish that I think they were hesitant to tell

00:48:56   people you got to go out and get it just because it was too much and I think it

00:49:00   too hard to foresee at the time how people would see value in that in terms of it really

00:49:05   replacing your laptop for many purposes.

00:49:10   Matt

00:49:26   It certainly sounds like it sounds great, but in terms of just comparing to what's already on the market, it certainly isn't blowing anything away.

00:49:36   So, I'm curious, I've got one coming on Friday, you know, I need it for work. I don't know that I'd get it for myself.

00:49:42   But I'm curious how it plays out over the next, say, three to nine months, more than just any individual thing on it.

00:49:50   know, is there anything specific that you—I mean, you just wrote a review of it, obviously—but is

00:49:54   there anything specific that jumped out to you that was interesting? Or I guess one thing that

00:50:00   you mentioned was being able to give commands to it without sort of yelling over the music,

00:50:06   if you're playing music. So that's one that was interesting to me. I'm interested to experiment

00:50:10   with that, even if I don't know that it's something that's super useful.

00:50:12   Ted

00:50:12   Pete: It is super useful, I think, if you ever plan to play music at an even reasonably loud

00:50:18   volume. And it really is uncanny. I think that's the word I used in the review. It works uncannily

00:50:25   well because you don't expect it, I didn't expect it to be able to work better than human ears.

00:50:32   So, imagine if you and I are in the same room where a home pod is blaring music relatively

00:50:38   loudly and you're standing eight feet away from me, there's a certain volume that I'm

00:50:45   going to, if I want to say to you, "Hey, do you want another beverage?" I'm going

00:50:50   to say it at a certain volume that I think you'll probably still hear me. And I, you

00:50:56   know, and I think I'm, I think, you know, anybody who's lived life for a while is

00:51:00   pretty good at getting that volume about right, you know, where you don't sound like you're

00:51:05   screaming too loud, but you're speaking louder than you would without the music on.

00:51:08   whereas with the HomePod, you can say, "Hey, dingus," whatever, to it at a volume that

00:51:15   if there was another person in the room, you would never think that they would hear it.

00:51:20   Or they might hear that you're saying something, but they would never understand it.

00:51:24   Right.

00:51:25   So that's definitely interesting, and it sounds like, from what you said and from your experiments

00:51:29   with it, that it's fairly impressive, and it's not something that I saw, at least, that

00:51:34   Apple had touched on or that Apple had—is that something that they at least mentioned

00:51:37   to you or is that something that you discovered?

00:51:39   No, they mentioned it to us, well, to me at least, to my group, at least while we were

00:51:42   in California.

00:51:43   Okay.

00:51:44   Yeah, and it is at an engineering level, and I think it is inextricably tied both to the

00:51:54   hardware of the microphones and the software running.

00:52:00   It's a version of iOS.

00:52:01   It's like a lot of these other gadgets Apple's come out with, where it's really running a

00:52:05   variant of iOS.

00:52:06   The version number right now is even 11.2.5,

00:52:09   the same version number as the version on your phone.

00:52:12   - It's involved with that, right.

00:52:14   - It's a combination of the mics being really good,

00:52:18   the mics being oriented in a certain way,

00:52:20   and the mics knowing exactly how the seven tweeters

00:52:25   and the woofer are oriented.

00:52:29   And it's one of those funny things

00:52:35   Apple wanted to, I'm not surprised that they're not like making it a major advertising component,

00:52:43   but they definitely wanted us to know about it.

00:52:46   I definitely noticed it in the demos that Apple performed for me that they, you know,

00:52:54   she clearly, the woman who was doing the demos clearly wasn't speaking, I thought, loud enough,

00:52:59   but it was hearing her almost perfectly.

00:53:01   I mean, there were a whole bunch of commands and there was like one or two she had to repeat.

00:53:05   But it was -- and I know -- and the other thing combining that is that firsthand as a year-long

00:53:12   owner of an Amazon Alexa, with the Alexa, it's not that you have to scream, but you have to talk at

00:53:18   least as loud as you'd have to talk to a human being over the same volume of music.

00:53:22   Soterios Johnson So, you've got -- I think you mentioned you've got an Echo in the kitchen.

00:53:27   Do you have -- how many do you have throughout the house, like two or three?

00:53:29   Dave: Yeah, we've got one in Jonas' room and another, a dot in the living room. But

00:53:36   the living room and the kitchen are on the same floor, and it's maddening because I'll

00:53:40   be in the kitchen—the same thing happens to Amy is we'll be in the kitchen and we'll

00:53:44   say the Alexa name—hopefully I said that in a way that won't trigger people's things—and

00:53:53   and whatever, at a relatively sane volume.

00:53:57   And it's like, for whatever reason,

00:53:59   the one in the living room at the other end of the floor

00:54:04   kicks in.

00:54:04   And it's like, what?

00:54:05   It's like crazy.

00:54:06   I don't understand how that's possible.

00:54:09   And does the kitchen one not kick in,

00:54:11   or do they both kick in?

00:54:12   No, it's only the other one.

00:54:14   I don't know how that is.

00:54:15   It's very strange.

00:54:16   And it doesn't happen all the time.

00:54:17   It certainly doesn't happen most of the time,

00:54:18   or I would have thrown the things out the window.

00:54:20   it happens enough that it's crazy. And it's like, and one way, one way it manifests itself is,

00:54:28   like, Amy certainly sends the most timers, because in the kitchen, because she's, she cooks more

00:54:32   things that need to be timed. And I think what happens every once in a while, she'll tell it

00:54:37   to set a timer and thinks it didn't hear. And then she'll tell it to set the timer again, and it

00:54:44   hears her and it goes off. But meanwhile, the dot out in the other room, I don't know, 30,

00:54:50   40 feet away heard it too, and nobody's in there. And it set a timer. And then like, you know,

00:54:56   15 minutes later, the dot is making the little alarm sound. And it's like, who the hell did that?

00:55:01   Anyway.

00:55:03   >> Well, so I'm interested to hear, you know, like you said, you've had these Echo devices for

00:55:10   about a year and you've had, did they, they just gave you one HomePod to test with?

00:55:13   - That is correct because it's right now.

00:55:16   And the HomePod we got for testing

00:55:18   is running the production software

00:55:20   that will be on the ones that come in the mail on--

00:55:23   - In two days. - On two days.

00:55:25   Or that you can buy in a store in two days.

00:55:27   So because ours are running,

00:55:29   which is the way I would prefer it.

00:55:30   I would not, I would be,

00:55:33   I would have been very uncomfortable.

00:55:34   I don't know what I would have done in fact, because I--

00:55:37   - Right, throwing in caveats of,

00:55:38   you know, I'm testing something that's not yet available.

00:55:40   - Right, I would have, if I was running one

00:55:43   with a pre-release version of 11.3

00:55:47   with the AirPlay 2 stuff on it,

00:55:50   I would have mentioned it up front

00:55:52   and I would have had to mention it every step of the way.

00:55:54   I don't know, it would have made me very,

00:55:57   I don't know, so I'm glad.

00:55:58   And I think that the same reason that I'm glad

00:56:00   is the reason that they gave us the production firmware,

00:56:04   whatever you wanna call it.

00:56:06   So anyway, they only gave us one

00:56:07   because there's really no point to having two yet.

00:56:10   I mean, I guess you could set it up

00:56:11   as two independent devices,

00:56:12   it's not really going to help you review anything.

00:56:14   >> Sure. But so, in your actual use case in your house, if you've got three different Echo devices,

00:56:22   I guess that's sort of the question is, do you think and does Apple think that people are going

00:56:29   to use this in the same way that people use an Echo currently or use a Google Home currently?

00:56:34   >> No.

00:56:35   >> Or -- exactly. And because they've been so focused on the music aspect of it,

00:56:39   but it really seems like, you know,

00:56:40   maybe you only get one of these for the house

00:56:42   and you put it wherever you have your biggest TV

00:56:45   or your stereo system if you still have one of those.

00:56:47   And it sort of joins in that way,

00:56:50   as opposed to Amazon's idea that, you know,

00:56:52   maybe you have one of these

00:56:53   in every single room of the house.

00:56:54   - Right.

00:56:55   Although I think you could have them in multiple rooms.

00:56:58   I think it, you know,

00:57:01   I think it varies greatly by the layout of your home.

00:57:04   Like, do you have this sort of floor plan

00:57:07   we're putting one in the dining room and the kitchen

00:57:10   and having them sync together to play the same song

00:57:13   at the same time makes sense.

00:57:14   We kind of do.

00:57:19   That might make sense for us to have two that way

00:57:22   because from our dining room,

00:57:25   you can walk right through to the kitchen,

00:57:26   but if the HomePod was in the kitchen,

00:57:29   you wouldn't really consider it a source for music

00:57:32   in the dining room and vice versa.

00:57:34   - Outside of the kitchen, right?

00:57:35   - Right.

00:57:35   So, I think it comes down to the fact that it really is music first. It really is a thing

00:57:42   that's meant to be playing music. And I think the other thing I think that you mentioned

00:57:47   that the one place where I feel like the HomePod really doesn't fit is in the room with your

00:57:52   TV, or at least not unless you want to use it completely separately from your TV.

00:57:59   Right. Sorry, that is what I meant. Yeah. That's the same way that you might have a

00:58:04   stereo there that is, at least in my mom's house, she has a TV here and a stereo there,

00:58:08   and they're completely divorced from one another or completely unrelated to one another, but it's

00:58:12   where you do your listening or your viewing. But right, yeah, that was something interesting that

00:58:18   you wrote about was that it's not designed to hook up to your TV, and this is a super high-quality

00:58:23   speaker that doesn't have an input and can't really take audio from your TV short of having

00:58:28   your Apple TV send to it. Which is, I don't know, you had talked about not having a line input

00:58:35   because Apple, you know, is thinking that everything's going to be wireless. And that's,

00:58:39   I get that, but it's a pretty cheap part to add to this. And when everything else on this is fairly

00:58:46   high end and you, you know, you could say, well, I just want to be able to take my device somewhere

00:58:51   and plug in audio to it without having to wirelessly send to it. I don't know, that's one

00:58:57   that it wouldn't make me not purchase it if I were interested to purchase it, but it seems like

00:59:02   something that doesn't necessarily make sense to cut the same way that they made some changes on

00:59:08   like the phone where, you know, a headphone jack supposedly at least had something to do with

00:59:12   waterproofing. Obviously, you're not waterproofing the HomePod, so there's not an obvious reason to

00:59:18   cut this besides the idea that, no, we just want everyone to focus on wireless audio to this thing.

00:59:22   Well, I think there's also a simplicity angle though because if you have a line in and then you're pumping your TV to it

00:59:29   And you're watching a movie what happens when you say hey dingus play whatever to it

00:59:35   Does it start playing the music you just asked it to play or does it keep playing the TV?

00:59:40   Input on line in and what happens when you tap the top of it?

00:59:43   Which typically does play pause does it stop and how would top how would tapping the stop button on?

00:59:50   on a speaker getting a dumb line-in signal go back to pause the TV. It couldn't.

00:59:56   So…

00:59:57   No, that's certainly a good point. Yeah, absolutely.

01:00:00   You know, I mentioned it in my review. It does seem wasteful. If you want to put it in a room

01:00:04   where you already have a TV and some kind of speaker system, it seems wasteful to add another

01:00:09   wholly independent speaker system. It is…

01:00:11   Right.

01:00:12   You know, what is that word? I was going to say duplicitous, but duplicitous means

01:00:15   deceitful.

01:00:17   Oh, superfluous.

01:00:19   Superfluous, right. It does seem superfluous. But I get it. I think it's for a simplicity where

01:00:27   it's always just playing either what you tell it to or acting as an AirPlay speaker and acting as

01:00:33   an AirPlay speaker never. I don't know though, because you can set Apple TV to talk to it as

01:00:39   an AirPlay speaker. I don't know. I don't feel like I feel much stronger. I feel like getting

01:00:48   getting rid of the headphone jack on the phones

01:00:50   is the right way, I feel like it was the right decision

01:00:53   last year, I really do.

01:00:55   On the line in, I'm a little bit more ambivalent.

01:00:58   I'm okay with this product not having it,

01:01:01   but if it did have it, I wouldn't think that they were

01:01:05   sticking with an older technology for no good reason,

01:01:07   like I would've if they didn't get rid of the headphone jack

01:01:10   I'm more ambivalent about it.

01:01:18   What else about it?

01:01:19   I do think if there's one thing, excuse me, Paul.

01:01:23   There's one thing I saw in a couple of reviews,

01:01:25   I think Matthew Panzarino's in particular,

01:01:27   which was really interesting to me because he knows,

01:01:30   and I knew this like a career ago,

01:01:33   he was actually working as a salesman

01:01:35   in a high-end stereo shop.

01:01:38   So he really knows a lot more about

01:01:41   why one speaker sounds better than another

01:01:47   or where one speaker sounds better and another one doesn't

01:01:50   and why and stuff like that than I do.

01:01:52   I just kinda listen to one, listen to the other,

01:01:53   and then well, I can tell I like that one better.

01:01:56   I just, I don't know. - Right.

01:01:57   - But he mentioned something,

01:02:01   and I think it's absolutely true, is that,

01:02:04   and it's just the layout of our current house

01:02:07   just and where I could try it.

01:02:09   I don't really have a smaller and smaller room.

01:02:15   And in a small room, and I heard a couple of demos,

01:02:19   'cause when Apple demoed these things for us,

01:02:22   it was in an actual house.

01:02:25   I don't know if they rented it or whatever,

01:02:27   but it was in a real house of real dimensions

01:02:31   and had real furnishings and stuff.

01:02:33   And I think very typical.

01:02:35   I don't think it was, there was nothing weird

01:02:39   or set up about it, including some room.

01:02:44   camera's on every inch of it and you're in all sorts of videos now.

01:02:47   But they had like a downstairs with like a very modern floor plan for a living room, living floor,

01:02:56   where the kitchen flows right into the living room without a wall, just with like a kitchen

01:03:02   island between them, which is, you know, I've been I know so many people who have a floor plan like

01:03:07   that, which is a bigger, bigger, much bigger space, more risk for more ways that you could

01:03:13   you get echoes.

01:03:14   And then a smaller room upstairs,

01:03:15   which would be just a very, very typical,

01:03:18   or they even had a bedroom.

01:03:19   There was even a very typical bedroom,

01:03:21   and then maybe like a very typical home office type room.

01:03:24   And in those smaller rooms,

01:03:27   it was really more startling how good it sounded.

01:03:31   And in my personal testing at home, it sounded good.

01:03:35   It sounded better than any other thing

01:03:36   I've tried in these rooms,

01:03:38   but I feel like our place is a little bit,

01:03:41   has more space, bigger rooms and more echoey rooms.

01:03:44   So that's one thing too, is there's a lot of,

01:03:49   the smaller your room, I think the better

01:03:51   this thing is gonna sound, and it really

01:03:53   almost sounds phenomenal, and the effect

01:03:56   of not quite coming from a single point

01:03:59   is way more pronounced in a smaller room.

01:04:02   That's the other thing that I remember from the demos.

01:04:05   And it's not like it fools you into thinking

01:04:08   that there's two speakers on two sides of the room.

01:04:10   you could close your eyes and point to where the HomePod is,

01:04:13   right?

01:04:14   Or like if you're in a small room and there's one HomePod

01:04:19   and somebody spins you around like pin the tail

01:04:21   on the donkey and they're like, where's the HomePod?

01:04:23   You'll get very close to it when you point it,

01:04:25   but it doesn't sound like it's coming

01:04:27   from a tiny little seven inch point.

01:04:30   It really does have a dimensionality, a 3D-ness to it

01:04:33   that seems like something, you know,

01:04:36   a next level up in small speaker design.

01:04:40   So do you think that — all these reviews have talked about, you know, this audio quality, and

01:04:45   Apple touted this, and it sounds like that is true, that this has phenomenal audio quality and better

01:04:51   than, you know, the other devices that are out there, certainly better than the cheaper devices

01:04:55   that are out there, and sounds like better than even the devices that are comparably priced from,

01:05:01   you know, the Google Home Max and Sonos. Is that enough to make this thing sell, though?

01:05:07   I don't know. I've I thought before I started my review, just knowing what I knew, you know,

01:05:12   what Apple had said coming up to it and up to the point where I met with their, you know, engineers

01:05:18   and the next day got a briefing and headed home with my review unit before it and after it, I

01:05:25   really I have I don't know what I would which way I would bet on how successful this product would

01:05:29   be. My guess is that the best case scenario is a sort of slowly building hit, sort of like Apple

01:05:39   Watch, you know, where, although without that initial, like, Apple Watch debuted with like a,

01:05:45   you could, you know, all of a sudden it was backordered six weeks. Right, everybody wanted

01:05:49   that up front. But then once that subsided, it was sort of like you didn't really see a lot of

01:05:54   of people with Apple Watch the first year, but then it seemed like through word of mouth.

01:05:59   It's the sort of thing that I feel like you need word of mouth for, and that people might

01:06:03   come to your house and if you have a HomePod, they might be really impressed by it and think,

01:06:08   "Wow, that really does sound good. I might get one of those." But I could see it all

01:06:14   the way to being the iPod 2.0, the iPod Hi-Fi 2.0, that Apple built this thing that they

01:06:23   seemingly spend a lot of engineering time on and seemingly are very proud of and really

01:06:27   think people are going to like and people just don't want to spend 300 plus dollars

01:06:33   on something that just plays music from Apple.

01:06:36   And was that I'm trying to remember was that $4.99 the iPod Hi-Fi?

01:06:39   I don't remember how much it was.

01:06:41   We could think that's I, I don't want to, we should look it up.

01:06:46   But it was it was definitely I think, even more expensive than this and obviously did

01:06:49   a lot less.

01:06:50   Right.

01:06:51   It was literally just a speaker that took audio from an iPod.

01:06:54   - Nope, it was three.

01:06:55   - It didn't take commands or anything like that.

01:06:57   - It was 349.

01:06:58   - Oh, was it exactly the same price?

01:07:00   I guess I feel like I remember people saying that

01:07:02   now that I think about it.

01:07:04   - That's even funnier.

01:07:06   My God, is it bigger.

01:07:07   It's ridiculous how much bigger the iPod I was.

01:07:10   - Oh, it was enormous, yeah.

01:07:12   And especially compared to the device

01:07:14   that you were putting on it.

01:07:16   - I never bought one of those.

01:07:18   I had no desire to buy one.

01:07:21   But boy, I kind of wish I had one laying around

01:07:23   'cause that would be a fun side-by-side review.

01:07:25   - Oh, comparison test, yeah, absolutely.

01:07:28   - See how much better it sounds.

01:07:29   I thought Pansarino, I think it was Pansarino,

01:07:33   had another observation that I thought was spot on

01:07:35   where he described the iPod Hi-Fi's sound as being,

01:07:39   I think he said accurate.

01:07:41   - Wait, the iPod Hi-Fi or the HomePod?

01:07:45   - Not the iPod Hi-Pod. (laughs)

01:07:46   You've got me thrown off, the HomePod.

01:07:49   And everybody agreed, if you saw it,

01:07:51   if you read it, I'll put a link to a couple

01:07:54   of these reviews in there, but there was a strong consensus

01:07:56   among everybody that the Google Home Max,

01:07:59   which is their $399 dingus, which is the,

01:08:03   you know, $50 more than the HomePod,

01:08:06   so clearly, you know, fair comparison,

01:08:09   is way too base heavy, you know,

01:08:12   which some people like, but it's like one of those things

01:08:15   that's like the TVs in the store being oversaturated

01:08:20   because you're in there looking at 17 different TVs

01:08:24   and the ones with the saturated colors look like,

01:08:27   wow, that one has, that other one looks bland.

01:08:30   This one has pop, I want the one with pop.

01:08:32   But you would never, it's like inaccurate.

01:08:35   You'd never really wanna tune your TV that way.

01:08:37   It's, you know.

01:08:38   And I think it's also similar to the way

01:08:43   that Apple has calibrated its screens forever,

01:08:48   but especially like in the iPhone era,

01:08:51   where Apple, one of the reasons that they were

01:08:53   one of the last, if not the last major phone company

01:08:57   to put out a phone with an OLED display

01:09:00   was that in the early days of OLED,

01:09:02   while there are some advantages to battery life

01:09:04   and certainly all along batteries

01:09:06   or advantages to the richer blacks,

01:09:08   color accuracy was really, really hard

01:09:12   and really has only come in the last few years.

01:09:14   And even though once it came on other phones,

01:09:16   it still couldn't come in the quantities Apple needed.

01:09:19   Like Apple was never gonna ship an OLED phone

01:09:22   until they could ship it in the quantities they needed

01:09:25   and with the color accuracy that they wanted.

01:09:28   And one thing, I'm picky about color.

01:09:31   I really, I've always been very picky about color.

01:09:34   And the one thing I've noticed with the iPhone 10

01:09:36   now that I've had it for months,

01:09:37   is even when I see it side by side with anybody else

01:09:40   who has like an iPhone 8 or a 7 or any other recent iPhone,

01:09:43   is the one thing I don't notice

01:09:44   is I don't notice any difference in color.

01:09:46   I really don't.

01:09:47   And I feel like that is exactly what they've done with sound

01:09:51   on the HomePod,

01:09:52   where they're being very, very fair to the original.

01:09:55   They're not pumping up the bass.

01:09:56   They're not doing other,

01:09:58   like the audio equivalent of sugar sweetening the audio.

01:10:02   - Right, tweaking it to make it sound supposedly better,

01:10:05   but bastardizing it a little bit.

01:10:06   - Right.

01:10:08   I would say that that's very fair.

01:10:10   I think the other thing that I got out of this,

01:10:15   I feel like there's three factors in the decision

01:10:18   of does somebody want a HomePod.

01:10:20   One is do you care enough about,

01:10:22   do you have a place in your life where a $350 speaker

01:10:26   that sounds really good makes sense?

01:10:29   And for some people that might be nowhere.

01:10:33   You might not have a room in your house or an office

01:10:36   where you can do that.

01:10:37   if you work in a cubicle or something like that.

01:10:39   I don't think your cubicle mates are gonna appreciate it

01:10:42   if you set up a home pot.

01:10:44   - But it's gonna sound great.

01:10:47   - Right, and there might be people out there

01:10:49   who like hear the $89 Amazon Alexa play music

01:10:54   and say that's good enough for me.

01:10:57   And why in the world would I spend four times more

01:10:59   on this other thing?

01:11:01   So that's one factor.

01:11:02   Do you have a spot in your life

01:11:03   where you're willing to spend $3.50 for audio

01:11:06   that you would appreciate.

01:11:08   Two is the issue of where do you,

01:11:13   where does your music come from?

01:11:15   You know, if your music, if you're heavily into Spotify,

01:11:18   and Spotify keeps coming up over and over and over again

01:11:20   in all these reviews,

01:11:21   because some of these other products support Spotify

01:11:25   as a first class like source of talking to the device

01:11:29   to play music from Spotify, and HomePod doesn't.

01:11:36   there's no way you want HomePod, in my opinion.

01:11:38   If you're heavily into Spotify and you don't wanna leave,

01:11:40   then I really can't see why you'd want to switch to HomePod,

01:11:45   even if the sound is a little better.

01:11:47   - Right.

01:11:48   - And conversely, if you are on the opposite,

01:11:50   if you're heavily into the Apple Music ecosystem,

01:11:53   lowercase m, 'cause I'll include in that

01:11:57   the Apple Music, capital M, subscription service,

01:12:02   iTunes Music Store, any purchases that you've ever made,

01:12:06   or see any music that you own in your personal library,

01:12:11   if you have iTunes Match or Apple Music,

01:12:14   they'll sync to the cloud,

01:12:16   and then you can talk to your HomePod

01:12:19   and have it play those.

01:12:20   And in fact, that's most of the music testing

01:12:22   I did this week, 'cause I was so interested in that,

01:12:24   is I had it play a bunch of Rolling Stones albums I have

01:12:28   that are not and have never been available

01:12:30   from the iTunes Store.

01:12:31   And it worked great

01:12:33   So if you're into the Apple system

01:12:36   Yeah, and you could just say and it's funny it got smarter - I have an album

01:12:42   I think it's a 1973 live recording called the Brussels affair recorded in Brussels

01:12:48   One of my all-time favorite Rolling Stones albums and the first time I asked the home pod to play the Rolling Stones Brussels affair

01:12:56   I think that's what I asked for play the Rolling Stones Brussels affair

01:13:00   HomePod told me that it couldn't find any music

01:13:02   Brussels affair and I thought damn that's this sinking I thought the damn sinking feature wasn't working

01:13:10   So I thought about it and I looked in my library and the actual file name I have on the album is Brussels affair

01:13:18   parentheses

01:13:19   live

01:13:21   1973 so I said I asked the HomePod to play Brussels play Brussels affair live

01:13:28   1973 and it said okay. Here's the Rolling Stones Brussels affair live

01:13:32   1973 and it just started playing

01:13:35   That's a little bit of a pain in ass, but that's okay. But then like the next day I said

01:13:39   Hey play the Brussels affair and it said okay. Here's the Rolling Stones Brussels affair and then it it worked now

01:13:47   I don't know if it learned I don't know if it just needed to sink

01:13:50   You know if I asked it the first time before it was done sinking

01:13:54   I don't know what happened.

01:13:55   You know, and that's one of the things

01:13:57   about these talking dinguses,

01:13:59   is you never know why it works one day

01:14:01   and doesn't work the other day.

01:14:03   - Well, so can I pick this bone that I have with you

01:14:08   about the HomePod? - Yeah, absolutely.

01:14:09   Well, before we do that, let's save that.

01:14:10   Let's save that.

01:14:11   And I did wanna mention,

01:14:13   I wanted to mention one review in particular

01:14:15   that I thought was kinda crappy,

01:14:16   was Brian Chen's review for the New York Times.

01:14:19   Because I feel like all the other reviews,

01:14:22   I largely agree, even if I didn't agree completely,

01:14:24   I thought they were all pretty accurate.

01:14:26   And I thought Chen's review for the New York Times

01:14:28   was way out of line because it was sort of like

01:14:31   it started with him talking about using it

01:14:33   to listen to music.

01:14:34   And he said, "Hey, play some music."

01:14:37   And it played music he didn't like,

01:14:38   and he tried to get it to stop.

01:14:40   And instead of stopping, it said it didn't recognize

01:14:43   whatever artist he's complaining about's album, Stop,

01:14:46   or something like that.

01:14:49   And then he kind of went right to like a 14 point comparison

01:14:53   of trying to get these, you know,

01:14:55   multiple of these devices to do assistant type things,

01:15:00   like create calendar events and stuff like that.

01:15:04   And creating calendar events

01:15:06   is something HomePod doesn't do.

01:15:07   Now, I'm not saying it's not fair to mention that,

01:15:09   but it's like his whole review was pretty much

01:15:12   comparing it.

01:15:15   To me, it would be the equivalent of

01:15:19   if he wrote a review of the new Amazon Echo

01:15:24   and quickly brushed over a bunch of something

01:15:28   that Alexa does that does particularly well,

01:15:32   and then just skipped right to a 14 point comparison

01:15:35   of how good did the speaker sound.

01:15:37   Right, and then that's the whole review of,

01:15:40   like it's totally fair to mention it,

01:15:44   and I think my review and various others,

01:15:48   I don't see how you couldn't mention that Siri does less

01:15:52   on HomePod than Alexa does on the Echo products

01:15:56   and that the Google Voice product, you know,

01:15:59   which I feel like needs a name.

01:16:00   Like, I don't know what to call it.

01:16:01   They call it like the device is Google Home Max,

01:16:04   but, and you address it as OK Google,

01:16:07   but it's so much--

01:16:09   - Right, it doesn't have a personified name behind it.

01:16:11   - Right, it's so much easier.

01:16:13   It's just a small aside from writing a long review

01:16:15   about this is it's so much easier

01:16:17   to write about the separation between HomePod and Siri

01:16:21   and say the Echo or the Alexa equipped Sonos One hardware

01:16:26   and Alexa as the abstract service.

01:16:33   I feel like I wish Google would fix that,

01:16:35   but I don't, I guess we could just call the service

01:16:39   okay Google, I don't know.

01:16:41   But anyway, that's an aside.

01:16:43   Anyway, I thought Chen's review was sort of

01:16:45   deliberately written to make it look bad.

01:16:48   I don't see how there was any way

01:16:50   that HomePod could come out of his review testing

01:16:52   looking good, 'cause he was trying things

01:16:54   that he knew in advance it couldn't do.

01:16:57   Like, what's the point? - Well, but I mean,

01:16:58   is that unfair if those are the things

01:17:01   that he wants it to do?

01:17:02   I mean, it's not like he went and said,

01:17:04   "This car doesn't have any storage space,

01:17:07   "so this is a two-seater convertible,

01:17:09   "so I'm gonna try and haul two tons of potting soil in it."

01:17:14   This is something that I think people who get a device

01:17:17   of this type are gonna try and do.

01:17:19   And this is, it's something where it certainly is lacking.

01:17:22   And Apple definitely wanted to frame this device

01:17:25   and I think successfully framed a bunch of the reviews as,

01:17:29   you know, there's some shortcomings

01:17:31   but the audio quality is great.

01:17:32   Or the audio quality is great despite other shortcomings.

01:17:36   And his review was definitely,

01:17:38   it didn't really talk too much at all

01:17:40   about the audio quality said, you know,

01:17:41   I listened to some music that didn't work super well.

01:17:43   and then Siri itself worked really poorly.

01:17:46   Do you think that's about an accurate summary

01:17:48   of what he wrote?

01:17:49   - Yeah, I think so.

01:17:52   I think that's a pretty accurate summary.

01:17:54   - So I don't know that,

01:17:56   I mean, you're absolutely right.

01:17:57   It was definitely one of the harshest reviews of the device,

01:18:01   but I don't think that he came at it in a super unfair way.

01:18:04   - I wouldn't say super unfair.

01:18:07   I would just say a,

01:18:09   I just don't think it was helpful.

01:18:13   You know what I mean?

01:18:14   I don't know.

01:18:15   I feel like, I almost feel like the angle he took

01:18:17   would be better as a follow-up

01:18:19   after reviewing it for what it is,

01:18:21   and then having a column of what type of device

01:18:24   do you want in your house that talks to you,

01:18:27   which is two different things.

01:18:28   - Well, I guess to me, it's a question of

01:18:32   how similar is this device to the Echo and the HomePod,

01:18:37   or sorry, and the Google Home, rather.

01:18:39   - Right.

01:18:40   - Are these really exactly the same type of device,

01:18:43   or are we getting down to the nitty gritty and saying,

01:18:45   you know what, there's actually virtual assistant devices

01:18:48   that happen to play music, and there's music players

01:18:51   that happen to have a virtual assistant,

01:18:52   and those are two separate things.

01:18:54   And I think to most, I would assume

01:18:57   to most potential customers, those are the same thing.

01:19:01   And it's just a question of which one of those

01:19:04   you care about a little bit more, but.

01:19:06   - That's a good way to put it.

01:19:07   I think that's exactly a good way to put it.

01:19:08   And that's how I tried to frame my review.

01:19:11   And in fact, I even caught myself at one point

01:19:13   where I, in my review, in an early draft of it,

01:19:16   I had that the HomePod and Alexa

01:19:19   clearly aren't even in the same category.

01:19:21   And I realized that the other day,

01:19:23   I had written that they are in the same category,

01:19:25   but from different perspectives.

01:19:27   And so I caught myself and realized,

01:19:31   the way I reworded it, and which I think is more accurate,

01:19:33   is that they're at opposite ends of the category.

01:19:36   Right, 'cause you really, like, right now,

01:19:38   we literally have the Alexa and the HomePod

01:19:41   in the kitchen at the same time,

01:19:43   both, you know, just mostly for testing reasons.

01:19:46   Feature wise, because Amy is actually annoyed

01:19:50   that the HomePod doesn't have the one thing she,

01:19:52   one of the things she really likes about the Echo,

01:19:54   which is being able to set multiple timers,

01:19:56   which really feels like it's something that Apple could

01:20:01   and should fix right away.

01:20:03   Like with Alexa, you can say,

01:20:06   set a potato timer for 20 minutes,

01:20:09   and then like a minute later say,

01:20:11   what else might you be cooking with potatoes?

01:20:16   - Remind me about the boiling water in 10 minutes

01:20:18   or whatever. - Right.

01:20:19   And then you can say, Alexa, how much time do I have left

01:20:23   on the potato timer?

01:20:24   And she will tell you.

01:20:27   And on the HomePod, if you set a timer, you can't name it,

01:20:31   it's only one timer.

01:20:32   And then if you set another timer, Siri will say,

01:20:36   you already have a timer with four minutes

01:20:38   and 33 seconds remaining, would you like to replace it?

01:20:42   Like that's your only option.

01:20:43   And that's, you know, pretty sure that iOS

01:20:46   is an A8 processor could handle running two timers

01:20:50   at the same time.

01:20:51   - Well, now I'm trying to think,

01:20:54   does the phone let you do multiple times?

01:20:55   - No, the phone doesn't either.

01:20:56   - I don't think it does, right?

01:20:58   - No.

01:20:59   So, you know, and you know, it's a feature she uses.

01:21:05   It's not a crazy feature.

01:21:06   I don't think that's esoteric.

01:21:08   And I feel like once you get, I hear this a lot.

01:21:11   It's clearly putting these things in a kitchen

01:21:13   is very popular and setting timers is hugely popular.

01:21:16   And it's just one of those tiny little,

01:21:20   once you get used to, just to go back to it,

01:21:25   once you get used to indoor plumbing,

01:21:26   there's no going back to outdoor plumbing.

01:21:28   People have been cooking for thousands of years

01:21:32   and they've used various ways of determining

01:21:35   how long to cook a thing.

01:21:36   But the idea of having to touch a device to set a timer

01:21:43   is, once you go to just doing it by voice,

01:21:46   it's so, it just seems barbaric.

01:21:49   Because a lot of times, if you're in the kitchen cooking,

01:21:52   your hands might be covered with stuff,

01:21:54   or you might not be near the device,

01:21:56   or various reasons.

01:21:59   It's just so nice, and it just, you know.

01:22:02   So anyway, that's something Apple's got to get on.

01:22:06   >> All right, now can I issue with this thing?

01:22:08   >> Absolutely.

01:22:10   I feel like this is a fantastic discussion.

01:22:12   >> All right, so six, no, I guess about eight months ago,

01:22:15   the HomePod was announced.

01:22:17   And you had a post that I assume you will link to about

01:22:22   the HomePod having a touchscreen.

01:22:24   And prior to the announcement, there were all the rumors floating around and

01:22:29   multiple rumors sites reported that it did not have a touchscreen, unlike the, what is

01:22:36   it, the Amazon Echo Show, I think is the one that has a screen.

01:22:39   Which you don't hear about much anymore, by the way.

01:22:41   In this whole—

01:22:42   Yeah, that came out, and I don't know if it's—I don't know anything about that one except that

01:22:46   it has a screen and I guess it exists. But so, after this was announced, you said,

01:22:53   "Claim Chowder, it does have a touchscreen." And you and I had a discussion about this,

01:22:58   and I said, "I don't think that that constitutes a touchscreen." And you stuck to your guns,

01:23:04   and you said, "No, you touch it, and I don't know, you can summarize your own position."

01:23:08   JS: Well, I don't think it was multiple rumor sites, though. I think it was a Bloomberg report

01:23:13   by Mark Gurman and Alex Webb for Bloomberg, and it was, I think, about a week before WWDC,

01:23:19   and their exact words are, "Ahead of Apple's launch, the competition has upgraded their

01:23:24   speakers with support for making voice calls while Amazon's gained a touch screen.

01:23:31   Apple's speaker won't include such a screen according to people who have seen the product.

01:23:37   And then Ming-Chi Kuo, two weeks before that, said, "We also believe this new product

01:23:41   will come with a touch panel."

01:23:43   Okay.

01:23:44   And then you wrote, "HomePod has a touch screen on top."

01:23:47   Right.

01:23:48   After seeing it at WWDC.

01:23:51   This was, I've posted it Tuesday, so it was like within a day of the keynote.

01:23:57   And I was under the impression, now this was, I forget if I'd had my hands on, I don't think

01:24:01   I had, I don't think they'd had the briefing yet.

01:24:04   Maybe I did though, maybe they did that on Monday.

01:24:06   I don't remember when, in addition to the one that they had out there for everybody

01:24:10   to walk by, but not touch, we also got invited in like little groups of four to hear it,

01:24:17   not touch it and we weren't allowed to speak to it or anything. But I saw the plus and

01:24:25   minus buttons that you could touch for volume and I saw the Siri, I'll call it a waveform,

01:24:30   but the primary colored circular swirly cloud animation and assumed incorrectly that that

01:24:39   that was some sort of, like the equivalent

01:24:44   of an iPhone screen showing these things.

01:24:48   And that it could, in theory, show other things

01:24:52   under other circumstances.

01:24:55   And I had no idea how it worked,

01:24:56   other than that they said you could touch it

01:24:58   to do the plus/minus, but they wouldn't let us touch it,

01:25:00   so we couldn't see how it worked.

01:25:01   (laughing)

01:25:04   So you think I was wrong?

01:25:08   You think I was wrong?

01:25:09   - I'm not saying you're wrong on this.

01:25:10   - It does not, I would say I am wrong.

01:25:13   'Cause I would not call the thing on top of HomePod

01:25:15   a touchscreen.

01:25:16   What Ming-Chi Kuo called it a touch panel

01:25:19   is probably better.

01:25:20   It's weird what to call it because it is,

01:25:23   it doesn't show arbitrary pixels.

01:25:27   I'm kind of curious for iFixit to get,

01:25:29   more curious than for most products,

01:25:31   just to have iFixit take this apart

01:25:33   because I'm curious what the hell is under there

01:25:36   to make the waveform.

01:25:38   But what we've since heard from various birdies,

01:25:42   not me directly, I think ATP might've had a birdie

01:25:44   who said it, is that there's some kind of color LCDs

01:25:48   under there, but it's more like, I don't know,

01:25:52   like light bright type things, you know,

01:25:54   like not pixels that could display anything that,

01:25:56   you know, like text.

01:25:57   Anything arbitrary, right.

01:25:58   Or arbitrary information, but it's really only meant

01:26:00   to create that Siri multicolored animation

01:26:04   and then some kind of diffuser that makes it look blurry.

01:26:08   - Okay.

01:26:10   - And like the plus and minus buttons are, I believe,

01:26:13   just completely hard, you know,

01:26:14   they're just old fashioned buttons that are, you know,

01:26:18   there's nothing else that--

01:26:19   - Pressed in plastic or whatever.

01:26:20   - Right, they're not arbitrary pixels,

01:26:22   they're just, you know, plus and minus.

01:26:24   - So I looked this up, and Apple refers to it,

01:26:29   you can go to their tech specs,

01:26:30   and they call it the touch surface,

01:26:33   which I guess would apply to pretty much anything you can touch.

01:26:37   But it's definitely not -- they don't refer to it as a touch screen,

01:26:42   because like you said, I think that to me, I guess, is the definition,

01:26:45   is that it can't display an arbitrary image.

01:26:50   And that to me is what a touch screen can do.

01:26:53   A touch screen ATM can display whatever you put on it.

01:26:56   Your phone obviously can display whatever you draw to it.

01:26:59   >> Touch surface. I guess that's fair.

01:27:02   So, touch panel sounds pretty much right to me as well.

01:27:04   That seems like a pretty good name for it.

01:27:06   Touch surface just sounds sort of meaningless, but that is the term that they're using.

01:27:10   Right.

01:27:12   Yeah, I think I was wrong.

01:27:14   I don't think German and Webb were right, though.

01:27:16   I don't think saying it doesn't include such a screen is right either,

01:27:18   because you can't -- there is a touch thing that they didn't mention.

01:27:23   Well, so the only thing that -- there, I think there --

01:27:27   I think it was poor writing, if anything.

01:27:28   They're saying the Amazon device has a true screen that displays the weather and whatever,

01:27:34   and the HomePod obviously does not have that. And if you just showed them side by side and said,

01:27:40   "This one has a screen and this one doesn't," you'd say, "Yeah, that's right." But because

01:27:44   they're writing about things that they didn't have images of and, I think, like I said, didn't

01:27:49   necessarily express it properly, then yeah, I think you're right that it was not necessarily

01:27:54   written the way that it should have been. - Right, you read it again, and it sounds to me

01:27:57   like they weren't told by someone what the HomePod does present to you, a Siri waveform

01:28:04   and plus and minus volume buttons, but they were told that it doesn't present to you a

01:28:10   what the Amazon device does.

01:28:12   Well, I just kicked Syrian somehow. Sorry about that. Sorry, Siri. Here's a weird thing

01:28:21   with the HomePod that I forgot to mention in my review. Could it happen to me today?

01:28:27   which is really why I forgot to write.

01:28:29   I'd noticed it before, but if you don't touch your HomePod

01:28:32   or use it in like a day, like let's say,

01:28:35   I was using it yesterday and I went to bed

01:28:38   and then I woke up today and did some work

01:28:41   and then I went out and then I record a podcast

01:28:44   and it's been like 18 hours since I've used the thing

01:28:46   and I go in there and if I just touch the top,

01:28:49   it'll just start playing whatever I left off on

01:28:52   like a day ago.

01:28:53   - 18 hours later.

01:28:54   - Right, and it, you know, and like, I've run into it,

01:28:58   and I mentioned in my review that the,

01:28:59   at least on the Space Gray run,

01:29:01   the touch surface is a fingerprint magnet,

01:29:04   and I kind of wish it was either matte finished

01:29:06   or had a better oleophobic coating.

01:29:08   It's, I've run into it where I look at it

01:29:10   and it looks like smudgy, and I wanna just,

01:29:12   I kinda wipe it off, and I just go to wipe it off,

01:29:15   and it just starts playing music real loud.

01:29:17   It doesn't seem,

01:29:19   I don't know, it doesn't seem to me like it should,

01:29:22   It seems like that's, I could see where it would like wake up

01:29:25   and maybe, maybe, you know, Siri should say hello to you

01:29:29   or something, if it hasn't been playing for,

01:29:33   I don't know what the threshold is,

01:29:34   but there's some threshold in ours

01:29:36   where if it hasn't been playing music,

01:29:39   I feel like just touching it should just sort of wake it up.

01:29:42   I'm not quite sure what wake it up means,

01:29:44   but I, you know, more or less the prompt you get

01:29:47   when you just hold the side button on the phone.

01:29:50   - Right, yeah.

01:29:51   think it should just start playing. When it is playing, of course, tapping it to pause it is

01:29:56   fantastic. It makes all the sense in the world. But just randomly starting to play when you touch it

01:30:02   is surprising.

01:30:04   >> Well, I'm interested to get it. I'm interested to fiddle with it. I don't know if it's gonna be

01:30:11   something that I wind up using or if it's something that I test with, and then that's sort of the end

01:30:15   of it. But like I said, I'm definitely interested to see longer term whether this is something that

01:30:20   you know, do you think, how about that?

01:30:22   Do you think they have a HomePod 2 in development already

01:30:26   with, I don't even know what features we think it would have

01:30:29   but you know, do they, do you think they have a

01:30:31   chain of these or is it something like the iPod HiFi

01:30:34   where they made one and that was it?

01:30:36   - I think it's more like Apple TV.

01:30:38   And Apple TV had, at least in its current incarnation

01:30:43   since it went to like a, you know, a TV OS

01:30:45   with an app store, it had a very obvious

01:30:48   next generation model with support for 4K.

01:30:51   I know there are other changes too,

01:30:54   but just specifically going, supporting 4K

01:30:57   was an obvious need and there's no such thing in audio.

01:31:01   Right, like, so I wouldn't be,

01:31:03   I think this is sort of like Apple TV

01:31:06   without even the obvious 4K upgrade

01:31:08   and anything that's improved on this

01:31:11   is all going to come on the software side

01:31:14   in terms of either some kind of SDK

01:31:17   so that other services like Spotify can be addressed directly by talking to the device,

01:31:25   and so that apps, like things like podcast players, like Overcast and Castro, can be

01:31:33   addressed by talking to the device without having your phone nearby, you know?

01:31:39   Or even if it's only with your phone nearby, but some way where you can just talk to it.

01:31:44   >> Well, so I guess the only -- so thinking about the hardware,

01:31:47   the only obvious thing that you could do to change it would be what we were just talking about is

01:31:51   having some sort of display screen on it, which given what you said about the Echo Show not --

01:31:58   well, I guess we don't really know. We have no idea how well that's sold or anything,

01:32:00   but it certainly has not been in the forefront when you're talking about the Echo. It doesn't

01:32:05   necessarily seem like that would be the obvious thing to do with this. So, yeah, it definitely

01:32:09   does seem like software is where this will get upgraded. So, that's, yeah, I don't know.

01:32:14   The whole thing is interesting to me because they've been talking, they've said that they've

01:32:18   been working on this for half a decade. And so, it's very much not, oh, we got to play catch up

01:32:24   with a virtual assistant. It seems more like, oh, we have this thing and we can, you know, add a

01:32:29   virtual assistant to it. So, we'll do that. That makes sense. But they didn't necessarily want to

01:32:35   enter that virtual assistant market as much as they wanted to have a high quality speaker.

01:32:39   Yeah. You know, and it's, you know, a lot of people, people who are already invested in

01:32:44   Spotify are very, very down on the thing. And I don't blame them if you really are.

01:32:48   And talking to a couple of, I'm not, I have like a free Spotify account that I only use for poking

01:32:53   around on it. But talking to various friends over the last week or two, some of them are really into

01:32:59   Spotify. It sounds like Spotify has some fantastic features, some really interesting features in

01:33:05   terms of not telling Spotify to play, you know, having something specific to play in mind, but

01:33:11   being able to tell Spotify what you're in the mood for and based on your previous preferences,

01:33:17   it's like getting a radio station that is just perfect for you and it plays things that you-

01:33:22   Well, it's what Pandora, you know, claimed to do a decade ago and is still around and still trying

01:33:27   to do. But yeah, it seems like Spotify has gotten the intelligence of music recommendations pretty

01:33:33   well done at this point. Right. I guess the two main things are playing things that you do like

01:33:38   but weren't in your mind to ask for and like, "Oh, I love this song," and be exposing you to

01:33:44   new music that you might like. Whereas if you only ever ask for what you like or what you already know

01:33:51   that you want to listen to right now, it's very different. And I'm not saying that that's how

01:33:55   HomePod works, I mean, although that's how mostly how I tested it.

01:34:00   You know, and a big factor in that, though, is the limit the current limitation of HomePod

01:34:06   only being tied to one iCloud account, which, you know, I spent a fair amount of time on

01:34:10   my review.

01:34:11   And it's I understand it, especially for a 1.0.

01:34:13   But it's, it certainly is obvious to me that the way this product should work is that,

01:34:22   at least in the size of a typical household

01:34:24   with two, three, five people,

01:34:29   it should be able to have five people's iCloud music accounts

01:34:34   and identify them by voice.

01:34:38   And the competing products, and you say,

01:34:40   well, this isn't science fiction,

01:34:43   but the other products already do this.

01:34:45   The Google products can identify people by voice

01:34:48   and the Amazon, and tie them to different Google accounts.

01:34:52   So like with the Google products,

01:34:55   you can tell it to add an event to your calendar,

01:34:58   and it adds it to your Google calendar,

01:35:00   'cause it both recognizes your voice

01:35:02   and knows which Google account is yours,

01:35:05   and then I can ask it to add event to my calendar,

01:35:07   and it knows my voice and can add it to my calendar.

01:35:10   So it's not like me saying that the HomePod should do this

01:35:15   is asking for something outlandish,

01:35:16   it's something that competing products do.

01:35:19   And for building up--

01:35:19   - Are there any Apple devices besides the Mac

01:35:23   that do profiles?

01:35:25   - No, I don't think so.

01:35:26   - Like your phone obviously doesn't,

01:35:28   your phone that makes a decent amount of sense,

01:35:30   that's your device,

01:35:31   even if you have kids or something like that.

01:35:32   iPads are one that people have been,

01:35:35   I think clamoring for for years to have profiles on.

01:35:37   - Right from the beginning.

01:35:38   I remember people saying,

01:35:39   this would be fantastic in school,

01:35:40   but why can't I have profiles?

01:35:43   Apple TV is one where individual apps

01:35:47   definitely have profiles.

01:35:48   You know, if you load up Netflix,

01:35:49   it'll ask you who's watching,

01:35:51   but there's not an overarching profile

01:35:54   where you can just say, okay, now Paul's watching,

01:35:56   now John's watching, and just show me my apps

01:35:58   or show me my recommendations or whatever.

01:36:02   It seems like something that they don't do currently,

01:36:05   besides on the Mac, obviously.

01:36:06   - Yeah, it seems like a blind spot for the company.

01:36:08   I thought about that as an angle for the review,

01:36:10   that they're so, you know, their roots as a quote unquote

01:36:15   personal computer company really still show through

01:36:20   to today, right?

01:36:21   And like with a watch, it makes all the sense in the world.

01:36:24   You know? - Right.

01:36:25   - But with the TV, it makes no sense.

01:36:28   And even with the way that they've changed their TV app

01:36:32   in the last year to make it, try to make it like your hub

01:36:35   for watching stuff. - Right, exactly.

01:36:37   - From multiple sources, like pick up on this show

01:36:40   you were watching on Hulu or pick up on this other show

01:36:45   that you're watching on Amazon Prime

01:36:47   or watch this new movie release from iTunes.

01:36:52   It's like it's based on the aggregate viewing

01:36:55   of everybody in your house, not on you,

01:36:57   which really doesn't make a lot of sense.

01:36:59   - Doesn't make any sense, yeah.

01:37:01   And now I'm trying to remember, OS 9 and earlier,

01:37:04   did that not have users?

01:37:06   - No, definitely did not.

01:37:08   - There might have been some kind of weird,

01:37:11   cheaty move towards the end that was like in a,

01:37:16   I wish Syracuse were here, but it was,

01:37:18   there might have been-- - That's what I'm trying to,

01:37:19   I'm trying to go back in time 20 years at this point,

01:37:22   but LS-10 is clearly where,

01:37:24   that's definitely built around individual users

01:37:27   and you have a home folder

01:37:28   and you can have 10 home folders on your computer

01:37:31   if you have 10 people in your house

01:37:32   and everybody can use the same computer.

01:37:33   - And everybody can be equal.

01:37:35   You can even make everybody an admin.

01:37:37   It's not-- - An admin on it, exactly.

01:37:39   - You can't, you're not even limited to,

01:37:41   well, one person can be the admin

01:37:43   and everybody else can be a non-admin user.

01:37:45   You can even grant admin privileges to everybody in the house

01:37:48   if you want and trust them with the computer.

01:37:50   And the non-admin users aren't really limited

01:37:55   from what they can do other than modifying

01:37:57   the system software and installing apps and stuff like that.

01:38:01   - Right, whereas the TV-- - It truly is--

01:38:02   - Like you said, that's the big one to me,

01:38:04   that the TV and the iPad,

01:38:06   where these sorts of things make perfect sense,

01:38:08   but I think you're right, it's not in their DNA

01:38:11   as a personal computing company,

01:38:12   and I think in OS X it sort of happened almost incidentally

01:38:15   because they built it on Unix.

01:38:17   - Yeah, and Netflix has a great interface for it.

01:38:20   Netflix, I'm not even quite sure what their algorithm is,

01:38:23   but their algorithm seems to be,

01:38:25   if you haven't fired up Netflix,

01:38:28   if you've, you know, we've got three family members

01:38:29   on one Netflix account, and you know,

01:38:32   you fire up the Apple TV

01:38:33   and you haven't watched Netflix in a while,

01:38:35   it'll say who's watching, and there's the three of us,

01:38:38   and you pick who it is, and then it shows stuff

01:38:40   based on what you've watched before.

01:38:42   And it seems like if you have watched recently,

01:38:46   it just assumes that you're the person

01:38:48   who was watching recently, but if you want to,

01:38:50   you can go back and manually change it to the other person.

01:38:55   - Right, if you dip out of it to go back to the home screen,

01:38:57   it doesn't immediately ask you who it is again.

01:39:00   - Yeah.

01:39:00   - But after, yeah, you're right, I don't know

01:39:02   what the time is, because I've never thought about it,

01:39:04   because it's always just worked the way I expected it to.

01:39:07   - Oh my God, it was like a year ago,

01:39:09   I had to sit Jonas down and say,

01:39:11   you know what, don't be lazy,

01:39:13   you've gotta switch this goddamn thing.

01:39:14   'Cause my Netflix thing is--

01:39:16   - Oh, you're getting the worst recommendations

01:39:17   in the world, right?

01:39:18   - It was filled up with 30 seasons of Friends.

01:39:22   (laughing)

01:39:24   - I think Amy told me this, like Friends got big

01:39:27   with the middle school crowd last year.

01:39:29   - Yeah, like last year--

01:39:30   - I don't understand.

01:39:31   - It was like a nationwide craze.

01:39:33   Jonas watched the entire series of Friends

01:39:36   from first episode to last twice.

01:39:38   But he did like the first season of it,

01:39:42   or first year of it, or first run through the whole thing

01:39:44   on my Netflix account, which I honestly have no interest

01:39:48   in rewatching Friends, and it really,

01:39:52   he watched a couple other stupid things too,

01:39:54   and it was all, he understood it, that's the worst part,

01:39:56   he totally understood it.

01:39:57   He just didn't feel like going back, you know, one level.

01:40:00   - Two clicks to get back to his profile.

01:40:02   - Son of a bitch.

01:40:03   Kids are angry.

01:40:06   Hey, let me take a break here

01:40:07   and thank our third and final sponsor of the show.

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01:41:04   Like I've said before, the worst thing about when you,

01:41:06   if you're a bad gift giver like I am,

01:41:08   and you finally give somebody who you really care

01:41:10   about a gift that they're like, and that they tear up,

01:41:13   and they're like, this is fantastic, thank you so much.

01:41:15   Well, now you've gotta top it, right?

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01:43:13   So my thanks to Fracture for their continued support

01:43:16   of the talk show.

01:43:20   sent some fractures to us, I believe. Isn't that true?

01:43:22   (Laughter)

01:43:23   I was just thinking about that. Amy and I did an episode of Just the Tip that revolved around

01:43:29   what we called the fracture swap. And I was wondering where those are. I sent, I believe,

01:43:35   basically, Fracture sponsored the show and they gave us basically like a credit to send

01:43:42   photos to one another. And she sent me one large photo and I sent her, I think, about five different

01:43:49   ridiculous photos that then we spent half an hour laughing about. But I was wondering where those

01:43:53   photos are now. There's one of Danny DeVito's naked ass that should be hung in a prized place

01:43:59   in your house. I'm they might be packed up, Paul. I bet they didn't make it through the move. That's

01:44:07   my guess. And I'm hurt by it. But I understand. I believe one of them was Pete Rose, right? The

01:44:12   all time hit came. Absolutely. Yeah. I'll include that one in the show notes. That was a good one.

01:44:18   Pete Rose underwear model.

01:44:19   He's a handsome man.

01:44:23   I saw Pete Rose a couple weeks ago. I was in Vegas.

01:44:25   How's he doing?

01:44:27   Well, he's still signing autographs.

01:44:29   And what's that go for? About 50 bucks a pop?

01:44:34   I think so. It might be up to 100 depending on what you want him to sign. I think it might

01:44:38   be a sign baseball. It might be 100 bucks. Very strange. Speaking of sports, we had the

01:44:47   Super Bowl this last weekend. Did you watch the Super Bowl?

01:44:52   Michael Scott I did watch the Super Bowl. I'm in Boston.

01:44:56   And so, you know, it's certainly fairly mandatory to watch the Super Bowl when

01:45:00   the local team is in it.

01:45:02   Trenton Larkin I was out in Vegas for the Super Bowl,

01:45:05   which I've done for the last few years. I don't know if you can hear it, my voice. I'm a little

01:45:09   hoarse still. Do you hear it? Do I sound a little hoarse?

01:45:13   Michael Scott You sound like you've had a weekend in Vegas.

01:45:16   - It's a bad combination because it's dry desert air

01:45:21   and it's really the last place I go in the world

01:45:28   where people are still allowed to smoke cigarettes

01:45:31   in public.

01:45:32   I personally do not smoke.

01:45:34   I've never really smoked.

01:45:35   But there's a lot of,

01:45:39   you effectively pick up a cigarette habit.

01:45:43   (laughing)

01:45:44   So I don't know how much of it to blame

01:45:46   on the Dry Desert Air, I don't know how much to blame

01:45:49   on the ambient cigarette smoke,

01:45:51   and I don't know how much to blame on yelling and screaming

01:45:54   during the game, but it was pretty wild.

01:45:58   It was really-- - It was a good game.

01:46:00   - I would honestly, in hindsight though, as time goes on,

01:46:02   you end an exciting game, you know, like,

01:46:06   you know, last year's game had a very exciting finish,

01:46:08   and it had sort of a stunning fourth quarter,

01:46:10   and you come out of it thinking,

01:46:11   "My God, that was an extraordinary game."

01:46:14   And then as the time settles on you,

01:46:16   it settles in and you're like,

01:46:18   well it was certainly an extraordinary fourth quarter,

01:46:21   but it wasn't really an exciting game.

01:46:23   The first three quarters were actually rather unexciting.

01:46:27   - You're talking about last year's Super Bowl.

01:46:29   - Last year's Super Bowl.

01:46:30   - Where it was a blowout for most of the game and then, yeah.

01:46:33   - The Atlanta Falcons ran up a 28 to three lead

01:46:36   on the New England Patriots. - That's right.

01:46:38   - Until late in the third quarter,

01:46:41   I believe the third quarter finished 28 to 10.

01:46:44   And so they still had an 18-point lead going into the fourth quarter, but they had been

01:46:47   up 25 points late in the third quarter.

01:46:51   And then everything went to hell for the Atlanta Falcons.

01:46:54   Whereas this year's Super Bowl was truly, in hindsight, really, in a moment it felt

01:47:00   like it was terribly exciting throughout.

01:47:04   It was certainly terribly exciting for me as somebody with a large, large wager on the

01:47:08   Philadelphia Eagles.

01:47:10   Were you one of the million dollar bets?

01:47:12   I was not one of the million dollar bets.

01:47:14   We were talking about that.

01:47:16   That is crazy.

01:47:19   They said there were about a half dozen and I think most more of them at least were for

01:47:22   the Eagles.

01:47:23   That was the consensus.

01:47:24   So good for those people.

01:47:25   Well word comes around.

01:47:26   It's like when you're in Vegas for the Super Bowl weekend, it's just like who knows what's

01:47:32   true and what's not.

01:47:33   It's not like you go into the sports book where you place the bets and there's like

01:47:37   a light up sign that says someone just placed a million dollar bet.

01:47:41   But there's some kind of weird certainty that runs around where it's like somebody will

01:47:46   say, "I heard somebody dropped a million dollars on Eagles."

01:47:49   And then you're like, "Really?"

01:47:51   And then somebody will say, "Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:47:52   I heard it from my guy at the casino, his casino host," or something like that.

01:47:59   What do you think the mechanics of dropping a million dollar bet on?

01:48:03   We couldn't figure it out.

01:48:05   Like you don't just want-

01:48:06   Like how do you back that bet up?

01:48:08   Right.

01:48:09   my bet, which I could call and considered and certainly felt in my heart throughout

01:48:13   the game a quote unquote large bet. My bet was placed with cash. You certainly couldn't

01:48:20   do that with a million dollars.

01:48:21   John "Slick" Baum: You could. I mean, a million bucks is like that's a suitcase worth, I think.

01:48:27   Dave "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky

01:48:28   "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick"

01:48:29   Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick" Baum" Kelsky "Slick"

01:48:30   I believe that you would have to set up some kind of a line of credit with the casino and

01:48:35   maybe do a wire transfer or something like that to an account.

01:48:39   And then I don't think...

01:48:40   No, you know what it probably is.

01:48:42   I think they just write a check.

01:48:44   That's it.

01:48:45   Well, I mean, this is America.

01:48:48   You can just write a million dollar check and hand it to them and they'll walk it over

01:48:52   to the bank.

01:48:54   Now, you've been in Vegas with me and you've placed sports wagers before and when a normal

01:48:59   punter like us goes up and maybe you would like to bet a hundred dollars pre-season on

01:49:06   the Red Sox to win the World Series. And it'll pay, I don't know what the current odds are,

01:49:12   I bet a Red Sox ticket right now off the top of my head probably pays eight to one or nine

01:49:16   to one. So you can play, you know, put a hundred dollars down and then they'll print out a

01:49:22   little ticket and it's almost like a receipt. It's a little white piece of paper with that

01:49:28   heat type printing on it.

01:49:30   - Right, thermal printed, that's super high quality.

01:49:32   - Right, and then there's like a little,

01:49:34   the equivalent of a QR code at the bottom,

01:49:36   and then it'll tell you you've bet $100 at nine to one.

01:49:39   And then you can hold that until the World Series is over,

01:49:41   and if you win, you can either fly back to Vegas

01:49:44   and cash it in, or you can mail it in,

01:49:46   and they'll send you a check for your $900.

01:49:48   I'm gonna guess when you place a million dollar bet,

01:49:52   they don't just print out a little

01:49:54   thermal printed slip of paper.

01:49:57   But I would love to know what they do print, right?

01:50:00   What do they do?

01:50:03   And just think about things, think about this.

01:50:05   Let's say I go out and I bet $1,000 on the Eagles.

01:50:08   And the game is over and the Eagles have won.

01:50:15   But I've got a flight to catch.

01:50:16   I could just hand you the ticket and I'll just say,

01:50:18   Paul, just send me that 1,000 bucks.

01:50:20   And I'm off in a cab to the airport

01:50:22   and you can walk right up to the counter and hand it over.

01:50:25   - Right, there's no verification.

01:50:27   just having possession of the ticket is all you need.

01:50:29   - They'll just pay you the thing.

01:50:32   I'm gonna guess you can't do that with a million dollar.

01:50:34   (laughing)

01:50:36   Bet on this.

01:50:36   - I think it's like a bearer bond.

01:50:38   You know, whoever has possession of that slip of paper,

01:50:41   it's worth a million bucks now and that's it.

01:50:44   And actually, I guess that's the question.

01:50:46   Was it a million dollar, were the bets,

01:50:48   did they put down a million dollars?

01:50:50   And then how much did they win?

01:50:52   - Well, there's different ways to bet.

01:50:53   So the two ways to bet on a game,

01:50:56   If you take the point spread, and now in this game,

01:50:59   the Patriots are favored by four,

01:51:01   and if you bet on the Eagles on the point spread,

01:51:04   you could add four and a half points to the final score

01:51:07   in terms of satisfying them.

01:51:08   - Right, the Eagles could have lost by up to four points.

01:51:10   - Right, so if the Patriots had won by three or even four,

01:51:14   they would have won the Super Bowl,

01:51:15   and they would have been very happy,

01:51:17   but if you bet on the Patriots, you would be unhappy

01:51:21   because you would have lost your bet.

01:51:23   And then the other thing you do

01:51:24   is they call it the money line,

01:51:26   where instead of any point spread,

01:51:27   it's you bet on the team that wins,

01:51:29   and the way that it's adjusted for who's favored

01:51:32   and who's the underdog is it pays different odds.

01:51:35   If I recall correctly from Sunday,

01:51:40   the Eagles, I know what the Eagles went off at.

01:51:41   The Eagles were called, were at plus 165,

01:51:44   and that means a money line bet on the Eagles for $100,

01:51:48   if they won, would pay $165.

01:51:52   So however much you wanna bet on it,

01:51:54   you'd multiply it by 1.65 and that's your payout.

01:51:58   And the Patriots were the other way.

01:51:59   I believe that when the game started,

01:52:01   they were at minus 190, meaning you had to bet $190

01:52:06   to win just $100 if the Patriots won.

01:52:12   And the thing that-- - Right, so if you bet

01:52:14   a million dollars on the Eagles at 165,

01:52:16   you would get back 2.65 million, is that right?

01:52:20   - That is correct, 'cause you would give them the mill--

01:52:22   And when you place the bet, you give them the money.

01:52:24   So they've already got your million dollars.

01:52:27   And it's sort of like an escrow.

01:52:29   Whereby escrow, I mean in the casinos.

01:52:33   - In the vault. - In the vault.

01:52:35   And then when it wins, you go over there

01:52:37   with your little thermal ticket and they'll pay you.

01:52:40   And the ticket will say, you've bet a million

01:52:42   to pay 2.65 million to win 1.65 million.

01:52:47   You give it to them and then they'll sit there

01:52:51   count out 2.65 million in $100 bills.

01:52:54   - Sure.

01:52:55   (laughing)

01:52:56   I don't know why we didn't do this.

01:52:59   It sounds like loads of fun

01:53:01   and you wouldn't have been at all nervous

01:53:03   when the Pats threw a Hail Mary at the end of the game.

01:53:06   - Oh God, I was dying.

01:53:09   'Cause it seemed like exactly the sort of play

01:53:10   that they would make.

01:53:14   It really did. - Make the completion,

01:53:15   get the two point conversion, go to OT, win by six.

01:53:18   - Right.

01:53:19   - With another touchdown,

01:53:20   us like last year, yeah. Well, so this is interesting, though. I mentioned we should

01:53:24   talk about this because you live in Philly, and I live in New England, but you're a Cowboys fan.

01:53:28   That is correct.

01:53:29   So if anything, I mean, you said you placed a bet on the Eagles, so I guess you're rooting for the

01:53:34   Eagles. But if anything, you should be rooting against the Eagles. I know I have plenty of

01:53:38   friends who are Giants fans who are rooting for the Pats, which felt weird to them, but...

01:53:43   I re- well, I remember specifically, it's funny, the last time the Eagles were in the Super Bowl,

01:53:47   I don't remember the year. I think it was 2006 though. I could be wrong

01:53:50   2005 and that was it was against the Pats right against the Pats and I was never been a fan of the Patriots

01:53:57   I was ambivalent a bit ambivalent about that game

01:54:00   I don't remember which way my gut swung

01:54:03   but it wasn't very hard in either direction because I don't like the Eagles because they're a division rival of the Cowboys and I

01:54:09   Right as a Cowboys fan in Philadelphia. I have numerous friends who we have

01:54:15   friendly rivalry about that issue with

01:54:17   And I don't like the Patriots because they cheat

01:54:21   and

01:54:25   To be honest, I really don't like the Patriots because as a Cowboys fan what I really like about the Cowboys is that they

01:54:32   are a historically great team and that they've won five Super Bowls and I

01:54:38   Would like for the Cowboys to be the team that has the most Super Bowl victories

01:54:44   But right now with the Cowboys have been stuck at five since I don't know. I was like 20 years old. It's been a long time

01:54:50   They're in a very long extended rut stuck at five. I believe when they last one or right no 95 or 696

01:54:58   I think is that right? One in 93 95 and 96?

01:55:02   No, no, they want they want in to they want back-to-back years because that's where I was going with this

01:55:08   Right was that they played the bills two years in a row, right?

01:55:11   And they had the blowout against -- so, I mentioned my parents are from Buffalo, so I grew up a Bills fan

01:55:16   and had the love of football just beaten right out of me because the Bills lost to the Giants,

01:55:23   to the Washington Redskins, to the Cowboys in the biggest blowout in history. And then I was

01:55:29   actually at Super Bowl XXVIII, which was in '94, I'm pretty sure, and watched them lose their fourth

01:55:36   Super Bowl in a row. Right. Which is astounding. I mean, it's an incredible feat. I'd probably

01:55:43   never be equaled. Just getting to four Super Bowls in a row is tremendous. In a league,

01:55:47   in any league it would be impressive, but in the NFL in particular you tend to have teams

01:55:51   come out of nowhere to get to the Super Bowl and then drop out of the Super Bowl and, you know,

01:55:56   be nowhere the next year. So, this past weekend we had you, a Philadelphia resident who likes the

01:56:03   the Cowboys who was sort of cheering for the Phillies, for the Eagles rather.

01:56:06   No, I was all in on the Eagles. I was all in in this case because the Patriots have

01:56:10   only only extended their argument to be the greatest team of all time, so I need

01:56:15   that to stop. You want that to stop? I want that to stop, and I just generally

01:56:19   find them to be unlikable people. I really do. I, you know, it was noted

01:56:24   after the game that when the game was over, Tom Brady didn't go to the

01:56:28   midfield to shake hands with the Eagles quarterback Nick Foles. He just went

01:56:32   right to the locker room.

01:56:34   I, you know, I mean, I don't think that's a huge deal.

01:56:37   I mean, you just lost a heartbreaker.

01:56:38   Who knows, I might do that.

01:56:39   I'm a very poor loser, to be honest.

01:56:42   Honestly, I might do the same thing.

01:56:44   I wouldn't wanna go shake somebody's hand.

01:56:46   But this rubs me the wrong way.

01:56:48   I don't know, I don't like 'em.

01:56:49   And I happen to, even as a Cowboys fan

01:56:51   who generally is predisposed to just like anybody,

01:56:54   any other team from the NFC East,

01:56:56   this particular Eagles team this year

01:56:58   is extraordinarily likable.

01:57:01   I said it to Moltz last week,

01:57:02   that they've got these guys who are just likable guys.

01:57:04   I mean, the one guy donated his whole salary

01:57:07   to local schools.

01:57:08   I mean, how do you not love that?

01:57:09   I mean, it's just like-- - That's right.

01:57:11   - Boy, that just seems like,

01:57:12   and they're just doing great things in the city.

01:57:14   They've been doing it since before this

01:57:16   really reached a fever pitch,

01:57:17   but they're just really good guys.

01:57:19   - And they sold all those dog masks.

01:57:23   So, I mean, that's good for somebody.

01:57:25   - So anyway, we had to record today

01:57:27   because tomorrow we're having a parade here in Philadelphia,

01:57:30   and by, where by parade, it pretty much means

01:57:33   the entire city is shut down.

01:57:35   I mean, like literally, like they're,

01:57:37   they're shutting the city down tonight.

01:57:39   And I don't think they're real.

01:57:41   - So are the schools closed?

01:57:42   - Schools are closed, man.

01:57:43   They're not even pretending that kids are going to school.

01:57:45   There's no school.

01:57:47   Schools are closed, which is really kind of awesome.

01:57:50   I honestly, I mean, it's,

01:57:51   Jonas has never been more interested in sports

01:57:53   than when he found out that he gets out of a day at school.

01:57:56   - He could get a day off of school.

01:57:58   - Yeah.

01:57:59   And you know, I just don't think people,

01:58:01   people don't realize it's, you know,

01:58:03   it really means a lot to this city.

01:58:06   It's a city that hasn't had a championship team

01:58:08   since the 2008 Phillies, and prior to the 2008 Phillies,

01:58:11   I said this last week, I should have double checked.

01:58:12   - 25 years.

01:58:14   - Before that, it was the '83 Sixers.

01:58:16   And that's a long, '83 to 2008 sounds like a long time.

01:58:20   And from '83 until Sunday,

01:58:22   only have one sneak in the middle was the Phillies.

01:58:25   It's, you know, it's been a long time.

01:58:27   But of all the teams in the city,

01:58:29   the one that's the most beloved is the Eagles,

01:58:31   without question.

01:58:32   I don't think there's anybody,

01:58:33   it doesn't matter how big a Sixers fan or Phillies fan

01:58:35   or even, or certainly Flyers fan that you might be,

01:58:38   no one would argue that this isn't an Eagles town.

01:58:41   And there's nothing they want more than to win a Super Bowl.

01:58:43   And they went 52 Super Bowls

01:58:46   and only made it to two and lost both.

01:58:48   So people went nuts.

01:58:50   And to have them win it in quite arguably

01:58:54   the most extraordinary Super Bowl game in history

01:58:58   is just icing on the cake.

01:59:00   I mean, and again, I know there's probably some people

01:59:02   who've already stopped the show, but that's all right.

01:59:04   But if you're into it, it's mathematically,

01:59:07   it's extraordinary that in the,

01:59:09   it's not in the history of the Super Bowl,

01:59:11   which is 52 games, or the history of the playoffs

01:59:15   in the NFL, which is, I guess, a thousand or so games.

01:59:19   In the history of the NFL, every game

01:59:21   that has ever been played in the National Football League,

01:59:25   the game on Sunday had the most total yardage ever.

01:59:29   And it was by a long shot.

01:59:30   They broke the record in the third quarter.

01:59:33   In the third quarter, they had already racked up

01:59:35   more total yardage between both offenses

01:59:37   than any game in the NFL.

01:59:40   And when I was watching, I was watching in this big,

01:59:42   big room in Vegas in a casino filled with,

01:59:45   I don't know, a couple thousand people

01:59:47   and all of these big jumbotrons and real noisy.

01:59:52   That's so noisy that that's why I think

01:59:54   half the reason I'm a horse.

01:59:56   But everybody was just sort of looking at each other

01:59:59   like in the third quarter.

02:00:00   Like when the first half was terribly exciting.

02:00:04   And then you got the big long halftime show

02:00:06   and then the third quarter starts up

02:00:08   and third quarter just takes it up a notch on both sides.

02:00:10   And neither team, every time every team touches the ball,

02:00:13   they score.

02:00:14   And everybody was just sort of looking at each other

02:00:16   saying like, am I drunk, what's going on?

02:00:20   This is like crazy, right?

02:00:21   This is crazy.

02:00:22   And when they came up with that stat

02:00:23   that this was the most yardage in any game,

02:00:26   not any playoff game, any game ever,

02:00:28   and we're only in the third quarter.

02:00:29   And it's the Super Bowl,

02:00:31   which is often a very defensive game.

02:00:33   We were like, okay, this is crazy.

02:00:35   - Well, that was the thing.

02:00:37   Nobody was playing defense.

02:00:38   I mean, if you like defensive football,

02:00:40   this was not a very good game at all.

02:00:41   - Right.

02:00:43   That's my theory.

02:00:44   My fundamental theory is where pro football is going.

02:00:45   - All the stats I saw were that, like, sorry, go ahead.

02:00:49   - Well, my fundamental theory is that

02:00:50   that's where football's going,

02:00:52   is to be a more basketball-like game, meaning--

02:00:55   - Just constant scoring.

02:00:56   - Yeah, constant scoring and a faster pace.

02:01:00   Both teams-- - I was gonna say,

02:01:04   all the stats I saw were about,

02:01:06   it was about the Pats and how they're,

02:01:09   they got over 600 yards,

02:01:10   and that's the only time anyone

02:01:11   has ever lost a game doing that.

02:01:13   And they got all these great records,

02:01:15   except for the fact that they lost this game.

02:01:17   - Right, so Brady personally had 500-plus yards passing

02:01:21   and three touchdowns and no interceptions

02:01:24   and no quarterback who's ever done that.

02:01:26   Again, in every single game that league has ever played

02:01:29   for like roughly 100 years, probably about 90 years,

02:01:33   every game that's ever happened,

02:01:36   any time a quarterback has done that, they've won the game.

02:01:38   Because you would think, "Well, how could you lose?"

02:01:41   (laughs)

02:01:42   Right?

02:01:43   Well, you can lose--

02:01:44   - 'Cause your defense was just slightly worse

02:01:45   than the other team's defense.

02:01:46   - And the other team only had one time

02:01:49   that they touched the ball that they didn't score.

02:01:51   Both teams, I believe, had one time they touched the ball

02:01:53   that didn't score.

02:01:54   One time the Eagles punted, and then at the end of the game,

02:01:56   towards the end of the game,

02:01:58   one time Brady got hit and fumbled.

02:02:01   - Yep, I know they didn't punt, so that sounds right.

02:02:04   - Well, usually when you watch,

02:02:05   and historically at least when you watch the Super Bowl,

02:02:08   you think, "My God, it's hard to score in this league."

02:02:10   You either have to do something crazy,

02:02:12   or you gotta get a lucky break, or whatever.

02:02:15   And there's times where it's like, "Punt, punt, punt,"

02:02:18   and you're like, "My God, there's no way,

02:02:19   "how does anybody score in this game?"

02:02:21   Whereas in that game it was like,

02:02:22   (laughing)

02:02:24   does the other team even have 11 men on the field?

02:02:26   (laughing)

02:02:29   - Well, congratulations to the city of Philadelphia.

02:02:33   - Oh, it's gonna be something.

02:02:34   Hopefully the city stands up to this.

02:02:36   (laughing)

02:02:38   You know, I guess they're greasing the polls again.

02:02:41   I heard that they were not going to grease the polls.

02:02:43   I think I told Moltz last week they were gonna stop

02:02:46   because the idea was that they criscoed up the polls.

02:02:49   We have a tradition here in town

02:02:50   where when a Philadelphia team wins,

02:02:53   the fans will climb up the street poles for whatever reason.

02:02:58   So the cops-- - It's what you do.

02:03:02   - Well, the cops to, I don't know, fight against this

02:03:07   'cause they don't want people to--

02:03:09   - Prevent this, yeah. - Prevent it.

02:03:10   They greased them up with Crisco before the Vikings came,

02:03:15   and it didn't stop them.

02:03:17   And then you're the one who sent me the link that they,

02:03:19   What'd you say?

02:03:20   They're training for this.

02:03:20   That in South Philadelphia,

02:03:22   it's a tradition like on certain holidays.

02:03:24   - During like an Italian festival or something.

02:03:26   - That they grease, they themselves grease the poles

02:03:30   and then they have a contest.

02:03:32   - And then they put something on top of the pole,

02:03:34   grease it, and then everybody tries to climb it.

02:03:36   So yeah, they're training for this event.

02:03:38   - And so that didn't work.

02:03:40   They criss-coed up the poles and people climbed them anyway.

02:03:43   And so the word was,

02:03:44   they're not gonna criss-co them up again.

02:03:46   But what they did is they replaced it

02:03:48   some sort of industrial grease. I don't know how much better it worked.

02:03:50   Yeah, it was like some kind of oil or something, yeah.

02:03:53   Yeah.

02:03:53   Well, so did it work, though? I saw a bunch of street poles on the ground.

02:03:58   I don't know if that was from climbing or just destruction in general.

02:04:01   Yeah, maybe people getting angry that they were so well greased up, where it's like,

02:04:04   "Well, if I can't climb it, I'm going to take it down."

02:04:07   I might as well knock it over.

02:04:08   I don't know how you do that. I really don't. I saw there were a couple of street poles

02:04:12   knocked over, and I guess if you just get a couple people rocking it back and forth,

02:04:16   you can do it, but it's certain, you know, I've walked by and just given them a knock this week,

02:04:21   and it certainly seems like most of them are pretty sturdy. So it's pretty impressive.

02:04:25   Hopefully the parade will go off. All right.

02:04:26   And is it it doesn't go by your house? Does it? Did you say it goes by Jonas's school?

02:04:33   It does. It does.

02:04:35   Right by the school. Yeah. He might not have a school come Friday.

02:04:40   Yes. He's the luckiest kid in the world. That's what he's not only does he get a day off,

02:04:45   He gets the whole rest of the year off.

02:04:47   - Yeah, he's rooting for chaos.

02:04:48   We're nearby at Center City, Philadelphia,

02:04:49   is very, very small, given the size of Philadelphia proper.

02:04:53   Center City, Philadelphia is very small.

02:04:55   So we're nearby, we could walk.

02:04:56   We have a couple of choices of which way to go.

02:04:59   But I think our house will be all right.

02:05:02   I don't know.

02:05:03   Anything else you wanted to talk about, Paul?

02:05:07   - No, I think we covered it.

02:05:10   I mean, I don't know how much you get into the politics,

02:05:15   But I did have -- I did a quick interview that I thought maybe we could just real quick touch on.

02:05:20   And, you know, feel free to cut this out, but I was able to reach my good pal, Barry Oboms,

02:05:27   and I got his take on the current president of the United States. And it's just a five-second take.

02:05:34   I don't know if you'd like to hear what Barry Oboms thinks of President Donald Trump.

02:05:38   Now you know that guy ain't shit.

02:05:40   Sorry this motherfucker got nothing on me, right?

02:05:43   Nothing.

02:05:44   (laughing)

02:05:46   - And you know, it's from the heart he spoke, so.

02:05:49   (laughing)

02:05:51   - Letting it fly.

02:05:52   - Let it out there.

02:05:54   - Telling it as it is.

02:05:55   My thanks to Paul and his sidekick, Farrago, over there.

02:06:00   I've got some links, I promise they'll be in the show notes.

02:06:04   There's a great designing Farrago story

02:06:07   on the Rogue Amoeba blog talking about the design of it.

02:06:11   It's a terrific app, hope it does very well.

02:06:13   And I don't know, I'm not sure what to say.

02:06:16   It's like I almost wish that the Patriots

02:06:18   had gotten blown out, I could stick it to you.

02:06:20   I feel like there's something noble

02:06:22   in a five-time championship team

02:06:24   also having the single greatest performance,

02:06:29   and indisputably the single greatest performance

02:06:31   in a loss in Super Bowl history.

02:06:32   - In a loss, yeah. - Right?

02:06:34   Like there's some way to measure,

02:06:36   like when you count the greatness of teams in all times,

02:06:40   certain losses are better than others,

02:06:42   you know what I mean?

02:06:43   Like your Buffalo Bills, the time that they lost

02:06:44   on a wide right kick at the last second by two points,

02:06:49   well that counts for something different

02:06:50   than when the Cowboys beat 'em 55 to 10

02:06:52   or whatever the hell the score was.

02:06:54   - That's what it was, it was 55 to 10.

02:06:56   - So I would say scoring a touchdown

02:06:58   every time you have the ball except once

02:07:01   and then still scoring a minute later.

02:07:03   (laughs)

02:07:04   Almost scoring a minute later.

02:07:05   Certainly counts for something.

02:07:08   There's something, certainly, it's certainly a noble loss.

02:07:11   Oh, did you see the crazy thing before we signed off?

02:07:14   Did you see the crazy thing with the offensive coordinator

02:07:16   on the Pats?

02:07:19   - Yeah, Josh McDaniels.

02:07:20   - Josh McDaniels had agreed--

02:07:22   - He was supposed to go to Indy and be their head coach.

02:07:25   - And had gotten so far that they had already scheduled

02:07:28   a charter plane to take him there today

02:07:30   for the big introduction,

02:07:31   and he'd already signed a bunch of assistant coaches

02:07:34   who quit their jobs at other teams

02:07:36   and had already been signed

02:07:38   and are under contract for next year.

02:07:40   And somehow Belichick and team owner Bob Kraft said,

02:07:45   "Hey, maybe you wanna stay?"

02:07:48   And he said, "Okay, Indianapolis, nevermind."

02:07:51   (laughing)

02:07:52   - It's a real kick in the pants for the Colts,

02:07:55   but they deserve whatever they get

02:07:58   for stealing the team in the first place, so whatever.

02:08:00   Yeah, sort of. I kind of had the same thought there where it's kind of what you get.

02:08:05   Anybody who doesn't know the backstory on that, the Indianapolis Colts, long story short,

02:08:09   in terms of you want to think like, "Hey, I feel that doesn't sound right that a team

02:08:12   would lose their new coach like that." But what happened with the Indianapolis Colts

02:08:16   was they were the Baltimore Colts, the beloved Baltimore Colts for decades. And the team

02:08:22   owner, Art, what was his name? Modell? Art Modell, for whatever reason, decided he would

02:08:29   and moved the team to Indianapolis

02:08:30   and knew it wouldn't be popular.

02:08:32   And so he had a bunch of moving trucks show up

02:08:35   literally in the middle of the night in Baltimore

02:08:37   and moved everything out of their stadium

02:08:39   in the middle of the night

02:08:41   and drove it all to Indianapolis

02:08:43   and then announced it there

02:08:45   that they were leaving the city of Baltimore.

02:08:48   Needless to say, did not go well in Baltimore.

02:08:52   I forget if it was Art Modell was the owner.

02:08:54   Art Modell might have been the--

02:08:55   - No, you solid the wrong man.

02:08:56   He's the one that eventually got the Ravens.

02:08:58   - He's the Browns, right? - He was the Browns owner.

02:09:00   Exactly. - All right, all right.

02:09:01   Sorry for-- - It was Bob Irsay.

02:09:03   It was the father of the current owner.

02:09:05   - That's right, that's right, Irsay, right.

02:09:07   - So they got exactly what they deserved.

02:09:09   - Modell's the guy who screwed Cleveland over,

02:09:11   not screwed Baltimore over.

02:09:14   - Well, but he didn't screw Cleveland

02:09:15   over the way Baltimore got screwed over

02:09:17   'cause when they left Cleveland,

02:09:18   Cleveland knew they were getting a team back

02:09:21   in like two years or something.

02:09:22   - And that they would get to keep the name.

02:09:24   - The Browns name, exactly.

02:09:25   He didn't steal, that's exactly right.

02:09:27   He didn't steal the Browns name.

02:09:28   - Right.

02:09:29   - He took the team, but--

02:09:30   - And when you have a storied success,

02:09:32   like the Cleveland Browns.

02:09:33   - Like the Cleveland Browns.

02:09:35   - Where the only good thing in your team's history

02:09:40   was the great Jim Brown, who so hated the team owner

02:09:44   that while he was indisputably the single greatest player

02:09:48   active in the league, he quit,

02:09:50   so he could just go make action movies.

02:09:55   When that's the finest achievement

02:09:56   your franchise has ever achieved,

02:09:58   you certainly wanna keep that name and brand.

02:10:00   - You gotta hold onto that name, yeah.

02:10:02   And that beautiful color scheme.

02:10:04   - Yeah. (laughs)

02:10:07   Anyway, Paul Kefastas, "Rogamy," but thank you very much.

02:10:10   It's always a pleasure to have you on.

02:10:11   I'll see you in 100 episodes.