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ATP

276: Observing a Black Hole

 

00:00:00   Well, how about let me bring you back together then. What would you buy if not a Tesla? I

00:00:04   feel like we might have covered this at one point, but sitting here today, what would

00:00:07   you buy?

00:00:08   Hold on. Tiff just brought me a plate of freshly baked cookies and wants me to taste test to

00:00:12   see which one is better. I love my life.

00:00:17   Important business is happening here.

00:00:20   Top four cookies that Tiff just brought you.

00:00:22   Well, there's only two, so…

00:00:24   That doesn't matter.

00:00:25   I think we've spotted the problem. You need two more cookies.

00:00:27   I have to take a picture of this.

00:00:29   You rank them.

00:00:30   The cookies that are still in the kitchen will be your honorable mentions.

00:00:37   This does not by any means have to make it in the show, but expressly had an interesting

00:00:41   question in the chat.

00:00:42   What do you think the best server-side language would be? Use Windows for .NET? Use Windows

00:00:46   and .NET for ease of deployment and all that, or try and pursue Swift?

00:00:51   I can tell you with some confidence, perhaps a lot of confidence, that Swift on the server

00:00:55   is not a good idea, because it is not ready.

00:00:58   But with regard to what one should do, there's so many great answers to that question that…

00:01:05   Neither of which is Swift or .NET.

00:01:07   I'm not so sure .NET is not the right answer, because…

00:01:10   .NET is not the right answer.

00:01:12   No, just hold on. A couple of years ago, it was absolutely not the right answer. And I'm

00:01:17   out of the game, to be clear. I haven't written any .NET code in at least a year,

00:01:20   maybe two now.

00:01:21   .NET is such not the right answer that it fired you from web development.

00:01:26   No, that was SharePoint more than anything else.

00:01:29   You ran screaming into mobile development.

00:01:33   That's ish true. So what I hated about .NET was really all the things around it. So like

00:01:41   Visual Studio was pretty good. It's ugly. It's not as ugly as Android Studio or any

00:01:47   of the equivalents and all the Eclipse-based IDEs. But it's still ugly. But it's Windows

00:01:56   that drove me away from… Windows and like the whole IIS pipeline and information servers,

00:02:01   basically the web server, all that just drove me nuts and I didn't want it.

00:02:06   But they now have .NET Core, which is new since… I think it was starting to be developed

00:02:09   or was just coming out when I left this world. And .NET Core is a subset of .NET that will

00:02:14   run on pretty much anything. And I actually think that could be a reasonable answer. I'm

00:02:22   not saying it's the best answer. I'm just saying it could be a reasonable answer, because

00:02:25   you can have all the good parts of .NET and C#, which C# is a great language. It has its

00:02:28   words like every other language, but it's a great language. But it's the rest of the

00:02:34   ecosystem that's garbage. And so if you can issue the rest of the ecosystem, then you're

00:02:38   in pretty good shape.

00:02:39   But I mean, I think that it's really… obviously it depends on what you're trying to build

00:02:43   and what its purpose is and what your team or you know. But I mean, I could make a decent

00:02:48   argument for PHP, maybe even an ancient-ass language from the Stone Age like Perl, depending

00:02:53   on what you were trying to do. So there is no good answer.

00:02:56   Well, I think doing anything on the web using Windows or any Windows-adjacent technology

00:03:03   as your back end is like the path of most resistance. Don't do that. Use an open technology,

00:03:09   whether it's PHP or Ruby or Python.

00:03:11   That's what .NET Core is.

00:03:12   Yeah, I know. But then you're losing all the other stuff. You're losing all the stuff

00:03:16   that you liked about, "Oh, I get to use the fancy Windows IDE that knows how to do

00:03:19   all this stuff." And I ask having that be your deployment target instead of the bazillion

00:03:26   deployment targets for all the different languages. It's just better to go with something completely

00:03:30   open, open source, and much more popular on the server than anything Windows-related.

00:03:35   I don't think it's as bad as you say. But I also don't think you're wrong either.

00:03:40   Like I think Windows… well, not Windows. I think .NET is a more reasonable answer than

00:03:43   you're giving it credit for. But I agree with you that the other answers you're giving

00:03:47   are probably better answers.

00:03:49   I mean, just look at the biggest companies out there doing things on the web. How are

00:03:54   they doing them? What are they hosting on? What kind of language and technology stacks

00:03:58   are they using? And Windows stuff is still in the minority. Not as big a minority as

00:04:04   Swift, which I assume nobody is using, probably not even Apple, but of the ones that are existing

00:04:10   and fairly well established.

00:04:12   Yeah, the problem with Swift and the server is that it violates a number of my best practices

00:04:17   for server-side languages, one of which is they should be old and boring, but another

00:04:21   one is that you should never have any risk of being the largest installation of it. And

00:04:27   I feel like if I ran… suppose I converted all of Overcast's website over to Swift,

00:04:32   that might be the biggest Swift server-side installation. It probably isn't, but it

00:04:36   might be. And therefore, I would run a major risk of running into bugs and limitations

00:04:42   and scaling problems that no one else is running into, or that too few people are running into

00:04:47   where that could make it hard to get past them. Or it might make things become my problem

00:04:53   that shouldn't be my problem. And that's not a recipe for happiness when you're running

00:04:57   server-side stuff.

00:04:58   Also, if you get into server-side stuff and you end up learning of the Windows stack or

00:05:03   the .NET stack, even if you learn the cool open source one, job prospect-wise, you're

00:05:07   going to be doing the stuff that you were doing, Casey, which is working on people's

00:05:10   crappy internets or whatever.

00:05:11   That's a good point.

00:05:14   But again, without question, you are not wrong. But it is not as guaranteed as you're painting

00:05:20   it to be. Like, for example, at work, we were straight up Windows .NET the whole way for

00:05:27   the server-side APIs. And then we had PHP on the front end, which was weird. PHP isn't

00:05:33   really a front-end language, but we were basically using PHP to consume .NET APIs. It's weird.

00:05:38   But anyway, I bring all this up to say that we have actually started moving everything

00:05:42   away from Windows and onto .NET Core so we can deploy to any, within reason, any Linux-based

00:05:50   server setup.

00:05:51   And to be fair, I'm speaking a little bit, more than a little bit out of my comfort zone

00:05:54   at this point, because I'm out of that world now. But I wanted to point out that CAM25

00:05:59   has kind of lightened me up in the chat room in a nice way in saying, you know, Vapor,

00:06:04   which is one of the Swift server-side things, is really good, which very well may be. And

00:06:10   they said, "Me saying C# is better than Swift," says CAM25, "that's only true because Swift

00:06:17   is so new and people are being scared to adopt." And that's exactly why you don't want to be—this

00:06:22   is what Marco was just saying. Like, you do not want to be on the bleeding edge on server-side

00:06:26   stuff. And I'm not doubting that Vapor is very good and is probably going to be very,

00:06:31   very, very good in the future. But you do not want to be the tip of the spear or one

00:06:36   of my favorite Clarkson lines of all time. You do not want to be the prow of the good

00:06:40   ship progress when it comes to these sorts of things. As Marco said, you want to be on

00:06:45   the boring old technologies that everyone's been using for a long, long time. Anyway,

00:06:51   I guess this is sort of kind of follow-out. We wanted to call attention to—and this

00:06:56   is a pretty much annual occurrence—the AppCamp for Girls fundraiser/live near WWDC concert

00:07:04   jam with James Dempsey and the Breakpoints. If you are not familiar with this—and we've

00:07:08   talked about this in the past—James Dempsey is an ex-Apple employee and also a pretty

00:07:12   talented musician. And he writes songs that are very catchy and very good, but the lyrics

00:07:18   are all about writing code. And this sounds like it may not be enjoyable at all at first

00:07:25   glance, but it's actually really, really, really good. And so ATP is one of many sponsors

00:07:31   of the live near WWDC 2018 benefit concert for AppCamp for Girls. Now it's AppCamp for

00:07:36   Girls. We've talked about this many times in the past. It is a sort of tutoring camp

00:07:42   sort of thing for girls and other underrepresented groups, especially in the middle school age

00:07:51   group. And we have supported them—ATP has supported them for a long time. Many of the

00:07:57   members of AppCamp for Girls are dear friends of ours, most especially Jean McDonald, who

00:08:01   is one of their founders. They are an unbelievably good organization that has done tremendous

00:08:07   things to push young girls and young women forward into STEM sort of paths through life

00:08:17   and teach them that they too can write code. And despite what all these jerky boys around

00:08:22   them say, it's actually just as easy, if not easier, for a girl to write code as it is

00:08:27   for a boy. And so if you are in the WWDC area next week on Wednesday, I strongly encourage

00:08:34   you to come and hang out and say hi. I'm pretty sure all three of us will be there for at

00:08:40   least some amount of time, if not the whole thing. You can buy tickets for $35, which

00:08:46   is a donation effectively to AppCamp for Girls. There will be an open bar with, I'm told,

00:08:51   top shelf liquor, which is very exciting. And even if you're not at WWDC, you know what?

00:08:56   You can just donate. You can be a cool kid and just donate. I'm good with that. Marco

00:09:00   and John are good with that. Just donate. That's awesome. So we just want to call that

00:09:03   to your attention. We're trying to raise $25,000 for AppCamp for Girls, and I could not say

00:09:07   enough good things about that organization. So if you have the means, I strongly encourage

00:09:14   you to throw a few bucks their way, whether or not you're going to be there. And if you

00:09:17   are going to be there, it'll be great.

00:09:18   That's all the follow-up, right?

00:09:20   I didn't think it was, but I feel like all the other follow-up disappeared while I was

00:09:24   talking.

00:09:25   It didn't disappear. It was never there.

00:09:27   Turns out Elon Musk and unions are not controversial at all. Okay, moving on.

00:09:32   They actually weren't. We didn't actually get that much feedback on that. I didn't think

00:09:36   we would, and we didn't. I mean, like five people, but that's nothing.

00:09:42   We are sponsored this week by Eero. Finally, Wi-Fi that works. We all know by now that

00:09:47   one router doesn't cover a lot of our houses all the way. There's always gaps or slow spots

00:09:52   or dead zones. What you need is what businesses figured out a long time ago. You need a distributed

00:09:57   Wi-Fi system that broadcasts from multiple physical points, and they overlap and they

00:10:01   make a nice big blanket mesh of fast, even coverage.

00:10:05   Now business systems are really hard to use and pretty expensive. Eero brings this to

00:10:10   everyone with a great value and with the easiest setup I've ever seen of a wireless router.

00:10:16   So here's what you do. You start out with the base station, and you plug this into your

00:10:19   network connection, just like any other router. Then you have the Eero beacons. These are

00:10:24   additional little units that you can plug in at different points around your house,

00:10:27   and they broadcast the Wi-Fi too. So they all work together, and they communicate with

00:10:31   each other via a back-end mesh network so that it's all wireless. You don't have to

00:10:35   run wires everywhere if you don't want to, if you can't. They all communicate with each

00:10:39   other, and they form this huge, even, fast blanket of Wi-Fi coverage across your entire

00:10:45   home. You can use whatever number of the beacons you need. Most homes need about two beacons,

00:10:49   plus one base station. These are all high-grade wireless gear, all the top radios, top speeds,

00:10:55   everything you'd expect from a high-powered router. It's all controlled via their app,

00:10:59   and it is not only beautiful, but so easy to use. It is, again, the easiest setup I've

00:11:05   ever seen of any Wi-Fi router, and it happens to have this incredible coverage area by using

00:11:10   these beacons. You can see for yourself, see the reviews. You'll see, it isn't just me

00:11:14   saying this, the reviews speak for themselves. This is a very highly rated item. Look on

00:11:17   Amazon, look at all the review sites you'll see for yourself. So check out Eero. Go to

00:11:22   Eero.com, and at checkout, you can select overnight shipping, and if you do, enter promo

00:11:27   code ATP to make that shipping free to the US or Canada. So once again, go to Eero.com.

00:11:33   That's E-E-R-O dot com, and for free overnight shipping to the US or Canada, select overnight

00:11:37   shipping at checkout, and then enter promo code ATP to make it free. Thank you so much

00:11:42   to Eero for sponsoring our show.

00:11:47   iOS 11.4 is out, and I am happy to tell you the long national nightmare is over. AirPlay

00:11:53   2 and Messages in the Cloud are here. I have tried neither of these things. So I am useless.

00:12:02   I have nothing constructive to add, really, other than to say I have seen people throwing

00:12:07   up screenshots of their iCloud storage usage after engaging Messages in the Cloud and seeing

00:12:14   the Messages line item at like 20 plus gigs. And as someone who does not pay for extra

00:12:20   iCloud storage, because I don't use iCloud photo library, and I don't back up to iCloud

00:12:25   - Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're on the free plan?

00:12:28   - Yeah.

00:12:29   - You don't pay the dollar a month?

00:12:30   - What do I need it for?

00:12:31   - Oh my god.

00:12:32   - Who buys batteries?

00:12:33   - Yeah, who buys batteries?

00:12:34   - I say that every time, yes, I am gonna make that same joke every time someone doesn't

00:12:37   pay for a Cloud storage.

00:12:39   - You're a power user. This makes a big difference in how your device functions. How, what?

00:12:43   - What? In what way? What does that buy me up until this?

00:12:47   - You do your iCloud backups. You have a Cloud backup of all your stuff.

00:12:50   - Yeah, but why would I need that when I have it on my computer?

00:12:52   - So you have it in one more place. You also do it on your computer.

00:12:55   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:56   - Why do you need any backups? They're just copies of what you already have.

00:12:59   - That's right.

00:13:00   - It's useless. Why bother? It's so redundant, you guys.

00:13:03   - Why make another copy? What's the point?

00:13:09   - Oh my god, Casey.

00:13:10   - I mean, I just, I've never really had, I've never felt like I've had the deed. And I'm

00:13:15   not saying I wouldn't get use out of it, but I've never felt like I had the need. But now,

00:13:18   now this is the moment, this is the moment when I'm probably gonna have the need. Because

00:13:23   I would like to do messages in the Cloud, I think. And it is clearly going to require

00:13:29   me to spring for some amount of iCloud storage. Or maybe I'll just play the slow and lazy

00:13:36   Procrastinators game. Hello, Marco. And maybe at WWDC next week, I will get some more free

00:13:42   storage and that would be lovely.

00:13:43   - Who wants to bet against that? I will.

00:13:45   - I do. I do as well. But all kidding aside.

00:13:50   - I mean, you still won't have enough. You should just, you know, you should just pay

00:13:53   for it just so you can back up all your devices. Like, forget about the messages in the Cloud

00:13:56   thing. Just so you can back up your devices.

00:14:00   - No real argument here. But either way, I have not tried any of these things. And, John,

00:14:07   did you get a HomePod? I don't recall. Because Marco and I do not have them.

00:14:10   - I do. I have a HomePod.

00:14:11   - Okay. So have you tried AirPlay 2?

00:14:13   - How would I go about doing that?

00:14:14   - What do you mean? How would you?

00:14:16   - I don't know. If I'm asking you an honest question, I have no idea.

00:14:19   - I believe under iOS 11.4, if you AirPlay to a HomePod or I think an Apple TV, you know,

00:14:28   the app model or forward, that should, I think, automatically use AirPlay 2. Except if you're

00:14:35   streaming Overcast, which is part of the reason why I now had to go buy a fucking HomePod.

00:14:43   - Yeah, well, you really should have bought two of them.

00:14:48   - That's true, actually.

00:14:49   - I know it's actually late for this.

00:14:50   - I actually did buy two of them.

00:14:51   - Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, that's the whole point. Like, the features that it

00:14:55   gives, multi-device audio and stereo pairing, I can't use with my single HomePod. So if

00:15:00   I did AirPlay 2 to it, I'd be like, "Great, it sounds just like it did before because

00:15:03   music is going over the air." I suppose I might notice, like, less lag in the controls,

00:15:07   but other than that, it never even occurred to me to try because I just have the one HomePod.

00:15:11   - Tell me you bought white ones. Please tell me you bought white ones.

00:15:14   - They happen to be white.

00:15:15   - Oh my god.

00:15:16   - They're not white. They're, like, grayish.

00:15:18   - This is the best time of my life. This is fantastic. Did you play any Dave Matthews

00:15:22   on them by chance?

00:15:23   - No, only Weezer and the Long Winter so far.

00:15:26   - Oh, my word. Okay, so how do they sound?

00:15:29   - It was just today. The second one I haven't hooked up yet. It was literally, like, tonight

00:15:33   that I finally got to hook it up.

00:15:35   - Do they sound good or does it sound good?

00:15:37   - It sounds good, yeah. It doesn't sound as mind-blowing as people have said. I honestly

00:15:44   expected it to sound a little bit better than it does, but it does sound way better than

00:15:47   the Amazon Echo and it's, you know, for the size, it sounds good. They are certainly doing

00:15:53   a whole lot of bass, especially at lower volumes where you're less likely to notice. I think

00:16:00   the bass is dynamic by volume level. Bose has done this for a long time where basically

00:16:05   at lower volumes you use more bass than at higher volumes and it makes lower volume sound

00:16:11   better to most people, but without having the bass be too boomy and overpowering when

00:16:15   you turn it up. I think that's what they're doing on it. Anyway, it sounds pretty good

00:16:19   for its size, but this is nothing new. I got it because I have to finally, basically I

00:16:26   was kind of gambling, like, Airplay 2 seemed like it was maybe never going to come or going

00:16:30   to come later this year, and so I thought I had time to move my audio engine to it and

00:16:36   I was going to just keep doing other things until it was clear that it was going to actually

00:16:40   happen. Well, it actually happened, so now I have to test it and I'm going to be traveling

00:16:45   a lot back and forth to the beach this summer, so I bought one for there and one for here.

00:16:49   So I can actually test it and I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty big chunk of my

00:16:53   summer work. We should note though, in Make It Plain, that these things, Airplay 2 and

00:16:59   Messages in the Cloud, they were both debuted or teased at WWDC 2017. They were announced,

00:17:06   not teased, they were announced. Fair, fair. And it is now less than a week away from the

00:17:13   keynote that kicks off WWDC 2018 and just in the nick of time, just by the skin of their

00:17:21   teeth they have gotten this in in time. And it makes me wonder, is it that this is really

00:17:27   and truly fully baked and it was a happy coincidence, or is this getting shipped a little sooner

00:17:31   than they want just so they can check the before 2018 checkbox? Well, something clearly

00:17:36   went wrong here. I hope people who have access to press that have access to Apple during

00:17:40   WWDC week, ask this. Not that it's some deep deadly secret, but I feel like if it's a year

00:17:46   since when you announce something and when you release it, something has gone wrong and

00:17:49   it's worth some kind of answer. Hey, what went wrong? Apple's just probably going to

00:17:53   say it took longer than we thought. But I feel like it is something that needs, it's

00:17:56   a question that needs to be asked and answered. We can't just pretend like, oh, just sometimes

00:18:00   this happens, they announce something and it doesn't come out for a year. Because then

00:18:03   what's the point of announcements anymore? This wasn't like a preview or a sneak peek

00:18:08   or a thing that we might be working on. It was like, here are these things and some things

00:18:12   are available now and some things will be able two weeks from now and some will be available

00:18:16   a little bit later and a little bit later turns out to be a year. That's no good. No

00:18:20   good. Yeah, honestly, I haven't turned the feature on yet, even though I do pay for storage,

00:18:25   Casey, because I'm a little scared to be one of the very first people to turn this on. I

00:18:30   think it's very telling that Apple has not enabled this for the Mac yet and has not enabled

00:18:38   it by default on iOS and has kind of buried the setting that it kind of makes me, it kind

00:18:44   of looks like, I don't know, maybe they're not that confident in it yet. I don't know

00:18:47   if that's the reason. I did enable it just because I was the feature, one of the features

00:18:52   I was most excited about last year and I'm like, fine, I'll wait for a delay. I'd rather

00:18:55   have it work than not work. And it was like sort of half released in betas a couple of

00:18:59   times, then pulled back and like, well, whatever, they'll get it worked out. But at this point,

00:19:02   I'm like, look, you've had a year, this thing better work. I'm enabling it. So I enabled

00:19:06   it. It was buried. I was thinking of why it doesn't appear to be enabled by default. It's

00:19:10   hard to tell because like I know I did probably, I don't, did I play with it during the betas?

00:19:14   I don't remember. It was so long ago. It's the problem of waiting a year. But it, you

00:19:18   know, people have a surprising amount of data in their messages, right? So if they enable

00:19:22   it by default, it would blow everybody's free five gigabytes, just like Casey, right? Because

00:19:26   you may, you know, you may not have a lot of cloud storage and other stuff you might

00:19:29   have hanging around like the photos don't count towards it or whatever I think, right?

00:19:33   Or I don't know, I can keep track of what, or maybe music doesn't count towards it, but

00:19:36   photos do. Anyway, check, you can check if you go into, you know, settings on your, on

00:19:42   your phone and then go into iCloud and then look at, go to manage storage and then look

00:19:49   at the messages row and, and you may not think you have a lot of messages like, oh, it's

00:19:54   just text messages. How big could it possibly be? But you send video to people, people send

00:19:58   you stupid multi megabyte GIFs that are probably MPEG4 if you're lucky.

00:20:02   What do you mean stupid?

00:20:04   GIFs are so incredibly massive.

00:20:07   You said people, not you.

00:20:09   Yeah. If you actually get a legit GIF, I don't even know if this is possible. Is it possible

00:20:13   to get an actual GIF in messages or just does it like back end convert them all down before

00:20:17   it's like Twitter does?

00:20:18   No, no, no. They're actual GIFs. I shouldn't say this with such extreme confidence. I am

00:20:23   fairly sure that they are not converted because if you, you know, save that from your messages

00:20:29   app, it's being saved as a GIF. It's not being saved as an.

00:20:33   GIF is GIF animations are not space efficient, let's just say, despite the fact that, you

00:20:37   know, they're still delightful. Right. Anyway. So my messages, it says 4.6 gigabytes and

00:20:44   because I pay for tons of storage, it's not a big deal. So I enabled it. It's not the

00:20:49   new version of a Mac OS is not out yet. What is it going to be? 10, 13, 15 or something

00:20:53   is going to have it enabled. We're anywhere in 14 now, something like that. So that'll

00:20:57   probably be out in a couple of days. I've only enabled it on one device. It's the only

00:21:01   device I've upgraded. And when I tap on messages, it says 4.6 gigabytes when I tap on messages.

00:21:07   Oh, fine, fine. Now you're going to tell me, it has a little thing that says conversations

00:21:11   and it says 2.18 gigabytes all day. It has said conversations, zero kilobytes, despite

00:21:19   the fact that the thing I just tapped on said 4.6 gigabytes. So anyway, now when I go in

00:21:22   4.6 gigabytes, I go in it says conversations 2.18 gigabytes. And then I go into the next

00:21:26   screen and my top conversation is negative one byte. And my second conversation is negative

00:21:31   six bytes. Nice. And they're sorted, they're sorted. But yeah, so something is a little

00:21:36   bit wacky with their calculations of exactly how much storage thing is taking up. Cause

00:21:40   I'm pretty sure I have no conversations that are negative bytes in size. So it hasn't destroyed

00:21:47   my messages. Everything, all my conversations on my phone, I continue to see there, but

00:21:51   I have also not using the actual feature yet, which is so your messages should be the same

00:21:56   on all your devices. In theory, if you go into your Mac, it should be the same. And

00:21:59   you go into your iPad, it should be the same. I will try that out as I upgrade my devices.

00:22:03   Of course I can't upgrade my Mac, so I'll never really see it here, but I'll see it

00:22:07   on my wife's 5k iMac. So yeah, I'm taking a bullet on this one. I'm like, look, you

00:22:15   had a year. I really want this feature. It better work. So I enabled it.

00:22:19   Yeah, I am not that, but leaving aside the iCloud storage issues, which are self-created,

00:22:25   I am not bold enough to do this quite yet. And I don't think I will be until after I'm

00:22:30   back from WWDC, because even though I do have some issues with iMessage from time to time,

00:22:34   like messages coming out of order and so on, I don't want to mess with any of that until

00:22:38   I'm back from WWDC just to make sure everything's kosher.

00:22:41   Yeah, I think the main reason to enable this, you're like, I never had these bugs. Why would

00:22:47   I enable this feature if you're saying that this feature might be itself buggy? I never

00:22:52   have the problems that it's supposedly solving. I think it's mostly for the same reason you

00:22:57   would have any kind of iCloud integration. You'd want some kind of iPad integration.

00:23:02   It's another backstop against losing stuff. So maybe there's some conversations that you

00:23:07   have that have sentimental value or you have tons of videos and images or whatever, and

00:23:13   you may be schlepping them along from device to device but don't really have a good cloud

00:23:18   backup of it for whatever reason, Casey. This will give you a cloud backup of all your conversations,

00:23:24   or it will destroy all your conversations. This is the deal we make with these cloud

00:23:28   things. This scary feature could just like, everything's been fine on my phone, but in

00:23:33   theory if everything works well, you will now have all your conversations in more places

00:23:38   than you used to, especially if I think like most of us, you have some conversations that

00:23:43   are on your phone but aren't on your iPad or are on your Mac but aren't on your phone

00:23:47   but aren't, you know, like, it's not the same everywhere. This in theory will make it the

00:23:51   same everywhere and will also make sure that that sameness is also stored on Apple's server

00:23:56   somewhere. That's the way it's supposed to work. That's the way I hope it works, and

00:24:00   it will also make your messages go in order. So I'll let you know if it destroys—I don't

00:24:04   have any particularly sentimental iMessage conversations given how long it was before

00:24:09   I even got an iPhone, and if I did messages on an iPod touch, I don't even remember. So

00:24:14   I was using AIM. All my sentimental conversations are on AIM, or maybe some on ICQ, but I don't

00:24:21   even remember my number anymore.

00:24:22   >> One, two, three, five, seven, two, what's up?

00:24:25   >> Yeah. I don't even know if I have my ICQ number in email anymore. I probably could

00:24:30   dig it up in an email archive, but it's all lost.

00:24:32   >> Of course it's all lost.

00:24:34   >> All those WhyTalk conversations, all gone.

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00:26:29   (upbeat music)

00:26:32   - So WBC is coming. I don't know how we want to dig in on this. I don't have any particular

00:26:37   format because we're not as clever as upgrade with their draft and all that nonsense, which

00:26:41   I adore.

00:26:42   - Isn't it frustrating how clever they are with stuff like that?

00:26:45   - So annoying. So annoying.

00:26:46   - Get Jason on the podcast, you know there'll be a draft. That's how it works. Get me on

00:26:51   a podcast, you know there'll be follow-up and you get Jason on a podcast, there will

00:26:53   be drafts.

00:26:54   - That is a lie. There's neither follow-up nor draft on Robot or Not.

00:26:58   - That's true. The whole show is follow-up. That's my secret, Casey. It's all follow-up.

00:27:03   - Reference acknowledged. Reference acknowledged. All right. So how do we want to start this?

00:27:08   Do we want to just start spitballing things we're excited for, hopeful for? I mean I guess

00:27:13   that--

00:27:14   - I have an opening statement.

00:27:15   - Oh, sure. Please.

00:27:16   - All right. So I'm excited about this because we really know almost nothing going into it.

00:27:23   Like as of this recording--

00:27:24   - That was gonna be my opening statement too.

00:27:27   - Like as of this recording, we know almost nothing. We have no real credible rumors.

00:27:32   We have no hardware parts leaks or anything like that. We really have no idea what we're

00:27:38   getting. And maybe that'll change over the next few days. Like a lot of times like on

00:27:41   Monday morning, stuff will leak. But for the most part, we really don't know anything.

00:27:46   And that's kind of concerning on some levels, but mostly it's very exciting that this will

00:27:51   actually be full of surprises for us. For me, the big thing I'm looking for, and like

00:28:00   on Kinesis this week, they were talking about how rather than kind of predictions, they

00:28:03   were basically making a list of like what would make them happy. What would make me

00:28:08   happy is when I look at Apple today, I see a company that's mostly doing pretty well,

00:28:17   has a bunch of stuff that's mostly pretty good. There are a couple of problem areas.

00:28:21   I think the major problem areas to me are the Mac and Siri. And it's not that they suck

00:28:30   or are broken. And the Katewell Siri kind of does. But yeah, Siri needs a lot of help.

00:28:38   The Mac, it's hard to tell with the Mac whether they are just neglecting it horribly or whether

00:28:47   there is some big new direction that it will be taking that just isn't ready yet. You know,

00:28:53   this is always a problem when looking at Apple. And with Siri, you can kind of say the same

00:28:56   thing maybe to some level like maybe Siri is as bad as it is because they are working

00:29:02   on a better Siri that hasn't launched yet. Who knows, right? So what I want to see this

00:29:07   year, like all we've seen from the few little trickles of rumors that we've gotten are people

00:29:13   saying that, "Oh, big stuff is in the work for the Mac with various like cross platform

00:29:17   slash new UI framework kind of things." And other people saying, "No, it's not." Or mostly

00:29:22   saying, "It's not ready yet and maybe it will be ready next year." What I want to see this

00:29:26   year is some kind of indication of this kind of major motion in the Mac and in Siri. I

00:29:37   want to see some kind of indication that these aren't just sucking like they are sucking

00:29:43   now forever. That Mac OS and that Siri, even if their major upgrades are coming next year,

00:29:53   I want to see a sign of life this year that they will have major upgrades. And if their

00:29:59   major upgrades are ready, that's even better, but it sounds like they're probably not. So

00:30:03   I just want to see a sign of life that the lull that we're seeing in these two major

00:30:07   problem areas right now is not because they're just being elected forever, but because bigger

00:30:14   stuff is coming but it just isn't ready yet. That's what I want to see.

00:30:17   So what would that look like?

00:30:19   It's hard to know. It's hard to really tell. Maybe really early feature or code or API

00:30:27   shifts that kind of suggest something that might be coming down the road.

00:30:32   Not even Apple announcements, but things where they don't say, "But here are size quests."

00:30:37   That type of thing?

00:30:38   Yeah, I mean, certainly. I would consider that the bare minimum. With Apple, a lot of

00:30:43   times observing Apple is kind of like observing a black hole. You can't see the thing you're

00:30:50   looking for, but you can try to observe effects of things around it that might indicate that

00:30:56   it's there. So something that indicates that there is a next generation of Mac OS or of

00:31:05   UI development on the Mac or of Siri getting significantly better. Just something to indicate

00:31:11   that this work is going on and is progressing rather than the way it looks right now in

00:31:16   a lot of ways is they just aren't doing any work on these things.

00:31:21   Even if we don't get any official announcements, I just want to see a sign of life that that's

00:31:26   the direction they're going in rather than just letting these things slowly wither and

00:31:30   die.

00:31:31   I don't think you're going to be too happy.

00:31:33   If we're talking about the things that, before we get to preview/prediction, we're just talking

00:31:39   about what would you like to see, what would make you happy, I think I don't...

00:31:46   Well, let me just get the quick one out of the way. A Mac Pro teaser would make me happy,

00:31:51   but I'm not holding my breath.

00:31:54   But anyway, I'm kind of on board the train with the... I don't even remember if it was

00:32:00   a rumor or announcement or whatever that Apple was trying to slow down and pull features

00:32:05   out of iOS 12 and move things to more of a two-year cycle and that kind of slowdown,

00:32:11   right?

00:32:13   What would make me happy to see is that this WWDC reflects a slowdown, which means like,

00:32:19   wouldn't that be bad?

00:32:20   That means it's like boring stuff and we'd be talking about, "Oh, they don't have anything

00:32:23   to announce except for like boring stuff that there's nothing exciting at this show.

00:32:27   There's no new hardware, there's no amazing new software, and even though we didn't think

00:32:30   there was going to be anything, it's kind of disappointing."

00:32:31   But I would take that as a sign that the slowdown in philosophy is in effect and is bearing

00:32:38   fruit.

00:32:39   The less they have to say, the more I will expect the things they do announce to actually

00:32:45   work and be useful.

00:32:46   So all the new things that I think we should start off talking about are things we know

00:32:50   they're going to announce anyway.

00:32:52   Hopefully they're boring and they're reliable and they're predictable and they have fewer

00:32:57   bugs than their equivalents in the past couple of years and longstanding bugs that bother

00:33:03   everybody end up getting fixed.

00:33:06   That kind of a slowdown, which sounds boring, but is kind of what I would like from Apple

00:33:13   now to sort of regroup because there's lots of potentially very large things happening

00:33:19   in 2019, including the Mac Pro, but also all the stuff with the cross-platform stuff that

00:33:24   really is for next year or the next big move on watchOS or whatever.

00:33:29   I don't need that stuff this year.

00:33:31   I don't need the big revolutions in any of these areas.

00:33:34   Take the time to roll that out next year and have this year be like a rebuilding year where

00:33:39   there aren't any earth-shattering announcements, but everything that is announced ships on

00:33:43   time, works better than you would expect for the state that it's in.

00:33:48   All the products come out of the gate when they actually get their point-O releases.

00:33:52   More solid than usual and all sorts of little bugs that have been around for years and years

00:33:57   get fixed.

00:33:58   That would make me happy.

00:33:59   That's a good one.

00:34:00   It would make the press flip out, of course, but you know, whatever.

00:34:03   Who cares about the press?

00:34:04   Yeah, we're not the press.

00:34:05   If we were the press, we'd have press passes.

00:34:06   Exactly.

00:34:07   Oh, there it is.

00:34:08   Then we could flip out.

00:34:09   Well done.

00:34:10   Yeah, you know, I think the number one thing on my list is having now experienced the comparative

00:34:17   bliss that is the Amazon lady in a tube, it is just ever more apparent how awful Siri

00:34:25   is.

00:34:26   And in fact, just this evening, I was talking to Aaron, my phone in my pocket, and I don't

00:34:33   remember what it was I said, but all of a sudden I heard my pocket talking and Siri

00:34:38   was saying something about my mother, which I wasn't really clear on and definitely startled

00:34:44   me.

00:34:45   I looked at my screen and my screen said, "Call Mom."

00:34:48   I don't know how Siri heard the wake word because I didn't say anything that even vaguely

00:34:53   sounded like a hoy telephone.

00:34:55   And I didn't even, I wasn't even talking about my mom at the time either.

00:34:58   Now in the defense of my phone, it wasn't my pocket, but that is the first time I think

00:35:02   I've ever had that brutal a misfire with Siri.

00:35:06   But all that said, Siri has been ever more frustrating, particularly when I go for my

00:35:13   run.

00:35:14   I talked about this a couple of months ago, but when I go for a run in the morning, I

00:35:17   go with just my watch and my AirPods.

00:35:20   And I've actually taken the, I've gotten into the habit of turning Bluetooth completely

00:35:26   off on my phone before I run.

00:35:30   Because if I don't do that, then apparently from what I can piece together, the watch

00:35:36   is stretching so hard to try to be able to contact my phone so it can do all the Siri

00:35:41   related things that I occasionally ask it to do, like play a different album or even

00:35:44   turn up the damn volume or whatever.

00:35:46   But it can't quite get there via Bluetooth, so it just sits and spins and sits and spins

00:35:52   and sits and spins and no, it doesn't fall off to the already active cellular connection.

00:35:57   It just sits and spins and sits and spins and eventually it will just give up.

00:36:03   So that actually doesn't have a lot to do with Siri, but it's just something I thought

00:36:05   about that is driving me bananas.

00:36:07   Actually, a related thing is on my WatchOS wish list, which is that because it tries

00:36:13   Bluetooth as much as possible, that also means that when an app tries to transfer files or

00:36:19   data to the watch, it will prefer Bluetooth if it's available at all, even when it's

00:36:24   on its charger, because it doesn't want to power up the Wi-Fi radio to save power.

00:36:30   But this means that if you're transferring a podcast over Bluetooth, it takes forever.

00:36:35   You're trying to download a file off the internet over Bluetooth.

00:36:38   It takes forever.

00:36:39   I don't think that's true.

00:36:40   I think forever is considerably shorter than the amount of time it actually takes, because

00:36:44   I've lived this life and you are 100% correct.

00:36:48   It is heinously slow.

00:36:51   That's the thing is that, just like you said, there's no reason in theory that this couldn't

00:36:55   use Wi-Fi or hell, even cellular if it wanted to for those of us who have cellular watches

00:37:00   that pay too much money for them, not that I'm bitter.

00:37:02   But no, it insists on using Bluetooth for reasons that are beyond me.

00:37:05   And again, on battery, I can sort of understand that.

00:37:10   But like you said, Marco, on the charger?

00:37:13   Come on!

00:37:14   That's just, no, no.

00:37:15   That's just a poor choice.

00:37:16   Why would you like the batteries just so big these days?

00:37:19   Why not prefer Wi-Fi and cellular until the battery is down to 75% or 50% and then start

00:37:24   preferring Bluetooth?

00:37:27   There are much better solutions.

00:37:28   The way it feels to me, from the API level, it just kind of feels like this is how it

00:37:32   was with Watch 1, and they just never revisited that decision since then.

00:37:37   So hopefully they will.

00:37:38   But I don't know.

00:37:39   That's one of my WatchOS wish list items.

00:37:42   This is just the kind of boring change that you can't really demo.

00:37:46   You just have to kind of say, "Improve battery life and radio handling."

00:37:51   And maybe if you go to that session, you learn that they've changed their priority.

00:37:53   But it's the kind of small, long-standing issue that is only an issue in certain situations,

00:37:59   but it has been annoying people for a long time, and fixing it is not going to get you

00:38:03   into the keynote.

00:38:04   Right?

00:38:05   It's not something you can even brag about or demo.

00:38:07   Maybe it doesn't even make it to a big word background on a slide.

00:38:10   But we all want it fixed.

00:38:12   This is the type of thing that we would hope would get fixed.

00:38:14   And you're just waiting patiently for it to get fixed.

00:38:17   This is the year to do it.

00:38:18   If there's not going to be anything super exciting, do all the boring things.

00:38:22   And people will grumble, but eventually will love it.

00:38:25   But yeah, what am I looking for?

00:38:27   I'm looking for Siri improvements first and foremost.

00:38:30   I would like to see the Mac not dead.

00:38:34   I am less worked up about it than the two of you guys are, but I am worked up about

00:38:38   it.

00:38:39   I would like to see any mention of the Mac doing anything at all.

00:38:42   That would be lovely.

00:38:44   I wouldn't mind new hardware, new Mac hardware, but I'll believe it if I see it.

00:38:49   But the other thing I'd like, or two things I'd like, I'm not entirely sure if either

00:38:56   will happen, but I'd like to see some notification improvements, some more—and Mike has been

00:39:01   banging this drum for a while, and I think he's right—some more granular controls for

00:39:07   notifications, again, on upgrade this week.

00:39:09   I don't recall if it was Mike or Jason, but one of them said, "Hey, what about geofencing

00:39:14   your notification preferences?"

00:39:15   I think that was on upgrade.

00:39:16   Maybe it wasn't.

00:39:17   Like, "At work, I want these notifications.

00:39:20   At home, I want these notifications," or whatever the case may be.

00:39:22   Or can we group things more intelligently?

00:39:25   Can we do something to make this better and preferably have more granular controls over

00:39:30   what does or does not make it through the barrier?

00:39:34   Additionally, I would love to have either third-party watch faces, which we've all been

00:39:41   banging that drum for a long time, or I would just think—I think it would be really excellent

00:39:46   to be able to have third-party Siri watch face, like, widgets or whatever those are

00:39:51   called.

00:39:52   Because I actually—I use the Siri watch face when I'm at work because it's a really

00:39:57   nice way to kind of see what your day is—what's in front of you for the day in a very lovely

00:40:02   and easy-to-scroll nice way.

00:40:05   And it would be awesome if I could have, like, a weather report inserted from Carrot Weather

00:40:12   when it thinks it's going to rain.

00:40:13   You know, at 4.53, oh, it's probably going to rain, or something like that.

00:40:17   And I'm not even sure what other ones I want, but I feel like this is something I

00:40:20   want in my life.

00:40:21   So those are my three, like, I would really love these things to happen.

00:40:26   And so it's general Siri improvements, Siri watch face, like, widgets for third parties.

00:40:32   Again, I'll ask for third-party watch faces, but I feel like this is my Gene Munster TV

00:40:37   moment.

00:40:38   And then finally—

00:40:39   And it's on my list, too.

00:40:40   And finally, notifications improvements, I think would be lovely.

00:40:43   But again, I'm not sure I'm expecting any of that.

00:40:45   In terms of the secrecy and us not knowing at this late date much of anything, like,

00:40:50   the usual read on that in the modern Apple era is that hardware stuff is much harder

00:40:56   to keep secret than software stuff, especially software stuff that only happens in California,

00:41:00   right?

00:41:01   So that argues for no hardware of any interest, because that probably would have leaked by

00:41:07   now if it's in any state to be announced.

00:41:10   But software stuff is always completely up for grabs, because Apple has shown that it

00:41:14   can keep that really, really secret even when it's something huge like Swift or whatever,

00:41:18   right?

00:41:19   They usually can't keep secret the idea that there is a project underway to do something

00:41:23   about this, but they can keep secret of, like, what year will it be released?

00:41:26   When will it be announced, right?

00:41:28   So I would—is it going to be anything remotely dramatic?

00:41:31   I have to think it's going to be software, which is kind of a shame, because there's

00:41:34   a lot of sort of, again, boring rebuilding-year-style hardware that they could put out, like, slightly

00:41:42   revised laptops to address some of our concerns, right?

00:41:46   They've had a long time to do something with the keyboard, right?

00:41:50   You know, some kind of device besides an iPhone X that lacks a home button, so pick one of

00:41:57   the iPads and make a swipey version of it, right?

00:41:59   Maybe with Face ID or—I don't know.

00:42:01   There's all sorts of things—small, iterative, non-revolutionary things they could do with

00:42:06   their current hardware line and announce, but it just seems like if any of that was

00:42:09   in the cards, we would have heard leaks from it already, so I'm not holding my breath

00:42:14   for any of that.

00:42:15   I'm also not holding my breath for Siri improvements just because of, like, I mean,

00:42:20   history and the fact that they're still, like, hiring important people to help work

00:42:25   on Siri.

00:42:26   It's like if you're just hiring important people to help on Siri, like, we're not

00:42:29   going to see the fruits of those labors anytime soon, so, you know, maybe next year, right?

00:42:33   So, but who knows?

00:42:34   Again, solve our stuff a secret.

00:42:36   Maybe they're bringing new people on board, but maybe the second or third generation Siri

00:42:39   has been in the works for two years now, and now it's coming out here.

00:42:42   We never do know.

00:42:43   Yeah, I mean, it does often seem like they just kind of woke up to the Mac having a major

00:42:49   problem last spring and to Siri having a major problem this spring.

00:42:54   Yeah, I hope—I really, I mean, the evidence shows that that probably is the case with

00:42:58   the Mac, but I really hope it's not true with Siri because that's their bread and

00:43:01   butter.

00:43:02   That's their product that they supposedly care a lot about, and it's a flagship feature,

00:43:06   and I don't, like, I think it is incumbent upon everyone in leadership at Apple to own

00:43:12   all of their competitors' devices and products so they know what everyone else is doing.

00:43:18   Like, is it conceivable that these people, like, had no experience with any of the other

00:43:23   voice assistants for years and years?

00:43:25   Like, I find that hard to believe, and it would be bad if that was the case.

00:43:29   So I think they should have known how far behind Siri is, and maybe it's like they

00:43:35   knew they were behind, they thought they were working to improve it, but it turns out they

00:43:40   needed an entirely different approach, and maybe they just discovered, you know, this

00:43:43   spring that they needed an entirely different approach, and prior to that they had been

00:43:47   like, "We're improving it!

00:43:48   We're trying to improve it!" and just not recognizing that they're not making progress

00:43:52   fast enough or they're barking up the wrong tree.

00:43:53   I don't know.

00:43:54   That's the kind of question that Apple won't answer.

00:43:57   It's like, "Why is Siri not better?"

00:43:59   You know, they always do improve it every year.

00:44:02   It's just the improvements have not been keeping pace with the competitors' improvements,

00:44:05   and that's been true for many years, and now the gap is wide.

00:44:08   I think the basic flaws remain.

00:44:10   It's still unreliable, inconsistent, slow, and too cutesy.

00:44:14   Like, those have been the problems since the beginning.

00:44:17   And not smart enough.

00:44:18   Like, I mean, this is a meme on Twitter where people post, like, "It's the blessing

00:44:24   and curse of Apple that when you talk to your phone, it gives you the little transcript

00:44:28   of what Siri thinks you said and then Siri's response, so it's perfect for screenshotting."

00:44:34   And that is definitely a genre where someone asked some question or tried to say something

00:44:39   to set up some kind of appointment, and Siri was unclear about something.

00:44:41   So it said, "Do you mean, you know, Thursday the 28th or Friday the 29th?"

00:44:46   And the answer was 29th.

00:44:49   And Siri said, "I'm not sure what the weather is on blah blah blah."

00:44:52   I was like, "What?

00:44:53   What?"

00:44:54   And Siri clearly understood the 29 and had just asked a question about 28 or 29 but could

00:44:58   not map that 29 back to, you know, so you just take a screenshot of this absurd conversation.

00:45:04   There should be fewer of those over time, not more.

00:45:07   You know, and it's much more daring, like, audio because you're like, "Well, maybe

00:45:11   you didn't understand me or misinterpreted what I said," but it puts on the screen

00:45:15   what it thinks you said, and it just asks you a question about the 28th or 29th.

00:45:18   You say 29.

00:45:20   It puts the 2 and the 9 on the screen as what it understood you to say and then goes off

00:45:24   the rails.

00:45:25   Stuff like that just can't happen, right?

00:45:27   So I hope to see those type of screenshots either go away or become situations where

00:45:34   it's like, "Oh, well, you can't expect Siri to have figured that out.

00:45:37   That is actually complicated and nuanced."

00:45:39   But the brain dead stupid ones should go away.

00:45:42   Imagine, like, if you look at the incredible amount of access Siri has to us, to our devices,

00:45:51   to our information, to our bodies, Siri has the privileged access spot on the highest

00:45:59   profile, best mobile devices.

00:46:02   Now we have the watch with Siri.

00:46:04   We have, of course, iPhone and iPad.

00:46:05   We have the Mac with parts of Siri.

00:46:08   We have the Apple TV with Siri.

00:46:09   We have the HomePod with Siri.

00:46:11   These could be amazing products and this could be an amazingly useful assistant if it was

00:46:18   not even great but merely good.

00:46:21   But it's not even that yet.

00:46:23   And now that we're seven years into it, it's really concerning that it isn't better than

00:46:29   it is yet.

00:46:30   So I just want so much more from Siri.

00:46:34   But I don't want Siri to be better than Alexa, better than Google Assistant, like better than

00:46:40   Cortana, I don't know anything about Cortana.

00:46:41   I don't need it to be better than those.

00:46:43   I used to need it to be almost as good even.

00:46:47   It doesn't even approach that.

00:46:49   It's not even almost as good.

00:46:50   It's barely in the game at all compared to the other ones.

00:46:53   And I needed it to be where Alexa was two years ago.

00:46:57   That's where I need Siri to be.

00:46:59   That would be a huge upgrade from where it is now and that's sad.

00:47:04   Anyway, with Siri's specific requests, I do have some of those.

00:47:08   What I really hope, of course, for Overcast, I really hope for a SiriKit audio intent.

00:47:14   This is something that I still don't know if it's necessarily likely.

00:47:18   There's obviously a lot of work involved in building some kind of system for Siri to index

00:47:25   what is available from the music app.

00:47:29   There are ways in SiriKit, which I now know.

00:47:32   I use SiriKit in my Swift teaching walking map app.

00:47:35   But now I know how the basic intents API works.

00:47:39   And there is a provision there for the app that's being called upon to provide vocabulary

00:47:45   words to Siri that the user might be using.

00:47:47   So things like names of their notes or names of their playlists or whatever else.

00:47:53   So I could provide those for Overcast.

00:47:54   I could say, "Here's the podcast you subscribe to.

00:47:56   So this is the list of things they might be saying and try to match that and let me know

00:48:00   what you find."

00:48:01   But something like Spotify, it's a little bit harder for the Spotify app to provide

00:48:06   a list of strings that could be any band they could be possibly asking for, any song title.

00:48:12   That could get pretty extreme pretty quickly.

00:48:15   So for the audio intent system, there would have to be some kind of different and more

00:48:20   complex maybe asynchronous or offline indexing process, kind of like what Spotlight does

00:48:25   on the Mac.

00:48:26   Or some kind of web search API which would be probably unlikely for Apple to use.

00:48:32   So I see the complexity in an audio intent.

00:48:36   I also see the possible competitive pressure for Apple to never add it because now Apple

00:48:42   Music is the only thing you can use, you can call it by name from Siri on your phone, which

00:48:47   is useful in the car, or from a HomePod.

00:48:50   So that boosts Apple Music subscription.

00:48:52   So I can see why they might not do it.

00:48:54   I think those are bad reasons.

00:48:55   I think they should do it anyway because I think the value it provides to the platform

00:48:58   and to their hardware products is better than whatever they're making for Apple Music and

00:49:02   whatever effort they're saving.

00:49:03   But anyway, a SiriKit audio intent would be very, very good and that would make me very

00:49:10   happy.

00:49:11   I also think currently the SiriKit intents are very narrow in focus and in scope.

00:49:19   So most apps can't actually involve Siri in their interface or their usage.

00:49:26   Most apps have no use for Siri because most apps are not note taking apps, workout apps,

00:49:31   reminders apps, payment, like cash payment apps, or ride handling apps.

00:49:36   Those are most of the, or to do apps.

00:49:39   Those are most of the SiriKit intents.

00:49:41   Like if your app is not one of those like five or six things that they have these little

00:49:45   narrow intents for, not only is there nothing for you to use, but you aren't even allowed

00:49:50   to like fake it because app review will, you know, you might think if you try to like,

00:49:54   if I tried to say, oh yeah, Overcast is a notes app.

00:49:57   So if you say like, you know, add play to my ATP note, like I can try to fake it and

00:50:04   make that work, but I'd be rejected pretty fast.

00:50:06   So what I want to see from SiriKit is not just like two or three new narrow intents.

00:50:15   What I really want to see is less specific generic intents that can be used more broadly

00:50:22   for lots of app types, even if it isn't necessarily as sophisticated or as good as specialized

00:50:29   intent for a narrow thing could be.

00:50:32   So this could be as simple as do blank in app or tell app to blank blank with like an

00:50:40   action and an object.

00:50:42   So tell app to action object or action object in app or do action in app.

00:50:49   And then the app can provide through the vocabulary API, you know, a small set of actions and

00:50:55   object vocabularies that it could be asking about.

00:50:58   This is something that the Mac text to speech API had like a billion years ago.

00:51:02   This is not a new concept and doing speech recognition with a limited vocabulary is really

00:51:05   accurate and really easy these days.

00:51:07   So like that is not going to be as smart as, you know, something that's more, you know,

00:51:13   like a multi-step kind of here.

00:51:15   What do you want your message to so and so to say, well, where do you want to hail your

00:51:19   ride from the lift app?

00:51:21   Like it doesn't, those are great.

00:51:23   They exist.

00:51:24   But there's this massive number of apps out there that currently can use nothing with

00:51:29   Siri and that hurts everything that hurts series usefulness.

00:51:33   It hurts developers and it hurts users ability to use apps through Siri that they might want

00:51:37   to use.

00:51:38   So just some kind of generic action that can just map a generic list of verbs and objects

00:51:44   to the system and have the system, you know, respond to basic commands like that.

00:51:50   So many apps could use that, that yeah, it isn't as fancy as the narrow intense, but

00:51:55   it's better than nothing, which is currently what we have and what it seems like we're

00:51:58   going to have for a while.

00:52:00   And incidentally, that kind of change is exactly the kind of thing that happens year over year

00:52:04   at WWDC.

00:52:05   Like they'll announce an API and it will be very limited and there'll be a bunch of use

00:52:11   cases that it doesn't cover, but the ones that it does cover, it covers well and it

00:52:15   has, you know, maybe it has a novel design like this does where instead of just, you

00:52:18   know, the brain dead thing where you say words, we turn it into text and we chuck the text

00:52:22   over the wall to your application and let you handle it.

00:52:25   This is, you know, it's much more sophisticated in saying, well, because these intents are

00:52:28   so specific, we can figure out what they mean.

00:52:31   And by the time we talk to you, your app doesn't have to deal with text.

00:52:34   We'll just tell your app what to do.

00:52:35   And you know, they're very, very limited, but also very, you know, a novel take, not

00:52:42   the most obvious thing that you would do.

00:52:43   Right.

00:52:44   So at that WWDC and over the course of the year, they get feedback from developers using

00:52:50   it.

00:52:51   Okay, I like this about it, but I can't use it in this way.

00:52:53   Or I'd like to do something like that.

00:52:54   Or it, you know, there's these common use cases that don't fit, like Margaret was saying,

00:52:59   like Spotify.

00:53:00   I can't give you a list of my vocabulary.

00:53:01   I have every song in the world.

00:53:03   Right.

00:53:04   And Apple, you know, says, okay, thanks for the feedback, blah, blah, blah.

00:53:06   And then the next year they come out with an improved version of this API to saying,

00:53:13   now we cover more use cases.

00:53:15   Maybe we have a generic one to cover use cases like Spotify.

00:53:17   Maybe there's a few classes of applications that we want to cover, not just specific intents,

00:53:23   but these classes require a different approach, require approach more like Marco described

00:53:27   or whatever.

00:53:28   And that reads mostly as a boring thing.

00:53:32   Like maybe, you know, it gets a mention in the keynote, but if you go to the session

00:53:36   and if you've spent the year sending feedback and being frustrated that you can't use it

00:53:40   and you're in one of those big new classes, you're like, oh wow, this is great.

00:53:43   Like this is why, this is why developers, people don't understand why anyone would want

00:53:46   to go to W2W3C.

00:53:48   Developers get excited when, you know, they go to the keynote and maybe there's some fun

00:53:51   things but doesn't really go over their lives.

00:53:53   And they go to the sessions that interest them that are related to their work or their

00:53:56   app.

00:53:57   And in those sessions they learn, oh, this is going to change everything.

00:54:00   Like this new API is what I've wanted because now all these things that I wanted to do,

00:54:04   I don't have to write my own code for it.

00:54:05   I don't need to read, we're weird work around or I'm, I'm able to add features that I've

00:54:09   always wanted to add that I couldn't before for app review reasons or whatever.

00:54:13   And they get super excited about something that's buried 20 minutes into an obscure session

00:54:18   somewhere.

00:54:19   And the fruits of that come out like, you know, over the course of the year applications

00:54:22   that didn't have an ability, you know, start getting it.

00:54:25   Like if you would just talk into the air and have Overcast play a specific episode for

00:54:29   you and be able to tell it to do things, that's a game changer.

00:54:34   If that's going to be the case, Marco will find out about it by, you know, watching a

00:54:37   screen of obsession next week.

00:54:40   And then you'll find out about it if you're not listening to this podcast, you know, weeks

00:54:44   or months later.

00:54:45   And it will just be like, oh, why don't they finally added this feature?

00:54:48   That's great.

00:54:49   But WWC is excited for exactly these reasons that they make changes to APIs that seem boring

00:54:54   and inconsequential, but have wide reaching consequences over the course of the year.

00:54:59   So I'm actually kind of hopeful, not that Siri is going to get radically improved, but

00:55:03   that pretty much exactly what Marco described is entirely plausible for a sort of down year

00:55:12   where it's not going to make Siri magically amazing, but it will be the next major step

00:55:18   in the Siri Intents API, which will, you know, will go a long way to making our apps nicer

00:55:22   for all of us.

00:55:24   One more thing I would like to have on the Intents front is SiriKit default app settings.

00:55:31   You know, the idea of being able of users being able to change the default app on iOS

00:55:35   for various system level things has been on people's wish lists for since the beginning

00:55:40   of iOS.

00:55:41   You know, the people have wanted to be able to like set Chrome as their browser or set

00:55:44   Gmail as their mail client.

00:55:46   I don't see those things happening for lots of reasons, various system level integrations

00:55:52   and stuff like that.

00:55:53   But having SiriKit be able to say, you know what, when I use a reminders intent, when

00:55:58   I say remind me in things to do this, can I actually have an option that any reminding

00:56:03   intent defaults to things or, you know, whatever, insert your app of choice for your intent

00:56:07   of choice here.

00:56:09   That would go a long way towards, I think, boosting usage of SiriKit and just making

00:56:14   the experience of using it smoother for the users.

00:56:17   Like having any like advancement to that system is going to pay dividends in how people use

00:56:24   Siri, how good Siri is, how much they're able to use it, and just how little friction

00:56:29   there is.

00:56:30   Right now, I say remind me in things to do blah, blah, and about one out of eight to

00:56:35   ten times, it misses the things part and adds it to reminders for no apparent reason.

00:56:42   And you know, again, it's just more friction.

00:56:43   And I have to remember to say somewhere in the sentence, in things.

00:56:47   And it would be nice if I didn't have to say that because I never want to add things

00:56:51   to the system reminders app.

00:56:53   And if I did, I could say remind me in reminders to do this.

00:56:57   So having a default system for SiriKit apps, I know a default system for web browsers and

00:57:02   emails is too much to ask, probably.

00:57:05   But SiriKit seems like a win-win for everybody.

00:57:08   >> The default app thing is like the one feature that we didn't get in iOS 8.

00:57:12   Like that was the year where we got all the things we thought we were never going to get.

00:57:16   And you could put that in the keynote.

00:57:18   Like that is a big applause line in the keynote of saying you can now pick your default apps,

00:57:22   not just for the intents, but OSY.

00:57:24   I don't think there are any remaining reasonable technical barriers for doing it.

00:57:28   It's just a matter of doing the work to do it.

00:57:30   Like you've had long enough.

00:57:31   Like we've waited.

00:57:32   You know, you did third-party keyboards, but you didn't do I can change to my default mail

00:57:36   app.

00:57:37   It's ridiculous.

00:57:38   Right?

00:57:39   So I think that needs to come.

00:57:42   Maybe it doesn't need to be this year, but it better be on their radar because people

00:57:47   will love it.

00:57:48   It's kind of like the notification stuff.

00:57:49   Like this sound -- we're at the point with iOS where there's not a lot of huge features

00:57:56   that everyone's going to use that people feel like are missing, but there's plenty of features

00:57:59   that people use every day that if they were improved, if you said, oh, and by the way,

00:58:03   we're going to let you change your default mail app, so many people use Gmail or whatever.

00:58:10   That's a big -- definitely a big applause line at WWDC.

00:58:12   And it's just -- it's one more thing.

00:58:15   I found another category of things you feel embarrassed having to explain to people who

00:58:19   are not obsessive Apple followers while setting up their phone.

00:58:22   It's like, oh, look, they're looking at all these great apps, and I can use this and that

00:58:25   and that.

00:58:26   And they're like -- you get the question three weeks later.

00:58:29   How can I make it when I mail something using this handy share thing that you showed me,

00:58:35   how can I make it so it mails it and sends it in Gmail?

00:58:38   That you can kind of answer them, oh, get rid of the mail thing and put the Gmail icon

00:58:42   there, whatever.

00:58:43   But it's like, what about when -- like in your case, what about when I tell it to remind

00:58:46   me?

00:58:47   How can I make it remind me?

00:58:48   And I have to start explaining and be like, well, you can't really do that.

00:58:53   You have to always remember to say things.

00:58:56   And if you have an unpronounceable reminder application, you're kind of screwed.

00:59:00   Learn to say -- what is the Todoist one?

00:59:02   >> Todoist.

00:59:03   >> Todoist.

00:59:04   >> I don't know.

00:59:05   >> Todoist, right.

00:59:07   That's an embarrassing long conversation that, you know, maybe doesn't come up that often,

00:59:12   but it's a type of thing where I can make excuses for iOS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, right?

00:59:19   But like we're up into 12 now.

00:59:23   It's time for that to get on someone's radar.

00:59:25   And honestly, I think it is definitely a one-year project and it is a big applause line and

00:59:31   it will be a big like before and after thing where we're like, I remember when you couldn't

00:59:35   even change the default application on iOS.

00:59:37   That was tough.

00:59:38   And it will help third-party developers.

00:59:39   That's what you want to do at WWDC.

00:59:41   So people -- you, third-party developer, have a better opportunity to make more money in

00:59:47   the App Store because now people will be able to use your application as the default reminder's

00:59:50   application and that will make them use it more and want to pay for it more and so on

00:59:53   and so forth.

00:59:55   >> And that's been a big theme to things that we've gotten at previous WWDCs that we've

01:00:00   been very happy with is ways for third-party apps to have the same levels of access and

01:00:08   privilege and functionality on the system that Apple's own apps do.

01:00:12   Like giving us the same abilities that Apple's apps might have.

01:00:15   So you know, like when we got background audio, finally we could have like background -- like

01:00:20   we could have third-party music and podcast players and they could do all the same things

01:00:24   that Apple's could do, you know, stuff like that.

01:00:26   And over the years, Apple really has broken down a lot of those barriers of differences

01:00:31   between what their apps can do and what any app can do.

01:00:35   And Siri involvement here is one of those major ones that's -- and default handling

01:00:40   of URLs is one of those major ones that is still a really big barrier that significantly

01:00:46   hinders third-party apps that rely on these things.

01:00:50   And so anything they can do to level that playing field a little bit is going to be

01:00:54   way better for the apps and therefore way better for Apple's users and Apple.

01:00:59   >> I just -- I don't think default apps, you know, being able to set a default web browser,

01:01:03   set a default email client, I'm hard-pressed to imagine an Apple where that's okay.

01:01:10   >> Third-party keyboards, Casey.

01:01:11   Third-party keyboards.

01:01:12   >> I hear you.

01:01:13   I really do.

01:01:14   >> Like that was the year.

01:01:15   It was like Apple's never going to do X and they're like, guess what?

01:01:18   They just did all the X except for default apps.

01:01:21   Like it's -- they've done it on Mac OS for years.

01:01:24   It's not like there is work involved.

01:01:27   I understand not doing it in the first, say, decade of iOS or whatever long it's been,

01:01:32   but now is the time.

01:01:34   People are saying, oh, there's no big features, no music from iOS.

01:01:36   Right, but there are little ones.

01:01:38   There are little ones and they are missing.

01:01:40   And most of them you just look to the competition to see what they are, right?

01:01:43   I mean, the enhanced notifications and the more sophisticated, you know, speech stuff.

01:01:49   And yes, default applications.

01:01:51   Like it's a thing that they're going to have to do eventually.

01:01:55   And if not this year, then maybe next year, but please not 10 years from now because that

01:01:59   will be too long.

01:02:00   Like it's an embarrassing -- it's kind of like a vestige of the days when Apple didn't

01:02:04   think there would be third-party applications at all.

01:02:05   Like the one year when they had no app store and they're just like, you know, make web

01:02:09   apps or whatever.

01:02:12   Having the bundled mail app be the default and the bundled reminder app be the default

01:02:18   and anytime you say mail and remind, it's like that's not the world we live in anymore

01:02:23   and the phone should reflect that.

01:02:25   Well, it's funny you said low-hanging fruit because I was going to say myself that the

01:02:31   only thing that gives me pause when I say there's no freaking way they're going to do

01:02:35   it is that we are running out of obvious low-hanging fruit for Apple to fix, which is good.

01:02:41   I mean, that's very good.

01:02:42   That means iOS is getting pretty mature and pretty robust and that's a good thing.

01:02:48   But that is -- setting default apps is a piece of theoretically low-hanging fruit.

01:02:55   Of course, now I'm committing the ultimate programmer sin and saying, "Oh, I'm sure that's

01:02:58   easy."

01:02:59   It's just --

01:03:00   How hard could it be?

01:03:01   How hard could it be?

01:03:02   I mean, there are complications, but like, you know, you've had time to deal with the

01:03:06   complications.

01:03:07   You've had many, many years to say, "Oh, we're not doing that this year.

01:03:09   It's not a high enough priority.

01:03:10   There are more important things to do.

01:03:11   It's complicated," right?

01:03:13   All those conversations should have happened.

01:03:15   Yes, that was the right answer then.

01:03:16   Now the answer should be, "You know what?

01:03:18   That actually is probably the most -- one of the things we can do that gets the most

01:03:22   bang for the buck about making it a more attractive platform for third-party developers and making

01:03:29   users happy with it."

01:03:30   That's the level we're at now with iOS where it's like -- same thing with more sophisticated

01:03:36   notification facilities.

01:03:37   This is a pain point for users.

01:03:40   We have notifications.

01:03:41   They're good.

01:03:42   They've been improving, but there are still a couple things that we could change to make

01:03:45   them better for our users and add a special Apple Touch to it, right?

01:03:50   So do it slightly better or smarter than Android if you want to be clever with it.

01:03:54   But our notifications are not as sophisticated, and it results in our devices annoying our

01:04:00   users in situations that we don't want it to.

01:04:02   So let's tackle that.

01:04:04   Now is the time for that stuff.

01:04:05   Or next year, you know, sometime around there.

01:04:08   I mean, with so much of this stuff -- I know this probably is not the case, but so many

01:04:14   areas of Apple's OSs and so many of their first-party apps appear to have a staff of

01:04:21   like one person.

01:04:23   It seems like they just make glacial progress in some of these areas.

01:04:27   And every year, the big new thing of the new OS is something that it seems like shouldn't

01:04:34   have taken an entire year for the biggest company in the world with all the money in

01:04:39   the world.

01:04:40   Because that's kind of all you did in a year.

01:04:44   And I think another major area that I'd like to see Apple improve on, which I don't expect

01:04:49   to happen anytime soon, because by all accounts, it's actually gotten worse in the last few

01:04:53   years, especially under Tim Cook's structure of management, is I want to see a sign that

01:05:00   Apple can walk and chew gum at the same time.

01:05:05   I want to see a sign of them being able to actually hustle a little bit, like pick up

01:05:10   the pace, actually innovate on all their platforms without two-thirds of them being seemingly

01:05:16   neglected all the time.

01:05:18   Actually move forward and use the massive resources they have to maintain all the platforms

01:05:25   that they voluntarily launched.

01:05:27   It's not like people force them to do all these things.

01:05:29   So I want to see more hustle.

01:05:34   I don't want to be constantly saying that's all you did in a whole year.

01:05:37   Isn't that the opposite of my desire for a slowdown?

01:05:41   Well your desire for a slowdown is only a thing because it seems like they can't update

01:05:47   two OSs with quality.

01:05:50   The right answer to that isn't, "Well, you better slow down so you do everything even

01:05:54   more glacially."

01:05:56   The answer to that is, "There's some bottlenecks here that need to be fixed."

01:05:59   Well, it's more like don't race ahead so quickly that you leave your messes behind you.

01:06:04   That's the philosophy of the slowdown.

01:06:06   It's not so much that we feel like you can't improve simultaneously, but that you're

01:06:10   racing ahead on all your platforms so fast that you're not taking time to pay down

01:06:15   the tech debt and fix the little niggling bugs and all that stuff that's behind.

01:06:22   I suppose you could say if they improved the baseline quality of all their products but

01:06:29   did it across all of them, not just the iPhone.

01:06:35   The Mac was still buggy and the iPad was still neglected.

01:06:39   I feel like if they can make a noticeable improvement, even if it's just stability

01:06:47   and bugs, but across all of their things, it would show they are able to walk and chew

01:06:51   gum at the same time.

01:06:53   They're just not yet at the point where they can show a noticeable improvement across all

01:06:57   stuff and also massively advance all stuff.

01:07:01   You've got to walk before you can run.

01:07:03   I feel like they're rebuilding.

01:07:04   They need to get back to basics.

01:07:07   Yes, pay attention to everything.

01:07:09   Don't leave anything behind and say, "Oh, we're just not doing anything to that this

01:07:12   year."

01:07:13   But what you do to everything, start small.

01:07:15   Just improve quality, minor new features, better stability, removal of old bugs, but

01:07:23   do it across everything.

01:07:24   Honestly, I think that would be an improvement because it used to be that it would race ahead

01:07:28   as fast as you can but totally ignore certain platforms and that didn't feel good.

01:07:33   I think it's just tough because obviously the best we can do is armchair quarterback

01:07:38   and pontificate about what's going on inside Apple, but it sure feels like this annual

01:07:43   release cycle—and we've talked about this before—the annual release cycle is not compatible

01:07:48   with the sorts of things they're trying to do now.

01:07:51   This perhaps relates to what I was saying a few minutes ago about there being not a

01:07:54   lot of low-hanging fruit anymore.

01:07:56   So, the things that they want to do to iOS and to macOS as well, they're big, complex

01:08:04   things that take a long time to do.

01:08:06   And if they're being compelled to do them in a year or less, I'm sure I'm oversimplifying

01:08:11   some, but that may not be compatible.

01:08:14   And so, I think some sort of indication that Apple is willing to say, "No, this marketing

01:08:22   feature we were really going to hang our hats on for 2018, it's just not ready.

01:08:28   It's just not ready, so let's wait and let's not say a thing until it is ready."

01:08:31   And it seems like Apple used to be much better about that than they are now.

01:08:37   And we did hear a report—one of you mentioned this earlier—a report a couple months ago

01:08:40   that they are going to go back to doing that and they're going to have the courage to

01:08:47   not release things if they so desire, which I think is healthy and good.

01:08:51   And so, I think it's both things, right?

01:08:55   We want them to move quickly on the things they can, which is what Marco was saying,

01:09:01   but we also want them to have the strength of will or courage to say, "You know what?

01:09:06   This just ain't ready.

01:09:07   It's got to wait."

01:09:08   And I think both of those things can be true.

01:09:10   A yearly release cycle doesn't mean things take a year to do.

01:09:12   That just means every year you release something, right?

01:09:15   So I feel like the slowdown—again, I mentioned this on past shows—many of the projects

01:09:20   that come out have been in the works for three, five years, right?

01:09:23   They're not one-year projects.

01:09:24   It's just that the rumor about them slowing down was, "Let's become more aggressive

01:09:29   and more honest with ourselves about whether something actually is ready this year."

01:09:34   So the rumor was things got booted out of iOS 12, things that—two years ago, Apple

01:09:39   would have said, "Eh, we could probably squeeze that into iOS 12."

01:09:41   There's always this—as new OSes approach, you have to decide which features make the

01:09:46   cut and which don't, which is why nobody inside Apple can remember when anything was

01:09:50   released because they've all been in the works for years and years, and you're like,

01:09:52   "Oh, yeah, that's right.

01:09:53   It didn't even make that release.

01:09:54   Even though it was almost done, we saved it for the next one," right?

01:09:56   So the change in Apple is when we make that trade-off conversation about, "This has

01:10:01   been in the works for three years.

01:10:02   Is it ready to go on iOS 12, or are we going to save it for 13?"

01:10:05   To change wherever the balance point is of go/no-go, to say, "Actually, let's be even

01:10:11   more conservative because we've proven to ourselves that whatever balance we were striking

01:10:16   before, we were being too aggressive."

01:10:18   We would say, "Eh, we could probably get that ready in time for WWC.

01:10:22   We could probably ship that in the OS."

01:10:24   And then once you announce it, you're kind of committed, and it turns out—so that their

01:10:28   balance was a little bit off.

01:10:29   So it's not about projects taking a year versus two years or whatever.

01:10:33   It's more about where you draw the line and where you cut things off.

01:10:39   That's a fair point.

01:10:41   And then one way to think about the slowdown thing is, at the top of the notes here, I

01:10:46   had, "I usually do this every WWC," and I'm thinking about it in a different way

01:10:50   for this one.

01:10:51   The stuff we kind of know they're going to announce, and for years we've been right

01:10:55   in knowing that they're going to announce these things, like there'll be a new iOS,

01:10:58   there'll be a new macOS, there'll be a new version of Xcode, right?

01:11:02   Things that just happen at every WWDC.

01:11:04   And just the question of what will be in the new iOS, what will be in the new macOS, what

01:11:07   will be in the new Xcode, what will be announced for Swift, which is much easier because it's

01:11:11   all open, right?

01:11:12   But I'm wondering if one thing they could do that would be dramatic would be not to

01:11:21   have a new macOS this year, not to have a new iOS.

01:11:24   I mean, you probably can't get away with not having a new iOS.

01:11:27   I'm just wondering if the standard required suite of things that we know at every WWDC,

01:11:36   is there any wiggle room on that, that there wouldn't be one of them?

01:11:40   What if they just did macOS 10.13.16.17.18?

01:11:45   Like what if they just continued that train, right?

01:11:47   And add features in point releases, but if they didn't have the burden of having a newly

01:11:53   named, newly numbered, new major version of all their stuff, maybe not even a new version

01:11:59   of Xcode, maybe just an Xcode, but I don't even know what the hell version Xcode is on,

01:12:02   but just don't change the first number or the second number, just change the third number.

01:12:09   I don't think that's likely.

01:12:10   I think there will be those new things and there'll just be less and different stuff

01:12:14   in them, but it's worth considering whether Apple is a prisoner to every year having one

01:12:21   of those things, even if it's just like a marketing thing.

01:12:23   It's like, well, this is really iOS 11 point whatever, but we're just going to change the

01:12:27   first number to 12 and add the two features to fix a bunch of bugs.

01:12:32   I don't see that on the cards, but I'm thinking about what the reaction would be and whether

01:12:36   or not it would be a healthier thing to do, to Casey's point about the pressure to cut

01:12:42   a new major release of all these important components and to be able to have enough marketing

01:12:48   features to be worthy of a new name and a new number and a new section of your website.

01:12:54   That seems like it might influence the decision about whether something is ready to fit in

01:12:58   an OS, but it's like, well, we can't cut that.

01:13:00   If we cut that from iOS 12, why do we even get to call it 12?

01:13:04   What's different about it than an 11, except for a bunch of bug fixes and minor features?

01:13:08   How is this even a 12?

01:13:09   That needs to stay in and that can lead you to the path of either shipping something before

01:13:14   you should or promising something that doesn't arrive for a year later.

01:13:19   Anything else with regard to software?

01:13:20   Are we really expecting anything for macOS?

01:13:23   Is that a thing?

01:13:25   I think there'll be 10.14.

01:13:27   I think it will have a new name and I'm, God knows what they're going to include.

01:13:32   I suppose there'll be like Metal and ARKit stuff.

01:13:36   There's lots of young frameworks that can kind of carry the weight of new major versions

01:13:43   of the OS.

01:13:44   But you want this new, cool ARKit functionality.

01:13:47   It's only an iOS 12 and a macOS 10.14 name of California City, right?

01:13:55   It's not really an OS feature, but it comes with the OS and probably requires the OS.

01:14:01   But in terms of major new features that are not across platform UI framework for macOS,

01:14:07   I don't know.

01:14:09   I've even given up asking for OpenGL because obviously that ship has sailed.

01:14:15   So I feel like it's just framework stuff, maybe an enhanced version of Time Machine

01:14:20   that takes advantage of APFS.

01:14:24   But even that, that can wait until next year too.

01:14:26   iOS 12, I think we mostly discussed.

01:14:28   There are plenty of things that can do iOS 12 that will be crowd-pleasing, that will

01:14:32   have a significant impact on users and third-party developers and they should do those things.

01:14:38   WatchOS, we've talked about that as well.

01:14:40   Although have they always had a new version of WatchOS at WWDC?

01:14:43   I forget what the timing on WatchOS is.

01:14:45   I believe so.

01:14:46   Yeah, they have.

01:14:47   I mean, I really am curious to see where that goes because WatchOS is so weird.

01:14:54   It always has been.

01:14:57   They've made improvements over the last couple of releases, but it's still not what you want

01:15:02   it to be.

01:15:03   It's still not great.

01:15:04   They still need to, I think, rethink a lot of what WatchOS is and how things are done.

01:15:11   Like Casey, I would love to see third-party watch faces.

01:15:14   I don't expect that.

01:15:16   I expect Apple to continue to want to lock that down for themselves.

01:15:19   Although that would be such an insane crowd-pleaser.

01:15:21   I don't think they ever have to do that, but boy, people would go nuts for that.

01:15:25   Because talk about things you can sell to people with watches.

01:15:27   You can sell watch faces for sure.

01:15:29   Of course.

01:15:30   And it's a fashion item.

01:15:33   It's already kind of awkward that everyone has the same watch.

01:15:38   That's not great for people's fashion identities and stuff.

01:15:42   They have customizability with the straps somewhat, but geez, give people the ability

01:15:48   to have their own watch face.

01:15:49   Let them make this their own.

01:15:51   And then ideally, hopefully, the watch faces could be a little bit smart too.

01:15:55   Maybe offering their own intelligent displays of certain types of data or complications.

01:16:00   There's lots of ways they could do it.

01:16:03   I have a feeling if they did it at all, they would probably do it in a very limited way.

01:16:06   And I still don't expect them to do it at all, honestly.

01:16:09   But if they did, the potential could be great.

01:16:13   If they allow it to be.

01:16:15   I would love to see that.

01:16:16   I would even just see, I'd love to see things like, in addition to all my other complaints

01:16:21   about WatchKit, because WatchKit is horrible, and I still maintain that WatchKit should

01:16:26   be entirely thrown away, and there should be a UI framework that Apple uses and developers

01:16:35   use.

01:16:36   Whether they're working on such a thing, I have no idea, but I hope they are.

01:16:40   But who knows?

01:16:42   And there's lots of things with audio that I want to see.

01:16:46   My number one problem with my watch app is that the now playing glance has a volume control

01:16:52   from the crown that controls the phone's volume.

01:16:55   And I can't offer that.

01:16:56   There is no way for me to do it in watchOS.

01:16:59   If I could offer that, my app could be competitive with a now playing glance.

01:17:03   Right now, most of, not most, a lot of people, almost most, who could install the overcast

01:17:09   watch app actually delete it off the watch because the now playing app will then show

01:17:13   and it's more useful to them because of volume control.

01:17:16   So some kind of volume widget I really want.

01:17:18   I also, as I've said many times before and blogged about, I want actual background audio

01:17:23   playback through the AV audio APIs, not through the crappy WK audio file player.

01:17:28   I want now playing info center and remote command center so I can actually make a useful

01:17:32   podcast playback experience on the watch.

01:17:36   But also things like, just more generally beyond just what I need, I think the entire

01:17:41   system of complications was a miss and needs to be completely thrown out and rewritten.

01:17:46   Well, why?

01:17:47   Because--

01:17:48   Because I don't think I agree, so convince me.

01:17:50   All right.

01:17:51   So the idea of letting third party apps integrate into the watch faces with complications, that

01:17:56   is a good idea.

01:17:58   But the current system of complications is, first of all, the way they're integrated into

01:18:02   the watch face is way too static where you just have, like the reason why people like

01:18:07   you like the Siri watch face is that it doesn't do this.

01:18:11   It isn't static.

01:18:12   It actually is dynamically servicing things as they matter to you.

01:18:15   The entire complication system should be doing that.

01:18:18   You should have watch faces that can show complications only when they're in use.

01:18:22   So for instance, I don't need to see the timer calculation-- the timer complication if I

01:18:28   don't have an active timer running.

01:18:29   But when I do have an active timer running, I want to see that on the watch face.

01:18:32   Things like that.

01:18:33   You know, basic intelligence.

01:18:34   Things like what the iOS-- what the iPhone lock screen does.

01:18:38   Like the iPhone lock screen can show a timer when it's running.

01:18:41   When it isn't running, it doesn't say set in the middle of your lock screen.

01:18:45   It just doesn't have it there.

01:18:46   It's smart.

01:18:47   It's like I think the watch should be that smart.

01:18:51   It should be as smart as the lock screen on your phone for God's sake.

01:18:54   This isn't rocket science here.

01:18:56   I also think that the entire API for supplying complications with their data was built upon

01:19:05   the like, you know, watch series zero hardware limitations of your app really can't be running

01:19:13   almost ever.

01:19:14   And also the idea that was added in I believe OS 2, which is time travel, where you could

01:19:20   spin the crown on your watch face and have it advance forward and backwards in time and

01:19:23   you could see how your complications change over time.

01:19:26   The entire API is based on that.

01:19:28   And that's really complicated and cumbersome to program against.

01:19:33   Doesn't make sense for all types of applications.

01:19:35   Makes a lot of things way too complicated.

01:19:37   And I think from the user point of view, the time travel feature failed.

01:19:41   That's why in the next version of watchOS they turned it off by default.

01:19:44   So I think that entire system needs to be scrapped and rethought, both from the display

01:19:48   side on the watch faces becoming more smart and the complication side no longer being

01:19:53   based on this weird time travel thing.

01:19:55   I don't know.

01:19:56   What else about WVDC?

01:19:57   TV OS.

01:19:58   Oh yeah.

01:19:59   Oh yeah, that's a thing.

01:20:00   That they occasionally update.

01:20:01   I mean, what I would love from TV OS is if the OS could leap out of that pocket and fix

01:20:09   the remote.

01:20:10   But it can't.

01:20:11   I mean, what's wrong with TV OS now?

01:20:14   The most pressing thing that's wrong with TV OS is not the OS anymore.

01:20:18   It's the devices that it runs on, specifically the remote.

01:20:21   They did the frame rate matching.

01:20:23   And I mean, I don't think their HDR support is up to snuff yet.

01:20:26   I don't have an HDR TV.

01:20:27   But I think that that is an area of improvement.

01:20:29   But the frame rate matching and the improvements to the playback APIs and everything, so that

01:20:38   the third party applications can take advantage of it, those were the last major features

01:20:43   to make the Apple TV a viable video device.

01:20:46   The OS, as far as it goes, running the apps and everything, it's all right.

01:20:51   The performance is all right.

01:20:52   The apps are okay.

01:20:54   The single sign-on stuff, they're doing what they can.

01:20:57   But it's kind of like it's more of a third party dependency thing.

01:21:01   They can improve that a little bit.

01:21:03   But things that I want from the OS that it doesn't do, there's not a lot of the obvious

01:21:10   stuff left they really have to get now into the refinement and performance and new APIs

01:21:15   and allowing easier third party integration to a unified experience.

01:21:19   Kind of like watchOS, they really do need to rethink the entire TV OS interface.

01:21:24   But the one they have is passable.

01:21:26   Mostly people don't want to spend time hanging out there.

01:21:29   They don't want to go into the TV app, the little vestige of their attempted skinny bundle

01:21:34   deal.

01:21:35   And at some point in our future, presumably not this year, the Apple video service is

01:21:38   coming with all their new TV shows and movies and other stuff that Apple is paying billions

01:21:42   of dollars for.

01:21:43   Like that's coming and that's the time to totally revamp Apple TV and take your next

01:21:48   shot at a grid of rectangular things on your screen or whatever their interface is going

01:21:54   to be.

01:21:55   But for now, I'd be content to just do minor refinements and really what I want is a new

01:22:00   remote but I don't see that happening at WWDC.

01:22:02   So TV OS, probably interesting if you're a third party application vendor.

01:22:06   Like oh, now I can get my things to show up in the TV app whereas previously they wouldn't.

01:22:12   That might be kind of interesting for people who use the TV app but I feel like that OS

01:22:17   is in a holding pattern awaiting Apple's video service and awaiting, as far as I'm concerned,

01:22:22   a new hardware with new remote.

01:22:25   That reminds me, to kind of bring it back to iOS, are we going to see any noticeable

01:22:29   springboard changes this year?

01:22:31   And when I say that, I mean in terms of like the way the home screen looks.

01:22:35   Do you think we'll get maybe widgets, which I'm not so convinced are really that useful

01:22:39   but a lot of people seem to want them.

01:22:41   Will we get widgets?

01:22:42   Will we get, I don't know, something other than a grid of round racks?

01:22:45   Do you think there's anything different there?

01:22:47   No, that got booted out of iOS 12.

01:22:48   Wasn't that the rumor?

01:22:49   That was one of the headlining features they said was planned for iOS 12 but nope.

01:22:54   So I'm going to say no, don't expect that.

01:22:56   Yeah, I wouldn't expect that either.

01:22:59   So the only real rumors we've heard are there's these cross-platform type things.

01:23:08   There's the marzipan thing where allegedly iOS apps or iPad apps will be able to run

01:23:13   on the Mac in some way, in some form.

01:23:16   And then there's the thing that Gruber wrote about, the declarative UI framework, which

01:23:20   Mark Gurman says is codenamed Amber or Ultraviolet, that is apparently like a new kind of like

01:23:27   React kind of UI framework that will go across platforms, I think.

01:23:31   Is it like React or Rx?

01:23:32   What are those?

01:23:33   Which one of those is it?

01:23:35   I'm not sure, to be honest with you.

01:23:37   I've heard descriptions that would make me think either.

01:23:40   So I've heard descriptions that you don't have to like rerun the app in order to see

01:23:45   UI changes, which is React.

01:23:46   I've heard that it's responding to, it's functionally reactive, which is kind of React

01:23:52   and also definitely RxSwift.

01:23:54   So I'm really honestly not sure.

01:23:56   Well anyway, that sounds like two different things.

01:24:00   Mark Gurman thinks it's two different things.

01:24:03   Either of those would be awesome to get this year.

01:24:05   It doesn't sound like we're getting either of them based on the little bit of rumors

01:24:09   we've heard.

01:24:10   But ultimately, I think if either of those things are coming, that might coincide well

01:24:15   with a UI overhaul on iOS, which we've been talking about for a couple years now that

01:24:20   it seems like it's due for one.

01:24:23   Things like maybe a system-wide dark mode for OLED screens, maybe rethinking some of

01:24:27   the system UI conventions and widgets in light of no longer being able to reach the top of

01:24:33   screens very often and in light of just the iOS 7 look being really dated and there being

01:24:38   lots of different various iOS design directions that Apple's own apps have gone in.

01:24:45   Like look at something like Maps that has a whole new design vocabulary for something

01:24:51   like Apple Music that has a different new design vocabulary.

01:24:54   It seems like a system redesign is overdue at this point, but that's a really big job.

01:25:03   So if they're truly taking this as a bug fixing year and if these cross-platform things aren't

01:25:09   ready yet but might be ready by next year, it would seem likely that most of the stuff

01:25:13   is probably going to all hit together next year.

01:25:16   I forgot about dark mode for Mac OS.

01:25:19   Remember we talked about the WebKit thing with the dark mode?

01:25:23   The expansion, cosmetic things are always good if you want to justify a new OS with

01:25:29   a new version.

01:25:30   Hey look, the screen looks totally different.

01:25:31   You can look at these screenshots like an expansion of the dark dock and menu bar to

01:25:35   more darkness that is an opt-in for developers with the exact same problems that we saw with

01:25:40   the dark menu bar where people's menu bar icons weren't showing up because they didn't

01:25:43   correctly handle the dark thing and they're drawing black on black.

01:25:46   That could be a fun thing for Mac developers to wrangle with and that could also be a fun

01:25:51   thing for Mac users to experience.

01:25:53   It's not the most complicated feature in the world and it does make a lot of sort of busy

01:25:59   work for developers to make sure their applications look good in both dark mode and light mode,

01:26:03   but it definitely shows up in screenshots and it's a thing you can look at someone's

01:26:07   screen and know that they're running a new version of the OS which in the past years

01:26:10   has been a thing that is sometimes difficult, you know, glance at someone's screen and

01:26:14   say "Is that Sierra?

01:26:15   Hi Sierra."

01:26:16   Which one is that?

01:26:17   It's really hard to tell sometimes.

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01:28:12   supporting this show.

01:28:14   Alright so I have a problem.

01:28:20   So last summer at the beach I brought with me my wonderfully hated 2017 15 inch MacBook

01:28:30   Pro because I had to work full time there for like a month and so I got the LG 5K brought

01:28:40   the laptop out plugged it in and was able to work full time off of that.

01:28:44   It had close performance to my 2014 iMac at the time so it was like alright this is good

01:28:52   enough for summertime.

01:28:54   Okay there were a lot of downsides to it ultimately.

01:28:57   Having the all USB-C lifestyle even when you have four ports was still kind of annoying.

01:29:01   Certain things were like certain peripherals were not reliable or were only reliable when

01:29:06   put into a real port not the hub on the back of the monitor or things like that but you

01:29:10   know ultimately I got by.

01:29:12   But I hated that laptop for lots of other reasons and ended up as we all know getting

01:29:16   rid of it, selling it and then getting a 2015 MacBook Pro again.

01:29:21   Oh but now you can't use your fancy pants monitor.

01:29:24   Bingo!

01:29:25   Alright so I have a problem is that this summer I will hopefully be working there a lot again

01:29:32   and I have this big monitor out there that my current computer can't plug into.

01:29:38   So I have some options.

01:29:40   One option is I can go and get another laptop again.

01:29:46   Here's the thing if they actually announce modified laptops in you know four days or

01:29:52   whatever the keynote is if they actually announce new MacBook Pros that have look I'm not hoping

01:29:58   for a return to the old keyboard or the old ports I just want a changed keyboard.

01:30:03   I don't care how it's changed just something even if it's still butterfly switches even

01:30:09   if it still has the stupid arrow key.

01:30:11   Even if it's a giant screen.

01:30:13   Well maybe not that.

01:30:14   I'm just trying to find your limits here.

01:30:16   Yeah I can always count on you John.

01:30:21   Like just any indication like here's a third generation butterfly key mechanism or even

01:30:27   better here's the scissor mechanism from the magic keyboard which is a nice halfway point

01:30:31   between the two fields and way more reliable.

01:30:34   But hey I would even accept third generation butterfly mechanism right.

01:30:38   Just some indication that they have changed the keyboard because I assume that if they

01:30:45   change the keyboard now it is probably going to be more reliable because it's hard to make

01:30:50   it less reliable but also they've had all this time to see like okay we have some problems

01:30:54   with dust and stuff getting under these keys so hopefully if they change it now it should

01:30:58   be good right.

01:30:59   So anyway so my option is buy a new laptop that gets announced next week but that's of

01:31:04   course dependent on if a new laptop gets announced next week and so far we haven't seen any evidence

01:31:10   of that being likely so that's one problem.

01:31:15   I could also just use my 15 inch laptop now just use it full time.

01:31:21   Lots of people do.

01:31:23   I would probably develop neck and shoulder problems but I could use that full time with

01:31:27   no external monitor and I wouldn't love that arrangement but I could do it.

01:31:32   Another option is to get a different monitor for out there something like either like a

01:31:39   4K monitor which there are 4K monitors that work with the old with the 2015 laptops.

01:31:45   That's what I do at work.

01:31:46   That's my work I actually have two 4K monitors side by side and it is pretty nice like I'd

01:31:52   still prefer a single 5K which you can I think you can also do with that 2015 actually obviously

01:31:57   not the one that you have.

01:31:58   Are you sure?

01:31:59   Yeah I'm positive.

01:32:00   Oh okay.

01:32:02   Well unless if our listeners know if there's a 5K monitor that can work at 60 hertz with

01:32:08   2015 MacBook Pro I'm happy to hear about it.

01:32:11   I don't think that's possible but anyway if it is I'd love to be wrong about that.

01:32:16   But anyway so I could just get 4K monitors which even then like it's hard to find 4K

01:32:21   monitors that like that people will officially say yes this works at 60 hertz with the you

01:32:27   know with the 2015 laptops even the ones without the GPU like it's actually that's actually

01:32:31   pretty hard to find.

01:32:32   But anyway.

01:32:33   I can give you one.

01:32:34   They're not great well not give you one but you know I mean like I have that at work and

01:32:39   the monitors are sufficient.

01:32:41   They're not tremendous but they're sufficient and the one thing I will say while I'm thinking

01:32:46   of it just in case you go and do something without talking to me which is something that

01:32:50   you've been known to do from time to time don't you don't use HDMI because you will

01:32:54   not get 60 hertz.

01:32:55   Yes.

01:32:56   You have to use whatever.

01:32:57   What is the other connector?

01:32:58   Thunderbolt 2 slash mini display port.

01:33:00   Well yeah but then I forget what it is going into the monitor.

01:33:03   Because mini display port to display port.

01:33:05   Yeah yeah yeah you're right you're right.

01:33:06   Yeah you have to do that to get 60 hertz because I almost sent the one I have back when we

01:33:12   got it at work until I did a little googling and realized oh no no I can get 60 hertz out

01:33:17   of this I just need to not use HDMI.

01:33:20   So a couple of people in the chat are saying that I can use the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt

01:33:25   2 adapter to plug in the 5K to my laptop.

01:33:28   I believe they are correct however this is what the Apple stores do with the LG Ultrafine

01:33:33   being plugged into the trash can Mac Pro because it has the same limitation.

01:33:37   If you look if you look closely at those screens you see it's actually running at a reduced

01:33:42   quality what it's doing so you can actually do this because the Thunderbolt 3 or 2 adapter

01:33:47   works bi-directionally.

01:33:49   So you can plug the 3 or 2 adapter into the USB C monitor then you can take a Thunderbolt

01:33:54   2 cable and plug it into the adapter and plug it into your laptop and if you do that what

01:33:59   will happen is the laptop it seems to be that the laptop basically down renders it renders

01:34:04   it to like a roughly 4K sized buffer and then up scales it at the monitor side kind of transparently

01:34:12   along the way.

01:34:13   So it does appear from far away to be 5K like things are the right size for it to be 5K

01:34:20   but if you look up close the pixels are really kind of blurry and a little bit off like it's

01:34:23   just it's not quite right because it actually is down sampling and then put it back up.

01:34:27   So you can do that with the adapter and I have that adapter but it's not it's not something

01:34:35   I want to do.

01:34:36   But anyway the option exists for me to buy a 4K monitor have it out there.

01:34:41   The problem is once this summer is done like I don't have any use for that monitor anymore

01:34:45   like I what am I going to do with it?

01:34:48   That being said 4K monitors aren't that expensive it's one of the cheaper options I have it's

01:34:52   you know from my initial searching looks like I can get like a 4K 24 inch not 27 inch 27

01:34:59   inch is the wrong size for 4K the right size for 4K is 24 inch.

01:35:03   But 24 inch 4Ks look like they're about like 350 bucks at most.

01:35:08   So like this actually compared to some of these other options is actually a pretty reasonable

01:35:11   option.

01:35:12   That's a that's a HomePod.

01:35:13   Well anyway so 24 inch monitor that's that's an option too probably the most sensible one.

01:35:19   Another option is to bring my iMac Pro there.

01:35:25   Did you see oh god where is this it's called the La Volta iMac case did you see the picture

01:35:33   of this with like the the hipster walking through.

01:35:35   Oh god yes.

01:35:36   I could actually look like this guy with substantially less hair and a little bit more weight but

01:35:43   I could look like this guy carrying my iMac with a bespoke leather and whatever that cloth

01:35:49   is.

01:35:50   It's got a little elbow patches on the corners.

01:35:53   Isn't that great.

01:35:55   I love that like they they can't really hide the fact that the stand is just poking out

01:36:00   and we're just like hitting passers by.

01:36:02   Yeah it's just like flopping around.

01:36:04   And hitting people like it sticks out substantially.

01:36:06   No it's great.

01:36:08   But the funny thing is like I looked at various options for like you know iMac carrying cases

01:36:12   and this this thing is only like 60 bucks and to get like a like a full size padded

01:36:18   one that actually like sits around the entire thing is like 200.

01:36:21   So this is actually carrying case.

01:36:23   This is why you should all be insane like me and save your original boxes because if

01:36:27   you want to transport your iMac safely you put it back in the original box and original

01:36:30   packing material and guess what you can transport it safely.

01:36:33   I know I have mine too but that's massive like the original box is so big.

01:36:39   That big it's tapered.

01:36:41   Yeah it's still pretty massive.

01:36:44   Anyway that's I mean honestly like if you want to transport this thing safely and not

01:36:48   be like worrying about it and like because this isn't going to protect the thing if you

01:36:51   you know shove it in the back of your car with a bunch of other crap you need to put

01:36:55   it in something about the size of the original box.

01:36:57   That's it like there's no there's no slimmer version that protects your thing just as much

01:37:01   as the original box does.

01:37:02   That's true.

01:37:03   So anyway so that is an option.

01:37:04   I could just bring my iMac there but then but that would the problem with that besides

01:37:11   the fact that I have to look like this guy is that and you know basically my concern

01:37:16   would be what if I either damage it which should be very expensive or what if I make

01:37:24   it less reliable in some way like what if I like slightly.

01:37:27   It's filled with salt air.

01:37:28   Yeah like what if I like slightly jostle something inside or some component flakes out just a

01:37:32   little bit and then it's like a little bit less reliable for the next few years that

01:37:36   I'm trying to use it like I would never forgive myself if that happened.

01:37:39   I would worry more about the salt air than the transport like honestly like I mean I

01:37:43   don't I guess probably have air conditioning on a close but like it is a more hostile environment

01:37:47   for electronics no question.

01:37:48   Very yes no like everything out there like anything made of metal out there dies in like

01:37:54   three years like everything like you know appliances hardware on doors locks like everything

01:38:01   it's like everything's crazy out there.

01:38:03   So yeah so like I don't think I want to bring my expensive iMac Pro there for lots of reasons.

01:38:10   So anyway that that option I don't love another option would be to like like get like a cheap

01:38:17   used iMac or like maybe like upgrade Tiff now and bring her old one there like there

01:38:22   are things I could do but then it's like but I don't want a computer to be sitting there

01:38:24   all year when I'm not using it like the whole rest of the year.

01:38:27   There's no reason for it to be there.

01:38:28   Sell it at the end of the summer as is your way.

01:38:32   Whether that's the option I might as well do the same thing with a laptop.

01:38:35   Yeah but I mean like don't aren't you like the laptop isn't just about like the monitor

01:38:40   connection it's also about like the thing running hot and making noise and potentially

01:38:45   downclocking.

01:38:46   I honestly I think if you're going to spend substantial time there and you like working

01:38:49   on a big screen that like a cheaper a cheap 5k iMac seems like the obvious answer and

01:38:54   what you do with it when you're done with the season whether you just leave it there

01:38:58   and come back to it the next summer or like you know have it shipped there and pack it

01:39:02   when you leave the house pack it up in its original box and shove it somewhere like that

01:39:06   just seems better than trying to find some kind of laptop arrangement that's going to

01:39:12   work for you.

01:39:13   I don't know I mean especially as like you know you're trying to save trying to save

01:39:16   money by using your existing laptop with just a monitor and then just leaving it like just

01:39:21   just get the cheap iMac it seems that that's my vote for the path of least resistance that

01:39:25   will make you have the fewest compromises while you're there and it's not that much

01:39:30   more expensive you're not you're not getting another iMac Pro for it right.

01:39:33   If I didn't already have the 5k monitor out there I think that that seems like a better

01:39:38   option because I already have it out there like it seems like well what else like I don't

01:39:42   I don't have any use for that monitor here.

01:39:44   You're going to go out there and you're going to sell it that's what you're going to do.

01:39:48   I don't know this that I'm just I'm like I'm really I'm mostly just kind of annoyed like

01:39:54   if I have to end up buying for this purpose another one of the new laptops that I hate

01:40:01   like imagine like if Casey had to buy another BMW right now like that's deep right deep

01:40:06   yeah you really don't want to really even if that might be the most sensible option

01:40:10   for for what your stated priorities and needs are you still don't want to do it like that's

01:40:15   kind of how that's kind of how I feel about like ideally I think the actual option I should

01:40:20   take is probably to do exactly what I did last summer which is buy the highest end 15

01:40:24   inch I can get use it for the summer and then sell it or hopefully use it as my main one

01:40:28   if I can tolerate it that's what I should do but I just can't bear to do that like this

01:40:34   is why I hope they get updated.

01:40:35   But wouldn't you rather be using an iMac like you're not you don't need the portability

01:40:40   aspect of it right wouldn't you rather be using an iMac all summer and sell that at

01:40:43   the end then use a weird laptop Hydra arrangement?

01:40:47   I suppose I would but like but I'm still like my life's my the needs of my life are I do

01:40:53   need a laptop on a semi frequent basis so like I do need to maintain a laptop it doesn't

01:40:59   need to be the highest end laptop in the world but I do need a laptop so if I'm gonna have

01:41:04   a laptop anyway then I might as well have a laptop that can also serve this role because

01:41:09   it's way it's just a way more efficient allocation of computing resources and like number of

01:41:14   systems to maintain and everything then trying to have a desktop out there and desktop at

01:41:19   home and my laptop like that's that's getting a little bit crazy we'll get to that actually

01:41:22   in the in the SKTP but I just I don't want like I don't think I want a whole additional

01:41:28   Mac I don't need three.

01:41:31   You've got you've got a whole additional refrigerator and a whole additional washing machine you've

01:41:34   got a whole additional house this is the problem I found the root problem.

01:41:37   There's actually there's actually two refrigerators in it it came with two one of them was apparently

01:41:42   used for fish and so we don't use that so there's there's a second fridge in the living

01:41:49   room the fish fridge it's really high class yes and we just like leave it closed all the

01:41:56   time because we made the mistake of opening it a couple times and trying to clean it and

01:42:02   believe me this cannot be cleaned we we have tried we also tried giving it away surprise

01:42:08   no one wants it fish fridge yes anyway put it outside then come back next year it'll

01:42:14   just be slowly crumbling into you know rusty metal shards that's not a bad idea yeah take

01:42:19   advantage of the corrosion anyway so that's that's my beach computer problem this is admittedly

01:42:27   like massive first world problem you know white wine etc but I do think it's interesting

01:42:32   to consider and hopefully next week these concerns will become moot as they release

01:42:37   the laptop of my dreams but I I'm not sure how likely that is I don't know I think if

01:42:43   it were me I would just get a 4k monitor and you won't like it but it'll be sufficient

01:42:50   and I looked up how much the one I have at work is and it's 250 bucks and I'm pretty

01:42:57   cheap and even I if were I in this situation I would just plunk down 250 bucks and call

01:43:04   today or you could have iCloud storage for like 20 years anyway ask ATP cw Bennett writes

01:43:12   what would be the best strategy to accidentally bump into you guys at WWDC I kept my eyes

01:43:17   open for you last year but had no luck if you're looking for Marco go to southern policy

01:43:22   if you're looking for John or well if you're looking for me social policy so sorry or if

01:43:27   it's evening the beer and sausage place on the street if you're looking for John look

01:43:33   in the sessions and if you're looking for me basically in between social policy layers

01:43:41   actually because I'll be I'll be boinging through layers as well I'm gonna just be like

01:43:45   a Tasmanian devil but yeah any of those three places are well I guess for if you include

01:43:51   the beer the beer place that's the best bet for the three of us I reckon and I will also

01:43:58   reiterate as we do every year if you happen to see one of us in the streets and in a session

01:44:04   in social policy wherever the case may be do please feel free to say hi we may or may

01:44:10   not be able to talk for more than a moment especially for running between sessions or

01:44:14   something like that so please don't take offense if we're if we're quick but please say hi

01:44:18   I love it when people say hi and say you know hey I really like the show that makes me feel

01:44:22   super good and this is the one week a year where I get to pretend like I'm famous and

01:44:26   it's super fun and then I'm nobody just like always which is also super fun so please feel

01:44:33   free to say hi I think all three of us will probably have stickers is that right gentlemen

01:44:38   yeah I wanted to talk about that now because I'm gonna tweet about this too but it's easier

01:44:42   to to express this without sounding like a jerk so I'm definitely gonna have stickers

01:44:49   and if you see me you want a sticker I will just give you one I will have ATP stickers

01:44:54   I will also have a small amount of hypercritical stickers which kind of look like the logo

01:44:59   on the website that I never update I will post pictures of these and the pictures are

01:45:03   important because don't ask for a sticker unless you want the specific stickers that

01:45:10   I have because you want to stick it on something don't just ask for one because it sounds like

01:45:15   it might be neat to have a sticker right because I have a limited quantity and don't feel like

01:45:19   you have to take a sticker to be polite if you don't want a sticker do not ask for a

01:45:23   sticker and how can you tell whether you want them watch my Twitter feed and I will show

01:45:27   you pictures of the stickers and if you don't want that sticker do not ask for a sticker

01:45:32   I feel like when you have stickers like oh sure I'll take a sticker like you feel like

01:45:35   you get lots of swag from like vendors and other things like yeah I'll take a sticker

01:45:38   or whatever don't because these are surprisingly expensive and people actually do want them

01:45:43   so if you don't want these stickers because they're ugly or stupid I will not be offended

01:45:46   just merely do not ask for one I will say the exact opposite I went to Sticker Mule

01:45:51   last year before a couple weeks before the show and bought like the smallest quantity

01:45:54   I could which I think was like 200 of them and I still have like 180 of them after a

01:46:00   whole year so that's not the smallest quantity because I got less than that oh well whatever

01:46:04   it is by all means if you see me even if you don't want a sticker ask for a sticker and

01:46:08   you can take one Margo needs to get rid of his stickers I have too many stickers so please

01:46:12   for the love of God take these yeah at the live show I'll probably also put a bunch of

01:46:16   stickers out for people to just grab but I would also say like don't grab them if you

01:46:19   don't want the sticker like some people are not sticker people like I don't I don't put

01:46:22   stickers on things so I'm not gonna take a sticker but other people really are sticker

01:46:26   people and they do want them and they're gonna stick them on a laptop those people should

01:46:29   have the stickers Wow leave it to John to have rules about whether or not you're allowed

01:46:34   to get a sticker from I'm just saying like sometimes people feel like they have to take

01:46:36   a sticker to be polite even though they're like what the hell am I gonna do with this

01:46:38   and they just chuck it right don't don't do that I will not be offended if you don't want

01:46:42   my stickers oh yeah I mean don't yeah don't don't take my stickers if you're gonna throw

01:46:45   them away I mean I can throw them away it's safe to say it was the trouble man and any

01:46:52   other thoughts about where we can be found I mean obviously we'll have our Monday night

01:46:57   show the relay thing is Wednesday is that right talk show Tuesday app camp thing Wednesday

01:47:04   we'll be at all those places we'll be at our own live show surprise we'll all be at the

01:47:09   talk show we'll all be at the relay thing so if you go to any of those things you will

01:47:12   probably see us excellent Pat Murphy writes do any of you use multiple machines for development

01:47:17   and if so do you use any automation for that environment for example I understand Marco

01:47:22   does most of his dev work on a Mac on an iMac but he takes his laptop when he goes out to

01:47:26   WWC and I think he has said he does development while on the road do you just manually copy

01:47:30   your working directories and manually keep all the tool chains in sync or do you use

01:47:32   drop drop box or iCloud gasp says Pat Murphy to sync folders or perhaps just do get sinks

01:47:38   across machines so I do development on my iMac on my work computer and on my MacBook

01:47:43   adorable and I basically just use git and then everything else is manual that may or

01:47:48   may not be the bestest approach in the entire world but that's what works for me Marco what

01:47:54   do you do for your 13 different laptops that you're switching out every minute I I'm for

01:48:01   the most part until very recently I was doing what you do which is just have a different

01:48:05   git check out on the local home directory of each machine like for various project I'm

01:48:10   working on and like just use git as the you know the merging and hosting platform to keep

01:48:15   everything in sync which of course has the downside of like you have to commit everything

01:48:21   to get it to sync to another machine so like if you if you're on your desktop and you gotta

01:48:25   run and you want to take your laptop and and start working on stuff you have to make sure

01:48:28   everything's committed and pushed before you can take your laptop and that's kind of cumbersome

01:48:34   and annoying and is is kind of violating like the purpose of the version control system

01:48:38   like it kind of messes up the semantics of what those things mean and when you should

01:48:42   and shouldn't be using them and things like that so one thing that that underscore David

01:48:49   Smith told me on under the radar forever ago and he said it now it's like what that's crazy

01:48:55   he said he actually keeps his git checkouts in Dropbox and so he could just pick up his

01:49:02   laptop or whatever and just start working on the same checkout he was working on his

01:49:06   desktop and it just syncs because it's Dropbox and you know still using git for its version

01:49:12   control but using Dropbox as the like sync mechanism between his own machines and I thought

01:49:19   that was the craziest thing in the world why did you think that was crazy it just seemed

01:49:23   like it was like I don't know it seemed like it shouldn't work right it seemed like it

01:49:28   was crossing some kind of weird line it's just the web 3.0 version of NFS mounts back

01:49:34   in the old days we'd have our stuff in a common place and we'd have our stuff mounted on all

01:49:37   our machines and it was the same everywhere and how is this it's like a network file system

01:49:42   where it's not here but it's somewhere it's exactly the same thing only Dropbox is like

01:49:46   dumber and slower and more loosely coupled well anyway I started doing that like last

01:49:52   week and it's really cool like I gotta say it actually works props to underscore it sounded

01:49:59   crazy but it's actually really nice the only downside I found is that like when I when

01:50:06   I work on the project between my iMac and my laptop because the screen sizes are so

01:50:11   different like I get really weird window sizing when the Xcode I think it's the XC user file

01:50:17   whichever one of the project files that you that you would never commit to a git repository

01:50:21   but that like it's like your local like window settings that file is now sinking so it kind

01:50:26   of makes weird things happen when you go between screen sizes but and I might try to look up

01:50:31   some hacks maybe make that file not sink or something but otherwise it's pretty cool like

01:50:35   having being able to just take my laptop and just continue what I was doing without anything

01:50:41   like without any effort really that's really cool word of warning though when you're doing

01:50:46   any specifically with Dropbox because it isn't NFS in the end and the end that is a is a

01:50:51   different thing with this offline process that's making a best effort to sink your crap

01:50:56   you will make Dropbox cry if you give it too many files so apparently Mark is using with

01:51:02   Xcode and his products and it's working out but I can tell you from experience if you

01:51:06   think you're going to do node development and do a non-trivial NPM install and that's

01:51:12   going to sink to your other Mac you're in for a long sad wait so there are limits and

01:51:19   you should kind of know what they are before you commit to putting your substantial git

01:51:24   repo plus your entire node modules directory on Dropbox and have it magically syncs to

01:51:29   another Mac it will eventually but you will die waiting for it to happen I've also been

01:51:35   slowly moving as much as I could about my local Mac setup to Dropbox so for instance

01:51:43   my like I use a bunch of tools from homebrew and I now have a shell script that I maintain

01:51:49   in Dropbox that is like my homebrew setup script to install and configure the various

01:51:55   packages and tools that I use there and that way I can run it on any new Mac installation

01:51:59   or new Mac itself and it sets everything up in a consistent way also sometimes like when

01:52:04   I upgrade my OS that kind of stuff gets hosed for some reason even though it supposedly

01:52:08   shouldn't but it just does and so it's also really nice to be able to uninstall homebrew

01:52:13   on a Mac where it's not quite working right and just run that script and have it have

01:52:17   a whole thing set up perfectly clean again that's really nice similarly I also now put

01:52:22   things like the nginx configuration like where you have nginx include the list of sites and

01:52:28   you have like a bunch of files you should one site configuration in them that sites

01:52:31   directory is now in Dropbox for me so when I have local development where I like you

01:52:34   know my local development for overcast versus like any other like you know little CMS things

01:52:39   I might be working on I can have all those things be synced up and then finally my bash

01:52:45   profile on each machine that I use I include a file that's on Dropbox for that too so I

01:52:51   can have the same bash aliases and settings and stuff like that on all my machines.

01:52:56   Also worth noting that if you are living in that terrible world that I used to live in where you're doing all your work in VMs

01:53:03   one thing I used to do years ago when I was bouncing my VMs between computers was just getting like an external hard drive

01:53:09   and at this point this is before SSDs were affordable but just get an external hard drive preferably an SSD

01:53:15   and leave your VMs on there and just plug it into whatever computer you happen to be working with

01:53:19   obviously there's fragility there because if you jostle that you know connection even the littlest bit

01:53:24   and it falls down then you're gonna have a real world of hurt but by and large if your computers

01:53:31   are reasonably stationary when you're actively using them that ends up working out really well too.

01:53:35   Thanks to our sponsors this week Casper Squarespace and Eero and we'll talk to you next week.

01:53:41   Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.

01:53:50   John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.

01:54:01   It was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM and if you're into Twitter you can follow them

01:54:14   @CASEYLISS so that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-Marco-Arman S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-S-T-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:54:31   It's accidental. They didn't mean to accidental. Tech podcast so long.

01:54:45   So Casey how's your car doing? So where is your car right now? My car has been at BMW since Thursday

01:54:55   maybe Wednesday I forget exactly what day I dropped it off. It went in for a litany of problems I think

01:55:02   went in the day after we recorded so Thursday it doesn't really matter. It went in for a hum at

01:55:08   about 75 indicated miles an hour which is actually about 70 miles an hour. It went in for slow tire

01:55:13   leak. It went in for AC fans not working. It went in for brake fluid flush which is a maintenance

01:55:19   item and it went in for the brakes squealing like hell when I took off. So I got the call Friday that

01:55:29   the damage is $5,000. The car last I looked several months ago is worth $10,000 or thereabouts. So as

01:55:40   it turns out the brakes are the brake shoes within the drum brake that is the emergency brake that

01:55:51   lives within the disc brakes. So for a long time it's not the case anymore but for a long time

01:55:57   four-wheel disc cars actually had little tiny drum brakes kind of within the disc brakes as the

01:56:04   emergency brake. Now most of these are electronic and they'll actually I believe the caliper just

01:56:11   squeezes the brake disc and you can hear that whirring on Aaron's car when we hit the emergency

01:56:17   brake here as it's you know grabbing the disc. But anyway for me the brake shoes... Are you e-braking

01:56:24   on Aaron's car like drifting it around the neighborhood? What time do you have occasion to

01:56:29   engage the parking brake while the wheels are spinning? Please tell me. No no it's all when

01:56:33   the wheels are spinning. I'm saying you can hear the parking brake engage when you stop the car

01:56:38   and engage the parking brake. You hear the electric motor go "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" as it's spinning. Oh I thought you heard the wheels spinning underneath the gripping calipers as you engage the parking brake at 30 miles an hour going around a right-hand turn. So yeah so the brake shoes needed to get replaced and I was told and I'm quoting that's not a normal failure item which made me

01:57:03   laugh more than I can tell you to which my immediate response was that is everything in this car.

01:57:09   Everything in this car has been a not has been not a normal failure. It sounds like they have a list of items in your car that they expect to fail so you should ask. Well fair but actually the reason this is relevant is because they said they needed to wait for those to come in because they don't even keep them in stock because they never brake. Anyway that so they needed to repair that.

01:57:32   I told them to go ahead and do that. The the blower issue was apparently a warranty. I think it was a warranty fix. I haven't picked up the car yet but it is ready. Is a warranty fix so I don't think I was charged for that. The slow tire leak is a cracked wheel. What? How? Like the rim? Apparently. So I told them so they wanted $500 to replace that and to which I said absolutely not. Don't do it. I'll deal with the slow leak.

01:58:00   My Accord wheels cost more than $500. That sounds like a bargain. Oh I didn't know that. That makes you feel slightly better but I still don't want them to do it. What was the brake fluid? You know whatever that's normal wear and tear. And then finally the hum at 75 miles an hour indicated is apparently my front differential which is shot. I don't know why. I don't know what specifically. I asked what specifically and I got kind of a in response. It's filled with metal confetti.

01:58:30   Yeah basically. So I told them don't fix the front diff. Don't replace the wheel and I'm not sure what my plan is from here. But I am going to either bring it to CarMax and see what they'll give me and you know just present it as is and see what they'll give me. Or maybe I will go to a local non BMW dealer but like a local BMW quote unquote specialist and see what they'll give me.

01:58:59   And see if that's demonstrably cheaper than repairing it at BMW. But my current intention is probably the moment I come back from DubDub is to attempt to sell it as is and then probably replace it with a brand new Wrangler.

01:59:17   Yeah what's the least you can get out of it? Like what's the least you can get out of paying for the current batch of repairs? Like I assume you're going to have to pay for some of these right?

01:59:25   Oh yeah so I'm definitely in for about 750 bucks for the brakes.

01:59:29   Oh that's it?

01:59:30   Yeah that's exactly what I said.

01:59:32   Out of 5000.

01:59:33   Preposterous. But yeah. So I'm in for the brake pads. I'm in for the brake fluid. And I'm in of course they insisted on doing a cabin air filter and I'm too lazy to argue with them and that was probably $3000. But anyway.

01:59:45   So I'm in for like basic wear and tear stuff in the brakes and that was 750 bucks. So if I don't do the wheel and I don't do the front differential I'm still quote unquote saving you know what $4000 or thereabouts.

02:00:02   So my hope is I can find a way to unload this car. And by the way I'm not entirely convinced it really does need a differential. I think that's potentially not the case. But one way or another I'm going to attempt to unload the car and take that money and apply it to a probably a Wrangler but I'm not 100% sure that's where I'll end up.

02:00:24   But my thought is I am tired of performance cars because I always break them. I don't know how but I always do. German cars are unaffordable to maintain so I don't want to deal with that.

02:00:34   I don't really have a lot of interesting options in German performance cars anyway because I will end up divorced if I buy another BMW. The Audi is not as fast as I would like. The GTI is from everything I'm told pretty much perfect but it's German and it's front wheel drive and I'll probably drive one before I commit.

02:00:54   And then the Golf R is no sunroof and also fast in German and from what I understand not as good as the GTI anyway so that's not happening. I'm not buying a Model 3 because it's too much money. I'm not buying a Quadrifoglio because it's too much money and it will always break.

02:01:10   So my thought is as we've discussed previously and I will cut it short here just issue all performance and luxury and just get a box on wheels and enjoy it for what it is.

02:01:22   Well in that case you might as well get an Accord. It's better.

02:01:25   With a stick shift and it's fun. Although the new ones are ugly so I feel for you here.

02:01:30   Yeah the new ones are not good looking and I really did kick that idea around for a fleeting moment.

02:01:36   You should test drive it. You're going to test drive the GTI. You should also test drive a stick shift to the Accord if you can find one. Don't bother test driving the automatics because they're gross.

02:01:46   I've been in an automatic turbo Accord. A brand new one and it was reasonably quick. If you find me a stick shift Accord to try in Richmond I will happily go do it.

02:01:58   I'm not even going to bother trying because it won't exist.

02:02:02   Well I mean look I think what you have here like your current your problems with your current car are substantial and possibly fatal for you owning the car.

02:02:14   That's fine. I'm not going to disagree with you there. I will caution you against rushing into a new choice. Even though I know you've been waffling about possibly getting a new/different car for a while now.

02:02:28   This is like being caused by a sudden impetus that you suddenly need something like now. Right?

02:02:34   Right.

02:02:35   Given how much you care about your car and how much enjoyment you get out of your car I don't think you should rush into whatever you buy next.

02:02:44   So that being said I mean I don't know how much I don't know what your situation will be like if you take this car home like how operable it will still remain for a while.

02:02:53   Well right.

02:02:54   If it dies like what do you like can you can you get can you just be a one car family for a few weeks while you test drive other stuff like you know that so you have things like that to worry about.

02:03:03   But ultimately you know you do have a similar problem to my beach computer thing which is like I really so badly don't want to buy another one of these new generation laptops if it isn't fixed.

02:03:15   And you so badly don't want to buy another German performance car.

02:03:19   But ultimately my best solution is to just buy one of those laptops and your way to get most of what you want the most of what you want is to get another German sports car probably from BMW.

02:03:32   So it's it's it's never happened in both ways it's kind of a question like over like whether you can overcome how mad you are at them or or your your like you know identity being tied currently to like really hating them like that's like how how bad is it if I the the the master of the 2015 MacBook Pro like the biggest advocate decide in like a month.

02:03:53   Oh I actually need to need a new one instead like that's that's I'm trying to avoid that for lots of reasons but one of them is like identity and just how much I hated the previous ones right so like if you're you know looking at this trying to look at this a little more objectively like.

02:04:07   It really does seem like you are jumping through quite a lot of hoops to avoid the option of leasing something not necessarily from BMW but just to consider the option of leasing something because that is how you get high performance cars without having to deal with maintaining them over time.

02:04:26   Yeah and that's true but I mean even if I let's assume I wanted to lease I'm not going to lease some BMW because I just I need a break from it even if that is the empirically correct answer I just need a break from it.

02:04:39   Great thing about a lease it's three years so you can you can do something now realize you miss having a stick shift German car and go back to it in three years if you can still find one.

02:04:49   Yeah I mean that may be but I even if I even if I have leasing on the table the only thing I can think of that I that would maybe re enter the discussion is maybe the Alpha and it's still more expensive it's too expensive for what for what I want to pay even for a lease so I don't think that empirically changes anything and for Jeep it the residuals are so damn high it makes a lease terrible doesn't it or do I have that backwards.

02:05:14   A high residual is good residual is what percentage of the price it is worth at the end of the lease so a good residual is like in the 60s generally like you want it to be worth about 60% of its original value at the end of the lease that means you're paying over the span of three years 40% of the cost like that's that's like something like in the goodish range in among the cars that I tend to lease something that's better like like something like like a Honda or something Japanese like that probably has even better residuals if I had to guess but I haven't looked.

02:05:43   But yeah that's the like typically like 60% kind of thing is what you would get on like a hard to maintain German fast car.

02:05:52   And the thing is and so like a lot of people as I've been talking more and more about Wranglers a lot of people have been saying like oh they're so unreliable they're so unreliable maybe but let's assume for the sake of discussion.

02:06:01   Oh they are.

02:06:02   Let's assume for the sake of discussion that that is a fact which I disagree with let's assume that Wranglers are unequivocally and unquestionably unreliable the critical difference that nobody seems to be thinking about is that doing a front differential for the sake of conversation maybe this is wrong but for the sake of conversation doing a front differential on a Wrangler has got to be like a third the cost of doing it on a 335 because it's a domestic car where all the parts are here they're already here all the parts are cheaper.

02:06:31   The labor is presumably either the same or cheaper and so it's going to be much much much cheaper even if it's broken all the time it's still gonna be way cheaper to fix the way I figure it.

02:06:45   So yeah I understand that may it may or may not be reliable now again my Anic data says that it's extremely reliable because data said three across 30 years and they've all been super reliable but admittedly Anic data.

02:06:59   So I in either way I'll have a warranty which of course would be true of any new car.

02:07:04   And that's actually one thing that's a pellet that's compelling about the VW is to say if like a six or seven year bumper to bumper warranty now is a kind of the oops from dieselgate so that is slightly compelling about the Volkswagens but I don't know I don't know what I want to do.

02:07:18   I need to test drive a bunch of stuff but I don't have the time to do it especially now because I'm about to go out of town but I'm deeply deeply frustrated with my BMW and we have crossed the point of no return I think so it is getting sold sooner rather than later.

02:07:33   The question is as Marco said earlier will I jump immediately into something else or not and I don't think that I will and the main reason I don't think I will is that just like with the 335 I want a very particular set of options on this hypothetical Wrangler.

02:07:49   And when I looked a few days ago there were precisely three Wranglers with this set of options within 150 miles of me. Two of them or no all three of them I believe were spoken for and they were all more expensive than I wanted.

02:08:04   Please say all three of them were white.

02:08:06   No I don't know which computer was I looking at this on hold on I can tell you because I think I took a screenshot.

02:08:12   Yes I did it was one blue and two gray actually that might be one blue one light gray one dark gray but no whites.

02:08:21   How light is the gray?

02:08:23   I don't know it's normal gray.

02:08:25   Very light gray.

02:08:27   It's not that light.

02:08:28   No it actually does look fairly reasonable and white I gotta say but.

02:08:31   I actually think it looks terrible in white but this is only via pictures.

02:08:35   I really and truly I really and truly think that.

02:08:38   No but I think you know again I do think you know don't rush into this.

02:08:42   That being said though you know if you are going you know you mentioned you want to sell the BMW and then did I understand correctly that you might then not buy something immediately that you might go down to one car for a little while?

02:08:52   Yes so I my intention is to buy if I sell like my hypothetical wherein I sell the BMW within days of returning back here after dub-dub.

02:09:01   I think I would sell the BMW post haste so it doesn't explode on me you know what I mean?

02:09:08   Well see here's the thing though it's probably fairly stable if you don't drive it that much it's not gonna like explode in your garage.

02:09:14   You are in a much better bargaining position to apply that to a trade-in than you are to try to sell it in its you know needing expense state to anybody.

02:09:25   Who's gonna buy it like that but if you are in the process of buying or leasing a new vehicle the dealer has a strong incentive to take your trade-in.

02:09:33   So even so I think you are in a much better negotiating position using that as a trade-in than trying to sell it outside of a purchase.

02:09:41   That is a really good point I hadn't considered.

02:09:43   Alright fair enough so maybe it'll just get parked and collect dust until I find a replacement.

02:09:49   Put up on blocks in your front yard.

02:09:51   Make sure it can drive onto the lot of the place you're buying it from that's all you need to do.

02:09:55   Drive onto the lot and then when they go out to check it you need to start. That's it.

02:09:59   Yeah well and that's the thing that's why it fixed the the the screaming e-brake is because the second you move the car it was *screaming*

02:10:05   And so it was clear that that was going to have to be fixed if I wanted to get more than 10 bucks for this thing.

02:10:10   So yeah so we'll see what happens I mean it's first world problems but it's frustrating. Man is it frustrating.

02:10:15   Yeah take your time. We'll see. Drive test drive everything and and really I I strongly suggest that you consider the option of leasing.

02:10:26   You know I I know you have a lot of objections to it on like principal grounds but it really does solve a lot of your problems.

02:10:34   And I think overall once you could swallow that bitter pill of damn it I'm leasing like you know and it's against everything I believe in.

02:10:41   Once you can get past that everything else about it I think would make you a lot happier.

02:10:46   Maybe yeah but I still don't know what I would lease like I really honestly don't.

02:10:50   Well but but you your options greatly expand once that option is on the table. Once the leasing is on the table then you can get quote unreliable brands.

02:11:02   Or brands that you wouldn't want to be responsible for after they're three years old. Like you can get that. Things like the warranty stop mattering.

02:11:11   Yeah. Things like reliability and you know like that's just stops maintenance costs just stops mattering.

02:11:16   Yeah but again like I'm I'm I don't want to get a BMW. I don't want to get a BMW so your your lease idea would fix the BMW problem except I am petulantly refusing to get a BMW.

02:11:27   So then I I still don't know what it really buys me you know what I mean.

02:11:30   That yeah I mean you know obviously that would be like the most extreme example of like why it would beneficial to you because you could totally erase the maintenance headache from BMW.

02:11:39   But a hundred percent.

02:11:40   But also if you're concerned about reliability for things like Audi or Alpha or VW like you know that does help you on those fronts as well or even heck even Jeep.

02:11:50   Like if they're if they're known to be unreliable yeah they are probably cheaper to service than the BMW but that's still something you probably want to be dealing with.

02:11:59   And so if you can lease one even better. That being said if you're going to buy one I think if you're going to buy one and your main justification for buying it is long term value you should be buying used.

02:12:12   I agree. I one hundred thousand percent agree. But the problem I'm running into with the Wrangler is the same damn problem that I put myself or box myself into a corner with with Aaron's car which is really two problems.

02:12:25   Number one I refuse to buy a car without CarPlay. Yes I know I could do some aftermarket mumbo jumbo but I am way too old and way too busy and way too boring for that.

02:12:33   Don't want to deal with it.

02:12:34   Number two both the Volvo and the Wrangler just got redesigned.

02:12:39   And so I don't want the old and busted design. I want the new hotness design.

02:12:43   But even more importantly than that because my BMW was bought when the F30 was brand new and mine's an E90.

02:12:48   So I've I've bought the old and busted design and by and large I stand by it for the BMW.

02:12:53   But the problem is is that I really would like CarPlay and the only way to get CarPlay in either of these cars is to get the brand new version.

02:13:02   And so that's why I want to buy new.

02:13:04   That's honestly that's a reasonable reason.

02:13:06   But I totally agree with you. Like you're not wrong that that buying used is the more appropriate answer.

02:13:11   It's just in this especially actually if I were to go BMW because then I could get a CPO BMW which would have an even better warranty than a brand new one would.

02:13:20   But yeah in this particular case it's not going to work out.

02:13:24   Well if leasing can help you get what you want strongly consider it.

02:13:30   Yeah it's a fair point. I think the the most useful tidbit you've given me though is to not insta-sell the BMW.

02:13:39   To not pull a Marco in a Marco five years ago.

02:13:41   That's a trade-in not a sale.

02:13:42   Like because of the condition it's in and because you do intend to have another car like use that use it as a trade-in.

02:13:50   No dealer is going to give you jack crap for it as a regular purchase from you.

02:13:55   But as a trade-in you'll get something for it.

02:13:57   Yeah that's fair.

02:13:58   And you don't want to deal with individuals with that because then you're selling somebody a broken car like they're going to know.

02:14:03   Like that's going to cause problems for you.

02:14:06   You definitely want like you want because what you know when a dealer buys a car as old as that they're not going to keep on their lot and resell it.

02:14:13   They're going to send it to an auction thing and they're going to get what some fixed price for it and that's it.

02:14:16   It's out of their hands. It's not your problem. It's not their problem.

02:14:18   It's just gone. It just vanishes and it's just your trade-in value. That's it.

02:14:21   That's the way to do it. You do not want to sell it to an individual or anything like that.

02:14:25   Like just use it as a trade-in and then it's the problem just disappears.

02:14:29   appears.

02:14:29   [Door closes]

02:14:31   [BLANK_AUDIO]