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ATP

477: In the Metal

 

00:00:00   I'm gonna try to get through this recording.

00:00:02   I'm sitting here in my old office,

00:00:05   and it is very echoey, because I made a mistake

00:00:09   when we were here cleaning out the house

00:00:11   and filling the dumpster.

00:00:13   I took too many objects out of my office,

00:00:16   and now the acoustics in here are terrible.

00:00:19   It sounds like a bathroom,

00:00:21   because there's too much missing from the room.

00:00:24   - Did I tell the story on the show?

00:00:26   I don't recall if I brought this up on the show,

00:00:28   but about a month or two, maybe two or three months ago,

00:00:31   I was doing some sort of video conference,

00:00:33   which is very rare for me,

00:00:34   and is soon to be rare for Jon, or is rare for Jon now.

00:00:37   But I was doing some sort of video conference

00:00:39   where I needed to close the closet door.

00:00:43   Now, the way I'm facing,

00:00:44   I'm facing an exterior wall of the house,

00:00:46   and behind me is a closet, a very small closet,

00:00:49   that has some of those accordion-style doors on it.

00:00:52   And I closed the doors early in the day

00:00:54   for that video conference,

00:00:55   And then that evening I recorded ATP.

00:00:59   And the next day, Marco says to me, "What did you do?"

00:01:03   I was like, "What?

00:01:04   "What did you do?

00:01:05   "What are you talking about?

00:01:06   "Everything's the same.

00:01:06   "No, you changed something."

00:01:07   I went, "No, I didn't.

00:01:08   "What did you take out of your room?"

00:01:10   Marco, "What, do you have a camera?"

00:01:11   "No, I didn't do anything."

00:01:13   And we eventually--

00:01:14   - Wait, didn't it say like you took out something soft

00:01:15   from your room and you had to put it back?

00:01:16   - Right, yeah, yeah, that's basically what you said.

00:01:18   And eventually we concluded, oh, I had closed the closet door

00:01:23   And so all the soft material that's in the closet,

00:01:26   like coats and things like that,

00:01:28   instead of it being soft material,

00:01:29   it was very echoey hard material.

00:01:31   And I don't think another human on the planet,

00:01:33   except perhaps one of the people

00:01:35   we're gonna talk about in follow-up,

00:01:36   other than Marco and this person from follow-up,

00:01:38   I don't know if any other human on the planet

00:01:39   would have noticed, but I tell you what, Marco noticed.

00:01:41   So apparently you've done it to yourself.

00:01:43   Congratulations, you played yourself.

00:01:45   - And the thing is, I've recorded shows in here for years,

00:01:48   and I didn't, I mean, it's never been as good

00:01:50   as the beach office, 'cause the beach office

00:01:52   is a much smaller room and I've treated it pretty well.

00:01:55   This room is sized to be like a bedroom

00:01:57   and so it's significantly larger.

00:01:59   I might be moving to a small bedroom upstairs

00:02:02   instead soon.

00:02:03   So reason number one, I'm trying to get through this,

00:02:06   is the reverb that I'm gonna have to try to filter out

00:02:09   with iZotope after the recording.

00:02:11   Reason number two, one of the benefits of living

00:02:13   at the beach is that I live on a very skinny island.

00:02:18   It's very windy.

00:02:20   And so in the springtime, whatever pollen

00:02:23   might be created by the island is instantly blown

00:02:26   right off of it.

00:02:27   And so there actually isn't that much pollen in the air

00:02:29   that actually sticks around and builds up

00:02:31   and gets into my eyes and makes me miserable.

00:02:34   Well, so that also means that my tolerance for pollen

00:02:37   has gone down over the last two years.

00:02:39   And so I've come back to Westchester for just a day

00:02:42   to run some errands, and now I am filled with allergies.

00:02:47   Additionally, the changing routine made me forget

00:02:50   to take my allergy pill this morning.

00:02:51   And so I had like the double whammy

00:02:54   and I got away with it all day until about 15 minutes ago.

00:02:58   And now my eyes are just itching like crazy.

00:03:00   Oh God, I spent a lot of time outside today too.

00:03:04   So I had a lot of like wind blowing around

00:03:06   and blowing everything into my face.

00:03:08   So that's fun.

00:03:10   And then reason number three is that

00:03:12   despite my best efforts,

00:03:14   which included stopping at an Apple store earlier today,

00:03:17   I am still looking at the goddamn LG Ultrafine 5K,

00:03:22   which is slightly crooked, which I think,

00:03:24   I can't even tell, I think it's slightly crooked.

00:03:26   - Well, it's moving a lot, so it's hard to tell.

00:03:28   - Yeah, it's wiggling constantly

00:03:29   whenever I touch the desk, and now that I'm used to 6K,

00:03:31   it looks like I'm using my computer through a porthole.

00:03:34   Like it's-- - Oh, get off of it.

00:03:36   You can come right off of it, good grief.

00:03:38   - Oh my God. - I can allow the wiggly,

00:03:41   I can allow you going to get a studio display,

00:03:43   honestly, I'm still surprised you haven't gotten

00:03:44   a second XDR, but--

00:03:46   - Frankly, I thought about it.

00:03:48   - You can come off of it on the postage stamp.

00:03:50   - Honestly, maybe if they ever update the XDR,

00:03:52   maybe I would get the second one then

00:03:54   and move the older one to whichever place

00:03:56   I was using the least.

00:03:58   But that's, I mean, they're so expensive.

00:04:01   - Can we actually drop a topic right here,

00:04:02   which is going to fly completely in the face

00:04:05   of everything Jon stands for?

00:04:06   Hey, buddy.

00:04:07   - You know, you could save this for seven minutes.

00:04:09   - No, no, no, we might as well drop it now

00:04:11   because it's relevant.

00:04:13   I've been thinking a lot about my forthcoming studio display,

00:04:17   which should be here in the next couple of weeks,

00:04:20   which means since we're recording early,

00:04:22   it might be here by the time we have our next recording.

00:04:24   No promises, we'll see.

00:04:25   But I've been thinking a lot about the studio display

00:04:28   and how there's so many things

00:04:30   that we were talking about before it existed

00:04:32   that we wanted, like high refresh.

00:04:34   The, what is it, mini LED?

00:04:36   I always get the terminology wrong.

00:04:38   - Yes, 'cause micro doesn't really exist yet.

00:04:40   - It exists.

00:04:41   - Well, but no one's using it really, right?

00:04:42   - Not in computer displays.

00:04:43   - So, the point is, there's a lot of stuff

00:04:46   that it seems like low-hanging fruit,

00:04:49   even though I don't think it actually is,

00:04:50   but there's a lot of stuff that we wanted

00:04:52   that we didn't get in the studio display.

00:04:53   And I'm not complaining, mind you.

00:04:55   I'm overjoyed to be getting this display,

00:04:58   even with the current camera problems.

00:05:00   Like, I'm sure they will get fixed.

00:05:01   I'm overjoyed to be getting this display.

00:05:03   Certainly Marco was about to insta-buy one earlier today,

00:05:07   if at all possible.

00:05:08   What I wonder from you guys is,

00:05:10   Do you see an in-between display happening

00:05:15   in, let's say, the next two years?

00:05:17   Do you think that there will be a display

00:05:22   that is beefier, more powerful, nicer,

00:05:25   take your adjective, that is better than the studio display,

00:05:29   but still not quite the bananas XDR?

00:05:32   Do you think that there's space for that in Apple's lineup

00:05:35   for, I don't know, maybe like $3,000 or $4,000

00:05:38   or something like that?

00:05:39   I mean, yes, there is space, but your first question was,

00:05:42   will Apple actually do that?

00:05:43   But the Apple approach, I don't necessarily think

00:05:46   is to make sure that there's space for it.

00:05:48   They would just replace this one with a better one.

00:05:50   - And your question of, you said within two years,

00:05:53   I'm gonna say definitely not within two years.

00:05:54   - Well, historically speaking, Apple has been terrible

00:05:58   about updating its monitors, but things change.

00:06:00   So again, I guess the question, will Apple do this or should?

00:06:03   They absolutely should, of course they should,

00:06:05   but they just, I mean, just look at the history

00:06:07   of their monitors.

00:06:08   ever been in Apple monitor that like a year later

00:06:10   was replaced with one that was better.

00:06:11   The closest I think you can come to that is maybe

00:06:13   the 22 inch Apple cinema display was replaced

00:06:15   by the 23 inch Apple cinema display,

00:06:17   which was a lot better in what seemed to me

00:06:19   a fairly short amount of time, but everything else.

00:06:22   I mean, even just the XDR, where is the new XDR?

00:06:25   Didn't come out the year after the XDR was released,

00:06:26   that's for sure.

00:06:27   - Yeah, I think what we're likely to see here

00:06:30   is exactly what John said, like when they are ready

00:06:33   to offer those features at somewhere near this price point,

00:06:36   they'll just replace this monitor with a new model

00:06:38   that has them.

00:06:39   - It will probably be a little bit more expensive,

00:06:41   but not $3,000.

00:06:42   - Yeah, well, I don't know how much of a market

00:06:45   there would be for a 27-inch 5K Apple monitor

00:06:48   with those features for three or four thousand dollars.

00:06:51   - I think there's a market for it,

00:06:53   because it would be for people who would buy the XDR,

00:06:56   but it's too much money,

00:06:57   but they need the features of the XDR.

00:06:58   - But once you're at three or four thousand dollars,

00:06:59   why wouldn't you go five or six thousand dollars

00:07:01   for the XDR and get a much bigger monitor?

00:07:03   - 'Cause it's twice as much.

00:07:04   (laughs)

00:07:06   You get two of them.

00:07:06   - Yeah, I mean, it depends a lot on the,

00:07:08   does the XDR, whenever the XDR is updated next,

00:07:11   is it still $5,000 without a stand?

00:07:13   - Yeah, or does it get even more expensive?

00:07:15   - Or maybe they can bring it down to 4,000, who knows?

00:07:17   - Or maybe it's 8K and it gets more expensive, we'll see.

00:07:19   But the thing is, the features that we're talking about,

00:07:22   this is another one of those reaching limits

00:07:23   of human perception, the features that we're talking about

00:07:25   eventually will be economical,

00:07:27   whether it's with, eventually with OLED or with micro LED,

00:07:29   eventually those features will just be par for the course.

00:07:32   And once you have them,

00:07:33   It's not as if you have to wait for 500 hertz, right?

00:07:36   Like, it's, you know, there is a,

00:07:38   that's the point of diminishing returns.

00:07:39   And same thing with the HDR thing.

00:07:42   Will there someday be a 5,000 nit monitor?

00:07:44   Like, I really doubt that is something

00:07:46   that any human would even really want, right?

00:07:48   So I think you'll be able to fit all the features

00:07:51   that we want into something like the Apple cinema,

00:07:55   the Apple Studio display within a handful of years.

00:07:58   And at that point, for a reasonable economic,

00:08:01   you know, amount of money. At that point, this will just be the new Apple Studio display.

00:08:05   But look at the cadence of Apple releasing better versions of its monitors. Their history

00:08:09   is really bad here. So you had said, and this was off the cuff, off the top of your head,

00:08:15   I dropped this on you spontaneously, so no shame. You had said that you thought the 22

00:08:20   inch cinema display to 23 inch cinema display was a year or two. I said it was a, it reminded

00:08:25   me it was a very short amount of time, relatively speaking. So how long was it? So August 31st,

00:08:30   which actually is Aaron's birthday, of 1999,

00:08:32   was the 22-inch cinema display,

00:08:35   which has like a tripod-style stand,

00:08:38   or just making sure we're talking about the same thing.

00:08:40   - It's flat, it's got two stubby little feet

00:08:42   on the right and left sides,

00:08:43   then it's got a kickstand on the back.

00:08:45   - Correct, okay, we're talking about the same thing.

00:08:47   That was August 31, 1999.

00:08:49   The 23-inch cinema display,

00:08:51   which is visually very different, almost iMac-ish.

00:08:55   - No, visually very different?

00:08:57   You must be thinking,

00:08:58   maybe I'm thinking of a different one.

00:08:59   - Oh, this is aluminum, 23 inch display.

00:09:02   - No, no, that's not what I'm talking about.

00:09:03   - Okay, then I take it back.

00:09:04   - You're talking about the one

00:09:05   with the big plastic clear feet?

00:09:06   - Yeah, they made two of those, one at 22 and one at 23.

00:09:09   - That was March 21, 2002.

00:09:11   That makes much more sense.

00:09:13   Okay, I feel better.

00:09:13   - Say, that's a pretty small gap in Apple monitor years.

00:09:18   - That's basically instant.

00:09:19   That's basically the next day.

00:09:20   - That was three years, right?

00:09:21   It was within three years?

00:09:23   - Yeah, it was two and a half years-ish,

00:09:24   give or take.

00:09:25   - That is the smallest gap I can remember,

00:09:27   but pretty much everything else.

00:09:28   Look at the Thunderbolt display.

00:09:29   That just never got changed and then eventually went away.

00:09:33   - Well, no, it didn't.

00:09:34   - I mean, you're thinking there was an LED SIM display

00:09:37   that was not Thunderbolt.

00:09:38   It used, I believe, many display ports.

00:09:40   - Yeah, there was a 24-inch Apple LED display

00:09:43   that I had at work.

00:09:44   - No, but there was also a 27.

00:09:45   - 27-inch LED display.

00:09:47   - But it was right before Thunderbolt.

00:09:49   - Yeah, and then replaced with a Thunderbolt.

00:09:50   But honestly, the replacement with a Thunderbolt display,

00:09:52   it was, like, the thing that changed about it

00:09:54   was the stupid rat tail thing in the Thunderbolt interface.

00:09:57   I'm not sure the panel changed at all.

00:09:59   - Yeah, I think you might be right.

00:10:00   And that thing was buggy as hell.

00:10:02   TIFF had one for a while.

00:10:03   And yeah, we heard from a lot of people too.

00:10:05   Ours was buggy, we heard from a lot of people,

00:10:06   theirs were buggy.

00:10:08   - And I have one, it was always weird.

00:10:09   It's 'cause it didn't run on iOS, that was the problem.

00:10:10   (laughing)

00:10:12   - Yeah, but seriously, so anyway,

00:10:13   so I was in the Apple Store today.

00:10:15   I did finally see the studio display

00:10:18   and the Mac studio in person.

00:10:20   I tried to listen to the fan noise,

00:10:21   but you know, yeah, in an Apple Store,

00:10:23   you can't hear anything,

00:10:24   and we'll have feedback on that in a second.

00:10:25   But I could've bought a studio display today

00:10:28   if I didn't want the good stand.

00:10:30   If I wanted just the regular fixed angle

00:10:32   or fixed height stand, that one they actually had

00:10:34   in stock in my store here.

00:10:36   And I could've bought the table.

00:10:36   I'm like, no, if I'm gonna get this thing,

00:10:39   I wanna get it with the good stand.

00:10:40   (laughing)

00:10:41   Because I never run my Apple monitors at stock height.

00:10:44   So I could've gotten it, but yeah, I just had to wait.

00:10:46   But as soon as I can get one of those,

00:10:48   I think I'm going to get one to replace this stupid LG

00:10:50   and I'm just gonna mail it to you.

00:10:52   - What, mail me the LG?

00:10:53   That's like an $80 postage sort of event,

00:10:55   but hey, I'll take it.

00:10:56   - It's worth it for the joke alone.

00:10:58   I think everybody should mail you their LG 5Ks.

00:11:01   - And Marco's USB ports still work, right?

00:11:03   - Allegedly.

00:11:04   - You know what, they were always so unreliable,

00:11:06   I don't use them.

00:11:08   Right now they're just empty there.

00:11:09   - I mean, the one that connects to the computer still works.

00:11:12   - Remember, it was the only one

00:11:13   that actually friggin' mattered and failed.

00:11:15   (laughing)

00:11:17   - Does your monitor occasionally go black

00:11:18   like Merlin's does?

00:11:19   - Yeah, it might.

00:11:20   I'm convinced Merlin has the exact same problem.

00:11:22   - Oh yeah, he totally does, he has the exact same problem.

00:11:24   - Yeah, of course, everyone has that problem.

00:11:26   But yeah, it's, oh God, this monitor,

00:11:29   I'm so over this monitor, I just want this out of my house.

00:11:33   Like, I'm literally willing to spend $2,080

00:11:37   to get this monitor out of my house.

00:11:39   That's how much I hate it.

00:11:41   - You just put it on the floor and throw a blanket over it

00:11:43   and it could absorb sound.

00:11:44   (laughing)

00:11:46   - So getting back to it, so I don't know how far off we are

00:11:49   from economically having mini LED,

00:11:53   local dimming and everything here,

00:11:54   because if you look at the MacBook Pro,

00:11:56   the 16 inch MacBook Pro, that display is,

00:11:59   what do you think, about half?

00:12:00   It's like if you have like two of them,

00:12:02   like a left half and a right half,

00:12:03   that would about be the 5K area, right?

00:12:06   - Mm-hmm, someone should do the math.

00:12:08   That seems-- - Maybe three.

00:12:10   - Yeah, I think it needs three.

00:12:11   - It's like between two and three of those

00:12:12   would cover the 5K area.

00:12:14   Now I know things are harder to make

00:12:15   when you increase the area

00:12:16   because for things like yields and everything like that,

00:12:18   but I think we're mostly not talking about

00:12:22   yields of the panel.

00:12:23   we're mostly talking about the backlight technology.

00:12:25   That would enable the local dimming--

00:12:27   What the hell?

00:12:27   (laughing)

00:12:29   You know, Siri, I'm not sure I understand either.

00:12:30   - Your house missed you.

00:12:32   - No, that was my watch that just did that.

00:12:34   - Your watch?

00:12:35   - Oh, that's the worst.

00:12:37   - Anyway, how far are we from being able

00:12:39   to economically offer that?

00:12:40   I bet it's not, we're not talking like six years from now.

00:12:44   If we can do it in the 16 inch MacBook Pro

00:12:45   for not that much money relative to the rest

00:12:48   of the cost of the computer and everything,

00:12:50   we can probably do it in 5K without too extreme of an expense,

00:12:54   probably within maybe three years, two years, something like that.

00:12:56   I think that's the time frame we're talking about. But again,

00:12:59   because of Apple's aforementioned slowness to update the monitors,

00:13:02   that's why I think it's going to be more like, you know,

00:13:04   three to five years probably before we see it. But that being said,

00:13:07   so I did see these things in, I guess in the metal, is that what we call it?

00:13:12   That's what people call it. Like for watches.

00:13:14   You were in the flesh.

00:13:15   Yeah. I was gonna say I was in the flesh. When you see a watch in person,

00:13:18   you call it seeing it in the metal.

00:13:19   So do we see the same thing at computers?

00:13:21   - You do not.

00:13:22   You're making that up.

00:13:23   Is that a thing that happened?

00:13:24   - That's actually the term that watch people use.

00:13:26   - When you see it in person, they say,

00:13:28   "I saw the watch in the metal?"

00:13:30   - That's exactly what they say, yes.

00:13:31   - What if it's a ceramic watch?

00:13:33   - They usually contain some metal somewhere.

00:13:34   (laughing)

00:13:35   - Oh my God.

00:13:36   - That's a good question though.

00:13:37   There are very few watches that are all ceramic casing.

00:13:39   Usually at least the button pushers

00:13:41   will be metal or something.

00:13:42   - Fisher Price watch, it's all plastic, right?

00:13:44   - Yeah, but even then you get some metal somewhere.

00:13:45   There's a battery at least.

00:13:47   - Let's wind up, elastic springs.

00:13:50   - Then, yeah, right, you have metal somewhere in there.

00:13:53   - It's the watch that Magneto wears in his prison.

00:13:56   - Yeah, there it is.

00:13:57   - Anyway, so I saw these things, and I gotta say,

00:14:01   so number one, the studio display looks fantastic.

00:14:04   I was very impressed by it.

00:14:06   - Yeah, man.

00:14:07   - The raising and lowering stand version,

00:14:09   they have one on display.

00:14:10   - It's very nice.

00:14:11   - Oh, it's so nice.

00:14:12   I totally want to get that one when I get one.

00:14:15   So how does that compare to the XDR? Because I don't recall having heard anyone who has spent significant time with the XDR and

00:14:22   has also seen the studio display and it seemed to me having never spent, you know, meaningful time with the XDR that the

00:14:30   mount, the stand was very similar in quality. Is it? That's how it felt to me.

00:14:37   I mean the XDR stand is, you know,

00:14:39   it's a little bit thicker, like the metal is just a little bit thicker on the base and everything and the little, I guess, neck.

00:14:43   - And it rotates.

00:14:44   - Right, yes, well.

00:14:46   So I would say overall it's very similar quality

00:14:51   to an XDR stand at like 2/3 scale or something like that.

00:14:54   It's, or thickness or bulk or whatever.

00:14:56   Very, very similar.

00:14:57   However, the up and down motion

00:15:00   of like how easy it is to move up and down,

00:15:01   I would say it felt the same.

00:15:03   Now I'm not moving my XDR up and down all the time.

00:15:05   I set it where I want it and then I set it and forget it.

00:15:09   But you do have to set it.

00:15:11   So I adjusted the one in the store,

00:15:13   moved it up and down a little bit, and it felt great.

00:15:15   It felt exactly as high quality as the XDR stand.

00:15:18   And actually, the fact that it can't rotate,

00:15:20   I consider that a feature, not a bug,

00:15:22   because again, I want my monitors to be level.

00:15:25   And you know what monitor can never be unlevel?

00:15:28   One that can't rotate.

00:15:30   And so I would actually prefer it to not have that ability.

00:15:33   - This gets back to two things that I said

00:15:34   when I originally got my XDR.

00:15:35   First, that I was surprised at how the up and down motion

00:15:40   wasn't as smooth as I thought it would be.

00:15:42   Not that it was janky or loose, it was very tight,

00:15:44   but it felt kind of like, I don't know,

00:15:46   it didn't feel like a well-oiled machine,

00:15:48   it felt a little bit gritty to me, right?

00:15:50   And the second thing is that,

00:15:52   what you're talking about, you can rotate it, right,

00:15:55   but it doesn't have like a click into place

00:15:56   for exactly horizontal and exactly vertical.

00:15:59   That is a disadvantage if you're like,

00:16:01   oh, well how will I know if I'm gonna get it level,

00:16:03   but it is also an advantage if you are not sure

00:16:06   that your desk or room are level,

00:16:08   because then you can make sure the monitor

00:16:10   is level even if the stand isn't.

00:16:12   Maybe that's not a problem for people

00:16:13   who live in new construction, but if you live

00:16:15   in an old house in New England,

00:16:16   the ability to actually level your monitor,

00:16:19   even if your desk isn't level, is actually a feature.

00:16:21   Of course, my desk is level, so I don't have to worry

00:16:22   about it, or rather, I do have to worry about it,

00:16:24   but I can level my desk, and I also leveled my monitor,

00:16:27   and like Marco, I got it set where I want it,

00:16:29   and I generally don't mess with it.

00:16:30   - Yeah, and also, regarding seeing the Mac Studio

00:16:34   in the middle, I was very surprised how bulky

00:16:38   and blocky it looks in person.

00:16:40   It was like, you know, I knew academically

00:16:42   like how big it's supposed to be.

00:16:44   It looked in person bigger than I expected it to look.

00:16:47   And it's still not attractive.

00:16:50   But not that I'm, you know, it's fine.

00:16:53   It's serving its purpose.

00:16:54   So, you know, I'm very glad this product exists.

00:16:58   It definitely looks utilitarian.

00:17:01   I was surprised, there's a large white power LED

00:17:05   on the front.

00:17:06   It's not super bright, but it has a larger diameter

00:17:09   than a typical little point white LED.

00:17:11   It's more of almost like a pencil eraser sized.

00:17:15   So that was kind of interesting

00:17:17   and a little surprising to see.

00:17:19   So if you're sensitive to that,

00:17:20   you might wanna get one of those little

00:17:21   like stick on light cover tape things for it.

00:17:23   But otherwise, no, it looks pretty cool.

00:17:26   Just it looked big.

00:17:27   - It's a chunk.

00:17:28   - Yeah, yeah.

00:17:29   It's not something that I would want,

00:17:32   like they have it, in all their pictures,

00:17:33   they have it kind of like sticking out

00:17:35   from under the monitor a little bit.

00:17:36   So it's like a few inches

00:17:38   in front of the monitor a little bit.

00:17:39   because they wanted to be in the product shot.

00:17:40   Here I am.

00:17:41   - In practice, you're never gonna wanna have that

00:17:43   be sticking out past the monitor on your desk.

00:17:45   You're gonna tuck it behind it somewhere,

00:17:47   like off to the side.

00:17:48   - Although it is nice that it fits underneath.

00:17:50   I think that's kind of like a space saving thing.

00:17:51   Like if the space is tight,

00:17:53   you don't actually need a separate space on the desk for it.

00:17:55   You can just let it be sort of be in the shadow

00:17:57   of the monitor.

00:17:57   But was it Jason Snow was just pointing out

00:18:00   a plexiglass thing that mounts under your desk.

00:18:02   It's really, what it actually is

00:18:04   is a dual Mac mini under desk mount, right?

00:18:07   but because this is about the same size as two MacMamies,

00:18:10   you can just buy it, put it under your desk,

00:18:11   put the studio in it, and then you

00:18:14   wouldn't have to see it at all.

00:18:15   It would just be stuck under your desk,

00:18:17   and maybe you wouldn't hear it as much either.

00:18:20   We are brought to you this week by Linode, my favorite place

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00:20:10   On a completely random note,

00:20:15   you know what's painting me a little bit?

00:20:17   Knowing that there is a black version of the keyboard

00:20:20   and trackpad that I'm using right now and I don't have it.

00:20:22   'Cause I don't have anything against the white version,

00:20:24   but after having spent years with the iMac Pros,

00:20:27   black keys, well dark gray or whatever it was,

00:20:31   and black trackpad.

00:20:34   Now, as of the event, you can get,

00:20:36   and they're obscenely expensive,

00:20:38   but you can get a black keyboard and a black trackpad.

00:20:40   I really want it.

00:20:41   - So I gotta say, I saw the black peripherals

00:20:44   in person today as well.

00:20:45   I wasn't that impressed by them,

00:20:46   but maybe it's just not my style.

00:20:47   I will say, the reason I was in the Apple Store--

00:20:50   - Other than the studio display.

00:20:52   - Well, I was shopping at Whole Foods

00:20:52   like almost next door to it, and so I walked over there,

00:20:54   but the reason I was there is that for tonight's recording,

00:20:57   I wanted to get myself a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter

00:21:00   so I could use my other Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter.

00:21:03   It's for, you know, remember when I have recorded here

00:21:05   in the past, we had some issues using WiFi.

00:21:07   - Ah, yes. - And the USB,

00:21:09   the stupid, you know, Belkin-made USB-C Ethernet adapter

00:21:12   is not very good or fast or reliable,

00:21:14   but and I had two of the Apple Thunderbolt

00:21:16   Ethernet adapters, one of them's at the beach

00:21:18   and I had one here, I just didn't have the converter

00:21:20   to use it on Thunderbolt 3.

00:21:22   Secondly, I wanted to get the new little Touch ID keyboard

00:21:26   because I wanted to try it out, try using it as a keyboard,

00:21:30   maybe I could switch to it.

00:21:31   I've already decided that's probably not going to happen,

00:21:33   but it is kinda nice.

00:21:35   But I wanted to have the thing where you Velcro it

00:21:38   under the desk or something so that you can touch ID

00:21:40   with it while still using a good keyboard

00:21:42   on top of your desk.

00:21:43   And I did try using it for this afternoon

00:21:46   for while setting up my computer

00:21:48   and responding to some emails and stuff.

00:21:49   And it's almost a good keyboard.

00:21:52   I could almost see myself using it,

00:21:54   but the damn arrow keys.

00:21:56   Remember we talked about how they apparently

00:21:58   rounded the corners of this keyboard so much?

00:22:01   - 'Cause you got the one without the numeric keypad.

00:22:03   - Yes, I did.

00:22:04   - Bingo, mistake.

00:22:06   - The numeric keypad one's too wide.

00:22:08   But I think I might try that at some point.

00:22:11   - Aren't you ambidextrous now?

00:22:13   You use lefty trackpad and everything?

00:22:14   - I do use lefty trackpad and righty mouse,

00:22:17   but I just don't like having the mouse

00:22:18   all the way off in New Jersey when I'm trying to,

00:22:21   but man, this keyboard is almost really good,

00:22:25   except for those damn full height left and right arrow keys.

00:22:28   That was messing me up constantly.

00:22:30   Like, you know, I'm used to the Microsoft Sculpt

00:22:31   that I use all the time.

00:22:32   I've even, by the way, quick little thing.

00:22:34   Lenovo released a new ergonomic keyboard recently.

00:22:37   I bought one, I tried it.

00:22:38   It was so bad and I couldn't return it,

00:22:40   I actually threw it away.

00:22:41   That's how bad that was.

00:22:42   So if anybody's wondering if I've found anything better

00:22:45   than the Microsoft Sculpt for a split ergonomic keyboard,

00:22:48   no. (laughs)

00:22:49   But anyway, so going to the Apple thing,

00:22:52   it's almost really good.

00:22:53   I just, if they made the small keyboard

00:22:56   without the numeric keypad going off all the way

00:22:58   into New Jersey, but with regular half-height

00:23:01   left and right arrow keys,

00:23:03   that would be an amazing product.

00:23:04   I'd be so happy with that.

00:23:06   I might even stop using my ergonomic keyboard entirely

00:23:08   for that product, but as it stands, unfortunately,

00:23:11   we haven't gotten there yet.

00:23:12   But having Touch ID is really cool.

00:23:13   And I was also interested to see that

00:23:15   by setting up this Touch ID keyboard

00:23:18   with my 16-inch MacBook Pro,

00:23:20   which of course has its own Touch ID sensor

00:23:22   on the MacBook Pro, I didn't have to re-register

00:23:25   my fingerprint for the keyboard.

00:23:27   So it must have either transferred my fingerprint data

00:23:30   over somehow, which I'm not sure how that's possible,

00:23:32   while also having the whole security thing that they do

00:23:35   where it's all locked in, or there's some kind of

00:23:37   common hash that it stores and it's able to read

00:23:40   the same fingerprint data from two different sensors

00:23:43   and match one common hash.

00:23:44   But I thought that was kind of an interesting

00:23:45   little side effect that I expected I'd have to train

00:23:48   my own fingerprint again on this new sensor, but I didn't.

00:23:51   - Yeah, I think the Secure Enclave is on the M1, right?

00:23:55   It's not in the keyboard, but I might be wrong.

00:23:57   - Yeah, that's probably it.

00:23:58   So it's transmitting my fingerprint image somehow

00:24:01   from this keyboard.

00:24:02   - Well, not the image, but some amount of data,

00:24:04   but who knows?

00:24:05   - By the way, just some real time follow-up here.

00:24:07   R. Mori in the chat has linked,

00:24:09   there's actually a whole Apple support document

00:24:12   on how the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID

00:24:14   does the fingerprint security,

00:24:16   and how it securely transmits stuff

00:24:19   between it and the computer.

00:24:20   So we'll link that in the show notes as well.

00:24:21   - You know, hearing you, to go back a step,

00:24:23   talk about the officially called Magic Keyboard

00:24:26   with Touch ID for Mac models with Apple Silicon,

00:24:27   hyphen US English.

00:24:29   That's a very non-Apple name.

00:24:31   - That's almost one of those like Amazon keyboard spam

00:24:33   titles.

00:24:34   - Seriously, my goodness.

00:24:35   Anyways, when I was buying my new setup,

00:24:37   when I got my new computer,

00:24:38   I got the keyboard that has numeric keypad on it.

00:24:42   And I do like numeric keypad,

00:24:44   but I don't use it that terribly often.

00:24:46   And I understand what you're saying,

00:24:47   and I know you're being hyperbolic,

00:24:49   But even though my trackpad is east of where I would

00:24:53   potentially want it to be, I wouldn't go so far as to say

00:24:55   it's in New Jersey or anything like that,

00:24:57   or for us it would be the eastern shore.

00:24:59   But nevertheless, it is further away

00:25:01   than I would prefer in a perfect world.

00:25:02   But-- - New Jersey is west of me,

00:25:04   I just, I face south.

00:25:05   - Fair, okay, well, that's true actually,

00:25:07   that's a good point.

00:25:08   But anyways, the point is that the reason I didn't get

00:25:10   the keyboard that you ended up with was expressly

00:25:12   because I knew those arrow keys were going to drive me

00:25:14   friggin' nuts.

00:25:16   And so I thought, you know what,

00:25:18   I'm just gonna bite the bullet and I'm just gonna go ahead

00:25:20   and I'm gonna get the one with the keypad

00:25:22   because I would prefer to have the arrow keys

00:25:24   that are not, the consistent arrow keys

00:25:26   where everything is a full key size.

00:25:29   - Just a quick update on Apple peripherals

00:25:31   with black key caps and so on.

00:25:34   Stephen Hackett had a good post to remind us.

00:25:36   It was a discussion about the black MacBook

00:25:38   and how that would cost more,

00:25:39   but it came with a bigger hard drive.

00:25:40   But even if you accounted for the bigger hard drive,

00:25:42   it still costs a little bit more.

00:25:43   So it's a thing that Apple still does,

00:25:45   reading from his webpage.

00:25:47   we'll put a link in the showrooms,

00:25:48   the current Magic Mouse, or I don't know if this is current,

00:25:50   but anyway, the Magic Mouse, white with 79, black 99.

00:25:53   The Magic Trackpad, white 129, black 149.

00:25:56   Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, numeric keypad,

00:25:58   white 179, black 199.

00:26:01   - I wanted the black MacBook

00:26:02   until I saw someone else's in person,

00:26:05   and it was just covered in fingerprints.

00:26:07   Oh my, it smudged up.

00:26:10   - Oh, but it was the white ones,

00:26:12   which I had a white poly book,

00:26:13   and it was covered in finger grease.

00:26:15   - I feel like it's easier to keep the white things clean

00:26:18   than it is to keep the black one's finger ungreased

00:26:20   because it's harder to clean off fingers.

00:26:23   - Also, who are you to be throwing stones

00:26:25   about black keyboards, mister?

00:26:27   I always bought black cars for you.

00:26:28   - I still have a black keyboard right here.

00:26:30   I just don't happen to have very greasy fingers

00:26:31   or I wash my hands before I touch my computer.

00:26:33   I have a black mouse, I have a black keycap.

00:26:35   I was lucky enough for my extremely inexpensive Mac Pro

00:26:38   came with a keyboard and black keycaps

00:26:40   and a black mouse that I've never unwrapped.

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00:27:51   Coffee that you find in stores is old.

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00:28:42   Thanks to Trade for sponsoring our show.

00:28:44   - All right, we should, I guess, maybe do follow-up,

00:28:50   or aren't we supposed to start the show at this point?

00:28:52   - Yeah, someone derailed us, I can't remember.

00:28:54   - Yeah, well, jeez, it must have been Marco,

00:28:55   couldn't have been me.

00:28:56   All right, so we should do some actual follow-ups.

00:28:59   So friend of the show, Mark Edwards over at Django,

00:29:01   who makes John's favorite app in the entire world,

00:29:04   iStat Menus, he put together a follow-up to his post

00:29:09   from several years ago that started me down

00:29:11   this whole journey of looking into monitors

00:29:14   and high DPI monitors and so on and so forth.

00:29:18   Well, Mark has put together a revisit

00:29:21   in much the same way I had on my post in December,

00:29:24   and he walks through kind of, you know,

00:29:27   let's talk again about what it is we want,

00:29:29   why we want it, et cetera.

00:29:30   And did you know, fellas, it turns out

00:29:32   that when you have a visual medium

00:29:35   and you're trying to discuss visual things,

00:29:37   it's very easy to display examples

00:29:41   of exactly what we're talking about.

00:29:42   So if you were curious, listener,

00:29:44   as to why we keep banging this drum

00:29:47   and barking up this tree,

00:29:48   then I encourage you to check out this post

00:29:51   because it is abundantly obvious very, very quickly

00:29:55   exactly what we're talking about.

00:29:56   Also, actually, that reminds me,

00:29:58   last week I meant to say out loud, and I didn't,

00:30:02   but I did put in the show notes,

00:30:04   I went back and watched the iOS,

00:30:06   or excuse me, iPhone 4 retina display announcement

00:30:11   with Steve Jobs, and I put in the show notes,

00:30:13   but I completely forgot to say anything about it.

00:30:15   And in very Steve fashion, he does a phenomenal job

00:30:20   in just a couple of minutes of explaining

00:30:22   exactly why retina is a big deal,

00:30:24   in a much better way than any one of us can

00:30:26   just using our voices.

00:30:27   So it's in the last episode's show notes,

00:30:30   if I remember, I'll try to copy it

00:30:31   to this episode's show notes as well.

00:30:33   But it is absolutely worth the, I don't know,

00:30:35   five or 10 minutes of your time

00:30:37   if you're still confused why we want Retina so bad.

00:30:39   So go check that out too.

00:30:41   - So you mentioned how it's really nice

00:30:43   to have a blog post for this visual medium,

00:30:45   for this visual explanation.

00:30:47   Well, I happened to read this blog post earlier today

00:30:50   while sitting outside at a playground with,

00:30:52   you know, Adam was playing and I was like sitting there,

00:30:53   you know, as I was sitting at this playground bench

00:30:57   with no parents I knew around me to talk to,

00:30:59   I was reading my phone, of course,

00:31:00   and the wind just kept blowing in my eyes

00:31:03   and my eyes were just watering the entire time.

00:31:06   In retrospect, that was most likely

00:31:08   because of the pollen and the missed allergy pill,

00:31:10   but at the time I thought,

00:31:11   "Man, it's just really windy today."

00:31:13   And my eyes were just constantly watering

00:31:15   and I'm trying to read this article

00:31:16   and I kept wanting to wipe my eyes

00:31:17   and they're getting all itchy and red

00:31:19   from all the wiping then.

00:31:20   - Who else would have thought

00:31:21   you were having an emotional experience?

00:31:22   - Yeah, it looked like that.

00:31:23   It really, and I actually thought,

00:31:25   I'm like, people might think I'm crying here.

00:31:26   It's actually like there's a lot of water

00:31:28   coming out of my eyes right now.

00:31:29   - Non-native scaling makes you sad.

00:31:31   - Well, yeah, I mean.

00:31:32   (laughing)

00:31:34   Anyway, yeah, so that was a very good article

00:31:36   that I read through tears of pollen.

00:31:38   - And joy.

00:31:39   - Yes, also pollen, mostly pollen.

00:31:41   - I can tell you that this, like the mid-Atlantic

00:31:44   is real bad, it may not be the worst,

00:31:45   but it is real bad for pollen, and it is very frustrating.

00:31:50   And what's worse is, because I'm getting ever older,

00:31:52   it affects me more and more every year.

00:31:54   And I assure you, when you have rigid gas permeable,

00:31:57   or otherwise known as hard contact lenses,

00:31:59   if even a microscopic speck of pollen

00:32:02   ends up between your eyeball and your contact,

00:32:05   it's like getting stabbed to death in the eye.

00:32:06   It is delightful, I assure you.

00:32:08   - I can tell you, I know that my most popular

00:32:12   subject matter that I can cover is medical advice.

00:32:14   Everyone loves--

00:32:15   (laughing)

00:32:16   - And it never goes poorly for you.

00:32:17   - Yes, everybody loves whenever I discuss medical advice.

00:32:20   However, I can tell you, I have had good experiences

00:32:23   with adult allergy shots.

00:32:26   I got them when I was a kid also, like more regularly.

00:32:29   - It makes it sound dirty, won't it?

00:32:30   (laughing)

00:32:32   Adult, all right, go on.

00:32:34   - Yes, allergy shots as an adult,

00:32:39   not like explicit allergy shots.

00:32:42   No, I can actually recommend, it actually helped a lot

00:32:44   and takes way less time than you think to build up immunity.

00:32:47   - But you just said how you're dying from your eyes.

00:32:48   If it helps so much, why are you still bothered so badly?

00:32:50   - 'Cause I haven't gotten them in like three years

00:32:52   'cause they don't have them at the beach.

00:32:53   - Gonna get back on that shot train.

00:32:54   (laughing)

00:32:57   Ay yi yi.

00:32:57   What are we doing right now?

00:32:58   Is this the show? Is this what people tune in for?

00:33:00   - I believe we're still in the pre-show.

00:33:01   We're trying to do a follow-up. It's not working.

00:33:03   - It's not working. - Keep trying.

00:33:05   - All right, we'll keep, we'll soldier on.

00:33:07   All right, so we've been dropping hints about this.

00:33:10   We had some really genuinely great feedback

00:33:12   from a couple of different audio people,

00:33:15   and I know that's not the right term, and I'm sorry,

00:33:17   but one of them that wrote in was Sam Kosnetz,

00:33:19   and Sam writes, "I'm a theatrical sound designer,

00:33:22   "and a very big part of my job is ensuring

00:33:24   "that audience members sitting in different places

00:33:26   "in the theater have more or less

00:33:27   the same acoustic experience as each other. This involves a lot of measuring of sound

00:33:31   in a whole bunch of different ways, so it's become a topic that's very near and dear to

00:33:34   me. Something that we came close to touching on several times in episode 476, but never

00:33:39   exactly addressed, is the relationship between loudness and distance. We can say things like,

00:33:44   quote, "A car passing by is 65 decibels," quote, or "A jet engine is 140 decibels,"

00:33:49   but those numbers don't mean anything without knowing the distance between the source of

00:33:52   the sound and the measurement device. Regarding the 3-decibel MacBook, Apple's operator position

00:33:57   measurements are almost certainly taken within an anechoic chamber completely isolated from

00:34:02   outside sources of noise. In this environment, the three decibels that they pick up from the MacBook

00:34:05   Air is certainly thermally induced, but it's hard to say what exactly it is. My guess is vibration

00:34:10   of any parts that have flexed, like keyboard keys or the hinge of the lid. This is very close to the

00:34:14   edge of what is physically possible to measure, so it's shrug-worthy territory. Apple's probably

00:34:19   obligated to report whatever they measure, even if it's hard to explain, since it's part of the

00:34:22   official technical specifications of the device. Finally, there was the question of noticing a

00:34:27   a three decibel difference or not, with the acoustician stating that a three decibel difference

00:34:30   was close to unnoticeable and Marco observing that when he makes a three decibel change

00:34:33   while editing podcasts, he very clearly notices it. This is one of those great examples of

00:34:38   "you're both right!" and the reason is that you're likely not talking about the same scale,

00:34:41   because a decibel isn't a fixed quantity, it's a ratio, and without a reference point,

00:34:45   a decibel means nothing. Measurements of the loudness of things in the real world use the

00:34:50   decibel SPL scale. The SPL means "sound pressure level" and is calibrated against a specific

00:34:56   amount of air pressure. The reference point for one decibel SPL is 20 micropascals, which

00:35:01   is the smallest quantity of air pressure that a human ear is able to perceive. Anything

00:35:05   less than that doesn't have enough energy to motivate the mechanism of the ear. When

00:35:08   Marco makes a three decibel adjustment while editing, he's working in the DBFS domain,

00:35:11   or decibel file system domain, just kidding. The decibel full scale, which uses as its

00:35:17   reference point the loudest possible sound that can be encoded on disk at the given sample

00:35:21   rate and bit depth. And this next part actually blew my mind. I had no idea this was the case.

00:35:26   So back to Sam here, this is why almost all level measurement

00:35:29   in audio software uses negative numbers.

00:35:31   They're all saying, quote, "How much quieter is this level

00:35:34   than the absolute loudest possible level

00:35:36   that I can reproduce?"

00:35:36   Quote, "I had no idea, that's why I always saw

00:35:39   negative stuff in Final Cut Pro, that's so cool.

00:35:41   So I've learned something."

00:35:42   - You also see it if you have an AV receiver

00:35:43   and you adjust the volume on it.

00:35:44   - Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's very good

00:35:46   that it shows you a negative number.

00:35:47   - That's true, I didn't think about that, yeah, you're right.

00:35:49   - If you think about it, like, zero,

00:35:52   it's kind of hard to say, well, what is the quietest sound?

00:35:54   that depends a lot on the sensitivity

00:35:56   of what you are recording or measuring it with.

00:35:58   As you increase the signal to noise ratio,

00:36:00   or you decrease the noise floor,

00:36:02   or like in digital terms, if you increase the bit depth,

00:36:04   like from 16 bit to 24 bit or 32 bit,

00:36:07   the smallest or tiniest little measurable sound

00:36:10   gets quieter the more sensitive you're representing it.

00:36:13   Whereas you can always easily represent

00:36:15   what is the loudest.

00:36:16   Like the loudest is like your digital circuit is at one,

00:36:20   like 1.0 or whatever,

00:36:21   it's like it's the maximum capacity

00:36:23   of that circuit before it clips.

00:36:25   It's the highest value it can represent, whatever it is.

00:36:27   So it makes sense to set that as your starting point

00:36:30   and then represent everything as,

00:36:32   how far below that are we?

00:36:34   Because the depth of that can change over time.

00:36:37   - Right, and then Sam finishes up,

00:36:38   a three decibel adjustment within your editor

00:36:40   may not equate to a three decibel SPL difference

00:36:43   once that signal makes its way

00:36:44   through the rest of the signal path.

00:36:46   And even if it does, it isn't equating

00:36:48   to an actual level of three decibel SPL.

00:36:51   It's equal to maybe 63 or 73 decibels SPL.

00:36:54   Human hearing perception is not linear,

00:36:55   and the decibel scale is neither.

00:36:57   The difference between 70 decibels SPL

00:36:58   and 73 decibels SPL is more perceptible

00:37:01   than the difference between zero decibels SPL

00:37:04   and three decibels SPL.

00:37:05   This is all fascinating,

00:37:06   and I know that was a little bit long,

00:37:07   but I was riveted by all of it.

00:37:10   - I think this is another time to say that all of which

00:37:12   is interesting and important background knowledge,

00:37:14   but does not solve the very, I mean, it's not a mystery,

00:37:19   But the very puzzling reality of the wildly varying reports

00:37:24   we continue to get from people who have owned

00:37:27   or are near Mac Studios, right?

00:37:30   It's just, I've been tweeting about it all week long.

00:37:32   And I'm not saying any of these people are wrong,

00:37:34   but this is really, the variability is just off the charts.

00:37:37   It's even made some people guess

00:37:39   that maybe there's like a manufacturing problem

00:37:41   and some are loud or some are quiet

00:37:42   because people are saying, like you get,

00:37:44   all the way from the people saying, I have one,

00:37:47   I live in a tomb where there is no noise or wind and I can't hear it at all.

00:37:54   And my ears are the best ears.

00:37:55   I won the hearing contest in my town.

00:37:57   I can't hear a thing.

00:37:58   And other people are like, I'm returning my $8,000 computer because I can't stand the

00:38:02   noise.

00:38:03   It's so loud.

00:38:04   You have no idea.

00:38:05   Right?

00:38:06   Some people even said they could hear the display.

00:38:07   I'm like, come on, you can hear the display.

00:38:09   No one had said they could hear the display.

00:38:10   I'm like, at least the whole world agrees.

00:38:12   You can't hear the fans in the Apple studio display.

00:38:14   And then people, until you get yours.

00:38:16   And then you're going to say, "I absolutely can hear it."

00:38:17   I can't hear the fans in my XDR.

00:38:20   I said that before.

00:38:21   My XDR has fans.

00:38:22   I do not hear them, right?

00:38:23   But anyway, the Mac studio is all over the map, right?

00:38:26   We even had somebody who said, "I bought two Mac studios.

00:38:29   One was the Ultra and one was the Max, and I can hear the Max, but I can't hear the Ultra."

00:38:32   It's the same person.

00:38:33   Literally the same person.

00:38:34   And one of them is like, "Well, the Ultra has the copper heatsink and blah, blah, blah."

00:38:39   But every other person who tested them said, "The fans stay at the same RPM.

00:38:43   Apple has said it's the same cooling assembly in both of them.

00:38:45   The heat sink is baffling.

00:38:49   All this academic stuff about explaining the decibel differences in SPL or whatever, that's

00:38:53   good to understand the measurements we were getting.

00:38:55   It's like, "Oh, well, we don't have to rely on people's reported annoyance level.

00:39:00   We can just take measurements with science."

00:39:02   This explains how the science would work, but almost everyone who's told us about the

00:39:06   science has also thrown in a little aside as if it's unimportant to say, "Of course,

00:39:10   the quality of the sound matters."

00:39:13   If it is broad spectrum, high pitch, low pitch, loudness is just one factor that goes into

00:39:21   is this sound annoying or even can I hear it?

00:39:24   And so the subjective support reports in many ways are all that does matter, right?

00:39:29   Because it's not like we're measuring a single frequency tone at different sound levels.

00:39:34   It's we're measuring a very complicated sound in very complicated environments and then

00:39:39   subjecting it to individual people and right now the individual people do not

00:39:43   agree are these computers dead silent are they the noisiest things Apple has

00:39:46   ever made and need to be returned and in the end all that matters is what you

00:39:50   listener or me or Marco or whatever what you think about it when you buy yours

00:39:54   because who cares if other people can't stand the noise that if you buy one and

00:39:57   you can't hear it success or if everyone else thinks it's quiet and you buy one

00:40:01   and can't stand the noise that's bad so I'm still hoping that by the time my Mac

00:40:06   studio actually ships sometime this summer, whatever issues they might have will be sorted

00:40:09   out and I'm just hoping I'm old enough that this sound won't bother me.

00:40:13   But if it was a taste related thing, you are a supertaster and you would know.

00:40:16   I mean, I think your taste buds get crappier as you get older.

00:40:19   Everything is crappier as you get older for the most part.

00:40:21   So even that's probably fading with age.

00:40:24   But you know, if it tastes good, being a supertaster is great.

00:40:26   It tastes like a thousand peaches.

00:40:29   Thousand pears.

00:40:30   Come on chat room, help me out.

00:40:32   These two aren't gonna.

00:40:33   Millions of peaches.

00:40:35   - Thanks for having me.

00:40:36   - Nice.

00:40:37   - All right, and moving right along.

00:40:38   Chris Gagne writes, "It appears that some common

00:40:40   "USBC Ethernet adapters, like the Belkin 1 Apple cells,

00:40:43   "have issues reaching full gigabit speeds

00:40:45   "plugged into the studio display.

00:40:46   "I could only hit about 400 megabits per second

00:40:48   "via speed test when plugged into the studio display

00:40:50   "and about 920 megabits per second,

00:40:52   "close to the limit of gigabit,

00:40:54   "plugged directly into my MacBook Pro 14 inch.

00:40:56   "However, an Anker 2.5 gigabit Ethernet adapter,

00:40:59   "an Anker 2.5G model, was able to reach

00:41:01   "at least gigabit speeds, and I was consistently

00:41:03   getting download speeds of about 930 gigabits per second when it when I

00:41:06   plugged it into the studio display. I don't have a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet

00:41:11   network to test its full capabilities but this solves my issue. I didn't put

00:41:16   this in here I'm not sure why we why do we care. I mean it's just an interesting

00:41:19   thing to consider for you know the getting the full capabilities of your

00:41:23   monitor and the mysteries of things that fit into USB-C shaped holes but may not

00:41:27   you know what I mean like it's just it never ends it's not even just cables.

00:41:32   Yeah, I mean, I get that. I don't know. I would really love for someone to put together

00:41:38   like an online calculator for all the stuff flying through a Thunderbolt connection. Because

00:41:44   I feel like, and this is very unscientific of me, but I feel like, well, you know, the

00:41:49   5k displays carrying that 5k is a lot of data to pass and it has to pass it very frequently.

00:41:55   So if the, if the network connection is a little slower, well, I get that. And, and

00:41:59   And again, that's not scientific at all.

00:42:01   But I wish someone would put together some sort of online calculator where you could

00:42:05   say, you know, something like, "Oh, I've got a 5K display and I've got a this or that and

00:42:10   the other thing.

00:42:11   When do I get into the danger zone of throughput or something like that?"

00:42:15   So somebody make that for me, please, and thank you.

00:42:17   Real time update.

00:42:18   I got the fruit right eventually but blew the number.

00:42:20   Hundred pairs or million pairs?

00:42:22   Not a thousand pairs.

00:42:23   Link in the show notes.

00:42:24   I have no idea what you're talking about.

00:42:26   Well, I put it in the chat room.

00:42:27   I put it at the top of the document.

00:42:28   - Oh, they might be giants?

00:42:31   Oh, fair enough, okay.

00:42:33   All right, let's talk about, from about 15 years ago,

00:42:35   iCloud and custom domains.

00:42:37   Dominic Lautner wrote a blog post, or a post about

00:42:41   a lot of the problems with iCloud and custom email domains,

00:42:44   and to quickly go through some of them.

00:42:47   There's no catch-all address support,

00:42:49   so this is, you know, my email address is @caseylist.com.

00:42:53   Well, if you were to email FUBAR@caseylist.com,

00:42:57   which isn't a valid address, I can set it up

00:43:00   such that that will go to a particular email address of mine

00:43:03   that I do check, and iCloud doesn't allow that.

00:43:06   There's also, according to Dominic,

00:43:08   aggressive DNS record validation.

00:43:10   There's no inbound email relay support,

00:43:13   and the error messages are, guess what,

00:43:15   super duper opaque and useless,

00:43:17   because hey, Apple, this is what you love to do.

00:43:19   - Yeah, Dominic, when you looked into this,

00:43:22   got a crappy error message, and being an industrious,

00:43:25   probably developer or whatever, said,

00:43:27   I need more.

00:43:28   And then just because it's like a web type thing,

00:43:30   you can just look at the AJAX request going back and forth

00:43:34   and look at the actual JSON.

00:43:36   And so the UI error was, there was a problem

00:43:40   adding this email address.

00:43:41   Please try again later, which is like the worst copy,

00:43:43   because try again later, it's like,

00:43:45   is it going to be different later?

00:43:46   Or is it just like, is this just a form of torture?

00:43:49   Because later, it makes it seem like there

00:43:52   is a temporary condition that you think will resolve, right?

00:43:55   But if you look at the JSON, the JSON has an error code,

00:43:58   whatever, some number.

00:43:59   And then it has an error message key in the JSON.

00:44:01   And the error message is MX record not pointing to iCloud.

00:44:05   Boy, that would be useful to know,

00:44:07   because now you know how to fix it if you know what an MX--

00:44:10   at least you have a hint if you know what an MX record is.

00:44:12   And I understand this is technical,

00:44:13   and most people don't understand that.

00:44:14   But that is not the equivalent of there

00:44:16   was a problem ending with the email, please try again later.

00:44:17   Because later, it will not work unless someone changes the MX

00:44:20   record between now and later.

00:44:22   And it reminded me of experience I'm

00:44:25   having with my iPhoto library or Apple Photos library,

00:44:31   where it will get into a state where it'll say,

00:44:32   restoring from iCloud dot, dot, dot,

00:44:35   and it will just stay that way forever.

00:44:38   And I look at it and I wonder, what's really going on?

00:44:41   Please tell me.

00:44:42   Like, are you ever going to complete?

00:44:44   Are you stuck on something?

00:44:45   Is there an image you can't get to?

00:44:48   And I resort to such ridiculous things.

00:44:50   Obviously, I'm looking in console for anything.

00:44:52   There's nothing helpful there.

00:44:53   using FS usage and SC usage, running them

00:44:56   in every process I can think of.

00:44:57   The photo library D, the photos application itself,

00:45:03   the cloud sync D, like just, I just want to,

00:45:07   I mean, 'cause you look at it and like,

00:45:08   nothing's happening on the computer.

00:45:09   The CPU is not being stressed,

00:45:11   it's not a lot of disk IO, but there's a little bit

00:45:12   and you're like, is the, are photos,

00:45:16   is something happening related to photos?

00:45:18   Because I left it on this thing for like days

00:45:20   a couple of times before I gave up

00:45:22   and just rebuilt the whole library with the,

00:45:23   you hold down launch photos and hold down command option,

00:45:25   it'll rebuild the whole library,

00:45:27   which also takes forever by the way,

00:45:28   which is why I didn't wanna do it.

00:45:29   But eventually, after several days

00:45:31   of it just having an opaque message like this,

00:45:33   I just gave up.

00:45:34   So I really wish Apple would, like,

00:45:37   it's a difficult problem,

00:45:38   'cause you don't wanna throw weird error messages

00:45:39   in people's faces, they're confusing,

00:45:40   nobody knows what an MX record is for the most part.

00:45:43   So I get why they're trying to hide it,

00:45:45   but there should be some way for people who want to know

00:45:48   or want some kind of hint to figure out,

00:45:51   Is this irretrievably wedged?

00:45:53   Is it doing something?

00:45:54   Or should I give up and rebuild the thing?

00:45:57   And Apple continues to be terrible about this.

00:45:59   I thought this was interesting that this subject came up

00:46:02   in an otherwise unrelated topic of iCloud custom domains.

00:46:07   - Indeed.

00:46:08   And then there, Dominic also talks about some notes

00:46:10   about coupling with Apple IDs,

00:46:12   emails sent from addresses without an account get dropped,

00:46:16   which is super delightful.

00:46:18   And according to Dominic, third-party clients

00:46:21   may leak your Apple ID, which is also super delightful.

00:46:23   So there's problems.

00:46:26   And you might want to tread carefully

00:46:29   if that's what you want to do.

00:46:30   - These problems may or may not apply to you.

00:46:31   Like follow the link to the article

00:46:32   to see them in much more detail.

00:46:33   This is just a quick bulleted list,

00:46:35   but there are sort of edge cases that may concern you

00:46:38   that you should look into.

00:46:40   - And finally, with regard to iCloud email stuff,

00:46:45   Eli Lindsay writes that despite including instructions

00:46:48   to configure DNS entries for domain keys,

00:46:50   identified mail or DKIM.

00:46:52   DKIM signatures are not generated when sending mail

00:46:55   from iOS or Mac OS mail app.

00:46:57   DKIM is generated when sending from the iCloud web mail

00:47:00   client, but who actually uses that?

00:47:02   This means that outgoing mail takes a deliverability hit,

00:47:05   though it's still generally OK, since sender policy framework

00:47:08   or SPF is properly configured.

00:47:11   Cool.

00:47:12   Anything else we'd like to add about that?

00:47:13   Use fast mail, I guess.

00:47:15   Yeah, oh, and speaking of, I've had a few questions

00:47:17   about what I've done with regards to my Gmail and Google App Shear domain. What I've done

00:47:21   is I've continued to kick that can down the road and not think about it. But my current

00:47:26   plan is the same as it was before, which is even though there apparently are some ways

00:47:30   that you can ask Google, "Please, please sir, please can I have some more?" And you might

00:47:35   be able to get access in certain circumstances forever, I just plan to divorce myself from

00:47:41   Google at this point. And so I do plan to get a Fast Mail account. I need to do that

00:47:44   soon because I would love to pull a Marko and get all of the referral credit, but I

00:47:49   haven't done so yet. So please, if you're thinking about sending any referral credit

00:47:54   my way, please just hold on a little bit longer. I promise I'll get to it at some point.

00:47:58   All righty, let's talk about iPhone 14 rumors. And there have been a bunch lately because

00:48:05   we're coming up to that time, which actually speaking of, I'm a little surprised that we

00:48:09   haven't heard about WWDC yet. It's April. What the heck?

00:48:11   - Yeah, it's one of those like any day now situations,

00:48:14   but I mean, frankly, I would be very surprised

00:48:17   if it would be any different than the last couple years.

00:48:19   I think it's very little chance that it's in person,

00:48:22   so it's probably gonna be another remote conference.

00:48:24   And frankly, I mean, we talk about this every year,

00:48:26   but frankly, I think remote is better.

00:48:30   And it isn't better in all ways,

00:48:32   but it's better in many ways.

00:48:34   And I think if they went back to having it in person again,

00:48:38   certain parts of it would feel like a step backwards.

00:48:41   Can you imagine going to what used to be called

00:48:43   the Fairmont and what is now, Hilton bought it

00:48:46   and renamed it, but it's like, going back to one of these--

00:48:48   - I'll let you know that.

00:48:49   - Yeah, but you know, I checked the other day for fun,

00:48:51   like, what does it cost for that first full week of June

00:48:54   where it would most likely be if it was in person?

00:48:56   And it's like $475 a night.

00:48:59   (laughing)

00:49:00   - It's full of money.

00:49:00   - And of course, every San Jose and San Francisco hotel

00:49:03   is in that ballpark if it's anywhere near decent.

00:49:08   Not even, we're not even talking like really fancy hotels,

00:49:10   we're talking just like, what would anywhere,

00:49:12   in any other city in America,

00:49:13   what would be like $100 a night,

00:49:14   there it's almost 500.

00:49:16   (laughs)

00:49:18   But anyway, you know, can you imagine going back there

00:49:21   in person and spending a million dollars on a hotel

00:49:24   and flying out there from wherever you have to come from,

00:49:27   which is a big expense and a big time commitment

00:49:29   and everything, and sitting through the terribly slow

00:49:33   coffee shops that you find out there,

00:49:34   you know, between sessions,

00:49:36   and having to go into the conference center

00:49:40   and having to wait in line to get into the room

00:49:44   to then watch people present on a stage

00:49:47   when frankly if you look at the videos they've made

00:49:49   over the last couple years, the videos are better.

00:49:52   It would seem in many ways like a step backwards.

00:49:54   And yeah, I miss the socialization, I miss the labs,

00:49:58   like kind of BSing with some engineers here and there.

00:50:01   That was fun, but I think what we have now overall

00:50:06   is better and you cannot ignore that

00:50:09   It's better in many ways even for those of us

00:50:12   who were lucky enough to be able to go in person,

00:50:15   but there's so many more people who could never go in person

00:50:19   or who maybe only go once at best,

00:50:21   'cause it's a big ordeal, it's a big expense,

00:50:24   it's hard to get tickets.

00:50:26   So imagine how much better the current system is now

00:50:31   for how many more total people.

00:50:34   I really do think if we ever go back in person,

00:50:36   it will feel like a step backwards.

00:50:38   And we only will have known that by now,

00:50:41   having it be better.

00:50:42   And then right now we think, oh, we can't wait to go back,

00:50:46   but if you do go back, I think you will miss the parts

00:50:49   about this that make this so good.

00:50:51   - Yeah, I don't know.

00:50:52   I wanna go back just 'cause I need an excuse

00:50:55   to see all my friends again, but I hear you,

00:50:58   and I think you're probably right.

00:50:59   If I were to wager a guess, I don't think it'll be this year

00:51:02   but I think in maybe next year, it wouldn't surprise me

00:51:06   if the keynote becomes a media event where, you know,

00:51:10   the John Grubers of the world and so on.

00:51:12   And I would love to be invited.

00:51:14   - And us, maybe, hey, invite us.

00:51:15   - You never know.

00:51:16   But you know, the Grubers and the Smells of the World

00:51:18   would get invited and would go out and go for one day

00:51:21   for the big keynote.

00:51:23   If there is hardware,

00:51:25   which is not usually their style these days,

00:51:28   then maybe they would get some hands-on time

00:51:29   with the hardware, and then that would be that,

00:51:31   and the rest of the conference would be online,

00:51:33   you know, just as it has been.

00:51:35   To go back a quick step, hearing you talk about $450 hotels in San Jose, is California

00:51:44   like the crypto of states where everyone is just agreeing that it's more expensive?

00:51:53   I believe they're called fiat hotels.

00:51:55   They're just declared to be that expensive.

00:51:58   But like, the Fairmont, while a perfectly reasonable and maybe even fine hotel, I wouldn't

00:52:05   so far as to call it ultra-fine.

00:52:06   - Is it ultra-fine?

00:52:07   - That's a step too far.

00:52:09   But it's a perfectly fine hotel.

00:52:11   Was it a $450 a night hotel?

00:52:13   - No.

00:52:14   - No, it was not.

00:52:15   - And when we were in San Francisco,

00:52:16   was the Park 55 a $350 a night hotel?

00:52:18   Absolutely not.

00:52:19   - No, it's all about location, though.

00:52:20   At least the one in San Francisco is in downtown San Francisco.

00:52:23   The one in San Jose is in downtown San Jose,

00:52:25   where there is, as far as I'm able to determine, nothing.

00:52:28   - I know.

00:52:29   I do miss the beer in Sausage Place.

00:52:31   That was a very--

00:52:32   - What was it?

00:52:33   - Are we talking about-- - Yeah,

00:52:34   - No, what was that? - "Early Gravity Public House."

00:52:36   That and the vegan Indian place across from it

00:52:38   are both very good and I miss those places.

00:52:40   I do not miss anything else about going to person.

00:52:44   - Right, but here's the thing,

00:52:45   I feel like crypto, not to really tick off

00:52:49   all the crypto people again, but I feel like crypto--

00:52:51   - I think we lost them already.

00:52:53   - Everyone's agreeing to,

00:52:56   we're all deciding as a collective

00:52:58   that we're gonna believe that this currency

00:53:01   is worth a lot of money, right?

00:53:03   - And I feel like, well, but I feel like that's California

00:53:07   at this point.

00:53:08   We are just all as a society agreeing

00:53:10   that California is expensive.

00:53:11   - Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them

00:53:13   is the phenomenon you're describing.

00:53:14   And that's true of the hotels in San Jose as well.

00:53:19   - I mean, I guess, but I don't know, man.

00:53:20   It just seems like we're all agreeing

00:53:21   that we're just gonna get fleeced anytime we step

00:53:24   within the state border of California.

00:53:26   Like it doesn't matter where you're going.

00:53:26   - I mean, the health of the conference,

00:53:28   California is a big place.

00:53:29   If I knew more about it, I could name some city

00:53:31   in California that no one ever goes to

00:53:32   where everything is super cheap.

00:53:34   - Yeah, see, we should do that.

00:53:35   - I don't think they have a lot of big conference centers

00:53:36   there, though, and they're probably not close

00:53:38   to the airport.

00:53:39   - Real time follow up, it looks like Original Gravity

00:53:41   Public House is still open, from what I can tell,

00:53:43   which is great news.

00:53:44   - Oh, thank God.

00:53:45   - Yeah, that's what we should do, we should do,

00:53:46   oh, and it looks like the gentleman who is pouring a beer

00:53:48   on their website has what I think is a Triforce tattoo.

00:53:52   That's from a game called The Legend of Zelda, Jon.

00:53:55   - Do I need to go look at this photograph

00:53:56   to see if it's actually a Triforce?

00:53:57   - It probably isn't, actually. (laughs)

00:54:00   I'm pretty confident. - Put a link in, please.

00:54:01   It's in the chat room.

00:54:03   But I feel like Marco, maybe once it's safe,

00:54:07   what you and I should do is we should go on a dining tour

00:54:12   of WWDCs of years past,

00:54:15   and we'll get lunch at Original Gravity,

00:54:18   we'll get dinner at House of Prime Rib,

00:54:21   and then we can come home.

00:54:21   We might not even need to stay the night.

00:54:23   We could just come home right then and save 500 bucks.

00:54:26   Golly, I miss that place.

00:54:29   Original Gravity was great.

00:54:31   Their sausages were delightful.

00:54:33   Of course all the Germans were listening to this

00:54:34   and like, oh really, let me tell you about it.

00:54:37   Let me tell you about good sausage.

00:54:38   Okay, this is going nowhere.

00:54:39   Good, let's talk about iPhone 14.

00:54:40   - Everything's relative.

00:54:42   - Although we took that entire detour

00:54:44   just to avoid talking about the iPhone 14 rumors.

00:54:46   I mean frankly, is this very interesting?

00:54:49   I don't think it is.

00:54:50   Okay, let's hear why.

00:54:51   - John, tell us what's interesting.

00:54:54   - I mean it's interesting for the drama.

00:54:56   It's like the last time we talked about iPhone 14 rumors,

00:54:58   I don't know, it was ages ago,

00:54:59   And the prevailing rumor at that time,

00:55:01   which I think we described as very early,

00:55:02   so take with a grain of salt.

00:55:03   I was excited about because iPhone 14 is my iPhone year.

00:55:07   I buy a new iPhone every two years instead of every one.

00:55:10   And recently I've been in the cadence where it's like,

00:55:12   when Apple comes out with the new form factor,

00:55:14   that's my year.

00:55:15   So I get the first of whatever the new thing is.

00:55:19   Like I got the first flat-sided one.

00:55:20   I got the 12 here, right?

00:55:22   And then 13 was also flat-sided.

00:55:25   So it was the 14, it's time for new form factor, whatever.

00:55:27   And so the rumors they had a while ago

00:55:30   were getting me excited 'cause the main thing

00:55:31   I didn't like about the 13 Pro, my wife has a 13 Pro,

00:55:34   is the gargantuan camera bump.

00:55:37   Like, I think we talked about this when we were reviewing

00:55:39   our various iPhone 13s and I was saying

00:55:41   when I use my wife's phone, very often the camera bump's

00:55:43   so big, first of all, that it doesn't lay flat

00:55:44   even with the case on it.

00:55:46   And second, when I'm holding it,

00:55:47   I would bump into the little wall

00:55:49   that's around the giant camera bump.

00:55:51   I would, you know, it was like, it just didn't,

00:55:54   I preferred, I was glad that I had a 12

00:55:56   because the 12's camera bump, while big,

00:55:57   is nothing compared to the 13 one.

00:55:59   It is smaller in width and height,

00:56:00   and it sticks out less far from the phone.

00:56:03   And I'm like, well, maybe that will be solved by the 14.

00:56:06   So the early rumors on the 14 was

00:56:08   that it was gonna have a periscope camera,

00:56:10   and like no more camera bump, essentially.

00:56:12   Like the cameras would be flush,

00:56:15   because, you know, we described this before,

00:56:17   but the periscope camera is basically like the,

00:56:19   the sensor is inside the phone, and it is sideways,

00:56:22   and then there's like a little prism,

00:56:23   or mirror, or whatever, where the light goes into the phone,

00:56:25   and then goes down the phone and all the lens elements are,

00:56:29   there'll be a link in the show notes

00:56:30   that shows an image of what it looks like,

00:56:31   but all the lens elements are stacked sort of sideways

00:56:34   inside the phone and that would let you have

00:56:36   a very long lens possibly also with an optical zoom

00:56:39   on it as well without sticking out a lot from the phone.

00:56:42   And then the next set of rumors that started coming were,

00:56:45   hey, no more notch, it's gonna have a hole,

00:56:47   what they call a hole punch camera,

00:56:48   only instead of just a hole punch for the camera,

00:56:50   it would be like a circular hole punch for the camera

00:56:53   and then a lozenge-shaped hole punch

00:56:55   for the remaining Face ID sensor stuff,

00:56:58   but the two of them together

00:56:59   would be much smaller than a notch.

00:57:00   I'm like, wow, this iPhone 14 sounds like

00:57:03   it's gonna be awesome.

00:57:04   And now as we get closer to actual iPhone 14 time,

00:57:09   all my hopes have been dashed.

00:57:11   Because now we get the real leaks,

00:57:12   people are leaking like the schematics

00:57:13   that the case makers get and the CAD drawings

00:57:16   and parts leaks of the actual screen.

00:57:18   So the hole punch stuff seems to be true.

00:57:20   Everyone's leaking all these little different parts

00:57:21   that show like a little circle

00:57:22   and a lozenge cut out instead of a notch.

00:57:24   But honestly, that was the part that I was least excited

00:57:27   about because the notch doesn't bother me.

00:57:29   And if you're going to have something screwing up

00:57:32   the top of your screen, whether it's a smaller notch

00:57:34   or a hole punch thing, it's not like you can put content

00:57:37   there.

00:57:39   You can't put text there.

00:57:40   It's in the middle of the line.

00:57:42   It's going to break.

00:57:43   It's good.

00:57:43   They're working on it.

00:57:44   They had the notch.

00:57:45   They made the notch smaller.

00:57:46   Then you get the hole punch.

00:57:47   And then iPhone 16 comes around, and you've

00:57:49   got the under screen face ID sensors or something,

00:57:52   which is another rumor, right?

00:57:53   But anyway, there's that.

00:57:54   But the real thing that's disappointing me is

00:57:57   all these rumors say, yeah, the periscope camera thing,

00:57:59   not this year.

00:58:00   And not only not this year,

00:58:02   but the little drawings of what the iPhone 14

00:58:04   is gonna look like, they're saying,

00:58:05   oh, you remember the camera model of the 13?

00:58:07   14 is gonna be even bigger.

00:58:10   Like what, how could it possibly be bigger?

00:58:12   Even bigger, it's just gonna like rock on the table

00:58:15   no matter what you do to it.

00:58:16   So I'm really sad about that.

00:58:19   and I'm trying to make myself feel better

00:58:21   by thinking about what it means

00:58:23   to have an even bigger camera pump than the 13.

00:58:27   And apparently, according to the rumors,

00:58:29   what it means is the iPhone would be going

00:58:32   from a 12 megapixel camera, 1X camera,

00:58:35   to a 48 megapixel 1X camera, which is a big step up.

00:58:40   And the stats on that for the rumors

00:58:41   are we would have the 57% bigger sensor than the 13 Pro,

00:58:46   going from 44 millimeter square to 69 millimeter square,

00:58:48   and a 28% pixel size increase going from 1.9 micrometers,

00:58:53   microns, to 2.44.

00:58:56   But there's a caveat there.

00:58:58   So like 48 megapixels, like how can,

00:59:00   you're saying it's gonna go to 48 megapixels,

00:59:02   it's gonna be a 57% bigger sensor,

00:59:05   and it's gonna have bigger pixels?

00:59:06   How can it have bigger pixels

00:59:07   when it's got four times as many of them

00:59:09   through the magic of what they confusingly call

00:59:11   pixel binning, which is not sorting your pixels

00:59:14   by which ones work and which ones don't

00:59:15   and selling the ones where everything works

00:59:16   is more expensive.

00:59:18   That's not what they mean. - It's a different kind

00:59:18   of binning.

00:59:19   - Yeah, different kind of binning.

00:59:20   The binning is, what they will do,

00:59:22   oh, this is so confusing with the retina stuff, I'm sorry.

00:59:24   But what they will do is they will take

00:59:25   a 48 megapixel camera sensor,

00:59:28   and in conditions where there's not enough light

00:59:31   to be gathered by those tiny, tiny little pixels,

00:59:35   they will group together two by two squares of pixels,

00:59:40   and those two by two squares of pixels,

00:59:42   those bins of four pixels, will act as a single pixel

00:59:47   for light gathering purposes.

00:59:48   So suddenly your 48 megapixel sensor will act

00:59:52   just like a 12 megapixel sensor,

00:59:54   which is exactly half as much like a 12 megapixel sensor

00:59:57   with much bigger pixels.

00:59:59   If there is adequate light, like on a bright sunny day,

01:00:01   they will use all 48 individual megapixels.

01:00:04   But as the light level goes down,

01:00:06   they will bin them together and do that.

01:00:07   So this does sound like a very impressive camera

01:00:10   and a big upgrade,

01:00:11   'cause if you think about how many megapixels

01:00:13   have been in the iPhone camera,

01:00:14   someone had a timeline somewhere,

01:00:15   but it was like, it had only gone up a few times.

01:00:19   And the current 12 megapixel camera has been the same

01:00:21   for a few generations now.

01:00:22   Going from 12 to 48 is a big jump and you don't have to,

01:00:25   if they do the pixel bending as described,

01:00:27   you don't have to worry about,

01:00:28   oh, but now all the pixels are so much smaller, it will suck.

01:00:30   They'll just bend them together and it will become

01:00:32   like a 12 megapixel camera with even bigger,

01:00:36   quote unquote, pixels, because each of those pixels

01:00:38   is four of the tinier ones, which turn out to be 28% bigger

01:00:41   than the one single one of the other ones.

01:00:43   So I am excited about having a bigger camera

01:00:47   because I was originally thinking,

01:00:48   well, if the iPhone 14 is gonna have a bigger camera bump,

01:00:50   I'm just not gonna buy it.

01:00:52   I'm just gonna skip it and I'll do a three-year gap

01:00:54   instead of a four-year one.

01:00:56   Because the periscope camera,

01:00:58   that rumor's still out there.

01:00:58   They're just like, oh, it's not gonna be in the iPhone 14.

01:01:00   Maybe it'll be in the iPhone 15 or 16.

01:01:03   I would like a periscope camera.

01:01:04   I would like an optical zoom, but more importantly,

01:01:05   I would like a flat back to my phone.

01:01:08   So the rumors are exciting,

01:01:12   but also mildly disappointing 'cause I said last year

01:01:16   that the 13 Pro has crossed some kind of a line

01:01:19   in terms of the size of the camera,

01:01:21   at least some kind of a line for me.

01:01:22   Like it's aesthetically,

01:01:24   if you look at the back of the camera or the phone,

01:01:27   same difference, it doesn't look like a rectangle

01:01:31   with a thing in the corner anymore.

01:01:32   It's not in the corner anymore.

01:01:34   Once you pass the midway point,

01:01:35   once you're taking up more than half the width of the phone,

01:01:38   you're not tucked into a corner.

01:01:40   and it's just not, like they might as well

01:01:42   have just made it full width

01:01:43   like so many Android phones have done

01:01:44   or just chosen a different shape or arrangement

01:01:47   because it's like they're trying to stick to the idea

01:01:49   that there's a camera in the corner of the phone,

01:01:53   but there's not, there's just a giant camera

01:01:54   slowly eating the back of all of their phones.

01:01:56   And so I wish they'd either embraced that

01:01:58   or figure out how to get back to smooth

01:02:00   with a periscope camera.

01:02:01   But those are the rumors and I'm like,

01:02:04   right now it's a battle between being excited

01:02:06   by having a 48 megapixel camera

01:02:08   I'm being depressed about having a giant wart

01:02:10   on the bottom of my phone.

01:02:12   - And you had put the Max Tech video on this

01:02:15   in the show notes, and sometimes I think

01:02:17   their explainers are a little bit rough

01:02:19   and kind of cut a bunch of corners,

01:02:21   but this one was really, really good,

01:02:22   and I really enjoyed it, and it's worth your time.

01:02:25   I think it was like 10 minutes or something like that.

01:02:26   And they explain exactly why 48 megapixels

01:02:29   is potentially nothing but better.

01:02:32   Well, with the exception of the bigger bump.

01:02:34   Other than that, everything else about it

01:02:35   is potentially better, and one of those things

01:02:37   like you were saying earlier,

01:02:38   like low light performance can actually go up

01:02:40   because the net pixel size, once you do this binning,

01:02:44   is bigger, just like you were saying.

01:02:45   And so what that means is you could have

01:02:48   a far more crisp picture in good light

01:02:51   and a more understandable, discernible picture in low light.

01:02:56   - So less noisy picture in low light,

01:02:58   'cause you wouldn't have to crank up the ISO as much.

01:02:59   - Yep, that's a better way of putting it, thank you.

01:03:01   So this sounds to me, if you can get over the bump,

01:03:04   which I don't agree that we've crossed the Rubicon

01:03:07   or anything, but I do agree that it's getting

01:03:09   kind of ridiculous.

01:03:10   If you can put up with the Bump,

01:03:11   this sounds like it's going to be a dramatic improvement

01:03:14   to the camera and the iPhone,

01:03:15   if everything comes to fruition.

01:03:18   - Frankly, I mean, the Bump, you know,

01:03:20   now that I've had the 13 Pro for, you know,

01:03:23   half a year or whatever it's been,

01:03:25   the camera Bump does not bother me at all.

01:03:27   That is never something that I notice,

01:03:29   that is never something that bothers me.

01:03:31   - Yeah, same.

01:03:32   - What bothers me about this phone is that

01:03:34   it is pretty big in the pocket and pretty heavy,

01:03:36   and my whole pants journey that I went through last fall.

01:03:39   You know what, I'm like halfway through that

01:03:41   by having bought my fancy spoke pants,

01:03:44   but also it still is noticeable.

01:03:47   I do wish that I had a smaller and lighter weight phone,

01:03:52   but the camera is really, really good.

01:03:57   And so I am glad I didn't go mini this time

01:03:59   just for the camera alone,

01:04:00   and actually if these rumors hold,

01:04:02   it seems like they're gonna be an even bigger difference

01:04:04   in specs because the rumors are that possibly

01:04:07   that the iPhone 14 non-pro models

01:04:12   are going to retain the A15 processor.

01:04:16   And that the iPhone 14 Pro only will go to the A,

01:04:21   presumably it's called A16,

01:04:22   whatever the next processor is.

01:04:24   So it looks like there, if this is true,

01:04:27   and iPhone rumors tend to be pretty accurate

01:04:29   'cause it's just so hard to keep that kind of scale

01:04:31   of an operation quiet.

01:04:33   But if this is true, then this year there's going to be

01:04:36   more differentiation than ever, assuming this big

01:04:40   48 megapixel camera is probably also pro only,

01:04:43   between the pro models and the non-pro models.

01:04:45   And so that'll be interesting to watch,

01:04:47   but I have a feeling this is going to very, very quickly

01:04:52   make people who are really serious about this kind of stuff

01:04:55   jump for the pro instead of whatever other

01:04:59   physical advantages might be present on the lower end models.

01:05:02   Speaking of differentiation, even within the pro phones,

01:05:05   if the 1X camera is 48 megapixels,

01:05:08   but they don't really substantially also upgrade

01:05:11   the other two cameras, boy, it's gonna be a big fall

01:05:14   from switching from the 1X.

01:05:15   Like already the 2X you can tell

01:05:16   is not quite as good as the 1X,

01:05:18   but maybe they'll, you know, they do the thing

01:05:20   where the Apple's camera app sort of decides

01:05:23   when it's appropriate to use which lens.

01:05:25   And it seems like in a lot of scenarios,

01:05:27   it would be better to continue to use the 1X

01:05:29   and like crop it maybe, than falling off the tour.

01:05:32   I don't know what the rumors are for the other two lenses.

01:05:34   Maybe they'll be mildly improved as well.

01:05:37   - Yeah, 'cause the 3X camera is not very good.

01:05:40   It really isn't.

01:05:41   - With just this rumor, it suddenly seems like

01:05:44   you have an unbalanced camera system,

01:05:45   or one of your cameras suddenly got way, way, way better

01:05:48   and bigger, and the other two are there too.

01:05:50   And as for the product line,

01:05:54   I think we talked about this on a past show,

01:05:56   like the non-Pro phones having A15 instead.

01:06:01   And there's no getting around it.

01:06:02   That's a downgrade as far as customers are concerned, right?

01:06:05   Because it was really great when a customer could

01:06:07   get a plain old iPhone 13,

01:06:08   it had the exact same system on a chip as the Pro one, right?

01:06:12   And it's not even like you can say,

01:06:15   oh, well, when they have the 15,

01:06:16   I bet their battery life will be better.

01:06:18   'Cause it's not like they're fabbing the 15 on a different,

01:06:19   it's just, it's gonna be the A15 as the A15 ever was,

01:06:22   fab the same way it always was.

01:06:24   So it doesn't suddenly get lower power either.

01:06:27   And so that's just, that's not as good

01:06:30   is having the 16 and everything.

01:06:32   And that's disappointing and there's no way around it.

01:06:34   It's not like Apple's gonna pass the savings on to you.

01:06:36   The systematic chip is not the most expensive part

01:06:38   of those phones.

01:06:39   Anyway, on the bright side, the other part of the rumor

01:06:42   is that the pro and non-pro lines

01:06:45   will all have a full range of sizes.

01:06:47   Like there'll be a non-pro big phone,

01:06:48   non-pro max essentially.

01:06:50   It's not, these names are so confusing.

01:06:52   I listened back to episodes of the show

01:06:53   and I screwed up so many times.

01:06:54   Anyway, there will be like a iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 max

01:06:59   and there'll be iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.

01:07:04   And the chips and the Macs will be Pro and Max,

01:07:08   but there will be no chip and a Mac called Pro Max.

01:07:09   Anyway, it's their own stupid fault for doing this.

01:07:13   But having a big phone that is not a Pro is such a,

01:07:17   I don't know why they waited so long to do it.

01:07:18   'Cause sometimes people want a really big phone.

01:07:20   They shouldn't be forced to pay

01:07:21   for the most expensive phone that Apple makes

01:07:23   just because they want a bigger screen, right?

01:07:25   So that's the good part of the new rumored arrangement,

01:07:29   but I just, you know, I understand why, like, hey,

01:07:33   if you're gonna have a pro line, it should have,

01:07:34   maybe it should have a bigger advantage

01:07:36   over the non-pro line, as opposed to the 13s,

01:07:38   where they were, you know, almost identical

01:07:40   except for the camera, but it's just not as good

01:07:43   as a consumer to get the A15 in the non-pro phone, right?

01:07:46   It's just not, so that's kind of a bummer.

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01:09:43   (upbeat music)

01:09:46   - All right, you wanna do some Ask ATP?

01:09:48   - Let's do it.

01:09:49   - Let's start tonight with Elijah,

01:09:51   who writes, "I have been a long time Canon user,

01:09:55   but I've seen the writing on the wall for a while

01:09:56   that DSLRs are being replaced by mirrorless cameras.

01:09:59   Since I have to buy lenses again anyway

01:10:01   to follow this trend, should I stick with Canons

01:10:03   or why should I jump to Sony?"

01:10:05   Jon, I think you're the most enthusiastic about Sony,

01:10:08   although Marco, you're not far behind.

01:10:09   So Jon, do you want to start

01:10:10   and then Marco take it away after?

01:10:12   - I didn't even know that you would need to buy new lenses

01:10:13   or that you can't use them.

01:10:14   It makes sense, obviously,

01:10:15   the distance of the sensor from the front of the lens

01:10:17   or whatever, but anyway,

01:10:18   I think Canon and Sony are very different.

01:10:21   in terms of like, it's like differences in car manufacturers,

01:10:25   if you just like, if you, you get used to the way

01:10:28   certain car manufacturers do things,

01:10:29   whether it's stupid Porsche with their ignition key

01:10:31   in the wrong spot or bottom hinged, you know,

01:10:35   pedals or, you know, whatever, like,

01:10:38   even if it's just how the stocks work

01:10:40   or how the cars are priced, like,

01:10:41   there are things that are just sort of arbitrary decisions

01:10:44   that you just get used to.

01:10:45   And if you try a different brand,

01:10:49   Those arbitrary decisions,

01:10:51   even when they're not actually worse or better,

01:10:53   seem foreign to you, and that is very true of cameras.

01:10:56   And then it goes from there up to all,

01:10:58   even more important things like value judgments,

01:11:00   what's important to spend money on, what's not,

01:11:03   how big, what's more important, small size,

01:11:06   or battery life, or portability, or grippiness in the hand,

01:11:09   or how many buttons are there versus knobs versus joysticks

01:11:13   and how do they feel.

01:11:15   There is such a huge difference between Canon and Sony.

01:11:18   I like Sony better, but if you're used to Canon,

01:11:22   almost certainly you're gonna like Canon better.

01:11:24   Like it's almost impossible to imagine someone

01:11:27   who used Canon for years, tries a Sony and goes,

01:11:29   "Wow, this is much better."

01:11:30   That is not gonna happen.

01:11:31   'Cause it is so different.

01:11:33   The companies make such different decisions.

01:11:35   They couldn't be any more different.

01:11:36   Like Sony is so about making the camera body

01:11:39   as small as possible.

01:11:41   For years, Sony was, first Sony started,

01:11:43   they wouldn't even make it like a grip for your hand.

01:11:45   And then they put the grip on it

01:11:46   and it was just this tiny little grip.

01:11:47   and it's like, what are you saving the grip size for?

01:11:51   We want a bigger grip so we can grip it better,

01:11:53   and Sony was like, okay, how about we make it

01:11:54   two millimeters bigger?

01:11:55   Three, it's like, what are you doing?

01:11:56   It's like the Johnny Ivey, just put a grip

01:11:58   that fits in a human hand, we have hands,

01:12:00   we have fingers, we need them,

01:12:02   and Sony eventually got the clue on that,

01:12:04   but it took so many years for Sony to even deign

01:12:06   to make the grip a little bit bigger.

01:12:08   That is not a problem on Canon cameras,

01:12:10   especially the big ones.

01:12:11   They put giant grips on them,

01:12:13   the giant battery cases on the things,

01:12:15   the buttons feel different, the UI feels different,

01:12:17   everything about it is different.

01:12:19   So I don't think there's anything anyone could say

01:12:21   to convince you to use a Sony if you like Canons.

01:12:24   If you've been using Canons for years

01:12:25   and you think they're too big

01:12:27   and you don't like how the buttons work

01:12:30   and you hate the UI, then maybe you like the Sony better.

01:12:32   But they really are, and so Canon and Nikon,

01:12:36   I think, are so much closer than Canon and Sony are.

01:12:39   Sony is really sort of--

01:12:40   - Don't their zooms go the opposite direction?

01:12:43   - It depends.

01:12:45   There are lenses for all the different camera systems

01:12:47   that go in different ranges.

01:12:48   I think even Sony made one with the reverse zoom lens on it.

01:12:51   Or maybe I'm thinking of a third party one,

01:12:52   but no one can agree on which direction

01:12:54   the zooms could go.

01:12:55   Or which direction the rings are,

01:12:56   is the zoom ring or the manual focus ring closer to you

01:12:59   or farther away? - Oh yeah.

01:13:01   - It's a little bit of a--

01:13:02   - Yeah, it's always varied per lens.

01:13:03   - Yeah, but anyway, Canon and Icon are much closer together

01:13:05   than either Canon and Icon are from Sony.

01:13:08   So try one out in the store, hold it,

01:13:10   see what you think of it.

01:13:11   If it appeals to you, I endorse it, I really like Sony.

01:13:14   it matches my tastes and I do enjoy the small sizes

01:13:17   for portability even if the grips are too small.

01:13:19   But if you really love Canon,

01:13:21   Canon makes mirrorless cameras too, just buy one of those.

01:13:24   - I mostly agree.

01:13:25   At first, when I first heard this question,

01:13:27   I thought I probably shouldn't answer this

01:13:28   because I haven't been paying attention

01:13:30   to the recent models of any of these things

01:13:32   'cause I really haven't been in the camera game.

01:13:34   But I think when you're,

01:13:36   so Elijah's saying already,

01:13:38   they have to buy new lenses no matter what

01:13:42   because of the shift from DSLR to mirrorless.

01:13:45   So it's just a question of whether to invest

01:13:47   in Canon's mirrorless system or Sony's mirrorless system.

01:13:51   Also, not mentioned, Nikon's mirrorless system

01:13:53   is another option, although I know even less about that.

01:13:55   But I think when you're talking about

01:13:58   which system to invest in long term,

01:14:01   you have to look past whatever the current models

01:14:03   of each camera are and look at, in general, over time,

01:14:07   what are each of these brands really best at?

01:14:09   What areas do they tend to specialize in

01:14:12   or prioritize or pay attention to or excel in.

01:14:15   So in my experience over, you know,

01:14:19   geez, 15 years, whatever it's been,

01:14:22   that I've been really into these things,

01:14:24   my impression, having tried a lot of Canon stuff,

01:14:28   a lot of Sony stuff, and almost nothing by anybody else,

01:14:31   so I'm sorry, I really don't know anything about Nikon.

01:14:33   (laughs)

01:14:34   I've used a handful of times, very small handful of times,

01:14:37   but my impression on Nikon seems like

01:14:40   it's very similar to Canon,

01:14:41   but less popular among pro users.

01:14:42   But, you know, 'cause again, just different decisions

01:14:45   as John was saying, certain buttons are in different

01:14:46   locations, certain things work slightly differently,

01:14:48   but you know, generally pretty good.

01:14:50   But in general, I think that Canon is better than Sony

01:14:55   in what I would call pro workflow and pro ergonomics.

01:15:01   So if, you know, as John was saying,

01:15:03   things like the battery grip situations,

01:15:06   you know, if you want, if you have some kind of pro setup,

01:15:09   If you're gonna have like, you know,

01:15:11   some coordinated flashes or some of the big L lenses

01:15:16   with the big telephoto zooms and the sticks

01:15:18   on the side of sports games,

01:15:20   or if you're in the market more for something like

01:15:22   what used to be like the 1D or 1DS series

01:15:25   where you have much more pro abilities,

01:15:27   pro sports shootings, stuff like that,

01:15:29   I think Canon has always had an edge in that area over Sony

01:15:33   and they probably always will.

01:15:35   Canon is more likely, even though they had a later start

01:15:37   to mirrorless, I think over time,

01:15:39   Canon is more likely to have more pro lens options

01:15:43   and more specialty lens options.

01:15:45   Whereas Sony tends to have things that more kind of hit

01:15:47   like the more commonly used lens rolls.

01:15:51   Again, I think right now, Sony probably has an advantage

01:15:53   just because they're, you know,

01:15:55   they've been here a little bit longer,

01:15:56   but I think over time, that edge will go back to Canon.

01:15:59   Because Canon is generally used by more pros

01:16:01   for lots of other reasons.

01:16:02   And again, things like battery grips and flash accessories

01:16:06   and timer accessories and all sorts of stuff,

01:16:08   Canon tends to really nail that stuff.

01:16:10   They have a great first party set of things

01:16:13   and third party tends to support them very, very well.

01:16:15   Where Sony tends to have the advantage

01:16:18   is video features and sensor technology

01:16:22   and things that are related to those.

01:16:24   If what you're looking for is like,

01:16:26   I want the camera that is going to be the best

01:16:29   in low light that it can possibly be,

01:16:32   most of the time that's probably gonna be a Sony.

01:16:35   Now Nikon is interesting because a lot of times

01:16:36   Nikon uses Sony sensors, I don't know what the current

01:16:38   status quo is, sometimes you can get a pretty awesome

01:16:41   hybrid approach where you have like Nikon

01:16:43   with their like a little bit nicer pro controls

01:16:46   with a Sony sensor, that can be very good.

01:16:49   There's also other features that go along with this.

01:16:51   Things like you know, auto focus technology,

01:16:53   even you know, something more fundamental like,

01:16:56   how do they render the colors, like do they render colors

01:16:58   in a way that you like in their JPEG render

01:17:00   and then you can save a bunch of time and not do RAW.

01:17:02   Or even if you're using RAW, like how are they,

01:17:04   How are they creating the colors in the RAW to start with?

01:17:06   There's certain things where the different manufacturers

01:17:09   will have their own algorithms for how they

01:17:10   make the pictures and that can work with you

01:17:13   or against you, depending on your style and your conditions.

01:17:15   But generally, Canon is much better usually

01:17:19   for things like pro-ergonomics and pro-workflows.

01:17:22   And Sony is better for usually the more techy angles

01:17:26   of high quality sensors and video features.

01:17:30   I don't know anything about video features

01:17:32   on these cameras, and so everything I said

01:17:34   applies only to photos, and so if you're a video shooter

01:17:37   or a heavy video user, frankly,

01:17:40   I think you ruin the camera industry, thanks a lot,

01:17:42   but I don't know anything about that.

01:17:43   - Wow.

01:17:44   - Yeah, I think the speed, two things to add.

01:17:47   One is the speed thing, that applies to photos as well.

01:17:49   In general, Sony is sort of on the forefront

01:17:52   of dumping things off the sensor as fast as possible,

01:17:54   so you can hold down the shutter for a really long time

01:17:56   and take 30 frames per second, right?

01:18:00   That kind of goes hand in hand with the sensor tech,

01:18:02   but in general, the Sony electronics,

01:18:06   sort of CPU, GPU, whatever, image processing engine,

01:18:09   they're pretty good at that.

01:18:12   And the second thing is on ergonomics,

01:18:14   only if what you mean by ergonomics

01:18:17   is excluding the idea that you're going to be

01:18:19   carrying this thing around a lot,

01:18:20   because if portability is anywhere on your list,

01:18:23   if you're a nature photographer,

01:18:25   you're lugging through and through the woods,

01:18:26   obviously the giant lenses that you're gonna lug

01:18:28   are the big factor too,

01:18:29   but pretty much Sony's ethos is make smaller camera bodies,

01:18:33   which is why if you get a battery grip,

01:18:35   it's a thing that you can add onto it,

01:18:36   unlike the, you know, you can get Canon and Icons

01:18:39   that are just built in with the giant battery grip

01:18:40   and are the size of your head, right?

01:18:42   Every Sony camera is way smaller

01:18:44   than you would think it would be for the size of things.

01:18:47   And so, depending on what you do with your photography,

01:18:49   maybe it doesn't matter 'cause you're in a studio

01:18:51   and who cares how big it is,

01:18:52   or you're on the sidelines at an NFL game

01:18:54   and you've got tons of gear anyway,

01:18:56   but if you're doing travel photography

01:18:58   or you're traipsing through the wilderness

01:19:01   or the jungles or whatever.

01:19:03   - Well, get an iPhone at that point.

01:19:04   - You may value the fact that Sony does make things,

01:19:09   tends to make things smaller and lighter,

01:19:10   including their mount is smaller.

01:19:12   That's why they have the same mount

01:19:13   on their APS-C cameras in their full frame.

01:19:15   That was done intentionally to sort of be able

01:19:17   to support smaller camera lenses.

01:19:20   And if you compare, even we were just talking

01:19:21   about like the Sony 50 millimeter 1.2,

01:19:24   if you see a picture of that next to the Canon

01:19:26   in Nikon 50 millimeter full frame 1.2's,

01:19:29   Sony lenses tend to be smaller,

01:19:30   they also tend to be lighter.

01:19:32   So if that is a factor in your selection,

01:19:36   and you can tolerate or grow to like the Sony UI

01:19:40   and the Sony sort of the rest of the Sony feature set,

01:19:43   that may appeal to you.

01:19:44   But yeah, they're so different

01:19:46   that I can't imagine somebody who likes it as a customer

01:19:49   who can enter an icons seeing a Sony

01:19:51   and finding it appealing

01:19:52   unless they've been secretly gritting their teeth

01:19:54   at just how big their camera is.

01:19:56   Ryan Morry writes, "I have an M1 Mac Mini, a 2TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD, and an 8TB USB hard

01:20:04   drive.

01:20:05   I think I'd like to use the SSD as a cache for the hard drive.

01:20:07   While Fusion drives have gone out of fashion, I've never used one, and Apple doesn't ship

01:20:11   them anymore, right?

01:20:13   It appears possible to set one up manually via some arcane disk util invocations.

01:20:18   Is this a good idea?

01:20:19   Am I about to shoot myself in the foot?

01:20:21   Is there any better way to do this?

01:20:22   Should I not want to do this?

01:20:24   What even is a Fusion drive?

01:20:25   Please advise and or expound.

01:20:27   If I understand this right, so Ryan said,

01:20:30   I have an M1 Mac Mini, a two terabyte Thunderbolt 3 SSD,

01:20:34   which implies to me that it's external

01:20:36   and a eight terabyte USB hard drive,

01:20:38   which obviously would be external.

01:20:40   I personally don't think you want to do

01:20:42   a fusion drive anyway,

01:20:43   and John I'll let you take it away here in a second,

01:20:45   but the idea of doing a fusion drive

01:20:47   with two external drives,

01:20:49   that seems really even one external drive,

01:20:51   that seems like a recipe for disaster to me.

01:20:53   But John, what is a fusion drive

01:20:55   And why should Ryan definitely not do this?

01:20:58   Fusion Drive was a really cool idea.

01:21:01   In fact, I even kind of fantasized

01:21:03   about this exact idea years before it became a reality.

01:21:06   Because it was back when Mark was getting his first 160

01:21:09   gigabyte Intel SSD or whatever.

01:21:11   The SSDs were so expensive, but they were so awesome.

01:21:14   But it's like, but how can I have the benefits of an SSD

01:21:18   but fit all my stuff?

01:21:19   Because in the beginning, they didn't even make SSDs.

01:21:21   They were big enough to fit a reasonable amount of stuff

01:21:23   that people had.

01:21:24   are all so tiny.

01:21:25   And so the idea behind a fusion drive

01:21:29   and the fantasy that I was describing is,

01:21:30   well what if you just sort of combined

01:21:32   a big, cheap spinning disk with an SSD

01:21:35   and the operating system handled,

01:21:36   trying to keep the files that you access frequently

01:21:38   on the SSD, like you didn't have to do anything,

01:21:40   it looks like one volume to you

01:21:42   and through the magic of the file system,

01:21:43   the operating system, everything gets shuffled around,

01:21:45   you're already done, you can't do it a second time.

01:21:47   - Well the first one-- - It was a half-hearted one.

01:21:49   - Yeah, the first one you said FS something.

01:21:51   - FS usage, that stands for file system usage,

01:21:54   - You got it, I was proud of you for--

01:21:55   - I wasn't sure if it counted, but I did a quiet ding.

01:21:58   - No, I'm with Marco, that was a ding,

01:22:00   and what you just heard moments ago was a dong,

01:22:02   and I think that you needed both.

01:22:03   - No, no, there's no half-dings,

01:22:05   you can't land on a fraction.

01:22:06   - All right. (laughs)

01:22:08   Integral dings only.

01:22:09   - Anyway, the Fusion Drive was a way to do that.

01:22:14   It was a, you know, you used core storage,

01:22:16   it was technology Apple introduced,

01:22:17   sort of abstracts away all these details,

01:22:19   and lo and behold, Apple would sell you a computer

01:22:20   with a small SSD and a big, spinning hard drive,

01:22:23   but from your perspective, it would look like one drive

01:22:25   that is not as fast as an SSD,

01:22:27   but not as slow as a spinning disk either.

01:22:29   Cool idea, but the time of the Fusion Drive

01:22:33   has more or less come and gone

01:22:35   because today you can find pretty economical SSDs

01:22:39   that are big enough to hold all your stuff.

01:22:42   Now, maybe you're not gonna find, you know,

01:22:44   10 terabyte SSD because you've got an eight terabyte

01:22:47   spinning disk and a two terabyte SSD

01:22:49   and you wanna have a 10 terabyte total

01:22:51   that's faster than that.

01:22:52   I understand where you're coming from,

01:22:54   but Fusion Drive, as you've noted,

01:22:57   you can probably pull this off with disk util,

01:23:00   but it's not really an area of active interest,

01:23:02   let's say, for Apple.

01:23:04   And it's not a good idea to base something as important

01:23:08   as your file system,

01:23:09   especially if this is your boot disk or something,

01:23:11   on a technology that Apple

01:23:12   does not seem interested in anymore.

01:23:14   So I think you could probably pull it off.

01:23:17   I think it would work, but I personally wouldn't do it.

01:23:20   I mean, these are two big drives you're talking about.

01:23:22   you got two terabyte SSD and eight terabyte hard drive,

01:23:25   you probably know which things need to be in the SSD

01:23:27   and which don't.

01:23:28   Boot from the SSD, use most things from the SSD,

01:23:30   and then put the big files with the large files

01:23:33   where you can do large sequential reads,

01:23:34   put them on the eight terabyte spinning disk.

01:23:36   And if you can't figure out how to divide your stuff up

01:23:39   and you'd rather just the drive do it for you,

01:23:42   like, I mean, you can try it.

01:23:44   It would be a cool conversation piece for nerds

01:23:47   if they ever visit your house,

01:23:48   but boy, if something goes wrong with that drive

01:23:50   or one of them becomes unmanageable,

01:23:51   other one is still mounted, I'm not sure the disk utility in its current state would be

01:23:55   able to figure out how to help you.

01:23:57   Yeah, that's why I think doing it with external seems brave, to say the least.

01:24:02   All right, and then finally, well, no, actually, I think we're going to go for a bonus.

01:24:05   So nearly finally, Matt Chenander writes, "Despite my better judgment, I'm exploring

01:24:09   the purchase of a Pro Display XDR for my desk at home, which now houses a Mac Studio.

01:24:14   I work from home full-time and have an employer-supplied 14-inch MacBook Pro that I also need to connect

01:24:18   to the monitor on my desk.

01:24:20   The Dell monitor I have currently works great for this because it supports multiple inputs

01:24:23   that I can easily switch between.

01:24:25   This convenience would of course be lost with the XDR single input.

01:24:28   Is there any device out there that would allow me to not have to plug or unplug from the

01:24:33   back of the XDR every time I need to switch between machines?

01:24:36   The first thing that comes to mind is something like an HDMI switcher or a KVM switch, but

01:24:39   instead for Thunderbolt 3 or 4.

01:24:41   From the research I've done, I don't think these exist, but I would be happy to be wrong.

01:24:44   So I don't understand, I don't think, why we're unplugging from the back of the XDR.

01:24:50   Why wouldn't you just unplug the other end of that same cable?

01:24:53   So there's a cable coming from the XDR to one computer, you unplug it from, let's say

01:24:58   it's going into the studio, you unplug it from the studio and plug it into the MacBook,

01:25:01   and then reverse that later.

01:25:03   I think I'm kind of missing the problem here.

01:25:05   No, I think they don't want to do any unplugging.

01:25:07   Well, you're going to have to do some sort of unplugging.

01:25:10   Oh, a KVM would do it for you, a switch.

01:25:12   Well sure, but does that exist?

01:25:13   Because I don't think it does.

01:25:14   - That's the question.

01:25:15   - I don't think it exists for Thunderbolt 3/4 speeds.

01:25:20   Certainly you could get various switches

01:25:21   for simpler protocols, things like USB.

01:25:25   I'm sure you can get a switch for USB

01:25:26   maybe up to like USB 3 point something speeds,

01:25:28   but I don't think anything like that exists for Thunderbolt

01:25:31   and this requires Thunderbolt.

01:25:32   Unplugging the cable from the computer end

01:25:34   and plugging it into the different computer,

01:25:35   that's gonna be, I think, not only your only option,

01:25:38   but I think it's not that bad of an option.

01:25:40   Obviously it would be better if it could be automated

01:25:43   in some way and wouldn't involve physically wearing out

01:25:45   the connector on a very expensive cable.

01:25:47   But the other thing is to know that,

01:25:49   if in case this helps you decide,

01:25:53   the XDR appears to work totally fine

01:25:56   with almost every modern Thunderbolt hub that's out there,

01:25:59   like almost every modern Thunderbolt 3/4 hub from OWC

01:26:03   or from CalDigit or any of the other companies

01:26:07   that are making the modern ones with these modern chipsets,

01:26:09   the XDR works totally fine through those.

01:26:11   And so if that helps you make your decision a little bit more

01:26:13   easily, that you can unplug and plug everything all at once

01:26:17   through one cable, that might make this a little bit easier

01:26:20   to swallow.

01:26:21   I was faced with a similar situation

01:26:23   when I had my work laptop here, and I wanted

01:26:25   to hook that up to the XDR.

01:26:27   And I also had that same feeling that Mark was just saying,

01:26:30   I know how much the cable that's connected to my XDR costs.

01:26:33   And I was like, am I going to do this every day,

01:26:36   possibly multiple times a day?

01:26:37   Am I really going to plug and unplug this thing?

01:26:39   And by the way, you don't even have to use that cable.

01:26:41   You can use any Thunderbolt 4 cable, and it's fine.

01:26:43   I know, but you have to plug it into the same spot in the XDR,

01:26:46   right?

01:26:46   Yes.

01:26:47   The XDR has one input port.

01:26:48   But you can use any cable.

01:26:50   Right, so you'd have to get the expensive cable out of there.

01:26:53   The expensive cable is the one that reaches my Mac,

01:26:56   because it's over there.

01:26:57   It's a tower computer.

01:26:58   It's a little bit farther away.

01:26:59   Anyway, I didn't want to plug and unplug.

01:27:00   The good thing about the USB-C type connector, which

01:27:04   is the same as the Thunderbolt type connector,

01:27:06   is that the springy bits are inside the cable.

01:27:09   So springy bits inside your expensive monitor

01:27:12   and your expensive Mac Pro don't wear out.

01:27:13   The ones in the cable wear out,

01:27:14   but in this case the cable is also expensive,

01:27:16   so it's kinda crappy.

01:27:17   So I was faced with this decision.

01:27:18   I did unplug and unplug a few times,

01:27:20   but sometimes also what I would consider doing,

01:27:23   which was difficult because I couldn't be on the VPN

01:27:25   when I did this, but you can use like,

01:27:27   you know, screen sharing essentially.

01:27:29   - I was gonna say that, yeah.

01:27:30   - To, and it sounds like well these two things

01:27:32   are right next to each other.

01:27:33   You're telling me I'm gonna do,

01:27:34   like isn't it gonna be laggy over the network

01:27:36   or are there gonna be compression artifacts?

01:27:38   If you have both computers on your desk,

01:27:40   you can connect them to ethernet.

01:27:42   You can connect them to the same ethernet switch.

01:27:45   And if you use an efficient sort of VPN, not a VPN,

01:27:50   a VNC or Apple remote desktop,

01:27:52   there's lots of different choices that you can use here.

01:27:55   It's surprisingly tolerable if what you're doing

01:28:00   is like typing source code, right?

01:28:02   It's not, there is lag.

01:28:04   It doesn't seem exactly the same,

01:28:06   But it does give you that sort of software switch KVM type feeling.

01:28:10   You know, universal control is another option, right?

01:28:13   You know, have I don't know how you'd pull this off.

01:28:16   Universal control and sidecar may give you some other way to get at the same thing

01:28:19   to sort of a software only solution.

01:28:21   It seems like it will be too laggy.

01:28:23   I can't possibly do that, but it still beats plug in unplugging.

01:28:26   And I agree there.

01:28:27   It would be great if there was some kind of thunderbolts,

01:28:30   you know, KVM type solution.

01:28:32   But that is I don't know if that's technically possible.

01:28:34   And I've never heard of such a thing existing.

01:28:37   - Daniel Berkvitz writes, "The Cook Doctrine says

01:28:40   "that Apple needs to control crucial technology.

01:28:43   "How do you think that making your own cellular modem

01:28:45   "fits into this?

01:28:46   "How will Apple be able to differentiate using a modem?

01:28:48   "Sure, maybe they can make it a bit more stable,

01:28:50   "more integrated, cheaper, faster, and smaller,

01:28:52   "but do you see any obvious way that making your own modem

01:28:54   "would truly help to differentiate the Apple products

01:28:56   "for the end user?"

01:28:58   And one of you has been kind enough to put

01:28:59   the Cook Doctrine into the show notes, which I will now read,

01:29:02   "We believe that we need to own and control

01:29:03   the primary technologies behind the products we make and participate only in markets where

01:29:07   we can make a significant contribution."

01:29:09   It was important to put the quote in there.

01:29:12   There's links to the ASIMCO page that lists the larger context of this statement.

01:29:19   This bit of the Cook Doctrine, it's a single sentence here.

01:29:22   The first part of the sentence potentially contradicts the second part if you read it.

01:29:27   "Own and control all the primary technologies behind the products we make."

01:29:30   That's the sort of thing that we cite all the time.

01:29:33   Why would Apple do this?

01:29:34   Well, is it a super important part of the product?

01:29:36   They want to own and control it.

01:29:38   And so that's why, why should Apple make its own system on chips?

01:29:42   Why should they make their own processor for their Macs?

01:29:46   It's a primary technology behind the products.

01:29:47   They make the one and control it, now they do.

01:29:50   But then the second part is participate only in markets where you can make a significant

01:29:53   contribution.

01:29:55   It may be that you need to own and control a primary technology even if you can't make

01:30:02   a significant contribution.

01:30:03   And I think cellular modems are one of those cases.

01:30:06   Where I don't really think Apple is looking to make a significant contribution, but that

01:30:10   technology is so important to their most important product, the phone, and they've already been

01:30:15   like screwed over in various ways fighting with Qualcomm about it, that it's so obvious

01:30:21   that they need to own and control this primary technology, even though probably they can't

01:30:27   make a significant contribution.

01:30:28   'cause all they're hoping to do is can we get a cell modem

01:30:31   that works as well as the Qualcomm ones have in the past?

01:30:33   Like I don't think this is an area of active innovation.

01:30:36   It's not like they're fabbing them.

01:30:37   TSMT is gonna be fabbing them anyway, right?

01:30:40   Maybe they make it smaller power.

01:30:41   Maybe they can integrate it into the SOC.

01:30:43   There are possibilities there, but even if there weren't,

01:30:45   even if it's just like,

01:30:46   just so we don't have to deal with Qualcomm anymore

01:30:48   'cause we hate them and they're always trying to screw us

01:30:51   and they have us over a barrel

01:30:53   because without those Qualcomm chips,

01:30:54   there's not a lot of other manufacturers ago

01:30:56   they'd use Intel modems in one of their phones

01:30:57   and the Intel ones maybe weren't as good.

01:31:00   They bought the company,

01:31:01   they bought Intel's cell modem division,

01:31:02   so now they're handling that, right?

01:31:04   And I think the reason people cite the first part is,

01:31:07   the first part trumps the second part.

01:31:08   When there's a conflict, the first part wins.

01:31:11   And so, yeah, that's the answer.

01:31:13   That's why they have to make the remotems,

01:31:15   because it is an application of the first part

01:31:18   of the sentence, which is

01:31:19   owning controlled primary technologies,

01:31:20   even if the second part isn't true.

01:31:22   - Yeah, I would say too,

01:31:24   I think the possible improvements they could make

01:31:28   to a cell modem might be significant.

01:31:30   You know, you look at something like a CPU.

01:31:33   Maybe five or 10 years ago, it seemed like CPUs

01:31:35   were kind of a solved problem, right?

01:31:37   I mean, you know, just a matter of iterating on,

01:31:40   you know, just process technology

01:31:41   and the more physical side of things.

01:31:44   But when Apple jumped into the CPU game,

01:31:46   they really showed like, by applying both good talent

01:31:50   and also just specialization,

01:31:52   specially designing the CPUs for exactly what their platforms

01:31:57   and their products needed and nothing more.

01:32:00   Really optimizing for their stuff and their needs

01:32:02   and optimizing the software stack for their processor

01:32:05   and this wonderful cycle we have now.

01:32:08   They actually did make pretty significant contributions

01:32:10   to that field.

01:32:12   And a cell modem, I don't know much about cell modems,

01:32:14   but I know that it's non-trivial.

01:32:16   I know that it is not just like a sound chip.

01:32:19   It's a pretty significantly complex chip,

01:32:24   and it uses an untrivial amount of power,

01:32:26   takes an untrivial amount of space,

01:32:28   and so if they enter that market,

01:32:31   and if they, as Johnson mentioned,

01:32:33   they could possibly integrate it into the SOC,

01:32:35   which frankly seems logical to me,

01:32:37   I don't know, again, know nothing about this,

01:32:40   maybe it makes no sense from a physical point of view.

01:32:43   - They've got some radio stuff that make that tricky,

01:32:45   but I just mentioned that as there are integration

01:32:47   opportunities to do things that Qualcomm would never do

01:32:51   because now Apple has the, they did it with the M,

01:32:54   what was it, the M7, remember the motion?

01:32:56   - Yeah, yeah. - That used to be

01:32:56   a separate chip, that got sucked into the SoC real quick

01:32:58   and I wouldn't even talk about it.

01:33:00   - Yeah, but anyway, so cell modems are very complicated,

01:33:04   they're very processor intensive,

01:33:06   they're physically very complicated,

01:33:08   all the radio stuff and everything, they're a big deal

01:33:11   and they're such a big part of the phone

01:33:15   in terms of its total technical complexity,

01:33:19   its total power budget,

01:33:20   possibly even its total heat consumption.

01:33:22   They're a big deal, and so I think Apple

01:33:26   could make a good contribution to that area

01:33:29   in the same way they contributed to processors.

01:33:33   And I think in something like a phone,

01:33:35   that actually matters quite a bit.

01:33:36   And so not only do they think they are doing this,

01:33:41   but I think it's a good idea for them to do this.

01:33:43   And I think once they do it,

01:33:45   we're gonna look back a few years later

01:33:47   and think like why didn't they do it sooner,

01:33:49   or it's gonna be so obvious we're just gonna forget.

01:33:52   Like they're gonna announce one year,

01:33:53   oh now we have the built,

01:33:54   they probably won't even announce it,

01:33:55   but at some point we'll have the built-in cell modem,

01:33:58   and literally like the next year,

01:34:00   no one will even talk about it anymore.

01:34:02   Like it'll just be, of course it's Apple's cell modem

01:34:04   built into the A24 or whatever.

01:34:07   It's just gonna be a thing that's there.

01:34:09   - And the other context,

01:34:11   the sort of invisible context here,

01:34:12   is these two clauses of the sentence

01:34:14   are not talking about the same thing.

01:34:16   The first part is about technologies,

01:34:18   and the second part is when Cook says,

01:34:20   participate only in markets, he's talking about,

01:34:23   what products do you make?

01:34:24   Do you make a printer?

01:34:25   Do you make a car?

01:34:26   Do you make a laptop?

01:34:27   Do you make a phone?

01:34:28   That's what participate only in markets.

01:34:31   Apple doesn't participate in the market for making CPUs,

01:34:34   because they just make their own CPUs.

01:34:35   They don't give them to anybody else.

01:34:37   It still applies.

01:34:38   Everything we still said still applies,

01:34:39   but I think the context is mostly

01:34:41   talking about like, you know, why do you decide

01:34:43   to make a cell phone?

01:34:45   Why did you decide to make a TV puck or whatever?

01:34:49   Like in all those cases, in theory, Apple can explain

01:34:51   like what we thought we could make a significant

01:34:52   contribution to the market for, you know,

01:34:55   selling songs over the internet or the market

01:34:58   for cell phones or whatever.

01:34:59   And sometimes Apple's obviously right.

01:35:01   I think they have made a significant contribution

01:35:02   to the cell phone market.

01:35:04   I think that's inarguable.

01:35:05   Have they made a significant contribution

01:35:06   to the TV connected puck market?

01:35:08   Meh.

01:35:09   You know, so this, again, this is,

01:35:12   the larger context of this is kind of a manifesto.

01:35:13   I think it was in like an earnings call

01:35:15   or something similar to that.

01:35:16   So context definitely matters here.

01:35:18   But for the technology thing, like, you know,

01:35:21   what was that first chip, the A4?

01:35:23   They basically worked on it for a decade

01:35:25   before they blew away the entire industry, right?

01:35:27   - The A4 was the first chip they branded,

01:35:29   but they weren't really designing the guts of it,

01:35:31   I think, until later.

01:35:33   - I think they had a significant, maybe the A7.

01:35:35   - I think the A6, yeah.

01:35:37   Anyway, the point is, when Apple starts down this road,

01:35:41   they're not saying, we're gonna dominate,

01:35:45   but they're like, it's so important as a primary technology

01:35:47   that we have to do this.

01:35:48   And then once they have to do it,

01:35:49   of course they're going to be able to do it

01:35:52   in a way that is less annoying to them.

01:35:54   Because every third-party thing they have to integrate

01:35:56   into an iPhone is surely a headache,

01:35:57   because they don't get to say what Qualcomm makes.

01:36:00   Qualcomm makes what they make,

01:36:01   and it's probably some significant portion

01:36:03   of their phone manufacturing is designing

01:36:06   around the third party pieces that they have no control over.

01:36:08   They can ask for what they want,

01:36:10   they can suggest changes or whatever,

01:36:11   but in the end, if Qualcomm makes a 5G chip

01:36:13   that uses more power than Apple would like,

01:36:16   what are you gonna do, not have 5G?

01:36:18   Apple didn't have 5G for a long time

01:36:19   when they eventually bit the bullet.

01:36:20   5G hurt their battery life

01:36:22   in the first generation of that phone,

01:36:23   and how much of their headache for building that phone,

01:36:26   whichever one it was, was building the guts

01:36:28   around the Qualcomm chip that they can't change, right?

01:36:32   And so, even if it's just simply a drop-in replacement,

01:36:36   even if they never do integrate into the SOC,

01:36:38   at the very least, Apple can make exactly the 5G

01:36:41   or whatever chip that it wants,

01:36:43   according to its specification on its timeline,

01:36:45   with its sweetheart deals with TSMC

01:36:47   for their best manufacturing process

01:36:49   and all the other stuff.

01:36:51   And so that's why I think in the end,

01:36:52   we will all be very glad, assuming Apple pulls it off,

01:36:55   when they do this, because it will have the same benefit

01:36:57   as whenever Apple takes over any sort of technology

01:37:00   component that goes into their things.

01:37:01   They've shown that it is a huge advantage

01:37:04   to be able to do only what Apple needs.

01:37:07   And because they do not participate in the wider market,

01:37:09   they don't need to sell their cell phone chips to anyone.

01:37:11   They're not going to sell them to anyone, I imagine.

01:37:13   They don't sell their Apple Silicon things to anybody else.

01:37:16   They just have to make it good enough for Apple,

01:37:18   and they just have to sell enough of the things

01:37:19   to make up for it.

01:37:21   And I think cell modems,

01:37:23   they're already in enough Apple products that is,

01:37:26   even if it was just in the iPhone, it would be enough.

01:37:28   So I think it's gonna happen,

01:37:29   and assuming they don't blow it,

01:37:31   it's gonna be good for everybody, except maybe Qualcomm.

01:37:33   - Real time follow up, the Apple A6 is said to have

01:37:37   a 1.3 gigahertz custom Apple designed ARM 7A

01:37:40   architecture based dual-cord CPU called Swift,

01:37:43   rather than a licensed CPU from ARM

01:37:46   like in the previous designs.

01:37:47   - Yep, gotta reuse those names.

01:37:50   - A6.

01:37:50   - Okay, anyway.

01:37:52   Alright, thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:37:55   Squarespace, Trade Coffee, and Linode.

01:37:58   And thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:38:00   You can join atp.fm/join.

01:38:03   We'll talk to you next week.

01:38:05   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:38:12   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:38:17   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:38:23   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:38:28   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:38:33   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:38:38   @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:38:43   So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:38:47   Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:38:52   U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:38:55   It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:38:58   ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:39:01   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:39:02   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:39:03   ♪ Tech broadcast ♪

01:39:05   ♪ So long ♪

01:39:08   - You know, the grand tradition of broadcasting

01:39:11   during large sporting events,

01:39:13   I am sad to report that North Carolina

01:39:15   is losing to Duke by two points,

01:39:17   and it's almost half time.

01:39:18   - I love that I don't even know

01:39:19   what sport you're talking about right now.

01:39:20   Like, I'm pretty sure it's not football season.

01:39:22   - Nope.

01:39:23   - Maybe basketball?

01:39:25   Is it basketball? - It is.

01:39:26   It's March Madness, baby.

01:39:27   Well, now we're in April, but it's March Madness.

01:39:28   - That's Mark Madison's about basketball?

01:39:30   - Yes, oh my God, Marco.

01:39:31   Anyway, as one is required to do,

01:39:35   I would very much like to see Duke lose,

01:39:37   and so far it's not sounding like it's happening.

01:39:39   - So I have a bone to pick with Mr. Siracusa.

01:39:43   Last episode, when he did his amazing reveal

01:39:46   of his new job status of not having one,

01:39:49   he made us try to guess what he was gonna say,

01:39:55   and we guessed Freezer and TV,

01:39:58   and Merlin guessed in the first try in Rectifs.

01:40:01   Well, it was not a fair comparison

01:40:04   because on that Rectifs episode, earlier in the episode,

01:40:08   you had already discussed the Freezer and the TV.

01:40:12   - That's true.

01:40:13   - We eliminated the two most common choices.

01:40:15   - Yes, those topics were ruled out.

01:40:18   - I don't, well, he could've guessed Toe,

01:40:21   I don't think that--

01:40:22   - You also, no, that was also ruled out.

01:40:24   - Yeah, it was.

01:40:24   - He was always also ruled out earlier.

01:40:26   So like the big like things like,

01:40:28   whoa, what might John want to talk about?

01:40:30   They were all ruled out.

01:40:31   - Those aren't mystery topics.

01:40:32   Those all would have been written into the document.

01:40:35   Like I don't think he would ever guess something

01:40:36   that would have been written into the document.

01:40:37   - We don't know that.

01:40:38   And Marco's right.

01:40:39   It didn't cross my mind until Marco said something,

01:40:41   but you're exactly right.

01:40:42   - Top fake excuses.

01:40:43   He was just in the right mindset and you two weren't.

01:40:46   It's fine.

01:40:47   - No, it was not a level playing field.

01:40:49   - I mean, if you want to be fair,

01:40:51   we'd recently had questions very close to this topic

01:40:54   on recent ATP episodes that you had heard me answer,

01:40:57   which is how Alex Cox said that they figured out

01:40:59   that something was up, so all I'm saying is, you know.

01:41:01   - I mean, look, in your defense,

01:41:04   I would probably still not have guessed correctly.

01:41:06   However-- - Same.

01:41:08   - However, it was on a level playing field

01:41:10   because you had already ruled out

01:41:11   all of the big hit possible topics,

01:41:13   including the two we guessed, earlier in the episode.

01:41:15   - I had, they hadn't been ruled out,

01:41:18   and there were so many other things

01:41:19   that could have been guessed.

01:41:20   Those wouldn't have been in the running for rectives

01:41:22   because those are always written into the notes.

01:41:24   Those are never mysterious.

01:41:25   So it would be so stupid to make that,

01:41:27   oh, I'm gonna have a mysterious thing

01:41:28   I'm not gonna tell you about, you know,

01:41:30   Tow Freezer, you know, TV show, whatever.

01:41:33   (laughing)

01:41:35   Just take the loss.

01:41:37   And the best thing is, making him guess

01:41:40   was a totally spur of the moment thing.

01:41:41   'Cause I just, I had that feeling.

01:41:43   It's like they'll, they get that vibe of like,

01:41:45   I feel like we're on the right wavelength here

01:41:47   that if I just ask this question, it'll pop out.

01:41:49   It's like that game where you try to make people

01:41:51   will guess a vegetable and you show them a little card

01:41:53   about what they're gonna guess.

01:41:54   You two guess a vegetable.

01:41:55   - Asparagus.

01:41:56   - Marco. - Gotta guess a vegetable,

01:41:59   Casey.

01:42:00   - He doesn't know of any.

01:42:01   Macaroni and cheese.

01:42:02   - Oh, stop.

01:42:04   (laughing)

01:42:04   - Cheese and vegetable?

01:42:05   - French fries?

01:42:06   Our French friends.

01:42:07   - Velveeta, Velveeta.

01:42:09   - Guess a vegetable, Casey.

01:42:10   - Carrot.

01:42:11   - Thank you, that's what everyone says,

01:42:12   and I would hold it with a piece of paper that says carrot,

01:42:13   and you'd be like, "And Marco just said asparagus

01:42:16   "to be Marco."

01:42:16   (laughing)

01:42:18   Because he likes smelly pee.

01:42:20   - I don't even like asparagus that much.

01:42:21   - John, do you have that gene?

01:42:22   Do you have smelly pee? - I do,

01:42:23   and I do not like it.

01:42:24   I like the taste of asparagus, I do not like the pee smell,

01:42:27   so I avoid it just for the pee situation.

01:42:29   - Yeah, it's not worth it, I agree.

01:42:30   Like, it tastes fine, like I don't love it.

01:42:33   But yeah, it's not worth the side effects.

01:42:34   - Marco, happy anniversary.

01:42:36   - Uh-oh, uh, of? (laughing)

01:42:39   - Did you have to renew an SSL certificate?

01:42:41   What does this mean?

01:42:41   - Yeah, what did I fail to do? (laughing)

01:42:45   - Happy ninth anniversary, Marco.

01:42:48   - Of the show?

01:42:49   - No. - No.

01:42:50   - Well, hmm, I'm really blanking here.

01:42:53   - How old is my child?

01:42:56   Quick, no, he's 10.

01:42:57   (laughing)

01:42:58   - Yeah, almost, not quite.

01:42:59   - That's not an anniversary.

01:43:00   Been married for more than nine years.

01:43:03   - You really don't know, this makes me a little bit sad.

01:43:05   Not in like a you're in trouble way,

01:43:07   just it makes me a little bit sad way.

01:43:08   - I'm totally in trouble.

01:43:09   Is this neutral?

01:43:10   - No, no, no, no.

01:43:11   Well, you're getting warmer, but no, not neutral.

01:43:13   - Oh, is this our Munich trip?

01:43:15   - Yes, specifically this is the day you bought your M5

01:43:18   or really received your M5.

01:43:19   - Oh yeah.

01:43:20   - Nine years ago today.

01:43:22   - Oh man, that was, so yeah, neutral was pretty close.

01:43:25   - Do you still have that picture on the wall?

01:43:26   You're in the room with it, would it have it?

01:43:28   Is it still on the wall?

01:43:29   - No, it's in the closet with some other, like, you know.

01:43:32   - Oh, that's so sad.

01:43:33   - That is sad.

01:43:34   - Well, 'cause the area that it was hanging,

01:43:35   I covered up with acoustic foam on the wall.

01:43:37   (laughing)

01:43:38   - I thought it would've graduated to the beach house.

01:43:41   - What does the beach house have anything to do with cars?

01:43:43   It's a car-free island.

01:43:44   - No, but it's just a fond memory.

01:43:46   You have pictures of fond memories.

01:43:48   - Yeah, no, but I have other ones.

01:43:50   I have a picture on the wall of Triana Stasio

01:43:53   playing a guitar with rainbow lines coming out of it.

01:43:56   That's my beach wall art.

01:43:59   - You remember when the sound hit this acoustic foam

01:44:01   and didn't bounce back as much?

01:44:02   Those were good times.

01:44:04   (laughing)

01:44:06   - For the record on my wall, and has been for years,

01:44:09   is a picture of Marco and Underscore and me

01:44:12   in front of the BMW Performance Driving School sign

01:44:15   from South Carolina, which was also almost nine years ago.

01:44:18   That was the same year.

01:44:19   And that's been on my wall in the office for years now.

01:44:23   Just letting you know where you stand in my book,

01:44:24   even though I don't apparently stand at the same stock.

01:44:27   - More importantly, the poor M5.

01:44:29   - I know, right?

01:44:30   - That was a good car.

01:44:31   - Sad times.

01:44:31   It was a great car.

01:44:33   I feel like we should do a quick thank you to the members,

01:44:37   and this is non-sarcastic, genuinely.

01:44:40   There have been a bunch of new members

01:44:42   that have signed up over the last,

01:44:44   actually I was gonna say week,

01:44:45   but it's only been a couple of days

01:44:46   since we recorded last.

01:44:48   And that is extremely kind of all of you.

01:44:50   I've been mostly amused when people have written in

01:44:53   and said, "Yeah, this had nothing to do with John,

01:44:55   "it had nothing to do with Marco and Casey,

01:44:57   "this is all for John."

01:44:57   So hey, you're welcome, John.

01:44:59   So thanks, but thanks.

01:45:03   But no, all kidding aside,

01:45:05   it's been wonderful to see the messages of support

01:45:08   just that I've seen,

01:45:09   and I can only imagine how John feels.

01:45:11   But it's been wonderful to see the message of support,

01:45:13   It's been wonderful to see some of you actually

01:45:16   financially support, which is going above and beyond.

01:45:18   And on behalf of all three of us, thank you for that.

01:45:22   We really do appreciate it.

01:45:24   And I will say that we are working on merchandise.

01:45:26   We are actively working on merchandise.

01:45:27   You'll hear more about that sooner than you think.

01:45:30   John, how is, how is, was this full week number one?

01:45:34   Is that right?

01:45:35   This is the conclusion of week number one of no work?

01:45:38   - Maybe, yeah, sounds about right.

01:45:40   - My timeline is already all out of whack.

01:45:41   - So I do have one specific question.

01:45:43   So you mentioned at the end of your blog post

01:45:45   that you're not looking forward to having to tell people,

01:45:47   like having to explain to your job

01:45:49   that you're now a full-time podcaster basically.

01:45:52   Has that come up yet?

01:45:53   Have you actually had to tell anybody that

01:45:54   and how did it go?

01:45:55   'Cause I can tell you one thing,

01:45:56   from my experience that is always kind of awkward.

01:45:59   - It is super awkward.

01:46:00   - I don't interact with people, although I am interacting.

01:46:03   (laughing)

01:46:05   I am interacting with people for business purposes,

01:46:09   like talking to my accountant who's also Casey's accountant

01:46:13   for tax stuff, right?

01:46:15   And had to, you know, just preemptively fill in

01:46:17   for next year's taxes and like, you know,

01:46:19   just estimated taxes are pain in the butt.

01:46:21   So I've communicated that,

01:46:22   but that's mostly communicated as a negative.

01:46:24   Like, oh, you remember that job I have?

01:46:25   Well, I don't anymore.

01:46:26   (laughing)

01:46:28   And so that may be important

01:46:29   for next year's taxes or whatever,

01:46:31   but yeah, it hasn't come up for any person.

01:46:33   I don't know, I'll probably be okay.

01:46:35   Like, you know what I used to say before?

01:46:37   Like it wasn't much better before really,

01:46:39   'cause, and I realized this recently

01:46:40   because it was like, what, a month ago or something?

01:46:42   I was out for like, I don't remember.

01:46:43   I had occasion to see a person

01:46:46   who asked me a question about my life,

01:46:47   and I was like, "Oh, what do you do for a living?"

01:46:49   Oh, I know, I think it was when I was renewing

01:46:51   my life insurance, I don't remember.

01:46:53   Anyway, and for years now, I haven't known what to say

01:46:58   about what do you do, and I just slipped into this thing

01:47:01   where I feel bad 'cause I wanna give people a direct answer,

01:47:05   but eventually I just started saying

01:47:06   kind of like Marco's old hat that he can't wear anymore.

01:47:08   I would just say computers.

01:47:11   (laughing)

01:47:12   And that usually made people not want to ask

01:47:14   a follow-up question, partly because of how

01:47:16   I would say it or whatever, but it's like,

01:47:19   I would just say computers, or sometimes

01:47:21   the longer version would be I do stuff with computers.

01:47:24   That's all they need to know.

01:47:25   They're not actually interested.

01:47:26   They're like, oh, I guess, fine.

01:47:28   There aren't any follow-up questions.

01:47:31   If they are actually a computer nerd,

01:47:33   they'll be able to tell that by their follow-up question,

01:47:35   then I can tell them more,

01:47:36   but people aren't that interested.

01:47:37   So they're just, I just stuff for computers.

01:47:39   I used to say I'm a programmer, but nowadays I'm like,

01:47:41   they'd be like, do you program things,

01:47:42   like you know, things on the radio or something?

01:47:45   - Oh, nobody thinks that, no, you can say programmer.

01:47:46   Everyone knows it's computers, like that's--

01:47:49   - But that's what I would say.

01:47:50   Like I would put, like occupation, programmer, right?

01:47:53   'Cause all those stupid fill-in things,

01:47:54   I don't care what they think.

01:47:55   If they think programmer means like something else,

01:47:57   then that's fine, but I would just say computers.

01:47:59   And now I can't really say computers or programmer anymore.

01:48:02   I mean, I can if people don't care,

01:48:04   because podcasting is done through computers as well,

01:48:06   and it kind of fits, but I guess I'll let you know

01:48:09   the first time I have to say podcaster,

01:48:11   but it has not come up yet,

01:48:12   and I don't expect it to come up for a while,

01:48:14   because in general, people don't ask,

01:48:16   like, I don't talk to strangers.

01:48:19   - Yeah, they spot you from across the room,

01:48:21   and they're like, that man looks like he wants

01:48:23   to talk to strangers about his job.

01:48:25   - No, they say that man looks like he does computers.

01:48:27   (laughing)

01:48:28   As soon as you ask the question, Marco,

01:48:30   a certain somebody that John lives with says,

01:48:32   and I quote, he doesn't leave the house.

01:48:35   - That's true. (laughs)

01:48:36   - I think that might have answered the question.

01:48:38   - Haven't gotten COVID yet, woo!

01:48:40   That you know of.

01:48:41   - That's the thing that I know of.

01:48:42   - That's the same in our house.

01:48:43   And as a matter of fact,

01:48:45   there's a cough going through most of the house.

01:48:47   And on precaution,

01:48:48   Aaron took a test earlier today, an at-home test.

01:48:50   And it was big, fat, negatory,

01:48:52   but you never know these days.

01:48:53   - Yeah, unfortunately the home rapid test negative results

01:48:56   simply mean you might not have it.

01:48:58   - I know, I know.

01:48:59   John, how was your first week though?

01:49:00   What did you do?

01:49:01   I guess really, since I spoke to you two days ago,

01:49:04   But have you had any good relaxation time?

01:49:06   Are you already doing either self-assigned

01:49:08   or Tina assigned honey do's?

01:49:10   What have we been up to?

01:49:11   - I mean, I did spend a lot of time, you know,

01:49:15   reading and trying to acknowledge/reply

01:49:18   to all the nice congratulations.

01:49:20   Lots of people have been tweeting at me.

01:49:22   Some people sent me some nice emails.

01:49:24   You know, I appreciate every kind word

01:49:26   that everyone has sent.

01:49:28   I've tried to reply when I could.

01:49:29   I've also tried, like, on Twitter,

01:49:31   it's hard to know what to do because, honestly,

01:49:32   tons of people have been tweeting at me and I want to,

01:49:36   my practice has been for years,

01:49:38   for years and years and years,

01:49:39   which probably means in the internet it's out of date

01:49:41   and I agree that it probably is.

01:49:43   My way of acknowledging that I have seen your thing

01:49:45   and appreciate it but do not have the ability

01:49:48   to send you an individualized reply is to like it.

01:49:51   - Same, yeah. - To fave it, to heart it,

01:49:53   whatever the hell it's called.

01:49:55   But a couple years ago,

01:49:56   Twitter changed its official client to do this weird thing

01:49:58   where if you follow somebody,

01:50:00   somehow you get injected into your timeline stuff that they fave

01:50:04   Which doesn't make any sense to me. I apologize

01:50:07   I've been apologize for it on the show before I've like because I sometimes fave like whatever things as a form of

01:50:11   Bookmarking because third-party clients can't do bookmarking because Twitter is crappy with their API and I still use their break line

01:50:17   But anyway, I will save things just to remind myself of them later

01:50:21   So it's not you know, our teas and retweets are not an endorsement faves are not an endorsement

01:50:25   But that is a dated notion because if I favorite it shows up in someone else's timeline

01:50:29   And they're like, oh, this is the thing.

01:50:31   It was, you know, faved by Jon.

01:50:32   He must really agree with it.

01:50:34   Anyway, pretty much every single person

01:50:36   who sent me a nice tweet to say, you know, congratulations

01:50:39   or whatever, I faved them.

01:50:40   I faved them all.

01:50:41   So God knows what this is doing to anybody who follows me.

01:50:43   I apologize for people who follow me

01:50:45   and aren't involved in this whole thing

01:50:47   if you're seeing this huge flood of things that I'm faving,

01:50:50   but I faved pretty much every single one of them.

01:50:52   And that's my way of trying to tell the people,

01:50:54   I saw your thing and I appreciate it.

01:50:56   Thank you, right?

01:50:58   And I try to reserve my longer replies for either

01:51:02   if I have time to do it, because honestly, it just--

01:51:05   overwhelming support.

01:51:06   I thank everyone who has sent even a little note or whatever.

01:51:09   You just don't realize how many people

01:51:10   are aware of your existence until they all

01:51:14   get something in them to pop up and say hello

01:51:17   or say something nice.

01:51:18   So that's been very gratifying.

01:51:20   And same thing, lots of people actually send me emails

01:51:22   and stuff, too.

01:51:23   So I've been spending a lot of time

01:51:26   I'm faving and replying to emails and tweets, believe it or not, and fixing typos in my

01:51:32   blog post and all that stuff.

01:51:34   And then just dealing with the – speaking of the store, I made the store page for the

01:51:40   upcoming ADP thing today.

01:51:44   What else did I do?

01:51:45   I mean, I prepared the show notes for the thing that we just recorded, like just doing

01:51:48   my normal podcast stuff and doing a few things around the house.

01:51:52   One of the projects I'm working on is – maybe we'll talk about it in future episodes when

01:51:56   when I get past the point of research and Amazon ordering

01:51:58   and get to the installation part,

01:52:00   but I'm finally going to try to upgrade my thermostat,

01:52:02   potentially with a smart one,

01:52:04   which will involve major house surgery

01:52:06   'cause my thermostat is, you know, older than I am,

01:52:10   or the wires from it are older than I am anyway,

01:52:12   so it's a little bit terrifying.

01:52:13   And I've been playing this for a while,

01:52:15   and believe me, the best time to do a thermostat

01:52:18   is when the weather is getting warm enough

01:52:19   that you don't need to eat anymore.

01:52:20   So you do not want to mess with this in the middle of winter

01:52:22   and then freeze to death and your pipes burst or whatever.

01:52:24   So it's kind of getting to that season, springtime is coming, where if I really screw it up and

01:52:28   our heat doesn't work, pretty soon that will not be a fatal error.

01:52:31   So I'm giving myself leeway to do that.

01:52:33   So that is one of the projects that I'm currently tackling.

01:52:35   Do you even have a common line or whatever it's called?

01:52:37   I do not.

01:52:38   Oh, so it's going to use, can you even use a smart thermostat or are you going to have

01:52:42   to do some wiring?

01:52:43   You're going to do it?

01:52:44   Yeah.

01:52:45   Oh, I mean it's low voltage.

01:52:46   It's not that dangerous if you mess it up.

01:52:48   24 volts.

01:52:49   Yeah.

01:52:50   Alternating current.

01:52:51   Yeah, it is AC.

01:52:52   That's true.

01:52:53   is not the electrical part of it, it is the physical part of it.

01:52:56   Like just like routing the wires there? Navigating the guts of my ancient terrifying house, yes.

01:53:00   Which does not have drywall. You know, I think I spoke about this a while ago,

01:53:06   but I got a burr up my butt a few months back as a pandemic project to, I'm gonna get the terms

01:53:11   wrong to go from the switches that you can like grab onto, you know, the stereotypical like older

01:53:17   switches that are like a little thing sticking out of the wall that you flip up and down.

01:53:22   I forget what those are called,

01:53:23   but I wanted to go from that to the paddle style switches,

01:53:26   you know, where it's just like a paddle.

01:53:27   - Because you wanted to look at your houses from the '80s?

01:53:29   - No, I think it went, did we get this one--

01:53:31   - No, the paddles are now, paddles are in style again.

01:53:33   It's the, what is it, Decora, what's the?

01:53:36   - I forget. - I guess the flat paddles

01:53:37   are more in style, but I still look at them,

01:53:38   and they look like '80s to me.

01:53:40   - Well, what's good about the flat paddles too

01:53:41   is that if you wanted to upgrade them

01:53:43   to possibly Lutron Quesada switches,

01:53:45   they all have that same shape

01:53:47   for the cover plates and everything.

01:53:49   - And so, I think we got in the same argument

01:53:51   I was talking about this a few months back. But anyways, I've been putting paddles everywhere,

01:53:55   which is relatively cheap to do, all told. And it's actually something that I can handle,

01:54:00   which is when it comes to things around the house, there's very little that falls in that

01:54:04   category. And so I was able to handle like all of the switching over from the toggle

01:54:11   or whatever they're called to the paddle decor style. And I was even able to tap existing

01:54:18   common lines to put in a couple of prior sponsor,

01:54:21   Lucian Casada things, but I can't imagine actually

01:54:25   like going through the wall back to the furnace

01:54:28   or what have you in order to wire a new common line.

01:54:32   No, no thank you, I would definitely call someone.

01:54:33   - Yeah, I'm just gonna end up running a whole new wire

01:54:36   because honestly the wire is there currently.

01:54:38   - You're gonna do this yourself?

01:54:39   - Yeah, that's what I'm saying, I think that's bananas,

01:54:40   you should call somebody.

01:54:41   - No, I can handle it, it'll be okay.

01:54:43   And I'll talk about it on the show, how it turns out,

01:54:46   but again, if I really screw it up,

01:54:48   It's not like we're going to freeze to death in the house

01:54:50   because pretty soon it's gonna be hot.

01:54:52   - I didn't tell you guys, I tried to fish a wire

01:54:54   for the first time a few months back.

01:54:57   Oh, it was hilarious.

01:54:58   I excited it totally wrong.

01:55:00   - Do you have the right tool?

01:55:01   Do you have a little, what do you call it?

01:55:03   The little metal thingy?

01:55:03   - The cable fish thing where it's like the big,

01:55:05   it's like basically like a long tape of metal

01:55:07   that you reel up and yeah, I got one,

01:55:10   you know, just some Amazon thing.

01:55:12   I was trying to run a network cable

01:55:14   across a portion of my basement that I can't really reach.

01:55:17   It's like between two posts.

01:55:19   So you can't really get in there as a person

01:55:21   or with your arm.

01:55:22   And I had to run like 15 feet to a space that I could reach.

01:55:27   And I got it jammed between two floor boards

01:55:29   and it was just stuck.

01:55:31   - Just send in a mouse.

01:55:33   - I had to take off a siding board

01:55:34   on the other side of the house

01:55:35   to access where I'd gotten it stuck.

01:55:37   And it was a whole thing.

01:55:38   So I learned, and I had it hooked on backwards

01:55:42   so it was like hooky instead of flat.

01:55:45   (laughs)

01:55:46   - You didn't tape up the end?

01:55:48   - No, I did, but it still was able

01:55:51   to wedge itself somewhere.

01:55:53   - Yeah, you really gotta smooth that out.

01:55:55   No, I did, if you recall, when I first got Fios,

01:55:58   I ran like 100 feet of Cat 6 through my basement

01:56:02   because the fiber comes in the far corner

01:56:05   of the house from where I actually needed,

01:56:06   and so I did all that fishing myself

01:56:09   through the finished room in the basement,

01:56:11   through the non-finished room,

01:56:12   up through the floor to the television area,

01:56:14   up through the wall and floor into the room that I'm in.

01:56:18   I'm very familiar with trying to

01:56:19   fish ethernet cables through things,

01:56:21   and the techniques I came up with are unorthodox

01:56:23   and probably stupid, but they did eventually work.

01:56:26   So I'm going to leverage those skills.

01:56:29   My thermostat wire will be easy in comparison

01:56:31   because my thermostat is actually not that far

01:56:33   from the furnace in the basement,

01:56:35   and I did all the Googling and looked up the part number

01:56:37   and figured out all the parts that I have,

01:56:38   'cause my furnace is not super ancient,

01:56:40   of the wire, the two wires, only two,

01:56:44   the two wires that go to my current thermostat

01:56:47   absolutely are older than me.

01:56:48   Like they don't even use rubber insulation,

01:56:50   they use like braided cloth insulation

01:56:52   that's so old that if you look at it, it crumbles.

01:56:54   - Oh my God.

01:56:55   - None of the insulators, none of the insulation

01:56:57   on the wires are anywhere in my house have any colors.

01:57:00   Everything is like, oh, you're gonna find

01:57:02   like the common wire and it'll be black

01:57:04   and the neutral wire will be white

01:57:05   and whatever the hot wire was.

01:57:06   - They can see the way around.

01:57:07   - You kidding?

01:57:08   Yeah, whatever.

01:57:09   Like, none of the wires in my house have any color.

01:57:11   They're all color-- the color I would describe is soot.

01:57:14   Every single one of them is soot color.

01:57:17   And they're not wrapped in rubber.

01:57:19   They're wrapped in like this ancient hard stuff,

01:57:20   and there's like canvas things around it.

01:57:22   And so like that just--

01:57:23   it's amazing my house doesn't burn down

01:57:25   any time I do anything.

01:57:26   So that is going to be removed and replaced

01:57:27   with actual 18-5 thermostat wire if I am successful.

01:57:31   And if I'm not, I will call someone and pay them lots of money

01:57:33   and they'll fix my mistakes.

01:57:35   But I think I can pull it off for further news

01:57:37   on future episodes.

01:57:38   - Oh man.

01:57:39   - Yeah, there's only a couple of spots in the house

01:57:41   that I really wish I had an ethernet drop.

01:57:43   And what I've done because I'm lazy

01:57:45   is I've put mocha bridges in those spots.

01:57:48   But if I was braver, and I know it's not,

01:57:51   like I helped my dad when I was in high school wire

01:57:54   our then house for cat five or whatever it was at the time.

01:57:57   And I presumably could do it, but I'm so scared

01:58:00   I'm gonna like put a hole somewhere somehow,

01:58:02   which you shouldn't be able to do using,

01:58:05   you know, just trying to wire with ethernet.

01:58:06   but I feel like I would somehow put my foot

01:58:09   through the ceiling of the second floor

01:58:11   or something like that.

01:58:12   I'm just, I'm scared.

01:58:13   I'm a big baby.

01:58:14   - I think it's one of those things

01:58:15   that eventually you realize,

01:58:16   you know what, if I accidentally put a hole in a wall,

01:58:19   I don't want to be there,

01:58:20   it's not that hard to patch a wall.

01:58:22   It's one of those things that you learn as an adult,

01:58:24   okay, well, I can patch it

01:58:26   and it might look a little bit uneven, but who cares?

01:58:28   It's just living in a house.

01:58:30   - Did I tell you that story

01:58:31   when we were getting a new siding on our house?

01:58:33   There, you know, the--

01:58:35   - Yeah, the big project a few years back?

01:58:36   - Yeah, yeah, and they were,

01:58:39   people who were doing the project were outside

01:58:41   using pneumatic nail guns to do whatever they were doing

01:58:44   or whatever, and they had a misfire,

01:58:47   and one of the nails from the nail gun

01:58:49   went through the outside of the house

01:58:51   and came into the room that I'm sitting in.

01:58:52   So I came home one day. - Oh my gosh.

01:58:54   - I came home one day and looked above the wall,

01:58:57   above the upper right corner of the wall

01:58:59   where my wife's computer is,

01:59:00   and there was four inches of nail sticking out of the wall

01:59:04   like sort of hanging there, just sort of dangling,

01:59:06   'cause it had come almost all the way through,

01:59:08   but it had not come all the way through

01:59:09   to fall out into the room,

01:59:11   so it was just being held in by the little part of the nail,

01:59:14   and I was like, "Wha?"

01:59:15   Yeah, so, you know, it's like,

01:59:17   "Well, how do you patch it up?"

01:59:18   "No, we just kinda patch it up

01:59:20   and put a little bit of spackle over it

01:59:22   and don't talk about it."

01:59:24   Yeah. (laughs)

01:59:25   It's not the same color as the wall,

01:59:26   but it's close enough that no one notices,

01:59:28   and there's so much else wrong with the house

01:59:29   that really it's hard to pick out any one thing.

01:59:31   (beeping)