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ATP

324: Automatic Kicking Machine

 

00:00:00   So you live in a... affluent, is that right? No, why do you, it's only two ways to do it. Just

00:00:07   do the opposite of what you think you're gonna do. It's not, it's affluent, that just sounds wrong to

00:00:11   me. But that's how the pronounce the word, I didn't make it up. Oh god. Just think about it. Maybe

00:00:16   think of like Aflac, the Aflac duck. Oh! Affluent, Aflac. That's a good Mnemonic. It's a good what now?

00:00:24   It was a joke. I know it's Mnemonic. It was a joke. It was a joke. Everybody relax. Okay, so we should

00:00:30   start right at the top of the show and remind everyone. I know I got really obnoxious about it

00:00:36   last week. You're welcome on the, or I should say that Marco should say you're welcome, because I

00:00:42   noticed he cut quite a bit of my lecturing, as he should have, about how now is the time,

00:00:47   ladies and gentlemen. Now is the time, ladies and gentlemen, to go to ATP.fm/store in order to find

00:00:54   links to Cotton Bureau's website where we have all sorts of different merchandise up. Every year,

00:01:00   somebody, actually usually many somebody, says, "Oh, I meant to do it and I forgot and I can,

00:01:07   is there any way? Is there any?" No, there is no way. Pull the car over, stop your run,

00:01:13   do whatever you do need to do to safely equip yourself to go to ATP.fm/store, please,

00:01:19   and buy yourself some delightful merch. And I'll just leave it at that this week. Moving on, let's

00:01:24   start with some follow-up. Rob McAlvey has written in to say that the Australia Post website terms

00:01:30   and conditions have a whole section telling you what to do to get approval to link to their

00:01:34   website. This came up within the context of, what is it, Luminary, something like that? I already

00:01:39   forgot the name of the stupid thing. Yeah, Luminary. It was telling them that they, you can't

00:01:42   put my podcast in your feed. So Rob writes that, you know, in the context of us saying who's in

00:01:47   control of, you know, whether or not a podcast ends up in Luminary, and we were joking about,

00:01:51   well, who's in control of who links to your website? Well, apparently the Australia Post

00:01:55   has some guidelines about how you can link to their website, which is something else. It's not

00:02:02   that long, but it's surprising to me that this exists. Well, you're saying this is a thing that

00:02:06   websites used to do before they understood the web. This is notable because this is a current

00:02:09   website that is live right now that says if you want to establish a link to the website, you must

00:02:13   first seek approval from Australia Posts. And also if the nature or content of your website changes

00:02:19   in any significant way, you must contact the Australia Post. Yeah, we'll get right on that.

00:02:22   Well, this brings the obvious question of, are we allowed to link to this from our show notes?

00:02:26   Yeah, that's a good point. That is a good point. Come and get us, Australia Post.

00:02:29   Come at me, bro. Roger Allen Ford, who is an associate professor of law somewhere,

00:02:35   writes, this is, hey, whoever put this in the show notes didn't include the where. I'm sorry,

00:02:40   Roger Allen. I didn't want to nail it down too much. He did get the location of where he's an

00:02:44   associate professor of law, but you know, I don't know. Don't be creepy. All right. By providing an

00:02:49   app that allows members of the public to receive transmissions of album art and podcast audio,

00:02:54   Luminary could be said to perform or display those copyrighted works. By embedding a podcast

00:02:59   copyrighted artwork within the app and playing copyrighted episodes, a podcast player app would

00:03:03   be infringing on the exclusive rights to public performance or display. I don't know why the

00:03:08   Times and others want to block Luminary, but they are essentially on solid legal ground doing so.

00:03:12   I should have said context. I'm sorry. This was, you know, whether or not it's even really possible

00:03:17   for these podcasts and podcast hosts to block their shows from appearing Luminary. And I think

00:03:23   Roger wasn't necessarily saying that this was a slam dunk case, if I recall this email correctly,

00:03:29   but I believe he was basically saying, it's possible. Like it is certainly plausible in

00:03:33   the MythBusters, you know, canon. It is plausible that this could be enforced in American copyright

00:03:40   law. Yeah, this was a very long email that I was trying to condense here. But you know, this is

00:03:44   another instance where, you know, just because something is legal doesn't mean it's not also

00:03:50   stupid. Or reverse that because it really is very silly. But legally speaking, there are lots of

00:03:58   legal arguments you can make in favor of the idea that law, what can you do? That's why we have

00:04:04   lawyers. The thing with copyright law too is like, I mean, like much of law, if someone makes any

00:04:09   kind of copyright legal claim against you, you can't really fight it. Like you can't because it's

00:04:15   never going to get to a court. You never need to argue with somebody, well, what I'm doing is fair

00:04:18   use or what I'm doing is not constitute public performance. Like you're never going to argue

00:04:22   that. What's going to happen is if somebody has a complaint that they want their stuff off your app

00:04:27   or platform, they're going to complain to you. And if you don't respond, they're going to complain to

00:04:32   Apple or Google, you know, the app store provider. And if they don't respond, like they're going to

00:04:35   complain to your web host, like they can complain to different infrastructure providers up the chain

00:04:40   until one of them doesn't want to deal with it and just kicks you off. So the reality is there is no

00:04:45   copyright law defense online. If somebody wants to make a stink, they make a stink and you have to

00:04:51   comply. So the reality here is this is not a legal problem. This is a market problem that the only

00:04:59   defense that anybody has against this kind of thing is making an app or service where it is not in

00:05:05   anybody's best interest to opt out of your service or it is not, or like none, nobody would even think

00:05:10   to do that because it seems so ridiculous to do that. And that's where most podcast apps land in

00:05:16   that kind of area. But Luminary, by angering everybody, everyone is, you know, looking for

00:05:22   things they can do because they're mad. And that's, I think that's what a lot of this stuff was.

00:05:26   We are sponsored this week by Clear, the absolute best way to get through airport security.

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00:07:03   our show. Overcast has come out with a really freaking cool new feature and I'd like to lodge

00:07:13   a complaint that hopefully we can rectify right now. Let's do it. I was listening to Under the

00:07:19   Radar which is an excellent podcast with Marco and our good friend Dave Smith and you kind of

00:07:27   fluffed over all the technical aspects of how this feature works and we'll explain the feature

00:07:32   momentarily but I am here for the technical explanation of how this feature works to the

00:07:38   degree that you are willing to share. Now I should probably back up and explain what the hell I'm

00:07:42   talking about but I would like it to be on record that I am all about figuring out or not figuring

00:07:47   out but hearing about how you did this because this sounds fascinating to me but what am I

00:07:52   talking about? So out of nowhere and I did not know this was coming. I don't think Jon knew this

00:07:58   was coming and you had said on maybe Under the Radar that only a couple of people did know it

00:08:04   was coming but all of a sudden in the last couple of days Marco and his app Overcast have released

00:08:10   this new clips feature and the idea is and Marco if I'm you know characterizing this unfairly just

00:08:17   feel free to cut me off but the idea is hey you know podcasts are not easy to share in the same

00:08:21   way like a gif or in some degree a YouTube video is and Marco has for years and years had timestamp

00:08:29   links where you can go to a the Overcast website and it will open to a specific time in the podcast

00:08:36   which works great except for all the big shows with dynamic ad insertion for all the reasons we

00:08:40   already spoke about etc etc plus it's still hard to know like am I supposed to be listening to the

00:08:45   last 45 minutes of this episode and I'm just starting in the middle or am I supposed to listen

00:08:49   to 15 seconds or what what's the deal here and so Marco and perhaps you can discuss motivations

00:08:56   in a second other than that but it seemed like the idea was hey let's make it easy to share this

00:09:01   stuff and you know if they share it with Overcast clips feature that's some you know kind of

00:09:07   subliminal that's not the right word for it but kind of you know quiet marketing for Overcast

00:09:11   but then because you're a good person you decided to optionally allow people to remove the Overcast

00:09:17   branding or add branding for Apple Podcasts or even some of your competitors which I think is

00:09:22   really tremendous and I hope I don't sound sarcastic because I really do mean that I really

00:09:26   think that this is the right way to do it not the easy way not both in the literal sense of the word

00:09:33   word but also in the like should I really be promoting my competitors kind of thing but I

00:09:39   think this is the right way to do it and you're a good man Charlie Brown and I used this feature for

00:09:43   the first time a couple hours ago and I loved it I really want to know even if it's privately how you

00:09:50   did all this because I am neck deep in doing things that are considerably less complex and considerably

00:09:56   less advanced and so the thought of trying to implement this just makes me you know googly-eyed

00:10:02   but one way or another before we dive in if we even do dive into implementation I just wanted to

00:10:08   first of all publicly say I love this feature I think it's great I think you did right by

00:10:12   everyone including listeners including competitors including podcasters I really think this is a home

00:10:18   run but if you would like to revise anything I said or add any clarity please feel free.

00:10:26   No you're just saying how awesome I am I think I'm gonna leave it at that.

00:10:30   I have to say how awesome it is first too before Marco goes.

00:10:32   I'll allow it.

00:10:33   One of the parts that Casey might have left off which I think is the most important part of this

00:10:40   entire feature actually before I get into that I'll briefly touch on the links at the bottom

00:10:46   where like you could link to competitors and stuff like that I feel like there's a little bit of the

00:10:50   enemy of my enemy is my friend going on here because Marco does not link to Luminary.

00:10:55   Well honestly like so like the I mean I don't honestly I don't care about Luminary.

00:11:01   Luminary is not a threat to me Spotify is a threat to all of us but I don't know how to link to

00:11:06   Spotify when what I have is an iTunes ID. Every app that I link to there has a way that I can

00:11:12   generate a URL knowing the iTunes ID of the podcast. I don't know how to do that for some

00:11:18   other services like Spotify and so I don't do that if Spotify had some way that I could say like you

00:11:23   know Spotify.com/podcast/itunes12345 and I know that anybody I sent there would get redirected

00:11:29   to whatever Spotify's giant garbage URL was would be for that podcast I would add them.

00:11:34   Really? I always thought you were mostly linking to open to actual real podcast apps

00:11:38   as in they they read RSS feeds. There's two sides of this like I do want to only support open

00:11:46   based podcast apps if I can but also I want the share page to be so useful that big publishers

00:11:53   will be tempted to use it and if big publishers you know have a lot of their audience on Spotify

00:12:00   they're not going to even consider using a page like a you know a share page that has a bunch of

00:12:06   other apps but not Spotify. Now that being said this might be a a moot concern because big

00:12:12   publishers would probably never use these at all anyway they're probably going to use only their

00:12:15   own stuff because that's how this how they usually work so like this might be you know a moot

00:12:20   argument but ideally I would like that I would like those pages to be as like broad appeal on

00:12:28   the client side as possible. All right well getting back to my original point and then I think it's

00:12:32   the most important feature of this and which may not have been clear in all of our descriptions

00:12:36   when you activate this feature what you get in the end that you can stick in your tweet or

00:12:43   whatever the hell is a video which is like you're sharing podcasts if I'm sharing podcasts why the

00:12:50   hell do I get a video at the end of it it's not it's not a video medium it's audio and Overcast

00:12:56   already had audio share links granted without an ending timestamp but Marco could have added an

00:12:59   ending timestamp or a duration very easily as another query parameter or something but he didn't

00:13:03   why is this feature video the fact that it's video is I think the most important and most

00:13:09   attractive thing about this feature for a couple of reasons one is the obvious one of like when it

00:13:14   makes the video the content of the actual video includes like essentially the brand of the podcast

00:13:19   the the album art or whatever the hell you want to call it of the podcast which is important for

00:13:24   branding and recognition to know instead of just following an Overcast timestamp link and I mean

00:13:30   you'd go to overcast.com and you'd see the thing or whatever but like it's yeah so there is a

00:13:34   presentational detail there but I think the most important reason is that people want something

00:13:39   to look at and it seems weird because it's like well isn't it all just about being in the headphones

00:13:44   and just listening to the thing or whatever just and the only thing that happens on it is like

00:13:49   there's a progress bar that progresses just being able to see a progress bar and to see how much

00:13:52   longer there is in a clip individually to see the album art while you listen people like to look at

00:13:57   videos and like I don't know if this was a conscious like if you went through this whole

00:14:02   thought process or decided this was important about it but I think it is essential I think part

00:14:07   of the reason people share these is because all the social sharing services are optimized for

00:14:12   sharing video you can play it right in the thing you don't get sent elsewhere you don't get sent

00:14:16   to a website all social media sharing type things have to be good at sharing video because all the

00:14:22   gifts get turned into video and all the little you know when vine was popular that was out there just

00:14:26   like it's part of social media part of good use of social media is to embed tiny videos so even if

00:14:33   you're sharing podcasts if you do it as embedding tiny videos that is the the the native lingua

00:14:39   franca of the entire social networking world and in practice I think people love it because it's

00:14:45   video I like it because it's video I find myself watching the little video of the thing which has

00:14:50   a tiny little progress bar that goes from left to right while I sort of see the album art out of my

00:14:54   peripheral vision it is a very simple feature but I think it is the genius part of this feature that

00:15:00   if you were just thinking about how to do this in a straightforward way you would have found a way to

00:15:04   share audio and then you would have found out how bad tiny audio clips are handled by most social

00:15:09   media networks I mean that is the entire feature the entire feature is generating video for social

00:15:15   network sharing like that is the whole point because and like you know I basically wrote the

00:15:20   feature for instagram like that everything else has been like oh it's nice to also use other

00:15:24   things but like the very first layout I made was the portrait layout for instagram stories

00:15:28   the reason why the videos are 16 by 9 or 9 by 16 or square is because those are the exact dimensions

00:15:36   of what instagram is is optimized for I even looked up like you know one some of the first

00:15:42   questions I had were like what is the what is the ideal resolution that you can submit to instagram

00:15:47   for a video like you know the pixel resolution and stuff and and by the way there's no information

00:15:52   about most of this out there and there's things like you know with instagram stories there are it

00:15:59   overlays certain controls in certain parts of the video so that's why I don't have anything in the

00:16:04   very top or very bottom of an instagram story video so anyway yeah this this was built for

00:16:09   social networks because the fact is like you know you said earlier like audio is the format of

00:16:15   podcasts but video is the format of sharing and so if you want to share things socially it needs to

00:16:23   be a photo or a video anything that like if you try to put something that doesn't have those it's

00:16:28   very easy for people to skim over and I think there's also you know like I think you mentioned

00:16:32   this I think there's also a an appeal of like when you are playing one of these clips there is

00:16:39   something for your eyes to do so like if it was suppose the twitter app or the instagram app were

00:16:45   really optimized for playing audio they're not but suppose they were if you do that you hit play you

00:16:51   keep scrolling and you keep scrolling you're reading things with your eyes and the linguistic

00:16:57   parsing parts of your brain and so you stop listening to what's being said if it's a talk

00:17:01   rate if it's a talk segment of the audio you need something visual to lock your eyes in place to

00:17:07   give them something to do so that you pay attention instead of continuing to scroll through a visual

00:17:14   format feed otherwise you wouldn't hear what's being said it wouldn't be very effective and if

00:17:18   you've ever seen a kid tap a youtube video while it was playing you're like why why are they tapping

00:17:26   the screen the video is playing it's everything's fine you know why they're tapping it to find out

00:17:30   how long this video is by seeing a progress bar you know how far along in the clip are you what

00:17:37   am i signing up for if i just hit play and it starts playing i'm like is this going to be like

00:17:42   20 minutes of audio that i have to listen to am i expected to listen to 10 minutes how long is this

00:17:47   thing there's a progress bar right there and you can see very quickly and also you get to this in

00:17:51   a second that the actual maximum limit means that you're not going to be there for 20 minutes no

00:17:55   matter what which means that when the progress bar starts to move you'll see oh this is going

00:17:59   at a pretty good clip here huh uh it's going to be over pretty soon i'm about halfway through you

00:18:03   know how close you're getting to the end uh the second cool feature is that if in twitterific

00:18:08   anyway and some other video players when a large video starts to play this this looks for all the

00:18:12   world like like a player animation in like overcast or podcast app it has a progress bar let's say if

00:18:18   like me you briefly forget that this is a video playing and you think it's a uh a player app where

00:18:25   you can just grab the the scrubber like the little you know play head and the progress bar and drag

00:18:30   it to to fast forward to like three quarters of the way through lots of video playing apps

00:18:36   have a thing where when the video is playing if you swipe your finger across the screen it acts

00:18:42   as sort of a virtual progress bar really you can actually grab the little thumb in the video

00:18:47   and i didn't know that move your thumb like you're moving the progress bar and it doesn't match one

00:18:53   to one but it will basically do what you mean it's like you've made a fake interactive video that

00:18:59   tricks you into thinking it's interactive but it is not interactive it is just a video and all

00:19:03   you're doing is scrubbing it's uh it's unintentional genius great i'll take it so we've kind of talked

00:19:09   about what it is the motivation uh again i love this so much to the extent you're willing to

00:19:16   can you pull back the curtain and tell us kind of how at the very least how did it go on a

00:19:23   qualitative sense like was this pretty easy sailing or were you fighting this every step of the way

00:19:28   and then i am happy to go as deep as you want into the actual implementation i have a feeling that's

00:19:33   not going to be very far but um but but how how oh can i can i make a guess of the implementation

00:19:40   yeah go for it uh i know nothing about this this is just telling a wild ass guess right um because

00:19:46   if there's some easy api for doing it i assume casey wouldn't even be asking so well yes and no

00:19:51   i mean i i have a relatively okay idea of a lot of the surface area of the ios api but there's a lot

00:19:59   particularly media i don't know and either way i've only been doing this for real for a couple

00:20:04   of years whereas for marco it's been what 10 plus so there is a lot i don't know so i appreciate the

00:20:09   compliment but uh it's possible that it's easier than i thought that being said i bet you it's not

00:20:15   as easy as i thought so i have two guesses the easy one and the hard one the easy one

00:20:19   is if this any of this is true i'm pretty sure ios has a screen recording api and if you can get

00:20:24   an off-screen view and stick the the existing screen recording api at your off-screen view you

00:20:28   just go through the view and have the screen recording thing recorded right but that might

00:20:32   require it to be real time i don't know so that would be the one where like i didn't really really

00:20:35   have to do any work because ios already knows how to record the screen and i just have a record

00:20:38   off-screen screen and i just render the screen and that would work out the hard one is uh you know it

00:20:44   is a video is just a series of pictures you can render a view that is in the state that you want

00:20:50   and the only thing that changes is the progress bar so you can render a series of frames as

00:20:56   individual states of views and capture the view as an image and then surely there's some video api

00:21:01   that says hey i've got 700 images each of which is a frame of video construct a video out of these

00:21:07   frames that would be the hard way and i imagine that would be very painful and take a really long

00:21:12   time but it could be done given the constraints of what we see probably neither one of those are

00:21:16   right but those are the two things that immediately sprung to mind both of those would have been too

00:21:20   slow what the way this is so what i wanted to do i wanted something first of all that i could render

00:21:27   using ui kit style things so i could use like my fonts and my my text rendering and like have the

00:21:35   artwork render with the shadow and the rounded corners and everything basically using like the

00:21:40   the tools i use to render the interface i wanted to also render the video i also critically wanted

00:21:47   you to be able to preview it immediately upon generating the trimmed region for the audio so

00:21:54   when you trim the audio you you put it pushes when you say next or preview whatever it pushes you to

00:21:59   the preview screen and you can hit play and it renders it in real time like it plays it in real

00:22:05   time there's it doesn't have to render it to a video first and the reason why is because what

00:22:10   you're playing is not a video what you're playing is a core animation stack basically the entire all

00:22:17   of it is rendered using core animation and that makes it so you can scrub through it with that

00:22:22   scrubber on the bottom and when you hit the the save thing in the corner to bring up the

00:22:28   share sheet that's when it encodes all that to a video and i also i wanted to make sure also i

00:22:34   wanted the preview to be exactly right i did i wanted exactly what you see in the preview to be

00:22:39   what's rendered to the video so i didn't want it i didn't want the video to be using a different kind

00:22:42   of technology that would like maybe have like different text rendering or different you know

00:22:47   anti-aliasing on edges or something like that i wanted it to be exact so i wanted instant previewing

00:22:53   using core animation ui kit and stuff like that and and having the video look identical and there

00:23:01   is a way to do this i can tell you it's i'm using av export av asset export session oh god are these

00:23:08   names are so long for all these api's so the the preview video is not it's not ui views it's ca

00:23:18   layers the rendering is a av asset export session that somewhere buried deep in the api you can set

00:23:28   something called an animation tool and the animation tool is this weird api that lets you

00:23:34   basically overlay onto a video a core animation composition huh and and there's all and the thing

00:23:43   is like with with this api like everything about av foundation is incredibly powerful

00:23:51   incredibly poorly documented and has the worst error reporting of anything i've ever used

00:23:58   i have heard this many times and not just from you the only documentation you'll find

00:24:04   you know the headers are basically useless the official documentation is basically useless

00:24:08   the only documentation that's any good is like stack overflow and blog posts usually which are

00:24:13   very old and sometimes sometimes out of date and because not a lot of people are doing this kind

00:24:20   of stuff there really isn't that much help on stack overflow in place like that like there's

00:24:24   some help but it's not not a lot and sometimes you will find other people asking like hey i got you

00:24:30   know error negative 319 when i did this what does that mean and it'll have responses but there'll

00:24:36   just be other people saying i got it too i don't know and occasionally somebody will be like well

00:24:41   i rewrote the entire thing and it fixed it so it's like okay right um and so there's all you've run

00:24:47   into all sorts of weird errors and failures my favorite failure astute users might have noticed

00:24:55   that occasionally the progress circle during the export restarts at zero have you have you guys

00:25:02   caught this happening no i haven't yeah someone's someone complained that it was taking like two

00:25:06   progress bars and i guess it was just the same progress bar attempt number two yes it isn't it

00:25:11   isn't uncommon i'd say it happens maybe i wanted it five times what happens is during the av asset

00:25:16   export of the video as it's rendering the video which i have very little visibility into but i

00:25:22   do have a progress value you know it's like 0.5 0.6 whatever during the export sometimes for

00:25:28   reasons i have not been able to figure out and that are not reported to me at all progress just

00:25:33   stops and it just it will never finish like when it gets to that state when progress stops of an

00:25:39   av asset export session it just never resumes i have no idea why this happens i found no

00:25:45   documentation about it i have you know found nobody reporting this elsewhere and there's no

00:25:51   error reported when it happens it just stops one time i i i tried like i i paused in the debugger

00:25:58   and i basically you know i i cancelled it and restarted it manually basically i kicked it and

00:26:05   that time it worked and i kept developing it and then you know the next time i noticed that

00:26:10   happened in one of my test runs i kicked it again and it worked the second time

00:26:17   and i eventually realized that if it stopped working and i just kicked it

00:26:22   it would usually work the second try so my solution to this problem was i filed a bug with

00:26:28   apple just kidding you no i didn't because that would have taken a lot of time and not solve the

00:26:34   problem because how do you file a bug on this instead i built an automatic kicking machine

00:26:39   every time it detects that it has stopped for more than a few seconds

00:26:44   it automatically kicks it and it usually fixes it 50 of the time it works 100 of the time

00:26:50   so uh this is the equivalent of this is the equivalent of when you edit that delay for

00:26:55   the resume after siri like the time delay this is exactly the same type of terrible solution

00:27:00   to a problem just like uh just try to get it probably works the second time yeah but this is

00:27:05   how you have to ship things in ios like yeah because you know what the reality is i could

00:27:09   have filed a bug and it would have taken five times longer it would have gone back and forth

00:27:13   with can you provide a test project not really you know i can't even provide reliable reproduction

00:27:19   steps it happens sometimes and this usually fixes it like that's a terrible bug report and so and

00:27:25   and it's not like they're going to fix it immediately they might fix it this fall but even

00:27:31   like it's may they're like whatever is locked in for like the the wbc release of these os's is

00:27:38   locked in they're not doing bug fixes for unimportant stuff now so i could either wait

00:27:44   for apple to fix this bug before i ship this because the feature was unshippable with this

00:27:47   because you know if it if one out of five exports just fails that kind of sucks like you can't

00:27:53   really ship that i could have waited seven months for apple to maybe fix this feature

00:27:57   or i could build the automatic cooking machine and that worked within 10 minutes

00:28:01   so that's the solution i shipped and i would love to not eat it anymore i would love you know i'm

00:28:06   still trying to figure out what caused this i'm trying a few things for the next version that

00:28:10   maybe might avoid it but i still haven't quite nailed it down so that's that's how that if you

00:28:18   ever see the uh the progress circle restart itself from zero you know what happened does it how many

00:28:24   times will it retry as many as it takes so you can in theory be there and watch that progress bar go

00:28:29   start and then restart and then restart and you'll just never leave until it succeeds

00:28:33   the most i've ever seen is twice this is gonna be a new contest who can get the most restarts

00:28:38   and if anybody if anybody can can reliably like have reproduction steps of like what makes it do

00:28:45   that because i still can't figure it out so let me know this is a this is a killer feature i

00:28:50   love that you're linking to all these other um all these other competing apps have you gotten feedback

00:28:56   from like the castro folks which i know you're you're relatively close with the castro folks but

00:28:59   like i guess they're all copying this feature now well but i mean that's reasonable they're all

00:29:04   building their own automated kicking machines no but seriously like were they pleased with it but

00:29:10   uh or or or you know how was the the reception not necessarily from castro i shouldn't single them out

00:29:15   i just know that you talk to those guys a fair bit but like in in a broad sense did you speak to

00:29:21   anyone about this after it released and were they pleased were they kind of like whoa kind of

00:29:24   whatever seems positive good yeah no one seemed to have a problem with it yeah and we're all saying

00:29:31   we like this feature or whatever but the real proof is that if you go on twitter right now

00:29:34   at least in the the circles of our followers uh lots of people are using this feature to share

00:29:39   clips from podcasts which is exactly the whole point of the feature now maybe it's just a fad

00:29:43   and people will stalk but honestly i think we're just gonna continue to see more and more this at

00:29:47   least among overcast users and when every other podcast client copies this feature then we'll see

00:29:51   it more in general which is good because i have i have listened to more uh short clips of podcasts

00:29:58   since you've introduced this feature than like the entire three years before that combined like

00:30:03   they're everywhere um and that brings up another one of my questions like you you limited this to

00:30:07   was it one minute maximum length yes how did you come up with that number i wanted to have a limit

00:30:13   for lots of reasons you know there's um fair use concerns uh attention span concerns with people

00:30:19   like if you post a 10-minute video on twitter no one's gonna sit there and watch all 10 minutes of

00:30:23   it you know it's you know it's it's just not the mode people are in the progress bar is not that

00:30:28   exciting right exactly and there were you know technical concerns also like that that long the

00:30:34   video would take a lot longer to encode and that would just be tedious and so there were there were

00:30:38   a number of concerns with that but that you know the the what made me choose one minute specifically

00:30:43   is because that is the limit of how long a video can be on instagram

00:30:48   that might as well like i wanted to have a low limit anyway might as well match that one

00:30:52   yeah my feature request is the minimum length should be shorter because i wanted to post a clip

00:30:56   of someone snorting on a podcast but the snort was not short enough what is the minimum length

00:31:02   one second two second i actually don't know it has to do with the width of the grab handles

00:31:07   uh for the trimming thing because i have i have logic for the grab handles never to overlap each

00:31:12   other or cross each other like and this is currently why you also can't trim a podcast from

00:31:17   zero zero like from the very beginning of it you can't actually clip that you have to like clip

00:31:21   like one second in that's not a content decision that's a implementation detail that i'm hoping to

00:31:26   fix in the next version yeah i guess here the handles are like c-shaped and not just like flappy

00:31:31   the the little the little branches on the c must be pretty long because it's a it's a big gap but

00:31:35   yeah i would i would love to be able to to clip the handle the handle actually has a rectangular

00:31:40   grab area that is about five times wider than the visual handle like it's like two and a half times

00:31:45   on each side roughly it's it's some it's about i think 50 pixels wide total is the is the total

00:31:50   grab area um and and right now those grab areas can't overlap so the closest you can put the

00:31:56   handles together is something like 100 pixels apart yeah it's something like that that could

00:32:01   be tighter that could be better and if you if you really want to go nuts which you probably don't

00:32:04   but it'd be good practice for your future audio editing application one of the features that i

00:32:08   always love i would always love to have in whether it's audio or video or particular audio

00:32:14   when you're trying to do fine adjustments on a trim like i've more or less got the beginning

00:32:20   and the end where i want them but i want to do fine adjustments being able to no longer touch

00:32:25   the primary controls for touching the trim ends but to have a separate set of controls for the

00:32:29   fine adjustments whatever those may be right either whether it's like a tiny bump thing or

00:32:33   whatever because you usually especially with sort of quantized data you can know there's a minimum

00:32:38   step that's reasonable to take for trimming right and you could so you could even have it to be a

00:32:42   digital thing to be you know bump it left left left right right right lots of you know photoshop type

00:32:48   applications or you know mac paint or whatever had a way to like nudge the selection by single pixels

00:32:52   at a time with the arrow keys and stuff like that something like that where you get it pretty close

00:32:56   and then use a separate control with with less less pressure because especially on the touch

00:33:01   screen trying to move your thumb one retina pixel to try to get like a little bit it's just it's very

00:33:07   difficult to do and there's no real zooming on that timeline i know it's not an audio editor it's

00:33:10   just for trimming or whatever but um if you want to go whole hog when you're trying to make just

00:33:15   that perfectly trimmed clip which you should be because a lot of people are getting pretty sloppy

00:33:18   especially with the end wheel there cut it off in the middle of someone's word or something that's

00:33:22   no good you want to you want it to sort of begin and end exactly where you want it to fine controls

00:33:27   would be great that's interesting yeah i mean if you if you use voiceover you can go plus or minus

00:33:31   one second that's how i made it accessible but oh second is huge i'm talking about like one sample

00:33:37   well that's yeah i i mean one thing i could do is which would be technically a pain in the butt but

00:33:42   one thing i could do is like if you hold down on one of the drag handles maybe it would zoom in like

00:33:48   the whole time audio editor features you can do all sorts of fancy things or like when you when

00:33:52   you move the trim handles you constantly rescale to like readjust the scale to say now that you've

00:33:58   you've moved the drag handles now that is 100 and constant but but i think like that's that's too

00:34:03   much probably just you know just being able to do gross adjustment and then fine adjustment

00:34:07   iMovie annoys me because as far as i'm aware iMovie is what i use for all my youtube videos

00:34:12   it doesn't seem to have a great fine adjustment feature luckily on a 27 inch screen you make

00:34:16   things pretty huge and set the zoom to max and get it in where you want it but i always

00:34:20   i'm like just don't make me even with a mouse like don't make me try to move any control on the

00:34:24   screen a single retina pixel or a single regular or single point like this give me a second set

00:34:29   like mechanically speaking there's always like a second set of controls with like a different

00:34:33   sort of gear ratio or mechanical advantage ratio where you can move huge gross movements that move

00:34:38   the actual thing you want to move a tiny amount well it's funny like as i was developing the clip

00:34:43   editor there i had to decide like what is the scale like what's the zoom level and i could make

00:34:48   a dynamic but that would again a lot more work i didn't i didn't want to tackle that yet so you

00:34:53   know what's the zoom level of that and overcast is a portrait app and this is a horizontal timeline

00:34:59   being so it's like you only have the short side of the phone as the width of what you're dealing

00:35:03   with here as i was developing it i actually slowly zoomed out from like i would think that i had a

00:35:11   certain time scale that was right and then as i would try to make clips with it i'd be scrolling

00:35:15   scroll scroll scroll scroll trying to find like where i wanted the end it was too many swipes to

00:35:19   get like a like a 45 second long clip and so i slowly zoomed out and out and out and i basically

00:35:25   solved the problem of imprecision by just adding crossfades to the beginning and end so there's a

00:35:32   very brief i think it's about like 0.2 seconds crossfade on the audio like fade in at the

00:35:38   beginning fade out at the end because that way you can be a little bit sloppy and you don't hear like

00:35:42   an abrupt transition yeah you need that so you don't get the little pops anyway right yeah i mean

00:35:47   i could do like you know a zero crossing thing but that's that's just that's you know more trouble

00:35:51   than it's worth and i don't i don't know that passing that level of precision to core media is

00:35:56   is a great idea to rely on yeah these are all details like it this it totally passes the the

00:36:01   basic test which is people are using it to share clips and the clips are good and enjoyable and

00:36:06   people hear them and under they understand what the person was trying to clip and they're funny

00:36:11   and it's it's working system is working yeah exactly so please everyone share whatever you

00:36:15   want and uh like i don't want this feature you just like have a week of use and then die and it's

00:36:22   the kind of thing like if you are seeing these clips on a regular basis you will then think when

00:36:28   you come across a funny moment oh i can i can post a clip of that but if you never see any of these

00:36:33   clips you might never even go to this menu like you might even you might never even know this

00:36:37   feature is there yeah i would not have known it was there i never go to the share thing why would

00:36:40   i ever even tap that button but i only know about it because i saw the feature on twitter

00:36:45   right and it's like and like you know i could i could like put up a balloon or something in the

00:36:48   app but i don't i hate doing that i don't do that so like ideally this is the kind of feature that

00:36:52   people see around and then they go oh i can do that with overcast too cool and then they would

00:36:59   go and look for it and they should i assume they'd be able to find it pretty easily yeah

00:37:03   i think that's probably the biggest problem is i don't think people will i mean the nerdy people

00:37:06   will know to use the share icon or whatever but it for a feature this good it should be so much

00:37:11   more prominent in the application and i know it's now is not the time to totally redesign your your

00:37:14   ui to highlight this one feature but i think people will have a little bit of difficulty

00:37:19   finding it yeah i i'll play with it and and you know certainly like when i design the next version

00:37:25   of the now playing screen uh i would i will certainly consider like do i want to promote

00:37:30   this further did you just what do you call this we've been calling it clips but isn't it the name

00:37:34   of like apple's app for like making instagram story things you don't have like a trademark name it's

00:37:39   not like uh no i just call it share clip smart clip smart clip it's the clip i don't know oh

00:37:48   there we go it's the smart clip oh my word all right so the feature wow it's getting it all

00:37:55   trying to get it all the margo name slams in one it's like man it took me a minute oh yeah yeah

00:38:02   so i would ask you you know how how the the new uh airplay 2 stuff is going but i already know what

00:38:11   you're going to be doing starting next month and you're going to be using marzipan to make overcast

00:38:17   for the mac oh wait never mind steve trot and smith already did it if you exclude the ability

00:38:22   to play audio but that's a minor feature yeah minor minor issue yeah so tell me about your side

00:38:28   of the story and i mean i mean that in a good way i hope that didn't sound nasty but you know like

00:38:31   what what's going on here uh yeah so basically steve trot and smith has been playing with uh the

00:38:38   the marzipan environment on mohavi for i don't know six months now for a while and he wrote a

00:38:44   couple blog posts and has made some tools one called marzipanify that basically allow you to

00:38:49   take a simulator build which is therefore an intel build of an ios app and if you're willing to

00:38:57   disable system integrity protection and and some other thing about um i think like some kind of

00:39:03   certificate validation on a mac and you run this tool on a simulator build you can make it run

00:39:10   in marzipan on mohavi and so those are two giant ifs but if you're willing to do this that i'm not

00:39:17   willing to do uh but he is and he wrote the tool and he knows a lot more about getting this stuff

00:39:23   to run than i do and so i've been meaning for a while to like send him a simulator build of overcast

00:39:28   like hey can you just see if this runs and see what happens like let me know if i need to do

00:39:31   anything and uh and so i finally got around to doing that um what is a couple days ago now and

00:39:38   we worked through there were a few frameworks that i had to if def out the use of things like

00:39:44   the media toolbox things for doing things like putting the playback controls and title information

00:39:51   in control center like that api is not there in mohavi marzipan and so i had to just like if def

00:39:56   that out for this build um and then there were a couple other like small things that had to if

00:40:00   dev out that just weren't present um things like the male compose sheet there's a lot of frameworks

00:40:05   that aren't there this is a lot of frameworks that just don't make sense on the mac things like that

00:40:09   control center framework and carplay like those frameworks were missing on the mac probably for

00:40:14   good because that doesn't make sense so but like you know my app would launch and try to load them

00:40:19   and it would crash and so we went back and forth i think six builds later after i had a few more

00:40:25   things i think he got it running and that was it and it was great and and it you know it didn't take

00:40:30   a lot really like which was promising partly i i kind of i kind of won here in part because i

00:40:38   am such a jerk and don't ever use anyone else's code in my app like i have my app contains almost

00:40:45   entirely my code and the little bits of that aren't mine are very simple open source things

00:40:49   that i can look at the source for anything that i can that i need to change i can change and i and

00:40:54   it isn't loading a whole bunch of crap you know to get there and so i was i was able to fairly easily

00:40:59   give him a version of the app that would run in in mohavi under the marzipan thing when it's hacked

00:41:06   in this way um so i was very happy about that and it's really cool and you know it isn't mac like

00:41:11   at all uh but that's because like he's written blog posts about like they have apis you can

00:41:17   generate to do things like add toolbars like add mac toolbars add mac split views add you know menu

00:41:23   bar stuff apple script stuff touch bar integration like the the the basics of all this stuff are all

00:41:29   there but he doesn't have my source code so he couldn't add those things and i don't i don't

00:41:33   want to take the time to do it yet because i assume all that stuff is going to be more mature

00:41:36   and maybe different in a month when the official tools presumably come out so anyway

00:41:41   i'm really excited about the possibility of making this a mac app and i'm really happy that it mostly

00:41:46   works as is like it's not going to require massive changes one change it probably is going to require

00:41:51   though is airplay 2 and that's as you mentioned it it works in the sense that the ui works uh

00:41:59   it does not however play audio which for a podcast app is not great already established overcast is

00:42:06   all about video now well that feature works fine you can watch the progress bar move from left to

00:42:11   right in silence no no the the audio in the clip preview editor that works because that doesn't

00:42:19   use my audio stack the audio playback in the preview editor for clips uh is just using av

00:42:25   player that works fine under marzapam Mojave but my core audio based audio engine does not

00:42:33   and actually i i sent him my airplay 2 test harness app which is like a very basic app that's running

00:42:39   my very alpha airplay 2 engine just to see like does this play audio and it did so well good that

00:42:46   that is moving up my my priority of like i should probably switch to this sooner rather than later

00:42:50   so i'm gonna finish that soon i think uh that's probably the next major thing i tackle well no i

00:42:56   i don't think we need really need to spend much more time on this i just think it's extremely cool

00:43:01   and you had made mention of this kind of offhandedly a moment ago but he did not have

00:43:04   source code access and even when he decided to make himself a three-column version of the app

00:43:10   that was without source code access which is just i if you follow steve john smith this won't surprise

00:43:16   you and shouldn't have surprised me and yet i found it somewhat surprising that he could go in there

00:43:20   and swizzle the snot out of your app in order to get a three-column version out of thin air which

00:43:26   is just incredible marco is doing the actual marzipan version of overcast writing source code

00:43:31   like a chump i know right you're thinking of steve draughton smith who added a third column

00:43:36   just by shifting selectors around whatever the hell he's doing in there yeah in like an hour

00:43:41   too like it took him like no time like because i actually i do want to go to a three-pane layout

00:43:46   on ipads and max uh because it makes total sense like you know i have i already have three level

00:43:51   navigation it makes complete sense like you know the leftmost pane would be the root screen it'd

00:43:55   be like you know playlist podcasts and then you know the middle pane would be the currently selected

00:43:59   playlist or podcast and the right pane would be now playing like that make that's of course what

00:44:03   i'm going to do and i think modern ipads are now wide enough that i can do it there too uh so that's

00:44:08   great so i intend to do that but like for me to do it's gonna take me like a week to get all that

00:44:14   worked out like even with my current structure and he did it like an hour with no code it is utterly

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00:45:55   you're passionate about there was an article in the new york times where they said there used to

00:46:04   be lots of apps that would allow parents to control slash restrict or at least have visibility into if

00:46:12   nothing else what their children are doing on on their phones and a lot of these apps were using

00:46:17   mdm which is mobile device management is that right i think so which um which is a tool that

00:46:23   apple really developed in order for corporations to control their assets so if your company issues

00:46:29   you an iphone then you could use mdm in order to maintain that iphone and make sure that only the

00:46:35   right apps are being used and that you knew where the iphone was physically on the planet and so on

00:46:40   and so forth a lot of these companies that were doing the the kind of stalker vision for your kids

00:46:46   so you could see exactly what they're doing where they are and so on and so forth we're using mdm

00:46:50   and apple whether or not they did a good job of explaining it seems to have come to the opinion

00:46:57   that using mdm for some if not all of these things isn't really what it's meant for and there's some

00:47:04   amount of debate how they message this to these companies but one way or another they told the

00:47:10   companies hey you're either not going to be able to do this anymore and thus your company will

00:47:15   maybe go away or you really need to rethink the mechanism by which you're doing this which may

00:47:20   also make your company go away but we're not cool with the way this works right now and so this new

00:47:24   york times piece which i really didn't care for was basically a bunch of kvetching and moaning

00:47:29   from these companies about why apple is big and unfair and terrible and there are a lot of reasons

00:47:36   why apple can be big and unfair and terrible but this one this didn't strike me as that unreasonable

00:47:42   and the response from apple was basically look it's a privacy thing and this isn't how it was

00:47:47   supposed to be used and we're not comfortable with this so we're not going to allow it anymore

00:47:53   well i think apple did make a bunch of mistakes here but first of all i can start with this new

00:47:56   york times article which sort of kicked this off the angle and the article the the sort of

00:48:02   sensational angle and the the story put forward by the software developers affected by this is like

00:48:08   well isn't it convenient apple comes out with its own screen time feature for dealing with restrictions

00:48:14   on uh you know family members or children's phones and stuff and all of a sudden it doesn't want to

00:48:19   let us the the third-party developers who have been offering the same functionality doesn't want

00:48:23   to let us sell our applications anymore isn't it nefarious and evil uh apple once apple enters the

00:48:29   market they want to kick everybody else out um and then apple had like this pr thing that was partially

00:48:34   quoted in the new york times article saying that uh you know apple treats uh third-party applications

00:48:40   the same as it treats its own yada yada which is not true in any way and is like the worst thing

00:48:45   the worst thing that apple could have you know the one quote they could have pulled is the one that

00:48:48   you know those in the know no it's not true but that's not the issue the whole point is the angle

00:48:53   is kind of like apple is doing this because they're mean slash evil and have their own

00:48:57   interests at heart um but then here are the mistakes that i feel like apple made in in this

00:49:03   and some of them are understandable and nobody's perfect but like this there are mistakes that made

00:49:09   the situation more for authenticity the first one i feel like is letting third-party developers

00:49:14   distribute parental control applications using mdm right because mdm yeah in case you described it

00:49:20   well it's like for companies who let their employees have iphones who want to control what

00:49:25   those employees put on their iphones and want to be able to remote wipe them and stop people from

00:49:28   using applications and like any kind of thing where if you're in a big company and they give

00:49:33   you computer hardware to use they have some degree of terrible evil control over it because that's how

00:49:39   it works like it's the company's phone it's not your phone it's the company's laptop it's not your

00:49:43   laptop you're just using it um and mdm gives the company control of your laptop the mdm scenario

00:49:51   for parental controls like the reason they use them is because it is literally the only way

00:49:56   without jailbreaking to provide this functionality on ios devices but in in this scenario in the

00:50:04   company scenario the company is i don't know what i don't know the right terminology of this so the

00:50:08   company is that is the thing that sort of is controlling the mdm thing and the employee has

00:50:12   the phone right there's just two parties it's the company and and the employee well actually i

00:50:17   suppose there's the vendor of the other thing uses mdm either way when a parent buys this application

00:50:23   and uses it to control their children's phone and i may be wrong about this but my impression is that

00:50:29   yes the parent has the ability to control the control the child's phone but also the vendor

00:50:34   of the mdm application effectively has some control in this chain as well because they are

00:50:40   the creators of the application i may be wrong about that but no that's correct they they have

00:50:44   full control yeah so so it's like it's a three-party scenario instead of two and that third party is

00:50:50   one that that a parent downloading this application might not realize is in the mix here a company

00:50:56   surely knows that it is the one controlling thing yada yada like but the parent might think i'm just

00:51:01   controlling my kid's phone but the company that makes this software doesn't have any untoward

00:51:06   access to my kid's phone and they do it's just not the right tool for the job and it's on apple

00:51:12   that they allowed this entire ecosystem of applications to flourish now i can kind of

00:51:17   understand where apples come from they're like well there is no other way to do this and this

00:51:20   is functionality people want and we don't have a solution for it so why shouldn't we let third

00:51:24   parties do this so while we work on screen time or while we figure what we're going to do

00:51:28   let's just allow these third-party applications to go on this to go with mdm in hindsight that was

00:51:34   a mistake because eventually when apple comes out with a similar feature and this is the kernel of

00:51:39   truth in the story in the new york times when apple comes up with a similar feature they'd

00:51:42   be like all right well finally we have screen time now we can get rid of all those applications that

00:51:48   use mdm and say please stop doing that because it's really not great and it's it's putting parents in

00:51:53   a situation where they might not realize but they're providing third parties with access to

00:51:57   their phones that is not great and like it's and i know you're a good company but really this is not

00:52:02   what mdm is for mdm is for you know companies and their employees so it's not for parents and their

00:52:06   kids so it's for the parental situation you screen time so on and so forth that is a bad situation

00:52:12   though because there remains no other way to provide this functionality in a third-party app

00:52:16   this extent of the functionality in third-party app than using mdm so if apple says uh please

00:52:22   company that's been in business for a long time and has lots of customers stop using mdm in your

00:52:26   app and it's like well you're basically telling us to stop selling our app because there is no

00:52:30   other way for us to do what we do on our app without using mdm so and how did apple get into

00:52:36   the situation they allowed these developers to sell their apps using mdm for a long time and be

00:52:41   successful and now they're saying you have to stop basically it's a product killing decision

00:52:45   you know and the third mistake is when apple has to communicate this like i don't i don't know the

00:52:53   right way to communicate this because it's a hard conversation to have to call the developer and say

00:52:58   yeah i know you've been selling this application for a long time and are very successful with it

00:53:02   but basically you need to stop selling it because we're not going to let you use mdm anymore and

00:53:08   there's no other way for you to provide this functionality so basically your product is dead

00:53:12   sorry about that our bad and by the way and by the way we have a screen say sorry yeah screen

00:53:19   time is available but it's not as full featured as your application but it's built into the us and we

00:53:23   control it and you know like that that is effectively what is happening to a lot of these

00:53:29   people who make products like this but there's no good way to communicate that it's you're going to

00:53:36   be sad either way but perhaps one of the worst ways to communicate that is the passive-aggressive

00:53:41   app store rejection way which is basically to just send terse responses that say something very sort

00:53:46   of clinical that you know your use of api blah blah is disallowed please remove the use of this

00:53:52   application and resubmit something like that that doesn't like it just seems like it was from a

00:53:56   machine that says mdm is not allowed doesn't acknowledge that it was allowed before it doesn't

00:54:00   tell you that apple understands what this means for your application right and this is this true

00:54:05   of all the app store frustrations you'll do a thing in an app for years and years that apple

00:54:09   thinks is fine then you'll do a bug fix update and they'll reject your application for a feature

00:54:13   that's been there for a year and with the thing that says this application does x please remove

00:54:17   x and resubmit with no acknowledgement like but i've been doing x for years you've approved 100

00:54:22   versions that do x communicate to me as a human to tell me what's going on you're just like

00:54:27   mechanical rejections right maybe that's the the quote-unquote right way to communicate from a

00:54:32   legal perspective because it opens you up to less liability because it doesn't make you but it's it's

00:54:35   not the human way to communicate that and again maybe there's no right way maybe the wrong approach

00:54:40   would try to be human because if you're if you do that you're opening yourself up to legal

00:54:44   liability or who knows i don't i don't know what goes into the thing behind this and it's a

00:54:48   difficult conversation to have but the difficult conversation stems from earlier decisions that

00:54:52   were apple's decisions to make that i think they made the wrong call on so they allowed these stores

00:54:57   these things to be in the store for a long time then when it came time to essentially kill a bunch

00:55:01   of products it seems like at least in the few cases of people complaining it was communicated

00:55:05   in the most terse and sort of impersonal way possible and it just makes everybody feel bad

00:55:11   right so there is there is fault to go around here but in the end apple is i think apple is doing the

00:55:17   right thing mdm shouldn't be isn't the right tool for parents to do that and there is no other better

00:55:22   api and yes i understand these apps are potentially better and more full featured than screen time and

00:55:28   i know it looks like apple is killing these things with screen time but they kind of are and that's

00:55:31   just part of software like if you implement if you are a third party that implements a feature that

00:55:37   rightfully should be part of the os don't be surprised when eventually it does become part

00:55:41   of the os and the app store era or in the not the app store but in the sort of the privacy focused

00:55:47   security focused error of today don't be surprised also that not only does it get built into the os

00:55:53   but that you are no longer allowed to use whatever weird side door you were using before because this

00:55:58   is a security concern so i feel bad for these companies and uh i also kind of feel bad for apple

00:56:05   but there's a little bit of uh enough blame to go around what i don't believe is that this is some

00:56:10   nefarious you know scheme to say haha finally we'll destroy all those companies with our

00:56:14   amazing screen time that we bundle for free with our os it's right this is not a a massive

00:56:21   money-making scheme this is part of apple security focus uh and it stems from an earlier mistake an

00:56:28   earlier mistake by the way where apple is being if you want to look at it more magnanimous than

00:56:32   they should be basically saying we don't have a solution to this why shouldn't we let third parties

00:56:36   use mdm the answer is because someday you're gonna have to stop them and then everyone's gonna be sad

00:56:40   but they made a bunch of money in the meantime that they wouldn't have made if apple had said

00:56:44   you know what we don't have the ability to provide this functionality and we're not gonna let third

00:56:49   parties provide it with mdm ever and so we'll just all have to wait for ios 12 or whatever screen time

00:56:54   came in so tough situation but uh apple is not being unnecessarily evil they're all just uh

00:57:04   reaping what they saw from past mistakes i feel like this is an extension of what we went through

00:57:10   a few months ago or maybe even less than that with the apps that allowed you to sideload stuff

00:57:16   so there was like you know getting enterprise certificates you mean mm-hmm i feel like the

00:57:22   enterprise cert thing was far worse it was both more nefarious on on the vendor so not apple but

00:57:29   these other people it was it was pretty clearly nefarious on their part and clearly pretty clearly

00:57:34   not in the spirit of what enterprise search are for this i do think is more gray but i don't think

00:57:40   it's that dissimilar in ideas that hey you're taking a technology that we really want to use

00:57:46   for a b and c and you're using it for i was going to say xyz but maybe that's a bit aggressive but

00:57:51   you're using it for i don't know l and m and that's not good and this analogy is really falling apart

00:57:55   but anyway the point is the point is that it's using this mdm technology in a way that it's

00:58:01   really not meant for and and just like john said like if he had burned for that well whose fault is

00:58:06   that really yeah i i mostly agree with john and a little bit from casey except i think that

00:58:12   i would be surprised if the development of screen time had anything at all to do with this i think

00:58:21   it's purely coincidental that it happened to be developed during this because yeah apple has been

00:58:25   cracking down on things like enterprise distribution abuse things like vpn apps that maybe shouldn't be

00:58:32   like that are using vpns to do things that are not really what vpns are for uh apps that are you know

00:58:39   using using profiles like mdm to do things like this has been a crackdown that's been going on

00:58:43   for like a year or something like that like it's been like over over a while and i think one thing

00:58:48   that became apparent i think we've seen signs of this here and there but i think one thing that

00:58:52   became apparent during the enterprise certificate kerfuffle from a few months back is that it

00:58:58   doesn't seem like apple has a great idea at like decision-making levels of power how some of this

00:59:07   stuff is being abused like it just it kind of seems like the app store is so big and the ecosystem is

00:59:13   so big that sometimes stuff gets through and you don't have a super powerful person in the company

00:59:19   making like a policy decision on every one of these things because it's just too big to keep up with

00:59:24   i get the feeling like i think what happens is at some point something is brought to the attention

00:59:30   of the higher ups whether it's through the press or through you know internal channels whatever it is

00:59:35   and then decisions can be made and then they're executed for you know down below again at the

00:59:41   lower level of the company where more people are that's kind of the impression i get and so

00:59:45   whenever there's like an app store policy change i think it's something like that where like

00:59:49   somebody in the press or somewhere like calls out hey these apps are doing this thing you know why

00:59:56   are they allowed to do that and then someone who matters notices and they say hey that's wrong they

01:00:02   shouldn't be allowed to do that and they go tell app review hey get rid of these things or you know

01:00:06   enforce this policy or change this policy that's what i think happens and it's a big company it's

01:00:12   a really big company the lower level people are probably not empowered to be incredibly

01:00:17   communicative and verbose with the outside world so when you know if the lower level people get

01:00:22   a directive like hey this app is doing this thing that we actually don't want to permit

01:00:27   all they can probably tell the developer is you are being rejected for rule 2.4 point whatever

01:00:33   you know it's like they can only give those robotic responses probably because of that's

01:00:36   you know policy and as john said maybe legal concerns and everything but what we see from

01:00:42   the outside when this happens is you have an app in the store like if you're a developer you have

01:00:48   an app in the store it's fine because it gets updated it goes to that review every couple of

01:00:52   weeks when you change something it's fine until it's not and all you're getting from apple is the

01:00:57   is this kind of like stonewall response of either no reason given or a very robotic minimal reason

01:01:03   given it's not really helpful and not really explaining like why was this okay last month

01:01:07   and now it's not so it makes sense on both sides like i can totally see i can understand why

01:01:14   apple's side of it is the way it is but the developer side of it like what we see on the

01:01:22   outside in this kind of situation is terrible and you might occasionally like maybe if you're lucky

01:01:28   like when when you're on the side of a rule change or reinterpretation if you're lucky after a while

01:01:34   you might get a phone call which i've always termed the agent smith phone calls because you

01:01:39   get a phone call from like the apple main switchboard number so you can't call them back

01:01:43   you are not given a name usually if ever you are given the bad news from this person who usually

01:01:50   the conversation is usually quite civil but they will they will then tell you like the reason

01:01:56   basically during those phone calls but of course because it's a phone call you don't have a solid

01:02:00   record of it really you can't really quote them very easily because it's a phone call you get

01:02:04   this random phone call from apple that's like a nice but terse person telling you really what you

01:02:08   can't do and then that's it and you have no way to ever reach them again i actually i heard a rumor

01:02:13   a while back that all of those phone calls were made by this one guy who was like the nicest guy

01:02:20   in the world but was also ex-military and just had like there's an article about that i think

01:02:25   oh really yeah i think it was yeah i heard he just he just had like you know like the like willpower

01:02:29   of stone and he could just make these calls and get through them with people like probably giving

01:02:33   them all sorts of crap on the other on the other end he could just get through them and apparently

01:02:36   he was super nice and apparently he he stopped doing that job like last year or something like

01:02:41   that anyway i don't know if that's true but i thought that was kind of funny that like it's

01:02:44   like this one super nice guy doing all this anyway you know apple has this problem of like

01:02:49   they changed the policy something was allowed now they don't want to allow it anymore

01:02:54   that's going to be uncomfortable as john said developers have this problem of

01:02:57   apple changes something right from under us and we're getting terrible to know communication on it

01:03:02   and we seem to have seemed to be powerless both sides of it suck i think the the solution here

01:03:08   you know it's never going to be problem free but apple has to get way better at the communication

01:03:15   when this kind of thing happens they are just horrendous at it i think their motivations here

01:03:20   were fine like i don't i don't think they were badly motivated again i don't i don't think this

01:03:25   had anything to do with screen time at all agreed i don't think anybody at apple at like decision

01:03:29   making high up levels knew about these apps using mdm for this purpose a year ago and said we're

01:03:35   going to wait till we long screen time and then kick them out like i seriously doubt that i think

01:03:39   that's plausible and i'll tell you why um the only reason apple made screen time is because they think

01:03:44   it's a feature that users want that there is something that people want to do with their

01:03:48   phones that are not currently able to do we should make a feature that does that it's not like they

01:03:51   frivolously add features to ios like it's filling a user need and whoever was on the team to to

01:03:57   fulfill this need to say let's make let's add this feature to ios uh you have to figure out okay what

01:04:04   uh what should this feature do uh what what you know what what features should it have what

01:04:09   functionality should have surely you look at the space and you say well are there any other

01:04:14   applications out there that already do something similar in your exploration of the space that's

01:04:18   when you discover hey there's 75 applications that do this with millions of downloads and they all use

01:04:23   mdm to do it at that point i feel like you now have the knowledge maybe it's still at the high

01:04:28   enough level the company like oh it's a big company that's two different divisions right i'm

01:04:32   saying those people have the knowledge that there's a bunch of apps out there that are using mdm and i

01:04:37   feel like at that high enough level team coming up with a feature that's that's on the slate for

01:04:41   potentially being added to ios 12 or whatever at that level i feel like that that's enough to

01:04:47   disseminate the information to the to the the the company at large at the very top and i think at

01:04:52   that point you have the discussion is like well we're exploring this feature we looked at the

01:04:56   space we think we're gonna we think we're gonna add you know these are the bullet points we're

01:04:59   gonna have these are the you know the the benefits and the you know functionality we're gonna have

01:05:04   um and also uh we probably also think probably that uh you know that these apps are using mdm

01:05:11   shouldn't do it but let's not kill those apps yet let's wait until we get screen time out the door

01:05:15   because the next consideration is that our users are you know this need that we think our users

01:05:20   have they're currently getting it filled by third parties so let them continue to have the third

01:05:25   party apps until we have some semblance of a replacement then deliver the bad news i'm not

01:05:30   saying this is what happened i'm saying it's a plausible scenario where apple what apple is

01:05:34   trying to do is provide a feature to its users in the safest way possible and also not screw all of

01:05:39   its users remember it's like what apple uh users developers the three-level hierarchy of apple's

01:05:44   priorities right there's way more users than developers so the calculus has to be not like

01:05:50   oh let's you know let's sneakily wait until screen times out and screw the developers it's let's not

01:05:54   screw our millions of users because our millions of users want this functionality so until we

01:05:58   deliver screen time let's just not do anything to that thing but put it on the agenda for some point

01:06:03   after screen time ships to eventually get those mdm apps out of there like i think that is a plausible

01:06:08   scenario because i think there's no way apple implemented this feature without looking at what

01:06:12   what exists in the space at a high enough level that the company might know and again those are

01:06:16   i'm describing basically kind motivations to everything involved that apple is looking at

01:06:21   trying to find features that are useful to its users that's thinking of its users who are using

01:06:25   the third-party apps and then in third place unfortunately other developers who it's probably

01:06:30   not thinking of that much but again the user priority wins we don't want a parent putting an

01:06:34   app on their kid's phone that unwittingly gives control to a to the third-party developer without

01:06:39   the parent understanding exactly what they've just given away when i first read the story uh i pretty

01:06:45   much immediately sided with apple in my head with the the decision side of it like you know the

01:06:50   communication side i think it was not great but the decision side of it makes total sense to me

01:06:55   because like as an ios developer i didn't even know these apps existed and if somebody would

01:06:59   have asked me hey i have an idea for an app it's a parental control app that limits how many you know

01:07:04   how long you can run apps on your phone uh can i make this i would have said no it's not possible

01:07:09   any ios developer would know like there is no way for apps on your phone to look around in your phone

01:07:16   and see what other apps are running or to have any control over that like most developers would

01:07:21   assume that's not possible and if somebody would if somebody in like in the back of the room and

01:07:26   raise their hand be like hey what if we install an mdm profile on every user's device and and we use

01:07:33   that to control these any experienced ios developer be like well they're never going to allow that

01:07:37   that's definitely going to be against app store policy like i think it's it's like developer it's

01:07:43   it's experienced ios developer common sense that this kind of thing would probably not be allowed

01:07:49   because that is clearly not what mdm is for similar thing with vpns like there's a lot of

01:07:56   apps that were using vpns to do certain things and apple cracked down on them over like the last year

01:08:01   or so as well because that's a similar kind of tool where it's like you're you're taking this

01:08:06   tool that is intended for a relatively specific type of use and if you make a vpn like like onavo

01:08:13   like facebook's onavo thing that has pretty horrible privacy implications that most of its

01:08:19   users are probably not really going to be aware of and maybe are installing for other reasons

01:08:23   uh you know a vpn is is not a great tool to use for that job or to be permitted to be used that way

01:08:29   because that's not really what it's for and most most users don't realize all the power it gives

01:08:34   the other party and things like that and so like for the same reasons that mdm profiles are i think

01:08:42   common sense not like not allowed to be used in ways like this vpns also developer common sense

01:08:47   are you know shouldn't be allowed to be doing this kind of stuff and and i think apple's policy on

01:08:51   both of those things has been slowly tightening but not outside of the realm of common sense like

01:08:57   clearly they are responding to the problems that we've seen over the app store like in recent years

01:09:03   of like wow this large-scale thing is using this api in a way that we think is creepy you know see

01:09:08   also enterprise certificate abuse stuff like that apple's finding ways that that are that are being

01:09:14   abused like this and they're closing those loopholes and i don't think that's the wrong

01:09:19   decision the only failures are that the loopholes were allowed to be exploited in the first place

01:09:24   and that they and the policy change was so badly communicated almost every time we are sponsored

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01:11:24   all right let's do some ask atp starting with keegan sands who writes what naming convention

01:11:32   do you use for directories and files on your mac camel case hyphen delimiter underscore delimiter

01:11:37   etc underscores are good for many things i'd just like to put that out there for me i uh i

01:11:43   generally just use like the windows 95 oh my god i can put spaces and capitals and whatever i want

01:11:50   my file name i will do that thank you very much and so that's what i do i use spaces i don't have

01:11:56   any particularly strong feelings about camel or pascal case or anything else i name things in the

01:12:02   most appropriate way i see possible because that's what the file system enables me to do i'm going to

01:12:09   assume that marco is slightly more particular than me so let me ask you first um anything that's like

01:12:16   like me like you like user facing i just use spaces and proper capitalization and it's fine

01:12:24   exactly um i i will use all lowercase no spaces using hyphens between words for things like

01:12:32   developer directories so things like my my git checkouts of like i have like you know overcast

01:12:39   dash web and it's all lowercase that's that's the git checkout for it so it's so like in the in the

01:12:43   path that will be used by developer stuff there's no spaces just because just in case something

01:12:50   weird happens i don't want to deal with it right so um and just for some reason and like i do the

01:12:55   same thing on my servers like the servers all have like lowercase with dashes um as as the delimiters

01:13:01   and just you know because it's easier on linux to do things that way um but yeah anything like

01:13:06   documents for myself that are just like in my home documents directory or anything that or stuff on

01:13:10   my desktop that's all just with spaces and capital letters and stuff it's fine yeah i think shell

01:13:15   scripts are another good example of like all lowercase and hyphens yep me too yep so that

01:13:20   that's there are occasions that that'll be more particular but not usually all right john we only

01:13:26   have but so much time but please tell me your rules for files file file naming on your file

01:13:31   system well more than since more than a decade before windows 95 i was naming my files in sane

01:13:36   ways because that's what you can do on a mac and by the way i was naming them whatever i wanted to

01:13:40   name them literally whatever one of the name there was no part of the file name that i was required

01:13:45   to put any sort of secret code in there the operating system would then interpret and try

01:13:48   to take action based on i could literally what about the colon i could literally name my files

01:13:52   whatever i wanted no that that's a forbidden character but there was no part that if you

01:13:56   wrote it the operating system would look at that part of the file name and interpret it in a weird

01:13:59   ass way that can break things okay you are so i've never met a human being that is more angry about

01:14:06   extensions than you are so angry forever anyway uh and and how did i choose how did i actually choose

01:14:11   to name them it's mostly title case like you know my obsession with title case it's mostly title case

01:14:16   um you don't say yeah because they were like the titles of folders and applications were named

01:14:20   it essentially in title case since the beginning of the mac so that's the way you know everything's

01:14:24   staying that way uh that said you know so the mac uh it now has unix to uh great taste it tastes

01:14:30   great together uh i do sort of code switching uh to pull a word to code switch slightly here

01:14:37   code switching when i'm doing work uh if i am working let's say in a programming language

01:14:42   that itself has some kind of strong cultural convention for what you name your source files

01:14:46   or what you name your directories or sometimes a mandated convention like pearl where the

01:14:51   package name corresponds to a directory path that has to exactly match the package name and the

01:14:55   language has an informal convention for how packages should be named i totally use those

01:15:00   conventions right sometimes it's hard to tell like if you asked a random person in the street what is

01:15:05   nodes uh naming convention for javascript files some person might say uh hyphen separating words

01:15:11   all lowercase some person might say underscores in the end it doesn't really matter that much

01:15:15   and it's a cultural thing but certainly no one would say that the convention for uh node js is

01:15:20   to generally do title cases with spaces between words that's not the convention you can do it

01:15:25   but it's not the convention so i do code switch um my personal preference if i don't think i would

01:15:32   say in the absence of any other overriding culture or concern for a programming language or environment

01:15:36   what would i choose but there is no context like that like every in every context whether it's

01:15:41   shell or pearl or c or whatever there's some kind of cultural surrounding influence to suggest how

01:15:48   you might consider naming your files and i generally just tend to stick with whatever the

01:15:52   dominant culture is within the thing which means that on my mac there are a bunch of files and

01:15:56   folders and everything that look you know that are named the way i want them to be named especially

01:16:00   with extensions hidden um but then there are whole directory trees that are in the sort of culture

01:16:06   and parlance of whatever programming language or environment they're in patrick writes with

01:16:11   apple willing to spend big money on controlling important pieces of tech why are they paying so

01:16:15   much for aws instead of making their own cloud it's an interesting question but i i don't think

01:16:21   apple has any interest in managing something that like their their cloud stuff i i just i mean they

01:16:29   have that huge data center in north carolina which is used for something uh but by and large i just

01:16:35   don't think that them doing doing an aws clone or an aws alike really how does that help the user

01:16:44   because aws seems by and large to be pretty good at what it does i don't know john why am i being

01:16:50   wrong why am i wrong with this used to be a much less interesting question if you'd ask the same

01:16:53   question a couple decades ago would it be like well duh like there are things that apple does

01:16:59   that are part of its core company core competency and value proposition and there are things that

01:17:03   it asks another company to do right it doesn't uh it doesn't decide to run its own construction

01:17:08   company to build its buildings i you know and the current apple every example i can think of is like

01:17:12   actually a much more plausible you might think but let's say decades ago like it doesn't you know

01:17:16   like there are certain things johnny i've builds the bulldozer yeah they're not like reinvents

01:17:21   concrete right like it doesn't it doesn't make the machines that make its computers like it doesn't

01:17:25   you know it doesn't uh make the bulldozers that mine for the chemicals that go into it's like

01:17:29   that's not what the core competency of the company is it's like what is what should we put our effort

01:17:34   and money behind um uh outsource things that are not part of your value proposition to a company

01:17:40   that does them exclusively and does them better uh that's that's the way you do things um and

01:17:46   practically speaking both decades ago and today i'm gonna say everybody uses aws but the public

01:17:52   cloud writ large is extremely popular uh if you don't work for a company that does things online

01:17:59   perhaps you don't realize how much of all the cool products you use are powered by aws or to a lesser

01:18:05   extent azure or google cloud uh the companies don't advertise that fact uh but that's how the

01:18:12   world works today and it works that way like why does netflix use aws why don't they run all their

01:18:17   own data centers netflix's core competency is these days making original content and doing

01:18:22   content deals and delivering you uh video it is not writing cloud infrastructure to run servers

01:18:28   and stuff right that is not you know like that's that's not where they want to be spending their

01:18:32   money and that's that's sort of the current business model but today with apple today

01:18:37   it's a more difficult question because there are very few companies that should be trying to run

01:18:45   their own cloud but arguably apple might be one of them that should at least be considering it

01:18:51   amazon runs its own cloud it's called aws google runs its own cloud microsoft runs its own cloud

01:18:57   apple is kind of in that camp and services are a big part of apple things and yada yada yada

01:19:01   you can still make a very strong argument that apple should absolutely not be running its own

01:19:05   cloud and they should outsource this but some of its competitors actually do derive advantage from

01:19:12   running their own clouds google certainly does their entire business was founded on the fact

01:19:16   that they would run their own data centers and design their own hardware and draw their own

01:19:19   machines and do a lot of stuff and it gives them an advantage both in terms of cost and innovation

01:19:23   and lots of lots of other areas amazon has an advantage because you know they they built aws

01:19:30   is kind of this weird side business now it is a huge business because as i said every other

01:19:33   freaking company in the world is using the public cloud to run their businesses on and that's a

01:19:36   pretty darn good business look at like bezos's like yearly report or whatever aws is a good

01:19:42   business it's nice to have you know it's maybe it's not an iphone size business but it's a big

01:19:46   business and it's nice to have that and by the way there's synergy between that business and what

01:19:51   amazon does and all that other stuff apple a lot of the same things are true it would gain both a

01:19:56   cost and innovative innovation advantage to running its own cloud it if they decided to ever sell

01:20:01   their services like google and microsoft and amazon do that could be a big business but on the

01:20:07   other hand it's also a crowded market and apple is not traditionally being particularly good at this

01:20:10   but on the other other hand maybe they should be good at it so it is way more complicated question

01:20:16   today than it used to be used to be the answer was simple nobody should run their own cloud it's

01:20:20   stupid today the answer is nobody should run their own cloud except maybe apple might think about it

01:20:26   like there's like five companies in the world that are on their own cloud and apple might be one of

01:20:30   them so i think this is an interesting question i don't think it's a really good answer i mean i

01:20:35   think it's it's even simpler than that i mean this is a this is a role that is easily outsourced

01:20:43   because it is it is separate from like it's easy to separate this role out of like dumb server stuff

01:20:49   or dumb online services like it's easy to outsource that to aws or various companies like aws and it's

01:20:56   hard for apple to build that up to a large scale reasonably quickly like apple's cloud needs and

01:21:05   back end needs have grown a ton over the last decade apple itself seems to have a lot of

01:21:10   trouble multitasking as a company in general they have they seem to have a lot of trouble scaling

01:21:15   their company scaling their head count in particular they just seem like they're they don't

01:21:19   do that very quickly or very easily and when they try it seems like they have trouble this seems like

01:21:24   an easy thing to like take this big boring highly commoditized role and have someone else do it for

01:21:31   us because not only can we then not build all that out ourselves and save some head count and

01:21:37   save some complexity there it's also possible that amazon can do it cheaper than we can

01:21:43   that's not spoken like someone who hasn't paid a big aws bill lately i mean they certainly can do

01:21:50   it cheaper but it won't be cheaper to you because they charge a profit margin on those things they

01:21:56   do but it's it's a highly commoditized market that's very competitive and easily switched

01:22:00   between providers they're using it right not as commoditized as you would think it is like there's

01:22:05   it really depends like i see what like you're making the argument for the old apple but i think

01:22:10   what you're really saying is apple is so late to the market that it's too late for them to be

01:22:13   competitive but well both like i'm saying that they are pretty late to this market especially as you

01:22:19   mentioned like this is not historically an area where they've been incredibly competent or cared

01:22:24   very strongly to become competent so like this is something that they don't really value much as a

01:22:29   company uh you know the whole thing of like you know like the i think the tim cook doctrine of

01:22:33   like we want to do things that we can add value to they can't add value to data center but they

01:22:38   could like if they did what google did google and amazon both add value to that but they add value

01:22:43   to their own businesses and they add value in terms of they sell it to other people like it's

01:22:46   a good business and like what google does how they can make their data if google paid for aws

01:22:52   it would cost them so much money and by the way they'd also be paying a potential competitor right

01:22:56   google does their own stuff because they're google and they do it really really well for their own

01:23:02   purposes google cloud is is a good example google cloud is the best example apple shouldn't do google

01:23:07   has their public cloud service and even though i think google has best in class best in the entire

01:23:12   world data center management and systems for their own stuff like the google search engine and all

01:23:17   that other stuff they are behind amazon in terms of selling that to the public because they came in

01:23:23   too late and if google's having trouble catching aws what chance does apple have right but that's

01:23:28   kind of the pessimistic taste and on the other hand apple uh was considering making a car so

01:23:33   like we live in a strange world yeah good point yeah i think i think honestly i think

01:23:39   apple should have already been in on the public cloud and many many years ago but they haven't

01:23:45   so maybe it is too late but i think it is not it's not entirely slam dunk and depending on how this

01:23:52   shakes out long term apple may seriously regret not getting into the space because i can tell you

01:23:59   that there's a lot of money to be made selling these services to other people uh adws bills

01:24:05   really add up and no matter who you go to who's apple going to go to their public cloud they're

01:24:10   not going to run their own they're either going to pay microsoft google or amazon that's not a

01:24:14   great situation to be in and they're going to pay them a lot of money that's if they're going to be

01:24:18   a big that's not a good situation to be in for apple like you don't want to be it's kind of like

01:24:22   google paying apple billions of dollars to be the default search on ios it's you really don't want to

01:24:28   be giving that much money to your competitors especially when they know they kind of have you

01:24:32   over a barrel because what are you going to do move all your crap from aos into azure it's not

01:24:36   it's not an easy lift all right this next piece of ask atp has been lingering in our document for

01:24:43   probably two or three months and we keep just putting it off putting it off putting it off

01:24:47   putting it off but sometime forever ago paul wood the third wrote hey you know john roderick has

01:24:54   and merlin i guess is what he was intending have discussed their top 10 sports cars on roderick on

01:25:00   the line can we get that list on atp and hear from marco and casey as well oh did you did you discuss

01:25:06   this with roderick yeah when he was on rectiffs a while back i think we talked about it ah okay

01:25:10   right right so anyway so i put this in the show notes and then uh apparently john has added a

01:25:17   tweet wherein this was already decided in 2016 so would you like to tell me about that john yeah i

01:25:21   think that's when i had a roderica and reconcilable differences with me and we discussed this and i

01:25:25   think i tweeted about it my list hasn't changed that much i i start this is the list i put in

01:25:31   the tweet and it's tweet link so you can't go into super detail but there are nuances to it

01:25:35   and it was like top 10 i don't think i came up with 10 but my list is basically uh

01:25:40   i'll describe it and then we can fill in the fill in the variables later like whatever the current

01:25:49   mid-engine uh ferrari uh v8 sports car is like whatever the latest model that's usually on my

01:25:55   list so in this at the time it was a 488 but now it's the what the hell is the thing called

01:25:59   tributo f8 tributo or something like that anyway whatever that one is the current one that one

01:26:05   keeps changing then the ferrari 458 because it's the last naturally aspirated iteration of that

01:26:11   model line bmw m3 but i mean the m3 that was around in like the what i always forget is the

01:26:17   e46 is the one that i like the one that was around that was new in like 95 96 i think it's that's e36

01:26:25   no i think it's the 46 is the one i like no e46 was early 2000s well i like that whatever the

01:26:30   one is that has the little like uh slats by the by the m3 badge i don't know which one you're talking

01:26:36   about you're talking about rich seagulls m3 because that's that's an e46 if you're talking

01:26:40   about a little boxier than that it's e36 yeah it's rich seagulls e46 that's early 2000s yeah that's

01:26:45   the m3 that i'm talking about mercedes s600 which i didn't put a year on that but it varies from year

01:26:50   sometimes i like them i don't like them but what i'm basically saying is the big v12 ridiculously

01:26:55   huge mercedes sedan that's like driving a living room that one i had tesla model s on here in 2016

01:27:02   but honestly i think i would remove that now because i'm really down on tesla and i'm just

01:27:06   angry and scared of the company and then of course mclaren f1 because why not all right for me i

01:27:13   thought the well i have to explain pretty much all of these uh the c3 corvette which is like the

01:27:20   mid to late 70s ish which by most standards is one of the worst if not the worst corvette of all time

01:27:29   however my dad had a 77 vet for a long time when i was growing up which i probably told that story

01:27:33   about 15 times on the show and on neutral but the c3 corvette i would love to have one of those um

01:27:39   the z32 uh so this is the nissan 300 zx uh from the early 1990s i had a 91 non-turbo many many

01:27:47   years ago i love that car i don't regret selling that car but i regret selling that car an aspen

01:27:53   martin dbs of pretty much any vintage something modern that i should say but leo be that brand new

01:28:00   or five years old or 10 years old whatever i'd be fine with it uh lamborghini diablo uh i don't care

01:28:05   what specific flavor of the diablo but that was my ultimate car when i was really coming of age when

01:28:10   i was a little kid and uh and i love that thing and i would even though i'm sure i would hate to

01:28:15   drive it i would still love to have one e39 m5 because it's been one of my favorite cars of all

01:28:20   time pretty much since the moment i laid eyes on it uh i echo your for you know v8 mid-engine

01:28:26   ferrari so like the 488 or what have you i echo your mclaren f1 and i'd also i would love to you

01:28:31   know have a bugatti varan just because i think it would be a cool thing to have as puke oh come on

01:28:38   so ugly so i'm not saying it's i'm not saying it's pretty i'm just pretty cool in person

01:28:43   i don't think i've ever seen one in person but i do not like that car i know i just feel like

01:28:49   it's the we spared no expense version of the automobile and i kind of respect well they

01:28:53   spared no pound that's for sure well they spared no expense brutal uh all right marco hit me all

01:29:02   right you're gonna hate my list of course i was gonna have an mr2 on it let's go one of the

01:29:08   entries i begin with quote ferrari whatever because i don't know enough about ferraris to say which

01:29:15   one you should get a ferrari california for that's your punishment for putting that on the list

01:29:19   oh god yeah because i i know i should i should want them because they're like the driver enthusiasts

01:29:24   car but i don't know anything about them so i figured i'd let john pick my ferrari yeah

01:29:28   um current mid-engine actually i would just i would i would just wait or i would get the 458

01:29:33   those are your two choices okay whatever you said that um i also thought uh in the like i like my

01:29:41   large fast electric cars like i like that and so i have model s model 3 the Porsche Taycan or is

01:29:49   that the mission wait why are you putting model 3 on the list why would you want you have a model s

01:29:53   why would you want a model 3 which is just the worst model s i needed 10. oh okay now you didn't

01:29:58   i didn't get 10. i just listed good all right all right all right so model s course take on and uh

01:30:04   the m5 i thought like you know i had one it was great and i i haven't tried the new one yet one's

01:30:09   really good they say right and so that would be certainly on the list to consider i like large

01:30:13   stands um in the uh smaller category uh i'm very curious about the new tesla roadster not enough

01:30:21   to buy one but it looks pretty cool i'll also ask to martin whatever you know casey can tell me which

01:30:26   has to martin to get and uh and then also um i'm not i've never been in one i'm not sure that i

01:30:32   would actually enjoy it but i find the bmwi8 very attractive in person i think it looks striking and

01:30:39   really impressive uh i would agree with that the other thing and i've said this in other places i

01:30:44   think but the other car that i think is does not photograph terribly well but i think is gorgeous

01:30:49   in person person is the audi r8 i agree i do not like the look of those on paper but i think they

01:30:56   are very pretty they look better in person than they do in photos but it is not to my taste i

01:31:00   can't have all the two-tone panel on the side it's just yeah it definitely it allows for some pretty

01:31:06   ugly color combos they aren't all ugly and even when it's not there's a texture difference there

01:31:12   that bothers me and then finally um in the uh small fast like kind of enthusiast category

01:31:19   uh i have the porsche cayman which i've also never been in uh but i've heard they're wonderful to

01:31:23   drive and they're mid-engine which i've never driven uh and so i'm i'm curious about that

01:31:28   the only downside with the cayman is that you're basically sitting on the ground from what i can

01:31:33   tell and so my final pick uh is the bmw m2 i thought you were gonna pick a cheap wrangler

01:31:38   no because like the m2 like it seems very similar to the 1m that i had and that was a really fun

01:31:46   car and what i what i especially liked about the 1m is that it was a small fast sporty car

01:31:50   but that you were sitting at regular sedan height not like sitting on the ground and the m2 appears

01:31:58   to basically be like the next version of that and so i'm very curious like to possibly try one of

01:32:02   those ultimately though like i'm so converted to electric at this point what i really want

01:32:07   bmw to make is an electric 2 series but they don't seem interested in doing that anytime soon

01:32:13   well thanks to our sponsors this week hover aero and clear and we will see you next week

01:32:19   now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:32:29   oh it was accidental john didn't do any research marco and kacy wouldn't let him

01:32:37   because it was accidental it was accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm

01:32:47   and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's kacy list m a r c

01:32:59   o a r m anti-marco armen s i r a c u s a syracuse it's accidental

01:33:10   they didn't mean to accidental

01:33:17   tech i was uh summoned to jury duty this week uh i recognize this is not a popular opinion

01:33:30   i really hate jury duty i it makes me what some would call unreasonably angry i call it perfectly

01:33:38   reasonable um i really don't like jury duty and i recognize why we do it the way we do i think it's

01:33:46   an incredibly broken imperfect system and not the right solution but that's just me and everyone else

01:33:52   seems to care about it a lot more than i do so i'll just stop my complaining there going to jury duty

01:33:57   makes me very angry i don't like going i don't like being there i especially don't like how much

01:34:04   they spend all this time showing you videos and stuff that thank you for going because i don't

01:34:09   think it's dignified to be thanked for something you were forced to attend that seems insulting

01:34:16   at best to legally kidnap me force me to be there and then say thanks for coming uh anyway last time

01:34:25   i served jury duty i i never got to a trial it just basically made me wait in a jury waiting room

01:34:32   to be maybe called to a courtroom for a few days eventually i i believe i even talked about on the

01:34:38   show eventually i was called up for a court into into a a courtroom and i was kicked out during

01:34:44   vardhir because i said i didn't trust authority i'd forgotten about that yes yes yes yeah anyway

01:34:51   but the vast majority of the time was not even in a courtroom it was sitting in a jury waiting room

01:34:57   with other potential jurors with nothing to do and these are federal courts that i get summoned to

01:35:01   this is the southern district of new york federal court and the federal courts are extremely strict

01:35:08   that you cannot bring any kind of electronics into the courtroom and so last or into the building

01:35:16   even and so as i was sitting there last time in this jury waiting room i had nothing to do like i

01:35:22   i had printed out articles to read and i brought like a magazine or two and i had just totally

01:35:29   under provisioned for like how much material i would need for the amount of time that i was

01:35:34   going to be there that's a good thing you're such an avid reader of novels so you have plenty to

01:35:38   fill your time right yeah exactly yeah like so anyway so last time i was dramatically under

01:35:43   prepared and i was bored out of my mind and i was super mad which made it even worse so

01:35:47   this time i wanted to do it right now as john mentioned i think a normal person's solution

01:35:53   to this would be to bring a book and this time i did i brought the creativity ink book that john

01:36:01   recommended um because i said i'm gonna bring a book this time damn it but i don't like reading

01:36:06   books very much so i wanted more options than that so for my mental health i wanted a way to have

01:36:14   my two favorite things music and podcasts now you might assume as one would that i was out of luck

01:36:23   because you aren't allowed to bring electronic devices to jury duty and that makes sense in

01:36:28   people's picture of jury duty where they picture you immediately go into a courtroom and sitting

01:36:33   and being paying attention you wouldn't want jurors using their phones during a trial and

01:36:36   that's all true but that isn't what jury duty is that's what jury duty really is at least in this

01:36:43   federal court i keep being summoned too because it's random law uh is that you go and sit in this

01:36:49   room for a long time possibly for days without going to a courtroom so you're basically just

01:36:53   sitting in a waiting room i see no harm in having electronics in that room so i decided to this time

01:37:01   try to push the boundaries a little and see if i could bring of course something that could play

01:37:07   music and podcasts while i was in this waiting room waiting around to do nothing and ideally i

01:37:12   was even thinking like it'd be nice if i could have an e-reader or something so i wouldn't have

01:37:18   to carry around paper books i have a few ebooks i'd like to read i didn't own any paper books that

01:37:24   i really wanted to read that i haven't yet so like i don't want to just buy a paper book just to bring

01:37:28   here like if i have ebooks that i can read so i'd like to bring an e-reader if possible and something

01:37:33   that can play mp3s and and maybe one device that could do both would be ideal i decided to be a

01:37:38   lawyer about it like i looked at the exact wording of what the rule was the summons that you get in

01:37:44   the mail it says and i quote do not bring electronic equipment including cell phones

01:37:50   blackberries pdas laptops and the like to the courthouse so of course i mean my first question

01:37:58   is like what's the last time somebody tried to bring a blackberry or a pda into the courthouse

01:38:02   but like so it says do not bring electronic equipment including blah blah blah and the like

01:38:06   electronic equipment is very broad but there's a lot of it that is not like those things like

01:38:13   is a digital watch electronic equipment that's like pda's laptops and blackberries no what about

01:38:20   a fitbit and one question is what about an e-reader is that like a cell phone pda or laptop

01:38:28   maybe maybe not so the good thing is that i i called that you have to like call the night before

01:38:34   to listen to a recording to see if you actually have to go in that day and the phone message

01:38:38   had different wording oh god it said no pocket knives cell phones blackberries or internet

01:38:46   capable devices are allowed in the last one that killed what i was going to say because you were

01:38:51   mentioned digital watches and there is a kind of watch that you can use to listen to both music and

01:38:55   podcasts but unfortunately it is internet capable right so i saw i don't i don't have a pocket knife

01:39:00   that one's easy you don't have a pocket knife no i'm not a knife person no cell phones blackberries

01:39:06   or internet capable devices okay now this is much more specific internet capable okay so nothing

01:39:12   with cellular obviously probably nothing with wi-fi either it's questionable what they mean by

01:39:18   internet capable but you know let's say nothing with wi-fi either now there's also a separate rule

01:39:23   that you aren't allowed to have image or sound recording devices in a courtroom so nothing with

01:39:28   a camera or microphones so before i move on if you were in this position what if anything would you

01:39:35   bring the obvious answer is some sort of portable turntable duh no you could bring a five-piece band

01:39:42   yeah that's true there's nothing about musical instruments nobody says you can't bring like

01:39:46   a wedding band in with you and just entertain the entire waiting room can i bring like mike and

01:39:51   jason to come like have a conversation in front of me about the apple news of the week yeah and

01:39:55   then the podcasting you just bring a bunch of people who will sit behind a table and talk

01:39:58   that's awesome kacy what would you bring uh all kidding aside i would certainly bring like a

01:40:06   backpack full of magazines and novels and so on and so forth like if i couldn't bring a kindle

01:40:12   then i would bring a series of novels or something like that so e-reading was the first thing i tried

01:40:18   to tackle so an e-reader is probably the easiest thing to get away with the problem is no kindle

01:40:24   has ever been made that doesn't have either wi-fi cellular or both i was gonna say they were all

01:40:28   internet capable yes now the old sony readers were neither of those things the old sony readers would

01:40:34   pass this test uh but i believe i mailed mine to you john years ago as part of packing material

01:40:40   with other kindles around it i had one sony reader like forever ago and you can't really buy them

01:40:45   quickly these days so i thought me you know a kindle would probably not pass the test but

01:40:51   what matters isn't whether something has wi-fi but whether a courtroom security guard is likely

01:40:59   to know that it has wi-fi so i figured i could actually probably get away with a kindle but what

01:41:06   i really wanted ideally i figured like trying to carry a bunch of stuff in there was risky i wanted

01:41:11   to only try to get one thing past them that was a questionable electronic device so i really wanted

01:41:16   a kindle with a headphone jack so i could also play music and podcasts from it now the only

01:41:22   problem is i gave all those to john too like many kindles have headphone jacks i don't own any of

01:41:26   them right now the only one i right now the only kindle i own is a first generation oasis not the

01:41:32   current the current one's the second generation and the first generation oasis has no audio output

01:41:35   at all so if all it could do for me was the reading functions and just replace like a book well i could

01:41:41   just bring a book like that's not that big of a deal if this device is only going to replace one

01:41:46   book it isn't worth the risk if it can't also be an audio player now i looked the newest kindles

01:41:52   all support bluetooth audio output that could be great except that they only support this for

01:41:59   audible audiobooks but in the audible app on the kindle so previous kindles back when they had

01:42:04   headphone jacks you could sideload music onto its memory by just like plugging in through usb to

01:42:08   your computer you could like put music in a folder and i could play it modern kindles can't do that

01:42:12   anymore apparently and i don't actually i didn't actually have one that could do this to test with

01:42:16   but the information i could find basically said they will only play stuff from the audible app

01:42:20   you can't load stuff on them anymore so i couldn't like load podcasts onto them so between that and

01:42:25   you know the my situation here i figured e-readers we're not going to work out they have too little

01:42:30   upside for too much risk so i decided to stick with paper for my reading needs and only try to

01:42:34   solve for music and podcasts electronically the correct modern solution as john alluded to a

01:42:40   minute ago would probably be an apple watch with air pods but the apple watch has wi-fi some of

01:42:46   them have cellular and they all have microphones and the apple watch is instantly recognizable

01:42:52   to most people and most people know that apple watches are kind of like phones and they have

01:42:58   phone-like features so i think any security guard it would be a pretty high risk like they're

01:43:04   probably not gonna let apple watch through because they know an apple watch is like a phone and you

01:43:08   know bluetooth again i wasn't sure if i could really rely on that you know it is it's not

01:43:13   usually used to provide an internet service though it can be it's also you know it is a wireless

01:43:18   electronic communication method and i figured like the guards probably wouldn't be willing to debate

01:43:24   this with me you know so i actually i thought like a little music player would be ideal

01:43:32   uh i actually have a little sony music player that is otherwise perfect except that it's very

01:43:41   obviously an audio recorder that's what it really is it has these two giant microphones on the top

01:43:46   and it has a giant red record button on the front so i figured that was too risky because you aren't

01:43:52   allowed to record stuff so clearly that was not a good idea so what i needed really was an ipod

01:43:58   you know something that looks old and basic enough that any security guard would recognize it as

01:44:06   just a music player and they would know this has no internet or phone capabilities whatsoever

01:44:12   i was hoping you were gonna say a rio pmp 300 like i had way back in the day

01:44:16   or nomad did you were you one of the nomad people i don't remember no i i briefly had one of the

01:44:21   ones that was a big hard drive but it wasn't it wasn't the nomad brand it was another brand i

01:44:25   forget i forget which one it was but it was some other brand well it was uh it was like creative

01:44:29   something something nomad is that right you know what i'm thinking of right the one that looks like

01:44:32   a yeah you're thinking of the creator of nomad jukebox which is which is the one that looks like

01:44:35   a fat disc man and it had like a five gig hard drive in it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i had

01:44:39   one that was by a different company that had a hard drive and i had one that played mp3 cdr's

01:44:43   which is much better um anyway i decided ipod is the way to go here people recognize ipods they

01:44:49   know what they look like they know what they are and they know and they know what they aren't and

01:44:53   they know it's clearly just an ipod right so that's what i wanted problem is we don't have

01:44:58   a working ipod whoops and most i yeah like tiff has her old ipod mini but it's i don't even think

01:45:03   we have a 30-pin cable anymore like i don't think i could plug it in if i wanted to and i'm pretty

01:45:08   sure the battery because most ipods that are still around today have batteries that are like 10 or 15

01:45:13   years old and so they can't hold a charge anymore and you can actually still today buy new ipods

01:45:20   that are refurbished with new batteries the problem is these are like 200 and up like the ipod nano

01:45:29   refurbished with a new battery is like 180 for most places a small price to pay but they retail

01:45:36   for 150 when they were new like they're actually more than msrp now and an ipod classic they're

01:45:41   even more ipod classics are like over 300 for like one in good shape that has a new battery

01:45:45   and i also thought though like looking at the ipod nano availability the seventh generation

01:45:50   nano the latest one is the one that looks like a tiny iphone like it has the home button and a big

01:45:55   touch screen and so i figured the security guards might not let that one through because it was

01:46:01   never very popular like by the time that came out iphones were taking over so like it wasn't very

01:46:04   popular and it looks like a small phone so i figured there's actually a risk so the one i

01:46:09   really wanted was the fifth generation that was the last one that had the iconic ipod nano shape

01:46:15   with with the screen on top and the buttons in a circle below it like that's the last one that

01:46:20   looks like you know the ipod shaped ipod was the seventh generation ipod nano or the sorry the

01:46:24   fifth generation ipod nano problem is those are those were again like 200 for a refurbished one

01:46:28   with a new battery and i also thought like am i going to spend 200 on something that the next time

01:46:34   i need this thing is probably going to be when they call me back in another five years and five

01:46:39   years from now will that battery still work and more importantly will i still be able to sync

01:46:45   files to an ipod using itunes in five years probably not let's just all sit back and appreciate

01:46:52   the fact that you are even considering making a one-time 200 purchase for a single day activity

01:46:58   that may repeat every five years correct just appreciate that i it felt rich to me like i felt

01:47:03   what it's like to be marco yeah so honestly the price really put me off if if not for the if it

01:47:09   was like 50 i would have done it no question 200 felt a little ridiculous for this purpose

01:47:15   but the good thing is i am not the first person to have ever wanted a cheap ipod the ipod spawned

01:47:22   a thousand clones and many of them are still around today and still being made still brand new

01:47:30   and because it is 2019 they cost basically nothing so i will put in the show notes the one i chose

01:47:40   i bought the agp tech mp3 player 8 gigabyte bluetooth 4.0 upgraded a02t lossless sport music

01:47:47   player with fm radio voice recorder expandable up to 128 gigs black for kids and adult voice recorder

01:47:52   so i selected this one in part because it looked very similar to an ipod nano also in part because

01:48:00   i was ordering it on a saturday and it was guaranteed to arrive on sunday and in part

01:48:06   because it was 26 dollars i should clarify the price has since gone to 29 but when i bought it

01:48:12   it was 26 now john noticed a few problematic keywords it does have bluetooth and it does

01:48:20   include a little microphone to make voice recordings but neither of those things were

01:48:24   visually apparent the microphone as far i i didn't even test where it was but there's a small hole

01:48:29   on the back of it i think that's the microphone it might not even be it might just be like it might

01:48:34   just use a microphone that's on the earbuds if you happen to be using like a trs earbud set

01:48:38   uh so i don't know i never tried the voice recorder i assume it was recording everything

01:48:42   and transmitting it back to a data center in china the whole time you were there so maybe uh so

01:48:47   anyway uh that's what bloomberg said anyway right yeah exactly so because the voice recorder aspect

01:48:55   of it was not visually apparent at all and i wasn't even sure it even had a microphone i

01:48:59   figured that would probably not be a problem so i loaded it up and you know it's there is no sync

01:49:05   software to be had you just you plug it in and it's a usb device and you copy stuff over two

01:49:11   folders on it it's great um i loaded up with music i i put some podcasts on it and uh i wrapped an

01:49:17   old wired pair of white apple earbuds around it like it's 2005 you know and i brought to the

01:49:23   courthouse now they were very very clear in the instructions don't even bring your phone into the

01:49:29   building just don't even bring it with you that day at all or leave it in your car so i left it

01:49:33   locked in my gloves in my glove box because i wasn't going to not bring it obviously i got to

01:49:37   get there somehow don't leave your phone in your car that's not i mean you probably got away with

01:49:42   it because you know whatever and the tesla is kind of climate control but that's bad for your phone

01:49:46   don't leave your phone in your car sorry uh anyway so i left it in the glove box locked up um the

01:49:51   first thing i had to do was figure out where to park i had to you know go into like a big

01:49:56   municipal city parking garage and i had my phone until i parked but then i had to leave my phone in

01:50:01   the car so the first thing i had to do was figure out how to pay for this parking and there's signs

01:50:06   up saying remember your parking spot my usual solution of this would be to take a picture of

01:50:12   the parking spot and if not that i would at least usually take a picture of the sign by the elevator

01:50:18   that told me what floor i was on and whether it's like east or north or whatever and i couldn't do

01:50:22   those things so i had to like i like my short-term memory for these things is gone like i the skill

01:50:27   i have to remember parking spots is gone because i haven't used it in you know what 10 years so i i

01:50:34   took out a notebook and a pencil which i had to buy for this this is where you need the the mike

01:50:42   hurley in your life you got a bunch of expensive hipster notebooks and a million pens yeah well

01:50:47   fortunately i have tiff but i but our tastes aren't they don't overlap that much in this area

01:50:52   gigantic sparkly fountain pen to write down what parking spot you're in yeah so i took out a brand

01:50:59   new notebook and a brand new mechanical pencil and i had to write down like my parking spot and

01:51:04   everything could you just look for the big red tesla i mean how many other red teslas were there

01:51:09   in the parking lot at the time it was i was lost man it was terrible like and so anyway so i

01:51:14   i i eventually found the pay station and the elevators and everything and i paid i couldn't

01:51:18   use apple pay i had to use my credit card like a animal and then uh then i had to find the courthouse

01:51:27   from the parking garage which was about a block and a half or two away and so i walked out of the

01:51:33   parking garage and basically immediately got lost like i like walked up and down the block

01:51:41   one different direction like where the hell i i i had already forgotten even the name of the street

01:51:46   that the courtroom was on you know you should have just printed map quest directions like we did back

01:51:52   in print that's what i used to do you just need a hankstrom is what you need you should you should

01:51:57   have driven there without navigation too yeah right and so like eventually i found like somebody

01:52:02   was walking by in a suit and i figured he probably knows where the courthouse is so he's wearing a

01:52:06   suit on a weekday morning so i said like hey you know where the uh courthouse is and i couldn't

01:52:12   have lucked out with a better guy he points like across like diagonally across the street and he's

01:52:17   like that one's county that one's city and around the corner from that one is federal like great

01:52:22   all right thanks so i uh that's amazing yeah so i i went to the around the corner one eventually

01:52:29   found the federal like i thank god i would never would have found it on my own like it was it was

01:52:32   i was gonna walk around a very long time before finding that uh so it's like finally like i'm a

01:52:37   human without a phone like i'm totally lost finally i find this place um i of course i i'm so mad when

01:52:45   i get there that i have to do all this i immediately wanted to take a picture of myself outside the

01:52:48   courtroom or outside the building like flipping it off and realized i had no camera with me and

01:52:52   couldn't do that so i'm like oh here we go modern life tracks again you could still flip off the

01:52:56   building even with there's no camera there to record it it's not the same anyway so it's not

01:53:01   the same so the uh so i get in go through security the security guards seem pretty nice and you know

01:53:07   take everything out take everything out and he glanced at the mp3 player and initially he said

01:53:12   he gave it a quick glance and he said no electronics but of course i was trying to get i'm like it's

01:53:17   just an mp3 player sir and and he stopped for a minute and he looked more closely at it because

01:53:22   you could tell you know it's like like it's like tsa like they get they have to say the same thing

01:53:26   a million times to everybody who comes in so they're sick of it they're not really thinking

01:53:30   when they first say it he actually took a look at it and he realized it looks like an ipod nano with

01:53:35   white headphones wrapped around it and he he like asked the guard like in the next lane over like

01:53:39   hey we allow these now right and so they mumbled to each other and then he waved me through he said

01:53:44   all right it's fine so i had it i got it through i was able to bring nice an ipod like mp3 player

01:53:52   into the courthouse and uh it was fine so i can tell you finally with my day of using it in the

01:54:01   in the waiting room which is fortunately they sent us home early and then we were done and i

01:54:06   don't have to go back because it turns out this week there weren't a lot of cases needing juries

01:54:12   and white planes uh so it was a short i only actually needed it for like two-thirds of a day

01:54:18   but in my two-thirds of a day of using it i can tell you my review of the agp tech a02t

01:54:25   26 mp3 player in 2019 please carry on uh it looks and feels like a 26 device

01:54:32   the body of it is that like that like cheap soft touch rubbery plastic you know what i'm talking

01:54:38   about yeah like it's like every every super cheap device is made from that now um the screen is

01:54:46   horrendous looking like the resolution is terrible the viewing angle like i don't think there is a

01:54:50   good angle to view it okay it's just what if there is i couldn't find it um none of the buttons or

01:54:56   switches feel remotely good to use um the buttons only work about two-thirds of the time uh and

01:55:05   lots of navigation just requires like you know oh just push it again like my kicking machine like

01:55:10   just push it again and it'll solve the problem it doesn't support the remote control clicker buttons

01:55:16   on the ipod headphones for like volume up and down or play pause which i immediately missed for

01:55:22   listening to podcast i had using a command line tool of course i had pre-processed the files to

01:55:28   bake in smart speed of course you did but they were all still at 1x and there was no easy 30

01:55:35   seconds skip forward and back buttons so it wasn't really ideal uh for podcasts um the device has

01:55:44   some other issues as well upon boot up about one out of five times it says no files found which is

01:55:51   terrifying when you've loaded this up to go to jury duty but then you just wait a second and they're

01:55:56   all there uh sometimes it doesn't resume from sleep and needs to be power cycled when you do

01:56:03   this this is one of many conditions i found where it will lose the position in whatever you're

01:56:07   listening to which is another thing that made listening to podcasts fairly non-ideal on this

01:56:12   device it does support video playback but it only plays 128 by 160 amv files what i if you look up

01:56:24   amv on wikipedia this is actually a music video no it's actually a format that's like it's made

01:56:29   for like cell phones and like certain things use a certain like certain type of chipset that's

01:56:33   optimized to play only that and it came with a sample video so i was able to look at that

01:56:39   video like an ffmpeg it's like what is this what are the specs in this but i have been unable to

01:56:43   encode any other videos that will actually play for whatever it's worth if you play a video

01:56:48   normally to get out of what you're doing you would hit the the menu button like the m button on top

01:56:54   if you do that it shows you a menu but none of the options are like quit it took me a long time

01:57:00   to figure out how to exit video playback mode one of the options is update playlist that's how you

01:57:07   leave oh my goodness so you know for video not so good podcasts not so good for music it's fine

01:57:18   you know not great but fine um to play or pause you often need to wake it up first which often

01:57:25   involves multiple button presses that often get lost or ignored and my favorite thing is adjusting

01:57:31   volume to change the volume which is a fairly common action that you often have to do quickly

01:57:36   you have to wake it up so you know hit player pause maybe one to five times over the course

01:57:40   of a few seconds to wake it up then you have to there's a volume button on the bottom but if you

01:57:45   push it nothing happens you have to hold it down for a few seconds to enter the volume menu oh

01:57:51   then you hit up or down a few times to your desired volume level then you like hit play to

01:57:57   be like enter to set it so this thing is pretty much a piece of garbage but it worked and i was

01:58:07   able to slowly and clumsily listen to music and podcasts while i waited around all day to do

01:58:13   nothing in jury duty and that was totally worth 26 to me so while this is a terrible product in

01:58:21   absolute terms i would actually say it's a pretty good value and i still i find it amazing just like

01:58:27   in modern life that i decided i wanted an mp3 player i found one in a few seconds i ordered it

01:58:34   on a saturday and it was delivered on sunday for 26 that's pretty cool that is pretty cool i think

01:58:42   you should have tried an ipod shuffle because i know about the battery i was really old and it

01:58:46   won't hold a charge but like the shuffle does everything you describe better retains your

01:58:50   playback position easy to change the volume wakes up instantly does all the things you're supposed

01:58:54   to do and is much less likely to be flagged as electronics by random security guard guard that's

01:59:00   what i would have gone with well i don't but i didn't have one you don't have a shuffle like in

01:59:03   the house somewhere no the only ipod we own is tiff's old mini what happened all the old other

01:59:08   ones you sold them all i i never had that many i i had i think we had a total of two shuffles ever

01:59:14   and one of them at least one of them died i don't know what happened another one um we had tiff's

01:59:18   ipod mini and i had a ipod video the 5g i think whatever the first video one was i had that one

01:59:24   and that's it i never owned a nano neither a tiff and i never owned any other like classic one

01:59:30   except for the video and that was it and that one i think that one died like 10 years ago or

01:59:35   something like it's it died not recently probably could have found a chinese knockoff ipod shuffle

01:59:40   but then that wouldn't have actually worked like an actual apple would work yeah it's kind of

01:59:45   amazing i can screw that up that badly and the volume changing thing when you go into the volume

01:59:49   menu and change it do you get to hear what the new volume sounds like while you're changing it yes

01:59:54   but you but you have to hit like the enter play button to exit the volume menu so are you holding

02:00:00   on to this for the next jury duty experience i i might as well i mean it's more likely to work in

02:00:05   five years than an ancient ipod well we'll see we'll see put it in the box says jury duty and

02:00:12   you'll open another one just be an exploded battery oh yeah the plastic will all be like

02:00:17   liquefied oh gosh now i'm also wondering if you were to do this again tomorrow for the sake of

02:00:25   discussion would you be spending any time splitting your podcast mp3s like in every minute so it's

02:00:33   easier to seek effectively back to where you left off or like mark to yourself where you've left

02:00:38   off because you say that it loses your place a lot and and it's just not a very good music player

02:00:43   so that that's something my dad used to do all the time with like audiobooks that he would download

02:00:49   like via mp3 or something like that that he would slice them up so that instead of having

02:00:54   each file be like i don't know a chapter or something like that instead each file would

02:00:59   be like 30 seconds or a minute or what have you so that uh so that it was easier for him to come

02:01:05   back to where he was that was going to be my next move like so i mean so i went to jury duty for one

02:01:10   day and then was was not needed after that and so i had a very short term of of using this if i were

02:01:18   going to be there longer i think i would probably actually then at that point go buy an ipod nano

02:01:23   like it's you know spend the 200 and like if i was going to be there for a long time and i and i would

02:01:27   have an opportunity to use this you know more than once i would i would probably go that route i i

02:01:32   also i think if i if i knew like if i if i go back and do it again and i didn't do that option there's

02:01:39   this um there's a sony player that is basically the version of my little nice sony recorder that

02:01:44   isn't a recorder like it's like the it's like the ipod nano version of my little audio recorder that

02:01:49   i have it's like the same generation has lots of the same parts i would it's like it's 75 so it's

02:01:55   more but i would probably try that first before i did before i uh did this you know any any crazy

02:02:02   hacks to make my 26 dollar one work that much better because it is it seems like it's a nicer

02:02:07   built thing the reviews are a little bit mixed but because you know the problem is like a new mp3

02:02:12   player in 2019 this is not a high volume market like there are digital audio players like there

02:02:19   are like portable audio players that are for audio files like for high-end audio listeners that

02:02:23   support like high bitrate stuff and everything but those all look like phones because they all

02:02:28   have these like they're all like the size of phones and they have they have like a big touch

02:02:32   screen on them there's actually very few that aren't touch screens um but i i wanted something

02:02:36   that looked more like an ipod because i figured it'd be more likely to get through whereas

02:02:39   something that looks just like a phone which is all the high-end models i figured that was not

02:02:44   likely to get through did you read any of your book nope