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461: Re-tend That Garden

 

00:00:00   I have a pre-show.

00:00:02   - All right and then if we don't have a better post-show,

00:00:04   I did have a Synology adventure a week or two back

00:00:07   that the both of you will find quite humorous

00:00:10   because I almost died again.

00:00:12   But we don't have to do that

00:00:14   if we end up on something better.

00:00:16   - I think we might leave there a little bit earlier.

00:00:18   - Oh no, that scares me.

00:00:20   I don't know, I don't like where this is going at all.

00:00:22   - How long is your pre-show gonna be?

00:00:23   If your pre-show's gonna be an hour long,

00:00:24   maybe think of it as a topic.

00:00:26   - We'll see.

00:00:29   - Oh God, I'm very scared.

00:00:31   - You're gonna be like, what is that movie?

00:00:33   I mean, I think the Fugitive does it a few other ones.

00:00:35   Todd tweets about it sometimes where like,

00:00:37   the title card for the movie comes up 40 minutes in.

00:00:40   - Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

00:00:41   - Or the other one is like,

00:00:43   when does the last credit appear on the screen?

00:00:45   Some of those are like 40, 50 minutes into the movie.

00:00:47   The last, it's as directed by whatever,

00:00:50   like 50 minutes of the movie is ridiculous.

00:00:52   - It's gonna be one of those days.

00:00:54   - Oh wait, I need to open IRC, shoot.

00:00:56   - Yeah, I didn't have it open either.

00:00:57   - I kinda dislike Textual,

00:00:59   'cause Textual is taking over like the T-E-X like shortcut,

00:01:04   you know what I mean?

00:01:04   'Cause I don't wanna launch TextEdit.

00:01:06   - Okay, wait, you launch TextEdit?

00:01:08   - Yeah.

00:01:09   - That, for what?

00:01:11   - Sometimes I need styled text.

00:01:13   - For what?

00:01:15   - Sometimes you need fonts, you know?

00:01:19   - Yeah, but if you're, I mean,

00:01:20   anything I would use rich text for,

00:01:22   I would do in pages,

00:01:23   'cause it's probably something I'm making,

00:01:25   I'm printing out.

00:01:25   - Pages, come on.

00:01:28   - Why else would I use rich text?

00:01:29   - Yeah, I kind of agree with Markle on this one,

00:01:31   to be honest with you.

00:01:32   - Like all plain text documents open up in TextMate,

00:01:35   and for you I'm sure it's BB Edit,

00:01:36   and for Casey I'm sure it's some kind of garbage thing

00:01:38   made by Microsoft.

00:01:39   - Oh, stop.

00:01:40   - It's not some non-native app.

00:01:43   - I've never actually used it,

00:01:43   I don't even know how good it is,

00:01:45   I'm sure it's fine.

00:01:47   - TextEdit launches real fast,

00:01:48   and if you just wanna do some style text,

00:01:50   like, you know, say you wanna print like a label

00:01:52   or something, I just wanna launch an app

00:01:54   that launches real quick and print some style text.

00:01:56   No way I would launch pages, you kidding?

00:01:58   - I guess I would just use pages for that.

00:02:00   - Oh, TextEdit launches instantly.

00:02:02   - Maybe you're so accustomed to using

00:02:04   a 12 year old computer that like now

00:02:05   that you have a fast one, you don't realize like,

00:02:08   oh, pages also launches instantly.

00:02:10   - Yeah, right, let's see, let's see how long pages takes.

00:02:12   Three, four, five, six, six bounces, six bounces,

00:02:16   all right, now the text came up, all right.

00:02:18   Now let's see TextEdit.

00:02:19   TextEdit, one, done.

00:02:23   - Yeah, six times faster, as counted in bounces.

00:02:26   - All right, fair enough.

00:02:28   - Before the show, John has instituted over the last,

00:02:33   I don't know, six months, maybe a year,

00:02:35   something that he likes to call pre-flight,

00:02:37   where we kinda run through what we're gonna talk about,

00:02:39   and it's actually very helpful,

00:02:40   as much as I give him grief for it.

00:02:41   And Marco just kinda slid in in the midst of pre-flight.

00:02:44   I have a pre-show, which is fine,

00:02:46   that's not entirely unusual.

00:02:48   And then as we keep talking, I said,

00:02:49   oh, you know, I have an after show

00:02:50   about how I had a heart attack about my sonology,

00:02:52   and Marco said, well, that might come up

00:02:54   before the after show.

00:02:56   I'm getting really nervous,

00:02:58   and I would like to end my misery as quickly as possible.

00:03:01   So what's going on, Marco?

00:03:04   - Well, let me start by saying

00:03:07   that my Mac Mini flooded my closet.

00:03:09   - What?

00:03:12   What are you talking about?

00:03:14   - I'm trying to think, what kind of things involving water

00:03:16   does the Mac Mini control?

00:03:18   The ice machine, no.

00:03:20   So here's what happened, listeners.

00:03:24   When I moved away from the Mac Mini as my desktop,

00:03:29   when the Pro laptops came out,

00:03:30   I switched, as you know, to my desktop laptop,

00:03:32   which I'm still extremely happy with.

00:03:34   And in fact, the Mac Mini and TIFF's old Intel MacBook Pro

00:03:39   are both, as we speak, sitting in their trade-in boxes,

00:03:42   waiting to be shipped out.

00:03:43   The Mac Mini is no longer gonna be used as a home server,

00:03:47   because what I was using it for,

00:03:49   so here, backing up a little bit,

00:03:51   when I got the new laptop,

00:03:53   I figured I have some uses for a home server here and there,

00:03:56   pretty light uses, if I'm honest,

00:03:58   but I could use one here and there.

00:03:59   Network storage is probably the biggest use case.

00:04:03   And then I was thinking, in the past,

00:04:05   I've used my Mac Mini back at Nether House.

00:04:08   I used an old Intel Mac Mini to run the crappy software

00:04:12   for my scanner and stuff like that

00:04:14   that I didn't want cluttering up my main Mac.

00:04:16   Or when I had the Synology back at home,

00:04:20   I would run the iSCSI terminator on that Mac Mini,

00:04:24   because iSCSI is such a garbage fire on Mac OS.

00:04:27   But I was using iSCSI so the back please

00:04:28   could back it up, remember that whole thing.

00:04:30   So anyway, so I thought, I have some uses for a home server.

00:04:34   That was the idea.

00:04:36   And I had two eight terabyte external SSDs

00:04:40   that were serving as massive storage for both me and TIFF.

00:04:44   They were serving as time machine hosting,

00:04:47   as well as archive storage.

00:04:49   And because they were mounted on a Mac,

00:04:51   the archive storage was also being backed up to back please.

00:04:54   So I figured that was a really good solution overall.

00:04:56   And I had originally got the SSDs

00:04:58   so that it could live in my office

00:05:00   because they don't make any noise

00:05:01   and I don't allow fans in my office.

00:05:04   So it was fine in my office,

00:05:05   but my office here is kind of small

00:05:07   and I wanted to get it out of my office

00:05:09   because once it's operating as a server,

00:05:12   a Mac Mini doesn't really need to be next to you.

00:05:14   It can be anywhere in your network

00:05:15   and it serves the same purpose.

00:05:17   So I happened to have a closet nearby

00:05:21   that hosts the router and the switch.

00:05:23   I figured I can put the Mac Mini in this closet.

00:05:25   It's perfect actually.

00:05:26   There's plenty of room for it on this high up shelf.

00:05:29   All the networking gear is right there.

00:05:31   So I brought the Mac Mini in there about a month ago

00:05:34   and I also brought with it

00:05:35   the two eight terabyte external SSDs.

00:05:39   And each one of those are just in like a $15 cable matters

00:05:44   enclosure from Amazon where like one side is metal

00:05:47   and the bottom plate is plastic

00:05:48   and just like a basic USB-C external enclosure.

00:05:52   I did run into a couple of issues there.

00:05:55   The M1 Mac Mini is actually kind of a crappy server.

00:06:00   It seems to require a keyboard

00:06:03   to be connected to it to boot.

00:06:05   I tried from previous Mac Minions,

00:06:07   I knew that if you were gonna run a Mac Mini headless

00:06:10   that you would want one of those little

00:06:11   HDMI dummy port dongle things.

00:06:14   That way it thinks there's a hardware monitor plugged in.

00:06:17   That was the first thing I got.

00:06:19   But the M1 series of Mac Minis is more complicated

00:06:22   than that to run headless.

00:06:23   You actually need a keyboard connected

00:06:25   otherwise it will not boot headless.

00:06:27   And I had mixed luck getting it to boot

00:06:30   or not boot with a password.

00:06:31   It ended up being complicated.

00:06:33   So that was kind of crappy and I didn't love that.

00:06:36   Other than that it seemed to work okay.

00:06:38   But I did notice that every so often

00:06:42   I would open up that closet

00:06:43   and it would be really warm in there.

00:06:45   - Okay.

00:06:47   - So I'm thinking like is,

00:06:49   all I've changed recently is I put this Mac Mini there.

00:06:51   Well I reached up and I felt and I noticed that

00:06:54   those SSDs run pretty hot actually.

00:06:57   Like for some reason an SSD that is idle most of the time

00:07:02   for whatever reason these things run really hot.

00:07:06   I imagine not all SSDs are like this

00:07:07   but these big eight terabyte cheapo micron ones

00:07:12   were definitely like this.

00:07:13   - That's why Sony requires a heat sink on SSDs.

00:07:16   If you buy like a third party M.2 SSD

00:07:18   for your PlayStation 5 you must use a heat sink with it.

00:07:22   - Interesting, yeah I mean I never really thought about

00:07:24   whether SSDs run hot 'cause I always assumed they wouldn't.

00:07:28   But no, I mean I'm sure it depends a lot on what they are

00:07:31   and how they're controlled and everything

00:07:33   but these definitely run pretty hot.

00:07:35   I also noticed that the surface of the Mac Mini itself

00:07:37   was like once it's in a warm closet

00:07:40   it actually was kind of warm as well.

00:07:42   I kind of made a mental note like I should probably

00:07:44   move these somewhere else sometime.

00:07:47   Well the other day I was working in that closet a little bit

00:07:51   we have a printer in there too

00:07:52   and I was trying to feed some stuff into the printer

00:07:54   and I noticed that the shelf was wet.

00:07:58   - What?

00:07:58   - Because one other thing I keep in that closet,

00:08:01   it well kept in that closet.

00:08:03   - Oh no, blocks of ice?

00:08:06   - Is a gallon of distilled water

00:08:09   for putting into my rowing machine.

00:08:11   - Oh this is distilled water so then that shouldn't

00:08:13   conduct electricity as easily right?

00:08:15   - Theoretically I hope, yeah.

00:08:17   So I noticed that the gallon of distilled water

00:08:19   that was back there was about half filled

00:08:23   and kind of imploded slightly like as if

00:08:26   there had been some thermal contraction.

00:08:28   - Oh no.

00:08:29   - Is the gallon of whatever water,

00:08:31   that's on the floor right?

00:08:33   - No it's up on the shelf along with everything else.

00:08:35   - Oh imagine that.

00:08:37   - You put a thing of water high up on a shelf.

00:08:39   - Imagine that, imagine.

00:08:42   It could just happen to you.

00:08:43   It could just happen to you John, it happens.

00:08:45   - Like it's heavy, like don't you want it on the ground?

00:08:48   You don't want to reach up to a high shelf

00:08:50   and pull down a big thing of water.

00:08:51   - It's a big shelf, I mean the weight wasn't a problem.

00:08:55   A gallon of water weighs what like seven pounds?

00:08:57   - Can we just learn putting water up high

00:09:00   is called a water tower and it's to get water pressure

00:09:02   in some places, some places in the Midwest right?

00:09:05   Don't do that in your house unless you're trying

00:09:07   to create a miniature water tower for a tiny Lego village

00:09:10   that you have on the floor.

00:09:11   - Well anyway, most of the water,

00:09:16   well about half of that gallon of water

00:09:18   had leaked out over some time period.

00:09:21   It sure looks like it was due to some thermal issues

00:09:25   that were happening nearby.

00:09:27   - So it got so hot that it melted or weakened

00:09:30   the wall of a plastic container containing water?

00:09:33   - It seemed to have weakened the wall of it enough

00:09:35   to make a tiny little hole somewhere on one of the seams.

00:09:38   - What kind of container is this coming?

00:09:40   Can you describe, like what is it?

00:09:41   - Like a gallon of milk, that big plastic.

00:09:44   - Exactly like a gallon of milk?

00:09:45   - Yeah, like the big plastic thing with the handle.

00:09:47   - Oh okay.

00:09:48   - Yeah no, do not put jugs full of milk high up

00:09:51   on shelves near electronics, what are you doing?

00:09:53   - It was distilled water, it's not conducting.

00:09:56   Anyway, I'd never seen this happen before.

00:09:59   - It's right next to the mineral oil.

00:10:01   (laughing)

00:10:03   - So anyway, fortunately nothing was damaged

00:10:05   and the water didn't escape the shelf

00:10:07   and stain the floor or anything, so that's good.

00:10:08   And didn't even seem to stain the shelf somehow.

00:10:11   I guess it's a good shelf.

00:10:12   So anyway, besides a couple of sheets of printer paper

00:10:17   that got wet and got ruined and a few cardboard boxes

00:10:19   for things that didn't need anymore,

00:10:20   including this Mac Mini, nothing else seemed

00:10:23   to have been damaged by this, so fortunately that's good.

00:10:26   - Wait, are you gonna trade in this Mac Mini now

00:10:28   that's been in the water?

00:10:29   - The Mac Mini was not in the water.

00:10:30   It was one shelf above.

00:10:33   - All right.

00:10:34   - Same closet, one shelf above.

00:10:36   Anyway, so I realized I need to get rid

00:10:41   of the situation now.

00:10:42   I mean also I need to stop collecting water in my closet,

00:10:45   but that problem just solved itself.

00:10:47   There is now no more water left in my closet.

00:10:49   (laughing)

00:10:51   - My closet has good drainage that it just leak

00:10:53   out of your house.

00:10:54   (laughing)

00:10:55   - No, it just sat on the shelf.

00:10:56   It didn't have enough surface tension,

00:10:59   or there wasn't enough volume of water

00:11:01   to overcome the surface tension, make it go over the edge.

00:11:04   So it was just like a shallow layer of water on the shelf,

00:11:08   but I don't know.

00:11:09   Anyway, that's not the point of the story.

00:11:11   - Do you have photo, even if you don't post them,

00:11:13   we need some private photos of--

00:11:15   - Yes, concur.

00:11:16   - I didn't take them.

00:11:17   I was busy freaking out and getting paper towels.

00:11:19   - I know.

00:11:20   I'm just gonna say to the listeners, in general,

00:11:23   I know you hear the idea of like a server closet

00:11:25   or whatever, but closets are terrible places

00:11:27   for anything that produces heat.

00:11:29   Unless you have a ventilated closet,

00:11:31   a closet that has air flow going into and out of it,

00:11:34   don't put things in closets or media cabinets

00:11:36   for that matter, if they're entirely enclosed.

00:11:38   You need some source of fresh, cool air

00:11:41   for your electronics to be healthy.

00:11:43   - Turns out.

00:11:44   So anyway, and yeah, this is not a ventilated closet.

00:11:49   Although the networking gear does fine in there.

00:11:50   You know, it's the Ubiquiti Dream Machine,

00:11:52   a big switch, like, you know, it's fine.

00:11:54   I'm sure it does fine 'cause it's more tolerant,

00:11:57   but it's not great for that either.

00:11:59   - Well, but I've literally, like, with the exception

00:12:02   of since I moved the Mac Mini in there,

00:12:03   I've never opened up that closet

00:12:05   and felt it noticeably warm.

00:12:06   And it's an interior closet to the house,

00:12:08   so it doesn't get too hot in the summer

00:12:09   or too cold in the winter either, so anyway.

00:12:11   I have to adjust my Mac Mini setup.

00:12:14   So I have a couple other places around the house

00:12:17   I could put it that are like somewhat enclosed,

00:12:19   but better thermally controlled.

00:12:21   Like there's a utility closet on the outside

00:12:23   that has electrical stuff in it and that's fairly controlled,

00:12:26   so I'm like, all right, I could put it in there.

00:12:28   But I realized I was doing all this, you know,

00:12:32   this Mac Mini, I looked up the trade-in price,

00:12:35   and the trade-in price was like $800.

00:12:38   - With Apple or with someone else?

00:12:39   - With Apple. - Okay.

00:12:40   - So I was like, all right, I could trade this in.

00:12:44   What do I actually need this for?

00:12:45   Could I get away with less?

00:12:47   Is there something else that I could spend the $800 on

00:12:49   that might solve my needs in a better way

00:12:53   and or, you know, something like,

00:12:55   this is not a great solution that I have here.

00:12:57   It seems like both a waste of a perfectly good

00:12:59   M1 workstation computer that could be used in other ways

00:13:04   and also, you know, this is not a great storage solution

00:13:08   physically or logically, like as I mentioned,

00:13:11   it's kind of a crappy home server.

00:13:13   So I thought, all right, let me think about

00:13:15   some other options here.

00:13:16   As much as I hated to admit this,

00:13:20   I thought maybe some kind of network-attached storage

00:13:24   would probably solve this need better.

00:13:27   The main thing I needed it for is Time Machine.

00:13:30   Tiff and I now both have large laptop internal storage,

00:13:34   and we can fit almost all of our archive files

00:13:37   on our laptops.

00:13:38   All we really need something else for is Time Machine.

00:13:41   The Time Machine does have to be fairly large, though.

00:13:44   Tiff's laptop is eight terabytes minus four.

00:13:46   I need a lot of terabytes of Time Machine,

00:13:48   and not much else.

00:13:50   So I basically just need like, what were those,

00:13:53   time capsule, I need a time capsule,

00:13:54   but like for the modern age.

00:13:56   So I decided this would be best solved

00:14:02   by a network-attached storage device.

00:14:04   - Indeed, putting storage on the network

00:14:06   would indeed be best solved

00:14:09   by a network-attached storage device, I agree.

00:14:11   - Preferably that you do not store in a closet.

00:14:13   (laughing)

00:14:16   - So what did you buy?

00:14:17   - Take a guess.

00:14:19   - Did you buy a Synology?

00:14:21   (buzzing)

00:14:22   - I got a Synology, I got another one.

00:14:25   - Attaboy, which ones you get?

00:14:27   - So here, I'm not even sure I should tell you.

00:14:29   - Why?

00:14:31   Honestly, I'm not up to date on the newest Synology stuff.

00:14:33   In fact, I was just discussing this with a friend

00:14:35   via text the other day.

00:14:37   My Synology, my primary Synology that I use

00:14:39   probably more heavily than either of you guys

00:14:41   is still the original one that Synology sent us in like 2013.

00:14:45   It's almost 10 years old.

00:14:46   Now granted, it's a ship of Theseus.

00:14:48   - The 1813 Plus, right?

00:14:50   - Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, the 1813 Plus.

00:14:51   - I upgraded the RAM on mine, did I tell you that?

00:14:53   - No, you didn't, was that easy?

00:14:54   - 'Cause when Synology's like OS 7 came out,

00:14:57   they said, oh, you know, you can get by with as much RAM

00:15:00   or you recommend that much, and I'm like, huh,

00:15:01   I wonder how hard it is to upgrade the RAM on Synology.

00:15:04   Turns out it's not hard at all.

00:15:05   It's super cheap, I bought a little RAM expansion thing,

00:15:08   opened it up, shoved it on while I was in there,

00:15:09   I sprayed out some of the dust, slapped it back together,

00:15:11   it's got like double the RAM that it had before.

00:15:14   Still going strong.

00:15:15   - Can we put that in the parking lot

00:15:16   and talk about it later, please?

00:15:18   'Cause I genuinely would like to know about that,

00:15:20   but we can take that offline.

00:15:21   So yeah, so anyway, very briefly,

00:15:24   so I have this 1813 Plus that's sitting here now,

00:15:27   despite my tale of woe that I'll hopefully get to later,

00:15:30   is running really well, but I know the clock is ticking,

00:15:34   and as you, as listeners have really found out

00:15:38   in the last couple of weeks,

00:15:39   I am a little bit on the frugal side,

00:15:40   and I really don't want to buy another 8-base Synology,

00:15:43   and then the proper answer's probably to fill it

00:15:46   with all new hard drives, rather than to just extract

00:15:49   the ones in the current Synology

00:15:51   and pump them over to the new one.

00:15:52   So that's like a several thousand dollar expenditure

00:15:55   that I really don't feel like doing right now.

00:15:58   - Wait, wait, how much space are you using?

00:16:00   - I think I'm using around 11 terabytes at the moment.

00:16:03   - Okay, I can tell you exactly how much it would cost

00:16:05   to replace that, because I just did that.

00:16:07   - Good, okay, well tell me more.

00:16:08   - Okay.

00:16:09   - But then Marco gave the one that's all SSDs.

00:16:11   - Yeah, that's the thing.

00:16:12   - Well, I thought about it.

00:16:13   So first I thought, all right, if I get,

00:16:15   they made a few years ago, I don't think any of them

00:16:19   were still made, but they made some that only took

00:16:21   two and a half inch disks.

00:16:23   - Oh, I didn't know that.

00:16:24   - Oh, no, you don't want that, that's gross.

00:16:25   - There was a little tiny 6 bay.

00:16:27   - Oh, I bet that was adorable.

00:16:28   - It was, yeah, there's a 6 bay, it's called the DS620 Slim.

00:16:32   It doesn't seem like it's currently made,

00:16:34   but you can still find a couple of them

00:16:35   for sale here and there.

00:16:36   But it's like a little tiny 6 bay SSD only one,

00:16:40   which I thought was kind of cool.

00:16:42   But I realized, okay, for my actual needs here,

00:16:45   A, I don't have six SSD sized disks.

00:16:49   I don't really need to or want to have those.

00:16:52   And also, I want this to be very large storage.

00:16:56   And it can be very large, very cheap.

00:16:59   And so I'm looking at three and a half inch drives.

00:17:01   But I also realized, I also don't want,

00:17:03   my needs here, while they are large, they are also simple.

00:17:07   I'm not running Plex on this thing.

00:17:09   I'm not gonna get into the Docker fest and running apps

00:17:14   and having it download pirated movies for me and everything.

00:17:16   I'm not gonna do any of that stuff.

00:17:18   It just needs to host Time Machine.

00:17:20   A Raspberry Pi could possibly have done this

00:17:24   with more work. (laughs)

00:17:25   So it's really, it's fine.

00:17:28   Anyway, so I decided I'm just gonna get a small one.

00:17:32   Now I know Merlin would kill me if I got a 2 bay.

00:17:36   - And that is correct, by the way.

00:17:38   - But I really only want two disks.

00:17:40   If all I'm doing is Time Machine,

00:17:42   theoretically I could get a one bay one.

00:17:44   Because I can just get a single 16 terabyte hard drive

00:17:47   and be fine.

00:17:48   Like that's all I would really need.

00:17:50   - And in your defense, when we had first gotten

00:17:52   these technologies almost a decade ago,

00:17:55   you and I were talking, maybe it was all three of us,

00:17:57   but I remember particularly you and I, Marco,

00:17:58   were talking about how to allocate these eight drives.

00:18:02   And what you had said you were gonna do,

00:18:03   and I agreed with it, and still am doing to this day,

00:18:05   is you said you were gonna, what is it,

00:18:07   RAID 0, two of the physical drives,

00:18:09   which is to say make it as though

00:18:11   it's virtually one large drive.

00:18:14   But the only thing that gets put on that drive

00:18:17   is Time Machine.

00:18:18   Because that's redundant, and yes,

00:18:20   I'm sure Jon is fuming right now,

00:18:22   but I concur with you, Marco,

00:18:23   that for something that is already redundant,

00:18:26   it is not the end of the earth if it poops the bed.

00:18:28   - Right, it's like if you have Time Machine and Backblaze,

00:18:31   you're pretty well covered,

00:18:33   and you can put that Time Machine on a single disk

00:18:35   or a RAID 0 or whatever, it's fine.

00:18:37   - If you like to live dangerously,

00:18:38   I'll cross that bridge when I eventually run out of storage,

00:18:41   'cause that's like the last bridge,

00:18:42   like how do I get more storage back?

00:18:44   Well, I'll break that RAID array,

00:18:46   break that RAID 5 array and put it into RAID 0,

00:18:48   and voila, you've like doubled your,

00:18:50   and that's where I'm gonna run out of storage,

00:18:52   'cause we back up everything to Time Machine,

00:18:54   to that all the laptops in the house,

00:18:55   all the desktops, everything,

00:18:57   and that adds up after a while.

00:18:58   - Yeah, so anyway, I realized my actual storage needs are,

00:19:04   they're large in the sense of,

00:19:06   we have roughly 12 terabytes, maybe 13,

00:19:10   of Time Machine data that I wanna back up.

00:19:13   - That's a lot.

00:19:14   - But also, modern hard drives go up to 18 terabytes.

00:19:18   So in a sense, it is a lot, like in absolute terms,

00:19:23   but relative to modern hard drives,

00:19:25   if you're buying new equipment, it kind of isn't a lot.

00:19:28   That's why I said I could get away with a one or two bay one

00:19:32   because really, I just need like one drive worth of storage.

00:19:37   So I looked at my options.

00:19:39   I ended up going with one called the DS420J.

00:19:44   It's four bays, and it has otherwise

00:19:47   pretty minimal features.

00:19:49   Nothing is hot-swappable on it.

00:19:51   It doesn't have, I don't think it has any of the like

00:19:54   fancy media encoding features or anything like that,

00:19:57   but what's nice about the 420J is that it is compact

00:20:02   and quiet and low-powered.

00:20:05   And so if you're going to put it in a closet or something,

00:20:08   those are pretty attractive qualities,

00:20:10   and it's not that expensive.

00:20:13   It's $300 empty.

00:20:14   - That's really not bad.

00:20:15   - Yeah, for a four bay Synology, that's pretty good.

00:20:18   - And by the way, looking at the official site

00:20:21   for this device, DS420J is a four bay desktop NAS

00:20:25   designed for home data backup, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:20:28   (laughing)

00:20:29   You're barking up the correct tree, I would say.

00:20:31   - But is it rated for outdoor use?

00:20:32   (laughing)

00:20:33   - Oh, gosh.

00:20:35   - As long as there's a roof over it, it'll be fine, right?

00:20:37   - Yeah, theoretically.

00:20:38   - Yeah, totally, totally.

00:20:38   - The rain doesn't get to that area.

00:20:40   (laughing)

00:20:42   So I got it, I set it up today, and I put into it

00:20:48   only two drives so far.

00:20:49   I figure if I really need expansion later,

00:20:51   I can expand later.

00:20:52   I probably never will.

00:20:55   But it's good to have the four bays for flexibility

00:20:57   in the future if need be, given that the price

00:20:59   was so good on this.

00:21:00   And the drives I got were two Seagate whatever, whatever,

00:21:04   18 terabyte drives that for some reason are on sale

00:21:08   right now for like $350 each.

00:21:10   - Where, how do you get the drives in this thing?

00:21:14   - You actually unscrew the butt.

00:21:16   It's like those old overalls where you unbutton things

00:21:20   for the butt access panel.

00:21:21   - Yeah, I saw in the back panel, I see two big openings

00:21:24   for fans, so you open that up.

00:21:26   - You see those giant black thumb screws on the corners

00:21:29   of those fan panel, you unscrew all those,

00:21:31   and the whole back hinges down.

00:21:33   - And then does it flap down like a door?

00:21:35   Yeah, I see it.

00:21:36   Do the fans come with it when it hinges down?

00:21:37   - Yes.

00:21:38   - And then it's just four vertically stacked.

00:21:40   - And then, yeah, it is.

00:21:41   You have these four trays you pull out

00:21:43   and stick the hard drives in.

00:21:44   Yeah, so it's fine.

00:21:46   I did the new setup, I mean, the last time I set up

00:21:50   a Synology was 2013, they've come a long way since then.

00:21:54   I did it all from an iPhone app to start,

00:21:56   like the whole finding your IP and setting up

00:21:57   your admin password and stuff.

00:21:59   And I did the rest of the setup via the web interface,

00:22:02   when I had to enable time machine shares.

00:22:04   It's been totally fine to set up,

00:22:06   it was a very quick and easy process.

00:22:09   It was really nice.

00:22:11   So overall, I'm satisfied so far, we'll see how it goes,

00:22:14   but I think this will be a really good solution.

00:22:18   And I've decided here, in the past I have had issues,

00:22:23   as talked on the show, about how the heck do you back up

00:22:27   a Synology?

00:22:28   - Yeah, tell me about it.

00:22:29   - You can't use Backblaze or any good cloud backup for it.

00:22:33   - You can use B2.

00:22:35   - Well, right, but you can't have unlimited capacity.

00:22:38   You gotta pay per gig, and you can use various services

00:22:41   to pay per gig.

00:22:42   Backblaze B2 is one of those services,

00:22:43   or you could do S3 or whatever else.

00:22:45   So those options exist, I don't love those options.

00:22:48   What I decided to do with this is,

00:22:51   because we now both have these large laptops,

00:22:54   and because the Synology, we mostly just need it

00:22:56   for Time Machine, I decided to only use it

00:22:59   for Time Machine, effectively.

00:23:01   Maybe I'll, if I have some kind of weird app I wanna run on,

00:23:04   maybe I'll do that in the future.

00:23:05   Again, I don't think it's very likely,

00:23:07   but what I really want here is for the computers themselves

00:23:10   that we're using to be the primary storage,

00:23:14   and to have the network attacks thing only be for backup.

00:23:18   And that way, I never have to worry about how the heck

00:23:20   I back up the Synology.

00:23:22   - I recommend eventually, it's hard for me to believe

00:23:25   that you're gonna have this four-bay Synology

00:23:26   that you only have two bays filled on,

00:23:28   that you're only ever gonna use it for Time Machine.

00:23:29   Eventually, inevitably, you're gonna fill

00:23:31   those other two bays, then you're gonna have more storage

00:23:33   than you need, then you're gonna put files on it,

00:23:34   and then you're gonna think about backing it up.

00:23:36   And when you do that, several years from now,

00:23:38   I'm here to tell you, using the native, or whatever,

00:23:41   the Synology B2 backup thing, and just pointing it,

00:23:44   not at your Time Machine volume, but at your other volume,

00:23:46   it's really simple, it's pretty darn cheap.

00:23:48   It's not as cheap as the $5 flat rate per month,

00:23:51   whatever Backblaze is now.

00:23:53   You pay per byte that you store, but to give an example,

00:23:57   you know what I back up from my Synology?

00:24:00   Yes, there's a smattering of files

00:24:01   that are only on the Synology for storage, or whatever,

00:24:03   and of course, they get backed up through B2.

00:24:06   I back up my media library, which I don't need any of that.

00:24:09   I can reconstitute that at any time from other sources,

00:24:11   but I don't want to, so I pay to back it up to B2.

00:24:15   - You're talking about things like blue-rays and stuff?

00:24:17   - Yeah. - That's gotta be a fortune.

00:24:19   - It's not, it's like $8 a month.

00:24:21   - No, B2's really cheap. (laughs)

00:24:22   - Yeah, that's what I'm saying, it's not that much money.

00:24:24   - I looked at this, and for 10 terabytes,

00:24:26   it was not cheap at all.

00:24:28   - Well, I also have two Synologies,

00:24:31   and I back up one Synology to the other Synology,

00:24:34   a subset of it, right?

00:24:35   So I've got the big Synology,

00:24:36   and then a subset of the big Synology syncs,

00:24:39   again, through built-in software

00:24:40   that comes with the Synology,

00:24:42   I can sync a subset of it to the other Synology.

00:24:45   It's very convenient.

00:24:46   - Yeah, it's $5 per terabyte per month,

00:24:49   so that's 50 bucks a month for me.

00:24:52   - Yeah, I don't have a giant media library.

00:24:54   - Yeah, see, that's the problem

00:24:55   with having a giant media library.

00:24:57   - See, I've decided for that,

00:24:59   I mean, look, I ripped a lot of blue-rays and DVDs

00:25:02   in my time, but I decided,

00:25:04   I have all those sitting on my other Synology,

00:25:06   I have all those sitting there, and I never watch them.

00:25:08   Most of the movies that I've bought on physical media,

00:25:13   either I never watch, or when I want to watch them,

00:25:16   I can watch them on whatever iTunes is called now,

00:25:20   because I hooked up that Movies Anywhere thing years back,

00:25:23   and so all those purchases,

00:25:25   I redeemed all the blue-ray codes for all the discs I had,

00:25:28   and so almost every movie I own on physical media,

00:25:31   in any modern format like blue-ray,

00:25:33   I have access to that for free,

00:25:35   or for no additional cost, through iTunes.

00:25:38   So I can always just go and watch those whenever I want,

00:25:41   and yeah, the quality is not gonna be as good

00:25:44   streaming, playing off of the Apple Store

00:25:46   compared to a much higher bit-rate blue-ray,

00:25:49   but I also just don't care anymore,

00:25:51   and I've decided the simplicity of that setup

00:25:54   is so much nicer than having to maintain

00:25:58   my own physical copy, or whatever,

00:26:01   physical or digital copy of this thing,

00:26:03   like sitting on a disc I own somewhere,

00:26:05   and having to worry about things like file management

00:26:08   and backups and data integrity, all that stuff.

00:26:11   I've just decided, there's so much in my life

00:26:14   that I care so deeply about and that I nerd out about,

00:26:17   I had to get rid of some stuff,

00:26:18   and that's one of the things I got rid of.

00:26:20   - You know, and that makes sense,

00:26:22   especially if you're only consuming media

00:26:24   that's easily findable, replaceable, buyable, whatever.

00:26:26   - Fair point.

00:26:27   - As we've talked about a lot,

00:26:28   and I don't need to belabor the point,

00:26:30   that I tend to track down, and I don't necessarily,

00:26:33   that's not like a tongue-in-cheek way of saying pirate,

00:26:35   although occasionally that might happen,

00:26:37   but generally speaking, I'm able to track down,

00:26:39   or YouTube DL or something,

00:26:41   something that doesn't exist anywhere else,

00:26:43   or doesn't exist in a way that's easily replaceable,

00:26:46   and so on and so forth.

00:26:46   So I think for your purposes,

00:26:49   and I don't mean to sound dismissive, I apologize if I do,

00:26:51   but for your purposes, I agree with you.

00:26:53   What you're doing is the right approach.

00:26:54   For me, it's not quite so simple,

00:26:56   because not only do I have a lot of media

00:26:59   that's not easily, not easy to replace,

00:27:01   but I'm often tweaking that media,

00:27:03   so I'm adding chapters or doing this or doing that,

00:27:05   and so that's part of the reason why I am going through

00:27:08   this ridiculous amount of administrate and headache

00:27:12   to maintain my Plex library,

00:27:13   because as ridiculous as it probably seems and maybe is,

00:27:17   it does provide me an immense amount of joy,

00:27:19   and it is not easy for me to just replace.

00:27:21   Like Jon, you said a minute ago,

00:27:22   "Oh, I can just get this stuff back from other sources."

00:27:24   A lot of the stuff I have in Plex I could,

00:27:26   but not all of it,

00:27:27   and I would be devastated if I lost it.

00:27:29   - It's not so much that I can't get this stuff back.

00:27:31   It's that I do tend my Plex library a little bit.

00:27:34   Like, I put custom artwork on some things,

00:27:35   'cause I didn't like the default ones.

00:27:37   I messed with the metadata.

00:27:38   I have 17 versions of Star Wars

00:27:39   that I kinda have to hand roll,

00:27:41   because Plex just knows about Star Wars,

00:27:43   but then I got all the different versions,

00:27:45   and I want them labeled, and you know, like,

00:27:46   and if it went away and I lost that,

00:27:50   it's like, "Oh, well, you can get those things back,"

00:27:52   but now I have to go and re-tend that garden.

00:27:54   I have to remember where did I find that good artwork

00:27:58   that I liked for this?

00:27:58   Did I save a little subfolder of like Synology custom artwork

00:28:02   on my Mac, or did I not do that?

00:28:04   How did I set up the metadata

00:28:05   for these different versions of Star Wars

00:28:07   so they're all set up correctly?

00:28:08   Just how do I recreate the folder structure the right way?

00:28:11   Like, it's not just the data.

00:28:12   It's the tending to it.

00:28:13   It's the same thing with my photo library.

00:28:15   Worst case scenario, like, I have my photos backed up

00:28:17   a million times, including to Google Photos again,

00:28:19   but Google Photos doesn't have any of my metadata about it,

00:28:22   and I would be devastated to lose all that metadata,

00:28:24   so part of me backing up my iCloud photo library

00:28:27   a thousand times is because I never wanna lose

00:28:30   all of the work that I have poured into tending

00:28:32   that particular garden of, you know, tagging photos

00:28:35   and editing them and cropping them

00:28:37   and putting them into albums and sub-albums

00:28:39   and the smart folders and, like, you know, keywords,

00:28:43   and, like, that's time I've invested into this library.

00:28:46   It's not a lot of data.

00:28:46   That metadata is probably, like, you know,

00:28:48   less than 100 megabytes or something,

00:28:50   but that is the most important part of it.

00:28:52   Yes, obviously you want the photos themselves,

00:28:53   which is why in the end my backstop against my backstop

00:28:57   against my backstop is, you know,

00:28:59   oh, at least I still have the photos,

00:29:00   and that's better than, you know,

00:29:01   that's what you really want,

00:29:03   but the real thing that would devastate me

00:29:05   if I still had the photos is if I lost all that metadata.

00:29:07   I do less tweaking to Plex.

00:29:08   There's probably enough customization

00:29:09   that one day worth of banging my head against it

00:29:11   I could get it back to the way I wanted it,

00:29:13   but I don't want to spend that day, so, yeah,

00:29:15   I just back it all up, and the good thing

00:29:18   about Network Attack Storage is, for me anyway,

00:29:20   it's a big noisy thing, but it's in my basement.

00:29:22   I never hear it.

00:29:23   I never see it.

00:29:24   It backs up the B2 with me not having to do anything,

00:29:26   and it just runs, and it's been running

00:29:27   for 10 years with no problems.

00:29:29   - Yeah, I cannot say enough good things about Synology,

00:29:32   and that's why, as cheap as I am,

00:29:34   I will at some point either because I'll be forced to

00:29:37   or because I'm finally being proactive,

00:29:39   I will be buying another one.

00:29:40   Now, maybe it won't be eight bay.

00:29:41   Maybe it'll be six, 'cause drives are getting bigger,

00:29:43   blah, blah, blah.

00:29:44   I don't know.

00:29:45   I haven't really looked into it, but I will be getting--

00:29:46   - Here's the thing I'm telling you.

00:29:48   My setup here was about $1,000 total

00:29:50   for 18 terabytes of RAID 1.

00:29:53   - Yeah, yeah.

00:29:53   - That's pretty good, and I have two extra bays

00:29:55   for the future if I really need that,

00:29:57   but the drives are so big.

00:30:00   The days of any of the three of us

00:30:02   needing a six bay NAS are over.

00:30:06   - Well-- - I don't know.

00:30:07   When I look at them, I also look at new Synologies,

00:30:09   and I think because storage is so cheap,

00:30:12   I think both Casey and I are of the mind

00:30:14   that if we had 10 times more space,

00:30:18   we can think of things to use it for.

00:30:19   - Oh, heck yes.

00:30:20   - That's the thing, I really can't.

00:30:21   That's why I went this direction.

00:30:23   I looked at what is my personal slice of the archive drive.

00:30:29   Tiff's is a little bit bigger.

00:30:30   She has more of the family photos from big events and stuff,

00:30:34   but my slice of the archive drive is 1 1/2 terabytes.

00:30:37   So I just copied those files onto my laptop

00:30:41   in a folder called Archive, and it fit.

00:30:44   I have less pre-space now, but it still fit just fine.

00:30:48   And so now that's, okay, this is just primary storage now.

00:30:51   Archive is simply a filing system as opposed to,

00:30:55   not a file system, a filing system concept

00:30:57   as opposed to a physical distinction of how it is stored.

00:31:02   - Yeah, again, I don't mean to sound dismissive.

00:31:05   I think for the purposes that you are talking about,

00:31:07   I think you made the exact right choice.

00:31:09   And I'm glad that #CaseyWasRight

00:31:12   and that you should have and did eventually

00:31:15   end up with Synology.

00:31:16   So what we're learning over the last month or so on ETP

00:31:18   is that I need to listen to you more,

00:31:21   you need to listen to me more,

00:31:22   and probably neither of those things

00:31:24   is going to end up happening.

00:31:26   That's okay.

00:31:27   All right, so now that we're 40 minutes in,

00:31:28   you wanna start the show?

00:31:30   - Directed by Margot Arment.

00:31:32   (upbeat music)

00:31:33   - We are sponsored this week by Linode,

00:31:36   my favorite place to run my servers.

00:31:38   Visit linode.com/ATP, see why Linode has been voted

00:31:42   the top infrastructure as a service provider

00:31:44   by both G2 and TrustRadius.

00:31:46   I run all of my servers at Linode.

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00:31:55   So obviously there's all the benefits of virtual servers.

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00:32:19   on those cloud instances.

00:32:20   And they also just have a really great

00:32:23   infrastructure around it.

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00:32:33   in an incredible value proposition.

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00:32:41   that I have found, and I've been with them

00:32:42   for almost a decade now, and they've been the best value

00:32:45   the entire time, because as technology gets better,

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00:32:50   or they'll introduce even lower-cost plans.

00:32:53   It's just great being a Linode customer.

00:32:55   I run a lot of servers, all of my servers that I run

00:32:57   are run on Linode, and I think I have something

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00:33:02   and it's just a wonderful web host.

00:33:04   I strongly, strongly recommend,

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00:33:16   and you get $100 in credit.

00:33:19   Once again, linode.com/atp, make a free account today

00:33:23   to get $100 in credit.

00:33:25   Thank you so much to Linode for being an awesome host

00:33:28   and for sponsoring our show.

00:33:29   Do you have the XDR yet?

00:33:35   - No, no.

00:33:36   I do have a new desk setup though, which we can talk about,

00:33:38   and will talk about in just a few minutes.

00:33:40   But no, I do not have an XDR yet.

00:33:43   I have not purchased an XDR yet.

00:33:44   My desk setup is ever-changing, but no, nothing yet.

00:33:47   But we have to start with a little bit of housekeeping,

00:33:51   I suppose, and one of you would like to talk

00:33:53   about lithium batteries and smoke detectors.

00:33:56   - Yeah, Andrew on Twitter pointed us

00:33:57   to a Consumer Reports article,

00:33:59   counteracting our advice from past shows that say

00:34:02   you can use these really cheap lithium nine-volt batteries,

00:34:05   really long-lasting nine-volt batteries

00:34:07   in your smoke detectors,

00:34:08   because they last much longer than alkalines,

00:34:11   and you don't have to change them as often.

00:34:12   Here's what Consumer Reports has to say.

00:34:14   Lithium nine-volts aren't recommended for smoke detectors

00:34:16   unless you follow a strict battery replacement schedule.

00:34:19   Those batteries maintain a high voltage

00:34:21   until the end of their usable life,

00:34:22   so they provide a much shorter low battery warning

00:34:24   to alert you that it's time to swap in a fresh one.

00:34:27   Alkaline batteries, by comparison,

00:34:29   have a more gradual voltage drop-off,

00:34:31   prolonging the low battery alert

00:34:32   and greatly increasing the odds

00:34:34   that you'll be nearby to get the alert.

00:34:36   So here's Consumer Reports doing a very bad job

00:34:38   of what is their basic job, right?

00:34:40   So this is their advice.

00:34:41   Hey, just don't use lithium nine-volts, all right?

00:34:43   And here's why, right?

00:34:45   But there is no sort of quantifiable information.

00:34:49   Okay, so you'll have less time to hear the beeping.

00:34:52   The whole idea is that the smoke alarms beep

00:34:54   when the voltage gets too low, right?

00:34:56   So if you can graph the voltage of a battery over time,

00:34:58   there's some threshold after which

00:34:59   the smoke detector starts beeping,

00:35:01   and you can imagine lots of differently shaped curves.

00:35:03   The question is, like, how long,

00:35:06   if you ignore an alkaline battery, you know,

00:35:08   in your smoke detector and it starts beeping,

00:35:10   how long would it beep?

00:35:12   Say you're on vacation for a month.

00:35:14   It starts beeping the second you walk out the door.

00:35:16   When you come back a month from now, is it still beeping?

00:35:18   How long does an alkaline battery beep

00:35:20   in your smoke detector?

00:35:21   A day, a week, a month, two months?

00:35:23   We don't know.

00:35:24   And also, how long does a lithium beep

00:35:27   in your smoke detector?

00:35:28   30 seconds, one minute?

00:35:30   Does it beep once and never again?

00:35:32   Or does it beep for one week instead of two?

00:35:35   I can't make an informed decision about whether or not

00:35:37   I should use lithium nine-volt batteries

00:35:38   in my smoke detector without knowing

00:35:39   how short is the low battery warning.

00:35:41   Yes, you might be out of the house when it beeps,

00:35:43   but I would like to know, does it beep for 30 seconds?

00:35:46   Or does it beep for three days instead of two days?

00:35:48   Or instead of two weeks or whatever?

00:35:51   That's an important question.

00:35:52   And they do touch on, okay,

00:35:53   if you have a battery replacement schedule

00:35:55   and you just put a reminder for every year,

00:35:57   replace all the smoke detector batteries on,

00:36:00   whenever we set the clocks back or whatever,

00:36:03   you won't have a problem with this.

00:36:04   But this advice, I wanted to put on the show

00:36:06   because we did recommend the use of lithium nine-volts.

00:36:08   We want you to know that apparently

00:36:09   there is a potential problem,

00:36:11   but I can't quantify that problem

00:36:13   or know how seriously to take it.

00:36:15   Because A, it's Consumer Reports

00:36:16   and they have weird opinions on stuff.

00:36:17   And B, they don't tell me how much shorter it's going to be.

00:36:20   Because that is the most important fact

00:36:22   in deciding whether this is important advice

00:36:24   that I should definitely follow or advice that I can ignore.

00:36:27   - Yeah, 'cause there's an obvious trade-off.

00:36:29   Like if a lithium battery lasts two or three times longer

00:36:35   than an alkaline battery, if you're optimizing for time

00:36:39   the smoke alarm is working,

00:36:41   then that's a pretty big benefit.

00:36:43   And then so you have to weigh that.

00:36:45   Depending on how, as I was saying,

00:36:47   we don't know how much shorter is the beeping window.

00:36:49   Who knows?

00:36:51   There's no data here.

00:36:52   So this sounds like the kind of thing that like,

00:36:55   sometimes established people with established mindsets

00:37:01   have a hard time adjusting to new things

00:37:03   and try to immediately disregard or discredit

00:37:07   some kind of new option as, ah, you can't do that.

00:37:09   It's not safe.

00:37:10   It's not the way we used to do it.

00:37:13   And that kind of attitude often is the cause of myths

00:37:17   and quote wisdom that is not true, spreading around.

00:37:21   And this sounds a lot like that kind of thing to me.

00:37:25   There is actual science that in the sense that

00:37:27   lithium-based batteries do have higher

00:37:31   nominal voltages than alkalines.

00:37:33   I think, I think they're slightly above 1.5.

00:37:36   And things that try to detect their battery level

00:37:39   based on the assumptions of alkaline battery voltages

00:37:41   will often not detect it correctly in either lithiums

00:37:44   or going the other direction if you put in rechargeables.

00:37:47   Like the rechargeable nickel metal hydride batteries

00:37:49   that everybody uses in most things,

00:37:50   like rechargeable double A's and everything,

00:37:52   those have a lower nominal voltage than double A's.

00:37:54   When you put those in something,

00:37:56   I think those are 1.2 or 1.3 volts instead of 1.5.

00:37:59   Off the top of my head, I could be wrong,

00:38:01   but it's lower.

00:38:02   And so when you put those in something,

00:38:05   oftentimes it will think that you have a low battery

00:38:08   even when you don't.

00:38:09   And then those also have a different kind of curve

00:38:11   of like when they fall off.

00:38:13   Like alkaline batteries fall off kind of gradually.

00:38:16   Nickel metal hydride I think has a little bit flatter

00:38:18   of a curve and then lithium has a much flatter curve

00:38:20   where lithium will stay at a high voltage level

00:38:22   until pretty close to the end,

00:38:23   which is the problem they're citing here.

00:38:25   But anyway, this claim about a safety issue with lithiums

00:38:29   I think needs more information to be backed up here.

00:38:32   But if you're actually that concerned

00:38:33   about your smoke alarm safety,

00:38:35   you should get the ones that have the new

00:38:38   like permanent built-in 10-year lithium batteries

00:38:42   and then when they die, and they're designed for lithiums,

00:38:45   so they probably have the correct voltage curve

00:38:48   adjusted for in their beepiness,

00:38:50   when they die, you replace the whole thing.

00:38:54   Like that's the currently best recommended practice

00:38:57   for smoke alarms in your house

00:38:58   and that way you get all new sensors and everything

00:39:01   in addition to a new battery when you get a new unit.

00:39:03   So if you're really that concerned about safety, do that.

00:39:06   And otherwise, if you're gonna replace your nine volts

00:39:08   in your existing smoke alarms,

00:39:10   I still think lithiums are fine.

00:39:12   - And honestly, you should probably replace

00:39:14   the whole smoke detector,

00:39:15   especially if it's in like an area like near the kitchen

00:39:17   where like greasy smoke and stuff can accumulate.

00:39:19   After 10 years, even if the battery's not dead,

00:39:21   it's probably a good idea to get a new one.

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00:41:17   - All right, let's go to Casey's Corner.

00:41:22   And I'm not talking about the restaurant

00:41:24   at Walt Disney World.

00:41:25   I have a whole bunch of hopefully quick follow up.

00:41:27   - Wait, there's a restaurant at Disney

00:41:28   called Casey's Corner?

00:41:30   - There sure is.

00:41:31   They serve hot dogs and other things of the like.

00:41:32   It's delicious.

00:41:33   - They serve like Velveeta?

00:41:35   - Boar's Head American cheese, white American, yeah.

00:41:37   - And now, you know.

00:41:38   - That would be incredible.

00:41:40   - Velveeta shells and cheese.

00:41:41   - I actually have several pictures of me in front of it,

00:41:44   which if I remember, which I won't,

00:41:45   I will give you one for this chapter of the show notes,

00:41:48   but I will surely forget.

00:41:49   Nevertheless.

00:41:49   - You inspired my wife to get Boar's Head

00:41:51   white American cheese at the store the other week.

00:41:54   - It's good.

00:41:55   - I always liked it.

00:41:56   I've liked it my whole life.

00:41:57   It's good, I ate it.

00:41:58   - Good, see, I'm telling you.

00:41:59   - Yeah, I'm still a yellow American person,

00:42:01   but otherwise, I admit the white American

00:42:04   is very good as well.

00:42:05   - There you go.

00:42:06   See, now that is useful followup.

00:42:07   That is what I like to hear.

00:42:08   All right, so let's talk about--

00:42:10   - Is this the only food and drink opinion

00:42:12   that the three of us share?

00:42:14   - That might be, actually.

00:42:16   - We all find Boar's Head American cheese acceptable.

00:42:19   Thumbs up.

00:42:20   - No, actually, really and truly,

00:42:22   I think you might be onto something.

00:42:23   This might be--

00:42:24   - Do we all like water too?

00:42:25   Not distilled, Mark Allen.

00:42:27   - Yeah, too soon.

00:42:29   - Too soon.

00:42:29   - Two of you have a fraught relationship with water.

00:42:32   - We do, me more so than Marco, but both of us now.

00:42:35   All right, so hey, the LG Screen Manager app,

00:42:38   which is this piece of garbage app

00:42:41   that you can install on a Mac

00:42:43   in order to update the firmware on your LG Ultrafine 5K,

00:42:47   as we discussed a show or two ago,

00:42:49   that only successfully worked on Intel Macs,

00:42:52   and as of the last day or two,

00:42:54   it now works on M1 Macs, which is great,

00:42:56   and that was via Dave Stachowiak via Twitter,

00:43:00   so we'll put that link into the show notes.

00:43:02   If you have an LG 5K or presumably 4K,

00:43:04   you can check that out if you have an M1 Mac.

00:43:07   Now, let's talk about my LG.

00:43:09   It is no longer in the house.

00:43:11   - Oh?

00:43:12   - After nine days of pestering LG,

00:43:16   I have finally gotten a RMA,

00:43:19   and it is finally on its way back to LG.

00:43:21   Thankfully, the repair center is super close.

00:43:24   Let me see where it is.

00:43:25   Oh, City of Industry, California.

00:43:27   So now this thing is going to probably go on a truck

00:43:31   all the way to California to probably sit for three weeks

00:43:33   until someone's available to look at it,

00:43:35   only to probably tell me that the thing is back ordered,

00:43:38   and then eventually, in a month or two or seven,

00:43:41   I might have my Ultrafine 5K back.

00:43:45   - And it might even work then.

00:43:46   - And it might even work then.

00:43:48   So that'll be the test.

00:43:49   What will be over first, my monitor drama or the pandemic?

00:43:52   I'm probably gonna go in favor of the pandemic at this point

00:43:55   and I realize how bold that is.

00:43:56   Nevertheless--

00:43:57   - You can end your monitor drama tomorrow.

00:43:59   - Oh, stop, stop.

00:44:00   Well, I sort of have, and we'll get there in a second.

00:44:02   So just to show you how great LG's service is,

00:44:06   I had an online chat with them on Monday the 6th,

00:44:09   which actually was fairly easy and delightful.

00:44:11   I didn't get a lot of flack about what I wanted.

00:44:13   I didn't have to like, you know,

00:44:15   assure them that I've plugged it in and blah, blah, blah.

00:44:18   Like, it was pretty straightforward.

00:44:19   - Did you take a video of your monitor now?

00:44:21   - No, no, no, didn't have to take a video of my monitor.

00:44:22   Nothing like that.

00:44:24   But they said, hey, here's the deal,

00:44:25   and I think I spoke about this last week.

00:44:27   We need $150 from you in order to do the repair

00:44:31   and we're not gonna collect that by an online chat.

00:44:33   So in order to do the repair, they wanted 150 bucks upfront.

00:44:36   I think I said this last week.

00:44:37   - See, you're spending even more money on the LG now.

00:44:39   - Correct, yes.

00:44:40   - You might as well buy a boat.

00:44:41   It's like just throwing more money.

00:44:43   - You're not wrong.

00:44:45   But no, I really, I have faith.

00:44:46   I truly honestly have faith that sometime between now

00:44:49   and when I'm dead, this thing will come back to me

00:44:52   and work properly, but nevertheless.

00:44:54   - I will agree that it will most likely come back to you.

00:44:56   - Oh gosh.

00:44:57   So I'm gonna be so furious.

00:44:59   In fact, if I'm smart, I won't bring it up

00:45:01   if it comes back and it's not working.

00:45:02   Please, future Casey, don't say anything to Marco.

00:45:04   - Now listen, I'm telling you,

00:45:06   the LG 5K is like the butterfly keyboard.

00:45:09   They can maybe repair it and send it back to you,

00:45:12   but it's not gonna be flawless in a reliable way

00:45:15   for an indefinite amount of time.

00:45:17   Like there's a high chance that something about it

00:45:20   will flake out again.

00:45:22   - We'll see, hopefully not.

00:45:23   But nevertheless, so very quickly,

00:45:24   on Monday the 6th, I have an online chat.

00:45:26   They say, okay, we're gonna call you in two to three days

00:45:27   so we can take your money.

00:45:28   I say, great.

00:45:29   On Friday the 10th, they haven't called yet,

00:45:31   so I had another online chat.

00:45:32   Oh yes, yes, yes, we will absolutely call you

00:45:34   as soon as possible to take your money.

00:45:36   Great.

00:45:37   On Tuesday the 14th, I said, guys, please,

00:45:39   can we please call me and take my money?

00:45:42   All I want in the world is for you to take my money.

00:45:44   - Please end this.

00:45:45   - Please and thank you.

00:45:46   - Can we all buy you an XDR so we can stop talking about it?

00:45:49   - Yes, yes, if you wanna buy me an XDR,

00:45:51   I will gladly accept it.

00:45:52   I am not buying that.

00:45:53   - I am not volunteering for this.

00:45:54   (laughing)

00:45:56   - If Marco would like to volunteer his tribute, so be it.

00:45:58   So anyway, so on the 14th, I get on the online chat again.

00:46:02   (jazzy music)

00:46:04   So finally, I speak to the last person

00:46:06   that I end up speaking to,

00:46:08   and that individual who's very kind,

00:46:10   said in so many words, I'm the person that's in charge

00:46:14   of scheduling refrigerator and TV repairs.

00:46:19   There is no chance I'm going to be taking $150

00:46:22   of your money over the phone

00:46:23   in order to get a monitor repaired.

00:46:25   I don't even know why they sent me to you,

00:46:27   or sent you to me, but anyways.

00:46:29   So I was like, okay.

00:46:31   - Why, why are you putting yourself through this?

00:46:34   - Because now I have to see it through.

00:46:36   I'm not a goddamn quitter, Marco.

00:46:37   - Quit this monitor, you have to quit this monitor.

00:46:40   This is sunk cost fallacy, come on,

00:46:43   just get out of the situation.

00:46:45   - No, no, it's gonna be okay.

00:46:46   - Run from this monitor, it's not worth it.

00:46:48   It's so not worth it.

00:46:50   - So, but it was so nice when it was worth it.

00:46:52   - Isn't your time worth anything?

00:46:54   - Well, apparently not.

00:46:56   So eventually I do get a call back

00:46:57   from a very delightful lady who said,

00:46:59   "I will take $150 of your money, please."

00:47:01   I said, "Yes, absolutely."

00:47:03   And so she immediately sent me a shipping label,

00:47:05   and I dropped the LG 5K off at FedEx this morning

00:47:09   to go to City of Industry to hopefully get repaired.

00:47:12   So she said, "In a best case scenario,

00:47:16   "it's probably gonna be like a week to get there,

00:47:18   "a week or so getting repaired and a week back."

00:47:20   Which, I didn't even look to the calendar,

00:47:22   but that's like what, the first half of January?

00:47:25   I will bet that there is a 50/50 shot

00:47:27   I see this thing before Valentine's Day,

00:47:29   and even that I'm not particularly confident in, obviously.

00:47:31   So we'll see what happens.

00:47:33   - So just for the record, I know the XDR is expensive.

00:47:38   I know, I've said it.

00:47:40   No, it looks back at expensive and says,

00:47:42   "Huh, remember how cheap expensive was?

00:47:44   "I'm ludicrous."

00:47:45   - Fair enough, however, LG's service is awful.

00:47:50   It has always been awful.

00:47:52   And one of the things you get

00:47:54   when you buy something nice from Apple

00:47:56   is most of the time, and they're not perfect all the time,

00:47:59   but most of the time, a way better service experience

00:48:03   if you need it.

00:48:04   This is ridiculous.

00:48:06   Like, the hoops that you're jumping through

00:48:08   to try to get what is, in absolute terms,

00:48:13   still a pretty premium priced monitor

00:48:16   to get warranty serviced.

00:48:17   - Oh no, it's out of warranty, which is part of the problem.

00:48:19   But go ahead.

00:48:20   - Well, to get serviced by its manufacturer.

00:48:22   - Yep, yep, yep.

00:48:22   - That's still a ridiculous amount of hoops to jump through

00:48:26   and a huge amount of time to be without it.

00:48:28   People buy tools for their work,

00:48:30   and they need them to work.

00:48:32   And this is one of the things,

00:48:33   when I was younger and didn't have money,

00:48:38   I thought I was a hotshot who knew everything,

00:48:42   and everything I didn't understand was stupid.

00:48:43   - Wait, you thought that?

00:48:45   That that stopped?

00:48:46   - That's called being smart and 20.

00:48:50   That's what that feeling is.

00:48:52   And so, I would look at things like enterprise-grade servers

00:48:57   and stuff like that, and I'd be like,

00:48:59   "My God, those computers are so expensive.

00:49:01   "What idiot would pay that premium price

00:49:04   "for that Dell workstation when I could build

00:49:08   "a very similar or identically performing computer

00:49:11   "for less money?"

00:49:12   And so I did.

00:49:14   And God, I spent and wasted so much time building

00:49:19   and then repairing and fixing and trying to get to work

00:49:22   custom-built computers for me and my friends,

00:49:24   like throughout all of high school and college.

00:49:26   So many hours down the drain.

00:49:29   But we didn't have much money,

00:49:30   and so that trade-off made sense.

00:49:32   But I never understood why people would buy

00:49:34   the expensive things.

00:49:35   Now that I'm a business and an adult, it makes sense.

00:49:40   If I'm using this thing as a tool for all of my income,

00:49:45   I can spend a little bit more,

00:49:47   this is where the phrase,

00:49:48   throw money at the problem to make it go away.

00:49:51   If I can throw money at this problem

00:49:52   and make it totally go away, that is often worth doing,

00:49:56   because these problems are not worth

00:49:58   the massive amount of time and hassle and potential risk

00:50:04   of this thing might just die one day

00:50:06   when you really need it to be working.

00:50:08   If you're working on something really important,

00:50:10   this thing might just die and you're just screwed.

00:50:12   And if when something does die,

00:50:14   it takes you a week of effort to even get them

00:50:18   to start the repair,

00:50:19   and then you might see it back again in a month,

00:50:22   that is not suitable for professional use.

00:50:26   Simple as that.

00:50:27   And that's why professionals in professional environments,

00:50:30   when they can afford it,

00:50:31   get nicer gear that has better support,

00:50:35   better reliability and better service when you need it.

00:50:38   And in this case, you're just making the case for the XDR

00:50:41   over and over again, every single week.

00:50:43   - He's making the case against the LG 5K,

00:50:46   not necessarily for a $6,000 monitor

00:50:50   that's been surpassed by the laptop monitors.

00:50:53   - It pained me so much to order

00:50:55   this goddamn expensive monitor, it really did.

00:50:58   But my monitor problem has been totally gone since then.

00:51:03   Zero issues, I'm totally happy with it.

00:51:06   Regardless of what Jon says,

00:51:08   and we'll talk about the rumors in a second,

00:51:10   I am not at all feeling FOMO about like,

00:51:13   oh God, what if I'm gonna miss the new thing?

00:51:14   - No, we bought ours at the right time.

00:51:17   We bought them when their price

00:51:20   made the most possible sense.

00:51:22   - Well, it never made that much sense,

00:51:23   but you bought yours at the best time when it was brand new.

00:51:27   - Yeah, if you look at the slope of how much sense

00:51:29   does this monitor make at this price,

00:51:30   it's going down real fast now.

00:51:33   - Maybe, I wouldn't say fast, but anyway.

00:51:35   So the point is, one of the reasons it's so expensive,

00:51:37   yeah, it is a ridiculous price and it is a ridiculous thing,

00:51:40   but you do get a lot for that.

00:51:42   Whether it's worth it to you or not,

00:51:44   that's up to you and everyone else.

00:51:45   But for me, if my LG monitor

00:51:49   that I was depending on every day,

00:51:51   if it died one day, I wouldn't even bother contacting them.

00:51:54   'Cause I've dealt with LG warranty support in the past.

00:51:57   It's always been terrible.

00:51:58   As far as I'm concerned, if the LG monitor dies,

00:52:00   I would just put it in a closet, forget about it forever,

00:52:02   and just get it, I would overnight myself a replacement

00:52:04   and keep working.

00:52:05   (laughing)

00:52:06   - Well, I understand what you're saying.

00:52:07   And that's the other thing, actually,

00:52:08   is even if I wanted a brand new LG,

00:52:10   they're back ordered for like a month or two.

00:52:12   Why?

00:52:13   Because there's no other options.

00:52:16   - Oh, there's one. - Nevertheless.

00:52:17   Well, there's one.

00:52:18   So I have settled on a new desk setup,

00:52:21   which will hopefully persist until and when

00:52:26   and if I ever get that 5K back.

00:52:28   And so I have the 24 inch 4K, not ultra fine LG monitor

00:52:33   that I was using literally four years ago,

00:52:36   or no, three years ago at work,

00:52:38   that I had borrowed from my good friend at my old job.

00:52:41   And then I don't know if I mentioned it on the air or not,

00:52:43   but I actually ordered one of those as well

00:52:46   before I even spoke to the friend,

00:52:47   because I figured, oh, there's no way

00:52:48   he's just gonna let me buy

00:52:50   or much less borrow one of these monitors.

00:52:53   So I'm just gonna order one and I'll use,

00:52:54   one of these 24 inch 4Ks and the onboard laptop screen.

00:52:58   - Speaking of orders, didn't you order a new LG 5K?

00:53:01   And you're like, oh, I don't think

00:53:02   I'm gonna cancel that order yet.

00:53:03   That's the last we heard of it.

00:53:04   Did you cancel that order?

00:53:05   - I did cancel it.

00:53:06   I think around the time that the LG, the one that I had--

00:53:09   - Do you regret canceling it now?

00:53:11   - A little bit, yes, but that's neither here nor there.

00:53:14   So anyway, so I have--

00:53:16   - You know what's better than one mediocre finicky monitor?

00:53:19   Two of them.

00:53:19   - So it would be a brand new one

00:53:21   that maybe would be less finicky, but he goes,

00:53:23   who knows why?

00:53:24   And by the way, you're talking about it.

00:53:24   Here's my new desk setup.

00:53:25   Again, I would petition for a photo

00:53:28   to be shoved into the Slack so at least we can see it.

00:53:31   And so I can also point at all the liquids

00:53:33   that are threatening your setup.

00:53:36   - All right, you know what?

00:53:37   I will do it right now.

00:53:38   So now you're gonna have to vamp

00:53:40   because I will do it right now

00:53:41   and I will not touch the water.

00:53:43   I will show you exactly where my situation is.

00:53:44   So hold on, you two vamp for a second.

00:53:45   - All right, got it, yep, yep, plenty of time.

00:53:46   Marco will edit this out and then we can,

00:53:48   while you do that, we can discuss which part

00:53:50   of Marco's adult businessman brain decided

00:53:53   I'm gonna store a jug of water next to the computers

00:53:55   in my closet.

00:53:56   - In my defense, those were stored there

00:53:58   at very different times.

00:53:59   - When you're an important businessman,

00:54:01   you realize don't do risky things

00:54:03   like make your own computer, it could cause problems.

00:54:05   I have a jug of water, what should I do with it?

00:54:08   How about up high in the electronics closet?

00:54:11   (laughing)

00:54:12   You need some adult supervision over there.

00:54:14   I don't know what you're doing in that office.

00:54:15   You're probably on wifi right now.

00:54:17   - I did this with the wide angle lens,

00:54:21   so it's probably not the crispest or brightest,

00:54:23   but it should be going through.

00:54:24   - I forgot you sit in darkness.

00:54:26   - No, actually the overhead light is on.

00:54:28   - It's a great thing with your glass desk

00:54:30   that we can see the cable mess right through it.

00:54:32   Like every time you look at the desk,

00:54:33   you're like, oh, there's my bad cable management.

00:54:35   Yep, still there.

00:54:36   - It's an absolute disaster, I'll be the first to tell you.

00:54:38   But so yeah, so what I have now--

00:54:40   - Wait, hold on, okay.

00:54:41   - And he does have a water, what are you doing?

00:54:43   - You have its way over to the side.

00:54:45   (laughing)

00:54:46   - So it was mine.

00:54:47   - Mine was in the corner.

00:54:47   - It was in the corner, nothing.

00:54:49   - All right, so--

00:54:50   - You have an on air sign, but it's off

00:54:52   and we're on the air.

00:54:53   - If that spills, like the USB pre-2 is right there,

00:54:56   which is like a $700 box that does not like water.

00:54:58   The keyboard is there, whatever,

00:54:59   but you already said there's like 100 and something, right?

00:55:01   The laptop is up on a little stand,

00:55:03   but it's learned its lesson.

00:55:05   It's afraid of the word.

00:55:06   - It's on an IMAX stand, isn't that an IMAX stand?

00:55:07   - Yes it is, it is actually.

00:55:08   - At least it's on something.

00:55:10   It's like someone scared of a mouse in a kitchen

00:55:12   going up on a stool, that's what I think.

00:55:14   - But it's hanging over the side by like four inches.

00:55:17   - Yes, well, all right, nobody's perfect.

00:55:18   So here's the thing, so what I've got,

00:55:20   I do have my glass desk, which eventually I will replace,

00:55:23   but have we mentioned I'm cheap?

00:55:24   So directly in front of me--

00:55:25   - Wait, where is the iPad that this Apple Pencil belongs to?

00:55:27   It's nowhere.

00:55:29   - Charging behind me.

00:55:30   I think one of the kids removed the pencil

00:55:32   and dropped it on my desk

00:55:33   and I haven't had a chance to put it back on the iPad.

00:55:35   All right, so let me describe this picture that I took

00:55:37   that you will probably not see

00:55:38   because my whole situation is a mess,

00:55:40   but I'll describe it to you.

00:55:42   So I have my glass desk centered directly in front of me

00:55:45   is one of these LG 24-inch 4K monitors.

00:55:48   This is the one that I actually bought

00:55:50   and I told myself I was going to return.

00:55:51   Like I'd never opened it for a week and a half

00:55:53   or something like that.

00:55:54   And I said, you know, I'll just return it

00:55:56   because I'll just live off of the borrowed monitor

00:55:59   until the LG comes in.

00:56:01   This thing was like 300 bucks,

00:56:03   which is not a small amounts of money,

00:56:05   but it's really not that much money

00:56:07   in the grand scheme of things.

00:56:08   - And it's 27 inches at 4K?

00:56:09   - 24 inches at 4K, which strictly speaking isn't retina,

00:56:13   if you look at the number, like the PPI numbers,

00:56:16   but for my crap eyes, it is absolutely retina,

00:56:19   without question.

00:56:19   - I would say that is like the upper edge.

00:56:22   Because back in the olden days,

00:56:25   24-inch monitors when they first came out

00:56:28   were 1920 by 1200.

00:56:32   And 4K is roughly, depending on some details,

00:56:36   but roughly double that.

00:56:37   It's the roughly retina version of that.

00:56:39   So later on, towards the tail end of 1X monitors

00:56:42   being normal in Mac land, they did get more dense

00:56:45   and that 1920 across resolution shrunk down

00:56:48   to like 21 and a half inches for the iMac,

00:56:51   in the same way that like the 2560 across

00:56:54   was first in the 30-inch Apple monitor,

00:56:57   and then later on was put in 27s.

00:56:59   So I would say, going quote back to the 1920 point

00:57:04   across monitor at 24 inches,

00:57:09   while it is not today's version of retina,

00:57:12   it is like close enough.

00:57:14   It's within the realm of what we expect as Mac users.

00:57:17   - Absolutely, so that's centered in front of me.

00:57:18   And then to my right, at like a 45-degree angle,

00:57:21   is the borrowed equivalent.

00:57:23   It's the exact same monitor, just the borrowed version.

00:57:26   And that's off to the right.

00:57:27   And then to my left, on a riser that was designed

00:57:30   for the base of the iMac, and is obviously,

00:57:33   and thus a little too small for the MacBook Pro,

00:57:35   but nonetheless, here it is.

00:57:36   On the riser is my MacBook Pro in clamshell at the moment.

00:57:39   And so I've got two identical 4K monitors

00:57:43   basically directly in front of me.

00:57:45   For the record, my water is all the way to the right,

00:57:47   as far away from my hand as it can possibly be.

00:57:51   - You know what water can do across a flat surface,

00:57:53   especially one made of glass?

00:57:54   It can travel, 'cause it's all the same level.

00:57:56   - But it's an Aquafina bottle that's been recycled

00:58:00   in the sense that it doesn't have Aquafina water in it,

00:58:02   it has tap water in it now, but it has a lid on it.

00:58:04   And the lid always stays on it,

00:58:06   unless I'm actively drinking.

00:58:06   So I'm doing the best I can here, fellas.

00:58:09   - But I wonder if maybe the solution

00:58:11   to Jon's water anxiety is sloped desks.

00:58:13   (laughing)

00:58:15   - That's gonna cause more problems.

00:58:17   - Or what if you use an air hockey table as a desk?

00:58:19   - Now you got stuff sliding out.

00:58:20   It's not that difficult.

00:58:21   - No, but you have all the holes, all the drain holes.

00:58:23   - You just need a surface around that same place

00:58:26   that is like three inches lower.

00:58:28   - My next desk is gonna be an air hockey table.

00:58:30   - By the way, your laptop being on the iMac stand,

00:58:34   none of the feet of that laptop

00:58:36   are in contact with the stand, right?

00:58:38   - Correct.

00:58:39   - So it's just metal on metal.

00:58:40   - Oh, no!

00:58:41   - No, there's a little, no, no, no, no, no.

00:58:42   The stand has like a little pad on it.

00:58:44   There's some metal on metal,

00:58:45   but the stand does have a little pad on the top.

00:58:46   - Oh, God.

00:58:47   You can get you like a tray table.

00:58:48   You have tray tables in your house,

00:58:49   just put a tray table next to your computer.

00:58:52   - All right, I'll get right on that.

00:58:52   - Then you can put like a whole meal on that tray table

00:58:54   and when it spills, it just goes to the floor

00:58:56   and nothing on your desk gets any of the liquid.

00:58:58   - Well, you can't really see in this picture

00:59:00   'cause it's terrible, but there's a filing cabinet

00:59:01   directly to the left of the--

00:59:02   - Yeah, just roll that out a little.

00:59:04   - Yeah, well, I could, but I always put junk on there.

00:59:07   That's like my landing area.

00:59:08   As you can tell in this picture,

00:59:09   it's my landing area for the office.

00:59:10   Nevertheless--

00:59:11   - I get some lights in this room next time.

00:59:14   - So anyway, I bring all this up to say,

00:59:16   right now, my setup is two of these identical,

00:59:19   I'll put the model number in the show notes.

00:59:21   I forget what it is offhand,

00:59:21   but two of these identical 4K monitors.

00:59:23   Each of them is $300 on Amazon,

00:59:25   which again is not cheap, but given what you're getting,

00:59:27   is actually really not that bad.

00:59:29   The monitors are not great.

00:59:31   They are fine.

00:59:33   They're too low on this desk.

00:59:34   I'll be the first to tell you they're too low.

00:59:35   I was thinking about that earlier today.

00:59:36   I need to figure out a way to raise them up

00:59:38   because in typical LG fashion, the stand sucks,

00:59:41   but it's fine.

00:59:42   And the thing is, and the reason I bring all this up

00:59:45   is because to my eyes and to my wallet,

00:59:48   600, like even if I bought both of these,

00:59:50   $600 for two 4K monitors, it is not what I would prefer,

00:59:55   but it is absolutely not 10 times worse

00:59:59   than the 10 times more expensive Pro Display XDR.

01:00:03   Like I just can't get, I don't think I would get 10X the,

01:00:07   I can't think of the word I'm looking for,

01:00:09   Joy, the return out of a $6,000 Pro Display XDR

01:00:14   that I am off of this not perfect,

01:00:17   but ultimately pretty serviceable $600 setup.

01:00:20   And that's why I keep digging my heels

01:00:22   because it just, I can't justify 10X what I've got right now.

01:00:25   I just can't.

01:00:26   Now, if somebody else wants to literally buy me one,

01:00:28   I will absolutely accept your Pro Display XDR.

01:00:31   But I, and if it was like a couple thousand dollars,

01:00:34   I probably would, but at four or five or $6,000,

01:00:38   I just can't bring myself to do it.

01:00:39   And I actually don't disagree with you, Marco.

01:00:42   I really truly don't.

01:00:42   Like everything you said, logically,

01:00:45   I 1,000% agree with you.

01:00:47   I just cannot bring myself to open my wallet for $6,000.

01:00:51   I just can't do it.

01:00:52   So that is my new desk setup.

01:00:54   And related to that, one of the things I've noticed

01:00:57   is that now I'm running out of ports on this computer,

01:01:00   which I actually have a dock coming from someone

01:01:03   coming my way in the next few days.

01:01:05   But with that said, I currently have plugged in

01:01:08   one of the monitors via HDMI,

01:01:11   one via USB-C to DisplayPort.

01:01:13   I have the MixPre 3.

01:01:15   I have a Ethernet adapter and I have MagSafe.

01:01:18   So I am using every one of the ports

01:01:21   on this computer right now,

01:01:23   which I'm glad that this computer

01:01:24   has as many ports as it does.

01:01:26   And that brings me to a tip.

01:01:27   I forget who it was that wrote in,

01:01:29   but I had read a few nights ago,

01:01:30   and then somebody wrote in the next morning,

01:01:33   that you can actually do 60 hertz via HDMI,

01:01:37   which I previously erroneously said

01:01:39   was not possible on these monitors.

01:01:42   The thing is you have to engage HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color,

01:01:46   because when I think of refresh rate, I think Deep Color.

01:01:49   - Does that screw with their color reproduction?

01:01:51   'Cause a lot of displays--

01:01:52   - You think I notice?

01:01:53   - Yeah, well, televisions and some displays

01:01:56   have a mode in which they can accept your signal and say,

01:02:00   but actually, the color gamut of the monitor

01:02:03   is wider in some areas than the color gamut

01:02:05   of whatever this thing is supposed to be displayed.

01:02:07   It's more important for TVs,

01:02:08   'cause TVs, things are mastered in a certain color space.

01:02:11   And for accurate reproduction,

01:02:12   that color space should be shown on the TV

01:02:15   within the color space that the thing is mastered at.

01:02:17   But the TV is like,

01:02:18   but actually I've got more colors in that.

01:02:20   Don't you want me to just take that image

01:02:21   and expand it to fill the whole color space?

01:02:23   And it makes everything look all candy colored

01:02:26   when it shouldn't be.

01:02:27   And the only reason that's relevant to your computer is,

01:02:30   if you're looking at pictures

01:02:31   and you're trying to adjust them

01:02:32   and everything looks all candy colored,

01:02:34   and you're like, oh, I gotta try to dim it down.

01:02:36   But then you look at it on an actual device

01:02:38   that shows it within whatever color space that photo,

01:02:41   like an sRGB or Adobe, whatever RGB,

01:02:45   if you see it accurate,

01:02:46   you just realize you've changed your picture

01:02:48   in a way that you don't like.

01:02:49   So it's not that you care super duper professional,

01:02:52   but if you're ever doing anything with photos on it,

01:02:54   you want what you see on the screen to reflect the reality

01:02:57   and not to be some ultra HD deep color thing

01:03:02   where the monitor is disregarding the color space

01:03:04   or expanding the color space for you.

01:03:06   - Yeah, I can't say I've noticed one way or the other,

01:03:09   but again, I do have a discerning eye about some things

01:03:13   and clearly a discerning ear,

01:03:14   because I can tell you all about how great vinyl is.

01:03:16   (laughs)

01:03:18   But this is not one of those things.

01:03:19   And so if you happen to have one of these monitors,

01:03:21   for what it's worth,

01:03:22   you can do picture, picture adjust, HDMI ultra deep color.

01:03:25   And if you do that,

01:03:26   you can use an HDMI cable and do 60 Hertz at 4K.

01:03:30   I will say not about color, but I could swear,

01:03:32   like something about the anti-aliasing is different.

01:03:35   I couldn't tell you what, and this is again.

01:03:38   - You're running at a native resolution,

01:03:40   so there wouldn't be any.

01:03:42   - I agree.

01:03:43   Something felt different to me,

01:03:45   but I can't put my finger on it.

01:03:46   I'm probably bananas.

01:03:47   - Is the sub pixel arrangement different on these monitors?

01:03:50   - I mean, possibly, but I wouldn't know,

01:03:52   because what I was doing was I was switching

01:03:54   between DisplayPort and HDMI in the same actual monitor.

01:03:57   And I felt like it looked different,

01:03:58   but there was enough delay

01:03:59   between the switching of the two that.

01:04:01   - I think the signaling,

01:04:04   someone just wrote in about this,

01:04:05   they were saying how you were complaining

01:04:07   that using DisplayPort

01:04:08   and it made you feel like it was a gross and ancient,

01:04:10   but I think what you meant is you were using

01:04:11   an older DisplayPort connector and that felt old,

01:04:13   but the DisplayPort protocol is more modern

01:04:16   and more computer focused than HDMI for,

01:04:20   can you find that email so I don't just make this up?

01:04:21   It's talking about HDMI, mixing chroma and luminance

01:04:24   in the thing would DisplayPort has them

01:04:26   more cleanly separated, I don't know.

01:04:28   Anyway, that could explain the difference

01:04:30   in that you're getting worse picture quality

01:04:32   because of some HDMI thing.

01:04:34   - Yeah, and I mean, it's certainly within the realm

01:04:36   of acceptable, it's not bad

01:04:38   by any stretch of the imagination,

01:04:40   but I felt like I was noticing something,

01:04:44   although I couldn't really put my finger on

01:04:45   exactly what it was.

01:04:47   And nevertheless, this is workable,

01:04:49   this is what I think I'm gonna stick with

01:04:51   at least until the 5K comes back

01:04:53   or until somebody literally donates a fixed DR to me,

01:04:57   which I'm not actually advocating for the love

01:04:59   of all that is good and holy.

01:05:00   I can afford one if I really wanted to,

01:05:02   I just really, really, really don't want to.

01:05:05   And for the record, this is an LG 24UD58-B,

01:05:09   24 inch 4K UHD IPS monitor with FreeSync, black,

01:05:13   as per Amazon.

01:05:15   So, and there's only 16 left in stock, so go fast.

01:05:19   But anyways, so that's what I'm doing.

01:05:21   And also one other quick bit of follow up.

01:05:25   I'd been complaining a little while ago

01:05:27   about my Magic Mouse, my brand new Magic Mouse

01:05:29   feeling weird with my brand new M1 Macs MacBook Pro.

01:05:34   And it felt like, I think I said a week or two ago,

01:05:36   it felt like almost as though the Bluetooth connection

01:05:40   was sleeping too soon, I have no evidence

01:05:42   to prove my theory, but it felt like it was going

01:05:46   into some sort of like low power mode too quickly.

01:05:48   And Monterey 12.1 has come out since I last spoke about it.

01:05:51   And I think it has made it mostly better.

01:05:54   There's also been, I forget who pointed this out to me,

01:05:56   but somebody pointed out a tweet from Charity Majors

01:05:59   who has a default's right that you can try

01:06:02   that apparently disables mouse acceleration.

01:06:05   I have not tried this yet because I think it's workable

01:06:09   for me now that I don't have to plug in the mouse

01:06:11   to make it feel like it's okay.

01:06:12   But it is something that I might try

01:06:15   if I feel like it gets worse.

01:06:16   So we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

01:06:18   - I found the tweet, it doesn't have much more detail,

01:06:20   but Andreas Hartl says about you talking about

01:06:23   DisplayPort versus HDMI, he says,

01:06:25   "HDMI is based on DVI and mushes together all data

01:06:28   "in a stream that still has the concept

01:06:31   "of blanking intervals.

01:06:32   "DisplayPort is more modern and packet-based.

01:06:34   "Video over Thunderbolt uses the DisplayPort protocol."

01:06:37   So that doesn't have much more information, sorry,

01:06:38   but that's what I was trying to remember.

01:06:41   - All right, well, I appreciate the try.

01:06:44   All right, that's all for follow-up now for SKTP.

01:06:46   (laughing)

01:06:47   - My goodness, this went a little longer than we thought.

01:06:49   - We've got one more monitor item,

01:06:50   and now it's ostensibly a topic, but sure.

01:06:53   - Oh, yes, that's right, we do have

01:06:54   that one more monitor item, how could I forget?

01:06:56   So you are welcome, all of you, every single one of you.

01:07:00   What can I say, but you're welcome,

01:07:02   because we heard a rumor today,

01:07:04   which was a short tweet thread,

01:07:06   and then we'll put in a MacRumors post about it,

01:07:08   that says, as per Twitter user Dylan something or other,

01:07:13   I don't know that they really have a last name,

01:07:15   but nevertheless, there are three LG made displays,

01:07:18   right, Dylan, encased in unbranded enclosures

01:07:21   for usage as external monitors

01:07:22   that are in early development,

01:07:24   two of which have the same specifications

01:07:25   as the upcoming 27-inch and current 24-inch iMac displays.

01:07:30   The other display seems to be

01:07:31   an improved 32-inch Pro Display XDR.

01:07:33   Despite the lack of branding, it can be assumed

01:07:35   at the very least that this display will be Apple branded.

01:07:38   Okay, I mean, it's a little bit bold, but I'll go with it.

01:07:41   Dylan continues, "Interestinglyingly enough,

01:07:43   "there seems to be a reference to custom silicon

01:07:45   "powering the 32-inch display.

01:07:47   "Sadly, no such references were found

01:07:48   "for the 27-inch or 24-inch displays

01:07:50   "with regards to custom silicon."

01:07:52   And Dylan continues, "Finally, this of course

01:07:55   "does not rule out the possibility

01:07:56   "of custom silicon for these displays.

01:07:57   "It simply means that there's not sufficient data

01:07:59   "proofing otherwise.

01:07:59   "Finally, the 32-inch and 27-inch monitors

01:08:01   "seem to have many LED displays

01:08:03   "and 120 hertz variable refresh rate."

01:08:06   This is very exciting, except for one key word.

01:08:10   Did you catch the key word that is making me very sad?

01:08:13   Early development.

01:08:14   - Early, that does not make me happy at all.

01:08:18   - Isn't it weird that like, according to this rumor,

01:08:21   again, this is just, I don't think there's much more

01:08:23   in these rumors than we've seen in the past,

01:08:25   'cause we've seen rumors for months now

01:08:26   about Apple making them on an external display

01:08:28   with like a system on a chip in it,

01:08:31   it's an A something inside there, whatever.

01:08:33   But the idea that one of these displays

01:08:36   is the same as the one in the current 24-inch iMac,

01:08:40   correct me if I'm wrong,

01:08:41   but the current 24-inch iMac screen is not high refresh

01:08:44   and is not HDR, right?

01:08:47   - I don't know about HDR,

01:08:48   but it's definitely not high refresh.

01:08:50   - It probably is HDR, at least in the old way,

01:08:53   like before the micro LED things

01:08:54   that all the previous MacBook Pros and stuff had,

01:08:57   where like they would just kind of overdrive

01:08:59   the screen brightness.

01:09:00   - Is it not mini LED as well?

01:09:02   - No, as far as I know, the current M1 iMac

01:09:06   is not mini LED.

01:09:07   - It's 500 nits, yeah, just looked it up.

01:09:09   - 24-inch iMacs or 500 nits, that is not HDR.

01:09:11   - Right, so all this being said,

01:09:15   if this information is correct about the products

01:09:17   that are in development, that sounds perfectly great.

01:09:21   I'm actually kind of surprised

01:09:22   they would sell a smaller monitor,

01:09:25   but certainly the 27-inch,

01:09:28   assuming that whatever the updated HDR is

01:09:33   is probably gonna be similarly priced.

01:09:35   And we talked before about the 27-inch,

01:09:39   if they do 27-inch 120 hertz and mini LED,

01:09:43   that's gonna be probably a fairly expensive display.

01:09:46   And so it would be nice then

01:09:48   to also have that 24-inch option,

01:09:50   although honestly I would want it to be bigger.

01:09:51   I'd rather have, I'd rather have a 27-inch

01:09:53   that doesn't have 120 hertz and mini LED

01:09:56   in the lineup, but anyway.

01:09:59   I see why they would do all three of these things,

01:10:01   although I would also see why they would only choose

01:10:03   to do the top two.

01:10:05   But this is also, this is a random person on Twitter,

01:10:10   and random people on Twitter who tweet Apple rumors

01:10:14   don't have a strong track record.

01:10:17   I'm not familiar with this particular person's track record,

01:10:20   but I would not read this as gospel.

01:10:24   Like until we have somebody who is reliable

01:10:27   with this kind of thing,

01:10:29   somebody like Ming-Chi Kuo, Mark Gurman,

01:10:32   when they start claiming specifics and timelines,

01:10:35   those are way more reliable than Twitter leakers

01:10:38   and YouTube leakers have been so far.

01:10:40   - I think both of those people did have a external display

01:10:43   with some kind of chip inside it,

01:10:44   rumor from many months ago.

01:10:45   - Right, so, and having the chip inside of it,

01:10:50   they don't necessarily say what kind of chip it is,

01:10:52   it's just a custom Apple chip.

01:10:53   That could be a lot of things.

01:10:54   That could be a timing controller.

01:10:55   That could be a display controller.

01:10:58   That could be a lot of things that is not like

01:11:00   an M1 Pro running in the display.

01:11:03   It could be a lot of things.

01:11:04   So I don't think that necessarily means much

01:11:07   with the information or lack thereof that we have.

01:11:09   But the part about it being early development,

01:11:13   that again, that could be true.

01:11:15   Gurman said a display was in early development

01:11:17   like a year ago.

01:11:19   Well, when did they receive the information?

01:11:21   Where did this information come from?

01:11:22   Maybe they received old information

01:11:24   or maybe they only saw evidence of early development

01:11:29   because the evidence of the current development

01:11:30   didn't leak out in that same way through the same channel.

01:11:33   Getting any kind of timeline argument from this,

01:11:36   I think is weak and unreliable.

01:11:40   It sounds like a lot of this information

01:11:43   is being derived from software support somewhere

01:11:46   or references that are in a library somewhere

01:11:48   to different displays.

01:11:50   So I wouldn't read too much into this.

01:11:53   We have heard from multiple places for about a year

01:11:55   that Apple is working on an external display.

01:11:58   At least one that is going to sit below the XDR

01:12:01   in the lineup.

01:12:02   There is a lot of smoke to that fire.

01:12:04   That's probably going to happen.

01:12:07   I don't think this information from this person today

01:12:09   gives us anything really concrete to work with

01:12:12   that we didn't already have.

01:12:14   I wouldn't assume that the 24 inch proves to be a thing.

01:12:19   I wouldn't assume that anything this person said

01:12:22   that wasn't backed up by other sources over the last year

01:12:24   would be a sure thing.

01:12:26   It's all maybe.

01:12:28   If this is true, that'd be great.

01:12:31   The timeline is not going to be what Casey wants,

01:12:33   but that would be a great.

01:12:35   Again, typical Apple fashion.

01:12:37   They basically stopped working on the Mac

01:12:40   from 2016 until about 2018.

01:12:43   They really did almost nothing for the Mac in that time.

01:12:49   For whatever reason, history will eventually maybe tell us

01:12:53   and some tell all books sometime.

01:12:54   But it certainly seems like they basically

01:12:57   turned off Mac development hardware wise for that time.

01:13:01   There was this giant hole in the lineup

01:13:03   and they decided to fill it sometime in the last

01:13:05   couple of years I think, from what we can derive so far.

01:13:09   And it takes some time to make stuff.

01:13:11   And an external display is going to be way lower priority

01:13:14   than things like fixing the Mac Pro fire

01:13:16   they made for themselves and fixing the laptop fire

01:13:18   they made for themselves.

01:13:20   These things are all more important.

01:13:22   And so if you only have a certain amount of engineering

01:13:24   resources that you're willing to devote to the Mac

01:13:26   and certain teams you're going to move around to do it,

01:13:29   the monitor is going to be last priority.

01:13:31   - Well, you say that, but all the other fires are out

01:13:33   at this point, right?

01:13:34   Like, yes, yes, yes, Mac Pro.

01:13:36   And actually legitimately the 27-inch iMac.

01:13:38   But other than those two, which I would argue

01:13:41   the Mac Pro is a smaller fire, what else is left, right?

01:13:44   Like in terms of Mac stuff, this is it.

01:13:47   This is what they gotta fix.

01:13:48   - Agreed, and I think that this is very likely to be

01:13:52   a problem that Apple has decided to solve.

01:13:55   When they decided to solve it is, you know,

01:13:57   that's a question mark.

01:13:59   And how quickly the result of that will come onto the market

01:14:03   is another question mark.

01:14:04   Whether the result will solve it is a third question mark.

01:14:09   But it does seem like they are making an extra monitor,

01:14:12   at least one that is going to be lower than the XDR

01:14:15   in the product line.

01:14:17   But other than that, I don't think this gives us

01:14:18   any new information at all.

01:14:21   - One quibble with what you had said earlier.

01:14:22   I personally am not familiar with Dylan, what is this,

01:14:26   DylanDKT is the Twitter user.

01:14:29   I have never seen this person before.

01:14:30   But as per the summary on MacRumors, they write,

01:14:33   "According to Twitter account, DylanDKT,

01:14:37   "who has a mostly accurate track record

01:14:39   "with Apple-related rumors."

01:14:40   I have no earthly idea what that track record is based on,

01:14:43   what rumors this person has leaked.

01:14:45   But according to MacRumors, they seem to think

01:14:48   that this person is not a complete dope.

01:14:50   So take that for what you will.

01:14:52   - But the problem with this rumor, it says,

01:14:53   "We found three displays."

01:14:54   And you can explain the use of those displays all

01:14:58   in a context other than a new external display.

01:15:00   Because the 24 inch, he already says it's the one

01:15:02   they use in 24-inch iMac.

01:15:03   Great, well, so why do we care about that?

01:15:07   Yes, there's a display used in the 24-inch iMac.

01:15:09   Okay, maybe that's for a 24-inch iMac.

01:15:12   Then there's a 27-inch one for the upcoming iMac.

01:15:14   Okay, maybe that's display for the upcoming iMac,

01:15:17   which is also not an external display.

01:15:19   And then finally, 32-inch for the replacement

01:15:21   for their one existing extremely high priced external monitor.

01:15:24   So none of those, you know,

01:15:26   "Hey, we found these display panels."

01:15:28   None of those things necessarily say

01:15:30   that there will be a new display that is not the XDR.

01:15:33   All it says is, "We found one that might be

01:15:34   "for the new XDR, and we found two other ones

01:15:35   "that are going into iMacs."

01:15:37   Great.

01:15:38   - The other thing is that this says

01:15:40   that LG is developing these things.

01:15:44   And to some degree, that is not as bad as it sounds

01:15:49   because LG makes the panels that Apple often uses

01:15:54   in their large display computers.

01:15:55   - It's actually two different companies.

01:15:57   So there's LG Display and LG Electronics.

01:15:59   And the company you hate is LG Electronics

01:16:01   'cause they make the monitor.

01:16:02   LG Display makes the panels that, like for example,

01:16:05   LG Display makes the OLED panels

01:16:06   that every single OLED TV maker uses.

01:16:09   Sony uses them, Panasonic uses them.

01:16:10   - I didn't know that.

01:16:11   - Right, and LG Display sells their panels

01:16:14   to LG Electronics.

01:16:16   And the relationship between LG Electronics

01:16:18   and LG Display is surprisingly contentious

01:16:21   considering it's like same team.

01:16:22   Like for example, LG Display versus LG Electronics

01:16:26   have disagreements about whether or not we should

01:16:30   move on to display technology XYZ.

01:16:33   Like what should we do next after OLED?

01:16:34   Should we use QD OLED?

01:16:36   Should we go back to some weird LCD thing or whatever?

01:16:38   There's very often debates between them

01:16:40   as to what they actually want for their next television.

01:16:42   So it's super weird over there.

01:16:45   So when Apple's talking about,

01:16:47   Apple is buying things from LG Display.

01:16:50   They're not buying things from LG Electronics.

01:16:51   But of course, Apple does have some kind of relationship

01:16:53   with LG Electronics 'cause I think they kind of like

01:16:55   essentially cajoled them into making the stupid 5K

01:16:58   that we all love.

01:16:59   - Totally, and Apple does that, at least they did

01:17:02   that kind of relationship with lots of companies before.

01:17:05   Especially in the last few years, Belkin has been

01:17:08   the recipient of a lot of those kind of seemingly

01:17:10   like Apple contracts possibly,

01:17:12   where Apple will kind of just work it out

01:17:16   with either Belkin or LG or somebody like that.

01:17:18   Like hey, we don't wanna make USB to Ethernet adapters

01:17:21   anymore, just please you make one that follows these specs

01:17:24   and we'll sell it in our stores and we'll promote it.

01:17:27   And that's probably the arrangement they have with LG.

01:17:29   Probably something like that, LG Electronics,

01:17:31   for the ultra fines.

01:17:34   I hope that LG in this rumor only refers to LG Display

01:17:39   because I hope that Apple has realized,

01:17:42   and I think they probably have,

01:17:43   that outsourcing those essential items to LG or Belkin

01:17:48   or companies like that doesn't usually result

01:17:51   in the quality that Apple wants.

01:17:53   - You get a monitor that doesn't work when it's near WiFi,

01:17:55   remember that?

01:17:56   - Yeah, that was the first version, yep.

01:17:58   - It's like real basic kind of like hey,

01:18:00   so your job is to take this panel from LG Display

01:18:03   and make a monitor out of it, can you do that?

01:18:05   It's like it won't be near WiFi, right?

01:18:07   I mean, we didn't really test it near WiFi,

01:18:09   we were just surprised as you when we shipped this product

01:18:12   to customers and their thing turns off when it's near WiFi.

01:18:14   - Yeah, exactly.

01:18:15   And you know what also is pretty mediocre?

01:18:17   The Belkin USB CD Ethernet adapter.

01:18:19   Like these things, Apple should make these things

01:18:22   if they matter and the monitor matters.

01:18:26   That is definitely an area where it matters.

01:18:29   And I hope Apple has learned that.

01:18:32   And again, given how good their recent releases have been,

01:18:37   it really does seem like there was this bad period

01:18:40   with the Mac for a few years, they have since turned it

01:18:43   around and it has just taken a while for like the good stuff

01:18:47   to really come out.

01:18:48   As part of that turnaround, I would expect current day Apple

01:18:53   to be making these monitors themselves,

01:18:54   not to have LG Electronics give them another crappy

01:18:58   ultra-fine solution.

01:18:59   Like I would expect whatever comes out is gonna be

01:19:02   Apple branded with an Apple price tag sold in Apple stores

01:19:06   and hopefully with Apple quality.

01:19:08   - I sure hope so.

01:19:09   And I mean, obviously I'm burned by this ultra-fine

01:19:13   experience, so burned that I bought a different $300

01:19:16   LG monitor, but nevertheless.

01:19:18   - You don't see that burned.

01:19:19   (laughs)

01:19:20   - Yeah, exactly.

01:19:20   - I hate this LG so much I'm gonna buy two more of them.

01:19:23   - All right.

01:19:24   - Well that's the thing, like when you look, again,

01:19:25   looking for gaming monitors and stuff,

01:19:27   a lot of the top choices are often by LG,

01:19:30   'cause of course LG makes the panels.

01:19:31   And LG Electronics often packages those panels

01:19:34   in a reasonable thing, like you know, Asus and on Razer

01:19:39   and whatever, all these other gaming companies

01:19:40   also package them, but they have like RGB lights

01:19:42   and these weird pointy things all over them.

01:19:44   And so if you just want, just give me the LG display

01:19:47   inside like a black rectangular thing,

01:19:49   LG Electronics and their monitors,

01:19:51   they have lots of different options for them.

01:19:52   And it's, you know, they're one of the better sources

01:19:56   to get those things, because it's not like you're gonna buy

01:19:57   an Apple to monitor for your PlayStation or whatever.

01:20:00   - Yeah, but I mean, I am really hopeful that this rumor

01:20:04   comes true in some way, shape or form,

01:20:07   and I really hope it's sooner rather than later.

01:20:09   Like in a perfect world, I will have my 5K back soon

01:20:14   and it will actually work and it will stay working

01:20:16   for a little while.

01:20:17   In a worst case scenario, I will have one or, you know,

01:20:20   at least one of these 4K monitors that I can fall back on

01:20:23   if necessary, but I would love, I would love to be able

01:20:28   to retire this LG Ultrafine 5K and buy an Apple branded,

01:20:33   or even if it was an LG Electronics display,

01:20:37   that actually worked better.

01:20:38   And if they've learned their lesson from the 5K,

01:20:42   I would be okay with that.

01:20:43   I just, I would really love to start fresh and try again.

01:20:46   And I really think that, you know, 1,300,

01:20:50   I think the 5K is $1,300 new right now

01:20:52   or something like that.

01:20:53   That is an expensive monitor.

01:20:56   It is very expensive, arguably not worth the $1,000 premium

01:21:00   over the monitors that are sitting in front of me right now,

01:21:02   or, you know, one of the monitors sitting in front

01:21:04   of me right now.

01:21:05   But I would do it because I really love having that 5K

01:21:08   in front of me.

01:21:09   But yeah, and so I think an Apple branded version of that,

01:21:13   like I would probably pay two grand for an Apple,

01:21:16   you know, equivalent of an LG Ultrafine 5K

01:21:18   that actually worked reliably.

01:21:20   I would probably pay a couple thousand dollars for that.

01:21:22   It's just, there's such a gap between,

01:21:24   there's a pretty big gap between the $300 monitor

01:21:28   that I've come to like and the Ultrafine 5K.

01:21:31   And there's just this phenomenal gap between

01:21:35   the Ultrafine 5K and the XDR.

01:21:37   And I really feel like there's a place for at least one,

01:21:39   if not a couple of options in that space.

01:21:42   Now, kind of tangentially related,

01:21:44   I don't trust myself to do this mental math at this hour,

01:21:48   much less, probably at any point, but nevertheless,

01:21:53   if there was, and if there was a 5K 120 hertz HDR monitor,

01:22:02   we don't have a port that can support that

01:22:05   without some sort of compression, right?

01:22:06   I feel like the three of us have talked about this

01:22:08   in the past. - Yeah, I think we went

01:22:09   through this before.

01:22:10   I think it's plausible with display stream compression,

01:22:12   which gets used for the XDR as well in many scenarios, so.

01:22:16   - So we think we could do it on today's hardware.

01:22:19   - Jonathan needs to go through the math again,

01:22:21   but yeah, I think it's plausible.

01:22:22   (laughing)

01:22:24   - Fair enough.

01:22:25   I mean, I would, and that's the thing is,

01:22:26   I think Marco has been saying this as well,

01:22:28   and I agree with Marco.

01:22:29   Like, if I couldn't run at 120 hertz on an external display,

01:22:34   on the computer that's sitting on my desk right now,

01:22:37   I'd be okay with that.

01:22:38   If I didn't have HDR, that would bail me out too,

01:22:41   but I'd be okay with that.

01:22:42   Like, I just want a reliable 5K display that works.

01:22:44   That's all I want, is a reliable 5K display that works.

01:22:47   - Yeah, and until we have those in the market,

01:22:52   like 4K, or you know, HDR and 120 hertz are just like,

01:22:57   nice to have in the future bonuses,

01:22:59   but like, until those basics are covered,

01:23:02   like, we'll be fine.

01:23:03   Like, just give us the basics.

01:23:05   Like, that's what we need.

01:23:06   The rest of the stuff, you can deliver that when you can.

01:23:09   - I feel like it's starting to be table stakes.

01:23:11   I mean, we just assume the big iMac's gonna have

01:23:12   all that stuff.

01:23:13   We know the laptops have it, so it's kind of,

01:23:15   I know you don't need it to code.

01:23:17   Like, I know you don't need HDR or 120 hertz to code,

01:23:19   and it'll be fine, but eventually it just becomes

01:23:21   kind of the baseline, and you feel disappointed

01:23:23   if you don't get it.

01:23:24   Kind of like 24-bit color for, I think you PC,

01:23:27   losers spent decades being like, 24-bit colors,

01:23:29   who needs all those colors?

01:23:30   That's ridiculous, but eventually it just becomes

01:23:32   the baseline, and now we never go to the, you know,

01:23:34   system preferences to colors and pick, you know,

01:23:38   what is it, four, eight, 16, 256, thousands and millions?

01:23:43   Those, or something like that used to be the choices

01:23:45   in Mac OS, that doesn't exist anymore.

01:23:47   24-bit is just the baseline.

01:23:48   I don't need all those colors, it's ridiculous.

01:23:50   Eventually I feel like HDR, and in fact, improving HDR,

01:23:55   in terms of like, you know, what is the maximum brightness,

01:23:57   can you do it full screen versus a 10% window or whatever.

01:24:01   Not this year maybe, but like, in a few years,

01:24:03   just like retina eventually became the floor,

01:24:05   and we made fun of the remaining non-retina monitors,

01:24:07   HDR and higher refresh will be the floor eventually too.

01:24:10   - Agreed, I just don't know how long that infinite,

01:24:13   or really ultimately finite timescale is.

01:24:16   - But you know, this is the year when I feel like

01:24:18   every single Mac that Apple sells that has a monitor,

01:24:21   or can attach to a monitor is probably going to be HDR

01:24:25   and a high refresh.

01:24:26   - I think you're probably right,

01:24:28   like that is probably what's going to happen,

01:24:30   but I also agree with Casey that like, we don't need that.

01:24:33   At like, I'm perfectly, like the other day,

01:24:36   I noticed 120 hertz on my laptop,

01:24:39   I think for the first time.

01:24:41   Like I was scrolling something, I think a Tweetbot list,

01:24:45   and that happened to be whatever combination of conditions

01:24:50   makes it run at 120 hertz, and I was like,

01:24:53   "Oh, that's pretty smooth."

01:24:55   But then I instantly forgot about it

01:24:56   once I did anything else, and it's fine.

01:24:58   Like, until I have 120 hertz everywhere,

01:25:02   I'm not really going to notice its absence, I think.

01:25:07   - Yeah, yeah, I agree.

01:25:08   So, I do think this is, you know,

01:25:11   to try to put a positive spin on this,

01:25:13   I do think this is great news,

01:25:14   that there's at least some amount of smoke

01:25:16   that there is a fire being built within Apple

01:25:19   to make some sort of new monitor.

01:25:21   I really, really hope that this comes true.

01:25:24   And I know the Apple Way,

01:25:26   maybe not in the last six months to a year,

01:25:30   but for a long time, the Apple Way was, you know,

01:25:32   "Here's our $6,000 6K monitor,

01:25:35   "and if you don't want that, then kindly piss off

01:25:37   "and get one of these pedestrian $300 ones

01:25:40   "that only losers use."

01:25:42   And I really think that there's room for,

01:25:44   I think there's room for a 24-inch, and a 27-inch,

01:25:48   and a 32-inch.

01:25:49   I would love to see all three of those.

01:25:51   And we'll see what happens.

01:25:52   - My concern is that if they're making a 24,

01:25:56   that probably means the 27 is gonna be really expensive,

01:25:59   and that's why they have to make a 24.

01:26:01   - Maybe, maybe.

01:26:02   And obviously, you know, again, I have my hopes for a 5K,

01:26:05   but if I had a 4K that was 100% rock solid,

01:26:10   which is so far what I'm looking at right now,

01:26:12   that wouldn't be so bad.

01:26:13   So, we'll see, I don't know.

01:26:16   I'm really, really hopeful that this will be

01:26:18   a springtime surprise sometime next year,

01:26:20   although I don't actually expect it to be

01:26:22   by any stretch of the imagination.

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01:28:19   - Hey, you wanna do some Ask ATP?

01:28:24   We need to clear some of this out.

01:28:26   So, this was added to Ask ATP possibly six months ago,

01:28:31   which is relevant when you hear me read

01:28:33   that Steve Wellington writes,

01:28:34   "I'm getting my first iPhone this Friday,"

01:28:37   (laughs)

01:28:37   six months ago,

01:28:39   "after a decade on Android." - 2007?

01:28:40   - Yeah.

01:28:41   "What are your favorite things that I should know?

01:28:43   "Tips, apps, obscure settings, et cetera."

01:28:46   You know, I should have done homework on this.

01:28:48   It's been so long since I've had a new iPhone.

01:28:51   I don't even know what people don't know these days.

01:28:55   I don't think I put this in, so I don't know.

01:28:58   Whoever put this in, you gotta have some idea

01:28:59   of some good tips, and maybe that'll spur my memory

01:29:02   and make me think of others.

01:29:03   What do you guys got?

01:29:04   - I suggest Overcast for your podcast needs.

01:29:06   - Actually, yeah, use Overcast.

01:29:07   That's a good idea.

01:29:08   - You sure you didn't put this in case?

01:29:09   Yeah, I think you did.

01:29:10   - Did I?

01:29:11   Well, it was still darn long ago.

01:29:12   I've forgotten whatever I was gonna say then.

01:29:14   - All right, well, so here's my main tip.

01:29:17   Part of the reason all of us don't have,

01:29:19   like, what were the tips?

01:29:20   I don't remember what it was like to have a new phone,

01:29:21   is because Apple's system for sort of setting up

01:29:25   your new phone like your old one is pretty good, right?

01:29:29   And so there are things that we set about the iPhone,

01:29:32   you know, some of us in 2007,

01:29:34   that we have just never thought about or looked at again.

01:29:38   But if we suddenly got a factory refresh phone

01:29:40   or all those settings were off,

01:29:41   we'd be like, what's weird about this phone?

01:29:42   This doesn't work the way I want it to, right?

01:29:44   So my first suggestion is to, when you get the iPhone,

01:29:48   spend a long amount of time in the Settings app

01:29:50   just going through every single screen.

01:29:52   We can't tell you which exact settings

01:29:54   you're gonna wanna change or whatever.

01:29:55   And also it's organized in a really Byzantine way,

01:29:57   so we can't even tell you look in this section,

01:29:59   look in that section, although I will say,

01:30:01   do not skip the Accessibility section,

01:30:03   'cause there's lots of good stuff in there.

01:30:05   And just wander through the settings.

01:30:06   This is a thing that might sound dumb or boring,

01:30:08   but I think for most computer enthusiasts, let's say,

01:30:13   going through the settings or the preference screen

01:30:15   is like the first thing we do in any application, right?

01:30:17   What can this thing do?

01:30:18   What can I change about it, right?

01:30:20   What are the options that I have available?

01:30:22   How can I customize it to be the way that I like it?

01:30:25   And just go through literally every single Settings screen,

01:30:27   just for the phone, not for every single app,

01:30:29   'cause apps also put their settings in Settings,

01:30:31   which is dumb and weird, but whatever.

01:30:32   And you will find things in there that pique your interest.

01:30:37   And maybe you'll change your mind about them, whatever,

01:30:39   but key clicks on or key clicks off, right?

01:30:43   How big do you want the text?

01:30:44   Oh, I can change it to make it easier to read.

01:30:46   Sometimes you can change the screen resolution.

01:30:48   I don't even know if that's still in there.

01:30:49   Make everything bigger or smaller on the phone.

01:30:51   - I believe DisplayZoom is still offered.

01:30:53   - Yeah, there's so many things in there.

01:30:55   Reduce motion, higher contrast,

01:30:58   not just accessibility things.

01:30:59   Sound, what sounds do various things make?

01:31:01   Oh, did you know you can make different sounds

01:31:03   for different notifications for different people

01:31:06   who text you in Messages or whatever?

01:31:08   And when I say the Apple stuff,

01:31:08   I mean the built-in Apple apps as well.

01:31:11   I'm just saying, just don't go through

01:31:11   every third-party app's Settings screen.

01:31:14   Settings will bubble up to the top,

01:31:15   like the important first-party apps,

01:31:17   like Safari messages, camera, stuff like that.

01:31:20   And just spend some time there getting set up,

01:31:22   and trust that the time you spend setting that crap up

01:31:26   will be well spent, because the next phone that you get,

01:31:28   you won't have to do this all again.

01:31:29   It will just carry this stuff over for you,

01:31:31   which is why we don't know what any of these settings are.

01:31:34   And the final thing I'll suggest,

01:31:35   just because this is the way I run my phone

01:31:37   and a surprising number of people do,

01:31:38   is on the side of your iPhone,

01:31:40   there is shockingly surprisingly

01:31:42   a tiny little physical switch called,

01:31:44   I guess it's the silent button, the ring silence button.

01:31:47   What the hell is that button called?

01:31:49   I think it's called the mute switch.

01:31:50   The mute switch, anyway, it's a physical switch.

01:31:53   And when you put that switch

01:31:54   so that the red part is showing,

01:31:56   your phone is in silent mode.

01:31:58   Back from the old days when we had feature phones,

01:31:59   it was like business that turned the ringer off, right?

01:32:02   If you do that, it's not that nothing on the phone

01:32:06   will ever make a sound,

01:32:08   it's that the phone won't make a sound from its speaker

01:32:12   when you're not using it for the most part.

01:32:15   And so I think a lot of people,

01:32:16   if you don't know what that is, or don't think about it,

01:32:18   you're like, well, I want audio to come out of my phone,

01:32:20   why would I make it silent?

01:32:22   Like, I need to hear things.

01:32:23   I wanna watch a YouTube video and hear stuff, right?

01:32:26   Why would I put the silent switch on?

01:32:28   Turning that silent switch on

01:32:29   does not stop you from watching a movie on your phone

01:32:32   and hearing the audio of that movie

01:32:34   out of the phone speakers, right?

01:32:36   That will still work.

01:32:37   What it does mean is when your phone is off

01:32:38   and someone texts you, it will not make a be-ding sound,

01:32:41   it will vibrate instead, right?

01:32:44   It will like, you know, to use the vibration motor

01:32:46   or whatever the haptic thing in it.

01:32:48   And I have to say a few times that I've turned that off

01:32:51   and my phone has started bleeping and blooping at me,

01:32:53   I was like, what the, oh, I somehow, you know,

01:32:55   I must've been cleaning it

01:32:56   and I switched the silent switch back to on.

01:32:58   I am a strong proponent of just leaving that silent switch

01:33:01   on silent for the life of your phone.

01:33:03   And a surprising number of people

01:33:06   who are long-time iPhone users do that.

01:33:08   And it does not really impair your ability to use it

01:33:13   or be notified because again,

01:33:15   like a vibrating iPhone on a hard surface,

01:33:17   you'll hear that from across the room.

01:33:19   Don't think you won't notice that you got texted.

01:33:21   If it's on a pillow, no, you won't hear it

01:33:23   and the ding would be better, right?

01:33:24   But it's a physical switch.

01:33:25   It's really, really easy to change your mind about that.

01:33:28   I'm about to put my phone down on this pillow

01:33:30   and go to the other room.

01:33:31   But if I get texted, I wanna hear it.

01:33:33   Click, put the switch on, go in the other room.

01:33:34   Like you don't have to go launch into a screen.

01:33:36   You don't even have to unlock your phone.

01:33:37   It's a physical button.

01:33:38   It's amazing, amazing feature they have.

01:33:40   It's a button on the outside of your phone

01:33:42   that you don't need to use the screen to access.

01:33:44   Take advantage of that button.

01:33:45   Decide which, how you want it to be set

01:33:48   and don't be afraid to move that switch up and down.

01:33:51   - That is a very good fidget device,

01:33:53   which you shouldn't use it for,

01:33:54   but I definitely don't stress test the switch.

01:33:57   It's probably only good for like 30,000 switches.

01:34:00   - Nonetheless, and as it turns out, I think you were right.

01:34:03   This was apparently sent in in September

01:34:06   and I said I was going to add it to the list.

01:34:08   And I actually apologized in advance

01:34:10   that we probably wouldn't get to it for quote a month quote.

01:34:13   So I was a little off there, but nevertheless,

01:34:14   at least I knew us well enough to know.

01:34:16   - That's awesome.

01:34:16   - Someone puts it on the chat room.

01:34:17   Like when you have that silent thing on

01:34:19   and you're sleeping and you set the alarm and the clock app,

01:34:21   which is a built-in app or whatever,

01:34:23   the alarm will still go off too.

01:34:24   Like it will wake you up.

01:34:25   Like don't worry that the silent thing

01:34:27   is going to stop you from,

01:34:28   like I guess this thing you just learned from experience,

01:34:31   what does the silent thing stop versus what does it not stop?

01:34:33   But for the most part, it does smart stuff.

01:34:36   Like if you forget you have that silent switch on,

01:34:37   but you set an alarm to wake you up at 5 a.m.

01:34:39   and you put your phone to sleep and plug it in

01:34:41   and put it on your nightstand,

01:34:42   I'm pretty sure that alarm will still go off and make sound.

01:34:46   - Yeah, alarms will always bypass the mute switch.

01:34:49   And there are even certain apps can register

01:34:52   for a special entitlement that will allow them

01:34:54   to do the same thing.

01:34:55   So there are certain like custom apps from other people

01:34:58   who are not Apple that are like important alerts

01:35:00   of some type that can do that as well.

01:35:03   Yeah, and the only thing, I would add a couple

01:35:05   of small things to this question.

01:35:07   Number one, I would suggest turning down the sensitivity

01:35:12   of Face ID security in one key way.

01:35:17   There's a switch under Face ID and passcode

01:35:19   require attention for Face ID.

01:35:22   This means basically like require you to be looking at it

01:35:25   to actually count as Face ID.

01:35:28   I would say this is not necessary for many people.

01:35:31   Evaluate your own security needs

01:35:33   and if this is not necessary for you,

01:35:34   that's fine to turn off.

01:35:36   I would also turn off the switch right below it.

01:35:38   Attention aware features, which should have a hyphen

01:35:41   between attention and aware, but doesn't

01:35:43   because I guess they're expensive in California.

01:35:45   And it shows that you have a notification

01:35:48   on the lock screen, but until you look at it

01:35:50   and unlock it with your face,

01:35:51   it doesn't show you the contents of the notification.

01:35:54   This again is a level of security

01:35:55   that I personally don't need and many people don't need.

01:35:58   - I love that feature.

01:35:59   - Right, so evaluate your own security needs.

01:36:01   If you don't need that feature, don't use it.

01:36:03   And beyond that, I would kind of go a little bit extending

01:36:06   what John was saying.

01:36:08   I would say use the built-in apps first

01:36:11   before you seek out a replacement in most cases

01:36:14   because when you use Apple's built-in apps for things

01:36:17   like notes and reminders and stuff like that,

01:36:19   mail, Safari, when you use the built-in apps,

01:36:23   a lot of things about the system work better

01:36:25   or are more convenient or are less of a pain in your butt

01:36:28   or enable certain kind of integrated features

01:36:30   that you might enjoy.

01:36:31   And that's part of the big benefit of Apple stuff

01:36:33   is when you buy in further into Apple stuff,

01:36:37   when you use more of their integration,

01:36:39   more of their first-party apps,

01:36:41   you get a lot more of those cool features.

01:36:43   And over time, as they add more of those features,

01:36:47   every day, they announced some new thing.

01:36:49   I was like, well, this is gonna be great,

01:36:50   but I don't use reminders or whatever.

01:36:52   And then you're disappointed.

01:36:53   It's good to minimize those areas

01:36:55   that are unnecessarily using third-party apps

01:36:58   where the first-party app actually would cover

01:37:01   your needs just fine.

01:37:02   So by default, I would say try Apple's built-in stuff

01:37:05   in most cases, except for the podcast app

01:37:08   which is called Re

01:37:17   Reviewed It and called it a quote, tour de force.

01:37:20   Things change over the years.

01:37:21   So I wonder whether you have any opinions

01:37:23   on these apps these days.

01:37:25   Do you use a Finder app replacement?

01:37:28   - I think that Pathfinder review

01:37:29   was gotta be over a decade ago, right?

01:37:31   I don't even wanna look up how many years ago it was.

01:37:33   But Pathfinder still exists.

01:37:34   In fact, I just recently bought the latest version of it

01:37:37   as part of some big app bundle thing

01:37:38   that I found myself buying.

01:37:39   So the problem with Finder alternatives

01:37:44   is kind of like what Margot was just talking about.

01:37:45   Apple does not make it particularly easy

01:37:49   to supplant a lot of its built-in apps.

01:37:51   So part of the reason why using Safari is so convenient is,

01:37:55   well, I don't know, is this still true?

01:37:57   They let you replace your mail app

01:37:59   and your web browser on iOS now?

01:38:01   - Yeah, basically to handle mail to and URL links.

01:38:04   - So I need another example.

01:38:05   But Apple has been slow on iOS in letting you replace

01:38:08   all the built-in apps with custom versions

01:38:10   of like Reminders I think still can't be replaced

01:38:12   as a default, right?

01:38:14   - That is correct.

01:38:15   So Reminders, certainly things like Notes and--

01:38:18   - Or things like Siri.

01:38:19   You can't replace Siri with--

01:38:20   - Music. - Amazon.

01:38:21   - Maps. - Right, yeah.

01:38:23   So that's an annoyance.

01:38:26   And on the Mac, the Finder is not easy to replace.

01:38:29   Yes, there are ways.

01:38:30   You can obviously, you can quit the Finder.

01:38:32   That's a thing you can do pretty easily.

01:38:34   And you can run another app instead of the Finder.

01:38:35   But lots of other apps, especially in the olden days,

01:38:38   maybe less now, but like would send Apple events

01:38:40   to the Finder to have it do something.

01:38:42   They just expect the Finder to be there

01:38:43   and they expect the Finder to be the thing

01:38:45   that they talk to do to file managers.

01:38:46   So if you try to use a third party one,

01:38:49   you are swimming against the tide.

01:38:51   Lots of things in the system will try to relaunch the Finder

01:38:54   or try to do things with the Finder,

01:38:56   and Pathfinder is not the Finder.

01:38:57   I don't use a Finder alternative partly for that reason

01:39:01   and also partly because Pathfinder,

01:39:03   which is I think the best Finder alternative,

01:39:05   is an extremely powerful browser-style file manager.

01:39:09   I don't want a browser-style file manager.

01:39:11   If I wanted one, Pathfinder's there and you can use it.

01:39:13   You can use it in addition to the Finder,

01:39:16   which if you want a better, cooler browser

01:39:18   that does more stuff, just run Pathfinder all day,

01:39:20   but then also run the Finder

01:39:21   and just don't open any windows in it.

01:39:23   I want a spatial Finder.

01:39:24   Nobody really makes one of those.

01:39:25   And even if they did,

01:39:27   like part of the benefit of the Finder that I wanna see

01:39:30   is it has to be the actual Finder, the default one,

01:39:33   the one that everybody uses

01:39:35   and not some third party thing

01:39:36   that I'm constantly trying to run

01:39:37   but being chucked back into the other one.

01:39:39   So the answer is no, I don't use it,

01:39:41   but Pathfinder is super cool.

01:39:42   You should check it out.

01:39:43   It may appeal to you,

01:39:44   but keep in mind that you will be fighting

01:39:46   against the entire operating system

01:39:48   and the entire Apple corporation

01:39:50   that wants you to just use the Finder.

01:39:51   (both laughing)

01:39:54   - All right, Yanda G. Streit,

01:39:56   Swift can be used in the command line

01:39:57   and I expect that you can also use it for automation

01:39:59   like what people do with Python.

01:40:01   I also read that you apparently can also run Swift

01:40:03   with Linux and Windows.

01:40:04   Do you guys have experience in using Swift

01:40:06   for other purposes in creating iOS and macOS apps?

01:40:09   - I do a little bit.

01:40:12   My bespoke, I'll call it a script,

01:40:14   although it's probably more of a command line app,

01:40:16   that I use to file away my pictures,

01:40:19   that is a Swift command line app.

01:40:21   That's the only thing I can think of

01:40:23   off the top of my head.

01:40:24   Swift, you know, the Latner,

01:40:27   I think on this very program, Latner has said,

01:40:29   and he's certainly said in other places

01:40:30   that he envisioned Swift to, you know,

01:40:33   its goal is world domination.

01:40:34   So you can use it, you know,

01:40:36   for super important low level stuff

01:40:39   and you can use it for scripts.

01:40:40   And yes, one could use Swift for that sort of a thing,

01:40:45   but I wouldn't say it's terribly well positioned

01:40:48   for that sort of a thing,

01:40:49   since it really is designed to be compiled

01:40:52   and it just doesn't feel to me like that's the right fit.

01:40:57   That's just my experience.

01:40:59   Again, like a command line app is a little bit different,

01:41:00   but for like something more along the lines

01:41:02   of what I would turn to like Python

01:41:04   or I guess if I was an old man, Perl,

01:41:07   or if I really liked weird technology, PHP,

01:41:11   you know, I could use one of those things.

01:41:14   And honestly, if it were me,

01:41:16   if I wasn't gonna use like Bash

01:41:17   or just a FishScript or something like that,

01:41:19   then I would probably turn to Python myself.

01:41:21   Marco, what's your thoughts on this?

01:41:23   - I pretty much agree.

01:41:24   Swift, while I'm developing an appreciation for it

01:41:28   as I use it more and more in my app development,

01:41:32   what you want out of that kind of language,

01:41:35   out of like a command line utilities kind of language,

01:41:38   is a little more quick and dirty of a style of a language.

01:41:42   And Swift is so rigid and unforgiving.

01:41:46   The type strictness, I can understand the value of it

01:41:50   when building like a larger app for public distribution.

01:41:54   For something like a shell script

01:41:56   or something that has a quick little command line utility,

01:41:59   Swift is just too cumbersome and too picky.

01:42:02   The other thing I would say about Swift

01:42:03   is that its string handling sucks.

01:42:05   I kind of can't believe that a language developed

01:42:09   so recently has such bad string handling.

01:42:13   - All right, now hold on, hold on.

01:42:15   Let me quickly jump in.

01:42:17   First of all, string handling sucks in Swift.

01:42:20   Absolutely right.

01:42:21   I couldn't agree more.

01:42:22   But I think the reason is because it's too academic

01:42:24   and it tries to be too pedantically correct

01:42:28   in too many cases, and that's at the cost

01:42:30   of an easy to use API surface.

01:42:32   Or just an easy to use API.

01:42:35   So I understand why it sucks, and I agree with you it sucks.

01:42:38   I agree with you it shouldn't suck.

01:42:40   But there is at least a reason behind it,

01:42:43   but it still totally sucks.

01:42:45   - Yeah, and there's so much of modern programming

01:42:50   is string processing in many ways.

01:42:54   String processing is just everywhere.

01:42:55   That's why it's so generally good and friendly

01:43:00   in most web development languages,

01:43:02   because the web uses tons of string processing,

01:43:04   and modern programming in general

01:43:06   uses tons of string processing.

01:43:07   And when you're dealing with command line stuff,

01:43:09   you're probably dealing a lot of string processing.

01:43:11   That's why Perl is so often used in this way,

01:43:13   'cause Perl, for all of its weird little faults,

01:43:17   it's pretty good at string processing.

01:43:19   Python, from what I understand,

01:43:21   I don't have any experience with Python, really.

01:43:23   But I understand it's pretty good at it too.

01:43:25   And Swift is just terrible at string processing.

01:43:27   It's just so cumbersome to use with strings.

01:43:31   And it seems like the API was designed,

01:43:33   as Casey said, for academic perfection,

01:43:36   rather than the actual practical needs

01:43:39   of most programmers doing string processing.

01:43:41   So for those reasons, it's just,

01:43:44   I could use Swift for this kind of thing,

01:43:47   but other tools are usually better,

01:43:49   and I will reach for them almost every time

01:43:51   in this kind of context.

01:43:52   - So I'm gonna agree with your conclusion,

01:43:54   but not for the exact reasons that you stated.

01:43:57   So the main problem that Swift has as a kind of like,

01:44:01   have you used it for something that's not an iOS

01:44:03   or a Mac OS app?

01:44:04   Like the type strictness is an issue, right?

01:44:06   Like that's just the type of language it is.

01:44:09   But most of the things you do from like, you know,

01:44:14   like just a command line program

01:44:17   or something that's not a GUI app or whatever,

01:44:18   or just basic scripting,

01:44:20   you only ever really need to deal with like one or two types.

01:44:24   You need to deal with string, which we've talked about

01:44:26   and I'll get back to in a second,

01:44:27   and then some kind of numbers, right?

01:44:29   Or if you wanted, you can just treat the numbers of strings

01:44:31   and have some convertible thing

01:44:33   that works in some scripting mode or whatever.

01:44:35   That's basically it,

01:44:36   like especially in one off little scripty things,

01:44:38   you're not defining a bunch of new types and whatever.

01:44:40   And like, if you just deal with the built-in types

01:44:43   and easy conversion between them,

01:44:45   even if you get into things like URLs and dates,

01:44:48   you're probably okay with the type,

01:44:51   like the type system is not gonna kill you, right?

01:44:52   What's gonna kill you is the API.

01:44:55   And actually, before I get to that,

01:44:57   it's not the compiled nature either.

01:44:58   Perl is a compiled language as well.

01:45:00   Having a compilation phase is fine,

01:45:02   as long as that compilation phase is fast enough.

01:45:04   Perl's compilation phase is so fast,

01:45:06   people don't even know it exists,

01:45:07   but Perl is a compiled language.

01:45:09   It goes through your whole program,

01:45:10   loads all of it and all the files that it includes

01:45:13   and all the other things,

01:45:14   and has a compile phase in which it compiles it

01:45:16   before it runs it.

01:45:17   It's a little more complicated than that,

01:45:19   but it is not an interpreted language

01:45:20   where it goes a line by line

01:45:21   and doesn't even know what the next line's gonna be

01:45:23   before it executes it, it compiles it.

01:45:25   So being a compiled language is no barrier to this.

01:45:28   I'm assuming Python and PHP are similar in that way

01:45:31   that they have a compile phase.

01:45:32   Swift has a compile phase.

01:45:33   You can write a command line Swift thing,

01:45:37   and when it runs with the little, you know,

01:45:39   hash exclamation point, whatever, user bin Swift,

01:45:42   it compiles it on the fly for you and runs it.

01:45:44   You don't have to compile it and make a C program

01:45:46   and make your a.out executable and run that.

01:45:49   It does it for you, right?

01:45:50   So that's not the barrier.

01:45:52   The real barrier is its API is not good

01:45:55   for those common things that I just said,

01:45:57   strings, dates, URLs,

01:45:59   and it's not because they're like,

01:46:01   oh, they're academically correct and it's a hard problem.

01:46:03   I will point to Perl.

01:46:05   Perl has academically correct string handling.

01:46:07   - I know, right? - Right, yeah.

01:46:09   Perl has academically correct string handling

01:46:11   with all the Unicode crap in it, and it is complicated,

01:46:14   and if you care about the nuances of Unicode normalization

01:46:18   and all that stuff, you can do that all in Perl,

01:46:21   and fast, by the way, but if you don't care about it,

01:46:25   Perl's API and interface to dealing with strings

01:46:27   does not make you care about it,

01:46:29   and Swift's API makes you not only have to care about it,

01:46:32   like it just shoves it in your face.

01:46:34   We were just talking in the chat room,

01:46:34   the thing we were talking about in the Slack is,

01:46:36   I wanna extract a substring from a string.

01:46:38   Swift's API is defined a substring type

01:46:41   that is not a string, and because Swift is type safe,

01:46:44   you can't take a substring and pass it to a function

01:46:46   that wants a string because this is a substring.

01:46:47   You have to construct a new string

01:46:49   by using the string constructor on the substring

01:46:50   you just got from a string.

01:46:52   Nobody expects that. (laughing)

01:46:54   Nobody expects that to happen,

01:46:55   and it's not the biggest deal in the world.

01:46:56   It's like, oh, once you just know that, you just do it.

01:46:58   It's like, yeah, but it's inconvenient.

01:47:00   That throws the type system in my face

01:47:01   in a way that I don't want to, or just,

01:47:04   I mean, regular expressions are coming to Swift,

01:47:05   see the Swift forums and the discussion of it.

01:47:07   I participated in a little bit trying to say that,

01:47:10   like, the Perl motto from ages ago,

01:47:13   easy things should be easy, hard things should be possible.

01:47:15   Easy things are not easy in Swift,

01:47:17   it's not because it's a compiled language,

01:47:19   it's not because it's a type safe language,

01:47:20   it's because the API is to do easy things is not easy.

01:47:25   Like, it's not convenient, right?

01:47:26   It's not like, I'll just do the first thing I think

01:47:29   and it'll probably work.

01:47:30   If you have never programmed in, like,

01:47:33   if you program just in one of these language

01:47:34   and you hop into PHP and you hop into JavaScript

01:47:36   or you hop into Perl, you're gonna guess right,

01:47:39   like, more than 50% of the time

01:47:41   about how to do stuff related to strings.

01:47:44   Or if you don't, you just look it up and it's like,

01:47:45   oh, they spelled it a little bit differently.

01:47:47   None of that knowledge transfers to Swift.

01:47:49   You're like, how the hell do I find, you know,

01:47:52   do I replace a substring in a string?

01:47:53   How do I construct a URL and get its components?

01:47:56   It was just today a big proposal and say,

01:47:58   oh, by the way, if you pass a string

01:48:00   to the URL constructor, if you just did URL double quote

01:48:04   and then, like, a string, because of the, you know,

01:48:06   a string convertible thing that they built in or whatever,

01:48:09   even if it's like http colon slash slash triple w

01:48:12   dot apple dot com, it'll construct a file URL for you

01:48:16   out of that because the string got literal converted

01:48:20   to a file URL and then that file URL got passed

01:48:22   to the constructor, right?

01:48:24   And so they wanna make a change.

01:48:25   Hey, if I pass http, like, shouldn't it just look

01:48:28   at the http and realize this is not a file URL?

01:48:30   And that's the change they're proposing.

01:48:32   That means for years now, this behavior has gone on.

01:48:35   If you were doing a script, you never want that to happen.

01:48:38   You don't wanna be surprised by stuff like that.

01:48:40   Swift just does not have an API that lends itself to,

01:48:44   let me just write 15 lines of code

01:48:45   and not be surprised, right?

01:48:47   And arguably, all those same things make it more annoying

01:48:50   to use in quote unquote real apps too,

01:48:52   but it's more tolerable in real apps because it's like,

01:48:54   well, this is a more serious endeavor.

01:48:56   I should think more about my types or whatever.

01:48:57   When you're doing a one-off script,

01:48:59   it's not that you don't wanna deal with the types at all

01:49:01   or anything like that.

01:49:02   You just want the obvious thing to work

01:49:04   and you want easy things to be easy

01:49:05   and that's where Swift is falling down

01:49:08   as a scripting language.

01:49:09   And then the final thing on that is all three of us,

01:49:10   I think, well, maybe not Casey, no, probably still Casey.

01:49:14   I think we all know some other language

01:49:18   better than we know Swift that is better at this job.

01:49:21   Marco knows PHP better than he knows Swift.

01:49:23   I know Perl better than I know Swift.

01:49:25   Maybe Casey knows Python or something better

01:49:27   than he knows Swift for these purposes.

01:49:29   - Casey's using C# for all of his shell scripts.

01:49:31   - Or C#, like the thing is--

01:49:33   - PowerShell, baby.

01:49:34   - When you wanna bang something out

01:49:36   and you're an experienced programmer

01:49:38   who has a deep experience with even just one language

01:49:41   that is vaguely suited to the task,

01:49:43   it is so much more efficient to just say,

01:49:44   even though there's a better tool for this job,

01:49:46   I know this tool like the back of my hand.

01:49:48   So I'm gonna ignore the supposedly better tools

01:49:50   and just bang out what I know will work.

01:49:51   It's why my stupid CMS site generator is written in Perl

01:49:55   and why Marco's is written in PHP.

01:49:57   'Cause those are the languages we know best

01:49:58   and we could bang it out in that.

01:49:59   We don't have to think about it

01:50:01   and it works fine for that purpose.

01:50:03   - Yeah, and that's why for a lot of things,

01:50:05   I'll turn to Python, which I know okay.

01:50:08   If it were an actual spoken language,

01:50:10   it would probably be a bit of a stretch

01:50:12   to say I am conversational in Python,

01:50:14   but I feel like that's kind of where I'm at.

01:50:17   But I would turn to Python for these sorts of things,

01:50:19   even though I don't know it super well,

01:50:21   but because it feels like a much better tool

01:50:23   for the job than Swift would be.

01:50:25   - Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:50:27   Squarespace, Mac Weldon and Linode.

01:50:30   And thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:50:32   You can join at atp.fm/join.

01:50:35   We will talk to you all next week.

01:50:38   (upbeat music)

01:50:40   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:50:43   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:50:45   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

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01:50:48   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

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01:50:51   ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:50:53   ♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

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01:51:40   - So I've been alluding to,

01:51:42   or kind of casually hinting at,

01:51:44   I had a Synology adventure a little while ago,

01:51:47   which I'd like to,

01:51:49   VibraSlap, which I'd like to briefly--

01:51:51   - It's only the first mention, Marco, come on.

01:51:53   - Well, it was a little one.

01:51:53   - It's an hour over here.

01:51:56   - All right, so in any case,

01:51:58   so again, I have an eight bay Synology.

01:52:00   The first two drives are time machine rate zero.

01:52:03   The remaining six drives are Synology hybrid RAID,

01:52:06   which is their version of some other flavor of RAID.

01:52:09   I forget which one.

01:52:10   - It's like what Drobos do.

01:52:11   Like, it's their version of,

01:52:13   it's like, it's a dynamically expendable,

01:52:16   like kind of software-based RAID

01:52:18   that abstracts away a lot of the details.

01:52:21   It's not like a straight RAID one,

01:52:23   or straight RAID five, or anything like that,

01:52:25   but it's just like their dynamic thing

01:52:27   that has some redundancy, depending on how you set it,

01:52:29   and is kind of managed in software,

01:52:31   so it can be expanded over time without breaking

01:52:33   the whole array.

01:52:35   - And speaking of that, Marco, quick aside,

01:52:36   what file system did you pick for your Synology?

01:52:39   - I did what it did by default through the iOS app,

01:52:42   which I was curious what the heck it did,

01:52:43   'cause I was intending RAID one,

01:52:45   'cause I got two identical disks.

01:52:47   - Not RAID, the file system.

01:52:49   - Oh, I have no idea.

01:52:51   Whatever's--

01:52:52   - BTR now, or butter, or whatever it's called, isn't it?

01:52:54   - That's what I was gonna suggest,

01:52:55   that if you didn't pick that,

01:52:56   now is a good time to maybe change that decision,

01:52:58   'cause BTRFS is, I think, the best choice.

01:53:01   - All right, I'll check it.

01:53:02   I mean, whatever was default,

01:53:04   and I thought it was interesting that by default,

01:53:06   it just did SHR as the RAID setup,

01:53:09   so even though I only had two disks, it didn't even ask me.

01:53:11   It just set them up as SHR, which in theory,

01:53:16   I was a little bit upset by that,

01:53:18   'cause I'm like, RAID one would be faster, probably,

01:53:21   but I also think in the grand scheme of things,

01:53:24   I'm probably only ever gonna have two drives in here,

01:53:26   and I might want expansion.

01:53:28   - And you don't wanna have to match the size.

01:53:30   - Exactly, so I might want the expansion down the road,

01:53:33   so I figure that's fine for my purposes here.

01:53:36   - So in my RAID zero array of two drives

01:53:40   that is used only for time machines--

01:53:41   - It's pronounced RAID-O.

01:53:43   - RAID-O, my RAID array (laughs)

01:53:46   with the two drives, one of them was dying,

01:53:49   and that wasn't great, but wasn't the biggest deal,

01:53:52   because it's my time machine volume.

01:53:55   I don't use it for anything else.

01:53:57   It's not the end of the earth.

01:53:58   So I tried to play this smart instead of fast and loose,

01:54:02   and I decided to wait until my periodic time comes

01:54:06   when I back up the entire Synology

01:54:09   to a single physical external drive,

01:54:11   which then gets plugged into my Mac mini server

01:54:14   so it can go up to backplays.

01:54:16   So I waited the week and a half,

01:54:17   'cause I do this every couple of weeks,

01:54:18   and I waited the week and a half or whatever it was

01:54:20   until the backplays backup was completed,

01:54:23   and then I set about to replace drive two.

01:54:27   This is a three terabyte drive.

01:54:29   I think it had been in the machine

01:54:30   since when I got it in 2013.

01:54:33   It's not unreasonable that it was time to replace it,

01:54:35   and since I don't need a ton of time machine space,

01:54:38   and I don't really care that much about time machine,

01:54:41   to be honest, I don't know that I've used it

01:54:42   in literally years, but I like having it

01:54:45   as yet another backup.

01:54:45   So I bought basically the exact same drive to put back in,

01:54:50   and so I got another three terabyte drive to put in.

01:54:52   - They still sell those?

01:54:54   - I don't even remember how much it was,

01:54:55   to be honest with you, but yes, they do.

01:54:57   So I think to myself, well, I'm pretty sure

01:55:02   this DS1813+ can hot swap.

01:55:05   Why don't I just do that?

01:55:06   I always used to shut it down when I was doing a drive swap.

01:55:08   - What do you think, hot swapping to you just means

01:55:11   I didn't have to turn the power off to the thing

01:55:13   to take out the drive, but it's RAID zero.

01:55:14   Like, you can't take out one of the drives.

01:55:18   - No, no, totally.

01:55:19   I knew I was gonna have to,

01:55:20   I knew I was gonna lose everything.

01:55:21   I knew I was going to have to recreate the volume

01:55:23   and so on and so forth,

01:55:24   but could I just hot swap the physical drive

01:55:27   and have the Synology understandably freak out

01:55:29   and then tell it, you know, just put everything back, please.

01:55:33   - To be kinder to the thing, what I would have done

01:55:34   is destroyed the volume, destroyed the RAID zero volume,

01:55:37   and just said, now you just have two empty disks,

01:55:39   and then if you wanna do a hot swap experiment,

01:55:41   leave the thing on and yank out the drive.

01:55:42   - That, see, this is why you're smarter than me,

01:55:44   because that didn't even cross my mind.

01:55:46   It didn't even cross my mind.

01:55:47   - Well, one question I have is like,

01:55:50   how do you know which volume Synology's OS is installed on?

01:55:54   - You know, I agree, agree.

01:55:56   - You can look this up, but yeah.

01:55:58   My main question is how do you make sure

01:55:59   that the one you're yanking out is the bad one,

01:56:01   because they all look the same from the front.

01:56:03   - Well, so they actually--

01:56:04   - I start numbering from left to right or right to left.

01:56:06   - They number from left to right.

01:56:06   - Is it drive zero or drive one?

01:56:09   - They number from left to right,

01:56:10   and there is actually a feature,

01:56:11   yeah, I forget where it is.

01:56:12   In, I think, Storage Manager,

01:56:14   there's a feature that where they,

01:56:15   where you can go and, I think they call it identify,

01:56:18   and you can have it identify that drive.

01:56:21   - It'll play music on the voice coils inside the hard drive.

01:56:23   - No, stop it.

01:56:24   So it plays the Imperial March, right?

01:56:28   - You know, it should play,

01:56:29   (imitates music)

01:56:31   - Yeah, right, it'll play the washing machine,

01:56:34   or the freezer thing.

01:56:35   So no, what it does is it turns the light

01:56:37   on that particular drive amber instead of green,

01:56:40   and because at this point it was dying, it was not dead.

01:56:43   So it was still showing green.

01:56:45   - What made you think that it was dying, by the way?

01:56:47   - Because it said, I got emails about it

01:56:50   literally every day or two saying--

01:56:51   - What did it say?

01:56:52   - I forget, I could dig it up, but I think it--

01:56:54   - 'Cause I get periodic emails about my drive help too,

01:56:56   and it kind of like--

01:56:57   - I think it said it kept reconnecting

01:56:59   or something like that, I forget exactly what it was.

01:57:00   - Oh, all right, I haven't gotten that message.

01:57:02   - So anyway, so I decided to hot-swap,

01:57:04   and you two are 1,000% correct,

01:57:07   I should have destroyed the volume first,

01:57:08   and so on and so forth, but I didn't, I just hot-swapped it.

01:57:11   And everything took a dump, everything took a real big dump.

01:57:14   So I tried to do that, and suddenly the web interface

01:57:19   kind of stops responding, which was not entirely surprising,

01:57:22   but I'm thinking this is not good.

01:57:24   - Was it the OS drive?

01:57:26   - Maybe, I don't even know, to be honest with you.

01:57:28   Still to this day, I don't know.

01:57:29   - This would be a thing to check before, again,

01:57:31   before yanking drives out of your computer.

01:57:32   - Perhaps, perhaps.

01:57:33   - Also, probably not the best to have the OS

01:57:35   on a RAID 0 volume.

01:57:36   - Well, how do we even know how to move it?

01:57:38   Like, even if that's true, listener, if that's true--

01:57:41   - It's not about moving it, it's about not creating,

01:57:44   like when you do volume groups,

01:57:45   don't create any new volumes in the volume group

01:57:49   that has the OS on it.

01:57:50   - No, I mean, it's a bit late for that now,

01:57:52   isn't it, gentlemen?

01:57:53   So anyway, so everything takes a dump.

01:57:56   The web interface isn't really working,

01:57:59   or it's sort of working.

01:58:00   It's like I'm on a 1400 baud modem.

01:58:04   Occasionally it'll work a little bit,

01:58:05   then just kind of crash, or I shouldn't say crash,

01:58:07   it just doesn't really do anything.

01:58:09   I try entering my username and password,

01:58:11   and that doesn't really work.

01:58:13   And so eventually I was able to request a shutdown.

01:58:17   I forget how I did that, I don't remember

01:58:19   if it was through the web,

01:58:20   or by like an iPhone app or something.

01:58:22   And it started to shut down, but it didn't succeed

01:58:25   after literally like 15 minutes,

01:58:26   and so I said, "Ah, screw it,

01:58:27   "I'm just gonna force the damn thing to shut down,"

01:58:28   which I know I shouldn't do, but at this point,

01:58:30   I don't have a Synology for all intents and purposes,

01:58:32   so I need to do something.

01:58:34   So I force a shutdown, and I boot it back up,

01:58:38   and it's very, very upset,

01:58:41   and it wants me to enter a username and password,

01:58:44   and I try entering my username and password,

01:58:48   and it doesn't accept,

01:58:49   I try to enter my username and password, and it accepts it,

01:58:52   but it refuses to accept my one-time password,

01:58:55   you know, the little six-digit thing.

01:58:57   And I try that, and I try that, and I keep trying that,

01:59:00   and it's still not working,

01:59:01   and now I'm running out of chances

01:59:02   before it like locks my entire account out.

01:59:05   So then I think to myself, all right,

01:59:06   well, surely I will try to use,

01:59:09   all right, surely I can use the admin account,

01:59:12   you know, the out-of-the-box administrative account,

01:59:13   which I know I've changed the password for,

01:59:15   and there's only three or four options of passwords

01:59:16   I would likely use for it, so I'll try that,

01:59:20   and that doesn't work.

01:59:22   So let's recap.

01:59:23   I have a Synology that has eventually booted itself,

01:59:25   and it is literally beeping

01:59:27   because, you know, the volume has crashed,

01:59:29   so it wants my attention.

01:59:30   It is booted, but I can't log in

01:59:32   using the login I usually use.

01:59:34   I don't think I have any other administrative logins

01:59:36   except the actual administrator account,

01:59:39   which it won't accept the password for that either,

01:59:41   so I literally cannot log into my Synology.

01:59:44   What do you do?

01:59:45   - Quick real-time follow-up, by the way,

01:59:46   about the operating system.

01:59:48   Someone in the chat room said,

01:59:49   and I just did a quick Google

01:59:50   that found at least some supporting evidence

01:59:52   that Synology stores the OS

01:59:54   and all of the data related to the OS

01:59:56   on all of the hard drives.

01:59:57   - Oh, that's cool.

01:59:58   - So as long as you have one disk that still works,

02:00:01   you should, in theory, have your OS in all your settings.

02:00:04   That does not necessarily mean

02:00:05   that KC hasn't hosed himself.

02:00:06   He'll continue your story.

02:00:07   - All right, so Pop Quiz hotshot.

02:00:09   You can't log in with your username password

02:00:11   and one-time password.

02:00:12   You can't log in with an administrator account.

02:00:14   What do you do?

02:00:16   - You have physical access to the machine.

02:00:17   You can boot into, like, the firmware mode

02:00:19   and go into, essentially, single user mode,

02:00:21   you know what I mean?

02:00:22   - Yeah, isn't there, like, a reset hole in the back?

02:00:24   - There is a reset hole.

02:00:25   - No, just single user mode.

02:00:27   Like, back in the old days, in regular Unix,

02:00:28   you could boot into single user mode

02:00:30   where it's not in multi-user,

02:00:31   and the one, because you have physical access,

02:00:32   and there's some, you know, thing you have to press

02:00:34   to make that happen,

02:00:35   but then you are essentially root on the thing,

02:00:37   and you can fix whatever's broken.

02:00:39   - So what you can do, and double-check me on this

02:00:42   if you're listening, for the love of all that is good

02:00:44   and holy, double-check me on this,

02:00:45   'cause I Googled to figure out the right answer,

02:00:46   but there is a reset hole with a button within it

02:00:50   in the back of the machine,

02:00:51   and if you, I forget the details,

02:00:52   but it's, like, if you press it for a small amount of time,

02:00:55   it will basically reset, like, the administrative password

02:00:59   or something like that, if I remember right,

02:01:01   but if you hold it for a really long time,

02:01:03   it will straight-up reset everything,

02:01:05   and if you hold it long enough,

02:01:07   it will straight-up reset everything

02:01:08   to the point that you lose your data,

02:01:09   so there's, like, two or three stages of reset,

02:01:12   and so I did the littlest bit of reset,

02:01:16   and that got me into the administrator account

02:01:19   with the default password.

02:01:20   - That just, like, resets the wallpaper.

02:01:22   - Yeah, basically.

02:01:23   No, I got into the administrator account

02:01:25   with the default password,

02:01:26   and then I was able to restore my account,

02:01:30   which, well, I shouldn't even say restore it.

02:01:31   I think I know what the problem is.

02:01:33   What would cause my username and password,

02:01:37   which is one of the few passwords I have memorized,

02:01:40   and my one-time password,

02:01:41   which is stored in one password, not work?

02:01:43   What would cause that to not work?

02:01:45   - Date and time, Rowan?

02:01:47   - I think so.

02:01:48   I think the date and time got out of whack,

02:01:50   and that's why the one-time password wouldn't work,

02:01:53   because if my limited understanding

02:01:54   of how one-time passwords work

02:01:55   is they have some sort of seed value,

02:01:57   jump in, gentlemen, when you're ready,

02:01:58   they have some sort of seed value,

02:01:59   and they compare the time to some reference

02:02:02   and can compute via algorithm

02:02:04   what these six digits should be at this time,

02:02:07   and if the time isn't agreed upon

02:02:09   between your device and the device you're trying to log into,

02:02:12   that will cause it, so whoopsie-dupsie.

02:02:15   So I did a update to the time.

02:02:17   I was able to get back into my account,

02:02:18   and then when I was putting everything back

02:02:20   and trying to restore everything,

02:02:22   it was very, very angry at me

02:02:25   that the administrative account was enabled at all,

02:02:28   because to their eyes, that's very ripe

02:02:31   for a dictionary attack or something like that,

02:02:34   and so they really, really, really don't want you

02:02:37   to have the administrative account active,

02:02:39   but the problem is when you're a single-person company

02:02:41   and a single-person Synology user,

02:02:43   I only had the administrative account,

02:02:45   which I surely had disabled,

02:02:47   because I did what they told me to do, and my own account.

02:02:49   It's not like I could go to Bob down the hall and say,

02:02:51   "Hey, Bob, can you log in with your administrative account

02:02:54   "and get us all squared away again?"

02:02:56   So I think that really hosed me,

02:03:00   but the good news is I was able to not only

02:03:04   get my normal account back with very minimal loss of data

02:03:09   or settings or anything like that,

02:03:11   but I was eventually able to set up

02:03:13   a administrative account that is not my normal account,

02:03:16   that does not use the username admin,

02:03:18   and I was able to set all that up,

02:03:20   and I have a ridiculously strong password for that

02:03:22   that's stored in 1Password,

02:03:24   but I decided not to turn on the one-time password for that,

02:03:26   so this way I will never have that particular problem again.

02:03:31   But for a brief window of time, again,

02:03:34   I thought that I had lost everything on my Synology,

02:03:38   which was not delightful, and thankfully,

02:03:41   I had been smart enough to wait until everything

02:03:43   was confirmed to be in back place

02:03:44   before I did all this dance, but wow,

02:03:47   that was a very tense two hours

02:03:49   while I was trying to figure all this out,

02:03:50   and it was not fun.

02:03:53   - Your impulse control when it comes to technology,

02:03:55   like when we're talking to you now,

02:03:56   you're like, oh yeah, no,

02:03:57   I probably should have destroyed the volume first,

02:03:58   but in the moment, you're so excited about hot-swapping,

02:04:00   you're just like, let's see what happens

02:04:01   when I yank this out. - Yeah, why not, man?

02:04:03   - You're not projecting forward in time and saying,

02:04:05   well, what's the worst that could happen

02:04:07   if you yanked this out, and you almost saw

02:04:08   what the worst thing could happen if you yanked it out.

02:04:11   - So yeah, so now drive two is back up and running,

02:04:14   and volume, the time machine volume is back up and running.

02:04:17   I did lose, of course, everything on that volume,

02:04:18   but that's fine, but yeah, what a nightmare.

02:04:21   It was a self-created nightmare,

02:04:22   but what a nightmare that was,

02:04:23   and I was so thankful that Synology's have this

02:04:26   like multi-tier reset paradigm,

02:04:28   wherein I could get myself logged in

02:04:30   because I have physical access to the machine,

02:04:32   I could get myself logged in

02:04:33   without having to reset all my settings and all that jazz.

02:04:35   - Yeah, physical access usually means

02:04:37   that if there's working stuff inside there,

02:04:40   you can get to it, that's the whole point of physical access.

02:04:41   It's something you have to hold down or press or do,

02:04:44   but you can get back in.

02:04:45   And if this, I'll have to look more into this,

02:04:48   but like the idea that Synology puts the OS

02:04:50   in every single drive is interesting and clever

02:04:52   and other reason too, like how they do things.

02:04:54   I was just thinking of that with Marco,

02:04:56   was like, oh, I'd only need,

02:04:57   I just have two drives or whatever.

02:04:58   Well, especially if you just have a single volume,

02:05:02   you're like, if one of them goes bad, who cares?

02:05:04   I'm assuming you'll have to reset up your whole OS, right?

02:05:07   'Cause if you destroy that volume and it's the only volume,

02:05:10   you've also destroyed all your settings and stuff,

02:05:11   if like a disk went bad,

02:05:12   like if you RAID 0 it is what I'm saying.

02:05:15   Like, 'cause you don't have a second place for the OS to be,

02:05:18   you have a single RAID 0 volume,

02:05:21   maybe it's on all these individual hard drives, I don't know.

02:05:23   I don't know quite how it works, but I would not try.

02:05:26   Like, I always feel better having,

02:05:29   you know, at least three drives.

02:05:31   I know you bought a four bay thing,

02:05:33   but you only put two drives in it.

02:05:34   Maybe you got a small third one and throw it in there

02:05:37   just to be like your OS backup boot drive

02:05:40   so that the other two can be totally hosed

02:05:41   and you won't lose all your settings.

02:05:42   Then again, you probably don't have too many settings,

02:05:43   but it is annoying to go back through

02:05:45   and reset up the time machine volume

02:05:46   and set up quotas for people or whatever you did, you know?

02:05:49   - Actually, I couldn't even do the quotas

02:05:50   because the quota for TIFF's computer

02:05:52   needs to be eight terabytes,

02:05:54   and the most it'll let you enter is four terabytes,

02:05:56   presumably for some kind of integer limit somewhere.

02:05:59   But so like, I literally, so I'm just like,

02:06:01   well, I guess I just won't use quotas then.

02:06:04   - Yeah, I don't use quotas.

02:06:05   And like, it takes care of itself

02:06:07   and that whoever's filling the thing,

02:06:08   you'll see their poor Mac say cleaning up,

02:06:10   like, or free, you know, freeing up space.

02:06:13   Like, if you look in the time machine menu bar,

02:06:14   it says like, freeing up space,

02:06:15   and it will do that for a long time.

02:06:17   But what it's doing is saying,

02:06:18   oh, well, the disk is running out of room,

02:06:20   and I'm in the middle of doing a backup,

02:06:22   and I know that I can't do my next backup

02:06:24   unless I clean up space,

02:06:25   and it will delete like a whole bunch of old backups.

02:06:27   And they'll all just fight with each other

02:06:29   over that last scrap of space.

02:06:30   It also is a good idea to change,

02:06:33   like Synology will email you

02:06:35   if like a volume is getting low in space,

02:06:37   and you can choose what threshold it will email you.

02:06:40   If you have the threshold set like too high,

02:06:42   like if you have it set,

02:06:43   please email me when you have 20% space left,

02:06:45   you will be emailed forever, right?

02:06:47   'Cause time machine will never leave 20% free.

02:06:50   But time machine will leave 8% free.

02:06:53   So if you set the threshold to be like 5%,

02:06:55   then you'll only get the email

02:06:56   when like something has gone wrong with time machine,

02:06:59   it hasn't been able to free up space or something.

02:07:02   - Yeah, that's the only reason

02:07:03   I ever want the Synology to email me

02:07:05   is a hard drive has died.

02:07:08   I want to know that.

02:07:09   I want no other emails from this device that is--

02:07:12   - You enjoy like the health report ones

02:07:14   that tell you how many bad sectors all your hard drives have?

02:07:16   - I turn those off after a while,

02:07:18   or they stop working, one of those.

02:07:19   Somehow they were turned off.

02:07:21   - 'Cause that gives you the pre-warning of like,

02:07:23   if you get an email and said there's one bad sector, right?

02:07:25   And then the next week you get an email

02:07:26   and says there's 10 bad sectors,

02:07:28   maybe start shopping for a new hard drive, right?

02:07:30   But you know, I still get the emails, I think monthly.

02:07:33   And like I've had a hard drive

02:07:34   that's had one bad sector for like six years.

02:07:36   And that's fine.

02:07:37   Like hard drives have bad sectors

02:07:39   and it just keeps emailing me, I just look at that number.

02:07:40   And if it's still one, I'm like, everything's fine.

02:07:43   (laughing)

02:07:45   If it's 110, I need a new drive.

02:07:49   (beeping)