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295: Outlets That Suck

 

00:00:00   - I still haven't bothered picking up a watch,

00:00:01   and at this point I'm like,

00:00:02   "I don't know if I should even bother."

00:00:04   - Why, are we too close to the next one?

00:00:06   - No, it's just I feel like I've missed all the excitement

00:00:09   at this point.

00:00:09   - Obviously he doesn't need it

00:00:10   if he's getting by without it so long.

00:00:12   - Yeah, exactly.

00:00:13   - So two things.

00:00:14   Number one, it really is the big deal.

00:00:16   And if you care this much, you probably should buy it.

00:00:18   But number two, if the only reason you wanted to buy it

00:00:21   was to participate in the wave of newness,

00:00:24   then you shouldn't.

00:00:25   - I didn't think so.

00:00:26   (laughs)

00:00:27   But now I'm wondering, now I'm wondering,

00:00:29   if maybe that was it.

00:00:29   - That's a very bad reason to buy it

00:00:31   because that's very short-lived.

00:00:33   But if you wear the Apple Watch every day

00:00:35   and you really are into the Apple Watch,

00:00:37   you should buy it.

00:00:38   - Yeah, and that's what it boils down to,

00:00:39   is I think both of those,

00:00:41   I don't know if I'm really into the Apple Watch.

00:00:44   What does really even mean in this context?

00:00:46   But I take your point, and I think that in spirit,

00:00:49   what you mean is spot on.

00:00:51   And I probably should go find one.

00:00:53   I haven't looked at iStock now in a while,

00:00:55   and I haven't just ordered online because--

00:00:57   - No, literally, just walk into a store in the morning.

00:00:59   Like, you know, now that you don't have a job,

00:01:00   you can do this.

00:01:01   Like, just, you know, your local store will probably--

00:01:03   - Seriously, I'm doing my job right now.

00:01:04   - It probably opens at like 10 in the morning.

00:01:06   Just go there at 10 in the morning one day

00:01:08   and say, "Hey, do you have any?"

00:01:09   And they'll say yes or no.

00:01:10   And if they say no, say, "Hey, what time

00:01:11   "do they usually come in?"

00:01:12   And they'll tell you like 1 p.m.

00:01:14   And then so next time, show up at 1 p.m.

00:01:16   and say, "Hey, do you have any?"

00:01:17   - Right.

00:01:18   - I bet if you actually do that,

00:01:19   I bet you can get one within two days.

00:01:21   - You're probably right.

00:01:22   I have been making a habit of looking at iStock now

00:01:24   like a fool, although, oh, actually, this is,

00:01:29   I went to my friend's house.

00:01:32   I think we didn't talk about this on the show, did we?

00:01:34   'Cause I think it was after we recorded.

00:01:37   The husband has a 44, the wife has a 40.

00:01:39   I think I gotta go 40.

00:01:42   I think I do.

00:01:44   - The 40 lifestyle is awesome.

00:01:46   I really enjoy the 40.

00:01:48   Like, it's a really good size.

00:01:50   It really is much better proportioned for me.

00:01:54   You know, so I'm curious your reason,

00:01:56   but my reason stands that like,

00:01:58   I care about how a watch looks on my wrist.

00:02:00   I care about the proportions of it

00:02:02   and I get a lot of value out of a small watch

00:02:06   being sufficient on me because that's graceful,

00:02:09   that's pleasing, it's lighter, it's smaller.

00:02:12   That actually is more valuable to me.

00:02:14   The smaller I can go and have it

00:02:15   still look reasonable on me.

00:02:16   And so I'm curious your reasoning

00:02:18   'cause you're more into it than me

00:02:19   like as a computing platform.

00:02:22   So why do you say 40?

00:02:25   - Just from looks.

00:02:26   I think that the 42 looked on the upper edge

00:02:31   of okay on my wrist.

00:02:33   You know, as I look down on my wrist now,

00:02:34   I think I'm right on the ragged edge of it being okay.

00:02:37   And even though the 44 is only two millimeters,

00:02:39   and maybe it's all in my head, who knows,

00:02:41   but at the end of the day, even if it's in my head,

00:02:44   let's suppose it is,

00:02:46   I still gotta look at my own darn wrist every day, you know?

00:02:49   And if I look at it and go, ugh,

00:02:51   then that's not a good thing.

00:02:52   And so even though I really don't wanna get rid of my bands,

00:02:55   which is funny because I only have like three or four,

00:02:56   only one or two of which are actually decent,

00:03:00   it makes me kind of not sick,

00:03:01   but it bums me out to not being able to use the stuff

00:03:05   I already have on what appears to be the same device.

00:03:08   Like I totally understand it.

00:03:09   I'm not saying Apple did anything wrong here.

00:03:11   But that being said, you know, when I tried on,

00:03:13   this is my friend, Steve and Kristen,

00:03:14   when I tried on Steve's watch, it didn't look,

00:03:18   it wasn't out of bounds unacceptable if that means anything,

00:03:21   if that makes sense.

00:03:22   It's just, it didn't quite look right on my wrist.

00:03:24   And I thought it looked fine on his wrist.

00:03:26   His wrists are bigger than mine.

00:03:27   And so I think that makes sense.

00:03:29   But on my wrist, I just didn't think it looked quite right.

00:03:30   And I thought that the 40 did look a hint smaller

00:03:34   than I would have liked,

00:03:36   but all told, I think it looked better than the 44.

00:03:40   And I think part of this is just some, I don't know,

00:03:43   maybe latent or subconscious angst about me

00:03:48   not having the wrists for like a Panerai.

00:03:50   'Cause one of the first times I looked at a watch

00:03:53   and thought, damn, that's a good looking watch,

00:03:55   was a friend of mine who was a watch nerd, not Marco,

00:03:58   surprisingly, 'cause this was years ago.

00:03:59   And he had a Panerai, I forget the model,

00:04:02   but it's one of the ones with like the weird clasp

00:04:03   on the right hand side around the crown,

00:04:05   which a lot of people hate.

00:04:06   And I think you're in that camp, Marco, but I love,

00:04:07   I just think it looks really cool.

00:04:08   - I prefer the ones without it, but yeah.

00:04:10   It's a cool look overall.

00:04:14   Like all of their stuff looks pretty much the same.

00:04:16   And it's all a pretty cool look.

00:04:17   Although to be fair, the Panerai look

00:04:20   is a statement of bigness.

00:04:23   Like they are big intentionally.

00:04:25   That is the look, that is the style they're going for.

00:04:28   - I'm glad you said that.

00:04:29   That is a perfect way to describe it.

00:04:31   And I always thought that, yeah, they're huge.

00:04:35   And we're just comical on my wrist.

00:04:38   Like I tried my friends on once

00:04:39   and it was hilariously oversized.

00:04:42   But I always thought to myself like,

00:04:45   and this was even years ago when I was just wearing

00:04:47   either no watch or like a crummy Timex wristwatch,

00:04:50   you know, that was like 25 bucks at Target, which I loved.

00:04:52   And it's actually a very good looking Timex.

00:04:54   You're probably thinking of the exact one

00:04:56   I'm thinking of, both Marco and listeners.

00:04:57   But anyways, I always thought to myself,

00:05:01   you know, if I ever fall upon just an absurd amount of money,

00:05:04   I'm gonna get myself a Panerai and just not care

00:05:05   about the fact that it looks ridiculously stupid.

00:05:08   And so I wish I had bigger wrists.

00:05:12   Maybe I just gotta take the Dr. Nick approach,

00:05:14   that's a reference, John,

00:05:15   and get myself a little bit bigger

00:05:17   so I can sport one of these watches.

00:05:19   But realistically, I think it's just the 40 looks better

00:05:23   than the 44.

00:05:24   And there is something to be said

00:05:25   for being able to share watch bands with Aaron,

00:05:28   which I can't imagine that would happen often,

00:05:30   but it would be kind of nice

00:05:31   to be able to share them occasionally.

00:05:33   So I think whenever it is I get around

00:05:36   to pulling the trigger on a watch,

00:05:37   I think I'm gonna do a 40.

00:05:39   And part of the reason I wanna do it in the store

00:05:42   is because I'm pretty sure I just wanna, you know,

00:05:44   trade in or whatever the term is in this context,

00:05:47   you know, get rid of my 44 that I'm wearing now

00:05:51   and get a credit against the 40 that I would be buying.

00:05:55   And--

00:05:56   - You can do that in store?

00:05:57   - I thought that was the case.

00:05:59   And what I had read after having looked

00:06:01   only briefly into this was that it's actually much better

00:06:05   to do it in store because I guess they do some amount

00:06:08   of the assessment in store, whereas if you send it in,

00:06:12   whatever third party vendor is handling that,

00:06:14   my understanding is they're way more aggressive

00:06:18   about taking credit away.

00:06:20   So let's say for the sake of discussion,

00:06:22   I think my watch was, my current watch is worth like 225 bucks

00:06:25   and let's just say that's true even if it isn't.

00:06:27   My understanding is if you go in store,

00:06:28   you're likely to get 200, 225 bucks for it,

00:06:30   whatever the case may be.

00:06:31   But if you send it in, you're getting like 150 at the best.

00:06:34   You know what I mean?

00:06:35   Because they just, oh, well, this has a tiny hairline

00:06:37   scratch you can only see under a microscope

00:06:38   that we have at our little facility

00:06:41   or whatever the case may be.

00:06:42   So I wanna do it in store

00:06:44   and that's why I haven't just ordered it

00:06:47   and so one of these days I just need to walk in

00:06:49   like you said and just give it a shot.

00:06:50   - Well, for whatever it's worth, on that topic,

00:06:53   since this year I learned of this system

00:06:56   of trading things in, I'd sent in a bunch of stuff.

00:06:59   Over the last couple of weeks, I have sent in

00:07:02   two iPhone 6s, an 8 Plus, my iPhone 10,

00:07:06   which is still processing because it took a while

00:07:08   to get there, and my Series 3 Apple Watch.

00:07:11   All of them so far, I don't know about the 10 yet,

00:07:13   but all of the other ones have given me

00:07:15   the exact quoted price online.

00:07:17   - Oh really, okay.

00:07:18   - Yeah.

00:07:19   - So is this Apple Giveback?

00:07:20   Is that what I'm thinking of?

00:07:21   Is that the term for it?

00:07:22   - Yes, and it's run by, I think it's run by

00:07:24   two different companies, BrightStar or Fobio.

00:07:27   All the other ones except for the 10 went to BrightStar.

00:07:30   The 10 went to Fobio and it's like it went FedEx

00:07:33   and the others went UPS.

00:07:35   Like I don't know if this is actually

00:07:36   two different companies or just two different

00:07:38   receiving centers for different age devices.

00:07:40   But so far it's been totally fine.

00:07:42   I've gotten the full value of everything I sent in.

00:07:45   And I know I can get more if I go to eBay or something,

00:07:48   but I don't want to deal with that.

00:07:50   That's the reason why I try to sell things

00:07:51   on Twitter so often, 'cause dealing with eBay

00:07:53   is tricky and very risky.

00:07:56   Even as a seller it's very risky.

00:07:58   There's a lot of scam buyers out there.

00:08:00   It is worth it to me to give up some of the value

00:08:02   for an easy sale, and that's what these things have given me.

00:08:04   And so yeah, for whatever it's worth,

00:08:06   I have been, I've been totally fine with my experience

00:08:10   with this company so far, but your mileage may vary.

00:08:13   - Yeah, I hear you.

00:08:15   Also we should tell everyone that we fired John

00:08:17   from the show, so it's just us now.

00:08:19   - John never gets rid of anything.

00:08:20   (laughing)

00:08:21   - I'm looking at these ugly Panerai watches.

00:08:24   It occurs to me, I mean this is something

00:08:26   that I think about, and I'm sure some other people do,

00:08:28   but like do you guys ever worry about wearing things

00:08:33   that can either injure you or increase the,

00:08:38   increase the severity of injuries to you?

00:08:41   About the little, this ridiculous guard thing

00:08:45   they have over the--

00:08:47   - Yes, it's called a crown guard.

00:08:48   - Whatever, right?

00:08:49   So if you're looking where that is,

00:08:51   depending on what wrist you wear it on,

00:08:52   like if you fall and catch yourself with your hand

00:08:55   and the palm of your hand goes to the ground

00:08:57   and so it's like at a 90 degree angle with your forearm,

00:08:59   that thing's gonna dig into and cut into

00:09:03   the top of your hand.

00:09:04   Like it just is, it's a sharp piece of metal

00:09:06   and it's a big, chunky watch.

00:09:08   - It doesn't stick out that far.

00:09:09   - Basically the same thing as like wearing earrings.

00:09:12   Like you're probably fine, but if you wear

00:09:14   big dangly earrings, they could get caught in something

00:09:16   and yank through your earlobe and in a situation

00:09:19   where your earlobe would otherwise be fine, right?

00:09:22   Like so there are things that you can wear

00:09:24   that can injure you or increase the severity of an injury

00:09:28   that you would, you'd be injured anyway,

00:09:30   but wearing the thing increases the injury

00:09:32   or makes it much more severe.

00:09:34   And these giant watches definitely look like

00:09:36   they would increase the severity of an injury

00:09:38   or possibly injure you in a case where you wouldn't

00:09:40   have an injury in that area.

00:09:41   And they could also protect you I suppose

00:09:43   if you block bullets with them like Wonder Woman, but.

00:09:45   - No, it doesn't stick out that far.

00:09:47   It's like, no, this is a non-issue.

00:09:50   It does not stick out that far.

00:09:52   You're not gonna injure yourself with your Panerai.

00:09:54   - Even just a regular watch with nothing sticking out on it

00:09:56   can increase the severity of your injury

00:09:59   if it snags on something or presses against

00:10:01   some part of your skin because it's just a foreign object

00:10:04   attached to you, I don't know.

00:10:06   I'm obviously, I don't even wear my wedding ring anymore.

00:10:09   I don't wear earrings, don't wear a watch, so.

00:10:12   - Wait, did you wear earrings at some point?

00:10:15   - No, I just said I don't.

00:10:17   I didn't use a tense that,

00:10:20   should lead you to believe that I did.

00:10:21   I do not have any additional holes in my ears.

00:10:24   - That would be kind of, I would love to see this

00:10:26   if we can somehow arrange this.

00:10:28   - I can get a clip on earring.

00:10:29   I'll put it on for you right now.

00:10:30   - Yes.

00:10:31   - But that, I mean, I suppose that could increase

00:10:33   the chance of injury as well.

00:10:34   - Even just a simple earring, like, because the post

00:10:36   goes through, if your ear gets pressed against your neck,

00:10:38   the post can go into your neck.

00:10:40   - I think if you're to that point where that's a risk,

00:10:43   I think you have bigger problems.

00:10:44   - That's why you can't wear, you know,

00:10:46   earrings in gym class.

00:10:47   Like, they don't want you to poke a hole in your neck.

00:10:49   - Oh my God.

00:10:50   - Or get your earring ripped out.

00:10:52   - Well, but the good news is if you fall into the water,

00:10:55   the Panerai, isn't the history of Panerai

00:10:57   that it was like a diving watch or something like that?

00:11:00   And so you would at least know what time it is

00:11:01   as you're, you know, drowning.

00:11:03   So that's good.

00:11:04   - The bloom is so strong that as you go into the depths

00:11:06   of drowning, you will see that time for quite a while

00:11:08   as you go down.

00:11:09   - Precisely.

00:11:11   - And it's so big that it will weigh you down.

00:11:13   - So it'll hurry it all up for you.

00:11:14   - It'll go down faster.

00:11:16   - All right, we should probably get some started

00:11:18   with some follow up.

00:11:19   Greg Parker writes in that ARMv8.3 adds a new float

00:11:23   to int instruction with errors and out of range values

00:11:25   handled the way that JavaScript wants.

00:11:27   The previous instructions to get JavaScript semantics

00:11:29   were much slower, so JavaScript's numbers are double

00:11:32   by default, so it needs this conversion a lot.

00:11:35   So this is with regard to the dramatically increased

00:11:38   or improved benchmarks on the new A12 processor,

00:11:42   is that correct?

00:11:43   - Yeah, it did really well in the JavaScript benchmark.

00:11:47   And you know, this is just depressing.

00:11:50   Kind of in the, it's worse I think than, you know,

00:11:52   the quote unquote string instructions in x86

00:11:55   because JavaScript, as we all know, is a dumb language.

00:11:58   No one making a language today would decide,

00:12:02   you know what, semantics for like edge cases

00:12:04   and booleans and type conversion and how numbers are stored,

00:12:07   like no one would choose this.

00:12:09   It's not good.

00:12:11   No one is like, I love how JavaScript handles numbers.

00:12:13   It's so obvious and does what I want all the time

00:12:16   and doesn't have any weird edge cases.

00:12:18   It's just the best.

00:12:19   No, it's stupid.

00:12:20   But we're stuck with it.

00:12:21   - It's like the way PHP named functions

00:12:22   or orders arguments to things.

00:12:24   - Yeah, like I mean, it's JavaScript is a victim

00:12:26   of its own success, it's everywhere now.

00:12:28   And they keep changing, you know, JavaScript,

00:12:30   but there's a lot of things like that

00:12:31   that you can't, you would think,

00:12:33   oh, why don't they just change it?

00:12:34   Why don't they just change it

00:12:35   so they're just native in storage behind the scenes

00:12:36   and not have everything be doubles.

00:12:38   But that would change programs,

00:12:40   how they would break programs, right?

00:12:41   And the web, you know, they keep adding stuff to JavaScript

00:12:44   and adding new features, but the fundamentals like that

00:12:47   are changing slowly, put it that way.

00:12:48   I don't know if they've changed at all,

00:12:49   but they're changing very slowly.

00:12:51   So adding an instruction that lets you quickly convert

00:12:56   from JavaScript's stupid everything is a double

00:12:59   even though you think it's,

00:13:00   even though you start as the number one,

00:13:01   it's like, I know I'll start that as a double,

00:13:03   please don't, right?

00:13:05   And the whole like 53 bits of precision for, you know,

00:13:08   integers, even though it's there 64 bits long.

00:13:10   Anyway, there's lots of stupid things about it.

00:13:13   But given that JavaScript does this

00:13:16   and you have to follow these semantics,

00:13:18   having a CPU instruction that does this conversion

00:13:23   and handles it the way JavaScript wants you to handle it

00:13:25   in terms of what have I converted and it's too big

00:13:27   or too small underflow and overflow and all of this stuff

00:13:29   makes a JavaScript benchmark faster

00:13:31   because the JavaScript benchmark, maybe, you know,

00:13:33   a couple of them are doing lots of stuff in numerics

00:13:35   where otherwise they'd be spending so much of their time

00:13:37   doing conversions from int to float to float

00:13:38   in and back and forth.

00:13:40   If you can do that 10 times faster,

00:13:42   you get a higher score on the benchmark.

00:13:44   So that is, that's gross and depressing.

00:13:47   And I don't want my CPUs perverted by a stupid language,

00:13:50   but regular people just want web pages to be faster

00:13:54   and this gets the job done.

00:13:56   So I suppose, you know, you have more explanation

00:13:59   of why the A12 does so well on this JavaScript benchmark,

00:14:02   even if it's a depressing explanation.

00:14:05   - Minecraft is leaving the Apple TV.

00:14:08   We're grateful to the Apple TV community for their support,

00:14:10   but we need to reallocate resources to the platforms

00:14:13   that our players use the most.

00:14:14   Don't worry though, you can still play Minecraft

00:14:16   on Apple TV, keep building in your world

00:14:17   and your marketplace purchases, including Minecoins,

00:14:19   will continue to be available.

00:14:21   I know nothing about Minecraft,

00:14:23   so John, will you translate for me?

00:14:25   - Do you know that Minecraft is really popular?

00:14:27   - I did know that.

00:14:28   Although I did not know it was on the Apple TV.

00:14:31   - Well, yeah, there was a story about it.

00:14:32   And I think it was even an Apple presentation at some point.

00:14:34   Anyway, Minecraft was a wildly popular game.

00:14:37   It's been popular for years and years.

00:14:39   And the straightforward hot take on this is,

00:14:42   as everyone has said who's responding to these tweets

00:14:44   about this is that if you have a gaming platform

00:14:48   where Minecraft feels like there aren't enough users,

00:14:50   where you can't support Minecraft,

00:14:52   you have a crap gaming platform.

00:14:54   Because it's not like this is some obscure game.

00:14:56   If Minecraft can't get enough people to play it,

00:14:59   to justify porting it, like it's incredibly popular.

00:15:03   And the people who play it don't demand

00:15:05   super high performance or need to have a mouse and keyboard,

00:15:07   or it's not a platform exclusive like Apple TV,

00:15:11   but they say, you know what, it's not even worth it.

00:15:13   It's not even worth it to like the most popular game

00:15:16   in the world, like before Fortnite probably.

00:15:18   One of the most popular games in the world,

00:15:20   one of the most popular games ever made.

00:15:23   It's not worth their time to be in your plan.

00:15:24   This is after a fairly high profile,

00:15:26   even though none of you remember it,

00:15:28   coming out and saying, and Minecraft will be on Apple TV.

00:15:31   Yay, see, it's a good gaming platform.

00:15:33   Notice by the way that they're not pulling off of like iOS.

00:15:36   Like I think they still have a phone version

00:15:38   and an iPad version.

00:15:40   It's Apple TV in particular that they can't be bothered with

00:15:42   because not enough people play Minecraft on Apple TV.

00:15:46   And that's depressing.

00:15:47   We've talked about Apple TV and games in general and Apple.

00:15:51   And you know, I think Apple probably should care about this

00:15:56   because it's a big external validation of the idea

00:15:59   that Apple TV is not a good gaming platform.

00:16:02   Like not that you need much validation.

00:16:05   It's more like a dumping ground for people

00:16:08   who have an iOS game and think,

00:16:10   ah, you'll probably make an Apple TV

00:16:11   or maybe it'll be okay.

00:16:12   But nobody is getting an Apple TV to play games on it.

00:16:17   It's just not really a thing.

00:16:21   I'm sure people who have Apple TVs might enjoy the fact

00:16:23   that they can play games on it.

00:16:25   That's different than having a gaming platform.

00:16:26   I think we've discussed in the past.

00:16:28   If you really want to break into the gaming business,

00:16:31   you can do what Apple did and fall ass backwards into it

00:16:33   and say, oh wow, games, they make a lot of money.

00:16:36   Or you can set out to have a gaming platform,

00:16:40   which is what Microsoft did.

00:16:41   And that involves a lot of giving people a lot of money

00:16:44   and losing money over a long period of time

00:16:46   and courting game developers,

00:16:47   generally doing what Apple is doing with television now,

00:16:50   which is find talent,

00:16:52   get them to make things for your platform, market it.

00:16:54   And it remains to be seen if Apple will be successful,

00:16:56   but that's what it takes

00:16:57   because gaming is the entertainment industry

00:16:58   and you can't just say, we have a platform,

00:17:01   now come make great things for it

00:17:03   because that's not how the creative

00:17:05   and gaming industry works

00:17:06   because all the other players are out there

00:17:08   courting developers and trying to get the best content

00:17:11   and getting platform exclusives and paying for marketing

00:17:14   and paying for people to bring ports to the thing.

00:17:17   It's difficult to build critical mass.

00:17:19   So Apple is back to its normal position,

00:17:21   which is people just seem to love to make games

00:17:25   for our phone platform because we have a bunch of users

00:17:28   who are willing to spend money on software

00:17:29   and you can build your casino, human nature,

00:17:31   exploiting free to play casinos for children.

00:17:36   And we make tons of money off that

00:17:37   and we somehow we manage to sleep at night,

00:17:40   but it doesn't really require us to do anything

00:17:42   other than sell lots of iPhones every year,

00:17:43   which is itself a difficult task,

00:17:45   but still it's not,

00:17:46   the iPhone is not a gaming platform first

00:17:49   and everything else second,

00:17:51   despite games being by far the best seller in the app store.

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00:19:45   (upbeat music)

00:19:48   Screen time is here and I have barely looked at it,

00:19:51   but I presume one of you has a little more thoughts

00:19:53   on this than I do.

00:19:55   - I put this in here back when screen time

00:19:56   was actually here, back with iOS 12 introduction.

00:19:59   It's been sitting there and we've had other things

00:20:01   to talk about, whatever.

00:20:02   I put it in for a couple of reasons.

00:20:04   One, I figure it's a good time for us to check in

00:20:06   with our own screen times to see if there's any surprises.

00:20:09   I'm assuming we all have it turned on

00:20:10   and occasionally we look at it.

00:20:12   So what do we think about the information

00:20:14   we found out there?

00:20:15   The second reason is because I also turned it on

00:20:17   for my kids and I wanted to talk about that.

00:20:20   - Ooh, this sounds fun.

00:20:21   - But let's do us first.

00:20:23   I thought I was using screen time,

00:20:25   but until last night when I was trying to figure out

00:20:27   why my settings has the one indicator on it,

00:20:31   I didn't actually have it turned on.

00:20:33   So I just turned it on last night,

00:20:34   so I don't really have useful data yet.

00:20:36   - Most use for me, the Plex Beta,

00:20:39   because that's how I've been watching a couple of things

00:20:43   here and there, like before I go to sleep.

00:20:46   Tweetbot, messages, Instagram, Safari, Facebook,

00:20:48   surprisingly, wow, I didn't really think

00:20:50   I looked at Facebook that much, huh, and mail.

00:20:53   90 pickups a day, 1,005 notifications.

00:20:56   This is last seven days, 500, maybe more,

00:21:00   or more than 500, I don't know,

00:21:02   just as 500 messages, notifications, that's my most.

00:21:04   182 mail notifications, which have been on my to-do list

00:21:07   to turn that, crank that down even more than I already have.

00:21:11   My garage door opener, getting pissed off about everything.

00:21:14   Like, hey, the light turned on, the light turned off,

00:21:16   the garage is open, the garage is closed,

00:21:17   I gotta turn that down.

00:21:19   Instagram, our baby, she pooped, she peed,

00:21:22   she ate, et cetera thing, ESPN and Slack.

00:21:25   - So no surprises for you except for Facebook,

00:21:26   which you didn't think you were using that much,

00:21:28   but showed up in the top five or whatever.

00:21:30   - One, two, three, four, five, top six, but yes,

00:21:33   that is an accurate description.

00:21:34   Time per day, it's hard for me to tell.

00:21:37   I don't, well, Tuesday apparently was six hours,

00:21:40   which seems pretty aggressive, but I don't know.

00:21:43   Yeah, the only thing I'd say I can definitely glean

00:21:46   from this is that I spend a lot of time on Twitter

00:21:49   and messages, which I knew, a fair bit of time

00:21:51   on Instagram and Safari, which I knew,

00:21:53   more than I thought on Facebook,

00:21:54   and I get a lot of text messages.

00:21:55   - What's interesting to me is that it's,

00:21:57   mine is, I mean, even though I have very small,

00:21:59   you know, number of values here,

00:22:02   but it's breaking down to individual websites in Safari,

00:22:06   and they look like apps.

00:22:08   - Yeah, if they get up to, like it'll do,

00:22:11   if a particular website you're on

00:22:14   for a significant period of time,

00:22:15   it ranks that website right alongside everything else.

00:22:17   It still shows you your Safari total, though,

00:22:19   which is handy for the kid stuff

00:22:20   to find out which websites they're on.

00:22:22   - So I can't say, other than the,

00:22:25   I mean, Facebook was what, 58 minutes in the last seven days,

00:22:28   which is not egregious, but more than I thought, to be fair.

00:22:32   But anyways, other than that,

00:22:33   I wouldn't say there was that much.

00:22:34   That was really too terribly interesting.

00:22:36   - Well, I've been watching, I use my iPad a lot,

00:22:39   and I've been watching TV shows on it,

00:22:41   so like Hulu is by far my number one,

00:22:43   'cause they just like binged an entire season or something,

00:22:45   and Netflix is like in third place, and Twitter.

00:22:47   Twitter is the top non-I'm watching video app.

00:22:51   YouTube, surprisingly, is, well, I guess not that much,

00:22:53   one hour over the past seven days of YouTube,

00:22:56   but it's video, you know, so I do watch,

00:22:58   I'm not, I don't know how to split stuff by device,

00:23:00   but this is all devices, and I can tell you

00:23:02   that all the videos on my iPad.

00:23:04   Other than me watching TV shows on my stuff,

00:23:07   I think I'm using my devices less than you.

00:23:09   My average pickups per day is 17.

00:23:11   - Oh my God, you basically never touch your phone.

00:23:15   - You gotta get out of that whole pouch and everything.

00:23:17   It's a big ordeal. - That's true.

00:23:18   - This is the phone and the iPad, remember.

00:23:20   It's not just the phone.

00:23:21   - What do you do all,

00:23:22   you really do love the Mac, don't you?

00:23:25   - And then my notifications per day is 29,

00:23:28   and almost all of those are from Nest, again,

00:23:31   security, camera stuff,

00:23:33   noticing the light moving across the room.

00:23:36   - Oh God, do the Nest engineers who design these

00:23:39   sensing notification movement kind of things,

00:23:43   do they not ever test it in a room that has a window?

00:23:46   - Most of the time I get it as not the sun by itself,

00:23:49   but like a branch with leaves on it

00:23:51   swaying in the wind in front of the sun,

00:23:52   making it flicker and move,

00:23:54   but I think most of these notifications are,

00:23:57   your Nest Cam thinks it hears a dog barking,

00:23:59   and it's right, it does.

00:24:00   My dog is barking.

00:24:01   Sorry, neighbors.

00:24:03   Second place is messages, but it's a very low number.

00:24:06   And then third place is my dog's GPS thing

00:24:09   for notifications.

00:24:10   So yeah, what this is telling me is that basically

00:24:13   I'm watching a lot of video in Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube,

00:24:16   and TiVo even, one hour on TiVo, I think I watched, yeah.

00:24:19   Occasionally if I'm in bed already

00:24:22   and wanna watch TV show,

00:24:23   I don't bother going downstairs to watch it

00:24:25   if I'm gonna like,

00:24:26   if it's the last thing I'm gonna watch before I go to bed

00:24:27   or whatever, I'll watch it there, so not a lot.

00:24:30   And then Twitter,

00:24:31   Twitter is by far my number one actual iOS app

00:24:35   that doesn't involve watching videos.

00:24:36   So no surprises for me.

00:24:37   I'm such an anti-notification person, just seeing,

00:24:42   obviously when you rank stuff, you're gonna rank like,

00:24:44   what is the thing that sends me the most notifications?

00:24:45   There will always be a number one,

00:24:47   unless you have zero notifications on,

00:24:48   there will always be a number one.

00:24:50   But my instinct is to look at that number one and say,

00:24:53   I'm gonna knock you down.

00:24:54   I gotta take whatever that number one is,

00:24:56   let me see if I can cut that number of notifications in half,

00:24:57   but there will always be a number one.

00:24:59   It's not like I can eliminate it.

00:25:00   It's like, if I follow this instinct, eventually,

00:25:02   everything will have notifications turned off.

00:25:04   So, I mean, maybe I'll make, I don't know,

00:25:07   I like the Nest notifications

00:25:10   and I'd like to be able to see

00:25:11   if my dog is getting into something in the house

00:25:14   or I like knowing like when the kids come home,

00:25:16   they usually get a Nest notification

00:25:17   from them walking in the door, you know?

00:25:19   So, but on the kids' devices, I mean,

00:25:23   transitioning into the kids' stuff,

00:25:24   'cause it doesn't sound like we have any dramatic news

00:25:26   for our stuff.

00:25:27   - Well, hold on, before you do that, are you,

00:25:28   either of you, I'm assuming not Marco,

00:25:30   leveraging any of the like downtime or anything like that?

00:25:32   Because I really should explore that.

00:25:34   Maybe I'll set homework for myself

00:25:36   that I need to play with that.

00:25:38   Because as an example, we tend to eat dinner

00:25:41   at around the same time every night

00:25:42   and sometimes I'll get a buzz or notification or something,

00:25:45   or maybe just not have the self-control

00:25:46   to not pick up my phone.

00:25:48   And I'll be using my phone over dinner,

00:25:51   which obviously any family time

00:25:53   I shouldn't be doing it, period.

00:25:54   But particularly over dinner is kind of obnoxious with me.

00:25:57   So maybe I'll try that and set that up

00:26:00   to give myself a little downtime during dinner

00:26:02   and see how that works out.

00:26:04   But Jon, have you played with it?

00:26:04   Well, let me start with Marco.

00:26:06   I assume you haven't.

00:26:07   - No, I haven't.

00:26:08   I mean, I do schedule, do not disturb at night,

00:26:10   like when I'm expected to be in bed, but otherwise, no.

00:26:13   - All right, well, I'm gonna try some downtime

00:26:14   and see how that works over dinner.

00:26:16   Jon, what about you?

00:26:17   Any downtime or app limits or anything?

00:26:19   - No, I don't see why I would use downtime,

00:26:24   because that's the thing that like stops you

00:26:27   from using your device, right?

00:26:29   - Or does it just lock out certain apps?

00:26:30   - Yeah, or yeah, but I don't want

00:26:33   to be locked out of anything.

00:26:34   - I mean, for me, like, you know,

00:26:36   just for me to try to add some kind of value

00:26:38   to this discussion, not having any data on myself yet,

00:26:42   I have spent, you know, periods in the past

00:26:44   using things like Rescue Time

00:26:46   that can track what I'm doing on the Mac.

00:26:48   And this kind of stuff was never possible to do on iOS

00:26:52   in some kind of like automated system I'd way before,

00:26:54   which is why screen time is noteworthy and useful now.

00:26:57   But on the Mac, it's been possible for a long time.

00:26:59   So I have done that before for long spans.

00:27:02   And just to do things, you know, kind of like what,

00:27:06   like what our friends talk about like on Cortex

00:27:09   and what you, Casey, have so far done very poorly

00:27:12   on analog about time tracking.

00:27:14   (laughing)

00:27:16   - This is a true story.

00:27:17   - You know, what you're basically doing here

00:27:19   is like time tracking for the stuff

00:27:20   you're doing on your phone.

00:27:22   And so the value there is in,

00:27:26   not necessarily in like shaming you or in controlling you,

00:27:31   the value is giving you information about something

00:27:34   that your brain is pretty hard,

00:27:36   or is pretty bad at estimating on its own.

00:27:38   Like if you just ask most people,

00:27:39   like how many times do you pick up your phone in a day?

00:27:41   And you know, they'll give some estimate,

00:27:42   it's actually like, you know, 10 times higher.

00:27:44   'Cause like you just, your brain's not good at that.

00:27:46   Or a more useful example of like,

00:27:48   how long do you spend browsing Twitter every day?

00:27:51   And, or every week?

00:27:52   Like if you look at like, oh,

00:27:54   if I wanna get 40 hours of work in in any given week,

00:27:57   how many of those hours am I wasting on Twitter?

00:28:00   And you can get that information now.

00:28:02   Like you have that information.

00:28:03   And when I've had that information in the past,

00:28:05   like on my Mac, that number has been scary.

00:28:09   That's why I have, that's why I made Quitter.

00:28:11   Like that's why, because like I would see like,

00:28:14   oh, I've used Twitter for something like, you know,

00:28:17   six hours this week out of like the 40 or 50 or 60

00:28:21   that I was at my computer.

00:28:22   Like, that's not good.

00:28:23   That's not worth it to me.

00:28:26   And so the main value in this is giving you the tools

00:28:31   to do whatever you feel is necessary.

00:28:33   And that might be nothing.

00:28:34   You might decide when you see your data,

00:28:35   like you know what, okay,

00:28:36   I already have a pretty good balance.

00:28:37   I don't need to do anything right now.

00:28:39   But it's useful to check in there every so often,

00:28:41   just so you can see like,

00:28:42   oh, I'm spending X hours a day or a week on this thing.

00:28:47   Is that really worth it to me?

00:28:49   Is that worth those X hours a week?

00:28:51   Or should I use these tools to help me reduce that?

00:28:55   That's really valuable.

00:28:57   - I would have guessed way more than 70 pickups per day.

00:28:59   I don't know if this thing is broken or what.

00:29:00   I mean, every other number looked accurate,

00:29:02   but I don't know if it's counting my pickups quite right.

00:29:04   I feel like I'd, well, I don't know.

00:29:05   Maybe if I added them up,

00:29:06   I'd take out my phone more than 17 times a day today.

00:29:10   I don't know.

00:29:10   But anyway, downtime, yes.

00:29:12   I use downtime on the kids.

00:29:14   - How'd that go?

00:29:16   - It's things that stops you from using your thing.

00:29:18   You can make exceptions for applications

00:29:20   and stuff like that.

00:29:20   But no, I don't use that.

00:29:22   Do not disturb is the feature that I love

00:29:26   because although I have to sometimes remember

00:29:28   that it's on iOS 12 is kind of obnoxious with this banner.

00:29:31   Every time you have do not disturb on,

00:29:32   there's a giant banner on your phone

00:29:33   every time you look at it, just so you know,

00:29:35   like it's on right now.

00:29:36   So let me see what it looks like.

00:29:37   It's like--

00:29:38   - I find that great, honestly,

00:29:39   because it prevents you from leaving it on

00:29:42   without realizing it's on

00:29:43   and missing everything for like a day.

00:29:44   - Well, but there's a thing like time,

00:29:46   I don't know why everybody doesn't do this.

00:29:47   Time to do not disturb.

00:29:48   This is my recommendation for everybody

00:29:50   who's listening right now.

00:29:51   Set scheduled do not disturb.

00:29:54   Pick hours, like be conservative if you want.

00:29:56   Say I don't want to be disturbed from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.

00:29:59   Maybe start with that if you're afraid

00:30:00   I need to be reached all times.

00:30:01   Just pick some times of like,

00:30:03   after this hour I don't wanna be disturbed

00:30:05   and before this hour I don't wanna be disturbed

00:30:06   and just set time do not disturb for that time.

00:30:10   It's such a simple thing that I'm shocked

00:30:12   that everybody doesn't do it,

00:30:13   but I always see people like,

00:30:14   "Oh, I don't wanna do do not disturb,"

00:30:15   or "I forget when it's on,"

00:30:16   or "I just set a schedule."

00:30:17   It's like, oh, then some people are like,

00:30:18   "Oh, but what if someone wants to reach me at 10 o' one p.m."

00:30:21   It's like your favorites can get through,

00:30:23   repeated calls can get through.

00:30:24   They'll reach you if they need to get through.

00:30:27   So my time do not disturb is like 9 p.m. to like 6 a.m.

00:30:32   or something like that.

00:30:34   And that does for me what I think a lot of people

00:30:36   are looking for for downtime.

00:30:37   Well, maybe it's not the same thing.

00:30:38   I'm not preventing myself from using my phone.

00:30:39   Phone works fine as far as I'm concerned,

00:30:41   but the point is if my phone is sitting next to me

00:30:43   while I'm watching TV, it never disturbs my television

00:30:47   'cause nothing will make it vibrate or make a noise,

00:30:50   which is kind of annoying to other people who live with me

00:30:53   because occasionally my wife or my kids will text me

00:30:56   from upstairs.

00:30:58   My kids will text me, not text me,

00:31:01   I'll get the notifications then that they wanna buy an app

00:31:03   or download an app or extend their downtime,

00:31:06   which we'll get to in a second,

00:31:08   and I won't see the notification,

00:31:09   or my wife will text me and I won't see the notification.

00:31:12   I mean, we're in the same house.

00:31:13   They could just come and get me if they really cared,

00:31:14   but they'd be like, "Why didn't you answer my text?"

00:31:16   Like, "I didn't see your text."

00:31:18   Like, my phone becomes dead to the world

00:31:20   as far as notifying me about anything,

00:31:23   but if I need to pick up my phone

00:31:24   and look up where an actor is from or something,

00:31:26   it works fine.

00:31:27   Like, I'm not locking myself out of anything.

00:31:28   So I don't see that I would ever use downtime,

00:31:31   but that's the exact feature I want for my kids

00:31:34   because it's just a sort of,

00:31:36   it's computer enforced way of thinking.

00:31:38   We always had downtime in the house.

00:31:39   No electronics after whatever time, right?

00:31:41   That's been a rule forever.

00:31:43   But the problem is if you're not on top of them,

00:31:46   they're always trying to eke out

00:31:47   that extra two or three minutes,

00:31:48   or they're like, "Oh, just let me finish this thing

00:31:50   that I'm doing," or whatever,

00:31:51   and it's just, it's a constant battle.

00:31:53   And you can shortcut that battle

00:31:55   and not fight over those extra two minutes,

00:31:57   oh, whatever, by just having the computer do it.

00:32:00   And there is a handy feature

00:32:01   which they all quickly discovered

00:32:02   which you can ask for an extension.

00:32:04   So if you're in the middle of watching something

00:32:06   and the big scary downtime banner comes over

00:32:09   to precisely 9 p.m. or whatever,

00:32:12   they can press a button on the screen

00:32:14   that says ask for more time,

00:32:15   and we'll get a notification that says,

00:32:18   so-and-so would like to have 15 more minutes of YouTube

00:32:23   or whatever app they're using.

00:32:23   Like, it's specific to that app.

00:32:25   And you could say yes or no,

00:32:27   unless your phone doesn't do it at the start,

00:32:29   in which case you don't see the notification.

00:32:30   You have to wait for them to come whine in person,

00:32:31   which is fine with me.

00:32:32   Like, good, take the stairs.

00:32:34   It's a good exercise.

00:32:35   So we did that.

00:32:37   A couple aspects of the experiment.

00:32:38   I did that.

00:32:38   I also wanted to see what they were doing,

00:32:39   like to see their graph,

00:32:41   like how much time they were spending in each app.

00:32:43   Not that it was surprising.

00:32:44   Guess what?

00:32:45   YouTube is really popular with both of them.

00:32:46   Websites they're on, which was interesting

00:32:49   and led to some interesting conversations.

00:32:51   But you know, I'm not like pouring over

00:32:53   their entire history or whatever.

00:32:55   The screen time stuff, or the downtime stuff

00:32:58   was very upsetting initially,

00:33:00   because they didn't like the hardline nature of it,

00:33:03   especially before they discovered the extension.

00:33:06   They didn't like the idea that it precisely,

00:33:08   you know, the hour ticks over or whatever,

00:33:10   the precise time.

00:33:11   There's no ifs, ands, or buts.

00:33:12   Doesn't care if you're in the middle of something.

00:33:13   Doesn't care if there's only one minute left

00:33:15   on the show that you're watching.

00:33:16   It just doesn't care.

00:33:17   It just--

00:33:18   - So now, did you tell them beforehand

00:33:20   that this was going to be a thing,

00:33:21   or did you just turn it on and let them, you know, stew?

00:33:23   - I told them about the feature of iOS 12

00:33:25   when it was announced,

00:33:26   and have talked to them about it previously,

00:33:28   gleefully saying, "It's coming, it's coming."

00:33:30   But I didn't like tell them the day.

00:33:32   They knew I was upgrading all their devices.

00:33:33   I didn't tell.

00:33:34   I think I, anyway, I probably caught a couple of them

00:33:37   by surprise, despite the fact that I was even talking about it

00:33:38   where they didn't know exactly when it would come.

00:33:42   - A couple of them?

00:33:42   How many more are there?

00:33:44   - You know, my son got annoyed by it.

00:33:47   My daughter quickly adapted and shifted

00:33:49   into just asking for extensions, and I don't know.

00:33:52   I mean, they'll live with it.

00:33:53   It's fine.

00:33:54   Like, you can, the tricky thing is,

00:33:55   before they had the extension thing,

00:33:57   my son is like, "I need to do my homework."

00:33:59   I'm like, "Fine, I'll disable it for you."

00:34:00   So I disabled it, but I didn't realize

00:34:01   that I had permanently disabled.

00:34:03   Like, I didn't know I was basically losing it.

00:34:05   And so the next day, he's using his device past the deadline

00:34:07   and we're like, "Did you turn it off for his thing?"

00:34:08   So I turned it back on.

00:34:10   So, but I think now we're just settling it.

00:34:12   You know, you can adjust the time,

00:34:14   and there are negotiations.

00:34:15   It's not, it's not like a, it's, again,

00:34:18   it's a thing that we were doing anyway.

00:34:19   It's just an additional tool

00:34:21   to make that interaction easier,

00:34:23   because for whatever reason, the kids are more accepting

00:34:27   that the computer is doing it to them

00:34:30   than if I came and hard-lined said,

00:34:32   "Oh, it's 9 p.m., like this."

00:34:34   I would do that, and then it's an immediate negotiation

00:34:36   and whining and annoyance or whatever,

00:34:38   where if the screen just blanks over,

00:34:40   then they have, it's on them to say,

00:34:41   "Do I care enough about watching the last two minutes

00:34:43   "of this thing to go down and whine and beg

00:34:46   "or ask for an extension, right?

00:34:48   "Or do I not care enough?"

00:34:50   Like, they have to come to me and say, "I want,"

00:34:53   you know, it puts the burden on them to do it.

00:34:56   And it's just, the path leads to business,

00:34:57   like, "Oh, I wasn't doing anything anyway.

00:34:59   "I was just, you know, farting around on YouTube."

00:35:01   And they'll pick up the video right where I left off

00:35:04   tomorrow morning or whatever when I look at it.

00:35:06   So, you know, I think that's mostly settled in fine.

00:35:10   I do like seeing what they're doing.

00:35:12   Again, screen time isn't the first time

00:35:13   I'm seeing what they're doing.

00:35:14   I always look what they're doing on their devices,

00:35:16   which they hate, but it's part of being a kid,

00:35:19   is your parents get to know what the heck you're doing

00:35:21   on the computer all the time.

00:35:22   What video are you watching?

00:35:23   What websites are you going to do?

00:35:24   What is this about?

00:35:25   You've seen me, like, I'm always watching in real life.

00:35:30   And I think they prefer this, because at least then

00:35:32   I'm not over their shoulders.

00:35:34   "Hey, what's that video about?"

00:35:35   They hate when I do that, but that's parenting for you.

00:35:38   You have to actually be aware of what they're doing.

00:35:41   - You know, little Bertie's telling me

00:35:43   that you're downplaying how perturbed your son was

00:35:46   when this all landed.

00:35:47   (laughing)

00:35:48   - Yeah, I mean, I know, but like,

00:35:51   I don't wanna throw any kids under the bus.

00:35:55   (laughing)

00:35:57   It's tough being a kid, right?

00:36:00   We all make adjustments.

00:36:02   I ended up adjusting my son's time

00:36:04   to be a little bit different than my daughter's

00:36:05   because he's older, and to recognize the fact

00:36:07   that he has less time for leisure

00:36:08   because he does sports after school, right?

00:36:11   And then he's gotta do homework, right?

00:36:12   And so the adjustments have been made

00:36:14   to make it reasonably equitable,

00:36:17   so they can get in their minimum amount of YouTube time.

00:36:19   Although, they really don't have a case.

00:36:21   When I look at the YouTube totals for the week,

00:36:23   and he's complaining on a weekend when downtime kicks in,

00:36:26   and like, "Oh, you only watched six hours of YouTube today."

00:36:29   Which watching YouTube is like a thing

00:36:31   that your parents would say

00:36:32   that you would like playing Nintendo or whatever.

00:36:34   Watching YouTube is not a thing.

00:36:35   He's watching video, right?

00:36:37   If he's watching a television show,

00:36:38   and he's watching a season of a television show

00:36:40   because there's a season of a television show on YouTube,

00:36:42   which is a thing, it's like,

00:36:43   "Oh, you're watching quote, unquote, YouTube."

00:36:45   It's just like watching TV or movies,

00:36:47   or like what I did, binge watching a sci-fi series

00:36:51   on Hulu or something.

00:36:52   The fact that it's YouTube doesn't change the fact

00:36:54   that he's essentially watching a TV show, right?

00:36:56   So it's not that ridiculous.

00:36:59   Although a lot of it is, of course,

00:37:00   watching Fortnite videos,

00:37:01   but I watch a lot of Destiny videos too,

00:37:03   so I can understand.

00:37:04   Anyway, it's mostly working itself out.

00:37:08   But the big thing, like this topic changed.

00:37:12   Like, "Yeah, so that's screen time for the kids.

00:37:13   I'm finding it a valuable tool.

00:37:15   There's, you know, it can't be the only tool,

00:37:17   and you should be doing this anyway.

00:37:19   It can be helpful.

00:37:20   I'm glad this feature exists in iOS, Valve."

00:37:22   But now this topic suddenly changes, unfortunately,

00:37:25   for people who don't like hearing us talk about bugs,

00:37:27   to a story about how screen time has decided

00:37:31   that it's no longer interested

00:37:32   in performing one of its major functions.

00:37:34   So if you have a family in iCloud,

00:37:38   which I suggest you do,

00:37:39   because there's lots of cool features that come with it,

00:37:40   and you make a family, you put the members of the family,

00:37:42   and you put the kids in, and you have the adults,

00:37:46   and I think only one person could be like the family manager,

00:37:49   which just lets you add them.

00:37:50   Anyway, when I go to screen time on any of my iOS devices,

00:37:56   I see all my info, and then if I scroll down,

00:37:58   there's a section called Family, and it shows my two kids.

00:38:02   Not my wife, she's also a member of the family,

00:38:03   but it doesn't show her.

00:38:04   So I see my two kids,

00:38:05   and they're in a little section on their own.

00:38:07   They have a little, you know, rightward-facing arrow,

00:38:10   and it used to be when I would tap on one of them,

00:38:13   you see a screen that looks just like your screen,

00:38:15   where it says, "Downtime app limits, allowed apps,

00:38:18   content and privacy restrictions, include website data,"

00:38:21   you know, all the same things that you see on your own,

00:38:23   and that's where you can set what the downtime is

00:38:24   for that kid, what the app limits are,

00:38:26   which is nice.

00:38:27   I excluded apps like, you know, by default,

00:38:29   like maps and messages are excluded.

00:38:31   I excluded like FaceTime, and I excluded,

00:38:33   I excluded a whole bunch of things that are reasonable.

00:38:34   Basically, if I could blacklist,

00:38:37   that all it has to do with blacklist YouTube,

00:38:38   and I basically destroy their devices,

00:38:40   as far as they're concerned, right?

00:38:41   (laughing)

00:38:43   Yeah, and the content and privacy restrictions,

00:38:45   you can not let them, you know, rent, you know,

00:38:48   rated R movies, although for a longest time,

00:38:51   when you have a family, if a kid wants to buy something,

00:38:54   they can't buy anything.

00:38:55   They can't even download free stuff

00:38:57   without it sending a notification

00:38:58   to one or both of the parents' accounts,

00:39:01   and saying, you know, "Kate wants to watch the movie,"

00:39:04   whatever, and you can see information about the movie,

00:39:06   you can approve or deny.

00:39:07   That feature's been there for a while.

00:39:08   It's not a screen time thing,

00:39:09   but that's definitely a cool thing.

00:39:10   If parents don't know about it, you should definitely,

00:39:12   there's another reason to put people into a family.

00:39:13   You definitely enable that.

00:39:14   You basically know that there's no way

00:39:15   your kids can download anything onto their devices

00:39:18   without you approving it.

00:39:19   Again, even if it's a free app,

00:39:21   especially if it's a free app,

00:39:22   'cause I like these free-to-play games.

00:39:24   Anyway, at the top, it says screen time,

00:39:26   and it's got an all devices thing,

00:39:28   because they both have phones and iPads at this point.

00:39:31   And in theory, if you tap on all devices,

00:39:33   you see it today and last seven days,

00:39:35   there should be a bunch of graphs there,

00:39:36   just like there are for us.

00:39:38   But instead, what I see is, underneath all devices,

00:39:40   it says, "As this device is used,

00:39:42   screen time will be reported here."

00:39:43   And if you tap into all devices,

00:39:46   today says nothing and last seven days says nothing.

00:39:48   This worked fine for the first two weeks of iOS 12,

00:39:51   and then for the past two weeks or so,

00:39:54   there's just no data.

00:39:56   As this device is used, screen time will be reported here.

00:39:58   I assure you, this device is being used.

00:40:00   No, they have not disabled screen timeline devices.

00:40:02   Their devices are all set up fine.

00:40:04   You can look on their devices and see the info.

00:40:06   They're all set up to share with iCloud, like everything.

00:40:08   All the settings are correct.

00:40:10   Nothing is disabled.

00:40:10   They haven't somehow circumvented it or whatever,

00:40:12   just both of them one day just disappeared.

00:40:15   So now, this feature that used to work

00:40:17   is now entirely non-functional.

00:40:19   I can't see any screen time information for any of my kids

00:40:22   anymore, despite it working for multiple weeks.

00:40:25   So that kind of annoys me because it's one of those things

00:40:27   like, well, what do you do?

00:40:28   I pull the refresh, I tap, I turn screen time on,

00:40:30   turn screen time off.

00:40:32   I don't even know what to do.

00:40:34   I tried all the things.

00:40:36   I'm not gonna delete the family and then recreate it

00:40:39   'cause that'll destroy a million things.

00:40:41   So I'm hoping the dot update will fix this.

00:40:44   Well, this is pretty frustrating that a headlining feature

00:40:46   that I was actually enjoying decided to just stop working

00:40:50   and not entirely, 'cause again, I can go to their devices

00:40:54   and look it up on each one of their devices,

00:40:55   but the whole point of this is as the family adult

00:40:59   or whatever, I should be able to look at it in my devices

00:41:02   and they're all listed here.

00:41:03   I just can't see any information about them.

00:41:04   So I find this very frustrating, but aside from the bugs,

00:41:08   I suggest all parents, A, look into making a family

00:41:13   with your kids, I forget about the process.

00:41:17   It used to be worse than it is now,

00:41:18   but kids can have their own Apple IDs,

00:41:22   which is what I suggest.

00:41:23   Don't try to share one amongst the whole family.

00:41:24   Everyone in the family should have their own Apple ID.

00:41:26   There's a kid's Apple ID.

00:41:27   You can make a family.

00:41:28   You can say which are the kids and which are the adults.

00:41:30   And the kids, you can require your approval

00:41:33   to make purchases.

00:41:34   And in theory, you could see their screen time information.

00:41:37   And these are all great tools for parents

00:41:39   and I'm glad Apple's added them.

00:41:41   I just want them to go back to working.

00:41:44   - I don't think you're alone in this either.

00:41:45   We heard from a lot of our friends who did this

00:41:46   during the iOS 12 beta that apparently,

00:41:49   it seemed like screen time,

00:41:51   like whether it tracked data for you or not,

00:41:53   and especially whether it synced that data,

00:41:55   was seemingly very rough and buggy during the beta.

00:41:58   And so it's possible they just haven't ironed that out yet.

00:42:01   So I would keep an eye on it and hopefully they will

00:42:04   get it all worked out in the next couple of point releases.

00:42:07   - Yeah, I heard that too during the betas,

00:42:08   which I ran iOS 12 since like the second beta on my iPad.

00:42:12   And I heard people saying, oh, screen time is fine,

00:42:15   except like they were just doing for themselves,

00:42:16   except like every once in a while with a new beta,

00:42:18   it just totally wipes all my screen time data.

00:42:20   I'm like, well, fine, it's a beta,

00:42:21   like they'll wipe the data every once in a while,

00:42:22   but surely once the release one comes, they won't do that.

00:42:26   This seems like a different class of bug

00:42:27   in that the data is all still being collected.

00:42:30   I just can't see it from my phone,

00:42:32   despite there being sections for their stuff.

00:42:33   So yeah, I hope they work this out

00:42:35   'cause otherwise it's a pretty nice feature.

00:42:37   Like the UI was pretty straightforward,

00:42:39   which is actually a challenge

00:42:40   because it is a fairly complicated

00:42:43   and setting filled thing to do,

00:42:46   and they've managed to organize it

00:42:47   in a way that I didn't, you know, I didn't have to,

00:42:49   it was pretty obvious to me what was going on,

00:42:52   despite all the screens kind of looking similar

00:42:53   and everything like that.

00:42:54   So it, you know, it's a lot of buttons

00:42:58   and a lot of settings and a lot of semantics

00:42:59   and a lot of information

00:43:00   that they managed to organize in a nice way.

00:43:02   Just need to make it work.

00:43:04   - One of these days,

00:43:05   I don't think we have time for today,

00:43:06   I'd like you to sell me on doing this iCloud family thing,

00:43:09   because--

00:43:10   - I just did, I just sold you on it.

00:43:12   - Oh, geez, do it.

00:43:13   - Well, I don't know, man.

00:43:15   Well, so, okay, fine, I guess we're just gonna

00:43:17   pull on the thread right now.

00:43:18   - Number one, you share purchases.

00:43:19   Number two, you have like, I think you share iCloud storage.

00:43:23   Yeah, you do as of a couple of years ago.

00:43:25   - Consolidate to a single bill.

00:43:27   - Yeah, yeah, you single bill,

00:43:28   shared iCloud storage, shared purchases,

00:43:30   although not in-app purchases,

00:43:32   I believe those are still separate.

00:43:33   - Depends on the app.

00:43:34   - Right, so certain types aren't,

00:43:36   but for the most part you're sharing most purchases,

00:43:38   you're sharing media purchases,

00:43:40   and also you have all these parental control things,

00:43:43   so you can do the thing where your kid can ask for a game

00:43:46   and you can approve it and stuff like that.

00:43:48   It's really nice, I strongly,

00:43:50   and as far as I can tell, we set it up for our family,

00:43:53   I think about a year after it launched,

00:43:54   so like a few years back,

00:43:56   as far as I can tell, there's no downsides.

00:43:57   I don't think anything has gone wrong

00:43:59   or is worse off since we set it up, it's wonderful.

00:44:03   - You also get automatic location sharing,

00:44:05   and you can prevent the kids from turning off location sharing

00:44:08   like there's all sorts of controls and conveniences

00:44:11   because if you have a family like,

00:44:13   oh, we all share our location with each other

00:44:15   in perpetuity, but if you're all in the same family,

00:44:17   you don't even have to set that up,

00:44:18   just they show up and you're find my friends

00:44:20   'cause they're part of your family all the time.

00:44:22   - Interesting, yeah, the way we've had it

00:44:24   and have run this way since both of us got iPhones,

00:44:26   and remember, Declan has an iPad

00:44:29   that's kind of dedicated to him,

00:44:30   but basically it's just a Daniel Tiger device.

00:44:32   Like he almost never uses it outside of long car trips,

00:44:35   and basically the only thing he uses on it is Plex,

00:44:38   so this isn't really relevant in traditional.

00:44:40   - He's your son, all right.

00:44:41   - Yeah, right, exactly.

00:44:42   - Of course he's in Plex.

00:44:44   - Of course he is.

00:44:44   - It'll be relevant faster than you think it will.

00:44:47   - Yeah, yeah, I agree,

00:44:48   and so this is really today only about Aaron and me,

00:44:51   and the way we've run it is the trick

00:44:52   that a lot of people discovered by accident,

00:44:54   which was different iCloud accounts

00:44:56   with the same Apple Store account,

00:44:58   so we're using my Apple Store account,

00:45:00   but different iCloud accounts,

00:45:02   and to be honest, that's generally worked pretty well for us,

00:45:04   but I know I'm gonna have to pull this,

00:45:07   rip this Band-Aid off sooner rather than later,

00:45:09   to your point, Jon,

00:45:10   so it's not ruinous to do the switch from--

00:45:13   - Yeah, even just for you and Aaron,

00:45:15   you don't lose anything by doing this,

00:45:17   because if you're in the same family,

00:45:18   she can still use all of your purchases.

00:45:22   Again, plus or minus the in-app purchases,

00:45:24   I don't know how many of those you have,

00:45:25   and it might be annoying to have to repurchase them

00:45:27   or whatever, but the sooner you cleanly separate

00:45:30   into your own Apple IDs, the simpler things become,

00:45:34   I feel like, and I was also worried about,

00:45:38   oh, am I gonna have to rebuy anything,

00:45:39   but in practice, I don't think we had to rebuy anything,

00:45:42   maybe it's 'cause we don't do many in-app purchases,

00:45:43   but yeah, separating into separate IDs across everything,

00:45:48   but being in the same family gives you most of the benefits

00:45:51   and it's just cleaner, and that part, all that stuff,

00:45:54   the purchase approval and everything,

00:45:55   that's, again, it's not part of screen time,

00:45:56   that stuff isn't really buggy.

00:45:58   It was buggy in the beginning,

00:46:00   but it's been around for years now,

00:46:01   so most of the kinks are worked out,

00:46:03   or if they're not worked out, occasionally you get

00:46:06   some weirdness on the Mac where you can see

00:46:08   the same family stuff, but occasionally it gets

00:46:11   a little fidgety over there.

00:46:14   Usually you can solve it just by signing out

00:46:16   and back into iCloud, I don't know, it's the same thing.

00:46:19   Yeah, but that's true of any stuff.

00:46:22   I'd imagine this, I don't think I mentioned this

00:46:24   on the show, but my contacts stuff is back to not syncing.

00:46:29   It's really annoying me.

00:46:29   - Oh no.

00:46:31   - I went through, I was looking at,

00:46:33   I was on the Mac for whatever reason,

00:46:34   I'm like, oh, I have all these, here's what it was,

00:46:37   it was like after Mike's wedding,

00:46:40   I had all these pictures of people I knew, computer people,

00:46:44   like you guys and Mike and all this,

00:46:46   I had recent photos of them.

00:46:48   - I love that we're computer people.

00:46:49   - And so I needed to update the contact pictures,

00:46:52   because previously I had for Mike,

00:46:54   I had like a, I don't know where I got the picture from,

00:46:56   I probably just Googled for his name and pulled the picture,

00:46:58   or maybe I used like his Twitter avatar or something,

00:47:00   but they were old, they were old pictures,

00:47:01   and here I had pictures that I'd taken

00:47:03   that I liked of these people,

00:47:04   I'm gonna replace their contact pictures

00:47:05   so they show up nicely in my messages list or whatever.

00:47:08   And so I go and I paste, I figure out,

00:47:10   using the Mac contacts app, what it wants me to do,

00:47:13   get stupid image in there,

00:47:13   because you used to be able to just drag it,

00:47:15   but now you have to do some other dance.

00:47:16   And anyway, I get the image in there,

00:47:18   I crop it to the right size, I blah, blah, blah,

00:47:21   and I do this for like four or five contacts.

00:47:24   I think I might've updated both of yours, I forget.

00:47:27   Marco's got his ancient picture,

00:47:28   but he basically looks the same.

00:47:29   So I know I did update Marco's,

00:47:30   he's got a beardy Marco now.

00:47:31   I got a beardy Marco.

00:47:32   - Yeah, I look totally different.

00:47:34   - Well, but it's just the thing,

00:47:35   like the reason I don't remember this

00:47:37   is because I did all this work on the Mac,

00:47:39   and then I noticed the next day,

00:47:41   none of that stuff was on my phone or my iPad.

00:47:44   Like what the hell?

00:47:44   Like I spent all that time doing these pictures.

00:47:46   And so then I'm going back to the Mac

00:47:49   and like turning off contact syncing and turning it back on

00:47:52   and just trying to like do anything I can.

00:47:53   It's just, I cannot get anything I do on my Mac

00:47:56   to appear on any of my iOS devices

00:47:58   or on any of my other Macs.

00:48:00   I haven't tried it in Mojave yet,

00:48:03   but it's something used to frustrate me.

00:48:06   Like there's like nothing I can do.

00:48:07   There's no like, please sync it now.

00:48:09   Like see this contact image?

00:48:11   I'm holding my phone next to the screen.

00:48:12   It's the same contact.

00:48:13   It has the different image, it's the old one.

00:48:15   Same thing with it changing any other contact info,

00:48:17   like adding a new email address or phone number.

00:48:20   It's very, very frustrating.

00:48:22   And I felt like, how are we past this now?

00:48:24   Can't we get contacts to sync successfully?

00:48:26   Every once in a while, my computer just says no.

00:48:30   - Maybe it's 'cause it's too old.

00:48:31   - Hey, you should get a new one.

00:48:32   No, this is my wife's computer.

00:48:33   It's a 5K iMac running Mojave.

00:48:34   Everything is latest, latest, everything.

00:48:36   It's not like there's no excuse.

00:48:38   No, sync is hard.

00:48:39   That's a big excuse.

00:48:40   Sync is really hard.

00:48:41   I just want something to happen.

00:48:43   I want to do something on my Mac

00:48:45   and see something happen elsewhere.

00:48:46   Put it in a duplicate contact.

00:48:47   I don't care.

00:48:48   I just want to see something happen to acknowledge.

00:48:50   I'm doing, especially I'd spent so long,

00:48:52   like carefully finding all the images and cropping them

00:48:55   and being careful not that they're too big as it chokes

00:48:57   if you just like take a giant, you know,

00:48:59   20 something megapixel image,

00:49:00   chuck it on the thing and try to crop it to the head.

00:49:02   It freaks out, right?

00:49:03   So I'm making small versions of things.

00:49:05   In the end, because I had done it once and it had annoyed me,

00:49:08   the second time I did it, I made a little folder

00:49:10   that I call contact photos.

00:49:12   And I put the contact photos suitable for dragging

00:49:15   into contacts in that folder.

00:49:16   And then I put it in my Dropbox.

00:49:18   So the 900 other times I try to do this,

00:49:20   I have a ready-made bin of all your heads.

00:49:23   (laughing)

00:49:25   Throw on the stuff.

00:49:27   Let me look at my, I haven't looked lately.

00:49:28   This was actually like, you know,

00:49:29   it was actually a primo hobby,

00:49:30   but I haven't looked lately to see

00:49:33   what my contact situation is like.

00:49:34   Let me see.

00:49:35   Is Marco beardy?

00:49:37   That is the question.

00:49:38   Hey, I got beardy Marco.

00:49:41   I think it's because I did it on my phone

00:49:42   as one of my ninth or 10th times.

00:49:45   Yep, I think I used the one that you have

00:49:47   for your Twitter avatar picture maybe.

00:49:49   - You took that picture.

00:49:50   - I took all these pictures.

00:49:51   It's from my photo library.

00:49:52   But yeah, I was pulling pictures from my photo library.

00:49:56   I think I just happened to pick the same one

00:49:57   that you picked from like WWC or whatever.

00:49:59   Yeah, it's frustrating.

00:50:02   And the main reason I'm doing that though,

00:50:04   is because you ever get that thing where like,

00:50:07   I don't know if you guys run messages on your Mac a lot,

00:50:09   but I do, 'cause you know, guy.

00:50:12   And the window just sits there.

00:50:14   It's just sitting in the background

00:50:15   and every once in a while you look at the window

00:50:17   and along the left sidebar of the thing,

00:50:19   you'll see the avatar image

00:50:22   of all the people you're talking to.

00:50:23   Or the last five or 10,

00:50:25   or depending on the size of your window,

00:50:27   the people you talk to.

00:50:28   And first of all, if one of them has no icon,

00:50:30   they're just like the silhouette, that looks bad.

00:50:32   You're like, oh, that person needs an icon.

00:50:33   Like, why doesn't that person have an icon?

00:50:35   I've known that person for 20 years.

00:50:36   They have no icon, that's bad.

00:50:37   (laughing)

00:50:39   And second of all, if you look at it

00:50:41   and it's like a picture of somebody,

00:50:42   it's like a bad blurry picture.

00:50:44   It's like 64 by 64 pixel image stretched out

00:50:47   and looking all gross.

00:50:48   It's like their aim icon from 1993 or something.

00:50:51   You're like, I need to fix that.

00:50:53   And it uses the contact images.

00:50:54   So then you go to their contact and you add a picture.

00:50:56   And what you want is a messages list that you look at

00:50:58   and you're like, yeah, I recognize all those people.

00:51:00   And those are the people I talk to and they look nice.

00:51:03   And you know, so that's what motivates this.

00:51:07   My anal retentiveness to have a,

00:51:10   to wanna have a pleasing sidebar,

00:51:13   partially inspired probably by like all my screenshotting

00:51:15   and OS 10 reviews, that you would never take a screenshot

00:51:18   where the sidebar didn't have like beautiful

00:51:20   professional photos of everyone you communicate with.

00:51:23   - Oh yeah.

00:51:23   - And there's no like embarrassing message.

00:51:25   That's the thing that always about messages.

00:51:27   Next to the avatar, it shows the name and the date.

00:51:30   And then it shows the last line of text

00:51:33   that was in that conversation.

00:51:35   But the last line of text may not have been spoken

00:51:37   by the person whose image is there.

00:51:39   It may have been the last line you sent to them.

00:51:41   - Oh yeah.

00:51:43   - And so sometimes it makes it look like, you know,

00:51:45   your wife is saying something that you said

00:51:48   because it's her image next to the last sentence

00:51:51   you wrote to her.

00:51:52   So it's still not a great interface.

00:51:54   Anyway, everyone's got pictures of my stuff.

00:51:55   - Well, but no, but you can collapse that though.

00:51:57   - You can get rid of it.

00:51:58   Yeah, you can get rid of the whole sidebar, but like.

00:52:00   - No, no, no, you can get to go to just icons.

00:52:02   So it's just heads.

00:52:04   - Yeah.

00:52:04   - Yeah, what kind of monster leaves the like one line

00:52:06   of most recently said?

00:52:07   No, no, no, no, no.

00:52:08   - Sometimes that's all I can see in the window

00:52:10   and I will only be able to see that

00:52:11   when the last line is from them,

00:52:12   I think it's relevant information.

00:52:13   And I also want to see the date.

00:52:15   - That's what I'm saying.

00:52:16   There's two modes of the sidebar.

00:52:18   There's show me the last line in addition to their avatar

00:52:21   and just the avatars.

00:52:23   - Really, I'm always in last line, like a chump mode.

00:52:26   - Yeah, no, that is like a chump mode.

00:52:27   You just, in the divider between the sidebar

00:52:31   and the actual messages pane,

00:52:33   slide that bad boy to the left.

00:52:34   - Yeah, but I think it's sort of the dates too.

00:52:36   I want to see the last line when it's from them.

00:52:38   It reminds me of the context of the conversation.

00:52:40   - Oh, that's weird.

00:52:41   No, I don't like, and it has their name too.

00:52:43   - Yeah. - Nah, screw that.

00:52:44   - No, this is the way to go.

00:52:46   - How am I going to know

00:52:47   what two factor verification looks like?

00:52:49   This is another context tip

00:52:50   while we're in the context tip section of the thing.

00:52:52   Every time you get a two factor thing,

00:52:55   which everyone's saying you shouldn't do

00:52:56   over SMS anymore anyway, but anyway,

00:52:57   if you still have some services

00:52:58   where you're getting two factor or SMS,

00:53:01   every time you get one of those,

00:53:03   add that phone number to a single contact

00:53:04   that you call two factor verification or something similar.

00:53:07   So then when it comes in, you don't see like,

00:53:09   what is this random text from?

00:53:10   Oh, it's a two factor thing.

00:53:11   It'll come in as two factor verification.

00:53:13   And it's not a random number every time.

00:53:15   After you've added like the five or six common numbers

00:53:17   that you get stuff from, that's it.

00:53:21   Like, you know.

00:53:22   - That's a really good idea.

00:53:24   - It's just like saying,

00:53:25   I haven't gotten to the point where I've given it an icon,

00:53:27   but it's only like, how many icons are Mr. Two Factor?

00:53:31   Details.

00:53:32   (laughing)

00:53:33   One, two, three, four, five.

00:53:34   Only five phone numbers covers everything.

00:53:37   Granted, I'm trying to move away from SMS for a two factor,

00:53:40   but many services, it's still the only thing they offer.

00:53:43   Sony, PlayStation.

00:53:45   So.

00:53:45   - Well, you know, Sony is really known

00:53:46   for their incredible online security.

00:53:48   - That's why I'm able two factor.

00:53:50   Like, my PlayStation account is one of the accounts

00:53:54   I care the most about, because someone got into there

00:53:56   and like deleted all my Destiny characters or whatever.

00:53:59   That would be more disastrous than deleting all of my photos

00:54:04   because I have backups of the photos.

00:54:06   - You'd rather have somebody come in

00:54:07   and delete all your family pictures than your Destiny account.

00:54:09   - Because I have a hundred backups of those.

00:54:11   How many backups do I have of my PlayStation data?

00:54:14   None.

00:54:15   It's like that thing I tweeted the picture of before

00:54:17   that Nintendo finally has an online backup of Switch data.

00:54:20   And it's like, oh, finally,

00:54:21   because like my data was tied to my specific Switch.

00:54:24   And if I dropped it and cracked it in half, that's it.

00:54:28   Like I said, I'd send it away to Nintendo.

00:54:29   Like, oh, well, we'll just give you a new one.

00:54:30   What about my saved data?

00:54:31   Sorry.

00:54:33   - I gotta do that.

00:54:33   - So now I have an online backup of that too.

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00:56:11   (upbeat music)

00:56:14   - I have a hopefully quickie about a new Apple feature

00:56:17   that mostly works well and I really love

00:56:19   even though I thought it was both hilarious and stupid

00:56:22   when I saw it during the keynote.

00:56:23   And that is Apple Watch walkie talkie mode.

00:56:26   I did not understand the point to this

00:56:28   up until a couple of days ago.

00:56:30   And now it's like my new favorite thing.

00:56:32   And this is if you have two people with an Apple Watch

00:56:35   on watchOS 5, there is a new app called walkie talkie.

00:56:40   And you can go into that app and you can invite people

00:56:43   to join walkie talkie mode with you.

00:56:46   And then like the Hellscape was that was the late 90s

00:56:50   and next tell push to talk phones,

00:56:52   which were very popular in the Northeast.

00:56:54   I don't know if they were popular anywhere else.

00:56:56   But you can just drop in on somebody's world

00:56:58   and send them a, well, talk to them.

00:57:00   Like you actually broadcast a verbal message

00:57:03   from their wrist, which sounds freaking terrible.

00:57:07   But if you say have a partner that you live with

00:57:11   and if you say have one or more children

00:57:14   that you live with, it is amazing.

00:57:16   Because in the past, I would grab my phone

00:57:20   and type out a message to Aaron like,

00:57:21   hey, can you bring me a bottle?

00:57:23   Or hey, can you help me do this?

00:57:25   Or hey, Declan is really hungry.

00:57:28   What did you give him for snack earlier

00:57:29   so I don't give him the same thing again

00:57:31   or whatever the case may be?

00:57:32   And now I can just bloop on my watch

00:57:35   and we can get through this conversation so much quicker,

00:57:37   no typing involved.

00:57:39   - I'm so glad I don't have this

00:57:40   because all I would hear is,

00:57:41   dad, answer the request on your phone.

00:57:43   (laughing)

00:57:45   I just wanna hear now, but at least it's yelled

00:57:46   from upstairs instead of actually coming out of my wrist.

00:57:49   Approve my request.

00:57:50   - You don't have to add your children as people.

00:57:53   - Come out of your drawer, let's be honest.

00:57:55   - Yeah, that's true too.

00:57:56   It would absolutely come out of your drawer.

00:57:57   I think that for most use cases,

00:58:00   like when we all looked at the,

00:58:02   what do they call it, digital touch?

00:58:05   When the watch first came out and everyone was like,

00:58:07   dudes, people, Apple people.

00:58:09   No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:58:11   That's not what we want.

00:58:12   And generally speaking, I think that's applicable

00:58:14   for this walkie talkie mode, but holy crap,

00:58:16   to get Aaron and I to have a quick two second conversation,

00:58:20   typically involving some child related issue,

00:58:22   it is great and I love it.

00:58:24   And I just wanted to put a little word out for everyone

00:58:28   because we tried it kind of on a whim

00:58:30   when we were at the beach over the weekend

00:58:32   and it was great.

00:58:33   It worked really, really well

00:58:34   and I'm really, really happy about it.

00:58:36   So if you have a similar situation,

00:58:38   you should give it a shot.

00:58:39   - I feel you're missing the simple joy

00:58:40   of yelling across the house to each other.

00:58:42   - Well, no, and we do that from time to time,

00:58:45   but oftentimes if we're gonna do this walkie talkie thing,

00:58:47   it's because one of us is upstairs

00:58:48   and the other downstairs.

00:58:49   - Yeah, it's a big part of being a family

00:58:51   is yelling across floors of a house.

00:58:53   - Yeah, exactly.

00:58:54   And I mean, our house is not particularly big.

00:58:56   It's an at best average size house,

00:58:58   but it's big enough that yelling between floors

00:59:02   is not particularly fun nor conducive.

00:59:04   And we only have one echo in the house,

00:59:06   so we can't do any sort of like,

00:59:07   what does that drop in or whatever it's called.

00:59:10   So this is the best thing that we have available to us.

00:59:13   And it's funny because it's kind of like coming full circle.

00:59:16   I remember as a kid, my family built a house,

00:59:20   gosh, how old was I?

00:59:22   Maybe eight or 10 or something like that.

00:59:24   And it had one of those in-home intercom systems,

00:59:26   which were super popular in the day.

00:59:27   - Those were so fancy.

00:59:29   - They were so cool.

00:59:30   - I was just about to mention this.

00:59:31   So I was gonna mention it

00:59:33   in a very unflattering context though.

00:59:35   - Well, it was so cool, but they were pieces of trash,

00:59:39   but it was amazing 'cause you could play FM radio

00:59:41   throughout the house 'cause that's what people wanted.

00:59:43   But anyway, I just thought we had made it as a family.

00:59:46   And again, our house was not particularly large.

00:59:48   It was an average sized home, but we built it

00:59:50   and we had our little intercom system.

00:59:53   And I think we also had a urinal in the basement,

00:59:55   which was amazing, but that's a story for another day.

00:59:57   Anyway.

00:59:58   - First time anybody's ever said a urinal's amazing.

01:00:01   - I'm telling you, put one in your house

01:00:02   and see what you think.

01:00:03   - They are amazing. - See what you think.

01:00:05   But yeah, so having that intercom

01:00:06   we thought was the coolest thing in the world.

01:00:08   And it lasted like a month.

01:00:10   - I love that you had the air.

01:00:12   It's like, that was like the coolest thing in the world

01:00:14   in like 1992 or something.

01:00:15   And like never--

01:00:16   - It's exactly what I'm talking about.

01:00:18   - So it's not a '90s thing, it's an '80s thing.

01:00:20   - So the thing that's relevant to my life

01:00:23   that I was gonna say about that

01:00:24   before Casey even began that story

01:00:25   was like the house that we run on Long Island

01:00:27   was renovated in the '80s.

01:00:29   So Long Island house renovated in the '80s by rich people.

01:00:33   So it has, of course, it has an in-home intercom.

01:00:36   It also has central vacuum and it also has--

01:00:38   - Yes, I was gonna mention central vacuuming.

01:00:40   - That's another good one, that's true.

01:00:42   - I had this one rich friend who had all this stuff

01:00:44   and the two things I was gonna mention

01:00:46   were the intercom and the central vacuuming.

01:00:48   - Yeah, well, it's actually a third one,

01:00:50   which I think might be part of the intercom system,

01:00:52   but it's also, I don't know if it was Bang & Olufsen,

01:00:55   but it was similar, it was like built into the wall

01:00:59   a dual cassette stereo system, like built into the wall,

01:01:04   like flush with like a wood grain thing or whatever.

01:01:06   I think it might've been part of the intercom,

01:01:08   but they have one of those too.

01:01:09   But here's the thing about the intercom,

01:01:11   the whole house intercom, the way it manifested itself

01:01:14   throughout the house was, you know,

01:01:17   'cause it was like you'd push a button and talk

01:01:19   and you could hear this, it was like terrible quality,

01:01:21   it was RF or whatever.

01:01:23   It's like, I kid you not, 16 inch by 16 inch square

01:01:28   fake wood panels, they're huge,

01:01:33   they're bigger than 12 by 12, they're probably 16 by 16,

01:01:36   they're plastic slats, like blinds or whatever,

01:01:41   like, I don't know, what are the horizontal blinds

01:01:45   called made out of wood, but it's plastic with wood grain

01:01:47   on it and it's a big square and then there's a circle

01:01:50   inside the square that's gigantic,

01:01:52   it's like bigger than a subwoofer,

01:01:53   it's like the biggest supposed, inside it's probably

01:01:56   this tiny little four inch, you know, speaker thing in it.

01:02:00   And then all these buttons lined up on it

01:02:01   and you'd talk across the house.

01:02:02   Now, my family was a rich family in the 80s,

01:02:06   but not quite that rich, so we bought from Radio Shack

01:02:10   these little realistic home intercoms things.

01:02:13   - This vaguely rings a bell.

01:02:15   - They were beige, they were like maybe like as big

01:02:19   as an iPhone, 10S Max, but of course like, you know,

01:02:23   seven times as thick and they had a big button on them

01:02:26   and you would press the button down and you would talk

01:02:28   and it would broadcast into horrible fidelity

01:02:30   throughout the house in theory.

01:02:32   And there was the idea to stop us from yelling

01:02:36   through the house, but the sound quality was so bad

01:02:38   and you'd end up yelling into the intercom

01:02:39   and you could hear them like not on the intercom.

01:02:41   I don't know why we kept them for as long as we did,

01:02:43   but we did have them in the house and they're mostly useless.

01:02:45   We've never used the ones in the vacation house,

01:02:47   but they're there.

01:02:49   - So, I mean, this is the most pathetic contest ever,

01:02:54   but my rich friends intercoms were fancier than yours.

01:02:56   Because it was just, it was basically a phone system.

01:03:00   It was like an office phone system.

01:03:01   Like, each room had a wired like office phone in it,

01:03:04   basically, even like the kids' bedrooms

01:03:06   had wired office phones in them and you could use those.

01:03:09   So because everything was wired over the phone system,

01:03:12   it was perfectly clear just like an office phone would be.

01:03:14   - Yeah, the cheaper ones are RF.

01:03:16   Yeah, they were bad.

01:03:17   - A user in the chat says, "I was born in 1991.

01:03:20   "What the hell are they talking about?"

01:03:23   So the intercom system, imagine there was like

01:03:26   this big control panel typically in the kitchen,

01:03:29   which was like literally two or three feet wide

01:03:31   and like a foot or two tall,

01:03:33   where you could speak into it and little,

01:03:37   well, not actually that little per Jon's conversation,

01:03:39   but comparatively little boxes in every room

01:03:43   would wake up and broadcast the message

01:03:46   that you just said in the kitchen.

01:03:47   So a great example of this is mom or dad says,

01:03:49   "Hey, dinner's ready, come downstairs."

01:03:52   So you walk up to the intercom box, which is massive,

01:03:55   and you hit a button and you say, "Hey, dinner's ready."

01:03:58   And then all of the rooms in the house get that message.

01:04:00   "Hey, dinner's ready."

01:04:01   And that was extremely cool in the,

01:04:04   apparently anywhere from as early as the '70s

01:04:06   all the way through the like early to mid '90s.

01:04:10   They were typically pieces of garbage.

01:04:12   They typically toward the end of the era

01:04:14   would allow you to do FM radio,

01:04:16   like I was talking about earlier,

01:04:17   so you could put on radio throughout the house.

01:04:19   And these were the crappiest speakers known to man,

01:04:22   so it sounded hilariously bad,

01:04:24   probably no better than an iPhone, if not worse.

01:04:27   But they were a sign of someone that was typically

01:04:31   at least slightly well-to-do.

01:04:32   - I've never seen, the kind of intercom system

01:04:35   you're describing, I've never seen it.

01:04:36   I've only seen the one at my friend's house

01:04:38   that was basically an office phone system

01:04:39   installed in their house.

01:04:40   - I put a link in the chat room to,

01:04:43   it's not the exact one that we have,

01:04:44   but it's a similar design.

01:04:45   - Oh, I remember this.

01:04:46   Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:47   - See how big that is?

01:04:48   Like, oh yeah.

01:04:49   - Yep, I hear you.

01:04:50   - And imagine a panel that size in like every room.

01:04:53   - So the central vacuum, what that is,

01:04:55   is imagine you had like this big tall canister somewhere,

01:04:59   typically a basement or a garage,

01:05:01   and then you had--

01:05:02   - It's called a vacuum.

01:05:03   - Hoses, yeah, it's called a vacuum, who knew?

01:05:05   But no, it's larger, or at least the one we had

01:05:09   in the house that I kind of sort of grew up in,

01:05:12   'cause we had central vac and that.

01:05:13   We did not have an intercom.

01:05:14   - You had a central vac.

01:05:15   - We did, we did.

01:05:15   (laughing)

01:05:17   But anyways, so there's hoses running throughout the home,

01:05:20   like you don't see them, they're in the walls,

01:05:21   but all running back to that vacuum.

01:05:22   So you could plug in, so you take a hose,

01:05:27   and you can bring it to any room

01:05:28   and plug the hose into the wall,

01:05:30   and suddenly you have a vacuum in that room.

01:05:32   And it actually is very cool.

01:05:33   - Yeah, you basically have outlets that suck.

01:05:36   - Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, that's exactly right.

01:05:38   - There's outlets near the floor level usually

01:05:40   that are just suction outlets,

01:05:42   and you plug a hose into it,

01:05:43   and you can have a vacuum anywhere.

01:05:45   But vacuums aren't that hard to carry around,

01:05:47   or it solves a problem in a really crazy way

01:05:52   that isn't that big of a problem to solve the regular way.

01:05:55   - Yep, I mean, it was a neat trick.

01:05:57   And actually, one of the extremely cool things about it is,

01:06:01   actually, I think my brother-in-law's house,

01:06:02   which was built not that terribly long ago, has this.

01:06:06   He has a central vac, but in the kitchen,

01:06:08   he has a little door or something

01:06:10   where you can sweep crumbs into it, you know what I mean?

01:06:14   So it's right at floor level,

01:06:15   and I don't remember how you activate it

01:06:17   to get the sucking to start title,

01:06:20   but you can sweep dust into there,

01:06:24   which is actually pretty cool.

01:06:25   - It's like a built-in dust pan, basically.

01:06:27   - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:29   - None of these things are worth their installation

01:06:32   and maintenance over just having a vac.

01:06:35   (laughing)

01:06:35   - That's true.

01:06:36   Here's the miraculous thing about them, though.

01:06:38   The fact that they continue to work at all,

01:06:40   because all of the home automation crap

01:06:42   that we're installing now or that people installed

01:06:44   five or 10 years ago is not going to work

01:06:47   when they're 20 years old.

01:06:48   But here's the 1980s stuff that's 20 years old or more.

01:06:52   I mean, it's still just as bad as it ever was,

01:06:54   but it continues to function.

01:06:55   RF continues to be just as bad as it always was.

01:07:02   The size of it becomes more and more hilarious,

01:07:04   because now, again, we got into this,

01:07:05   Casey is talking to his wrist at higher fidelity

01:07:08   than these gigantic panels in every room of the house.

01:07:11   - Yep, and I don't think it's like Bluetooth

01:07:14   or anything like that.

01:07:15   This is getting carried over the internet,

01:07:16   if I'm not mistaken.

01:07:17   So yeah, it must be, because I was walkie-talkie-ing

01:07:20   with Stephen Hackett very, very briefly

01:07:21   when this all first came out.

01:07:23   So yeah, this is going over the internet.

01:07:25   I could talk to Memphis from Richmond more clearly

01:07:29   than I could talk from the downstairs to the upstairs

01:07:31   in a prior home that my family owned.

01:07:34   - Not if he yelled.

01:07:35   (laughing)

01:07:36   Yelling is quite clear.

01:07:37   - Touche.

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01:08:58   - All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:09:00   Bastian and Inuk--

01:09:01   - Are we really not gonna talk about the Bloomberg thing?

01:09:05   - No, just listen up, great.

01:09:06   He'll be fine, he'll be fine.

01:09:08   - Honestly, I fully support that.

01:09:09   Upgrade covered it really well.

01:09:11   - It's still in the topic list.

01:09:13   It's probably not going away.

01:09:15   We'll have another shot at it next week.

01:09:16   - Just quickly, do you think there's any chance

01:09:19   that Bloomberg is correct?

01:09:21   It seems like there isn't.

01:09:22   It seems like they really have a lot of egg on their face.

01:09:25   - No, they can't be 100% correct

01:09:28   because the claims are so broad

01:09:31   that it would be very easy to find evidence of them

01:09:34   from all the players involved

01:09:35   who are highly motivated to find evidence of them.

01:09:38   So it can't be 100% correct.

01:09:39   Could it be 1% correct?

01:09:40   Sure, there could be a kernel of truth somewhere in here.

01:09:43   But their claims are just so massive

01:09:47   that this is things that happened

01:09:48   and it happened to all these different companies

01:09:51   and all these different people

01:09:52   and confirmed by all these people

01:09:53   and confirmed by this agency and that agency.

01:09:55   And all these people can't be conspiring

01:10:00   to pretend they know nothing about this.

01:10:02   And again, they're fairly highly motivated

01:10:05   to find out if this is true.

01:10:09   I don't think there can be coordination

01:10:12   between all the tech companies

01:10:13   and all the government agencies all got together

01:10:15   and decided we're all gonna get together

01:10:17   and agree on the same story and deny this Bloomberg thing.

01:10:19   So Bloomberg made a boo-boo somewhere.

01:10:21   It just depends.

01:10:22   It's sinister, it's just incompetence.

01:10:25   We didn't even give any context for this.

01:10:26   I guess many people don't know,

01:10:28   haven't been reading the news,

01:10:29   but the Bloomberg ran a story claiming

01:10:30   that there are secret, very tiny chips embedded in boards

01:10:34   used by a bunch of big tech companies

01:10:36   and that allow hackers to get into their data centers

01:10:40   or whatever and they named a bunch of different companies

01:10:42   and all the companies are like,

01:10:44   the companies weren't just immediate denial.

01:10:47   They checked this.

01:10:48   All of them probably turned to their security people

01:10:50   and said, do we have secret chips in our computer?

01:10:53   The things, have we talked to the FBI about it?

01:10:56   The answer was they talked to all their people,

01:10:59   the security people, their company lawyers or whatever.

01:11:01   The answer is no, none of this stuff is a thing.

01:11:04   So I'm not sure where you're getting,

01:11:06   and the FBI denied it and everybody.

01:11:08   - You've had the level of denials from me.

01:11:12   You really can't look at these denials and say,

01:11:15   oh, they're leaving room to BS their way out of it.

01:11:18   They're categorical, very broad.

01:11:21   - They're not using weasel words.

01:11:23   They're not using carefully worded lawyer messages.

01:11:26   And they're almost worded as if we were willing to believe

01:11:29   that we double checked and triple checked just to make sure,

01:11:33   make really, really sure because we're gonna,

01:11:36   they issued a statement like we checked it.

01:11:38   If you say we have these servers with these chips

01:11:40   and you say that we discovered, in some cases,

01:11:43   oh, this company, it was Amazon or whatever,

01:11:45   discovered these chips and then canceled its order,

01:11:47   it's like we wouldn't know if we discovered the chips

01:11:49   and canceled the order, it's a thing we would remember.

01:11:52   - Well, and these are the kind of statements,

01:11:54   if these companies and their denials,

01:11:56   if they're lying about this,

01:11:57   executives would go to jail if they got caught.

01:12:00   That's how severely these statements would be taken.

01:12:02   - Executives never go to jail, so let's be real.

01:12:04   But they would get fined.

01:12:06   - I mean, this would be a severe SEC problem.

01:12:10   They would almost certainly have major problems

01:12:13   if they lied about this kind of stuff.

01:12:15   - Almost as bad as Elon Musk's tweeting.

01:12:17   - Yeah, that's, yeah, that's, yeah,

01:12:18   we'll get to that some other time, I hope.

01:12:20   - $20 million tweet, good job.

01:12:21   - Oh, I wish he would just stop being like that.

01:12:25   - Yeah. (laughs)

01:12:26   - Just stop being like him.

01:12:27   - Just stop, keep making the awesome cars,

01:12:29   please stop tweeting. (laughs)

01:12:31   - So it's worth listening to the latest upgrade,

01:12:35   which is upgrade number 214,

01:12:37   which actually has a journalist as part of the panel.

01:12:40   And so Jason Snell and Mike Hurley did a really good job

01:12:43   of kind of dissecting all this.

01:12:44   The only thing I think that may be interesting

01:12:47   for the three of us to really pontificate on,

01:12:49   and maybe this was covered in the Bloomberg piece

01:12:52   that I didn't read

01:12:53   because it was almost immediately debunked by everyone,

01:12:56   but what do you think is the attack vector here?

01:12:59   Like, how do you make heads or tails

01:13:02   of data anywhere on a machine without any context?

01:13:06   Like, if you intercept an ethernet cable,

01:13:10   can you really tell what's going on there?

01:13:13   Or where do you attack in order to get all of the things

01:13:17   that are happening on a computer without context?

01:13:20   That's what I can't just put my finger on.

01:13:22   - But if you're on the board, though,

01:13:24   that's not the, I don't think that's the most obvious

01:13:27   attack factor, you suppose you could do that,

01:13:28   but first of all, many things travel across a computer board

01:13:32   in an encrypted form that are otherwise encrypted, right?

01:13:34   Because if encrypted data comes in over a network connection,

01:13:38   it is decrypted by the whatever software on your computer,

01:13:42   and the decrypted information is put into memory

01:13:45   and read by programs.

01:13:45   Like, that's how you render a webpage

01:13:47   when it's SSL, you know, HTTPS connection, right?

01:13:50   At some point, that information is decrypted

01:13:52   inside the computer.

01:13:53   So in theory, if you were in the right place,

01:13:54   you can intercept decrypted information

01:13:56   because your computer has to decrypt it to use it,

01:13:58   and there you are.

01:13:59   But I don't think that's the vector.

01:14:00   I think the vector is more like BIOS and boot loaders,

01:14:04   like compromising the security of the hardware

01:14:08   to allow you to pull down a compromised OS image, right?

01:14:13   With like a rootkit on it or something like that.

01:14:15   You can subvert the hardware at the lowest level,

01:14:17   and then, you know, like the assumption is,

01:14:21   oh, we're running a trusted version of the OS

01:14:22   that we validated, a trusted version of the firmware.

01:14:24   Like everything is all great and validated.

01:14:27   If you can sneak in there and subvert that and say,

01:14:30   we can load any arbitrary binary onto your system,

01:14:33   unbeknownst to you, replacing a binary

01:14:35   that you thought was your validated version,

01:14:37   but it's actually, now we're gonna replace it

01:14:39   with our version.

01:14:40   And that piece of software has a backdoor in it,

01:14:43   you know, logs everything that is typed on the keyboard,

01:14:46   attached to the computer, watches all network traffic

01:14:48   for like certain information and relays it.

01:14:51   And, you know, there's still difficulties.

01:14:53   Like Amazon was saying, like these computers in question,

01:14:55   like have no way to communicate on the network.

01:14:58   Every one of these companies watches egress

01:15:00   from the network like a hawk and has it all locked down.

01:15:02   So it's not easy, but if you can get in

01:15:04   at the hardware level,

01:15:05   there are all sorts of very nefarious things you can do.

01:15:08   One of the most interesting stories I saw about this

01:15:10   was a security researcher, I forget who,

01:15:12   if we had been talking about this,

01:15:13   I would have collected more links,

01:15:14   but who had written up for like one

01:15:17   of those security conferences.

01:15:18   I don't know if it was Black Hat,

01:15:19   but one of those similar things like,

01:15:20   let me show you all the cool exploits you could do

01:15:22   if you could get onto the motherboards of this hardware.

01:15:25   And he did a bunch of proof concepts

01:15:27   and had ideas about it and suggested ways

01:15:30   you could hide the hardware and, you know,

01:15:31   all sorts of stuff.

01:15:33   And this Bloomberg story basically includes

01:15:36   every single thing he talked about,

01:15:38   exactly the way he talked about it.

01:15:40   So as he said himself, and the paraphrasing is basically,

01:15:42   either I'm incredibly good at predicting the future

01:15:45   or this story was massively influenced,

01:15:48   but like it doesn't mean that Bloomberg saw what he wrote

01:15:50   and made up a story.

01:15:51   It just means like whoever the sources were

01:15:53   perhaps saw his stuff and then fed Bloomberg information

01:15:56   that exactly matched his ideas of how you could exploit this.

01:15:58   Like literally every single thing point by point.

01:16:01   You know, I said you could possibly do this

01:16:03   and the Bloomberg story, they say somebody did do that.

01:16:05   And I said you could hide it here

01:16:06   and the Bloomberg story says they hid it there.

01:16:07   And like, it's weird.

01:16:10   Like at this point I think it's,

01:16:13   like there's gotta be something nefarious somewhere

01:16:15   because all these supposedly validated sources

01:16:19   have to have some motivation to be sources

01:16:22   and to say hey Bloomberg, I've got information for you.

01:16:24   What their, you know, motivation is

01:16:27   and why they're doing it and why they were able

01:16:30   to seem credible to Bloomberg.

01:16:33   Like eventually we have to get to the real story

01:16:36   which is, you know, lots of theories about like

01:16:39   retaliation and trade wars with China

01:16:43   to try to make it seem like China's exploiting stuff

01:16:46   or trying to hurt tech companies or a stock manipulation.

01:16:48   There's all sorts of motivations for this type of thing.

01:16:50   But hopefully in the end the real, real story will come out

01:16:55   and we'll know what the deal is.

01:16:56   But for now I'm content to believe

01:16:59   that all the secret exploits inside the data centers

01:17:03   of all the biggest tech companies remain totally hidden.

01:17:06   (laughing)

01:17:08   'Cause that's all you can say.

01:17:09   You can't say I'm sure everything's secure

01:17:10   'cause this story's BS.

01:17:11   This story may very well be 100% BS.

01:17:14   You still just don't really know, do you?

01:17:16   Just don't really know.

01:17:18   - Yeah, I just, when you look at all the,

01:17:21   everything's come out since then.

01:17:22   All these pretty very, you know, very, very firm,

01:17:26   very like high risk denials from all the companies.

01:17:30   The corroborating denials from the British

01:17:34   and US intelligence agencies or whoever they are.

01:17:37   Like it's, the chance that the Bloomberg is right

01:17:40   in the face of all that.

01:17:41   And not to mention what you mentioned with like, you know,

01:17:43   the guy who gave them an interview

01:17:45   and then they basically said all of his theoreticals,

01:17:47   they basically said that as fact.

01:17:49   It just seems very unlikely that any part of this is true.

01:17:53   I 100% blame Bloomberg for this.

01:17:56   Like I don't think this was necessarily nefarious.

01:18:01   Like I don't think we know enough yet

01:18:03   to say whether it was like intentional stock manipulation

01:18:05   or but, but I do think it was--

01:18:08   - What's the non-nefarious motivation for this?

01:18:10   Like there has to, someone has to have bad motives

01:18:13   because if it all isn't true,

01:18:14   someone is taking untrue information

01:18:16   and either just making it up themselves and printing it,

01:18:17   which is unlikely I think, or being a source.

01:18:20   Sources coming to Bloomberg and saying

01:18:22   here's this information, which is not true,

01:18:24   but they're intentionally feeding false information.

01:18:26   So that's a nefarious motiva--

01:18:28   They must be feeding false information for a reason.

01:18:29   - It could be a misunderstanding somewhere along the way.

01:18:32   It could also just be like confirmation bias.

01:18:34   Like I've had so many, I've seen so many instances,

01:18:37   both stories I'm involved in and stories I'm not,

01:18:40   where a journalist or their editor

01:18:42   really wants to make a story true.

01:18:45   And so they will basically, you know,

01:18:48   talk to sources until the source tells them

01:18:50   what they wanna hear or until they hear

01:18:52   what they wanna hear, even if the source never even said it.

01:18:55   And it's not necessarily malicious,

01:18:58   it's just like human nature.

01:18:59   Like you want so badly for this thing to be true

01:19:01   that you think is true that you will find evidence of it,

01:19:06   even if that evidence isn't real

01:19:08   or doesn't actually support the conclusion

01:19:10   you're trying to write about.

01:19:11   And so that's a natural thing that happens.

01:19:14   The real crazy part here is these are very,

01:19:19   very serious allegations against very big companies

01:19:23   and massive world governments.

01:19:25   And a major publication appears not to have done

01:19:29   enough diligence on vetting this

01:19:31   before making it a very high profile story.

01:19:33   That is the crazy thing to me,

01:19:36   because I really don't believe a shred of this.

01:19:38   I don't think this story is true at all.

01:19:39   I think we have a lot of evidence on the other side

01:19:41   and we have nothing on the side of it being true

01:19:44   except Bloomberg saying, "We say it's true."

01:19:47   But it really appears like a massive case of negligence

01:19:50   on Bloomberg's part.

01:19:51   - Yeah, but it's so easy to validate.

01:19:53   If these things are out there,

01:19:54   especially if it's the story specifically says

01:19:56   that they were discovered by some companies,

01:19:58   you should be able to verify all of that.

01:20:01   Like everyone, if this is a widespread problem

01:20:04   and some companies already discovered it,

01:20:06   I mean, the only possible explanation would be,

01:20:07   yeah, they discovered it

01:20:08   but they're just not saying anything about it

01:20:09   'cause it's super secret.

01:20:10   Like the conspiracy theory you have to spin

01:20:14   to make the Bloomberg story actually truthful

01:20:16   gets bigger and bigger and more ridiculous by the day

01:20:19   'cause it's the type of thing that it's not,

01:20:21   it's not just one tiny isolated thing.

01:20:23   It's so widespread and so large and such large numbers

01:20:26   and like it's totally under their control to detect it.

01:20:29   They can take the boards out.

01:20:30   They can put them on our microscope.

01:20:31   They can examine it.

01:20:33   Like it's the type of thing that if you know

01:20:34   it's supposedly there and you know where to look for it

01:20:37   or how to look for it, you would find it if it was there.

01:20:40   Like obviously if you don't know to look for it

01:20:42   or like slipped under your radar, you might not see it

01:20:44   but once the story is out,

01:20:45   certainly you're gonna look at the stuff

01:20:46   and I don't know, it's messed up.

01:20:49   - That's why I think like for this to be true,

01:20:52   it requires such craziness to actually be true

01:20:55   and so many people to be lying and outright.

01:20:57   But if instead you say it looks like Bloomberg was wrong

01:21:02   and is either really afraid to admit it

01:21:05   or really in denial that they're wrong

01:21:07   or too proud to admit it,

01:21:09   either like what they have done here

01:21:12   is so incredibly damaging and so incredibly irresponsible

01:21:16   that they could really be sued big time for this.

01:21:19   Like Bloomberg, I'm saying,

01:21:21   they have a serious problem on their hands

01:21:22   if this is wrong and it sure looks like it's wrong.

01:21:25   I don't think Apple would sue them.

01:21:27   I think Apple has done enough

01:21:29   and I don't think they would want the bad PR

01:21:31   of suing a journalistic entity.

01:21:32   That's pretty bad PR for a big company

01:21:34   but like what Bloomberg has done appears to be so neglectful

01:21:39   and so like potentially nefarious

01:21:41   that it wouldn't surprise me

01:21:42   if somebody sues them in a really big way.

01:21:45   - Yeah, like I said, just listen, upgrade.

01:21:48   There's a lot of good stuff there.

01:21:49   It's worth your time.

01:21:50   Moving on to Ask ATP,

01:21:53   Bastian Anok writes storyboards for iOS development,

01:21:56   yay or nay.

01:21:57   And if you're not familiar with iOS development,

01:21:59   there's basically three mechanisms

01:22:01   to generate a user interface

01:22:04   that I can think of off the top of my head.

01:22:05   You can write a bunch of code,

01:22:07   you can handle each user interface

01:22:10   and I'm oversimplifying a little bit as an individual item

01:22:13   or and that's typically referred to as nibs

01:22:16   or you can use a relatively comparatively new technology

01:22:20   called storyboards where you have many different screens

01:22:24   all in one file.

01:22:25   And this is one of those things like Objective-C or Swift

01:22:28   that everyone has an opinion about and nobody agrees on

01:22:31   and I expect that that's going to happen again momentarily.

01:22:34   I have used both professionally.

01:22:38   I tend to come down in favor of storyboards

01:22:40   because that's clearly where Apple wants you to be,

01:22:43   that provide or used to provide things like you can do,

01:22:48   I forget the term for it now off the top of my head,

01:22:50   but you can do table view cells and things like that

01:22:53   in storyboards very easily.

01:22:54   There's ways to do it with nibs,

01:22:55   but it's not quite so simple.

01:22:57   And there's a bunch of, there's a few other things

01:22:58   like maybe safe area insets.

01:23:00   There's other things that were only in storyboards

01:23:01   that never made it to nibs.

01:23:03   The problem with storyboards though,

01:23:04   is that they are just a wonderful place

01:23:08   to have tremendous merge conflicts.

01:23:09   And if you have storyboards that are more than a screen

01:23:11   or two and a team of more than one,

01:23:13   it gets real ugly real quick.

01:23:15   So I'm in favor of storyboards.

01:23:17   And if you don't like storyboards,

01:23:18   I'm still in favor of nibs.

01:23:19   I personally do not think the writing code

01:23:23   for everything way is a smart call because all code is evil.

01:23:26   But Marco, tell me why I'm wrong.

01:23:27   - I don't necessarily think you are wrong.

01:23:29   I don't use a lot of storyboards.

01:23:31   I do almost all of my interface work in code

01:23:33   using auto layout and my compact constraint library,

01:23:36   which is basically a fancy version of auto layout syntax

01:23:39   that you can do really easily in code.

01:23:41   With a combination of that and the kind of ASCII based

01:23:45   auto layout syntax, the, I forget what it's called.

01:23:48   - Visual format language.

01:23:49   - That's it, VFL, yeah, the visual format language.

01:23:51   You're right.

01:23:52   So I do all my interfaces like that,

01:23:53   but that does bring issues.

01:23:56   It makes it harder to accommodate for things like

01:23:59   dynamic text or new screen sizes.

01:24:02   Just because there's more places to check,

01:24:03   there's more work to be done.

01:24:06   Certain areas of development you need

01:24:10   to use a storyboard for, like the launch thing

01:24:12   or like watch kit stuff is all storyboard based.

01:24:15   So there's certain areas where you just kind of need that.

01:24:18   And that is clearly where Apple is investing their time.

01:24:21   They're investing their time in the tooling

01:24:23   and the capabilities and making things easy for you

01:24:26   if you use storyboards.

01:24:28   So there's a huge argument to say just use storyboards

01:24:31   because when you're fighting Apple on fewer fronts,

01:24:34   things are easier for you.

01:24:35   However, with storyboards and with nibs before them,

01:24:39   there are certain walls that you just hit.

01:24:41   And they have done a really good job of reducing

01:24:44   these walls over time so that storyboards

01:24:47   are now more capable and more flexible than ever.

01:24:49   And there's fewer and fewer areas that you'll run into

01:24:52   where you just can't do this in a good way

01:24:54   with a storyboard and you have to switch your code.

01:24:56   But there are still areas like that.

01:24:58   And there are still downsides to using storyboards

01:25:00   in certain ways.

01:25:02   There are things like using custom controls

01:25:05   where you can do the IB designable stuff

01:25:08   to make your custom control appear in Interface Builder

01:25:12   in a useful way.

01:25:13   But that's really buggy and is difficult.

01:25:15   And so you end up, if you're a storyboard heavy workflow,

01:25:20   you end up doing a lot of supporting work

01:25:23   to enable the storyboard.

01:25:25   And that might, for certain use cases,

01:25:27   that might be more work than it would have been

01:25:29   to just write the thing in code in the first place.

01:25:31   So it's a debate that is not, it doesn't have an easy answer

01:25:36   but I lean towards just use storyboards

01:25:39   because that's what Apple wants you to do

01:25:41   and that's what they're gonna make easy.

01:25:42   That being said, I don't do that because that's me.

01:25:45   - Yeah, and just, I would love for Apple to do something

01:25:50   about making it easier for multiple people

01:25:52   to work on storyboards at the same time.

01:25:54   And I don't know how to do that

01:25:56   because it's just like the XC Proj files

01:25:59   or if you're a Windows person

01:26:00   like the Visual Studio solution in project files,

01:26:03   it's just hard to have a scenario

01:26:07   where multiple people can modify them

01:26:09   and things don't just go straight to hell.

01:26:11   So I still encourage storyboards but be careful.

01:26:15   - Eh, working with people is overrated.

01:26:17   (laughing)

01:26:18   - Does that mean I'm fired?

01:26:19   Spencer Waller writes, "What's the worst compromise,

01:26:22   "a fusion drive or a hybrid car?

01:26:24   "Assume modern implementations of both."

01:26:26   I thought this was really clever.

01:26:28   I think I would rather have a fusion drive

01:26:33   and avoid the hybrid car, but it's a tough call.

01:26:37   And I say that because having never actually used

01:26:41   a fusion drive, to be fair, it seems like

01:26:44   there are not many compromises outside of them

01:26:48   still not working with APFS, is that right, Jon?

01:26:51   - No, they do.

01:26:52   - Oh, okay, there you go.

01:26:53   So there's few compromises in theory

01:26:56   and it would solve a lot of computing problems in theory

01:27:00   and when everything works great, it's fairly transparent,

01:27:03   whereas I would say that your typical hybrid car,

01:27:07   and I'm thinking more of an economy hybrid car,

01:27:09   Jon's about to swoop in with some sort of NSX

01:27:11   something or other, but--

01:27:13   - It's pronounced NS 10.

01:27:15   (laughing)

01:27:17   - Well done, sir.

01:27:18   Anyways, I think that I would,

01:27:20   unless you go into the hypercar territory,

01:27:22   I would be more displeased by a hybrid car

01:27:25   than a fusion drive.

01:27:27   - That wasn't the question.

01:27:28   I was gonna make it about you.

01:27:29   What's the worst compromise, not which would you rather have?

01:27:31   - All right, fine.

01:27:32   The worst compromise is still the fusion drive.

01:27:37   Don't at me.

01:27:38   Marco, what do you think, Marco?

01:27:40   - A fusion drive is a pretty poor compromise

01:27:44   because you do start hitting weird speed issues pretty often.

01:27:49   It's just kind of, it's hard to predict and inconsistent

01:27:54   and those are not good qualities

01:27:56   for a performance-critical part of anything to have,

01:27:59   especially your computer.

01:28:00   And ignoring Jon's complaint for a second,

01:28:02   if I were choosing for myself,

01:28:04   I would choose the hybrid car

01:28:06   because I don't like either of these things,

01:28:08   but I spend a lot more time using my computer

01:28:09   than using my car.

01:28:10   So, and I think I would,

01:28:13   the problems of a hybrid car, which are many,

01:28:18   I think the biggest problem to me of a hybrid car,

01:28:20   besides the massive weight that they would tend to have

01:28:22   'cause they have all of everything,

01:28:24   is just the massive complexity they tend to have.

01:28:25   Like, hybrid cars, you have an entire electric drivetrain

01:28:28   and an entire gas drivetrain

01:28:30   and all the parts that both of those things need.

01:28:32   So, I recognize their importance for environmentalism

01:28:36   to kind of bridge the gap until we get all electric,

01:28:38   but just as a concept, like on principle,

01:28:41   they're incredibly complicated.

01:28:43   And I don't like the idea of requiring all of those parts

01:28:46   for all of those systems in this car

01:28:48   as opposed to just picking one and sticking with that one

01:28:50   and making that one really efficient and whatever else.

01:28:53   So, the Fusion Drive, though, like, Fusion Drive is,

01:28:55   again, it's a bridge technology, it's a hack.

01:28:58   It's a way to get near where we wanna be, which is all SSD,

01:29:03   but without having to pay the costs.

01:29:05   And so, it's actually a very good parallel,

01:29:07   but the downsides of a Fusion Drive are constant in use

01:29:12   in the sense that like, if that's all you have,

01:29:15   if that's all you can afford, fine, it's fine.

01:29:17   It's better than a pure hard drive,

01:29:19   but it's not nearly as good as a pure SSD.

01:29:21   I would pick the hybrid car, and I think the hybrid car

01:29:26   might even be the better compromise

01:29:29   because a Fusion Drive is unpredictable

01:29:33   in how it'll perform in a very critical way to the computer.

01:29:36   Whereas a hybrid car, much of the time

01:29:40   that you're driving it, you could totally forget

01:29:42   that it's a hybrid car.

01:29:44   - Now, what if you didn't live on your computer like you do?

01:29:47   - Same thing.

01:29:48   I think the, I mean, it depends on how, you know,

01:29:50   if I use my computer an hour a week,

01:29:52   then maybe I might make a different decision,

01:29:55   but I still stand by my last sentence there,

01:29:57   which is like, a hybrid car, like, you don't notice

01:30:00   its downsides most of the time while driving it.

01:30:02   You know, you notice when something breaks

01:30:03   or it needs to be serviced or wears out,

01:30:05   but like, for the most part, you don't notice

01:30:07   its downsides most of the time.

01:30:09   Whereas a Fusion Drive makes itself apparent

01:30:12   more often in use.

01:30:13   - John?

01:30:15   - Just wanna correct one of the things that Marco said.

01:30:17   I don't think hybrid cars weigh more on average

01:30:19   than an electric car with the same range.

01:30:21   They weigh less.

01:30:22   So yes, they do have all of everything,

01:30:23   and the complexity is for sure there

01:30:25   compared to an electric car, but they weigh less

01:30:28   because they have very dinky gas motors

01:30:31   and you get huge range from a very small gas tank

01:30:33   and they have very small batteries,

01:30:34   as opposed to one giant hunk of battery.

01:30:36   So that's not a reason to dislike hybrid cars.

01:30:40   What's the worst compromise?

01:30:41   I'm gonna agree with both of you and say Fusion Drive,

01:30:44   but for a slightly different reason.

01:30:46   So judging like, what's a good compromise,

01:30:48   but it's not like, in the moment,

01:30:50   both a hybrid car and a Fusion Drive are similar.

01:30:55   In the beginning, I was having trouble picking

01:30:57   which one is the worst compromise

01:30:59   because they're very similar compromises.

01:31:01   It's like, you can't go all the way

01:31:05   for basically for cost reasons.

01:31:07   So how can you get a reasonable compromise

01:31:10   that gives you the speed of an SSD without the cost?

01:31:12   How can you get something that gives you

01:31:15   better gas mileage, but you can't afford

01:31:17   to use a full battery pack, right?

01:31:19   'Cause it just costs too much money.

01:31:21   But the Fusion Drive is worse because

01:31:25   in its relevant realm, storage for computers,

01:31:29   the rate of advancement is such that

01:31:32   that compromise quickly becomes moot.

01:31:37   Like, flash storage is so cheap now

01:31:40   that it's very hard to recommend a Fusion Drive

01:31:43   as a reasonable compromise.

01:31:44   In the beginning, it was reasonable,

01:31:46   but very quickly it became unreasonable,

01:31:47   whereas hybrid cars have been a very reasonable compromise

01:31:51   for a long time.

01:31:52   They existed way before the Fusion Drive

01:31:54   and they will exist way after the Fusion Drive,

01:31:57   mostly because the full solution,

01:32:00   the complete electric, is still very, very expensive.

01:32:03   If you want to get the same range,

01:32:05   if you want to get a car with a 300-mile range

01:32:08   that's all electric, it's just much more expensive

01:32:11   than a car with a 300-mile range that's a hybrid.

01:32:13   A car with a 300-mile range is a hybrid

01:32:15   you can get for like 20K,

01:32:16   like if you buy a dinky Econobox, right?

01:32:18   But Fusion Drives, like now, flash storage

01:32:24   is so much cheaper than it used to be.

01:32:25   Like, the SSE that's sitting on my computer now,

01:32:28   I only bought it a few years ago.

01:32:30   Already I can get it for a half or a quarter of the price

01:32:32   depending on how much I want the performance to go down.

01:32:35   So Fusion Drives are a worse compromise

01:32:36   because they had a shorter lifetime,

01:32:38   whereas the lifetime of the hybrid drivetrain

01:32:43   has been much longer already and will continue to live on

01:32:46   because despite all the complexity,

01:32:49   taking a very well-known technology,

01:32:52   the internal combustion engine,

01:32:53   and making a small, very efficient Atkinson cycle version

01:32:57   of that and supplementing it with a fairly small battery,

01:33:02   perhaps even using cheaper battery technology

01:33:04   like nickel metal hydride instead of lithium ion,

01:33:06   and combining them in what is a fairly complex system

01:33:09   but it's cheap enough to put in a Toyota Prius,

01:33:13   you end up with something that gets better mileage

01:33:16   than a gas vehicle that isn't as expensive as a full electric

01:33:19   and that's what you've ended up with for a long time

01:33:21   and it'll continue to live on.

01:33:23   So that's how I came to my answer.

01:33:26   - Marc-Andre Weibesen writes, "Since you are all car fans

01:33:30   and each one of you owns at least one console,

01:33:32   I wonder, do you enjoy racing games?

01:33:34   If so, which one is your favorite?"

01:33:36   Let's go with the reverse order, Jon.

01:33:41   - This is about being a car fan,

01:33:43   so I bet they mean like, you know,

01:33:45   Gran Turismo and Forza and stuff like that.

01:33:48   But I think the only racing games I've ever really enjoyed

01:33:53   are, you know, the arcade kart racing games,

01:33:57   so Mario Kart, obviously,

01:33:58   Diddy Kong Racing was a favorite back in the day.

01:34:01   I did play some of the Wipeout series,

01:34:04   which Marco will talk about in a second.

01:34:06   - Yep.

01:34:07   - They never really grabbed me that much.

01:34:11   The racing game I have been most into

01:34:13   was Mario Kart Double Dash,

01:34:15   but in general, the whole Mario Kart series I liked.

01:34:19   So I guess the answer to this question is,

01:34:21   in terms of racing games with like realistic cars,

01:34:23   I've never been into one.

01:34:25   I've like, I've never gotten, gone down that rabbit hole.

01:34:28   - Marco.

01:34:30   - Yeah, I'm with you on pretty much all that.

01:34:31   I know the kind of racing games

01:34:34   that are like the super realistic racing simulators,

01:34:36   like, you know, like Forza or Turismo or whatever.

01:34:40   Like, I know what those are.

01:34:41   I've played them before.

01:34:43   I have never found them to be fun.

01:34:45   I think there's a, it's really hard

01:34:49   to make this kind of game realistic and fun

01:34:53   to a general audience, you know?

01:34:55   Like, if you're super into racing realistically,

01:34:59   then it might be fun to you,

01:35:00   but like, I think to a general audience, that's not fun.

01:35:03   And so I prefer the games that are optimized for fun

01:35:07   and don't go for realism basically at all.

01:35:11   And so, you know, Mario Kart is fantastic.

01:35:15   I think Mario Kart is probably the best example series,

01:35:20   and I'm talking about like basically

01:35:20   the entire series of Mario Kart.

01:35:21   Like, it's basically the best example series

01:35:23   of like fun racing.

01:35:26   Also 'cause like, for me, a major part of racing fun

01:35:30   is battle racing.

01:35:31   I love racing with weapons.

01:35:32   And that's always been a very fun category.

01:35:35   And so like Mario Kart is a very good example of that,

01:35:38   very accessible to lots of people.

01:35:39   You know, multiplayer is also very important

01:35:41   to the fun of racing games for me.

01:35:43   So multiplayer battle racing is my ideal.

01:35:47   That's the most fun to have with a racing game for me.

01:35:50   I find Mario Kart very, very fun.

01:35:51   Wipeout, I found more fun as a single player thing

01:35:54   'cause I just never could find anybody to play with me.

01:35:56   So I played a lot of single player Wipeout.

01:35:59   And that was fun too.

01:36:02   That's, it's also, Wipeout, I had fun doing things

01:36:04   like time trials, like trying to get your time better.

01:36:07   And I recognize people are gonna say immediately like,

01:36:08   that's what's fun about other racing games.

01:36:10   But yeah, I know, I know.

01:36:11   But I don't find the driving mechanics

01:36:13   of realistic racing games fun.

01:36:15   But I do like, you know, things that are like futuristic

01:36:18   or cool or just comically ridiculous.

01:36:20   Like I really enjoyed, back on the original Xbox,

01:36:23   I really enjoyed the early Burnout games

01:36:26   because those were just like completely ridiculous,

01:36:28   like arcade racers where like, you know,

01:36:31   you drive your car and those are the ones

01:36:32   that had the ridiculous crash sequences.

01:36:34   Like you'd crash your car into like as many other cars

01:36:37   as possible to get points and they would like,

01:36:38   do like slow-mo, like bullet time of the car crashes

01:36:41   and you see everything breaking apart.

01:36:43   And that was really cool for 2005 or whatever.

01:36:46   Yeah, so like, I like fun racing games like that.

01:36:52   I don't like realistic racing games.

01:36:54   And I especially like battle racing multiplayer games.

01:36:58   And for me, Mario Kart is the best example of that.

01:37:01   - I completely, wholly and entirely agree with Mario Kart.

01:37:05   I have played Gran Turismo on and off in the past

01:37:08   and it's fun, I guess.

01:37:11   I don't know, it seemed like a lot of work,

01:37:12   like upgrading your car and earning new cars

01:37:14   and stuff like that.

01:37:15   I'm going to give you two really bad answers

01:37:19   and then I'm going to redeem myself.

01:37:21   First of all, I played a crapload of Carmageddon,

01:37:26   which was apparently 1997. - That was awesome.

01:37:29   - I loved that game, which by probably any metric

01:37:34   was not a very good game, but I loved it.

01:37:36   - Oh no, it was terrible.

01:37:38   But there's a whole category of games that are like,

01:37:40   not good, but very fun.

01:37:42   - And so Carmageddon was a great example of that.

01:37:46   I believe this was DOS, if I'm not mistaken, it was so old.

01:37:50   I also really, really, really loved and played

01:37:53   probably more of than almost any other human,

01:37:57   wave race for the Nintendo 64.

01:37:59   - Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

01:38:01   That's not the other racing series that I really like.

01:38:04   Both the original and Blue Storm.

01:38:05   I think Blue Storm was head and shoulders the better game,

01:38:08   but I did actually get pretty heavily into Blue Storm

01:38:10   until I started getting frustrated by the RNG

01:38:13   of the waves killing my lap times.

01:38:15   I like things to be predictable in a racing game

01:38:19   and waves are just not.

01:38:20   And I get that's the fun of the game,

01:38:22   but eventually I got, like Margot was saying,

01:38:24   I do time trials in Mario Kart.

01:38:26   I would do time trials in wave race

01:38:30   and play against the computer players.

01:38:33   It just always annoyed me when a perfect run was ruined

01:38:35   by like a rogue wave that hit at the wrong time.

01:38:38   - Yeah, and so I loved Wave Race 64.

01:38:41   I didn't even realize that there was a Game Boy version

01:38:43   until just a minute ago getting the link for the show notes,

01:38:45   but I loved Wave Race 64.

01:38:47   I played the snot out of that game.

01:38:49   And at the time, seeing what appeared to be

01:38:51   pretty realistic wave physics in a video game

01:38:54   was mind blowing, like you kids these days, born in 1991,

01:38:59   you don't understand how amazing this was.

01:39:01   'Cause previously when you played a racing,

01:39:04   or any game that involved water,

01:39:06   the water was flat always, no matter what.

01:39:09   And this thing, it seemed to actually have water,

01:39:12   a lot more realistic water than anything else we had.

01:39:16   And coincidentally, my final answer,

01:39:17   which is the one that I think you guys

01:39:18   would have approved of if you didn't approve

01:39:20   of the other two, and it reads in the Wave Race 64

01:39:24   Wikipedia entry, it reads the following.

01:39:27   - Oh, I know what this is.

01:39:28   - Originally referred to as F-Zero on water.

01:39:31   And that is my final answer, F-Zero,

01:39:34   which I played the ever living crap out of.

01:39:37   I adored that game for the Super Nintendo.

01:39:41   And I would play that forever if I could.

01:39:45   And what was really interesting about F-Zero is,

01:39:47   and I'm sure there's a term for this,

01:39:49   and I don't know what it is offhand,

01:39:50   but the vehicle was always in the exact same position

01:39:55   on screen, it was the track that was rotating,

01:39:57   like your view of the track was rotating around the vehicle.

01:40:01   It was super, super weird, but I loved that game.

01:40:04   And I played the snot out of it on the Super Nintendo

01:40:08   when I was a kid, God, did I love that game.

01:40:11   - Yeah, I played F-Zero too.

01:40:12   I would lump that in with Wipeout

01:40:14   in a similar kind of futuristic racing thing.

01:40:16   - The only interesting thing I remember about F-Zero,

01:40:19   I mean, obviously they have the F-Zero theme cards

01:40:21   in Mario Kart, so they kind of live on

01:40:22   and there's the F-Zero courses in Mario Kart.

01:40:25   But the F-Zero Nintendo 64 game was,

01:40:27   my memory serves, 60 frames per second.

01:40:29   - It was.

01:40:29   - Which was unheard of on Nintendo 64

01:40:32   because it struggled to do like 15 or 20 frames per second

01:40:36   in most normal games.

01:40:37   So they sacrificed graphical fidelity for frame rate,

01:40:39   which I always respected them for.

01:40:41   - Yeah, and I remember when that came out,

01:40:43   and everyone knew that that was one of the things

01:40:45   that made it special.

01:40:46   And yeah, I mean, it was,

01:40:48   the tracks were really basic, like geometric.

01:40:50   They're basically driving on a tube.

01:40:51   Hey, it's a tube.

01:40:52   Like, it was super simple.

01:40:54   But to see that smooth motion

01:40:56   for this very high speed racing game,

01:40:58   that was pretty fun.

01:40:59   I give them a lot of credit for that.

01:41:00   I've never gotten too into F-Zero.

01:41:02   Like, it's always been a fun thing I play

01:41:03   for a few minutes and then I don't care anymore

01:41:06   because it hasn't captured my other desires

01:41:09   for a racing game with the battle or stuff like that.

01:41:12   But it is a very well done game.

01:41:13   I gotta give credit for that.

01:41:15   - I would suggest, I wish they would bring back Wave Race

01:41:17   because Blue Storm was a pretty amazing game.

01:41:21   The original one was a little clunky

01:41:23   and then it has a standard 64.

01:41:24   But Blue Storm, because if you're into racing games

01:41:27   and you think like, oh, I play realistic racing games,

01:41:30   I play the arcade racing games,

01:41:31   I kind of like racing games.

01:41:33   It is a different experience

01:41:35   than I've ever had in any video game

01:41:36   because the waves are such a factor.

01:41:38   Like you can't just ignore them

01:41:39   and they're not just scenery.

01:41:41   They are what you're doing.

01:41:42   You have to anticipate, look at, and play the waves.

01:41:46   And it's not true of most other racing games.

01:41:48   Even things with tracks that change or whatever,

01:41:50   they're fairly predictable

01:41:51   and not like the moment to moment thing that you're doing.

01:41:54   Kind of like a skiing game or a snowboarding game

01:41:59   or anything like that.

01:42:00   Again, similar racing games where you have to play the hill.

01:42:02   But at least the hill, the hill is the hill.

01:42:04   It doesn't change shape that much.

01:42:05   The waves are ever changing.

01:42:06   That's what you're playing when you play the racing game.

01:42:09   Yeah, there's the course and there's the buoys or whatever.

01:42:12   You have to go between, but you're playing in the water

01:42:14   and that is so different.

01:42:15   And so some people I think find disconcerting

01:42:17   'cause they think they're good at racing games

01:42:19   and then they play Wave Race and they just, they stink.

01:42:21   And they're like, "Well, this game sucks.

01:42:22   How can you do anything

01:42:23   when the waves knock you all over the place?"

01:42:24   (laughing)

01:42:26   If you have a GameCube lying around, check it out.

01:42:28   I hope they bring that game back.

01:42:29   I don't remember if they ever brought back a port

01:42:30   for another one of the platforms, but they should.

01:42:33   - I should, in top four style,

01:42:35   I should give honorable mention to Cruisin' USA,

01:42:38   which is probably the best arcade racing game

01:42:40   that's ever been.

01:42:41   Don't at me.

01:42:42   - Oh, come on.

01:42:43   - I thought you were gonna say Hydro Thunder

01:42:44   before we reached that zero. - That was my next one.

01:42:46   I loved Hydro Thunder,

01:42:47   which was just Cruisin' USA on water.

01:42:50   And Hydro Thunder was,

01:42:51   both of them are really terrible by any true metric,

01:42:54   but I loved that both of them.

01:42:55   - Oh, and speaking of, you know, so many racing games,

01:42:57   Super Sprint, do you remember that?

01:42:59   - No. - You don't remember that.

01:43:00   That's before your time.

01:43:00   I don't know, am I getting the title right?

01:43:02   Anyone in the chat remember Super Sprint?

01:43:03   So it was a four-person arcade cabinet,

01:43:06   kind of like Gauntlet,

01:43:07   where all four people would stay around the same screen.

01:43:09   And there were four steering wheels.

01:43:11   And it was a top view of a track,

01:43:13   like a static top view of the track.

01:43:15   So you were looking down on the track.

01:43:16   - Oh, this does look familiar.

01:43:18   - With these little tiny cars on it,

01:43:20   and you would drive the cars around the course.

01:43:22   And it was a dirt track.

01:43:24   And you're in, basically,

01:43:26   they look like remote control cars,

01:43:27   'cause they're remote control buggy cars.

01:43:29   These are the big cars they're modeled on.

01:43:30   I don't know if you get what the dirt track cars are called.

01:43:33   And of course you would skid around turns

01:43:35   'cause dirt is loose.

01:43:36   And to go around each turn, you would spin the wheel,

01:43:40   and they were on bearings.

01:43:41   Like the wheel would spin. - Yes, yes, yes, yes.

01:43:44   Oh, I remember this. - So you'd go around

01:43:44   a 90-degree turn, and you'd spin the wheel,

01:43:46   and it would be spinning like 17 rotations as you go around.

01:43:49   It was totally unrealistic,

01:43:50   but it was so fun to spin the wheels

01:43:52   and just massively oversteer and then correct

01:43:54   and countersteer as your little buggies.

01:43:56   And you could see everyone else on the course.

01:43:58   It was like doing slot cars on dirt on a static thing.

01:44:01   I don't know, anyway, I had a lot of fun with the game

01:44:03   from spinning the wheel.

01:44:04   And the unique, very low-tech, here's the whole course,

01:44:08   and you could see every single car on it.

01:44:09   Just drive your little car now.

01:44:11   - Oh, wow, that was a fun trip down memory lane.

01:44:13   Actually, a lot of this episode

01:44:15   was a fun trip down memory lane.

01:44:17   - Also, you're totally wrong.

01:44:19   The best arcade racer like that is Daytona USA.

01:44:23   - No, no. - No, it was mostly

01:44:25   after my time in the arcades.

01:44:27   Was that multiplayer or two-player?

01:44:28   - Yeah, it was the time of the sake of Saturn.

01:44:30   So it was like the mid-'90s to late '90s.

01:44:33   - 1993 limited release, full release in 1994.

01:44:38   Was that set alongside somebody at a second cabinet?

01:44:40   - Yeah, so you could link up to either four

01:44:43   or maybe even eight of them,

01:44:44   and it would cost a dollar per play.

01:44:47   It was like the expensive game in the arcade

01:44:50   'cause they were these big new machines.

01:44:52   But multiplayer at Daytona USA was a lot of fun.

01:44:55   If you could convince anybody else to spend a dollar on it,

01:44:57   it was a lot of fun.

01:44:58   Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:45:00   Betterment, Molecule, and Mack Weldon,

01:45:03   and we'll talk to you next week.

01:45:04   (upbeat music)

01:45:07   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:45:09   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:45:12   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:45:13   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:45:14   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:45:16   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:45:17   ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:45:19   ♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

01:45:22   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:45:24   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:45:25   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:45:26   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:45:28   ♪ And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM ♪

01:45:33   ♪ And if you're into Twitter ♪

01:45:36   ♪ You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S ♪

01:45:41   ♪ So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M ♪

01:45:46   ♪ N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:45:51   ♪ U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A ♪

01:45:54   ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:45:55   ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:45:57   ♪ They didn't mean to accidental ♪

01:46:01   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:46:02   ♪ Tech podcast so long ♪

01:46:07   - The new 3-series, the new BMW 3-series,

01:46:10   has no stick shift in the United States,

01:46:12   and apparently it's only going to have it

01:46:13   on the small motors overseas.

01:46:15   - The M3 still has it though, right?

01:46:17   - They haven't said one way or the other.

01:46:19   - Yeah, I'm pretty sure the M3 still does.

01:46:21   I think that might've been the backslide that I mentioned.

01:46:23   Like, there was gonna be no sticks anywhere,

01:46:25   and then there was a couple of strategic backslides,

01:46:27   and I think a stick on the M3 was one of them.

01:46:29   - It seems like the M3 would be the last BMW

01:46:32   to offer a stick in the US.

01:46:34   Outside of the US, I don't know,

01:46:35   'cause people buy sticks outside the US

01:46:36   for different reasons, but in the US,

01:46:38   I would bet the M3 is the very last BMW car to have it.

01:46:42   - Now, that I would probably agree with.

01:46:43   - Or maybe the M2.

01:46:45   Now that I think about it,

01:46:46   I forgot they have a billion different cars now,

01:46:48   so maybe now that they have smaller M cars,

01:46:51   maybe the M2 would be the last one to have it.

01:46:53   - Yeah, I'm not sure.

01:46:54   I don't think they've said anything

01:46:55   about the M3 that I have seen,

01:46:57   but I mean, it says here BMW announced Tuesday

01:47:00   that it will drop the manual transmission

01:47:02   from its gas-powered platforms

01:47:03   in the newest 3 Series lineup.

01:47:05   Makes me so sad.

01:47:06   They were supposed to hold out.

01:47:07   They were supposed to be the ones

01:47:08   that held out longer than anyone else,

01:47:10   and they failed us.

01:47:11   - As soon as you stop buying them,

01:47:12   they're like, "Well, we don't need them anymore.

01:47:13   "Casey stopped buying BMWs."

01:47:15   - That's true.

01:47:16   I'm sorry, everyone.

01:47:17   It's all my fault.

01:47:18   - It is.

01:47:19   They would have only made it in white.

01:47:21   (laughs)

01:47:22   - What are you gonna do, John, when the Accord is next?

01:47:24   - Oh, they're gonna hold,

01:47:25   the cheap cars are gonna hold on way longer

01:47:27   than the fancy cars.

01:47:28   Like I said, Honda moves slowly.

01:47:31   So they're just not,

01:47:33   they're just sheer inertia

01:47:35   in the fact that it takes them a really long time

01:47:36   to do anything.

01:47:37   I feel like it'll hang on for a surprising amount of time.

01:47:41   Maybe not in the Accord,

01:47:42   but like the Civic and the Type R,

01:47:46   like just because it takes them a long time

01:47:49   to change anything.

01:47:50   So I think I'll be able to buy at least one more Accord

01:47:54   at some point.

01:47:56   - Speaking of which,

01:47:58   I got my new tires, remember,

01:48:00   that I mentioned?

01:48:02   - Yeah, yeah.

01:48:02   - They're working great,

01:48:05   except for I have my alignment thing

01:48:07   that I have to deal with,

01:48:08   which drives me insane.

01:48:09   I honestly envy people who can't tell

01:48:12   when their car is out of alignment,

01:48:14   but I can tell,

01:48:15   and it really bothers me.

01:48:17   So I gotta get that done.

01:48:18   But now my wife messed up one of her tires,

01:48:22   so we're spending a lot of time at the tire store.

01:48:24   - Oh God.

01:48:26   Oh yeah, those Boston winters, man.

01:48:29   Yeah, living in the Northeast the best.

01:48:31   - It's not winter though.

01:48:33   - I know it's not winter there yet,

01:48:34   but it's the winters that destroy your roads, isn't it?

01:48:38   And the plows that are removing your 18 tons of snow.

01:48:41   - Yeah, yeah, you see the roads in front of my house,

01:48:43   it's ridiculous.

01:48:43   They're repaving a lot of stuff,

01:48:45   just obviously not like the residential street

01:48:47   in front of my house.

01:48:48   But the major roads,

01:48:49   a lot of them are getting repaved.

01:48:50   And when they're in the process of repaving,

01:48:52   that's how you destroy your rims as you bang over

01:48:56   helpfully spray painted manhole protrusions

01:49:00   at 50 miles an hour on a major highway.

01:49:03   It's like, oh, thanks, you spray painted it pink now.

01:49:04   How am I supposed to navigate these five manhole covers

01:49:07   that are all in a pattern that it's impossible for me

01:49:09   to avoid if I'm in this lane?

01:49:12   - Yeah, just makes me sad that the manual is leaving.

01:49:14   I mean, I know that it's coming.

01:49:17   I know it's a thing, but I enjoy it.

01:49:20   And everyone is quick to tell me

01:49:22   how they're oftentimes less efficient,

01:49:24   how they're oftentimes slower than a modern automatic,

01:49:27   that modern automatic's very good.

01:49:29   I know the ZF8 speed is very good,

01:49:31   but it's more fun for me to drive with three pedals.

01:49:34   That's what I like.

01:49:36   And you should let people enjoy things.

01:49:38   - I think you're still gonna have that option

01:49:40   in a lot of cars,

01:49:41   but they're gonna become increasingly fewer choices,

01:49:44   and they're gonna become increasingly higher end sports cars.

01:49:46   Like Porsche is probably not gonna stop offering them

01:49:48   for a while in some of its cars.

01:49:50   Maybe not all of its cars,

01:49:51   but maybe the smaller ones like the Cayman or something.

01:49:54   Who knows?

01:49:55   I'm guessing there's gonna be options like that,

01:49:58   or maybe like a Miata.

01:49:59   There's gonna be options where

01:50:01   you will still be able to get sticks,

01:50:03   but 20 years ago, you could get a stick

01:50:06   on lots of different cars,

01:50:08   and just now you can get them on very few.

01:50:11   We're still gonna have options for a while, I think,

01:50:13   but it's not gonna necessarily be cars that you want

01:50:17   or that you want to spend the money for.

01:50:19   - Yeah, like the BRZ, like those throwback type cars

01:50:22   where it's like a small traditional sports car.

01:50:24   Speaking of the BRZ, by the way,

01:50:25   the 2018 Accord beat the BRZ around the track

01:50:30   in the lighting lap.

01:50:30   (laughing)

01:50:31   - Really?

01:50:32   - So that thing needs a bigger motor badly.

01:50:34   - Oh, I could have told you that.

01:50:35   I've driven one.

01:50:36   They're hilariously underpowered.

01:50:37   - But still, that's kind of embarrassing

01:50:38   for a sporty looking car.

01:50:41   - That was pretty funny, though.

01:50:42   Also, I mean, this is kind of against

01:50:45   the way we tend to do things,

01:50:47   but there's also the old car option.

01:50:50   You could keep a car in your garage

01:50:53   that is your old Nissan 350 white thing

01:50:57   with the wheels falling off.

01:50:58   You could totally--

01:51:00   - You've conflated three different cars,

01:51:02   two of which I owned and one of which I did not.

01:51:04   I am very impressed.

01:51:05   - Yeah, 350 is the modern numbering.

01:51:07   It was 300 back in the case you had it.

01:51:10   - I had a 300ZX, but it was my Saturn

01:51:12   that the wheel fell off, and then there exists a 350Z,

01:51:15   which I have never owned.

01:51:16   (laughing)

01:51:17   My mistake.

01:51:18   Anyway, but I'm sure all three of them were white.

01:51:21   That's what matters.

01:51:22   But yeah, so the point is you could always

01:51:23   just buy a stick car for fun driving

01:51:26   on the side or on the weekends,

01:51:27   or just make it your regular car

01:51:28   and just tolerate the maintenance.

01:51:30   A lot of people do that.

01:51:31   That's totally an option.

01:51:32   If I really wanted to buy a stick car today,

01:51:36   I could go try to find one today,

01:51:38   or I could go buy my MR2 and drive it slowly

01:51:42   around town as its death trap.

01:51:45   I can do that. I have that option.

01:51:46   I wouldn't recommend it necessarily,

01:51:48   but that option exists.

01:51:49   You don't have to be driving a stick all the time

01:51:53   or as your everyday car,

01:51:54   and it doesn't have to be a new car

01:51:56   for you to still have this as a thing you can do

01:51:58   when you wanna have some fun.

01:52:00   - That reminds me, I have not caught up

01:52:02   with any of my YouTube subscriptions,

01:52:04   of which I do not have many,

01:52:06   but one of the regular car reviews that I've seen

01:52:11   has been posted in the last month or two

01:52:13   is a 300-wheel horsepower MR2,

01:52:15   which I'm sure is right up your alley.

01:52:18   And how do they do this?

01:52:21   - I'm gonna guess the answer is turbochargers.

01:52:23   - Yeah, I think that is exactly the right answer.

01:52:26   Now, if you were listening to this listener

01:52:30   and you have never seen--

01:52:31   - They installed some large pipes in the back.

01:52:34   - That's a turbocharger.

01:52:35   If you've never seen regular car reviews,

01:52:37   it is pretty deeply offensive,

01:52:39   and that's kind of the shtick.

01:52:43   So understand what you're getting into.

01:52:45   I find it interesting and actually fairly well-written

01:52:50   if you can get past all the misogyny,

01:52:53   which may or may not be for show.

01:52:56   I can't tell if it's legitimate and real

01:52:58   or if it's not. - Doesn't really matter.

01:52:59   At a certain point, it does not matter.

01:53:01   - Yeah, fair point. - For sure.

01:53:03   - So anyway, so the dude that does it

01:53:05   has an appearance of being extremely misogynistic,

01:53:08   so be forewarned.

01:53:09   But I do think the reviews are interesting,

01:53:12   and he, I think it was an English major in college

01:53:15   or something like that, so he makes these really interesting,

01:53:17   often literary comparisons to these cars

01:53:20   that I never would have expected.

01:53:21   But I have not watched this particular video,

01:53:23   but it is apparently a 300 horsepower MR2.

01:53:26   I think this is the era that you cared for, right, Marco?

01:53:28   - Yes, it is.

01:53:29   - See, there you go.

01:53:30   So I'll have to watch that later.

01:53:31   I have so much homework this episode.

01:53:32   What the hell's going on?

01:53:34   - Sorry.

01:53:35   - God.

01:53:36   - Boy, that is a nice-looking car.

01:53:37   Although the problem is it's a nice-looking car

01:53:40   from some angles, not from all angles.

01:53:43   That's kind of the problem all '80s and '90s cars have.

01:53:46   Looking back on old cars, some of them have timeless designs,

01:53:50   some of them have sort of time-full designs,

01:53:54   some of them have more time-sensitive angles than others.

01:53:57   (laughing)

01:53:59   - I don't know.

01:53:59   - But I still would love to drive one of these sometime.

01:54:01   I've still never driven one.

01:54:03   - It's gonna drive like a noisy, low Honda Civic.

01:54:06   - I know, yeah, I know.

01:54:08   Maybe it's probably better

01:54:09   if I haven't ever driven one.

01:54:10   I think maybe that would ruin the appeal for me

01:54:11   'cause I would realize--

01:54:12   - 'Cause it was never actually a really good car

01:54:14   and it's old and--

01:54:16   - Right, right.

01:54:18   But it has T-tops, man.

01:54:19   Does anybody even make T-tops anymore?

01:54:22   - They do. - Nope.

01:54:22   - Porsche makes them.

01:54:24   Porsche makes a Targa, which is basically a T-top.

01:54:25   - Targa's not, it's not the same.

01:54:28   - It's close enough.

01:54:29   - Is it just like the Boxster with a T-top, basically?

01:54:31   - No, it's not the same.

01:54:33   - A removable hard roof thing.

01:54:35   - Right, but there's no T to it.

01:54:37   The entire roof comes out.

01:54:39   - Arga?

01:54:40   - Targa, T-A-R-G-A.

01:54:41   - With no T, you miss the joke.

01:54:43   - No.

01:54:44   Eh, got it.

01:54:44   All right.

01:54:45   I thought, didn't Porsche make one

01:54:47   that actually had a T in it at one point?

01:54:49   Years and years ago,

01:54:50   American New Generation, I don't know.

01:54:51   - Maybe, maybe.

01:54:53   I just now realized that YouTube honors

01:54:55   the backward, forward, and play, pause keystrokes

01:55:00   from Final Cut Pro.

01:55:01   So J, K, and L.

01:55:02   J to go back, K to play, pause, and L to go forward.

01:55:05   - Do you think those are from Final Cut Pro?

01:55:07   Well, what are they from, Mr. Fancy?

01:55:08   - VI.

01:55:09   - Oh, God, you would.

01:55:11   - Sorry, that's not that.

01:55:12   - You monster.

01:55:13   [door closes]

01:55:15   [BLANK_AUDIO]