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ATP

438: Some Amount of Futzing

 

00:00:00   Guys, I had a bad afternoon. Did you drop your phone again? No. Did I tell you though that I

00:00:05   realized I had dropped... I think I said this on the show... I have dropped my 12 Pro only indoors ever, and I've dropped in such a way that I noticed I did shatter the back ever so slightly. Like, if you don't look at it, if you don't look at it up close, I don't know. But I've decided unequivocally this is the last time I will be caseless caseless. I just can't do it. I can't do it. They're too fragile. Oh, apparently not.

00:00:28   So funny that you mentioned that actually. Uh oh. Uh oh. No, it's not too bad. So I've been going caseless this year, first time in a number of years, and the other day I just dropped it. I wish I had some good story, but I never dropped my phone. It's never been a thing. Well, the problem is, almost every year I drop my phone like once or twice. And normally it's in a case, and so I kind of get forgiven. I hope that was a freebie.

00:00:57   And this year, AppleCare is my case. Sure enough. So I'm just walking the dog, and I have my phone in my hand, adjusting something, and he pulls right at that moment. And normally it doesn't happen, but it happened. And I dropped the phone from a height of three feet onto a concrete sidewalk. And it's fine in the sense that neither glass pane has broken, but the edges are pretty scuffed up. And they're rough when you run your finger over them.

00:01:26   That's undesirable. Yeah, it's not bad enough to invoke the AppleCare and get it replaced. But it's just kind of a reminder, like, oh, I guess that's what cases are for. I wish I didn't need them, and maybe I still don't if I can have a phone for almost a year and only drop it once, and only have a few scratches on the outside that result from that.

00:01:47   You get some sandpaper or metal file, you can take down those rough edges. I thought about that, but because I have the red finish. Like, if I had just the regular silver aluminum, like, uncolored red magic marker and color. Yeah, well, touch up pen from a car, you know?

00:02:02   Yeah, well, and like, and anywhere that the finish gets scratched, the aluminum shows through. It's like the reds already gone from those sections. But I would hate to have to make my the silver patches larger that are already there.

00:02:17   That's not why my afternoon was bad. But yes, I agree. You know, and I love, I love, love, love, love the look, and in many ways, the feel of the 12 Pro. And I love the color. Like I liked the the foresty green from last year, but this like, deep blue I freaking adore.

00:02:34   I just absolutely adore it. But I have decided without question that this upcoming next phone for me, I must have a case. And Aaron, I didn't get a case for her 12 Pro, because they didn't have like the light pink case that she's used for years and years and years.

00:02:51   And she had other not as good colors and she absolutely shattered her back within like a week, like I did last year. And so the Liss family is no longer allowed to go to go caseless. But I digress. The reason I'm sad is because I, I went to pick up my car from safe flight repair, safe flight replace, because I had gotten dinged by a rock weekend before last on my windshield and it was starting to spider so I was getting replaced.

00:03:18   And the safe flight place happens to be sort of kind of downtown Richmond. And right around the corner from there is my favorite barbecue place in Richmond, a place called ZZQ, which is like nationally ranked one of the best barbecue joints in the entire country, etc, etc. It's a Texas style brisket and other things. And from everything I've read from people who are born and bred Texas, they say this is one of the only places you can get Texas Texan brisket outside of Texas, right?

00:03:44   Well, we go and remember that the Liss family is not currently eating indoors. We're not, you know, we're still being fairly paranoid on account of the kids. And ZZQ has a really good back patio.

00:03:58   And so the thought was, you know, the kids and Aaron would go to the back patio and I would run through the line, grab the food and we would go to the back and eat in the back patio outside.

00:04:06   And I'm pulling up to ZZQ, which is this very, very small parking lot. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, gosh, this is going to be a mess. You know what? Because Aaron had to drop me off so we could pick up my car. So we're in two cars. I said, now I send Aaron a text using Siri.

00:04:18   You take whatever spot you can find in the lot, I'll go parallel park elsewhere. I come up to the parking lot and it's empty. They call this is fantastic. It was early even for the Liss family and we eat early as it is, but it was like five o'clock, which even for us is early.

00:04:31   And so I pulled into the parking lot and there's like one or two other cars. I'm thinking, oh, this is magnificent. The back patio is going to be empty. We'll be able to waltz right through the line. This is great.

00:04:41   And we finally get up to the door after unloading the kids. Sold out. We'll see you tomorrow. Do you guys have barbecue places that will just sell out? It was devastating. I was so sad.

00:04:52   I thought you were going to say that it was closed down.

00:04:54   No, no, no. Thank goodness.

00:04:56   Oh, that happened to mine.

00:04:57   Oh, wait, the one, the one in Westchester, the one that's gone. Although I heard that's really too bad. I mean, I mean, it didn't, it didn't survive COVID at all. They didn't even like as soon as COVID started, they were gone.

00:05:07   But I heard that it's being picked up by another barbecue place, but I haven't been back to in town to see it yet.

00:05:14   Oh man, that's a real bummer. I really wanted to, I mean, I don't have any plans to come up near you again anytime soon with respect, but I was assuming at some point I would be up in the Westchester area and I would, you know, I was hoping that you could take me and we could go get some of your barbecue and see how it is.

00:05:26   I mean, in all fairness, like it's probably better for my health not to have massive quantities of meat covered in like wood carcinogens every week. Like it's probably best ultimately that I'm not, that you know, having super easy access to it.

00:05:42   But it does, that, that was a very good time that I kind of miss.

00:05:45   Ah, it makes me sad. But anyway, so if that's the most of my problems, I'd say I'm doing all right. But it did make me sad that I couldn't get my delicious and hilariously expensive barbecue after picking up my car.

00:05:56   Interestingly, I couldn't have them just do it in the driveway because I guess with these new fancy shmancy cars these days, they need to do like recalibration of all the sensors that are behind the windshield.

00:06:08   So I'm assuming that's why they insisted that I bring it down to their location and they took it for like three hours and did their thing.

00:06:14   You never want them to do it in the driveway. Come on.

00:06:18   I mean, why not?

00:06:19   Why not get your car painted in a tent? Because it's not a controlled environment.

00:06:23   Okay.

00:06:24   You want it to be indoors, first of all, so there's not like pollen and dust and bugs and wind and rain and who knows what else. And yeah, you want it to be like someplace with controlled lighting on a level surface with technicians who are in a comfortable place, not just randomly gorilla in a parking lot.

00:06:41   I always dislike that.

00:06:43   I love that word.

00:06:44   Okay.

00:06:45   Good to know.

00:06:46   Yeah, see, but the advantage of John never buying cars ever in buying unremarkable cars when he does is that you don't have radar cruise control, do you? You don't have any of it.

00:06:55   My car is remarkable, Casey, first of all. Second of all, no, I don't have radar cruise control.

00:06:59   But I've also, I guess I drive between the rocks. I haven't lost a windshield that I can recall either.

00:07:06   Yeah, yeah. This is also my opportunity to remind you, those of us who live in places with snow, which John includes me sometimes, those of us who live in places with snow, please clean off the roof of your car when it snows.

00:07:19   Because once, going back to mom and dad's when they lived in Connecticut, I was on the Jersey Turnpike and some lazy turd in front of me in a Lexus sedan didn't clear all the snow and ice off of the roof of his car.

00:07:31   And then a lot of it hurtled into my windshield and absolutely shattered the windshield of the Subaru to the point that I probably shouldn't have continued to drive it.

00:07:40   But I was so close to mom and dad's at that point, I was like, screw it, I'm just going to get home.

00:07:44   So please, if you live in a place with winter, don't be a jerk. Clear off the roof of your car. Please clear the roof of your car.

00:07:50   I don't care how tall your car is. If your car is that tall, either get a more reasonable car or get a ladder.

00:07:56   But clear off the roof of your car for the love. Please. Please do it for me.

00:07:59   Get a ladder. And this is a good defensive driving lesson. If you're driving behind a car that has snow on the roof, change lanes.

00:08:05   If you're driving anywhere near a truck, get far out of the lane, away from it, in front of it ideally, or several lanes to the side as you pass it.

00:08:13   And if you have an iPhone, put it in a case so when you drop it, it doesn't break.

00:08:16   Brutal. Absolutely brutal.

00:08:20   But it makes it so much bigger. I'm loving the mini lifestyle so much this year.

00:08:27   My case is so slim. I just put a link to my case. Like, honestly, someone, we had a friend's visit, and they had a phone like, "Oh, how are you liking the big iPhone?"

00:08:35   Because I thought they had a 12 Pro. And they said, "I don't have the big iPhone." I said, "Yeah, you have the big, like, the Pro Max or whatever. You got the big Max one, right?"

00:08:43   And they said, "No." So I grabbed their phone, and then I took out my phone and held them up to each other.

00:08:47   And lo and behold, we had the same size phone, but their case was huge. It just made the phone seem so much bigger.

00:08:53   My very, very thin, extremely cheap leather case, which so far turned out to be a great purchase because it's holding up great.

00:09:00   It's protecting my phone, and it makes the phone barely bigger than it is.

00:09:04   So it's so slim that I thought someone else's phone was the bigger size up just because the case was so chunky.

00:09:10   But she, I don't, the current generation of the medium-sized Pros, I really don't like the way they feel.

00:09:16   I don't like the polished steel bands and, like, I don't know.

00:09:20   First of all, they're massive fingerprint magnets. I think they look terrible.

00:09:23   You put a case on it, so you don't have to worry about the steel band anymore.

00:09:26   Yeah, I guess, I mean, I guess, like, that is the size phone I had for the last few years before this one, and I lived with it.

00:09:32   But I love the Mini so much, except the battery life does suck, and I do miss the 2X camera.

00:09:36   But other than those things, I do, like, a lot.

00:09:40   Like, there's never a time when I'm using my Mini and I think, "My phone is too small."

00:09:45   Like, that literally never, I never think that at all. And every time I handle, like, TIF's Macs, I'm like, "What is this? It's an iPad."

00:09:54   That is, that is effectively an iPad. I couldn't agree with you more.

00:09:58   Yeah, but, like, and I know there's a middle setting that most people pick, and there's a reason why.

00:10:02   But still, like, the Mini feels so good, even though it has those flaws, like, yeah, the battery life is not good.

00:10:10   And especially now that it's not brand new, you know, I have, it's almost a year old now, so the battery capacity is a little bit less, and I'm using it a little bit more, because it's summer and I'm walking around a lot.

00:10:18   But it is still such a great size that I'm willing to tolerate the mediocre battery life.

00:10:23   And, yeah, and the 2X lens, I do miss that. I would love to have that back.

00:10:28   But I love the way this phone feels so much that I'm willing to give that up.

00:10:33   But, yeah, we'll see this fall, like, the current rumors are that it's going to be the same sizes and probably roughly the same trade-offs.

00:10:39   And if that's the case, I might go back to the middle size, I don't know yet, but I won't enjoy it.

00:10:46   You tell him.

00:10:47   This is, like, the worst, like, most privileged thing, but still.

00:10:49   Yeah.

00:10:50   Like, I want my 2X lens back, but, man, I really like the size.

00:10:56   If the Mini had all three lenses, which I'm sure would have looked preposterous, I'm sure it's physically difficult to fit it all.

00:11:03   Like, I understand why it doesn't, but, my goodness, if it had all the standard issue camera setup, I probably would have gotten one this past year.

00:11:12   But I am personally unwilling to give up anything in terms of--well, I shouldn't say anything.

00:11:18   I'm unwilling to give up one of the three available lenses because I feel like I do flip between all three quite a bit.

00:11:23   And I know we did research about this when this was an issue, you know, a year ago almost.

00:11:26   But whether or not the facts bore it out, I feel like I use all three of the lenses enough that I would not sacrifice and get a Mini.

00:11:34   And now, because Apple made this compromise device, not unlike the MacBook that I loved so much, nobody's buying them.

00:11:41   Who'd have thunk it?

00:11:42   And so now the rumors are, well, there's not going to be more of them, possibly ever, because nobody's buying them.

00:11:47   Well, but--and one theory I heard that I think makes a lot of sense is that this past year, anybody who bought a new iPhone this year

00:11:54   probably did not do so by first handling them in stores because you couldn't.

00:11:58   That's true.

00:11:59   And so--and like the Mini, you kind of have to feel it to get that kind of like, "Ooh, I want this" kind of feeling.

00:12:05   Because it's--you know, most people, the idea of going super small sounds risky or they might think that's not what they want.

00:12:12   But once you handle it, that's when you realize like the--you know, whatever the benefits of it are and whether that does something for you.

00:12:18   Like that's--you know it when you feel it, right?

00:12:20   And so in a year when most people never went into the stores, you know, if picking out a phone this year, it does make sense why a lot of people would not have gone for it.

00:12:32   Whereas, current rumor again is that they're going to stick with these same three sizes for the next year.

00:12:37   And I think that that might--we might see a different sales breakdown in the next year.

00:12:42   That being said, I don't think it's going to take off like wildfire.

00:12:45   I still don't think it's going to be the most popular phone and it's probably going to be, you know, a somewhat distant third like it is now across the three sizes.

00:12:53   But it's still really nice and they still sell a ton of them in absolute terms.

00:12:59   You know, it's not a big percentage but they still are selling a ton of them.

00:13:03   And so I do hope the size continues and continues to improve over time.

00:13:08   But even I, after a year, I'm kind of thinking maybe I should go back this fall to the middle size just to get that 2x lens and the extra battery life back.

00:13:17   But I don't know. We'll see.

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00:14:59   Robert Spivak writes, "As a designer/installer of smart home systems, I think I can contribute a few thoughts

00:15:08   and some insight about what was mentioned without being self-promotional or a hidden agenda."

00:15:13   Robert writes, "I can't prove it, but I swear the problems with Apple HomeKit Wi-Fi devices

00:15:17   is rooted in Apple's problems with Bonjour and multicast DNS.

00:15:21   HomeKit is totally reliant on mDNS, which Apple uses, but almost nothing else does."

00:15:25   Robert apparently has tested 15 different smart plugs from all kinds of manufacturers,

00:15:29   and they've all had the symptom of mysteriously dropping off HomeKit Wi-Fi networks.

00:15:33   Some in a few hours, some in a few days, some after a few months.

00:15:36   But the common symptom is that they still have an IP address and can be pinged.

00:15:39   But in any mDNS lookup app, like the free discovery apps for iOS, MacOS, etc.,

00:15:44   they have dropped out of the mDNS section.

00:15:46   Anecdotally, after swapping a lot of Wi-Fi gear and finally methodically upgrading and downgrading

00:15:51   firmware and various access points and Wi-Fi routers,

00:15:54   it appears that mDNS support is simply buggy or poorly implemented.

00:15:57   When a stable combination of software and firmware is found, the devices don't drop off anymore.

00:16:02   I'm not sure I buy this, but I certainly have a lot less experience than Robert does.

00:16:06   Yeah, I think, so this was in response to last week, how I was talking,

00:16:10   I was basically expressing my woes in trying to get smart home devices that were actually reliable

00:16:15   and in particular like a smart outlet behind an ice maker that's built in that's kind of hard to access.

00:16:19   And I had said like I've never found anything like smart home wise that worked 100% of the time

00:16:26   or that didn't occasionally require you to like go re-pair it with things or whatever.

00:16:31   And a couple of pieces of follow up.

00:16:34   Number one, I had forgotten that I have a Lutron cassette setup at my house.

00:16:41   When they put in my front lights to meet some kind of safety building code,

00:16:48   they had to be on some kind of timer so they would always automatically turn on at night.

00:16:53   They did that with a Lutron cassette setup.

00:16:56   And so I actually have that and I never think about it because it always just works.

00:17:02   And there are switches on the wall also to control the lights.

00:17:05   So like I just kind of forgot that that's there.

00:17:09   So that's a good sign that maybe that's something I should look into.

00:17:12   And I heard from a bunch of other people that Lutron is worth looking into,

00:17:15   whether it's the cassette or the higher end radio raw stuff.

00:17:18   So I ordered the Lutron outlet.

00:17:23   They have one that's made for outdoor use that looks like it'll probably fit back there.

00:17:28   So I have that in order.

00:17:29   I will report back to let you know how that goes.

00:17:32   But that's part one.

00:17:34   And part two is I think I probably agree with this feedback.

00:17:39   Anecdotally it does seem like Wi-Fi is the problem,

00:17:43   whether it's the actual radio layer or the association with the SSID

00:17:49   or whether it's IP mapping or DHCP problem, who knows what.

00:17:55   But it does seem like Wi-Fi is the common thread here.

00:18:00   If you avoid Wi-Fi and you go with something that uses its own radio stuff,

00:18:05   like the Zigbee or whatever, all that stuff, including Lutron stuff,

00:18:11   anything that basically has to have some kind of little radio base

00:18:14   to make its own mesh network or whatever,

00:18:16   it seems like people have better experiences with that stuff

00:18:20   than anything that connects directly to Wi-Fi itself.

00:18:23   If that's the case, apparently the new chip or matter stuff

00:18:28   heavily uses Thread as the radio protocol between devices when possible.

00:18:33   And I think Thread is one of those things.

00:18:34   That being said, I don't know anything about Thread yet.

00:18:36   But it does seem like the industry also realized that Wi-Fi

00:18:41   was a pretty big part of the problem.

00:18:43   And so if we can get more reliable stuff that uses Thread

00:18:49   or other radio technologies that can somehow work together

00:18:51   and not have a closet full of hubs, then great.

00:18:54   If that works, great.

00:18:56   But in the meantime, I'm going to try the Lutron stuff

00:18:59   and see if that works and report back.

00:19:02   It's kind of weird that the computer spawned stuff.

00:19:05   Wi-Fi and Bluetooth end up not being reliable enough

00:19:09   for sort of utilitarian purposes, whereas in both cases,

00:19:12   the less computery, like the dedicated radio stuff for the home things

00:19:17   or the dedicated little USB RF dongles for Logitech mice,

00:19:22   at least in my experience, is much more reliable than Bluetooth.

00:19:25   Like sort of not purpose-built, because they're all kind of doing the same job.

00:19:29   But the ones that, you know, the Logitech thing is not built

00:19:33   to be a general purpose wireless networking protocol.

00:19:36   It's made for mice and keyboards.

00:19:38   So they can really concentrate on that one use case.

00:19:40   And in my experience, they nail it.

00:19:42   The range is amazing. The reliability is great.

00:19:45   You know, I think it's way better than any Bluetooth I've ever used.

00:19:48   And then in the home stuff, what's wrong with Wi-Fi?

00:19:50   All our other devices are on Wi-Fi. Everything's fine.

00:19:52   But if you think about it, Wi-Fi is something that,

00:19:56   even when it's in a house and it's very reliable,

00:19:58   we're used to the idea that a device could fall off of Wi-Fi

00:20:02   and then have to get back on it.

00:20:03   Right? This is something that happens, right?

00:20:05   Even if just your device has restarted,

00:20:07   like it goes off of Wi-Fi, then it gets back on and it reconnects.

00:20:10   And if you get a new device, you have to tell it about your network

00:20:13   and your password and the right SSID.

00:20:16   And there's all those sort of steps that involve getting on your network.

00:20:19   If someone comes and visits your house,

00:20:21   which network should they go on, what's the password, you know,

00:20:23   all this other stuff, the different security levels.

00:20:25   Oh, this device supports 5 gigahertz. This one supports 2.4.

00:20:28   Like a Wi-Fi network is flexible and supports all our devices,

00:20:32   but everything I've just described, I think anyone who's had Wi-Fi

00:20:34   for a long time has experienced the sort of busy work,

00:20:38   management, maintenance of a Wi-Fi network.

00:20:40   And no one wants to have any kind of management

00:20:43   or maintenance of their light switches.

00:20:45   Like you just don't want to literally ever have to do anything,

00:20:48   or for that matter, the thermostat, right, or anything like that.

00:20:51   Like when you're talking about your Nest thermostat

00:20:53   and how you dislike everything, I was thinking about my thermostat,

00:20:55   which I don't even, honestly, I don't know if it was here when we moved in

00:20:59   or if we got it when we replaced the furnace in the basement.

00:21:02   But either way, I've literally never thought about it.

00:21:04   I don't think I've ever even changed the batteries,

00:21:06   and I think it just takes like a double A, like one double A battery, right?

00:21:11   Like just there is a zero tolerance for any kind of maintenance work.

00:21:16   And Wi-Fi just isn't like that.

00:21:19   As great as it is, I don't really think about my Wi-Fi,

00:21:22   but we just had some friends over,

00:21:24   and I had to tell them which SSAID to connect to and what the password was.

00:21:28   And when I do get new devices, like even just the new Apple TV,

00:21:31   it would ask me which network to connect to

00:21:33   or if it doesn't grab the network info from something else

00:21:36   or whenever I get a new TiVo, when I used to get those back in the day.

00:21:39   There is some amount of futzing to do,

00:21:42   but with appliance stuff, you just want it to always work.

00:21:45   So I don't know how this is going to sort itself out,

00:21:47   but the depressing history of Bluetooth does not make me optimistic

00:21:51   about the idea of any of these computer technologies ever getting

00:21:54   to the point where they are as reliable as the dedicated ones.

00:21:57   So I also don't know anything about Thread,

00:21:59   but I really hope Thread is a more purpose-built networking protocol

00:22:04   that concentrates on a smart home use case

00:22:06   and doesn't care about, you know, computer stuff.

00:22:09   Well, I think also part of it is like the computer standards,

00:22:12   Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, they are massively more complicated

00:22:16   and always changing.

00:22:18   Like when Wi-Fi was first coming around,

00:22:20   you know, around like 2000, 2010, like in that range,

00:22:24   when it was first getting ubiquitous,

00:22:26   it was a lot more primitive than it is now.

00:22:30   It's also a lot simpler than it is now.

00:22:32   You know, think about, as you mentioned,

00:22:34   2.4 GHz versus 5 GHz support.

00:22:36   The way that's implemented at the Wi-Fi layer

00:22:39   is everything broadcasts two SSIDs, you know, one for each one,

00:22:42   and devices have to figure that out,

00:22:44   and they don't always do that right.

00:22:46   Now we have, in common usage, multipoint Wi-Fi networks,

00:22:50   where you're broadcasting from multiple SSIDs,

00:22:52   from multiple, you know, little routers or boosters around your house,

00:22:55   and so you have to, like, devices have to manage that

00:22:59   and, you know, not see them as 19 separate SSIDs

00:23:02   and be able to roam if it's a portable device between them.

00:23:05   And like everything is so much more complicated now

00:23:08   than the Wi-Fi was first designed and was first supported.

00:23:11   So it's kind of no wonder that some kind of, like,

00:23:15   $4 Wi-Fi chip in a smart home outlet

00:23:19   that has to sell for 10 bucks to be competitive

00:23:21   might be kind of crappy at dealing with that in practice,

00:23:24   or it might be a little bit buggy or a little bit off,

00:23:27   or just like not quite very good or reliable at that.

00:23:30   And so something like Thread, you know,

00:23:33   if you think about the needs of a smart home networking solution

00:23:37   versus anything else, it's so different

00:23:40   than computer-based things that are mainly focused on things

00:23:43   like data transfer rates and, you know, stuff like that.

00:23:46   Like, smart home stuff needs to be almost no bandwidth.

00:23:50   Like, you need very little data transfer,

00:23:52   except maybe, like, cameras, but otherwise, like, you know,

00:23:55   most stuff, you don't need very much bandwidth.

00:23:57   And what you do need is reliability, range,

00:24:02   and enough security to keep people out

00:24:06   who, like, wouldn't be authorized,

00:24:08   but not so much security that you're, like,

00:24:11   transmitting state secrets, you know, within your house

00:24:14   to tell your light switch that it's on or not.

00:24:16   So, like, the needs are just so totally different,

00:24:19   and it makes sense why, in practice, you know,

00:24:24   the actual hardware that you can get for smart home devices

00:24:28   might be universally 80% good,

00:24:32   but impossible to make 100% good, you know,

00:24:35   without charging enough that nobody would buy it.

00:24:38   - Yeah, all I want to say is that Lutron Caseta,

00:24:40   in my limited experience,

00:24:43   it's only lasted a couple months, but it is excellent.

00:24:45   It's basically bulletproof, and it, generally speaking,

00:24:48   you can have a physical switch, as well as, you know,

00:24:51   control via your phone or HomeKit or what have you,

00:24:53   which, to me, I think,

00:24:55   and we've brought this video up several times,

00:24:57   but a friend of the show, Quinn, I think nailed it on the head.

00:25:00   You know, you want physical controls

00:25:02   in addition to shouting into the air.

00:25:04   When you have one or the other, it's really not the best,

00:25:07   but when you can hit a freaking button

00:25:10   in order to turn the lights on and off,

00:25:12   you want to have that as a backup always, no matter what.

00:25:15   So, moving right along.

00:25:17   With regard to HSTS, which may or may not be a list,

00:25:21   Jacob writes, "I don't think Safari's

00:25:23   automatic HTTPS upgrade has much to do with HSTS

00:25:27   because Safari has supported that header

00:25:28   in the preload list for several years.

00:25:30   My guess is that it works similar to DuckDuckGo's

00:25:32   Smarter Encryption." We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:25:34   And here's a quote.

00:25:35   "At the center of DuckDuckGo's Smarter Encryption

00:25:37   is a large list of websites that we know have encrypted

00:25:39   or HTTPS versions of their websites,

00:25:41   which we use to ensure that you can only interact with --

00:25:44   that you only interact with these encrypted versions.

00:25:47   We automatically generate this list

00:25:49   by continually crawling the web."

00:25:51   -Yeah, so it is from Apple over which one of those things it is,

00:25:53   but, yeah, having a list that Apple maintains

00:25:55   in addition to supporting HSTS sounds plausible.

00:25:58   -Moving right along, Scott Sutton writes,

00:26:01   "I just can't wait until Apple allows the web page

00:26:03   to change the color of my physical iMac.

00:26:05   It's just so jarring to be looking at that web page

00:26:07   and see that non-color-coordinated keyboard

00:26:09   hovering at the edge of my vision."

00:26:11   -I put this in here because it was a funny joke,

00:26:13   but, honestly, like, first of all,

00:26:15   people with PCs probably already do this

00:26:17   with all their RGB stuff, right?

00:26:18   You know, it's not too far to think

00:26:20   that people are certainly changing the color

00:26:22   of their keyboard based on the game they're playing

00:26:23   or whatever.

00:26:24   Changing the color of your computer

00:26:25   based on where you're going

00:26:27   is definitely a thing that I can imagine

00:26:29   Apple doing some day, especially as the technology,

00:26:32   you know, becomes possible and, you know, maybe less tacky.

00:26:35   But it's also -- It's trying to, you know, slam the Safari --

00:26:38   the new Safari UI where they're changing the Safari Chrome

00:26:43   to match the website in some sort of,

00:26:45   I think, mostly misguided attempt

00:26:47   to make the website bleed into the application

00:26:50   you're using to render it,

00:26:52   and I'm not sure how much value there is in that.

00:26:57   Like, if you like the way it looks,

00:26:58   maybe, but there's so much variability,

00:27:00   I really don't want to give web pages

00:27:03   that much control over my UI.

00:27:05   I think we talked about this in the past couple of weeks,

00:27:07   so just, like, the -- It's a matter of degree.

00:27:11   You know, when Apple allows you to allow your desktop background

00:27:15   to tint your windows or to show through your menu bar, right,

00:27:19   or to allow the time of day to influence

00:27:21   whether your computer is light mode or dark mode,

00:27:24   I would say even the light mode/dark mode things,

00:27:26   these are, in general, more subtle,

00:27:29   like, in terms of how much influence does content

00:27:33   you don't control have over your interface.

00:27:35   If it's light and dark mode, you would say, "That's not subtle.

00:27:37   That's a total flipping of the UI."

00:27:39   But, you know, it's just two things.

00:27:41   There's light mode and dark mode that Apple

00:27:42   and presumably app developers have tailored to look okay.

00:27:46   The light mode looks okay, and the dark mode looks okay.

00:27:48   It's not arbitrary control over your user interface

00:27:51   by random people's web pages

00:27:54   or even random people's individual apps.

00:27:56   And even the desktop background, which, of course, you control,

00:27:58   it just subtly hints the color of things

00:28:01   and shows through the menu bar a little bit.

00:28:03   I would say the menu bar goes a little bit too far, right?

00:28:05   But Safari 15 is along that spectrum.

00:28:08   It's just way over at the other edge,

00:28:10   where you're really giving, you know,

00:28:12   almost total arbitrary control of what color the UI is,

00:28:15   and then Safari mightily tries to lay out

00:28:18   all of its text and controls on top of whatever color

00:28:20   was dictated by the web page

00:28:22   because they do want to make the web page,

00:28:24   like the background, blend into the UI.

00:28:26   So you can't have the UI just be influenced by green.

00:28:28   It has to literally be the same green

00:28:30   for this effect they're going for,

00:28:32   and I just don't think it's a great idea.

00:28:34   Again, you can turn off all these features.

00:28:35   You can turn off the window tinting.

00:28:37   I think you can't turn off the menu bar,

00:28:39   which really annoys me, although there's that boring old menu bar app

00:28:41   that you can use to hack around it.

00:28:43   You don't need to use dark mode if you don't want to, right?

00:28:45   You can turn off this feature in Safari.

00:28:47   But what we're talking about are the defaults.

00:28:51   I'm pretty sure window tinting is the default.

00:28:53   That's the problem with always upgrading your Mac.

00:28:55   I don't actually know what the defaults are anymore

00:28:57   because I don't do Mac OS X reviews,

00:28:59   but I think window tinting might be the default.

00:29:01   It seems like so far the Safari thing

00:29:03   that we're complaining about is the default.

00:29:05   But, yeah, along this --

00:29:07   not too much farther along this spectrum

00:29:09   is changing the physical color of your computer

00:29:11   if it was possible because, hey, why not?

00:29:14   Like, for the same reason that you have

00:29:16   a color-coordinated desktop background

00:29:18   and keyboard and trackpad, like, it looks nice,

00:29:20   I can imagine if you had all those peripherals

00:29:22   be chameleon-like, the exact same philosophy that says

00:29:25   if the website is green, Safari's Chrome should be green

00:29:28   should also make your entire Mac green.

00:29:30   Like, it's along that path just a little bit farther down

00:29:33   and actually not that much farther down.

00:29:35   I probably wouldn't be in favor of it.

00:29:37   What about those TVs that have, like, the edge LEDs

00:29:40   that can change color based on the content

00:29:43   that's being shown on the TV screen?

00:29:45   Hey, like, those prove to be a great idea.

00:29:47   Why doesn't Apple just do that?

00:29:49   Just have every web page -- and, of course,

00:29:51   as you scroll, it would scroll with it.

00:29:54   You know, the whole thing would animate your whole wall.

00:29:56   You know, why -- why --

00:29:58   why not just get the entire computer out of the way?

00:30:00   Yeah, like, theming is a thing.

00:30:01   Like, I remember doing this in the classic Mac OS days

00:30:04   of, like, picking a kaleidoscope's theme

00:30:06   and a desktop background and an icon set that has a look,

00:30:10   whether that look is kind of a dark mode

00:30:12   or, like, everything is lime green

00:30:14   or the teal, you know, iMac, you know, bluish iMac days, right?

00:30:19   There is something to that aesthetic.

00:30:22   I don't -- like, I don't begrudge people theming,

00:30:24   and I think all the colored iMacs are a great idea.

00:30:27   It's the connection between something you don't control,

00:30:31   like a web page, and your stuff.

00:30:33   Like, it feels like someone reaching across the Internet

00:30:36   and changing, like, the lighting in your room

00:30:38   or the color of your rug,

00:30:40   and that connection is the problem.

00:30:42   The problem is not having a theme

00:30:44   or having all your peripherals match.

00:30:46   I think all that is great.

00:30:47   I just feel like it needs to be under the user's control

00:30:50   more than allowing, again, arbitrary web pages,

00:30:53   which is the biggest canvas of the world

00:30:56   to invade your, you know, your computing environment

00:30:59   and screw with it,

00:31:00   'cause you control your desktop background, right,

00:31:01   and you can turn all these features on and off, I suppose,

00:31:03   but I just think that connection is not the best strategy.

00:31:07   We'll see.

00:31:08   We'll see if Apple sticks to it in terms of the defaults.

00:31:11   -Do either of you have the beta on your phones yet?

00:31:15   -I have the beta on a non-Cari phone,

00:31:18   which I've only used very briefly, to be honest with you,

00:31:20   but my initial impressions were that I like Safari on the phone.

00:31:23   I also have it on my -- not "Cari" iPad,

00:31:27   but my day-to-day iPad,

00:31:28   and I actually don't mind the color.

00:31:33   It is jarring, but I don't mind it.

00:31:35   You know, I think I would get used to it.

00:31:37   However, I would like to echo the entirety of the Internet

00:31:42   who has been saying that the tabs are garbage

00:31:44   because they are straight garbage on iPad.

00:31:46   On iPhone, I'm fine with it.

00:31:48   On iPad, no good, and I haven't run the Mac beta yet,

00:31:51   but I have a feeling that I would feel

00:31:53   the exact same way as the iPad.

00:31:55   -So, when you put it on your Cari phone,

00:31:57   whenever that happens,

00:31:59   let's revisit how much you like Safari on the phone.

00:32:02   -And that's fair. That's fair.

00:32:04   Again, I really haven't used it very much.

00:32:06   It was a few minutes here and there,

00:32:08   and the initial impressions were very, very good,

00:32:11   but I will be the first to tell you

00:32:13   that you might be exactly right,

00:32:15   that if I put it on a phone

00:32:16   that I'm using more than a few minutes a day,

00:32:18   it might drive me absolutely bananas.

00:32:20   -You know what's the worst thing about it to me?

00:32:22   Like, now that I know I've complained about it a lot,

00:32:25   but just, like, a few new observations.

00:32:28   This is the new Safari on the phone.

00:32:30   First of all, it seems like the touch targets

00:32:33   are smaller now for, like, certain toolbar elements

00:32:37   for all over the U.S., but especially in Safari,

00:32:40   like, the touch zone for that dot-dot-dot menu,

00:32:43   like, I feel like I'm missing it sometimes,

00:32:45   and a lot of the other controls,

00:32:47   like, since they spaced it more away

00:32:50   from edges of things or, like, bars,

00:32:52   it seems like you actually have less vertical space

00:32:56   on some of the controls,

00:32:57   so I keep just missing the controls.

00:32:59   And then also, because it does this ridiculous thing

00:33:02   where it has the bar on the bottom

00:33:04   and then you tap it and then it zooms up to the top

00:33:07   so that you can edit the text,

00:33:09   the location that you have to tap to edit the text

00:33:13   moves around the screen all the time.

00:33:15   And I'm finding it's breaking muscle memory constantly

00:33:18   because I keep, like, tapping up top to edit the URL

00:33:22   or to, you know, do something on the page

00:33:24   before the bar is there or something,

00:33:26   and I realize, "Oh, it's at the bottom.

00:33:27   "Go to the bottom. Tap.

00:33:28   "Oh, now it's zoomed up to the top. Woo!"

00:33:30   And you gotta, like, go find it.

00:33:32   And, like, I'm finding it's breaking tons of muscle memory

00:33:36   because Safari on iPhone, you know,

00:33:38   it has worked similarly for so long,

00:33:42   like, in the way it was before this,

00:33:43   it was mostly unchanged for so long

00:33:46   that there's tons of, like, just automatic muscle memory

00:33:50   from being an iPhone user

00:33:52   that you don't necessarily realize will be destroyed

00:33:55   when making a radical new UI like this,

00:33:58   but that, to me, is the biggest point of friction,

00:34:00   is that I don't know where to tap

00:34:02   and I don't know where to look for a certain control.

00:34:06   For longer now, I have to, like, refigure it all out,

00:34:09   and I've had it on my main phone now for about a week,

00:34:13   and I'm still not used to it.

00:34:15   Like, I still think it's terrible,

00:34:17   but I'm thinking, like, "Hey, maybe as I use it more,

00:34:19   "maybe I'll get used to it."

00:34:21   Nope. A weekend hasn't happened yet.

00:34:23   I'll keep you posted,

00:34:24   but I'm finding it incredibly cumbersome

00:34:27   and even simple stuff,

00:34:29   like having to do two taps for a reload.

00:34:31   One of the most common things I do in Safari

00:34:34   is I check pages on my servers

00:34:38   that show me statuses of things

00:34:40   or show me things I have to go through,

00:34:42   like new ad buys I gotta have to approve

00:34:43   or something like that,

00:34:44   and my workflow for those pages is I go to those tabs

00:34:46   and I hit refresh to see what's new,

00:34:48   and so I realize now, like,

00:34:50   how often I need to hit refresh in Safari on mobile.

00:34:53   Turns out it's a lot more than I would have guessed

00:34:55   if you would have just asked me a few months ago,

00:34:57   and I have to just, like, I have to just re,

00:35:00   I guess, redo those pages to reload themselves

00:35:03   with JavaScript or something, 'cause I--

00:35:05   - You're not using pull to refresh on those pages?

00:35:08   - Does that work?

00:35:09   - We talked about it on the show.

00:35:11   - Hang on. Oh, I just--

00:35:12   - I mean, if you're at the top of the page, right?

00:35:14   - So I just hit the tab square button

00:35:17   to pull up my list of tabs, and, wait, where the hell am I?

00:35:21   Did I break it? Oh, I broke it.

00:35:23   I can't get to my list of tabs anymore.

00:35:24   Now it just brings up a new page.

00:35:26   Anyway, somehow, when I can get back to my list of tabs,

00:35:29   I, like, scrolled up.

00:35:33   Now I guess there's some kind of gesture

00:35:34   where a side swipe on your tab, I guess, closes it,

00:35:37   so I scrolled up a little bit off

00:35:40   and accidentally closed a tab,

00:35:41   and I don't know which one it is,

00:35:42   and I can't get it back.

00:35:44   So great. This is a lot of fun.

00:35:46   I love Safari.

00:35:47   - Shake your phone. Shake, undo.

00:35:49   - Let me see. Shaking.

00:35:51   - That's always my desperation, is like,

00:35:52   I only have one move left, and it's to shake my phone

00:35:54   and hope desperately that whoever made this app

00:35:57   is stuck in, like, 2009

00:35:59   and made shake to undo work to restore a tab.

00:36:02   - Yeah, shake to undo didn't work, first of all,

00:36:05   and, yeah, I don't...

00:36:06   I always...

00:36:08   Whenever I have to shake my phone to undo,

00:36:10   I kind of, like, do it under the table.

00:36:12   Like, I look around.

00:36:13   Like, I don't want anybody to see me doing this.

00:36:15   - You can... There's a gesture for it now, too, right?

00:36:17   Isn't it, like, three-finger double tap or something?

00:36:20   Chat room will have it in a second.

00:36:22   There's some gesture for it as well.

00:36:24   - Yeah, 'cause, like, I just...

00:36:25   I always feel like I look like such a fool doing this.

00:36:27   - It's satisfying, though.

00:36:29   You're, like, punishing the phone for making a mistake.

00:36:31   Bad phone. Bring that text back.

00:36:33   - [laughs]

00:36:34   Yeah. Anyway, so if my Safari ever works again,

00:36:37   I'll keep you posted, but it's...

00:36:40   I literally can't do anything now.

00:36:42   It's totally broken.

00:36:44   - So I just installed the Safari technology preview

00:36:47   on my iMac at the suggestion

00:36:49   of somebody in the chat who has already scrolled off the screen,

00:36:52   so I apologize.

00:36:53   This [bleep] sucks. I hate this [bleep]

00:36:55   - [laughs]

00:36:56   - The Safari technology preview, I think,

00:36:58   is slightly different than actual Monterey in a few areas,

00:37:02   but in general, yeah, that's the UI.

00:37:03   I have it installed as well.

00:37:04   The good thing about Safari technology preview

00:37:06   is that you can run it alongside regular Safari,

00:37:09   and they have separate worlds of everything,

00:37:11   as far as I can tell.

00:37:12   At least they have separate state,

00:37:13   because when I was trying to test,

00:37:15   like, reload button stuff or whatever,

00:37:17   every time, you know, I would quit and relaunch Safari,

00:37:19   I have it configured to restore all of my windows,

00:37:22   and that's just too many damn windows

00:37:24   to be closing and opening,

00:37:25   but Safari technology preview, I just had one window,

00:37:27   and so quit, launch, quit, launch.

00:37:29   Yeah, that's for everyone.

00:37:30   We should put a link in the show notes.

00:37:31   If you want to try out the new terrible Safari on your Mac

00:37:34   but don't want to try Monterey,

00:37:35   which I think is a wise thing to do,

00:37:37   Safari technology preview that will run on your...

00:37:40   whatever the hell OS we're on now.

00:37:43   I was gonna say Catalina, but that's not right, is it?

00:37:45   - Big Sur.

00:37:46   - Big Sur, yeah, sorry.

00:37:48   I think, I'm not sure how far back it'll run,

00:37:50   but anyway, I'm running on Big Sur.

00:37:52   Check out Purple Safari, it's cool.

00:37:55   - Is it?

00:37:56   - I mean, Purple Safari is cool.

00:37:58   - Normally.

00:37:59   - This new UI is not cool.

00:38:01   - Oh, I hope they don't ship this.

00:38:03   I'm getting scared.

00:38:04   I'm getting scared they're going to.

00:38:06   - Yeah.

00:38:07   - At least Gruber complained in large,

00:38:09   you know, organized fashion,

00:38:11   so like, they tend to listen to him pretty well,

00:38:13   especially with Safari UI stuff,

00:38:15   so hopefully maybe like it's getting to the right ears

00:38:18   or eyes, but.

00:38:19   - I still think that every change I see is like,

00:38:22   all it needs is some minor tweaks

00:38:23   to address the biggest complaints,

00:38:24   and it'll be great, right everybody?

00:38:26   Like, we already put the preference in

00:38:27   for you to turn off the window tinting,

00:38:28   so no one can complain about that,

00:38:29   which I agree with them, like,

00:38:30   you put a pref in the GUI to turn it off,

00:38:33   good, thumbs up, that's good,

00:38:34   but the tabs, no preference is getting rid of those, right?

00:38:38   And these, like, these minor tweaks are like,

00:38:40   here's a reload button,

00:38:41   now the share button can be in the toolbar,

00:38:42   everything's fixed now, right?

00:38:43   It's like, no, you're not getting it,

00:38:44   the whole, like, it's like when,

00:38:47   if someone shows you something.

00:38:48   - They're the rubber gaskets of Safari UI problems.

00:38:51   - Yeah, it's like,

00:38:52   someone shows you something to critique or something,

00:38:54   and they're expecting you to give them like,

00:38:55   well, you know, maybe change this small thing

00:38:57   or that small thing,

00:38:58   and what you really wanna say is, start over.

00:39:00   Like, nothing about this is good,

00:39:02   your fundamental idea is bad.

00:39:04   - We've added a protective membrane under the keys.

00:39:07   - Yeah, it's similar to that,

00:39:10   but it's the UI version, like, yeah.

00:39:12   Like, to their, like, I understand what they're going for,

00:39:15   and there is a measurable benefit

00:39:18   in terms of vertical screen real estate,

00:39:20   but it's just, like,

00:39:21   I don't think I've seen a single review

00:39:24   that has not said the same exact thing,

00:39:26   which is like, here are the benefits,

00:39:28   here are the drawbacks, they're out of balance, right?

00:39:31   Like, people aren't being mean to it,

00:39:32   just be like, oh, you're bad, and this is bad,

00:39:34   and you should never try anything.

00:39:35   - It's new, oh my God, it's new!

00:39:37   - Like, you tried it, yeah,

00:39:38   and there is some part of that,

00:39:39   'cause here's what I think,

00:39:40   I think if we get stuck with this UI,

00:39:41   we will eventually begrudgingly become accustomed to it,

00:39:46   and there is a little bit of that,

00:39:47   I'm trying a new thing, and it's different,

00:39:49   Mark mentioned the muscle memory for the phone version,

00:39:52   the Mac version is all weird,

00:39:53   but I feel like we've had enough time with it now,

00:39:56   and enough people have really just sat down

00:39:57   and analyzed and said,

00:39:59   it's not, like, it's not all awful,

00:40:02   but the trade-offs don't work, right?

00:40:03   We get benefit, and then we have drawbacks,

00:40:05   and the drawbacks are just so much bigger,

00:40:07   and that's a sign of a unsuccessful experiment, I think,

00:40:10   so I really hope they try something different eventually,

00:40:13   but I totally feel like they're going to ship this.

00:40:16   - Well, and I feel like,

00:40:17   I think one of my favorite parts

00:40:19   of Gruber's critique of the Safari design,

00:40:22   is this actually better,

00:40:24   or did they just redesign it to just be different,

00:40:26   and I get that feeling with a lot of

00:40:29   modern Apple redesigned stuff that,

00:40:32   you know, sometimes it is better,

00:40:34   but it seems like the design team wants to move forward

00:40:39   whatever that means, so badly,

00:40:42   that they want to redesign stuff,

00:40:45   like on a certain interval,

00:40:47   even if A, it doesn't necessarily need it,

00:40:50   and/or B, what they come up with

00:40:53   might not necessarily actually be better,

00:40:55   it might just be different.

00:40:56   Like, I feel like, you know, designers,

00:40:58   programmers, you know, we're the same way,

00:41:00   you know, we don't like the old,

00:41:01   and we always try to, like,

00:41:02   justify rewriting something we've done before,

00:41:05   'cause we want to do it in a new, cool way,

00:41:06   using some new API or new programming technique or whatever,

00:41:09   and designers, I think, have a similar problem,

00:41:11   of like, they want to do something new

00:41:14   because they get tired of the old,

00:41:16   and it's always fun to redesign something

00:41:18   and try to really radically change it,

00:41:20   and what if we totally rethought, you know,

00:41:22   X, Y, Z boring thing that we haven't touched in a while?

00:41:25   It's very appealing, I get the appeal to do that,

00:41:29   but so often, just as programmers,

00:41:32   oftentimes when we rewrite things or refactor things,

00:41:35   oftentimes we make them worse,

00:41:37   or we forget to fix all the bugs that we forgot

00:41:40   over the last 10 years in the new version,

00:41:41   and so the new version actually ends up being buggier

00:41:43   and possibly not worth it to the customer or the company.

00:41:47   I feel like redesigns have similar problems,

00:41:50   where, like, there's this push,

00:41:52   and you want to redesign this as the designer,

00:41:55   and you think, I'm gonna make my mark on this project

00:41:57   or on this product, I'm gonna really, you know,

00:42:00   rethink the way browsers look or whatever.

00:42:03   Sometimes that's good, sometimes that gives you

00:42:06   really great results, but not every time.

00:42:09   It's very important for an organization

00:42:11   to be able to tell the difference

00:42:13   and to catch things like this before they ship

00:42:16   if it's not actually better, and in this case,

00:42:20   you know, it hasn't shipped yet, technically,

00:42:23   like, you know, these are still betas,

00:42:25   but I hope that Apple gets it right

00:42:30   in their decision-making here,

00:42:32   that, like, these redesigns of Safari,

00:42:35   while they are different and while they have some good ideas,

00:42:40   both the desktop and iPhone versions

00:42:43   fail in pretty big ways as designs,

00:42:46   and I don't think they're better,

00:42:49   and I don't know anyone who does,

00:42:52   who doesn't work at Apple.

00:42:53   Even people who work there,

00:42:55   I think many of them don't think so either.

00:42:56   Like, I don't know how you could put this out there

00:42:59   and see the reaction that the world has given,

00:43:01   and think, all right, we're good, let's ship it in the fall.

00:43:05   So I hope they're hearing us at deeper levels

00:43:09   than just, we'll add a reload button,

00:43:11   and it's fixed, right?

00:43:12   - Finally, this has been hanging out

00:43:15   in the follow-up section for, I feel like,

00:43:18   two months or something like that,

00:43:19   even though it's probably less than that.

00:43:21   So Daniel Yount writes, "Hey, what's going on here?"

00:43:24   And there's a video of the login screen,

00:43:28   and apparently Daniel's avatar for his Mac is his Memoji,

00:43:34   and the eyeballs on his Memoji are following his mouse cursor,

00:43:39   like Super Mario style in Super Mario World.

00:43:42   - Oh, like from the title screen, yeah.

00:43:44   - Mm-hmm.

00:43:45   - This has been, it's X-Eyes, guys,

00:43:47   or the eyes in the menu bar on the Mac,

00:43:49   but X-Eyes probably predates it.

00:43:50   Anyway, this was in here for so long,

00:43:52   just because I initially couldn't tell,

00:43:54   is this just a joke video of, like,

00:43:55   hey, wouldn't it be cool if they added this feature?

00:43:57   And then once I got Monterey on a Mac,

00:43:59   every time I was on it, I mostly forgot to do this,

00:44:01   so I was like, how do you set your Memoji as your avatar?

00:44:04   I didn't quite know how to do it,

00:44:06   or mostly I just thought of it when I wasn't on that computer

00:44:08   and it was rebooted into, you know,

00:44:10   Big Sur or something like that.

00:44:11   But finally, I saw someone discussion online

00:44:14   how to set your avatar to your Memoji in Monterey.

00:44:17   So once I saw that, I'm like, this must be real then,

00:44:19   because you can apparently use your Memoji as your avatar,

00:44:23   and then once you do that, it seems plausible

00:44:26   that on the login screen, if you move the cursor around,

00:44:28   the eyes of your little 3D Memoji will fire your cursor.

00:44:31   That is a cool feature, even though I think Memoji are --

00:44:35   we've talked about this before --

00:44:36   are a great example of Apple's corporate aesthetic

00:44:42   taking precedence over the literal size, shape,

00:44:45   and look of people's faces,

00:44:46   because Memoji are standardized in a way

00:44:49   that human beings are not,

00:44:50   and Apple essentially doesn't let you make a Memoji

00:44:54   that actually looks like yourself.

00:44:55   If you happen to not have the skull shape

00:44:57   that Apple has decided is the appropriate skull shape

00:44:59   for humans, as compared to Nintendo with their Miis,

00:45:04   where you can absolutely make any grotesquerie

00:45:06   that matches you exactly,

00:45:08   and that's why people who are good at making Miis

00:45:12   can make Miis where someone looks at it and says,

00:45:14   "Oh, yep, that's Uncle Tom.

00:45:16   That's Grandpa. That's Susie." Right?

00:45:19   You recognize the people,

00:45:20   because you have enough flexibility to make something

00:45:23   that does not fit with the Nintendo aesthetic or whatever,

00:45:26   whereas everybody in Memoji looks like this

00:45:30   just cherubic, sphere-faced --

00:45:33   You know, even Apple, when they did their --

00:45:35   They did, like, little Memoji

00:45:37   for all of the executive team or whatever,

00:45:39   and, like, Phil Schiller looks nothing like Phil Schiller.

00:45:42   Like, the Phil Schiller Memoji, presumably done by the best --

00:45:45   The best minds, the best Memoji experts inside Apple,

00:45:48   you cannot make a Memoji, apparently,

00:45:50   that looks like Phil Schiller,

00:45:51   because his head just isn't shaped like that.

00:45:54   And anyway, sorry to go on the Memoji rant,

00:45:56   but if you happen to like --

00:45:57   Or if you just want to be an idealized cartoon version

00:45:59   of yourself that doesn't actually look like you,

00:46:01   check out Memoji,

00:46:02   and then your eyes can follow the cursor, maybe.

00:46:04   [ Laughs ]

00:46:05   -Can I just -- If you'll --

00:46:07   I don't want to complain this whole episode,

00:46:09   but is it just me,

00:46:12   or does it seem like Apple likes Memoji

00:46:15   a lot more than everyone else does?

00:46:17   -I think people like it a lot.

00:46:19   I see a lot of Memoji usage among non-nerd people.

00:46:23   Like, I mean, even before that -- Remember Bitmoji?

00:46:26   Like, there's been a lot of things online.

00:46:28   -Bitmoji's huge, but even that --

00:46:30   So, I feel like Memoji --

00:46:31   I think it was a really cool, fun thing,

00:46:34   and I think it was a fad for a short time,

00:46:36   and I think that time has passed.

00:46:37   I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone's using it.

00:46:39   -No.

00:46:40   -Because when people pick that or make their Memoji

00:46:44   and use it as their avatar, like, all of us,

00:46:47   once you find an avatar that you are okay with,

00:46:50   you just tend to leave it there.

00:46:52   And I think that, like -- You're right that people

00:46:55   aren't just, like, super excited about it,

00:46:57   but it's like, "Oh, that's my avatar."

00:46:58   I know people who have Bitmoji avatar right now,

00:47:00   and they've had them for years.

00:47:01   Like, I think that it's fulfilling its role

00:47:03   of, "Give me a tool to make an avatar

00:47:06   that I'm comfortable with to present to the world."

00:47:09   And some people aren't comfortable

00:47:10   with doing an actual photo of themselves.

00:47:12   They want something more stylized,

00:47:14   and so Memoji provides that.

00:47:15   And I think Memoji, like, it's well implemented.

00:47:17   The feature's well implemented.

00:47:18   It has a lot of cool things to it.

00:47:20   It's nicely modeled.

00:47:21   You can do the whole tongue-wagging,

00:47:23   sticking-out things.

00:47:24   It's just fundamentally flawed

00:47:25   as a way to capture people's likenesses,

00:47:27   which, if that's not what you want,

00:47:28   if you don't want to capture your likeness, then fine.

00:47:30   But if you want to capture your likenesses,

00:47:31   this is not the tool for you.

00:47:32   -Mm.

00:47:33   -Yeah, I know a handful of people, nerdy and non-nerdy,

00:47:36   that have Memoji as their, like,

00:47:39   iMessage avatar picture, whatever.

00:47:42   And the funniest thing is, I can't remember who it is

00:47:45   other than my dad, but there's a handful of people in my life

00:47:49   that are all, you know, older white dudes,

00:47:51   and I swear to you, every single one of those Memojis

00:47:54   looks absolutely identical.

00:47:55   Like, "Oh, it's another old white guy."

00:47:57   There you go.

00:47:58   They're exactly the same, to Jon's point,

00:48:00   exactly the same, every single one of them.

00:48:02   ♪♪

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00:49:53   ♪♪

00:49:56   -All right, John, tell us.

00:49:58   I know we have all been waiting with bated breath.

00:50:01   What's going on with your mouse pad and your mouse?

00:50:03   -We just had a few questions and theories from people.

00:50:05   After the last show that I wanted to close the loop on,

00:50:08   they recall it was my mouse pad,

00:50:10   where the right side of it was not as good for tracking,

00:50:13   as far as my optical mouse was concerned,

00:50:15   as the left side of it.

00:50:16   It's not really half and half.

00:50:17   It's actually like a bad area

00:50:19   that's more or less towards the right side.

00:50:21   So, one theory people had was maybe it's not the mouse pad.

00:50:24   Maybe it's the cable, because, remember, my mouse is plugged in.

00:50:27   And they were saying maybe when you go

00:50:28   to the right side of the mouse pad,

00:50:30   your cable bends in a certain way,

00:50:32   and maybe you have, like, a break or a flaw.

00:50:34   And inside the conductor, and when you do that,

00:50:36   it causes interference or, you know,

00:50:38   it loses continuity for a short period of time,

00:50:40   so maybe it's your cable.

00:50:42   Check that, and nope, that's not it.

00:50:45   You know, it doesn't really matter where the cable is.

00:50:47   I can move the cable around. I can wiggle it.

00:50:49   It doesn't have any effect.

00:50:50   It's only that spot on the mouse pad.

00:50:51   The next theory was maybe it's not the mouse pad.

00:50:53   Maybe it's the desk surface or, you know,

00:50:57   something else emanating from the Earth

00:51:00   underneath where it is.

00:51:02   To test that one, I just removed the mouse pad from where it is,

00:51:05   and I put it on an entirely different place on the desk,

00:51:07   and I rotated it, you know, 90 degrees various times

00:51:10   and used the mouse on it.

00:51:11   And the bad spot is really on the mouse pad.

00:51:15   Wherever that bad spot is,

00:51:16   no matter what surface I put it on,

00:51:18   no matter how I rotate the mouse pad,

00:51:20   you can track the bad spot,

00:51:22   and the mouse has a little bit of trouble

00:51:24   tracking on that spot.

00:51:25   I did mean to, this weekend, cut myself a new mouse pad

00:51:28   from one of my, you know, sheets of mouse pad material

00:51:31   to eliminate this problem,

00:51:32   but I got distracted at some point

00:51:34   and didn't actually do that.

00:51:35   So I'm still using the bad mouse pad,

00:51:37   but on my to-do list is to cut a new mouse pad for myself.

00:51:40   -That's an amazing to-do list.

00:51:42   -It's something. It is something.

00:51:44   We had a question from Jason Abreu, and he writes,

00:51:49   "My name is Jason, and I'm soon to be married to my fiancée

00:51:51   in September of this year,"

00:51:53   which might have even been 2020 for all I know,

00:51:55   but nevertheless...

00:51:56   -I think we beat it. I think we got it.

00:51:57   I think September means this fall,

00:52:00   so we may actually be reading feedback in a timely manner.

00:52:03   -Squeaking it in at the last second.

00:52:05   All right. "I think that moving in

00:52:06   and creating our own family is an opportunity

00:52:08   to put in place some solid and safe process

00:52:10   for us to handle our shared digital data.

00:52:12   I was wondering if you could give me some advice

00:52:13   on how you manage your family's digital life and documents.

00:52:15   I'm concerned with digital backups of things

00:52:17   like important receipts,

00:52:18   which may be needed later for warranty purposes,

00:52:20   insurance policy documents, fun stuff like that.

00:52:22   I'm also thinking of things like shared bank statements

00:52:24   or other types of financial documents.

00:52:26   As for photos, I currently use Google Photos

00:52:28   due to the fact that it's web-based

00:52:29   and I refuse to give Apple money for subpar

00:52:31   online photo storage.

00:52:33   My people.

00:52:34   Ideally, I prefer an online self-managed solution."

00:52:37   -It's pretty good. It's not subpar.

00:52:38   It's pretty good.

00:52:39   -Actually, I have an aside about this.

00:52:41   I'll try to remember to talk about it

00:52:42   after we get to this topic.

00:52:43   -Oh.

00:52:44   -But, no, you're gonna maybe like it?

00:52:46   But anyway, coming back to what Jason wrote.

00:52:48   "Ideally, I prefer an offline self-managed solution,

00:52:51   but I'm leaning more and more toward an online solution

00:52:53   so I don't have to worry about physically maintaining hard drives.

00:52:55   My concern with an online solution is if the service

00:52:57   will be around five years from now

00:52:58   and our documents actually stored in an encrypted, secure manner."

00:53:02   I actually don't have too much to say about this

00:53:05   because there's not a lot of documents

00:53:08   that I consider to be precious.

00:53:10   That being said, things like scans of our passports,

00:53:14   our driver's licenses, birth certificate, our wills.

00:53:18   So, you know, for wills and things of that nature,

00:53:20   we put them in 1Password.

00:53:21   That's not to say that that's the best or most perfect place,

00:53:24   but that's what I do and it seems to work.

00:53:26   And one of the nice things about 1Password for Families --

00:53:28   they're not a sponsor right now,

00:53:30   and I don't remember if they've been in a long time --

00:53:32   but one of the nice things about 1Password for Families

00:53:35   is that you can create different vaults.

00:53:37   And so, like, I have a vault, Aaron has a vault,

00:53:40   and then my business stuff is in its own vault.

00:53:43   And then I also have, like, a vault dedicated

00:53:46   mostly to travel documents like passports

00:53:48   and birth certificates and driver's licenses

00:53:50   and things like that, but also things like, you know,

00:53:53   Aaron and I each have our own will.

00:53:55   And I'm trying to think of other examples,

00:53:58   but for me, I like putting that stuff in 1Password

00:54:01   because it's super -- I'm super selective

00:54:03   about what ends up in there.

00:54:05   And if it's in 1Password,

00:54:06   it's got to be really frickin' important.

00:54:08   And so that's what I do.

00:54:10   For almost anything else that I don't consider

00:54:13   to be near as important or as critical,

00:54:16   I just have it on my Synology,

00:54:18   sitting there in a particular folder

00:54:20   where I can find that sort of thing easily if necessary,

00:54:24   but it's not, like, super encrypted or anything like that.

00:54:28   That's what I do.

00:54:29   Marco, I have a feeling that you also don't have

00:54:32   too much to say about this famous last word,

00:54:34   so let's start with you and then finish with Jon.

00:54:36   -Yeah, by the way, some real-time follow-up.

00:54:38   We had 1Password sponsor our show less than one month ago.

00:54:41   -Wasn't that recently? God, I'm such a jerk.

00:54:44   -It was June 10th. -Oh, I'm the worst.

00:54:46   Oh, man, I'm sorry. I love 1Password.

00:54:48   Hand to God, I really do love 1Password.

00:54:50   It is one of my favorite pieces of software

00:54:52   on any of my devices,

00:54:53   and I would say that partially because I feel guilty,

00:54:55   but I also am saying that

00:54:56   because I really honestly believe it.

00:54:58   It is really, truly that good.

00:54:59   -Yeah, and I'm also a 1Password user.

00:55:01   I know Jon's not, but that's cool.

00:55:03   You get two of the three of us, it's pretty good.

00:55:05   -Is it cool? I don't know if it's cool.

00:55:07   It's acceptable, but I don't know if it's cool.

00:55:09   -Yeah, so, yeah, I use 1Password.

00:55:11   We also have the family account

00:55:12   so that Tiff and I can have the shared vault

00:55:14   between the two of us for, like, any kind of shared credentials

00:55:17   or, like, any of --

00:55:18   Like, we put any of our kids' credentials for his accounts.

00:55:21   We put those in the shared vault

00:55:23   so that Tiff and I can both have access.

00:55:24   You know, if he's like,

00:55:25   "Hey, I got to log into Minecraft on my iPad,"

00:55:28   or whatever, like, whichever parent is around

00:55:30   can help with that request.

00:55:32   So that's very good.

00:55:35   I, too, use it for very sensitive documents,

00:55:38   things like passports, IDs, and stuff like that,

00:55:41   but for the most part, like, the big important stuff

00:55:45   like wills and things like that,

00:55:47   those are just, like, at lawyer's offices,

00:55:49   and, like, I have scans of them, but I --

00:55:52   And they're -- Like, we have, like,

00:55:54   one of those fireproof boxes.

00:55:57   Like, it's not really -- It's not safe, but it's, like, a fire --

00:55:59   It's a fire-resistant box, and, like, we have hard copies

00:56:02   of all, like, that kind of stuff in that box.

00:56:05   So, to me, like, you know, anything like that,

00:56:08   you know, things that are of the nature of, like,

00:56:12   if I am incapacitated or dead,

00:56:14   what does my family or other people need from me for that?

00:56:18   That, I think, is still better off living in the physical world

00:56:21   as much as possible, because the digital world

00:56:23   is so much harder for people to get into

00:56:25   in that kind of scenario.

00:56:27   -Actually, let me jump in right there,

00:56:29   because I would like to echo what you just said.

00:56:32   A few years ago -- I don't remember

00:56:34   what the catalyst moment was for this,

00:56:36   but I sat down, and I wrote out --

00:56:39   I call it my "just in case" document,

00:56:41   and then the idea of this is,

00:56:43   if I were to just drop dead spontaneously,

00:56:46   like, what is the bare minimum amount of information

00:56:48   that Erin needs to know about things

00:56:50   that Erin doesn't typically, you know, manage?

00:56:53   What is the bare minimum she needs to know

00:56:55   in order to continue her life and the kids' lives

00:56:59   and continue paying bills and things of that nature?

00:57:02   And, you know, one of the big things on that document is,

00:57:04   "Sign into 1Password. That's where all my junk is."

00:57:06   But nevertheless, a lot of that is, like,

00:57:09   "Here's who carries our insurance.

00:57:11   Here's where our bank account --"

00:57:12   She knows some of this stuff.

00:57:13   But what if Erin dies, too?

00:57:15   Like, then my parents or somebody could come in

00:57:17   and, like, recreate our lives,

00:57:19   and not only does that document exist,

00:57:21   which I think is an extremely smart thing

00:57:24   for any family to do,

00:57:26   but additionally, I have a paper copy

00:57:29   in our "fireproof" "safe,"

00:57:33   which, like you said, isn't really a safe.

00:57:35   It's more of just a fireproof box.

00:57:36   But I would like to strongly echo what you said about that.

00:57:39   Having some sort of document with the bare minimum

00:57:42   in order to get, you know, your children

00:57:44   or your spouse or whatever able to continue to live,

00:57:48   I really, really encourage you to put that physically somewhere

00:57:52   in addition to electronically somewhere.

00:57:54   -Yeah. And, you know, legacy planning

00:57:57   is a whole different thing of, like,

00:57:58   how do you give people your passwords to stuff

00:58:01   that is online, and, you know, that's a whole thing.

00:58:03   But anyway, for the purposes of other documents,

00:58:05   I'm not very organized because, frankly,

00:58:07   I don't keep many documents.

00:58:09   I do have a paperless lifestyle whenever possible

00:58:13   for, you know, stuff like, you know, bills and crap like that,

00:58:16   you know, receipts, things like that.

00:58:19   And my strategy for that is I have a sheet-fed scanner.

00:58:23   Back in, you know, my regular life,

00:58:25   I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap, which I love.

00:58:28   Here in my fake life, I have a Raven scanner, which is okay.

00:58:32   It's really -- That's a whole separate topic.

00:58:36   The Raven scanner is basically an Android tablet

00:58:40   glued inside of a scanner.

00:58:42   -Oh, cool. -It's very strange.

00:58:44   Like, my scanner has software updates,

00:58:46   where, like, you know, I'll have to, like,

00:58:49   I'll open it up one day to try to scan my electric bill

00:58:52   or whatever, and it'll be like, "So, we need a software update.

00:58:55   You know, tap here to do it."

00:58:57   And you tap, and it has, like, the little, like, circle,

00:59:00   like, finger cursor when you tap that Android tablets can have.

00:59:04   And then it has to do, like, a software that has to reboot itself

00:59:07   like an Android tablet does.

00:59:09   Like, it's very -- Once you realize it's just an Android tablet,

00:59:13   it makes a lot more sense,

00:59:16   but the way it works is so bizarre as a scanner

00:59:19   to work that way. [ Laughs ]

00:59:21   And, yeah, this whole -- this world of, like, smart devices

00:59:25   that are made, you know, with commodity stuff kind of,

00:59:28   it has its downsides.

00:59:30   And the downside of this is that it's basically a very,

00:59:33   very slow, sluggish Android tablet

00:59:36   that is powering this not-cheap scanner that otherwise scans pretty well,

00:59:40   but it's a very weird and awkward

00:59:43   and sometimes very slow user experience.

00:59:45   But anyway, so, honestly,

00:59:47   I don't know if I would recommend this product.

00:59:49   I use it, but this is not an endorsement or a condemnation, I guess.

00:59:53   I feel ambivalent towards my Raven scanner.

00:59:58   Anyway, so, paperless lifestyle. [ Laughs ]

01:00:02   If this scanner was, you know, stolen or fell into the bay tomorrow,

01:00:07   I would replace it with a scan snap, a Fujitsu scan snap again.

01:00:11   Anyway, paperless.

01:00:13   So, I basically scan everything to OCR'd PDFs

01:00:18   so that they are searchable by text,

01:00:20   but I dump them into one giant folder.

01:00:23   The files are just named by date that I scan them.

01:00:25   So, it's just one giant chronological shoebox

01:00:28   of everything that I've ever scanned.

01:00:30   Because in practice, I hardly ever need to go back and look at these things.

01:00:34   So, I've tried over the years different organizational strategies for that,

01:00:38   and I've never really found it worthwhile

01:00:41   to actually, like, categorize them into file folders and everything else.

01:00:46   Like, you know, here's all the electric bills.

01:00:48   Here's all of the insurance renewals.

01:00:50   Like, I've never found that level of organization

01:00:53   worth it or necessary for my scanned documents.

01:00:56   Anything that is unscanned that originates as an electronic document,

01:01:03   things like email receipts, I tend to just keep those in my email.

01:01:08   My email itself is a giant document store,

01:01:12   and it's all, you know, downloaded locally and searchable.

01:01:15   And so, any kind of, you know, important document or confirmation

01:01:21   or information I need probably came through an email at some point.

01:01:27   And so, oftentimes, that's how I dig things up,

01:01:30   is I search through my email for this one email I got 15 years ago

01:01:34   or 10 years ago that has this attached PDF that has this receipt on it or something.

01:01:38   For other types of data, like, a lot of times this stuff just lives in

01:01:43   its originating web service, and that's mostly fine.

01:01:46   Like, I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon. Yeah, I know.

01:01:49   I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, and I can search my past orders on Amazon.

01:01:53   And so, that, to me, is another place where, like, that's a huge searchable history

01:01:58   of the type of, you know, data or document that is my purchase history.

01:02:03   So, if I need to know, when did I buy that hard drive that just died?

01:02:07   Is it still under warranty?

01:02:08   First thing I'll do is I'll look at Amazon history to see when I bought it,

01:02:11   and then I'll know, okay, did I buy it within the warranty period or not?

01:02:14   So, stuff like that, like, I tend to have a lot of stuff in those few different silos,

01:02:20   like, where it originated, and I tend to not move stuff out of those very often,

01:02:24   like, into new silos. Like, if it originates in a silo that I have ongoing access to,

01:02:30   I tend to leave it there because it's just easier, and as long as I can trust

01:02:34   it's going to be there, but, like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep buying stuff

01:02:37   from Amazon in the future. I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep having an email in the future.

01:02:41   You know, stuff like, so, like, it's kind of, that's kind of inherently long-term reliable.

01:02:46   As for other types of documents, you know, my code and everything,

01:02:50   that's all, like, in source control and everything, but that's a whole different thing.

01:02:53   But, you know, other, like, you know, other types of, like, you know, quote documents

01:02:57   that would go, like, in your documents folder, things like spreadsheets,

01:03:00   Wordpresses and documents, that I just keep in the documents folder,

01:03:05   or in, you know, a very small number of subfolders of that.

01:03:08   Like, every year I have a folder for my taxes for that year.

01:03:12   So, it's, like, Taxes 2021 is the current one, and it lives on my desktop for the whole year,

01:03:16   and then once my taxes are filed for the year, I move it into the documents folder,

01:03:20   and so I have, you know, Taxes 2008, Taxes 2009, like, all my tax documents

01:03:25   and everything needed to support my tax documents, like, that's, that goes in that year's storage,

01:03:30   and that's it. Other than stuff like that, I don't have a large number of these things.

01:03:35   You know, I have a few spreadsheets that I kind of update on an ongoing basis.

01:03:39   Those live in the documents folder, or I think on iCloud, maybe.

01:03:42   That line is kind of blurred recently.

01:03:45   I have a few things I keep in Dropbox, so I have easy access to them no matter what computer I'm on.

01:03:50   But otherwise, like, I don't really have a lot of organization or strategy to most of this.

01:03:57   Most stuff either lives in one of those giant silos that I kind of have ongoing access to,

01:04:02   or it is kind of disorganized in my documents folder somewhere because I don't have enough documents,

01:04:09   nor do I access them frequently enough for that mess of a system to be a problem.

01:04:14   So, Jon, what's the right way?

01:04:16   I mean, Marco definitely does the most of the stuff of the three of us.

01:04:21   Like, he's talked about his scan snap and stuff like that, and neither one of us do anything like that,

01:04:25   but hearing Marco talk about it, I think my system is very similar to his,

01:04:29   except imagine it run by somebody who doesn't want to do things electronically,

01:04:32   and that person is not me because my wife does the finances and the paperwork,

01:04:36   and I say paperwork because she likes to do things on paper.

01:04:39   Whenever there's an option for most of her life where it says,

01:04:42   "Hey, we could send you your bill electronically, or you can get a paper version,"

01:04:45   she always says paper version.

01:04:47   "Hey, we could pay your bill automatically if you just give us your credit card number,

01:04:49   or you can just, you know, do it manually every month."

01:04:52   He does it manually every month.

01:04:54   Like, it's just what she's comfortable with.

01:04:55   She manages all the stuff, so who am I to say,

01:04:58   "You know, you could just set that up to auto pay, and it would be fine."

01:05:01   The only time I've ever won that debate is when we got a new credit card for my business for my LLC,

01:05:09   and one month she forgot to pay it because it wasn't set up to be automatic,

01:05:14   and I said, "Can I just set this up on auto pay?"

01:05:17   Because, I mean, it was like a $20 bill, right?

01:05:19   And she's like, "Fine, set it up on it," because so little happens on it that she never thinks to look at it,

01:05:23   but she's the one who wants to manage it, so she does it the way she feels comfortable,

01:05:26   and that involves a lot of paper.

01:05:28   So, yeah, paper things come to the house, and they are not scanned in any way.

01:05:33   They just stay in paper form.

01:05:36   The main sort of document management activity we do is much like Marco described.

01:05:42   It's basically for tax purposes each year, collecting together receipts

01:05:46   and things that we're going to deduct as business expenses and stuff like that,

01:05:49   and that's tedious, but we basically do the same system, which is,

01:05:52   I have on my Mac a folder for each tax year, and I put in,

01:05:56   whenever I buy something that I know is attributable to the business,

01:05:59   I make a PDF of the receipt, and I stick it in the folder and do all that stuff, right?

01:06:04   But since I don't do the finance stuff, over on my wife's computer,

01:06:09   she's got a similar set of folders, and I periodically take my collected things

01:06:15   that I've been doing and put them into her to process folder for the tax year,

01:06:19   so it's like things that you haven't processed yet,

01:06:21   she's got a way that she wants to do it.

01:06:22   I organize it the way I want to do it and folder by date, by year,

01:06:26   and I know what the receipts are for, and then periodically dump them into her inbox,

01:06:30   and then she grinds through them and names them the way she wants.

01:06:33   In the end, it's not that many documents, but it's a screen full by the end of the year.

01:06:36   I'm not expensing tons of stuff.

01:06:39   But yeah, things like that.

01:06:40   Now, for almost everything else, like Marco said, email is great for keeping track of stuff

01:06:47   because another activity my wife engages in, which is looking at all of our credit card bills

01:06:53   and saying, "What's this charge? What's this charge? What was this?"

01:06:56   Because you know how things show up on your credit card,

01:06:58   and many companies try to warn you about this.

01:07:00   "Hey, you're going to get a bill on your credit card.

01:07:01   It's going to say something that's not going to make any sense,

01:07:03   even though you're buying your thing from Acme Pet Store."

01:07:05   It's not going to say Acme Pet Store.

01:07:07   It's going to say VNDQXPR or something, asterisk, right?

01:07:14   So when you see them on a credit card bill, it's not always clear what they are.

01:07:18   The easy solution to finding the answer to that question is search for the exact amount in the email.

01:07:24   We both use Gmail, and she's logged into my Gmail thing or whatever.

01:07:28   If you just search for $15.95 in Gmail, and it will give you the results by date by default,

01:07:33   the top item is whatever that receipt was.

01:07:36   It's instant. It always works, and it answers your question.

01:07:39   Then you could say, "That's what Acme Pet Store was?"

01:07:42   That's really smart.

01:07:44   So email is -- well, I would say what's smarter is to not worry about the $15.95 charge.

01:07:48   But anyway, she really wants to know what every single charge --

01:07:52   she's been doing this for our entire married life,

01:07:55   and so far she has not caught a single case of a company charging us for things that we didn't actually buy.

01:08:02   I guess that's the fear that somehow just charges are showing up in your credit card.

01:08:05   Now I say this, and she's going to tell me once I get off the air that there was a case sometime

01:08:10   where we got double charged or something, and she found it.

01:08:11   But to my recollection, it's not common in upper currents.

01:08:15   But anyway, she deals with it. This is how she wants to do it.

01:08:18   She wants to know what every charge is. It's fine.

01:08:21   For other documents, like my whole backup vortex,

01:08:24   I've got all of my stuff getting backed up in a million different places.

01:08:27   My digital stuff is way better protected than the paper stuff.

01:08:30   The only reason we have any paper stuff is because, A, she wants paper,

01:08:33   and B, I forget how many years it is, but you can be audited back to X number of years or something,

01:08:39   so you have to, in theory, keep the receipts for that number of years or whatever.

01:08:42   Because we have all this paper, we try to keep a buffer of that number of years,

01:08:46   and then we just push off the end and shred, which is another thing that's a hassle with paper things.

01:08:51   You actually shred them if you care about this stuff. Shred off the end of the thing.

01:08:56   We're not running a Fortune 500 company in our house. It's not actually that complicated.

01:09:02   The amount of actual paper is not that big.

01:09:04   For our important documents, passports, driver's licenses, all that type of stuff, it's not particularly well protected.

01:09:10   Yes, I suppose I do actually have scans of most of those things,

01:09:13   but most of the reason I have them is not because I'm carefully preserving them,

01:09:17   it's because online things very often want you to submit something like that,

01:09:20   like for insurance purposes or who knows.

01:09:23   If you ever try to do anything with cryptocurrency, they're always trying to get you to scan your driver's license and upload it,

01:09:28   which I generally refuse to do.

01:09:30   In fact, I was trying to buy a domain name recently, and one of those semi-slimy domain name registrar watch services is like,

01:09:38   "Hey, that domain name you asked about in 1997, it's available. Do you want to bid on it?"

01:09:43   And I always go, "Sure, I'll give you 50 bucks."

01:09:46   And they say, "Would you consider 30,000?" That's how that conversation always goes.

01:09:50   But anyway, this time they're like, "You want to bid on this domain name?"

01:09:53   I'm like, "Sure, here you go. 50 bucks. What do you think?"

01:09:55   And they said, "Well, your account has been frozen because you need to upload your driver's license."

01:10:00   I'm like, "Well, goodbye."

01:10:02   I suppose there's probably some fraud-related reason why they want all this information, but it's like,

01:10:08   "I don't want the domain name that much."

01:10:10   Anyway, we're not really particularly obsessive about that stuff.

01:10:14   If our house burned down, we would lose our passports, we would have to get a new driver's license,

01:10:18   but in the end, it would be fine.

01:10:21   Important documents being with lawyers is another way you can do it.

01:10:25   But honestly, anything that's really important, I do have in digital form, and that is backed up 20 ways to Sunday.

01:10:31   For this question here that Jason had, which gets into more than just digital documents,

01:10:35   but also photos and stuff like that, we've talked about this in the past, I don't want to go into it too much,

01:10:39   but I would definitely recommend, as part of whatever your data backup strategy is,

01:10:44   not to just rely entirely on cloud backup.

01:10:47   You should have cloud backup because it's physically distant and it's generally economical

01:10:51   and it's another factor in your security of a different thing that would have to fail.

01:10:55   But I would suggest very strongly, as annoying as it is, to have local backups of stuff

01:11:01   because the main failure mode is probably not going to be your house burning down,

01:11:04   it's probably going to be you accidentally hosing something or an SSD or hard drive going bad.

01:11:10   So don't say, "I just have my computers and then cloud."

01:11:13   That's not enough. You need something in the middle there, which is a local backup.

01:11:16   And I know it's a pain in the butt. It's expensive, it's cumbersome, where am I going to keep this local backup?

01:11:20   It's another thing for me to futz with. Do I have to get a Synology now?

01:11:23   Do I have to get a tower computer so I can put internal storage?

01:11:25   Do I have to have a bunch of SSDs dangling off the end of my computer?

01:11:28   I know it's annoying, but I highly recommend including that tier,

01:11:33   that sort of, you know, that tier in your cache hierarchy or your backup thing,

01:11:37   because just cloud is not enough.

01:11:39   I'm not saying cloud is unreliable, but it's so distant from you and cloud companies are flaky

01:11:43   and the bottom line is it's just one thing. You need to have another thing.

01:11:47   And no, two cloud backup companies probably isn't as good either.

01:11:50   And it's a pain to restore from. It's very distant from you.

01:11:53   Yes, they will send you a hard drive and stuff or whatever,

01:11:55   but having it locally gives you much more peace of mind

01:11:59   and will let you sort of see the data flowing through more easily,

01:12:02   because you see both the source and the place you're backing up to.

01:12:05   Whereas with the cloud thing, you're just kind of trusting that you'll notice

01:12:08   if it's been failing to back up for the past ten days or some weird problem is causing it to silently fail or whatever.

01:12:15   So I would recommend the middle tier there.

01:12:17   I would now recommend my system of actual paper filing cabinets and paper bills and stuff like that,

01:12:21   because there's too much stuff to forget or whatever,

01:12:23   but it just goes to show that defer to the person who is managing this stuff.

01:12:31   Most people don't manage their own paperwork sort of equally with their partner,

01:12:36   business partner or life partner, just because it's confusing.

01:12:39   So normally one person sort of says, "I'm going to do the one to manage the bills.

01:12:43   I'll make sure we pay them and I'll make sure we don't double pay them."

01:12:46   Whereas both people are equally responsible for the bills.

01:12:48   I feel like it's a situation where an email goes out at work to five people

01:12:52   and that just gives everyone an excuse not to do anything about it,

01:12:54   because it wasn't addressed to me, right?

01:12:57   That's my advice on managing this.

01:12:59   And then whoever is managing this stuff, let them use whatever system

01:13:05   that they're most comfortable with, even if that system seems barbaric to you or whatever,

01:13:09   because in the end they're doing it and it has to fit their brain and the way they want to do it.

01:13:14   And I don't think -- like, again, with the possible exception of Marco,

01:13:18   who has sort of some continuity of functionality of an application that he sells

01:13:24   that we'd want to continue after his death, most of us, if we die,

01:13:27   it's okay for all of our stuff to just drop on the floor.

01:13:29   We're not running a Fortune 500 company.

01:13:33   We're responsible to the lives of thousands of people.

01:13:36   Neither is my business.

01:13:40   True, but I'm saying, what if your family wanted to continue your business as a way of making money?

01:13:46   There is continuity of income for the family, as in, when you're gone,

01:13:50   that thing could still be a going concern and its value would be damaged by it

01:13:54   just suddenly falling over and no one having any idea how to bring it back up.

01:13:58   You know what I mean? And it's an asset, right?

01:14:00   I should probably start commenting my code.

01:14:03   Yeah, and it's an asset. Even if you just wanted to sell it or whatever,

01:14:05   it loses value if Marco died and then overcast, broken, never worked again.

01:14:09   Anyway, what I'm saying is that of the three of us, at least you have something like that for me and Casey.

01:14:15   If Erin can't get to your source code, honestly, she'll live.

01:14:20   It's not that big of a deal, and I think that's true of a lot of people's stuff.

01:14:24   Again, passports -- I don't even know if a digital version of your passport is worth anything.

01:14:28   Is that useful for anything other than making you feel good?

01:14:31   But either way, if our house burns down and we lose our passports, we can go get new ones.

01:14:34   We're not international travelers constantly, and certainly not now.

01:14:37   Generally, I'm chill about the fact that many things in our life are vulnerable to being gone

01:14:45   because I don't even have a fire safe.

01:14:48   I don't even have a fireproof box.

01:14:51   Yeah, if our house burns down, boy, we're losing a lot of stuff.

01:14:53   By the way, can we not hear from all the safe people?

01:14:58   I know a fireproof box is different from a safe.

01:15:02   I know a fireproof safe is different from a regular safe.

01:15:05   I know these are all very different things.

01:15:07   We don't have to hear about it.

01:15:09   I actually researched these things a few years back and discovered quite how massive and heavy

01:15:16   an actual fireproof actual safe is when it's one thing and all this stuff.

01:15:21   We really don't need to hear all the details.

01:15:22   Thank you for writing in already.

01:15:24   I know if you are using that feature in Gmail where you can unsend the email within a certain amount of time,

01:15:30   please go back and unsend the one you sent a half hour ago.

01:15:32   We don't need it. Thank you very much. Thank you.

01:15:35   Well, you need a salt-waterproof safe because when the hurricane comes and washes away your house,

01:15:38   fire is not your problem.

01:15:40   The salt water is going to leak in and just destroy all the stuff.

01:15:43   If you actually care about the physical safety of things like paper and stuff, keep it somewhere else,

01:15:49   like not in your house, in someone else's house, trade with a friend or a relative, rent a storage space.

01:15:56   What you're trying to do is say if there's a disaster here, at least there won't also be a disaster there.

01:16:01   I mean, I suppose if the nuclear bomb hits New York City, your storage facility is probably also gone,

01:16:07   but then losing your passports is probably the least of your worries.

01:16:10   I don't spend too much time worrying about this stuff.

01:16:12   We are probably less protected from silly losses than we could be.

01:16:16   We're just playing the odds that our house isn't going to burn down.

01:16:19   And mostly just our main concerns are pragmatic.

01:16:22   Come tax time, which is the main time we have to deal with family digital documents,

01:16:27   come tax time, can we find all the crap that we need to find to do all the things that we need to do and get it filed?

01:16:33   Every year it seems like, oh, it's kind of a hassle or whatever,

01:16:36   but the system that we have is enough to get us through tax time every year, right?

01:16:40   And to feel like from week to week and month to month we are more or less on top of our finances.

01:16:45   My wife also does the finances. I think I mentioned this before.

01:16:48   She uses You Need a Budget, which is not pronounced Yabnab, but that's what I call it, which recently moved online.

01:16:54   We had used Quicken before that. It mostly had my insistence, but she didn't like it.

01:16:58   And then Quicken 2007 became the latest version for way too long.

01:17:01   And then the new Quicken came and it was weird.

01:17:03   Anyway, some kind of program to manage your finances to stay on top of, again, whoever is doing that stuff.

01:17:10   If they just want to go to the bank's website and use that thing, fine.

01:17:13   If they want to use Yabnab to make a budget and try to stick to it, fine. Whatever.

01:17:18   I think it is not as dire as when we talk about this stuff in the past,

01:17:24   we tend to be preachy about, oh, back up all your stuff, back up all your photos.

01:17:27   I think that is so much more dire than keeping track of all your receipts.

01:17:32   If there's some catastrophe that happens, are you going to be more sad that you lost five years' worth of receipts

01:17:38   or all the pictures of your kids?

01:17:39   That's why we harp on protecting your family photos so much more than we ever talk about,

01:17:45   here's my sophisticated filing system for every restaurant I ever ate on and how much I tipped

01:17:49   so I can put it in a spreadsheet and calculate it and show you trends over time.

01:17:52   No, that's not as important as pictures of your kids or pictures of yourselves or anything like that.

01:17:57   Photos are so much more valuable than everything else, which is why at least I personally spend so much more time,

01:18:02   and money, making sure all of my precious, irreplaceable family memories that are in digital form are massively protected.

01:18:11   Meanwhile, my passport, driver's license, and electric bills are just going to burn with the house.

01:18:15   For someone who is so completely in a retentive and over-the-top about your digital stuff,

01:18:21   I really want to make fun of you for not having basically any protection for physical things,

01:18:25   but your logic does make sense. John Syracuse says it often does,

01:18:29   and yeah, I can't entirely blame you. I just wanted to kind of echo a couple things you said.

01:18:35   I am not quite as dedicated to paper stuff as Tina, but that dedication has only been waning in the last year or two.

01:18:43   I do plug in all of our expenditures and things of that nature.

01:18:48   I do it in former sponsor Banktivity, which has native apps for all Apple platforms.

01:18:54   I used to use Quicken in 2007 for years and years and years and years, even long after 2007 had come and gone.

01:19:02   I personally like having that feeling of, I would say control, but maybe awareness over where our money is going.

01:19:11   The good news is we are not living paycheck to paycheck, so it wouldn't be critical for me to know,

01:19:19   "Uh-oh, we spent 20 bucks at McDonald's and that's put us way over the budget for this month,

01:19:24   and now we might not be able to pay our mortgage." There was a time that was me.

01:19:28   I think I've mentioned on the show many times that I would treat myself to one McDonald's value meal a week

01:19:34   when I had first started working and being a real adult.

01:19:37   Actually, I think it was factual, more than one $7 McDonald's meal in a week would not financially ruin me,

01:19:45   but put me in a genuinely bad spot.

01:19:47   Anyway, I bring all this up to say I still like having that awareness. I still like having that control, maybe?

01:19:53   And then somebody put in the chat, and I think we should bring it up, former sponsor Backblaze has put together

01:20:00   a really good reference to the 3-2-1 backup strategy, which I think is a really good way of looking at how to back up your digital stuff.

01:20:09   So, what is this? How does this work? It's three different copies, two of which can be local but different things,

01:20:19   like different drives or CD and hard drive or whatever, and at least one copy that is not in your house.

01:20:24   And for stuff like pictures and whatnot, I think that you, me, and probably Marco as well,

01:20:29   are easily achieving this. For other things, perhaps not. But for stuff, like you had said, Jon,

01:20:34   like pictures that you really, really, really don't want to lose, that you can't get back from anyone else,

01:20:40   I can't stress enough. Be it Backblaze or someone else. Try to figure out how to do a 3-2-1 setup for yourself.

01:20:48   And the flip side of the picture things, by the way, is one of the reasons that I've spent an ungodly amount of money

01:20:54   printing photo books from Apple Photos and Mimeo and Apple Photos is gone now is because it's kind of the reverse backup.

01:21:03   If I have a digital disaster and somehow my 19 copies of my photos all get erased from the internet,

01:21:08   probably through like ransomware or some other terrible malicious thing, at least I have now essentially,

01:21:14   you know, I have like several feet of physical photo albums in the form of photo books.

01:21:19   Several feet?

01:21:21   Yeah, that's the unit of measure for pictures. As measured by shelf space of these books, like sort of lining my shelf,

01:21:28   it's maybe like 3 feet, maybe. Anyway, and I try not to calculate the price when I look at that because these books are so expensive.

01:21:34   But you don't have to do it that way. You can just, like, making prints, making photo prints of your digital things

01:21:40   is a reverse backup of your digital stuff. And now, granted, I would be devastated if I lost all my digital photos

01:21:44   because I have, you know, 130,000 of them and there's probably, you know, maybe a thousand photos in those books,

01:21:51   but a thousand of my best photos is better than zero photos.

01:21:55   And plus, making physical copies of your photos is a good idea. Obviously we have pictures and picture frames around the house and everything too,

01:22:01   but having actual albums where you just, you know, print your favorite pictures at Walgreens at the end of the year

01:22:06   and stick them in an album, like just something minimal like that doesn't have to be fancy, you don't have to do these silly photo books that I pay for,

01:22:12   but it's nice to have that as a backup and it's also nice to have that as a thing that you can just leaf through.

01:22:18   One of the gifts I give my parents frequently is, you know, photo albums of pictures of their grandkids, which they appreciate.

01:22:24   I do wonder how much they look at them, but I do know for a fact that they're not like perusing my digital pictures online,

01:22:30   even though they technically could in various ways. So I'm hoping that, you know, hey, I give you this photo book

01:22:35   and you flip through it when you get it and then you put it on your shelf, but maybe, you know, you sit down on the couch one day

01:22:41   and see the book and take it out and flip through it again. It's nice to have physical copies of your photos

01:22:46   for people who aren't so connected with digital life that they routinely flip through photos on their phone

01:22:53   or look at their little memories from Apple. Like some people do that or even have digital picture frames or whatever,

01:22:57   but not everyone does that. Not everyone is accustomed to that. And even if you are, having physical copies is nice as well.

01:23:05   So I alluded to earlier that I had a bit of an epiphany with regard to Apple One,

01:23:11   and this came because I got my first bill for Apple TV+. And we are working through the second season of For All Mankind,

01:23:20   which we are on the penultimate episode, no spoilers, but oh boy, things just got serious.

01:23:25   And I'm very excited to continue watching that. Ted Lasso comes out in just a couple weeks, so you bet that I'm not canceling Apple TV+ anytime soon.

01:23:34   But I got this $5 bill for Apple One, or I'm sorry, for Apple TV+, and I've been getting $10 a month bills for Apple Fitness+,

01:23:42   and I've been getting, I think, $10 a month bills for iCloud storage. And it occurred to me as I got this new $5 bill,

01:23:49   you know, I'm really approaching the amount of money I would probably be spending on Apple One, or whatever they're,

01:23:57   that's what it's called, right? Apple One? The like, get everything?

01:24:00   Right, that's right. It's called Apple One because there's more than one plan, because that makes total sense.

01:24:04   Right, totally. So anyway, so it occurred to me that, you know, if I'm spending, what is that, like $25 bucks,

01:24:10   $25 bucks a month on various Apple services, why wouldn't I just pony up the extra $5 bucks to get a whole ton more iCloud storage,

01:24:20   get, maybe finally put us on a family plan, and give me iCloud photo library, and Apple music, which I don't think I care about,

01:24:32   because I am a devout Spotify person, please don't at me. But it occurred to me…

01:24:38   The ultimate luxury of getting Apple Music when you use Spotify is the same reason I have Spotify and Apple Music,

01:24:43   is just being able to follow other people's links and hear music, because people, because people,

01:24:49   the Spotify people think everyone has Spotify, and the Apple Music people think everyone has Apple Music,

01:24:53   and when people send links to songs, I don't use either one of those services, but I pay for both of them,

01:24:58   so I can follow people's links. And that's not the main, I mean, my daughter is into Spotify, so I'm basically paying the fat for her,

01:25:06   and Apple Music, I get it because it's part of Apple One, I guess.

01:25:10   Yeah, well, and so, there's a really great, just very quickly, there's a really great website, I think it's called SongWhip,

01:25:16   if that's not right, I'll put it in the show notes, but it can, and I'm sure this is not the only one,

01:25:19   but it's one that's been very reliable for me, that will let you go back and forth between different services,

01:25:26   so you know, you can put in a Spotify link and you'll get out a more generic link that you can share.

01:25:32   Isn't it, this service is kind of like Song.link, which I think might be spyware, malware, I don't know,

01:25:39   but like the great function of these websites is, the problem I just described, like hey, if you want to link to something,

01:25:47   it just might be natural for you to give a Spotify link, but then if you actually think about it for a second,

01:25:51   you're like, oh, but what about the people who don't have Spotify, how are they going to listen to this thing?

01:25:54   Well, I don't know what service everyone subscribes to, so how do I just link to a song?

01:25:57   These meta sites exist that say, if you want to link to a song, here, link to this webpage on our site,

01:26:05   and this webpage will say, listen to the song in huge list of services, so then you land on the webpage,

01:26:11   and then you just tap on whatever service that you actually pay for, if any of them,

01:26:14   and maybe they also have like a free YouTube link or whatever, and so, you know, in the context of Twitter or whatever,

01:26:19   if you want to link to a song, you link to one of those sites.

01:26:23   I used to use song.link because I saw people using it, but I think it might be shady that I have seen this song whip one,

01:26:28   and that's the context I've seen it, where it's just a landing page with 20 links to the same song,

01:26:32   which I think is a great thing, and I would love a more reliable, like if Apple did something like that,

01:26:39   obviously Apple's not going to do it, it's not going to link to Spotify, but like some company that I trusted

01:26:43   not to turn that link into terrible malware 10 years down the line would be great,

01:26:47   but in the meantime, I have used those things sometimes when tweeting.

01:26:50   So anyway, it occurred to me, you know what, it's probably about time that I start actually taking action on this

01:26:59   and not just kicking this can further and further and further down the road.

01:27:02   So, I haven't done anything yet, but to recap, the current setup is I have my own Apple ID and my own store account.

01:27:13   Erin has her own Apple ID, but she is riding on my app's store account.

01:27:20   So, the good news is she doesn't have like a bunch of her own purchases and things, like they're all our purchases,

01:27:25   or really strictly speaking, they're my purchases.

01:27:28   And so, I think it'll be relatively straightforward, he says famous last words as he knocks on wood,

01:27:34   that in order to convert mine to be like the family, I don't know, Maven or Boss,

01:27:42   I don't know what the correct term is in the Apple parlance, but family organizer, if you will,

01:27:46   and then just add Erin's like iMessage ID, her standard Apple ID to that new family,

01:27:53   and then hopefully that'll work out.

01:27:55   But if you're in this situation, you have this exact situation where you had the complete picture Apple ID,

01:28:05   or your spouse did, and then the other one of you joined a new family.

01:28:11   Like if you're in this scenario and you've lived this, only if you've lived exactly this,

01:28:17   please reach out via email or Twitter and let me know what you've done,

01:28:20   because sometime in the next couple of weeks I think I'm going to try to take the plunge.

01:28:23   And so that means I'll do a family plan finally that'll give Erin iCloud backups,

01:28:28   which she hasn't had in forever, I don't think.

01:28:30   It'll give me iCloud backups potentially because I'll finally have the space for it.

01:28:34   And then the next step is to get, more likely than not, to get some big, huge, honking SSD to put all my pictures on.

01:28:40   And I don't even remember how much space my pictures take up.

01:28:43   But I don't think I want to sacrifice all that space on my iMac for reasons I can't even put my finger on.

01:28:50   So if I don't just put them on my iMac, then I'm going to need some sort of big SSD to put them on,

01:28:56   which is going to be several hundred dollars.

01:28:58   So suddenly I've gone from $15 a month to several hundred dollars and $30 a month.

01:29:03   Oh, that's what happens these days.

01:29:05   But yeah, I think it's time.

01:29:07   You should listen to ATP because we talked about the exact scenario many shows ago.

01:29:10   I did the thing you're describing.

01:29:12   Did you? Okay.

01:29:13   I have the Apple ID that owned everything in the entire family, just like you do now.

01:29:17   And my wife had an Apple ID, but she'd never purchased anything on it.

01:29:19   And we made a family, and I became the family organizer, and my wife joined the family,

01:29:23   and then we had kids, and they joined the family.

01:29:25   Like, no, it'll be fine. We talked about it.

01:29:27   All right. I remember talking, I couldn't remember what the details were with either of you.

01:29:30   To be honest, I thought it was Marco that had the same situation.

01:29:32   I mean, you could potentially screw it up if you do something weird during it.

01:29:35   But I was saying, like, the scenario you just described, I did that.

01:29:38   That's exactly what I did, and so far it's been fine.

01:29:40   Now, the other weird thing about it is we continue to purchase things through my Apple ID.

01:29:46   We don't have to.

01:29:47   My wife could purchase things on her Apple ID and sometimes does, you know,

01:29:51   but in general, just for simplicity's sake, I continue to buy most of the stuff on my Apple ID

01:29:56   because everyone has access to it.

01:29:58   You know, if I buy it, you know, in-app purchases are, I think you can opt into that or whatever,

01:30:03   and it's changed over the years, but in general, I buy it, and then everyone in the family has access to it.

01:30:08   You don't have to keep doing that.

01:30:09   You can switch after you do the family to doing individual purchases, and that's fine, too,

01:30:13   and the kids sometimes purchase their own stuff when they get, like, gift cards for iTunes or whatever.

01:30:17   But as we said on past shows, it works surprisingly well.

01:30:20   Yeah. I've had, I mean, geez, I've been doing Apple family sharing for years and years and years.

01:30:27   I mean, I think within a few months of them introducing it, I think, my whole family was in it.

01:30:32   And it's been great. I've had no problems. Like, you know, Tiff and I are the adults on the account.

01:30:38   I'm pretty sure us using family sharing predated Adam existing, but once Adam existed, he was added to the account.

01:30:45   Like, it's been totally fine. There's all sorts of great things, like with the parental, like, ask for permission for in-app purchases

01:30:53   or for screen time extensions on limits and stuff like that. It's fantastic. It works very, very well.

01:30:59   And I commend Apple for getting that really right really early on because it's been great.

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01:32:41   Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my servers and for sponsoring our show.

01:32:46   Let's move on and do some Ask ATP. I don't know how much we're going to get through,

01:32:52   but Carlos Luis Portillo writes, Portillo, I actually would suppose, "What is the latest on y'all's desk chairs?

01:32:58   A few years back, Marco talked about his experience with the Embody, and Jon had just purchased one.

01:33:03   Have any of y'all tried anything new, or is the Embody still the one to get?"

01:33:07   I will start because I'm extremely boring and simple. I still have a gifted desk chair that I am sitting on that is fine.

01:33:15   And I probably should get a better one, but I'm cheap, and I haven't. So that's my story, same as it ever was.

01:33:21   Marco, what do you got going on?

01:33:23   I still like the Embody for most desk usage. That being said, for the beach, I got an Aeron.

01:33:34   I had a couple of summers here where I just got a cheap Amazon Basics, whatever, because it's the beach.

01:33:41   There's a lot of moisture and heat here. I didn't want to ruin a nice chair with that.

01:33:46   But once I started spending longer times out here in the summertime, having the Amazon Basics chair was killing my back.

01:33:54   I noticed the difference. It sucked. It's fine for whatever $50 that it cost, and it's fine for temporary short-term use, or not very many hours in a day.

01:34:06   But I noticed the difference when I was sitting in that for my full-time job.

01:34:12   So I upgraded to, I wanted to get a Herman Miller chair for here.

01:34:16   And I know the Embody is great, but because it's so hot and humid here, the Embody has a lot more fabric that's thicker and touching your body compared to the Aeron, which is very cool and mesh-like.

01:34:30   So I went Aeron for this. I'd used them back in my days when I worked for actual other people.

01:34:35   So I knew that Aerons were good for me, and they fit me well. So I went with that, and it's great.

01:34:42   Again, it's Herman Miller. It's expensive, but it's very well made. It has a, I think, 10 or 12 year warranty, and it's awesome. So no regrets.

01:34:52   So, John? So, I mean, one of the advantages of buying a horrendously expensive chair is that you don't have to think about chairs for a while. So I'm still using the Embody. I liked it when I bought it. I still like it now. It is the same as when I bought it.

01:35:05   That's why you spend a lot of money on a chair, I suppose. My wife had the steel case gesture, and I have to say, despite the fact that she liked that chair better than this one, it has not held up as well.

01:35:14   It has more creaks and more things that are, you know, wearing a little bit on that chair. The creaks really annoy me, because we spent a lot of money for that gesture, and I didn't want anything to be creaking.

01:35:24   And there's like this plastic panel that keeps like popping off that I have to tuck back in, whereas the Embody is like the day I got it. Like it shows no wear, it does not make any noises. There's no extra play or slop in any portion of it.

01:35:39   Yeah, but that doesn't mean that you should get an Embody. Like remember what we did with the chairs, I tried to do as much research as I could. I went to stores and sat in lots of different chairs, and then we bought two different chairs hoping that one of us would like one, at least one of us would like one, and then we could return the other one.

01:35:52   It just so happens we got lucky that my wife liked the gesture, and I liked this one, so hey, we're all set. We didn't have to return anything. But honestly, you have to sit in chairs with your body, ideally for longer than five seconds in the store, but at least for five seconds in the store.

01:36:06   Because I went to lots of these fancy ergonomic chair stores and sat in a whole bunch of chairs, and you could tell sometimes, no, this one doesn't fit my body, or this one's a maybe or whatever.

01:36:15   So don't just buy the Embody because you hear a bunch of podcasters got it, at least of which is because it's so expensive. You really have to like this chair to do that.

01:36:22   But you should get, to Marco's point, a good chair that you like, that's comfortable for you. And yes, money is somewhat of a proxy for durability and comfort, but not always. There's lots of very expensive chairs that I sat in that I would be miserable in.

01:36:36   So don't just buy based on price, and don't just buy because you hear us talk about something, but please do buy a decent chair that fits you well.

01:36:44   My chair that I had prior to this, as we discussed, was a $250 chair, which was, at the time I bought it, it was the horrendously expensive chair of the 20-something, John.

01:36:54   Because that was a lot of money for me when I was making a lot less money at my very first job out of college and living in Georgia or whatever.

01:37:01   And that chair was not a high quality chair, but hey, $250 in 1998, that's, you know, I don't know what that translates to, but it's not a cheap chair, it's not a $50 chair.

01:37:12   And that one did slowly deteriorate and get creaky or whatever, but I was glad that I spent that money on that, because I was going to be working from home at that time, and I didn't want a $50 chair.

01:37:21   The $250 chair lasted me until, what, you know, just a couple years ago, so definitely get a decent chair.

01:37:29   Spend a little bit more money than you think you should spend, but don't necessarily buy the specific fancy chair that a bunch of podcasters you listen to bought.

01:37:36   All right, moving right along. Stephen Kim writes, "I'm thinking about getting a dedicated camera. My biggest gripe with this kind of photo taking process is the ingest process."

01:37:47   Oh, don't even get me started. "I connect the S data at my M1 iMac and then go through the photos in Finder, deleting the bad shots and then importing the rest to Photos."

01:37:55   This is sounding all too familiar. "The problem is previewing a photo in Finder. These are not instant. There's an ever so slight lag going from one photo to the next.

01:38:03   The Photos app itself is better, so I can import these photos and prune them there, but it feels wasteful to import a bunch of photos that will automatically start uploading to the cloud when I know a vast majority of them are bad shots and are going to be deleted."

01:38:14   It's like I wrote this. "I'm curious to know what each of you do when taking photos from your big cameras and ingest them into your photo library. That's lowercase photo library because..."

01:38:22   This is what Stephen wrote. "That's lowercase photo library because I believe Casey still needs to switch over to iCloud photo library."

01:38:28   Well, look at what we just talked about. I have talked on and off about my photo ingest process for a while, but in broad strokes, it's kind of sort of what you're talking about.

01:38:38   I go through an SD card using Finder. I don't love it, especially when I'm loading RAWs, especially when I'm doing it on anything but my iMac Pro.

01:38:47   I don't tend to keep very many RAW photos. It's only things that I think are really, really fantastic shots, but I shoot in JPEG and RAW just in case.

01:38:56   Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever used a RAW photo in the seven years I've had a big camera.

01:39:02   This is why you have 1.2 terabytes of photos. I still have less than a terabyte of photo and I have way more photos than you. You know why? No RAWs or very few RAWs.

01:39:12   I think you're right. You've got a RAW problem.

01:39:14   I think you're right. I think there's a cream for that. Oh, lordy.

01:39:20   Anyways, so I get them down to what I think is reasonable on the SD card. Then I use an app called Geotag, which is sufficient.

01:39:31   I don't love it, but it works in order to geotag the photos that have come in off the big camera because it's really important to me to have geographic information on those photos because it's not unusual for me to look up things by where they were taken.

01:39:47   So I use Geotag to tag them to at least an approximation of where they were taken.

01:39:52   Then I use my bespoke app that I wrote that is not going to be open source because the code sucks. It's not going to be for sale because it sucks.

01:40:00   But it does work for me and that's the thing that files it away on my Synology into folders for years, folders for months, and then a ISO, whatever, whatever.

01:40:13   So it's 2021-07-07 and then the time after that. It's not great. I don't love it.

01:40:20   I don't know what I'm going to do when I get to using iCloud Photo Library. I guess I would import to the Synology and then drag from the Synology into photos, which is super convoluted and weird, which is part of the reason I never used iCloud Photo Library.

01:40:33   But here we are. But I don't know. It's wonky. Marco, I've given you first shot for the last several. So John, what are you doing these days?

01:40:41   I'm speaking to Steven, but I'm also speaking to Casey here. I don't know why either one. Well, I know why Casey is.

01:40:48   Importing into the Finder when you're planning on putting in photos, don't do that. Just import directly into photos.

01:40:54   There's one thing that actually does a reasonable job at is imports. It has a separate dedicated section showing your photos organized by when you imported them, which is essential for organizing because they're not necessarily the order that they were taken in.

01:41:07   There's not date order because you might be importing from multiple cameras. And anyway, important to photos. Yes, I understand. Like, oh, I import them, but I'm not going to keep most of them and I don't want to waste time uploading it.

01:41:17   Don't worry about what the computers is there for. Just delete the ones you don't want. If that was empathy for the computer, John.

01:41:24   But I can tell you that the upload speed, especially if you don't have gigabit fiber like I do, but even if you do, you're going to probably be able to go through them faster than your computer can upload them just because photos is lackadaisical about getting around to pushing your stuff up or whatever.

01:41:38   But even if it doesn't, it's fine. Like, I swear it's fine. And sometimes it'll save your butt because you'll be like, oh, I delete. I want this one. This one. You go through it and you realize, you know what?

01:41:47   I thought I had more angles in that one shot. And even though I picked the one I like, I actually would like those ones back. Guess what? Look in your recently deleted things and it'll be in there.

01:41:56   And if it's not in recently deleted, it might be on another computer recently deleted because it got uploaded. But don't worry about it. Like, it's the whole point of a cloud library. Just import into photos, sort in photos, delete in photos.

01:42:07   They'll go into recently deleted 30 days or whatever later. They'll get purge from recently deleted. Like, it takes care of itself. That's why you want a photo library. That's why you don't want a hand organized shoebox of files like Casey has.

01:42:20   And guess what? Photos does a pretty good job of previewing images quickly. Like, don't use the finder and quick look as your way of going through photos. It's just no.

01:42:29   And by the way, once you get into any kind of workflow with Apple Photos or literally any other program that manages photos, you'll get into a nice workflow of hitting the period key to mark things as a fav.

01:42:41   Or knowing the keyboard shortcuts to quickly crop or do whatever. Or applying adjustments to multiple photos or tagging things. Getting into a workflow with an actual dedicated photos app is way, way better than using the finder. Please stop using the finder.

01:42:56   Sorry, Dad. Alright, Marco, what do you got?

01:42:59   So in an ideal world, I can see a pretty good argument for shooting RAW plus JPEG. And the reason why is that in most cases you would just import the JPEG and leave the RAW alone. And the idea would be that you would go through your JPEGs and you would pick and choose the ones you like best and you would be able to tell pretty quickly, are there any of these that I'm going to need to or want to edit to such a degree that the RAW would be beneficial.

01:43:28   So am I making large changes to the color temperature or color balance or do I need to pull a whole lot of detail out of the shadows or highlights? And you can tell that pretty quickly in your first pass going through them. Am I really going to need the RAW for this ever?

01:43:44   And for the few that you do, keep those. For all the rest of the ones that you don't, get rid of the RAWs and then you just have all the JPEGs. And then put those into Apple Photos for long term storage after maybe sending them through something like Lightroom for the RAW tweaking and everything.

01:44:01   Okay. That's what I would do in an ideal world. In the real world, I basically never use big cameras anymore in part because this process is so cumbersome and I sucked so badly at having any kind of discipline to actually do it.

01:44:14   So in reality, what I did for a while was try to occasionally shoot photos on a nice big camera, see how awesome they were, import them into photos as RAW, never do anything with them really, forget to ever pick through them and then eventually I would forget about them.

01:44:32   And then there's this massive 30 gig block of photos from this day sitting in my photo library forever taking up space on all my devices forever. I would have duplication problems where I would want to edit the RAWs in Lightroom, which is now known as Lightroom Classic, old Lightroom.

01:44:53   I'd want to edit them there because that had the better RAW editor of anything I'd used. But then I'd want to actually have my photo library live in iCloud photo library so everything could be in one place and the iPhone could be automatically included in that and everything.

01:45:06   So I would ideally edit in Lightroom and then ship everything over to Photos app and then delete them out of my Lightroom, whatever. In practice, didn't do that right either.

01:45:16   In practice, I would just have two copies of everything and not know, can I safely delete this from here? Is this my only copy of this photo? Am I going to have three or zero copies of this photo that I'm trying to have one copy of?

01:45:27   It was a mess. And so the reality is, I just don't use big cameras anymore for multiple reasons, but this was a big one that I just never really nailed this process.

01:45:40   I was always sloppy about it and I would always have all the best intentions and very ambitious ideas of what I would do. And then what I would do in real life was very different and inferior and much lower effort and sloppier.

01:45:54   I actually, I know this is not the time to wedge us in, but hey, it's our show. I think it would be really interesting to consider the idea, I know this would never actually happen, but just to consider the idea, what if Apple made a dedicated camera?

01:46:12   Now I know why they don't. I know that basically the phone is their dedicated camera in addition to being a phone and that it's already this $1,000 thing that we upgrade every few years and it takes great pictures and uses all their AI and everything.

01:46:27   But wow, can you imagine how amazing it would be if you could give Apple's silicon and integration benefits to a device that could have bigger glass and bigger sensors?

01:46:43   Can you imagine what it could do? Like, look at what it does with little tiny garbage glass and little tiny garbage sensors that you can fit in a phone and just make it the size of a point and shoot.

01:46:52   I'm not even saying make it a giant SLR or even mirrorless. Obviously, Apple doesn't even need that much physical space for their stuff to make it amazing.

01:47:01   Just make it the size of a Sony RX100 series thing. Imagine what they could do with that.

01:47:08   I recognize that's not the world that we live in, but if they would ever do that, that would be such a dream setup of like, imagine that Apple makes a camera that just uploads to your photo library like a phone.

01:47:22   That would be just automatically, you just take the pictures and a few seconds later they're there. Oh my god, that would be incredible.

01:47:29   And I think that's part of the reason why iPhones are everyone's camera for the most part. Not only is it always with you, and not only is it a better camera now than most cameras most people can buy that are operated in most people's hands,

01:47:44   but also, what do you want to do when you take a picture? You might want to share it somewhere. You might want to send it to somebody or post it on Instagram or something.

01:47:51   That's such a common thing, like what's the next step you want to do with this picture? And when you're working with a regular non-phone camera, that process is so cumbersome and heavy and time consuming and data consuming.

01:48:06   And it's so easy to basically fall out of it like I did. So my answer to this question is I don't have a process to ingest photos from my big camera to my photo library because I no longer even do that at all.

01:48:22   It sounds like you never really had much of a process. You had an idea of a process but you weren't actually executing on it. I would not recommend trying to use Lightroom and photos. I realized I kind of skipped over what my process is. My process is I take pictures with my big camera, I connect my camera to my computer with USB and import the photos into photos.

01:48:38   And I only shoot in JPEG. That's it. That's the whole process. There is no importing into another app, there's no manual organization. The new camera does have a geotagging app. I'm not sure if it's working. I think it might be. But in the end, I don't care as much as Casey about the geotagging integration. If I did, I would try harder to get this weird Sony app to work.

01:48:59   I can look at the picture and tell where it is. But yeah, that's my workflow. I've talked about how annoying it is that I have to import my phone pictures into my wife's library because she owns the library but that's a problem that no one has solved as far as I'm aware.

01:49:14   And I'm willing to deal with that annoyance in the hopes that someday Apple will remedy this in exchange for using what for me has been a very reliable system of maintaining my photo library. I've printed books from it from back when it was called iPhoto.

01:49:30   It lets me organize my stuff. The minimal amount of editing that I do, I can do within the application. I have complaints about the application. But in general, the trend has been very bumpy with a big dip when they iOS-fied everything. It has been positive over time.

01:49:45   I keep expecting that someday Apple photos will fall over and fail me and I'll have to find a new solution. But that day hasn't come yet. I just teeter around the edge of falling over for my 130,000 photos.

01:50:00   I have my photos mixed in there but generally not that many. Mostly because I don't want to end up in a situation where my photos can't fit. Because I do want my photos on the main hard drive, the main thing that I back up. I don't want it to be a separate thing.

01:50:15   If I took everything in RAW, this would be terabytes. But because they're mostly JPEGs with a smattering of RAWs thrown in, I'm able to have a huge number of photos and not take up that much room.

01:50:25   It does make a difference. Like Marco said, when I first got a camera that shot RAW, I did a bunch of RAW shooting and I saw what this would look like if you do this.

01:50:32   At the volume I take pictures. And it's just too much. Not just the processing over there, but how much space is this taking up on disk?

01:50:40   And it makes you be so much more brutal about deleting stuff. I prefer, in my ingestion flow, to mostly keep anything that is not...

01:50:49   I'll keep the seven different versions of the same picture, unless they're out of focus or whatever. But I'll keep them just because, hey, they're JPEGs. It's really not that big. I'm not as brutal as I would be. If I had RAWs, I would really, really want to narrow it down.

01:51:01   So that's my ingest flow. Or my outjest? I don't know. The outward flow. Again, I had some friend visit recently and we hadn't seen them in a while. Took a whole bunch of pictures that day on my big camera.

01:51:13   Connected my big camera with a cable to my computer, imported into photos, pick, delete, crop, edit, chucked a bunch into a temporary folder, shared to my shared photo library. Everybody sees them. Done.

01:51:25   It's like, you know, 15 minutes worth of activity. Then that includes also importing from my phone, which involves connecting my phone to my computer with a wire, importing into image capture because photos is broken.

01:51:35   Dragging it into photos. But they all just go into photos. Organize, pick, crop, select, shared photo album, share, done. That's a privilege I have as someone who's like relatives all use iPhones and can see all the photos.

01:51:48   But, you know, either way, like it is a the the all Apple, all JPEG straightforward workflow, even if you have both a dedicated camera and a bunch of iPhones can work. And it's it's reasonable.

01:52:02   Please avoid the finder and please, please don't try to use light room and photos at the same time. Marco, does TIFF ever use the big camera, her big camera, your y'all's big camera?

01:52:11   She uses it all the time. I see that like part of Marco's retirement from fancy cameras is suddenly TIFF has access to all the cameras.

01:52:19   I was surprised when I saw her using the Sony and recent some social thing. I was like, oh, she's not using the Canon for these things. She needs some better long lenses for the whale pictures, though.

01:52:28   You don't realize how long it is. So I do. I know how far you are from the beach. I know where that whale is, but I'm just saying like the lens is the Sony 200 to 600.

01:52:40   And we have a 2x teleconverter on it to bring it to 1200, which does also drop off tons of light and makes the photos. I mean, it's it's not a super sharp lens to begin with.

01:52:50   Yeah, they're they're plenty bright, but they're very soft. It's yeah. And that's that's part it is. It is part of the lens problem. Like if you look at the reviews of this lens, it's not amazing, even though it is massive and it's overall a high quality lens.

01:53:03   But just serving the 200 to 600 range with any degree of like super sharpness is not an easy thing to do. And then also just stabilization at that range.

01:53:13   You know, it has image stabilization in the lens and in the camera body, you're not you're not on a tripod. Well, usually it's it's like resting on it on the railing of the deck or something like that.

01:53:23   But even with that, like it's it's a significant challenge to just stabilize it. So it's it's it's certainly a challenge getting those pictures to be good.

01:53:35   And most of it is not most of it would not be improved by like an even more expensive lens like that's that's actually not the problem here might be improved by a tripod, though. Possibly. Yes.

01:53:47   So what is her workflow? Do you know, Marco? Because if she's taken shots with the big camera constantly, she's got to have some sort of fix for this problem.

01:53:54   She uses her computer like import stuff from it. But but you know, the first thing she usually does is take a picture with her phone of the viewfinder on the camera displaying the picture that she wants to post on Instagram and post that first because it's faster because like because otherwise like, all right, well, OK, now I have to like bring the bring the SD card to my computer, plug in the dongle, find the dongle or plug in or connect the camera with a USB cable.

01:54:21   All right. So like it's like then do the whole import thing, you know, get it into photos or whatever or Adobe Bridge or, you know, whatever editing thing she wants to do with it.

01:54:31   I think she still uses bridge. Last time I talked to her about this was granted was a little while ago.

01:54:36   Yeah. I mean, it's it's not it's it's a cumbersome process, you know, as we as we've just been talking about. So, you know, usually she will get it into her photo library within a day or two.

01:54:46   But it's it's very different from like, oh, my God, I just shot this amazing picture. I want to post this on Instagram right now or send this to somebody right now, like an iMessage.

01:54:54   So it's you know, I feel like because that second step is so often like, oh, my God, I just took this amazing picture. I want to do something with it on my phone right now.

01:55:06   You know, usually it's showing someone, whether it's a lot of someone's through a social media thing or whether you're messaging it to, you know, your partner or whatever.

01:55:14   You want to show it to someone. And it's so often that that involves being on your phone so that the process of just getting the camera to give the picture to your phone somehow, usually having to involve a computer or some kind of awful app from the camera manufacturer.

01:55:30   Like it's it's such a cumbersome process and nothing has ever made it better. Like nothing like all the different, you know, my five cards and direct Wi-Fi connections that the cameras have sometimes that can be controlled through their apps and everything.

01:55:45   They're all garbage. They're all cumbersome, clunky, terrible, fragile and slow. And believe me, I've used many of these things. They're terrible.

01:55:55   And so that's what I'm saying. Like I would just love if Apple just made a camera that that would just upload directly to your iCloud photo library, whatever it took.

01:56:04   That would be incredible. But the answer is they do make that it's called the iPhone and that's that's it. And if that's not what you want or it doesn't come with any good lenses.

01:56:13   Right. Yeah, exactly. That's the problem.

01:56:18   Someday someday maybe, you know, that maybe that'll be like, you know, Schiller's project on the roof is like, you know, he's finally getting Apple to release because like, I mean, look, Apple likes charging $5,000 for really boutique expensive high end things like look at what people like Sony or you know, higher and look at what Leica charges for their little their little mirrorless or fixed lens point and shoots like Apple could do something amazing in that market for like 2000 3000 bucks.

01:56:47   Oh, my God, like imagine what they could do. And it would have all the advantages of, you know, being able to be integrated with your phone somehow. But I know the reality for so many reasons. I know that that's really a pipe dream. They're never going to do that. But one can dream in pipes.

01:57:05   What is a pipe dream? Is it a dream in pipes or of pipes or containing pipes? I don't know. Actually, I think that you've got me confused by talking about the way it's phrased is normally it's like a dream.

01:57:16   That's not going to happen. Yeah, but pipes happen all the time. Oh, God, we're so sheltered. So Wikipedia for pipe dream varies very bottom wild dreams induced by inhaling from an opium pipe.

01:57:29   Yeah, we're all way too straight edge. The main association I had is the video game, which I really love. That was a great game. Her pipe dream. No. Yeah, yes, you absolutely do remember pipe dream. You just don't remember the name.

01:57:41   It's a it's a it's a like a grid and you get to put tiles on them that have pipes. Right. And then eventually water is going to start flowing. So you get it's like pieces drop and it's like, oh, I have a horizontal pipe and a vertical pipe and a T pipe and an X pipe.

01:57:54   And you have to just put them anywhere on the board before the water starts flowing. And once the water starts flowing, you've hopefully made a pipe sequence of the water won't come out. Oh, yeah, it's a great game.

01:58:04   I would have known about that before I knew about the other mean. The opium pipe. Yes. Pipe dream. The game was definitely more more of a factor my childhood than an opium pipe. I hope so.

01:58:16   Speaking of games, as if as the hard right, I imagine Nintendo came to Apple and asked for an M one license for their next Nintendo Switch Pro. Why would Apple refuse and why would Nintendo not attempt this? And this is also relevant on account of the new OLED Switch having come out, which I want if if for nothing else, just because of the kickstand, which is so much nicer.

01:58:39   But nevertheless, I don't see Apple licensing the M one to anyone for any reason, even somebody in a different industry, because I think they think of this as their what's the opposite of an Achilles heel like their superpower that that this is what what gives them a competitive edge and advantage over everyone else.

01:58:59   And I don't think they would want to give that to anyone regardless of industry. I mean, it's not it's not an obscure industry with Apple. You know, 85 percent of Apple's profits in the App Store coming from games. Nintendo is a direct competitor.

01:59:11   Don't give your competitor like your best hardware asset, which are these amazing CPUs that they made for their phones, iPads and Macs. Yeah. So obviously that's why Apple would refuse is, you know, why would you help a competitor be better than they otherwise would be?

01:59:25   The other reason I feel like they would refuse is Apple needs all the chips they can make for its stuff, especially now that they're using the same chips and all their stuff.

01:59:33   And then why would end and not attempt this? I mean, if Apple offered Nintendo would be just, you know, incredibly foolish to refuse. Apple would never offer.

01:59:45   Nintendo is also a very proud company and tends to not be on the bleeding edge of technology very intentionally in the past. Various people who have made very popular products like there was a good article recently about recently about the person who made the Game Boy like very intentionally makes make a product with established essentially older technology that it's inexpensive to make and very reliable and rely instead on things that don't have to do with cutting edge technology to make your games fun.

02:00:12   Witness the Wii, not so much the Wii U, but even the Switch, which uses an extremely old off the shelf chipset slightly modified that is massively less powerful than its competing consoles.

02:00:23   And yet the Switch is selling like hotcakes because the games are really good. And Nintendo had a good idea for a product, this handheld slash TV thing, right?

02:00:32   They made a good product. They made it with older technology and Nintendo is proud of the fact that they sort of go their own way. So, Nintendo would not come begging to Apple.

02:00:43   You know, Sony and Microsoft might, although Sony is also very proud. Microsoft would totally do it though. But yeah, Apple's not giving this stuff to anybody. Like, yeah, who wouldn't want a chip that's incredibly low power and incredibly fast?

02:00:55   Like every game console maker could do amazing things with this chip, but nope, you don't get it. Only Apple does.

02:01:01   Yeah, and a couple other reasons too. I mean, whatever amount of money Nintendo would make them in this deal, I don't think would be worth Apple having a customer for the chip that's not them.

02:01:13   And therefore, having to do things like make contracts to make this chip available for a certain amount of time in a certain volume and have to then answer to this customer and deal with them.

02:01:24   And what if there's a problem with the chip? Apple has to deal with that. I can't see Apple wanting to take on the burden of a customer on that level.

02:01:34   And then secondly, whether Nintendo might not want this, cost I think would be a pretty big problem. The Switch is a $300, $200 game console.

02:01:46   I guess I know about the new one that's $350 and I know about the little one that's $200, but suppose they would put this in the high-end new one for $350.

02:01:54   There aren't any M1 devices that are anywhere near that price point. I don't know what Apple pays for the M1, but...

02:02:01   They would use an A12 and it would still be faster.

02:02:03   That's true.

02:02:04   That's what I'm saying. Nintendo is not buying top of the line anything. The cost wouldn't be a factor because they wouldn't be using an M1. Your other point about the needs of the customer are the real difference.

02:02:17   Because Nintendo would ask for, Apple would be like, "Well, we don't have anything that does that." And Nintendo would say, "Well, can you make something like that and sell it to us?"

02:02:24   And Apple would say, "No, because they don't want to have a customer."

02:02:27   Yeah, Nintendo could use an M1 and that would be great, but that would be "expensive" compared to the price. But the Tegra X1, whatever they're using, probably costs Nintendo $7.

02:02:38   It's so cheap and the power reflects that. It is not a powerful chip, but it is designed to do game-like things.

02:02:49   If Nintendo went shopping in Apple's portfolio, it would have to choose from the older Apple TV chips, essentially.

02:02:58   Yeah, and also, the M1 is not necessarily what Nintendo would even want. Obviously, it's probably a larger chip than what they're using. It might have different thermal and board space needs.

02:03:11   It has way more CPU power and not enough GPU power, probably, in terms of the balance.

02:03:16   Game chips are usually lopsided in that way. They usually put as much chip real estate and budget, both for power and heat and money, into the GPU as possible.

02:03:28   And the CPU is usually okay, but they need a lot more GPU power and not as much CPU power, typically, as you'd put in a MacBook Air.

02:03:36   So the M1 is not even the right chip for them. But even if they did all this stuff, part of the reasons why Apple's chips are so incredibly fast for Apple is that they're Apple's chips running Apple's compiled software on Apple's operating systems.

02:03:54   And you wouldn't have all those advantages if you just popped an Apple chip into someone else's hardware device running someone else's software with someone else's whole ecosystem.

02:04:04   They're still fast competitive chips, but it wouldn't necessarily be as compelling, even if all the other issues were worked out.

02:04:14   It's not going to be what you think it would be by having all of a sudden Apple's chip in someone else's device.

02:04:20   Well, it would be pretty amazing, but you'd be totally wasting the image processor, the neural engine. Nintendo doesn't need those. That's just a waste of money. And those are a big part of the chip. And they're powerful and significant.

02:04:34   Nintendo would be in the situation that Apple has been in sometimes where it's like, "Geez, well, the chip we're getting has this stuff on it, and we don't actually have a use for it, but I guess we could put better cameras on the Switch or..."

02:04:44   Does the Switch even have a camera? I think it does, right?

02:04:46   No.

02:04:47   I didn't think so.

02:04:48   Anyway, the neural engine, can we use that in games somehow? This is not what they want or need, right? And yet, Apple has invested a huge amount of time and money making it, and they invest real estate on their chips and putting it there because it's incredibly important to the iPhone, which is what these chips are made for. Or arguably to the Mac.

02:05:06   But still, go look at any benchmark of the M1 versus the Tegra X1 that's in a Switch. It's night and day, right? And the thing about the M1 is it would probably also fit within a similar power envelope that would work in the Switch given how big it is.

02:05:24   So, you know, the technology Apple has access to, let's put it that way. It's CPU cores, it's the manufacturing it gets through TSMC, the preferential treatment it gets for having its chip on the newest processor when other people can't get their chips, all that stuff. Anyone would love to have access to that.

02:05:40   Secondarily, I think they would like to have access to Apple's parts bin of crappy old chips, just because those are also better than the Tegra X1 in many, many ways. But yeah, none of this is ever going to happen. I can't imagine why Apple has ever thought about it, and I can't imagine Nintendo has ever thought about it, just because that's not how the companies work.

02:06:02   It is fun to think about. I mean, the general disappointment over the OLED Switch is because people thought they were going to get potentially a more powerful system, they could do better stuff, and that's, I'm kind of in the same camp of I'm always wondering, what could Nintendo do with more power, right?

02:06:18   One example of that is Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild is a game that's not possible in the N64, it's not possible on the GameCube, it's probably not possible on the Wii or Wii U class of things, although it starts to get close, but the point is, games like Breath of the Wild became possible when Nintendo finally crawled up the power curve high enough that, hey, now we can do an open world game.

02:06:39   Power for the sake of power isn't just like, oh, I don't need fancy graphics, no, it's gameplay. You can make more interesting, better games the more computing power you have. Nintendo travels that path, they're just behind everybody else.

02:06:53   So every time I see an amazing Nintendo game, I think, imagine what Nintendo could do with PlayStation 5 power. Imagine what they could do with Xbox Series X power.

02:07:02   We'll find out in seven years. Because they'll get there eventually, but I am always looking for, I wish Nintendo would have a little bit more power, but if you look at Nintendo's balance sheet, they're saying, we use incredibly cheap components that are reliable in known quantities, and we're selling every Switch that we can make, and I think they're approaching 100 million Switch sold, I think they're up to like 85, 86 million, which is close to the number of Wiis they sold, and the Wii was a standard dev console, and the HDH, if you remember that.

02:07:31   So you can't really fault Nintendo's strategy, but I am always looking for, I'm always fantasizing about, imagine if Nintendo first party game creators had access to modern day computing power rather than always being stuck with, you know, five years ago computing power.

02:07:48   Thanks to our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, Hover, and Linode, and thank you to our members who support us directly. You can join at ATP.FM/JOIN. We will talk to you all next week.

02:08:02   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

02:08:15   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM, and if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S,

02:08:40   That's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse, it's accidental, accidental.

02:08:55   They didn't mean to accidental, accidental, tech podcast so long.

02:09:14   Speaking of summer and things you don't like and sweatiness in your Aeron chair, I'm sure I asked about this when we talked about Aerons in the past, but I always found the stupid bar on the front digs into my legs. Do you find that?

02:09:27   So it depends on how you sit, by the way there's a reason why none of Herman Miller's chairs made after the Aeron have that bar, it's not a great part of the design, it would be hard to get rid of with this particular design, but I agree that is a problem. Many people don't know that Aerons come in three different sizes, there's like an A, B, and C size, and if you have the wrong size chair for you, if you have one that's too big for you in particular, then that bar will dig into your legs more than it does.

02:09:56   It depends on how you sit, whatever you're doing with your legs, if you're crossing one and sitting on it, that bar can get in the way.

02:10:09   Or sticking your legs out in front of you, sometimes I do that and I think that exacerbates it, putting them straight essentially so they go way out under your desk.

02:10:18   I'm trying that now, it doesn't really do it for me, but it depends on how much you squish the fabric down. Like any chair, it's going to be really good for most people, but some people it's going to have a little bit of a weird fit on them, and so that's why typically, ideally, in the good old days when you could go to stores, it was always useful to go find a showroom for whatever brand you're looking at, or somebody that sells it and go sit in one.

02:10:47   The Aerons were everywhere as the dot-com bubble was popping and I was working in the industry, so they were easy to get, cheap by the crappy companies that I was working at.

02:10:58   We weren't buying new Aerons, but as the other companies around us went out of business and they liquidated their stuff, we got a bunch of used Aerons.

02:11:04   And they're pretty sturdy and they hold up pretty well, so they were all over the office, so I got to try all different sizes and shapes and textures of chairs, including Aerons.

02:11:13   That's how I learned that they were not the chair for me. Although I do appreciate the mesh thing, your house is air-conditioned, so what do you like?

02:11:20   Aren't you going to keep it at a little temperature? You're not sweating like I am in this little un-air-conditioned cube here.

02:11:25   We use the air conditioning when it's really hot. It's on actually right now, because it's both very hot, very humid, and going to storm, so it's obviously good for that kind of situation.

02:11:36   But I don't, and we've talked about this before, I don't like using air conditioning if I can get away without it and be somewhat comfortable.

02:11:43   Because I have a ceiling fan, which I love, and I would so much rather just have this fan on all day blowing on me at medium speed up to about 78 to 80 degrees.

02:11:56   Unless it's super humid, then maybe a little bit lower than that. Because I don't like air conditioning, because first of all, the way air conditioning works is it's blowing 40 degree air into the room to chill the room down.

02:12:13   40 degrees? How powerful is your air conditioning system? I hope it's not blowing 40 degree air. It's going to be a frost.

02:12:21   It's blowing very cold air into a room through some ducts to try to cool the room down to a low average temperature.

02:12:28   And it's doing this in a cycle. So the result is you have this cycle of very cold air blowing in, and then it slowly warms up to the point where it's almost too hot.

02:12:36   Then you have very cold air blowing in again. During that time, there's no wind. I mean, you could turn the ceiling fans on in addition, but then there's not a lot of air movement.

02:12:46   You're in this isolated place where you're missing out on the natural environment outside. You're missing out on the natural breeze and the sound of the waves and the sound of the drunk people yelling outside.

02:12:59   So I miss all that. And then I go outside and I get blasted by this super hot temperature difference.

02:13:08   And then when I get back to my house, I'm blasted by the super cold temperature difference. There is no outfit I can wear that, like, because if I'm wearing shorts, then I'm cold in the house.

02:13:18   Maybe you have the AC on too high, or making it too cold in your house. Your house should not be like a refrigerator. You're just trying to take the humidity out.

02:13:26   No, but because when you have the AC on, you seal the house up, you kind of have to keep it a little bit lower than you would be able to tolerate if it was open. Otherwise it gets too stuffy, because then it doesn't cycle on enough.

02:13:45   So it's a whole thing. I'm very glad we have air conditioning. There are times like this where it's really nice to have and I would never go without it if I had the choice.

02:13:56   But I try to minimize how often I actually really use it, because I like natural air. I like the breeze. I like when it's a little bit warm.

02:14:07   I like all that. It's summer. It's supposed to be warm. And this is all things I like. So ultimately I consider air conditioning a necessary evil sometimes. But I'm not going to use it all the time if I can help it.

02:14:21   I'm assuming your house has an air to air heat exchanger so you're not just recycling the same air. And I'm guessing that maybe it has a dehumidify function that doesn't change the temperature, which is a thing you can also have. You shouldn't be stuck in the situation that people with crappier air conditioning are where you have to choose between freezing cold but dry and too hot.

02:14:44   As far as I know it doesn't have a way to dehumidify. So the systems, they're heat pump air conditioners. Because it's mostly air conditioning with occasional heating.

02:14:57   And so it's regular heat pump air conditioners. And I don't think there's any mode on them that I can access that is just dehumidifying.

02:15:20   We had to get something like for modern energy codes we had to get an ERV, which I think does that function. I'm still not entirely clear on why we needed the ERV and what exactly it does besides make noise. It's some kind of fan that is like up in the ceiling. And I don't know what it does. But I'm pretty sure that is the goal it's trying to achieve.

02:15:44   Energy recovery ventilator. Effective ventilation for humid climates. Yep, you definitely qualify.

02:15:50   Yep, that's the one.

02:15:51   Yeah, it's an air to air heat exchanger. It's exactly that you can see the little diagram on the thing. It's a little diamond shaped box with the air. Yep, that is exactly what I'm talking about. That should help things.

02:16:02   And the air conditioning with the fan, you scoffed at that, but that is definitely a way to go. I don't know, having spent many summers on Long Island at various rental houses, some of which had air conditioning, some of which didn't, I can tell you you want the ones with air conditioning.

02:16:16   Oh, yeah, that's why we put it in.

02:16:17   It's very hot and humid. Especially at night, not being able to sleep because it's too hot and too humid is just the worst. So, I'd avoid and call it a necessary evil. I would say, again, spend a lot of time without air conditioning and you'll never call it evil again.

02:16:32   Oh, no.

02:16:33   I get what you're saying about wanting the fresh air.

02:16:35   Yeah, I won't go without it. I just don't like when I have to use it.

02:16:39   You should try just putting the air conditioning on, but at a slightly lower temperature. We'll still take most of the humidity out of here. You should never feel cold in your house. I know this is a problem in the south, sorry, Casey, where the air conditioning is on.

02:16:51   I always feel like there's only one setting, which is maximum. It's like, how cold can the HVAC system in this building make it? Whatever the maximum is, just that's what I want it to be all the time because I don't know, people are always sweaty.

02:17:06   And it's so cold that if you stay in there for a long period of time, just die of hypothermia. In the beginning, you come in from the 90 degree, 90% humidity, like, "Ah, it's so nice and cool in here." But you see the person working behind the counter and they've got earmuffs on because they're like, "No, you can't stay in this building for any period of time. You'll die. It's too cold for humans."

02:17:26   That's the bad rap that air conditioning gets. It used to be movie theaters were really guilty of that, but they have stopped that more recently.

02:17:36   What are the other worst offenders? It's usually smaller stores. The mall costs too much money to make that cold, but anything that's like a mattress store or something, go into a mattress store in Georgia and it's negative 27 degrees in there.

02:17:50   It's no good. It's cold in my office. It's not cold in my office, Marco. How much sweat is on your upper lip right now? Is it non-zero? Mine is non-zero.

02:18:06   I think I'm getting a blanket. I like air conditioning. It's too cold.

02:18:10   Only a monster, either a monster or someone who is just impossibly spoiled would say, "Oh, no, air conditioning is too much."

02:18:20   I get what he's saying. A lot of people don't like air conditioning and I generally don't like it when it's too cold.

02:18:24   Well, that's the thing, too. Air conditioning takes on a whole other level when you have to share the space with other people or other people are controlling it.

02:18:32   There's disagreement about what the livable temperature for humans is. Here's the problem. The hot people, of which I am not one in many ways.

02:18:40   I don't think we have a lot of experience in that area on this show.

02:18:44   It usually isn't in the bed of who's always cold at night and who's always hot. I'm always cold. I have bad circulation. I'm always cold. It's just the way out.

02:19:04   I think the problem is that people have of the thermostat psychology. Number one, people often think that they're going to burn and I will literally melt through the floor and journey to the center of the earth in a molten trail if I don't live in this meat locker for two hours to get back to normal and then govern but they move again.

02:19:24   Well, I think also there's the problem that people have of the thermostat psychology. Number one is that people often think that if they turn it way past where they want it to be, it'll somehow get there faster. It'll make it work faster, not realizing it's just an on/off switch.

02:19:42   Also, then there's the thermostat battles between people where if you keep adjusting it and someone else comes up and adjusts it a different way and you go back and adjust it again, I feel like you adjust it also in bigger swings in that context than you might necessarily want to.

02:19:59   So you walk up to a thermostat and it'll be set to 62 and you're like, "What? Who would set this? That makes no sense." And then someone else comes over and sets it up to 85 and you're like, "No, this is not how this thing works." But at this point, it's become a human problem much more than an HVAC problem.

02:20:17   The rental houses we used to have was always a challenge, especially when we had lots of people and a really big rental house with lots of extended family in one house. Inevitably, once we upgraded to houses that had air conditioning in them, which was a big upgrade, the air conditioning would work way better in one corner of this sprawling house than the other.

02:20:37   So now you have, "Okay, who gets to be comfortable tonight?" Because if you set it to this temperature, these two rooms will be comfortable and the rest will be incredibly hot. And you set it at this temperature, they'll freeze in there, but everyone else will be comfortable. So you really just kind of have to alternate nights.

02:20:52   Not alternate nights, but what it boils down to usually is the old people get to be comfortable, which is a rule set that I'm becoming much happier with now that I'm entering the class of the old people.

02:21:15   Well, that depends on who you're sleeping with, because if you're sleeping with one of the people who disagrees with the temperature, even a one room grain size is not sufficient.

02:21:25   Are you a dual zone climate control in the car couple?

02:21:31   It's like the smoking section in restaurants. That's not a thing. I'm sorry, we don't have a glass wall down the middle of our car.

02:21:37   Oh, BS. It is absolutely a thing. You just have crappy cars.

02:21:41   It's not a thing. You're sitting a foot from them in one interior space. No, I never take it off of sync. It's always on sync. Because what the hell is the point? It's literally a foot and a half away.

02:21:52   I understand what you're saying, but I strongly disagree. It is not flawless. It's not perfect, but it absolutely works.

02:21:59   Then next time you're sitting next to Aaron, why don't you strike up a cigarette and see how great this dual zone thing works for you?

02:22:06   [beeping]