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283: Just Lower Your Standards

 

00:00:00   I am so freaking stressed right now.

00:00:02   I don't think I've really come to grips with this whole filming car videos thing quite yet,

00:00:09   because all I can think about is all the ways that the footage I have is not enough and will never work and is all

00:00:16   wrong and the car goes back in on Friday morning. And

00:00:20   this is roughly the same feeling I've had every time I've had a car video,

00:00:25   but it's getting worse and worse because I'm now

00:00:28   no longer just doing this for grins and giggles. I'm doing it for like sort of my job.

00:00:33   So I am just a ball of stress right now. I should not be recording right now.

00:00:39   I should be fiddling around in Final Cut right now. In fact, if you just find me dropping off the call, just just roll on.

00:00:44   It's fine.

00:00:46   So, I mean, I think interesting thought exercise might be

00:00:49   assume you had more time with the car.

00:00:52   Do you think you would ever reach the point where you wouldn't feel all panicked and insecure about the video clips that you have so far?

00:00:59   Don't don't use your logic on me.

00:01:01   You know, I've made, you know, of all the video I have made,

00:01:07   I had that feeling for

00:01:11   all of it and

00:01:13   and it was true. I didn't have all the right footage.

00:01:17   In fact, I had way too little footage than for what I actually needed, but

00:01:22   I managed to get a video out of it anyway, and I think

00:01:25   that's probably true of most people who make videos on a deadline. Like, you're never gonna have enough time or

00:01:31   enough people or enough gear to get all of the shots you want exactly the way you want them and

00:01:38   you're always gonna have to make up for something that you didn't get or that's wrong or that doesn't fit in

00:01:44   like during editing after the car's gone. Like, that's always gonna happen.

00:01:48   That's gonna happen every single video you make. I think that's just part of making videos.

00:01:51   So

00:01:53   while I sympathize with this feeling that you have, I think it's also

00:01:56   possibly reassuring to think of it as just this kind of

00:02:00   inevitability that will probably happen to every video and you'll find a way around it and it'll be fine.

00:02:05   Just lower your standards like DeMuro. You don't have some footage? Sit in front of a room and shoot yourself.

00:02:09   Yeah, I had footage of me driving, but I lost it. So here's me not driving. Let me tell you what it was like.

00:02:13   It was pretty good. Anyway, Doug Skor.

00:02:18   Title. No, I hear you and I think in a serious answer to your actually very interesting thought

00:02:25   question, or what was thought exercise, I think

00:02:29   in a perfect world where I had absolutely no deadline, what I would be doing is I would be filming and then

00:02:38   putting that into my Final Cut project and

00:02:41   figuring out was that good? Was it perfect? Was it good enough? Where does it fit? What is the story arc, etc?

00:02:48   And you know what I mean? So I could see it. I would be processing it

00:02:52   "live" not literally live, but you know

00:02:55   I'd be processing it like nightly or something in order to

00:02:58   figure out if what I had just recorded was good enough. And as it stands right now

00:03:02   I'm just like

00:03:04   glancing at the footage to make sure it isn't an utter disaster and then going on faith that I can somehow

00:03:09   piece together something out of it, which is what you were talking about Marco. And

00:03:14   it's fine, like it's all fine, but I am deeply woefully

00:03:18   incredibly stressed right now because I feel like I have a bunch of mediocre video and no good video. And

00:03:25   at some point I'm just gonna have to get over it and deal with it,

00:03:30   which is what has happened the last couple of times.

00:03:31   But I think the difference, like I said, is that this time I'm doing the reverse of what John recommended.

00:03:37   I'm holding myself to an even higher standard because now in theory

00:03:42   I have more time to make this better, when in reality

00:03:45   I do have more time, but I have no more skill than I had or only marginally more skill than I had before. And

00:03:51   it's it stressed me out some fears. You need to mentally sever the connection between production values and

00:03:57   popularity of the video and success of the video if you consider popularity be success because there is not as much connection as you think

00:04:04   there is. Like I mean I used Demir's example. Casey, did you see the video I'm referring to where he really lost all the driving footage

00:04:10   and he just said, "Well, whatever. I lost it. I deleted it accidentally.

00:04:14   Here's what it was like to drive." Like just, you know, the audio quality in his videos,

00:04:20   the number of shots, the quality of the shots, doesn't matter.

00:04:24   Like it doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Like just, you know, I think you're

00:04:30   stressing about the wrong things. Much better things for you to stress about.

00:04:34   Well, and again, I think you're right, but man, it's hard not to. Plus I still haven't licked the

00:04:40   the audio thing. I need to find a lavalier mic or however you pronounce it. Don't lick your microphone. Oh, is that the tip?

00:04:46   Okay. No, I mean audio is it's it's hard to get it really good. I would say audio

00:04:52   I mean, I'm kind of biased because I like audio better than everything else.

00:04:54   But I think audio is more important to get technically good than video in even in a video

00:05:00   because the audio like bad audio is makes the video really hard to watch whereas bad video is

00:05:06   pretty acceptable in a lot in a lot of ways.

00:05:09   And doesn't doesn't actually interfere that much with the viewing experience.

00:05:13   But anyway, I would I would just go to say like, you know, John's right. Like there when you're making video

00:05:21   you first of all, you're looking at people who are like

00:05:25   you know big YouTube channels and big TV producers and what they produce and you're comparing yourself as a

00:05:30   Complete newbie relatively speaking. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Also you're working alone

00:05:36   You know most big channels and producers have staffs that produce video like it's as you know

00:05:43   There's a lot about making video that's pretty hard to do by yourself

00:05:45   and you know you make it work you figure out a way or you or you have some somebody help you as much as possible but

00:05:52   You know with video there is an infinite

00:05:56   There is no ceiling on production values like no matter like you're never gonna reach a point where you think

00:06:04   My production values are right where they need to be

00:06:06   no, that's never gonna happen like you're always gonna want to get more and more and more and more and

00:06:10   Because you aren't like the entire BBC with an infinite budget like that's you're never gonna reach the level

00:06:18   You know that level of like of technical perfection. So

00:06:22   instead, you know

00:06:24   you have to aim for basically like best bang for the buck and I mean that both in money and also in time and complexity and

00:06:31   You know, that's why like I made this mistake for my video

00:06:34   when you know, I basically bought a whole bunch of gear that I ended up using between zero and one times and

00:06:41   You're never gonna you know reach perfection technically but you just have to reach the point where

00:06:47   You can say this is good enough and that's gonna be really hard to decide and it's gonna be really hard to finally make that

00:06:54   Call and whether you're there or not, you might already be there

00:06:57   but but the reality is what people care about is what you're saying and how it sounds and

00:07:03   A little bit of the video but if there's flaws in the video who cares welcome to YouTube everything on YouTube is like, you know

00:07:11   Like only the only the very top top top tier are producing things that look like TV

00:07:17   everyone else is

00:07:20   making do with like their iPhone as the camera and

00:07:24   Long shots of themselves talking and everything and it's fine. It's totally fine. Even the high-end channels are doing that

00:07:30   I just watched that

00:07:32   MKBHD I just seen opening of the old that was so good. I

00:07:36   Forget which channel it was on but I'm I don't I don't know this for sure

00:07:41   But looking at the video my thinking is that they shot the thing in 8k and then they're just crop zooming

00:07:46   To the interesting parts like because they could they didn't have a camera person

00:07:49   They basically had a camera on a tripod

00:07:51   tripod getting both of them and every time there was a point of interest because they shot at 8k they had the resolution to be

00:07:57   able to zoom in on peeling the sticker off or zoom in on a person's a reaction and it didn't look gross because

00:08:02   You know, they had a ridiculously expensive camera, but that's not you shoot TV

00:08:05   like they do that in movies sometimes but like really what you want as a camera person and get the close-up and like do inserts and

00:08:12   All like but they didn't because it's like well we don't time for that

00:08:15   We don't have the staff. We don't even though that were you know bazillionaires and have these amazing big channels

00:08:20   We just want to get this video out and like and all the way down to Doug DeMuro

00:08:23   Who's putting an iPhone on a tripod pointing it at himself with no staff?

00:08:27   And he just crawls around in the car for a half an hour and he's done

00:08:30   like and that's just like he should be your inspiration because it's not like he doesn't care but like the

00:08:36   Quality that he's putting out by just using like his iPhone and a cruddy microphone. It's not great, but it's fine

00:08:42   Like it's that's not the problem with his videos, right?

00:08:44   It's not no one's watching his videos and saying your video was good, but I wish there was more dramatic lighting

00:08:48   It's like can you see what he's talking about? Can you hear him? Does it sound not awful good thumbs up?

00:08:54   Like and even only unlike the sound gear front to like on in my video

00:08:59   My sound wasn't that good. I have all the gear in the world

00:09:03   I could I could have had perfect sound but you know, I didn't have a boom operator

00:09:09   Or even the right kind of like, you know big long stand to hover it over my head during it, you know in the shot

00:09:15   Yeah, and or a camera person to skillfully avoid having the boom in the shot if I tried that, you know

00:09:22   The right way to get really good audio to the best of my knowledge is to have somebody holding a hyper cardioid

00:09:28   Short-range mic right above your head pointed at your mouth the whole time that you will get the best audio that way sure

00:09:34   But you need you know, you need more equipment and especially generally you need some you need a person to be doing that

00:09:42   there's a lot of things about about video production where like

00:09:45   What it comes down to really is you need a person to be holding something or looking at something or operating something for you

00:09:51   You know and that's hard to do when you're an indie, you know in your house

00:09:54   Like you can you can try to rip your family into it

00:09:58   But even that has has limits of like how much they're willing to tolerate for you

00:10:02   Yeah, right

00:10:06   Just keep holding a kid. Yeah, so so yeah, that's that's of limited value generally

00:10:11   So, you know you see you got to figure out you know

00:10:13   Good enough hacks like even I who care so much about audio quality

00:10:17   Ended up just like having a microphone like on my podcast boom arm

00:10:23   pointing near me at too far of a distance and

00:10:27   It was oh wait. No. No, I forgot. I tried that didn't it wasn't as good you did the lab Mike thing

00:10:33   Yeah, what I have there is my is my really crappy yet not cheap

00:10:38   Rode wireless lavalier mic which is not a good idea. Those things are not very good for their price. See this is the problem

00:10:45   I need you to do a podcasting

00:10:47   microphone mega review but for lavalier mics because I've I've solicited recommendations more than once and

00:10:53   Nobody really seems to have experience in a surprisingly enough who knew with lavalier mics in a loud moving

00:11:00   Automobile now granted the the I would turn the AC either offer all the way or you know

00:11:05   Nearly off but nobody has really experienced one of these mics in this extremely

00:11:09   Boomy loud environment and I'm and I'm reluctant to spend like I'll spend

00:11:14   decent money on a mic if I have if I am

00:11:17   Fairly confident that it will fit the bill and I'm not the kind of person that likes to do the like

00:11:22   Oh try this return it. Oh try this return it dance. So I need someone like you Marco

00:11:27   Try all these out in your not in your electric car mind you I need it in your in your dyno juice mobile

00:11:35   in order to tell me which one is the one to buy so I can just buy that and be done with it because the

00:11:39   Audio the best audio I've found so far is by having a brand new GoPro within like six inches of my mouth

00:11:46   Which I'm sure is making everyone's skin crawl, but it actually is the best audio I found in car

00:11:50   Anyway outside the car. I have a crummy

00:11:52   Lavalier mic that works enough, but I feel like it clips over

00:11:57   Everything and so I just need to get a better

00:12:01   Lavalier mic I just don't know what to buy and there and I well if you're if you're

00:12:04   Clipping the problem isn't the mic

00:12:06   Well, but I'm not even talking loudly that well

00:12:09   but the problem is lower the problem is what's driving the mic or or what's receiving the mic signal like

00:12:14   you're clipping because something is exceeding a

00:12:17   limit on you know when it converts with the gain back to digital whenever like that's you're exceeding the

00:12:24   range of

00:12:26   What's receiving that signal?

00:12:27   so the way to fix clipping is to lower the input signal or to use an analog limiter and

00:12:32   I and actually if you use USB pre - that does have analog limiters

00:12:37   I believe only when the mic mode is being used so you might need to do some some wiring conversion to make that work, but

00:12:44   Anyway, that that is not a problem with the mic that is a problem with something, you know down the down the chain there

00:12:51   But generally though, you know your instinct to put a GoPro right next to your face

00:12:56   You know proximity is your friend when it comes to having good sound in a in a loud environment

00:13:01   Then you know trying to separate you from the background. There's no magic to it

00:13:05   It's just you know, see them signal noise ratio. Like you are the signal the background is the noise

00:13:10   So you need to be as loud as possible in that mic while being as well

00:13:15   The mic is as far away from the noise as possible. Like that's that's it

00:13:17   And so sometimes, you know when you're in a car, it's kind of hard to get away from noise

00:13:20   So just get really close to the mic adjust your you know gain on whatever this is going into so that it's not clipping

00:13:27   You're that that is that solves your problem right there

00:13:30   Yeah, and to go back a little bit, you know, one of you said it might've been John, you know

00:13:35   This takes a whole team of people to do actually Marco you said this as well

00:13:37   This reminds me of a video that Casey Neistat put out

00:13:41   I don't know like a month or two ago May 31st

00:13:43   Where he ended up rendez-vousing with MKBHD as MKBHD was was reviewing a Lamborghini and sure enough

00:13:51   There were like five people there helping him do this and that did make me feel both deeply miserable

00:13:58   Because I know I will never get to that point and also really really happy because it made me feel like okay

00:14:04   If it takes five people to come up with something that good then maybe one person can come up with something

00:14:11   That's passable, which is what you guys have been saying in the iBook video

00:14:14   They're also they they were using their iPhone to shoot the front of the thing because again

00:14:18   They didn't have time to have multi camera setups and it's just like well, whatever

00:14:20   We got the one thing on the tripod and then if we need a shot of the front of it

00:14:23   We'll keep awkwardly turning it towards the camera, but then eventually

00:14:27   Just use our iPhone or whatever and then the iPhone shots because they're shooting the opposite direction

00:14:31   You could see the camera on the tripod and you could also see like this bored person off to the right like now paying attention

00:14:37   To them making the video just like fiddling around on the computer with no interest in whatever they're doing

00:14:41   You know, it's just I don't think anyone cares like it's fine

00:14:47   They just want to see the computer like I mean, maybe I feel like that could have told I got a move

00:14:51   But it's not gonna reshoot it. Like it's just this is the one and done. That's just this is the thing

00:14:55   We're opening the box. We're excited about it and we're done and then I didn't look at the view count on the video

00:14:59   But I bet it's pretty hot. So don't worry about it 1.2 million. Yeah, so you're fine. You're just fine

00:15:04   What's the view count on the Jamiro video where he lost the driving foot? I don't remember which one it was

00:15:11   I know exactly what you're thinking of, but I don't remember what the video was. I'll look at a pan

00:15:15   I know I just I really needed a I needed a pep talk and I appreciate it because I feel like I

00:15:20   it's it's that typical thing where

00:15:24   my vision is

00:15:26   Is far beyond the means of my ability which is probably in the grand scheme of things a healthy thing

00:15:32   But when you're in the midst of it and when you have this ticking

00:15:35   Not time bomb but this ticking clock because this car is gonna go back as I record in

00:15:39   Basically a day, you know, I have all day tomorrow to record with it and that's basically it

00:15:44   and so I just there's this deadline that just won't go away and

00:15:49   And it's just stressing me out and the moral the story is I just got to keep doing it

00:15:55   I got to keep trying it

00:15:56   I got to keep just putting the pieces together with the utter crap that I've filmed and try to make something out of it

00:16:03   But golly it's tough and in and I feel like the only way I'm gonna get really a better at this is to do more and

00:16:10   More and more of it, but that's hard when I only have access to but so many cars especially for the duration of time

00:16:17   You know that I don't get a lot of access to a lot of cars for a whole week

00:16:20   You know what?

00:16:21   I mean, I could I could potentially get access to two cars for a few hours like DeMuro does but I am nowhere near that point

00:16:28   Right. He does what he has in a few hours. That should be he should be your inspiration

00:16:31   His video by the way has 900,000 views the one where he deleted all the driving footage

00:16:35   RCF Lexus so keep in mind also Casey like, you know, you're saying like

00:16:43   You know because this is the first video that you're doing after your go after you've got independent you've placed this this like

00:16:49   Additional standard or burden on it of like how good it has to be but it's still only your third one of these

00:16:55   so

00:16:58   Don't worry about that. You just became self-employed like that actually like you're self-employed as a podcaster

00:17:04   The video stuff is currently your hobby. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And so it doesn't need to be

00:17:10   amazing this time compared to how it was last time which was already pretty decent because it's still just your third one of these and

00:17:17   By the way, let me point out you do have access to lots of cars for more than a week

00:17:22   The ones that you own or have owned

00:17:24   Or you know cars you can borrow from your dad or whatever

00:17:27   So like, you know you have you have access to more cars than than you think

00:17:30   And and you might think it's not worth reviewing like, you know an old, you know

00:17:37   Before it went away like Aaron's old Mazda or your old BMW if that still exists

00:17:42   Totally should have got footage of Aaron's Mazda

00:17:45   I know

00:17:46   First of all, like I think it actually is kind of fun to have like modern reviews of old cars

00:17:51   Like I think that's kind of cool and I'm sure I'm not the only one

00:17:53   I mean people watch all sorts of total bullshit on YouTube

00:17:56   so they like they've got to watch stuff like that because actually, you know, pretty fun and also

00:18:00   Doing that will be practice for you to get better and more confident for when you get press cars

00:18:07   Or when you get limited time access to two cars. So like

00:18:10   You should be doing that now anyway

00:18:13   But again, just keep in mind that like all the burden you've placed on this

00:18:18   It's still only your third video give your you know

00:18:21   Cut yourself some slack and realize it's not gonna be perfect because it's your third one

00:18:25   Listen to the third episode of any podcast anybody has ever done like the very first time they started podcasting

00:18:31   It's not very good

00:18:33   It's and like, you know, everyone learns you get better, but it takes time. It takes practice and that's what you're doing

00:18:38   But you're you're at the very beginning stage of that really so cut yourself a break deal with what you got and you'll get better over time

00:18:45   Appreciate it. I mean, I'll get there and for the record I am not at all above

00:18:51   You know doing old car reviews. I am totally into that and had this been something I was really

00:19:00   Considering doing when we got rid of Aaron's car, which was I think almost to the day a year ago now

00:19:04   I I absolutely would have reviewed the crap out of that Mazda 6 which was probably the best car that our family will ever own

00:19:11   I mean that thing was bulletproof for 10 years and we put almost no money into it and it was a great car from the moment

00:19:16   We bought it till the moment we sold it

00:19:18   But

00:19:22   But no it was it was a great car and I miss it

00:19:25   I'm like my BMW was just been sitting rotting because I still haven't done anything with it

00:19:29   But I think I might know what I might be buying except maybe not and that's kind of the arc of this forthcoming video

00:19:33   Okay, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that after the video is out

00:19:37   This this video is both answering and answering all of my questions and raising all new ones

00:19:43   Which is the best and the worst but you know, it is what it is

00:19:46   Stephen Hart writes us to say that the patent office has a policy to reject any patent of a perpetual motion machine unless there is

00:19:54   A fully built working model. This was like a one-off comment that John made if I'm not mistaken

00:19:59   Apple's patent on their little keyboard condoms like you can patent stuff. It doesn't mean that it actually

00:20:04   Works the to do the thing that you say it's supposed to do so Apple patented this thing to keep crap out of your keyboard

00:20:10   Right, but does it keep crap out of your keyboard doesn't matter

00:20:13   You can get a patent on it anyway, and I was saying you can patent anything even perpetual motion machines

00:20:17   Which I'm sure I had in my mind for this specific reason because perpetual motion machine is such a

00:20:22   You know, it didn't say this in the Wikipedia article

00:20:24   But because it's such a popular thing and like in the history of humanity like everyone thinks they're always thinks

00:20:30   They're making a perpetual motion machine. I bet tons of people tried to patent perpetual motion machines

00:20:35   And it's probably just an annoyance

00:20:36   So the patent office in the US has a specific rule that says if you get something that basically is a perpetual motion machine

00:20:42   Just flat-out refuse like special case rule. We're annoyed with your stupid purple perpetual motion machines

00:20:48   Just know you have to show us a working you have to actually show us a working thing that actually

00:20:53   Works the way you say it does which is not true of other patents. And so this is the Wikipedia thing goes on

00:20:58   Even if a patent is granted this is what I was getting at does not it does not mean that the invention actually works

00:21:03   It just means the examiner believes that it works or was unable to figure out why it would not work another dumb thing about the patent

00:21:09   System patent examiners who are just these people are expected to make a determination to say do you believe this works or?

00:21:17   Can you not figure out why it wouldn't work?

00:21:19   Give a patent

00:21:22   I guess I'm the expert and everything

00:21:24   So what I was getting at is still holds despite my perpetual motion machine not being a valid one

00:21:30   Just because they've been so inundated and annoyed by that and the hundreds of years of the patent office

00:21:34   You can get a patent on all sorts of things does not mean it does what it but you say it does

00:21:39   My favorite thing too is like me for last last episode

00:21:43   We we had we had been written into by an air conditioning expert of like, you know

00:21:48   Like window air conditioner expert and this time somebody wrote in who claims to be a former patent examiner

00:21:54   Tell us this we actually we heard this information from a number of people

00:21:58   I forget whether it was Steven Hart here the same guy though. Same guy same air conditioning guy works in patent office. Oh, yeah

00:22:03   Are you being serious? I can't

00:22:07   It might be I mean, that's the magic of the magic of email

00:22:11   No, and you could make up anything an email to anybody. Yeah, we're so gullible. We write us anything

00:22:15   We'll just believe it and say it in a podcast put in the show

00:22:18   Please don't encourage them. All right moving on 2018 keyboards will not be used to repair the 2016 2017 MacBook Pros according to Joe

00:22:27   Russ single Ross Ross signal at Mac rumors

00:22:31   This is a quote

00:22:33   when asked if Apple stores and Apple authorized service providers will be permitted to replace the second gen keyboards in

00:22:38   2016 2017 MacBook Pro models with the new third gen keyboards if necessary Apple said no

00:22:43   The third generation keyboards are exclusive to the 2018 MacBook Pro then they quietly added under their breath. Please give us more money

00:22:49   No, that's not true

00:22:50   This actually kind of makes sense as we were learning more about these machines as people are getting them and taking them apart

00:22:55   That one of the major changes of these machines is that the battery size is pretty different the new ones have a bigger battery

00:23:02   There's been a few parts inside that have had to be

00:23:05   Redesigned or moved slightly to fit that bigger battery. Well, the battery is part of the top case

00:23:10   The keyboard is also part of the top case and in fact

00:23:12   There's some speculation at I fix it because the one they took apart

00:23:17   Weighs the exact same as last year's model, even though it has like a 10% bigger battery

00:23:22   So they speculate that they made up the weight difference by reducing some of the metal mass in the top case

00:23:28   So whatever the case may be it does seem like the top case is different enough with these 2018 models

00:23:34   that it probably is not a trivial job to fit one onto the previous generation MacBook Pros and

00:23:42   Since the keyboard is part of the top case. That's probably why they can't

00:23:47   Fit this this particular new keyboard in the top case it comes with on the old computers now

00:23:53   This isn't the only option they have they could

00:23:56   re-engineer the

00:23:58   2017 2016 top cases to have these

00:24:02   These silicone membrane things that protects the keys from dust they are choosing not to take that option and I'm not that surprised

00:24:08   You know when Apple does these kind of extended repair programs or when they have a flaw like this

00:24:14   their solution

00:24:16   Usually isn't we will fix it in a way that is permanently fixed for you

00:24:20   their solution usually is

00:24:22   We will repair it for free up to X years and then you just have to buy a new laptop if you won't don't want this

00:24:28   Problem anymore. That's what they did with the GPU failures before that repair program

00:24:32   That's what they did with with like the cracking plastic on the plastic MacBooks

00:24:35   And that's what they're gonna do on the on this too. Like, you know, if you have a 2016 2017

00:24:40   Your keyboard will probably never be fully a hundred percent immune to it the to these problems

00:24:46   We actually don't even know if the 2018's will be yet. It's a little early just to say

00:24:51   but but if the 2018

00:24:55   Rubber gasket thing or rubber membrane thing does fix the problem

00:25:00   that's not coming to the older ones and and that's I I understand why with the

00:25:06   Likely difference in top case but doesn't make it suck any less for the owners of those two generations of laptops

00:25:12   Yeah, that's why you don't want to end up, you know getting a you know

00:25:16   A quote-unquote bad model or whatever because like you're just even with the repair program

00:25:21   Which you have to wait patiently for to come into existence

00:25:23   Maybe you have to bring it back one or two more times and that's just annoying to have to bring it back and be without

00:25:27   your laptop and then you know, it's just

00:25:30   You feel like I wish I had a laptop that I just bought and then used for a while and it was fine

00:25:36   but now you're

00:25:38   you know that the likelihood of you having to bring it back in is exactly the same as the likelihood was from the time that

00:25:44   You bought it because they're putting the same exact part in it

00:25:47   We are sponsored this week by Northwestern University and their master's program in information systems

00:25:53   Visit SPS dot Northwestern dot edu slash is for more information

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00:26:01   Management expertise and professional network needed for a successful career in IT management

00:26:06   If so, the Northwestern University's master's program and information systems might be just what you're looking for

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00:26:56   Slash is thank you so much to Northwestern University and the master's program in information systems for sponsoring our show

00:27:03   There's been a

00:27:09   kerfuffle because apparently

00:27:11   Apparently we can't just have nice things and be excited about them instead

00:27:17   We all need to get grumpy about something and this week

00:27:20   We're all electing to get grumpy about the 2018 MacBook Pro with the i9 processor

00:27:25   So Dave Lee who I'm not personally familiar with but seems like he is no schmuck by any stretch of the imagination

00:27:31   has a YouTube channel where he reviewed or maybe not even reviewed but but made a video about the

00:27:39   core i9 MacBook Pro and the TLDR of this is that it apparently runs real hot and

00:27:47   because of that

00:27:49   it will

00:27:50   Throttle itself and not use the full potential of the i9 processor because it gets too hot too quickly

00:27:56   And what he was seeing was that it only runs for a few seconds

00:27:59   I don't remember exactly how many but not very long before it throttles itself and

00:28:03   Justifiably, he's pretty grumpy about that because the whole idea behind getting this maxed out MacBook Pro is

00:28:09   To be able to do the sorts of things that he does in this case video editing

00:28:14   Anywhere and as someone who is dabbling with video editing myself, I can sympathize with this

00:28:19   so he actually tested the i9 MacBook Pro the brand new one and

00:28:24   Just sitting there and then he literally put the thing in a freezer

00:28:29   Which you should not do know what you should not do but for lots of reasons

00:28:33   He put it in freezer and ran the same test

00:28:36   I believe he was like exporting a rendering or something in Final Cut Pro 10 or whatever the case maybe it doesn't really matter the specific

00:28:41   Specifics of the test but he tried it again and it turned out it was like 30 percent or something like that better when it

00:28:47   Was in the freezer thus implying that throttling was the problem now

00:28:52   I I have a couple of problems with this test in that of course any you know

00:28:57   Processors gonna run a lot quicker when it's cold just like you know a motor runs a lot

00:29:01   He's stopping it from throttling right first of all the time scales on his test was it was like a 30 minute thing

00:29:10   So just based on his video is like I'm gonna do I'm gonna max out all the cores

00:29:15   presumably for like 30 minutes

00:29:18   And then and that's why he was running it against like the old the previous generation that had two fewer cores and the one with

00:29:25   two fewer cores one

00:29:26   Presumably because the new one with six core was was throttling itself down to a lower clock speed and the other one was not throttling itself

00:29:33   As much and then when you put in the freezer the new one one handily over the old one, right?

00:29:38   So everyone is really really really perturbed about this. So I'm

00:29:44   I'm not sure what to think of this because I

00:29:47   Certainly wouldn't be happy if I spent a whole pile of money on this machine that that quickly therm

00:29:53   You know thermal throttles that's or you know throttles itself because of thermal issues

00:29:57   But to some degree I feel like

00:30:01   Some amount of this should be expected though

00:30:03   Perhaps not as much as we're seeing and I can't decide if I'm actually upset about this or not. So I don't know

00:30:09   You should go through the the reddit ones too because they have some again

00:30:12   This is just anecdotal testing but there's more numbers for more people. I think the red the red ones got got more specific

00:30:18   So that was a 30 minute test and it's like, alright

00:30:20   Well, the geekbench numbers all look good, but geekbench doesn't take 30 minutes to run

00:30:24   So at what point does the throttling kick in does it just kick in if you max all six scores with you know?

00:30:30   For a half an hour or does it kick in after 30 seconds?

00:30:32   So this is one person did a test where it was throttling down to 800 megahertz, which is bad

00:30:37   After less than five minutes, he's running this prime number benchmark

00:30:41   I was trolled down to 2.5 gigahertz after less than one minute with maximum fan speed on so this is this goes to something Marco mentioned

00:30:48   earlier today on Twitter that a possible fixes Apple to tweak the

00:30:51   Fan controlled sail just blow the fans faster

00:30:55   so this was a test in which they artificially made the fans blow at max speed the entire time just crank them to max and

00:31:01   Did a test and it still throttled down to 2.5 gigahertz after less than a minute on this prime thing

00:31:05   And it was throwing down to point 5 gigahertz with automatic fan on you know

00:31:11   The fan doing what it wants to do as well

00:31:12   So the 800 megahertz thing after five minutes is bad

00:31:15   But anytime you look like a prime number generator or some other kind of like hotspot producing thing. It's probably

00:31:20   Not representative of real loads, but I think the final cut export probably is representative of real loads. So

00:31:29   This is just two data points here two people Dave Lee on YouTube and aea on reddit

00:31:34   And there's a bunch of other people in the thread giving their experience as well

00:31:37   but it certainly looks like

00:31:40   this laptop is

00:31:43   doesn't quite have enough cooling to realize the full performance of all six cores under

00:31:50   On harsh conditions admittedly, but I think potentially realistic conditions

00:31:56   Yeah, I mean this if it was just Dave Lee's video then I would have assumed he got a bad one

00:32:01   But the fact that a lot of other people are now chiming in with similar reports

00:32:06   It does sound like this is not just a fluke with like his laptop

00:32:09   It seems like this is just this model of laptop with this processor. I would like to know has anybody posted whether the

00:32:16   Base 15 inch CPU has this kind of throttling. Yeah, I don't know

00:32:21   I mean, I have to imagine it's related to the cores as

00:32:25   Discussing us on Twitter a lot as many people find out thinking of Marco as well like

00:32:28   That this is not a process shrink like this six core is made on the same process as the previous four core, right?

00:32:35   so you're not getting well we could fit more cores in because everything is smaller and

00:32:39   That's how we can you know, get it into the same thermal envelope

00:32:42   Like I have to imagine I don't know what the actual numbers but I have to imagine the six core processor

00:32:47   Puts out more heat than then the four core does because it's it's made on the same process

00:32:53   You can't get blood from a stone, right? So and I don't think they removed a whole bunch of cash and made the GPU smaller to wedge in the other cores or anything like that or even if they did it's obviously not making up for it and the cooling capacity is determined mostly by

00:33:05   You know

00:33:06   How fast can the fans move air and how many heat pipes can you snake from the little contact patch and you mean?

00:33:12   this is this is what was getting at last show about the

00:33:14   The inherent design trade-offs like what trade-offs are made for the 15 inch. There's a certain envelope of size weight

00:33:21   Power, you know all that little stuff

00:33:23   the trade-offs made for this chassis

00:33:26   May not have been made with the expectation that they're going to have to cool

00:33:30   What is it now a 14 nanometer six core processor?

00:33:34   They made the expectation may have been that surely by

00:33:36   2018 there'll be 10 nanometers explore processors and that'll fit it in this chassis

00:33:41   No problem

00:33:42   And so let's design everything around that but Intel as we have later in the topics that we ever get to it Intel has

00:33:47   Been very late on its smaller process size. And so we have many many generations

00:33:51   talk talk talk talk as Marco said last show of these 14 nanometer processors and it's entirely conceivable that just

00:33:58   It can handle the heat most of the time

00:34:02   But if you really max out all six cores and maybe the GPU as well that even at maximum fan speed in a fairly hot room

00:34:09   It's gonna throttle like that's my laptop suck everybody. Let's get a Mac Pro and be happy

00:34:16   Yeah, and to understand this problem it helps to I'll go over briefly some of the factors here

00:34:22   CPUs are you know modern CPUs they're rated by their TDP

00:34:26   Which I believe stands for thermal design power and this is basically like the maximum amount of heat expressed in watts

00:34:32   that the processor is is allowed to emit under load and

00:34:39   What if it's if it's hitting the TDP limit it will usually clock itself down now

00:34:44   they realized as an optimization like you can use something you can use dynamic clock speeds to

00:34:49   Be able to like boost one core super high for a little while as long as it doesn't hit thermal limits

00:34:56   If the other cores aren't doing that much and if all the cores are super busy like they are and like

00:35:01   You know multi core exports from Final Cut multi core benchmarks things like that

00:35:05   Then you can't go quite as high

00:35:07   You can still usually boost the speed a little bit until it gets too hot and then you got to slow it back down

00:35:12   And that's what turbo boost does turbo boost is what manages that it's what offers these like higher speeds sometimes

00:35:18   but not all the time higher speed of a certain workloads like single threaded ones, but not all workloads, but

00:35:23   With all that what is expected for from every processor every processor advertises its base clock speed

00:35:31   This is the speed like in this one

00:35:32   I believe it's 2.9 gigahertz right the the speed that is advertised on the box

00:35:36   And then usually it'll say you know it can turbo boost up to whatever it usually it's like another

00:35:42   500 megahertz or 800 megahertz above that does this one go to 4.5

00:35:46   I thought I saw a turbo boost number of 4.5 or something crazy like I think it's 4.8. It's it's ridiculous. It's very very high

00:35:52   but anyway

00:35:54   So with a properly engineered computer and a properly engineered processor and a properly working cooling system the base clock

00:36:02   Should be sustainable no matter what even if it's a hot day

00:36:07   Even if you're maxing out all the cores for eight hours the base clock should be fixed

00:36:13   It shouldn't you the processor should never have to dip below the base clock if it ever did for the base clock something is wrong

00:36:19   With that design or that hardware simple as that so there was also an article posted today about the 13-inch on

00:36:26   notebook check.net

00:36:28   it's testing the 13 inch base model so the I believe the i5 13 inch base model and

00:36:34   They're claiming throttling on this, but if you look at the Intel power gadget graph

00:36:37   Intel power gadget is this little app that you can run from Intel that shows you

00:36:42   the frequency and wattage and temperature of your processor in a little graph as

00:36:46   As you run benchmarks to do things so you can see whether throttling or not you can see how much wattage

00:36:51   It's drawing you can see how hot it's getting but what they're showing with Intel power gadget the 13 inch is

00:36:56   Maintaining at or above its base clock speed it did below it for like a second

00:37:02   But that's it like the whole rest of their benchmark it it is hovering above you can see like there's like a gray line

00:37:07   That shows where it is like it's hovering above that so the 13 inch doesn't appear to have this problem in this base model configuration

00:37:14   Unfortunately we don't have more tests yet of the higher

00:37:17   configuration of the 13 or the lower config of the 15

00:37:19   So it's kind of hard to know if this is a problem with all these or some of these or none of these

00:37:23   hopefully by next week we'll have more information, but

00:37:28   When properly working these processors should be able to maintain at least their base clock no matter what and then as

00:37:36   thermals allow be able to go between the base clock and the turbo boost max speed as they kind of

00:37:42   Sit at or near that thermal ceiling during load and the problem with this 15 inch is that?

00:37:48   It can't even sustain its base clock like the 15 inch i9 according to these reports from these

00:37:54   multiple people now is that it can't even sustain the base clock after a very short time and

00:38:00   That means something is really wrong that like that is not normal that is a major problem

00:38:06   Well wasn't that true also of the previous 15 when you plugged in an external monitor its base clock went down, right?

00:38:13   So it's not as if this is unprecedented, but but it wouldn't yeah, so I I run into that problem last summer

00:38:17   Where yeah, but this was not talked about that much, but I believe the base clock was like

00:38:24   2.4 or something and it would base it would clock itself down to 2.0 something like that

00:38:28   What yeah when when an external monitor was was connected it would just like the base clock would just get reduced

00:38:35   Automatically and it and I heard from a couple people on Twitter about it

00:38:40   I checked mine. It did it too, and I had the maxed out 15 X from last year from from 2017 and

00:38:45   It did it and it sucked and you know it

00:38:49   I wouldn't have probably noticed if I didn't if people didn't point it out to me, so sorry for everybody who I just ruined your CPU

00:38:55   People don't expect that those people expect when I'm plugged into power like at my desk

00:39:01   That's when I'll get the maximum power out of my laptop because hey everything's plugged in you don't have to worry about draining your battery

00:39:06   Everything should be fine, but it's not true because heat is your other enemy

00:39:10   It doesn't matter that you're plugged in actually you're getting worse performance than if you weren't connected to your big monitor

00:39:14   yeah, and that's that to me like

00:39:17   Laptops in in some ways they make better desktops than ever you know in set like connectivity is better than ever

00:39:24   External bandwidth external monitor support better than ever

00:39:27   But it seems like the thermal situation just getting worse over time like the where they're even more annoying

00:39:32   Thermally because they keep getting thinner and thinner and thinner and smaller and smaller, but the the processor

00:39:37   Like the the max TDP and these processors is not going down

00:39:41   There is one difference that I noticed looking through the Intel spec sheets between the two years

00:39:46   The 15 inch CPUs they they have a TDP of 45 watts, and that's that's unchanged between the years

00:39:51   But there's something on Intel spec sheets called configurable TDP down, and they explain this as basically

00:39:57   laptop manufacturers are able to

00:40:00   Set the processor to actually have a lower TDP than 45 watts if they want to and last year CPU could be set as low

00:40:07   As 35 watts the 2018 doesn't have that option. It doesn't list configurable TDP down is available anymore

00:40:13   So maybe Apple was configuring it down last year this year

00:40:18   They can't because until doesn't offer anymore

00:40:20   so they just let it fly and you know are seeing what happens which is not a good thing if that's what's going on here and

00:40:26   This probably won't affect the 13 inch because you know a 13 inch CPU is a 28 watt TDP

00:40:32   Same for last year in this year

00:40:35   They both have configurable TDP down and this year the TDP down is actually lower last year was 23 watts this year

00:40:42   It's 20 watts so

00:40:44   This is probably not affecting the 13, but again. We don't have enough data to tell yet

00:40:48   So are we getting angry about this well?

00:40:51   I mean

00:40:51   It's like like I said last year's did the same thing that you could decide to be angry about or not well

00:40:57   I'm - there's a huge difference in degree though

00:40:59   Yeah

00:41:00   But it depends it depends on what you're doing though not going from like 2.4 to 2.0

00:41:03   Or whatever it was is very different than going from 2.9 to 800 megahertz

00:41:07   But yeah, but the 800 megahertz one like it's really mostly going from 2.9 to 2.5 with with the the base thing on this

00:41:14   It depends on what they're doing like this is a prime 95 benchmark like I don't know of what anyone is ever going to do

00:41:19   Is gonna get you down to 800 megahertz?

00:41:21   But I think as low as the thing could possibly go that sounds like a situation

00:41:23   Where you're really maxing everything out, and maybe it's also hot and maybe you also have a bad

00:41:29   You know thermal solution in your thing, but the thing is with all laptops

00:41:32   they're actually great if you remember the original MacBook Air it had these thermal problems as well and

00:41:37   And 800 megahertz was as low as it could go that was back when I believe it was still called speed step the frequency adjusting

00:41:43   Technology back there. Yeah, the max was 1.2 or something so it was one point

00:41:47   I think it was 1.6, but it was going down to 800 megahertz yeah, so anyway like laptops are always

00:41:53   potentially thermally compromised they all come with the ability to slow themselves down when they get hot and

00:41:58   to some degree

00:42:01   When you sell a laptop you can't control exactly how hot it's going to get people use them on their laps on top of a

00:42:07   puffy comforter on top of a pillow and it blocks all the vents and the things get super hot and basically the machines have to

00:42:11   Protect themselves right if people don't know or don't care about that then their computer is running at half speed and tough luck right?

00:42:17   But in reasonable conditions on top of a desk at like a room temperature room

00:42:21   You know like Margo said they should be able to

00:42:24   Maybe not max out everything because I think it's a high demand to say max out everything on the GPU and all the cores and every

00:42:32   Special unit like I feel like if you do some sort of

00:42:34   There's a name for this kind of test would like to try to melt my CPU type tests where everything is super hot I?

00:42:39   You probably just you're gonna throttle

00:42:42   But just using all the cores like you're gonna in a laptop

00:42:47   You know and a laptop of the size and shape of Apple's ones just using all the cores

00:42:50   It should be able to sustain that because it can with four cores as you noted in that little graph showing the four core things

00:42:55   Staying above its base frequency and ping-ponging back and forth, but never going below base

00:42:59   That's possible with six why buy a six core machine if

00:43:04   That's why I was literally slower than the four car ones because it was throttling lower the the four car one could maintain its base

00:43:10   And this one was going well below its base and taking longer, so why are you paying for six cores like oh?

00:43:16   I have a lot of multi-threaded work. Well is it actually gonna complete your multi-threaded work faster

00:43:19   Do you keep the thermostat at like you know 52 degrees then maybe it'll do it, but so this seems like not a great situation

00:43:27   But it really depends on what you're doing are you

00:43:31   You're using all six cores in bursts of 25 seconds

00:43:35   Then you're probably fine, and it probably will never throttle right are you running three hour render jobs?

00:43:41   Maybe consider different solution because it seems like unless you work in a freezer

00:43:44   Which again you shouldn't do?

00:43:47   It's it might run slower than the four core um what does what does Apple's like?

00:43:52   Return thing like if you just don't like it for any reason. It's like 14 days. Yeah 14

00:43:56   Yeah, so this would be good if anyone's buying one of these like again

00:44:00   It's like laptops are not the ideal Pro machines in many situations for a variety of reasons and also why?

00:44:06   Apple's particular trade-offs especially for the 15-inch are perhaps not ideal because they could have made a much thicker computer with better cooling and yada yada

00:44:14   And Intel's behind there's lots of reasons

00:44:16   But anyway bottom line is if you're wondering should I buy one of the machines or not?

00:44:20   Well is are all six cores going to be useful to me buy one try your typical workload

00:44:26   See how long it takes and if it's slower than a four core return it and get a four core

00:44:32   I would also I mean I disagree with you a little bit in the sense that I

00:44:36   Don't think we should just blindly accept

00:44:39   These limitations of like well it advertises these high specs, and you're paying for these high specs in fact

00:44:47   You're paying quite a lot for these high specs, and you're buying it expecting these high specs

00:44:51   And then oh you actually can't use you you're not gonna get this performance if you actually try to use it all at once like

00:44:57   that to me

00:44:59   Maybe at best is acceptable in a consumer line

00:45:03   But when when you're talking about the highest end models for that are specifically advertised at doing sustained pro kind of work

00:45:11   I don't think we should settle for

00:45:13   The resources that you buy and that are advertised and then and the performance is advertised

00:45:18   Not actually being available all the time like turbo boost as I mentioned like turbo boost is is optional

00:45:24   And I understand that like that may make sense that like maybe under certain

00:45:28   Situations you can't use the turbo boost speed because that's what turbo boost is if you could always use the speed

00:45:35   They would just raise the base clock so

00:45:37   but you know so

00:45:38   Understood like turbo boost is is an optional bonus when you can get it

00:45:42   But if you can't maintain the base clock that to me. It's basically it's false advertising

00:45:48   It's like you design this machine you sold me this machine that says it can do xyz

00:45:53   But it can't actually do x and y and z at the same time like that or you know

00:46:00   It can't do x and y at full speed if I plug it into a monitor like that which is a configuration specifically advertise and promote

00:46:06   So like that to me is not good enough for a pro machine again at best

00:46:11   If it's acceptable anywhere, which is a big if it should be acceptable only in

00:46:17   consumer and low-end machines

00:46:19   Not in something advertised marketed and priced as a pro machine desktop or laptop

00:46:25   My exception was only if you're using literally all the hardware so not just all six cores

00:46:30   but also the h.264 decoder and also every single execution unit on the GPU at the same time and the reason I say that is because

00:46:37   There's not enough cooling in

00:46:40   certainly an Apple laptop size case

00:46:43   to be able to sustain a powerful GPU and all the cores and all the ancillary execution units and

00:46:50   Massive IO and like just light up everything like have you ever seen those things where they try to say, you know

00:46:54   Can you use can you keep all the pipelines fed?

00:46:56   Can you do run all the SIMD units all the intergenerates all the floating-point units all the GPU execution cores?

00:47:03   Like can you actually run and you know everything it wants to see like basically can you melt this thing?

00:47:08   Can you a completely artificial no real-world type scenario custom-designed heat?

00:47:14   Generating thing on all components because it's not representative of most real workloads probably any real

00:47:20   It's more of a torture test to make sure to test your cooling solution, right?

00:47:24   And I think there is no laptop available with a powerful discrete GPU and a six core

00:47:29   CPU that has sufficient cooling that isn't like the size of you know a

00:47:34   Giant brick because it's just too much power output right that these machines are designed

00:47:38   Like they're over provision, right?

00:47:41   But they there's no way that they can cool all that stuff in that case with those fans

00:47:45   So they're relying on the fact that you're never going to be running all of it at once and that's the only place I'm giving

00:47:51   The exception if you light up everything I could say even on a pro machine and it with this size and weight trade-off

00:47:57   It's just not gonna happen. But if you're just using the CPU and not really isn't GPU. Yes

00:48:01   It should be able to sustain that and if you plug in a monitor and it auto throttles down from 2.4 to 2

00:48:06   That's bogus - right. The only exception I was allowing for is that like

00:48:10   There there is a certain point of a trap

00:48:12   Like I said using it on your lap and a pillow or something like that like or in just a very hot room

00:48:16   You don't have air conditioning this room that I'm in right now. It's probably 85, right this

00:48:20   You can't control the entire environment

00:48:23   So if you're in an 85 degree room and you think thermal throttles and you're super angry about it

00:48:26   Try it in a 68 degree room and it doesn't thermal throttle

00:48:29   Are you okay with it then like the bottom line is the laptops are a compromise and

00:48:33   Part of the way they get to this compromise. We talked about with battery life - is there over provision on battery life?

00:48:39   They assume you're not going to be doing

00:48:41   Big expensive stuff with CPU and GPU all the time

00:48:44   The battery life is like most of the time you just be tooling around and cores are blipping here and there right and you get the

00:48:49   Advertised battery life, but if you do any serious work for a certain period of time you don't that's how they get

00:48:54   That's that that's how laptops are made these days

00:48:56   That's what the trade-offs are which again argues for if you really want to have a laptop and you really need to do all that stuff

00:49:01   Apple needs to make different trade-offs for a laptop for you or you just get a desktop, but I

00:49:07   Maybe I guess maybe that's just repeating what you said in terms of like the the pro thing or whatever

00:49:12   But Apple's version of pro is super thin and light

00:49:14   And you just can't have super thin light with that CPU with that GPU without

00:49:19   throttling in some scenario

00:49:23   I think the and again I'm saying if you light up everything

00:49:26   Just that six cores like a Final Cut Pro export that uses all six course or an Xcode compile or something

00:49:32   that needs to be run at base clock speed and I

00:49:35   Wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of related class-action lawsuit about this eventually because this seems

00:49:42   More more class-action lawsuit friendly than the next term monitor thing

00:49:47   But we have to see more data because if you can get them to go in less than five minutes if you can get them

00:49:51   To go down to 800 megahertz. That's class-action lawsuit territory. But then again, maybe it's just this one guy

00:49:56   I got a dud so we'll have to wait and see I

00:49:58   Wouldn't expect a lawsuit honestly because like you can get lost

00:50:02   It's over like iPhone batteries because everyone buys iPhones that and it's so much more like

00:50:07   You know headline grabbing to to do a lawsuit about that

00:50:10   You can get the lawsuit about the broken keyboards only just barely started because they affect it affected

00:50:17   All of the laptops this is looks like it this looks like it's probably only gonna be affecting the highest end

00:50:23   Configuration of their highest end laptop that's brand new right now. So I'm guessing

00:50:28   Either it will never have a lawsuit or it will be like three years from now, but that's very unlikely for this

00:50:33   You know, I think I see your point about like tests. They're designed to max out everything and to heat things up

00:50:40   Although I don't necessarily I don't think I necessarily agree that that's that those should be permitted to fail

00:50:46   But when you look at like, you know, these tests are not throttling only under prime 95

00:50:51   These are throttling under Final Cut Pro as you mentioned so like that is not only a legitimate workload

00:50:56   But it's literally one of the workloads they promote this machine and market this machine to do right

00:51:01   So like the fact that this machine can't handle its

00:51:04   Flagship marketing workload without having thermal issues is a pretty serious problem

00:51:10   Now whether it affects you as a customer of these I don't you know, it's up to you

00:51:15   But this is a problem that needs to be addressed

00:51:18   Like it's not this isn't just gonna we can't just hand move this away and say well, this is an inherent problem with laptops

00:51:24   They all do this. You're holding it wrong. Like that's not gonna be the solution here

00:51:28   the solution here is gonna be like this configuration this machine at least has a serious design problem and

00:51:34   Whether they address it with faster fans, which by the way, congratulations and your machine just got louder. Is that really better?

00:51:42   Faster fans don't seem to help like that's what they were maxing the fans, you know

00:51:46   Artificially making the fans run at max the whole time just to see does that solve the problem? The answer is no

00:51:50   Well, it helped the problem. It didn't didn't make the problem go away help but didn't but didn't solve right? I mean so it

00:51:55   Nerds tend to be annoyed by like number on box not equal number in real life

00:52:00   But the real the real test is is it faster than the four core?

00:52:05   Because if it's not faster than the four core, then what is the point of this machine again for your workload?

00:52:09   So like that that's all that really matters if it was faster than the four core but not but it still didn't match the numbers

00:52:15   In the box people would be angry because like oh it's supposed to do what it says in the box and you could probably sue

00:52:18   them over and everything right but

00:52:20   Practically speaking ignore all the nerd stuff if the six core doesn't do your work thing faster than the four core

00:52:27   Why would anyone ever buy the six core?

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00:53:58   Moving away from the thermal thing for at least a moment now that we have all the benchmarks of all the different CPU configurations. I

00:54:04   Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed by how much faster the six core isn't than the four core in the 13 inch

00:54:11   Like it is faster and it's not you know, it's faster by like a decent amount

00:54:15   but it's not it isn't as much faster as I would have expected before I saw, you know, all the all the

00:54:22   actual benchmarks of these different options like to me

00:54:26   The 13 inch in this generation looks like the one to get if you don't need a GPU

00:54:30   Like or this or the screen space of the 15 like because it's the 13 inch

00:54:34   Again, we still are missing most good like long-term benchmarks. I still have no clue on battery life of either of these machines

00:54:41   But like they both got the bigger battery

00:54:45   But only the 15 got the DDR for RAM to eat some of that power

00:54:50   So the bigger battery presumably is also to address, you know

00:54:53   The fact that these CPUs have more cores than they probably should at their process size

00:54:56   But you know, it's still the same TDP. So, you know that might not matter. So basically

00:55:01   Battery life is still a big question mark

00:55:04   But it sure looks like the 13 is the one to get if your needs can be solved by it

00:55:09   Yeah, but sometimes people want 15 inches

00:55:11   I wonder if there'll be a market for people to manually disable two cores on their 15 inch to get

00:55:18   One thing I thought it to like so I for on my 2015 actually I wrote a blog post with us forever ago

00:55:23   There's a utility

00:55:25   Called turbo boost switcher Pro that it actually quotes my blog post on its product page, I guess but I ran tests and and basically

00:55:33   disabling turbo boost with with a utility on my

00:55:37   2015 MacBook Pro and to see like what kind of effect does it have on performance and battery life? It's actually it's a it's a pretty

00:55:43   interesting and useful test

00:55:45   And and the utility is such that if you get the pro version it can automatically switch for you so you can do things like

00:55:51   run

00:55:53   without turbo boost whenever you're on battery and then when you're plugged in enable it again and the difference is is

00:55:59   pretty striking

00:56:01   You do lose noticeable performance like in in deep bench. I lost something like

00:56:06   20 or 30 percent of my performance

00:56:09   but I also gained like 20 or 30 percent more battery life and the laptop became

00:56:15   Way cooler under load like it's a pretty big difference because not having turbo boost

00:56:21   Makes it when it's properly engineered in its thermal system makes it stay way below the TDP even under load

00:56:28   So it's actually a really nice option to have if you're trying to max things out

00:56:33   Or if you don't always need the massive amount of power you bought but you want to be able to turn it on selectively

00:56:37   The at the time when I when I had the 2016 and 2017

00:56:42   This utility I don't think worked with them and I'm curious to revisit that and see like if it works with them now if it

00:56:47   works with the new ones because

00:56:49   Being able to manage that could be really useful also

00:56:52   You know it's it's long since overdue for Apple to add low power mode to the net to a new version of Mac OS and

00:57:00   An easy way to implement that in addition to you know like things like background service stuff and time machine slowing down and everything else

00:57:08   easy win number one is like on the 15 inch force the integrated GPU to be used as much as possible and

00:57:14   Turn off turbo boost like that if you're gonna do a low power mode like it actually is pretty compelling to have that option

00:57:21   I wish it was available to users on all the machines in some way even even if it's just exposed to some API and apps

00:57:27   Have to do it like it is it is kind of nice running without turbo boost sometimes

00:57:31   Anyway, the other thing I'm were a little worried about with these with the thermal situation here

00:57:37   Is these machines are brand new?

00:57:40   now over time the thermal paste is gonna start cracking and become less effective the

00:57:47   Fans and and vents and heatsinks are gonna fill with dust

00:57:51   Things are gonna start getting a little bit out of whack little bit of alignment over time the cooling system of most computers

00:57:57   Especially laptops becomes less efficient

00:57:59   So what's gonna happen if these are barely holding on today when they're brand new what's gonna happen when they're like two years old

00:58:07   and

00:58:08   You know normally you'd expect like at that point you start maybe here in the fan a little bit more on your laptop

00:58:12   And you know maybe it runs a little bit hotter, and you don't really know why this

00:58:16   There's no headroom here for that and that I think worries me also long term for these machines

00:58:21   Thank you ever also you mentioned it a few times is the the extra power for the RAM and the bigger battery extra power means

00:58:28   More heat from the RAM right there's a lot

00:58:30   You've got two more cores

00:58:33   You've got a you know a big GPU and that extra power going to that RAM and also possibly the four terabyte SSD if you get

00:58:40   That option that's more heat in a case that really has basically the same cooling solution as before those two little fans and the heat

00:58:47   Pipes there's not really a lot of wiggle room for what you can do in there

00:58:51   If only they could make a case which was a little bit thicker or maybe had

00:58:55   I don't know more cooling don't have a millimeter to spare wouldn't that be amazing

00:59:01   Like so next the next round of laptops the next generation in addition to potentially having more ports, and you know

00:59:07   Bring back magsafe all of our wonderful dreams of what they could potentially do to make everybody happy right anyway fantasies whatever

00:59:14   But one thing they can actually definitely do and they totally should is have an option at the top end for a thicker laptop

00:59:20   Thicker lot not that much thicker. It'll be thicker. It will be heavier

00:59:24   You don't want it if you want lightweight and thin but make one make one thick heavy and powerful option right because

00:59:30   If that laptop you could put a cooling solution

00:59:33   Maybe that wouldn't throttle with a six core right and it would automatically be faster than this one even with the exact same hardware in

00:59:39   It you can put bigger batteries in and get more battery life

00:59:41   You'd have room on the side for a 10 gig ethernet adapter or whatever you know like

00:59:45   That's a product that they don't make anymore the 17 inch used to fill that role had a PC card slot crying out loud

00:59:51   But it's gone. It doesn't have to be a 17 inch laptop, but it could people buy 17 inch laptops

00:59:58   It's a small market, but it's there right so that

01:00:00   That's a you know and I don't I didn't expect them to come with that now, but for the next generation

01:00:04   It's something they should definitely consider. They've kind of done that on the phones

01:00:08   Accidentally like by making all the screens so much bigger

01:00:12   And it's like wow we have so much more room for battery now and an OLED screen takes less power and voila the iPhone

01:00:17   10 has pretty good battery life like they backed into it somehow

01:00:20   Maybe they we need to find some sort of similar trend for them to follow in the laptop market to somehow make a thicker laptop

01:00:27   Alright, we'll see how this all plays out, but I don't know it's disappointing

01:00:32   It's disappointing that you know after all this time of not really get why I guess wasn't that long

01:00:39   But it feels like it's been a long time without updates that you know we're finally given this this

01:00:45   Golden apple to consume this this wonderful golden egg to use and it's still got problems

01:00:52   It's still not as gold as we thought it's gold-plated perhaps

01:00:55   But it's Rose gold not it. Yeah, it's rose gold

01:00:58   honestly like this

01:01:01   What they're doing with the laptops now. I don't love this generation, which I've made very clear

01:01:06   But they have updated it every year. They have you they have not skipped a generation of CPU. That's available

01:01:14   They are updating these machines on

01:01:16   The schedule that we want them to be updating the machines on they've and and the schedule they used to always update their machines on

01:01:24   Like we've been saying we've been complaining for years that lines were getting neglected

01:01:29   Entire CPU generations were being skipped and with the laptops. They're hitting the wall now. They are hitting every generation

01:01:37   They have updates they had they released this dumb generation in 2016. They made another one

01:01:41   That's exactly as dumb in

01:01:43   2017 and the here's one that's a little bit less dumb in some ways and more dumb others in 2018 like they're doing exactly what?

01:01:49   We wanted them to do in the sense that they are updating these laptops every year. That's great

01:01:54   the only problem is that they're continuing to use a

01:01:57   Series of hardware generation like in its physical design and other choices that has a lot of problems and a lot of downsides

01:02:05   I was hoping that

01:02:07   This year's revision would be the one where they changed the body design again

01:02:12   Even though that would be premature relative to their previous, you know durations of how long they they use these things

01:02:17   I was hoping they would move one up if they could you know for you know

01:02:23   For all the complaints with the current one and instead they address the complaints in different ways and that's fine

01:02:28   But I really hope the next generation that actually changes the body style

01:02:32   Really takes into account

01:02:35   customer feedback from this generation

01:02:37   Because you know, there's there's this romantic idea

01:02:40   that

01:02:42   Apple just dictates what it knows we actually want and never actually take customer feedback and doesn't really care what we think because they know best

01:02:49   And I think some people at Apple actually do work that way

01:02:53   but I think that's mostly in the past it seems like the

01:02:57   Last couple of years like since the Mac Pro roundtable and and the pro workflows group and and the iMac Pro and things like that

01:03:05   I think they they seem to have a different mindset now a much more healthy mindset of oh crap

01:03:11   we were like in space and designing things with immense hubris and

01:03:17   That that were getting increasingly distant from what our customers actually wanted and needed

01:03:22   and

01:03:24   It seems like they have course-corrected

01:03:27   But when you course-correct it takes a while for like the new products and new changes and stuff to actually get out into the world

01:03:34   You know if they if they just you know, they decided to make a new Mac Pro

01:03:37   Well like a year and a half ago now and it's probably not gonna be out for another year

01:03:42   You know and that's that's a pretty big thing

01:03:44   They you know

01:03:47   It took them probably like two or three years for the iMac Pro to come out it they were probably

01:03:51   Developing this horrible generation of laptops for two or three years before it came out in 2016

01:03:55   I think this course correction has happened

01:03:58   I think we have enough evidence to suggest as we mentioned, you know

01:04:01   As I mentioned on Twitter as John mentioned a couple weeks ago, like the Mac Renaissance

01:04:05   It does seem to be happening. It does seem like they have turned the ship. They are on the right track

01:04:10   We think it sure does look that way

01:04:12   but we haven't seen the result of that in the laptop line yet and

01:04:17   So it kind of remains a big mystery as a whether they have Christ of course in the laptops or not

01:04:22   I I was hoping to see it this year. We didn't I sure hope we see it next year

01:04:26   by the way related to getting getting what you what's printed on the box or whatever and

01:04:32   consumer expectations I think someone in earlier in the chat had mentioned that you know

01:04:36   It's just not how the world works if I buy a car with 300 horsepower. It always has 300 horsepower

01:04:40   I have some bad news to you every year about how cars work

01:04:44   Although I have some good news sometimes after you use a car for a while. It has more horsepower than when you bought it

01:04:49   So but anyway, no one dinos their cars and then certainly they're not measuring the horsepower at the wheels

01:04:53   And there's all sorts of other things you don't want to know about

01:04:55   So just continue to think that your car gets exactly through entered horsepower as advertised that they drive it off the lot

01:05:01   You'll be fine at every speed

01:05:03   It's also unsafe at every speed am I right anyway

01:05:07   Let's talk about something that's really gonna cheer us up since we've been a little sad lately

01:05:13   John what's going on with your photo books these days?

01:05:16   Yeah, I found out about this on Twitter

01:05:18   I think which is part of the reason I wanted to put in the show is a public service announcement to other people

01:05:25   Apple if you didn't know has a thing in their photos application where you can take your photos and you can order a

01:05:31   Book like a bound like hardcover book with your photos printed inside them, which is a nice thing to do

01:05:37   They're kind of expensive but they make nice gifts and they're a good way to

01:05:41   They're a good nice alternative to making prints and then putting the prints in it for a while. You just make an actual book

01:05:45   It's really neat

01:05:47   They're ending that service

01:05:49   and the way you would find out about this in the way that the person on Twitter found out about it is they went to

01:05:54   Order a book and it photos pops up a dialogue and says hey just so you know

01:05:58   We're not gonna do this anymore. And after September 1st, we're not going to take any more orders for books

01:06:04   so if you didn't I wouldn't have found out unless I had gone to make a book right and normally I make a book like

01:06:08   once a year after I come back from my you know, Long Island vacation and I have photos and I make a book that's when I

01:06:14   Would have seen that dialogue and that would have been very close to September 1st

01:06:17   So I'm glad I saw this on Twitter. Thank you to whoever put it up there

01:06:22   I'm sad that they're ending this program

01:06:25   because I have I've been printing books for my beach vacations and I've been going back in time for past years and printing a book like

01:06:32   I started from 2017 then I went backward to 2016 15 14 working my way back with your time

01:06:37   I made a book for my parents for a Christmas gift. I did a book of our Disney vacation

01:06:42   I did all sorts of stuff like that. But but you know, it's kind of like whenever you get around to it

01:06:46   It's kind of a time-consuming thing and whatever now that I know that they're canceling them. I'm making books like crazy

01:06:51   I was I think I've ordered like seven books and I'm not done

01:06:57   I'm still going like because I got I have to race back to you know

01:06:59   - I have to do all the years we went on beach vacations and all the major vacations and just I gotta get and

01:07:06   Maybe asking why why bother by it?

01:07:08   Just get your book from another place Apple's not the only company that makes photo books tons of places make photo books

01:07:13   photos has even has a thing where it's like a third-party plug-in system a terrible terrible third-party plug-in system for

01:07:19   Like I was the thing not smug mug snapfish or whatever

01:07:24   Can make a little plug-in thing where you can order a book using the photos app

01:07:28   But if we printed it snapfish or whatever, so you get different pricing you get different layout options

01:07:32   But all those plugins are pretty terrible

01:07:35   And I've had books printed not me personally about my wife and for school things and stuff at other other

01:07:40   Businesses and and they're fine, but the Apple ones are very appley like they're very

01:07:46   elegant and simple and

01:07:49   I'm not gonna say tasteful because it just depends on your taste like this snapfish ones are tasteful, too

01:07:54   It's just it's just if you like put it this way if you like Johnny I've in his white room and all the featureless

01:08:00   Glass and aluminum hardware you like these photo books, and that's that's the aesthetic I go for in my books the layout I use is

01:08:08   It's a little misleading because if you look at the different layouts

01:08:12   They have the app is terrible at previewing them, but one of them like the big picture

01:08:15   I want pictures to be big so I'm gonna pick that one don't you what you want to pick is called garden blooms

01:08:20   Which doesn't make any sense, but just trust me it gives the most layout to say

01:08:24   Most of my pages are full page full bleed edge to edge top to bottom right to left photo

01:08:31   Right, but you also have the option to do two photos vertically or three photos vertically like you have lots of different options of just basically

01:08:38   Slicing up the page into regions. That's the way I like my books to me. I haven't found another

01:08:42   photo book maker that has layouts like that, but

01:08:46   You know even worse to someone who is you know very picky about these type of things it

01:08:52   Will there's no way it's gonna match my existing books. It won't be exactly the same dimensions

01:08:55   It won't look the same so I need to go and print tons and tons of books before September 1st

01:09:01   go through all my photos and just slap them together and throw them into a book and get everything printed and I'm really sad about

01:09:08   it because

01:09:09   Like certainly I can't print the books for next year and the year after in the year after right and so I'm gonna have this

01:09:15   Discontinuity my beautiful collection of books that are all like nice and neat in the same size and everything and then it's just gonna be

01:09:20   the new books printed by somebody else

01:09:24   I don't I don't blame Apple for a stop like I'm sure they don't make a lot of money on this

01:09:29   But most people probably don't even know this feature exists

01:09:31   But if you've never tried this feature

01:09:33   You know give it a try before it's gone like I said the books are actually kind of expensive

01:09:37   Especially if you put in a lot of photos in but they look pretty nice

01:09:40   And they're you know they're for gifts and stuff. They're interesting and unique like it's not like you

01:09:47   Just bought something off the shelf if someone gets something. They don't understand how you made this amazing one-off book

01:09:51   You'll be impressive to them

01:09:53   And I find them

01:09:55   You know a little bit more pleasant than like the old style photo album with a bunch of

01:09:59   printed photos shoved into little clear sleeves or whatever so

01:10:04   Yeah, I don't know. That's it. I'm just I'm just sad and and I'm spending hundreds of dollars on books

01:10:09   I can't wait until the official announcement on September 2nd that the demand for photo books has ramped up so much

01:10:17   Mostly to John Sarah to say we're bringing them back

01:10:21   There's been the spike of usage in Massachusetts for some reason

01:10:24   Yeah, I do have some complaints about them like my main complaint books well the software for putting your software for putting your photos

01:10:31   Into books in photos is grim. It is real. I played complained about it before it is like

01:10:36   You just do like a master class on how to be a frustrating piece of software

01:10:42   It's like a simple job of taking photos and putting them on two pages is made so difficult by bugs by misfeatured

01:10:47   But I just so much about it is terrible. I can't wait for you to use one of the like the web-based ones

01:10:52   The web-based ones destroy it really because usually they're real bad

01:10:56   All right

01:10:57   I'll give my favorite example is it has like that has a

01:11:01   Photos along the bottom and a tiny little strip that you can't make much bigger

01:11:04   And you can't you can't like spacebar or zoom or whatever to see the pictures bigger

01:11:08   So if you have two similar looking photos good luck figuring out which one is which without actually placing them

01:11:11   But set that aside you got photos on the bottom and in a horizontally scrolling

01:11:15   one one height just one single row of you know horizontally scrolling forever right and

01:11:20   You scroll to find the picture you want and you drag it up onto like one of the pages and a little book thing

01:11:26   Right and it loses your scroll position in the bottom thing. Oh, you know let me get that next picture

01:11:31   Oh, no you now you're back to one end again, so now horizontally scroll

01:11:34   Which is everyone's favorite thing to do horizontally scroll to find where you are drag it up up nope you've lost your scroll position again

01:11:40   That's just basics. That's just like it's there to torture you so you can do it

01:11:44   You eventually scroll back and find the place where you were don't get confused

01:11:46   It's it's a bad interface, but anyway the actual books that you get printed my main complaint about them

01:11:52   Is they don't do a good job of aligning the dust jacket on the spine of the book right?

01:11:58   So you know dust jacket work they wrap around or whatever and they don't they let you do printing

01:12:01   I think they make you do printing on the on the spine of the book that says you know whatever Long Island 2016

01:12:06   If you look at where the printing is on all my different books as I sit in there on the shelf

01:12:11   It's all over the map because they fold the dust jacket onto the books

01:12:15   They don't quite get the text lined up with the spine

01:12:18   And that kind of annoys me especially given how much money else

01:12:21   But literally over $100 for a single one of these books sometimes

01:12:24   Because I'm a crazy person and I max out the number of pages

01:12:28   They're willing to put in and they charge you like a dollar extra each page, so it adds up fast. Don't do that

01:12:32   But they look really nice anyone wants to come into my house check them out. I'll show you

01:12:37   Yeah, I've never I've never seen one, but I've always heard not even just from you

01:12:41   I've always heard that like they really are high quality like it is kind of sad when an

01:12:46   option that goes away cuz like we have like TIFF gets a

01:12:49   Book for of our Instagram like family pictures every year, so you know every year

01:12:55   we have like the same little like you know and I think it's blur or somebody it's one of the big one of those big

01:12:59   companies and

01:13:01   and

01:13:02   Like there was some threat they might go out of business a few years ago

01:13:05   And I remember we kind of we kind of freak out really cool, but what if we have to like?

01:13:08   the size of our book would change and we have to find someone else who integrates with Instagram and and it's like

01:13:14   It was actually you know fairly scary and disruptive and the good thing is they didn't go out of business

01:13:19   And so we're still using them, but like I remember like that was like the same thing

01:13:23   You just said like you know the spines aren't gonna all line up. They're gonna be different

01:13:26   It's gonna be the old kind of book and then a new kind of book like

01:13:29   There's something to be said for that and also

01:13:31   You know if you look at Apple today

01:13:34   If they didn't have this service already and and somebody and there was like some rumor that came out

01:13:39   That Apple was going to launch a photo book printing service today

01:13:43   We would laugh it out of the room because like it would seem ridiculous that today's Apple would be like printing you

01:13:49   Photobooks for $80 well they do make leather sleeves for your laptops

01:13:54   I think people would just file it mentally with one of those little things that Apple does for people who have more money than cents

01:14:02   another reason Apple felt that it

01:14:04   Should do the photo book type stuff with the I life things is that back then Apple was very big about

01:14:10   We want you to have an experience that is Apple quality, and it's definitely a Steve Jobs thing

01:14:15   I don't know if he said this on stage, but he could have

01:14:17   We looked at the photo books that are out there, and they're all terrible we wanted one

01:14:21   That's up to Apple standards, so we're doing one ourselves and now if you order a book from our software

01:14:25   You'll get an Apple quality book

01:14:27   I don't know if that is still true, or if it was ever true

01:14:30   But that ethos that it's worth doing ourselves because to give

01:14:34   The Apple quality experience we can't trust the third party to do this if we outsource it or use some vendor which of course

01:14:42   They are like it's not like they're doing this themselves

01:14:43   They're on Apple factories or whatever

01:14:45   But like that they they are able to assure

01:14:47   The quality of the product that you get so you get a Mac and you get I life and you get a photo book it

01:14:53   Will be an Apple quality photo book right down to the Apple logo

01:14:56   That's on the book, but then you can also opt to not have on the book because that's just the kind of company Apple is

01:15:02   Yes, they will watermark your thing with a little Apple and that not watermark your pictures

01:15:06   But put a little Apple logo on the back, but you can say you know what Apple don't do that

01:15:10   And that's what you should do by the way tell them not to do it because you don't want an Apple logo on your books

01:15:13   so

01:15:14   I'm not sure that Apple is entirely gone

01:15:17   But certainly the Apple that would do it just because they couldn't stand the idea of any Apple customers having a less than Apple quality

01:15:24   Photo book that Apple doesn't seem to exist anymore

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01:17:18   Let's do some ask ATP and

01:17:24   Colin Bell Phils writes in is dedicated having a dedicated picture machine useful

01:17:30   I'm thinking about getting a Nikon D

01:17:32   3400 and a 50 millimeter prime having interchangeable lenses and an adjustable aperture means it seems like it would be useful

01:17:37   Can a camera that cheap be worth it compared to phone cameras? I don't know barely anything about the Nikon

01:17:44   D 3400 that Colton is is citing here

01:17:48   But I can tell you that I was really really

01:17:53   worried about spending I think it was around $1,500 for my micro four-thirds camera and a

01:17:59   And I think it's a 25 millimeter prime which I think is the equivalent of a 50 millimeter prime if memory serves anyways

01:18:05   Yep, I when I bought this camera right before Declan was born

01:18:09   I was deeply worried that I was wasting a pile of money and

01:18:12   I

01:18:14   Cannot tell you I don't I genuinely don't think I can describe with words

01:18:19   How thankful I am that I spent that money and that I use that camera anytime we have something that's even vaguely important

01:18:25   Because the pictures that come out of my iPhone are great

01:18:29   The pictures that come out of that camera by comparison are incredible

01:18:33   And I'm not trying to say that this particular camera is particularly better than any other camera

01:18:38   it may be quite a bit worse or better than the D 3400 and I'll let one of you guys chime in in a second and

01:18:43   tell me if it is but

01:18:45   having a camera that has proper glass on it and

01:18:48   I

01:18:50   Find it useful to have you know interchangeable lenses, but that's not even necessary really

01:18:54   But having a camera that can that can get a real wide-open aperture with really decent glass on the front of it can take

01:19:02   phenomenal pictures and I am so unbelievably proud of some of the pictures I've taken of my family and a lot of that has been

01:19:09   Me but a lot of that has also been the equipment and I don't think

01:19:12   These same pictures would look near as good with an iPhone as they do with with my particular camera

01:19:19   That's just my two cents. I suspect you guys are gonna are gonna agree with me, but let's start with you Marco

01:19:25   What do you think about this?

01:19:27   First of all, I love the way this question was phrased is having a dedicated picture machine useful

01:19:32   Talking about a camera because I when I first read that I thought oh it does

01:19:36   You know, they want to like build a computer for photo processing

01:19:39   I thought the same thing like, you know because like, you know

01:19:41   If you want to build a dedicated machine for Lightroom or something

01:19:45   Maybe it should be a Windows PC because Lightroom runs on Windows and you can build this giant crazy monster PC

01:19:50   So like that's what I thought but no it's about the camera being a picture machine

01:19:56   Which is just a glorious way to phrase that

01:19:58   you know having having a separate camera from your phone is

01:20:02   A pain in the butt. It's simple as that

01:20:06   It's it's really a pain in the butt

01:20:08   You have to you have this other thing you have to carry

01:20:10   You have to buy it to begin with you got you got to buy accessories for it

01:20:13   You got to buy batteries and chargers. You got to keep it charged

01:20:16   It's never charged when you want it to be charged if you don't use it that often

01:20:19   You have to maintain it

01:20:21   You have to do firmware updates sometimes if you ever have to transfer the photos off of it onto your computer or phone or iPad

01:20:28   It's kind of a pain. It's kind of slow, you know

01:20:31   There are luxuries that you get with the phone camera that you don't get with any other camera

01:20:36   Things like you know, obviously connectivity being able to snap picture and immediately share it without using some weirdo Wi-Fi transfer app

01:20:43   Which are all terrible

01:20:45   that you you get certain advantages with the

01:20:48   Processing that an iPhone does you get things like automatic HDR you get things like different skin tone stuff you get certain

01:20:55   Stabilizations and you get really good video with surprisingly good sound right out of the iPhone

01:21:00   All these things are either absent or worse on most or all standalone cameras

01:21:05   but

01:21:07   Then you see the pictures and the pictures

01:21:10   Make you want to take more pictures with the camera well put and it's always this constant battle because

01:21:17   It never stops being a pain in the butt. I have this battle with myself. I I used my good camera

01:21:23   yesterday for the first time in probably two months and

01:21:27   That sucks like I should be using it more. That's it's kind of a waste

01:21:31   But using a camera is inconvenient

01:21:34   But when I look at what all of my like super favorite photos are photos that are so good

01:21:39   That I would want to get them framed or photos that are so good that I use them as my desktop wallpapers

01:21:46   Those are always shot with good cameras never with phones

01:21:50   So there is certainly a quality argument on a number of fronts, you know, big cameras will just have way better resolution

01:21:56   Usually they have the ability to have way better optics

01:22:01   They don't always but they they have the ability to have way better way better optics what they mostly give you though besides, you know

01:22:08   a much larger sensor and being able to capture more detail and lower noise and oftentimes, you know, just better everything

01:22:15   They also give you flexibility in what kind of optics you're putting on them, you know with your iPhone. I

01:22:21   hope you really like

01:22:24   High aperture like narrow aperture 29 millimeter perspective because that's all you're getting with your iPhone

01:22:30   If you happen to have an iPhone that has the 2x lens like the 7 plus 8 plus or 10 you can get

01:22:36   Two choices neither of which are that useful you have your default like 29 28 millimeter one

01:22:43   And then the 2x one is like a 40 or 45 millimeter one, which is like fine, but you know, it's not amazing

01:22:50   It's not a not a good portrait lens, you know, it's not it's certainly not a telephoto by any means

01:22:55   Neither lens is particularly wide or telephoto

01:22:59   So like the iPhone basically gives you a really easy convenient

01:23:04   middle of photography, it's like you can shoot like the middle

01:23:10   70% of what you probably want to shoot and it'll look pretty good

01:23:13   but when you when you want to do something that's outside of that that's like on the in a more specialized areas of

01:23:21   optics or capabilities or quality

01:23:23   You can't do that with a little tiny like, you know pinky nail sized

01:23:31   Lens and sensor that probably cost $40 like you just can't

01:23:36   There's no way to match the quality of a camera or the optics when you have something that small not cheap

01:23:41   So phone cameras are great because they're always with you and there's lots of stuff

01:23:46   You know

01:23:46   That's like as the saying goes the best cameras when you have with you

01:23:48   Like there are so many great photos and videos that if I didn't have a phone camera

01:23:54   I would not have I would just miss because I would be in those moments

01:23:58   My camera would be at home and I would just have no way to capture them and I have my phone to capture those now

01:24:04   And it's great

01:24:05   but

01:24:06   If you really want amazing photos, you need to use a real camera usually

01:24:10   So this specific question was can a camera that cheap as cheap as that icon D

01:24:16   3400 be worth it compared to phone cameras and this specific model. Yes, definitely because this is an APS-C sensor

01:24:23   Which is just massively larger than the sensor in your iPhone

01:24:27   And it's a it's a reasonably reputable brand and like so yes this camera will

01:24:33   Absolutely be worth it all the things that Marco said are true, but just to make sure that you don't end up buying like a

01:24:37   Camera with a tiny tiny sensor. It's like oh wow, you know this this camera doesn't take better pictures than iPhone

01:24:42   That's what you're worried about this specific model the Nikon D 3400 will absolutely take better picture

01:24:48   It'll be able to take pictures in situations where your phone just can't like because they just come out as a blurry mess

01:24:52   Because it's like it's too dim or you'd have to use the flash and they become at all gross

01:24:55   So yes, yes to the specific model with the 50 millimeter prime lens. You will take pictures. You could never take on your phone

01:25:02   If you have the camera with you and you think it's worth it. Yeah, it's only like 500 bucks

01:25:07   Like it's totally worth it

01:25:08   Like it's a good like to see these but you have to determine like Margaret said is but will you bring it with you?

01:25:13   Or we'll just sit in your house if it's in your house is doing you no good, right?

01:25:16   So you have to actually bring it with you

01:25:18   Like you have to come up with some kind of arrangement where you decide

01:25:20   Is this a time when I'm gonna bring the big camera or no if you never bring the big camera then obviously it's not worth it

01:25:26   But if you if you have occasions where you think you might want to use it

01:25:29   This will be worth it in terms of the the quality that you get out of a $500 camera with an aps-c sensor. Yes

01:25:36   Erin Bushnell writes, I believe Sir Cusa mentioned doing more node JS development on a semi-recent episode of ATP FM

01:25:43   This was probably from like six months ago, but that's okay. What are his thoughts on what are his thoughts on nodes so far?

01:25:49   What does he liked and disliked and I have I haven't written any node in a long time

01:25:53   But I have done a semi reasonable amount of node for someone who never did it professionally

01:25:58   So I have thoughts on this but John you were the one addressed. What do you think about node?

01:26:01   Yeah, it was maybe was from six months ago, but I'm still doing node stuff as far as I'm doing any stuff. I

01:26:08   Think my first impressions haven't really changed I've been using it for about a year and a half or two years now

01:26:15   I'm coming from the pearl world obviously with most people aren't familiar with but it is is a particular kind of world it has a

01:26:27   Lot of the things that you see in modern languages like Ruby and Python and node

01:26:32   Oh their existence to things that were in pearl and pearls got like the old

01:26:37   Creaky version of them, but so one of the things is very popular

01:26:40   I noticed of course NPM having a common standard and a common repository

01:26:46   For to package up software and reuse it which is why every node product has a million dependencies

01:26:51   It's the beauty and the horror of node

01:26:54   So I'm constantly comparing NPM to CPAN which is pearls like the the og

01:26:59   Distributed distribution mechanism for open source software, right?

01:27:04   There's it's one well-known place where everyone uploads their stuff and you know

01:27:09   It's rich you know

01:27:10   You can share this the old thing was like oh there must be a pearl module for that because there was the pearl module for

01:27:14   Everything now people say that about node of course in the node world. There's not one node module for everything

01:27:21   There's a hundred of them and 99 of them are terrible

01:27:25   And they have nonsensical names because namespace solution is like the epic

01:27:30   No

01:27:30   One of the problems in those teams have is they made just too darn easy to contribute to contribute to CPAN

01:27:35   There was enough of a hurdle that you just didn't get random stuff, but NPM is just it's too easy to contribute

01:27:41   so all the sensible names are taken by crap modules that are not maintained and

01:27:44   Everyone has nonsensical names for the good one

01:27:46   Then it's very difficult to tell out of the 800 NPM packages that claim to do this thing which one is

01:27:51   Not a virus is not written by someone who has no idea what they're doing and is actually maintained and is popular

01:27:59   and you learn that through culture like oh you just sort of

01:28:01   As you spend more time in the node ecosystem you learn

01:28:05   Everyone knows about package X or package Y or whatever

01:28:07   But it's not it's not a great system to enter into as a new person

01:28:10   trying to figure that out and even the ones that are supposedly quote-unquote good the

01:28:15   backward compatibility ethos is

01:28:17   Very different than it was in the pearl world where they would like very rarely break backwards compatibility even when adding new features

01:28:24   Whereas when I start to give an example when I started doing node, we're using mocha for testing

01:28:30   I think it was mocha. I forget the specific version

01:28:32   It might have been some other nonsense work, and then I took one of my original projects

01:28:37   I'm like oh I should update that and run it through our new CI or whatever so I grab the project

01:28:42   I'm like I should update these things. I wonder if there's many new versions

01:28:45   The particular unit test thing I was doing had gone from version like 0.9

01:28:50   And now it was on version 6 6.0 and in between every stage

01:28:55   Well, you know 0.9 to 1.0 1.0 to 2.0. Those are all breaking

01:28:59   You know the the semantic versions and those are all backwards incompatible changes, right? I

01:29:03   had to

01:29:05   Go through all those transitions say oh you've got a 0.9 code

01:29:09   You want to change it to 1.0 do this and then you want change from 1.0 to 2.0 do this

01:29:13   Oh, you want to change from 2.0 to 3.0? That's just two years. That is a little bit ridiculous

01:29:18   So my two main complaints, and this is not new complaints

01:29:21   Everyone who uses node has the same complaints is that there's there's too many MPM packages. Most of them are

01:29:26   terrible

01:29:28   almost none of them are up to the standards of the

01:29:30   Well-known decades old Perl modules that I'm used to like for performing a certain function like oh

01:29:36   What's what's the best node package for talking to a Pro transgress database?

01:29:40   Whatever you think the best is it is worse than it worse in terms of reliability speed features comprehensibility documentation

01:29:47   Standardization stability all all measures that I care about

01:29:51   Everything was better in the Perl world for that perhaps not performance because Perl super slow, but you know, I mean

01:29:58   So I feel kind of like a cranky old man saying you whippersnappers you're making all these nonsensical mod

01:30:03   MPM packages with nonsensical names most of which are really bad and you break things too often and your documentation is bad and you

01:30:10   Don't have good tests

01:30:12   So yeah, I just it just makes me feel like a man but beyond that you like it

01:30:17   Yeah, but no this thing is I do like it. I do like it because it's nice

01:30:20   It's working it working in the language

01:30:22   Like if people don't know node like it's JavaScript, right? But it's not JavaScript like it is in the browser

01:30:28   It is so refreshing to be able to work with modern JavaScript standards

01:30:31   It's you know, it feels like a different language. It is a different language

01:30:34   Like it is nothing like writing JavaScript for the browser. It is so nice

01:30:38   We don't need to use transpiling. We just you know use use ES6 straight up or like it's so much nicer and it's fast and

01:30:46   Despite me complaining about all the packages. Usually there you can find something to do what you want

01:30:50   Even if it just don't look at the source code

01:30:53   That's my advice

01:30:53   if you're holding cranky like me and you find a package that does what you want and it seems like it's pretty popular and

01:30:59   Reasonably well maintained just don't look at the source because you'll get sad. But anyway

01:31:02   Yeah, that's that's basically it. I

01:31:05   mean I think

01:31:07   Everything you said is reasonable which maybe indicates that I'm becoming a cranky old man as well

01:31:12   But I mean when I was teaching myself node it was when it was getting really really popular. This was

01:31:18   2013 I think

01:31:22   It was getting really popular and I wanted to teach myself node. And so I wrote what I call camel which is my blogging engine and

01:31:28   Basically, once I wrote it I have barely touched it ever since because it's been pretty

01:31:36   Foolproof and that's not a challenge before everyone tries to break my blog. It's not a challenge. I'm sure there's problems

01:31:41   Yeah again, I'm sure there's problems. I'm not saying it's perfect. All I'm saying is I knew zero node

01:31:48   I knew JavaScript. Okay, but I knew zero node and within like a month or something like that

01:31:53   I was able to come up with an entire blogging engine. It's it's not the world's best blogging engine

01:31:59   It has a lot of problems

01:32:00   But it does exactly what I want it to do and exactly the way I want it to and for that

01:32:04   I think it's really great and and I was I was and remain really pleased with how approachable it was

01:32:10   However, I echo everything you said John that it's easy to fall into one of the many traps that are set on either side of

01:32:18   The path you need to walk to you know get to have a successful node project. So I do I do quite like it

01:32:24   I think it has certain uses where it's really really good and certain uses where it's not as great but by and large

01:32:32   I like it a lot and and I have no regrets having used it

01:32:35   Oh, we didn't mention one more thing about the about NPM security not great. They are always getting you know

01:32:43   Security of the that guy pulling left pad that's not really a security issue

01:32:47   But recently they had a malware thing that was added to like an ESLint

01:32:49   ESLint configuration module or something like that. I don't know. Anyway, there are controls on who can upload to

01:32:56   popular packages

01:32:59   You know again package signing some form of authentication your github keys like it's all all the wonders of the modern open source world

01:33:06   But because so everyone has so many dependencies with NPM and the dependencies are small and so distant and so deep

01:33:12   It's very easy to get one package that you don't realize that like

01:33:16   50% of the world uses and injects a malware into it and now you've infected a lot of people

01:33:20   That's not great either

01:33:22   And Marco you've never really touched it, right? I

01:33:25   Wrote my first feed crawler for overcast in node what not my second first one in PHP

01:33:31   Second one was node third one is the one I use now which isn't go the no one ran briefly

01:33:36   But I kept having memory leaks and stuff with various like block capture problem

01:33:42   You're probably unlike that was like node version zero point seven or something like the

01:33:47   Language not not just the NPM packages because things change so fast

01:33:51   Like what are we up to now like node node nine or something like there's a new major version node like every five minutes

01:33:56   Yeah, I can't keep up like it even just hearing about like I don't even use it just hearing about it

01:34:00   I can't keep up with like what the heck is going on in node or any

01:34:04   JavaScript web framework and like the language they add major language features with every new every new version picks up something more from another one

01:34:12   of the you know

01:34:14   Specs right major important features, and it's like you're still using that sucker. They added a sink away. What are you doing?

01:34:20   It's like when did they think of weight? It was like last week. It's like. Oh, they just added a sink weight. Okay, then

01:34:25   All right finally Gareth Thomas writes, and I thought this was a really clever question

01:34:30   you get a magical extra garage bay and

01:34:34   Must fill it with the car you have

01:34:37   $15,000 and may only buy a car that is 25 years old or older

01:34:42   What do you choose for those of you who cannot do mental math that means 1993 or newer?

01:34:46   1983 or older you mean sorry yeah the test anywhere yes older I

01:34:50   Will start us off it took me about four and a half seconds to figure out the answer this question

01:34:55   There is only one answer this question as far as I'm concerned it is a

01:34:59   1990 through 1993 choose your year

01:35:02   Nissan 300 ZX twin turbo because I had the non turbo edition

01:35:08   In the early 2000s it was obviously quite old at the time, but I loved that car

01:35:14   I still think it looks reasonably modern today. I miss that car even the naturally aspirated version

01:35:21   I miss it

01:35:22   And I would kind of wish I never sold it and I would definitely get a twin turbo version

01:35:27   And I'm pretty sure you can be those can be had for under 15 grand

01:35:31   So Marco you're buying an MR2. Yeah pretty much. Yeah, I

01:35:35   Looked at my other options

01:35:39   You know I don't I don't follow

01:35:42   You know old cars that closely so I kind of just browsed around AutoTrader

01:35:46   Which made this very easy to just be like all right price cap of like 16,000

01:35:50   I figure I can negotiate it down to 15 so price cap of 16,000 maximum year 93

01:35:55   And you could just browse through different brands and what's available

01:35:58   And I actually was unable to find any DeLorean's within this price range, but you wouldn't want one. Yeah, probably not

01:36:05   But you know I was able to find a bunch of other stuff one other option

01:36:10   I looked at was the I want to say what does BMW offer? I only found there was one

01:36:15   M5 that fit this they fit the qualifications for sale

01:36:19   unfortunately it was white and it also had like a hundred and fifteen thousand miles on it or something and

01:36:24   If I actually got an old BMW a 25 year or yeah 25 year old BMW

01:36:30   That would last like two seconds before something broke

01:36:33   Yeah, you don't know what you're getting there because it's those aren't original parts anymore who knows what's in that thing right exactly?

01:36:38   There were a good number of BMW 850s

01:36:42   Which was a v12 coupe those are interesting?

01:36:47   It's like and it's funny. They actually just announced like recently

01:36:52   They're doing a new 8 series

01:36:53   Which is basically the new version of their massive high-power coupe is basically like an even bigger version of the 6 series

01:36:59   Yeah, the new 8 is just the 6, but they made the number 2 bigger just to make you spend more money on it exactly

01:37:05   Yeah, it's like it's like a tweaked up 6, but anyway

01:37:08   So yeah, maybe I'd look at something like this, but ultimately I'd be very afraid

01:37:12   I mean

01:37:13   I'm I'm too afraid to own a

01:37:15   four-year-old BMW out of warranty to try to own one 25 year old and trend even like if a car that old brakes

01:37:23   How do you fix it? Like who do you even go to you have to like you have to like have like

01:37:28   Special dealers that you know that can even get the parts or make the parts or find the parts that work somehow like I don't

01:37:35   Even know how you maintain a car this old when it breaks. I have no idea how that world works

01:37:39   I imagine it's a big pain in the butt and probably very expensive

01:37:43   But also I imagine certain things break and it's just like well, you can't fix that. Sorry. You're out of luck

01:37:49   so I

01:37:51   Ruled out BMW for the most part because I knew that more things would break on them than what I would be willing to fix

01:37:57   so yeah, I looked at

01:38:00   Basically, yeah the Toyota mr2

01:38:02   1991 my favorite generation of mr2 which again I've never actually driven or even been inside any of these

01:38:09   This is the one I saw when I went with two cars and coffee with you. So I saw the outside

01:38:13   it looked awesome just as I expect but

01:38:15   But I would love to someday drive one of these and and maybe own one if that wouldn't be totally ridiculous

01:38:21   But I don't have the garage space so oh well

01:38:24   But this is I think it would be fun because it is, you know, I know realistically it's by any modern standard

01:38:30   It's not gonna be fast

01:38:32   It's sure as hell not gonna be safe

01:38:34   Like you can make an argument that nobody should be driving 25 year old cars now because modern safety standards are so much higher

01:38:41   That anything this old is just a death trap, even if it was good by this by the standards of its day

01:38:46   So you really shouldn't be driving any of these but if for some reason I felt like driving one of these

01:38:51   This would be kind of cool. I think it'd be fun. It it looks very like retro like 80s early 90s

01:38:59   but it looks pretty cool in that way, I think and

01:39:01   They seem to be not that hard to find and because they Toyota I feel like I have

01:39:07   Some chance of it being remotely maintainable

01:39:10   All right, John

01:39:12   You can choose to either

01:39:14   Simply answer the question or do what you really want to do

01:39:17   Which is make merciless fun of our answers and then answer the question. We all know what's gonna happen here

01:39:22   I want to point out that Gareth I think phrase this part of the question for me and then but then Marco needed it as

01:39:27   Well, you get a magical extra garage bay because Gareth knew that my objection would be I'd have nowhere to put the car

01:39:32   Mark would have said I don't have the garage space for it. You forgot about the magical extra garage bay

01:39:36   No, I said I said in reality, I would never buy this because of that but in this hypothetical exercise

01:39:40   I I accepted that premise and moved on the magical extra garage is real Marco

01:39:45   And to people who ask in the chat room the parameters the question that I think we all answered is that you're buying it today

01:39:52   So it's a used car

01:39:54   $15,000 is your budget now so you could go on to like Auto Trader and pay someone $15,000 for a used car

01:39:59   It's nothing to do with what the car was cost when it was new or anything like that. No time travel is involved here

01:40:04   So if you ask this question to two oldish people or at least people who are much older than 25

01:40:10   I think our first inclination and what all we all did is to try to buy a card that we liked back when we were

01:40:17   Alive 25 years ago when it was new

01:40:20   He's buying his old car mark was buying a car that he never he wanted but never got my first instinct was to go to

01:40:25   Get my first car which the 1992 Honda Civic which I still think was a great car Oh John

01:40:30   Why a stick shift 1992 Honda Civic?

01:40:32   Here's here's part of the reason actually so I can kind of so one of the one of the things I looked at was old

01:40:39   Acura integras which are basically like civics

01:40:41   Because my friend had one of those in college and I drove it all the time and it was a lot of fun

01:40:46   It was it was like some like crappy like late 80s integra that was totally beaten up and horrible

01:40:52   But it was a pretty fun car to drive for a college kid

01:40:54   Yeah

01:40:55   If you get the the newer integra some of those are actually a pretty decent pretty quick cars like after the generation you're talking about

01:41:01   Yeah, the square headlights into when they had the four tiny circle headlights. Yep. Yeah, we had one of those

01:41:06   My parents had one of those then it became my brother's car

01:41:08   I had a sunroof though, so my head hit the headliner I didn't like it

01:41:10   but anyway the the thing about the the 92 Civic is you can get a

01:41:16   92 Civic for like two grand right, but I've got a $15,000 budget. So what I would be looking for is like

01:41:22   the 1992 Civic in

01:41:24   amazing condition with low mileage

01:41:26   like it hasn't the problem of these civics this generation is that is they've all been massively modified because these were like the

01:41:33   Original like tuner import car like you can do so much to them

01:41:36   So it's very very difficult to find a 92 or 93 Civic that has not been modified

01:41:41   But if you have 15 grand, maybe you find a low mileage pristine thing, right?

01:41:45   So but anyway, that was my first instinct, but I did look in the other direction as well

01:41:49   So let me just not pick my nostalgia car

01:41:51   Then what else can I find that has nothing to do with?

01:41:55   Nostalgia like it kind of like I did in our original neutral thing where I came up with the Acura NSX because you could get

01:42:00   One for 25 grand which probably isn't true now because they're going up in price but back then it was

01:42:04   like be amazed at some car that you didn't think you could get 15k, but you can because it's 25 years old and

01:42:10   I was leaning towards Mercedes there because I always love those, you know

01:42:15   late 80s

01:42:17   Mercedes and

01:42:18   Back then they really made them like tanks and they over engineered everything

01:42:22   Not to say that they have great reliability, but it's to say that the parts tended to last a long time

01:42:27   There wasn't things chintzy on them. They were very big very heavy. The safety is not terrible because

01:42:33   They were just so big and heavy

01:42:35   So if you have a fighting chance of like unlike a 92 Civic which will crumple like a tin can

01:42:39   An 80s s-class or something would probably protect you reasonably well for a 25 year old car

01:42:44   I couldn't find any s-classes that were in

01:42:47   The price range but I did find you can get yourself

01:42:52   I really wanted to be 12, but I couldn't do it that can I could not get a v12 Mercedes for a 15k

01:42:57   Like I just couldn't find one on our trader. You can't get the 850 from BMW. Yeah, I don't like that car

01:43:03   But I could find the v8 once so I were my my car if I don't go with just buying my

01:43:10   92 Civic is

01:43:12   500 SL I always loved that generation like the

01:43:16   You know 90s late 80s early 90s 500 SL. I should have had a link to it

01:43:21   But I hope you hope you're envisioning the one that I'm that I'm thinking of. It's a convertible. It's a two-seat

01:43:26   It's got a big v8 in it. It's built like a tank. It's old-school

01:43:29   80s Mercedes it's incredibly heavy, you know

01:43:33   Like it's just I always wanted to have one of those

01:43:36   If I can't have a big s-class because it was just so ridiculous to me that it's like oh, it's convertible

01:43:41   Is it small and light and nimble? No, no, it's a gigantic battleship

01:43:44   That's why you need the v12

01:43:46   It's a gigantic battleship with like 600 horsepower v12 in the front like a two-seat car to see convertible with a 600 horsepower v12

01:43:53   It's ridiculous today and they made them back in the 80s and they were awesome

01:43:57   I can't get that I'd get the v8 and I would be satisfied because it's kind of amazing to me that you can get

01:44:02   You know a 500 SL for 15k, but you can if it's 25 years old you get a 500 SL for six grand

01:44:10   That's actually not a bad price. What was the mileage in this?

01:44:13   104,000 miles. I mean like the 80s it's kind of like buying that's that's early 90s one

01:44:18   Yeah, both. Yeah, both both Honda and

01:44:21   Mercedes like

01:44:23   Made cars differently back then Honda was before the big Japanese decontending and Mercedes just everything was just massively over engineered and ridiculously heavy and

01:44:31   Just beefy. So there's some chance that this car will still be holding together

01:44:36   And I think people treat Mercedes pretty well, like unlike an integrity which people are gonna beat the hell

01:44:40   Boring rich people drive the Mercedes. Hopefully it's in better condition

01:44:44   All right, thanks to our three sponsors this week Squarespace Jamf now and Northwestern University and we will see you next week

01:44:54   Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:45:05   Accidental

01:45:07   John didn't do any research Margo and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental

01:45:14   was accidental

01:45:17   And you can find the show notes at ATP

01:45:21   FM and if you're into Twitter

01:45:25   You can follow them at

01:45:28   CAS

01:45:30   EYL

01:45:32   ISS so that's Casey lists and a I'll see Oh a RM

01:45:36   NT Marco Armin

01:45:39   SIR

01:45:41   AC

01:45:42   USA, Syracuse

01:45:57   Hey, so let me give you the good news and the bad news the good news is this press car that I have has answered

01:46:02   A lot of the questions that I had about what I need to buy for a new car

01:46:06   The bad news is the press car that I have has raised a million new questions about the press about the next car

01:46:13   I need to buy so we're all gonna go on this journey together over the next few months

01:46:16   Well before I finally make it make up my mind even we're gonna go on the journey like we haven't been on this journey. Yeah, right

01:46:23   The journey is never-ending my friend. It's going to go on for journey has been like every other after show for the last six months

01:46:29   Six months it feels like it's been years

01:46:32   It's like the m5 purchase story all over again

01:46:37   But with mud what with something far less exciting at the other end now that you don't need to go anywhere anymore

01:46:41   I don't think you need a car at all. It's to solve this problem

01:46:44   Let's cut the cut the Gordian knot here and say no car for you

01:46:47   That's actually something I've been considering but we'll see you could get like a something done like a smart car

01:46:53   Did you I saw I think someone mentioned in one of our slacks

01:46:57   But I saw what I can only assume was a convertible smart car in London

01:47:02   No, I mentioned that I saw I saw one in Paris. It was actually I thought it looked really good

01:47:07   It was like apparently smart a while back made like basically like a little like a little coupe like a little it

01:47:15   Looked almost like a little sports car like it

01:47:18   I would know that's not what it looked like it looked like a smart car that had gone through a bridge that was too low

01:47:22   Yeah

01:47:24   It's like the cartoon where like the person who goes rolling past the camera like they're no longer under engine power

01:47:29   But they're like they're there their head is all blackened from an explosion that goes

01:47:32   And like rolls to a stop after the top of the car has been torn off it looked incredibly unsafe and ridiculous

01:47:39   Looks like you were riding like like one of those little cars outside the shopping

01:47:42   Outside the grocery store that your kids go in that rocks back and forth. That's what I look like

01:47:46   Yeah, so it's called the smart Roadster

01:47:48   I would say it looks almost like like the smart car version of the Miata like it's it's very much like in that vein

01:47:55   I thought like I walked past one that was that way in Paris and I was like, ooh

01:47:59   What's that like it not not in the sense that like I want that but that's really interesting looking like it's kind of cool

01:48:06   It has like something to it. I thought that I thought it looked really cool in person

01:48:09   Yeah, that's the picture you posted but that's not what I saw

01:48:12   What I saw looked much more ridiculous

01:48:16   So that that car is just ugly

01:48:17   But the one I saw it looked much more ridiculous it literally looked like the grocery store

01:48:21   Little put a quarter in and the car shakes back and forth, but with adult humans in

01:48:24   My word

01:48:28   Trying to figure it out. There is there is another 2018 smart convertible

01:48:32   But this also isn't what I saw and I think the one I saw I mostly saw the front of it

01:48:36   But I think the one I saw had the little hatchback version the the coupe convertible version that's on the Wikipedia page here

01:48:43   Which does look I think significantly better than the one that has just like the chopped off truck back thing

01:48:48   So here's the smart convertible but it's also not what I saw this

01:48:51   This is the thing the thing that I saw is like a quarter of the size of this assuming that's a normal-sized person

01:48:57   Yeah, this is what I'm talking about this the rest of their lineup is terrible. The smart Roadster was so good

01:49:03   They had to stop selling it. It's an ugly car. It's an ugly car

01:49:06   What's the relationship by the way to between smart and I don't think the smart Roadster is ugly. I really don't what's the relationship between?

01:49:14   Between smart and Mercedes because I believe

01:49:18   Mercedes was selling smart cars here in Richmond now, maybe that was a one-off on that particular dealer

01:49:24   I think they own it. Is that what it is? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a sub brand of Mercedes

01:49:28   I don't know if it always was I think they're a isn't there a class like

01:49:31   Doesn't it share a platform with the smart and maybe I'm just remembering that I have no idea

01:49:36   It's an acronym for something that I think might involve Mercedes in the M part

01:49:40   Yeah, I don't know what the acronym is before the hard drive checking thing

01:49:43   Wow smart car. I'm sure I remember what the harder one stands for

01:49:48   Something monitoring of

01:49:52   Derive some cooperation with swatch. There you go Marco and Mercedes swatch Mercedes art

01:49:59   S-ma RT swatch Mercedes ART. That's why they're so ugly

01:50:03   Holy smokes. I never knew that that's

01:50:06   crazy self monitoring

01:50:09   Analysis and reporting technology. I feel so much better John. Thank you. Knowing the meaning of that is almost as useful as the functionality itself

01:50:16   You

01:50:18   [door closes]

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