ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I looked at the show notes for this week. A lot of it is shit I really don't care about.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Cool.

00:00:05 ◼   ► So, I might not have a lot to say this week.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Well, you can adjust it to be things you do care about.

00:00:09 ◼   ► That's fine. The thing is, so the thing that's in the show notes that I think, that I don't care about, that I expect to talk, that we'll be talking about for a while is the Echo.

00:00:19 ◼   ► And the thing with the Echo is that I'm the one that doesn't care about it. It's not like the world doesn't care about it, you know what I mean?

00:00:25 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:00:25 ◼   ► Nobody cares about the Mac Pro except YouTube numbskulls,

00:00:28 ◼   ► but everyone cares about the Echo.

00:00:33 ◼   ► So it's not one of those things like the Mac Pro

00:00:36 ◼   ► that I would at least attempt to railroad YouTube

00:00:41 ◼   ► and change the subject.

00:00:42 ◼   ► This one I know is worth talking about.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I just don't have anything to say.

00:00:45 ◼   ► - I mean, if it would make you more interested,

00:00:47 ◼   ► we could talk about the new Google rectangles

00:00:49 ◼   ► of whatever they launched.

00:00:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, we should maybe make

00:00:53 ◼   ► passing mention of that.

00:00:54 ◼   ► In fact, I guess we can do it now because all my--

00:00:56 ◼   ► - No, I'm serious. - I don't know about

00:00:57 ◼   ► any of those things.

00:00:58 ◼   ► What did they announce today?

00:00:59 ◼   ► - Some new phones and laptops no one's gonna buy.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - I didn't know about the laptops,

00:01:02 ◼   ► but I knew about the phones.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - It's a new Chromebook that no one's gonna buy

00:01:05 ◼   ► because it's way too expensive,

00:01:06 ◼   ► just like their previous Pixelbook or whatever it was.

00:01:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, so they also announced the Pixel 2, I believe it is,

00:01:12 ◼   ► which is their rough equivalent,

00:01:15 ◼   ► I would say more equivalent to the iPhone 8

00:01:17 ◼   ► than the iPhone 10.

00:01:18 ◼   ► What is the official ATP stance on 10 versus X?

00:01:21 ◼   ► Are we ignoring the official ruling?

00:01:25 ◼   ► I'm assuming Jon is not.

00:01:26 ◼   ► - I don't know why people are rebelling us.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Let's just say 10.

00:01:28 ◼   ► - I don't like it.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - We did it for like a decade and a half with Mac OS X

00:01:32 ◼   ► and somehow now we've just lost that ability.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - I'm gonna try really hard to just avoid saying it

00:01:37 ◼   ► for a while because I do not like that it's called 10.

00:01:40 ◼   ► I really think it should have been called X

00:01:42 ◼   ► if they were gonna spell it like that.

00:01:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too.

00:01:44 ◼   ► - And there are so many better reasons to call it X

00:01:46 ◼   ► and the fact is the entire world is going to call it X.

00:01:51 ◼   ► like I bet you could go into an apple store and ask people about this thing

00:01:55 ◼   ► and not a single person there including the staff would say ten everybody calls

00:02:01 ◼   ► it X so it's gonna be like this pedantic thing that Apple nerds are gonna be

00:02:05 ◼   ► battling for the next year or more depending on how long this name is

00:02:09 ◼   ► relevant and we're just gonna be sitting saying it's ten don't you know

00:02:14 ◼   ► it's ten and it like no no one knows everyone's going to say X like we we

00:02:18 ◼   ► We probably already have lost this battle

00:02:22 ◼   ► on such a massively bigger scale

00:02:25 ◼   ► than we ever were even trying to battle on Mac OS X or X,

00:02:30 ◼   ► and the fact is most people didn't ever really have to say

00:02:34 ◼   ► OS X, you know, but everyone says the name of the iPhone,

00:02:38 ◼   ► and a lot more people have them than have ever had Macs.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So, I think, you know, calling it the X was a bad move,

00:02:48 ◼   ► and also they're going to lose the public perception

00:02:52 ◼   ► of this name if they haven't already.

00:02:54 ◼   ► So, I don't think we're ever gonna convince Jon

00:02:58 ◼   ► to have the show have an official position other than 10.

00:03:01 ◼   ► However, I will file a dissenting opinion

00:03:04 ◼   ► that I believe it should be called X,

00:03:08 ◼   ► and I might occasionally call it X

00:03:10 ◼   ► because that's what I call it in my head,

00:03:12 ◼   ► and I'll try to say 10 around you guys,

00:03:14 ◼   ► just like I appreciate when people try to say

00:03:18 ◼   ► online instead of in line in front of New Yorkers,

00:03:21 ◼   ► but I don't think I'm gonna be able to do it.

00:03:24 ◼   ► I'm going to slip up and we're gonna have to be okay

00:03:26 ◼   ► with that because the entire world

00:03:28 ◼   ► is going to call it iPhone X.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - I don't see how this is any different than Mac OS X

00:03:32 ◼   ► except for by scale.

00:03:33 ◼   ► The whole world called it X for the Mac OS too,

00:03:36 ◼   ► but that didn't stop everyone who knows the difference

00:03:40 ◼   ► in the Mac community from saying 10.

00:03:41 ◼   ► I think it should be the same way.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Of course, yeah, you slip up every once in a while,

00:03:43 ◼   ► but to take a contrary stance and to purposely say X instead,

00:03:47 ◼   ► That's silly and all the reasons everyone else is going to say X instead of 10 don't

00:03:51 ◼   ► apply to us because we know how it's said.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Well, but it's a little different too because like it's when you like almost no one ever

00:03:58 ◼   ► has to give the full name of the OS of their computer that they have where like but if

00:04:03 ◼   ► they're if they were all called power books and like people would always say power book

00:04:10 ◼   ► and we'd be like, you know, it's power book like that that would be way more ridiculous

00:04:14 ◼   ► seeming you don't have to correct people though.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Like just because you say 10 doesn't mean you have to be the person who corrects other

00:04:20 ◼   ► people, right?

00:04:21 ◼   ► Just, all we're just talking about is what will you say or try to say because obviously

00:04:24 ◼   ► you slip up and you say X, whatever, right?

00:04:26 ◼   ► That's it.

00:04:27 ◼   ► It doesn't mean when people say X, you're going to correct them or be obnoxious about

00:04:32 ◼   ► it or whatever, but it's just what about what we're going to say.

00:04:35 ◼   ► And again, I don't think this is, we didn't have this discussion about Mac OS 10.

00:04:38 ◼   ► I heard who's going to say X. No, we just, we just all said 10.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And if you messed up and said X, oh well, but it has nothing to do with what other people

00:04:46 ◼   ► say or whether you should correct them. So I don't think there's any debate to be

00:04:49 ◼   ► had. Well, but Mac OS is not, Mac OS is a terrible analogy for a couple of reasons.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Number one, it was established before most people came to the Mac. And yes, I know, Jon,

00:04:59 ◼   ► you've been using the Mac since 1912, blah, blah, blah. But for like Marco and I, we came

00:05:04 ◼   ► to the Mac when it was already clearly established and a couple versions in to OS X. So this

00:05:09 ◼   ► train had already left the station. But it was clearly established that everyone said

00:05:14 ◼   ► The only people who said 10 was Apple nerds.

00:05:16 ◼   ► That's it.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Everyone else said X.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Because it was literally never said.

00:05:21 ◼   ► It's like the 10 commercials.

00:05:23 ◼   ► They just show the text.

00:05:25 ◼   ► They don't really have an announcer talking about it.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So it's the same situation.

00:05:29 ◼   ► Anyway, it'll be fine.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Just say 10.

00:05:31 ◼   ► You'll be fine.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Well, the other thing is if you were communicating to somebody who thought that it was X, if

00:05:37 ◼   ► you say Mac OS X, I think they can figure that out pretty easily.

00:05:41 ◼   ► If you say iPhone 10 to a person who thinks it's iPhone X, they're not going to know what

00:05:47 ◼   ► you're talking about.

00:05:49 ◼   ► That'll be fine.

00:05:50 ◼   ► It's like GIF/GIF.

00:05:51 ◼   ► They'll figure it out.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Oh, don't even start with that.

00:05:53 ◼   ► And like GIF/GIF, I feel like if you surrender to the other person's incorrect pronunciation,

00:05:59 ◼   ► that is, you lose, right?

00:06:00 ◼   ► So just you say it the right way and eventually they'll bend to your will.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Yeah, that always works.

00:06:04 ◼   ► In a conversation, it will.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Like in a GIF/GIF conversation, the first person to give and to use the other person's

00:06:09 ◼   ► pronunciation loses. I see what you're saying there. But the other thing the

00:06:16 ◼   ► other thing I was gonna say earlier you know other than then OS X having already

00:06:19 ◼   ► been established by the time Mark when I got there is that nobody really gives a

00:06:22 ◼   ► crap about Mac OS. I do, you two do, but nobody in the grand scheme of things

00:06:26 ◼   ► gives crap about Mac OS. Whereas there are many many many many people who give

00:06:31 ◼   ► a crap and many more people who give a crap about iPhones. They don't give a crap about iPhone

00:06:36 ◼   ► - I don't know names, believe me.

00:06:37 ◼   ► 5C, 5S, 6S, 6S Plus, only we know those names

00:06:41 ◼   ► that people, once they buy those phones,

00:06:43 ◼   ► it's like whatever, I got the Plus, do you have the Plus?

00:06:45 ◼   ► - No, everyone knows which iPhone they have.

00:06:49 ◼   ► They all know that, believe me.

00:06:50 ◼   ► - I don't know about that.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - People know, it's like oh, I have a 6S,

00:06:53 ◼   ► or like people know that.

00:06:55 ◼   ► - I don't think they do.

00:06:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:57 ◼   ► I think they, especially since they all look the same.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Anyway, it'll be fine, we'll just,

00:07:02 ◼   ► - We should set an example for everybody else by saying 10.

00:07:07 ◼   ► - I do not agree.

00:07:08 ◼   ► - So anyway, so Google released the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Let me start by saying that I did not watch

00:07:16 ◼   ► any of the keynote because I was in meetings.

00:07:18 ◼   ► And all I knew was that this thing happened.

00:07:23 ◼   ► And most of my coworkers that are local in my office

00:07:28 ◼   ► are all Android users, the coworkers on the mobile team.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And so I get a lot of the bleed from them being enthusiastic.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Just because they're enthusiastic,

00:07:40 ◼   ► I'm interested in what's going on.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And so I asked one of them, what's the executive summary?

00:07:45 ◼   ► And they actually linked me to The Verge,

00:07:47 ◼   ► which I am not the biggest Verge fan,

00:07:49 ◼   ► but it's a pretty good executive summary of what's going on here.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And I'll talk about it in a minute.

00:07:53 ◼   ► But what was most fascinating and frustrating to me

00:07:57 ◼   ► was that one of my co-workers, one of the QA guys, he's the iOS QA person, but his personal

00:08:04 ◼   ► phone is an Android phone. And he sent me a screenshot of his reservation or order or

00:08:10 ◼   ► whatever it was for his brand new Pixel 2. He sent this to me like 10 minutes after the

00:08:16 ◼   ► keynote. Imagine that, gentlemen. Imagine moments after the keynote, you could go to

00:08:21 ◼   ► a company that actually understands that the internet is a thing, and you could order your

00:08:25 ◼   ► device right then and there in the middle of the day like an adult instead of having

00:08:31 ◼   ► to wake up like a friggin animal at three in the morning just throw money at Apple because

00:08:35 ◼   ► we're all idiots that just need it pulsing through our veins. It made me so angry when

00:08:40 ◼   ► I found out that he could just order right then and there like it was nothing.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Jared Ranere Well, I mean, in all fairness, a nobody comparably

00:08:48 ◼   ► buys these things or wants them and B, Google screws up lots of other stuff about selling

00:08:55 ◼   ► phones directly, things like support, returns, there's no retail angle really. I mean,

00:09:00 ◼   ► there's also, Apple's way ahead of Google when it comes to the business of selling people

00:09:05 ◼   ► phones and then supporting them by so many miles that it's comical to even compare

00:09:11 ◼   ► them. But yeah, I mean really what this really comes down to ultimately is that they can

00:09:15 ◼   ► open up pre-orders for this thing immediately and sell it, you know, and start selling it

00:09:18 ◼   ► immediately because the numbers are so much dramatically smaller than what Apple sells

00:09:24 ◼   ► and so comparably few people are even paying attention, let alone ordering these things

00:09:29 ◼   ► and using them and owning them, that it's a totally different game.

00:09:34 ◼   ► You know who's paying attention? I'm paying attention to the fact that you tried to skip

00:09:37 ◼   ► follow-up and Ask ATP.

00:09:39 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no. This is pre-show. This is pre-show.

00:09:42 ◼   ► This is pre-show? We're going to do the Google I/O in a pre-show?

00:09:45 ◼   ► Yeah. Because I don't think I--

00:09:47 ◼   ► Well, I need you to send me links to these things. I googled for them and I don't see

00:09:51 ◼   ► what you're talking about.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I will put a link in the show notes, in the chat, in the robot, it will be everywhere.

00:09:56 ◼   ► But the reason that this ran long was because we got talking about names and how stupid

00:10:02 ◼   ► iPhone X is, and then we're getting sidetracked with me moaning about having to wake up at

00:10:06 ◼   ► three in the morning to spend an absurd amount of money that I should be so lucky as to have

00:10:10 ◼   ► on a phone that I don't need.

00:10:11 ◼   ► So moving on from first world problems.

00:10:13 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Moving on from my first world problems, the most fascinating thing to me, well there's

00:10:19 ◼   ► couple interesting things to me about these Pixel 2 devices. One is the aesthetic look

00:10:25 ◼   ► of them. So if you go to the Verge post and, you know, they have this tremendous video

00:10:28 ◼   ► right up front, and then you scroll down a little bit and you see these phones. And in

00:10:33 ◼   ► a lot of ways they remind me of like older iPhones when you look at the top half. And

00:10:39 ◼   ► I can't really put my finger on why. I guess it's because it's, you know, more rectangular,

00:10:43 ◼   ► I guess. But then as you scroll down the page, maybe it's just because my window is smaller,

00:10:48 ◼   ► But anyway, as I scroll down, I see the bottom of the phone.

00:10:50 ◼   ► I realize, is it upside down?

00:10:52 ◼   ► Because the top and bottom look exactly the same.

00:10:55 ◼   ► And that's a little bit peculiar to me.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Now, in the defense of this phone, I believe, you know, both of these are certainly speakers.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And having like stereo speakers that are pointed at you rather than having the bottom speaker

00:11:07 ◼   ► pointed down and the top speaker pointed at your face, that's kind of cool.

00:11:11 ◼   ► But aesthetically, this looks odd to me.

00:11:15 ◼   ► You can squeeze it to get Google Assistant.

00:11:17 ◼   ► - Yes, that's right, I forgot about that.

00:11:18 ◼   ► That's a good point, I wouldn't have brought that up,

00:11:20 ◼   ► and so I'm glad you reminded me, but yeah.

00:11:22 ◼   ► What do they call it?

00:11:23 ◼   ► They had some truly terrible marketing name for it,

00:11:25 ◼   ► like Active something or something like that?

00:11:26 ◼   ► Shoot, I don't remember what it was.

00:11:28 ◼   ► - Active squeeze, force squeeze, who knows?

00:11:30 ◼   ► - Active edge, squeezable sides, there you go.

00:11:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:34 ◼   ► - That's awful.

00:11:34 ◼   ► - Active edge, how truly terrible is that?

00:11:37 ◼   ► - That's even worse than Apple's modern,

00:11:40 ◼   ► like, undiscoverable gestures.

00:11:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:44 ◼   ► That's like, what do you think is worse,

00:11:45 ◼   ► like squeeze for assistant or shake to undo?

00:11:48 ◼   ► - I don't know, it's a tough call.

00:11:49 ◼   ► But the thing that was most interesting to me about this

00:11:53 ◼   ► was the way they're doing portrait mode.

00:11:55 ◼   ► And I mean this genuinely, I'm not trying to snark.

00:11:58 ◼   ► The way they're doing portrait mode is,

00:12:02 ◼   ► and I'm probably gonna get the details slightly wrong,

00:12:04 ◼   ► but in the single rear lens,

00:12:07 ◼   ► they don't do a two lens setup like Apple does,

00:12:10 ◼   ► or 16 lens setup like our friends at Light do,

00:12:13 ◼   ► but they do a single lens.

00:12:14 ◼   ► But what's interesting is each of the pixels in the sensor is apparently two different

00:12:20 ◼   ► pixels.

00:12:21 ◼   ► And I know that doesn't make sense, and that's the best I can do to explain it without really

00:12:26 ◼   ► going into nuance.

00:12:27 ◼   ► But suffice to say, they've effectively got a two-lens system, or really I guess I should

00:12:33 ◼   ► say a two-sensor system, because the actual single sensor does a two-for-one, I guess

00:12:40 ◼   ► I guess to close out sale on pixels or whatever,

00:12:43 ◼   ► but anyway, it has two pixels for,

00:12:46 ◼   ► I guess one pixel's worth of data,

00:12:50 ◼   ► if that makes any sense at all.

00:12:51 ◼   ► So, what they do is they kinda have the two,

00:12:55 ◼   ► I'm saying lens, and I don't mean that, I guess, literally,

00:12:57 ◼   ► but they have a similar setup to the two-lens system

00:13:00 ◼   ► that Apple has, but they have it with only one lens,

00:13:03 ◼   ► and then they use machine learning,

00:13:05 ◼   ► which is Google's favorite thing,

00:13:06 ◼   ► and you know what, I don't blame 'em,

00:13:07 ◼   ► because they actually can do it pretty well.

00:13:09 ◼   ► They use machine learning to kind of extrapolate and interpret what these two pixels are seeing

00:13:15 ◼   ► in order to get their own portrait mode, which coincidentally they've literally called

00:13:20 ◼   ► portrait mode.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I just thought that was kind of cool and a clever approach, because having the two lenses

00:13:27 ◼   ► on the back, I mean, it doesn't offend me, but I don't think it looks particularly

00:13:32 ◼   ► great, especially with the camera bump, which this does not have.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a camera bump.

00:13:36 ◼   ► I know, I'm sorry, it does have a camera bump.

00:13:37 ◼   ► No, no, you're right, you're right.

00:13:38 ◼   ► - It's got a fingerprint sensor on the back too, right?

00:13:39 ◼   ► - Yes it does, and I apologize,

00:13:41 ◼   ► you were absolutely right about the camera bump.

00:13:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, these phones, and just superficially,

00:13:46 ◼   ► the regular Pixel 2, the regular sized one,

00:13:49 ◼   ► not the plus sized one, the top and bottom bezels

00:13:53 ◼   ► look comically large by today's standards.

00:13:55 ◼   ► It's funny, the iPhone 10 comes out

00:14:00 ◼   ► and immediately ruins the look

00:14:04 ◼   ► of all previous iPhone proportions forever, right?

00:14:07 ◼   ► And like the Pixel 2 has pretty much all iPhone proportions

00:14:12 ◼   ► and it looks just impossibly old now.

00:14:14 ◼   ► The Pixel 2 XL has much more of like an S8 style proportion

00:14:19 ◼   ► where it's almost, it's kind of like what people want Apple

00:14:27 ◼   ► to do with the iPhone X where they lop off the top

00:14:30 ◼   ► and bottom and just make it black

00:14:32 ◼   ► and just give like a curved thing in the middle.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And I don't think it's that attractive honestly,

00:14:37 ◼   ► So maybe this is kind of why Apple didn't do that.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Like maybe they found the same thing, they tried it

00:14:43 ◼   ► and they're like, oh, it just doesn't look as good.

00:14:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:14:45 ◼   ► But anyway, every time that like a new Google official

00:14:50 ◼   ► phone comes out, back when they were called Nexus's

00:14:52 ◼   ► and now that they're called Pixels,

00:14:54 ◼   ► here's what's gonna happen.

00:14:56 ◼   ► All the gadget nerds are going to fawn all over

00:14:59 ◼   ► certain features of this.

00:15:00 ◼   ► They're all gonna say, man, this is the best phone

00:15:02 ◼   ► at, you know, feature X, Y, or Z.

00:15:05 ◼   ► or this is the best Android phone ever made.

00:15:08 ◼   ► And then like in three months,

00:15:10 ◼   ► Samsung's gonna come out with a better one,

00:15:12 ◼   ► and no one will actually keep using this phone long term.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Everybody will tell you like how great it is,

00:15:19 ◼   ► and they're so glad Google's making these awesome phones,

00:15:21 ◼   ► and this is the best at these certain things,

00:15:24 ◼   ► but none of them will actually switch to it permanently.

00:15:26 ◼   ► They're all gonna either go back to their iPhones,

00:15:29 ◼   ► or they're going to go to whatever Samsung launches next,

00:15:32 ◼   ► or go back to what Samsung launched recently.

00:15:35 ◼   ► because Google just does not,

00:15:38 ◼   ► they make this great hardware that's like good in reviews,

00:15:42 ◼   ► but it's usually not class leading in the big picture,

00:15:46 ◼   ► and also, they never sell very many of them,

00:15:50 ◼   ► comparably speaking, because their retail distribution game

00:15:55 ◼   ► is crap compared to all their competitors,

00:15:57 ◼   ► or at least compared to Samsung and Apple.

00:16:00 ◼   ► So it's funny, it's fun to me to look at these things

00:16:04 ◼   ► when they come out and say, "Oh, that's interesting."

00:16:06 ◼   ► Just like everyone else, but it's hard for me

00:16:08 ◼   ► to ever see Google's launches like this

00:16:11 ◼   ► having a major impact in the market, really.

00:16:13 ◼   ► They have a major impact on reviews

00:16:15 ◼   ► that make it seem like they're gonna have

00:16:16 ◼   ► a major impact on the market, but they never do.

00:16:19 ◼   ► - I don't know if that's entirely true, though,

00:16:20 ◼   ► because I think these are the darling phones

00:16:22 ◼   ► of the people that are like us, but like Android.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And so, your point is 90% true, I think,

00:16:30 ◼   ► but these certainly do make a big splash

00:16:32 ◼   ► and I think are held onto by the people

00:16:34 ◼   ► who really, really, truly love Android.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Now, I won't make any snarky comments

00:16:39 ◼   ► about how many people that is,

00:16:41 ◼   ► and I won't guess publicly that it's about 10,

00:16:44 ◼   ► but nevertheless, I do think it's important that--

00:16:46 ◼   ► - Do they all work for the Verge?

00:16:48 ◼   ► - Potentially.

00:16:49 ◼   ► The other thing about this phone,

00:16:50 ◼   ► like the front, I agree with you

00:16:52 ◼   ► that the proportions look wrong

00:16:54 ◼   ► now that I've seen an iPhone 10,

00:16:56 ◼   ► but the back, this two-tone thing, do not want,

00:17:01 ◼   ► like if you scroll down the Verge article,

00:17:03 ◼   ► almost all the way at the bottom.

00:17:05 ◼   ► This two-tone that they've had for two years running now

00:17:08 ◼   ► does not work for me at all.

00:17:10 ◼   ► I think it looks like garbage.

00:17:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, no one's buying this phone for the looks,

00:17:14 ◼   ► let's be honest, same as other Google stuff in the past.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Like, the people who buy this are reviewers

00:17:21 ◼   ► and people who really, like, tech nerds

00:17:23 ◼   ► who very closely follow, like, Google and the Android world.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Like, it's not gonna be a lot of normal consumers.

00:17:31 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:17:32 ◼   ► I thought it was worth bringing up and I'm sorry that we have an extended pre-show this time, Mr. Syracuse.

00:17:38 ◼   ► I kind of like the black and white one with the little orange button on the side. It's kind of stormtrooper-y.

00:17:42 ◼   ► It's always a good look.

00:17:45 ◼   ► The most offensive thing about the back of it is that terrible G logo.

00:17:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I noticed that too. It's pretty bad.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And I guess the touch sensor.

00:17:52 ◼   ► How does the squeeze part work if you have a case? Like, does that impair squeezability?

00:17:56 ◼   ► Do you have to get a squeezable case?

00:17:58 ◼   ► Do they live little cutouts for both the belly button and and the squeeze sides right like you can imagine a case

00:18:03 ◼   ► It's like rigid all around but then has squishy areas for the squeeze

00:18:06 ◼   ► No, I mean like

00:18:09 ◼   ► You know everything I said earlier like I I don't want this to be the case like I want

00:18:14 ◼   ► somebody in the Android world to make phones that are really really nice and that really

00:18:21 ◼   ► Kick Apple on the pans and and make everyone compete on a higher level

00:18:27 ◼   ► Samsung doesn't do that.

00:18:29 ◼   ► Samsung makes phones that have great specs,

00:18:33 ◼   ► but usually have lots of downsides.

00:18:36 ◼   ► I gotta say, they are getting better

00:18:40 ◼   ► at the physical design side,

00:18:42 ◼   ► but they still always have a lot of weird,

00:18:44 ◼   ► bizarre, dumb features and downsides and weird decisions.

00:18:48 ◼   ► I think Google is coming closest

00:18:51 ◼   ► to being able to compete with really nice stuff

00:18:55 ◼   ► in the Android world,

00:18:57 ◼   ► but they're just so far from actually being

00:18:59 ◼   ► on the same level that I don't think Apple

00:19:01 ◼   ► looks at this at all and is threatened by this.

00:19:03 ◼   ► I also think that, again, their lack of having

00:19:06 ◼   ► much retail power or distribution power

00:19:08 ◼   ► to get these things sold in large volumes,

00:19:10 ◼   ► I think that just doesn't intimidate Apple at all.

00:19:13 ◼   ► I wish there was higher level competition here,

00:19:16 ◼   ► but there just isn't yet.

00:19:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Alright, 20 minutes later, are we done with the pre-show?

00:19:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:19:24 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:19:26 ◼   ► I'm sorry, Jon.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Oh man, all right.

00:19:29 ◼   ► So let's quote unquote start with some follow up.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Jon, how's your fan?

00:19:35 ◼   ► Do you hear the fan in your Apple TV?

00:19:38 ◼   ► - And that's the thing, just one follow up item this week.

00:19:40 ◼   ► It's just poor planning.

00:19:41 ◼   ► It's just poor planning.

00:19:42 ◼   ► It could have gone on topics.

00:19:44 ◼   ► And like I said, what about Ask ATP?

00:19:46 ◼   ► Like, you know, how soon we all forget.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Anyway, one follow up item this week, just one.

00:19:52 ◼   ► I do have my Apple TV 4K.

00:19:56 ◼   ► I rotated my Apple TVs, a couple of notes about the thing.

00:20:00 ◼   ► First, just to confirm about the output format thing,

00:20:04 ◼   ► the person who wrote in to tell us that you can change

00:20:06 ◼   ► to 24 Hertz, but only in 4K, I found that also to be

00:20:10 ◼   ► the case, despite the fact that my television can accept

00:20:13 ◼   ► 24 Hertz input, the Apple TV will not send it

00:20:16 ◼   ► because it's not a 4K TV.

00:20:17 ◼   ► So if I had a 4K TV, I could do 24 Hertz,

00:20:19 ◼   ► but because I have a 1080p TV, I can't.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Second thing is setting up the Apple TV.

00:20:24 ◼   ► It's got that thing where you bring the phone near it.

00:20:26 ◼   ► Was that in the old one or is that the new HomePod thing?

00:20:28 ◼   ► - I thought it was. - It was in the old one.

00:20:30 ◼   ► - Oh, anyway, that was nice.

00:20:32 ◼   ► But then I realized, oh, I have to re-download

00:20:35 ◼   ► all my purchased apps and then remember

00:20:37 ◼   ► how they were arranged and stuff like that.

00:20:39 ◼   ► If you're setting up a new Apple TV 4K

00:20:41 ◼   ► and find yourself in that situation,

00:20:43 ◼   ► stop because there is a setting somewhere in settings,

00:20:47 ◼   ► in the settings app that, I forget what it's called,

00:20:49 ◼   ► like home screen sync or something.

00:20:51 ◼   ► you can tell it to make this Apple TV

00:20:54 ◼   ► like all your other Apple TVs.

00:20:55 ◼   ► In other words, keep the home screens

00:20:57 ◼   ► in sync with each other.

00:20:58 ◼   ► And so you turn that on and it will,

00:20:59 ◼   ► I think it'll automatically download the apps,

00:21:01 ◼   ► but certainly it will rearrange them to be in the same order

00:21:03 ◼   ► as they were on your other Apple TV,

00:21:05 ◼   ► which saves a lot of time.

00:21:06 ◼   ► Unfortunately, you still have to log in

00:21:10 ◼   ► with all your applications and doing that is a super pain.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Like there's this feature, I don't know if it's new,

00:21:16 ◼   ► because I haven't set up an Apple TV in forever,

00:21:18 ◼   ► but when you're launching an app

00:21:21 ◼   ► and it wants you to like log in,

00:21:22 ◼   ► like not log into the Netflix app, right?

00:21:24 ◼   ► And you have to log in with your email address and password,

00:21:28 ◼   ► which is how you just log into Netflix everywhere.

00:21:31 ◼   ► And when you do that,

00:21:32 ◼   ► Apple TV tries to remember the email address you entered

00:21:35 ◼   ► because it's such a pain to enter things with a remote

00:21:37 ◼   ► so that the next time you go to a different app to log in,

00:21:39 ◼   ► it will give you a choice of recently used email addresses.

00:21:43 ◼   ► There's actually a section in settings

00:21:44 ◼   ► that shows all your recently used email addresses,

00:21:46 ◼   ► which sounds like a good idea because hey,

00:21:48 ◼   ► I don't want to type that email address more than one time.

00:21:51 ◼   ► But since I use the remote app on my phone to type things in,

00:21:54 ◼   ► instead of using the terrible Apple TV remote,

00:21:57 ◼   ► there's some weird interaction.

00:21:59 ◼   ► Apparently no one at Apple ever did this,

00:22:01 ◼   ► because I enter the email address, da da da da da da da.

00:22:04 ◼   ► And it works fine.

00:22:05 ◼   ► I sign in and everything like that.

00:22:07 ◼   ► And then I go to the second app and it says,

00:22:08 ◼   ► choose from your recent email addresses.

00:22:10 ◼   ► And it shows my iCloud email, because it

00:22:12 ◼   ► knows that one because I'm signed into iCloud on my old TV.

00:22:14 ◼   ► And then the other choice is the first letter only

00:22:16 ◼   ► of my previous email address, like a single letter.

00:22:19 ◼   ► And as I entered in multiple email addresses

00:22:21 ◼   ► to sign into multiple services, it

00:22:23 ◼   ► would only save the first letter.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And I think it's because I was typing it all on my phone,

00:22:27 ◼   ► like the phone remote app.

00:22:29 ◼   ► That's a stupid, terrible bug.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I'm like, all right, well, I'll go into settings,

00:22:32 ◼   ► and I'll be able to edit those.

00:22:33 ◼   ► Nope, all you can do is delete them in settings.

00:22:35 ◼   ► So I had to delete all the single character email

00:22:37 ◼   ► addresses.

00:22:38 ◼   ► But that's a dumb bug, and they should fix that.

00:22:40 ◼   ► But I do like the idea of it remembering the feature.

00:22:43 ◼   ► For the other things, there's like the please

00:22:45 ◼   ► select your television provider.

00:22:47 ◼   ► And my television provider is on the list.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And like, oh, this is great.

00:22:50 ◼   ► This is that single sign-on thing.

00:22:52 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what it's doing with my provider,

00:22:55 ◼   ► like what part of the process it's streamlining,

00:22:57 ◼   ► but having signed into umpteen applications

00:22:59 ◼   ► for all the services that I subscribe to

00:23:01 ◼   ► and being bounced from webpage to application

00:23:03 ◼   ► to around and around in circles

00:23:05 ◼   ► and going to like youtube.com/activate

00:23:07 ◼   ► and all these other URLs and typing in four letter codes,

00:23:10 ◼   ► I don't think there was any single sign-on

00:23:12 ◼   ► that entering my television provider saved me from.

00:23:15 ◼   ► In fact, the worst offender was,

00:23:16 ◼   ► I think it was Showtime or something.

00:23:18 ◼   ► As far as I could tell, they want you,

00:23:20 ◼   ► they launch the app and it says,

00:23:21 ◼   ► "Please go to like ShowtimeAnytime.com/activate."

00:23:25 ◼   ► And you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna do that.

00:23:26 ◼   ► I'm gonna type in this code."

00:23:28 ◼   ► When you go there, as far as I can tell,

00:23:30 ◼   ► it demands that you download their iOS app

00:23:32 ◼   ► just so you can activate their app on your Apple TV.

00:23:36 ◼   ► You download the iOS app,

00:23:37 ◼   ► and that's the only time you get to type in the code.

00:23:40 ◼   ► It's, logging into television apps is the worst thing ever.

00:23:42 ◼   ► So home screen sync is great.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I wish it also synced the fact

00:23:45 ◼   ► that I'm logged into in my other services.

00:23:47 ◼   ► And someone added one final item here

00:23:51 ◼   ► about remote improvements.

00:23:52 ◼   ► As far as I can tell, there are none that I can detect

00:23:56 ◼   ► other than the raised ring,

00:23:57 ◼   ► which helps less than I thought it would,

00:24:00 ◼   ► because I think my main complaint,

00:24:02 ◼   ► I mean, I guess I don't pick it up backwards

00:24:04 ◼   ► as much as most people because I look at it.

00:24:06 ◼   ► And the reason I look at it is because it's like,

00:24:07 ◼   ► I said, it's like a mousetrap or like a game of operation.

00:24:10 ◼   ► Like you just, you have to look at it

00:24:11 ◼   ► to gingerly pick it up so that you don't accidentally

00:24:14 ◼   ► cause something to happen.

00:24:15 ◼   ► saying that it is better about accidental input, but I don't like it when the progress bar comes

00:24:19 ◼   ► up and overlays the show that people are watching. Frequently I will pick it up to just use the

00:24:24 ◼   ► volume or something like that and accidentally graze the touchpad and now you gotta do a five

00:24:29 ◼   ► count for the progress bar to disappear off the screen. I don't like that remote. It's still bad.

00:24:35 ◼   ► - I mean, I will say that the ring around the menu button

00:24:40 ◼   ► does help, because it is noticeably raised,

00:24:46 ◼   ► and so it now does feel different if you hold it wrong,

00:24:50 ◼   ► and you can orient yourself by feel with that button.

00:24:54 ◼   ► But that's the only problem it solves.

00:24:56 ◼   ► This remote has lots of other problems.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - It doesn't really solve that problem, though,

00:24:59 ◼   ► because if you grab it upside down, and you go,

00:25:01 ◼   ► oh, I don't feel the ridge,

00:25:03 ◼   ► so I know I'm holding it upside down,

00:25:04 ◼   ► Well guess what, your palm has been all over that touchpad

00:25:06 ◼   ► by this point, and it has done,

00:25:08 ◼   ► it certainly has brought up the progress bar,

00:25:10 ◼   ► and who knows what else it might have done,

00:25:11 ◼   ► especially if you've gripped it firmly,

00:25:12 ◼   ► instead of gingerly like the beautiful,

00:25:14 ◼   ► delicate little insect that it is, right?

00:25:16 ◼   ► If you actually grab the remote,

00:25:17 ◼   ► you probably not only grazed the touchpad,

00:25:19 ◼   ► but activated the pressure sensitive button,

00:25:21 ◼   ► and who knows what you did, it's the worst.

00:25:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I'm not quite as hard on it as you

00:25:26 ◼   ► in this regard, however, the white circle,

00:25:30 ◼   ► the raised white circle on this button does help,

00:25:33 ◼   ► but the remote is still a terrible remote.

00:25:36 ◼   ► And I wish they would have done substantially more

00:25:39 ◼   ► to actually redesign this thing

00:25:41 ◼   ► instead of basically digging in and saying,

00:25:44 ◼   ► no, this is fine, here, take a stupid white ring.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Like that's basically what this revision says.

00:25:49 ◼   ► - Oh, and I was frequently faced with the prompt that says,

00:25:51 ◼   ► hold down the speaker button to speak.

00:25:52 ◼   ► Like very often, you know, it's like,

00:25:54 ◼   ► let me just speak this thing that I have to enter here

00:25:56 ◼   ► instead of typing,

00:25:57 ◼   ► 'cause even just typing on your phone

00:25:58 ◼   ► gets tedious after a while.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Like I'm not very good with the phone size keyboard

00:26:01 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:26:02 ◼   ► So I'm like, "Okay, it's prompting me with a little speaker on it.

00:26:05 ◼   ► It says, 'Hold down the button and talk into your microphone.'"

00:26:07 ◼   ► And that often works if you just want to say, like, watch Game of Thrones.

00:26:10 ◼   ► It will do that.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Like, that part of the Apple TV experience is great.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Anytime you don't have to use the remote, you're like, "Yes!"

00:26:15 ◼   ► Right?

00:26:16 ◼   ► And so I'm in a text field of some kind, and it's telling me, "Hold down the remote and

00:26:20 ◼   ► talk."

00:26:21 ◼   ► And I would hold down the remote and start to talk, and as soon as I started to talk,

00:26:23 ◼   ► it would just go "bloop," and it would, like, stop listening to me.

00:26:26 ◼   ► And then it would say, "Hold down the remote and try to talk," and I would hold down the

00:26:28 ◼   ► remote and started talking to go bloop and stop listening to me like it's I

00:26:32 ◼   ► wouldn't it wouldn't maybe I'd get like one character out or I wouldn't type

00:26:35 ◼   ► anything it was just like why why what is happening why do you hate me you're a

00:26:40 ◼   ► brand new thing out of the box you're presenting me a native text field with

00:26:42 ◼   ► the native you know the little picker with the the alphabet and and the three

00:26:47 ◼   ► things oh yeah and during the setup experience they had this crazy on screen

00:26:51 ◼   ► prompt they're asking a bunch of questions and a series of like sort of

00:26:55 ◼   ► wizard type screens that are asking you questions, there would be a thing highlighted and below

00:27:00 ◼   ► it like the corners of a triangle, like, were two buttons. And your highlight would be on

00:27:06 ◼   ► like the top point of the triangle, like that button, and there would be a button, you know,

00:27:12 ◼   ► sort of southwest and a button southeast. And I couldn't for the life of me figure out

00:27:17 ◼   ► which direction it wanted me to swipe to get to the southwest or southeast button, because

00:27:22 ◼   ► swiping south did nothing right and you're like I don't swipe west to get

00:27:28 ◼   ► southwest and as far as I could tell it was like any direction you swipe to do

00:27:33 ◼   ► anything would always bring you to the default button and then if you didn't

00:27:36 ◼   ► want the default you could swipe right because the default button was on the

00:27:39 ◼   ► left there was like this weird puzzle game of figuring out how I moved the

00:27:43 ◼   ► selection basically down into the left it was it was the worst I don't know how

00:27:49 ◼   ► Did you experience this when you were setting it up, Marco?

00:27:53 ◼   ► - No, my setup experience was pretty flawless,

00:27:57 ◼   ► and in fact, I was actually also gonna compliment

00:28:00 ◼   ► that my keep the home screens in sync thing worked great.

00:28:05 ◼   ► I mean, probably because I use far fewer apps

00:28:07 ◼   ► than it sounds like you do,

00:28:08 ◼   ► and I have far fewer accounts for things

00:28:11 ◼   ► that I need to sign into.

00:28:12 ◼   ► For me, it's basically just like Netflix

00:28:14 ◼   ► and HBO Now Go thing.

00:28:17 ◼   ► That's it.

00:28:19 ◼   ► I don't really have anything else on there.

00:28:20 ◼   ► - You did have to re-sign into those,

00:28:22 ◼   ► but I thought it was like a wizard at the beginning

00:28:23 ◼   ► that forced you to pick all the things that I was picking

00:28:25 ◼   ► that gave you the triangle buttons,

00:28:27 ◼   ► where I forget what the highlight is on,

00:28:29 ◼   ► but yeah, the dragging Southwest,

00:28:31 ◼   ► I would like swipe what I would think was Southwest

00:28:34 ◼   ► and the selection would just not move.

00:28:35 ◼   ► It would just not move.

00:28:36 ◼   ► And so I would do South.

00:28:37 ◼   ► It wouldn't move.

00:28:38 ◼   ► I think it wanted you to go like dead West

00:28:41 ◼   ► to select an item on the screen Southwest, infuriating.

00:28:44 ◼   ► I should have taken pictures of the screen.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - No, I did not have those issues,

00:28:48 ◼   ► But I mean, a lot of this UI has been like three quarters

00:28:52 ◼   ► baked for two years now and doesn't seem to be getting

00:28:55 ◼   ► put back in the oven.

00:28:57 ◼   ► So wouldn't surprise me.

00:28:59 ◼   ► - Anyway, that's it.

00:29:00 ◼   ► I've got my 4K Apple TV.

00:29:01 ◼   ► I rotated all the Apple TVs and now I have one free one.

00:29:03 ◼   ► Like my Apple TV three is now like the travel TV.

00:29:06 ◼   ► Oh, and I usually use, this is a TiVo compiler.

00:29:10 ◼   ► I usually use the, I have an old TiVo remote

00:29:13 ◼   ► that I use with an old Apple TV.

00:29:15 ◼   ► And I trained it on the TV that rotated up to the bedroom.

00:29:17 ◼   ► But the problem is the new stupid bent TiVo that I have up there, like they're top of

00:29:22 ◼   ► the line box essentially.

00:29:23 ◼   ► As far as I can tell there is no way to get it to not receive signals from my TiVo remote.

00:29:29 ◼   ► I even have, the technique I used before is TiVo remote used to have a one/two switch

00:29:33 ◼   ► on them.

00:29:34 ◼   ► You could switch to the one side or the two sides.

00:29:35 ◼   ► You could have two TiVos hooked up to your TV and you'd have one remote set to one and

00:29:38 ◼   ► one remote set to two so they wouldn't interfere with each other, which was a great idea.

00:29:40 ◼   ► TiVo is really smart.

00:29:42 ◼   ► the new TiVo's no matter what I set any of the remotes to this bent TiVo sees

00:29:47 ◼   ► it obeys the commands of any TiVo remote so you can't use the TiVo remote with

00:29:52 ◼   ► the Apple TV but you can but you will realize that you are blindly going

00:29:56 ◼   ► through menus accidentally who knows possibly you know deleting stuff or

00:30:00 ◼   ► recording things you don't want because every time you press a button the TiVo

00:30:04 ◼   ► registers the command in addition to the Apple TV so that's kind of crappy so I

00:30:08 ◼   ► We have to use the crappy Apple TV remote upstairs now.

00:30:12 ◼   ► I'm sorry, Jon.

00:30:13 ◼   ► I know that's hard for you.

00:30:14 ◼   ► I think you can turn off the IR on the thing and then just make it do Bluetooth only, but

00:30:18 ◼   ► then you can't do the volume control because the volume control is IR.

00:30:20 ◼   ► It's a complicated situation.

00:30:22 ◼   ► I also have a piece of tinfoil covering the other TiVo that's up there.

00:30:25 ◼   ► I have two TiVos in Apple TV up there.

00:30:28 ◼   ► The tinfoil works great, though, by the way.

00:30:30 ◼   ► How do I -- where is the IR sensor?

00:30:32 ◼   ► How do I stop the IR?

00:30:33 ◼   ► Guess what?

00:30:34 ◼   ► Tinfoil over the whole front of it.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Solves that problem.

00:30:37 ◼   ► And when you don't need it to block your TiVo,

00:30:39 ◼   ► you can wear it as a hat.

00:30:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I wanted to just get rid of it,

00:30:42 ◼   ► but we have tons of prerecorded stuff on there.

00:30:44 ◼   ► So we're slowly and painfully transferring it

00:30:47 ◼   ► from the old TV to the new TiVo,

00:30:48 ◼   ► which takes forever for a variety of dumb reasons.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Most of which have to do with the weak wifi signal

00:30:54 ◼   ► that I have like in that corner of the house

00:30:55 ◼   ► where the TV is.

00:30:57 ◼   ► And the fact that I think it's like 802.11b or something,

00:31:01 ◼   ► like it doesn't even have wifi built in the old one.

00:31:03 ◼   ► So it's like got a little adapter hanging out the end.

00:31:05 ◼   ► So the Wi-Fi speeds are super slow.

00:31:08 ◼   ► Anyway, eventually we will get rid of that box

00:31:10 ◼   ► and the aluminum will go.

00:31:13 ◼   ► And someone in the chat room is asking me,

00:31:14 ◼   ► have I heard of Eero?

00:31:15 ◼   ► We do have Eero.

00:31:16 ◼   ► We have five bars, five, you know,

00:31:17 ◼   ► full signal strength in there,

00:31:18 ◼   ► but like the Wi-Fi adapter dongle thing is bad.

00:31:22 ◼   ► And in general, TiVo's got really bad transfer speeds,

00:31:25 ◼   ► not even limited by the network.

00:31:26 ◼   ► So who knows what its problem is,

00:31:27 ◼   ► but it takes a long time.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Oh, I forgot about the fan.

00:31:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:33 ◼   ► All this time.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I just looked at the thing.

00:31:36 ◼   ► All right, so I actually forgot, I did forget about it.

00:31:38 ◼   ► I hooked it up, I'm doing CV setup and everything.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Like, oh, I forgot I should go look at the fan.

00:31:42 ◼   ► So by this point it's connected to my television

00:31:45 ◼   ► and I've been using it to like set up all the applications

00:31:47 ◼   ► and do all the setup stuff.

00:31:48 ◼   ► And I actually played a few games with it

00:31:51 ◼   ► and to see if the performance was better

00:31:53 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Then I had to go over to the TV, grab the little thing.

00:31:57 ◼   ► And of course I can't pull it away

00:31:58 ◼   ► from the entertainment center very far

00:32:00 ◼   ► because it's got an HDMI cable in the back

00:32:02 ◼   ► and the power cord and stuff like that.

00:32:03 ◼   ► And if I unplug the power cord, obviously the fan will be off.

00:32:06 ◼   ► And on my television, I have, at the very least,

00:32:09 ◼   ► a TV with the fans on.

00:32:11 ◼   ► My television itself has fans in it,

00:32:12 ◼   ► so this is a pretty noisy environment.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Nevertheless, held that thing up to my ear.

00:32:17 ◼   ► I can hear the fan in it.

00:32:18 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, that's not fair.

00:32:19 ◼   ► I did a lot of setup.

00:32:20 ◼   ► I was playing games.

00:32:20 ◼   ► I just let it sit.

00:32:21 ◼   ► So the next morning, after the Apple TV had been sleeping all

00:32:24 ◼   ► night long, I came, activated the Apple TV

00:32:28 ◼   ► so the little light turns on, put it up to my ear.

00:32:30 ◼   ► I can still hear it.

00:32:31 ◼   ► So you can hear it if you shove it up to your ear.

00:32:33 ◼   ► But I guarantee you get four inches away

00:32:36 ◼   ► And you cannot hear it even if it was in a dead sound room

00:32:40 ◼   ► And it's not it is in my entertainment center with my TiVo fan and my television fan so noise is absolutely not a concern with

00:32:46 ◼   ► This I think the fan is always spinning you can hear it if you put it up to your ear

00:32:50 ◼   ► And if you have better hearing than apparently Jason Snell and Marco

00:32:54 ◼   ► You can hear it it wasn't even close like you can hear it. I didn't put it

00:33:00 ◼   ► I didn't put my ear right against the case. I just move my ear close to it

00:33:05 ◼   ► No, you have to pick it up and hold it to your ear like you're like you're uh, you know

00:33:09 ◼   ► What do you call like it when you ever see the movies where some some?

00:33:11 ◼   ► Record producer is trying to listen to some music and get into the groove and takes a pair of headphones up

00:33:16 ◼   ► But he only holds one ear of the headphones against his ear. Oh, yeah that yep do that

00:33:20 ◼   ► No

00:33:23 ◼   ► Anyway, if you have any concerns about this fan that gets the John Siracusa seal of approval

00:33:28 ◼   ► It is inaudible to humans. You're fine

00:33:31 ◼   ► Wow, can we get like an actual seal made to that effect? I don't put stickers on things

00:33:36 ◼   ► Also, did you just imply that you're not human

00:33:40 ◼   ► Did we just get confirmation that you are a robot? It's inaudible to humans unless you're holding it to your ear

00:33:45 ◼   ► You're not supposed to use the hells of you hold literally holding it to your ear like a like a seashell

00:33:50 ◼   ► You know, you can hear the ocean and shell Marco. Has that even taught you this now that you're a beach bum? Yes

00:33:54 ◼   ► Yeah, all right good anyway. Uh that's there you go do that. Maybe he's a superhero wouldn't surprise me

00:34:01 ◼   ► Maybe I just don't have it last time. I just have my yearly physical and the last time I had my yearly physical

00:34:06 ◼   ► Oh my god. Are we really going they did they did the hearing test?

00:34:10 ◼   ► you know where they did the different tones in your ears and

00:34:12 ◼   ► Last year I failed a bunch of the tones in my right ear and she's like oh, it's probably just because you have a cold

00:34:17 ◼   ► Like oh my god, I'm going deaf. I'm old but turns out just because I had a cold this year. I got them all

00:34:21 ◼   ► The long national nightmare is over

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00:35:47 ◼   ► So, let's move on to Ask ATP, and the curiously named "Null" wrote in to ask, "What do Marco

00:35:56 ◼   ► and Casey use for iOS error logging?

00:35:58 ◼   ► Existing frameworks or something homegrown?

00:36:00 ◼   ► #noob" and it looks like this was spelled correctly with two zeros, so I applaud you,

00:36:04 ◼   ► Null.

00:36:05 ◼   ► Anyway, "noob ios-dev."

00:36:06 ◼   ► Since I'm talking, I will go ahead and start.

00:36:09 ◼   ► The company I work for uses Fabric, which was...

00:36:11 ◼   ► I don't even know the relationship with Crashlytics.

00:36:14 ◼   ► It either was Crashlytics or Crashlytics is now considered

00:36:17 ◼   ► a product within--

00:36:18 ◼   ► - Crashlytics was acquired by Twitter.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Twitter rolled it into a larger thing called Fabric,

00:36:22 ◼   ► then Google bought Fabric from Twitter.

00:36:23 ◼   ► - Right, okay, there you go.

00:36:24 ◼   ► So that is what we are currently using.

00:36:27 ◼   ► It is sufficient.

00:36:28 ◼   ► I don't really have any-- - For error logging?

00:36:31 ◼   ► Is this, I don't, does this include,

00:36:33 ◼   ► is this just crash reporting or,

00:36:34 ◼   ► I took this to mean like, NSLog kind of error logging.

00:36:37 ◼   ► - Oh, that is not how I took this.

00:36:39 ◼   ► I took this to mean crash reporting,

00:36:40 ◼   ► which is exactly what you expected.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And for that, we use Fabric.

00:36:43 ◼   ► like nslog sort of thing we don't we don't do anything you just use nslog yeah well i

00:36:48 ◼   ► mean we don't have any mechanism by which that's reported anywhere is what i mean like

00:36:52 ◼   ► we we use well really we use print because we're not stuck in 1987 on objective c but

00:36:59 ◼   ► anyway um we we just use the effectively nslog for you know local debugging and development

00:37:05 ◼   ► and stuff like that but we don't that never gets reported to a server anywhere or not

00:37:09 ◼   ► knowingly anyway i'm sure somebody's gonna write in and tell me no you idiot crash litigates

00:37:12 ◼   ► is getting all that too, and that very well may be the case,

00:37:14 ◼   ► but I've never seen it.

00:37:15 ◼   ► - Probably.

00:37:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I use nslog in development.

00:37:19 ◼   ► In production, I don't think my app logs much of anything.

00:37:23 ◼   ► I usually remove them, or I use macros to have a debug log

00:37:27 ◼   ► that calls nslog in development,

00:37:29 ◼   ► but not in production, stuff like that.

00:37:32 ◼   ► And then I don't have any mechanism

00:37:33 ◼   ► for the instances of the app out in the field

00:37:36 ◼   ► to be reporting back to me what they have logged.

00:37:39 ◼   ► I don't have that.

00:37:41 ◼   ► - Right, same here.

00:37:41 ◼   ► had the need for it ever. That seems like a lot of data to deal with. I also, I know

00:37:45 ◼   ► that last year they introduced this whole unified logging framework thing among all

00:37:51 ◼   ► the systems and I honestly have, I don't know anything about it. I never saw the session.

00:37:57 ◼   ► I haven't looked at it at all and the only thing I see from that is that ever since they

00:38:04 ◼   ► introduced that new logging system, console app is completely useless. The phone console

00:38:10 ◼   ► is covered in garbage when I look in Xcode,

00:38:12 ◼   ► and that even when I do a build and run in Xcode,

00:38:16 ◼   ► all the system crap still logs to that console

00:38:19 ◼   ► and makes it very hard for me to use NS Logging

00:38:21 ◼   ► for anything else.

00:38:22 ◼   ► So the new system has not made a good impression on me

00:38:25 ◼   ► having not used it, because now it just seems like

00:38:28 ◼   ► everything in the OS is constantly spewing crap

00:38:31 ◼   ► into the logs, and that can't be good

00:38:33 ◼   ► no matter how lightweight they've made it.

00:38:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:38:36 ◼   ► Alex writes in, "Is there any meaningful difference

00:38:38 ◼   ► between the $50 Qi, is that right?

00:38:41 ◼   ► Is that how you pronounce this?

00:38:42 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:38:42 ◼   ► - Thank you, Qi chargers, Apple's promoting,

00:38:45 ◼   ► and the $15 no-name ones on Amazon.

00:38:47 ◼   ► - It's pronounced 10.

00:38:48 ◼   ► - I don't have the faintest idea

00:38:52 ◼   ► what the answer to this question is.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I understand the question, but I don't know.

00:38:54 ◼   ► I don't have any Qi capable devices in my house right now.

00:38:58 ◼   ► - So the reason I put this in here

00:39:00 ◼   ► is because a bunch of people have been using

00:39:02 ◼   ► their iPhone 8s with the non-Apple Qi chargers

00:39:06 ◼   ► and having varying experiences with exactly how carefully you have to position the phone

00:39:12 ◼   ► on the mat, both orient and position it. And the basic tale of woe is, I woke up and my phone was

00:39:19 ◼   ► 10% charged because I didn't put it on the mat quite the right way. And a lot of people are

00:39:26 ◼   ► saying that this is the reason why, this is the space for Apple to innovate. They already said

00:39:31 ◼   ► that they have some things that you can do with the AirPower mat that you can't do with a regular

00:39:36 ◼   ► Qi charger like charge multiple devices at once and have them you know do all the things they

00:39:40 ◼   ► showed in the keynote right that's what AirPower will do but another possible thing that the AirPower

00:39:43 ◼   ► mat might do is you know be better about positioning now I think this question is about

00:39:50 ◼   ► what about the ones that you know from Belkin or whoever that Apple's running 50 bucks versus

00:39:54 ◼   ► the $15 ones I would imagine that one possible difference is exactly how picky they are about

00:40:00 ◼   ► how you place your thing on it, right? It's probably very easy to make a technically Qi-compatible

00:40:07 ◼   ► charger that is super finicky about where you put your phone and maybe the more expensive ones

00:40:14 ◼   ► have either larger areas where you can put them or have multiple orientation things or something

00:40:19 ◼   ► like that. That would be my guess, having not used any of these things and not torn any of them apart.

00:40:24 ◼   ► But at the very least I wanted to bring this up because I hope that that's exactly what Apple does.

00:40:30 ◼   ► That regardless of the possible difference between $50 and $15, it could just be one's Belkin branded and you pay, you know, an extra $35 for that or whatever.

00:40:38 ◼   ► But Apple, we already know that they're doing multi-device.

00:40:42 ◼   ► One of the things that they should, one of the attributes of their fancy AirPower, Matt, which I'm sure won't cost $50, is that it should be able to charge in lots of different positions.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And with them showing multiple phones and a watch all in the same pad, surely that means

00:41:00 ◼   ► that you can put them more or less anywhere on the pad and they'll be fine.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Because it's not as if there's three preset positions and you have to put them exactly

00:41:06 ◼   ► on that, especially since as far as I can tell the surface of the AirPower is completely

00:41:09 ◼   ► featureless.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Like there's no red X that says put your phone here and put your watch here and put your

00:41:14 ◼   ► whatever here.

00:41:15 ◼   ► So that is my hope and that is a possible reason to maybe wait for the AirPower thing

00:41:20 ◼   ► to come out before you take a dive into the wireless charging world.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Finally, Mike Bolton, you know, it's too bad—

00:41:27 ◼   ► Is that your real name?

00:41:29 ◼   ► Yeah, it's too bad that No Talent Ass Clown ruined it for everyone.

00:41:32 ◼   ► Mike Bolton writes in, "Who's the fastest typist?

00:41:36 ◼   ► If you guys play for the best 2 out of 3 on Type Racer or a similar head-to-head typing

00:41:40 ◼   ► thingy, I'll donate $100 to the charity if you're choosing."

00:41:44 ◼   ► We didn't yet do an actual, like, simultaneous head-to-head thing, which I am willing to

00:41:49 ◼   ► to do right now if Marco's willing to edit it all out.

00:41:52 ◼   ► But we each, well, two thirds of us,

00:41:55 ◼   ► those of us who believe in homework,

00:41:57 ◼   ► did the homework and filled out the appropriate entry

00:42:00 ◼   ► in the show notes indicating what our scores were.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Marco, have you done this?

00:42:04 ◼   ► - I have, I just didn't put my entry in the show notes

00:42:06 ◼   ► 'cause of course when you ask me for a list

00:42:10 ◼   ► with a certain number of items in it, in this case one,

00:42:12 ◼   ► I can't give my top one list.

00:42:14 ◼   ► It has more than one entry.

00:42:16 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:42:17 ◼   ► - He's trying to build suspense.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And by the way, going into this, I assumed that I would have the slowest typing speed.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And even though Marco hasn't entered his time, I'm going to say that I will have the slowest

00:42:26 ◼   ► typing speed, mostly because I don't type correctly.

00:42:29 ◼   ► Like the correct way with the fingers on the home keys.

00:42:31 ◼   ► I took typing courses on IBM Selectric typewriters in my youth.

00:42:36 ◼   ► I took many years of typing courses, and I apparently successfully resisted everything

00:42:41 ◼   ► they had to teach me.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And I typed totally the wrong way, and so I'm slow.

00:42:46 ◼   ► I used to hunt and peck for the longest time, and when I was still pretty young, I think

00:42:51 ◼   ► before I started taking like keyboarding class in school, I decided one day I was going to

00:42:57 ◼   ► force myself to learn to touch type, and I basically forced myself to use the home row.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And after, given how much time I spent on a computer, even my youth, it took me all

00:43:05 ◼   ► of a couple of weeks to get okay.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And now, well for a long time now, I've been in the just truly tremendous position where

00:43:13 ◼   ► I don't have to think about where to put my fingers.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Words just magically appear on the screen.

00:43:17 ◼   ► And I know I'm not unique in that way.

00:43:19 ◼   ► It's just getting to that point is amazing.

00:43:23 ◼   ► So anyway, so what I did was I took the test.

00:43:28 ◼   ► I did the little typing thing once, and then they ask you to

00:43:31 ◼   ► verify that you're a human by taking another little test.

00:43:34 ◼   ► And the second test that I took, so the verification

00:43:37 ◼   ► test, indicated that I could type at 125 words per minute.

00:43:41 ◼   ► If I had seen Marco's score, which I'm assuming is higher than 125 words per minute,

00:43:46 ◼   ► I assure you I would have spent hours getting to the point that I beat it.

00:43:49 ◼   ► But based on one time and one time—or I guess really two times—I scored 125 words per minute.

00:43:56 ◼   ► That was without any sort of warm-up. I think it was early in the morning.

00:43:59 ◼   ► I would blame it on coffee, but coffee is evil, and so I don't drink coffee.

00:44:03 ◼   ► But that was my score. John, what was your score?

00:44:07 ◼   ► So I did a couple of runs to get warmed up, and I put 79 down, even though that wasn't

00:44:11 ◼   ► my very best run, because I did a little bit after that.

00:44:14 ◼   ► And you can, especially once you learn the passages that they're having you type, half

00:44:19 ◼   ► my problem typing these things is like, I wouldn't put a comma there, I wouldn't word

00:44:22 ◼   ► it that way, and you get hung up on that, right?

00:44:25 ◼   ► But once you've done that, sometimes they repeat or whatever.

00:44:27 ◼   ► So 79 is what I'm entering here.

00:44:29 ◼   ► I think that is representative of my typing skill.

00:44:31 ◼   ► I can go faster by like hammering away at that and get into the 80s or 90s, but realistically

00:44:35 ◼   ► speaking I'm not typing that fast. I only kind of wish they asked us to write, I was

00:44:39 ◼   ► cheating, but if they asked us to write Perl code I think I would do a pretty good job.

00:44:42 ◼   ► Oh my god. Despite the fact that my hands are not in the right place, I'm really good

00:44:48 ◼   ► at dollar signs, at signs, curly braces, and square brackets. Fastest dollar sign in the

00:44:53 ◼   ► east you guys. Because I type them so much, I spent 20 years typing tremendous amount

00:44:57 ◼   ► of dollar signs and parentheses and at signs and curly braces. And despite the fact that

00:45:03 ◼   ► I'm only at 79 and more which is not fast in the grand scheme of things. I can also

00:45:06 ◼   ► type without looking at the keyboard and words just come out and code just comes out. Very often

00:45:11 ◼   ► I will just be staring at the screen and code is just coming out and not just that I'm going to the

00:45:16 ◼   ► arrow because I type incorrectly I'm going to the arrow keys home and my hands are all over that

00:45:21 ◼   ► keyboard and I'm just looking at the screen. I'm selecting you know command option shift up down

00:45:27 ◼   ► arrow selecting text cut pasting you know like you get in the zone. I'm not fast when I'm doing it

00:45:32 ◼   ► but it's not as if I'm staring at the keyboard

00:45:34 ◼   ► hunting and pecking.

00:45:35 ◼   ► - Alright Marco, tell me how much faster you were

00:45:39 ◼   ► than the two of us.

00:45:41 ◼   ► - So my first test, just cold, was 91 words per minute.

00:45:45 ◼   ► It was not that accurate.

00:45:47 ◼   ► Basically, I got slowed down a lot

00:45:50 ◼   ► if I ever made any mistakes,

00:45:51 ◼   ► because like Jon, if a passage was written

00:45:54 ◼   ► in a way that I wouldn't write it,

00:45:55 ◼   ► it would kind of trip me up a little bit.

00:45:57 ◼   ► I'd have to go back and be like, "Wait a minute."

00:45:58 ◼   ► That didn't make sense, where if it was something

00:46:00 ◼   ► that flowed the way I would write something,

00:46:03 ◼   ► I was way faster.

00:46:05 ◼   ► So I took a second test a few minutes later at 125,

00:46:10 ◼   ► then I got prompted for that human qualifier thing,

00:46:13 ◼   ► that one was 132, then I took two more,

00:46:16 ◼   ► I got 116 and 122.

00:46:18 ◼   ► So it's kind of all over the place,

00:46:21 ◼   ► but I would say-- - I would consider that

00:46:21 ◼   ► a draw. - Yeah.

00:46:22 ◼   ► It seems like me and you were in the same range.

00:46:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you guys are even.

00:46:27 ◼   ► You had the correct mistakes, right?

00:46:29 ◼   ► - I was never quite clear on that.

00:46:30 ◼   ► You weren't allowed to just blindly continue on, right?

00:46:33 ◼   ► 'Cause I lost a lot of time realizing

00:46:34 ◼   ► that I had missed a comma or something like that

00:46:37 ◼   ► and then having to backspace

00:46:39 ◼   ► and make sure I'm getting the right,

00:46:41 ◼   ► that really ate up my time.

00:46:43 ◼   ► - The other thing is typing speed tests

00:46:46 ◼   ► are a fun little thing like this,

00:46:47 ◼   ► but I don't get a lot of value out of this

00:46:50 ◼   ► because there is very little time that I'm at my computer

00:46:54 ◼   ► that I am typing at full blast for more than a few seconds.

00:46:58 ◼   ► because I'm not transcribing things

00:47:01 ◼   ► or spewing out tons and tons of paragraphs.

00:47:04 ◼   ► - That's the thing about these tasks.

00:47:06 ◼   ► They're asking you to transcribe,

00:47:08 ◼   ► which is something I never do on a computer

00:47:09 ◼   ► and find incredibly tedious.

00:47:10 ◼   ► I'm always either writing words from my brain

00:47:12 ◼   ► or writing code from my brain.

00:47:14 ◼   ► I'm never transcribing.

00:47:16 ◼   ► So it is actually a very foreign skill for me

00:47:18 ◼   ► for me to be typing some words

00:47:21 ◼   ► that I'm reading off of the screen.

00:47:22 ◼   ► That's what copy and paste are for.

00:47:24 ◼   ► I am a strong, strong proponent of copy and paste.

00:47:28 ◼   ► and give my few nuggets of copy and paste device

00:47:31 ◼   ► for the people listening.

00:47:31 ◼   ► I think I already gave Merlin some of these.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Never type a process ID,

00:47:35 ◼   ► 'cause you're just asking to kill the wrong,

00:47:37 ◼   ► if you like root on a system

00:47:38 ◼   ► and you want to kill a process ID, never type it.

00:47:40 ◼   ► No, I just ran PS, let me just transcribe that process ID.

00:47:44 ◼   ► You only have to like kill the process ID

00:47:50 ◼   ► belonging to some kernel thing

00:47:51 ◼   ► to like halt your entire machine.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Like you only have to do that once.

00:47:55 ◼   ► You just always copy and paste it.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Always copy and paste any piece of information

00:48:00 ◼   ► you're entering like email addresses

00:48:03 ◼   ► or the type of thing that's authentication information,

00:48:05 ◼   ► copy and paste it.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Obviously not passwords,

00:48:07 ◼   ► 'cause you shouldn't be copying and pasting those,

00:48:08 ◼   ► but everything else, copy and paste.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Encode variable names, copy and paste.

00:48:13 ◼   ► The way you can tell if you're correctly using

00:48:14 ◼   ► copy and paste is if you initially misspelled the variable,

00:48:17 ◼   ► it should be misspelled consistently

00:48:18 ◼   ► through your entire file,

00:48:19 ◼   ► because you never typed it again.

00:48:20 ◼   ► You either auto-completed it

00:48:21 ◼   ► or copied and pasted it from elsewhere.

00:48:23 ◼   ► So copy and paste is your friend, don't transcribe.

00:48:25 ◼   ► And I feel that people who are really fast typists

00:48:29 ◼   ► resist that, but like I can retype it faster

00:48:31 ◼   ► than I can copy and paste it.

00:48:32 ◼   ► You probably can.

00:48:33 ◼   ► You can also accidentally type it the wrong way

00:48:35 ◼   ► 'cause there's nothing's gonna highlight red for you

00:48:37 ◼   ► like it does in these typing tests.

00:48:39 ◼   ► - So what we've learned today is if you want us

00:48:42 ◼   ► to do something stupid,

00:48:43 ◼   ► just swear that you'll donate $100 to charity.

00:48:46 ◼   ► And we never defined which charity.

00:48:48 ◼   ► Somebody put the show notes, St. Jude,

00:48:50 ◼   ► I am totally fine with that.

00:48:52 ◼   ► I would also like to pitch as an option

00:48:54 ◼   ► the Brady Center to prevent gun violence,

00:48:55 ◼   ► which seems to be a pretty pertinent thing

00:48:57 ◼   ► to donate a little money to these days.

00:49:00 ◼   ► - Or maybe Puerto Rico relief efforts.

00:49:02 ◼   ► - Or Puerto Rico relief efforts.

00:49:03 ◼   ► So actually, so yeah, how about we'll go with those three.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Mike Bolton, take your pick amongst

00:49:08 ◼   ► whatever one of those three you would like to donate to.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And I will put at least me on the spot

00:49:13 ◼   ► and say, send me a receipt and I'll match it.

00:49:15 ◼   ► - Me too.

00:49:16 ◼   ► - No pressure, Jon.

00:49:18 ◼   ► Anyway, I'll move on so you don't have to answer.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Let's talk some topics.

00:49:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'll do it too.

00:49:24 ◼   ► - We usually save our charity stuff

00:49:26 ◼   ► towards the end of the year, but no problem moving it up.

00:49:29 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by HulloPillow

00:49:32 ◼   ► at hullopillow.com/atp.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Hullo makes these pretty cool buckwheat hull pillows.

00:49:39 ◼   ► So this is totally different from regular pillows

00:49:42 ◼   ► that are filled with some kind of like soft springy material.

00:49:45 ◼   ► It's almost like a giant bean bag full of buckwheat hulls.

00:49:49 ◼   ► So it supports your head and neck however you set it up

00:49:52 ◼   ► and it kind of just stays there.

00:49:53 ◼   ► It doesn't like slowly collapse over the course of the night

00:49:56 ◼   ► or squish around.

00:49:58 ◼   ► It just stays where you put it.

00:49:59 ◼   ► It's also really cool.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Like it helps you keep cool at night.

00:50:03 ◼   ► It doesn't get hot the way most pillow fill does.

00:50:07 ◼   ► And so it is by far, in my opinion,

00:50:09 ◼   ► they sent me a couple and it is by far

00:50:12 ◼   ► the coolest feeling pillow I have ever used.

00:50:14 ◼   ► I love that part of it, it's really nice.

00:50:17 ◼   ► You can also add and remove buckwheat hulls

00:50:19 ◼   ► as you see fit.

00:50:20 ◼   ► So like if it's a little bit too big for you,

00:50:23 ◼   ► you want like a smaller or kind of looser filled pillow,

00:50:26 ◼   ► you can just unzip the side and pour some out.

00:50:29 ◼   ► Or if you want more, or if you want to kind of rejuvenate

00:50:32 ◼   ► an old Hello pillow over time, you can go to their website

00:50:34 ◼   ► and just order more fill and just dump it in.

00:50:37 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing.

00:50:39 ◼   ► People have been sleeping on buckwheat pillows for centuries

00:50:42 ◼   ► they've been used extensively in Japan

00:50:44 ◼   ► and they remain relatively popular to this day

00:50:47 ◼   ► and it's really a more natural way to sleep.

00:50:49 ◼   ► 'Cause what are you laying your head on every night?

00:50:51 ◼   ► Perhaps it's a bag of bird feathers

00:50:53 ◼   ► or sometimes they're petroleum based foams,

00:50:55 ◼   ► that's no good.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Hullo is made in the USA with quality construction

00:51:00 ◼   ► and quality buckwheat hulls and materials.

00:51:02 ◼   ► They have certified organic cotton cases

00:51:05 ◼   ► that's cut and sewn for durability

00:51:06 ◼   ► and the buckwheat is grown and milled in the United States.

00:51:09 ◼   ► So here's the deal,

00:51:10 ◼   ► you can sleep on a Hullo pillow for 60 nights.

00:51:13 ◼   ► If it isn't for you, just send it back

00:51:15 ◼   ► and they will give you a refund.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Go to hullopillow.com/atp.

00:51:19 ◼   ► If you wanna get more than one,

00:51:21 ◼   ► you can get a discount of up to $20 per pillow

00:51:23 ◼   ► depending on the size.

00:51:24 ◼   ► And every order comes with fast and free shipping.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And 1% of all profits are donated to The Nature Conservancy.

00:51:32 ◼   ► So check out Hullo today at hullopillow.com/atp.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Hullo for sponsoring our show.

00:51:38 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:51:41 ◼   ► - All right, so this is the portion of the show

00:51:45 ◼   ► wherein I take a little power snooze.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Tell me about the new Amazon Echo stuff.

00:51:49 ◼   ► And I say I'm gonna take a Power Snooze because

00:51:52 ◼   ► I bet you if I had an Echo I would really like it,

00:51:54 ◼   ► but because I've never experienced it, I don't really care.

00:51:58 ◼   ► But there's new Echo news

00:52:00 ◼   ► and there's new Sonos news as well.

00:52:02 ◼   ► So one of you take it away, tell me what's going on.

00:52:06 ◼   ► - All right, so basically Amazon held the secret event

00:52:09 ◼   ► where the existence of the event itself

00:52:11 ◼   ► was embargoed, which is hilarious,

00:52:14 ◼   ► the other day and they announced

00:52:16 ◼   ► a whole new line of Echo products, which is pretty cool.

00:52:20 ◼   ► I've been a big fan of the Echo, not since it came out,

00:52:24 ◼   ► but since our friends got one and I saw it

00:52:27 ◼   ► and used it myself at their house,

00:52:29 ◼   ► which is a big important distinction here

00:52:31 ◼   ► for any kind of Echo announcement.

00:52:34 ◼   ► When the Echo first came out, it came kind of out

00:52:36 ◼   ► of nowhere and it had this really weird,

00:52:38 ◼   ► creepy promo video on Amazon's site,

00:52:40 ◼   ► and we all, the entire tech world,

00:52:43 ◼   ► relentlessly made fun of them for it.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And because it really did seem like the creepiest thing

00:52:49 ◼   ► advertised and promoted in the creepiest way,

00:52:53 ◼   ► and it seemed like, you know,

00:52:54 ◼   ► oh, another crazy thing from the company

00:52:56 ◼   ► that brought you the Fire Phone.

00:52:57 ◼   ► It turned out that it was actually really awesome,

00:53:00 ◼   ► and that the Echo ends up being surprisingly useful

00:53:04 ◼   ► and just fun and very satisfying to have in our houses.

00:53:09 ◼   ► And as a result, over the last couple years,

00:53:12 ◼   ► I think it came out two years ago, maybe even three.

00:53:16 ◼   ► But as a result, over the last couple years,

00:53:18 ◼   ► many people around these parts have gotten them

00:53:21 ◼   ► and they're quite fun.

00:53:23 ◼   ► Last Christmas, I know many of us gave them

00:53:24 ◼   ► as gifts to family and stuff.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Only great things have reviews from family

00:53:29 ◼   ► and everything about the Echos.

00:53:31 ◼   ► So very good product line.

00:53:33 ◼   ► However, Amazon also releases a whole bunch of garbage.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Like they release a whole bunch of weird products.

00:53:39 ◼   ► They are kind of taking the spaghetti against the wall

00:53:43 ◼   ► approach to new Echo hardware.

00:53:45 ◼   ► So they have all sorts of crazy things.

00:53:49 ◼   ► They launched the Echo Show, which is the weird,

00:53:52 ◼   ► ugly thing with the screen.

00:53:54 ◼   ► They launched the Echo Look, the weird bedroom camera

00:53:56 ◼   ► where you're supposed to take pictures of yourself

00:53:57 ◼   ► getting dressed every day.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And those kind of fell on their face.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I don't know a lot of people who really enjoy those.

00:54:05 ◼   ► So you kind of don't know, when Amazon announces

00:54:08 ◼   ► something new in the Echo world.

00:54:12 ◼   ► The initial reaction to things has very little bearing,

00:54:16 ◼   ► and the initial appearance of things really,

00:54:18 ◼   ► has very little bearing on how good they'll end up being

00:54:21 ◼   ► and how much they'll end up liking them

00:54:22 ◼   ► or how well they will sell.

00:54:24 ◼   ► So Amazon announced a whole bunch of new Echo stuff

00:54:28 ◼   ► the other day and so now there is,

00:54:31 ◼   ► they finally revised the core product line.

00:54:35 ◼   ► There is finally a second generation

00:54:37 ◼   ► of the tall cylinder version of the Echo.

00:54:40 ◼   ► That used to be the only version of the Echo.

00:54:42 ◼   ► There is now a kind of shorter, stubbier,

00:54:45 ◼   ► optionally cloth-covered cylinder

00:54:48 ◼   ► that looks almost like a tiny HomePod.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And now there's also this little alarm clock thing

00:54:54 ◼   ► with a circular screen that can sit on your nightstand

00:54:57 ◼   ► but also has a camera, so it's kind of like a mini Echo Show

00:55:00 ◼   ► that can also be an alarm clock,

00:55:01 ◼   ► which is kind of interesting.

00:55:03 ◼   ► And there's a whole bunch, right?

00:55:06 ◼   ► - The Echo Connect thing that connects to your phone line

00:55:10 ◼   ► so you can make telephone calls.

00:55:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like a bridge to your landlines

00:55:14 ◼   ► that you can make calls using your Echo

00:55:16 ◼   ► that are routed over your hardwired landline

00:55:18 ◼   ► if you actually have a landline.

00:55:21 ◼   ► That's, I think that's gonna go down into the weird category

00:55:26 ◼   ► that we're probably never gonna hear about again,

00:55:27 ◼   ► but I'm sure somebody will use it.

00:55:28 ◼   ► - Got the Fire TV 4K.

00:55:30 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, and the new stick

00:55:32 ◼   ► that hangs diagonally off your TV.

00:55:35 ◼   ► So these are very different things.

00:55:37 ◼   ► So the Fire TV's, I don't know much about the Fire TV world.

00:55:41 ◼   ► I bought a Fire TV box like two years ago,

00:55:44 ◼   ► didn't really care for its UI at all,

00:55:47 ◼   ► so I ended up just selling it.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Do you use them at all, John?

00:55:51 ◼   ► I forget.

00:55:51 ◼   ► - No, I've seen, my friend who has them,

00:55:54 ◼   ► and I looked at them, they're not bad.

00:55:55 ◼   ► Like, the UI is very Amazon-y, but the performance is okay.

00:55:59 ◼   ► The remote is better than Apple's, like it is--

00:56:02 ◼   ► - Well, that's not what I wanted to do.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Right, it is very similar to the old one and it's got like a ring on it, but at least my

00:56:08 ◼   ► recollection of the old Fire TV thing, it's not flat on the bottom, it's more like shaped

00:56:12 ◼   ► like a triangle, so it actually sits in your hand a little bit like an actual remote, right,

00:56:16 ◼   ► and it doesn't have a touchpad on the whole top of the thing.

00:56:20 ◼   ► Anyway, it's fine.

00:56:24 ◼   ► It has always been cheaper than the Apple TV, and I would say like almost as good, but

00:56:28 ◼   ► of course you can't watch iTunes content on it, so it was never anything that I was going

00:56:32 ◼   ► to get. Maybe if it did 24 hertz output I would have considered it to run like

00:56:35 ◼   ► Plex on it or whatever but it doesn't seem like it never seemed like a speed

00:56:39 ◼   ► demon. Certainly the Apple TV 4k feels faster. The new one doesn't support Dolby

00:56:46 ◼   ► vision which is kind of a shame but maybe they'll add that after the fact. It

00:56:51 ◼   ► does support Dolby Atmos which Apple TV 4k doesn't but I feel but Apple TV 4k

00:56:57 ◼   ► is supposed to get that support but remember this is $100 cheaper than the

00:57:01 ◼   ► Apple TV 4k. It's not just like $15 cheaper, it's significantly cheaper. The form factor

00:57:07 ◼   ► of what Marco was alluding to before, that it dangles off your TV, it is like an HDMI

00:57:12 ◼   ► connector, a ribbon cable, and then a box hanging from its corner off of the ribbon

00:57:17 ◼   ► cable. And the ribbon cable is like 3 inches long. So this is not a box you put in your

00:57:21 ◼   ► entertainment center, it is a thing that you hang off the back of your TV. Which is kind

00:57:26 ◼   ► of interesting. I have actually have a Google, what is it called, the Google thing that I

00:57:31 ◼   ► hangs off the back of your TV. The Chromecast, right? The hang off your back

00:57:35 ◼   ► of the back of your TV thing, it's neat. It's like an acknowledgement that we can

00:57:39 ◼   ► make this thing so small that there's no reason it has to be in your entertainment

00:57:42 ◼   ► center. But it's also not neat in the neat and tidy sense and that you have

00:57:47 ◼   ► this little thing hanging off your TV and just always hangs awkwardly and

00:57:51 ◼   ► you're hoping that no one has a view of that television. Like what if your

00:57:54 ◼   ► television is in a place where someone walking to the room can see the side of

00:57:57 ◼   ► it and now you got this thing hanging off it. It's just it's just not tidy. It's

00:58:01 ◼   ► unseemly it's like a wart like purposely adding a wart to your thing never mind

00:58:04 ◼   ► that you know the idea of hanging even a small amount of weight off of the end of

00:58:08 ◼   ► your HDMI port I suppose it's probably weighs less than a very long cord but

00:58:11 ◼   ► either way thumbs down on that form factor but as far as you know people who

00:58:18 ◼   ► don't have any investment at all in the iTunes world this versus Roku and stuff

00:58:24 ◼   ► though they're all reasonable choices I would have no problem recommending a

00:58:28 ◼   ► Fire TV for someone who wants to have to look at Amazon content and to have access to be

00:58:35 ◼   ► able to watch YouTube on the TV and Netflix. If they happen to have one of the televisions

00:58:39 ◼   ► doesn't have that crap all built in, or if they have a television where that's all built

00:58:43 ◼   ► in, but the built in apps are terrible. The Fire TV apps are better than the built in

00:58:48 ◼   ► ones on most television. So it's an okay product. I don't think it'll change things up. I think

00:58:52 ◼   ► it's just, you know, status quo.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I have a Fire TV Stick.

00:58:56 ◼   ► I think it's the original generation.

00:58:58 ◼   ► And I hadn't used it in probably a year

00:59:03 ◼   ► and then had to, wanted to get it like all updated

00:59:05 ◼   ► and whatnot before we went to the beach a couple months back.

00:59:08 ◼   ► And doing that update took like a day

00:59:11 ◼   ► because I had to do an update, wait, reboot,

00:59:14 ◼   ► do an update, wait, reboot.

00:59:15 ◼   ► It was like updating Windows for goodness sakes.

00:59:17 ◼   ► But the new revamped UI that came with it was very nice.

00:59:21 ◼   ► And as a portable thing that's easy to travel with,

00:59:26 ◼   ► I love my Fire TV Stick.

00:59:27 ◼   ► As something that's an alternative to say an Apple TV,

00:59:30 ◼   ► no thank you, I'd much rather have an Apple TV.

00:59:33 ◼   ► But the user interface is fine.

00:59:35 ◼   ► It got a lot better with this revamp

00:59:36 ◼   ► that happened sometime in the last 12 months.

00:59:39 ◼   ► And it's fast enough to do the sorts of things I wanna do.

00:59:41 ◼   ► But if I was living with it every day,

00:59:44 ◼   ► like especially your situation, Marco,

00:59:46 ◼   ► where all of your TV consumption happens

00:59:49 ◼   ► via some sort of box,

00:59:50 ◼   ► I would not recommend a Fire TV stick.

00:59:52 ◼   ► Now that is very different than the 4K,

00:59:54 ◼   ► which presumably is considerably faster, better, et cetera.

00:59:57 ◼   ► But in terms of UI, it's fine.

00:59:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, the whole Amazon Fire TV thing

01:00:04 ◼   ► is not an area that I play in.

01:00:07 ◼   ► But the Echo very much is.

01:00:10 ◼   ► And so all of these new Echos,

01:00:11 ◼   ► I'm really glad that Amazon's finally doing more

01:00:16 ◼   ► with just the base model Echo,

01:00:18 ◼   ► not just making new, weird accessory versions

01:00:21 ◼   ► and different things that serve different roles,

01:00:24 ◼   ► but also just finally revving the main speaker.

01:00:28 ◼   ► The main problem the Echo has always had for me is,

01:00:32 ◼   ► well, it's not the most attractive thing in the world,

01:00:34 ◼   ► but the main problem for me has always been

01:00:36 ◼   ► that it doesn't sound very good.

01:00:39 ◼   ► It doesn't get that loud,

01:00:41 ◼   ► and the sound quality is not very good,

01:00:43 ◼   ► 'cause it really is just,

01:00:45 ◼   ► It's one speaker pointed downwards above a second driver

01:00:50 ◼   ► for being a woofer.

01:00:51 ◼   ► It's just like a single tweeter, a single woofer.

01:00:53 ◼   ► They point down and they don't sound very good.

01:00:57 ◼   ► The microphones have always been excellent.

01:00:59 ◼   ► It doesn't seem to have trouble hearing me

01:01:00 ◼   ► compared to anything else,

01:01:01 ◼   ► but the sound quality is just really poor.

01:01:06 ◼   ► And it really says a lot about how convenient the Echo is

01:01:10 ◼   ► and how compelling the whole package is

01:01:13 ◼   ► that we listen to, with the exception of my desk

01:01:18 ◼   ► with headphones while I'm working,

01:01:20 ◼   ► while we're out in the house,

01:01:22 ◼   ► we listen to far more music on the Echo,

01:01:25 ◼   ► even though it sounds like crap,

01:01:27 ◼   ► than any other mechanism by which we have to play music.

01:01:30 ◼   ► And that includes, we have a whole nice speaker setup

01:01:34 ◼   ► with an Apple TV that could feed it through AirPlay

01:01:36 ◼   ► if we wanted to, or the Apple TV playing music itself.

01:01:41 ◼   ► We have Sonos, which we'll get to,

01:01:43 ◼   ► and we never use these things to play music,

01:01:45 ◼   ► comparably speaking, because the Echo is just so much

01:01:48 ◼   ► more convenient to just say, "Hey, name of thing,

01:01:51 ◼   ► "play fish," and that's it.

01:01:52 ◼   ► Or, "Play a song from the '90s."

01:01:54 ◼   ► It's just really, really nice and compelling to use that,

01:01:57 ◼   ► so much so that we've been willing to overlook

01:02:00 ◼   ► the relatively poor sound quality,

01:02:03 ◼   ► because most people simply don't care.

01:02:05 ◼   ► And even I, who do care, I would rather just have it

01:02:07 ◼   ► be easy then to have to set up some fiddly thing

01:02:10 ◼   ► on a better, nicer system.

01:02:13 ◼   ► - To echo that, haha, we have the Google Home,

01:02:15 ◼   ► but it's the same thing.

01:02:16 ◼   ► It's got a terrible speaker in it.

01:02:18 ◼   ► Like it's probably worse than the Echo.

01:02:19 ◼   ► It's so, you know, the Google Home is actually even smaller

01:02:22 ◼   ► than the big Echo.

01:02:23 ◼   ► And I think it's probably just got one terrible speaker

01:02:25 ◼   ► in there. It does not sound good.

01:02:26 ◼   ► And yet, when my daughter has her friends over,

01:02:29 ◼   ► all they do is ask that thing to play music.

01:02:31 ◼   ► Like that is their favorite activity.

01:02:33 ◼   ► More music has been played on that thing

01:02:35 ◼   ► than any other device in their house easily.

01:02:37 ◼   ► And that's like, you know, cause again, we have,

01:02:39 ◼   ► I've got my television speakers,

01:02:42 ◼   ► and you could play things through the Apple TV

01:02:43 ◼   ► on the television or through the receiver on the television

01:02:45 ◼   ► without even turning the television on,

01:02:48 ◼   ► but they just wanted to talk to the thing

01:02:50 ◼   ► and make it play songs.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Because what other, they just say words in the air,

01:02:55 ◼   ► speculatively, and it finds the song that they want

01:02:59 ◼   ► and plays it, and they love it,

01:03:00 ◼   ► even though it sounds like crap.

01:03:02 ◼   ► - And I will say too, I have been trying to give Siri

01:03:08 ◼   ► more chances in my life, 'cause everyone keeps saying

01:03:11 ◼   ► how good it is, how good it's getting,

01:03:12 ◼   ► how it's so much better than it used to be.

01:03:15 ◼   ► And so I have tried in many occasions recently

01:03:19 ◼   ► to have Siri play me music as well,

01:03:21 ◼   ► to just kinda get a sense.

01:03:22 ◼   ► So I'll issue it similar queries,

01:03:24 ◼   ► like play songs by cake or whatever.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Like I'll issue it a fairly simple music query.

01:03:31 ◼   ► And Siri gets it right about a quarter of the time.

01:03:36 ◼   ► And it's really frustrating.

01:03:38 ◼   ► Whereas the Echo gets it right almost every time.

01:03:42 ◼   ► It's really quite shocking how different the two are

01:03:46 ◼   ► in reliability and speed and just the sensibility

01:03:51 ◼   ► of responses for things like music.

01:03:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, similarly, Google Home,

01:03:56 ◼   ► like my daughter and her friends say things like,

01:03:58 ◼   ► play song whatever but the one with whatever in it.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Like there are variants of songs

01:04:03 ◼   ► where multiple artists cover them

01:04:04 ◼   ► and they will say a sentence describing the song they want

01:04:07 ◼   ► and it will find the thing for them.

01:04:09 ◼   ► And not only that, it will say,

01:04:10 ◼   ► "Okay, I found blah, blah, blah featuring blah, blah, blah."

01:04:13 ◼   ► Like, I don't know if it's just doing fuzzy word matching

01:04:16 ◼   ► of finding like song title plus the name of the person

01:04:20 ◼   ► they said, but they ramble on these whole sentences

01:04:22 ◼   ► and I'm like, "Listen, I'm amazed it finds the song

01:04:25 ◼   ► that they were asking about."

01:04:27 ◼   ► When I don't think a human could have found it.

01:04:29 ◼   ► A Google search probably could have,

01:04:30 ◼   ► maybe that's what they're doing.

01:04:31 ◼   ► They're just like literally doing a Google search

01:04:33 ◼   ► and taking the first hit.

01:04:34 ◼   ► But the fact that it works is all, it's magic.

01:04:36 ◼   ► And saying that to Siri would just be this word salad

01:04:39 ◼   ► of misheard, you know, you know what it does

01:04:41 ◼   ► when you say stuff and it doesn't understand what you say?

01:04:43 ◼   ► It would assemble that and then it would be like,

01:04:45 ◼   ► I'm sorry, I can't help with that because it doesn't,

01:04:48 ◼   ► I don't think it has the fallback of,

01:04:50 ◼   ► can't make heads or tails of this,

01:04:51 ◼   ► throw it into the magic that is Google

01:04:53 ◼   ► and try the number one hit.

01:04:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:04:57 ◼   ► And the assistant, like the Amazon assistant,

01:05:01 ◼   ► I don't know if Google does this too, it probably does,

01:05:03 ◼   ► but it even does lyrics search.

01:05:05 ◼   ► You can say, "Play the song that goes blah,"

01:05:08 ◼   ► and it will search for those lyrics.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And it's just incredible how good it is.

01:05:14 ◼   ► And honestly, one of the reasons why I am not that excited

01:05:19 ◼   ► about the HomePod is that I know,

01:05:23 ◼   ► like just judging on how Siri does,

01:05:26 ◼   ► if you have an iPhone or an iPad or an Apple TV,

01:05:28 ◼   ► giving it these same queries,

01:05:30 ◼   ► I know that these other systems are gonna be better than it

01:05:32 ◼   ► in that regard at least.

01:05:36 ◼   ► - You gotta do the chained,

01:05:38 ◼   ► a lot of YouTube videos showing this,

01:05:39 ◼   ► chaining the assistants to talk to each other.

01:05:41 ◼   ► So they're like, you know, dingus,

01:05:43 ◼   ► tell the other dingus to play songs by whatever, you know?

01:05:46 ◼   ► Or just like have this big chain,

01:05:48 ◼   ► let the smart ones figure out what song you want

01:05:50 ◼   ► and convey to the one with the good speaker to play it now.

01:05:53 ◼   ► - So that is actually a great segue into this other thing.

01:05:58 ◼   ► - I know, I said that for you.

01:05:59 ◼   ► - Thanks, John.

01:06:00 ◼   ► So today, we've had a couple days to digest this Echo stuff,

01:06:04 ◼   ► but today there was a Sonos announcement.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Sonos has made wonderful sounding speakers

01:06:14 ◼   ► and very like, they're basically products

01:06:17 ◼   ► that are designed to be sold on Apple stores.

01:06:20 ◼   ► It's like, I know they weren't officially,

01:06:23 ◼   ► but like they are really, really like high end speakers.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Well, they're high priced speakers that sound pretty good.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And they don't sound amazing and credible

01:06:37 ◼   ► compared to high end audio file speakers,

01:06:39 ◼   ► but for consumer grade, I guess, gear,

01:06:44 ◼   ► they sound very good.

01:06:46 ◼   ► And compared to all these other smart cylinders,

01:06:50 ◼   ► they sound great.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And Sonos have been around for a very long time,

01:06:54 ◼   ► and they have focused mainly on multi-room audio

01:06:57 ◼   ► and this kind of library management of things.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And in fact, much of the benefit of AirPlay 2

01:07:05 ◼   ► is what Sonos has been doing all this time,

01:07:06 ◼   ► where basically it hands off the playback

01:07:09 ◼   ► to the speaker itself.

01:07:11 ◼   ► So you're not just playing a constant stream from the phone.

01:07:15 ◼   ► You're telling the speaker, here's this file, play it.

01:07:18 ◼   ► Or here's the next 15 minutes of audio, play it.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Or go to this URL and just play what you find there,

01:07:24 ◼   ► 'cause they're all networked, which is nice.

01:07:26 ◼   ► it has lots of benefits like if one person leaves the house

01:07:30 ◼   ► with the phone that was controlling it,

01:07:32 ◼   ► the music doesn't stop.

01:07:34 ◼   ► And it doesn't skip if you bend over

01:07:36 ◼   ► and your waist is blocking your pocket or something.

01:07:40 ◼   ► It's a really nice architecture

01:07:42 ◼   ► and it also makes things like multi-room audio

01:07:44 ◼   ► significantly easier to do.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And so anyway, Sonos has had this for years

01:07:49 ◼   ► and years and years and they really have owned

01:07:51 ◼   ► the high-end multi-room audio market.

01:07:55 ◼   ► The main problem with Sonos in recent years

01:07:58 ◼   ► is that when the Echo came out, everyone's like,

01:08:01 ◼   ► well, it's a lot easier to just do this.

01:08:03 ◼   ► I mean, playing stuff through Sonos is cumbersome

01:08:05 ◼   ► because their app is really quite poor.

01:08:08 ◼   ► It's unintuitive, it's incredibly complicated

01:08:11 ◼   ► 'cause it can do so much and it's laid out

01:08:13 ◼   ► in a not that intuitive way.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Honestly, it feels like an Android app

01:08:18 ◼   ► and I don't mean much disrespect by that

01:08:22 ◼   ► but it just feels like, it feels like an app designed

01:08:24 ◼   ► by the Windows and Android aesthetic.

01:08:27 ◼   ► And so it's just very cumbersome to play stuff

01:08:31 ◼   ► on a Sonos system, even though when you finally do,

01:08:34 ◼   ► it sounds great and you can do multi-room stuff

01:08:36 ◼   ► really easily and stuff like that.

01:08:38 ◼   ► So the Echo comes out and it's really crappy

01:08:43 ◼   ► at sound quality and initially doesn't have

01:08:46 ◼   ► multi-room audio support, but it's really, really,

01:08:49 ◼   ► really, really easy to get stuff playing.

01:08:52 ◼   ► You can say what you want and it just starts playing.

01:08:54 ◼   ► And it turns out that's incredibly compelling

01:08:55 ◼   ► as we said earlier.

01:08:56 ◼   ► And so many Sonos owners, myself included,

01:09:01 ◼   ► our Sonos stuff has basically been gathering dust

01:09:04 ◼   ► ever since the Echo came out.

01:09:06 ◼   ► So today, Sonos announced that they have partnered

01:09:10 ◼   ► with Amazon at some seemingly fairly deep level.

01:09:14 ◼   ► And they announced a partnership like months ago,

01:09:17 ◼   ► but who knew if anything was ever gonna come out of it?

01:09:20 ◼   ► Well, now it is.

01:09:21 ◼   ► They now have a version of what used to be called

01:09:24 ◼   ► the Play One speaker, their lowest end, smallest little,

01:09:28 ◼   ► it's like a little cube almost, speaker.

01:09:30 ◼   ► They now have a version of that

01:09:32 ◼   ► that is basically also an Echo inside of it.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Has the little microphone ring up top

01:09:39 ◼   ► and a couple of extra buttons

01:09:41 ◼   ► and now they basically have a Sonos Echo.

01:09:45 ◼   ► And they also have integration

01:09:46 ◼   ► with the Echo Assistant platform

01:09:49 ◼   ► so that you can tell your Echos to play things

01:09:53 ◼   ► on your Sonos and stuff like that.

01:09:55 ◼   ► And forgive me, I haven't looked into too many

01:09:56 ◼   ► of the details on that yet,

01:09:57 ◼   ► 'cause I haven't had time yet,

01:09:58 ◼   ► because this all came out today.

01:10:01 ◼   ► So some of the finer details of this

01:10:04 ◼   ► might be wrong or incomplete.

01:10:06 ◼   ► But basically they announced what looks like

01:10:09 ◼   ► surprisingly deep and comprehensive integration

01:10:12 ◼   ► between the Echo products and Sonos products,

01:10:15 ◼   ► along with this new Sonos speaker that has a built-in Echo.

01:10:18 ◼   ► And if this works as they are advertising,

01:10:23 ◼   ► it's gonna be awesome.

01:10:25 ◼   ► And it's actually not that ridiculous of a price too.

01:10:28 ◼   ► Like the new Sonos One, which is their new version

01:10:32 ◼   ► of the Play One speaker, is 200 bucks.

01:10:36 ◼   ► And it's positioned roughly, like market wise,

01:10:40 ◼   ► roughly where like the tall Echo cylinder is positioned.

01:10:44 ◼   ► It's not supposed to be a HomePod competitor.

01:10:46 ◼   ► The HomePod competitor is kind of supposed to be

01:10:49 ◼   ► their next one up, which they haven't updated

01:10:50 ◼   ► with Alexa yet, sorry, with the Amazon Assistant yet.

01:10:54 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:10:55 ◼   ► - Why is it not supposed to be a HomePod competitor?

01:10:57 ◼   ► 'Cause it looks like a HomePod to me.

01:10:58 ◼   ► It is a single thing with one speaker,

01:11:01 ◼   ► you know, with one set of speakers in it.

01:11:03 ◼   ► It's about the same size as the HomePod.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Is it just because it's like 100 something bucks cheaper?

01:11:06 ◼   ► Like, it seems like a HomePod competitor to me.

01:11:09 ◼   ► - Well, it's going to serve as a HomePod competitor,

01:11:12 ◼   ► effectively, but one of the reasons why Apple,

01:11:16 ◼   ► when they were doing price comparisons,

01:11:18 ◼   ► they positioned the HomePod against the Sonos Play 3,

01:11:21 ◼   ► the next speaker up that's more expensive.

01:11:23 ◼   ► And I think part of that is because the Play 1

01:11:26 ◼   ► only has one driver, or it's just like the Echo,

01:11:29 ◼   ► it has two drivers that it's just forming one channel,

01:11:33 ◼   ► whereas the HomePod has, didn't the HomePod

01:11:35 ◼   ► have tweeters and a big circle around the whole top of it,

01:11:38 ◼   ► and maybe one big woofer in the middle

01:11:40 ◼   ► or something like that?

01:11:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, but how does that change the sound?

01:11:44 ◼   ► - You're not getting stereo out of it.

01:11:46 ◼   ► We've talked about this before,

01:11:46 ◼   ► about how it's doing all the channels

01:11:48 ◼   ► through the single location,

01:11:50 ◼   ► so you're not getting a right channel,

01:11:51 ◼   ► a left channel that's separated by six feet

01:11:53 ◼   ► from either one of these devices.

01:11:55 ◼   ► - Well, when you only have a single driver set

01:12:00 ◼   ► pointing in one direction,

01:12:02 ◼   ► you can't really do anything with stereo imaging.

01:12:05 ◼   ► It's gonna be mono.

01:12:07 ◼   ► But the HomePod is kind of this weird hybrid

01:12:10 ◼   ► where because it has drivers pointing all around it,

01:12:14 ◼   ► It can do things by bouncing stuff off the walls

01:12:16 ◼   ► and everything to try to kind of simulate things

01:12:17 ◼   ► in different directions, because it actually

01:12:19 ◼   ► is firing sound in multiple directions.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Whereas the Sonos One series only fires it straight ahead,

01:12:27 ◼   ► and the Echo fires one set of drivers straight down,

01:12:31 ◼   ► so it kind of has like a ring effect,

01:12:33 ◼   ► but it can't control what goes left, what goes right.

01:12:37 ◼   ► So these other things are effectively mono,

01:12:41 ◼   ► whereas the HomePod and the higher-end Sonos models

01:12:45 ◼   ► have multiple speakers that they could adjust

01:12:48 ◼   ► and direct in different ways.

01:12:51 ◼   ► So I think it's, in practice, this is a HomePod competitor

01:12:55 ◼   ► in the same way the Echo's a HomePod competitor.

01:12:57 ◼   ► But if you ask Apple marketing,

01:12:59 ◼   ► what is the HomePod competing against,

01:13:00 ◼   ► they're gonna go with the higher-end models

01:13:02 ◼   ► in part because of those technicalities,

01:13:04 ◼   ► in part because of just sheer physical size,

01:13:06 ◼   ► and in part because they're more expensive.

01:13:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Play 3 looks more like the iPod Hi-Fi.

01:13:10 ◼   ► it's a rectangular thing.

01:13:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, this is good.

01:13:15 ◼   ► I hope, I really hope this works,

01:13:17 ◼   ► and I hope that it does smart things integrating with,

01:13:20 ◼   ► so like, for instance, I already have other Sonos speakers.

01:13:25 ◼   ► I have a few other ones throughout the house.

01:13:27 ◼   ► You know, can I only buy one of these things?

01:13:30 ◼   ► Do I even have to buy any of these things,

01:13:31 ◼   ► or can I just have the Echos connect to the Sonoses

01:13:34 ◼   ► through the apps?

01:13:35 ◼   ► I think they can do that, actually, but I don't know yet.

01:13:37 ◼   ► So this is, I have a lot of research to do,

01:13:39 ◼   ► and we have a lot of, you know, just,

01:13:42 ◼   ► no one has actually used this device.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I don't think there's any reviews of it,

01:13:45 ◼   ► except there was this one on Wired

01:13:47 ◼   ► that was kind of not that specific.

01:13:50 ◼   ► So, I don't know, we'll see, but,

01:13:52 ◼   ► I hope this works as well as their advertising does,

01:13:58 ◼   ► because if it does, this is going to be a total game changer

01:14:02 ◼   ► in the Echo market, because it will be finally

01:14:05 ◼   ► a fusion between the good sounding world of Sonos

01:14:10 ◼   ► and the really convenient world of Echo.

01:14:12 ◼   ► It's gonna be a problem for the HomePod, I think.

01:14:15 ◼   ► I mean, the HomePod is already,

01:14:16 ◼   ► given the HomePod's price

01:14:20 ◼   ► and relatively limited apparent capabilities,

01:14:25 ◼   ► I think the HomePod's gonna have a hard time in the market.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Now I think it's gonna have an even harder time than before

01:14:32 ◼   ► because if this works at all,

01:14:34 ◼   ► The Sonos Play One is, sorry, the Sonos One,

01:14:37 ◼   ► the new one with the Echo built in,

01:14:40 ◼   ► is going to be a very compelling alternative

01:14:43 ◼   ► for a lot of people.

01:14:45 ◼   ► - So a lot of people are asking after the story came out,

01:14:47 ◼   ► why doesn't Amazon just buy Sonos?

01:14:49 ◼   ► They seem to buy everybody.

01:14:50 ◼   ► Like this type of integration,

01:14:51 ◼   ► this type of partnership is practically unheard of.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Like it's basically Sonos saying,

01:14:55 ◼   ► we're never gonna do all this stuff that Amazon does.

01:14:57 ◼   ► And Amazon apparently saying,

01:14:59 ◼   ► we don't wanna build a really nice speaker.

01:15:01 ◼   ► We'll just, our new version of, as you noted,

01:15:03 ◼   ► the new version, the new good version of the Echo,

01:15:06 ◼   ► didn't really make a lot of progress sound.

01:15:08 ◼   ► I think it's a little dull be like,

01:15:09 ◼   ► oh, we'll make it sound better,

01:15:10 ◼   ► but they didn't change the hardware in a way

01:15:12 ◼   ► that makes it sound like they are serious

01:15:14 ◼   ► about audio quality.

01:15:15 ◼   ► They just tweak the, you know, but like, so they said,

01:15:18 ◼   ► okay, well Sonos, you do the sound part

01:15:20 ◼   ► and we will do the software part.

01:15:22 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure what's in it for Amazon

01:15:25 ◼   ► to continue that relationship.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Like why, why not take, you know,

01:15:31 ◼   ► those nice profits that Sonos is making by selling expensive speakers? Why doesn't Amazon

01:15:35 ◼   ► want those too? Like arguably Amazon is providing the majority of the value in this arrangement

01:15:41 ◼   ► because I think it is easier to make a nice speaker than it is to make a thing that understands

01:15:48 ◼   ► words that you say and does intelligent things like they've got all the back end that is

01:15:51 ◼   ► finding that music for you and you know playing it back and the music subscription service

01:15:56 ◼   ► and all sorts of other things making a speaker compared to that is relatively easy and I

01:16:00 ◼   ► And I suppose Sonos's secret sauce is the multi-room stuff.

01:16:02 ◼   ► But anyway, there seems to be a natural synergy

01:16:05 ◼   ► between these companies.

01:16:06 ◼   ► And given the fact that Amazon bought things like IMDB

01:16:08 ◼   ► and other companies that seem like it should be--

01:16:11 ◼   ► or Whole Foods, right?

01:16:14 ◼   ► I mean, buy-- like, how is that just buy Sonos?

01:16:17 ◼   ► Like, what are you even waiting for?

01:16:19 ◼   ► It makes me uncomfortable as a consumer,

01:16:21 ◼   ► if I was into these type of products,

01:16:24 ◼   ► to know that I'm buying a thing between two companies that

01:16:28 ◼   ► frenemies, right? They're competitors, but they're also in this mutually beneficial arrangement.

01:16:35 ◼   ► It just seems like there's a tension there, and I'm not sure how that is sustainable.

01:16:39 ◼   ► Not that I'm for big companies buying up all the small companies, but Sonos kind of had its

01:16:46 ◼   ► chance to figure out the, you know, make something that you can talk to, and they've essentially

01:16:52 ◼   ► outsourced it to Amazon, so I don't know.

01:16:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm with you too.

01:16:57 ◼   ► I don't see why Amazon gets enough out of this deal

01:17:00 ◼   ► to make it worth it.

01:17:01 ◼   ► Like even the integration, it's such that also,

01:17:05 ◼   ► like when I went to go pre-order the Sonos One today,

01:17:10 ◼   ► you can't buy it on Amazon.

01:17:12 ◼   ► Like you couldn't buy every other Sonos on Amazon,

01:17:15 ◼   ► but this one you can pre-order only

01:17:17 ◼   ► on Sonos's website right now.

01:17:19 ◼   ► It's like they couldn't even coordinate that?

01:17:21 ◼   ► Can you like order toilet paper from the Sonos One?

01:17:24 ◼   ► - I think, the way it's advertised

01:17:26 ◼   ► and the way the product page positions it,

01:17:29 ◼   ► it looks like it has full Echo integration,

01:17:32 ◼   ► like a full Echo built into it basically.

01:17:34 ◼   ► So I think you should be able to do

01:17:36 ◼   ► everything the Echo can do.

01:17:38 ◼   ► So I don't, that's the thing, it's very,

01:17:41 ◼   ► a lot of this will depend on like

01:17:42 ◼   ► when we actually get these things,

01:17:43 ◼   ► like does it actually do those things?

01:17:46 ◼   ► Is it actually as good?

01:17:47 ◼   ► You know, what if there's other problems?

01:17:48 ◼   ► Like what if the microphones aren't as good

01:17:50 ◼   ► as on a real Echo.

01:17:51 ◼   ► You know, there's gonna be issues like that,

01:17:54 ◼   ► but the good thing is though,

01:17:56 ◼   ► if this integration works the way it appears to

01:18:00 ◼   ► on all their advertisements and in the apps and everything,

01:18:03 ◼   ► you might not even need to buy the Sonos One.

01:18:06 ◼   ► Like, from what everyone's saying,

01:18:08 ◼   ► you can just connect your Sonos account

01:18:10 ◼   ► in the Alexa app and just start sending commands to it

01:18:15 ◼   ► and you can just start controlling them.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Like that's kind of incredible if that's true.

01:18:21 ◼   ► And so like, again, like I don't,

01:18:23 ◼   ► this will all depend on how well this stuff is implemented.

01:18:26 ◼   ► But yeah, basically I ask again in a couple weeks.

01:18:29 ◼   ► But I'm really happy about this.

01:18:32 ◼   ► As recently as two months ago,

01:18:35 ◼   ► I was saying that I would be surprised

01:18:38 ◼   ► if Sonos was still in business in a year.

01:18:40 ◼   ► 'Cause it seemed like things weren't going well for them.

01:18:43 ◼   ► But this could really turn things around for them.

01:18:47 ◼   ► if this makes a lot of people buy more Sonos stuff.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And also, one area that maybe we're not seeing

01:18:54 ◼   ► by looking at just the speaker,

01:18:56 ◼   ► like the little portable speaker side of this thing,

01:18:58 ◼   ► one area in which maybe Amazon wanted to get in

01:19:01 ◼   ► that they couldn't easily do themselves is home theater.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Sonos in recent years has dramatically gotten

01:19:10 ◼   ► into the home theater business with their soundbar products

01:19:13 ◼   ► and then later on like the subwoofer,

01:19:16 ◼   ► I think they play bass in the subwoofer.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Their names are a little confusing,

01:19:20 ◼   ► so I forget which is which.

01:19:21 ◼   ► But they launched their first soundbar a couple years back,

01:19:24 ◼   ► and I think they have a second one,

01:19:26 ◼   ► I don't even know anymore.

01:19:28 ◼   ► But I think those actually sell really well.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And Sonos, I think, does pretty well

01:19:32 ◼   ► in the soundbar business now.

01:19:35 ◼   ► So if Amazon wanted to get more like Echo Music playback

01:19:39 ◼   ► into home theater systems,

01:19:42 ◼   ► maybe this is what they get out of this deal.

01:19:44 ◼   ► maybe they get access to this market

01:19:45 ◼   ► of high-end home theater stuff.

01:19:47 ◼   ► That the Echo hardware being this kind of like,

01:19:51 ◼   ► you know, inexpensive, kind of crappy audio products,

01:19:55 ◼   ► we're probably never gonna get into that business.

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01:21:34 ◼   ► Hi, I'm back.

01:21:38 ◼   ► Ready to talk about alarm clocks, Casey?

01:21:42 ◼   ► I am so excited to talk about alarm clocks.

01:21:46 ◼   ► Tell me more.

01:21:48 ◼   ► This is just a coincidence.

01:21:49 ◼   ► I did not have any inside information about Amazon's product announcements, but a show

01:21:55 ◼   ► or two ago, I mentioned offhand how I was looking for something to replace my clock

01:22:01 ◼   ► radio from the '80s.

01:22:02 ◼   ► that would just perform one function that wouldn't be, you know, I wasn't gonna use

01:22:06 ◼   ► my iOS devices which potentially travel around the house and I have to remember to put it

01:22:10 ◼   ► on my bedside and plug in, just wanted something that was always on my bedside that I could

01:22:14 ◼   ► look at and always showed me the time and then had an alarm on it and that's about it.

01:22:20 ◼   ► And what Amazon came out with is this little ball thing.

01:22:23 ◼   ► It's like the Amazon Echo Show in that it's like a screen and it shows you the weather

01:22:28 ◼   ► and tells you what time it is and I guess shows you news stories that you don't want

01:22:31 ◼   ► see and annoys you with all the other stuff like that. But anyway, it's got a circular screen on it

01:22:35 ◼   ► and it's 130 bucks and it's basically a smart, dedicated, looks like an alarm clock thing.

01:22:43 ◼   ► And a lot of people saying, "Hey, is what you were asking for someone, probably not Apple,

01:22:48 ◼   ► to make some kind of dedicated alarm clock electronic component thing?" And guess what?

01:22:53 ◼   ► Amazon did it because, as Jason Snell, I think it's Jason Snell, said in his article about it,

01:22:58 ◼   ► god bless amazon with her at every single form factor and seeing what people might buy

01:23:02 ◼   ► they that's the thing that amazon does they they just make a bunch of crap and

01:23:06 ◼   ► you know maybe people like this maybe they won't we'll just keep trying um it's cute i'll give it

01:23:12 ◼   ► that but and you know 130 is kind of ridiculous um but the thing that makes it uh makes me pretty

01:23:20 ◼   ► sure i'm never gonna buy this is that it has a camera on it and i'm not one of those people who's

01:23:24 ◼   ► paranoid about cameras but of all the places I'm not going to stick a camera of dubious

01:23:28 ◼   ► security it's next to my bed.

01:23:30 ◼   ► So sorry Amazon.

01:23:34 ◼   ► If this thing didn't have a camera then I would probably still not buy it because my

01:23:39 ◼   ► next fallback position would be Marco hated the screen and it was really annoying and

01:23:42 ◼   ► this has the same screen so unless someone told me "oh the screen they solved that problem

01:23:45 ◼   ► you can make it to the screen it's not annoying or not too bright or whatever" I probably

01:23:49 ◼   ► still wouldn't get it but the camera no deal for me.

01:23:53 ◼   ► And that's despite the fact that when we talked about the Amazon Look, the thing that takes

01:23:56 ◼   ► pictures of your outfits and stuff, that I totally endorse the idea of having more cameras

01:24:00 ◼   ► in the house for functions like that.

01:24:02 ◼   ► But for me personally, my bedside table is a no-go.

01:24:05 ◼   ► That's just my position.

01:24:06 ◼   ► If you don't mind it and if you're not concerned about security or whatever, then by all means

01:24:10 ◼   ► go for it and tell me how annoying it is.

01:24:12 ◼   ► But I'm not getting this thing.

01:24:13 ◼   ► That's a different lifestyle.

01:24:14 ◼   ► No, I mean, I think there's a theme of my opinions of Amazon products, basically.

01:24:22 ◼   ► and that is that when Amazon does things

01:24:24 ◼   ► that are related to sheer functionality

01:24:27 ◼   ► or voice response and voice interfaces,

01:24:31 ◼   ► I really like the way they do things most of the time.

01:24:33 ◼   ► When it comes to UI, I really don't like

01:24:38 ◼   ► almost any visual interface that Amazon makes.

01:24:42 ◼   ► The Echo Show, I really did not like.

01:24:45 ◼   ► This thing I think would have the exact same problem

01:24:47 ◼   ► as you mentioned with just like, you know,

01:24:49 ◼   ► Like, it takes a certain degree of standards and taste

01:24:54 ◼   ► and good decision making to do a user interface

01:24:58 ◼   ► like this well, and I don't think Amazon has that talent

01:25:01 ◼   ► right now, or at least they don't let it shine.

01:25:04 ◼   ► They just, they have not shown that they can make

01:25:07 ◼   ► a good interface.

01:25:09 ◼   ► The Kindles have always been interface disasters.

01:25:11 ◼   ► The only reason anybody enjoyed using Kindles

01:25:13 ◼   ► is because for most of the heyday of the black and white

01:25:17 ◼   ► E Ink models, there just wasn't much of an interface there,

01:25:22 ◼   ► so Amazon's mediocrity at interface design

01:25:25 ◼   ► was less of a problem with this primitive thing

01:25:27 ◼   ► that just couldn't do that much.

01:25:30 ◼   ► But they have gotten progressively more and more annoying

01:25:33 ◼   ► as the technology has gotten better,

01:25:35 ◼   ► and now that they have these full color screens,

01:25:38 ◼   ► the interface design is about as good as it is

01:25:40 ◼   ► on their tablets and their TV boxes,

01:25:42 ◼   ► which is not that good.

01:25:45 ◼   ► So this is the kind of product that if Apple made something

01:25:49 ◼   ► like this, it might be really good.

01:25:53 ◼   ► Although you could argue they do.

01:25:54 ◼   ► It's an Apple Watch at nightstand mode.

01:25:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:57 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:25:58 ◼   ► - But you know, or an iPhone and a dock.

01:26:01 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, this is the kind of thing

01:26:04 ◼   ► that I don't think Amazon should make

01:26:07 ◼   ► with their current talent.

01:26:09 ◼   ► And also, you know, the camera I think is going to be

01:26:12 ◼   ► one of the most turn-offish factors of it,

01:26:16 ◼   ► why does this need a camera?

01:26:18 ◼   ► And the only reason I can think of

01:26:19 ◼   ► is they really wanna push their video calling thing.

01:26:22 ◼   ► They're trying, obviously, very hard to make that a thing,

01:26:25 ◼   ► even though I don't think anybody actually wants it,

01:26:26 ◼   ► but if this didn't have the camera,

01:26:30 ◼   ► not only could it maybe be five bucks cheaper,

01:26:33 ◼   ► but I think more people would buy it lacking a camera

01:26:36 ◼   ► than anybody who's gonna buy it with a camera.

01:26:39 ◼   ► This seems like one of those corporate strategy tax things

01:26:41 ◼   ► Like they're obviously trying so hard to push

01:26:44 ◼   ► calling people on the Echos that they're putting

01:26:47 ◼   ► the cameras in all these different models

01:26:49 ◼   ► that like really probably shouldn't have them.

01:26:52 ◼   ► And I think this would be a much better product without it.

01:26:54 ◼   ► So yeah, I just, I don't see this being a good thing

01:26:58 ◼   ► with the combination of the camera

01:27:00 ◼   ► and Amazon's terrible UI taste.

01:27:03 ◼   ► But the concept is a good concept.

01:27:06 ◼   ► And I hope someone, Amazon or not, does it right.

01:27:09 ◼   ► because I think that would be a really nice market.

01:27:12 ◼   ► Maybe you put it in a kitchen, it wouldn't be as bad.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Like there's nothing that says this is supposed to be on your bedside table.

01:27:17 ◼   ► That's just the where I was interested in putting it.

01:27:18 ◼   ► But if you put it in your kitchen, it is less ugly and gigantic.

01:27:22 ◼   ► Or I don't know how gigantic it is because I don't have one.

01:27:24 ◼   ► But like the the other one certainly looks big.

01:27:26 ◼   ► I know it's not actually that big when you get it in person,

01:27:28 ◼   ► but it's like it's like a rectangular monolith.

01:27:30 ◼   ► This is a cute little ball.

01:27:32 ◼   ► And so maybe it would fit in more places in people's lives.

01:27:35 ◼   ► And the camera, because it's so cheap, it just feels like a hedge.

01:27:38 ◼   ► like maybe we'll think of something cool to do with this, or maybe you can hold things

01:27:40 ◼   ► up to it and we'll find them on Amazon and buy them for you, you know, and that is the

01:27:44 ◼   ► video conferencing angle too, but the camera just gives you a lot of possibilities, so

01:27:47 ◼   ► I understand why it's there, it's just that for me it makes it not a choice for the bedroom,

01:27:54 ◼   ► but for something in the kitchen or whatever, that's where I wouldn't mind it, I already

01:27:58 ◼   ► have a camera in my kitchen to watch my dog, so I'm obviously, that's not a problem for

01:28:01 ◼   ► me.

01:28:02 ◼   ► So here's, I just noticed in the specs of the,

01:28:06 ◼   ► of this little ball thing, it has a line out for sound.

01:28:10 ◼   ► That's interesting.

01:28:12 ◼   ► So that basically makes it a fancy expensive Echo Dot.

01:28:17 ◼   ► So you could use this to add a small screen

01:28:22 ◼   ► to a smart speaker somewhere in your house.

01:28:24 ◼   ► Like, if you take it out of the bedroom,

01:28:27 ◼   ► that I think makes it a more interesting proposition.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Anyway, so I wish them luck with these things

01:28:33 ◼   ► and we'll see, I mean probably next year

01:28:36 ◼   ► between me and John, Casey I know you're not gonna buy

01:28:39 ◼   ► any of these things, but between me and John

01:28:41 ◼   ► we're probably gonna own one of each of these things.

01:28:44 ◼   ► - That means you're gonna buy every single one of them

01:28:46 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think I'm buying any of these.

01:28:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, just wait.

01:28:48 ◼   ► - I mean I thought about having another,

01:28:51 ◼   ► having Echo and the Google Home in the house

01:28:54 ◼   ► at the same time, but I don't know.

01:28:56 ◼   ► I think what I'm more likely to do at this point

01:28:59 ◼   ► is buy more cameras for my house, more dedicated cameras

01:29:01 ◼   ► 'cause now that I have one to watch the dog,

01:29:03 ◼   ► I'm like, I can get a better angle on the dog

01:29:04 ◼   ► when she's in a different room.

01:29:06 ◼   ► Like maybe a second camera or something like that.

01:29:09 ◼   ► Or maybe I'll finally get into like the light bulbs

01:29:12 ◼   ► and stuff and then I'll get an Echo

01:29:13 ◼   ► and some other room to do light control.

01:29:16 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:29:17 ◼   ► None of these are making me wanna run out

01:29:19 ◼   ► and buy any of them.

01:29:20 ◼   ► I'll let you buy all of them and tell me what they're like.

01:29:22 ◼   ► - Okay, thanks.

01:29:23 ◼   ► - I'm back again.

01:29:25 ◼   ► What did I miss?

01:29:27 ◼   ► - Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:29:28 ◼   ► Casper, Betterment, and Hullo.

01:29:30 ◼   ► and we will see you next week

01:29:37 ◼   ► didn't even mean to begin.

01:29:39 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental.

01:29:41 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:29:42 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:29:44 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:29:45 ◼   ► John didn't do any research.

01:29:47 ◼   ► Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:29:49 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental.

01:29:51 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:29:52 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:29:54 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:29:55 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:30:00 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter,

01:30:03 ◼   ► You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:30:10 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:30:14 ◼   ► N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N S-I-R-A-C

01:30:19 ◼   ► U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:30:22 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:30:25 ◼   ► They didn't mean to accidental (Accidental)

01:30:30 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast so long ♪

01:30:33 ◼   ► - What do we got for the after show?

01:30:36 ◼   ► - You got fancy chairs.

01:30:38 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, this time it was John that spent

01:30:42 ◼   ► an exorbitant amount of money.

01:30:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got a lot of chair issues

01:30:49 ◼   ► in my little computer room that also has my PS4 in it.

01:30:52 ◼   ► I've got a chair in front of my wife's computer,

01:30:54 ◼   ► which is a 5K iMac.

01:30:55 ◼   ► I've got a chair in front of my old Mac Pro,

01:30:58 ◼   ► I've got a third chair in front of my ps4 where I play destiny and all these chairs are bad chairs. Oh

01:31:04 ◼   ► Two of them two of them are bad chairs. One of them is just really old

01:31:09 ◼   ► So my wife's chair is some crappy like office max staples, whatever

01:31:14 ◼   ► Cheap chair that is actually not even good for the amount that we paid for it. Like it's like well it was a cheap

01:31:21 ◼   ► But it's okay. It's it wobbles. It was never very comfortable. It's ugly. It's just not a good chair

01:31:27 ◼   ► The PS4 chair is like not actually a chair that's supposed to be in front of a desk. It's like

01:31:33 ◼   ► Sort of a casual. I don't know what it is like

01:31:37 ◼   ► It's not like a folding chair what you take out when company comes over, but it's like one step removed

01:31:41 ◼   ► No, it's not a folding chair

01:31:42 ◼   ► But it is like it's not a computer chair at all

01:31:45 ◼   ► And I don't like it because it puts weird marks on the carpet

01:31:48 ◼   ► And we have like a pillow on top of it to make it marginally comfortable and like it's kind of falling apart

01:31:55 ◼   ► So that's not great. And then finally my computer chair, which is the one I'm excluding from calling a bad chair

01:32:02 ◼   ► It's just it seemed better days

01:32:03 ◼   ► I bought this chair for a two hundred and fifty dollars which seemed like a huge amount of money

01:32:07 ◼   ► When I lived in Georgia, which was at least what 20 years ago

01:32:11 ◼   ► Right, and you know, I was I was just out of school just married living in our first apartment

01:32:17 ◼   ► Oh, you know away from home. We're buying furniture for our stuff

01:32:21 ◼   ► I bought myself a desk which I'm not using anymore. Actually, my wife's using it, but the desk that my wife is using,

01:32:26 ◼   ► so that thing survives. And I needed to get a chair for it, and I spent what I thought was a lot of money,

01:32:31 ◼   ► $250 for a chair in like 1997, 98. Boy, that's a lot of money. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that expensive.

01:32:38 ◼   ► But anyway, that $250 chair has lasted me, you know, 20 years.

01:32:43 ◼   ► And it still works okay. The cushion is absolutely shot.

01:32:48 ◼   ► It is shredded and it also any foam that might have been in there is compressed

01:32:53 ◼   ► You know beyond belief from 20 years of me sitting on it, but nothing on it is broken

01:32:58 ◼   ► Doesn't really rattle the pneumatic up and down thingy

01:33:02 ◼   ► Has a little bit of spring in it when it shouldn't like this sort of goes down

01:33:07 ◼   ► Compresses when you sit on that no matter what but it's pretty heroic like kind of like my Mac Pro

01:33:12 ◼   ► You know it's it's fast this time

01:33:15 ◼   ► But it is pretty but anyway it has never been a particularly comfortable or good chair

01:33:19 ◼   ► And I just feel like I needed a better one, and I've been putting this off for years

01:33:23 ◼   ► It's not like I'm buying new new fancy chairs on a whim for years and years

01:33:27 ◼   ► I've been like we need new chairs all our chairs are crap

01:33:29 ◼   ► And I'm sitting on a 15 year old chair now. I'm sitting on an 18 year old chair now

01:33:33 ◼   ► I'm sitting on a 20 year old chair and for whatever reason

01:33:35 ◼   ► finally

01:33:37 ◼   ► Got the wherewithal to say we just just need to get new chairs, and I've been resisting mostly because

01:33:43 ◼   ► Fancy chairs cost huge amounts of money if you've never looked at fancy chairs

01:33:47 ◼   ► And you think that $250 one was too much money. Don't look it's terrifying

01:33:51 ◼   ► They cost too much money, and I would be like I don't like my chair, but no do I not like it that much

01:33:57 ◼   ► the answer is usually no I was working during the dot-com boom right and

01:34:03 ◼   ► That means I had occasion to encounter air on chairs which is one of the first

01:34:09 ◼   ► fancy chairs. And I sat on them, and they're interesting, but they never seemed like they

01:34:15 ◼   ► could justify the price. So I always had an excuse in my head of like, "Yeah, okay, fancy chairs may

01:34:19 ◼   ► be nice, but they're not that nice." And I had some foundation in it, having actually like sit on

01:34:24 ◼   ► some kinds of fancy chairs for an extended period of time. But obviously I changed my mind on that,