ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I guess we have to talk about him this week, huh?

00:00:02 ◼   ► Okay, so here's the thing.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Every year I say over and over again, you gotta order, you gotta order, you gotta order. And every time all of you

00:00:11 ◼   ► justifiably roll your eyes, "Oh sure, Casey, whatever, ho ho ho, we've heard this before."

00:00:15 ◼   ► Really, this is your last warning. If you're driving

00:00:19 ◼   ► signal, because you're an adult and you know what a damn turn signal is, signal and then pull off the road.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Park,

00:00:28 ◼   ► open up ATP.fm/store and take a look at our wares,

00:00:32 ◼   ► our merchandise, that's W-A-R-E-S.

00:00:35 ◼   ► - Oh yes. - Mind you.

00:00:35 ◼   ► - Not our wares.

00:00:36 ◼   ► - Not our wares.

00:00:38 ◼   ► So yeah, so here's the spread one last time real quick.

00:00:41 ◼   ► We've got the M1 Ultra shirt,

00:00:43 ◼   ► which is exactly as you would expect.

00:00:44 ◼   ► The M1 Interposer shirt, which,

00:00:47 ◼   ► follow-up is far and away in the lead of our new offerings.

00:00:50 ◼   ► I am very pleased by this.

00:00:52 ◼   ► If you don't know what we're talking about,

00:00:53 ◼   ► this is the M1 logo that we've kind of created,

00:00:56 ◼   ► and then underneath it, it says Max,

00:01:00 ◼   ► and then adjacent to that with a kind of interposer

00:01:02 ◼   ► in between them is an upside down Max.

00:01:05 ◼   ► So I am in love with this shirt,

00:01:07 ◼   ► I am so excited to get one, I have ordered mine.

00:01:09 ◼   ► We additionally have M1 Ultra in monochrome,

00:01:12 ◼   ► which is a little bit cheaper,

00:01:13 ◼   ► because we're not doing 34 passes to print them.

00:01:16 ◼   ► And then, and that comes in many, many different colors.

00:01:19 ◼   ► We also of course have the traditional ATP shirts,

00:01:22 ◼   ► and we have brought back the embroidered zip hoodie as well,

00:01:26 ◼   ► which I quite like. I actually, to be honest with you, I prefer not to have the hood on my hoodie.

00:01:30 ◼   ► I know this is very controversial, but it's still an excellent, excellent sweatshirt/hoodie.

00:01:34 ◼   ► And then finally we have brought back the ATP Pankglass and you might ask, "Well, what do you mean finally? You said they're mugs."

00:01:39 ◼   ► No, no, you should have ordered. You should have listened to Casey and you should have ordered because guess what? Mugs are sold out.

00:01:45 ◼   ► I'm so sorry. There is a slim chance we will have some extras after returns and things of that nature.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Maybe, and we might be able to put it up later, but no promises. You should have listened to me.

00:01:56 ◼   ► You should have pulled the car over, stepped to the side of the sidewalk, done whatever you needed to do

00:02:00 ◼   ► to go to ATP.fm/store. Your time is running out as we record this, which is presumably

00:02:07 ◼   ► hours before you hear it. There's only a couple days left. It will end, the store sales will end

00:02:14 ◼   ► on the 30th of April at eight in the evening ATP time.

00:02:18 ◼   ► So that is Saturday at 8 p.m. ATP or New York time.

00:02:23 ◼   ► That is your last chance.

00:02:24 ◼   ► So now is your moment.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Signal or say, "Excuse me," and pull the car

00:02:30 ◼   ► or pull your butt over, do whatever you gotta do.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Go to ATP.fm/store, please, and thank you.

00:02:36 ◼   ► - Consider buying our pint glasses.

00:02:37 ◼   ► We've got plenty of them left.

00:02:39 ◼   ► - And they're actually-- - You'll be seeing them

00:02:40 ◼   ► on the on-demand store for sure,

00:02:42 ◼   ► 'cause it looks like we are not going to sell out of those.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And the funny thing is, hand to deity of your choice.

00:02:48 ◼   ► I love these pine glasses. - Deity?

00:02:50 ◼   ► - Deity, is that what I meant to say?

00:02:52 ◼   ► Sorry, whatever.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Hand to God, fine. - Affluent.

00:02:54 ◼   ► - Affluent.

00:02:56 ◼   ► What is that, bezel, but that was John's.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Anyway, so yeah, hand to a thing that you consider holy.

00:03:02 ◼   ► These pine glasses are excellent.

00:03:03 ◼   ► They really, really are.

00:03:04 ◼   ► They're dishwasher safe, they're engraved, they're excellent.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I have four of them, I haven't broken any yet,

00:03:08 ◼   ► and I actually have ordered two more

00:03:10 ◼   ► 'cause I love them so darn much.

00:03:11 ◼   ► So all of my pronunciation mistakes aside,

00:03:15 ◼   ► I apologize, the offending people have been sacked,

00:03:17 ◼   ► but please, ATP.fm/store.

00:03:20 ◼   ► - Not one store-related thing.

00:03:22 ◼   ► I did another blog post.

00:03:23 ◼   ► I'm out of control.

00:03:25 ◼   ► I'm just like, "Foast into--" - It's a whole new world.

00:03:27 ◼   ► It's a whole new world.

00:03:28 ◼   ► - I would say not only did you write a blog post,

00:03:30 ◼   ► you launched a new app, sort of.

00:03:32 ◼   ► - Kind of. (laughs)

00:03:33 ◼   ► - Anyway, the post is about,

00:03:35 ◼   ► the thing I do on Twitter when the store is,

00:03:37 ◼   ► when we have the ATP store up,

00:03:38 ◼   ► I do this thing I call Frame Game

00:03:40 ◼   ► I post little snippets of frames from movies or TV shows and I ask you to guess what it's

00:03:45 ◼   ► from and the first person who guesses it gets a free t-shirt in the ATP store.

00:03:50 ◼   ► I've been doing that for several years now.

00:03:52 ◼   ► It's a fun little game.

00:03:53 ◼   ► I finally did a post about it to explain the game for people who don't know.

00:03:59 ◼   ► This was really unrelated as I started doing this before the holy animus twitter thing

00:04:03 ◼   ► where I was like, you know, I've been playing this game for years on twitter and it's kind

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's kind of hard to follow on Twitter if you go back in time and try to look at it

00:04:10 ◼   ► because of the way I've chose to thread the tweets together.

00:04:13 ◼   ► It's just not easy to go back in time and look at it for even my own purposes.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Did I ever do this movie before?

00:04:20 ◼   ► Did somebody guess it?

00:04:22 ◼   ► It's not easy to look at.

00:04:23 ◼   ► I was afraid having all this stuff locked up in Twitter isn't great.

00:04:27 ◼   ► I do the thing where you download your Twitter archive periodically too, but that just gives

00:04:30 ◼   ► you a local copy that's hard to follow.

00:04:32 ◼   ► So I wanted to have my own copy of the history of Frame Game, which is stupid, whatever.

00:04:38 ◼   ► But I saved all the images in a folder on my Mac, so I'm like, I should put a web version

00:04:42 ◼   ► of this up.

00:04:43 ◼   ► So I did.

00:04:44 ◼   ► So there's the post explaining it, and then there's a big shiny candy button on the post,

00:04:49 ◼   ► just because I always need something to distract myself with when I'm doing a blog post, and

00:04:53 ◼   ► this time it was, can I make a shiny button?

00:04:54 ◼   ► Anyway, you follow that button and it will take you to the Frame Game history viewer.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Is that a place where you can go and play Frame Game?

00:05:01 ◼   ► Kind of in your head if you want but really it's a history of you or if you want to see all the frames that

00:05:06 ◼   ► We've ever done

00:05:07 ◼   ► There's a surprising number of things like more than 50 of them all the frames you've ever done the person who won them

00:05:13 ◼   ► How long it took them to win because I put that in there just because it's so surprising like I think the best one is

00:05:19 ◼   ► The I'm not gonna ruin the movie in case you haven't seen it

00:05:22 ◼   ► But there's one with I think the smallest little piece of a frame I've ever posted it was 64 by 64 pixels

00:05:29 ◼   ► out of like a 1920 by 1200 frame.

00:05:32 ◼   ► That's how much I posted with the frame

00:05:33 ◼   ► and someone got it in like a minute.

00:05:35 ◼   ► So.

00:05:35 ◼   ► - It looks like 48 seconds for one of them.

00:05:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, and sometimes they're kind of easy,

00:05:39 ◼   ► but, and as I noted in the post,

00:05:41 ◼   ► there's a good chance that people will figure out

00:05:43 ◼   ► how to brute force this with computers,

00:05:45 ◼   ► but I like to think that most people

00:05:46 ◼   ► are trying to play it legit.

00:05:47 ◼   ► So anyway, read the post, play the game, it's lots of fun.

00:05:50 ◼   ► One other aside I want to throw in here

00:05:51 ◼   ► for a little dev corner thing.

00:05:53 ◼   ► I ran, when making this thing,

00:05:56 ◼   ► which is, oh, it's a history viewer

00:05:57 ◼   ► that shows a bunch of pictures.

00:05:58 ◼   ► How hard could that be, right?

00:06:00 ◼   ► I ran into a classic of layout that I've certainly

00:06:03 ◼   ► run into before on the web.

00:06:04 ◼   ► And I imagine people with more experience doing iOS and Mac

00:06:08 ◼   ► apps have also run into it.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Tell me if this sounds familiar.

00:06:11 ◼   ► So if you go to the frame game--

00:06:13 ◼   ► game-- hypercritical.co/frame-game,

00:06:16 ◼   ► you'll see that it's trying to show the frame.

00:06:20 ◼   ► And it shows a small snippet of the frame.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And then it shows the full frame.

00:06:23 ◼   ► And when it's showing the small snippet,

00:06:25 ◼   ► it's in a container that's the size of the full frame.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And of course, every full frame is different aspect ratio,

00:06:31 ◼   ► probably because movies and TV shows

00:06:32 ◼   ► are different aspect ratios, and partially

00:06:34 ◼   ► because I'm taking screenshots of video players

00:06:37 ◼   ► and I'm not pixel accurate.

00:06:38 ◼   ► So they're all over the place.

00:06:39 ◼   ► So I have to change the aspect ratio.

00:06:41 ◼   ► And it's like a single page web app or whatever.

00:06:45 ◼   ► But something that you may not know

00:06:47 ◼   ► if you're not a long suffering web developer

00:06:49 ◼   ► is that when you get what we call the viewport width, which

00:06:53 ◼   ► is the width of the browser window from the left

00:06:55 ◼   ► to the right edge, that returns the same value,

00:06:58 ◼   ► whether the scroll bar is visible or not.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Now, most people who run their Macs

00:07:02 ◼   ► in a default configuration don't even have scroll bars.

00:07:04 ◼   ► They just have that thing where like,

00:07:05 ◼   ► oh, when you're scrolling,

00:07:06 ◼   ► like a little lozenge appears or whatever,

00:07:08 ◼   ► but old people like me have it set

00:07:10 ◼   ► in the general preferences and system preferences set

00:07:12 ◼   ► to always show scroll bars, which is a confusing setting.

00:07:15 ◼   ► It's kind of like the cache control, no cache header,

00:07:18 ◼   ► which tells it it's okay to cache.

00:07:19 ◼   ► But anyway, always show scroll bars means,

00:07:23 ◼   ► it doesn't mean that always shows the scroll bar.

00:07:24 ◼   ► means if there's stuff that you need to scroll to,

00:07:27 ◼   ► then it will always show the scroll bar, right?

00:07:29 ◼   ► So if you're looking at a very long web page

00:07:31 ◼   ► and it's way taller than your monitor,

00:07:33 ◼   ► you will see on the right side of your browser a scroll bar,

00:07:36 ◼   ► you know, a Mac OS X or whatever Mac OS scroll bar,

00:07:39 ◼   ► and it will always be there.

00:07:41 ◼   ► When that scroll bar is there,

00:07:43 ◼   ► the viewport width does not change,

00:07:45 ◼   ► but part of the viewport is blocked by the scroll bar.

00:07:48 ◼   ► So what if you want to have, like I did,

00:07:50 ◼   ► want to have a frame for a movie

00:07:52 ◼   ► that spans from edge to edge, okay?

00:07:55 ◼   ► Well, you could get the viewport width and you could say,

00:07:58 ◼   ► okay, I'm going to make this image

00:08:00 ◼   ► the same width as the viewport.

00:08:02 ◼   ► But of course, you know, frames have a width and a height

00:08:05 ◼   ► and an aspect ratio.

00:08:07 ◼   ► So if you make it the same width as the viewport,

00:08:09 ◼   ► then you can calculate what the height would be

00:08:10 ◼   ► based on the aspect ratio, right?

00:08:12 ◼   ► And then you make it that height.

00:08:13 ◼   ► But oops, what if making it that height

00:08:16 ◼   ► pushed the crap on the bottom of the page

00:08:17 ◼   ► down below the bottom of the browser window?

00:08:19 ◼   ► Now you need a scroll bar

00:08:21 ◼   ► and suddenly the scroll bar appears.

00:08:22 ◼   ► And now the scroll bar is covering some of the content,

00:08:25 ◼   ► which also means that a horizontal scroll bar now appears

00:08:28 ◼   ► because there's some part of the content

00:08:29 ◼   ► that you can't see that you need

00:08:30 ◼   ► to horizontally scroll for.

00:08:32 ◼   ► And so you're like, okay, well, if that happens,

00:08:35 ◼   ► I'll figure out that the scroll bar is visible

00:08:38 ◼   ► through an annoying hacky technique.

00:08:40 ◼   ► And then I'll shrink the picture

00:08:43 ◼   ► so that it moves out from under the scroll bar.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And I'll say, make the picture the viewport width

00:08:48 ◼   ► minus the width of the scroll bar,

00:08:49 ◼   ► which I can also calculate using some hacky ass way

00:08:51 ◼   ► to do it, right?

00:08:53 ◼   ► And now you think you're all clever.

00:08:54 ◼   ► So you shrink the thing, but when you shrink it,

00:08:57 ◼   ► of course the height shrinks too, right?

00:08:59 ◼   ► Because you have to maintain the aspect ratio.

00:09:01 ◼   ► What if the height shrinks so that now the content

00:09:04 ◼   ► doesn't roll off the end of the screen

00:09:05 ◼   ► and you don't need the vertical scroll bar anymore?

00:09:08 ◼   ► Do you see what the problem is here?

00:09:10 ◼   ► Right?

00:09:11 ◼   ► So you made it too big and a vertical scroll bar appeared

00:09:13 ◼   ► because it pushed the content down.

00:09:15 ◼   ► Then you move it out from under the scroll bar

00:09:16 ◼   ► and now in certain scenarios, the vertical content

00:09:19 ◼   ► is no longer big enough to require vertical scroll,

00:09:21 ◼   ► now you have a blank space on the right side

00:09:22 ◼   ► of your picture.

00:09:24 ◼   ► This is a classic layout problem of like,

00:09:27 ◼   ► changing my metrics to avoid things that pop in

00:09:30 ◼   ► and out on the sides, also changes the metrics,

00:09:32 ◼   ► because you have to maintain an aspect ratio.

00:09:35 ◼   ► And so I had fun chasing my tail about this

00:09:37 ◼   ► and sort of cursing and saying,

00:09:38 ◼   ► like, I don't know why I didn't think of this,

00:09:40 ◼   ► 'cause I've run into this exact same problem so many times,

00:09:42 ◼   ► but you just forget about it.

00:09:43 ◼   ► It's like childbirth amnesia, right?

00:09:45 ◼   ► You just forget about the pain, right?

00:09:47 ◼   ► And so I have to do-- any programmer who's dealt with this

00:09:51 ◼   ► probably knows what I did, because this is not

00:09:53 ◼   ► a really important application.

00:09:54 ◼   ► That's just throw ugly hacks at it.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Isn't that all of web development ever?

00:09:58 ◼   ► No, it's all of all development ever.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Because if you think about this, there's no actual solution.

00:10:06 ◼   ► In this edge case, which if you get a window that

00:10:09 ◼   ► sides just right and a content that sides just right,

00:10:11 ◼   ► both of those settings don't work.

00:10:13 ◼   ► One of them, it's hidden underneath the scroll bar.

00:10:15 ◼   ► The other one is an empty space.

00:10:17 ◼   ► There is nothing in between that you can get.

00:10:18 ◼   ► They're both wrong, right?

00:10:20 ◼   ► So the only way to do it is to figure out

00:10:23 ◼   ► how much did the content have to grow

00:10:26 ◼   ► to cause the scroll bar to become visible

00:10:28 ◼   ► and add a blank space that's that size

00:10:30 ◼   ► so that you make sure that when I resize this image

00:10:33 ◼   ► and it gets a little bit shorter,

00:10:35 ◼   ► I shove enough white space in there

00:10:37 ◼   ► such that the vertical scroll bar,

00:10:39 ◼   ► I'm sure the vertical scroll bar is not gonna go away.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Then you can shrink the image and shove in the white space.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And so don't look at the code for this, it's horrendous.

00:10:48 ◼   ► But you know, I just got sick of it

00:10:50 ◼   ► and just wanted to get it done.

00:10:51 ◼   ► So while you're playing the game,

00:10:53 ◼   ► you can appreciate the edge case layout nuances

00:10:57 ◼   ► that I had to suffer,

00:10:58 ◼   ► all so I could get the image to go exactly

00:11:00 ◼   ► from one edge to the other.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And please don't look on a red and display

00:11:03 ◼   ► and look for half pixels because they're there.

00:11:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:06 ◼   ► - All right, let's do some follow up.

00:11:09 ◼   ► The Apple Studio Display has a beta firmware

00:11:13 ◼   ► that is available that fixes all of the camera problems.

00:11:16 ◼   ► It is now perfect in every measurable way.

00:11:19 ◼   ► There's nothing else to talk about.

00:11:20 ◼   ► - Oh, I wish.

00:11:22 ◼   ► - This is interesting that this change,

00:11:24 ◼   ► like we were saying, like, oh, the screen runs iOS, right?

00:11:27 ◼   ► So I guess the next time the screen is gonna get

00:11:29 ◼   ► new quote unquote firmware is the next iOS update.

00:11:32 ◼   ► But of course this update is part of the next macOS beta.

00:11:35 ◼   ► Now, you know, I'm sure there's an iOS beta

00:11:37 ◼   ► to go along with this and this,

00:11:39 ◼   ► maybe this beta is the same build number as the iOS beta.

00:11:42 ◼   ► We don't know yet.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Anyway, if you want to try out if you have a studio display you want to try this out

00:11:46 ◼   ► Which I don't recommend by the way, but if you're really desperate to try it out, it's in the Mac OS 12.4 beta

00:11:50 ◼   ► So a friend of the show Jason Snell has

00:11:53 ◼   ► possibly the best

00:11:56 ◼   ► Reasonable setup to show before and afters for this a lot of people like other friend of the show James Thompson

00:12:01 ◼   ► Had you know taking some photos before and after or compared them to like an iMac Pro or what have you but?

00:12:07 ◼   ► Jason still has a review unit which he didn't update and then updated his his actual unit or perhaps vice versa

00:12:13 ◼   ► So he has two studio displays sitting right next to each other one at one updated one not and so he put a video on

00:12:20 ◼   ► YouTube where he filmed and linked up, you know the both of them and have has them side by side

00:12:25 ◼   ► So I am biased because I'm looking at a studio display and it's in my best interest not to think it's a piece of garbage

00:12:32 ◼   ► Because I've been waiting for it for like six years. So consider your source here

00:12:35 ◼   ► I have not installed the firmware update,

00:12:37 ◼   ► but of course I've looked at all these different,

00:12:40 ◼   ► you know, examples and whatnot,

00:12:41 ◼   ► and it's not great, I mean, it's not fixed

00:12:45 ◼   ► by any stretch of the imagination.

00:12:47 ◼   ► I do think it's better from what I can tell,

00:12:49 ◼   ► but it's not fixed, but I was talking with Jason briefly

00:12:52 ◼   ► on Twitter, and having had only one experience

00:12:57 ◼   ► with, what's the, not the front and center,

00:13:00 ◼   ► that's your thing, what's the little--

00:13:02 ◼   ► - Center stage.

00:13:03 ◼   ► - Thank you, center stage, I couldn't think

00:13:04 ◼   ► darn name. So I've had one experience with center stage and I loved it. I thought it was amazing. I

00:13:09 ◼   ► thought it made being on a call when people are flipping in and out of the call, you know, just

00:13:14 ◼   ► that much better. And perhaps if I was just sitting on Zoom by myself all day, I would have a very

00:13:18 ◼   ► different opinion about it. But for my needs, I think I would take an imperfect camera with center

00:13:25 ◼   ► stage over a flawless camera without it. I am not saying that anyone has to agree with me. In fact,

00:13:30 ◼   ► In fact, I bet most people don't.

00:13:31 ◼   ► But for me, I'm willing to make that trade,

00:13:34 ◼   ► and I am happy to see that this is getting better,

00:13:38 ◼   ► but I mean, I never expected this webcam

00:13:39 ◼   ► to be particularly stupendous.

00:13:41 ◼   ► I wish it was better.

00:13:42 ◼   ► I think it should be better,

00:13:45 ◼   ► especially for a company that seems to pride themselves

00:13:47 ◼   ► on being so great at imaging and so on,

00:13:49 ◼   ► but it doesn't look like this is fixed yet.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And now people are starting to wonder,

00:13:53 ◼   ► well, is this really hardware?

00:13:54 ◼   ► Is this as good as it's gonna get?

00:13:56 ◼   ► And I don't know, it's hard to say.

00:13:59 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's pretty clear that the hardware here

00:14:01 ◼   ► is very limited.

00:14:03 ◼   ► When this first hit the news, whenever

00:14:06 ◼   ► that was a few weeks back or a couple months back,

00:14:10 ◼   ► my guess then was like, I think the software might

00:14:12 ◼   ► be able to be tweaked a little, but you have this relatively

00:14:17 ◼   ► low-resolution camera that's being cropped significantly

00:14:20 ◼   ► to achieve center stage.

00:14:22 ◼   ► And it's at quite a distance from people

00:14:25 ◼   ► compared to the iPad that has similar hardware.

00:14:27 ◼   ► So it just seems like this was doomed to always be pretty mediocre to poor.

00:14:33 ◼   ► And so far this bears that out, that the tweaks that we're seeing now are seemingly fairly

00:14:39 ◼   ► minor.

00:14:40 ◼   ► And I think one of my favorite comparisons was, and I mentioned it a second ago, the

00:14:44 ◼   ► James Thompson comparison.

00:14:45 ◼   ► This is our friend who makes PCALC, you know, great programmer and a great member of our

00:14:50 ◼   ► community.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And James, he posted the before and after from the old software and the new software

00:14:54 ◼   ► here.

00:14:55 ◼   ► that him posted the similar shot from his iMac Pro

00:14:59 ◼   ► built-in webcam, which may I remind you is I believe

00:15:03 ◼   ► a something like a two megapixel.

00:15:04 ◼   ► It's a very low-resolution camera.

00:15:06 ◼   ► It's from 2017 and has no super fancy image processing.

00:15:11 ◼   ► It probably has whatever kind of basic stuff

00:15:13 ◼   ► would come in any webcam, any commodity thing

00:15:16 ◼   ► up to at least a couple years ago.

00:15:18 ◼   ► So no ML stuff.

00:15:20 ◼   ► So in my opinion, and many others who saw this,

00:15:24 ◼   ► The iMac Pro built-in webcam looks way better

00:15:27 ◼   ► than the studio webcam, before or after.

00:15:30 ◼   ► And it's not that it looks super great,

00:15:33 ◼   ► but it seems like it was working with more

00:15:36 ◼   ► on the hardware side and didn't need to do

00:15:39 ◼   ► so much software processing to get it to look right.

00:15:42 ◼   ► And there's only so much you can do in software

00:15:46 ◼   ► when you have a little tiny sensor and a little tiny lens,

00:15:49 ◼   ► and especially with these new center stage cameras,

00:15:52 ◼   ► then you're further cropping it down

00:15:54 ◼   ► to do the center stage effect.

00:15:56 ◼   ► I think center stage in this context was a mistake.

00:16:00 ◼   ► It makes a little more sense on the iPad

00:16:02 ◼   ► in the sense that again, you're holding it closer to you,

00:16:05 ◼   ► it is more consumer targeted,

00:16:06 ◼   ► you might have those situations where like,

00:16:08 ◼   ► you know the family's coming in and out,

00:16:09 ◼   ► like they demoed in the background.

00:16:10 ◼   ► But for a professional display like this

00:16:12 ◼   ► that's mostly being bought for workplaces

00:16:14 ◼   ► and power users and nerds like us,

00:16:17 ◼   ► I don't think center stage is necessary

00:16:19 ◼   ► and it's definitely not necessary

00:16:21 ◼   ► if it comes at the expense of whatever hardware resolution

00:16:25 ◼   ► is necessary to have a decent picture.

00:16:27 ◼   ► And in this case, it seems very clear,

00:16:29 ◼   ► putting this camera in here was a mistake.

00:16:33 ◼   ► And if you look at the built-in webcams

00:16:35 ◼   ► of all of Apple's recent hardware,

00:16:37 ◼   ► I mean, look, they're never good.

00:16:38 ◼   ► They're clearly relying very heavily on image processing,

00:16:43 ◼   ► in all of them, including the brand new MacBook Pros.

00:16:45 ◼   ► People also say, why don't you put the iPhone camera,

00:16:48 ◼   ► you know, the iPhone front camera even

00:16:50 ◼   ► in the MacBook Pro cameras.

00:16:52 ◼   ► And you know, the answer there usually is depth

00:16:54 ◼   ► of those screenlets being very, very limited.

00:16:56 ◼   ► And you know, we had to get the notch now

00:16:58 ◼   ► and you don't want the notch to be bigger

00:16:59 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:17:00 ◼   ► But again, in a desktop display,

00:17:03 ◼   ► you have significantly more depth.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Now, they did have to keep the margins thin

00:17:08 ◼   ► to make it look nice and look modern.

00:17:10 ◼   ► So agreed, you know, there's not a lot of like depth

00:17:13 ◼   ► or not a lot of like width and height

00:17:15 ◼   ► in the screen bezel that I put it,

00:17:16 ◼   ► but I have to imagine there was better hardware available

00:17:19 ◼   ► that could have fit, and they just picked wrong here.

00:17:22 ◼   ► They just made the wrong choice.

00:17:24 ◼   ► This webcam and this display was the wrong choice,

00:17:27 ◼   ► and if they have to give up center stage

00:17:29 ◼   ► to have a better one,

00:17:30 ◼   ► I think that's the path they should have taken.

00:17:32 ◼   ► - I think it's kinda weird that, as you noted,

00:17:34 ◼   ► Apple has always had crappy cameras,

00:17:36 ◼   ► crappy front-facing cameras in all its products.

00:17:39 ◼   ► We used to complain about the two megapixel

00:17:40 ◼   ► one and the iMac Pro, we were just saying it was good.

00:17:42 ◼   ► It just seemed like they didn't care about them that much.

00:17:45 ◼   ► We didn't think they would make it worse.

00:17:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, same thing for the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro.

00:17:49 ◼   ► They have like a 640 by something camera

00:17:52 ◼   ► in like the original MacBook Air.

00:17:54 ◼   ► They were always just kind of not good behind the times.

00:17:57 ◼   ► And we'd complain about them and nothing would happen.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And I think the silver lining

00:18:00 ◼   ► to this Apple Studio display thing

00:18:01 ◼   ► is I think this is the first time

00:18:03 ◼   ► that sort of the Apple tech review community

00:18:06 ◼   ► has latched onto the idea that the camera sucks

00:18:09 ◼   ► in such a way that Apple might notice.

00:18:10 ◼   ► 'Cause we all said it about the other ones.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Like, oh, the new laptops are out.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Oh, does it still have a non-HD camera?

00:18:17 ◼   ► We meant like, is it not up to 1080p yet or whatever?

00:18:19 ◼   ► Like we'd make these snarky comments,

00:18:21 ◼   ► but it was never like a story, a big story.

00:18:24 ◼   ► And the studio display, the front-facing camera

00:18:26 ◼   ► has suddenly become a story.

00:18:27 ◼   ► So I have to imagine, especially with the Mac hardware team

00:18:32 ◼   ► that has produced the last few years of products,

00:18:34 ◼   ► that they have taken notice

00:18:36 ◼   ► that we all think their cameras suck.

00:18:38 ◼   ► And the next version of anything that they put out

00:18:41 ◼   ► that starting from now, right?

00:18:43 ◼   ► so that's probably three years from now,

00:18:44 ◼   ► like whatever the pipeline is where they are making

00:18:47 ◼   ► decisions about future products now,

00:18:49 ◼   ► I hope that they will say, oh, we don't want a repeat

00:18:51 ◼   ► of the Apple Studio display thing,

00:18:52 ◼   ► so let's actually put a decent camera in this.

00:18:55 ◼   ► That's my hope anyway, we'll circle back in three years

00:18:57 ◼   ► and see how it is.

00:18:58 ◼   ► And the second thing is about this software update,

00:19:00 ◼   ► I still continue to think that the processing they're doing

00:19:03 ◼   ► in software is not as good as it could be, right?

00:19:07 ◼   ► Because it's not as if we're looking at it and saying,

00:19:11 ◼   ► oh, there's not enough light or it's too noisy or whatever.

00:19:14 ◼   ► If you look at James Thompson's thing,

00:19:16 ◼   ► some people were looking at the histograms of them

00:19:18 ◼   ► and someone said, did they not have the iPhone camera

00:19:22 ◼   ► image processing team look at this?

00:19:23 ◼   ► 'Cause the histogram is crap.

00:19:25 ◼   ► You haven't processed it to,

00:19:27 ◼   ► you could do a better job of processing this,

00:19:29 ◼   ► it wouldn't look as gross.

00:19:30 ◼   ► It still wouldn't look great,

00:19:31 ◼   ► like it's not a good camera or whatever.

00:19:32 ◼   ► And by the way, one of their solutions to like,

00:19:34 ◼   ► oh, we have a big fisheye camera

00:19:36 ◼   ► that you're taking a small crop of,

00:19:38 ◼   ► they just took a bigger crop.

00:19:40 ◼   ► So it makes it look less bad because you're not sort of

00:19:43 ◼   ► throwing out more pixels.

00:19:44 ◼   ► Of course, you are smaller in the frame than you were before

00:19:47 ◼   ► and you can decide if that's a feature or benefit.

00:19:48 ◼   ► But that's one solution.

00:19:52 ◼   ► Like, okay, we'll just zoom back out.

00:19:53 ◼   ► So now you can't see how ugly it is.

00:19:54 ◼   ► But the processing, especially on James Thompson's one,

00:19:57 ◼   ► looks off.

00:19:58 ◼   ► If you look at Jason Snell, I agree he has the best example

00:20:01 ◼   ► because he's literally like in front of both cameras at once

00:20:03 ◼   ► so he gets to move and you can see how the camera moves

00:20:05 ◼   ► around or whatever.

00:20:06 ◼   ► And the one with the firmware update or the one without,

00:20:09 ◼   ► at various times look very similar to each other.

00:20:12 ◼   ► So I don't think it's a particularly big change.

00:20:15 ◼   ► I still think they could do better with better firmware.

00:20:19 ◼   ► And I do wonder if it's like, again,

00:20:21 ◼   ► like I was saying in the camera, I think a policy choice,

00:20:24 ◼   ► where they've decided that the most important thing

00:20:27 ◼   ► is to have every pixel on a human being's face

00:20:29 ◼   ► as bright as possible, even if it makes them look

00:20:31 ◼   ► like a wax death mask.

00:20:33 ◼   ► I think that's the wrong choice,

00:20:34 ◼   ► but that sure seems like what they're trying to do,

00:20:36 ◼   ► like eliminate shadows on people's faces.

00:20:39 ◼   ► And they don't need to because like in James Thompson he had a ring light on him.

00:20:42 ◼   ► He had plenty of light on his face and the image processing was like I've detected the

00:20:45 ◼   ► human face.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Brighten that sucker up because I guess most people like you know in front of their webcams

00:20:51 ◼   ► and they all otherwise look like they're in a dark dungeon so that the processing is really

00:20:54 ◼   ► trying to brighten the face up.

00:20:56 ◼   ► They need to detect that they don't need to make certain faces brighter because they're

00:20:59 ◼   ► already bright enough.

00:21:00 ◼   ► So anyway we'll see in future firmware updates but yeah if you're buying this display for

00:21:05 ◼   ► camera you're gonna get what you're gonna get and you're probably gonna be upset.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Meanwhile, you know, when I first got the XDR, which as you know does not have a

00:21:15 ◼   ► built-in webcam, you know, I bought the little Logitech magnetically attaching

00:21:20 ◼   ► thing that goes on top of it. As I've said before, that's a pretty good webcam

00:21:24 ◼   ► and when I first set that up I was kind of disappointed that I had to look at

00:21:29 ◼   ► this giant black blob on top of my monitor all the time. But I've gotten

00:21:34 ◼   ► used to it now and I'm really happy that I have a really good webcam for whenever I have

00:21:37 ◼   ► to appear on a zoom call. I kind of wish like maybe, you know, the webcam now is pretty

00:21:43 ◼   ► important of a feature and that seems to be only growing over time. You know, there's

00:21:48 ◼   ► obviously a big a big bump during COVID of everyone all of a sudden working from home

00:21:52 ◼   ► who wasn't before. But I think obviously a lot of that's going to stick around, even

00:21:56 ◼   ► as COVID kind of, you know, goes into an endemic and waning state where a lot of people go

00:22:01 ◼   ► go back to work.

00:22:01 ◼   ► So to have designed this product,

00:22:04 ◼   ► which chances are this studio display

00:22:06 ◼   ► was probably designed almost entirely

00:22:09 ◼   ► or entirely during the COVID era.

00:22:12 ◼   ► And so to have designed this product

00:22:14 ◼   ► with a really crappy webcam situation

00:22:17 ◼   ► in this day and age, it was a misstep.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And the more I look at the studio display,

00:22:23 ◼   ► the more I think, you know, they put it in like,

00:22:25 ◼   ► you know, the A13, it runs iOS, it's kind of buggy.

00:22:29 ◼   ► I'm kind of thinking like, hmm,

00:22:31 ◼   ► did they have to make this product,

00:22:33 ◼   ► did they have to design this with all this complexity?

00:22:36 ◼   ► Did they have to give it a whole like phone OS

00:22:38 ◼   ► in there to control stuff?

00:22:39 ◼   ► Did they have to do this fancy center stage thing

00:22:42 ◼   ► with this crap hardware when the iMac Pro

00:22:46 ◼   ► with its five year old basic webcam looks better than it?

00:22:50 ◼   ► The XDR works as a perfectly great display

00:22:52 ◼   ► without having to boot an OS that occasionally crashes.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Like I just, I have to wonder like,

00:22:56 ◼   ► Was all of this weird engineering they did in this

00:22:59 ◼   ► the right choice when what they really just needed to do

00:23:03 ◼   ► was make a smaller XDR?

00:23:05 ◼   ► - I think it was the right choice to have all the features

00:23:07 ◼   ► that it has, good speakers, camera, whatever.

00:23:10 ◼   ► I mean, obviously we just wish they were better,

00:23:11 ◼   ► but that's what you want out of,

00:23:13 ◼   ► it's more of a middle of the road $1600 monitor thing.

00:23:17 ◼   ► The really expensive one doesn't have any extraneous crap

00:23:19 ◼   ► 'cause you just, you know, you just buy that stuff,

00:23:22 ◼   ► you're gonna have external speakers,

00:23:23 ◼   ► you're gonna have a fancy external camera.

00:23:24 ◼   ► Like it makes more sense on the pro end

00:23:26 ◼   ► and this thing.

00:23:27 ◼   ► And also for them doing the iOS thing,

00:23:29 ◼   ► that was probably the fastest, cheapest way to do it.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Because I think about it, if they didn't do that, OK,

00:23:34 ◼   ► so we're going to have a camera, we're going to have speakers.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And we want to do center stage.

00:23:37 ◼   ► I can imagine them wanting to do that.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Pretend the camera was good.

00:23:40 ◼   ► We would all be saying, great, center stage is cool.

00:23:44 ◼   ► How do you control center stage?

00:23:46 ◼   ► You have to have some way to thread through your M-whatever

00:23:50 ◼   ► chip in your Mac, and all of its image processing,

00:23:52 ◼   ► and all of those smarts, and all that code that you wrote

00:23:55 ◼   ► now has to control a camera that is not in the same piece of hardware as the

00:23:59 ◼   ► system on a chip but is actually connected externally and so you have to

00:24:02 ◼   ► write drivers to do all that and it's just like the the shortest distance to

00:24:07 ◼   ► getting something working is that we already have an incomplete system that

00:24:09 ◼   ► does this just put an a13 in there and then the a13 acts like it would in an

00:24:13 ◼   ► iPad the cameras in the same case and the speakers are there and it's like

00:24:15 ◼   ► it's it seems like it might even be less work I don't know probably people who

00:24:19 ◼   ► worked on this project are laughing at me now but it seems to me that could

00:24:21 ◼   ► the conceivable would be less work to do what they did.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Like, because you don't have to do as much brand new stuff.

00:24:27 ◼   ► You already have the pieces that know how to do

00:24:29 ◼   ► the things you want it to do.

00:24:30 ◼   ► And then it's a smaller amount of communication

00:24:33 ◼   ► between the host Mac and the things there.

00:24:35 ◼   ► If it wasn't less work, if it was in fact more work,

00:24:38 ◼   ► and it's buggier, then it's definitely the wrong choice.

00:24:40 ◼   ► But I look at this and I think, you know,

00:24:42 ◼   ► it's part spin engineering.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And part spin engineering is, you know,

00:24:46 ◼   ► a dirty word in the car industry, but it shouldn't always be

00:24:48 ◼   ► because if you have something that works, you know,

00:24:50 ◼   ► If you have door handles that work on your cars,

00:24:52 ◼   ► you don't need to reinvent the door handle with every car.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Just put the good door handle on every car, it's fine.

00:24:56 ◼   ► - We're talking about him already.

00:24:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, right? - Yeah.

00:24:59 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:25:00 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Sanity.

00:25:02 ◼   ► What is Sanity, you ask?

00:25:03 ◼   ► It's a content platform that powers exceptional

00:25:06 ◼   ► digital experiences for many companies,

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00:25:14 ◼   ► and digital leaders rely on Sanity to collaborate

00:25:17 ◼   ► in real time, ship new experiences quickly,

00:25:19 ◼   ► and delight their customers with rich media content.

00:25:22 ◼   ► It takes less than 10 minutes to get set up and running

00:25:24 ◼   ► with Sanity, and then your content will flow across APIs,

00:25:27 ◼   ► and there's no limit to how and where you can display it

00:25:30 ◼   ► on any of your channels, websites, mobile apps, kiosks,

00:25:33 ◼   ► anywhere you need it to go.

00:25:34 ◼   ► You can use Sanity for free for low-scale projects,

00:25:37 ◼   ► and it's pay-as-you-go if you need more API usage after that.

00:25:40 ◼   ► And they have great price plans and features for larger

00:25:43 ◼   ► businesses as well.

00:25:44 ◼   ► So now let's talk about their inaugural conference happening

00:25:47 ◼   ► this May called Structured Content 2022.

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00:25:52 ◼   ► to discover new approaches to creating rich, connected

00:25:54 ◼   ► digital experiences.

00:25:56 ◼   ► There will be a mix of talks, panels, and conversations,

00:25:59 ◼   ► covering topics like foundations for building a content

00:26:01 ◼   ► system, real-life applications for structured content

00:26:03 ◼   ► from well-known brands like AT&T or The New York Times,

00:26:06 ◼   ► proven collaboration methods to better connect everyone

00:26:08 ◼   ► who works on content.

00:26:10 ◼   ► And here's a few of the sessions, for example.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Reflections on the Future of the Web,

00:26:13 ◼   ► with digital leaders Guillermo Roque from Vercel

00:26:16 ◼   ► and Michael Sippy from outside.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Overcoming the challenges of digital transformation

00:26:20 ◼   ► with Sanity CEO Magnus Hillestad and AT&T's Director

00:26:23 ◼   ► of Technology Strategic Platforms Scott Gents.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Improv consulting.

00:26:27 ◼   ► A panel of content strategy consultants

00:26:28 ◼   ► will improvise solutions to real life problems.

00:26:30 ◼   ► That's pretty cool.

00:26:31 ◼   ► So there's more than one way to attend as well.

00:26:33 ◼   ► You can join in person in San Francisco on May 24th to 25th,

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00:26:55 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Sanity and the Structured Content 2022

00:26:58 ◼   ► conference for sponsoring our show.

00:27:00 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:27:04 ◼   ► Tell me, Jon, about your Sonos Roam power button.

00:27:06 ◼   ► I was complaining about my Sonos Roam,

00:27:07 ◼   ► that I didn't like the power button because to turn

00:27:09 ◼   ► the stupid thing off, you needed to hold it down

00:27:11 ◼   ► for a ridiculous amount of time and listen

00:27:13 ◼   ► through a series of beeps.

00:27:14 ◼   ► and it was hard to hold the button

00:27:15 ◼   ► 'cause the button was very skinny

00:27:16 ◼   ► and it was on the edge of a triangle

00:27:17 ◼   ► and you had to just keep holding it and holding it

00:27:19 ◼   ► and it was terrible.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Anyway, brilliant thingy, I noted on Twitter

00:27:23 ◼   ► that the Sonos Roam software was updated a few months ago

00:27:26 ◼   ► and now a quick press of the button on the back

00:27:28 ◼   ► turns it off, so I updated my firmware

00:27:30 ◼   ► and lo and behold, I can turn it off by pressing the button

00:27:32 ◼   ► and it immediately turns off, so that's much nicer.

00:27:35 ◼   ► The plus, minus and play buttons on the end still suck though.

00:27:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:40 ◼   ► - And then tangentially related, Patrick Niemeyer writes,

00:27:43 ◼   ► "Hearing Jon talk about the power button

00:27:44 ◼   ► on his shower speaker reminded me of a topic that I can't believe I've never heard him

00:27:47 ◼   ► discuss. The fact that a few generations ago the lock button on the iPhone went from being

00:27:51 ◼   ► instantaneous to more of a suggestion. It currently takes almost a second for the phone

00:27:55 ◼   ► to lock after hitting the button, during which time the screen and touch input are fully

00:28:00 ◼   ► active. I find myself constantly falling into the following trap. I prepare to pocket by

00:28:04 ◼   ► making a quick volume adjustment, then lock the phone, and attempt to put it in my pocket,

00:28:08 ◼   ► however in the movement to put the phone down I accidentally swipe down the on-screen volume

00:28:11 ◼   ► gadget and mute the phone. Is this because the lock button became all things to all people?

00:28:17 ◼   ► Because it used to be that the lock button was the lock button, but now it, well, even

00:28:21 ◼   ► with guided access turned off, or sorry, accessibility turned off, you still have like Apple Pay

00:28:27 ◼   ► and Siri if you hold it down. And so I think this, that's what this is, is because when

00:28:31 ◼   ► you hit the button once, there needs to be some amount of time for Apple to wait and

00:28:36 ◼   ► say, "Are they hitting it a second time? You know, is this really a double tap?" And we've

00:28:39 ◼   ► only seen the first of the two taps. And so there's no way for them to divine what it

00:28:46 ◼   ► is you're going to do. They just have to wait it out and wait whatever the amount of time

00:28:48 ◼   ► is to time out, if you will, and know, "Oh, that was definitely a single tap we should

00:28:53 ◼   ► lock now."

00:28:54 ◼   ► That's exactly right. And so if you think about the different, you know, holding it

00:28:57 ◼   ► down, they don't have to wait really for that. As soon as you release the button, they know

00:29:00 ◼   ► you're not holding it down. But they do have a delay to see, are you double-clicking it

00:29:06 ◼   ► or triple clicking it or just single clicking it.

00:29:08 ◼   ► So the interesting thing is,

00:29:10 ◼   ► if you disable the things that it might be waiting

00:29:13 ◼   ► for double or triple clicks for,

00:29:14 ◼   ► so that's Apple Pay,

00:29:16 ◼   ► and if you have the accessibility shortcut

00:29:18 ◼   ► as the triple click,

00:29:20 ◼   ► if you turn those things off,

00:29:21 ◼   ► which you can do in settings,

00:29:23 ◼   ► and you hit the button, it sleeps instantly.

00:29:25 ◼   ► So if you care that much about that being a thing

00:29:29 ◼   ► and if you can live without double tap to Apple Pay,

00:29:33 ◼   ► now I actually, I tried this,

00:29:34 ◼   ► And I couldn't figure out how to go

00:29:37 ◼   ► to that Apple Pay screen otherwise.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Like I opened up the Wallet app.

00:29:40 ◼   ► - That's what I was gonna ask, if I turn this off,

00:29:42 ◼   ► then how do I Apple Pay?

00:29:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, you go into Wallet

00:29:44 ◼   ► and then you tap on a card, right?

00:29:45 ◼   ► - No, it didn't bring up the,

00:29:48 ◼   ► well, I don't know, maybe I did it wrong,

00:29:49 ◼   ► but I tried that and it didn't bring up

00:29:50 ◼   ► like the payment confirmation.

00:29:52 ◼   ► - Oh no, you're right.

00:29:53 ◼   ► - Yes, anyway, if you turn off those things,

00:29:55 ◼   ► you can get instantaneous sleep again.

00:29:58 ◼   ► But yeah, unfortunately, you'd have to like

00:29:59 ◼   ► never use Apple Pay.

00:30:00 ◼   ► - There's gotta be a way.

00:30:01 ◼   ► - Oh, apparently the chat's saying

00:30:03 ◼   ► that if you hover the phone over the active NFC terminal

00:30:07 ◼   ► at the store, then it will prompt it to open up that screen.

00:30:11 ◼   ► So you can't pre-approve it with your face,

00:30:13 ◼   ► but you can at least open it up,

00:30:15 ◼   ► move over the terminal first, then Face ID approve it.

00:30:17 ◼   ► - Huh.

00:30:18 ◼   ► - I do wonder if, for the double tap thing,

00:30:22 ◼   ► if they could immediately sleep,

00:30:24 ◼   ► but then if you hit the button again

00:30:26 ◼   ► within the double tap interval, unsleep it,

00:30:28 ◼   ► and do Apple Pay, you know what I mean?

00:30:30 ◼   ► - Oh, that's interesting, yeah.

00:30:31 ◼   ► - That is wild, I had no idea that

00:30:32 ◼   ► That was the only obvious way to get into payments.

00:30:36 ◼   ► That's very interesting.

00:30:37 ◼   ► Anyway, Apple's self-service repair site is live.

00:30:40 ◼   ► So if you recall, they announced--

00:30:41 ◼   ► I don't know, it was a few months ago or something like

00:30:43 ◼   ► that-- that you will be able to buy parts and repair things

00:30:49 ◼   ► yourself if you so desire.

00:30:50 ◼   ► And apparently, that has gone live, particularly

00:30:53 ◼   ► for the iPhone.

00:30:54 ◼   ► I don't believe there's anything for the Mac yet.

00:30:56 ◼   ► And the website is weird.

00:31:00 ◼   ► It is super weird.

00:31:02 ◼   ► It's selfservicerepair.com and it looks super janky.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I don't know what's going on here, but it's weird.

00:31:11 ◼   ► And apparently it's version, what is this?

00:31:14 ◼   ► It says on the bottom, on the bottom left,

00:31:16 ◼   ► it's Spot version 8145.5.

00:31:20 ◼   ► I feel like I'm looking at the little pie symbol

00:31:21 ◼   ► in the corner now.

00:31:22 ◼   ► And there's a little doggy in the icon, which is very cute.

00:31:25 ◼   ► But anyway, I guess they just outsource this whole thing,

00:31:27 ◼   ► this whole website, which is super weird,

00:31:29 ◼   ► but you can go ahead and order parts.

00:31:32 ◼   ► You can look at the repair manuals,

00:31:33 ◼   ► and you can get general info, and so on and so forth.

00:31:36 ◼   ► So that is something you can now do.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Is it something that I would do?

00:31:39 ◼   ► Heck no, because that scares the poop out of me.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Trying to repair my phone, just the thought of it

00:31:44 ◼   ► sounds terrible in my personal opinion.

00:31:45 ◼   ► But I am genuinely glad that this

00:31:46 ◼   ► exists for people who are not scaredy cats like me.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Steven Hackett did an investigation

00:31:50 ◼   ► of this whole external website and looked

00:31:52 ◼   ► at the company that did it.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Apparently, they've done some other work for Apple as well.

00:31:56 ◼   ► We'll link to his blog post where he explains it.

00:31:58 ◼   ► The service manuals themselves are on Apple's website.

00:32:01 ◼   ► and we'll put a link to that, it's just support.apple.com/manual/repair-manual.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And the website's fine.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Like, the complaint is it doesn't look like it was Apple designed, which is for sure,

00:32:11 ◼   ► it just looks like someone used, you know.

00:32:13 ◼   ► It's a simple, it's perfectly fine, it's a perfectly reasonable website.

00:32:17 ◼   ► It's got three boxes with icons and buttons and you know, it's like a template from a

00:32:22 ◼   ► bootstrap website, I don't know.

00:32:24 ◼   ► It's not terrible, but it certainly doesn't look like an Apple site.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And it's not, to Steven's point, it's not an apple.com anywhere.

00:32:32 ◼   ► It's not self-service-repair.com, it's self-service-repair.com, right?

00:32:35 ◼   ► So it's not even an Apple's domain.

00:32:37 ◼   ► You could be forgiven for thinking it's some kind of weird scam site or like not affiliated

00:32:41 ◼   ► with Apple anyway, but it totally is.

00:32:43 ◼   ► This is Apple's official, like, we'll link to the press release.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Apple's press release links to this site.

00:32:48 ◼   ► This is not a scam, right?

00:32:50 ◼   ► And that I feel like is a slight problem for Apple, but on the other hand, I bet there's

00:32:54 ◼   ► probably all sorts of not particularly nice looking websites

00:32:58 ◼   ► that you have to go to if you're an Apple authorized dealer

00:33:01 ◼   ► to deal with stuff.

00:33:02 ◼   ► I mean, Steven obviously knows about these things

00:33:03 ◼   ► having worked in an Apple store at least,

00:33:05 ◼   ► but those ones still probably are under

00:33:08 ◼   ► the apple.com umbrella.

00:33:09 ◼   ► But yeah, if you want to dive in

00:33:11 ◼   ► and start repairing your stuff,

00:33:12 ◼   ► if your thing is one of the supported devices,

00:33:15 ◼   ► check it out.

00:33:17 ◼   ► - All right, moving right along.

00:33:18 ◼   ► There's been a lot of discussion,

00:33:19 ◼   ► mostly led by John Gruber about

00:33:22 ◼   ► Would Apple do this WWDC thing inside the ring of Apple Park?

00:33:27 ◼   ► And I think it's a very reasonable--

00:33:29 ◼   ► - How is that discussion led by John Gruber?

00:33:30 ◼   ► We recorded an episode where we said the exact same thing

00:33:32 ◼   ► before he released his, so--

00:33:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, but he really deep dove, did a deep dive, whatever.

00:33:37 ◼   ► - We just said the same thing.

00:33:38 ◼   ► We did just longer and later.

00:33:40 ◼   ► I reject this notion.

00:33:41 ◼   ► We have primacy about whether or not

00:33:43 ◼   ► people are allowed in the ring.

00:33:44 ◼   ► - So having nothing to do with John Gruber at all,

00:33:46 ◼   ► copyright 2022, John Syracuse.

00:33:48 ◼   ► - Copyright ATP, you were all there.

00:33:50 ◼   ► We were talking about it, remember?

00:33:51 ◼   ► "Hey, would they let people into the ring?

00:33:52 ◼   ► "Doesn't it seem weird?

00:33:53 ◼   ► "Have they ever had people in the ring?

00:33:54 ◼   ► "That was us.

00:33:55 ◼   ► "It was this show."

00:33:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:57 ◼   ► - Moving right along.

00:33:59 ◼   ► - One thing.

00:33:59 ◼   ► I just wanna remember it from one thing.

00:34:00 ◼   ► - Just wanna be remembered for one thing.

00:34:03 ◼   ► - I just wanna remember two episodes ago

00:34:05 ◼   ► when we talked about people being let in to Apple Park ring

00:34:07 ◼   ► and then the talk show episode came out a week later

00:34:08 ◼   ► and everyone's like, "Led by John Gruber?"

00:34:10 ◼   ► No, no, Casey.

00:34:11 ◼   ► - Two episodes ago, it was like three months.

00:34:13 ◼   ► We haven't recorded in forever.

00:34:14 ◼   ► Anyway, all right, so regardless of who it was,

00:34:18 ◼   ► gosh darn it, people familiar with the matter

00:34:21 ◼   ► have been wondering about whether or not Apple would bring civilians, regular schmoes, into

00:34:27 ◼   ► the inside the ring of Apple Park. And Anonymous wrote us the following, "You guys wondered

00:34:32 ◼   ► if there had been any large events where visitors were able to go into the Apple Park Ring Courtyard.

00:34:37 ◼   ► There was a series of Friends and Family Saturdays in summer of 2019. Employees could bring up

00:34:40 ◼   ► to four people, the theaters, some lobbies, and some of the inner and outer hallway of

00:34:43 ◼   ► the ground floor. Nearly all of the green space inside and outside the ring and all

00:34:47 ◼   ► All of giant Cafe Max were accessible.

00:34:50 ◼   ► The majority of staff keeping people going where they were allowed seemed to be contract

00:34:53 ◼   ► event staff that had experience working with other Apple events like WWDC and Keynotes.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Some people brought picnics, they served gelato pops (Apple doesn't do things as plebeian

00:35:01 ◼   ► as the pros and novelties, you get an ice cream truck), and a beverage I don't recall.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Officially no photos were allowed, but Twitter had plenty of photos from the days before

00:35:08 ◼   ► I went.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Unofficially, the staff seemed to direct people toward photos of outside spaces rather than

00:35:13 ◼   ► inside spaces.

00:35:14 ◼   ► So apparently it has happened.

00:35:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think the Cafe Max thing answers another question of like, how are they going

00:35:22 ◼   ► to feed people and where will people go to the bathroom and stuff like that?

00:35:24 ◼   ► Apparently they do have a subset of the the the ring and the space in the building, you

00:35:31 ◼   ► know, the inside of the ring and also the space in the actual building where they allow

00:35:34 ◼   ► the public at least allowed the public to go once or twice that they can sort of cordon

00:35:38 ◼   ► off with people and feel safe enough that, you know, there's places for people to be

00:35:43 ◼   ► taken care of but that they're not going to just wander into the ring and you know.

00:35:46 ◼   ► All the doors are locked in there anyway with key cards and stuff so it's not,

00:35:50 ◼   ► I don't think it's a real problem but I also don't think they want strange people just wandering

00:35:53 ◼   ► around. Indeed and then Benedict Evans tweeted, "An idle observation. I have no idea what this

00:35:59 ◼   ► kind of fencing costs but it's very not cheap and it extends around the entire Apple Park site."

00:36:05 ◼   ► And so I've not seen this in person but judging on this picture, I'll paint you a word picture here,

00:36:09 ◼   ► It seems like there are many, many, many vertical metal rods,

00:36:14 ◼   ► each of which I would guesstimate is like four

00:36:16 ◼   ► to six feet tall, but they're completely freestanding.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Like if you think of an average fence,

00:36:20 ◼   ► you would put some posts down and then have some stuff

00:36:22 ◼   ► linking from one post to the other,

00:36:24 ◼   ► but you wouldn't put a post every six inches,

00:36:27 ◼   ► which is apparently what they've done here.

00:36:29 ◼   ► Like there must be either like a river of concrete

00:36:33 ◼   ► that went through the ground, I don't know.

00:36:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm guessing they're bound together

00:36:37 ◼   ► underground somehow.

00:36:38 ◼   ► There's something supporting them.

00:36:40 ◼   ► - But this is like the most expensive kind of fence

00:36:43 ◼   ► you can ever imagine you're making.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Very Apple-like, right?

00:36:45 ◼   ► So in case you're having trouble picturing,

00:36:47 ◼   ► I'll put a link to his tweet in the show notes

00:36:49 ◼   ► with the photo, but it's like, you know like the bars

00:36:51 ◼   ► of a jail cell, just vertical bars?

00:36:53 ◼   ► Like that, but they just come out of the ground.

00:36:55 ◼   ► There are no horizontal members whatsoever.

00:36:57 ◼   ► It's just vertical bars.

00:36:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, nothing bridges across the top.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - Or the bottom.

00:37:02 ◼   ► - Well, as far as we can see.

00:37:03 ◼   ► - It's just a vertical bar.

00:37:05 ◼   ► Now here's the thing about just vertical bars like this.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Now first of all, yes, obviously there needs to be

00:37:08 ◼   ► something underground to make it so these aren't just stuck into the earth

00:37:10 ◼   ► they're probably in cement or something but the second thing is the precision

00:37:13 ◼   ► required to make this fence not look terrible it's extremely high because

00:37:19 ◼   ► these sticks are like probably look like they're at least six or seven feet tall

00:37:22 ◼   ► the tops of these things need to be even with each other so the fence makes a

00:37:26 ◼   ► line and not like a wavy thing right every one of these sticks needs to be in

00:37:30 ◼   ► concrete and aligned up just so the correct distance from each other and

00:37:33 ◼   ► they and it needs to be sturdy enough that you couldn't just go and like pull

00:37:37 ◼   ► the tops of the bars apart, but think of the leverage

00:37:39 ◼   ► that you have at the top of those bars.

00:37:40 ◼   ► If these are stiff, you know, metal bars,

00:37:43 ◼   ► just do the math and the physics,

00:37:45 ◼   ► of how much leverage do you have down there?

00:37:46 ◼   ► You have to not be able to bend them apart,

00:37:48 ◼   ► and they have to not be able to be bent forward

00:37:50 ◼   ► or backwards, and if this goes around all of Apple Park,

00:37:54 ◼   ► how much does this cost per like, linear foot?

00:37:57 ◼   ► I don't even understand, and I don't think it's any more

00:38:00 ◼   ► particularly secure than any other kind of fence,

00:38:02 ◼   ► 'cause you know, you throw a carpet over this thing,

00:38:04 ◼   ► and hop over like they do in every action movie,

00:38:06 ◼   ► it's not like there's barbed wire on it, right?

00:38:08 ◼   ► It's just as susceptible to hopping over

00:38:10 ◼   ► by a bunch of kids or like climb a tree and hop over.

00:38:12 ◼   ► They see the tree that's over there.

00:38:14 ◼   ► If there's a tree near the fence,

00:38:15 ◼   ► you climb up the tree, hop over it.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Kids know how to get over fences.

00:38:17 ◼   ► But it just boggles my mind.

00:38:19 ◼   ► This is a Johnny Ive special.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I would like a fence that looks like this.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And they say, "Johnny, this is gonna cost

00:38:25 ◼   ► "$250,000 per linear foot."

00:38:27 ◼   ► It's like, I don't care, just do it.

00:38:29 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, in all fairness,

00:38:31 ◼   ► I've been fortunate, maybe, as a question mark

00:38:35 ◼   ► at the end of that enough in life

00:38:36 ◼   ► to have once purchased custom windows.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And oh my God.

00:38:42 ◼   ► And so if you look at the amount of glass

00:38:45 ◼   ► that is custom made in Apple Park,

00:38:47 ◼   ► this fence is a drop in the bucket

00:38:51 ◼   ► compared to what they must have spent on glass, trust me.

00:38:55 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, so the big doors on the cafeteria,

00:38:57 ◼   ► like the height of the whole building

00:38:58 ◼   ► and they go out or whatever,

00:39:00 ◼   ► I think those are only a few million each

00:39:02 ◼   ► and maybe this fence is more expensive than those two doors.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe.

00:39:06 ◼   ► I mean, there's certainly, you know, if it's going through on the whole site, like,

00:39:08 ◼   ► they had, like, how many miles of, like, it's probably, like, a couple of miles

00:39:11 ◼   ► worth of fence, right?

00:39:12 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:39:13 ◼   ► So if you were in the fencing industry, maybe this is just a standard kind of fence that

00:39:16 ◼   ► we don't know, and there's been an advance in fencing technology that makes it cheap

00:39:20 ◼   ► to manufacture, and it's actually not that hard to line these things up.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Like, maybe they're all made in a factory, and they just come and you just bury them

00:39:25 ◼   ► in units or whatever, but it looks expensive.

00:39:28 ◼   ► It looks fancy and expensive and maybe not particularly functional.

00:39:32 ◼   ► So very Apple-like.

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00:41:35 ◼   ► All right, a very quick follow up. I had made offhanded comment, I think early on in the

00:41:42 ◼   ► last episode that I was not a fan of the Radiohead song "Creep" and I think John, you were giving

00:41:46 ◼   ► me a little bit of flack about that. Dozens of people, dozens I tell you, wrote in to

00:41:51 ◼   ► to say I too love Radiohead and I dislike the song Creep,

00:41:54 ◼   ► but most interestingly of all, my friend Spencer,

00:41:57 ◼   ► a friend of the show really, Spencer Wohlers wrote in

00:41:59 ◼   ► and said, "Hey, Tom York, the lead singer and songwriter

00:42:02 ◼   ► "of Radiohead also hates Creep."

00:42:04 ◼   ► And so I'll put a link into a short article

00:42:09 ◼   ► that Spencer had sent that basically talks about

00:42:11 ◼   ► how he always thought it was kind of garbage too.

00:42:13 ◼   ► So there, Jon.

00:42:14 ◼   ► - Bands always hate their big breakout hit

00:42:16 ◼   ► because they just get sick of it.

00:42:17 ◼   ► I can feel them.

00:42:19 ◼   ► I think if you're asked any band how much they like the song that made them famous, they're probably over it now, too.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Yeah, imagine like being Tham York and having to go to any party and like "Hey man, play creep, here's a guitar."

00:42:30 ◼   ► Like it's just yeah, and yes, I know about the whole piano man comic or whatever the was it on The Onion or something?

00:42:36 ◼   ► I don't know. I have no idea what you're talking about, but that's fine. All right. Why don't you tell me about your game streaming setup, please?

00:42:41 ◼   ► Yes, so I mentioned I believe it was last show or the one before that. I was looking at some new

00:42:47 ◼   ► video capture hardware and trying to get some video capture recommendations for the Team

00:42:52 ◼   ► Arment video game streaming setup that we have here, where there are three gaming PCs

00:42:57 ◼   ► being captured over HDMI, three webcams, and they're all shown on screen at once in like,

00:43:02 ◼   ► you know, three video screens or three webcams. So there's six little viewports being shown

00:43:06 ◼   ► on screen at once for our game streaming for our family.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And to jump in real quick, I gotta say, we got a lot of feedback about this and more

00:43:12 ◼   ► More than possibly any other time in ATP's history, the feedback was universal about

00:43:18 ◼   ► Blackmagic stuff.

00:43:19 ◼   ► And you can tell me whether or not it's good or not, but it seems like anyone who had touched

00:43:23 ◼   ► Blackmagic stuff was like, "Oh, this stuff is great."

00:43:25 ◼   ► Most.

00:43:26 ◼   ► We did get a couple who said it had some issues, but for the most part.

00:43:30 ◼   ► So quickly, before I go to the hardware route, I did mention briefly that I looked into NDI.

00:43:36 ◼   ► This is basically sending video and audio over the network, running software on the

00:43:40 ◼   ► the PCs to do capture and stuff in software.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And I tried that, we had a couple of people write in,

00:43:47 ◼   ► actually more than a couple, who wrote in

00:43:48 ◼   ► with experience with NDI.

00:43:50 ◼   ► Basically for me to use NDI to do all this over the network,

00:43:55 ◼   ► it probably would require me to hardwire

00:43:58 ◼   ► the gaming PCs with ethernet,

00:44:00 ◼   ► and have possibly even like 2.5G or 10G ethernet,

00:44:05 ◼   ► because the data rates for the amount of data

00:44:08 ◼   ► I'd be capturing would be pretty high.

00:44:10 ◼   ► I might still do that at some point,

00:44:11 ◼   ► or maybe I'll do it for part of it,

00:44:12 ◼   ► like the webcams maybe,

00:44:14 ◼   ► 'cause they're much lower bandwidth stuff.

00:44:15 ◼   ► But I don't know, that seems more finicky

00:44:18 ◼   ► than I wanna get into right now.

00:44:20 ◼   ► Because the thing is, what I want here out of the setup

00:44:23 ◼   ► is when we want to stream,

00:44:25 ◼   ► to be able to basically turn it on and have it just work.

00:44:29 ◼   ► However, because the setup is massive

00:44:31 ◼   ► and lives on our kitchen counter basically,

00:44:34 ◼   ► I have to be able to take it apart sometimes

00:44:37 ◼   ► and put stuff away, and then take it back out,

00:44:39 ◼   ► and have it work somehow without having to like

00:44:42 ◼   ► reset up a bunch of stuff.

00:44:44 ◼   ► So the more complex it is, the more finicky it is,

00:44:46 ◼   ► the more things can change between invocations,

00:44:49 ◼   ► the less appealing that is to me.

00:44:51 ◼   ► And also, the more stuff is required to be out

00:44:55 ◼   ► and to be used and to be bought and everything.

00:44:57 ◼   ► Again, that also makes it less appealing to me.

00:44:59 ◼   ► So anyway, so NDI I'm keeping on the back burner

00:45:02 ◼   ► as an option, but right now I'm not using it.

00:45:04 ◼   ► By far and away, the top recommendation

00:45:07 ◼   ► was the Blackmagic, I don't know if it's ATEM or A-T-E-M,

00:45:11 ◼   ► however you say that, ATEM Mini Pro.

00:45:14 ◼   ► This was by far and away the most common recommendation.

00:45:16 ◼   ► What this is is basically a little hardware video switcher

00:45:20 ◼   ► and compositor thing and it has a bunch of great features.

00:45:23 ◼   ► You can basically have it do,

00:45:26 ◼   ► and the feature I need is called multi-view,

00:45:27 ◼   ► where you show different view ports

00:45:29 ◼   ► all at once on the screen.

00:45:30 ◼   ► So the ATEM Mini Pro could show the three,

00:45:34 ◼   ► it has four input multi-view.

00:45:36 ◼   ► So it could theoretically show the three big game screens

00:45:40 ◼   ► and then it can be a USB input to the computer running OBS.

00:45:45 ◼   ► And so I could theoretically have that be the main input

00:45:48 ◼   ► on the main background of the OBS composition

00:45:50 ◼   ► and then put in the webcams myself manually.

00:45:53 ◼   ► There's also a higher end ATEM Mini Extreme

00:45:57 ◼   ► that has eight ports.

00:45:59 ◼   ► I could theoretically use that and have it all in one box

00:46:02 ◼   ► being done on hardware if I just replace the webcams

00:46:05 ◼   ► with something that output HDMI instead of USB.

00:46:07 ◼   ► So that's an option I might go with in the future.

00:46:09 ◼   ► I don't really want to.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Because this thing is this giant control panel

00:46:15 ◼   ► covered in buttons with a thousand features

00:46:17 ◼   ► I wouldn't use and don't need.

00:46:19 ◼   ► And it's also super high end in its capabilities

00:46:24 ◼   ► and so it's also like $1,000 for the big multi-input one

00:46:27 ◼   ► or $500 for the only four-input one.

00:46:29 ◼   ► So these are big chunks of money

00:46:31 ◼   ► for a lot of features I wouldn't use.

00:46:33 ◼   ► and I think it would actually make my setup

00:46:36 ◼   ► physically more complicated,

00:46:38 ◼   ► which is a little unappealing to me.

00:46:40 ◼   ► So I'm also back-burnering that idea.

00:46:42 ◼   ► I might go to that in the future, we'll see.

00:46:44 ◼   ► But what I decided to try first

00:46:45 ◼   ► was a PCI Express Thunderbolt enclosure

00:46:50 ◼   ► and using the Blackmagic DeckLink Quad HDMI recorder,

00:46:54 ◼   ► which is a four HDMI input PCI Express card.

00:46:58 ◼   ► And I put it in the Sonnet Echo Express

00:47:01 ◼   ► Thunderbolt enclosure that has three slots

00:47:03 ◼   ► because once I started going into looking for this,

00:47:05 ◼   ► I was thinking, well, hey, wait a minute.

00:47:08 ◼   ► If I have the, if I could get a PCI Express enclosure,

00:47:12 ◼   ► if I just get one that has more than one slot,

00:47:13 ◼   ► I can also get one or two USB cards

00:47:17 ◼   ► and get rid of the whole hub entirely,

00:47:19 ◼   ► stop using a Thunderbolt hub and just use this one box

00:47:23 ◼   ► with all these ports that I need all built into it.

00:47:25 ◼   ► So that's what I did.

00:47:26 ◼   ► I bought the one box, I got the three slot enclosure,

00:47:29 ◼   ► I got the HDMI quad input from Blackmagic

00:47:32 ◼   ► and I got two Sonnet USB cards.

00:47:34 ◼   ► One that has four USB-Cs and one that has four USB-As.

00:47:39 ◼   ► This is, so far, it looks like it has a lot of promise.

00:47:43 ◼   ► I was very, very impressed that the enclosure

00:47:47 ◼   ► and the USB cards don't need drivers.

00:47:50 ◼   ► This is a huge appeal to me,

00:47:52 ◼   ► because every single time I'm looking at these things,

00:47:55 ◼   ► I have to first figure out, try to go to their site

00:47:57 ◼   ► or they go to their support page and see,

00:47:58 ◼   ► all right, does it support Macs, number one.

00:48:01 ◼   ► When you're buying PC style hardware,

00:48:04 ◼   ► you gotta really make sure, number one,

00:48:05 ◼   ► does it support Macs?

00:48:06 ◼   ► Number two, does it support Apple Silicon Macs?

00:48:09 ◼   ► That's a huge question mark on a lot of these things.

00:48:12 ◼   ► And the answer is not always yes,

00:48:13 ◼   ► or the answer is sometimes like,

00:48:15 ◼   ► well, it supports some features,

00:48:17 ◼   ► or it supports some configuration,

00:48:18 ◼   ► or it supports some of the hardware, but not all of it.

00:48:20 ◼   ► - You forgot number three.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Number three, does it look gross on the back of my Mac Pro?

00:48:25 ◼   ► Nobody makes color matched cards.

00:48:29 ◼   ► I was looking at USB cards and I was like,

00:48:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have all these ports, I could put--

00:48:32 ◼   ► - Are the brackets the wrong,

00:48:33 ◼   ► what color are your PCI brackets?

00:48:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, everything on the back of the Mac Pro

00:48:37 ◼   ► is like matte black, like the part,

00:48:40 ◼   ► the part that has the ports in it, right,

00:48:42 ◼   ► that kinda needs to be matte black to match,

00:48:44 ◼   ► and all these are shiny silver,

00:48:46 ◼   ► and you just can't have that, what is this, a PC, come on.

00:48:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:48:50 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Anyway, so the enclosure and the USB cards

00:48:55 ◼   ► require no drivers, they just worked instantly.

00:48:57 ◼   ► I was very, very happy.

00:48:58 ◼   ► So the Sonnet enclosure and the two Sonnet

00:49:00 ◼   ► Allegra USB cards, fantastic.

00:49:02 ◼   ► And I love the fact that I could just add this.

00:49:04 ◼   ► I was also very pleased that the fan is not super loud

00:49:08 ◼   ► relative to being in my kitchen.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Now, I wouldn't really want this thing in my office.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Oh, and also, I was impressed when I took it apart,

00:49:16 ◼   ► the fan they use is a Noctua 80 millimeter fan.

00:49:19 ◼   ► That's a really good fan.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Noctua is an enthusiast fan brand

00:49:24 ◼   ► that specializes in very quiet fans.

00:49:26 ◼   ► So I was very impressed to see that in there.

00:49:28 ◼   ► That's not something you usually see

00:49:29 ◼   ► in someone else's hardware.

00:49:31 ◼   ► So that was pretty cool.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Anyway, so very impressed with the enclosure

00:49:35 ◼   ► and the USB cards.

00:49:37 ◼   ► The Blackmagic DeckLink Quad HDMI card,

00:49:40 ◼   ► I did have to install their software.

00:49:41 ◼   ► It is comically difficult to figure out

00:49:44 ◼   ► where exactly you go on their website

00:49:46 ◼   ► to download the software.

00:49:48 ◼   ► It ends up being called desktop video something.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Like it isn't called what you think it'll be called.

00:49:52 ◼   ► You can't just go to the page from this card

00:49:54 ◼   ► and click download.

00:49:55 ◼   ► The manual doesn't, it's hilarious how opaque

00:49:59 ◼   ► this process is.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Eventually got it in there, got it working.

00:50:02 ◼   ► The problem is, you know, this card said it works with Macs.

00:50:07 ◼   ► It said it works with Apple Silicon Macs.

00:50:12 ◼   ► It said you can capture things, and you know what?

00:50:15 ◼   ► You open up any kind of capture app,

00:50:17 ◼   ► including the one that comes with it,

00:50:18 ◼   ► or OBS or anything like that,

00:50:20 ◼   ► and all four ports show up

00:50:22 ◼   ► as four different capture devices, great.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Unfortunately, the card, while it says,

00:50:28 ◼   ► it will capture audio from the HDMI signals,

00:50:32 ◼   ► and while it will attempt to capture said audio,

00:50:37 ◼   ► it will also crappily do that by overlaying

00:50:41 ◼   ► a whole bunch of noise and repeated blocks of audio,

00:50:44 ◼   ► so like, if you click a button in Minecraft,

00:50:46 ◼   ► it'll play the click, and then a half second later,

00:50:48 ◼   ► it'll play it again, and the whole time,

00:50:49 ◼   ► they're static playing.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And no matter what I did,

00:50:52 ◼   ► tried searching their support forums and all that crap,

00:50:56 ◼   ► could not get past this issue.

00:50:57 ◼   ► I cannot figure out why it's doing that.

00:50:59 ◼   ► It's difficult with Blackmagic stuff

00:51:01 ◼   ► if something doesn't work right

00:51:03 ◼   ► because they have so many different products

00:51:06 ◼   ► that it's really hard to search for things

00:51:08 ◼   ► that are relevant to what you are doing with them.

00:51:10 ◼   ► But anyway, for whatever reason,

00:51:11 ◼   ► the audio capture does not work on this card.

00:51:15 ◼   ► So I'm going back to the drawing board on some of this stuff.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I ordered a Magewell card,

00:51:21 ◼   ► which is like a, I guess one of their rivals in this area.

00:51:24 ◼   ► I already wanted those to try.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Elgato does make a PCI express card called the Cam Link Pro

00:51:29 ◼   ► with four inputs, but it's Windows only,

00:51:31 ◼   ► so I can't use that one without, again,

00:51:33 ◼   ► doing a whole PC based setup,

00:51:34 ◼   ► which I really don't wanna do.

00:51:36 ◼   ► So we'll see if the Magdwell card is any better,

00:51:39 ◼   ► and then I guess I'll go from there.

00:51:40 ◼   ► The Magdwell card also claims to support Macs,

00:51:42 ◼   ► claims to support M1 Macs,

00:51:44 ◼   ► so we'll see if it actually does,

00:51:45 ◼   ► claims to support audio capture, we'll see if that works.

00:51:48 ◼   ► But I'm very, very happy with most of the setup,

00:51:51 ◼   ► except for the video capture card.

00:51:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:54 ◼   ► Which is unfortunately kind of important.

00:51:56 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:51:57 ◼   ► - I know, far be it from me to recommend

00:51:59 ◼   ► that you not bend over backwards to use a Mac

00:52:01 ◼   ► for something that it's not well suited for,

00:52:03 ◼   ► but I'm telling you, if you just made,

00:52:04 ◼   ► use the PC as your capture machine,

00:52:07 ◼   ► I think you'd have a lot easier time.

00:52:09 ◼   ► But keep plowing bravely forward, I guess.

00:52:12 ◼   ► - I guess.

00:52:14 ◼   ► - You're spending some serious money on this.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Like, I mean-- - I'm aware.

00:52:17 ◼   ► - Well, he's gonna return a lot of this stuff,

00:52:18 ◼   ► I'm assuming.

00:52:19 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, I'm hoping to keep the enclosure.

00:52:23 ◼   ► The only thing I might be returning

00:52:24 ◼   ► is the Black Magic card,

00:52:24 ◼   ► 'cause the audio capture literally does not work

00:52:26 ◼   ► the way they say it will.

00:52:27 ◼   ► - Well, but eventually, when you give up on this

00:52:29 ◼   ► and get a PC to do it, like all this stuff will come back.

00:52:32 ◼   ► - Well, not necessarily.

00:52:34 ◼   ► Presumably the PC could use a lot of it, right?

00:52:36 ◼   ► - No.

00:52:37 ◼   ► - A PC with Thunderbolt?

00:52:38 ◼   ► Come on.

00:52:39 ◼   ► - But I will say, this is the first time

00:52:40 ◼   ► I've ever used a Thunderbolt enclosure,

00:52:41 ◼   ► and I'm very pleased with how nice and easy it was.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Now granted, I'm not using it for GPUs,

00:52:47 ◼   ► which is I think what a lot of people use them for,

00:52:49 ◼   ► but for this kind of thing, it was very nice to see.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And this really solidified, if anything,

00:52:55 ◼   ► this solidified my opinion that if we don't need

00:52:59 ◼   ► external GPU support, or rather,

00:53:02 ◼   ► if we don't need additional GPU support,

00:53:05 ◼   ► then future Mac Pros are totally able

00:53:08 ◼   ► to use Thunderbolt enclosures for other types

00:53:11 ◼   ► of PCI card needs if they don't want to have internal slots.

00:53:15 ◼   ► because this is great, this is all running off

00:53:16 ◼   ► a 13 inch MacBook Pro, like I don't even need a desktop

00:53:19 ◼   ► to have full bandwidth PCI cards in there.

00:53:21 ◼   ► That's fantastic, and that works great.

00:53:24 ◼   ► So certainly it at least has been educational

00:53:28 ◼   ► in the sense that I now know what these enclosures are

00:53:31 ◼   ► and how they work and the kinds of things they can do.

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00:55:16 ◼   ► [Music]

00:55:18 ◼   ► All right, I have some news.

00:55:21 ◼   ► At long last, I am finally off of Gmail for my email.

00:55:26 ◼   ► I switched my MX records like a week ago, maybe a week and a half ago,

00:55:30 ◼   ► and I am receiving my email at Fastmail, as the prophecy foretold.

00:55:34 ◼   ► foretold. So if you too are looking to move off of Gmail and would like a

00:55:38 ◼   ► referral link where I believe both of us get some money off and I get some free

00:55:42 ◼   ► time it is going to be in the show notes it's ref.fm/theosomemorableU2818-3245

00:55:47 ◼   ► It's like an ICQ number. Right? 1202572. I still don't think I get a lot...

00:55:54 ◼   ► 2-5-7-4-4-2-9-4. There you go. Why does that get drilled into every nerd's head? I don't understand.

00:56:00 ◼   ► I mean I had an ICQ account but I did not memorize the number I don't know I

00:56:04 ◼   ► I wasn't young enough to want to memorize it.

00:56:06 ◼   ► Like, I never had a reason to memorize it,

00:56:09 ◼   ► because if anyone wanted, I would just

00:56:10 ◼   ► copy and paste it to them.

00:56:11 ◼   ► - I don't know what my deal is, or Marko's for that matter,

00:56:14 ◼   ► but I don't know, I memorize mine.

00:56:16 ◼   ► - I'm kind of sad that I don't remember

00:56:17 ◼   ► what my ICQ number was.

00:56:18 ◼   ► I think I could dig out one of my classic Macs

00:56:19 ◼   ► that probably still has the account information in there,

00:56:22 ◼   ► just launch ICQ and see what it tries to log in with.

00:56:25 ◼   ► - A couple years ago, I think I tried logging into ICQ

00:56:27 ◼   ► with 1202572, and it was not happening.

00:56:30 ◼   ► And God knows what email address

00:56:32 ◼   ► associated with that account. So yeah so many new friends for Blista now. That wasn't Blista, that was AIM.

00:56:39 ◼   ► So many new friends. Anyway we're getting sidetracked as per usual. So yeah so I did the

00:56:45 ◼   ► migration for Fast Mail. So to fill you in in case you're not keeping up, I was on the Google Apps

00:56:50 ◼   ► for Your Domain free plan which had come out somewhere around like 2004, 2006, something like that.

00:56:56 ◼   ► And if you wanted to you could sign up for you know Gmail and then eventually you know Google

00:57:01 ◼   ► Docs and all these other things were kind of stabled on the side. You can get it for free

00:57:04 ◼   ► You thought for life and a couple of months ago. They've said oh no not for life

00:57:08 ◼   ► We're gonna end of life this free thing and you're gonna have to start paying us which I mean, okay fair

00:57:13 ◼   ► I mean, I've freeloaded for like 10 15 years at this point, so I can't entirely fault them

00:57:16 ◼   ► But I would already been trying to wean myself off of most things Google as it was

00:57:23 ◼   ► And so this seemed like a pretty good opportunity to wean myself off of Gmail

00:57:27 ◼   ► So I went to fast mail. I signed up for an account and I paid for a year and I told it, okay

00:57:35 ◼   ► Take all my things from Google and put them into fast mail

00:57:40 ◼   ► Expecting that this would be a 42 month endeavor that never ends and and presumably will not work

00:57:46 ◼   ► So what they have you do is you know sign in via OAuth and it looks at Gmail says I have about 20 gigabytes

00:57:54 ◼   ► of email

00:57:56 ◼   ► and so I started it at something like 930 in the morning like a week ago and

00:58:02 ◼   ► It took all of my calendar entries, which was almost 5,000 calendar events

00:58:08 ◼   ► It took that in I think it was literally two minutes or something like that

00:58:12 ◼   ► It was absurdly fast, which like if you think about it, that's the way it should be right?

00:58:15 ◼   ► Like you would hope that it would be able to download, you know from internet phone to internet backbone if you will

00:58:21 ◼   ► extremely quickly, but I didn't expect it to actually happen and

00:58:25 ◼   ► and even more so to work.

00:58:27 ◼   ► And it seemed like it did.

00:58:30 ◼   ► It did happen, and it did work.

00:58:32 ◼   ► But that was calendars.

00:58:34 ◼   ► What about my email?

00:58:35 ◼   ► So sure enough, I'm buckled up for like two weeks

00:58:39 ◼   ► of transferring and so on and so forth.

00:58:41 ◼   ► And it took two hours.

00:58:45 ◼   ► In two hours, I got an email that said, hey,

00:58:47 ◼   ► all your past emails here now, we have downloaded 149,409

00:58:53 ◼   ► of 149,396 messages.

00:58:56 ◼   ► And you might ask, well, why does that number not match?

00:58:58 ◼   ► Well, I think because at the time it started,

00:59:00 ◼   ► which was 149,396, I had gotten like 20 emails.

00:59:04 ◼   ► So it ended up with 149,409.

00:59:08 ◼   ► - Well, that brings up a point.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Is there a catch-up mode?

00:59:10 ◼   ► Like how do you deal with the gap?

00:59:13 ◼   ► - So I think it does.

00:59:15 ◼   ► I think I could have it refresh,

00:59:18 ◼   ► but once it was clear that it was actively working,

00:59:21 ◼   ► I pretty much immediately flipped my MX records

00:59:23 ◼   ► and was like, screw it, this is gonna work,

00:59:25 ◼   ► I'm just going for it.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Which is a bit cavalier, I'll be the first to admit.

00:59:27 ◼   ► - I mean, you could've flipped down

00:59:29 ◼   ► an MX record first, right?

00:59:31 ◼   ► - I could have, theoretically, yeah.

00:59:33 ◼   ► But I was a little--

00:59:34 ◼   ► - But you just wanted to make sure

00:59:35 ◼   ► there was still a race condition.

00:59:36 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly right.

00:59:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:39 ◼   ► No, I really just wanted to make sure

00:59:41 ◼   ► that something was being transferred

00:59:42 ◼   ► and that it was working in some way, shape, or form.

00:59:45 ◼   ► And once I saw the transfer was starting to work,

00:59:47 ◼   ► I was like, okay, this is gonna be a mess.

00:59:49 ◼   ► And so there was, maybe I lost five minutes of email

00:59:51 ◼   ► because I was too slow on the MX record change.

00:59:53 ◼   ► But one way or another, yeah, so the chat is asking,

00:59:57 ◼   ► did I give FastMail my username and password?

00:59:59 ◼   ► No, no, no, like I said, this is OAuth.

01:00:00 ◼   ► So it has me log in via Google.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Google gives them some sort of token back.

01:00:05 ◼   ► It's been so long since I've done an OAuth implementation.

01:00:08 ◼   ► So there's magic tokens that are exchanged,

01:00:10 ◼   ► and then that's that.

01:00:11 ◼   ► So I never actually gave FastMail my username and password.

01:00:15 ◼   ► So yeah, so in the span of two hours,

01:00:16 ◼   ► I got literally 15 years of email or something like that

01:00:20 ◼   ► that went through Lickety Split, no problem.

01:00:22 ◼   ► All of my folders, which are really labels in Gmail world,

01:00:27 ◼   ► that came through.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I had the option of importing the rules that I set up in

01:00:31 ◼   ► Gmail, of which I had a not insignificant amount of them.

01:00:34 ◼   ► But I wanted to take this as an opportunity to clean Slate

01:00:37 ◼   ► and start anew.

01:00:39 ◼   ► One thing that I did try was Fastmail, by default, is IMAP.

01:00:44 ◼   ► And so it uses folders as folders rather than labels,

01:00:49 ◼   ► which is what Gmail does.

01:00:51 ◼   ► And I tried for a few days, maybe a week, to see if I

01:00:55 ◼   ► could go back to the world of folders.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And for me, I couldn't do it.

01:01:01 ◼   ► And so what I did was, very nicely, Fastmail has an option

01:01:04 ◼   ► that says, hey, instead of organizing your messages with

01:01:07 ◼   ► folders, you can organize them with labels.

01:01:09 ◼   ► And then it's basically what I would call Gmail mode.

01:01:12 ◼   ► And so now it behaves much like Gmail does,

01:01:16 ◼   ► which is super great.

01:01:16 ◼   ► And not for everyone, of course, but for someone who's

01:01:19 ◼   ► been used to Gmail, that worked out excellently.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And like I said, all the folders came through,

01:01:22 ◼   ► everything was great.

01:01:24 ◼   ► - Sorry, so is the idea here that you can basically

01:01:26 ◼   ► have a message in multiple folders,

01:01:27 ◼   ► like it's kind of like a tag instead of a--

01:01:29 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly, it's like a tag, yeah.

01:01:32 ◼   ► And when you add a tag, it doesn't necessarily mean

01:01:37 ◼   ► that it is no longer in the inbox.

01:01:39 ◼   ► So part of the reason I went back to labels was,

01:01:42 ◼   ► I like to label, say, ATP feedback with an ATP label.

01:01:47 ◼   ► And that was all well and good,

01:01:49 ◼   ► but what was happening was,

01:01:50 ◼   ► and maybe this was user error on my part,

01:01:52 ◼   ► but I don't think so.

01:01:54 ◼   ► But what was happening was when I set up my rule

01:01:56 ◼   ► that said, okay, put this in the ATP folder,

01:01:59 ◼   ► that's literally what it did,

01:02:01 ◼   ► is it moved it out of my inbox and into the ATP folder.

01:02:04 ◼   ► And I personally prefer any new email,

01:02:07 ◼   ► regardless of where it came from or why it's there,

01:02:09 ◼   ► I wanna see it in my inbox.

01:02:10 ◼   ► It's the only place I wanna check.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Then I will file it away as necessary,

01:02:13 ◼   ► but I only wanna have to look at my email.

01:02:15 ◼   ► And with the way folders were set up,

01:02:17 ◼   ► or perhaps the way I set up the rules,

01:02:19 ◼   ► I would have to go into the ATP folder

01:02:20 ◼   ► to look at the new ATP email.

01:02:22 ◼   ► And so I said, now the hell with this.

01:02:23 ◼   ► I'm just going back to labels.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And now it works exactly as I want.

01:02:26 ◼   ► I have a rule that says, hey, when an ATP email comes in,

01:02:28 ◼   ► mark it with the ATP label, but leave it in the inbox,

01:02:32 ◼   ► which is exactly what I wanna do.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Again, not for everyone, but that's how I like it.

01:02:36 ◼   ► So all good news on things that FastMail can control.

01:02:40 ◼   ► The web app is surprisingly good.

01:02:43 ◼   ► Now I'm not like John.

01:02:44 ◼   ► I never use a Gmail web app.

01:02:46 ◼   ► And I know the Gmail web app, if you like it,

01:02:48 ◼   ► you really like it.

01:02:50 ◼   ► I really enjoyed it when it was new.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Over time, I decided it was not for me.

01:02:54 ◼   ► I'm not saying Jon's wrong.

01:02:55 ◼   ► It's just not for me.

01:02:57 ◼   ► And the Fast Mail web app is really good.

01:02:58 ◼   ► I don't have it open in front of me, but I believe there's

01:03:01 ◼   ► even a way to make it use Gmail key shortcuts, or

01:03:05 ◼   ► keystrokes, if you will.

01:03:06 ◼   ► I'm not 100% sure about that.

01:03:08 ◼   ► You'll have to check me on that.

01:03:09 ◼   ► But I believe that to be true.

01:03:11 ◼   ► So everything Fast Mail related, the web app is great.

01:03:13 ◼   ► The email comes in super fast.

01:03:15 ◼   ► I haven't had two, I've had a couple pieces

01:03:17 ◼   ► of spam breakthrough, but not a lot.

01:03:19 ◼   ► There's also a neat feature where you can set up a folder

01:03:22 ◼   ► or a label and say, hey, when I put something in here,

01:03:26 ◼   ► tell your spam thing that this is something

01:03:30 ◼   ► it should have caught a spam,

01:03:31 ◼   ► and so you can help train it.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Or what's even more interesting is,

01:03:34 ◼   ► there's a, you can set up a second label that you say,

01:03:38 ◼   ► hey, if I put something in here, this is not spam.

01:03:41 ◼   ► Like this is something that you thought was spam, but isn't.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And that's not the only way to do that.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Like if you're in the web interface,

01:03:47 ◼   ► you can say, oh, not spam.

01:03:48 ◼   ► But I just thought that was a very clever approach,

01:03:50 ◼   ► especially if you're using a third party client.

01:03:52 ◼   ► The other interesting thing about FastMail,

01:03:53 ◼   ► which I feel like we said this on the show at some point,

01:03:56 ◼   ► but FastMail seems to have some sort of

01:03:59 ◼   ► certification or entitlement or something,

01:04:03 ◼   ► such that it is one of the very, very few

01:04:05 ◼   ► third party email providers that actually

01:04:08 ◼   ► can do push email on iOS.

01:04:12 ◼   ► I don't necessarily need that, but I turned it on

01:04:14 ◼   ► 'cause it's cool.

01:04:15 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:04:16 ◼   ► And so, in fact, I can make an argument why it's not cool,

01:04:18 ◼   ► but because it's new and shiny, I turned it on.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And you can get push email via iOS, which is cool.

01:04:25 ◼   ► And oh, and to log into your email in iOS,

01:04:29 ◼   ► one of the ways you can do it,

01:04:32 ◼   ► they do have their own bespoke iOS app,

01:04:34 ◼   ► but the way I did it is I logged into Fastmail

01:04:38 ◼   ► on the computer, and then they give you

01:04:40 ◼   ► a convenient little QR code,

01:04:42 ◼   ► and you scan the QR code with your phone,

01:04:45 ◼   ► and that installs a profile, which sounds sketchy,

01:04:47 ◼   ► but all the profile does is put in the account for you,

01:04:51 ◼   ► which is super neat.

01:04:52 ◼   ► And so, again, like, FastMail's a prior sponsor.

01:04:56 ◼   ► It wouldn't surprise me if there's,

01:04:57 ◼   ► they're going to be a future sponsor, I haven't looked.

01:05:00 ◼   ► So I'm at least slightly biased,

01:05:02 ◼   ► but they didn't pay me to say any of this stuff.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Like, this was all me on my own.

01:05:06 ◼   ► And it's been really great.

01:05:08 ◼   ► So if you're interested in moving away from Gmail

01:05:10 ◼   ► for any reason or from whatever your current

01:05:12 ◼   ► email provider is, I really do recommend Fastmail.

01:05:15 ◼   ► It's really been really good so far.

01:05:17 ◼   ► I mean, Marco, you've been there for forever, right?

01:05:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, for, I mean, geez, probably over 10 years now.

01:05:23 ◼   ► It's been fantastic, I have no complaints.

01:05:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I cannot say enough good things

01:05:27 ◼   ► about how this process has gone.

01:05:29 ◼   ► So then, by comparison, I went back to Gmail

01:05:33 ◼   ► and was like, okay, what do I need to do

01:05:35 ◼   ► to tell them I wanna get on the list of people

01:05:37 ◼   ► that would like to maybe not do email anymore

01:05:40 ◼   ► but I don't wanna lose like what little YouTube stuff

01:05:43 ◼   ► I have saved, I don't wanna lose Google Docs,

01:05:45 ◼   ► I don't wanna lose the shared ATP calendar,

01:05:49 ◼   ► even though we should probably move it to Apple Calendar,

01:05:51 ◼   ► I'm just gonna leave that here.

01:05:53 ◼   ► I don't wanna lose any of that.

01:05:54 ◼   ► - Move it to Apple Calendar, that's madness.

01:05:56 ◼   ► What are you talking about? - No, it's not.

01:05:57 ◼   ► No, it's, it's, right now what I have to do

01:06:00 ◼   ► is do it via freakin' CalDAV, which is absurd,

01:06:04 ◼   ► just because you're on Google, John, not that I'm bitter.

01:06:06 ◼   ► - I'm the one who moves the calendar rent anyway,

01:06:07 ◼   ► don't worry about it.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Anyway, the point is, so I think the way this works is,

01:06:12 ◼   ► if Google blesses me, which they're not guaranteeing,

01:06:16 ◼   ► with, I forget what they call it, but like,

01:06:18 ◼   ► if I'm allowed to have one of their freebie accounts,

01:06:21 ◼   ► then I think I can keep all of the Google Docs calendars,

01:06:25 ◼   ► et cetera, and YouTube and whatnot,

01:06:27 ◼   ► and I just lose my email, which is fine by me.

01:06:29 ◼   ► But when I went to go do that, you know,

01:06:32 ◼   ► they sent all these scare grams about,

01:06:34 ◼   ► "Oh, everything's gonna be expensive,

01:06:36 ◼   ► "and you gotta pay, you gotta pay, you gotta pay,

01:06:37 ◼   ► "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh."

01:06:38 ◼   ► Or you can sign up for this thing,

01:06:40 ◼   ► but that's probably not what you want.

01:06:41 ◼   ► (screams)

01:06:42 ◼   ► And so I went to sign up for the thing,

01:06:43 ◼   ► and for the life of me, I couldn't find it.

01:06:46 ◼   ► And of course, the Google website has gone,

01:06:49 ◼   ► especially Google Apps website, is so full-on enterprise,

01:06:53 ◼   ► which means everything is confusing.

01:06:54 ◼   ► It's all using verbiage that even I'm far enough removed

01:06:57 ◼   ► from real jobs that I don't know what they're talking about.

01:07:00 ◼   ► It was a mess.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And eventually I finally found my way into an online chat

01:07:04 ◼   ► where someone was genuinely very helpful and was like,

01:07:06 ◼   ► "Yeah, I'll take care of it.

01:07:06 ◼   ► put it on the list for you. But oh my word, it was just like the biggest F you on the

01:07:12 ◼   ► way out the door. Like, Oh, you want to leave? Oh no, no. This is like canceling cable, baby.

01:07:18 ◼   ► You got to work for it. And it was a mess, but fast mail. Great Google. I'm over you.

01:07:23 ◼   ► And if you're interested in fast mail, please check out my referral code. It would make

01:07:27 ◼   ► me very happy. John, tell me about your security camera.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I feel when I sit on the show about this, did I just say I was getting one? I think

01:07:35 ◼   ► were talking about how you had intended it as a home project and I don't think we went

01:07:41 ◼   ► too much further than that, but I thought we talked about how you didn't want to put

01:07:45 ◼   ► any holes in your house and I'm pretty sure a little birdie told me that involved in this

01:07:50 ◼   ► process was putting a hole on the outside, through the outside of your house.

01:07:53 ◼   ► I mean, I knew it would, I just wish the hole had worked out a little better, but anyway,

01:07:59 ◼   ► that wasn't that bad. So I talked about this a bit more on a yet-to-be-released episode

01:08:04 ◼   ► of our console differences which we would link in the show it's if we could

01:08:07 ◼   ► but we can't but maybe we will later the camera that I got is this the latest

01:08:12 ◼   ► nest camera it's called nest cam outdoor indoor comma battery great product name

01:08:17 ◼   ► and I have a bunch of nest cams already and I the reason I got this one is

01:08:24 ◼   ► because I realized that I'm already paying for whatever the fancy plan is it

01:08:27 ◼   ► lets you add cameras without having to pay anymore so if I bought another

01:08:32 ◼   ► camera I didn't have to like it doesn't increase my monthly fee. I used to have a ring camera and

01:08:35 ◼   ► I got rid of that one so I could stop paying for that and I could you know just buy this camera and

01:08:40 ◼   ► you know it's going to be an outdoor security camera and I had a place where I wanted to put

01:08:45 ◼   ► it especially where the old ring camera was but I didn't want to have to deal with batteries. Now

01:08:50 ◼   ► this camera as the description indicates has a battery so you can run it on battery but from

01:08:57 ◼   ► experience I don't like you know using cameras and batteries no matter how long

01:09:01 ◼   ► the battery lasts first of all the batteries degrade especially if they're

01:09:03 ◼   ► outdoors all year long in New England and the freezing in the winter and hot

01:09:07 ◼   ► in the summer that really kills the battery and second I don't want to have

01:09:10 ◼   ► to recharge it right so why not get one of the ones that you can plug in well

01:09:14 ◼   ► this camera you can also plug in and if you plug it in it just so it kind of has

01:09:18 ◼   ► like a little it's like a USB C type cable or whatever but you can also get

01:09:23 ◼   ► one that has a an AC plug wall wart thing and then a little cable runs so

01:09:27 ◼   ► the camera and so even though the camera is battery powered it's still plugged in

01:09:30 ◼   ► and if you lose power then the battery takes over right and the battery lasts

01:09:34 ◼   ► like a month or whatever so this is great it's it's essentially power powered

01:09:39 ◼   ► by wire all the time except when if the power goes out you don't lose your

01:09:42 ◼   ► camera so I had to find a place to run the wire this is near a light that I had

01:09:48 ◼   ► that kind of shines where like my garbage cans are so I can scare away the

01:09:51 ◼   ► raccoons when I go out there to deal with that at night in the winter or

01:09:54 ◼   ► whatever and so there was already like you know electrical wire running to the

01:10:00 ◼   ► outdoor lights they're just plain old regular lights right so I knew there was

01:10:04 ◼   ► a way to get a cable from where I wanted to go you know from from inside my house

01:10:09 ◼   ► to outside my house and I figured what I could do was make another small hole and

01:10:14 ◼   ► then fish a wire in the same place where the the wire that goes to lights go but

01:10:20 ◼   ► instead of going out the hole where the lights are I would go out a different

01:10:23 ◼   ► hole and I spent a long time trying to get that to work without tearing everything apart.

01:10:30 ◼   ► In the end I had to tear apart a little bit more than I wanted to to get at the guts because

01:10:34 ◼   ► this is like the eaves by my garage and the inside wall of the garage and the outside

01:10:39 ◼   ► eaves and I drilled, here's my big mistake, I was trying to drill a hole that I was going

01:10:44 ◼   ► to be able to fit this little wire through and so I was looking at my drill bits and

01:10:48 ◼   ► I'm looking at the little adapter going is this drill bit big enough, is this drill bit

01:10:51 ◼   ► big enough, whatever, and comparing it.

01:10:54 ◼   ► And the little plug that I had to get through is not,

01:10:57 ◼   ► it's not symmetrical, it's like the plug goes

01:11:01 ◼   ► and then the sort of socket that's on the end of the plug

01:11:03 ◼   ► is on an angle, and I think I miscalculated.

01:11:07 ◼   ► It's kind of like if you have a square,

01:11:09 ◼   ► you measure the dimensions of the square, that's fine,

01:11:12 ◼   ► but if you tilt the square and the angle

01:11:13 ◼   ► suddenly gets bigger because the diagonal

01:11:14 ◼   ► is much bigger than the legs of the square, right?

01:11:17 ◼   ► That's kind of the situation I was in.

01:11:18 ◼   ► So I drilled a nice, neat hole that was about,

01:11:21 ◼   ► half of a millimeter too small.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Like, you could fit the plug into there,

01:11:26 ◼   ► but it was like, the hole went in a ways,

01:11:28 ◼   ► and so it would get like, it would get bound up and jammed,

01:11:31 ◼   ► and so I had to make the hole bigger,

01:11:33 ◼   ► and making an existing hole bigger is difficult to do.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Didn't do a great job of it.

01:11:38 ◼   ► It got bigger.

01:11:39 ◼   ► But anyway, you can't see it.

01:11:42 ◼   ► I'll, you know, I'll paper over it.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Luckily, it's hidden behind a downspout,

01:11:45 ◼   ► so you can't actually see my horrible job I did.

01:11:47 ◼   ► But I did get it plugged in, and it works.

01:11:51 ◼   ► and it's doing its thing.

01:11:53 ◼   ► Two bits that I want to talk about with this camera.

01:11:56 ◼   ► The first one is, if you look at the webpage of Lincoln,

01:12:00 ◼   ► Google's website, you'll see that one of the things

01:12:04 ◼   ► that they advertise about this camera,

01:12:05 ◼   ► in fact, it's in the little animation,

01:12:07 ◼   ► is that it is magnetically attached to the base.

01:12:10 ◼   ► So the camera is just like a unit,

01:12:12 ◼   ► like a little semi-circular thing or whatever,

01:12:14 ◼   ► that's the camera, and it's got a really powerful magnet

01:12:17 ◼   ► in it, and then the base also has a really powerful magnet

01:12:19 ◼   ► and you screw the base to whatever surface you want,

01:12:21 ◼   ► and you stick the camera on with the battery.

01:12:23 ◼   ► And if you look their installation instructions,

01:12:25 ◼   ► they say, "If you're putting this camera outdoors,

01:12:27 ◼   ► "we recommend that you put it six to six and a half feet

01:12:29 ◼   ► "off the ground for best operation, blah, blah, blah."

01:12:33 ◼   ► Well, if you've got a supposed security camera,

01:12:36 ◼   ► six to six and a half feet off the ground,

01:12:38 ◼   ► that's connected only with a magnet,

01:12:40 ◼   ► someone can just walk right up to it

01:12:42 ◼   ► and yank your security camera off the wall,

01:12:45 ◼   ► and A, now you don't have a security camera,

01:12:48 ◼   ► And B, now they have your camera.

01:12:50 ◼   ► Right, now obviously you probably got a recording

01:12:52 ◼   ► of them doing that because it's sending the data

01:12:54 ◼   ► to the internet constantly,

01:12:55 ◼   ► but what good is that gonna do you

01:12:56 ◼   ► when they've got your camera?

01:12:58 ◼   ► It's like taking $200 bills and thumbtacking them

01:13:01 ◼   ► to the side of your house, right?

01:13:03 ◼   ► It's like, I don't want somebody to be able to take that.

01:13:05 ◼   ► So there's this sub-market of products

01:13:08 ◼   ► to try to take Google's stupid design

01:13:10 ◼   ► and make it slightly more secure.

01:13:12 ◼   ► So you can buy a little kit that connects one of those

01:13:16 ◼   ► metal security wire things, you know?

01:13:19 ◼   ► I mean, security wire, right?

01:13:22 ◼   ► Little metal wire, right?

01:13:24 ◼   ► And so one end of it is kind of screwed behind the base

01:13:26 ◼   ► so you can't get to it, and the other end is screwed

01:13:28 ◼   ► to the camera with like one of those security screwdriver

01:13:32 ◼   ► tips that's like a weird shape.

01:13:33 ◼   ► It's not a Torx wrench, it's not a normal shape, right?

01:13:37 ◼   ► So you buy one of these little kits and it comes

01:13:39 ◼   ► with a little 2 cent weird security screwdriver tip

01:13:42 ◼   ► and a screwdriver, and anyway, at least now it's harder

01:13:46 ◼   ► for someone to casually take the camera off my house,

01:13:49 ◼   ► that if they tried to do it, they would say,

01:13:50 ◼   ► "Oh, it's stuck with something."

01:13:51 ◼   ► And then they'd have to have also brought with them

01:13:54 ◼   ► a pair of nail clippers or something

01:13:55 ◼   ► to cut through the metal security wire.

01:13:57 ◼   ► - Or just pull harder.

01:13:59 ◼   ► This is not a thick wire.

01:14:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, or just, exactly.

01:14:01 ◼   ► Or just pull, but if they pulled harder,

01:14:02 ◼   ► they might break the camera too.

01:14:03 ◼   ► So they should really just, you know.

01:14:05 ◼   ► And no, it's not pentalobe.

01:14:06 ◼   ► It's like, it's got a little nub.

01:14:08 ◼   ► - It's a star with a dot in the middle.

01:14:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, the dot in the middle is the security feature, right?

01:14:12 ◼   ► So a Torx wrench doesn't have a hole in the middle.

01:14:14 ◼   ► I guess probably some of them do.

01:14:15 ◼   ► But anyway, it's stupid.

01:14:17 ◼   ► But that's what I did.

01:14:18 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think, I'm not in a neighborhood

01:14:20 ◼   ► where people are routinely steering security cameras

01:14:22 ◼   ► off of the wall.

01:14:23 ◼   ► So, so far so good at that.

01:14:24 ◼   ► But the real thing I want to complain about,

01:14:26 ◼   ► and I went into more depth on this than on RecDiffs,

01:14:28 ◼   ► but it's worth at least mentioning here.

01:14:31 ◼   ► This camera, like the other Nest camera,

01:14:32 ◼   ► has a feature where it can identify faces.

01:14:36 ◼   ► And so you can teach it, like it'll, you know,

01:14:37 ◼   ► you can have a prompt, you look at this face, who is this?

01:14:39 ◼   ► Who is this?

01:14:40 ◼   ► And you could just tell it who all the people are.

01:14:41 ◼   ► So it attaches a name to a face.

01:14:44 ◼   ► It calls that feature familiar faces, right?

01:14:46 ◼   ► And so, you know, I already have this from like my cameras

01:14:50 ◼   ► that are in my house that I know as all my family

01:14:51 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:14:52 ◼   ► And it's pretty good with the facial recognition,

01:14:56 ◼   ► even at weird angles and with, you know,

01:14:57 ◼   ► bad resolution and in the dark and all sorts of other things

01:15:00 ◼   ► it can identify who it is and, you know,

01:15:02 ◼   ► identify the face.

01:15:03 ◼   ► And one of the features of that is

01:15:06 ◼   ► if you have notifications turned on,

01:15:07 ◼   ► instead of saying person was spotted in the kitchen,

01:15:10 ◼   ► it will say, you know,

01:15:11 ◼   ► so-and-so was spotted in the kitchen by name, right?

01:15:13 ◼   ► it'll tell you the name of the person.

01:15:15 ◼   ► But what I wanted from this,

01:15:19 ◼   ► and I just assumed I would be able to get, silly me,

01:15:22 ◼   ► is that, okay, if I have a camera

01:15:24 ◼   ► that's facing outside my house,

01:15:26 ◼   ► and it knows all about all the familiar faces, right?

01:15:29 ◼   ► Then it also knows if it sees a face

01:15:32 ◼   ► that's not a familiar face.

01:15:33 ◼   ► Like, I saw a face, but it's not one of the five

01:15:36 ◼   ► that's in my familiar face list.

01:15:39 ◼   ► What I would like is for the outdoor camera to say,

01:15:42 ◼   ► oh, hey, I saw somebody, and it's not

01:15:44 ◼   ► on your familiar face list.

01:15:45 ◼   ► So here's a push notification.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And as far as I've been able to determine,

01:15:50 ◼   ► even though they built this facial recognition

01:15:52 ◼   ► system into their cameras, they have no way

01:15:54 ◼   ► to tell it to notify you when it sees

01:15:56 ◼   ► a face that is not familiar.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Your choices are no notifications

01:16:00 ◼   ► for people whatsoever or notifications

01:16:03 ◼   ► of every single person.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Those are the only two choices.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Nice.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And if you have a camera notify you of every single person

01:16:10 ◼   ► and it's at your house, it's gonna constantly

01:16:12 ◼   ► notify you, your son is by the camera,

01:16:14 ◼   ► your daughter's by the camera, your wife is by the camera,

01:16:16 ◼   ► you're by the camera, like that's too many notifications.

01:16:19 ◼   ► But I don't want zero notifications.

01:16:22 ◼   ► The camera knows whether it's familiar face

01:16:25 ◼   ► because it tells me who's in front of the camera by name

01:16:27 ◼   ► or it says a person.

01:16:29 ◼   ► It knows, but there is no mode that I could find

01:16:32 ◼   ► that says just send a push notification to my phone

01:16:35 ◼   ► if it's an unfamiliar face.

01:16:36 ◼   ► That seems like the feature that a security camera

01:16:39 ◼   ► what happened, this thing doesn't seem to do it.

01:16:42 ◼   ► And I Googled for it and I found one of those sad

01:16:44 ◼   ► Google help pages, you ever see these ones?

01:16:45 ◼   ► Like Google doesn't actually have any humans helping you,

01:16:47 ◼   ► they just have like this community forum

01:16:49 ◼   ► where users just wail into the void.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Are you familiar with these pages?

01:16:52 ◼   ► Like if you're looking for the answer

01:16:53 ◼   ► to anything Google related, you'll find like,

01:16:55 ◼   ► I don't know what it is, like a,

01:16:57 ◼   ► it's like a sick twisted version of a web bulletin board

01:16:59 ◼   ► where people are like, help me, I can't figure out

01:17:01 ◼   ► this thing with Google and other users,

01:17:03 ◼   ► commits are right, yeah, I can't figure out either,

01:17:04 ◼   ► I can't figure out either.

01:17:05 ◼   ► And at the bottom of the thread is always some Google

01:17:06 ◼   ► employee saying, yeah, we don't support that,

01:17:09 ◼   ► you should file a ticket and maybe we'll look at it.

01:17:10 ◼   ► And then you look at the date, it's like 2015.

01:17:13 ◼   ► No, right, so I found a page where somebody said,

01:17:17 ◼   ► can I only get push notifications for unfamiliar faces?

01:17:20 ◼   ► And they're like, yeah, you can't do that yet,

01:17:21 ◼   ► you should file a feature request.

01:17:23 ◼   ► Oh my God, I don't understand how they ship this product

01:17:25 ◼   ► without that feature.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Like what is the point of familiar faces

01:17:28 ◼   ► if this feature doesn't exist for an outdoor security camera

01:17:31 ◼   ► just so you can know exactly which person it saw

01:17:34 ◼   ► but you still want notifications for everybody?

01:17:36 ◼   ► Boggles my mind.

01:17:37 ◼   ► So anyway, I don't have person notifications on,

01:17:40 ◼   ► because otherwise I'd be notified every single day,

01:17:42 ◼   ► every single time anyone in my family came

01:17:44 ◼   ► and went from my house or walked in front of my house.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Good job, Google.

01:17:48 ◼   ► - That's amazing.

01:17:50 ◼   ► This is the kind of thing I would assume

01:17:53 ◼   ► Google would be very good at.

01:17:54 ◼   ► - They're good at identifying faces.

01:17:56 ◼   ► They're not good at understanding

01:17:58 ◼   ► what to do with that information,

01:17:59 ◼   ► which is tell me when it's not familiar.

01:18:02 ◼   ► - Honestly, I don't find this surprising at all,

01:18:03 ◼   ► but whatever.

01:18:04 ◼   ► - And if this is a brand new product,

01:18:06 ◼   ► "Oh, it's just version 1.0? Fine, whatever. It'll come in the next version." This is years and years

01:18:10 ◼   ► they've had Nest security cameras. I've owned them for years and years, right? And inside my house,

01:18:15 ◼   ► it never occurred to me that this would be an issue because my inside the house cameras aren't

01:18:18 ◼   ► even on when we're home. They're only on when nobody's home. And so being notified when it

01:18:23 ◼   ► sees any human is appropriate. If nobody's in the house and there's a human in the house, notify me,

01:18:27 ◼   ► right? So I never went looking for the feature that I just assumed exists, which is just tell

01:18:31 ◼   ► Tell me if you see an unfamiliar face.

01:18:33 ◼   ► - I'm too lazy to look right now,

01:18:36 ◼   ► but I wonder if the Synology surveillance station,

01:18:39 ◼   ► which is there.

01:18:40 ◼   ► (phone ringing)

01:18:41 ◼   ► For third camera, I just had no idea what that noise was.

01:18:44 ◼   ► It startled me.

01:18:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:45 ◼   ► Anyway, I wonder--

01:18:46 ◼   ► - You need to get closer to the mic.

01:18:47 ◼   ► You need to figure out how to mic a VibraSlap.

01:18:50 ◼   ► - I can get closer.

01:18:51 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:18:52 ◼   ► (phone ringing)

01:18:53 ◼   ► - How's that, better?

01:18:54 ◼   ► - That was better.

01:18:55 ◼   ► - I can keep the bell really far away.

01:18:56 ◼   ► It's nice and sharp.

01:18:58 ◼   ► But I guess I gotta bring the VibraSlap closer.

01:18:59 ◼   ► - You need to mic it.

01:19:01 ◼   ► Like you need to like have it as in like an instrument setup

01:19:03 ◼   ► where there's a separate little mic,

01:19:04 ◼   ► little wire going, you know.

01:19:06 ◼   ► - What black magic box will fix you?

01:19:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

01:19:09 ◼   ► I got a PCI express capture card

01:19:10 ◼   ► to capture the sound of the virus.

01:19:12 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:19:14 ◼   ► Anyway, I wonder if Surveillance Station does any of this.

01:19:17 ◼   ► And I honestly don't know.

01:19:18 ◼   ► It may be the dumbest thing in the world.

01:19:19 ◼   ► - It has to because the facial recognition

01:19:21 ◼   ► is like table stakes.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And once any product other than this,

01:19:24 ◼   ► I assume has facial recognition,

01:19:25 ◼   ► the first feature we implement is semi-notifications

01:19:28 ◼   ► of his unfamiliar face.

01:19:29 ◼   ► Unless you're Google,

01:19:30 ◼   ► in which case you just let it sit there for years,

01:19:31 ◼   ► without this feature.

01:19:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I can say for whatever it's worth,

01:19:35 ◼   ► I continue to have only very good experiences

01:19:38 ◼   ► with HomeKit Secure Video and with the Logitech Circle View.

01:19:40 ◼   ► I know it's a really weird specialized niche thing

01:19:44 ◼   ► that no one besides me appears to be using.

01:19:46 ◼   ► However, this is a pretty good product.

01:19:49 ◼   ► I actually, we recently took a trip

01:19:51 ◼   ► and so we had found on our previous trips

01:19:55 ◼   ► that there were a couple of areas of our house

01:19:58 ◼   ► that we wanted eyes on.

01:20:00 ◼   ► I bought a couple of additional Logitech Circle views

01:20:04 ◼   ► right before this trip.

01:20:05 ◼   ► It's fantastic, like I set them up in two seconds.

01:20:08 ◼   ► John, they are outdoor rated, John.

01:20:11 ◼   ► And also, if you wanted to drill one through your house,

01:20:16 ◼   ► you only need to fit a USB-A plug,

01:20:17 ◼   ► a regular little rectangular USB-A plug through the wall.

01:20:20 ◼   ► - My hull is bigger, smaller than a USB-A plug already.

01:20:23 ◼   ► I was hoping it would be really tiny

01:20:25 ◼   ► and I had to make it a little bigger,

01:20:26 ◼   ► but it still wouldn't fit USB-A.

01:20:27 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:20:28 ◼   ► Anyway, they have been fantastic.

01:20:30 ◼   ► I have had perfectly fine luck with them.

01:20:33 ◼   ► I think I now own something like four or five.

01:20:37 ◼   ► HomeKit, like if you have much of an iCloud plan,

01:20:41 ◼   ► if you have like the medium plan,

01:20:43 ◼   ► you have I think five cameras worth of stuff.

01:20:45 ◼   ► If you have the really big plan, you have unlimited cameras.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Although I question like, what does unlimited mean exactly?

01:20:52 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:20:53 ◼   ► The only, the major downside, and I mentioned this

01:20:55 ◼   ► back months ago when I first talked about this,

01:20:57 ◼   ► the only downside is that Nest actually gives you

01:20:59 ◼   ► continuous recording and none of the HomeKit stuff does that.

01:21:02 ◼   ► HomeKit stuff is like, if it detects motion

01:21:05 ◼   ► or whatever conditions you set,

01:21:06 ◼   ► it will start recording a clip

01:21:08 ◼   ► and it will record a clip until that motion

01:21:10 ◼   ► or whatever is gone for a few seconds.

01:21:12 ◼   ► So you don't have continuous recording,

01:21:15 ◼   ► but you do have a lot.

01:21:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was kind of one of the features

01:21:17 ◼   ► that I like about the Nest is that it's internet,

01:21:21 ◼   ► so everything's going up to the internet.

01:21:22 ◼   ► So again, if someone steals the camera,

01:21:23 ◼   ► I'll have a video of that and it is continuous

01:21:25 ◼   ► because for things that are facing outside,

01:21:27 ◼   ► even if there's no interesting events,

01:21:29 ◼   ► like you can cordon off areas that you're not interested in.

01:21:31 ◼   ► Sometimes you just want to see,

01:21:32 ◼   ► did the UPS truck come?

01:21:34 ◼   ► Did, you know, when did this Amazon thing?

01:21:36 ◼   ► Does the neighbor walk in their dog?

01:21:37 ◼   ► If the tree falls across the street,

01:21:39 ◼   ► like just having it, just recording all the time

01:21:41 ◼   ► and saving or whatever, it saves like 60 hours or 60 days.

01:21:45 ◼   ► It saves a lot of video.

01:21:46 ◼   ► - I think it's like 60 days.

01:21:47 ◼   ► I mean, it depends on what plan you have, I think.

01:21:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, but anyway, like it's just one less thing

01:21:51 ◼   ► because I had, the Ring camera was the same type of like,

01:21:54 ◼   ► oh, I only turn on when I detect

01:21:55 ◼   ► something interesting happening or whatever,

01:21:57 ◼   ► and that's cheaper and it's nicer on battery,

01:21:59 ◼   ► but that's why I wanted this to be plugged in.

01:22:00 ◼   ► So it's just recording all the time

01:22:02 ◼   ► 'cause it's facing out of the house.

01:22:04 ◼   ► And it's plugged in so I don't have to worry about it

01:22:06 ◼   ► and about it running out.

01:22:07 ◼   ► - But I will say also, for whatever it's worth,

01:22:09 ◼   ► because it's only recording via Eclipse,

01:22:11 ◼   ► I haven't missed anything because it does have,

01:22:14 ◼   ► it seems to be recording a rolling buffer

01:22:15 ◼   ► because it doesn't, I've had certain ones,

01:22:18 ◼   ► I think the Eufy ones, where if somebody walks

01:22:21 ◼   ► into the frame, it wouldn't record the first couple

01:22:24 ◼   ► of seconds of them being there because it would take

01:22:26 ◼   ► a couple seconds for it to notice, wake up,

01:22:28 ◼   ► and start the recording.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Whereas the Logitech Circle View,

01:22:32 ◼   ► and I don't know if HomeKit always works this way or what,

01:22:34 ◼   ► but the Circle View, it seems to be recording

01:22:37 ◼   ► a rolling buffer all the time, and if you text motion,

01:22:40 ◼   ► the clip you get includes a couple of seconds

01:22:42 ◼   ► before the person enters the frame.

01:22:44 ◼   ► So you have the complete entrance, activity, and exit,

01:22:48 ◼   ► and then a few seconds after the exit,

01:22:49 ◼   ► all recorded, which is nice.

01:22:50 ◼   ► So in practice, I haven't actually,

01:22:52 ◼   ► it only recording clips has not been a problem for me.

01:22:55 ◼   ► It also does have all similar features

01:22:57 ◼   ► of like you can draw out an activity zone

01:22:59 ◼   ► to pay attention to in the frame.

01:23:01 ◼   ► All this within the home app,

01:23:02 ◼   ► I mean it's by far the nicest part of the home app.

01:23:04 ◼   ► And it's like for as much crap as HomeKit gets

01:23:07 ◼   ► for a lot of other stuff,

01:23:09 ◼   ► this has worked extremely reliably for me.

01:23:11 ◼   ► And this hardware has worked great.

01:23:12 ◼   ► I only wish there was more hardware available

01:23:14 ◼   ► like with maybe a few different things

01:23:16 ◼   ► like maybe a less expensive indoor cam that was good.

01:23:19 ◼   ► There's not very many options.

01:23:20 ◼   ► But overall the Circle View and HomeKit secure videos

01:23:23 ◼   ► have been great for me.

01:23:24 ◼   ► It detects people, it detects animals, packages.

01:23:28 ◼   ► It's just fantastic.

01:23:29 ◼   ► I can strongly recommend HomeKit Secure Video.

01:23:32 ◼   ► I only have experiences with Nest with their older hardware,

01:23:36 ◼   ► but my experiences with Nest have been very mediocre.

01:23:40 ◼   ► Whereas HomeKit Secure Video with Circle View

01:23:42 ◼   ► has been pretty good so far.

01:23:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, this hardware seems good,

01:23:45 ◼   ► and the recognition, like animal person, vehicle,

01:23:48 ◼   ► like it all seems dead on.

01:23:50 ◼   ► Like I don't have notifications,

01:23:51 ◼   ► but I can still go and look at the events

01:23:53 ◼   ► for the last, you know, whatever many days and see that, yeah, that is a person, that

01:23:57 ◼   ► is an animal, you did hear a dog bark, you know, and it has all the other stuff like

01:24:00 ◼   ► if it hears a fire alarm, if it hears glass breaking, I'm assuming all this stuff works

01:24:04 ◼   ► well, I just don't want to find out.

01:24:05 ◼   ► Hey, so I'm looking at the Circle View camera website and there's a, you know, a bunch of

01:24:12 ◼   ► general marketing material and then like halfway down, unparalleled privacy, and there's three

01:24:18 ◼   ► images side to side, side by side, tilt to hide, need instant privacy at a moment's notice,

01:24:23 ◼   ► Simply tilt the camera down to instantly shield yourself from view.

01:24:26 ◼   ► Simple turn off.

01:24:27 ◼   ► A rear mounted button immediately cuts off both audio and video so you're not left fumbling

01:24:31 ◼   ► during private moments.

01:24:32 ◼   ► - Oh, that's what that button does?

01:24:35 ◼   ► - Do people put these in their bedrooms?

01:24:37 ◼   ► Is that what's going on here?

01:24:38 ◼   ► - If they wanna go have intimate moments underneath Marco's house, they need to be able to turn

01:24:42 ◼   ► the camera off.