00:00:18 ◼ ► And people have money and interest behind it, so when stupid ideas have money and interest behind them,
00:00:27 ◼ ► This is one of those times where, and I think I've talked about this perhaps here, certainly on analog,
00:00:40 ◼ ► is that you guys are... you have a little more experience in life than I do, I'm trying to put this gently,
00:00:59 ◼ ► to be better at not dismissing something out of hand simply because it seems kind of kooky and bananas.
00:01:13 ◼ ► It seems... I kind of... and I know trying to battle the tide on what terminology people are using for something new
00:01:23 ◼ ► is usually a losing battle, and there's no... it's like people trying to call these netcasts, you know, or like...
00:01:28 ◼ ► You know, I think the use of the term Web 3... I don't see how what is going on in the world of crypto crap
00:01:40 ◼ ► has anything to do with the rest of the Internet. It seems like it's not Web 3, it's, you know, gambling 25.
00:01:47 ◼ ► It's speculative, volatile investments, you know, 17,000. How many of these have we had?
00:02:01 ◼ ► Like, I think it's stupid that they're squatting on that term, and I think Web 2.0 is also a stupid term, but whatever.
00:02:15 ◼ ► And that's why they call it Web 3, because they want this particular application of blockchain
00:02:20 ◼ ► to make people think it's like the Web, but you'll have more ownership of stuff or whatever.
00:02:25 ◼ ► You know, it's like, but it's different than NFTs or cryptocurrency, which are also applications of blockchain.
00:02:35 ◼ ► But the fact that you say, "Oh, it doesn't have anything to do with the Web," well, they all have something to do with the Web.
00:02:52 ◼ ► But you're right that it isn't the Web. It's not like, "Oh, it's, you know, HTTP 2.0, like that protocol, is an advancement in web technologies."
00:03:05 ◼ ► it doesn't become an essential part of a web browser probably isn't part of the web proper.
00:03:09 ◼ ► But if you're doing web-like stuff, if you know, if you're using blockchain to, in theory, let people do web-like stuff in a different way,
00:03:17 ◼ ► it makes some vague kind of sense that you would try to get the name Web3 and get people to use it.
00:03:23 ◼ ► But of course, this, like all the other things, is, aside from scamming people out of money and aside from figuring out how to make money off of suckers,
00:03:32 ◼ ► no one needs to care about this until and unless it rises to the level of something useful, right?
00:03:39 ◼ ► So think about, I don't know, for a long time people didn't have to care about BitTorrent until eventually BitTorrent found a useful application, which is piracy.
00:03:57 ◼ ► Steam uses a peer-to-peer protocol, but I think World of Warcraft was one of the first games to use the literal BitTorrent protocol to help downloads of the game go faster.
00:04:13 ◼ ► and so far the only application of these blockchain technologies are things that people who want to make money fast find useful.
00:04:21 ◼ ► Yeah, it seems like, I mean we've talked about this before, like how there's this kind of psychological hack that when a certain type of person, let's face it, usually dudes,
00:04:33 ◼ ► get faced with the prospect of being able to make money from other money, as opposed to doing something and making something,
00:04:43 ◼ ► And the effects that... it just breaks people's brain in such a weird, drug-like, or cult-like, or religion-like way,
00:04:52 ◼ ► that they just get so obsessed and they can't... they see, "This is gonna do everything and save everybody and do everything for everyone."
00:04:59 ◼ ► And they can't see that it's like, "Oh, this is actually just a pump-and-dump Ponzi kind of scheme, or a speculative, volatile investment kind of thing."
00:05:08 ◼ ► You know, "We just invented an interesting technology, but use it only for these horrible things."
00:05:15 ◼ ► And there's this whole culture around obsessing over it and claiming this is gonna be the next big thing,
00:05:22 ◼ ► but a lot of people claim a lot of things are gonna be the next big thing, and most of them don't actually reach that point.
00:05:33 ◼ ► You need to get more people to come in and be investors, you know, you need the greater fool to come in later and put their money in, otherwise you don't make any money.
00:05:48 ◼ ► It's not like, "Oh, and they become obsessed with it." They don't become obsessed with it.
00:05:52 ◼ ► Being obsessed with it is what you have to do to make the thing a success, a financial success for you.
00:05:58 ◼ ► And each group of people that comes in, if they come in and go, "Oh yeah, we're not enthusiastic about it,"
00:06:03 ◼ ► then they're the last one holding the bag, so they also need to be super enthusiastic about it to get other people to come in.
00:06:10 ◼ ► So yeah, some people really are obsessed with it and are like, "Oh, this is gonna change everything, and we're all gonna own our information,
00:06:20 ◼ ► And yes, there are definitely true believers, but it's hard to distinguish the true believers from the people who just are turning the crank on the machine that they think will hopefully make them money.
00:06:30 ◼ ► I don't know. It seems very irrelevant to my life right now, but that doesn't mean it will be forever.
00:06:36 ◼ ► Yeah, that's what you should be watching for, is like, "When does this become relevant?"
00:06:39 ◼ ► "Oh, here's something useful that can be done in a better way than it could be done before."
00:06:45 ◼ ► And so far, that has mostly not happened except for you can definitely do crime better, and you can do scams better.
00:06:52 ◼ ► So those are the two applications where people go, "Well, this is way better than it used to be."
00:06:57 ◼ ► We used the ransomware of people, it was so hard to get the money, now it's way easier.
00:07:01 ◼ ► Let's do some follow-up, and I actually wanted to very quickly mention, since it is the holidays, this is our Christmas Spectacular.
00:07:10 ◼ ► As much as we have a Christmas Spectacular. Anyways, I thought, since we missed talking about it at Thanksgiving,
00:07:17 ◼ ► it seemed like now is as good a time as any to just briefly thank all of our members who have made it much, much less stressful to do this show,
00:07:26 ◼ ► insofar as worrying about sponsorships and things of that nature. I'm not going to belabor the point,
00:07:30 ◼ ► but all of you that have become members over the last year and a half, it has really made a tangible and demonstrable difference,
00:07:40 ◼ ► So I just wanted to very briefly and quickly mention all of you. It is very kind of you to have even tried it once,
00:07:47 ◼ ► much less than many of you that have stuck around. So thank you to all of you, and if this sounds interesting to you, ATP.fm/join.
00:07:54 ◼ ► Yeah, thank you very much. Casey's glossed over it quickly, and I won't spend too much time on it,
00:07:58 ◼ ► but the ad market has its ups and downs. We've talked about this before, and it used to hurt a lot
00:08:05 ◼ ► whenever we would have a spot that didn't sell in an episode, or we'd have to offer a discount to get something sold at the last minute,
00:08:13 ◼ ► or something like that. That would hurt a lot more in the past, but now that we have something to fall back on,
00:08:19 ◼ ► we have diversified income, we have this chunk from members and this chunk from advertisers,
00:08:24 ◼ ► it hurts a lot less when the ad market has its dips or its little flukes, and so it makes it easier to take.
00:08:31 ◼ ► It gives us pleasure to be able to also have this kind of fun premium product that we give members the ad-free feed,
00:08:41 ◼ ► and we have the bootleg bonus for the members, and stuff like that. It's kind of fun to have this little club for people who want a little bit extra,
00:08:49 ◼ ► and also to just smooth out the market fluctuations of the advertising business. So thank you very much,
00:08:55 ◼ ► and anybody who chooses not to be a member, that's fine. We're not going to make you feel bad about it.
00:09:00 ◼ ► Anybody who does choose to be a member, thank you for what you're doing, and we'll keep trying to make it awesome for you.
00:09:10 ◼ ► I know, but they don't want to be thanked. They don't want to hear anything about membership.
00:09:16 ◼ ► We're sorry for talking about membership, but we thank you very much for your membership.
00:09:45 ◼ ► First of all, that are not the XDR? Four, but one of them just arrived in California today.
00:10:04 ◼ ► And it just occurred to me an hour ago, this is in many ways the USB-C hub that Marco has always wanted.
00:10:38 ◼ ► Anyway, so on the front there's a traditional USB-A, and then the connector to connect to your computer,
00:10:46 ◼ ► And it does provide 60 watts of power delivery, which is less than I would want for my particular laptop,
00:11:01 ◼ ► So right now I have two of them used by a USB-C to display port connector for the two LG 4K temporary,
00:11:16 ◼ ► However, because I have not yet recorded with this whole setup and I don't trust anything anymore,
00:11:21 ◼ ► for Marco's benefit, you're welcome darling, I have plugged the Ethernet directly into the computer.
00:11:38 ◼ ► So even if everything took a dump at the same time, it shouldn't be a problem and shouldn't interrupt the recording.
00:12:18 ◼ ► No, this new category of Thunderbolt hubs, these just came out maybe six months ago at the most.
00:12:31 ◼ ► So yeah, it's one Thunderbolt 4 in, three Thunderbolt 4s out, and also usually a USB-A port or 4.
00:13:07 ◼ ► I have two of those CalDigit element hubs in various testing and occasional roles right now.
00:13:36 ◼ ► But the CalDigit TS3+, I am using in that setup and plugging in just a ton of USB devices to it
00:13:44 ◼ ► and using a ton of bandwidth and it all comes through one Thunderbolt port and it's fantastic.
00:13:57 ◼ ► And I had problems with my Elgato video capture, HDMI capture thingies, whatever they're called,
00:14:10 ◼ ► Anyway, I had problems running those through the element hub that I didn't have running them through the TS3+.
00:14:20 ◼ ► Maybe OSs need a couple more updates before they're very well supported in some edge cases
00:14:26 ◼ ► or maybe the chipset has some limitation I'm unaware of because the TS3+ is a much older device
00:14:37 ◼ ► My only big complaint about this new class of Thunderbolt hubs, which finally has given me what I want
00:14:42 ◼ ► in the sense of take one Thunderbolt port and make more Thunderbolt ports with it, that's great.
00:15:01 ◼ ► You also have to provide I think at least 15 watts per port for Thunderbolt for the devices that are plugged into it.
00:15:15 ◼ ► And so it's one of those big black rectangles that has the C13 plug on one end and the DC out on the other end.
00:15:22 ◼ ► And so you have one of those floating black blocks that is somewhere between the outlet and this thing
00:15:34 ◼ ► Maybe we can get a law passed that says that your product photography of your electronic device
00:15:43 ◼ ► Because this looks so small and elegant like so many things in our modern technology lives.
00:15:49 ◼ ► But oh, it's only small and elegant because they outsourced this giant ugly part of it to this thing that's going to sit outside of it.
00:16:06 ◼ ► And it is simplifying my connection situation because before I had two physical connections, one per monitor,
00:16:18 ◼ ► Now all of that in general use, podcasting aside, has dropped down to just the one connection.
00:16:23 ◼ ► Just from the computer to the hub and then everything else is taken care of from there, which is really nice.
00:16:28 ◼ ► This is part of the reason why... snark aside, this is part of the reason why I liked the LG 5K in the four minutes that it stayed working
00:16:34 ◼ ► was because it did similar things and it handled... I think it has three additional USB-C ports on the back
00:16:47 ◼ ► So anyway, I just wanted to give a quick update. I'm sure I will fabricate some sort of reason to bring this up again next week.
00:17:00 ◼ ► This is a good question. This is a nice little hack that I... or not a hack, but a nice little tip that I came up on recently.
00:17:06 ◼ ► So C13, it's that three-prong AC plug that you plug one end of it into the wall and you plug the other end into a desktop PC power supply
00:17:16 ◼ ► or lots of other electronics that has the three big AC pins arranged in a little triangle.
00:17:25 ◼ ► That's called a C13. Well, I think the other end is a C14, but the wire end of it is a C13.
00:17:36 ◼ ► including the wall to big power block cable of almost everything that uses a big power block,
00:17:43 ◼ ► therefore you can go on like Amazon or whatever and get standard cables that have that same end.
00:17:54 ◼ ► Or you can get splitters or you can get a cable that has one wall plug and comes out to three C13 plugs.
00:18:02 ◼ ► So if you have to power like multiple devices in the same location, you can run it all through one plug.
00:18:12 ◼ ► Be safe about that stuff. But most of the things that use these plugs are not like super high-water devices.
00:18:17 ◼ ► So, for instance, one of the things we use this for, as part of my YouTube streaming setup for our games,
00:18:32 ◼ ► And each of them takes a C13. And we all want to play in the same location and there's one outlet nearby.
00:18:38 ◼ ► Well, a nice clean way to clean up those cables is to have a regular AC, NEMA 15, whatever,
00:18:51 ◼ ► And I plug it in boom, boom, boom to the three power supplies for the laptops and have them all running through one outlet.
00:19:00 ◼ ► it's still very much within all the limits of everything that it's rated for and so it works out very well.
00:19:04 ◼ ► So, hot little tip, if you want to clean up some of your wiring, you probably have like 15 of those wall AC to C13 black cables
00:19:17 ◼ ► Throw them all away and buy some that are like exactly the lengths you need. It's so much nicer.
00:19:26 ◼ ► I don't know, man, the power supply, like Mark was saying, the power supply for this breakout box uses it.
00:19:31 ◼ ► I'm surprised. I'm surprised it didn't use the, I don't know what the name of it is, but you know the one that looks like a three leaf clover, you know that one?
00:19:41 ◼ ► Yeah, lots of things that are smaller. Like I imagine a power brick, why would a power brick have this giant thing on it?
00:19:47 ◼ ► It does. And that little, the three leaf clover one is, I forget, I don't know the name of that one, but that's also a standard.
00:19:53 ◼ ► Yeah, and so you could do similar things if you happen to have multiple devices that use that or you know, you want to get different cable lengths.
00:20:01 ◼ ► And there's the two leaf, the two leaf clover, the one that looks like the three leaf clover, but it's just the two side by side.
00:20:10 ◼ ► And you know what Apple TV does? They put the power supply in the computer, or in the box.
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00:22:13 ◼ ► There's a couple of people pointing out limitations in the weird synology that Marco bought that he talked about last episode.
00:22:20 ◼ ► Apparently, according to Squozin, the J-series synologies cannot use BTRFS. They're EXT4 only.
00:22:38 ◼ ► But if that's true, that means the answer to the question I asked last week, Marco, what file system do you use?
00:22:47 ◼ ► I don't know why they would. Maybe there's like a CPU limitation and BTRFS is more CPU intense.
00:23:14 ◼ ► So you can't get two more 18 terabyte drives and put them in here, apparently, or I guess you could, but you can't address all the space.
00:23:22 ◼ ► So what probably happened, what I'm guessing, is when they were testing and qualifying this unit, the biggest hard disk you could get was 16 terabytes.
00:23:29 ◼ ► It has four bays. So they're like, all right, we tested it with four 16 terabyte disks.
00:23:46 ◼ ► Maybe, but you did say that the quota thing wouldn't let you set quotas higher than four gigabytes.
00:23:54 ◼ ► And I would actually guess that the lack of butter FS support might, you know, this J series of these 2020 model synologies, I think they have a different processor architecture.
00:24:06 ◼ ► Like, I think the new ones are all these fancy ARM chips. I think this uses some kind of low-end Intel thing.
00:24:11 ◼ ► Yeah, it's like Realtek something. I looked that up last week and I was like, huh, it's not even an Intel chip or anything.
00:24:21 ◼ ► Linux is running on it, right? And BTRFS is part of Linux. And I can't imagine the processor would stop using it.
00:24:32 ◼ ► I think it's that, like, maybe Synology doesn't have their, like, maybe they forked their software stack and, like, when they change architectures and they're just not going to update the software on this to that level.
00:24:44 ◼ ► Or they don't want to test that package on this old processor or on this low-end product or whatever.
00:24:48 ◼ ► Yeah, when BTRFS first came to Synology, it was the question of, like, oh, will our old ones be able to do it?
00:24:53 ◼ ► And for a while, I think they couldn't, but then eventually they could. So maybe this will change in the future. But anyway, there you go.
00:24:59 ◼ ► Continuing on, there's a quote in the show notes that none of you can see, but the quote is as follows.
00:25:18 ◼ ► I put it, was Marco going to put in a movie reference? He's seen, like, three movies and he doesn't remember them.
00:25:22 ◼ ► I thought it was, like, a quotation from you or Tiff or something like that. Or from Marco or Tiff or something like that.
00:25:37 ◼ ► Anyway, this is about Marco's jugs of water. Many people wrote in, surprisingly, in addition to all the sand driving and off-roading tips, lots of people wrote in to say,
00:25:48 ◼ ► "Hey, I had water in one of those one-gallon US milk jug things in some location in my house and it spontaneously started leaking."
00:25:59 ◼ ► And lots of people said, "And it wasn't hot in there and it wasn't cold and it wasn't weird, it was just plain old room temperature place."
00:26:07 ◼ ► Basically the bottom line is that these water jugs that are, you know, gallon milk jugs or whatever, whatever they're made from nowadays, they don't stand up to long-term storage.
00:26:18 ◼ ► If you put liquid in them, even if it's just plain water and you put it anywhere, eventually they will spring a leak.
00:26:24 ◼ ► So that makes much more sense to me than Marco's theory that his SSDs were getting so hot in his little unventilated closet that somehow it was like melting the jug or whatever.
00:26:39 ◼ ► They're made to last just long enough for the expiration date of the milk and then they just go kablooey.
00:26:43 ◼ ► Yeah, and I was curious, so when you go to the store to buy distilled water, it has expiration dates on it.
00:26:49 ◼ ► And I've always wondered why, and maybe this is the reason. Maybe it's because they just know the container might leak a few months after this date and so you might as well just get rid of it from the stores and not cause problems.
00:27:00 ◼ ► One person also had a theory of why it was indented. The idea is that they get a pinhole leak and water can seep out of the pinhole leak but air can't get back in.
00:27:19 ◼ ► It was a theory presented in email. I passed no judgement on it other than to say at least it's a theory that you can test about the explanation for the dented part of the thing.
00:27:26 ◼ ► It's just like breathable fabrics. It's like where it kind of seems impossible. Like, wait, you're going to keep my warmth in but you're going to somehow let sweat not happen? Like, how is this going to work? And you're going to also keep rain out?
00:27:38 ◼ ► The moral of the story is, if you need to store water for any period of time in your house more than just a few days or a week or whatever, do not use essentially disposable gallon milk or water jugs from the supermarket.
00:27:57 ◼ ► A very quick clarification with regard to the forthcoming LG or maybe Apple display featuring some sort of Apple silicon. Back in July, 9to5Mac had an article about this and a brief quotation from that article.
00:28:11 ◼ ► However, 9to5Mac has now learned from sources familiar with the matter that Apple is internally testing a new external display with a dedicated A13 chip and also neural engine. So I bring this up to clarify what people are thinking or at least what 9to5Mac is thinking is inside these displays.
00:28:28 ◼ ► Again, I've never seen a real good theory offered for what the SOC inside here would be doing. I mean, A13 is like, well, it's what we've got on hand. It's a chip that we've made and it can do what we need to do. But what do you need to do exactly?
00:28:41 ◼ ► Is it going to run FaceTime face recognition? Is it going to be a helper GPU somehow? Is it just going to run the display? Is it going to run a fancy compression decompression algorithm for the signaling to use some weird custom thing?
00:28:53 ◼ ► It's a general purpose. An A13 can do all sorts of things. It's got video encoders and decoders. It's got all sorts of stuff in there. But I don't think any of the rumors have said, and here's what they're using it for and why they're using an A13 and not some other chip.
00:29:08 ◼ ► Still kind of mysterious to me. I'll have to wait and see when they release these displays. If they have some kind of chip in them, they can explain what is it doing for us? And the thing with the A13 is you get the A13 and you get everything that's in it. So whether or not you're using that neural engine that's in there, whether or not you're using an H.264, H.265 encoder decoder, they're in there, right? That's the deal, right?
00:29:29 ◼ ► And surely if they put a chip like that in there, they're not going to use every single part of the chip because some parts of it just are not relevant. Like maybe the secure enclave isn't relevant or maybe it is relevant if they're doing face ID on it or maybe the SIMD engine is or isn't relevant. I don't know. We'll wait and see.
00:29:46 ◼ ► But honestly, I kind of hate these rumors. It's like, Apple, you're overcomplicating and we just want a monitor. We don't need an A13 in there.
00:29:54 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean my guess, if this is real and if these monitors do A, come out ever and B, have something like an A13 chip in them, I'm guessing the role it plays is something really boring that we might not even, it might not even be obvious in their announcement and release and they might only find on teardown, like, wait, there's an A13 in here doing something.
00:30:16 ◼ ► So, you know, things like that, it could be, you know, obviously it could be more public things like face ID. I think it's more likely to be something like, you know, maybe they're doing a custom compression algorithm to fit 120 hertz over the cable, you know, like bandwidth wise and the A13 decodes it.
00:30:34 ◼ ► You know, like, I don't think it would be something like an integrated GPU because the A13 is too old for that, for that kind of, you know, for a large new screen that might come out in a year or two, the A13 seems to be grossly underpowered to be the GPU for that screen.
00:30:47 ◼ ► So it probably is not that. So it's probably some other like boring thing, a timing controller to glue two panels together logically, you know, something like that.
00:30:57 ◼ ► I don't know enough about it to really speculate on anything more specific than that, but I'm guessing it's going to be something boring if it's anything at all.
00:31:04 ◼ ► I would agree with that. Tangential question. We haven't had anyone write in with the mathematics behind 120 hertz at 5K, but I think the three of us tentatively agree that it seems like it's too much for Thunderbolt 4 as it exists today.
00:31:17 ◼ ► That's not a fact. It's just our theory. So let's assume though that it is fact. Let's assume for the sake of conversation that 5K 120 hertz is too much data. You can't carry it over Thunderbolt.
00:31:27 ◼ ► And I know both of you have mentioned, you know, display or some sort of compression just moments ago.
00:31:31 ◼ ► And a chroma subsampling, which we need to point out that we went to the thing with chroma subsampling, which essentially throwing information that you're not going to get back because it's perceptually not interesting.
00:31:39 ◼ ► With chroma subsampling, you can definitely fit it, but you are starting to lose stuff that you will miss if you're looking at text on a computer screen that you wouldn't miss if you were looking at a TV show.
00:31:50 ◼ ► Right. So for the sake of discussion, let's say that Apple is not satisfied with any mechanism that has it on a single cable.
00:31:58 ◼ ► Do either of you envision a world where there's like some new XDR, maybe it's 5K, maybe it's 6K at 120 hertz, who knows?
00:32:06 ◼ ► But one way or another, it requires two physical cables to plug into a Mac. Do you see that as even a possibility that Apple would consider?
00:32:14 ◼ ► On the Mac Pro, yeah. If it was 8K, if it was an 8K screen at 120 hertz on the Mac Pro and it took two cables, that's the only machine that Apple would find two cables except for one.
00:32:22 ◼ ► Because the whole point is it's a giant monster. Like it's a huge thing, everything about it is big, it's got all sorts of ports and whatever.
00:32:27 ◼ ► And if the only way you can get 8K, 120 hertz, HDR, blah, blah, blah on the big giant Mac Pro thing is with two cables, then yeah, Apple would do two cables.
00:32:37 ◼ ► Obviously they would want to avoid it, but I think that is a bridge they would definitely cross on the Mac Pro if indeed they're trying to even make an 8K.
00:32:46 ◼ ► I'm going to say no. I don't think Apple would ever do two cables, modern Apple at least as we know them today.
00:33:03 ◼ ► Yeah, right. So either they would just wait until the next highest bandwidth standard comes out and use that and leave this massive hole in the market until then.
00:33:12 ◼ ► Or they would develop their own custom connector and cable that maybe logically it would just be two Thunderbolt 4 channels in the cable, but I think they would go their own way before they would do a two cable solution.
00:33:27 ◼ ► Well, if they did, when I say two cables, yes. If they make it like a single thicker cable, then inside it has two cables. I'm going to still call that the two cable solution.
00:33:35 ◼ ► Basically the idea is are you implementing something yourself? Because a lot of these things already support two cables. Like if I did a 5K iMac, I think internally essentially it had "two cables," like two data paths.
00:33:50 ◼ ► So if they do that, the advantage of just taking two Thunderbolt tables and wrapping them in a bigger rubber thing is you don't have to come up with new protocols. You don't have to invent anything. PCs do that today. Apple itself has done it internally, so it's not as big a lift.
00:34:07 ◼ ► But honestly, I haven't even seen any rumors of 8K. And also I think 120Hz is probably the least relevant to the Mac Pro, believe it or not. It's more like a consumer-facing thing where everything gets smooth, whereas there's not a lot of video mastering done at frame rates higher than 60.
00:34:25 ◼ ► Probably not even higher than 30 most of the time. Again, unless you're Peter Jackson. High frame rate movies didn't seem to catch on. So I think there's actually less of a demand at the highest of the high end for Apple to field a 120Hz monitor.
00:34:40 ◼ ► And if they just did 8K at 60, I don't think you need any new tech with that except for maybe DisplayPort 2.0. New standards come out all the time.
00:34:48 ◼ ► In Thunderbolt 4, I saw some people writing about Thunderbolt 3. Remember, Thunderbolt 4 is no faster than Thunderbolt 3. All it is is Thunderbolt 3 with more requirements to support whatever the latest USB 4 stuff is.
00:35:00 ◼ ► It's 40 gigabits per second on both of them. Thunderbolt 5, the rumors of that is that it's significantly faster. And that would take care of all of Apple's needs as well.
00:35:10 ◼ ► It's just a question of how long these things take. Intel was presenting some behind closed doors thing that had some slides about Thunderbolt 5, which means Thunderbolt 5 could show up. I don't know what the timeline is, but it could show up in a year or two years.
00:35:22 ◼ ► Someday, some Mac Pro left Thunderbolt 5. And maybe that's the time Apple chooses, like Margaret was saying, "Okay, now is the time to go 8K. Now is the time to go high airframe rate because Thunderbolt 5 can handle it."
00:35:33 ◼ ► If that's anywhere near on the horizon, they'll just wait for that before they do anything like that.
00:35:37 ◼ ► Agreed. Was there not a, like, cinema display? Was there not the Thunderbolt? Oh, no, the Thunderbolt display had like MagSafe and data. Is that what I'm thinking of?
00:35:45 ◼ ► Yeah, it was still quote-unquote one cable, but inside that cable was like five other cables.
00:35:51 ◼ ► I have the monitor to work. It's a 24-inch Apple LED cinema display. It has a MagSafe connector, a USB-A plug, and the video connection, which I think is Thunderbolt 2. It looks like mini DisplayPort.
00:36:07 ◼ ► The first one was just mini DisplayPort. And then they later made the Thunderbolt display.
00:36:14 ◼ ► Which they upgraded the port to Thunderbolt, and I think that let them drop the USB source cable.
00:36:24 ◼ ► I don't know. That's the only example I could think of where they had two connection points, but one of them was power and one of them was data. So you could excuse that, I guess? Although I still concur that I don't see that happening in today's Apple.
00:36:40 ◼ ► So Apple DisplayPort was the Apple proprietary one, which still was kind of DVI with extra wires in it, but it wasn't so clearly we just took multiple cables and wrapped them in a round thing.
00:36:50 ◼ ► And then for the Thunderbolt display and the LED cinema display, they didn't want to make another ADC. They didn't want to make another new thing.
00:36:58 ◼ ► So they said, "Well, we need all these things. Let's just wrap all the cables together with the existing standard."
00:37:02 ◼ ► So that USB-A cable was a straight-through USB-A thing that connected to a USB interface on the display, and the DisplayPort or Thunderbolt one went straight through, right?
00:37:12 ◼ ► I think that is more of a modern Apple solution. ADC was the last gasp of Apple saying, "We can make our own ports and our own protocols."
00:37:21 ◼ ► Because ADC was great. ADC was one cable to your Apple Cinema Display that gave everything power, data, and video. Sound familiar? But that didn't exist. They had to create it themselves.
00:37:32 ◼ ► And yes, granted, it was just kind of DVI with a bunch of other stuff mixed in, but they made their own connector and their own protocols to handle all of that.
00:37:39 ◼ ► I don't think Apple wants to do that anymore. They don't really need to. Thunderbolt basically handles all of that for them with the DisplayPort tunneling and all that other stuff.
00:37:46 ◼ ► So they'll just sort of keep up with the latest Thunderbolt standards and use them when they're ready.
00:37:54 ◼ ► We are sponsored this week by RevenueCat. Now if you are a developer and you've ever had to write in-app purchase handling code or subscription handling code on iOS, Android, or the web, you know that this is kind of a pain in the butt to write and to manage.
00:38:10 ◼ ► And you've got to keep up with the platforms and their requirements and everything. RevenueCat takes all that pain away.
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00:38:24 ◼ ► RevenueCat provides the payment infrastructure, the customer analytics, and the data integrations, and all of this gives you time back from writing this, frankly, pain in the butt code.
00:38:34 ◼ ► I've written a lot of this code, and it's a pain in the butt every single time. No one ever wants to spend their day writing or testing or validating in-app purchase code.
00:38:43 ◼ ► And RevenueCat takes that burden away from you. This gives you time back in your day to do anything else you want.
00:38:50 ◼ ► You don't have to worry about the edge cases, the updates across the platforms, all the little nitpicky details.
00:38:56 ◼ ► RevenueCat was created by developers for developers because they know what they actually needed.
00:39:01 ◼ ► And thousands of the world's best apps use RevenueCat to power their in-app purchases and subscriptions.
00:39:08 ◼ ► See for yourself, ask around. Frankly, I know lots of people who use RevenueCat, and I've heard only great things about it.
00:39:18 ◼ ► So see for yourself at RevenueCat.com to see why so many apps use RevenueCat to power their in-app purchases and subscriptions.
00:39:38 ◼ ► I think Marco made a mostly off-handed remark about how, I believe Marco, you had said you typically turn off the Attention Aware checkbox or whatever.
00:39:48 ◼ ► And I forget exactly the justification you used, but a friend of the show, Guy Rambo, wrote to say that to Guy, and I agree with him,
00:39:56 ◼ ► "The most important aspect of the Attention Aware setting is that the iPhone will not dim the display while you're actively looking at it."
00:40:01 ◼ ► So for example, if you're reading a long piece of text or watching something, it won't dim the display because it's looking at where your eyes are looking,
00:40:09 ◼ ► Additionally, the thing where it requires attention to expand notifications can be disabled on a per-app basis in notification settings.
00:40:18 ◼ ► So to recap, if your phone is sitting upright and using the default settings and you get a notification, it'll show messages.
00:40:25 ◼ ► And it might even show who it's from, but it won't show the text of the message until it unlocks by you looking at the phone.
00:40:32 ◼ ► So you might not have touched the phone, you've just looked at it, but it does the Face ID dance and it unlocks and it shows you the preview.
00:40:38 ◼ ► Well, apparently, on a per-app basis, I didn't verify this, but according to Guy, who knows his stuff, that you can actually turn that on and off per app, which is pretty cool.
00:40:47 ◼ ► The attention-aware stuff, I actually turned off the attention setting for Face ID unlock for my mother because she has vision problems.
00:40:55 ◼ ► And apparently her vision problems make it hard, make it more difficult for the phone to tell that she's looking at it, or maybe she's looking not directly at it.
00:41:04 ◼ ► Because the whole point of the attention thing is, if you look to the left of your phone, it won't unlock.
00:41:12 ◼ ► You have to be looking at your phone, so it's trying to tell where you're looking, not just that your eyes are open and you exist and have a magic face.
00:41:19 ◼ ► And I think it was causing Face ID to fail for my mother a lot of the time, so I just turned off the attention thing and I think the success rate has gone up.
00:41:37 ◼ ► So thank you to Oliver Ames, who wrote on Twitter the other day, "I got this gummy clear case that has MagSafe, it is fantastic."
00:41:46 ◼ ► And it is the Spigen brand, which is a pretty common phone case brand as far as I know, ultra-hybrid mag anti-yellowing technology compatible with MagSafe, and this case is so far fantastic.
00:42:01 ◼ ► So it combines the gummy clear case finish that I liked from the other case I had before with the big white, obviously very visible, because it's in a clear case, MagSafe magnet, very similar looking to Apple's clear case, but with the squishy finish instead of the hard.
00:42:21 ◼ ► So Apple's isn't squishy, I was going to say, if you like this case, why don't you just get the Apple one?
00:42:34 ◼ ► So what's great about this case, it's overall fairly similar to the one I had before, there's a couple of minor regressions.
00:42:42 ◼ ► One is that on the back corners of the case that are not the camera bump, they have these little raised ridges on the corners so that to try to make it sit more evenly on the desk.
00:42:55 ◼ ► I don't love those, I got used to them after like a day, but at first the feel of those was off-putting as I would feel the back of my phone, it's not smooth on the corners, you feel those scrapey corners, that's not great.
00:43:08 ◼ ► The other thing I don't like about it is that on the top ridge of the case, right around the top left corner of the phone, on the part of it, it says it's printed on the case, "Air Cushion Technology"
00:43:22 ◼ ► and it has a little triangle that's pointed towards the corner, showing these little bubble square things on the corners of the case.
00:43:30 ◼ ► So I don't usually see this because it's on the edge, like it's on the vertical part of the case, not the big flat part, but I don't know why they had to print that, that's stupid.
00:43:41 ◼ ► Same reason they had to cut a hole in the side of Nike Air Jordan so you could see the air thing, because when the air thing was in there but you couldn't see it, it didn't matter.
00:43:54 ◼ ► But anyway, other than the air cushion technology printing on the corner and those weird little corner things on the back, this is great and I'm very happy with this case.
00:44:04 ◼ ► I've kept it on now for about a week maybe and I've gone through a lot. The MagSafe is great, it's nice and strong, the finish of the case feels well, it has that same grip that I love from the other Squishy Clear case.
00:44:18 ◼ ► So overall, this is great and it was only $20. So the clear winner for my iPhone case saga, the new clear winner rather, and yeah, I'm very happy with it.
00:44:33 ◼ ► I can't believe you can handle those ridge things on the corner, that would be a deal breaker for me.
00:44:37 ◼ ► It almost was, like the very first day I'm like, oh no, I don't know if I can live with this, but then after a day I ignored them.
00:44:48 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, it's just rubbery plastic, you get a razor blade, you just have to be real careful and you can, you know.
00:44:53 ◼ ► Alrighty, let's move right along and macOS 12.2 beta is out and there's a couple of interesting things here.
00:45:16 ◼ ► Yeah, I keep hearing stories about, you know, improvements to scrolling in Safari and I was like, didn't they fix that in 12.1?
00:45:23 ◼ ► But in all these things it's like under certain circumstances, depending on what the application is doing, whether it asks to have a maximum frame rate of 120 or not,
00:45:33 ◼ ► but it sounds like on 12.2 maybe it's just like any webpage, when you scroll it, it'll do 120 hertz.
00:45:48 ◼ ► Yeah, well, and so actually I wanted to ask Marco, I guess you're not often living on the onboard display of your new fancy MacBook Pro,
00:45:57 ◼ ► but when I use my new fancy onboard display of my MacBook Pro, I feel like I don't notice the 120 hertz that often, which we've talked about.
00:46:06 ◼ ► And I think the only place I regularly notice it is when I'm doing the three finger swipey left and right to go between spaces,
00:46:20 ◼ ► And the real question I wanted to ask both of you actually is what do you think the real advantage of variable refresh rate is?
00:46:31 ◼ ► I think the best thing that variable refresh rate gets me is potentially longer battery life,
00:46:42 ◼ ► I can't give numbers about this, I've never tried to force it to stay at 120 hertz or anything like that,
00:46:49 ◼ ► And even though I like the 120 hertz, I don't even care about that as much as I care about the potential for more battery life.
00:46:56 ◼ ► But Marco, do you notice it? What do you think is the real advantage here? Tell me your thoughts.
00:47:24 ◼ ► And it's upstairs, I mentioned it has basically replaced my iPad that I was using as an upstairs/kitchen computer for most of the time.
00:47:32 ◼ ► It's also doing FaceTime calls for workouts and stuff like that, so that computer bounces around the house.
00:47:39 ◼ ► So wonderful in fact that I did end up selling my MacBook Air, my M1 MacBook Air, which I loved,
00:47:54 ◼ ► That's why if there was an XDR released next year that supports 120Hz somehow over a cable,
00:48:02 ◼ ► I don't think I would be that tempted to upgrade to it unless there were other major gains to it.
00:48:08 ◼ ► Because frankly, it's something that I notice a lot on touch devices, but I don't notice it a lot on Macs.
00:48:16 ◼ ► Because it makes sense, on touch devices you're doing a lot of direct manipulation with your finger against that screen,
00:48:23 ◼ ► pushing around the content, that's something that I think you're going to notice a lot.
00:48:29 ◼ ► As I mentioned when the new iPhones came out, it makes so much sense on a touch device,
00:48:46 ◼ ► even when you scroll with the mouse or a trackpad, you're limited by the sample rates of those devices,
00:49:05 ◼ ► Maybe in the future that will change, but for now, I'm glad I have it in case it becomes useful,
00:49:17 ◼ ► As a long-time Mac user, you're killing me with this whole "Oh, the Mac doesn't have direct manipulation."
00:49:22 ◼ ► Because when the Mac was introduced, the whole point of the Mac was "Hey, it has direct manipulation!"
00:49:37 ◼ ► Now, in the modern smartphone era, and in particular on this program, we've had many past episodes where we say
00:49:41 ◼ ► "Well, the Mac doesn't have direct manipulation like the phone does, I mean, you don't touch the screen!"
00:49:49 ◼ ► I would still say that they both have direct manipulation, but one does not have a touchscreen, that is definitely true.
00:49:54 ◼ ► When we talked about promotion on the iPhones, originally, I think one of the points you brought up was
00:50:08 ◼ ► the whole notion that you're staring straight at it, it's right in front of your face, and your thumb is scrolling.
00:50:35 ◼ ► "When I hit page down, don't animate from where you are to one page lower, just immediately go there."
00:50:41 ◼ ► Because that's the way page down used to work, and it is faster, and it's like "I don't need the animation,
00:50:48 ◼ ► I can't read it when it goes by anyway. I'm not confused by the fact that the display just updated immediately.
00:50:58 ◼ ► But that is not the default, and it may be difficult to get that back, and it scrolls really really fast.
00:51:04 ◼ ► But anyway, all this to say is on the Mac, I think we're not accustomed to trying to read while we scroll.
00:51:13 ◼ ► On most Mac displays, you can get more or less a full page, or almost a full page worth of text in the vertical space.
00:51:19 ◼ ► And then when you want to go see more, maybe hit page down, or click in the scroll bar area,
00:51:28 ◼ ► And then you just let it go by, and then you read, so you're less likely to try to read it in motion.
00:51:33 ◼ ► So 120Hz, I think the main advantage it has, other than maybe looking nicer at something,
00:51:41 ◼ ► And I think there is less need for things to be legible while they're in motion, based on our habits of using the Mac.
00:51:48 ◼ ► And then of course, Casey brought up battery life, which is probably the biggest saving for anything that is portable or battery powered.
00:51:53 ◼ ► But I would also throw in variable refresh rate lets you view video while refreshing the screen at the frame rate of the video.
00:52:02 ◼ ► If the video is 24 or 30 frames per second, you can update the screen at exactly 24 or 30 frames per second.
00:52:16 ◼ ► if you have a fixed refresh screen like most people do, it's updating at 60Hz all the time,
00:52:22 ◼ ► and it can be difficult to get the motion to look right if you're looking at some content that's an odd frame rate,
00:52:27 ◼ ► that doesn't divide nicely into 60Hz. I'm not saying this right, but how long do you show frame 1 and frame 2 and frame 3?
00:52:37 ◼ ► If you're doing it 30 frames per second, it's easy. You show frame 1 for two screen refreshes,
00:52:43 ◼ ► frame 2 for another two screen refreshes, that's 30. It's an even multiple of 60 or whatever.
00:52:57 ◼ ► There's all sorts of things like how to decide how many refresh cycles to show each frame to try to make the motion smooth.
00:53:04 ◼ ► The bottom line is you can't show it for half a frame. You have to show it for 2 frames or 3 frames or 4 frames,
00:53:14 ◼ ► But if you have a variable refresh screen, you can just refresh the screen 24 times a second,
00:53:21 ◼ ► There are other problems with motion and LEDs and persistence and all sorts of other issues having to do with display,
00:53:36 ◼ ► and setting aside high refresh was important if you're trying to make things legible while they're in motion,
00:53:59 ◼ ► I did not install this beta, but I almost did, because I was so frustrated by all these stories saying,
00:54:04 ◼ ► "Oh, is there going to be a native app now?" And finally someone put up screenshots, and I was like,
00:54:09 ◼ ► "Eh." So maybe they just took the existing app, which is Music, which used to be iTunes, with his guts ripped out,
00:54:18 ◼ ► and some things that used to be web views now maybe aren't web views, but it's such a hodgepodge.
00:54:31 ◼ ► and then based on that XML, it would render a UI, and then it eventually changed to use WebKit to render web views,
00:54:50 ◼ ► but it still doesn't seem to me to be the thing that we all want, which is, imagine if Music was a new app,
00:54:58 ◼ ► I'm not going to say written from scratch, because that's not necessarily what we want,
00:55:01 ◼ ► we just want an app that we look at and say, "This is a good app for listening to music."
00:55:17 ◼ ► For a while, Notes was unspectacular but not that great, and then they basically redid Notes,
00:55:23 ◼ ► and the new Notes app is not the world's most feature-rich application, but it got way better.
00:55:37 ◼ ► if there was a really good single-person development shop and they made an app, would it be like this?
00:55:58 ◼ ► to hit is like, "Can this big company make an app as good as a single really good independent Mac developer who cares about it?"
00:56:09 ◼ ► It should be, "Well, of course Apple can do things way better than any single developer or small development team or whatever."
00:56:20 ◼ ► the built-in apps that Apple ships, a lot of them are not up to the level of small independent developer team that's really good at the Mac.
00:56:29 ◼ ► Some of them have surpassed it. Obviously, no small individual developer could make Safari.
00:56:37 ◼ ► Many people have tried. People continue to try. Safari is actually pretty darn good, right?
00:56:47 ◼ ► because there are independent developers who make music player apps, most of which are better in fundamental ways than music,
00:56:53 ◼ ► if only in fewer bugs, right? You know, and faster and less cruft and less ancient history.
00:56:59 ◼ ► So I don't know if this Mac OS 12.2 beta is going to bring us a music app that will be more--
00:57:05 ◼ ► any more satisfactory than it is now, but maybe things are moving in the right direction.
00:57:14 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't have high hopes for this being a meaningful change, because if you actually read the article and see what they're actually changing,
00:57:23 ◼ ► and, you know, it's using this web backend still, and it's just like the rendering layer on top of the web backend in the app
00:57:35 ◼ ► Well, that's fine, but all Apple devices that are remotely modern are able to render the contents of a web view very quickly and responsibly.
00:57:53 ◼ ► The shortcoming we've had with the music app and similar apps from Apple recently is that the care and effort aren't there,
00:58:11 ◼ ► And I don't see how this changes any of that, except maybe they're putting more effort into it.
00:58:16 ◼ ► But, alright, I mean, that's good. The effort they've gotten so far in the last decade has been somewhat minimal and very misguided.
00:58:26 ◼ ► As a daily user of the app that was previously known as iTunes and is now known as Music on the Mac,
00:58:34 ◼ ► this app is only getting buggier and buggier and harder to use for its original purpose of "I have music in these MP3 files. Please play them."
00:58:44 ◼ ► And more confusing, too. There are so many places in the UI where there are so many different ways to view music,
00:58:52 ◼ ► and what you can do from each of the views is just like, it's historical, it's an accident of history.
00:58:57 ◼ ► What can I do from this view? It's like, well, you have to understand when this view was created and what it used to look like and what view it replaced,
00:59:03 ◼ ► and why is this under the right-click menu and this under the three dots menu and this not available at all in this view?
00:59:16 ◼ ► Anytime you looked at a playlist, you looked in the browser view, it was the list view.
00:59:22 ◼ ► Now, music has like 17 different views, all of which are subtly different from each other.
00:59:26 ◼ ► Very often I'm like, is this feature not in the music app anymore? But it's like, no, you have to be in just this right view.
00:59:31 ◼ ► And remember, it's not under right-click. You have to click over here, but then it's under the three dots,
00:59:35 ◼ ► but you have to click in this area. Lots of mystery meat navigation, lots of like, I wonder what will happen if I click here.
00:59:40 ◼ ► Can I hit the delete key? Can I drag this? It's incredibly confusing. It's like a house that's been added onto.
00:59:48 ◼ ► It's like a house that was gutted because they took out, we were begging for them to take out all the baggage.
00:59:52 ◼ ► And some of the baggage ended up in Finder for the singing stuff, and obviously they took out podcasts and the TV stuff came out of it.
01:00:00 ◼ ► And I think that was a move in the right direction, but still what you're left with is a house that was recently gutted that has been added onto 17 different times.
01:00:08 ◼ ► And every new view they added to music, isn't this new modern view? Doesn't it look so much better than that old, crufty one?
01:00:14 ◼ ► It just makes me wish we could go back to just having one list view that had all the features on it that worked consistently and fast.
01:00:21 ◼ ► Yeah, because that's, like, I often think, like, back in, you know, the Stone Ages, when I used to use a PC and I used Winamp as my player,
01:00:39 ◼ ► And I could just hit J and start typing, and it was like a quick search, and you could jump right to whatever you were looking for.
01:00:45 ◼ ► And that navigation was so fast. Now, granted, my collection was a lot smaller back then and had way less fish, but it was so incredibly fast and easy to navigate.
01:00:56 ◼ ► Everything the app could do was visible or findable, it was findable, at least, very quickly.
01:01:10 ◼ ► I feel like this is one area where what we have now, if you look at the capabilities, I mean, it's not even, you can't even imagine back then.
01:01:19 ◼ ► Like, if you would have told me 20 years ago that in, you know, the year 2021, I could literally, I could pay some small, very small, relatively speaking, some small monthly fee,
01:01:30 ◼ ► and be able to legally and pretty much instantly listen to any music, like anything that was available from any major label or, you know, many indie labels,
01:01:41 ◼ ► like most available released music, I could just type in the name of or even just shout into the air and something would start playing.
01:01:51 ◼ ► Like, that would be incredible, but everything should be better than it was 20 years ago. Like, it shouldn't be like, well, we're better in certain areas, but in some like really core critical areas, things have gotten worse.
01:02:05 ◼ ► Like, yeah, we have these amazing capabilities, we now have effectively infinite storage space, or we can stream things whenever we want, not even use any of our local storage space.
01:02:14 ◼ ► So we have all this amazing technological capability, but a lot of these basics of, you know, can I just quickly get to the thing I'm looking for and play it?
01:02:24 ◼ ► Or can I star rate something in my list and not have it three seconds later, jump to the bottom of the list because something changed in the list and it's at a table reload?
01:02:39 ◼ ► Or like, show me where this file is in the Finder, right? It's a file that I downloaded, let's say it's a podcast file in the podcast app and I've downloaded it.
01:02:46 ◼ ► I'm just so accustomed to be able to search a Reveal in Finder because maybe you want to pull that MP3 file out and do something with it or whatever.
01:02:55 ◼ ► Yeah, this drives me nuts about photos. All the time I want to get to the, because I'll use photos.
01:03:01 ◼ ► A lot of times I want to get to the original file. Now, truth be told, I really don't need to. I can just copy in photos and it does the right thing.
01:03:10 ◼ ► But muscle memory, and because I'm an old man, it makes me want to get to the original file.
01:03:15 ◼ ► And every time I go looking and looking and looking, trying to find the Show in Finder option somewhere and can never find it, only to remember, no, this is its own magical container.
01:03:26 ◼ ► You can do Export on Modified Original. And in Photos, you can always do Export on Modified Original. Photos is much better to give an example of an app.
01:03:33 ◼ ► Photos basically has one view with all the features on it where you can show different sized thumbnails.
01:03:38 ◼ ► iTunes, or music, does not. It has many different layers of views. Some of them let you Reveal in Finder, some of them don't.
01:03:44 ◼ ► And the podcast app, since it's an entirely new app, is really stingy about Revealing in Finder because it really just doesn't want you to know where those files are at all.
01:03:52 ◼ ► You know, it's funny, Marco, a minute ago you said you can listen to almost any music you want instantly.
01:03:58 ◼ ► That confirms for me that you must be a Spotify user because I can tell you that nothing in Apple Music happens instantly.
01:04:04 ◼ ► It is so dog-slow. And it still drives me nuts. For the most part, I'm fine on Apple Music. We've belabored at this point in the past. I'm not going to build on it now.
01:04:18 ◼ ► As much as I love to poop on Apple services, which is one of my favorite pastimes these days, it is so bananas to me that iMessage, for me anyway, is extremely reliable and almost always instant.
01:04:36 ◼ ► And iCloud is, for me anyways, extremely reliable and almost always instant. But holy cow, Apple Music is so slow and so inconsistent and fails so frequently.
01:04:51 ◼ ► I don't understand. Does Apple issue a direct fiber optic line directly from the spaceship to every employee's house?
01:05:00 ◼ ► Especially for the last year and a half when they've all been home. How do they not run into this and get infuriated by it? I don't understand it. It's so frustrating.
01:05:09 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm with you. And I'm actually not usually using Spotify because their app is garbage. And I don't usually need to stream music. Usually I'm listening to my own collection.
01:05:17 ◼ ► And that's all in Apple Music. Because iTunes. But it is so frustrating to me whenever I have Apple Music do some kind of weird failure.
01:05:26 ◼ ► And so this integrates with so many other of Apple's weak points. Siri, web services, it's all interconnected with the experience of using Apple Music.
01:05:36 ◼ ► And it's frustrating because Apple makes such amazing stuff in so many areas. And it's not that they don't have the talent or the resources to do this well.
01:05:48 ◼ ► They easily have the resources. And if they don't already have the talent, which I think is unlikely, I think they probably do already have the talent, but they could get the talent.
01:05:57 ◼ ► And chances are they probably already have it. And it's just not being managed correctly to achieve greatness in these areas for some reason.
01:06:06 ◼ ► And we don't know enough about their structure to say why exactly. But I bet a lot of it is historic. In the sense that there was a lot of weird cruft and baggage coming from the iTunes era.
01:06:18 ◼ ► Trying to modernize that over time and everything. But, jeez, what year is it? Enough is enough. There's no good excuse for why Apple Music and Siri and the music apps, why these things are still mediocre.
01:06:34 ◼ ► There is no good excuse. I'm sure everyone in the company has their reasons. Either they are delusional and think they are extremely competitive, which would be truly delusional, honestly.
01:06:45 ◼ ► Or they think they have good reasons for why they have to be the way they are. And I'm telling you there's no good reason. I'm sure they have lots of bad ones. But there's no good reason.
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01:08:14 ◼ ► So in the tradition of ATP, we've had something in the show notes for what feels like a year or two now. I think it's actually been a few months.
01:08:21 ◼ ► But it was something that I hadn't noticed until I saw it in the show notes. And it was a very delightful article that was a pretty quick read.
01:08:28 ◼ ► And it's called "File Not Found. A Generation That Grew Up With Google Is Forcing Professors To Rethink Their Lesson Plans."
01:08:36 ◼ ► The short, short version of this article is college professors are realizing that kids in college today genuinely don't really understand what a file is or where one can find a file.
01:08:50 ◼ ► Like, this is not them trying to be too cool for school or anything. They really just don't have any experience with this and don't understand it.
01:08:59 ◼ ► Catherine Garland, an astrophysicist, started seeing the problem in 2017. She was teaching an engineering course and her students were using simulation software to model turbines for jet engines.
01:09:08 ◼ ► She laid out the assignment clearly, but student after student was calling her over for help. They were all getting to the same error message. The program couldn't find their files.
01:09:15 ◼ ► Garland thought it would be an easy fix. She asked each student where they'd saved their project. Could they be on the desktop, perhaps in the shared drive?
01:09:25 ◼ ► Not only did they not know where their files were saved, they didn't understand the question.
01:09:29 ◼ ► Gradually, Garland came to the same realization that many of her fellow educators have reached in the past four years.
01:09:34 ◼ ► The concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations' understanding of computers, is gibberish to many modern students.
01:09:46 ◼ ► Fine, whatever, whatever, whatever. Sorry I dropped the "e" guys. Anyway, the point is, I'm withering away to dust and dying as we speak because, oh my gosh, I've never felt more old.
01:09:59 ◼ ► Well, I don't think you need to. Part of the reason I put this thing in, this article in here, is because I feel like this, it sounds like a depressing article.
01:10:09 ◼ ► All the kids these days, they grow up in the school system and they use Google Docs because Google really dominates the school system and everyone knows in Google Docs you never need to save because it's just always saving.
01:10:18 ◼ ► You don't really have to deal with the file system and you don't even have to pick where you save things.
01:10:23 ◼ ► Yes, you can make folders and organize things in Google Drive, but a lot of people don't do that.
01:10:26 ◼ ► Apparently, for this lesson plan, they were having actual files with whatever this weird modeling software is and the kids couldn't handle it.
01:10:32 ◼ ► So it seems like, oh, the kids these days, they don't understand files and folders and now we're old.
01:10:39 ◼ ► This is not exactly an exhaustively researched thing, it's just a fun article with some anecdotes from people. So I'm going to counter it with my own fun anecdotes from me.
01:10:53 ◼ ► The even sadder reality is there has never been a point in the history of personal computers where the average person has understand files and folders.
01:11:05 ◼ ► It is not worse now than it used to be. It has always been this bad. Yes, even college students. Yes, even smart people.
01:11:13 ◼ ► No, because I've been helping people with computers my whole life, starting from the very first computer that had icons, files, and folders that anyone was likely to see in the 80s.
01:11:24 ◼ ► Some people get it and some people don't. And I don't think those percentages have changed and maybe will ever change.
01:11:33 ◼ ► And it's not because it's a complicated concept, it's just you have always been able to get by without ever really grokking this at a fundamental level.
01:11:46 ◼ ► You could use a Mac, a Windows 95 PC or whatever with just enough understanding to get the thing done that you wanted to get done.
01:11:56 ◼ ► And you may think, isn't it even less necessary today? We use Google Docs, Auto Saves, and all that other stuff. I don't think so, at least not on personal computers.
01:12:06 ◼ ► Maybe on phones you could say that, but even phones and iPads you've got the files thing or whatever. No matter what the computing device is, there is still a file system under there.
01:12:16 ◼ ► And there is sometimes you have to deal with it. But you can get by without really ever understanding or engaging with it at anything below a surface level.
01:12:30 ◼ ► And that leads to situations, and it's always led to situations where, where did you save your file? Oh, I don't remember.
01:12:36 ◼ ► That's not a thing that happened because of Google. People have always been saving their things and not knowing where they saved it.
01:12:42 ◼ ► The only thing that has ever saved them is well written applications that remember the last directory that the open save dialog box was on.
01:12:52 ◼ ► And so when they hit open, it's right, they don't know where it is, but wherever they hit save when they hit open, it opens to the same place and they can find it again.
01:13:00 ◼ ► Or the thing that we talked about on this show a million times and everyone is familiar with, why does everyone save everything on a desktop?
01:13:06 ◼ ► It's the one place quote unquote in the file system that people feel comfortable that they can find because it's literally on the screen in their face.
01:13:13 ◼ ► Right. And that's why people have crap all over the desktops. You know, that's one of these sort of coping mechanisms, let's say for people who don't understand or want to engage with the file system is I don't know about all that mumbo jumbo, but I know what the desktop is.
01:13:27 ◼ ► I can see it right here and I put stuff on the desktop, it's on the desktop and I always know in an open save dialog box, I figured out on whatever operating system I'm using how to get to the desktop, which is the one place that I know about and that's where I put my crap.
01:13:39 ◼ ► And then I see it on the screen. Right. And that's enough for people to get by. That's why people, things are all the top levels, everyone's Google Drive.
01:13:47 ◼ ► It's whatever the default save location is, that's where the stuff is and when they go look for it. Some people also learn that you can start by date and then you'll find your thing.
01:13:53 ◼ ► And honestly, I'm not saying this is bad and people are bad for doing this. It's just that this is like water has has found its level, right?
01:14:02 ◼ ► You don't need to ever really, really understand the file system if you don't ever need to engage with it at anything more than just this very surface level.
01:14:14 ◼ ► And that will always lead to situations like this. Oh, it's the first time you're using this whatever the simulation software is, which is surely not a consumer application. It's some weird academic thing or something from industry and it expects you to understand the file system.
01:14:27 ◼ ► And it's maybe not going to be, you know, have its preferences set up to spring you back to the last directory where you saved files or maybe it's on a communal computer where someone saved in a different location or maybe, you know, all the students are saving into their shared drive and they don't understand this and they just can't find their file or, you know, and there will always be people.
01:14:43 ◼ ► Kids who I used Google Docs my whole life, but I never had to deal with the file. It's just, you know, it was always just there in my Google Docs. I saw the icon because it always shows the most recent three things I worked on.
01:14:52 ◼ ► And, you know, I don't think, you know, I would never blame modern technology for making people more ignorant of this. And I think fundamentally we have never lived in a world where it has been necessary for some percentage of people for, you know, for most people.
01:15:09 ◼ ► I don't know. I don't know what the percentage is. I can't give you numbers here, but like whatever percentage has been able to get by without knowing this, I feel like that percentage has been more or less the same and continues to be the same.
01:15:19 ◼ ► And it's a pretty big percentage. And even though it's unfathomable for us computer nerds who, you know, understand the file system and don't think it's that complicated and is a fundamental way that we organize things.
01:15:30 ◼ ► That's just us. There's a whole other swath of the world that has never needed to know that and never will needed to know it. And if they don't need to know it, then they won't know it because they're not into it.
01:15:40 ◼ ► You know, I told the story many times before, I think, including on this very program, but I was a very frustrating kid for at least, probably my whole upbringing, but at least a small portion of my life because I really wanted to play games on the family computer.
01:15:59 ◼ ► And I just didn't understand how to use DOS. And John, can you please hold your snark about how barbaric DOS is just for a few minutes here. And I always needed my dad's help. And dad, for all of his great qualities, patience has never been one of them.
01:16:13 ◼ ► And eventually he threw me the manual to DOS and said, just read this and you'll figure it out, which is really not great parenting. But as it turns out, that sent me on the course to talk to you two every week, all these years later.
01:16:30 ◼ ► And on a lark, I think because of a Cococonf keynote I did several years back now, I found and purchased with real money, a physical copy of the disk operating system version 3.30 user's guide.
01:16:44 ◼ ► And on page six, hyphen three, I've been trying to find a PDF for this. And the only PDF I found is a different version of this guide that doesn't have all these ridiculous things I'm about to describe.
01:16:53 ◼ ► But on page six hyphen three, it's in the section organizing files, it says the title is your fixed disk and electronic filing cabinet.
01:17:01 ◼ ► And there's a little goofy diagram of a filing cabinet with files pulled out. And then there's a different diagram on the next page of your root directory, which is like a hallway with doors off of it.
01:17:12 ◼ ► And then you're building rooms off of the room. And it's just the most preposterous, like chintzy and weird and cutesy diagrams to help you understand how to use your file system.
01:17:23 ◼ ► And it's so ridiculous, especially looking at this at my position that I'm in now, but it is also quite hilarious. And if I can find an electronic version, I will put it in the show notes.
01:17:35 ◼ ► That's part of the reason people have trouble with the file system, even though, again, computer nerds don't. It's really simple. What's the problem?
01:17:42 ◼ ► Like that book, more so in the 80s, but a lot of the times things like that book are trying to give a metaphor by comparing it to something that people understand.
01:17:51 ◼ ► Oh, it's like a hallway with doors off of it. And it's like a filing cabinet and all these type of things.
01:17:58 ◼ ► They're assuming the reader is familiar with this thing in the real world. And they say, well, this is like that, but in the computer.
01:18:04 ◼ ► And it's the whole desktop metaphor and having folder icons and the trash can. But it breaks down surprisingly fast.
01:18:13 ◼ ► In the real world, we do not literally put other folders inside folders. You can't put a bigger folder inside a smaller folder.
01:18:21 ◼ ► This folder has two items in it, but inside it is one folder that has 10,000 items. Nothing in the real world is like that.
01:18:27 ◼ ► Maybe the TARDIS from Doctor Who. That's not how it works at all, but that's how it works in the computer.
01:18:34 ◼ ► And we have no problem with that because we're not constantly, it's like learning a language fluently.
01:18:38 ◼ ► You're not constantly translating from the computer metaphor to the real world one to understand.
01:18:43 ◼ ► When you understand the file system and "files and folders" on a computer, you understand it for what it is.
01:18:51 ◼ ► You don't understand it because it's like a filing cabinet. It's not like a filing cabinet. It's not like a hallway with doors on it.
01:18:59 ◼ ► It's not a big truck, right? It's a series of tubes. And it's not very difficult to understand, but all those attempts to explain it to people in terms of folders and folders or filing cabinets or houses with rooms all fall down really quickly.
01:19:13 ◼ ► Especially in the modern age where we have millions of files. It's like either it is worth your while to, I keep going back to the word "grok."
01:19:23 ◼ ► Either it is worth your while to grok this for what you do with computers, or it's not worth your while because you never actually need to know it.
01:19:29 ◼ ► Or maybe when I took that one astrophysics class I had to learn the file system because there was some annoying software that you used and I learned it for that.
01:19:37 ◼ ► But then after that I forgot about it again. Not everyone is going to be as into your hobby as you are.
01:19:42 ◼ ► In the same way that people who are into repairing their own cars can't believe that people can't identify the major parts of an internal combustion engine and don't know how to change their oil.
01:19:49 ◼ ► But it's like, I never need to know that. It doesn't come up in my life and I'm not interested in it and I can get by without knowing it.
01:19:55 ◼ ► And that is true of basic file system knowledge for computers. And it always has been true and I think it will continue to be true.
01:20:03 ◼ ► Maybe over time it's becoming more true. Again, phone takes you farther away from that. But still, for my entire lifetime, there are major classes of people who absolutely do need to know about it.
01:20:15 ◼ ► Programmers, for example. Any kind of programmer. You cannot avoid dealing with the file system.
01:20:20 ◼ ► You can argue whether this is right or wrong, but we still organize source code files into subdirectories and the web is very fundamentally based on, you know, if you're running kind of a web server, you're probably going to have to know files and directories because they're a very important part of how things are served and how code is organized.
01:20:37 ◼ ► It's unavoidable if you are a programmer. And that hasn't changed. So there will always be people who really do need to understand this as like a baseline. It's like knowing how to read and also understanding the file system because you will not get far as a programmer without understanding the file system. That would be super confusing.
01:20:55 ◼ ► Well, I wonder if that's always going to be true. I mean, no, I don't. I don't think it's always going to be true, but it still is. And what I'm saying is that has not made any progress. Like in my entire lifetime, you need to know about the file system just as much now as you did in the 80s.
01:21:09 ◼ ► I mean, there's so many angles on this. I mean, number one, like going back a second, like to use a like file cabinet metaphor, I am almost 40 and I've never used a file cabinet or file folders at my jobs. You haven't had many like normal jobs.
01:21:27 ◼ ► Well, fair enough. But there's a lot of people younger than me now in the sense that like young people don't understand like file folder metaphors. Well, of course not. If people who are 40 have never used file folders, what do you think someone who's 20 is going to have it? Like what context do they have?
01:21:43 ◼ ► But it doesn't make any sense because there's not another file cabinet inside any of the folders in my filing cabinet.
01:21:58 ◼ ► Older people in particular seem to be very intimidated by them because they had their way of working for their whole career and all of a sudden you try to change it in pretty big ways. That's hard for people to adopt. And we first made these file and folder metaphors so we weren't dealing with just like sectors on disk.
01:22:17 ◼ ► So that's part one and then you start dealing with, okay, well now we have a GUI and we're going to visually arrange these things and have your spatial finder that you love so much and have like spatial visual ways to navigate and organize things.
01:22:31 ◼ ► And that'll help. And then as computer technology went on, the need for the file folder metaphor made less and less sense as more and more people just natively understood computers and didn't necessarily, like me, didn't necessarily understand files and folders, like file folders on paper as like the thing that they were trying to emulate.
01:22:54 ◼ ► And then we started making computers so easy that we started hiding the file system. So rather than trying to assume people would know this and this would be the main interface to computers as it was with say the original Mac.
01:23:14 ◼ ► Obviously the file system was the main interface of the computer in the sense that it was the here is finder, here is this visual thing and here are your files, do stuff with them. And over time we've shifted more and more away from that.
01:23:26 ◼ ► More towards not only at the app based metaphor, the app as the container where the app manages the storage in some managed way. Things like Apple Notes or Apple Photos, stuff like that.
01:23:38 ◼ ► Oh, interestingly the apps are all arranged spatially and into folders. I wonder if young people wonder why are they called folders? Like when you put icons on your phone and you lump them together, that's called a folder. It looks nothing like a folder.
01:23:54 ◼ ► It doesn't even attempt to make it look like a folder. But we call it that because, and you're right, it's totally app driven. What do you see on that screen? You don't see files, you see apps. But those apps, A, can be arranged spatially and B, can be put into folders. Not multiple folders, just one level of them.
01:24:09 ◼ ► So it's like at ease or Microsoft Bob, it's the Play School version of the file system for your apps. And it doesn't have much of a connection at all with the actual file system. But still, whatever the fundamental thing that you're dealing with, you don't have to know anything about how they're organized.
01:24:28 ◼ ► You don't have to organize them at all. But you can organize them. And the thing you organize them into are called folders. Kind of like the same reason in the contacts app, they're called contact cards. Why are they called cards? If you've never seen a real Rolodex, they don't look like cards anymore.
01:24:42 ◼ ► They're called contact cards because that's what they used to be in a Rolodex. They were like literal paper cards. And that is so long gone that nobody, you know, it's just one of those, it's not a skeuomorph, that's a physical thing, but it's a terminology skeuomorph. Like a leftover from a bygone era that no longer serves a purpose that is only there for historical reasons. They're called contact cards and the things on Springboard are called folders.
01:25:07 ◼ ► Yeah, but I think, you know, so we went through this period where, you know, for what was relatively speaking, you know, a brief period of the computing revolution, files and folders mattered a lot because that was like the only way that you could organize your data on a computer.
01:25:25 ◼ ► You had to know how to find files, where to put files, you know, back in the DOS and early Windows and early Mac days, you had to interact with it. But over time, we removed the need in many ways and the ability in many ways to interact with it.
01:25:42 ◼ ► And then what developed later were web apps where you, you know, now your data is somewhere else entirely and you can't manage it with the file system on your computer because it's all in a web app and the rise of both web and local search as one of the main ways you find stuff.
01:26:01 ◼ ► You know, keep in mind, like you couldn't just, you know, Quicksilver and Spotlight and whatever the heck the Windows search thing is called where you start typing into the start bar now, those things didn't exist like 15 or 20 years ago.
01:26:13 ◼ ► Like there was a very long period where the idea of searching for files on your computer was nowhere near instant. It was something that you were expected not to have to do very often because it would take like, you know, seconds or minutes to actually search for in some rudimentary way for like a file name portion rather than like what you can do now if you just like, you know, hit command space and start typing something and you're probably going to find the file you're looking for within a few seconds.
01:26:39 ◼ ► Now search is so universal that you can save files pretty much anywhere on your computer and if you are still doing that and not using a web app or a managed like, you know, shoebox kind of app, you can save files pretty much anywhere and you're going to find them really fast no matter where they are.
01:26:55 ◼ ► So you don't have to know that search where you just mentioned that was the first like this article.
01:27:01 ◼ ► This is one of the again, it's a silly article whatever, but like the first wave of these articles the same type of thing of kids these days don't understand the file system and you want to know why like the ant the the culprit what wasn't Google Docs back then and the fact that like it auto saves and you don't have the concept of files.
01:27:16 ◼ ► It was search it was like in this age of search normal need to organize things anymore because they'll just search for it and lots of people wrote that article and I think this is just a modernized version of in this age of Google Docs who has any concept of saving a file location you just open a window and start typing.
01:27:36 ◼ ► It's a bookmark Google Drive like no but like where is it like Google Drive is it in a subfolder and what is that subfolder called?
01:27:51 ◼ ► That's what I'm saying like so there's always something that's going to be held up as like this is the thing that makes people not understand the file system but like I said I'm here to tell you that even when there was nothing you know there was no Google search there was no people still didn't understand the file system.
01:28:04 ◼ ► That's what made computers hard and as you're saying like when we introduce things that let people be able to use computers.
01:28:16 ◼ ► Still the same number of people didn't understand the file system it just let them accomplish more right?
01:28:21 ◼ ► Yeah but so two other things I wanted to point out here so number one I think when we say something like you know the kids these days don't know this.
01:28:31 ◼ ► It's not that they are somehow you know they can they'll never learn it or they're unable to learn it.
01:28:37 ◼ ► They just haven't had to learn it yet and as soon as you give them a reason or need to learn it they'll learn it.
01:28:43 ◼ ► It's fine so this is I wouldn't say this is anything that we necessarily have to worry about.
01:28:53 ◼ ► Well yeah most people don't need to know assembly language and when we first came up with you know higher level languages.
01:29:00 ◼ ► A lot of programmers were like well no one even knows assembly anymore this is ridiculous.
01:29:06 ◼ ► How is anybody ever going to be a good programmer because they now they don't even know assembly and yeah you know what they didn't need to.
01:29:15 ◼ ► Sometimes you know it's you know you hear stories like well the kids these days they're only learning how to use iPads.
01:29:22 ◼ ► They aren't even going to know how to use computers and I thought that's I thought I was afraid that would happen you know to you know in our family to our son.
01:29:29 ◼ ► I was thinking like man I should probably like teach him how to use like a full-size computer of some sort PC or Mac whatever.
01:29:36 ◼ ► So that he can start coding and you know get into better games and stuff because he's doing everything on his iPad.
01:29:40 ◼ ► Well you know what as soon as he wanted to play a computer game he learned how to use a computer.
01:29:44 ◼ ► And it took him like three seconds to pick it up and he picked it up and he's flying now in no time at all.
01:29:51 ◼ ► Same skill level everything he started coding recently first on his iPad and then I showed him some stuff to do on the computer.
01:29:58 ◼ ► By the way Pico 8 really cool showed him that so he did it in two seconds figured it all out.
01:30:03 ◼ ► Like it's like kids they don't know what they haven't needed to know yet obviously but as soon as they need to know it for something they'll learn it it's fine.
01:30:14 ◼ ► And also an iPad you got things like Swift playgrounds 4 or whatever it's not like the iPad.
01:30:21 ◼ ► So Swift playgrounds 4 we didn't talk about this last week as we had too much other stuff as we tend to do.
01:30:26 ◼ ► But Swift playgrounds 4 came out and it's incredible like it's what the things you could do with Swift.
01:30:33 ◼ ► So this is the update to Swift playgrounds that they I think originally talked about was it WVDC?
01:30:49 ◼ ► And obviously there's a bunch of limitations chief of which is that you can't use any objective C code.
01:31:04 ◼ ► But the point is so here is this complete development environment that it's not as full featured as desktop Xcode or as you know other you know PC and Mac based environments.
01:31:14 ◼ ► But it is like a full blown app development environment just with a lot of limitations but you can make full apps on an iPad and that is programming that could become professional programming.
01:31:31 ◼ ► I'm sure somebody there were already probably already are but there will be people who are doing their full time job that way.
01:31:39 ◼ ► You know it's not going to be the main way people do their full time programming jobs for a while if ever.
01:31:44 ◼ ► But there are going to already if you know if not already there's going to be people who are doing full time programming work from an iPad from that environment and that environment has no access to the file system.
01:31:57 ◼ ► So I can't say for sure that programmers will always need file system access because here's a here's a brand new environment that doesn't really expose that to you at all.
01:32:15 ◼ ► Some people do that but eventually if you want to organize your source files you will take sub directories and you if you want to understand version control version control deals with files and directories.
01:32:37 ◼ ► I mean they will eventually like it's called playgrounds it's not called Xcode for iPad right but it is it is it is advancing by leaps and bounds.
01:32:44 ◼ ► If you look at this though like you can you can take those project files and migrate them back and forth to desktops and you can you can open them up in Swift playgrounds on them on a Mac and you can manipulate them on the Mac and you can ship them back to the iPad back and forth.
01:32:59 ◼ ► So it would not surprise me if this is like you know Xcode X like for lack of a better name like you know like the way they remade Final Cut Pro X or X or X or 10 or however that one was pronounced.
01:33:13 ◼ ► They wouldn't surprise me if this after a long time I don't think this is going to be a soon thing but I think on a long term basis the next Xcode might be just this brought forward in a lot of ways.
01:33:32 ◼ ► All the things that this can't do today are probably things that future Xcode won't do.
01:33:39 ◼ ► You know with the exception of things that are more likely to be obvious developer needs forever like version control right.
01:33:47 ◼ ► But I'm guessing that like this is the direction this is going and so I wouldn't assume that even programmers would necessarily need file system access like that we like we're moving towards worlds of many more you know packages and pre-made modules being used.
01:34:06 ◼ ► You know right now today you and I as you know old programmers we think of course you would always use a file system in the same way that people who were older than us doing programming a long time ago said of course you would need assembly language for everything at some point.
01:34:20 ◼ ► And here I am as a programmer in 2021 I have never used assembly language except for one class in college that taught me how to use assembly language.
01:34:29 ◼ ► I've never used it in a real program like after that and I've never had to and I never will as far as I can tell like based on my career and what we actually do these days I'll probably never need that.
01:34:39 ◼ ► Access to like you know file system stuff and dealing with and organizing files and in you know non-trivial hierarchies besides like you know a single level grouping like we have now.
01:34:49 ◼ ► That might just be stuff that people in current and future generations just never need to deal with because we've just moved in different directions.
01:34:57 ◼ ► Well, so your example of assembly is a good one is why I emphasize the point that for my entire life and career programmers had to deal with the file system whereas for my entire life and career programmers have not always had to deal with assembly because they did way back when and they do way less now.
01:35:11 ◼ ► But the file system has been a constant and as I said I'm not saying again infinite timescale eventually yes we will hopefully move farther away from it even for programmers.
01:35:20 ◼ ► But I think no time soon is that going to happen right because it just everything you describe Swift package manager packages are a structure of files and directories right version control frameworks everything having to do with programming.
01:35:34 ◼ ► And by the way writing programs that manipulate files in the file system because yes the file systems underneath the whole operating system is running off a file system all those containers and all that other stuff are in a file system right.
01:35:44 ◼ ► Fundamentally understanding files and folders and how they nest which is not a complicated concept people think it's we're talking about something complicated is not it's the simple thing that you understand that you know maybe a little bit of nuances of like.
01:35:56 ◼ ► If you're in a CH root environment like where is the root of the file system what do you have visibility into what is the security model gets actually gets more complicated on the phone and then on the Mac these days because the Mac is just basic.
01:36:06 ◼ ► Unix permissions and all that other stuff where everything on the phone is sandboxed everything on the phone has a constrained view of the world at a fundamental level right which is harder to understand.
01:36:18 ◼ ► Then the relatively open file system on a PC but just the basic idea of like hey when I'm you know I guess it's not the same thing with this we're not talking about objective C but like an import statement and objective C.
01:36:32 ◼ ► Where is the framework that I'm importing I know there's a magic there with search paths but again search paths and now you know LD load path and the dynamic linker and where does it find packages and whatever it's like oh well it'll just all take care of that for me.
01:36:45 ◼ ► Yeah most of the time it will take care of that for you until it doesn't and which point you kind of have to know where things are and you have to understand file system at the very basic level to do that and even if you're just organizing your source files.
01:36:54 ◼ ► You know you might not even know that those things in the sidebar you know maybe they'll use a folder icon maybe they won't maybe you'll dimly understand that you're organizing things into a hierarchy maybe you won't.
01:37:05 ◼ ► And maybe that won't be reflected on disk as actual files maybe they'll all be in the data doesn't really matter those are implementation details the whole point is just.
01:37:13 ◼ ► Understanding that what is a directory and what is a file what is their relationship between them how can I navigate amongst them how can I reference them how can I refer to them and the web helps that too like.
01:37:23 ◼ ► Urls have a bunch of slashes in them do those mean that those are files or directories on a file system somewhere maybe maybe not but.
01:37:30 ◼ ► Usually not right but conceptually they do work that way and for you know for many years I should try this in Safari for many years you could go to a website.
01:37:41 ◼ ► It doesn't work anymore for many years in Safari before they really went hog wild on that menu bar you could do the same thing you do in the finder so if you go to finder and you go to a like a list view window and you hold on the command key and you click on the title of the window.
01:38:00 ◼ ► Used to be able to do that in Safari you could hold down the command key and click on what used to be back when Safari had the title like the title tag the content of the title tag was the title bar in Safari you could command click on that and you could go you know it would show you the hierarchy.
01:38:20 ◼ ► Got to find a website that has an hierarchy probably our website doesn't let's see it does thank you very much.
01:38:36 ◼ ► Anyway if you if you were to go to atp.fm/join is top level /store is top level let me see Apple have something.
01:38:50 ◼ ► Here you go apple.com/shop/mac/accessories right if I was to command click on an old version of Safari.
01:38:57 ◼ ► It would give me a pop up menu that this first item was apple.com/shop/mac then it would be apple.com/shop and then it would be apple.com as if those were directories you know because it's laid out like it's the concept we're talking about those aren't obviously probably real directories anyway right but conceptually.
01:39:15 ◼ ► The idea that that a string what is a path you know the path portion of URL is called the path portion it's you know even though we know it's probably not a real set of files and directories conceptually that's how we describe resources on the Internet including local resources including things in a sidebar and Xcode even though on an iPad we have no idea we can't you know reach out to process and but the iPad does have an app called files that shows a bunch of folders and yes it's complicated by sandboxing containers and also for other things but.
01:39:44 ◼ ► Conceptually it works that way and even conceptually springboard in the folders that are there like someone pointed out in the chat room the original Mac file system called MFS did not allow multiple levels of nesting it was very primitive you know this is unlike a 400 K floppy disk so there wasn't that much need for that eventually HFS came that's what you know if you're wondering what HFS you know it's a planted MFS HFS the H stands stands for hierarchical if I'm putting extra so well sorry because you could have more than one level and it was you know.
01:40:19 ◼ ► Yeah I think these concepts are still there it's kind of like this kind of reminds me of one of those things in terms of programming we talk a lot about.
01:40:28 ◼ ► Maybe not so much these days but you still hear it occasionally why do we use monospace fonts in our text editors in programming right like why don't we use style text like bold italic proportional fonts.
01:40:42 ◼ ► And technically there's not really a reason for that but culturally we still are acting like you know we have to use a monospace font and of course it has to be plain text right why does that do plain text well plain text is simple we don't need anything more than plain text or whatever.
01:41:00 ◼ ► The same thing with the file system could programmers eventually not have to know about the file system maybe but so far there hasn't been enough of a reason for us to go there to do that which is why like I said and in contrast to assembly which we flee and we ran away from as fast as we could get it's really hard to deal with and now very very few people need to deal with assembly the same number of programmers need to deal with the file system in some fundamental level as they always have and so it's on a much longer timeline getting.
01:41:29 ◼ ► Getting away from the file system getting away from plain text for source files that seems like it's going to take probably longer than all of our lifetimes which is fine with me and you know if the timescale eventually will get away from it but it seems like both of those things have legs.
01:41:44 ◼ ► Thanks to our sponsors this week Green Chef stream and Revenue Cat and thanks to our members who support us directly big thank you once again to our awesome members you can join become one of them atp.fm/join we will talk to you next week.
01:43:03 ◼ ► Alright here's what we're going to do. We're going to do two AskATPs since we ran out of time but one of them is going to be fast. Watch this.
01:43:15 ◼ ► I'm not generally interested in fancy cars but I live adjacent to Silicon Valley so I've seen my fair share of expensive European cars.
01:43:21 ◼ ► Lately I've been surprised by how often I think I'm approaching a fancy European car and it turns out to be a Corvette.
01:43:29 ◼ ► So what you're looking at is almost surely the C8 Corvette. That would be the 8th generation Corvette.
01:43:34 ◼ ► Which on an infinite timeline the Corvette did go mid-engine as has been foretold for literally like 40 or 50 years.
01:43:47 ◼ ► It is sort of kind of in the back but strictly speaking it's in the middle of the car because it's in front of the rear axle.
01:43:53 ◼ ► And they look way different. They look much more like a Lamborghini or Ferrari or something like that.
01:44:03 ◼ ► Given how expensive they are which is I think they start at like $60,000 and can easily run up toward $100,000.
01:44:10 ◼ ► But given how expensive they are the performance per dollar if you will is just off the charts.
01:44:16 ◼ ► And they are phenomenally fast and phenomenally good despite being for the market reasonably cheap.
01:44:23 ◼ ► Now this is where Jon I'm sure will complain and moan about the C8 Corvette so please carry on.
01:44:28 ◼ ► If you think that the Corvette looks like a Lamborghini I really question how discerning you are about what cars look like.
01:44:40 ◼ ► It is because no not that I'm you know if you're not into cars yeah lots of cars look the same and yes of course they look the same.
01:44:47 ◼ ► But if you are into cars and you think that Corvette looks like a Lamborghini now I'm thinking like it just it doesn't.
01:44:56 ◼ ► Like if you are into cars and you know what a lot of different cars look like and you are very familiar with the different sizes and shapes of different makes and models of cars.
01:45:04 ◼ ► There is no confusing I understand what you are saying mid engine proportions from a distance it can look like.
01:45:10 ◼ ► I always found myself when I'm looking at fancy cars in traffic I always have like fancy car peripheral vision right.
01:45:15 ◼ ► In the distance I'm not however you're like is that a and then as soon as I glance over it and swivel my pupils over it's like oh it's a Corvette.
01:45:22 ◼ ► Because it does because it's a mid engine car you might think is that a Ferrari no no it's a Corvette.
01:45:27 ◼ ► And this is to the credit of the Corvette designers through many years and many iterations they've managed to keep Corvettes they've managed to keep a family resemblance through the line of Corvettes.
01:45:37 ◼ ► It has changed very much over the years but when I look at it I can say it's clear that that's a Corvette.
01:45:47 ◼ ► I don't think you need to see them next to each other but if you saw literally any Lamborghini literally any Corvette next to each other like modern ones right.
01:45:54 ◼ ► They don't actually look the same yes they're mid engine and they have mid engine proportions.
01:45:59 ◼ ► They don't actually I was trying to think of an analogy of like just I couldn't think of a good one they're so they're so fundamentally it's kind of like if you think of the Mac and Windows 95 look the same.
01:46:13 ◼ ► Oh they will have windows and little window controls and a mouse pointer and folders and menus and the same.
01:46:20 ◼ ► No like a Mac user would say if you can't see the difference between Windows 95 and Mac OS I mean just aesthetically and forget about user interface ease of use you know but I'm just aesthetically in a screenshot.
01:46:31 ◼ ► There's that's how different I feel like the C8 Corvette is from any modern Lamborghini it's like Windows 95 and the Mac and I'll let you decide which is which.
01:46:43 ◼ ► All right that was Windows 3.1 you realize that Rob in the question Rob said and I quote I'm not generally interested in fancy cars so you shouldn't beat up on poor Rob.
01:46:54 ◼ ► Yeah no that's what I'm saying like if you know if for someone who doesn't know about a topic if I look at it five different racehorses I don't know anything about racehorses they all look just like horses I mean I can tell they're different colors maybe that's about it right and I can tell a racehorse from like a horse that pulls the carriage around Central Park.
01:47:11 ◼ ► I can tell the difference between those two right but beyond that nuances of like oh you know this is a horse from this line or this is an Arabian horse versus a Russian horse I can't tell those you know doesn't make a difference to me so but if you were into horses you could tell and it would be super obvious and if you were into cars.
01:47:31 ◼ ► Do you know Orion asks since we seem to agree that Apple should not make a car what's the next product they should focus a lot of R&D on in order to not make.
01:47:47 ◼ ► I want to want to emphasize by the way that we have a lot of these questions I appreciate the fact that when they have these questions that you know like oh you know Apple's doing these things they don't just ask an open ended question of like what should Apple do next instead of the car.
01:48:00 ◼ ► No people have a limited list of options that you will not choose from these three options and that really does focus us and not just you know have to be like oh you can make anything you want like the last one is like if they could buy a company they buy like a camera company or I figure with the other ones like a game company or something else really narrows the question down.
01:48:21 ◼ ► But that being said let us hear what Juno's options are for the three things that Apple can make instead of a car.
01:48:38 ◼ ► A user friendly 3D printer with a built in quote unquote object store like the App Store but for things you can print.
01:48:54 ◼ ► An object store as in a store like a storefront where you buy things where you could buy 3D objects.
01:49:00 ◼ ► Indeed and then finally in door number three behind door number three a smart TV with great audio capabilities that can be used as the main quote unquote dashboard for controlling your smart home.
01:49:10 ◼ ► I mean I read this originally I thought oh definitely drone I think it'd be super cool but I can maybe this is Apple at its best to be honest with you I can't think of what I really wish my drone had that that would require Apple special sauce like I wish it had the collision detection that the Marcos does but it's because I have a little baby one and so that's why it doesn't.
01:49:42 ◼ ► It's like those bees that dropped as soon as videos going on recently of like a bunch of bees flying around and when you turn the lights off they just stop drop dead out of the air they just immediately stop flying and fall to the ground in a straight line.
01:49:58 ◼ ► Yeah pretty much so yeah so that was my gut reaction was yes definitely the drone because because yeah that would that would be great but again I don't know what special sauce Apple really bring to that and I don't personally see what 3D scanning really does for me but maybe I'm just not creative enough.
01:50:28 ◼ ► I think really solid audio would be really cool we bought a new I think I can't remember if I brought this up in the show but we brought it bought a new bedroom TV recently actually this is going to drive Syracuse awful up a wall.
01:50:40 ◼ ► We bought a new bedroom TV recently, and this TV's purpose is to maybe once a week at most show video and play a little bit of audio, it is very infrequently used. We have it for reasons that are uninteresting, but we need something to show video and play audio and it's does not have to be fancy so we bought a like $150 or $200 4k Sceptre TV that immediately got mounted on the wall and it sounds like garbage sounds like a made up brand.
01:51:09 ◼ ► No, this is our second Sceptre. Is it the James Bond villain company? No, yeah, yeah. That's Specter. No, Specter, I'm sorry you're right you're right you're right I apologize it is Specter you are right.
01:51:19 ◼ ► So it is the James Bond villain. But anyways, no it was a really good Black Friday deal and we bought it and it sounds like utter trash and it looks fine. I'm sure it's not filled with spyware.
01:51:30 ◼ ► Well, it's actually not a smart TV. It doesn't have any sort of smart features, which is good as far as I know. But I think having a legitimate like Apple, what was the person that kept asking for Apple television?
01:51:49 ◼ ► It's so true. So call me Gene Munster, but I think it could be interesting even leaving the dashboard stuff and smart home stuff out of it. I just think it'd be cool to see Apple do a television set. I don't see it happening, but I think it would be interesting. So I'm going to go with that as my answer.
01:52:03 ◼ ► Let's I feel like I've been picking on John a lot recently. Marco, what's your what's your pick of these three?
01:52:20 ◼ ► I've seen all the bonds except for I think one or two. Anyway, in the context of which of these products would I want Apple to release? That's a different question. Right? And if it was products that I want them to release, you know, maybe I'd go for the TV.
01:52:36 ◼ ► Although the thing is, you know, a smart TV with great audio capabilities. Well, I already have, you know, great audio capabilities covered from other people. If Apple doesn't make it, I don't have covered by other people.
01:52:49 ◼ ► A really great TV with software that I can trust. That's that's something that I would like to have other people enter.
01:52:57 ◼ ► And Apple would be it would be a good maker for that, I think, although they're never going to do it and they shouldn't do it for lots of other reasons.
01:53:03 ◼ ► The 3D printer with built in object store, like the App Store. I wonder how useful that would actually be for most people because, you know, 3D printers can't print anything.
01:53:19 ◼ ► They can print lots of different types of shapes from a small variety of materials, but that's very different from being able to print any random object. You know, there's lots of sophistication and material needs and things like that that they just can't achieve just because, you know, just in practice the way they work.
01:53:40 ◼ ► So they have great uses, but they're they're great, narrow and still fairly specialized uses. So I'm not necessarily sure that would be super necessary or beneficial.
01:53:50 ◼ ► A sophisticated, easy to fly camera drone with 3D scanning capabilities. Casey, you're right that I mean, for the most part, you know, most drones are pretty good these days.
01:54:01 ◼ ► And so I'm not sure what Apple would really add to that. But the question here was not what should Apple make? It's what should they focus a lot of R&D on in order to not make like the car?
01:54:13 ◼ ► Right. So that's a different question. And so the question in my in my mind is, well, which of these things, if they invested in heavily and then failed to produce a product, how would we benefit from the R&D in their other products?
01:54:29 ◼ ► So a smart TV with great audio through controlling a smart home. Well, we already pretty much have all those parts. Apple already makes really great displays, really great speakers and an OK home control system.
01:54:45 ◼ ► So that I don't think would be super necessary. A 3D printer with an object store. I don't see where else that would fit in their lineup. Now, a drone with 3D scanning capabilities.
01:55:00 ◼ ► Now we're talking now that is something that actually has a role in the lineup. They already are doing things like AR with Lidar and stuff and 3D scanning and integrate with cameras.
01:55:10 ◼ ► That's just good for cameras, you know, for things like autofocus and and, you know, things like that. So ultimately, I would rather them dump a whole bunch of R&D into that option.
01:55:20 ◼ ► The sophisticated drone with 3D scanning capabilities. And if they happen to actually get 3D scanning capabilities working in something which honestly should just be your iPhone.
01:55:32 ◼ ► And I think we're already part of the way there. That's something that I actually would find useful in the sense before, like I would love to be able to capture a 3D object and send it like in an iMessage or post it on Slack or put it up on a Web page as like a, you know, weird image like the USDZ format, something like that.
01:55:55 ◼ ► Like, I would love to be able to do that to be able to treat 3D scans the same way we treat images today where there's they're just easily back and forth supported everywhere capture on one end, have some send it to somebody had them be able to view it like in some kind of AR view, because that would allow you to see objects better, you know, the way they are in the real world, you know, remotely.
01:56:17 ◼ ► And it would allow you to have a better sense of scale of objects, because that's one thing that's really hard to tell with photos and videos is it's really hard to tell like how well how big is that in practice.
01:56:26 ◼ ► And I would, I'm just I'm very much looking forward. You know, when we talk about all the research, Apple's dumping into AR and stuff. I am interested in almost none of it.
01:56:37 ◼ ► And I'm excited by almost none of it. And I think almost none of it has a super great future. But something as simple as take a 3D scan of this thing and send it to my wife.
01:56:49 ◼ ► And so and say like, Hey, can we you know, will this size table fit next to our couch? I'm out somewhere and it looks interesting that I can see uses for that.
01:56:58 ◼ ► Or you're looking at, you know, a product page on an online store and you want to see like, hey, how does how big is this thing? Let me you know, visualize it being held in my hand.
01:57:07 ◼ ► That kind of thing. I see great uses for. So all that to say, I would go for the camera drone, R&D money fire option here, because I think the 3D scanning and everything.
01:57:21 ◼ ► I think that would have the most usefulness in their other products that they would actually be shipping.
01:57:26 ◼ ► Of all the AR things you pick, like stuff that we can almost do now and don't pick the killer apps, which is names over people's heads and directions.
01:57:35 ◼ ► So I have this very strange list of three things. I'm going to nix off the drone thing just because I feel like the drone part of it, the flying thing part of it doesn't really have any place.
01:57:50 ◼ ► And Apple's already doing the 3D scanning stuff without the drone parts. I feel like that's not going to help much the 3D printer.
01:57:56 ◼ ► I mean, maybe Apple's industrial design lab probably has lots of experience with 3D printing prototype objects or but I don't you know, like if they did that and didn't release it, maybe it helps their industrial design group.
01:58:07 ◼ ► But I think they've already they're already traveling that path again. They don't need this project to help them go down the road.
01:58:12 ◼ ► They're already doing that with their rapid prototyping. I'm sure they keep up with the latest and greatest and all that other stuff.
01:58:18 ◼ ► I think the smart TV is the one because although Apple does have lots of home automation stuff, one thing that Apple continues to lack is any home product with a screen.
01:58:29 ◼ ► Right. I'm not counting the Apple TV. Right. It's not actually the screen like they don't have like a home pod with a screen on it.
01:58:36 ◼ ► And I think a lot of things that people would use a kind of home hub voices and thing for are augmented by having a screen, even if it's just as simple as glancing over and seeing a cute picture of your kids.
01:58:47 ◼ ► Plus the time and the weather. It's easier to glance at that or a recipe in the kitchen or whatever than it is to ask your faceless cylinder for it.
01:58:56 ◼ ► Right. And if they made a smart TV, they would be forced to make what is what does a UI look like? That's not an Apple TV UI.
01:59:04 ◼ ► What is a home, you know, home hub, you know, controlling your smart home, but with a screen.
01:59:09 ◼ ► We know what they think it looks like on the phone and the iPad and the Mac. And it's stupid and bad.
01:59:14 ◼ ► We don't like the home app, but if they had to make something that was expected to be shown on a television set for controlling your smart home, they'd have to rethink that UI and that project gets scrapped.
01:59:26 ◼ ► But then they sell us the shrunk conversion, kind of like the you know, the original home pod was supposedly, according to rumors, part of the Apple's television set product that got scrapped.
01:59:34 ◼ ► Well, we got out. It was the home park product, which wasn't a television by any stretch, but some of the work they did transfer it over.