00:00:00 ◼ ► oh noes what's happening oh again fix it what is happening plug and unplug not the iMac pro mic
00:00:11 ◼ ► did you unplug it and then plug it back in uh this is not good hold on what what do you
00:00:17 ◼ ► think goes on over there and what did you get for adding a follow-up at one minute before
00:00:23 ◼ ► recording time casey hold on all right it's not on the back side okay all right this is extremely
00:00:44 ◼ ► hello that's better hey all right hold on let me i don't know what the hell happened that was
00:00:52 ◼ ► weird i had to unplug it and plug it back in and i just rebooted my mac that's what i just told you
00:00:56 ◼ ► to do all right stop adding follow-up whenever that is closed no it's happening it's happening
00:01:02 ◼ ► here hold on let me hit record okay should be recording now oh a lot going on well yeah i mean
00:01:07 ◼ ► you know the holidays it's always always a busy time indeed and we uh have a lot to get through
00:01:12 ◼ ► so we should probably start but i feel like we haven't had any witty banter yet so far do we
00:01:21 ◼ ► so my mms bug that i am so in love with uh it had struck me during the very last episode like
00:01:33 ◼ ► literally as we were recording the very last episode of the show and i talked to a couple
00:01:39 ◼ ► people on the inside about it and basically was told both gently and not so gently look if you
00:01:45 ◼ ► don't get us a cyst diagnosed there's nothing we can do so what's a cyst diagnosed so my extremely
00:01:50 ◼ ► limited understanding is that basically there's a log file or like buffer or ring buffer or something
00:01:56 ◼ ► that exists on ios devices and if you hold all three buttons on a modern iphone so the volume up
00:02:04 ◼ ► following volume down and lock buttons if you hold them for about a second then it will trigger a cyst
00:02:10 ◼ ► diagnose and what that basically does is it takes all of the logs that are in memory or on disk or
00:02:17 ◼ ► what have you i would presume in memory but i don't know for sure and it will dump those to the iphone's
00:02:22 ◼ ► file system and you can get to them in settings and my phone is locked up that's cool uh settings i
00:02:27 ◼ ► think it's privacy uh app data something seriously settings is just freaking locked what the heck um
00:02:33 ◼ ► we can get to it somewhere in settings and you can air drop that to your computer and then you can
00:02:39 ◼ ► attach that to a feedback once you know for the thing formerly known the artist formerly known as
00:02:44 ◼ ► radar settings privacy analytics and improvements analytics data and then you can search for sys
00:02:52 ◼ ► and these things are usually multiple hundreds of megabytes and i can understand the conundrum right
00:02:57 ◼ ► you know apple needs to be able to find something to dig through other than just looking through
00:03:02 ◼ ► code to figure out what's going on and they're not exactly going to have me drive my iphone over to
00:03:07 ◼ ► craig's house so what you're going to do but i uh i had one bug i'll put the bug links or i'll put
00:03:13 ◼ ► the bug numbers in the show notes i had one bug that apple closed and then reopened probably
00:03:21 ◼ ► sys diagnosis so apple people i love you wouldn't you mind just going ahead and taking a look at
00:03:27 ◼ ► this for me please now i'm going to do the cardinal sin of being a person on the internet i'm going to
00:03:32 ◼ ► bring up something that i got in trouble for in a different place because apparently i really like
00:03:36 ◼ ► punishment and i at the same time this was all going on this was literally christmas eve christmas
00:03:42 ◼ ► day that i was you know finally grabbing sys diagnosis um right when it when it was happening
00:03:47 ◼ ► i also noticed that my beloved synology drive client which is you know the synology version
00:03:53 ◼ ► of dropbox uh they their icon on big sur if you if you use their quote-unquote minimalist icon which
00:04:02 ◼ ► is to say their monochrome icon their icon on big sur in dark mode is super duper bright white
00:04:06 ◼ ► which is like the world's most ridiculously silly aesthetic bug that affects nothing functionally
00:04:13 ◼ ► but it's really annoying on my laptop and so i filed a bug i think it was like the 23rd or
00:04:18 ◼ ► something like that saying hey you know can we fix this icon in this certain setting on this certain
00:04:23 ◼ ► os on this certain machine that'd be great and i was expecting them to be like whatever dude leave
00:04:28 ◼ ► us alone i was getting replies from them christmas eve christmas day the day after constant replies
00:04:36 ◼ ► about something that is the dumbest bug in the world it does not matter and i'm getting all
00:04:43 ◼ ► these replies from synology like like it's their job to keep their customers happy imagine that
00:04:48 ◼ ► they value customer set and uh and so it was it was startling to me because a i didn't actually
00:04:55 ◼ ► expect a response from synology at all be certainly not on a time that most companies not all but most
00:05:02 ◼ ► companies are probably you know on a skeleton staff or perhaps off entirely as apple is
00:05:07 ◼ ► and sure enough i'm getting replies non-stop and it's just so striking how quietly hostile bug
00:05:16 ◼ ► reporting is within apple and how actively great it can be in a company who really cares and
00:05:22 ◼ ► so with that with that bad mouthing aside hey fix my bug please that'd be great you've uh you've
00:05:28 ◼ ► invoked my uh time delayed rage by putting the word sysdiagnose and follow up and i must now uh
00:05:35 ◼ ► add my oh good most recent complaint about it so there's a bug that i've been tracking uh it's a
00:05:40 ◼ ► bug that i saw on one of my apps um but it's not a bug in my app as far as i can tell uh i saw it
00:05:46 ◼ ► in the big sur beta i made a sample project that just puts a window on a screen and just demonstrates
00:05:51 ◼ ► the bug right i even put a cute little bug icon on it right so here's a sample project with with
00:05:56 ◼ ► very little code like you know 20 lines of code reproducing this bug and i sent it uh to apple
00:06:03 ◼ ► during the big sur beta of course they sent it back after like a week saying we need a sysdiagnose
00:06:08 ◼ ► sure whatever they did also ask him by the way uh you know upload the sysdiagnose and also tell us
00:06:13 ◼ ► what time you captured it yeah i'm like seriously i mean like surely the time is in the sysdiagnose
00:06:22 ◼ ► right isn't it a giant log yep right and and not only that but i think the file name might have a
00:06:27 ◼ ► date in it and then of course the metadata for the file itself has the date in it but whatever fine
00:06:31 ◼ ► here you go apple here's this diagnose i i ran my sample project which is attached to the bug report
00:06:36 ◼ ► and sure enough when you follow the instructions and run my sample build and run my sample project
00:06:42 ◼ ► it triggers the bug and then i capture a sysdiagnose and then i noted the time and here it is and then
00:06:48 ◼ ► it sat there for like a week or two and you know new betas came out and it didn't get fixed then
00:06:53 ◼ ► then they send another thing on that bug that says can you please capture a six diagnosed
00:06:56 ◼ ► and tell us the time that it came out and this is like a month in gosh i'm like oh my god listen and
00:07:03 ◼ ► i did i did the cardinal sin which is like i tried to communicate to whatever this is that's replying
00:07:08 ◼ ► to me as if it's a human because i don't know that it's a human right and i said listen here's another
00:07:17 ◼ ► and then i said like why are you asking me the time that it was captured can you not reproduce
00:07:22 ◼ ► it does the sample project i included not work for you like that's valuable data we say hey guess
00:07:27 ◼ ► what uh we can't reproduce this right and i said i'm running it on the dtk because at this point
00:07:32 ◼ ► i had sworn off big sur on my main computer i was able to reproduce it on both but by this point
00:07:36 ◼ ► i was no more big sur on my mac pro so is it like what's the problem are you can you not reproduce
00:07:41 ◼ ► it like are you having trouble reproducing it are my instructions not clear should i capture like a
00:07:46 ◼ ► screen screen capture video of me showing what it looks like in fact i took photos of my screen in
00:07:51 ◼ ► the original report and i said because when i try to take a screenshot it triggers like a refresh
00:07:56 ◼ ► effect which fixes it's a cosmetic bug it fixes the cosmetic bug if you take a screenshot of it
00:08:00 ◼ ► for whatever reason and i included that info in the original bug report and i took photos of my
00:08:04 ◼ ► screen and i said here's why i'm sending you photos of my screen not screenshots like i was
00:08:07 ◼ ► so helpful and it's like a month in i'm like what's going on no reply and anyway because
00:08:12 ◼ ► i came out of my bug is not fixed still no reply in this bug that's all yep it's so frustrating
00:08:18 ◼ ► it's so incredibly infuriating and then and then to have me at the same time get responses from
00:08:24 ◼ ► sonology on christmas day like i'm not advocating that apple should be working on christmas day
00:08:30 ◼ ► that's not my point my point is of all the days in the entire calendar that you would have expect
00:08:36 ◼ ► nothing it was christmas day and here it is i'm having like almost an active conversation on their
00:08:41 ◼ ► bug tracker on christmas day it's preposterous yeah and just to just to give a like the reason
00:08:48 ◼ ► that the most likely reason that you're having that experience is it's not an excuse but it is
00:08:53 ◼ ► an explanation uh it's one of scale sonology has far far far far far fewer customers than apple
00:08:58 ◼ ► apple has a tremendous volume of feedbacks coming in um apple also has a tremendous amount of money
00:09:04 ◼ ► you know so on and so forth but like when you're a smaller company you can afford one of your
00:09:09 ◼ ► advantages is that you can afford to have better customer service it's part of what lets you grow
00:09:13 ◼ ► into a bigger company so i'm not excusing the fact that apple is slower on responses in some ways it's
00:09:19 ◼ ► explicable even though it seems like it shouldn't be because they have all the money in the world
00:09:22 ◼ ► but as we talked about in the past it's not actually as easy as you think it is to convert
00:09:25 ◼ ► money into human resources and productivity if it was if it was that easy like you know business
00:09:32 ◼ ► would be a lot easier and there'd be a lot more of them they'd be a lot more successful anyway
00:09:36 ◼ ► uh we all attached our sys diagnosis apple so please communicate about our bugs sometimes i
00:09:41 ◼ ► mean i'm saying within six months or a year you know i'm not in a hurry it's cosmetic bug that's
00:09:47 ◼ ► all the same story plays out over and over again you know we we hear from apple people or we talk
00:09:52 ◼ ► to apple people like you know wbc or whatever and and they always tell us the same story your your
00:09:57 ◼ ► bug reports really matter please file bug reports it really helps it really does get things you know
00:10:02 ◼ ► fixed or helps us vote on things or whatever but the experience of being an external developer
00:10:08 ◼ ► reporting bugs to apple has always been and continues to be horrendous in fact it seems
00:10:13 ◼ ► like it's getting worse as the company is getting bigger and scaling like the it is so often apparent
00:10:19 ◼ ► that whatever screening process the bugs are you know are going through like at the at the first
00:10:25 ◼ ► levels it doesn't seem to work much if at all uh at actually like communicating to developers
00:10:33 ◼ ► we've seen this we've taken this seriously we paid attention to it and your time creating this bug
00:10:39 ◼ ► report writing it all up creating sample code etc that time was well spent like no that the process
00:10:44 ◼ ► does not communicate that at all it communicates the opposite it clearly communicates over and
00:10:48 ◼ ► over again to the vast majority of developers that i know myself included with all my experiences
00:10:52 ◼ ► you are wasting your time by doing this and you're better off if you just wait around for other
00:10:58 ◼ ► people to do it and that that way you don't have to waste your time doing it because like that's
00:11:02 ◼ ► that is that is what their actions actually show and i know their words say differently and i bet
00:11:06 ◼ ► they truly believe that we should be doing this and i bet they truly intend for this to be good
00:11:12 ◼ ► just like i always intend to do all my homework i always intend i have the best intentions and answer
00:11:17 ◼ ► email yeah i have the best intentions to you know to be productive and to to you know do do all my
00:11:23 ◼ ► homework answer all my email floss every day lose weight and you know what about two-thirds of those
00:11:28 ◼ ► things happen and usually the homework and the email aren't very high on the list the experience
00:11:34 ◼ ► of filing bugs with apple just has shown me over and over and over again for years and years and
00:11:41 ◼ ► years this is not worth my time to do and not only that but it almost seems actively hostile
00:11:48 ◼ ► like yeah very few of the of the reports that i or the bugs i report ever get any response at all
00:11:55 ◼ ► they just sit there open forever with no comments ever put on them like they just sit there open
00:11:59 ◼ ► like well why did i even file that at all some of them eventually get assigned as a duplicate but
00:12:03 ◼ ► that's actually very rare almost everything that i file just sits there forever if i'm lucky i'll
00:12:09 ◼ ► get a response and the response the vast majority of the time is you didn't report a system or you
00:12:14 ◼ ► didn't have a cyst diagnosed therefore we're closing this bug or please check it to see if
00:12:19 ◼ ► this is fixed in the latest version yep yeah another thing they don't do themselves yeah
00:12:23 ◼ ► they're checking whether it's closed you know like this is something you have to do i mean like in
00:12:28 ◼ ► most ticketing systems you want the person who opens the ticket to agree that it's closed but
00:12:32 ◼ ► in the apple system you have to actually check whether it's closed they don't tell you we think
00:12:36 ◼ ► this is fixed i mean they do eventually if they actually fix it they say we think this is fixed
00:12:40 ◼ ► please confirm but what they also do is we have no idea of this fix but could you just test it
00:12:45 ◼ ► on the latest beta to tell me if it's fixed and i did that for every single big survey that they
00:12:49 ◼ ► came out every single one i tried it and stuff yep still can reproduce it but they weren't even
00:12:53 ◼ ► communicating to me at that point like if i had to uh recommend a way to make the system better
00:12:59 ◼ ► that's easier to apply money to is you just need someone who's an actual human being communicating
00:13:06 ◼ ► more so for example um with with a bug like mine where i you know i found it in my program but then
00:13:10 ◼ ► i made a sample project or whatever it is entirely possible that it's still my bug because my sample
00:13:15 ◼ ► program is still code that i wrote and so if i'm doing something fundamentally stupid because i'm
00:13:19 ◼ ► an inexperienced mac developer the possibility is that i'm wasting apple's time where they're
00:13:27 ◼ ► it's your bug because here's here's a problem in your program right um and that's me wasting their
00:13:33 ◼ ► time and that's the problem of being apples like you have tons of developers and they send you
00:13:37 ◼ ► reports and you have to i got to deal with this this isn't a bug this isn't a bug either this is
00:13:41 ◼ ► just someone complaining or whatever right so it's going to be low priority and it takes work to do
00:13:45 ◼ ► that and it's costly or whatever but the problem with silence is i don't know if that's actually
00:13:50 ◼ ► happened already for all i know they reproduced the bug with my sample program looked at my sample
00:13:55 ◼ ► program for two seconds and said oh this dummy has a bug in their program and they're just never
00:13:59 ◼ ► going to tell that to me ever right you need to communicate over communicate apple say okay we've
00:14:05 ◼ ► accepted your thing okay we're looking at okay this human looked at it at this time okay we have
00:14:09 ◼ ► we have reproduced it we haven't we could build your sample program we couldn't where you know
00:14:14 ◼ ► what number are you in the queue like at the deli counter like literally anything any kind of
00:14:18 ◼ ► communication that is convincingly human that communicates the status of your bug in the system
00:14:26 ◼ ► and in the absence of that our minds just spin off and say i'm being ignored i feel like it's a you
00:14:30 ◼ ► know passive aggressive or whatever or they don't care which may not be true but we're just not
00:14:35 ◼ ► privy to what is actually going on behind the scenes it's extremely frustrating and and i feel
00:14:41 ◼ ► completely handcuffed because this is a bug just to quickly reiterate where i'm myself or aaron
00:14:48 ◼ ► are just straight up not receiving text messages my internet communicator is not consistently
00:14:53 ◼ ► communicating with the internet which is very frustrating and i feel like this is a pretty
00:14:57 ◼ ► critical bug i'm not saying that people have to be working on christmas or whatever i'm just saying
00:15:01 ◼ ► it's a pretty critical bug and as far as i'm concerned i'm just throwing things over the wall
00:15:06 ◼ ► for them to laugh and incinerate them and it's very very frustrating i mean on your bug casey
00:15:10 ◼ ► i'm pretty sure they know about like they already did that one thing we think we're helping you know
00:15:14 ◼ ► that they it was in the release notes for an ios release now the fact that didn't fix all the
00:15:17 ◼ ► problems is bad but i don't think they're unaware that this is a problem like your report is surely
00:15:24 ◼ ► one of thousands that complained about this and that's the other problem where it's like okay
00:15:28 ◼ ► we've got a team working on this would you rather that team spend its time writing the same thing in
00:15:32 ◼ ► a thousand bugs or would you rather than just fix it we all just want it to be fixed right
00:15:36 ◼ ► but it feels like when you're the one who submitted the bug and they come back and say we need a cyst
00:15:40 ◼ ► diagnosis like like if for example a human communication could be hey we've got a lot of
00:15:45 ◼ ► reports of this problem and the team is working on it and then oh and by the way if you can give
00:15:49 ◼ ► us a stagnant it might help but honestly we have 5 000 bug reports of this exact bug and they're
00:15:54 ◼ ► probably never going to look at your cyst diagnosed maybe don't put the last part but just say like
00:15:58 ◼ ► hey we know this is a serious bug and the team is working on it which i think is almost certainly
00:16:02 ◼ ► the case you know in the case of this bug but you don't know that because they didn't they didn't
00:16:07 ◼ ► write it in the bug report yep well and it says on the top of feedback assistant for this particular
00:16:12 ◼ ► bug recent similar reports none and here again i mean even even just even just categorizing and
00:16:19 ◼ ► grouping them yeah just just doing that task of identifying the 5 000 reports this of this one
00:16:24 ◼ ► bug and grouping them is a big task to do and obviously apple is not staffed to do that and
00:16:30 ◼ ► you know anyways and it's also not like the people who are fixing the bug are the same people who are
00:16:35 ◼ ► trashing all the things that separate people yada yada it's just all saying is on the outside it
00:16:39 ◼ ► feels very frustrating and in the end especially with like a serious bug like casey's we all just
00:16:44 ◼ ► want it fixed and so it's like you know if you could you can just shut us up entirely by just
00:16:48 ◼ ► fixing the bug and then we'll go away exactly all right so now that i've besmirched apple and
00:16:54 ◼ ► guaranteed that this bug will never get fixed let me tell you something nice about apple um mostly
00:16:59 ◼ ► uh i have done a little bit more with fitness plus still really like it a couple of quick thoughts
00:17:04 ◼ ► that i had since our discussion last episode um one of the things that i both like and don't like
00:17:10 ◼ ► about it is that there doesn't seem to be any real like continuity between workouts um one of the
00:17:17 ◼ ► things again i'm comparing to beachbody because that's what i'm familiar with with beachbody you
00:17:21 ◼ ► have like a program so i had done this boxing program called 10 rounds and and basically the
00:17:26 ◼ ► idea is they take you from never having boxed before in your life hello and teach you the very
00:17:31 ◼ ► basics of how to box like you know different punches and different moves you can do and stuff
00:17:36 ◼ ► like that and that was i think a six-week program with the five workouts per week if i'm not mistaken
00:17:42 ◼ ► and you know you go over the course of the program from not knowing anything to knowing a little bit
00:17:52 ◼ ► fitness plus is as yet there's none of that real continuity now on the flip side that's actually
00:17:58 ◼ ► kind of nice in a way because it's very easy to just drop into any trainers any workout and just
00:18:03 ◼ ► do it and that's that and again i like that there are workouts of varying lengths so there's 10
00:18:09 ◼ ► minute workouts 20 minute workouts 30 minute workouts etc and i like that a lot too but i also
00:18:14 ◼ ► wouldn't mind to have a little more continuity and be like hey you know greg is going to take
00:18:20 ◼ ► you from not being able to lift a one pound weight to being you know to deadlifting 350 pounds or
00:18:26 ◼ ► whatever and you know it would be neat to be able to have that kind of continuity that being said
00:18:32 ◼ ► one of the things i do like is it seems that they're constantly updating the the app or the
00:18:36 ◼ ► the workouts with new workouts which is super awesome and in beachbody you know by comparison
00:18:41 ◼ ► it's like an ios release right like they have an entire program that lands all at once generally
00:18:46 ◼ ► speaking and that's that and then that particular trainer will come back in six months to a year with
00:18:51 ◼ ► another program that they just drop all at once and it's really nice to have apple fitness plus
00:18:56 ◼ ► having um you know regular updates and it seems like this is still going on as we speak which is
00:19:00 ◼ ► great uh i still think the information architecture is kind of kind of janky um being it's not
00:19:07 ◼ ► terribly easy and maybe it's just me but it's not terribly easy to find the workout you want
00:19:15 ◼ ► and i wanted to do it and i wanted to focus on my upper body and it seemed like there wasn't really
00:19:21 ◼ ► it either wasn't accurately telling me what these workouts do or basically all the more total body
00:19:26 ◼ ► workouts which is fine but i would have liked to do something concentrating more on my like arms
00:19:31 ◼ ► and and chest and back and stuff in this particular day and i didn't seem that that was available but
00:19:37 ◼ ► again maybe that's casey problem uh finally i did do a workout with aaron simultaneously with aaron
00:19:43 ◼ ► on our apple tv this is the first of the app enabled apple tvs you know the first with the
00:19:48 ◼ ► sweet remote that we all love so much and perhaps i did something wrong i don't know but when i
00:19:54 ◼ ► started it it basically said okay who's doing this workout is it casey's apple watch and i said yeah
00:19:58 ◼ ► and then started the workout and that was that so there was no integration whatsoever with aaron's
00:20:04 ◼ ► watch now she does not have a user on the apple tv the fitness plus trial is associated with my
00:20:09 ◼ ► apple id so i can explain a way why this would be a thousand different ways it's not it's not
00:20:15 ◼ ► unreasonable but it would have been really nice if it could just detect oh there's another apple
00:20:20 ◼ ► watch nearby and there's only one other it's not like we're in a gymnasium where there's 500 in the
00:20:24 ◼ ► before times you know there's like one other apple watch nearby shall i offer it to that person and
00:20:30 ◼ ► that just did not happen and that's kind of too bad maybe we need an m1 or whatever it is or not
00:20:35 ◼ ► the m1 what's the um the u1 what's the proximity one uh u is the ultra wide band that is mysterious
00:20:41 ◼ ► and seemingly unused yeah exactly it's the airdrop animation chip maybe the next apple tv that's
00:20:48 ◼ ► coming in five years maybe that'll enable this sort of feature but that kind of bummed me out
00:20:52 ◼ ► that that basically what she had to do is just start a workout and she couldn't see any of her
00:20:56 ◼ ► stuff on the screen which again i don't necessarily take issue with i mean i'd like it if if her if
00:21:01 ◼ ► she showed up as well but i don't begrudge them for for only concentrating on one person but even
00:21:07 ◼ ► just starting the workout automatically and pausing it automatically would have been really nice
00:21:11 ◼ ► before we move on from this very quickly marco have you had a chance to do any of these yet
00:21:14 ◼ ► not yet um for various boring reasons but i i do intend to do with them soon yeah i really really
00:21:19 ◼ ► am interested to hear what you have to say particularly about the rowing stuff so because
00:21:22 ◼ ► i haven't tried any of that we are sponsored this week by the tech meme ride home podcast
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00:22:48 ◼ ► have included mg siegler talking about phones a16z's connie chan on super apps mark german on apple
00:22:55 ◼ ► federico vatici and john voorhees breaking down wwdc casey newton on facebook the great taylor
00:23:01 ◼ ► lorenz on all things influencer nick kwa on podcasting multiple j and farad show reunions
00:23:06 ◼ ► with j yarrow of cnbc and farad manju of the new york times so it's a great podcast check it out
00:23:12 ◼ ► today in your podcast app of choice by simply searching for tech me right home and in fact
00:23:17 ◼ ► if you use overcast not only can you just type in ride and it appears right there in the autocomplete
00:23:22 ◼ ► but it also i i've been looking and it is almost always in the top handful in the most recommended
00:23:27 ◼ ► podcast category and i don't edit that that isn't you know purchasable or editorial or anything
00:23:32 ◼ ► that's just the most recommended podcast among overcast users and it's always right up there
00:23:36 ◼ ► check it out tech meme ride home please subscribe in your podcast app today thank you so much to
00:23:41 ◼ ► tech meme ride home for sponsoring our show an anonymous apple employee writes you're absolutely
00:23:49 ◼ ► correct that photos ui in an iphone 12 applies an hdr boost captures that were captured in hdr
00:23:55 ◼ ► capturing hardware like iphone 12 captures on the technical side this is achieved by storing a 2d
00:24:00 ◼ ► 8-bit single channel grayscale image within each heek file heic file the this auxiliary file detects
00:24:07 ◼ ► excuse me dictates how much hdr boost and that's in quotes should be applied to each pixel when an
00:24:12 ◼ ► eight when an sdr source is viewed full screen in the ui this ensures that the original file is
00:24:17 ◼ ► always sdr and remains compatible with the outside world while also allowing in ecosystem devices and
00:24:22 ◼ ► displays to apply a quote hdr boost quote over them if they are capable of doing so and you can
00:24:27 ◼ ► see this in settings photos view full hdr that's pretty cool i know that and that also explains
00:24:34 ◼ ► that we were wondering like do they look blown out or weird on other devices and they do it in this
00:24:39 ◼ ► you know fairly clever way of like if the device doesn't know about that boost file it just just
00:24:44 ◼ ► ignores it and just looks like a normal photo yeah that's super cool uh with regard to iphone 12 and
00:24:50 ◼ ► 12 pro screen brightness apple says that the 12 has 625 nits max brightness uh in typical modes
00:24:58 ◼ ► and normal modes and 1200 nits oh boy in in max brightness for hdr uh that was the iphone 12 the
00:25:04 ◼ ► iphone 12 pro by comparisons 800 instead of 625 for typical use and the same 1200 for hdr and
00:25:12 ◼ ► displaymate.com indicates that it's 825 nits when it's full screen with white image yeah i wish
00:25:16 ◼ ► displaymate had a little bit more info but basically like we were wondering how how high do the phones
00:25:20 ◼ ► go so apple has this info they don't go up to 1600 and the next question was can they do that 1200 on
00:25:25 ◼ ► the full screen and displaymate says no if it's full screen white it's update 25 so they're pretty
00:25:30 ◼ ► they're pretty darn good like there was a couple reviews on youtube of like if your iphone was a
00:25:34 ◼ ► television it would be like the best television ever made in terms of color fidelity and hdr and
00:25:40 ◼ ► so on and so forth unfortunately it's you know six inches so it's not really great as a tv unless you
00:25:45 ◼ ► put it really close to your face and then it's fine well that's me when i don't have my contacts in
00:25:49 ◼ ► oh goodness all right and then matthew smith writes in an episode 410 there was a question
00:25:56 ◼ ► about backing up icloud photos when you don't have disk space to accommodate your entire library
00:26:00 ◼ ► my problem is that i no longer have a mac at all this led me to a project called icloud photos
00:26:04 ◼ ► downloader ah yes this has been recommended to me several times it's written in python uses
00:26:08 ◼ ► pi icloud to call the icloud apis to download photos it supports two-factor auth and only needs
00:26:13 ◼ ► to re-authenticate on the interval that apple sets and matthew writes i believe it's currently
00:26:17 ◼ ► two months so it can be set up as a cron job or to run as a given interval i recently did a fresh
00:26:22 ◼ ► poll of my entire photo library which is over 30 000 photos and videos and it completed in under a
00:26:26 ◼ ► day subsequent jobs take complete very quickly using the hyphen hyphen until hyphen found option
00:26:32 ◼ ► i don't think it preserves any library database information but it does preserve xif data so it is
00:26:37 ◼ ► useful as a raw file level cloud level cloud to local backup that can be backed up to anywhere you
00:26:44 ◼ ► want yeah like i put this in here because this this is a solution for people who don't want to
00:26:50 ◼ ► deal with the max stuff but just want their data down somehow but i would caution people that stuff
00:26:55 ◼ ► like this where it's like oh someone made a python script that uses apis to get my photos that can
00:27:00 ◼ ► break it anytime because apple is not trying to make sure this maintains compatibility and the
00:27:04 ◼ ► second thing is if it doesn't do like database information which is like hey if you edit your
00:27:08 ◼ ► picture crop it adjust it rotate it add keywords to it don't like any of that stuff it seems like
00:27:14 ◼ ► this has no idea that that happened so because it doesn't pull any of the database info so what
00:27:18 ◼ ► you're just getting is the original raw captures if that's what you want and you don't mind it
00:27:22 ◼ ► maybe breaking sometime in the future this is a cool option to look into but don't think of it as
00:27:27 ◼ ► just a complete solution to the idea that i just want to you know a separate download of my full
00:27:33 ◼ ► iphone library somewhere indeed can you tell me about information that i missed from friend of
00:27:38 ◼ ► the show jonathan deets you should never skip the paragraphs i put no it's not true sometimes you do
00:27:42 ◼ ► have to skip them i put a lot of stuff in the show notes and casey he usually usually wisely condenses
00:27:46 ◼ ► them as needed but there was one bit of info that did get skipped over which i think was important
00:27:50 ◼ ► we were talking about the owc thunderbolt stuff last time the hub and the doc mark ordered the doc
00:27:55 ◼ ► one key piece of information which you may miss if you go to the website looking at is that
00:27:59 ◼ ► it requires not just big sur but it requires big sur 11.1 i don't know why it requires it it just
00:28:05 ◼ ► does but if you're not updated to big sur or even if you have big sur but you don't have the very
00:28:09 ◼ ► latest you can't use that odbc stuff so be aware yeah my understanding is that 11.1 added support
00:28:16 ◼ ► for whatever new thunderbolt controllers or chipsets are used in a lot of these ocean ridge
00:28:21 ◼ ► oh god really is that what it's called it was called goshin yeah that's my memory goshin is
00:28:25 ◼ ► everything a ridge goshin something i guess yeah so anyway mac os did not support this until 11.1
00:28:32 ◼ ► all right we talked last week about now is the time to do the big big sur update man i wish i
00:28:38 ◼ ► thought that one through before i started that's all right the big big sur update so how the
00:28:43 ◼ ► turntables uh all right i have not done any big sur updates to recap my macbook pro has been on
00:28:49 ◼ ► it for a while now but the imac pro i haven't touched i will soon but i just haven't gotten
00:28:53 ◼ ► to it marco what have you done well uh i have solved this problem in a different way but
00:28:59 ◼ ► suffice to suffice to say i am now running big sur on all of my max all right i am very very
00:29:05 ◼ ► curious to hear about this later john what's your situation i did what i said i picked this you know
00:29:11 ◼ ► week-long gap in my podcasting schedule aside now is the time to bite the bullet and do the update
00:29:15 ◼ ► after doing many many backups i did um update for the most part went well except for i mean this
00:29:22 ◼ ► would have been an update would be like disastrous to like a non-computer nerdy person who doesn't
00:29:26 ◼ ► want to deal with this stuff like i did the update everything seemed to go fine and then i went in to
00:29:31 ◼ ► you know give some app permissions because some app needed some permissions that it didn't have
00:29:35 ◼ ► whatever and i go into the security and privacy thing i guess this is already off into computer
00:29:40 ◼ ► nerd land because who else knows to do anyway i'm in there and it's like oh okay give this app
00:29:45 ◼ ► access to whatever uh enter your password and enter my password and it's like no sorry it does
00:29:50 ◼ ► a little dialogue shake i'm like did i mistype it enter my password no sorry i'm like look i just
00:29:56 ◼ ► logged in with this password right so i try all the things all the mac os 10 lore of like well
00:30:01 ◼ ► i don't know if you guys remember this occasionally still does it it'll bring up a dialogue that asks
00:30:05 ◼ ► you to enter your password and it's it wants your account password like your mac account password
00:30:10 ◼ ► right um for a while apple would let you have it synced with your icloud one but i don't think
00:30:15 ◼ ► they even let you do that anymore anyway it would put in the name field sometimes it would put your
00:30:19 ◼ ► full name and not your username right and sometimes that dialogue would reject your your username or
00:30:27 ◼ ► password if you didn't delete your full name john space eric usa delete that and put in your
00:30:32 ◼ ► username then it would let you through so i tried that trick and that didn't work log that back in
00:30:36 ◼ ► restart so on and so forth again logging out and back in with the password that it's asking like
00:30:41 ◼ ► i'm like i'm logging in with this password i know it's my password i changed my password because hey
00:30:45 ◼ ► you know sometimes maybe you just need to change your change my password nope still wouldn't take
00:30:50 ◼ ► it so that's not a good start like you just do an os update and you know nothing would would accept
00:30:54 ◼ ► it like sudo wouldn't accept it from the command line like my anything that wanted to elevate part
00:30:59 ◼ ► my permissions thought that i just did not know my user account password the one i just logged in with
00:31:05 ◼ ► and it's always scary because i'm always afraid like i'll log out or restart and it just won't
00:31:09 ◼ ► let me back in period and that's a really bad situation um but then i did some googling uh and
00:31:15 ◼ ► then googling says oh yeah this happens all the time of course it's been it's been a problem
00:31:19 ◼ ► since the big serb beta and the solution is an smc reset this why why is it an smc i don't know
00:31:27 ◼ ► and by the way smc reset um i don't have the link for the show maybe in case you can find it but
00:31:31 ◼ ► smc areas that used to be simpler but now that there are so many different max there are you know
00:31:36 ◼ ► intel max before the t2 after the t2 then the arm max and then there's desktop versus portable you
00:31:42 ◼ ► may think you know how to do an smc reset but it actually varies a lot based on what kind of
00:31:48 ◼ ► computer you have so i would recommend not trying to memorize how to do an smc reset but always go
00:31:52 ◼ ► into the most recent apple support document that takes you to this like you know phone tree if it's
00:31:57 ◼ ► like what kind of computer you have a desktop or a laptop does that have an arm processor and intel
00:32:00 ◼ ► processor does it have a t2 or does it not have a t2 and then finally you get the instructions how
00:32:04 ◼ ► to do an smc reset in your computer so anyway i did an smc reset in my computer and suddenly it
00:32:09 ◼ ► took my admin password not a great start but in the grand scheme of things not fatal um as for
00:32:16 ◼ ► the update uh we're talking about it wasn't any software that i was missing one i was forgetting
00:32:20 ◼ ► was super duper i i knew that super duper wasn't updated for it but i had already sort of resigned
00:32:24 ◼ ► myself to it and hadn't thought about it for a while partially because i'm leaving my super duper
00:32:29 ◼ ► update on catalina for now just as my like ultimate ultimate backup because i've already replaced all
00:32:34 ◼ ► my other time machine backup so i want to have one catalina backup in there and partially because i
00:32:38 ◼ ► do have carbon copy cloner as well and that can do an update albeit i think it does a full update
00:32:43 ◼ ► every time which is kind of crappy right so i'm still waiting for super duper to update but uh
00:32:48 ◼ ► big sur does not make it easy for super duper to do the stuff that it does due to all of the changes
00:32:58 ◼ ► incremental time machine backups on apfs i think i talked about this when i tried it on the betas
00:33:15 ◼ ► which sounds super slow until you know how slow it was before before we measured like half an
00:33:19 ◼ ► hour or an hour just to figure out that it didn't really have much to do uh six minutes is glorious
00:33:25 ◼ ► so i am very satisfied with the increased speed of my time machine backups and otherwise i'm just
00:33:30 ◼ ► hanging out in big sur and everything's fine nice i did not peg me as the slacker of the three of us
00:33:36 ◼ ► i'm very surprised but here we are all right matthew taylor writes with some airpods max audio
00:33:41 ◼ ► settings marco you did return them is that correct uh no i have simply transferred them to another
00:33:47 ◼ ► member of my household now hop says a really expensive pair of headphones no tiff likes them
00:33:52 ◼ ► so she's keeping them good deal all right so matthew writes well this will certainly not
00:33:56 ◼ ► solve marco's airpods max discomfort problems i wanted to share a set of off the beaten path
00:34:00 ◼ ► tweaks that in my experience dramatically improve sound quality so matthew writes go into settings
00:34:06 ◼ ► accessibility audio visual headphone accommodations and lo and behold there are a number of airpods
00:34:11 ◼ ► max sound settings i personally says matthew prefer tune audio for brightness strong this is
00:34:17 ◼ ► utterly transformative for my favorite new order tracks and is easy it's easy to hear the difference
00:34:21 ◼ ► by rapidly toggling headphone accommodations on and off once the tune audio mode is set only marco
00:34:27 ◼ ► could tell us how this affects fish i can indeed tell you how it affects fish because i actually
00:34:31 ◼ ► tested these settings oh good they're designed for like people who are hard of hearing in certain
00:34:36 ◼ ► frequency ranges want to be able to hear their environment better say like to have people like
00:34:41 ◼ ► if they want to hear people speaking nearby more clearly than they would hear with unmodified sound
00:34:46 ◼ ► input then this can help that because there's basically settings to like boost the mid-range
00:34:49 ◼ ► and stuff like that i tried these settings and i found them to be probably very useful for that
00:34:54 ◼ ► purpose but the settings are fairly aggressive i think a little too aggressive to be used for
00:35:00 ◼ ► general music listening like i think if you're expecting this to sound to make music sound nicer
00:35:09 ◼ ► out there you want to try this feel free but i wouldn't count on this if you're kind of on
00:35:13 ◼ ► the fence about whether these are for you i wouldn't count on this as something that would
00:35:16 ◼ ► make or break that decision unless you have a specific accessibility need that these would solve
00:35:21 ◼ ► quick real-time follow-up on that previous item someone in the chat room asked um uh apple juice
00:35:26 ◼ ► says i thought apfs wasn't recommended for spinning discs i know we talked about this before but just
00:35:31 ◼ ► a quick repetition apfs slower is slower than hfs plus on spinning discs uh so that's why you hear
00:35:37 ◼ ► it not recommended but uh the new time machine uses as far as i know special features of apfs to
00:35:44 ◼ ► be faster and i think actually i'm big sir that may be your only choice for a time machine backup
00:35:50 ◼ ► destination uh so that's why even though it's a spinning disc i'm going with apfs and the second
00:35:55 ◼ ► thing is when people ask me hey i've got a new spinning disc attached to my mac should i format
00:35:59 ◼ ► it as hfs plus or apfs even though i know it will be slower i usually tell people to format it as
00:36:05 ◼ ► apfs just because it has more features like snapshots and so on and in my experience it is
00:36:13 ◼ ► more reliable than hfs plus now granted that experience is not very long because apfs hasn't
00:36:17 ◼ ► been out of the mac for very long but that's why i'm recommending that i usually preface it by
00:36:21 ◼ ► saying are you doing something high performance or whatever but even though it's slower i still
00:36:25 ◼ ► in general recommend using apfs on spinning hard drives unless you really really need the extra
00:36:30 ◼ ► performance tell me about the airpods max fat lightning connector what is this about i mean i
00:36:37 ◼ ► don't know what it actually is i i i linked to the i fix it tear down but they didn't go to this
00:36:40 ◼ ► level of detail so this is from a tweet that somebody uh posted we're talking about how like
00:36:45 ◼ ► electricity is sent through the the yoke the little metal thing that goes over your head to
00:36:50 ◼ ► the other ear cup and it's like some kind of brushes or something according to that uh snazzy
00:36:54 ◼ ► video that like touched the metal thing or whatever someone yanked the the little yoke out
00:36:59 ◼ ► of the ear cup and what you see in the end of it is nothing looks like a tiny fat lightning connector
00:37:04 ◼ ► with two contacts it's super weird looking i mean it's not really a connector like this is just the
00:37:08 ◼ ► internals of the device but i just think it's funny that like the dna of apple's products
00:37:13 ◼ ► penetrates so deeply to parts that you will never see unless you literally like tear it apart like
00:37:18 ◼ ► you've got the you know the the digital crown in the same photo it's like oh that's from the watch
00:37:22 ◼ ► and then when it comes time to make some kind of connector that you're never going to see this is
00:37:27 ◼ ► part of the internal structure of a thing it ends up they end up making something it's like well
00:37:31 ◼ ► we've done connectors like this before why not just make it the same way we make lightning but
00:37:35 ◼ ► fatter so there it is this cute little two prong fat lightning thing that is inside all of your
00:37:41 ◼ ► earphones check out the picture in the show notes and or show art chapter art indeed and then
00:37:47 ◼ ► somebody has stepped up to the plate to make the case we always wanted yeah it was the first third
00:37:52 ◼ ► party airpods max case i've seen and lo and behold it is just a regular case now obviously the case
00:37:57 ◼ ► maker can't change how the the airpods max fold but it's just a hard case they just took a hard
00:38:03 ◼ ► case and wrapped it around that shape uh they put in the little magnets to make it go into super low
00:38:08 ◼ ► power mode right that wasn't apparently too hard to do uh you know it it zippers around the entire
00:38:14 ◼ ► thing it's got a little handle it's got storage on the inside and it's got a little pocket on
00:38:19 ◼ ► the outside so look at that apple it wasn't so hard for 500 and something dollars you too could
00:38:24 ◼ ► have included a case that actually encases your headphones instead of whatever that weird thing
00:38:28 ◼ ► is that you include it and this is only 100 bucks i mean yeah it's an expensive case like you know
00:38:34 ◼ ► and it's fancy or whatever but like it doesn't have to be you know just look at the sony case or the
00:38:38 ◼ ► boze cases they're not the fanciest things in the world but it's just a plastic shell with a zipper
00:38:42 ◼ ► around it it's not rocket science and i've already ordered this because even though i'm giving the
00:38:47 ◼ ► headphones to tiff she needs a good case too everyone deserves a good case and yeah this is
00:38:52 ◼ ► and this is from waterfield designs you know sfbags.com they've been around forever making
00:38:56 ◼ ► products for pretty much everything apple sells and they're pretty high quality i've had a few
00:39:01 ◼ ► other things before and they've been very good so 100 bucks for something from them is actually
00:39:06 ◼ ► pretty reasonable and speaking of cases uh my final iphone 12 case finally came i ordered this
00:39:14 ◼ ► over a month and a half ago and it just came in the mail it was from overseas and you know shipping
00:39:19 ◼ ► is all weird and covid and yada yada so don't blame it if you've missed but that's what i've
00:39:23 ◼ ► been waiting for so previously i had the apple silicon case that i talked about in a past episode
00:39:27 ◼ ► and then the senna leather case that i talked about in the past episode and now finally this is
00:39:32 ◼ ► the let me look up the name of this thing uh the olexar leather iphone 12 case and it's just like
00:39:41 ◼ ► the other cases that i ordered it's got an open bottom so you can see the entire bottom of the
00:39:46 ◼ ► phone and so you can swipe up from that edge it is black it is leather it has buttons that are made
00:39:51 ◼ ► of metal that poke out they're not little leather lumps uh it doesn't have any markings other than
00:39:55 ◼ ► the brand at the bottom what i did was i i looked at it before i decided to put over on my phone and
00:40:01 ◼ ► said am i going to take off the senna case and put this one on in general i tried to only put a case
00:40:06 ◼ ► on my phone once just because i feel like they get they get loose as you take the phone in and out of
00:40:09 ◼ ► them right uh and this one looked good it looked like the buttons were to let that go by all right
00:40:18 ◼ ► go ahead it's fine um the buttons were more recessed than the senna case and they were not
00:40:24 ◼ ► textured like the rough texture that i complained about them um so it's more like the apple leather
00:40:29 ◼ ► case like if you look at the apple other case is actually like look if you look at the volume
00:40:32 ◼ ► buttons there's actually a little trough in the side of the case where the volume buttons are
00:40:36 ◼ ► so they don't it's not like there's a case and then buttons stick out from that there's a
00:40:40 ◼ ► divot and in the divot are the volume buttons the volume buttons still stick out farther than the
00:40:44 ◼ ► case itself but not as far as you would think um and then you know the power button the other side
00:40:49 ◼ ► so i put it on um the leather is nowhere near as tacky as the senna case the senna case is the
00:40:56 ◼ ► tackiest leather case i've ever seen in my life like out of the box it's already super grippy
00:41:01 ◼ ► like i said it also the senna case seemed like it scratched easily it was very soft that's part of
00:41:05 ◼ ► what made it tacky but i did like that feel this one feels a lot more like not the apple leather
00:41:11 ◼ ► cases but it's it feels i was like is this leather or is it plastic it feels very hard so this is the
00:41:16 ◼ ► type of leather case it's going to take a while to break in i smelled it and looked at the label says
00:41:20 ◼ ► is this actually leather or they just sent me a plastic case that you know that just got ripped
00:41:24 ◼ ► off pretty sure it is some kind of leather or it's plastic with a leathery smell on it i don't know
00:41:29 ◼ ► they don't know if they're filming me but anyway the price is suspicious yeah yeah it is it's super
00:41:34 ◼ ► cheap like it was like 30 bucks or something 17 17 yeah whatever it was like i i don't know i i
00:41:40 ◼ ► don't think it's plastic because it's too soft to be plastic it smells like leather it feels like
00:41:45 ◼ ► leather it's i don't know anyway i put it on the phone it is not as slippery as the phone by itself
00:41:51 ◼ ► it's not as tacky as the senna case the volume buttons are in fact metal and the power button
00:41:56 ◼ ► are metal and they're black fit and finish is what you would expect from a was it 17 euros or 17 bucks
00:42:02 ◼ ► 17 us dollars all right the volume button fit and finish was not that great the lower volume button
00:42:14 ◼ ► and i was like can i live with this can i live with one of my volume buttons poking out more
00:42:20 ◼ ► than the other the answer is no i couldn't so i took the phone out of the case and then i i
00:42:32 ◼ ► and this is another reason i think it's leather because as i'm scratching away at it like if you
00:42:35 ◼ ► can imagine taking a little metal thing and scraping away at leather you know how like leather
00:42:39 ◼ ► like resists like it doesn't it's not like plastic but it felt like leather on the inside too so i
00:42:44 ◼ ► scraped away a whole bunch put it back in and now the the volume down button sticks out only slightly
00:42:51 ◼ ► more than the volume up button no one but me would ever be able to tell anyway so this is the case
00:42:55 ◼ ► i'm using that it is the by far the cheapest case that i got but it is also the closest to what i'm
00:43:00 ◼ ► looking for it is the most like the apple case but with no bottom on it so for now i'm sticking with
00:43:06 ◼ ► this case and i already knocked the phone off of my nightstand onto the floor with this case on it
00:43:10 ◼ ► and it seemed to protect it pretty well so i'm i'm doing uh you know doing pretty well i went back
00:43:16 ◼ ► and looked at all my uh iphone case tabs to see what other alternatives that that are out there
00:43:21 ◼ ► that i might be interested in buying and none of them really stood out to me i know there are lots
00:43:25 ◼ ► of other options but all of them had something about them that i like worse than this case that
00:43:30 ◼ ► i have on it now so so i guess this is it until until unless this case totally fails or something
00:43:36 ◼ ► terrible happens to it um i'm sticking with the super cheap olixar case i'm not really loving it
00:43:43 ◼ ► oh and one more thing about it is it has like a little plastic ring around the camera it's almost
00:43:48 ◼ ► entirely flush but not 100 entirely flush so when you lay it down flat on a hard surface again no
00:43:56 ◼ ► human could tell this but if you lay it down flat on a hard surface you can move it like a half a
00:44:00 ◼ ► millimeter at one of the corners i'll i'll deal with it it's fine i feel like that's uh going on
00:44:07 ◼ ► your gravestone i'll deal with it it's fine we are sponsored this week by boxcryptor many of us use
00:44:14 ◼ ► storage space from cloud services such as icloud one drive dropbox google drive etc all of this is
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00:46:10 ◼ ► to boxcryptor for sponsoring our show earlier tonight i read a fascinating tweet and it it was
00:46:21 ◼ ► as follows selling my imac pro 10 core 64 gigs ram 4 terabyte ssd vega 56 apple just replaced the
00:46:28 ◼ ► screen and logic board there's a 90-day warranty similar use config sell for such and such and i
00:46:33 ◼ ► want such and such this tweet this fascinating tweet written by marco armand what's going on man
00:46:41 ◼ ► like it says on the tin my imac pro is uh sold boxed up will be shipped out tomorrow uh i got
00:46:49 ◼ ► it back from apple tonight it's fine it's perfectly working order as far as i can tell they they did
00:46:53 ◼ ► indeed replace the logic board you got it back tonight yep and within an hour and a half two
00:46:59 ◼ ► hours you have boxed it up and prepared it to be sold correct oh boy all right what's going on well
00:47:05 ◼ ► you know without boring listeners with too much of the past details you you already know that i had
00:47:08 ◼ ► my imac pro in for service because of you know dramatically increased fan noise recently apple
00:47:15 ◼ ► indeed diagnosed the problem as something with the fan controller on the motherboard probably
00:47:18 ◼ ► and so they replaced the entire logic board and the display as well for unrelated reasons they
00:47:25 ◼ ► said they they there was a small chip in the corner and it wasn't noted on the way in and so
00:47:30 ◼ ► they weren't sure if it was my fault or their fault so they replaced the display great well that's kind
00:47:34 ◼ ► of nice yeah that's really nice um so anyway you know when you when you go without an apple desktop
00:47:41 ◼ ► for a while you know i've been i've been without it for about i don't know a week and a half two
00:47:44 ◼ ► weeks something like that and uh so you know i had to get used to life without it you know i'm not
00:47:48 ◼ ► going to just stop needing a desktop so i basically moved in to my macbook air my new m1 macbook air
00:47:56 ◼ ► and not not full edit and transfer everything over because there's first of all space to transfer
00:48:01 ◼ ► everything over because i don't have i don't have four terabytes in this macbook air because it
00:48:04 ◼ ► doesn't exist yet and so you know i i have like i have a small minimal setup here but i've been
00:48:09 ◼ ► getting along with it just fine and i've really gotten used to as i mentioned i think last week
00:48:15 ◼ ► just how fast a lot of things are on this machine it is so good and and before you know i've been
00:48:21 ◼ ► kind of away from my my main desktop situation for about a week but before that i was doing all
00:48:27 ◼ ► my work on this for about another week and so i've done all the heavy lifting i've had it connected to
00:48:31 ◼ ► the ultra fine screen uh you know for big desktop work i've had it you know run it in clamshell
00:48:38 ◼ ► mode for there in the entire time i've had it working there so far which admittedly was only
00:48:42 ◼ ► a week or so clamshell mode was a hundred percent reliable that's impossible i didn't have a single
00:48:49 ◼ ► problem entering or leaving clamshell mode connecting or disconnecting the cable and having
00:48:54 ◼ ► anything you know wake up correctly never had an issue with sleep and wake for you know just
00:48:58 ◼ ► regularly you know wake up when i get there in the morning and there was there were zero problems
00:49:04 ◼ ► with clamshell mode never had a problem with heat or thermals because well it's already pretty low
00:49:09 ◼ ► heat and there's no fan to go crazy anyway in the map book air i realized in in this week of using
00:49:15 ◼ ► it there and now this week of using it separately you know away from a desk i'm fine with this this
00:49:21 ◼ ► is what i need i just need more screen space and a keyboard and mouse and i have that there and you
00:49:26 ◼ ► know i have the ultra fine i don't love that part of it but otherwise like i love this setup when
00:49:34 ◼ ► you send in an apple desktop for a repair these days that requires a logic board replacement
00:49:40 ◼ ► you're going to get it back blank and sure enough i did i expected that i expected that would
00:49:44 ◼ ► probably happen i you know i made a backup and everything but resetting up a computer is a lot
00:49:50 ◼ ► of work and it's a lot of time you know i've already had to set up this new one that's enough
00:49:54 ◼ ► time right there and then if i want to reset up the old one or any other desktop i have to then
00:50:00 ◼ ► clone everything back i'm going to lose probably a day to the cloning process or the you know the
00:50:06 ◼ ► reverse cloning process itself followed by all the apps they're going to break because this is now a
00:50:11 ◼ ► new motherboard with a new serial number and it's going everything that uses drm is going to break
00:50:17 ◼ ► and have to be reauthorized reinstalled like it's so it's just it's a big pain to do all this and
00:50:23 ◼ ► you know this is why again like when when people whenever i have problems that you know every three
00:50:28 ◼ ► years i have problems with my desktop that that that you know i want to get it serviced and
00:50:32 ◼ ► everyone's just bring it into apple just bring it in what's the big deal no it's a big deal this is
00:50:37 ◼ ► a huge pain in the butt to you know it's a lot of time that you lose it's a lot of you know not only
00:50:44 ◼ ► are you have to be without your computer for two weeks maybe but you have the transfer process you
00:50:50 ◼ ► know there and back of you know not only physically bringing it to the store and everything which
00:50:54 ◼ ► itself is time and hassle and effort but also like having to move your data off of it and then move
00:50:59 ◼ ► your data back into it when it's over like that's a big pain in the butt it's a huge cost and time
00:51:04 ◼ ► and frankly i'm busy i don't have time to be doing that very often i really don't want to take that
00:51:10 ◼ ► burden on unnecessarily and this is why like as much as i've loved using imax as my main desktops
00:51:17 ◼ ► for these last six years it's really frustrating whenever i have to bring it in and the screen and
00:51:26 ◼ ► the computer are one piece and i have to bring the entire thing in for a problem with one or the
00:51:31 ◼ ► other but probably not both in these cases so far and i have to be without my main computer and when
00:51:38 ◼ ► my screen is my desktop i also have less flexibility with like what can i do in the meantime if i have
00:51:44 ◼ ► to bring this thing in for repair you know if i had a separate screen like the ultra fine then i can
00:51:49 ◼ ► plug my laptop into that and basically just resume my setup like change almost nothing else because
00:51:54 ◼ ► what i did here like i basically changed nothing else kept the same keyboard mouse desk speakers
00:51:58 ◼ ► everything else just moved this monitor into that setup move the iMac away and it's really nice to
00:52:05 ◼ ► just plug in a laptop you know if tiff has to come into my office to record a podcast she can just
00:52:09 ◼ ► plug her laptop into it and i can take mine out and bring it upstairs like it's so there's lots
00:52:19 ◼ ► separated that's the whole that was always the whole appeal for me of a Mac Pro in addition to
00:52:23 ◼ ► having like the super fast performance and everything having the monitor be separate from
00:52:29 ◼ ► the computer whatever form that takes whether it's like a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro or a laptop
00:52:33 ◼ ► having those things be separate has significant benefits sometimes and for you it might not be
00:52:40 ◼ ► all the time for me it wasn't all the time but sometimes that has massive benefits and it's
00:52:46 ◼ ► during those times that i always curse myself for getting these iMacs because they're great at all
00:52:50 ◼ ► other times but when you when you run into a problem with one of these parts and you have to
00:52:55 ◼ ► have the whole thing sent in for service that's really cumbersome i'm not sure if you're aware
00:53:00 ◼ ► of this but your laptop has a screen attached to it yes thank you i'm using it right now if
00:53:04 ◼ ► something goes wrong with that screen you will have to actually bring the whole laptop in
00:53:08 ◼ ► obviously that's easier than bringing your iMac in but i also say that if you if you're getting
00:53:12 ◼ ► a Mac Pro because you think it'll be easier to bring in just the computer part i have bad news
00:53:16 ◼ ► that's fair so i got an email from listener Matthew Taylor uh well almost a month ago uh you
00:53:25 ◼ ► know dear Marco and ATP you guys got this too but no i've been talking with Matthew here and there
00:53:29 ◼ ► a little bit but anyway uh they say here's what i suggest for Marco buy a second m1 macbook air
00:53:38 ◼ ► as your main work machine and use your existing macbook air as your lightweight fun mac
00:53:42 ◼ ► number two buy the pro display xdr if you need more ports buy the cal digit ts3 plus doc
00:53:49 ◼ ► sell the lg 5k after repair sell the iMac Pro then wait until all the dust shakes out over the next
00:53:56 ◼ ► six to 18 months on new high-end macbook pros imax and mac pros and buy whatever you want then
00:54:01 ◼ ► Matthew is using this setup the the macbook air with the pro display xdr and it's apparently
00:54:08 ◼ ► phenomenal the best mac experience imaginable zero noise ultra fast gorgeous tons of screen
00:54:15 ◼ ► real estate and plenty of expansion and then later this other thing that stuck out to me
00:54:19 ◼ ► all intel max are rapidly depreciating assets we're experiencing a once in a generation quantum leap
00:54:28 ◼ ► in speed and capabilities and that that kind of infected my brain and i've been thinking you know
00:54:35 ◼ ► this is this is correct this is this is all like on the level like this is totally correct
00:54:41 ◼ ► as soon as you use the m1 stuff if it fits your need profile it is amazing and i understand
00:54:51 ◼ ► there's a lot of people for whom the m1 stuff does not fit their need profile yet i totally get that
00:54:56 ◼ ► you know if you need more than 32 or more than 16 gigs of ram you're out of luck for now with this
00:55:01 ◼ ► stuff if you need like super high-end gpu performance maybe if you're like a video editor or
00:55:06 ◼ ► something this is not going to be great for you you know if you need more than two terabytes this
00:55:10 ◼ ► is not great for you if you need a laptop with a bigger screen than 13 inches again not great for
00:55:14 ◼ ► you or more than two ports you know like there's huge holes in this lineup that are not filled yet
00:55:18 ◼ ► if you need to run intel stuff if you need to run windows like those the needs for intel machines
00:55:26 ◼ ► are still going to be best served by intel machines for a while but my needs are none of those things
00:55:34 ◼ ► for the most part like yeah i would like more ram i would like more disk space but i'm getting by
00:55:39 ◼ ► just fine for now on 16 gigs and it's faster and lots of things i do in the worst case you know a
00:55:45 ◼ ► few things are slightly slower like when i have to launch a rosetta application that's fairly large
00:55:52 ◼ ► like adobe audition or photoshop yeah it takes a couple extra bounces on the dock before it launches
00:55:57 ◼ ► once it's open it's fine it's fast like so it's you know it's not this isn't that big of a deal
00:56:02 ◼ ► and in every other way this machine is actually either the same or way better for me and for what
00:56:07 ◼ ► i do i again as i mentioned in the past i love desktops and i will probably return to desktops
00:56:16 ◼ ► fairly soon but for right now i feel like this this really is a like once in a generation
00:56:23 ◼ ► kind of time where right now the best computer apple makes for most people unless you have one
00:56:31 ◼ ► of those special needs is the macbook air which has almost no downsides at all like there's not
00:56:40 ◼ ► even a fan and i hate fans by the way we've we've had a couple of people write in to say that not
00:56:45 ◼ ► only does yes the lg definitely have a fan but also apparently like the previous apple cinema
00:56:50 ◼ ► display also apparently it's fairly common for monitors to have for big monitors to have fans
00:56:57 ◼ ► the thunderbolt display the fan i think it's funny describing the ideal setup of a fanless
00:57:01 ◼ ► macbook air connected to a monitor with multiple fans yes yeah but anyway i've always hated fan
00:57:07 ◼ ► noise and in recent years i've been spoiled by computers that didn't make much fan noise for
00:57:13 ◼ ► the most part and so i've i've loved that and i don't i don't ever ever really want to go back but
00:57:25 ◼ ► clamshell mode sucked and like all intel max clamshell mode still sucks because it as many
00:57:33 ◼ ► of you out there know because you do it it works most of the time but working most of the time is
00:57:38 ◼ ► very different from working every time and so far with the m1 it works every time and it's glorious
00:57:51 ◼ ► or if you push them at all they would sound like jet engines next to your desk and those things
00:57:58 ◼ ► aren't true with this laptop and before you know they would there would be like significant
00:58:02 ◼ ► downsides with things like ports and another expansion and well if the thunderbolt stuff ends
00:58:08 ◼ ► up being reliable which so far early reviews of this of the new owc thing are very positive and
00:58:15 ◼ ► even the caldigit thing that i have people say like you know the ethernet port and sound ports
00:58:19 ◼ ► are apparently a little bit buggy for some people myself included but everything else about it which
00:58:23 ◼ ► is most of what i'd be using it for everyone says is rock solid so it does seem like it's possible
00:58:28 ◼ ► to get good thunderbolt stuff these days especially if the ethernet on the new owc one is solid
00:58:41 ◼ ► laptop primary setups in the past most of those reasons are not there anymore or at least are
00:58:47 ◼ ► significantly reduced and it might only be for the next six months you know this this is a unique time
00:58:55 ◼ ► maybe in six months when you know new maybe new m1 max or maybe maybe new you know m whatever based
00:59:02 ◼ ► i max will be out by then or the 16 inch macbook pro will be out by then or i i don't expect
00:59:08 ◼ ► whatever you know whatever the new rumored mac pro is that maybe that's going to be a significant
00:59:11 ◼ ► later than that but you know in a couple years maybe i won't want to be using a macbook air
00:59:18 ◼ ► in in six months maybe i won't want to you know maybe maybe in six months i'll say oh man this
00:59:22 ◼ ► this new m1x based you know imac or whatever is so good i'm going to relocate the laptop back to
00:59:30 ◼ ► secondary status but right now during this period this is the only computer i want to use it's that
00:59:38 ◼ ► good and i totally love using it and when i have used it with the monitor and the keyboard and mouse
00:59:45 ◼ ► it's been just as good as a desktop for my needs you know i i just i could use more storage space
00:59:52 ◼ ► and that's about it i also looked up the trade-in value of the mac mini that i bought earlier i
01:00:01 ◼ ► think this i think early 2020 for studio b upstairs which we're not using anymore because of our you
01:00:08 ◼ ► know different situation now we're not using studio b anymore so this mac mini has been sitting there
01:00:12 ◼ ► this is where the lg 5k came from it used to be the monitor for this mac mini and the trade-in
01:00:17 ◼ ► value for it on apple's trade-in thing is like 650 dollars and i can like i can get a new and this
01:00:25 ◼ ► it's low it's only it's only eight gigs uh and 512 gig storage i can get a new m1 mac mini that is
01:00:33 ◼ ► also eight gigs and it's also 512 storage for like 200 more than that or something it's it's not much
01:00:40 ◼ ► more than that so i'm gonna trade this in too i already filled out their form earlier tonight i'm
01:00:46 ◼ ► trading this into ample i'm gonna i'm gonna trade it in and i order myself an m1 mac mini to serve
01:00:50 ◼ ► as a home server and that's going to solve my large storage needs for now i'm gonna do you know
01:00:56 ◼ ► my laptop only has one terabyte and it's too late to return it and two terabyte ones are back ordered
01:01:01 ◼ ► till february anyway i'm gonna do exactly what i told the ask atp writer last week to do about
01:01:07 ◼ ► large photo storage right now i don't have any max that are signed into my iCloud account that
01:01:11 ◼ ► have all the photos on them but i'm gonna use the new mac mini to do exactly that with an external
01:01:17 ◼ ► hard drive it's totally fine like so now i will i will make my primary computer not have all the
01:01:24 ◼ ► photos on it but that's fine as long as i have something with all the photos on it i'm fine
01:01:28 ◼ ► i'm gonna you know try to live on one terabyte as my primary computer which is not going to be like
01:01:33 ◼ ► incredibly simple but with some discipline i think it'll be totally reasonable to do many people out
01:01:38 ◼ ► there do it you know i've i've lived on that before on my primary so it's been it's been a while but
01:01:43 ◼ ► you know i have a bit more fish since then but but i think i think it'll be fine and uh and that's
01:01:50 ◼ ► gonna be that that's gonna be what i use for now and i'll say you know again i'm not gonna make any
01:01:53 ◼ ► promises i know myself well enough to know that as soon as apple releases something better and
01:01:56 ◼ ► faster i'm gonna rationalize getting it but for now i'm going to do this exact setup i'm going to
01:02:03 ◼ ► have this map book air and i'm going to bring the lg 5k back from the beach because i hate it and
01:02:13 ◼ ► that will be my non-beach monitor at my alternate setup here and at the beach i'm going to buy
01:02:19 ◼ ► another lg 5k just kidding i ordered the xdr i was gonna say i just lost a tremendous bet with
01:02:27 ◼ ► myself oh okay the all's right in the world because i the thought of you not setting money a flame for
01:02:33 ◼ ► the fun of it is just so foreign to me so okay the pro display xdr now i am a little i am a little
01:02:39 ◼ ► surprised though can can you tell me why i'm trying to figure out a way to phrase this question
01:02:45 ◼ ► i don't actually take any particular issue with anything you've said it's obviously your right to
01:02:49 ◼ ► do whatever you want i think it makes sense but if you like desktops so darn much first of all why
01:02:54 ◼ ► don't you marry them but why not get like why not use the mac minis the primary and use the air as a
01:02:59 ◼ ► satellite i might do that um so you know the mac mini the uh the m1 mac mini is not going to arrive
01:03:07 ◼ ► because i i ordered it with the storage i should have ordered on the first one it's not going to
01:03:10 ◼ ► arrive until like mid february oh that's a bummer i basically i ordered it with the maxed out
01:03:15 ◼ ► configuration first of all because it wasn't that much money because this m1 stuff is fantastic
01:03:20 ◼ ► second of all i want to leave that option open so like i got a configuration that leaves that
01:03:25 ◼ ► door open so that if i want to when the mac mini arrives i can make it my desktop i do like having
01:03:31 ◼ ► having two computers like it is nice for in other ways you know as much as i was talking last week
01:03:36 ◼ ► kind of i said i just have one like there are advantage to having two as well there are advantage
01:03:40 ◼ ► to having a desktop that's always plugged in always set up you know always has all your windows
01:03:44 ◼ ► and your ssh connections open and all the windows are in the right places like you know there are
01:03:48 ◼ ► certainly advantages to that and i'm going to see how that how that goes over time but for now my
01:03:53 ◼ ► plan is to keep the laptop as primary but you know i'll re-evaluate that decision when the mac mini
01:04:00 ◼ ► arrives in february but until then i'm fine with it and either way i i'm going all all m1 and
01:04:08 ◼ ► external monitors and that's that's going to be it because it just it's such a nice it's such a nice
01:04:14 ◼ ► setup and i am i'm more mobile this year than in the past looking forward at you know how our family
01:04:21 ◼ ► plans to live for the next few years we are probably going to stay fairly mobile for a while
01:04:27 ◼ ► and so i i have a need for more mobile setup than i had before and this is just working so darn well
01:04:34 ◼ ► in so many ways i'm really enjoying it and and so that's it and you know we'll see what happens down
01:04:40 ◼ ► the road maybe i get the the mini mac pro that mark erman thinks exists um but until then uh i'm
01:04:52 ◼ ► questions for you one uh how did you not manage to find a way to get a non-gold macbook error in this
01:04:59 ◼ ► equation like you give that one to tiff you order the non-gold one with two terabytes like is that
01:05:04 ◼ ► is that not in the mix somewhere what's happening on that front if my gold one terabyte model was
01:05:11 ◼ ► still under the holiday return thing i might have considered doing some kind of a swap like that but
01:05:16 ◼ ► it's not not a swap like an additional an additional non-gold macbook here honestly the gold's not
01:05:22 ◼ ► really that big of a problem for me like it's it's a weird color i i knew that going into it
01:05:26 ◼ ► in certain lights it looks a little more pink than than what i would prefer in certain lights it looks
01:05:32 ◼ ► weirdly orange which is kind of cool like it's it's a weird color but i still like that because
01:05:37 ◼ ► i don't get excited at all about the silver or the gray at all like i i look at those and i think this
01:05:42 ◼ ► is the same old computer that i've seen a million times that i've owned a million times and so having
01:05:48 ◼ ► it be this weird orange pink gold thing makes it seem new even though it's kind of an odd color and
01:05:55 ◼ ► in certain life i don't like how it looks it at least looks fresh and new which it is on the
01:06:00 ◼ ► inside and it's kind of nice to have the outside you know convey that to me all right and second
01:06:05 ◼ ► set of questions nano non-nano and did you get the stand i got the stand and i got non-nano because
01:06:12 ◼ ► i was a little concerned about the the cleaning aspect of it of the nano and i've been using a
01:06:20 ◼ ► glass-fronted monitor in this exact position for six months and it's been totally fine so i don't
01:06:28 ◼ ► expect to uh you know to need the nano texture where it's going all right so this is the law
01:06:33 ◼ ► of conservation of fans in your office you get a computer without them you get a monitor with some
01:06:39 ◼ ► we'll maintain the same amount yep well this all sounds good because i feel like as you
01:06:44 ◼ ► change computers six months or whatever from now you'll be able to like pass things on so the
01:06:53 ◼ ► may be that laptop can get passed down very easily to be useful as a small light laptop for anyone
01:06:57 ◼ ► else in the household who wants to use or even just for you to use as your lightweight computer
01:07:01 ◼ ► and then you can rotate in uh you know a beefier mac mini or a half-sized mac pro or whatever
01:07:08 ◼ ► or even if you get an iMac right you could still have the iMac and still have this big screen and
01:07:12 ◼ ► use the big screen to hook up to one of the laptops that's floating around right so you
01:07:15 ◼ ► have a lot of options now with these modular components i i still think you have a little
01:07:19 ◼ ► bit of a risk area in the the hub zone i mean i know you're working on that you got the odsc
01:07:25 ◼ ► one coming um we'll see how that goes and the cal digit and everything in the mix uh which is why
01:07:31 ◼ ► maybe an iMac will be attractive because maybe by the time that comes down the pike you're
01:07:34 ◼ ► sick of dealing with thunderbolt and hubs and stuff and you just are just gonna get the new
01:07:39 ◼ ► iMac because it it's a touch screen and it's really cool new design or whatever but uh but
01:07:43 ◼ ► we'll see i think you have a reasonable path forward for all your weird computing needs now
01:07:48 ◼ ► that you've now that you've finally gotten over the hump that took me a while to get over as well
01:07:52 ◼ ► to buy the horrendously expensive monitor that is very big yeah and like i've heard from other
01:07:57 ◼ ► people who have it since since last week as well and everyone who i've heard from says the same
01:08:01 ◼ ► thing it's fantastic just do it like just just buy the thing like it's great so i i still don't
01:08:07 ◼ ► feel good about how much it costs but i i will move past that as i do with every apple price
01:08:13 ◼ ► it'll be painful and the good thing is when apple comes out with a better monitor it will be like
01:08:19 ◼ ► six years from now like when the oled apple display comes out it'll be so long from now right because
01:08:24 ◼ ► they they have proven they do not update remember we're waiting for them to come up with new monitors
01:08:29 ◼ ► like what was the biggest one i think the uh the 30 inch went away i don't know if you guys were
01:08:33 ◼ ► in the in the scene at this time but the 30 inch went away and we're like when are they going to
01:08:38 ◼ ► replace the 30 inch and just years would pass and nothing would happen then eventually we just
01:08:41 ◼ ► forgot the 30 inch ever existed and it was like well the 27 inches are out uh but i think they're
01:08:46 ◼ ► probably going to have new displays this was in our time where they're probably going to have a
01:08:49 ◼ ► new 27 inch soon that just never materialized it was just or when it came it was just like the
01:08:53 ◼ ► thunderbolt one but it was the same exact display with just weird pigtail stuff like that the the
01:08:59 ◼ ► good and bad thing about the 6k is i feel like it is a product line that apple that when apple
01:09:04 ◼ ► obsoletes it they're going to take their sweet time because they're just going to keep selling
01:09:08 ◼ ► this thing for the same exact price long after all the technology and it is outdated and then finally
01:09:13 ◼ ► at some point after the next round table in 2027 they'll be like oh here's the new you know micro
01:09:19 ◼ ► led whatever not not micro what is the i get confused what's the one where every individual
01:09:24 ◼ ► pixel is an led oh that's that's micro i think or nano or something i got it right then okay yeah
01:09:28 ◼ ► but here's the new micro led 8k display that'll be like 2030 so uh despite this monitor being
01:09:34 ◼ ► ridiculously overpriced at least you will have a long period of time to let that overpricedness
01:09:39 ◼ ► soak in yeah yeah the only thing that that will really annoy me is if they really do release a 5k
01:09:47 ◼ ► 27 inch monitor for like two thousand dollars thinking that yeah like you know six months well
01:09:52 ◼ ► here's the thing the odds of that happening are actually much higher than them replacing the 6k
01:09:56 ◼ ► within 8k or something but if that happens i think you'll be fine because you'd be like yeah but i
01:10:01 ◼ ► know i'm used to 6k and if we go back to 5k it'll feel small because like i said when i first got my
01:10:05 ◼ ► monitor at first it felt so big i didn't know where to look and then like a half an hour later it's
01:10:09 ◼ ► just normal and now if i look at it my go back to my wife's 5k i'm like oh look at how do you get by
01:10:13 ◼ ► with the small screen it's like just you just get used to having the extra real real estate and so
01:10:19 ◼ ► when they come out with the 5k you're gonna feel bad that you it's like less than half the price
01:10:23 ◼ ► or whatever and you would have been perfectly happy with it but now you're not going to be happy
01:10:26 ◼ ► it's like why would i get a smaller screen yeah yeah probably well well because i will be coming
01:10:32 ◼ ► back periodically to this the place where i'll have the lg 5k and also i'll have to do some work
01:10:38 ◼ ► on that periodically so that'll that'll remind me every like you know every every month or two like
01:10:42 ◼ ► oh crap this look look at how small this is and that's gonna be worse in other ways like i i i can
01:10:47 ◼ ► tell you that your your uh protos play xdr will not shake when you type it better not for the
01:10:54 ◼ ► thousand dollar stand on it i know okay see as someone in the chat room pointed out uh i got an
01:10:59 ◼ ► xdr last year mark ago and this year uh 2021 is your year so start saving now i don't i i'm
01:11:08 ◼ ► thinking to myself man in so many ways what marco is describing is describing is very appealing like
01:11:13 ◼ ► leaving the money aside just for a second i think a macbook air or a macbook pro i i think for
01:11:25 ◼ ► i'd really like four ports and and i don't mind the touch bar like i don't actively like it but
01:11:31 ◼ ► i don't actively dislike it either um and so i've already been kind of planning that when the direct
01:11:37 ◼ ► replacement for my current laptop comes out which would be a 13-inch four port macbook pro i'll
01:11:41 ◼ ► probably go ahead and upgrade it um but i'm hearing you talk about the pro display xdr and i'm hearing
01:11:47 ◼ ► you talk about the one computer lifestyle which was my lifestyle for a long time and i just keep
01:11:52 ◼ ► thinking man that does sound good but i cannot imagine being able to justify to myself spending
01:12:00 ◼ ► what seven thousand dollars on a computer monitor much less sending it through the family cfo who
01:12:12 ◼ ► it happening um but if you would like it to happen listeners atp.fm join may i strongly recommend
01:12:18 ◼ ► it'd be a great idea no seriously casey for you i would say suck up your pride sell the new 13-inch
01:12:26 ◼ ► and get this air instead it's you know i i i don't think it's about pride it's just that i
01:12:32 ◼ ► i don't mind being wrong about having gotten the laptop i think the laptop was a good purchase and
01:12:36 ◼ ► i made it at the right time i needed to make it um i i just i have convinced myself for you know
01:12:43 ◼ ► right wrong or indifferent that i don't want to lose the four ports now if you start quizzing me
01:12:48 ◼ ► about how often do i use all four ports you know is this really a problem the answer is almost never
01:12:52 ◼ ► and no but i i really i really don't love the idea of losing what i've got in the same way you were
01:12:59 ◼ ► talking about not loving the idea of going from 6k to 5k like could you go from 6k to 5k one day oh
01:13:04 ◼ ► yeah absolutely you could but do you want to eh maybe not yeah i would love to have four ports on
01:13:11 ◼ ► this thing like that that is something that i do miss i would love to have four ports and if there
01:13:16 ◼ ► is ever a 13-inch four port model that i hear is totally silent in practice maybe i would switch to
01:13:23 ◼ ► that or maybe i will go back up to the 16 someday i don't know um i i do like the big size frequently
01:13:30 ◼ ► so you know we'll see how that goes but this like and and i think it is important to clarify like
01:13:36 ◼ ► and for you know for you and for anybody else who's bought an intel mac recently and and kind
01:13:39 ◼ ► of now regrets it like we had no idea first of all we had no idea when each product line would be
01:13:47 ◼ ► updated and we had no idea how much faster things would be even on the low-end machines yeah like we
01:13:56 ◼ ► knew that we knew the arm chips were fast you know we knew they were fast in the context of a phone
01:14:01 ◼ ► or an ipad and we could see the geek bank scores and we could say wow these these things are pretty
01:14:05 ◼ ► competitive with like desktops and single-threaded stuff but i don't think anybody had any idea in in
01:14:11 ◼ ► the public you know in as buyers or as commenters like us on podcasts we didn't have any idea that
01:14:18 ◼ ► you know when you were buying your 13-inch what six months ago yeah it was it was like late may
01:14:23 ◼ ► early june so like you know seven or eight months ago we had no idea that in seven months from then
01:14:29 ◼ ► there would be this radical improvement in the lineup that would be so massive to that exact
01:14:37 ◼ ► product line or to a very similar product line as that one uh like no you couldn't have known
01:14:42 ◼ ► the good thing is right now these things are all still worth money at resale because a lot of
01:14:49 ◼ ► people still need intel stuff and if you don't you can take advantage of this time and get like a
01:14:58 ◼ ► whoopsie undo like let me undo that like like my mac mini like this purchase that i made earlier
01:15:03 ◼ ► this year i am literally trading it in for almost the entire price of a new one that's way better
01:15:11 ◼ ► than it this is a good time to have some recent intel mac hardware to sell and to not need anything
01:15:20 ◼ ► that the current m1s can't do or don't address very well like again if i was like doing video
01:15:25 ◼ ► stuff where i need not only big screens but also like tons of multi-threaded gpu performance like
01:15:31 ◼ ► these are not great for that kind of thing if if you have like a mac pro or imac pro at your
01:15:37 ◼ ► disposal instead those are better for that but i don't do that like i i did briefly once
01:15:42 ◼ ► i don't do that now and for what i do this is fantastic and for many people do this is fantastic
01:15:49 ◼ ► so this this really is you know like as matthew tellers email said like this is a once in a
01:15:54 ◼ ► generation jump this is a really like massive shift in the industry i do agree that intel max
01:16:01 ◼ ► are wrap the depreciating assets or they they will be soon so much is better on the m1 already
01:16:08 ◼ ► and i also think that apple you know apple has the best of intentions they're going to keep supporting
01:16:14 ◼ ► the intel max for a while but whether your mac is on apple silicon or intel is going to be a line in
01:16:21 ◼ ► the sand for software updates and compatibility down the road we don't know when how far down
01:16:28 ◼ ► the road that's going to happen but a mac bot today that has an apple chip in it will get
01:16:33 ◼ ► software updates and will probably be you know useful to people for a longer period of time than
01:16:39 ◼ ► an intel machine bought today so this it is a distinction that i think has great value over
01:16:45 ◼ ► time in addition to just how much nicer they are and things like heat and noise and stuff like that
01:16:49 ◼ ► i do think this is this is worth taking advantage of if your needs can be met with these
01:16:58 ◼ ► yeah i hear you and it makes a lot of sense to unload one or both of my computers now when
01:17:04 ◼ ► they're still worth a lot more but i don't know i i don't change computers like i change underwear
01:17:09 ◼ ► unlike some of us so i'm reluctant to do anything at the moment especially since i would be getting
01:17:16 ◼ ► something that is sufficient but not what i really and truly want like that's fair i i'm the kind of
01:17:22 ◼ ► person that i'd rather wait for what i really and truly want even if that ends up costing me a
01:17:27 ◼ ► little bit in a loss of resale value in the thing that i've currently got yeah fair enough all right
01:17:34 ◼ ► we got to move on because we've been told that dad is going to be real upset at us if he doesn't
01:17:39 ◼ ► get a chance to talk about his new toys so john the time has finally come we cannot procrastinate
01:17:47 ◼ ► anymore because you said you were going to do it this year tell me about your playstation 5 please
01:17:52 ◼ ► i forget if we if i talked about that i wanted to do the playstation 5 review before the end of the
01:17:57 ◼ ► year in the bootleg or the regular show but it is a thing i wanted to do um i've had a playstation
01:18:03 ◼ ► 5 since launch uh yes i'm very lucky to get one thank you very much to a listener who helped me
01:18:09 ◼ ► out in this endeavor um and i wanted to talk about it i can't give you a super comprehensive review
01:18:15 ◼ ► for a couple of reasons one uh when consoles launch there's not always a lot of games that
01:18:20 ◼ ► take advantage of them or not a lot of games period and two even if there were i wouldn't
01:18:24 ◼ ► be playing those games but i will tell you what my experience has been and why i got it to begin
01:18:30 ◼ ► with why did i even want a launch playstation 5 um i wanted it for one main reason um a i play
01:18:37 ◼ ► destiny all the time i've talked about that before i got my fancy mac and this big fancy screen and
01:18:44 ◼ ► my big fancy video card partly so that i could play destiny in a way that i hadn't played it
01:18:48 ◼ ► before play the pc version of destiny the pc version destiny has two things that my old
01:18:53 ◼ ► playstation 4 pro did not have uh well a couple things one uh uncapped frame rate uh the playstation
01:19:00 ◼ ► 4 versions of destinies have been capped at 30 frames per second um and i you know the pc version
01:19:06 ◼ ► has not been so the pc version will play it as fast as you can possibly play it and to uh hdr the
01:19:13 ◼ ► playstation 4 version of destiny i believe did support hdr but i don't have an hdr monitor
01:19:17 ◼ ► connected to my uh playstation 4 and my ridiculously expensive aforementioned pro display
01:19:25 ◼ ► xdr turns out to be an hdr display so i spent a lot of time and energy getting windows 10 to run
01:19:32 ◼ ► destiny through steam on my hdr monitor uh at high frame rates at high resolution and we talked about
01:19:41 ◼ ► this on past shows i couldn't get it to run well at 6k because my video card is just not strong
01:19:45 ◼ ► enough but at 4k i could get comfortably over 60 frames per second with hdr and it was pretty super
01:19:51 ◼ ► cool the other thing that the pc version of destiny has that the console version does not
01:19:56 ◼ ► is an adjustable field of view and that's basically like how wide you can see like if you
01:20:03 ◼ ► had a 360 degree field of view you could see everything in front of you and in back of you
01:20:07 ◼ ► all on your flat screen right um and if you had a very narrow field of view you could just see the
01:20:11 ◼ ► stuff that's right in front of you so it's if you kind of think it was like a fisheye lens the wider
01:20:15 ◼ ► the field of view the more things look kind of fisheye right um the where this becomes relevant
01:20:21 ◼ ► for console versus pc is the narrower the field of view the fewer triangles are in view and the
01:20:27 ◼ ► fewer things need to be drawn by the gpu so a higher field of view all other things being equal
01:20:32 ◼ ► takes more you know computing power to display and just like the uncapped frame rates on pc the pc
01:20:39 ◼ ► platform you have variable hardware and if you have really beefy hardware you can do things like
01:20:44 ◼ ► have more pixels and higher frame rate and yes a bigger field of view so up until you know the
01:20:50 ◼ ► playstation 5 i had my choice was like a playing console at 30 frames per second with the whatever
01:20:57 ◼ ► the default field of view was like 75 degrees or something like that um or i could play on my
01:21:03 ◼ ► quote-unquote pc at 4k 60 frames per second and up to a field of view of 105. um and the reason by
01:21:11 ◼ ► the way the reason you want a wilder wider field of view is if you're playing pvp which is what i
01:21:15 ◼ ► play a lot of a wider field of view basically gives you better peripheral vision so you can
01:21:19 ◼ ► see more you have a better situational awareness of what's going on around me what's to my left
01:21:24 ◼ ► what's to my right because it is giving you a literally a wider view of the world in the same
01:21:28 ◼ ► monitor right so uh i wanted a playstation 5 because i knew based on bungee's announcement
01:21:35 ◼ ► that the playstation 5 version of destiny was going to offer higher frame rates than 30 frames
01:21:40 ◼ ► per second minimum 60 frames per second up to 120 frames per second in the pvp mode for a slight
01:21:46 ◼ ► downgrading graphical quality and adjustable field of view and also hdr um so and and what do i do
01:21:54 ◼ ► with my console time i play destiny i do it all the time right so i got my playstation 5 basically
01:22:00 ◼ ► so i could continue playing the exact same game that i've been playing in playstation 4 but now
01:22:05 ◼ ► i get to play it at 60 frames per second at 105 degree field of view and if i had an hd monitor
01:22:10 ◼ ► i could be playing in hdr i don't have an hd monitor i didn't buy one because as far as i'm
01:22:15 ◼ ► aware there are no monitors available right now that if it support hdmi 2.1 which is what the
01:22:22 ◼ ► playstation 5 outputs at and our hdr ips and support 120 frames per second from the ps5 you
01:22:29 ◼ ► can get an oled tv that does that but the smallest they come in is 48 inches and that is way too big
01:22:34 ◼ ► for the place where i play this i have a 27 inch display here right so i'm still waiting for
01:22:39 ◼ ► someone to put out a 27 inch ips hdr panel with a nice stand that's not ugly that does 120 frames
01:22:47 ◼ ► per second so right now i'm just playing at 60 good luck with that oh they're coming they're
01:22:52 ◼ ► absolutely coming like there's a market for this the only reason it's just because hdmi 2.1 is so
01:22:55 ◼ ► new that only the the new xbox console the ps5 supported all the other consoles didn't because
01:23:01 ◼ ► they were previous generation right so these monitors are coming they're probably going to
01:23:05 ◼ ► be expensive but whatever but for now i'm dealing without the hdr so that's what i did when i got a
01:23:11 ◼ ► playstation 5 i was like great i have a you know i had to wait actually for another destiny update
01:23:15 ◼ ► and there was a recent expansion to destiny right so this is my new destiny playing machine which
01:23:20 ◼ ► is a boring way to use a new console but it wasn't boring to me because this is what i've been
01:23:24 ◼ ► waiting for and it doesn't mean that my mac is retired from doing this because my mac can also
01:23:28 ◼ ► crank up the graphics a little bit higher than the ps5 can and there are other games i play on
01:23:33 ◼ ► it and the mac is still the only thing with hdr display but in general i get to play destiny better
01:23:39 ◼ ► that said the playstation 5 comes with a game already installed on it i don't know if it comes
01:23:45 ◼ ► with the game disc if you buy the disc one but i got the digital one so there's no disc drive in it
01:23:49 ◼ ► and it came with astro's playroom installed which is more of like a tech demo if you think kind of
01:23:55 ◼ ► well people have been comparing it to nintendo land but i think it's even more slight than that
01:23:59 ◼ ► nintendo land came with the wii u to sort of demonstrate the new capabilities astro's playroom
01:24:03 ◼ ► is a cute little platformer from sony where you just you know make this little robot guy hop
01:24:09 ◼ ► around and do platforming things and all the levers levels are filled with sony nostalgia like
01:24:15 ◼ ► there's lots of little robots are acting out scenes from famous playstation games in the
01:24:19 ◼ ► background and everything and what you collect at the end are these shiny high fidelity models
01:24:25 ◼ ► of sony hardware and then you get to put you know it's it's a very sony type thing but the whole
01:24:29 ◼ ► point of this is to demonstrate the capabilities of your new console and in particular the
01:24:34 ◼ ► capabilities of the new controller the dual sense controller they're really stuck on the dual dual
01:24:40 ◼ ► shock what was the dual shock two three four was it always dual shock i forget what they go anyway
01:24:45 ◼ ► now it's dual sense and i'm sure you've seen reviews of this controller if you keep up with the
01:24:58 ◼ ► thingies inside it so what right that's why asterisk playroom is here because i'm not sure
01:25:02 ◼ ► how much third-party games are going to take advantage of all the features of this controller
01:25:05 ◼ ► certainly destiny 2 doesn't take full advantage of it and in fact i have rumble turned off in destiny
01:25:10 ◼ ► because it messes with my aim and pvp um but asterisk playroom uh is a it's first of all it's
01:25:17 ◼ ► a fun little game to play and if you're a sony fan the nostalgia thing really works but it is an
01:25:23 ◼ ► amazing demo of the controller the controller basically the things that it has uh in it that
01:25:27 ◼ ► it didn't have before are fancier uh vibration motors bigger fancier vibration motors if you
01:25:38 ◼ ► right is that i think that was the last one to have the uh the little motor that turns with a
01:25:45 ◼ ► with a semicircle weight attached to the axle right that's what used to be in most controllers
01:25:52 ◼ ► right and of course in modern iphones we have the haptic engine which is that linear whatever the
01:25:57 ◼ ► hell it's called yeah it's more like a speaker driver right i'm pretty sure that's what's in the
01:26:08 ◼ ► you can programmatically control to a much finer degree so it's got that and then it's also got
01:26:14 ◼ ► um motors that are able to resist you pulling the triggers which sounds like something you would
01:26:22 ◼ ► think would like break or like well you know you can't stop me from pulling the triggers with these
01:26:26 ◼ ► tiny little motors like what how is that even going to work like it's basically like when you
01:26:30 ◼ ► pull the trigger it turns a little through a series of gears it turns a little corkscrew gear
01:26:34 ◼ ► on the axle of the motor and that's it and you control electricity in the motor to oppose that
01:26:39 ◼ ► force right um and that's and that's also what was it that's got a touch pad on and it's got a bunch
01:26:47 ◼ ► of little things got a microphone built in it's got a bunch of other features but those vibration
01:26:51 ◼ ► and trigger haptics are the main additions but because both of them are able to be controlled
01:26:56 ◼ ► so precisely by the game uh astros playroom demos this uh very well you can make experiences that
01:27:09 ◼ ► you run across sand and ice and rocks and jump off of things and land on things and all that is just
01:27:14 ◼ ► like okay well we'll make the vibration motor vibrate a different amount how can you make
01:27:19 ◼ ► vibrating a different amount feel like ice versus feel like sand versus feel like mud they managed
01:27:24 ◼ ► to do it like it you know obviously you're still holding a controller you don't feel mud on the
01:27:29 ◼ ► bottom of your feet this is not vr right but it is way better than the old haptics and it is fun it
01:27:36 ◼ ► adds an element of you know immersion to the game and then the trigger resistance i thought would be
01:27:42 ◼ ► annoying but it's it's kind of amazing how much it feels like like it's a hardware feature like oh
01:27:48 ◼ ► suddenly my controller has a stop midway through where you have to press real hard then you go
01:27:52 ◼ ► through the stop and it gets easy right you can do things like that where they're not you know
01:27:57 ◼ ► they haven't mechanically changed your controller but it feels like now it's a two-step controller
01:28:02 ◼ ► or a three-step one now it's hard to press now it's easy to press like you know they have a thing
01:28:06 ◼ ► where you have to control the uh the triggers to control these paws of a robotic monkey and
01:28:11 ◼ ► every time you reach and grasp for something and click onto it it becomes easy once you grab it
01:28:14 ◼ ► right very cool features that are basically it reminds me of the wiu and it's like all right
01:28:20 ◼ ► technologically it's not that amazing it's just a controller with motors in it but it's an experience
01:28:25 ◼ ► you haven't had before while playing a console game the wiu had way more of these it's a console
01:28:29 ◼ ► that almost nobody used and it's a shame because i think nintendo land on the wiu is an amazing
01:28:34 ◼ ► demonstration of a ton of different fun mechanics and games that had never been seen before and
01:28:40 ◼ ► haven't been seen since um so i don't know how many games are going to take advantage of this
01:28:45 ◼ ► but astros playroom demonstrates the potential for it to be super cool uh like to give a recent
01:28:51 ◼ ► example if uh if the last of us part three was a thing that ever existed like that type of game
01:28:57 ◼ ► i can imagine benefiting immensely from this type of control so it's not in such a gimmicky you know
01:29:02 ◼ ► fun way as astros playroom but just sort of woven into the way the game plays it would be super cool
01:29:10 ◼ ► and speaking of the controller ios 14.3 beta that's how old the story was according to i'm or
01:29:16 ◼ ► um the beta had support added support for the ps5 controller to ios i haven't tested it with 14.3
01:29:24 ◼ ► release but i assume that it's in there so you could always use the uh not always but in the past
01:29:30 ◼ ► versions of ios you could use the uh playstation 4 controller with your ipad or iphone and i've
01:29:36 ◼ ► done that several times and now you can use the ps5 controller um those are the only games i've
01:29:42 ◼ ► played on the playstation 5 is astros playroom which i finished and it was fun and uh tons and
01:29:47 ◼ ► tons of destiny so the only other thing i have to add to this review of the ps5 is to talk about the
01:29:52 ◼ ► controller my favorite thing in the world uh not the parts that i talked about but like the
01:29:57 ◼ ► controller as a controller right so aesthetically it's like the rest of the playstation 5 where they
01:30:02 ◼ ► try to do like a two-tone thing where it's like a white shell wrapped around a black interior i was
01:30:07 ◼ ► worried about that because that's entirely an aesthetic thing there's nothing mechanically
01:30:10 ◼ ► about like it's not actually a white shell wrapped around a black interior that's a design element
01:30:14 ◼ ► and i don't want additional seams or gaps or like here's the shell and here's the interior on the
01:30:20 ◼ ► controller because that's not it's just going to make it uncomfortable right um so i was worried
01:30:25 ◼ ► about that and also they changed the shape subtly from from the dualshock 4 or whatever the
01:30:30 ◼ ► playstation 4 controller was and i love the playstation 4 controller shape wise um i thought
01:30:35 ◼ ► they did a good job this is a different shape uh but the shape is also good uh if they managed to
01:30:42 ◼ ► keep the seams away from where my hands go on the controller so the fact that they have a you know
01:30:47 ◼ ► a black interior and white exterior that is not not relevant to how i hold the controller which
01:30:54 ◼ ► was a relief um they did something clever with the buttons uh if you're wondering if the layout
01:31:00 ◼ ► changed it's the same layout as the dualshock 4 as all the dual shocks so the d-pad is where the
01:31:04 ◼ ► analog stick should be but whatever you know it's it's the way it's always been the buttons are still
01:31:09 ◼ ► in an exact diamond shape the two analog sticks in the same place like everything is the same so no
01:31:14 ◼ ► real movement of the major controller notes but the buttons again i think they did this for
01:31:18 ◼ ► aesthetics but it's smart design wise as well the buttons are clear which looks cool uh the reason
01:31:25 ◼ ► it's smart design wise is because each of the buttons has a particularly the the buttons on
01:31:30 ◼ ► the right side this triangle circle x and square right those symbols are underneath a clear piece
01:31:37 ◼ ► of plastic so the symbols are not printed on the top of the clear piece you can see them by looking
01:31:43 ◼ ► through the you know four millimeter thick piece of clear plastic which means that no matter how
01:31:48 ◼ ► much you press these buttons you're never going to wear the symbols off and that's a problem with lots
01:31:52 ◼ ► of controllers now most people use the controllers don't need to see the symbols but your controller
01:31:55 ◼ ► looks crappy if after a long time the x is slowly wearing off because you have you know an alien
01:32:01 ◼ ► acid stuff coming out of your fingers and we all know people like this and something that you can't
01:32:06 ◼ ► help like how acidic is the ooze that comes out of your fingers just look at someone's laptop
01:32:11 ◼ ► keyboard look to see if the e key is slowly disappearing right or even just the keys being
01:32:16 ◼ ► polished or whatever same thing with game controllers if you are unlucky and have that type
01:32:20 ◼ ► of hand secretions you'll wear the symbols off your control that doesn't look good they solve
01:32:26 ◼ ► the problem you're never going to wear these off they're under they're under a really thick layer
01:32:29 ◼ ► of clear plastic um the actual plastic of the controller the bottom half i didn't realize this
01:32:38 ◼ ► until i got it in real life the bottom half of the controller is textured plastic it is textured in
01:32:43 ◼ ► this a little bit too cute way that sony textured the playstation 5 console itself in that you know
01:32:50 ◼ ► it's white plastic and it feels a little bit rough but if you zoom way way in you see the roughness
01:32:54 ◼ ► is not just a random stippling pattern it is those symbols which have become part of the playstation
01:33:00 ◼ ► brand triangle circle x and square there are you know thousands and millions of triangles circles
01:33:07 ◼ ► x's and squares tiny tiny ones making up the texture of the plastic it's it's very clever
01:33:14 ◼ ► it's very cool but you can't see it unless you zoom way way in uh texturing just the bottom half
01:33:20 ◼ ► is nice because texturing for grip is good but like it is rougher right and so i'm kind of glad
01:33:29 ◼ ► that the part where my the you know where i'm pressing the buttons i'm not scraping my finger
01:33:33 ◼ ► against a rougher plastic on the top surface because the top surface is not textured um so
01:33:39 ◼ ► that's a nice touch the only problem with the texturing is and the fact that the controller
01:33:44 ◼ ► is white is that where my fingers contact the textured bottom it is slowly removing dirt and
01:33:49 ◼ ► grime from my fingers and depositing it onto the white controller uh so this started out as a white
01:33:57 ◼ ► controller and now it's a white controller with some slowly darkening smudge marks from my human
01:34:04 ◼ ► fingers rubbing against the bottom of the control they do make a black version of the controller now
01:34:08 ◼ ► too and this will be far less visible there i think the white control looks cooler maybe i'll
01:34:12 ◼ ► have to actually wash it and and believe me i'm washing my hands before i use my playstation
01:34:16 ◼ ► i'm not going in super dirty it's just that like the texture is rough enough to slowly exfoliate
01:34:23 ◼ ► let's say gently exfoliate your under here under controller fingers adding a little darkening mark
01:34:30 ◼ ► there um the fact that the controller has a microphone built into it and a mute button on it
01:34:34 ◼ ► is great for people like it lowers the barrier to entry of like i don't want to have a headset i
01:34:39 ◼ ► don't want to use like a little earbud this little earbud that came with the ps4 was always so
01:34:43 ◼ ► delicate and so easy to break you just want to be able to play right out of the box if you don't
01:34:47 ◼ ► care about audio quality or whatever it's got a microphone there already the the asterisk playroom
01:34:52 ◼ ► does the same thing from the who did this first the switch no uh i don't know so whatever nintendo
01:34:57 ◼ ► console first did the thing where you blow into the controller and like a fan spins on the screen
01:35:01 ◼ ► do you guys remember that no i'm sorry to ruin this as surprising to never sub this so sorry
01:35:08 ◼ ► maybe it was the ds summer sorry to ruin the surprise and delight but there's there's like
01:35:12 ◼ ► a bunch of party games i think maybe it was on nintendo ds and it's at one point you're confronted
01:35:16 ◼ ► with like a pinwheel like a little kitty pinwheels you know and to progress you have to blow and it's
01:35:23 ◼ ► because the ds or whatever was has a microphone on it and once you figure out you had to blow in real
01:35:28 ◼ ► life and the microphone picks up like the static of you blowing right it's amazing right because
01:35:34 ◼ ► it's a very simple trick a simple gag with very simple hardware but the first time you figure that
01:35:40 ◼ ► out and it works you're like wow this is magic and then you know you eventually figured how they did
01:35:44 ◼ ► it but um i can't remember who did it first there's lots of examples from later nintendo history i'm
01:35:49 ◼ ► thinking it was probably the ds but anyway sunny does it on the ps5 too in the asterisk playroom
01:35:54 ◼ ► only they kind of ruin the surprise by telling you uh blow blow into the controller it's like
01:35:59 ◼ ► you know it's a little bit better with a handheld because the handheld has to be in front of you
01:36:03 ◼ ► whereas the controller is in your lap so they do kind of have to tell you to pick the controller up
01:36:06 ◼ ► having a mute button on the controller is nice too uh it's got built-in rechargeable batteries
01:36:12 ◼ ► instead of replaceable which i like i like it to be built in and sealed it's got little recharging
01:36:16 ◼ ► nubbins so you can put it in this little recharging dock or you can just plug it in it's usb-c yay
01:36:22 ◼ ► finally um and the console itself has a usb-c ports and usb-a ports including usb-a ports in
01:36:29 ◼ ► the back which is nice because sony's wireless headphones still require usb-a port but you don't
01:36:33 ◼ ► want to see that sticking out the front the usb-c port is faster i bought a new usb-c thumb drive to
01:36:39 ◼ ► transfer my destiny recordings that i make videos out of why because for some reason sony thinks the
01:36:45 ◼ ► only way to get data off a playstation is through a thumb drive it's connected to the network what
01:36:50 ◼ ► year so how's my computer these are full-fledged computers please let me transfer data from my
01:36:56 ◼ ► playstation 5 drive to my mac they're like nope would you like to write it to a usb thumb drive
01:37:01 ◼ ► so that's why i have to get like the fastest possible usb thumb drive to max out the speed
01:37:12 ◼ ► and you can record in uh in 4k now which is nice i don't think you can record it over 30 frames
01:37:17 ◼ ► per second i have to look at the captures to see what frame rate i'm getting from but that's another
01:37:23 ◼ ► potential advantage of the new console if you manually initiate recording you can record at 4k
01:37:27 ◼ ► if you don't manually initiate it it's just always recording right it's always recording like a 30
01:37:31 ◼ ► minute buffer or whatever which is a great feature that debuted in the playstation 4 and i still use
01:37:35 ◼ ► like you don't have to think about recording it's just after something cool happens in the game you
01:37:40 ◼ ► just say great and you said let me capture that the playstation 5 has more granularity of how
01:37:44 ◼ ► much you can record it'll say like do you want me to capture the last five minutes last 30 seconds
01:37:48 ◼ ► the last 30 minutes whatever so you don't have to constantly make these videos that are a fixed
01:37:54 ◼ ► length long like i always used to make 15 minute long videos even if i just wanted to last 30
01:37:58 ◼ ► seconds because that was the only option available unless you went to the preferences or whatever
01:38:02 ◼ ► so yeah uh playstation 5 my review is thumbs up uh if you want to play destiny and play it better
01:38:10 ◼ ► than you were playing it before the playstation 5 does an amazing job oh i guess one more thing
01:38:14 ◼ ► fan noise playstation 5 is huge lol uh what you get for that hugeness is the fan noise is less
01:38:27 ◼ ► it is both quieter and less annoying it is not silent you can hear it it's got a humongous fan
01:38:41 ◼ ► and i never see my ps5 because it is hidden away underneath the desk that i'm playing on
01:38:45 ◼ ► but it is massive so measure whether you have room for the stupid thing in your life it's massive and
01:38:53 ◼ ► it's not particularly attractive but i don't really care it does the job so anyway playstation 5 you
01:38:59 ◼ ► should go out and buy one i think they're available in stores everywhere hahaha no they're not oh well
01:39:05 ◼ ► good i'm glad we covered that yep and you guys should pick up some playstation fives as soon as
01:39:10 ◼ ► you can because they'll be very important for when we do the atp plays destiny together member special
01:39:16 ◼ ► sometime in the distant future yeah and when that happens i'll pick one up yep you can get the
01:39:24 ◼ ► playstation 5 slim which will be slightly smaller maybe it'll be a 1u rack mount case it's slim
01:39:39 ◼ ► yes uh so one gift that i got um ostensibly for my kid but it's kind of like a family gift in
01:39:49 ◼ ► practice uh i have a family of gamers i did not get a ps5 for anybody or have one given to me
01:39:55 ◼ ► because we don't really want one yet but we've been kind of curious about vr for a little while
01:40:02 ◼ ► you know we are a family of me plus gamers and we tried vr back years ago at xoxo in portland
01:40:13 ◼ ► we went to somebody's office who had the i believe it was the htc vive it was one of the very first
01:40:18 ◼ ► like you know mainstream vr headsets that was available and we tried it for like five minutes
01:40:22 ◼ ► and you know just like punch some boxes around in some kind of demo room or something and it was
01:40:27 ◼ ► interesting but that was that was the only experience i had with it really our family was
01:40:31 ◼ ► curious about it um and again like you know adam and tiff are pretty heavy gamers i'm kind of a
01:40:36 ◼ ► casual sometimes gamer uh and so i decided you know i had heard amazing things about vr but
01:40:42 ◼ ► the thing that always turned me off about it was the need for a gaming pc like you know some pc
01:40:48 ◼ ► that you either had a long wire that was wired to that you had to like make sure you don't trip over
01:40:54 ◼ ► the wire or get it tangled up in your arms or whatever which doesn't sound like a lot of fun
01:40:59 ◼ ► or i know people have tried things like building backpacks that have like the pc in the backpack
01:41:04 ◼ ► so you don't have to have a long wire but instead you can sound safe yeah people people never fall
01:41:15 ◼ ► if that works for you great but that's that wasn't going to work for us it's like those backpack
01:41:20 ◼ ► vacuum cleaners you know yeah use if you have to vacuum a large place but you don't want to be
01:41:24 ◼ ► lugging behind like the canister you just put it on your back but the same amount of noise too
01:41:28 ◼ ► exactly wow exactly and i figured also like that wouldn't have a good chance of working on
01:41:34 ◼ ► our eight-year-old kid very well either so yeah so we ruled that option out for now and we weren't
01:41:40 ◼ ► going to build an entire gaming pc desktop just to try to see if we like vr or not you know because
01:41:52 ◼ ► i'm not going to invest in a giant desktop pc gaming rig only to find out five seconds into
01:41:58 ◼ ► gaming oh none of us can do this because it makes us all motion sick anyway so i decided i had heard
01:42:05 ◼ ► about the oculus um not the go what's the other one the the other wireless oculus thing they
01:42:12 ◼ ► their names i keep forgetting is that the quest and the quest 2 is that the one yeah quest okay
01:42:18 ◼ ► so i heard about the oculus quest earlier this year um our friend cgp gray got one and was raving
01:42:23 ◼ ► about like how how good it was and i looked into what that was and i learned that it's it's a vr
01:42:29 ◼ ► headset that is self-contained that you know there's no wire that runs to a pc it is just
01:42:34 ◼ ► self-contained and it runs you know lower end but usable hardware in the helmet and that sounded
01:42:40 ◼ ► great to me that sounded like exactly like what we were looking for for like we want an entry an
01:42:45 ◼ ► entry into the world of vr but we don't want the the big full-sized rig and we don't really care
01:42:50 ◼ ► that much about the hardware trade-offs required to get that so great there was a downside in that
01:42:58 ◼ ► facebook owns oculus and they made this decision that i'm still not sure why they made it but
01:43:07 ◼ ► facebook decided to basically end oculus accounts sometime soon and require all new purchasers
01:43:14 ◼ ► of these vr headsets to use facebook accounts to manage you know the headset itself to log into the
01:43:20 ◼ ► headset to use it to manage all your purchases and all your online gameplay and to require a facebook
01:43:26 ◼ ► account for a vr headset is as baffling as it sounds and has angered many people to the point
01:43:36 ◼ ► where if you look at any review of the oculus quest or quest 2 it's filled with people who are
01:43:42 ◼ ► super angry about this and are refusing to use their oculus hardware or refusing to buy new
01:43:49 ◼ ► oculus hardware as a result frankly i i don't know why it's worth it for facebook to continue and not
01:43:55 ◼ ► relent on this front but they are continuing and not relating on this front so far so anyway i
01:44:00 ◼ ► again i don't know why it seems to make no sense to me why facebook would would continue to push
01:44:04 ◼ ► this for seemingly very little gain and for a gain they don't really need anyway they are
01:44:12 ◼ ► and so if you don't have a facebook account or you uh you know don't want to tie your facebook
01:44:19 ◼ ► activity to this piece of hardware that needs to know it for no reason uh then this is not for you
01:44:27 ◼ ► and i understand that i didn't have a facebook account for a while but i did keep using instagram
01:44:32 ◼ ► and there's no difference there like and so like i tweeted about this the other day like i i've
01:44:37 ◼ ► decided that i you know i i need i recently needed to recreate a facebook account for various real
01:44:44 ◼ ► life purposes that are not interesting to the show but i i had to make a facebook account i realized
01:44:49 ◼ ► like i'm being stupid here i've continued to use instagram this entire time and i've been like i
01:44:55 ◼ ► don't have a facebook account but like that that makes no difference if i'm using instagram i wasn't
01:44:59 ◼ ► achieving anything by not having a facebook account i wasn't making any kind of real stand
01:45:04 ◼ ► about my politics or my privacy by not having facebook but having instagram so i decided well
01:45:11 ◼ ► i i needed a facebook account for some real life reasons so i'm like fine i'll just create a stupid
01:45:15 ◼ ► facebook account and i'll put nothing in it except for the bare minimum that i need to get this stuff
01:45:20 ◼ ► done and so i had one and so i could connect it to the oculus hardware so that was not a problem for
01:45:27 ◼ ► me but if it's a problem for you i understand completely anyway so i decided to get the quest
01:45:32 ◼ ► two which was released a few months back and had great reviews and i couldn't besides the facebook
01:45:38 ◼ ► thing i couldn't find anything wrong with it in the reviews so we got it gave it to adam on
01:45:42 ◼ ► christmas morning he absolutely flipped his mind like he was so happy like he basically exploded
01:45:50 ◼ ► and so it went very well as a gift and then the family had to play and i've i've had you know
01:45:56 ◼ ► maybe four days of playing with it so far between various members of the family and i have some very
01:46:02 ◼ ► very early impressions i'll go through fairly quickly number one motion is a bit of a problem
01:46:10 ◼ ► like the motion sickness or motion nausea is a bit of a problem for at least me and tiff and a couple
01:46:18 ◼ ► other people who have tried it in the household like you know family who have tried it and i don't
01:46:24 ◼ ► think it's going to be a huge problem in that like i can still use it but i can't find any settings
01:46:32 ◼ ► between like the little eyepiece moving bits or the head strap or anything i can't find any way
01:46:46 ◼ ► but i can't get it so that everything is sharp and it seems to just be like maybe just a fit issue
01:46:53 ◼ ► like the little like eye spready spacing things it's not a continuous setting where you can set
01:46:58 ◼ ► exactly how spaced apart your eyes are it's like just three notches like just three fixed settings
01:47:02 ◼ ► and so maybe my settings between them i don't know but for whatever it is i can't get it to a point
01:47:09 ◼ ► where it is sharp and that makes it so that sometimes when i use it even just doing simple
01:47:15 ◼ ► things like looking around the menus makes me feel a little bit sick and i have to stop
01:47:24 ◼ ► so i don't i haven't quite figured out you know how to manage that well yet but it might just be
01:47:28 ◼ ► i just might not be compatible very well with either vr as a whole or this particular hardware
01:47:35 ◼ ► well one of the problems with motion sickness with vr is that the hardware is not yet fast
01:47:42 ◼ ► enough and certainly is the case for a mobile thing like the quest right because anytime there
01:47:47 ◼ ► is a mismatch between what your eyes see and what your inner ear feels that's where you get motion
01:47:52 ◼ ► sickness so if the frame if the images on the screen lag even by a frame or two when you move
01:47:59 ◼ ► your head just like a half an inch right that's a mismatch that your brain can detect if you have
01:48:04 ◼ ► faster hardware at a higher frame rate that's more reactive with better you know alignment with you
01:48:09 ◼ ► know whatever it's using the whether it uses the accelerometers or cameras or there's all sorts of
01:48:15 ◼ ► different ways to try to orient yourself but like there's in any vr hardware that's available now
01:48:20 ◼ ► there is some lag between you moving your head and the image changing on the screen they try to make
01:48:24 ◼ ► that lag as small as possible but any lag at all has the potential to introduce motion sickness so
01:48:30 ◼ ► even if you had perfectly in focus stuff the fact that what you're seeing in front of you
01:48:35 ◼ ► is a couple milliseconds behind what your head is doing and may not exactly match what your head
01:48:46 ◼ ► for motion sickness so i don't expect that to go away for a long time because you need very very
01:48:51 ◼ ► fiendishly fast hardware and very accurate head tracking to you know eliminate that essentially
01:48:58 ◼ ► yeah and and i think that you know that's probably part of the problem i think another part of the
01:49:01 ◼ ► problem is just like the design of some of the games i've tried is such that like you just keep
01:49:06 ◼ ► like it keeps like popping you to different places you're moving to different places because you can't
01:49:10 ◼ ► walk there yeah i mean there's a reason for that it's like they like in general keeping your body
01:49:16 ◼ ► still they're actually trying to help you i mean yes you're right that you can't physically walk
01:49:20 ◼ ► because you'll hit the wall of your house right but they're trying to help you not be as motion
01:49:24 ◼ ► sick because if you're standing still but what you see in front of your eyes is like a roller
01:49:29 ◼ ► coaster ride that's that's a huge mismatch between like i'm not walking anywhere i'm standing still
01:49:34 ◼ ► why am i suddenly gliding forward really fast so they teleport you to a different place or whatever
01:49:38 ◼ ► they're trying to get you so that you're you know in the game your virtual avatar is also standing
01:49:44 ◼ ► still just like you are to just try to do a better match between what's on screen and what's happening
01:49:48 ◼ ► right and so like that's why the games that work really well are things like beat saber you know
01:49:53 ◼ ► everyone recommended beat saber um i'm okay at it tiff is like amazingly good at it she's really
01:49:59 ◼ ► enjoying it um i i'm okay at it but it's fun but what's good about beat saber is like your virtual
01:50:05 ◼ ► character is standing still and stuff is coming at you that you have to like deflect or whatever
01:50:10 ◼ ► so that kind of thing makes sense another one of the games that i've really surprisingly enjoyed
01:50:15 ◼ ► is 11 table tennis which is just a really well done ping pong table simulator and it's and you're
01:50:22 ◼ ► so in in ping pong you are standing in a small square area making small movements while stuff
01:50:27 ◼ ► happens in front of you that and it replicates that perfectly like you don't have to move your
01:50:31 ◼ ► body that very far in ping pong you can just move within that small you know few square foot area on
01:50:36 ◼ ► the floor that you're standing in behind the virtual ping pong table and it works and like
01:50:40 ◼ ► that by the way the game is so delightful like you like wake up and you're just in some guy's
01:50:43 ◼ ► apartment and there's a ping pong table and that's it's just it's such a fun world and it's so
01:50:48 ◼ ► well done like the the sound of the ball hitting things it's perfect like it the way the ball is
01:50:55 ◼ ► about like it's an incredibly well-done game highly recommend 11 table tennis if you're a vr person
01:51:00 ◼ ► and i haven't played anything multiplayer yet i can imagine it would be even more fun if you
01:51:04 ◼ ► were playing against a real human instead of like the ai torso that you play against normally that
01:51:11 ◼ ► was one of the most fun motion control games i played not vr but like for the playstation
01:51:15 ◼ ► 3 sony had motion control stuff the ones that look like a glowing lollipop it's like a black
01:51:20 ◼ ► stick with a glowing ball on top of it and i think was it rockstar that made the ping pong game some
01:51:25 ◼ ► big name game company made a motion control ping pong game that used those motion control things
01:51:31 ◼ ► as the paddles and it was perfect for the same reason you said that you're standing in front of
01:51:35 ◼ ► the tv and the thing you're holding might as well be a ping pong paddle like it's instead of a paddle
01:51:41 ◼ ► on top it has a glowing ball and it just worked so well for like even though it wasn't vr you might
01:51:46 ◼ ► as well have been vr because on the screen is the table and the ball's coming out of the screen at
01:51:51 ◼ ► you and you wave this controller and it was it was amazing it was the best simulation i'd ever seen
01:51:56 ◼ ► i'm sure vr is even better but i i remember that being impressed the the good match between what
01:52:02 ◼ ► can you do while standing in front of your tv holding a stick and that kind of game yeah it is
01:52:07 ◼ ► kind of i was highly amused the fact i was sitting there thinking like you know the first video game
01:52:11 ◼ ► was pong all right and then i think like what what did we do back then and with the hardware we had
01:52:18 ◼ ► that now we've made this incredible these incredible advances and we've come to the point now where we
01:52:25 ◼ ► now have pong again just way better in all these different ways but still we're still playing the
01:52:32 ◼ ► same game everything's a remix so anyway so ping pong is awesome um mini golf putt putt we have this
01:52:40 ◼ ► we've got walkabout mini golf that's been pretty fun too that that does have the issue where you
01:52:45 ◼ ► keep having to like teleport to your ball but you like you pull the trigger and it teleports you to
01:52:49 ◼ ► be right in front of your ball and you can walk around within that spot but you know it's a mini
01:52:53 ◼ ► golf course so you hit the ball and it's going to move more than a few feet away so you're going to
01:52:57 ◼ ► have to keep teleporting like after every stroke and so you you teleport to your ball and then you
01:53:01 ◼ ► got to like kind of reorient yourself where am i oh oh here i am you know you look around oh
01:53:05 ◼ ► the water's behind me now or whatever so that's it's a it's you know a little bit you know jarring
01:53:10 ◼ ► to move around like that um we haven't yet tried any like driving or flying games because that i
01:53:17 ◼ ► think i fear the motion component of those i did try there was like a like a nature film thing
01:53:27 ◼ ► underwater and looking at all these fish swimming by and i couldn't get through that because it
01:53:32 ◼ ► wasn't like the right i think the screen resolution wasn't good enough or it wasn't sharp enough
01:53:36 ◼ ► or the motion of the camera moving was too weird that one made me feel sick so i had to stop that
01:53:46 ◼ ► those seem okay for me so far but i i can't play it for that long but i i will say like
01:53:52 ◼ ► between beat saber and ping pong and mini golf so far that have been kind of the hits among the
01:53:57 ◼ ► family they've been really well received not only by the gamers but also by the non-gamers like we
01:54:05 ◼ ► had parents play and they enjoyed them too and it wasn't weird for them it was like oh yeah i just
01:54:12 ◼ ► put this thing oh i'm in a golf course okay and just start playing and it reminded me a lot of
01:54:17 ◼ ► when the nintendo we came out in was it 2006 like that thanksgiving and holiday season i saw much of
01:54:23 ◼ ► the same effect of like you brought the brand new we over to your family's house and you had like
01:54:27 ◼ ► your parents and your grandparents playing these games and you know having this similar kind of
01:54:32 ◼ ► experiences where you're kind of like semi-virtual with the with the wiimotes and moving you know
01:54:35 ◼ ► having motion control of these virtual worlds on screen and they had broad appeal but i think it
01:54:42 ◼ ► was also largely a novelty and it wore off quickly and i think so far i think that's probably what's
01:54:48 ◼ ► going to happen with us and vr i i think this is really fun but i haven't yet found the killer
01:54:56 ◼ ► thing that i think we're going to be doing for a long time it seems like it's really good for
01:55:00 ◼ ► certain kinds of games and not that good for a broad type for a broad variety of games at least
01:55:07 ◼ ► not yet or maybe not with this hardware or maybe just the software hasn't caught up yet who knows
01:55:11 ◼ ► but it's really good for like the small segment of games like we have our we sports like we have
01:55:16 ◼ ► that is covered but i don't yet know if we're going to really be able to move past that anytime soon
01:55:22 ◼ ► and so i think what's going to happen is i think we're going to play with it a lot for like a month
01:55:28 ◼ ► and then it's not going to get a lot of use but i i could be wrong but i kind of get that feeling so
01:55:33 ◼ ► far that this is really fun this is a great new cool experience to have right now but i don't see
01:55:40 ◼ ► a lot of lasting power in the software library at least what's available for the quest which like
01:55:46 ◼ ► this is a subset of pc vr stuff because it's not running on windows it's not running on intel
01:55:57 ◼ ► platform so like this is not all vr but i have a feeling this is much of this is probably like
01:56:03 ◼ ► a decent representative sample of like what's out the kind of things that are out there
01:56:05 ◼ ► and i i'm not seeing a lot of that depth yet maybe i just haven't looked hard enough or you know it's
01:56:12 ◼ ► only been a few days i also when i was asking for recommendations i did not i specifically said
01:56:18 ◼ ► please no like shooting games because i don't want to get to it now but i'm not into shooting games
01:56:24 ◼ ► it did try super hot it's not the same type of shooting game and speaking of shooting games
01:56:28 ◼ ► though has using this made tiff more interested in playing half-life alex like getting beefier
01:56:34 ◼ ► vr hardware to do that uh i we haven't talked about it yet i mean we're we've we've always been mildly
01:56:39 ◼ ► interesting because we're such big half-life fans i was looking at just like yesterday morning it's
01:56:43 ◼ ► like hey how how easy is a valve index to get these days and it did have a little like finger
01:56:49 ◼ ► adjuster thing to adjust the eye spacing in a variable manner instead of these three fixed
01:56:54 ◼ ► spaces that the quest has so i thought like maybe the quest might be better with me because i i think
01:57:00 ◼ ► if i can get vr gear that fits me better that that where like i can have a full field of vision that's
01:57:07 ◼ ► sharp across the whole thing every time i i think i would have fewer motion issues but i don't
01:57:13 ◼ ► think i like it enough to necessarily make that jump right now and get the pc for it and everything
01:57:18 ◼ ► else because ultimately one thing i love about the quest too is even though it's facebook behind the
01:57:25 ◼ ► scenes and that's really gross it is a really nice experience to have this thing be all in one like
01:57:30 ◼ ► the hardware is well designed the software is all integrated like the their storefronts all
01:57:35 ◼ ► integrated with it and all the games work really well with their like boundary detection and stuff
01:57:40 ◼ ► like that there's no hardware to put around the room like you don't have to have like little like
01:57:46 ◼ ► you know emitters around the room or sensors around the room like you just put the helmet on
01:57:51 ◼ ► and put the controllers in your hand and that's it it senses the room for you you draw where you want
01:57:56 ◼ ► to stay and it makes you stay there there's no other wires like that's all really nice the
01:58:00 ◼ ► experience of using that is very very good and i think if i went into any of the more powerful
01:58:07 ◼ ► pc based solutions for this i think all of the rough edges of the experience that aren't that
01:58:14 ◼ ► nice would irritate me possibly more than the value i would get out of the additional hardware
01:58:19 ◼ ► of the pc stuff real time follow-up uh asked if do you want to play half-life alex more now that
01:58:25 ◼ ► you've played on the quest her answer was absolutely exclamation point so i think you know what you
01:58:29 ◼ ► have to do ah correct well so one thing i did order they they sell a cable that's basically just
01:58:35 ◼ ► a fiber optic 16-foot usb 3 cable with active transmitters on both sides um but yeah they sell
01:58:45 ◼ ► a link cable that you can actually use this headset as a pc headset for you know compatible
01:58:51 ◼ ► software whatever that means and so i bought the cable to try that out to see if we wanted to go
01:58:55 ◼ ► down that route and if it ends up being really cool maybe then i'd order the the valve index you
01:58:59 ◼ ► know if it needs to be better but uh i i'm gonna explore that avenue but i don't i don't know uh
01:59:10 ◼ ► because tiff wants a new gaming laptop but ideally like it would have the new rtx generation of gpu
01:59:17 ◼ ► that isn't seemingly available on laptops yet so we'll see how that goes anyway thank you to our
01:59:22 ◼ ► sponsors this week boxcryptor and techmeme ride home and thank you to our wonderful members who
01:59:29 ◼ ► support us directly we want to thank you very much for your support this year this we know we just
01:59:32 ◼ ► launched a membership program this summer you've been wonderful to us so far thank you for your
01:59:36 ◼ ► support if you want to join as a member atp.fm join thank you everybody and we will talk to you
01:59:42 ◼ ► next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental
02:00:11 ◼ ► and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's kacy list m a r c
02:00:50 ◼ ► uh there are two tiny buttons on the playstation 4 controller one of them is the share button
02:00:56 ◼ ► and one of them is like the options menu button they're like the tiniest buttons you could possibly
02:01:00 ◼ ► imagine which is a good idea because they're not important buttons for gameplay they're just for
02:01:04 ◼ ► like menu functionality they're in exactly the same place as they were before but previously
02:01:09 ◼ ► they were tiny sort of lozenge shaped buttons that had a dents in them like little swimming pool dents
02:01:26 ◼ ► and it's a downgrade uh the little the little little dimples that they had before felt good
02:01:32 ◼ ► you'd feel for the little dimple you'd press the little dimple it was a great tiny little button
02:01:44 ◼ ► downgrade why would you do that i mean again i think it's aesthetics these are more sort of
02:01:48 ◼ ► regular geometric shapes it's not bad they're fine like you feel them they work they're not hard to
02:01:54 ◼ ► press nothing like that but it's like a a minor downgrade on a on a button and it is a button
02:01:59 ◼ ► that you hit a lot especially in destiny you hit the options button a lot and i hit the share button
02:02:03 ◼ ► a lot to capture things or whatever so that's that's kind of a shame and then one more software
02:02:08 ◼ ► thing that i forgot to talk about uh i don't know how to describe this but playstation 5 software
02:02:15 ◼ ► ui is a lot like the playstation 4 one only with more not with more ads but with more more
02:02:21 ◼ ► promotion like when you turn the thing on when like it boots in or whatever there is always this
02:02:29 ◼ ► line of squares by default that is where your cursor is active which is fine except that line
02:02:36 ◼ ► of squares is filled with crap that i don't care about here's the latest game that's available on
02:02:41 ◼ ► the playstation store i don't care here's a bunch of stuff that happened recently in the games you're
02:02:46 ◼ ► playing i don't care i don't want to see any of that stuff now it's one tap away from going away
02:02:52 ◼ ► and doing what you're doing but i do not need and it's not they're not actual i guess the game
02:02:56 ◼ ► things are actual ads it's not like it's advertising viagra or something it's all playstation related
02:03:02 ◼ ► and it is relevant to what i'm doing and what i'm playing for the most part but i don't need to see
02:03:07 ◼ ► that in my face i wish there was a way to get rid of that people have mostly been complaining that
02:03:11 ◼ ► it takes now more taps to put your playstation 5 to sleep because you have to first get off of that
02:03:16 ◼ ► menu onto another menu in general the menus are better than they were on the playstation 4 they're
02:03:22 ◼ ► more logical they're better organized they're graphically better but that whatever that stupid
02:03:26 ◼ ► bar is that has your default input focus that is constantly filled with stuff that it thinks is
02:03:31 ◼ ► relevant to you plus some advertisement for a game you're not interested in that gets a big
02:03:36 ◼ ► thumbs down for me yeah like the whole direction that so much of our hardware has gone and software
02:03:42 ◼ ► has gone in recent years of just turning everything into a like promo fest and a vending machine like
02:03:49 ◼ ► it just it really runs me the wrong way but it seems like you know the the cats out of the barn
02:03:56 ◼ ► door on that one so badly that there's just no going back yeah like like in the the sony's case
02:04:01 ◼ ► like i understand what they're doing it's stuff relevant to games that i'm playing and like even
02:04:06 ◼ ► just the one square they put for like a recent game that came out like it makes sense it is a
02:04:10 ◼ ► game console and you would want to to see that stuff on the screen it's just that there's just
02:04:14 ◼ ► no way to get out get rid of it like you should be able to say okay fine but don't show me that
02:04:19 ◼ ► like kind of like you can with apple stuff like don't show me serious suggestions don't show me
02:04:23 ◼ ► results from the web don't you know like to control sort of the default sort of quick complete
02:04:29 ◼ ► stuff because that's what they're trying to do is like we think these are the the three things
02:04:32 ◼ ► you're most likely to do and sometimes they're right like sometimes if i just did a capture
02:04:36 ◼ ► like the square to the right is the capture that i just made that's probably what i'm going to go
02:04:39 ◼ ► for anyway if i want to trim it or look at it or whatever like that makes sense it's it's a lot
02:04:43 ◼ ► like auto completing but the other ones like there's just lack of control i think they just
02:04:47 ◼ ► need more settings to to trim that down like in other places they expanded like i said when you
02:04:52 ◼ ► do share you have a menu where you can pick what uh you know how long you want to share it's kind
02:04:55 ◼ ► of like the opposite of what they did in big sur with where you can't snooze the notifications
02:05:00 ◼ ► for different amounts of time they added that in the playstation 5 that's the direction to go on
02:05:04 ◼ ► before it was like pick a length and every time you save a clip it'll be that length and playstation
02:05:08 ◼ ► 5 is like but why not just in time give them a list of like seven different preset lengths why
02:05:13 ◼ ► not it's a tiny little menu put it there it's like oh so nice look i don't have to go change
02:05:17 ◼ ► the setting it's just in real time i can say snooze for five minutes people don't know what
02:05:21 ◼ ► we're talking about in big sur uh notifications come up uh calendar notifications you used to be
02:05:25 ◼ ► able to snooze them for a certain period of time in a pop-up menu and now what does it do now you
02:05:31 ◼ ► can just say later and you don't get to pick the length yeah it used to be you'd have like you know
02:05:34 ◼ ► 15 minutes one hour tomorrow something like that and now it just snooze or not snooze and i think
02:05:39 ◼ ► it's something like 15 minutes and that's it yeah and and you can imagine a plan like but i don't
02:05:43 ◼ ► like those three choices i don't like 15 minutes an hour in a day i wish i could have 90 minutes
02:05:47 ◼ ► or whatever and maybe the next version you think they'd expanded and make customizable but instead
02:05:51 ◼ ► they said nope how about no options how do you like that right that plays 85 so that in general
02:05:57 ◼ ► is going in the right direction but like i think they need a little bit more flexibility and and i
02:06:01 ◼ ► don't mind i don't even mind being like not advertised to but sometimes you do want to know
02:06:07 ◼ ► like oh there's a new update available wherever like that type of information just in time it's
02:06:12 ◼ ► just zero flexibility that i found so far to change that and they're usually good about this
02:06:16 ◼ ► like so many has tons of options for everything they even have an option of like by default do
02:06:20 ◼ ► you want the microphone to be muted when you start playing or not muted and the default is not muted
02:06:26 ◼ ► but i changed it because like i want the default to be muted so i'm not accidentally on microphone
02:06:30 ◼ ► if somehow i connect through audio and i didn't mean to like they're pretty good with options
02:06:34 ◼ ► it's just that the ui is a little bit getting a little bit pushy well because none of those
02:06:38 ◼ ► options make them less money i i i don't even think that's what it is like i understand the
02:06:43 ◼ ► advertising of the game thing but like in general sony tries to give you like it not allowing you to
02:06:50 ◼ ► mute the microphone by default it would be like oh more engagement and get people involved but
02:06:54 ◼ ► they don't they understand it's a privacy thing they're actually pretty good about that stuff
02:06:57 ◼ ► there's a huge list of privacy settings about who can see what you're doing whether you're online
02:07:02 ◼ ► what games that you play your triumphs and you could for all those different things it's very
02:07:06 ◼ ► grainy you can say nobody can see this only my friends can see this only my close friends can see
02:07:11 ◼ ► this friends of frenzy it's a lot like facebook in that regard but the defaults are actually pretty
02:07:15 ◼ ► locked down so much so that you usually have to dive in there and sort of open things up if you
02:07:19 ◼ ► want people to be able to find you to play with you online anyway you should definitely get a