ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Meanwhile Adam's upstairs right now having nightmares about all potatoes.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Alright, so as usual we should start with some follow-up and I shouldn't be excited about this one and only follow-up item.

00:00:15 ◼   ► And I shouldn't be excited because it's about boring big business stuff, but I'm actually kind of excited about this because it's some news about Nomad.

00:00:25 ◼   ► So tell me about what Nomad is, what problem it's supposed to solve, and whether or not it solves it.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Last time we talked about this, it was like me complaining that I got a new computer at work,

00:00:34 ◼   ► and my new computer was on the Active Directory network, and it was a Mac.

00:00:37 ◼   ► And I was complaining about how it seemed like being on the Active Directory network

00:00:43 ◼   ► was making lots of things about my Mac worse, and I was sad about it.

00:00:47 ◼   ► And then in follow-up on the subsequent shows, a lot of people sent us information about this

00:00:52 ◼   ► this thing called Nomad, they said, "Hey, you should try this." I think the story I

00:00:56 ◼   ► was told by a couple of people in feedback was like, "Apple's Active Directory support

00:01:01 ◼   ► is not great in macOS and it never really has been." And there was like a consulting

00:01:07 ◼   ► wing of Apple that would like come to your company and help you set up all your Macs

00:01:12 ◼   ► for your big, you know, enterprise or whatever. And the consulting company recognizing Apple's

00:01:20 ◼   ► Active Directory stuff wasn't that good, but also recognizing that they weren't in a position

00:01:26 ◼   ► to make it better, came up with a system, just like a series of shell scripts and other

00:01:35 ◼   ► little programs and stuff that would try to give you the effects of Active Directory without

00:01:39 ◼   ► actually being Active Directory, and that they would pitch that to their clients.

00:01:45 ◼   ► My recollection was that this is an Apple, not just a consultant, but actually part of

00:01:51 ◼   ► Apple going to help people.

00:01:53 ◼   ► And this part of Apple, because it wasn't empowered to change macOS, was doing this

00:01:58 ◼   ► other thing and giving it to clients.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I don't know if I got that part right.

00:02:00 ◼   ► But anyway, we will put the link in the show notes.

00:02:03 ◼   ► They have a .menu domain.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Nomad.menu, which I think is not good.

00:02:10 ◼   ► You can look at their website and read about what it does.

00:02:14 ◼   ► There's a blog post from another company that does Mac-related enterprise stuff that basically

00:02:20 ◼   ► is saying it gives you the experience of Active Directory without requiring, as they put it,

00:02:24 ◼   ► a bind to AD.

00:02:26 ◼   ► So you're not constantly connected to Active Directory.

00:02:29 ◼   ► And all the things that I thought were making my Mac slower, like me trying to wake it up

00:02:33 ◼   ► from sleep and getting to the point where I can enter my password to unlock my computer

00:02:37 ◼   ► or random spinners before it will allow me to have network access and stuff like that

00:02:43 ◼   ► But in theory this thing would help.

00:02:44 ◼   ► So I took that feedback and said, "Yeah, that sounds kind of neat, but it's not like I have

00:02:49 ◼   ► any control over when or if it's going to happen."

00:02:51 ◼   ► But I had a pleasant surprise a couple weeks ago, and my work started doing a trial of

00:02:58 ◼   ► this.

00:02:59 ◼   ► And I asked if people wanted to sign up, and I said yes.

00:03:01 ◼   ► And like a day or two later, some Active Directory stuff disappeared from my Mac, and this Nomad

00:03:06 ◼   ► stuff appeared.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And so I got to try it.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And I have to say, I'm about a week in here, it feels like a lot of the things that seem

00:03:14 ◼   ► stupidly slow are not stupidly slow anymore.

00:03:18 ◼   ► It is much faster for me to – when I wake my computer up or whatever, to get to the

00:03:23 ◼   ► point where it lets me enter my password.

00:03:26 ◼   ► The computer unlocks faster and I feel less like hangs for no reason.

00:03:31 ◼   ► So I'm pretty happy with it so far.

00:03:34 ◼   ► This also lets me know that my complaints about Touch ID on the Mac were not related

00:03:38 ◼   ► to Active Directory because now I'm not on Active Directory anymore and still Touch ID

00:03:43 ◼   ► on my 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Like when I want to unlock my computer, sometimes the screen will say, "Enter your password

00:03:50 ◼   ► or do Touch ID."

00:03:51 ◼   ► And that's what the screen says.

00:03:54 ◼   ► But me repeatedly putting my finger on the Touch ID thing is telling me that it is not

00:03:58 ◼   ► reading my finger.

00:04:00 ◼   ► It's not like it's failing.

00:04:01 ◼   ► It just doesn't care my finger is there at all.

00:04:03 ◼   ► It doesn't have the little "put your finger here" arrow animation.

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's just completely blank and putting your finger there as many times as you want doesn't

00:04:11 ◼   ► work.

00:04:12 ◼   ► When it does work, it's great, but when it doesn't work, it makes me sit there with my

00:04:14 ◼   ► finger on the stupid thing and putting it up and down until I realize, "Oh, I have to

00:04:17 ◼   ► type my password.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Why do I have to type my password this time?"

00:04:20 ◼   ► Who knows.

00:04:21 ◼   ► But anyway, I'm guessing it's not Active Directory related.

00:04:23 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:04:25 ◼   ► My work has been grumbly about Active Directory stuff, and so we've kicked around the idea

00:04:31 ◼   ► of Nomad, but none of us really knew much about it.

00:04:34 ◼   ► So I will have to point my IT people to this episode at the beginning of it.

00:04:39 ◼   ► So hi Rory, this was for you, even though you didn't know it.

00:04:43 ◼   ► But we'll definitely have to check that out, that's super cool.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Because the advantage of being in a place that's only 500 or so people is that there's

00:04:49 ◼   ► an IT group of maybe 5 to 10 people, which means I can actually somewhat influence this

00:04:56 ◼   ► decision making, insofar as if I put in a good word, that's a positive thing.

00:05:01 ◼   ► So cool, no I'm glad it's working out well.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Any other follow-up?

00:05:04 ◼   ► Let me just have some preemptive real-time follow-up from the question from the chat

00:05:08 ◼   ► room.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Yes, I know that sometimes you have to actually press the touch ID button thingy to get it

00:05:12 ◼   ► to try to register.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I'd do that and it would just not register.

00:05:15 ◼   ► So sometimes it just is not in the mood to read my finger, and I don't know why, despite

00:05:21 ◼   ► the messages on the screen to the contrary.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I have some news.

00:05:26 ◼   ► We have another new child in the house.

00:05:29 ◼   ► We have adopted a child called Alexa.

00:05:31 ◼   ► That's not news, you told us that last week.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Oh, did I tell you that it was forthcoming?

00:05:35 ◼   ► Okay, I'd forgotten about that.

00:05:36 ◼   ► So yeah, so Alexa's here.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Now, remind me, John, in your household you are mostly on Google Home, is that right?

00:05:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I've got a regular Google Home, and I've got a mini Google Home,

00:05:45 ◼   ► and then I have the HomePod that we talked about last week.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Okay, and then what's going on in the Armit household?

00:05:50 ◼   ► You guys are all in on Alexa, is that right?

00:05:52 ◼   ► Oh yeah, she's my girl.

00:05:54 ◼   ► So this is the first time that I have ever had any sort of smart thing in my house. There's a joke

00:06:02 ◼   ► here. I see it. I don't care. It's the first time I've ever had any sort of smart assistant in the

00:06:07 ◼   ► house because Siri definitely does not count. So I had heard from other people talking about the

00:06:13 ◼   ► lady in the tube that she has skills and things and that you can add stuff onto her. And so I was

00:06:19 ◼   ► vaguely familiar with the ecosystem that I was trying to set up. So, you know, I got

00:06:24 ◼   ► the lady in a tube, I set it up, which was pretty straightforward, it's like, you know,

00:06:28 ◼   ► a Wemo light switch or something like that, you know, you connect to its Wi-Fi, it reads

00:06:32 ◼   ► your Wi-Fi, then everything reconnects to the regular Wi-Fi and things happen. This

00:06:36 ◼   ► is old news to probably 95% of the people listening. Anyway, I added a few skills and

00:06:42 ◼   ► it's cool. It works with Spotify, which is great. Doesn't sound like utter garbage, which

00:06:47 ◼   ► is surprising. I wouldn't say it sounds great, but it is listenable. I would not plan to

00:06:53 ◼   ► use it for music.

00:06:54 ◼   ► You got an Alexa and you're playing music on it. That's what you're doing. You got an

00:06:57 ◼   ► Alexa and you're playing music on it.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Well, no, no, no. I tried it just to see and it got surprisingly loud and it didn't sound

00:07:03 ◼   ► utterly terrible. Again, I would not say it sounds good.

00:07:06 ◼   ► She knows a lot of animal facts. You should ask her about animals.

00:07:09 ◼   ► I tried to install a skill. I don't remember what it was called. That's basically like

00:07:12 ◼   ► a quiz for Declan, you know, what animal makes this sound? And the one I found was clearly

00:07:18 ◼   ► written by someone who does not use English as their first language and it was just very

00:07:22 ◼   ► peculiar. So you don't have to answer right now. But if you have some sort of suggestions

00:07:27 ◼   ► about like toddler friendly games, which you guys may have gotten this too late, because

00:07:31 ◼   ► Adam may have been too old at that point. But if you do have suggestions,

00:07:34 ◼   ► Adam basically tells Alexa to play timber by Kesha. No. Yeah, yeah. Pitbull Kesha. Yeah,

00:07:40 ◼   ► Yeah, he likes that.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And he also likes Fireball.

00:07:44 ◼   ► He's always like, "Alexa, play Fireball by Pitbull."

00:07:47 ◼   ► So that's how he communicates with Alexa.

00:07:51 ◼   ► We're not really playing animal games.

00:07:53 ◼   ► We've passed that and we've moved on

00:07:54 ◼   ► to the inappropriate hip hop stage.

00:07:56 ◼   ► So it's fine for us.

00:07:59 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, we had books and stuff for that,

00:08:04 ◼   ► that you hit the little, the sound animal buttons

00:08:07 ◼   ► on the side when you're old school,

00:08:09 ◼   ► like the ones that haunted Lex's house that one time.

00:08:13 ◼   ► If anyone remembers that.

00:08:14 ◼   ► - That's right, I had forgotten about that.

00:08:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Dora the Explorer book that was haunting him.

00:08:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, the battery was going low

00:08:20 ◼   ► and I was making a terrible noise, I remember that.

00:08:21 ◼   ► - And he like tore apart half his house to find it

00:08:24 ◼   ► and it ended up being a stupid book.

00:08:26 ◼   ► But yeah, we mainly use it for weather.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Adam will ask the weather in the morning.

00:08:32 ◼   ► And it actually, talking to Alexa

00:08:35 ◼   ► greatly helped him improve his pronunciation because--

00:08:39 ◼   ► - Oh, that's interesting.

00:08:39 ◼   ► - He would get frustrated that she wouldn't understand him.

00:08:42 ◼   ► So then he would have to articulate the word

00:08:44 ◼   ► a little bit more.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And I really think that talking to her

00:08:47 ◼   ► has helped him develop his linguistical skills.

00:08:51 ◼   ► - He's more receptive to instruction than my children

00:08:53 ◼   ► because my children have the same problem.

00:08:55 ◼   ► And I tell them, "You have to enunciate

00:08:56 ◼   ► and it will understand you better."

00:08:58 ◼   ► And they say, they roll their eyes and then say, "Forget it."

00:09:01 ◼   ► - So yeah, Adam really, really wanted to hear

00:09:03 ◼   ► "Fireball" by Pitbull.

00:09:04 ◼   ► So he made sure he got that right.

00:09:06 ◼   ► - He's got no other way to do it, yeah.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Does he learn that syntax, "play fireball by pitbull," like if he just says "play fireball,"

00:09:12 ◼   ► I'm sure there's other songs that are by fire.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Like did you?

00:09:15 ◼   ► Oh no, yeah, he'll say "by pitbull," and he also found it really funny that when he tells

00:09:20 ◼   ► Alexa to say, he says, "Alexa, play nothing," that it will play a song called "Nothing,"

00:09:26 ◼   ► and he thinks that's really funny because he told her to play nothing when then she

00:09:30 ◼   ► goes and plays something.

00:09:31 ◼   ► So yeah, he asked the weather, like I said, it's pretty good at animal facts and other

00:09:37 ◼   ► basic facts asking it and setting timers and stuff. Oh, he's been setting timers with it

00:09:42 ◼   ► too, because every time we're like, "All right, you know, you have five minutes for this,"

00:09:45 ◼   ► and he'll set a timer. Oh, in the morning, he comes downstairs by himself. He gets up,

00:09:49 ◼   ► gets dressed, brushes his teeth, and comes downstairs and tells Alexa to turn on the

00:09:52 ◼   ► lights. So he's pretty capable now. He's like a little person. It's amazing.

00:10:00 ◼   ► Asking the weather is actually the most common use of Siri in my house. And it started many

00:10:05 ◼   ► years ago with my daughter coming to my bedside table and using whatever device I have there

00:10:12 ◼   ► to find out what the weather is so she could figure out what she wants to wear, although

00:10:15 ◼   ► she ostensibly it's to find out what you're supposed to wear, but regardless of what the

00:10:19 ◼   ► weather is, she just wears clothing that is not appropriate for the weather, so I don't

00:10:22 ◼   ► know what she's doing.

00:10:23 ◼   ► But anyway, the key fact is that you don't need to unlock any of my devices to get the

00:10:30 ◼   ► You can, you know, hold down the little button and then say, "What's the weather?"

00:10:35 ◼   ► And it will give you the weather report without the device being unlocked.

00:10:38 ◼   ► That's why she's using it.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Even she has her own devices now, but she still likes to come into my room and use my

00:10:43 ◼   ► iPad or my iPhone to get the weather report.

00:10:47 ◼   ► So I was trying to think of how often does Siri get used and like, well, I use it.

00:10:51 ◼   ► So the reminder once every few weeks or something, mostly we don't use it.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Then I realized it gets used every day to tell my daughter the weather.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and so it's been interesting for us trying to, I mean, again, it's been all of

00:11:02 ◼   ► a day, but you know, starting to figure out how can this integrate into our lives because

00:11:06 ◼   ► we didn't exactly seek this out, right?

00:11:08 ◼   ► It kind of fell in our laps, just like my white cars.

00:11:11 ◼   ► And so anyway, it just kind of appeared, if you will, and we're trying to figure out,

00:11:16 ◼   ► well, where does this fit in our lives?

00:11:17 ◼   ► Because this is not something we've like wanted.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And so far, it seems like weather and timers have been popular.

00:11:25 ◼   ► We did enjoy doing a little bit of Spotify just because it's nice to be able to call

00:11:29 ◼   ► out across the room, you know, "Hey, Lady in the Can, play such and such by so and so."

00:11:34 ◼   ► Oh, you can ask it to tell you stories or jokes.

00:11:36 ◼   ► Oh, good to know.

00:11:37 ◼   ► I did not know that.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Adam, during Halloween, really enjoyed asking the Lady in the Can to tell him a scary story.

00:11:45 ◼   ► But they weren't really scary.

00:11:46 ◼   ► It was like, "Whrrrrr!"

00:11:47 ◼   ► Then the old potato, like, it was really cheesy.

00:11:51 ◼   ► It was like, "Oh no, you have rotten vegetables!

00:11:54 ◼   ► How scary!"

00:11:56 ◼   ► - So Casey, where did you physically put it?

00:11:58 ◼   ► - So, well actually, Tiff may remember this, but--

00:12:02 ◼   ► - It's next to the plant on the ledge

00:12:04 ◼   ► by the table in between the living room and the table.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Duh.

00:12:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, totally, Jon.

00:12:09 ◼   ► So basically, if you walk in from the garage,

00:12:11 ◼   ► you're dumped directly in our kitchen,

00:12:13 ◼   ► from the kitchen to the little breakfast nook,

00:12:14 ◼   ► the breakfast nook to like our main living or family room, whatever you want to call it.

00:12:18 ◼   ► And there's a little ledge in between the breakfast nook and the family room. And so we just stuck it

00:12:24 ◼   ► there for now on a piece of wood. And after all the HomePod stuff, I'm like, man, should I get

00:12:29 ◼   ► a little doily for this or what? I don't even know. But we put it there because, you know,

00:12:33 ◼   ► that's easy access orally, verbally, whatever, to both the kitchen and the family room. And so

00:12:39 ◼   ► So without having to like scream, you know, most of the downstairs can hear or can speak to her and can hear her.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And one of the striking things to me about this, which I think I intellectually knew, but it creeped me out to see,

00:12:54 ◼   ► on the Lady app on your phone, it actually shows you, "Hey, here's the things that you've said recently,"

00:12:58 ◼   ► which in and of itself, okay, I can kind of understand that, but that's a little weird.

00:13:01 ◼   ► But then you can listen to yourself making these requests, which is, again, like understandable.

00:13:07 ◼   ► My brain understands.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Of course it's listening to you.

00:13:09 ◼   ► That's how it does things.

00:13:11 ◼   ► But like, it's also recording me, which is a little weird, but I still mostly understand

00:13:16 ◼   ► it.

00:13:17 ◼   ► But it's saving that, which is a little weird, even though I do understand it.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So that's like a little bit funny.

00:13:25 ◼   ► And that did creep me out a little bit.

00:13:27 ◼   ► The only skills I've installed are AnyList, which we spoke about an episode or two ago,

00:13:32 ◼   ► Which I didn't realize you actually have to flip a switch on the lists within any list

00:13:37 ◼   ► in order to get them Lady in the Tube enabled.

00:13:41 ◼   ► And once I did that it's been working pretty well.

00:13:43 ◼   ► We don't have Nest thermostats because we're not cool like that, but we have, you know,

00:13:48 ◼   ► one of the--it's not Honeywell, but it's like some other manufacturers--rough equivalent.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And so I've installed a skill for that.

00:13:54 ◼   ► It's the Nexia skill, N-E-X-I-A.

00:13:56 ◼   ► But I haven't actually tried it yet.

00:13:58 ◼   ► I've installed an Eero skill that I haven't tried, and the aforementioned Garbage Guess

00:14:02 ◼   ► the animal sound. So I haven't done much with it, but it is neat. It is more neat and more

00:14:08 ◼   ► convenient than I thought it would be, but I wouldn't say that it has changed my world

00:14:11 ◼   ► quite yet. And the one thing that did strike me as super world-changing, no sarcasm intended,

00:14:18 ◼   ► is being able to just shout at the tube, you know, "Hey, play Timber by Pitbull," or whatever

00:14:23 ◼   ► the case may be. In our case, it was actually "Play Five Little Ducks by Raffi." But anyway...

00:14:28 ◼   ► Yeah, you gotta update that.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Well, being able to be synced with Spotify, that's really cool because I pay for Spotify

00:14:38 ◼   ► anyway and just having it being able to use Spotify.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And then if I turn Spotify on on my phone, we can do the, I forget the term for it, but

00:14:48 ◼   ► the thing where you can control other Spotify clients.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And so even the hardware buttons on my phone, as long as the phone was left in Spotify mode,

00:14:57 ◼   ► The hardware buttons on my phone can control the volume of the lady in the tube playing

00:15:01 ◼   ► music, which is super cool.

00:15:03 ◼   ► I'm not even entirely clear how that works, but it does.

00:15:06 ◼   ► And so in that sense, all this integration is super awesome.

00:15:10 ◼   ► And it occurred to me, wow, I really wish that this tube was a much better speaker.

00:15:14 ◼   ► And I thought, well, then I should get a HomePod.

00:15:16 ◼   ► And then I thought, well, no, because I can't use Spotify with it in the way I want.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And then it occurred to me, I don't know where I've been for the last two years, but they

00:15:23 ◼   ► They make an echo, what is it, a little dot or something like that, the echo dot, that

00:15:28 ◼   ► I can plug into the stereo.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Why have I not thought of this for two years?

00:15:32 ◼   ► And I could just shout at this little dot, echo dot, or whatever it's called, "Hey

00:15:37 ◼   ► Lady and the Tube, play Timber by Pitbull," and it would play on our home theater stereo,

00:15:43 ◼   ► which is not a remarkably great stereo.

00:15:44 ◼   ► In fact, it's kind of crappy, but it's the best stereo we have in the house.

00:15:48 ◼   ► Why didn't I do this a long time ago?

00:15:49 ◼   ► Why do I do this to myself?

00:15:51 ◼   ► So how does the other people in your house feel about your new tube?

00:15:56 ◼   ► Erin is kind of ambivalent about it.

00:15:58 ◼   ► I don't think she's really embraced it as yet, partially because it's been a day, partially

00:16:02 ◼   ► because I don't think she's really seen me successfully add things to the grocery list

00:16:06 ◼   ► a few times.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Or she's not one to typically play music if I'm not around, so usually I'm the family

00:16:12 ◼   ► DJ.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Declan is scared to talk to it, not in the "Oh God, Oh God" way, but in the "I'm bashful

00:16:20 ◼   ► and shy way, but he does enjoy the fact that we can talk to it and ask me to talk to it

00:16:26 ◼   ► from time to time.

00:16:28 ◼   ► And Michaela is just sitting there as per expectations.

00:16:32 ◼   ► So it's so far I wouldn't say it's a rousing success, but I mean I'm enjoying it more than

00:16:35 ◼   ► I thought I would.

00:16:36 ◼   ► And for the 17 or so dollars that it cost me to ship it here, it's worth $17.

00:16:41 ◼   ► I don't know that I personally would pay like $100 or $150 or in the case of the HomePod

00:16:45 ◼   ► $350 for something like this, especially in the case of the HomePod where Siri is, in

00:16:50 ◼   ► my personal opinion, kind of garbage. But it's pretty cool. I like it.

00:16:56 ◼   ► A few of the times that made me fall really in love with the lady in the tube was when

00:17:02 ◼   ► we have game nights and we all end up having song suggestion battles and we just keep interrupting

00:17:09 ◼   ► each other's songs to play other songs and it just gets really fun, the back and forth

00:17:13 ◼   ► just yelling at Alexa to do different things. And in addition, you can also order stuff

00:17:17 ◼   ► on your friends' Alexa's and that gets pretty fun too.

00:17:22 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know. It's cool. I don't see myself buying a HomePod, although it wouldn't

00:17:26 ◼   ► surprise me if that's on the birthday list. Like, it occurred to me that all this waffling

00:17:31 ◼   ► I'm doing in front of Erin is probably not helping her for my birthday shopping because

00:17:36 ◼   ► my birthday's in two weeks. So I don't know if she's looking to buy me a HomePod, would

00:17:41 ◼   ► never buy me a HomePod, has already bought me a HomePod, I don't know what the plan is.

00:17:45 ◼   ► It's brought you a child, Casey.

00:17:48 ◼   ► No argument here, I'm fine with that.

00:17:50 ◼   ► But it just occurred to me that I need to be more clear about what my desires are for

00:17:55 ◼   ► the HomePod, just in case that's on her radar.

00:17:58 ◼   ► But the thing is, I still don't know what I want to do about a HomePod.

00:18:00 ◼   ► I feel like it's not something I want, except I do think having a really great speaker would

00:18:04 ◼   ► be nice.

00:18:05 ◼   ► So, I don't know.

00:18:06 ◼   ► If she listens to this podcast, which she won't, so you should tell her separately,

00:18:08 ◼   ► maybe she can get you a Dot, because it's cheaper and it'll give you something to hook

00:18:11 ◼   ► hook up to your good speakers.

00:18:12 ◼   ► That is true.

00:18:13 ◼   ► Now, Jon, how is your HomePod second week on?

00:18:16 ◼   ► It's not seeing much use.

00:18:17 ◼   ► Like, I mean, I don't think my kids know that they can ask it the weather, or maybe

00:18:22 ◼   ► my daughter just likes to use the stuff on my nightstand because it's closer to her

00:18:26 ◼   ► bedroom where she's deciding what she's going to wear.

00:18:30 ◼   ► But yeah, not really getting much use.

00:18:31 ◼   ► I mean, my Google Homes don't get much use either.

00:18:33 ◼   ► It's just that they're there when I need them to be there.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Like, that's the key component of these things is I don't use them that frequently.

00:18:41 ◼   ► not daily, probably not even weekly, but in the moment when I have a desire and I'm too

00:18:46 ◼   ► lazy to get up or too lazy to go get my phone or just want to know right now, the fact that

00:18:50 ◼   ► I can yell something into the air and get satisfaction immediately is great.

00:18:55 ◼   ► And so I feel like it's well worth the money for these things, just for those times.

00:19:00 ◼   ► And of course, like I said, when my kids have friends over, they use them, you know, they

00:19:05 ◼   ► become the house DJs, and they use them to play whatever songs they want and laugh and

00:19:10 ◼   ► do whatever they're doing and interrupt each other's songs and stuff like that.

00:19:13 ◼   ► So it's a home entertainment device to keep children entertained as well.

00:19:17 ◼   ► Alexa, play "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Oh!

00:19:21 ◼   ► At least it's not that gargle song.

00:19:25 ◼   ► I just listened to the Valentine's Top Four just earlier today.

00:19:30 ◼   ► I'm way behind on podcasts.

00:19:32 ◼   ► And yeah, that gargle is bad, but "Tubthumping," I cannot abide by that.

00:19:39 ◼   ► It's like their own personal never going to give you up.

00:19:43 ◼   ► I'm never going to give it up.

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00:20:48 ◼   ► Any other thoughts about ladies and canisters and tubes and cylinders and things of that

00:20:51 ◼   ► nature?

00:20:52 ◼   ► Tiff's not in a cylinder, but do you want to explain why she's here?

00:20:57 ◼   ► Well Marco is sick so they found another Arment and replaced him. So hey it's me.

00:21:04 ◼   ► And who are you?

00:21:06 ◼   ► I'm Tiff. I'm lossless.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Wow.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:21:12 ◼   ► You don't have to assume that everyone who listens to the show knows who you are. You should introduce yourself.

00:21:16 ◼   ► Hi I'm Tiffany Arment. You may know me from such podcasts as Top 4 or Playing for Fun with Relay FM's Michael Hurley.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Hurley. I'm also sometimes on ATP and I'm married to Marco Arment, who's usually on

00:21:30 ◼   ► ATP. Bam! There you go. You can find me on the

00:21:33 ◼   ► webs under Tiffany Arment. All right, you skimmed over the part about Marco being

00:21:37 ◼   ► sick, which is kind of vague. He's not dying and I think he could have been on

00:21:42 ◼   ► the program but he doesn't feel well enough to do it, so here we are.

00:21:45 ◼   ► Hey screw you man

00:21:47 ◼   ► God I can't talk you jackass

00:21:53 ◼   ► Somebody having fun with terminal and the say command not that we're complaining. It's great to have Tiff

00:22:02 ◼   ► I'm just saying do you guys remember smarter child remember talking to that bot? No

00:22:06 ◼   ► What there was a bot smarter child in like the 90s that you would talk to you

00:22:12 ◼   ► They I don't think I ever did it but now that you mentioned it as a 90s thing

00:22:15 ◼   ► I think I vaguely remember it, but I don't think I did it. Yeah, we all did it

00:22:19 ◼   ► You know after school chatting with smarter child on a messenger like all the cool kids do

00:22:24 ◼   ► Eating snacks talking to smarter child listening to no doubt

00:22:28 ◼   ► As you do, you know a piece of 90s nostalgia just came back recently

00:22:33 ◼   ► I feel like every six months or so, maybe it's every year

00:22:38 ◼   ► For some reason or another somebody brings up ICQ like, you know, the the the precursor predecessor or we know

00:22:45 ◼   ► Not everyone does

00:22:48 ◼   ► What you're talking about see thank you Tif

00:22:51 ◼   ► So I see Q the letters I see and Q which is supposed to you know be funny because it's also the words

00:22:57 ◼   ► I seek you

00:22:59 ◼   ► It was like the first particularly popular online presence like I am applications

00:23:05 ◼   ► So this was before, either before AOL Instant Messenger existed, or it was before it existed

00:23:11 ◼   ► to anyone outside of AOL.

00:23:12 ◼   ► I don't know exactly what the timeline was, but what was interesting about ICQ, and I

00:23:17 ◼   ► think it does still exist, but what was interesting about ICQ in its heyday, which was like mid-90s,

00:23:21 ◼   ► maybe late 90s, was that it had sequential user numbers, not unlike Twitter actually.

00:23:27 ◼   ► And so, for whatever, and you actually use these user numbers, like I believe that was

00:23:31 ◼   ► the equivalent of a screen name.

00:23:33 ◼   ► And so everyone knew their user numbers, and to this day, welded into my brain, or that's

00:23:40 ◼   ► probably not the right phrasing, but whatever, somewhere in my brain in a place that I cannot

00:23:43 ◼   ► remove it is 1202572.

00:23:46 ◼   ► And I will never forget that probably for the rest of my life.

00:23:49 ◼   ► And I just, it's funny because, you know, you bring up to feel this weird bit of nostalgia

00:23:53 ◼   ► that just comes up out of nowhere.

00:23:54 ◼   ► I really feel like every six months or so somebody brings up ICQ and or their ICQ number.

00:23:59 ◼   ► I don't know why, but it happens all the time.

00:24:02 ◼   ► There's a new TV show on Netflix called Everything Sucks and it's very 90s.

00:24:07 ◼   ► They pretty much just throw in all these 90s references just for people our age to be like,

00:24:13 ◼   ► "Whoa, remember that?"

00:24:16 ◼   ► It's like a little teaser 90s candy kind of show and Marco and I just binge watched it

00:24:21 ◼   ► because we've been sick.

00:24:22 ◼   ► So it was pretty fun.

00:24:23 ◼   ► I suggest it to anybody who is feeling some 90s love.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Go for it.

00:24:28 ◼   ► So you never had ICQ?

00:24:29 ◼   ► No, no.

00:24:30 ◼   ► I started with AOL and some messenger.

00:24:33 ◼   ► - I think they were kind of contemporary.

00:24:35 ◼   ► I had all these things, right?

00:24:38 ◼   ► But I was not as into any of them

00:24:40 ◼   ► to remember my ICQ number.

00:24:42 ◼   ► It was a pretty big number too,

00:24:43 ◼   ► but it was like anything else where I would,

00:24:46 ◼   ► it was more fractured than it is now.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Like you talk to some people on ICQ, some people on AIM,

00:24:51 ◼   ► some people I talked to on the universities,

00:24:54 ◼   ► like real-time communication thing,

00:24:56 ◼   ► like just using the talk command or using write

00:24:58 ◼   ► - Right, to the terminal.

00:25:00 ◼   ► - I'm sorry.

00:25:01 ◼   ► - I'm old, yes, I know.

00:25:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and the ICQ had this terribly drawn flower icon

00:25:08 ◼   ► on the Mac.

00:25:09 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:25:10 ◼   ► - It was not a good looking icon by any stretch.

00:25:13 ◼   ► - Marco's in the chat room letting everyone know.

00:25:16 ◼   ► - Is that your number Marco?

00:25:18 ◼   ► - You all have big numbers too.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I think my number was similar length.

00:25:21 ◼   ► I just don't remember what it is.

00:25:22 ◼   ► - Our screen names are gone now, right?

00:25:24 ◼   ► Or can you like look up stuff with people's screen names?

00:25:26 ◼   ► someone just asked about what my screen name was and it's pretty really teenager-y and

00:25:33 ◼   ► I don't know if I should say it.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Screen name for what, AIM?

00:25:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:37 ◼   ► No one can do anything weird with that, can they?

00:25:39 ◼   ► AIM just recently shut down.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I know because I got the message that said, "Hey, you've been signed on to AIM every

00:25:43 ◼   ► day since it existed, but guess what?

00:25:44 ◼   ► It's going away."

00:25:45 ◼   ► Because I was still on an adium.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Is it gone now in all of our-

00:25:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:50 ◼   ► I got the message about it.

00:25:51 ◼   ► Once I got the message, I deleted it.

00:25:52 ◼   ► Oh, well, I guess I still had mine, but I saved all the important chat messages from

00:25:56 ◼   ► when Marco and I first met, because we're super cute like that.

00:25:58 ◼   ► I actually have some, I think I might have our first InstaMessenger conversation somewhere

00:26:04 ◼   ► buried between Erin and me and every couple of years I stumble on it. So because we're

00:26:08 ◼   ► also super, I'll go with cute, maybe creepy. I don't know.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Well, it's like saving love letters, right?

00:26:13 ◼   ► Right? No, I'm serious. It's hilarious listening or not listening, but rereading this because

00:26:18 ◼   ► it's like, after you've been with any human being for a long time, be it married or just,

00:26:23 ◼   ► you know, partners or whatever, you as a couple will change, like you as individuals and you

00:26:29 ◼   ► as a couple will change and looking at like this totally like, you know, scuffing of the

00:26:33 ◼   ► feet looking down at my toes, Casey like, hey, you know, maybe we can chalk later.

00:26:39 ◼   ► As opposed to today's dynamic wall scaling ice crushing Casey.

00:26:43 ◼   ► I'm picturing you in overalls with a daisy hanging out of the butt pocket.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Right? Well, I mean, that's how it reads. That's how these like chat, these chats between

00:26:49 ◼   ► Erin and I read. It's hilarious and embarrassing. But nevertheless, it is adorable to go back

00:26:54 ◼   ► to that.

00:26:55 ◼   ► Yeah, Marcos and I, we were all like, "Oh, well, what's your favorite meal? And do you

00:27:00 ◼   ► like thunderstorms?"

00:27:01 ◼   ► Like long walks on the beach?

00:27:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:06 ◼   ► You like piña coladas?

00:27:07 ◼   ► Nice.

00:27:08 ◼   ► So the generation before had to save their paper love letters. Your generation is saving

00:27:14 ◼   ► your AIM messages, right? But the current generation doesn't have to say anything because

00:27:19 ◼   ► it'll be in the cloud forever.

00:27:20 ◼   ► - Lucky bastards.

00:27:21 ◼   ► - They'll want to expunge it, right,

00:27:24 ◼   ► after they get divorced and they won't be able to.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Like Google searches will still turn it up

00:27:27 ◼   ► 'cause it's feeding some training model

00:27:30 ◼   ► in Google's giant machine learning cloud.

00:27:34 ◼   ► - All right, so what was your AIM name, Casey?

00:27:36 ◼   ► Let's see what yours was.

00:27:38 ◼   ► - I think I have mentioned this at some point in the past.

00:27:41 ◼   ► So I was trying to think of like a cool 90s AIM name.

00:27:45 ◼   ► I don't know, I think it was '97-ish

00:27:47 ◼   ► that I joined Instant Messenger, '96, '97, something like that. And so I was trying to

00:27:51 ◼   ► think of a cool name. I needed a cool name. And I was on the bus on the way home from

00:27:56 ◼   ► high school, and my friend Ben was talking about how he was trying to learn to play bass,

00:28:01 ◼   ► and he had gotten a lot of blisters on his fingers. And I thought, "Ah! Got it. Blister."

00:28:06 ◼   ► But...

00:28:07 ◼   ► You think that wasn't going to be taken.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Your name was Blister?

00:28:10 ◼   ► No, no, no. No, it gets better. It gets better.

00:28:13 ◼   ► It was even worse than that.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Exactly, Robot Marco.

00:28:16 ◼   ► I know what this is because I had your AIM address.

00:28:18 ◼   ► It's all coming back to me now.

00:28:20 ◼   ► I had blocked it out, but now, in fact,

00:28:22 ◼   ► I can probably pull you up on my buddy list right now

00:28:24 ◼   ► if I could connect to the service.

00:28:26 ◼   ► - You probably could.

00:28:27 ◼   ► - That sounds like, it's like a metal name,

00:28:30 ◼   ► like, "My name is Puss."

00:28:32 ◼   ► - Right, I'm saying it was such a great name.

00:28:35 ◼   ► - Did you have like a nose piercing with a safety pin?

00:28:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally, yeah, that's definitely me.

00:28:39 ◼   ► No, I was like the dorkiest white boy in the world,

00:28:43 ◼   ► which surprises no one.

00:28:44 ◼   ► But nevertheless, it turns out that the word blister, B-L-I-S-T-E-R, was taken.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Who knew?

00:28:50 ◼   ► So what do you do if blister is taken and you're, I don't know, 15, 16, 17 years old,

00:28:54 ◼   ► however old I was at the time?

00:28:56 ◼   ► B-L-I-S-T-A, of course.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Blista.

00:29:01 ◼   ► At least you didn't put a number on the end of it.

00:29:04 ◼   ► That's true.

00:29:05 ◼   ► Blista 69.

00:29:06 ◼   ► Right?

00:29:07 ◼   ► Or Blista 6732 and 4, you know, or whatever.

00:29:12 ◼   ► Those were the worst.

00:29:14 ◼   ► So Tiff, now that you've compelled me to share,

00:29:16 ◼   ► it is now your turn.

00:29:17 ◼   ► - Okay, well, mine is really like wavy, teenage.

00:29:21 ◼   ► I'm like super deep and write poetry.

00:29:24 ◼   ► So mine was M-A-M-T-J-S,

00:29:28 ◼   ► which stood for Music Always Makes the Journey Sweeter.

00:29:32 ◼   ► - Wow!

00:29:33 ◼   ► - You win. - Wow!

00:29:35 ◼   ► - And it was also the title of a painting that I liked

00:29:38 ◼   ► by this really weird artist.

00:29:40 ◼   ► I believe his name was James Christiansen.

00:29:42 ◼   ► He was like some Mormon artist guy

00:29:46 ◼   ► that a Mormon boy showed me

00:29:49 ◼   ► 'cause I was super in love with him.

00:29:51 ◼   ► - Hey. - It was a whole thing.

00:29:53 ◼   ► Hey, yeah, it was in high school, dude.

00:29:55 ◼   ► I didn't even meet you yet, Robot Marco.

00:29:57 ◼   ► - Don't be in love with Mormons.

00:29:58 ◼   ► - Oh, no, it was a whole scene.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I don't even think he's straight.

00:30:04 ◼   ► No, it was a whole thing.

00:30:06 ◼   ► It was a whole thing.

00:30:07 ◼   ► He was deep, though.

00:30:08 ◼   ► He played the piano beautifully.

00:30:10 ◼   ► We hung out on the jetty.

00:30:11 ◼   ► It's those type of things.

00:30:12 ◼   ► So yeah, music always makes the journey sweeter.

00:30:15 ◼   ► Can you explain to Marco and Casey what a jetty is?

00:30:17 ◼   ► They don't know what a jetty is.

00:30:19 ◼   ► It's a big whole bunch of rocks that jut out into some water that kids go out on.

00:30:23 ◼   ► Marco might know, now you're indoctrinating him into Long Island culture.

00:30:26 ◼   ► That's true, he knows now.

00:30:27 ◼   ► I don't think he's been out on -- he's seen the rock jetties, but he hasn't ventured out

00:30:30 ◼   ► on them or gotten stuck on the end when the high tide comes in.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Until he slipped and given himself a terrible cut on the barnacles or something, then he

00:30:38 ◼   ► hasn't really arrived.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:30:40 ◼   ► Until you grab like, you know, a croissant from the local bakery and go out on the jetty

00:30:44 ◼   ► and cuddle a little bit.

00:30:46 ◼   ► You haven't lived.

00:30:47 ◼   ► So these, these, you know, you have these AIM names, right?

00:30:52 ◼   ► But were they, did they span outside the service?

00:30:55 ◼   ► Did they become an identity outside the service?

00:30:57 ◼   ► Or are these just the names that you picked for the thing?

00:30:59 ◼   ► Because I think a lot of, a common thing in the early internet was to be forced to pick

00:31:04 ◼   ► some name on a service, but lots of people haven't picked names and to come up with something

00:31:07 ◼   ► like these two things you've just described.

00:31:09 ◼   ► two things. Yeah, and to attach that and then so for the next service to use like the same

00:31:15 ◼   ► name because for the same reason because like you know it won't be taken and you become

00:31:18 ◼   ► to be identified by it. That happened with either of these? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I had my

00:31:22 ◼   ► name forever until I started using like my real name places. I was always ma'am to just

00:31:27 ◼   ► at least at least no numbers but I think that's worse than this is not pronounceable. No,

00:31:35 ◼   ► It's not, it doesn't even pronounce any.

00:31:37 ◼   ► It was a terrible decision made by a really confused person.

00:31:41 ◼   ► - So, Casey, where else did you use Blista?

00:31:44 ◼   ► - I think I actually, well, generally speaking,

00:31:47 ◼   ► I used Blister where I could and fell back if possible.

00:31:50 ◼   ► - I wish my name was Blista.

00:31:52 ◼   ► - That's such a gross name.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Blister's not, give me the origin again.

00:31:57 ◼   ► It's like a bass player and he had got blisters?

00:31:59 ◼   ► - So, no, no, no, no, no.

00:32:01 ◼   ► So like my, my, so if you think I'm nerdy and my friend Ben was even nerdier than I

00:32:07 ◼   ► am, or at the time anyway, and he was learning to play bass and was lamenting on the school

00:32:13 ◼   ► bus on the way home from school because we were, we lived like a couple of houses down

00:32:16 ◼   ► from each other, that he was getting blisters all over his hands.

00:32:18 ◼   ► And this was as I was pontificating about what I should call myself online.

00:32:21 ◼   ► And that's when I chose blister.

00:32:23 ◼   ► And the image in your mind, you say blisters.

00:32:25 ◼   ► That's that's an image I want to associate myself with.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Why not?

00:32:28 ◼   ► Because blisters are gross.

00:32:29 ◼   ► - Yes, but I was 17 years old, for goodness sakes.

00:32:32 ◼   ► - How about abrasion?

00:32:33 ◼   ► - Well, yes.

00:32:34 ◼   ► - You were 17?

00:32:35 ◼   ► That's way too old to be naming yourself Blista.

00:32:38 ◼   ► - I mean, whatever it was, I was in high school.

00:32:39 ◼   ► I know I was in high school, that I'm sure of.

00:32:41 ◼   ► So yeah, I was probably too old to be naming myself that,

00:32:44 ◼   ► but remember everyone that this was a different era

00:32:46 ◼   ► and that things were different back then.

00:32:48 ◼   ► - I had a friend whose, his name was Gravy Boat

00:32:50 ◼   ► and I was so jealous.

00:32:51 ◼   ► I'm like, that's so good.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Ah, I wish I thought of Gravy Boat.

00:32:56 ◼   ► - That's not better than your name.

00:32:58 ◼   ► - Gravy boats amazing, are you kidding?

00:33:00 ◼   ► Such a good name.

00:33:01 ◼   ► - So my aim name I wish I can share

00:33:05 ◼   ► because the service is now dead was JC Saracusa.

00:33:08 ◼   ► Why was it JC Saracusa?

00:33:12 ◼   ► Because both JC Saracusa and Saracusa were taken.

00:33:15 ◼   ► - 'Cause DJ Saracusa was taken.

00:33:17 ◼   ► - No.

00:33:19 ◼   ► - You should have been DJ Saracusa.

00:33:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:33:24 ◼   ► I've been trying to teach my children

00:33:25 ◼   ► don't pick usernames with numbers in them

00:33:27 ◼   ► because I feel like that's not something our family does.

00:33:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:31 ◼   ► - We don't do that in our family.

00:33:33 ◼   ► - No, we don't.

00:33:34 ◼   ► It's not appropriate.

00:33:35 ◼   ► But beyond that, they're not good at picking usernames.

00:33:40 ◼   ► And it's hard to do.

00:33:42 ◼   ► I had to come up with my son's PlayStation account name

00:33:45 ◼   ► and like everything is taken.

00:33:46 ◼   ► And I just wanted something that would like

00:33:48 ◼   ► not being embarrassing to anyone in the present

00:33:51 ◼   ► or in the future,

00:33:52 ◼   ► but be somehow meaningful and connected to something, right?

00:33:57 ◼   ► Hard was hard to do we spent a long time on that

00:33:59 ◼   ► Well, you know what having you two on the show reminds me that I need to pick a bone with

00:34:06 ◼   ► Long Islanders because for the longest time once I realized that I should just start embracing like my actual name

00:34:13 ◼   ► Like I was you know old enough because remember early internet

00:34:15 ◼   ► You never used both your first and last name on the internet never did that because it was too scary

00:34:20 ◼   ► Especially if you're a kid, but not for yeah, this is weird. You're yeah

00:34:25 ◼   ► That's I felt like that skipped my generation

00:34:28 ◼   ► Because I guess it was like before we were taught like we at the point

00:34:32 ◼   ► I would when I was doing it they were teaching the younger kids not to do that

00:34:36 ◼   ► But no one was teaching us not to do that. So we did it. Yeah, I think this is one of the rare times

00:34:40 ◼   ► I mean this genuinely that I remember that you are more than just a year or two older than I

00:34:44 ◼   ► Because generally speaking you and I I mean there there are some subtle differences between our upbringings and some bigger ones

00:34:50 ◼   ► But but they're not in my face very often and this is one of those times where it's very in my face

00:34:55 ◼   ► But anyways, when I realized that I should start purchasing domain names because they were less than like a gazillion dollars for dot-com

00:35:02 ◼   ► You know

00:35:02 ◼   ► So what things had started to level out a little bit?

00:35:04 ◼   ► For the longest time I wanted to get list calm and for the longest time it was taken by Long Island soda

00:35:11 ◼   ► systems and I remain to this day bitter about that because seems like

00:35:16 ◼   ► Not only did they take my surname and my rightfully deserved domain name, but because I wasn't very organized

00:35:24 ◼   ► they eventually let it lapse and now some squatter has it and probably wants a billion dollars for it.

00:35:28 ◼   ► You should have been, you could have sniped it. I know, I know. You should have had a watch on that

00:35:32 ◼   ► and picked it up as soon as it came available. It's hard to say that you have, you know,

00:35:36 ◼   ► anything because with Li you have to go to Long Island, so tough luck on that one. Yeah,

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00:36:54 ◼   ► Should we actually talk about tech stuff?

00:36:59 ◼   ► No, I like talking about Long Island.

00:37:03 ◼   ► There is one tech-related, game-related thing that I wanted to do a quick hit on, because

00:37:09 ◼   ► TIFF may actually have something to say about it.

00:37:12 ◼   ► This is a story about Vulcan coming to the Mac, V-U-L-K-A-N, which is the latest version

00:37:19 ◼   ► of, well, a graphics API made by the same consortium that does OpenGL.

00:37:28 ◼   ► And all of our Macs have OpenGL, and there's a mobile OpenGL ES on the iPhones and stuff.

00:37:36 ◼   ► But it's been years since Apple did anything with the OpenGL stack on the Mac.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And it shows in the performance and features of OpenGL on the Mac, which tends to hamper

00:37:50 ◼   ► the ability to either make Mac-native games, which almost nobody does, or to port games

00:37:57 ◼   ► from other platforms.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Because if you make a game and it uses some gaming API that doesn't exist on the Mac,

00:38:03 ◼   ► It's not going to work and you need some kind of shim layer to work with OpenGL, you know,

00:38:08 ◼   ► converting from DirectX to OpenGL or something.

00:38:10 ◼   ► Or if you try to write it portably in OpenGL for multiple platforms, OpenGL on the Mac

00:38:13 ◼   ► is so old and so slow that you can't, like unless you use it as a, you know, lowest common

00:38:18 ◼   ► denominator like, and most people don't do that for games, it's not good.

00:38:22 ◼   ► So I think it has hurt gaming performance and game availability on the Mac.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And so, and of course Apple is now doing the metal thing where it's a lower level API with

00:38:33 ◼   ► a much more modern, lower level API that is nevertheless exclusive to Apple platforms.

00:38:37 ◼   ► It's on iOS and it's on the Mac.

00:38:40 ◼   ► And a lot of game engines have written to that.

00:38:41 ◼   ► So the Unity engine, some other – what's the other big game engine, Tiff, you probably

00:38:45 ◼   ► know from the opening screens of games, Unity and – oh, Unreal.

00:38:50 ◼   ► I was totally just going to say that.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Have support for Metal.

00:38:54 ◼   ► And so that helps bring some games to the Mac.

00:38:55 ◼   ► Because like, okay, well, I'm not writing my game using OpenGL.

00:38:58 ◼   ► I'm using an engine and the engine knows how to target these platforms.

00:39:00 ◼   ► So that has helped a little bit.

00:39:02 ◼   ► But now, finally, Vulkan is coming to the Mac, not from Apple, but from the same—I

00:39:06 ◼   ► don't know if it's the same consortium—it's an open source thing, anyway, to let people

00:39:11 ◼   ► write games using the Vulkan API and then run them on the Mac and on Windows and on

00:39:16 ◼   ► wherever with equal feature set.

00:39:20 ◼   ► And there's a couple stories—we'll put links in the show notes—of, like, they tried

00:39:23 ◼   ► porting a game and the Vulkan implementation, even though Vulkan is just, like, translating

00:39:28 ◼   ► those calls down into Metal for the game to run is like 50% faster than the old version,

00:39:34 ◼   ► which would translate the calls down to the OpenGL stack.

00:39:37 ◼   ► So I feel like this is yet another nail in the coffin of OpenGL on the Mac, which has

00:39:42 ◼   ► basically been dead ever since Apple decided they're never going to update it again.

00:39:46 ◼   ► But having it there and having it be old and slow was just depressing, and it was almost

00:39:52 ◼   ► like I didn't like it when games used the "native Mac API" because it was slow.

00:39:56 ◼   ► So now, just all the game makers are taking this all out of Apple's hands and I'm hoping

00:40:01 ◼   ► what it will mean is better performance for games when running on the Mac.

00:40:05 ◼   ► So you don't have to reboot into Windows like running games in Steam or whatever on the

00:40:08 ◼   ► Mac.

00:40:09 ◼   ► And finally, everyone giving up on waiting for Apple to do anything gaming related on

00:40:14 ◼   ► the Mac other than Metal.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Because they changed the Windows server to Metal I think and Sierra, hi Sierra, I forget

00:40:20 ◼   ► when.

00:40:21 ◼   ► But like, OpenGL seems to be fading fast.

00:40:23 ◼   ► I wish Apple instead had just said, "Oh, never mind.

00:40:27 ◼   ► We realized we should have kept updating OpenGL and making it faster and better."

00:40:30 ◼   ► But it doesn't seem like they're doing that, so I'm glad someone else is doing it for them.

00:40:34 ◼   ► I'm excited for all the games I play on my Mac.

00:40:37 ◼   ► I like games.

00:40:38 ◼   ► Do you reboot into Windows to play games, or do you mostly just play them on Steam on

00:40:42 ◼   ► your Mac?

00:40:43 ◼   ► I play mine on Steam on Mac.

00:40:45 ◼   ► I haven't played any games on my Mac except Firewatch, which I almost forgot the name

00:40:49 ◼   ► of.

00:40:50 ◼   ► That's how long it's been.

00:40:51 ◼   ► That was very good, but that is the only time I've ever played a game on my Mac.

00:40:54 ◼   ► Oh, and you did do boot camp because you had all those big complaints about how hard it

00:40:57 ◼   ► was to get boot camp working.

00:40:58 ◼   ► What game was that for that you were trying to do boot camp?

00:41:00 ◼   ► Oh, that was for the...

00:41:03 ◼   ► Inside.

00:41:04 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:41:05 ◼   ► Thank you, Robot Marco.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Inside.

00:41:07 ◼   ► Oh, I'd totally forgotten that wasn't...

00:41:09 ◼   ► Did they just not have the Mac port out then or are they still not?

00:41:12 ◼   ► Yeah, the Mac port wasn't out.

00:41:13 ◼   ► It literally came out like a week after we recorded or like a few days after we recorded

00:41:18 ◼   ► or it was coming out while I was playing the game,

00:41:22 ◼   ► but I needed the time to play the game before I could,

00:41:25 ◼   ► I saw I couldn't wait for the port to come out.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - That's another podcast you're on occasionally.

00:41:29 ◼   ► You'd enlist it in your list of podcasts,

00:41:30 ◼   ► Tiff is also on the incomparable occasionally.

00:41:33 ◼   ► - Oh, and I'm also, I'm a player on all the game show,

00:41:37 ◼   ► the incomparable game show stuff.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Yeah, Boulder Dash.

00:41:40 ◼   ► I mean, not Boulder Dash, low definition.

00:41:42 ◼   ► - No, no, that's a copyrighted trademarked game

00:41:45 ◼   ► owned by some other company.

00:41:47 ◼   ► - No, we don't play the Boulder Dash at all.

00:41:49 ◼   ► I don't even know what game that is.

00:41:51 ◼   ► I never heard of it more in my life.

00:41:53 ◼   ► - Low definition.

00:41:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, the lowest of lows and the highest of highs.

00:41:58 ◼   ► - All right, let's talk about this weird patent

00:42:01 ◼   ► that just came out, which is that really that weird

00:42:04 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things?

00:42:05 ◼   ► So at Patently Apple, they noticed that Apple

00:42:09 ◼   ► has been granted a patent for a dual display MacBook

00:42:11 ◼   ► or perhaps second generation iPad Pro.

00:42:13 ◼   ► So the gist of it is there's a display

00:42:16 ◼   ► that you look at and a display that you would ostensibly type on.

00:42:21 ◼   ► And since Marco has done a little bit of kvetching and complaining about the modern keyboards,

00:42:29 ◼   ► I think this is really—we should just call this the Marco patent.

00:42:32 ◼   ► This is to make Marco happy, because clearly the answer to Marco's problems is if dust

00:42:38 ◼   ► is a problem, Marco, we'll just remove any mechanism by which dust could get in the keyboard

00:42:42 ◼   ► because there is no "in" to the keyboard.

00:42:44 ◼   ► It's all just glass.

00:42:45 ◼   ► So you're welcome, Marco.

00:42:46 ◼   ► for you. I actually don't think there's that much to say about this. I put it in here mostly

00:42:49 ◼   ► so we can refer people back to the original discussion of this, which was episode 193,

00:42:56 ◼   ► title of that was "The Escape Zone." It was when we first talked about the Touch Bar MacBook

00:43:00 ◼   ► Pros, like right after they were announced. And the first thing that I think occurred

00:43:05 ◼   ► to anybody, including us, who looked at the Touch Bar MacBook Pro is, "Okay, so they've

00:43:10 ◼   ► got a little screen on top of the keyboard, it seems kind of like a half measure.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Do we think that eventually the whole keyboard will be a screen and we have like this long

00:43:20 ◼   ► conversation about it so go back to that episode if you want to hear it because I don't think

00:43:22 ◼   ► we're going to repeat it here.

00:43:24 ◼   ► We did all the things you were going to expect us to say about the pluses and minuses of

00:43:27 ◼   ► having anything that's entirely a screen to type on.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And then this story is like any other Apple patent story.

00:43:35 ◼   ► The idea of having an entirely screen keyboard is obvious to anybody, including Apple.

00:43:44 ◼   ► And they did it on their iOS devices, they put a screen on their keyboard, surely they

00:43:49 ◼   ► had investigated that, and like anything that Apple does, they investigated and they patented.

00:43:53 ◼   ► Especially the obvious ideas, because that's how our stupid patent system works.

00:43:57 ◼   ► So as with all patent things, this means nothing about any product that Apple will actually

00:44:01 ◼   ► ship.

00:44:02 ◼   ► But it's a thing that's been in everybody's mind.

00:44:05 ◼   ► I think people do want to touch screens on their computers.

00:44:07 ◼   ► I think people don't like the, some people don't like the keyboards as they exist now

00:44:13 ◼   ► and we expect them to change.

00:44:15 ◼   ► I don't expect them to change in this direction, but this is just, you know, time-delayed confirmation

00:44:21 ◼   ► that, yes, of course Apple has considered having the whole keyboard be a screen or having

00:44:25 ◼   ► the whole thing to be a convertible snap-apart thing with like an iPad and a screen thing

00:44:29 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:44:31 ◼   ► But until we hear more, we'll just continue assuming that this is a thing they investigated

00:44:35 ◼   ► but are not going to produce. But I think they could sell something like this, not maybe as a

00:44:41 ◼   ► Mac laptop, maybe as an iOS thing, but it doesn't seem imminent to me. Let's start with baby steps.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Let's fix the mechanical keyboard reliability problems first, and then after that maybe fix the

00:44:52 ◼   ► Marko satisfaction index on the mechanical keyboard that is now reliable. On that topic,

00:44:58 ◼   ► I have to say I've been using my 2017 MacBook Pro at work with the keyboard. It has not yet broken

00:45:04 ◼   ► because I rarely use the keyboards that I'm not using at all, but it's not yet broken,

00:45:08 ◼   ► and I'm mostly a convert to the key switches. I still hate the touch bar,

00:45:12 ◼   ► mostly because of the escape key, which I want to be a real key, but I like the actual keyboard.

00:45:19 ◼   ► Obviously, the reliability part is still an issue.

00:45:21 ◼   ► - No, I agree with you, Jon, that, granted, I've not used a touch bar Mac, but just the key switches

00:45:28 ◼   ► and whatnot, I adore them, and I have spent years talking about how much the Magic keyboards are my

00:45:34 ◼   ► favorite keyboards ever and in the last six months to a year I have decided that

00:45:38 ◼   ► no my favorite keyboard ever if you can put a humongous asterisk on the end is

00:45:43 ◼   ► the is the one that's in the modern MacBook Pros and MacBooks but that

00:45:47 ◼   ► humongous asterisk is when it's working and as much as I want to say that Marco

00:45:53 ◼   ► is being a big baby and that really it's not a problem no really it is a problem

00:45:57 ◼   ► like I've never needed to buy compressed air in ten years but as I've mentioned

00:46:02 ◼   ► several times I had to buy compressed air to get some like microscopic dust

00:46:06 ◼   ► out of my MacBook keyboard but man when it's where it's like my car isn't it

00:46:09 ◼   ► like when it's working gosh I love that thing but then occasionally it fails it

00:46:13 ◼   ► makes me sad but you know you don't love the arrow keys that like I mean they're

00:46:16 ◼   ► still I have I have general hatred for laptop keyboards but specifically the

00:46:20 ◼   ► arrow keys message it's grim I don't like the arrow keys but they don't drive

00:46:25 ◼   ► me as nuts as I think they drive you and I think some of that is because I've

00:46:29 ◼   ► been using the inverted T for less time.

00:46:33 ◼   ► Well, no, is that really true?

00:46:34 ◼   ► Because my PC stuff always had an inverted T, I think.

00:46:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:46:38 ◼   ► The fact that you could feel for it,

00:46:39 ◼   ► because you could feel for the gap.

00:46:40 ◼   ► So the one is the-- we talked about the feeling for it.

00:46:42 ◼   ► But the other thing I find that surprised me using the keyboard

00:46:44 ◼   ► now for a long time, besides not being able to feel down there

00:46:48 ◼   ► to find where the edges are, is that the up and down arrow

00:46:50 ◼   ► keys, which it's essentially the same logical arrangement

00:46:53 ◼   ► has always been, a half size up and half size down,

00:46:56 ◼   ► crammed into a single key space.

00:46:58 ◼   ► I find it more difficult to differentiate and find and select like the up versus the

00:47:03 ◼   ► down and I don't understand why.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Maybe it's because the travel is less, maybe it's because there's less of an indent or

00:47:08 ◼   ► a space between them, but I find myself, I've found the correct key with my finger, I'm

00:47:12 ◼   ► not looking, but I found the correct key, the up/down key with my finger, and I have

00:47:15 ◼   ► to like carefully navigate which one of the things I want to hit.

00:47:20 ◼   ► All that, as I've said for years and years, would be solved if they just put an actual

00:47:22 ◼   ► full-size inverted T and broke the symmetry of the outline of the keyboard, but not holding

00:47:27 ◼   ► my breath in that.

00:47:28 ◼   ► - Tiff, are you using any sort of mobile rig,

00:47:31 ◼   ► or mobile computer computer, or are you on iPads

00:47:34 ◼   ► when you're running around?

00:47:35 ◼   ► - I'm on iPads when I'm running around,

00:47:37 ◼   ► but I wanted to say something about this virtual,

00:47:39 ◼   ► the all-screen keyboard patent thing.

00:47:41 ◼   ► So Apple does a lot of different patents for everything,

00:47:45 ◼   ► right, so it's not super important that they did this one,

00:47:48 ◼   ► because they're doing weird patents all the time

00:47:50 ◼   ► for different things that they think of,

00:47:51 ◼   ► which is, as they should, a smart business move.

00:47:54 ◼   ► But what if, I didn't read this article,

00:47:57 ◼   ► because I'm not allowed to prepare for the show.

00:48:00 ◼   ► - You're filling the Marco role.

00:48:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I mean you're not allowed to read stuff.

00:48:03 ◼   ► I asked him and he was like, "No, no, no,

00:48:04 ◼   ► "you have nothing to read, it's fine."

00:48:07 ◼   ► But so I use a kind of like a skin

00:48:10 ◼   ► on the top of my keyboard now,

00:48:11 ◼   ► which has Photoshop shortcuts on it.

00:48:14 ◼   ► And generally the shortcuts that I use the most

00:48:17 ◼   ► I don't need a keyboard for,

00:48:19 ◼   ► but the ones that are kind of more obscure,

00:48:21 ◼   ► I do use it and it's nice to have that reference

00:48:23 ◼   ► without having to look up a guide online

00:48:27 ◼   ► to find out what is the shortcut for a certain obscure tool

00:48:30 ◼   ► that I'm just not used to using that I wanna try out.

00:48:32 ◼   ► But a virtual keyboard, well not virtual,

00:48:35 ◼   ► 'cause there is a physical pad there,

00:48:38 ◼   ► but it would be kind of an all-screen digital keyboard,

00:48:41 ◼   ► and that you can kind of have those layouts

00:48:44 ◼   ► built in in the software.

00:48:46 ◼   ► You could just swap them in and out,

00:48:48 ◼   ► and I think that would be kinda cool, wouldn't it?

00:48:50 ◼   ► - Add to TIFF.

00:48:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:48:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, that's why, I mean,

00:48:55 ◼   ► if you don't remember episode 193, but that's kind of what we talked about.

00:48:58 ◼   ► Like it was the original pitch for, remember Steve Jobs up on the iPhone, it's like, okay,

00:49:03 ◼   ► well you got a keyboard on your thing, but then like the keyboard is what the keyboard

00:49:07 ◼   ► is.

00:49:08 ◼   ► But what if you could change the keyboard based on the application you're using?

00:49:11 ◼   ► Like if you just make the entire front of the phone a screen, it's, you know, it's much

00:49:16 ◼   ► more configurable.

00:49:17 ◼   ► And they demoed that on the original iPhone, like look, when we ask you to enter numbers,

00:49:20 ◼   ► we'll just change the whole keyboard to a numpad.

00:49:22 ◼   ► when you're entering just letters, we can save room and not have -- and we have like

00:49:25 ◼   ► a key to toggle. You know, we all know this from using iOS, but like we don't have to

00:49:29 ◼   ► have the numbers above the letters all the time taking up more room on what was then

00:49:32 ◼   ► the very small iPhone screen. We can just not have a number row at all. And then when

00:49:36 ◼   ► you want to type numbers, hit this little thing in the corner and then the whole keyboard

00:49:38 ◼   ► changes to numbers. That's like the most simple form of this and what you're talking about

00:49:42 ◼   ► is like when you have a screen, you could put anything you want there. It doesn't even

00:49:45 ◼   ► have to look anything like a keyboard. It could be like this palette of buttons that

00:49:49 ◼   ► that you can hit to do Photoshop-y type things.

00:49:52 ◼   ► - Well, that's what's nice,

00:49:53 ◼   ► 'cause it would keep the layout of a standard keyboard,

00:49:56 ◼   ► because that's the way people learn

00:49:58 ◼   ► and are used to typing, right?

00:49:59 ◼   ► 'Cause like-- - Old people.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - Right, old people.

00:50:01 ◼   ► But in general, that's where it's laid out that way

00:50:06 ◼   ► for a reason, I guess, I don't know.

00:50:08 ◼   ► I remember CGP Grey talking about

00:50:10 ◼   ► some sort of weirdo keyboard that he uses,

00:50:11 ◼   ► but I mean, again-- - Dvorak, yeah.

00:50:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, why?

00:50:14 ◼   ► But I mean, looking at my keyboard right now

00:50:18 ◼   ► with this floppy skin on it that gets a whole bunch

00:50:21 ◼   ► of crud underneath and it just, it's all pasty.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I don't know, it's not a pretty solution.

00:50:26 ◼   ► I mean, everything's laid out similar,

00:50:28 ◼   ► but it has the shortcuts written on top of them

00:50:30 ◼   ► and it would be really nice to kind of have

00:50:31 ◼   ► that transparency layer be in a digital format instead

00:50:36 ◼   ► and then be able to switch back to see a normal keyboard

00:50:38 ◼   ► instead of revealing the crud-covered keys

00:50:40 ◼   ► that now live underneath this floppy skin.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - And that's like the transitional model

00:50:44 ◼   ► because people who have been using a physical keyboard

00:50:46 ◼   ► to use Photoshop for a long time

00:50:47 ◼   ► have muscle memory for where the key shortcuts are for like the commonly used ones for example,

00:50:51 ◼   ► right? And so if you –

00:50:52 ◼   ► Oh yeah, the common ones. I'm talking about like, you know, some of the obscure stuff.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Yeah, no, but I'm saying like that's the reason why you'd display a virtual keyboard

00:51:00 ◼   ► on the screen instead of something, you know, more sort of like thinking outside the box

00:51:05 ◼   ► because you're not limited by a physical keyboard anymore. You can display anything

00:51:08 ◼   ► you want down there. It could be like a custom palette made for manipulating Photoshop really

00:51:12 ◼   ► quickly. But because people are coming from a world where they're using Photoshop on

00:51:16 ◼   ► PCs and things with regular keyboards, they would probably want a layout that mimics a

00:51:20 ◼   ► physical keyboard only with, like you said, with the overlay on it or whatever.

00:51:23 ◼   ► But eventually I'd have to think that all of us would die out and it would be like,

00:51:27 ◼   ► "Well, why am I showing you a picture of a physical keyboard down there when what you

00:51:31 ◼   ► really want is a custom control layout made specifically for using Photoshop most efficiently,

00:51:38 ◼   ► perhaps that you could even rearrange them?"

00:51:40 ◼   ► So it just becomes another piece of software.

00:51:41 ◼   ► In the same way they let you rearrange all your sidebars and your layers palette and

00:51:45 ◼   ► and all that other stuff and dock things to each other

00:51:47 ◼   ► and customize in that way.

00:51:49 ◼   ► The bottom, the screen that is horizontal

00:51:52 ◼   ► is just another version of the screen that is vertical

00:51:54 ◼   ► and you should be able to lay it out the same way,

00:51:56 ◼   ► even to the point where that could be the surface

00:51:57 ◼   ► that you draw on with your pencil

00:51:58 ◼   ► instead of drawing on your vertical screen on a laptop,

00:52:00 ◼   ► which would never work.

00:52:01 ◼   ► - We're just talking about the multi-pad lifestyle here,

00:52:03 ◼   ► right, essentially, you just put two iPads

00:52:05 ◼   ► next to each other and communicate.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Didn't they have a shuffleboard app

00:52:10 ◼   ► that you could string them all up

00:52:11 ◼   ► and you could throw the pucks right across

00:52:14 ◼   ► like four iPhones. I think Margo and I set that up once. It was pretty sweet. But yeah,

00:52:18 ◼   ► that's basically what this is, right? But in a laptop?

00:52:20 ◼   ► Yeah, well, the patent doesn't say, I mean, it's just a patent, right? But you know, they

00:52:24 ◼   ► try to cover all their bases like, you know, could be a tablet, could be a personal, you

00:52:29 ◼   ► know, they're all vague about it, right? That's the thing with patents. But there's lots of

00:52:32 ◼   ► possibilities here of, you know, applying second screen to a thing that Apple makes,

00:52:39 ◼   ► whether it's an iPad with a second screen that snaps onto it or a laptop thing or both

00:52:45 ◼   ► and you can snap it onto either one with little magnets or something.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Or they just never do anything like this and we'll see.

00:52:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:51 ◼   ► I can get behind this.

00:52:52 ◼   ► I can get excited about it.

00:52:53 ◼   ► This sounds kind of fun.

00:52:54 ◼   ► So you don't have a hang-up about typing on it?

00:52:56 ◼   ► Because say it was on a laptop or something.

00:52:58 ◼   ► The reason people usually buy physical keyboards for their iPads, there's two reasons.

00:53:02 ◼   ► One is they want to have something they can type on that's not a screen.

00:53:06 ◼   ► But the second one I feel like people forget is having a separate keyboard and iPad frees

00:53:11 ◼   ► up the entire iPad screen for screen purposes.

00:53:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm seeing the benefit in having the double screen space.

00:53:17 ◼   ► So if you're doing any kind of – even if you're drawing or typing or doing anything,

00:53:21 ◼   ► the screen space in front of you is precious and you don't want to take half that up

00:53:25 ◼   ► with some keyboard that you're typing on.

00:53:28 ◼   ► But no, I type a lot on my phone.

00:53:30 ◼   ► I don't think it really matters anymore.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Is that working for you?

00:53:34 ◼   ► Seriously?

00:53:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I don't type a lot.

00:53:37 ◼   ► - It is so bad for me.

00:53:38 ◼   ► - But I don't type a lot.

00:53:40 ◼   ► I mean, I answer some emails, and even long emails,

00:53:43 ◼   ► I sit and I type them out on my phone

00:53:45 ◼   ► because it's easier being mobile with it

00:53:47 ◼   ► than coming back and sitting at my computer.

00:53:50 ◼   ► - I guess it's a Casey problem.

00:53:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's one of the things we've discussed

00:53:54 ◼   ► in the past of how some people really don't like

00:53:56 ◼   ► typing on Glass, but a whole generation of people

00:53:59 ◼   ► is growing up typing on Glass,

00:54:00 ◼   ► and they're not gonna have the same hang-ups about it

00:54:02 ◼   ► that some of us do.

00:54:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel more fine about it.

00:54:05 ◼   ► - Tiff's young at heart.

00:54:06 ◼   ► - I am.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I'm the youngest right here right now, so I mean, come on.

00:54:09 ◼   ► - By like a couple of months or something?

00:54:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm millennial, man.

00:54:12 ◼   ► - I don't like to think about it.

00:54:14 ◼   ► I don't like to think about people born in the '80s.

00:54:16 ◼   ► It's gross.

00:54:17 ◼   ► - Love you too, Jon.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Oh, goodness.

00:54:22 ◼   ► No, I don't know about this patent.

00:54:24 ◼   ► I mean, I'd try anything, and just like you guys said,

00:54:27 ◼   ► the idea of having another screen that's modifiable

00:54:30 ◼   ► to suit your needs or suit the needs

00:54:32 ◼   ► of what's going on right then does sound good.

00:54:35 ◼   ► I never really played, was it the 3DS

00:54:37 ◼   ► that had the two screens set up, is that right?

00:54:39 ◼   ► No, yes? - Still does.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - Okay, I never really played one of those

00:54:43 ◼   ► for more than like two minutes,

00:54:44 ◼   ► and it seemed kind of silly in the two minutes I played it,

00:54:47 ◼   ► but I'm sure that there were plenty of games

00:54:48 ◼   ► where it actually made a lot of sense.

00:54:51 ◼   ► But I don't know, I'd try it.

00:54:52 ◼   ► I'm not great at typing on Glass.

00:54:54 ◼   ► I'm better on a full-size iPad,

00:54:56 ◼   ► which is funny because I don't have a full-size iPad

00:54:58 ◼   ► in the house, but I mean, I'd give it a shot.

00:55:01 ◼   ► But man, I can't imagine I would want,

00:55:03 ◼   ► especially for a full-on computer,

00:55:05 ◼   ► I would enjoy having glass as my only input mechanism.

00:55:09 ◼   ► - What was that projection keyboard from like Microsoft?

00:55:12 ◼   ► - That never worked?

00:55:13 ◼   ► It was from Sharper Image, I think.

00:55:14 ◼   ► - I know what you're thinking, that's right.

00:55:15 ◼   ► - No, we went into a Microsoft store

00:55:16 ◼   ► when we had Adam was young enough to be strapped to me,

00:55:19 ◼   ► you know, like in a little harness thing

00:55:22 ◼   ► that you wear when you wear your babies.

00:55:24 ◼   ► And we were in a Microsoft store

00:55:25 ◼   ► typing on some sort of like projected keyboard.

00:55:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, they still make those.

00:55:29 ◼   ► That I feel like is even worse than the screen ones

00:55:31 ◼   ► that never quite worked as well as even a screen keyboard would.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Well, yeah, and you couldn't see it too well either. It wasn't great.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, yeah. All right. So before we do Ask ATP, we're going to do a brief Ask TIFF.

00:55:45 ◼   ► And I'm assuming that this was mostly Jon's work that I'm now taking credit for, but I

00:55:49 ◼   ► will emcee and let Jon take over as soon as he sees it necessary. Tiff, what's your favorite

00:55:55 ◼   ► tech product right now?

00:55:57 ◼   ► These questions. I mean, come on, dudes.

00:56:00 ◼   ► tech podcasts you must endure. It's all John. These questions are so cheesy. Alright, my

00:56:07 ◼   ► favorite tech product right now I would have to say is the Switch because I've been playing

00:56:12 ◼   ► it constantly. So go Switch. Are you playing it handheld or on the TV mostly? TV with the

00:56:19 ◼   ► Pro Controller. Good. Yep. The proper way. But I put stickers on the Pro Controllers.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Oh, that's fine. You got the doggy stickers.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Well, the dog sticker is on the main, um, the little joy con set up holder thing.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Yeah. That may when it actually looks like a little dog.

00:56:36 ◼   ► But on the back of all of our pro controllers,

00:56:39 ◼   ► we each have kind of like our own sticker.

00:56:40 ◼   ► So each family member has their own controller. You know,

00:56:44 ◼   ► I do still love my switch, but I almost,

00:56:47 ◼   ► I feel like I never have time to play it.

00:56:48 ◼   ► And the part of the problem I have with the switch is that I've only made it,

00:56:53 ◼   ► I would guess like a quarter of the way through Zelda despite having had it for months now.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Oh my goodness.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And I feel like it's so hard, and maybe this, maybe it's me, but it's hard for me to pick

00:57:04 ◼   ► it up, play it for like 10 or 15 minutes, put it back down, and then remember what the

00:57:08 ◼   ► crap I was working on the next day when I pick it up again.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Like, Zelda is not the kind of game that you just pick up and play for 10 or 15 minutes

00:57:14 ◼   ► and put down.

00:57:15 ◼   ► It totally is.

00:57:16 ◼   ► You just haven't, here's the thing, it is that type of game, especially this Zelda is

00:57:19 ◼   ► that type of game, but the problem is that you have not...

00:57:21 ◼   ► Because you don't have to do anything.

00:57:23 ◼   ► It's so...

00:57:24 ◼   ► Yeah, fair.

00:57:25 ◼   ► But the thing is, the game hasn't grabbed you.

00:57:27 ◼   ► That's the problem.

00:57:28 ◼   ► If the game grabbed you, the way it works, showing that you can dip into it, is, yeah,

00:57:33 ◼   ► you only have 15 minutes, so you dip into it and do a thing.

00:57:36 ◼   ► But if the game has actually grabbed you and really gotten your attention, all the while

00:57:39 ◼   ► you're not playing, you're thinking about, "Here's what I'm going to do the next time

00:57:42 ◼   ► I play.

00:57:43 ◼   ► I'm going to go over here, I'm going to do this thing, and then I'm going to do that

00:57:44 ◼   ► thing, and maybe I'll think about it."

00:57:45 ◼   ► Like, you're thinking about it, you're thinking about this place, this virtual place, even

00:57:50 ◼   ► when you're not there. If you don't get grabbed in that way, when you come back, it'll be

00:57:54 ◼   ► like, "Okay, reboot everything. Where the hell was I in this game?" Because you haven't

00:57:59 ◼   ► been thinking about it since then. So it's not, I don't think it's that the game doesn't

00:58:01 ◼   ► allow you to play in short spurts. It's just that it hasn't really got its hooks into you.

00:58:05 ◼   ► It's just not connecting with you or whatever. Yeah, because when I was very into Odyssey,

00:58:09 ◼   ► I could sit down and play Odyssey for like 10 minutes, get one moon and then shut it

00:58:16 ◼   ► You know, like I would be like, oh, I'm just gonna do this real quick because and the same thing with Zelda, too

00:58:21 ◼   ► You could just play a quick little temple and be like, all right

00:58:24 ◼   ► I'm just gonna beat this temple and then I'm just gonna shut it off and I'm gonna go do something else

00:58:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and maybe that's part of the problem in and now I'm showing my inability to play games

00:58:33 ◼   ► But I feel like I got all of the temples that were easily accessible

00:58:36 ◼   ► So like none of the so I did your eyes, please like I can't allow us to continue. Sorry. Thank you

00:58:41 ◼   ► I went to the I went to all of the shrines

00:58:44 ◼   ► I'm sorry John, I'm sorry.

00:58:48 ◼   ► You must now do 10 push-ups.

00:58:49 ◼   ► No, I went to all the, and I do too, I went to all the shrines that were easily accessible

00:58:54 ◼   ► and now all that remains that I can see anyway are like in the super hot lava-y area or like

00:59:00 ◼   ► the super cold tundra-y area.

00:59:03 ◼   ► All the shrines, they were easily accessible.

00:59:04 ◼   ► Can you put a number on that for us, please?

00:59:06 ◼   ► I honestly don't remember.

00:59:07 ◼   ► I can, give me a minute.

00:59:08 ◼   ► Oh my gosh, there's so many.

00:59:09 ◼   ► You can't even find them all.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Well then that's probably the thing is just I'm not exploring the right areas.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Hold on. Let me see if my switch is even sure you don't have to do shrines at all

00:59:15 ◼   ► You don't do shrines don't do shrines

00:59:17 ◼   ► Like that's the thing about the Zelda like if there's something you find it, you know

00:59:20 ◼   ► Just like maybe you just want to get that you're the best horse you can get right you could spend hours

00:59:25 ◼   ► Just fine. Oh you you got to get a lot of you got to get a lot of donut to get the best horse

00:59:29 ◼   ► You can get let me tell you, you know one thing that is really nice that

00:59:33 ◼   ► I like about having my macbook is I just ripped the power charger

00:59:39 ◼   ► cable-y thing out of my MacBook, slammed it into the Switch, and unfortunately it's like

00:59:44 ◼   ► any modern iOS device in that it needs to be at least slightly charged, even if it's

00:59:47 ◼   ► hooked up to power to turn it on.

00:59:50 ◼   ► But just grabbing my computer's power cord and putting it into my video game system's

00:59:54 ◼   ► power cord, that's pretty cool.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Wait, you just did that right now?

00:59:57 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:59:58 ◼   ► Wait, why is the Switch in your office?

01:00:01 ◼   ► Because it's...

01:00:02 ◼   ► I never play it on the TV, sorry guys, and to be honest I never really play it at all.

01:00:05 ◼   ► Even though I do enjoy it, it's not that I enjoy it really any less.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I just never have a chance.

01:00:10 ◼   ► - That's why you're not playing

01:00:11 ◼   ► because it's not in like the hub of the house.

01:00:13 ◼   ► It's not in the enjoyment center.

01:00:15 ◼   ► That sounds gross.

01:00:18 ◼   ► - Well, he's just not that into it

01:00:21 ◼   ► as they used to say in the 90s.

01:00:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:24 ◼   ► But like one of the great things about the Switch,

01:00:26 ◼   ► especially for short gaming sessions

01:00:30 ◼   ► is that of all the gaming things I have ever known,

01:00:33 ◼   ► it is the fastest from powering on

01:00:37 ◼   ► to picking up where you left off. Now granted it's easy because it's not an MMO or whatever,

01:00:41 ◼   ► but you turn that thing back on and you are the exact millisecond you were in Zelda.

01:00:45 ◼   ► Yes, it's awesome.

01:00:46 ◼   ► And I love that. I love that, you know, that's no boot screen, no spinners, no cursors, no,

01:00:52 ◼   ► you know, no anything. I wish Destiny did that. Obviously you can't because of online

01:00:56 ◼   ► stuff, but that makes it so easy to just dip in, run, do a thing, grab a thing, fight a

01:01:01 ◼   ► person, put it back to sleep, and then just pick up right where you left off.

01:01:04 ◼   ► You can even be a total monster and play half of a Mario Kart race and then pause it and

01:01:09 ◼   ► then come back and pick it up.

01:01:11 ◼   ► Although I would, that's the thing about that.

01:01:13 ◼   ► I do it sometimes with Alto's Adventure and Alto's Odyssey now.

01:01:16 ◼   ► When you're having a long session and you think you're doing well, sometimes you think,

01:01:21 ◼   ► "I should take a break now because I'm approaching my record and if I take a break, I will reset

01:01:26 ◼   ► all the goodness and I'll come back to this later when I haven't burned through my attention

01:01:31 ◼   ► or whatever."

01:01:32 ◼   ► other hand you might come back to it and you're not in the groove anymore. So

01:01:35 ◼   ► knowing when is a smart time to take a break and how long that break should be.

01:01:40 ◼   ► Jon, you have to know when to hold them and know when to hold them.

01:01:44 ◼   ► Totally, totally true. I found with Alto that it is useful to take a break but it

01:01:49 ◼   ► cannot be a very long way because I don't want to get out of the flow but

01:01:52 ◼   ► sometimes I do want to release whatever tension I feel like is building up. Also

01:01:55 ◼   ► my problem with Alto and Elzad, I see an adventure is that eventually when you

01:02:00 ◼   ► good your games start lasting a really long time and it's like do I have 45 minutes to play Alto?

01:02:05 ◼   ► Maybe not. 45 minutes to sit there and do nothing? That sounds amazing. I'm doing nothing. I'm going

01:02:11 ◼   ► downhill. You know what I mean? I don't mean that in a disparaging way. I'm just saying like to

01:02:16 ◼   ► just have 45 minutes. I go that way really fast. If something gets in my way, I turn.

01:02:24 ◼   ► It's an 80s reference for you 90s kids.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Nope, not a bit.

01:02:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I got nothing.

01:02:29 ◼   ► I know, it's fine.

01:02:30 ◼   ► I'm playing Marco, so I don't get it.

01:02:31 ◼   ► You're doing great.

01:02:32 ◼   ► Thanks.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Favorite tech product, the Switch.

01:02:35 ◼   ► What tech thing is Tiff most looking forward to in 2018?

01:02:38 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to getting Marco's computer

01:02:43 ◼   ► after he's done, how about that?

01:02:46 ◼   ► That's good, all right.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:48 ◼   ► After he's done, all right, so I think more accurately

01:02:51 ◼   ► be after he decides to buy the Mac Pro, you're going to take his computer and then when he

01:02:55 ◼   ► returns the Mac Pro, you're not giving it back.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:02:58 ◼   ► I am definitely buying the Mac Pro.

01:03:01 ◼   ► We know, we know, computer man.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Everyone knew.

01:03:04 ◼   ► This is like me definitely not buying the watch.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Everyone knows you're buying a Mac Pro.

01:03:09 ◼   ► All right, if you could change one, oh, I'm not asking this.

01:03:12 ◼   ► This is all tech-related.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Yes, no, it's tech-related.

01:03:14 ◼   ► No, you ask this.

01:03:15 ◼   ► I'm not doing this.

01:03:16 ◼   ► This question's like the dating game.

01:03:18 ◼   ► I know, right?

01:03:20 ◼   ► yeah so this question is make whoopee yeah in the butt if you could change one

01:03:28 ◼   ► if you could change one tech related thing about Marco what would it be I

01:03:33 ◼   ► feel like this is safer because it's tech related we're not asking you to

01:03:36 ◼   ► like critique him as his being one tech related thing about Marco what would it

01:03:40 ◼   ► be if I could change one tech related thing about Marco what would it be it

01:03:46 ◼   ► can be like a thing that he does with tech that you don't like a product that

01:03:50 ◼   ► has that you wish you didn't like anything anything tech related I wish

01:03:54 ◼   ► you would play games a little bit more but then I would have less time to play

01:03:58 ◼   ► games to play cop games yeah yeah well we played um Oh digital Marco what was

01:04:07 ◼   ► that one where you're under the bunker and we played it like back and forth

01:04:11 ◼   ► shadow complex yeah shadow complex that was fun when we did that and we had time

01:04:15 ◼   ► and things. You kind of you do your kind of not co-op playing but like backseat driver playing

01:04:22 ◼   ► no can yeah over the shoulder playing with each other with Stardew Valley or like when the one

01:04:27 ◼   ► person has played the other person is advising right? Yeah yeah we did that we did that for

01:04:30 ◼   ► Odyssey 2 a little bit well it was more I advise Marco or laughed when he totally missed stuff

01:04:36 ◼   ► like the good wife that I am. So but no that's that's a terrible answer. I don't know. That's

01:04:44 ◼   ► That's pretty good. I mean, that's tech related. You wish he played games for.

01:04:47 ◼   ► I mean, he's so supportive when it comes to getting technology stuff all set up

01:04:51 ◼   ► for me or if I need his help with anything.

01:04:54 ◼   ► He doesn't get mad if I need extra help.

01:04:56 ◼   ► We're not asking you to say the good things about him.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah, well he's great. I don't know.

01:05:01 ◼   ► I am the best.

01:05:02 ◼   ► All right. I take away that. Whatever he's using right now,

01:05:06 ◼   ► I would take that away from him. He should not be allowed to have this.

01:05:09 ◼   ► It's freaking me out.

01:05:10 ◼   ► Good luck.

01:05:11 ◼   ► Just tell him to pass a different argument to the,

01:05:14 ◼   ► there's a voice parameter to the command he's running.

01:05:16 ◼   ► He can pick a different voice.

01:05:17 ◼   ► He just keeps picking the default Fred one, which is boring.

01:05:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, you should definitely pick

01:05:21 ◼   ► the sexy Australian Siri voice

01:05:24 ◼   ► because that one's pretty good.

01:05:25 ◼   ► - All right, and I would ask the next question,

01:05:27 ◼   ► but I have no idea what it means.

01:05:28 ◼   ► So go ahead, Jon.

01:05:29 ◼   ► - Well, I put that in there.

01:05:32 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:05:33 ◼   ► - But you don't have to say it.

01:05:35 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:05:36 ◼   ► Okay, so you know how there's so many different companies

01:05:38 ◼   ► now that gather or collaborate a box that they send you

01:05:43 ◼   ► and you can get like a quarterly box

01:05:45 ◼   ► or a weekly box of whatever things.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Well, Pusheen, the little gray internet cat has a box

01:05:53 ◼   ► and it's stupid expensive and it comes quarterly

01:05:58 ◼   ► but it does look pretty cute.

01:06:01 ◼   ► So I've kind of been debating about it.

01:06:03 ◼   ► - So what's in it?

01:06:03 ◼   ► I'm familiar with Pusheen,

01:06:05 ◼   ► I'm not familiar with the box idea.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Well, it's just a whole bunch of merch.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Like the best way to describe it in like the cheesiest way possible, because it

01:06:15 ◼   ► is, it's just like, here's some Pusheen socks and a little vinyl figure.

01:06:20 ◼   ► And, uh, I don't know, like a towel and a printed turban.

01:06:25 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Like there's like all kinds of weird stuff in there that you get.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And so it's like, you don't get to pick.

01:06:30 ◼   ► So it's kind of like a surprise where you're like, I wonder what I'll get.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:33 ◼   ► It's like a curated collection of Pusheen paraphernalia.

01:06:38 ◼   ► - Does the box cost more or less

01:06:41 ◼   ► than the sum of the retail prices of the things it contains?

01:06:43 ◼   ► - Well, less.

01:06:44 ◼   ► That's usually the appeal of the whole box situation.

01:06:47 ◼   ► But they say, you know,

01:06:48 ◼   ► it's a hundred dollar value for only 69.99 or so.

01:06:52 ◼   ► - So since this is a question

01:06:55 ◼   ► that you are asking about yourself,

01:06:57 ◼   ► my answer based on the experience seeing my children

01:07:03 ◼   ► have way too many possessions is that you really,

01:07:07 ◼   ► it's not so much about whether the box will be exciting,

01:07:10 ◼   ► it's about what happens with the stuff

01:07:11 ◼   ► that's in the box after because you will rapidly run out

01:07:14 ◼   ► of places to display things no matter how cute they are.

01:07:18 ◼   ► - That's it, that's the answer I needed.

01:07:19 ◼   ► So it's no, no to the Poohsheen box.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I will just enjoy it on Instagram.

01:07:24 ◼   ► - Plus you got a whole new art room

01:07:26 ◼   ► and all you're gonna be flirting with art junk.

01:07:27 ◼   ► So there's, you're gonna be getting plenty of boxes of stuff.

01:07:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, I'll have plenty of stuff to fill my art room

01:07:32 ◼   ► but it's a good idea not to invest in the pooching box.

01:07:36 ◼   ► Thank you, that really did help, actually.

01:07:39 ◼   ► - See, this is the opposite of the advice Marco gives,

01:07:41 ◼   ► because with almost all things, Marco's advice is,

01:07:43 ◼   ► oh yeah, definitely buy it.

01:07:45 ◼   ► - Now, Marco is free to get her one of those boxes

01:07:47 ◼   ► for a special occasion,

01:07:47 ◼   ► 'cause she wouldn't have bought it for herself,

01:07:49 ◼   ► but now here's a box.

01:07:49 ◼   ► But an ongoing commitment to continual boxes,

01:07:52 ◼   ► you will run out of places to put that stuff.

01:07:54 ◼   ► - Oh, no, no, I wasn't gonna commit

01:07:55 ◼   ► to the whole yearly box situation.

01:07:57 ◼   ► I was just thinking for spring,

01:07:59 ◼   ► like Easter Bunny situation, treat yourself.

01:08:01 ◼   ► - You can get one box, I feel like, but be careful,

01:08:04 ◼   ► 'cause one box turns into me.

01:08:05 ◼   ► - No, see, no, I'm just gonna open it,

01:08:07 ◼   ► and then it's gonna be over,

01:08:09 ◼   ► so I might as well watch a video of somebody opening it.

01:08:11 ◼   ► Like, you get the same thrill.

01:08:13 ◼   ► - There you go, now you'll be like every other,

01:08:15 ◼   ► you know, seven-year-old kid who watches Disembodied Hands

01:08:19 ◼   ► silently, silently unbox things on YouTube

01:08:21 ◼   ► for hours and hours, making people millionaires.

01:08:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, why not? - What the hell?

01:08:24 ◼   ► - Spread the wealth.

01:08:25 ◼   ► - Where do I figure out how many shrines I have in Zelda?

01:08:29 ◼   ► - In their load screen?

01:08:30 ◼   ► on the loading screen in the upper right.

01:08:32 ◼   ► - Oh God, I wasn't paying attention.

01:08:33 ◼   ► - In the hood?

01:08:34 ◼   ► - It was something like, it was 20 some shrines,

01:08:37 ◼   ► which I'm sure is where you go,

01:08:38 ◼   ► "Oh God, are you kidding me?" - Oh my God.

01:08:40 ◼   ► - Exactly. - Yeah, you're not a quarter.

01:08:42 ◼   ► - You're a baby, oh my goodness.

01:08:44 ◼   ► - Sorry, I do have the elephant dude.

01:08:46 ◼   ► What is that called?

01:08:47 ◼   ► The divine beast, there you go.

01:08:48 ◼   ► - Ruta?

01:08:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go.

01:08:51 ◼   ► - I just had to draw a whole bunch of those for Adam.

01:08:53 ◼   ► He kept requesting them for his lunchbox notes.

01:08:56 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Look, I need like two days

01:08:58 ◼   ► "to draw a divine beast kid.

01:08:59 ◼   ► Like I can't whip that out in the morning in like 20 minutes.

01:09:02 ◼   ► Tell them you can't give away your eye for free anymore.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Yeah, you have to buy it.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Wow.

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01:10:54 ◼   ► [Music]

01:10:58 ◼   ► All right. Jimmy Bossy? Bossy?

01:11:01 ◼   ► Buffett.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Jimmy Bose. Jimmy writes in, "Max out hearts or stamina?" I'm assuming this is a video game

01:11:07 ◼   ► thing. I'm assuming about Zelda, is it not?

01:11:09 ◼   ► Yay!

01:11:10 ◼   ► Is that how we're reading this? Okay. This is actually relevant to my interests if I

01:11:14 ◼   ► ever get back to this game. So Marco or just Marco, geezy peasy, I'm so pleased to see Marco

01:11:19 ◼   ► Marco and Jon.

01:11:20 ◼   ► So Tiff and Jon, what do you recommend?

01:11:23 ◼   ► Let's start with Tiff.

01:11:24 ◼   ► - I'm gonna go with stamina, AKA Donut,

01:11:27 ◼   ► which Adam calls it Donut,

01:11:28 ◼   ► but Marco insists that he came up with the name,

01:11:30 ◼   ► but it's really cute and we call it the Donut.

01:11:33 ◼   ► I definitely think Donut,

01:11:34 ◼   ► because the more stamina you have,

01:11:37 ◼   ► the more you can explore,

01:11:39 ◼   ► and then you can get hearts later.

01:11:40 ◼   ► So stamina is way more important to max out first.

01:11:44 ◼   ► - I think this is a choice that people put on themselves,

01:11:46 ◼   ► like with these extremes here, max out hearts or stamina.

01:11:49 ◼   ► So long term, obviously you're going to max out both, right?

01:11:52 ◼   ► That's your, you know, if you just keep playing the game, it's going to happen.

01:11:55 ◼   ► People really want to know is, in the early game, where should you put your points, essentially?

01:12:00 ◼   ► And my experience, I know there's a lot of people who say, "Oh, just put everything into

01:12:04 ◼   ► stamina," but like, Breath of the Wild is, you're more likely to die in Breath of the

01:12:11 ◼   ► Wild than you are in a lot of recent Zelda's.

01:12:14 ◼   ► Because they start you weak and because there's no sort of guided path through the game, you

01:12:17 ◼   ► find yourself encountering enemies that want to kill you.

01:12:21 ◼   ► And so I don't feel like it's good advice to tell somebody, just put everything into

01:12:25 ◼   ► stamina.

01:12:26 ◼   ► If you want to do like a recipe, like a two to one ratio, like two in stamina, one in

01:12:30 ◼   ► hearts, two in stamina, one in hearts, just pick like a pattern like that that has some

01:12:35 ◼   ► reasonable balance and go with it.

01:12:36 ◼   ► I do agree that if you have to weight one, weight stamina more than you think you should

01:12:41 ◼   ► weight hearts.

01:12:42 ◼   ► But I'm hesitant to tell people put everything into stamina because you will die a lot and

01:12:46 ◼   ► I feel like that is just as frustrating as not being able to climb a hill.

01:12:49 ◼   ► But I'm super into climbing.

01:12:51 ◼   ► And also, by the way, you will max out stamina long before you max out your heart.

01:12:55 ◼   ► So if you do this two to one ratio or any kind of thing that favors stamina, you will

01:12:58 ◼   ► max out your stamina and you'll feel sad.

01:13:00 ◼   ► You're like, "Really?

01:13:01 ◼   ► That's all I can get?"

01:13:02 ◼   ► Yeah, that's all you can get.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And then you'll just spend everything else on hearts.

01:13:04 ◼   ► And then you'll get upset.

01:13:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree with Jon.

01:13:07 ◼   ► You articulated that in a much more delicate and poetic way.

01:13:13 ◼   ► But I…

01:13:15 ◼   ► This is my life.

01:13:16 ◼   ► - Every Wednesday night.

01:13:16 ◼   ► - I know, it's like, duh, do the stamina.

01:13:19 ◼   ► And John is like, well, actually,

01:13:22 ◼   ► let me eloquently tell you exactly.

01:13:25 ◼   ► - I did not say well, actually, defend myself.

01:13:28 ◼   ► - But yes, I agree with you, John,

01:13:30 ◼   ► that you should do a little bit here, a little bit there,

01:13:33 ◼   ► but more stamina is better.

01:13:34 ◼   ► So get a good recipe going.

01:13:36 ◼   ► - Brian Middleton writes,

01:13:37 ◼   ► what arcade games are each of you nostalgic for

01:13:39 ◼   ► from your childhood?

01:13:40 ◼   ► Is there one game that you would like to own?

01:13:42 ◼   ► And this time let's start with John.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And I actually have answers for this, thank you very much.

01:13:45 ◼   ► but we'll start with Jon.

01:13:47 ◼   ► - I was trying to think of this.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Like, it's the one game I want to go with easier,

01:13:51 ◼   ► but like games are nostalgic for it.

01:13:53 ◼   ► There's so many.

01:13:54 ◼   ► I did spend a lot of time in arcades as a kid.

01:13:58 ◼   ► - I have mine.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Do you want to think about it?

01:14:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, go ahead.

01:14:01 ◼   ► I mean, I'm probably not going to pick one

01:14:03 ◼   ► because this is in top four,

01:14:04 ◼   ► but if you're, you should,

01:14:05 ◼   ► you definitely have an answer, you go.

01:14:07 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:14:08 ◼   ► "Skiball."

01:14:09 ◼   ► Yes.

01:14:10 ◼   ► It's totally an arcade game.

01:14:12 ◼   ► - I know they said arcade game and not video game.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Yes, they did say arcade game and not video game.

01:14:16 ◼   ► Totally skee-ball and I would love to own a skee-ball thing in my house.

01:14:20 ◼   ► That would be awesome.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Well, that's what you're nostalgic for from your childhood as well.

01:14:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I played skee-ball all the time as a kid.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Every time I went to arcades, that's what I would play.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Tiff, you should listen to this show called Top 4 where the rules really don't matter

01:14:32 ◼   ► and the points and rankings are all made up because that was a very top 4 answer to that

01:14:36 ◼   ► question.

01:14:37 ◼   ► I know.

01:14:38 ◼   ► Top 4 arcade games.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Oh, you already know my top one, so busted.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Spoiler alert.

01:14:42 ◼   ► You do top four video games and then you don't have the artist people.

01:14:44 ◼   ► We already did that.

01:14:45 ◼   ► First episode, man.

01:14:46 ◼   ► For real?

01:14:47 ◼   ► It really was that?

01:14:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it was.

01:14:49 ◼   ► But you have to revisit it because now there's been so many new games come out.

01:14:53 ◼   ► I know.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Yeah, we have to do a top four mistakes.

01:14:57 ◼   ► You hadn't even played Stardew at that point?

01:14:59 ◼   ► You hadn't played Mario Odyssey?

01:15:00 ◼   ► I know.

01:15:01 ◼   ► And I made the big mistake of not putting Journey on there.

01:15:03 ◼   ► So it's all coming back to me now.

01:15:04 ◼   ► I blocked it out.

01:15:07 ◼   ► For me, these answers are truly and utterly terrible, but I don't care because they're

01:15:11 ◼   ► my answers. What would I love to have? We actually do have a pinball machine in the

01:15:15 ◼   ► house but, but...

01:15:17 ◼   ► It's true, I've seen it.

01:15:19 ◼   ► It is, it is old. It's older than I. Probably not older than Jon. Hey-o! But anyway, I would

01:15:25 ◼   ► love to have either Street Fighter II, which is actually an okay answer, or Cruisin' USA,

01:15:32 ◼   ► which is a truly and utterly terrible game that I loved when I was a kid. See also Tropic

01:15:39 ◼   ► No, not Tropic Thunder, that's the movie, isn't it?

01:15:41 ◼   ► It was Hydro Thunder or something like that, which is basically Cruise in the USA, but

01:15:44 ◼   ► boats.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Either one of those I think would be tremendous.

01:15:48 ◼   ► And I don't know why.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Like, Street Fighter, yeah, you can make a pretty decent argument, I would imagine, that

01:15:53 ◼   ► that was actually a good arcade game.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Cruise in the USA and, I forgot, what was it called, Hydro Thunder?

01:15:59 ◼   ► Both really not good games, but oh man, I spent so many hours playing those in the arcades.

01:16:04 ◼   ► And by arcades, I mean like in a Fuddruckers or something like that.

01:16:08 ◼   ► But God, they were fun.

01:16:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I spent a lot of time in arcades, so much so that I think--

01:16:16 ◼   ► one of my first memories is learning that five times four

01:16:20 ◼   ► is 20 from putting a $5 bill into--

01:16:24 ◼   ► learning multiplication based on bills

01:16:27 ◼   ► that you would put into the machine that would give you quarters.

01:16:30 ◼   ► That's how young I was.

01:16:31 ◼   ► I guess before multiplication tables.

01:16:33 ◼   ► And also, the other factor that comes into this

01:16:35 ◼   ► is that arcades, I probably still like this, I think, but even when I was a kid, like,

01:16:43 ◼   ► games come into an arcade, right, and they don't really leave. So when they got the

01:16:48 ◼   ► Space Invaders machine...

01:16:49 ◼   ► So until California.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Yeah, probably, yeah, probably before I was, probably before I was even born, when was

01:16:54 ◼   ► Space Invaders? Before I was old enough to play Space Invaders, someone got a Space Invaders

01:16:58 ◼   ► machine, and it would just be there, and it would stay there, and then they would get

01:17:00 ◼   ► Pac-Man, and then they would get Ms. Pac-Man, they got Galaga, and they got Centipede, and

01:17:03 ◼   ► like just you know all the different things and it's kind of like this like layers of

01:17:08 ◼   ► sediment like the lower down you go the older the games get so they never left so I played

01:17:14 ◼   ► all these games some games that were before my time at the same time like afterburner

01:17:18 ◼   ► would come out and it was the big 50 cent machine and the thing moved and so on and

01:17:21 ◼   ► so forth but still pac-man was sitting right there at space invaders missile command was

01:17:25 ◼   ► still there missile command compared to afterburner it was like but in the same arcade so I have

01:17:29 ◼   ► this huge spread of things that I'm nostalgic for, going all the way from, you know, things

01:17:33 ◼   ► like Centipede and Millipede and Pac-Man and stuff like that, all the way up to the quote

01:17:37 ◼   ► unquote fancy new games like Hydro Thunder or Afterburn and stuff like that.

01:17:41 ◼   ► So I can't -- if I had to pick one, I would probably say Gauntlet, the original, because

01:17:46 ◼   ► I think that was -- I think I had the most fun playing that, because it was four-person,

01:17:51 ◼   ► sort of side-by-side, in-person, which was -- Gauntlet was the first game in my arcade

01:17:55 ◼   ► anyway that did this.

01:17:56 ◼   ► That was a novel experience versus you just standing there fighting against yourself or

01:18:00 ◼   ► the high scorers or whatever.

01:18:01 ◼   ► So Gauntlet is my most nostalgic pick.

01:18:03 ◼   ► Now, which game would I like to own?

01:18:05 ◼   ► None of them because arcade machines are huge.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Just get, just play the game.

01:18:10 ◼   ► That is true.

01:18:11 ◼   ► And pinball machines are both huge and weigh a ton.

01:18:14 ◼   ► I cannot even begin to describe to you how heavy that pinball machine is.

01:18:17 ◼   ► It is preposterous.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Now, Jon, why, why in your fantasies do you always think about putting, like, if someone

01:18:25 ◼   ► ask you, well, what would you pick to put in your house like an arcade game or something?

01:18:29 ◼   ► And then your fantasy, you're squeezing this fantasy object into your real house.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Because I respect the parameters of the problem. They didn't say all in all, you get you get

01:18:38 ◼   ► unlimited money to make a giant house. If I had a giant house, surely I would have a

01:18:42 ◼   ► full arcade and then everyone had to pick a game. I would have all the games. Well,

01:18:45 ◼   ► see, then you could say things like that. Because I don't assume that that means like,

01:18:49 ◼   ► okay, actually put these things in your house. So I feel like if you would want that thing,

01:18:53 ◼   ► it would already be in your house.

01:18:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, so which would you like to own?

01:18:56 ◼   ► Some people might have an answer.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Like some people might say,

01:18:58 ◼   ► "Look, I was really into the Star Wars,

01:19:01 ◼   ► the vector Star Wars game,

01:19:02 ◼   ► and I would love to have one of those in my house."

01:19:03 ◼   ► People do, they buy them,

01:19:04 ◼   ► but they buy that one game

01:19:05 ◼   ► 'cause they have room for one of it.

01:19:06 ◼   ► And they make room for one game

01:19:08 ◼   ► in their otherwise normal house.

01:19:09 ◼   ► I'm just saying like,

01:19:10 ◼   ► there is no game that I want enough to make room for it

01:19:13 ◼   ► in my otherwise normal house.

01:19:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I couldn't put a skeeball game in my house,

01:19:17 ◼   ► but I'm still like, that's what I would want in my house.

01:19:19 ◼   ► - You totally could.

01:19:20 ◼   ► - No.

01:19:21 ◼   ► - You have an art room.

01:19:22 ◼   ► If you cared as much about skeeball as you did about art?

01:19:24 ◼   ► - The art room is outside of the house.

01:19:26 ◼   ► - Whatever, the whole point is,

01:19:27 ◼   ► if you were into skeeball instead of art,

01:19:29 ◼   ► you could put a skeeball thing in there.

01:19:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:33 ◼   ► - This is my skeeball.

01:19:34 ◼   ► - So mommy needs to have some private time.

01:19:36 ◼   ► She's gonna go flexible.

01:19:38 ◼   ► And I did enjoy skeeball, by the way.

01:19:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, my landlord goes and asks me

01:19:41 ◼   ► why I'm renting this space, and I'm like,

01:19:42 ◼   ► "Well, I am an avid skeeball player,

01:19:45 ◼   ► "and I just don't have room for it in my house."

01:19:46 ◼   ► - Gonna be in the skeeball Olympics, I need to train.

01:19:49 ◼   ► - Me too.

01:19:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:51 ◼   ► I bet you there is.

01:19:52 ◼   ► I bet you there is totally professional skeeball players.

01:19:54 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, no, I've played a lot of that.

01:19:56 ◼   ► I do have nostalgia with skeeball.

01:19:59 ◼   ► - Skeeball is so fun.

01:20:00 ◼   ► I'm terrible at it.

01:20:01 ◼   ► I am truly and utterly terrible at it.

01:20:02 ◼   ► - This year, all right, so here's a question.

01:20:05 ◼   ► Two questions, two parts to this.

01:20:07 ◼   ► All right, so the skeeball angle is,

01:20:09 ◼   ► if you had a skeeball machine in your house,

01:20:11 ◼   ► would it be important to you that it gives tickets?

01:20:13 ◼   ► - Ooh.

01:20:14 ◼   ► - Yes, and I would have a basket of things

01:20:16 ◼   ► that you could win with the tickets.

01:20:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:20:19 ◼   ► - All right, now if you have an arcade game in your house,

01:20:21 ◼   ► would you make it take quarters?

01:20:23 ◼   ► - Yes, because then you would use the quarters

01:20:26 ◼   ► for fun stuff later on.

01:20:28 ◼   ► - Our pinball machine does not take quarters.

01:20:31 ◼   ► I mean, it has the slot for it.

01:20:32 ◼   ► - That's all part of the ceremony.

01:20:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like then it's like restricting it

01:20:36 ◼   ► in some like weird kind of not important way

01:20:39 ◼   ► because you're in your house.

01:20:41 ◼   ► - You can make like a little cardboard thing

01:20:43 ◼   ► with an NFC or QR code on it.

01:20:45 ◼   ► You'd hold it in front of the game.

01:20:48 ◼   ► - I like the idea of having to go to the bank

01:20:49 ◼   ► get a roll of quarters to play a game in your own home.

01:20:52 ◼   ► No, what you need to have is a token machine. So you have to build it and then you get little

01:20:58 ◼   ► armament tokens that you can only spend in the armament arcade.

01:21:00 ◼   ► Ah, yes! Custom tokens!

01:21:02 ◼   ► Armament arcade. Can you imagine Adam Armament's arcade? There you go.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Oh, we're building this. Digital Marco, write that down in the good ideas list, please.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Done.

01:21:12 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:21:13 ◼   ► So you pay the miners with money they can only spend at the company store, see?

01:21:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:21:20 ◼   ► - The final Ask ATP question,

01:21:22 ◼   ► which Tiff is probably the most equipped to answer,

01:21:26 ◼   ► Simon Tanler asks, "What are some good resources,

01:21:29 ◼   ► "blogs, books, people to follow, et cetera,

01:21:31 ◼   ► "for photography beginners?

01:21:34 ◼   ► "Not really gear-wise, more about learning the craft."

01:21:36 ◼   ► - So I read this and I was thinking,

01:21:41 ◼   ► at first thought I was thinking of like,

01:21:44 ◼   ► pretty much the one photographer that I follow,

01:21:46 ◼   ► and that's Jamie Beck.

01:21:49 ◼   ► And she has been living in Provence for the past year

01:21:53 ◼   ► and doing a lot of still life photography

01:21:55 ◼   ► and actually showing her techniques

01:21:57 ◼   ► with using film and digital.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And it's just been really fascinating to watch.

01:22:02 ◼   ► So she's a really great one to check out.

01:22:04 ◼   ► But it's very personal what you wanna see

01:22:09 ◼   ► as to learn for technique and craft

01:22:12 ◼   ► on what type of photography you want.

01:22:14 ◼   ► It's a lot like art, right?

01:22:15 ◼   ► Like you find a style that you're very into

01:22:18 ◼   ► or an artist that you're very into.

01:22:20 ◼   ► And I think a great resource for that right now

01:22:23 ◼   ► is Instagram.

01:22:25 ◼   ► And if you find one photographer or one,

01:22:29 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say artist, it doesn't matter,

01:22:31 ◼   ► it translates both ways.

01:22:31 ◼   ► So you find a photographer on there that you really like,

01:22:34 ◼   ► and you can see who they follow or who follows them,

01:22:38 ◼   ► and especially in the Explore tab.

01:22:40 ◼   ► And then it kind of rolls into finding other photographers

01:22:45 ◼   ► that are interesting to you,

01:22:48 ◼   ► whether it's landscape or it's portraits

01:22:50 ◼   ► or it's various different styles,

01:22:52 ◼   ► the way they shoot texture, the way they shoot light.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And I think if you start following that

01:22:56 ◼   ► and you start looking at a lot of pictures

01:22:59 ◼   ► and a lot of other people's work,

01:23:00 ◼   ► it can kind of open up your eye

01:23:02 ◼   ► to find a style that you like.

01:23:04 ◼   ► And at first, when you're practicing,

01:23:06 ◼   ► it is not a problem to mimic someone else's work.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Obviously give credit, don't charge for it,

01:23:12 ◼   ► don't try and sell it, but being it for you

01:23:15 ◼   ► as a learning experience, I think that that is

01:23:18 ◼   ► a fantastic way to open up your creativity

01:23:22 ◼   ► and then you can move on from there.

01:23:24 ◼   ► But I've been loving Instagram for following artists

01:23:28 ◼   ► and seeing the way that they do different techniques

01:23:30 ◼   ► and then that kind of, it snowballs into the next person

01:23:34 ◼   ► that I follow and then they follow other people

01:23:36 ◼   ► that are similar but slightly different

01:23:38 ◼   ► and you kind of can see how someone's art or photography

01:23:41 ◼   ► evolves through even their own personal feed.

01:23:44 ◼   ► And it's been really valuable to kind of immersing yourself

01:23:49 ◼   ► in all of that and that's what I would definitely suggest.

01:23:53 ◼   ► So Instagram.

01:23:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would agree with that.

01:23:55 ◼   ► I still love Instagram and even though it's owned

01:23:58 ◼   ► by Facebook and Facebook is getting ever more creepy

01:24:00 ◼   ► with each passing moment, I adore Instagram.

01:24:03 ◼   ► I look at Instagram a lot.

01:24:06 ◼   ► Somebody that I, a photographer that I admire quite a bit on Instagram is Erin Brooks, whose

01:24:11 ◼   ► username on Instagram is Erin R. Brooks.

01:24:14 ◼   ► She has two young daughters and most of her shots are of her or of her kids or her and

01:24:21 ◼   ► her kids.

01:24:22 ◼   ► And I would guess about a third to a half are like a big camera, but half to two thirds

01:24:29 ◼   ► are just her iPhone.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And what's really great is as we record this, she's done some Instagram stories where she

01:24:35 ◼   ► she'll take a shot that she shot on her iPhone and show how she like tweaks it and and

01:24:41 ◼   ► edits it all on her iPhone in order to make it into the final product and I think she's a great follow

01:24:48 ◼   ► I'm sure that there's a bunch of others that I'm not thinking of but she's really great

01:24:52 ◼   ► Also, if you happen to do if you happen to like say a particular subject matter like cars, for example

01:24:58 ◼   ► I don't know if anyone on this, you know show has ever talked about cars for any length of time

01:25:01 ◼   ► but you know, there's oftentimes a lot of

01:25:04 ◼   ► Really good car related accounts or maybe it's watches if that's your thing, whatever the case may be

01:25:10 ◼   ► Oftentimes you'll find somebody that that likes not only photography but that thing

01:25:15 ◼   ► and it's really great to follow them because you can get a lot of the same kind of ideas about composition and

01:25:22 ◼   ► Depth of field and things like that just by looking at shots of cars, you know

01:25:27 ◼   ► They're pretty cars and they're pretty shots and it works out

01:25:29 ◼   ► well. One other photographer that I really like that I think people should

01:25:33 ◼   ► check out if they like portraiture Benoit Paile. I think that's how you

01:25:45 ◼   ► pronounce his name but anyway he's an amazing portrait photographer and you

01:25:50 ◼   ► should check out his work it's just stunning. How do you feel about Marco's

01:25:55 ◼   ► taste in cars which is another way to come at it is when it's time for you to

01:25:59 ◼   ► to get your next car, are you going to get an electric one?

01:26:01 ◼   ► How do you feel about your car?

01:26:02 ◼   ► Like, what's your take on the car situation

01:26:05 ◼   ► in the Arman household?

01:26:07 ◼   ► - Oh, my car is a dinosaur,

01:26:09 ◼   ► and I forget to fill it up with gas,

01:26:11 ◼   ► so I don't wanna do that anymore,

01:26:14 ◼   ► and I definitely want a Tesla for my next car.

01:26:18 ◼   ► - Big one or small one?

01:26:18 ◼   ► Like, you have-- - The small one.

01:26:20 ◼   ► I want the small one.

01:26:21 ◼   ► - The Roadster or the 3?

01:26:23 ◼   ► - The 3, the new one that's gonna come out,

01:26:25 ◼   ► or has come out, or has a big waiting list to come out.

01:26:27 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:26:28 ◼   ► in two years when my lease is up, we're good to go.

01:26:31 ◼   ► Have you looked at the dashboard that Casey hates so much?

01:26:35 ◼   ► Oh, I don't care. I'll figure it out. I just don't want to fill my car up with gas anymore.

01:26:38 ◼   ► So it'll be easier just to have two Teslas. Right? That sounds reasonable.

01:26:45 ◼   ► You used to be taking your car because Margo had anxiety about the superchargers, but now

01:26:50 ◼   ► it seems like you're just taking a Tesla all the time and I don't know what you use your

01:26:54 ◼   ► car for.

01:26:55 ◼   ► I don't know what I use my car for either.

01:26:56 ◼   ► I like go down the block sometimes.

01:26:58 ◼   ► I drive around the corner

01:27:01 ◼   ► when I don't want to walk home at night

01:27:03 ◼   ► and hang out with my friends.

01:27:04 ◼   ► - So it seems like you've collectively gotten over

01:27:06 ◼   ► the whole like whatever the limitations of electric car

01:27:08 ◼   ► and you've felt them out to the point where now

01:27:10 ◼   ► there's no reason for you to have a gas car in reserve

01:27:12 ◼   ► just in case you say you need to flee

01:27:14 ◼   ► an expanding mushroom cloud or something.

01:27:16 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:27:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm abandoning it.

01:27:19 ◼   ► I mean, the amount of times that I forget

01:27:21 ◼   ► to fill it up with gas versus how many times

01:27:23 ◼   ► Mushroom cloud might be here.

01:27:25 ◼   ► I'm going to go with the Tesla.

01:27:27 ◼   ► - Well, if you order the three now,

01:27:28 ◼   ► you might get about time releases up.

01:27:30 ◼   ► - That's true. - Interesting point.

01:27:31 ◼   ► - Marco, we should order that.

01:27:33 ◼   ► - On it.

01:27:34 ◼   ► - This is like the version of anything

01:27:37 ◼   ► so shopping list thing.

01:27:38 ◼   ► - It is. - Right, right, right.

01:27:39 ◼   ► - Marco, add model three to shopping list.

01:27:42 ◼   ► - Do you want me to search the web for add model three?

01:27:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:27:47 ◼   ► - Well played, robot Marco, well played.

01:27:50 ◼   ► Are we done here?

01:27:50 ◼   ► I think we're done.

01:27:51 ◼   ► Well, thanks to our sponsors, Casper, Fracture and Squarespace, and we'll see you next week.

01:27:56 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:28:03 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:28:09 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:28:14 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:28:19 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:28:24 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:28:30 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:28:34 ◼   ► So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:28:38 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:28:46 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:28:49 ◼   ► They didn't mean to Accidental (Accidental)

01:28:55 ◼   ► Tech Podcast So Long

01:28:59 ◼   ► I started a new podcast called Playing For Fun with Mike Hurley.

01:29:03 ◼   ► And we talk only about the positive stuff about playing video games.

01:29:08 ◼   ► So it's like two besties playing video games and discussing them.

01:29:12 ◼   ► We don't have any negative talk, no industry talk, no, uh, just,

01:29:17 ◼   ► just very much the fun and the enjoyment that we get from the game and what we liked about

01:29:22 ◼   ► it. And yeah, so that's where we're going. We already had our first episode. It was about

01:29:26 ◼   ► Mario Odyssey and you can check it out on Relay FM.

01:29:32 ◼   ► What is the publication schedule? Because shouldn't we be having the second episode

01:29:35 ◼   ► by now? Yeah, we're recording on Friday, the next episode, but we're going to be doing

01:29:39 ◼   ► it once a month. So that way we each have a month. Oh, well, it's so it's not a huge

01:29:44 ◼   ► - I've been doing that before. - For everybody.

01:29:46 ◼   ► - I got invested in this.

01:29:47 ◼   ► - Well, why?

01:29:47 ◼   ► It's a great thing.

01:29:48 ◼   ► It's easy to invest in because it's not,

01:29:51 ◼   ► it won't bog down your playlist of podcasts

01:29:53 ◼   ► because we need time to play the games all the way enough

01:29:57 ◼   ► to discuss them.

01:29:59 ◼   ► And then that way,

01:30:00 ◼   ► it also doesn't become like a big burden for other people

01:30:04 ◼   ► to add a new podcast to their list.

01:30:07 ◼   ► So it's nice and easy.

01:30:09 ◼   ► And yeah, so it's,

01:30:11 ◼   ► I like it once a month.

01:30:12 ◼   ► It feels good.

01:30:13 ◼   ► up faster than you think because we're already recording again on Friday and I just finished

01:30:17 ◼   ► the game we're going to be talking about.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Well, I don't think you need the time to play the games because you have such a backlog.

01:30:23 ◼   ► You could talk about games that you've played in the past for like a year before you even

01:30:26 ◼   ► got to games that are going now because again it's not like you're talking about current

01:30:29 ◼   ► events or something. You could talk about games you played seven years ago.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Oh, definitely.

01:30:33 ◼   ► I guess it's hard. Maybe Mike hasn't played them then. He's probably not.

01:30:36 ◼   ► Well, that's the thing. It has to be both of us. We've started a nice little list of

01:30:39 ◼   ► things that we would possibly like to games we would like to talk about in the future.

01:30:43 ◼   ► But a lot of them it's one of us has played it or one of us hasn't and then or one of

01:30:48 ◼   ► us has tried it a little bit but didn't get very into it. So we do need the time because

01:30:53 ◼   ► we do have other things to do besides play games all day. You know, even though we are

01:30:58 ◼   ► mostly playing games for fun anyway in our free time because that's what we enjoy. So

01:31:02 ◼   ► we we do have some nice things to fall back on some, you know, things that we've played

01:31:06 ◼   ► in the past just like you said but yeah so John this is a show that you can definitely

01:31:11 ◼   ► never be on because I don't think you could stay positive about a game for an entire podcast.

01:31:16 ◼   ► This description here of like who wrote this is probably Marco. John probably has some

01:31:20 ◼   ► nitpicks about a show focused solely on the good things about games like there's only

01:31:23 ◼   ► been one episode that I've heard but I know you're trying to say like you're not it's

01:31:27 ◼   ► not like you're gonna critique and you're not gonna talk about games that you don't

01:31:29 ◼   ► like but even when talking about the games that you like there are always quirks and

01:31:33 ◼   ► odd things in the games that you will you are briefly momentarily laughing at the game

01:31:37 ◼   ► instead of with it or talking about how you wish this thing was a little bit different.

01:31:40 ◼   ► That happens. It's just in general it's positive. It's not as if you are blind to the quirks

01:31:45 ◼   ► of the game, let's say. You still do talk about that.

01:31:49 ◼   ► Nothing is so perfect.

01:31:50 ◼   ► Yeah, it's true. And as for, like, the reason I'm asking about past games is I wonder how

01:31:56 ◼   ► you're going to navigate, speaking of trying to stay positive, I wonder how you're going

01:31:58 ◼   ► to navigate this because I want to hear you talk about, like, the long dark and half-life

01:32:03 ◼   ► for all sorts of games that I assume Mike has never played.

01:32:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I definitely want to get him

01:32:06 ◼   ► to play the long dark, I do.

01:32:07 ◼   ► - Right, but if the rule is that both of you have to play it

01:32:11 ◼   ► and one of you quote unquote makes the other one play it,

01:32:13 ◼   ► what if the other one doesn't like it?

01:32:14 ◼   ► I still want to hear you podcast about it, right?

01:32:16 ◼   ► And so then when Mike have to be politely explained,

01:32:18 ◼   ► as so often happens in other shows

01:32:20 ◼   ► where Mike is talking about games with somebody else,

01:32:22 ◼   ► one person might like it more than the other, let's say,

01:32:24 ◼   ► and you have to be able to have that conversation

01:32:26 ◼   ► in a reasonably positive way, and I hope that's what you do.

01:32:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that that's what we're gonna try and do,

01:32:30 ◼   ► or we're just won't if the game is so negative or so disliked by one of the

01:32:35 ◼   ► one of us,

01:32:36 ◼   ► then we probably wouldn't talk about it or we'd put it on the back burner for,

01:32:40 ◼   ► for a later date.

01:32:41 ◼   ► But right now for the shows that we're going to be talking about the first few

01:32:45 ◼   ► episodes or so,

01:32:46 ◼   ► we're going to try and stay mostly positive reminded of when Gruber was raving

01:32:50 ◼   ► about the grand tour to Marco.

01:32:51 ◼   ► It was the best. See, I didn't have three hours to listen to that. So,

01:32:56 ◼   ► yeah, but by the way,

01:32:58 ◼   ► I have an explanation for that for Marco, who is sitting there off to the side pretending

01:33:01 ◼   ► he can't talk. I think it's because he's never seen Top Gear, so he doesn't understand how

01:33:07 ◼   ► much better this same thing could be. So if this is your first viewing of these three

01:33:12 ◼   ► people doing something they like, you're like, "Oh, yeah, whatever." But if you don't realize

01:33:16 ◼   ► that this is the much worse version of a previous thing, maybe—

01:33:20 ◼   ► So bad.

01:33:21 ◼   ► I'm trying to make some excuses for why Grüber likes the Grand Tour as much as he seems to.

01:33:26 ◼   ► It's so bad. Oh, gosh. It's not that bad. I shouldn't say that. It's not so bad. It's

01:33:31 ◼   ► just so bad compared to what it was. It's just the mighty have fallen.

01:33:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He doesn't have a comparison.

01:33:39 ◼   ► Yeah. Oh, makes me sad. The Playing for Fun reminds me of a podcast by a couple of local

01:33:45 ◼   ► guys here in Richmond called Sam and Ross Like Things, and we'll put a link in the show

01:33:49 ◼   ► notes to that as well. It's a similar idea where just every—I think they do it fortnightly,

01:33:55 ◼   ► each of them has to bring something that they like to the show and the rule is no hedging.

01:33:59 ◼   ► And so in this era that's, you know, everyone complaining about everything. Hello. It's

01:34:06 ◼   ► nice to have something like playing for fun or, you know, Sam and Ross like things or

01:34:10 ◼   ► something else where people are more positive.

01:34:12 ◼   ► Yeah, we're trying to keep it light and happy and give people something to smile when they

01:34:17 ◼   ► listen. So bring people up instead of down.

01:34:20 ◼   ► [BEEPING]