PodSearch

ATP

412: Love Batteries

 

00:00:00   Hey, uh, America's still here because I can't tell this is a horrible day in the political American world and

00:00:08   Glide right past it. Actually. It started out pretty good

00:00:11   Works true. We had a great morning. Yes, it's been a roller coaster. Yeah, we're gonna glide right past this because you all need a break

00:00:19   I'm sure and so do we and so we're gonna have a text like usual

00:00:22   With that happy thing behind us, let's start with some follow-up and

00:00:29   Pared Pahlin stone which I believe is actually supposed to be pronounced Fred Flintstone, right?

00:00:33   Do you want to know how to transform 62 year old years into 16 year old years?

00:00:37   Download one of the free hearing test iOS apps and then point

00:00:40   Settings audio visual headphone accommodations audio gram to the resultant audiogram

00:00:46   I didn't even know that you could do such a thing. That is extremely cool

00:00:50   Fred Flintstone continues this EQ is the audio output to compensate for frequency loss according to the audiogram

00:00:56   Even with relatively minor hearing loss this gave the 62 year old his 16 year old years back and newfound enjoyment of music

00:01:03   Using the audiogram provides personalized and much more nuanced EQ adjustment than the built-in iOS presets now just to be clear John

00:01:10   You did just have a birthday, but you are not yet 62. Is that correct?

00:01:13   No, and I think my hearing is actually pretty good

00:01:15   But this is related to someone suggesting that Marco look into the EQ settings for for the AirPods max said he tried them

00:01:22   They all seem kind of extreme

00:01:24   Apparently this is a pluggable system. So you can you know, these these apps these hearing test apps

00:01:30   I imagine they're a plague on the App Store

00:01:32   Like I don't know I don't know this for a fact, but I imagine if there's one of them

00:01:35   There's probably a thousand test you're hearing free anyway

00:01:37   Actually made one. Yeah, what they'll do is make a personalized audio gram for you

00:01:43   Slow down, we're just gonna let that glide right by what do you mean you made one?

00:01:46   I never released it back when I when I had my like temporary hearing injury a few years back

00:01:52   I made a hearing test app so I could tell like as I was getting better if I was getting better and how

00:01:56   You know one of those things that goes like, you know

00:01:58   It plays different beeps at different frequencies and different volume levels and the raise your hand if you can hear it

00:02:04   Yeah, basically what you did what you did to come through? Yeah. So anyway that will give you a

00:02:09   You know basically equalizer preset tailored to your hearing ability

00:02:15   So it won't be too extreme for you because it will be made based on measuring now

00:02:19   I don't know which because I suspect hearing test apps are a terrible plague filled with scams on the App Store like so many categories

00:02:26   I've put in a link to one such app that one listener sent then I assume this one is not a scam

00:02:32   but honestly, I haven't tried it but

00:02:34   Anyway, check it out if you get a chance

00:02:36   and if you think if you think you're hearing may be going or you just want to

00:02:40   Play with an app to see what it says about your hearing if the results turned out that you're you know

00:02:45   Have difficulty hearing certain frequencies. You can make your iPhone accommodate for that and help you hear that better

00:02:51   seems to me like this is a

00:02:53   Opportunity here for apps to just help you generate custom EQ profiles for the system

00:02:57   Because if that's what that's all this is doing it is just saying alright

00:03:00   Well this frequency range boost this or even better if it's parametric

00:03:03   I don't actually know the format but but if it's if it's a way to supply effectively

00:03:08   The inverse of the custom EQ that you want then any app can generate those files

00:03:14   Apparently or possibly if you know as long as the format is documented somewhere and then you could

00:03:19   Theoretically have an app that's like alright

00:03:22   What if I want to boost this frequency range only and no others, you know like that that actually could be really interesting

00:03:28   This sounds like it should be a feature of overcast buried in the setting somewhere. You've already got the code for it

00:03:32   Just chuck it in there

00:03:32   I mean ideally, you know, I mean people don't play a lot of music through overcast

00:03:35   But you know, ideally this would be a system setting like instead of those like ancient

00:03:40   What is it 11 EQ profiles from the iPod era?

00:03:44   That are just like fixed like pop rock treble booster or whatever like instead of those

00:03:49   Also, just offer an EQ with like, you know, maybe make it a 10 band EQ have 10 sliders across whatever it is

00:03:56   I mean, you know, I'd go parametric. I'm a nerd but no one else would but like, you know

00:04:00   It the the processing power is trivial to do EQ and I know cuz I wrote one into voice boost

00:04:05   Do like to do EQing is trivial on modern hardware

00:04:08   So it wouldn't be like a big deal to do it

00:04:10   It also like by offering the presets that they have versus offering it like a custom EQ

00:04:16   There's no there's no real difference in how complex that is to to run live

00:04:20   It's you know

00:04:22   The phone is constantly doing all sorts of operations that are way more complicated than running a basic bi quad filter

00:04:29   You know to have an EQ profile

00:04:31   So it's actually really not that hard to do with modern hardware without even noticing the overhead

00:04:36   So they might as well just offer a custom EQ at this point

00:04:38   I mean that's basically what this is it is system-wide

00:04:40   I mean it says headphone accommodations

00:04:42   But I'm assuming this just goes into the system audio pathway and if you install one of you one of these

00:04:47   headphone accommodation audiogram things

00:04:49   Every sound that your phone makes I'm assuming through any of the audio system gets processed through this thing

00:04:54   So I think what overcast would have to do is basically be a little miniature hearing test app that produces one of these autogram files

00:04:59   And the only question I have is like, okay

00:05:01   well

00:05:01   then do you have to make the user like download it and install it because I assume

00:05:04   Overcast doesn't have the ability to jam that audiogram into the system preferences thing. Yeah, I would assume

00:05:10   There's probably no API for that

00:05:11   Like that's probably one of those things where you just have to kind of you know

00:05:14   Export a file and figure it out yourself

00:05:16   But again, I don't really see this being something that overcast has to do, you know

00:05:20   rather this it's the kind of thing where like I

00:05:22   just need to build in a custom EQ to overcast for people who want that which is actually a

00:05:28   Somewhat frequently requested feature right and I have the entire engine to do that is already written

00:05:34   It's already in voice boost - it's been shipping to everybody for like a year

00:05:37   There's just no UI to adjust the parameters of the EQ and that's that's all that's what I have to do

00:05:42   Moving on I thought we'd do a quick big sur update big sur

00:05:45   And I'd let you know that Marco your favorite thing is happening as we speak

00:05:50   This is being recorded on a mostly untested environment because I have upgraded to big sur

00:05:56   I did that a couple days ago. I did record analog yesterday

00:06:00   However, it has not been edited as yet that being said Jim who does the editing for analog and many other shows that you

00:06:07   know that you all enjoy has said that he did crack open my file my files and everything seemed to write but

00:06:12   Sorry Marco if I make a terrible edit for you, it would not be the first time and unfortunately probably won't be the last

00:06:18   but that actually brings us to the next follow-up item because

00:06:23   My big sur upgrade seems to have been mostly okay

00:06:26   until I rebooted and

00:06:29   It's there maybe I can actually I guess was first boot and I needed to I believe bless the audio hijack

00:06:36   Kernel extension or whatever it's called now. Oh

00:06:39   Yeah, and in order to do that, I needed to go into system preferences and unlock the security

00:06:44   Preference or whatever it is and I needed to type in my computer password and so, you know audio hijacked

00:06:50   It was either audio hijacked or the OS itself knew that I might want to do this, you know

00:06:54   prompted me to do all these things and

00:06:57   When I got to the preference pane and it asked for my username and password

00:07:00   It was not Casey which is my username on the computer. It was Casey lists. I

00:07:03   Thought hmm. I've heard about this somewhere

00:07:06   I think I know what to do and I think I know what's about to happen and sure enough I typed in my password

00:07:11   No dice. I changed Casey lists to Casey typed in my password again

00:07:15   No dice and as it turns out what I needed to do was reset my SMC. Does this sound familiar to anyone? So

00:07:23   We also got some some feedback from Tom bridge, which is the follow-up item that this all leads into

00:07:28   Tom says I just had to deal with the same situation as John with regard to the SMC reset

00:07:32   There's even a tech note at Apple for this quote if you can't unlock settings and system

00:07:36   While using big this is still quote while using big sir

00:07:40   Mac OS Big Sur 11.1 your Mac with Apple t2 security chip had it has an issue that requires you're setting SMC

00:07:46   System preferences should accept your password after you reset the SMC. There's a link in the show notes to all of this

00:07:52   Comically, do you know how you reset the SMC in an iMac Pro?

00:07:55   Unplug it from the wall for five seconds 15 seconds, but yeah things

00:07:59   Yeah, and then plug it back in and wait five seconds and then press the power button. Yep. That is correct

00:08:03   That is the official guidance and some a bunch of other people wrote in to tell us about this like the reason

00:08:08   The reason why SMC reset has anything to do with this or anything to do with t2 stuff is apparently, you know

00:08:14   Any any dialogue that asks for authentication that could potentially be tied into touch ID because you know how you can use touch ID to use

00:08:20   to do some

00:08:21   password dialogues on the Mac

00:08:23   but not all of them but any one of them that sort of triggers the subsystem that says hey if you had a Mac with touch

00:08:27   ID and that was all registered. We would ask you for your fingerprint that all goes through the t2 and

00:08:32   somehow the big Sur update hoses something having to do with a good old bridge OS running on the t2 and

00:08:38   if it's hosed when you shut down your computer

00:08:41   The t2 is still there doing its thing

00:08:43   The only way to sort of reset the t2 is in the case of a desktop computer

00:08:47   To remove power from it and say guess what t2 now you're stopped because you don't have any electricity

00:08:52   And then the t2 will start back up and presumably operate correctly now

00:08:57   What's wrong with the t2 after the big Sur update that it needs to be reset? I don't know

00:09:01   People have theories about something inside the t2 crashing or whatever

00:09:05   The bottom line is that those author are all dogs tie into the t2 because of touch ID and if they're hosed you must reset

00:09:12   the SMC t2 subsystem

00:09:15   By in the case of a desktop Mac depriving enough power

00:09:18   It's why it's more complicated on laptops because you can't take the batteries out, right?

00:09:21   Because they're sealed inside this you got to do some other dance

00:09:24   That's why again look at the tech note follow the instructions for your specific computer to reset the SMC

00:09:29   Don't just assume because you have a desktop. It's unplugged because maybe you don't have a thing with a t2 in it indeed

00:09:33   Can you tell me John about this follow-up with regards to the Famicom?

00:09:38   Sure

00:09:39   Andrew Odinger wrote in to tell us that the Nintendo Famicom had a microphone built into the second controller only Famicom is

00:09:45   What the we what we know as the Nintendo Entertainment System in the US or the NES?

00:09:49   First existed as the Famicom which was short for a family computer in Japan and it looked different

00:09:54   But the controllers were very similar little you know little rectangle the NES rectangle with the d-pad and the two buttons

00:10:00   Anyway, it had two controllers with comically short wires in them that you couldn't remove

00:10:05   And the second control had a microphone in it

00:10:09   So Andrew says like many of us in the US I first learned of it when playing led the Legend of Zelda

00:10:13   With game manual stated that an irritating enemy the polls voice hated loud sounds however the NES had no microphone

00:10:20   So everybody in the US made futile attempts to use other weapons to defeat it usually the recorder or flute in Japan

00:10:26   However one only needed to yell into the microphone eradicated the polls voice and we'll have a link to a YouTube video

00:10:31   They I guess they didn't change the manual because the manual back in the old days video games came with manuals that you could read

00:10:36   And I remember those days. Yeah, you read it in the car on the way home

00:10:40   Yeah, exactly right Marco exactly right, and if you saw like oh this enemy hates loud sounds and in the game

00:10:45   You find like a flute or something you're like oh, I know how to beat that enemy

00:10:48   But little did you know that you what they expected you to do was yell, but of course you couldn't yell in the u.s.

00:10:52   One so they changed the game and the u.s.

00:10:54   When you can just shoot them with arrows, but in the Japanese version of the game

00:10:57   You can't shoot them with arrows and the only way you can defeat them is by yelling into the controller

00:11:01   So that is the oldest instance. I've seen of Nintendo at least using microphones in games

00:11:05   You could yell or probably blow because blowing just sounds like static

00:11:09   Fair enough tell me about the ps5 controllers weight, please

00:11:12   Yeah

00:11:12   I should think about her notes on my controller comments because I thought of more things once we were off the air that I forgot to

00:11:16   Mention one of them is the ps5 controller is heavier than the ps4 controller

00:11:21   Which is mostly just an accessibility issue because it's not heavier enough that anyone will notice but someone like me who has

00:11:26   Wrists that have slowly been destroyed by our as I over the years

00:11:30   The weight of the control actually matters like I'm not holding the controller up in the air when I play part of me playing

00:11:35   With the consoles that I get to the rest my sort of my arms on my legs like the controller is in my lap, right?

00:11:40   But even in that instance, it's like well, you're not really holding the controller up

00:11:44   But still it is a heavy weight in your hand

00:11:46   It's being supported by your fingers in your hands and I feel the difference like a little tiny bit. It's not

00:11:51   The end of the world, but I would prefer a lighter controller

00:11:54   But these slightly heavier controller is the price you pay for the really cool rumble stuff

00:11:57   Alright, tell me about the PlayStation 5 UI and following games

00:12:03   Terrence was one of many people to write in to give me some advice on how I could make the ps5 UI less sort of

00:12:07   Ad banner II I was annoyed that there are things in my face that I didn't wanted to see when I turn on the UI

00:12:11   These big tiles that are telling me about new games or whatever and sometimes they were mostly relevant

00:12:17   But other times it was like I don't want to know about that anyway

00:12:19   Apparently there's a mechanism in the PlayStation 5 UI where you can quote-unquote follow like like following on Twitter a game

00:12:27   And I never did that

00:12:29   I never knew about that feature but basically any game that you own becomes followed by default and

00:12:34   That makes some sense in terms of why am I seeing things about destiny and stuff because they own destiny, right?

00:12:39   But also if you are a subscriber to PlayStation Plus you get a lot of free games as part of PlayStation Plus

00:12:46   You know, they're just they're just yours, you know for paying the monthly fee, which is a great deal actually

00:12:50   Especially if you haven't played those games usually they're good games with older games

00:12:53   Anyway, I ended up quote-unquote following things like God of War or fortnight and stuff that I don't play on the PlayStation

00:13:01   At all and so that's why I'm seeing some you know

00:13:04   Fortnight thing in my face constantly every time I turn my computer it was because I was following fortnight

00:13:08   So if you go to the game and unfollow it, then you won't see those tiles anymore

00:13:11   So I did that and it helped but unfortunately

00:13:14   You can't unfollow as far as I'm aware the PlayStation store and I don't want to see the store telling me about stuff either

00:13:19   so the struggle against the

00:13:22   PS5 banner filled UI continues, but I've definitely improved things since last week

00:13:27   We are sponsored this week by Linode my favorite place to run my servers

00:13:33   Whether you're working on a personal project or managing an entire enterprise infrastructure Linode gives you simple

00:13:40   Affordable and accessible cloud computing solutions so that you can take your project to the next level

00:13:47   Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode's Linux virtual machines and develop deploy and scale your modern applications

00:13:54   Faster and easier than ever before I can personally vouch for this

00:13:58   I've been a Linode customer for years before they were a sponsor almost a decade now, and I just love it

00:14:04   I have oh geez something like 30 servers there now

00:14:07   I have a lot of servers there now and

00:14:09   I don't pay nearly as much as I used to back in the olden days when I had to actually have like, you know

00:14:13   Physical hardware servers and it's just so capable. It's so fast you get so many resources for your dollars

00:14:20   Like it's just it's a great host. They have great support if you ever need it

00:14:23   They have specialty needs covered with things like GPU compute plans

00:14:27   If you need that they have managed backups managed load balancing all sorts of stuff that you can see at Linode

00:14:32   Whatever your needs might be big to small

00:14:34   They have you covered get started on Linode today with a hundred dollars in free credit at Linode.com/ATP

00:14:41   or by texting ATP to 474747

00:14:46   That'll get you instant access to a hundred dollars in free credit. They have 11 global data centers around the world

00:14:53   24/7 365 human support with no like different tiers or handoffs and it's this is true of all plans from their

00:15:00   $5 a month plan all the way up to when you have 30 servers you get the same support

00:15:04   It's great

00:15:05   And you can use that hundred dollars in credit on their S3 compatible object storage or their managed Kubernetes service or so much more

00:15:11   so once again visit Linode.com/ATP and click on the create free account button to get started or text ATP to

00:15:19   474747 get started on Linode today. Thank you to Linode for hosting all my servers and sponsoring our show

00:15:26   We have to do like a little bit of vocabulary for the next section so we have a lot of feedback which was really good about

00:15:35   feedbacks and radar and sys diagnosis and things of that nature, so

00:15:41   we're going to talk about the galaxy's largest black hole and that is Apple's feedback system and

00:15:45   So we're gonna use several different terms all probably interchangeably

00:15:50   Feedback is is what Apple currently calls is to the best my knowledge

00:15:55   basically a bug report you use an app called feedback assistant and you create a feedback in

00:16:01   The olden days and I think still internally within Apple these were called radars

00:16:05   So in so radar is the app that Apple uses that you that they use to do their or track their bugs and things of that

00:16:13   nature an

00:16:14   Individual instance you an individual bug or ticket if you will is was also also often called a radar

00:16:19   Sysdiagnose is basically as we discussed before

00:16:23   Just if you have something bad happen Apple needs to be able to recreate to some degree

00:16:29   What was going on in your system at the time and that's not an unreasonable request and a sysdiagnose

00:16:34   Basically says when when the user does some you know particular incantation which varies based on OS and device

00:16:41   then

00:16:43   the the OS and the will write

00:16:45   Potentially tens of thousands of lines of data and logs

00:16:49   To a very very large file usually a couple hundred mangs at least which you can then upload to Apple so they can try to

00:16:56   Piece together what was going on at the time? So that's just a little vocabulary to get out

00:17:01   So hopefully we all are on the same page and if you recall all of us were probably me more than most

00:17:07   We're lamenting the fact that if you create a radar with Apple if you create a bug report with Apple

00:17:12   It just disappears into the ether

00:17:13   it is seriously the galaxy's largest black hole and it's very frustrating from a user's perspective and especially from a developer's perspective because

00:17:20   You want some amounts of feedback and typically you get precisely zero

00:17:24   So we had a bunch of different people some of whom are at Apple some of whom are

00:17:30   Former Apple write in and say hey

00:17:33   Here's my perspective on this and what what John and Marco and I are gonna go through over the next several minutes

00:17:37   Is kind of an amalgamation of several different pieces of feedback?

00:17:41   I believe you mean several different feedbacks. That's right several different feedbacks from several different people

00:17:47   So that that's kind of the stage that I'm that we're standing on if you will right now

00:17:52   So with that said the first piece of feedbacks

00:17:55   we got

00:17:57   Again from either a current or former Apple employee this individual writes you file a radar and then get a reply saying quote attach

00:18:05   Assist diagnose quote this can optimistically be taken as an acknowledgement that someone believes your bug is real

00:18:10   But that they have no idea how to reproduce it on demand or fix it. It can also have other meanings though

00:18:15   I think that is a very optimistic

00:18:18   Take very optimistic in the example that I gave, you know, they believe your bug is real

00:18:23   Well, they have no idea how to reproduce it. Well, I attached a sample project that you can build

00:18:27   The only thing this project does is reproduce the bug and plus there was instructions on how to use the sample product to reproduce the bug

00:18:34   So that's not why they asked me for a system. I can understand like case you said when the vocabulary section

00:18:40   Here's why they want a system diagnosed

00:18:42   But as we'll see in a little bit even that is not explained

00:18:45   well

00:18:46   Right and just in case it wasn't clear like John said a sample project means it's something that you can run that an Apple person

00:18:52   Could run on their device that will specifically tickle the particular bug in question

00:18:57   so hypothetically

00:18:58   There should be no need for anything else because you run this little app be that for your Mac or for your iOS device or whatever

00:19:04   and perform whatever thing that the developer wants you to perform and

00:19:07   In hypothetically if everything goes according to plan it will it will make that bug happen

00:19:13   and so you really should need anything else and actually

00:19:15   It's probably the best thing that a developer can give

00:19:20   In a radar it's the gold standard of bug reproductions to be clear

00:19:23   We keep saying sample project when we say project we mean an Xcode project. We give them the source code

00:19:29   It says here is the source code from Xcode projects

00:19:31   Not only do they have an app that they can run after they build it

00:19:34   They have the full source code to your app, which hopefully is like 20 lines long here. I'm reproducing the bug

00:19:39   Sometimes I have to be instructions because like launch the app then do this then do that and here's my expected behavior

00:19:44   And here's the actual behavior. So we're we're giving them an explicit way to reproduce it

00:19:48   We've already narrowed the bug down to the smallest possible case and they have the source code

00:19:52   Like this is what everybody wants for any bug report

00:19:55   And yeah

00:19:57   So that's it's all the more frustrating when you take the time to make a new Xcode project

00:20:01   Narrow the bug down yourself get it to the point where you have the minimal set of code that reproduces the problem and still nothing

00:20:07   Right and to use a really crummy analogy

00:20:10   Imagine you're making like some

00:20:13   50-step recipe and you realize that oh I used a bad ingredient somewhere because I can tell it tastes like garbage

00:20:20   Well, then you need to go through this recipe and like do it all over again in order to figure out

00:20:25   Okay

00:20:25   which specific one of these

00:20:26   ingredients was was wrong and that's kind of what a lot a lot of times happens is you you have a fully functioning app like take

00:20:33   Overcast for example, I don't remember Marco if you know off top of your head how big overcast is but I'd assume it's you know

00:20:38   Several thousand if not tens of thousands of lines of code. It sounds about right

00:20:41   I think it's like 80,000 or something. There you go. So there's effectively 80,000 ingredients in this casserole

00:20:47   So if you will so in order to find the one or two or ten things that are really

00:20:53   Causing the problem can be hours upon hours of work

00:20:56   so imagine how frustrating it is for us on this side of the table when we put in the work to

00:21:02   Give Apple this just perfect present

00:21:05   That they can just run immediately and see exactly what's going on. And then the response we get in return is oh

00:21:12   Can I have a cyst diagnosed? No, no, you can't have a cyst diagnosed. You've already got what you need. No, you can't

00:21:17   It's so frustrating. So anyway

00:21:20   Moving on from the Apple people time of bug is important when you take a cyst diagnosed because as you can see in the console app

00:21:25   There are often thousands if not tens of thousands of logs per second this individual writes

00:21:30   I used to be a screener for Apple search bugs and you wouldn't believe

00:21:33   The variation in times between when people experience bugs and when they launch a cyst diagnosed the tools for analyzing cyst diagnosed logs

00:21:40   Also suck hard. That's the Apple person's quote

00:21:42   By the way

00:21:43   The amounts of effort it takes to write down the time you saw a bug is much smaller than the effort it takes to find

00:21:49   The bug you're describing an assist diagnosed

00:21:51   Right. So that's the explanation now. Here's how Apple asks for a cyst diagnosed in the feedbacks that I have

00:21:57   This is directly quoting for one of my feedbacks and I'm not omitting anything

00:22:01   Please capture a cyst diagnosed immediately after the issue reproduces

00:22:05   Additionally comma please note the exact time ex colon 1 slash 1 slash 1 9 space 12 colon 51 space p.m

00:22:13   so

00:22:15   All right. This is another tidbit from someone else according from another piece of feedback on feedbacks

00:22:21   If someone asked you when it was taken that's really interesting because that means someone dramatically misunderstood the directions. Yes, the directions say

00:22:29   Capture a cyst diagnosed

00:22:31   Immediately after the issue reproduces now, here's that God there are so many there are so many problems here in terms of this communication, right?

00:22:38   Certainly wasn't clear to me. Although it is now clear from listening to the feedback things like

00:22:43   Capturing a cyst diagnosed like you invoke a thing. There's different ways to invoke it as Casey said, but you invoke a thing. I

00:22:49   Feel like since cyst diagnosed is such a common thing that they're asking for

00:22:56   it's worth the people who work in whatever this department is to have essentially a text text expander shortcut or a

00:23:03   Standard, you know link to a web page that explains

00:23:08   here's what a cyst diagnosis right a cyst diagnosed what happens is you trigger this thing and

00:23:13   We we unbeknownst to you while you've been using the system

00:23:18   We've been collecting data and when you trigger cyst diagnosed it dumps the data that has been collected that whole time

00:23:23   Right that wasn't clear to me because from my perspective especially the first few times I did this and like oh I invoke a cyst diagnosed

00:23:29   As soon as I invoke it

00:23:31   It must be taking stock of the whole system and say I'm just gonna dump the current state of the system to a big file

00:23:36   Or something like that, right?

00:23:37   but apparently that's not what cyst diagnosed does suppose it's diagnosed as take all the data that we've been gathering in the background and we're

00:23:43   always gathering in the background and

00:23:44   Dump that for some period of time in the past

00:23:47   But either way when you're trying to explain what you want the users do and why especially with this whole

00:23:53   You know do it immediately after the issue reproduces and tell us the exact time

00:23:57   There is like a fundamental, you know

00:24:01   Knowledge gap between like well, what am I doing here?

00:24:03   And what time am I noting like down to the point of like you're supposed to be knowing the time that the bug happened

00:24:08   Not the time you did the cyst diagnosed, right?

00:24:10   This is captured immediately after the issue reproduces

00:24:14   So that means the time of the cyst diagnosed would also essentially be the time of the bug because they're telling me to capture it immediately

00:24:19   After that's not really cool. Now they're saying sometimes the body was reproduced

00:24:22   You know, there's a big time gap between when the bug was reproduced and when they launched cyst diagnosed

00:24:27   right, this is the perfect opportunity to

00:24:30   To do this once have a couple people sit down at a table and say we're gonna ask for millions of people for cyst diagnosis

00:24:37   Can we have a web page that explains what a cyst diagnosis and then have this text expander snippet that says?

00:24:42   You just type these two keystrokes and it says we need a cyst diagnosis

00:24:46   this diagnosis x y & z and then use like the magic of

00:24:48   Hypertext to link one of those words or say if you want more information on what a cyst diagnosis and how to trigger

00:24:52   Please go to this web page

00:24:54   Oh, you can't get those no hypertext and then the feedback system as far as I can tell but either way

00:24:58   It's done so often don't leave it to the discretion of the person sending the thing to say something like this

00:25:03   Like please note the exact time and the exact time example they give is you know month day year hour minute

00:25:12   In 60 seconds is thousands and thousands of logs and if you're expecting me to note down to the second when something happened the

00:25:19   Clock in the menu bar doesn't show seconds by default and if I'm gonna check on my other device, they're not necessarily synchronized

00:25:26   It's like well, what do you why do you want to know this? What are you trying to get at?

00:25:29   It's it's so maddening the sort of failure to communicate

00:25:32   Failure there's no meeting of that

00:25:35   We're not we're not communicating here

00:25:36   You have a need but you're not able to communicate that need to me in a way that I can do what you want

00:25:40   I mean everyone is just frustrated. So building on that you said there's no thing that explains this diagnosis. That's half true

00:25:46   There is a page on the Apple developer website

00:25:49   That's bug reporting and it lists and this is about profiles and logs and it lists probably a hundred maybe even more

00:25:57   different things that you can collect bug reports or

00:26:01   diagnosis or whatever for now included in that is different entries for sysdiagnose for

00:26:07   For iOS for Mac OS etc. The super cool part is though if you want instructions on how to do this

00:26:13   Guess what the Apple developer site wants you to do search for it login

00:26:19   So you need to have an Apple developer account just to see the instructions on how to create a sysdiagnose

00:26:26   I mean doesn't it like I'm glad that they have this page somewhere but like you got to connect the dots

00:26:31   When you ask that's why I'm saying text expanders tip it when you ask for it

00:26:35   That's the perfect opportunity to link people to more information so they can have background and contacts and you can't link to all of it

00:26:42   You have to put like one or two sentences minimum in line

00:26:45   So that if someone doesn't bother following that link

00:26:47   They at least know why you're asking for this and they have the context the things that I think they should communicate is

00:26:52   When you do this, it's going to dump information that has been collecting in the past

00:26:56   So like this is an ending thing like it's not a start thing

00:26:59   It's an ending thing and the second is by the way

00:27:02   If we're gonna ask you for something additional like the time the reason we're asking that for you is because maybe the bug happened five

00:27:07   Minutes ago and we need to know that right that but that needs to be communicated in line and then you link to the web page

00:27:13   You said and then make people not have to be logged in to read it

00:27:16   Well, honestly, that is a minor concern because you got to be logged in to do feedback

00:27:19   Anyway, I'm to a communication. So Apple screeners don't have direct access to your feedbacks

00:27:25   They go through a middle party that especially with the betas attempts to consolidate similar feedbacks into one bug

00:27:31   When developers want to ask questions of originators or request more logs, we have to go through that middle party

00:27:37   It's a really clunky setup that makes it feel like you're like there's a lot of time going by without anything happening

00:27:43   So to kind of translate that a little bit

00:27:44   So if I'm an Apple engineer

00:27:46   And John has filed a bug that lands on my desk and I want and I don't know it's John because of this

00:27:52   You know intermediary layer if if I want to get more information from this anonymous source of this bug I can go to

00:27:59   This other intermediate intermediary team which might be dev relations

00:28:03   I'm not sure and then they can go to John and say oh, hey

00:28:06   Can you provide us a system I got help us or whatever it is that that me the developer the Apple developer wanted

00:28:12   But because there's this middle layer, you know

00:28:15   The the guy that talks to engineers I talk to engineers because there's this middle layer. It makes everything clunkier

00:28:21   so that's just I understand to a degree why that's there but

00:28:26   Well developer relations is not a good middle layer for any kind of reasonable general-purpose solution

00:28:33   Because developer relations at Apple does not scale

00:28:36   Most people have no idea who if anybody inside might be like their relevant developer relations

00:28:45   Person for a certain thing like most people have no clue. Yep. I've gone through

00:28:49   Years of my career not having one then I've then I would like have somebody who seemed to be my dev relations person

00:28:55   and the funny thing is like

00:28:57   they like if you have one of these people and they

00:29:01   Eventually contact you about something or you know, God knows or if you have to ask somebody inside like, you know

00:29:07   They act so surprised that you had no idea that you had a relevant person to contact

00:29:12   It's like you never tell us and most developers don't have any contacts inside. So any

00:29:20   Solution that relies on like oh well, you know the real process for this is you contact this person and they contact the rig

00:29:26   The real person inside like that's not accessible to most developers most of the time

00:29:31   again, it's one of those areas where it seems like the

00:29:34   The impression that people inside Apple have of what it's like to be outside is incomplete or incorrect

00:29:42   They seem to have no idea quite how little

00:29:46   Visibility and access we have on the outside into the inside

00:29:51   I'm lucky that like because of my big loud mouth. I have a little bit more access to most people most developers have zero

00:29:57   Absolutely. There's no one they know inside the company. They could like email or you know, somebody you know on Twitter

00:30:03   You could DM or anything like that's that's very unusual for most developers the impression I've gotten over the years. Is that

00:30:10   Apple kind of intentionally keeps it fairly inaccessible

00:30:15   Because they don't have the developer relations staff size

00:30:19   To actually provide like full service access to all their developers. There's too many of them

00:30:25   But I don't think the solution to that is you know, know the secret password and you know

00:30:31   whisper people in bars in California sometimes and maybe occasionally get an email address like

00:30:35   That's not a great solution to this problem. I know why they do it, but I wish they would

00:30:41   instead

00:30:43   scale the staff in such a way that I know that's easier said than done but like

00:30:48   Scale that division so that they can provide real developer support to a bigger level to more people

00:30:53   You know, it's not even clear to me because given how little experience I have actually being a real developer for our platforms that this

00:31:00   middle party referred to in this feedback is in fact that relations probably it is I mean if that's your guest and that's probably

00:31:06   you know a better guess than anything I would have but

00:31:08   the fact that there is a middle party between there like

00:31:12   It makes some sense

00:31:14   Organizationally and that you don't want your rank and file developers

00:31:17   Communicating directly with customers because they might say something they're not supposed to do it

00:31:20   Right, so have a buffer in between there, but as this last bit to be read said it can you know, it's a clunky setup

00:31:26   It makes you feel like there's not there's a lot of time going by without anything happening because what's actually happening is you know

00:31:33   the the the person inside Apple

00:31:35   responsible for the bug has a clarifying question and they asked the middle party and the middle party eventually sees that question and then

00:31:42   Asked it of you and then you see it and then it goes back and so this is all bouncing back and forth

00:31:45   This is another example of where like I said last week's show

00:31:49   Over communication can help right? We don't we're not privy to these internal conversations

00:31:54   But how about on the bug to say here's what happened?

00:31:57   You know

00:31:59   You're the the middle party has seen your bug the middle party has passed your bug down to the responsible team

00:32:05   the responsible team has passed a

00:32:08   You know a response back up to the middle party then the middle party has sent you a response and that would mean you have

00:32:13   Like six updates or whatever where previously you had zero and none of them reveal any secret stuff about going inside Apple

00:32:18   Just you know, something is happening with your bug and that's reassuring

00:32:21   Communicate over communicate doesn't mean you need to reveal secrets, but let people know something is happening

00:32:26   indeed

00:32:28   So continuing from the Apple people. It's also a bit like a game of telephone

00:32:32   Maybe the middle party just copies and pastes between the internal and external bug reports

00:32:36   So what you see is literally comments and questions from the person looking at the issue

00:32:39   Or maybe the middle party is paraphrasing what the engineer is saying and maybe something gets lost in translation

00:32:45   I mean

00:32:45   This is a downside of having the middle party and it was mentioned like especially in beta is that part of the responsibility?

00:32:49   Of the middle party is to condense

00:32:51   So if there's like 50 people asking about the same thing rather than dumping 50 of those on the dev team

00:32:55   That's presently busy working on the the thing that's in beta condense it down into one. So now this middle party is responsible for

00:33:03   Memorizing paraphrasing passing on which is how you get things like

00:33:06   You know capture assist diagnosed immediately after the issue reproduces and add the time

00:33:10   You get that because maybe the middle party doesn't understand why this being asked for and like in the game of telephone

00:33:16   It starts to warp over time and maybe they make their own personal text expander snippet that says suddenly the wrong thing to make people

00:33:22   Angry that they're being asked to know the time and be not understand why they're being asked at all

00:33:26   With regard to bugs that linger forever without updates if you follow a bug during the run-up to shipping a new version

00:33:31   It's very possible that your bug will be assigned to the next version which typically means the perceived risk reward

00:33:37   Dynamic doesn't favor fixing this bug in the version. We're trying to get out the door right now

00:33:40   Okay

00:33:41   So far so good

00:33:42   If a bug is still in the books when a team gets to the final run-up before shipping a new version eventually someone on a bug

00:33:47   Review board will ask the room would we block the shipment of this version because of this bug?

00:33:52   The powers that be will debate the relative merits and risks and come up to it with an answer to that question

00:33:57   If that answer is no then the bug will likely be moved out of this versions backlog and into the next version again so far

00:34:01   So good

00:34:02   If this bug ever happens to come up for review again

00:34:05   The answer to would we block the shipment of the software because this bug will almost certainly continue to be no based on the justification

00:34:11   That well, we didn't block it last time. Why should we do it this time?

00:34:14   debates about the logic of this aside

00:34:17   the reality is that a bug that's ever been deemed to not block shipping is

00:34:22   exceedingly likely to never block shipping and this Apple person says I might go so far as to say that unless there is a

00:34:29   Specific champion for fixing that bug on the specific team empowered to fix it. It is very likely to remain in this purgatory

00:34:35   indefinitely

00:34:36   Cool, isn't this like priority queue starvation?

00:34:39   No

00:34:40   This is this is such a failure familiar dynamic of software development in large companies and it comes down to

00:34:46   this basic truth

00:34:49   Feature work is always valued internally over

00:34:52   Tech debt or fixing bugs or whatever right feature work is you know?

00:34:58   I'm working on a product it does X now

00:35:00   I know I want to do X and also do Y right whatever that feature is because customers have requests for features

00:35:05   Features you can come up with ideas for features internally they can give you a competitive advantage

00:35:08   Feature work is where it's at

00:35:11   So when you have to plan your releases and plan what you're gonna work on next or whatever feature work is where it's at

00:35:17   Right. Everybody has bug cues and this whole system of like well

00:35:20   This doesn't block shipping and you know, so we'll just put it back in the backlog and then you know that comes up again

00:35:26   It's like well didn't block shipping last time

00:35:27   So problem this time and just eternally gets there and the reason it looks like a queue

00:35:30   prioritization thing to Marco is because and you know in computer parlance of the idea of like having a low priority test gets starved because

00:35:36   It's always something more high priority

00:35:38   happens but it's an organizational problem because

00:35:42   Unlike a queue that has a simple set of rules organizations have values that are embodied by their plans feature work is prioritized because feature

00:35:50   Work is what gets you raises and bonuses and recognition and glory and you know

00:35:55   You can brag about on a slide and like everybody in the entire organization is incentivized to

00:36:00   Work on feature work tech that gets a lot of lip service

00:36:04   But it looks you know

00:36:05   It's it's never-ending pile first of all and second of all when you put up on the slide

00:36:09   We reduced our tech debt by five percent this thing this release. It's not as

00:36:13   exciting for everybody

00:36:15   And the only time it becomes exciting is when the mountain of tech debt

00:36:19   Becomes almost company destroying and then finally the organization wakes up to the idea of oh, we're living in a house of cards

00:36:26   This is a serious problem

00:36:27   We all need to buckle down and everybody carve out

00:36:30   20% of your schedule for tech debt from now on to the future like that will over hold and

00:36:34   We're gonna do this big release where we're gonna burn down tech debt and everybody's new, you know

00:36:38   Okay

00:36:39   ours are you must burn down x percent of your tech debt and then at the end of that release everybody gets to go up

00:36:44   There and say proud said we have this much tech debt and we burned it down

00:36:47   Here's how much better we did and then you forget about tech debt for two more years, right?

00:36:51   and this ties into the customer sat thing where

00:36:54   The only time that ever comes to a head is let's work like this where we prioritize feature work over tech debt

00:37:00   essentially forever until

00:37:02   the accumulation of crap

00:37:05   Starts to affect our customer satisfaction. Hey random stuff that used to be reliable isn't reliable anymore, and it's never getting fixed

00:37:12   Have you heard that on this program before I think we talked about it

00:37:14   I think Mark has written blog posts about it, right?

00:37:16   Only and obviously we're more sensitive to this and we're you know in the tech world

00:37:20   So we're constantly thinking about this stuff. But eventually if you neglect this stuff too long

00:37:24   organizationally eventually even your regular customers will start to get a feel for maybe your stuff isn't as

00:37:30   Isn't as reliable as it used to be isn't as nice like it will eventually bubble up

00:37:34   But internally it's so hard to like the things that they described here in case he was going through it

00:37:39   Okay, this makes sense makes sense all logical, right?

00:37:41   It combine that with the internal incentives for advancement and promotion and recognition

00:37:48   It makes it almost impossible to essentially quote-unquote do the right thing. That's what that's why these people are

00:37:54   responding like if your bug has a champion inside like if there's someone inside the organization who knows it's the right thing to do to

00:38:01   fix this stupid bug and

00:38:03   They're willing to essentially

00:38:05   Forgo the time they could spend doing something that is more likely to get them a razor or promotion or a good review

00:38:11   To do this because they know it's the right thing to do

00:38:13   That's that's one way things get fixed and this is the sign of an unhealthy organization and this dynamic I described

00:38:18   Plays out in every software company

00:38:20   Forever it will always happen, right?

00:38:23   It's the job of the organization to figure out how to counteract that. It's a natural force for that to happen

00:38:29   So organizations try to have cultures that have countervailing forces that try to be try to systemically oppose this

00:38:37   Inevitable force because left to people's own devices. They will always do the wrong thing in this case

00:38:42   So building on that back to the Apple people the converse of the quote once a blocker never a blocker quote problem is the phenomenon

00:38:49   Of once noticed by Steve or Tim or someone important this bug must be fixed no matter how risky or challenging fix it now

00:38:57   That's the shortcut to organizational incentives

00:38:59   Oh the organization

00:39:01   Have a cool feature whatever. Well, guess what if your boss or your boss's boss or the super duper big boss suddenly notices something

00:39:07   Oh suddenly

00:39:08   You're now incentivized because now fixing this stupid bug gets me recognition with the big guy and that's why you know

00:39:15   I'm gonna get a promotion now because it's right and that's that is a not a scalable system be a terrible system in general and

00:39:21   See you can't rely on that. You can't rely on someone important noticing your bug

00:39:25   like you can't it's not great to rely on champion developers helping as well, but

00:39:30   And that's why you know rang to the press never helps or whatever has they said in the in the app store things

00:39:36   that's why when something gets big on Twitter or something somehow it magically gets fixed because

00:39:40   Someone who's important suddenly picks their head up from their spreadsheets and says what is everyone talking about?

00:39:45   They're talking about what what and they're like, hey

00:39:47   What is what is this thing with name recognition and people getting numbers after their devices in their home?

00:39:51   and then someone has to explain Oh, well, we just

00:39:54   replaced a let me explain what

00:39:56   DNS is and we replaced this part of the system that does naming and it used to be called mDNS and now it's a new

00:40:02   Thing called discovery day and by the time you don't explain it and someone hopefully says

00:40:05   Well, if the old thing was working the new thing isn't put back the old thing, right?

00:40:08   And then they go back to what they were doing for a few years, right?

00:40:10   So it wasn't that Bono complaining to Tim Cook to get that one done. What's it Bono?

00:40:14   I don't know. It was some big celebrity complaining about discovery D problems - I think directly at him cook

00:40:20   And that's how they got fixed. Yeah, like this and this this this sounds so dumb, but like

00:40:25   companies

00:40:28   you know companies in the capitalist system are much more like

00:40:32   Monarchies or dictatorships than they are like democracies, right? Which is fine. They're not systems of government

00:40:38   You're just you're trying to find a way to like make computer products and sell them to people

00:40:41   it's not a human rights issue or anything like that, but it does mean that a

00:40:46   Lot of important decision-making is concentrated in the top of that org chart on the top of that pyramid

00:40:51   And you can shortcut the whole thing by making Tim Cook notice literally anything that's annoying you like I imagine like Tim Cook's

00:40:59   You know like her and anyway high executives like the people in their life like they're you know

00:41:04   Spouses or relatives or children should like take advantage of this and say this bug is annoying me

00:41:09   And then like bug their parents or uncle or something or you know aunt about it until their aunt goes back to work and says

00:41:16   I keep getting bugged about this. Can we just fix this and again not a scalable system

00:41:21   but in reality lots of things happen that way and it is it is at once embarrassing for like the org and it's like

00:41:28   If we had a functioning org that really did handle these things in a systemic way

00:41:32   This should never have to happen but on the outside you're like, I'm just glad it's fixed. So true

00:41:37   Alright, so with regard to getting in your feedback

00:41:40   Can you see if this reprose and the latest version you can you reproduce this in the latest version of Mac OS iOS whatever?

00:41:46   Apple people, right

00:41:47   This is something that's sometimes done in mass

00:41:49   After release to all bugs that have been punted out of that version possibly into next version

00:41:54   It's an attempt to get the bug off the books or otherwise find a reason to close it if you don't reply in a timely manner

00:41:59   Saying that it still happens with a new syst diagnosed attached

00:42:02   That was created on the very newest version of the OS and software

00:42:06   The assumption will be that it was a side effect fix or it was obviated by something else and it is very likely to be

00:42:12   Closed never looked at again

00:42:13   So the person stopped whining. Whoo. It's done. It's system works

00:42:17   So the Apple person writes, you know, if the bug isn't fixed and you care about it ever getting fixed

00:42:23   You should reply to these queries

00:42:24   Super guys. This is a typical bad

00:42:26   Like it should be opt-in versus opt-out system or it's like if we don't hear for you and we'll assume everything's fine

00:42:31   It's like why were you to assume everything's fine. Like you didn't even check whether you fixed it

00:42:35   You're just like fingers crossed. We made a bunch of other changes. Maybe we fixed your bug, too

00:42:38   I don't know

00:42:39   Why don't you check for us and tell us and this is what I referred to last time as like a you know

00:42:43   He human resources problem where apparently they don't have enough people

00:42:47   Oh every time we do a release we got to go through the entire

00:42:50   Outstanding bug backlog and see if we've accidentally closed some of these bugs by stuff that we did

00:42:55   I mean, no, I suppose you don't have to but you also shouldn't be like, you know

00:43:00   This person writes that said it's an attempt to get the bug off the books, right? This is more

00:43:04   organizational and process dysfunction

00:43:06   Surely one of the metrics that the people in this part of the order measured on is how many outstanding bugs there are how big

00:43:11   Is the bug backlog how much have you burned it down? How many bugs have you closed?

00:43:15   And so there are massive incentives to close bugs. So something like this internally makes perfect sense

00:43:19   You know what after we do a release?

00:43:21   I know we don't we don't have the ability to check every single one of these bugs

00:43:24   But I bet some of them we fix like by accident because we just change stuff around or whatever

00:43:28   So I've got an idea the system will be just ask everybody

00:43:31   Hey

00:43:31   Is this still a problem if they don't answer assume it's fixed and then close them and that'll really increase our metrics for bug closures

00:43:37   And that's a bad system. It's good

00:43:39   If your goal is to get as many bugs as possible

00:43:41   It's bad

00:43:41   If you're if your goal is to make the software quality as good as possible

00:43:45   Unfortunately software quality is usually measured by number of outstanding bugs. So you see the problem with the system

00:43:50   Alright another reason that your bug might be closed without being fixed is that someone in a bug review says there's a bug here

00:43:56   But knowing what I know about the product

00:43:58   I believe the real bug is fundamentally different from what's being described in this report and this report is more likely to create confusion

00:44:04   Than lead to a solution. So write a new better one and close this bug

00:44:07   This is another example of how bugs filed by outsiders can disappear behind the wall forever

00:44:11   I imagine it's frustrating to the person who filed the original and loses visibility into the fix. Yeah

00:44:16   There's another communication thing like tons of bug reports are gonna be bad. Most of them are gonna be bad

00:44:20   it is an important function of this part of the org to

00:44:22   Consolidate rationalize, you know, like to know this to say I see what these, you know

00:44:28   700 people are all saying and they're not really getting at the real bug

00:44:31   But I think I know what the real bug is. Sorry to consolidate. So that's great. Fine. Do that. It's awesome

00:44:36   Just communicate back and say here's what happened to your bug just like that paragraph that was just written

00:44:41   This is like you what you're describing is

00:44:44   One part of this giant elephant that is this bug and so we've consolidated them all down to this bug

00:44:49   Which unfortunately because we're Apple you can't really keep track of but just just so you know

00:44:53   We didn't just ignore your bug forever. What happened is

00:44:55   It got folded into this larger bug number and then if you're nice Apple maybe communicate

00:45:00   Hey, if you want to know what's happening with this larger bug, you don't have visibility into it

00:45:03   But I'll tell you when the bug is being passed down to a dev team when they're looking at it

00:45:07   What state it's in and when they close it again?

00:45:10   These are all communication things that you can do without revealing anything about no secrets

00:45:16   No showing other people source code all the things they say the reason why we can't know what's happening with bugs

00:45:19   Just communicate where it is in the state machine and what happened to it

00:45:23   So another thing that developers especially are told a lot is if you want to change made file radar, you know

00:45:30   make a feedback and even if you know that other people are doing the same thing do it anyway, because apparently

00:45:36   It it may or may not be a system of voting within Apple

00:45:41   So if Apple sees that a hundred people or a thousand or a hundred thousand people have all filed the same feedback

00:45:47   Like for example, if a hundred thousand people all wanted to autocorrect to stop correcting

00:45:53   F*cking to ducking then maybe if there's a hundred thousand people filing that radar eventually they will fix it

00:46:00   Not that that annoys me at all

00:46:02   Anyway with regard to that the Apple people write some groups use this bug voting thing by duplicate count

00:46:10   So by figuring out how many duplicates of the same bug there are some groups use this to inform their decisions

00:46:14   But other groups don't it varies wildly

00:46:16   It's mostly true for radars with incredibly large dupe counts as in in the tens of thousands and those really only happen when they can

00:46:23   Be automatically duped which brings this individual to auto duping

00:46:27   Apple has systems that look at stack traces and okay, so sorry another piece of vocab

00:46:32   So stack trace is here's what the the system was doing at the time or what the program a specific program

00:46:38   Or app was doing at the time and here's how it got to where it was, you know

00:46:41   Like a few minutes ago it had done this and now it's trying this and then it and then it's about to try that and so

00:46:46   that that's a very

00:46:48   Kind of high level way of thinking of a stack trace

00:46:50   So coming back to this Apple systems to look at stack traces and sys diagnosis attached to radars and automatically dupe radars based on that

00:46:56   Info, this is the most likely likely way for any given radar to accumulate a notably high dupe count

00:47:02   This is another gap in human power versus automation this type of automation sounds great again

00:47:07   If your goal is like, oh, we're getting all these feedbacks and radars

00:47:10   We need a way to deal with this flood. Like how do we how do we rationalize this? How do we lump them together?

00:47:15   How do we sort of sort through them and find out which ones are valid which ones are spam?

00:47:20   Which you know, like you need to look at them all but there's just so many of them and it takes expertise to know how to

00:47:25   put them together so any way you can automate that is great and

00:47:28   Automating by saying let's have my automated tool

00:47:31   Look at the stack traces and the sys diagnosis and look for similarities and lump them together

00:47:35   If that's the only way you can get a high dupe count

00:47:38   That means they don't have enough people looking at them to notice that. All right

00:47:42   Let's say there's a bug where the stack trace and the sys diagnose show no similarities because the bug is not straightforward

00:47:49   It is a weird second or third order effect

00:47:51   That is perhaps entirely reproducible maybe 50 those people put in sample projects or great instructions and how to reproduce it

00:47:58   But you can't lump them together in an automated way because the stack traces vary because it happens when people use different programs

00:48:05   Or it happens in different times like there's no way to do it in an automated way if duping only works or only works

00:48:10   Well when you're lucky enough that the problem is straightforward enough to have a sort of an identifiable fingerprint

00:48:17   And the sys diagnose and the stack trace that's bad and that shows that we need I mean having automation is great

00:48:22   Definitely do that

00:48:23   But then you need more human power to help that work because otherwise you could get a very important and terrible bug

00:48:30   That is actually been duped perhaps thousands of times

00:48:34   But you don't know that because your automated system doesn't know how to lump them together

00:48:37   So now you need an actual human to look at them and do that

00:48:39   It's another plausible reason why you'd get the attach a sys diagnose response

00:48:44   So often the most favorable favorable way to interpret that request is that they need more info to diagnose your problem the less favorable way

00:48:50   To interpret that is that it's a request for you to provide information that may automatically reveal the bug to be a dupe

00:48:56   Such a desperation ploy. It's like look just I need I need you to like

00:49:01   Include more information in the hopes that our automated tools will somehow get you into the fast lane to being fixed because I as a human

00:49:08   Don't have the apparently the ability to do that

00:49:10   But maybe if you're lucky your sys diagnose will put you into a bucket with a thousand other things and someone will finally look

00:49:15   at this bug

00:49:16   Indeed so a couple thoughts from the Apple people on my specific bugs, which again the feedback numbers will be in the show notes hint hint

00:49:23   The Apple people write I don't doubt that this bug happens or that it's extremely annoying

00:49:27   But I'm pretty confident that it's not that widespread

00:49:29   Here's why there are almost a billion iPhones in active use today if

00:49:32   Even 1% of those users experience this bug and then 1% of those users that experience the bug file radar

00:49:39   It would still be a hundred thousand radars and a hundred thousand radars would definitely get someone's attention

00:49:43   But based on your recounting it's not getting enough people's attention

00:49:47   Which tells me it's probably not as pervasive as it might seem to you. Okay, first of all, that's certainly possible

00:49:52   Second of all, even if it's only for me it is infuriating that my internet communicator can't friggin communicate

00:49:59   Like this this isn't like a oh, I'm annoyed at the way this looks or oh the dialogues in Big Sur trash

00:50:06   Which they are it's it's something that's fundamentally breaking my ability to use this device

00:50:11   Which which I think I would hope would if any human ever looks at these bugs

00:50:16   Which I know they have I would hope that someone would have bubbled this up as a big frickin problem

00:50:22   Additionally to think that even 1% of 1% of 1% people file radars is preposterous. Nobody files radars

00:50:30   I don't usually follow rate at file radars because I've been trained not to because they're black in holes

00:50:36   That's why I don't do it

00:50:38   Also, like that number like we would notice hundred thousand radars only if they're properly categorized as a dude

00:50:45   Like they would have to make it through all those filters first

00:50:47   which most of them the vast majority of them wouldn't exactly my bit of

00:50:52   Feedback on this particular thing is it was noticed like there was an iOS release where in the fairies

00:50:58   We're using two iOS releases. Thank you very much. Well, it's not like Apple gives very extensive release notes

00:51:05   So anything that makes it into release notes had to be serious enough that they thought to mention it

00:51:10   So they mentioned it they know about it and they're trying to fix it

00:51:14   So it's not you know, the idea is like oh, I guess not enough people did this

00:51:17   So they didn't know about Apple absolutely knows about it. They've tried to fix it. They just haven't succeeded yet. Yeah, so

00:51:24   It's very frustrating for anyone and I

00:51:31   Think the thing that's most frustrating to me and John I think you had said this earlier right right at the beginning of this conversation

00:51:37   Is that if you take any of these pieces in and of themselves?

00:51:40   They're justifiable and make reasonable amount of sense

00:51:44   Like obviously there are problems and that's what you've been enumerating this whole time

00:51:47   But if you take them at face value

00:51:49   None of these things is necessarily bad like using a dupe count as a kind of ad hoc voting system

00:51:55   I think I can understand how someone someone would get to that, you know point of view or get to that conclusion

00:52:00   but what I don't think your average Apple person understands is that

00:52:05   Even though radar from what I gather is actually pretty good on the internal side

00:52:11   It is so

00:52:13   incredibly indescribably

00:52:16   impossibly user hostile in pretty much every measurable way and

00:52:21   Yes, I understand for you the Apple rank-and-file engineer. It's not so bad

00:52:27   And yes, I understand that you are a special rank-and-file engineer that knows that it's probably not great for outsiders

00:52:34   But I don't think most rank-and-file engineers and I know a handful of them. I've talked to them about this a little bit

00:52:40   most of them I don't think really and truly understand how awful radar is and how

00:52:47   Offensive it is for for Apple to say give us a sample project, please and then you spend hours of your time

00:52:56   Building that sample project attaching that sample project putting that sample project on radar and then just disappears into a black hole

00:53:03   It is it is broken it is

00:53:06   Fundamentally broken and for Apple to shrug it off because it works for them internally is also

00:53:15   Fundamentally broken if you're an Apple person listening to this and you think I'm bananas then I encourage you

00:53:22   To look at it from my perspective for a half second because I see it from your perspective as best I can and yeah

00:53:27   It doesn't seem that bad from your perspective. It seems actually probably pretty decent but from our perspective, it's trash

00:53:33   It's offensive and it's so frustrating in the same way that I'm so fired up about the god-darned

00:53:38   Piss-poor documentation that Apple's been putting out lately or lack of documentation that they've been putting out lately

00:53:43   It's offensive and the fact that nobody cares enough to fix it. It's it's a problem to me

00:53:50   It's a problem. It's worse than that. They excuse it and they did. Thank you. That's an excellent point

00:53:56   They excuse it and that's why I've got to burr up my butt about it

00:53:59   They excuse it and it makes me so angry and granted. I'm a little on edge given what's going on this particular Wednesday

00:54:06   Nevertheless, it's just so frustrating and yes, I'm glad you made that point mark. I'm glad you jumped in because that's exactly it

00:54:13   It's it's it's excused within Apple that oh, well, it's the best we got and you know, it works for us internally

00:54:20   So whatever

00:54:21   No

00:54:22   That's not good enough

00:54:23   If you want to be the Apple that you think you are where you can do no one nothing you can do no wrong

00:54:28   But that you're better than everyone else then you need to do better at this

00:54:31   I have I've seen people paste, you know

00:54:34   Or the link to link me to Android bug reports where you can see almost all the internal communication. I

00:54:40   Understand that's never gonna happen with Apple. I get that but this is what what John was talking about earlier

00:54:48   This is this is exactly it like there's there's got to be amount in an amount of communication between all of it and zero

00:54:55   And I gotta figure out that I got I got to believe that there's some way that Apple can figure this out

00:55:01   You're smart people figure it out

00:55:03   I

00:55:04   Continue to try to talk Casey down off his ledge to say Apple does know about your bug and they're trying to fix it in

00:55:08   your bug to be fair as you yeah is

00:55:11   Surely one of the harder kind of bugs to fix because it has to do with interfacing with a third-party thing

00:55:17   So I think in this case you're not actually being ignored

00:55:20   It's super frustrating because it is a fundamental function of the device and it's not something off to the side as the point you made

00:55:26   But I do think they know about it or trying to fix it or having problems

00:55:29   So even though this particular bug has got to be up your butt

00:55:31   It's like I don't think it's actually emblematic of of the larger problem the larger problem

00:55:36   What made me think of it again?

00:55:37   What made me actually decide to put in this giant follow-up aside from all the feedback we got about it was that?

00:55:45   Spoiler alert for upcoming year and review things but we have some friends who do some year and review

00:55:50   Type things on their websites about Apple and one of the questions they ask is to rate Apple's

00:55:57   Software quality and every year is the question. How would you write the software quality? Whatever it is one to ten or you know

00:56:02   Whatever it is. It should be one through six hint hint. Yeah

00:56:07   and and

00:56:09   It's a thing like this kind of report card is exactly what I was talking about before but like the incentives inside the organization

00:56:15   that you know feature work gets prioritized, but they're also there's the customer sat and there's the idea of software quality and

00:56:21   Software quality like just like in this questionnaire is like well, how do I measure software quality for an entire company?

00:56:27   They make so many things, right?

00:56:29   That is the big question the small question is well

00:56:32   How do I measure software quality on the level of an individual project right and that gets into all of these sort of?

00:56:38   Systems with metrics and things that are games and perverse incentives

00:56:42   You have to come up with some way to measure this because you can't measure it

00:56:45   You can't do anything about it

00:56:46   If you have no idea what your software quality is like, what are you ever gonna do?

00:56:49   But almost every system to measure software quality

00:56:52   especially ones that are internally focused like how many bugs are or whatever like there's just so many ways to

00:56:57   Intentionally or unintentionally game that type of system in the end

00:57:02   What actually matters is do customers feel like you're putting out a quality product does your product do what you say?

00:57:08   It's supposed to do if someone got an iPhone and they're trying to talk to the family in SMS and they're missing messages as far

00:57:12   As they're concerned this product doesn't do one of the basic things that it's supposed to do and they're gonna rate your software quality low

00:57:19   but on the flip side of that is if someone gets one of your products and it more or less does what it's supposed to but

00:57:24   There's tons of annoying little minor bugs that make them think maybe they're using the computer wrong

00:57:28   Or why does this thing look like this or why doesn't this thing work?

00:57:30   But then click on it the first time and the second time it does

00:57:33   Those things accumulate too and that is the hardest thing to measure like do customers feel like when I get your thing

00:57:39   It's just you know, I won't I won't have to think about this stuff or do they feel like they're being gaslit by your software

00:57:45   It's like oh well

00:57:46   I can drag this but I can't drag that and when I click that it highlights sometimes sometimes it doesn't and

00:57:51   Sometimes it pauses for a brief time and sometimes you know, obviously things like crashes and stuff like that are easy to measure

00:57:57   but it's the things that are hard to measure that get you and every time I

00:58:00   Answer the software quality question on this annual survey of Apple things

00:58:04   I think about it mostly in terms of like how many questions have I had to field from relatives about?

00:58:10   Why is my computer doing a weird thing? How many times have I seen a bug? That's

00:58:13   Not a crasher not a data loss bug not something that's gonna show up any metrics, but it's an annoying little thing

00:58:19   How many of them are there there's always gonna be some right but if they build up to a certain level it

00:58:24   You know a critical mass of sort of

00:58:26   malaise of software

00:58:30   All of a sudden people start to get cranky and have these big long rants on podcasts and everything

00:58:33   All right, that's what Apple has to manage that sort of dark matter of you know

00:58:38   the dissatisfaction with software quality and

00:58:41   I understand that it's hard to measure we're working in software my entire life. It is not easy to get this right. That's the challenge

00:58:49   That's why they get all the big bucks and I feel like

00:58:51   Apple I

00:58:52   Mean, there's a separate question about hardware quality and in general

00:58:55   I think they do a better job of that butterfly keyboard aside

00:58:57   but on software quality feel like Apple has had a

00:59:00   Quite a roller coaster over these past few decades on software quality and it's difficult for me to connect

00:59:06   The software quality that Apple puts out with anything that's visible externally hardware quality design

00:59:14   The products they choose to make and don't choose to make are much easier to connect with the larger

00:59:18   Environment of the industry and what people say on earnings calls. Oh, we want to be in this space. We don't want to do that

00:59:25   We're gonna stop making printers. We're gonna start making cars. We think AR is the next big thing all that makes sense

00:59:30   But so our quality is like what's affecting that like they've been making Mac OS for a long time

00:59:35   And it's basically been the same thing a personal computer operating system

00:59:39   That has a bunch of windows on the screen and a menu bar and a pointer and like runs programs and it hasn't changed that

00:59:45   much but the software quality is all over the place and I just wish I just wish they could

00:59:50   Get a handle on this in the way that I think they have a handle to give an example

00:59:55   on

00:59:56   their hardware quality they've been making iPhones for a long time and the hardware quality of iPhones has been

01:00:01   Amazingly consistent when there's problems they address them quickly and they don't repeat the same mistakes

01:00:07   Right and in general every year the iPhone is a good piece of hardware

01:00:10   You know and you know in many ways we think we talk about this mess shows

01:00:15   Hardware quality is a little bit easier to do than software quality

01:00:18   You know the hardware people will disagree but software is way more complicated than hardware and hardware is it's more

01:00:23   You're more able to ratchet up the knowledge curve. We've never worked with aluminum before so it's weird

01:00:27   Oh now we've worked with aluminum for many many years, right?

01:00:30   And now we know a lot about working with aluminum

01:00:31   And in fact all our products made out of machined aluminum you can get better at it and ratchet your way up

01:00:35   Whereas no matter how long you're doing software you never get to the part where like software that's easy

01:00:40   It's always gonna be hard, but there's these big wild swings that I feel like have to be related to some internal organizational

01:00:48   Functions that crop up become fires and get extinguished smolder for a while then flare up again much like the wildfires in California

01:00:56   Yeah, let's make a lovely analogy there. I don't know

01:00:58   Anyway, it's it's frustrating on the outside

01:01:01   And I think it's one of the most important things that Apple needs to address because they do almost everything else

01:01:09   Pretty good, if not great, but software quality

01:01:12   They just do not have a handle on it's not the end of the world

01:01:16   It's not functional high-ground Marco blog post or whatever year that was from but I feel like

01:01:21   Because they're so close to being great and because like the m1 hardware is amazing and everything

01:01:26   You just you just feel like I'm just if you could just spend one release just knocking down bugs you would

01:01:31   fall back down below that threshold of

01:01:34   Annoyance and say okay now we're back to the regular number of bugs instead of like everywhere you look

01:01:39   There's some something that doesn't work right or doesn't work consistently

01:01:43   And and Casey what you're doing with this with this thing with your messaging thing

01:01:46   I kind of wish you didn't have this problem because you keep putting your bug number and your feedback number and the show notes your

01:01:52   Problem is so much worse than mine, but I want mine to be fixed. Oh, I'll put one in for you

01:01:55   Don't let my feedback number. It's a cosmetic bug. I feel bad. It's a cosmetic bug, but I but it

01:02:00   but it's a cosmetic bug that affects like one of my two apps and

01:02:04   I feel like it would be easy to fix if someone who knew something about the relevant frameworks looked at it

01:02:09   Even like I said in the past show maybe I'm doing something wrong

01:02:11   I would love to know that too just after you fix Casey's bug, which is way more important someone. Please look at my cosmetic bug

01:02:17   It's got a sample project

01:02:19   We are sponsored this week once again by flat file you've experienced data onboarding

01:02:25   But you probably haven't heard that term think back to when you needed a CSV template to import data online

01:02:31   Or that one time you had to email an excel file that might have had sensitive data in it

01:02:36   There are problems like this and many others inherent with data onboarding

01:02:40   Companies spend exorbitant amounts of money trying to fix it usually with expensive implementation and services teams

01:02:47   Luckily our friends at flat file are solving data onboarding for companies of all sizes

01:02:53   They've just interviewed over a hundred companies and compiled a 2020 state of data onboarding report that quantifies this hidden business cost

01:03:01   Not surprisingly 96% of their respondents ran into problems when importing data

01:03:08   33% said it takes weeks or months to migrate customer data

01:03:11   So while you might not have heard of data onboarding chances are you or someone you know has experienced it

01:03:17   Check out the full report by visiting flat file dot IO once again

01:03:22   That's the full 2020 state of data onboarding report at flat file dot IO

01:03:27   Thank you so much to flat file for sponsoring our show once again

01:03:35   Moving on can we hopefully find something a little more awesome to talk about Marco. Let me live vicariously through you

01:03:40   There's nothing that retail therapy cannot fix am I right so

01:03:44   What's going on with your equipment your setup your your working world how's things looking

01:03:51   I actually don't have a ton to report on that front at the moment. I do have the new

01:03:57   OWC Thunderbolt 4 Thunderbolt 3 whatever the dock is that the new

01:04:02   OWC docking station thing that has the three upstream or I guess downstream

01:04:06   Thunderbolt 3 ports this Thunderbolt hub. Is that right? No, the hub is like the the smaller one

01:04:13   Oh, okay the dock even though I would still call this a hub, but the dock people call it a dock

01:04:19   So whatever anyway the comparing it to the Cal digit. It's a little early to say they've only been using it for about three days

01:04:25   So far, it's kind of a mixed bag. So I have this way here

01:04:29   So first of all, you know the good and the bad it is like, you know a nicer shape

01:04:33   It has more bandwidth on certain ports

01:04:36   It's basically the Cal digit and you know in a reasonable competitor unless you really need those that like massive Thunderbolt pass-through

01:04:43   Which I wish I don't so far. I'm very curious right now. I'm keeping them both for now because I'm curious

01:04:50   When my XDR arrives if I can actually pass it through either of them

01:04:56   Or if I have to plug it in directly to the MacBook Air, I would love it

01:05:00   If I could pass it through it and I've heard mixed reports from people some people say you can't really pass the XDR through anything

01:05:05   Some people say they have an XDR and they're passing it through there is just fine

01:05:09   So like everything else with Thunderbolt once you get to the high end of things

01:05:13   It probably comes down to things like what cables you have and stuff like that. So I'll see how that goes

01:05:19   I'm very curious to see when that arrives

01:05:22   The XDR by the way is not supposed to arrive until like early next week

01:05:26   So I might have it in time for next week's show. I hope I do but I might not

01:05:31   Anyway, so but you know the LG you've passed it through this this thing just fine the OWC thing because it requires mentioned because it requires

01:05:39   Big Sur 11.1 to be supported at all. There's a couple of odd things about it

01:05:44   So like one thing this morning

01:05:46   I was restoring the old Intel Mac Mini

01:05:48   So I could send it back to for trade-in if it booted normally the boot screen would be fine on it

01:05:53   But the restore I guess app whatever the restore environment is called when you do a Mac OS system restore by holding down command R

01:06:01   At startup that environment doesn't support it yet

01:06:04   And so I like I had to stop using it for that environment and plug my monitor directly into my Mac

01:06:11   The Mac Mini that I was restoring rather than going through this dock because like again like certain things support it

01:06:17   But it's very new and certain things don't support it doesn't that doc only work with Big Sur 11.1

01:06:21   Yes, we mentioned last time so maybe your recovery environment is not Big Sur 11.1, right?

01:06:26   So like and I don't know what if anything ever updates the recovery environment on a system

01:06:30   But yeah, so like weird stuff like that that happens with it so far

01:06:34   But I also it seemed I had like, you know after I said clamshell mode has been 100% perfect for me

01:06:41   Oh, no, the very first day I was using this which was I think Monday

01:06:45   It was a little bit buggy like weird stuff happened when I plugged and unplugged like for a few hours and then it was fine

01:06:52   Now I had zero such bugs of that type on the Cal digit and I've had a couple on this one on that first day

01:06:59   So, I don't know if it's coincidence. Maybe I would have had it either way. Maybe it's something else the other weirdness

01:07:04   I'm having with this member if you remember correctly the issue I had with the Cal digit

01:07:08   It seemed fine in most ways except that I couldn't get the built-in Ethernet port to connect at more than a hundred megabits

01:07:15   And if you just told it to auto configure it wouldn't connect at all

01:07:18   Like you could force it to a hundred and it would connect if you forced it to gigabit or auto connect

01:07:22   It wouldn't connect at all

01:07:24   This the oWC

01:07:27   Thunderbolt dock

01:07:29   also has an Ethernet port on it and

01:07:31   It's Ethernet port also won't connect at gigabit

01:07:36   But its problems are different

01:07:39   So it will auto connect like if it auto senses it will auto connect it will connect to only 100 megabits if

01:07:45   I try to configure it manually to gigabit

01:07:49   It will say okay and it will report that it is connected via gigabit through the system preferences hardware pane

01:07:56   But if I look on the switches control panel like that the ubiquity switch that I'm plugging it into the switch says nope

01:08:02   This ports 100 megabits right now. I

01:08:04   Don't know enough about that to know what could cause that the disagreement between the device and the switch as to what speed it's running at

01:08:11   but that's

01:08:13   Interesting when I was home, I brought back with me two useful diagnostic things. I have the original

01:08:20   Belkin

01:08:22   USB-c Ethernet adapter that Apple started selling in 2016 when they went all USB-c on their laptops

01:08:26   So I have this Ethernet adapter. I also have the old

01:08:30   Thunderbolt I think Thunderbolt one

01:08:33   Ethernet adapter that Apple started selling back in roughly

01:08:36   2012 ish I guess whenever the laptop yeah

01:08:40   2012 was when they were first retina MacBook Pro came out and that is when they dropped Ethernet off

01:08:45   The high-end laptops and so they started selling a thunderbolt one. I believe a

01:08:50   Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter. I also have the

01:08:54   Thunderbolt two to three adapter

01:08:57   So I brought back with me that Thunderbolt adapter because what I had heard is

01:09:01   When this when the little USB-c one came out in 2016

01:09:05   I heard that it was kind of crappy and that it was slower in

01:09:07   Practice than the old Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter and that if you have a thunderbolt 3 slash USB-c Mac

01:09:14   That if you actually connected the old thunderbolt Ethernet adapter through the two to three adapter

01:09:20   It was faster than using the native USB-c adapter. I did actually try all of these things and

01:09:27   the

01:09:29   Thunderbolt one adapter plugged in through the the you know, the Thunderbolt two to three dongle

01:09:34   works

01:09:36   fantastically when plugged directly into my MacBook Air

01:09:40   I plug it directly in it loads up instantly and it connects at full gigabit speed

01:09:45   So this tells me it's not the cable. It's not the jack. It connects at full gigabit speed

01:09:51   Also when I plugged it into the Mac Mini, which was built in Ethernet port full speed gigabit

01:09:56   No problem. Both sides recognize it full speed my old iMac Pro

01:10:00   Same thing it works full speed every time so I know it's not like the problem is not outside of the computer

01:10:06   The the cable is fine

01:10:08   the switch is fine the wiring that runs through the wall is fine like all that should be fine because

01:10:14   Many things can connect by gigabit and transfer just fine and you know running a speed test gets me right up approaching gigabit speed

01:10:21   So I know the rest of its okay the CalDigit can't do gigabit and the OWC

01:10:27   Thunderbolt hub can't do gigabit on its own built-in port

01:10:30   So, I don't know what's going on with Ethernet going over these Thunderbolt dock things something's up

01:10:36   I've tried I tried all the things with the CalDigit where they tell you like

01:10:40   Oh if you just reboot and reconfigure your things with the Thunderbolt bridge port one and two or port zero and one and then if you

01:10:46   Reset your SMC then it will all of a sudden start working and first of all

01:10:50   I did all that and it didn't start working but second of all even if that would ever work

01:10:54   That's not a solution for me because the whole reason I want an Ethernet connection is

01:10:59   because Ethernet is supposed to work every single time without hassle and

01:11:05   When I plug it directly into a computer with an Ethernet port, it does work perfectly and reliably

01:11:10   I don't know what it is with these with the you know, the things that are built into these Thunderbolt docks

01:11:14   but I can't get it to work through them reliably and

01:11:17   That to me is a pretty big value loss for these docks

01:11:22   So I'm a little disappointed in the Ethernet situation on all these Thunderbolt products so far

01:11:28   But I am making it work just fine

01:11:30   And the reality is my computer where it usually sits is about I think nine feet from the Wi-Fi router

01:11:37   Granted there's a wall between them, but it's so close that really like when I'm on Wi-Fi

01:11:43   It's pretty rock-solid. So this may all be moot, you know

01:11:47   Obviously when I have a desktop here like when I have the Mac Mini here

01:11:51   I will wire it because it's best to wire stuff if you can if it's convenient to do so just to get it

01:11:56   You know not only more reliable and usually a little bit faster

01:11:59   But also just gets it off the wireless network to free up the you know radio bandwidth for other devices in the meantime

01:12:05   If it ends up this Wi-Fi situation or the Ethernet situation is too finicky through these docks

01:12:10   And I have to use Wi-Fi when I'm using the laptop. That's that's fine, too

01:12:14   There's another reason why we always talk about Apple

01:12:18   Being beneficial for Apple to make a set of products that constitute a complete ecosystem

01:12:24   we talk about in the context of Wi-Fi docks usually but

01:12:26   Things like this if you're gonna make all your laptops have all all the same shape ports on them because you're like well

01:12:32   You can connect anything to a Thunderbolt dock

01:12:34   All right. Well barco so far has bought in two of the you know, most commonly recommended most

01:12:40   expensive things that ostensibly plug into one of those cool ports and

01:12:44   Ostensibly do a thing and he's having trouble making both of them do a thing and you would imagine that if Apple sold anything like

01:12:51   This something that you could connect a Mac laptop to that offers a bunch of ports that their thing would work

01:12:56   That the Ethernet would work without being configured because they're Apple right the benefit of Apple making the whole thing

01:13:01   We talked about in the context of the m1 the great benefits of when you control the entire stack from top to bottom

01:13:07   We're not getting that benefit for laptops in theory

01:13:11   They let you connect anything to it

01:13:12   But in practice you have to find one that you can buy and see just buy and try and know it's got a problem to

01:13:16   Buy another one and try I know it's got a problem

01:13:17   Most people aren't Marco and don't just keep buying products until they find one that works

01:13:21   Usually what happens is you buy one you grit your teeth and buy a hundred or two hundred dollar Thunderbolt thing

01:13:26   That's supposed to do what it says on the box

01:13:28   it's and you can't get it to work and you Google and you get frustrated and

01:13:31   maybe you're like

01:13:32   oh am I gonna go through the hassle trying to return this and get my money back and go through their tech support and just

01:13:37   That's not the experience people want to deal with if Wi-Fi was like that. Luckily. It's not luckily

01:13:42   You can buy third-party Wi-Fi things that Mac work with without much of a problem

01:13:46   but you know, I guess the Ethernet is more narrow now that everyone uses Wi-Fi, but I feel like

01:13:51   the promise of these laptops hinges on the product the promise of the things you connect to them and

01:13:56   For many years and many generations now finding things that you can connect to them

01:14:01   That forget about aesthetics forget about price forget about price performance

01:14:05   They just simply do the job. They're supposed to do reliably all the time has been a problem

01:14:10   And so this is something that Apple should address eventually

01:14:14   Because you know if you see them talk on stage about it, or if you talk to them in person

01:14:18   It's like well, we've got these great Thunderbolt ports. What are you complaining about? This is what we're complaining about

01:14:22   He's just trying to get Ethernet to work. It shouldn't be rocket science. Yeah, and and I shouldn't I shouldn't need to be

01:14:28   An expert in any of these areas like I shouldn't need to know about well

01:14:32   Well, this one this one won't negotiate to give it speeds or maybe I have to reset my SMC three times every time

01:14:37   I want it to work like no, that's not that's not a solution

01:14:39   this is not yeah the whole point of

01:14:43   You know having and this is why ultimately this is why I complain about having like multi having too few ports on the laptops

01:14:50   This is why I like desktops whenever I have like a stationary workstation

01:14:54   They they tend to work better like when you when you don't need these extra adapters and peripherals and docks and hubs and dongles

01:15:02   Things tend to work better

01:15:04   many people are

01:15:07   Totally fine and and they're like, hey what what's the big deal?

01:15:10   I you know, I do this I use these kind of things and they work most of the time and

01:15:13   to me there's a massive difference between something that works most of the time and something that works all the time and

01:15:19   I don't have a lot of tolerance in my life for things that work most of the time

01:15:25   When there are options that work all the time in that same solution like in that same role that there is something I can do

01:15:32   to get full working Ethernet with no tricks and no jumping through hoops and

01:15:38   Working at full time at full speed every time so I know it's possible

01:15:42   I have had it for years and so, you know when when something like this comes out and to go

01:15:46   Well, this is it's fine. As long as you you know, jump through hoops every so often like no, that's that's not that's not a solution

01:15:51   Anyway, I do

01:15:54   Want to derail the show slightly?

01:15:56   I'm going to go rogue and insert a rogue ask ATP question right here in the show

01:16:02   Oh, this is John's favorite. Carry on. We've got a lot of ask ATP backlog

01:16:06   So I'm actually happy for you to pull one of them out of there. Oh great reduce the backlog

01:16:10   So this came in from listener Brian a few days back Brian asks, how does Marco sell his unwanted computers?

01:16:18   He's mentioned in a few episodes that he sells them and I'm wondering if uses something like eBay

01:16:22   Craigslist or some other networking tool to find buyers is just word of mouth and people market personally knows who are in the market

01:16:28   I'm asking because I have a bunch of computers and related equipment

01:16:31   I'd like to get rid of but I'm tired of being scammed by bad buyers on eBay and

01:16:36   Don't really want to go to the hassle of selling on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace. Thanks

01:16:40   So I want to I want to address this because I just sold stuff and I have a lot more stuff I want to sell

01:16:46   And and a lot of people are going through this of like oh crap the new m1 max are out and they're awesome

01:16:52   how do I sell my old Intel stuff and and that way I can buy the new m1 stuff and

01:16:56   And so I get this question a lot because people see me like saying on Twitter

01:16:59   Hey, anybody want this and then it's gone in like 10 minutes

01:17:02   So I figured I'd share, you know what I could hear

01:17:06   This is a very common problem of like not wanting to deal with eBay or Craigslist or Facebook like that's those are all

01:17:15   Incredibly messy it is by far the messiest way to sell stuff

01:17:20   but the good thing about going through something like eBay is that if you have something that's somewhat specialized like

01:17:27   You've seen me on Twitter sell computers just fine. Like I can sell

01:17:31   Apple laptops to Apple, you know fans that follow me fairly easily and I'll tell you how in a second

01:17:38   But you know that that's that's the easy part

01:17:41   What you don't see is me selling more obscure things or I'll try and I usually fail

01:17:47   So something like, you know, I wanted to sell a while back. I had this pair of road wireless

01:17:52   Lavalier microphones with like, you know

01:17:55   the little wireless belt packs and the wireless receivers and everything and I tried to sell it and I just never got any

01:18:00   takers on it like because it's specialized gear and

01:18:03   Even though I have a decent number of followers on Twitter where I was trying to sell it

01:18:08   I don't have enough people who were looking for that kind of specialized gear and so

01:18:13   You can you can kind of tailor like how you're selling things where you're trying to go based on

01:18:18   how like how specialized how how like niche is what I'm trying to sell and

01:18:23   If it's if it's something that's fairly specialized

01:18:25   eBay's basically the only game in town because eBay will get you the highest chance to sell the most obscure or specialized or

01:18:34   relatively unwanted things like somebody will buy it on eBay and

01:18:39   Then as you if you have access to more people and if something is more broadly applicable

01:18:44   Then you have more options on how to sell that. So what I usually do is

01:18:47   my main interest is in getting something sold as

01:18:53   Easily off to me as possible. I don't want to deal with anything. I don't want to deal with people like, you know

01:18:59   eBay's the worst like, you know

01:19:01   People do get sellers get ripped off on eBay all the time

01:19:04   And and so if you are going to go into eBay to like sell a laptop you are taking a risk

01:19:09   Like the the buyer could rip you off in various ways that there's lots of scam buyers

01:19:14   Especially for things like laptops on eBay and so it's it's very very risky. I

01:19:19   Would suggest if if you want to sell something like a laptop

01:19:24   Consider instead

01:19:28   doing either Apple trade-in or

01:19:30   Something like Mac being offer or like one of those various sites that buys

01:19:35   that buys like used Apple computers as

01:19:38   their business like because what's great about that like

01:19:42   you will never get the best price doing that at least not usually and

01:19:47   Oh, and by the way to judge what something's actually worth. This is another use of eBay go to eBay

01:19:53   Look at completed items, but look at sold completed items

01:19:57   There's a separate checkbox on the search page for sold items because what you want to see is what what is this thing actually sold?

01:20:04   for recently what I usually do when I'm trying to sell something is either

01:20:08   go through one of those brokers like Apple or you know, Mac me an offer or whatever and

01:20:13   just accept that they're gonna be a pretty low price or

01:20:17   see whatever if these things are going for on eBay and offer on Twitter for like 20% less than that and

01:20:25   Usually people will jump on that soon enough if there's a market for it at all now granted

01:20:29   This is not you know available to most people like that. The Twitter option is not available to most people

01:20:34   and honestly, you're not missing out on a whole bunch Twitter is awful, but

01:20:39   You know the the other options are

01:20:43   again, like either less money for doing like the basically they traded into the dealer or how like

01:20:51   These are same problems when you have to deal with when you have to sell a car like if you ever sold it sold a used

01:20:56   Car it's exactly the same trade-offs of like you can trade it into a dealer or like a bulk buying company

01:21:01   And they won't give you a very good price

01:21:03   But the advantage of those things is it's almost no hassle. There's almost no risk and it's really easy

01:21:11   Like right now I sold this Mac mini back to Apple

01:21:15   I probably could have gotten maybe a few hundred dollars more if I would have sold it privately

01:21:19   but I'd be it would take much more work and I'd be taking a risk that the buyer might scam me and

01:21:25   You know and so I actually might not make that much more or the amount of time that I would have to spend

01:21:31   Dealing with that like putting up for sale dealing with any inquiries

01:21:35   Shipping it packing, you know, all that stuff that time is all valuable to me

01:21:41   And so in many in many cases I might actually just choose the cheaper trade in price

01:21:48   From you know Apple or whatever because it just it saves you the trouble, you know again

01:21:51   It's just like it's just like when you have a car when you trade it into the dealer because you don't want to deal with people

01:21:55   You make less off it

01:21:56   but it is often better in the long run for you and finally better than selling it at all is

01:22:03   if you don't need the money for it that much and if there's someone in your family who needs a computer or a phone or

01:22:10   Whatever just give it to them and you know, you can be the person you're in your family who gives

01:22:16   Gently used computers to people who really need new ones, but never buy them themselves

01:22:20   So I do that with a lot of my stuff, you know, my family is a family of hand-me-downs

01:22:25   Not TIFF because that's she wouldn't let that fly but it's a family, you know, like, you know extended family

01:22:33   This is kind of a rambling way of saying that there's lots of different ways to sell stuff

01:22:36   eBay is best if you want the highest price but are willing to take the most risk and do the most work or if you

01:22:43   Have very specialized stuff

01:22:44   selling it to people you know is

01:22:46   Generally not recommended but you know, give it giving it away people you know is okay

01:22:51   And if you want something very low effort and low risk, but it'll also give you kind of a low price

01:22:57   That's when you do things like trading into Apple or the various other sites that buy stuff or let you trade stuff in

01:23:02   We are brought to you this week by Squarespace start building your website today at squarespace.com slash

01:23:10   ATP and to offer code ATP at checkout to get 10% off make your next move with a beautiful website from

01:23:17   Squarespace now making websites this used to be a really interesting thing for me

01:23:22   I used to want to do it all the time these days

01:23:24   I really don't want to do it unless I really have to and

01:23:27   When I when I want to make a really great site

01:23:29   I know that the best way for me to do that to be to make an incredible

01:23:33   Site as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible

01:23:37   to just get something up there that then looks amazing and has amazing functionality and amazing design and

01:23:43   Looks like I spent a lot of time on it is to go to Squarespace

01:23:46   Because Squarespace sites are so easy to make no matter what your skill level is. There's no coding involved here

01:23:51   It's all these visual tools you start with their amazing templates and you can customize them to whatever you want them to be

01:23:57   They're always adding more templates. They're really they keep things fresh and it looks good on any device. Of course any size screen

01:24:03   You don't have to worry anything like that and you don't have to worry about

01:24:06   Software updates security patches server uptime. None of that

01:24:10   They take care of all of that for you

01:24:11   If you need any help that great support as well

01:24:14   Which I personally have never needed to use it because it's just so easy to use Squarespace

01:24:18   But it's really nice if you're making a website for somebody else

01:24:21   Which I do sometimes

01:24:22   Then you can set it up on Squarespace and then hand it off to that other person and then when they need help they can

01:24:27   Have Squarespace instead of you down the road. It's wonderful. Check out today

01:24:32   squarespace.com

01:24:34   Squarespace.com/ATP and you can start a free trial with no credit card required

01:24:38   When you decide to sign up after that trial is over and trust me

01:24:41   I'm pretty sure you will make sure to head back there squarespace.com/ATP and use the offer code ATP to get

01:24:47   10% off your first purchase that's squarespace.com/ATP code ATP for 10% off your first purchase

01:24:55   Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show make your next move with Squarespace

01:25:02   [Music]

01:25:04   So I mentioned last week that I had two Christmas gifts I wanted to talk about

01:25:09   One of them was the VR headset the oculus quest 2 that I got for the family

01:25:14   I

01:25:16   Now want to talk about a gift that my wonderful wife got for me

01:25:20   now this I

01:25:22   Would never if you would have gone back and told me of five years ago

01:25:28   that this is actually a gift that I would want and

01:25:31   somebody would get for me not as a joke and I would actually love and use I

01:25:36   Would be shocked

01:25:38   But here we are

01:25:40   Tiff got for me for Christmas a gaming PC. Oh my god

01:25:47   Sounds like one of those gifts that you get for someone that's really kind of a gift for yourself. Yeah, she got you a bowling ball

01:25:54   Mm-hmm. She did she got you a bowling ball

01:25:57   [Laughter]

01:25:59   So a couple years back maybe a year year and a half ago Tiff got a gaming PC

01:26:06   you know, she was getting into certain PC games and

01:26:08   and you know as you know, John playing games on Macs is

01:26:13   painful, so so when Tiff needed a gaming PC

01:26:16   she went and got a real gaming PC and

01:26:21   Notably chose to get a laptop a gaming laptop from the wonderful Razer with a Z company Razer

01:26:28   So she had a Razer gaming laptop a 15-inch

01:26:32   Whatever the Razer gaming laptop at 15 inches is called that was for sale about a year ago

01:26:38   And I made fun of her relentlessly because of the all the crazy like RGB

01:26:42   Keyboard lighting things that it could do it. It does a lot of ridiculous stuff

01:26:46   it's like totally over-the-top with like RGB and everything but

01:26:50   Razer is actually from what I understand and from from our experiences with with it

01:26:55   it's actually a pretty decent PC maker and they seem to do things with a

01:27:00   With the RGB stuff aside with a higher degree of taste

01:27:06   Than what I usually see from PC gaming hardware

01:27:10   Not what I would have thought of I mean, I guess everything is relative

01:27:15   but I would not say that Razer is a conservative brand when it comes to

01:27:19   Stylized gamer type

01:27:22   Stuff it's not the most extreme but it is also not very tame

01:27:27   There's lots of black and neon colors and jagged edges and a lot of Razer mice that look like

01:27:32   Someone took a lump of coal and shattered it and said here's your mouse

01:27:35   Not but see that style doesn't really carry into the laptops though

01:27:40   The laptops are actually pretty boring black slaps for the most part and they're pretty nicely made with neon lights that come through the keyboard

01:27:46   And you know and a green a green logo on the cover and whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so it's had this gaming PC and

01:27:53   When the family started playing?

01:27:56   Minecraft a lot which started really in full-blown strength this past spring

01:28:02   Tif played mostly on the Nintendo switch

01:28:06   Adam played mostly on his iPad and

01:28:10   At some point in the spring I decided I need to play Minecraft because this is what my family is doing

01:28:16   This is what my son's really into

01:28:18   I want to be able to you know

01:28:19   Relate to my son and nobody's talking about and spend time with him and you know other parents, you know

01:28:25   They maybe like throw a ball with their kid or or you know

01:28:28   Like whatever their kid wants to do the parent tries to do it with them. Well, my kid wants to play Minecraft all day

01:28:34   So damn it. I'm gonna play Minecraft all day. So I learn how to play and

01:28:38   Tiff and Adam vowed to teach me the device that was left for me to play on

01:28:43   was Tiff's gaming PC and

01:28:46   They and she let me use it because she also knew that I was comfortable with

01:28:49   Keyboard and mouse for that kind of like, you know open world and you know crafty kind of game

01:28:54   Like she knew I was comfortable with that. And so I said great. I would love to learn on that

01:28:58   That became basically my family a Minecraft device

01:29:03   All year the entire year every single time that PC woke up and it said hey

01:29:10   Where's Tiff and it's looking around for Tiff using the windows face ID thing. It's looking around

01:29:13   Hey Tiff, where are you Tiff and every time it was me and I had to type in the password manually

01:29:18   I never changed it over to like mine

01:29:20   It's still hers

01:29:22   you know, she would gracefully let me do it, but Tiff wants her gaming PC back and

01:29:27   So that entire time I was using it, you know, it was it was being used and that's nice

01:29:32   I was getting used to it. I was really enjoying playing Minecraft with the family and occasionally by myself and

01:29:38   I started thinking, you know

01:29:41   Maybe I maybe I want to try the new flight simulator or maybe I want to play

01:29:45   You know, whatever new sim cities or city skylines, you know, like maybe I want to try some of these other games

01:29:50   Maybe I want to try it in songs with my old games

01:29:52   I used to like and I didn't really want to do it because it wasn't my computer

01:29:56   Tiff sensing this and wanting her gaming PC back

01:30:01   Decided as a Christmas gift

01:30:03   She was gonna get me a gaming PC and she kind of hinted like well if you were gonna get one

01:30:07   What would you get and I know I looked at the options the funny thing is like the laptop

01:30:13   Hardware world has not really changed much since she bought hers

01:30:16   So the one I got is almost identical to hers

01:30:20   The the main difference is when I looked at the specs

01:30:23   I saw that there was a slightly higher end trim level that came with an OLED

01:30:29   4k touchscreen. Oh and I thought okay 4k on a laptop on a PC laptop

01:30:36   I don't really need a touch screen. I'm a little curious about but I probably wouldn't use but OLED that's interesting

01:30:44   because we frequently play in a room that has a lot of sunlight coming into it during the day and

01:30:51   That makes it hard for me to do anything in dark areas in the game on Tiff's LCD gaming PC

01:30:57   Because it's I mean look it's not the best LCD in the world. These these aren't laptop

01:31:01   These aren't Apple quality laptop displays that that racers using on their LCDs

01:31:05   So, you know, it's not great for you know, like dark scene detail in a sunny room

01:31:12   I would have to like not do my quest in the nether in Minecraft until nighttime because I couldn't see it

01:31:18   And I thought well OLED could be better for that because all that's really good at you know

01:31:25   Dark detail and and and being super bright in the day and stuff. So

01:31:28   Let me try that. Let me see like, you know

01:31:31   Hey, if there's there's an old option

01:31:32   I want to try that

01:31:33   Well, it is actually the opposite when it comes to televisions because it can't get as bright

01:31:36   So the advice for TVs is if you have a sunny room get it get an LED backlit

01:31:41   LCD television because OLED can't become bright enough to overwhelm it but it sounds like what your problem was is

01:31:46   especially on like cheap LCDs where

01:31:48   It's not like you couldn't make the bright parts bright enough

01:31:51   It's that the dark parts you get like I'm assuming you get like glare on the screen and their screen looks like it's gray

01:31:56   because yeah the sort of matte finish on the screen or whatever the light is reflecting off of it and so you have two problems

01:32:03   one is

01:32:04   Can I see the bright parts but two is do the black part suddenly look really light gray because it's catching light

01:32:10   So the OLED with its actual black blacks is gonna help there and hopefully on a what I assume is a small laptop screen size

01:32:16   Like it's not a 40 inch laptop

01:32:18   hopefully at a small screen size the OLED can get bright enough to

01:32:22   Compete with the sunlight and and the reason I wasn't looking I wasn't considering desktop desktop options here for lots of reasons

01:32:30   I mean number one is like like when two foot went if we got hers

01:32:34   I first initially thought like it's like it's gonna be a laptop, you know a laptop GPU

01:32:39   How good could that really be for for you know, PC gaming and the answer was pretty damn good

01:32:45   Like it could do a lot especially, you know, we're not playing it's incredibly demanding games here

01:32:51   You're playing Minecraft try Microsoft flight simulator on it in 4k. You'll bring it to its knees. Yeah. Well, hold on sir

01:32:56   I'll get there but

01:32:58   So, you know, I figured like we don't need the massive, you know desktop cards also

01:33:04   Trying to buy a high-end desktop GPU right now is not so easy

01:33:10   Also, you know a desktop is a much bigger

01:33:14   ordeal and not only is it much larger physically but then you need a

01:33:18   Monitor that you can plug into it and I don't have a spare. I'm not gonna plug the LG into it

01:33:23   I'm not like I don't have like, you know extra monitors lying around. I don't want to set up a whole desk

01:33:29   Station for a desktop because this is not something that I'm that I'm doing like super seriously all the time

01:33:36   This is something that I do sometimes for fun with my family

01:33:39   A laptop is actually perfect for this if it can be anywhere near good enough and these laptops so they both so it's their 15-inch

01:33:47   Models, they both have the I guess laptop version of the 2080 max Q

01:33:53   whatever it's whatever the the best 2080 is that razor offers like that's what I have and

01:33:58   And it's actually really good. I

01:34:01   Don't know what a desktop could get me

01:34:04   But I'm guessing this is getting me at least 50% of what our desktop is getting me like in like high-end GPU

01:34:09   Frame rate stuff on the highest settings and everything and that's great for me for a laptop like it's fantastic. I am

01:34:16   extremely happy with the performance this gets for my needs and

01:34:21   Considering that it's in a laptop and not a particularly large. I pop you know, it's it's a 15 inch. It's you know, it's a little heavy

01:34:28   It's not too thick. It's you know, it's it's a 15 inch laptop

01:34:31   It doesn't feel you know, too too ridiculous for that size class

01:34:35   The fan is not super loud like, you know, it spins up you hear it when you're playing games

01:34:40   But it's not like a jet engine or anything. It's not like disturbing

01:34:43   So it's it's actually a really good balance and this is why when Tiff kind of floated the idea of whether I wanted mine

01:34:50   I basically said like yeah get me yours with the OLED screen

01:34:52   Because I've been playing on it for a year and it's been totally great as a laptop

01:34:58   Like it really does shock me how good it is. And that's mostly what we need. You know, I use an extra mouse

01:35:03   I use the Razer

01:35:05   the Mamba wireless

01:35:07   These names and it's just a basically, you know, two button thing. I I could even use a more basic one

01:35:13   I already killed one by right-clicking too much I guess or too hard. I don't know needs. Yeah, so

01:35:18   Killed a mouse over about eight months of Minecraft. I killed the right mouse button

01:35:23   so anyway, and I know as these things go I

01:35:28   Could have gotten better bang for the buck if I built a desktop myself

01:35:31   I could have gotten higher frame rates or lower temperatures or whatever if I built a whole desktop and I used to build desktops

01:35:37   I know that like I used to really enjoy that

01:35:40   but right now I'm at a point in my life where I wouldn't really enjoy that and I and I'm very happy to have the

01:35:45   self-contained

01:35:47   Complete thing of a laptop and not as a deal with a whole bunch of stuff. So anyway all that aside

01:35:52   Yeah, I'm very happy with this with this hardware

01:35:55   so

01:35:57   actually using windows and like having to set it up and make my own user account and

01:36:03   Sign in to the Microsoft Store and all you know all this crazy stuff

01:36:07   That was actually a really interesting experience because I have not

01:36:11   used Windows

01:36:14   Really much at all

01:36:16   Since Windows XP like that's that was the last version

01:36:19   I really used for more than you know trivial things here or there and so a lot of this stuff is pretty new to me

01:36:26   For the most part I was pretty happy with like the windows

01:36:30   Setup process, you know, this is running I guess but what is Windows 10 is the latest version whatever it is

01:36:35   It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be

01:36:37   Certain things have gotten better certain things haven't certain things are just papered over from the olden days and they're worse. They're just covered up

01:36:45   But it really wasn't that bad. It was totally so, you know, it was interesting. I was basically approaching it

01:36:51   almost the way

01:36:54   Like a regular non technical person would approach it because I don't know anything about windows anymore

01:36:59   Again, like in the last version I used was like, you know 15 20 years old

01:37:04   so, you know, it's it's been a while and

01:37:07   The way things are done now is a little bit different

01:37:10   I actually did have to kind of just like plow through and figure stuff out and

01:37:14   It really gave me some I think useful perspective that I haven't had in a long time of like, you know

01:37:19   What is Windows like what is it like to use it? What is it like to try to get stuff done on Windows?

01:37:24   um

01:37:25   One thing that made it very very easy to get set up there. Is that

01:37:29   Dropbox of course runs on Windows, but also so does one password

01:37:33   Mmm that made it so much easier to set up my stuff there because you know

01:37:39   I didn't obviously I'm not gonna move like my entire computing life onto Windows

01:37:42   Not only would most of it not be compatible, but you know, this is a gaming PC. That's that's what it's for

01:37:47   so I'm not gonna move over a bunch of stuff, but it was nice to be able to like

01:37:52   Set up one password and Dropbox and be able to transfer stuff back and forth

01:37:56   You know be able to log into the right accounts at the right times with you know

01:38:00   All the nice big long secure passwords stuff like that

01:38:03   It was actually really nice and surprisingly easy to get those things running and working

01:38:08   One of the biggest things that I hit was I really missed airdrop

01:38:13   Oh, yeah

01:38:14   We had I had the you know

01:38:16   The the old PC to you know, I had TIFF's PC and there there were a bunch of like Minecraft data files

01:38:22   They wanted to move from TIFF's PC to my new PC and like art. I have a laptop here

01:38:28   Four inches away. I have another laptop almost just like it. How do I move files from this to that?

01:38:36   And I could not figure out like I assume there was some kind of network way to do it. Just use just use SCP

01:38:45   Windows you may not know this but Windows has a Linux subsystem now, you can use SMB or you know

01:38:50   Type command K in the finder, right?

01:38:54   Isn't SMB and Microsoft protocol yes, yes, it's it's yeah, I was just thinking that like you were using Dropbox sync files

01:39:04   It's so strange that you have these two computers that are in the same house on the same network and the way you're transferring files

01:39:09   Is by passing them to a third-party company that stores them and you know data center somewhere

01:39:13   They come back to the other computer rather than they both speak SMB

01:39:17   It's the default in Mac OS and it's what Windows has used forever

01:39:20   If you knew the right incantations, you could simply network the two together via SMB and transfer files

01:39:26   But because you didn't right yeah Windows is like ffmpeg if you know the right incantation it can do a lot

01:39:31   Wow, I mean, I bet you can do it in my computer somewhere or whatever the hell but I don't know either because my computer

01:39:38   That I use Windows on is the same is my computer. So I never have to transfer the files anywhere

01:39:43   They're all either there or they're not

01:39:44   Yeah

01:39:45   so I ended up like I couldn't figure out how to do it in any reasonable way and

01:39:49   so I ended up doing it like the most like basic way possible I

01:39:53   I had an SD card and

01:39:56   I mean meanwhile TIFF's computer doesn't have an SD card slot mine does and

01:40:01   So I had to use my MacBook USB C SD card dongle

01:40:07   Plug at the SD card into the old computer copy the files onto it like a giant floppy disk

01:40:13   Unplug it plug it into mine copy them

01:40:15   You didn't have a USB thumb drive. No, what year is this? You gotta have thumb drives. Everyone's got thumb drives

01:40:22   I've you know, I was never a thumb drive person

01:40:24   I I mean I've had them here and there like that were like given to me by you know freebies from conferences and stuff

01:40:29   But I never used them. I never got into that lifestyle

01:40:33   Because like when they first were coming around I was very much still like a CD burning person and then in their later days

01:40:38   I would just use the internet to transfer stuff everywhere and then eventually SD cards got so cheap

01:40:43   You know that became a reasonable way to do it as well

01:40:45   but anyway

01:40:47   so

01:40:48   After I eventually got my files trim shit over I did get to play games and I learned

01:40:54   Why PC gamers don't like 4k screens? Oh, no. It's a lot of pixels

01:41:01   yeah, so first of all, the OLED is

01:41:04   Amazing looking like it is so it looks so awesome. I

01:41:10   I was just blown away how much better

01:41:14   The games look on the OLED compared to on the fairly mediocre LCD that the other one has

01:41:21   It's it's a massive upgrade in like just color contrast brightness

01:41:28   It has the glossy finish instead of because it's it's ducturing has the glossy finish instead of the like matte thing

01:41:33   And so it looks you know, just sharper and brighter. It looks amazing and when you run the games at 4k

01:41:41   They look amazing, too

01:41:43   It's like it's like upgrading to retina, you know, and and even in my blocky world of Minecraft

01:41:49   The edges are all really sharp now

01:41:51   Wow, you know every cube has a bunch of edges. It looks amazing

01:41:57   And I'm very happy with that. However

01:41:59   When you're running games at 4k, it makes it harder for the GPU to drive them quite a bit harder actually

01:42:07   the issue I had was when I

01:42:10   Started playing Minecraft that you know, it looked fantastic

01:42:14   But I noticed that when I would move the mouse to move myself or to look

01:42:18   It would like lag severely to the point

01:42:22   It was like delayed input almost to the point where it almost gave me motion sickness

01:42:26   Just like because it was like, you know, I would move the mouse and that would kind of

01:42:29   Then go over. I had to dive into the world of

01:42:34   trying to debug

01:42:36   Minecraft issues on Windows via web search and you live to tell the tale I

01:42:42   Do not recommend going into this world

01:42:45   It's everything you think it would be it's a whole bunch of like

01:42:48   You know forum posts from eight years ago from from total idiots who don't know what they're talking about

01:42:55   Or at least their information is extremely outdated a whole bunch of YouTube videos

01:42:59   That are the only information about Minecraft that's any good that you have you would watch and it's you know

01:43:06   Hey guys

01:43:08   So if you're having performance problems on my you know, it's just like oh god just get get to the point

01:43:13   it was awful trying to figure this out and

01:43:17   What they recommended once I got through all the hey guys was

01:43:23   You know your Windows gamer

01:43:25   Greatest hits so first upgrade your video drivers. Okay. How do I do that? I knew how to do it 15 years ago

01:43:32   How do I do it now?

01:43:33   I have this Nvidia control panel that I have to log into because downloading video drivers now requires a

01:43:39   Name and an email address and a whole account like I had to tell them video what my birthday was

01:43:44   I'm like you got to be kidding me. Those are the best the video card manufacturers install so much software on Windows

01:43:50   It's like we need an entire I know there's a whole bunch of

01:43:54   Screens and windows and the control panels and the display settings where you think you can control your video card

01:43:58   But you have no idea here is an entire

01:44:01   AMD ATI Nvidia app that includes

01:44:04   screen capture ability and the ability to change features in your video card with scary warnings next them telling you can destroy your screen if

01:44:12   You do what what I just want to change the resolution and it's just it's terrifying

01:44:17   I was a little a little concerned about and I might still be concerned about

01:44:21   OLED burn-in on a PC like, you know for games that's obviously a pretty big concern

01:44:26   My my OLED TV back home is indeed permanently burned in with the Minecraft heart bar

01:44:31   Because it was playing it on the switch on that TV for the entire quarantine

01:44:36   So, you know, that's that burn-in still there. We saw it last week. It's still there

01:44:42   And so I was worried about that but and I noticed one thing that that I assumed the built-in razor

01:44:47   Software that came pre-installed on this or something that is pre-installed on this

01:44:51   I noticed that no matter what I set it to if you set the start bar to like auto hide and show like auto raise and

01:44:59   Lower when you just like just like doc auto hiding if you set it to not auto hide and to always be there

01:45:04   Sometime later that day it will reset itself to auto hide

01:45:09   neat so I assume that some kind of you know stock software is

01:45:13   Permanently just gonna overwrite that setting over and over again to avoid burning in the start bar to the screen

01:45:18   Anyway

01:45:21   Interesting. So back to my you know, my minecraft thing. So I'm like looking on I upgrade the

01:45:27   graphics drivers and I try and everyone's like, oh well actually

01:45:31   if you have to, you know enable v-sync or disable v-sync and

01:45:37   yeah, it's just all this crap and and

01:45:39   It didn't make sense to me. Like why would I like why would I want to?

01:45:43   turn v-sync off

01:45:46   To fix a performance problem that seems like a bad idea because then it doesn't hold your frame

01:45:52   It starts drawing as soon as it's ready, even if the bottom half of the screen is still a previous frame

01:45:56   So it's PC gamers love to say tearing. I don't mind tearing

01:46:01   Just give me that next frame as soon as it's ready, and I think it's ridiculous, too

01:46:04   I always turn on v-sync but if you want the absolute maximum PC gamers just want to see the FPS number go up

01:46:09   So if you want the absolute maximum FPS number screen tearing who cares and that's that's solved by later technologies

01:46:15   But if you're watching older videos and you see these PC gamers saying always turn off v-sync because you get one more frame per second

01:46:21   I just can't get on that page. Yeah. So anyway, I did eventually fix it the fix was to

01:46:28   Not only it was basically do the opposite of everybody said not only

01:46:32   force v-sync on in the Nvidia control utility thing because the other problem is like

01:46:39   Minecraft we mostly play the bedrock edition that way we can play with the switch in the iPad and the family and the bedrock edition

01:46:45   Doesn't have a lot of graphical controls it would it runs itself at whatever

01:46:50   resolution Windows is currently running at so the full 4k and

01:46:54   It doesn't have any built-in like, you know disabled v-sync or any of that but in videos giant bloated control panel utility thing

01:47:02   Does have a way to say either for specific games or for everything?

01:47:06   Force these settings to override whatever the game says and so I was able to force v-sync on in that way and

01:47:14   Then I also some forum post recommended that you

01:47:19   Limit the frame rate that like you actually impose a frame rate limit

01:47:23   to 60 because the screen refresh rate anyway and doing those two things 60 frames a second lock and

01:47:30   v-sync forced on

01:47:32   Fix the problem because the GPU was trying to render a billion frames a second and it was doing it was

01:47:39   Overloading something or other and it was causing input lag basically and that instantly fixed the problem

01:47:43   Well, you're really sacrificing your responsiveness and the PV minecraft PvP by locking to 60. I just want you to know that

01:47:50   Yeah, right because for a 38 year old dad playing minecraft the real limitation is that extra?

01:47:56   What is it 16 milliseconds of it of my wrist my reaction time, right?

01:47:59   You really what you want for is the game to be to be computing faster that slightly faster than your refresh because that will help

01:48:06   Reduce your you know your input lag and the peekers advantage and it's really important to you in Minecraft. I'm sure yeah

01:48:12   Oh, yeah, totally. So anyway, I got it working. It was great. It looks incredible

01:48:16   I was just playing it yesterday with with Adam and it's just it's I'm having so much fun with it

01:48:23   I thought it was funny that

01:48:25   Within an hour of setting up my gaming PC. I hit a problem that required diving into video drivers and tweaking my

01:48:32   settings

01:48:34   You gotta be kidding me. It's still Windows. It's still gaming

01:48:38   It's still like all the crap that you have to put up with lots of it's all still there

01:48:42   I you know that stuff was all there 20 years ago

01:48:45   I thought maybe by now we would have gotten past some of it and no we haven't other otherwise

01:48:49   I tried the cool RTX ray tracing mode of Minecraft

01:48:53   Which I thought it would be like a setting you turn on it ends up

01:48:56   You can only do it like on certain maps that Nvidia made and I assume maybe like baked in the the light

01:49:01   Textures or whatever like whatever Sun

01:49:04   Position the map starts in it just stays there forever like the Sun you don't have the day/night cycle that you usually do

01:49:10   so like I'm playing one where it's like a sunset map and

01:49:13   it's like at dusk and it looks really cool and

01:49:17   the whole idea that

01:49:20   This computer can do

01:49:22   real time ray tracing

01:49:25   That as a casual observer to this world, but as enough of a geek to know what ray tracing is

01:49:33   I'm sure they're doing all sorts of hacks to reduce the amount of work they have to do but my god, that's incredible

01:49:39   because I remember like back in my first computer, it was a 486 and

01:49:44   I downloaded some you know ray tracing renderer program

01:49:48   And I remember like setting up a scene and hitting render you'd have to let it go like overnight

01:49:53   To render a frame one just to render a still picture

01:49:58   with ray tracing lighting this program had to run all night long for one picture and

01:50:05   the idea

01:50:07   That I can play this full 3d game

01:50:10   with live

01:50:12   Ray tracing and again, I'm sure there's tricks and hacks and work reductions in place here. It is very asterisk asterisk on that

01:50:19   Yes, it's not it's it's it's a little bit of extra ray tracing special sauce thrown on top of a raster engine still

01:50:26   It looked amazing and to see all those real-time lighting effects and everything

01:50:30   My god

01:50:32   Even though like playing it as Minecraft that way is really weird because you know things like torches don't really work

01:50:39   Because they generate shadows and so like you need way more torches than before

01:50:44   So it's you know as it as like a fun game playing thing

01:50:49   it's not so fun because it makes a lot of things about the game not work as well because the game wasn't designed for that but

01:50:55   As a amazing tech demo, I was so happy to see it. Like it just it made me almost giddy

01:51:01   Just like wow, I can't believe hardware is so advanced that it can do this these days. It really was incredible

01:51:09   I

01:51:10   Also in addition to playing the a ten-year-old game. I tried to play a whole bunch of 20 year old games

01:51:15   of course

01:51:18   And by the way, yes, I know everybody I know there's a whole bunch of new games

01:51:21   I should be playing and I'll get there in time. Really. I will maybe maybe not but

01:51:26   Ultimately, if all I ever play on this is Minecraft

01:51:30   It's worth it because we play that much Minecraft as a family and I get that much enjoyment out of it. But anyway

01:51:36   I also thought hey, there's all these old games from you know, my old PC days that I would love to play

01:51:41   Let's see how many of them work

01:51:43   it was not as many as I would have guessed and the great thing is, you know, you can go on Steam or GOG and

01:51:49   Download a lot of these old games for like two dollars like the end of the total illegally

01:51:54   I think you know just they're just really cheap because they're so old but it was I

01:51:58   Had a lot of issues like I couldn't get total annihilation, which is my favorite game like of all time back then

01:52:04   I couldn't get total annihilation to

01:52:06   Work correctly like it works a little but it has some issues that make it pretty hard to play

01:52:12   The best way best way to play old games like that is the same way you play them on a Mac or on Intel Mac

01:52:18   VMs virtual machines like that's yeah

01:52:20   I was gonna ask about that

01:52:21   once you get to a certain age and there's no like this there's no steam version or the GOG version is weird like just

01:52:27   Just do the thing like you had get a VM put Windows 95 on it and go to town and that will work and you won't

01:52:33   Have any performance problems. So yeah, yeah

01:52:36   I think I think I might do that because like it seemed like they were not working for you know

01:52:40   Just software glitchy reasons, you know

01:52:42   They these games that were like it's funny the ones that so, you know in the concept of like, you know

01:52:47   the game rendering engine thing if

01:52:49   the game uses what used to be called a full screen mode the the game takes over the screen and

01:52:57   Sets the screen to whatever resolution the game wants to set it to anything that works that way

01:53:03   you

01:53:04   mostly worked fine still

01:53:06   the problem is games that that would like render basically as a window and

01:53:10   And let windows render over them sometimes or or you know

01:53:15   Just take whatever resolution the PC ran at like those games often seem to not work as well

01:53:20   Also just certain games that were just even very like kind of extra old

01:53:25   Like I tried running the the very first version of worms, which is a DOS game

01:53:30   But I like it better than many of the newer ones

01:53:33   um

01:53:34   worms man what talk about like losing the franchise like worms started out so good and

01:53:40   I'd say after about worms world party or so

01:53:44   Really lost its way

01:53:47   once it went it went 3d which was terrible and then after 3d it came back to 2d and just had all this like

01:53:54   Mania on screen constantly. It was it was it's not a good scene, but old worms was really fun

01:54:01   So I wanted to play some of those old games and couldn't get a lot of those to work

01:54:05   As I mentioned ta had issues SimCity

01:54:09   3004 both work great. I was right. I don't really enjoy for that much, but I do enjoy SimCity 3000

01:54:17   So that was that was kind of fun as Casey knows

01:54:20   I was always a big fan as he was of transport tycoon and of course there it is, of course open ttd works great

01:54:27   But it also works great on Macs and Linux

01:54:29   So I did play a little bit of transport tycoon

01:54:32   But again, I could have done that on my Mac one thing that was a nice surprise is

01:54:35   This wonderful game that I love a lot that I believe was once named the best game. Nobody played of 2002

01:54:42   moon-based commander

01:54:45   This is it's exactly what it's what the award sounds like. It's it's a game that was like pretty under the radar

01:54:50   Didn't sell a lot of copies

01:54:53   My friend found it in a discount bin at like a software store back when those were a thing for like five bucks

01:54:59   and

01:55:00   We played it and it's actually a really good game. It's it's a turn-based kind of top-down artillery

01:55:06   Game and it's I love that game. It's so much fun. I installed that I played a little bit Adam saw me play that

01:55:12   He got super into it and then the whole rest of the trip, you know

01:55:16   In the same way that I had taken over tips gaming PC the year before

01:55:19   Adams had taken over my gaming PC to play moon-based commander

01:55:22   It was this it was a wonderful experience to have you know

01:55:26   All these all these old all this old nostalgia that was so readily available

01:55:30   Ran so well

01:55:32   Obviously, you know moon-based commander is a DirectX 8 game and even that was a stretch only to make like the little ripple effect with it

01:55:38   with a pixel shader

01:55:40   Anyway, so had a lot of fun. It was it was a wonderful

01:55:43   Present it was a wonderful diversion

01:55:45   I think Christmas is a great time for video gaming for people who don't play a lot of games the rest of the year

01:55:51   Because like, you know, you can't you don't have a lot else to do everyone's kind of home. They're family together

01:55:55   It could be like a fun thing

01:55:57   so I had a lot of fun and

01:55:59   Haven't done a lot of the old games since I got back

01:56:02   But we have played minecraft on it and it's it runs it perfectly and it's again the screen is awesome

01:56:08   Haven't touched the touch screen once

01:56:11   At least not not, you know, not as an input method. I have found that

01:56:15   Whenever I want to like brush a piece of dust off the screen it interprets that as a touch

01:56:20   So I think Gruber might be right about touch screens

01:56:25   Now that now that I have one like oh, yeah, I don't I don't I mean granted

01:56:29   I'm not using it to get any work done. So I'm not like, you know browsing documents or anything, but I

01:56:33   Guess I don't really actually need touch screens on my laptop turns out. Otherwise, like it's a fantastic piece of hardware. It is exactly

01:56:42   what I want and need for my

01:56:45   very specific and limited and casual gaming needs

01:56:49   And it's great and I it's it's a great gift and I never would have guessed in a million years that I would

01:56:55   have a gaming laptop, but here we are and

01:56:59   I'm really happy with it. It makes you happy. It makes you happy. What about flights at flight simulator?

01:57:05   Oh, I haven't actually installed it yet

01:57:06   But that's next on my list

01:57:08   But then the new one where you can fly around like the real world maps because that's the that's the new PC gaming crusher

01:57:13   In terms of like no matter how big a gaming PC you have you can turn the settings up high enough to make your computer

01:57:19   Cry. Yeah, and and look I don't care like I know I'm not gonna able to run everything at max. I don't care

01:57:24   I actually don't care about flight simulation at all

01:57:27   I just think it would be cool to fly through these real places in the world with that map data

01:57:32   Like that's what I want to do. It's not about like I don't care about the planes

01:57:36   It's all about the weather effects. The plane models are amazing

01:57:39   And I think you'll be impressed by especially the interior but also the exterior of the planes

01:57:42   They do look amazing, but the weather effects they put into this game, which I think are also driven by real-time stuff

01:57:47   But they look amazing. So you'll be able to appreciate that at least even if it's at a slower frame rate

01:57:53   Yeah, I almost bought it

01:57:55   But it's like there's like six different additions and I don't know what addition I need

01:57:59   So I just gave up and didn't buy anything. I figured I'd research it later

01:58:02   You can get destiny for that gaming PC just FYI. Oh god, or I could not

01:58:06   There it is. You can use your fancy Razer gaming mouse for a game where it might actually have some actual influence

01:58:13   Now so this is this is this is the thing like everyone who's gonna recommend that I check out certain games

01:58:18   I really appreciate that. Here's the thing though. I really have no interest in first-person shooters

01:58:23   I just don't I know but you will as as soon as Adam switches from Minecraft to fortnight

01:58:28   Which is coming sooner than you think you better start honing those skills

01:58:31   Keep playing with them. I have like, you know political opinions about

01:58:35   it's being kind of a poor taste to play shooting games, but I

01:58:40   Just I don't care like I did like when I was a teenager and a young adult

01:58:44   I didn't play lots of first-person shooters and and yes, you know, it didn't make me a violent person ever

01:58:49   But still like I played a lot of them back then and I turned out well, I turned out like this

01:58:54   I don't know if I turn out. Okay, I

01:58:56   Turned out like this, but I just now I do not have any desire to play games where I'm shooting people

01:59:03   I just don't and even if it's like oh, it's it's a fun a fun way to shoot people

01:59:07   Yeah, I don't it's not for me if it's for you fine. It's not for me. It's gonna be for Adam

01:59:12   I'm saying if you want to keep playing with them. Yeah, some someday I'm going to lose him into that world

01:59:17   I know, you know, he's he's a he's a video game kid. Like it's gonna happen

01:59:20   It's coming sooner than you think because he's so acclimated to video games

01:59:24   His fortnight transition will happen earlier than other kids. I know I know

01:59:27   It's like puberty like you know, you don't want like, you know, he he still has his cute kid games

01:59:31   I want to keep it at that as long as we can. He doesn't play PvP in Minecraft

01:59:36   He tells me what I want to hear

01:59:38   Because we've we've expressed to him our stance like we really don't want him playing games where he's killing other players

01:59:44   Like if he's you know competing in other ways or building co-op stuff, that's great

01:59:49   We really don't want to play in games where he's killing other players and they're killing him and should think back to your childhood playing

01:59:54   First-person shooters and how you would have reacted if your parents said that to you. Yeah, I mean and and I know that he does

02:00:00   Kind of secretly do that like when we aren't looking I know

02:00:04   You know, I know he's playing on servers with that and and whenever we ask him like hey you killing players

02:00:08   He'll be like, well not exactly, you know

02:00:11   He'll kind of like soften it because he knows we don't really want him to be doing that

02:00:15   But we also don't feel so strongly about that. We would actually police that and actually enforce that

02:00:21   so we all kind of have like a like a we're gonna pretend like you're not doing that too much and

02:00:27   you're gonna pretend like when you are doing it that you're not and

02:00:31   The result is you know, I don't like it and you don't do it that often and so that's kind of a good result for me

02:00:37   I don't think I do worry about too much

02:00:40   like it's what I would have told my parents if they had to complain about this when I was a kid is that like it's I

02:00:45   Know it manifests itself and in a way that looks like it has some connection to the real world

02:00:51   But the closest analogy is to like freeze tag

02:00:53   Because there's no consequences and it is just a competitive way to run around and essentially tag

02:00:59   You're it only the tags are projectiles that may or may not look like bullets. I also find distasteful the

02:01:04   Realistic sort of military simulation where it's actual guns from the real world and that's part of the whole thing or whatever

02:01:11   But in the end all those competitive online games are are much more analogous to sports than they are having to do anything with

02:01:18   Actual guns and honestly, I would rather someone play with

02:01:22   virtual

02:01:24   Photorealistic guns than real ones any day. So I'm sure you don't have anything to worry about but you know kids

02:01:29   like

02:01:30   Probably less so than most adults do like the competitive aspect of it

02:01:33   Just like the same reason kids like to play freeze tag and tag your rid and run away from each other and have competitions

02:01:37   It's just part of it's just natural part of play only it's happening on the computer

02:01:41   So, you know, I think you should dive into that with him

02:01:44   If only so he can beat you and you can feel the pride slash shame of your own offspring being better at something

02:01:49   Yeah, that's I know that time is coming but yeah and I also I also do recognize that you know

02:01:58   The that video game violence is kind of a continuum and you know, there's like there's over over on one side

02:02:04   There's like the Call of Duty or like and I I'm not I'm super not into that either for myself or for him

02:02:11   and fortunately he's he's not been exposed to that and I

02:02:14   Think it's gonna be a while before before that's permitted. I mean fortnight is pretty cartoony like in that spectrum, you know, they're

02:02:20   Avatars to do funny dances and have costumes and yes, they use semi-realized looking guns

02:02:25   But the entire game looks like a cel-shaded cartoon and is on its face very ridiculous. I

02:02:29   Actually didn't know that I don't know anything about fortnight

02:02:32   So that's actually good to know because I again like I know the time is coming soon

02:02:36   Like he already has some of his some of his classmates in school play it already in third grade

02:02:42   So I know the time is coming

02:02:45   but you know again like there is that continuum and like the the like, you know,

02:02:50   Realistic military shooters with real guns that I'm super not into and then if it's more like, you know

02:02:56   And then on the other side is like Splatoon or battle Tetris

02:02:58   We're seeing competitive Tetris for your you play that remember those the two-player versions

02:03:04   I did I did it like on my graphing calculator and in high school like I would run the little headphone cable

02:03:11   Yeah, if you get a line on your side, it puts junk on the other person's side. It's basically it's competitive two-player Tetris. Mm-hmm

02:03:16   Yeah, it's yeah, we're hitting people with bullets. Anyway, yeah, I don't I

02:03:22   Again, I know that time is coming

02:03:25   I'm just trying to last as long as possible in the wonderful world of like let's build things, you know

02:03:29   or the things that you kill they're like

02:03:31   Square ghosts like that's fine. Like I don't care too much about that

02:03:35   You know, it's it got to take what you can get and meanwhile TIFF is over on the the giant television screen slicing people's necks

02:03:42   Oh, but I supposedly when he's not awake. I suppose no. Oh, yeah, like she couldn't play that the last oh

02:03:47   So she could not play that game with like she would do it while he was at school

02:03:50   Which was its own adventure in like dark scenes in a light room

02:03:55   She had to play it downstairs

02:03:58   just

02:03:59   She needs to come over to the gaming monitor lifestyle where my my console was connected to a monitor

02:04:06   Just like my computer and a much more controlled environment than my television has many advantages

02:04:10   Yeah, maybe I guess maybe we'll have some PC monitors in the house pretty soon. She use the LG 5k after next week

02:04:16   Anyway, thanks to our sponsors this week flat file Linode and Squarespace and thank you to our members who support us directly

02:04:26   You too can become one of these members at ATP FM slash join. Thank you everybody and we will talk to you next week

02:04:36   Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

02:04:42   It was accidental

02:04:45   John did any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental

02:04:53   Was accidental

02:04:56   And you can find the show notes at ATP

02:05:00   FM and if you're into Twitter

02:05:05   You can follow them at

02:05:07   Cas

02:05:09   ey l

02:05:10   Iss so that's Casey lists ma RC o a RM

02:05:15   anti Marco Arman

02:05:18   SIR AC

02:05:20   USA, Syracuse

02:05:23   It's accidental

02:05:25   All right, so I have news

02:05:37   Let me tell you my news by

02:05:40   telling a story when I went to college at Virginia Tech and

02:05:45   This was in the fall of 2000 and one day

02:05:50   I don't know a few weeks after I arrived I got an email for my dad, which was not

02:05:54   unusual and the subject line was new lists

02:05:59   Which was unusual?

02:06:01   And I opened this email. I'll never forget this. I opened and I opened this email. There's a picture of a dog

02:06:06   Then that's it. That's the email. It's a picture of a standard poodle and the subject line is new lists

02:06:12   so naturally I call my dad and say

02:06:14   What's going on here? And in so many words, he basically said well, we've replaced you with a dog

02:06:20   Meet Molly

02:06:22   Okay, then. I mean at least it's less jarring than like if it was actually like you have a new baby brother. Yeah, that's true

02:06:28   That's very true. Your dad didn't say new dog who lists

02:06:31   Wow

02:06:34   It was it was a bit a bit before that was a popular thing

02:06:38   I'm given that this was the fall of 2000 but still well done. I still award you full points

02:06:42   So we have a new dog. We have a new list

02:06:45   Early, I don't know early ish in quarantine Aaron started needling me about hey, you know, we should get a dog

02:06:52   we're gonna be home all the time for

02:06:54   Forever so and we're actually truth be told we're home all the time. Anyway, so

02:06:59   We should get a dog and I said to her absolutely not and then after months and months and months of this I said well fine

02:07:07   Okay

02:07:09   If we can get a dog that doesn't shed that is going to be small ish

02:07:13   I'm thinking maybe a little bit bigger than hops but like not not necessarily a full-on daisy size

02:07:18   Small ish doesn't shed and I don't want a frickin puppy. I don't want to do the housebreaking thing

02:07:24   I'm over it don't I don't you know, even though Aaron did most of the work for both the kids

02:07:28   We just you know, I almost had house broken. He just potty trained

02:07:32   Michaela this past March I don't do it again. So let's do not a puppy doesn't shed not too big

02:07:40   We have adopted and we have adopted a rescue who is a puppy. She is what like ten weeks old now

02:07:46   She'll probably be anywhere between 40 and 75 pounds and she is a sharp a lab mix that will almost certainly shed

02:07:53   So I've failed every measure on my three requirements

02:07:57   But here we as I said to Casey when this was going on slash when it already happened

02:08:02   This is a political lesson here

02:08:03   Which is that you have to engage with the process because if your only position is no dog no dog

02:08:08   No dog the process happens without you and it seems like the process did happen without you the process of selecting a dog finding out

02:08:13   Where you're gonna get it from?

02:08:14   Deciding that dog is super cute

02:08:16   You need to get that one that happened all while you were saying no dog

02:08:19   And so by the time the decision was made you no longer had time to put an input

02:08:24   So you should recognize earlier on when your family is going to get a dog whether you like it or not

02:08:28   And work within the system to try to get a dog that fulfills your criteria. Maybe next dog you can do that

02:08:33   Yeah, Oh God, please no. So yeah, so the backstory which I'll try to make brief

02:08:38   Aaron's best friend from college. Her name is Dorothy and Dorothy's husband Daniel. They foster dogs and

02:08:45   Now this particular dog whom we've named penny

02:08:48   Penny was part of litter where both the parents passed away

02:08:53   Right after penny was born and so our friends Dorothy and Daniel

02:08:58   They literally nursed penny and I think she had three sisters if I'm not mistaken

02:09:03   Um penny and her sisters back to health or not even back to help but to health to health. Yeah, exactly

02:09:09   so

02:09:12   As this is happening

02:09:14   Dorothy and Daniel particularly Dorothy were saying to us, you know, you know

02:09:18   This is this is a good dog

02:09:22   I'm telling you this is a good dog, which probably sounds preposterous and I and I can see that it probably sounds preposterous

02:09:29   Well, it's just one of those things like you expect that they would always like it's it's all highway miles

02:09:32   I

02:09:34   Would always say it's everybody what are they gonna say that this this adorable puppy is bad

02:09:39   It's very don't usually you don't find no this for this puppy is a bad seed

02:09:45   It came out and immediately I could see it was a terrible dog. No all puppies are precious and beautiful

02:09:49   Yeah, exactly. So but they I think what's reading through the lines what they were saying was, you know

02:09:54   This is a pretty well-tempered dog who seems to be pretty chill and isn't exceedingly hyper and I'm not saying

02:10:02   Hyper dogs are bad. I am saying hyper dogs are not for the Casey list family. That's just not our speed

02:10:09   I think something more in the vicinity of a hops is closer to our speed and I don't mean that in a disparaging way at

02:10:16   All obviously, I think that you know having having a dog that doesn't need to be walked for you know

02:10:22   Five hours a day is definitely more our speed

02:10:25   Oh, yeah

02:10:25   Like the general like advice on this point is like to get a dog that matches your energy level and activity level

02:10:32   like and so for that's different for everybody, you know, like some people have

02:10:35   You know a small apartment and they can't they don't they don't have like a lot of time to go out on big walks and everything

02:10:42   and so like you should probably get a low-energy dog in that context and probably a smaller one or

02:10:47   And you know, some people have like a lot of land and they're on a farm and they need like a working dog

02:10:51   Probably shouldn't get hops for that one

02:10:53   Like that's not a good match and and so, you know get a dog that matches your energy level whether it is

02:10:59   You know a border collie to run around a farm all day or a hops to sit on a rug and be a rug himself

02:11:04   Exactly, I mean obviously it's a bit early to know where penny will end up but

02:11:11   You know based on our friends who have fostered many dogs

02:11:16   They they have they had four and ended up adopting they what do they call they foster failed?

02:11:21   they

02:11:24   Adopting one of pennies sisters so they will have five dogs now

02:11:28   I trust their judgment and you know, we talked about this on the as yet released

02:11:32   Analog that'll be coming out the Sunday Mike and I talked about this and if you'll permit me another quick sidetrack

02:11:38   When Declan was born our OB did not deliver him

02:11:42   It was the middle of the night and she was you know off-duty and asleep or whatever

02:11:44   When she came in the following morning and Declan was like six months old and six months cheese six hours old

02:11:50   So she comes in she picks him up and she's holding him for a minute. She's wow. This is a chill, baby

02:11:55   I looked at her. I'm like you freaking crazy lady. What do you mean? There? I did it again. Hi Marco. I

02:12:01   Looked at her. I was like are you bananas lady? Like what do you mean? This is a chill baby?

02:12:06   He's six hours old. What is that? What but as it turns out, I mean not every not every kid is exactly the same

02:12:14   And Declan definitely has his own chill moments, but he's a relatively chill kid

02:12:19   and so

02:12:21   based on that one piece of anecdotal I've now decided that sometimes you can tell a

02:12:25   Person or animals disposition based on how they are as infants. That's probably wrong, but that's what I'm telling myself. It's not and so

02:12:33   So, you know Dorothy and Daniel say no, this is a really chill dog. And I think it's it's a good fit for you guys

02:12:40   And then they start sending pictures and oh god, it was all downhill from there

02:12:44   and so next thing I know I'm driving to Bethesda Bethesda making a day trip up and back to pick up this dog and

02:12:50   We brought her home and so far mostly so good as it turns out

02:12:56   She's a little bit ill

02:12:59   She was on some antibiotics for some things and we thought that was already licked by the time

02:13:04   We picked her up and it turns out not so much

02:13:06   So she's still on some meds and and that's made for increased amount of accidents inside

02:13:12   She's done very well with what I keep calling potty training

02:13:16   But I really mean housebreaking and she's gotten to the point that normally but not always she'll sit by the particular door

02:13:22   We use to take her out to pee

02:13:24   And so she seems to be self-aware enough to say I need to pee and I'm gonna sit at the door that you will take

02:13:30   Me to pee which is great. But obviously accidents are still happening and

02:13:34   You know one of the one of the things with her sick is she has a urinary tract infection

02:13:38   And so that obviously makes her have difficulty with it and need to go more often and so on and so forth. So

02:13:44   That's been going okay

02:13:46   Turns out puppies like to nip and bite a lot, which is fine for an adult but harder to explain to a

02:13:53   You know a kindergartner and a toddler it we're trying to curb that as best we can

02:13:58   And it's just it's been wonderful, especially

02:14:02   Especially today as I'm listening to our country falling apart having this nice little bundle of fluff on my lap did make things a little

02:14:10   More palatable, which was great. Oh

02:14:12   We've got that going for us and the kids all in all are completely in love Aaron and I are completely in love

02:14:17   It's also been funny watching penny

02:14:19   Watching penny

02:14:22   Establish her own roles for us. So what I mean by that is when she's interested in like playtime. She'll come over to me

02:14:30   but if she's interested in rest time, she's going to Aaron's lap and

02:14:34   Oftentimes like if she's on my lap out of desperation because Aaron isn't around, you know

02:14:39   She's in a different room or whatever and then Aaron shows up. She is running right over to mama

02:14:43   So she can sleep in her in slap, which is both adorable and very frustrating

02:14:47   but I'll tell you that's one of the best things you can do with the puppy and

02:14:50   You may be a mentalist based on your sleepy shirt

02:14:53   productions

02:14:55   To start having a nap time because puppies love to sleep a lot because they're like little babies, right?

02:15:00   Right, and I remember when I first got Daisy and she was a puppy and I was on sabbatical from work

02:15:04   We would have nap time every day where I would lay down and put Daisy on my chest and we would just sleep for a certain

02:15:10   Period of time and if you can get into that routine

02:15:12   You get to have a nap and the dog gets to have a nap and you get to have a nap with the dog

02:15:17   In your chest and it's I highly recommend it eventually like kids

02:15:19   They kind of grow out of that nap or if they're 75 pounds

02:15:22   You're not gonna want a 75 pound dog in your chest, but enjoy all you can. Yeah. Yeah, that's very true

02:15:28   The only problem with that though is that we are currently a no dog in the bed family

02:15:32   We are also currently a no dog on the couch family

02:15:35   I think we'll stick with the no, I think we're going to stick with no dog on the bed

02:15:40   I don't think we're going to stick with no kid. No dog on the couch. Here's what I recommend for the bed stuff

02:15:44   I held the line on the bed thing for a long time for my first dog

02:15:47   I didn't hold the line at all

02:15:48   It was dogs in the bed and that taught me that this is a line potentially worth holding

02:15:54   I couldn't hold it for that long

02:15:56   We last like three years with Daisy, but here's where I draw the line dog can be on the bed

02:16:00   But because I held the line with Daisy from the time that she was a puppy until she was about three

02:16:05   Dog doesn't sleep the night on the bed. There's a difference, right?

02:16:10   So if the dog thinks this is where I sleep for the night, you've got problems

02:16:14   But if you have a dog bed eventually you get a place where the dog goes make that the dog's bed

02:16:18   Now we are in the best of both worlds, which is we invite Daisy up on the bed

02:16:22   And she hangs out with us all night

02:16:24   But then when it comes time for us to go to sleep

02:16:26   She goes to her dog bed and we are in our people bed and I don't have to be

02:16:30   Kicked in the ribs by a sideways 40-pound dog all night long

02:16:33   Exactly, and that's why I think I really think we'll come back to this and somewhere between a couple months and a couple years

02:16:41   I really think we're gonna hold strong on the no bed thing. You won't it'll be fine. I am

02:16:45   Extremely extremely not confident that we were going to hold strong on the no couch thing

02:16:50   I think we're probably going to cave within weeks. Yeah. Yeah the couch thing

02:16:54   I mean you can how you can have a dog couch and a people couch is one way to deal with that and then the people

02:16:58   Just end up on the dog couch. If you have nice furniture and you have a dog

02:17:01   It's kind of like having nice furniture and having kids. It's like, okay. Well, you know, there is a it's like the severe weather

02:17:08   Maintenance guide for your car if you live in New England or whatever

02:17:12   Yeah, kids are kids and or pets change the lifetime of your furniture. Let's say even if you don't let them on

02:17:20   So just accept that and you know be okay with the idea that when next time you buy a sofa you're like well

02:17:27   Should we get the super expensive sofa knowing that there's gonna be a dog on it or you know?

02:17:33   I think the benefits of snuggling with a dog especially in the winter time on a sofa outweigh the

02:17:38   Downsides of your dog slowly destroying yourself. Oh, yeah

02:17:41   I mean the whole point of having a dog is to like sit there and pet the dog all day like that's fun

02:17:45   It's and you know, you have this little buddy that you can you know

02:17:48   You can go on walks with and they can keep you company and they're basically like little love batteries

02:17:53   You fill them with love they give it back. It's wonderful. So are they love capacitors then? Oh, maybe well

02:17:58   You got a charge of battery. Yeah fair enough fair enough in any case

02:18:02   So yeah, I don't think we're gonna hold strong on the couch

02:18:03   It's not that we have particularly nice couches

02:18:05   in fact, our couches are falling apart because we've had them for like 10 plus years and now two children and and

02:18:10   They're just old in and I think we'll replace them sometime in the next couple of years

02:18:16   So it's not because we have fancy nice couches. It's just that I have a feeling

02:18:21   And I learned this with Declan like what what mom and dad think is a one-time thing like sure Declan

02:18:27   I'll let you have this french fry just once

02:18:29   It's never just a one-time thing with the kids and I'm assuming the dog will be the same way

02:18:33   so that's the number one piece of advice I can give you is

02:18:37   To try to avoid like the begging behaviors by realizing that like just never

02:18:45   Let the dogs begging

02:18:47   Result in food or you know, like a food reward from any place that you don't want to forever be doing that

02:18:54   So like like what most people do like right before we got our dog

02:18:58   We had a dog elsewhere in the family. That was pretty annoying at begging at the table

02:19:03   and so we made a rule with hops like

02:19:06   Not only are we never going to feed him from the table, but no one else is ever gonna feed him from a table either

02:19:14   That's no one ever like it's never gonna be a thing and as a result hops doesn't beg at the table and it's wonderful

02:19:20   Meanwhile, like, you know if things like a few things that have resulted in getting food like, you know, if I stand near the fridge

02:19:29   Yeah, he's gonna start poking my leg. It's really cute. He doesn't make any noise

02:19:32   He just like pokes his nose onto my leg as if he's like tapping me like tap tap tap. It's so cute

02:19:37   because sometimes I give him carrots out of the fridge and

02:19:42   Therefore like it's just a thing like that's that's something that happens. Like we have some other family members

02:19:48   Who for their dogs?

02:19:51   They basically come over and beg at the table then the person to avoid giving the dog food from the table

02:19:57   Gets up walk to the kitchen and hands them food and like, okay

02:20:02   Well that whole charade doesn't matter

02:20:04   All that matters is cause and effect and the whole time they're saying like nether season from the table and they're trying to explain the dog

02:20:10   With words like now don't expect this every time. Yep. The reality is dogs don't care about your words

02:20:17   they don't understand most of them and any cause and effect they'll remember and so if them begging at the table

02:20:23   Resulted in them getting food, even if it's through a bunch of indirect steps, that doesn't matter

02:20:29   They're gonna keep doing it because it still resulted in the right result

02:20:33   And so like and yeah, this does apply to kids as well, by the way, as you noted

02:20:36   But yes, like just keep that in mind like whatever whatever results in the reward

02:20:41   they will remember and they will and it will be reinforced in their mind the more you do it and then like those habits are

02:20:47   Incredibly easy to accidentally develop and incredibly hard to ever break once they're developed the coral the coral

02:20:55   I do this though is even if there's something you never do like, oh, we never let the dog on the couch

02:20:59   Well, do you ever leave the house because unlike bed being on the couch is something the dog can do by itself

02:21:06   So if your security cameras do this one of the things you can see it's like we never let the dog on the couch

02:21:10   All right, so leave the house for a few hours and look in security camera find out where the dog is

02:21:13   Guess what on the count?

02:21:15   No, I mean the dog you're gonna lose the couch thing instantly is just accept it now like because you know also

02:21:21   You know you you don't want to send the wrong message

02:21:24   like it's their house - they live there - and

02:21:28   All they want to do is be with you

02:21:30   Yeah, and so if you start sending confusing messages like well you can be with me except when I'm sitting on this thing

02:21:35   Which you desperately want to jump up and sit next to me

02:21:38   But you aren't allowed for arbitrary reasons like they they don't you can't explain to them

02:21:42   Why something is the way it is?

02:21:44   So it's easier to just be to have things be much more consistent and simple for them in the rules

02:21:49   And by the way, man, I wonder if we're gonna get horrible feedback about all this like dog advice

02:21:53   Oh boy, but anyway on as for the bed. My solution is much simpler than than John's

02:21:59   I don't know if it will work for a larger dog

02:22:01   But my solution is to just overheat my dog until he leaves if I want the bed to myself

02:22:05   and so you know because he always starts out in the bed, and he has a dog bed that he loves and

02:22:10   Most nights he starts out in the bed and then within the first half hour of us being there

02:22:16   He will usually jump down into the dog bed because I will start like petting him with my feet

02:22:21   Putting my leg up against his back so and so it makes them all hot and eventually gets up and leaves

02:22:26   Yeah, it depends on the dog like you what you really don't want the reason you don't want the dog in the bed is not

02:22:30   Because you're mean it's because especially if you have a larger dog

02:22:33   It's uncomfortable for everybody because dogs are not polite they just they will lay sideways between

02:22:38   The two people and be in the most awkward position and just be annoying and you would think some dogs like you know

02:22:44   Like cops apparently. Oh if you poke them with your feet or whatever. They're like full forget this

02:22:48   I'm not I'm tired of being poked by these feet

02:22:50   I'm out here or they'll get too hot or whatever

02:22:52   But really what you want is for the bed situation

02:22:55   Is to make them want to be in their bed as their most secure place to sleep because it's more comfortable for them, too

02:23:00   And I don't know this is what just what we did with Daisy

02:23:03   I don't know if this is what you have to do

02:23:04   But we didn't let her on the bed at all for years and then when we finally did let her up

02:23:08   It's just exciting snuggle time before bed, but when it's like okay lights out everyone goes to bed

02:23:13   She goes right to her dog, but she doesn't want to be on there. She's like well if it's bedtime

02:23:16   I'm going to my dog

02:23:17   But even if she's been snoozing with us on the bed while we've just been looking at her iPads or watching a TV show for like

02:23:23   Hours it's like when it's bedtime

02:23:24   She goes to her bed, and that's the best of all possible worlds because we get to snuggle with the dog

02:23:29   Especially in the winter months when it's cold we get all the dogs not we want and then we need to go to bed

02:23:33   She goes to her bed, and we stay in ours

02:23:35   I'm surprised there's enough room in your bed for you

02:23:39   Tina the dog and your 35 layers of pajamas during the winter time and and my and my big down comforter

02:23:47   And and one or more of my children who may be flopping on the bed at that time usually to try to pet the dog

02:23:53   That's also on the bed

02:23:55   It's a crowd

02:23:57   So anyway, so it's it is going pretty well so far like

02:24:00   I'm obviously very sad for her that she's ill

02:24:04   But where we have her on meds it coincidentally

02:24:07   she's on what smells and appears to be it isn't amoxicillin, but smells and appears to be what I would used to call bubblegum medicine and

02:24:14   Turns out maybe you two knew this, but I didn't know this it turns out when that prescription was called in

02:24:19   It was called into a human pharmacy. Oh, yeah, because I did not expect that and again

02:24:24   Maybe it's this is obvious to any dog owner, but I've never owned a dog before we had dogs when we were kids

02:24:29   But they weren't my dogs. They were the family dogs, which means they were mom and dad's dogs

02:24:32   And so I was talking to the vet and she said oh, yeah, you know

02:24:35   I'm gonna have to call in such-and-such prescription to help with with pennies issue

02:24:39   Where is your pharmacy and I'm like well

02:24:42   What do you mean like for for people and she said yeah? Yeah what and turns out that's the thing who knew?

02:24:48   Yeah, it was like a lot of dog medicines are the same as you medicines just like different doses or different from you know

02:24:53   Different packaging around them or the different forms they take but you know like things like antibiotics and steroids and stuff like that

02:24:59   Like, you know commonly things for dogs. It's it's usually like it's very a lot of times. It's very similar to what humans get

02:25:06   Although I've never had that in particular like a human because like my vet is also a pharmacy

02:25:11   I don't know if that's like a see that's what I had thought was going to happen

02:25:14   And apparently the particular vet we ended up choosing that I guess that doesn't happen like they had given us

02:25:19   And they didn't know what the particular issue was at first and they had given us a moxazone at first

02:25:23   And that they just grabbed from like their fridge and so I assume they have like the basic array of things there

02:25:29   But whatever this it isn't a moxazone, but it's something vaguely similar that that got prescribed

02:25:33   I don't remember what it was and that I had to go to a Walgreens for which which is funny

02:25:37   It was especially funny when the the gentleman on the other side of the drive-through window says this is for penny Casey lists

02:25:43   because

02:25:44   Put in penny - Casey lists. I mean while I'm at this topic, by the way, you do not have to although

02:25:51   I'm sure you already have you do not have to email me and point out that her name is penniless

02:25:54   She's a dog. We didn't name Michaela penniless, even though, you know, my surname accepted

02:26:00   I really wanted to because I think pennies a really lovely name

02:26:03   So we chose it for the dog and the dog is indeed penniless

02:26:06   So it was not a deliberate pun, even though I do love a pun, especially with my last name

02:26:11   It was not a deliberate pun, but it was the best and only name we could come up with

02:26:15   So here we are that's totally reasonable because like first of all, yeah

02:26:18   Like penniless for a human is kind of you know negative a negative thing

02:26:21   But penniless for a dog is adorable and also no one calls dogs by their last name

02:26:27   So your dog's name isn't penniless. Your dog's name is penny

02:26:29   Except for sometimes at the vet and and also she's penny colored so it kind of fits

02:26:34   Yeah, do you wanna by the way promote her social media? Ah

02:26:37   Yeah, so this is this is a family issue here. She has to have more followers than just hops

02:26:45   Well, so one of us in the family is of the opinion that that your Instagram is your entire person

02:26:53   And if you get a dog and want to post non-stop dog pictures, well, that's part of your person put it on your main Instagram

02:26:58   others of us who who may have

02:27:03   somewhat more Instagram followers

02:27:06   Have a feel like you should opt in to the incessant dog photos

02:27:11   And I think part of the problem is those of us who think you don't need a separate Instagram are willing to

02:27:16   Incapable of having the self-control to not post dog photos every five minutes

02:27:20   Those of us who may have already created this second Instagram specifically for penny

02:27:25   Don't have that self-control and all they want to do is just post dog photos all the time

02:27:30   And there's a bit of a familial disagreement so far. We're each

02:27:35   Accepting that we are disagreeing about it in the in the Instagram account has not folded

02:27:40   We'll see we'll see what ends up happening in the long term, but at least for now

02:27:44   You can find penny on Instagram

02:27:46   Well, certainly I'll put a link to the announcement Instagram post in the show notes

02:27:51   And I'll put a link to Penny's Instagram as well. If you are so inclined to look at dog pictures

02:27:56   Probably daily at least for the next few weeks

02:27:58   No, you have to like when you have a dog Instagram like that

02:28:03   That's totally a fine thing to do but you can do both like

02:28:07   Right now like Instagram your personal Instagram account ostensibly is about things going on in your life right now

02:28:13   You just got a dog. That's a big deal

02:28:15   And so you're gonna have a lot of dog pictures because you just got one and she's your dog

02:28:19   So that makes total sense down the road

02:28:21   The dog pictures will become less of it like they'll be less dominating of your main feed

02:28:28   and so

02:28:30   That's when you can start posting like, you know, if you still want to post every day or two on her account

02:28:37   You still can but then maybe maybe you post things to her account that you wouldn't necessarily post to your own because they aren't as interesting

02:28:43   For your main account, you know, but it makes total sense to have those two separate things

02:28:47   Also, there's a whole community of dogs that follow each other Instagram

02:28:50   It's adorable like hops follows a bunch of other dogs and then like me and Tiff and Adam

02:28:54   Hops doesn't follow other people because he doesn't know other people

02:28:58   But I think it's funny to think of like hops following a bunch of dogs and Tiff runs that whole account anyway

02:29:02   So like whatever happens to it. It's it's like always a cute surprise for me to see it. I didn't do it

02:29:07   I suppose in a new photo. He looks so good. Yeah, I

02:29:11   Haven't I haven't yet gone down that road of following other dog accounts. I'm sure

02:29:15   Things it's coming. It's only a matter of time. But but yeah, no so far. It's been really good

02:29:20   It's it's super it's super stressful in the sense that it is

02:29:25   So far in a lot of ways not that dissimilar from parenting children like human children

02:29:31   But yet it is very very different in ways. I know it's hard for me to put my finger on what's what's different about it

02:29:38   I mean other than you can't really talk to it because I mean you can't really talk to an infant baby either

02:29:43   But you know, it's just a little bit different in that regard, but I am enjoying it

02:29:47   I am very I think we are very lucky insofar as penny does seem to be

02:29:52   Generally speaking pretty agreeable. For example, we've decided to put her in a crate only in the evenings

02:29:58   I think people tend to have somewhat strong feelings about this

02:30:02   But she took to it immediately like when we put her in we had put her in there on and off during the first day

02:30:09   but we got home at

02:30:11   shoot, I don't know like two or three o'clock in the afternoon and you know, we tried to get her to go to bed at

02:30:15   10 or 11 at night and you know

02:30:18   She had only seen the crate for a few hours at that point and I think she cried for like a minute

02:30:23   And then was like a screw it. I'm going to sleep which was awesome and

02:30:28   Generally speaking that's been the case like she's been super fine with the crate which is very very good

02:30:32   overnight I've I've been waking her up more than she's been waking me up in terms of like

02:30:38   Taking her out to pee

02:30:40   Aaron very Aaron very gently in in one of those like jokey

02:30:45   But no really ways explained to me that I would be the one handling the overnight

02:30:48   Issues with this child because she did it for the other two and I think that's a pretty fair trade. Yep. That's reasonable

02:30:54   So I've been the one taking her out now Aaron because she's the best and and refuses to listen to me

02:31:02   she's been like

02:31:04   making sure that that penny hasn't peed the bed when we weren't aware of it or anything like that and oftentimes coming down to like

02:31:09   Grab her from me once I come inside so I can take off my coat wash my hands and so on

02:31:12   but but all told it's been like I've set alarms on my watch to quietly wake myself up and then take penny out and

02:31:19   You know of depending on when we go to sleep if we go to bed normal time

02:31:23   We'll do it like twice overnight and if we stay up late enough like to the extreme end of our early to bed

02:31:30   Capabilities so if like we if we stay up late till like 11 or midnight

02:31:33   We can we can stretch her to like just one overnight pee and so far knock on wood as I jinx everything for tonight

02:31:42   She hasn't had any accidents in the in the in the crate overnight

02:31:45   Which is great and we you know

02:31:47   We've been doing like three and three quarter hours and could probably bump her up to four and it would probably be okay

02:31:52   Especially since she has woken us up a couple times in the past and cried and and basically said I need to go

02:31:58   Which again like if this is how potty training a dog is I'm the best potty to a potty training

02:32:03   And if this is what housebreaking a dog is I'm the best housework in the world because basically Penny's been doing everything for me

02:32:08   So far so good remind me of this in like three weeks when I tell you I don't know what to do

02:32:13   She's she's a she's a monster and I can't get her to do anything. I want her to do. It'll be fine

02:32:18   It'll work out dogs are great. Enjoy and congratulations. Well, thank you. Yeah, we're really pleased and the kids by and large

02:32:24   Really really like her and have been really adorable with her and you know

02:32:28   Both our kids have been a little reluctant or perhaps cautious with dogs in in Aaron's side of the family

02:32:34   There's a German Shepherd who for the first couple of years of his life, I think was

02:32:39   Excused for behaviors that he shouldn't have been because even at age two apparently he was still a puppy

02:32:46   And that eventually has come around which is good and the German Shepherd is pretty well behaved now

02:32:51   But he's still a German Shepherd

02:32:52   So he's like, you know

02:32:53   90 100 pounds or something like that with the bark of like a 300 pound dog and he's scary like he's nice, but he's scary

02:33:00   And that's one of the dogs that they were exposed to regularly and then there's another dog in the family. That's a mutt

02:33:07   Who is who has had like a really crummy first year of life before you know with our family the our extended family got him

02:33:15   and so he's like a very skittish very nervous dog and about like 40 50 pounds and so

02:33:21   He's well behaved but he's nervous and skittish and you know both the kids this is like their dog experience

02:33:26   So they've always been kind of cautious and nervous around dogs

02:33:29   and I think penny I think and hope penny is going to

02:33:33   Kind of fix that maybe or at least make it less

02:33:38   Less egregious for the both of them. Oh, yeah, because like people's comfort level with dogs is

02:33:44   so tied to

02:33:46   Their own experience level with dogs, right? You know, like when when you don't have a dog in your family yourself

02:33:52   Then your only experience is everyone else's dogs and everyone else sucks at raising dogs and doesn't train them, right?

02:33:57   and so, you know, it's a it's it's very common for people to be exposed to a

02:34:04   Poorly trained or poorly handled dog in the real world once or twice

02:34:08   And so if that's the only dog experience they ever have of course

02:34:11   They're gonna be a little afraid of dogs like that makes total sense, right? But because you now have a dog in your house

02:34:17   Who lives there all the time?

02:34:19   you know the kids will become accustomed to her and will

02:34:22   Generally be more comfortable dealing with dogs as a general result as well. So we're really happy. I'm scared. I'm nervous

02:34:30   I'm worried that I'm teaching bad things even though I'm trying my darndest not to I'm worried that you know

02:34:36   I'm establishing bad habits some way somehow

02:34:39   It's all the same stuff with parenting a person

02:34:41   It it's it's not really any different. I think I'm just I may be part of the reason

02:34:49   I'm almost more worried about the dog is because I

02:34:52   feel like and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like you can work through with a person a bad habit and

02:34:59   You get more than one chance, you know, despite what I said earlier about oh sure

02:35:03   You can have this french fry just once you get I feel like I get more than one chance to

02:35:08   Screw you you can you can screw up a person and undo it and I'm sure you can do that with a dog

02:35:13   But again never having experience with it. I'm worried that like one time

02:35:17   Something is gonna fall off the table and she's gonna get it and it's gonna be like that's it forever

02:35:22   And I might like intellectually I know that's probably not the case, but it freaks me out that that

02:35:27   We're gonna make one misstep and then it's gonna be committed in Penny's little brain and that's gonna be it forever more and and I

02:35:33   Really? Hope that's not the case and it's probably not but that's what like scares the piss out of me

02:35:37   and so I'm trying my darndest to be vigilant to be to be loving and to just

02:35:42   Teach the right things to not only her but to me and to the rest of us and just try to do right by her

02:35:48   I think you should be worried more about messing up your kids because dogs in general run simpler software

02:35:53   It's

02:35:57   People can be messed up in so many ways

02:35:59   Oh sure

02:35:59   Which may be your fault some of which may be not be but there's so much more complicated that can go so much worse with people

02:36:05   whereas dogs

02:36:07   it's much more straightforward not that I'm saying you shouldn't be worried about it try to do all the right things but in general a

02:36:12   Simpler set of rules can consistently lead you to success

02:36:16   whereas there is no simple set of rules that can lead you to consistent success raising children because

02:36:20   Boy, children are complicated

02:36:23   (beeping)