0:00:00Destiny Shadowkeep moved to October 1st, but I'm not going to move A to B for that.
0:00:05Thank you.
0:00:06Whatever that is.
0:00:07They delayed it.
0:00:08It was supposed to be September 17th.
0:00:09They sent out this point.
0:00:11When game companies, like, you know when Apple tells you the thing that they didn't even
0:00:15tell you, they're like, "It's going to be in the fall," and it ends up being the last
0:00:18day of fall or whatever.
0:00:19Game companies announce a launch date, and they have to announce a specific day, like
0:00:24months and months and months in advance, and then if they miss that day, they're moving
0:00:28it from September 17th to October 1st, which is like nothing in Computerland.
0:00:32So what?
0:00:33Who cares?
0:00:34They end up writing a two-page apology letter and explaining in detail because game fans
0:00:38are so rabid and insane that they'd be like, "You're delaying my thing.
0:00:41You said September 17th six months ago.
0:00:43I planned my entire life around her.
0:00:45Now you tell me October 1st?"
0:00:46Where it's in Computerland, it's like, "October 1st, September 17th, whatever.
0:00:50Who cares?
0:00:51Ship it when it's done.
0:00:52Fix the bugs."
0:00:53God, gamers are the worst.
0:00:54They are.
0:00:55They're absolutely the worst.
0:00:56Because I read these letters, and I'm like, "I feel these companies."
0:00:59And then I think, "They have to do that.
0:01:01They have to prostrate themselves and be like, 'We're so sorry that six months ago we didn't
0:01:06know the exact date, time, and hour that we were going to launch a thing that we're working
0:01:10on that is basically software.
0:01:13Please forgive us.
0:01:14We just want to make sure it's okay.'"
0:01:15But it's like, "It's fine."
0:01:17It's like two weeks.
0:01:19Not even two weeks.
0:01:20But you said October 1.
0:01:21That's a Tuesday.
0:01:22That doesn't bother us?
0:01:23It doesn't matter.
0:01:24It's fine.
0:01:25It's not like I'm taking a day off of work.
0:01:28I wouldn't put it past you.
0:01:29People take weeks off of work for these launches.
0:01:31They take an entire week off.
0:01:34It's a way of life.
0:01:38Vacation is over for at least one of us.
0:01:41Summer of back to work.
0:01:43For some of us.
0:01:44Hey, we work occasionally.
0:01:46Yeah, I'm working right now on my vacation.
0:01:49How was your time in Long Island, Jon?
0:01:52On Long Island, Casey.
0:01:54On Long Island.
0:01:55Whatever.
0:01:56Oh my god, you two are...
0:01:58You know, I expect this from Jon, Marco.
0:02:00But for you to have fallen this far this fast, I'm sad.
0:02:05It's okay.
0:02:06It's okay.
0:02:07Marco has nearly adopted the island.
0:02:09Alright, Bane.
0:02:11So how was your time on Long Island?
0:02:14It was fine.
0:02:15Good talk.
0:02:16I'm glad you're still with us, man.
0:02:18Really?
0:02:19That's all we're gonna get?
0:02:20It's like talking to a teenager.
0:02:21Well, it's the same vacation I have every year and I enjoy it and it's good.
0:02:26You sound like you really enjoyed it.
0:02:28It was fine.
0:02:29Well, in Jon's defense, not only was I'm sure...
0:02:33It was very hot here.
0:02:34I can imagine it was very hot there.
0:02:35But you woke up this morning, I almost said "in" again, on Long Island and then you drove
0:02:42some amounts of time, is that right, to a ferry and then drove many amounts of time
0:02:46to home?
0:02:47Yeah, no, it was an easy trip.
0:02:49Not a big deal.
0:02:50How long does it take at a broad order of magnitude?
0:02:53Like an hour to the ferry, an hour and a half on the ferry and another hour and 40 minutes
0:02:57in the car.
0:02:58It's a really easy trip.
0:03:00I have never been, to my recollection, I've never driven onto a car carrying actually
0:03:06anything.
0:03:08I've been on things that carry cars.
0:03:09Like I've been on the Chunnel, for example, and I believe that carries cars.
0:03:13But I've never driven onto anything.
0:03:16There's actually possibly the only car carrying train that I'm aware of anyway.
0:03:21I think the only one that Amtrak has is a train that goes, I think they call it the
0:03:26Auto Train, and it runs from the DC area to the Orlando area.
0:03:30And don't tell Declan, but we're going to Disney in a few months for his fifth birthday.
0:03:36And I had kicked around the idea of taking the train, but it's like a 24 hour journey
0:03:40or something like that.
0:03:41I forget how long it takes, but it's long.
0:03:43And you know, long enough that you have to sleep overnight on the train, which to some
0:03:48degree is part of the fun, but I don't know.
0:03:50I'm not sure Michaela, a year and a half, almost two at that point, will really see
0:03:54the fun in riding on a train for 24 hours straight.
0:03:57But that's right.
0:03:59Anyway, all that's to say that I'm jealous of going on the ferry.
0:04:02It sounds fun.
0:04:03Yeah, you haven't lived until you've tried to take your stick shift car with no hill
0:04:07hold up a wet 45 degree angle slick ramp with metal inches from either side of you.
0:04:15That sounds absolutely delightful.
0:04:18My modern cars have no holds, but I still remember back in the days when they didn't
0:04:21and you'd get unlucky and you'd be on one of the side ramps and they'd be like guiding
0:04:25you.
0:04:26Like there's no room.
0:04:27Like they alternate the cars so that they're staggered so that the doors can open because
0:04:33you need the door to open into the gap between the cars because you couldn't get out of your
0:04:39car if you have the car.
0:04:41It's just all lined up right next to each other.
0:04:42You couldn't open the door wide enough for humans to fit out of it.
0:04:46Maybe you come out the window Dukes Hazard style.
0:04:48I've cut it close.
0:04:50Couple of times I've had to go out a different door than the one that I'm sitting in because
0:04:55it turns out I can't open the driver's door, but they really wedge them in there.
0:04:59Today on the way back though, they offer like priority boarding or whatever.
0:05:04It's not always available.
0:05:05I think they sell out.
0:05:07Anyway, I had priority boarding on the way back, so I was dead center first one off the
0:05:12thing, which means that my car was like three inches from falling into the sound the entire
0:05:16time.
0:05:17I'm sure that means just one block under one front wheels between me and an ornery grave.
0:05:24Wait, all kidding aside, the ramp doesn't fold up to block the car from falling out
0:05:31of the car?
0:05:32The thing that was keeping me there is the block under my driver's side front wheel and
0:05:37a couple of metal poles about the diameter of a golf ball with chain strung between them.
0:05:44So there's no, what do they do for a ramp to get the car off of the boat?
0:05:49So when I board it, I'm boarding through the front of the boat.
0:05:51So my car ends up at the very back of the boat facing backwards and then the boat backs
0:05:55into new London and the flat deck of the boat backs right up to the dock.
0:06:03They pull those little metal poles out, the little metal pole I described, those poles
0:06:06and chain, like the pole just goes in like four inches into a little hole in the deck.
0:06:10They just pull those poles out, undo the chains and I just drive right off.
0:06:13So really like there was nothing stopping my car from going into the sound except for
0:06:17that pole that just manually shoved into a hole in the deck.
0:06:22Sounds super secure.
0:06:23But those blocks, they do the job.
0:06:26As they say on the Long Island Sound Ferry, "Sea conditions are calm."
0:06:30And that's what I like to hear.
0:06:33Do you get real bad motion sickness during this hour and a half journey?
0:06:36No, because sea conditions are calm.
0:06:38But on not so calm sea conditions, have you got...
0:06:41They're always calm when we go.
0:06:43I always pick the biggest boats.
0:06:44You can see which boat is going to be your boat, so I don't pick the dinky boats.
0:06:47I pick the really big ones.
0:06:48So the odds of them being rocky is low.
0:06:53Do you pre-reserve this spot or do you just kind of pitch up at the last second and say,
0:06:57"Here I am"?
0:06:58Oh yeah, you got to make a reservation.
0:07:00That's why you go for the priority.
0:07:02The priority boarding is like...
0:07:03I mean, hopefully they don't learn anything from the airline industry.
0:07:06Priority boarding is like $10 extra.
0:07:07It's the most no-brainer purchase you've ever made in your entire life.
0:07:11It's not like an extra 300 bucks for two inches of leg room on an airline or something.
0:07:15But they do sell out.
0:07:16So depending on what boat you're going for and what time and what day, you might not
0:07:20be able to get priority.
0:07:21Does it earn your car extra room in any dimension?
0:07:24It did actually this time.
0:07:26Because I was...
0:07:28First of all, you want to be in the center.
0:07:29You don't want to be off to the sides because then you just have to drive straight on.
0:07:31So you don't have to maneuver into any of those little alleys.
0:07:34In the center, the aisle is usually wider.
0:07:36That's where they put the big trucks and stuff.
0:07:38And yeah, so I was straight right back to the back of the boat and we had plenty of
0:07:42room on either side.
0:07:43It was very nice.
0:07:44But the problem is that means your car is out in the sun.
0:07:47So it gets super hot on the journey over.
0:07:48The struggle.
0:07:49Does your car have an electronic or a hand parking brake?
0:07:53Hand.
0:07:54Okay, so are you wrenching up even harder than normal in this particular circuit?
0:07:58I'm trying not to brake.
0:07:59I have the whole thing with the parking brake thing seizing up.
0:08:03So I had to get the whole rear brake caliper replaced at tremendous expense.
0:08:06So I'm trying to be gentle on my...
0:08:08Because I think I do...
0:08:09I tend to pull up on the parking brake too hard just from a lifetime of older cars.
0:08:14They were where you needed to do that.
0:08:15And I think in modern cars, you don't need to pull up quite as hard.
0:08:18So I'm trying not to...
0:08:19I'm trying to lengthen the lifetime of my parking brake by not yanking on it like it's
0:08:24my 1983 Volvo.
0:08:26Fair enough.
0:08:28We didn't ask you.
0:08:30I forgot.
0:08:31How was the refurbished, re-renovated whatever beach house this year?
0:08:34Nah, I mean, they didn't do much.
0:08:37Like they had ripped up a bunch of carpeting, which was good.
0:08:41And then they ripped up a bunch of very large linoleum tile, which was neutral because the
0:08:46old tile was fine.
0:08:49And what they did was they put this wooden laminate flooring over top of all of it.
0:08:53And you can tell it's over top because it's another half inch higher than the rest of
0:08:56the floor in the house now.
0:08:57No, no.
0:08:58And it was not a good...
0:09:00First of all, it's not real wood.
0:09:02It's like particle board or something.
0:09:03And it's squeaky and it looks okay and it's better than the carpet.
0:09:10And then what they did is they had these nice wood grain cabinets.
0:09:12They had them all painted white, just spray painted white.
0:09:17That's like instead of getting new cabinets.
0:09:19And then they replaced the countertops with some kind of stone countertops.
0:09:23They spent a bunch of money to "fix things that did not need fixing."
0:09:28And things that did need fixing, like every appliance in the house, remains the same.
0:09:34They replaced a really old '80s couch with a newer couch that was an upgrade.
0:09:40But the room they have in it is still a little bit ridiculous.
0:09:44I'm saying is I could have brought my dog.
0:09:46I wouldn't have had to bring the dog because the house is all remodeled.
0:09:50It would have been fine.
0:09:54Have you picked Daisy up yet or is that tomorrow?
0:09:55What are you talking about?
0:09:57I'm assuming she's at a kennel or something now.
0:09:59A kennel, yes.
0:10:01We sent her to the orphanage.
0:10:04First of all, Daisy gets picked up immediately upon returning.
0:10:09You're going to leave the dog stranded while you're like, "I'll just get my dog tomorrow."
0:10:13You're going to get the dog immediately.
0:10:14And second of all, Tina came home before I did, so she got the dog.
0:10:18Oh, that's right.
0:10:19I knew that.
0:10:20I'm sorry.
0:10:21I thought you had come home before her, but in retrospect, I don't know why I thought
0:10:23that.
0:10:24Wait, so where is the dog?
0:10:25Yeah, exactly.
0:10:26Where was Daisy when you guys were both gone?
0:10:28She goes to a doggy playdate four days a week where she just, in the middle of the day,
0:10:34she goes and hangs out with a bunch of other dogs and runs around.
0:10:38And the person who does those doggy playgroups also does boarding, and so that's where she
0:10:42was.
0:10:43So she's boarded there several times.
0:10:45It's just a person at their house, and there's a bunch of other dogs that she knows already
0:10:48there, so it's great fun for her as well.
0:10:51Everyone's on vacation.
0:10:53Always on vacation in New York and Massachusetts.
0:10:55All right, to go back a half step, I think we should start the follow-up with the most
0:11:00important follow-up.
0:11:01I know that I am on pins and needles to find out the one true version of the story of the
0:11:08Apple sticker on your Civic from 20 years ago.
0:11:10Please, Jon, fill me in.
0:11:12What was the story with your sticker on your Civic?
0:11:13It's actually related to a topic farther down in the notes that you may or may not get to.
0:11:20I forgot, oh, it was some Ask ATP question a week or two ago.
0:11:24It was like, "Do you put stickers on your cars or your iPads or something like that?"
0:11:27And I said I had one sticker on my first car, which is a Honda Civic.
0:11:31And first of all, I'm surprised my wife didn't call me on this.
0:11:34Maybe she didn't hear the episode yet.
0:11:36But when I was listening back to it, I heard myself say that I had an Apple logo sticker
0:11:41on the back window of my Honda Civic, and I said it was a white Apple logo sticker.
0:11:48But by the timelines, I think this might have been before Apple had dropped the rainbow
0:11:53logo.
0:11:54It was a '92 Civic, but I didn't get it new, right?
0:11:58So maybe this is like '98.
0:12:01When did they drop the rainbow?
0:12:02Maybe around the iMac.
0:12:03Anyway, bottom line is, good thing I have photos.
0:12:06I went into my photo collection and looked it up, because as soon as I heard that, I'm
0:12:09like, "Wait, it wasn't white, was it?"
0:12:10It was a rainbow sticker, rainbow logo Apple sticker, which is what used to come with all
0:12:15your Macs before they started to go to the solid color thing.
0:12:18And the story that's related to it is the potential return of the rainbow Apple logo.
0:12:21We'll see if we get to that this week.
0:12:23I feel better for having known that piece of information, and your old man Mac user
0:12:26cred has been restored, don't you worry.
0:12:28Also, it wasn't on the rear quarter window, because the '92 Civic did not have a rear
0:12:32quarter window.
0:12:33It just had a little piece of plastic there.
0:12:35Like, you know how there's the part that goes up and down that has straight sides, right?
0:12:38And sometimes they have that little tiny bit.
0:12:40First of all, the little bit of window would have been tiny, but second, it's a very inexpensive
0:12:44car, so it was just plastic.
0:12:45Marco, do you feel better knowing this?
0:12:47Because I know I do.
0:12:48I'm not even sure I know it now.
0:12:50I'll send you pictures.
0:12:52You've seen the picture of me with my cool white Civic, right?
0:12:55I don't think so.
0:12:56I really want to see this picture now.
0:12:57Yeah, I really want to.
0:12:58When I show it to you, it will look familiar.
0:13:00It's not in front of me now, because it's in my wife's photo library, which I have no
0:13:04access to on this Mac, of course.
0:13:06All right, let's move on with other beach-related follow-up.
0:13:09Michael T. Raymond has some information for us about underwater swimming.
0:13:13So this was with regard to Marco learning how to swim, specifically in the ocean, and
0:13:18Michael had some feedback for us.
0:13:19Would you like to take it away, John?
0:13:22Yeah, this was about my suggestion that Marco spent some time in his pool, being comfortable
0:13:27holding his breath, and you can build up your lung capacity by holding your breath and swimming
0:13:30underwater back and forth.
0:13:31A fun thing you can do in a pool, and Michael T. Raymond had this long, harrowing email
0:13:36explaining how you could die instantly without knowing it, even if you're a lifeguard, because
0:13:42you're all on him.
0:13:43The problem is that people, almost invariably young males, which I guess excludes Marco,
0:13:50figure out that you can extend the distance that you swim underwater by hyperventilating
0:13:54right before.
0:13:56And so you see this in movies sometimes, when a boat is capsizing and everyone's stuck on
0:13:59a cruise ship beside an adventure or something, and they have to hold their breath and go
0:14:03under a thing.
0:14:04They breathe in and out real fast before diving under the water.
0:14:06Have you seen that in a movie?
0:14:08You know, I have not seen this in a movie, and I am really going to regret sharing this
0:14:11out loud.
0:14:12As usual, I haven't seen it.
0:14:13Well, as usual, I'm going to regret saying this out loud.
0:14:17There was a TV show, I don't remember the name of it, I will put a link in the show
0:14:21notes for it, but there was a TV show way back in the day that starred Hulk Hogan, of
0:14:26all people, and it was like two dudes with this cigarette boat who went and solved crimes
0:14:32or something like that.
0:14:33And I can't remember the name of the show, but I will never forget watching one episode
0:14:38where they needed to, I don't know if the boat capsized or something, but something
0:14:42happened where they needed to be underwater for a long time, and that's exactly what they
0:14:47did.
0:14:48They, you know, and then dove in, and I was like, what in tarnation just happened?
0:14:52And at some point they explained, maybe beforehand, they explained what they were about to do.
0:14:55And I was like, does that make sense?
0:14:57Well, apparently, apparently it's real, but unwise.
0:15:00So continue, please, sir.
0:15:01Yeah, and it's not just one particular movie or TV show.
0:15:04It's a way to be able to stay underwater longer, but it lends itself to what's known as shallow
0:15:09water blackout or shallow water drowning, where it upsets the balance of stuff that
0:15:13normally forces you to do a service and take a breath so that you can stay underwater longer,
0:15:17which allows you to deprive your brain of oxygen for longer than you would expect.
0:15:22And then you just basically black out while you're underwater, which is bad because as
0:15:26soon as you become unconscious underwater, then you, you know, your body will take a
0:15:30deep breath and then you'll inhale water and you will basically drown.
0:15:33And at that point, your brain will have been without oxygen for a long time anyway, because
0:15:36that's what you were doing by extending the time you are underwater.
0:15:38It was a very long email.
0:15:40Bottom line is do not hyperventilate before going under as a way to try to, you know,
0:15:45let yourself break your record of going back and forth.
0:15:47Just do it the old fashioned straight up way.
0:15:49No, no pre-hyperventilating apparently is very dangerous.
0:15:51And I'll just add to this.
0:15:52This is like a specific case of the general idea of the buddy system.
0:15:57Don't swim anywhere ever by yourself if you can help it.
0:16:01It's always good to have someone else there with you because water is dangerous.
0:16:05And even if you are an experienced swimmer, you can get tired.
0:16:08You can knock your head on something.
0:16:09You can have low blood sugar and faint.
0:16:11Any of those things happen while you're in water.
0:16:13It's very bad.
0:16:14Always have someone with you.
0:16:16The television show that I was thinking of is Thunder in Paradise, which, and apparently
0:16:24now that I'm reading the Wikipedia page, it was, I guess, Knight Rider on the water to
0:16:28some degree.
0:16:29Thunder in Paradise Fallacy Adventures.
0:16:30It wishes.
0:16:31Yeah, right.
0:16:32It Fallacy Adventures with two ex-navy SEALs who work as mercenaries out of their tropical
0:16:36resort headquarters along Florida's Gulf Coast using their futuristic high-tech boat nicknamed
0:16:40Thunder.
0:16:41They travel around the world fighting various criminals and villains.
0:16:44I know you feel better for having known that particular piece of information.
0:16:49Unrelated to Hydra Thunder.
0:16:50Yes, which is a fantastic video game.
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0:18:51I had asked last episode, which feels like it was 17 years ago that we recorded it, for
0:18:56an idea for what to do about ditching Dropbox, because I was very upset with Dropbox and
0:19:00I had kicked the tires very briefly on Synology Drive as a replacement for Dropbox.
0:19:07And my initial impression after having spent 30 seconds with it was that it's too much
0:19:12like Google Apps with like documents and spreadsheets and all sorts of things I don't care about.
0:19:17Well, many people very gratefully, or very gracefully I should say, wrote in and said,
0:19:23"No, no, no, really, it's not bad, you should try it."
0:19:25And it turns out it's not bad and I'm glad I tried it.
0:19:27So the good news, it does seem like it is very similar to a hosted Dropbox that's on
0:19:33my Synology.
0:19:35And so it seems to work pretty much instantly.
0:19:38It works inside or outside of my home network.
0:19:41In that sense, everything seems good.
0:19:42You know, it operates just like Dropbox would.
0:19:45It has a native app for the Mac.
0:19:46Thankfully, one of the few good, there are almost no options in this app, but one of
0:19:50the few options that it does have is to make a grayscale menu.
0:19:55What do we call these things?
0:19:56Menu bar items on the upper right?
0:19:57I don't know, whatever it's called.
0:19:59You can do a grayscale one of those, which is great because otherwise it was going to
0:20:03be the only colored icon in my little, I don't want to call it a tray lest John yell at me,
0:20:07but we'll call it a tray.
0:20:09Anyways, so on the surface, seems good.
0:20:12Bad news, however, the client is very crash-plan-y, very Java-y.
0:20:18It is not very native at all.
0:20:20And in particular, the notifications, which can get very chatty, don't use the notification
0:20:25center stuff that is native to Mac OS.
0:20:28It looks very much like, what was the growl that was around before notification center
0:20:33was a thing.
0:20:35I think there may be a mechanism to get like a synced folder to someone that does not have
0:20:41an account on your Synology, but it does not seem clear to me the mechanism by which one
0:20:47does that.
0:20:48So I'm 50/50 on that.
0:20:49Additionally, when I tried to set it up, port forwarding requirements were extremely ambiguous.
0:20:54It seemed like it wanted other ports besides the ones that I already had exposed to be
0:20:59forwarded, but I couldn't find any documentation about what they wanted forwarded specifically.
0:21:04So I had to use Synology's Quick Connect, which is sort of kind of like a dynamic DNS
0:21:09sort of thing for your Synology where your Synology phones home and says, "Casey Synology
0:21:15is at IP address 192.168.1.1."
0:21:18Of course, that would be an externally accessible one.
0:21:20You get the idea.
0:21:21Anyway, so I did have to use Quick Connect for the first time, and then it worked no
0:21:23sweat.
0:21:25So it is not flawless by any means.
0:21:27I don't think it would solve the problem for the three of us of passing our microphone
0:21:31recordings around.
0:21:32But if you're just doing stuff within your own family, for example, or people who may
0:21:37have an account on your Synology, in that sense, it seems to work really well.
0:21:41So I have stopped using the Dropbox client on all of my computers, at least for now.
0:21:46When I do need to share files with somebody, I'll just go to the web interface and upload
0:21:49them.
0:21:50And so far, so good.
0:21:51Synology Drive seems good.
0:21:52The other thing that was offered as probably the second most popular contender was, I think,
0:21:56Resilio?
0:21:57I might have that name wrong, but it was the BitTorrent-based thing that has recently changed
0:22:03its name to something else.
0:22:05And that was the other thing that people said worked really well.
0:22:08I have not tried that.
0:22:09So Synology Drive, don't fall trap like I did to it looking like enterprise garbage.
0:22:16It actually seems pretty good.
0:22:18Have you guys explored any of this or don't care?
0:22:20These things have social components.
0:22:22They have network effect components.
0:22:23Like if you only need to share something with yourself and your other computer, and you
0:22:27have no need for shared folders, well, I got iCloud Drive.
0:22:31That's everywhere.
0:22:32It's built into all my computers.
0:22:33I'm already paying for the space.
0:22:35So I might as well just use that.
0:22:37The whole reason why so many of us feel like we're stuck to some degree on Dropbox is because
0:22:40it has social network lock-in.
0:22:43There are files that we have to share with people for folders, we have to share with
0:22:47people for various workflows or things we like to do or things we need to do for work
0:22:50or whatever else.
0:22:51And so there is this degree of lock-in.
0:22:54And so for anything to come along to replace it, it has to be something that has a really
0:23:01large social network already or a really large install base already among people who we would
0:23:06need to trade files with or sync files with.
0:23:08And so that's why I think ultimately nothing is going to stand a chance against Dropbox
0:23:13in that way except maybe iCloud Drive.
0:23:17If you have an Apple-centric work group like we do, then we can very easily-- but when
0:23:22all this Catalina and everything ships in a few months, chances are the three of us--
0:23:27well, John can't because Mac Pro can't run it.
0:23:29But chances are two of us can switch to this new iCloud Drive-based system and have shared
0:23:34folders that way, and we can get rid of Dropbox.
0:23:37But most of the other solutions that are like, well, yeah, this is great if you're the only
0:23:41person who's using it.
0:23:42But if you're the only person who's using it, you probably don't even need something
0:23:45like this, or at least you need it a lot less.
0:23:48And/or iCloud Drive can be fine for you.
0:23:50So ultimately, I'm not really interested in trying any of these other solutions.
0:23:54I think I'm just going to hang out with Dropbox until iCloud Drive launches with its shared
0:24:00folder support, hope it works, and switch to that.
0:24:03Yeah, I don't disagree with you.
0:24:05The one nice thing about using something on your own private cloud or hardware or whatever
0:24:11is that I have no space quota of any kind.
0:24:14Like if I wanted to put 15 terabytes in this quote-unquote "Dropbox," I could.
0:24:19Now I don't see myself doing that.
0:24:21And in fact, I removed a lot of old cruft when I pulled pretty much everything out of
0:24:25my Dropbox and put it onto this thing.
0:24:27But I think I'm going to stick with it for my own personal stuff.
0:24:31As you had said, Marco, I completely concur that if you do any sort of social thing with
0:24:37this, as the three of us do, this is probably not a good solution.
0:24:40And if there is a good solution for that, for having people who are not on my Synology
0:24:46have access to some sort of shared folder, I will put out a call for help for that, please.
0:24:50Since you fine ladies and gentlemen, we're so great to provide such good help on this.
0:24:55If you have an answer for that with regard to Synology Drive, I'd love to hear it.
0:24:58But one way or another, I suspect you're right, Marco, that iCloud Drive is going to take
0:25:01up this spot for most of us, including probably you and me, if not Jon as well.
0:25:07One aspect that I like of the original Dropbox and the version that I continue to use is
0:25:13that it has complete copies of everything, plus or minus selective sync, but complete
0:25:18copies of everything on the Macs that are connected to Dropbox.
0:25:22No weirdness, no user space file system, no magic automatically downloading files.
0:25:28They're just there.
0:25:30And it's a cloud service where all of my files are kept in somebody else's computer far away
0:25:35that will survive if my house burns down.
0:25:39And also, that cloud thing keeps version history for some period of time.
0:25:45And a lot of those things are not true of Synology.
0:25:47It's not in a cloud anywhere unless I use B2 to back it up to the cloud.
0:25:51It doesn't have a versioning.
0:25:53And it does.
0:25:54The Synology Drive, I believe, has versioning for possibly infinite amounts of time.
0:25:59I'm not confident I'm right about that, but I have seen mention of versioning somewhere.
0:26:03All right.
0:26:04And then your description of the client interface is not particularly reassuring.
0:26:09Not that I love the Dropbox client, but a weird-- and same thing with iCloud Drive.
0:26:15Despite our complaints about the Dropbox client, as mentioned the last show, I think, you can
0:26:21just completely uninstall the Dropbox client and either use the web interface or use transmit.
0:26:26Both of those interfaces do not mock up your computer with anything and still allow you
0:26:30to participate in the network effect like we're all using Dropbox type of thing.
0:26:35Whereas if we switch to iCloud Drive, I think there's a web interface, but I'm not sure
0:26:40if there are any other interfaces to iCloud Drive that are more sensible, let's say, or
0:26:45more trustworthy as far as I'm concerned than the thing that the Finder exposes for iCloud
0:26:50Drive, which I have found to be terrifying in so many ways.
0:26:53And I'm not sure, does iCloud Drive have versioning?
0:26:55I'm not sure about that.
0:26:56I don't think so, but again, I'm not terribly confident.
0:26:59The chat room is saying that I am right at least in part--
0:27:01Would you trust it if it did?
0:27:02I wouldn't trust it either if it did.
0:27:04That's true.
0:27:06The chat room is saying that Synology Drive does have at least some amount of versioning,
0:27:10but it doesn't sound like anyone's really played with it heavily at this time.
0:27:13So I continue to prefer the actual cloud solutions that have options for interfaces, even Google
0:27:20Drive.
0:27:21I think Transmit does Google Drive as well, and then of course there's the web interface,
0:27:25and then there's the Mac interface, which is not great.
0:27:28But I like the idea of it being a cloud service far away from my computer and then me having
0:27:31options of how I have some kind of interface to it.
0:27:34And of course, Google Drive sharing thing requires people to have a Google account.
0:27:38I think every time I try to share with somebody, I think they all end up having to have a Google
0:27:42account, but I'm not sure if that's true.
0:27:44But anyway, bottom line is I have successfully shared many, many files using Google Drive
0:27:47where I have tons of space, mostly because the people I share with all have Google accounts.
0:27:53And I continue to like the network effects of Dropbox and my many options for using the
0:27:59clients.
0:28:00If the Mac client becomes unusable, then obviously I'll look elsewhere, but elsewhere might be,
0:28:05"Okay, uninstall the Mac client and just use Transmit."
0:28:07I think that may be an acceptable solution for certain limited uses of Dropbox.
0:28:12Mainly, I'm just still scared of iCloud Drive just because I've not had successful experiences
0:28:18with it, so I'll let somebody else go first and tell me if it's safe.
0:28:22That's probably going to be Marco and me.
0:28:23So I'm wondering, so I had this idea that I haven't had time to try yet, and I'm a little
0:28:28scared to.
0:28:29So John, tell me how this could fail and why.
0:28:32So I did for, last time I tried to give up Dropbox, I basically gave up Dropbox for like
0:28:38a month or something like that, like about a year ago, because I got mad at them then
0:28:41again.
0:28:42Problem number one is that the iCloud Drive folder is some weird file path buried deep
0:28:48in library mobile documents, something like that.
0:28:50It's some big folder path that you're not really supposed to ever use the folder path.
0:28:54It's totally obfuscated.
0:28:56And then inside of it, and this is something that actually John Gruber brought up on last
0:29:00week's talk show.
0:29:01By the way, I was on the talk show this past week, you should go listen if you want to
0:29:03hear more of me talking.
0:29:05Anyway, so one thing he brought up the week before was that with iCloud Drive, it creates
0:29:10all these folders for all these different apps that you have, so you are not really
0:29:14creating the folder hierarchy.
0:29:16If you create a folder in there, it's buried between like 17 other folders that you didn't
0:29:19create, so it's kind of annoying.
0:29:20So one thing I did a year ago when I was doing my Dropbox diet back then, I just created
0:29:26a folder inside iCloud Drive called Dropbox, and I sim linked home/Dropbox to that, and
0:29:33I just moved everything to that from my Dropbox, but that was actually mine.
0:29:37And so I was able to use like my command line utilities and stuff that call into like some
0:29:43of the various scripts I have in Dropbox.
0:29:45That all just, it all just worked, because the file path was the same.
0:29:49The only downside to it was that I didn't have shared folders, which is hopefully about
0:29:53to get fixed, and that every time I would type in home/Dropbox as a folder path, it
0:30:03wouldn't autocomplete the slash at the end, because it was a sim link.
0:30:07I would have to type in the slash before it would autocomplete to the stuff below it.
0:30:11So the idea I had earlier today is, what if I hard link a folder from iCloud Drive to home/Dropbox,
0:30:20or the other way around?
0:30:23And then wouldn't, so first of all, would Time Machine back that up as a normal folder,
0:30:30and then would anything weird happen if I had a hard link into or out of iCloud Drive?
0:30:36- What shell are you using that it wouldn't tab complete with the slash?
0:30:40- Bash, the built-in one.
0:30:42I mean, maybe, I don't know, does this change that for--
0:30:45- Oh yeah, well just hit tab a second time.
0:30:47TCSH does it on the single tab, but for Bash, just hit tab a second time and you'll get the
0:30:51slash.
0:30:52- That's a good one, right?
0:30:53So anyway--
0:30:54- Change the TCSH and you'll get it.
0:30:55All right, so but--
0:30:56- I'm not gonna change my entire shell if I'm not willing to hit tab twice.
0:30:59- There's probably some setting in Bash that lets you control that.
0:31:02So I would not do this.
0:31:03- Why not?
0:31:04- Either one of those things.
0:31:06Don't mix cloud file system thingies.
0:31:10Like I understand that it's possible that it worked, and that's fine, but you're relying
0:31:14on unintended cooperative behavior.
0:31:19Because all of these things have some mechanism monitoring the local file system, and some
0:31:22mechanism is syncing those changes up, and if you try to do what you're doing where there's
0:31:28basically a single directory that two cloud file thingies think they own--
0:31:33- Wait, wait, to be clear, I would not have Dropbox installed anymore.
0:31:38The only reason it would be called home slash Dropbox is for all my file paths for all my
0:31:43scripts not to break.
0:31:44- Okay, well so my second concern then is if you don't have Dropbox installed and you're
0:31:49just doing it with iCloud Drive, I would be worried that iCloud Drive really, really expects
0:31:55its stuff to be where it expects it to be.
0:31:59Simlink is not the same thing.
0:32:00Hardlink to directory could be done.
0:32:03You could also use Firmlinks if you can find the private API that creates them, but all
0:32:06of those things are not the same as directories, and I don't know how well the various demons
0:32:11that are on iCloud Drive handle those things, because they would have to be designed to
0:32:15explicitly handle them, I believe.
0:32:18Even in the case of Firmlinks, I'm not sure about that.
0:32:22And Hardlink's directories might work.
0:32:25Because we don't have the source code to these demons, it's not clear how well they'll handle
0:32:30it.
0:32:31Now if I work with Simlinks, you'll be like, "Oh, fine," but you're relying on an implementation
0:32:34that, it may work now, but they may make some change to it in the future, all of a sudden
0:32:40it stops working or it hoses all your files or deletes them all or something like that.
0:32:43I don't feel like this is a supported scenario, despite the fact that we all do things like
0:32:48this.
0:32:49To give an example, I had a bunch of my BBEdit directories Simlinked to Dropbox for a really
0:32:53long time.
0:32:54I think at one point it was actually recommended, "Oh, if you want all your BBEdit settings
0:32:59to sync between your computers, just put them in Dropbox and then go to Library, Application
0:33:04Support, BBEdit, blah, blah, blah, and make a bunch of Simlinks that point to your Dropbox."
0:33:07And it worked fine for years and years until it didn't.
0:33:10And when it didn't is when BBEdit decided, "We're going to have official support for
0:33:14having your stuff in Dropbox," and their official support stopped working with the Simlink thing
0:33:20and said, "We will look in your Dropbox and see if the files are there and they have to
0:33:23be in a particular location, but we will totally ignore your Simlinks."
0:33:26And there was, you know, I read the release notes and I'm on the list, so I was able to
0:33:30fix things, but everything just would have stopped working.
0:33:32I would have had fresh preferences or would have hosed my preferences.
0:33:35I don't write them with fresh versions if I didn't keep track of that.
0:33:38And that was a more or less supported configuration recommended by the application developer at
0:33:42one point.
0:33:44But yeah, for Cloud Drive, stuff like this, I would like, "Give iCloud Drive the best
0:33:48possible chance at success.
0:33:51Use it in the default mode."
0:33:53Then you can say, "Look, if it messes up, it's not because I was doing some weird stuff
0:33:56behind its back."
0:33:57If you really want to keep your muscle memory the same or whatever, maybe like do it in
0:34:04the opposite direction.
0:34:06I know as everyone who seems to be confused about the order of arguments to the LN command,
0:34:12we had the verbal equivalent where what you described wasn't clear to me whether you were
0:34:16Simlinking from the Dropbox location into iCloud thing or vice versa.
0:34:22But if you Simlink into the iCloud location, then iCloud should be none the wiser because
0:34:26all the Simlinks are in the old locations where Dropbox was.
0:34:29It just means you can't go in the reverse direction.
0:34:31So if you're just Simlinking into it, like Dropbox is Simlink into the iCloud Drive,
0:34:37then that's fine.
0:34:38But it wouldn't Simlink out of iCloud Drive into the actual Dropbox directory.
0:34:43I mean, it reserves your muscle memory and all your commands and stuff, right?
0:34:49Because they're doing tilde slash Dropbox slash whatever and that will work.
0:34:53Although, who knows how many commands and scripts you have that might be confused by
0:34:56that if someone runs a real path or whatever on a path and resolves it.
0:35:01I mean, you have some regular expression running against the path that's no longer going to
0:35:04match because it's not where it was.
0:35:07Let's give iCloud Drive a chance here.
0:35:11All we are saying is give iCloud a chance.
0:35:14I can't believe Bash makes you tab a second time for that slash.
0:35:18Barbaric.
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0:37:18All right, and then we had something that was kind of intended to be an Ask ATP, but
0:37:24it's also sort of follow up and one way or another it was a really good question.
0:37:28So I'm going to ask it on behalf of Justin Cardinal.
0:37:31Marco, what steps are you taking in Overcast's recommendation algorithm to avoid the radicalization
0:37:35issues that have resulted from YouTube's similar approach?
0:37:38I thought that was a really good question and I commend Justin for asking it in a way
0:37:43that wasn't snarky.
0:37:45There's a way to ask this question like a jerk and that is not what Justin did.
0:37:47So well done.
0:37:48So Marco, what are you doing?
0:37:50Before you answer this one, can you briefly explain what the radicalization issues are?
0:37:56What is he talking about?
0:37:58Basically Overcast has a new recommendation algorithm we discussed last week or the week
0:38:02before, I forget.
0:38:04And basically I'm looking at people who subscribe to this also subscribe to this.
0:38:08And so I can provide recommendations based on what other people subscribe to who listen
0:38:12to the shows you listen to.
0:38:14The problem that happens with YouTube and I think Facebook has a similar problem, I
0:38:18don't know if it's by Facebook to say, YouTube's algorithm will eventually make you, like if
0:38:24you just keep clicking on like recommended videos in the sidebar from what you're looking
0:38:27at, you will very quickly eventually get to like really radical conspiracy theory content
0:38:31or stuff like that or hate content or whatever.
0:38:34And so the algorithms on these big social networks that are very advanced optimize for
0:38:39engagement.
0:38:40So what that means on YouTube, you know, on Facebook that means like clicks and time,
0:38:44you know, looking at stuff and sharing stuff.
0:38:46On YouTube it means watch time and clicks.
0:38:49So whatever you end up watching the most, spending the most time watching or clicking
0:38:54on at least, YouTube then feeds that into the algorithm to recommend that content more
0:38:59to other people.
0:39:00And what tends to get clicked on and watched the most is stuff that makes people angry.
0:39:05There's actually a really good CGP Grey video on this, like the mental virus thing or whatever
0:39:09that was, we'll link to it.
0:39:11Anger is a very powerful emotion.
0:39:13Making people angry is a quick way to have something spread very quickly, virally online
0:39:16and everything.
0:39:17And so what ends up happening is because the algorithms are optimizing for whatever engagement
0:39:22happens, good or bad, it still counts for engagement, then all this like, you know,
0:39:27stuff that makes people angry ends up bubbling to the top and being recommended.
0:39:32So the reason why I, so there's a number of layers to Overcast's engine that I think
0:39:38won't let this be a problem.
0:39:40I mean obviously time will tell and I'm happy to adjust it if it needs to be, but really
0:39:44out there stuff in podcasts tends not to be found very easily because all podcasts that
0:39:51are in the Apple podcast directory are reviewed by humans at Apple at submission time.
0:39:58Now they're not listening to every episode, they're not, you know, like it's possible
0:40:01for a podcast to get submitted, get reviewed by a human and then get, you know, get crazy
0:40:06afterwards and you know, that can happen.
0:40:08And podcasts can get delisted later, but it's more like only in response to complaints and
0:40:13stuff like that.
0:40:14But like, but Apple does have humans screening things for initial submission.
0:40:19So that initially cuts out tons of stuff from getting into the Apple podcast directory and
0:40:23there is this process for things to get removed.
0:40:24Now almost all podcast apps that are on iOS, including Overcast, use the Apple podcast
0:40:32directory somehow.
0:40:33The way I use it is I use it as a filter.
0:40:37If something is not in the Apple podcast directory, I don't show it in search results and I don't
0:40:42show it in any kind of editorial recommendation context like these recommendations.
0:40:47So I basically, anything that is not listed in Apple podcasts, I basically treat it as
0:40:51private.
0:40:52So if you enter the URL for it, you can subscribe to it.
0:40:54Like if you know the feed URL, fine, I don't care, but I'm not going to promote anything
0:40:58that's not in Apple's directory.
0:41:00So that right there filters out a whole lot of the really extreme and harmful content.
0:41:05I do have like a switch that I can press on a podcast that even if it is something that
0:41:10is in the Apple directory, I can say this is not appropriate to be recommended to people.
0:41:17I don't know if that's currently active for anything.
0:41:20I had to look it up.
0:41:21It's not a switch I use more than like twice a year or something.
0:41:24Sometimes I use it like if some podcaster writes to me and doesn't like that their podcast
0:41:27shows up in Overcast, I can hit that switch for that, but that's very rare.
0:41:32The other thing is that I think podcast subscription activity is very different from clicking a
0:41:39link once in a web browser.
0:41:42If you click something and it makes you angry, and even if it takes you like two or three
0:41:46minutes of watch time to realize this is making you angry and you back out of it, YouTube
0:41:52doesn't know that that just made you angry.
0:41:53All they know is you just click on that and watch it for two or three minutes.
0:41:57So they're going to show you more stuff like that.
0:41:59In a podcast app, if you subscribe to a podcast, first of all, that's kind of a bigger action
0:42:03if you're going to subscribe to a podcast.
0:42:06And then it ends with this podcast is not for you and you delete that subscription if
0:42:09you unsubscribe from it.
0:42:11That data's gone out of my database.
0:42:13That's a hard delete.
0:42:14If you subscribe to a podcast and delete it, I have no record that you ever did subscribe
0:42:19to it.
0:42:20The subscription is a row in a table that gets deleted.
0:42:23It's not marked as deleted.
0:42:24It's not soft deleted.
0:42:26It's an actual SQL delete statement.
0:42:28So once somebody unsubscribes from a podcast, next time that podcast's recommendations are
0:42:34refreshed, which is every time the feed is crawled, or rather every time it has updated
0:42:39contents, that data's going to be gone then.
0:42:41So it's not going to keep contributing.
0:42:42So the only way to have my algorithm recommend stuff to you is if people are subscribed to
0:42:49it currently.
0:42:51So while it is possible for something to maybe get a whole bunch of rolling one-time subscriptions
0:42:55every time it happens to update itself, that's not going to be the common case.
0:43:00So ultimately, I don't think my algorithm is going to fall prey to the same types of
0:43:05dysfunction that the big guys' algorithms do that could potentially make me promote
0:43:12weird radical content more than usual.
0:43:14I feel like the alignment of incentives are different too.
0:43:21Marco is not incentivized to try to get people to subscribe to more podcasts or listen to
0:43:32more podcasts or whatever.
0:43:34No, technically I am.
0:43:35I have ads in the podcast player.
0:43:37So the more time you spend-- I know, but if someone is subscribed to a single podcast
0:43:43that listened to 24 hours a day, that is better to you than someone who's subscribed to 1,000
0:43:48podcasts that have listened for two minutes each.
0:43:49So you're not incentivized to try to get them.
0:43:54The advertising is not as associated like it is with videos because if you see ads in
0:43:58YouTube, you'll see an ad at the start of a video.
0:44:01So watching one video for 20 minutes that has a single ad at the beginning is worse
0:44:05for YouTube and worse for the creators than watching 20 videos that are a minute long,
0:44:09each of which shows a head in front of it.
0:44:11I know YouTube doesn't work exactly that way, but the incentives are different.
0:44:15You just want people to be in your application.
0:44:17You don't necessarily need them to be hopping from thing to thing.
0:44:22Podcasts in general are longer than YouTube videos.
0:44:25There's not many two or three minute podcasts.
0:44:28There's tons of two or three minute YouTube videos.
0:44:30So I just feel like it's a different incentive structure for both the podcast makers who
0:44:38generally don't want to put out hundreds of two to three minute podcasts per day, but
0:44:42rather one 30 minute podcast a week or every day.
0:44:48It's like long format versus short format.
0:44:51The advertising model is different.
0:44:53The advertising inside the podcast is different than it is on YouTube videos.
0:44:56The advertising in the client is different than it is.
0:44:57It's just that the revenue sharing with YouTube selling the ads that run in front of other
0:45:02people's things, then YouTube shares the revenue.
0:45:04That's not how overcast works.
0:45:07It's different enough that I feel like there's not enough in common to end up in a similar
0:45:11situation.
0:45:13Honestly, being audio only eliminates a large category of toxic engagement or whatever you
0:45:23want to call it.
0:45:24The example I kept thinking of are those – I forget what they're called.
0:45:27I knew at one point.
0:45:28I'm glad.
0:45:29I don't remember.
0:45:30Please don't tell me.
0:45:31Those clusters of images that you see at the bottom of websites that make you lower your
0:45:34opinion of the website.
0:45:35You know what I'm talking about.
0:45:36Like celebrity, look at them and buy these cheap shoes and 11 ways you can turbocharge
0:45:42your blog or whatever.
0:45:43Yeah.
0:45:44It's like six pictures and they're all appealing to base emotions.
0:45:48There's going to be a sexy lady.
0:45:51There's going to be something really gross.
0:45:53There's going to be a thing that appeals to your sense of gossip or knowing what people
0:46:01happen.
0:46:02There will be some kind of celebrity thing.
0:46:04There will be some kind of thing that appeals to your sense of insecurity about your personal
0:46:11relationships or your health.
0:46:13There's like six boxes and each one does a thing.
0:46:17They're all gross and they're all trying to get you to engage with them in some way.
0:46:25Each one of those things relies on the fact that when you're scrolling some article
0:46:30on a website whose opinion is about to go down when you get to the bottom, these images
0:46:38scroll up and you're confronted with all of them essentially at once because there's visual
0:46:43information.
0:46:44They have text in them, yes, and they have pictures, but there they are.
0:46:47There is no equivalent of suddenly being assaulted with six different one-sentence come-ons in
0:46:52a podcast player because you can't hear six snippets of audio at a time and you're not
0:46:56going to engage with it in that way because it's visual and because they can put text
0:47:01and visuals as well as regular visuals.
0:47:04It's a lot easier to appeal to all of the base instincts in a person, whether it's sex
0:47:13appeal or insecurity.
0:47:15Those are the main ones, sex appeal and insecurity.
0:47:17And I guess that's it.
0:47:19I'm not trying to think of if there's a third pillar there.
0:47:21I feel like it can all be reduced to lust and insecurity in one form or another.
0:47:26Immediately poking your lizard brain in those places, not sort of against your will, but
0:47:33by looking at that section of the screen, it's like poke, poke, poke.
0:47:36And that's what leads to the radicalization on YouTube.
0:47:39It's like, what will cause people to go and click on that thing?
0:47:44Something sexy or something that appeals to your sense of insecurity about something.
0:47:50And the more gross and periant, the more extreme, the more likely someone is to click on it.
0:47:59So that just drives the cycle.
0:48:01It's like, okay, well, you clicked on something in this sidebar.
0:48:04Now what is it going to take to get you to click?
0:48:06You're mad about the last video.
0:48:07What is it going to take to get you to click now?
0:48:09And you end up in Nazis in three clicks.
0:48:13Because you can't generally just have someone scroll to the bottom of a screen in Overcast
0:48:19and have six audio snippets play in their ears and have some way for them to engage
0:48:22with those.
0:48:23It's just not the same.
0:48:26I think it's just because it's audio and it's a more deliberate medium.
0:48:30You have to actually choose to listen to a thing.
0:48:33Listening takes longer than looking.
0:48:35And it's harder to get at those insecurities in such a sort of broad bandwidth way.
0:48:43You can still say things like, do you think you're too fat?
0:48:46But it's just not the same as showing someone pinching some fat and saying magic, lose weight,
0:48:53whatever.
0:48:54It's just different.
0:48:55So I haven't seen any podcast clients that suffer from this cycle of radicalization that
0:49:04lots of these visual mediums do.
0:49:06I'm not saying it's not possible.
0:49:07It totally is possible.
0:49:08You can add a visual component to podcasts.
0:49:10You can add thumbnails to podcasts that are come ons for the things.
0:49:14This is all technically possible to be done.
0:49:16I just haven't seen it yet.
0:49:18So we've been blessedly spared this particular disease for now.
0:49:23For now.
0:49:25So I need help.
0:49:27I have shipped to beta testers something that I've called duplicate detection in Vignette.
0:49:35And in discussing with Mike this very feature on a forthcoming episode of analog, it was
0:49:41made very clear to me that duplicate detection is a terrible freaking name for it because
0:49:45it makes people think that it's doing something it isn't.
0:49:47So what am I talking about?
0:49:50So what I have shipped to beta testers and hope to ship very, very soon to the greater
0:49:54public is a mechanism by which Vignette will detect if it's offering up the same image
0:50:02to replace one that you already have.
0:50:04So let's run through like an example use case.
0:50:06So you have my phone number in your contacts list.
0:50:11You have an entry for me.
0:50:12867-5309 is sitting right there.
0:50:15That's a reference, John.
0:50:16And you eventually put in my Twitter handle and Vignette offers an image.
0:50:21As we record this, that image would be me looking down to the left, bearded.
0:50:25In fact, I think John, you took that picture if I'm not mistaken.
0:50:28Anyways, you see that picture of me looking down to the left.
0:50:31And you have Vignette update my picture.
0:50:33And now my picture in your contact card is me looking down to the left.
0:50:37Then fast forward a week.
0:50:39And you go back to Vignette and it's looking at all these different things.
0:50:42And today, as it exists in the App Store, it will offer you, "Hey, here's Casey's Twitter
0:50:46avatar.
0:50:47Would you like to use that to replace what you've already got?"
0:50:48Well, what you've already got is Casey looking down to the left and here's the Twitter avatar,
0:50:51which is Casey looking down to the left.
0:50:53And that's not very helpful, right?
0:50:55So what I was, I've been calling this internally.
0:50:57And by that, I mean what I've been referring to it for myself is duplicate detection because
0:51:02I'm detecting a duplicate image.
0:51:04Now what Mike thought I was talking about, and I think that's completely reasonable,
0:51:07is, "Oh, you have two entries for Casey in your contact list.
0:51:10That's not good."
0:51:11That is not at all what I'm talking about.
0:51:13What I'm talking about is detecting when an image that I'm suggesting matches the image
0:51:19that is already there.
0:51:21So one of my questions is, "What should I call this?"
0:51:23But we'll get to that in a minute.
0:51:24But my bigger question is, and what I need advice on, is, "Okay, let's say my contact
0:51:30card has my Instagram account, my Twitter account, my Facebook account, my GitHub account,
0:51:35and my Gravatar.
0:51:36And so in theory, Vignette will find, what is it, five, doesn't matter, some number of
0:51:42images.
0:51:43And they may or may not match.
0:51:44So what if my Instagram avatar, which I think it is different than my Twitter avatar, and
0:51:49what if my GitHub avatar is different than my Twitter avatar, and so on.
0:51:53So what should happen if Vignette sees that the Twitter avatar matches the contact card,
0:52:01but maybe other networks do not?
0:52:04So my two choices here are, I could eliminate only the things that are found to be matched.
0:52:09So in this example, Vignette would not offer Twitter as a way, as a thing to replace the
0:52:14existing image, because it is the same image.
0:52:17But it would offer Instagram and Gravatar and so on and so forth.
0:52:22Or do I just throw away that entire contact the moment I find any matches?
0:52:28So in that case, it says, "Well, even though the Instagram image doesn't look the same
0:52:33as what's in this contact card, the Twitter image does match what's in this contact card,
0:52:38so screw it, we're not even going to offer KC for updates."
0:52:42Am I making any sense at all?
0:52:43Let's start there.
0:52:44- So first of all, the name for this feature should be nothing.
0:52:49There should just be some logic that you do behind the scenes.
0:52:52This is not a marketing feature, this is not a marketable feature.
0:52:56This is just the way people expect these things to work.
0:52:58They expect it to just figure it out.
0:53:00So you're not going to get much recognition for this feature.
0:53:04In the blog post where you release it and talk about it as an update note, you can describe
0:53:10it there, but it doesn't really need a name.
0:53:13And I think duplicate detection is a totally fine name.
0:53:15I would maybe say duplicate photo detection to clarify that it's the photo, not the contact.
0:53:20But anyway, this is not a marketing or public name as a marketable feature.
0:53:28You don't currently have, well, hold on, maybe you do.
0:53:31So I was going to say you don't currently have the concept of when you have multiple
0:53:35image sources, which ones are the best ones.
0:53:39But you do, because you choose which ones to show as the one, when you have the little
0:53:44stack interface, like you have whatever you show as the suggested replacement.
0:53:48So you do have logic there to somehow rank the images in order of what do you think is
0:53:55the best one.
0:53:56- That's adorable.
0:53:57But that logic is just what's the first one.
0:53:59- Okay.
0:54:00- I appreciate your vote of confidence, but it is undeserved.
0:54:04- So anyway, well, so I think this might be how you can potentially solve this, is develop
0:54:09a stable ranking algorithm so that given a set of possible avatars on a contact, somehow
0:54:19be able to rank which of these avatars are the best ones which to show people.
0:54:27And so some obvious examples of this I would think would be which one is the largest one,
0:54:32image size-wise, which is the biggest image.
0:54:35If you have any way to get modification dates on any of these, I know that for most of the
0:54:40services you probably don't, but if you have any way to get modification dates, you could
0:54:43say like what's the most recently changed one.
0:54:47Or you could do something more complex that you probably shouldn't engage the engineering
0:54:52effort in, such as like which of these social networks have they posted on most recently.
0:54:56- Oh.
0:54:57- You know, but that's probably not worth the trouble.
0:55:00- It isn't, but that is a clever solution to the problem.
0:55:02I do like where your head's at, but I agree that it is a big waste of my time.
0:55:06- Right, or you could, you know, if you're doing similar photo detection, you could see
0:55:11like if they have three photos and two of them are the same and one of them's different,
0:55:16probably the two that are the same, that's like the right one, right?
0:55:18So then you could just pick the larger file size out of those two or whatever.
0:55:22So there's a couple of heuristics you can use, but somehow develop like a stable sort.
0:55:27Use that to like basically compare like does whatever you have in the contact now, does
0:55:33that photo match using the similarity algorithm?
0:55:36Does it match the current like one that you would show at the top in this sort?
0:55:41And if it does, then it's considered a duplicate.
0:55:44- And in that case, you would just move to the next highest scoring image or you would
0:55:49throw out that entire row.
0:55:52So if I've decided that what you've got for my image matches Twitter, would you throw
0:55:58Casey out entirely or would you just re-rank or would you eliminate Twitter as an option
0:56:03to overwrite what you've already got?
0:56:05- Do you have, right now, do you store in any kind of metadata whether you have modified
0:56:11the image for a contact?
0:56:13- No, and I am resistant to doing it because I don't feel like I should have to, but it
0:56:18absolutely would solve this problem.
0:56:20- Yeah, 'cause obviously then like when someone has changed something, you basically force
0:56:26that, whatever they picked, you force that to be the top element in that ranking algorithm.
0:56:32But I don't know, yeah, obviously this would require you to first like start writing metadata
0:56:38if there is even a way to do that without some garbage like putting stuff in the notes
0:56:42field.
0:56:43- Exactly.
0:56:44- Which you probably shouldn't do.
0:56:45I mean you could even keep a local database in the app of some kind of like, is there
0:56:48like some kind of unique ID on a contact?
0:56:50You can just like keep like a list of them that you have modified.
0:56:53- Yeah, I don't know if it's consistent, you know, across different runs.
0:56:58And I could do it by, you know, first and last name or something like that.
0:57:00Again, I'm with you, I understand where your head is and it does make sense.
0:57:06I don't think I want to go that deep on it.
0:57:10I think what I'd rather do is just make a best guess with the information I have at
0:57:15either, well, the two original options were either throwing out that one or more images
0:57:20that match or throwing out that entire contact.
0:57:24Or this third option which you brought up which I do like, which is just re-rank the
0:57:29options that I have to perhaps move something that I believe to be a duplicate further back
0:57:36in the stack, so to speak.
0:57:38- I mean one thing also, like, I don't know, do you have any kind of analytics to know
0:57:43how, what percentage of your users are running the app multiple times?
0:57:48- I don't.
0:57:49I do get enough feedback about this that I know it bothers people.
0:57:52And it should.
0:57:53I mean it's kind of bull the way it works right now because it's, let's say you run
0:57:57it and you decide to run it again for whatever reason, like immediately.
0:58:01It's gonna show you a whole, like, it's gonna show you everything and all of the left and
0:58:04right images are gonna look identical.
0:58:06Maybe not all of them, but you take my point that almost all of them will look identical
0:58:10if everything goes according to plan.
0:58:11And that's not good.
0:58:12Like, that's not a good runtime experience for users.
0:58:14So I feel like this is something that in a perfect world would have been in the 1.0,
0:58:22in the launch version of the app, but I just couldn't get it in time.
0:58:25And now I've got it basically right, I'm just not sure how to design for it.
0:58:31- My thoughts probably require more work than you wanna put into this, but I'm gonna bring
0:58:35back my old favorite from the beta period, which is that I still, again, kind of like
0:58:39the LN command for some people, but not me for some strange reason, I still look at your
0:58:44interface and have to remind myself forcibly that what the arrow is trying to tell me.
0:58:51It is not telling me that the left image is going to go and overwrite the right image,
0:58:57or is it telling me that?
0:58:58Or is it telling me that the left image is the current image and the right image is the
0:59:01image that it will become?
0:59:02Like the visual metaphor of these two images next to each other with an arrow between them,
0:59:07like I always find myself wondering, which one is the current picture and which one is
0:59:11the one that it's offering to put on it for me?
0:59:13Which makes me think, this is related to your question, that, backing up a bit, utility-wise,
0:59:20the whole point of this program is to do a bunch of stuff for me that would be tedious
0:59:23for me to do myself.
0:59:26And that utility is strengthened by saying, like I found a bunch of images, right?
0:59:33And maybe you picked one of them last time, but maybe you change your mind in the future,
0:59:36maybe someone updates one of their things before you chose their Gravatar, but then
0:59:40they updated the Twitter icon and it turns out the Twitter one is better.
0:59:42I basically want to see, here's all the work I did, I'm the application, I did a bunch
0:59:45of work, I got a bunch of images.
0:59:47And I would like to say, here is the current image, here are all the other options that
0:59:52are available for me, maybe one of which you've already picked and I'll gray it out or indicate
0:59:55that, which basically means a much more complicated interface than the current two circles with
0:59:59an arrow between them, right?
1:00:01Which is not ideal and it's going to be difficult to design, but that gives the most utility.
1:00:06Like if I was to care about what is the power user tool for dealing with my contacts and
1:00:10not something simple and straightforward, but that's what you're getting into with this
1:00:13whole like, well, I've got multiple options and you picked one of them before and I have
1:00:16to detect whether it's a duplicate.
1:00:17Like you're starting to get into that realm anyway, but it is like bigger rows, different
1:00:22interface, sort of the GameCube controller style of thing.
1:00:26One button is more prominent than the other.
1:00:27Like the current image should not be the same size and prominence as the options available
1:00:34to change that image to.
1:00:35And I would imagine that if you picked one of the images, there'd be some animation showing
1:00:38that you've selected one of them so that it's clear and that some resting state display
1:00:43so that it's clear.
1:00:44If you scroll down the list, you can see which ones am I changing at all?
1:00:46Like maybe get rid of the check boxes and maybe you have the selection of the image
1:00:49cause a animation and translation and overlay and graying out so it's clear which ones you're
1:00:54going to change at all and which ones you're not going to change.
1:00:56You know what I'm saying?
1:00:57Like a different interface.
1:00:58Like this is not a minor issue of like, oh, I just, which one do I pick or do I show this
1:01:02or do I not show it?
1:01:03Like I'm getting into more bigger changes, which may not be worth your time, but for
1:01:08the, to solve this problem in a more comprehensive way, I think you need that, that kind of interface.
1:01:15And on going in the far opposite direction from large scale changes that you probably
1:01:20don't want to make to small scale changes that you should make.
1:01:23I'm using the beta with supposed duplicate detection.
1:01:25And I posted a bunch of images to our Slack channel that show a bunch of things where
1:01:28it is not successfully detected duplicates.
1:01:30So you might want to look into that.
1:01:32Yeah.
1:01:33So the way this works was a suggestion from Craig Hockenberry, which I had never heard
1:01:40of something called a hamming distance and I probably will do a terrible job describing
1:01:44it.
1:01:45How did you graduate from CS without hearing about hamming distance?
1:01:47I did not go through a CS program.
1:01:49I went through a CPE program just like you did, but be that as it may.
1:01:52Oh, I learned it.
1:01:53Anyway.
1:01:54Wait, am I the only one here with the CS degree?
1:01:56Yeah.
1:01:57Oh my God.
1:01:58That's incredible.
1:01:59Yeah.
1:02:00We're both, we're both engineers, which is much harder.
1:02:01Yeah.
1:02:02I'm going to go ahead and learn this just for the record.
1:02:04In any case, so the basic, I'm going to hugely oversimplify it and then we'll see if I get
1:02:09away with it.
1:02:10So the basic idea is, I think I have a degree.
1:02:12You kind of get a hash for each of the two images and then figure out, okay, how far
1:02:17away from each other are the bits of these two hashes?
1:02:20And if they're not far away from each other, they're probably the same.
1:02:24And if they're pretty far away from each other, then they're probably not the same.
1:02:29And one of the nice things is, by just changing what the threshold is between what I consider
1:02:33to be far and what I consider to be close, then I can crank up or down the sensitivity.
1:02:40And I haven't had the chance to look at these screenshots because you just sent them to
1:02:42me moments ago, but if it's really a whole ton of duplicates, then maybe I need to make
1:02:46it so that it needs to be closer together than I already need it to be in order for
1:02:52them to count as the same.
1:02:53So, so in other words, the distance really needs to be almost nothing for them to be
1:02:58considered...
1:02:59Oh, did I get that backwards?
1:03:00You get the idea.
1:03:01Yeah, sorry.
1:03:02But anyway, you get the idea, is that I can crank up or down the sensitivity.
1:03:05Yeah.
1:03:06Take a look at the screenshots.
1:03:07It's like two seconds to see.
1:03:08Like look at Will Shipley, clearly that's a duplicate.
1:03:13Gruber.
1:03:14Atwood.
1:03:15Jeff Atwood.
1:03:16Yeah.
1:03:17They're just, I mean, if you look really close at the pixels, you can see how they aren't
1:03:19actually identical.
1:03:20It was like JPEG compression differences, but they are literally the same picture, just
1:03:23with different levels of compression.
1:03:24So you have to adjust that.
1:03:25I also threw a screenshot down at the bottom where this, yeah, getting back to the big,
1:03:30bigger changes thing.
1:03:31I thought of this when I saw this.
1:03:32Like I run the app all the time, obviously, because I'm running the betas and trying it
1:03:37out and stuff like that.
1:03:38And after you do a bunch of updates, like I select a bunch of ones I want to change,
1:03:43it updates them.
1:03:44It leaves the button for updating, but it changes the number to update zero contacts.
1:03:49I don't want to see that button anymore.
1:03:50I don't want to grade out buttons to update zero contacts.
1:03:52That doesn't make any sense.
1:03:53That's fine.
1:03:54And to Marco's question of like, who's running the application more than once, the actual
1:03:59sort of non-beta tester users who are legitimately running the application more than once, what
1:04:03they want to make their experience better, I would say the number one thing before the
1:04:10things we're talking about with duplicates and like maybe their other options is for
1:04:13it to remember what it did last time and to just see if anything has changed since then.
1:04:17Like for it not to take as long, basically.
1:04:19Because every time I run it, I got to wait for that progress bar to go through.
1:04:21And even with multi-threading, it takes a really, really long time and makes a lot of
1:04:24requests.
1:04:25I'm like, you just did a bunch of this.
1:04:26Like remember what you did last time and just show me anything that's different.
1:04:29Like in other words, have in the UI to say, I found all these last time.
1:04:35You can consider them again if you want, like if I can hide them from you, but here's what's
1:04:38changed since the last time you did this search.
1:04:41Here's some new stuff that you might want to consider.
1:04:43And you can also go and consider stuff that you didn't make decisions on last time, but
1:04:46that differentiation and the acceleration of like doing the new stuff first, I'm not
1:04:49sure how easy that is to do given all the APIs or whatever, but that's the experience
1:04:53you want.
1:04:54We don't want it to be a frosty the snowman happy birthday every time we launch the application
1:04:57has no idea that you've ever run it before.
1:04:59Do all the work again upfront because I have a lot of contacts and it's a long wait.
1:05:04Yeah.
1:05:05I don't think that what you're asking for will empirically change the amount of time
1:05:10it takes to process things unless I just blatantly refuse to look for updates on anything that
1:05:16has been updated in the last X days.
1:05:18>> The services don't have like if modified since header support or whatever.
1:05:22>> Not to the best of my knowledge, no.
1:05:23>> Really all these images are probably being sort of CDNs.
1:05:25They probably all support that.
1:05:27>> I mean, I'll have to look again.
1:05:29I hadn't really looked in the past, but I, to the best of my knowledge, they don't, but
1:05:33I am not confident I am correct about that.
1:05:35So I can certainly look again.
1:05:38But yeah, I take all of your points and they are all genuinely very good.
1:05:42Yeah, it's a tough nut to crack, right?
1:05:44Because I think to get to the app that you want, Jon, is a considerable amount of effort.
1:05:52And I don't disagree with any of your desires.
1:05:55I just don't know if I want this app to solve those problems or to solve them in exactly
1:06:00the way you want.
1:06:01>> Well, you do, but it's just a question of how much development effort you want to put
1:06:03into it.
1:06:04Like you do want your app to solve all of these problems, but like is a question of
1:06:08do I want to put in the amount of work that it would take to do that?
1:06:10Because does it provide, what is the marginal value?
1:06:12Like is the point of diminishing returns?
1:06:14Like the app basically solves the problem for 80% of the people now and now you're getting
1:06:17to like, well, what if I run the app multiple times or what if I have lots of different
1:06:20options and it's diminishing returns really fast?
1:06:23So it's up to you to decide whether you want to invest any time in this.
1:06:26Although for the duplicate detection thing, if you're going to have it at all, you definitely
1:06:30need to tune it so that it doesn't, you know, because despite this not being a marketing
1:06:36feature and I agree, for you to even say you have the feature, you can't have results that
1:06:39are clearly a bunch of duplicates that people can see with their eyeballs.
1:06:43Yeah, it's just, it's going to be, there's only so much I can do, right?
1:06:46Because if the JPEG compression is utterly mangled one version and not at all mangled
1:06:52another, it's going to be relatively hard for me to really be at, well, no, it shouldn't
1:06:56be though.
1:06:57There might be core ML stuff that you can do some kind of, like we discussed this before,
1:07:02I figured there's got to be some kind of API for image similarity that will give you something
1:07:07close, but you know, again, how much time do you want investing and just searching for
1:07:10that?
1:07:11Fair.
1:07:12I think it can, it certainly can be tweaked.
1:07:14I'm not, I'm not debating that at all.
1:07:17The question is, you know, where do I land?
1:07:18And inevitably it's going to be wrong for some people, right?
1:07:21Like when I initially tested it, it looked pretty darn good to me, but I cannot sit here
1:07:25and argue with what these screenshots that you've shown me that clearly are offering
1:07:29duplicates in some cases.
1:07:31So yeah, it's, it's, it's a tough nut to crack.
1:07:34I feel like now I'm left with more questions than answers, but that's okay.
1:07:38It gives me a lot to think about.
1:07:39You can always count on us.
1:07:41Maybe we can revisit this in a little while, but, but no, I appreciate the, the talk through
1:07:47and thank you gentlemen for the time.
1:07:49All right, moving on.
1:07:51Apple is buying the corpse of Intel's modem business, which I think all of us expected,
1:07:57not just the three of us, like all of us expected when, when all the brouhaha happened with
1:08:03Intel, basically shutting all this down, but it is officially a thing.
1:08:07Apple's getting something to the order of 2200 or thereabouts more employees, and hopefully
1:08:11they will not need to rely on Qualcomm much longer.
1:08:14So I think this is good, right?
1:08:16I mean, I don't see why this is anything but a good thing, but, uh, but maybe I'm missing
1:08:20something.
1:08:21Marco, how do we feel about this?
1:08:22I feel great about it.
1:08:23I mean, like I remember like back when Intel kind of like, or when the news came out that
1:08:27Intel's modem business was for sale, um, I believe there was some initial reporting that
1:08:32like Apple had been in early talks and then basically bailed out.
1:08:36And I found that's very surprising because it does kind of seem like they would be the
1:08:39best buyer.
1:08:40Like, Oh, that's weird.
1:08:41Why, why would they bail out?
1:08:42Why didn't they buy it?
1:08:44And now it seems like that was probably just part of some negotiation or, or process or
1:08:49who knows what, you know, these things are complicated.
1:08:51So uh, so it, I'm glad to see that I was wrong or, and that that report was wrong and that,
1:08:56you know, that they actually are buying it.
1:08:58And I don't know how you possibly absorb 2200 new employees.
1:09:03That seems like a big job, but I'm sure that, you know, they're a big company, they can
1:09:06figure it out.
1:09:08And so I think this is great.
1:09:09Um, I think it's, it's been kind of, you know, an obvious prediction for a while now that
1:09:14of course Apple wants to make its own cellular modems if it can.
1:09:18Uh, I was under the impression they already were, but Hey, whatever.
1:09:21Um, this is great.
1:09:23Uh, I look forward to the results of this, which I don't think you're going to start
1:09:27seeing the results of this.
1:09:28It's certainly not this year and probably not even next year.
1:09:31Uh, but maybe in iPhones that come out and iPads that come out like two or three years
1:09:36from now, you might start seeing Apple branded modems.
1:09:39Or Apple, Apple made modems, or they might just become integrated into the a series systems
1:09:44on a chip, which would be, you know, a bunch of wins in a number of ways.
1:09:48So I think that's great.
1:09:50It makes a lot of sense.
1:09:51It's probably going to work out about as well as their acquisition of PA semi did.
1:09:55And that's how we had a chips in the first place.
1:09:57Uh, so yeah, I think this is great and I'm, I'm kind of surprised it didn't happen sooner,
1:10:02but here we are and I'm looking forward to the results.
1:10:04I don't think it's going to be as good as PA semi because just because it's so many
1:10:10more people, it's such a larger group.
1:10:12It's not like a small group of super duper experts.
1:10:15It's a much larger group of super duper experts plus every other kind of employee that you
1:10:19need.
1:10:20But the biggest thing it has going for it is like there are, there are very few companies
1:10:25in the world that have any experience building and selling cell radio chips for smartphones
1:10:34on the scale that Apple needs with the quality that Apple needs.
1:10:37Like we've talked about them all in the show.
1:10:38There's Qualcomm, there's Intel, there's Apple's team that they've been working on internally,
1:10:42but Apple's team has never actually shipped a cell modem chip.
1:10:46Intel's has again, as we mentioned in past shows, we're using them right now in our iPhone
1:10:5010s, right?
1:10:51And how many teams in the world can say, yeah, no, we totally have made the cell radio chip
1:10:58for Apple's top tier smartphone.
1:11:01We not only do we know how to do it, but we all like the legal hurdles and all of the
1:11:06regulatory hurdles and like all the intellectual property issues, like we have overcome all
1:11:12those to get to the point where we sell them, they put them in the phones and you buy them
1:11:15and they work.
1:11:16Now, 5G is a different ball of wax.
1:11:18It's not just because they did it with the current things doesn't mean, you know, 5G is
1:11:21going to be more difficult, but like that kind of experience is just invaluable.
1:11:26That and the IP, if any, that's coming with this to say they have overcome all those things
1:11:32and they have actually shipped.
1:11:34That's that's who you want.
1:11:35Because PA semi, even though it was a smaller team and easier to integrate, they hadn't
1:11:39made all these great A series chips yet.
1:11:41We just thought they were very talented people and they probably can, but the Intel folks
1:11:44that they're getting have done it at least once or twice.
1:11:48And they're, you know, to varying degrees of success, but apparently they've they were
1:11:52good enough.
1:11:53I'm fine with Apple's in-house team that has presumably been working on this for years.
1:11:57Like I'm I'm a little bit worried about integrating those thousands of employees and what kind
1:12:01of redundancies there are and how to merge the efforts of those teams, because I don't
1:12:04think, as we've discussed in many past shows, Apple's strategy was not let's twiddle our
1:12:09thumbs for years and then hope we can buy someone else a cell modem business.
1:12:13They had their own team working on this.
1:12:16And now they have these Intel people who have also been working on this.
1:12:19They need to merge those two things together, and it's probably a smaller team at Apple
1:12:24and a much larger team at Intel with two totally different projects that had no relation to
1:12:27each other whatsoever suddenly smushed together.
1:12:31And we want to get something out of that.
1:12:32Now that could accelerate things if the Intel project is really close to being done and
1:12:36the Apple one just kind of waits in the sidelines and the Apple one becomes the 2022 chip and
1:12:40the Intel one because of 2021.
1:12:42Or it could delay things even farther to say like, we need to rationalize these and come
1:12:45up with a single project and that single project is going to be 2022 instead of 2021.
1:12:50In the meantime, we'll buy from Qualcomm or whatever.
1:12:53Either way, we continue down the long path that we've discussed many times in the past,
1:12:57which is that Apple wants to be masters of their own destiny here.
1:13:01And just like they make their own system on chips, they want to make their own cell radios.
1:13:04So far, they're not making their own flash.
1:13:07And are you know, well, they are making their own Taptic Engine.
1:13:10Like you should start looking at the chip breakdown from iFixit and say how many chips
1:13:15on the iPhone's board are made by Apple and how many aren't.
1:13:19And I feel like Apple is sort of going by area.
1:13:22The system on the chip is Apple's.
1:13:23It's usually the biggest or one of the biggest chips on there.
1:13:25The cell radio may not be the biggest, but it's one of the most important.
1:13:29I guess the flash storage, probably Apple's not going to be into that because it's more
1:13:32of a commodity and it takes up a lot of space.
1:13:35But we're getting to the point of diminishing returns where all the major important components
1:13:39are made by Apple.
1:13:40And that's kind of where they like to be because having to deal with third party vendors is
1:13:44a pain, especially since Apple usually wants to have two of them and that becomes increasingly
1:13:48difficult for components that are difficult or highly differentiated like the CPUs or
1:13:53the cell modems.
1:13:54So I think this is good news for Apple, probably good news for the people on the Intel teams
1:13:59that their alternative is to be laid off by Intel and now they have a slightly less chance
1:14:03of being laid off by Apple.
1:14:04I'm sure there will be some layoffs, but hey, now you're an Apple employee instead of an
1:14:08Intel employee and that may be a good thing depending on whether you get to move to Apple
1:14:12Park or eat the fancy food or whatever.
1:14:15I don't think they're on a totally different campus, right?
1:14:17I forget where they are, San Diego or something?
1:14:19Who knows?
1:14:20I honestly don't know.
1:14:21Which I think is also where Apple's team was.
1:14:24They did a good job of sort of setting things up for this, that I think they're geographically
1:14:28co-located so that acquiring doesn't require everybody to move, any of the Apple side or
1:14:33the Intel side.
1:14:34Anyway, things are looking up.
1:14:35This is a good move.
1:14:36I still think we'll be waiting a year or two to see the fruits of that labor, but when
1:14:40we do, it should be good.
1:14:42And then I think finally for today before I ask ATP, apparently Apple has employees
1:14:48or contractors listening to Siri audio.
1:14:51What?
1:14:53So this was a report from the Guardian from a few days ago as we record saying that Apple
1:14:58employees and/or contractors are occasionally listening to Siri audio to help improve Siri,
1:15:03which on the surface makes a lot of sense, but what?
1:15:09Apple is the self-proclaimed top of the mountain, the king of the hill, if you will, on privacy,
1:15:16and this doesn't feel very private to me.
1:15:20So what's going on here and should I start putting on my tinfoil hat?
1:15:26I'm trying to think.
1:15:27I don't know the details of whether they're just doing it for transcription or they're
1:15:30also doing it for commands, but Apple often touts the things they do on your device, but
1:15:36there are many things that Siri does that require contact with the server, but all of
1:15:41that is separate from the idea of you say something and Siri turns it into text, which
1:15:48then sort of drives the rest of the system, right?
1:15:51So that could all be happening in device.
1:15:54You say something, Siri translates it to text, the text gets sent to a server, the server
1:15:57does a bunch of work, gives you a response, something like that, or it could happen on
1:16:00device, but the bottom line is that usually with Siri architecture, as I understand it,
1:16:06there's no reason for your audio to leave the device, except of course this reason,
1:16:11which I have to say I'm not surprised this is happening, but I can understand why people
1:16:16would be surprised that it's happening given Apple's privacy stance, which is Apple wants
1:16:21to make its thing better, and if someone says something and Siri interprets it terribly
1:16:27badly, that's something that Apple wants to know, and if you picture yourself as tasked
1:16:33with making this better, making Siri better, you're like, well, some user said set a
1:16:38timer for 10 minutes and it totally interpreted it in some bizarre way, and even if you give
1:16:45them the bizarre way, you're like, if you're the developer working in Siri, this is not
1:16:50actionable, how do I fix this?
1:16:52I have to know what they said, I have to know what it sounded like, I have to know where
1:16:54the problem happened, was there lots of background noise, did they have an accent, was there
1:16:58a certain cadence, like what part of our system is failing?
1:17:00I need the audio to be able to debug this.
1:17:04The part where I think people are, as a developer, that's not surprising, you can't improve it
1:17:10without this audio.
1:17:12The part that people find surprising is that sometimes that audio will just be taken and
1:17:18fed into the machine to make it better without any kind of consent or notification or anything
1:17:23like that, and that is off-putting and not in keeping with Apple's privacy stance in
1:17:29general, despite the fact that Apple says, oh, it's not identifiable as you, it's not
1:17:32associated with your Apple ID, it's your voice.
1:17:37I don't know, people's voices may sound similar, but it's your voice and you're saying words,
1:17:42it's your voice and your content.
1:17:44Just because it's not associated with your Apple ID, if Morgan Freeman says something
1:17:47to his thing to remind him to set up a meeting with Steven Spielberg about the whatever movie,
1:17:53you're going to know that it's Morgan Freeman, you know who Steven Spielberg is, it's information
1:17:57that someone, some random contractor gets to hear that and now can sell the story to
1:18:03the Hollywood Reporter or something like that.
1:18:05You can say, oh, but don't worry, they don't know Morgan Freeman's Apple ID, so everything
1:18:10is completely anonymous.
1:18:12It's not, and the fact that that's happening behind the scenes, not all the time, just
1:18:17once in a while or whatever, it seems like Apple has sort of snatched a feat from the
1:18:21jaws of victory here, because what do we all think every time we try to tell Siri to do
1:18:25something, it hilariously screws it up.
1:18:28If there was a giant button somewhere that said, do you want to send the audio of this
1:18:34interaction to Apple so that they can try to fix it, lots of the time we would say yes,
1:18:38because we just have something totally innocuous, like we sold them to set a timer and it did
1:18:42something bizarre, right?
1:18:43We would say send, but Morgan Freeman would not hit that button after he tried to remind
1:18:47himself about the Steven Spielberg meeting about the new movie, right?
1:18:50Because he would know, I'm not sending that audio to Apple, right?
1:18:53Or he wouldn't even see that button, he wouldn't even hit it, he would just turn off the phone
1:18:55or whatever.
1:18:56It has to be informed and opt in, and there's a benefit for being opt in because it provides
1:19:03satisfaction.
1:19:04When Siri screws up now, there's no satisfaction, you just get angry at it and it just sits
1:19:09there mocking you with its ridiculous answer.
1:19:11I had one recently, I'll save a screenshot of it, I think it was like, what the hell
1:19:16did I ask it?
1:19:17Oh, I asked it to change the volume?
1:19:21No, I think I asked it what the weather was and it told me the volume level or something,
1:19:25it was totally bizarre.
1:19:26And of course I screenshotted it because you screenshot all these ridiculous Siri interactions.
1:19:30If there had been a big button that said send this to Apple right now because it's ridiculous,
1:19:35I would have sent it.
1:19:37And it would say I'm about to send this and it would play the audio back to me and it
1:19:40says to confirm that you want to send this to Apple.
1:19:42That would have made me more satisfied as a customer.
1:19:45That I was actually, because I'm not filing a radar, I'm not creating an Apple developer
1:19:50account like it's just happening on the device right then and I get to say, hey Apple, your
1:19:55thing is broken, here's exactly how it's broken, yes you can have this audio that I just heard,
1:20:00it's fine with me, fix your stuff.
1:20:03That would make me a happy customer.
1:20:04Whereas if you tell me, every once in a while, unbeknownst to you, and this may never have
1:20:08happened to you but you really have no way of knowing, some of your audio may have been
1:20:12sent to someone at Apple so they can try to fix some sort of problem.
1:20:15A, you're mad that they may be getting my audio or whatever.
1:20:19And B, you're probably mad that maybe they picked up something where there was just lots
1:20:23of background noise.
1:20:24That's not the one you need to fix.
1:20:25You need to fix the one where it was a quiet room and you correctly interpreted what I
1:20:28said but still told me about the volume level instead of the weather.
1:20:31That's the one you need to fix.
1:20:32And I don't know if you sent that one because it's just a random sampling of stuff that
1:20:35you send.
1:20:36So I really hope Apple fixes this.
1:20:39There are lots of ways to fix this to make everybody happy and I feel like to give Apple
1:20:43more better data because Apple doesn't just care about making Siri better.
1:20:47They care about making it better in ways that make customers more satisfied.
1:20:51So the more angry and confused the customer is, the more likely they are to opt into the
1:20:56system and the more valuable those are to be the ones that get fixed, not just the randomly
1:21:01selected ones that fail for some reason.
1:21:04So this is all just disappointing all around, easy for Apple to fix and I hope they take
1:21:08some action on it.
1:21:09And I talked about this on the talk show this week.
1:21:13So listen to that also please.
1:21:14I won't repeat myself too much because we have a lot of audience overlap but I don't
1:21:18think this is as egregious of a problem unless you consider two things.
1:21:24Number one, there is no way to opt out of this and still use Siri at all.
1:21:30There is no like don't share this with Apple.
1:21:32If you use Siri at all, your audio is transmitted to Apple and John by the way you said earlier
1:21:38that you think it's transcribed on the phone and sent.
1:21:41That's not the case.
1:21:43That can be the case sometimes but I believe still by default the audio is transcribed
1:21:49remotely and so it is sending the audio and that's probably still going to be the case
1:21:53for the foreseeable future.
1:21:55So that's problem number one.
1:21:56Problem number two is that there is a lot of accidental invocation.
1:22:01So it's one thing if you hold down the Siri button and you say hey do this thing and it
1:22:04gives you some bad response and you say well I guess hopefully someone on Apple is going
1:22:09to see stuff like this and try to fix them.
1:22:10It's a whole other thing when the HomePod in the corner of your room says hmm when you
1:22:16weren't asking it something and all of a sudden you realize like oh wait a minute that was
1:22:22listening to what did we just say and it's you know what if you were saying something
1:22:26sensitive and that like all the time I have the HomePod or any hey dingus enabled iOS
1:22:32devices very frequently will butt into conversations where I didn't say hey you you know wake
1:22:39up.
1:22:40I didn't even say anything that even remotely sounded like it.
1:22:44But and oftentimes we'll think back and realize wait it thought that was hey whatever like
1:22:48wow.
1:22:49I have a sound alike problem related to last week's link to the look right into the eyes
1:22:53of your sweetie which is what I call my sweetie and sweetie when I mumble it or yell it across
1:22:58the house sounds a lot like Siri so I get a lot of accidental activations with incredibly
1:23:04bizarre results that follow the word sweetie because it tries to transcribe what I'm telling
1:23:08it to do.
1:23:09Right like Siri has a pretty significant problem with accidental invocation by accidentally
1:23:14recognizing those words especially on HomePods and so not only is it sending recordings to
1:23:21humans potentially when you intentionally invoke Siri but it's sending recordings to
1:23:26Apple for humans to review when you didn't even realize you were invoking Siri and didn't
1:23:30intend to be invoking Siri.
1:23:32Or maybe it's sending them you don't know like right you don't know which ones it's
1:23:35sending because it's not sending a hundred percent of them that's too much it's sending
1:23:38some amount of them but you don't know which which ones it's sending.
1:23:41Right so to me because there is accidental capture happening there must be clear communication
1:23:49there must be an opt-out that allows you to keep having Siri enabled as a as a service
1:23:55but that you can say don't use recordings of me don't let don't let humans review those
1:24:00that needs to be an option.
1:24:02And I found my screenshot that I took of the ridiculous Siri thing this was actually the
1:24:07legit thing that we were trying to do with various iOS devices of my family on vacation
1:24:11the question like we're trying to say what version of iOS device is running without having
1:24:15to go to settings general about blah blah blah and scroll and look for the thing so
1:24:19just ask Siri and so it Siri shows you what it transcribed of what you said so it correctly
1:24:25transcribed my question which was what version of iOS am I running correctly capitalized
1:24:31iOS like that's you know it got the question and its answer was the current volume is 13
1:24:37percent.
1:24:38Oh my god.
1:24:39Nice.
1:24:40Which is an interesting answer to the question that it correctly transcribed and you may
1:24:44think I think it just can't tell the answer to that question not true because if you do
1:24:49it again and it re-transcribes it it tells you like the version like it's in typical
1:24:53bizarre Siri fashion why does the same question result in different answers in the same device
1:24:58seconds apart.
1:24:59Yeah so I did take a screenshot of this.
1:25:04There was no button to submit it to Apple but I submitted it through other channels
1:25:07whether anything comes of it who knows.
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1:27:12All right let's do some Ask ATP and we start tonight with Prone2Bits who asked for a two-fer
1:27:21which is usually against the rules but they were both pretty good and hopefully quick.
1:27:25Number one does Marco have any favorite tracks for testing speakers or headphones?
1:27:30I have a whole playlist called audio quality tests and there's a there's a few go-tos in
1:27:33there that's I shared it at some point I blogged about it I think or I showed a screenshot
1:27:37of it right now there's 31 songs on it and the idea is to span a wide variety of musical
1:27:42genres at least within what I know and what I have and to include songs that are very
1:27:47well recorded and and songs that I just know really well and that way I can I kind of have
1:27:52a very quick benchmark. One of my favorite ones the one of the ones that I go to fastest
1:27:58and most often is the Once and Future Carpenter by the Avid Brothers. That is usually the
1:28:04very first song I will test on any new pair of headphones and then I will go on from there
1:28:10I have songs from I have old songs I have a couple of Cat Stevens songs I have new songs
1:28:15I have like you know 90 songs like Counting Crows I have Decemberist, Dispatch, Foo Fighters,
1:28:21Green Day, Maroon 5, Milk Carton Kids, obviously some fish, some social distortion, yeah stuff
1:28:30like that like it's songs I know very well and especially some songs that are very very
1:28:35well recorded so that they so that when I'm listening to something that has very high
1:28:39quality potential I'm feeding it really good input so I know like if I'm if I have really
1:28:45good headphones that I have something that can sound really good on them. Nobody asked
1:28:48me but I really like two Kevin Gilbert tracks one is Thud or excuse me it's the album is
1:28:56Thud Live the track is Kashmir which is a cover of Zeppelin I forget I know everyone's
1:29:02gonna be angry at me I'm so sorry anyway it's a really good cover of Kashmir and then Last
1:29:06Play Now which is also Kevin Gilbert but part of the band as part of the band Toy Matinee
1:29:11both of those I really enjoy using for similar circumstances. Coming back to Ask ATP well
1:29:17actually let me give John a chance John do you care and ever have any favorite tracks
1:29:21for these sorts of things?
1:29:22>> John
1:29:44S. B. stuff went to user space in iOS 13 or in iPad OS 13?
1:29:48>> No, it's because iOS doesn't care about your data that's why. This is an eternal question
1:29:54of like you know PC users say I hate on Macs you have to unmount volumes before ejecting
1:30:00floppy disks or disconnecting drives or stuff like that and the Mac users would say like
1:30:06well then how do you know all the various buffers have been flushed to disk and then
1:30:10the Unix people say just type sync and hit return then type sync again and then hit return
1:30:13and everything will be surely on disk and we go round and round and then the PC users
1:30:17say I just wait for the light to stop blinking and then you can yank it out and it's a complicated
1:30:22issue.
1:30:23I was complicated very often there is buffering involved there are various mechanisms in operating
1:30:28systems that are supposed to ensure that all bits have been successfully transferred to
1:30:32the persistent storage media so that it is now safe to remove things. The Mac OS way
1:30:39the Mac way of unmounting is always going to be the safest because it allows the operating
1:30:44system to decide that everything truly has been written in disk and to give a visual
1:30:49indication in the interface that says now it's okay for you to pull your disk out or
1:30:53disconnect your thing because as far as the operating is concerned everything has been
1:30:56flushed to it and we have unmounted the device and it's gone from the operating system so
1:31:00if it didn't make it to your disk now or your storage now it's never going to make it there
1:31:04but either way it's safe to pull it out. But practically speaking given modern IO stacks
1:31:11and modern storage mechanisms and you know the experience of all PC users are just staring
1:31:16at the little blinking light and yanking it out when the light is done blinking that technique
1:31:20also works if you always wait for the light to be done blinking as long as you're not
1:31:23sure it wasn't about to blink one more time right before you yanked it out. As for iOS
1:31:29it's like it's no different than any other operating system it's trying to get everything
1:31:34flushed to storage as fast as possible it's trying to handle cases where there were things
1:31:38in flight if you yank it out while it's in the middle of a transfer and put it back in
1:31:42maybe it can resume where it left off like I don't know what things it's doing but the
1:31:45bottom line is it is always safest to let the operating system unmount and be completely
1:31:50done with the thing. That is there's never going to be it's never going to be as safe
1:31:55to do it the other way because you can yank it out at any time and the OS may not be ready
1:31:58for it. The fact that lots of operating systems let you yank it out is a feature in that it's
1:32:05more convenient and you don't have to deal with unmounting but I have to believe that
1:32:10there's no possible way that you can allow the user to yank it out at any time and never
1:32:15suffer any data loss if they don't plug it back in ever because if I yank it out and
1:32:19it's in the middle of a transfer and I'd never plug that thing back in I'm not getting those
1:32:23bits they're on the device they're not on the thing that I yanked out and there's nothing
1:32:28you know it's just that's just the arrow of time right so I'm I don't like systems like
1:32:33this where it says just pull it out at any time I'm sure it'll be fine because the answer
1:32:36is no it won't always be fine almost always it'll be fine but I would rather it be closer
1:32:42to always fine we need more nines so you get a lot more nines with unmounting. Oh my goodness
1:32:50all right Aaron Bushnell writes you wake up to an email from Phil Scheller that you're
1:32:57on the new pro workflow team for complete overhaul of Mac OS iPad OS and iOS what suggestions
1:33:03would you provide for the next generation of Apple operating systems so I did not spend
1:33:07enough time thinking about this but I thought about this briefly before we recorded and
1:33:10I came up with kind of a big question yeah it's it I came up with some ideas I don't
1:33:15think they're revolutionary enough but let me just throw some ideas at you for Mac OS
1:33:21I first of all think that we should get cellular radios and particularly Marco and I have been
1:33:25barking up this tree for a while now for portable Macs I think they should have cellular radios
1:33:30I think I'm also on board with touch support which makes me sick to say out loud but I
1:33:34think I'm on board with at least giving it a shot for iPad OS I the best I could come
1:33:40up with was increased system access which is very nebulous but I'm thinking of things
1:33:44like is it why can't you sideload an iPad app like if this is really a professional
1:33:48device let us maybe get something from places other than the App Store and yes I know the
1:33:52million and six reasons why that's a bad idea but maybe let us anyway and also like audio
1:33:57subsystem access like can we please be able to do I would like to be able to record a
1:34:01podcast my iPad I would never do it but I'd like to be able to that would be kind of cool
1:34:04and then finally with iOS picture in picture please and I feel like there may be something
1:34:10better we can do with the home screen I'm not sure what but I feel like springboard
1:34:14a which has gone through zillion changes over the last 10 years but I feel like we could
1:34:18get something a little more interesting on the home screen so again most of those not
1:34:23terribly revolutionary but just some ideas I thought about I feel like I've been picking
1:34:28on Marco first a lot recently so John what do you have for us this is too big a question
1:34:32to be answered in any kind of comprehensive way especially in an STP so I'll just give
1:34:37one tiny thing that that occurs to me aside from the fact that I probably shouldn't be
1:34:40on the per workflow team because I don't have any per workflow so I don't understand why
1:34:43I would be on the team but this is a hypothetical John you are a developer they said developers
1:34:48are their largest segment of pro users yeah the most the most important pros that's right
1:34:52not the most important clearly we're not but they are the largest segment right and there's
1:34:56the same developers seem to do seven thousand dollar monitors they can view text on it right
1:35:00yes well obviously the most important members of the pro workflow team are video editors
1:35:04all right but yeah my my one quick tiny answer that spans all their OS's would be would have
1:35:11to do with responsiveness they did a lot of this in iOS 12 with enhancing it but I feel
1:35:16like it's something needs to be done across the board to give an example of what I'm talking
1:35:19about well the larger issue is like today we're using computers and phones and iPads
1:35:25and whatever they're fantastically more powerful than the ones I started out using when I was
1:35:29a kid they're just tremendous they have so much faster CPUs and more RAM and just like
1:35:33there's so many more computing resources and yet the second by second moment by moment
1:35:38interactive experience of using the computers it's faster than it was but not by the same
1:35:44amount that that the actual resources have increased because we're using the resources
1:35:49to do fancier things obviously right so we're not not just because your CPU is a million
1:35:52times faster you don't expect everything to be faster because you're doing stuff with
1:35:56that I get that but there are many corners of the various operating systems that are
1:36:00less responsive than they should be to give a tiny example if you are in the list view
1:36:04window in the finder and you hit command and to make a new folder because you've remapped
1:36:08that command because you've spent 16 years typing command and then you refuse to command
1:36:11shift in anyway set that aside you hit the keyboard shortcut to create a new folder right
1:36:17and because you're used to doing this frequently you immediately start typing the name of that
1:36:21new folder because you know the untitled folder text will automatically be selected so you
1:36:26know command and then you start typing the name of the folder it will miss the first
1:36:30few keystrokes or maybe just the first one keystroke of what you typed what you have
1:36:33to do is hit your keystroke for a new folder wait a moment for the computer to catch up
1:36:41to what you've done then start typing the name of the folder and this seems like a tiny
1:36:47thing it's like just wait a fraction of a second what's the big deal the big deal is
1:36:51on a computer with like an 8 megahertz CPU or the hell was the spell type command in
1:36:55and immediately start typing the name of the folder and it would get all the characters
1:36:58every single time on a computer that was so much slower than any other computing device
1:37:03I have in my life that's an example where responsiveness has not been prioritized and
1:37:08by the way it's only list view like com view doesn't have that problem I think icon view
1:37:11doesn't have problem it just lists view there are all sorts of weird corners of the operating
1:37:15system of all operating systems where there are delays where I have to wait for the computer
1:37:18iOS and iPad OS have tons of delays that are built into the interaction model whether it
1:37:22is because you have to hold down a certain period of time or you have to check whether
1:37:26I'm double tapping like all those kind of delays it's harder in iOS and iPad OS find
1:37:31a way for me not to have to wait for the computer I think a lot of the stuff where they eliminated
1:37:34the loop for the cursor insertion point and everything on iOS 13 which I still haven't
1:37:38tried because I've still been afraid to install it but those are steps in the right direction
1:37:42that's what I want I don't want to be waiting for the computer for things that I shouldn't
1:37:46have to be waiting for the computer for small interactive things that involves like it's
1:37:52not saying that oh you have to eliminate animations they take too long I just want everything
1:37:56to be interactive all the time I want it to be responsive to my input and this occurs
1:38:03to me because I just have gone through you know many hundreds multiple thousands yeah
1:38:08probably multiple thousands of photos of the course of my vacation so I spent another many
1:38:13many arrows and in the Apple photos application on my Mac and boy is that program not responsive
1:38:20like you'll hit the right arrow key to go to the next photo and not only will it not
1:38:23go to the next photo often it will show you a beach ball I was starting to do counts one
1:38:29two three four oh you went to the next picture great sometimes it will just never advance
1:38:35the next picture and you have to hit the right arrow key again this is not an example of
1:38:38a responsive program I'm not asking for the moon here I'm asking to go to the next completely
1:38:43unedited picture as I go through imports it they need things need to be more responsive
1:38:51and it's not just something that benefits people who are in a super duper hurry they
1:38:53go you're in such a hurry you hit command and you want to type the name right away just
1:38:56wait a second nobody's in that big a hurry it's not a big deal blah blah blah responsiveness
1:39:00benefits everybody even if you think for 15 seconds between what you do everybody likes
1:39:05it that when you finally after thinking for 15 seconds go to do what you want you immediately
1:39:09see the result on the screen that's what people want it makes a satisfying user experience
1:39:14it feels like you are directly interacting with the thing just feels less like you are
1:39:19sending a letter in the mail to the computer for it to do something at some point in the
1:39:22future oh my words how do you really feel john don't hold back marco thoughts all right
1:39:29so I picked just a few things I spent you know maybe 15 minutes on this earlier so you
1:39:34know forgive me this is not comprehensive as john said on mac os I would I had forgotten
1:39:41until john just mentioned it that like the photos app is kind of considered part of the
1:39:45os I would completely throw away the photos app everything about it except the syncing
1:39:53engine throw away the entire browsing and editing interface on the mac it's terrible
1:40:00it is it seems designed for people who don't actually use it it seems programmed by people
1:40:06who have never used it and I don't know how anybody could be expected to do anything in
1:40:12the apple photos app for mac on more than like one photo at a time ever without throwing
1:40:18it out the window it's I still it's still baffling how like basic stuff like going through
1:40:24a bunch of photos and trying to like delete the bad one to keep the good ones is so clumsy
1:40:28and bug prone and slow and unintuitive simple things about editing as john said are like
1:40:34unresponsive slow confusing like it it just seems like the people who make this app don't
1:40:40use it and or maybe they're not empowered I don't know what the problem is but whatever
1:40:45it is it seems like the mac photos app is just it's just bad simple things very very
1:40:54common things you need to do with such an app are bad or unintuitive or slow or buggy
1:40:59or just clumsy so that app needs to be totally thrown out but moving on to to kind of larger
1:41:06themes for mac os I would say again I echo Casey on cellular support I actually I'm not
1:41:13convinced yet on touch I go back and forth on touch I would say at kind of an a big user
1:41:20experience level I think time has proven that the lion document model was the wrong choice
1:41:29it is still all these years later still confusing people frequently still do unintended things
1:41:36make unintended changes you know people know how to do things like file save as we've been
1:41:43doing this for decades on our computers we had like people know that they learned that
1:41:49it is how all computers worked for so long and by trying to make the mac work more like
1:41:56ios and getting rid of save as and making everything autosave by default and having
1:42:01these weird like duplicate commands instead I see what they were going for it didn't work
1:42:08it's very confusing I would like to see that totally rolled back honestly or at least an
1:42:13option to enable because like right now you can like hold down the option button and you
1:42:17get like a save as command for real but like the fact is users I don't think ever caught
1:42:23on with the system pro apps mostly didn't adopt this system so now you have a situation
1:42:29where a lot of apps on your computer don't work this way but then all the built in ones
1:42:34from apple do work this way so you have an incredible inconsistency now the lion document
1:42:39model failed it is it was a good idea to try something like that they failed it didn't
1:42:44work get rid of it architecturally speaking if we didn't you know if this is like a total
1:42:49overhaul as it was kind of stated I would like to see a an ios style container folder
1:42:57structure for each app like on the mac you have like the library folder and inside the
1:43:02library folder you have all these different folders so like if you install an app on the
1:43:05mac if you run an app on the mac it's expected to write files in standard locations they're
1:43:10kind of all over the place you know it has like it's supposed to write documents in your
1:43:14documents directory it's supposed to write its temp files in a certain folder under library
1:43:17it's supposed to write its preferences in a different folder under library and if you
1:43:20delete the app all those files are still there and or even if you just install a new version
1:43:24of the app it might start writing them in new locations and so you have all this garbage
1:43:27accumulating all over the file system and that's why you have you know all these like
1:43:30app cleaner app uninstaller apps that are supposed to try to help you out but like on
1:43:35ios you delete an app and you know it's gone you know it can't possibly have left anything
1:43:40behind like zoom stupid web server like you just know it's gone because the container
1:43:44structure of the app is such that you install an app it gets its own little folder with
1:43:49its own little library folder inside of it and that library folder has all of its temp
1:43:53files and everything else and when you delete the app that whole container gets deleted
1:43:58now there would have to be some concessions about like where documents go for example
1:44:02because that's you know the mac works differently about documents than ios does but i think
1:44:07having that kind of structure come to the mac would be great and would solve a lot of
1:44:10problems and yes it would be a lot of work and a big change and a lot of things would
1:44:13break but this is in a you know re-architecting kind of scenario i would also say i would
1:44:19like to see more background app services come to the mac from ios things like background
1:44:25refresh content available push notifications background downloads of urls and stuff like
1:44:30that i don't know how much of that is there yet i don't think much of it is moving on
1:44:34to ipad os i would like to see this become a little bit more mac like in in a few ways
1:44:41that i don't think are popular but that i would like to see um number one and this is
1:44:46going to be controversial a desktop for files on the ipad people want to work this way i
1:44:54know it is not what nerds like to have a desktop covered in files but this is how i work i'll
1:45:00admit it i'm a desktop file clutterer i have crap all over my desktop my folders are all
1:45:04over there that's like all my active working files are on my desktop and then once they're
1:45:07done i move them somewhere else maybe but like the desktop is my home base for my files
1:45:12that's how most people use their desktops that's why apple made a feature uh one or two mac
1:45:17versions ago that will optionally sync your documents and desktop folders and none of
1:45:23your other folders because no one uses any other folders they will optionally sync your
1:45:27documents desktop folder uh folders between your max i would like to see that feature
1:45:31extended to also include ipads to be able to potentially optionally sync your desktop
1:45:37and documents folders between your max and your ipads so the ipad would have a desktop
1:45:43that could have files and folders on it that is what i would like to see additionally a
1:45:47few other uh kind of mac niceties come to the ipad i would like to see a standard window
1:45:55chrome for the ipad right now the ipad can do things that are kind of window like but
1:46:01they're all with only hidden gestures there's not a lot of on-screen controls to control
1:46:06them or to invoke them and everything i would like to see some kind of like standard title
1:46:10bar with standard buttons to like you know shrink it to the various window sizes that
1:46:14let you know there are various split configurations that can exist on the ipad and not every app
1:46:20would have to show window chrome those apps that you know benefit from full screen edge
1:46:25to edge content could opt into it the same way right now we have the home indicator and
1:46:29apps can opt to hide it by default so some kind of standard title bar with window chrome
1:46:35going along with this to make multitasking less slow and horrible and painful like it
1:46:40is now a fast mode for multitasking that skips all the animations of moving and resizing
1:46:47apps on the ipad and instantly snaps apps into place so you drag that thing over it
1:46:54doesn't have to go whoop and slide it over you don't have to set it down and wait for
1:46:58it it just goes bam snaps right into place you want to resize it drive the handle bam
1:47:02snaps again instant finally much more responsive and much more reliable keyboard shortcuts
1:47:10the ipad is slowly gaining keyboard navigability but it's pretty slow it's still pretty you
1:47:16know few and far between and it's unreliable and it's not very responsive at times i want
1:47:21to see just again kind of what john said about you know responsiveness get get faster because
1:47:25if the ipad they're trying to push the ipad into a lot of mac like uses mac like territory
1:47:30it needs to be fast and responsive and multitasking has to be immediate we can't be waiting around
1:47:34for things to like swoop around and slide around and get pushed around it's just too
1:47:39slow that's not how that isn't how pros work you need things to be faster broadly moving
1:47:44back moving on to the iphone including you know ios i would like to you know for ios
1:47:50generally it's time we want uh user set default apps for uh http mailto and the camera at least
1:47:59and any other buttons that appear on the lock screen by default they have this in the mac
1:48:03it's been fine it hasn't like you know prevented them from shipping a web browser on the mac
1:48:07or having awesome user features on the mac that involve integration between the system
1:48:11and safari or mail or whatever else two little things uh phone calls to show as notifications
1:48:18not as full screen takeovers as an option multiple named timers to be supported i would
1:48:25like to see the ability to integrate widgets into the home screen alongside icons if we
1:48:30see fit and to let those widgets update much more frequently right now we just seem to
1:48:36update basically only when you navigate to them so when you swipe over to see your widgets
1:48:41which itself is kind of varied you first see old stale data first i can as they update
1:48:45to fresh data and that's how dashboard on mac os always worked may it rest in peace
1:48:51and that sucks we have computers they have background refresh we have enough power now
1:48:56enough ram now we can have those widgets update more often maybe like every couple of minutes
1:49:01every 10 minutes that that would be great and finally i would like to see complications
1:49:08like watch os has complications although better because they're terrible uh from a programming
1:49:12point of view so a complication api customizable for the lock screen on ios so what you're
1:49:22saying is you want tiles on springboard that are like alive so you want these like alive
1:49:30tiles on springboard and then you want to have a whole bunch of little things hanging
1:49:34out across the top of your screen on the lock screen yeah basically i want the iphone lock
1:49:39screen to become watch os i want the ipad to become the mac and i want the mac to become
1:49:42the older mac you want the you want springboard to become uh what is it windows metro what
1:49:48was the thing that that looked like a lot of tiles are dead now i'm not sure that's
1:49:53what he's asking for i think he just wants to to ugly up his lock screen like an android
1:49:56phone that's the other thing i was going to say is what you want it's all every time i
1:50:00see any family members or friends android phone the amount of that is across the top
1:50:06of their screen is insane i don't understand he wants complications like there's a lot
1:50:12of quote unquote wasted space on the lock screen i know there's notifications stuff
1:50:16that can potentially fill up that space but there's there are there is space you could
1:50:20carve out on the lock screen for uh watch size complications yeah i mean what like why
1:50:26not what is it what is it for it's it's right now it's basically a giant billboard why like
1:50:32why can we not use the space ios uses it sometimes like if you have a timer running it'll show
1:50:37on the lock screen that's great very useful and not notifications that if you have notifications
1:50:41set to show on the lock screen you could fill that entire lock screen just with notifications
1:50:44like that's what that space is reserved for essentially like they'll they'll fill your
1:50:48screen sure but what if look look the apple watch look at how many apple watch screens
1:50:53could fit on your iphone screen like the apple watch like most of the complication face things
1:50:58on the apple watch like most faces have support for between three and six complications you
1:51:04could fit like five or six complications in the space of one notification that could just
1:51:10be like pinned to the top of notification area you could have like a little like complication
1:51:13zone like right below where the clock and date are that if you wanted to you could have
1:51:17a little row of like five or six little square complications like there there's so much potential
1:51:22there like weather temperature timers you know staff flight status whatever what everyone
1:51:27uses the watch complications for why isn't that on the iphone which would also by the
1:51:32way have the battery resources to be able to update those more frequently like that's
1:51:38it to me is like the the iphone lock screen is a huge amount of wasted potential and it's
1:51:44just empty space right now and i would love to see us be able to use that more and to
1:51:49be to have apps be able to use that more certainly an interesting point do you vision envision
1:51:56this phantom desktop on ipad to be like an app that you open or is this in replacement
1:52:01of springboard like what what is the experience there right now like like in ios 13 you have
1:52:06the option to opt to uh to optionally put like a basically your widget zone as like
1:52:13the left side of your springboard what if this is just another option for that what
1:52:17if you could put you know instead of having like you know half of it be your widget zone
1:52:22and half of it be your your app icons what if half of it is your desktop files like you
1:52:27know like so and you could do left the left pane could be widgets or desktop who knows
1:52:32what if what if app launch moved what if it really became mac like and what if the apps
1:52:37all moved into the dock and then the whole desktop was there for your files it works
1:52:43on the mac we've done it on the mac for a very long time and this is how people are
1:52:48accustomed to working and if you're trying to say the ipad is more and more appropriate
1:52:52to replace the mac hey maybe it would make a little more sense to be more mac like in
1:52:57this way that everyone's familiar with as well i don't know i mean maybe part of the
1:53:00reason why the ipad why ipad people like it so much is that it isn't like the mac in some
1:53:05ways but certainly when we've given the ipad more mac like functionality in some of these
1:53:11like basic like kind of you know workflow ways or the way the way multitasking our window
1:53:16and work like the more math like it gets in a lot of ways the more mac the more ipad power
1:53:22users like it but i think right now we still have these major problems of a lot of clumsiness
1:53:27around file access a lot of clumsiness around multitasking discoverability and performance
1:53:31and everything else like i feel like if we if we improve that by bringing over more helpful
1:53:37things from the mac i feel like it wouldn't just make it a little mac but there there
1:53:42are more ideas we can borrow that i think would bet that it would benefit from you two
1:53:46or two new to the mac to remember this but there was a time when applications cared way
1:53:51way way less where they were and people did indeed put applications on the desktop i know
1:53:55you just said like oh applications in the doc and files on the desktop nope you could
1:53:59put anything on the desktop including all your applications if you wanted and people
1:54:03did yeah you can you can still do that with a lot of apps who cares like look who cares
1:54:08where people put their apps apps these days though are super cranky about it like so many
1:54:12of them detect whether they're running from slash applications and they're not they're
1:54:15like hey i'm not running a slash applications do you want to move me in there i might be
1:54:18running on a read-only disk image that might screw me up because i'm not it wasn't created
1:54:22in an age of sandboxing it's things are more complicated than they happen but yeah marco
1:54:27marco loves desktop everybody loves desktop as i've been pointing out for i was gonna
1:54:31say multiple decades now it is the one the most reliably spatially consistent part of
1:54:37the mac operating system that remains now that the spatial finder is gone and so it's
1:54:40the one place people always know that they can find and that's why they put all their
1:54:43stuff there right well and like i feel like really kind of like raging against people
1:54:49keeping all their files on the desktop it's like raging against people taking photos on
1:54:52ipads or taking portrait video those fights are lost people made people do what they do
1:54:57and the fact is everyone keeps files on the desktop but it's not it's it's a fight it's
1:55:02not you're fighting against them doing that though it's not like saying oh you shouldn't
1:55:05be doing it's a bad thing what the reason i rage against it is not because people are
1:55:09doing it but because it shows that what people want is a spatially consistent place to put
1:55:14their stuff that's why people put on the desktop and the fact that there's only a single one
1:55:17of those places left is a problem that the operating system needs to address it's not
1:55:22the people's fault they're using the best that is offered to them the best that's offered
1:55:25them is like oh there's one place where i can put stuff where i know it will not move
1:55:30someplace else and i won't have multiple places where i can see it it's just this one place
1:55:35right and of course they're putting everything there because there is no other place like
1:55:39that and so i'm what i'm not raging against is you know people having messy desktops i'm
1:55:44raging against the operating system for not providing more places that feel as secure
1:55:48as the desktop they don't have to be exactly like the desktop but it's obvious that that
1:55:53is the the characteristics that make the desktop so attractive should be duplicated elsewhere
1:55:59like you should make other places that also feel as secure and as easily findable as the
1:56:04desktop or close to it or try to do that and it's like they don't even try it's like no
1:56:09there is the desktop and then there's just a series of a million different windows that
1:56:13are all million different views on things and no one can find anything so continue putting
1:56:16stuff on the desktop all right and finally from ask atp this week anthony roberts writes
1:56:22that the last episode reminded anthony that uh john is a tennis fan john how would you
1:56:28rank the following players not taking into consideration their competition record but
1:56:31using some other criterion such as style of play and the options are as follows thanks
1:56:37to our sponsors this week brutal brutal the options are andre agassi uh michael chang
1:56:44jim courier and pete sampras i don't know why johnny mac isn't there but uh you know
1:56:49you can't win them all you're not a tennis fan these are a more or less a particular
1:56:54class of tennis players as in like high school class like they're they all came up around
1:56:59the same time so and these are american players so this this grouping does make some kind
1:57:04of sense um yeah so i'll make the short yeah i'm glad that the question was not about rank
1:57:11or whatever because you can easily rank them by number of grand slam wins or whatever you
1:57:14want to pick and that's boring so i'm going to pick based on my amalgam which is like
1:57:21it's not just my favorite players but their favorite for a reason anyway andre agassi
1:57:24is my number one he's always been my favorite player uh even though his record is not as
1:57:28good as uh some other people i've always loved his style of play i've always loved his personality
1:57:33of loves his personal struggle yada yada yada he's my favorite player i really like him
1:57:38he's number one pete sampras is number two uh pete sampras probably a better player has
1:57:43a better record uh but whenever andre played pete i was always rooting for andre because
1:57:47he was the underdog right so pete is a better player probably in most regards except probably
1:57:53return of serve anyway um so pete sampras number two this is where it gets hard and
1:57:58michael changer is jim courier i'm gonna have to give it to courier just because he's so
1:58:01much more accomplished michael chang had a lot of potential but could only break through
1:58:04a very small number of times and i was rooting always rooting for him but jim courier made
1:58:09it happen more often despite the fact jim courier took advantage of one of andre's big
1:58:14chokes and you know defeated my favorite so that there's your ranking it's agassi sampras
1:58:19courier chain which i think is a ranking that most people would agree with except people
1:58:23would probably have sampras above agassi you know i do like that as i'm looking up who
1:58:28uh jim courier is because i have no idea who that was uh one of the items in the contents
1:58:33for his wikipedia page is item number four atp career finals you're excited by the fact
1:58:39that uh atp stands for association of tennis professionals oh they stole it from us man
1:58:43thanks to our sponsors this week ero away and molecule and we'll see you next week
1:58:51now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental it was
1:59:02accidental john didn't do any research margo and casey wouldn't let him because it was
1:59:10accidental it was accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm and if you want to
1:59:19follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m a r c o a r m anti-marco armen
1:59:36s i r a c u s a syracuse it's accidental they didn't mean to accidental
1:59:48they didn't mean to accidental tech podcast so long john how was your camera stuff for
1:59:56your vacation this year did not drop it in the ocean did get one very big splash sort
2:00:02of over the top of my entire head and camera so like it's not like the camera went in the
2:00:07water but i don't understand how the camera could have gotten any more wet based on the
2:00:10amount of water that fell over both of us so it was you know just water just imagine
2:00:15dumping a bucket of water on top of your camera and then just letting it fall over it right
2:00:19and so i dried it off and it seems like it's okay but i guess we should now accelerate
2:00:25the uh salt corrosion countdown clock on the innards of my camera it is absolutely astonishing
2:00:32to me that a man who has a phone condom for putting his phone in his pocket will take
2:00:40a probably far more expensive camera and lens combination into salt water for it to get
2:00:47splashed on i'm taking it underwater i'm i'm very see i think it should not be too incongruous
2:00:52because the little my little sleeve is too is a way of taking care of my phone and i
2:00:59because i'm trying to be careful and take care of my things i'm also trying to be very
2:01:02careful and take care of my camera as i use it standing knee deep in ocean waves right
2:01:10it's a dangerous thing that i'm doing with my camera but i'm very careful during that
2:01:13process which is why it survived as long as it has so it's all just me being careful but
2:01:18the bottom line is this is what my camera is for it's to be used so i'm using it and
2:01:24this camera has long since outlived its expected lifetime of being taken into the ocean like
2:01:28this i did have access success with i think i mentioned in the show someone suggested
2:01:33when i was having some wonkiness with the camera to use this deoxit stuff the electrical
2:01:37contact cleaner i don't know what uh terrible chemical is in this spray bottle but it really
2:01:43did help i had an issue that is apparently common with my model of camera even if you
2:01:46don't take them in the ocean which is the little the main shutter switch gets a little
2:01:50wonky and the camera thinks that it is half pressed down when it's not half pressed down
2:01:54and that locks out a bunch of functions and so you'll try to use controls in the back
2:01:57of the camera and it would just be totally unresponsive and it's because the camera thinks
2:02:01that like the shutter button is like quarter pressed or half pressed or some other thing
2:02:05that locks out the ui a little bit of electrical contact cleaner about a year ago solved that
2:02:10problem completely i brought the contact cleaner with me on vacation just in case it came back
2:02:13and it hasn't so camera still going like a champ i am really kind of feeling frustrated
2:02:20with both the limits of my lenses and the limits of my camera now that i'm more intimately
2:02:25familiar with those limits like i can see like boy this zoom lens that i use at the
2:02:29ocean is not a great lens i knew it was not a great lens it's cheap it's not a good one
2:02:34it's doesn't you know zoom lenses are compromised we've talked about this many times like and
2:02:39so and you know resolution wise sometimes i can't get the crop i want right sometimes
2:02:43the dynamic range isn't there and so i do think about getting a bigger fancier camera
2:02:47the new uh a11r4 is out now so i was looking at that but the prices of all those things
2:02:54and i look at the the fact that i want to get a new tv and look at mac pro prices so
2:02:58i'm just continuing to have a lot of things that i want to buy but they're that's all
2:03:02just pushed off into the future but i may consider next year getting myself a better
2:03:08zoom lens because my zoom lens is really cheap it's it's like the cheapest longest zoom i
2:03:12could get and i take so many pictures with that lens like half my pictures are with this
2:03:17cruddy lens that i should probably like get one that is twice as good for twice the price
2:03:23or something you know i should just get one for twice the price basically because twice
2:03:27the price would only be a couple hundred bucks and that's not insane for a zoom lens i'm
2:03:31not going to be able to get a good one but i can get a better one um so i try to take
2:03:35most of my pictures with like my prime lens that most of my non-ocean pictures my prime
2:03:39lens which is more expensive than my zoom and takes way better pictures obviously because
2:03:44it's not a zoom uh but then i look at all those pictures take with zoom and like you
2:03:48know i could do better there so i don't know i'm i'm thinking about cameras i'm definitely
2:03:53reading the reviews of the new uh the new a11 to see but a7 right a7 r4 seven seven
2:04:02it's seven anyway seven seven there we go 7 11 got it a7 r4 but it's iv for the four
2:04:08yeah right it's pronounced if um i i'm curious what is the uh what's the uh 35 millimeter
2:04:15full frame equivalent focal uh range of your telephoto right now i have no idea um maybe
2:04:23no i don't actually i don't know i don't know the math on that i like i do everything in
2:04:27i i do everything in aps-c so i think what i think of is like my 50 millimeter i know
2:04:31it's not what everyone else thinks of 50 millimeter because it's 50 millimeter in aps-c but that's
2:04:35the you know this is my first interchangeable lens camera so i have no idea what the real
2:04:38equivalents are i just know what the e the e class mount aps-c so what what is it what
2:04:44is it like a 200 at the end um what what is my zoom lens my zoom lens is is 200 millimeter
2:04:49okay so you're looking at like a 300 millimeter equivalent all right so here's here's what
2:04:52i would suggest spending money on zoom lenses to get good ones is not money well spent most
2:05:00of the time because as we've discussed it's pretty much impossible to make a zoom lens
2:05:06that gets really good quality over a very wide zoom range typically the biggest kind
2:05:12of range that you can get like good quality at is something like 24 to 70 or 70 to 200
2:05:19which is why there's such popular ranges uh it may be 100 to 300 but like you're not you're
2:05:25not getting like massive uh zoom ranges uh generally speaking that have good quality
2:05:31at any price that's what my 200 is like a 70 to 200 or 50 to 200 is not it's not a huge
2:05:37range good okay so what i suggest is especially since you only use this lens like once a year
2:05:45get a better camera and use the money instead of buying a new zoom lens use that money to
2:05:52just rent a nice 70 to 200 that mounts on a good full frame camera and that will you
2:06:00know it won't give you the kind of reach you have now because what you have now is literally
2:06:04the cropped in version of that but any new camera that you get will have so many ridiculous
2:06:10megapixels that you can crop it if you need to to get what you have now and even even
2:06:16if you take the a7r IV and just take us take like a you know aps-c size crop out of the
2:06:24middle with a nice 200 millimeter lens that you've rented because they're big and heavy
2:06:30and like $2,000 or something you know you don't want to buy those necessarily but you
2:06:34know for your kind of use that's going to result in much better quality than the entire
2:06:41output of the entire frame of your current camera shooting through your lens is made
2:06:45of like a plastic cup basically oh i mean there are other factors that you mentioned
2:06:50one of like the size and the weight and the fact that this won't be my lenses when i drop
2:06:53it in the ocean i'll actually have to pay someone a whole bunch of money no no you'll
2:06:56buy the insurance every lens renting place has some kind of like all risk insurance that
2:07:02you could pay like 30 more and you literally can drop it in the ocean as long as it's an
2:07:07accident and and you're okay that's actually probably a better idea than actually buying
2:07:13it yourself and taking on the risk yourself well they're all buying a new camera thing
2:07:16like that stalls out too because that's like $3,500 or whatever the r4 is i'm i'm i like
2:07:23the fact that they fix a lot of the problems with the with the sonys they have like the
2:07:25battery is twice as big now and they you know there's a bunch of nice new features and they
2:07:29made the handle bigger but it's still like i don't know i'm still i'm my order of operations
2:07:35is obviously mac pro first and then you're done you can't afford anything after that
2:07:40right yeah then i then i go back into saving money but then like television is next in
2:07:44line because i more or less know what i want and we're getting close to the thing i want
2:07:47to get in the camera is like a distant third it's like do i even want a bigger one do i
2:07:52want bigger heavier lenses like like i kind of i kind of really like my current camera
2:07:57i like how small it is i really hope that they that the sort of the the r4 treatment
2:08:03like they did a they have their new stuff what it what does it call the backside illuminated
2:08:07sensor that they did and like the the rx100 and same thing with this and the and the r4
2:08:12i hope that this size camera the a 6000 6300 6500 i hope this size camera gets that same
2:08:19treatment and gets all updated internals because i might buy that because i really do like
2:08:23this size and i like the size of the lenses i don't like the full frame lenses and i honestly
2:08:28i don't think i need more pixels for what i'm doing if they were just better pixels
2:08:32i would be fine like i don't know i'm obviously i'm still waffling like i i'll definitely
2:08:38consider that it's not like i'm gonna run out and buy a new zoom lens it's honestly
2:08:41i don't know what the options are if i want to spend twice as much money as my cheap lens
2:08:45to get a slightly less cheap lens is there anything on the market that is better than
2:08:49what i have for that amount of money or do i have to jump immediately to gigantic expensive
2:08:53lens at which point i should probably do what you suggest and not buy that but just rent
2:08:56it so i don't know i'll think about it but uh maybe i'll maybe i should just spend some
2:09:02money and buy a different prime lens instead i don't know what i really want to do is i
2:09:06thought i think of this every time i'm on vacation i'm gonna be yeah like one of those
2:09:10real pro photographers the real the ultimate luxury is not having to change lenses on the
2:09:14beach let me tell you oh yeah so i want to have multiple bodies with different lenses
2:09:18on them so i can just reach into the bag and pull out the other camera with the other lens
2:09:21on it you know what i mean there you go then you can drop two cameras in the ocean yeah
2:09:25i would just drop one at a time right like because it's very odd like i have to plan
2:09:30what i want to do and like when i change lens i try to make like a little like microclimate
2:09:35clean room involving yeah right now like make this little area where i can just i still
2:09:40i told the story in the pockets before when i went on vacation through europe and brought
2:09:46my then fairly new fancy camera with her to take pictures and had a hair stuck uh inside
2:09:52like the shutter thing for the entire trip yeah you can just see it in all the shots
2:09:57of this line going through at various levels of blurring and it was just tragic and this
2:10:02and this trip in a couple of shots i'm like oh my god do i have dust on the sensor or
2:10:06something and i'm not sure what it was it might have just been like a water spot on
2:10:09the lens or something but i immediately you know as soon as i saw one shot with a little
2:10:14smudge and i you know took it up and took a bunch of shots of the sky and you know check
2:10:18the sensor and like i don't know what it was but it was it was not persistent and i don't
2:10:22think it was on the sensor might have actually been on the lens it's really hard to get something
2:10:25on the lens that actually shows up on the picture so i'm still not entirely sure but
2:10:28many pictures of clear blue sky later convinced me that there that is my thing is entirely
2:10:33clear so it didn't muck up any of my pictures but but yeah i would love to have multiple
2:10:37cameras with multiple like a6300 you know and let me invent a camera the a6700 which
2:10:43is like this camera in size and shape it has better battery life and is faster in all regards
2:10:47and takes better pictures but is the same you know same size and everything i want two
2:10:51of those one of them with a cruddy zoom lens and one with a good prime lens and i just
2:10:54want to have them in a bag that would that would be sweet and it would probably cost
2:10:59less money yeah that that actually might not be that ridiculous of a solution because you
2:11:03already own one you could keep the one you have and keep the prime lens on it or whichever
2:11:08lens you use less often keep that lens on that one and then you know have like a nice
2:11:1370 to 200 kind of thing on a new one or you know like whatever the crop equivalent would
2:11:18be yeah well i have three main lenses that i use i have four total lenses but three that
2:11:22actually use i have my prime i have my sort of expensive zoom which is a tiny range it's
2:11:30what is it 16 to 70 but it is a very expensive lens so it does the best you can do for 16
2:11:36to 70 which is not great but it's really versatile like it's a good vacation lens it's small
2:11:41ish it can do a reasonable zoom range and then i have a big zoom so those are the three
2:11:46i go between so the the prime i'm mostly using when i know when i know all the ranges involved
2:11:53i wouldn't go out into a city uh to do touristy things with just the prime because i feel
2:11:57like i would be in scenarios where i wish i could go a little bit wider but you know
2:12:01because i'm on aps-c a 50 something millimeter on aps-c that's zoomed in more than you think
2:12:05it is yeah 85 millimeter on yeah so that like you might want to get some landscape and you're
2:12:10just not going to do it so i need you know i need that in between these zoom and then
2:12:13the big zoom is all for when people are super far away from me anyway i got a lot of good
2:12:17shots this year
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