PodSearch

ATP

332: Fuzzy Muppet Felt

 

00:00:00   This is the beach setup, so it's like, still the iMac Pro.

00:00:03   - Did you use your fancy carrying case again?

00:00:06   - Not only did I use my fancy carrying case,

00:00:07   but I took Underscore's recommendation and added for $35

00:00:12   a wheeled dolly to it, also known as a hand truck.

00:00:16   'Cause you can get foldable, light duty ones

00:00:20   that weigh like six pounds and fold up to be all flat

00:00:22   and compact for like 35 bucks on Amazon.

00:00:25   So I got one of those, I carried it on the boat

00:00:27   with the dolly in the pocket.

00:00:29   When it came time to carry it off the boat

00:00:31   and walk it to the house like a half mile away,

00:00:34   I just stuck the wheels on.

00:00:35   - Did you discover luggage dollies?

00:00:37   Is that what I'm coming in the middle of here?

00:00:39   - Yes, yes, I discovered dollies.

00:00:41   - I use that one, I think I describe using that

00:00:43   to take my 27 inch Thunderbolt display

00:00:46   to and from the Apple Store like three times.

00:00:48   Remember when I had to do that?

00:00:49   - Yeah, like if I have to take my iMac in again,

00:00:52   'cause I took my iMac in once before

00:00:54   for the image retention stuff that I had

00:00:55   for the previous iMac, now I will definitely use this

00:00:59   for that as well.

00:01:00   Like this has now made my ridiculous iMac carrying case

00:01:04   a lot more useful because it's just a simple,

00:01:09   I didn't even get the big four wheel kind,

00:01:10   just the basic two wheel kind,

00:01:12   so it would fold up nice and small

00:01:14   and it would be pretty lightweight itself.

00:01:15   I didn't want like an extra 13 pounds of metal

00:01:18   for just this thing to make it easier

00:01:20   for me to carry something,

00:01:21   something smaller and lighter was good.

00:01:23   But yeah, it made it a million times easier.

00:01:25   So now I'm even more a fan of the solution

00:01:29   of bringing my iMac to the beach with wheels now.

00:01:32   And I'm even less leaning in the direction of a Mac Pro now

00:01:37   because the iMac Pro has proven to be such a good solution.

00:01:40   - You didn't even need that fancy case.

00:01:43   I think actually the original box,

00:01:44   if you still had it, is even better

00:01:46   because it's like stiff, you know, so it's good.

00:01:49   What I would use is the little bungee cords or whatever

00:01:52   to wrap over the front of the thing, you know, just.

00:01:54   - Actually, I have the original box.

00:01:56   I didn't bring it, but I do have it.

00:01:58   I also bought a bunch of bungee cords,

00:02:01   but I didn't actually need them

00:02:02   and I sent them home with the next bag

00:02:04   because the carrying case has straps,

00:02:08   like it has like a shoulder strap.

00:02:09   And if I made it, I made the shoulder strap

00:02:11   as small as it goes and that was basically

00:02:13   a perfect strap to go over the handle of the dolly.

00:02:15   So it was very secure.

00:02:17   It didn't wiggle or try to fall off at all.

00:02:20   - Just so we don't get into any corrections,

00:02:22   we should say that dollies have four wheels

00:02:25   and hand trucks have two.

00:02:27   - Okay, so what I have is a hand truck then.

00:02:29   - But I think everyone just calls them dollies

00:02:31   and we all know what we're talking about,

00:02:32   but the pendants will be out and say,

00:02:34   technically, that's a hand truck.

00:02:36   Can you, did you already put a link to your thing?

00:02:39   'Cause when we're talking about things for luggage size,

00:02:41   it's different than the other thing anyway,

00:02:42   but so maybe they have a different name when they're small.

00:02:45   - It was the one that Amazon sent was the best one.

00:02:48   - Mine is like super old.

00:02:49   I think it's mine is from the days before luggage had wheels.

00:02:52   Do you guys remember that or you old enough to remember

00:02:54   before luggage had wheels?

00:02:55   - Yeah.

00:02:56   - I didn't have wheeled luggage until a few years ago.

00:02:58   - Few years ago, anyway.

00:02:59   I thought that wheeled luggage came in

00:03:01   sometime around my childhood,

00:03:03   but before that we had tons of suitcases

00:03:04   that just had one handle on one side of them and that's it.

00:03:08   Oh, these are very fancy, you know.

00:03:10   - Yeah, this is the Magna Carte Personal,

00:03:12   150 pound capacity aluminum folding hand truck,

00:03:14   black and red, $29.99,

00:03:16   and it only weighs about six pounds.

00:03:18   It's great and it collapses.

00:03:20   It's really nice.

00:03:21   - That's way more complicated than the one I have.

00:03:23   The one I have is like one half that number of parts,

00:03:25   but it's the same thing.

00:03:26   It's a metal frame with a fold down flap and two wheels,

00:03:29   so it's not much to it.

00:03:30   - And the wheels are rubberized,

00:03:32   so it moves really nicely.

00:03:34   I was surprised how nice it was

00:03:36   for how little it weighed and how little it cost.

00:03:39   - Well, I am glad that you are in paradise

00:03:41   on your beloved computer.

00:03:43   You really think you're not gonna buy at least one Mac Pro?

00:03:46   - I mean, look, never say never, but,

00:03:48   and some people have suggested what seems like

00:03:52   an obvious idea is leave the iMac Pro at the beach

00:03:56   and buy a new Mac Pro for home.

00:03:58   And that's, like, I can, you know,

00:04:00   if I really want to do that, like, I could do that,

00:04:03   but it just seems wasteful.

00:04:05   It seems like--

00:04:06   - It's like having two houses,

00:04:07   only one of which you live in.

00:04:09   (laughing)

00:04:11   You're worried about the Mac.

00:04:14   Having two Macs seems wasteful.

00:04:16   - Well, it's just-- - So wasteful.

00:04:18   - Touche.

00:04:19   But, like-- - Todd, I love you.

00:04:20   - It seems wasteful to buy something

00:04:22   that has such a limited lifespan as a computer

00:04:24   and to only use it, like, three months a year.

00:04:28   - I think your real problem is, like,

00:04:29   the reason it's so great for you to bring it

00:04:30   is you take your computer that you were just using yesterday,

00:04:33   you put it on a little dolly/hand truck,

00:04:36   and you set it up, and it's like you pick up right

00:04:37   where you left off, whereas if it was sitting

00:04:39   in the other house, it would be like,

00:04:41   well, it doesn't, like, have all my stuff in all my state.

00:04:43   And you could try to do iCloud syncing

00:04:44   and put your project into Dropbox or whatever,

00:04:46   but it'll never be the same as, like,

00:04:48   this is the exact computer I was using yesterday,

00:04:50   and now I just turn it on in a new location

00:04:52   and resume my work.

00:04:53   So there's the syncing disadvantage,

00:04:55   because Apple has not yet fully embraced the idea

00:04:58   that the computer is an empty shell,

00:05:00   and you log in and all your state gets pulled down

00:05:02   from the network.

00:05:03   They're getting closer to that, but they're not there yet.

00:05:05   - Exactly, and that's, like, I mean, this is why,

00:05:07   like, I mean, look, this is why everybody uses laptops,

00:05:09   right, 'cause, like, if you're willing to tolerate,

00:05:12   like, it turns out we already have a kind of computer

00:05:14   that you can bring everywhere you go,

00:05:16   and it's always the same computer, but--

00:05:17   - But laptops are garbage, we already know that.

00:05:19   - But yes, yeah, laptops are garbage.

00:05:21   - Hi.

00:05:22   I was just thinking to myself earlier today, actually,

00:05:24   that I wonder, even though I really love my iMac,

00:05:27   which is, it's like three years old now, what was this?

00:05:31   It's a 5K, 27-inch, late 2015,

00:05:35   although I think I bought it early, early, early 2016.

00:05:37   Anyways, I was thinking to myself earlier today,

00:05:39   I wonder if I should just get myself a brand new laptop,

00:05:43   'cause I feel like I really wanna replace the adorable,

00:05:45   'cause it was slow when I bought it,

00:05:46   and it's getting real bad now, and the iMac is fine,

00:05:50   but it's getting a little long in the tooth.

00:05:52   Maybe I should just go back to the laptop

00:05:55   with an external display on the desk, and--

00:05:59   - What external display?

00:06:00   - Well, that's problem number one, right?

00:06:01   - Yes, question number one.

00:06:03   - Is what external display,

00:06:04   and I don't have a good answer for you there,

00:06:06   but I don't know, like, I do really like having the iMac

00:06:11   here at the desk, and I feel like with Dropbox,

00:06:14   and GitHub, and so many other online services these days,

00:06:18   and Gmail, or, you know, an equivalent,

00:06:20   it's so easy to manage multiple computers

00:06:23   in a way that it's never been easy before,

00:06:26   and yet, I still kind of miss having just the one computer

00:06:31   that is everything to, well, not to everyone, it's just me,

00:06:34   but everything to everyone, so to speak, you know?

00:06:36   And I don't know, at the moment, I'm not upgrading anything,

00:06:41   but I can't help but wonder, you know,

00:06:43   the laptop-only life is calling to me a little bit,

00:06:45   and I think the thing that's gonna stop me from going there

00:06:47   is, to your point, the display.

00:06:49   I just don't have a good display.

00:06:50   - Well, and also, like, when you're in that world,

00:06:52   like, you know, I spent a long time using a laptop

00:06:55   as my only computer, or at least my primary one

00:06:57   for a very long time, and it was great,

00:07:00   especially in that way, like, I didn't have to worry

00:07:02   about syncing and everything, and transferring files,

00:07:04   and making sure all my settings were the same,

00:07:06   and applications were the same, like, all that stuff,

00:07:08   it's a pain, that much of which is still a pain today,

00:07:11   I had to worry about none of that,

00:07:12   but then, like, my computer had to go in for service,

00:07:16   and I just didn't have a computer for, like, a week.

00:07:19   (laughs)

00:07:19   Like, there are problems like that that come up, too.

00:07:22   And when you're using a laptop as a desktop,

00:07:24   you run into the problems of doing that.

00:07:26   You run into things like the unreliability

00:07:28   of external monitor usage, and if you wanna use it

00:07:31   in clamshell mode, or things like wake from sleep

00:07:33   are frequently unreliable, and you have issues with noise

00:07:37   when you're running it really hard,

00:07:40   you're gonna hear that fan spin up,

00:07:41   and so, like, it just, there's just problems

00:07:44   with using laptops that way, some of which are better

00:07:47   these days, like things like Dropbox and iCloud sync,

00:07:50   some of which are worse, like, I think the laptops today

00:07:53   are less reliable than ever when it comes

00:07:55   to external monitor usage, and the number

00:07:59   of good external monitors to buy is lower than ever.

00:08:02   - One of the other fun pipe dreams,

00:08:05   along with the modular Mac that's made of a bunch

00:08:08   of stackable components that connect together,

00:08:10   is the idea, I think it started, or started getting Steam

00:08:13   back in the iPod era, the idea that you have

00:08:16   some small thing that you carry with you today,

00:08:19   it would be a phone back then, it was an iPod,

00:08:21   you could even imagine it as just like an external SSD

00:08:23   or something, that contains all of your state, essentially.

00:08:27   This is like, before cloud computing was popularized,

00:08:30   just like, it's like your hard drive, your boot disk,

00:08:33   all your info, and you just go from station to station,

00:08:36   whether it be a desktop station with a big monitor

00:08:38   and a keyboard and a mouse, or a laptop or whatever,

00:08:41   and you plug in your iPod, your phone, your external drive,

00:08:46   and there's all your stuff.

00:08:48   And so, you carry the state with you in this little box,

00:08:52   but you're able to use whatever the best computing setup

00:08:55   is for you, it's, you know, dockable laptops

00:08:57   are similar to that in hoteling situations

00:08:59   and companies and stuff, but that fantasy,

00:09:03   that like, my entire world will be on my phone,

00:09:05   and I'll just sit down in front of my computer

00:09:07   wirelessly, the phone will display onto a giant

00:09:09   27 inch display and all that stuff,

00:09:10   like that's right up there with the modular Mac,

00:09:14   and for various reasons, we're not quite there,

00:09:16   technologically speaking, but you can, Paul Jason Snell,

00:09:18   he posted a picture the other day of like,

00:09:20   an external drive duct taped to the back of his display

00:09:24   on his laptop, like if you just carried a boot drive

00:09:26   with you, you could boot an iMac from that external drive

00:09:31   and how it'll all your state, like say it's a one terabyte

00:09:32   SSD in a very small case, and then you could connect it

00:09:35   to your laptop when you're on the go and boot from that

00:09:37   and have it taped to the back of your display or something

00:09:40   so it's not dangling off or whatever,

00:09:41   and you still have basically a portable computer

00:09:43   that is, like Marco's iMac Pro, it's like quote unquote,

00:09:46   the same computer as you had before, although,

00:09:48   of course all your Windows will be screwed up

00:09:50   by constantly changing screen resolution,

00:09:51   but that doesn't bother you, there you go.

00:09:54   So, you can't approximate that with an external drive today,

00:09:58   can't do it with a phone, certainly can't do it

00:10:00   with an iPod, but the problem is, okay,

00:10:03   well what if I don't wanna tape it to the back

00:10:04   of my display, do I really wanna use a laptop

00:10:06   with a thing dangling off of it that I can't disconnect

00:10:08   'cause it is the boot drive, and as fast as USB-C is,

00:10:12   it's not as fast as an internal SSD,

00:10:13   so you're taking a speed hit there too,

00:10:15   and it would be kind of wasteful to buy an iMac

00:10:18   but always boot from some other thing,

00:10:20   so you could do it today, but it's a compromise,

00:10:23   but I think that is one of the dreams.

00:10:25   Obviously the better version of that is I don't carry

00:10:27   anything with me and all my stuff is in the cloud,

00:10:29   but the realities of data transfer rates

00:10:32   and waiting for things to sync and the reliability of that

00:10:35   and the fact that it's not really done system-wide

00:10:38   at anything except for Chrome OS means that

00:10:42   we're still a little bit farther away from that dream.

00:10:44   I think that dream is closer than the crazy modular

00:10:47   computer made of building blocks that you snap together,

00:10:50   but it may come to pass eventually,

00:10:53   and then we will finally be freed from these form factor

00:10:56   and state decisions that haunt us.

00:10:58   - All right, so let's start with some follow-up.

00:11:02   So a friend of the show, Ricky Mondello,

00:11:04   had written in with regard to what Marco was talking about

00:11:06   last episode with regard to overcast and sign-in

00:11:10   and things like that, so they had some tips with regard

00:11:13   to what to do or some thoughts or suggestions.

00:11:16   So Marco, can you recap that for me please?

00:11:18   - Yeah, so they pointed out what John had said last episode

00:11:21   that he expected was the case.

00:11:23   Ricky clarified that yes, by default,

00:11:25   sign-in with Apple does not give name and email info.

00:11:29   Apps have to explicitly opt in.

00:11:31   I think the direction I'm going to go is what John

00:11:35   recommended towards the end, when I said he was

00:11:37   frustratingly correct, of basically use the current

00:11:42   key value store that I'm using.

00:11:44   I'm basically going to make it support multiple entries

00:11:47   that point to multiple anonymous accounts on overcast.

00:11:52   Same with any Apple ID could then become multiple

00:11:55   and any number of anonymous overcast accounts,

00:11:58   and then you would just be prompted with them

00:12:00   at the login screen and you could pick which one.

00:12:01   Maybe I can show you, this is from the device

00:12:03   called Marco's iPhone that has these three podcasts

00:12:06   as the top podcast in it, or somehow make it easy

00:12:08   for you to detect which one is the right one.

00:12:11   Maybe a last logged in date or something like that.

00:12:13   Maybe I could use sign-in with Apple just on the web

00:12:16   and have it associate with these things.

00:12:17   I have no idea, but I have a lot of options here.

00:12:21   And so I still haven't had time to actually explore

00:12:23   these options this summer.

00:12:25   I've been doing a lot of other stuff, server stuff,

00:12:27   technical debt stuff, moving my entire life

00:12:29   to the beach, et cetera, but I'm working on it.

00:12:33   - Fair enough.

00:12:34   All right, and then Hashir Rashad writes,

00:12:36   in Catalina, Graffr is gone along with Dashboard.

00:12:40   Sorry, Jon.

00:12:41   I blame you guys for reminding Apple of Graffr.

00:12:44   Remote disk and chess are still there.

00:12:46   And somebody who is not supposed to do homework

00:12:50   actually did some very helpful homework,

00:12:51   so thank you, Jon.

00:12:52   - Well, Hashir provided the timestamp link

00:12:54   of our previous discussion of this.

00:12:56   Well, first of all, he's wrong.

00:12:57   Graffr is actually still there, so.

00:12:59   - Oh. - So much for that.

00:13:00   But anyway, it was worth revisiting.

00:13:02   It was back in episode 287,

00:13:04   Open Face Compliment Sandwich, where we,

00:13:07   someone asked in an Ask ATP question,

00:13:09   it was like, which one of these two things

00:13:12   do you think will be removed first?

00:13:13   And so we had a couple of pairings here.

00:13:15   And the first one was, which one will go first,

00:13:17   Dashboard or Remote Disk?

00:13:18   And Casey and I said Dashboard,

00:13:20   and Mark was said Remote Disk,

00:13:21   and it turns out Dashboard is gone in Catalina.

00:13:24   So we were right.

00:13:25   But the reason I did this is 'cause I thought Graffr

00:13:27   was gone too, but I'm like, you know what?

00:13:29   Let me double check this.

00:13:29   Let me actually look in Catalina.

00:13:31   And sure enough, Graffr is still there.

00:13:32   So we have no decision on chess versus Graffr,

00:13:35   and we have no decision on DVD player versus OpenGL.

00:13:38   Because DVD player and OpenGL and chess and Graffr

00:13:41   are all in Catalina, but we will keep you posted

00:13:44   as new versions come out.

00:13:45   - We are sponsored this week by Hover.

00:13:49   Visit hover.com/ATP to learn more

00:13:51   and get 10% off your first purchase.

00:13:53   Hover is a great place to buy and manage domain names.

00:13:57   Now these days, who doesn't need a domain name?

00:14:00   It feels like pretty much everybody has them,

00:14:02   so it's important that you have one

00:14:04   and that yours stands out.

00:14:06   Hover lets you do this with over 400 domain extensions

00:14:10   to choose from to help you brand yourself online

00:14:12   and stake out your own claim for your own place online.

00:14:15   So recently they've been doing this great promotion on .me.

00:14:18   So .me is a unique extension to use,

00:14:21   especially for a portfolio site,

00:14:23   to showcase who you are and what you do

00:14:25   and what you're about.

00:14:27   So if you have a portfolio website ready to launch,

00:14:29   go to Hover and get the .me extension for your domain.

00:14:33   And if you don't want .me,

00:14:34   they have over 400 names to choose from,

00:14:36   from classics like .com to all new kind of fun, crazy ones

00:14:40   like .plumbing, .diamonds.

00:14:42   And they offer this all to you with no shady upsells,

00:14:45   no tricks to get more money out of you,

00:14:47   to trick you into agreeing to something

00:14:48   you didn't want to agree to.

00:14:49   They give you free privacy on your Whois information,

00:14:52   unlike a lot of places that charge extra for it.

00:14:54   And it's super easy to use Hover as well.

00:14:57   They have this great feature called Hover Connect,

00:14:58   lets you easily set up popular web hosts

00:15:00   with just a few clicks.

00:15:01   And of course, if you need full advanced DNS control,

00:15:04   they offer that as well.

00:15:05   If you run into any problems,

00:15:06   they have the best customer support

00:15:08   I've ever dealt with in this industry.

00:15:10   It's amazing.

00:15:11   I manage most of my domains now at Hover,

00:15:12   and it's just, it's super easy.

00:15:14   There's a reason I do it.

00:15:15   It's nice and easy to use.

00:15:16   They make it easy to buy them, easy to manage them.

00:15:18   I've never needed their support for much of anything,

00:15:20   but the very handful of times I have, they've been wonderful.

00:15:23   So it's great.

00:15:24   Visit hover.com/ATP to learn more

00:15:27   and get 10% off your first purchase.

00:15:30   Once again, hover.com/ATP for 10% off your first purchase.

00:15:34   Hover, get a domain name

00:15:35   for whatever you're passionate about.

00:15:37   (upbeat music)

00:15:40   - All right, Marco, tell me you have some new toys,

00:15:43   other than your hand truck,

00:15:45   that you have been able to play with.

00:15:47   So what's going on there?

00:15:50   - I've been going through kind of like

00:15:52   the most boring midlife crisis ever,

00:15:54   like a midlife self-improvement phase, basically,

00:15:57   trying to improve limitations and things about myself

00:16:01   that I wasn't happy with.

00:16:02   I've been exercising more, dieting better.

00:16:06   I learned to swim last month for the first time ever,

00:16:08   and that was a big thing.

00:16:09   - You're preparing for the ocean, that's right.

00:16:12   - Yep, yep.

00:16:14   I taught myself to like seafood.

00:16:16   - Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down.

00:16:17   Tell me more.

00:16:18   - That was last summer we talked about this, Casey.

00:16:19   Pay attention.

00:16:20   - Oh, right, right, right.

00:16:21   Yeah, I started it last summer.

00:16:23   I've been working on it throughout the winter also.

00:16:25   Like I added sushi to my palate,

00:16:27   and I still don't like all seafood,

00:16:29   but I'm working on more this summer,

00:16:30   'cause I'm in a place that has a lot of it,

00:16:31   so getting there.

00:16:33   'Cause I didn't want there to be anything

00:16:35   that I just blanketly didn't like.

00:16:37   - Except for windows.

00:16:38   - Well, yeah.

00:16:39   (laughing)

00:16:40   You gotta have standards.

00:16:41   But it's limiting to not like things.

00:16:44   It's limiting to say like,

00:16:45   oh, I can't go to the sushi restaurant with you

00:16:47   because I don't like anything there.

00:16:49   Like, you know, that kind of thing.

00:16:49   So I guess I wanted to get rid of as many limitations

00:16:53   on myself as I possibly could.

00:16:55   And so dammit, I wanted to teach myself

00:16:57   to be able to use AirPods.

00:16:59   AirPods have never fit my ears right.

00:17:02   (laughing)

00:17:03   - This is gonna be a story like the binding of your feet.

00:17:06   (laughing)

00:17:07   You're gonna be like shaping your body

00:17:09   with these series of increasingly large AirPod-shaped wedges.

00:17:12   (laughing)

00:17:13   - So--

00:17:14   - Go ahead, go ahead.

00:17:15   - So, all right, so AirPods have two problems for me.

00:17:17   Number one, they fall out easily.

00:17:19   Like not immediately,

00:17:20   but if I go on a dog walk with AirPods,

00:17:22   within about 10 minutes,

00:17:23   if I haven't pushed them back in,

00:17:24   they'll fall, like at least one of them will fall out.

00:17:26   And the second problem is that when they are in,

00:17:29   they were painful after a pretty short time.

00:17:31   Like they would just hurt my ears.

00:17:34   But AirPods are so damn convenient.

00:17:37   You can keep headphones in your pocket all the time.

00:17:42   - Yep.

00:17:43   - Now, I have never had this luxury

00:17:45   because I couldn't wear AirPods.

00:17:47   I also couldn't wear any of the earbuds

00:17:48   that came before them.

00:17:50   So, I've always wanted that to have headphones

00:17:52   that I could keep in my pocket all the time.

00:17:55   There's also the benefits of the W1 and the H1,

00:17:59   the Apple Bluetooth pairing stuff.

00:18:01   These benefits are huge when you have multiple devices.

00:18:04   Like right now, every time I go on a plane,

00:18:06   I feel like a fool because I have my big Sony headphones

00:18:09   that are Bluetooth that are nice,

00:18:10   but as most Bluetooth devices,

00:18:13   like I know there are some that compare

00:18:14   to two or three things, but they're pretty rare.

00:18:17   The more common case is most Bluetooth headphones,

00:18:19   they can only be paired to one source device at a time.

00:18:21   And so, if you are, say, wanting to switch

00:18:24   from your iPhone to your iPad on a plane,

00:18:27   or like your phone to your laptop,

00:18:29   you have to re-pair the Bluetooth headphones

00:18:32   to the other device, which sucks.

00:18:34   - Like an animal.

00:18:35   - Yeah, it's time-consuming and annoying and it sucks.

00:18:38   And that's no good.

00:18:39   AirPods can easily switch between multiple devices.

00:18:44   And so, even though it isn't always a perfect process,

00:18:48   I know occasionally it does the wrong thing,

00:18:50   but it's way, way better than having to re-pair every time.

00:18:54   Re-pairing is so annoying that when I'm on a plane,

00:18:56   I keep my Bluetooth headphones just paired to my phone.

00:18:59   And when I wanna use my laptop or my iPad,

00:19:02   I get out the wire and I plug in the wire to the headphones

00:19:05   and plug in the wire into the other device,

00:19:06   because that's less inconvenient

00:19:08   than re-pairing it both ways. (laughs)

00:19:11   So anyway, going from regular Bluetooth to AirPods

00:19:16   is as big of a jumping convenience

00:19:20   as it was going from wired to Bluetooth in the first place.

00:19:23   Like, it's that much of a change

00:19:25   to have that multi-device pairing.

00:19:27   So I really wanted to be able to use AirPods

00:19:29   for all these reasons.

00:19:30   The convenience, the pocketability, the multi-pairing,

00:19:33   but my ears seemed like physically incompatible.

00:19:37   So as part of the self-improvement kick,

00:19:38   I figured I'm gonna make myself able to wear AirPods, damn it.

00:19:41   So I started just wearing them a little bit every day.

00:19:43   I figured, like, I can train my ears

00:19:46   to tolerate them physically. (laughs)

00:19:49   - Oh my word.

00:19:50   - You put tiny bits of sandpaper on the thing

00:19:52   and just wiggle it around there.

00:19:53   I'm not gonna make these ears the right shape

00:19:54   if it kills me. (laughs)

00:19:57   - Yeah, and so I just started wearing them

00:19:58   a little bit every day, thinking, you know,

00:20:00   maybe I could just get my ears accustomed to them.

00:20:03   - But before you embarked on this,

00:20:05   did you have a consultation with someone

00:20:07   who can see into your ears to say, like,

00:20:10   what is it about the AirPods that, you know,

00:20:13   like, is it a contact point?

00:20:15   Which dimension is too small?

00:20:16   Which dimension is too large?

00:20:18   Because there may have been something you could do

00:20:19   if you figured out the answer to that question,

00:20:21   like, what precisely is it that is different

00:20:23   about my ear shape that makes AirPods fall out

00:20:26   and be uncomfortable after a period of time?

00:20:28   Obviously, if it's something that's too tight,

00:20:30   there's maybe not a lot you can do,

00:20:31   but maybe there's an alternate position

00:20:33   that you could put them in where you could add material,

00:20:34   like add some, like, putty or whatever to the AirPod

00:20:38   and put it in in a different arrangement

00:20:39   so that it stays, like, I feel like,

00:20:41   you're doing the sort of the blind technique of like,

00:20:44   I can't see into my ears, I know they don't work,

00:20:46   but I'm just gonna try acclimation,

00:20:48   just gonna stick them in and just like,

00:20:49   eventually I'm able to get used to it,

00:20:50   or maybe it'll stretch out, or maybe, or whatever,

00:20:52   but I feel like you could have taken a more scientific

00:20:56   approach to this and had someone examine your AirPod fit

00:20:59   and come up with a strategy for correcting for it.

00:21:03   That didn't happen, I guess?

00:21:04   - I think if I would have gone to, like,

00:21:07   an ear doctor or an audiologist--

00:21:09   - I met your wife.

00:21:10   - Oh.

00:21:11   - You're going to a doctor.

00:21:12   - I was gonna say, like, I would think I would be laughed

00:21:14   out of any doctor's office if I actually would have gone,

00:21:16   I'd be like, can you help me work better with AirPods?

00:21:18   - No, no, I just met another person who can see into your ear

00:21:21   your wife is the obvious example.

00:21:22   - Oh, you know, I didn't think about asking somebody else,

00:21:25   but--

00:21:26   - Don't you ask her to get your ear hairs?

00:21:27   Maybe you're not at that stage of midlife crisis yet,

00:21:29   but you will.

00:21:30   - No, sorry.

00:21:30   - You will be.

00:21:31   - Good to know what I have to look forward to.

00:21:34   So, no, so my approach was simply brute force,

00:21:37   blindly poking, like, just try to get AirPods to fit

00:21:40   in my ears by just enduring some discomfort every day

00:21:43   for a while, which honestly is how I started liking seafood.

00:21:46   (laughing)

00:21:48   - Ringing endorsement of seafood.

00:21:49   - Yeah, right.

00:21:50   - The mucus of the sea, they call it.

00:21:52   (laughing)

00:21:54   - Oh my god.

00:21:55   - All right, so anyway, so this process of just wearing them

00:22:01   a little bit every day actually did improve things.

00:22:04   It actually did kind of work, and it worked enough

00:22:07   that I could now actually wear them, kind of,

00:22:11   but it still hurt a little, and they still fell out

00:22:13   regularly if I wasn't constantly pushing them back in

00:22:16   like every minute or so out of a walk.

00:22:19   Now, people have recommended various add-on things

00:22:24   to AirPods, ever since I started complaining about this,

00:22:26   like, you know, a year ago, whatever,

00:22:28   but almost all add-on things to AirPods are like hooks

00:22:32   to help hook them into your ears so they're supported better

00:22:35   or they're like these big rubber tips that you can stick

00:22:39   on them that protrude out a lot, and all these things

00:22:41   have the same universal problem that make the AirPods

00:22:44   no longer fit in the charging case.

00:22:47   And to me, that's a fatal deal killer right there,

00:22:50   because it seems ridiculous to actually use AirPods

00:22:54   in real life if you have to constantly keep pulling off

00:22:58   these attachments you have on them and put them back on

00:23:01   every time you want to use them just to get them

00:23:02   in and out of the case, 'cause like, you have to have

00:23:05   the AirPods in the case all the time, because you have

00:23:08   to put them into charge 'cause their battery life sucks,

00:23:11   and if they aren't in the case, they're on.

00:23:14   And so it's like they're ready to steal the output

00:23:17   at any moment and interpret gestures in your pocket

00:23:18   and everything, so you kind of have to have them

00:23:20   in the case a lot, so I don't know why any product

00:23:23   could possibly exist that can modify AirPods

00:23:26   in such a way that they don't fit in the case anymore

00:23:28   and have absolutely anybody want to use that.

00:23:32   Fortunately, I did find one product, and I think there's

00:23:35   a couple of clones, but they all seem to be the same thing,

00:23:38   there's one product that does allow you to keep using

00:23:42   the case, but is one of those silicone add-on wrapping pads

00:23:46   around the AirPods.

00:23:48   In typical Amazon style, it is called Fit in the Case

00:23:51   AirPods EarPods Covers Compatible with AirPods 2

00:23:53   and 1 Anti-Slip Silicone Soft Sports Covers Accessories

00:23:55   Apple AirPods Earbud 2 Pairs White.

00:23:57   - This product name is very close to being a valid

00:24:01   shell command line, like I looked at it briefly,

00:24:03   and it's like 2 ampersand greater than 1

00:24:06   for input redirection, that's got the curly,

00:24:08   like who puts curly braces?

00:24:09   Fit in the case, it's not fits in the case,

00:24:12   it's capital F fit in, capital T, the case,

00:24:16   in curly braces.

00:24:18   These have to be generated by a computer anyway, go on.

00:24:22   - Yeah, so I found these, and they were like 11 bucks,

00:24:24   and I figured I'll give it a shot.

00:24:26   They actually do work, they really are thin enough

00:24:30   to just barely have the AirPods still fit in the case.

00:24:34   They don't actually change things that much,

00:24:38   'cause they're very thin rubber, or silicone,

00:24:42   and they're hilariously difficult to install too,

00:24:46   'cause the first time I tried to install one,

00:24:48   I tore it in half immediately.

00:24:51   The good thing is they actually give you an extra one,

00:24:53   so it happens a lot.

00:24:56   So I'm like, oh, that was nice.

00:24:57   - For a mere $11, you get an extra .001 cent of silicone.

00:25:02   - Yeah, it doesn't matter, it was worth it.

00:25:05   - Did you get colors?

00:25:07   - No, I stuck with white.

00:25:09   But other colors might be useful,

00:25:12   if you have multiple AirPods in your house,

00:25:14   you wanna distinguish them, or if you wanna be able

00:25:16   to easily tell when you have these on the AirPods.

00:25:19   So they don't do much, they make the AirPods

00:25:24   just a little bit bigger, and just a little bit softer.

00:25:28   And that is just enough to make the AirPods

00:25:32   not fall out of my ears anymore.

00:25:34   And it makes it a little bit more comfortable too.

00:25:37   So now, I can actually use AirPods.

00:25:42   I can actually carry them in my pocket, in the case,

00:25:45   whenever I think I might want headphones,

00:25:47   and I can actually use them acceptably.

00:25:50   So I have actually pretty much solved my AirPods problem.

00:25:54   I still wish they were more comfortable,

00:25:56   but I think these are about as comfortable

00:25:58   as they're going to get for me.

00:26:00   I'm actually very satisfied with that.

00:26:02   But, because they are still not amazingly comfortable,

00:26:06   and I take a lot of long walks with headphones,

00:26:09   so I also wanted to try the new Powerbeats Pro.

00:26:14   This is a product that was harder to get

00:26:16   than the original Apple Watch.

00:26:18   Like the Powerbeats Pro officially launched

00:26:19   in, I think, mid-May.

00:26:23   But they were backordered like crazy,

00:26:25   typical like Apple, you know, like a short supply launch.

00:26:28   Like they were backordered for weeks,

00:26:30   and I had to like keep checking the store,

00:26:32   I'd refresh the page every morning,

00:26:33   and like, you know, try to get in.

00:26:36   I finally snagged a pair on the morning

00:26:39   that I was about to leave for WWDC.

00:26:42   I was literally going to the airport in like two hours,

00:26:45   and I caught it in stock at my local store,

00:26:47   and I went over there and picked them up.

00:26:49   So, I've been using the Powerbeats Pro for,

00:26:52   I don't know, a few weeks now, I guess, whatever it's been.

00:26:54   I gotta say they're really interesting.

00:26:56   So, these are the things that are basically AirPods,

00:26:59   but for like more active workouts.

00:27:02   So they are physically larger,

00:27:05   and they have these, the big like hook around things

00:27:08   like that hook on top of your ears.

00:27:10   And then they have these little rubber things

00:27:11   that like stick that into your ears from them.

00:27:14   So they're kind of suspended on your ear,

00:27:16   and they stick directly in instead of the AirPods,

00:27:18   like they're all kind of like resting there in your ears.

00:27:21   So, they're much better if you are doing

00:27:24   like a super active kind of workout,

00:27:26   where AirPods might fall out of your ears

00:27:28   if you wore them, but these are better,

00:27:30   and also these are I think more water resistant

00:27:32   and everything, but otherwise, they're basically AirPod IIs.

00:27:35   They have the H1 chip, they have the Hadeingus support.

00:27:39   It takes a good few days, at least,

00:27:43   to figure out how to get them into your ears,

00:27:46   or how to get them back into the case

00:27:49   without an embarrassing degree of fumbling around.

00:27:52   - Oh my goodness.

00:27:53   - 'Cause you gotta like, like to get them into your ear,

00:27:55   you have to kind of like hook it over your ear,

00:27:56   like twist it in, like you're like screwing it

00:27:59   into your ear, like to get the hook right.

00:28:00   It's really weird, and then getting it back into the case

00:28:03   is similarly like incredibly awkward,

00:28:06   because you have to figure out like how does this fit,

00:28:08   and if you get the left and the right mixed up,

00:28:09   you're totally screwed, like you'll never figure that out.

00:28:12   It's hilarious.

00:28:14   The controls on them are a mixed bag

00:28:18   compared to AirPods or other Bluetooth headphones.

00:28:21   Each of the two earpieces has a volume rocker switch,

00:28:25   like volume up and down, and a center button

00:28:27   that functions just like the old wired clickers did.

00:28:31   One tap on the center button is play/pause,

00:28:33   two taps is seek forward, three taps is seek back,

00:28:35   just like the old remotes.

00:28:37   And I think it's actually really nice

00:28:39   to have actual buttons on these again.

00:28:41   You know I'm a fan of buttons, obviously.

00:28:44   So they're tactile, they are pretty reliable.

00:28:47   The only problem I've had with the buttons

00:28:48   is that the double and triple click seek gestures

00:28:50   are actually still as tricky as they've always been.

00:28:53   Like sometimes I double click too fast,

00:28:56   and it treats it as a pause,

00:28:57   so I have to like deliberately remember to wait a second

00:29:00   between the two clicks so it really recognizes that it's two.

00:29:03   And similarly getting three clicks recognized

00:29:05   to be seek back is not easy,

00:29:08   'cause it often interprets it as two,

00:29:09   which is seek forward, which is the opposite of what you want

00:29:11   so like it's tricky to do the seek gestures,

00:29:14   but they do work, and those are things

00:29:16   that AirPods just can't do at all

00:29:18   unless you map the things differently and everything.

00:29:21   With these you can't remap the controls on the Powerbeats,

00:29:24   they're not customizable the way the AirPod

00:29:26   double tap gestures are.

00:29:27   The buttons all do the same thing, always all the time,

00:29:30   and both earpieces buttons do the same thing.

00:29:33   So you can't make like the right one skip forward,

00:29:35   the left one skip back, or anything like that.

00:29:37   You can use Siri of course, I found that to be

00:29:40   the hey dingus support is just as reliable on this

00:29:43   as it is on the AirPod twos.

00:29:44   Other downside of the controls here is that

00:29:48   the center button that does like the play, pause, and seek

00:29:52   is directly behind the main driver

00:29:55   and like the rubber tip protrusion.

00:29:57   So when you push it, you are pushing the rubber tip

00:30:00   into your ear more.

00:30:02   And so you're kinda like squishing it into your ear

00:30:04   with every push, and that's not pleasant.

00:30:06   Although I will say, it is less unpleasant

00:30:09   than tapping AirPods that are in your ear,

00:30:12   which I find significantly unpleasant.

00:30:14   (laughs)

00:30:15   So the controls are, you know, they're a mixed bag,

00:30:17   but overall I find them significantly better

00:30:19   than the AirPods in that way.

00:30:20   The case that they go in is comically large

00:30:26   if you're accustomed to AirPods.

00:30:28   It's far too large to be pocketable in pretty much anything

00:30:32   except maybe the largest of like winter jackets.

00:30:36   And because of the physical controls,

00:30:39   you can't just keep them loose in your pocket

00:30:42   when you're not wearing them,

00:30:43   because the play, pause button gets accidentally pressed

00:30:46   all the time in pockets.

00:30:48   So if you have them with you, like with AirPods,

00:30:51   if you have AirPods with you,

00:30:53   and you wanna like go into a store

00:30:55   and not be so rude as to be wearing headphones in a store,

00:30:57   or somebody comes up to you and you wanna talk to them,

00:30:59   or you arrive where you're going

00:31:01   and you wanna take your headphones out,

00:31:02   with AirPods, you probably have the case in your pocket.

00:31:04   So you can just take out the AirPods

00:31:06   and put them in the case.

00:31:07   But with the Powerbeats Pro,

00:31:08   the case is too big to be in your pocket,

00:31:10   so you probably don't have it with you

00:31:12   a lot of the time that you're using them.

00:31:14   But because the button on them

00:31:15   gets pushed in your pocket accidentally,

00:31:17   you also can't put them in your pocket really well either.

00:31:21   So you have to like just kinda hold them,

00:31:22   or leave them in your ear

00:31:23   and just hope nobody cares or whatever.

00:31:25   So like that's a bit of an inconvenience.

00:31:27   - Speaking of that, did you have with your AirPods yet

00:31:30   the sort of typical, most awful social experience with them,

00:31:35   which is you're wearing them like you said,

00:31:37   and maybe someone comes up to you,

00:31:38   you're walking your dog, you're taking a long walk,

00:31:40   someone comes up to you and wants to say something,

00:31:41   or wants to tell you that you dropped something.

00:31:44   Or anyway, someone tries to talk to you,

00:31:46   but you're listening to something.

00:31:47   So they get your attention, you turn to them,

00:31:49   and you immediately tap your AirPods with your finger

00:31:53   to stop whatever you're listening to,

00:31:54   so you can hear the person who just got your attention.

00:31:57   And this gesture, I think I've described this

00:31:59   on the show before, and this gesture is interpreted

00:32:01   as you pointing to your headphones,

00:32:04   and you're doing, "Uh, person, can't you see

00:32:07   "that I'm listening to something on my headphones?"

00:32:08   - Oh no.

00:32:09   - Because they don't understand that tapping stops the sound.

00:32:12   They think what you're doing is going,

00:32:14   "Uh, hello, I have things in my ear."

00:32:17   And so they think, "Oh, um," and they go, "Oh, sorry, sorry,"

00:32:20   and they start to back away.

00:32:21   Have you had that happen yet?

00:32:22   - Oh no, I haven't yet.

00:32:24   I mean, I think that's the biggest argument ever

00:32:26   for just using the pull the AirPod out to pause feature.

00:32:30   - Yes, pulling out is the right move, right?

00:32:34   But if you get used to tapping, which I'm very used to,

00:32:36   because that's what I do in my house or whatever,

00:32:39   it's easier to tap because then you still have

00:32:41   both hands free or whatever, but my experience is

00:32:44   the entire rest of the world thinks that tapping

00:32:47   is you being the rudest person ever,

00:32:49   and I feel so bad when it happens,

00:32:50   then I feel like I have to explain to them,

00:32:52   "No, tapping them makes the sound."

00:32:55   Oh god, forget it.

00:32:56   This is the most awful thing ever.

00:32:58   I feel like Apple should have special PSAs on television

00:33:02   or streaming channels or whatever people watch on YouTube,

00:33:04   I guess, or whatever you watch these days,

00:33:05   is they just so you know, if someone taps their ear,

00:33:08   they're not telling you to buzz off by pointing

00:33:13   to their expensive headphone and telling you to go away.

00:33:15   They're stopping the sound.

00:33:16   - Oh man, I didn't think about that.

00:33:18   - With Powerbeats, yanking them out might be more difficult

00:33:21   'cause you have to unhook them from your ear or whatever,

00:33:23   and I guess the button, you don't have to tap as much.

00:33:25   That's my one question.

00:33:26   - You just twist a little and pull it out.

00:33:27   It's real fast.

00:33:28   - That's my question about the button,

00:33:29   but you already answered it.

00:33:30   How hard do you have to hit that button?

00:33:32   'Cause I don't, like a physical button,

00:33:33   I wouldn't wanna actually press into my ear,

00:33:35   but I guess the squishy rubber helps.

00:33:37   - Well, and the reality is,

00:33:39   you don't have to push it very hard at all.

00:33:40   It pushes very easily, which is I think why

00:33:42   it gets pushed so accidentally in my pocket.

00:33:44   - And why you can't have it loose in your pockets now.

00:33:46   - Yeah, like I frequently will accidentally push the button

00:33:48   as I'm putting it in my ear or taking it out of my ear,

00:33:51   because it's that easily pressed.

00:33:53   - That case looks like it's the size of a baseball.

00:33:55   That can't be how big it is, though.

00:33:57   - I mean, it's not round, but it is--

00:33:58   - It's like a baseball with a top and bottom cut off?

00:34:01   - It's like if you made a pillow shape

00:34:05   that has the approximate maximum diameter of a baseball.

00:34:08   - Yeah, that's gigantic.

00:34:09   - And if you look, it isn't that ridiculous

00:34:13   when you see the way they're designed,

00:34:14   because the shape of them is such that

00:34:17   you kinda can't fit them in anything

00:34:19   that was much smaller than that.

00:34:20   - If they had made them so that the two weird shapes,

00:34:23   if you offset them to each other,

00:34:25   went into each other's negative space,

00:34:26   you could've got it down smaller,

00:34:28   but I guess that's tricky.

00:34:29   - Yeah, maybe.

00:34:30   And then, I mean, they're hard enough

00:34:31   to get into this case as it is.

00:34:33   - To get them into that, it'd be like

00:34:34   one of those tavern puzzles.

00:34:35   - Yeah, right.

00:34:36   - You have to fit the things together at a particular range.

00:34:38   - There's like two rings, and they look like

00:34:40   they can't come off each other,

00:34:41   but somehow you have to get this one through that one,

00:34:43   and then it comes off, yeah, exactly.

00:34:45   Anyway, so overall, though,

00:34:49   where I think the Powerbeats Pro are substantially better,

00:34:53   there's a couple of advantages.

00:34:54   Number one, battery life is way better on them

00:34:58   than AirPods, 'cause the batteries are just much bigger.

00:35:00   Both the case and the batteries that are actually

00:35:03   in the earpieces are substantially larger

00:35:05   and longer lasting, so that's great

00:35:07   if you ever run into battery issues with AirPods.

00:35:10   And then, comfort is significantly upgraded.

00:35:14   Because they have those ear hooks,

00:35:16   the ear hooks are kind of suspending them

00:35:19   in front of your ears, and so there is the part

00:35:21   that goes into your ear, but that's not bearing

00:35:24   the weight of the thing.

00:35:26   Like with AirPods, the AirPods bear the weight

00:35:28   of the whole AirPod on the bottom surface,

00:35:32   whatever it is, of the inside of your ear.

00:35:34   Whereas the Powerbeats are suspending them

00:35:36   kind of nearby in there, and so a lot of that weight

00:35:39   is falling on the top of the ear,

00:35:41   which I think is less sensitive to it.

00:35:43   'Cause it's like, if you wear glasses,

00:35:45   it's going the same place, basically.

00:35:46   - I was gonna say, the next old person thing

00:35:48   you have to encounter is when you eventually get glasses.

00:35:50   I find it very uncomfortable to have anything

00:35:53   pressing against the stems of my glasses,

00:35:55   so I imagine if I had these hooked over my ears,

00:35:57   fine, all well and good, maybe,

00:35:59   although I find the back of my ear more sensitive

00:36:01   than the inside for the most part.

00:36:03   But then if I also had to have a glasses stem there,

00:36:06   I'd be like, well, does that go on the inside of the hook

00:36:09   or on the outside, and in both things,

00:36:10   I think it would result in something pressing

00:36:13   against the side of my head behind my ear,

00:36:16   and I hate that feeling.

00:36:17   - Yeah, honestly, I don't know how well these

00:36:19   would play with glasses for that reason.

00:36:20   - You'll find out.

00:36:21   - Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

00:36:24   But yeah, so comfort-wise, the fact that they're not

00:36:28   having all their weight on the bottom thing

00:36:30   on the inside of my ear is a huge improvement.

00:36:32   You only feel the fairly light pressure

00:36:36   of those rubber tips, and they come with four different

00:36:39   types of rubber tips in different sizes.

00:36:41   They have the regular kind of bulbous marshmallow kind,

00:36:46   and that comes in small, medium, and large,

00:36:48   and all that's come with it, and they also have

00:36:50   another one that's like, it's the kind that looks like

00:36:52   two scoops of ice cream.

00:36:54   It's like two half circles stacked.

00:36:55   - Yeah, it's like the barbed one.

00:36:57   - Yeah.

00:36:58   - It goes in, but it doesn't come back out.

00:36:59   - Yeah, right.

00:37:00   - Wow.

00:37:01   - I don't know what that one's for.

00:37:02   I tried it, and it was too skinny,

00:37:04   and it wouldn't seal for me.

00:37:06   So I've been using the larges and the mediums,

00:37:08   and they are great, and so because you have

00:37:12   this customizability of those various tips,

00:37:15   and they're being set there with less pressure

00:37:18   to begin with because of the hook setup,

00:37:21   comfort is way better.

00:37:22   I can wear these things for a long time

00:37:24   and feel no pain whatsoever.

00:37:27   And the sound quality is also,

00:37:29   so sound quality normally is pretty much exactly

00:37:31   like the AirPod 2 or the AirPod 1.

00:37:33   It's the same thing as the AirPods, really,

00:37:35   which means that when you have a loose seal,

00:37:39   you don't really get much bass or anything.

00:37:41   It's fine for podcasts, but if you get a good seal

00:37:44   with AirPods, if they really seal well into your ear

00:37:46   or if you push them in a little bit,

00:37:48   it actually gets pretty decent even for music.

00:37:50   With Powerbeats, that's actually easier to achieve

00:37:53   because it's much easier to get a good seal

00:37:56   because of the way they're held there

00:37:57   and because you have the different size tips to choose from.

00:38:00   So I actually really like them.

00:38:03   They are significantly less convenient than the AirPods

00:38:07   in the sense that they are not really pocketable,

00:38:12   and the case is so clumsy and everything,

00:38:15   but the convenience is really nice.

00:38:16   Now, that being said, they still are not suitable

00:38:20   for use on a plane.

00:38:21   Like, they still don't seal well enough

00:38:25   to make them particularly audible

00:38:27   in a very loud place like a plane.

00:38:30   AirPods have the same problem, even slightly worse,

00:38:32   and this is why I am so looking forward

00:38:35   to if Apple ever makes the rumored over-ear headphones

00:38:39   using the W1 or H1 style pairing and chip and everything.

00:38:44   Even if they are terrible sounding

00:38:47   and even if they have terrible noise cancellation,

00:38:50   I will buy those because A,

00:38:52   I don't use noise cancellation on planes.

00:38:54   I just use whatever passive isolation my headphones have.

00:38:56   I turn off the noise cancellation 'cause I don't like it.

00:38:59   So the actual active noise cancellation,

00:39:01   I couldn't care less.

00:39:02   I just want big, comfortable over-ear headphones

00:39:04   that passively isolate sound well,

00:39:06   and to be able to switch those between my phone,

00:39:09   my iPad, and my computer easily on a plane

00:39:11   would completely negate any possible advantage

00:39:16   that Sony or Bose could come up with with their headphones.

00:39:20   So I'm very much looking forward to,

00:39:22   if that rumor ends up being true

00:39:24   and they end up coming out with over-ear headphones,

00:39:25   man, I can't wait.

00:39:26   Whatever we call them, like, head pods or air heads

00:39:29   or whatever, like, I can't wait.

00:39:31   - So how long can you reasonably have AirPods

00:39:36   with these little sheaths in your ears?

00:39:39   Like, are we talking half an hour, an hour, two hours?

00:39:43   - I could, like, walk to the store and back

00:39:45   or take, like, a short dog walk and be okay.

00:39:47   I'd rather not.

00:39:48   Like, I'd rather use the Powerbeats Pro or my AfterShocks

00:39:52   or, you know, other, like, good portable headphones.

00:39:54   I'd rather, like, I'd rather use those.

00:39:57   But the AirPods are now usable.

00:40:02   So, like, before, like, suppose, like,

00:40:05   one thing that's happened a lot is, like,

00:40:06   you know, I'll walk into town at the beach,

00:40:09   like, with the family, and then I will wanna walk home

00:40:13   or I'll be asked to walk somewhere else

00:40:14   to go get something and the family will stay back.

00:40:17   They'll go to a playground and I need to go to the store.

00:40:19   So I'll, like, split off from the family.

00:40:21   I'm, now I'm just alone and I'm bored.

00:40:23   And, like, I have a long walk ahead of me.

00:40:25   So it's like, if I have AirPods in my pocket,

00:40:27   like, I didn't have to plan for that.

00:40:29   I just can always carry them.

00:40:31   And now I have them and they're great, right?

00:40:33   Or, you know, something like,

00:40:35   if I'm, like, going to the city for the day,

00:40:38   I can just have them in my pocket and I might eat them

00:40:41   and I might not and it's fine.

00:40:42   I don't have to think about it.

00:40:43   Like, I can't fit my AfterShokz in my pants pocket.

00:40:47   I can fit my AirPods, though.

00:40:48   Like, I can just have them there.

00:40:50   It's just really nice.

00:40:52   So it's, like, even though they are not

00:40:54   my favorite headphones,

00:40:55   they're not the most comfortable headphones on me,

00:40:57   there are cases where, like, I'd rather have headphones

00:40:59   than not have headphones,

00:41:00   even if they're a little uncomfortable after a while.

00:41:02   And it's way better than the way they were before.

00:41:04   Like, I can actually use them

00:41:06   and not really regret it now.

00:41:09   So I'm pretty happy.

00:41:10   - And then what about the PowerBeats?

00:41:13   How long can those stay in before you get cranky

00:41:15   or uncomfortable or whatever?

00:41:16   - I would say they are as comfortable

00:41:18   as the AfterShokz for me.

00:41:19   So that would be, like, you know,

00:41:20   I can easily take a two-hour walk with them and be,

00:41:23   I might be a little hot at the end, but I'd be fine.

00:41:26   - Since we're doing headphone reviews,

00:41:27   I got new headphones recently, too.

00:41:29   I used them for my flight to WWDC.

00:41:31   I got the Sony, whatever the latest Sony

00:41:33   noise-canceling thing.

00:41:34   It's like--

00:41:35   - The WH, whatever, Mark III.

00:41:36   - Yeah.

00:41:38   And I had been using Bose noise-canceling ones before.

00:41:41   I do use the actual noise-canceling,

00:41:43   so that's what I wanted out of them.

00:41:45   And I just listen to podcasts,

00:41:46   so I don't really care what the sound quality is like,

00:41:47   as long as it's okay.

00:41:48   And the reason I was interested in replacing the Bose at all

00:41:51   is because I find the Bose ear cups

00:41:53   to be a little bit small for me

00:41:55   and a little bit uncomfortable on a six-hour flight.

00:41:57   Like, they're okay in the beginning,

00:41:58   but around an hour, three and a half,

00:41:59   I'm like, "Well, these are kind of annoying my ears."

00:42:03   So I got the Sonys,

00:42:03   which look like they had bigger ear pads

00:42:06   and ear cup things, and hopefully that would work better.

00:42:09   And people had said that noise-canceling is as good

00:42:11   as Bose or better or whatever.

00:42:12   So anyway, I got these.

00:42:14   They're fancier, they have all sorts of weird features

00:42:16   where they can optimize their noise-canceling

00:42:18   based on the atmospheric pressure

00:42:19   and other BS they tell you they're doing.

00:42:21   Who knows what they're actually doing.

00:42:22   But anyway, they have their Bluetooth

00:42:25   instead of having a wire like my Bose ones did.

00:42:27   They have a swipey touchpad thing

00:42:30   on the outside of the ear cup,

00:42:32   which is terrible because it's like the Apple TV remote.

00:42:35   Is this a horizontal swipe?

00:42:36   Is it a vertical swipe?

00:42:37   Did I get it right?

00:42:38   Did I get my oriented correctly?

00:42:40   Tapping them is the worst.

00:42:41   Oh God, 'cause they have a tap control.

00:42:44   As bad as it is to tap an AirPod,

00:42:47   imagine tapping the rigid outside of a giant cup

00:42:51   that's like sealed to the side of your head.

00:42:53   It's like the loudest sound ever.

00:42:55   I'm trying to tap gently, but it's very uncomfortable,

00:42:58   not uncomfortable physically from like the pressure,

00:43:00   but uncomfortable noise-wise, it is very bad.

00:43:04   But setting that aside, I mean,

00:43:05   you can always stop in a million other ways.

00:43:07   You can use your phone to stop,

00:43:09   or you could use one of those little Bluetooth

00:43:12   controller things, you know, anyway.

00:43:14   All that aside, the ear cups were more comfortable.

00:43:16   What surprised me, and the thing that was annoying me

00:43:19   by like hour two, was the band that goes

00:43:22   over the top of my head was just like,

00:43:23   it's like that feeling that Casey might be familiar with,

00:43:25   and Marco maybe not as much for multiple reasons,

00:43:28   when your hair hits the headliner in a car, right?

00:43:31   (laughing)

00:43:33   Do you know that feeling, Casey?

00:43:34   - I actually, I know of what you speak,

00:43:36   but I am not quite tall enough

00:43:38   to have ever really had that problem.

00:43:40   Despite my hair also adding an inch or two to my height.

00:43:43   - If you're a taller person, or you have a car

00:43:46   with a very low ceiling, and like your car has like a,

00:43:49   you know, typical cheap car, you know,

00:43:52   sort of fuzzy Muppet felt stuff on the roof,

00:43:55   if your hair just hits that, you're like,

00:43:59   well, so what, your hair is barely swiping

00:44:01   a fuzzy Muppet felt, how can that,

00:44:04   how do you even notice that, right?

00:44:05   It's a strange thing, I'm sure there's some word for it,

00:44:08   or someone did their PhD thesis on it,

00:44:10   like that it sort of grips your hair a little bit,

00:44:13   like it's not like it's like, you know,

00:44:15   vinyl or something slippery, so the fuzzy Muppet felt

00:44:18   grips your hair a little bit, and just through like

00:44:20   the regular motion of your head,

00:44:21   of just like driving or whatever,

00:44:24   your head moves and the hair kind of stays

00:44:26   where it's being gripped, and it just ends up like

00:44:28   moving your hair follicles back and forth,

00:44:30   and back and forth, and it becomes incredibly irritating,

00:44:32   it's like a kind of, like, you know,

00:44:34   water torture where they drop a drop of water

00:44:36   on your forehead, it's like, who cares, drop of water,

00:44:38   that doesn't hurt, but by 10,000 drop,

00:44:40   it feels like a hammer falling and you're ready to go insane.

00:44:42   Well, this felt like the same thing,

00:44:43   where it's just like, the band was just,

00:44:46   I don't know what it was doing, was it moving my hair around,

00:44:48   was it like, it didn't feel like it had much more pressure

00:44:51   on top of my head, it's so weird,

00:44:53   like the headphones I'm wearing now

00:44:54   that I wear every time on my podcast

00:44:56   don't have the sensation at all,

00:44:58   like they're touching the top of my head, right,

00:45:01   but they don't feel like they're irritating the hair,

00:45:04   they're, the Sony ones are padded up there,

00:45:06   it's the same, feels like the same kind of slippery,

00:45:08   fake vinyl-y material up there, I have no idea what it is,

00:45:12   I'm thinking maybe it's because of like,

00:45:14   the shape of the band, 'cause sometimes they make it like,

00:45:17   it's supposed to look like a nice rigid U shape,

00:45:19   but really to get it to fit over your head,

00:45:20   you have to adjust the things,

00:45:21   and now the nice rigid U becomes like a rigid section,

00:45:24   and then this other section that's a different angle,

00:45:25   then the rigid section on top,

00:45:26   and then another little section,

00:45:27   and then the final rigid section,

00:45:29   and maybe that makes an arc

00:45:30   that's actually pressing on my head more, I don't know,

00:45:33   but that band was, God, it was making me,

00:45:35   it was making me think about returning them,

00:45:36   I kept adjusting it, like if I make it super loose,

00:45:39   if I make it so the top doesn't even touch my head,

00:45:41   but it doesn't quite work,

00:45:41   because you do need something up there for support,

00:45:43   because they can't just stick to your ears from the pressure,

00:45:46   anyway, it was very, it didn't quite agree with my head,

00:45:50   I'm trying to work out what I'm gonna do about that,

00:45:53   but overall, the ear cup comfort was way better,

00:45:57   and the final thing, the noise canceling,

00:45:58   I think it was better than the Bose,

00:46:00   but the noise canceling had this weird thing,

00:46:02   during takeoff, when the engines are ramping up,

00:46:04   the noise canceling decided to send out

00:46:06   some of these terrible echolocation bursts of noise

00:46:10   into my ears, which was like,

00:46:12   just during takeoff,

00:46:16   when the noise levels were changing a lot,

00:46:17   like, is that a bug, is that a feature,

00:46:20   whatever it is, it was uncomfortable,

00:46:22   and it only happened during takeoff,

00:46:24   but it happened during both takeoffs,

00:46:26   so I don't know what the deal with that is,

00:46:28   but that was kind of uncomfortable,

00:46:29   but for the rest of the time, sound was fine,

00:46:32   noise canceling was even better than the Bose,

00:46:34   ear cup comfort was better,

00:46:35   I have problems with the headband.

00:46:37   - Wow, yeah, 'cause I use the previous version of that,

00:46:41   the W-whatever-whatever Mark II,

00:46:45   and there aren't many differences between the two,

00:46:47   like, they're almost identical,

00:46:50   and so I'm actually kind of surprised,

00:46:51   'cause I haven't had those issues

00:46:53   with the fit with the headband,

00:46:54   I mean, maybe it's just I have a different hairstyle.

00:46:56   - It's different head size,

00:46:57   like, you should look at how much of the part

00:47:00   that you expose when you adjust it,

00:47:01   how much do you have exposed,

00:47:03   maybe you have much more or much less than I do,

00:47:04   and maybe the irritability of the hairs on top of my head

00:47:09   are different than yours.

00:47:10   - Maybe you need a thin silicone wrapper.

00:47:12   (laughing)

00:47:13   - I was thinking during the flight,

00:47:14   I'm like, what could I put up there,

00:47:16   if I put, you know, is it too slippery or not,

00:47:19   like, if I put a piece of felt

00:47:20   between the headphones in my head,

00:47:21   or if I, like, coated the band at the top of my head,

00:47:24   would I wanna make it slipperier or grippier,

00:47:26   I don't, you know, do I need an extra piece of padding again?

00:47:29   It's plenty padded up there,

00:47:30   it's not like it's a hard piece of plastic against my head,

00:47:32   it's mysterious, and the reason it reminded me

00:47:34   of the car headliner thing is because it's the type of thing

00:47:36   it's like, how can that even bother you?

00:47:38   Like, it's like a pillow on top of your head

00:47:41   with no weight on it, how is that bothering you,

00:47:43   and yet, just the tiny motions,

00:47:45   like you're inheriting the headliner

00:47:46   over the course of many hours,

00:47:47   eventually feels like the worst thing in the world,

00:47:49   it's like a pebble in your shoe, another example,

00:47:51   tiny little rock, you know, you're walking,

00:47:53   and like, you're building up the size of this thing

00:47:54   in your mind, so you finally take off your shoe

00:47:55   and you look at it, and it's like the size

00:47:57   of like a grain of sand, you know,

00:47:59   how did that feel so big in my shoe?

00:48:01   It's that type of situation.

00:48:02   - Well, I am glad, Marco, that you can feasibly carry

00:48:06   your AirPods with you always, and that sounds sarcastic,

00:48:09   but actually that has, that changed my life,

00:48:12   is a bit dramatic, but it has definitely improved my life

00:48:15   to always have headphones in my little change pocket

00:48:18   in my jeans, you know, pretty much all the time,

00:48:21   and you'd be surprised how often, like you were saying,

00:48:24   you know, you peel away from the family or something

00:48:26   like that, for a perfectly legitimate reason,

00:48:28   and then you think, well, I could catch up

00:48:29   on podcasts right now, or I could listen to music right now,

00:48:32   or whatever the case may be.

00:48:33   - Exactly.

00:48:34   - I cannot overstate how much I love my AirPods,

00:48:37   and I genuinely think they're the best Apple product

00:48:40   of the last five to 10 years by a comfortable margin,

00:48:43   in my personal opinion.

00:48:44   - Like the Mandelbrot set, it changed the world

00:48:46   in a tiny way, I was so sick of catching

00:48:49   my headphone cords on things, so sick of that,

00:48:52   AirPods just rescued me from that life,

00:48:54   rescued me from the life of untangling the cords,

00:48:56   and it rescued me from the life of them,

00:48:57   getting caught on things and being yanked out of my ears.

00:49:00   Love it, can never go back.

00:49:01   - We respond to this week by Fracture,

00:49:05   who prints your photos in vivid color directly onto glass.

00:49:09   Visit fractureme.com/atp for a special discount

00:49:12   on your first Fracture order.

00:49:13   Now almost all of us take and share photos,

00:49:16   but very few of those photos ever leave our phones

00:49:19   or our social feeds, very few actually get printed

00:49:22   as physical objects, and even fewer end up on display

00:49:25   anywhere to actually be enjoyed for more than

00:49:27   like the two seconds in your social feed.

00:49:29   Fracture helps you focus on the moments

00:49:31   that mean the most in your life

00:49:32   by turning your favorite memories into meaningful photos

00:49:36   that are actually printed in the physical world

00:49:38   and hung up for you to enjoy.

00:49:39   And Fracture prints are amazing,

00:49:41   they're made by printing directly onto glass.

00:49:44   It goes edge to edge, there's no border,

00:49:46   you don't need to put them in a frame,

00:49:48   they are their own total complete object,

00:49:51   and they come ready to display right out of the box.

00:49:53   They even include the wall hanger for you right in the box.

00:49:56   And it's a very nice, thin, lightweight glass too,

00:50:00   so you don't have to worry about whether a big one

00:50:01   will pull out of your wall and fall off and break,

00:50:04   like it isn't like that at all,

00:50:05   they're very nice, big, lightweight things.

00:50:07   They are awesome, they also make amazing gifts.

00:50:10   So we have them all over our house,

00:50:11   and people compliment them all the time,

00:50:13   but we also give them as gifts a lot.

00:50:15   It's a great idea, like for relatives,

00:50:17   you know, give, send them a picture of your kid

00:50:19   or your dog or something, or send pictures to friends

00:50:21   of a time you had together,

00:50:22   like maybe on a vacation or something.

00:50:24   It's a great idea for gifts for all occasions,

00:50:26   and we've had tons of wonderful reactions to these

00:50:30   when we give them as gifts.

00:50:32   So these are awesome prints from Fracture,

00:50:34   and you can feel good about them.

00:50:35   They are handmade by real human beings

00:50:38   in Gainesville, Florida from US source materials,

00:50:41   and their factory is carbon neutral.

00:50:43   You can see for yourself how awesome these are

00:50:45   at fractureme.com/atp, and you will get a special discount

00:50:50   in your first Fracture order.

00:50:51   They will ask you where you came from,

00:50:53   make sure to tell them you came from ATP.

00:50:55   So once again, go to fractureme.com/atp

00:50:57   for a special discount in your first Fracture order,

00:51:00   and make sure that you tell them you came from ATP.

00:51:02   Thank you so much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.

00:51:05   (upbeat music)

00:51:07   - We have heard many reports of a new 16-inch MacBook Pro

00:51:12   that is supposedly coming,

00:51:15   and there's a report at 9to5Mac from a couple of days ago

00:51:18   saying, yeah, this is a thing,

00:51:20   and there are a couple of specific tidbits,

00:51:23   including a report of a 3072 by 1920 resolution.

00:51:28   Marco, how excited are you?

00:51:30   - I am not excited about that screen resolution.

00:51:32   I'm very excited about everything else.

00:51:34   Everything else about this,

00:51:36   the rumors have been pretty strong on this one

00:51:40   from multiple different sources

00:51:41   over the last couple of months

00:51:43   that it really does seem like,

00:51:45   where there's smoke, there's fire thing,

00:51:48   there is very likely to be a redesigned MacBook Pro

00:51:52   for the first time since 2016,

00:51:54   coming out sometime between this fall and next spring.

00:51:58   The last redesign, the 2016 one,

00:52:00   as you know, I'm not really a big fan.

00:52:02   - Oh, really?

00:52:03   - Yeah, not a fan of the touch bar,

00:52:04   not a fan of the butterfly keyboard,

00:52:07   and the most recent rumors seem to indicate

00:52:11   that the touch bar is actually staying,

00:52:13   but we might be getting a hardware escape key next to it.

00:52:17   More importantly, we might be getting a new keyboard

00:52:21   that uses scissor switches with one millimeter of travel,

00:52:24   which is about twice the travel of the butterfly keyboard.

00:52:27   Overall, very similar in many ways

00:52:29   to the most recent desktop Magic keyboards

00:52:32   that Apple has shipped,

00:52:33   which have been widely recognized

00:52:35   as pretty decent keyboards, pretty agreeable.

00:52:37   Not everyone totally loves them,

00:52:40   but most people are pretty big fans.

00:52:41   No one really hates them, like they're fine,

00:52:44   and that's what you need a laptop keyboard to be,

00:52:45   and that's what we haven't had for the last few years.

00:52:48   Even if they've solved the reliability problems,

00:52:50   which I think is still too early to say,

00:52:52   they still failed to make a keyboard last time

00:52:55   that everyone was okay with.

00:52:57   Now they have a chance to do that again,

00:52:58   and the rumors all suggest

00:53:00   that they are probably doing that.

00:53:02   Additionally, as I mentioned I think last week,

00:53:05   this will be the first laptop

00:53:06   that has most likely been designed

00:53:09   after the formation of the Pro Workflows team.

00:53:13   And the Pro Workflows team has produced

00:53:15   such wonderful things as maybe the iMac Pro,

00:53:19   I'm not sure if they were there late enough

00:53:21   or early enough for that,

00:53:22   but they were definitely there to influence things

00:53:24   like the new Mac Mini and the new Mac Pro.

00:53:27   And those are both really, really good products

00:53:29   that did things and added things and kept things

00:53:33   that we never would have guessed

00:53:36   the 2016 era Apple would have done.

00:53:39   Things that customers wanted and needed,

00:53:41   but Apple back then was in the mood

00:53:43   of taking a lot of things away

00:53:46   and pushing things really aggressively, quote, forward,

00:53:50   in ways that we didn't all agree were the way forward.

00:53:53   But this is the first thing in a new series,

00:53:58   and I cannot wait to see what it is.

00:54:00   Good or bad, I at least just want to see movement.

00:54:03   And I think I have faith,

00:54:05   based on how they've done the last few new releases

00:54:07   like this, it's probably gonna be really good.

00:54:10   Now about that screen resolution.

00:54:12   The one thing that's bugged me

00:54:14   about the Retina MacBook Pro screens,

00:54:17   ever since their introduction in 2012,

00:54:20   is that in the last few models of the pre-Retina age,

00:54:24   Apple increased the point density of the screens.

00:54:29   You could see this in the original MacBook Air,

00:54:32   which was like, I think, 1366 by 768, something like that,

00:54:36   the 13 inch version.

00:54:38   And then right before they went Retina,

00:54:41   the 15 inch could be had with a 1680 by 1050 screen,

00:54:44   and the 17 inch could be had with a 1920, I think?

00:54:47   Yeah, a 1920 by 1200 screen.

00:54:50   The resolution, the horizontal resolution of the 15 inch

00:54:53   was 1680 points across.

00:54:55   When they went Retina in 2012,

00:54:59   the effective, the number of pixels went up

00:55:01   'cause it went Retina, but the effective point width

00:55:05   went down from 1680 back down to 1440,

00:55:08   where it was a few years earlier

00:55:11   in the regular non-Retina lineup.

00:55:14   And as the rest of the lineup went Retina,

00:55:17   that same step back happened.

00:55:20   It happened on the 13 inch,

00:55:22   it eventually happened even to the Air

00:55:24   when that went Retina.

00:55:26   That didn't happen on the desktops, mind you.

00:55:27   When the iMac 5K came out, and later the iMac 4K,

00:55:30   that same step back did not happen.

00:55:33   They went exactly double the number of points

00:55:35   they were pre-Retina.

00:55:37   So we know that it's possible not to do that on the desktop,

00:55:40   and they didn't.

00:55:41   On the laptops, they made that step backwards.

00:55:44   At the time, like, you know, 2012 was three years before,

00:55:48   or two years before it ever came to the desktop,

00:55:50   and two and a half years before it came to the desktop.

00:55:54   And so it kind of made sense back then,

00:55:56   like, well, it's still really new technology,

00:55:58   maybe there are concerns about economics

00:56:00   of the screen panels, or quality of the colors,

00:56:03   or battery concerns of having more

00:56:05   pixels to drive or whatever else.

00:56:06   - Yeah, battery concerns is what Apple cited, by the way.

00:56:09   That when we asked that question

00:56:10   at the introduction of the Retina,

00:56:11   it was like, well, there's just so many more transistors,

00:56:13   battery is why we did this,

00:56:14   and everyone basically accepted it.

00:56:15   - Right, and they also, they introduced these scaling modes

00:56:18   at the same time, where you could,

00:56:21   for the first time ever in their laptops,

00:56:23   you could simulate higher resolutions

00:56:25   than what the panel actually supported,

00:56:27   using these new GPU accelerated scaling modes

00:56:29   that it would basically render the image

00:56:32   to a, I think like a 4X or 3X buffer,

00:56:36   like it would render it to a higher buffer,

00:56:38   and then scale it back to the physical pixels of the screen.

00:56:40   It's the same technique that was used later

00:56:42   in the iPhone 6 Plus, and the 6, 7, and 8 Plus

00:56:46   all used it until we finally got true 3X

00:56:48   in the iPhone 10 series.

00:56:49   But anyway, they did this pixel scaling mode,

00:56:52   where the native pixel resolution for the 15 inch

00:56:57   was indeed stepped back to the 1440 points at 2X density,

00:57:02   but you could set it to the way the old ones used to look

00:57:05   at 6 and 8, and it would just kind of like

00:57:08   blur the pixels to look to fit the panels,

00:57:11   to make it look kind of like that.

00:57:13   But it never looked as good as when you were running it

00:57:16   in the true native 2X format.

00:57:19   Like it never, they never had it exactly as sharp

00:57:24   and as nice looking as when you were running it at 1440

00:57:27   at the native 2X scale.

00:57:28   When the 2016 era models came out,

00:57:31   starting with actually the 2015 MacBook One,

00:57:34   like with the MacBook One, and then following into 2016,

00:57:38   the Touch Bar generation of MacBook Pros,

00:57:40   and later the MacBook Air, they actually set

00:57:43   the one step up scaling mode as the default

00:57:47   screen resolution the way they shipped.

00:57:50   So by default, since 2016, and for every 12 inch MacBook,

00:57:55   they have shipped in a mode where the screen

00:57:56   is a little bit blurry and not as good as it could be.

00:58:00   Because they just haven't put enough pixels into it

00:58:03   to make it have true 2X retina clarity

00:58:08   without using blurry scaling modes

00:58:10   at the default resolutions they've been shipping,

00:58:12   which to me is a crime.

00:58:15   On the 12 inch, you can kind of forgive it

00:58:17   because regardless of what they charge for it,

00:58:19   that's a budget machine, like it has budget parts,

00:58:22   it's a low end machine in lots of ways.

00:58:25   So it kind of makes sense on that, it kind of makes sense

00:58:27   on the Air, 'cause the Air is also there

00:58:28   to hit a low price point.

00:58:30   But on the MacBook Pro, the 13 inch and 15 inch Pro,

00:58:34   I don't think we need to be doing that anymore.

00:58:36   And the desktops prove that we don't have to do it.

00:58:39   Like the 5K iMac and later the 4K iMac proved,

00:58:42   it isn't just like, oh we won't notice,

00:58:44   we can get away with it, or nobody wants it.

00:58:46   No, we want it, and we do notice, they didn't do

00:58:50   the scaling mode by default on the desktops,

00:58:52   because it's better not to.

00:58:54   So on the laptops, we're sitting here,

00:58:56   we're enduring this 2012 era screen density all this time.

00:59:00   In the next generation, surely it's time now.

00:59:04   Surely now, whatever factors are at play,

00:59:08   we can afford to step up the pixels by whatever it be,

00:59:12   like 20% in each dimension.

00:59:14   It's not like we're doubling it again,

00:59:16   like it's adding like 20% in each dimension

00:59:18   or something like that.

00:59:19   Surely we can do that now, and the cost is able

00:59:24   to be spent on that now, in both battery and economics

00:59:26   of the panels, surely.

00:59:28   The only thing I don't like about this new rumor

00:59:31   is that it quotes the screen resolution

00:59:34   in a way that almost certainly suggests

00:59:36   that they haven't done this, that they're sticking

00:59:39   with the same thing of just scaling all the time by default,

00:59:42   and just accepting that the panel's just gonna be blurry.

00:59:45   And I'm not okay with that.

00:59:47   After all this time, I mean yeah,

00:59:50   I'm gonna buy this thing anyway,

00:59:51   'cause I just can't wait to get a new keyboard.

00:59:53   But that was like one little nitpick that I've had

00:59:58   since 2012 that I thought they would've solved by now.

01:00:01   And they put so much effort and marketing and promotion

01:00:04   into having these really awesome screens

01:00:07   in these other ways, like in color and contrast

01:00:10   and HDR and color profiles and wide gamut and all that.

01:00:14   They do all this amazing stuff with the screen,

01:00:17   but now they're just a little bit blurry all the time

01:00:19   because we can't have all the pixels

01:00:20   that they actually are kind of BSE claiming that they have

01:00:24   by having it be the default mode.

01:00:26   Like that's not okay.

01:00:28   And they can do better than that,

01:00:29   and they should do better than that.

01:00:31   - So I think the iMac is not,

01:00:33   I mean the iMac is a different scenario

01:00:35   because you don't have battery power

01:00:37   and you have more depth.

01:00:38   So I'm not sure, if you were to ask Apple,

01:00:41   I bet their answer would still be the same

01:00:42   as it was in 2013, which is in a very, very thin screen

01:00:46   like this with battery constraints,

01:00:48   if we put all those transistors behind there

01:00:50   for the actual 2X scaling of the resolution you want,

01:00:54   it would hurt us in battery life.

01:00:55   And of course our answer would be

01:00:56   make the damn thing one millimeter thicker and be quiet,

01:00:59   but you know Apple.

01:01:01   So when I saw this rumor, I was at least glad

01:01:05   that it wasn't going to be 1440 by 900 points, right?

01:01:09   - Just larger?

01:01:10   - Yeah, it is a larger physical screen

01:01:13   and it has more pixels than the smaller one,

01:01:16   which made me hope that if I was ever forced

01:01:18   to use one of these for work,

01:01:19   which is the only way I would probably ever have

01:01:20   one of these, that I would be able to put it at native 2X

01:01:25   and not feel like I don't have enough room.

01:01:27   Obviously this at 2X would not be the same

01:01:31   as the resolution you wanted, you know,

01:01:33   1680 by 1050 points, right?

01:01:36   It's not quite the same,

01:01:38   but it's better than the current 15 inch

01:01:40   if you put it at native 2X.

01:01:42   And so I'm hoping that if I go into the store

01:01:45   and set this one to native 2X and I look at it

01:01:47   and go like, nah, I think I can live with that.

01:01:49   It's reasonable, especially as I get older,

01:01:51   like the fact that everything would be slightly larger

01:01:54   at that 2X resolution, but there would be a more screen

01:01:56   that maybe it would be worthwhile.

01:01:58   But I agree, I think there,

01:02:00   the fact that there hasn't been an Apple laptop

01:02:04   with a native point, you know,

01:02:07   when the LCD is running at native res,

01:02:09   has a point resolution that matches the previous 15 inch,

01:02:12   let alone the 17 inch, 17 inch, by the way,

01:02:13   was 1920 by 1200 native pixels, right?

01:02:17   There hasn't been a display with that number of points,

01:02:20   point dimensions at native res since 2013.

01:02:25   And that's not a good streak.

01:02:27   And I, you know, power is honestly the only thing

01:02:30   I can think of because we know they can make a display

01:02:32   like this and I imagine they can make it just as thin.

01:02:35   It's just a question of how much more battery power

01:02:37   we're taking, people would pay.

01:02:38   I mean, maybe does this mean they need to bring back

01:02:40   the 17 inch, right?

01:02:41   And then make a, maybe they'll feel okay

01:02:43   about making that one thicker,

01:02:44   or maybe they won't have to make it thicker

01:02:46   because it'll have more, you know,

01:02:47   just have more surface area to put battery in.

01:02:50   I don't know, but I think it's another gap in their lineup

01:02:53   and hopefully they'll fill it somehow.

01:02:56   - Well, and it just, it seems too like this could be

01:02:58   a nice differentiator for the pro line.

01:03:01   Like, and you would think the pro workflow team

01:03:04   would bring this up at some point.

01:03:07   Like, yeah, you know what the fact is,

01:03:08   like these screens being scaled does kind of suck.

01:03:10   Also, like, the scaling is not free.

01:03:13   The scaling has a computational cost on the GPU to achieve.

01:03:17   And so, like, at some point, surely, like,

01:03:21   the cost of driving the more pixels has to, like,

01:03:24   you know, outweigh that, right?

01:03:25   I don't know, it's just--

01:03:26   - Nah, it's much cheaper to do that computation

01:03:28   in some dedicated hardware on the GPU

01:03:30   and some little dinky thing than to actually

01:03:34   do the transition in those spaces.

01:03:35   I have to imagine that that's the power thing.

01:03:37   And honestly, I think that's, their explanation

01:03:41   would be both the power and also the idea that,

01:03:45   yeah, it's blurrier, but like, most people can't tell,

01:03:48   just like no one could tell that the six plus

01:03:50   was not at native res, just because everything was so small.

01:03:53   And I imagine that the number of people

01:03:55   who can tell the difference between the native 2x

01:03:58   and the one step down from it is also probably very small

01:04:01   and will eventually not include you

01:04:03   as your eyes get worse with age.

01:04:05   So I can kind of see where they're coming from,

01:04:07   but to your other point, it's like,

01:04:09   well, then why not do that on everything?

01:04:11   Why not make the $7000 display non-native?

01:04:13   Why not make the iMac 5K non-native?

01:04:15   It's like, you don't because it is actually better this way.

01:04:17   So there should be one, how about,

01:04:19   there should be one model that Apple sells

01:04:22   that, again, can match the point density

01:04:26   at native res of the old 15 inch.

01:04:28   - Right. (laughs)

01:04:29   - We're not even saying there has to be one model

01:04:31   that matches the 17.

01:04:32   - If there's any model that should do it,

01:04:34   it should be this one.

01:04:36   So I hope this rumor is wrong.

01:04:39   I don't have, I mean, honestly, my confidence isn't high

01:04:42   because usually when Ming-Chi Kuo quotes

01:04:44   a screen resolution, it's usually correct.

01:04:47   So that's, I'm not, I don't have high hopes here,

01:04:50   but I really am hoping that this rumor's wrong

01:04:53   and that they actually have increased it

01:04:54   to be what it should be and kind of what they're selling.

01:04:57   Like, the fact that it's the default mode

01:05:01   surely suggests to people that this is what the screen

01:05:04   is actually pulling off, and the fact that it's not,

01:05:06   I find BSE, and I'm not comfortable with them selling it

01:05:11   in scaling mode by default and saying,

01:05:12   here, look at how great the screen is,

01:05:14   and it's like they're intentionally hobbling it

01:05:16   just to achieve a faked increase in screen real estate,

01:05:22   really, and I want it to be real.

01:05:24   - I think they might sell this one at native 2X, though,

01:05:27   because it's like, it's 1536 points across,

01:05:30   which is not 1680, but maybe they'll actually sell it,

01:05:34   maybe the default will be 2X.

01:05:35   I mean, maybe, but that would make it look,

01:05:38   it would make it look significantly different

01:05:40   and less advanced than all the ones next to it

01:05:44   in the Apple store.

01:05:45   - Well, it would make the screen look clearer,

01:05:46   and it would make everything on it look bigger,

01:05:48   and clearer and bigger is actually a selling point

01:05:50   for a lot of customers when it comes

01:05:52   to displays on laptops.

01:05:53   - That's true, although most of those customers

01:05:55   probably aren't buying the highest-ed model in the store.

01:05:57   - I don't know, I mean, yeah, I don't wanna say.

01:06:00   Like, scaling mode's like, I don't think Apple

01:06:03   has these stats, but I wonder how many people

01:06:06   run their phones at like the bigger mode,

01:06:08   you know, during setup when it asks you,

01:06:09   do you want this to be bigger?

01:06:11   - Yeah, display zoom.

01:06:12   - Like, if you've ever watched anyone go through

01:06:14   that process with no input from you

01:06:16   and just like letting them pick what they want,

01:06:18   they look at the two, and as far as they're concerned,

01:06:20   they want the one where the pictures are bigger.

01:06:23   Like, the nuances of what that means,

01:06:26   like, here's one showing a bunch of apps,

01:06:28   and here's one showing a bunch of apps,

01:06:29   but each app is bigger.

01:06:29   It's like, oh, I want the one where they're bigger.

01:06:31   That is their only concern.

01:06:33   The nuances of nativeness don't factor into it,

01:06:36   nor does the idea that if they're bigger

01:06:37   that you can see fewer of them.

01:06:39   Like, it's just an obvious choice.

01:06:40   Oh, bigger, why would anyone pick the smaller one?

01:06:43   And so it's a different set of values

01:06:46   that leads to those decisions.

01:06:47   So I really do wonder if native 2X

01:06:49   where everything's slightly bigger

01:06:51   would actually be seen as a benefit of the 16 inch.

01:06:53   I mean, you know, the screen itself is bigger,

01:06:56   and it doesn't make sense that the things

01:06:58   on the screen are also bigger,

01:06:59   and also it seems a little bit sharper for some reason.

01:07:02   So maybe that's the selling point.

01:07:05   - Yeah, I'm interested to see what this laptop brings.

01:07:07   Like I said earlier, I am casually in the market

01:07:11   for a MacBook Adorable replacement,

01:07:13   and to go all the way to a 16 inch

01:07:15   is probably not gonna be the answer,

01:07:17   but I at least wanna see what this brings,

01:07:20   and if it's the sort of thing where this is the Halo car

01:07:23   of the MacBook Pro family,

01:07:25   and has something that I'm really interested in,

01:07:28   say, a new keyboard, which I'm not as, you know,

01:07:30   angry about as Marco is,

01:07:33   but still a more reliable keyboard sounds good to me.

01:07:36   You know, if that arrives in the 16 in the fall,

01:07:38   then maybe I would wait until the spring to get like,

01:07:40   you know, what would hopefully be a new Adorable

01:07:42   or maybe even a 13 inch MacBook Pro at that point

01:07:45   that has, you know, the same keyboard

01:07:46   and a similar setup.

01:07:47   I don't know.

01:07:48   I'm curious to see this for sure though,

01:07:50   and like you had said, Marco,

01:07:51   this is something new, and new is always exciting.

01:07:53   So I'm very curious to see it.

01:07:55   - Speaking of Halo car,

01:07:58   and given our recent Mac Pro musings,

01:08:01   as this opens, remembering that the non-retina 15 inch

01:08:05   that Marco was talking about,

01:08:07   that higher point, higher resolution screen was an option.

01:08:12   It wasn't the default screen.

01:08:14   So Apple could offer this laptop with this screen

01:08:17   at this exact resolution,

01:08:19   and then have as an option, an upgrade option,

01:08:21   a native 2X display with a higher point density,

01:08:25   and that upgrade option could be $7,000.

01:08:27   - And there you go.

01:08:28   There's your Halo car laptop.

01:08:30   - Yeah, the funny thing, like the option back then,

01:08:32   two things about those that are interesting,

01:08:33   the option back then was actually very inexpensive.

01:08:35   I think it was like $150.

01:08:37   It was very inexpensive to go from the 1440 screen

01:08:40   to the 1680 screen, and more interestingly,

01:08:42   the 1680 screen came in two finishes, matte or glossy.

01:08:46   - And the finishes weren't an extra cost.

01:08:48   The matte one didn't cost an extra $1,000?

01:08:50   Hmm, weird.

01:08:51   - Mm-hmm, and the total upgrade cost was like $150 or $200.

01:08:54   It was in that ballpark.

01:08:56   And yeah, but man, if they offered this

01:08:59   with a higher resolution screen and a matte option,

01:09:04   I mean, $7,000 would be excessive,

01:09:06   but what do you think would actually be

01:09:10   a reasonable price for that

01:09:11   that Apple would actually also charge?

01:09:13   So both reasonable and also realistic for Apple these days?

01:09:17   I think $400 extra?

01:09:19   - Yeah, $500 is what I was gonna say.

01:09:22   - Yeah, same, I was gonna say $500.

01:09:23   - And I'm just saying for the resolution,

01:09:25   like for the nano texture, I would say five and up.

01:09:28   (laughing)

01:09:29   Maybe 600.

01:09:31   - Yeah, I don't know about the nano texture.

01:09:32   I feel like the nano texture is all about

01:09:35   people in a particular environment

01:09:36   where they really need to see what it looks like

01:09:38   and they want to really take down,

01:09:40   I mean, I guess it's more important on a laptop

01:09:42   than a desktop, but I feel like the things

01:09:44   that motivated the weird nano texture

01:09:45   for the Mac Pro display or the XDR or whatever,

01:09:49   maybe aren't at play because those same people would say,

01:09:53   well, I don't care what you do with your laptop,

01:09:54   it's not like I'm gonna use one of those

01:09:55   to do my work on my feature film or whatever

01:09:58   because I'll be in the studio

01:10:00   and I'll be staring at a much larger screen,

01:10:01   but who knows?

01:10:02   Well, now that they have the nano technology,

01:10:05   the nano texture technology in their toolbox,

01:10:10   maybe they'll just apply it to everything

01:10:11   and add astronomical markup to all their products.

01:10:14   (laughing)

01:10:16   - On one hand, you need it for the laptop more than ever

01:10:19   because you are in environments

01:10:21   with varied lighting with laptops.

01:10:23   On the other hand, I would imagine the nano texture

01:10:26   is gonna have a problem with cleaning and fingerprints.

01:10:30   - If you're not supposed to touch it.

01:10:31   Now, I don't know the answer to that.

01:10:32   Do any of you know, I didn't actually ask the people

01:10:35   in the room of like, I had heard lots of people saying,

01:10:37   oh, you're really, really not supposed

01:10:39   to touch the nano texture, but then I can't tell

01:10:41   if that's just saying like, since it costs $1,000,

01:10:44   haha, keep people's grubby fingers away

01:10:45   from your $1,000 finish, or if there's an actual issue

01:10:48   in that if you get grease in it, cleaning it is difficult

01:10:51   because you're not supposed to like rub it or something.

01:10:53   I have no idea what's the truth there.

01:10:55   - It actually, they provide a cleaning cloth in the box,

01:10:59   and it isn't $1,000.

01:11:01   They don't provide the stand.

01:11:03   - But everything comes with a cleaning cloth.

01:11:04   My Thunderbolt display came with a cleaning cloth.

01:11:06   Right, that's fine.

01:11:07   I just wanna know like, if someone does touch your screen,

01:11:11   is it any harder to clean than just a regular glass screen?

01:11:15   - Well, you have to hold it at a 70 degree angle.

01:11:17   (laughing)

01:11:18   - Speaking of touching laptop screens,

01:11:20   so I have the Air in the house

01:11:22   that is technically the homework laptop.

01:11:23   I think it's called like homework laptop or something.

01:11:25   So the kids use it.

01:11:26   For the most part, I'm pretty sure none of them

01:11:30   are touching the screen like, you know,

01:11:32   accidentally or habitually, like,

01:11:35   because they think it's a touchscreen,

01:11:36   'cause they're not really habituated

01:11:38   to use touchscreen laptops.

01:11:40   Granted, they use their iPads all the time,

01:11:42   but I don't think they're actually touching it like,

01:11:43   oh, I thought I get it the okay button, right?

01:11:46   But the entire frame of the display

01:11:50   is covered in fingerprints.

01:11:52   It looks worse than any of their iPads,

01:11:54   because they like, I don't know, they have grubby hands.

01:11:58   And for some reason, like, well, I know my daughter

01:12:01   picks up the laptop by the screen,

01:12:03   which is why she destroyed.

01:12:04   She picks up the screen all the time.

01:12:06   And that's how she destroyed the 2011 laptop.

01:12:08   She destroyed the 2011 laptop by dropping it,

01:12:11   but also by repeatedly picking it up by the screen.

01:12:13   So the hinge became incredibly loose,

01:12:16   but then the dropping is what eventually cracked the screen.

01:12:18   But yeah, like, a huge amount of grease.

01:12:21   And I think about cleaning it sometimes,

01:12:22   I'm like, why bother?

01:12:23   Like, in a week, it's gonna look like that again.

01:12:24   But now it's getting to the point where I'm like,

01:12:26   have I waited too long?

01:12:27   Has this screen gone over?

01:12:28   Like, is it now impossible to remove the finger grease

01:12:31   that has accumulated on the screen?

01:12:32   Like, if I were to try to clean it,

01:12:34   would I be removing, like, whatever sort of anti-glare

01:12:37   finishes on the screen?

01:12:41   I think that the grease is now a structural element

01:12:43   of the screen, and I can never remove it.

01:12:47   - Oh, God. - Oh, my word.

01:12:48   - We are sponsored this week by Squarespace.

01:12:52   Start building your website today at squarespace.com/ATP,

01:12:55   and enter offer code ATP at checkout to get 10% off.

01:12:59   Make your next move with a beautiful website

01:13:01   from Squarespace.

01:13:02   Now look, we are programmers, many of us

01:13:04   who listen to this show, and we can make our own CMSs,

01:13:07   but these days, that's a terrible use of time.

01:13:10   Because two things have changed since the bad old days

01:13:13   of the early 2000s.

01:13:14   Websites have gotten much more complicated

01:13:16   to make look professional, to make work professionally,

01:13:20   and to make appear the way people want them to appear.

01:13:22   There's so many more factors these days.

01:13:24   People want more dynamic content,

01:13:25   more dynamic widgets and layouts,

01:13:27   and of course, you have to deal with responsive layout,

01:13:30   and you have to deal with security and SSL

01:13:32   and uptime and everything else.

01:13:34   So it's more complicated these days than it used to be.

01:13:36   And also, there's tools out there that make it super easy,

01:13:39   and Squarespace is the best one of these I have seen.

01:13:42   Squarespace makes it so easy to not deal

01:13:44   with any of that complexity yourself,

01:13:46   and you just make a beautiful, highly functional website

01:13:50   with almost no time and effort.

01:13:51   That there's really no reason to build your own CMS anymore,

01:13:54   unless you need something very specialized.

01:13:55   But for almost everybody out there,

01:13:57   for almost every website out there,

01:13:58   Squarespace has you covered.

01:14:00   Their sites look professionally designed,

01:14:02   regardless of your skill level.

01:14:04   There's no coding required.

01:14:06   It's all managed by intuitive, easy to use tools

01:14:08   with live previewing, what you see is what you get,

01:14:11   custom colors, custom fonts, custom layouts,

01:14:13   whatever you wanna do.

01:14:14   So start your free trial and just see what I mean here.

01:14:17   You'd be amazed how much you can get done on Squarespace

01:14:19   in like one hour.

01:14:21   I swear, it's that easy.

01:14:22   Give it a try at squarespace.com/atp.

01:14:26   When you decide to sign up for Squarespace after that,

01:14:28   make sure to go back there, squarespace.com/atp,

01:14:31   and use code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase.

01:14:35   Once again, squarespace.com/atp,

01:14:37   code ATP for 10% off your first purchase.

01:14:40   Make your next move with a beautiful website

01:14:42   from Squarespace.

01:14:44   (upbeat music)

01:14:47   - Alrighty, Jack Fried, Friedeye, I hope I have that right.

01:14:51   Do you think Apple would or could re-implement

01:14:53   target display mode on the iMac maybe this fall

01:14:55   in order to make a lower end display available

01:14:57   for the Mac Pro?

01:14:59   Would that be a solution for you?

01:15:01   I mean, I guess anything is possible,

01:15:04   but I don't personally see them coming back

01:15:07   to target display mode possibly ever on an iMac.

01:15:11   - Yeah, I don't think they would either.

01:15:13   For a number of reasons.

01:15:14   So this was kind of a big deal because when

01:15:17   the 27 inch iMac first came up, non-retina,

01:15:20   the regular 27 inch iMac, this was at the time

01:15:22   when there were no 27 inch 2560 by 1440

01:15:27   or 1680 monitors on the market.

01:15:30   The only ones you can get that had the 2560 pixels across

01:15:33   were the 30 inch class monitors at Apple

01:15:35   and a few other companies like HP sold.

01:15:37   The 27 inch iMac had that same resolution

01:15:40   in a smaller panel.

01:15:42   Actually, it lopped at the bottom a little bit.

01:15:43   It went to 1690 instead of 1610 or whatever it is.

01:15:46   But anyway, so it was 2560 across by 1440

01:15:50   and it was an awesome panel.

01:15:51   It was way brighter, better contrast

01:15:53   and whatever else than the 30 inch.

01:15:55   And when it came out, the iMac with this panel in it

01:15:59   cost less than the 30 inch monitor did alone.

01:16:03   And it included this with a quote free computer

01:16:05   behind it basically.

01:16:07   So there was actually strong demand for people

01:16:11   who wanted this kind of monitor

01:16:12   and all these amazing specs on it

01:16:14   and this was before Apple sold it separately

01:16:16   as what later became the Thunderbolt display.

01:16:18   They had this target display mode

01:16:21   where you could, I think, hold down a certain key combination

01:16:24   or something and you could plug a computer into the iMac

01:16:28   and just use the iMac screen as that computer's monitor.

01:16:31   So because there was this kind of demand for this,

01:16:33   I know I heard a few people who tried it,

01:16:36   but it wasn't actually very good

01:16:38   because first of all, it was kind of wasteful conceptually

01:16:43   in the sense that you were buying a computer

01:16:45   to not use the computer part of it ever really

01:16:48   and to plug some other computer into it.

01:16:50   If you wanted to use both, like to have the iMac

01:16:52   and maybe have a laptop,

01:16:54   you couldn't leave the iMac booted in this mode.

01:16:56   You'd have to reboot it into target display mode, I think.

01:16:59   So that was kind of weird.

01:17:01   And also, if the computer part of it broke

01:17:04   or somehow went wrong,

01:17:06   target display mode wouldn't work either.

01:17:08   And so you kind of had to rely on that computer

01:17:10   working forever.

01:17:12   And this was also before SSDs.

01:17:13   There was like a spinning hard drive back there

01:17:15   just spinning around doing nothing.

01:17:17   It was kind of a crappy solution.

01:17:19   It wasn't a great way to get a 27-inch display.

01:17:22   And it lasted until Retina came.

01:17:24   And when Retina came, it went away.

01:17:26   And there were lots of good reasons for that.

01:17:29   At the time that the 5K Retina iMac launched in 2014,

01:17:32   there was no cable standard

01:17:34   that could drive at a full resolution.

01:17:36   Like Thunderbolt 2, I don't think could do it.

01:17:37   These days, a Thunderbolt 3 cable could do it.

01:17:40   So theoretically, the modern iMacs

01:17:43   that have Thunderbolt 3 ports

01:17:45   could theoretically offer this.

01:17:47   But I think the hardware wiring and support for it

01:17:52   would be non-trivial.

01:17:55   And I think just not a lot of people

01:17:56   actually ended up using it

01:17:57   because it was so clunky to actually use in practice.

01:18:00   So while they maybe could technically do it,

01:18:04   not only do I not think that they will,

01:18:06   but I don't think they should.

01:18:08   I think if they want to address the market

01:18:11   that I hope they want to address

01:18:13   of people who want an Apple-made external 5K display

01:18:18   that is not $7,000, I hope they do address that market.

01:18:23   And if they're going to address that market at all,

01:18:26   they should do it properly

01:18:27   by actually having a standalone 5K monitor

01:18:30   that is like the iMac without any computer attached to it.

01:18:33   Just do that again,

01:18:34   the same way they did in the pre-retina days

01:18:36   with the Cinema Display and the Thunderbolt display.

01:18:39   Just do the same thing again

01:18:40   because they're really good at that and no one else is.

01:18:43   And there's a huge hole in the market.

01:18:45   Target Display Mode is a hack that never worked very well

01:18:49   and shouldn't be used to solve this problem.

01:18:51   - Yeah, the amount of money they would spend

01:18:54   getting Target Display Mode to work,

01:18:55   sort of doing the plumbing to get a Thunderbolt,

01:18:59   one of their Thunderbolt ports

01:19:00   or all of their Thunderbolt ports

01:19:02   to be able to pipe directly into the display controller

01:19:04   and all the other internal stuff they have in there

01:19:07   would be weird and expensive and so much more difficult

01:19:10   than just making a display.

01:19:11   And honestly, and we joked about this at the WDC show,

01:19:14   if they just charge the same price

01:19:16   as the one that has the computer inside it,

01:19:18   but this one doesn't have a computer,

01:19:19   you would still pay it.

01:19:20   It would be so high margin and people will be happy to pay it

01:19:23   because you'd have the anchoring of the 7G XDR

01:19:26   making it seem like a bargain.

01:19:27   Obviously, you price it like the low-end iMac

01:19:28   and not like the top-end iMac Pro,

01:19:30   but I think people would pay a surprising amount.

01:19:32   Probably up to, honestly, probably up to half the price,

01:19:35   so you could probably charge $3,000 for this thing

01:19:39   and it would be a rip-off,

01:19:40   but people will be like, well, here are my choices.

01:19:43   Nothing or a $3,000 monitor or a $7,000 monitor

01:19:48   that has HDR and higher resolution.

01:19:51   And the 3,001 starts to look reasonable.

01:19:53   Or I can find an old LG or I can buy some weird brand

01:19:57   that I've never heard of

01:19:58   that supposedly has a 5K display.

01:20:01   The choices are slim, so if Apple wants to make money,

01:20:05   now's the time to do it,

01:20:06   assuming there will be some future wave

01:20:08   of people making 5K displays,

01:20:10   which maybe will never come

01:20:11   and maybe that's why Apple feels like they don't have to do it

01:20:12   but if I was given the choice

01:20:14   between you can use a 5K iMac,

01:20:17   some new 5K iMac in target display mode,

01:20:20   or for the exact same price, you can have a 5K monitor,

01:20:23   I would take the monitor because,

01:20:25   the reason Marco said,

01:20:26   I don't have to worry about a whole computer being back there

01:20:29   and more things that can break,

01:20:30   even if the price was the same,

01:20:31   it's like, well, wouldn't you want the free computer

01:20:33   and you can also use it as a computer?

01:20:35   I'm not gonna use it as a computer,

01:20:36   it's gonna be attached to a desktop.

01:20:38   It's not like every once in a while

01:20:39   I'm gonna yank it out of my desktop

01:20:41   and use the second computer behind the monitor,

01:20:43   I'd rather just have the monitor.

01:20:45   So, I don't know,

01:20:46   I don't think they're gonna do target display mode,

01:20:48   unless it's really easy,

01:20:49   unless it falls out of the new arrangement of the internals

01:20:52   of the new 5K iMac,

01:20:55   like they've simplified everything

01:20:56   because now they do have Thunderbolt 3,

01:20:57   so they don't have to have that double,

01:20:59   they essentially internal double driving the display

01:21:02   through this weird timing controller

01:21:04   that they were bragging about that multiplexes it,

01:21:06   or, you know, once that is simplified internally,

01:21:09   if target display mode just falls out of the fact

01:21:11   of the internal architecture,

01:21:12   sure, by all means offer it,

01:21:13   it's like, it's, you know, good flexibility,

01:21:15   but it's not what I'm looking for.

01:21:16   - Now, something that I'd forgotten about,

01:21:19   but while you guys were talking, I'd remembered,

01:21:21   is that you can also do target disk mode,

01:21:25   which really doesn't solve the problem

01:21:27   we're talking about here,

01:21:28   but one time, or maybe a couple times, just for fun,

01:21:32   I actually booted my work-issued MacBook Pro on my iMac,

01:21:37   or I guess, strictly speaking,

01:21:41   my iMac booted itself off of my work-issued

01:21:44   MacBook Pro's hard drive.

01:21:45   So, I was using all of my iMac's bits and bobs,

01:21:50   except instead of using the onboard SSD,

01:21:52   I was using the SSD in my MacBook Pro,

01:21:56   which was very weird and very cool,

01:21:59   and definitely had some caveats and drawbacks,

01:22:00   most especially the keychain lost its ever-loving mind,

01:22:04   because it was basically a new computer at this point,

01:22:07   but it is something you can do,

01:22:08   and I did a write-up about this three years ago

01:22:11   on my website, which I'll link in the show notes,

01:22:12   but it's just something that's a neat party trick

01:22:16   for very, very nerdy parties, I guess.

01:22:18   - Yeah, like, target disk mode

01:22:19   has been on the Mac forever,

01:22:20   and it's an awesome tool for migration or data recovery,

01:22:24   like, for that kind of thing.

01:22:26   I don't think it's intended, and was ever intended,

01:22:29   to be just booted up for fun,

01:22:31   like, I'll just use my iMac like this.

01:22:32   I don't think it's ever meant for that,

01:22:34   but yeah, for transfers and recovery, it's awesome.

01:22:38   - Yeah, I mean, it was nice having my work machine

01:22:40   on this 20, well, so to speak, on my 27-inch screen.

01:22:43   I mean, ultimately, it was the iMac booting

01:22:45   off of the work machine's hard drive, like I said,

01:22:47   but it was very freeing having a 27-inch screen

01:22:50   all of a sudden, but it was not,

01:22:53   that juice was not worth the squeeze, ultimately.

01:22:55   - You're bringing back the thing from the beginning

01:22:56   of having, like, a little thing that you carry around

01:22:58   that has your data, and you just connect it up to,

01:23:00   although the thing is very large, in the case of the laptop.

01:23:02   Do you recall if, when you put your laptop

01:23:05   into target disk mode, did it show the FireWire logo

01:23:08   on the screen as, like, a screensaver?

01:23:10   - I actually have a picture on my website,

01:23:12   and it is, it's a little lightning bolt-y thing.

01:23:16   - Yeah, it shows whatever the interface is that you're using,

01:23:18   so, like, on modern ones, it'll show a Thunderbolt icon.

01:23:21   - I thought there was some period of time

01:23:22   where it continued to show the FireWire logo,

01:23:25   even when it wasn't using FireWire,

01:23:26   like, maybe just during the transition,

01:23:28   but I may be wrong about that.

01:23:29   That's why I was curious.

01:23:30   - FireWire had a good logo, like, among, like,

01:23:33   the connection standard logos that we've had over the years,

01:23:35   I think FireWire's was the best one.

01:23:37   - It looks a little bit like Destiny logo.

01:23:39   - Oh, God. - Three-pointed thing, right?

01:23:41   - I don't even know, I can't even judge the reference,

01:23:44   'cause I don't even know what Destiny logo looks like.

01:23:46   - Can't believe you don't.

01:23:48   - Okay, let's move on, let's move on.

01:23:50   - You really can't believe that?

01:23:51   - All those videos that I'm, all the things

01:23:53   that I'm tweeting and retweeting about Destiny,

01:23:56   thinking you ought to come across it.

01:23:57   - You don't think that I muted that 18 years ago?

01:23:59   - I should stop using that hashtag.

01:24:02   - No! - Sneak past your filters.

01:24:05   - Oh, please, no.

01:24:06   All right, Chris Hubbard writes,

01:24:07   "What software like cPanel does Marco use

01:24:09   "to manage his servers on Linode?"

01:24:11   Chris continues, "I use another shared business

01:24:14   "hosting service.

01:24:15   "I had considered Linode, but the price

01:24:17   "of a cPanel solo license is more

01:24:19   "than what my entire hosting cost."

01:24:20   - I don't use anything like that.

01:24:24   I simply administer my servers manually

01:24:27   using command line stuff and set up scripts

01:24:29   that I write and things like that.

01:24:31   There are, and there are even tools now

01:24:33   that make it even easier.

01:24:34   I can't really recommend any,

01:24:36   'cause I'm not really in that market.

01:24:37   I've never used any of the other tools.

01:24:39   But things like cPanel, I mean,

01:24:42   they came up in the era of bulk shared hosting

01:24:46   where you didn't have VPSs or cloud instances,

01:24:50   which are basically VPSs.

01:24:51   You didn't have those yet.

01:24:52   You had dedicated servers that you could run

01:24:56   200 small websites on and have to manage

01:24:59   all these different websites off of one box.

01:25:02   That's kinda where that software came up,

01:25:04   and there's some justification for it

01:25:07   in that kind of situation, although even then,

01:25:09   I think you have probably better tools these days

01:25:11   for even that kind of thing if you still do that.

01:25:13   But yeah, these days, when you're running your own VPSs

01:25:17   or cloud node kind of things,

01:25:19   there's I think very little reason

01:25:20   to use that kind of stuff.

01:25:22   It does help if you're a novice.

01:25:24   It helps you add domains and stuff like that

01:25:26   if you're a novice, but honestly,

01:25:28   it's probably easier to just learn how to do that yourself

01:25:32   manually from the command line

01:25:34   than it is to deal with any of these packages these days.

01:25:37   And I'll say that, and I said on Twitter too,

01:25:39   I kinda responded to this on Twitter as well,

01:25:40   like so many developers or nerds or power users

01:25:44   will jump through ridiculous hoops

01:25:48   to avoid learning how to use the command line

01:25:51   because they think that it's harder than it really is.

01:25:54   The fact is, learning basic Unix command line stuff,

01:25:57   things like basic directory management, file management,

01:26:02   basic editing with a tool like vim/vi,

01:26:06   which is available pretty much everywhere on everything,

01:26:08   on every server everywhere,

01:26:10   and learning how to use these things at a basic level

01:26:13   is such a critical skill for so many types

01:26:16   of advanced computer tasks and power user tasks

01:26:18   and system administrator tasks,

01:26:21   and it doesn't change very much over time.

01:26:23   The basics of things like using the command shell

01:26:26   and piping commands to each other and things like that,

01:26:29   that stuff hardly ever changes.

01:26:31   You can learn it once, and it'll be pretty stable

01:26:35   and pretty useful for your entire career in all likelihood.

01:26:39   So it's worth learning, and it's not that hard to learn.

01:26:43   I would say it's easier than things like Swift.

01:26:48   I think it's actually much easier to learn shell stuff

01:26:50   than it is to learn Swift.

01:26:52   If you are a nerd enough to want to run your own servers,

01:26:57   you have the capacity to learn command line basics,

01:27:00   and you really should,

01:27:02   and there's lots of great documentation out there.

01:27:05   Much of which is published by Linode,

01:27:08   but it works on any server.

01:27:10   But you can get a server for like five bucks a month

01:27:13   and just try setting up a website,

01:27:16   and just stumble through with guides and stuff

01:27:18   until you figure it out,

01:27:20   and you will eventually build up these skills

01:27:22   of using command line tools and editing config files

01:27:25   and stuff like that,

01:27:26   and these skills really last a lifetime,

01:27:29   and they're worth learning.

01:27:30   So I would say try not using stuff like cPanel

01:27:35   and not using automated setup tools,

01:27:37   and just try setting up yourself

01:27:38   and see how far you get,

01:27:39   because that skill is worth building.

01:27:41   - Another thing I would add is that,

01:27:43   I mean, different people learn in different ways,

01:27:45   and I always find this type of learning helps me,

01:27:47   but I think particularly with the command line,

01:27:49   because it's such a large problem domain,

01:27:52   like you think of it as one thing,

01:27:53   like I know quote unquote the command line,

01:27:56   or even worse, the terminal, right?

01:27:58   But really it's this entire universe

01:28:00   of different operating systems and different shells

01:28:03   and different pieces of software

01:28:04   that you are manipulating from those shells

01:28:06   on those operating systems,

01:28:07   and the number of variables is huge.

01:28:09   So I think one good way to get started on this

01:28:14   is to find some way to get a basic conceptual understanding

01:28:17   of the relationship of the pieces to each other,

01:28:20   rather than learning,

01:28:21   I know specifically the magic things that I type

01:28:24   to make this happen with this particular software

01:28:26   and this platform,

01:28:27   because then it can just become like sort of cargo culting,

01:28:29   where it's like, well, I know this command,

01:28:30   and I know that command,

01:28:31   and like if you don't understand what the little,

01:28:34   you know, greater than signs and ampersands

01:28:36   and whatever else you're typing on the command line,

01:28:38   or a dot slash, and like,

01:28:39   like if you don't understand all that stuff,

01:28:42   it can still seem like magic,

01:28:44   even though you've like quote unquote learned it,

01:28:47   understanding the fundamentals.

01:28:48   What is all this stuff?

01:28:49   What is a terminal?

01:28:50   What is, you know,

01:28:51   what happens when I type a command and hit return,

01:28:54   and how does that translate into something happening?

01:28:57   That is conceptual, and if you learn that,

01:29:00   then everything else is just details.

01:29:01   It's kind of like, you know,

01:29:02   learning the basis of programming.

01:29:04   You learn about loops, conditionals, and stuff like that,

01:29:06   and functions, and like with those basics,

01:29:08   a lot of programming language become like,

01:29:10   oh, I understand what functions are.

01:29:12   Just tell me how functions work in this language.

01:29:14   I understand what arrays are.

01:29:16   Just tell me how arrays work in this language, right?

01:29:18   And so that type of basic understanding,

01:29:20   no, it won't make you a super duper expert,

01:29:21   and you won't know the esoteric stuff,

01:29:23   or esoteric stuff as people tell me it's pronounced,

01:29:25   but it will really help you,

01:29:27   it will really help you not feel like you're at sea,

01:29:32   because it's like, oh, I knew how to set up Apache,

01:29:34   but now here's this new thing,

01:29:35   and I don't really understand what those things

01:29:37   I was typing for Apache,

01:29:39   to get Apache to work actually meant,

01:29:41   so I don't have any sort of ladder to grab onto

01:29:44   when I'm trying to set up Nginx, right?

01:29:47   So that's my suggestion.

01:29:48   Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions

01:29:50   of like where do I go to get that conceptual understanding,

01:29:52   but I think if you look at any piece of documentation,

01:29:54   you can tell, is this just telling me

01:29:55   how to set up a particular piece of software,

01:29:57   or is this trying to tell me this is what a shell is,

01:30:00   this is what Unix is, this is what files and directories are.

01:30:03   Here are some basics about it.

01:30:04   Like if you see something,

01:30:05   a guide that starts with that type of information,

01:30:08   I would dive in and make sure you get some of that

01:30:11   before you get neck deep in setting up your MySQL server.

01:30:16   - All right, and finally, Joseph Dykstra asks,

01:30:18   what are your opinions on people listening to ATP

01:30:20   faster than OneX?

01:30:21   Some podcasters dislike their shows being sped up.

01:30:25   As one of the people who does not edit this show,

01:30:28   I don't personally have a problem with it.

01:30:30   If you can and want to listen to us faster,

01:30:33   then go for it and do what you gotta do.

01:30:35   John, as the other person who does not edit this show,

01:30:37   do you have opinions about this?

01:30:39   - I don't care, people listen to it however they want.

01:30:41   I listen to my podcast at OneX,

01:30:43   but I understand why people don't.

01:30:44   So, you know, I mean, the only place

01:30:47   it impacts my life at all is people constantly telling us

01:30:50   that we sound drunk when they hear us at OneX,

01:30:52   but it's funny that it's always the same thing.

01:30:55   It's always you sound drunk,

01:30:56   not you sound tired or slow or groggy.

01:30:59   It's always drunk, so they always go right to the drinking.

01:31:01   Anyway, other than that one effect,

01:31:03   I don't care, listen to whatever you want.

01:31:05   We're just glad you listen.

01:31:07   - Exactly, Mr. Editor, however, what are your thoughts?

01:31:10   - Basically the same.

01:31:11   I mean, I make a podcast app,

01:31:13   and I give people speed controls.

01:31:15   - He's the one who makes the app that does this.

01:31:17   - Yeah, I make the app that most of our listeners

01:31:20   use to listen to the show in, and I give them the option,

01:31:22   and it's totally fine.

01:31:24   I listen faster than OneX myself to almost everything.

01:31:27   There are very few shows I listen to at OneX.

01:31:29   Most shows I listen to at about One and a Quarter X.

01:31:32   So it's not super fast, but it's faster than normal.

01:31:35   And there are indeed a lot of podcasters

01:31:37   who have almost a moral objection.

01:31:40   You know, or similar features like Smart Speed.

01:31:44   We put those silences in there for a reason,

01:31:46   and if you shorten them,

01:31:47   you're ruining our editorial choices.

01:31:49   I get why people would think that, but I don't think that.

01:31:54   I think that we put our podcasts out there

01:31:58   for people to listen to, and once we do that,

01:32:00   it's in your hands.

01:32:01   Like, a book publisher doesn't tell their readers,

01:32:05   like, you aren't allowed to skim any pages in my book.

01:32:08   You have to read every word very carefully.

01:32:10   You can never skim, you can never look forward.

01:32:13   Like, that's impractical and unreasonable

01:32:17   to expect of people.

01:32:18   What actually happens is, you put your work out there

01:32:21   the way you intend for it to be done,

01:32:23   but then once you put it out there,

01:32:26   it becomes the audience's, like, to do with what they want.

01:32:29   And they're not gonna experience it

01:32:32   the way you intend 100% of the time,

01:32:35   and you just gotta deal with that.

01:32:37   So we put our podcast out there,

01:32:39   and you can listen to it however you want.

01:32:41   As Jon said, we're just glad that you listen.

01:32:43   So, thanks.

01:32:45   - I feel like the point stands about, though,

01:32:46   like, the skimming type thing.

01:32:47   Like, I think an author would feel like,

01:32:49   oh, I don't want people skimming my thing.

01:32:51   And the reason I listen to everything in 1X

01:32:53   is because I do wanna hear those silences.

01:32:55   But everyone has different priorities.

01:32:57   If you don't have time to get through an entire episode

01:33:01   in your commute unless you do it at a faster speed,

01:33:03   or if you find it too boring to listen to people

01:33:05   talk in 1X, like, those outweigh the thing of like,

01:33:08   oh, I, you know, 'cause you are missing some nuances

01:33:10   of timing that, you know, gaps in silence can be annoying,

01:33:14   and you're getting rid of the annoyance,

01:33:15   but sometimes the gaps in silence can make a joke funnier,

01:33:17   and you're missing out on that, and it's a trade-off.

01:33:19   But people understand what the trade-offs are,

01:33:21   and they make the trade-off that makes sense for them.

01:33:23   If time compression is more important

01:33:25   than hearing the pauses in someone's speech,

01:33:27   that's the choice they make.

01:33:28   And same thing with skimming.

01:33:30   I think if we did a music show,

01:33:34   I think all of us would have a bit more of an objection,

01:33:36   'cause if you're like, but music, it's like,

01:33:38   it's rhythmic, and you're hearing it faster,

01:33:40   and it's really weird, and smarts being,

01:33:41   might do weird stuff to music.

01:33:43   But other than just that one little song break we have,

01:33:45   it's not a music thing.

01:33:46   So because it's speech, I think it is less onerous,

01:33:48   but everything you said is the reason I do listen at 1X,

01:33:52   and the skimming thing from authors is the reason

01:33:54   people who make content might wish

01:33:56   you didn't listen to it spit up,

01:33:59   because they feel like you're missing something

01:34:00   that they worked hard on, like, oh, you skimmed that page,

01:34:03   and that was actually my best passage,

01:34:04   but you just really kind of skipped over it.

01:34:06   But that's, there's nothing you can do about that,

01:34:10   and I bet the author would just be happy

01:34:12   that you bought their book,

01:34:13   and so that's where we're coming from.

01:34:14   - Yeah, and there are people who watch movies

01:34:16   at faster than 1X.

01:34:19   Like, this phenomenon is spreading,

01:34:22   and we have so much media available to us

01:34:26   in the modern world.

01:34:27   We have such a surplus of available media.

01:34:31   Somebody who watches movies at 2X,

01:34:33   or listens to podcasts at 2X, they don't hate movies.

01:34:36   They don't hate podcasts.

01:34:37   - Well, the movie people kind of hate,

01:34:39   they kind of hate movies.

01:34:40   - Well, maybe, yeah, maybe.

01:34:41   I haven't tried that, actually.

01:34:42   - It's like music.

01:34:43   I feel like speech is the one where it's the most excusable,

01:34:47   because we're not singing,

01:34:48   and you're not listening to the melodic sound of our voices.

01:34:51   That's not why, presumably,

01:34:52   not why you're listening to the show.

01:34:53   It's not an ASMR show, right?

01:34:56   It's a transference of information

01:34:58   and to secondarily emotion,

01:35:00   which I think still comes through,

01:35:01   whereas if it was music, much less so,

01:35:03   and I feel like movie, because there's a visual element,

01:35:06   and that gets spit up, and everyone walks fast and stuff.

01:35:10   - I mean, honestly, I don't want to do that to movies,

01:35:13   but I kind of get why some people do,

01:35:15   'cause it's like the same thing.

01:35:17   And when we have this massive surplus

01:35:20   of content available to us,

01:35:22   the reason I speed up podcasts by a little bit

01:35:25   is because I want to listen to more podcasts.

01:35:27   And I have more podcasts that I want to listen to

01:35:30   than I have time.

01:35:31   Sometimes, if I get really behind in my queue,

01:35:32   and I have this massive queue,

01:35:34   I'm not gonna go delete things I want to listen to.

01:35:37   I will just increase my speed for that week.

01:35:39   And then once I run out of things,

01:35:41   I'll slow it back down again.

01:35:42   That's a control I have.

01:35:45   And I'm doing all this so that I don't have to cut things,

01:35:49   so I don't have to listen to fewer podcasts.

01:35:52   And I still have room to try new podcasts.

01:35:55   That's why I do this.

01:35:56   And I think that's the reason why most people do it.

01:36:00   Most people I know who listen to podcasts faster than 1X

01:36:03   listen to a ton of podcasts.

01:36:05   So if their alternative is just listen to fewer,

01:36:09   I feel like everyone loses there.

01:36:11   So yeah, people can listen to whoever they want.

01:36:13   - A good example of sped up videos,

01:36:16   W2C sessions, I often watch it faster than 1X

01:36:18   just because there's lots of,

01:36:20   because Apple trains their speakers to take their time

01:36:22   and pause between slides, which is great and everything,

01:36:24   but sometimes I more or less know most of the material

01:36:27   and I just want to get to the good stuff.

01:36:28   So just letting it run at 1.5X

01:36:30   while half paying attention to it

01:36:31   is the great way to do that.

01:36:33   That's visual, but it's mostly just spoken word and slides.

01:36:36   So I don't get to see people walking across the stage

01:36:38   really fast and making it distracting.

01:36:40   - Right, and they do occasionally

01:36:41   when they're going in and out of demos.

01:36:42   Yeah, I do the same thing.

01:36:43   I usually watch W2C videos at 1.5X.

01:36:45   And yeah, it does sound a little bit funny

01:36:47   and people do walk funny when you see them coming on and off,

01:36:49   but it's fine because that's something like,

01:36:51   not everything is a masterpiece of art.

01:36:54   Like not every video that people watch

01:36:58   is a handcrafted piece of film

01:37:01   that has been made by experts who every second counts.

01:37:03   Like a lot of what people watch is stuff on YouTube.

01:37:06   And so to watch some of that at 2X,

01:37:09   2X wouldn't be fast enough

01:37:10   for a lot of the stuff I find on YouTube. (laughs)

01:37:14   - Brutal.

01:37:15   - And the same thing is true for podcasts.

01:37:17   So many podcasts, like ours, are produced

01:37:20   in a casual conversational format

01:37:23   where we are not heavily editing this show.

01:37:26   We are not scripting this show.

01:37:28   If you're listening to one of the big publishers' podcasts,

01:37:31   every line of what you're listening to

01:37:33   from almost all the major podcasts

01:37:36   that are produced by these big companies,

01:37:37   those are scripted.

01:37:39   Almost every single line is scripted.

01:37:40   And then it's edited to an inch of its life.

01:37:43   They have massive production and writing going into them.

01:37:47   Even things that sound off the cuff

01:37:49   are usually not on the big shows.

01:37:51   They are almost always scripted.

01:37:54   And so when you're listening to something like that,

01:37:55   they can say, "Oh, we handcrafted all these silences,

01:37:58   "all these words, all these phrases.

01:37:59   "You can't gloss over any of this

01:38:01   "'cause it was all made intentionally."

01:38:03   That isn't true for most podcasts.

01:38:05   Most podcasts are done closer to what we're doing here,

01:38:08   of just people talking.

01:38:10   And they're off the cuff.

01:38:11   Maybe they're going off of an outline.

01:38:13   Maybe they have a few things they want to say,

01:38:14   but for the most part, it's more conversational.

01:38:16   That's part of what makes the medium great, I think.

01:38:18   I think people really appreciate

01:38:20   the conversational nature of it.

01:38:21   But that is going to also have, by definition,

01:38:23   a lot of dead space, a lot of dead air,

01:38:26   and phrasing that is wasteful,

01:38:29   and people repeating themselves like I do all the time.

01:38:31   Having something that goes through it faster,

01:38:34   you're not missing this marvelous work of art

01:38:36   between every single word.

01:38:38   You're just hearing conversation a little bit faster.

01:38:40   And that's totally fine.

01:38:42   Anyway, thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:38:44   Hover, Squarespace, and Fracture.

01:38:47   And we'll see you next week.

01:38:48   (upbeat music)

01:38:51   ♫ Now the show is over

01:38:53   ♫ They didn't even mean to begin

01:38:56   ♫ 'Cause it was accidental

01:38:57   ♫ Accidental

01:38:58   ♫ Oh, it was accidental

01:39:00   ♫ Accidental

01:39:01   ♫ John didn't do any research

01:39:03   ♫ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:39:06   ♫ 'Cause it was accidental

01:39:08   ♫ Accidental

01:39:09   ♫ Oh, it was accidental

01:39:10   ♫ Accidental

01:39:12   ♫ And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:39:16   ♫ And if you're into Twitter

01:39:20   ♫ You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L

01:39:24   ♫ I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss

01:39:27   ♫ M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:39:30   ♫ N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N

01:39:33   ♫ S-I-R-A-C

01:39:35   ♫ U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:39:38   ♫ It's accidental

01:39:39   ♫ It's accidental

01:39:41   ♫ They didn't mean to accidental

01:39:44   ♫ Accidental

01:39:46   ♫ Tech podcast so long

01:39:49   (buzzer)

01:39:51   - Don't install the betas.

01:39:53   Oh my god.

01:39:54   Why is everyone installing the betas?

01:39:56   Why did Apple make this the public beta?

01:39:59   - Did you hear that Merlin installed it

01:40:01   on his phone and his iPad?

01:40:04   - I mean, I did, but that's stupid.

01:40:06   - On his main phone.

01:40:07   You installed it on your main phone?

01:40:09   - Yeah, I waited 'til beta two

01:40:11   and I installed it on my main phone.

01:40:12   And it totally solved my robocall problem,

01:40:16   but it introduced a lot of other problems.

01:40:18   - I'm glad you waited 'til beta two,

01:40:20   which shows that you weren't like,

01:40:21   "I can't wait, I have to install it."

01:40:22   But I think you just waited for the number

01:40:25   to go from one to two and didn't check.

01:40:27   Hey, is beta two actually better than beta one

01:40:30   in terms of stability?

01:40:30   Like, well, it's one more, so I'm installing it,

01:40:32   and now you found out.

01:40:33   (laughing)

01:40:34   Not really.

01:40:35   - It's so bad.

01:40:36   - I wouldn't even install beta two on my iPad.

01:40:40   I haven't installed it anywhere.

01:40:41   I wanted beta two on my iPad,

01:40:42   but then I'm like, "Let me just read about this a little bit."

01:40:44   And I said, "Nah, I'm gonna skip that."

01:40:47   Wait a little longer.

01:40:47   Let me tell you, people,

01:40:49   it's probably already too late for most of you,

01:40:51   but if it's not too late,

01:40:52   if you're still on the fence

01:40:53   and you haven't installed the betas yet,

01:40:54   don't install the betas.

01:40:55   The public beta is garbage.

01:40:57   The public beta should not have been released

01:40:59   as a public beta.

01:41:00   It is developer beta two of everything, that's what it is.

01:41:02   And developer beta two is terrible.

01:41:05   It feels like beta one still

01:41:08   of an average to poor quality year.

01:41:11   I have tons of beta problems

01:41:14   on my developer beta two installs of everything.

01:41:17   The iPad is bad.

01:41:19   The phone is bad.

01:41:21   Catalina, I'm not really using much.

01:41:22   I'm only booting into it occasionally,

01:41:24   so I don't know how bad it is.

01:41:25   But a lot of people are having problems with these betas.

01:41:27   These are really rough.

01:41:29   You should not be running these.

01:41:30   And I do think Apple has done a great disservice

01:41:34   by releasing such an incredibly rough set of builds

01:41:37   as the public betas.

01:41:38   - So Merlin doesn't yell at me four weeks from now

01:41:41   when we record our next episode.

01:41:42   Translated from hyperbolic conversational podcast speak,

01:41:46   what Marco was saying is that even the very latest builds

01:41:49   of the public beta are not particularly stable

01:41:51   and you should be aware of that.

01:41:52   He says it as don't install that,

01:41:54   but obviously if you need to install it

01:41:56   or if you want to install it and just deal with the bugs,

01:41:58   we just want you to know what you're getting into.

01:42:00   So what we're telling you is that they are not stable

01:42:02   and tons of crap doesn't work.

01:42:03   If you hear that and say, that's fine,

01:42:05   I still wanna install it, go for it, right?

01:42:07   But we just want you to be aware

01:42:09   that if you have experiences based on iOS 12 beta,

01:42:13   you thought, oh betas aren't that bad.

01:42:14   This is more back to the bad old days of iOS 5

01:42:17   where the beta is like barely even functional

01:42:19   and basic things don't work.

01:42:21   So just so you're aware of that.

01:42:22   So when people say don't install the beta,

01:42:25   and speaking half to Merlin and half to other people,

01:42:27   they're not saying literally,

01:42:28   I forbid you to install the beta.

01:42:30   By all means, install it if you wanna install it.

01:42:32   Just be aware.

01:42:33   We're providing you information and experience

01:42:35   that we either have done it ourselves foolishly

01:42:38   or know other people who have done it

01:42:40   and have felt the pain.

01:42:41   And so now you know,

01:42:42   is this a pain that you want in your life?

01:42:44   Maybe it is, maybe you got a spare device, go crazy.

01:42:46   Or maybe not.

01:42:48   - Speak for yourself, I actually mean don't install the betas.

01:42:50   (laughing)

01:42:51   - All right, well,

01:42:52   - They're really bad. - Margo is very extreme.

01:42:54   Margo has banned you from installing the betas, everybody.

01:42:56   That's it, I'm sorry, I tried to stop 'em, but.

01:42:58   - Yeah, and there's a number of good reasons why.

01:43:01   So first of all, and one thing that I didn't even do

01:43:04   that I didn't consider,

01:43:06   but that a friend of ours remarked the other day

01:43:09   that I think is a really good point.

01:43:12   Like on iOS, you know, you can always step back from a beta

01:43:16   if you do a full restore with these certain steps,

01:43:19   like you're able to un-beta something,

01:43:20   so you kinda have a way out.

01:43:22   On Mac OS, I've mentioned how I do this separate install

01:43:25   in a separate APFS volume, or partition,

01:43:28   whatever they call them,

01:43:29   so that way like the data stays separate

01:43:31   from my Mojave installation,

01:43:33   you do a dual boot scenario,

01:43:35   or some people would do external disks to do that.

01:43:38   So you're kinda keeping it separate.

01:43:40   One thing that I didn't consider,

01:43:42   that I'm always bad at whenever I do this,

01:43:44   is that iCloud, and your iCloud data,

01:43:49   your iCloud account,

01:43:51   is your primary data volume in a lot of ways.

01:43:55   And you are logging into a beta with your iCloud account,

01:43:59   you're logging into your main data.

01:44:02   And iCloud is especially risky to do this with,

01:44:04   because if your iCloud account gets messed up by the beta,

01:44:09   there is no time machine for iCloud,

01:44:12   there is no recovery for iCloud,

01:44:14   you can't just go and restore your data

01:44:17   back to where it was on iCloud.

01:44:20   So in a way, logging into your iCloud account on a beta

01:44:24   is the most risky thing you could possibly do to that data,

01:44:27   because you are putting it at the whims of the beta world,

01:44:31   which is often very unreliable,

01:44:33   especially in the early betas,

01:44:33   especially with iCloud data,

01:44:35   and you can't step it back.

01:44:38   Once that data is touched by the new installation,

01:44:40   that's it, it isn't in its own little separate sandbox,

01:44:43   you are dealing with your live and permanent iCloud data

01:44:47   with beta software.

01:44:48   So if you are going to install the betas,

01:44:51   not only should you do it on dedicated hardware,

01:44:54   you should also not log into your iCloud account with it.

01:44:58   And so you start to think about

01:44:59   what this actually means in practice,

01:45:01   if it's not on your primary devices,

01:45:03   and you're not gonna log into iCloud from it,

01:45:06   what the hell are you gonna do with it?

01:45:08   - I mean, that's why we had the same conversation

01:45:11   with Merlin, and I was surprised that people

01:45:14   were just thinking of this now,

01:45:15   because it's been true as long as iCloud has existed,

01:45:18   and that's why I had all those Apple IDs.

01:45:19   Remember my big Apple ID saga?

01:45:21   All those Apple IDs were the Apple IDs

01:45:24   that I would use with beta versions of macOS,

01:45:26   'cause I would never use my real Apple IDs.

01:45:27   It was worse back in the old days.

01:45:29   They would just completely hose your data routinely.

01:45:32   And then there was sort of the middle years

01:45:33   where Apple was upgrading the storage format,

01:45:36   do you remember that?

01:45:37   Like they changed the storage format out of Notes,

01:45:38   they moved them from IMAP into their regular stuff,

01:45:40   and sometimes when they, you know,

01:45:42   like there would be a one-way backend transition

01:45:45   that if you did transition your Notes on that Apple ID,

01:45:50   your other devices could no longer read it,

01:45:52   or couldn't read it correctly, or it's even true today.

01:45:56   It's like I'm sitting in front of a LCAP on this Mac.

01:45:59   I can't see some of the Notes that I create

01:46:01   on newer operating systems on this Mac.

01:46:03   It still works with them, but the Notes that are made

01:46:05   with like newer features just don't show up at all

01:46:08   on this Mac.

01:46:09   So if you're gonna have beta OS's

01:46:12   and you're gonna be installing them, have spare Apple IDs.

01:46:14   It's kind of a pain in the butt, as I discovered,

01:46:17   especially when you decide you don't need them anymore,

01:46:19   but that's the safe way to do it.

01:46:20   Spare Apple IDs with fake data, and it's like,

01:46:21   well, what are you even doing?

01:46:23   You're basically doing what I would do for my reviews.

01:46:25   You're exploring the operating system in a safe way.

01:46:28   It's on a separate volume, it's with separate Apple IDs.

01:46:31   You start filling your fake Apple IDs with semi-real data

01:46:34   so you can see what it's like.

01:46:36   Like it's not fun opening up Notes and seeing no Notes.

01:46:39   You don't know how the sync works until you start

01:46:41   adding Notes and adding pictures to your Notes

01:46:42   and all that other stuff.

01:46:44   But that's definitely the safest way to do it.

01:46:45   Now I have to say, in recent years,

01:46:47   Apple has hosed your iCloud data far less often.

01:46:52   But since I've always been using spare Apple IDs,

01:46:55   I can't say that definitively.

01:46:57   Usually what I do is I wait until like the release

01:47:00   before the final release, and then I'll put my real

01:47:02   Apple ID on a beta system, and usually by then

01:47:04   it's fairly safe that they're not gonna hose your stuff,

01:47:06   but not always.

01:47:07   And as for time machine for iCloud,

01:47:10   it's especially true of big data sets,

01:47:12   but for small data sets you do have an out,

01:47:14   and I've used this out a couple of times.

01:47:16   For example, contacts lets you save,

01:47:19   I think they still call it an address book archive

01:47:21   or whatever, lets you save a single archive

01:47:23   of all the information, and it's small,

01:47:26   'cause like how many contacts do you have?

01:47:27   Worst case scenario, if iCloud hoses everything,

01:47:31   just wipe all of your contacts, wipe it from every

01:47:33   single device, wipe it from, you know, just tell,

01:47:35   I have zero contacts, and then just restore

01:47:37   from the address book archive.

01:47:38   Can't do that with 100,000 photos and metadata

01:47:41   in your iPhone library.

01:47:42   So, you know, there is no time machine.

01:47:45   For select sets, there is a way to export or reimport,

01:47:49   but in general, use testing Apple IDs,

01:47:52   and then just deal with the fact that you're gonna have

01:47:54   20 Apple IDs that you have to call Apple

01:47:56   about five years from now.

01:47:59   - I really wanna put 13 on my iPad,

01:48:01   and I do have some travel coming up in a couple of months

01:48:06   when presumably whatever beta we're on,

01:48:08   if not the released version at that point,

01:48:10   will be much more stable.

01:48:11   - Install the beta right before you get on the plane,

01:48:13   that's the best time to install betas.

01:48:14   - That's the right moment.

01:48:15   - Traveling with beta software is awesome.

01:48:18   You should be installing it while you're on battery

01:48:20   in the airport.

01:48:20   - The airport wifi.

01:48:23   - The airport wifi.

01:48:24   Oh man, that's funny.

01:48:26   No, but I really wanna put it on my iPad really badly,

01:48:29   and I have resisted so far,

01:48:32   and from everything I've heard

01:48:33   even before recording this episode,

01:48:35   it sounds like I've made the right call.

01:48:37   And usually it's been at least passable by public beta time,

01:48:42   and as you're saying, Marco, everything I've heard

01:48:45   is that it is not even passable yet,

01:48:47   and to stay away, which is what I'm gonna be doing.

01:48:50   - I made that joke about installing your thing

01:48:52   in the airport, but in case you don't remember,

01:48:55   I did, didn't reinstall, I reset my Apple Watch

01:49:00   in line at WMC.

01:49:02   - Indeed, I do remember that.

01:49:04   - I left the hotel and didn't realize

01:49:05   that it was failing to pair with my phone entirely,

01:49:09   and I talked to the Apple Watch experts in line around me,

01:49:12   AKA underscore.

01:49:13   - Underscore, yeah.

01:49:14   - And he said, yeah, you just need to reset,

01:49:18   erase all data, whatever that option is called,

01:49:20   where I reset and erase all data on your watch,

01:49:23   and a series zero takes like an hour and a half to do that,

01:49:27   maybe it was two hours, and I was looking at it,

01:49:29   I'm like, is this gonna, you know,

01:49:30   'cause I'm not anywhere near a charger,

01:49:32   it's just on my wrist, I think it was at least an hour

01:49:35   watching that thing slowly. - It was a long time.

01:49:38   - But it didn't kill the entire battery,

01:49:39   it did actually reset everything and pair with my phone again

01:49:43   and I restored a backup from the last time

01:49:46   I had worn my watch, and everything turned out fine.

01:49:49   (beeping)