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484: Hot-Spare Price is Right

 

00:00:00   we now have purchased as a family

00:00:02   our first Apple TV channel.

00:00:05   Do you remember that this was even a thing?

00:00:07   - I do not.

00:00:08   - Vaguely, so is this where you like sign up

00:00:11   for like NBC or something through Apple TV

00:00:13   or something like that?

00:00:14   - Yeah, so in this case,

00:00:17   so our kid was home sick today with a stomach ache

00:00:20   and we said, okay, well, you know,

00:00:23   if you're gonna stay home,

00:00:24   you're not gonna just play video games all day

00:00:27   'cause you wanna make sure that it's like a real thing.

00:00:29   So, you know, when just like, you know, it's,

00:00:31   "Oh, my stomach hurts."

00:00:32   That could be a lot of things, or it could be nothing.

00:00:34   And so you're like, "Well, you know,

00:00:34   "you're not gonna just use this as an excuse

00:00:36   "to play video games all day, but if you want,

00:00:40   "you can stay home and you can sit on the couch

00:00:42   "and you can watch 'The Price is Right.'"

00:00:44   - That is the requisite thing to do

00:00:46   when you are sick and home from school.

00:00:48   - Why would you pass on this suffering to a new generation?

00:00:52   - What?

00:00:53   What do you mean suffering?

00:00:54   Explain yourself.

00:00:55   - You know, I used to be so angry at daytime TV,

00:00:58   And yes, Price is Right in particular.

00:00:59   It's like just, there was no internet.

00:01:02   This is all you had was you turn on the TV

00:01:03   and it was this or soap operas and just boy.

00:01:05   - Yeah, but the Price is Right is delightful.

00:01:07   - No, no.

00:01:09   - Explain why it's not delightful.

00:01:10   I mean, admittedly it is an hour long commercial,

00:01:12   but explain why it's not delightful.

00:01:14   - It's just not, I mean, it's not what I prefer

00:01:17   as a 10 year old staying home from school.

00:01:19   I'll tell you that.

00:01:20   - That's the best reason to stay home from school.

00:01:22   - No, no.

00:01:23   - If I'm sick at 40 years old,

00:01:25   I'm watching the Price is Right.

00:01:26   In fact, this is not a lie.

00:01:27   This is not a lie.

00:01:28   I use the prior sponsor and absolutely lovely app

00:01:32   called Channels, which I believe is getchannels.com.

00:01:36   I have it record that day's price is right

00:01:39   every single day and just overwrite the prior days.

00:01:41   So that this way, don't listen, hear me out.

00:01:44   So that this way, if one of the kids is homesick, or me,

00:01:47   is homesick, then we have at least one price is right

00:01:50   available and waiting at all times.

00:01:52   - That's your hot spare price is right.

00:01:54   - That's right, yes.

00:01:55   - Just got ready to go at a moment's notice.

00:01:57   - That's exactly right.

00:01:59   - I mean, can't you just watch it on YouTube?

00:02:00   Like, I'm assuming there's whole episodes

00:02:02   of "Price is Right" like available on demand anywhere.

00:02:04   You don't need to keep wearing a spot

00:02:06   in your SSD re-recording "Price is Right"

00:02:09   over and over again.

00:02:10   - It's on the Synology, it's fine.

00:02:12   - Hold on.

00:02:13   - Hey, what was I gonna say?

00:02:15   I dropped that on you, you weren't prepared.

00:02:17   - Yeah, right.

00:02:17   - But, so other than the fact that you're a monster

00:02:20   who does not enjoy "The Price is Right,"

00:02:21   all right, so Adam is staying home

00:02:23   to watch "The Price is Right," as he should.

00:02:25   - Well, here's the question.

00:02:26   - When you said that, did Adam,

00:02:28   does Adam know what The Price is Right is?

00:02:30   - He didn't until today.

00:02:32   - And did he love it?

00:02:33   - Well first, we explained to him,

00:02:35   like first of all, you know,

00:02:36   Mommy and I used to watch this

00:02:37   whenever we were home sick as a kid,

00:02:39   but we would only get one episode of it

00:02:42   available to us in that day.

00:02:44   It would go from like, what was it,

00:02:45   like 11 or 12 I believe?

00:02:46   - Yep, that's right.

00:02:47   - And you'd have to sit through whatever

00:02:49   morning news crap shows were on before it,

00:02:51   and afterwards you'd just have to watch

00:02:53   soap operas or whatever.

00:02:54   There was not much else that was on it.

00:02:56   So you'd only get one, it was full of commercials

00:02:58   between the giant commercial that is the show.

00:03:01   And so, I'm telling them how great this is.

00:03:03   Anyway, so we try to find it on Apple TV.

00:03:05   We do the usual dance of like, all right,

00:03:06   so first, use the Siri search

00:03:08   to try to find the prices right.

00:03:10   Find out that you can only get it through paid services,

00:03:13   check Netflix, go to their search,

00:03:15   hold down the Siri thing on the remote

00:03:17   to ask the prices right there.

00:03:19   See, it's not there.

00:03:20   Then go back to the Apple Siri global search

00:03:24   to then go back and give up and go pay for it.

00:03:27   But it ends up it's on whatever Paramount Plus means,

00:03:31   it's on that.

00:03:32   - There's a bunch of shows on that.

00:03:34   You can watch Halo, you can watch the Star Trek

00:03:37   Strange New Worlds, you can watch Star Trek Picard.

00:03:39   What else can you do?

00:03:40   How much is that?

00:03:41   - You're really selling it there, John.

00:03:43   - The Halo one is worth watching just to watch someone else

00:03:45   try to make a show out of a video game.

00:03:47   - Anyway, so for those of you who don't remember,

00:03:51   which is almost everybody, when Apple launched Apple TV Plus.

00:03:56   In the same event, they also announced something called

00:03:58   Apple TV channels, or just Apple channels,

00:04:00   or just TV channels, or just Plus channels,

00:04:02   I don't know, whatever the heck it's called,

00:04:03   it's called something channels.

00:04:04   And this is something that Amazon's been offering

00:04:06   for I think a couple years before that.

00:04:09   And it's just like a very basic reseller thing

00:04:13   where you can subscribe to some service

00:04:16   that doesn't have its own app,

00:04:18   or at least doesn't need to use its own app.

00:04:20   And so it's displayed in the native Apple TV interfaces,

00:04:24   but it's someone else's content.

00:04:26   So that's what this is, and so it's free trial,

00:04:29   and then 10 bucks a month whenever I forget to cancel it

00:04:31   in a week or a day or whatever the interval is.

00:04:34   And there's a whole bunch of these,

00:04:37   and they launched it at that event a couple years back,

00:04:39   and we never heard about it again.

00:04:42   - That's so true.

00:04:43   - But it turns out it's still there,

00:04:44   and it still seemed to work, and with a few clicks,

00:04:47   we got a free trial to watch as much Price is Right

00:04:50   as we want to.

00:04:52   And it's not the same as the Bob Barker era,

00:04:54   but the only, the things that were weird about it,

00:04:57   you know, like, I was never watching it

00:05:00   during the Drew Carey era,

00:05:01   and I never really knew Drew Carey's stuff before anyway,

00:05:04   so he's like a nothing to me,

00:05:06   but he seemed to do an okay job of it.

00:05:08   I noticed that the microphone, like he tries,

00:05:11   you know, Bob Barker always had

00:05:12   a little skinny stick microphone he would hold in his hand,

00:05:15   but it was a cabled microphone.

00:05:16   he would have this giant long mic cable

00:05:18   that he would drag around the stage with him.

00:05:20   And as a result, the microphone could be very, very slim

00:05:24   and very small itself.

00:05:26   Whereas Drew Carey is holding a big wireless mic pack

00:05:29   stuck on the bottom of a stick mic,

00:05:31   and it's really clunky looking, it does not look good.

00:05:34   And it's just much more bulbous and clunky.

00:05:37   But anyway, biggest thing I noticed is that the products

00:05:40   that they would have on there,

00:05:41   it was all just kinda like,

00:05:43   that like random Amazon no-name brand stuff.

00:05:47   It's really weird.

00:05:48   There were very few brands I recognized

00:05:52   and most of the products were kind of weird,

00:05:54   like wannabe sharper image kind of things

00:05:57   but from no-name brands.

00:05:59   And so it's like asking how much is this random piece

00:06:01   of Amazon garbage?

00:06:02   It's like I don't know.

00:06:03   That could be anywhere from eight to $45.

00:06:06   Who knows?

00:06:07   So it was a little bit odd to see the modern day version

00:06:11   of this show that is definitely past its prime.

00:06:15   But certainly Adam really enjoyed it actually.

00:06:18   He said he really liked this show.

00:06:20   I don't know how often we're gonna use it.

00:06:21   I think we're gonna save it only for sick days,

00:06:23   but I'm probably not gonna spend 10 bucks a month on it,

00:06:26   but we'll see.

00:06:27   - Does he, this may be like the first

00:06:29   traditional game show he's seen,

00:06:30   so it could be just the novelty of,

00:06:32   this is interesting, a television show

00:06:33   where they play a game, hmm.

00:06:35   - Yeah, and certainly I think the attitude

00:06:37   of the contestants on The Price is Right is very fun.

00:06:40   It's like, you know, 'cause it's so kind of like,

00:06:43   woo, party, like everyone's so like over the top happy

00:06:47   to get up there and everything.

00:06:48   So I think that part of it's fun, even though,

00:06:51   like, you know, he doesn't know what things cost,

00:06:53   'cause he's a kid, you know.

00:06:54   Kids don't have to buy stuff in grocery stores,

00:06:55   so he doesn't know how much laundry description costs,

00:06:57   you know, but it was still kind of a fun experience,

00:06:59   and he really enjoyed it.

00:07:01   - So one of my crowning achievements in life,

00:07:03   which should really explain a lot about,

00:07:05   well, everything about me, was I was watching,

00:07:08   I think as a young adult, I was watching Price is Right,

00:07:10   And as you do, you shout out your own guesses for everything,

00:07:14   for whatever the row of four,

00:07:16   I forget what the term is for that,

00:07:18   and particularly when they do the showcases

00:07:19   at the end of the show.

00:07:20   And by pure circumstance, I guessed whatever,

00:07:23   let's call it $18,143, or whatever it was.

00:07:28   - Did you win both showcases?

00:07:29   - And the contestant guessed $18,143.

00:07:33   - What? - And I'll be darned,

00:07:35   or I'm sure it wasn't that specific,

00:07:37   but just for the sake of discussion.

00:07:38   - But you had the same guess to the dollar?

00:07:39   I had the same guess to the dollar.

00:07:41   It was probably like $18,500 or something like that,

00:07:43   whatever, the point is I had the same guess to the dollar.

00:07:46   And they won both showcases.

00:07:49   So I clearly won both showcases.

00:07:53   That is one of my crowning achievements in life.

00:07:55   It doesn't get better than that.

00:07:56   - So you deserve the bedroom set and the motorhome.

00:07:58   - And the motorhome and the trip to Paris.

00:08:01   All of the above.

00:08:03   If you'll permit me, if you gentlemen could open

00:08:06   a web browser and type the following URL,

00:08:08   which is both extremely cool and extremely clunky

00:08:11   all at once.

00:08:12   The URL is as follows.

00:08:13   Try .appletvapp.apple/channels.

00:08:18   - What the? - Which I think

00:08:20   is the land, right?

00:08:22   Which I think is the landing page

00:08:23   for what you're talking about.

00:08:24   Isn't that such a weird URL?

00:08:26   - I didn't even know .apple was a TLD.

00:08:27   When did that start? - Neither did I.

00:08:29   I don't know, but here we are.

00:08:31   - Can we get .ATP?

00:08:33   - Maybe.

00:08:34   I'm sure if we paid a billion dollars.

00:08:36   So, ATP.FM/join.

00:08:38   - Remember the dot sucks TLD, did that ever go anywhere?

00:08:41   - I don't know.

00:08:42   Can you imagine if we had HTTP colon slash slash join dot ATP

00:08:47   that would be pretty cool.

00:08:49   I would like that.

00:08:50   - I'm confused people with different URLs Casey.

00:08:52   All the wood behind one arrow here.

00:08:54   - ATP FM slash join.

00:08:56   - See I said ahead and remember this channel's things

00:08:58   but I subscribe to a whole bunch of these little circles

00:09:00   that are on this page.

00:09:01   I just never look at them.

00:09:02   I never look at them through the TV app.

00:09:04   I use their individual apps which are of varying quality

00:09:07   but at least each time it's like rolling the dice,

00:09:10   you might get lucky and one of them

00:09:11   might have a good interface.

00:09:13   With Apple TV, it's kind of a known quantity

00:09:15   that still makes me scroll through an extremely long list

00:09:19   of languages every time I wanna turn subtitles on and off.

00:09:22   (laughing)

00:09:23   - That is annoying. - Not that you're upset.

00:09:25   - So angry.

00:09:26   So I'm watching shows, especially I'm watching

00:09:28   Slow Horses now, which is like a British show,

00:09:30   people doing British accents and everything,

00:09:32   and sometimes you can't understand

00:09:33   'cause their accent's real thick.

00:09:34   And I just, I don't want the subtitles on all the time

00:09:36   'cause I'm not that type of person, I find it distracting.

00:09:39   But when somebody says something, I'm like,

00:09:40   ah, and you know, why don't you just use the remote

00:09:42   and say, what did he say?

00:09:43   Well, I'm watching on my iPad and there's no remote

00:09:45   and I can't talk to Siri when I'm bed next to my wife,

00:09:47   she's trying to sleep.

00:09:48   So I gotta hit pause, go to the menu,

00:09:51   scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll,

00:09:53   English, not English CC and not auto-recommended,

00:09:56   but English, and then tap outside the thing

00:09:58   to dismiss the menu, then back five seconds, then play.

00:10:01   All right, subtitle, subtitle, okay, that's what he said.

00:10:04   Pause, subtitles, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, off.

00:10:07   (laughing)

00:10:08   It's so bad, I just, I don't understand.

00:10:11   And meanwhile, I'm looking at a giant iPad screen

00:10:14   with so much empty space on it for a million controls,

00:10:17   and that's how I have to turn subtitles on and off.

00:10:19   Anyway, that's, see, previous episodes for that rant.

00:10:22   - Well, try channels, it's actually pretty decent.

00:10:24   Like, as you mentioned, it does put it all

00:10:26   in the okay Apple TV interface,

00:10:28   but at least it's the okay interface you know.

00:10:29   - That is, I'm saying Slow Horse is an Apple TV+ show,

00:10:32   that is in the Apple TV interface.

00:10:34   - Oh yeah, well.

00:10:35   - Yeah, so that's why I tried the other apps.

00:10:36   I think maybe some of them are, you know,

00:10:38   have a chance of being better.

00:10:39   - Yeah, but I mean, how good are those chances?

00:10:42   - So a lot of them do actually have either a subtitle button

00:10:45   or at the very least they, you know,

00:10:46   they sort English to the top of the subtitle menu

00:10:49   or like, I mean, there's so many things they could do here.

00:10:52   Maybe the last language I picked

00:10:53   is the one I'm likely to pick again

00:10:54   when I enable and disable subtitles, imagine that.

00:10:56   Or maybe the language of the OS is in,

00:10:58   is it the language I'm likely to pick?

00:11:00   But no, how about an alphabetical list

00:11:01   every language in the world. Oh God, sorry everyone I set them off. Well I'm sorry and

00:11:06   you're welcome. We had a little bit of feedback from Matthias Korhonen who wrote with regard

00:11:15   to what I called Medusa cables or I think the official term is power over Ethernet splitters.

00:11:20   Matthias writes improper use can apparently lead to damaged equipment. The important takeaway

00:11:24   is that most PoE splitters are intended to be used with devices like security cameras

00:11:28   that don't have any other gear plugged into them.

00:11:29   This is due to the lack of galvanic,

00:11:32   galvanic, whatever, isolation for the DC output.

00:11:35   To be safe, it's best to only buy PoE splitters

00:11:38   from reputable companies that are explicitly advertised

00:11:41   as being isolated.

00:11:42   Personally, I went for a splitter

00:11:43   from the German brand Digitas,

00:11:45   but I'm not sure if those are available in the US.

00:11:47   I'm sure you'll be amused to learn that Digitas

00:11:49   is owned by the wonderfully named Assman Group.

00:11:52   - I was very amused to learn this, for the record.

00:11:54   - And I was very amused to learn this,

00:11:57   because I am a child.

00:11:58   - Butts are always funny.

00:12:00   - We need to move into the pro fiber propaganda section

00:12:03   of the program.

00:12:05   Adam Papamarcos writes, "I ran fiber for two main reasons,

00:12:08   "faster speeds and less interference."

00:12:10   - Oh, that kind of fiber.

00:12:11   Sorry, I just--

00:12:12   (laughing)

00:12:13   It was right after the joke, come on.

00:12:16   - To keep you regular, just ask the ass man.

00:12:18   (laughing)

00:12:21   - Oh my gosh, now I've just been railroaded

00:12:24   right out of here.

00:12:25   Let me try this again, okay.

00:12:26   So Adam, we're a mess.

00:12:31   We're an absolute mess.

00:12:32   Uh, I ran fiber for two main reasons that at Adam faster speeds and less

00:12:36   interference that I wanted this set up to be future proof.

00:12:38   So I only need to open the walls once interference was less of a factor, but

00:12:41   having tight groups of cable runs or running gear near electrical lines

00:12:44   inside walls can cause interference.

00:12:45   I like the idea that pulses of light running through fiber

00:12:48   optics is not susceptible to EMI.

00:12:50   In some ways running the fiber was actually easier than ethernet, a cat

00:12:54   6a, even the unshielded riser stuff that I got is pretty thick. By contrast, the fiber is quite

00:12:59   small and flexible, isn't very expensive, and seems to be fairly robust. Later on, Adam added,

00:13:04   after a couple emails back and forth, the OM4 fiber cable that I used is advertised as quote

00:13:08   "bend insensitive" quote and specifies that a minimum bend radius of seven and a half

00:13:13   millimeters or three tenths of an inch. There's also specs for 20d or diameter for dynamic or

00:13:19   under tension as in while it's being pulled and 10D for static or after installation. So even using

00:13:25   the worst case of 20D for this two millimeter diameter cable that's only 40 millimeters or

00:13:30   an inch and a half or 20 millimeters or a little under an inch of bend after installation. So I

00:13:37   think that's pretty reasonable for 90 degree bend and I didn't really worry about it at all. So in

00:13:41   other words you can bend fiber a lot more than even I thought you could as it turns out which

00:13:46   which was surprising.

00:13:47   - Can I just interject here for a moment

00:13:48   based on the section in the follow-up I hear.

00:13:50   This is the pro-fiber propaganda section.

00:13:53   - Yeah.

00:13:54   - I've got a few more items to have.

00:13:54   I noticed I don't see an anti-fiber propaganda segment,

00:13:57   but I, I mean, I didn't,

00:13:59   maybe I didn't read all of the feedback about this,

00:14:01   but I read a lot of it, and I have to say,

00:14:03   there was definitely a category of feedback

00:14:06   about this topic from people who had lots of experience

00:14:09   installing fiber optics that basically said,

00:14:10   "No way would I ever do this in a house."

00:14:12   And I noticed that is not represented in the follow-up.

00:14:14   Would you like to comment on that, Casey?

00:14:16   So moving right along Eli Block, no I'm kidding,

00:14:19   so here's the thing, all jokes and snark aside,

00:14:22   I really don't know what I'm gonna end up doing

00:14:25   and what I'd like to do and what I have started doing

00:14:28   and unfortunately I've just had a really busy week

00:14:30   so I haven't had the time to finish this homework assignment

00:14:33   but what I'm going to do,

00:14:34   and I don't think I brought this up last week,

00:14:35   is I'm going to build basically a bill of materials

00:14:38   or a best case guess of literally what do I need to buy

00:14:42   to do a full fiber installation where I'm running fiber

00:14:44   all the way to a room.

00:14:46   What do I need to buy for a like hybrid installation where I'm running fiber into the crawl space and into the attic and then

00:14:52   You know maybe cat six or something after that and then what do I need to buy in order to do just a plain vanilla?

00:14:57   cat six installation no fiber whatsoever and I've started down this path with the full fiber like 10 gigabit where I can

00:15:05   absolutely absurd Marco style installation and

00:15:09   It's already getting way more expensive than I'm comfortable with but I want to come up with an actual number because as much as I'm waving

00:15:15   my arms in the air saying "oh it's not gonna be that expensive sure" and you guys are saying "oh

00:15:19   oh it's gonna be your fortune you're ridiculous" well which one the only way to figure out which

00:15:22   one of us is right is to actually do the homework and I am working on it but I haven't finished it

00:15:26   yet and so hopefully once WWDC stuff settles down in a month I'll finally find the time

00:15:34   yeah right yeah I'll find oh god help me if there's a Mac Pro um and so in a month if there's

00:15:39   no Mac Pro in 12 months if there is a Mac Pro, then I really will probably put on Google

00:15:44   Sheets like here's what I think is my bill of materials for full 10 gig fiber for 1 gig

00:15:51   fiber where I'm simply future-proofing and I'm not trying to get anything fancy today,

00:15:56   and then what if I do just Cat6? And I do plan to disclose whatever, even if the answer

00:16:01   is that fiber's 8x. I think that's useful to know. It's useful for me to know and it's

00:16:06   and it's useful for listeners to know.

00:16:07   So I will come back.

00:16:10   I think so.

00:16:11   Maybe it's just me.

00:16:13   But even if I quote unquote lose, I don't care.

00:16:16   Then I know, at least I know the answer.

00:16:17   And I'll talk about it on the show when the time comes.

00:16:20   And I'll share the spreadsheets when I'm ready.

00:16:22   But I'm nowhere near that point.

00:16:24   So yeah, so moving right along, Eli Block writes,

00:16:26   take my word for it as someone who runs a network

00:16:28   on a 200 acre property, totally what I'm doing

00:16:30   on my one third of an acre,

00:16:31   who is doing exactly what you're proposing

00:16:33   with fiber backbone.

00:16:34   Go for the fiber wherever possible.

00:16:35   Copper 10 gigabit is a abomination.

00:16:38   Let's just leave it at that.

00:16:39   When it comes to heat and power consumption,

00:16:42   you wanna use copper absolutely nowhere

00:16:44   once you see how much power it consumes

00:16:45   and how much heat it throws off.

00:16:47   And then back to Adam from before,

00:16:49   Adam writes, "I was very much in your shoes.

00:16:51   I felt this was a good learning experience

00:16:52   and I knew very little about fiber going into it

00:16:54   and I just wanted to future proof things.

00:16:55   At least that's how I justified it to myself."

00:16:57   And then finally, the piece de resistance, Greg writes,

00:17:01   "If Marco was allowed to over-specify

00:17:03   almost every technology problem, why not you?

00:17:06   - That's a fair point. - Marco doesn't overspecify.

00:17:09   Is he trying to say, Marco buys fancier,

00:17:13   more expensive stuff than he needs

00:17:14   to solve all his tech problems?

00:17:16   Is that what overspecify is trying to say?

00:17:17   - I'm pretty sure Marco didn't need most of the Mac Pros

00:17:21   in your life, you probably don't need the XDR.

00:17:24   I mean, you probably need two laptops.

00:17:26   - But I'm quibbling with the phrasing overspecify,

00:17:29   because the spec in when you spec something

00:17:31   stands for specifications, as in the attributes of the thing

00:17:34   that you're buying, right?

00:17:35   And so if the specifications of the stuff

00:17:38   that Marco buys is excessive, like their specifications are

00:17:42   too high for what he needs, that kind of makes sense.

00:17:45   Sorry, Greg, to pick at your wording here.

00:17:47   But overspecify sounds more like Marco knows precisely

00:17:51   every fastener and cable tie and cable and product

00:17:57   down to the SKU that he needs to get for a thing.

00:18:00   and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

00:18:02   - I would also like to point out,

00:18:02   in the realm of what Greg meant here,

00:18:06   Jon is talking to you from a Mac Pro.

00:18:09   (laughing)

00:18:10   - With an XDR. - With an XDR.

00:18:12   And I'm not.

00:18:13   (laughing)

00:18:15   - 10 years of, what do you call it,

00:18:17   10 years of equity in my previous Mac Pro.

00:18:19   - Yeah, right, right.

00:18:20   - Yeah, fair. - In the defense--

00:18:21   - It averages out, it's just really lumpy.

00:18:24   Yell at me again when I replace this thing

00:18:26   when it's three years old,

00:18:27   then you'll have a stronger argument.

00:18:29   [LAUGHS]

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00:20:07   - Ad blockers on desktops.

00:20:12   This is, John, you had made a kind of in passing remark

00:20:15   that you don't run an ad blocker on your desktops

00:20:18   because you don't seem to think it's really worth it.

00:20:20   You don't need to worry about power savings, et cetera.

00:20:22   And so we got some feedback about this from Ryan.

00:20:25   I cut a lot of context, but the short short of it

00:20:27   is that Ryan's parents were running like a 2014 Mac mini

00:20:30   with a spinning hard disk, which was fine

00:20:32   until suddenly their internet speed increased

00:20:35   and then web pages seemed to get really bloated.

00:20:37   So now this is Ryan's words,

00:20:40   "Since then I've been running ad blockers on all my Macs

00:20:42   "with similar system resource usage improvements

00:20:45   "and my web experience is so much more pleasant

00:20:48   "and cooler on my i9 MacBook Pro that it's hard to describe

00:20:50   "other than to say that anytime they get turned off

00:20:53   "or fail in some way, browsing the web

00:20:54   is like being repeatedly hit in the face with a dead catfish. I'm not opposed to

00:20:57   ads in principle, you gotta pay the bills somehow, but as long as the

00:21:01   implementations are such power-hungry, privacy-consuming beasts, I have no qualms

00:21:04   about blocking everyone that I can. P.S. I have actually been hit in the face with

00:21:09   a dead catfish, I'm from the south, so I know of whence I speak.

00:21:12   I like being hit in the face with a live catfish. There's a little bit of extra thrash in the live catfish.

00:21:20   So anyway, I think that was worth it just for the postscript, but nevertheless I thought that was an

00:21:23   - That's an interesting point.

00:21:24   And also, I thought it was fascinating,

00:21:26   and I don't think Ryan was trying to say this was factual,

00:21:29   it was just his anecdotal data,

00:21:30   but to say that suddenly when the internet speed

00:21:34   went way up, so did all of the bloat in these web pages,

00:21:37   that seems like that shouldn't be something

00:21:40   that a web server should know.

00:21:41   I mean, I haven't done real web development in a long time,

00:21:43   so maybe they do, but I thought that was fascinating.

00:21:45   - You can time the download to see what the bandwidth

00:21:48   you're getting in the connection

00:21:49   and choose which resources to load based on that,

00:21:51   But who knows, I mean a 2014 Mac Mini

00:21:54   with a spinning hard disk is a tough situation.

00:21:56   Like I was saying, I ran an ad blocker on my phone

00:21:58   to try to like preserve the scarce resources there,

00:22:01   but I'm pretty sure every phone I've had for many years

00:22:03   has been faster than a 2014 Mac Mini

00:22:05   with a spinning hard drive.

00:22:05   So by all means, yes, if you have limited computing

00:22:09   and storage resources, an ad blocker is a good way

00:22:12   to optimize the usage of those things.

00:22:15   - Indeed.

00:22:16   With regard to sign in with X, you know,

00:22:18   sign in with Apple, sign in with Google, whatever,

00:22:19   from Brian Donovan, "Like you, I choose email and password

00:22:23   "for 99% of the time.

00:22:24   "However, my small employer recommends that for work stuff

00:22:27   "we use sign in with Google.

00:22:28   "This is primarily because we're required to use 2FA

00:22:31   "with our work Google accounts,

00:22:33   "and that's likely a stronger protection

00:22:34   "than whatever the site we're logging into offers."

00:22:36   I thought that was a very interesting point

00:22:37   that I hadn't considered.

00:22:39   - Yeah, I mean, most people just don't wanna have to think

00:22:41   of another password or whatever,

00:22:42   but if you're gonna sign in with something,

00:22:45   Google has pretty good security on its stuff.

00:22:47   All right, with regard to the bespoke app

00:22:50   for listening to concerts, which was in Ask ATP last week,

00:22:54   Jonathan Deco writes, "In Apple Music on the Mac,

00:22:57   "if you get info on the song or concert,

00:22:59   "there's a checkbox to 'Remember playback position.'

00:23:02   "This option syncs to the phone

00:23:03   "so you can play another song, such as 'Baby Shark,'

00:23:05   "and then go back to the concert

00:23:06   "and pick up where you left off."

00:23:07   I didn't try this for myself, but that's very cool.

00:23:10   I did not know that was a thing.

00:23:11   - I didn't mention it on the previous episode.

00:23:12   I thought everybody knew about this,

00:23:13   but that's how podcasts work.

00:23:15   That's why podcasts remember their position,

00:23:16   It's not just because they're like, you know set to like media type podcast or whatever remember play acquisition

00:23:21   It's been a boolean setting and iTunes since the day and I didn't since it was called iTunes

00:23:25   But I feel like this is not really a solution to the problem as posed last time because as Marco pointed out

00:23:31   It doesn't help you when you sit down for work

00:23:34   The next day and you launch the music app and it has no idea what you were doing the last time you're running the music

00:23:39   App so yeah, maybe the playback position is remembered within the track you were going

00:23:43   but what track are we listening to?

00:23:44   In what album?

00:23:45   In what concert?

00:23:46   Music doesn't know and it's not telling you.

00:23:48   That's the problem.

00:23:49   The problem is not like remembering playback position

00:23:51   within a single song.

00:23:52   It's remembering what I was doing period,

00:23:55   like sort of state restoration, big picture,

00:23:57   not small picture.

00:23:58   And the other thing I'll warn about the

00:24:00   remember playback position,

00:24:01   I mean, maybe if you carefully said it only

00:24:04   on the things that are songs and albums,

00:24:06   but depending on how savvy the implementation

00:24:09   of your player is, you could find yourself, you know,

00:24:12   skimming around or scrubbing around for things,

00:24:14   or you listen to a few seconds of something

00:24:16   and skip to the next track,

00:24:17   then the next time it plays that previous one,

00:24:19   it's gonna start from five seconds into the song,

00:24:21   'cause it's trying to remember playback position,

00:24:23   and that might catch you off guard.

00:24:24   Like if it's a month later,

00:24:26   it will still remember that playback position,

00:24:28   and so you, like, you're basically leaving a trail

00:24:31   of state behind you as you jump through the songs,

00:24:34   whether you're doing it manually

00:24:35   or just forgetting to hit next track in the car

00:24:37   'cause you're distracted by traffic or something, right?

00:24:39   That has now saved, oh, you're three seconds into the song.

00:24:42   So the next time that song comes up on shuffle or something,

00:24:44   it starts in three seconds in.

00:24:45   I don't think it's actually,

00:24:46   I think there is like a buffer of like,

00:24:47   it doesn't save the player 'cause until you've got

00:24:49   a certain distance in and same thing with being near the end

00:24:52   but it really depends on the smarts of the player app

00:24:55   you're using to implement a feature like that

00:24:57   in a way that's not annoying.

00:24:59   - We also got some very interesting feedback from Amber

00:25:02   and this was with regard to the Apple Fitness Plus

00:25:05   behind the scenes videos.

00:25:07   This is a little bit long but I found this riveting

00:25:09   and we actually cut down quite a bit

00:25:11   And all of it was riveting, but we're giving you the

00:25:12   riveting parts of the riveting parts.

00:25:14   So here we go.

00:25:15   Amber writes, John was curious about the white markings on a

00:25:18   few of the control room screens.

00:25:19   Yes, some of that appears to be action-safe

00:25:21   HDTV framing guides.

00:25:23   Which are closer to the edges than title-safe that you'd

00:25:25   use to contain text.

00:25:27   And yes, it is kind of silly to think about that much

00:25:29   overscan on HDTVs.

00:25:30   Old habits never die.

00:25:32   But the interesting one is the two gutters on the

00:25:35   right and the left.

00:25:36   To my eye, those look like pretty typical 4 by 3 standard

00:25:39   definition action-safe markings.

00:25:41   Why would Apple have old-school 4x3 markings on a product that is almost exclusively viewed

00:25:45   on 16x9 screens?

00:25:47   Because Apple doesn't make multi-view systems, video switchers, and CG systems for live TV,

00:25:51   so they had to buy them from somewhere else.

00:25:53   That guide overlay could come from one of two places, either the switcher itself, as

00:25:56   you can see with the little purple buttons being operated by the technical director or

00:26:00   TD, the person in the front row on the far right at about 40 seconds of the KCAU clip,

00:26:05   or from the multi-view system.

00:26:07   In most modern video switchers, you can have the option to turn on those overscan guidelines

00:26:11   in your preview window to make sure that the upcoming shot is well framed and any potential

00:26:14   graphics are safe.

00:26:15   In most switchers I've encountered, they're either all or nothing.

00:26:18   So if the switcher manufacturer thinks, "We think you'll need 4x3 safe guides!" then you're

00:26:22   getting 4x3 safe guides when you turn guides on.

00:26:25   The other place that those overlays could come from is a multiview system which looks

00:26:29   like they're using it Fitness Plus.

00:26:32   And yes, you guessed it, most multiview systems I've worked with also have a stock set of

00:26:36   these guide overlays that you can put on any virtual screen you want.

00:26:40   And despite all the customizations elsewhere in the system, you usually can't customize

00:26:43   which specific overlay guides you want.

00:26:46   In the MultiView Hardware manufacturer, if the MultiView Hardware manufacturer thinks

00:26:49   you need 4x3 in your overlays, your overlays will have 4x3.

00:26:51   Also, why would you have a live control room for a show that isn't even necessarily live,

00:26:55   but always just on demand?

00:26:56   Because it massively cuts down on post-production staff time.

00:26:59   If they have a good clean show, they can just trim the beginning and end from the output

00:27:02   program recording feed and send it out.

00:27:04   If they need to fix a mistake, they're probably recording each camera individually so an editor

00:27:08   can go in with synced time codes and fix a technical mistake in a matter of minutes and

00:27:12   send it out.

00:27:13   The alternative would be recording all the cameras individually and spending hours in

00:27:18   an edit room, splicing it all together with the camera cuts and the graphics and whatnot.

00:27:22   That gets expensive quickly, more expensive over the long term than the initial build

00:27:26   costs of the control room.

00:27:27   I thought that was absolutely fascinating.

00:27:29   I didn't even think of the idea that why the heck do they have a control room for a show

00:27:33   that's not live.

00:27:34   Obviously, it's not like Peloton where people are watching people, if you don't know how

00:27:38   fitness plus works, it's not like you're seeing the person live, they pre-record them and

00:27:42   then distribute them that way.

00:27:44   But as a cost-saving way, you think it would cost more to have a room full of people saying,

00:27:51   "Ready one, take one," and doing all the things and doing all the control and have all the

00:27:53   stuff, but apparently that's more cost-effective than getting all the raw material and dumping

00:27:58   on the head of a bunch of editors and having them slice things together.

00:28:01   I guess it's like essentially the skill set

00:28:04   of cutting together a live show in real time,

00:28:06   which is a skill set that has been developed

00:28:08   over many decades for people who do this for a living

00:28:10   for live events, sports, awards shows,

00:28:14   everything you possibly imagine that's live,

00:28:15   like that skill set that a lot of people have.

00:28:18   It's kind of like, I don't know,

00:28:19   I can't think of an equivalent.

00:28:20   Like we think of everything with computers

00:28:23   as being like offline, right?

00:28:24   You get the materials and you use a computer

00:28:26   to sort of munch them together,

00:28:27   but sort of, it's like doing that as a performance.

00:28:29   Those people in those room are,

00:28:30   they are doing their own performance,

00:28:31   or they're building the performance

00:28:33   from the raw materials in real time.

00:28:35   And it's kind of like a, I don't know,

00:28:37   it's like a high wire act where,

00:28:39   yeah, we could wait until later and do it.

00:28:41   But if we try to do it in real time,

00:28:43   it's, you know, we have people who have been trained

00:28:45   to know how to do that, and we can use those skills now,

00:28:48   even though this is not like a live sporting event

00:28:50   or a live award show.

00:28:52   The other thing I thought was funny about this

00:28:53   is that Apple is forced to use software

00:28:56   that doesn't have the settings that they want, right?

00:28:59   'cause they absolutely don't.

00:29:01   Apple Fitness is never being viewed on 4x3 screens.

00:29:03   It's not made for that whatsoever,

00:29:05   but it's like, oh, I guess you can't.

00:29:07   It would be nice if you had a setting to turn that off,

00:29:09   wouldn't it, Apple?

00:29:10   But sorry, you get the 4x3 gutters

00:29:12   whether you like it or not.

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00:31:04   Thanks so much to Memberful for sponsoring our show.

00:31:06   - John, tell me about Fido.

00:31:12   - This is a story from, I don't know,

00:31:14   back in early May sometime,

00:31:16   and it is actually referencing a technology

00:31:18   that was described at WWC 2001,

00:31:22   almost exactly a year ago as we're recording this.

00:31:25   They don't have session numbers anymore,

00:31:26   but the session name was from WWDC 2021

00:31:29   and it was move beyond passwords.

00:31:31   I think we talked about it at the time,

00:31:33   but if you're not familiar,

00:31:35   you can still find it on developer.apple.com.

00:31:37   I believe it is freely available to everybody.

00:31:38   I don't think you even have to have a developer account.

00:31:41   We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:31:42   I do wonder if the number in the URL,

00:31:44   is that the session number?

00:31:45   It's developer.apple.com/WWDC21/10106.

00:31:49   - I think it might be.

00:31:51   - This used to be three digit numbers.

00:31:53   I don't understand.

00:31:53   - That's true.

00:31:54   - It's a weird new world.

00:31:55   Anyway, it's about trying to move beyond passwords, right?

00:32:00   Which is something that people have attempted

00:32:03   for a long time.

00:32:04   The presentation kind of goes through it

00:32:06   from first principle saying, you know,

00:32:08   well, if you make people pick passwords,

00:32:10   they can't think of good passwords if they reuse passwords.

00:32:13   So they can use a password manager, which helps,

00:32:16   but not all your passwords are in one basket

00:32:18   and you gotta make sure the password manager works well.

00:32:22   And it's hard to recover them

00:32:23   if you lose your one password to one password,

00:32:24   you know, anyway.

00:32:25   And then we have passwords plus one-time passwords,

00:32:28   the two-factor thing and security keys,

00:32:31   which probably most people listening

00:32:32   don't even know what that is,

00:32:33   but it's like a literal hardware device,

00:32:35   like a little USB thingy that has some other secret on it.

00:32:39   So in addition to you being the person

00:32:41   who knows your username and password,

00:32:42   you also have this little hardware dongle that you shove in

00:32:45   and it does a thing.

00:32:46   And then there's the thing they're proposing here,

00:32:48   which they called in the session,

00:32:50   pass keys and iCloud key chain.

00:32:51   We all know passwords suck.

00:32:54   Like everyone we've talked about even on the show,

00:32:56   picking username sucks and picking password sucks.

00:32:58   So it's why we use password managers.

00:33:00   If you're good with password hygiene,

00:33:01   you know not to use the same password in multiple places,

00:33:04   but it's hard to pick good passwords.

00:33:06   And if you pick really good passwords,

00:33:07   there's no way you're gonna remember them.

00:33:08   So now you need a password manager,

00:33:09   but you gotta be careful with that.

00:33:11   It's a hassle and it's terrible.

00:33:13   And there's just too many things to sign up for,

00:33:16   too many places to use passwords.

00:33:18   So Marco is trying to use one password

00:33:20   in iCloud Keychain at the same time.

00:33:22   I kind of have a bit of a problem

00:33:23   because I'm using Chrome and Safari everywhere,

00:33:26   at least on my Macs.

00:33:27   And of course Safari does everything in iCloud Keychain,

00:33:29   but Chrome has its own thing.

00:33:31   So now I have to remember,

00:33:32   first I certainly don't know any of my passwords, right?

00:33:35   So when I sign into something, I have to remember,

00:33:37   did I originally sign into that in Chrome or in Safari?

00:33:41   So since passwords suck,

00:33:43   what can we do that is better than passwords?

00:33:46   And a lot of people have had ideas,

00:33:48   but most of those ideas have a problem in that,

00:33:51   like passwords for all their faults

00:33:54   work pretty much everywhere.

00:33:56   You're on your phone, you're on somebody else's phone,

00:33:58   you're on your computer, you're on someone else's computer.

00:34:00   We can put a text box on a webpage,

00:34:02   we can put a text box in an app,

00:34:03   you can type in an email address and a password,

00:34:07   and you can get in.

00:34:08   And they push all the details of that

00:34:10   under the covers of the user, right?

00:34:11   It's like, oh, well, just type stuff in these text boxes.

00:34:13   Problem solved, it works everywhere,

00:34:15   it's completely cross-platform.

00:34:16   Okay, but what do I type in the password box?

00:34:18   Oh, you type your password there.

00:34:19   And it's like, then we're back to where we were before.

00:34:21   Oh, but picking passwords is hard,

00:34:22   and I have a good password, I can't remember it,

00:34:24   and there's too many to memorize anyways,

00:34:25   and I don't need a password manager.

00:34:27   So this whole like, passwords work everywhere.

00:34:30   So nothing can ever displace them.

00:34:32   It's not really true, because if you use them the right way,

00:34:34   passwords don't work everywhere,

00:34:35   because if you don't have access to your one password stuff,

00:34:37   if you're over someone's house,

00:34:39   and I mean, I suppose if you don't have your phone with you

00:34:41   or, you know, if you're in any other situation

00:34:43   where you don't have access to your passwords,

00:34:45   it's hard to be able to log in, right?

00:34:48   So if you try to just match that, like say, okay,

00:34:50   let's not just assume that like we have to be the type

00:34:52   of thing where you can log in anywhere,

00:34:53   'cause that's not, that hasn't been true in ages.

00:34:55   Like maybe that was true back when we had three accounts

00:34:57   and we all had those three passwords memorized,

00:34:59   but it's no longer true.

00:35:00   If we just need to be able to log in where we have access

00:35:02   to one of our devices, the problem gets a little bit easier.

00:35:05   So the FIDO thing and this passkey is an iCloud keychain.

00:35:09   The FIDO thing is just an alliance of other companies

00:35:13   to try to be interoperable.

00:35:14   The idea is basically the same.

00:35:15   If you know anything about public key encryption,

00:35:17   it's very similar to that.

00:35:17   So rather than you tapping your password in a text box

00:35:20   and hitting a button and it's sending that password

00:35:23   across the internet, you know, over a TLS connection

00:35:26   or whatever, but still sending that password

00:35:27   over the internet to a server,

00:35:29   which then you hope does something reasonable with it

00:35:31   to see if it's the correct password,

00:35:32   you have a situation where with these, you know,

00:35:36   public encryption, you never have to send

00:35:38   your secret anywhere.

00:35:39   So your secret is safe on your local computer

00:35:41   and you give the, you know, you send your public key

00:35:44   over the internet and you give the server your public key

00:35:46   and then you sign something with your private key

00:35:48   and the way private public key encryption works is

00:35:50   you can sign something with your private key

00:35:51   and anybody with your public key can cryptographically prove

00:35:54   whether or not it was signed with your private key

00:35:56   even though none of them know your private key.

00:35:58   That's not new technology, that's what PGP is based on

00:36:01   ages ago or whatever.

00:36:02   But this is sort of taking that technology

00:36:04   that's been around for a long time

00:36:05   and baking it into the operating system

00:36:07   and taking advantage of all the things

00:36:08   that our Apple devices specifically

00:36:11   have to make this very secure, right?

00:36:13   So if we take the system where we're not going to send

00:36:16   passwords to anybody, right?

00:36:17   We're just going to have a private key,

00:36:19   and it's literally never going to leave our device.

00:36:22   How can we make that even more secure?

00:36:24   Well, pretty much at this point, all of our devices,

00:36:26   if you buy like a current generation Apple product,

00:36:28   and even for several years back,

00:36:30   have really, really secure ways

00:36:32   to store stuff only on your device,

00:36:34   the secure enclave, right?

00:36:35   Where no programs can get it out.

00:36:37   In theory, it's very secure.

00:36:38   It's inside there.

00:36:39   That's where all the stuff is kept

00:36:40   for the decryption of your SSDs

00:36:42   and iCloud keychain and all sorts of other unlocking things.

00:36:45   Like the secure enclave is very secure.

00:36:48   We have biometrics to get into it, and we have passwords.

00:36:50   We have all these ways, you know, our face ID, touch ID,

00:36:54   all that stuff is tied into the secure enclave

00:36:56   and tied into the security of our individual devices.

00:36:59   We can use that existing security infrastructure

00:37:02   and all the authentication methods

00:37:03   that we decide to use for that,

00:37:05   whether you decide to configure face ID with or without masks,

00:37:08   with or without attention, touch ID, passcode, you know,

00:37:11   So it's like whatever we decide is the security,

00:37:14   you know, setup for our device,

00:37:16   that can also be the thing that logs us in everywhere.

00:37:19   And from there, we'll just use public key encryption

00:37:21   where the private key will be in the secure enclave,

00:37:23   protected by all those normal things

00:37:25   that we protect our stuff with.

00:37:26   And the public key will be used to send over the internet

00:37:30   to services, which will then verify

00:37:31   that we're allowed to log in, all that stuff.

00:37:33   Never have to pick a password,

00:37:34   never have to hopefully pick a username or anything like that

00:37:38   is all just completely secure.

00:37:41   And you're thinking, well, when I send my password

00:37:44   over the internet, it's not like, you know,

00:37:46   that end is getting hashed anyway.

00:37:48   It's not like they're storing my password.

00:37:49   They're just hashing it and then comparing it

00:37:50   to a hash they have or whatever.

00:37:52   Yeah, that's how it's supposed to work.

00:37:54   But you are literally sending your password

00:37:57   over the internet to the server and you will be shocked,

00:37:59   or maybe not shocked depending on how much

00:38:01   you've been involved in this,

00:38:02   how many servers decide to just take your password

00:38:04   and store it in plain text in a database,

00:38:06   which then gets breached.

00:38:07   And now someone has thousands and thousands of passwords.

00:38:10   And you would think, well, maybe fly-by-night websites

00:38:13   have plain text passwords saved,

00:38:15   but surely nothing important or secure

00:38:17   like a bank or a healthcare company,

00:38:19   and you'd be wrong about that

00:38:21   because some of those have the worst security.

00:38:24   I mean, they're not supposed to,

00:38:25   and often there are laws dictating that they shouldn't,

00:38:28   but look at the history of data breaches

00:38:30   where you'll just be incredibly shocked

00:38:32   that a cybersecurity company or something

00:38:36   has plain text passwords stored.

00:38:38   It's still a problem.

00:38:39   The WDC video does a good job of going to this.

00:38:42   Having a system where trust is between you

00:38:46   and your hardware device,

00:38:47   and your trust is never between you and any random server

00:38:50   is way better because

00:38:51   there still has to be a trust relationship.

00:38:52   Like you trust Apple to securely implement all the things

00:38:54   that they implement on their devices,

00:38:56   and you trust them to defend their hardware and software

00:38:58   against hacks and bugs and so on and so forth.

00:39:00   But that's way better than having a trust relationship

00:39:02   with every single server that you log into,

00:39:05   and just hoping that none of them get breached.

00:39:08   And while it's nice that all of our web browsers

00:39:10   now have a thing that lets you know,

00:39:12   hey, there was a security breach

00:39:13   and we found one of your passwords in it.

00:39:15   I'm sure a lot of people here have gotten that message

00:39:17   and either Safari or Chrome, right?

00:39:19   Where it'll tell you when there's been a data breach, right?

00:39:22   But that's, I mean, that's kind of like, you know,

00:39:24   closing the barn door after the horse has left.

00:39:26   Well, you gave your passwords to a thousand websites

00:39:29   and some percentage of them were breached

00:39:30   and some percentage of them held their passwords

00:39:32   in plain text and you used,

00:39:34   passed your it a couple of times 'cause you were lazy.

00:39:36   And now just to let you know, FYI,

00:39:38   all these accounts are compromised,

00:39:39   so go in them and set up new passwords for them.

00:39:42   That's not a great experience.

00:39:43   It would be much better if we just had sort of one,

00:39:46   I'm not gonna say one password,

00:39:47   but one secure way to do things,

00:39:50   which is unlocking your phone

00:39:52   or signing into your Mac or whatever,

00:39:54   as protected to the degree that we feel comfortable with,

00:39:57   again, deciding which one of the authentication methods

00:39:59   you wanna use and how secure you wanna get.

00:40:00   Do you wanna have a four-digit passcode,

00:40:02   or do you wanna have a 20-digit passphrase?

00:40:04   Do you wanna use Face ID or not?

00:40:06   Do you wanna use Touch ID or not?

00:40:07   all that stuff, have that be sort of the linchpin

00:40:11   of security and have it work everywhere, right?

00:40:14   So your Macs can do that, your phones can do that,

00:40:16   your iPad can do that.

00:40:17   Yes, you have to have one of those devices with you then

00:40:20   to sign in, but it is, that's, like I said,

00:40:23   that's the same thing with our modern,

00:40:25   with best practices and modern passwords.

00:40:27   It's not like you have memorized

00:40:29   the extremely complicated password

00:40:31   to all the thousand sites you log into.

00:40:33   You probably only have one or two passwords memorized

00:40:35   if that, depending on how good you are with password hygiene.

00:40:39   And so in the WSC video, they show a little demo

00:40:41   of what this looks like with a demonstration app.

00:40:43   And it looks very similar to like sign in with Apple,

00:40:46   only it's not that.

00:40:47   You sign in by giving them an email address, a username,

00:40:51   or whatever you want to pick, and that's it.

00:40:53   There's no other step.

00:40:54   You're like, great.

00:40:55   You're signed in, because the device does the web auth,

00:41:00   public key passing back and forth, and authentication,

00:41:03   and all that other stuff.

00:41:04   When this session was made, one of the limitations of it

00:41:08   was like, OK, well, that's great,

00:41:09   but does that mean that each individual device needs

00:41:11   to register itself with the site?

00:41:13   And that used to be true in part of this Fido announcement

00:41:15   from earlier in May.

00:41:16   It was like, oh, they're going to add a system

00:41:19   to the specification that allows your credentials to be synced

00:41:23   among devices.

00:41:24   And so once you sign in with one device,

00:41:26   you're signed in with all devices,

00:41:28   sort of like what Apple does with iCloud keychain syncing.

00:41:31   And this is a consortium with Apple, Google, and Microsoft,

00:41:34   which I feel like is probably sufficient

00:41:36   to make this technology spread across most of the web

00:41:39   because with those three companies behind it,

00:41:41   everyone else will probably follow along.

00:41:44   And I think, you know, so sign in with Apple's great.

00:41:47   If you trust Apple, if you're super into Google,

00:41:49   sign in with Google's great.

00:41:50   No one should ever sign in with Facebook.

00:41:52   But anyway, the sign in with services,

00:41:55   I think people prefer those just because it's like,

00:41:57   oh, I don't have to remember another password.

00:41:58   But as we talked about last time,

00:41:59   now you're putting all your trust on this other party

00:42:02   that might not even care about you and your accounts.

00:42:05   There's a second party in the trust relationship.

00:42:11   Just having it be between you and your device,

00:42:13   and that's the only trust relationship,

00:42:14   well, you and your device and a device vendor,

00:42:17   is a lot simpler, and you've already chosen

00:42:19   that relationship by buying your device.

00:42:21   You don't have to then enter into another arrangement,

00:42:23   and remember, like we talked about in the Ask ADP question,

00:42:26   when I signed up for this service,

00:42:27   did I use sign in with Apple,

00:42:29   did I use sign in with Google,

00:42:30   or did I use a username and password, right?

00:42:31   - Mm-hmm.

00:42:33   - I think you'll probably still,

00:42:34   might still have to remember this,

00:42:35   but I think it'll probably try the web auth thing

00:42:38   if it exists at all, and then if not,

00:42:39   ask you for username and password.

00:42:41   Anyway, I would love for this to be a real thing

00:42:44   because I hate managing passwords.

00:42:45   Everybody hates managing passwords.

00:42:47   The security of this seems,

00:42:51   probably about equal to best practices now.

00:42:54   Like, I'm not gonna say it's like tons more secure.

00:42:57   I think the session goes a little bit overboard

00:43:00   and pitching on how much more secure this is.

00:43:02   It depends.

00:43:03   Like, it is equally secure as someone

00:43:07   using all of the best practices of password hygiene,

00:43:11   but nobody does that for every site.

00:43:12   So in practice, it's more secure,

00:43:14   because you don't have to do anything to get these benefits.

00:43:16   You just use it, and there's no way

00:43:18   not to get all of these benefits.

00:43:20   And you also get to use all of the sort of

00:43:24   password recovery flow stuff that's built into, like,

00:43:28   your device and your Apple ID and all that,

00:43:32   that stuff just has to be implemented once,

00:43:33   essentially, by your platform vendor.

00:43:35   And Apple's already implemented all of that.

00:43:36   There's so much stuff around your Apple ID password

00:43:41   and I forgot dot apple dot com and backup codes

00:43:44   and multi-factor authentication and biometrics

00:43:47   and all that stuff that already exists

00:43:48   and to be able to just leverage that to say,

00:43:50   once I've done that once, I can now sign up for,

00:43:53   sign into any service anywhere on the entire web

00:43:57   and the entire internet without ever having

00:43:58   to pick another password, that is the world I want to live in.

00:44:01   So I am totally rooting for this thing.

00:44:02   And I like the fact that there is a multi-company alliance

00:44:05   trying to make this happen.

00:44:06   And I really hope this year, WWC 2022,

00:44:08   there is another session about this.

00:44:11   In the move beyond password session,

00:44:14   they said at the end that this is the first step

00:44:17   in a multi-year effort to move beyond passwords.

00:44:20   And it was basically like, here's a bunch of APIs,

00:44:22   but they're all prototypes.

00:44:24   Maybe this year we'll have a more concrete set of APIs

00:44:26   that you're allowed to use in production,

00:44:28   and then maybe the year after that,

00:44:29   they'll sort of start rolling out the applications,

00:44:31   and then maybe the year after that,

00:44:32   we'll all be signing in everywhere

00:44:34   without ever having to pick another password.

00:44:36   - I hope so.

00:44:37   I mean, as somebody who has tried to get rid of passwords

00:44:40   on numerous occasions in numerous different ways,

00:44:43   every time I've done it,

00:44:47   I have learned about some shortcoming of my system

00:44:51   that just having passwords would solve.

00:44:54   Because we all think, again, this is one of those areas

00:44:58   where everyone thinks they have some idea

00:45:01   to get rid of passwords,

00:45:02   and it always contains the word just.

00:45:05   Why don't we just blank?

00:45:07   And that's a wonderful phrase that usually suggests

00:45:11   that the person does not understand

00:45:13   the full complexity of the problem.

00:45:15   And in reality, passwords, as you were saying earlier,

00:45:18   passwords actually have a lot of benefits

00:45:21   compared to a lot of these systems.

00:45:22   like for instance, once you get into the realm of having multiple people who might need access

00:45:31   to the password for something, many of these systems become much more complicated or break

00:45:36   down. Whereas one password is great. Earlier today, as within our family, we're multiple

00:45:42   people who often need to share passwords for something. And there was something that our

00:45:47   our kid had a password for that I had set up,

00:45:50   like just on my phone one day, I had set it up,

00:45:52   and so it was only in my one password vault,

00:45:56   which is like their data silo.

00:45:58   And I was able, and Tiff was asking for it,

00:46:00   and I was able to just go on my phone

00:46:02   and open up one password and move it

00:46:03   to our shared family vault, and then seconds later,

00:46:07   Tiff had it on her phone, and she could help Adam

00:46:09   set up his thing.

00:46:10   And once he's old enough to manage all this stuff himself,

00:46:13   we'll be able to just move all that stuff over to him.

00:46:15   And that becomes very easy.

00:46:17   When you have families or businesses,

00:46:19   any situation where multiple people

00:46:22   need to share a credential,

00:46:24   or you need to send it to somebody,

00:46:25   you look, I mean the three of us host on the show,

00:46:27   we have some shared social media accounts and stuff

00:46:30   that we all can log into.

00:46:32   And the way we've done that is we just,

00:46:35   one of us generates a crazy password

00:46:36   in our password manager,

00:46:38   and we just send it to the others in some secure way.

00:46:41   And then we can all log in then

00:46:43   for services that don't support

00:46:44   multiple user accounts for the same access thing or whatever.

00:46:47   So that's just, that's one of the many things where

00:46:50   passwords actually really help a lot.

00:46:55   And passwordless systems or systems move on

00:46:58   beyond passwords make a lot of that stuff more difficult.

00:47:01   And because of that, I think passwords are going

00:47:04   to stick around for longer than we think.

00:47:07   Because there's a reason they've stuck around this long

00:47:09   and it's not because they're great.

00:47:11   It's because they're really versatile

00:47:13   and they enable a bunch of use cases and kind of failsafes

00:47:17   that we end up actually using quite a lot in reality.

00:47:19   - I mean, the thing you described

00:47:22   of putting into a shared vault,

00:47:23   if Apple got its acts together and realized how families

00:47:26   work, you can imagine iCloud Keychain working exactly

00:47:29   the same way.

00:47:30   There would be a family iCloud Keychain because hey,

00:47:32   Apple already has an organization called a family

00:47:35   that has multiple members.

00:47:36   Apple knows about that.

00:47:37   It is a thing that exists.

00:47:38   It would be, you know, like it makes sense for them

00:47:41   to eventually expand iCloud Keychain to be family aware,

00:47:45   family savvy, I would say back in the system of seven days.

00:47:48   I hope they do photos first,

00:47:50   but still this is definitely a solvable problem

00:47:52   because like in the end,

00:47:54   like if you look at this from a programmer's perspective,

00:47:56   what's actually happening here is like, you know,

00:47:59   80s, when was PGP?

00:48:01   The 80s, the 90s, this is not super advanced technology.

00:48:04   Public key encryption has existed forever.

00:48:07   It's a great example of how somebody did some clever math

00:48:10   a long time ago and came up with the system

00:48:12   and it is very clever and has very good security

00:48:15   and sort of security that you can scale

00:48:16   to your level of comfort.

00:48:17   It's really neat, right?

00:48:18   So why don't we use it everywhere?

00:48:20   The reason it's not used everywhere

00:48:21   are the non-technical aspects.

00:48:24   How do I implement this in my operating system

00:48:26   in a secure way across all my devices?

00:48:28   How do I get it implemented across the entire industry?

00:48:30   How do I make all the websites or whatever

00:48:32   that I'm signing into implement this system

00:48:34   and building up the standards around this,

00:48:36   you know, I'm not gonna say very basic method,

00:48:38   building up the standards around

00:48:39   this well understood thing, public key encryption,

00:48:42   building that up and building the infrastructure

00:48:43   and making the web off an API

00:48:45   and making a JavaScript API for it

00:48:46   and building into web browsers and building into the OS

00:48:49   and having a secure enclave and everything.

00:48:51   It's taken us so long to get to the point

00:48:53   where we can assume that modern hardware,

00:48:55   phones, NPCs will have something on it,

00:48:58   whether it's the TPM module or the secure enclave

00:49:00   will have some way on it to securely store

00:49:03   private credentials that's not just like a file

00:49:05   on a disc or something like we have a way

00:49:07   to do that in devices finally.

00:49:09   and it seems like we're finally getting to the point

00:49:10   where we're gonna have the plumbing

00:49:12   in the operating system and the support for it

00:49:15   in the web browsers, and then it's just a matter

00:49:17   of getting the websites on board.

00:49:19   And I think websites will wanna get on board with this

00:49:21   in the same way they've got on board with the sign-in

00:49:23   with this, 'cause they're all about reducing friction.

00:49:25   If they can make it easier for you to sign up

00:49:27   for an account at their website

00:49:28   that makes fewer people run away screaming

00:49:30   when they say, "Oh, I have to make an account?

00:49:31   "Oh, nevermind," right?

00:49:33   If they don't have to go through that process,

00:49:35   if it's just literally like one click

00:49:37   with an auto-filled email address or something,

00:49:40   they're gonna wanna use it too.

00:49:41   So I feel like we're kind of finally getting

00:49:43   through critical mass, but that last little bit of like,

00:49:46   but what about the weird use cases, like a family Apple,

00:49:51   what are we gonna do then?

00:49:52   Passwords might be superior then.

00:49:54   It's like, just please just do the obvious thing

00:49:56   and make iCloud Keychain, you know, work with families

00:50:00   and have a family Keychain and share their credentials.

00:50:02   'Cause what are you sharing?

00:50:03   There's private keys and there's public keys.

00:50:06   and those are just little bits of information.

00:50:08   You can put them in text files.

00:50:09   It's, you know, as long as we have a secure place

00:50:11   to store them, you can have the private key be shared

00:50:14   among all members of a family.

00:50:15   And it's problem solved.

00:50:17   Like it's not rocket science.

00:50:19   It's not a huge amount of data.

00:50:20   It's not gigs and gigs of data.

00:50:21   It's not an unknowable, unsolvable problem.

00:50:23   But if they don't do that, you're right, Marco.

00:50:26   It's gonna be like, oh, well I don't,

00:50:27   well I signed up for this.

00:50:29   Like imagine if Netflix used this Fido,

00:50:32   you know, Pescis and iCloud keychain.

00:50:34   You sign up for Netflix and you're like,

00:50:35   And your wife's like, "Oh, I want to sign into Netflix."

00:50:37   Like, "Oh, well, I guess you have to sign out

00:50:41   of your account on your laptop

00:50:42   and sign into my account on your laptop

00:50:44   so you'll be signed in with my Apple ID

00:50:45   and then you can use my passkey."

00:50:47   And you're like, "Why don't you just give me the password?"

00:50:49   Well, there's not passwords anymore.

00:50:50   What do you mean there's not passwords?

00:50:51   Yeah, they use a different,

00:50:52   you don't want to have to have this conversation.

00:50:54   It's terrible, right?

00:50:55   And I know Netflix doesn't want you

00:50:56   to share passwords anyway, so maybe Netflix loves this.

00:50:58   But either way, like, if they just implement

00:51:01   iCloud Keychain, a family-shared iCloud Keychain,

00:51:04   you don't have to have this conversation.

00:51:06   You'll do exactly what you do with one password,

00:51:07   which is you drag it from your individual one

00:51:09   into the shared family one, done and done.

00:51:11   - Well, and that's if it works.

00:51:12   I mean, I think the password sharing example

00:51:15   is a really good window into the potential pitfalls of this.

00:51:19   In reality, we often design technology in a way

00:51:23   that is quickly defeated by post-it notes

00:51:27   and emailing files to ourselves

00:51:28   and other low-tech hacks that tons of people end up doing

00:51:33   because the cool, complicated thing that we developed

00:51:36   doesn't work well enough, or is too hard,

00:51:38   or has some kind of use case where it falls over

00:51:41   where the Post-it note wins.

00:51:43   And when trying to do something as lofty

00:51:46   as replacing passwords, we're gonna have to really

00:51:49   make sure it works really well, and is really easy,

00:51:53   and is really versatile.

00:51:55   And that's hard to do while maintaining security.

00:51:59   - I mean, that's why I think this multi-company alliance

00:52:01   gives it hope, because it's a standard,

00:52:03   It's not just Apple devices, not just Microsoft devices.

00:52:06   Apple, Google, Microsoft all do it.

00:52:08   People will get in line because they own--

00:52:11   what is Microsoft?

00:52:12   Anyway, Apple and Google own the two most important platforms,

00:52:15   right?

00:52:15   iOS and Android.

00:52:17   And Apple and Microsoft own the two most important desktop

00:52:20   platforms.

00:52:20   And that pretty much covers all of your bases.

00:52:23   If they implement all this stuff,

00:52:25   it's only a matter of time and polishing to get it to work.

00:52:28   And because it has to work across

00:52:29   all these different platforms, it

00:52:30   doesn't mean there's no room for innovation.

00:52:32   So if you look at the Apple things,

00:52:34   they're making APIs in their various OSs to do this.

00:52:36   And Apple chose to make the APIs such that you basically throw up

00:52:40   an authentication thing, and you give it

00:52:41   a list of possible authentication methods

00:52:43   that you want to support.

00:52:44   And it still gives the user the choice.

00:52:46   Do you want to do the passkey sign-in thing?

00:52:48   Do you want to use a username and password,

00:52:50   in which case all your autofill stuff works?

00:52:52   Do you want to sign in with Apple?

00:52:53   Maybe it's annoying that there's this big list of things,

00:52:55   but it's a cascade and a hierarchy

00:52:57   that, as someone writing--

00:52:59   I suppose a website, but certainly

00:53:01   if you're writing an iOS app or a Mac app,

00:53:03   you can present the authentication,

00:53:06   you know, kick off the authentication flow

00:53:08   and you don't have to write any of that.

00:53:09   Apple's got an API that does it all.

00:53:11   You just tell it what methods you want to support

00:53:13   and what their priority order is,

00:53:14   and it will put up a UI and deal with all that stuff.

00:53:16   And that is another great way to let Apple be Apple

00:53:20   and make like a better user experience

00:53:22   and make it easy for developers to implement this

00:53:24   so you don't have to write all this code yourself

00:53:26   and also make it more secure.

00:53:27   But if under the covers, it's the same exact standard

00:53:29   that's supported in Google and Microsoft,

00:53:31   and Google usually does a good job of these APIs too,

00:53:32   especially on the web,

00:53:34   then you can be sure that anywhere you go,

00:53:36   you'll be able to use this system to log in

00:53:38   as long as you have with you a thing

00:53:40   that has your private key in it, essentially.

00:53:43   And that's usually been the pushback,

00:53:45   like, oh, what if I don't have my phone

00:53:46   or I don't have access to my Mac or whatever,

00:53:48   or I can just type in my password.

00:53:50   But I really hope that's not the case for people

00:53:51   because if you feel like you can sit down

00:53:53   in front of any computer with nothing

00:53:55   but the clothes on your back

00:53:56   and sign into any of your accounts,

00:53:57   your passwords are not good.

00:53:58   (upbeat music)

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00:55:53   Get endpoint management that puts the user first.

00:55:56   - Hey, so do you think Apple really wants us

00:56:03   repairing our own phones?

00:56:05   - This whole thing, huh?

00:56:06   - I don't know, I don't know what to make of this.

00:56:09   Like when I'm in a grumpy mood, I feel like,

00:56:12   oh, Apple's just a big pile of jerks

00:56:14   and they hate everyone.

00:56:15   - A big pile of jerks.

00:56:17   - When I'm in a more--

00:56:18   - Picturing this.

00:56:20   - When I'm in a more happy mood, I'm like,

00:56:22   Well, you know, Apple's just trying to make sure people do the best job they can repairing everything themselves.

00:56:26   So what am I talking about?

00:56:28   Friend of the show, Quinn Nelson, Relay FM alumni, I think at this point, and a prolific YouTuber,

00:56:34   he put out a couple of videos where he got the tools and parts and whatnot in order to do a, I believe it was an iPhone mini,

00:56:43   screen and battery replacement if memory serves.

00:56:46   And Apple sent him all of the tools he needs to do this and the parts.

00:56:51   And I don't remember how much parts cost but I think he needed to pay between fifty and a hundred dollars

00:56:55   Deposit to rent the tools to rent the tools and he came or he got shipped

00:57:01   Something like 80 pounds worth of tools two humongous pelican cases with 80

00:57:07   pounds of tools in order to do these repairs and

00:57:11   You know the cynical take which is what the verge put up. I don't know

00:57:15   Yeah, we do have a link will put in the show notes. The cynical take is Apple's just making this difficult for everyone

00:57:20   They're doing this to be jerks because they're jerks. They're jerks from the top to the bottom. They're jerk jerk jerky jerk jerks and

00:57:26   That is a take that is a take for sure. I

00:57:29   Don't think that's what this is

00:57:33   But maybe maybe I'm being maybe I'm grading on too much of a curve here. So what do you fellas think about this?

00:57:39   It was 97 pounds not 80 pounds because he did the screen and the battery so you get more tools based on what you do

00:57:45   If you recall from past programs when we talked about this that Apple is gonna come up with a self-repair program so that anybody could

00:57:53   Get to could do repair to their phone

00:57:56   Which previously Apple didn't like people that you've been authorized Apple repair or whatever thing or you can go to an Apple store

00:58:01   But it's like hey Joe Schmall off the street

00:58:03   You want to replace the battery on your phone?

00:58:06   Well, feel free and the way you know, they have this plan to do it

00:58:10   You're gonna get genuine Apple parts and blah blah blah, right?

00:58:12   but now that the program is actually actually here people like Quinn have done it and

00:58:16   You know, it's it's not I guess what people expected

00:58:20   I guess you know

00:58:21   like this article that

00:58:22   Sean Hollister wrote in The Verge you kind of expected to get in the mail like a little baggie with a battery in it and

00:58:27   Then like some tools like iFixit toolkit or something, you know

00:58:31   Just like something to pry open your iPhone and like some screwdrivers with the weird tips on them and that's basically it, right?

00:58:38   But no, that's not what they send you. They send you the same tools that they use in Apple stores to do these repairs

00:58:45   Until they're big tools are heavy. The tools are weird. In fact Quinn has a second video where he

00:58:51   He says breaking into Apple's tools where he opens up Apple's tools

00:58:54   They all have these security labels on that tells you that makes it so you can't open them up

00:58:58   But he does open them all up to see what these tools are like on the inside and

00:59:02   All right, so the Apple or jerks side of this

00:59:07   I think has a little bit of merit to it,

00:59:11   but part of it is also like,

00:59:13   so if you want to replace the battery in your phone,

00:59:17   this is how Apple does it, right?

00:59:19   It's like, I don't want to pay Apple to do it,

00:59:20   I want to do it myself, right?

00:59:22   And Apple's saying, okay, well if you want to do it yourself,

00:59:25   we'll let you do it the same way we do it,

00:59:28   because we think, I mean, this is the way to do it,

00:59:31   because if you gave it to us, this is what we would do,

00:59:32   so if you're gonna do it yourself,

00:59:33   you should do it the same way,

00:59:34   only now you get to do it instead of us, so here you go.

00:59:37   and that involves a bunch of these tools.

00:59:39   And it kind of, I mean, part of what I think

00:59:43   it makes you realize if you're on the receiving end of this

00:59:45   is if you don't repair iPhones for a living as your job,

00:59:50   you probably don't need these tools.

00:59:54   But if you don't repair iPhones for a living as your job,

00:59:57   should you be repairing iPhones?

00:59:59   Should you be doing this?

01:00:01   It's kind of like the difference between like,

01:00:04   do it yourself mechanically.

01:00:05   I'm gonna change my oil,

01:00:06   I'm gonna change my brake pads versus, you know,

01:00:09   I'm going to, you know, change the timing belt on my car.

01:00:13   As your car repairs get more invasive, you know,

01:00:17   I'm going to replace the head gasket or whatever,

01:00:19   you start needing more sophisticated

01:00:22   and very expensive tools.

01:00:24   Like eventually you might need a lift for your car.

01:00:27   Lifts are expensive.

01:00:28   Are you gonna do everything on jack stands?

01:00:30   Probably not.

01:00:31   You're probably not gonna drop the engine

01:00:32   out of your car with jack stands.

01:00:33   So now all of a sudden you need a lift

01:00:34   and you need all these special tools.

01:00:35   and especially if you have a BMW where there's a special tool

01:00:37   to remove every single piece of the freaking thing

01:00:39   which BMW will sell you for a million dollars

01:00:40   'cause you can't use regular wrenches.

01:00:42   - Too soon, too soon, John, too soon.

01:00:44   - You see, they have a tool for everything.

01:00:46   It's like, oh, the belt tension loosener thingy,

01:00:48   well, BMW sells a tool for that for $300,

01:00:51   but you can also try to use this wrench.

01:00:52   Anyway, you can do simple repairs to your car

01:00:56   with simple tools, but as the repairs get more invasive,

01:01:00   you can't, you have to buy more expensive tools,

01:01:02   and the tools get very expensive.

01:01:04   This is setting aside the weird DRME stuff of like,

01:01:06   you need a weird computer thing to interface to it.

01:01:09   I'm saying it like purely mechanical repairs.

01:01:11   Think of even cars before the age of computers in cars.

01:01:14   Eventually you needed expensive tools.

01:01:17   As it turns out,

01:01:18   a lot of the things that you have to replace in phones,

01:01:20   it's fairly invasive 'cause they're pretty well sealed

01:01:23   and they're really small and miniaturized

01:01:25   and it's tightly packed.

01:01:27   And so to do almost anything,

01:01:30   there's no equivalent of changing the oil on your phone.

01:01:33   It's not, there's no easy job.

01:01:35   There's no changing the brake pads on the phone.

01:01:37   You have to crack the thing open

01:01:38   and they're not put together in a straightforward way,

01:01:41   especially Apple's ones,

01:01:42   because they're made as small as they could possibly be

01:01:44   and they're made to be waterproof

01:01:45   and all this other stuff, right?

01:01:47   So I feel like these super expensive, big, heavy tools

01:01:50   is telling you,

01:01:51   this is probably not a thing you should be doing

01:01:53   because this is the way to do it.

01:01:55   Like it's telling you, like,

01:01:56   you shouldn't try to do this with just like

01:01:59   a flathead screwdriver and some sweat, right?

01:02:02   That's the wrong way to do it.

01:02:03   You'll break something, it won't work well,

01:02:06   like just you probably could pull it off,

01:02:09   but here's the right way to do it.

01:02:10   And by the way, as you can see, Quinn,

01:02:12   when he uses these tools, kind of like a mechanic.

01:02:15   If we give you a hoejillion dollar snap-on

01:02:18   and set of tools, right, and a lift,

01:02:20   and all sorts of, and you know, an impact driver,

01:02:22   and all like all the things, just we give you a full garage

01:02:26   filled with like $70,000 worth of tools.

01:02:30   Now can you repair the car?

01:02:31   and you're like, "Well, I've never used these tools before."

01:02:32   I don't know.

01:02:34   It takes skill to use the tools.

01:02:36   Well, if we give you the same tools

01:02:37   that Apple uses to repair your batteries,

01:02:39   it doesn't mean suddenly you know how to use them.

01:02:41   It doesn't mean suddenly you have the experience

01:02:43   to know exactly how, you know, what happens

01:02:45   if you put it in the little heater thing

01:02:47   and it still doesn't want to come apart

01:02:48   'cause it's wintertime, the phone was a little bit colder

01:02:50   than you thought and how much you can put it back in

01:02:51   and how hard you have to pull on this connector

01:02:53   to disconnect it but without like ripping it

01:02:56   and where you have to be careful to pull vertically up

01:02:58   or where it's not in it.

01:02:59   Like that comes from experience, the same way it comes from experience of knowing how

01:03:03   to rebuild an engine or something or do an invasive repair on a car.

01:03:06   Just because you have the professional expensive tools doesn't mean you know how to do that.

01:03:10   Again sending the message, are you sure this is a thing you want to be doing?

01:03:16   And so you could say, well Apple's being a jerk because they should just sell me the

01:03:20   battery and say good luck.

01:03:23   Or they should just sell me the battery and a $20 iFixit toolkit with a couple of plastic

01:03:26   spudgers in it and say good luck.

01:03:29   That's all I want from Apple and they're being jerks by requiring me to rent these tools

01:03:32   for $50.

01:03:33   I don't want these tools.

01:03:34   I can replace my head gasket with just a flathead screwdriver and a 10mm wrench.

01:03:40   I don't need all this fancy stuff.

01:03:42   I can drop the engine by just putting logs under my car.

01:03:45   I don't need an engine lift.

01:03:46   I don't need anything.

01:03:48   Just sell me a genuine Apple battery and give me permission to do it and I'll figure it

01:03:52   out myself.

01:03:53   And Apple doesn't do that.

01:03:54   They want to give you the official tools.

01:03:56   So that's the only way I can look at this and say that Apple is not giving people what

01:03:59   they wanted for the people who wanted to just say, "Look, just give me the official Apple

01:04:03   part and I'll figure it out on my own."

01:04:05   But I think those people would be very unsuccessful and sad.

01:04:08   They're also probably going to be unsuccessful with the fancy tools, but in both cases, I

01:04:12   feel like if there's not a thing that you do for a living over and over and over again,

01:04:16   it's probably not something you should try to do.

01:04:18   But on the flip side of that is Apple's giving you the tools that it uses to do itself, and

01:04:24   It's giving them to you at what must be a loss,

01:04:26   because the $50 you pay to rent these tools

01:04:29   surely doesn't even cover the shipping,

01:04:31   because it's like, in Quinn's case,

01:04:32   it was 97 pounds of tools in these giant Pelican cases,

01:04:36   which themselves probably cost $500, right?

01:04:39   And then who knows how much the tools cost?

01:04:40   It's not like the tools are particularly fancy,

01:04:42   but they're all custom.

01:04:43   It's not like you can buy one of these tools anywhere.

01:04:45   It's something that was built just for Apple.

01:04:47   It's the exact specifications

01:04:48   of whatever specific phone you're repairing.

01:04:50   So if you say, "I'm repairing an iPhone mini,"

01:04:52   They will send you tools with little sleds and pieces exactly sized to the iPad mini

01:04:56   down to every nuance of where the antenna lines are on the outside of it, where all

01:05:01   the buttons are.

01:05:02   The tools are accustomed to the specific thing you're repairing.

01:05:06   There is no way that Apple is not losing money allowing you to rent these tools for $50 for

01:05:13   seven days or whatever it is.

01:05:15   And they put like a $1200 hold on your credit card for the tools.

01:05:18   There is no way that $1200 covers the tools, it probably barely covers the Pelican cases.

01:05:24   So in one respect, Apple is letting you do this, and people will be adding up the cost

01:05:29   and they're like, "Well, at this cost, I pay this much for the battery and I pay this much

01:05:33   for the tool rental."

01:05:34   And of course the labor is free because I do that myself.

01:05:37   But at that rate, it's practically the same price as bringing it to an Apple store.

01:05:40   And then Apple will be like, "Yes!"

01:05:42   And then if you do it in an Apple store, people who change your battery on your phone, or

01:05:46   who have changed 100 phone batteries.

01:05:48   How many phone batteries have you changed?

01:05:50   How successful do you think you will be

01:05:53   changing your very first iPhone battery on your iPhone

01:05:56   with the same tools Apple has

01:05:58   as the person who's changed 100 of them?

01:06:00   I'd probably rather the person who changed 100 of them

01:06:03   change my battery rather than trying to do it myself

01:06:05   because the people do it themselves,

01:06:06   like I'm gonna save money and time.

01:06:08   You're not gonna really save money

01:06:11   and I don't think you're gonna save time either.

01:06:14   Like again, if they just sold you the battery

01:06:16   and gave you a flathead screwdriver and said,

01:06:17   go nuts, you're just gonna break your phone.

01:06:19   That's just what's gonna happen.

01:06:21   So I don't know what else Apple could have done here.

01:06:25   If Apple just sold you the part and said,

01:06:29   we want no part of this,

01:06:30   but you can buy an official battery from us,

01:06:32   seems like that's the type of thing that could be abused.

01:06:35   But within the bounds of the way we know Apple wants to act,

01:06:40   like they want everything to be good and proper,

01:06:43   I think they did the best they possibly could

01:06:45   of this program, but in the end,

01:06:46   the program is basically like a teaching tool

01:06:48   to teach people this is not something you wanna do.

01:06:51   - Yeah, I mean, I think both sides are right

01:06:55   in certain ways.

01:06:57   It is very clear that Apple wants you,

01:06:59   if you're going to tackle a self-service repair,

01:07:02   they want you to do it using the best tools that you can

01:07:05   and using their tools.

01:07:06   And they're basically treating you like a temporary,

01:07:09   authorized service provider just for yourself.

01:07:11   And on the other hand, it is very clear

01:07:16   that they are trying on some level

01:07:19   to make this look like as ridiculous a process as possible.

01:07:24   I don't think that's necessarily 100% malicious.

01:07:27   It's also not 0% malicious.

01:07:29   (laughing)

01:07:30   But I think the most likely explanation

01:07:34   for how incredibly over the top this situation is

01:07:39   where they're mailing you 80 pounds of gear.

01:07:42   Clearly, as John said, clearly at a loss.

01:07:44   Like there's no way they're making money

01:07:46   from any part of this.

01:07:47   They're clearly losing money each time they do this.

01:07:49   What I suspect is probably the case

01:07:52   is that when they designed all these phones

01:07:56   that are out there that are being able

01:07:58   to be serviced by this program,

01:08:00   I don't think most of them were designed

01:08:02   with a self-service program in mind.

01:08:04   Now, I don't know why they created the self-service program

01:08:07   or when they decided to do it,

01:08:09   or if it was in response to certain threats of legislation

01:08:12   or whatever it might have been.

01:08:14   - It almost seems like it's something

01:08:15   that you would implement to be compliant

01:08:17   with like a lawsuit settlement,

01:08:18   like you have to have a program like this,

01:08:20   therefore you could say, okay, we have one.

01:08:23   - Yeah.

01:08:23   - No one should use it, but it exists.

01:08:25   - Exactly.

01:08:27   I think that is very likely,

01:08:28   it's very likely that this was created

01:08:32   for some reason other than we designed this

01:08:36   from the start to be an economical thing

01:08:39   that we could have people do in their homes

01:08:41   by having us send them a kit or whatever.

01:08:43   Now, I think it's a very reasonable thing to expect

01:08:47   that you should be able to self-service certain things

01:08:48   because yes, while this kit demonstrates

01:08:52   you should probably just bring it to an Apple store

01:08:53   and have them do it for 60 bucks or whatever,

01:08:55   that's assuming you're in a place

01:08:57   where you can easily get to an Apple store.

01:08:58   And so I think the main value of this

01:09:02   is going to be in places or situations

01:09:06   where you can't get to an Apple store

01:09:08   or any authorized reseller.

01:09:09   And there's lots of places around the world

01:09:11   where that's the case.

01:09:12   - Yeah, but in those places,

01:09:13   you're still stuck with getting a very big shipment

01:09:16   that may be a pain for you to ship back,

01:09:18   so that's one thing.

01:09:18   And the second thing is you're still then stuck

01:09:21   with a bunch of tools that you don't know how to use.

01:09:23   Again, with the big fancy garage scenario,

01:09:25   if you give me $100,000 worth of tools,

01:09:27   I can't suddenly repair a car.

01:09:29   I've never used these tools.

01:09:30   They're complicated tools.

01:09:31   I don't know what to do with them exactly.

01:09:33   And even with the best instructions,

01:09:35   fumbling through my very first, you know,

01:09:38   invasive surgery on a phone or a car is not gonna go well.

01:09:41   So I like, no matter how far you are from an Apple store,

01:09:44   like mail the phone out.

01:09:46   Put the phone in the mail, it's easier than putting

01:09:48   two giant Pelican cases in the mail.

01:09:50   - Well, yes, but if you have one and only phone,

01:09:54   what are you gonna do, put the phone in the mail for a week?

01:09:56   - Well, you're just gonna break your one and only phone

01:09:57   when you get the tools, and then what are you gonna do?

01:09:59   You won't even be able to call Apple to tell them

01:10:01   that you broke the phone with it.

01:10:03   I mean, this gets it back to what Margot was saying

01:10:05   with like, okay, so these phones are clearly not designed,

01:10:07   but the self-repair, not designed,

01:10:09   I don't think the Emperor had chewies in mind

01:10:11   when she designed her.

01:10:13   I messed up that line.

01:10:14   It's close, I was close.

01:10:15   I just watched the movie.

01:10:17   Don't think the Emperor had Wookiees in mind

01:10:18   when they designed her.

01:10:19   I think that's pretty close.

01:10:21   Yeah, these phones weren't designed for self-repair

01:10:24   and famously Apple has been making its products

01:10:28   less and less, let's say less and less modular over time.

01:10:31   I mean, it kind of started,

01:10:34   it came to public consciousness with, I think,

01:10:36   the what, 17-inch PowerBook?

01:10:37   Was that the first one that did not have,

01:10:39   first Apple laptop that did not have a replaceable battery?

01:10:42   As in like, you could take it out and put another one in.

01:10:44   Not like replaceable as in you open up the guts,

01:10:47   but like a, I don't know, a removable battery.

01:10:50   The battery was just sealed up inside,

01:10:52   and there was quite a bit of outrage about that.

01:10:54   What if I'm on a long plane flight

01:10:56   and I need a second battery?

01:10:57   I can't, I have a dead battery in here,

01:10:58   I can't take it out and put it in a fresh battery.

01:11:00   It used to be I could buy three batteries

01:11:02   and keep them in my carry-on bag,

01:11:03   and when one battery died, I would take out that battery

01:11:05   and slap it in another one, and I'd be good to go.

01:11:07   And now you've just destroyed that

01:11:09   and made these laptops much worse, right?

01:11:11   Fast forward many years, and all of Apple's laptops

01:11:14   have sealed-in batteries, and of course,

01:11:16   Apple's phones have sealed-in batteries,

01:11:17   which wasn't always the case before.

01:11:18   Used to be able to get a feature phone or a dumb phone

01:11:21   or whatever we call them these days.

01:11:22   You usually be able to swap the batteries.

01:11:24   Sometimes you had to open up the whole back of the case,

01:11:25   but you could take out a battery and put in a fresh one.

01:11:28   yourself at home, it was pretty easy to do.

01:11:31   And so there have been a couple of projects to say,

01:11:34   wouldn't it be cool if a modern smartphone was like that?

01:11:37   I had to go to Google for a bunch of these

01:11:39   'cause I didn't remember how long ago they were

01:11:40   or what they were called.

01:11:41   There is a bunch of them.

01:11:42   We'll put a link in the show notes to a CNET article

01:11:45   that actually has a roundup of seven modular phones.

01:11:48   Apparently a lot of people have made a run at this idea

01:11:51   because it's an intriguing idea.

01:11:53   Imagine, picture an iPhone, but imagine it was modular

01:11:56   where the back was a bunch of little Lego pieces

01:11:58   and you could pick which camera you want

01:12:00   and how much SSD space and how big the battery is

01:12:04   and a bunch of different modules

01:12:05   that you could slap on the back.

01:12:06   So you could, A, you could sort of build your own phone

01:12:08   like you build your own PC.

01:12:09   Well, I care a lot about the camera,

01:12:10   so I'm gonna be expensive one,

01:12:11   but I'm willing to sacrifice storage.

01:12:14   So I'll buy a small storage module,

01:12:15   but I want a really big battery,

01:12:17   so I'm gonna buy the big battery module.

01:12:19   Apple used to do this on its laptops

01:12:20   where you could get a laptop

01:12:21   or you'd have two removable slots

01:12:24   and you could either put two batteries in,

01:12:25   one battery and left one battery on the right,

01:12:27   or you could just put a battery on the left

01:12:28   and the floppy drive on the right,

01:12:30   depending if you needed a floppy drive or not,

01:12:32   like a modular smartphone.

01:12:34   The one people may remember is Project Aura from Google.

01:12:38   That was in 2014, I never would have picked that.

01:12:39   I thought it was more recent than that,

01:12:41   but apparently it was a while ago.

01:12:43   And the reason you haven't heard of most of these

01:12:45   is because I don't think any of them shipped.

01:12:48   I may be wrong.

01:12:48   I know someone did ship a modular laptop,

01:12:50   and I forget the name of that one,

01:12:51   but not sure any of these modular phones shipped.

01:12:55   And so this idea is, it's very attractive

01:13:00   because then you wouldn't need a self repair kit.

01:13:01   Like if you could just snap the battery out,

01:13:03   like a little Lego piece off the back of your phone,

01:13:05   A, you could change batteries real easily during the day,

01:13:07   which would be a game changer for people

01:13:09   with giant battery cases and backup batteries

01:13:12   and recharging their phone every Friday morning.

01:13:13   But if you could just like slap off a little piece

01:13:16   of your phone and slap on another one,

01:13:17   that would be amazing.

01:13:18   And B, it really would let people sort of customize

01:13:21   and hot rod their phones and specify them

01:13:25   according to their priorities.

01:13:27   If someone, all they care about is battery,

01:13:28   they would fill the whole back of their thing with battery.

01:13:31   And you know, even take the camera slot thing

01:13:33   as like, I don't need a camera, I just need battery all day

01:13:35   'cause I'm on a construction site or whatever, you know,

01:13:36   like you could really customize these things

01:13:39   to the extent allowed by the size of the form factor,

01:13:40   obviously, but then people could choose

01:13:42   to have a really thick phone or a really thin phone

01:13:43   and so on and so forth.

01:13:44   But of course, the reason this doesn't exist

01:13:46   is because doing that,

01:13:48   this is kind of a naked robotic core thing,

01:13:50   every time you put like little cases

01:13:52   around each one of these components,

01:13:53   each one of the Lego bricks

01:13:54   has to have its own little case.

01:13:56   And then the cases have to have little connectors

01:13:58   and the connectors have to have little places

01:13:59   where the connectors connect

01:14:00   and then those have to be seated into something

01:14:02   that needs to be a superstructure.

01:14:04   That adds layers and layers and layers

01:14:06   and millimeters and millimeters and millimeters to the phone.

01:14:08   And it becomes thicker, heavier, more complicated,

01:14:12   probably delicate because these connectors

01:14:14   need to be small just because it has to fit

01:14:16   in a smartphone and problem prone, hard to make, waterproof.

01:14:19   Now you get Dorito crumbs underneath the little thing

01:14:21   you try to slap in your SSD and the Dorito crumb

01:14:23   gets in the way and it shortens something out

01:14:25   and it's just way more complicated

01:14:27   than a completely sealed thing like our smartphones, right?

01:14:30   But hey, we'll get rid of this whole self repair thing.

01:14:33   So this hasn't worked.

01:14:34   And I think it was something too,

01:14:37   it was either Dithering or the talk show,

01:14:39   one of those Gruber vehicles where they were discussing

01:14:41   these projects and saying, yeah, that's never gonna happen.

01:14:43   So people keep trying, it sounds like a good idea,

01:14:45   but it's just not gonna happen.

01:14:46   And you know, when someone says never, what happens?

01:14:48   The ghost of infinite timeline comes out and says,

01:14:51   "Did you say never?"

01:14:54   Ooh, you know, you can't say never, never say never.

01:14:57   What it made me think of is this.

01:15:00   So yeah, we don't have the tech to do this now.

01:15:02   It's a cool idea, people have tried, kudos for trying,

01:15:05   but we're not quite there yet.

01:15:06   We just, we don't have the tech for it, right?

01:15:08   But phones are not going to, phones as a thing,

01:15:14   like you hold it in your hand and it's got a screen on it

01:15:16   and you look at it and stuff.

01:15:17   There are limits on phones.

01:15:21   A phone the size of, you know,

01:15:23   like the head of a pin is useless.

01:15:25   You can't see anything, the screen's too small.

01:15:27   A phone the size of a dinner menu,

01:15:28   not particularly useful, even if it folds, right?

01:15:31   There is a limit to handheld phone size things.

01:15:34   So to the extent that we continue to have things

01:15:36   that we hold in our hands,

01:15:38   the size and form factor of phone has reasonable limits.

01:15:42   At a certain point, kind of like we always talk about

01:15:45   with like audio and to a lesser extent video,

01:15:48   we get to the point where technology is sufficient

01:15:51   to max out the form factor.

01:15:53   So we can make audio and distribute audio

01:15:57   over the internet that is good enough

01:15:58   for everybody's human ears.

01:16:00   Human ears are not changing particularly quickly.

01:16:03   Technology has caught up with them.

01:16:05   If you want to, you can stream lossless,

01:16:07   extremely high bit rate, totally saturates the ability

01:16:11   of any human ear over the internet in real time,

01:16:14   and like, we can do that.

01:16:15   We did it, right?

01:16:18   Everything else after that,

01:16:19   there's no point in making that any better, right?

01:16:22   If that fits within a particular constraint, it's fine.

01:16:26   At a certain point, the technology to make

01:16:29   a phone-sized thing with sufficient computing

01:16:33   and display prowess to be a phone-sized thing

01:16:37   will have enough headroom to support crap like this,

01:16:41   to support a superstructure,

01:16:43   a little shell around everything, all the little connectors,

01:16:46   because the parts of the phone will have gotten

01:16:48   small enough that we have that excess capacity to do that.

01:16:53   This has already happened with existing phones,

01:16:55   with us having the excess capacity to, you know,

01:16:59   make the batteries bigger,

01:17:00   because the computer parts are smaller.

01:17:01   If you look at like the original iPhone,

01:17:04   or any, like a Palm device or whatever,

01:17:06   used to be that the computer parts of it were way bigger compared to the rest of it.

01:17:10   But now if you open up an iPhone it's just basically a battery in there and like the

01:17:13   tiniest little logic board you could ever possibly imagine.

01:17:16   And that trend can then use over time, right?

01:17:18   So at a certain point you will be able to make a compromised phone where you sacrifice

01:17:25   absolute maximum computing power or whatever because you can always make a better phone

01:17:29   without all this crap, but you will be able to sacrifice it and still have an okay decent

01:17:34   phone while being modular.

01:17:37   That day will eventually come.

01:17:38   I'm not saying it will come where it's like you have infinite computing, you don't have

01:17:41   to worry about it, there will always be a tradeoff, but eventually the tradeoff becomes

01:17:44   so small that no one cares anymore.

01:17:46   Because what you're constrained by is a phone-sized thing.

01:17:50   This gets back to the blog post I did a while ago about making the iMac thinner and people

01:17:53   were all pissy about it, little did they know that we would get the 24-inch iMac that's

01:17:57   so insanely thin.

01:17:59   Anyway, they were complaining like, "What's the point in making the edges thinner?

01:18:01   You got rid of my optical drive."

01:18:03   People don't remember, this was a controversy,

01:18:05   but anyway, people were mad that they got rid

01:18:06   of the optical drive and in exchange,

01:18:08   the edge of the iMac was a little bit thinner.

01:18:09   It's like, who cares about that?

01:18:10   I never see the edge, why not make it thicker

01:18:12   and put the optical drive in there?

01:18:13   People got over it, but in that article

01:18:16   when I was writing about it, it's like,

01:18:17   you think you don't care about thinner,

01:18:19   but that's because you're thinking about

01:18:20   from one generation to the next,

01:18:21   but if you don't say like, well, I don't care

01:18:25   that this iMac is a little bit thinner,

01:18:26   but instead, fast forward 10 or 15 years,

01:18:30   and I use the phone example,

01:18:32   Like, I don't care about the iPhones getting thinner.

01:18:33   It's done, done, make them thicker

01:18:35   so the battery lasts longer.

01:18:36   It's okay, fine.

01:18:37   But if you don't continue to pursue

01:18:39   making your phones thinner,

01:18:41   you'll never get to the next sort of step change,

01:18:43   which is imagine that your iPhone

01:18:45   was as thin as a credit card.

01:18:47   Now, I mean, you may say that

01:18:49   that sounds incredibly uncomfortable.

01:18:50   I wouldn't want to hold that.

01:18:51   But if you drop a credit card on the ground,

01:18:53   are you afraid it's gonna crack?

01:18:54   No, of course not.

01:18:55   It flutters to the ground like a leaf.

01:18:57   It does not crack when it hits the ground.

01:19:00   Can you imagine a phone that you could drop

01:19:02   with the same confidence that it's not going to break

01:19:04   that you can drop a credit card?

01:19:05   But you will never get to a phone that thin

01:19:07   if you don't pursue thinness ever,

01:19:09   if you just say this is as thick as it has to be, right?

01:19:12   So same thing with the modular phone.

01:19:14   If you say, well, we're never gonna be able to do that,

01:19:16   right, at a certain point,

01:19:17   if you can make that credit card thin phone,

01:19:19   then you can make a iPhone 13 thickness thing

01:19:22   that is modular.

01:19:23   And that may seem like a clunky battleship

01:19:26   where you're sacrificing all,

01:19:27   like, oh, I like my credit card thin phone,

01:19:29   Why would I want that big battleship?

01:19:30   Ah, but it's modular.

01:19:31   At a certain point you have enough overhead

01:19:33   because as thin as you can make it,

01:19:37   you're not gonna make it the size of a pinky nail

01:19:39   'cause that's a useless phone, right?

01:19:41   The phone size stays,

01:19:44   whatever size we decide is okay for phones,

01:19:46   that's going to stay more or less constant

01:19:48   as long as we hold things in our hands

01:19:50   because too small is crappy and too big is crappy.

01:19:53   And within that size,

01:19:54   if all the components continue to shrink,

01:19:56   we will have sort of a piece dividend to spend

01:19:59   And I would love to see that piece of evidence spent

01:20:01   on making a modular phone sometime in the next few decades

01:20:04   when we can do this, because a modular phone

01:20:07   solves a lot of problems for customers,

01:20:09   and I think it solves a lot of problems for manufacturers.

01:20:12   Because if you could swap parts that easily too,

01:20:14   Apple can sell you parts, Apple can sell you parts upgrades,

01:20:17   you can customize them, like, I mean,

01:20:18   leave it to Apple to find a way to make this more expensive

01:20:20   instead of less, because consumers are like,

01:20:22   "Great, now I'll be able to save money

01:20:23   "by only buying the parts I want."

01:20:25   And Apple's like, "Great, now I'll be able to upcharge

01:20:26   "for every little part of this thing."

01:20:27   Like, I believe in Apple's ability.

01:20:29   I mean, look at the Mac Pro.

01:20:31   They made a modular Mac, and is it the cheapest one

01:20:33   where you can customize the parts?

01:20:34   No, it's the opposite, right?

01:20:36   I don't think this will hurt Apple's ability to make money,

01:20:39   but boy, it will be so much easier for everyone involved

01:20:41   if you could swap pieces out really easily.

01:20:44   And we're not gonna be able to do that until we have,

01:20:47   until the guts of a phone-sized device are so small

01:20:50   that we have so much room left,

01:20:51   we don't know what to do with it.

01:20:53   - Yeah, this whole modular phone idea,

01:20:55   it sounds very clever and interesting,

01:20:57   But yeah, in reality, I can see 1,001 ways

01:21:00   why it would be no fun, at least today,

01:21:02   not on an infinite timescale.

01:21:03   - Obviously, we'll probably all be dead,

01:21:04   but maybe your grandchildren,

01:21:06   when they have their hyper podcast,

01:21:08   they'll be talking about the latest modular phone.

01:21:10   (laughs)

01:21:12   Holo Podcast, sorry, not hyper podcast, Holo Podcast.

01:21:15   - Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:21:16   Memberful, Collide, and New Relic.

01:21:19   And thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:21:21   You can join atp.fm/join.

01:21:24   We will talk to you next week.

01:21:26   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:21:33   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:21:38   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:21:43   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:21:49   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:21:54   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:22:03   So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:22:07   N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N S-I-R-A-C

01:22:12   U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A It's accidental

01:22:18   They didn't mean to accidental

01:22:23   ♪ We've got no tech podcast so long ♪

01:22:28   - So I would like to posit that, or propose,

01:22:32   that there are some very special episodes

01:22:36   in the John Siracusa podcasting universe,

01:22:38   in the pantheon of John Siracusa podcasting.

01:22:41   One of them is the video game controllers on back,

01:22:45   I almost said on back to work, my goodness, on Hypercritical.

01:22:48   One of them is the windows of Siracusa County

01:22:51   on this very program.

01:22:52   But the most recent was preparing the way

01:22:57   for your refrigerator on reconcilable differences.

01:23:00   We are not going to have one of those episodes today.

01:23:03   I'm not trying to say that.

01:23:04   But you are preparing the way once again,

01:23:07   and I am on pins and needles.

01:23:10   I want to know what are you up to, Jon?

01:23:13   - I'm really preparing the way, but also--

01:23:17   - Are you sure?

01:23:18   - Yeah, I'll explain why.

01:23:20   I mean, what I'm doing is a weird thing

01:23:22   that I haven't ever really done before, but I'll explain why.

01:23:24   But anyway, before I jump to that,

01:23:25   I first want to do a brief bit of Casey-style whining

01:23:27   about my Mac Studio.

01:23:28   All right.

01:23:30   Patented TM, Casey-style whining.

01:23:32   I did order a Mac Studio at some point in the past.

01:23:38   I waited too long to order it.

01:23:40   I was punished by having to wait a long time for it to arrive.

01:23:43   Poor me, right?

01:23:45   So my Mac Studio did arrive recently.

01:23:48   It's sitting in a box at my feet right now.

01:23:51   My keyboard that came with it, the little Touch ID extended keyboard, that came real

01:23:55   quick because I just put that aside because I don't really have any computers I can use

01:23:58   it with.

01:23:59   And then the Mac Studio finally came.

01:24:02   And remember this is going to be my wife's replacement computer, she's replacing her

01:24:05   5K iMac.

01:24:06   But I haven't even opened the Mac Studio box yet.

01:24:09   I probably should just make sure that what I expect to be in there is in there.

01:24:12   Yeah, and to make sure it works.

01:24:15   Yeah, well so here's the problem.

01:24:18   We don't have a monitor to hook it up to, like, for her to use, right?

01:24:22   Obviously I have old monitors in the attic, I have my Playstation monitor that I could

01:24:26   use just to test to see if they did boots or whatever, which I should probably do, right?

01:24:31   But we don't, she can't set it up and use it as her computer because we don't have,

01:24:37   I mean we could, but she would be downgrading.

01:24:39   I could give her a non-retina 27" monitor, I have one of those, and I think that's really

01:24:44   her only choice.

01:24:46   think I have a lot of other monitor options for her, but I don't think she would like

01:24:50   that.

01:24:51   And she certainly wouldn't like, even if she could have my PlayStation 5 monitor, which

01:24:53   she can't because I use it to play games, she wouldn't want to downgrade to 4K.

01:24:57   Like it's a smaller screen, right?

01:24:59   So she just continues to use her 5K iMac, which is protesting by making noises, right?

01:25:03   Because it knows it's going out.

01:25:05   But in theory, the Apple Studio display that was supposed to come with this was going to

01:25:10   follow it shortly behind by maybe a week.

01:25:12   But then I got a message from Apple.

01:25:13   Well, first I got an email from Apple that said,

01:25:16   I forget what it said, it was like a bunch of our friends

01:25:17   got it, it was like apologizing for the delay,

01:25:19   something, it was like something non-committal,

01:25:20   just saying like, hey, we're sorry about the delay,

01:25:24   we'll let you know what the deal with your thing is ASAP.

01:25:27   And that was followed a couple days later by,

01:25:29   oh, by the way, remember that thing that you ordered

01:25:31   that we said was coming on this date?

01:25:32   Well, now it's really coming on this date.

01:25:33   So what they did was they moved my studio display

01:25:36   shipping date from the very large range of May 9th

01:25:39   through the 23rd, and they said, yeah, forget about that.

01:25:42   Actually, it's gonna be June 22nd through the 29th,

01:25:45   which if Apple hits its window,

01:25:48   will be approximately three and a half months

01:25:50   after I ordered it, which I think is a record

01:25:53   for anything I've ever ordered from Apple.

01:25:54   Not pre-ordered, I didn't pre-order

01:25:56   the Apple Studio Display.

01:25:57   I ordered the Apple Studio Display ostensibly a product

01:26:00   that Apple was then selling to customers at the time.

01:26:03   And I ordered it and now it's gonna come

01:26:05   three and a half months after I did that.

01:26:08   So that's not great.

01:26:09   Is this the first time that an Apple product,

01:26:12   like where you were given a date,

01:26:14   and it said it would definitely arrive in this range,

01:26:17   and then later on that date was pushed back?

01:26:19   I've never seen that happen.

01:26:20   - I mean, it happens rarely,

01:26:22   but I think this is the longest date

01:26:24   I've ever personally gotten of like,

01:26:25   from the time that you order,

01:26:26   then it said this is when it will arrive.

01:26:28   That's a big gap, and I mean,

01:26:30   I could probably pull a Marco here

01:26:32   and like go to an Apple store and like, you know,

01:26:34   stalk them and say, "Can I get a studio display?

01:26:36   "Do you have any in stock?" or whatever,

01:26:37   'cause there's no options on the display,

01:26:39   It's just it is what it is.

01:26:40   But anyway, I just wanted to let people know

01:26:43   that I do have a Mac Studio and yeah,

01:26:45   I should probably just open it up

01:26:47   and make sure it works and boot it or whatever.

01:26:49   - Yeah, plug it into your TV or something.

01:26:51   You know, just plug it into something.

01:26:54   - Yeah, and so what else I have with this,

01:26:55   I have the same thing that Steven Hecht got,

01:26:58   a 3D printed sort of cage or sling

01:27:03   where you can attach a Mac Studio

01:27:05   to the underside of your desk.

01:27:06   Did you see his pictures of his setup?

01:27:08   - Oh yeah, it looks really good actually.

01:27:10   Yeah, it was basically like a big bracket

01:27:12   that just, you stick it below your desk.

01:27:14   - Yeah, it's made, it's like, there's a bunch,

01:27:15   I had mentioned in the past thing where you could buy

01:27:18   a like a thing from OWC or something,

01:27:20   it was really made to hold two Mac Minis,

01:27:22   but it actually perfectly fit a Mac Studio as well,

01:27:24   because Apple doesn't have any new ideas

01:27:25   how to make computers.

01:27:27   It's just a series of rounded rectangles at various heights.

01:27:30   But this one is custom made exactly for the Mac Studio,

01:27:34   so it exactly fits it, and so if the fan annoys me,

01:27:37   I'm ready to bolt that thing to the bottom of my wife's desk and give her more desk space back

01:27:40   So we'll see how that goes. So I have those pieces here speaking of preparing the way

01:27:44   It's like I've got this computer set up. My original intention was let the boxes build up until they all arrive and then

01:27:52   Tada, here's your new setup, right and then start with it on the desk

01:27:56   And if the fan is too annoying put it underneath, right?

01:27:58   but now it seems like I'll have to open up the studio and hook it up to the 4k monitor make sure it boots and

01:28:03   Then just shut it down and put it back in the box and wait something. Anyway, so there's that

01:28:07   That's not ideal, but at some point I will be able to

01:28:10   Give some kind of judgment on the max studio fans, but not this week because it's still in the box

01:28:15   but what Casey was referring to another form of like sort of

01:28:20   Things arriving in my house and me getting ready to do stuff with them is the long-awaited replacement of my television

01:28:28   Maybe not that long away in this program

01:28:29   But I wrecked this Merlin has been haranguing me for many years now that I need to get a new TV before I die

01:28:36   For those who don't know my long TV history,

01:28:39   I'm super into TV tech, I talk about it on the show a lot.

01:28:43   Always waiting for the right time to buy a TV.

01:28:45   The last television I bought was one of the very best

01:28:49   plasma TVs you could buy right before they stopped

01:28:51   making plasma TVs entirely.

01:28:53   And that TV is 1080p.

01:28:55   So that's how old my TV is.

01:28:56   I have a 1080p plasma television.

01:28:58   It was and is a very good 1080p plasma television,

01:29:02   but it is 1080p plasma television nonetheless.

01:29:06   No HDR, no 4K, you know, it is what it is.

01:29:11   Doesn't have any blooming though, that's nice.

01:29:14   So I was waiting for a better TV tech to come

01:29:16   and then OLED came, but then OLED had a bunch of problems

01:29:18   and it had burn in and brightness wasn't that great.

01:29:20   And I was just waiting for the next leap in panel tech.

01:29:23   And they came out with like the fancier panels

01:29:24   that get a little bit brighter.

01:29:25   And some people put a heat sink on the back of them,

01:29:27   like, eh, I don't know about that.

01:29:29   And then they came out with the Quantum Dot OLEDs

01:29:31   and like, this seems like the tech that I'm waiting for.

01:29:33   It has fewer compromises,

01:29:34   assuming they're pretty good and not too expensive.

01:29:36   I'm gonna get one.

01:29:37   So that remains my plan.

01:29:38   The embargo just lifted, I think like two days ago

01:29:41   on the TV I wanna buy, the Sony 895K.

01:29:44   So people have reviews out of it now

01:29:46   and I'm watching the reviews.

01:29:47   Still can't order it.

01:29:48   It's supposed to go on sale in June.

01:29:50   And then kind of like the Mac studio.

01:29:54   Who knows when I'll actually be able to get one delivered

01:29:56   to my home because I mean, again, I wouldn't say this,

01:29:59   but like the Mac studio business and the studio display

01:30:01   and all this is all COVID supply chain stuff I'm sure

01:30:04   because Apple is very good at building products

01:30:06   and shipping them to you.

01:30:08   And it's not like they're selling 700 million Mac studios.

01:30:11   It's just, you know, it's hard to make new products

01:30:15   and ship them to people.

01:30:16   I assume that will also be true

01:30:18   of this new fancy television.

01:30:20   But in theory, when this TV comes out in June,

01:30:21   I'm gonna buy it.

01:30:23   So why am I talking about it now?

01:30:25   Well, so the refrigerator preparing the way is like,

01:30:28   oh, I have to do a bunch of stuff to my home

01:30:30   to get ready for the refrigerator that I ordered

01:30:32   to be able to arrive and be placed into my home.

01:30:35   Which sounds like it's not that involved,

01:30:37   but feel free to listen to that episode

01:30:38   to see exactly how involved it is.

01:30:40   But that's not what the deal is with the TV.

01:30:42   The TV, there's the part of the project

01:30:45   that Casey's doing now with fiber,

01:30:46   like the researching part of the project,

01:30:48   which, you know, as the story goes,

01:30:51   which I've been continuously doing since like 2013

01:30:54   or whatever I got my last Plasma TV, right?

01:30:57   I'm always doing that part of the project.

01:30:59   That is an ongoing project.

01:31:00   I have a running tally of if I had to buy things today,

01:31:03   here's what I would buy.

01:31:04   All right, the depressing thing about that part

01:31:07   of the project, the research part,

01:31:08   is that over the past year or two, it hasn't changed.

01:31:12   I did one last pass like a couple weeks ago to see,

01:31:16   let me revisit this because I have all, you know,

01:31:18   all the things I need to get.

01:31:19   And I need to get a lot of things,

01:31:20   'cause yeah, you gotta get the TV, right?

01:31:22   But nothing in my setup works with 4K.

01:31:24   My receiver doesn't work with 4K.

01:31:25   I don't know a 4K Blu-ray player.

01:31:27   Like just, there's no, you know,

01:31:29   My HDMI cables are not rated spec-tie enough

01:31:31   to be able to support HDMI 2.1.

01:31:34   I need all new stuff, right?

01:31:35   So I gotta research all that.

01:31:38   And I looked at it again, and I'm like,

01:31:40   it's been months since I looked at this.

01:31:41   Is there anything better?

01:31:42   I think I, where did I complain about the Blu-ray players?

01:31:44   Was it on here or on rectiffs?

01:31:45   I forget. - Rectiffs.

01:31:46   - All right, but anyway, if you don't know,

01:31:48   Blu-ray players, like as in things you buy

01:31:50   that you stick a plastic disc into,

01:31:52   everyone's just decided they're not making them anymore.

01:31:55   Not that they're not making them.

01:31:56   You can go buy one in a store.

01:31:57   In fact, they're incredibly inexpensive,

01:31:59   but they're not making new ones.

01:32:00   They're like, we have a Blu-ray player.

01:32:02   The last Blu-ray player we made was from 2017.

01:32:05   We're just gonna sell that 2017 model basically forever

01:32:08   'cause it's done, right?

01:32:09   There's nothing new we need to add for it.

01:32:11   And so if you look at like the very fanciest,

01:32:14   best Blu-ray player from Panasonic or Sony or whatever,

01:32:17   it's the same one they were selling a couple of years ago.

01:32:20   'Cause they're like, yeah, it's fine.

01:32:21   We don't need to make a new one.

01:32:23   And that doesn't happen with computers

01:32:24   or for that matter televisions.

01:32:25   Every year new televisions come out.

01:32:27   They may look similar to the old ones

01:32:29   and use a similar panel, but every year

01:32:30   they make a new one that's slightly better

01:32:31   than the old one, but Blu-ray players?

01:32:33   No, we don't do that anymore.

01:32:34   So when I was researching Blu-ray players, it's like--

01:32:36   - I should send you mine.

01:32:36   I have this incredible Oppo HDR Blu-ray player.

01:32:41   - Oppo doesn't even make Blu-ray players.

01:32:42   - I know, but it's a really nice one.

01:32:45   - They stopped making them, 'cause it's like,

01:32:47   you know what, it's not even worth our time to make.

01:32:49   They were one of the best makers.

01:32:50   They had all these fancy features and stuff like that,

01:32:52   so they just stopped making them.

01:32:52   And the problem with that is, since they stopped making them,

01:32:55   new standards came out.

01:32:56   Like your thing doesn't do HDR 10 plus probably

01:32:59   because HDR 10 plus didn't exist when it was made.

01:33:02   - I know it does HDR, but it probably does

01:33:03   whatever the first version of that was.

01:33:04   - It probably does HDR 10, right?

01:33:06   Or like, are you gonna find one that does HDR 10,

01:33:08   HDR 10 plus, and also Dolby Vision, right?

01:33:11   Like it's hard to find ones that work

01:33:14   with all the latest specs because people just stopped

01:33:16   making them a couple of years ago because there's no,

01:33:19   I guess they decided it's not a big enough market.

01:33:20   So now you can find a Blu-ray player for like $75.

01:33:23   Like they're so cheap, right?

01:33:25   but they don't support all these fancy standards.

01:33:27   And if they don't make new ones and a new standard comes out,

01:33:29   they're not going to support it because this is the same model

01:33:31   from-- anyway.

01:33:32   So yeah.

01:33:33   Blu-ray player I found.

01:33:35   I said, is there a better Blu-ray player available?

01:33:37   No.

01:33:38   There's not.

01:33:38   So the research is stabilized.

01:33:40   Right?

01:33:41   Receiver.

01:33:42   I need a receiver that does 4K.

01:33:44   It does HDMI 2.1, 4K, 120 hertz.

01:33:46   Like, there was this bug in the firmware of the first round

01:33:49   of ones that supported this, and they all

01:33:51   couldn't do 4K 120, which was sad.

01:33:53   So I'm like, "Well, the next year's model, they'll fix that."

01:33:55   But there basically was no next year's model.

01:33:57   This is mostly because of COVID.

01:33:59   Like I was waiting for them to fix this

01:34:00   in the next year's model, and next year came

01:34:02   and they just kept selling the same ones

01:34:03   with the same bugs in them.

01:34:05   It's like, what the hell?

01:34:05   They're not gonna make new receivers anymore?

01:34:07   Couple of receiver companies went bankrupt

01:34:09   and their businesses were bought by other people

01:34:11   or whatever, so yeah.

01:34:11   So when I did my receiver research,

01:34:13   like the last round of this I did several months ago,

01:34:15   I had two possibilities.

01:34:18   The leading contender was out of stock then,

01:34:21   and I'm like, "Well, I'm not gonna buy now any.

01:34:23   probably like six months from now it'll be in stock.

01:34:25   Nope, still out of stock.

01:34:27   Six months ago I was looking for a thing

01:34:28   and it was not available anywhere.

01:34:30   Today, still not available.

01:34:31   This is the current model of a thing.

01:34:33   Like you just can't buy it.

01:34:35   Again, it's probably supply chain.

01:34:37   Also that model turned out it had a really big fan in it.

01:34:39   So I had a backup choice that didn't have a fan

01:34:43   that had similar features and I did research on that.

01:34:45   Is there anything better available?

01:34:47   Nope, what you researched a couple minutes ago,

01:34:49   exactly the same, right?

01:34:52   And then TV stand.

01:34:53   Why do I need a TV stand?

01:34:54   This is a long sad story, but basically,

01:34:56   I have a very narrow piece of furniture

01:34:58   that I need to put my televisions on.

01:34:59   If the television has a central stand, fine.

01:35:01   If the television has little feets

01:35:03   at the way at the edges of the TV,

01:35:05   it does not work for me because the edges of my TV

01:35:08   are wider than the piece of furniture.

01:35:09   And for years, decades, who knows how long,

01:35:12   HDTVs had central stands.

01:35:15   And then as soon as I was in the market to buy television,

01:35:17   they all said, "Nope, we're putting the feet at the edges."

01:35:18   And so the new fancy Sony one that I want,

01:35:21   feet that span the entire thing.

01:35:22   In fact, they even put a picture in a manual that says,

01:35:25   "Don't put this television on a piece of furniture

01:35:27   that's not as wide as a TV

01:35:28   'cause it will fall down and break."

01:35:29   And it's got this hilarious picture of the TV falling over

01:35:31   and like lightning bolts coming forever, right?

01:35:34   So I have to buy a third party stand, right?

01:35:36   All these things are like arm mountable or whatever,

01:35:38   and you can buy just a stand

01:35:40   that has the same mounting hardware on it or whatever.

01:35:43   So that's all the stuff that I need.

01:35:45   And I've done all the research for it

01:35:47   and the TV's probably coming out soon

01:35:49   and the normal thing for me to do

01:35:51   would be wait for the reviews to come out

01:35:53   to actually confirm for my trusted reviewers

01:35:55   that this TV as advertised actually is worth buying

01:35:59   and is actually really good, right?

01:36:00   And then after I see the reviews,

01:36:02   order all the stuff, have it all arrive,

01:36:04   tear off my old setup, put in my new one.

01:36:07   But the reason I didn't employ that strategy this time

01:36:09   is I'm making, I thought I was just making

01:36:12   another pass on my stuff.

01:36:13   Let me just make another pass on all my things.

01:36:14   Let me do, catch up on the research

01:36:16   and get depressed that nothing has changed, right?

01:36:19   And when I did that pass, I'm like,

01:36:21   the main thing was like my main receiver choice

01:36:23   not being available.

01:36:24   I'm like, really?

01:36:25   That's still out of stock?

01:36:26   And what I thought to myself is,

01:36:27   all the old rules don't apply.

01:36:30   Don't assume that if something's out of stock,

01:36:31   it'll be in stock later.

01:36:32   Don't assume if you can buy something today,

01:36:34   you'll be able to buy it next month.

01:36:36   So I said, this other receiver, like my backup choice,

01:36:40   I should just buy that now,

01:36:42   because what if I wait until June when the TV is available,

01:36:46   and they say, oh sorry, out of stock,

01:36:47   and they're all gone.

01:36:48   - That's a good call.

01:36:49   And they're never like, and then it's like,

01:36:50   well, when are they gonna make another one?

01:36:51   It's like, I don't know, wait till next year or something.

01:36:54   So I just started buying things.

01:36:55   I'm buying things for a TV I don't have.

01:36:57   I bought the TV stand.

01:36:59   Not that I really love this TV stand,

01:37:00   but I spent a long time looking

01:37:01   at a million different crappy TV stands

01:37:03   and I got the least crappy one,

01:37:05   which is still crappy, mind you.

01:37:07   I wish I could have a central stand.

01:37:09   My central stand and my plasma is beautiful.

01:37:11   But you know, so I got my crappy stand,

01:37:14   I got my receiver, and my Blu-ray player.

01:37:16   And my receiver is from like a year or two years ago,

01:37:19   my Blu-ray player is like three or four years ago.

01:37:22   And I ordered these things,

01:37:24   and they're sitting in my house.

01:37:25   I half assembled the TV stand,

01:37:27   'cause I can't assemble the other part of it,

01:37:28   'cause it attaches to the back of the TV.

01:37:30   The receiver's sitting in the box,

01:37:32   the Blu-ray player is not sitting in the box,

01:37:34   we'll go back to it in a second.

01:37:35   But I don't even have a TV yet.

01:37:37   But for all the people complaining

01:37:39   that I'm never gonna buy a TV or whatever,

01:37:41   well now I bought all the stuff for the TV,

01:37:43   so now I feel like I'm pretty committed.

01:37:44   I feel like I'm gonna buy a TV.

01:37:47   Otherwise, I mean, this stuff's probably gonna be

01:37:48   outside its return window by the time I, you know,

01:37:51   decide to buy a TV or not.

01:37:52   So that is happening.

01:37:54   And the other sort of side project I had on this,

01:37:57   aside from, you know, the research project,

01:37:58   the Casey part of the project where I just did the research,

01:38:00   that part, and like I said, Casey,

01:38:02   with you talking about you doing the spreadsheet

01:38:04   with like the different prices of the various setups,

01:38:06   I feel like this is the project.

01:38:08   Just making these spreadsheets and doing comparisons.

01:38:12   You can make some graphs and you can do a presentation.

01:38:15   And I feel like that's the project.

01:38:16   You don't actually have to buy anything.

01:38:18   Your house is fine.

01:38:19   - It may end up being that that's the case.

01:38:20   You may be right.

01:38:21   - It sounds like it's gonna be more work

01:38:22   than the installation and certainly more time.

01:38:24   But you know, and if you want, and same thing with me.

01:38:26   You add up the time I've cumulatively spent

01:38:29   watching reviews of televisions and researching stuff,

01:38:31   it is way more time than the time it's gonna take

01:38:33   to install this stuff, right?

01:38:35   But one of the things I learned in my research is

01:38:37   this Blu-ray player that, you know,

01:38:39   The one I decided to get that had the least worst

01:38:43   set of features and the least worst

01:38:45   age of all the other stuff.

01:38:47   I did, by the way.

01:38:48   So Oppo's gone, right?

01:38:49   But there's also this French company

01:38:51   that people say is kind of like the new Oppo,

01:38:53   and they have this weird--

01:38:54   I don't even know what the brand is.

01:38:55   It's all super expensive stuff, and it looks kind of like Oppo.

01:38:58   Maybe they bought some of the assets of Oppo,

01:39:00   but its interface was so janky looking,

01:39:02   I just couldn't do it.

01:39:03   And I don't know.

01:39:05   I bought a Panasonic Blu-ray player,

01:39:08   just because it's, you know, it's fine.

01:39:10   But everyone said that they got it,

01:39:11   like oh, the fan is super loud and annoying, right?

01:39:15   And you know me and fans, I'm like,

01:39:16   like first my receiver has a fan in it,

01:39:18   which just, I was lucky the backup receiver didn't,

01:39:20   so you know, the one with the fan wasn't in stock,

01:39:23   so I bought the one without a fan, so I'm fine.

01:39:25   I'm like the Blu-ray player has a fan,

01:39:26   and granted, I use my PlayStation 3

01:39:28   as my Blu-ray player now, which is incredibly loud.

01:39:31   - Yeah, right. (laughs)

01:39:32   - Surely this is gonna be quieter than that,

01:39:34   but still, like when I get an all new setup,

01:39:37   I want it to be all smoothing this out.

01:39:38   But luckily, in my research of like,

01:39:42   I always wanna see the inside of these devices,

01:39:44   see what the guts look like.

01:39:46   You find these forums where people are cracking

01:39:48   their hardware open, either to solve a problem

01:39:50   or to update something or whatever.

01:39:53   And in this case, I found a picture of the inside

01:39:55   of the Panasonic Blu-ray player showing the fan

01:39:58   because someone had a little project

01:39:59   where they replaced the fan

01:40:00   with one of those quiet PC fans, right?

01:40:02   You know, by like a little, I forget the fan.

01:40:05   - Not too.

01:40:06   I don't think that was the brand,

01:40:07   but it was a similar sort of PC enthusiast brand.

01:40:09   And so somebody did this project

01:40:11   and they posted it on a web bulletin board,

01:40:12   one of the greatest things on the internet

01:40:14   that everyone should continue to use.

01:40:16   All the AV nerds are on literal web bulletin boards,

01:40:19   just like you remember, right?

01:40:20   And they said, "Here's what I did."

01:40:22   And it's a bunch of pictures,

01:40:23   like here are the parts I bought, here's the process.

01:40:26   I opened the thing up, I took this thing out,

01:40:28   I bought this little connector,

01:40:30   and with, you know, mostly with links

01:40:32   to go buy the same things, and if not links,

01:40:34   than with part numbers that I could find.

01:40:36   So maybe like three or four months ago,

01:40:40   I ordered all those parts.

01:40:42   Again, thinking, well, these parts are cheap

01:40:44   and I don't know if these links are still gonna be good

01:40:46   and all these skews are still gonna exist.

01:40:48   So I purchased all the parts that were listed

01:40:51   just to have them

01:40:52   and they were sitting on a shelf for a while

01:40:53   and it's mostly like the fan.

01:40:55   The connector needed to connect that fan

01:40:57   to the motherboard of the Blu-ray player,

01:41:00   which is different than the connector the thing comes with.

01:41:03   I think that's about it.

01:41:05   And so now I have the Blu-ray player.

01:41:06   And so while I'm waiting for the TV

01:41:07   to be available to purchase, I'm like,

01:41:09   "Oh, now here's a fun little electronics project."

01:41:11   I can take this brand new Panasonic Blu-ray player

01:41:14   that just arrived and immediately crack the thing open,

01:41:16   yank out the fan and put in the new one.

01:41:18   And so I did that project this weekend.

01:41:21   You know, I did open the thing up,

01:41:22   which was a bit of a challenge.

01:41:23   Like I'm opening it up and I'm like,

01:41:24   "Oh, it's got screw, just plain old Phillips head screws.

01:41:26   "How hard could it be to open a Blu-ray player?"

01:41:28   But of course, everything has to be put together

01:41:29   in a weird way these days.

01:41:30   But luckily, and I should have done this before,

01:41:32   Luckily, the person who wrote the Web Bulletin board post

01:41:35   had a little sentence or two about how to take it apart.

01:41:37   I'm like, thank you.

01:41:38   Thank you for saving me from trying to figure it out.

01:41:40   Because you undo the screws

01:41:42   and then it still doesn't come apart.

01:41:43   And you're like, does this slide out?

01:41:45   Or is that part of this or whatever?

01:41:47   Anyway, then she figured it out,

01:41:48   opened the thing up without breaking anything,

01:41:49   which is a good start.

01:41:51   I removed the existing fan.

01:41:53   I did, but actually before I did this,

01:41:54   I plugged it into the wall to hear what the fan sounded like.

01:41:56   Like, is this actually noisy

01:41:58   or should I just not even bother with this, right?

01:41:59   So I plugged it in, turned it on,

01:42:01   put a disk in it did all the things.

01:42:03   As soon as you plug it in, it does that thing

01:42:05   where it cranks, it probably does this just to start the fan

01:42:07   but it cranks this fan up to like max speed for a second,

01:42:09   goes like that, right?

01:42:11   And then it settles back down into its idle speed.

01:42:13   And when it does that, you can hear

01:42:17   that if this fan was going anywhere sort of above

01:42:20   like the midpoint of its speed, it would be not just,

01:42:23   not particularly loud, but like annoying

01:42:24   'cause it's a very small fan, small diameter fans.

01:42:27   This is probably the problem with the max studio as well.

01:42:29   Small diameter fans make an annoying noise

01:42:31   and have to spin faster to move the same amount of air.

01:42:34   And this is a small fan, 'cause as you can imagine,

01:42:36   a Blu-ray player is very sort of slim.

01:42:37   So it's got a very small diameter fan.

01:42:39   I don't know how many millimeters, but it's small.

01:42:41   All right, and so I heard what it sounded like.

01:42:42   I'm like, okay, I can see how someone

01:42:44   who has a very quiet setup could hear this fan

01:42:46   and it would be annoying.

01:42:47   Still way quieter than my PS3,

01:42:48   but I can hear how it would be annoying.

01:42:50   So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this project.

01:42:51   And the good thing about this project

01:42:52   is you take the old fan out and it's not damaged.

01:42:55   It has a connector on the motherboard.

01:42:56   It's got a little like two or three pin connector.

01:42:58   you just take it out.

01:42:59   So worst case scenario, if I botched this project,

01:43:01   assuming I don't destroy the blue pair,

01:43:02   I can just put the original fan back in.

01:43:04   So I take the fan out,

01:43:05   but the new fan that I have to put in,

01:43:07   it's like a PC fan and it comes with a PC connector,

01:43:09   but then I bought the other connector separately.

01:43:11   So now I have to cut off the PC connector

01:43:14   and then sort of connect the new connector

01:43:16   by soldering together the wires.

01:43:18   So I got like, I believe it or not,

01:43:20   I did not have a functioning soldering iron in the house

01:43:22   'cause my dad's ancient one, I don't even know where it is

01:43:24   and it's probably broken by now anyway.

01:43:26   So I bought myself the world's cheapest soldering iron.

01:43:28   - Oh my God.

01:43:30   - And I bought what I hoped would be lead-free solder,

01:43:32   but it wasn't.

01:43:33   - Great.

01:43:35   - And then I got to reuse my soldering skills.

01:43:40   I was thinking about this when I was looking at all

01:43:42   like the instructions that come with it or whatever.

01:43:45   I guess people didn't think about lead when we were kids.

01:43:49   The other thing I saw recently,

01:43:50   like the Gen X is the most lead-poisoned generation.

01:43:52   You know how much soldering I did

01:43:53   with lead-filled solder as a kid,

01:43:56   inhaling the lead fumes from it.

01:43:58   That couldn't have helped me at all.

01:44:02   I don't know how many IQ points I left from doing soldering.

01:44:04   - So actually, wait, if anybody knows, I'm curious,

01:44:07   because my wife works with a lot of solder

01:44:10   for stained glass creation.

01:44:12   And I raise this point of like, hey,

01:44:15   is breathing in all this lead a bit of a problem?

01:44:18   And she did some research, and I believe the conclusion,

01:44:22   I'd love to hear if anybody knows for sure,

01:44:23   I believe the conclusion was actually

01:44:25   that the lead is not being vaporized.

01:44:28   The temperature is not enough to actually

01:44:30   make the lead become airborne.

01:44:33   But please let me know if that is incorrect.

01:44:36   - I mean, as I said in the chat room,

01:44:37   the flux that's in the use of the lead is not that great.

01:44:40   But the main problem is you're handling it.

01:44:41   Like it's getting all of your fingers and everything, right?

01:44:43   And so you have to wash your hands

01:44:44   and make sure you're not touching food

01:44:46   that you then eat like it's not.

01:44:47   - And to be clear, and she's really,

01:44:49   she wears gloves and she's working

01:44:51   under this ventilation fan thing.

01:44:53   So like, you know, all that's pretty well covered,

01:44:55   but yeah, certainly I would love to know

01:44:57   what the risks actually are if anybody knows.

01:44:59   - And we talked about that with like Apple

01:45:01   getting lead-free solder and all its things,

01:45:02   and the challenge is lead-free solder is not as good

01:45:06   in terms of performing the job

01:45:08   that solder is supposed to perform, right?

01:45:09   - Yeah, but she tried it and found the same thing out.

01:45:11   - Yeah, and so Apple had to, like Apple did do this.

01:45:15   They're like, it's gonna suck for us,

01:45:16   but we're gonna figure out a way to,

01:45:18   without making our products unreliable,

01:45:19   to use lead-free solder.

01:45:21   So kudos for Apple for doing that.

01:45:23   I was hoping that I was going to get lead-free solder because I'm just soldering three wires

01:45:25   together, so who cares.

01:45:26   But I didn't, I got the lead kind.

01:45:30   So I did some soldering, I soldered together these wires that the, well they didn't mention

01:45:34   the person who did this, like the connector has a much thinner wire than the fan, so I'm,

01:45:41   the connector wires are like little tiny angel hairs, I don't know what gauge they were,

01:45:44   but they were very thin.

01:45:45   So I'm soldering these very thin multi-strand wires to these slightly thicker multi-strand

01:45:49   wires very delicately soldering them together.

01:45:52   cute little soldering kit that I got extremely inexpensive this is one of

01:45:55   those no-name like brand Amazon crap things or whatever it's just it's

01:45:59   hilarious what they give you like they give you like a little stand to put the

01:46:01   solder in and they give you a little sponge to like dampen it off and the

01:46:04   sponge is like the thinnest most insubstantial thing that could

01:46:08   technically be called a sponge it's like who manufactures it was it was like as

01:46:12   thin as a piece of paper I kid you not like it's imagine a sponge as thin as a

01:46:16   piece of paper when it's dry hilarious like it was like a doll set anyway I

01:46:20   I can't believe like how we just started for the brief derail here, but like we had, you know,

01:46:26   this like one of those leaky shower ones, because I guess when the plumbers put it back, it's the

01:46:30   outdoor shower. And so in the winter, you got to take it take the whole thing down so it doesn't

01:46:34   freeze and break. And the plumbers when they put it back or when they took down at some point lost

01:46:39   a little gasket that goes into it. So getting a plumber to come to your house out here is not easy

01:46:44   or fast. And certainly not inexpensive when it does happen. And so Tiff decided, let me try to

01:46:49   I'm gonna fix this myself.

01:46:51   And so she goes on Amazon and orders,

01:46:53   you can't just get a gasket for the,

01:46:56   (laughs)

01:46:56   and Wilson can't tell, yeah.

01:46:58   So she ended up getting this case

01:47:01   of a huge assortment of rubber gaskets for like $11.

01:47:06   And I have no idea,

01:47:08   there's so much super cheap stuff on Amazon.

01:47:11   And in one way it's nice in the sense that

01:47:15   if you need some kind of special tool to do something

01:47:19   or some kind of home repair or something,

01:47:21   you no longer have to rely on some professional

01:47:24   who's a gatekeeper to all the special tools.

01:47:26   You can just go on Amazon and order your own special tool

01:47:28   for no money, basically,

01:47:30   and it'll be at your house in a couple of days.

01:47:32   On the other hand, if you want high quality tools,

01:47:37   they're increasingly difficult to find

01:47:40   because they decreasingly exist.

01:47:42   The entire middle and upper end of the market

01:47:47   has been gutted because everyone just goes on Amazon

01:47:50   or whatever and buys whatever's cheapest

01:47:52   when they need something.

01:47:53   And so there's very little market

01:47:56   for high quality anything anymore.

01:47:58   - You have to know the right brand.

01:48:00   Like for hand tools, you have to know,

01:48:01   I mentioned Snap-on before,

01:48:03   there's a couple of like German brands you have to know.

01:48:05   For scissors, you have to know the weird Japanese brands

01:48:07   that like make the good scissors and they're out there.

01:48:11   But for, and I'm sure there's an equivalent

01:48:13   for soldering iron, but I didn't do that.

01:48:14   I got the cheap one.

01:48:15   And the nice thing about the cheap one is,

01:48:17   So it's this little adorable kit

01:48:19   that comes with all sorts of stuff.

01:48:21   It came with a little tiny baggie of shrink tubing, right?

01:48:24   Heat shrink.

01:48:25   - Oh, that's nice.

01:48:26   - Stuff or whatever.

01:48:27   So I don't have to buy that separately as well.

01:48:28   You know, it came with like a,

01:48:30   it came with this hilarious thing

01:48:31   that they call a wire stripper

01:48:32   that honestly I don't know what it really is.

01:48:35   Luckily I had wire strippers,

01:48:36   but it tries to give you everything you'll need.

01:48:38   But I was happy to get the little baggie

01:48:40   of heat shrink tubing,

01:48:40   'cause I didn't want to order a separate,

01:48:42   'cause to your point,

01:48:43   it's not like you can order like three pieces of that.

01:48:44   You have to order a bag of 5,000, right?

01:48:46   - Right.

01:48:47   - So I had that experience.

01:48:49   I was trying to, for one of my son's electronic projects,

01:48:51   buying like a bunch of electronics components.

01:48:53   So I needed like a 555 timer,

01:48:55   but you can't get one of those.

01:48:56   You gotta buy, you know, seven of them.

01:48:57   And I needed, like, we had to buy a breadboard

01:48:59   and you can't buy one of those.

01:49:00   You have to get a pack of four breadboards

01:49:02   and I wanted to buy a bunch of little wires.

01:49:03   You can't get one wire, you gotta get a giant package.

01:49:05   I needed like two capacitors.

01:49:07   Well, here's a set of 500 capacitors

01:49:08   in all different sizes.

01:49:10   So we have a lot of excess electronic components.

01:49:11   But anyway, I did this surgery,

01:49:14   connected everything together.

01:49:16   Beautiful solder joints, heat shrink tubing.

01:49:18   I didn't have a heat gun.

01:49:19   I didn't come with one, but I just used like a, you know,

01:49:22   butane lighter to do that.

01:49:23   Like the old days, use a match or whatever.

01:49:25   Beautiful job.

01:49:27   I plug it in, hook it up, bring it over,

01:49:30   bring it over to the outlet to plug it in

01:49:32   to see how it goes.

01:49:33   It gets plugged in, I turn it on,

01:49:36   and the fan doesn't spin.

01:49:38   - Oh no.

01:49:39   - What did I do?

01:49:40   Well, my first mistake, my first mistake was,

01:49:42   and this is what happens when you do,

01:49:44   You have a project that you've looked at too long, right?

01:49:47   I found this blog post like a year ago,

01:49:50   and then a few months after that,

01:49:51   I'd bought all the pieces.

01:49:52   And then when I was going to do it today,

01:49:53   it's like, well, I've seen this post a million times.

01:49:55   I bought the pieces.

01:49:56   I know exactly what I'm doing.

01:49:57   I don't need to reread the instructions, right?

01:50:00   But as soon as I saw that fan not spin,

01:50:02   suddenly my brain said, hey, dummy,

01:50:04   remember when you read the instructions for the 17th time

01:50:06   and you noted for the 17th time

01:50:07   that there was an instruction

01:50:08   that pins one and three were switched?

01:50:11   Oh, you didn't do that, did you?

01:50:13   I disconnected the red wire to the red wire,

01:50:15   the white wire to the white wire,

01:50:16   and the black wire to the black wire.

01:50:18   And that should work,

01:50:19   except pins one and three are switched on this.

01:50:21   I'm like, oh no, I don't wanna have to undo these solders.

01:50:24   I did this one all this time,

01:50:25   making them all precious and delicate and beautiful.

01:50:27   But then, this is, we're having a tiny bit of experience

01:50:31   dealing with electronic connectors coming.

01:50:32   It's like, well, pins, connectors that go into little

01:50:37   plastic clip-on things that go onto motherboards,

01:50:40   you know how those work.

01:50:41   It's a piece of plastic,

01:50:42   there's a bunch of bent pieces of metal that slide into them, you can usually remove the

01:50:46   pins and move them around and stick them back in without breaking the connector.

01:50:50   So I did that with some very pointy, very very pointy tweezers that came with the stupid

01:50:54   soldering kit, lifted the little piece of plastic, slid out pin one, lifted the other

01:51:00   little piece of plastic, slid out pin three, swapped them, shoved them back in, pins one

01:51:04   and three swapped, no re-soldering needed.

01:51:06   I was so excited.

01:51:07   I'm like, "Ah, I've solved my problem."

01:51:09   Didn't have to re-solder, it was my own stupid fault.

01:51:11   So then I plug it back in plug it back into the wall turn it on a

01:51:15   Fan kind of feebly spins

01:51:19   Look too good

01:51:21   I looked at the voltage on it and the amps and everything was the same as existing pin and I tried the fan

01:51:27   With like a nine-ball battery beforehand and it was super quiet, but like it's feebly spinning and you know what else it's making a terrible noise

01:51:34   Oh, gosh, what the hell you're the quiet fan. I tried you before outside of the box. You weren't making noise

01:51:41   And I was like well

01:51:42   Maybe the problem was that like I when I screwed it in am I bending the case on the fan

01:51:46   And it's rubbing on the edges or something so I unscrewed it, and it's just like

01:51:49   At very low speeds and it's certain orientations this fan makes a terrible noise

01:51:55   And I feel like it's just not getting enough voltage because there's probably variable voltage going to the thing

01:51:59   And though the fan is right. There's like a start voltage and a regular voltage

01:52:03   I don't know you know I think the start voltage was the same as existing fan

01:52:07   But either way whatever whatever stuff was coming through the wires the blu-ray player was putting out was putting this fan into a speed

01:52:14   Where it was kind of like noisy and crappy

01:52:16   But the worst thing is if you stop the fan with your finger because I still have the whole case open

01:52:20   If you stop the fan with your finger, it does not start again. Oh, that's bad. Yep

01:52:25   Yeah, and so I'm thinking that the person who did this post I you know kudos to them

01:52:30   Thanks for the instructions and everything, but I'm wondering they're saying it's so much quieter now. It's like maybe it's because your fan isn't spinning

01:52:36   It's really quiet when the fan doesn't spin at all, I bet

01:52:39   So that was very disappointing and I was reminded of the phrase, you know, the medical, you know

01:52:45   Cliche the surgery was a success, but the patient died. I feel like that's what happened here. The surgery was a success

01:52:51   I accomplished what I intended to do going in there, but the patient died

01:52:55   so out came the supposedly quiet fan and in back went the old fan and I will just

01:53:03   Live with the fact that it is slightly noisier than apparently the whole internet wants but for as far as I'm concerned

01:53:08   It's way quieter than the ps3 was so I think I'll be fine. So yeah, and I've heard everything back in the box

01:53:13   So am I preparing the way not really I have a bunch of boxes with crap in it

01:53:18   Ready to go still no monitor for ya. I have no monitor. I have no TV

01:53:24   I have a half built. I have a half built stand. I have a receiver in a box

01:53:27   I have a blu-ray player in a box. I have a keyboard

01:53:29   I have a bunch of HDMI cables, a bunch of fancy HDMI 2.1, 48 gigabits, blah, blah, blah,

01:53:35   blah.

01:53:36   By the way, buying those on Amazon is quite an adventure, trying to find ones that are

01:53:39   not scams or whatever.

01:53:42   There's this whole certification program where you can scan this little QR code with an app

01:53:45   that will tell you if it's really certified, blah, blah, blah, but I feel like it's kind

01:53:48   of like extra virgin olive oil, where what it says on the package doesn't really matter

01:53:51   because who knows what you're getting.

01:53:53   I'll let you know how that goes once I get everything hooked up.

01:53:55   I'm aided by the fact that I don't plan to connect my PS5 to this TV, so honestly 4K

01:54:00   120Hz doesn't really matter that much.

01:54:02   But I do want to have a setup that in theory could support it if I ever decided to do that.

01:54:06   Like if I wanted to carry my PS5 over there or when the PS5 Slim comes out I put the big

01:54:10   PS5 in that room and use it for like the next Uncharted style game that comes out which

01:54:15   I would want to play on a TV.

01:54:18   But yeah, I'm kind of in the in-between phase.

01:54:20   When the time does come I should probably take pictures of it just to show you the nightmare

01:54:24   that it's going to be removing all my AV equipment and putting in new stuff, but for now it's

01:54:28   all in boxes, waiting patiently, hopefully not growing mold.

01:54:31   It's an adventure, Jon. This is one heck of an adventure.

01:54:37   I'm excited about it. I'm excited about all this new equipment I got. I'm just sad that

01:54:40   I can't use any of it yet.

01:54:41   I mean, there's nothing stopping you from plugging in the Blu-ray player or the receiver,

01:54:45   right?

01:54:46   It's a 4K Blu-ray player on a 4K TV.

01:54:48   A little down sample.

01:54:49   I don't have any 4K Blu-rays.

01:54:50   Well, fair.

01:54:51   I mean you could start buying those now though.

01:54:54   I will.

01:54:55   Like I have a bunch of, as you can imagine, I have a list of ones.

01:54:58   Actually no, it's not true.

01:54:59   I do have the 4K Godfather whatever thing that came out.

01:55:04   I did pre-buy that, sorry.

01:55:05   Yeah.

01:55:06   I don't know how many times I bought the Godfather movies, but yeah.

01:55:08   Whatever the most recent cool 4K Blu-ray thing.

01:55:12   There's only certain movies that I care enough to get on Blu-ray because most of the stuff

01:55:16   I own in streaming versions or whatever, but you know, streaming is not as high a bit rate

01:55:20   Blu-ray so that the handful of movies that I really really really care about I won't want to have on plastic discs at

01:55:26   The highest possible quality the godfather definitely qualifies as do a handful of other movies, so I will eventually get them

01:55:32   I mostly just wanted to have a blue-ray player

01:55:35   That's not a ps3 so I can use my

01:55:37   non 4k blu-rays and all that other good stuff and then I honestly don't understand why you wouldn't go ahead and plug in the

01:55:42   Receiver in the blu-ray player get used to it live. He'll use what you've got

01:55:46   I see that's thing plugging in the receiver like you don't understand like

01:55:50   Doing that process of taking my existing receiver out and putting this new one in that's like heart surgery

01:55:55   Like I'm not going to do that for funsies

01:55:58   Like I need to what I need to do is tear everything to the ground remove everything go back there find like it in

01:56:03   Merlin's

01:56:04   What we're always says find all the cables behind my TV that have not been connected to anything for several years, right?

01:56:09   Pull them all out

01:56:10   Get all that stuff out of there vacuum clean everything out remove all the cable ties and all the routing and everything and just

01:56:18   Start fresh and I want to do that when I have all the pieces

01:56:21   I don't want to do like piecemeal because really by pulling that receiver out would be a nightmare

01:56:25   Especially since my a lot of my speaker cables

01:56:28   They don't they're they're sized to fit. Let's say there is little coils of slack

01:56:32   I did give myself whatever they call like a little coil of extra slack or whatever

01:56:35   But that coil of slack is neatly coiled with ties around it. So really there isn't is there slack

01:56:40   If it's tied up and it's so hard to get behind there

01:56:45   - Yeah, so I don't even wanna think about

01:56:47   touching that setup until I have all this stuff available.

01:56:49   I just really hope that the TV is what it's supposed to be,

01:56:53   like the reviews so far are so good,

01:56:55   but I wanna see the final reviews from my trusted reviewers

01:56:58   who like bring it through all the testing things

01:57:00   and if it looks good,

01:57:01   and then I can actually order it and it will arrive

01:57:03   and it's not like this Apple Studio display

01:57:05   where it's gonna arrive in three months or something.

01:57:07   - Mm, the struggle is real.

01:57:10   - Oh my God.

01:57:11   - This is why you don't replace your stuff for 10 years.

01:57:12   - Yeah, but I am excited about it

01:57:14   because this TV is going to be pretty sweet.

01:57:16   The stand's going to be pretty ugly.

01:57:18   (laughing)

01:57:19   I'll definitely send you pictures of it.

01:57:21   The only one good thing about the stand is

01:57:23   it's like a vertical piece of metal.

01:57:25   Like I tried to get this simple as possible.

01:57:27   It's a big vertical piece of metal,

01:57:29   but it's wide enough that I can hide cables behind it.

01:57:31   My current stand on my Panasonic Plasma

01:57:33   is this beautiful, shiny, solid piece of like

01:57:36   forged aluminum in a V shape.

01:57:38   I've complained about this before.

01:57:40   And it's like a V of aluminum,

01:57:41   and you have to hide all the HDMI cables

01:57:44   along the little edges of the V, right?

01:57:47   There's no thing blocking the cable,

01:57:48   so you can't just be like,

01:57:49   "Ah, the tables come down from the TV."

01:57:50   You don't have to see them.

01:57:51   Every cable needs to be like,

01:57:52   like in a cartoon where a cartoon character

01:57:54   will hide behind like a rake or a shovel or something,

01:57:56   where they'll contort their body

01:57:58   to fit the exact shape of the skinny thing.

01:58:00   All of my cables are pinned to the legs of this V.

01:58:04   Some cable's coming down one side of the V,

01:58:06   some cable's coming down the other,

01:58:07   and then quickly snaking behind the TV

01:58:10   so they're not visible.

01:58:11   And it'll be nice to have something

01:58:12   to actually block the cable

01:58:14   so I can just stick a bunch of them

01:58:15   on the back of a piece of metal and you'll never see them.

01:58:17   - Or you could just not care about cable management.

01:58:19   - No, that's not possible.

01:58:21   Speaking of cable management,

01:58:22   I almost, this is the thing I almost did like this weekend.

01:58:25   I was like, when the shipping delay came,

01:58:28   why don't I, this is getting into Casey's own,

01:58:30   why don't I just get a 4K monitor to tide me over?

01:58:33   - Yep. - I'll get a 4K monitor,

01:58:34   here's my thing, I've got a 4K monitor.

01:58:36   My wife can use the 4K monitor on her desk

01:58:38   with her new Mac Studio and she'll grumble a little bit,

01:58:41   but she'll know that her 5K Apple Studio display

01:58:43   is coming soon, and the whole deal would be,

01:58:46   I get a fancy 4K monitor for my PlayStation 5.

01:58:49   I'd move my existing 4K monitor on my PlayStation 5

01:58:52   to be my wife's 4K monitor,

01:58:53   and then when the Apple Studio came,

01:58:55   I would take the lesser 4K monitor

01:58:57   and let my son use it with the PS4 Pro upstairs

01:59:00   and swap out his PS4 for a PS4 Pro.

01:59:02   So I have this whole plan about how I can excuse

01:59:05   getting a 4k monitor and then I refresh my 4k monitor research and realize the choices have

01:59:10   not changed since like last year and there's no there's no good HDR 4k monitor available for a

01:59:16   reasonable amount of money and the non-hdr ones are only so-so and my top pick had a very skinny

01:59:22   aluminum stand that you can't hide cables behind the eve spectrum has this really elegant apple

01:59:28   like stand that's a single vertical skinny stick it's like the thickness of a pencil made of like

01:59:33   solid aluminum. Very elegant looking. It's like, where am I supposed to put the cables?

01:59:37   There's a power cable and there's an HDMI cable. I can't fit. Like, they would have to be like

01:59:42   stacked behind each other exactly and there's no clips or anything for it either. So in every

01:59:46   review it's like this beautiful elegant stand and there's two giant thick scraggly wires just

01:59:50   randomly coming down from behind the screen. Poorly thought out. Always give people a place

01:59:55   to hide their cables.

01:59:57   (beeping)