ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► The funny thing is, if I cut your Amazon story,

00:00:01 ◼   ► we can always refer back to it as,

00:00:03 ◼   ► remember Casey's Amazon story?

00:00:04 ◼   ► And nobody will, it'll be like this enigma

00:00:07 ◼   ► no one's ever heard, 'cause we won't tell them

00:00:09 ◼   ► Casey's Amazon story.

00:00:10 ◼   ► - Like Casey's not gonna bring it up again

00:00:12 ◼   ► the next time he brings something to the lockers.

00:00:14 ◼   ► - Next time you return a $15 dongle.

00:00:16 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:00:18 ◼   ► - Spending like two hours of your life

00:00:19 ◼   ► to return this $15 thing.

00:00:21 ◼   ► - It was not two hours, you bastard,

00:00:23 ◼   ► but yes, I understand your point.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - It was two hours of our lives.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - That's true, that is accurate.

00:00:28 ◼   ► (phone ringing)

00:00:30 ◼   ► - Oh no, now everything's changed,

00:00:32 ◼   ► so now it's gonna be all screwed up, I blame you.

00:00:34 ◼   ► - Duh.

00:00:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:36 ◼   ► - What's your middle name, Charles?

00:00:37 ◼   ► Chester?

00:00:38 ◼   ► Casey? - No, Craig.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - No, really, what is it?

00:00:41 ◼   ► - John Craig.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Come on, Mark, we got it.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:45 ◼   ► - I didn't know, I couldn't tell if you were trolling me,

00:00:46 ◼   ► and that was a Federiki joke.

00:00:47 ◼   ► - I know how to pronounce it,

00:00:48 ◼   ► I know what the middle name is.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Boom, I'm the better friend.

00:00:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:52 ◼   ► - Just like that, just like that.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Well, now that we've got that sorted.

00:00:58 ◼   ► So anyway, John Craig's there, Q, so you need to grow up and get a proper microphone like

00:01:02 ◼   ► an adult.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I don't even know, man, levels are all weird.

00:01:05 ◼   ► It's madness over here.

00:01:08 ◼   ► I'm really loud in my own ears.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Who knows what you're going to get here?

00:01:11 ◼   ► The only thing you need to know is A, are you recording, and B, are you clipping?

00:01:14 ◼   ► Those are the only concerns I have.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I know, I can't tell if I'm clipping.

00:01:17 ◼   ► I got the little meter thingies and they never reach the top.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Does that mean I'm not clipping?

00:01:21 ◼   ► Yes, good.

00:01:22 ◼   ► But can I make them reach the top?

00:01:25 ◼   ► Test, test!

00:01:26 ◼   ► Do they turn red?

00:01:28 ◼   ► If it clips, so are you talking about the meters that are in Audio Hijack?

00:01:32 ◼   ► Peak slash RMS, it's the box right next to the input and the little white bars are hanging

00:01:38 ◼   ► at the, I mean can I get them to go up to, I don't know.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Hello?

00:01:41 ◼   ► I can't get them to touch the top.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Good.

00:01:44 ◼   ► They don't turn red, they stay orange the whole time.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Then you're not clipping.

00:01:51 ◼   ► But those claps, those claps should have pushed it up.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Does that do?

00:01:55 ◼   ► That was me that time, that was me that time.

00:01:57 ◼   ► - And I saw a little red on my physical hardware.

00:01:59 ◼   ► - You have a limiter.

00:01:59 ◼   ► (clapping)

00:02:00 ◼   ► - Right.

00:02:01 ◼   ► - They do not turn red.

00:02:02 ◼   ► - Good.

00:02:03 ◼   ► - This is the best episode ever.

00:02:04 ◼   ► - No, I'm clapping by the microphone, they don't turn red.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - We'll just have to keep you nice and calm

00:02:08 ◼   ► so your voice doesn't get raised.

00:02:10 ◼   ► - Oh man, we'll see.

00:02:11 ◼   ► See how that goes.

00:02:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:02:13 ◼   ► - Hey, fuck the Mac Pro.

00:02:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:16 ◼   ► - Man, you know what, I love maximizing all my windows.

00:02:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:20 ◼   ► - Spaces is the one true way.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Actually, I really do think that's true, but.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Wait, Jon, are you a VI or a Emacs guy?

00:02:26 ◼   ► I don't even remember.

00:02:27 ◼   ► - But Marco knows.

00:02:28 ◼   ► - Hmm, you know what?

00:02:29 ◼   ► - Oh no, he's being tested.

00:02:31 ◼   ► That's my middle name, doesn't know if I'm--

00:02:32 ◼   ► - No, yes, and that way, I'm gonna try to guess.

00:02:35 ◼   ► - I'm very disappointed.

00:02:36 ◼   ► - I'm gonna guess because Jon is old and picky,

00:02:40 ◼   ► I'm gonna guess Emacs.

00:02:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:43 ◼   ► - Why does that connect with old and picky?

00:02:45 ◼   ► - Is that right?

00:02:46 ◼   ► - I'm interested in your reasoning.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Why is old and picky equal Emacs?

00:02:50 ◼   ► - I mean, it's just usually.

00:02:51 ◼   ► - Like, is Emacs older than VI?

00:02:53 ◼   ► I don't think it is.

00:02:54 ◼   ► - Probably not, but I think its demographic is.

00:02:58 ◼   ► So, was I right?

00:03:01 ◼   ► - I'm Emacs.

00:03:02 ◼   ► - Yes!

00:03:03 ◼   ► - I've talked about it in a million podcasts

00:03:04 ◼   ► that you've all heard.

00:03:05 ◼   ► - Yes!

00:03:06 ◼   ► - That you just don't remember.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Never wavering.

00:03:10 ◼   ► - I actually agree with you.

00:03:11 ◼   ► I think it's Emacs all the way,

00:03:12 ◼   ► but I am surprised that a man of your pickiness

00:03:15 ◼   ► thinks that VI is not better.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - You guys are nuts.

00:03:19 ◼   ► - I think anyone who enjoys VI is a true-to-form animal.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Like, what kind of monster would enjoy using VI?

00:03:25 ◼   ► - I wouldn't say I enjoy it.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I would say I hate it less than I hate Emacs.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - Anyway, we should move on.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Who ordered a HomePod?

00:03:34 ◼   ► Because I believe all of us were pretty tepid about it,

00:03:38 ◼   ► weren't we?

00:03:39 ◼   ► So did either of you guys order a HomePod?

00:03:41 ◼   ► I will tell you that I did not.

00:03:44 ◼   ► - I mean, we know Jon probably didn't, right?

00:03:46 ◼   ► - No, Jon hates spending money, so of course he didn't.

00:03:48 ◼   ► - I did not, I didn't even think about ordering a HomePod.

00:03:50 ◼   ► - Well, we have now made show history.

00:03:53 ◼   ► None of the three of us ordered the brand new Apple product.

00:03:56 ◼   ► - Wow, we're terrible at this.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I'm really disappointed in us.

00:04:00 ◼   ► - Like, you know, I covered most of it last week,

00:04:02 ◼   ► but like, as the pre-order period passed and went,

00:04:05 ◼   ► and as some people are having those hour-long sample tests

00:04:09 ◼   ► with them and PR and everything,

00:04:11 ◼   ► it sounds like, okay, they focused on their strengths,

00:04:16 ◼   ► they focused on the audio engineering side,

00:04:19 ◼   ► Their weaknesses are things like the home assistant area

00:04:23 ◼   ► and the low-cost area.

00:04:25 ◼   ► They didn't focus on their weak sides,

00:04:27 ◼   ► which is probably smart,

00:04:28 ◼   ► but they ended up making a product

00:04:30 ◼   ► that I don't think I have not only a need for,

00:04:33 ◼   ► but I don't even think I have a place in my house

00:04:36 ◼   ► where it could go that would make sense.

00:04:38 ◼   ► It can't go in my living room

00:04:40 ◼   ► because only the TV speakers serve that,

00:04:43 ◼   ► and it can't be my TV speakers,

00:04:44 ◼   ► and I also don't want it to be my TV speakers.

00:04:45 ◼   ► I have nice TV speakers already.

00:04:47 ◼   ► It can't go in the kitchen because the assistant part of it

00:04:52 ◼   ► is not good enough.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Frankly, it's just not good enough.

00:04:54 ◼   ► The things we do most often,

00:04:56 ◼   ► things like timers on the Amazon Echo,

00:05:00 ◼   ► you know, the Amazon Echo has really good timers now.

00:05:02 ◼   ► You can name them, you can have multiple timers

00:05:04 ◼   ► running at once, so you can say,

00:05:06 ◼   ► hey Amazon thing, set an oven timer for 14 minutes.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Hey Amazon thing, set or rotate the thing

00:05:11 ◼   ► in the oven timer for seven minutes.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Like you can stack them up like that,

00:05:15 ◼   ► and you can have like, when you're cooking,

00:05:17 ◼   ► when you have multiple things going, it's a lifesaver.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And then it beeps and tells you,

00:05:21 ◼   ► your rotate oven timer is done.

00:05:23 ◼   ► It's so convenient and pretty advanced these days.

00:05:27 ◼   ► The Siri functionality on the HomePod,

00:05:30 ◼   ► if it's anything like other Siri functionality,

00:05:32 ◼   ► it's not gonna be good at that kind of stuff.

00:05:34 ◼   ► It might be able to do a little bit of it,

00:05:35 ◼   ► and I think we know that it can do one timer.

00:05:37 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause the iPhone can't even do multiple timers

00:05:40 ◼   ► or named timers.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Like, Siri on the phone can't even do that,

00:05:43 ◼   ► so I don't expect Siri on the HomePod

00:05:46 ◼   ► to be that much better in that regard.

00:05:48 ◼   ► So it seemed like this is really just focused on music.

00:05:52 ◼   ► But it's music only with these restrictions

00:05:55 ◼   ► and only for certain environments.

00:05:58 ◼   ► And there's nowhere in my house that I listen to music

00:06:02 ◼   ► that either doesn't require the more advanced

00:06:05 ◼   ► home assistant functionality of the Echo in the kitchen,

00:06:09 ◼   ► or doesn't have requirements the HomePod can't satisfy

00:06:11 ◼   ► like in my living room.

00:06:13 ◼   ► We don't listen to music in the bedrooms upstairs.

00:06:15 ◼   ► In my office, I listen to music mostly on headphones,

00:06:19 ◼   ► and when I do use my speakers,

00:06:21 ◼   ► it's because I need to play music from my computer,

00:06:25 ◼   ► which the HomePod can't do.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Even if I had one, I don't even know

00:06:28 ◼   ► where I would put it in my house.

00:06:30 ◼   ► So yeah, I just, I passed.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And it feels really weird for a major Apple product launch

00:06:36 ◼   ► to go by that I'm not buying,

00:06:38 ◼   ► and that I'm not really excited about.

00:06:40 ◼   ► But this product is just so boxed in,

00:06:42 ◼   ► and what it serves, and what it's good at,

00:06:44 ◼   ► and what it can't do, that it just boxed itself right out of my life.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Well, it has competitors. If you didn't have any Amazon stuff, you probably would have

00:06:54 ◼   ► bought this. Because you'd be like, "Oh, I've been meaning to try these cylinder things,

00:06:58 ◼   ► and here's an Apple one, so I'll try it."

00:06:59 ◼   ► Mm-mm. I don't have any Amazon stuff.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Not you, Marco.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I'm just saying, I am that person.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Yeah, no, you are anti-cylinder entirely, so you're just continuing your cylinder boycott.

00:07:09 ◼   ► But I'm saying, Marco totally would have bought this if he didn't already have a product that

00:07:13 ◼   ► liked better because he still would have been at the point of like, "I don't know about

00:07:16 ◼   ► these cylinders," whatever, and then eventually Apple would have come up with it and he would

00:07:19 ◼   ► have tried it.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Well, and like, I don't even have the very common excuse of, "I need this for testing

00:07:23 ◼   ► my app," because my app can't do anything with the HomePod. Like, until Siri has basically

00:07:30 ◼   ► like audio app support, which as I mentioned last time, I'm not expecting that to happen

00:07:34 ◼   ► anytime soon because that would also enable Spotify and other services like that. And

00:07:38 ◼   ► So, you know, it's possible, as we mentioned last WWDC,

00:07:42 ◼   ► when Siri kit updates came and went,

00:07:45 ◼   ► and there was no audio thing,

00:07:46 ◼   ► it's possible they just haven't gotten to it yet,

00:07:48 ◼   ► and that they do intend to do it at some point later.

00:07:50 ◼   ► I would say this summer, this WWDC,

00:07:53 ◼   ► is kinda like the do or die point here.

00:07:56 ◼   ► If they don't add some kind of music app support

00:07:58 ◼   ► this summer, I think it becomes increasingly likely

00:08:01 ◼   ► that the explanation is they don't want to do it

00:08:03 ◼   ► for competitive reasons, which is not good.

00:08:06 ◼   ► I really hope that isn't what's happening.

00:08:08 ◼   ► But right now, I don't even have anything meaningful

00:08:11 ◼   ► to test with Overcast on the HomePod.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Because AirPlay 2 isn't done yet.

00:08:15 ◼   ► - You had a bunch of good ideas in Slack.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Remind me in Overcast to play the latest ATP.

00:08:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:08:20 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:20 ◼   ► I can make Overcast a to-do app.

00:08:22 ◼   ► - Can you make Overcast a workout app

00:08:23 ◼   ► and a to-do app and a reminder app?

00:08:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, but yeah, that would be funny to attempt that,

00:08:30 ◼   ► but it would be not only clumsy,

00:08:31 ◼   ► but there's no way Apple would let that stand

00:08:32 ◼   ► for more than a week.

00:08:33 ◼   ► So that would be a waste.

00:08:35 ◼   ► But it's just like, I just,

00:08:37 ◼   ► There's nothing for me to do with the HomePod.

00:08:39 ◼   ► I suppose it's healthy for me as a human being

00:08:42 ◼   ► to not just buy every product Apple releases,

00:08:46 ◼   ► but it just feels weird that there's a major launch

00:08:49 ◼   ► and none of us are buying it.

00:08:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think I actually have a place in my house

00:08:53 ◼   ► where I could put this 'cause in the living room

00:08:57 ◼   ► I have a free Google Home Mini thing that I got.

00:09:00 ◼   ► It came free with some other thing,

00:09:02 ◼   ► which is convenient and makes it so you can ask questions

00:09:05 ◼   ► and kids can ask how to spell words.

00:09:07 ◼   ► to define things and stuff like that, but you can't play any music on it because it's, you know,

00:09:10 ◼   ► it's the mini and it sounds like a tinny little speaker. And I do have my speakers stuck up to my

00:09:15 ◼   ► TV, but there's no way to talk to them and they're mostly turned off all the time unless someone's

00:09:21 ◼   ► watching TV and really they're not ideal for music anyway. So if I had a nice like speaker thing that

00:09:30 ◼   ► could fill the room with sound, which is what this thing could do, and I could talk to it,

00:09:35 ◼   ► there is a place for that in my life and I would just, you know, stick it in my living room and I

00:09:39 ◼   ► have an easier way to fill the living room with much better sounding sound than the Google Home

00:09:43 ◼   ► Mini thing can provide. But I, my, it doesn't, you know, I don't like the idea that it would be tied

00:09:50 ◼   ► to my Apple ID and I don't like the idea that I could talk to it but not well. And so I'm taking

00:09:56 ◼   ► a wait and see. Like, eventually when the software catches up and it supports multiple people and it

00:10:01 ◼   ► it can understand who's talking to it and it can, you know, connect to both my phone and my wife's

00:10:06 ◼   ► phone and like it's eventually when the software catches up I probably will buy one of these

00:10:10 ◼   ► to fill exactly that function too. To basically fill my living room with better sounding sound.

00:10:16 ◼   ► I don't know if it'll ever get to the point though where I can talk to it and have it play like any

00:10:22 ◼   ► song because I subscribe to Google Play Music and I don't see myself subscribing to Apple Music just

00:10:27 ◼   ► to be able to talk to this speaker because I have to subscribe to Google Play Music to

00:10:31 ◼   ► get no ads on YouTube because of the way Google structures things.

00:10:34 ◼   ► If Google ever changes its YouTube Red whatever family plan thing that I get so that I don't

00:10:39 ◼   ► have to play for Google Play Music anymore but I can still, the whole family can still

00:10:43 ◼   ► be ad-free on YouTube, then I would probably subscribe to Apple Music and try it.

00:10:46 ◼   ► But for now I'm just kind of stuck in this, you know, this weirdly carved out problem

00:10:52 ◼   ► space of streaming service and ad-free YouTube and, you know, and the capabilities of the

00:11:00 ◼   ► HomePod.

00:11:01 ◼   ► I'm a devout Spotify user.

00:11:03 ◼   ► I admittedly have not tried Apple Music since it was brand new.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And as such, I've been debating, "You know, maybe I should try it again."

00:11:09 ◼   ► But two of the playlists that Spotify comes out with every single week for every single

00:11:13 ◼   ► user is, I believe they were called Discover Weekly, which is just, hey, given the entirety

00:11:18 ◼   ► of Spotify's library, and given what we've noticed you listening to so far, here's other

00:11:25 ◼   ► music that we think you would enjoy.

00:11:27 ◼   ► And that comes out on Mondays.

00:11:28 ◼   ► And then on Fridays there's Release Radar, which is similar but limited to just new or

00:11:33 ◼   ► new-ish releases.

00:11:34 ◼   ► So here's something that's brand new that just entered Spotify and we think you might

00:11:39 ◼   ► enjoy.

00:11:40 ◼   ► And those two playlists are tremendous, and I love them.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And beyond that, Spotify is a couple of really great apps.

00:11:50 ◼   ► It is one of the few apps that is Electron or equivalent that doesn't remind me of that

00:11:56 ◼   ► every time I use it, unlike Slack.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And on the iPhone, it's a really great app.

00:12:02 ◼   ► And what's wonderful about it is if I accidentally, as I often do, leave Spotify open everywhere,

00:12:07 ◼   ► any Spotify client that is signed in as the same Spotify user can control any other Spotify

00:12:12 ◼   ► client.

00:12:13 ◼   ► my phone from my computer or vice versa,

00:12:18 ◼   ► and that becomes useful if you're

00:12:19 ◼   ► air playing to something else.

00:12:21 ◼   ► - Oh, that's awesome.

00:12:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I could have my phone air playing to my Apple TV

00:12:26 ◼   ► but control it from my computer.

00:12:27 ◼   ► If my computer happens to be right in front of it,

00:12:30 ◼   ► whatever the case may be.

00:12:31 ◼   ► So, like I said, I have not tried Apple Music in a while,

00:12:35 ◼   ► but there's a lot to love about Spotify,

00:12:37 ◼   ► and I've been a loyal Spotify user

00:12:38 ◼   ► since it came to the United States,

00:12:40 ◼   ► and I've been paying for it

00:12:41 ◼   ► since it came to the United States.

00:12:43 ◼   ► So if the HomePod supported Spotify, like if I could say, you know, "Cylinder, play such-and-such on Spotify,"

00:12:52 ◼   ► I think there's a pretty darn good chance I would be getting one, what is it, a week from Friday?

00:12:58 ◼   ► And I probably would have pre-ordered it.

00:13:00 ◼   ► But given that it is tied to Apple Music, and right now I don't particularly care for Apple Music,

00:13:07 ◼   ► this is kind of a non-starter to me.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And it's really unfortunate because I've been thinking about this a lot, and we'll talk about it, I think, over the next couple of weeks,

00:13:18 ◼   ► because I have a few topics, some of which we may not get to this week, to discuss this.

00:13:21 ◼   ► But I don't like that whole, like, Google mantra, especially from years ago, of like, "Oh, we're open. We're open."

00:13:32 ◼   ► And we do things because we're open, and you can do whatever you want with our stuff because we're open.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Like that's just like open for open sake is just cheesy and I don't really care.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Also I mean in Google's case they're often using it as a total marketing BS thing.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Like it's actually you know there's open and there's Google and those occasionally

00:13:47 ◼   ► intersect a little bit but they're they're not usually that intersecting.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Yeah I completely agree with you but this is a case where this sort of gated community

00:13:59 ◼   ► really bums me out. That I can't use the music streaming platform that I prefer with the physical

00:14:08 ◼   ► speaker that I would probably really love. I have been so far, I am so far behind on podcasts,

00:14:13 ◼   ► like I haven't listened to, what was it, Query that was on Relay that had Serenity Caldwell

00:14:20 ◼   ► discussing her experience with HomePod. Is that right? I think I have that right. Well,

00:14:23 ◼   ► whatever it is, I'll put a link in the show notes. And so I haven't listened to that yet,

00:14:28 ◼   ► but I'm really looking forward to it. Yes, query number 23, I'll put in the show notes.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And Serenity Caldwell was able to get some hands-on time with the HomePod and apparently spent

00:14:39 ◼   ► basically an hour discussing it on this episode of Query, which is a really great podcast with

00:14:43 ◼   ► Stephen Hackett. So I haven't had a chance to listen to that. All I've heard through the grapevine

00:14:47 ◼   ► from the little I've been paying attention to is that the HomePod really does sound really great.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And you know what? That sounds good to me. Pardon the pun. That sounds good. Like,

00:14:55 ◼   ► I could see me putting this in my living room, even as a redundant set of speakers, just

00:14:59 ◼   ► because I could see screaming across the room, "Hey, Cylinder, play the latest album by Radiohead

00:15:06 ◼   ► on Spotify," or something like that.

00:15:08 ◼   ► And that would be pretty awesome.

00:15:09 ◼   ► One of my favorite things about the brief window of time I used Apple Music was being

00:15:14 ◼   ► able to use Siri with it, especially on my phone.

00:15:17 ◼   ► But because this is a walled garden that Spotify isn't allowed in, and actually to that end

00:15:24 ◼   ► overcast isn't either in terms of of Siri support. This is a non-starter to me. Like,

00:15:30 ◼   ► I'm just not interested in it. And that kind of bums me out, which is stupid, right? Like,

00:15:36 ◼   ► it bums me out that I can't send some faceless corporation another $350 of my money. Like,

00:15:40 ◼   ► that's so dumb. But, I don't know, like, a few years ago I would be excited about this

00:15:44 ◼   ► sort of thing. And now I'm kind of like, "Huh. That's too bad. I wish I could get excited

00:15:49 ◼   ► about this, but I can't." And I know that there's some capitalism, like capitalism sucks

00:15:53 ◼   ► and stuff is evil, etc, etc. But I don't know, this is just a silly thing that used to make me happy.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And a new Apple thing used to always make me happy, even when I claimed it wouldn't, it inevitably did.

00:16:04 ◼   ► But and maybe that'll be the case here too, who knows? But I don't know, man, I'm just bummed,

00:16:09 ◼   ► because I want to be excited about it and I just can't bring myself to.

00:16:13 ◼   ► You know, this, I'm thinking about this, I think, I guess we're all on the same page, but

00:16:19 ◼   ► I guess we all don't like music as much as we like television and movies because all of us

00:16:25 ◼   ► subscribe to multiple streaming services, right? For video. Like we all subscribe to Netflix, right?

00:16:32 ◼   ► How many people subscribe to something else besides Netflix? I have HBO, whatever.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Right, and Casey, anything else besides Netflix? Netflix, so recurring subscriptions are Netflix

00:16:43 ◼   ► and Spotify and I think that's it for us. Maybe cases on even footing, but Marco's got

00:16:49 ◼   ► I've got twice as many video as audio services,

00:16:52 ◼   ► granted it's just two to one.

00:16:53 ◼   ► I have like seven times as many video to audio services.

00:16:57 ◼   ► - Wait, nope, you're wrong.

00:16:59 ◼   ► I subscribe to Apple Music and Amazon Music,

00:17:01 ◼   ► whatever, on the Echo.

00:17:03 ◼   ► - Ah, what, how--

00:17:04 ◼   ► - So I'm tied.

00:17:05 ◼   ► - All right.

00:17:06 ◼   ► - But I think it's different because like,

00:17:08 ◼   ► with streaming services, I think you have way lower

00:17:11 ◼   ► of a percentage of overlap.

00:17:12 ◼   ► If you look at like the Venn diagram

00:17:13 ◼   ► of each one's catalogs, right,

00:17:15 ◼   ► video streaming services, I feel like there's a lot less

00:17:18 ◼   ► overlap between each ones.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Music streaming services, the overlap of those

00:17:22 ◼   ► Venn diagram circles of what they have is almost identical.

00:17:25 ◼   ► It's almost completely on top of each other.

00:17:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, so you don't feel like you're getting

00:17:28 ◼   ► anything extra, I mean--

00:17:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it feels redundant to pay for

00:17:30 ◼   ► multiple music services, whereas it doesn't feel

00:17:32 ◼   ► redundant to pay for multiple streaming services

00:17:33 ◼   ► with different content on them.

00:17:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I suppose, although, there's probably

00:17:39 ◼   ► lots of exclusive content, we just don't know what it is,

00:17:41 ◼   ► because maybe you're into classical music,

00:17:43 ◼   ► and maybe one has all the classical music,

00:17:45 ◼   ► and the other one has crap, or--

00:17:46 ◼   ► - None of them have fish.

00:17:47 ◼   ► you know, foreign music or, none of them have Fish, right?

00:17:50 ◼   ► But if one of them did, that would be a differentiator.

00:17:52 ◼   ► - Well, no, no, I think Spotify has a fair bit of Fish,

00:17:54 ◼   ► doesn't it?

00:17:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, but not all the live shows.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Actually, Live Fish has their own app,

00:17:58 ◼   ► and I think they're a streaming service

00:18:00 ◼   ► that has all the stuff.

00:18:02 ◼   ► - Well, anyway, what I'm getting at is,

00:18:04 ◼   ► why is it that I play for Google Play

00:18:07 ◼   ► and I won't play rap music?

00:18:08 ◼   ► Part of it might be the overlap,

00:18:09 ◼   ► but I don't have that problem in video.

00:18:11 ◼   ► There's a lot of overlap in the video services,

00:18:13 ◼   ► but when I envision the video services,

00:18:15 ◼   ► it's like, look, the only reason I'm subscribing

00:18:17 ◼   ► the CBS thing is for the one Star Trek show. Like in the worst case scenario, it's like

00:18:22 ◼   ► I'm literally subscribing for a single show because it's the only place I can get it.

00:18:26 ◼   ► It's 100% exclusive, right? And these video services pay to have exclusive content created

00:18:31 ◼   ► for them. That's what brings me to them. I'm not, at this point, I'm no longer subscribed

00:18:35 ◼   ► to Netflix to see a bunch of, like, their back catalog of movies. It's purely for original

00:18:41 ◼   ► Netflix series. We don't have that in the music space. But anyway, what I'm getting

00:18:47 ◼   ► as I'm paying, you know, tens of dollars for all these services every single month and

00:18:52 ◼   ► it doesn't bother me, but also paying for Apple Music just feels like, meh.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And I think, mostly for me anyway, it's because I watch much more television and movies than

00:19:01 ◼   ► I listen to music, because there's a fact, right?

00:19:03 ◼   ► I mean, and even in scenarios where I would be listening to music, I'm mostly listening

00:19:07 ◼   ► to podcasts, which, you know, so what does all this say that I don't think the cylinder

00:19:14 ◼   ► market is uniquely hosed?

00:19:16 ◼   ► It is hosed in very similar ways to the sort of the balkanized video market.

00:19:22 ◼   ► It's just that the video market, I guess, feels better because of the original content.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Although it doesn't feel great.

00:19:27 ◼   ► I mean, I resist adding up exactly how much money I'm paying every month for all my video

00:19:33 ◼   ► services because I think it's a pretty big number.

00:19:35 ◼   ► David Erickson Going back one more minute to what you said

00:19:38 ◼   ► a few minutes ago, Casey, about the kind of feeling of openness that you want or seek

00:19:44 ◼   ► from this product that you can't get.

00:19:47 ◼   ► So for reasons I'll get into later in the show,

00:19:49 ◼   ► I've kind of been thinking similar lines recently,

00:19:51 ◼   ► or having similar sensibility, and, you know,

00:19:55 ◼   ► the fact that the HomePod has no equivalent

00:19:58 ◼   ► to basically a line-in port, like maybe AirPlay One

00:20:04 ◼   ► might be that equivalent, but like,

00:20:05 ◼   ► basically it has no line-in port,

00:20:08 ◼   ► this, I feel like, limits its lifetime in a way

00:20:12 ◼   ► that people who buy speakers,

00:20:14 ◼   ► I think are gonna be disappointed with this long term.

00:20:16 ◼   ► Like, if you look at the iPod Hi-Fi,

00:20:20 ◼   ► the famous flop Apple product, well you know what?

00:20:22 ◼   ► The iPod Hi-Fi, for the very few people

00:20:24 ◼   ► who spent the crazy amount of money to buy it,

00:20:26 ◼   ► which actually I think was $400, right?

00:20:27 ◼   ► It's not that different from the price of the HomePod.

00:20:30 ◼   ► - I think it was exactly the same price as the HomePod,

00:20:31 ◼   ► wasn't it, $349?

00:20:33 ◼   ► - Oh, I thought maybe, anyway.

00:20:34 ◼   ► - It was $350, by the way.

00:20:35 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah, so there you go.

00:20:37 ◼   ► But like, for the few people who bought those,

00:20:40 ◼   ► who got them later off of eBay as a joke,

00:20:41 ◼   ► like, you know, I know Jason Snell and Steven Hackett

00:20:44 ◼   ► both have them, and they both still use them.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Now, the iPod Hi-Fi, the main input was an iPod 30-pin

00:20:51 ◼   ► dot connector on the top, but it also had a line import

00:20:54 ◼   ► on the back, and so the speaker that, by all accounts,

00:20:58 ◼   ► is actually a pretty decent speaker, is still useful today,

00:21:01 ◼   ► what is it, a decade after it came out, something like that?

00:21:04 ◼   ► So like, it's still useful today,

00:21:07 ◼   ► because it's just a good speaker,

00:21:08 ◼   ► and good speakers don't go out of date.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Good speakers are always good speakers.

00:21:12 ◼   ► I mean, eventually maybe the cones could rot,

00:21:13 ◼   ► but it takes a very long time.

00:21:16 ◼   ► A good speaker is useful way beyond the lifetime

00:21:19 ◼   ► of a typical tech gadget.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And people who buy good speakers

00:21:23 ◼   ► and who value good speakers know this,

00:21:25 ◼   ► because every good speaker they ever bought

00:21:27 ◼   ► has been this way.

00:21:28 ◼   ► And you know, Casey, your parents and my parents

00:21:32 ◼   ► were both super into music and hi-fi systems,

00:21:34 ◼   ► and we both grew up listening to speaker systems

00:21:37 ◼   ► that were decades old and many of those components

00:21:41 ◼   ► still work today, decades later.

00:21:43 ◼   ► - That's exactly true.

00:21:44 ◼   ► So my dad's fancy, fancy, fancy stereo

00:21:46 ◼   ► is 15, 20 years old at this point

00:21:49 ◼   ► and I know he has teal loudspeakers.

00:21:52 ◼   ► Now I'm having second thoughts.

00:21:53 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure he has teal loudspeakers.

00:21:54 ◼   ► There's a second set of speakers,

00:21:56 ◼   ► a second stereo in his house that is like,

00:21:59 ◼   ► I believe they're doll quests and I am almost sure

00:22:02 ◼   ► he had those in his dorm room when he was a kid.

00:22:05 ◼   ► and my dad is 60 and change,

00:22:08 ◼   ► and he was in college when he was like 20.

00:22:10 ◼   ► So, to your point, I think you might have had

00:22:12 ◼   ► to replace a cone here or there or something like that,

00:22:14 ◼   ► but I 150% agree with what you're driving at,

00:22:17 ◼   ► that good speakers can last, not literally forever,

00:22:21 ◼   ► but effectively frickin' forever.

00:22:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, like in the tech world, they last forever,

00:22:24 ◼   ► like relative to other products that we use.

00:22:26 ◼   ► And so, the iPod Hi-Fi, this speaker that came out

00:22:30 ◼   ► forever ago and was a flop, is still totally functional

00:22:33 ◼   ► today for the few people who have them,

00:22:36 ◼   ► because it had a line inject, it had like this escape valve

00:22:39 ◼   ► that like, this future proofs this thing

00:22:41 ◼   ► for a very long time, you know, and the HomePod,

00:22:45 ◼   ► I understand why Apple's positioning it so much

00:22:47 ◼   ► as like a good speaker, because as I said,

00:22:49 ◼   ► that's playing to its strengths and trying to position it

00:22:52 ◼   ► away from Apple's weaknesses in this product, that's good.

00:22:55 ◼   ► But a good speaker is expected to last, and to be useful,

00:22:59 ◼   ► you know, if you're gonna be spending $350

00:23:02 ◼   ► for a good speaker, and that's just for one, by the way,

00:23:05 ◼   ► like I think a lot of people are gonna end up wanting two

00:23:08 ◼   ► for the way it fills larger rooms better.

00:23:10 ◼   ► You know, if you're gonna be spending this kind of money

00:23:13 ◼   ► on a speaker, it is convention in the industry

00:23:16 ◼   ► that that speaker lasts, and it doesn't have to last

00:23:19 ◼   ► 50 years, you know, I understand there's like

00:23:21 ◼   ► complex processors going in there,

00:23:23 ◼   ► and lots of different tweeters, and everything like that,

00:23:25 ◼   ► so it's more complex than most speakers.

00:23:27 ◼   ► But if this thing is a flop, you know,

00:23:29 ◼   ► there's no guarantee that it will be,

00:23:30 ◼   ► but I'm just saying like, if this thing is a flop,

00:23:32 ◼   ► and support for it dwindles in the software

00:23:34 ◼   ► over the next five, 10 years, whatever.

00:23:36 ◼   ► If you have one of these, 10 years from now,

00:23:39 ◼   ► if it has a line import, you can still use it.

00:23:42 ◼   ► But if the software ecosystem dries up or moves on,

00:23:46 ◼   ► this thing is now useless.

00:23:47 ◼   ► And I understand a lot of tech products are this way now.

00:23:51 ◼   ► This is honestly how much of Sonos has operated.

00:23:54 ◼   ► In fact, almost all of Sonos works this way,

00:23:56 ◼   ► and that's one of the reasons why I kind of don't like it.

00:23:59 ◼   ► But it just kind of rubs me the wrong way

00:24:01 ◼   ► that this product is so dependent

00:24:04 ◼   ► on its internet connection, the Siri servers backing it up,

00:24:08 ◼   ► and the proprietary AirPlay protocol and things like that,

00:24:11 ◼   ► that it makes it really hard to envision

00:24:16 ◼   ► this thing being useful in 10 years.

00:24:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, and to that end, it's super surprising to me,

00:24:21 ◼   ► like you were saying, that there's no just input jack

00:24:26 ◼   ► anywhere on here, and I'm looking at the HomePod specs,

00:24:29 ◼   ► And it says, uh, where is this? It says, shoot, I just lost it.

00:24:34 ◼   ► Uh, la la la la la. Audio sources, there we go.

00:24:37 ◼   ► It says, "Apple Music, iTunes Music Purchases, iCloud Music Library with an Apple Music or iTunes Match Subscription."

00:24:43 ◼   ► Which, by the way, is very cool. I'm glad that iTunes Match is supported, because I do still subscribe to that.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Oh, I guess that is another audio service, to Jon's point earlier. Anyway, uh, Beats 1 Live Radio, uh, what is it, always on worldwide?

00:24:55 ◼   ► Podcasts, Airplay, other content to HomePod from iPhone, iPad, iPod, Touch, Apple TV, and Mac.

00:25:05 ◼   ► You'll note that Bluetooth is not listed in the audio sources section.

00:25:10 ◼   ► However, in the wireless section, it lists 802.11ac, Wi-Fi with MIMO, direct guest access, whatever the crap that means, and Bluetooth 5.

00:25:20 ◼   ► So I don't know if Bluetooth is supported or not, and again, I apologize if I should know this,

00:25:24 ◼   ► but I have not had time to read up on any of this stuff lately.

00:25:27 ◼   ► But it is quite possible that, to your point, Marco,

00:25:31 ◼   ► AirPlay is the only way to get quote-unquote "other audio" into this thing.

00:25:36 ◼   ► And that just severely—and I love AirPlay, like it has its problems, don't get me wrong,

00:25:40 ◼   ► but I love AirPlay. I use AirPlay all the time, oftentimes streaming Spotify to my Apple TV,

00:25:46 ◼   ► because it would be great if Spotify made a friggin' Apple TV app, but that's a different issue.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Anyway, I like AirPlay, I think AirPlay works great, and that seems to be the only mechanism

00:25:55 ◼   ► to get other audio in here, which I agree with you, Marco, is kinda bananas.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Because you would think, like, at least give us a little, like, what is it, an RCA jack

00:26:05 ◼   ► or like a headphone jack, you know what I'm thinking of, but what is the--

00:26:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, either an 8-thing stereo headphone and jack or a pair of RCA plugs.

00:26:13 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:26:14 ◼   ► Like, that would dramatically increase the usefulness of this thing, in my personal opinion.

00:26:19 ◼   ► And here again, like, I think it's a bit of a stretch for me to say what I'm about to

00:26:23 ◼   ► say, but here's like another quote-unquote "open" issue.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Like if this was designed—maybe openness is a poor choice of words, maybe flexibility

00:26:31 ◼   ► is a better word—if this was designed to be more flexible, then it may have some mechanism

00:26:37 ◼   ► of physical audio input.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Maybe it would have more software support for Spotify or friggin' Overcast or Pocketcast,

00:26:46 ◼   ► whatever.

00:26:47 ◼   ► care if Overcast isn't your podcasting platform of choice.

00:26:51 ◼   ► I do.

00:26:52 ◼   ► Fair.

00:26:53 ◼   ► But you know what I mean though?

00:26:54 ◼   ► Anything!

00:26:55 ◼   ► God, it's just so frustrating.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Because I feel like this is right up my alley as someone who has music playing in the house

00:27:01 ◼   ► almost always.

00:27:02 ◼   ► And I really mean that.

00:27:04 ◼   ► If silence just freaks me out, I have to have music playing when I'm in the house, just

00:27:09 ◼   ► playing with Declan or whatever.

00:27:11 ◼   ► I constantly have my stereo, my home theater, if you will, stereo on playing some sort of

00:27:18 ◼   ► music.

00:27:19 ◼   ► This would be perfect for me if I could get music into it from some mechanism other than

00:27:24 ◼   ► airplay.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And I guess maybe the adult answer, if you will, is, "Well, you're airplaying to your

00:27:29 ◼   ► Apple TV a lot of the time anyway, so who cares?

00:27:31 ◼   ► Grow up."

00:27:32 ◼   ► But I don't know, it's so frustrating that it doesn't have to be that way.

00:27:35 ◼   ► No, that's not a good answer.

00:27:37 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:27:38 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't feel right to me.

00:27:40 ◼   ► $350 to do something I'm already doing, you know?

00:27:44 ◼   ► It's just, ugh.

00:27:45 ◼   ► - Well, and also AirPlay is limited.

00:27:46 ◼   ► As I mentioned last episode, AirPlay has certain latency

00:27:48 ◼   ► in different scenarios.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Even AirPlay 2 is going to have latency.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Apple TV is going to be able to work with it

00:27:54 ◼   ► by compensating for that and delaying the video stream

00:27:56 ◼   ► so it catches up with the audio properly.

00:27:58 ◼   ► But any other thing sent into it might not.

00:28:01 ◼   ► And so if your answer here is AirPlay,

00:28:04 ◼   ► or even Bluetooth, which also has some latency,

00:28:06 ◼   ► that rules out things like using it as TV speakers

00:28:08 ◼   ► for a lot of people's setups.

00:28:09 ◼   ► that future audio components you might want to connect to it.

00:28:13 ◼   ► Honestly, I know this is not something Apple

00:28:15 ◼   ► would want to enable, but if you really liked

00:28:18 ◼   ► the Amazon Echo service and wanted to buy a HomePod

00:28:20 ◼   ► for its audio, if it had a line in,

00:28:22 ◼   ► you could plug in an Echo Dot to it

00:28:25 ◼   ► and have it receive audio from it.

00:28:28 ◼   ► - Oh my word.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - That's something that I would actually consider that

00:28:31 ◼   ► for my kitchen.

00:28:32 ◼   ► That's actually something people could do.

00:28:35 ◼   ► And I know Apple's not gonna try to enable it

00:28:36 ◼   ► for reasons like that, but they would probably sell more.

00:28:38 ◼   ► And it's just, again, the audio world, I feel like,

00:28:43 ◼   ► and this is kind of a larger tech problem,

00:28:45 ◼   ► like, you know, Apple talks so much

00:28:47 ◼   ► about their environmental responsibility and everything,

00:28:50 ◼   ► but they sure make a lot of really

00:28:51 ◼   ► limited disposable devices.

00:28:53 ◼   ► - They're recyclable.

00:28:54 ◼   ► You know, I don't know, since none of us have this,

00:28:57 ◼   ► since we failed as a group to buy one,

00:28:59 ◼   ► I don't know if it works as a plain old Bluetooth speaker,

00:29:02 ◼   ► but imagine if Amazon ships the Dot with Bluetooth,

00:29:06 ◼   ► and then the Dot can use the HomePod as a Bluetooth speaker.

00:29:11 ◼   ► - By the way, all Amazon Echo's can already do that,

00:29:14 ◼   ► including the Dots, but as far as we know,

00:29:18 ◼   ► the HomePod can't take Bluetooth input as a speaker.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Like the Bluetooth is there, but it seems like it's there

00:29:23 ◼   ► just for like its own private use.

00:29:25 ◼   ► It does seem like--

00:29:26 ◼   ► - Maybe for phone calls, perhaps, with the iPhone?

00:29:28 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, actually, I bet you're right.

00:29:29 ◼   ► It's probably for the phone call profile,

00:29:30 ◼   ► but like, you know, Bluetooth, it exposes certain profiles,

00:29:32 ◼   ► and there's some for phone calls,

00:29:34 ◼   ► there's some for being speakers for music,

00:29:35 ◼   ► And from what we know so far, it does not expose

00:29:38 ◼   ► the A2DP protocol for music, or whatever

00:29:40 ◼   ► the more modern ones are.

00:29:42 ◼   ► So it doesn't seem, from what we know so far,

00:29:45 ◼   ► that it is capable of being a Bluetooth speaker by itself.

00:29:48 ◼   ► - Seems like you have to buy one to find out.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Chat room has insight either way.

00:29:50 ◼   ► No one in the chat room bought one either.

00:29:52 ◼   ► We failed as a collective here.

00:29:53 ◼   ► - Well, nobody has them yet.

00:29:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess, when are they supposed to come in?

00:29:56 ◼   ► The ninth or something?

00:29:57 ◼   ► - I'm pretty sure during the hour-long demo at Apple PR

00:30:00 ◼   ► that some people had, they probably didn't want you

00:30:02 ◼   ► to pair your phone to it to see if it could run

00:30:04 ◼   ► as a Bluetooth speaker.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Oh, let me, I'll bring an Echo in and we can see if the Echo compares to it.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:11 ◼   ► Another point about this is, you know, all of us are asking for like line-in or RCA or,

00:30:15 ◼   ► you know, basically a wire connected to the thing, but it could be that the ubiquity of

00:30:19 ◼   ► Bluetooth just washes over the entire industry and having Bluetooth becomes the equivalent

00:30:26 ◼   ► of having a line-in for most people, like not high-end audio people.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Because I would say, you know, $350 is expensive, but it's not high-end audio expensive, right?

00:30:36 ◼   ► - No, no, it's high-end audio in mid-range.

00:30:39 ◼   ► - I don't know if it's even mid-range.

00:30:40 ◼   ► I guess when you have two of them, maybe it's mid-range.

00:30:42 ◼   ► - Well, okay, in audio, there's like, there's three prices that everything is.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Either nothing, $300, or $50,000.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Like that's roughly the classes here.

00:30:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, it could be that we're just behind the market and having the ability

00:30:58 ◼   ► to take Bluetooth input is sufficient for everybody.

00:31:01 ◼   ► In fact, it's what people want.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And then we'll just have to find out

00:31:05 ◼   ► whether this thing can take Bluetooth input.

00:31:06 ◼   ► Also, getting back to the hardware thing,

00:31:08 ◼   ► if it doesn't take Bluetooth input now,

00:31:09 ◼   ► as long as the hardware is there,

00:31:11 ◼   ► there's no reason they can't change that later.

00:31:12 ◼   ► And then you can have your Echo Dot talking

00:31:14 ◼   ► to your home pod scenario in your kitchen.

00:31:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe.

00:31:18 ◼   ► I mean, that would be nice to have,

00:31:19 ◼   ► just to have options like that.

00:31:20 ◼   ► Like, I know that's a ridiculous thing,

00:31:22 ◼   ► but although I would probably actually,

00:31:24 ◼   ► I really would do it.

00:31:24 ◼   ► - You could put the little dot on top of it.

00:31:26 ◼   ► - Well, that would cover up the little screen on it.

00:31:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:30 ◼   ► But yeah, just like, again,

00:31:32 ◼   ► in case you mentioned earlier flexibility,

00:31:34 ◼   ► I would maybe use the word versatility.

00:31:36 ◼   ► There are so many more things,

00:31:40 ◼   ► scenarios in which the HomePod could be useful

00:31:42 ◼   ► or could be compelling if it had just one or two

00:31:45 ◼   ► of these walls knocked down a little bit.

00:31:47 ◼   ► But yeah, over time maybe it will, we'll see.

00:31:49 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

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00:33:40 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:33:43 ◼   ► - All right, I wanna tell a short story

00:33:46 ◼   ► that is really an excuse to talk about

00:33:50 ◼   ► a shopping experience I just had.

00:33:52 ◼   ► So I have my MacBook Adorable, and I have a USB-C to Ethernet

00:33:58 ◼   ► adapter that also has three traditional USB ports on it.

00:34:02 ◼   ► And it's a little bit physically large.

00:34:04 ◼   ► But the problem is, because I have a MacBook Adorable that

00:34:07 ◼   ► only has one port, which usually doesn't bother me, but

00:34:09 ◼   ► occasionally does, let's say I wanted to do an initial time

00:34:13 ◼   ► machine backup, which can take hours.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Then I would have to make sure that I can do that before my

00:34:19 ◼   ► battery depletes because this USB-C Ethernet adapter does not have USB-C in.

00:34:24 ◼   ► So I have no mechanism by which I can power my laptop while I'm using Ethernet,

00:34:29 ◼   ► which normally is not that big a deal but is sometimes frustrating, right? Well,

00:34:33 ◼   ► I also have a knockoff version of the Apple—I forget the official term for it—

00:34:38 ◼   ► but the Apple adapter that has HDMI, USB-C in to provide power, and a single USB,

00:34:47 ◼   ► what a traditional USB 3 port.

00:34:50 ◼   ► - Yes, the $80 middle finger from Apple.

00:34:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, well I think I got mine for like 15 or 20 bucks

00:34:54 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:34:55 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes.

00:34:56 ◼   ► - Of course I paid 80 for mine.

00:34:58 ◼   ► - Well right, because I think I got mine

00:34:59 ◼   ► from Monoprice or something like that.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Again, I'll have to dig it up, I don't remember offhand.

00:35:03 ◼   ► But I've never had a problem with it, it works great,

00:35:06 ◼   ► and it was a heck of a lot less than 80 bucks.

00:35:08 ◼   ► So it occurred to me this HDMI thinger that again,

00:35:15 ◼   ► HDMI, USB-C, and traditional USB, that's actually a really nice way to add a single USB port

00:35:21 ◼   ► while maintaining power.

00:35:23 ◼   ► So you know what I should do?

00:35:24 ◼   ► I should get a USB Ethernet adapter, and this way, if I do have a long-running operation,

00:35:32 ◼   ► like a time machine backup, I can plug this old-school USB Ethernet adapter into my fancy

00:35:39 ◼   ► pants 80-but-not-actually-80-dollar adapter into the MacBook Adorable.

00:35:44 ◼   ► So I bought a $15 Ethernet adapter that runs over a USB 3.

00:35:49 ◼   ► I get it to the house and I bought it from Amazon.

00:35:52 ◼   ► I get it to the house and I did not do my due diligence

00:35:56 ◼   ► and it requires a driver.

00:35:58 ◼   ► And that should have been enough to stop me,

00:36:00 ◼   ► but I was annoyed and I was like, well, screw it.

00:36:02 ◼   ► It's already here.

00:36:02 ◼   ► I don't wanna have to return it.

00:36:04 ◼   ► So I'll just install this driver.

00:36:06 ◼   ► So there I go installing a kernel extension

00:36:08 ◼   ► that unequivocally came from China thinking to myself,

00:36:11 ◼   ► this is not a wise choice, but here I am.

00:36:14 ◼   ► - You hear us on a kernel extension

00:36:15 ◼   ► for a USB network adapter?

00:36:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:36:19 ◼   ► - That would have gone right back in the box for me.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - Well, hold on.

00:36:22 ◼   ► I understand that this was a terrible idea.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I don't need you to write into me, anyone.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I understand, I get it.

00:36:29 ◼   ► I understand China might be looking

00:36:31 ◼   ► at every bit of network traffic

00:36:32 ◼   ► that ever comes through this computer.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I get it.

00:36:34 ◼   ► - I mean, that's one problem.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Also, just like, your computer's gonna suck now.

00:36:37 ◼   ► Like, you're gonna have stability issues.

00:36:40 ◼   ► The next OS update's gonna probably break it.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - Well, so hold on, hold on.

00:36:44 ◼   ► You should not need this.

00:36:45 ◼   ► - I am fully aware of all these things.

00:36:47 ◼   ► So I was just frustrated and in the heat of the moment,

00:36:51 ◼   ► I just went with it.

00:36:51 ◼   ► Well, then I do this kernel extension.

00:36:54 ◼   ► I try to install this driver.

00:36:56 ◼   ► It installs just fine,

00:36:57 ◼   ► but I can't maintain a connection

00:37:00 ◼   ► for more than like a minute or two.

00:37:02 ◼   ► And I decide, you know what?

00:37:03 ◼   ► That is definitely not gonna work.

00:37:05 ◼   ► And even though this thing is only $15,

00:37:07 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to return it.

00:37:09 ◼   ► So I go to return it to Amazon,

00:37:11 ◼   ► which I've done like once or twice in the past,

00:37:13 ◼   ► but I think it was one of you guys that said this before,

00:37:16 ◼   ► like, it takes a lot for me to return anything,

00:37:18 ◼   ► even to like a nameless corporation.

00:37:21 ◼   ► It's really bad for me to return something

00:37:23 ◼   ► to a retail store.

00:37:23 ◼   ► I hate doing that, 'cause I just feel like a jerk.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Even if it's well within my ability,

00:37:30 ◼   ► that's not the word I'm looking for,

00:37:31 ◼   ► but if it's well within my rights, I guess,

00:37:33 ◼   ► for lack of a better word, to return something,

00:37:34 ◼   ► I hate doing it.

00:37:35 ◼   ► I think Marco, you've talked about this a lot,

00:37:36 ◼   ► and I feel exactly the same way.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - I mean, honestly, to be fair,

00:37:39 ◼   ► it's so easy to return stuff to Amazon

00:37:41 ◼   ► that I do returns with Amazon at more of a regular person

00:37:44 ◼   ► rate than anything else in my life.

00:37:46 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:37:47 ◼   ► So, perfect segue, thank you.

00:37:49 ◼   ► I'll send you a dollar later.

00:37:51 ◼   ► So I decide to return this thing to Amazon

00:37:54 ◼   ► and I start grumbling to myself 'cause I'm like,

00:37:55 ◼   ► oh, now I'm gonna have to box it up

00:37:57 ◼   ► and then I'm gonna have to mail it

00:37:58 ◼   ► and this is gonna be a royal pain.

00:38:01 ◼   ► But one of the options I had

00:38:02 ◼   ► was to return it to an Amazon locker.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I thought to myself, you know what?

00:38:05 ◼   ► I know there's at least a couple of lockers nearby,

00:38:07 ◼   ► don't be creepy, I'm gonna try this.

00:38:10 ◼   ► So they say, "Okay, you can return it to an Amazon locker.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Here's what you do.

00:38:14 ◼   ► We've given you a PDF that has a hilariously large,

00:38:18 ◼   ► like it almost looks like a mailing label,

00:38:20 ◼   ► except there was no postage required

00:38:23 ◼   ► because it's going to an Amazon locker.

00:38:25 ◼   ► And given that this was a little USB adapter

00:38:27 ◼   ► that was probably the size of a deck of cards,

00:38:29 ◼   ► like the box of it was roughly the size of a deck of cards,

00:38:31 ◼   ► I needed to put it in this like hilariously large box

00:38:34 ◼   ► just to fit the stupid mailing label on it.

00:38:36 ◼   ► But be that as it may, so far so good.

00:38:38 ◼   ► So I print that out.

00:38:39 ◼   ► I find a much larger box than I should really need.

00:38:43 ◼   ► I tape it all, I put it in the box,

00:38:45 ◼   ► I tape it all up, blah, blah, blah.

00:38:46 ◼   ► And I go to the Amazon locker.

00:38:48 ◼   ► - How much did this thing cost again?

00:38:50 ◼   ► 'Cause now you're overrunning my,

00:38:51 ◼   ► now I need to know a number.

00:38:52 ◼   ► How much did this cost?

00:38:53 ◼   ► - Didn't you say $15?

00:38:55 ◼   ► - It was about $15.

00:38:56 ◼   ► - That's way over $15 worth of effort you've already spent.

00:38:59 ◼   ► I feel like I spent $15 worth of effort

00:39:01 ◼   ► listening to this story so far.

00:39:02 ◼   ► - Well, thanks a lot.

00:39:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, if I had a $15 product that didn't work,

00:39:08 ◼   ► I would probably honestly just throw it away.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Like, I don't think I would go through this.

00:39:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would just eat that cost, but anyway.

00:39:13 ◼   ► - Normally, I agree.

00:39:14 ◼   ► - In case he's trying to work the system here.

00:39:16 ◼   ► - Normally I would agree.

00:39:17 ◼   ► Normally I would not even think about it,

00:39:18 ◼   ► especially since my LLC bought this,

00:39:20 ◼   ► so it's like free money, except not, but whatever.

00:39:23 ◼   ► - No, that's not how that works.

00:39:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, I know, but it's kinda like

00:39:26 ◼   ► sometimes think about it, but anyway.

00:39:27 ◼   ► - You really shouldn't.

00:39:28 ◼   ► - I know I shouldn't.

00:39:29 ◼   ► All right, just leave me alone, okay, just let me finish.

00:39:31 ◼   ► So the point is that I decided to return

00:39:33 ◼   ► to this Amazon locker, and I agree with you guys,

00:39:35 ◼   ► this was a hilarious amount of effort

00:39:36 ◼   ► something that I should have just thrown in the trash and walked away from. But I was annoyed and

00:39:40 ◼   ► I wanted to kind of send this back and say, "Screw you, this thing was a piece of garbage." So

00:39:44 ◼   ► I drive to the Amazon locker and they give you a little code. And so there's a screen in the middle

00:39:50 ◼   ► of the lockers and you type in your like six digit or six character code or whatever, and I do that.

00:39:54 ◼   ► And then a locker just pops open, which isn't entirely surprising, but was kind of cool to see.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And I go to put my hilariously large box in this locker that was about three or maybe three inches tall,

00:40:09 ◼   ► and this box was easily six or seven inches.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And I look at the box, and I look at the locker, and I look at the box, and I look at the locker,

00:40:17 ◼   ► and I think, "Well, crap. This isn't going to go well." And now I'm like, "What do I do?"

00:40:23 ◼   ► You throw it in the trash, and you consider this problem gone.

00:40:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I know. Shut up, Leo!

00:40:27 ◼   ► If you were a real American, you would have made that box stick. Just shove it in there,

00:40:31 ◼   ► - Just crunch it up.

00:40:32 ◼   ► - Wait, why was the box so big

00:40:34 ◼   ► for like a little USB dongle thing?

00:40:35 ◼   ► - Because of the stupid mailing label.

00:40:37 ◼   ► Like, because the mailing label was easily

00:40:39 ◼   ► like six inches wide for this teeny tiny little.

00:40:41 ◼   ► - I think what I would have done is just like tape

00:40:44 ◼   ► the mailing label around the item itself.

00:40:46 ◼   ► - I probably should have.

00:40:47 ◼   ► - With no box.

00:40:48 ◼   ► Make the mailing label and tape the box.

00:40:51 ◼   ► And just make sure the barcode is visible somewhere.

00:40:53 ◼   ► - Well, I was gonna say, you're also supposed

00:40:55 ◼   ► to put something in like a different barcode

00:40:57 ◼   ► in the box just in case, but I agree with you.

00:40:59 ◼   ► Well anyway, the reason I bring this up though

00:41:00 ◼   ► was because on the screen there was an option that said,

00:41:04 ◼   ► "My box is too big.

00:41:05 ◼   ► "I need a bigger locker, please," or whatever.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And so I closed the locker and I hit that button,

00:41:11 ◼   ► or I think I hit the button and then closed the locker,

00:41:13 ◼   ► and sure enough, a different one popped open

00:41:14 ◼   ► and it fit just fine.

00:41:15 ◼   ► And this all happened yesterday.

00:41:17 ◼   ► And so then--

00:41:18 ◼   ► - This can't be how the story ends.

00:41:20 ◼   ► - No, and then I put my box into the locker,

00:41:23 ◼   ► I shut the locker, I waited a day,

00:41:25 ◼   ► and they said they're gonna credit my credit card.

00:41:27 ◼   ► How cool is that?

00:41:28 ◼   ► I just thought that was such a neat experience.

00:41:30 ◼   ► This is like, no, this is so cool.

00:41:32 ◼   ► - You're excited about the option

00:41:33 ◼   ► to say that your box is too big?

00:41:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, and the fact that there was a locker to give,

00:41:37 ◼   ► like, I'm really not messing with you.

00:41:39 ◼   ► I realize this is hilarious, but--

00:41:42 ◼   ► - I can't believe it took this long to tell that story.

00:41:45 ◼   ► - This is so awesome, come on.

00:41:47 ◼   ► So here it is, like this establishment

00:41:49 ◼   ► that's all in the cloud, if you will,

00:41:51 ◼   ► figuratively speaking, it's all in the cloud.

00:41:53 ◼   ► Like, there's no real Amazon brick and mortar stores

00:41:56 ◼   ► except yeah, well, actually, whatever, whatever.

00:41:58 ◼   ► But the point is that they just installed,

00:42:01 ◼   ► this is like a friggin' Sunoco station

00:42:02 ◼   ► that they had this locker at.

00:42:04 ◼   ► And I could drive to the Sunoco station, don't be creepy,

00:42:07 ◼   ► and I could return my item

00:42:09 ◼   ► without having to send anything in the mail,

00:42:11 ◼   ► without having to worry about postage,

00:42:13 ◼   ► without having to worry about

00:42:14 ◼   ► whether or not the mail was open.

00:42:16 ◼   ► - Wait, you know that when you return something,

00:42:19 ◼   ► they give you a prepaid UPS label.

00:42:21 ◼   ► - But then I still would have to bring it

00:42:22 ◼   ► to a UPS store or a UPS drop box.

00:42:24 ◼   ► - Let me tell you, the UPS drop boxes

00:42:26 ◼   ► are big enough to accommodate your package.

00:42:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:29 ◼   ► - Yes, first of all, there are tons of UPS stores

00:42:31 ◼   ► and drop boxes everywhere.

00:42:33 ◼   ► Second of all, you can also hand it

00:42:34 ◼   ► to any UPS driver anywhere.

00:42:37 ◼   ► So, if you have a UPS driver who comes

00:42:38 ◼   ► to your office every day, you can just bring it to work

00:42:40 ◼   ► and leave it at the front desk and say,

00:42:42 ◼   ► "Hey, can you give this to the UPS guy?"

00:42:44 ◼   ► Or, if you are at home, like I am,

00:42:47 ◼   ► and you see the UPS person either come to your house

00:42:49 ◼   ► or go to a neighbor's house, you can walk outside

00:42:50 ◼   ► and be like, "Here you go, that's it."

00:42:52 ◼   ► It's so easy.

00:42:52 ◼   ► - Well, I think that second strategy only works for Marco,

00:42:55 ◼   ► where the UPS man comes to his house every single day.

00:42:57 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:42:59 ◼   ► That's exactly right.

00:43:00 ◼   ► - And he's home all day.

00:43:01 ◼   ► - You both go to offices where they definitely

00:43:03 ◼   ► come every day.

00:43:04 ◼   ► They come to every office every day.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Also, you have a month to return it when you do this.

00:43:09 ◼   ► - Not the Amazon locker.

00:43:10 ◼   ► The Amazon locker, you have one full business day,

00:43:12 ◼   ► thank you very much.

00:43:13 ◼   ► - No, but I was gonna say, if you do the UPS prepaid label,

00:43:17 ◼   ► which is the option you should always take,

00:43:19 ◼   ► they give you a month to return it.

00:43:21 ◼   ► So it doesn't matter if the UPS guy

00:43:22 ◼   ► doesn't come to your house every day.

00:43:24 ◼   ► If somebody from UPS comes to your house

00:43:25 ◼   ► at least once a month, or you can find a Dropbox

00:43:28 ◼   ► or pass a UPS store at least once a month,

00:43:30 ◼   ► you just do that.

00:43:31 ◼   ► It's so, oh my God, I can't believe

00:43:34 ◼   ► you spent that much effort on this.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - But the thing, the reason I brought all this up

00:43:38 ◼   ► was because, no, the reason I brought all this up

00:43:41 ◼   ► was not about this particular stupid dongle,

00:43:43 ◼   ► it was not about whether or not this was

00:43:45 ◼   ► the most effective way to return this item.

00:43:48 ◼   ► This is just my first experience with an Amazon locker,

00:43:51 ◼   ► and I thought it was really frickin' cool.

00:43:53 ◼   ► And I could see how having this at like Whole Foods's would be really convenient.

00:43:58 ◼   ► And I just thought, and I think that this is a company that really exists only in the

00:44:06 ◼   ► ether by most definitions, right?

00:44:09 ◼   ► There's magic wherein, you know, I click some buttons on my keyboard and my mouse, then

00:44:14 ◼   ► something suddenly shows up at my house, and I have no mechanism why, wherein I can physically

00:44:21 ◼   ► take something and return it to them.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Like, yes, I understand what you just said, Marco.

00:44:24 ◼   ► I get it.

00:44:25 ◼   ► - It's called the UPS, the same way it got there.

00:44:26 ◼   ► - I get it, I get it.

00:44:27 ◼   ► But I understand, but like, I just thought

00:44:29 ◼   ► that this was really freaking cool.

00:44:31 ◼   ► And yes, I understand, okay, you can nitpick everything.

00:44:34 ◼   ► I just said, yes, there's a local Amazon warehouse,

00:44:36 ◼   ► but no, I couldn't have brought it there.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Yes, I can take it to UPS, that's true.

00:44:40 ◼   ► But I just thought that this was a really neat,

00:44:41 ◼   ► like halfway, and a really neat way

00:44:45 ◼   ► to give themselves a foothold geographically

00:44:48 ◼   ► without having to have a full-on brick and mortar store.

00:44:51 ◼   ► And if you end up cutting this from the released episode, fine.

00:44:54 ◼   ► I just feel like it's really cool.

00:44:56 ◼   ► And after all the moaning and complaining we all did about the HomePod, I thought we

00:44:59 ◼   ► would like a nice story.

00:45:01 ◼   ► And this, to me, was a nice story.

00:45:02 ◼   ► So you're going to try that Amazon Key thing next where you let Amazon open the door to

00:45:07 ◼   ► your house and go inside?

00:45:08 ◼   ► No, sir.

00:45:09 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:45:10 ◼   ► That's the next step.

00:45:11 ◼   ► It could be neat.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Just try it.

00:45:13 ◼   ► You're installing Kex from China on your laptop.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Why not allow Amazon into your house?

00:45:18 ◼   ► Yes, yes, yes.

00:45:20 ◼   ► Here we go.

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00:47:09 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:47:11 ◼   ► - So I wrote a Mac app over the last couple of weeks.

00:47:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, last week you told us a little bit,

00:47:16 ◼   ► you kind of teased it a little bit,

00:47:17 ◼   ► it was for photo management, right?

00:47:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's right.

00:47:21 ◼   ► So, here's the situation.

00:47:24 ◼   ► Quick recap, Dr. Drang had written a,

00:47:27 ◼   ► or maybe he had fixed or otherwise tweaked

00:47:31 ◼   ► a series of scripts, I'm not sure what Genesis was,

00:47:34 ◼   ► but he had written or tweaked or whatever

00:47:36 ◼   ► a bunch of Python scripts to do some basic rearranging

00:47:43 ◼   ► of files after he imports them.

00:47:46 ◼   ► So the idea is, and here's how I used it.

00:47:49 ◼   ► So the idea is I have a single folder that has a shed load

00:47:52 ◼   ► of files, be that from the iPhone, be that from my

00:47:54 ◼   ► physical camera or my big camera, whatever.

00:47:58 ◼   ► But I want them all to be filed away in folders that are

00:48:03 ◼   ► like the root folder slash 2018 slash 01.

00:48:09 ◼   ► and then the file names would be roughly ISO 8601,

00:48:13 ◼   ► because this is one of the rare cases

00:48:15 ◼   ► where I think ISO 8601 makes perfect sense.

00:48:17 ◼   ► So the file name would be something along the lines of

00:48:20 ◼   ► 2018-01-31, and in my particular case, I did a space,

00:48:25 ◼   ► which I know some people may not agree with,

00:48:26 ◼   ► whatever, it doesn't matter, then the 24 hour time.

00:48:29 ◼   ► So something like 21-53-whatever seconds.jpeg, right?

00:48:34 ◼   ► So all this script did was it would crack open

00:48:38 ◼   ► all of these images, it would look at the EXIF data to see when was this picture taken.

00:48:44 ◼   ► Then it would rename that file to be, you know, the roughly 8601 time and date, and

00:48:51 ◼   ► then it would file that away and copy it to the appropriate folder.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Does that make sense so far, is everyone with me?

00:48:57 ◼   ► >> Yep.

00:48:58 ◼   ► >> So this was working pretty well, except it required, like, a whole bunch of third-party

00:49:03 ◼   ► libraries because Python, and I never had the confidence to like really tweak it

00:49:08 ◼   ► because I sort of understand Python, but I can read it okay, but I'm really

00:49:13 ◼   ► really bad at writing it. So it felt like an untenable solution. Like I

00:49:18 ◼   ► shouldn't have something that's this important to me that I can't really work

00:49:23 ◼   ► with. Plus HEVC and more importantly HEIC happened and I wasn't confident that

00:49:31 ◼   ► that this script would work with either of those.

00:49:32 ◼   ► It may have, for all I know, but I wasn't confident.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And that was just a straw that broke the camel's back.

00:49:37 ◼   ► And I said, you know what, screw it.

00:49:39 ◼   ► I'm gonna rewrite this, I'm gonna do it in Swift,

00:49:40 ◼   ► and I'm gonna make a command line app to do it.

00:49:43 ◼   ► And so I wrote an app, and it's about 500 lines,

00:49:47 ◼   ► and it's just used via the command line.

00:49:48 ◼   ► And what you do is you say, here's the source folder

00:49:50 ◼   ► where all of these files exist, be it movies or images,

00:49:54 ◼   ► and here's the target folder,

00:49:56 ◼   ► and then it will do basically the same thing

00:49:58 ◼   ► as this Python script did,

00:49:59 ◼   ► is it will open up these images or open up these movies,

00:50:02 ◼   ► figure out when they were taken,

00:50:04 ◼   ► when the snapshot happened or when the recording happened,

00:50:07 ◼   ► rename them and then file them appropriately.

00:50:10 ◼   ► It will also be smart enough to,

00:50:12 ◼   ► if you took like a burst and you actually kept the burst,

00:50:15 ◼   ► it'll rename it to like, you know,

00:50:17 ◼   ► something, something, something A,

00:50:18 ◼   ► something, something, something B,

00:50:20 ◼   ► something, something, something C, et cetera, et cetera,

00:50:22 ◼   ► et cetera.

00:50:22 ◼   ► And so there wouldn't be any collisions

00:50:25 ◼   ► and it will report in when something like,

00:50:27 ◼   ► when I couldn't figure out

00:50:28 ◼   ► when the picture was taken because sometimes, for example,

00:50:31 ◼   ► with Instagram, when you save a picture--

00:50:33 ◼   ► or maybe it's Instagram Stories, I forget what.

00:50:35 ◼   ► But one way or another, sometimes there is no exif

00:50:37 ◼   ► data, so there's no reliable way to figure out when was

00:50:40 ◼   ► this picture taken.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And I have the option of falling back to the file

00:50:43 ◼   ► creation date, but sometimes that works, sometimes it

00:50:45 ◼   ► doesn't, blah, blah, blah.

00:50:46 ◼   ► So I wrote all this in Swift, and it's roughly 500 lines.

00:50:50 ◼   ► It does not use any sort of third-party library.

00:50:53 ◼   ► There's no Carthage.

00:50:54 ◼   ► There's no CocoaPods because I'm not an animal and also

00:50:56 ◼   ► because I didn't need anything.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And it felt really, really good.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Like I'm really happy with it.

00:51:03 ◼   ► It's not perfect, but you know, this one is mine and it works for me.

00:51:08 ◼   ► And I have learned some new things during it.

00:51:12 ◼   ► For whatever reason, I'd never really had an occasion to use what old people will call

00:51:16 ◼   ► NSOperationQueue, what I would call just OperationQueue.

00:51:20 ◼   ► I'd never really had a need for that in the past.

00:51:22 ◼   ► And I used one.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And I actually found a bug because of it earlier today, but that's a different story.

00:51:26 ◼   ► But nevertheless, this thing is multithreaded.

00:51:29 ◼   ► So it will spew a whole ton of threads and churn through all these files and rename them

00:51:36 ◼   ► and move them, well, copy them, and so on and so forth.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And I really am happy with this.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Now, do I plan to release it to anyone?

00:51:44 ◼   ► Absolutely not, because I wrote it for me, it works only for me, this is specifically

00:51:48 ◼   ► designed to work for me, and the code kind of looks like garbage because I'm not showing

00:51:53 ◼   ► it to anyone, nor do I really plan on open-sourcing it, because I don't really know what good

00:51:59 ◼   ► will come from that, other than people laughing at why this is crummy code.

00:52:03 ◼   ► Because again, I didn't make it super testable, I didn't make it super robust, because it's

00:52:08 ◼   ► just for me.

00:52:09 ◼   ► It's okay.

00:52:11 ◼   ► But I'm really pleased with how it worked out, a couple of small bugs aside, and I just

00:52:17 ◼   ► thought it was a really neat learning experience.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And maybe the only thing that's super interesting for the listeners is to say, sometimes scratching

00:52:24 ◼   ► your own itch can really be helpful, because now I can use operation queues with confidence

00:52:31 ◼   ► in my work work.

00:52:33 ◼   ► And I understand that operation queue is in iOS, like I'm fully aware of that, but for

00:52:37 ◼   ► whatever reason I just never really had a need for it.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And now, and I'm picking on this only because it's a silly example that many, many iOS developers

00:52:44 ◼   ► have used in the past.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Marco, I assume you've used operation queues at some point or another, especially for Overcast.

00:52:48 ◼   ► I use many of them.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:52:51 ◼   ► So maybe it's kind of weird that I hadn't had a need for one,

00:52:55 ◼   ► but for whatever reason I hadn't.

00:52:56 ◼   ► And now I've used them.

00:52:57 ◼   ► And so now I kind of know something.

00:52:59 ◼   ► And that's exciting.

00:53:00 ◼   ► And so I just thought it was a useful thing to share.

00:53:04 ◼   ► That if you're a developer, even if you're not

00:53:06 ◼   ► learning a new language to do these sorts of things,

00:53:09 ◼   ► if you're not trying to use this as an excuse

00:53:10 ◼   ► to teach yourself Python, for example,

00:53:12 ◼   ► sometimes it's just nice to do something

00:53:15 ◼   ► different in the language you already know and love.

00:53:17 ◼   ► So that's basically it, that's all I got.

00:53:19 ◼   ► - That's cool, yeah, I think this is kind of one of the

00:53:22 ◼   ► unspoken benefits of being a programmer

00:53:24 ◼   ► and also just a computer user.

00:53:25 ◼   ► It's like, if you as a computer user have a problem

00:53:28 ◼   ► that you would like to be solved in a better

00:53:30 ◼   ► or different way, if it's something that can be

00:53:33 ◼   ► reasonably easily programmed and you're a programmer,

00:53:36 ◼   ► you can just do it, you can just make something

00:53:37 ◼   ► that does this for you, it's very empowering,

00:53:39 ◼   ► it's really amazing, and it's one of the amazing things

00:53:42 ◼   ► about modern computers, about all computers really,

00:53:45 ◼   ► that give people the power to do that

00:53:47 ◼   ► If they learn the relatively accessible skill of programming,

00:53:52 ◼   ► then you can do lots of cool things like this.

00:53:56 ◼   ► Whether it's as simple as an Excel macro

00:54:00 ◼   ► all the way down to doing something cool like this

00:54:01 ◼   ► with switch and operation queues on the command line.

00:54:04 ◼   ► It's one of the great satisfactions and advantages

00:54:08 ◼   ► of being a programmer is that if you have a problem,

00:54:12 ◼   ► there's a decent chance you can make a solution to it.

00:54:14 ◼   ► If one doesn't exist out there,

00:54:16 ◼   ► exactly what you want.

00:54:17 ◼   ► >> Yep, exactly right.

00:54:19 ◼   ► And I think your point that you just made is very important, that this doesn't have

00:54:23 ◼   ► to be writing a Swift command line app.

00:54:25 ◼   ► This can be, just like you said, something in Excel, it can be something with Automator,

00:54:29 ◼   ► if you're one of those iOS weirdos like Federico and Mike, then you can do this using workflow.

00:54:35 ◼   ► I mean, it's all, there's all sorts of different things you can do in all different levels

00:54:40 ◼   ► of the stack, or levels of abstraction, and it's just really, really nice and convenient.

00:54:46 ◼   ► And yeah, there's a couple of minor bugs I need to work out.

00:54:49 ◼   ► It occurred to me earlier tonight that the problem with going multithreaded is that as

00:54:53 ◼   ► multiple threads are trying to figure out if there's name collisions, sometimes one

00:54:58 ◼   ► thread will think there's not a name collision, and by the time it gets to copying the file,

00:55:02 ◼   ► there will be a name collision, which is unwise.

00:55:05 ◼   ► So I need to clean that up a little bit and make sure I have some gates in there where

00:55:10 ◼   ► those sorts of things are being figured out.

00:55:12 ◼   ► But nonetheless, the point I'm driving at is, whatever the level may be, be it in assembly

00:55:17 ◼   ► or be it in an Excel macro or anything in between, it's just really, really neat to

00:55:22 ◼   ► be able to solve these sorts of problems for yourself.

00:55:25 ◼   ► And once I get this thing like really and truly locked in, which I think I'm pretty

00:55:28 ◼   ► darn close, this is going to be perfect for me forever, because it was written for me.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Like you know, I guess my first contracting assignment for my newfound future, which may

00:55:40 ◼   ► or may not ever happen of being an iOS or Mac contractor, I hired myself. And so I wrote this

00:55:48 ◼   ► for myself. And you know what? I did a pretty great job. It's perfect, short of that one bug.

00:55:53 ◼   ► So, you know, it's just, it's this sort of thing. Like, and again, I can't stress enough,

00:55:59 ◼   ► like whatever your abilities may be, there's something like this that you can do. It may even

00:56:04 ◼   ► be in workflow. It may be whatever, but there's something like this you can do. And it feels so

00:56:09 ◼   ► great once it's done. Forecast is another great example actually. That was written entirely

00:56:14 ◼   ► for you, wasn't it? Like you never--

00:56:15 ◼   ► - And Sidetrack still is. Like Sidetrack is the DriftSync utility. Like that's still written

00:56:20 ◼   ► just for me in the language I already knew but doing something that was totally new to

00:56:24 ◼   ► me. Like, you know, similar to what you were just saying. Like it was wonderful and solved

00:56:27 ◼   ► a really big problem I had editing podcasts and lining up people's tracks. Like, but,

00:56:31 ◼   ► you know, and but like, you know, like you're probably gonna get at least two or three people

00:56:35 ◼   ► asking you to like open source this. You know, I've had handfuls of people ask me over the

00:56:38 ◼   ► the years that Sidetrack is now I think like four years old.

00:56:42 ◼   ► I've given it to a few friends here and there,

00:56:43 ◼   ► but it's not releasable.

00:56:46 ◼   ► There's a lot, it works, this is one of the advantages

00:56:48 ◼   ► of making things for yourself, it works for me

00:56:51 ◼   ► most of the time. (laughs)

00:56:53 ◼   ► - Right, exactly, exactly.

00:56:54 ◼   ► - Give it something it doesn't expect

00:56:56 ◼   ► or some kind of condition that I didn't consider

00:56:59 ◼   ► or that I never ran into myself so it's not really tested.

00:57:03 ◼   ► And it might not work so well or it might not work at all

00:57:06 ◼   ► or it might do weird things.

00:57:07 ◼   ► And so, you know, making something releasable

00:57:11 ◼   ► and then releasing it is way different and way more work

00:57:15 ◼   ► than making something that works for you.

00:57:17 ◼   ► And it's occasionally worth doing.

00:57:18 ◼   ► You know, some things are worth releasing to the world

00:57:20 ◼   ► for like the benefit of the world

00:57:21 ◼   ► or maybe for some kind of business reason.

00:57:22 ◼   ► But, you know, there's nothing wrong with making things

00:57:25 ◼   ► that are just for you that you never share with anybody

00:57:28 ◼   ► or that you share with only a couple of friends.

00:57:30 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't have to be a releasable big thing.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Like, I have, I usually use shell scripts

00:57:37 ◼   ► for these kinds of tasks,

00:57:38 ◼   ► 'cause I just like using shell scripts a lot.

00:57:39 ◼   ► But I have a giant shell script that takes the input files

00:57:43 ◼   ► from each of the podcasts I do.

00:57:45 ◼   ► So it takes my file, the file you give me,

00:57:48 ◼   ► the file that Jon gives me for this show,

00:57:50 ◼   ► and I don't even have to move them out of Dropbox anymore.

00:57:53 ◼   ► It goes and looks in Dropbox

00:57:55 ◼   ► for the files where they're supposed to be,

00:57:57 ◼   ► moves them into my project directory,

00:58:00 ◼   ► decodes them, moves all the channels around,

00:58:03 ◼   ► decodes the weird call recorder files.

00:58:05 ◼   ► Like, you know, it does all this stuff,

00:58:07 ◼   ► mostly by calling out to FFmpeg and stuff like that,

00:58:09 ◼   ► lines them all up and outputs all the right files.

00:58:11 ◼   ► And it's just a big shell script,

00:58:12 ◼   ► and I made it just for me,

00:58:13 ◼   ► just to help me with this task I do every week

00:58:15 ◼   ► that's kind of tedious if I do it manually.

00:58:17 ◼   ► And it's great, and like,

00:58:18 ◼   ► just the ability of programmers to do this is just,

00:58:21 ◼   ► it's so wonderful and productive, like as,

00:58:25 ◼   ► to be a power user of a computer,

00:58:28 ◼   ► then to also be able to do

00:58:29 ◼   ► at least a little bit of programming,

00:58:30 ◼   ► you can just make the computer work so much better for you,

00:58:33 ◼   ► and take even more advantage of the massive amount

00:58:37 ◼   ► of computational power that is at our fingertips

00:58:39 ◼   ► just waiting for the right software

00:58:41 ◼   ► to come along and actually use it.

00:58:43 ◼   ► - One other final thought on this,

00:58:44 ◼   ► which I forgot to mention earlier.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I do have a problem with this thing that I've written.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And the problem that I have is that now I kinda wanna make

00:58:53 ◼   ► a full-on Mac app, like not a command line app,

00:58:56 ◼   ► like a full-on GUI Mac app where it'll basically--

00:58:58 ◼   ► - That's my problem with the thing you wrote,

00:59:00 ◼   ► the fact that you called it a Mac app,

00:59:01 ◼   ► and I was all excited.

00:59:02 ◼   ► - Wow, Casey wrote a Mac app, and you're like,

00:59:03 ◼   ► "No, he just wrote a shell script in Swift."

00:59:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:08 ◼   ► - That, as much as I really want to get angry

00:59:10 ◼   ► and argue with you, I think that is actually

00:59:11 ◼   ► a fair characterization.

00:59:13 ◼   ► But now I kind of do want a GUI app.

00:59:16 ◼   ► - Hey, Marco, you should make overcast for the Mac,

00:59:18 ◼   ► but just make it, you know, a command line script.

00:59:20 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:21 ◼   ► You know, it's a command line thing that just hits

00:59:23 ◼   ► the web interface endpoints and pulls down

00:59:25 ◼   ► the idea that way.

00:59:26 ◼   ► - It would just be a shell script, just like pipe it

00:59:28 ◼   ► to like, you know, AF play or whatever.

00:59:30 ◼   ► It's just a really long alias for a cURL command.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:59:35 ◼   ► But no, now I do kind of want a GUI app.

00:59:36 ◼   ► So rather than just going on faith that this will work,

00:59:39 ◼   ► which again, short of this one bug,

00:59:41 ◼   ► has worked pretty well the few times I've used it so far.

00:59:44 ◼   ► But I'm thinking about maybe, quote, unquote,

00:59:48 ◼   ► "upgrading this to be a full-on GUI app," such

00:59:50 ◼   ► that this way I can kind of stage, OK,

00:59:53 ◼   ► here's what we think this file should be named,

00:59:56 ◼   ► and here's where it will belong.

00:59:57 ◼   ► It kind of like image capture.

00:59:59 ◼   ► I have this vision of something that aesthetically looks vaguely like image capture, where it's

01:00:04 ◼   ► basically like a big table of, "Here's a little preview of the image, here's maybe a couple

01:00:08 ◼   ► pieces of data about it, and then here's where we think it should end up.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Do you want to commit all these changes or tweak a couple things?"

01:00:16 ◼   ► And then there'll be basically the big green Go button that'll actually do it.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Whereas right now, it just goes immediately.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And it's copying, it's not moving, so in theory it's non-destructive.

01:00:26 ◼   ► it would be nice to be able to say,

01:00:28 ◼   ► ooh, actually that definitely is not right.

01:00:30 ◼   ► Let's tweak that, you know what I mean?

01:00:32 ◼   ► And so, who knows, maybe in my copious spare time,

01:00:35 ◼   ► I'll be able to write my first Mac GUI app, we'll see.

01:00:39 ◼   ► But--

01:00:40 ◼   ► - I'll tell you one thing, that is 10,000 times more work

01:00:42 ◼   ► than making the shell script version.

01:00:44 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, definitely.

01:00:46 ◼   ► - I've had similar thoughts about,

01:00:47 ◼   ► oh, I should really polish up Sidetrack

01:00:49 ◼   ► and make a little GUI for it

01:00:51 ◼   ► so people can drag in their files

01:00:52 ◼   ► and pick which channels should go where

01:00:54 ◼   ► and output the undrifted files, whatever.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And even that, that's just,

01:01:00 ◼   ► especially now that I know from forecast,

01:01:03 ◼   ► it's so much work.

01:01:04 ◼   ► GUIs are so much harder to make.

01:01:08 ◼   ► It's one thing if you just want a GUI,

01:01:13 ◼   ► but if you want a good one, that's very different.

01:01:15 ◼   ► If you want a nice Mac app,

01:01:16 ◼   ► or even a passably decent Mac app,

01:01:20 ◼   ► forecast is not a nice Mac app.

01:01:22 ◼   ► It's at best an okay passable Mac app.

01:01:25 ◼   ► But that's fine, it's not worth investing

01:01:29 ◼   ► tons and tons of my time into it

01:01:30 ◼   ► to make it a great Mac app.

01:01:32 ◼   ► You know, what you're talking about,

01:01:33 ◼   ► that's a pretty dramatic increase in the workload

01:01:36 ◼   ► for this problem. - Oh, 100%, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:01:38 ◼   ► - And especially if you don't really need the GUI,

01:01:42 ◼   ► this wasn't, like, Sidetrack,

01:01:43 ◼   ► I don't need the GUI for Sidetrack.

01:01:44 ◼   ► I call it, in my giant shell scripts

01:01:46 ◼   ► that process my podcasts, and, you know,

01:01:49 ◼   ► like Jason Snell uses it, and I believe he made

01:01:52 ◼   ► an automator workflow to use it, so he can use it

01:01:55 ◼   ► kind of in a graphical way at least.

01:01:57 ◼   ► But you know, I just use it through a shell script,

01:01:59 ◼   ► so I don't need it.

01:02:01 ◼   ► So it's one of the things, I would love to do it someday,

01:02:04 ◼   ► but I'm probably never going to,

01:02:06 ◼   ► because it's probably not worth it.

01:02:07 ◼   ► You know, this is the kind of thing,

01:02:08 ◼   ► like if you don't need this GUI,

01:02:10 ◼   ► you're talking about now taking this nice, small,

01:02:15 ◼   ► you know, script basically, that works great for you,

01:02:18 ◼   ► Now you're talking about making it into a product basically.

01:02:21 ◼   ► You're talking about the amount of work necessary

01:02:22 ◼   ► to make it into a product for lots of people.

01:02:26 ◼   ► And then you have to deal with,

01:02:27 ◼   ► do you wanna release that?

01:02:28 ◼   ► 'Cause once you put in all that much work,

01:02:30 ◼   ► you probably might as well release it,

01:02:31 ◼   ► then it's a big thing and you gotta support it.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Or even if it's free, or even if it's open source,

01:02:36 ◼   ► you still gotta deal with people's emails and questions

01:02:38 ◼   ► and pull requests if it's open source and everything.

01:02:41 ◼   ► It basically dramatically broadens the scope of this project

01:02:45 ◼   ► from a shell script that works for you

01:02:48 ◼   ► to this product, basically.

01:02:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I agree with you.

01:02:53 ◼   ► I think the thing is, though,

01:02:55 ◼   ► that even if I GUI-ified it, if you will,

01:02:58 ◼   ► it would be the world's most ugly user interface,

01:03:01 ◼   ► because it would be intended just for me.

01:03:03 ◼   ► And at most, I suspect I would open source it.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Like, I'm not saying I'm going to,

01:03:09 ◼   ► but I'm saying with this hypothetical GUI on top of it,

01:03:11 ◼   ► maybe I would open source it,

01:03:13 ◼   ► but I don't think I would ever properly release it.

01:03:14 ◼   ► But to that end, you're still right.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I would then feel guilty about ignoring all the poll requests that I would end up ignoring,

01:03:20 ◼   ► and I would feel guilty about ignoring all the issues I'd be ignoring.

01:03:23 ◼   ► No matter how much I said, "This is really made just for me, and it's not intended for

01:03:28 ◼   ► anyone else to use it," inevitably somebody else would be like, "Oh, I should use this,

01:03:32 ◼   ► but now I want something new."

01:03:34 ◼   ► Or it didn't work on this one file or whatever else.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Right, exactly, exactly.

01:03:38 ◼   ► So this is why...

01:03:39 ◼   ► And I don't mean this in like a...

01:03:41 ◼   ► I don't mean to be antagonistic about it.

01:03:45 ◼   ► These are all the reasons why I don't plan to release it, because no matter how much

01:03:49 ◼   ► I caveat, no matter how much I say, "Look, this was written just for me.

01:03:52 ◼   ► This code, I know it's garbage, but it was quick and dirty just to get it to work."

01:03:56 ◼   ► No matter how much you say that, nobody ever really and truly understands it.

01:04:00 ◼   ► And so it's just a waste of time to release this in any capacity, even with a GUI.

01:04:06 ◼   ► But on the plus side, though, that means it could be the world's ugliest, world's worst

01:04:10 ◼   ► GUI, and it would be okay, because it would be literally just for me.

01:04:13 ◼   ► I feel like GitHub has changed us a little bit and introduced a very important modern developer skill

01:04:18 ◼   ► Which is the ability to put source code up on

01:04:21 ◼   ► GitHub and you're under your github account and then feel zero guilt for ignoring it forever

01:04:26 ◼   ► Because all you're doing all the only reason you're putting it there is to have a convenient storage space

01:04:31 ◼   ► So when you need to get that shell script on some new Mac that you're setting up or like basically using github as hosting and as

01:04:37 ◼   ► version control for yourself and hosting for yourself

01:04:40 ◼   ► and with no intention of ever looking at the issues or ever answering anyone's questions about anything or caring how many people fork it or

01:04:48 ◼   ► Like I because I see a lot of that people have personal products and github

01:04:51 ◼   ► that it's so clear that they're just using it as like their their git remote and

01:04:56 ◼   ► Convenient hosting that's it. And I'm maybe you you know, you said you'd feel guilty about it or whatever, but like I think that

01:05:03 ◼   ► getting over that and eventually getting the discipline to

01:05:07 ◼   ► Reframe the problem in that way can be slightly freeing because because I think there is a benefit to not to having that source code like

01:05:14 ◼   ► Someplace else and to have it hosted

01:05:16 ◼   ► Even just as a single user. I mean I know you can just make it private like a why even make a puzzle

01:05:21 ◼   ► use use it we could have a mega prep, but

01:05:23 ◼   ► This I know this goes against what I just said

01:05:25 ◼   ► but every once in a while

01:05:26 ◼   ► Someone will do a convenient pull request or find a bug and you can just click a button and accept their thing and your program

01:05:32 ◼   ► Got better and you didn't have to do anything. It may be super rare that that happens

01:05:36 ◼   ► Maybe it's once every three years, but you know, I don't know. I just feel like that's a that's a good thing to be able to do

01:05:43 ◼   ► Because I feel bad about all like because we all have like piles of crap code like on our local computers for various purposes

01:05:50 ◼   ► And I feel bad about all that

01:05:52 ◼   ► I somehow I think I feel better if that crap code was like up on a public GitHub page for some

01:05:58 ◼   ► Poor person to stumble across and do with what they want

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01:07:50 ◼   ► It's time to return to Marco's Vinyl Corner.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Oh no, I forgot my own joke, Marco's Vinyl Arc.

01:07:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:02 ◼   ► - So, in the last episode of Marco's Vinyl Arc,

01:08:06 ◼   ► where I was discussing getting this turntable

01:08:09 ◼   ► and enjoying it and--

01:08:11 ◼   ► - You just need one more turntable

01:08:12 ◼   ► and you will have finally arrived.

01:08:14 ◼   ► - Oh, 'cause I have a microphone?

01:08:16 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

01:08:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, all right!

01:08:19 ◼   ► - Well done, I did not get that at all.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Well done.

01:08:22 ◼   ► - He may be oversubscribed in the microphone department.

01:08:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:08:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:28 ◼   ► Anyway, part of the appeal, what I like about it is

01:08:33 ◼   ► that it is kind of the anti-technology,

01:08:35 ◼   ► that you just like, you put on, you manually take your hands

01:08:39 ◼   ► and you put a piece of physical media on a player

01:08:43 ◼   ► that plays it in almost the most basic analog way possible.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Like it's ridiculous how basic this technology really is

01:08:51 ◼   ► at heart and how little it's really doing.

01:08:54 ◼   ► And so, and I really enjoyed, you know,

01:08:57 ◼   ► not only like the anti-tech part of it

01:08:58 ◼   ► of just being so simple and not relying on things like

01:09:01 ◼   ► crappy spotty voice assistants, not relying on wifi,

01:09:04 ◼   ► or people's weird network stuff,

01:09:07 ◼   ► or services, or gated communities, or whatever else.

01:09:13 ◼   ► Just a single purpose device,

01:09:15 ◼   ► you put music onto it and it plays.

01:09:17 ◼   ► And then you get to listen to the music.

01:09:19 ◼   ► And you don't get to mess with the music,

01:09:22 ◼   ► you don't get to skip around super easy or change,

01:09:26 ◼   ► yell a different band name across the room

01:09:27 ◼   ► "Let's do a different band before the song's

01:09:28 ◼   ► "even finished yet," like we so often do with Yeko.

01:09:32 ◼   ► You have to sit and enjoy it slowly,

01:09:34 ◼   ► and there's a lot of advantages to that.

01:09:37 ◼   ► - Builds character, you might say.

01:09:40 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:09:41 ◼   ► But, as Jon rightfully pointed out,

01:09:44 ◼   ► you don't need a vinyl player to do that.

01:09:47 ◼   ► You can use a CD player or an iPod or a cassette deck

01:09:52 ◼   ► or an eight track, if those still exist.

01:09:54 ◼   ► you can use lots of things that can only play music.

01:09:57 ◼   ► You know, in the more modern way.

01:09:59 ◼   ► I didn't wanna just buy an iPod because A,

01:10:01 ◼   ► that introduces too much choice again.

01:10:03 ◼   ► 'Cause then it's like, okay, now,

01:10:05 ◼   ► part of what I like about the vinyl situation

01:10:09 ◼   ► is that it forces me to really narrow down

01:10:12 ◼   ► what albums I actually want to buy.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Like, what albums are good enough

01:10:17 ◼   ► that I actually want this giant square

01:10:20 ◼   ► sitting in a bookshelf indefinitely?

01:10:21 ◼   ► Like, you know, so that's one angle.

01:10:25 ◼   ► And also, when I want to play some music,

01:10:30 ◼   ► it's nice to have restricted choice.

01:10:33 ◼   ► When you have like a cylinder you can speak into,

01:10:37 ◼   ► and you can just name anything in all of music,

01:10:41 ◼   ► and it will start playing, that's nice in certain contexts.

01:10:44 ◼   ► You know, it's nice to be able to just call up any song

01:10:46 ◼   ► if you wanna hear it.

01:10:47 ◼   ► But if you just want to like put something on

01:10:50 ◼   ► in the background or put something on to listen to

01:10:53 ◼   ► to chill out on the couch for a while or something,

01:10:56 ◼   ► I find that I'm almost paralyzed by the choice of that

01:10:59 ◼   ► and I often will just call up the same things

01:11:03 ◼   ► over and over again because I just can't think

01:11:05 ◼   ► of anything else off the top of my head.

01:11:08 ◼   ► I don't have that kind of, whatever kind of creativity

01:11:10 ◼   ► of the mind lets people call things up

01:11:13 ◼   ► or create new ideas out of nothing.

01:11:15 ◼   ► I've never really had that.

01:11:16 ◼   ► I need a prompt.

01:11:17 ◼   ► I joked on the show a long time ago

01:11:19 ◼   ► I'm not a salad power user when you go to one of those

01:11:22 ◼   ► trendy salad places.

01:11:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:24 ◼   ► I want a list of presets and I get to choose from the

01:11:26 ◼   ► presets and maybe do some customization from the salad,

01:11:29 ◼   ► but I just want presets to choose from.

01:11:32 ◼   ► And so one thing I like also about the vinyl situation

01:11:35 ◼   ► is that when I want to go play something,

01:11:38 ◼   ► I can look through the, roughly,

01:11:40 ◼   ► I think I have about 20 albums now,

01:11:41 ◼   ► I can look through the 20 albums and just say,

01:11:44 ◼   ► "Which of these do I want to listen to right now?"

01:11:45 ◼   ► By nature, it's all stuff I like,

01:11:49 ◼   ► because we bought them.

01:11:50 ◼   ► So it's not like, I don't have to look through

01:11:51 ◼   ► every artist ever in the history of the world.

01:11:54 ◼   ► I'm already looking at stuff I like,

01:11:56 ◼   ► and I'd be fine putting on pretty much any of them,

01:11:59 ◼   ► and I'll see one, and I'm like, oh yeah,

01:12:00 ◼   ► let's put on that one.

01:12:01 ◼   ► But I wouldn't have thought to call it up

01:12:03 ◼   ► if I was just given a prompt by voice,

01:12:05 ◼   ► like oh, what do you wanna listen to?

01:12:06 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:12:08 ◼   ► So that part's nice as well.

01:12:09 ◼   ► - This system's gonna fall apart

01:12:11 ◼   ► when you've purchased your first 7,000 albums

01:12:14 ◼   ► and have a section of your house dedicated to stacks

01:12:17 ◼   ► stacks of them and now you've just recreated your iPod in physical form.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Right, okay. So anyway.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Well that's the thing, like, you remember record collections when we were, well when

01:12:27 ◼   ► I was a kid and maybe you remember it well, like people would fill their houses with these

01:12:30 ◼   ► things.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Oh yeah. My dad has one.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Yeah, in fact we actually, we didn't, in my house growing up we had, our upstairs was,

01:12:37 ◼   ► it was just like the three bedrooms and the bathroom arranged like basically in a giant

01:12:41 ◼   ► square with like a little tiny like hexagonal hallway in the middle. It wasn't even like

01:12:45 ◼   ► like a long hallway, it was like a little

01:12:47 ◼   ► like hexagonal landing, basically,

01:12:49 ◼   ► with like a door to each of the rooms and that's it.

01:12:52 ◼   ► And there was nowhere in the house where my mom

01:12:54 ◼   ► could store her massive record collection.

01:12:55 ◼   ► So in that tiny little hallway were just like four

01:12:59 ◼   ► like milk crate type baskets just filled with records.

01:13:04 ◼   ► And so basically my entire childhood growing up,

01:13:07 ◼   ► I would all the time stub my toe on these giant boxes

01:13:11 ◼   ► of vinyl that were sitting in the hallway to our house

01:13:14 ◼   ► that I walked through constantly.

01:13:15 ◼   ► You just squeeze between two of them

01:13:17 ◼   ► to walk into the door of my bedroom.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Like, anyway, yeah, big pain in the butt.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm really enjoying the vinyl.

01:13:24 ◼   ► However, there are a couple of limitations.

01:13:27 ◼   ► Obviously, one of them, as Jon mentioned before,

01:13:29 ◼   ► is that you get like five minutes of playtime

01:13:31 ◼   ► before you flip it over,

01:13:32 ◼   ► especially on these new audio file masters

01:13:33 ◼   ► where they take like one album that's on,

01:13:37 ◼   ► if it's on CD, it's on one CD,

01:13:39 ◼   ► but if it's on vinyl, they split it onto four sides,

01:13:42 ◼   ► like two discs, four sides,

01:13:44 ◼   ► Each one with like three songs at best.

01:13:46 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:13:47 ◼   ► So that's kind of a pain.

01:13:49 ◼   ► And that isn't even for length reasons.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Like there's these giant black gaps in the middle.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Anyway, so that's a minor pain.

01:13:56 ◼   ► But one of the more glaring limitations of this

01:13:59 ◼   ► is that this only works for albums

01:14:02 ◼   ► that are available on vinyl.

01:14:04 ◼   ► And not everything, and not even just Phish,

01:14:07 ◼   ► not everything is available on vinyl

01:14:10 ◼   ► that I wanna listen to in this fashion.

01:14:12 ◼   ► I would like something that I can just, you know,

01:14:16 ◼   ► take some kind of physical media

01:14:18 ◼   ► that can be in some kind of small collection,

01:14:20 ◼   ► like what I have with the records,

01:14:22 ◼   ► and put it into a player and have it just start playing.

01:14:26 ◼   ► And to remove all of the abilities I have

01:14:29 ◼   ► with a voice assistant who just yell across the room

01:14:32 ◼   ► to have it change, to make it not that easy

01:14:34 ◼   ► to even skip a song, 'cause I actually kinda like

01:14:37 ◼   ► being forced to listen to all the songs.

01:14:39 ◼   ► 'Cause as I mentioned last time,

01:14:41 ◼   ► I've always been a full album listener.

01:14:43 ◼   ► I don't use shuffle or anything.

01:14:45 ◼   ► I always listen to full albums.

01:14:47 ◼   ► Obviously, one thing I could do is just get a CD player

01:14:50 ◼   ► and just get CDs, 'cause CDs cost nothing.

01:14:54 ◼   ► If you go on Amazon and look to buy used CDs,

01:14:57 ◼   ► any album you want, you can buy a used CD

01:15:00 ◼   ► for like 50 cents plus $4 shipping.

01:15:02 ◼   ► So they basically cost nothing. (laughs)

01:15:05 ◼   ► And I also thought, I also kinda want the ability

01:15:10 ◼   ► to make my own, like maybe certain albums

01:15:12 ◼   ► that aren't even available on CD,

01:15:13 ◼   ► or like certain like fish shows I wanna like

01:15:15 ◼   ► have a whole show, or like a band like The Beatles,

01:15:19 ◼   ► where I like a lot of Beatles songs,

01:15:21 ◼   ► but I don't like any of their albums well enough

01:15:23 ◼   ► to play them straight through,

01:15:25 ◼   ► or things like the two Gleam albums by the Avid Brothers.

01:15:29 ◼   ► They're both EPs.

01:15:30 ◼   ► I would like to have that be one long CD

01:15:32 ◼   ► that's the regular length of an album,

01:15:34 ◼   ► 'cause they're really good,

01:15:35 ◼   ► but you know, it's two very short EPs.

01:15:37 ◼   ► So anyway, so I wanted some degree of customizability

01:15:40 ◼   ► physical media and a way to play it

01:15:42 ◼   ► where I could literally just put it in,

01:15:44 ◼   ► not navigate any menus of anything,

01:15:46 ◼   ► not even have like the TV on in living room,

01:15:49 ◼   ► just put it in and it can start playing

01:15:52 ◼   ► and I can walk away.

01:15:53 ◼   ► So again, CDs I think are the most obvious solution to this.

01:15:57 ◼   ► These days, any CD player that you can find

01:16:00 ◼   ► that's at all reasonable will also be able

01:16:02 ◼   ► to play MP3 CDs and so that blows through

01:16:05 ◼   ► any kind of length limit you might be worried about

01:16:07 ◼   ► with single disks.

01:16:08 ◼   ► The downside of CDs is that then I would have to have

01:16:11 ◼   ► a CD burner on my computer all the time.

01:16:13 ◼   ► I'd have to get out a CD burner out of my closet

01:16:15 ◼   ► and plug it in and deal with that whenever I wanted

01:16:18 ◼   ► to create a new one of these.

01:16:20 ◼   ► So I wanted to see if I could do better.

01:16:22 ◼   ► In the last segment that we talked about this

01:16:25 ◼   ► a few weeks ago, I jokingly said,

01:16:27 ◼   ► why don't I just get something that can play songs

01:16:29 ◼   ► off of an SD card?

01:16:30 ◼   ► Wouldn't it be cool to have a little box full of SD cards?

01:16:34 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:16:36 ◼   ► And you can make 'em like tiny little record albums.

01:16:38 ◼   ► And so basically, I decided, let me try

01:16:43 ◼   ► to actually make something that does this.

01:16:46 ◼   ► There's this entire world out there

01:16:48 ◼   ► that I have not yet taken part in

01:16:51 ◼   ► of really small, really inexpensive hobbyist computer gear

01:16:55 ◼   ► led by things like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And the more basic stuff, like the Arduino-based stuff,

01:17:01 ◼   ► I haven't used any of it before,

01:17:03 ◼   ► but once you get into things like wiring things

01:17:06 ◼   ► on breadboards, this is beyond my level of expertise

01:17:09 ◼   ► and my level of interest, honestly.

01:17:10 ◼   ► I don't really want to get into the hardware manipulation

01:17:15 ◼   ► side of things for the most part.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Anything that involves putting resistors on,

01:17:20 ◼   ► soldering anything, or using those little waffle board

01:17:22 ◼   ► breadboard things, that's not for me right now.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Raspberry Pi, on the other hand,

01:17:28 ◼   ► has a bunch of really interesting stuff that,

01:17:30 ◼   ► until I started looking at this,

01:17:31 ◼   ► I really didn't realize quite how much stuff there was,

01:17:35 ◼   ► quite how easy it was to use,

01:17:37 ◼   ► and quite how little it all cost.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Again, I've mentioned before, in the Apple ecosystem,

01:17:42 ◼   ► it's kind of, if we spend too much time in Apple world,

01:17:45 ◼   ► it's easy to miss or to not be aware of

01:17:49 ◼   ► quite how cheap everything else is everywhere else.

01:17:52 ◼   ► What you can get for under $50

01:17:56 ◼   ► for almost any type of category that's not by Apple,

01:17:59 ◼   ► it's pretty remarkable.

01:18:01 ◼   ► So I decided I'm gonna get a Raspberry Pi

01:18:03 ◼   ► and I'm gonna try to build an SD card audio player.

01:18:06 ◼   ► I ordered the Raspberry Pi, I got like the,

01:18:08 ◼   ► I mean, and there's, again, there's tons of different ones.

01:18:11 ◼   ► The smallest one is like $10.

01:18:13 ◼   ► Like it's ridiculous what you can get.

01:18:15 ◼   ► I got like the kind of regular one,

01:18:17 ◼   ► which the board is about, I think $35,

01:18:20 ◼   ► and I got a little plastic case for it for like another 10

01:18:22 ◼   ► and a little USB power supply for another,

01:18:25 ◼   ► you know, five or 10 or whatever.

01:18:26 ◼   ► And it's just a Linux computer.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Like it's a little tiny Linux computer

01:18:30 ◼   ► with a remarkable amount of hardware and power.

01:18:33 ◼   ► Like, it has four USB ports, HDMI out,

01:18:37 ◼   ► audio out, and like, and composite video

01:18:40 ◼   ► if you need that for some reason,

01:18:42 ◼   ► and WiFi and ethernet.

01:18:44 ◼   ► All of that, and one gig of RAM,

01:18:46 ◼   ► and a pretty decent ARM processor.

01:18:48 ◼   ► All with, oh, with an SD card that came with it

01:18:51 ◼   ► in this bundle package, with a microSD card

01:18:54 ◼   ► that has a preloaded installation of a Raspbian.

01:18:59 ◼   ► It's like the Debian variant, I think, for Raspberry Pi.

01:19:04 ◼   ► You plug it in, and I plugged in this little tiny

01:19:06 ◼   ► HDMI monitor I got for my video, my failed video career.

01:19:09 ◼   ► And you plug in any keyboard, mouse, and HDMI monitor,

01:19:13 ◼   ► and it comes pre-configured.

01:19:15 ◼   ► The SD card has, you launch it the first time,

01:19:18 ◼   ► and it shows you a GUI.

01:19:20 ◼   ► You can navigate with the mouse you put into it.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And it's like, all right, pick your distribution,

01:19:23 ◼   ► and we'll install it for you.

01:19:25 ◼   ► And you pick whatever it is, you plug it into the network,

01:19:27 ◼   ► And it downloads the distribution with your settings,

01:19:30 ◼   ► you give it your WiFi password during setup,

01:19:32 ◼   ► and then it overwrites itself with the distribution

01:19:35 ◼   ► that you just picked with the WiFi preconfigured.

01:19:37 ◼   ► Like it's shocking, like how good this is,

01:19:40 ◼   ► and how really relatively easy it is to use.

01:19:43 ◼   ► And then I had a Linux computer that was ready to go

01:19:47 ◼   ► with built-in audio, built-in networking, built-in USB,

01:19:50 ◼   ► for me to do whatever I wanted with.

01:19:52 ◼   ► So I poked around, you know, one of the things

01:19:55 ◼   ► audio playback that is important to me is gapless playback. So I can't just do like

01:20:00 ◼   ► a shell script that just like you know calls like a terminal thing that just plays audio

01:20:04 ◼   ► synchronously and then stops and then goes to the next track. I want a gapless playback

01:20:08 ◼   ► between tracks because a lot of the albums that I listen to are live albums or they have

01:20:12 ◼   ► transitions between songs and so a gap between everything is you know just kind of it's jarring

01:20:18 ◼   ► and it's kind of you know inelegant and so I wanted gapless and it turns out there's

01:20:22 ◼   ► this great music player that's been around forever that of course I never knew about

01:20:25 ◼   ► because I've been in Appleland called MPD, Music Player Demon, and it does gapless with

01:20:32 ◼   ► no effort. This software is really advanced, I had no idea. And the Raspberry Pi has a

01:20:41 ◼   ► microSD slot, but that's for its disk, you can't really use it for anything else. It

01:20:45 ◼   ► has to boot off of that. So I had to add my own card reader, but I had a drawer full of

01:20:50 ◼   ► of card readers and it's, I made a shell script

01:20:52 ◼   ► that would respond to the card being inserted via UDEV.

01:20:56 ◼   ► It copies any audio files off of that card

01:21:00 ◼   ► into a temp directory and as it's copying,

01:21:02 ◼   ► it starts playing the first one,

01:21:03 ◼   ► so it's fast response time and then it unmounts the card.

01:21:08 ◼   ► And if you remove the card, it stops.

01:21:11 ◼   ► I gotta say, it took not that much effort

01:21:14 ◼   ► and it pretty much works.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And there's a couple of things I did with it

01:21:18 ◼   ► that I do wanna touch on, but it's kind of awesome.

01:21:22 ◼   ► Like, I wish I had, like, now I'm just like brainstorming,

01:21:26 ◼   ► like, I wish I had more things

01:21:28 ◼   ► that I needed Raspberry Pis for,

01:21:30 ◼   ► because I can't believe how good

01:21:33 ◼   ► and how easy it is to use this stuff,

01:21:35 ◼   ► and how cheap it all was.

01:21:38 ◼   ► Like, it kind of ignited in me this, like,

01:21:41 ◼   ► this satisfaction and happiness that like,

01:21:43 ◼   ► oh my god, I just made this awesome little computer

01:21:45 ◼   ► to do this crazy cool thing that I wanted.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Similar to, we mentioned earlier,

01:21:51 ◼   ► the satisfaction of being a programmer

01:21:53 ◼   ► and being able to have a computer solve a problem for you

01:21:55 ◼   ► by writing a script or something to do it.

01:21:57 ◼   ► This was like the hardware version of that.

01:21:58 ◼   ► I wanted a little SD card player to play audio

01:22:02 ◼   ► in a very simple way, and I just made one.

01:22:05 ◼   ► And it wasn't that hard,

01:22:06 ◼   ► 'cause I already know how to use Linux.

01:22:08 ◼   ► And it was really so satisfying,

01:22:12 ◼   ► and such a fun little project.

01:22:15 ◼   ► You know, we don't get a lot of fun in the Apple world.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Like, we get some cool stuff,

01:22:19 ◼   ► but they're not so big on fun.

01:22:22 ◼   ► This was just like a fun little thing,

01:22:23 ◼   ► and it was really nice to do, very satisfying,

01:22:27 ◼   ► and I'm just so thankful to the world of Linux

01:22:30 ◼   ► and open source software,

01:22:31 ◼   ► and these amazing hobbyist things like Raspberry Pi,

01:22:34 ◼   ► and I even later spent another $30

01:22:38 ◼   ► to upgrade the audio interface in it

01:22:40 ◼   ► with this company called HiFiBerry

01:22:42 ◼   ► It just makes a variety of audio I/O boards

01:22:45 ◼   ► that just stick right on top of the Raspberry Pi

01:22:47 ◼   ► using the big I/O header that's on it.

01:22:50 ◼   ► And they sell their own little cases

01:22:52 ◼   ► that are a little bit taller that fit it.

01:22:54 ◼   ► It's amazing.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And so I made this awesome player.

01:22:57 ◼   ► Now there are certain things that didn't go so well.

01:23:00 ◼   ► The idea of automatically detecting an SD card

01:23:06 ◼   ► being inserted or removed does indeed work from UDEV,

01:23:10 ◼   ► but doesn't work all the time.

01:23:13 ◼   ► Occasionally it gets into a state where it stops sending

01:23:17 ◼   ► add and remove events, it only sends change events.

01:23:21 ◼   ► So I have a little bit of a tweak that I need to do there.

01:23:24 ◼   ► That also seems to vary with which card reader I'm using.

01:23:27 ◼   ► One of them seems to work more reliably than the others

01:23:29 ◼   ► in this regard, so I'm just sticking with that one,

01:23:31 ◼   ► it's fine.

01:23:32 ◼   ► Also the, I guess that's really the only major problem.

01:23:35 ◼   ► Oh, the other problem is like, I assumed that it would be

01:23:38 ◼   ► really easy to go on eBay and buy large lots

01:23:42 ◼   ► of used low-capacity SD cards for very little money.

01:23:46 ◼   ► Because if you have, to copy over an album,

01:23:49 ◼   ► or even if you encode it with ALAC

01:23:53 ◼   ► or some kind of large, you know, FLAC,

01:23:54 ◼   ► some kind of large codec,

01:23:56 ◼   ► that's still only gonna be 300 megs maybe.

01:23:59 ◼   ► And so if you have a card that's a gig or 512 megs,

01:24:03 ◼   ► that's enough for this purpose.

01:24:04 ◼   ► You don't need larger cards than that.

01:24:07 ◼   ► So I assumed it'd be really easy to just go online

01:24:09 ◼   ► and get like, you know, lots of used one gig SD cards

01:24:11 ◼   ► for like a dollar each or something or less.

01:24:14 ◼   ► It turns out it's not so easy.

01:24:16 ◼   ► I don't know where these all are,

01:24:17 ◼   ► but they're not being sold very, very often.

01:24:20 ◼   ► So the best I could do is there's a couple of vendors

01:24:24 ◼   ► that sell 10 packs of 16 gig cheap cards

01:24:29 ◼   ► for about $5 each.

01:24:31 ◼   ► - That's insane.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Oh my gosh, that's cheap.

01:24:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:24:36 ◼   ► Understand it's more than you need like I totally get what you're driving out, but man

01:24:39 ◼   ► That's cheap 16 gigs and you're gonna put an album's worth of mp3

01:24:43 ◼   ► Smaller cards, I can't find smaller cards or at least or like the smaller ones are also $5 each

01:24:50 ◼   ► So it's like well, I might as well get the 16 gig for the same price. I

01:24:53 ◼   ► Continue to think that you need to take this one step farther and put all of your music on the internal very large SD card

01:25:01 ◼   ► That's part of the Raspberry Pi and have the thing that you insert

01:25:05 ◼   ► basically be an amiibo like a QR code or an NFC thing.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Like it's just a series of these little chips.

01:25:13 ◼   ► They don't even have to have electronics in them.

01:25:14 ◼   ► They just need to have some sort of little code that says,

01:25:16 ◼   ► please play this track that you already have

01:25:18 ◼   ► on your internal SD card.

01:25:19 ◼   ► That's what you need.

01:25:20 ◼   ► - Well, I brainstorm other options.

01:25:22 ◼   ► So, you know, one option would be like,

01:25:23 ◼   ► I think one of the coolest options would be,

01:25:25 ◼   ► you get one of the little camera modules for it

01:25:28 ◼   ► and you just show it like a little card.

01:25:30 ◼   ► - No, show it your album, hold up the vinyl album to it.

01:25:32 ◼   ► - But you know, a lot of things are things

01:25:34 ◼   ► that aren't available on vinyl.

01:25:35 ◼   ► So I'm thinking like, you know, you basically get like

01:25:36 ◼   ► a little like, have like a little like card file

01:25:38 ◼   ► of like index cards that are just like printed album art

01:25:41 ◼   ► and just hold it up and have it recognize it.

01:25:43 ◼   ► - Oh, oh wait, I've got an idea.

01:25:44 ◼   ► How about you just put up a microphone

01:25:46 ◼   ► and then you could say what song you wanted to play

01:25:48 ◼   ► and it would play it.

01:25:49 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:25:51 ◼   ► - Oh, did I ruin it?

01:25:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, a little bit.

01:25:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:54 ◼   ► - I mean, I'm glad you're having a good time

01:25:56 ◼   ► with this hobby thing, but like,

01:25:58 ◼   ► I just keep thinking of these little cards.

01:26:00 ◼   ► I mean, on the other angle of little cards,

01:26:02 ◼   ► I feel like you should maybe get some of that spray

01:26:04 ◼   ► that Nintendo uses for the Switch cartridges

01:26:06 ◼   ► to make sure like, no small children in your house

01:26:08 ◼   ► eat your music.

01:26:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:11 ◼   ► Just think of what else you could do with that spray.

01:26:12 ◼   ► I mean, I know Hopps isn't a chewer, but you know.

01:26:14 ◼   ► - No, he's not.

01:26:15 ◼   ► And I also considered other,

01:26:17 ◼   ► so one thing I considered when I was battling U-Dev

01:26:20 ◼   ► for reliability, I was thinking like, okay, maybe,

01:26:24 ◼   ► if the problem is that the SD card readers

01:26:26 ◼   ► aren't reliably telling U-Dev sometimes

01:26:27 ◼   ► when things are added and removed,

01:26:29 ◼   ► maybe the solution is to either use compact flashcards,

01:26:33 ◼   ► which I didn't go down that path, at least not yet,

01:26:36 ◼   ► because eventually you'd have calmed down.

01:26:39 ◼   ► But I also thought, what about cheap little USB sticks,

01:26:41 ◼   ► like thumb drives?

01:26:42 ◼   ► Because those are their own complete USB devices,

01:26:47 ◼   ► so they should be more reliable at telling the system--

01:26:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, but then you have to try to put them in three times

01:26:51 ◼   ► every time you wanna listen to music.

01:26:52 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah, that's one problem.

01:26:55 ◼   ► And also they're just kind of ugly and clunky.

01:26:57 ◼   ► But I did look, and they have about the same pricing.

01:27:00 ◼   ► You can get like, those kind that you get

01:27:02 ◼   ► at every conference ever,

01:27:03 ◼   ► they have like the big flip around metal cover,

01:27:06 ◼   ► like the swivels around, the plastic insert,

01:27:08 ◼   ► like everyone's seen these,

01:27:10 ◼   ► and you can get them printed with your logo and everything.

01:27:12 ◼   ► Those cost about the same, like a few dollars each,

01:27:15 ◼   ► is roughly what those cost.

01:27:16 ◼   ► So like, these are fine solutions,

01:27:19 ◼   ► and it depends on how many of these cards

01:27:20 ◼   ► or things I intend to have, but they're fun.

01:27:23 ◼   ► You know, I'm probably not gonna do a whole lot.

01:27:25 ◼   ► The other downside I found with the SD cards is

01:27:28 ◼   ► I had this great image in my mind of having these